Tommy saw it, too, said simply, “Shit…”
It was like the other incident where Wanda read those egg yolks, only worse. She had stiffened up, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. She trembled and made a moaning sound deep in her throat. There was a faint hissing sound as of steam and the air stirred around her, her hair blowing about, her dress flapping. And that’s when they saw it…white gossamer filaments coming from her fingertips and mouth and eyes. They grew and curled in the air, knotted and bunched, seeking each other out and joining in a wiry cage that encircled her head. The filaments looked physical, had substance like maybe you could hold them in your hands. But at the same time they seemed ethereal and appeared slightly transparent as if they were made of mist or cigarette smoke. They moved and pulsed, swimming and sliding like cobras in water.
Ectoplasm, Mitch heard a voice in his head say. That’s ectoplasm, ghost-threads.
And then as soon as they had appeared, they faded and were gone.
Wanda’s eyes focused and she looked at Mitch and Tommy. Those eyes were blazing and filled with a weird cerulean light. “No, not shit, Tommy Kastle. But the all and the everything. The talent and the gift that has come down my bloodline to me. The ability is in my blood and in my soul. I was taught by my mother as she was taught by hers down countless generations of women. That is how I know as we’ve always known, how I can see when you are blind…”
Wanda went off on another monologue about good luck and bad, about signs and portents and what was written on the wind and carried by the ashes of hearths. She told them that the caw of a raven brings death and disease and two crows circling a house means marriage and birth. Pigeons clustered on a roof are waiting to capture the soul of someone who will soon die and the whippoorwill calling in the dead of night is an indication that malign forces are gathering. The gentle hum of July bees brings good tidings, but the buzz of August wasps and hornets bring evil to the listener. Spiders are sacred to the memory of Athene and must never be killed, chortling frogs foretell passion, just as a gathering of vermin indicate pestilence and cattle sickening in the spring always foreshadow abnormal births or malignant growths to those who own them.
Finally, Mitch said, “Did you…did you see Chrissy?”
Wanda sat down, plucking a cigarette from Tommy’s pack. She snapped off the filter and lit it with a candle. She looked very tired and very old as if the process had taken years from her. “Yes, I saw her. She’s out there now. I cannot say where, but near enough to Upper Main Street I was told. There is danger for her. Paths to freedom and paths to bondage and death. But only she can choose.”
“I guess we’re making for Main,” Tommy said.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Mitch said to her.
“Oh yes, oh yes.” Wanda dragged off her cigarette. “I underestimated before what was about, what had taken hold of this town. I say to you know it is ancient and terrible. That there are those that called this up by practicing forbidden arts.”
Mitch said, “Fort Providence?”
Wanda nodded. “There is a beginning there. An ugly beginning. Seek it out, Mitch, then you’ll know.”
15
The kid who saved them from the clown was named Nigel.
He was a skinny little nothing kid who seemed perfectly at home in the new, devastated Witcham. He was really amazing. Flashlight in hand, old ugly Grimshanks battering his way through that door, Nigel led them down the corridor and then down a back staircase, out a window and back into the water. The route they took from there was circuitous?down flooded alleys and across avenues, up a fire escape and into an old apartment building.
“It’s okay,” he kept saying. “Just follow me! I know the way! I’ll take you to the lady! She’s the one that helped me!”
Nobody argued.
Nobody questioned.
Because really, when some demonic clown from a circus just this side of Hell wanted to maybe skin you and eat you and make balloon animals out of your intestines, what was there to argue or question? You accepted. Any port in a storm, as they said.
And that’s how they came to the dim, candlelit flat on the third floor. The one that smelled of fresh baked bread and platters of cookies hot from the oven. And that’s also how they met Mrs. Crowley. Dear, sweet, coveting Mrs. Crowley who was everyone’s grandma and favorite auntie. She sat in her rocker, knitting of all things, wearing a cranberry-colored dress and support hose that bagged at the ankles. Her hair was gray going to white, lustrous and full, a few stray fingers of it escaping her severe bun and tumbling to her shoulders. Everything about her was kind and comforting, even her finely-wrinkled face and sea-green eyes which were deep and relaxing like a country swimming hole you knew and trusted.
There was a fire going in the hearth and Brian, Chuck, Tara, and Mark stretched out before it like cats come in out of the rain. The wetness steamed from them. The heat and dryness felt so good, like warm fingers gently unlocking kinks in their backs and knots in their joints, massaging the feeling back into their numb limbs. It was all overwhelming and wonderful and how could you possibly question any of it?
“You poor things,” said Mrs. Crowley. “What an awful night! Thank God Nigel found you or you would have all caught your death!”
The heat loosened Tara’s jaw and she started talking. And once she started, it was pretty hard to get a word in edgewise. “…I didn’t think we’d ever get away. What’s going on this town? What’s happened here? I know the rain wouldn’t stop and River Town and Bethany were flooded…but there’s things out there! I saw them! We all saw them! We all saw the clown!”
“Terrible, terrible business,” said Mrs. Crowley. “Well, have no fear, my ducks and darlings, that awful clown won’t get you here! He knows better than to come sniffing around old Mrs. Crowley’s door! He comes knocking and it will be all tricks and no treats for him!”
“But…” Brian began. “But he’s not normal, he’s something else. He’s like some kind of monster.”
“He is,” Mark added.
“A monster?” Mrs. Crowley tittered over this. “Now, you boys and girls are too big for such nonsense! Monsters, indeed. Oh, you do go on.”
“But he was!” Tara said.
But Mrs. Crowley just shook her head, studied them all in turn through her square-rimmed spectacles. “I’ll have no more of that! You’ve been through a lot! Now what kind of world would it be, my ducks and darlings, if such things were! Ghosts and ghoulies and haunts and witches! Hee, a world that would chill my blood to ice!” She looked over at Nigel. “Did you hear this business, my boy?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Madness, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Chuck was thinking that someone around here was crazy or maybe everyone. Sure, their story maybe sounded a little wild when you unwound the guts of it before a blazing fire with a kind old woman in a nice, dry apartment. But there was no way anyone was going to convince him it hadn’t happened. Things had attacked the bus and they had gotten lost in Bethany and that clown…no, it had been real.
“Nigel!” Mrs. Crowley said. “I think that hot cocoa is ready! Bring a platter of cookies!”
Nigel scampered away into the shadows and they heard him bustling about, the clatter of trays and the liquid filling of cups.
Mrs. Crowley looked right at Chuck as if she could sense the confusion settling into him. “And what of you, my fine young master? You look like the responsible type, a practical sort…what do you say of these things?”
Chuck opened his mouth to answer, to fully disagree with her, but then he closed it. Leaning forward as she was, shadows wreathed over her face from the guttering candlelight, there was something almost sinister about her that made him almost afraid to cross her.
“Well?” she said.
He licked his lips. “We saw some things, weird things. I don’t know. I’m just glad we’re here and we’re
