Sunday, October 27, 2019

ADVERB KILLER part 2

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



ADVERB KILLER
Part 2
By R. Peterson

“Run!” Verb screamed.
Menacingly, the monstrous adverb whom the grammar police had pursued into the first chapter of A Ripple in Time by Julia Hughes, stalked toward Noun brandishing a dripping brush from a bottle of White Out.
Noun dodged just as Menacingly lunged with the brush. White splatters covered the bottom half of the page. Dragon fell three lines becoming drag and the pronoun her … became he.
            “If you know what’s good for you …you’ll turn around and go back where you came from,” Menacingly sneered. Then he flung the brush into a crowd of onlookers and then vanished just as an explosion of white occurred. At least twenty words were obliterated many more were crippled … some terminally. Most of the uninjured ran.
            “He set off a bomb!” Carrie screamed and pointed toward an adverb running with white-out covering her hands.
Verb pushed past Carrie just as she helped Shuddered and Moaned apprehend Miserably. “You know Menacingly don’t you?” Verb shook the distraught adverb. “We’ve dated each other for years,” Miserably confessed. “People called us the M & M’s … it’s not easy loving a stalker like him.”
            “So he came in here to see you?”
            “No,” Carrie said. “He set off the bomb and just likes to scare her. Hundreds of adverbs have been called into this story … something big is going on.”
            “And you weren’t called?” Noun released the distraught adverb,
            “Only the most brutal and dangerous were summoned for this job,” Miserably confessed. “I’ve always just been a victim.”
            “Do you know where Menacingly was going?”
            “A taxi stopped on this page for a moment and someone named Wren talked to him,” Carrie said. “But the taxi was full of quotation-marked words. At least a whole line I think. I bet he chased after them.”
Noun and Verb stayed to help the injured until book restorers arrived and secured the area with correction tape.
            “Can you help Them?” Noun asked a restorer trying to type over a pronoun Them who was now just The.
            “I can help The become Them,” the restorer said. “Although there’s apt to be some scaring.  Some of the others will have to wait for a second edition!”

--------2-------

            “Quotation marks?” Verb mused. They had been walking for several hours and were on the bottom of page twenty six. It was dark in the library and they followed a trail of white splotches in the bottom margin that glowed under Verb’s highlighter. She looked at Noun. “Do you think this is gang related?”
            “Words that think they have to be marked to give their lives meaning usually always belong to gangs,” Noun told her.
            “Usually?”
            “Dang!” Noun tried to shake off the clinging adverb. Didn’t I tell you they would breed?”
            “You think Wren is the leader of this gang?”
            “Carrie said something big is going on,” Noun said. “A Wren is a small bird.”
            “Speaking of birds!” Verb pointed just as Wren used the conjunction and to jump onto a packing trunk.
It was the bottom of page twenty eight before they found another and conjunction they could use then headed for something called the door.

-------3-------
           
Conjunctions will move you to places in a story faster than anything else and Verb’s hair was blown back when they arrived on page 174. It was the biggest group of unwanted adverbs either of the grammar police had ever seen. Enough opened bottles of White Out were stacked on the edge of the top line behind Ruthlessly, Dangerously, Wickedly, Deceitfully and Cruelly to wipe out half a chapter.
Menacingly pulled them off the conjunction and pushed them toward the gathered criminals. “What are you doing?” Noun demanded.
            “Preventing a terrible accident!” Titanic stepped out of the crowd smiling. Wren stood behind him smiling. “Did you really think I’d allow them to let me sink the second time around?”
            “You can’t mess with fate,” Verb warned.
            “But I can,” Titanic boasted. “I’ve got enough adverbs in my employ to insure that Rhyllann never clamps his hand over Carina’s mouth and stops her from warning the ship’s crew about the iceberg.
Noun glanced around. “You’ve got enough White Out stacked up there to wipe out the rest of the novel!”
            “Who cares?” Titanic sneered.  “I’ll go steaming into New York City harbor ahead of schedule and that’s what counts!”
            “You would live in a world dominated by Nazis?” Verb gasped.
            “Better than the bottom of the North Atlantic,” Titanic whispered. “Better than a cold and watery grave!”
            “Look out!” Verb screamed.
Noun looked up just as Recklessly and Dangerously pushed the first open-bottle of White Out off the top line.

TO BE CONTINUED ….
           


Sunday, October 20, 2019

ADVERB KILLER

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.




By R. Peterson

Noun and Verb watched as the shadowy character climbed the reading table inside the British library on Euston Road and slipped between the pages of an open book. “Did you get a name?” A coughing and out-of-breath Noun asked Verb.
            “Just the last two letters … L and Y,” Verb told him.
            “Damn! It could be anyone of a million adverbs!” Noun gasped.
            “Are we going after him … or her?”
            “We have to,” Noun wheezed out each word. “If there’s another adverb … hiding somewhere in those pages … they’re sure to breed … and you know what … that does to a story!”
            “Well let’s go then,” Verb said. “All editors miss at least one.” She looked at the overweight Noun struggling behind her and shook her head. “You really need to lay off the large fonts, Slim … and try to keep up!”
Noun couldn’t help glancing at the book’s cover just before they slipped inside. “A Ripple in Time by Julia Hughes,” he read. “Looks self-published. I’ll bet it’s crawling with miscreants!”

-------2-------

            “Don’t be such a racist,” Verb told him as they walked past the title page. “Self published authors are good writers … and not all adverbs are bad!”
            “They’re leeches,” Noun growled. “My best friend in school was Handsome. He went out with this wanna-be suffix once and she stuck to him like glue. After that Handsomely couldn’t get his name scribbled on a water closet wall even in the library gay literature sections.”
Noun and Verb walked past a sleeping Finally, Entirely and Abruptly on the prolog page to where Becky stood glaring at them on page four. “It’s supposed to be an old goods train that wakes me up not cops,” she held Verb back with her hand. “What’s your name … and who’s your fat friend?”
            “I’m Verb and this is Noun,” Verb tried to make her voice sound authoritative. “We’re grammar police.”
            “Ain’t nobody in these chapters sniffing glue,” Becky sneered. She spread her arms wide as if to encompass the entire book. “This whole bindings been dry since July 2011.”
            “We watched an adverb run in here a few minutes ago,” Noun told her. “We need to have all the words on this page ending in LY come down so we can question them.”
A few minutes later, Sleepily, Jelly, Cosily and a faded word all lined up at the bottom of the page. “You’re not an adverb are you?” Noun singled out Jelly.
            “It’s profiling,” Jelly grumbled. “Cops see the LY on the end of my name and they automatically think I’ve got sticky fingers.”
Sleepily could barely keep her eyes open. “I work nights,” she yawned. “And Becky’s line after line romping with Rhyllann makes rest a thing to be treasured.”
            “It’s not my fault your always on your period,” Becky snapped.
            “You looking for a good time?” Cosily moved closer to Noun. “I’ve got special rates for cops!”
            “Any of you Adverbs see an excited black word run through here?” Verb asked. “He would have been wet and looking to rub up against someone.”
            “Was he a dirty word, a four letter?” Cosily asked. “If so, this is a job for an editor.”
            “At least six letters I believe,” Verb told her.
            “Ask her,” Cosily pointed to the end of the sentence as she fondled Noun’s vowels.
            “Are   you smeared?” Verb asked the trembling word lingering in the shadows.
            “Nearly,” the shy adverb whispered.

-------3-------

            “I misjudged this book,” Noun said as they searched through the first chapter. “It feels like we’re back in prohibition era. I thought I would see italicized words dancing, laughing and stumbling about everywhere. So far I haven’t seen a single one.”
            “As long as they’re not driving I see no harm in getting a little buzz-on,” Verb said. “I don’t like it when they’re slanted too much but I think mostly they just want to draw attention to themselves.”
            “Everybody wants to be someone,” Noun told her. “You don’t have to be italicized to have a good time.”
They both knew it was too good to be true. They’d just started down page eight when someone named Wren stepped in front of them. “What are you looking at?” he demanded. Behind him a whole line of italicized words looked to be enjoying themselves. Verb recognized Becky among the inebriated.
            “I’m Verb and this is Noun,” Verb said. “We are grammar police. Did you see a black word run through here?”
            “Of course I did. This is my chapter,” Wren said. A smiling adverb named Mentally opened a door for him. He scooted into the taxi and sped away.
Noun and Verb tried to avoid the italicized words while they waited in a crowd in vain for another taxi. Come followed Annie as she stepped over Away and danced with Wales and Week.
“Why aren’t you stumbling about?” Verb asked a large word named Titanic as they watched the party. “I’m not built that way,” Titanic boasted. “No amount of ink in the world will ever make me list!”

-------4-------

            It was getting dark. Verb and Noun decided they better start walking. Nine pages later they met Ocean. He was too sloshed to give them more than a wave. A ragged Cliff stood leering on one side of Dinky Harbor while Small, Fishing and Fleet fouled someone named Air. “What makes you think Wren came here?” Verb asked batting away an unseen Dirt and thinking she was in the bad part of the chapter.
            “That too-smart word knows something,” Noun growled. “Did you see the way Wren left when I mentioned the black word?”
            “You’re probably right,” Verb told him. She raised her hand and pointed toward a high line on page twenty. “Isn’t that a Cave?”
            “I see a family resemblance,” Noun said. “But without a first name he’s just another hole in the wall.”

-------5-------

Noun talked to Opening who led them past Jagged Rock to Cave and then on to a leering Tunnel. It was total darkness as they followed behind Tunnel and another word they couldn’t see. Verb had just used a highlighter when, without Warning, Tunnel ran out.
“Look out!” Verb screamed as Menacingly leaped down from his hiding place two sentences above.
“Who, where, what?” a confused Noun stammered as the grinning black adverb stalked past Warning and toward them … brandishing a large brush from a bottle of White Out.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Sunday, October 13, 2019

CHRISTMAS 1936

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



Christmas 1936
Cimarron County Oklahoma

By R. Peterson

The Great Depression started with the stock market crash of 1929 and every year after things got steadily worse for struggling farmers in the mid-west and especially for those bedeviled souls working the drought devastated panhandle of Oklahoma … the area of the country people were already calling the Dust Bowl.       
“Stay close by me,” Harold told Ardel and Rodney as they pushed against the gritty wind toward home. He carried a shovel and both boys carried bulging burlap bags and water buckets. “Dust will kill you same as snow!” They were both good boys. Neither one complained even though the weight they carried would tire out a man.
There was no way to farm ground covered with more than a foot of sift dust. It hadn’t rained in more than six months. Most wells had gone dry. Gardens had been kept alive by packing buckets of water from Grasshopper Creek four miles away. But now the Banks owned the only access to the creek and they had put up a wire fence.
The Jenkins’ nearest neighbor Ed Stanton had already been pushed off his farm and had stopped by on his way to California. The smoking and rattling 1926 flat-bed Ford he, his family and all their belongings had been piled on, had bald tires and a plugged radiator that gulped a gallon of precious water every five miles. “Good luck,” Harold had told him.
“Pray for us,” Ed had told him, and the sincerity in the man’s face had made Harold want to cry.
They were just now returning from the Stanton Farm. Ed had told them his well still had water in it and there were still a few un-dug potatoes, carrots and onions in the north end of his former garden. “Sweep away the dust and get ‘em before the tractor does,” Ed had told him. Foreclosed-on farms were being leveled and the land worked by corporate machinery.
Keeping his two pre-teen boys by his side was his greatest concern at the moment but it was far from his only one. The Oklahoma Savings & Loan Corporation was in receivership and the new stockholders were foreclosing on delinquent farm mortgages at the rate of twenty a week. It was late December. The Jenkins had already lost both mules and the milk-cow to interest payments. Harold expected the law to arrive any day with an eviction notice. The family was desperate and starving. He hoped they wouldn’t be pushed off their land until after Christmas. His heart fell when he saw the Cimarron County Sheriff’s car parked in front of the sod-roof house. Sheriff Jackson Clements was from Chicago and had been selected by the banks and the farming corporations to make sure the foreclosures went easy.
            “You can stay the night,” the sheriff told him. “But I want you out first thing in the morning!”
Mary Ellen came out on the porch crying. “Where can we go? The bank already took our truck and the neighbors has most all left.”
The sheriff spit into the dirt and pointed his shotgun at Harold’s worn out boots. Both boys were barefoot. He cruelly imitated Mary’s  third grade talk. “Most all of you got shoes … I suggest you use them and get the hell off the bank’s land.”
           

------- Christmas Eve 2019 -------

Morning light filtered through sheer curtains and illuminated two people sleeping in the queen sized bed. The smell of fresh washed linen woke both people at the same time.
Harold’s mouth gaped open as he stared about the room. A large, framed abstract painting splashed with bright colors covered most of one white-painted wall.  “Where are we,” he gasped.
“Heaven, I think,” said Mary. She pulled the heavy bed-spread back and then pinched the flesh on her leg to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Her voice cracked. “Are the boys dead too … or was they spared?”
            “Don’t know,” Harold said as he climbed out of bed. He stared at the flannel pajamas he was wearing. “What the hell kind of pants is these?’
            “Don’t you be cursing Harold Joseph! Not here in the Lord’s house,” Mary told him.
Harold walked toward the window and pulled back the curtains. About ten foot below a fresh layer of snow covered an acre sized area of landscaped lawn leading down to a paved road.
            Harold’s mouth gaped open as he pointed toward the street. “I’ve seen lots of automobiles but none like them!” Mary stood by his side and they watched as a UPS truck and a 2019 Ford Escape passed each other on the tree lined street.
            “I don’t care about automobiles,” Mary said. “I want my boys. If they’re here we’ve got to find them!”
Harold and Mary left the upstairs bedroom and were cautiously making their way down richly carpeted stairs when they heard their children’s laughter. They ran the rest of the way.
A large lighted Christmas tree glowed at one end of a very spacious room. Colorfully wrapped gifts were stacked everywhere around the base.
On the opposite end of the room, Ardel stood next to a glowing frame with a picture inside that was moving. Rodney lay on the floor his eyes wide. “We thought it was a radio,” Ardel said. “I found the button that turned it on and Rodney just about jumped out of his skin.”
            “What is it?” Mary gasped.
            “Just about scared me to death,” Rodney said. He stood up and was staring at the flat screen TV. A man and a woman seated behind a large desk were speaking and looking directly at them.
            “It’s one of them motion picture screens,” Harold said. “Like we saw in Denver.”
            “I’ve looked everywhere for the projector and can’t find it,” Ardel said.
            “That ain’t all,” Rodney said as he led the family into an adjoining room. There’s water pipes inside and a whole closet full of cold food!”

------- Christmas Eve 1936 -------

The Jenkins family had walked all day. Night was coming on. Each member carried a large bundle of pots, pans, bags of potatoes and dishes wrapped in blankets. Their yellow dog Rover followed behind wagging his tail. Mary was still bawling over the framed portrait of her mother and father along with a bible she’d left in an abandoned chicken coop at the last farm they’d passed. “I’m sorry Mary,” Harold told her. “We’ll be lucky to make it somewhere as it is. Maybe the big tractors won’t come for a while and we can come back for what you left.”
“I’d go back for the picture … but not for the Bible,” Ardel said with defiance. “What kind of God does this kind of thing to people?” As if in answer it began to snow. Large white flakes drifted down from the darkening sky.
An hour later, Rover left the road and began to bark at something in the darkness. Rodney chased after him. “Over here!” Rodney called. When the three other family members arrived he pointed toward a small wooden shack not visible from the road.
“A light just come on in the window,” Mary gasped.
The family pushed through the drifted snow toward the tiny flickering light.

------- Christmas morning 2019 --------

The Jenkins family was all clustered around the Christmas tree. Torn wrapping paper littered the floor. “Do you really think it’s okay if we open these gifts?” Mary asked. She was wearing a robe that she’d found in an upstairs closet.
The smell of roast chicken and baking bread drifted in from the kitchen.
            “They all got our names on em,” Harold said as he handed her a present. “And according to the mail stacked in the other room this here is our house and we’re rich. I found papers from several banks that says we got more money than you can shake a stick at. I’m even on the board of directors for the Oklahoma Savings & Loan Corporation”
            “I don’t understand how any of this can be … but I’m glad and I thank the Lord!” Mary started to cry … but this time her tears were tears of joy.
She wandered into the kitchen and opened the door to the refrigerator over and over again. “A light comes on,” she told her husband. “Like some kind of magic!”
From the next room Ardel and Rodney had discovered a video game. “I can make the pictures on the screen move!” Ardel screamed as he moved the joystick in his hand. Rover ran in circles around the two boys. “I can make them move!”

------- December 26th. 1936 -------

Sheriff Jackson Clements prodded the frozen body of Harold Jenkins with his foot. Outside a tractor and workers for the farming corporation waited to level the land. The dead man was huddled with the corpses of his wife and two children around what looked like a burned-down candle in the abandoned shack. “How cold did it get the last two nights? Jackson asked.
“A little below zero,” a deputy said.
“I can’t understand why these damn illiterate Okies didn’t at least try to keep themselves warm,” he said pointing to the blankets piled in the corner. A frozen dog lay on the floor next to the other bodies.
The sheriff kicked a bag of potatoes half covered with drifted snow with his foot. “They had food and water … why didn’t they try to eat something?”
“And the smiles on their faces,’ the deputy said shaking his head. “It almost looks as if their last moments on Earth were the best times they ever had.”

THE END ???


Sunday, October 6, 2019

HAMILTON FISK part 4

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



Hamilton
Fisk
Part 4
By R. Peterson


A bewildered Walter Havens gaped at the birds circling him. He had never seen such a large number of great horned owls flying together. They seemed bizarrely aggressive.  He wasn’t watching the water until something rubbed against his leg. “Whaaa ?” A blue-grey dorsal fin skimmed past his wake-board … then another. Sharks? The furious birds circled closer now and there were more creatures coming up from below in the water. The six foot long body of a barracuda racing past terrified him. A box jellyfish floated just under the surface and more could be seen rising from the darkness below. An owl swooped past his head and raked his neck with its talons. A bomb of feathers exploded in the air as he struck one with his fist. He lay on the board and began to paddle. Three manta rays, their deadly barbed tails twisting in the air, broke the surface a hundred yards to his left gliding toward him.

Liberty Johnson handed the binoculars to Hamilton Fisk. “We have a caller,” she said as she scanned the beach.
“A caller?” Ham watched Worms paddling furiously toward shore.
“Red Point Trident members all specialize in various types of dark magic … as we do,” Herman Wilson explained. “The ability to call dangerous animals and have them do your bidding is an especially treacherous gift.”
“But who is doing the calling?”

A woman and two barefoot youngsters walked along the wet beach. The children had long pointed sticks trying to dig clams from the sand where small bubbles appeared. Several people lay on large beach towels. A man sold sandwiches and drinks from a small wooden shack. Two black labs chased after a Frisbee.
            “The beach appears to be filling up with people,” Dorian Edwards said pointing toward a parking lot overlooking the sand. “And some of them look out of place.”
“The beach was always crowded,” Liberty said. “It’s just that for some reason our magic is washing away.”
A large black SUV had just pulled up and two men wearing dark suits and sunglasses climbed out.

-------2-------


The children carrying the sticks began to squeal as dozens of sand crabs suddenly burrowed up out of the sand.

“Worms needs help!” Ham pointed toward the surf.
Several of the owls had landed on the board Worms was on and one was perched on his shoulders with its beak lost in his hair.
“Porta l'acqua grande!” Liberty called raising her arms in the air.

The water under Worms began to swell until he was riding a wave nearly twenty foot high.
The children carrying the sticks smiled wickedly and began to herd the crabs toward the clustered Abra Cadaver members. Wrinkles under the youngster’s eyes made them suddenly seem decades older … and murderous!
Both dogs abandoned the Frisbee and yelped away when a large panther appeared from some trees and charged down the beach.

            “I think we’re about to get wet!” Creeps moaned.
            “Not if we’re already dead!” Liberty pointed toward the men who had exited the SUV. Both had pulled automatic weapons from under their coats and were riddling the refreshment stand with bullets.
            “What the Hell?” Ham shrieked.
            “The Trident’s first concern is to eliminate us,’ Liberty said. “But they also don’t want any non-coven witnesses to their dark magic. I’m thinking the snack shack is about the only thing on the beach not involved in witchcraft!”

All the members of the coven began muttering defensive spells.

The panther was at a full run when it pounced toward Creeps. Dorian raised his hand and the vicious predator froze in md-air. If he hadn’t been distracted he might have noticed the small round and flat object, seemingly with a mind of its own, that fell into his pocket. “That used up everything I’ve got.” Creeps said to Liberty. “I hope you’ve got enough mojo left to get us out of here!”

The ten members of Abra Cadaver who minutes before had been lounging on the beach now huddled around their leader.

            “Gather your things, form a circle and don’t forget the bike,” Liberty said. “If fate delivers Worms to us before we move then we are favored if not … the Trident will have a new disciple.”
            Ham was about to pick up Walter’s clothes when she noticed a pile of coins next to his wallet. One of the silver pieces seemed out of place. She suddenly had a premonition not to touch it. She ran toward the others.

The wave Liberty had summoned was now thirty feet high and starting to break on the beach. Worms rode the wake board halfway to the crest. He appeared to be fighting entanglements coming from all directions.

Leave the sun, for skies grey cold.
The wave broke and Worms tumbled end over end toward them.
Leave the fun, for darkness old.
The coven’s newest member disappeared as two foot deep water and foam roared up the beach.
Leafless trees, in place of dead.
Water from the giant wave crashed against the sand barrier and splashed the parking lot behind it. Liberty hesitated to finish the spell until the water began to recede. Walter Havens appeared as a clump of seaweed struggling on the sand covered with slashing teeth and sting tentacles. It was as if every dangerous creature in the ocean was attacking him at once. Before any of the other coven members could utter counter curses the men holding the guns turned the squirming cluster into an explosion of blood. The woman and the two children, who now looked more ape than human, laughed.

Deliver us from that we dread.

The ten surviving members spun in a circle alternating between dark and light. The world they were leaving gradually vanished and a new one began to take shape.

A large circle of snow in the northeastern section of Salt Lake City Cemetery began to melt just before the ten coven members appeared with a loud whoosh. A flock of starlings nesting in a nearby leafless-tree took flight and were captured by the moonlight.

            “Poor Worms,” Hamilton moaned. “I don’t really think he knew what he was getting into! I’m sure I saw the eye with the other coins he kept in his pocket. It’s my fault; I should have trained him better.”




-------3-------

            “It’s nice to be back,” Creeps smiled while the rest shivered. “I’ve always hated that baked-in-the-sun look.”

Ham looked around. The ten surviving members of Abra Cadaver looked worn and tired. Two trips in one day and the fight with the Trident had exhausted their supply of magic. “Do we have enough magic left to perform the ritual?”

Herman (Inks) Wilson still had his face buried in a large book. It was as if throughout the entire mayhem on the beach he had kept reading. “I think so,” he said. “The ritual is rather simple. The 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle was owned by a devoutly religious man named Samuel King. He was a tabernacle caretaker for many years at a small town in Idaho. The children who played around the outside of the stone building used to be terrified of him. They said he had the ability to appear out of thin air. He is buried not far from his spot.”
            “What do we need?” Liberty scanned the frozen headstones illuminated by the full moon. Their escape had been too easy. Intuition told her they must proceed with great caution.

“We need dirt from his grave, a tear from any new one and a stone from a tree.” Inks read from the book. “There’s an incantation that must be read while the bicycle wheels are rolling.”

“Half of you search the trees for a pebble lodged in the branches,” Liberty said. “Look for an empty crow’s nest. These birds like to gather shiny things. There is a good chance one of them dropped a stone while lining their nests with treasure. The rest of you look for a fresh grave with mortuary flowers. Bring all the blooms you can carry. There is a good chance someone cried over a loved-one’s passing. All we need is a tiny bit … frozen or not.”


------- 4 -------


            Ham went with the group searching for a stone. She climbed several trees and even looked in one of the ball-of-sticks nests before she finally found one. It was smooth and had been polished and had a small eyelet for attaching a chain, probably looted by a crow from someone’s jewelry box, but a stone from a tree was still a stone from a tree.
           
            When they returned to the circle the others were already there. Ham was surprised to see the grass inside the thawed portion of the graveyard was growing and turning green under the moonlight. “Plant life doesn’t understand magic,” Liberty said. “All they know is that it’s warm and feels like spring.”
            “The cemetery sextant is going to freak out,” Creeps snickered. “Looks very witchy to me!”
            “The city never hires people who believe in witches,” Liberty said. “If they did, they would never keep their employees.”

            “You climb on the bicycle,” Liberty told Ham. The rest of you hold up the front and the back while she pedals. Not too high she just has to be able to pedal.”

Ham felt a jolt like electricity run down her spine when she sat in the seat. For an instant she saw the future becoming the past and was aware of the circle of eternity. She only captured a fraction of what passed before her eyes. The Damenrad hadn’t always been a bicycle. A thousand years before it had been a tinker’s cart, ten centuries before that a trebuchet and long before that a crude log boat … but it had always been … and would forever be.

            “We need everyone to focus … we barely have enough magic left to perform this ritual. Everyone close your eyes. There will be no more comfort spells tonight. We might have to check into a motel if we want to sleep.”

Liberty scattered the grave dirt and the stone on the ground beneath the wheels and held the flowers in her hand.

            A wheel within a wheel,” she read from Ink’s book.
            A seal inside a seal!”

Ham heard a sound and turned her head, several cars were turning into the cemetery entrance.

            “An ever hungry worm.”
            An ever breading germ.”

Ham tried to speak … to warn the others but the only parts of her that would move were her feet. The bicycle wheels began to turn slowly … then faster.

            A half dozen cars skidded to a stop on both sides of the group. Ham recognized Joseph Amati and another man who had to be his brother exiting one of the vehicles. They were stomping snow from their feet as they moved forward. Liberty kept on reading the ritual … oblivious to what was going on.

           
“Give us now these wheels with wings.”
            “And keep your hidden other-things.”

Hamilton Fisk felt the bicycle start to rise seconds before a ball of fire exploded into the group. Liberty had finally stopped talking now her eyes looked wildly at the attackers surrounding her coven. She raised her eyes toward the night sky just before she burst into flames. Ham pedaled across the face of the moon high above a sleeping Salt Lake City.

“With her dying breath, Liberty called, Ride child … ride toward a new beginning.”


THE END ?