Visit Flicker Warriors on Myspace!

Hello Blogging Friends!

Flicker Warrior Battlefield Chronicles (Chapters) are now being posted exclusively on the Flicker Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/flickerwarriors .

Please join Internationally Best Selling Author W. Maltese and Candle Artist Jfay on myspace and get caught up on all of the action.

See you there Warrior Spirits!!

Chapter 21: Strip Poker Anyone?

“Ace of spades,” Roman Michaels says.

Across the green-felt-covered table with its green-felt panel divider, Jordan Tolms lifts the leading edge of the face-down playing card and takes a look.

“Damn!” he says. “Do you know that this go-round you only missed two out of the whole deck?”

“You’re kidding!” Roman combs a hand through his silky hair. Disturbed strands catch the light and provide a momentary halo.

“Come on, now, Roman, fess up! You must have felt it the moment your hyper-perception kicked in. You’ve never had a success rate like this one.”

“Something about the air?” Roman hasn’t made a statement. He’s not sure he’s experienced anything differently. “There’s just, maybe, something different about it?”

“Like what?”

“Like … well, you know how it sometimes feels differently before an electrical storm? Like that.”

“Why don’t I feel it?” Jordan wonders aloud.

“Maybe I’m just imagining it.” As if Roman might actually have an answer.

Silently, this time, Jordan now wonders how Roman’s perception seems on the sudden increase. Jordan’s seem to be failing, more and more lately. The last time Jordan read a deck of playing cards, he only got twelve right. At one time, he consistently got thirty out of fifty-two.

“Let’s try it one more time,” Jordan suggests.

“Sure,” Roman agrees after checking the time. His wristwatch is a very expensive, but unassuming, Piaget that Gregory bought him when Roman read half the playing deck correctly. Gregory will be genuinely pleased by Roman’s latest progress, especially if Roman can provide an equally impressive encore.

“Okay, then. Let’s make it more interesting, shall we, by shuffling two decks?” Jordan says.

Roman frowns. As when his brother, Sydney, smiles, his dimples deepen; the corners of his eyes attractively crinkle. There’s less likely to be another expensive gift from Gregory if Roman’s skills, in reading two decks, don’t match the one-deck read lead-in.

“First, shouldn’t we verify my one-deck success story isn’t just a fluke before we move on to more complex testing?”

“A reading of all the cards but two in a regular deck is spectacular success, Roman,” Jordan says. “I mean, genuinely spectacular.” He should know. He had doubters gawking in disbelief when he was able, in his prime, obviously now passed, to get a correct reading of just thirty.

He doesn’t wait for Roman’s approval but reaches for a new deck. He breaks the seal. He peels off the cellophane. He opens the carton. He spills the cards into his hand.

He reaches for the deck already in use but changes his mind, sliding it to one side. He unwraps a second new deck and adds its cards to the ones already in his hand.

He shuffles. He shuffles again. He shuffles a total of ten times.

He deals the top card, face down onto the green felt on his side of the panel-divided table.

He nods for Roman to begin.

“Ten of diamonds,” Roman says, without hesitation.

Jordan thinks, “Four of spades.”

He upturns the card.

Ten of diamonds.

He deals a second card, face down.

He nods for Roman to continue.

“King of Clubs,” Roman says, without hesitation.

Jordan thinks, “Queen of Hearts.”

He upturns the card.

King of Clubs.

So it goes, until fifty-two of the hundred-and-four cards have been placed, face down, one by one, on the table top.

Score: Roman, fifty-two. Jordan, zero.

“He’s hot,” Roman says and wipes his forehead which is slightly sweaty.

“Who’s hot?” Jordan reflexively asks. Unless Roman refers to the Jack of Diamonds, the last card upturned, his comment is entirely out of context. Jordan pauses and doesn’t continue the deal.

“Timothy Gril’s father,” Roman says. There’s a slight glassiness to his eyes.

“I thought it was your brother who was gay.”

“I don’t mean hot that way,” Roman says. “I mean too-close-to-the-witch-burning hot.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Jordan asks. He deals another card.

Without waiting for Jordan’s nod to continue, Roman says, “Six of clubs.”

Jordan thinks, “Four of diamonds.”

He upturns the card.

Six of clubs.

“Burn, heathen, burn!” Roman says and does so rather loudly.

“Roman?” Jordan is suddenly concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” Roman runs his hand through his hair. He smiles. His dimples deepen. The corners of his eyes attractively crease. “Why do you ask?”

“You just said the most extraordinary thing about the father of someone called Timothy Gril.”

“Did I?” Roman looks confused. “Don’t really even know Timothy all that well. He doesn’t really run with my crowd, if you know what I mean. As for his father, I’ve never met the man, although I think Gregory knows him quite well. How am I doing with the cards, this time around, by the way?”

Jordan decides not to pursue the Gril line of inquiry. Stranger things happen during card-readings by genuine adepts. Their minds work in entirely different ways from normal folk. Jordan can attest to that from personal experience.

He deals another card.

Again, without waiting for Jordan’s nod, Roman this time says, “Two of clubs.”

Jordan thinks, “Two of diamonds.”

He upturns the card.

Two of clubs.

Once again, out of sight and out of mind, Gyle Gril’s flesh crisps, and he screams for rescue from frustrated fireman who simply can’t manage the intensity of the flames to get to him.



Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 20: BY THE DAWN'S EARY LIGHT?

Uxana is brought back to consciousness with a physically violent jolt. Immediately, she suspects Zila, or what’s left of her, has somehow managed to harness the constant ongoing barrage of emanating power waves electric in the air around them.

However, finding Zila possibly even more languid than when Uxana momentarily left her, it’s suddenly more likely that it’s Uxana’s younger and more receptive mentat to the rescue.

The girl is determined to make the best of a window of opportunity she doesn’t even know for how long will exist.

“I need answers, Zila!” Uxana insists. “Focus! Focus!”

Even assuming Zila’s eyes are somewhere near her mouth, it’s impossible to determine the where of them.

“I haven’t a clue how to handle this, Zila,” Uxana continues by stating what has to be the obvious. “You have to help me. You must know something.”

“For answers, you need the Book of Answers,” Zila says.

Uxana wonders if her wax-and-flesh mentor is being sarcastic.

“Yes, certainly the Book of Answers is one answer,” Uxana agrees. “Not having it, though, you’re going to have to do.”

“I’m beyond doing,” says the blue-wax maw that moves. “In fact, I’m nearly done.”

“No!” Uxana insists.

The combination of flesh and wax flickers as if a magnified version of the flame wavering atop the lop-sided candle beside it. Upon the resulting wavy mirage-like surface, an image of the once whole Zila appears, like a previously snapped photograph projected upon a rolling wave.

“You must be the one to focus, Uxana!” the visage insists, fades, then solidifies into its previously monstrous form.

“Focus on what?”

“On what I need mentat-tell you, now,” the waxy blue hole says.

When finished with its ensuing telepathic telling, it punctuates with, “Now haul me to the lip of this cave.”

“Now?”

“With what little sense I have left, I sense something there that you need see.”

“Shouldn’t I monitor the candle I’ve lit?”

“This candle you have lit is nothing but another pool of dead wax, my dear. You know that. I know that.”

Uxana is reluctant to touch the mass of flesh and wax that Zila has become. When she does, she’s disturbed by the heat and cold, the soft and hard, of the contrasting surfaces.

Somehow, though, she lugs her one-time mentor to the vertical gap that opens this hole in the earth onto the world outside; the once Primary Blue Candle of the Sisterhood has become no more than a seeming sack of speaking potatoes.

“You’ve brought us here to see the dawn?” Uxana wonders aloud.

“What dawn rises in the west?

”Uxana senses distraught and frantic human beings just beneath the pretty pink that tinges the skyline of the horizon.

“One of but many monsters serves up a human barbecue,” Zila says. “More and worse will occur if you don’t find a way to intervene.”

Without forewarning, the flesh and wax monstrosity tips over the edge of the precipice.

Uxana makes a grab, momentarily has hold of it.

“Don’t be a fool child,” Zila pleads. “Not fallen, I’m only a hindrance.”

Still, Uxana is determined not to let go. By way of proof that she doesn’t, are the powdery bits of candle wax that are all-too-soon all that remain in her clutching fingers.

Uxana reflexively, frantically, washes her hands in midair and releases candle dust that begins its slow float to rejoin the majority of Zila, late great Primary Blue Candle of the Sisterhood, that makes a sickeningly loud resounding thud on the dry-as-bone canyon floor.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 19: DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

“Zila? Is that you?” Uxana asks the darkness.

“I’m weak,” comes the reply. “I can’t see? What is this?”

“There have been rejuvenation malfunctions,” Uxana says. She hopes against hope that her mentor, once fully revived, will have answers. She’s not encouraged by the fade-in, fade-out, quality of her Big Sister in The Sisterhood’s voice.

“Who are you?” Zila asks.

“Uxana.”

“Uxana Uxl? And the others rejuvenated before us?”

“So far, we’re the only two.”“Only two.

And am I suddenly blind in this rejuvenation?”

“Mine is the only wick to have spontaneously combusted. I’ve had to mentat-light all of the others, including yours which is now out. All but you and I have gone to pooled wax. Shall I mentat-light another candle-in-the-line?”

“Why not just mentat an artificial flicker, for the moment, dear? At least until I can get my bearings. I seem strangely lethargic.”

“Mentating artificial flicker isn’t in my repertoire,” Uxana reminds. “I’m newly promoted, remember? There was no time to bring me up to full speed before we waxed for the last flood.”

“Then, let me try,” Zila says.

Moments pass. The darkness stays dark.

“Zila?” Uxana asks finally.

“I’m weak,” comes the reply. “I can’t see? What is this place? What is this happening?”

Uxana shivers and not just because she’s cold.

“A rejuvenation malfunction,” Uxana reminds. “You were about to initiate an artificial flicker?”

“Is that in my repertoire?” Zila asks.

“Most things are in your repertoire,” Uxana reminds. “You’re a Sister of Primary Color — Blue.”

“Do you, my dear, like I, feel an absence of emanated energy to summon from the air around us?”

“I feel quantities never before felt. I fear we may even have overslept to a time when another purging flood, long overdue, is eminent.”

“I don’t feel the excess energy of which you speak. In fact, even what little powers I seem to possess seem draining, even as I speak. Why, do you suppose?”

“Let me try another candle,” Uxana insists.

She finds the pile, feel-sorts through the waxy columns to find one that’s hopefully not too flaky, too soft, too bored with worm holes. The one she finally chooses in desperation seems slightly misshapen, as if sagged slightly after removal from its mold.

She sets the retrieved candle on the flat surface of a rock. She hopes for a spontaneous combustion, but it doesn’t happen.

She finger-locates its wick, squeezes it three times between a forefinger and thumb.

“Lalina prtuxus reonlin,” she provides the initiatory mantra from memory.

She sits back. She concentrates. A mentat-light isn’t easy for her despite all of her practice over the last few hours.

“I thought you were going to mentat an artificial flicker,” Zila says, an obvious hint of whining complaint in her voice.

“I thought you were going to mentat an artificial flicker,” Uxana says, and tries to keep a hint of whining complaint from her voice.

“I’ve tried,” Zila says. “It’s not happening.”

“Qantum-lu splinx,” Uxana continues with the alternative. She wonders if she should start all over, if Zila’s interruption has interfered with the necessary wick-lighting formula.

“I’m cold,” Zila says.

“Flixim palenum plodnominium,” Uxana says. She waits. She thinks she’s failed. She prepares for a repeat.

The wick of the candle ignites.

“Yes!” Uxana self-congratulates. Only to see the full horror of what her conjured light reveals.

Zila — if what exists upon the rock can actually be called Zila — is a deformed conglomeration of live flesh and contorted blue candle wax wildly malformed to resemble neither candle nor Primary Color Sister of The Sisterhood.

“I can’t see,” the thing says. Its mouth is only recognizable by the way a hole in the macabre collage elastically concaves and convexes around its circumference.

Uxana, despite all of her mentat efforts to maintain consciousness, feels her knees buckle and make painfully hard contact with the stone of the floor.

For her, at least, darkness returns.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 18: JOCKS BONDING

“So, how about we take a look at Uranus?” Sydney suggests.

“Don’t you think you might at least want to give me flowers and a box of chocolates first?” Cooper says.

“Very funny,” Sydney grants. He flashes a wide smile of appreciation.

“Come on.”

He tosses Cooper another bag of natural almonds and heads for the stairs. Cooper follows.

“You’re sure Mr. Ranlin isn’t going to mind?”

“First thing Mr. Ranlin is going to suggest, when you two meet up, is that you call him Gregory. As for his minding … he probably would if the telescope wasn’t pre-set. As it is, it’s just a case of my pushing a button, and you putting an eye to a small eyepiece. How easy is that not to screw up?”

“I wouldn’t want him angry.”

“Angry enough to bite you’re studly neck, and bleed you dry, you mean? Don’t worry. Since Gregory is obviously up and out so early this evening, he’ll come back full as a tick. Without my having told you, you wouldn’t even be able to tell that he’s not just another friendly, charming human being. Besides, when he finds out you’re a diviner, he’s going to want you up and about in sunlight, not hampered by forever being in the dark. Which reminds me … did you really see a werewolf in Matty Donnelly’s future?”

“As I’ve said … usually what I see isn’t all that clear. This time was no exception. It’s like a slideshow gone hyper on meth. Whatever I saw, as regards Matty, though, it definitely looked lupine.”

“Lupine?”

“Wolf-like. Definitely hirsute.”

“Hirsute?”

“Hairy.”

“Jeez, why didn’t you just say so? Obviously, you didn’t go to school in Flicker. Here, even some one-syllable words can get us all confused.”

“A slight exaggeration on your part, I would guess.”

“Okay, but not by much; believe me. Just remember if you want to come across as a genuine Flicker High jock, keep your conversation down to a few barely decipherable grunts.”

“I thought Coach Waynright said scholastics count.”

“Coach Waynright says a lot of things that aren’t true. I’ll bet, if confronted, he’d even deny that he likes watching us boys naked in the shower.”

“Does he? I mean, like watching us boys naked in the shower?”

“Don’t worry, buddy, it never goes any farther than an occasional gawk and sigh of jealous envy. The coach is harmless. On the other hand, I….”

On the second-floor landing, they take the skywalk to the observatory out back. From the road out front, few people would guess the large Tudor mansion comes complete with the most extensive sky-observing equipment this side of the astronomy department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Nor that the house’s owner has not only discovered a comet, Gregorran6, but is published in several prestigious scientific journals, and is widely respected by his heavens-watching peers.

“To prove how concerned Gregory is — not! — about any of us accessing his precious telescope, please note…” Sydney tries the observatory door, and it opens. “…how he doesn’t even bother to lock the damned place up. Try getting into his bedroom, though, especially after dawn, and you’ll need a wrecking ball and box of dynamite.”

“He sleeps in a regular bedroom, then? Not in a grave? Surely, in a coffin.”

“Haven’t a clue. I can only tell you for sure that he goes into his bedroom just before dawn, every morning, and shuts the door. I’ve been in there, during the night, though, and I’ve seen no coffin. Just a big bed. Too many windows to let in too much daylight. Drapes not nearly heavy enough. My personal opinion. I mean, if it’s true that daylight for him is a killer.”

“You think it may not be?”

“I only know that he keeps insisting that a whole lot of what people believe about vampires just isn’t so. He even insinuated, once, that a silver bullet wouldn’t kill them.”

“Isn’t that what kills a werewolf?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask Matty?” Sydney laughs.

Cooper laughs, too.

“This way,” Sydney says. “Before that great view of Uranus, I want to show you the great view from the observation deck at the top of the dome. On clear days, you can see all of the way to Dry Falls.”

The two maneuver a series of ascending metal staircases and an eventual narrow metal catwalk that dead-ends at a metal door.

Sydney pushes open the door and steps on out. Cooper follows.

“Whose house do you think is burning down to the ground over there?”

Sydney asks and points.


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 17: CANDLE IN THE WIND

It’s dark by the time Timothy mounts the front steps of his house. He hasn’t been doing anything in particular to keep him out so late. He’s just been out to be out. He’s been enjoying the kind of freedom he’s never known with his father holding so tightly to his reigns. Timothy’s new independence feels good but strange. It will, likely, take him awhile, but he’s sure he’ll get used to it.

He unlocks the door and steps inside. He shuts the door behind him and leans his back against it. He doesn’t turn on the houselights. Instead, he slowly scans the darkness of the living-room in front of him. He listens to whatever the sounds above and beyond those the house makes on its very own. He sniffs the air and smells something foul that’s new since he left.

“Are you going to say hello,” he asks finally, “or are you still hoping to jump out and scare the bejezus out of me?”

“Aren’t you the killjoy!” comes the response. A black candle suddenly flares on one end of the far window sill. There’s the accompanying smell of tar (and brimstone?).

Flickering candlelight unveils the darker shadow of Gregory Ranlin parenthesized by the regular shadows of the room.

“I was, indeed, hoping to give you a little ‘Boo!’” Gregory says. “I suppose I should have known you’d expect me. Your powers so quickly on the rise. Certainly, enough so as to keep your dear dad locked in one place for awhile.”

“You’ve sucked dad’s blood so often and for so long, I figured his cries for help would likely disturb your sleep.”

“So many people crying for help, during the course of each and every day, these days. I long-ago learned to tune most of them out. However, when he was still so distraught after nightfall…”

“Speaking of the old man, isn’t he going to join us?”

“Actually, I’ve left him where you left him, much to his chagrin. Although you might consider, next time, providing a bed pan. This way, you’ve his mess to clean up.”

“More likely, he has his mess to clean up.”

“And are you wondering when your powers will increase to surpass even mine?”

“No denying that thought crossed my mind.”

“Best to remember that I’ve been around for a very very long time. Even with my powers admittedly on the wane, I’ve a few tricks up my sleeve that might very well catch you unaware.”

“This is why I’ve decided to work with you. Now able to tell you that the Remoth candle-readers know no more about why Trish Remoth was kidnapped than you do, except to suspect the deed was done by a Native American shape-shifter after information. Demons, as curious as you, it would seem, are standing in the long line to find the meaning to this envisioned girl in blue with her blue candle.”

“And you came upon this information just how? Candle-reading, were you?”

“By asking. Sometimes a direct approach is the best approach. Anyway, Melissa Remoth seems to think so. In fact, I think she’s rather taken with me.”

“Increased powers of seduction among those you’re mysteriously being force-fed?”

“I certainly hope so. I’ve a lot of catching up to do.”

“I’m thinking you should do your catching up at my place, Timothy. Where I can keep a better and a closer watch on you. Think you’d like that? Moving out of this dump, away from your abusive father, into that big old house of mine, where you’ll have long days in which to get into to all kinds of mischief with my other two wards?”

“What will my father do without his punching bag?”

“Let me worry about your father. In fact…” He levitates to the window sill and opens the window. “Come, this very second. Hop on up here with me. We’ll go settle you in to your new digs. I’ll come back later and pacify your daddy dear.”

Timothy takes two steps. He pauses.

“No need to be fearful, Timothy,” Gregory encourages. “I ate before you arrived. Your father, as usual, was most obliging, although less so than usual.”

“Possibly, though, you might be thinking of dessert?”

Gregory laughs, showing fanged teeth white in darkness illuminated only by the one flickering flame.

“I do so love a sense of humor,” Gregory says. “Humor so damned hard to come by, these days. Blood, though, as you may one day be lucky enough to discover, is blood is blood is blood, yours no sweeter than any other.” His right hand extends. His right index finger flexes in invitation. “Come on, now. Over and up. Even I’m beginning to tire of the stench your father is making.”

With Gregory’s assistance, Timothy joins the handsome vampire on the window sill.

“Face me and take hold of both my wrists,” Gregory instructs, “and hold very tightly.”

Timothy does as instructed.

“Information sources so much more difficult to come by than food,” Gregory says. “So many people able to plot mischief in the light of day, while I’m relegated only to the dark of the night.”

Suddenly, they’re both disappeared. The wind into which they’ve been sucked, back-blows into the room, fluttering one of the curtains into the candle flame where it ignites with a loud and ominous POOF!



Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 16: THE BOYFRIEND

Roger Remoth opens the door to his daughter’s bedroom and stands in the breach.

“Someone here to see you,” he says with a disproving frown.

He steps back and lets Matty Donnelly step on by and into the room.

“Hi, babe!” Matty says to Trish on the bed. He smiles by way of additional greeting.

“Hi, back to you,” she says, glad to see him. She just loves the way his smile lights up a room. Both of his cheeks dimple. Little creases form at the corners of his light blue eyes. The cleft in his chin even seems to sink deeper.

“Don’t make this overly long, Trish,” her father says. “You need your rest.”

Roger leaves but doesn’t close the door behind him.

“Suddenly, I don’t think your father likes me any more,” Matty says. He pauses long enough to deliver a quick kiss to Trish’s forehead. His blond hair smells pleasantly of his tar-based shampoo. He sits in the visitor’s chair already bedside.

“What daddy doesn’t like is that I called you on the cell phone I’d promised him I wouldn’t take with me to Dry Wash Gulch. Then, I’d no sooner hung up from talking to you when I was kidnapped.”

“He doesn’t think I told anyone where you were, does he?”

“He doesn’t know what to think, Matty. Besides, you really didn’t know where I was, did you?”

“What in the heck were you doing there, anyway?” Matty has been wondering ever since he heard.

“You know how my parents have this thing for rocks.” Trish has thought about what to tell him. Importantly, it isn’t exactly a lie. “They think Melissa and I should love them, too. They hear of something interesting, geologically, and they figure we should all go, as a family unit, usually immediately, to see it. Go figure.”

“The police have any clues who took you?”

“Not that they’re saying.”

“You remember anything more?”

“A snake. A cat. A dog. Maybe, even, an Indian.”

“An Indian? Like a surround-the-wagons-we’re-being-attacked-by-an Indian?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone, because that part is really vague. As is the number three.”

“Three? As in Three Blind Mice? Three Little Pigs? Three kidnappers?”

“Whatever, whoever, maybe nothing, it’s probably just left-over hallucinations.”

“I heard the bastard drugged you.”

“You heard wrong. I only got stuck with a needle or needles. Twice. No sign of anything injected. The police say some sadistic perverts get off on weird things, these days.”

Mary Remoth makes an appearance with a vase of red roses.

“From Matty,” she tells Trish. “I’ve put them in water. They’ll have you thinking of him until he comes back the next time. Right now, you should get some rest.”

“All I’ve been doing is resting.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow, babe,” Matty says, stands. He kisses her on the cheek. “Promise.”

He leaves. Heading down the front walk, he feels Mr. Remoth’s gaze nailing him through the house’s front picture window to the paving stones.

“Hey, buddy!” someone calls from across the street.

Matty glances over to see Sydney Michaels and the new kid, Cooper something.

Matty heads in their direction.

“Your girlfriend up to visitors?” Sydney asks. “Some of the kids at school would like to stop by.”

“Probably best for everyone to wait for a couple more days,” Matty decides. Mr. Remoth isn’t exactly welcoming, but that might be special treatment just for Matty.

“You know Cooper, here, don’t you? Soon to be joining us on the wrestling team.”

“Actually, Coach Waynright isn’t going to decide that until tomorrow,” Cooper reminds.

“I’ve seen one of the other guys up for the slot,” Matty says. “Joey Spellman pinned him to the mat within thirty seconds. You’ve no competition from that direction.”

“So, how is Trish really doing?” Sydney probes.

“As well as anyone kidnapped, poked with a needle or needles, and still trying to deal with the aftermath of hallucinations about a snake, a cat, and a dog.” He almost adds — and about a Native American, and the number three.

“She’ll be okay,” Cooper assures.

“If that’s true, you know more about it than the quack-quack doctors do,” Matty says.

“Maybe that’s because Cooper, here, is a bona-fide diviner, buddy,” Sydney informs.

“Isn’t that someone who goes around with a forked stick, looking to find water?”

“Come to think of it... Not in this case, though. Cooper divines the future. Go ahead, Cooper, tell Matty something that’s going to happen to him.” “My insights aren’t all that automatic, if you know what I mean,” Cooper excuses.

“Ah, come on!” Sydney insists. “At least try.”

“Sure, go ahead.” Matty, doesn’t believe it’ll happen, but his interest is piqued.

Cooper bows his face into the fold formed by his two open hands.

“Do…do…do…do,” Sydney chants the theme song from a popular scary TV show.

Cooper opens his fingers but leaves them anchored, claw-like, to his face.

“You’re soon destined to have a close encounter of the third kind with a werewolf,” he informs Matty.

“No shit Sherlock?” Sydney responds.

Matty’s eyes squint. His lips purse. He looks from Sydney to Cooper. He bursts into full-throated laughter.

“Damn!” he chides and gives Sydney’s left bicep a quick and forceful fist-jab. “What’s up with the two of you trying to take me for a bloody idiot?”


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 15: SISTERS, OR NOT

Uxana Uxl is young, afraid, and cold.

She can do nothing about her age. She can do nothing about her fear. Unsuccessfully, she tries to make herself warmer by pulling her blue cloak even more tightly around her. The last large candle, blue as Uxana’s smaller candle had been blue, burns the darkness to provide flickering light but little warmth.

Uxana can get warmer by taking the long walk down the rocky corridor to the sunlight entering the narrow perpendicular mouth of the cave perched over the perilous drop-off, but she can’t spare the time. It’s her suspicion that too much time has already elapsed. She has to monitor closely this latest burn-down —that of her mentor Zila Bwl — and maybe others of The Sisterhood. She has to be there to do what she can do, if anything, in case something else goes wrong.

She should have known when she asked the apparition, “How long?”, and the girl obviously hadn’t a clue, that the time lapse was already too long. That is now verified by how, one after another, three of the all-important four larger candles have sloughed all their wax, with no results. All three have become merely lifeless colorful shiny splotches on the black basalt floor. The smaller candles still in the pile are possibly (fatally?) contaminated, too: burrowed by long-dead bugs, made brittle or crumbly from age, split and cracked from a natural temperature regulator malfunctioned (how long ago?).

Uxana is sorely afraid her candle, similar in color to the larger one of her mentor that now burns, might have been the only one, large or small, to survive as viable. Why else had her wick spontaneously combusted when she was fifth in the pre-planned revival sequence of large red, large yellow, large green, large blue, then Uxana’s smaller blue? Granted, one such anomaly of sequence occurred after the first flood, but never since.

She leans back against hard stone. She trembles but not just from the continuing chill. The energy pulses are genuinely electric all around her. They’re more powerful than any she’s ever known here. Another purging of them by flood water must surely be imminent. How can she, on her own, ever vacate the area and prepare for another soon-to-happen deluge?

She tries, again, for not the first time, to mind-contact the apparition. Although it had no answer, it can be an indication of people somewhere near, maybe even within the flood zone. Likely mortals drifted in; no warnings available since the last flood. Maybe some with psyches genetically attuned to the present massive power surges. Newbies with remnant DNAs from previous times before their ancestors chose mortality over magic?

Unfortunately, Uxana’s skills at summoning weren’t honed before having gone candle before the last flood. Even with the extra benefit, now, of magic-boosting emanations registering off-scale in intensity, no visions come. Meaning the girl of the apparition had revived before Uxana but left everyone else dormant? Who in The Sisterhood would have done such a wicked and perverse, not to mention dangerous, thing? Besides, Uxana didn’t recognize the girl who was such a pretty thing.

So, had magic merely reverted to mortals with everyone else suddenly out of the picture? If so, that wasn’t a pretty scenario, either. The magic of this place had never been something in which novices could safely dabble.

Her eyelids grow heavy. How strange that she should desire sleep, having already slept so long. She begins the mental exercises long-ago prescribed to keep those of The Sisterhood alert.

“Oooooooooooooooo,” comes a mournful moan from within the flickering darkness. The lit candle wick flares, briefly and brightly, and then, as if pinched by ghostly fingertips, goes out.



Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 14: A DIVINE FRIENDSHIP

“Okay, Michaels, turn loose and let the kid up!”


Sydney Michaels does as Coach Waynright instructs and releases his head-hold on his opponent.


Both sweaty young wrestlers scamper to their feet.


“Take a shower, Michaels,” coach says. “Loor, you stick around for just a minute.”


Sydney Michaels again does as instructed and heads for the locker room. Coach Waynright waits patiently, arms folded, until Sydney disappears into the locker-room access corridor on the far side of the gym.


“You should have seen that takedown coming from a mile away, buddy,” coach tells Cooper. “You’re rusty as hell and need some fine-tuning before you’re up to my standards.”


“I’m good at playing catch-up, coach,” Cooper promises. “As usual, I just need time to get back into a regular work routine after my dad’s latest base transfer.”


“I’m not saying you can’t be brought up to speed,” coach says. “In fact, I’m actually impressed by what I see. That said, later today I’ve a couple more kids trying out for the one available slot. I’ll take a look at them and have my final decision to all three of you by first-period tomorrow.”


“Great.”


“So, go take a shower and don’t be late for your next class. Grade-point is important for any kind of ongoing participation in extracurricular sports, here, at Flicker High. I can’t tell you how many good athletes I’ve had to let go because they thought brawn and not brains was all they needed on a wrestling mat.”



Coach Waynright nods toward the locker-room access corridor, turns, heads for the weight room in another direction.


Cooper peels off his sweaty T-shirt in the corridor. At his locker, he discards his shoes, sweaty sweat socks, sweaty shorts, and sweaty jockstrap. He picks up a fresh towel from the convenient wire basket stuffed full of them and wraps his sweaty neck with soft terry-cloth.


In the shower room, Sydney Michaels showers down the way. Cooper turns to the plumbing just inside the doorway. He hangs his towel on the pipes and reaches for the water release.


“Hey, Loors, get your studly ass over here,” Sydney calls and pats the wall tiles of one of the two shower spaces immediately beside his. “You and I have to talk, and I don’t feel like screaming.”


Cooper retrieves his towel and walks the distance.


For not the first time, he’s impressed by Sydney’s physique, tanned, and now made sensuously glossy by soap slick and water. He wonders if his classmate came by his great body naturally, because of good genes, or if he, like Cooper, has had to spend long hours bulking up. Intuition tells him it’s a combination of both.


Cooper hangs his towel, turns on the water, steps into it.


“You ever again hand me a takedown on a silver platter, and I’m going to beat the living crap out of you,” Sydney says. Sounds like he means it. Definitely looks as if he can at least give it a good try. “I don’t need hand-outs to pin your sorry ass to any mat.”


“Actually, I didn’t hand you anything,” Cooper says. He reaches for the soap and begins lathering his tightly muscled chest and belly. “I’ve just been off my regular training regimen, that’s all. Although, I can see where you might think the new kid on the block is out to brown-nose Mr. Popularity in order to gain social acceptance sooner than later.”


“Obviously, you have me confused with my older brother. He’s the one you should be kissing up to if you want quick acceptance around here.”


“Nah, he’s way too unapproachable. Besides, he’s obviously fond of you and includes you in just about everything. Sometimes, it’s just easier for a wannabe to try the backdoor approach.”


Sydney laughs. It’s a nice laugh; low-key and very-very sexy.


“Obviously, you did your homework and know I’m gay,” he says, turning in the spray to face, more directly, his possibly soon-to-be teammate.


“I know you’re gay, and I know you’re the ward of a vampire.” And doesn’t that make Sydney’s attractively square jaw drop just a bit. “And I…” The soapy index finger of Cooper’s right hand reaches out and almost, but not quite, touches down on the deep indent at the base of Sydney’s throat; it slowly air-traces a line down the middle of the young man’s chest to Sydney’s slightly innie navel. “…am a bisexual diviner who divines that you and I are going to become the very best of friends.”









Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 13: NONE OF YOUR BEES' WAX!

Pitch black. Black. Dark grey. Grey. Clotted cream. Pale white. White.

“Ohhhhhhhhh.” The latter hurts his eyes.

“It’s all right,” a low, masculine voice reassures him.

Maybe, but Johnny Three Spirits doesn’t feel all right, although he is encouraged.

“Grandfather, is that you? I thought I’d killed you.”

“Yes, grandfather, here. For awhile there, thinking you had killed me. As it turns out, though, I’m alive and well, and possibly more enlightened from having had my near-death experience.”

“Where are we?” Not the sweat lodge, unless the rocks are cooled, the heat all gone, electric lights installed.

“Back at my house.”

“You carried me here?”

“Actually, it would seem you carried me here, and then collapsed.”

“I’m sorry. I lost control — again.”

“Not as badly as the last time. Last time you were snake, and cougar, and wolf. Last time, you bit Melissa Remoth. This time you were only snake and didn’t bite grandfather. Progress. Or, so we shall see it until it is proven otherwise.”

“What keeps happening that so puts things out of whack?”

“An answer which obviously still needs more searching.”

“Did chant-to-see-the-future tell us nothing, then?”

“Snake interrupted chant. In afterthought, I’m thinking we need call upon a source far more insightful than chant.”

“Such a source exists?”

“If I can still believe my dreams.”

“You had a dream?”

“If dream is what can occur when losing consciousness from life-sucking squeeze of form-changer grandson as snake.”

“And what did you dream?”

“Of you and I scooping warm wax of angry scrubland bees. Of you and I working the wax to make it malleable. Of you and I rolling a waxy column of crusty gold and creamy fragmented honeycombs with wick.”

“A candle, you mean?”

“So it would seem.”

“Have you become a candle-reader, then, between sweat lodge and now?”

“No. Have you?”

“Not that I’m aware. And for as long as I can remember, I have heard you and the other elders complain because our people have been deprived of one for more than three generations. Which was why we set out to snatch Melissa Remoth to know her latest reading, yes?”

“Possibly why, in my dream, grandson, it’s Melissa brought with us to do the reading.”

“Unless, of course, I again spoil things by snatching her sister.”

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 12: THE STAY-AT-HOME

“Timothy!”

No doubt about it. His father’s voice can still send chills up and down the teenager’s spine and literally make the young man shiver. Timothy assumes it will take a long time for that reflex action to cease and desist. He’s determined, though, that it will.

“Timothy!”

Timothy stretches to press the volume button on the kitchen television’s remote control.

A lot of the local morning news, now louder, is devoted to the abduction and recovery of Timothy’s classmate Trish Remoth. Her assailant is thought to be a pervert … a madman … a druggie … maybe, even, a cult of druggies … or … when you come right down to it … no one is really sure; not even — it seems — Trish Remoth.

“Timothy!”

The momentary levitation of morning-breakfast PopTart within toaster slot, hot at cooking completion, almost cancelled that last holler from the bedroom across the kitchen, across the living room, and down the hall.

PopTart eaten, glass of milk drunk, Timothy fills a quart jar with tap water and grabs a box of cereal from the countertop.

He goes into his father's bedroom.

“About damned time!” Gyle Ranlin accuses his son from the bed.Timothy avoids his father’s reach and puts the quart of water on a bedside nightstand.

“What’s the problem?” Timothy asks. “The school bus is going to be here any minute.”

“What do you mean, what’s the bloody problem?” Gyle accuses.Timothy steps back, takes a good look at the way his father is locked in by the bed’s metal frame having been bent up and over to secure the man’s shins ever-so tightly to the mattress.

“This will really have to wait until I get back from school,” Timothy says. “In the meantime, here’s something to eat.” He tosses the box of cereal into bed with his father. Some of the box contents spill and look like bugs scattering among the rumpled blankets and sheets.

“Gregory won’t like this,” his father warns.

“Gregory is even older than you are. If he wants to keep in the game being played, he must rely on young people like me. I thought he already made that perfectly clear.”

Timothy leaves his fettered father and catches the school bus.On board, Jack Plenoc takes the seat next to him.

“Suppose you heard about Trish Remoth?” Jack says.

“I wonder if there’s anyone in Flicker who hasn’t.”

“I hear she was raped.”

Jack is a jackass! “I heard she wasn’t.”

At school, Timothy looks for Melissa Remoth. It’s harder to find her than it once was. The new building complex is large. Within the last year, there’s been more than a doubling of the student body.

He expects to find her in a crowd of curiosity seekers asking about her sister. He’s surprised to find her alone at her locker.

“Melissa,” he says. If not exactly on frequent speaking terms, they’ve shared classes together. Frankly, he’s surprised how cute she is. Before, his whole world centered on his father, he didn’t exactly have time to notice girls.

“Timothy,” she says. “Gril, right?”

“Can we talk for a minute?”

She checks her wristwatch.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more about what happened to my sister than what you’ve already heard on the news.”

“Actually, it’s not your sister I want to talk to you about but a certain girl in blue, with a blue candle.”

Melissa is obviously surprised but not nearly as surprised as Timothy would have expected.
She tilts her head slightly to one side. Her pretty blue eyes narrow as if to get a better look at him.

“Why is it, I wonder,” she says, “that I was led to believe you’d be Native American?”


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 11: BITTEN, BUT NOT BY FROST

“Thank God!” Roger Remoth says into the telephone mouthpiece. “Is she okay? …Where did you find her? … Does she know who abducted her? … Yes, of course, I understand.” He checks his wristwatch. “We can be there within the hour. … Thank-you, and please tell our daughter we’re on our way.” He hangs up and says to his wife and to his younger daughter, “They found Trish across town on the lawn of one of the tract houses allocated families of air-force personnel.”

“To have transported her so far so fast, the shape-shifter would have had to be large dog or cat,” Melissa says.

“Is Trish okay?” Mary anxiously asks her husband.

“She’s rambling, by the police’s way of thinking,” Roger says. “She’s babbling about abduction by wolf, snake, and cougar. The police assume she’s been drugged and still suffers the aftereffects. They even think they’ve located two syringe puncture wounds.”

“The shape-shifter, as snake, bit her,” Melissa says; it isn’t a question. “Neither the police, nor doctor, will recognize it as a snake bite; the punctures are too far apart for any snake they know. The larger the shape-shifter, the larger the snake. The larger the snake, the larger the bite.”

“They’re taking her to the hospital for a rape kit.”

“Oh, dear God, tell me she wasn’t raped,” Mary begs.

“She says not, but the police have to be sure. They’ll run a tox screen, as well.”

“Melissa,” Mary turns to her daughter, “please tell me your sister wasn’t raped.”

Melissa shrugs. Shakes her head. “I don’t know. I only know that if there is any poison in her, whatever it may be, we’ll have to watch her very closely. As will the shape-shifter. He’ll have to help her, if he’s turned her, won’t he? So, Trish constantly should be on guard for someone, anyone, more curious about her than usual. Which might prove difficult once it gets around she’s been kidnapped — everyone curious. I would think, though, the shape-shifter will be a local Native American. Maybe even one of our classmates. Then, again, it could be someone older.”

“You can’t be more specific?” her father presses.

“I sense that he bit her by mistake. Therefore, snake probably a mistake.”

“He? His?” Mary wants gender confirmed.

“I think so. Also, I think, as I’ve already said, that his intent was merely to have answers. That would have best been achieved by wolf or cougar and quick and hurried carrying of Trish out of the area. That he lingered, even bothering with snake, let alone with snake bite, says incomplete control. Someone grown old, his powers not what they once were. Someone young, his powers not yet fully realized. Someone old or young with powers in shift because of whatever is happening all around us.”

“Is he our friend or our enemy?” Roger asks.

“We really should get to the hospital,” Mary interrupts. “The police and Trish will be wondering what’s holding us up.”

“Is this shape-shifter our friend or our enemy, Melissa?” Roger persists, determined to have an answer before going anywhere.

“I feel the presence of many friends, many enemies,” Melissa says, “but I can’t, at least at the moment, identify any of them.”

“We have to go,” Mary insists and heads for the door.

It’s only when they’re all in the car, pulling out of the driveway, when Melissa adds, “I can tell you that there are many more — friends and enemies, beasts and beasties — still determined to get here.”


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 10: MORE CREATURES THAN A ZOO

“Oh, Mom, please, no!” Melissa’s punctuating groan is low and loud and full of frustration.

Back in their home, her mother has returned with the third candle in the last hour. This one is bright yellow and smells of freshly-squeezed lemon. Mary Remoth is desperate to have Melissa divine some hint as to Trish’s whereabouts. Even the police helicopter that scanned the Dry Wash Gulch camp area with infra-red hasn’t found Trish’s heat source. Which means what? Trish is no longer alive but stone-dead cold?

“Not one of your candles is working,” Melissa insists. She’s tired, even though she doubts she’ll ever sleep again. “We’re wasting our time.”

“Don’t say that!” Mary chides her daughter. “If the candles aren’t working, it’s because it’s the wrong combination of candles and you. Your father and Trish and my candle-powers have been in decline for quite some time. We all know that.”

“But are mine really on the rise, as you keep suggesting? It doesn’t seem so.”

“Did you, or did you not envision, the chimera while candle-reading at Dry Wash Gulch?”

“Chimera? That part cat, snake, and dog creature, you mean? Do you actually think any such thing exists?”

Mary takes Melissa and the candle to the table. She lights the candle wick and pulls out a chair into which she gently insists her younger daughter sit.

“You tell me,” she says. “In that, there are people who still don’t believe vampires exist, or werewolves exist, or witches, or warlocks, or candle-readers exist. You and I, though, know that they all do, don’t we? So, just because we’ve never seen a chimera in its own tangible flesh and blood, only the phantom you envisioned at Dry Wash Gulch, doesn’t mean that one or more isn’t out there — somewhere now — with your sister. You need merely ask the candle and wait for an answer.”

Melissa leans forward and blows out the candle flame. Inadvertently (or, is it on purpose?) she inhales the resulting twisting thread of smoke.

“No need to ask,” she says and turns to her mother. “Know that chimeras do exist. Know that we shall one day soon, to our peril, have to deal with one. Know that this time, though, it isn’t a chimera but a shape-shifter. And a shape-shifter who doesn’t any more have answers than we do but is merely seeking them as frantically as we are.

”The telephone rings.

Mary and Roger, though, are so taken back by what their daughter has just told them that they seem unable to register that it’s the phone that beckons them.

The phone rings again.

“A shape-shifter,” Roger finally echoes and nods the possible likelihood of that. “Why didn’t you or I think of that, Mary?”

The phone rings again.

“We didn’t think of it, my dear, because we’re more and more quickly being excluded from a game we’re too old to play.” The phone rings again. “Answer it,” Melissa says. “The authorities are anxious to tell us they’ve found Trish; though they can’t know it’s only because the shape-shifter has purposely dropped her there.”



Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 9: LONG DISTANCES TRAVELED

Cooper Loor senses that it’s about time he must officially start his day.

Actually his last name is Loo, not Loor. He’s unofficially changed to the latter — with his schools’ (and there have been many) cooperation. His mother’s permission came first, finally followed by his father’s. His mother won his father over after three years of Cooper being non-stop taunted in elementary schools, “Hey, Cooper, English Pooper.” Cooper was always amazed by how quickly school children, world-wide, could pick up on the British word, loo, for toilet, when a good harassing was in the offing.

Originally, Madison Loo argued that all of the schoolyard bullying would merely help his son build character. Madison felt himself a better man for his early-on having had the gumption and fortitude to carry on. He wore Loo proudly on the nameplates of his crisp military uniform, his desk, and his door. As a colonel in the United States Air Force, he never heard the derogatory chants that were still performed, only now too far behind his back for him to notice.

In time, because Madison loved his wife and his son, the latter a pretty poor specimen at the time the name change was proposed, he had decided what was asked would temporarily be okay.

Even though Cooper, by now a teenager blossomed into a stellar example of physical fitness and a powerhouse to be reckoned within high-school sports, still keeps the “r” on the end of his last name. His reasoning is that it’s become a preventative from his having to beat the crap out of any of his wise-ass fellow schoolmates; most of whom he rightly figures he can, by this point, dominate in any fair bout of fisticuffs.

Cooper’s muscular right arm stretches from beneath his bed’s comforter. His large easily-can-palm-a-basketball right hand softly slaps the alarm button before the wail of the time-to-get-up siren can interrupt the dimness and stillness of the morning air.

He gets up, showers, dresses, and heads downstairs to the kitchen. Along the way, he passes his parents’ room. His mother sleeps — alone — in a big king-sized bed.

Just because Cooper’s father called last night to say that “circumstances” would keep him at the Air Force base’s officer barracks for the night, doesn’t mean that this latest stationing will see him renege on his promise that he’ll be spending more time with his wife and son. It will take him time to settle in as the official Air Force liaison between Fort Rockpoint and the expanding town of Flicker. There is a lot for him to catch up on.

Relationship between base and town isn’t as good as it was when Flicker was merely a wide spot in the road, and the adjoining Fort Rockpoint was pretty much otherwise isolated within a wide stretch of central Washington State wilderness. Since an extensive underground water system has been discovered, two new housing projects are nearly completed and two more are on the drawing boards. Even a Walmart is insinuated to be in Flicker’s future.

Whatever it is that originally prompted the government to build its air-force base smack-dab in the middle of once-desolate scrublands, and Cooper doesn’t have a clue, it obviously makes his father (and Lt. Col. Loo’s military superiors) nervous to have the immediately adjoining area suddenly filling with civilians.

All of that, though, is his father’s problem to work out. Cooper’s main concern for the moment is getting himself breakfast. The rest of the day he’ll spend trying to fit into yet another school that already has its own groups and cliques and social clubs established well before his arrival. Luckily, he’s grown expertise at fitting in.

Turning toward the refrigerator, Cooper has a good view through one kitchen window to the bleak vista that’s drying (despite suddenly lots of available water) front lawn punctuated by vast expanse of wasteland extending to the horizon.

This time, though, he’s brought up short by the unbelievable sight of an apparently unconscious and disheveled Trish Remoth sprawled unceremoniously in the immediate foreground.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 8: HISSING STONES AND SNAKE

Naked to the point of even discarding his flashlight, Johnny Three Spirits pushes back the buffalo hide flaps to the traditional sweat lodge and steps on through.

Even more forcefully than usual, a wall of heat hits him like a battle ax and leaves him momentarily breathless.

He shuts his eyes and hopes they will adjust to the darkness. When he opens them, he still can’t see.


It’s only because he knows the space around him that he’s able to find his assigned place and sit in it.


Across from him, there’s a loud hiss. Frightening him, why? He knows it’s only his grandfather, Jimmy Who Knows, ladling water onto hot stones. As proof, another wave of heat brushes over and around him. His sweating pores sweat all the more.

“Is it done, then?” Jimmy Who Knows asks his grandson.


“Yes, Grandfather.”


“And were there more problems?”


“It was a continuing struggle but, this time, I kept wolf dominant.”


“Did Trish at any time see?”


“Only for a moment. Wolf made her faint.”


Johnny senses, more than sees, his grandfather’s disappointed head shake.


“From concealment at a distance, I did watch her recover,” Johnny adds.


“That much at least is reason for encouragement.”


“I am sorry, Grandfather,” Johnny apologizes. “It was all so strange, the way I was unable to control the shifts. It was like in the very beginning. All four of me battled for control. As I’ve said, I hadn’t a clue that I fetched Trish for you and not Melissa."




“You say you bit her just outside Dry Wash Gulch?”


“Yes, Grandfather. I couldn’t help myself. As I said, it was as if all of your teachings hadn’t been taught.”


“You say it was done as serpent, but you’re still not sure you delivered venom?”


“I tried not, but I may have failed. I wrestled so hard for my conversion back to speedier wolf that I was admittedly distracted.”


“We must monitor her very carefully. Should she become one of us as a result, she will need help with her transition. It will be your responsibility, if you should end up her initiator, to help her find her way as a shape-shifter; as I have been your guide.”


“Yes, Grandfather.”


“And now, let’s better try to analyze our situation.” “I’ve tried on my own without success.” “I suspect we are on the verge of events so long prophesied that we’ve denied they’ll ever come.”


“The battle after the flood, you mean?”


“All signs would seem to say so. I might know better if we’d accessed the right girl — even briefly. Unfortunately, Trish already verges on too old; as I am already way too old. If the time is near, it will be you, and young ones like you and Melissa, who must bear the responsibility for saving yourselves as well as the rest of us.”


“Is there some other way besides Melissa to confirm?”


“We can risk a chant-to-see-the-future. As you know, there is great danger in that. Even then, it may not work.”


“We need to know — I need to know — if just to prepare.”


“Then, we will chant — together — here — now.”


Jimmy Who Knows ladles yet more water onto hot stones.


Johnny Three Spirits hears the hiss, feels the heat. Without willing it, and unable to control it, his body becomes serpent, swiftly glides the floor to enwrap and entrap his grandfather in a suffocating embrace.






Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 7: BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON

Melissa screams non-stop. She continues until her mother slaps her hard across the left side of her face. Even then, her screams interrupted by her surprise (her mother never hits her), Melissa sobs uncontrollably.

“None of us is going to help your sister by being hysterical,” Mary Remoth insists and gives her younger daughter an accompanying shake.

Melissa, though, has been screaming just because she’s not at all sure anyone can help her sister now.

Trish and her sleeping bag have been pulled out of the tent by something or by someone. Trish has been yanked by something or by someone from her discarded bedding. There’s evidence, by way of scrapes across rock and ground surfaces, that Trish has been dragged by something or by someone into the darkness.

Melissa doesn’t sense her sister anywhere near and fears the worst.

What or who could have done such a thing? How could they possibly have managed it so quickly?

After having heard Trisha’s cries for help, her parents and Melissa had been at the tent within seconds — to find her gone. Roger Remoth kneels onto part of the scuffed and dusty rock surface that’s punctuated with his elder daughter’s skid marks.

“What is it, Roger?” Mary wants to know. “Trish’s cell phone, I think,” Roger says.

“I thought she said she left it behind.”

“As if we’ve lately been the best examples of truth-telling,” Mary reminds. “Having gotten us where?”

Roger manipulates buttons to recall Trish’s last call.

“She talked to Matty,” he says.

“Do you think she told him where we are?” Mary wonders aloud.

“Matty wouldn’t hurt Trish,” Melissa, between sobs, comes to Matty’s defense. “He loves Trish. Trish loves him. They’re going to get married.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Mary agrees, although she doesn’t sound at all convinced of Matty’s innocence.

“When did Melissa call him?”

“A few minutes ago,” Roger reads the call-up information.

“Matty couldn’t have possibly gotten here so fast?” Melissa continues to argue in the young man’s favor.

“Those things can cover an awfully lot of ground in a very short time,” Roger says.

“What things?” Melissa wants to know.

“What things?” she literally screams.

“Calm down, Melissa!” Mary insists.

“We’ll discuss all of this when you’re a little less upset.

In the meantime, Roger, you’d better phone the police. I suspect our chance of finding our daughter without help is nonexistent.”

Roger dials 911.

“My daughter has been abducted,” he says into the mouthpiece. “We’re presently camped at Dry Wash Gulch.”

Melissa hears but doesn’t hear the rest of her father’s side of the conversation. She’s remembering the dark shadow that passed across the candle flame probably just seconds before Trish was abducted. Would Trish be safe now if Melissa had commented upon the event instead of merely having assumed tired eyes had blinked from too much concentration?

“The authorities are on their way,” Roger says.

“As it may take some time, do you think we should try, again, to read the candle flame?”

“We’ve been trying all night,” Melissa reminds. “What makes you think we’ll come up with something now?”

She wishes she didn’t remember the moment of shadow passing between her and the light.

“It’ll be something to do,” Roger says. “We need something to do.”

Reluctantly, Melissa returns with her parents to the candle they’d been watching when Trish disappeared.

The wick has been extinguished. Did someone brush against it on the way to an attempted rescue of Trish?

Did a breeze arrive after the candle was left all alone?

Mary lights the charred wick and sits, pulling Melissa down beside her. Roger assumes a yoga cross-legged position across the flaming candle from them.

“Try to contact your sister, Melissa,” Mary instructs.

“It’s not going to work,” Melissa says, tears in her eyes. “I know it’s not going to work.”

“At least try,” Mary cajoles. “In that, what if it does work?”

Melissa tries her best to concentrate. It’s hopeless. Their whole candle-reading attempts since they’ve arrived have been hopeless.

A fleeting ghostly vision of a creature with the claws of a cat, the tail of a snake, and the head and body of a dog suddenly speeds before Melissa’s line of vision and makes the candle flame momentarily dim and flicker.

As if on cue, somewhere in the very far distance, some kind of animal raises its head dark-skyward and provides a low and plaintive bay at the moon.

The short hairs along Melissa’s neck stand on end.


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 6: I CANNOT TELL A LIE

Suddenly, Trish doesn’t know what to answer. She suspects she should have thought this out, far more, before making the call.

To tell Matty the truth will make Trish’s family seem as kooky as they are. To tell him the truth will reveal her parents as the liars they are. To tell him the truth will violate her parents’ trust in having specifically told her not to tell anyone where they were headed, and where they are now.
Not to tell Matty the truth, though, will endanger Trish and his relationship. From the get-go, they have promised each other that they will never lie to one another. Both have seen the disastrous results of lying on other relationships. They’re determined that won’t happen to theirs.

“Briana James said your grandmother died,” Matty says into the silence.

“Not quite so dire,” Trish says, figuring that’s the truth for sure. “It’s a family thing. Hopefully, I’ll be back in school soon, maybe even tomorrow.” If wishes were gold and pigs could fly.

“You’re still in town, then?”

“Between Flicker and Seattle,” Trish says. She didn’t add — out in the scrubland, having hiked in, having pitched a tent, having sat around staring at candle light and trying to figure out some meaning to her little sister’s dream of a blue candle and a blue-robed girl.

“Glad you’re okay,” Matty says. “Glad your grandmother didn’t die. I still miss mine.”

“I just didn’t want you to worry,” Trish continues with the truth as she can reveal it. “It was all kind of sudden, and I knew you’d wonder what happened.”

“You got that right.”

“Anyway, I …”

Trish stops talking, listens. She has heard something, and not on the phone, but what? Have her parents detected the light in the tent? Have they come to find out what mischief their elder daughter is up to?“What?” Matty asks from the other end.

“Shhhhhh,” Trish insists.

After a minute, she decides she’s imagined hearing anything at all. She doesn’t remember Dry Wash Gulch being nearly as creepy the last time around.

“Thought I heard someone,” she apologizes. “You know how parents don’t like us talking when we should be sleeping. As if we’re conspiring to do something they know they’ll be dead-set against.”

“Don’t I, though,” Matty said. Why else is his phone nightly under his pillow, on vibrate?

“So, just don’t worry, and I’ll be back soon.” Certainly Trish hopes she’ll be back soon. She doesn’t know how much longer she can take of all this getting-creepier-by-the-minute nonsense. “If there’s too much of a delay, I’ll call you again.” Anyway, she’ll “try” to call him again.

“Love you,” she says and makes kissing sounds into the phone’s mouthpiece, by way of fond farewell.

She breaks their tele-connection before Matty asks or says something that will make Trish tell an out-and-out-lie — or not tell an out and out lie and end up in major hot water as far as her parents are concerned.She’s tucking the phone back into the concealment of her pocket, when…
She does hear something. This time, she’s certain it comes from just outside the tent.

Like a turtle, she slides her head out of her sleeping bag shell and into the darkness held, like her, imprisoned within the enclosing canvas.

She listens.

There is someone or something definitely out there.

“Dad?” she asks. Can she actually see her breath gone misty against the dark, or does she only imagine the air gone icier?

It’s as if someone or something is sniffing or breathing heavily along the tent’s perimeter.
“Dad?” she repeats.

“Noooooooooooooooooo, not dad,” comes a whispered and hissed reply.




Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 5: YOU CALL THIS NORMAL?

Trish Remoth wishes, more than anything, that she had a normal life and family. Surely, that isn’t too much to ask, is it?

Granted, there was a time, before she knew any better, when she found some interest and enjoyment in all of this dream stuff and the attending candle-gazing hocus-pocus. That said, she has never been into any of it to the degree of her parents and her little sister, Melissa.

Trish’s dreams are never vivid, seldom even with a story line.

Certainly, she’s never dreamed anything to cause the excitement of Melissa’s dream of a blue candle and some girl clothed in blue. In fact, Trish’s dreams are so uneventful that even her parents, who had initially insisted she tell them everything about them, became pretty much disinterested, especially as Trish got older.

For awhile, things had almost been normal — if not altogether. Few of Trish’s friends have parents who spend long days and nights out in the field, often dragging their children along, all the while looking at rocks and stones. No way will Trish ever admit to any of her friends that her parents, and her younger sister, often spent virtual hours, like now, sitting around a lit candle and gazing into its flickering flame.

Trish knows she should be part of the present family circle. Actually, she had been part of it for almost an hour. That was before she got truly bored with the whole process — for not the first time. Besides, the candle light always gives her a headache. This time was no exception. She has said so before, and she said so a few minutes ago.

Reluctantly, her parents had let her return to the tent they’d pitched in Dry Wash Gulch. They’d only asked that Trish return to the circle when or if her headache gets better.

Well, her headache is better, but she isn’t going to go back and sit on hard stone and get another headache from candle-flame gazing. Not that she’s all that comfortable where she is, hunkered down in the goose-down-filled sleeping bag.

She wants to go home.

She’s going to miss an important history exam. Her parents lied in their excuse given, too. They said there was a death in the family. What normal parents would purposely have their child miss a test, especially if that child is looking forward to attending a good college and needs to maintain an A grade-point average?

Trish doesn’t even want to think about missing cheer-leading practice. The squad will call in Georgiana Portland to substitute. Although Trish isn’t fond of Georgiana, the girl has her friends who might, given half the chance, connive to substitute Georgiana for Trish in the line up on a permanent basis. “Better to have someone who attends all practices than someone who doesn’t,” Trish can hear Briana James saying to each and every fellow squad member who’ll listen.
And what about Matty? What must he think? Trish’s parents have refused to let Trish call her boyfriend with the lie or the truth. Certainly, they weren’t keen on her telling him the truth. For whatever the reason, they think it important that, this time around, no one knows where they are. Why is that? It’s all just too weird for Trish to bear.

She struggles to fish her cell phone out of her pants pocket; she’s fully clothed in her sleeping bag, for padding and for warmth. So what that her parents asked her to leave her phone at home? So what that she lied and told them she had done as they asked. After all, they lied, too, didn’t they? What kind of an example is that?

She opens her cell phone, genuinely surprised by the magnified intensity of its lone blue light inside the tent. Fearing the illumination shows through the canvas, from the inside-out, and brings her parents on the run, she shuts the phone’s lid. The shutting sounds clearly as a gunshot.

She disappears completely into her bag and reopens her phone there. She pushes a pre-set speed-dial.

Matty doesn’t immediately answer. It’s still early-morning, after all. His phone is under his pillow and set on vibrate, as it always is after official bedtime, so his parents will less likely know he’s getting a call when he should be sleeping.

“Trish?” he says finally, sleepily, from the other end. “Where in the heck are you?”

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 4: TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY

Finally, Timothy is out of the corner. He slips on a shirt and buttons it shut to pad the bruises on his torso. He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a bowl of cereal. He takes milk from the fridge and pours it over the flakes. He sprinkles sugar, directly from the sugar bowl, over his breakfast. He gets a teaspoon from the utensil drawer. He sits at the kitchen table. He eats.
He's halfway done eating what he's prepared when he hears the door opening to his father's bedroom.His father's heavy footsteps in the hallway and, then, in the living room, make the floorboards squeak like baby birds in distress.

Timothy doesn't look up but knows the exact moment his father's menacing body darkens the kitchen-to-living-room doorway.

"Your creepy friend Gregory isn't here," Timothy says. He spoons another bit of cereal into his sore mouth and commences chewing with difficulty.

"What do you mean he isn't here?" Gyle wants to know.

Timothy doesn't have to see his father's expression to know Gyle is confused and unable to grasp what's happened. Timothy isn't even really sure what's happened.

"Where is he?" Gyle wants to know. His fleeting gaze takes in the whole room, as if Gregory hides there, somewhere, in plain view.

"Gone," Timothy says. "He slithered out the very same window through which he slithered in. He did, though, leave a message for you."

"I don't believe he's gone without telling me," Gyle says. "What have you done with him?"

"Me?" Timothy looks up to see the all-too-familiar glare with which his father provides him.

"Done to him?" Timothy would laugh, but he knows his father would be even more upset by the insinuated mockery. "Gregory reminds me of someone who can take care of himself. You, on the other hand…"

"What's that supposed to mean, smart boy?" In this case, by "smart" Gyle insinuates anything but.

Timothy scoops another spoonful of milky cereal.

"What say you answer my question, or I make you answer it?" Gyle suggests with pure malice.

"Better be careful," Timothy says.

"You're telling me to be careful, you little piece of dog turd?"

"Gregory tells you to be careful," Timothy says.

"What nonsense!" Obviously, Gyle can't believe his ears.

"Seems times have changed," Timothy says. "Seems I'm suddenly far more important than I was just a few hours ago, while you…" He leaves the insinuation hanging, knowing that he may well be cutting off his nose to spite his face by inviting another beating. Strangely, though, he doesn't feel nearly as frightened of this man, his father, as he always has been before.

"What exactly did Gregory say?" Gyle isn't requesting but demanding to know.Timothy, though, isn't sure he knows what Gregory said. However, delighting in the continued confusion and uncertainty on his father's face, the boy is prepared to pretend that Gregory was full of revelations for Timothy to which Gyle wasn't given one-on-one access.

"He said if you ever touch me again, you'll be deeply sorry," Timothy says. "He said you'll be held accountable, from here on out, not only by him but by others far more important than he is."

"Bull!" Gyle says, takes two steps forward, only to stop with a suddenness that seems to leave him teetering.

It's the first time Timothy can remember Gyle having started forward and not finishing the journey with accompanying doubled fist.

Timothy tries to read the expression on his father's face. It's one the boy hasn't seen before and doesn't, now, have a clue as to how to read.

"How did you do that?" Gyle points and sounds decidedly breathless.

"Do?" Timothy doesn't have a clue. That is, not until he follows where his father points and sees how the teaspoon in Timothy's hand has gone quite curly as a corkscrew and has dropped milk-soggy cereal to a wet splatter on the tabletop.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 3: WINDOW TO WHERE

Sixteen-year old Timothy Gril slides his welt-striated back and buttocks downward along one corner of the room. He reaches a squat. He places his elbows on his knees. He puts his face in his hands. He leaves a space between his fingers to see, careful not to touch his split lip, or his black eye. He leaves a space between his fingers so his pale green eyes can see through them. A tousle of his red hair cascades his forehead and momentarily conceals a large bruise.

Gyle Gril, Timothy's father, agitatedly paces one section of the room in front of the boy. There's a tic that periodically pulses his left cheek. His large hands, complete with their fingernails never quite cleaned after each day's work in the water reclamation project that's quickly turning Flicker into a constantly enlarging scab-lands oasis, keep opening and closing. His swift heartbeat is evident in the pulse spot at the base of his thick neck.

"Don't you dare move from there!" Gyle has stopped his pacing, long enough to warn his son.
Simultaneously, there's a popping sound of the glass panes in one window. It's as if a change of air pressure threatens a hurricane. There's even a brief sound of outside wind.

Gyle goes to the window and throws it open to the darkness outside.

Gregory Ranlin enters gracefully through the breach. His six-foot frame, bent to achieve successful entrance, easily unfolds. He runs one hand through his black hair to make it automatically fall into order.

"So," Gregory says, his black eyes, set within his extraordinarily handsome face, having already surveyed the scene within the room.

"Timothy knew, all right," Gyle announces. He repeats, as if unheard the first time. "Just as you said he would. I found that…" He motions toward a small cloth-wrapped bundle on one cushion of the couch. "…in the back of his closet." He goes over and unfolds the cloth package. Inside there's a distorted lump of gray and black wax which may, or may not, once have been a candle.

"Why don't you leave your son and me alone for a few minutes, Gyle?" Gregory says.

"You want me to leave the room?" Obviously, Gyle finds the request surprising and not to his liking.

"Yes, please," Gregory says. His voice is low, his tone polite. There's something, though, in what he says and how he says it that insinuates he won't accept refusal.

Gyle storms out of the living room, stomps down the corridor, enters his bedroom, slams the door.

"Well, then," Gregory says. He positions a chair to better face Timothy's corner and sits in it. He purses his full lips. He tents his two index fingers and places the resulting apex within the deep cleft of his chin. "I think it's time I should apologize to you, my boy. Hopefully, it's not too late to make a difference. In that, I'm afraid my fondness for your father, and my inability to believe this time would ever arrive in our time, has seen me terribly neglectful in seeing that you have been properly cared for. I'm going to try and rectify that, here and now. Beginning with a trade-off, wherein you tell me what you saw in the candle flame, and I tell you how to make your life easier, from here on out."

He waits.

Timothy says nothing. Timothy does nothing but eye the handsome and dark-complexioned visitor through the spaces of the fingers still covering the boy's face.

"You envisioned a girl, possibly one of your classmates, walking the scrublands," Gregory says when Timothy remains silent. "You're not too sure which classmate, because candle-reading skills, even among the few of our kind who have them, are never the best. Yes?"

Still, Timothy does nothing but stay crouched, watching.

"This girl entered a cave and found some candles, one of which she lit. Shortly, she was joined by a second girl who, like the first, was unrecognizable. All visualized in black-and-white, of course, since no candle-reader on our side has access to a full color palette."

Gregory leans back more fully into the chair and folds his arms across his chest. The creases of his black suit, black tie, and black shirt grow darker with shadow.

"Come now, my neglected candle-reader," Gregory cajoles. "All I'm asking is a nod of your bruised and battered head in confirmation. As you can see, another candle-reader among us has already provided the details. And for your simple nod, I think even you will be pleased with the scope of your reward."

After a long pause, Timothy does nod. While he has meant to keep his candle-read a secret, out of pure spite, it's obvious his father and Gregory have at least one more source to keep them informed. He doesn't know what Gregory is offering for cooperation, but it has been a long time since Timothy has received something nice.

"Excellent!" Gregory informs.

For a minute, Timothy thinks Gregory will now leave without fulfilling his part of the bargain. It is what Timothy's father would do — it is what Timothy's father has done — at numerous times in the past.

However, though Gregory does stand, obviously preparing to leave, he doesn't immediately exit through the open window. He walks over to the boy, gently puts a hand to the boy's fingers and easily — though Timothy has meant to prevent it — shifts the face covering to one side.

Sympathetically, he shakes his head when seeing the results.

"Quite unexpectedly, Timothy," Gregory says, "though you may not yet know the how or the why, you suddenly have far more power over your father than he has over you. In fact, you have the power to prevent him from ever laying a hand on you again."

"How?" That's definitely a secret Timothy would give a good deal to know. If it were true, he would gladly candle-read for Gregory until the sun no longer rose.

"From here on out, it's your father who should be afraid of you," Gregory says and is suddenly gone, dissolved without even bothering, it would seem, to leave the way he entered; although, the window does, quite by itself, somehow loudly bang shut (behind him?).

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 2: THE GIRL, THE CAVE, THE CANDLES

Melissa knows exactly what she's supposed to do. More than once, she has been given explicit instructions. Nonetheless, she is reluctant to crawl from beneath her cocooning warm blankets to enter the chill beyond. Though the furnace is on — she hears it's blower at work in the basement to prevent the water pipes from freezing —the thermostat is always turned down at bed time.

Still …

Finally…

She throws back her blankets and sheet. She reaches for her robe. Her feet shuffle to find and enter the confining warmth of her slippers waiting just beneath the edge of the bed.

There is just enough filtered light through the blinds from a dawn, somewhere on the horizon, that she doesn't need to switch on any lights or use a flashlight.

She leaves her room for the dimmer hallway. She passes her older sister's room and hears Trish breathing regularly.

The door to her parents' room is open. Within the revealed shadows, she makes out her parents' king-size bed.

She taps lightly on the doorjamb. "Mom? Dad?"

Her mother, the lighter sleeper, responds. "Melissa, baby?"

"It's about the dream, Mom. It was different this time."

There is immediate movement within the room, verified by the clicking on of Mary Remoth's bedside light that reveals the twist of the woman's body. She scoots into a full sitting position; some of the blankets pool in her lap to reveal the top of her pink flannel nightgown. At five-foot, one and one-hundred-ten pounds, she looks very small in the very large bed.

Beside her, Roger Remoth stirs, looking athletically large. One of his wrists moves to shield his closed eyes from the artificial illumination. He doesn't wake up, though.

Mary pats a position on the bed's edge, beside her, inviting her younger daughter deeper into the bedroom. Melissa en route, Mary pokes her husband's back which is turned in her direction.
"Wake up, Roger. There's been a dream shift."

Melissa is surprised by how quickly her father responds. Like water from a breaching whale, his bed clothes slide his torso, as far as his pajama waistband, and show all of the exquisite muscles of his lightly haired bare chest. The hands-on owner of Remoth Construction, Roger's usually well-honed body has been made even more so by his summer spent building the new Flicker High School, as well as in erecting several of the new houses at the RockyShores and PinaclePoint development projects. His tip-top physical condition always makes Melissa feel exceptionally safe, as it does even now.

Roger wipes his eyes — which are the same startling blue as those of his younger daughter — to clear them of the last of his sleep as his daughter sits the edge of the bed.

"Tell us what you dreamed, honey," Mary prods.

Melissa does as asked.

"You're sure the candle you lit and the girl's robe were both blue?" Mary asks.

"Yes." After a moment, she adds, "Should I have known what to answer what she asked?"

"Though she doesn't yet know it, honey, she's the only one who has the answer she wants."

"I don't understand," Melissa admits.

"There's a good deal we likely should have told you," Mary apologizes. "We merely hoped all of this would pass you by, as it did my generation; as it did many generations before mine."

"In the meantime, we have to get dressed and make the drive to Dry Wash Gulch," Roger says.

"You think the cave, the candles, and the girl in blue are really there?" Melissa is definitely surprised.

"Maybe not where you dreamed them, honey," Mary says, "but they're there somewhere. We must do our best to find them before others do."

"Others?"

"The bad guys," Mary better defines.

"It's going to be okay, honey," Roger assures. He reaches for his daughter's nearest hand and enfolds it within both of his larger ones.

"God will surely be on our side," he says and kisses Melissa's cool fingertips.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE