The night grew quiet.
“Hello,” Maria called. “Anyone there? Mr. Klein? Mr. Ripple? Mr. Owl?”
Silence. Then the wind moaned through the trees.
“Goddamn it. I don’t need this shit.”
Maria unlocked her car, reached inside the glove compartment, and pulled out a flashlight. It was long and black—a Mag light just like the cops used. The heavy steel cylinder felt good in her hands, gave her confidence. She plucked her digital voice recorder from her purse, tested it, dropped the notebook and pen back inside, and then hid the purse beneath the driver’s seat. Then she locked the car again and flicked on the flashlight. The darkness seemed to press against the brightness. The spotlight beam showed a clear path to the forest. She’d been right. The woods were farther away than they’d looked. It would be a long walk.
“This is bullshit. These shoes aren’t made for traipsing around in the woods.”
Cursing, her hood pulled low, Maria trudged toward the hollow. The mud sucked at her feet, as if the ground were trying to prevent her from going forward.
Levi climbed into the back of the buggy. His weight made it shift, rocking the suspension. The wheels groaned. At the front, Dee shuffled her legs, hooves clattering against the pavement.
“I know what I’m doing,” he told the horse. “Trust me.”
Dee chomped her teeth together. They sounded like a mousetrap snapping shut.
“There’s just no pleasing you, is there?”
A car drove through the parking lot, hip-hop music blasting from the speakers. The bass rattled the windows. The driver’s face was painted to look like a skull—white and leering. Obviously, they were getting a head start on the holiday. Levi waited for the car to pass. If the driver parked next to him, he’d be unable to proceed until they left.
When the coast was clear again, Levi pulled a canvas tarp off a long wooden box and laid it aside, stirring up dust. He sneezed. The box was padlocked, and covered with charms to protect its contents from thieves, witchcraft, and the elements. The sigils were painted onto the wood, and in some cases, carved deep into the surface. There were holy symbols and complex hex signs, as well as words of power. Levi ran his fingers over the two most dominant etchings.
I.
N. I. R.
I.
SANCTUS SPIRITUS
I.
N. I. R.
I.
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
He’d carved them himself, just as his father had taught him, carefully inscribing the words from The Long Lost Friend and other books. Levi smiled. All of the books had been passed down to him from his father. He wondered what his father thought of him now, as he looked down on Levi from the other side. Was he proud of his son? Did he approve? Did he understand that sometimes you had to use the enemy’s methods and learn the enemy’s ways if you were to defeat them? Or, like the rest of Levi’s people, did his father disapprove, even in death?
There was no way of knowing—not until the day when Levi saw him again. The day the Lord called him home. He prayed for that moment. Yearned for it.
And feared it, too.
Dee whinnied softly and pawed at the pavement again with her hooves.
“Okay,” Levi said. “I’m hurrying.”
He pulled a key ring from his pocket and removed the padlock. Then he opened the box. The interior smelled of kerosene and sawdust and dirt. They were comforting smells. They spoke of hard work and effort and honesty. Many people had boxes like this, on the backs of their buggies or in the beds of their pickup trucks. Usually, they held tools. Chainsaws, shovels, hammers, spare engine parts.
Levi’s box held different tools; the ones of his trade.
He sorted through the contents, pushing aside a bundle wrapped in duct tape. The package contained a dried mixture of wormwood, gith, five-finger weed, asafoedita, and salt—a charm against livestock theft, to protect Dee when Levi left the buggy unattended. As long as it remained in the box, no harm could befall the horse. Too bad that didn’t go for the rest of the buggy, which was why he’d asked the store manager to keep an eye on it for him. He’d tried perfecting a charm for the buggy, but so far his efforts had been unsuccessful. The last time he’d tried it, Levi parked the buggy in downtown Lancaster. A street gang had tagged it with spray paint ten minutes later. He’d been ready to forgive them until they turned their attention on Dee. Then the charm had kicked in and Levi had shown them the error of their ways.
The memory made him smile. The looks on their faces…
But as long as Dee and the box were safe, that was all that mattered.
He moved a few books and trinkets around, and found what he was looking for.
A stick.
Levi’s stomach fluttered. His lips felt numb. He started to sweat.
He didn’t want to do this, but he had no choice. The girl was getting farther away. If he didn’t follow her now, he’d lose her for sure, and thus lose any chance he might have of learning the entity’s true name. Then, whatever befell this community would be on him. He was charged with the task.
Swallowing, Levi reached into the box and pulled out the stick. It looked like a walking staff—four feet long, an inch thick, and round. It had been cut from a tree and the gnarled wood was smooth and hardened with age. It was a Rod of Transvection and Levi was terrified of it.
Since the time of King Solomon, Levi knew, scholars had believed that witches could fly with the aid of a broomstick or similar implement. Lambert Daneau, in Les Sorciers, and witch-finder Henry Boguet in numerous writings, both believed that the stick was covered with some type of magic flying ointment and that was how the witches traveled. Other scholars had believed it to be nothing more than delusion. Prierias argued in 1504 that it did not matter if a witch actually flew or not. Simply believing that they flew indicated a clear devotion to pagan goddess Diana, rather than God, and thus branded them a witch. Sir George Mackenzie, Scotland’s King’s Advocate, also explored the psychological side, writing in 1678 that the witches he’d interviewed only dreamed they were flying.
None of them were correct. Like many men, they presumed to know not only the mind of God, but of His enemies as well. In reality, flying was a combination of both theories. Transvection involved a displacement of the inner self—what some people called an “out of body experience.” Levi’s staff had been cut and cured according to the rules, and then lathered with a special home-brewed oil that seeped into the wood. Holding the stick in a certain way, Levi could indeed leave his body and “fly.”
He just didn’t like to.
Levi sat the rod beside him and locked the box again. Then he picked up the stick, climbed down from the buggy, and gave Dee a kiss on the nose, stroking the horse’s thick mane.
“I’m ready. Stay here and mind the groceries. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The horse stared at him with sad, brown eyes.
“Now don’t you start with that, Dee. I’m about to undertake the Lord’s work. It’s not like I have a choice. If I don’t do it, who will?”
Dee snorted, then lowered her head and closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, girl.”
Levi glanced around the empty parking lot. He needed seclusion, some place where he wouldn’t be discovered or disturbed. The back of the buggy was out, as were the street and sidewalk. He considered using the grocery store’s rest-room, but decided against that as well. What if somebody came in while he was out, and they removed the stick from his hands?