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

Chapter 1: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

Melissa Remoth has dreamed the dream before. The first time was the very night she turned thirteen. It has continued, on and off, for three years.

The landscape through which she walks is bleak, but it's a landscape with which she's familiar. The whole area around the town of Flicker is a maze of crazily shaped rocks, disjoined boulders, and deep gullies. It all resulted from a gigantic prehistoric flood that ripped through the area thousands of years before.

Melissa's parents, both geologists, have researched the area for years. They specifically moved there before Melissa was born in order to devote spare-time study to the strange formations and put some kind of scientific explanation to them. Even before Melissa could walk or talk, she had often joined her mother and father on trips into the ancient flood lands.

In her recurring dream — and she always knows it's a dream — she recognizes exactly where she is. She's visited Dry Wash Gulch countless times before, awake and in sleep. The well-worn pathway in its ancient basaltic stone, long-ago uncovered and carved by rushing flood water, leads the way past a gigantic slab of volcanic glass at which she now stops, as she always does, to examine her reflection in obsidian and moonlight.

She wears a red robe with hood. She pulls back the latter to reveal her pretty face and blond hair. Somehow, even in the darkness of the night and the black obsidian stone, her blue eyes are clear and readily visible.

Here, the dream changes from the familiarity of all times before, in that she reaches out a hand and touches her reflection. The rocky surface is ice cold and accompanied by a sighing sound of stone against stone off to her right.

She turns to see a pathway revealed that hasn't been there before.

Unable to stop herself, she moves along the revealed trail and into deeper darkness. Though she's afraid she'll trip on rough and unfamiliar stone underfoot, she successfully maneuvers all obstacles until…

The cavern in which she enters has a niche filled with a large stack of candles. Somehow she suspects, it all has something to do with her mother who makes candles as a hobby.
Automatically, she pulls one conveniently placed candle from the pile. She stands it upright on an adjacent block of stone. From the pocket of her robe, she produces a lighter and sets fire to the wick.

Resulting shadows flicker the wall. The candle shimmers in distorted light and darkness to — quite miraculously — seem to assume human form: a girl, no older than Melissa, with long dark hair. She wears a long blue robe. Her mouth moves, but there's no sound.

"What?" Melissa asks and leans closer.

The apparition's lips moves again and barely seem to manage a whispered, "How long?"

Melissa hasn't a clue as to a proper response.

"Hopefully, not too long," the girl says and reverts to candle-status.

The fire caught within the wick sputters and goes out.

Melissa awakes with a start in her own bedroom.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE