9 Tales Told in the Dark 3 Read online

  Akeesha gave the same order with a gesture, then said, "Let's get started," and marched up the stairs to the door, with Aaron two steps behind her.

  The mausoleum was built of close-fitting gray stone, without mortar, and the twin doors were featureless slabs of the same stone.

  Sarena followed at a deliberately slower pace, with Starla behind her, but she didn't waste time when she got to the top. Without pausing she slid the Dagger of Kaleef to the hilt into a narrow slot at eye level where the doors met, a slot so narrow Aaron hadn't seen it.

  Nothing happened but Sarena backed away and ushered Akeesha into her place. "Your turn now."

  Akeesha already had the Eye of Arachna in her hand. Without hesitation she reached out and touched the octagonal diamond to the end of the hilt, where it stuck as though magnetized. She pushed it gently with the tip of her forefinger and the dagger sank further into the stone until the diamond touched, whereupon it split precisely in half with a sound like a crystal bell and the doors slid apart.

  The air itself seemed to ripple, there was so much magic inside.

  Without conscious thought, in unison, they stepped through the doorway. The doorway was the only opening, yet a uniform, gray light filled the interior. The walls were featureless, as was the flat, polished floor, except for an oval-shaped altar of darker stone in the center.

  Akeesha and Sarena conferred briefly, then got to work setting up for the first stage of the spell. Only the top three, most trusted acolytes from each coven were allowed inside the mausoleum to assist.

  On the surface it seemed that Akeesha and Sarena were working well together, but Aaron knew his mistress well and he could see her tension. The sisters needed each other now but they had always hated each other and there was no trust between them.

  Aaron felt a tension too, working so close to Starla but unable to even look at her without giving them away. He wished he had some way to communicate with her.

  Now that Akeesha's spells no longer bound him to obey her every command he found it hard to do some of what was required for the spell. Yesterday the idea of a blood sacrifice wouldn't have fazed him at all, but today he had to overcome a reluctance to cut his own arm. This far in there was no way he could back out without disastrous consequences to them all; they had to complete the spell.

  The hours passed and the tension increased. The room got hot and the air sizzled with static electricity, making their hair stick out in a comical manner, but nobody was in a laughing mood. There was so much energy flowing through the room that, at certain times, Aaron could siphon off a minute fraction of it without disturbing anything, storing it as heat in that place between, and when he started sweating he put his own excess heat there too.

  For the final stage of the spell, in the hour before midnight, the other acolytes were sent out. Aaron knew he and Starla were allowed to remain not because they were the best, but because they were the most strongly bound, and therefore the most trustworthy, or, to put it another way, the least likely to make a power grab for themselves.

  There was a lot of waiting during the final stage. Most of the spell didn't require four people, but there wasn't much trust, and they had to stay alert to make sure they performed the necessary actions at precisely the right times.

  The eclipse could not be seen from inside but when it began all four of them felt the change. Together, because neither would let the other do it alone, Akeesha and Sarena touched burning coals to the lines of powder laid out in intricate lines and patterns on the floor.

  Almost instantly the entire diagram burst into brilliant, blue-white flame, burned for two seconds and died, leaving a duplicate copy of the diagram in smoke, which stayed intact as it rose slowly toward the domed ceiling, where it was sucked to the center, as though going up a chimney, but it didn't go anywhere, it condensed into a cloud, and out of the cloud something fluttered down, like a discarded garment.

  It was the skin of Tamra, and as it came into reach they each took a limb and stretched it out on the stone altar. Aaron and Starla stood side by side at the feet but dared not take any notice of each other. The leathery skin seemed to suck the life force out of him the same way cold metal would suck the heat out of his hand.

  The skin stirred, inflated, taking on the shape of a thin, old woman, and when they let go it drifted up, the head rising faster than the feet, until it stood vertical with its feet about a yard above the stone slab. Though hollow, and filled only with air, the animated skin articulated like it had a skeleton inside it, moved like there were muscles under it, and even though there were no eyes in the eyeholes it still seemed to be looking right at them as it spoke in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rustling in the wind, but loud enough to be heard and understood.

  "Congratulations, you two have proven yourselves superior to all the others who sought to come here seeking power, but only one can win, so somehow you must decide. What shall it be? A battle of wits, of magical power, of physical strength?" The dry rasp of its laughter cut them off before they could reply. "No, you already showed that you both excel in those categories by defeating all the other witches. What we shall have is a test of loyalty. Let your acolytes choose."

  Akeesha and Sarena spun around in unison to face Aaron and Starla, who stood stunned, side by side at the foot of the altar.

  The raspy laugh sounded loud in the cold silence and Tamra's question hung in the air, "Which of them is less loyal?"

  Sarena looked at Aaron and said, "I'll give you anything you want."

  Akeesha said to Starla, "I'll give you more of everything."

  Aaron kept his face impassive and didn't look directly at either of them, giving no hint that his loyalty now lay with Starla, had, in truth, always done so, despite Akeesha's bindings.

  Starla smiled at both of them, performed an elaborate curtsy with so much flourishing of her hands and arms that only Aaron, who had been watching for it, saw the blowpipe slide out of her sleeve into her hand. As she straightened she raised the blowpipe to her lips and shot a dart into Sarena's neck.

  Sarena, her eyes full of hurt at the betrayal, slapped at the dart like it was a biting insect, pulled it out and threw it to the ground. "How could you?" The fast-acting poison didn't give Starla enough time to answer her, even if she had been inclined to do so. As the poison coursed through Sarina's blood her muscles went slack and she slowly folded to the ground in a limp heap. She quit breathing and panic filled her eyes as her consciousness slipped away and she knew she could do nothing about her impending death.

  Akeesha's face split into a wide grin as she watched her sister's demise. She turned to Starla and tossed her something. Aaron almost cried out a warning but he kept his mouth closed. Starla instinctively caught it and it puffed into dust in her face, her eyes glazed over and she slumped to the ground. Aaron knew she was only unconscious but he had a hard time keeping still. He was sure he had betrayed his feelings for Starla more than once today without Akeesha noticing, but he couldn't afford to give himself away now.

  Her eyes gleaming with hunger, Akeesha turned to address the skin where it hovered. "I'll make you glad I was chosen."

  "I don't care which of you dons my skin. Now be a nice girl and help put me on."

  Aaron didn't expect Akeesha to fall so eagerly into Tamra's trap but she methodically stripped until she stood naked in the center of a pile of clothes, then raised her hands above her head. The skin split open at the back, then settled down in front of her, slipping over her arms like a long pair of old gloves.

  When the skin began to bond with Akeesha, that was when it would be most vulnerable.

  Aaron's skin crawled but he managed to suppress his shudder. Using his training and conditioning to control his emotions and calm his mind he directed all the heat he'd accumulated in that place out through his wand in a single, narrow beam that struck the skin full on the chest. Defensive spells countered most of the heat but Akeesha screamed only once, briefly, as the front of her body cooked in
a few seconds, sizzling and steaming.

  The skin had a scorched spot between its breasts but was otherwise unmarked and unharmed. Faster than Aaron expected the skin stripped itself from Akeesha's corpse and flew straight at him, but he was ready with the unused twin of the pebble he'd stopped Olgana with. Tossing it freehand, he hit Tamra right on the burn mark. The magically augmented force of the impact deflated the skin and bore it down to the floor, but with the spell discharged the pebble was just a small chunk of rock and couldn't hold the skin down. It stirred on the ground, inflating, trying to take shape again.

  Aaron threw books and boxes and whatever he could find on top of the skin, deflating it a bit each time he hit it, but only the heavier objects actually held it down and there weren't many of those, so he went further afield. When he started moving things that were part of the room-sized diagram, now scorched into the floor, the skin grew frantic, one arm flapping like a flag in the wind.

  He smashed a bottle, letting the elixir pour onto the floor, he scattered carefully aligned artifacts, scuffed out lines, knocked over candles, and each time he destroyed a bit of the matrix energy rippled through the air as it was released, making his hair stand up on end, but the skin grew weaker, slowing down. He ran around the chamber, kicking anything he could move out of place, scuffing and rubbing out out lines, until Tamra's skin was flat on the floor and no longer stirred.

  He went to Starla and administered the antidote. When she came around he filled her in on what he'd done.

  She looked down at the skin, still inert now under a pile of paraphernalia. "What are we going to do with it now? It remains a potent artifact with a potential for great evil. We can't cut it, our hottest fire won't burn it, there's no way to destroy it."

  "So we hide it, where no one can get to it."

  "That's not enough. We need to spread word that the skin was destroyed so nobody will ever go looking for it again. With Akeesha and Sarena dead we're the only two people who know what really happened. As long as no one else ever sees the skin and we don't suddenly become way more powerful, everybody will eventually have to believe the skin was destroyed."

  Aaron agreed.

  Wearing gloves, they rolled the skin tightly, bound it with wire, wrapped it and weighted it enough that it wouldn't float, but not so much it would settle on the bottom, then chopped a hole in the ice and dropped it in the river, along with a random collection of other junk.

  They took their new coven and headed north, where it was warmer.

  The End

  REDMAN----By Sara Greene

  People fail to remember that the West wasn’t the only wild in America in the 1800s. Coyotes and mountain lions, bears and more roamed the forests of Virginia.

  Now, not everyone believed in ghosts and monsters. That’s a misconception I think a lot of people hold about the past. The same percentage of the population believed then as they believe now. Not everyone was ready to burn a witch at the drop of a hat.

  But that’s not to say the characters in this story were not ignorant or confused. I don’t know the answer. I’m telling their story a hundred years later passed down by more people who had never met them than did. I’m sure there were plenty of embellishments along the way. But one thing is for certain. People died.

  It was 1881 and the south was in the middle of the Reconstruction period. The Elected officials in any given area were Northerners and therefore distrusted and disobeyed. The Civil War had been over for more than a decade but resentment was strong.

  A nice southern accent was your only pass through most towns as anything else was likely to grant you a blank stare, a turned up nose, or a fight.

  You could be black in the South and receive more hospitality, but God forbid if your voice had the twang of Northern Aggression.

  It was September when a young schoolboy asked why no one was nice to a former slave named George Lee.

  George being aware of the hostility but accepting of it (as best as one could be) told the white boy, “Cuz everyone thinks George don’t like ‘em back. But dat ain’t it. I work hard fer yer pappy and he pay me like dey tell him to.”

  The schoolboy still didn’t understand. So he wouldn’t know why George Lee was arrested when the boy turned up dead the very next day.

  Now George Lee was found innocent as they tried to rush his case through the courts. But he was found innocent by a Northern accent and that didn’t sit well with anyone. A morning was not seen before George Lee was found beaten on a road about ten miles south of the town of Bowling Green.

  But George Lee didn’t point any fingers. He knew better. It was the men from the North that wanted answers and it was those answers that brought more death.

  In January 1882 a snowstorm hit and pushed most people inside by their fireplaces. Like most weather in Virginia, the snow would only be around for a couple of days. And George Lee who stayed with other Negroes was all healed up by then, at least on the outside. But when another child went missing, it was his door the white men had braved the near blizzard like conditions to beat down.

  “He ain’t moved none!” cried his roommates. And George Lee swore to this as well.

  And one of the men who had come to kill him this time believed him.

  “He’s a scared,” the white man said. “Look it, he done nuthin’. Ole George Lee’s a good one. He didn’t kill my boy and he ain’t killed this one either.”

  “Dat’s right,” George Lee nodded hoping the man he used to work for was winning over the rest of the posse.

  “Den who did?” one of them asked.

  The father of the first boy killed hung his head and swung it about until his neck forced him to gaze into George Lee’s eyes with all the apology he could muster. “My boy said it was a red man he was scared of. Said he’d seen him round the school.”

  “Remember, George Lee was wearing red the day they arrested him.”

  “Nah, my boy know his color, calls him black man. Darkest one he ever seen cause he works so hard. I should’ve said it before we come out here,” the father was trying to apologize to the other white man now. “I seen it in your children’s bedroom. He done drawn that red man on his wall.”

  “We driven the redskins as far west as we could. You know there ain’t none around here no more.”

  The father nodded, “It ain’t George Lee.”

  “Well I ain’t seen no red man wandering around the schoolyard or anywhere.”

  “Ask your children,” one of George Lee’s roommates piped up and then ducked in fear of retaliation from the white men.

  So they did. And every child had seen the Red Man.

  It was his eyes they said, that made him look red. They said they were red and when he looked at you he looked all red. But when he didn’t he looked like everyone else.

  “White?” they asked.

  “White.” They all agreed.

  “And he spoke to you?”

  “Sometimes,” the children gave different instances but the Red Man only ever asked them if they had been behaving. Then he’d go away humming a song.

  One of the children remembered it to the tune of:

  “My faith follows you down, down to town. I’ve been watching you walk, walk around.

  Duck my head in shame, I don’t know your name. I keep following you just the same.”

  The child noted, “It is not a pretty song. He sings it all ugly.”

  When asked what the child meant, she told him. “He don’t sound like up when he speak.”

  It was all too easy for the mob to switch its hatred from a black man to a Northern and they knew just where to find each one of them. They brought the child through the snow to identify the man and door-to-door they went accusing and being told it wasn’t the Red Man by the little girl. But one door was not answered.

  The men kicked it down and found the tenant not to be home. This man had come south but no one knew what he did. They assumed he worked for the Governor. The mob took the opportunity to ra
nsack the man’s home but found nothing to prove his guilt.

  By nightfall the mob had been forced to call off their investigation. But by morning two more children were found dead.

  Their bodies were left far more gruesome than ever before.

  One was the little girl brave enough to divulge the song of the Red Man. The other was yet another young boy.

  One child had witnessed their brother being taken. He said the Red Man did it, said his brother could hear the Red Man signing to him outside so he went to the window and the Red Man grabbed him.

  He told the child, ”to behave” and left. The child did not know their brother was dead and couldn’t provide any more details. The tracks had been covered by the additional snowfall overnight.

  It was the Northern who wasn’t home that paid dearly. They tracked him down and murdered him. Everyone knows that. One story says he did get away and returned up north. But those who say that is because they also say children still saw the Red Man long after that man was supposed to be dead. That he still sings his song and if you can hear it then he is coming for you.

  Listen, do you hear it?

  THE END.

  AMONG THE HOODOOS-----By Jeffery Scott Sims

  So the fall of evening found me in my little rented car creeping up that icy road in the Chiricahua Mountains, far from the welcome lights of civilization, smothered in darkness save for the stabbing illumination of the vehicle’s headlights. They showed me the narrow blacktop passage dead ahead, peaked around winding corners and picked out overhanging branches of the pressing, shadow-shifting trees that huddled despairingly in the snow. It was cold in that car, though I was heavily bundled, and colder outside, the cruel, clutching kind of cold that breathes frost on the windshield between swipes of the wipers. I could only make it up there because a snow plow had gone before me at some point in time, maybe a day or a week before, rendering the lane barely negotiable. I cringed when the asphalt gave way to dirt, but it was hard-packed frozen earth, and I didn’t have to decrease my already pathetic speed. The directions received via prior communications proved accurate-- I knew where I was-- and shortly I pulled above the gloomy tree-line onto a wide, undulating plateau.