The Stargazers (29 page)

As the old woman
moved into the light, Oleander noted the white hair, the
cloudy
cataracts
on her eyes
. The delicate chin, and
the
nose
that might once have been dainty before it was
ravaged by some sort of wasting disease
all showed a twin’s
resemblance to
Lily, but this woman was fatter and dressed in the dowdy garb of this world.

“I keep ‘em pott
ed in my greenhouse,” said the woman.
“Took some seedlings with me when I left Ellemire. It’s always good to take a little bit of home with you wherev
er you go, don’t y
a
think?”

She stepped away from
the porch and ambled toward Oleander
, hands in pockets, not even a
trickle of fear on that deeply-lined
face.
Oleander wondered how one so wasted away could walk without a can
e. “I had a feelin’ you’d be stoppin’ by at some point, so I decided to give these little guys some real
dirt to play in
.
Just in case they wanted to say hi. And it looks like they did.
”

The paralys
is from their venomous bite was
spread
ing
through her body
. Her legs were useless planks, and her hips were as heavy as a boat anchor, but she
could still speak
on shallow puffs of breath
. “That’s
no way to treat… your niece…
just came to say
…
hello…”

Iris cackled. “I like sayin’ hello to you just like this, if you don’t mind.”

“You’d kill me… and h
ave done with it like a… coward?”

“Coward? Now I’m just protectin’ my property like any sensible woman livin’ alone out in the country would. I was gonna ask if you wanted some tea while we waited for Aster, but I guess you’re not in much of a mood for my good hospitality.”

An invisible elephant was sitting on Oleander’s chest
,
and a deep wheeze was developing,
but she still forced out the words. “Tea… Poison…”

“
Hissabak
!”
Iri
s the old woman whispered, and the sickle vines retreated. She leaned against a nearby tree.
The bitch was every bit as confident as Lily, but wilier. “In
my readin’
on American psychology, that’s call projection. You only say I’d poison you
‘
ca
use that’s exactly what you’
d do. I’m just a simple old tree hugger. Don’t do much these days by way of magic outside my own garden, and that’s only for stuff folks round here like to eat.” She reached into the front pocket of the overalls she was wearing and pulled o
ut a wad of napkin
. Out of the other pocket she pulled a roll of silver tape. She smelled something fruity. Oleander didn’t like where this was going.

“What’s … that? Poison…”

Iris stepped closer and loomed
over Oleander’s powerless body.
Her arms had turned traitor as well, so she couldn’t ward the old woman away.

“Not poison.
Medicine. After Aster told me
you done stole the body of Miss Ivy—
I can
only imagine what you did to the real woman, but I didn’t wanna horrify the young girl more than was necessary
—I decided to do a little research of my own. That little potion of yours must’
ve took you a long time to make.
”

She opened the napkin, revealing
a big strawberry so red it looked like a ruby out of a
king
’s crown. Dangling it over Oleand
er’s mouth, she said, “Y
ou’ll be happ
y—though probably not, now that I think about it
—to learn that reversing the potion is a whole heck of a lo
t simpler. Perfect for an alchemy novice like me, though maybe not as perfect as it would be if you’d made it.
But if somethin’
goes wrong, I guess it’s no big loss.”

Oleander tried to pull away as Iris’s wrinkled fingers drew closer, but she might as well have been pushing against a mountain to make it move. All she could manager were a few grunts and mutters.

Her struggles were no match for the old woman, who shoved the berry into her mouth and then quickly strapped it shut with a length silver of tape from the roll
.
The smell from whatever potion she’d injected into the strawberry filled her nose with its cloying herbal stink.

“Now, I know you probably will try real hard not to swallow that thing.
And hell, maybe your windpipe’s freezin’ up and you can’t.
I secretly hope you just choke on it and save us all a whole mess
of trouble. But I have a feelin’
you just won’t go down that easy.
Besides,
I think it’s Aster’s job to finish you. She’ll probably do a heck of a job a
t it too. Heard a girl screaming
somethin’ awful
out there
just a little while ago. Dyin’ lungs don’t scream that loud, but angry ones do.”

T
he
tainted strawberry began
to macerate in her mouth, leaking its herbal juices across her tongue and down her throat,
which just managed to swallow with what little muscular movement she had left
.

The muscles in her face and body began to twist and contract
. T
he pain
of the transformation was worlds worse
this time, but her immobilized diaphragm made it impossible for her to scream.
Her
arms rose
involuntarily
and began to shake
a
s the bodily metamorphosis took hold
. The fingers
bent and twisted at the joints, be
coming knobby and gnarled and d
rained of their stolen mocha
color
.
The only brown remaining
now
was in the form of mottled liver spots and moles.
They were the hands of her mother and sister. Reversing the
potion
that had made her into Ivy’s twin
was robbing her of old form, as she
had known
it would.

Her spine hunched forward
,
making the characteristic Stargazer hump. The bones in her legs shortened and thickened, the flesh bubbling up into pustules that would
painfully
swell and weep in the hot summer months
. Two of the sickle vines snapped at the widest part of her calf, but others
slithered in
to their res
cue
.

After a few more shuddering twists and cramp
s, the potion
finished
its work, and Oleander’s spirit sunk back into its
spoiled new
body, like parasite to host.

“
Ooh boy, you are even nastier lookin’ than me, and that’s saying somethin’.”

I will kill you, and oh I will enjoy it
, thought Oleander.

“Now, I’ve been thinkin’ about what to do
with you. Aster might be on her way back
here, but
I think she’s headin’
north to that spot in the woods we all know and love. What do you say we meet her up there?”

All Oleander
cou
ld do was grunt
.
Pick your place, bitch. You’ll die either way
.

When Iris cut the
sickle vines free in order to move her, Oleander would have smiled if she’d been able
. The bitch had just made the last mistake of her life.

-26-

Aster wasn’t sure how long she sat on the burial
mound steps with Bryon’s head
in he
r lap, but by the time she found the strength to stand up, his blood had dried into cold and
tacky goo on her hands and
the slate steps. Th
e moon had risen higher into the sky, illuminating the way down.

She couldn’t leave him here, but what could she do? He was too heavy to carry by herself. She would have to call someone for help, someone who could explain to Bryon’s poor father that his son was dead. At least for t
onight, until she could look Nick in the eye and tell him that this
was all her fault. The thought
made her want to throw herself the rest of the way down the murdering stone steps
.

You told Bryon’s father that you weren’t in any kind of trouble
.
What a lie that was.
She looked down at Bryon. He’d tried so hard to come back to her, but he may have been lost anyway. She would never know from his final words.

“I’m so sorry.” A tear trickled down her cheek, but she wiped it away impatiently.

Sheriff
Kennedy said he would help her if she ever called on him, and now was the time to do that. Someone would come collect poor Bryon, and o
nce all thi
s madness was over, she would
face the consequences.

After arranging
Bryon’s clothes in the dignified manner he deserved
, she headed back up to
her shorts.

Their picnic area was a shambles, but the flowers Bryon had picked for her still sat in their small vase. “Asters for Aster,” she whispered. Fresh tears welled up again
, and she fought the urge to sit back down and cry some more. But she needed to get going; she’d already been lucky to avoid any witnesses
,
and the hour was growing late.

She
spared one more glance at Bryon’s body
on her way back down, thankful his face was h
idden. “I love you
,” she
whispered and headed toward his car
.

A quick check revealed
the keys were still
dangling from the ignition. The thought of driving it filled her with dread, but she didn’t have much choice.

S
he climbed in and situated herself behind the wheel. Her
legs barely reached the pedals. She was sure she’d seen Bryon move this seat once,
but she didn’t know how to move
it herself
, so she
just sat forward. She’d observed the practice of driving enough
to get the basic idea of how it worked.

“Turn the key. That’s the first thing you do.” She barely recognized her voice, as hoarse as it was.
She grasped the cold metal and turned it forward. After a few tries, the engine fired to life.

Th
e song they’d listened to when Bryon
drove her t
o meet his dad
was playing on the radio
. Heart of Gold it had been called. S
he
retrieved the small silver square that Bryon had used to control his music and
randomly
pushed buttons
until it switched off.

Now to illuminate the road before her so she wouldn’t have to drive in darkness. Sh
e twisted a little knob next to the
steering
wheel with the light bulb
symbol above it, and the area
before the car lit up in twin yellowish-white beams
.

“Now what?” She closed her eyes and tried to remember what she had seen Ivy and Bryon do. “
They moved some sort of lever…” She looked around until she saw something behind the steering wheel that might do the trick. The only thing was, she wasn’t sure
where or how far to move it
.
“Might as well try one click
.”

She
moved the lever until the a little needle hovered over the “R” and placed a foot over each of the pedals on the floor. Pressing on the right one
, the car lurc
hed backward so fast that she flew forward and hit her face on the wheel.

Immediately, she pressed the left pedal with her left foot, and
the car stopped, but
her body whipp
ed back against the seat, like an invisible hand had pushed her in the chest
.
Distantly she felt pain where she’d hit her head, but it was like a jagged shard of shell on a beach being swallowed up by waves of anger, grief, and frustration.

She let the left pedal go and the car continued to roll back un
til she stopped it again.
Returning the lever to its original position, she put
her face in her hands
and began to weep fresh tears she didn’t think she had.