After a long day of driving across Mississippi, Angela and I were intrigued by a dingy cardboard sign that flashed by on County Road 154. I reversed back down the red dirt-gravel road until we could read the faded writing:
Fall Faire in hand lettered calligraphy. The sign marked an intersection with a faded lane that might once have been a driveway. While we were considering, the rich oily smoke of real pit barbecue and the off-pitch keening of a fife filtered through the trees. The sensory triggers drew us from the main road and down the dirt path through the pines and maples overarching the lane. When grass grew over the track completely, I braked to a halt and looked back at Angela. Angela raised an eyebrow. "Adventure?" I asked.
"Adventure," her eyes said.
I got out to look over the all-terrain tires. Luckily our cross-country trek had already included a fair bit of off-roading. It never hurts to double-check before an adventure, though. You wouldn't want a flat and to get stuck in the middle of nowhere. I got back in. With noses and ears on full alert, we pushed forward.
The trees and brush drew closer and the terrain more hilly until we traveled in four-wheel-drive on broken trails, chasing the smell and sound across streams and ditches, one that I'd be tempted to call a gorge, before we ran up against the dense outer edge of a copse of juniper. I stopped the engine and looked around. Only rabbit trails left and right. The shrilling of the fife at that point was piercing and the air was thick with smoked meat. We were close but the sun was setting. I twisted in my seat to face Angela. "I think we need to head back. It's getting on toward night."
The limb of a tree disturbed by our passing settled back against my left arm. I reached over with my right hand to push it away. Angela didn't answer, although her eyes widened. She looked behind me as the tree branch grasped my brushing hand. Honestly, I jumped. I looked back and found my hand trapped in a large tanned hand. Above the hand, a thick wrist disappeared into the sleeve of a periwinkle robe. A blond-bearded man looked into my eyes and parted his lips to show his large teeth in an untrained smile.
"Brot," he said and gestured toward the trees. A tangle of unruly branches curled back to create an opening. It appeared too narrow for the jeep, but plenty wide for single file foot traffic.
I jerked my hand from his grasp and twisted the ignition. It didn't catch. Not even a stutter. The headlights which moments before had struggled to pierce the gloom of the interspersed trees were now dark. Brot knocked twice against the silent sheet metal. A melon sized dent in the fender emphasized his request when he gestured again. With no other choice, I climbed out. Brot walked to the passenger side and lifted Angela from the floor in the back where she lay. I reached back for her dangling hand as we entered the grove, Brot looming behind me.
Instantly, any ambient light from the deepening dusk was cut off. Brot's bulk blocked any sight of my yellow jeep as we stepped into the passage. The sudden shift from light to night disoriented me. In the space of a single step, I found myself blind, unable to distinguish sky from ground from formless void but overwhelmed by the closeness of Brot's hulking presence. The swelling fife and the weight of the smoke spun me and twisted me and the only touchstone I had was the sound of Angela's breath and our hands in the dark but then my hand grasped empty air and my breath rang lonely in my ears and I shut my eyes and Brot's presence grew upon me, the fife skirled high, the smoke billowed into my face, my stomach dropped and a hand tucked my bangs behind my ear.
"You still need that haircut."
Angela.
I opened my eyes.
She was still in her evening dress, a full green gown off the shoulder with a satin brocade skirt. The rip in the bodice had been repaired. Her hair was styled the way I remembered it from the first time I saw her, flowing down her back with her bangs in two small braids swooping down to her ears and rising to meet at the back of her head. She was very close so I could see her.
A dim red glow with hints of blue lit a low, round room of mud and stone. A fire pit in the center held the ghastly fuel responsible for the spectral light, flames licking the knobbed ends of charred white sticks. The walls curved around to meet at the arched doorway where Brot stood dwarfing an oak and iron door. The room was bare, only myself, Angela, the fire and Brot marring the sparseness. Yet Brot seemed to fit, an organic extension of the walls. In the smoldering firelight, his robe sank to dark violet, his beard to brown and his eyes to cavernous hollows from the farthest recesses of which something stolen shimmered.
My lungs stopped and my knees gave out. I fell against the wall and shuddered.
Angela knelt beside me. "Hey. Look at me. I don't know how, but we will get home." Her hands shook, but she held them against my face anyway. Her voice rang with the promise of our unending love. "I promise."
A low whistle and crack sounded from the pit. Brot walked to the center of the room. He reached into the flames and reverently drew out something reddish-brown and doll-sized, then set it down in front of us before resuming his position at the door.
In the shadows, I saw the outline of a rude chalice: a thick stem topped by a filigree of spiking iron, a deep glass bowl within. As Brot sank back, the firelight revealed more detail. The stem was a gnarled knotwork of blade-like edges and spines, a devil's walking stick cast in metal. The openwork around the nesting bowl wove chaotically ever upward, throwing bright thorns at all angles into the murk. From the interior, something dark and viscous reflected the wavering light through the dull interstices. The glass bowl sat far below a cold crown of spikes along the lip. Brot's reflective eyes tracked from me to Angela to the chalice.
I looked at Angela. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
Angela stood and started toward it. I made a noise to stop her.
She looked back at me. "I don't think he's going to let us out of here. What if the only way home is to play along?" Her one-sided grin made her brave tear-rimmed eyes flash.
I fought to rise but a dark hand held me, my legs unresponsive and my throat dry. She raised the chalice to drink and I watched the heavy iron points sink into her hands. Tear her skin. Pierce her face as she drew it close. She closed her eyes, but she drank. In great heaving swallows, she drank. Her eyes flew wide, she gasped air through her nose, raised it higher and drank.
The room trembled. A crack ran across the ceiling and down the walls. The fire flared green once and shrank, cloaking the room in blessed shadows.
Angela pulled the empty chalice from her hidden face. She wavered and Brot stepped to her from across the room. As Angela fainted and he lifted her into his gentle arms, Brot looked through the darkness to where I sprawled limp and he grinned, eyes and teeth reflecting the dying embers.
The room shook again.
He winked.
The ceiling fell around us.
* * *
Darkness.
* * *
My eyes cracked open.
Glints of flashing yellow light and the ragged edge of voices from a distance behind me. I was surrounded by horse apples and propped against a tree trunk in the middle of a small clearing. Angela lay only a few yards away, highlighted by a patch of moonlight, her back to me. Her dress was still damaged and she didn't appear to be moving at all anymore.
My legs were inoperative but the rest of me moved, so I crawled toward her on my elbows. "Angela," I croaked, "Angela, it's me. Wake up. I can hear people." I reached out to jostle her shoulder. When I touched her, she flopped onto her back and her left arm splayed outward, almost hitting me. Her eyes were open, clouded and dry. Her mouth was still gagged, but her face . . .
I choked a sob and looked down. Her arm lay still across the leaves, the imprint of my rope darkening against her flesh. Across her pale, white hand I counted one, two, three deep wounds. At her fingertips, instead of the iron and glass chalice, I found a length of two-by-four wrapped with a slender braid of bodark limbs, limbs so lithe and small I'd be tempted to call them vines if not for the inch-long spines and the littering of green fruit around us. Nature's own barbed wire my father had said. I picked the board up and the unwrapped end felt smooth. Shaped. An errant splinter pricked the heel of my palm. I saw my hand. My hand, covered in dried and drying blood.
A voice from behind me, "I've found a way in. I see her!" Two men rushed past dressed in the tan uniforms and dark brown Stetsons of county deputies. The first one knelt to check for a pulse on Angela's neck while the other kicked me away from her and held his gun on me. Pieces of dip speckled his bottom lip when he shouted. "What did you do to her, you sick son-of-a-"
"Roy, shut it." The kneeling man stood up, smoothed his blond mustache and sniffed. "We’re too late. She's dead. FBI said she might be." He looked into my eyes and parted his lips in a viscous sneer. He lifted his arm and gestured out of the clearing. "After you, son."
He winked.
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