“What are they then, these forces you speak of?” I asked, stepping closer and playing her game. I didn’t look at the lantern, although I wanted to as much as the rest of them. They stood there, slack-jawed, mostly. Some of them flinched when I spoke, but none of them looked at me. Even Mrs. Hatchell just stared at the brilliant sprays of color that rippled and danced on the walls.
“I believe these forces have lain sleeping in the Earth, in the belly of our world, for all time, undetected by our fledgling sciences. Our only hint of them comes from our myths, our persistent stories of the past which we’ve all chosen to laugh off. The wisdom of those that went before us we consider the ravings of the mad and the ignorant. All superstitious nonsense and children’s fables, fabricated to keep them from straying too far into the forests.”
She had both her hands on it now, and she was gazing deeply into it. She kept talking, seemingly immune to its mesmerizing powers. I wondered if her voice was hypnotic.
“You all realize that magma bubbles and froths just a few miles below our feet, intense, destructive heat that could kill us all in an instant if it chose to? The supernatural forces are like that. They have been in the Earth all along, lying dormant. What makes a volcano happen? Or a rash of them? One finger of lava is sent up through a weak spot in the planet’s thin skin. That finger sprays out like a hose and fills the land with new molten minerals, killing and destroying everything it touches, making new islands in the sea or blowing old ones into history. We don’t question these amazing phenomena. We accept a long history of such events. Just as we accept the falling of chunks of the sky to Earth, wiping out vast areas and causing vast extinctions. Just as we accept the random new tilting of the Earth’s axis, causing ice ages and warming periods, causing life to wilt or bloom all over the globe. These upheavals are known. But this new one, this upheaval of the supernatural, is unknown to us. We’d forgotten about this one. Perhaps humans, as we now think of them, were created in one such upheaval long ago. Perhaps our confused history is full of such hiccups and belches of chaos.”
“I can accept such lofty theories about the age we now face and that there might have been previous such ages,” said a new voice, the Preacher’s voice. He stepped in our makeshift plywood doorway from outside and approached. He stared directly at Wilton, never glancing at the lantern. He avoided looking directly at it, just as I did. He glanced at me and I nodded and took a step toward Wilton. She shuffled her feet and frowned at both of us.
“What I don’t accept,” the Preacher continued, “is the embracing of the destructive powers of the shifting effect. I think a man might wield an instrument touched by the effect, with some peril, but through strength of will, it could be overcome. I’m less convinced that an artifact forged wholly in the fires of the supernatural can ever be controlled by a human. Not if they still planned on remaining human, that is. I’m willing to offer as proof, your sad sore foot, Wilton, and your hound’s paw, which you favor along with a dozen other abominations, I’d wager, beneath that shapeless garment of yours.”
She curled her lip at him, and her eyes flicked between us.
“Can’t you all recall the basic images that have stuck with us for all time?” the Preacher continued. “What shape does a witch bear when she comes to us? She comes in the form of a Hag, an aged and withered thing, both pitiful and terrible. What garments does such a sad creature wear? Why, formless robes to hide the devastation to her body that her depraved congress with the supernatural has wrought upon her!”
“Nonsense!” Wilton bleated. “My abominations, as you call them, are noble sacrifices, made by me in full knowledge of the consequences for the betterment of us all.”
“Nay, I say they have been made for the betterment of just one: yourself,” he told her. On his belt, the axe that rode there moved and poked out its handle suggestively.
I looked at Wilton and the Preacher, their eyes were locked and I knew, with absolute certainty, that something very bad was about to happen. I wanted both of them alive, at least until we rode out this storm, so I took that moment to act. While her attention was diverted, I threw my coat back over the lantern. The beautiful colors died, and the crowd in the lobby sighed disappointedly.
Outside, there was a flash of color from the skies, answering the sudden quiet inside. Somewhere, there was a flash of red lightning. The storm had begun, and evening was falling over Redmoor on Halloween. The windows and doors shuddered with sudden gusts of cold wind. Rain speckled the parking lot and the sun died.
“Don’t uncover that thing again,” I told her with open threat in my voice.
“The Hag will kill us all,” Wilton hissed back. “She wants her source back and we can’t beat her if she gets it.”
“We’re not going to give it to her.”
She grinned, and I thought her teeth looked a bit too long. “In a way, I’m glad to see you can stand up to this pretty bauble. Maybe we can win this fight after all. I had all but lost hope, you see. Now, no matter what you think of me, remember one thing for the battle ahead: she only has one great power. She can make things come to life and move, such as the walking trees. She will make things that cannot move into mobile servants to tear us apart.”
She sagged down into a chair then, looking exhausted and old and empty.
The Preacher, cheek muscles twitching, stared down at her. There was murder in his eye.
I grabbed Mrs. Hatchell and spun her to look at me. “Don’t look at these things directly. They can captivate your mind. Tell the others. You understand, don’t you? Or are you a mindless old fool?”
She blinked at me, but the insult stung her. She stalked around the room, getting into people’s faces and waking them up.
“Let’s go outside,” I said to the Preacher. He continued to stare at the defeated Wilton. He tossed me a glare, and then stomped outside. I followed him.
Outside it was raining now and the wind worked hard to lash the silvery drops down in stinging sheets. I couldn’t recall a Halloween with worse weather. Probably, weather patterns had all changed now, and not for the better.
The Preacher was angry. “I had passed judgment upon her, Gannon. You interfered. You have imperiled us all.”
“You are the one always saying it’s never too late, that lost ones can come back to the fold. Here she is, back in the fold, and we are facing the greatest danger yet. I say let those who survive until morning decide who is guilty and who isn’t.”
“For her, I think it is too late. She’s passed on. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he quoted, “and if I’ve ever set eyes upon a witch, that is one sitting inside our very fortress.”
“We need her to counter the other witch. You haven’t met her yet, she makes Wilton seem harmless.”
He sighed. “You’ve endangered us all. Evil can’t be used to combat evil, Gannon, it doesn’t work that way. But very well, you’ve stayed my hand for now.”
That was all I wanted to hear. We went back inside.
This time the world did not fill up with fog. This time, the storm came on like a thousand giants beating furiously on the roof and the pavement. The red flashes were back, but with odd whooshing sounds rather than thunder. It was unnerving, and everyone knew that things would be changed outside after it had passed. We even invented a name for this kind of odd storm.
“A shiftstorm,” said Vance next to me. “Sounds a lot like shit-storm, doesn’t it?” he chuckled at his own joke and I smiled.
We looked outside. It was dark now, just after six in the evening, as closely as I could figure in this age without clocks.