DAY OF THE MOON part 4

Copyright (c) 2017 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.

DAY OF

THE MOON

Part 4

By R. Peterson

Hamilton Fisk, the witch Queen of Abra Cadaver, opened her orange eyes and a moment later her mouth. Ham’s teeth were long and shiny like the black keys on a piano. My hand was trembling and the shirt I was using for a glove slipped off when I tried to slide the bottle  from her grasp. The pupils of her eyes expanded from thin snake-like slits into dark watery wells as they focused on my face. “Pažadinti!” she hissed. What looked like twenty six discarded black robes suddenly fluttered to life with human forms inside. The frigid air inside the walk-in freezer was suddenly filled with schizophrenic shrieking and exhaled vapor clouds.

“Run!” Baby Bat pleaded as she tried to pull me toward the cast-iron door. My only thought was that Susan was going to die if I didn’t recover the stolen ethereal salts. Shoving Baby Bat toward the exit I slammed my fist into Ham’s wrist and, using my discarded shirt, caught the bottle-made-of-ice before it shattered on the floor. There was a moment when I thought I might actually escape … then I heard Baby Bat scream. I turned holding the precious bottle high above my head threatening to smash it if anyone came any closer. Several of the Goths took a step back.

Two of the Abra Cadaver cult members held the struggling girl while Ham yanked her hair from behind and traced a bloodline across Baby Bat’s throat with a sharpened fingernail as black as her teeth.  “This Spoon for the bottle,” she said thrusting her other claw-like hand forward.

“Don’t do it,” Baby Bat moaned. “She’ll kill us anyway.” Ham dug her fingernail deeper   into the girl’s throat and wiggled the fingers on her other hand.

“Give it to me!” Ham was staring at me … and then she began to smile.

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

JoAnne Wolf stared out the window of Melania Descombey’s upstairs bedroom. The sun had sunk behind the western horizon only minutes before and now an inky blackness settled over the city of Cloverdale. “They should have been back by now … if they were successful.”

“Hamilton Fisk is only half alive,” Allison said as she spooned warm tea into Melania’s mouth, “and her power comes from moonlight. Over an hour remains before the night sun rises in the east.”

Melania raised a withered hand and pushed away the spoon. “The girl is right,” she whispered. “I fear the two have failed and are in great danger!” She motioned for Allison to help her sit-up and her apprentice propped pillows behind her. “I have something that will stop the Salty Lake Witch … or at least slow her down.” Melania stared at JoAnne and then pointed to a wooden box with Ombré carved on the front sitting on her lamp-table. “Inside is a pack of very old Tarot cards,” she said. “Remove the Death card but be very careful not to touch the illustration with your fingers.”

JoAnne walked to the table and carefully removed the lid from the box. A dull glow like bottled fireflies radiated from the box. She took a step back and massaged her fingers. When a witch like Melania said be very careful … she meant it. JoAnne flexed her fingers and then began to sort through the deck careful to only touch the top edge of each card. Near the center she spied the Death card. An illustration of a crow perched on a tombstone before a landscape of the world turned into a cemetery. JoAnne cautiously lifted the card from the box, careful to only hold it by the edges.

“Inside the eye of the crow is a hole for moonlight to pass through,” Melania told her. “The beam becomes saturated with magic and very powerful when it passes through the card.” She stretched out a boney finger and caressed the carved box. “The Ombré was carved from the wood of a sacred Juhar tree called Zevot in the year 419. The paper cards were made from the pulp of the scrap wood left behind on the woodcarver’s floor. The broom used to sweep up the sawdust is in that corner.’ She gestured with her hand. JoAnne gazed at a straw broom with a twisted willow-bark handle leaning against a bookcase. “Every part of the Zevot is magical and extremely dangerous to those with the touch.” Melania flicked on the lamp next to her bed. “Hold the card up to the lamp and practice directing the light.” She noticed JoAnn’s hesitation and smiled. “Don’t be afraid. Lamplight has not the power of the moon.”

Joanne held the card before the lamp and was surprised to see a tiny beam of light projected through the crow’s eye making a tiny spotlight on the wall. She turned the card slightly and watched a beam of light cross the dark floor. A dark shape suddenly skittered in front of the light and JoAnne jerked her hand. There was a brilliant flash of light, the smell of burning flesh, scorched-blood and singed hair. “What was that?” Joanne gasped.

“A troublesome mouse that my cat has been trying to trap for months,” Melania said. She chuckled at the wide eyes covering the girl’s face. “I said the lamplight had not the power of the moon,’ she said. ‘I did not say it was without power.”

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

I was aware of being bound inside a dark bag and dragged across rough ground. My head was swimming like a college fraternity initiation gone terribly wrong. At least Baby Bat was not dead yet. I could hear her cursing our captors from what I presumed was her own black bag. “Silence them!” Ham’s voice was that of a hungry frog coming across a cluster of mating flies. “We must not attract undue attention as we move through the town.”

I felt Baby Bat’s bag brush against my own and could hear her frantic breathing. “Where are they taking us?” I whispered.

            “Black Rose.” Baby Bat said. “There is a huge wooden cross there that hasn’t soaked up its quota of blood.”

            “Be still!” I heard a thump like a wooden bat striking a pumpkin follow the harsh outburst. “There will be time enough to scream when the nails find you!”

I saw stars a split second before I heard another thump … the speed of light is many times that of sound … and then there was only darkness.

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

JoAnn didn’t know she’d been sleeping until a tiny door on a Black Forest cuckoo sprang open and the hands on the gilded dial began to spin backwards. Almost a dozen objects flew out from the chiming clock.  Blue silk wings fluttered and spinning gears hummed as tiny mechanical birds circled the room. “It’s after eleven O’clock,” Allison said. “You must take the card to the place of bones by midnight or your friends will die.”

            “How could you let me sleep,” JoAnne complained. She stared at the clock face. The minute hand was now a quarter after. “I’ll never make it there in time.”

            “All magic bends light and therefore affects time,” Melania whispered. “Pick up that broom and sweep my floor!” she commanded.

            “My friends are about to die and you’re worried about housekeeping?” JoAnne looked to Allison for support but Melania’s apprentice just handed her the broom.

JoAnne shrugged her shoulders and began to sweep. Tiny dust bunnies seemed to hop and dance before the yellow bristles. She had to move quickly to catch them. The wooden floor seemed to brush away with each stroke and then the house. Clouds appeared and then a black sky with stars. JoAnne was suddenly flying high over the city of Cloverdale. She gripped the broomstick with one hand and held the edges of the fluttering card with the other. Her legs were pressed tightly against the straw fibers. The cool night wind blew her blonde hair back like yellow ribbons tied to a window fan. Dizzying heights took her breath away and replaced it with an insane kind of euphoria. She saw the tiny intersection of Townsend Street and Vineyard Road below and leaned crazily to the right. She was laughing out loud as wind tears streamed from her eyes. The broom turned north toward State Hospital North and to Black Rose Cemetery beyond.

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

 I was semi-conscious when they pulled the black bag from my head. The members of Abra Cadaver were clustered around me and Baby Bat. Hamilton Fisk held an iron mallet and several sharpened railroad spikes in her claw-like hand. I could see the bottle made of ice that held the ethereal salts on a large flat stone behind Fisk. “You foiled our pleasure with your Goth Queen!” Ham spit on Baby Bat. “Your cries will have to be twice as loud to make up for it!”

I looked around. Black Rose Cemetery was empty except for a shimmering moon which appeared much larger than normal, peering from behind dark tree branches as if it had moved closer for a better look. Only those who enjoyed our screams would be able to hear them. “Don’t be such a Doom Cookie,” Baby Bat laughed at Ham. “I’m sure you must have done something right these last … what’s it been … nine years?”

“Tie them to the cross so they can’t move,” Ham screeched. “No quick and easy! I want the spikes to crawl like snails through their hands and legs.”

“I was hoping for something a bit quicker!” I gritted my teeth as two burley Goth Forks (males) positioned my arms along the cross.  . Next, they bound three foot long shoelaces around my wrists, tight enough for the wet leather to cut into my skin. They flipped the heavy wooden structure over. I could hardly breathe with my face buried in the dead grass but I knew the worst was yet to come.

“You know when you fail this time, Abra Cadaver will have to choose a new leader don’t you?” Baby Bat was taunting Ham even as she was tied to the other side of the cross. She giggled. “The shame will be too great!”

“Raise the cross to the night sky,” Ham thundered. “I will drive the spikes in myself!”

I felt myself lifted into the air but it was not the relief I expected. Four Forks hoisted Ham onto their shoulders so she could reach my hands with her spikes and hammer. “Perhaps when the infant bat hears your agony … she’ll think twice about insulting me.”

Hamilton Fisk placed the sharpened spike against the palm of my hand and raised the hammer high above her head. And then she hesitated, enjoying my horror as the cult began to chant.

Dooba Nanbean … ra da go.

Let us rend what others sew.

Rise the moon and tide the blood.

Drinking tears of gloom and mud.

Dooba Gonwat … goo ta rut.

Let demons eat that which they cut.

We are your shadows … wake to die.

Wings of terror … crucify!

I saw something move across the face of the moon a split second before the hammer was blasted from Ham’s hand. Every face in the execution party looked upward. I thought it was a very large bird flying with folded wings until I noticed the tail was not feathers … but made of straw. JoAnne Wolf was crisscrossing the night sky on a broomstick.  She held what looked like a playing card in her right hand and each time she crossed the face of the moon a beam of light filtering through the paper created destructive mayhem on the crowd below.

           

A beam of light bounced among the tombstones and I heard one of the Forks who had lashed my hands to the cross yelp like a coyote with his foot caught in a trap. He flung the black hood covering his head back and tried to beat out the orange flames devouring his red hair with hands as white as desert bones. The beam of light struck a large gravestone and chunks of polished granite exploded outward like organic shrapnel. The cult began to scatter and Ham had to bellow to keep them from routing. “A war from the sky is what you want?” Her eyes were like a snake’s trapped in the corner of a stone foundation by a sharpened shovel. “Then let the terror come forth!” She raised her arms in the air high above her head.

All the leaves on a giant cottonwood tree suddenly fluttered to life and became small black birds with slashing talons and angry beaks that swarmed as a cloud after the young girl riding the broom. JoAnne tried to cover her face and when she did the card she was holding fluttered to the ground.

Each time the tumbling card lined up with the moon a powerful beam of light projected toward the ground. A three foot length of cast iron lattice from the fence that surrounded the cemetery disappeared in a puff of smoke. The branch of an elm tree was severed at the trunk and sent spinning into the darkness.

The 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle that Abra Cadaver’s reining Doom Queen had enchanted to pedal in circles high above the cemetery came suddenly crashing to the ground as if the light beam passing through the playing card had severed an invisible tether wire. Hamilton Fisk tried to leap out of the way but the ancient bicycle struck her in the back as she dived for cover.

The Goth members as well as the enchanted birds became like dry leaves and scattered in the wind. I watched Ham pedal out the cemetery entrance with a bent front wheel wobbling horribly as JoAnne used a rope to lower the cross to the ground. The gashes in my wrists were almost cuts from the leather laces but I still laughed as a smiling JoAnne Wolf walked to a flat stone and held up the ice bottle containing the ethereal salts.

-------6-------

The night proved to be much shorter than I expected. The sun was rising in the east when Allison Weatherbee appeared in the sitting room of Melania Descombey’s mansion and said that Joanie Otter was awake and wanted to see me. Joanie had dark rings under her eyes but other than that she looked on the mend and rested. “Thank you,” she said. “I usually don’t like it when someone outside the wardrobe gets involved in Goth business … but in this case I’m glad you did.”

“Did Melania tell you why I was looking for you in the first place?” I was glad to see Joanie well but I couldn’t help thinking about what was going to happen to Susan if I didn’t stop the two Negatives stalking her and my son.”

“She said you were concerned about Lingerlings following an old girlfriend.” Joanie smiled. “Are you jealous or do you really think she’s in trouble?”

“I saw two ghost-like Orientals with knives and icepicks,” I told her. “I don’t  believe they were delivering takeout!”

“After all you’ve done for me and Cloverbone,” I want to help!”

“Are you sure you feel up to it?”

“Today is the eclipse,” Joanie said. “It’s now or never!”

-------7-------

The crowds converging on Cloverdale were enormous. Townsend Avenue from Main Street to Wallace was blocked off to motor traffic and vendors were hawking eclipse merchandise to excited crowds. I had the leftover ethereal salts in one of Melania’s antique flour sifters in my right hand covered with my jacket. There was only going to be a little over two minutes of totality the time in which the Negatives were frozen and unable to move. I had to make sure both Chinese were salted before the sun once again came into view. I put on the viewing glasses that I’d purchased from the second hand store and was surprised to see just as many Negatives or Lingerlings as Joanie and Egbert called them mixing with the crowds of living.

“In this crowd it will be hard to keep track of your Lingerlings especially if they separate,” Joanie said. She left to visit Ted Burlap and see if he had a second pair of the special glasses. I was furious when I noticed the two Chinese lingering on the sidewalk just down the street from Spare-A-Dime and I knew Susan must be inside working. I peered inside the café and saw her waiting tables. Another Negative this time an elderly lady that looked like she could be anyone’s maiden aunt stood guard in the doorway. I remembered Egbert saying that not all Negatives were bad and I hoped this woman was there to protect Susan. When I saw her watching my former girlfriend from time to time and then glancing toward the Chinese … I was sure of it and felt better.

Joanie noticed my improved mood when she returned with her own one-of-a-kind specs. “Ted insisted that he sold you the only pair until I explained to him what Cloverbone does to civilians that lie to us,” Joanie said.

“And that is?”

“You’re better off not knowing,” she insisted.

I told her to put on her glasses and told her where the old woman was standing. “Looks like we might have some help from the other side,” I smiled.

Joanie looked puzzled when she took off her glasses. “The woman looks very familiar for someone who is dead,” she said. “I know I’ve seen her picture somewhere before … but I can’t place her.”

            “Does it really matter,” I said. “We need all the help we can get.”

To my utter amazement Joanie turned and run down the sidewalk. “Where are you going?” My good mood was dissolving fast. “The eclipse begins in twenty minutes!”

            “To see my mom at the Comanche County Library,” Joanie called over her shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”

            “Thank God there is still two of us,” I said as I smiled at the old woman. I moved down the sidewalk and vowed to keep as close as possible to the Chinese. When the sun was blocked out I was determined to get them both.

-------8-------

I waited anxiously for Joanie to return. When she didn’t I knew it was up to me and possibly the old woman to save Susan and my son. Just after the moon began to cover the sun people poured into the street and Mrs. Lee closed the café so that all of her employees could watch. I watched Susan come out of the café and a minute later leave the day care center across the street with Jackie in tow. Then I lost them in the crowd.

            I did however find the two weapon wielding Chinese and they appeared to be pressing through the crowd of negatives trying to get as close as possible to Susan. I ran into dozens of people as I was blind with the glasses on but I was determined not to let them out of my sight! Digging Bear saw me trying to push my way through the crowd and became an Indian plow.

There was less than twenty seconds until totality began.

            I noticed the Negatives all become frozen like statues as the whole town was suddenly plunged into darkness. People gasped as they pointed to stars never seen in the sky just before noon. I jerked my jacket from the sifter and let it drop to the ground. For a frantic forty-five seconds I couldn’t find the Chinese and then I located them. They were about two steps behind Susan and Jackie. Thank God the old woman was between them. I vaulted to where they stood and raised the sifter over their frozen heads. My heart almost went into convulsions when the handle on the side wouldn’t turn. I banged the metal three times with my fist and rust fell from the crank. There was twenty three seconds of darkness left.

            Joanie was suddenly behind me. She grabbed the flour sifter filled with ethereal salts from my hands and cranked it furiously over the head of the old woman. I watched in horror as the old lady gasped soundlessly and then began to spin, sinking into the ground like fog going down a flushed toilet … there was what looked like a fishing knife and line clutched in her fingers.

            “What have you done?” I moaned.

            “Given you a second chance at love … I hope!” Joanie said.

-------9-------

            The town was in a carnival mood and we went to Melania’s house to get away from the crowds. “How did you know?” I asked her.

            “Her face looked familiar,” Joanie said. “So I went to the library where my mother works to look up the archives. Edith Crane died last year in the basement of State Hospital North. She was one of the worst mass-murderers in Montana History and had been in a coma for over twenty years in the basement of the mental hospital. She ran a day care center in Cloverdale fifty years ago, nice lady great with the kids and everyone loved her … until that one day!”  Joanie’s eyes took on that lost-look typical of so many who choose to walk in darkness.

“About 5 PM people started showing up to collect their kids, but Mrs. Crane’s house was locked. By the time the cops finally broke down the door, nine sets of parents were standing outside. The cops went in first and tried to stop the parents from seeing … but a few got through. Looney Edith had drowned all the kids in the bathtub, thirteen in all. Probably did them one at a time, then she laid them out in a row, gutting them and cutting their throats. The sweet old lady, crazy as crazy gets, threaded a long piece of clothes line through the neck and out the mouth of each child. She strung the whole line up, like you do drying fish, across her living room from wall to wall. Mrs. Crane was rocking in her chair and singing a lullaby, the one that goes hush little baby don’t say a word, when the cops came busting in. Susan’s mother was supposed to be number fourteen … but was home that day with a cold. I guess the ghost of bloody old Mrs. Crane wanted to finish her killing on at least one member of Susan’s family before she moved on to other worlds.”

            “But the armed Chinese who looked so treacherous … who were they?” I gasped.

            “They were there to protect Susan from Mrs. Crane!” Joanie explained.  “Susan’s grandfather, John Demotte, worked as a forman at the famous Blue Bonnet Mine the one owned by Elisabeth Walker. In 1896 there was a cave-in and two-dozen Chinese ex-railroad workers were trapped in the long tunnels almost a half-mile underground. Most of the people of South Fork stopped digging after three days but not Elisabeth or her forman. They worked day and night and pulled six Chinese out alive, a week later. A grateful Frank and Wanda Chang swore that they would honor the sacrifice Demotte and Elisabeth made and protect their descendants for a thousand years. I guess a promise made by a Chinese person is one kept … even after death.”

            Melania was getting tired and after the members of Cloverbone left I found myself back  on Townsend Avenue. There weren’t quite as many people … but there was still a crowd. I threw the special eclipse glasses in the first over-flowing  garbage can I came to. I don’t know what Joanie did with her pair. Some things in life … and in death … are better not known. I lingered outside Spare-A-Dime waiting for Susan’s shift to be over and laughed and wrestled with Digging Bear. I felt good … better than I had for years.

It was time for a new start …

THE END?

Note: Edith Crane makes her first appearance in “Creepers” written in 2012 and part of a collection of bite sized horror stories published as “Cloverdale: Tales of Terror” available to download from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/CLOVERDALE-Tales-Terror-Randall-Peterson-ebook/dp/B00IC4URYK

DAY OF THE MOON part 3

Copyright (c) 2017 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.

DAY OF

THE MOON

Part 3

By R. Peterson

My throat was dry and I couldn’t swallow! A crowd of sround twenty-four would be murderers disguised in long black robes chanted under a huge wooden cross. Mayor Otter’s daughter, Joanie, slumped unconscious on the cross in an upright position. She had been fixed to it by nails. I knew I’d never free her without help … so I crouched low and ran back out of the cemetery. Once back in the rental car, I thundered towards the cemetary’s gates at eighty miles an hour. As I neared the open area near the back where the crucifixion was taking place, I hit the car’s high beams. Every white powdered face looked up when I plowed through a row of tombstones, blasted the horn and aimed the careening car’s headlights directly at them. Most of the dark figures jumped out of the way but at least a half-dozen wearing black-lace funeral-dresses arched their backs like cats and hissed as they surrounded a hunched hooded figure mounting an old bicycle. I figured if she was important enough to die for she must be the leader. So I cranked the wheel and steered the car toward her.

Large blocks of broken granite slow a car considerably and I was down to forty miles an hour when a small army dressed in black somehow flew onto the hood of the car and clung to the fenders and wipers. Furious white faces with snarling black lips covered the windshield and kept me from seeing the massive Cottonwood tree until it was too late. It wasn’t so much a crash as an explosion. Broken branches, leaves, torn black cloth, shattered glass and blood filled the air. Just before I lost consciousness I saw the hooded woman on the bicycle rise into the air and fly across the face of the moon chased by what looked like a large flock of shrieking black birds and then darkness took me.

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

“Are you okay mister?” I opened my eyes and then lunged backward at the black-hooded, white-face leaning in the window. Stream from a hissing radiator rose in the air and gave the scene a surreal quality. “Don’t worry … we’re the good guys,” he said. “Well … relatively speaking.” Through the broken windshield I could see a dozen other figures all in black lowering the huge wooden cross with Joanie still nailed on it, gently to the ground.

“What the Hell is going on here?”

“It’s a Black Wedding … a contest of Forks,” he said. I could see traces of teenage pimples under the white powder on the boy’s face. “Ham and the other members of Abra Cadaver had Cloverbone ravaged and enslaved before you showed up! If you hadn’t chased them away Joanie would have bleed-out and we would have been taken back to Salt Lake City in chains.”

“Tony!” One of the girls hovering over the wooden cross waved her hand. “Baby Bat needs a claw-hammer to pull the nails out of Joanie’s hands.

“Sorry,” the boy leaning in the window said. “JoAnne Wolf is my master and I have to do her bidding.” I noticed the ring on the waving girl’s finger looked like a twisted handle from a broken piece of silver-wear and Tony wore the corresponding spoon on a chain around his neck. I watched as the boy ran toward a black bag leaning against a tree.

I climbed out of the car, dazed and disoriented, and staggered to the wooden cross just as they were pulling out the nails. Joanie moaned as if in delirium. Two girls covered her nakedness with a blanket. “My radiator is leaking but I think it will last long enough to get Joanie to the hospital,” I said.

“Don’t be a doom-cookie,” the girl who had ordered Tony to get the hammer said. “The Queen of Cloverbone does need help but she’ll get it from Melania Descombey not some pill pusher who doesn’t know what the Hell he’s dealing with!” I watched as they loaded Joanie into the back seat of my crumpled car.

“We’ll ride with the Lone Ranger to visit the witch,” the girl called Baby Bat told the others as she climbed in the back with Joanie, “meet us there as fast as you can pedal!”

JoAnne flung open the door to my car and then slid across the seat to the passenger side. A moment later she leaned toward me and hissed. “You’re the only one who can drive, Tonto,” she said. “So I guess you’re coming along!”

I looked at the keys dangling from my trembling fingers, some habits die hard, and then I climbed into the rental-car and started the engine.

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

The large stone Victorian mansion on the south west corner of Main and Galbraith Streets was much the same as I remembered it as a kid. The turn of the century landscaping had fought a heroic hundred year war with Vine Mint and Morning Glory and had finally surrendered. When I was a ten-year old my friends and I used to throw lighted firecrackers on the lawn and then run like the Devil was after us … and we’d believed that he was.

I parked on a carriage-house driveway with heavy stone fitted together like a parquet floor and JoAnne and Babybat carried an unconscious Joanie up to the door. Babybat banged a heavy iron gargoyle knocker on the huge carved door several times before it was finally opened by a good looking woman who had to be just out of her teens. “Melania is resting,” she said, “but please come in.” She stared at me standing by the car. “All of you!” I had no choice; I followed the girls into the very house that had given me nightmares as a kid.

            “My name is Allison and I’m Melania’s helper and apprentice,” she said as we were led into an old fashioned sitting room. The walls were covered with paintings of cats; some looked to be hundreds of years old. One large yellow feline sat sulking on a gilded throne looking regally majestic and properly bored. “What seems to be wrong with your friend?”

            “She was crucified,” Baby Bat said, “about twenty-minutes ago in Black Rose Cemetery!”

            “Another crucifixion!” Allison gasped. “That makes three this week!” She laughed and then shook her head. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself … you all looked so freaked-out coming in here!” She glanced at me. “Especially you!” Allison cleared off a cluttered table and told them to lay Joanie on it. “I’ll ask Melania what she wants to do.” We watched as she left the room through a large arched doorway and seconds later saw her scampering up a grand staircase to the second level. “Is Joanie going to be okay?” JoAnne gasped.

            “I hope not,” Baby Bat said. “I want her the same wreck as she was before.”

I was as startled as the others when an old upright piano began to play with no one sitting at the padded bench. A large jar of glass beads had toppled over on a shelf above and the shiny spheres rained down on the keyboard playing an excellent rendition of Tchaikovsky’s - Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat major.

            Allison returned just as the song ended. “Melania has only the strength to entertain one visitor,” Allison said. She looked directly at me. “She will allow you to speak with her but you must only stay a minute or so. Time is precious to everyone … especially to Melania in her late times.”

            “Him!” Baby Bat sputtered. “What about Joanie?”

            “This concerns what’s best for your friend and everyone here,” Allison said. I followed her up the stairs.

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

            Melania lay propped up in a king-size canopy bed. The room was lit by black candles that strangely cast no shadows. Everything about her looked at least a hundred years old except her eyes. She stared at me with the intensity of a cobra when I walked into the room. I stammered not knowing what to say. “I know why you’re here,” she shook her head. “The ethereal salts you need to destroy the Lingerlings are the same substance that will restore Joanie Otter to health.

            “I don’t know you and I’ve never been here before,” I blurted. “How could you know what I was looking for?”

            “A person doesn’t live as long as I do without learning to perceive what isn’t said and to know what a person desires even before they do.” A black cat with eyes the color of a desert sky jumped onto the bed and Melania stroked its fur. “Hamilton Fisk, the witch Joanie and her friends call Ham, is very powerful and you must be careful.

            “That twisted old hag riding the bicycle in the cemetery!” Freezing shivers ran down my back from the memory. “What’s she got to do with any of this?”

            “Ham stole the ethereal salts that Joanie had been collecting for other purposes. If you can acquire them from her and her followers, you can stop the Lingerlings and help Joanie.”

            “You said this woman, this witch, is very powerful. I know nothing about magic. How can I even think about going up against her?” I had visions of seeing myself nailed to a giant wooden cross. Thinking about what was going to happen to Susan was the only thing keeping me from leaving Cloverdale forever.

            “All things have their weakness,” Melania whispered. “Ham radiates so much energy during the night she and the members of Abra Cadaver must sleep during the day to recharge their powers.”

            “Kind of like vampires?”

            “They don’t sleep in coffins,” Melania said, “but in very cold and dark places. You’ll find the ethereal salts in a sealed bottle made of ice. Ham keeps her fingers on the jar at all times to keep it from thawing …even when she’s sleeping. Take the bottle from her and bring it to me as soon as possible. The bottle will thaw very quickly. Then I’ll tell you how to help your friends.”

I tried to ask Melania where I should look, but Allison ushered me out of the room. “You’ve already gone past two minutes,” she said.

            Baby Bat was hysterical when I told her they we had to recover the ethereal salts from Ham before we could help Joanie. “That salty Goth Queen will never give up her plunder,” she said. “How will we keep Joanie alive until we return?”

            “I’ll have Egbert Callahan send over some of his haze-ice from On a Cloud Garden,” Allison said. “Breathing the frozen vapors should keep her living for a day or two.”

I remembered the frozen mist that stung my face and the delightful sensation of euphoria that resulted when I walked through the mortuary. “What exactly is haze-ice?”

            “For thousands of years explorers like Juan Ponce de León and others have searched for the fabled Fountain of Youth,” Allison said. “But they’ve always looked in the wrong place. The sacred spring lies just inside Motha Forest but it might as well be on the moon. Only the Momett are allowed inside the sanctuary and all living things within protect the impassable borders. Egbert and a few others trade with the Momett about once a year delivering special items like books and in return they receive a very small amount, less than an ounce, of the fabled water. Egbert has found a way to disperse the water into an extremely fine vapor which even when frozen hangs suspended in the air. The sensation you felt when you walked through the mortuary was actually fine points on your skin becoming new again.”

Allison walked to drapes covering a large window. I was amazed when she opened them and sunlight poured into the room. The night had passed much too quickly. “You must find Ham before tomorrow,” she said. “This day is half gone and another eclipse will not pass over Cloverdale for more than three hundred years!”

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

JoAnne stayed with Joanie. Baby Bat and I began to search for the hiding place of Ham and Abra Cadaver. “We know it has to be someplace very dark and very cold,” Baby Bat said. “My guess would be a freezer.

            “Ham must have at least thirty disciples,” I reasoned. “It would have to be a place large enough to hold them all while they slept without being disturbed.”

We drove around in my battered rental car, searching the town and could find no place where they might be hiding. It was almost twilight when we stopped at Spare a Dime to get a bite to eat. I put the eclipse glasses on long enough to see the two Chinese Negatives lingering outside the entrance to the restaurant. Susan happened to be working the booth that we sat in and her hands shook with subdued fury when she took our order. Baby Bat was at least ten years younger than me and she looked like she just crawled out of a grave. “I’ll have a burger and fries,” BB told Susan.

            “All of our fresh hamburger is gone,” Susan snapped, “because of the crowd in town to see the eclipse. I’ll have to thaw out some frozen and it’ll take at least a half hour.” I was thinking she was hoping that we would leave when suddenly it hit me.

            “Where do you get your frozen hamburger from?” I asked her.

            “We used to get it from the meat packing plant out on Canyon Road,” Susan said. “But that place closed down last year. Now all of our frozen stuff is trucked in from Missoula.”

I was out of the booth and dragging Baby Bat with me. “Next time bring your bad Chinese friends with you,” Susan called as we left.

-------6-------

The Comanche County Meat Packing Plant looked long abandoned. Grass and weeds grew up from cracks in the asphalt parking lot. A half-dozen sodium lamps were just beginning to flicker on so I knew the building had to have some power. Most of the exterior doors were locked or secured with heavy chain. Around the back Baby Bat spotted a window that looked like it had been recently broken. I boosted her up and a minute later she opened a side door.

The interior of the meat factory was dusty and covered with cobwebs. Light streaming in from a row of windows next to the ceiling was growing dimmer by the minute. We wasted about ten minutes of precious daylight before we found the huge iron door near the loading ramps. It was a giant walk in freezer and the cold took my breath away as we stepped inside. What looked like a pile of black bags lying on the icy floor turned out to be the members of Abra Cadaver. I had to move several of the bodies to uncover Ham. She lay with her bony fingers grasping a bottle that looked like it had been made with some kind of ice-cube tray. “Hurry!” Baby Bat whispered. “The sun is sinking fast.”

The bottle was too cold for me to touch with my bare fingers. I had to remove my shirt and cover my hand. Ham was gripping the bottle tightly and I was just prying loose her fingers … when the witch opened her eyes …

TO BE CONTINUED …

DAY OF THE MOON part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 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

I returned to Cloverdale after seven years abroad to view a total eclipse of the sun and stepped in some trouble … now I was rolling in it. The special tinted glasses I bought from Ted Burlap at his second hand store somehow were allowing me to see what I called Negatives … a nice name for ghosts. The lingering dead  seemed to be everywhere. Although invisible without the glasses, yet somehow they caused physical things to happen in our world. Two sinister looking weapon-wielding Negatives, who looked like they might have come from China or another Asian country before they died, had slipped into the backseat of Susan Demotte’s car. She and her seven-year old boy, who was probably my son, looked to be in grave danger. Susan was the reason I’d left. At the time, I didn’t even know she was pregnant.

It was two blocks to where I’d left the rental car. I ran all the way. I passed two cars and a truck on Townsend before I turned the Nissan Altima south on Wallace and flew over the river bridge in the direction I’d seen Susan go. This was the section of Cloverdale people called the Aluminum farm, five acres of dilapidated single-wide trailer houses, crammed together with fences made of used tires, broken stoves, refrigerators or any other bulky appliance left to rust in someone’s front yard. A chronically drunk Fred Hicks owned the former landfill and his only rule was your Pit Bull had better be tied-up when he came to collect the rent.

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

I finally spied the rusted maroon 1974 Chevy Malibu parked in front of a tiny trailer next to the river. There was one of those white foam balls you get from Jack-In-the-box attached to the radio antenna. There was no tire fence or broken appliance in the front yard and it looked like she’d been mowing the grass. A neighbor’s caged Shitsu dog was warning everyone about strangers. There were red and yellow tulips growing alongside tomatoes in a bed bordered with river rock next to the wooden steps. I couldn’t see a weed anywhere. The doorbell was hanging from a broken wire so I knocked … but not as loud as I could have. My heart was thumping in my chest. Was I hoping she wouldn’t be home? I saw the curtains move slightly as someone looked out. I could hear doors opening and slamming shut about every thirty seconds. I heard a crash followed by a female cursing.

Two minutes later Susan flung open the door. I could see a few loose strands on her shoulder where she’d brushed her hair and her face was still damp in places. She was wearing a low-cut white lacey sweater that showed off her green eyes and she was still tugging it down. My nose stung from the Versace Bright Crystal perfume, but she still took my breath away. She must have spilled some. “What do you want?” She was glaring and looked ready to punch me. I didn’t blame her; that man-enslaving mist is over ten dollars an ounce.

I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to say and I struggled to come up with some kind of an explanation. People always insist truth is the best option, but in this case they were wrong … they would think I was crazy. Hell! I thought I was crazy! I settled for a half-truth. “I saw two bad people following you … I thought you might be in danger!” I tried to look past her into her house and then realized I wasn’t wearing the eclipse glasses. I quickly put them on.

“Are you stoned?” her hands were on her hips and I could see a faint trace of a smile becoming a smirk on her lips as she stared. “It’s not that bright out and my house is actually pretty dark inside.” She put her foot out as if she expected me to dive for the couch and then leaned forward and sniffed probably to see if I’d been smoking anything. I’m sure I didn’t smell as good as she did.

“I’ve got something going on with my eyes,” I explained, trying to look over her shoulder. Holes in an old stuffed couch had been covered with a blanket. A round glass table held fresh-cut flowers in an empty Pepsi bottle.

“Bad people? Following me?” She looked up and down the street and then smiled. “It looks like you’re alone!”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on me. I was trying to think of what to say when she turned and yelled. “Jackie come here. Someone wants to see you!” Her eyes looked like yellow stop- lights about to go red as she turned back to me. It was a warning without words. “Is this why you came?” A quiet boy with blonde hair and brown eyes the color of my own scampered up and stood partly behind her.

            “Hi,” I said as the kid stared at me. I felt suddenly uncomfortable and turned to Susan. “He looks like you!”

            “Hi,” the boy said and then tugged at his mother. “Can I play out back if I promise not to go by the water?’

            “Sure,” she told him. “But be careful …and no throwing rocks at Mrs. Brown’s cats!”

Her eyes followed him as he turned and ran. I heard another door open and slam and then she was looking at me again. “He also looks like you, but you’re not his father, Jack. At least not in the right way. It takes more than ten minutes in the back seat of a car to make a person a parent!”

            “I’m sorry Susan,” I said. “If I’d known … I’d never have left.”

            “It’s just as well.” Susan sighed. Her eyes were suddenly sad. “I left my dreams in my pants’ pocket and they went through the wash.”

I saw the look of determination come into her eyes that I remembered from years before. “Jackie is all I have,” she said. “I hope you haven’t come here to try to take him away from me!”

            “No I haven’t,” I stammered. “I didn’t know … I was just worried about you.”

She shrugged her shoulders as if she wanted to believe me. “What did these bad people look like?”

            “Orientals,” I told her. “They looked like they might have come from China!”

This time her smile was toothpaste commercial bright. “There’s a new Tai restaurant in town … perhaps they had the wrong take-out address.”

She slammed the door in my face. The neighbor’s Shitsu was still yapping. I saw at least a dozen cats race across the grass as I walked to my car. “I get the message!’ I said. “I’m going!”

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

            Susan didn’t believe me, but I knew she was in danger. Ted Burlap said he’d bought the glasses from Joseph Callahan’s estate sale. The old man was dead but his son Egbert ran the local mortuary. I hoped he could tell me what was going on. On A Cloud Garden occupies an entire block on the south east corner of Meghan Way and Garlow streets. The outside of the massive stucco building is spectacular, with exotic flora imported from all over the world. The interior is even more impressive.

There was no doorbell and the huge intricately carved black walnut door was unlocked so I went inside. On the far side of an elegant sitting room with walls, furniture and carpeting all a glistening white, round top mahogany doors opened into a two-acre indoor garden that took your breath away. A magnificent waterfall cascaded from a clear domed ceiling more than thirty feet high into a pool surrounded by a forest of rare Moth orchids. The fragrance was like synthesized euphoria. Dark rock expertly mixed with lush green foliage made you feel like you were walking in a high mountain meadow. A white mist rose everywhere from the ground and made you feel like you were walking on clouds. The vapors were strangely cold and seemed to stimulate the senses. I was suddenly alert and ravenously hungry as I crossed a fairytale bridge, spanning a gurgling stream filled with jumping Arowana fish, and saw a Japanese woman cutting black roses with a knife. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to intrude,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Callahan. Is he here today?” The kimono wearing gardener gestured toward an elevator door hidden behind a grove of  Yucca Rostrata palm trees, without looking at me, and then she pointed down. There were just two buttons on the inside of the elevator one with an arrow pointing up and one pointing down … I pushed down.

            I heard the tiny steam-whistle blast as soon as the elevator door opened. A miniature HO scale locomotive with the number 419 printed in white below the cab window and pulling a tinder car and several passenger cars roared out of a tunnel built into a wall that looked like the side of a mountain. The tiny train rumbled past miniature farm ground expertly detailed with tiny barns, trees and farm animals. I thought I recognized Porter’s Pig farm complete with a rusted ‘48 flatbed  Ford truck that had set in a patch of weeds for years and was bent over the table top layout studying the intricately detailed buildings behind it when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Egbert Callahan smiled. “Looks almost real doesn’t it?”

            “Yes,” I gasped. “I worked on the Porter farm one summer and that dented tin pail hanging on the rail fence is the same one I used to feed chickens with!”

            “There was a tiny hole in the bottom of the bucket and you used to leave a little trail of grain wherever you walked,” Egbert pointed.

            “Wow!” I had to put my nose almost on the fake ground but I could see tiny lines of spilled grain in the fake dust.”

            “When it comes to modeling detail is everything,” Egbert told me.

We watched as the tiny train rushed past several farms and then entered another tunnel hole in the wall. “Excuse me,” Egbert said. “But whenever the 419 is running I have to keep a close watch.” I followed him through a doorway down a long hallway and into a much larger room. A minute or so later the train roared through a miniature replica of Cloverdale so detailed I could see sheets hanging on the clothesline behind Mrs. Dern’s house.

            “This is incredible!” I gushed. “How long did it take you to build this?”

            “My father Joseph began the layout in 1919,” Egbert said.  “Almost every spot in Comanche County is shown in intricate detail. But the work is never done. Old building fall down or are burned … and new ones are built.” Egbert put his hands behind his back and turned his head to one side. “But enough about me and my pleasures. What can I help you with?”

I took the strange spectacles from my pocket and showed them to him. “I just got back in town,” I said, “and I bought these eclipse viewing glasses from Ted Burlap. He said they came from your father’s estate sale!” Egbert took the glasses from me and turned the lenses at angles to the light. “They look like they’ll block about 99% of the sun’s harmful rays … what’s your problem?”

            “When I put them on outside I can see what looks like dead people walking around making bad things happen to the living! I’ve been calling them negatives.”

            “Oh that,” Egbert said. “I seem to remember my father had a certain morbid fascination with the Lingerlings.”

            “Is that what you call these ghost like creatures I’ve been seeing?”

            “That was my father’s name for them but I like yours better … Negatives … that name

 seems more appropriate doesn’t it?”

            “What are they? And how can I stop them from harming people?”

            “Lingerlings … or Negatives are the remnants of the deceased that linger long after their souls should have departed for other worlds. They are powered by sunlight and can only operate outdoors during daytime. They often follow someone for weeks before they attack. My father had the glasses special made to locate a Negative who was especially troubling to him. One of my father’s enemies who continued to attack him, his friends, and his business ventures, even after death.”

            “Was your father successful … did he force the Negative to move on?”

            “I believe he did,” Egbert said. “But it wasn’t easy. The conditions have to be just right and you must use ethereal salts to dissolve the lingering spirit.”

            “I’ve never heard of ethereal salts. What are they?”

            “They are what remains when the life force the Chinese call Chi leaves a dead person or animal’s body. They are very difficult to gather and must be used correctly.”

            “Is there anyone in Cloverdale who could help me get some?”

            “You seem especially worried. Are you afraid that a Negative is planning to do you harm?’

            “Not me … an old girlfriend … actually the mother of my child. I saw two very sinister looking Negatives climb into the back seat of her car.”  

“That is troubling,” Egbert said. “But you must remember not all Negatives are bad … some actually are here to help the living.”

“I’m sure,” I told him. “One was carrying a butcher knife and the other an ice pick.”

“I believe Mayor Otter’s young daughter and her friends have acquired some ethereal salts from rotting corpses,” Egbert said, “although I don’t know exactly what they use it for.”

“I saw Joanie when I first got into town,” I told him. “Do you know where I can find her?”

Egbert turned and I followed him into another room. On the other side of a miniature four story building that had to be State Hospital North lay Black Rose Cemetery exhaustingly recreated to show every tree, bush and tombstone. A group of miniature teens all wearing black stood next to what looked like an open grave.  “Joanie and her Cloverbone Goth group are in Black Rose Cemetery until a little after midnight,” Egbert said. “If you hurry you might still catch them there!”

Suddenly the tiny train chugged to a stop at a tiny house just outside of town. Egbert and I watched as a wraithlike figure leaped from the train and ran toward the hose. Moments later we watched the dark figure drag an old woman toward the train. “Mrs. Evans!” Egbert gasped. “I knew when the train started up someone was about to die. I never dreamed it would be her. She’s only seventy-eight I believe. But I guess we all have to go sometime.” He pulled a small appointment book from his coat pocket and began to thumb through the pages. “We can probably have her funeral on Wednesday. I’d better notify the cemetery sexton.”

            I thought it was strange that Egbert said I should hurry until I looked at my watch. It was eleven thirty PM. I’d been in On A Cloud Garden for almost nine hours. “You said that in order for the ethereal salts to work conditions have to be just right!” I called to Egbert as I ran toward the elevator. “What are these conditions?”

            “Why a total eclipse of the sun,” Egbert said putting his appointment book back in his pocket. “It’s the only time Negatives are inactive long enough to salt them.”

Ten minutes later, I had the rental car flying down Vineyard Road. The eclipse was in two days … I had one chance to save Susan.

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

The moon was almost full and hovered like a huge red ball in the night sky. People in the know say it’s because of smoke in the air. A massive forest fire or two must be burning somewhere. The cast iron gates were open at Black Rose Cemetery, but I turned off my headlights and parked outside.  If Joanie and her friends were in there I didn’t want to scare them away. I walked past rows of tombstones glowing white under the light from the moon and the reddish tint made the night breeze blowing the withered grass look like they were floating in a sea of blood. I stopped several times and put on the eclipse glasses sure I would see hundreds of spirits crowding the cemetery. There was nothing. Then I remembered Egbert saying the Negatives were powered by the sun and only came out in daylight. I tried to laugh but it was hard. As a kid we had it all wrong. We were always afraid to walk through a cemetery at night … but it was daytime we should have been wary of.

I was nearing the back of the graveyard when I heard what sounded like low chanting. I fell to the ground and began to crawl … not sure if Cloverbone would welcome an intrusion.

Dooba Nanbean … go ra sin.

Open Hell and let us in.

We’ve been bad … you must agree.

Let us seek our destiny.

Dooba Gonwat … bla da guy.

Let the angels pass us by.

We wait for shadows … come at night.

Wait for pleasures … of your bite.

 Under the dim light I could just make out a group of dark clad figures crouching next to the ground. Several of the figures raised what looked like hammers high in the air. I heard a girl’s terrified scream that caused my blood to run cold quickly followed by three more. I watched horror-stricken as the dark figures raised a huge wooden-beam X from the ground and braced it with large rocks. The only sound was low moans of agony and the sound of something dripping into the grass.

A naked Joanie Otter hung upside down, high in the air, crucified with her bleeding arms and legs nailed to the center of the structure.

TO BE CONTINUED …