The Druid's Guise: The Complete Trilogy (The Druid's Guise Trilogy)

by Michael J Sanford

  Wyatt looked beyond his small sister. The light in the distance seemed brighter, and it called to him. Wyatt tried to speak, coughed, and pointed at it.

  Lucy tugged on his arm and Wyatt got his other foot beneath him. With halting steps, fractured by gasps and searing pain, Wyatt walked. Lucy wrapped herself around his waist and kept him upright as they gave everything to heed their mother’s wish. The light. Getting to the light was the only thing Wyatt could think. It was all that mattered.

  At last, Wyatt and Lucy crossed into the circle of golden light created by the lamppost at the edge of the street. Wyatt twisted away from Lucy and fell hard against the pavement. He groaned, and the world around him faded in and out at a dizzying rate. He felt Lucy’s hands on him and found himself leaning against the concrete pillar at the base of the lamppost.

  Every breath took Wyatt’s full effort. He wasn’t sure how many he had left.

  Lucy sat at his side and leaned into his body. Hot fire lit up Wyatt’s chest, but he didn’t resist. Wyatt blinked repeatedly and focused on his mother’s whispered voice that ran on a loop in his mind. With a wince, he shifted into Lucy, and looked down at her. Her face was buried into the crook of his arm, very near where a thick pine branch was embedded in his chest.

  He dragged his arm toward Lucy in an effort to better embrace her. His mother had given two directives—go to the light and stay together. The whisper in his head wouldn’t let him forget that. Lifting his hand, Wyatt saw the charred shape of Lucy’s stuffed bear clutched in his fingers. If he could have, he would have laughed. Instead, he laid the bear on his lap, leaned against Lucy, and drifted into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  WYATT OPENED HIS eyes and saw only blinding light. He wanted to shut them again, retreat back into the darkness, but the thought frightened him, though he wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, he didn’t think, but the light seemed far more welcoming, and it had been dark for so long.

  “Holy shit,” a voice said from somewhere in the light.

  Wyatt twisted his head. It didn’t feel like he moved much, but the outline of a head appeared in the center of a white aura.

  “Oh, excuse my language,” the voice continued. “But you’re awake.”

  Wyatt stared at the outline, willing some clarity into it. It must have worked, for after a moment, a dark-haired man with a matching mustache appeared where the silhouette had been. The light dimmed as well, but it still burned Wyatt’s eyes.

  “Wyatt?” the man asked, leaning closer. He smelled like aftershave and fruit. “Can you hear me?”

  Wyatt nodded, but the man didn’t react.

  Something grabbed Wyatt’s fingers and squeezed gently.

  “Do you feel me grabbing your hand?” the man asked. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”

  Wyatt squeezed.

  “Good,” the man said. “You’ve been asleep a very long time, but it’s great to have you back with us. Now, you’re going to be disoriented and confused for a while, I imagine, but everything can be explained in due time. What I need you to do now is be patient. You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

  Wyatt blinked, tried to sit up, and groaned.

  “Stay still,” the man said. “Just relax. It’s going to take some time to get back to your old self, but seeing you awake now gives me confidence that we can get there.”

  The man with the dark mustache said something more, but Wyatt couldn’t stop his eyelids from fluttering closed. He panicked for a moment, but then lost that ability as well as he slid into the darkness once more.

  * * *

  Days passed like a dream, clad in disorienting images and conflicting thoughts. They became weeks and then months, but Wyatt had little ability to keep track of them. No moment seemed any different than the last, and so time ceased to exist as far as Wyatt was concerned. He slept more than not and soon lost the ability to discern between dreams and reality. Both haunted him.

  A knock came on his hospital-room door as Wyatt struggled to get a spoonful of Jell-O to his mouth amid the ever-present tremor in his hand. He dropped the spoon as Dr. Maverick stepped lightly into the room. The man examined the monitors that cluttered the small space as he stroked the edges of his mustache.

  “How you feeling, Wyatt?” he asked.

  “Is this real?” Wyatt asked. Always the first question.

  Dr. Maverick reached over, pinched Wyatt’s arm, and smiled. “Far as I can tell,” he said. Always the response.

  Wyatt nodded. “Then I guess I’m feeling a little better than…” He wanted to say yesterday, but Wyatt couldn’t remember even having woken up, much less any days before the present one.

  “Good,” Dr. Maverick said. “Because you have a visitor.”

  “Really?” Wyatt asked. “Do I know them?”

  “I should think so. Shall I show them in?”

  Wyatt nodded and pushed aside the tray of food. He didn’t think he’d had a visitor before. Who would visit him?

  Dr. Maverick left the room and moments later it opened again, this time admitting an older woman with a tight crop of steel-gray hair and a cane of the same shade. She shuffled in without looking at Wyatt and fell into the chair at his bedside. She coughed, but said nothing more.

  Wyatt stared at her for several moments. “Grandma?” It was an honest question as Wyatt fought to bring the memory of the woman out of the depths in his mind.

  “I see you’re talking now,” she said.

  “Uh huh. I’m feeling better than…”

  Wyatt’s grandmother grunted. “Doctor says it won’t be too much longer till I have to take you home with me.”

  Wyatt frowned, confused. “Home?”

  “Guess we can’t put it off much longer, now that it’s obvious you’re not going to die or anything.”

  Something flashed in Wyatt’s mind and he caught the scent of something burning, and someone screaming, but then both sensations left him. “How long have I been here?”

  She looked at him for the first time since entering the room, but quickly glanced away again. “Eight months. Give or take.”

  “Eight?”

  “Five of that was on life support after the surgery.”

  “Surgery?” Wyatt asked. He looked down at his body, looking for an answer to a question he’d already forgotten.

  “Doctor says it’s a miracle you lived long enough to even see it. Says you’re some sort of fighter.” She grunted and then coughed for several moments. When she’d gathered herself, she said, “I’m taking you home because I have to, but don’t think for a second I won’t send you away again if you can’t control yourself. I won’t have another incident like with your sister.”

  Wyatt’s leg twitched. “Sister?” Another flash, this one lasting longer. “Lucy? Where is she? Is she okay?”

  Wyatt’s grandmother scoffed. “Seemed all right till she right lost her damn mind and went after her preschool teacher with a pair of safety scissors. Nearly cut the poor bitch’s head off.”

  “What?” He heard the words, but none of them made any sense.

  “Had to have her committed, and if you can’t keep your marbles, I’ll do the same to you.”

  Wyatt leaned back against the headboard of his hospital bed. He wanted to ask more, but couldn’t piece together what he’d already asked. He abandoned the hopeless avenue of thought and found a new one, one that’d gnawed at him since his grandmother had first come in.

  “Grandma?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you mad at me? Did I do something? I can’t remember why I’m here, but you’re mad, aren’t you?”

  Wyatt’s grandmother stood far faster then she seemed capable of previously. She leaned over the bed, her breath reeking of cigarettes and liquor. “Is that some kind of joke?”

  Wyatt recoiled against his pillow and shook his head.

  “Isn’t that just peachy? So, I guess I’m the only one who has to live with the shit you created? Th
at’s right; Lucy told me what happened, before she went crazy. I know it was your fault.” She pointed an arthritic finger at Wyatt and he squirmed deeper into the bed. “I don’t know what’s worse—that my daughter had to die or that she saved your life in the process.”

  Wyatt didn’t know what to say. He could hardly breathe. And he couldn’t piece together one coherent thought after another. His grandmother growled and turned from him. “Selfish little bastard,” she said as she got up and flung a tattered comic book onto the bedside table on her way out of the room. She slammed the door behind her.

  Wyatt stared at the door, perplexed. Nothing his grandmother had said made any sense to him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Had he? In a moment, his thoughts jumbled into an unrecognizable mess.

  His eyes wandered to his grandmother’s parting gift. The comic was well-worn, missing most of its cover and likely some of the interior pages. He leaned over, grabbed it, and carefully laid it open on his lap. The cover page was still largely intact, and it read The Mystical Adventures of Grenleck the Wizard.

  “Oh, I like wizards,” Wyatt said to the empty room. “I think.”

  He read through the book once, then twice, and then continued the circuit until twilight came and stretched long shadows across the hospital bed. He set the comic aside then, knowing what the night would bring. He sat up straight and stared at the far side of the room. He didn’t dare move any part of his body for fear of antagonizing the unseen intruder.

  “I’m not scared,” he whispered, doing his best to sound like the brave wizard, Grenleck.

  Even so, he did little but turn his head to watch the amorphous pool of shadow that always came at night to watch from the corner. It didn’t look much different than any other shadow, but it moved in unnatural ways, and Wyatt couldn’t help feeling like it was staring at him. And he couldn’t help but stare back.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Wyatt said, though as he spoke he forgot what he was denying.

  The shadow moved slightly, enough to let Wyatt know it was there, but remained silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  WYATT BLINKED AND found himself returned to Sanctuary’s Great Hall, though it seemed as if he’d never left. All was as it had been—Athena, Maia, and Ms. Abagail were still huddled together on the floor. The Lord Regent still sat at the head of a long wooden table, tugging on Rozen’s roped wrists, and smiling. And the Bad Man remained in front of Wyatt, sandwiched between Lucy and him.

  The Bad Man surged upward into the air, spun, and reformed at a spot nearer the table the Lord Regent occupied. Its smile returned.

  The Lord Regent clapped. “Quite a wonderful display, young Druids,” he said. “Gone one moment only to reappear the next. I nearly missed the entire act with a single blink.”

  “And now you are both returned to me,” the Bad Man said. “Here with nothing changed.”

  Wyatt caught Lucy’s gaze. He stepped closer to her and grabbed her hand tightly in his. Tears poured from his eyes just as they did hers. They turned to face the Bad Man.

  “You’re wrong,” Wyatt said. “Everything has changed.”

  Lucy shuddered, but nodded. “It was my fault,” she said.

  The Bad Man quivered, flickering for just an instant. “What did you say?” it growled.

  “And it was my fault, too,” Wyatt added.

  The Bad Man lost its shape, but then reconfigured itself and grew in size. “Of course, it was, you selfish little bastards. You killed them.”

  “It was an accident,” Wyatt said. “But you’re right. I was selfish and it got our parents killed.”

  “You think remembering your transgressions solves anything?” the Bad Man howled. “Do you think it excuses your sin?”

  “No,” Wyatt said firmly. “It doesn’t. But neither does forgetting it.”

  The Bad Man dipped to the floor, snaked its way toward Lucy, and rose up to loom over both of them. “It hurts, doesn’t it, Lucy, my dear? Your big brother responsible for killing Mommy and Daddy. No wonder you hate him so much.”

  “I don’t hate him,” Lucy said, thrusting her chin out.

  “But you must,” the Bad Man hissed, then, turning to Wyatt said, “Your parents dead and for what? So Lucy could get a stupid stuffed bear?”

  Wyatt held his position. “You have no power over us anymore. We know the truth. Your lies are meaningless now.”

  The Bad Man shook with laughter. “And yet here I remain. And if there is no more cause to play games, then perhaps your lives are forfeit. Just as you condemned your parents to die, so too do I—”

  “I know what you are,” Wyatt said, interrupting the shade.

  The Bad Man glided away from Wyatt, its smile collapsed back into an inky nebula.

  Silence filled the room. Wyatt looked over his shoulder. Ms. Abagail was crying, but her eyes were firm as they looked into his. He squeezed Lucy’s hand and turned back to the Bad Man. Wyatt now knew everything his mind had fought so long and hard to hide. And it hurt. More than he thought possible, it hurt. Part of him knew that it would never go away. He was marked.

  Wyatt pressed his free hand to his chest, fingers running along the web of scars. The pain was forever a part of him, just as his mother’s heart was, both in spirit and body. Every beat was a gift from a woman he had taken for granted. Every whisper he heard was her reminder to stay true, kind, and loving. She had been with him the entire time, just as the Bad Man had, pulling him in opposite directions. But no more.

  Wyatt stared into the twisting fog of the Bad Man’s shapeless head. “You’re me.”

  The Bad Man shook, howled. “No!” it bellowed.

  “You’re my guilt and shame. My regret. My fear.”

  The black mist of the Bad Man’s form hissed and evaporated, retreating from the thing Wyatt had buried the night his parents had died.

  “You’re my anger and hatred. My self-loathing. You were there from the beginning, in my hospital room. Following, taunting, whispering. You made me forget.”

  “I protected you!” the Bad Man howled. It twisted and contorted, long claws pressed to its shapeless head.

  “You…you didn’t protect me. I…messed up. My parents…our parents died because of me. And I forgot it. You took that from me. You took them from me! I couldn’t remember anything from before the accident. Not Lucy, not my mom, not my dad. None of it. You stole my family from me. The good, the bad. You stole everything from me!”

  The Bad Man pitched forward and raked at the stone floor. “You. You, Wyatt. You killed your family. You’re the monster.”

  “And I should have to live with that,” Wyatt said. He could no longer feel anything but the fire in his chest. “I should have the choice. Forgetting it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It doesn’t bring them back or fix anything. You don’t get to decide.”

  Hunched over, looking far smaller than its previous iterations, the Bad Man quivered. “You think you can dismiss me because you remember now? I can show you so many things. I am the Bad Man.”

  “No,” Wyatt said. “I’m the Bad Man.”

  The Bad Man continued to shrink as the concealing shadows were burned away by Wyatt’s will. With a last gasp, the black vanished, leaving only the form of a ten-year-old boy—Wyatt as he had been.

  “Even though I buried the memories of my parents, and of Lucy, and my grandmother, I made you. I thought I deserved to suffer. I wanted to be tortured for what I’d done. But I can’t run or hide from any of it, but I also don’t need to hurt myself any longer. Or those I love. It’s not fair to any of us.”

  Young Wyatt climbed to his feet, took a single step forward, and fell onto his knees. His chin dropped to his chest and he began sobbing. It quickly grew into pitiful wails of mourning.

  “I accept it now,” Wyatt said as he watched the eerie image of himself grieve on the floor before him. “What I did. The accident. My grandmother. Everything here. It does nothing to change the past, but it can shape my future. Because I
accept it.”

  “We accept it,” Lucy added.

  Young Wyatt stopped weeping, sat back on his heels, and regarded Wyatt and Lucy with swollen eyes and a trembling lip. “I miss them…” he said.

  “Me too,” Wyatt said. He tapped on the center of his chest. “Mom and Dad are right here now, just as they always were. No more secrets. No more forgetting. I remember how much they loved us. And I won’t ever forget that again.”

  The visage of Young Wyatt—the Bad Man—smiled and faded away.

  As the image of his own guilt and anguish disappeared, Wyatt turned to Lucy and they embraced. Something passed into Wyatt at that moment, whether a feeling from Lucy or the remnant of what the Bad Man was, he couldn’t say. But he felt whole again, or as whole as he thought he might ever be. The pain remained, more intense than ever before, almost tearing him apart, but it was real. Lucy squeezed the air from his lungs and he squeezed her back harder. There were words Wyatt needed to say, but before he could begin to formulate them, a loud bang forced the siblings apart.

  “I think you are forgetting something, Druid,” the Lord Regent said, the sarcastic grin wiped from his face. He banged the pommel of a sword on the table again and stood, keeping one blade pinned to Rozen’s throat.

  “I didn’t forget,” Wyatt said. “I remember now.”

  “How precious,” the Lord Regent said. “But do you know why you’ve been allowed to live so long, you and your sister?”

  “Because this is our world,” Wyatt said. “Made of our memories and—”

  “Ha!” the Lord Regent shouted. He drew two more swords from scabbards at his belt and slapped the blades on the table as he leaned over it. “Your arrogance never ceases to amaze and delight me. I allowed you to live because it was you that provided the dark power of the world. That Bad Man, as you called it, was what fueled our magic. And our power. For that, I thank you. The Regency has conquered much, shepherded on by your fear and shame.”

  Wyatt didn’t back down. That time had long passed. “And now it’s gone. And you have nothing left.”