Nocturnal Part 32

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, but I didn't have to, because at that moment the hulking form of the castle appeared, backlit by the full moon so it looked like a spotlight was pointing it out. I parked in the courtyard and we walked through the garden of dead trees and bushes. Eva moved more and more slowly the closer we got to the door. She put one hand up to her chest.

"Bad mojo," she said.

I snapped my fingers. "That's what Derek's mother said, but she used an Italian word. I a.s.sume it means the same thing, though." I tilted my head up and pretended to read a sign above the door. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

Eva linked arms with me as I pushed the doorbell.

"He's not going to answer," I said. "He knew we were coming."

"Let me." Eva put her hand on the iron latch. She closed her eyes and said a few words under her breath.

"Oh, come on," I protested.

The door opened with its trademark creak. Eva looked at me triumphantly.

"It was already unlocked, wasn't it?"

She didn't answer.

We made our way into the living room, calling out for Derek. Everything was just as it had been before, from the three guitars on their stands to the crushed painting of the idealized Edgar Templeton. Derek was sitting on the throne, staring out the window at the ocean. He didn't turn around as we approached, which reminded me of the day I met him in the hospital.

A cl.u.s.ter of emotions. .h.i.t me: relief at seeing him safe and not Edgar, mixed with anger and hurt that he could have left me so cavalierly. Half of me wanted to hug him, and the other half wanted to smack him silly.

"You shouldn't have come," Derek said.

"Nice to meet you too," Eva said. She climbed onto the dais and bent over Derek, examining him like he was a used car she was thinking about buying. "Tall drink of water, this one." She turned and winked at me.

"Come on, Derek," Eva said. "We need to do this tonight, while there's a full moon."

He looked up, his expression resolute. "I'm not going. I can't be sure Edgar won't hurt Maggie, so I have to stay away from her until I'm sure it's safe."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I won't let you hurt her."

Derek smiled ruefully. "You haven't seen me when he takes over."

Eva took something out of her skirt pocket. When she turned toward the mirrors I saw her reflected into infinity, pointing a shiny silver gun. Even in the first reflection it was so small it looked like a toy or a souvenir from a Wild West show.

"I'm not going to let anybody hurt my sister, Derek. Or me, for that matter. Much as I know about the other side, I'm still pretty attached to the here and now."

"So you'll kill me if it looks like Maggie is in danger? You promise?"

"What the h.e.l.l?" I took an awkward step forward, but with that gun pointed at Derek's head I didn't want to make any sudden moves. I was fairly sure it wasn't loaded, but I knew not to underestimate Eva.

"I promise," Eva said, ignoring me.

"How do I know you're not just putting on a show?" Derek asked. "After all, isn't that what you do for a living?"

There was a loud click as Eva c.o.c.ked the pistol.

"I guess we're just gonna have to trust each other, aren't we?"

Normally I would have used my high beams on the winding road to Muir Woods, but the fog created a wall that reflected the light back into my eyes. Derek sat silently in the pa.s.senger seat with his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn't asleep because his fingers were tapping. In the backseat Eva used a tiny flashlight to dig around in her suitcase, doing things I couldn't see but that were emitting a miasma of strange odors into the car.

After an hour my neck was cramped from the strain of peering into the dark road to follow the centerline, so I was relieved when we reached the entrance to the state park. The large parking lot was empty. Giant redwoods rose up on all sides of us, so tall it was impossible to see their tops from inside the car. The fog was so thick it vaporized into fat water drops that plunked onto the windshield. Instinctively I turned the car toward the visitor center and gift shop.

"What are you doing?" Eva snapped.

"I don't know. What do you want me to do?"

"Go that way." She pointed toward a road at the other end of the parking lot, with a chain across the entrance and a sign that read NO ADMITTANCE.

Derek stirred and stretched. "Are we there yet?"

"Apparently not," I said, driving to the blocked-off road.

The chain wasn't locked. Derek replaced it after I drove through and then jumped back into the front seat. The road inclined through the forest, pa.s.sing trees on both sides that were wider than the length of my Honda Civic. Some of these giants had burn holes straight through them; some were cut down, leaving only a broad, flat base that looked like a stage for late-night fairy shows. Many were surrounded by children, a protective circle of smaller trees. These whippersnappers were probably only a few hundred years old, compared to their millennial mothers.

The family trees made me think about children, and the fact that Eva and I didn't have any. If our mother had been alive to see us at ages twenty-eight and thirty, with no children and no prospects for any, she would have tortured us about it every day. She always said that people who don't have children or animals are missing out on the "zest of life." After growing up in a small shotgun house with one sibling, two dogs, a three-legged cat, and a turtle that lived in the bathtub, I decided I'd had enough zest to last me the rest of my comfortable, solitary life.

But now, sneaking a peek at Derek, who was securing his hair with one of my rubber bands in antic.i.p.ation of whatever was coming next, I realized that the life I'd thought of as merely solitary was now starting to seem lonely. Having Eva around contributed to that feeling. She had an infectious liveliness that reminded me of the way I'd been once, before seventy-hour workweeks and a seemingly endless supply of human misery had worn me down. Sometimes I felt I was nothing more than a human calculator, tallying up the costs of mental illness-insurance reimburs.e.m.e.nts, medicine dosages, number of inpatient days required.

"Turn off here," Eva yelled.

"Where?" I couldn't see anything except trees in the direction she was pointing.

"Right between those two big trees. There's an energetic point somewhere in there, I can feel it."

My Honda b.u.mped and shuddered as I negotiated a path between the redwoods. The turns were so tight I had to haul the steering wheel right and left with my whole body. Branches and other detritus caught in the undercarriage, making tearing noises. I wasn't sure we'd have a car to return in if we had to go much farther in this direction.

"Maybe I should drive," Derek said helpfully.

I rolled my eyes, which of course he couldn't see, as the only light was coming from the headlights. "Now you turn into Mr. Macho?" you turn into Mr. Macho?"

"Just a suggestion," he replied.

"There," Eva said, thumping me on the shoulder. Her hand appeared in my peripheral vision, pointing to the right. A hundred yards ahead I could detect a very particular kind of emptiness. The headlights, rather than reflecting back at us off the trees, petered out when confronted with that darkness. I drove to where the trees stopped and parked the car. My heart was pounding like a piston, and I wasn't sure whether it had just started or had been caused by the adrenaline of the drive. Either way, I didn't like the look of this glade.

"Turn off the headlights," Eva commanded.

"Don't you think I should leave them on until we've-"

"Off!" Eva was using a voice I hadn't heard before, commanding and imperious.

I thought that we would be plunged into darkness when I turned off the headlights, but we weren't. The glade was bathed in a silvery glow that resembled moonlight, but dark clouds obscured any celestial illumination. The light was coming from the glade itself, from everywhere and nowhere at once.

After my eyes began to adjust I saw the contours of the land: soft, undulating gra.s.sy hillocks, with a small stream running down the center. I thought I could even detect wild-flowers, stripped of their colors, gleaming white in the strange light.

Eva pushed a canvas bag into my hands. "Let's go," she said.

"I can carry something," Derek suggested.

"No, you can't. Don't touch anything unless I tell you to. In your condition it could backfire and be dangerous to all of us."

"Okay, then." Derek climbed out of the car, zipping up his down jacket against the fierce chill.

Eva led us near the center of the glade, to a flat rock that resembled a table. She handed me an armful of candles and a lighter, then directed me to create a circle around the stone, placing the lit votives an equal distance apart. Out of her own bag she pulled two vaguely oval-shaped black objects and placed them at opposite ends of the rock. I took a lit candle and moved closer to examine one. When I realized what it was I shrieked, dropping my candle into the gra.s.s.

Derek jumped forward, scooping up the candle before it had a chance to light the gra.s.s on fire. He stood next to me while we both contemplated the black objects in horror.

"Is that real?" Derek asked.

Eva, still busy with her preparations, didn't answer.

I touched the thing with one finger. The fur was silky. The cat appeared to have a slight smile on its face, because its fangs were showing.

"Yeah, they're real," I whispered.

"Don't touch my mediums," Eva said. "They don't like to come in contact with misbelievers."

I turned around to see Eva laying out several baskets and bowls made of gourds, and a large bunch of dried twigs.

Derek slid his hand into mine.

"What are we doing here?" he asked quietly.

"What other option do we have?" I asked, but then I looked at his bandaged wrists. "Don't answer that."

Eva came over and handed Derek a vial. "Drink this."

He held it up to a candle, swirling the brown and viscous substance. "What is it?"

"Truth serum." Eva didn't smile when she said this.

Derek looked at me questioningly. I gave a small nod. He lifted the vial and tossed the stuff down. His eyes bulged and he clutched at his throat.

"Oaky, with a hint of sulfur," he said, and shuddered violently.

"Lie down and close your eyes," Eva said, pointing to the rock.

Derek cupped my face in his hands and kissed me hard without opening his mouth.

"See you on the other side," he said.

Chapter 8.

Holding one of the gourd bowls and the bundle of twigs, Eva circled the rock several times, chanting in a language I didn't recognize. Every few steps she dipped the twigs into the bowl and sprinkled Derek with liquid. When she did this she stopped chanting and muttered quietly, as if she didn't want me to hear what she was saying.

Derek was absolutely still. I couldn't even tell if he was breathing.

"Play the drum, Maggie." Eva pointed into the darkness.

I turned around. There was a large drum sitting on the gra.s.s that I hadn't seen Eva put there.

"I don't know how," I said.

"Just play in rhythm to my incantation."

I sat on the drum and banged it with the flats of my hands, keeping time with the increasingly fast pace of Eva's chanting. She whirled around the rock, jumping on it and over it, splashing Derek with the liquid until rivulets ran down his face. Still he didn't move. She crouched at his head, opened his mouth, and placed something in it that looked like a large lozenge, a small pebble, or maybe a shiny black bug. Then she opened a bag at her waist and began winding a yellow and black checkered rope around her upper arm.

My hands froze in mid-air. Something about that pattern had awakened a deep and hidden fear, presumably some childhood lesson about poisonous snakes that had been lying dormant in my hippocampus.

"Play!" Eva's voice brooked no argument.

I hit the drum heedlessly while the snake slithered around Eva's arms. She lowered her hands, letting it slide onto Derek's neck. I gasped as it slipped under his shirt and disappeared. Her chanting was so fast now it didn't sound human. I couldn't keep up with it on the drum and I didn't try.

Eva pulled Derek's mouth open, removed the pebble and tossed it away. Derek's chest heaved. Spasms wracked his body, lifting him up and then banging him down onto the rock over and over. If Eva hadn't been holding his head he might have knocked himself unconscious.

Derek choked, gasping and clutching at his chest as if he couldn't breathe. I started forward. Eva held up one hand.

"Don't."

The coughing and choking got worse, as specks of white foam spewed from his open mouth. His arms and legs were stiff as boards, but the rest of his body jerked spasmodically. I ignored Eva and rushed over, grabbing Derek's wrist to check his pulse.

"I told you to sit down." Eva's voice was low, but her tone was biting.

"Eva, his pulse is dropping. What the h.e.l.l was in that liquid you gave him?"

"Mandrake root."

I stared at her in disbelief, remembering the fetus-shaped roots from her suitcase. "But that's poison."

"We must drive the malevolent spirit from his body."

Derek's pulse was getting slower and more arrhythmic by the second. I grabbed my sister by the arm. "You poisoned him!"

"Maggie, step back." Eva stared in my direction, causing my heart to lurch and my stomach to roil. Her normally emerald-green eyes were obscured by a bluish-white membrane. That or I was hallucinating.

The grip she applied in return caused me to yelp with pain. She spoke slowly and calmly, squeezing my arm so hard that my hand went numb and then lost all feeling.