MAJOR Ficpost here, folks.
((Okay, this story is ten pages in Word, I have been working on it for weeks, and I am rather pleased with it, although it has not been edited or beta-read or whatever. I would love feedback. Even if you only read part of it. I will give you e-cookies. With mallowcreme pumpkins.
Also, I have no idea what the title is. So if you come up with one, you get an extra e-cookie.))
I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
-TS Eliot, The Wasteland
Courtney sprawled on the study couch in the candlelight, legs folded behind her, studying one of Aloysius’ books. “Uncle A? Why do so many stories with Night Things and stuff have the hero immediately killing them? Not just the coven stories, but, like, movies and TV and everything. No one ever tries to talk to anything, they just walk up and start shooting.”
The old warlock, looking up from where he sat at his desk, raised an eyebrow and answered dryly, “I expect peaceful negotiations would make for a less interesting story, my dear.”
“Well…okay, yeah, but…”
“Fear of the unknown plays a substantial role, as well,” he answered more gently. “But you must remember, the people of the night are mercurial and their behavior is difficult to understand. Many will attack unprovoked. Many will repay good with cruelty.”
“That’s true of humans, too,” she said.
He sighed and put down his pen, rubbing his temples. “Yes…”
~*~
Twenty-four hours to get the part, the mechanic had said. Maybe another six or eight before the car was repaired and ready to return to the road. That was the best he could promise, and no cajoling or threats could get him to reduce his estimate any, either in time or in money.
Mrs. Crumrin refused to ride the bus. The only thing to do was wait. That, or purchase a new car on the spot, and even for profligate spenders like the Crumrins that seemed excessive.
“I told you going to this family reunion thing was a dumb idea,” Courtney grumbled as they checked into a small motel for the night.
Not surprisingly, both parents ignored her.
“I could conceivably come and pick you up,” Aloysius said when she called him on the phone in the room to complain. “I do own a car.”
“…nah,” she sighed. “It’s only a couple more days.”
But it made her feel better that he offered.
~*~
As her parents settled in, Courtney grabbed one of the keys to their room and slipped away. After several hours in the car and at the mechanic’s, the temptation to stretch her legs was too much to resist.
“Where are you going, sweetie?” Her mother called as the door thumped closed behind her.
She didn’t bother answering.
It wasn’t very hot out, but the air was heavy and humid, and the sky was overcast. Now and then you could hear a truck thunder past on the highway a mile or so away, and here and there a locust buzzed lethargically from grass-stem to grass-stem, but there was little sign of human life, or of any living thing larger than a field mouse. Courtney circled the motel on quiet, besneakered feet, feeling oddly discomfited by the stillness. Behind the building, the ventilation system whirred in its metal box. That was reassuring, somehow.
There was a battered plastic picnic table with an umbrella, sun-baked and cracked. One of the hotel employees, a woman in a blue shirt and slacks, was sitting there smoking a cigarette. Her hair was dyed red, but the roots were growing out steel grey. She raised an eyebrow at Courtney. “There’s no pool, kid,” she said brusquely.
Courtney frowned. “I didn’t bring my bathing suit. I’m just looking around.”
“I don’t call this scenic, but no one’s stopping you.” She exhaled a thin column of smoke and looked at Courtney with dull, tired eyes. “Stay out of the woods down the hill, though.”
The young witch peered in the direction the woman indicated and saw an anemic patch of trees and shrubs, smaller than a city block, at the bottom of the hill upon which the hotel was situated. There looked like a path running around the outside edge, and on the other side, just over the tops of the trees, she could see a few flat roofs and satellite dishes. Evidently there was some sort of trailer park there. “I wouldn’t call those ‘woods’ exactly,” she scoffed quietly. “What, you’re afraid they’ll have to call out the park rangers to find me or something?”
“It’s swampy,” came the answer. “Jordan’s Branch runs through there. It’s a bigger creek than you’d think. Plus there’s some little ponds and shit. Lotta kids sneak off down there to drink, get stuck in the mud and drown.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help but feel intrigued. “It’s so tiny.”
“Doesn’t take as much water to drown as you’d think. Just stay out of it, okay? We don’t need a lawsuit from your parents. This place is close to going under as it is.”
“…sure,” Courtney said slowly. “Thanks for sharing.”
“Customer service.” The woman shrugged, put out her cigarette on the table, and tossed the butt in the grass, getting up to go. “It’s my middle name.”
~*~
Dinner was dismal. The only place to eat close by was a convenience store with a deli counter. Courtney picked at the bruised lettuce in her salad disconsolately. Her parents tried to put a better face on things, but she noticed they didn’t eat any more of their meals than she had.
The apples by the deli counter were dark red and coated with wax. Scab-colored, she thought, but she bought one anyway, out of sheer desperation. After the Crumrin adults settled in to watch television in their room, she slipped out again and headed down the hill, munching on the mealy, overripe fruit as she walked.
The path around the woods to the trailer park was quiet enough. There was trash here and there on the grassy ground, and close to the northern end of the patch of trees, Courtney saw a sign, a bulldozer, and a mound of dry orangeish clay. There was building going on, or there soon would be. Maybe they were going to turn the trailer park into a real neighborhood. Or maybe they would just tear it all down and build a strip mall.
The half-dozen mobile homes were arranged in a neat block. One or two were surrounded by broken, rusted junk, but most had planters and little pieces of cement statuary on their meager lawns, small but determined attempts to establish some form of middle-American dignity. We are not savages. Courtney almost liked the place. She found a deflated basketball in the grass and prodded at it with a toe. A garter snake darted out from beneath it and made for the trees at top slither.
She had sort of intended to stay out of the woods. Sort of. But as her eyes followed the snake’s progress into the undergrowth, she noticed something odd about the trees. Around the trunk of each, at about the height of her waist, a knot of fabric was tied with a bright red ribbon. Upon inspection, she discovered there were herbs within the little cloth poufs. She sniffed. The smell of rosemary overwhelmed whatever else might be within, and she didn’t dare disturb it. She knew folk magic when she saw it.
Clearly, someone thought something unpleasant was living in these woods.
After venturing in a few dozen yards, Courtney was inclined to agree.
There was a feeling of stillness, coldness in the air beneath the trees. The last reddish rays of sunset filtered through the leaves, but they seemed to fade and die somehow before they hit the forest floor. There were lots of mushrooms and lichens, funny brightly-colored fungi the likes of which Courtney hadn’t seen before. The trees along the outskirts of the wooded patch were oaks mostly, with smaller trees filling in here and there, but as she got deeper in they turned into evergreens, alders, and river birches with pale, peeling bark. She tripped over a cypress knee and went sprawling in a pool of stagnant water. The hotel employee had not been exaggerating about it being swampy.
The creek, Jordan’s Branch, ran silently through the trees. It was wider than the brook at home, and probably deeper, but the water was dark brown and Courtney couldn’t see the bottom. There were no crickets crying, no frogs singing. She wondered if maybe the water was polluted. Some kind of nasty runoff from the nearby highway, perhaps. She’d never encountered anything quite like it. There was a feeling of bated breath, of a miniature world weary with dread yet unable to tear its eyes away from watching what it feared.
Then she found the drainpipe.
It was brown, earthenware reinforced with steel, perhaps, and quite old, older than the hotel at least, and certainly older than the trailer park. It trickled brown water into the creek slowly. The edges oozed slime and green-gray algae. It stank, not a chemical smell, but a pungent, deathly, decaying smell. It reminded her a little of the marl-pit.
She felt watched.
Cautiously, watching her footing, afraid to slip and fall in the muck, Courtney climbed onto a rock near the drainpipe and craned her neck, trying to peer into it. She overbalanced and flailed to catch herself, the half-eaten apple falling from her hand.
Plop! Into the brown water it fell, bobbing on the surface like a fishing float. She watched unhappily as her dinner whirled slowly in some kind of invisible eddy, then drifted toward the pipe. Abruptly, as if some hand below the water had pulled at it, it vanished.
She waited a few minutes. It didn’t come back up.
Feeling a faint chill, she turned and left the woods, heading quickly back the way she came. Nothing impeded her path, nothing stopped her, but the watched feeling never left her.
~*~
“So, other than mermaids and stuff, what else?” Courtney cupped her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone, speaking in a low voice. Mr. and Mrs. Crumrin were watching David Letterman.
“More than I can count,” Aloysius replied. “Rusalki, Nixen, Lorelei, Kelpies, Kappa…and that doesn’t even begin to count local legends such as Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler. Or our own Tommy Rawhead, for that matter.”
“There’s definitely something there. I don’t think it’s very friendly, but it didn’t try to attack me, either.”
“Courtney, I want you to stay away from that place.” Aloysius put on his sternest voice. She could practically hear the scowl over the phone.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow, probably. It’s not that big a deal. I’m only curious.”
“Your curiosity is the source of my endless vexation,” he sighed.
In the end, she told him she’d stay in the room, but of course she lied. Courtney Crumrin never could leave well enough alone.
~*~
After breakfast the next morning, her parents went to check on the car, and she went down to the woods, armed with the keycard to the room and a strawberry nutrigrain bar. This time she entered from the side facing the hotel. There was no real path, and it took her a long time to pick her way through the heavy undergrowth. Perching on the same rock she had stood upon yesterday, she opened the cereal bar and stuffed the wrapper into her pocket.
“So, okay. I know you’re there. I don’t mean you any harm. I just want to talk. I’m curious; are you actually drowning people, or are they just coming in being stupid and getting themselves killed?” She broke a piece off the pastry and tossed it into the pond.
It sank straight to the bottom.
There was no reply.
A few leaves fluttered down from the tree branches overhead.
“Take your time,” Courtney said, “I have hours and hours to wait.” She tossed another piece in. It, too, sank immediately.
Then something popped up out of the water and floated slowly toward her. It rolled over a few times in the shallows, then bumped against her rock. She picked it up with the tip of her thumb and index finger. It smelled terrible.
It was her apple from the day before.
Something other than her had been chewing on it. Something with sharp, jagged teeth that were not entirely suited for the eating of fruits. Courtney grimaced. “You, uh, you’re more of a steak person, huh?”
She dropped the apple on the ground nearby and had to fight back the urge to retch when the uneaten remainder split open, spilling viscous, dark rot and live worms onto the dirt. What sort of being did that to a piece of fruit?
Maybe Uncle A was right. She shouldn’t be here. She tossed the rest of the cereal bar into the water. “So you don’t want to talk? That’s fine. I’ll just leave.”
She was turning to go when the singing started.
It wasn’t especially beautiful music, and it wasn’t an especially beautiful voice. It was more of a rhythmic chant, but it thrummed its way under Courtney’s skin, through her veins, and into the very marrow of her bones. Her knees went weak. Very slowly, she sat back down on the rock, and listened.
She had read an Irish folktale one time, about a hunchbacked man who heard fairies singing a simple but exquisite song: Da Luan, da Mort, da Luan, da Mort, da Luan, da Mort, over and over. Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, it meant, and then a pause. The man finished the melody with the words agus da Dardeen, and Wednesday, too, and they rewarded him. Now, caught up in the eldritch intonations of the water spirit, Courtney found herself wondering how the hero of the story managed to remember how to speak, let alone put together a complimentary melody. She could barely breathe. She swayed a little where she sat, slumping gradually forward…
It was as if from a great distance she heard the splash, and the shock of cold as the dirty water penetrated her clothing seemed to be happening to someone else’s body. The water wasn’t deep; less than three feet in the middle, in fact. But Courtney was lying down in it, floating away on the music, floating toward the dark, ominous drainpipe. Her chin dipped under, then her eyebrows, and then there was a face looking into hers.
The Water Thing was pale green, and its hair was long and brown; not brown like the brunette of human hair, but the slick, slimy, sticky brown of weeds at the bottom of a stagnant pool. The features were a combination of sharp angles and deep concavities filled with shadow. There were no visible eyes, only empty sockets hungry for light. But there were teeth. There were lots of teeth, and they looked like shattered porcelain: sharp, jagged, irregular, and white.
There was something wrapping around Courtney’s throat now. Strong, thin hands. Either it was going to choke the life out of her, or it was going to hold her under until she inhaled that filthy, polluted water and drowned.
Suddenly, the spell the singing had cast over her snapped. She had not escaped the clutches of Tommy Rawhead to die at the hands of some sickened watersprite living at the back of a trailer park. Squeezing her eyes shut, Courtney reached into the core of herself and summoned up all her power. She had plenty of it, and she lashed out with the first thing that came to mind that might hurt the creature attacking her. FireFireFireFire!
If anything living had been watching the pool at that moment, it would have seen the drainpipe crack and hiss, would have seen an immense cloud of steam rise up, would have heard an unearthly screech as the Water Thing, wounded, released its prey and retreated as quickly as it was able. Then, if anything living had been watching, it would have seen a very wet and unhappy Courtney Crumrin, befouled and bedraggled, crawl away from the pond and collapse onto the dead leaves, coughing and spluttering.
~*~
She wasn’t going to call her uncle this time around. Truth be told, she was embarrassed to have been caught so easily by the Water Thing. All she wanted to do right now was to go back to the hotel room, clean up and change clothes, and watch television mindlessly until it was time to leave.
Sometimes being a witch was a pain in the ass.
Her arms were bright pink, scalded to the elbow by the superheated water her attack spell had created. She wasn’t sure she could heal them. She’d have to think of a truly creative explanation for her parents.
The outside hotel doors had locks on them that required the same keycards that let one into the room. Courtney trudged up the walk to the door that looked least used and reached into her pocket.
There was no keycard there.
After a moment of muffled panic, a kind of resigned horror settled into her chest. There was only one explanation.
The key to her hotel room was at the bottom of the Water Thing’s pool.
~*~
While Courtney was sitting on the grass at the back of the hotel, trying to decide on a course of action, the same woman she had spoken to the day before appeared, evidently for another smoking break. She came around the corner, tapping her pack of Benson & Hedges, but paused when she caught sight (and smell) of the girl.
“What the fuck-!” the woman began, then changed her mind. “You went back there, didn’t you? I warned you not to go in those woods. How did you…? You should be dead!”
“I’m a real good swimmer,” Courtney grumbled, looking daggers at her.
“It doesn’t care…” She trailed off.
The young witch perked up. It seemed like maybe now she knew who had put the little wards around the trees at the trailer park. “Yeah. Well. I think I injured it, but it’s still alive,” she said slowly.
They looked at one another for a moment, mistrustful. Then the older woman set her cigarettes down. “It can’t be killed. I’ve tried. It can only be contained.”
“Everyone always tries killing the thing first.” Courtney sneered.
“It almost drowned you! Don’t tell me you feel sorry for it!”
“Not exactly. But it was here first, wasn’t it?”
The hotel employee was silent for a long moment, pensive, then coughed noisily and spat on the grass. Courtney grimaced in disgust.
“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said once her throat was clear. “It’ll have to go somewhere else in a week or so. They’re tearing the trees down and filling in the swamp. Did you see the signs?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I saw the signs.” Courtney frowned down the hill.
Where does a Night Thing go when its home is destroyed, she wondered. Back to the Twilight Kingdom? But what if it can’t get there? Does it die? Waste away? There are people to protest about saving the spotted owl, but no one’s gonna be marching around with signs saying ‘Save the Goblins’, because hardly anyone knows they exist.
And the people who do know they exist know how vicious they can be.
“Do me a favor,” she said, and it was a demand, not a request. “Get me an empty jar. From the kitchen or something. Or a coffee can would be fine.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to solve a problem.”
~*~
“This is the last time I’m coming here.” Courtney stood on the rock at the water’s edge again, eyeing the now-cracked drainpipe and holding an empty pickle jar tucked under one arm.
There was no answer, no singing, no movement in the water.
“I need my hotel room key, for one thing,” Courtney continued. “They won’t let us check out without it. I know that means precisely crap to you, but still. I figure it’s there in the mud somewhere.”
She took a step off the rock and into the water. It only reached to her mid-calf at the edge.
“But I also know something you don’t. Your pond here is going to be filled in. Destroyed. Gone. In a few weeks. They’ll probably pull out the pipe here and rebuild it. Replace it with a steel one, maybe. Then they’re going to put human buildings on top of it. Where will you go?”
Still there was no answer. Courtney took the lid off the pickle jar and dipped it into the pond, filling it with just a little water.
“I’m only going to offer this once. I’ll take you with me. There’s water and woods where I live, and gateways to the Twilight Kingdom. You’d be safe there. I don’t know what happens if you stay here, and I don’t think you do, either. You need any more incentive?”
She reached over to the rock and rubbed her palm against it as hard as she could, scraping skin off along a sharp edge. A few drops of blood welled to the surface, and she let them fall into the jar. “Come and get it. And bring me my keycard.”
For a while there was nothing. Just when Courtney had decided the Water Thing was not going to take the bait, she saw a shadow move inside the drainpipe. The form crept toward her slowly, coming cautiously out into the pool. It looked a little like a naked young girl, except it was more emaciated than any human girl could ever be and still be breathing. The breasts were like empty bags against its chest, and the hipbones threatened to tear through the almost translucent skin. The legs were too long, as were the arms, giving it a spidery appearance. Courtney was horrified, but she steeled herself, focusing on the toothy, shadowy face that she had looked into only an hour or so earlier.
“That’s right,” she said. “C’mon. I’m not going to hurt you, unless you try to hurt me.”
The Water Thing’s slimy brown hair trailed behind it, disappearing beneath the surface of the pool. It slunk over to Courtney, bobbing and swaying like a wary mantis, then held out her keycard. Nervous despite herself, Courtney reached out a small, dirty hand and accepted it, then tucked it hurriedly into her pocket. Then she held out the jar.
“So…? Are you coming or not?”
The Water Thing licked its teeth, nodded, and abruptly vanished.
The jar was suddenly so much heavier Courtney almost dropped it. Hurriedly, she put the lid on and tied it up with red thread. “Nothing personal,” she explained to the contents. “I just don’t want you to come out until we get where we’re going. You did try to drown me, after all.”
~*~
“…understand why you brought this container of rancid water and weeds all the way home,” Mrs. Crumrin complained as they unpacked the car.
“I, uh, made a promise to one of the maids at the hotel,” the young witch lied. “It’s what her favorite goldfish used to live in.”
“Courtney, that doesn’t make any sense at all…”
“I know. She was a weird lady. I’m going down to the creek,” she replied. “Later!”
She ignored her parents’ protests, as they generally ignored hers. She also ignored her own longing to run up and see her uncle as soon as possible. But she did make a brief stop in the kitchen before heading into the woods.
~*~
The car ride had not improved the stench of the polluted water. Courtney tried not to breathe as she poured it into the pond before her. Once done, she set the jar aside. “Okay. Welcome to Hillsborough. Got any questions?”
The Water Thing rose up immediately and stretched, joints crackling and popping. It smiled at her, and she noticed that still no light reached its shadowy eyes. Then it reached out casually, wrapped its hands around her neck, and squeezed.
She pressed a kitchen knife against its ribs and hissed, “This…is steel. ‘S iron init.”
The squeezing stopped, and the Water Thing backed away, rubbing the place the knife had touched and looking disappointed.
Courtney smirked. “I was hoping you wouldn’t do that, but I kind of figured you would. Let me tell you where you are. This pond is called the marl pit. It’s kind of already occupied. By someone we call Tommy Rawhead. You won’t want to stay here.”
All Night Things know Rawhead and Bloody Bones. The Water Thing looked around nervously, folding its arms around itself.
“That’s right,” Courtney nodded. “But if you go East between those rocks and under the water, you can get into the Twilight Kingdom. I’d go quick if I were you. You don’t want Tommy to find you here. But I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you on somewhere else in the Kingdom.”
The Water Thing hissed and gave her a look full of anguish and resentment.
“Yeah, whatever.” She stood to go. “I still probably saved your life. Don’t come back. I don’t want to hear about you drowning people in my woods.”
There was a quiet splash and a row of bubbles headed East.
That was the last Courtney ever saw of it.
~*~
“Did I do the right thing? It won’t come back, will it?”
“I’m not sure, my dear,” Aloysius regarded his niece thoughtfully. It was a clever enough stunt she’d pulled, but she had left loopholes, things that could backfire on her later.
“It owes you now. Night Things don’t like owing humans. That could be troublesome. But there’s nothing for it. You certainly meant well, and you did your best, which is far better than most witches your age or even older could manage.”
Fortunately, he’d be around for a few more years, and if something did go wrong, he’d be around to help clean up the mess.
Courtney smiled, relieved and warmed by the praise. “I don’t think I want to go swimming for the next century or so.”
“No, I should imagine not.”
There was nothing more to say. He lit a fire in the fireplace, sat her down on the sofa, cracked open a book, and began to read.
In less than twenty minutes, she was asleep on his arm.
Also, I have no idea what the title is. So if you come up with one, you get an extra e-cookie.))
I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
-TS Eliot, The Wasteland
Courtney sprawled on the study couch in the candlelight, legs folded behind her, studying one of Aloysius’ books. “Uncle A? Why do so many stories with Night Things and stuff have the hero immediately killing them? Not just the coven stories, but, like, movies and TV and everything. No one ever tries to talk to anything, they just walk up and start shooting.”
The old warlock, looking up from where he sat at his desk, raised an eyebrow and answered dryly, “I expect peaceful negotiations would make for a less interesting story, my dear.”
“Well…okay, yeah, but…”
“Fear of the unknown plays a substantial role, as well,” he answered more gently. “But you must remember, the people of the night are mercurial and their behavior is difficult to understand. Many will attack unprovoked. Many will repay good with cruelty.”
“That’s true of humans, too,” she said.
He sighed and put down his pen, rubbing his temples. “Yes…”
~*~
Twenty-four hours to get the part, the mechanic had said. Maybe another six or eight before the car was repaired and ready to return to the road. That was the best he could promise, and no cajoling or threats could get him to reduce his estimate any, either in time or in money.
Mrs. Crumrin refused to ride the bus. The only thing to do was wait. That, or purchase a new car on the spot, and even for profligate spenders like the Crumrins that seemed excessive.
“I told you going to this family reunion thing was a dumb idea,” Courtney grumbled as they checked into a small motel for the night.
Not surprisingly, both parents ignored her.
“I could conceivably come and pick you up,” Aloysius said when she called him on the phone in the room to complain. “I do own a car.”
“…nah,” she sighed. “It’s only a couple more days.”
But it made her feel better that he offered.
~*~
As her parents settled in, Courtney grabbed one of the keys to their room and slipped away. After several hours in the car and at the mechanic’s, the temptation to stretch her legs was too much to resist.
“Where are you going, sweetie?” Her mother called as the door thumped closed behind her.
She didn’t bother answering.
It wasn’t very hot out, but the air was heavy and humid, and the sky was overcast. Now and then you could hear a truck thunder past on the highway a mile or so away, and here and there a locust buzzed lethargically from grass-stem to grass-stem, but there was little sign of human life, or of any living thing larger than a field mouse. Courtney circled the motel on quiet, besneakered feet, feeling oddly discomfited by the stillness. Behind the building, the ventilation system whirred in its metal box. That was reassuring, somehow.
There was a battered plastic picnic table with an umbrella, sun-baked and cracked. One of the hotel employees, a woman in a blue shirt and slacks, was sitting there smoking a cigarette. Her hair was dyed red, but the roots were growing out steel grey. She raised an eyebrow at Courtney. “There’s no pool, kid,” she said brusquely.
Courtney frowned. “I didn’t bring my bathing suit. I’m just looking around.”
“I don’t call this scenic, but no one’s stopping you.” She exhaled a thin column of smoke and looked at Courtney with dull, tired eyes. “Stay out of the woods down the hill, though.”
The young witch peered in the direction the woman indicated and saw an anemic patch of trees and shrubs, smaller than a city block, at the bottom of the hill upon which the hotel was situated. There looked like a path running around the outside edge, and on the other side, just over the tops of the trees, she could see a few flat roofs and satellite dishes. Evidently there was some sort of trailer park there. “I wouldn’t call those ‘woods’ exactly,” she scoffed quietly. “What, you’re afraid they’ll have to call out the park rangers to find me or something?”
“It’s swampy,” came the answer. “Jordan’s Branch runs through there. It’s a bigger creek than you’d think. Plus there’s some little ponds and shit. Lotta kids sneak off down there to drink, get stuck in the mud and drown.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help but feel intrigued. “It’s so tiny.”
“Doesn’t take as much water to drown as you’d think. Just stay out of it, okay? We don’t need a lawsuit from your parents. This place is close to going under as it is.”
“…sure,” Courtney said slowly. “Thanks for sharing.”
“Customer service.” The woman shrugged, put out her cigarette on the table, and tossed the butt in the grass, getting up to go. “It’s my middle name.”
~*~
Dinner was dismal. The only place to eat close by was a convenience store with a deli counter. Courtney picked at the bruised lettuce in her salad disconsolately. Her parents tried to put a better face on things, but she noticed they didn’t eat any more of their meals than she had.
The apples by the deli counter were dark red and coated with wax. Scab-colored, she thought, but she bought one anyway, out of sheer desperation. After the Crumrin adults settled in to watch television in their room, she slipped out again and headed down the hill, munching on the mealy, overripe fruit as she walked.
The path around the woods to the trailer park was quiet enough. There was trash here and there on the grassy ground, and close to the northern end of the patch of trees, Courtney saw a sign, a bulldozer, and a mound of dry orangeish clay. There was building going on, or there soon would be. Maybe they were going to turn the trailer park into a real neighborhood. Or maybe they would just tear it all down and build a strip mall.
The half-dozen mobile homes were arranged in a neat block. One or two were surrounded by broken, rusted junk, but most had planters and little pieces of cement statuary on their meager lawns, small but determined attempts to establish some form of middle-American dignity. We are not savages. Courtney almost liked the place. She found a deflated basketball in the grass and prodded at it with a toe. A garter snake darted out from beneath it and made for the trees at top slither.
She had sort of intended to stay out of the woods. Sort of. But as her eyes followed the snake’s progress into the undergrowth, she noticed something odd about the trees. Around the trunk of each, at about the height of her waist, a knot of fabric was tied with a bright red ribbon. Upon inspection, she discovered there were herbs within the little cloth poufs. She sniffed. The smell of rosemary overwhelmed whatever else might be within, and she didn’t dare disturb it. She knew folk magic when she saw it.
Clearly, someone thought something unpleasant was living in these woods.
After venturing in a few dozen yards, Courtney was inclined to agree.
There was a feeling of stillness, coldness in the air beneath the trees. The last reddish rays of sunset filtered through the leaves, but they seemed to fade and die somehow before they hit the forest floor. There were lots of mushrooms and lichens, funny brightly-colored fungi the likes of which Courtney hadn’t seen before. The trees along the outskirts of the wooded patch were oaks mostly, with smaller trees filling in here and there, but as she got deeper in they turned into evergreens, alders, and river birches with pale, peeling bark. She tripped over a cypress knee and went sprawling in a pool of stagnant water. The hotel employee had not been exaggerating about it being swampy.
The creek, Jordan’s Branch, ran silently through the trees. It was wider than the brook at home, and probably deeper, but the water was dark brown and Courtney couldn’t see the bottom. There were no crickets crying, no frogs singing. She wondered if maybe the water was polluted. Some kind of nasty runoff from the nearby highway, perhaps. She’d never encountered anything quite like it. There was a feeling of bated breath, of a miniature world weary with dread yet unable to tear its eyes away from watching what it feared.
Then she found the drainpipe.
It was brown, earthenware reinforced with steel, perhaps, and quite old, older than the hotel at least, and certainly older than the trailer park. It trickled brown water into the creek slowly. The edges oozed slime and green-gray algae. It stank, not a chemical smell, but a pungent, deathly, decaying smell. It reminded her a little of the marl-pit.
She felt watched.
Cautiously, watching her footing, afraid to slip and fall in the muck, Courtney climbed onto a rock near the drainpipe and craned her neck, trying to peer into it. She overbalanced and flailed to catch herself, the half-eaten apple falling from her hand.
Plop! Into the brown water it fell, bobbing on the surface like a fishing float. She watched unhappily as her dinner whirled slowly in some kind of invisible eddy, then drifted toward the pipe. Abruptly, as if some hand below the water had pulled at it, it vanished.
She waited a few minutes. It didn’t come back up.
Feeling a faint chill, she turned and left the woods, heading quickly back the way she came. Nothing impeded her path, nothing stopped her, but the watched feeling never left her.
~*~
“So, other than mermaids and stuff, what else?” Courtney cupped her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone, speaking in a low voice. Mr. and Mrs. Crumrin were watching David Letterman.
“More than I can count,” Aloysius replied. “Rusalki, Nixen, Lorelei, Kelpies, Kappa…and that doesn’t even begin to count local legends such as Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler. Or our own Tommy Rawhead, for that matter.”
“There’s definitely something there. I don’t think it’s very friendly, but it didn’t try to attack me, either.”
“Courtney, I want you to stay away from that place.” Aloysius put on his sternest voice. She could practically hear the scowl over the phone.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow, probably. It’s not that big a deal. I’m only curious.”
“Your curiosity is the source of my endless vexation,” he sighed.
In the end, she told him she’d stay in the room, but of course she lied. Courtney Crumrin never could leave well enough alone.
~*~
After breakfast the next morning, her parents went to check on the car, and she went down to the woods, armed with the keycard to the room and a strawberry nutrigrain bar. This time she entered from the side facing the hotel. There was no real path, and it took her a long time to pick her way through the heavy undergrowth. Perching on the same rock she had stood upon yesterday, she opened the cereal bar and stuffed the wrapper into her pocket.
“So, okay. I know you’re there. I don’t mean you any harm. I just want to talk. I’m curious; are you actually drowning people, or are they just coming in being stupid and getting themselves killed?” She broke a piece off the pastry and tossed it into the pond.
It sank straight to the bottom.
There was no reply.
A few leaves fluttered down from the tree branches overhead.
“Take your time,” Courtney said, “I have hours and hours to wait.” She tossed another piece in. It, too, sank immediately.
Then something popped up out of the water and floated slowly toward her. It rolled over a few times in the shallows, then bumped against her rock. She picked it up with the tip of her thumb and index finger. It smelled terrible.
It was her apple from the day before.
Something other than her had been chewing on it. Something with sharp, jagged teeth that were not entirely suited for the eating of fruits. Courtney grimaced. “You, uh, you’re more of a steak person, huh?”
She dropped the apple on the ground nearby and had to fight back the urge to retch when the uneaten remainder split open, spilling viscous, dark rot and live worms onto the dirt. What sort of being did that to a piece of fruit?
Maybe Uncle A was right. She shouldn’t be here. She tossed the rest of the cereal bar into the water. “So you don’t want to talk? That’s fine. I’ll just leave.”
She was turning to go when the singing started.
It wasn’t especially beautiful music, and it wasn’t an especially beautiful voice. It was more of a rhythmic chant, but it thrummed its way under Courtney’s skin, through her veins, and into the very marrow of her bones. Her knees went weak. Very slowly, she sat back down on the rock, and listened.
She had read an Irish folktale one time, about a hunchbacked man who heard fairies singing a simple but exquisite song: Da Luan, da Mort, da Luan, da Mort, da Luan, da Mort, over and over. Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, it meant, and then a pause. The man finished the melody with the words agus da Dardeen, and Wednesday, too, and they rewarded him. Now, caught up in the eldritch intonations of the water spirit, Courtney found herself wondering how the hero of the story managed to remember how to speak, let alone put together a complimentary melody. She could barely breathe. She swayed a little where she sat, slumping gradually forward…
It was as if from a great distance she heard the splash, and the shock of cold as the dirty water penetrated her clothing seemed to be happening to someone else’s body. The water wasn’t deep; less than three feet in the middle, in fact. But Courtney was lying down in it, floating away on the music, floating toward the dark, ominous drainpipe. Her chin dipped under, then her eyebrows, and then there was a face looking into hers.
The Water Thing was pale green, and its hair was long and brown; not brown like the brunette of human hair, but the slick, slimy, sticky brown of weeds at the bottom of a stagnant pool. The features were a combination of sharp angles and deep concavities filled with shadow. There were no visible eyes, only empty sockets hungry for light. But there were teeth. There were lots of teeth, and they looked like shattered porcelain: sharp, jagged, irregular, and white.
There was something wrapping around Courtney’s throat now. Strong, thin hands. Either it was going to choke the life out of her, or it was going to hold her under until she inhaled that filthy, polluted water and drowned.
Suddenly, the spell the singing had cast over her snapped. She had not escaped the clutches of Tommy Rawhead to die at the hands of some sickened watersprite living at the back of a trailer park. Squeezing her eyes shut, Courtney reached into the core of herself and summoned up all her power. She had plenty of it, and she lashed out with the first thing that came to mind that might hurt the creature attacking her. FireFireFireFire!
If anything living had been watching the pool at that moment, it would have seen the drainpipe crack and hiss, would have seen an immense cloud of steam rise up, would have heard an unearthly screech as the Water Thing, wounded, released its prey and retreated as quickly as it was able. Then, if anything living had been watching, it would have seen a very wet and unhappy Courtney Crumrin, befouled and bedraggled, crawl away from the pond and collapse onto the dead leaves, coughing and spluttering.
~*~
She wasn’t going to call her uncle this time around. Truth be told, she was embarrassed to have been caught so easily by the Water Thing. All she wanted to do right now was to go back to the hotel room, clean up and change clothes, and watch television mindlessly until it was time to leave.
Sometimes being a witch was a pain in the ass.
Her arms were bright pink, scalded to the elbow by the superheated water her attack spell had created. She wasn’t sure she could heal them. She’d have to think of a truly creative explanation for her parents.
The outside hotel doors had locks on them that required the same keycards that let one into the room. Courtney trudged up the walk to the door that looked least used and reached into her pocket.
There was no keycard there.
After a moment of muffled panic, a kind of resigned horror settled into her chest. There was only one explanation.
The key to her hotel room was at the bottom of the Water Thing’s pool.
~*~
While Courtney was sitting on the grass at the back of the hotel, trying to decide on a course of action, the same woman she had spoken to the day before appeared, evidently for another smoking break. She came around the corner, tapping her pack of Benson & Hedges, but paused when she caught sight (and smell) of the girl.
“What the fuck-!” the woman began, then changed her mind. “You went back there, didn’t you? I warned you not to go in those woods. How did you…? You should be dead!”
“I’m a real good swimmer,” Courtney grumbled, looking daggers at her.
“It doesn’t care…” She trailed off.
The young witch perked up. It seemed like maybe now she knew who had put the little wards around the trees at the trailer park. “Yeah. Well. I think I injured it, but it’s still alive,” she said slowly.
They looked at one another for a moment, mistrustful. Then the older woman set her cigarettes down. “It can’t be killed. I’ve tried. It can only be contained.”
“Everyone always tries killing the thing first.” Courtney sneered.
“It almost drowned you! Don’t tell me you feel sorry for it!”
“Not exactly. But it was here first, wasn’t it?”
The hotel employee was silent for a long moment, pensive, then coughed noisily and spat on the grass. Courtney grimaced in disgust.
“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said once her throat was clear. “It’ll have to go somewhere else in a week or so. They’re tearing the trees down and filling in the swamp. Did you see the signs?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I saw the signs.” Courtney frowned down the hill.
Where does a Night Thing go when its home is destroyed, she wondered. Back to the Twilight Kingdom? But what if it can’t get there? Does it die? Waste away? There are people to protest about saving the spotted owl, but no one’s gonna be marching around with signs saying ‘Save the Goblins’, because hardly anyone knows they exist.
And the people who do know they exist know how vicious they can be.
“Do me a favor,” she said, and it was a demand, not a request. “Get me an empty jar. From the kitchen or something. Or a coffee can would be fine.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to solve a problem.”
~*~
“This is the last time I’m coming here.” Courtney stood on the rock at the water’s edge again, eyeing the now-cracked drainpipe and holding an empty pickle jar tucked under one arm.
There was no answer, no singing, no movement in the water.
“I need my hotel room key, for one thing,” Courtney continued. “They won’t let us check out without it. I know that means precisely crap to you, but still. I figure it’s there in the mud somewhere.”
She took a step off the rock and into the water. It only reached to her mid-calf at the edge.
“But I also know something you don’t. Your pond here is going to be filled in. Destroyed. Gone. In a few weeks. They’ll probably pull out the pipe here and rebuild it. Replace it with a steel one, maybe. Then they’re going to put human buildings on top of it. Where will you go?”
Still there was no answer. Courtney took the lid off the pickle jar and dipped it into the pond, filling it with just a little water.
“I’m only going to offer this once. I’ll take you with me. There’s water and woods where I live, and gateways to the Twilight Kingdom. You’d be safe there. I don’t know what happens if you stay here, and I don’t think you do, either. You need any more incentive?”
She reached over to the rock and rubbed her palm against it as hard as she could, scraping skin off along a sharp edge. A few drops of blood welled to the surface, and she let them fall into the jar. “Come and get it. And bring me my keycard.”
For a while there was nothing. Just when Courtney had decided the Water Thing was not going to take the bait, she saw a shadow move inside the drainpipe. The form crept toward her slowly, coming cautiously out into the pool. It looked a little like a naked young girl, except it was more emaciated than any human girl could ever be and still be breathing. The breasts were like empty bags against its chest, and the hipbones threatened to tear through the almost translucent skin. The legs were too long, as were the arms, giving it a spidery appearance. Courtney was horrified, but she steeled herself, focusing on the toothy, shadowy face that she had looked into only an hour or so earlier.
“That’s right,” she said. “C’mon. I’m not going to hurt you, unless you try to hurt me.”
The Water Thing’s slimy brown hair trailed behind it, disappearing beneath the surface of the pool. It slunk over to Courtney, bobbing and swaying like a wary mantis, then held out her keycard. Nervous despite herself, Courtney reached out a small, dirty hand and accepted it, then tucked it hurriedly into her pocket. Then she held out the jar.
“So…? Are you coming or not?”
The Water Thing licked its teeth, nodded, and abruptly vanished.
The jar was suddenly so much heavier Courtney almost dropped it. Hurriedly, she put the lid on and tied it up with red thread. “Nothing personal,” she explained to the contents. “I just don’t want you to come out until we get where we’re going. You did try to drown me, after all.”
~*~
“…understand why you brought this container of rancid water and weeds all the way home,” Mrs. Crumrin complained as they unpacked the car.
“I, uh, made a promise to one of the maids at the hotel,” the young witch lied. “It’s what her favorite goldfish used to live in.”
“Courtney, that doesn’t make any sense at all…”
“I know. She was a weird lady. I’m going down to the creek,” she replied. “Later!”
She ignored her parents’ protests, as they generally ignored hers. She also ignored her own longing to run up and see her uncle as soon as possible. But she did make a brief stop in the kitchen before heading into the woods.
~*~
The car ride had not improved the stench of the polluted water. Courtney tried not to breathe as she poured it into the pond before her. Once done, she set the jar aside. “Okay. Welcome to Hillsborough. Got any questions?”
The Water Thing rose up immediately and stretched, joints crackling and popping. It smiled at her, and she noticed that still no light reached its shadowy eyes. Then it reached out casually, wrapped its hands around her neck, and squeezed.
She pressed a kitchen knife against its ribs and hissed, “This…is steel. ‘S iron init.”
The squeezing stopped, and the Water Thing backed away, rubbing the place the knife had touched and looking disappointed.
Courtney smirked. “I was hoping you wouldn’t do that, but I kind of figured you would. Let me tell you where you are. This pond is called the marl pit. It’s kind of already occupied. By someone we call Tommy Rawhead. You won’t want to stay here.”
All Night Things know Rawhead and Bloody Bones. The Water Thing looked around nervously, folding its arms around itself.
“That’s right,” Courtney nodded. “But if you go East between those rocks and under the water, you can get into the Twilight Kingdom. I’d go quick if I were you. You don’t want Tommy to find you here. But I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you on somewhere else in the Kingdom.”
The Water Thing hissed and gave her a look full of anguish and resentment.
“Yeah, whatever.” She stood to go. “I still probably saved your life. Don’t come back. I don’t want to hear about you drowning people in my woods.”
There was a quiet splash and a row of bubbles headed East.
That was the last Courtney ever saw of it.
~*~
“Did I do the right thing? It won’t come back, will it?”
“I’m not sure, my dear,” Aloysius regarded his niece thoughtfully. It was a clever enough stunt she’d pulled, but she had left loopholes, things that could backfire on her later.
“It owes you now. Night Things don’t like owing humans. That could be troublesome. But there’s nothing for it. You certainly meant well, and you did your best, which is far better than most witches your age or even older could manage.”
Fortunately, he’d be around for a few more years, and if something did go wrong, he’d be around to help clean up the mess.
Courtney smiled, relieved and warmed by the praise. “I don’t think I want to go swimming for the next century or so.”
“No, I should imagine not.”
There was nothing more to say. He lit a fire in the fireplace, sat her down on the sofa, cracked open a book, and began to read.
In less than twenty minutes, she was asleep on his arm.