Presenting the first quarter of KILLING WITH THE EDGE OF THE MOON A Graphic Novel (without illustrations) In token of my admiration for a wonderful spirit, this book is inscribed to you. Gods, demons, the whole universe, are but a dream, which exists in the mind, springs from the mind — and sinks back into the mind. —Katha Upanishad

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CONTENTS

PART ONE

THE MOON IN SILENCE SINGS

Prelude: Dark Ceremony

The Unseen Scene

Woman Made of Flowers
Black Dog
Something Wrong with the Kid
Smacked
The Otherworld
One Crazy Witch
Home Invader
Party Animals
A Bad Place

When You’re Here, You’re There

Tear It All Down
Zip to Do with Love
Tricked Out Ghost
Cool as in Strange
Wicked Wicca
Pit of Darkness
Maulers’ Dance
Deviant
Shining Moment

PART TWO

KILLING WITH THE EDGE OF THE MOON

Interlude: Walking the Black Dog

Taking Down the Moon

Butt Kick the Crone
There Is a Dragon to Feed
A Classic View of Hell
Jagged Morning
Out of Sight
Evil Strokes
Cold Revelation
Ransack the Pit
Terrors of the Hunt

Killing with the Edge of the Moon

Demented Hope
Love Cut with Fear
What Is What We Cannot Say Is
Breakdown at the Brink
Killing with the Edge of the Moon
Furious Angels
Hellhole
The Fetch
Dreams Pass like Starlight

PART ONE

THE MOON IN SILENCE SINGS

In the days when Mab was queen and the world knew much of magic, dreams were the soul’s adventures in the Otherworld. Sometimes the soul got lost or found greater happiness in the Otherworld than in ours, and the sleeper would not wake. Then the sleeper’s beloved—if the passion between them was strong enough—undertook a journey beneath the shadow of the moon to the Otherworld and there, by ardor of their love, enticed the soul to return. Such a journey, the old folk called the Fetch.

PRELUDE:

DARK CEREMONY

A witch; and one so strong she could control the moon.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Nedra Fell had a face like hickory bark, hair like cobwebs. In the woods at night, beside an altar made from a tree stump, she swayed, and moonlit mist swirled around her thick as smoke.

She mumbled an incantation no more comprehensible than the wind in the branches of the surrounding forest. The flames of two fat black candles on the altar blazed brighter, illuminating stark desperation on her craggy features.

“Obey me!” her entranced voice broke loudly into English. “Obey me, spirits!”

Arthritic hands manipulated crude magical implements upon the altar.

She raised a hare-skull goblet. Liquid, thick and dark as blood, glimmered to the brim. Intoning a hoarse salutation to the pocked moon, she sipped the potion. Then, she lowered the small skull between the candles and lifted a hefty wand carved from an elk’s thighbone. Its knobby length shook in her trembling grip as she touched it first to a black knife of gleaming volcanic glass then to a broad clamshell filled with loose fangs and yellow incisors.

“Spirits of night extend my days!” She bounced from foot to foot, her gown of coarse hemp jumping as she chanted. “Grant me success in all my ways! Improve my health so my life stays! Seven more years, my death delays! Spirits of night extend my days!”

Jerking like a puppet, Nedra danced about her tree stump altar. Silver threads decorating her long-sleeved gown glittered in the moonlight with embroidered spirals, hex signs and raying stars. Skinny arms, thin as sticks in those wide cuffs, beat the darkness, and long hair jerked across her haggard face.

“Spirits of night, hear my cry! Make me strong so I never die! Spirits of night, hear . . . ”

A loud growl from out of the forest froze the old witch, arms stiff above her gray head, hands grasping the elk thighbone more tightly. She stared hard among the trees, where branches sifted moonlight to silver haze.

“I hear you!” she shouted and edged closer to the altar, reaching for the knife of black glass. “I hear you hungering for me. Hungering for my bones. But you can’t have me! Not yet, Hela! I’ve cheated you once again. Oh, yes!”

From out of the moonshadows slid a large dog, thick shoulders shoving forward a faceted head of prodigious evil. The black, muscular beast slouched aggressively into the clearing, ears flat, pale eyes glaring, lips curled back in a fierce grimace.

Nedra Fell gasped. “Too late!” Her warped fingers closed on the black knife. “The chant! The night spirits! You can’t have me now, Hela. Try your luck again—in seven years!”

With an explosive bark, the powerful dog lunged. The witch reeled backward and swiped the glass blade before her. Atop the altar, the big mongrel crashed, scattering candles, goblet and fetish bones under splayed claws. Vicious jaws raved. Spittle flew in luminous threads, and barks pummeled the old woman like invisible fists.

The percussive force of the dog’s shouts staggered Nedra. “Be gone!” She slashed with the knife and jabbed with the femur big as a club. “You got here late. The spell is cast. You can’t have me!”

The bitch attacked, and her slavering teeth seized the cuff of the witch’s knife arm. Yanked to the ground by the weight of the mauler, the crone lost her grip on the knife. The blade spun flashing through the moonlight and splashed across the tree stump in tinkling shards.

“No!” The witch shrieked as if her lungs were on fire. “No!” She brought the femur down hard on the ferocious head, and the dog’s growling rage split to a damaged yelp. On her belly, the monster scurried backward.
Nedra rolled upright to her knees, eyes bulging with wrath, elk bone raised high. “Devil’s cur! Snake spit blind your eyes! You’ll not have me!”

The crouching beast watched her with a stare cold as winter windows. The wrinkled snout bared bone-crushing teeth. And she pounced, launching toward the witch in a flurry of black bristles.

Nedra swung the elk bone with all its skull-smashing force. The bitch slid away, elusive as moonlight. She curled about and came in snapping for the old woman’s hamstrings. Lurching aside, the crone backhanded the club with nimble malice.

Again, the predator dodged the blow, but the blur of the near-miss forced her back. She melted into the shadows of the forest.

A moment later, she appeared from an unexpected direction, forcing the witch to twirl about to defend her back. The club beat empty air, for the creature had not yet attacked. The silent dog watched her quarry from where she stood in the moonlight, ice eyes full of rage and purpose. Deepchested, shoulders undulating, she waited. Jaws gaping, she waited for the femur to grow heavy in Nedra’s hand.

And the large thighbone was heavy. The instant the old woman’s uplifted arm faltered, the black dog hurtled at her.

The beast fell back again from the sweeping blow. And attacked again. And darted away. With nightmare persistence, she came after the witch, bounding in and out of the moonlight, relentless, tireless.

The aged woman huffed and panted; her entire body shook from the effort of wielding the sturdy elk bone. Soon, those frenzied fangs would tear tendon and sinew and topple her. Soon, the battering thighbone would fall to the side and razor teeth would rip flesh and arteries and taste hot blood.

Soon—it had to be soon—for the hour was long after midnight, and the eastern stars dimmed. If the murderous dog did not bring down her prey soon, morning light would replenish the witch’s magic that had shattered with her glass knife. Morning light would protect her with radiant magic that the black dog could not rip with claw or fang.
Nedra Fell spied light through the trees—a sky gray as the dull side of aluminum foil—and her wrinkled face smiled. “Too—late!” Joints blazing with pain, marrows throbbing with weariness, she hacked away mightily with her femur club, gasping and cackling like a sputtering muffler, “Too— late! Ha! Too—late—for you!”

Desperate for the kill, the black creature howled at the brightening sky and flung herself at the witch. The bone wand smote her under the jaw, clacking her teeth together sharply, and toppling her head over tail.

Lungs aching, legs shivering, Nedra Fell hurled a harsh laugh at the raging brute twisting through the dead leaves. The bitch wrenched upright, muzzle foaming a ferment of hate and fury. Eyes of frost in a black mask of hackled fur fixed the aged woman with a look of uncanny and evil intelligence.

And then, the creature was gone.

THE UNSEEN SCENE

What is a ghost but a double, astral twin of the flesh,
roaming a dark dream, where night transpires in
moon smoke and star shadows, wearing your face?



1.

WOMAN MADE OF FLOWERS

Conjured by magic to serve as the wife of a prince, the beautiful Celtic goddess Blodeuwedd proudly bore her name: ‘ face of flowers.’ Though fashioned from blossoms of oak, meadowsweet and broom, she knew her own mind and had her own desires. Alas, when she insisted on going her way with the lover of her choice, the magician who conjured her turned her into an owl.
—Welsh myth

On a slow bend of dirt road in the middle of a forest stood a giant statue covered with flowers. The huge manikin, big as a parade float, had the curvaceous shape of a woman with one hand on her hip and the other behind her head, posing like a pinup from a former era. Daffodils at the top and sides of her head and along her shoulders created the illusion of golden, flowing hair. Rue anemones, with their white and blush petals, filled out her face and arms in flesh tones. Violets served for the blue of her eyes, red wild ginger her lips, and columbines, geraniums and ferns made up the flowing robes of her gown.

The manikin was not yet complete. The back of her body exposed a wicker framework packed with loam waiting for insertions of flowers. Trays of hyacinths, lilacs and crocuses sat on the grass beside a large twig-framed sign that faced the street beneath the giantess and told passersby her name in both runes and floral-shaped letters:

Blodeuwedd

Blodeuwedd

[Blud—EYE—eth]

Woman Made of Flowers

Near the shoulder of the dirt road, directly alongside the Woman Made of Flowers, a ramshackle commercial enterprise squatted—a primitive souvenir stand. Handcrafted merchandise dangled from splintery rafters and eaves: gourd lanterns, bird-bone wind chimes, ritual masks of tree bark and pine cones, and poppets—dolls woven out of straw and fitted with fleshy faces carved from apples and lacquered to glossy expressions of eerie tranquility. Fronting the rickety stand, another large, twig-framed sign of colorful floral letters announced:

NEDRA’S CELTIC CURIOS & PAGAN FETISHES

This roadside attraction fronted a wide yard of tangled weeds infested with stone garden gnomes, eroded, moss-covered statuettes chipped to almost featureless rock. A winding gravel path, studded with thistles, crossed the yard to an old trailer home under the wall of the forest. A rain barrel, perched atop the tin roof beside a crooked stovepipe, wore a shawl of ivy.

The trailer home had occupied this site a long time, long enough for creepers to cover all of it and for the blocks on which it rested to sink out of sight, woven over with vines. More poppets hung in the rusty-framed windows, and above the dented aluminum door, a single nail affixed a driedout branch, silver as driftwood and dripping gold mistletoe.

The door opened, and a young woman in a nightgown as archaic and simple as a burial shroud appeared, blinking wearily into the morning light. “Neddie?” She brushed tousled red hair from her eyes, and her elfin face, pouty with sleep, scanned the empty yard. Startling green eyes, ethereal cheekbones and slender form hinted at beauty, and she could have been lovely if not for her slouched posture, lank hair and disheveled demeanor, which diffused her attractiveness to plainness.

Yawning, the rumpled teen descended barefoot down three steps of gray planks and crossed the yard. She stepped absent-mindedly over scattered gnomes and around whopping weeds. At the Woman Made of Flowers, she called, “Neddie—you in there?”

She reached among the ferns at the side of the towering manikin and opened a door-sized section of the wicker scaffolding. Visible in the mottled light, stacks of peat bricks lay scattered beside various gardening tools. A rectangular depression in the ground from which the bricks of peaty loam had been cut occupied the center of an otherwise empty interior.

The sleepy teenager peered into the hole. By dappled light, she saw a root-cellar door with a rope handle. A large rock atop the door held it firmly closed.

“Neddie!” she hollered, shutting the fern-covered hatch. She shuffled toward the roadside stand. “Bus is coming.”

From the side entry, she glanced over an interior of pumpkin rattles, walnut shell babies, tree bark shields painted with Celtic knots, drums made from oak boles, and numerous straw poppets with wizened faces of apple flesh. She rubbed sleep from her eyes as she left the cluttered stand and strolled across the yard to the forest.

Smoky light filled the woods. The rising sun had burned off most of the morning mist and charged the air with shimmering gold dust and a fragrance of grassy resins and dew. Birdcalls trilled and chimed. Butterflies bopped among wildflowers and along the mossy banks of a creek. The creek itself stumbled noisily over stones rolled smooth as eggs.

She raised her voice louder, “Neddie! Come on. I got to get.”

Across a silt bar slippery with watercress, she forded the creek. A trail penetrated bulrushes on the far side and led into a tunnel of honeysuckle and through draperies of willows to a forest glade. Pines—tall, dark, hooded druids—surrounded the clearing. In the middle, leaning sunlight illuminated a broad tree stump. An old woman in a brown sack dress sat with her back against the stump, stiff legs outstretched, eyes closed, wrinkled mouth slack.

“Neddie?” The teenager approached the old woman warily. This was not the first time she had found her grandmother asleep outdoors beside her ritual stump. The witch was old. How old the young woman had no idea, though she was sure those rheumy blue eyes had seen a world without cars and airplanes.

Gingerly, she touched the knobby shoulder and, when the crone didn’t stir, nudged her.

Nedra sagged to one side, propped up by the big elk thighbone that she still grasped in one hand.

Reluctantly, the teen leaned closer and listened for breathing. She heard nothing, only the busy chatter of birds from the forest. Having anticipated this dread day for so very long, she calmly placed two fingers to the side of the old woman’s neck, vainly searching for a pulse.

Sadness wafted through her and flitted away. There followed a moment of curious contemplation. Now that the morbid event so direly anticipated had actually occurred, she felt less grief than relief.

She would not have to worry anymore about losing Nedra. Her grandmother was gone, and darkness had not descended upon the world. The morning ventured on brightly: birds darted through the clearing, bees bobbled among clover, and clouds soared into the vast blue, escorting a new season across the countryside. Nothing had changed.

She sighed and gathered a double handful of dead leaves. Muttering a prayer under breath, she covered Nedra’s face with leaves.

The witch sputtered and pushed upright, swatting the leaves from her face. “What’s this?” she cried with alarm. “What’s this?” Nedra blinked blearily at her surprised granddaughter.

Abruptly, the old woman’s expression sharpened. “Flannery Lake!” She spit leaf bits and wiped her mouth. “I’m not dead. Ha! Not yet, Flower Face.”

The witch’s laugh collapsed to a moan, and she rolled over and slumped to the ground. Flannery stooped to help her, and the hag waved her off. “Oh, child, leave me be.”

Flannery ignored her grandmother’s plea and grabbed the old woman under her shoulders. “Upsy daisy, Neddie.”

With ease, Flannery lifted the elder to her feet, and Nedra groaned. “Oh, these aching bones. Don’t hurry me so.”

“School day, Neddie.”

“School?” Nedra twisted her head around to give her granddaughter a scurrilous look. “What’s school to you, Flower Face? Let me sit a spell and pull soul and body together.”

“Kettle’s on the fire.” Flannery urged the old woman to keep walking. “Come inside, have some tea.”

A horrid snarl turned Flannery’s head, and she grabbed tightly at her grandmother. At the edge of the sunny clearing, a black dog big as a wolf glared at them with vicious intent.

“Scram, you!” Flannery yelled. She snatched the elk femur from beside the tree stump and waved the big bone at the mongrel. “Get away from here. Beat it!”

The black dog bristled, and its snarl deepened to a growl.

Laughter glittered in Nedra’s eyes, and she tugged at Flannery’s arm. “Come along, child. You won’t scare that bitch.”

Flannery followed her grandmother, keeping a wary eye on the violent cur watching from the forest. “I never seen that dog around here before.”

“You wouldn’t.” On the uneven ground that sloped to the creek, Nedra reached back and took her granddaughter’s hand. “She’s Death. Death herself come for me.”

The entire walk back to the trailer home, Flannery threw nervous glances over her shoulder. That was the largest mixed breed she’d ever seen. She helped her grandmother up the sagging steps and through the door to their home and looked around for the black dog, elk thighbone gripped securely in both hands.

The country road stretched emptily to where it cut into the dark green pines and spruce. A brace of doves alighted on the shanty roof of Nedra’s souvenir stand. Butterflies flurried around the Woman Made of Flowers and through the sunbeams in the woods across the road. No other creatures crossed her sight.

2.

BLACK DOG

Why the dog? Like Anubis, dog companion of Thoth, Egyptian god of the dead—like Cerberus, guard dog of Hades—the dog is death.
—Robert Graves, The White Goddess

Flannery entered the trailer home and leaned the big thighbone beside the door. She had to bow her head to pass under a low ceiling crowded with sheaves of drying herbs, mobiles of bird bones and feathers, and numerous dangling poppets with lifelike faces.

A worktable occupied most of the front room. Its naked boards displayed poppets and gourd masks in various stages of assembly among their raw materials: straw bundles, twine, toad skins, snake vertebrae, raven claws and a bat’s skull with its diabolic grin.

“Let me get you something hot to drink,” Flannery said, following Nedra into the narrow kitchen. Morning light, curling to rainbows in the thick glass of the windows, sparkled on the white ceramic sink and its gleaming gargoyle faucet. “You shouldn’t go to the altar at night, Neddie.” Flannery spoke over her shoulder to her grandmother, who sat in a cane chair, chin in palm, elbow resting on a kitchen table of varnished maple. Tacked to the wall behind her, crewelwork in a frame of acorn shells declared:

History is Nature’s orphan.

“It’s cold at night,” Flannery continued. She placed teacup and saucer before her grandmother. “If you catch a chill at your age—” With a dismal shake of her head, she admonished the old woman, then snapped a small cluster of buds from one of the hanging sheaves. She crumbled those herbs into a glass teapot on the table. Behind her, the gently steaming kettle atop the wood stove huffed hot vapors that tightened into vividly staring faces with wee expressions of impish beauty.

Nedra noticed the vaporous creatures, rubbed her face wearily and mouthed a silent chant. The rays of sunlight in the kitchen flexed as if inside a gem, and the grinning pixie faces blurred to mere steam.

Flannery, unaware of the vaporous apparitions, removed the kettle from the stove and poured its hot water into the waiting vessel. The brew swirled up murky green.

“It’s only April,” Flannery went on. “Too early for outdoor rituals. You could get sick.”

“I’m not going to get sick. I’m going to die.”

Flannery took down a fishbowl of cookies, lidded with a scrap of calico and twine, and brought it to the table. “Everybody’s dying. So what’s the hurry?”

“I’m in no hurry, child.” The witch raised her white eyebrows in agreement. “That’s why I worked the altar last night. It’s time I act boldly, because Death is getting impatient with me. You saw the black dog.”

“That was just a dog, Neddie.” Flannery poured tea into her grandmother’s cup. “Don’t get weird on me now.”

“I tell you, Flower Face, that is the black dog.” She immersed her wrinkled face in the steam rising from the teacup. “The Theena Shee sent her for me.”

Flannery gave her grandmother an irritated look and removed the cloth lid from the cookie bowl. “Got to go to school, grandma. The Theena Shee can wait.” She removed several cookies and arranged them on the saucer around the teacup.

“Be careful, child.” The crone watched her darkly. “The black dog got a good look at you. The Theena Shee would be happy taking a young thing in my place.”

Flannery gazed upward in feigned dismay. “It’s not elves I have to worry about, Neddie.” She fit the scrap of calico over the cookie bowl and secured the twine. “I take another skip day, I won’t graduate.”

The old woman opened her mouth to say something, but the girl had already turned away.

“Try and stay inside today, Neddie. We’ll work in the garden when I get back.” Flannery hurried through a nutshell curtain that separated the kitchen from the back of the trailer home, and the strands clacked loudly behind her, silencing any protest the old woman might have made.

Alone in her room, the teenager breathed a peevish sigh. Flannery didn’t care for the old religion or the childish bric-a-bracs and curios Nedra fashioned for her pathetic souvenir stand. In fact, Flannery didn’t care about much of anything.

Other than a prism mobile that hung in a sunny window, her sleeping quarters were as bare as her heart: no posters, pictures, or stuffed animals. No bookshelves. No clock or calendar. Her neatly made cot looked spare as a prison bunk. The flimsy wood table that served as her desk held only a glass oil lamp. On the well-worn straw carpet, her denim book bag lay unopened from the day before.

Streaks of rainbows fluttered through the small room from the prisms turning in a window breeze. Like delicate creatures, they swarmed around Flannery as she opened a narrow closet and quickly selected from her homespun wardrobe baggy brown trousers and a rumpled pullover once green now almost gray.

She dressed quickly and morosely, not wanting to go to school but definitely wanting to get away from her nagging grandmother. She stepped into scuffed brogans while combing her ruffled hair with the fingers of one hand and grabbing her book bag with the other. Turning to rush out of the room, she glanced quickly past the spinning colors of the dangled prisms into the nearby forest.

Cold fear rose up in her. At first, she wasn’t sure why. The dark wall of pine lay shadowed against the rising sun, no different than it had looked any other spring morning. She squinted into the slant light. Then, she spotted it beside a bent hickory—the black dog, motionless and watchful as a piece of darkness the night had left behind.

3.

SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE KID

Love weaves the cloak of sorrow.
—ancient Irish adage

Flannery burst out the front door, leaped off the stoop, and crossed the weedy yard with graceful speed. Nimbly, she dodged the stone garden gnomes in her path, eager to get away.

Nedra came out the door waving the elk thighbone. “At least take the wand! Protect yourself!”

Flannery ran beyond the Woman Made of Flowers and shouted from out of sight, “Stay indoors!”

The big dog had spooked her, and she jogged down the middle of the dirt road, looking apprehensively into the empty forest on either side. For confidence, she swung her book bag by its strap, loose and heavy.

The black dog was nowhere in sight. The muscular bitch stalked from deeper in the woods, trailing the girl’s scent. The young one smelled vulnerable—frightened. Blood-salt and flesh-heat on the light wind eddying through the pines excited the beast.

She moved closer to the briny scent until her quarry came into sight. Just out of Flannery’s line of vision, the dog pursued, coursing faster as the girl ran lithely along the country road, slipping in and out of view among the trees.

The dirt road ended at a paved highway, and Flannery tossed her book bag to the ground and leaned against a rusty pole under a school bus sign sieved with bullet holes. She jammed her hands into her pockets and watched butterflies jitter in the radiant air.

The black dog glided out of the forest, her attention fixed on the teenager standing in sunlight smoky with pollen. Her breathing tautened to a snarl as she closed in on the daydreaming girl.

Under a turn of wind, the sunlit wisps of pollen behind Flannery swirled with impish faces. The black dog paused. Her growl disappeared into sudden engine noise as a school bus whooshed around the bend. Hissing a loud whine, the bus braked to a stop. Doors clacked open, and the imp faces slurred away in the back draft. Flannery hoisted her book bag and boarded.

She slouched toward the rear of the almost empty bus, past two younger students. Children of affluent farmers from farther down the paved road, they usually drove to school with older siblings. For whatever reason, today they rode the school bus. One of them gawked at her, fascinated by Flannery’s rustic attire and wild hair. The other whispered, “Don’t look into her eyes. She’s a witch.”

“Nah.” The gawker shook her head and whispered back, “Her grandma’s the witch. She’s just a retard.”

Flannery scowled at the kids—“Boo!”—and they pulled away with startled cries and flurried giggles.

As usual, Flannery strode to the very back, threw her book bag on the floor and plopped down next to the window. She spotted the black dog standing among the trees, staring at her.

Fear tightened the knuckles of her spine, and she stared absently while springwoods scrolled by. She tried not to think about the dog. The bus stopped, and two more kids got on. Her mind roved ahead to what the day offered: a math quiz and a social studies presentation on the origins of World War One, neither of which she was prepared for.

Newly turned fields slid past, and farmhouses gradually gave way to suburban tracts. The interior of the bus filled with more kids. None sat near her. A few looked askance in her direction, and some openly mocked her among themselves for her hand-stitched clothes and sullen demeanor. She ignored them.

Out the window, on a wide street of sycamores, she noticed the black dog standing in the driveway of a well kept home. The bitch watched her with baleful pale eyes as the bus rolled on. Flannery straightened and heaved around to peer out the back window, stunned that the creature could have come so far so fast. The big dog kept her gaze fixed on her until the bus turned a corner.

By then, most of the seats had filled, and no one sat near Flannery. A few jeering faces sporadically looked her way. She paid them no heed. She was wondering if this black dog was the same animal that had confronted her in the woods earlier.

The bus stopped before a beige brick house fronted with poplar trees and a personalized mailbox that read: HUBERT. A bespectacled, neatly groomed boy with a heavy backpack walked his bicycle down the driveway toward the bus. An older version of himself in a business suit, with briefcase in hand, waved to him from the carport and got into a blue compact.

From the front door, a woman wearing a floral housecoat rushed out wagging a bag lunch.

The busload of kids hooted and hollered with derision and began chanting, “Chester Hubert! Chester Hubert!” The bus driver motioned for them to quiet down and got out to help Chester with his bicycle. One of the older kids lowered a window and yelled, “Hey, Hubert! Give us some love!”

Chester waved cheerfully to his fans in the bus, took the lunch bag from his mother and kissed her on the cheek. Whistles and laughter erupted from his schoolmates, and he hurried to mount his bicycle on the rack at the front of the bus.

“Chet, Chet, teacher’s pet. Biggest geek we ever met!” Spitballs and paper airplanes flew from the younger kids as Chester got on board. He made his way down the aisle, smiling and nodding easy as a politician on a campaign bus.

“Pipe down!” the bus driver barked, climbing back behind the wheel.

Chester grinned at his detractors with self-deprecating humor and held up his lunch bag. “Trade anybody? Got tuna and chunky peanut butter. On pumpernickel with ketchup.”

To a chorus of groans, he moved toward the back of the bus fending off flying rubber bands. He dropped his ponderous pack onto the back seat and sat next to Flannery.

“Hey,” he greeted.

Flannery, who was searching for the black dog, had not turned her face from the window during Chester’s boisterous entry, and she continued to ignore him.

“Okay if I sit here?” he asked.

Oblivious to him, Flannery gazed out the window as the bus moved on. “Dumb question,” Chester acknowledged.

Flannery watched suburban houses float past.

“So, uh, well . . . ” Chester leaned forward to catch Flannery’s eye, but her stare didn’t budge from the window. “I, uh, was wondering if you’re going with anybody.”

Flannery turned, just now registering he had sat beside her. “What do you want, Chester?”

“Chet,” he corrected. “Call me Chet. Uh, I was just asking if you have a date for the spring dance.”

Flannery returned her attention to the window. “I’m not going.”

“You don’t have a date?” Chet spoke excitedly. “All right! Great. I mean, that’s okay. That’s good. Maybe then you and I—we could go together.”

Flannery intently watched as the bus turned onto a commercial street. She scanned a strip mall.

Chet babbled on, “Hey, this would just be for fun. You know, just cause these are our last weeks in high school and all. Something to do. No big deal.”

Flannery, relieved to see no sign of the black dog, sat back in her seat. She met the expectation on the shining face of the kid beside her with a baffled scowl. “What?”

Chet’s cheeks ballooned, and he exhaled a huge sigh—then shrugged and sought a new approach: “We’ve known each other forever. And we’ve spoken—what? Maybe six times in thirteen years?” He perceived Flannery’s blank look and lost his train of thought. “Yeah, well, this isn’t exactly easy for me to say. I can feel my ears burning. They’re red, right? They feel red. Okay, I might as well just say it.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I’ve always admired you, Flannery.”

“Admired?” She gave him a cynical, sidelong glance.

Chet nodded energetically. “Other kids think you’re off, because you never say anything in class, never hang out with anybody—and you wear these—your homemade clothes. But I’ve seen you on the playground feeding birds and squirrels. You’re into nature. I admire that.”

Flannery inclined her head toward the window and looked at the city streets.

“Uh, so you think maybe we could go to the dance together?” Chet asked hopefully. “I know it’s short notice. But this could be our last chance to get to know each other.”

With her face against the window, she rolled her eyes as they pulled into the parking lot of the city high school. The vehicle slowed to a stop, and she snagged her book bag and got to her feet with the other kids.

“I know I sprang this on you suddenly,” Chet said, his magnified eyes glinting earnestly. “Don’t say no right away. Think about it.”

She shouldered past him and shoved her way through the kids waiting to disembark, provoking a chorus of chafed voices: “Hey!—Watch it, vampire slayer!—Downshift, girl!”

Chet crawled across the backseat, opened the side window and called to her when she walked by: “Flannery!”

She looked up and grimaced into the glare reflecting off his eyeglasses.

“Let’s talk about it at lunch,” he said and wagged his lunch bag. “Kohl-rabi brioche and star fruit?”

Squinting a discouraging frown, she hurried off.

4.

SMACKED

Death hides in the open.
—The Black Book of Caermathon

Flannery walked quickly, afraid Chet was going to apologize again and call even more attention to her across the schoolyard. In her eagerness to get away from the sunstruck lenses on the expectant face leaning out the window, she dashed behind the bus and into the parking lot.

Chet’s jaw dropped, and his eyes bugged. From his higher vantage, he could see another school bus pulling out, and he bawled, “Flannery!”

She glowered at him, annoyed—and rushed directly into the path of the accelerating bus. With a heavy thud, the impact sent her flying across the asphalt, limbs flinging, body rolling and bouncing like tumbleweed.

The school bus screeched, and students screamed and shouted.

Chet bolted from his seat and pushed his way through onlookers into the parking lot.

Flannery laid sprawled on her back, eyes half-lidded, showing zombie whites.

She snapped alert and found herself surrounded by shoes and sneakers of encroaching kids. The air resounded with their dismay and fright: “Damn! Did you see her fly?”—“She walked right into it!”—“Retard wasn’t even looking.”—“She was talking to Hubert.”—“Is she dead?”

“It’s my fault!” Chet’s hysterical voice rose above the other excited voices.

The voices muted, and a storm wind whistled loudly. A pair of scuffed brogans joined the footwear surrounding Flannery. The sibilant wind faded into eerie silence, and Flannery stared above the scuffed brogans at her own baggy brown trousers and gray rumpled pullover. For an instant, she glimpsed herself standing astride herself, peering down, placid and curious.

The whole world spun dizzily, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was standing among the other kids, gaping at her fallen body on the asphalt. Astonished, Flannery looked around at the gabbling students and the shocked bus driver restraining an agitated Chet. They were talking, but she couldn’t hear them.

“Hey!” she called. “What’s happening?”

No one responded—because no one saw her. They stood gawking at her still body. She bent over and touched her senseless face. Her flesh felt warm and dewy.

A furious growl jerked her around. The black dog charged across the parking lot, fangs flashing.

Flannery stood up with a shriek, turning to the gathered crowd for help. No one else saw the attack dog—or her. She grabbed at the nearest kids, and even as she reached out, the dog collided with her.

Hurtling backward under the impact, she fell to the ground at the feet of the unsuspecting students. The dog’s slobbering jaws snapped savagely for her throat. Frantically, she took hold of the beast’s thick neck and held off her murderous jaws.

A roaring engine muffled the brute’s rabid barking. From the corner of her startled eyes, she glimpsed a sleek black motorcycle slash across the parking lot. The blond rider in dark glasses wore a face of dangerous beauty, very like the impish visages that had been secretly watching her.

The bike slid sideways, abruptly stopping alongside the struggling girl, and the rider’s leg swung out and kicked the black dog with the heel of a snakeskin boot. The creature tumbled away, yelping sharply.

“Come on!” The stranger extended a gloved hand, and Flannery stared up at her rescuer, astonished by his outlandish attire: kidskin pants woven along the seams with colorful Celtic knots, thongs of rawhide crisscrossing a brawny chest tattooed with blue runes, and silver charms piercing ears, eyebrows and lip.

5.

THE OTHERWORLD

The Greek word mechane, the source of our word machine and origin of machination, means to trick—and so, whenever the fairy employ machines, they use them to deceive.
—Roger Pelion, Secrets of the Fairy

Flannery hesitated to take the stranger’s gloved hand, alarmed by his pirate beauty. Then, the black dog scrambled upright, eyes flaring, jaws grinding. And Flannery swiftly clasped the tattooed arm. The biker pulled her off the ground and smoothly swung her behind him onto the motorcycle.

With concussive thunder, the bike jumped away.

The black dog, barking vehemently, chased the fleeing motorcycle across the parking lot. Leaping into the air, the animal stretched monstrously, elongating like a demonic cartoon to a surreal blur of slashing claws and hot fangs.

Flannery cast a terrified look over her shoulder. Claws cut through her streaming hair, and sharp teeth gnashed inches away. The deathly shadow fell back, smearing flat across the asphalt, a long fierce smudge black as a tire burn.

As the motorcycle flowed into street traffic, a wailing ambulance flew past in the opposite direction. Moments later, the emergency vehicle swerved to the curb of the schoolyard and pulled up short beside Flannery’s rag doll body.

The principal and school security herded most of the students into the building. Chet insisted on staying with Flannery and giving the police a statement. He lingered afterward and watched with a poisoned expression as the paramedics loaded Flannery’s unconscious body onto a gurney.

“It’s my fault,” he told the nearest police officer. “Book me on negligent endangerment.”

“And you are?” the officer inquired.

“He’s Chester Hubert,” a second officer answered, stepping out from behind the ambulance and waving off the first cop. “I already got his statement. He was in the parked bus when it happened.”

“It’s my fault,” Chet asserted. “I distracted her. This wouldn’t have happened except for me.”

The officer pointed with his chin to the school. “Counselors are waiting for you in there, kid.”

“No.” Chet spoke loudly, to hear himself above his rushing blood. “You have to book me. I’m responsible for what happened.”

Chet watched the ambulance doors close and the red flashers spin. The wail of the siren cut through him so sharply, he thought he was going to vomit. He scurried around to the front of the parked bus and unracked his bicycle. Keeping the bus between him and the huddled squad cars, he hopped on his bike and pedaled furiously across the parking lot in pursuit of the speeding strobe lights.

Further away than he could ever hope to pedal—or even imagine— Flannery and the blond biker cruised along a country road through tigery shadows of trees. Overhead, fluffy clouds trod the sky like sheep.

She pressed her face into the rushing air, long red hair buffeting behind. The wind bleared her eyes, stung her face and assured her she was alive.

Urgent questions swarmed, but the bike’s rocketing speed snatched her breath away and made talking hopeless. She leaned against the biker and squeezed her arms tighter about him.

He smelled tawny, like worn leather. Was she dead? Was this the afterlife: a motorcycle ride into heaven with a biker angel?

They rolled to a stop before a meadow embroidered with flowers. On a distant hill, willows glistened. A small waterfall stepped down mossy ledges like a flight of stairs and fed a brook that meandered across the meadow and disappeared into a majestic forest. A dozen young adults lounged in the low, gnarled boughs of trees. They all wore dark glasses and crazy-casual clothes and watched her with severely lovely, impish faces.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” Flannery asked when the engine noise cut off. From somewhere nearby, music lilted, forlorn and frail, riding a balmy breeze with butterflies, pollen smoke and milky tufts of dandelions. “I’m dreaming—or I’m dead and this is the next world.”

“Is that what you think?” the blond rider asked, voice soft as suede. “The black dog doesn’t think you’re dead.”

She flicked an uneasy glance down the road.

“Don’t worry, Flannery.” The biker nodded for her to dismount. “We don’t have to run anymore.”

“How do you know my name?” She got off the bike, legs humming like struck crystal from the vibrant, fast ride. “Who are you? Where are we?”

Friendly laughter rippled among the young people watching her and whispering light-heartedly to each other. “We all know you, Flannery.” The rider sat back in the saddle of the machine. “And we want you to get to know us.”

“I saw my body on the ground.” Fear pleated Flannery’s voice. “Am I dead?”

“You’re in a coma.” He dropped the kickstand and got off the bike. “By now, your gutsack is in a hospital bed and stuck with tubes. That’s not you.” Under the warm gazes and nods of his friends, he strode through the meadow’s clover grass and sat on a low bough over the brook. “Come here. We’re not going to eat you.”

Flannery looked at the attractive, lolling youths in their careless attire and shook her head. She didn’t belong with these people. Whippet-thin girls wore silk tops slashed to their navels; techno-pagan boys sported hacked manes and razor-wire fetish charms in their ears and eyebrows. They should have been smirking at her. Instead, they smiled warmly and beckoned her, “Get out of the heat and sprawl.”

Flannery leveled a suspicious look at her rescuer. He reclined on a tree limb with the sinuous grace of a cat. “Who are you?”

“Arden.”

She tucked in her chin. “What are you?”

He offered a mischievous smile and gestured at the others. “We are the Theena Shee.”

“Elves?” Flannery blurted.

Arden winced. “We don’t like that name.”

“I’m dreaming.” Flannery scowled with disbelief. “The bus hit me and knocked me into a dream.”

“No, you’re not dreaming.” He said this in an indifferent voice. “The bus knocked you free of your corpse, and you’re here with us now.”

“With the Theena Shee?”

Arden nodded, and the others softly laughed at her glorious disbelief. “I thought the Theena Shee were a fairy tale.”

“Strange world.”

Flannery’s knees wobbled, and she leaned back against the bike saddle and tracked the landscape with a startled vigilance. This peaceful meadow intruded among primeval woods of enormous trees where perpetual night lingered. She didn’t want to stare too deeply into those gloomy timberlands, afraid she’d spot the black dog roving there.

She focused on the tilting meadow. Small fork-tailed birds laced the air and glistening dragonflies zigged and zagged. Far off, indigo mountains rose to crystal crags and blue snow bowls. Waterfalls descended those dark walls of rock and dissolved into rainbows.

“What is this place?” she asked hollowly, trying to untangle her emotions—her fear and awe—from her disbelief. “This can’t be real.”

“This is the Otherworld, Flannery.” Arden addressed her matter-of-factly. “The world behind the world you know. This is where we live. This is where you can live, too—if you come with us.”

She peered more carefully at the meadow, searching for the flaw in her dream. Her uneasiness dissolved among the daisies, pink clover and deepblue gentians. “It’s so beautiful . . . ”

“Come on, then.” He waved his hand over his head in a summoning flourish. “Join us.”

Flannery tugged at her hair till her scalp hurt, convincing herself she was awake. “I don’t believe this is happening.”

“Look at us.” Arden stood upon the bough, arms outstretched. “Don’t you recognize us in your heart? We are your heart’s choice.”

“Choice?” Flannery cocked her head. “You mean, I can go back? Back to my body?”

In playful imitation, Arden cocked his head and lifted an eyebrow above his dark glasses. “You want to go back?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t very happy back there.” He hopped off the bough and offered his gloved hand. “Decide later. Come on. Let me introduce you to the others.”

Flannery decided this was a dream. It had to be. Everything was too achingly beautiful. Better to share this gorgeous dream, she thought, than wake up alone in a hospital ward—or, worse, a morgue. With fear and longing, she strode into the fairy landscape and the warm embrace of the wickedly lovely people.

6.

ONE CRAZY WITCH

Long and white are my fingers—as the ninth wave of the sea.
—Hanes Blodeuwedd (The Poem of Flower Face)

Chet stood beside an empty crash cart in a clinic corridor talking to a doctor with porcupine hair, a big potato nose and delicate, gold wire spectacles.

A paisley of hospital noise imprinted the medicinal air, and a speaker voice clamored, “Doctor Antone, report to Neurology. Doctor Antone to Neuro.”

“That’s me.” The doctor backed away. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait,” Chet pleaded feverishly, looking as if he himself might require urgent care at any moment. “Is she going to be all right?”

“Internal organs are uninjured and surprisingly no bones are broken,” the doctor reported, edging backward. He paused and lowered his voice all the way to a whisper. “But she sustained head trauma. She could wake up in five minutes. She may never wake again. I’ve got to go.”

Chet stood nervously before the open door of the observation unit where the emergency staff had placed Flannery. Electronic chirpings and an antiseptic taint wafting from the room heightened his anxiety about actually facing her and seeing the damage he had caused. Bracing himself, he stepped through the doorway.

The sight of Flannery lying on her back in a hospital bed, glucose driptube stuck in one arm, monitor cuff on the other, left him aghast. Her hair looked red as fire, her flesh gray as rain. For a freaky instant, he thought he had arrived at the precise moment of her death. Then, he noticed the green spikes on the monitor recording the tread of her heart.

Slowly, he approached and stood at her bedside gazing down at her slack features. She didn’t appear as though she were peacefully slumbering. Jaw hanging loose, mouth agape, skewed lids exposing the whites of her eyes, she looked knocked senseless. “I’m so sorry.” He stifled a sob. “All these years—I wanted to talk—I just never had the nerve. And then, when I finally—” He swallowed another sob and removed his eyeglasses to wipe away tears with the back of his hand.

Behind him, Nedra Fell, in her hempen gown and cobweb hair, stood in the doorway. She didn’t enter.

Chet continued, “If you can hear me, Flannery, know I’m really sorry. I should’ve let you go. You wouldn’t be here now if I had let you go. It’s all my fault. And I’m sorry, really sorry. Please, wake up. I won’t ever talk to you again. I promise. I’ll leave you alone. Just wake up.”

He bent close and kissed her forehead.

A brusque voice directly behind him asked, “Who are you?”

Chet whirled. The gnomic old woman glowering at him with arctic wolf eyes hovered like an apparition. “Me?” He laid a hand over his scampering heart, his cheeks blazing with the realization the crone had heard every word he’d said. “I—I’m a friend of Flannery’s from school.”

“Flannery doesn’t have any friends.” With startling eyes of smashed ice, Nedra inspected the agitated teen who had just kissed her comatose granddaughter. “What’s your name?”

“Chester?” Chet followed up more firmly, “Chester Hubert. I—I’ve known Flannery since we were in kindergarten.”

The crumpled face, enclosed by thick mats of tangled spider webs, squinted skeptically. “She never mentioned you.”

“Oh, no way she could,” he gusted with embarrassment. “I mean—I never spoke with her. Not really. Not until today, that is.”

“Unlucky for her.” Nedra stepped closer, scowling ominously. “Chester Hubert.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice wobbled. “I mean, I’m so very sorry about what happened.”

The old woman inched very close to Chet, and he backed away, taking with him a whiff of her scent, something fragrantly sad, like November rain. “It was your fault.”

“I think it was. Yes.” Chet nodded vigorously. “I know it was my fault. I called to her from the bus . . . I—I just wanted to ask her to the spring dance—I . . . ”

Nedra pointed at her granddaughter with a finger brown as a root. “She’s lying there because of you, Chester Hubert.”

“I told the police . . . ”

Chet backed into the bed, and Nedra pinned him against the cool metal of the railing. “Do you love her?”

“Love?” He gawked. “Well, uh—I’ve admired her for years—from afar, but I never really . . . ”

She bit off each word with her reptilian lips, “Do—you—love—her?” He offered a small nod. “Yes.”

The crinkled face relaxed. “Then, you can save her,” she said gently. “What?”

The crone stepped back a pace so that he could plainly reckon the full length of her uncanny presence, from her voodoo frenzy of tangled hair and the grim radiation of her weather-beaten face to the medieval memory of her hempen gown and rope sandals. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Flannery’s grandmother?” Chet piped, then forced himself to speak more huskily, “I’ve seen you at school—picking her up when we were little . . . ”

“I am Nedra Fell,” she interrupted forcefully. “I am a Wiccan priestess.”

“You—you’re what?”

“I am a witch.”

“Oh.”

She pushed closer and informed him confidentially, “Flannery’s soul has been knocked loose from her body. And if she is not returned to her flesh soon, she will die.”

The shimmery intensity of the crone’s stare filled Chet with cold dread, and he trembled before the conspicuousness of her lunacy. “The doctor said . . . ”

“The doctor does not know Flannery.” Nedra spoke with demented urgency. “I tell you, she will die unless you fetch her soul from the Otherworld.”

“Me?” Chet’s shrill eyes grew larger. “You’re the witch . . . ”

“I am old.” With this unhappy admission, Nedra’s whole body seemed to deflate, and she added in a tone of bitter, self-scorn, “If I go to the Otherworld, Flannery and I will both be lost.”

Chet sidled past the shrunken madwoman and drifted toward the door. “I’m really sorry about what happened.”

“You, Chester Hubert, you are her only chance of coming back.” The witch floated after him. “If you don’t work the Fetch, the Theena Shee will hold her in the Otherworld until her body dies.”

“Who?”

“The Theena Shee. The spirit people.” She put her misshapen hand on Chet’s shoulder and stopped his retreat. “What is your ancestry?”

“What?”

“Who are your ancestors?” She sidestepped Chet and blocked him from exiting the room. “Hubert—what is that? French?”

“Uh, yes.” He gave his head a determined nod while his jittery eyes gauged the distance to the open door. “My dad’s grandparents were from Brittany. Northwest France.”

“You have Celtic blood.” She sized him up with an air of artful scrutiny. “You could find the Theena Shee in the Otherworld. They would recognize you.”

The manic glee in the professed witch’s face sparked genuine fright in Chet, and he budged past her gruffly. “Look, I’ve got to go.” He darted out of the room.

Nedra Fell, tottering backward, shouted into the hallway. “Chester Hubert! Only you can save her!”

7.

HOME INVADER

Make dread, thy heart, for the witch comes in the night.
—Sir Thomas Browne, Garden of the Witch

At the dinner table, Chet had no appetite. He leaned his fork against a pancetta-wrapped baked potato and stared at it as if it were some cumbersome object. His parents, Elliot and Lena, shared concerned looks.

Elliot ate his meal as he did every evening at the linen-draped dining table formally set with rose-print dishware and crystal goblets. His wife Lena, however, picked sporadically at the food on her plate and, no longer able to watch her son gazing disconsolately at his untouched meal, finally spoke up, “Chester, we know you think otherwise, but what happened today is not your fault.”

Chet addressed the immovable potato, “Then, who is to blame?”

“The young lady for not looking where she was going,” Elliot answered around a mouthful of roast loin of pork.

“Dad, her name is Flannery.” Chet forked the potato so hard the tines shoved all the way through and clacked against the plate. “And she wasn’t looking—because I distracted her.”

“Flannery Lake,” Lena spoke up brightly, cutting off any reply her husband might have made to Chet’s angry fork. “She’s the girl who lives with her grandmother. I’ve seen the old woman at school a few times. Nedra Fell. Quite a character. I think she sells her own crafts.”

“I know her,” Elliot recalled, waving a forkful of garlic mash with pear sauce.

“She has a doohickey stand out on Old Mill Road, sells voodoo dolls and stuff. You know, the place with that big statue of flowers that looks like a woman.”

“That’s her stand?” Lena absently pierced a single pea. “I haven’t been out that way in years. How does she manage to set that up every spring? What a remarkable green thumb.”

Elliot reached for another scallion biscuit from the basket beside the gravy boat and casually asked his son, “What happened to Flannery’s parents?”

“I don’t know,” Chet answered sullenly.

“They died in an accident,” Lena informed the table. “Car crash—years ago, when Flannery was very young, two or three.”

Elliot frowned at his son frowning at his food.

“Mothers talk,” Lena explained and poured a dollop of shallot sauce onto the untouched slab of pot roast on her son’s plate. “One of the mothers works in the school office and must have seen the records.”

Elliot noticed Chet’s lips tighten and his eyes narrow a critical stare at Lena. “You’re right, son. This is pure gossip. We shouldn’t be talking about that poor girl when we really don’t know anything about her.”

The penciled lines of Lena’s eyebrows lifted defensively. “I was just relating what I’d heard.”

“That, I’d say, is a pretty fair definition of gossip, Lena.” Elliot turned to his son with a smug expression of complicity. “Listen to me, Chester. Accidents happen. That bus driver is more to blame than . . .”

The doorbell chimed insistently. Elliot looked to his wife and son to see if they were expecting anyone. Blank stares circulated the table, and the doorbell continued to bong maniacally.

The convulsive ringing persisted as Elliot put down his knife and fork, removed the napkin from his lap, and rose from the table. “All right, already!” he griped, striding into the foyer past the antique cloak rack, umbrella stand, and a parlor vase stuffed with decorative feather-blooms of pampas grass. “I hear you!”

The front door swung open on an old woman with a face the color of dead leaves and hair white and flamboyant as steam. In her big-knuckled hand, she wielded a stout thighbone the size of a shillelagh. “Where is Chester?” she asked gruffly.

“We’re having dinner.” Elliot observed the woman’s coarse gown with its needlework along the neckline that resembled runes and other heathen symbols, and he surmised, “You’re that girl’s grandmother. I’m sorry about . . . ”

Nedra grimaced angrily. The femur wand in her hand punched forward, striking Elliot between the eyes with a resounding thwack! He dropped like a bag of bones, and the crone stepped over his collapsed body and stormed into the house, shouting, “Chester Hubert!”

The crazed hag stalked into the dining room brandishing her femur wand, and Lena leaped up, toppling her chair. The witch pointed the sturdy thighbone at Chet, who sat open-mouthed before her wrathful cry, “You!”

“Elliot!” Lena screeched.

Nedra hammered the dining room table with the femur wand, shattering a serving platter and scattering peas and pearl onions like shrapnel. “My granddaughter is dying because of you!”

Lena hollered again, “Elliot!”

“How can you sit here?” Nedra jabbed the femur at Chet. “How can you stuff your gullet while she lies dying in the hospital?”

From behind the old woman, Elliot staggered into the dining room, hair disarrayed, expression dazed yet smoldering.

“Mrs. Fell—please!” Lena waved both arms, hoping to distract the madwoman from Elliot’s wobbly approach.

Nedra ignored the frightened woman and held Chet in her livid gaze. “I told you what you have to do, young man.”

Elliot seized the old woman from behind, and she bucked in his arms and howled with rage. “Release me!”

Grunting and huffing, Elliot dragged the struggling witch from the dining table.

“The Fetch!” Nedra wailed, legs kicking. “Chester! Only you can work the Fetch!”

Lena hurried around the table, hands meekly outstretched toward the grappling couple, feeling both alarmed and reassured by her husband’s stern strength. “Don’t hurt her, Elliot.”

“How dare you barge in here and attack my family?” Elliot spoke through a clenched jaw, striving as arduously to contain his rage as restrain the manic intruder. “I should call the police.” With great effort, he pulled her twisting and jerking out of the room.

“You love her!” Nedra shouted from the foyer, her grievous voice booming through the house.

Lena turned toward her son with a wide-eyed look of dismay. He didn’t notice. He was staring stunned across the havoc of the dining room table at where the witch had stood accusing him.

In the foyer, Elliot managed to open the front door with one frantic hand. He leaned his shoulder into the thrashing old woman and shoved her out into the night. “If you don’t leave at once,” he warned, standing squarely in the doorway, “I won’t care anymore about what happened to your granddaughter. I’ll call the police.”

Nedra irately raised the femur wand, and Elliot slammed the door, leaving her standing alone under the porch light, trembling like a flame.

8.

PARTY ANIMALS

Dance, dance, dance to a Druid tune—while God sleeps
’neath the faeries’ moon.
—Gwion’s Riddle

Flannery and Arden lay together on a mossy bank of a brook among violets and minty grasses. Pollen mist, butterflies and aerial seeds like tufts of feathers filled the air with a dreamy, vagrant beauty, and, in the tricky waters of the brook, rainbows glinted and spiny-finned fish plunged.

Scattered across the meadow and in the sun-mottled alcoves of the surrounding forest, the Theena Shee loafed in couples and drowsy threesomes.

Flannery sat up sleepily and surveyed the idyllic scene. She felt wonderful. Her crucial loserness had entirely vanished, and the isolation she had lived with all her life gone, as well. Half-smiles and nods of welcome tossed her way from these beautiful creatures banished all self-doubt.

“This is too lovely,” she spoke her fear aloud once again. “It must be a dream.”

“It is,” Arden admitted, hands behind his head, a grass stem between his teeth. “This is the place where we dream our days away.”

“How long have we been here?” She watched bright breezes drift across the broad grassland under toppling clouds—and noticed how the forest shadows had lengthened. “It seems only minutes—but already it’s getting dark.”

“Time moves differently in the Otherworld,” Arden mumbled sleepily. “I have to go back,” Flannery decided, sitting up straighter. Her happiness collapsed into misgiving once she realized how much time had gotten away from her. “Neddie must be worried sick.”

“Forget about that old witch.” He sank deeper into the hummocky grass. “She’s not interested in your happiness. All she cares about is Wicca. How do you think she’s lived to be so old?”

Flannery showed him her surprise. “You know my grandmother?”

“You mean your great-great-great grandmother,” he mumbled from a drowsy depth. “There might be another great or two in there. Nedra Fell is a lot older than you think.” He felt the pressure of her stare and sat up with a lazy sigh. “The Theena Shee know your Neddie quite well.” He clenched the grass stem between his teeth and faced her, wraparound sunglasses reflecting the beautiful world darkly. “We’ve been doing business with that old witch since she was young as you—a very long time ago.”

Flannery absorbed this news silently for a dumbfounded moment while she tried to decide how much of what she was experiencing was valid. If this wasn’t a dream—if her soul had truly departed her body and trespassed the Otherworld—“Then, everything Neddie’s been telling me since I was a kid is true?” Amazement teemed through her with possibilities that always before she had dismissed as fairy tales, Neddie’s superstitious lore. “The Theena Shee are the first people?”

“Old as the world.”

“But you wear cool outfits—” She looked out to the road, where sunlight ricocheted off the bike’s chrome in crisp little rainbows. “And you ride a motorcycle?”

“All magic.” He laughed, low and dark. “How better to mock the mechanical, fashion-mad world of people?”

“And this world where you live?” She admired again the sparkling brook and the distant ice-castle mountains. She felt bewitched. “This place really is the Otherworld, the paradise Neddie’s been telling me about since I can remember—you know, the happy land where nobody gets sick or old?”

Arden sat back on his elbows and inhaled the spring breeze. “Every day is a good day here.”

“And the dragon?” she asked with a worried furrow in her voice. “The terrible dragon that must be fed? Is that true, too?”

“Ah, the dragon.” The roguery of his smile chilled her. “That’s what makes our lives here so sexy.”

“Then, it’s true?” she asked with a frill of dread. “You lure people into the Otherworld and feed them to the dragon?”

“A few vagabonds a year,” Arden conceded, his smile slipping away. “We take people that no one in the cold, dim world misses. They die merciful deaths, swift and painless, far better than the cruel fate of wandering homeless, hungry and diseased among their own people.”

Flannery stood. “I think I want to go home now.”

“What?” He evinced astonishment with a grin. “You’re afraid I’m going to feed you to the dragon?” He dismissed that possibility with an amused chuckle. “Flannery, please. I didn’t bring you here as dragon food.”

“Then, why am I here?”

He rose and tossed aside the grass stem he’d been chewing. “I want you.” He peeled off one of his gloves and put a gentle hand to the side of her face. “I want you for myself.”

Flannery backed away. “Take me home.”

His mouth turned a wry smile. “You just got here.”

“You said I had a choice,” Flannery challenged. “You said I could go home.”

“I asked if you wanted to go home.” He flapped his empty glove at the road. “You’re unhappy back there, and you know it.”

“I want to see Neddie.”

“She’ll try to talk you out of staying.” Arden tilted his head back knowingly, daring her to disagree. “Wicca is all she cares about. Not you. Do you have any idea how many generations she’s outlived? You’re just the latest.”

“Can I go home or not?”

“I’ll take you home myself.” He ambled toward the motorcycle and, with a jaunty wave, invited her to follow. “But first I want to show you something—” He passed a playful grin over his shoulder. “—something wonderful that I think will change your mind.”

Flannery remained where she was, hands on her hips.

At the side of the road, he turned and raised his arms with the outlandish showmanship of a circus ringleader. “Our nightlife!”

When he lowered his arms, the sky darkened like houselights going down in a theater. Azure deepened to darkest blue, then indigo. Flannery craned her neck, looking for storm clouds. Instead, she witnessed the orange orb of the sun cool in the violet sky to the silver disk of a full moon.

With hushed awe, she finally accepted the fact that she was dreaming. She met Arden’s pleased gaze and felt a chill, magnetic pulse of sexual force throb across the space that separated them. She figured if she was going to dream, why hold back? Anxiety and uncertainty dismissed, she climbed the moonlit embankment to his motorcycle.

The others in the meadow were already gone when she mounted the bike behind Arden. In the opal light of the moon, even the ancient and ominous forest appeared lovely, full of scintillant depths, a dark jewel under the starry sky, its interior ghostly, faceted like a shadowy crystal.

The engine revved with a growl percussive as a jackhammer, and they rode off on a molten road under the giant moon. She hugged the sturdy biker, her dream-lover, and marveled at the ingenuity of her comatose brain. The blurred speed of their ride struck her in the chest, and she clung tighter to the handsome demon rider, afraid she might wake up.

Like flickering flames, the dazzling woods flew by on either side. The road seemed to disappear entirely, and they glided as spirits through spectral groves of moonstruck trees.

The roar of the engine modulated to a growl as the bike downshifted, and they rolled to an easy stop in a large, incandescent clearing enclosed by massive trees. A high wind tossed the forest canopy so that moonfire flashed across the glade like strobe lights in a dance club.

At the center of the clearing a mammoth oak towered, its broad trunk mangled by past lightning strikes. The distorted bark, brocaded with hanging moss and scalloped fungus, bore an eerie semblance to a dragonish skull. Flannery sat mesmerized by the two dark sockets in the bole of the oak. Unearthed roots yawed like a gaping jaw.

Her fixation broke when loud and driving rock music thump-wailed from the glimmering forest, and the Theena Shee, in outfits of tattered elegance, rushed into the open, dancing frenetically, acrobatically, with a climactic abandon that rode the speed-run rhythms of the music.

Arden swept Flannery off the bike and spun her into the midst of the frenzied dancers. Theena Shee, with elvishly beautiful faces and sleek bodies, happily received her into their ecstatic crowd. For a moment, she forgot that she had agreed she was dreaming, and she gawked with a mixture of fear and wonder at the aggressive merrymakers grabbing her arms and twirling her among them.

Her fear dissolved quickly in the blissful frenzy of the celebration. She danced with Arden and the others faster and with greater abandon. Whirling, spinning, flailing with the relentless music, she glimpsed forest cubicles lit by foggy moonlight like a warren of smoky rooms. A flurry of images strobe-flashed around her, revealing ardent, momentary scenes of groping bodies, entangled limbs, passionate lovers.

Laughing at the antics of her imagination, Flannery surrendered entirely to the rapture and merged with the driving music and the laser-flickering moonlight. With joyful fervor, she and Arden danced.

The thrashing music exploded to silence. Flannery collapsed gasping and sobbing for breath in the leaf duff on the forest floor. Cradled in Arden’s arms and radiant with sweat, she grinned. She was happy. And she was beautiful. Gone was her vapid plainness. The tempestuous dancing had changed her, invigorating her with a glamour she had never before known. A mysterious, vigilant luster shone in her eyes, and her flesh glowed like ivory by firelight. The planes of her face had sharpened and acquired a surprising and thoughtful intensity. Even her hair, which before had hung lankly, took on a reckless liveliness.

Morning mist swaddled the entangled, exhausted bodies of the Theena Shee where they lay strewn upon the buttress roots of the massive dragon oak. Sunlight slanted through the trees yellow as fresh-milled lumber smoking with sawdust.

Arden, true to the puckish spirit of her dream, still wore his dark glasses. He ventured a fatigued smile. “You’re a passionate dancer, Flannery Lake.”

“I’ve never had this much fun.” She sighed contentedly. “I never want to wake up.”

Wearily, they rose. Arden led the way across the clearing to where his motorcycle waited in a shaft of morning light hectic with butterflies. Flannery shuffled after him. Along the way, she glanced at the Theena Shee sprawled among the trees.

Most of them had passed out. But a few sat against the root ledges of the giant yews and cedars, watching her. Sunrays seeping from the branches touched their lovely faces and illuminated orange eyes, striated and sliced with vertical pupils—the eyes of beasts.

9.

A BAD PLACE

The heart has a hand—and love unties it.
—Tom o’ Bedlam’s Ballad

An IV tube had tangled around Flannery’s throat. Her cheeks shone hot and purple. Through grimacing lips, no sound escaped. Green eyes gazed hard and horrified from their cancelled life. The agony of her death struck a blue match across Chet’s heart, and he thrashed in bed, flung free of this nightmare.

The dream’s frightfulness followed him to the kitchen table. He picked listlessly at his breakfast of Adzuki bean patties with a side of grilled mushrooms and tomato on fried multi-grain bread. Elliot peeked over the morning paper from the opposite side of the table and traded concerned looks with Lena as she stood at the kitchen island packing a sack lunch of cashew stuffed sweet potato balls & vegetable cake.

Chet gave up on breakfast, stood and retrieved the lunch bag from the counter.

“It’s too early for the bus,” Lena noted blandly, her tone free of the anxiety humming inside her.

Chet stuffed the paper sack in the ponderous backpack that hung by its straps from a kitchen chair. “I’m riding my bike to school.”

“You think that’s a good idea, son?” Elliot masked his worried frown with the newspaper. “You’ll be heading into commuter traffic.”

“I can’t ride that bus,” Chet stated curtly. “Not after yesterday.” He kissed his mom on the cheek and slouched out of the kitchen under his heavy backpack.

“Is he going to be all right, Elliot?” Lena inquired, filled with heartbruised longing to rush after her child and embrace him. “That crazy old woman could be stalking him. Maybe he should stay home today.”

“And mope around the house all day?” Elliot snapped the creases out of the newspaper and replied without looking up, “He’s better off in school. As for that nut case, Chet’s old enough to watch after himself.”

“Is he?” she asked, each word a throb of worry. “Mrs. Fell is violent. If she struck you, Elliot, what might she do to him? She thinks Chester’s responsible for her granddaughter’s accident!”

“She did whack me good.” Elliot lowered the paper, revealing a contusion on his forehead that looked like a Rorschach blotch of the Bat-Out-of-Hell. “How’s it look?”

Lena sucked a breath through her teeth. “I think she’s dangerous. We better drive Chester to school.”

“And humiliate him in front of the other kids?” Elliot ducked back into his newspaper. “Leave him alone, Lena. He has to live in the real world.”

Chet pedaled his bicycle glumly through the real world, backpack strapped to the rack behind him. The school bus he usually rode passed slowly, windows down, kids leaning out and jeering: “Chet, Chet, teacher’s pet!”—“Hey, lover man, you made a big hit with your girlfriend yesterday!”—“Ding dong the witch is dead!”

Chet stopped and watched the bus of laughing kids drive on. He pushed up his eyeglasses with his middle finger. Then, he turned his bike around and rode hard in the opposite direction.

The hospital provided a bike stand, but he didn’t bother to chain his bicycle or even to take his backpack. He walked briskly through the sliding doors directly to the information desk. In the midst of his inquiry, he spotted the porcupine coiffure of Dr. Antone beyond a traffic of wheelchair outpatients and hospital volunteers.

“Doctor Antone—how’s Flannery Lake doing?” Chet asked this enthusiastically, hoping to evoke an equally enthusiastic response. “The desk says she’s been moved out of the ER.”

Dr. Antone gave him a very hard stare. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I called from home, but the nurse wouldn’t tell me anything,” Chet lied and continued confabulating, “Flannery’s my girlfriend. Is she all right?”

Behind small rectangular lenses, the doctor’s dark eyes squinted, studying Chet’s earnest face, deciding what could be divulged. He shook his head. “Speak to the family.”

“I am family,” Chet dissembled floridly. “We’re secretly engaged. So, you can tell me. Is she all right?”

The dark eyes squinted tighter. “No, she’s not all right. Her vital signs weakened overnight. If this continues, she won’t last another twenty-four hours. I’m sorry.”

Chet’s shoulders slumped, and his whole body felt as if he were imploding as he watched the doctor walk off. Fighting this compression of dread and grief that he knew from dire experience might rebound at any instant to nausea and a puking fit, he dragged his feet toward the chiming elevators.

By the time he arrived at Flannery’s room, he had mastered his distress, and he peeked in anxiously, looking for the lunatic grandmother.

In one of the room’s two beds, an aged woman slept curled on her side, her peach-colored hair flossy as a cloud. A kaleidoscopic pastiche of getwell cards crammed the bulletin board beside her bed. Flowers and balloons crowded her bed stand.

Beyond a curtain partition, Flannery occupied her bed like a corpse, lying on her back, perfectly straight, her brilliant red hair spread out, drying from a recent shampoo. The glucose bag and monitor alone testified she was alive and in a bad place. Her bed stand and bulletin board displayed nothing but hospital paraphernalia—a plastic vomit tray on the stand and a yellowed chapel schedule tacked to the board.

Chet leaned on the bedrail and gazed with a mix of shame and consternation at this young woman he had adored too long from afar. “Flannery,” he whispered. “It’s me, Chet. I’m back, because you haven’t woken yet. You want to get rid of me, you better wake up.”

From his shirt pocket, he removed a pen and a small notepad and, bending over the bed stand, began writing. “I’m going to make it hard on you, Flannery,” he continued speaking under his breath. “I’m going to write you get well poetry. And I’m going to keep it up until you wake up and make me shut up. You hear?”

He paused in his writing, scratched out a line, chewed the end of his pen contemplatively, then scribbled again. Decisively punching the notebook with his pen, he finished. “Okay. Listen to this. It rhymes sort of.” He passed the comatose girl an apologetic smile. “I’m not really good at poetry.

Math is my forte. But this is from the heart. All right, here it goes—”

He sucked in a deep breath and softly read his lyric: “If you die—my life is a lie.—Come back.—I’m sorry—my love hurt you.—Come back.—My reasons are not new:—I didn’t mean to love you—I know that’s true—but it’s you—my heart goes to.”

Chet ripped out the poem and tacked it on her bulletin board, speaking with his back to her, “If you think this sucks, you better wake up soon or there’s going to be a lot more.”

When he turned around, Nedra Fell stood very close to him, pale, bulging eyes shining with ferocious strength.