Harvest of Changelings (36 page)

When Ben woke Sunday morning he had no idea where he was. He sat up, blinking and rubbing his eyes. God, he felt stiff—like he had slept on the floor. Ben looked around: he had slept on the floor. He was on the floor in the choir room at St. Mary's. He had spent the night there and so had everybody else: Jack, Malachi, Russell, Jeff, and Hazel and her cat.

“I wonder if I can borrow a razor and some shaving cream from Father Jamey,” Ben muttered, rubbing his hand over the morning stubble on his face. He glanced over at Jack, who was still asleep, flat on his back and snoring. Jack, at least for the moment, seemed to be getting better. Father Jamey had managed to change the dressing on Jack's chest wound and the burns on his back. The burns looked as if they were healing. The long cut on Jack's chest still oozed blood and the flesh around it had blackened. It hurts and it burns, Jack had said. Liberal amounts of Solarcaine—all Father Jamey had for burns —only slightly alleviated the pain. At least Jack could sleep with a glass of water and two pills left over from the priest's arthoscopic knee surgery.

Ben stood, his legs creaking.
Friday, Saturday, and now, on
Sunday morning, I don't have a home. I have to live in a church until Halloween—Samhain—and what then? Where do we go? How do we get there? I have looked and looked: in books, journals, upstairs, downstairs—and my lady is gone and I don't know which gate will take me to her chamber, which gate Valeria tried to take ten years ago.

He had watched her die, only minutes after she left the house, forbidding him to come to the door to see her off, a command he had ignored. One more Fomorii outside, waiting, the backup, in case the first two failed. He had almost died with her, along with a willow oak and a dogwood and a good chunk of the front yard. Grass refused to grow back where the trees had been. And for a long time thereafter, he might as well have been dead.

Ben pulled his pants on and then wriggled into a sweatshirt. He would have to ask Father Jamey to get him some clothes. Would the Wake County Sheriffs Department let a priest into his house? Ben shook his head. Too many things to think about. He glanced at his watch—six. And what the hell—heaven—
I am in a church
—was he doing up at six A.M.?

There were no alarm clocks, of course, anywhere in the choir room. The closest thing was a metronome on top of the piano and an old clock on the wall. The wall clock was broken: the glass was gone and somebody had managed to snap off the minute and hour hands. The second hand remained, stuck between four and five.

Jack didn't have an alarm wristwatch. None of the boys did, either. Nor Hazel. So, what had woken him up? What had rang?

“I must have been dreaming,” Ben whispered and stepping over Jack, went to check on Malachi.

The four children lay together in a nest of bodies on the opposite side of the room from Ben and Jack. Ben could see Malachi's luminous bright head between Russell's reddy-gold and Jeffs brown, a darkening brown, almost black, Ben realized as he stood over the children. And Hazel's honey-brown—the same? The bruises on Russell's face were almost gone. The blue-grey cat
was
bigger.
Malachi glows all the time now, just like his mother did when she was pregnant.
The cat was awake and staring back at Ben through half-open eyes, bright blue slits that cast a thin, blue light on the worn carpet.

“Good morning, Alexander,” Ben said and knelt down to rub the cat's big head. The beast had grown to the size of a German shepherd, but it still acted like a house cat. As Ben stroked Alexander's
head and back, the cat started purring, sounding like the rumbling of a small engine. To Ben's surprise, it rolled over on its back and let him stroke the soft white-grey belly fur.

“You are something else, kitty-boy-oh-boy—”

Ben stopped mid-stroke. He had heard again the sound that had awakened him. It wasn't an alarm, but a bell, a single, clear bell rung once. It couldn't be the church—the earliest mass wasn't until seven—no, eight, Father Jamey had said. No one wanted to be out before the sun was good and up, even when there hadn't been a curfew.

All that was left was a bare patch of earth in the front yard. I planted bulbs of every kind, fertilized, watered, aerated, everything I could think of, and nothing grew.

Ben resumed his stroking and was rewarded with another note from the mysterious bell. This time he could localize it: the sound was right by him—right in front of him.

The bell rang again.

“You are a good boy, Alex,” Ben whispered and walking on his hands and knees went around the cat. He knew where the bell was and it wasn't a bell.

Ben sat down beneath the window, by his son. He leaned back to press his back against the wall: that always took away some of the soreness. He gently stroked his son's hair, the warm light twisting around his fingers. “Malachi? Wake up, son, tell me what you're dreaming.”

“Dad? What?” Malachi opened his eyes and looked up.

“Tell me what you're dreaming. Quick, before you forget—the star your mother left you—it was ringing—”

Malachi sat up, holding the star in his right hand. He eased himself into the crook of Ben's arm. “A circle without grass, like the one in the front yard, where Mama died, but bigger and not here, it's glowing, and I'm above it, high in the air. Dad, feel what happens when I move the star.”

He's so frail and that fever is burning him up. There was nothing left to bury after Valeria and the Fomorii burned up in the front yard. Just that circle where nothing has grown since. There might be another place like that—near—but where? I know this; the name is in my head; I've read about it. But I've read so many books, looking for a clue, any clue—

The star rang again. Malachi moved the star to his left and it rang yet again. To his right: no sound.

“You dreamed of the gate, didn't you, son? Your mother's star is
a compass—see, that long point glows when you move it to the left. And the star rings.”

“Yes,” Malachi said, whispering, as he leaned into his father. “That's the way to the gate—now we can find it.”

“Don't say anything yet to the others. We have to be sure, son. It's just like a compass—if we only had a map—a map,
that's it,”
Ben said half to himself, half to Malachi,
“a map.”
But his road maps were in the car, outside, and it wasn't safe to go outside. Father Jamey had to have a map somewhere—in his car, the church, the rectory.

Father Jamey will be down here soon, with breakfast. I can wait until then to get the map. Malachi can sleep a little longer—he's already fallen asleep again, even with all this noise. He is so very hot. And he's so light; he feels like a bird. His arms, his wrists are so thin. His body seems to be melting away. Those golden eyes are enormous. Now I can get him home; I can save him. Jack? If he doesn't die first, the fairies must know how to save people. with black magic wounds. What am I going to do without Jack? If I can get Malachi and Jack and Jeff and Hazel and Russell and that cat out of this church, past the sheriff, past Thomas and his witches—know he hasn't given up—if.

 

Father Jamey brought in the North Carolina map he had fished out of the glove compartment of his car, and spread it out on the floor in the choir room. The children, all four awake by then, their questions squelched, followed Malachi's direction and each sat on one side of the map, Malachi to the north, Hazel to the south, Russell, the east, Jeff, the west. A very pale looking Jack sat behind Malachi, to the boy's right, on the piano bench, leaning back against the piano, as if he needed its weight to bear him. Ben sat on the floor, to his son's left. Malachi held the still-glowing silver-grey twelve-pointed star in his hand, the chain looped around his wrist.

“Well,” the priest said, looking at each of them, “are you ready? Malachi? This is your show, sort of. Your mother left you the star.”

Malachi nodded and unlooped the star and held it over the map, letting it sway like a pendulum. “Nothing's happening, and it's stopped glowing,” he said, frowning and looking at his father.

“It's a compass,” his father said. “Hold it flat in your hand, close to the map, see where it pulls.”

Father Jamey watched as the star glowed back to life and
pulled
Malachi's hand over the map, east on 40, then south on 15-501, away from Durham, around Chapel Hill, and south again, and into Chatham County, into Pittsboro, around the Courthouse, and
southwest on 902. Each road lit up on the map, as if someone was drawing with a luminous marker, as Malachi let the star
pull
his hand. And as each road lit up, the star rang, a sure sweet note that rose up above all of them, almost visible, a brightening in the air.

“It's warm,” he whispered, looking up once at his father. “Just like that game. Hot or cold.”

Ben nodded.

Over the Rocky River, then Dewitt Smith Road, NC 2176, over 421, and Bear Creek, another crossroads with a name, and streets, roads, all spinning out from it: Old US 421, Barker Road, Roscoe Road, Bonlee School Road, Bear Creek Church Road. Harpers Crossroad and Malachi and the star were still. A slight twitch, up, another stop, and the star rang. This time it sounded like a gong, a long, low tone, which reverberated, bouncing off the walls, and settling over them.

“Here it is, this is the place,” Malachi said and bent over the map to read the words naming the road. “1100. Devil's Tramping Ground.”

Of course. A perfect circle where nothing grows, has ever grown. I remember the stories—we read about it in school. If something is left on the path, anything, overnight, the path is clear the next day. The circle in the yard—that was all she left.

“Dad?”

Ben looked over at Father Jamey, who shook his head. “I'm not from North Carolina, Ben.”

“I know the place. I've never been there, but I know it. A big circle in a grove of trees where nothing grows. It's the gate.” Ben said.

“We can really get there—we can get to Faerie,” Russell shouted and jumped up. “We can do it—we can go home.”

“We're almost there,” Jeff shouted, joining in Russell's chorus. Hazel, then Jeff and Russell, started playing tag with the cat, knocking over the chairs and music stands. Music sheets became airborne, sailing around the room, making great circles in the air. Jack didn't stand, but he managed to sit up and watch, one hand on his chest, the other waving in the air, as if he had a baton and was directing the show.

Father Jamey was able to go back to the house yesterday afternoon, after the noon mass. He told me the house had been ransacked. The
doors had been knocked down, the windows smashed, the furniture turned over, torn apart. He said it was as if they were DEA agents looking for drug stashes. Cushions, pillows, and chair seats had been slashed open, foam and feathers torn out and scattered everywhere. Every plate, every glass, every cup and saucer—smashed. The kitchen floor crunched. Even the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar bowl, the jelly jars—smashed into a sticky mess. The computer, the TV, the stereo. Books with pages ripped out, spines broken.

Everything.

I had wanted him to get one book—just one,
The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories.
He had to go all the way into Raleigh, to the Cameron Village Public Library.

“None of the books in your house, Ben, were salvageable.”

Somehow the books hurt the most. I know I can't go back and get them—I know I will never go back to that house again. Where I am going to go—after Faerie—I don't know. Is there an after Faerie? Do I stay there? Can I? She's gone.

It wasn't just Thomas's goons or the sheriff's boys, Father Jamey said. My neighbors helped. He caught a handful in the house taking things.

“They're normals, Ben; their kids aren't Changing. They aren't Changing. They're scared.”

Normals? Are there two kinds of humans now? The Changed and the normal? The magical and the mundane?

“I got some of your clothes and Malachi's. Those diskettes you wanted—maybe you can use the computer in the rectory office. Here are some of Jack's clothes. They wrecked his house, too, by the way. I stopped at Kmart on the way back from the library—got some clothes for Hazel, Jeff, and Russell,” he had said.

He came back down a little while ago, to bring dinner. He was still wearing his robes from mass, white and made from rough cloth, a rope around his waist. He looked a bit medieval.

“Are you going to stay here tonight with us?” I asked, afraid that the house wreckers would follow us here.

“You are safe in this church, at least for now. You remember what you told me about priests having special powers in the old stories? You know I can make a Cross in the air,” he said and quickly drew another shimmering cruciform apparition. “I'm Changing, too; I told you that. Look at my ears, my eyes.”

The Change must take longer in adults. Besides his ears, there is just a touch of luminosity in his blue eyes—as if there were a light shimmering behind the blue, a bit of a ways off, flickering in some distant wind.

“Are you going with us?” I asked.

“No, I don't think so,” Father Jamey said. “I'm not dreaming of a place with silver and golden-leafed trees with glowing white trunks and two moons in the sky. My dreams are—different. I'd better go on, get to the grocery store before the panic sets in. It's the darkness—sunset is almost an hour earlier than it's supposed to be; sunrise an hour later. You're safe here. I can do that much, combined with the inherent Power of a sacred place. I might be able to do more—I'll tell you later.”

I am in the music director's office right now. I told the others I wanted to be left alone for a while. Father Jamey tells me the music director he inherited when he became the pastor at St. Mary's was a gadget man, sort of like Hazel's grand father, I guess. There is a complete computer set-up and a music synthesizer and a stereo deck like something off the
Enterprise
.

So I can keep up with my journal for now. But even as I write this, I wonder what for and why. Writing helps me think. Writing helps me release stress, work off tension. But who will read this when I am gone? Do I want anybody to read this? People will want a history of these times—won't they?

Never mind.

I still don't know how we are going to escape, to get to the gate, even now when we know where it is: the Devil's Tramping Ground.

It looks almost Edenic in the drawing in the book, a circle of earth surrounding a grassy lawn that is probably yellow with dandelions and buttercups in the spring. Trees grow close by the circle, a few almost on it, cedars, oaks, maples. According to John Harden, starting on page 54 in
The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Ghost Stories:

Anything left on the path is always removed by the next day. The Devil kicks aside “the obstacles on his nightly perambulations.” Or, a circle worn by the dancing feet of Indians? The path kept clear by God as a “monument to these faithful Indian braves”? A battle fought between Indians before the whites came, the survivors burying their chief, Croatan, and the “Great Spirit kept bare the circle, down through the years, in mourning for the loss of a faithful chief and a great leader.” The soil is simply sterile? Or the spells that bind this gate between worlds have made a barrier that keeps out vegetation, preserving only the earth in a perfect circle? Nine times around, backward, at midnight on Samhain and the gate will open.

None of which helps me. How are we supposed to get there, escape from this church when demons and demon-possessed people. are just outside? Father Jamey says he has a plan and not to worry.

Jack is only getting a little better. I make him eat and drink, but he hurts.

Malachi is dying.

Russell and Jeff are bored and scared and excited and are driving me crazy. Hazel is waiting for her turn to use the computer. Alex is asleep.

Samhain is three days away.

I can feel the demonic outside.