Summer's End (6 page)

October 29

A strange whining sound from Roxie
woke me in the morning.

It was earlier than my usual
waking time, but the sun was already up, and I was surprised to realize I had
slept.

But that sound—I’d never heard
her make anything like it. She was in the living room, so I couldn’t see (or
imagine) what would have caused her to act that way. “Roxie?”

She didn’t stop—she sounded
almost like a small child uttering a string of nonsense syllables. The sound
brought last night’s unease hurtling back, but the fact that it was already
light outside was reassuring.

I got out of bed, ventured into
the living room—and saw instantly what had provoked the sound from my cat:

Outside, on my enclosed,
second-floor balcony, a large carved pumpkin rested. The jack-o’-lantern’s face
was a small masterwork of carving skill, exuding vicious glee.

I picked up Roxie, trying to
calm her, and together we stared at the sinister objet d’art beyond the glass.
After a few seconds, I saw that the shadow around the base of the pumpkin
wasn’t just dark. It was dark red, and thick.

The thing was oozing blood. And
as I knelt so I could see through its empty grin, I saw there was something
inside, something with fur.

Whatever was in there wasn’t
moving, but it was still bleeding. The thin shape just visible through one eye
socket might have been a tail, a pointed extension was possibly an ear.

A cat. Maybe still alive.
Probably not, but…

If it was still alive, I
couldn’t stand there and watch it bleed out. Yes, Ripley went back for the cat
in Alien, and I’d risk a dangerous encounter now to check on an animal that
wasn’t even mine. That’s one of the things about compassion—it trumps both fear
and common sense.

Because I knew, at that moment,
exactly what I was confronting. There was no question that the jack-o’-lantern
and the bloodied animal were not the work of ordinary pranksters. For one
thing, my balcony is difficult to reach, accessible only by going through my
living room or coming down from the apartment building’s roof. The pumpkin was
a large one, and would have been hard for even a strong man to carry down a
ladder. And I didn’t want to accept that any humans were capable of inflicting
gruesome harm on a small animal and then stuffing its corpse into a
hollowed-out squash.

No, I trusted then that if I
stepped outside, I might be facing vicious, inhuman things.

I locked Roxie in the bedroom,
then went to the hallway closet and found the baseball bat stored there. It was
a good, solid wooden Louisville Slugger, and had been given to me years ago as
a gift after I’d called the police on a psycho who’d threatened a friend with
it. It had heft to it, and gave me enough confidence to slide the glass door
open and step out onto the balcony.

It was still early, but the day
was already warm and clear, and it was hard to believe anything more
threatening than a hungry squirrel would be nearby. I was guessing the
sidh
moved at night and had left this before vanishing at dawn, but I didn’t know
that for sure.

And…there might be something
hurt and alive inside the pumpkin.

I used the bat to reach down
and knock the pumpkin’s top aside. A smell assaulted me, a thick, musky odor
that I knew from an emergency visit to a veterinarian to fix an injured cat:
The smell of fear and feline blood.

I bent over the pumpkin and
looked in. I could see there was a small animal within: black, unmoving. A
black cat. I poked at it tentatively with the bat, but there was no response. I
went back in for a heavy towel and then returned. I laid the towel by the
pumpkin, picked it up gingerly, and tilted the cat out onto the towel.

Now it was clear: It was dead.
Its throat had been slit. Gore matted its soft black fur.

I understood then how the
sidh
had earned their reputation as savage pranksters: A black cat was not just a
classic Halloween icon, it was also the source of one of the most common urban
legends: that Satanic cults kidnapped black cats every Halloween and sacrificed
them in diabolical rituals. There was no basis to that story whatsoever.

Until now, that is.

The
sidh
had slain an
innocent cat to taunt me. The message was clear, and my response would be as
well.

I took little comfort from the
fact that I didn’t know this cat—it didn’t belong to a neighbor, it wasn’t a
local stray I’d glimpsed from time to time. I wrapped up the small corpse in
the towel and placed it in a plastic bag; later on, I’d find a nice patch of
yard and bury it. I’d deal with the pumpkin and the blood later. I had
something more important to do now.

I found ó Cuinn’s phone number
and called him.

He answered on the first ring,
and sounded wary when he heard my voice. “The little friends you called up are
stalking me,” I told him.

“Can we meet somewhere?”

I knew he was worried about the
police still possibly tracking him, but right then I didn’t give two fucks
about him or the cops. “No. Just reverse this shit, Conor. I don’t care what it
takes, get rid of them. Now.”

There was a pause before he
answered, “I can’t.”

“What do you mean—you can’t, or
you won’t?”

“I mean, I can’t. Look at the
manuscript yourself—the banishing spell is only partial. That section of the
manuscript is illegible.”

“You’re kidding.” I paced my
living room, wishing I could reach through the phone and strangle ó Cuinn. “You
called these things up before making sure you could get rid of them?”

“I…I really didn’t think they’d
be a problem. What exactly are they…what—”

I cut him off. “They left a
dead, mutilated cat on my balcony this morning, just for starters.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the
work of pranksters?”

I had to laugh at how our roles
had suddenly reversed themselves: two nights ago I’d walked out on this man
when he’d told me we were both Druids, and now he was arguing in favor of human
mischief while I advocated for the supernatural. “I’ve seen them, Conor.”

“Oh. Dear God. I never
thought—”

I hung up on him. He was an
irritating idiot. He was the fool in every bad horror movie who read the
ancient spell out loud, who taunted the killer, who had sex while a madman
lurked in the shadows. I’d solve this without him, then.

I brought up the manuscript on
the computer, and found the banishing spell. He was right about that, at least:
The beginning of it was there—it involved a rod made of ash and a spoken
command—but the rest was lost.

I’d find another way, then.
Could I still use logic against something that was essentially illogical? At
this point, didn’t it make the most sense to accept the irrational, to just
acknowledge that the supernatural did exist? But could that doorway be only
partly opened? If the
sidh
were real (they were), what else was behind
that portal? I’d met one goddess already—how many more were there? Was there
one single God, watching impassively?

Unless He was going to
intervene now, I’d have to wrestle with that question later on. Right now I
needed to come up with some way to fight the deadly tricksters Conor had called
up. I needed to think about practical magic, not impractical theology.

I tried to remember everything
I could about Samhain encounters with the
sidh
, and later Scottish
stories of fairies on Halloween. A few tales talked about silver or iron; one
odd legend mentioned wearing your clothes inside out. Mostly the old folklore
suggested avoiding them.

I pulled down some of my
reference books and flipped through them, but everything that I found described
ways to protect yourself from the
sidh,
not get rid of them. Or even
hurt them.

But I knew there was a
way—Mongfind had recorded one, but I only had part of it. A rod of ash…a
command…what else?

I glanced out my balcony at the
bloody jack-o’-lantern, and the sight of it triggered a realization: The
sidh
had carved the pumpkin in a recreation of their own faces. Their heads, in
fact, with the oversized, round shape and glowing features, looked like living
jack-o’-lanterns.

Was it possible that the
classic Halloween jack-o’-lantern—that most beloved of the holiday’s
symbols—had been based on the faces of the
sidh
? Or was there even more
to it than simply remembering the
sidh
in folk art?

Before bringing Halloween to
America
^[16]
,
the Irish had carved turnips into jack-o’-lanterns. Common wisdom held that the
vegetables—with a candle placed inside—had been used to startle passersby on
Halloween night, but now I believed they might have served another purpose:

What if the jack-o’-lanterns
had originally represented the ultimate defense against the
sidh
on Halloween
night? Were they perhaps used in Mongfind’s ritual? Were stories of Irish lads
smashing their sculpted turnips on Halloween night indicating more than just
sheer playfulness?

The baseball bat was made of
ash…it would certainly be very effective in smashing a pumpkin…

Somehow I knew this was right.
Maybe it was some part of the Morrigan, still residing in me; or my own
intuition, telling me that the connections I’d just drawn were simply too
strong.

Maybe it was Druid knowledge,
buried deep within me. Magic encoded in DNA, like musical ability or language
skills.

I would wait until evening,
when the
sidh
were present again. I knew I’d be putting myself in peril,
but I also thought it might be the only way to banish them—would they react to
a command and a banishment ritual during the day, when they didn’t seem to be
present?

No, I had to risk it. At
sundown, I’d use the bat—my rod of ash—to shatter the pumpkin they’d left me as
a cruel taunt, and I’d command them to return to their own world.

And if I was wrong and it
didn’t work…then come Halloween, the
sidh
would make any human
terrorists look like preschoolers.

October 29

Evening

I spent the rest of the daylight hours
going over Mongfind’s manuscript, paying attention to the charms, spells and
rituals that I’d only glanced at before.

Most of them were little more
than recipes or instructions: How to prepare a tea that would cure nausea, how
to make a poultice for a leg wound, how to keep berries picked in October from
spoiling by November.

But then there were the more
serious magicks as well. These included:

·
          
Shapeshifting

·
          
Communicating
with the dead

·
          
Enchanting
a spear so it would never miss its target

·
          
Creating
a cup that would never empty of mead

·
          
Traveling
via an astral body

·
          
Invisibility

·
          
Invulnerability
in battle

·
          
Passing
into the Otherworld, or the realm of the
sidh

A few of the incantations were
missing key words; despite Mongfind’s precautions, parts of the manuscript had
blurred with the passage time. A few sections were spattered with something
dark that covered the writing—probably Mongfind’s own blood, coughed out as her
lungs had failed her over that long final winter.

There were some instructions on
creating protective wards, in case I failed in my attempt at performing the
banishing ceremony.

I should perhaps make clear
that none of these practices were presented as symbolic acts; this wasn’t some
new age book in which transforming into a wolf meant you’d been granted a
license to behave a little wildly in the sack. No, in Mongfind’s book
transforming into a wolf meant you grew hair, got down on four paws, and grew
teeth as sharp as knife tips. This wasn’t bogus spiritualism; this was the real
deal.

As the sun dropped in the sky,
I made sure the (now empty) jack-o’-lantern, its base stained red, was placed
squarely in the center of my balcony. I moved everything—chairs, potted plants,
etc.—well away, so I’d have room to swing the bat. I took down the wind chimes
and the cute orange lights Ricky had strung around the eaves. Then I stepped
in, closed the glass door, and waited.

Five PM…five-thirty…six, and
the sun was gone. The sky overhead glowed like burnished steel, leaving the
ficus and magnolia trees to stand in mute silhouette. I made sure my lights
were all on, my front door locked, my bat in hand.

I hoped I wouldn’t need to
worry about my own cat; she’d been fed an hour earlier, and was now probably
curled up on a corner of my bed, sleeping off dinner.

Or so I thought, until I heard
her screaming.

The shriek was piercing, and
sent me rushing into the bedroom; it sounded as if she was still on the bed,
and now the cry was punctuated with hissing. I reached the bedroom—

The lights went off in the
apartment.

The terrible sound of the cat’s
shriek redoubled.

By the light coming in through
the bedroom blinds, I saw a flash of something moving around the edge of the
bed.

Of course: they could come into
a building. I’d been stupid to think that somehow doors and walls could keep
out things that came from another dimension.

I felt my way to the
apartment’s breaker panel in the hall, threw back the hinged cover, and started
flipping switches. The power returned, the lights came back on—

Something rushed past me,
leaving the skin of my leg chilled through my jeans. I heard a high-pitched
tiny cackle from the living room, echoing as if it came from the far end of a
cave.

Clutching and lifting the bat,
I stepped cautiously into the living room. Behind me, the cat quieted and I
heard her paws hit the floor as she leapt from the bed and scurried beneath it
in alarm.

Good girl.

That left me just needing to
get through the living room to the sliding door, and the balcony beyond.
Meaning, of course, I just had to get past what waited for me somewhere in the
living room.

One step…two…

I heard something skitter
behind a bookcase to my right. I edged to the left, trying to move away from
it—

And heard a snicker below the
couch to my left. Followed by a tiny cry from behind the desk in front of me.

There was more than one of
them. In fact, they were hidden throughout the entire apartment.

One brushed against my ankles.
I jumped and swung the bat, which crushed a corner of the coffee table but nothing
else.

I turned, seeking them,
determined to take a swing at the next little fucker who touched me.

But…

Their voices came from all
around me now. They whispered together, but because there must have been dozens
of them circling me the whispers became a single loud pulsing hiss.

I felt a sharp sting in my
right calf, and knew I’d been bitten. I kicked backwards, but only managed to
nearly throw myself off balance and go down.

How long before they’d all be
on me, with their claws and jack-o’-lantern grins…

Of course: The jack-o’-lantern.
They’d almost made me forget my original purpose.

I ran to the glass door and
slid it open. Behind me, talons raked both ankles while they cackled in feral
glee.

But they were too late; I’d
reached my goal. I raised the bat and turned to face them. The lights were out
again in the apartment, and through the glass I saw their eyes, glimmering,
savoring what they thought was their victory.

The command was simple: I
ordered them to return to their own world, and then I brought the bat down. The
pumpkin caved in, spraying orange pulp in a wide circle.

The
sidh’s
chortles
turned to shrieks. The glow of their eyes faded. And behind them…

I saw their world, for an
instant that has proven to be unforgettable: A black, starless sky looked down
on a lifeless landscape. Gray, leafless trees sprouted from depthless bogs,
stones sculpted into shapes like headstones with leering faces rose from mounds
of soggy earth—and then the stone faces turned to leer at me. The
sidh
scuttled among it all like maggots on a rotting corpse, and before the gap
between us closed, I saw from the way they glared at me that mere prank-playing
wouldn’t be involved should we meet again.

It was over. The lights in the
apartment flickered back on, the bat dropped from my fingers into the mess of
the shattered pumpkin, and the pain ignited in my legs.

I moved into the light to
examine the damage they’d inflicted on me: There were three striped claw marks
on my left leg, and four pinprick puncture marks on my right. They were
trickling blood, although none seemed deep enough to require stitches. But…

Were the
sidh
venomous?
Did they carry disease, had they succeeded in killing me in a way that would
just take longer…and be even more painful?

I swabbed the wounds out in the
bathroom, but stopped before bandaging them, wondering if Mongfind’s writings
could offer any aid. Upon checking, I found a recipe for a poultice that would
cure “the bites of dangerous creatures of all kinds.” It required a few herbs I
didn’t have, but that I thought I could find at a nearby health food market.

I put bandaids on and stepped
out the door. A moment of apprehension caused me to wait halfway down the
stairs, ears straining…but I was reassured by the normal night sounds: Cars,
dogs barking, a neighbor’s inane television sitcom.

I’d successfully performed a
banishment ritual.

As I headed to the market, I
felt fresh confidence, and I knew I would survive the
sidh’s
wounds.

I could create and control
magic, even better than Conor ó Cuinn.

I was a Druid.

I was living inside one of my
own Halloween stories.

I’ve written two
Halloween-themed novellas
^[17]
;
both are about ordinary, middle-aged adults who find themselves surrounded by
ancient, malevolent supernatural forces on Halloween. In both, the protagonists
fight to hang onto something: (a child, a business). In both, the fight
climaxes in another world.

What was I fighting for? I
wasn’t fighting to protect my (dis)beliefs; they’d already been taken from me.

There was something bigger at
stake. Much bigger.

But now I felt fever setting
in, and I had to concentrate on making it to the market, buying what I needed,
getting home and putting together Mongfind’s poultices. By the time I crawled
into bed, the heavy packs of herbs taped against the burning wounds, I was
shaking and sweating. If Mongfind’s cure didn’t work, whatever else was at
stake wouldn’t matter, at least not to me.