8 Gone is the Witch (35 page)

“Can you do that?”

“Sure. You know I can.”

“
Yeah, but on multiple people?” He pointed at Jerome. “And an alien?”

“He’s not an alien
,” said Carlos. “We’re the aliens.”

“I can do it
. Now come on. Everybody. Hold hands.”

We stood by the portal entrance and gathered hands. I instructed everyone to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. We did this three times. On the last exhale, I delivered
the incantation.

“
Through swirling fog of mountain mist, and fields of white that clouds have kissed, let thoughts meander, lost in time, and leave thy heads with clearer minds
.”

I looked up at the others. Their expressions were blank, their bodies relaxed. I coaxed our little circle to the edge of the portal and stepped inside. The tidal force around the opening quickly pulled the rest of the group in, sweeping them off their feet as if sucked through a vacuum.

T
he sensation of falling consumed me completely, setting my stomach aflutter and sending my head into a spin. My fingertips tingled. My toes itched. Goose bumps rippled up my arms and legs. I remember gasping instinctively, filling my lungs and holding my breath in anticipation of an icy plunge into water that never came.

Ursula squeezed my left hand, Tony my right.
A burst of white-hot energy exploded around us, bathing us in a blinding light that washed our bodies of color and form. I closed my eyes for an instant. When I opened them again, I saw that we were flying, cruising over the forest at incredible speed.

“Look!”
cried Carlos. He had opened his eyes already and saw what was just coming into focus for me. “It’s the fortress!”

The others opened their eyes
in time to see the massive stone structure appear through an opening in the thinning clouds. It seemed impossibly accurate to the one I had pictured in my mind; a medieval-looking castle, paltry by fairytale standards, yet formidable enough just the same.

It
rose from a jagged mound of rock as if carved from a single stone. Cloaked in creeping vines and splotched with patches of brown-green moss, I feared we’d find it abandoned.

A
slurry mix of marsh and grasslands surrounded the grounds, pushing the tree line hundreds of meters from the castle walls and preventing a stealthy approach from the woods.

“Is that it?” Tony asked.

We screamed over the castle in a blur and overshot it by several miles. When the ride stopped, we found ourselves suspended above a rush of river rapids, still holding hands and uncertain what to do next.

“
Yeah, that
was
it,” I said, before the portal dropped us into the water from a dizzying height of forty feet.

We flowed with the rapids, unable to control
our course and unwilling to fight it. It swept us down stream back toward the castle. At a bend in the river, the water pushed us against the bank where we were able to grab onto some low-hanging branches and pull ourselves out.

As we lay on the bank catching our breaths, Tony
called out, “Is everyone okay?”

We all an
swered affirmatively.

“
Well, this sucks. Doesn’t it?”

“What?” I said.
“That we’re all okay?”

“
No.” He pointed back upriver. “Look where the portal ended: four stories above the river. We’ll never get back to it.”

“So we find another. You said so yourself they’re all over the place.”

“I know. It’s just that I’d feel better if...”

“If what?”

He shook his head. “Forget it. You’re right. We’ll find another.”

“Hey, check it out.
” Carlos directed our attention skyward. Strange ribbons of orange light fractured the night in veins of frozen lightning.

“
What is that?” Tony asked. “Is the sky breaking up?”

I shook my head in wonder.
“I don’t know. It does appear as if it’s fracturing though. Very strange.”

Jerome pointed up at the
cracks. “Decussaday. All the where orange.”

“That’s
decussaday?” Carlos asked.

“Wait!” I said. “Now I get it. It’s no
t decussaday. I think our little green munchkin here means Decussate Day.”

“Same thing. Isn’t it?”

“No. Don’t you see? Decussate is a crossing or intersecting of two objects. It’s the two black suns. They’re in migratory crossing now, passing so close to one another that their powerful gravitational and magnetic pull causes the atmosphere to heat up and fracture like volcanic crust.”

“Are we going to die?”

I looked at Jerome. “I don’t think so. Not if Jerome knows about this. He’s obviously gone through it before.”

“Yes,” said Jerome
, nodding. “I see. Always same. Big light go boom.”

“Boom?” Carlos cleared his throat and swallowed. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Relax. It’s probably like our own aurora borealis on Earth. Only this one must culminate in a burst of thunder and lightning.”

Tony said, “I bet that’s it then.”

“What is?”

“Doctor Lowell
’s been waiting for this. He intends to sacrifice Leona during the apex of this decussate event to secure his attraction of blood.”

“
I don’t understand,” said Carlos. “That wasn’t his plan back when we first sent him here. Back then, he wanted to impregnate her and then eat the kid’s liver.”

I agreed with Tony.
“It’s the circle of consequence. He can’t solidify his acquisition of paranormal attributes until he closes the final chapter in his quest for absolute power over atheistic supernatural forces.”

“
Okay see... I didn’t understand a single word you just said.”

Tony
translated. “She means that if Doctor Lowell completes his quest, he’ll have acquired more power over the supernatural than any other soul in the universe, dead or alive.”

“Our universe o
r this one?”

“Both
. He’ll be unbelievably dangerous.”

Carlos shook his head. “I still don’t get it. I mean, I know he acquired some keen attributes of the extrasensory kind when he killed
all those people, but how does it all add up to super paranormal guy?”

“I told you. It’s the circle of consequence. You’ve seen it yourself since you’ve been here, how you were able to drag the fire off a log with just a point of your finger.”

“Yeah?”

“
Well, let’s face it, Carlos, you’re no witch. Imagine someone with real powers of paranormal proportions. Michael and Travis were masters of psychokinetic manipulation. Barbara could see into the future. Valerie wrote the book on psychometric disciplines. Doctor Lowell acquired all of their powers and more through the law of contagion when he killed them. And those are just the victims we know about.”

“
I see. So by completing the circle here in the ES during the height of the decussate, you believe it will both solidify and magnify his powers.”

“
Ten-fold, if not more.”

“Huh. All right then.” Carlos nod
ded in the direction of the fortress. “`Spose we ought to get going then and stop that madman. Come on. Time’s-a-wasting.”

We picked ourselves up off the bank and headed
for the rocky peaks not so far away. Getting to it, however, meant a trek through some of the thickest woods yet encountered.

Carlos took the lead. Ursula fell in behind him
, with Jerome, Tony and me pulling up the rear. In this more challenging hike, I could see that Tony’s ankle was really bothering him. I thought it strange that even after several weeks on his own where his hand had time to heal, his ankle had not. I felt I had to ask.

“How bad is it?”

“What, our situation?”

“No. I know our situation sucks. I’m talking about your
ankle. It’s not getting any better, is it?”

“It’s fine.”

“Stop lying to me. How bad?”

“
It’s no big deal.”

I stepped in front of him
to block his path, cupped his balls in my hand and squeezed.

“O
ww! Lilith, what the...”

The others stopped to look back at us. I waved them on. “Keep going
. We’ll catch up.”

I eased my grip but did
n’t let go. “How bad?”

“All right. Fine. It’s broken.
It hurts like hell. The only thing that hurts more right now are my nuts.”

“Oh,
sorry.” I let go. “Let me see.” I started to lift his robe. He slapped my hand and pulled it back down.

“
They’re fine, thank you.”

“Not your balls
, stupid! Your ankle!”

“Oh.” He rested his hand on my shoulder and lifted his foot.

“Yeah, it’s swollen all right,” I said.

“I told you it’s broken.”

“Does this hurt?” I placed my thumb on his ankle and pressed.”

“A
uh! Damn it, Lilith. I said it hurts!”

“Yeah, you also said it’s broken. It’s not broken.”

“It sure feels broken.”

“That’s because you’ve been walking on it for three days, or three weeks, whatever the hell it’s been. You should have made a crutch.”

“I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

“Yeah, like we won’t worry now.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll just––”

A commotion ahead
snared our attention, prompting Tony and me to rush to catch up with the others. I found Carlos with his arms around Ursula. Her hands were quivering.

“What’s going on?”
I pried the two apart and took Ursula in my arms. “Are you all right?”

“Sh
e’s fine,” said Carlos.

“What happened?”

Ursula said, “He did start my fright, is all.”

“Who,
Carlos?”

“No. Jerome.”

“Frog boy?”

Carlos put his hand on Jerome’s shoulder and pulled him against his leg. “
I’ll have you know that this
frog boy
you like to make fun of so much just saved Ursula’s life. So show some respect.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.
Mister
Frog boy.” I looked down at Jerome. “We good, pip-squeak?”

He bobbed his head and
smiled.

“See, he’s fine.”

“That’s nice, everybody’s good,” said Tony. “Now, will someone tell me what’s going on here?”

Carlos said, “We’ve walked into
a minefield.”

“Wh
ere?”

“
Here!” He splayed his hands in a broad sweep to encompass the entire woods. “This is kumoru country. See that?” He pointed to an innocuous spot on the ground that looked like any other. “That’s a kumoru. Step on it and it’s sayonara señora, adios la cucaracha, arrivederci––”

“All right, Carlos. I get it.”

“Good, because I couldn’t think of a word that rhymes with arrivederci.”

Tony edged u
p to the harmless looking plant, which blended seamlessly with the rest of the ground clutter. “So that’s the mighty kumoru, eh? Doesn’t look so big and bad.”

“Well it is
. Ursula was just about to step on it when Jerome tackled her to keep her from turning herself into confetti.”

“Really?”

Jerome pulled on Tony’s robe to coax him away from the plant. He then snatched up a mouse-sized lizard and returned it to the spot only inches from where they were just standing.

“You
watch,” he said, as he held the lizard by the tail over the kumoru and let it drop. He backed away quickly, putting three feet between him and the kumoru before the lizard hit the pad.

It was the
damnedest thing, I swear, and funny, too. The kumoru exploded. The lizard shot off like a bottle rocket over the treetops. At the pinnacle of flight, a tiny grey ball mushroomed open and rained down in a cloud of ash so fine you could hardly see it.

“Ouch,” said Tony
. “That would hurt.”

“Probably not,” Carlos
said. “I doubt you’d even know what hit you.”

Ursula knelt down and hugged Jerome.
“Thanks be to you, my friend. I am to thee forever indebted.”

“Jerome
do good?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling
obliged to choke on some humble pie. “I guess you’re not such a bad egg. In fact, you’re okay in my book.”

Directly a
bove us, the sky ripped open with a crack of thunder that shook the ground to its core. Deeper in the forest, several kumoru plants erupted spontaneously, their explosions triggered by seismic vibrations and loose debris falling from the tree.