7:4
Kim
Your mind wants to convince you the strands, the color of a happy childhood, are spun sugar that will dissolve beneath the liquid spill of tears, releasing you from their sticky, cloying cocoon. But they’re not. They’re fiberglass caught in a whirlpool; each strand a gossamer fine razor leaving microscopic slices as they dance in a whirling, swirling maelstrom around you. Keep fluid, like a great white shark who knows to stop swimming is death.
One
Two
Thr…
“She’s dying!”
“She can’t die.”
“Don’t get so close!”
Kim twitched her hand, making a snatching motion that ended with her grabbing air in her clenched fist.
“I think she stopped brea-” the words cut off on a gasping, choking, wheeze as the air the speaker need to speak was snatched from their lungs.
“Fuck you,” Kim whispered, closing her second hand into a fist and *pulling*. Then her arm jerked, rising towards the ceiling so swiftly it dislocated her wrist, loosening her fingers from the fist so they flopped like loose bean bags. A second later and her other arm did the same, with, if possible, more force. That fist, held so tight, did not give easily. Her fingers only loosened when each individual one was yanked by an invisible force, the sound of breaking bone like the crack of a twig under foot as all but one of her fingers shattered with the force of the pull.
Her eyes snapped open as she was jerked towards the ceiling. She screamed loud, long, as the persistent pull on her fingers caused the broken bones to punch through the skin in compound fractures. The scream only stopped when she slammed into the ceiling, her skull bouncing off the surface with enough force to jostle her brain against the bone. She slumped forward, unconscious, the sound of someone pounding their hand on someone else’s back chasing her into the darkness.
*
“That’s Kim?” Gwen panted out, doing her best to catch up to and keep up with Patti who was doing a very good job of tearing up the stairs to the next floor. “Meta…” pant pant “phoric her? Or it…” pant pant Pant! “sounds like her?”
Patti flew over the stoop at the top of the stairs, almost skidding into the empty room at the top. Stopping in the center of the room, she gave a quick look around at the emptiness. Cocked her head. Raised a finger and pointed at the stairs across the room. Then, without a word kept to charging, again leaving the group to follow or stay behind. They all elected to follow, running after Patti as she hit the stairs. Where the others were stone these were wood, cantilevered with light coming through the area under each step.
“Good,” pant, “Magickal,” pant, “Mayhem, Woman!” Gwen wheezed, tripping on a step and falling forward. Dan grabbed her by the back of her belt, hauling her back before she could cheese out.
“Whoa!”
Gwen jerked out of the grip and lunged forward. “Gotta keep up!”
“Why?”
“Don’t know! Just gotta! I feel it,” she pressed her hand to her breastbone, “Here!”
“You sure that isn’t your lungs exploding?” Ben quipped as he loped past her.
Gwen raised a wobbly hand to give Ben a wobbly one-fingered salute, then slow-ran after him with her hand pressed to her side. They stopped their upward assent in another identical round room. Well, identical except instead of a single doorway leading to another stair the round wall was dotted with doors, seven in total, with a large arched window where the stairs should have been. Ben leaned on the sill, his upper body halfway out.
Ivan sidled up next to him. “See anything?”
Ben pulled back in. “Trees. Tower. More trees. Some clouds.”
“So, just a window.”
“Just a window.”
Siobhan walked the circumference of the room, eying each of the doors. Each one had a different style and design. One was heavy wood and had a brass lion-head doorknocker. Another was rough, weathered wood with no finish that threatened splinters to anyone who tried it. The next was painted a deep orange, the brass of its knob gleaming. Another had inset bronze tiles, small squares with floral reliefs, eighteen tiles in total. One was smoked glass with a wood overlay in an art deco style. Next to that was a timber grid style with frosted glass. The last door was plain wood with a dented cylindrical brass knob and when Siobhan rapped her knuckles against it there was the dull thud of a hollow core.
“The Lady or the Tiger,” Dan said quietly, almost beneath his breath.
Siobhan turned fast enough her hair wreath tilted. “What was that?”
“The Lady or the Tiger. It was a short story published in…” He worked his toothpick, his eyes cast to the side. “1882. The name of it eventually became an allegorical expression for a problem that is unsolvable. It’s the story of a king who had an arena he used to punish crimes and reward virtue through chance. Criminals were given the choice of two doors to enter. One door lead to a tiger. The other to a lady. The king put his daughter’s lover in the arena. The lover looked to the princess to make the call as to which door to open. The story ends without revealing if she picked the lady or the tiger – whether to kill her lover or have him marry someone else.”
“Did you have a reason to mention it?”
Dan scratched behind his ear. “Not sure.”
Patti turned to Siobhan. “Are you asking if he thinks Magick directed him to that?”
Siobhan nodded. “Or The House. Or God. I’m not discounting anything.” She looked to Dan, her question written large on her face.
“Not sure.”
Siobhan drew a deep breath and swept her gaze over the group before nodding. “Okay. We should assume that we can get a tiger if we chose wrong. One of these doors holds the lady.”
“Find the Lady,” Ben muttered.
“What was that?” Siobhan asked.
Ben said it a bit louder. “Find the Lady. Another name for Three Card Monte.”
Patti tilted her head. “That’s the game where they move the three cards around and someone tries to find the Queen?”
Ben nodded.
“Don’t they palm the Queen so it’s not there?”
“No. It’s there but the scam is that even if the sucker finds the Queen they don’t win. The dealer has a shill double-down if the mark finds the Queen and then announces they’ll only take the highest bid. The Queen is there. The mark can find her. But the mark never wins.”
Patti tilted her head the other way. “Are we the marks here?”
Ben turned his head so he could look at each door, then rubbed his chin. “Feels like.”
Ivan stood with his back to the window, the vantage letting him see each of the doors. “There’s a reason they are all different.”
“You think?” Gwen slowly toured the room, stopping at each door to give it a solid look.
Dan walked over to stand near Ivan, resting against the sill of the window. “So, tigers behind every door?”
Ivan turned his head to look at Dan. “Shouldn’t we be asking you that?”
Dan shrugged. “No expert.”
“Guess?”
“Try one and see? If there’s a tiger, then we know.”
“How does this work?” Dempsey turned from the door he was looking at, the one with bronze tiles. “Do we just open one?”
“Well,” Ivan drawled, “We usually try for logic or to figure out the challenge.”
“But, yes,” Prairie said in her super soft kitten voice, “in the end we usually just open one.”
When Ivan turned to looked at her, she gave him a wide-eyed look. “Am I wrong?”
“You could have made it sound better.”
Prairie gave a big, deliberate shrug. “Would it have changed the answer in the end?”
Ivan rolled his eyes and looked back at Dempsey. “We usually just open a door.”
“Okay.” With that Dempsey laced his fingers into the door pull, pressed the lever, and swung the door towards him.
“Wait!” Gwen called out, diving towards Dempsey.
“Too late.”
As the door swung open fully Dempsey squared up his shield and took position in the entry. There was a long pause as everyone tensed for attack. Then remained tensed, frozen in position like someone had messed up the showing of an anime.
“Why’s nothing happening?” Patti said to Gwen from the side of her mouth, her cudgel held up at rib height.
“Not sure,” Gwen shot back in the same manner, holding her plunger above her shoulder in an attack position.
Ivan shifted to look over Dempsey’s right shoulder. “Looks like-” he broke off, frowned. “A dining room?”
Ben positioned himself to the left of the door and poked his head around the edge to look inside. “Definitely a dining room. Nothing th-”
His assessment ended in a gasp as a black blur flew from under the trestle-style table, on a direct course for Ben’s face. He threw his hands up to fend off the incoming attack. And just in time. The black blur resolved into a kitten, its paws outstretched, claws furled, clearly aiming for Ben’s face.
Prairie dropped back, hand pressed to suppress the giggle that burst spontaneously. Patti didn’t even try to hide her laugh. “Damn, Ben, that’s some fierce tiger you got there.”
“Get it off! Get it off!” Ben yelled as the kitty lunged for his face again, its slick fur letting it slide through his hands and whisk its claws less than an inch from his chin. Ben reared his head back and tightened his grip on the kitten’s middle, to which the kitten snapped up its back legs and raked at his arms. Luckily the leather of his jacket took the worst of the hit. Releasing a garbled shout, Ben flung the kitten back into the room it had jumped from, shouting as he did so, “Close the door!”
Alas, he was about two seconds too late. From within the depths of the room a scrambling sounded and then two more kittens, followed closely by the one Ben had flung, came flying out of the room like they’d been ejected by slingshots. A small ginger careened into Dempsey’s shield as he raised it quickly to block his face. And a cat of undetermined color, lets call it tabby, made a beeline for Ivan’s ankles, wrapping itself around one and sinking its claws in.
Ivan immediately started kicking, trying to knock the kitten off. Gwen strode over to Dempsey, shook her head, said “Really?”, then reached around him and closed her hand around the kitten’s shoulders, below the neck, and pulled it free of the shield.
“Who’s a sweet kitty,” she cooed at the little orange bundle of fluff and fury. The kitten flailed its paws and wriggled to get free, but Gwen had a firm grip on it. A swift moment of concentration from Gwen and the cat was relaxing under her hand, drawing its little paws up to its chest and letting its head fall back with a kitty smile transforming its formerly yowling mouth.
Gwen turned and started to hand the blissed-out kitten to Patti, but Sass let out an indignant “Squee!”
“Sorry, Sassafrass!” Gwen turned and handed the puddle of fur to Prairie whose face transformed to one of delight.
The black kitten had shaken off the confusion of its momentary flight and seemed determined to pay Ben back, if not in kind then for sure *back*. It darted across the room, bounded a good foot and a half off the floor, and sunk its claws into his leg above the knee.
“Fucker!” Ben tried to snatch the cat up by the back of the head only to have it turn at the last moment and sink its fangs into the meat of his palm. Ben reared back his hand, holding it out of reach near his shoulder and glared down at the cat who was even then starting to scale his leg like it was the K12.
Gwen took pity on him and grabbed the black cat much as she had the ginger, her hand over its shoulders with thumb and fingers digging in on either side. Meanwhile Patti was gamely jabbing at the tabby on Ivan’s leg with her cudgel. The cat turned from Ivan and started poking at the cudgel, batting it like it was a play toy. Then its eyes lifted from the cudgel and settled on the mouse in the house swinging from Patti’s belt. Sass had to see death in the kitten’s eyes because the mouse gave out a pitiable “Squeak!” and drew back into the house.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Siobhan yelled, diving in from the side just as the cat lunged, catching it midflight with a hearty swing of her bag. Considering that bag was full of, well a lot of things, the hit sent the kitten flying into the door which was opened into the main chamber. Ivan dropped back, drew back his leg, and scooped the kitten up on the top of his boot. With a flick of his foot he sent the cat flying back into the room it had come from where it landed with claws skittering as it skidded across the tile floor.
“Prairie, toss your kitten into the room. Gwen,” Siobhan turned to Gwen who’d neatly subdued the puffed-up ball of fur and fury that had targeted Ben, “you do the same.”
“But its so cute!” Gwen said, chucking the black kitten under the chin.
Ben stopped sucking the blood from the palm of his hand to give the kitten a good glower. “Its so dead if you don’t put it back!”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” So saying she ducked into the dining room and gently placed the kitten on the floor where it rolled over on its back and batted at imaginary butterflies or birds or whatever a kitten would imagine to bat at. Maybe Ben’s face.
The tabby Ivan had flick kicked shook itself under the table and bunched up its backend in preparation for another jump lunge. Prairie ducked around Dempsey to place the ginger kitten on the floor too, then stepped back as he swung the door closed before the tabby could clear the distance between table and door.
With the sound of the slamming door still ringing in their minds if not the room – the room still had that weird sound slash no sound thing going on that made it as much a null space as the six floors beneath it – the group dropped back from the wall, assessing the area and the doors there with wary eyes.
It was Dan that broke the silence. “Tiger.”
Patti snorted and then whacked him on the solid bicep.
“Big tiger,” Gwen said with a nod and a grin.
“Shut it!” Ben snapped.
“Here.” Siobhan dug in her bag and pulled out a small packet. “Salve. Put it on the scratch.”
“More like a gouge,” Ben said, narrowed-eyed, taking the salve from Siobhan and applying it liberally to his palm.
“Let me see.” Siobhan walked over, grabbed Ben’s fingers, and bent them back to display his palm. “Yeah, that’s a real-”
“That, that’s a scratch,” Ivan said, looking over Siobhan shoulder to see Ben’s boo-boo.
“Shut it!” Ben snapped with much less fire than before and pulled his hand from Siobhan’s. “It hurt.”
“I’m sure it did,” Siobhan said, the voice of a kindergarten teacher who’d seen her share of “horrible wounds that are bound to kill me dead!”.
“You going to stomp off? Maybe get co-opted by the bad guys now?” Gwen asked.
Ben pointed his finger from his eye to her. Gwen mimed shaking in terror and Ben cracked a smile. “Damn it, Gwen!”
Abe sidled up to Dempsey and asked in a quiet tone, “Inside joke?”
Dempsey shrugged. “Haven’t been inside long.”
“How did you end up with them?”
“They had something I wanted.” That said he shifted to the next door over to the right and began to eye its dark orange paint.
Gwen stomped over to him, standing real close with her hands fisted at her side. “If you could refrain from just flinging doors open willy nilly, Mr. Dempsey, that would be swell.”
Dempsey looked down from his considerable height, down the length of his considerable nose, at Gwen. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether I want something inside?”
Gwen cocked her hand at her wrist, gestured at Dempsey. “Why are you here again?”
Dempsey raised his brows. “I like the company.”
“Puke!” That said Gwen stomped over to stand next to Prairie while still maintaining her watchful glare on Dempsey. “I’m watching you!”
“Fantastic.”
“It’s like watching a Korean romcom,” Patti muttered to Siobhan who laughed and replied equally as quietly. “When will our plucky heroine admit to her dark fascination with the boy who fought off her attackers in the convenience store?”
“So,” Dempsey asked. “Door number two?”
“Why that one?” Ivan asked.
Dempsey shrugged. “Because it’s here? Because it’s the next one clockwise?”
Ivan huffed a breath. “Wish we had a better selection process than ‘because it’s here’. Anyone?”
He swept a glance across the group. Dan eyed the doors one by one, shifted his toothpick left to right and back again. “Got nothing.”
“The door with the tiles had kittens. And a dining room.” Prairie noted, screwing her mouth to the side. “I don’t know there’s a connection between those things?”
“Doesn’t feel like one.” Ben said.
“South India has doors that are similar in style.” Abe offered quietly from Dempsey’s shadow, then dropped their gaze before anyone could engage with them.
“Yeah?” Ivan asked.
Abe nodded. “Not that it means anything?”
“Tigers are known to come from India.” Ivan gave the blond a gentle smile of encouragement. “Which could maybe mean kittens? Not sure where the dining room comes in though.”
“Think we’ll get kittens if we open door number two?” Patti asked, flicking a finger at the orange door.
Ivan made a show of looking at the door, stepping up to within a few inches of it so he could stare intently at the wood grain under the paint. “Not sure. It’s orange. It’s wood. It’s a door. Standard brass hardware,” he ticked a finger as he looked along where the door met the wall. “Can’t tell the hardware. Appears to swing inwards. There’s a-” he leaned in, focusing on the small lens mounted in the center of the door. “A standard peephole. Can’t see anything through it.”
He dropped back and looked around the group. “What’s the consensus? Open? Leave? Tigers? Kittens?”
“Nothing indicates we’ll get kittens,” Prairie suggested. “Or anything else. We’ve only opened a single door and therefore do not have the data we’d need to make an informed guess.”
At Patti’s “well, look at you” glance, Prairie pointed to herself. “Nurse. School. Data crunching. I got skillz.”
Patti chuckled at the way Prairie buzzed on the last letter to make sure it was clear she was dropping Zees. “So, skilled one, what do you suggest.”
“I suggest we go ahead and see what’s behind door number two.”
Patti shrugged and said, “Sure, me too. Prairie has convinced me with her keen logic.”
Prairie made an attempt to roll her eyes at Patti but the effect was ruined by the dimples that popped out at the sides of her mouth.
“Sure.” Gwen shrugged. “Why not. Makes sense. I guess.”
“Well, be ready for kittens.” Ivan said, then turned to Ben. “You too.”
Ben mock snarled at Ivan. “Ha. Space. Ha.”
“Patti,” Ivan turned to Patti, “You have a shield. You want to take point?”
Patti draped her hand over Sass’s house. “Not if its kittens.”
Ivan nodded. “Valid.”
“Dempsey?”
Dempsey grunted. “Got it. Opening the door in three, two,” on “one,” he grabbed the brass knob and pushed the door open to reveal a room with a deep pile orange carpet from another era, one wall painted dark orange complimenting the tone of the others paneled in cedar, sturdy wood furniture, something that looked like a hammock seat of knotted cream rope hanging from the open beams, and a black metal stove in a place of honor on a brick apron in the closest corner.
Keeping his right foot on the jam, Dempsey stepped his left foot in so he could duck around the doorway and scope out the room. When nothing scampered, jumped, or moved within the space he took a cautious step forward with shield held at the ready. He hadn’t gone more than two steps, Patti crowding in after him, punch shield out at the end of her arm, when something oozed from the corner behind the stove.
A poetical description of it would be madness. Literal would be wispy darkness. A combination of the two might be “tattered shrouds of madness, nearly transparent but with substance enough to cling like the stink of an unemptied garbage pail.” Panicked would be ‘oh, good glorious googly moogly, get it out of my hair!’. Which was pretty close to what Patti hollered as the darkness flowed through the air and attempted to wrap around her. Her shield kept it from her shoulders and lower face. The rest of her was fair game and the darkness proved an advantageous thing, flowing around the shield to ooze towards her. It felt like being whapped by cold lasagna noodles. Or seaweed, that kind that came in sheets. And her response to it was the exact same as if she’d been assaulted by either of those things.
Patti flailed her shield around in something resembling the flight of a drunken bumblebee, repeating “Get it off! Get it off!”
Next to her, where she hadn’t noticed since she was too busy fending off the cloying damp slap of ‘whatever’, Dempsey grunted, “Can’t! Got me too!”
He thrust his shield up and to the side, fending off the fwap of darkness.
“It’s so-” Patti’s eyes rolled back in her heat and she fell to the ground. Sass, in its house, gave out a pitiable “Squee!” as the dark whatever flowed over Patti, engulfing her and the mouse in a shifting shadow. Patti thrashed in the shadow. At first her actions were frenzied as she tried to slap off the stuff only to have her hands rake through it. Accompanying these movements were equally frenzied, incoherent sounds of fear. Then her motions slowed and the sobbing started.
Next to her Dempsey had dropped to a knee, bracing his shield like an umbrella with the dark whatever cascading over the edges of it like a deluge. His shoulders shuddered as the darkness curled around the shield, coursed over his hand, and traveled up his arm. His eyes went very wide and he clenched his jaw, holding back the sound that battered at his teeth. As it was, he still grunted like he was deadlifting six hundred pounds without prep.
All of this happened so fast no one behind them reacted for a moment. Whether it was the speed of the onslaught or some kind of atavistic response from their brains causing their slow reaction, it was like the others were caught in a time warp, their limbs moving sluggishly and their eyes wide on the spectacle. Ivan lunged forward, sword raised, as Gwen surged around him, reaching through the shadows engulfing Patti. To the others it appeared a contrail followed Gwen’s movements.
“Everybody move!” Siobhan’s yell sounded like it was coming through water. Ben leaped up, snatching the potion she threw from the air, wincing as fire engulfed him.
Dan leaped forward only to draw his hand back from the fire. It was Prairie who dove in, jacket stretched out, and wrapped it around Ben, smothering the flames that licked over the protective leather of his jacket.
“It’s okay!” Ben spread his gloved fingers for Prairie to see. “Gloves!”
“Not okay!” she snapped, very un-Prairie-like. “Fire!”
“What were you thinking?” Siobhan rushed forward to stare at Ben.
“I was thinking you’d set that rug on fire if you hit it!”
Siobhan dropped back, her eyes wide. “Oh.”
At the door the shadows immediately wreathed Ivan, drifting around him like dense smoke. Realizing that the weapon would do no good, he dropped his sword and groped in his jacket for something even as his expression grew bleak and his skin-tone grew ashen. His jaw was tight as he pulled out a compact rectangle with an attached strap. He closed his eyes and inhaled a sharp breath, his facial features a mix of pain and despair, and wrapped the strap around his arm. Then with a flick and a twist he triggered the device to unfold into a fifteen-inch diameter circle too small to be an effective shield.
“Clypeus,” he gritted between his clenched teeth. A white blue glow formed along the edges of the circle and then burst out in a nimbus that expanded the protection of the device to a four-foot circle. The smoke or shadows or whatever the writhing darkness was sizzled as it hit the edges of the nimbus. Holding the shield firm in front of himself Ivan took two steps into the room, placing himself a bulwark before Dempsey.
“Fall back!” he grunted as the darkness pulsed against the light of the shield, seeking a way to reach him. He braced a knee, leaning into the press of darkness which weighed belied its smoky substance.
Gwen, on her knees, hooked her hands under Patti’s armpits, going by feel to get a firm grip. Once she was sure of her grip she threw a leg back, digged in her toes, and strained to drag Patti from the room. Through the touch, even through Patti’s clothes, Gwen could feel an unnatural surge of emotions. Despair, rage, defiance screamed through her. She opened herself to the storm of emotions and her Magick took over, sieving through the mess, untangling the knots that held it to the form that resembled smoke but was not and letting it flow out from her crown. Broken up. Cleansed. Free. She felt lightheaded as the emotion poured from her. No, not lightheaded. Buoyant. Joyful. Like she could leap over a house. Freakin’ A, this felt So Damned Good!
Her eyes refused to stay open, the eyelids drifting until her lashes dusted her cheeks. Every nerve in her body was on point, surging as if they wished to burst free of her, as if they could form a body of pure energy that could drift from her and expand until it filled the room, the town, the world until it burst like fireworks over the universe.
Caught up in the euphoric release, Gwen barely felt arms reaching around her, hand locking at her sternum, the vibration of a voice at her ear saying, “Let me help.”
“No,” she tried to say. “Don’t. I have to release the storm.” Her mouth moved on the words but no sound came out. Instead there was a cry, distant through the haze of Magick a dancing whirlwind inside of her, and the arms withdrew.
Then another set took their place. Again Gwen tried to voice her warning. Again she failed, overwhelmed by the emotion using her as a conduit to redemption. But this time the arms didn’t release.
“I’ve got you,” Prairie’s soft voice somehow cut through the haze, reaching the core of Gwen, causing a soft smile to form her lips. And she sighed, relaxing into Prairie’s surprisingly strong hold as she was pulled inexorably back from the room, Patti clamped against her.
“Wow!” Prairie’s whisper against her ear held wonder. “What is this?”
“Hold on,” Gwen whispered back. “We need to get Patti free.”
“Okay,” Prairie’s voice was, if possible, more dreamy.
With her physical focus on keeping Patti against her and her Magickal focus on cleansing her of the riot of emotion that had swamped her, Gwen had to rely on Prairie to pull she and Patti free of the room.
“The side,” she murmured, the second word rising as a pulse of ecstasy coursed through her and burst out of the top of her head. “To the side.”
“Trying!” Prairie’s hands slipped. “Whoa!”
“Can I?” Siobhan’s voice came from somewhere behind them.
“I think so?” Prairie answered. “Just touch me, not them.”
If the easy with which they began to move back and to the left was anything to go by it seemed like Siobhan had been able to grab Prairie without effect. Once they were all lying somewhat supine against the curved wall, Gwen slowly opened her eyes. She tilted her head back to look at Prairie. “Best O ever.”
Prairie giggled. “Wow.”
Abe looked at Siobhan. Their expression said they were confused. Siobhan whispered, “In joke. It doesn’t translate that well.”
Abe nodded their head and continued to run their hawk’s gaze over the group. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Siobhan wondered what it was they saw. She always wondered that when someone new joined the group. She got it. They were an eclectic group. At first glance you might wonder what tied them together. For herself, she’d long ago stopped noticing the differences between them so it was interesting to watch someone new interact with them for the first time. New eyes sometimes saw things familiar ones did not.
“Do you have any questions?”
Abe nodded, the emphatic gesture making their poof of hair bob in three directions at once before settling to obscure their eyes. A quick scrub of their hand over their brow cleared this, allowing them to focus their intent gaze on Siobhan. “Many. But,” their head darted, like the bird they reminded Siobhan of, “they can wait.”
The smile they offered her was tentative. She found herself returning it. Something about them reminded her of her kids, all curiosity and bluster, a façade of indifference like a scrim behind which the shadow of mischief stretched in distorted lines, with the new still wet behind their ears. Reminiscence pricked the back of her thoughts, making her blink fast to clear the moisture from her eyes.
Patti stirred against Gwen’s legs and slowly opened her eyes to squint around. “What happened?”
Gwen closed her eyes, relishing the feelings that had stopped rushing and were now slowly swirling from the top of her head. She imagined them like a heat mirage, a soft pulsing shimmer that promised respite. Her guess was no one else could see them. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to herself. But they were there, little ghostly fingers sifting her hair before releasing into the air. “I think the stuff in there is-”
“Ghosts,” Prairie said, “But,” a frown tinged her tone, “not ghosts?”
A smile melted over Gwen’s face. She drew a long breath. “Emotions. I think, those are emotions.”
“They feel like ghosts.”
“I don’t know what ghosts feel like. They feel like emotions. Old emotions. Bottled up. Trapped.”
“Wraiths?” Dan’s voice cut through the soft, floaty cloud that had drifted over Gwen’s senses. She opened her eyes to him, her gaze sharp, her focus sharper. “What?”
Siobhan gathered her legs underneath her, pressed her shoulders against the wall, and slowly rose before looking to the door where Ivan was dragging Dempsey awkwardly with the fingers of his free hand clenched under the collar of Dempsey’s jacket while making slow sweeps of his shielded arm to keep the swirling smoke, shadow, stuff back. The two men cleared the doorway, Dempsey’s legs dragging awkwardly over the uneven stone of the floor as Ivan exerted his considerable strength to drag him free. He paused on the threshold, his gaze going from Dempsey to the shield.
“The smoke isn’t following you.” Abe said from the safe shadow to the right of the doorway.
“Huh?” Ivan squinted, looking to the where the darkness formed a rippling screen that obscured the interior of the room beyond the door.
Siobhan braced legs wobbly from pulling the combined weight of Patti, Gwen, and Prairie free of the room. “Someone needs to close the door.”
Ivan eyed the smoke or darkness blocking the way. He moved towards the sound of Abe’s voice, drawing Dempsey to lie flat on the floor. Somewhere between Ivan thrusting his shield up to protect him and being dragged free of the room, Dempsey had succumbed to the effect of the dark smoke. He lay, stiff, unmoving, his hands fisted at his sides. His eyelids were clenched shut and his features were set in harsh lines.
Abe moved slowly, a frightened animal approaching a water hole, and lowered themselves down next to Dempsey. They lifted a hand as if to touch him, only to have Gwen cry, “No!” from across the room.
Abe lowered their hand, shifting their gaze over to Gwen who shifting to sit against the wall. “Don’t touch it.”
“What the fuck is that stuff?” Ivan asked half to the air and half to whoever might answer. Siobhan walked slowly over to Ivan, her gaze half on the door and the writhing screen blocking entry. “Dan suggested Wraiths. I’m waiting for an expansion on that.” She turned fully to look at the blocked doorway. “Someone has to go back into that to get the door.”
Prairie rose and dusted off her legs. “I’ll do it.”
Ivan’s eyes instantly went to Prairie. “You can’t!”
“Yes. I can. Those things won’t touch me.” Proving her point Prairie walked towards the door with her hand held out before her, making the kinds of sounds someone might make while approaching a scared dog or spooked horse. “Really,” her voice took on singsong tones, “It’s okay.”
The scrim of darkness pulled back from her hand, leaving a gap between her and it that allowed her to grab the doorknob and swing the door closed behind her as she stepped back into the room, careful to not step on Dempsey.
Suddenly Gwen’s eyelids snapped upwards. “Where’s Ben?”
Her gaze went around the room, lighting on each person.
“He’s over here,” Abe said, rising to their feet and backstepping to show Ben slumped against the wall to the right of the door. “He grabbed you and tried to yank you out then started screaming and went limp. I pulled him over here so he wouldn’t get stepped on.”
Gwen’s expression grew slightly dubious. “You weren’t affected?”
“I grabbed him by the jacket. I saw your very large friend do it to Dempsey.” They shrugged. “It seemed to work so I tried it.”
“Huh.” With that Gwen closed her eyes again and rested her head against the wall then curled her shoulders forward with a stretch and a groan. “Can someone help me over to Ben? No,” she corrected, “Dempsey.”
“Sure.” Siobhan stooped and offered her a hand up. Gwen took it, letting Siobhan hoist her to her feet. Her head swam a little and she pressed her hand to her temple to confirm her brains were at least close to where they belonged. With a sigh, she wobbled over to Dempsey and lowered herself to her knees next to him. She eyed Ivan. “You might want to step away from us. I’m not sure how this works exactly but it kind of feels like the emotions come out of my head all clean and happy and ready to take over the world and make it clean and happy and maybe you don’t want that.”
Ivan grinned at her explanation and rose. “I’ll check on Ben.” At Gwen’s “Don’t touch him!” he nodded. “Won’t.”
Gwen carefully placed her palm over Dempsey’s heart. A shudder coursed over her, she cocked her eyebrows unevenly, and her left eyelid drifted to half-mast. “Whoa.” She shook herself all over, like a dog throwing off water, then jerked her hand from Dempsey’s chest. “That’s-” Another head shake. “Yep. Uh huh.” She gave Dempsey’s chest a pat then pushed up to her feet and half-stumbled over to Ben where she repeated the process.
When Ben started stirring under her hands, she pushed away and fumble-walked her way back to flop down next to Patti who had sat up and was using the wall to support her still floppy form. Knees up, hands flopping over them, Gwen looked to Dan, “So, Wraiths?”
Dan braced his legs, stashed his crossbow, and then crossed his arms. “You felt the effect as emotions?”
“Uh huh.”
“And Prairie felt them as ghosts?”
Prairie walked over to stand next to Dan and looked up at him. “Yes.”
Dan nodded and worked his toothpick. “I’ve read of a creature called a Wraith. There’re different theories about what they are. Some say ghosts. Others say they are leftover emotions that take form. What everyone agrees is they feed off negative feelings.”
“Angry.” Patti let her eyes close and rolled the back of her head against the wall. “I was so angry. And hurt. Scared.” Hand shaking, she carefully reached into the mouse house and pulled out Sass who spun twice in her palm and then curled into a ball, nudging its head against her fingers as she caressed the soft fur of its head. “Really scared.”
“You said some people think they are leftover emotions?” Abe drew closer, though they still hung on the fringes of the group. When Dan looked at them without answering they added, “like after images?”
Dan worked his toothpick. Nodded. “Maybe.”
Abe swiveled their head to the left. Swiveled it to the right. Swiveled it back to the left. Gaze darting, like a hawk examining something around its beak. “Ghost photographs can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Most of them were hoaxes, manipulated by the photographers to show the image of a loved one behind the subject of a portrait. It’s a double exposure.” Abe leaned towards Dan, excitement lighting their features and apparently driving back their reserve. “But there was one artist, Pierre Lapaur, who claimed he used his Spirit Magick to capture the residual Magick of loved ones that hung around the living on film. This was before photography was very popular and the people who appeared on his film never had their photographic taken so the chance he was creating a double-exposure of an image of them was slight.”
As they petered into silence and looked at their feet, Dan rubbed the back of his neck and gave the blond a speculative look that was reflected in his, “Do you have sources for it?”
“Wraiths?” Prairie prompted quietly at Dan’s side.
“Right.” Dan looked down at Prairie, a soft smile transforming his granite features. “What can you tell us about poltergeists?”
“I’ve never actually seen a poltergeist.”
“Really?”
“No. I’ve heard of them but I’ve never seen one. I think maybe different people who have my Magick have a…” she searched for a word, “connection, I guess, to a specific type of Spirit. For me it’s always been people who have been wronged. Specifically, women. Poltergeists, I think, might be the Spirits of children. It would explain the mischief attributed to them and the fact that they seem to manifest around children.”
“Wraiths are also said to be attracted to children and teens. And where a poltergeist will leave a place once the child they are attached to grows up, a Wraith remains and makes the location theirs. It’s why I suggested those,” he gestured at the closed door, “were Wraiths.”
Prairie nodded slowly, her mouth pursed as she processed what Dan said. “So, angry spirits-”
“Not quite spirits.” To Dan’s interruption, Prairie said, “Close enough that my Magick seemed to repel them. I wonder-” She eyed the door. Speculation flavored her words. “Could I release them?”
“Open the door and go back in?” Ivan shook his head. “That would be a ‘no’.”
Prairie tilted her head and rolled her eyes at Ivan. “I can if I want.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why? Do you want to do it because you’re curious or do you need,” he emphasized the word, “to do it? Is your Magick drawing you to release them?”
Prairie sighed and lowered her gaze. “No.”
Ivan’s expression softened. “I understand curiosity, Prair, and normally I’d be all about supporting you in exploring it as long as there wasn’t a chance you’d be hurt but we didn’t come here to do that, your Magick isn’t compelling you to so that probably means you don’t need to, and there’s a risk to everyone else except you and Gwen if we reopen that door. Nothing says they will stay at the door and not come out here and then where would we be?”
Prairie sighed again, her whole soul in it. “You’re right. And maybe they are serving a purpose and I could actually do harm if I helped them move on. Sometimes its hard to see a problem and not want to solve it.”
“Yep.” Dan said.
“Yup.” Gwen echoed. She drew a deep breath and opened her eyes. “So, next door?”
“How about we wait until everyone is conscious?” Siobhan suggested.
Gwen yawned. “Sounds like a plan. I could use a rest.”
“I think we all could,” Siobhan said and lowered herself to sit next to Gwen who leaned over and rested her head on Siobhan’s shoulder.
Enter The Woods 