Harvest of Changelings (34 page)

For a long moment Jeff wanted to tell Mr. Tyson—Ben—Malachi's daddy—to stop the car and let him out. Anywhere on the side of the road; it didn't matter. Or maybe he would just
push
open the back of the station wagon they were in and launch himself out. He would just fly straight up into the air as high as he could go until the city of Raleigh and the town of Garner were a blanket of brightly glowing colored jewels below and above was only the night sky and the stars. He would just float on the winds forever and ever, never coming down, never again touching the earth. And the hard, tight lump in his stomach would come apart as if it were a loose granny knot.

Jeff said nothing. Even up there on the night wind, he knew the red-eyed monsters would eventually find him and he would never be able to get to the other place—Faerie—where he had gone in his dreams. That had been just two months ago. Malachi would die and so would Hazel and Russell and Mr. Tyson and his friend, Mr. Ruggles, and Father Jamey and the Clarks and then all the people Jeff loved would be dead and he might as well be, if that happened.

It would be like going to live with his father. His therapist had asked him, at his last appointment, if he loved his father. Jeff hadn't known what to say. Love his father? Once upon a time—before his mother had left—yes, he had. And did he love her?

“I don't know anymore,” Jeff said after a long silence. “I don't know.”

Finally Mr. Ruggles spoke. It was a relief to hear his voice. It sounded so ordinary, and it broke the memory of that last time at the therapist, and the other memories lying behind it, waiting, receded, went out to sea.

“We should be riding white horses, or be astride the back of a green dragon,” Mr. Ruggles said from the car's front seat, where he sat beside Mr. Tyson.

“Well,” Father Jamey said from the middle seat, “this is the church car I am letting you drive. St. Mary's Catholic Church in gold letters on both sides, and an outlined Dove of Peace and Mary herself—”

“There is a cross on the hood, too,” Hazel said as she leaned her head on the priest's shoulder. Russell was in the back of the wagon with Jeff, staring out the side window.

“I put that there this morning, along with some holy water,” Father Jamey said laughing, “so we have a blessed steed after all.”

The others laughed and Jeff felt the knot in his stomach start to unravel. He felt, with the lightest of touches, both Russell and Hazel mentally reassuring him:
It's okay. It's going to be okay, you'll see.
Even without Malachi to complete their tetrad, they remained linked inside a gossamer web of thought.

Huh you think YOU'RE scaredJeff I'm almost crazyscared too scared to talk about it . . .

They needed Malachi, who was the true golden-eyed telepath, to really mind-talk, but even so, sometimes Jeff could hear Russell's voice, clear and soft, as if Russell were whispering in his ear. Only Russell and neither Malachi nor Hazel could hear him. Jeff leaned over and squeezed Russell's hand.

And Russell could hear Jeff's voice as easily:
HeyRuss, Everybody's scared, but we practiced and PRACTICED, REMEMBER? And thecloserweget, the stronger Malachi will be and he'll help, he KNOWS we'recoming&what we are going to do.

“We're just about there,” Mr. Tyson said as he drove the car off the interstate and down an off-ramp. He slowed at the bottom of the short hill, but he didn't stop, even though the light was red. There were no other cars on the road. It was almost midnight—way too late for any sane person to be out. “There's the entrance to the state forest up ahead.”

“It's showtime,” Father Jamey said.

Jeff clenched his fists. This time Russell found and squeezed his hand.

“I feel him,” Hazel said suddenly, sitting up straight. “I feel Malachi. He's not far away. He's sort of sleepy—weird-sleepy, but he knows we're here. He's expecting us—and if he can wake up enough, he will help us.”

“He's drugged or enchanted or both,” Mr. Ruggles muttered. “How can a ten-year-old boy help us—”

“Jack: we can do this,” Mr. Tyson said as he turned off the highway onto a graveled road, the station wagon's tires crunching as he slowed the car down and parked it beneath a cedar tree. “We'll park here. Thomas wanted Jack to approach on foot.”

Jeff wished the car's headlights were on bright. All he could see was the gravel road and dark trees and darker shadows and a small
sign pointing the way to Parking. When Mr. Tyson cut the car's lights, the dark jumped at him, as if it had been waiting for that moment to pounce. For a long moment, after he had climbed out of the car after Russell, Jeff could see nothing at all. It was as if the darkness
had
eaten him, its mouth so large he hadn't even noticed he had been devoured, a huge land whale and a very small Jonah.

“Hold my hand,” Russell said very softly and the darkness receded at the sound of Russell's voice. Jeff gripped Russell's hand in his, reassured by the solidity of flesh. He wasn't surprised when a few moments later Hazel took his other hand. Nor was Jeff surprised that, when she touched him, a quick current of energy rippled between all three of them. Now he could see the trees were just trees: cedars, pines, dogwoods, and with a sudden new clarity of night vision, maples, oaks, sweetgums, sycamores.

WhyIcan see the colors of the leaves I see theleaves the texture of the bark—

Hold onTIGHT everybody, I need you all to HOLD on . . .

“He wants us to hurry,” Jeff said as the adults started getting out of the car. “He's really sick and keeping them out of his head and connecting to us—he's gone. I mean, the connection broke—there is something he is going to do and he's afraid Thomas might figure it out.”

The holy water Father Jamey sprinkled on everybody felt cool on Hazel's face. She kept a firm grip on Jeff's hand as she watched the priest pray. Everyone seemed on the edge of crazy with fear. No, just Mr. Ruggles, Uncle Jack, as the man kept insisting they call him —he was the only one visibly shaking. He had the hardest job: bait. He had to walk naked down a very dark road in the middle of the night to face a group of monsters waiting for him around a boiling black cauldron. And the head monster was his only son who wanted to cut out his father's still-beating heart and hold it up for all the others to see, blood running down his arm, his chest, his legs, and then eat the heart.

Hazel shuddered. She wished she were back home, in front of her computer, playing a very harmless and easy to control and understand computer game. So what if her grandparents ignored her most of the time—at least they weren't mean about it. Everything would be a lot neater and safe and the only chaos would be chaos she could manage. The dangers would be known and predictable,
but—in a way she couldn't quite name, to be here was to be—more alive. And it did matter that she lived an invisible life. Hazel shook her head. Now wasn't the time for these mental wanderings. She wanted to go over to Mr. Ruggles and hug him—well, maybe not hug him if he was naked—but at least squeeze his hand. But he seemed to want no one to get close to him; his aura had turned ice-blue-white, encasing him inside as if he were frozen. Not even Malachi's dad, his best friend, could penetrate the cold.

Hazel wanted to speak, to shout, to say something to break the heaviness of the silence, weighed down even more by the dark. But she didn't know what to say.

“In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Father Jamey said, his clear voice breaking the heavy silence—a silence, Hazel realized, as he prayed out loud, hadn't lasted more than the time needed for everyone to get out of the car. The sound of the priest's voice let her hear other sounds—it was as if his speech had knocked open a door. Jeffs and Russell's breathing. The crunch of Mr. Tyson's feet on the gravel. The snap of a twig as an animal moved in the trees. And the wind in the trees, sounding like the low muttering of a crowd.

“In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints. And powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil. Amen. That's the abbreviated version of what to say during an exorcism—the closest to what we are doing here, I think. Now it really is showtime,” Father Jamey said and starting with Mr. Tyson and ending with Jeff, blessed everyone individually, drawing wet crosses on their foreheads.

3:11 A.M.

I should be asleep; I need to be asleep. I need to be in a sleep so profound that I am past all dreams, past all remembering. I know that sleep will never come. I will remember and dream of what happened for the rest of my life.

Everybody else is asleep. The kids insisted on sleeping together in the same room, in the same bed. When I checked on them for the umpteenth time a few minutes ago Hazel and Malachi were sleeping
back to back and Russell and Jeff were a jumble of legs and arms. The tetradic link between them is still visible: ropes of multicolored light woven around, under, over, and through them.

This must be how it is in Faerie: tetrads make a family/ sexual unit. But then how did Valeria come to me? Are there two other people there with whom I would have shared with her?

Never mind.

I laid my hand gently on the talisman, the silver-grey twelve-pointed star on Malachi's chest. It's glowing now—it's never glowed before. It's vibrating, too; I feel it through my fingertips. With the silver light of the star rippling across his face my son has never looked more like his mother.

I smoothed his hair and put the back of my hand against his cheek.

Jack is asleep. I pray he isn't dreaming. I put a cot in my bedroom and after giving him a double dose of painkillers, shoved him on it with a pillow and a blanket. He managed to strip down to his underwear before he fell asleep. His back was still hot to the touch, beneath the dressings on his burns. The bandage on his chest oozed blood.

Father Jamey is surely asleep at the rectory. Or perhaps he is at St. Mary's, praying. I can see him doing that now, the only person in the empty sanctuary, in the corner by the pieta and the lit vigil candles, rows of tiny, white singular flames, turned blue by the color of the rows of blue glass jars. For what is he praying and to whom? I need to ask him how he fits God and Jesus into all this, now that the Change is upon us. Valeria told me of the Three Sons in Faerie, and the Four Teachers, and the Good God, the Father, whose symbol was an enor - mous cornucopia, overflowing with good things, and the Great Goddess, Triune, the oldest of them all. Aren't they all just different syllables of the same name?

He said he kept praying the whole time we were out there, in his heart, to himself—however he could. I'm glad he did.

I have tried to sleep. I have lain on my stomach, my back, and both sides. I have walked and walked around this house, checking and rechecking each room, each window, each door. just the way Valeria did almost every night as she set the protective wards. I have rearranged and re-rearranged the salt and the pepper shakers, the sugar bowls, and the honey and the jelly jars. I have stacked and re-stacked the fairy lore books beside my desk and I have written all this down here, in my journal, and I have been staring at my words on the screen for a good five minutes. I know what I have to do before I can sleep.
I have to write down everything that happened. tonight: what I saw, heard, smelled, did. And what the others did:

 

Jack took off his clothes and Russell and Jeff and Hazel disappeared somewhere over their heads, floating inside their nest of lights.

“I wish I could hear Malachi like they can,” Jack muttered as he pulled his NCSU sweatshirt over his head.

“I hear the barest of whispers,” Father Jamey said as he took each piece of Jack's clothes in his arms: sweatshirt, T-shirt, socks, shoes, jeans, underwear. “But it is a good sign. He's not completely under Thomas's control. He might be able to help us when the time comes. Now, let me bless you.”

I heard no whispers, touches, nothing. My own son, nothing. It didn't seem quite fair. Jack seemed to be getting smaller the less clothes he had on. When he was finally naked, I could see how much weight he had lost. Jack's bare body looked shrunken, frail, and no match for a black witch. Or the Fomorii guards we saw ahead, their eyes malevolent coals. They would let us pass now, I knew that. But if our plan worked, would they let us pass as easily on the way out? I reached down to reassure myself I had the iron fireplace poker hanging from my belt. I looked up to check the priest: a stainless steel butcher knife in a homemade sheath. And each of the kids had steak knives. In my pocket: a thin tube of iron filings. Just maybe—no, I told myself,
just let it happen
.

“Might? Better make this a strong blessing, then, Father, and a warm one,” Jack said, shivering. “And pray that nobody sees me wandering naked out here. Getting picked up for indecent exposure would definitely screw everything up.”

The night air was cool and wet with the promise of rain. I could see clouds gathering behind them, back toward the highway, back toward home. We would have to drive home in a storm—if we got to drive home. The wind was rising—the leaves were already turning over, the tree trunks beginning to sway. Lightning flashed in the clouds. An October thunderstorm? Just one more thing different this week, one more sign of the coming Change.

“In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen,” Father Jamey said in a soft voice and then drew a cross in the air. His hands glowed as he made the cross and the glow stayed in the air, a shimmering cruciform of light. “Take it inside you, Jack. It'll help you stay safe.”

I wanted to say something, anything to make Jack stronger and safe, but I couldn't. I didn't have any words. Jack had never looked
more vulnerable than standing naked in the gravel parking lot of the Clemmons State Forest, his skin even paler against the gravel's blue, with the dark trees and the path into the forest behind him, the path to the waiting fire.

Jack held out his arms and closed them around the cross, pulling it into his chest. It sparked and popped when it touched him. “It's warm—ahhh,” Jack whispered as the cross sank into his flesh. “There. I feel like I just drank a cup of hot coffee, really fast.”

“Jack?” I finally said, my voice breaking, “you're my best friend; I love you.”

“I know. C'mon, it's showtime.”

 

Once we were inside the forest, on the path that led to the coven and the fire, the wind of the coming storm died, as if the trees had swal - lowed it into their leaves. Father Jamey and I walked several paces behind Jack and I listened as they walked for what, I wasn't sure. All I could hear was the sound of shoes and feet on gravel, and then, when there was no gravel, shoes and feet on hard earth. And Jack muttering in relief that the gravel wasn't cutting into his bare feet. No branches stirred, no leaves rustled, no small unseen animal jumped or ran. Even the hands on my watch stopped moving. The watch's luminous glow disappeared, as if it were a candle snuffed out by wind—but there was no wind. This can't be Malachi's magic; he's too weak and sick. He could barely connect to the other kids and Father Jamey. Thomas did this; he made this empty space. Is this the sort of world Thomas wants to make? Still, silent, dark? God, those two Fomorii are scary and dark, dark, dark shadows in the night, a black darker than the night.

I felt the heat first, before I saw the fire, at first a slight warmth on my face, as if someone had touched hot metal and then touched my cheek. But the touch lingered and grew warmer: sunburn at the end of too much time on the beach. I started sweating. We walked past an enormous, old oak next, with a park sign on it and a box attached to its trunk. (White Oak,
Quercus Alba
. If I pressed the button on the box, I would be able to hear what the White Oak had to say—about what I couldn't then imagine. Did trees talk in Faerie? Were they “in-spirited” with a dryad? Narnian trees were, but Narnia and Middle-Earth are fictions; this was real.)

After White Oak, I could see the fire and the coven waiting for them, shadows around the flames.

“Jack, Ben, it's going to be all right,” Father Jamey said and blessed Jack again and drew yet another glowing cross in the air.

“Right, Father. Ben, if I don't—take care of yourself,” Jack said and squeezed my arm. I hugged him, naked as he was, and then Jack turned to face the coven and their fire and his son.

The fire was huge. Somehow Thomas had managed to get whole trees to burn: they formed a tipi-like structure, with the fire at its heart and crown, roaring, laughing, eating, talking. The coven stood around the flames, all of them naked, the fire making red shadows on white, black, brown, and yellow bodies.

“He has stolen a church altar. Or it was given to him,” Father Jamey whispered to me. I wondered why he was whispering—surely nobody could have heard anything unless they were shouting above the fire's roar. Sweat had plastered the priest's dark hair to his head. It rolled down his forehead, dripped off his ears, soaked his white robe, now a wavery pink in the firelight. I nodded. I had seen the altar, too. The marble top had been placed over four rock cairns, forming a rough table. I gripped the silver star hard and tight; its points cut into my flesh. I felt a surge of power and warmth in return.

Thomas stood behind the altar, the fire at his back, facing the coven, which had stepped back to open the circle, to let Jack in. Malachi lay on the marble, spread-eagled, his arms and legs tied to the four corners of the altar. Black candles sputtered in each corner. One silver bowl had been placed at Malachi's head; another had been placed at his feet. Something burned inside each bowl, releasing a strange scent and a heavy, white smoke twisting and curling out of each bowl like snakes. The smoke oozed and slithered to the ground, weaving itself in and around the stone cairns and Thomas's feet. Thomas lifted a long, black knife, its blade reflecting fire, when he saw all of them. He alone of those around the fire wore clothes: a mid - night-blue robe, marked with glowing pentagrams and twisting spirals.

“Of course I can hear you. And, of course it's a church altar, priest. But this is a different congregation than the sheep that listen to you every Sunday, isn't it? Or is it? You might recognize some of these faces, if you look closely,” Thomas said. “But let's discuss such things another time. We all know why we are here tonight.”

“We have a deal, Thomas,” Jack said. “My life for the boy. Release him to his father and the priest and then I'm yours.”

“Yes, we had a deal. Your life for his life, your heart for his heart,” Thomas intoned and raised his arms. The coven, in one voice, started humming:
aaaeeeiiiooouuu
. They stepped closer, drawing the circle tighter. I could see, in the shadows, in the firelight, individual faces: Charlotte Collins, Malachi's teacher, a Baptist minister, the
mechanic at a service station on South Saunders Street. I looked at the priest and saw him nodding—yes, there were members of his congregation here. And were those red eyes as well—were there even more Fomorii already here? Had the walls between rooms gotten so thin?

I was terrified.

Charlotte stepped out of the circle and stood behind Thomas. Her blond hair seemed to be part of the fire, as it writhed and twisted around her head—a medusa in flame. Her bare body glistened and shone and was marked with the same symbols as Thomas's midnight robe. She must be his witch queen. I knew she couldn't be trusted. She reached around Thomas's waist and pulled his robe back and then down his back, to pool at his feet. The same markings that covered his robe covered his body. His erect penis had been painted to match the color of his knife.

The humming grew louder. A log shifted and the fire jumped, flames curling up into the sky like unrolling streamers. The smell from the silver bowls grew thicker and more pungent and the white smoke spread, twisting itself through the legs of the coven. I felt the fire's heat on my face; I was soaked to the skin with sweat. I felt the terror growing, swelling and I wanted to run, yelling, knocking down the coven, Charlotte, Thomas, get Jack, get Malachi, get the hell out of here—but this was pretty close to hell. My best friend, my son.

“Don't. I know it's hard, Ben, but don't do anything,” Father Jamey said softly, stepping closer to me, grabbing my arm. “Thomas is distracted and he's let go some of his binding on Malachi. Give Malachi a chance to feel this, to figure out what's going on.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I whispered back.

In answer, the priest gripped my arm tighter and with his free hand, pushed back the hair from his own pointed ears. “Wait, just wait. And keep praying. Saint Michael, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Wait.”

Jack stepped to the altar and untied Malachi's left hand, then his right. Then Malachi's left foot, his right. Then, slowly, carefully, he leaned down to pick up the boy.

“No, stop,” Thomas said, and pulled Jack back from Malachi, who seemed to be waking up, stirring slightly, as if he were pushing against the spells that had bound him on the marble slab.

“What do you mean: No? We had a deal: me for him. More power from the willing sacrifice of a parent,” Jack said, pushing away Thomas's hands.

Thomas laughed and held up his knife. The blade shone in the firelight. “But I would have even more power if I took both hearts, now, wouldn't I? And why should I keep a promise made to you, old man?”

Thomas slashed down, aiming at Jack's chest, as Charlotte and the rest screamed, and the fire leaped higher. Jack caught his arm as the blade bit into his chest, and pushed Thomas back again, the blade shifting and then sliding against the sweat on Jack's chest. It fell between the two naked men as they wrestled, the screaming louder and louder.