Fields of Ashmere Read online

iron cage. This immediately set Derrick and Chin around the room, pulling back curtain after curtain. One contained a man that was drugged and completely unresponsive.

  “This is inspector Drumwell, we have to get him out of here and arrest the widow.”

  “What do we do first?”

  “I think we need to arrest the widow before she realizes we are down here and alerts others. My guess is that they can only force the others to behave like animals when the moon is up. Still, I don’t want to be trapped here. Besides, the cage is locked and I don’t have a key, can you pick it?”

  “Not that one, it looks like a really old fashioned lock. Let’s get out of here. I really wished our radio worked so we could call in back up and an ambulance.”

  The men scrambled back up the stairs and ran inside. The widow was just coming out of her room saw the officers and started to wish them a bright morning.

  “You’re under arrest Widow Waters, for the kidnapping of Inspector Drumwell.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “We’ve found the inspector underneath your house and witnessed a dozen robed figures go down in your cellar last night.”

  The smile never left the widow’s face, “So you boys have solved it, too bad.”

  Then she shrieked, the same shriek that had been coming over the radio. Both men felt their bones freeze and could not move a muscle. The widow approached, pulling a needle out of a pocket.

  “This is going to put you to sleep, then we will have enough to feed on for a long time.”

  Neither Derrick nor Chin could move to defend themselves, but Leonard had no problems. Seeing this strange person threatening his master, Leonard lunged for the widow catching her unawares. With the widow’s attention turned towards the dog, then men thawed and were able to move again. Chin grabbed his service pistol and shot the widow thrice, two in her left shoulder and one in her head.

  Once the widow hit the ground, a shriek started coming from outside. The two men hurried out to find the source and followed it back into the cellar. The pentagram was glowing red. Without another thought, Derrick shot the lock on Drumwell’s cage and burst it open. They grabbed the unconscious man and hauled him upstairs while the pentagram continued to scream. They basically threw the inspector into the back of the car, and then Leonard got in. The two men jumped inside and Derrick floored the accelerator. They had to drive through Ashmere to get out of town.

  There were people out again, just like they had been the previous morning, but this time all their attention was focused on the police car. Everybody had an unfathomable look of rage on their face. Without any notice, the pedestrians all dropped whatever they had been holding and started running into the path of the car. Derrick swerved to miss the first few, but realized that they were being controlled by some force. Then Derrick realized that this was a tactic, if he crashed the car trying to miss the people, then they were finished. So he just kept his foot on the gas, and started driving through the gathering crowd.

  After he hit several people, the lunatics backed off. Before he could breathe a sigh of relief though, Derrick caught sight of a local sheriff car. Not liking where this was going, he turned onto the main street out of town. The local sheriff’s car followed them, picking up speed. Without warning, the deputies started shooting at them. Then he realized that they had blocked the road ahead of them with another deputy car. Knowing that to stop was to be caught; Derrick picked up speed and hit the rear end of the car, spinning it around. He never looked back as he raced out of town and into the woods.

  The radio, which had previously been off, came on and started screaming at them. The voice was in agony, demanding that they bring back Drumwell. Chin tried to turn it back off to no avail, then grabbed the radio and yanked it out of the dashboard. Derrick’s car was much newer than the sheriff’s car, and even damaged as it was, it was the faster and they made their way out of the forest with the sheriff’s car falling further and further behind. At the edge of the forest, Derrick saw the sheriff’s car stop and turn around.

  Once they were out of the forest, the fog lifted and the sun shone brightly. Derrick and Chin drove the three hours back to the big city and took the inspector to a hospital before checking in with the police station. They had retrieved the man presumed dead, broken up a sorcerous cabal, and lived to tell the tale.

  Thank you so much for reading this short story, I really hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. This is simply a one-off kind of story that has been rattling around in my brain for a while. Even though this story takes place on earth and not in the Other Worlds universe that I have created you can still find my Facebook page for all the books and short stories that I write called Other Worlds, so just search for it and “Like” it to keep a tab on my newest stuff.

  Thank you,

  Ronald Brandenburg

  About the Author

  Ronald Brandenburg III was born in the United States in Alabama and grew up on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Growing up on a small farm meant having few neighbors and thus delved into the worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Major influences include Harold Coyle, J. R. R. Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. K. Rowling and many others.

  Ronald studied mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he graduated with honors. Since finishing school, he is a Systems Engineer for a Fortune 500 company. Alongside table top strategy games and computer games, writing is a favorite hobby.