By the Light of His Lantern Page 27

  “You’re sure about involving her?”

  “She insists. It’s important to her. I’d prefer her this way than running to the police to turn me in.”

  The line was silent. “Can you trust her?”

  “I’m hoping so. I don’t want to turn her away.”

  “I’m hoping so, too.”

  “Maybe it’ll help having a third person. Do you want to come over to plan, or are you busy right now?”

  “I can come now. Be there in a few.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There was an obvious distance between Beth and Lara. A refusal to look the other in the eye—or when they did, it was cautious or even seething. Catherine caught on to it quickly, noting that it was mostly on Beth’s part. Beth hadn’t been there, so it would be harder for her to understand or trust Lara knowing only what she did.

  Catherine filled Lara in on what she and Beth knew and what they planned to do. Most of their plan was without details, and most of it relied on people being where they were expected to be.

  “The plan was to look everything over today, to make sure it was even possible. But… other things came up.”

  “Sorry.” Lara picked at nothing on her jeans.

  “Are you on drugs?” Beth asked, point-blank. “I know your mom’s too skittish to ask, afraid she’ll run you off, but this is important. You want to help and that’s great, but you have to actually be of help.”

  “I’m not on anything right now,” she said. It was probably the truth, Catherine thought, but it wasn’t the most promising response. Lara turned to her then. “And I swear to you I’m trying to be done with that stuff. Don’t worry about me.”

  “She’s your mom, of course she’ll worry about you.”

  “Beth,” Catherine said, on edge. “Stop.”

  “I just want to make sure you don’t end up in any worse trouble. The problem at hand is enough.”

  “I’m not going to cause any more trouble. I told my mom before you got here, I want to help.”

  Beth seemed unaffected by her answer, but they continued planning regardless.

  Beth said, “If we can spot Rosaline at the bar, all we need then is to get the husband out of the picture, if he’s not already. He has a business number on his work truck, you said, right? What would be best is if we could call him and get him somewhere else regardless, just to know that he’s preoccupied.”

  “I forgot something,” Catherine said, an overlooked memory emerging with a cloud of disappointment behind it. “There was a little boy when I went to see her at her home.”

  “A little boy?” Beth asked. “Rosaline’s kids are older, I think. All grown. Could have been a grandson.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe.”

  “How little was he? If we get both the parents out of the house, maybe he’ll tag along with dad.”

  “Pretty little. Little enough for that, I think. I hope…”

  “All right…” Beth thought it over. “I don’t think that will matter.”

  Lara spoke up, “What happens if we do this and the house is just… locked?”

  “I’m not afraid to break a window,” Beth said.

  “Nobody’s window is getting broken,” Catherine said.

  “I’m not being funny. If the doors are locked, I will break a window.”

  Catherine’s heart started pounding. It was becoming too real. The guilt she felt at dragging Beth into her problem crushed her like a burning car. The idea that her friend would go to such lengths to help her, while flattering, terrified her. Lara chewed her lip, possibly revealing she didn’t quite know what she was in for.

  “So…” Catherine breathed to calm herself. “Rosaline is at the bar. Someone calls the husband, to get him away if he’s home—”

  “I’ll call him,” Lara said.

  “No,” Beth disagreed. “If he’s home when I get there, I’ll call him. I’ll give him this address. That way I can wait and watch him leave and know exactly where he’s going and give myself an estimate for how long I’ll have.”

  “Then I’ll be here,” Lara said. “I can be here when he comes.”

  “No,” Beth said again. “Your mom should be here. You can be at the bar, watching Rosaline’s car.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Catherine asked. “I met him briefly that time I went over there. He might remember me. Then he’d know me, and know where I live…”

  Beth pondered. Catherine got the feeling she didn’t want Lara there alone, in case they couldn’t trust her after all. What might she do? Rob Catherine’s home more? Do something with the unconscious man…

  “I guess that wouldn’t be the best idea…”

  “I’ll be fine,” Lara said. “I can handle myself.” Then she looked at Beth, whose eyes continued wobbling around her general direction as though avoiding seeing her altogether. “And nothing’s going to happen here. It’s just me. Rob is out of the picture. I don’t want anything more to do with… anything that happened yesterday.”

  “Rob the robber…” Beth muttered. Finally she made eye contact with Lara. “If you’re sure you can handle it,” she said, without a hint of sincerity.

  “All right.” Catherine shimmied in her seat. “So, assuming it works, and the husband is here, and Rosaline is managing her bar…”

  “Then I’ll break into the house. I’ll find the book… What’s it look like, again?”

  “Um…” Catherine remembered. “It was green. Dark green, and thick. I don’t remember what it was called, but the lettering on the spine and cover were black. I don’t imagine there being any others like it.”

  “Unless it’s part of a series,” Beth added. “An encyclopedia series of witchcraft.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Hmmm… She didn’t keep it anywhere special, either. I think when she grabbed it, it was just on their bookcase in the living room. I don’t remember, though. I don’t think she left the room to get it.”

  “Okay, so big green book in the living room. Anyway, I’ll flip through it until I find what we’re looking for… and what is it we’re looking for?”

  “I remember she copied the symbol I told you about from the page. I still have the scrap with the symbol she gave me. I can give you that and you can find the page with that symbol?”

  “Easy enough. I’ll snap a picture on my phone, and then I’ll leave.”

  “It sounds too easy,” Catherine said. “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Like what?”

  “What if you break in and the little boy is there? What if Rosaline leaves the bar, maybe not in her car, and comes home?”

  “What if there’s an electrical fire and I burn alive in their living room?” Beth mocked. “A lot of unexpected bad can occur with any plan. Outside of the impractical, I think we’ll be okay.”

  Catherine didn’t feel reassured at all. “You’ve watched too many of those movies.”

  “What movies?”

  “I don’t know what they’re called. The Julia Roberts one.”

  “The Pelican Brief?” Lara suggested.

  “No, there’s a bunch of them.”

  “You’re talking about the Ocean’s movies,” Beth said. She turned to Lara. “The Pelican Brief? That’s the one you think of? Isn’t that movie older than you are?”

  Lara shrugged.

  Catherine’s heart was still beating harder than it should. It hadn’t really stopped since it started. Even if everything went smooth as butter and they got exactly what they wanted, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it anyway. Her heart would give out before the end of it.

  “Everything will be fine,” Beth said, getting back on topic. “And if it’s not, if something goes wrong, it’ll be something simple.” She put a hand on Catherine’s leg, looked her in the eyes with as much understanding and promise of certainty as she could muster. “We’re not robbing a casino.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Beth didn’t want to wast
e any time. Neither did Catherine, but she felt much less gung-ho about it all. When it was suggested they try the next day, Sunday, Catherine knew without any doubt that she’d be getting no sleep that night. Which she didn’t. And once the ball was rolling—as they went over their final review of the plan in Catherine’s living room the next morning, and as Catherine was pulling out of the driveway, leaving Lara alone in the living room until it was time to play her part, and as she was driving toward the bar, watching Beth’s car grow distant in her rearview on her way to Rosaline’s house in the other direction—everything moved so quickly, like rain-beaten debris pulled through a violent flood, that Catherine felt helpless to try and stop any of it.

  And the flood could only get deeper.

  Chapter Nine

  Going Back

  Lewis made a blind run for it. He threw himself across the dark room, toward where he remembered there being a door. He hit the wall. He flapped his hands until he opened the door and fled onto the rickety staircase. In the narrow alleyway he screamed, called for help. How many similar cries for help were there a night? No footsteps followed. He looked over his shoulder, saw only the sparse torches lit overhead down the passage. The more brightly lit street waited ahead. A chirp from above drew his attention to the sky, where any number of creatures could be peering down at him at that moment, though he knew the one he heard was of a feathered variety.

  He burst from the alley into the street, calling for help, and saw no one there to see or hear him. Picking up the pace again, he jogged down the street for anyone else he could find. A sudden explosion stopped him cold. The nearest overhead torch swelled like a burning treetop, one large ball of flame. Lewis watched, dazed. It fell from its hook to the ground, splashed on the street in a plume of smoke and ember. From the rising smoke, as though from an open doorway, a dark figure emerged, rushed Lewis with outstretched arms. Lewis choked on his own scream. Those fiery eyes pounced on him. Clawed hands lifted and spun him round like pizza dough, shoved him face down into the dirt.

  “Now you can see,” he whispered in Lewis’s ear. “You cannot run.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lewis was tied with rope behind his back, tight enough to pinch his wrists and to start a throbbing in the stump of his finger. His legs were also bound. It was near impossible, then, for an escape. And even then, his captor appeared to have… tricks, up his sleeves.

  Lewis was carried naked and bound over the man’s shoulder all through town. He cried out for help as they passed open windows and doors, or even others walking plainly by, but no one responded. A group of women standing beneath a torn-up awning outside what looked to be a shop of some kind looked in his direction as he begged, but were uninterested. Soon they were at the town gate, the one Lewis had meant to find but never had. It was larger than the door he’d come through, and guarded by no one. Anyone or anything intelligent enough to work the opening/closing mechanism was granted access to town, it seemed. With Lewis thrown over one shoulder, the man turned the crank with his other arm, raising the gate high above their heads. When he released it, they slipped underneath and the gate slowly descended shut behind them.

  Lewis missed his lantern greatly as they departed town without any light of their own. In the dark, all he had were the wet, glowing pits of the man’s eyes, which he dared not meet. They walked a good distance. Lewis watched the scant light over the town walls fade into the sunless world with everything else.

  “Not much farther,” the man said.

  They bumped and bounced in stride a while longer until Lewis was suddenly dumped to the ground like a bag of luggage. Fabric slipped and unfastened in the dark. Boots climbed onto something wooden, creaking. A puff of air revealed a beast near them, but a familiar one. Puff, puff. A horse. Bootsteps crossed toward Lewis and he was heaved into the air one last time before being passed through some kind of curtain and rolled onto a flat wooden space. If he had to guess, and it was a fairly easy one, they were in a covered wagon. There was a wet spot in the back of the wagon, soaked into the damp wood.

  “And we’re off,” the man said. Lewis felt his eyes on him, though they weren’t glowing. The man laughed, low and privately.

  “Where are we going?” Lewis asked.

  “Somewhere I fancy no one’s ever been before.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lewis lay flat on his back, listening to the noisy wagon rattle and jostle over every dip in the dirt. The bird followed them. It made soft cooing sounds in the air overhead, and every now and then it landed somewhere in the front with the man, who fed it something Lewis wasn’t sure he wanted to see. Now and then the man took a bite himself, slurping and crunching and licking whatever it was from the beard around his mouth. The man hummed a tune, one not very musical or catchy, in his deep, dragon-like voice. Occasionally he laughed at nothing, or at least nothing Lewis knew about. The wagon was damp with blood. Not Lewis’s blood. He worried all the more at what the man and his bird might be eating.

  “What are you?” Lewis asked.

  “You already asked me that.” The man shuffled around in his seat, noises of amusement rising in his throat, like he was on the verge of cracking up. “You do not remember?”

  “I remember. You didn’t answer.”

  The man chuckled. “You do remember, then.” He took another bite of his questionable meal, rolled the hard bits around his teeth and sucked the juices down. “I told you before, I am like you.”

  “But you’re not.”

  The wagon was quiet.

  “I might have been, once upon a time.” He sighed, heavy and full of reminiscence. “Truth is, I do not remember.”

  “You’re part of it. You’ve been here since the beginning.”

  “Hmmmm…” The man considered. Then in a dreamy sort of drawl, he continued. “I have wondered… but I am not like the rest… you know… those things crawling about… they are animals… to me… I am not the same.” He smacked his lips, drew in a breath. “I have never met anything else like me. So I figure I must be like you. Though, if I am… I do not even remember my name… What do you make of that?”

  Lewis didn’t feel much like speculating.

  “Going quiet on me?” the man said. “Suit yourself.”

  They rolled onward in silence. Lewis attempted sleep, but it was a joke to try he realized. The fear of their destination, its mystery, was too great to allow his mind to sink anywhere deep enough for that.

  When Lewis first met the man, on that bridge when the bird stole his lantern, he had seemed much different. He was terrifying. With his burning, penetrating eyes, and the way they cast their light on Lewis full of knowing, and a hunger… He was terrifying even now, but it could be seen he was not entirely alien. He had questions of his own, about himself and other things, too. He gave the impression of being both determined and a little lost.

  Lewis chewed on the things he’d said to him back at Terry’s room.

  You are a very special man, Lewis. Did you know that?

  You are my ticket out of here.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asked again. “Specifically?”

  “To the farthest reaches,” he answered. An answer no less cryptic than before. Lewis hadn’t expected much else.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The man tossed something over his shoulder into the wagon. It scraped to a halt next to Lewis’s head. He was glad he couldn’t see it. Whatever it was, he guessed it wasn’t what it had been moments ago, and the deep rumble of a belch held in the man’s throat confirmed it.

  “Still hungry…” he murmured. “Never fear… I know a place…”

  Several minutes later, possibly an hour or two—time was so distorted—the wagon came to a stop.

  “I will only be a minute,” the man said. “I suggest you sit tight.”

  The wagon rocked as the man stepped down. His legs swished through grass until he was gone, and Lewis could hear the insects outside. Without hesitation he rolled toward the front of the wa
gon until he reached the opening. He sat himself up, a harder feat when your hands are bound behind your back. He leaned over the ledge of the driver’s bench. First thing he saw—the ONLY thing he saw—was what appeared to be a cloth tent not far off, lit from within. A shadow moved inside. The figure wormed at its edges in the licking firelight. A woman. She paced here and there, busying herself with something. That was, until the fire swelled, a trick Lewis had seen before. It swelled until the tent was full of it, caught with it. The woman shrieked. Knowing what would happen next, Lewis rolled himself onto the wooden seat, then off the wooden seat, down onto the hard earth below. He shimmied out from under the wagon and got to his feet. He looked over his shoulder. The tent was gone, vanished into charred darkness, a fizzle of embers twisting skyward. The woman continued screaming.

  Ankles tied together, he hopped madly away, like a sack race for his life. With nothing to prod the darkness before him, he could only hope he didn’t run headfirst into something, or trip and have nothing to catch his fall. The grass was forgiving in that regard. Then he remembered something.

  He can see in the dark.

  Thinking quickly, he collapsed into the grass and lay there still, panting. He hoped he’d done it soon enough. The woman’s screams had ceased. He waited. Crickets, scared into silence by his commotion, stirred to life again one by one.

  He lay on his back, hands crushed under his weight, staring up into an absence which suddenly caused a violent surge of longing through him. This man, who knew things, felt confident there was a way out of this place. An exit for which Lewis was somehow the key. Like drinking too quickly on a dehydrated stomach, he felt nauseous at the amount of hope he was filled with at such a possibility. Just when he’d begun to think he was looking at his eternity…

  Something moved in the grass ahead. He winced, prepared for the rough clawed hands to heave him over a burly shoulder back to the wagon.

  “It’s me.”

  Glorious day, it was her. He caught his lips trying to remember a smile at the sound of her voice. How was it she always found him in the end, wherever he was? He opened his eyes, nothing to see. She walked closer. She bent down, and he felt her hair tickle his face.