Chapter Two

 

Karen was in the bathroom when he reached the top of the stairs, brushing her hair. She was fully dressed and, of course, no longer even remotely playful. “Did you get rid of the little pervert?”

“He’s waiting in the driveway.”

“Why is he waiting in the driveway?”

“He’s in trouble. I need to go with him.”

She’d been looking straight into the mirror until now, but at this she turned and faced him. “Go with him where?”

Eric sighed. “Illinois.”

“Illinois?” She sounded even more upset than he’d imagined. “We have hotel reservations in two days. That’s non-refundable.”

“I know. I’ll be back before then. I promise.”

“You promised you’d help me plan.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Karen dropped her hairbrush hard onto the sink and stalked past him out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “That’s just great. On our anniversary.”

“Someone killed the kid’s grandpa.”

This didn’t make her turn around, but she didn’t respond to it, either. She merely picked her watch up off the nightstand and began fastening it around her wrist.

“A girl, too. He says they’ll kill him and his mom. His whole family. I have to help him.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

She did know. It was why she hadn’t asked how the boy managed to get himself from the front porch to the kitchen table without being heard or seen. “Because it’s like last time,” she said. “And the time before that.”

“Yeah.”

“So why does it have to be you?” she countered, finally turning to face him again. “Of all the people in the world, why are you the one who has to deal with it?”

Eric didn’t have an answer for that. All he could say was, “I’m sorry.”

But sorry just wasn’t good enough this morning. “Just go, then.”

“I’ll be back in plenty of time. I promise.”

She wasn’t convinced. He could see the emotions storming behind her eyes. She wasn’t good at expressing her feelings. It went back to her childhood and her relationship with her sister and parents. Never bad, never abusive in any way, but never really great, either. She was never quite good enough. She was always second best. She’d learned to bottle up the things that upset her and hide them away deep inside. It was a hard thing to turn off. She’d make jokes when she was afraid, and she’d turn passive when she was angry. And she’d withdraw when she was hurt. Now, all she said was, “Right.”

Eric kissed her on the cheek and then left her there in the bedroom. There was nothing more to say. She was mad at him, and he didn’t blame her. She felt humiliated by her ordeal in the kitchen and he didn’t blame her for that, either. She had every right to be displeased. What if he couldn’t make it back in time? What if this ended up blowing their whole weekend together? She’d been looking forward to it for months. She’d never forgive him if he screwed this up. And of course she was afraid. She was afraid that this time he might not come back at all. And he definitely couldn’t blame her for that. It was all happening again. And he had plenty of reason to be afraid. The things he’d seen on his last excursions into the weird and unknown still haunted him.

But he couldn’t think about any of that now. He needed to get his head in the game.

What he needed was to talk to Isabelle.

He grabbed his phone from beside the charger on the kitchen countertop and lit up the screen. It was just a cheap, prepaid model. He refused to own anything more expensive. Truth be told, he hated these things. They drove him nuts. The only reason he carried one was to please Karen, who (when she wasn’t pissed off at him) insisted that he should have one in case of emergencies and so she could always get in touch with him.

But when strange things like this happened, he needed it to talk to Isabelle.

Strangely, though, Isabelle hadn’t already called. Usually, he had only to think about needing her and the phone would ring.

“Isabelle?”

Nothing.

Suddenly, he was concerned. Had something happened to her? He tried to remember the last time he talked to her. Wasn’t it just this past weekend?

“Isabelle?”

Finally, the phone rang.

“Sorry,” gasped Isabelle. “I’m here.”

Eric was relieved. “Good. Scared me for a second.”

“You and Karen were in romantic mode, so I was giving you guys space.”

“I see. Thanks.”

“Sure thing. Nobody wants a thirteen-year-old girl peeping on them in the bedroom. Well…nobody normal…”

“Right.”

“And no offense, but I don’t really want to know what it’s like to have sex with your wife. Even if I had a sex drive, I don’t think I’d be into girls, you know.”

“Makes sense.”

“It’d just be too weird.”

“It would be,” he agreed.

Eric met Isabelle the year before, when he was summoned on a bizarre adventure not by a strange, teleporting boy, but by a strange, recurring dream that made him feel as if there were somewhere he desperately needed to be. When he first encountered her, she was trapped in an insane, living mansion built upon a sort of crossroads between two worlds. She rescued him from being swallowed by the monstrous place and in turn, he gave her the courage to escape, but only into other structures that existed in the same bizarre, cross-dimensional state as the one she left. She also discovered that she possessed a kind of psychic link with him, one that allowed her to get into his head, to read his thoughts and feel whatever he felt. She also had the ability to contact him through his phone, allowing her to speak to him anytime and anywhere she wished.

While their connection was always present, she’d assured him that she wasn’t always listening in on his thoughts and conversations. When he wasn’t talking to her, she could tune him out, so that whatever was going on in his head was like a television in another room to her. She’d even revealed to him that pleasant feelings, like those involved in lovemaking, were considerably easier to tune out than less pleasant feelings like fear or anger. Typically, only extreme emotions of panic and terror could wrench her fully into his thoughts against her will.

Technically speaking, she existed outside of time, never aging, never changing, so it wasn’t surprising that when she tuned him out, she didn’t immediately tune back in when things turned weird.

And because she was aware of the passage of time, she wasn’t even really thirteen. She was much closer to fifty.

“So what’s up?”

“I think we have another of those situations.”

“Oh. Fun.”

“Right. Fun.” If this turned out like the last two times he was thrown into a bizarre journey, he was going to end up exhausted and bloody. It didn’t exactly sound like fun. But he supposed there was something to be said about how well they worked together at times like these.

“Clue me in.”

As he gathered up his wallet and keys, he told her about Jude Thorngood and his ill-timed arrival at the door. It didn’t take long. He didn’t need to share any of the finer details. She could pick those up from his mind as he spoke.

“And he just popped up in the kitchen?” she asked when he was done.

“He did. I have no idea how.”

“And this magic man…”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know anything about magic, but he’d met a foggy man once. And a few others like him. Agents of a mysterious, nameless organization that made the world’s weirdest and most terrifying phenomena its twisted business. Above all, they were killers. And they were the first people to pop into Eric’s thoughts when Jude first mentioned this nameless magic man.

Isabelle didn’t have to ask him what his thoughts were. She knew. She could read his mind. Instead, she asked the other obvious question: “So how did this kid get into your kitchen? Did he really just…transport himself there?”

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s just some kind of parlor trick or something.”

“Seems like a pretty serious parlor trick. I mean he got into your house. What keeps him from getting into a bank vault?”

“Good question. Maybe he’ll tell us.”

Eric pocketed the phone as he stepped outside. The kid was standing beside a rusty Dodge minivan with a mismatched side door, looking impatient. But he made him wait a moment longer as he retrieved the mobile charger from the glove box of his PT Cruiser. The last time he did this sort of thing, a dying cell phone battery almost left him unable to communicate with Isabelle. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Can we go now?” asked Jude when he finally joined him.

“Before that,” said Eric, “we have a few things to talk about.”

Jude stared up at him, waiting.

“That little stunt you pulled back there left us both in the doghouse.”

“It was the only way I could make you talk to me.”

“Fair enough, but now my wife’s mad at both of us. This weekend is our anniversary. We have plans for Friday night. I’ll go with you and try to help, but if I’m not back here by Friday morning, we’re both going to be up to our necks in serious trouble. Is that clear?”

“We’d better hurry, then,” was all the boy had to say. “Get in.”

“First, you tell me how you did it. How’d you make yourself appear in my kitchen?”

“We don’t have time.”

“I’m not fond of secrets. I won’t do it if you don’t answer all my questions.”

The boy looked annoyed. Eric was glad. He had no intention of making this easy on him.

“Fine. But can I tell you while I drive? It’s…tricky to explain.”

Eric stared at him for a moment, considering. Then he nodded and walked around the front of the van.

His first thought as he climbed into the passenger seat was that the vehicle smelled musty. It reminded him of another van, an old, full-sized behemoth that his uncle once owned. “Does the air conditioner even work in this thing?”

“Sometimes.”

That was great. It was approaching mid-July and the weather had been hot lately.

Jude backed out of the driveway and made his way toward the highway. Once he’d made sure he was pointed in the right direction, Eric reminded him that he was still waiting for an explanation to his little trespassing stunt. His answer was both remarkably simple and utterly unacceptable: “It’s magic, dude.”

“Magic. Really.”

“Really. I know it’s… You know. Hard to swallow.”

“Yes. It is.”

Jude shot him a grin. “You might as well get used to it. You’re going to be seeing a lot of magic where we’re going.”

“You said we were going to Illinois. Are we going to Vegas instead?”

“No. Illinois. But that would be cool, I guess.”

It would. But he supposed Karen would be twice as mad at him if he blew off their anniversary getaway and went to Vegas without her.

“We’re magic users. Witches, I guess.”

“Witches?”

Jude looked annoyed. “Yeah. Witches.”

This wasn’t the first time Eric had heard of witches, oddly enough. He recalled a conversation almost a year ago with a man who claimed to have had an encounter with a witch at some point in his past. She reportedly drove two men insane and made a third vanish from the face of the earth, never to be seen again. And she’d refused to die, even after being crushed between a Jeep and a concrete wall.

After hearing that story, he’d kind of hoped to never meet a real witch…

“I’m not very fond of the word, myself,” Jude went on. “Too many negative connotations.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Actually, most of the girls embrace the word. They like being witches.”

“So I take it you’re good witches?”

“We don’t eat children, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Always a good sign.” Just this past spring in Eric’s freshman classes, he’d taught about several Shakespeare plays. One of them was Macbeth, one of his favorites, and now he couldn’t help but think of the three witches from that story, the weird sisters and their bubbling cauldron. “So you magically transported yourself into my kitchen this morning and ogled my wife.”

Jude gave him a shrug. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Is it?”

“I didn’t transport myself anywhere. I walked right past you.”

Eric looked at him, confused. “No you didn’t.”

“I did. Think about it. Did you close the door right away? Or did you hold it open for a little bit?”

Eric opened his mouth to say that he closed it immediately. Why wouldn’t he have? But as he thought back, he couldn’t quite remember the part where he closed the door. He remembered standing there for a moment, his hand on the doorknob, feeling annoyed…

“And when you were leading me out of the kitchen, did I actually disappear from your grip, or did you just let go of me?”

Eric tried to remember. He was so angry at that moment, he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he was sure that he hadn’t felt the kid disappear from his hand. He just realized suddenly that he wasn’t holding onto his arm anymore. His hand was open…

“I don’t just disappear from one place and pop up in another. It’s not all that different from what illusionists do, really. Kind of an advanced form of misdirection. I distract you, make you ignore what I don’t want you to see.”

Eric found himself reminded of things he’d discovered on his second excursion into the weird. After catching sight of Creek Bend’s most famous missing person, he’d discovered the existence of a number of hidden places scattered throughout his home town. They were neither invisible nor intangible, and yet almost no one could see these places. They ignored them. Did this kid’s peculiar magic trick work under the same basic principles?

“I’m not all that talented,” confessed Jude. “That’s really the only magic I can do well, but it can sure come in handy.”

“I’ll bet it can,” agreed Eric. He couldn’t help but wonder what mischief a teenage boy might use such a skill for. He knew what he would’ve been tempted to use it for back when he was a teenager…

“All I did was make you distracted so you paused for a few seconds before closing the door and then I pushed through and walked right past you. When I saw your wife, I did the same thing to her. I made her keep doing what she was doing and ignore me until I sat down. Then I just…quit doing it. When she turned around, it was like I’d just appeared out of thin air.”

“I should warn you,” said Eric, “that if you ever do that again, she’ll probably beat you half to death with one of any number of kitchen appliances. Maybe more than one.”

“Understood.”

“And I won’t get in her way.”

“Also understood.”

“So your whole family can do these magic tricks?”

“It’s not really a family so much as…”

“A coven?”

Jude shrugged. He looked annoyed by the word, but he didn’t say anything. “I suppose so. My mom and me, we’re the only ones actually related. Everyone else is kind of adopted. We’re kind of like a circus. We traveled around the Midwest, picking up girls with special…abilities.”

“Just girls?”

“Girls are easier for Mom to find for some reason. I’m not sure why.”

“Is your mom the one in charge?”

“She is. Now. I’m taking you straight to her.”

“Can she make herself ignored like you can?”

“And plenty more. She’s very powerful. The only one stronger than her was Grandpa.”

“You said only you and your mom were actually related. I take it he was your adopted grandpa?”

Jude nodded. “He found my mom when she was still pregnant with me. She was an abused runaway. He took her in off the street, taught her his magic. When she was strong enough, she started looking for more girls like her, saving them the way Grandpa saved us. She made it her mission to save them. And we were safe. Until he showed up.”

“The magic man?”

Jude nodded. “Grandpa talked about him occasionally. But he never went into any real detail. All we ever knew was that he was someone from his past. A seriously bad news kind of guy. Apparently, Grandpa defeated him once, but he always said he might come back.”

“Scary.”

“It was. Used to give me nightmares. Then, about six months ago, it happened. He came back.”

“And he killed him?”

For the most part, the kid had been pleasant, but now there was a darkness in his eyes that Eric found almost troubling. He nodded. “Ambushed us in the middle of the night. The bastard. Burned down our house in the middle of a snow storm. The rest of us barely escaped.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Jude shrugged. “My mom was convinced he was going to come looking for the rest of us, so we scattered. The two of us are held up in an old farmhouse. The girls all went out and faded into the surrounding towns. We cut off all communication. We went dark, you might say. And it worked up until a couple of days ago, when Mom woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t feel Regina anymore. She was gone. Dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Were you close to her?”

He glanced over at him. “Regina? Not really. I mean, not like the others, you know. Not like Grandpa.” At this, he paused.

“He meant a lot to you.”

“Of course he did. He was my grandpa. I loved him.”

“Must be tough.”

“Yeah. It is.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and went on: “Mom knew as soon as Regina died that it was the magic man. He was hunting us down one by one. And she knew we didn’t stand a chance against him.”

Eric nodded. “So she naturally decided to send you hundreds of miles away to fetch a thirty-two-year-old, out-of-shape, high school English teacher to save you all. Makes perfect sense.”

“She knows these spells…”

Eric wanted to ask if there were cauldrons involved, but decided against it.

“She cast one to tell her if she could face the magic man, but it showed her she’d die if she tried. We’d all die. Even with all our talents combined, we’re just no match for him. It also told us it was useless to run. He’d find us no matter where we went. That’s why we split up and tried to hide. But he found us anyway. Finally, she cast another spell to ask for help.” Jude turned and met Eric’s eyes. “What it showed her was you.”

Eric stared back at him. He had no idea why a witch’s spell would point to him of all people. Sure, he’d done a few amazing things. He’d traveled between worlds, conversed with ghosts, battled golems, even faced a jinn… But those were all things that sounded far more impressive and heroic than they really were. Particularly the part about battling the golems. Mostly he just ran away, screaming more like a girl than he cared to admit. How the hell was he supposed to face a magic man that was strong enough to single-handedly destroy an entire coven of witches?

And when did his life become so weird that this all didn’t sound utterly insane?

His cell phone rang and he fished it from the pocket of his jeans. It was Isabelle.

“Okay, so I just talked to Karen and she’s, like, totally pissed off at you.”

Eric sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

“We’ve got to get you home by Friday morning.”

“I know. I think my marriage depends on it.”

“Your place in bed definitely depends on it.”

“You have anything for me, or did you just call to tell me what I already know?”

“Hey, don’t get snippy with me. I’m on your side.”

“Sorry. But seriously, what do you know about magic?”

“I liked watching it on TV before I became a face on a milk carton.”

“What about this real magic I’m hearing about today?”

“Far as I know, it doesn’t exist.”

“So you’ve never encountered a real magician before? Or a witch?”

“I’m a thirteen-year-old girl who hasn’t aged in thirty-seven years and can read your mind from anywhere in the world. Magic kind of seems irrelevant to me.”

“Good point.” It wasn’t much different than a man who could conjure golems or churn his own aura into a monstrous, living fluid.

“One thing I learned from the people I ran into inside Altrusk’s moody mansion is that there are two distinct kinds of paranormal energies out there. One is psychic energy, which has to do with the mysteries of the mind. The other is spiritual, which of course is related to the soul. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, everything weird and unusual that I’ve ever witnessed can be lumped into one of those two categories. Jude’s ‘magic’ may be nothing more than the same psychic and spiritual abilities you’ve been encountering since the day you met me.”

“That’s true.”

“But there’s a lot I don’t know. I mean, there could be lots of other kinds of energy out there, including magic, and I just haven’t run across it yet. Either way, I wouldn’t underestimate it. It’s likely to be just as dangerous.”

“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”

Jude was watching him talk, his brow furrowed. “Who are you talking to?”

“A friend,” replied Eric. He was fairly sure he could trust the kid, but he didn’t like telling people about Isabelle unless he absolutely had to. He was afraid that if the wrong people found out about her, they might go looking for her, and he refused to put her in danger.

“A lot of people believe in magic,” Isabelle informed him. “A lot of the people I was trapped in the Altrusk house with thought that place was magic. Mostly, I think it’s just a way to rationalize anything people don’t understand.”

“I’d generally agree with that,” said Eric.

“So it could be that these people just call what they do magic because they don’t understand it. But I’m not going to dismiss it as a possibility, either.”

Eric nodded. That sounded very smart.

“I’ll let you know if I sense anything weird.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“I know.”

“By the way, where are you?”

“A little hunting cabin in the woods. Hell if I know where. Might be Canada.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is. At least I’m alone here. The last few places I passed through were…occupied.” Since leaving the Altrusk house, she’d traveled the world, jumping from one place to the next without ever stepping foot outside. Because she was partially fused to these places, she couldn’t simply walk out the door. She could only move around by using the mysterious gateway that existed inside the buildings she visited. She’d described this gateway to him as a door hidden deep within each building, where normal people couldn’t go for some reason. He still didn’t understand it, but the doorway apparently never led to the same place twice. She entered and exited by it and it always led somewhere new, but somewhere with the same, strange properties that had defined the Altrusk house, a place only half inside this world. Most of these places were deserted, but occasionally she ran across others like herself, people trapped in the buildings, unable to leave. Strangely, these people always seemed to succumb to some kind of madness within months of being trapped, eventually leaving them little more than frightened, empty shells of the people they used to be. She didn’t like being near those people. She found them disturbing. And they reminded her too much of the Altrusk house, which had trapped quite a few unsuspecting souls over the years. Of all those unfortunate people she’d encountered, Isabelle was the only one who’d successfully retained her sanity. She had no idea why.

The one advantage was that whenever she encountered someone, she somehow had the ability to absorb any knowledge they had about the world, which was how she’d become so knowledgeable about the weird and supernatural.

“I’ll be…you know…right inside your head if you need me.”

Eric smiled. “Thanks.”

“Bye.”

He hung up and pocketed the phone.

Jude continued to glance at him as he drove, but he didn’t ask about Isabelle again.

Eric didn’t volunteer anything. “So how far into Illinois are we going?”

“Way down in the southern part of the state. It’s about eight hours from here.”

“Fantastic.”

“Maybe you should take a little nap. You might not be sleeping much tonight. And let me tell you, there’s not much to see between here and there.”

Eric thought that sounded like a good idea, but it was almost three hours before the endless fields of Illinois finally lulled him completely to sleep.