Thursday, 23 May 2019, Late Afternoon
Paxwood, Whatcom County, Washington, USA
Eyewitness: Kerry
Mx. Cardoso and I stood together outside of the secret room we’d discovered in Paxwood House’s basement, the door wide open to us. I’d made my choice. How could I solve a puzzle and then turn back before I saw what awaited on the other side?
Mx. Cardoso brought Arcie out from a cozy pocket in their bag and placed her on their shoulder. Then they handed me the tuning fork again.
“Might not need it, but it doesn’t hurt to keep options open,” they said. “If you get any sense of danger, or you see me reaching for magic, start this thing humming and keep it going for me. Our priority is going home safe. If we have to retreat, we will.”
“Right.”
And with that, they went through the door in front of me. I stayed on the outside, tuning fork in one hand, one foot jammed next to the base of the door. It wasn’t heavy against my foot, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I knew haunted house doors had a habit of closing and sealing themselves, just from horror movie tropes.
“Well, that’s interesting.” Mx. Cardoso moved a step to the side to give me a clear look into the room.
It wasn’t especially large, around ten feet square, with bare white walls, a marble floor, and a coffered ceiling. In the center of the room, there was one piece of furniture. A wooden-framed antique bed with evergreen bedsheets.
And on top of the bedcovers, there was a young man with flaxen hair, asleep. If I hazarded a guess, I might say late teens or early twenties. Men’s historical fashion was not my area of expertise, but the single-breasted vest with a gold chain leading to a pocket watch made me think it had to be the late 1800s, early 1900s. Or maybe that was just my mind equating the house’s age to this sleeper’s. His hands were drawn across his chest, gripping a crystalline dagger with a deep blue pommel stone.
“Is this the boy you met in dreams?” Mx. Cardoso asked me.
I shook my head. “Not unless he changed his appearance drastically in Slumberland. Can people change their dream appearance?”
“From what I understand, your dream self tends to be a representation of how you see yourself. For some people, that means they look a little younger or a little older, a little thinner. Someone who has mastered their control of their dream self could probably make some major alterations.” Mx. Cardoso paced around the bedframe slowly, studying the sleeper.
“Even if he could change his appearance, I don’t think someone who’s been potentially asleep in a basement since the early 1900s would know as much about comic book superheroes as Bast does,” I said. “Because… Is this Sleeping Beauty a hundred years old? Or, Sleeping Handsome, I guess?”
“Whether he’s beautiful or handsome or both, it’s about time for his prince or princess to arrive and wake him up with true love’s kiss,” Mx. Cardoso said. “Looking at his suit, his shoes, his hairstyle, either he’s in period costume or he’s from around a hundred years ago.”
“And he’s definitely sleeping, not dead?”
Mx. Cardoso leaned in, putting their cheek above Sleeping Handsome’s nose and mouth and looking down toward his chest. “He’s breathing. Steadily. I can feel his breath and see his chest rising and falling. Strike the tuning fork for me.”
I tapped it against the doorframe, and it began to resonate. Mx. Cardoso waved their hands over the sleeping figure.
“There’s some enchantment keeping him asleep. Something incredibly powerful, and it’s being fed by…” Mx. Cardoso’s eyes shot open and he said a word most teachers didn’t want to get caught saying in front of students.
“What?” I asked.
“I think we’re standing in a magic well, and all its energy is being channeled straight into whatever enchantment or curse has been placed on the sleeper,” Mx. Cardoso said. “If I’m right, and if Anholts knows or even suspects there’s a deep well here, it explains a lot.”
“A magic well?”
“A source of Earth’s natural magical power. Most were lost, sealed, or destroyed by the 1500s. One reason Europeans were sending explorers out far and wide was to find fresh sources of pure magic,” Mx. Cardoso explained. They looked like they might say more, but a voice startled both of us.
“So, there is a magic well here, then,” Anholts said.
Mx. Cardoso’s head snapped up, and I looked back over my shoulder. Tricia Anholts was standing there in the basement, empty-handed and alone, impeccably dressed in an emerald green pantsuit and positively grinning. How long had she been listening, and we hadn’t noticed?
I tapped the tuning fork again to keep it resonating. Mx. Cardoso bolted from the room, grabbing me by the arm as they did. They pulled out from the doorway, and I understood without a single spoken word. I let the door close behind us.
“You and your demons won’t claim this.” Mx. Cardoso took a stable stance, their arms crossed. Arcie still nestled on their shoulder, quiet and still.
“That remains to be seen. For now, I don’t want you here any more than you want me here.” Anholts shifted one foot just slightly outward and leaned forward. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”
She spoke in that horrible ear-burning language that she’d used in the town hall parking lot to summon a demon. Mx. Cardoso took one step sideways and turned, so that they had both Anholts and the door in their line of sight.
“Get behind me. Be ready to run. Keep the tuning fork vibrating. If you spot any ghosts, let me know.”
Sulfurous acid yellow smoke billowed around Anholts, but as it did, Mx. Cardoso wove with their hands. Instead of coalescing and taking form, the smoke kept dissipating. Anholts’ chant grew louder, more intense. I tapped the tuning fork and kept watching.
Arcie scampered suddenly from Mx. Cardoso’s shoulder, expertly down along their clothes, and across the floor to Anholts. She didn’t even notice until she felt the little mouse slip between her sock and her pant leg, upward. I half expected her to scream and flail, but she only hissed—startled yet striving to maintain concentration as the smoke all but faded to nothing.
This wasn’t a sword fight, and they weren’t hurling lightning bolts or fireballs, or shapeshifting and trying to outwit each other in cleverness of physical form. The magic they wove was absolutely real; their spoken words burned—Anholts’ with a scalding heat like lava, and Mx. Cardoso’s with the radiance of the sun. But if a camera was running, it wouldn’t catch much. Two people in a strange tug o’ war, each of them straining at some unseen weight.
I kept the resonating note going with another tap, this time against the quartz bracelet in the off chance its protective magic would have any sort of impact on the scales of combat.
Anholts pivoted, like Mx. Cardoso, now with an eye toward the stairwell. Her sulfuric smoke was gone, but her determination wasn’t.
“Ladies of the House, come to my aid!” she called out.
The temperature in the basement plummeted—not that it had been warm to begin with. Mx. Cardoso’s light flickered, sputtered, dimmed to nothing, leaving us in the deep darkness of a windowless basement. Then, two of the women who had stood next to the throne in the dream ballroom appeared, one at a time. Whether they were glowing, or my mind registered their presence with some sense beyond sight, I could see them crisp and clear despite the darkness, closer to me than they’d ever been in dream.
The tallest was the woman in the pantsuit, but she wasn’t the oldest. The oldest wore an emerald green satin bustle dress with lace in layers, her gray hair styled in precise curls. Florence Paxwood and her eldest daughter Marjorie. Neither looked pleased.
“Rid us of these interlopers,” Anholts said.
The two ghosts moved closer—not walking, exactly. They flickered and flowed in a whispering movement that made no sense to my mind.
Then Mx. Cardoso’s light flared brighter than ever before. I could see it now, cupped in the hands of a third ghost, dressed far more simply than the rest, her hair loose. Her dress was more modest than any modern nightgown, but it could be an early 1900s nightgown.
“I can’t…” she gasped out, straining. “Go!”
I didn’t have to be asked twice. I tapped the tuning fork against my quartz bracelet again and dashed for the stairs, and Mx. Cardoso was only a step behind me. Up, through the kitchen, out, across the grounds, over the wall, back to our bicycles, we fled, only stopping for breath when the late afternoon sun warmed our skin.
Mx. Cardoso looked almost sallow, more than out of breath. They leaned against their bicycle and looked toward the Paxwood House. Even after they caught their breath, they still looked drained.
“What can I do to help?”
“I used almost everything I’ve got to put a powerful barrier around that room and keep Anholts out. She and her associates can’t be allowed access to that kind of power,” Mx. Cardoso said. “I just need some time to rest and recover my energy. It’ll be a few days before I’m casting any major spells again.”
I held out the tuning fork. “Sorry I couldn’t do more.”
Mx. Cardoso accepted it and tucked it away. Then, they produced Arcie from somewhere and held the little mouse cupped between two hands.
“Because of your investigation, we knew where to look, and we may have prevented demonic forces from getting easy access to a powerful magic source,” Mx. Cardoso said. “We know we’ve got to keep this house from them permanently. There’s an unconscious person in the basement, possibly under some kind of curse fueled by that magic source. We’ve got more information than we had before. You did good.”
Even with that, as we parted ways, I felt guilt heavy on my shoulders. Every time I left Paxwood House, someone else left worse off because of me. Char. Adrien. Now Mx. Cardoso. What good was all this story and all this knowledge if people kept getting hurt?
