Ten #2
The clouds covered the moon again, and it got dark, but it was summer, so it was never as shadowy as in the dead of winter. I veered right, not wanting to take whatever was after me toward two deer grazing nearby, but they moved, deliberately rushing forward to intercept me, then turned at the last moment, the thing leaping at me landing instead on the closest stag.
“No,” I screamed as they rolled together, and I tried to follow, to help, but another stag rushed in front of me. We collided, and I bounced off, falling to the ground.
“You.”
Something had spoken, and it took me a second to parse that it was the deer. As they didn’t normally speak to me, I felt okay with the fact that I was rendered mute.
Looking up, I saw the deer’s eyes glow red.
“Run,” it ordered, and I got up and bolted for the car.
If I had to guess, most people would’ve probably taken that moment to freak out about a stag speaking to them. But when you were aware of magic, you took it for granted that not every day would be a normal one.
The passenger-side door was open for me, and I dove in and swung the door closed.
“The fuck were you doing?” Lorne yelled as he put the car in gear and pulled out.
Turning to look, I saw the two deer again, both running, the first easily leaping over the six-foot wrought-iron fence and heading west toward town, the second close behind. It was hard to see in the darkness if the creature was following them, and there were trees as well, but I heard a roar, and then a portion of the fence flew forward. It started to rain again then, harder, and I checked the side mirror, but I couldn’t see anything.
“Is it gone?” Shelby gasped, her breath coming out in a staccato rhythm. When I glanced toward the back seat, I saw her sitting in Jeremy’s lap, both of them riveted to the rear window. Father Dennis was cradling Meijun, who had her face pressed into his chest, eyes closed tight. Liam was on the other side of Father Dennis, trying to look out the side window. It was a bit disconcerting, seeing all of them and the priest where normally suspects sat in handcuffs.
“No, it’s—fuck, what is that, two?” Jeremy asked, his voice high-pitched, terrified.
Lorne gunned it, and at the entrance to the cemetery, took a right toward home.
“That’s smart,” I whispered to him, and then, “Could you see what it was?”
“Some kind of reptile,” he answered icily, his eyes solidly on the road. He was furious. I could feel the anger rolling off him in waves.
Taking a moment to compose my thoughts and give my voice some strength, I said, “You wouldn’t have made it to the car, and even if you did, you wouldn’t have been able to get everyone safely inside.” I was gentle but firm. “We both know there was only one way for that to happen.”
He was silent as Liam and Jeremy said they lost sight of “whatever those fucking things were” in the trees on the side of the road.
“Which doesn’t mean they’re not still coming after us,” Father Dennis pointed out, sounding much calmer than I felt.
“There’s always another way,” Lorne rasped, still angry. Hard to speak clearly when your jaw was clenched that tight. “You scared me.”
“I’m really sorry I scared you,” I said sincerely.
He didn’t answer, remaining quiet, driving fast, and after a few moments, it occurred to me that we should have been home already.
When his breath caught, I turned to him. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it.”
“Look at them,” he directed, motioning toward the back seat, and I saw the kids—it was how I thought of them because they were all younger than me—sound asleep. Father Dennis was asleep as well, which frightened me more than anything.
“What the hell?” I asked, shivering.
“Is it me, or have our lives gotten weirder than usual?” He grinned.
I couldn’t help smiling back. “How are you not losing your mind right now?”
“Because I’m a fuckin’ rock under pressure. You know that,” he grumbled. “So remember it for the next time, and never deviate from the plan of staying right behind me, especially when we’re running away from God knows what!” he finished loudly, but I understood the reason. He really loved me.
“I plan to get married,” I said with conviction. “I want that more than anything.”
“Good. Keep that in mind,” he rasped, hands tightening on the wheel, making sure the car remained absolutely straight, as there were deer running alongside it.
“What is this?” I asked, hearing how frightened I sounded. At the same time, I realized it was hard to see where we were going, as we were driving with what appeared to be a stampede.
“This can’t—there aren’t this many deer in Osprey,” he choked out.
“I love that you’re trying to be logical right now, even when you can’t see where you’re going at all.” The deer surrounded us, and they were close. I could have rolled down my window and touched one.
“I hope as long as they’re running forward, that means we’re okay. I just need to keep pace because like you said a minute ago, something’s wrong. We passed Corvus, and we’re almost at the Chautauqua River bridge.”
“Which makes no sense.”
“I don’t want us to end up in—fuck!”
He hit the brakes hard, but despite sliding on the wet road, I wasn’t caught by my seat belt and neither was he. The kids and Father Dennis didn’t hit the partition and bounce off. It was as though all the motion was outside the car and none within.
“Oh thank God,” Lorne said hoarsely, glancing around. “I was afraid I was going to kill the stag.”
“What stag?”
He tipped his head, and when I looked forward, I saw an alabaster stag standing in the middle of the road. It was beautiful, bathed in moonlight, almost shimmering. And I knew there were albino deer in the world, but I’d never heard of any being in Osprey, and more importantly, none of that accounted for the size.
“Are there elk here?” Lorne asked.
“That’s not an elk. Look at it.” Because we were definitely looking at a deer. Or something pretending to be a deer and not quite pulling it off, or even a deer from another realm. “What is happening?”
“I don’t—those antlers are impossible.”
He was right. The antlers were enormous and intricate, and it would be physically impossible for an animal, even one the size of an elk, to hold up something easily twelve feet wide and five feet high. And antlers were supposed to be useful. These were not. They were beautiful, made of what appeared to be frosted ice, with swirls and curls and circles that could not occur in nature. It looked like they belonged in a Studio Ghibli film.
“Is there such a thing as a fae deer?” he asked me.
“I’m sure there is, but I’ve never seen one.”
He gestured at the stag. “I suspect you have now.”
I saw them then, two creatures emerging from the darkness farther up the road, with reptilian bodies, as Lorne had said. Their heads were large, with wide jaws that didn’t look like they could close because of all the razor-sharp fangs. Long, misshapen arms that nearly touched the ground ended in talons instead of hands. The feet had talons too, and they were dripping mud or something viscous onto the road as they approached. The deer, somehow unaware of them, would be eviscerated.
“No,” I rasped, and Lorne grabbed his rifle and passed me his Glock.
“Climb over here, stay in the car, use that, and if those things get through me, you drive away as fast as you can.”
“You are out of your mind if you think I would ever leave you,” I stated, scrambling out of the car before he could say another word, closing the door gently, afraid to frighten the stag in case it turned and ran from us and toward the creatures.
Lorne exited the same way, quietly, and we crept around the sides of the vehicle, coming together at the front.
“Aim for the middle when those things are close enough,” Lorne instructed.
“Yes,” I answered, seeing him raise the rifle to his shoulder.
“Hopefully the stag will run, but if it doesn’t, we’re not letting them hurt him either.”
“No, we’re not,” I agreed.
With a howl, the creatures flew forward, toward the stag, and Lorne fired, which didn’t do a thing.
Quickly, I got the amalgam out of my pocket, pulled the stopper, dumped it into my lifted hand, and blew hard. “Protect us all from harm.”
My intention was clear, us meaning me and Lorne, the kids, the priest, and the stag. I saw the spell fly through the air and surround the creatures. Their screams were loud, but they didn’t slow, advancing fast.
“Come to me,” I pleaded with the stag, who lifted his head and took a few steps forward, just as a horn blared and a semi-truck struck both monsters, obliterating them in a splash and crunch of blood and bone.
Lorne yelled, so did I, as the eighteen-wheeler sailed by us, fishtailed for a moment, nearly going off the road, but then straightened out, the hydraulic brakes squealing loudly as they tried to bring the massive machine to a stop. It took a good quarter mile, but the truck finally came to a standstill on the shoulder of the highway.
It happened so fast, like being jolted out of a dream, going from sleep to waking with a gasp. The only part that was not a surprise was that the stag was gone. I stared at Lorne, stunned into silence.
“I don’t under— Get in the car,” he barked at me.
Once we were both in and he’d secured his rifle, he made a quick U-turn and drove us down the road to where the trucker had pulled off. His hazards were on, bright in the darkness, bouncing off the wet pavement.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that we were on interstate 90 west outside of Westfield. That was how far we’d driven. There was no one else around but us and the truck, which made sense, as it was a bit past ten.
Lorne pulled in front of the truck, and we both got out.
“What the hell?” Lorne muttered as we closed in, because what we both had expected to see and what was there were two different things.
There should have been blood, pieces of flesh, anything, but instead, the front of the truck was coated in mud. Thick mud that would need to be hosed off, but still, beyond some branches and debris, there was nothing else.
“Is that the spell?” Lorne asked. “Did it change them?”
“It must have,” I murmured, my voice barely working.
“Evening, Officer,” the trucker greeted Lorne, smiling sheepishly. “Did I scare you all back there? I think there might be some debris on the road that basically exploded when I hit it.” He glanced at the police vehicle. “Doesn’t look like I splattered you.”
“No, we’re fine,” Lorne assured him.
He nodded but didn’t move. “I have flares. I’ll put some out if you need me to stay.”
“Oh, no need.” Lorne had recovered so much faster than I did, as evidenced by his ability to form words. “You hit a big pile of mud, nothing else.”
“I was scared for a second, thought I hit an animal.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t—I could have sworn I saw a deer, but thankfully not,” he rushed out. “I got them deer whistles on my rig just in case. Supposed to work, and knock on wood, I ain’t never hit one in all my years.”
“Hitting one would be dangerous,” Lorne told him.
“Yessir, but more importantly, I don’t wanna kill one of God’s creatures if I can help it. That would be a shame.”
“Yes, it would,” I agreed, finally finding my voice, smiling at him.
“Can you drive with all the mud on your windshield?” Lorne asked, drawing the man’s attention back to him.
“Oh yeah. The rain’ll clear a lot of it, but I’ll stop in a couple of hours and wash it off.”
“Okay, then,” Lorne said with a nod. “Thank you for stopping and checking. I’ll call the state police, and they’ll get people out here to take care of whatever’s left on the road.”
“Thank you, Officer.” He studied Lorne a moment, glanced at me, then returned to his truck and climbed into the cab. He started up the rig, eased around us, gave a quick blast of the horn, then drove off.
Once we could see his lights in the distance, I realized how quiet it was.
“We should get back to Osprey and drop off Father Dennis and the kids,” I told him.
“Well, yeah, but what the fuck, Xander?”
It was strange to be standing there, out in the open, on the side of the highway, getting damp in the drizzling rain, while having an existential crisis.
“The hell was all that?” he yelled, and it was loud.
We were both quiet a moment after his outburst.
“Feel better?” I asked once I saw him visibly calm.
“Yeah, sort of,” he grumbled. “But what even were those things?”
“I have no idea.”
He looked around, then said, “I think your potion turned them into mud at the perfect time.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“If it hadn’t,” he said, pointing down the road, “that poor trucker would have been a basket case, seeing all the blood and everything else.”
“Yeah.” I suddenly realized how wet I was getting. “We’re going to drown out here before we figure anything out,” I commented, as the rain had gone from a drizzle to a steadily increasing downpour.
“Good point.”
We ran to the car, and once in, we sat in silence for a good few minutes before Lorne started driving back toward Osprey. Strange to look outside and see everything as it was supposed to be, simply a dark, empty, rainwashed highway at night.
He took a deep breath, then exhaled. “So those reptile things, we can assume they haven’t come through that rift, right?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So then the demon conjured them?”
“That seems the most likely scenario.”
“Do we think that the demon is powerful enough to either conjure them or make us see them how it wanted us to see them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe your potion didn’t turn them into mud. Maybe they were mud the whole time, and what it did do was remove the illusion.”
“You think it was all an illusion?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m just saying, it’s possible those things were never scary, towering creatures out of a horror movie. Because given how big that one in the cemetery was, and how fast, it should have been able to catch you.”
“I felt its breath.”
“Or you thought you did. The mind in general is very powerful, and yours even more so. Couldn’t you have imagined its breath on you?”
“Isn’t it far more likely that it did happen than that it didn’t?”
“Hard to say.”
“From where you were, didn’t you see it nearly get me?”
“But that’s the thing—can I trust my own eyes?”
I shook my head. “No. It was there.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because of the deer.”
“Explain.”
“The two deer in the cemetery saved me. They diverted it. If the monster wasn’t really there, then why did the deer interfere? And why did a whole herd of them guard us during the drive?”
“Oh, that’s right.” He deflated a bit.
“You wanted it to be an illusion.”
He sighed. “It would explain everything so neatly.”
“It would, but the more likely explanation is that they started out as mud, were changed into creatures, and were then returned to mud by my spell.”
“It didn’t work instantly, though. The spell, I mean.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because whatever gave them life is very powerful.”
“Yeah, but so was your…what is the proper word?”
“Amalgam.”
“Well, your amalgam was really powerful. They were mud before they were hit by the truck.”
“Yes.”
“You should be pleased it worked.”
“I am, but if we’re right and those things were golems, crafted from the earth and made to attack us, that is very powerful magic as well.”
“That’s a horrifying thought.”
“Also, from the little I know about golems, if those things touched us, it would be deadly.”
“Which is why the deer in the graveyard kept them away from you, as well as all of them next to the car, creating a barrier.”
“Yes.”
“If the monsters were bad and the deer good”—he squeezed my hand—“where did the deer come from?”
“No idea.”
“Would he have sent them?”
He meant Arawn. “You’ve seen him. If he were going to save us, he would have come himself or sent his dogs.”
“He wouldn’t let you die, would he?”
“No, but he also doesn’t interfere unless things are truly dire.”
“That felt dire,” he said, widening his eyes.
“Yes, it did. But maybe that was the point.”
“What’re you—oh. To test us. To see what we would do.”
“Or could do.”
“I hate this.”
It went without saying that I agreed with him. “There are ghosts in that graveyard, especially where they were. Shelby is a clairvoyant and obviously has no clue how susceptible she is to spirits.”
“You’re saying everything that was happening when we got there was what, normal?”
“Normalish,” I offered. “Yeah.”
His eyebrows lifted, and there was a trace of a smile. We were calming down just talking together, and it was such a comfort. It reinforced what I had come to count on. That things could slip into absolute craziness, but the balance always returned with our shared communion. I was so lucky to have him in my life.
“Before I moved here, if I’d been called to a scene and found Shelby floating and everyone else freaking out, I would have run.”
I scoffed. “No way. Not you, Lorne MacBain. You’re made of much stronger stuff.”
“Fine. But I also wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing.”
“Which again goes to your earlier point—if we trust our eyes and believe what we’re seeing, do we also, later, make rationalizations to reassure ourselves we’re not going nuts?”
“Like the trucker with the whole I thought I saw a deer .”
“Exactly. Because you and I know that yes, there was a beautiful, otherworldly white stag there, and if we were looking at it, then so was he.”
“But afterward, his mind was telling him that couldn’t be because otherwise, where the hell did it go?”
“Well said.” I smiled at him as he covered our joined hands with his other, wanting even more contact.
“Okay. So going back to the kids and Shelby specifically, that floating thing, being basically taken over by a spirit or spirits, that’s normal for her?”
“I think so, yes.”
“She needs help.”
“Oh, I agree. I think I have a charm to help shore up her psychic defenses, and a recipe for casting herbs.”
“Sounds like you want to bring her home with us.”
“I think we need to bring them all home, but we’ll have to see where they are when they wake up.”
“Like, they could all start screaming.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
He nodded. “But if all this theorizing is correct, that means it was us all along. We were what those creatures were after, not the kids.”
“Yeah. I think the kids would have been fine if Pete or Victoria had shown up instead of us.”
“Pete probably would have called you anyway if he found Shelby floating.”
“Yes, he would have.”
“And Victoria would have called Pete, and then Pete would have called you, so really, any way you slice it, we would have ended up in the graveyard. God, ” Lorne groaned. “I want to figure this all out, but I’m so tired and still freaked out that I could have lost you, and I just wanna go home!”
I did too.
After a moment, I turned to him. “What are we gonna say to these kids?”
“More importantly,” he said, looking pained, “what’re we gonna say to Father Dennis?”
I had absolutely no idea.