Circles in hermes footst.., p.4
Circles in Hermes' Footsteps (The Temple of the Three Whispers Book 2), page 4
“Yeah. Me too.” He turned and looked back toward the countless mobile homes he passed on his way in. Just what the hell was going on? His mind was racing, retracing the steps that brought them here. It wasn’t by chance that they were in this place. Something brought them here, herded them like cattle, blocked all the roads that would’ve taken them anywhere else but here. And then there was that dream, all but forgotten until they were deep inside Nora’s Lilac Grove.
He didn’t say it aloud, but this was starting to feel like Gilbert House all over again. Except there were no mysterious envelopes. No invitation to do a job. No cash reward to entice them.
There was no choice.
Olivia glanced back one last time, too, still feeling that overwhelming sense of impending doom creeping closer, a clear message trickling through her nerves that it wasn’t safe to linger. Then, reluctantly, she set off down the stone steps.
“This really feels like we’re walking into something bad,” said Wayne as he eyed the shadowy tunnel of foliage laid out below them.
She couldn’t disagree. This was like the start of a horror movie. But if those awful feelings of panic were real manifestations of her psychic ability—and it didn’t steer them wrong five years ago on that burning mountain—then this was the only place for them to go. That feeling of impending dread was still with her. Frightful things awaited them on this course. But it was nothing compared to what she felt at the mere thought of doing anything else.
Again, she pulled out her phone and tried to call Nicole. Again it went straight to voicemail. Then she tried Andrea’s number, again with the same result. “You don’t think something’s happened to them, do you?”
What he wanted to say was, “Of course not,” but they both knew he couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t make promises like that. What if he was wrong? What if something terrible had happened?
Why was everything suddenly happening right now? That woman’s body turning up in the lake… The mysterious, invisible peril that herded them into this trailer park of mystery… A forgotten dream that both of them seemed to share and only just now remembered… And both Nicole and Andrea not answering their phones… It seemed like an awful lot to be just a coincidence. But what did all those things have to do with each other?
“I picked the wrong shoes today,” whined Olivia. With no handrail, she was clinging to Wayne’s arm and trying her best to watch where she was placing her feet. The steps were fairly narrow and while her sandals were cute and practical and went fabulously with her favorite sundress for a nice backyard barbecue, they weren’t exactly made for strenuous activity. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if they ended up having to run away in a hurry…
“At least it’s cooler down here,” tried Wayne. The temperature was slowly dropping as they descended into the deepening shade.
“I think I preferred it hot.” The colder it felt, the more of a chill this place instilled in her. Goosebumps were starting to rise on her bare arms. She looked back up at the angel above them. The blazing sunshine had turned it into a hazy silhouette. “It feels eerie down here.”
He couldn’t argue with that. There was something rather unsettling about the temperature difference. It felt as if they were descending not into a forest valley, but into the cold depths of a bottomless cavern.
“It reminds me of back then,” she said, finally speaking what both of them had been putting off saying. “Of Gilbert House. And…” She squeezed his arm a little tighter. “And the rest…”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” Descending into a cold darkness…farther and farther from civilization, deeper into unknown danger…
She looked up at him. “Which makes me that much more worried about Nicole and Andrea.”
“I know. But there’s nothing we can do about it right now. Let’s focus on whatever this is. I promise we’ll figure out why they’re not answering their phones as soon as we have some breathing room again.”
She nodded. Yes. That was a good plan. But she couldn’t help worrying. They were her closest friends, after all. Them and Brandy and Albert. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to any of them.
They were nearing the bottom of the steps now. The ground was a narrow grassy path leading forward. The forest on either side was the densest Wayne had ever seen in all his years living in these forests. He couldn’t see a single place where a person might slip into those surrounding trees. Brush and thorns and vines and weeds created a natural barrier that he wasn’t sure he could carve his way through with a chainsaw. And the trees here were enormous. Towering oaks and pines stretched high up into the heavens, their massive branches reaching across the path, intertwining, creating a dense canopy that turned the path into a deep, shadowy tunnel so dark and long that he couldn’t clearly see the end.
“It’s beautiful…” observed Olivia. “In the creepiest possible way.”
He couldn’t argue that.
Two rotting pine logs partially blocked the path near the steps, but the rest of the way forward was clear. They stepped over them and continued onward.
She tightened her grip on his arm and glanced back at the dwindling light shining down those steps. She didn’t want to be down here. It was scary. Looking back there reminded her of looking back at the cellar steps of Gilbert House when she first descended into the harsh reality of the universe. But something deep inside her mind insisted that she didn’t dare go back. The very thought of returning to those stairs filled her with such desperate fear and panic that she couldn’t bear to linger on it. She fixed her gaze on the shadowy tunnel of trees ahead of her and continued onward.
Something was there. A darker shadow seemed to be crouched at the base of the forest wall on the left side near the end of the path. But it wasn’t a creature of any kind. It was too symmetrical, too boxy. And approaching it didn’t fill her with any kind of dread, like the thought of turning back did. In fact, she felt surprisingly sure that it was precisely where they needed to be. It felt strangely as if she’d just glimpsed a safe shelter in a rapidly approaching storm.
It felt like the only safe place in these woods.
She squeezed Wayne’s arm and tugged at him, urging him to walk faster.
The boxy shape looming ahead of them was another trailer, she realized, though she couldn’t fathom just how anyone could’ve gotten one all the way down here. Perhaps there was a road leading here long ago? The forest could’ve grown up around it, she supposed. Maybe… After all, it didn’t look remotely new. It was a very old style of camper trailer, like something she’d seen in old Chevrolet ads from the forties and fifties. It was only about twelve feet across, entirely covered in rust and dripping with weeds, its only visible window covered in warped, rotten plywood. Only the side facing them was visible. The rest of it had been entirely swallowed by the dense brush and vines of the forest.
It didn’t look lived in at all. It looked like something long abandoned and forgotten, except for the open grassy path leading to it.
Wayne glanced around. There didn’t appear to be anything else here in this twilight-bathed recess of forest. If going back were really out of the question, then the ancient camper door in front of them was the only option. But it didn’t look like the sort of place he’d ever want to enter. It looked like a good place to stumble onto a nest of copperheads.
The very thought made him look down at their feet, anxious. They weren’t dressed for a hike in the woods. His sneakers and blue jeans weren’t going to do much to protect him from snakebite, much less Olivia’s sandals and short dress.
She stepped closer to the door, her exposed toes disappearing into the weeds crowding the little rusted step beneath it.
“Are you sure this is right?” he asked, cringing at the thought of something long and scaly sinking its deadly fangs into those vulnerable ankles.
“I’m not sure of anything. But this is what feels the least scary right now.”
He didn’t really understand how her particular psychic sense worked. Peril wasn’t something they encountered every day, after all. Not in all the time since their return from the Temple of the Blind. Not until today. But there were times when she did things that he didn’t understand. Occasionally, while they were traveling, she’d ask him out of the blue how fast he was going. Though he was rarely speeding when she asked him this (his fear of being in another accident made him overly cautious more often than not) there was always, without fail, a police car waiting up ahead. She always knew exactly when to leave home to arrive precisely when she wanted to. She always picked the fastest checkout line in the supermarket. And she always seemed to know, even before he came home, when he’d had a bad day and needed a little extra time in her arms. And of course there was her impressive luck with those scratch-off tickets. And all those perfectly ordinary things that might or might not have meant anything. Whenever she was shopping, she’d sometimes frown at a package of meat or a loaf of bread and then put it away and choose another one. Was it a coincidence that they never seemed to make it home with spoiled chicken or stale bread? Sometimes, when they’d go for a walk, she’d randomly decide to cross at a different intersection than usual. Did he only imagine that they never spent a lot of extra time waiting on traffic at crosswalks? And she just always seemed to know when to answer the phone and when to ignore it, even before the caller ID told them whether it was someone they knew or just another junk number. And she did all these things, as far as he’d ever been able to tell, completely on auto pilot. She rarely even seemed to be aware she was doing it.
And in the end, he trusted her. So he said nothing as he watched her reach out and open the camper door.
A long, candlelit corridor awaited them on the other side.
Olivia stared through the door, surprised, then looked out at the forest around them. She supposed it was perfectly possible to hide a building of this size in a forest this thick, creating just such an illusion, but she didn’t think for a second that this was the case. She turned and met Wayne’s gaze, her pretty eyes open wide.
They didn’t have to speak. They were both thinking the same thing.
This was just like Gilbert House. It was the exact same sense of wonder and awe that they both felt when they first gazed up into that impossible stairwell, into a five-story building that simply didn’t exist.
Again, she squeezed his arm, this time for courage rather than to urge him onward. She didn’t want to go in there. Something scary was waiting for them in the darkness that loomed at the end of that mysterious hallway. Not in the same way that something was waiting for them back on the highway. Not the same way that something was waiting for them if they tried to turn around at the angel. Not in an impending peril sort of way. No, this was a different kind of fear, the kind that didn’t crash down on you out of the blue like a runaway bus, ending you in a single, violent instant of broken bones and spraying blood. This was the kind of terror that crept. This was the kind of terror that stretched on and on…for hours and hours…for days and days…
This was the kind of terror she felt inside Gilbert House that first time, as she crept through those silent, impossible corridors.
She shivered and pressed herself closer to Wayne.
“I’m right here,” he assured her.
She looked up at him, into those loving eyes. He’d always managed to give her strength, ever since the day she met him.
She nodded.
Then she took a deep breath and stepped through the open doorway.
Chapter 5
Wayne stepped up into the camper behind her and let the door creak closed.
On one hand, Olivia felt better having that door closed behind them, shutting out that awful feeling of something waiting to ambush them. But now they were in this dark hallway, where the gloom of those measly candles was almost as awful as the eerie silence.
They stood there a moment, perfectly still, letting their eyes adjust. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears and the slight raggedness of her quickened breath and nothing more.
She hadn’t been this scared in a long time. Not since the nightmares faded.
Wayne took his cell phone out of his pocket and attempted to use its light to better illuminate the way forward, but found that it wouldn’t turn on.
Olivia tried hers with the same result. “Dead?” She put it on the charger just last night and had left it off all day. Why would it be dead?
Wayne stared at the black screen. “Some sort of…battery drain? Like on those ghost hunting shows?”
That wasn’t a particularly comforting thought. “I hope not,” she grumbled.
Then a voice drifted to them from somewhere in that looming darkness, soft and feminine, gentle and kind: “There’s no reason to be afraid. This is a safe place for all who enter.”
Wayne glanced down at his fiancée, wary. If it was so safe, why was it so damn dark?
“Come closer.”
Olivia hesitated. This voice didn’t fill her with any sense of impending doom. In fact, it gave her a very profound feeling of security. She believed this mysterious woman when she said this was a safe place. But the rational part of her mind remained wary. She still didn’t know how this power worked…or if it could be lied to…
But going back out into that creepy twilight didn’t seem to be an option, so she began to move. But slowly. Cautiously.
The floor creaked beneath their feet. It was the only sound besides the ones in their own ears. It sounded surprisingly loud, as if the whole place might be ready to fall apart at any moment. And there was an odd give to the floorboards beneath the rug, too. It sort of bounced with their footfalls.
Wayne squinted into the darkness ahead. Something was there. A shape loomed deep in the darkness beyond the last of those candles. A person? “Who are you?” he called out.
And from that darkness came a reply: “My name,” said the mysterious voice, “is Sandy.”
He frowned. Sandy? Really? That seemed like a surprisingly common name for a dark figure crouched in deep, mysterious shadows beyond a candlelit corridor. In an impossible trailer at the far end of a twilight-bathed forest tunnel. Behind an ominous angel statue in the far back of a strangely vast trailer park. Although he wasn’t sure what it was he was expecting. Maybe something a little more…goddessy? (Was that a word?) Something more mystical, at least?
There was definitely a person there. Hidden beyond the flimsy light of those candles, someone was sitting on the floor, draped in what looked like a heavy coat or blanket…or perhaps just a pile of rags. It was very difficult to make anything out in the dark, obviously.
“I’m the spirit guide of Nora’s Lilac Grove,” explained Sandy. “Where all who are lost may find their way home.”
He nodded. “Okay. Cool. I guess…”
Olivia took a shaky breath and forced herself to stand up a little straighter. With only a small tremble in her voice, she managed to say, “I’m Olivia. This is Wayne.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” She wilted a bit, unsure of herself. “Sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing to be sorry for,” Sandy assured her. “I know a great many things. Things about what is. About what will be. And also about what may be, what may have been, what never was and what never can be.”
Wayne stared at the shadowy shape in the darkness, bemused. “Neat…?” was all he could think to say. He glanced down at Olivia, but she only gave him a subtle shrug. She didn’t understand, either.
“All the opportunities that are presented to you,” she went on. “All the choices you make. All the risks you take. All the rules you follow and all those you break. All of it is already written in the glistening amber threads of fate. All of it lies before you every moment of every day. The future is nothing more and nothing less than the path you choose, the decisions you make between now and then.”
“So…you’re like…some kind of fortune teller?” asked Wayne.
This apparently amused Sandy, because she laughed. It was a very girlish laugh. Very feminine. Very human. But the more he stared into that shadow, the less certain he was that the shape before them was really a person. There were more shapes hidden in the shadows behind the figure, shapes like great, flexing humps, as if the cloaked, human-like shape before them were only part of what called itself Sandy…
“In a grossly simplified way, I suppose I am something of a fortune teller,” she replied.
Olivia took a small step forward. “There was something out there just now. Something dangerous. I felt it. With…uh…” She glanced back at Wayne again. Saying the words “with my psychic power” felt positively embarrassing…
But she didn’t have to say it. “With your special ability,” Sandy finished for her. “Yes.”
“Right…you just said you knew all that kind of stuff… Sorry…”
“Again, you have no reason to be sorry. It can be difficult speaking with one who already knows what you’re going to say. I’m not offended or bothered. It’s perfectly fine.”
“But there was something on the road out there…”
“My apologies. That was my fault.”
“You did that?” exclaimed Wayne, surprised.
“I needed to bring you to me. Quickly. I sent what you might call a messenger.”
“Messenger?” gasped Olivia. “It felt like we were going to die if we didn’t turn around.”
“Of course it did. That’s because I sent it with instructions to kill you if you tried to go anywhere but here.”
“You what?” Wayne stepped in front of Olivia, shielding her.
“There was no danger of it coming to that,” Sandy assured him. Her voice remained perfectly calm, utterly unfazed by his flared temper. “Her special ability would have warned her of such a danger, instilling a sense of panic that prevented her from continuing in that direction.”
“But I was driving!” he argued. “What if I’d ignored her? A lot of people don’t believe in stuff like that.”
“But you do believe her. You did. And you listened to her. As you would have done no matter what.”
He didn’t say it aloud, but this was starting to feel like Gilbert House all over again. Except there were no mysterious envelopes. No invitation to do a job. No cash reward to entice them.
There was no choice.
Olivia glanced back one last time, too, still feeling that overwhelming sense of impending doom creeping closer, a clear message trickling through her nerves that it wasn’t safe to linger. Then, reluctantly, she set off down the stone steps.
“This really feels like we’re walking into something bad,” said Wayne as he eyed the shadowy tunnel of foliage laid out below them.
She couldn’t disagree. This was like the start of a horror movie. But if those awful feelings of panic were real manifestations of her psychic ability—and it didn’t steer them wrong five years ago on that burning mountain—then this was the only place for them to go. That feeling of impending dread was still with her. Frightful things awaited them on this course. But it was nothing compared to what she felt at the mere thought of doing anything else.
Again, she pulled out her phone and tried to call Nicole. Again it went straight to voicemail. Then she tried Andrea’s number, again with the same result. “You don’t think something’s happened to them, do you?”
What he wanted to say was, “Of course not,” but they both knew he couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t make promises like that. What if he was wrong? What if something terrible had happened?
Why was everything suddenly happening right now? That woman’s body turning up in the lake… The mysterious, invisible peril that herded them into this trailer park of mystery… A forgotten dream that both of them seemed to share and only just now remembered… And both Nicole and Andrea not answering their phones… It seemed like an awful lot to be just a coincidence. But what did all those things have to do with each other?
“I picked the wrong shoes today,” whined Olivia. With no handrail, she was clinging to Wayne’s arm and trying her best to watch where she was placing her feet. The steps were fairly narrow and while her sandals were cute and practical and went fabulously with her favorite sundress for a nice backyard barbecue, they weren’t exactly made for strenuous activity. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if they ended up having to run away in a hurry…
“At least it’s cooler down here,” tried Wayne. The temperature was slowly dropping as they descended into the deepening shade.
“I think I preferred it hot.” The colder it felt, the more of a chill this place instilled in her. Goosebumps were starting to rise on her bare arms. She looked back up at the angel above them. The blazing sunshine had turned it into a hazy silhouette. “It feels eerie down here.”
He couldn’t argue with that. There was something rather unsettling about the temperature difference. It felt as if they were descending not into a forest valley, but into the cold depths of a bottomless cavern.
“It reminds me of back then,” she said, finally speaking what both of them had been putting off saying. “Of Gilbert House. And…” She squeezed his arm a little tighter. “And the rest…”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” Descending into a cold darkness…farther and farther from civilization, deeper into unknown danger…
She looked up at him. “Which makes me that much more worried about Nicole and Andrea.”
“I know. But there’s nothing we can do about it right now. Let’s focus on whatever this is. I promise we’ll figure out why they’re not answering their phones as soon as we have some breathing room again.”
She nodded. Yes. That was a good plan. But she couldn’t help worrying. They were her closest friends, after all. Them and Brandy and Albert. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to any of them.
They were nearing the bottom of the steps now. The ground was a narrow grassy path leading forward. The forest on either side was the densest Wayne had ever seen in all his years living in these forests. He couldn’t see a single place where a person might slip into those surrounding trees. Brush and thorns and vines and weeds created a natural barrier that he wasn’t sure he could carve his way through with a chainsaw. And the trees here were enormous. Towering oaks and pines stretched high up into the heavens, their massive branches reaching across the path, intertwining, creating a dense canopy that turned the path into a deep, shadowy tunnel so dark and long that he couldn’t clearly see the end.
“It’s beautiful…” observed Olivia. “In the creepiest possible way.”
He couldn’t argue that.
Two rotting pine logs partially blocked the path near the steps, but the rest of the way forward was clear. They stepped over them and continued onward.
She tightened her grip on his arm and glanced back at the dwindling light shining down those steps. She didn’t want to be down here. It was scary. Looking back there reminded her of looking back at the cellar steps of Gilbert House when she first descended into the harsh reality of the universe. But something deep inside her mind insisted that she didn’t dare go back. The very thought of returning to those stairs filled her with such desperate fear and panic that she couldn’t bear to linger on it. She fixed her gaze on the shadowy tunnel of trees ahead of her and continued onward.
Something was there. A darker shadow seemed to be crouched at the base of the forest wall on the left side near the end of the path. But it wasn’t a creature of any kind. It was too symmetrical, too boxy. And approaching it didn’t fill her with any kind of dread, like the thought of turning back did. In fact, she felt surprisingly sure that it was precisely where they needed to be. It felt strangely as if she’d just glimpsed a safe shelter in a rapidly approaching storm.
It felt like the only safe place in these woods.
She squeezed Wayne’s arm and tugged at him, urging him to walk faster.
The boxy shape looming ahead of them was another trailer, she realized, though she couldn’t fathom just how anyone could’ve gotten one all the way down here. Perhaps there was a road leading here long ago? The forest could’ve grown up around it, she supposed. Maybe… After all, it didn’t look remotely new. It was a very old style of camper trailer, like something she’d seen in old Chevrolet ads from the forties and fifties. It was only about twelve feet across, entirely covered in rust and dripping with weeds, its only visible window covered in warped, rotten plywood. Only the side facing them was visible. The rest of it had been entirely swallowed by the dense brush and vines of the forest.
It didn’t look lived in at all. It looked like something long abandoned and forgotten, except for the open grassy path leading to it.
Wayne glanced around. There didn’t appear to be anything else here in this twilight-bathed recess of forest. If going back were really out of the question, then the ancient camper door in front of them was the only option. But it didn’t look like the sort of place he’d ever want to enter. It looked like a good place to stumble onto a nest of copperheads.
The very thought made him look down at their feet, anxious. They weren’t dressed for a hike in the woods. His sneakers and blue jeans weren’t going to do much to protect him from snakebite, much less Olivia’s sandals and short dress.
She stepped closer to the door, her exposed toes disappearing into the weeds crowding the little rusted step beneath it.
“Are you sure this is right?” he asked, cringing at the thought of something long and scaly sinking its deadly fangs into those vulnerable ankles.
“I’m not sure of anything. But this is what feels the least scary right now.”
He didn’t really understand how her particular psychic sense worked. Peril wasn’t something they encountered every day, after all. Not in all the time since their return from the Temple of the Blind. Not until today. But there were times when she did things that he didn’t understand. Occasionally, while they were traveling, she’d ask him out of the blue how fast he was going. Though he was rarely speeding when she asked him this (his fear of being in another accident made him overly cautious more often than not) there was always, without fail, a police car waiting up ahead. She always knew exactly when to leave home to arrive precisely when she wanted to. She always picked the fastest checkout line in the supermarket. And she always seemed to know, even before he came home, when he’d had a bad day and needed a little extra time in her arms. And of course there was her impressive luck with those scratch-off tickets. And all those perfectly ordinary things that might or might not have meant anything. Whenever she was shopping, she’d sometimes frown at a package of meat or a loaf of bread and then put it away and choose another one. Was it a coincidence that they never seemed to make it home with spoiled chicken or stale bread? Sometimes, when they’d go for a walk, she’d randomly decide to cross at a different intersection than usual. Did he only imagine that they never spent a lot of extra time waiting on traffic at crosswalks? And she just always seemed to know when to answer the phone and when to ignore it, even before the caller ID told them whether it was someone they knew or just another junk number. And she did all these things, as far as he’d ever been able to tell, completely on auto pilot. She rarely even seemed to be aware she was doing it.
And in the end, he trusted her. So he said nothing as he watched her reach out and open the camper door.
A long, candlelit corridor awaited them on the other side.
Olivia stared through the door, surprised, then looked out at the forest around them. She supposed it was perfectly possible to hide a building of this size in a forest this thick, creating just such an illusion, but she didn’t think for a second that this was the case. She turned and met Wayne’s gaze, her pretty eyes open wide.
They didn’t have to speak. They were both thinking the same thing.
This was just like Gilbert House. It was the exact same sense of wonder and awe that they both felt when they first gazed up into that impossible stairwell, into a five-story building that simply didn’t exist.
Again, she squeezed his arm, this time for courage rather than to urge him onward. She didn’t want to go in there. Something scary was waiting for them in the darkness that loomed at the end of that mysterious hallway. Not in the same way that something was waiting for them back on the highway. Not the same way that something was waiting for them if they tried to turn around at the angel. Not in an impending peril sort of way. No, this was a different kind of fear, the kind that didn’t crash down on you out of the blue like a runaway bus, ending you in a single, violent instant of broken bones and spraying blood. This was the kind of terror that crept. This was the kind of terror that stretched on and on…for hours and hours…for days and days…
This was the kind of terror she felt inside Gilbert House that first time, as she crept through those silent, impossible corridors.
She shivered and pressed herself closer to Wayne.
“I’m right here,” he assured her.
She looked up at him, into those loving eyes. He’d always managed to give her strength, ever since the day she met him.
She nodded.
Then she took a deep breath and stepped through the open doorway.
Chapter 5
Wayne stepped up into the camper behind her and let the door creak closed.
On one hand, Olivia felt better having that door closed behind them, shutting out that awful feeling of something waiting to ambush them. But now they were in this dark hallway, where the gloom of those measly candles was almost as awful as the eerie silence.
They stood there a moment, perfectly still, letting their eyes adjust. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears and the slight raggedness of her quickened breath and nothing more.
She hadn’t been this scared in a long time. Not since the nightmares faded.
Wayne took his cell phone out of his pocket and attempted to use its light to better illuminate the way forward, but found that it wouldn’t turn on.
Olivia tried hers with the same result. “Dead?” She put it on the charger just last night and had left it off all day. Why would it be dead?
Wayne stared at the black screen. “Some sort of…battery drain? Like on those ghost hunting shows?”
That wasn’t a particularly comforting thought. “I hope not,” she grumbled.
Then a voice drifted to them from somewhere in that looming darkness, soft and feminine, gentle and kind: “There’s no reason to be afraid. This is a safe place for all who enter.”
Wayne glanced down at his fiancée, wary. If it was so safe, why was it so damn dark?
“Come closer.”
Olivia hesitated. This voice didn’t fill her with any sense of impending doom. In fact, it gave her a very profound feeling of security. She believed this mysterious woman when she said this was a safe place. But the rational part of her mind remained wary. She still didn’t know how this power worked…or if it could be lied to…
But going back out into that creepy twilight didn’t seem to be an option, so she began to move. But slowly. Cautiously.
The floor creaked beneath their feet. It was the only sound besides the ones in their own ears. It sounded surprisingly loud, as if the whole place might be ready to fall apart at any moment. And there was an odd give to the floorboards beneath the rug, too. It sort of bounced with their footfalls.
Wayne squinted into the darkness ahead. Something was there. A shape loomed deep in the darkness beyond the last of those candles. A person? “Who are you?” he called out.
And from that darkness came a reply: “My name,” said the mysterious voice, “is Sandy.”
He frowned. Sandy? Really? That seemed like a surprisingly common name for a dark figure crouched in deep, mysterious shadows beyond a candlelit corridor. In an impossible trailer at the far end of a twilight-bathed forest tunnel. Behind an ominous angel statue in the far back of a strangely vast trailer park. Although he wasn’t sure what it was he was expecting. Maybe something a little more…goddessy? (Was that a word?) Something more mystical, at least?
There was definitely a person there. Hidden beyond the flimsy light of those candles, someone was sitting on the floor, draped in what looked like a heavy coat or blanket…or perhaps just a pile of rags. It was very difficult to make anything out in the dark, obviously.
“I’m the spirit guide of Nora’s Lilac Grove,” explained Sandy. “Where all who are lost may find their way home.”
He nodded. “Okay. Cool. I guess…”
Olivia took a shaky breath and forced herself to stand up a little straighter. With only a small tremble in her voice, she managed to say, “I’m Olivia. This is Wayne.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” She wilted a bit, unsure of herself. “Sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing to be sorry for,” Sandy assured her. “I know a great many things. Things about what is. About what will be. And also about what may be, what may have been, what never was and what never can be.”
Wayne stared at the shadowy shape in the darkness, bemused. “Neat…?” was all he could think to say. He glanced down at Olivia, but she only gave him a subtle shrug. She didn’t understand, either.
“All the opportunities that are presented to you,” she went on. “All the choices you make. All the risks you take. All the rules you follow and all those you break. All of it is already written in the glistening amber threads of fate. All of it lies before you every moment of every day. The future is nothing more and nothing less than the path you choose, the decisions you make between now and then.”
“So…you’re like…some kind of fortune teller?” asked Wayne.
This apparently amused Sandy, because she laughed. It was a very girlish laugh. Very feminine. Very human. But the more he stared into that shadow, the less certain he was that the shape before them was really a person. There were more shapes hidden in the shadows behind the figure, shapes like great, flexing humps, as if the cloaked, human-like shape before them were only part of what called itself Sandy…
“In a grossly simplified way, I suppose I am something of a fortune teller,” she replied.
Olivia took a small step forward. “There was something out there just now. Something dangerous. I felt it. With…uh…” She glanced back at Wayne again. Saying the words “with my psychic power” felt positively embarrassing…
But she didn’t have to say it. “With your special ability,” Sandy finished for her. “Yes.”
“Right…you just said you knew all that kind of stuff… Sorry…”
“Again, you have no reason to be sorry. It can be difficult speaking with one who already knows what you’re going to say. I’m not offended or bothered. It’s perfectly fine.”
“But there was something on the road out there…”
“My apologies. That was my fault.”
“You did that?” exclaimed Wayne, surprised.
“I needed to bring you to me. Quickly. I sent what you might call a messenger.”
“Messenger?” gasped Olivia. “It felt like we were going to die if we didn’t turn around.”
“Of course it did. That’s because I sent it with instructions to kill you if you tried to go anywhere but here.”
“You what?” Wayne stepped in front of Olivia, shielding her.
“There was no danger of it coming to that,” Sandy assured him. Her voice remained perfectly calm, utterly unfazed by his flared temper. “Her special ability would have warned her of such a danger, instilling a sense of panic that prevented her from continuing in that direction.”
“But I was driving!” he argued. “What if I’d ignored her? A lot of people don’t believe in stuff like that.”
“But you do believe her. You did. And you listened to her. As you would have done no matter what.”
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