The Siren Stone

After bushwhacking through an overgrown field, I saw an outcropping of sandstone on a nearby hill, and knew I was getting close. 

From the top of the hill, the other side dipped into a deep valley. Blankets of moss covered the stone floor below. The black entrance of Moonshine Cave was cut into a wall of sandstone on the other side. It was perfectly round, as if a giant melon baller had scooped out the rock. I scrambled down to it, adrenaline driving me forward. 

It was only when I reached the mouth of the cave that I realized I’d forgotten to bring a flashlight with me. Luckily, I still had my phone. While it was next to useless out in the woods, lacking both WiFi and data, the LED worked fine.

The interior of the cave was cool, and carried a faint scent of earth and crushed leaves. The walls of stone glistened with moisture, reflecting the light from my phone. Though the entrance had been wide, it soon tapered into a narrow passageway. 

I followed the passage until I reached a fork, and on a whim, took the left path. The further I traveled, the more winding and circuitous the tunnel became. Each bend or corner I approached seemed to hold the promise of a spacious cavern on the other side, but there was never anything except more stone.

I reached another fork, and this time turned right. The walls in this tunnel constricted with every turn, tightening their grip until they brushed my shoulders. I squeezed around another a final bend, ready to turn back and explore the other path, and found myself in a small, elliptical chamber. Half a dozen other stone corridors branched off in every direction. Above each of them were strange markings etched into the stone. I traced a finger over one that looked like a tree branch. The rock was smooth, almost oily, and cold to the touch. The symbols all different. One was a star, another a crescent, the third a sphere, and the fourth nothing more than a cluster of dots. The path I’d come from was marked with three wavy, horizontal lines.

Under the light of my phone, the markings seemed to reflect an iridescent glow. I looked closer, and could see ripples of stone. The light from my shaking hand shimmered across it in waves. I ran a finger along the grooves, and could almost hear the sweet, susurration of the ocean kissing the shore. The soft shifting of sand. The echoes were intoxicating, and lingered in the air when I lifted my hand away. But as they faded, a deep chill crept into my muscles. The stone walls seemed to close in with a smothering silence, as if the entire cavern was holding its breath. I placed my finger back in the groove, and heard the distant, grinding sigh of settling stone. 

I must have spent hours tracing the symbols, one by one. The circular route I took became steeped in ritual, and I learned the markings by name, greeting each of them in turn as an old friend. The Earth. The Sun. The Moon. The Sky. The Deep. The Dark.  

I don’t remember when the bleeding began. Eventually I noticed the stains that dripped to the floor, but I didn’t mind. The blood didn’t sit long in the grooves, and by the time I came around again, the stone would be dry, hungry and waiting. 

I would have kept like that forever if my phone didn’t ring. The digital chirping cut through the soothing song of the cave, and suddenly I remembered where I was. Before I could answer it, the light went out, the battery died, and darkness closed in once more. 

Deep beneath my feet I could hear the stone grinding, groaning. Fear clenched my chest in an iron grip, and I fled, throwing myself down a random passage. The stone walls closed around me like a coiling boa, loath to let another meal escape. At one point I tripped, and thought I was lost for sure. The cave groaned hungrily. From the floor I glimpsed a tiny pinprick of light ahead and pushed myself towards it, scrambling over wet stone and rubble until I was free. My knees gave out, and I collapsed on the mossy ground outside. The afternoon sun bathed my face in a welcome warmth. 

I never went back again, but I can still see the symbols clearly. I still trace their shapes in the air. And in my sleep, sometimes, I can hear the grinding of tectonic plates beneath the earth, calling me back to Moonshine Cave.

 

Scratching the Itch

The door to the place is locked when I arrive. I press the buzzer and a voice crackles back seconds later.

“What?”

“Mr. Wiggins? We had an appointment.”

There’s a buzz and the click of the door unlocking. I climb up the narrow staircase, stained with who knows what on the sticky steps. Rent’s probably cheap, but it’s as good a place as any for a small, freelance business. Still, it’s not in the best neighborhood, just south of downtown, where the buildings are old, the streets bare, and the people desperate. Not ideal, but it’s the only place in Middle America where you can hire someone crazy enough to chase tornadoes with you.

The door at the top of the stairs has hastily painted white letters on the glass that read, Jim Wiggins, Adventure Travel.

Jim Wiggins is sitting behind a small desk in the cramped room. An open bottle of Jack Daniels sits on a file cabinet. Some cigarette smoke escapes through the door, but when I go to close it Jim stops me. He’s already standing, and stubs his cigarette out on his desk.

“Well.” he says, sizing me up. “You got the look of a kid with the heart for this kind of thing. Remind me of myself when I was your age.”  

“Thanks,” I say. “I think I’m ready.”

“No time like the present.”

 

Jim is gunning his beat up Jeep at sixty-five down an old county road. The sky is gray and smeared with cumulonimbus giants. I can tell it’s quiet outside, but inside Jim blasts classic rock on the radio. Black Sabbath. He taps his fingers on the wheel to the beat, and nearly has to shout to be heard above the distorted guitar.

“You got the itch, I can tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“The itch. That feeling you get when you’re cooped up all day and just want to live.”

I nod but don’t respond. I’d felt something similar before.

“Fight or flight, man,” he goes on. “You gotta scratch that itch to survive.”

We pull over in between two wide cornfields and step outside. The sky seems still if you only glance at it, but really the stretched clouds glide over the horizon, like water on a slow-moving river, and closer to the ground than you’d expect.

We end up waiting for over two hours without the faintest hint of a funnel cloud. Jim keeps checking the radar on his phone, and paces back and forth, chain smoking Camels. He’s impatient, but seems anxious for something other than the storm. I don’t press him. So another hour passes, and our conversations are short and pointed. We both know what we’re waiting for.

Eventually we give up and start driving back. Jim leaves the radio off, but keeps the constant Camel at his lips. He mutters to himself and I can only make out a few broken phrases and curse words. I’m a little disappointed too. I expected excitement and danger, not a restless man and cornfields.

As we start driving through town it begins to rain. First a few sprinkles, but within ten minutes it’s a full downpour. We missed the tornado, but there was still a very real storm coming through.

Jim seems unconcerned, and is still going nearly fifty down the busy streets. The cars in front of us cast waves onto the sidewalk, and the Jeep follows suit. Every couple of seconds we see the bright red shine of brake lights, and are forced to slow. I learn quickly how liberal Jim is with his horn.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be going so fast,” I say.

Jim turns to me and grins. I can see the fire behind his eyes; the wildness of a man bent on self-destruction. A man who has to scratch an itch. Here is a real storm chaser, outside of the romanticized image I had in mind. “Don’t you feel it?” he says. “We gotta get something out of this day.”

Without any more warning Jim makes a sharp right turn. I feel the wheels hydroplaning. Then I see the wrong way signs on either side of the road.

“Are you in—” I can’t finish. My senses are overloaded with stimuli. White lights of approaching cars blend with the flash of lightning. The blaring of horns sound with the rumble of thunder beneath. Above it all I hear the maniacal laughing of Jim Wiggins.

Then a screech and a crunch of metal. We stop hard and fast. Head, meet airbag. The seatbelt cuts into my shoulder and I’m thrown back against the seat. We aren’t moving anymore, and I can’t tell which way is up.

I look over at Jim and his face is all cut from the broken windshield. The blood comes down his face in strings, making the resting grin on his face all the more unsettling.

As a fog of darkness settles over my vision I can hear sirens and shouting in the distance. Never again, I vow to myself. I don’t have the heart for this line of work.

And yet, as I close my eyes I smile, and a little voice inside whispers.

Maybe.

 

Tommy Had A Secret

Tommy had a secret. He liked to watch people. Most wouldn’t consider people watching a secret so much as a casual hobby, but Tommy treated it like it was a true calling. He watched strangers on the bus, stared at lone movie-goers, and soaked in as much as he could from every diner waiter or waitress he ever had.

He liked to watch people he knew most of all. He once followed his friend Brian home from school, just for fun. Tommy walked two blocks behind Brian the whole way, and Brian never noticed. He crouched behind a hedge and watched Brian greet his family through a window in the kitchen. Then he went home. The next day at school, Brian asked him what he did yesterday, and Tommy said, “Not much.”

A few weeks later, their class received a new student, whose family had moved to town from Michigan. Mrs. Korzybski brought her to the front of the class and introduced her. Tommy could immediately tell that the girl was either poor, or didn’t know how to take care of herself. Her dirty blonde hair was a matted and greasy shag that ended just above her shoulders. Her clothes were faded and stretched, and her jeans had a yellow bandana patch on one knee.

When Mrs. Korzybski asked her to tell the class her name, she said, “Trish,” and sat back down. She didn’t speak to anyone, and no one knew anything about her. She was the most mysterious figure at school, and Tommy could not resist.

At the end of the day, he kept Trish in his sights as he and the other students were carted off to the buses. If he could find out what bus she rode, he could find out where she lived. As fate had it, Tommy watched as Trish walked over to Bus 314. His bus. Congratulating himself for this stroke of luck, Tommy followed. He picked a seat two back from the dirty shag of hair, and waited.

Trish was dropped off several stops from Tommy’s home. He watched her get out and walk across a yard of dead grass and up the porch of a small house. There were beer bottles on the porch, some empty, others half-full and attracting flies in the heat. The bus pulled away as the front door opened. Tommy could just make out a vague, shadowy figure inside before the house passed from view. His brain itched, and his curiosity welled.

Tommy tried to get off at the next stop, but the bus driver held him back. “This isn’t your stop.”

“I can walk the rest of the way, it’s fine.”

The bus driver shook her head. “Sorry. Parents like to know where their kids are being dropped off. If you wanna walk, walk. But when you ride my bus, you get off at your stop.”

Tommy sat back down and brooded for the next five minutes until the bus stopped at his street. He pretended to tie his shoe until he saw it turn onto the next street. Then he stood up, turned around, and started walking.

He found the house quickly enough, though it was surrounded by others just like it. As Tommy walked toward it, he realized this was maybe what his mother had meant when she told him not to wander. He shook off the thought, and slipped behind the fence and into Trish’s backyard.

A line of trees and withered shrubbery along the fence provided good cover for Tommy as he staked out his new classmates’ home. He positioned himself directly across from the sliding glass door that looked into the kitchen. A man and a woman sat at the table. Both of them had a bottle in one hand, and were gesturing wildly with the other. Tommy imagined raised voices, and loud music to drown them out. He kept watching. Occasionally, the man would stand and open the sliding door to toss out another bottle. The first time he did this, Tommy nearly jumped for fear he’d been discovered. After the third time, he relaxed, but kept his eyes peeled for signs of Trish, who he still hadn’t seen.

By this time, Tommy was beginning to think he should just give up and go home. His legs were starting to hurt from crouching, and the sun was getting lower. As he made to start crawling back around the line of trees, the faint murmur of voices behind glass exploded into a shouting match. Trish was standing in front of the table and yelling at her parents, who were giving it right back. He couldn’t make out what they were screaming, but their faces said enough for Tommy to know that he’d seen plenty. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, which wasn’t right. This was supposed to be his fun little game, not something that made him feel guilty or embarrassed.

As the shouting continued, Tommy started crawling. He needed to get out of here, needed to get back home. He’d already have some explaining to do when he showed up over an hour after his bus was supposed to drop him off. But he could make something up. At the most, he’d get a stern talking-to.

Tommy was only a few feet away from the gate when he heard the glass door slide open. He froze, and watched as Trish stepped out, giving the sliding door as much of a slam as she could. Then she sunk to the ground and put her head in her lap. Tommy could just make out the faint, gasping sobs from where he crouched.

But he was so close. Tommy eyed the gate, started inching towards it. He lifted a foot, set it down, lifted the other. He’d almost reached the end of the line of trees when he heard the snap of a dead branch crack underneath him.

“Who’s there?” The voice didn’t seem like it belonged to the sad, lonely girl Tommy had just heard crying alone on the ground. But when he turned to look, he saw Trish standing tall, with a hard look in her eyes. She had a bottle in her hand, and held it above her head, ready to throw.

Tommy stood as still as he could. He didn’t blink, and kept his breathing as shallow as possible. She was staring right at him, but he was sure she didn’t know whether he was there or not. His eyes flicked over to the gate again. If he ran, he could make it. He glanced at Trish, who took a hesitant step closer.

Tommy bolted. He heard a cry and an explosion of glass behind him. She’d missed. He nearly laughed at the thrill of it. His hands hit the gate, and he opened it.

“Hey!”

Something stopped him from just running. No one had ever caught him before. He had to take another look, had to see the expression on her face. Tommy looked over his shoulder, expecting to see a mixture of confusion and admiration splattered across Trish’s features.

Instead, he got a broken bottle to the face.

He blacked out from the pain. When he woke up, the world looked flat and narrow. He put a hand to his face, and felt the gauze and tape blocking his left eye. The doctor told him it was still possible to save it, but he didn’t want Tommy to get his hopes up too high. Tommy’s mother told him they would be having a long talk when they got home, but she was glad he was okay. Tommy didn’t say anything.

When he went back to school, no one asked him any questions. No one told him they’d heard anything. As far as he knew, Trish had stayed quiet. It was a small favor to Tommy, but he was grateful for it. Sometimes they would make eye contact across the lunchroom, and Tommy knew, and Trish knew, but no one else.

Tommy still had a secret, but he didn’t want one anymore.

 

Winter Blunderland

The early morning January sky was dark. The only sound Astor could hear in the biting cold was the sleet as it slapped against the icy parking lot, the frozen husks of cars, and the top of her head. Why did she have to be out here now? Why did she have to work a job that made her get up at this ungodly hour?

When she tried to open the door of her old rusty, red Jeep she was met with resistance. The door wouldn’t budge. Typical. Sighing, Astor walked around and yanked on the passenger door. It too, was frozen shut.

Astor shoved her freezing hands into the folds of her overcoat and stamped the numbness from her feet. It was no use. Even if she went back inside to get hot water to pour over the door, the damn thing probably wouldn’t budge for at least fifteen minutes. She could walk to work, and be there in the same amount of time. It was shaping up to be yet another fun fun day.

As she crossed the street outside her apartment complex, Astor’s foot caught on a patch of ice. She felt her legs slip from under her, but managed to catch herself before hitting the ground. There weren’t any cars on the road, and she made it to the other side without another incident. The wind tore at her exposed face, and within minutes she was sniffing back snot. She kept her head down, focused on her feet, and did nothing else but will them to continue walking.

This is crazy. Even if I do make it on time, there’s no way anyone will come in for coffee in this mess. 

Astor turned onto the rail trail that ran across town. It was her usual shortcut to work, but she preferred taking it in the summer time, when the leaves bristled from the welcome, cooling breeze. Currently, the trail was covered in four inches of snow and slush that had already soaked through Astor’s boots and socks. She tried to think of how welcome a nice hot latte would be once she got to work, but it did little to comfort her in the moment.

The trail led Astor through a field, across from which were several abandoned warehouses. There was a light in one of them, coming from the third floor. Astor glanced at it curiously, and felt her legs give out once again as she slipped on a patch of ice. this time she hit the ground hard, scraping her bare hands on the slush.

There was little pain, but Astor felt the tears coming anyway. Those warehouses were only a five minute walk from her place, but it’d easily taken her twice that long to get this far. The palms of her hands were red and raw, her toes numb and distant, and even the tears she was crying hurt as they froze halfway down her cheeks. Still, she had to get to work. So, wiping away the icicle tears, Astor picked herself up, and kept walking.

After another ten minutes of trudging through the thick slush, the sleet turned to a thick curtain of snow. Astor’s world was filled with static and grainy, white noise. Her thin frame rocked with each new gust of wind, but she pressed on.

Up ahead, Astor could just make out the faint outline of the Midtown Cafe.  There weren’t any lights on, but that was usual at this time. They wouldn’t be opening for another hour. She only hoped that Pete or Melissa were there to let her in, as she didn’t have a key. The numbness was spreading to her legs now, and she couldn’t feel her hands.

As she approached the door, she noticed a little sign on the window. It read: Closed due to weather. Will open tomorrow at regular business hours. No. Astor pulled at the locked door to no avail. Then her legs gave out, and she sunk to her knees in the wet snow. It was going to be a long walk back.

 

Post-NaNo: Looking to the Future

It’s been almost one month since I finished NanoWriMo, and the first draft of my novel, The Garden and the Graveyard.

That feels good to say.

But in all honesty, although it is a huge personal accomplishment, in the long term, not a big deal. I plan on writing many more first drafts, and seconds, and thirds…

During my absence this December I have continued to write. Short stories, mostly. It’s felt good to empty my head and work without a deadline for a while, but it’s about time I get back to it. I wanted to keep my eyes away from the story so that I can come back at it with fresh eyes, and a red pen in hand.

I hope to have finished my first round of revisions by the end of January, and send copies to one or two of my most trusted readers (you know who you are). Depending on the feedback I get, and how I’m feeling about the story, I expect to do one more final draft, before I publish it as an ebook for purchase.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about publishing, and how I want to go about doing it, and I haven’t come up with any concrete solutions so far. Right now I’m thinking I’ll be doing a mix of publishing my ebooks on amazon, and setting up an online store for my short stories.

With all of these aspirations of self-publishing, I’ve decided to move my blog here from worpress.com to wordpress.org, so that I can have more control over my work, and more options as I look to the future. I’m still in the process of setting up my domain, and figuring out how to move all of my content there, while keeping my subscribers (I won’t leave you all behind, I promise).

I’m hoping to get everything up and running by the time the new year rolls around, but that may be a bit optimistic. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

Until then, stay in touch, and don’t abandon me. I know I’m not the most consistent when it comes to posting new content, but I’m getting better at it. Sometimes I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff with makeshift wings, and I’m too scared to take the plunge for fear of falling.

Now, take a deep breath.

Here’s to the future.

And jump.

 

 

 

NaNoWriMo: Day 30 Aaaannnd done!

Epilogue

The whistling of the tea kettle brought me back to my senses. I shook my head, stopped looking out the window at the blue house next door, and turned the gas off. Then I poured the steaming water into my mug, and dropped a pouch of mint tea in it. I tied the string around the handle of the mug, as is my habit, and let it sit and steep on the countertop.

I hadn’t realized just how much of my childhood I had forgotten, how much had slipped through the cracks, and never resurfaced. How could I have gone through the rest of my entire childhood and adult life with that just stewing in the back of my mind, unaddressed and unnoticed?

I picked up my mug, and took a sip. The tea was still too hot, and burnt my lip, but I swallowed it down anyway. It was good, refreshing, and it warmed me up from the inside, as it settled in my belly.

I never did see Ms. Cleary again, I realized, standing there with my tea. The last that I saw of her she was walking into that house, and closing the large, sliding glass door. She must have moved out, though, because I remember having other neighbors, many, in fact, in that old blue house next door. None of them ever stayed more than a year, either, and most moved out after several weeks, or months. My parents would say that it was because they didn’t like the location, or got a new job, or were short on money and couldn’t afford the mortgage, but I always thought that it was haunted, and that there was some ghost or ghoul living inside of it, that drove everyone out.

It occurred to me then that that was how I had transformed, and distorted my memories of the house. I came to believe that it was haunted, and even then, remembered pouring salt around my house in a circle, so that I could keep any ghosts from coming in to get me. But all along it had been the opposite. The details were all there, they were just mismatched and scrambled. It made me wonder as to exactly how many of my memories were in this skewed state. Were these the only ones, or was I still not remembering more, even now?

I stared out the window again at Ms. Cleary’s old house and yard. What had ever happened to her? Where did she go to? I remembered the days after with astonishingly sharp detail in the moment, but as I riffled through them, like flipping pages in a photo album, I did not see any picture of her leaving, or moving out. She had just been gone. I’m sure that if she wanted to, she could have flown away, in the middle of the night, and left with no one being the wiser. But maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she hadn’t made Owd Hob disappear, but just thrown him into her home, and then gone inside to grapple with him again, a battle that perhaps had ended with the destruction of the both of them. Maybe she had been pulled inside of that house, and been lost from this world forever. The only thing I was certain of, was that I would never know, and could never be sure of what exactly happened to Ms. Cleary, or the one she had called Owd Hob.

Or could I?

After a long drink from my mug I set it down on the counter, and went to grab a jacket and shoes. I was still in my pajama pants, and an old t-shirt, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t that cold out, and I wouldn’t be gone for long. I made sure to shut off the porch light before leaving.

I slipped out the door, closed it quietly, and  crept over to the hedge, and moved along it to the end of the yard, turned back around, and came back up the yard next door. The night was cooler than it had been earlier, and the air humid, from the rain. I didn’t know who still lived on the street, and did not want to be recognized or seen, sneaking around the neighborhood. Up above me the moon shone light down, peaking its glowing white face from behind a thin layer of cloud.

There was no car in the drive of Ms. Cleary’s old place, and a ‘for sale’ sign staked at the edge of the lawn, so I assumed no one was at home, and that the house had still never changed from what I remembered it to be. I passed the tree where I had first seen Clara sitting, up in one of the taller branches, wearing her overalls and smacking gum. That was how I would always remember her. When I reached the wooden gate, it was unlocked. I pushed it open, and the hinges creaked, and groaned in protest. They had probably not been oiled in years, if ever. I stepped into the garden, and it was nothing like the way I remembered it just moments before.

The whole thing was like a barren wasteland, and there was more dirt in the yard than grass. It looked like a vacant lot, the kind kids would play baseball and soccer in, and kick up dust as they ran around. A few weeds rose above the flat land, and were especially clustered around the cement porch, poking through the cracks that had developed over time. They were the only life in the entire yard, and even they were wrinkled, and dehydrated, although it had only just rained. It was as if there was something underneath the ground; something with an unending thirst, that sucked up every last drop, and left no water for anything else to live off of.

I walked into the middle of the yard. the ground was damp from the rain, but already drying faster than it should have been. My sneakers left tracks in the ground behind me, and I stopped in the very center, where I remember setting down my dead uncle, and watching as he came back to life in front of my very eyes.

It all seemed so surreal and impossible now, as an adult. I had lived my whole life up until now, not believing in magic or monsters, or ghosts, or anything out of the ordinary. By the time I reached a certain age I had stopped believing in all that nonsense, and grown up. It was only for stories and daydreaming, and only existed in our heads. I began to start convincing myself then that what I had remembered in one long flash of recall, had been some sort of delusion, or hallucination. Maybe I was still grieving over my dead mother, and my mind had not yet moved on. It seemed by far more likely than the possibility that all of those impossible things that had happened to me were in fact real.

I knelt down, and wiped my hand along the wet ground. It felt like damp sand, drying out in a hot sun. I stood back up, and made to leave. I didn’t know what I had expected to find there. Not a thing had changed since I left for college, and I had not come back in all that time in between now and then.

And then I heard something, and it was very faint. So faint, that I almost did not hear it at all. It was a wandering, wavering humming tune, low and distant, and muted. It sounded as if someone were standing just on the other side of that glass door. I turned toward the noise, and walked up to the glass door quickly. The humming did not get louder or softer, but rather stayed where it was, at that annoying, just out of reach level, where I could hear it, but not all of it, and some notes were still lost in the wind, or the scuffling of my feet.

I was up at the sliding door, with my face pressed against it, and my hands cupped around my eyes, trying to see in at who was humming. But there was nobody there. The place was completely empty, and it did not  look a thing like I remembered Ms. Cleary’s kitchen looking like. There was a counter built into the wall, and a refrigerator, along with an open space where a table could go. But there was no wood-burning stove, no jars along the walls, and no Ms. Cleary sitting there humming, and waiting for her apple crisp to warm, as I’d thought, and secretly hoped. But the humming was still there, only it actually was growing fainter now, as if whoever had been doing the humming had walked away, into another room of the house, and was walking down the hall.

I backed away from the house, and shook my head, turned back around, and walked away. There hadn’t been anyone humming, I decided. It had only been the wind, or some combination of other sounds, along with my own deep desire to actually hear something, and confirm the wonderful but impossible things that could never have happened.

I went through the squeaky gate again, and back around the hedge that separated the two yards. I went inside, turned the porch light back on, and returned to my mug of tea. I had not been gone long, and it was at the perfect temperature. Not too hot, but still far from lukewarm. I brought the tea with me into the living room, with all of my still packed boxes, and sat down in the middle of them, opened the one closest to me.

I reached my hand in blindly, and grasped around for something to pull out. My hand brushed something cold and metallic, and I grabbed hold of it, and brought it out.

I didn’t remember packing it, but there it was, solid, real, and unchanged by the years: the rusted iron key that Clara had given to me as a child.

NaNoWriMo: Day 29

Chapter 15

 

Cold, wet drops smacked me on top of my head, dampening my hair, and a flash of lightning tore across the sky, followed several seconds later by the rumbling of thunder. The rain was only coming down half-heartedly, in a thin drizzle, but soon enough the ground was slick, and my shoes slid as I held onto my uncle’s feet, wrapping one arm around each ankle, and walking between them, as Ms. Cleary dragged him along by the shoulders. His butt sagged to the ground and dragged along it, making one long track, that I stepped on either side of as I walked.

We set him down in the middle of the garden, on the damp grass. His white shirt was wet and stained with  blood, that ran together to make the white bits pink. Ms. Cleary lowered his head , and stepped back.

I stood there and looked down at him, and I was sure that he was dead. With the boggart gone, his face seemed more like I remembered it, and, while I was never the best of friends with my uncle, we had just been getting to know one another better, and I had thought things could be okay between us. Now, there wasn’t any way that that could happen. I’d lost another member of my family.

Ms. Cleary closed her eyes and bowed her head, and started humming in a soft, low tone. She hummed a wandering tune, with no real melody or theme to it, and it varied in both pitch and rhythm, and seemed to hit every possible note and tempo. She sped up and slowed down whimsically, and the tune bounced between minor and major, not lingering long enough in either to be characterized as mostly happy or sad in quality.

The pitter-patter of raindrops on leaves matched Ms. Cleary’s rhythm, and the branches and flowers swayed in the wind, each bobbing along in their own way.

As I watched all of this, the colors of the garden all began to fade. At first I just thought that it was getting darker, and that the sun was going down, but then I noticed that neither Ms. Cleary or my uncle had been changed, and when I looked down at myself, saw that I looked no darker than I had a moment before. But the vibrant purple of the lavender buds, and the bright yellow of the daffodils were being drained away, as if someone had a vacuum that sucked away color, and was aiming it at each and every plant in Ms. Cleary’s garden. And all the while, Ms. Cleary continued to hum away.

Then my uncle’s foot twitched. It was the smallest of movements, just the involuntary tensing up of the leg that caused it, but it was a movement nonetheless. I stared in wonder, as tiny streams of yellow light curled out from beneath the ground, and flickered and twined up and down my uncle’s body. They were each like miniscule sparks of electricity, that sizzled and traced lines up my uncle’s chest, and through the hole in his abdomen.

More and more of the plants in the garden were withering, and growing dry, and the more they did so, the more sparks flew out from the dirt and onto my uncle. Remembering the incident with the snail, the tiny flicker of hope in my chest blossomed into a roaring bonfire, and I knew my uncle was saved. The garden had healed the snail, at the cost of a few dandelions, and I realized then, with a pang of guilt, that Ms. Cleary knew exactly what was happening, and was fully willing to sacrifice every living thing in her precious garden for my uncle to come back to life.

Everything around me was shriveling and shrinking, and crunching itself down into dust. Soon, I could see clearly the boundaries of the yard, the fence, the sliding glass door to the kitchen, everything. The jungle of leaves was melting away before my very eyes.

When I looked back down at my Uncle Martin, his eyes were open, and he was breathing long, deep breaths. He looked at me, and his eyes were full of questions.

“Wha–” he began, but Ms. Cleary cut him off, kneeling down low beside him, and placing a finger on his mouth.

“Shhh,” she said. “Just lay back, and close your eyes. Everything is going to be all right.”

And he did, almost immediately, as if he had no choice in the matter. A glazed-over look came onto him, and he yawned, and smacked his lips, and fell into a deep sleep. He looked content and at ease, with not a care in the world.  Every so often, a snore escaped.

By now there were no more plants in the garden. Everything had collapsed, and all that remained were dried up twigs and grass, brown and dead, and already decaying into the earth.

“Thank you,” I said, and hugged Ms. Cleary as hard as I could, burying my head in her dress, and blinking back tears. “I’m sorry about all of your plants.”

She patted my head, and said nothing for a short while. The rain had stopped, and the storm was passing. I could still hear the rumbling of distant thunder, but it was further away now, and moving on.

Then, “Don’t worry your little head about the garden, child. These things happen.” She said it like it was a simple truth, like stating that the sky is blue. “When he wakes up, he won’t remember any of this, as he shouldn’t. Your mother will forget as well, and in time, you will too.”

I stopped hugging her, stepped back and looked her in the eye, and shook my head. “No I won’t,” I said. “I’ll never forget any of this. How could I?”

Ms. Cleary shrugged. “Time happens. It stretches and warps things, and most of what you do will get swept under the rug, and you won’t even think to think of them again. They’ll just be there, inside, and if you remember them at all, you’ll remember them as foggy dreams, or things you’d only just imagined.”

She then started walking back to the glass door, as if that was all that had to be said.

“Wait,” I said. “What happened to Owd Hob? Is he gone forever? What did you do to him?”

She stopped, and turned to look at me, sized me up, as if trying to decide whether or not she was going to tell me the truth. “He’s not gone, no,” she said at last. “But so long as you never come back to this house, he’ll never be able to bother you again.”

I paused. “But,” I said. “but what about you?”

Ms. Cleary smiled, and wrinkles swallowed up her eyes. “Oh, don’t you worry for a second about me. I’ve never been better. And there are far worse things that have happened in my lifetime. This one will not be a smidgen of trouble.”

And then Ms. Cleary turned her back on me. I watched her hobble her way to the door, slide it open, and disappear inside.

As soon as the door had closed, my uncle’s eyes popped open again, and he sat up, and looked around, confused and disoriented.

“Wha happened?” he asked, to no one in particular. Then he saw me, and his eyes lit up with recognition, and he smiled. “Hey buddy. Did I fall asleep, or what?”

I smiled. “Yeah, just for a little while.”

He stood up. “Well,” he said. “We should probably get going, get you back to your mom. It’s almost dinner time, I think.”

We walked out of the yard together, and back to my house. He did not remark on the strangeness of taking a nap in the neighbor’s yard, and neither did I.

My mother was no longer lying passed out on the porch, but was inside, and putting the finishing touches on a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, with garlic bread. No one mentioned anything odd about the day, and when my mother and uncle talked to one another, it was more polite, and guarded, and she didn’t touch him on the arm, and paid far more attention to me at the table, than to him.

After dinner my uncle stood up and stretched. He thanked my mother for the meal, but stated that he should really be getting back home, and get some rest before work in the morning. They did not hug, or kiss, and before he left he ruffled my hair, like he used to, and said he’d be by the next weekend to help me get that treehouse started. Then he walked out the door, and backed the green truck out of the driveway, and took it off down the lane.

The rest of the night seemed so normal that it was almost surreal. I helped my mother wash the dishes and pack away the leftovers from dinner, and then we both sat in front of the television, and watched several game shows together, before she told me that it was time to brush my teeth, and get ready for bed.

Already the events of the day were fading away. I tried my best to hold onto them, but it was like they were tied to a string, and every time I reached out to touch one it was plucked away, by some invisible hand on the other end. Eventually I only found it tiring to try, and stopped trying to remember all together. Things were good now. That seemed to be all that really mattered, when I thought about it.

When I tucked myself into bed that night, and turned out the light, there was little on my mind. I thought that tomorrow I’d ask my mother to take me to the library, after she got off from work, and pick up a new book. Maybe a ghost story, or another fantasy adventure one. I pulled up the covers, and snuggled my head against my pillow.

And later this week, my uncle would come over, and together we’d work on that treehouse he had promised me.

NaNoWriMo: Day 28

I floated in nothingness. I tried to raise my hand to look at it, but could not see it, and felt nothing there. There was a buzzing, static hum in the air that surrounded and absorbed me, until I lost all sense of where I was, and drifted. Thoughts moved around through space, swirling in the black, and I could not tell if they belonged to me, or someone else. Maybe some version of a boy that was lost and scared, but I did not recognize who he was, or if there was really anyone there at all.

It was unpleasantly warm, the air stifling and muggy, and I felt as if I were choking, and could not breathe. Everytime I tried to, it only felt like I was sucking on a velvet rag that was shoved in my mouth, and down my throat.

Other than the mild discomfort, it was almost something like sleeping, almost like how I imagined death would be like. This was it. The end of the line. Nothing and nothing, forever. But if there was nothing, and I was dead, how was I thinking these thoughts? I tried to follow a line of logic, but could not keep more than one thought from creeping into my mind at a time. They were frayed, and disconnected. Random spurts of memory and feeling. A snapshot here, a fragment there. Images of a man vaguely familiar to me, getting into a car and starting it. Pangs of sadness, a tugging at my heart. A picture of a ruined birthday cake, candles smashed in and crooked, frosting smeared, the number seven on it warped and smudged. I wondered who it belonged to.

Then back to nothingness again, and it stayed that way for some time, I was not sure how long it was. It could have been seconds or minutes, or days or years. But however long it was, eventually, I heard something. A voice. It spoke through the darkness, ringing loud and clear, like a shot through the night.

“Hold on to yourself, boy.”

It was the voice of Ms. Cleary, and then suddenly, I came back to myself, was no longer slipping further away, and into the dark. My mind clung to those words, and repeated them over and over, like a mantra. And every time I repeated them, I heard her voice again, and I could see her face, and knew that she had arrived at last to help me. But she was too late. There was little she could do to help me now. It was over. But still I repeated the words, and still, I held on to my hope. That was all that I had left then. All that I was.

Then, a pinhole of light. A faint star in the distant black, light years away from me. It flickered and shone, and was growing, gradually. I could see nothing else, just the blinding white light, or the suffocating black sea, there was no in between. The white light grew and grew, until it enveloped me, and swallowed me whole, and I was forced to stare into it. All the while, I repeated the words of Ms. Cleary in my head. Hold on to yourself, boy. I knew, that if I ever stopped listening to those words, and did not repeat them to myself, I would be lost once more, and never be able to find my way out.

Suddenly I was cold again. I could feel. I raised a hand to my face, and saw it there this time. Light pooled outward from my hand, and when I looked down, I saw that it was coming from my entire body. I glowed, and shone, with a light that blended into the dazzling whiteness around me.

As I stared closer at my hand, trying to see the point where the light from it stopped and the whiteness began, it started to blur, and vibrate, making a small, humming noise. The humming grew, and turned into a large, thrumming rattle, that shook my whole body. I was jolted upward then, one great shake up, and then back down. Again, the jolt, but this time larger. The third time, I felt something like a hand grabbing hold of the scruff of my shirt, and yanking me up and out. The whiteness vanished back to its small dot, then briefly, I was in the dark, until at last I was being coughed out, and thrown up, onto the grass and out of Owd Hob.

Ms. Cleary was there, and already at my side, and she was holding me. Owd Hob was crouched on the ground just above me, on his hands and knees, and panting.

“I told you, this is it,” she was saying to him. “You’ve done what you came for, what I brought you here to do. Now get!” I could hear my uncle behind me, no longer frantically scooting away. His breath was harsh and ragged. It came slow, and was unevenly spaced.

Owd Hob snarled. “You can’t stop me, wench! You have no power to send me back.”

Ms. Cleary hacked back something in her throat, and spit it on the ground.

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I don’t have to.”

Owd Hob lunged forward, and then there was a sound of a thousand whips all cracking at once, and he was flat on his face, on the ground. Another crack, and he was lifted up, and into the air, laid flat, wis arms and legs out. Then with a slow, grinding sound, he was stretched out. He made a sound like screeching tires and power tools, whirring and screaming in pain. He was stretched, further and further, until he was so thin and so fine, that he was not much else but a line.

Ms. Cleary was standing now, and her hands were held out, fingers twitching in the air. The line wiggled, and contorted, and then flew, straight as an arrow, and through the walls of Ms. Cleary’s house. And then there was silence, and Ms. Cleary lowered her hands. She looked down at me, and smiled.

“It’s okay now boy,” she said to me. “It’s over.”

I had no energy at all, and felt as if I were only a cloud of smoke, that could be blown out into nothing with the wave of a hand. It was then that I realized that I was still gone from my body, but it was only a passing thought, as weariness overcame me, and I fell back. I felt my eyes closing, and then a sudden rush of motion and wind.

I hit the ground hard, as if I had fallen straight down, and landed on  my back. The breath was knocked out of me, and I gasped, strained for air. My eyes teared open to the sight of trees and branches above me, and a dark, cloudy sky. I was back in the forest. Back in my body, at the fairy ring.

I struggled to my feet, and managed to stand still, and steady, hold my balance. I felt dizzy, and slightly nauseous. I picked up the mirror from the ground, looked into it, and thought of Ms. Cleary.

She was kneeling above my uncle, staring down at him. He was gasping for breath now, and looked very pale. She cradled his head in her hands, and was speaking so softly, that I couldn’t hear what exactly she was saying, or if she was saying anything at all, and not just mumbling to herself.

My uncle’s eyes were foggy, and distant, and seemed to be looking just over Ms. Cleary’s shoulder, and into the mirror, as if he could see me watching him. There was blood running down his chin, from out of his mouth.

Then Ms. Cleary spoke.

“You should come now,” she said, and I knew she was speaking to me. “And fast. We need to move him, and I can’t do it by myself.”

I was taking off then, down the path and through the forest, as fast as my legs could carry me. My knees pumped up, and my mind was focused, and centered. I tore through the winding path, holding tight to the mirror in my hand, cupped it like a football to my side. I broke through the line of trees, and out into the field, speeding ahead now that I could see the fence across the meadow.

When I reached the fence I jumped up, and clung onto it like Spider-man sticking to a wall, and clambered up and over it as fast as I could carry myself. I held onto the mirror the whole way, and was careful not to drop it, and when I swung over to the other side I dropped down, nearly the whole ten feet, and stumbled on the ground, and fell. Then I was back up, and running again.

Ms. Cleary was still there, kneeling down next to my uncle. His shirt was covered in blood, and his hands were clasped over his stomach. His eyes were open, but they looked glassy, like they weren’t really seeing anything. Ms. Cleary’s face was grave, and she barely inclined her head in acknowledgement at my arrival.

“Come on, and help me lift his legs,” she said to me. “We’ve got to get him into the garden.”

I walked around the side of her, and she stood up. When I grabbed onto my uncle’s legs they were stiff, and cold. She and I carried him around the hedge and through the fence, and an awful stench followed us as we brought my uncle into Ms. Cleary’s garden.

NaNoWriMo: Day 27

I watched in horror as Owd Hob lowered a single finger down, and touched my uncle on the forehead. My uncle’s eyes lolled back in his head, and he collapsed in a heap on the ground. Behind them both, on the porch, my mother fainted, and fell as well. Owd Hob bent down, and prodded my uncle with a finger.

As I watched, I knew that Owd Hob would not stop, and intended on doing something awful to my uncle and mother, probably would eat them too. I wondered where on earth Ms. Cleary was, and why she wasn’t already there, and helping to keep them safe.

My uncle’s eyes flickered open, and he tried to scramble back when he saw the monster in front of him. He didn’t get the chance. Owd Hob took one long-nailed finger, and stabbed him through the heart.

Blood spurted out from my uncle’s chest, and he grimaced, and squirmed on the ground. Owd Hob took his finger out, and chuckled, lifting his hand to lick the blood off. He was kneeling down, and his other hand crept toward my uncle, spider-like, on the ground. My Uncle Martin was clutching his chest, trying to keep the blood in, and backing away as well as he could, scooting himself across the grass. Owd Hob was playing with him, enjoying the frightful look in his eyes, and chuckling to himself the whole time.

I knew that I could not just sit there and watch. Owd Hob would only kill my uncle, and then turn to my mother and kill her too. Then he would find me, and kill me as well, and probably Ms. Cleary too. There was little that I could do to help, and I was not sure that I could get there in time to save my uncle, even if I could. But I did know that I at least had to try. If I didn’t, I was for sure going to die, or lose my only family, or both.

I set the mirror down, and laid back on the cool, soft grass, and closed my eyes. I found the little fire in me, the essence of me that was entirely separate from my physical body. I plunged myself into it, and felt my body stiffening, and fading to the edges of my consciousness. It was even easier to grasp this time, for I knew that I had to act, and act quickly, if I wanted to have any chance at all of saving anybody.

I lost all sense of my body, lying there on the grass, and willed myself to rise above the ground. When I opened my eyes again, I was floating there, above my body, an ethereal being in space. Light streamed from my fingers, and spilled out around me.

Wasting no time at all, I immediately rose above the treetops, and flew towards my home. The sky above me was dark. A summer storm was coming on, and lightning flashed in the distance; a spark that lit up the sky for a single instant, and then plunged it back into gray and darkness once again. I kept going, moving as fast as I could, and hoping against hope that Ms. Cleary would get there before I did.

I flew past the graveyard and over the fields, past the hill, and over the fence I had once had to climb up and over, with a lame hand. I saw my house just a couple hundred yards ahead, but no silver Buick, and no Ms. Cleary. What could be taking her so long?

Then I arrived, a hundred feet above my house. My uncle was there, still trying to gain distance between himself and Owd Hob, who followed him with two walking fingers, and giggled to himself. There was no one else who could do anything, except me. I allowed myself a moment to gather my courage, and then flew down, over the ring of salt, to my uncle, and Owd Hob.

I put myself between the my uncle and Owd Hob. It was fairly obvious that my uncle could not see me; he made no indication that a flying boy made up of light had just landed in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. His eyes were still fixed on Owd Hob, and they were wide and staring, and filled with fear.

Owd Hob could see me though, and he stopped walking his fingers toward my uncle, and blinked at me, surprised. I tried my best to strike a heroic pose, hands on my hips, and legs spread apart, as much like Superman as I could appear. Which wasn’t much at all, really. I imagine I only looked like exactly what I was: a little kid, trying to seem brave, when in reality he was so incredibly close to wetting himself, that if he was still in his body, he would have done so already.

It was as if Owd Hob could sense this, sense all of my false bravado, and saw right through me, with his piercing yellow eyes, and knew all of my fear. He paused, staring at me like this for several seconds, so long that I actually thought that he was a bit hesitant. Then he let out a great guffaw of laughter.

“Hee hee, hoo, hah!” He giggled and crooned, clutching his hairy stomach. “Ah foolish boy, foolish boy. Did you have a plan to stop me, or is this as far as your little mind could think ahead?”

I blanked, didn’t know what to say. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought it through at all, had only known that I had to try and help, in any way that I could. I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to stop this giant monster, when I couldn’t even stop the boggart from coming in, and making my world a living misery. At the very least all I could hope to do was buy some time for Ms. Cleary to get there.

Owd Hob leaned way down, until he was laying flat on his stomach, with his head propped up on his elbows. “Do you know what I’m going to do?” he asked.

Speechless, powerless, all I could think to do was shake my head at him, dumbly.

“I’m going to pick you up, put you in my mouth, and swallow you whole, until you’re nothing but memory and shadow. You won’t die, no. You’ll still be alive, a part of you, at least, but you’ll also become a part of me, and everything else I am.” He smiled wolfishly, sticking his head out, so close to me now. “He’s in there too, you know. The one I just took. And I’ll let him out a bit, so that he can play with you, and have his fun. And when I take the rest of the ones you love and care for, they’ll all be there, and nothing will have changed.”

I was paralyzed with fear. Things had all seemed like they would work out just a few hours ago, and now everything was wrong. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. If I had only listened to Ms. Cleary, done what she said, and stayed behind, I would be safe. But no, I had to go and play the hero, trying to act like the ones I had read about and played in games. But I knew then that real heroes didn’t exist, not really. There was only the strong and the weak, and everyone everywhere only strove to protect and care for themselves.

There was still time, I thought. I could try and get away then, and fly so fast back to my body and then run, and keep on running, until I left everything I knew behind: my uncle, my mother, this home, everything.

I almost left then. Almost obeyed that sudden, fearful impulse. But I looked into Owd Hob’s eyes, just before, and knew that it would be useless. His eyes were glued to me, and the fingers of his hand inching closer, twitching in anticipation. He would catch me as soon as I tried to leave. My fate would be the same, whether or not I tried to play the hero. And as soon as I realized that, I decided that I would rather go out, swinging and defiant; would rather my last act in this world be one of bravery, that emulated the heroes I loved, rather than one of cowards and children.

So I raised my fists, and stepped forward, and glared at Owd Hob with all the hatred and courage I could muster. I thought of what Spider-man would say to one of his enemies, when he was afraid.

“Come on, fuzz-face,” I said. “The worst you can do is give me fleas.” My voice wavered at first, but grew stronger as I spoke. Owd Hob wasn’t anything really, but a big hairy dog, trying to be the alpha. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

Owd Hob blinked, and recoiled, shaking his head in confusion. I doubt that anyone had ever spoken to him in such a way. Without waiting for a better chance, I launched myself into the air at him, aiming to punch him straight in the jaw.

Then I was plucked out of the air, and he was holding me in between his long, hairy fingers. I wiggled and thrashed, trying to free myself, but it was no use.

“Quite spunky for such a little guy,” he said, and opened his mouth wide.

The last thing I saw, as he shoved me into his gullet, was a blackness darker than space, and a chilling cold that seized me with icy claws, and dragged me down.