Two
“Excuse me? Are you Dan?”
Dan was focused on running through the preparations he’d made for entering what they were calling the Mystery House so at first he didn’t hear the voice of the woman calling out to him. When it registered that she had said his name he stopped and waited for her to hasten up to him. It was the night of the full moon and he was on his way to the Mystery House but something in him would never let him ignore the sound of a person in need. He could spare a moment or two before continuing to the House.
“I’m Dan,” he confirmed when she had stopped beside him. By habit he quickly catalogued her features. As a private investigator he often relied upon a baseline response to a person, noting his first impression and pulling it out later to compare against their actions to determine any aberrations that might suggest subterfuge. It was instinctive at this point to do so.
The woman who approached looked worn down. Not in a “life has hit me with a bag of rocks” way, more a “I’ve worked hard for everything I have” thing. If he was to make a guess he’d say she made her living doing something with her hands, whether as a mechanic or factory worker or maybe a farmer. Yeah, maybe a farmer. She had that “organic farmer” crunchy granola thing in the homespun cloth tunic she wore over a long, loose skirt and the scarf that made an attempt at controlling a halo of naturally greying curls. The hand she reached out to grasp his arm had short nails with a hint of something dark under them, strengthening the impression of her working with either oil or dirt. There was strain around her eyes but no deep lines, suggesting that the tension was a recent thing and not one of long endurance.
He placed his hand over hers, the touch one he used often to reassure clients who had missing children and were seeking his aid in finding them. “How can I help you?”
As if his quiet competence opened a floodgate of worry and fear, words poured out of the woman. “My name is Bella. My son is missing. I was told that you found lost children? He isn’t a child. Well, not really. He’s grown but he’s still my child. You know?”
She paused to give him a look that begged understanding. He patted squeezed her fingers in encouragement and gave her a steady look. “I do know. They are always your children, no matter how old. When did your boy… I’m sorry, what was his name?”
“Mal. His name is Mal.”
Dan’s eyes widened slightly at the name, but he retained his calm and comforting expression. “When did Mal go missing?”
“He went to the market yesterday and he didn’t return. Sometimes he wanders off. Bad elements, you know?”
Dan nodded; he knew.
“He’s a good boy. Well, he’s not a *good* boy but he’s Good, you know?” She shrugs, looks down, bites her lip, clearly struggling to make Dan understand. And he does. Carl is his brother, after all. “He’s just young and he sometimes makes bad choices and listens to the wrong people. We aren’t doing that well, financially. I’m an organic farmer…”
Nailed it, Dan thought.
“I grow berries to make jam and there was a blight on our land. Mal kept saying he’d find a way to make the money for us but I didn’t want that. I knew what he meant!”
“Of course you didn’t,” another hand squeeze to prove understanding. “No one wants their child to resort to bad even if its for a good reason.”
“Right.” She nods enthusiastically. “Exactly. So, I made the hard choice to sell our cow. She’s a good cow and she gives milk and we eat well enough on her cheese but…” Another shrug. “I can’t let my boy do the wrong thing. I need the money for new seed stock so we don’t go hungry next year. So it hurt but I gave her to Mal and sent him to market to sell her.”
Dan made reassuring noises.
“But he hasn’t returned! And now I have no cow, no berries, no money, no son, and no luck except the hard kind.” Tears sheen her eyes. “I’ve searched up and down the road. I even went to the hall where his so called friends hang out. They claim to have never seen him. I’m honestly… I’m at my wits end.”
Her voice breaks on the last. She hastily looks to the side to hide the tears that fall.
“This world has so many dangers, Mr. Dan.”
“Just Dan.”
“I just fear for him, Mr. Dan.”
“Just…” he shook his head, never mind.
She was about to say more when Ivan and Ben came towards them down the road leading towards the Mystery House. They stopped when they saw Dan talking to the woman.
As all women seemed to Bella perked up at Ivan’s approach. She straightened her shoulders and raised a hand to smooth over her handkerchief contained curls. Pressing her hand to her bosoms she drew a depth breath. “Selectman. What an honor!”
Ivan, as was his way, took her attention in stride. Dan guessed if a guy looked like that he got used to it. Not that he was any slouch. He like to think he put himself together okay and bathed regularly but Ivan had the kind of looks that probably got him slipped sweets in the cradle, notes in school, and digits in bars, churches, and marketplaces.
“This is Bella,” Dan did the honors. “She’s missing her son.” He emphasized the next, “Mal.”
Ivan and Ben both gave Dan a slight nod, indicating they’d both made the connection to the story Kim had picked up from the merchant.
“Has he been gone long, ma’am?” Ivan asked.
“Oh, call me Bella,” the lady tittered then seemed to recall her concern. The small smile that had graced her features, lighting them from the inside, faded. “He’s been gone a day. That isn’t normal for him.”
Ben stepped in. “Does he ever stay out late or away for any time?”
“Oh, sometimes.” She shrugged. “Some of his friends are…”
“Questionable?” Ben’s tone invited intimacy, like he knew of what she referred to but did not say. Not a big surprise considering it was Ben. But also not a surprise that Bella relaxed beneath his regard. Ivan’s impact was one of immediacy, as soon as people saw him they responded. Men would see strength and confidence, a person they could look up to and follow. Women… well, women saw Ivan. Ben’s charm was a bit more insidious but no less effective. Again, Dan shrugged, consider the source.
Mal’s mother relaxed under Ben’s regard, nodding. “Yes. Questionable.”
“I happen to know a few people like that myself,” Ben’s grin invited her to join in his self-appreciating humor. She complied with a small giggle. In it and her subtly softening features Dan saw the girl she once was and it made him double-down on his determination to help her. He was a sucker for a hard luck story, a sucker for women missing their kids, and separate from that it seemed her needs and the needs of the crew aligned on this search for the missing Mal.
Ivan drew her attention, taking her hand between his two in what some might have thought was a practiced politician move, cradling the hand from below with one of his and patting it from above with the other, but Dan had seen his friend do this naturally too many times to think it anything but Ivan’s instinctive inclination to make connections and also to reassure with touch. “I can’t speak for Dan but let me assure you, Bella, that I will speak with the Board of Selectmen and see what resources we can put towards finding your son.”
“Oh, thank you.” She stepped back as Ivan gently released her hand. With another quick nod to each of them she turned and hurried away in the opposite direction they were headed.
“Weird coincidence, huh?” Ben asked once she was gone. “Reading a story about a kid named Mal which is apparently tied to the Mystery House then meeting a woman who is missing a kid named Mal?”
“In my line of work we don’t believe in coincidence.” Dan settled into an easy walk as they headed towards the swamp lands and the Mystery House. The full moon above illuminated their path enough that they didn’t need lights.
The night of the full moon which the crew had determined was the time to approach the House had seemed like it would never come and Dan was eager to get this thing going. The waiting had been hard enough but what had really eaten at him was the concern he felt for the entities within the House which had connected with him on their first incursion into it while investigating the disappearance of three local children who may have entered the premises on a dare.
While their world was full of strange oddities their small community lacked much in the way of “woo” and “whoa”, so when the house was found in the swamps some moons prior it had become a local curiosity. Its placement in the area from which odd noises were heard at night and which animals entered and never returned from was enough to give it the aura of mystery and spark the curiosity of thrill-starved children (and no few adults). The land was shrouded in fog, causing those that entered it to fade from sight – as if affected by some strange magic – once they traveled a few yards into it.
Prior to several months before few had risked travel through the swamp. Then a local enterprise discovered several rare herbs much prized by alchemists within it and had set about exploring it on hopes of finding rarer and more lucrative secrets within. One such excursion had found the house.
Normally a house, even one that may or may not have mysteriously arisen within a mysterious fog in a mysterious swamp wasn’t anything worth going “Wow!” over. It was the appearance though of this house that captured the minds of the locals. It looked, for lack of a better and less imaginative description, like a house from fairy-tale.
As he, Ivan, and Ben approached through the fog he was struck again by that impression of something from Story. And being a Bibliomancer, with his magic rooted in the written word and within stories, he was well acquainted with such.
The Mystery House stood in all its isolated dignity, a worn wooden fence separating it from the swamp. They pushed open the gate and entered the overgrown bounty of what had probably once been an alchemist’s garden, as distant from the drip and mire and equally overgrown splendor of the swamp as the boardwalk in AC was from the slums two blocks to the South. The windows which some swore expanded or shuttered themselves like the eyes of a preternatural creature watched as they strode through greenery that released herbal bursts into the air that nipped at Dan’s nose. Every time they came to the house the garden was equally as overgrown, showing no signs of a path of crushed herbs, as if it was frozen in a specific state and any deviation from that self-corrected with time.
It looked like they were the first ones there since there was no trampled path to the door which seemed to move of its own accord, sometimes in the center of the building’s stone front wall and others to the right or the left by some degree. When Dan had first heard this reported he’d put it up to the vagaries of the fog that wreathed the place and the inaccuracy of the eyes that peered upon the house through it, but since then he’d had to eat his doubts as he, himself, had been here four times and each time the door was in a different place.
Fairy tale shit for sure. But they lived in a world where people could glow like strobe lights, attack with sound, and change reality (to an extent) by telling stories; was a house with a moving door and potentially seeing windows really such a stretch? Weird, sure. Unnerving, like maybe the next time they managed to get past the door (the thing was always locked in some imaginative way which his crew had been able to navigate around twice now) the building would manifest a gullet and swallow them down, fuck yeah. Completely unlikely, that was a solid no.
They weren’t waiting long before Kim, Prairie, and Gwen came up, Kim gesturing excitedly as she likely explained some happening to the other two.
Ivan pulled Prairie aside. “You have the daggers I gave you?”
“Right here,” she patted her hip.
“Let me know how they work. I made it so they will make the most effective hit on whatever part you target.” At her questioning look he explained, “If you hit the heart it’s a guaranteed kill. But I wouldn’t go with the heart. It’s a hard hit with the ribs. But a kidney or liver shot would be brutal.”
Prairie’s eyes widened. “What if I slip and cut myself? Do I lose a finger?”
“No. There needs to be intent to harm. It kindles the magic.”
“Wow.” She blinked. “Why me? Why not use them yourself?”
“Daggers aren’t really my thing. Big hands,” he spread his fingers in emphasis, “I can’t get the Magick to stick on anything bigger than a dagger. And you’re good with knives.”
Prairie nodded and made a point of checking the thigh holster she had the daggers in.
Siobhan came up a few minutes later, pausing as she did each time to gently touch the leaves on several plants as she made her way respectfully through the greenery. The plants turned slightly towards her and Dan would swear a leaf nuzzled her fingertip. *Alchemists*.
Across Siobhan’s chest the strap of her bag was studded like a bandolier with potion vials. She ran her fingers quickly over them, appearing to count, then nodded as she joined the rest at the door.
“Everyone remember the system?”
Kim recited in a flat tone. “One dot healing, two dots energy, no dots keep your fucking hands off.”
Siobhan made them repeat this before every mission they went on. It seemed a little redundant, but mistakes had been made in the past. No one wanted to pour an incendiary potion down someone’s throat.
*Again*.
Nodding in satisfaction at the recitation, Siobhan pulled the bundled story out of the depths of her bag. One day Dan wanted to get an eyeball on that thing – it seemed to hold more than Mary Poppins’ carpetbag. Someday he expected they’d be in a situation that needed light and she’d pull a streetlamp out of the depths.
“Anyone want to try opening the door?”
The memory of the two times they’d entered the House before made Dan contract away from the idea. The first he’d encountered a young girl, or the spirit of a young girl – Prairie said that it was a spirit. Maybe. Seriously, their spirit-talker said “maybe”. Something about it felt like a spirit but not quite.
At the best of times she was fairly vague about how her magic worked; that time she was even more so. Anyhow, they’d met a young girl who had invited several of them to a tea party (trapped, really she’d trapped them, a barrier had isolated them from the rest of the group). The way in which she demanded (perhaps even compelled, it definitely hadn’t felt like they’d had a choice of saying no) them to play with her had given Ben, Kim, and Gwen the willies but Dan had found himself responding to her with sympathy and an almost instant need to help her. What had given *him* a bad feeling was the way they had been knocked unconscious and flung from the House before he could get the information he needed to help the girl. She’d given him a name, Koura, but he hadn’t been able to find any reports of missing girls in the area named that.
The second time they entered the house it was completely different. As in, they had entered into a living room the first time and then he, Kim, Ben, and Gwen had passed into a dining room where they were trapped by Koura. The second time they entered into a kitchen, then moved into a den where they encountered two new spirits that answered to Hansel and Gretel and helped them after they put together a ginger bread house for the girl and found shiny rocks for the boy – which was in keeping with the story they claimed to be a part of.
There was something about how they claimed to be part of a story and a niggle in the back of his mind about Koura that set off his Bibliomancer Magick. It felt as if there was this filament thin thread of magic weaving through the air, a strand in a tapestry of Story that he could see just out of the corner of his eye, that only he could sense in the House. He knew this because he’d asked the others if they felt it and they said they didn’t.
Someone, or something, was changing The Story within the House in such a way that it skewed Reality; shifting the setting, the characters, the very fabric of what made Story strong. Dan had never encountered a Magicker, Bibliomancer or other, that could do that. It felt wholly wrong. Like one more alteration in the tapestry, one more thread moved from weft to weave, and reality would unravel causing the threads of Life to drift out into eternity never to come together again.
His honor compelled him to reenter the house, to solve the mystery, to save the spirits; his Magick found the dissonance within both repugnant and challenging and fuck if he knew what to do with that.
Even Kim, who, honestly, seemed to have the impulse control of an eight-year-old hopped up on birthday cake and unfettered intellect and was usually the first to turn a nob, press a button, or pluck a string shook her head no to Siobhan’s question. Guess Dan wasn’t the only one who had some feelings about entering the House.
Ivan leaned against the side of the House, crossed his legs at the ankles and his arms over his chest, body language giving a big “no”.
Ben said, “We have the stupid story. Might as well read it. Maybe we’ll have more luck doing that then just breaking in and riffling the place.” That it was *Ben* advocating to not break in and riffle *any* place was telling.
A quick look around to confirm everyone was on the same page, badumbump, and then Siobhan unwrapped the ribbon binding the pages and handed them to Dan.
In the time it had taken for the Planting Full Moon to come the crew had discussed what they would do once it arrived, including deciding that Dan should be the one to read the pages. The thought being his Magick might prove valuable while doing potential Magick that involved a story.
Dan settled against the wall beside Ivan and began reading.
“Mal. “Hey, Mum! I’m home” was as far as he got before Siobhan dropped like a marionette who had had her strings cut. Ivan pushed away from the wall to try to catch her and lost consciousness as well. Ben followed and then each of the others in what was no more than two blinks of the eye.
Dan’s eyes widened as the tapestry he’d been seeing out of the corner of his eye while in the House came to sudden life all around him. Over, under, to the left and the right; the world was transformed into strand after strand, woven tight into a tapestry whose threads shimmered and pulsed, palpitations like racing breath and heartbeat causing a beat like a drum that commanded your blood. A gap formed around where each of his friends lay, expanding and contracting to incorporate their limp forms into the tapestry. Dan’s Magick swelled inside of him, words forming faster than his mind could think and rising to his lips, but before he could fully word an Edit the strands around him pulsed, expanded, contracted and swallowed him as well.
His last thought was, “Well, shit.” as he was sucked from consciousness and into Story.
Enter The Woods 