AFTER MIDNIGHT 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.

AFTER MIDNIGHT

Part 2

By R. Peterson

“We are on different paths … but we all wander a dark world looking for light.”

Joanie demanded a large order of fries, two Cokes and shook the catsup bottle next to the salt and pepper to make sure it was full. Even though Spare-A-Dime was overflowing with customers, most of them avoided staring at the Goth-dressed teenage-girls. Those few, who did, quickly turned away. Baby-Bat thumbed through the Select-O-Matic mounted just below the window looking for songs. Outside, traffic on Townsend Avenue was heavy for a Tuesday night in Coverdale.

“I want to hear about how you punished Tommy Poole.” Marsha dropped a quarter into the slot punched two buttons and Psychotic Reaction by Count Five began to blast over the load-speakers. A scowling waitress hurried to the main jukebox located at one end of the dining area and cranked down the volume to a faint buzz. Baby-Bat shook her head and then bent a fork around the salt shaker. She then concealed it behind the napkin holder just before the same waitress brought their order.

“He was throwing spit-wads and one piece of paper had his signature on it,” Joanie gulped a mouthful of her Coke and chewed on a mouthful of ice.

“What did you do with the luminary?”

“I tossed it on the floor and Tommy tripped coming back to his seat.”

“You still have it?”

“No I looked everywhere … the paper-star must have gone into hiding … after its crime.”

“Pity,” Baby-Bat said watching the waitress balance five large orders of biscuits and gravy on a tray and start over towards a table filled with truckers. She poured a bloody lake of catsup on the plate and began to dip the fries. “Sometimes there’s just enough residual energy left … for an encore.”

“I think we need to find out what’s going on with the Black Rose gate key before the ceremony tonight,” Joanie said as she finished her Coke.

“How we going to do that?”

“Pay a visit to a real witch,” Joanie said standing up and stuffing the last of the fries in her mouth.

“Oh I was afraid you were going to say that,” Martha moaned.

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

Most of the lights were off inside the ancient mansion on the corner of Main and Galbraith Streets. What looked like a single candle light shown from what was probably the kitchen. Bent and twisted shrubs, that looked as if they hadn’t sprouted growth for half a century, lined a stone pathway like mourners at a funeral. Joanie banged the heavy iron knocker, cast in the shape of a grinning gargoyle, three times on a tarnished brass strike-plate. Both girls prepared for a long wait but the door creaked open in less than a minute. “I’m sorry if we disturbed you,” Joanie said to the young woman who opened the door, “but we’d like to speak to Mrs. Descombey … if that’s possible.”

“Oh you didn’t disturb me,” the girl said. “I was just reading. I’m not sure Melania is up to having visitors but I’ll check … please come in.” She opened the door wide and both girls stepped inside Baby Bat with slightly more hesitation than Joanie. The entrance hallway was dark with the only illumination coming from a room beyond and the girl turned on a light switch. “My name is Allison Weatherbee and I’m a friend of Melania’s.” The young lady must have noticed the girls were dressed like witches but she didn’t react. They followed her toward the kitchen.

Everything in the room looked to be at least a hundred years old although clean and very well preserved. Joanie noticed the hands on an elaborately carved grandfather clock showed four nineteen and appeared to be running backward. Alison noticed her stopping to stare.  “Oops,” she said turning. “I sometimes tinker with the fetish in this house to give myself an advantage. She snapped her fingers in front of the clock’s glass front and the hands began to move in the correct direction.

“What kind of advantage?” Joanie gasped.

“Anything I can use,” Allison said. “This house attracts all kinds of magic … black and blacker. If a girl is not careful, she’ll get whisked away to a dark place where bad dreams spring out of the ground and the things we’re all afraid of … hide-in-wait … behind creeping trees.”

“That sounds awful,” Baby Bat moaned.

“I’m sorry!” Allison laughed. “Actually I find this house endlessly fascinating … and I love every minute that I’m here.” She took a ceramic pot from a cabinet over the sink and began to fill it with water. “Would you care for a cup of tea?’

“We just came from Spare-A-Dime,” Joanie blurted.

“I insist,” Allison said as she put the tea pot on a gas burner and then took three cups and a metal container from the same shelf and placed them on the table. “Sit down and try to relax, while I see if Amante is up to entertaining visitors.”

“I wonder what kind of tea she’s going to make us?” Baby Bat whispered as Allison left the room.  She rotated the metal box on the table to look at the baked-enamel artwork. A distraught woman wearing a long eighteenth century dress was forcefully holding a splintered door closed on what appeared to be a farmer’s shed. Clawed fingers jutting from a mangy fur-covered arm were trying to force the door open from the inside.  Sky blue lettering under the illustration proclaimed “KEEP CLOSED FOR FRESHNESS”

“I don’t know,” Joanie muttered. “But I’ll bet it’s not Lipton’s.”

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

Melania was propped-up by three large pillows in the center of a queen-sized bed when Joanie and Martha entered the room. The flesh on her wrinkled face sagged and showed a woman of extreme old age; only her eyes appeared bright and youthful. “So Rose Brown’s cemetery gate key is missing,” Melania said.

“Yes,” Joanie stammered. “How did you know?” She was starting to feel the effects of the tea they had consumed only minutes before. Her feet felt like they were barely touching the floor.

“Sheriff Walker stopped by while you both were tormenting that rude waitress in Spare-A-Dime.” Melania smiled. “He thought you two would also be along for a visit.”

“Then you know about the key?”

“Of course,” Melania said. “The key was locked safely away in my attic for many years. I donated it to the library for safekeeping when my storage area was unfortunately occupied by something dark and evil.”

“We are hosting a kind of meeting in the cemetery tonight at midnight,” Joanie blurted. “We don’t want anything to go … wrong.”

“I know all about your Ceremony of Týr,” Melania said. “Every night for you is Halloween. I don’t wear black leather but I have broken a few black crayons and I’m no stranger to the dark arts. I knew Rose Brown when I was just a girl. Cloverdale was then called South Fork and it was as wild a frontier town as Tombstone or Dodge City. The city founders paid Rose for every body she buried at her farm and she grew rich from all the killing. If I remember right, the fence and gates were imported from an ancient cemetery near Castello Di Poppi in Italy. Rose had problems keeping the dead in the ground almost from the time of her first burial. Some ground is cursed from ancient times. Folks said she used the walking dead to work her farm when no one was looking. Half the people buried there were no good rustlers and outlaws. If she did, she got more work out of them than anyone ever did when they was alive.”

“Will there be trouble tonight?” Baby Bat wrung an invisible rag with her fingers.

“Not if someone doesn’t unlock the gate,” Melania said.

“And if that happens ….” Joanie felt like she was starting to float.

“Most of the spirits that reside in Black Rose are harmless,” Melania said. “Just ordinary folks come to the end of their mortality. The gates are locked to keep the really bad ones in the ground. After the fence and gates were torn down in Italy and shipped to America three nearby villages were almost completely wiped out by horrible night murders in less than six months.”

“Night murders?”

“What should we do?” Both girls spoke at the same time.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Melania told them. “The road of life is a crooked path passing between shadow and sunshine. Learn to love the light and the dark and realize that one cannot exist without the other.” The old woman noticed the fear in the young girl’s eyes and motioned for Allison to bring her a carved box that rested on a shelf on the far side of the room. “If you find yourselves in trouble,” she said as she pulled an ancient and very old Tarot card from the box. “Recite the words on the back of this card while gazing at unobstructed moonlight. Whatever evil is drawn from the ground must return where the beams of light direct.”

Melania handed Joanie the card and then closed her eyes. Joanie rotated the reversed six of pentacles in her hand but no matter how she turned it … it always remained upside down. The writing on the back appeared to be in Latin. After almost a minute of silence, Allison pulled the covers up and gently tucked them around her employer. “I think that’s all for tonight,” she said. “Can I give you two a lift somewhere?”

“We have to be at Black Rose Cemetery at midnight,” Joanie said, “but that’s still hours away.”

“I’d better drive you,” Allison said as they walked down the stairs. “Time has a way of moving in all kinds of directions in this house.”

Joanie noticed the tall clock as they made their way to the front door. The hands behind the glass were on eleven twenty-six.

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

Joanie and Baby Bat rode in the large front seat with Allison. The nineteen forty-nine Buick Roadmaster hugged every curve and seemed to float over bumps even at seventy miles per hour. Allison tuned the radio dial to a station that neither girl was familiar with and then cranked up the volume when a group called Sex Gang Children began to play songs from the album Blind.

Allison parked the classic Buick so that the headlights shone on the open gate with the lock mechanism. “It looks still locked to me,” she said. “I think you’ll be okay … well not okay but you know.” Joanie and Baby Bat climbed from the car. A tiny light that looked like it might be a candle flickered from the back of the cemetery and then went out. In the faint distance dogs began to bark furiously.

“Looks like you’re the first ones here,” Allison said.

“I hope so,” Baby Bat said as they began to walk.

Something made Joanie turn and the classic Buick and Allison had both disappeared. A wind came from the east and touched mortuary-cold fingers under her hair as they walked among the tombstones.

            “I have a bad feeling,” Baby Bat whispered.

            “I know,” said Joanie as she felt for the card in her pocket. It was like touching the waxy skin on a dead person.

It was the spring equinox, nearly midnight … and the Ceremony of Týr was about to begin.

TO BE CONTINUED …