Frank and Lisa were still holding hands as the violet ripples of light and the roaring noise of their arrival faded. A moment later everything had returned to normal in the garden. Well, as normal as can be, for an inter dimensional mind-fuck vestibule.
"Sup," Baccha said, totally understated.
I wondered how they'd managed to find each other and travel back together. Had this happened before?
"Yes," Lisa said, looking at me and allowing herself a slight smile. She looked a lot more disheveled than I remembered.
"Wait," I said, looking at all three of them in horror. "Are you guys still high?"
"You didn't check the time," said Frank, rather accusingly.
It hadn't even occurred to me. I was more concerned that fucking Baccha had been eavesdropping on my thoughts this whole time. I felt my face turn red. But then he grabbed my hand, and then I was okay. It didn't matter.
"Same shit?" Baccha asked, glancing at the two of them.
"Yup," said Frank, Lisa nodding. Looking at me, he explained: "I'm in a store. Before long the feeling that I've been here before rises. This time I'm looking for socks. There are only two pairs: black and white. They aren't that attractive, but I try them on. Sometimes you walk into a place and see nothing you like, but you feel a little embarrassed to just walk out right?"
He looked pleadingly from face to face and saw that none of us had ever been afflicted by having to walk out of a sub-par store.
"Ew," Baccha said, "what kind of place is this? Letting you try on socks and shit."
"Don't you thrash my portal trip. Anyway, I look at the couple over at the next seat. A kid I knew from school – bratty, but he got away with it because his parents were stinkin' rich. He leaves, and she opens a trunk of his stuff. His clothes smell terrible and the people around us begin to gag.
"I am overcome with awe by what women will put up with for security," stopping here to look at Lisa, who was obviously annoyed. "Some women," he clarified. I wondered what happened to both their sunglasses.
"Then the store assistant comes to me, and to my chagrin he speaks only Korean or something. I take out my card, point at the cashier; he doesn't seem to understand. He leaves, and I think it's something to do with helping me, maybe getting another assistant to help. but he's just gone to the washroom."
Maybe the polite thing would've been to ask him why the fuck the portal would show him that. Instead my mind had zeroed in on a single, abysmal realisation: the three of them always relived the same scenario.
No way in hell, I thought, would I be going through that again. Famous last words.
"Hey man, you alright?" I heard Baccha say. Something had happened to Frank. "Out to where I'd gone," Frank said, but his voice, all along so low-key and cushy, now sounded rusty and illegal.
"It's happening," Lisa whispered, and I had no idea what she meant by this. She was still holding his hand, but looked like she was questioning if it was a good idea to do so.
"Speak up," Baccha commanded, his voice filled with academic certainty. So hot.
Shifting his feet, staring down at them, as if he'd never seen them before, suddenly Frank looked up and said, "So many if not then why you don't want you go where to go lopsided men meat reach. Qwerty." Uh, okay. But then I noticed, as Baccha went up close with his phone, using the light to get a closer look at Frank's eyes, which were terribly dilated, that his skin seemed a little more translucent than it ever was . . . and that last word, "qwerty" or whatever? had sounded like two voices overlapped, as if fighting for dominion, none of which resembled the drollness of Frank's own, your typical stoner's drawl . . .
"Oh my god," I said, "It's them, they've gotten inside Frank!" I hadn't even considered that as a possibility.
Dear reader, doubtless you are aware that there are many things you probably shouldn't do in the harrowing event that one of your teammates suddenly succumbs to possession by the malignant forces so evident in nature. Below is yet another fine example.
"Oh, suh-weeeeeet," sang Baccha as he squeezed between the two, breaking up their hand-holding. He put an arm around Frank's shoulder, pulling him close. Frank had become alarmingly slack-jawed, his eyes roaming in wild circles. With the other hand Baccha held the phone up high and snapped a selfie.
Oddly enough Lisa didn't seem too fazed by this. As she leaned in to look at the screen, I suppose I would've begun nagging at Baccha but I suddenly felt myself going catatonic. For a moment I feared that the shadow predators had gotten inside me too, but then I saw it. A towering figure, cast in the forest's darkness like a great overcoat. It was standing at the far end of the garden. So obviously human except for disconcerting fact that the head was shifting in shape, one moment looking like a horse's, and the next a dog, a donkey. A taxidermy nightmare of shifting features. I couldn't tell if this was some sort of illusion it was projecting, but I wasn't going to stick around and find out.
I had to warn the others, but my voice was caught in my throat. Stammering gutturally, I raised my hand pointing towards it.
They followed the pointing finger, this idiot Baccha actually swivelling the Frank-thing about with his arm. I'm sure they saw it too. Pretty hard to miss.
Baccha dropped a heavy gasp, as if the victory he'd somehow secured with that selfie was all but lost now at the sight of the bison-headed monstrosity. Lisa could still speak, and I heard her manage a "What the–"
"There's no time to analyse," said a voice that cut her off, and even in my rogue state I thought hey, that's a Thom Yorke lyric! Then I realised that I actually found the voice familiar beyond the possible, if unlikely, reference.
Whirling around in astonishment, I saw that it was Aunt Constance. And she did not look happy.
"We have to leave, right now," she said, putting her hand up before I could even jumble together an excuse for us being there, or to ask her how she found us.
"Fine with me," Baccha said. I could see that Lisa was on board too.
"Have you all lost your minds?" I cried, "what about Frank?"
"Qwerty. Joil!" he said helpfully.
"You don't understand," Lisa said quietly, coming up to me. "This is how we bind them."
"What?"
"Walk and talk, walk and talk!" screamed Aunt Constance, already retreating backwards. But she wasn't looking at us; all her attention seemed focused on the behemoth in the distance, as if her gaze was all that kept it from falling upon us at leisure and converting each of us into piles of minced meat.
I'm sure our exit was not altogether as efficient and quiet as she would've preferred; the Frank-thing kept up his merciless babbling, "Ilusiorio keep ass she you want I can't what you can't you," it said, sort of, followed by an asthmatic string of digital-sounding phonemes that made my head reel. "Due you what you can't she want you to what do what do what come on," on and on, Baccha dragging him along as we raced through the darkness, aided only by the glow of Aunt Constance's torchlight and from Baccha's phone.
It was scary as shit just to be running through the forest at night, trying not to trip over logs and fallen branches and huge stones. But then there was also the feeling that we were still being pursued by whatever it was back there; the chill of the very wind itself, howling its ill will. Like before, the trees seemed filled with shadowy figures, and I strained to keep my gaze down.
Eventually the warm light of the street lamps came into view, and we emerged at the mouth of the familiar trail that lead to the Invisible Scorpion.
"Don't stop yet," Aunt Constance warned, "keep moving."
We trudged on, past the Invisible Scorpion, though I really, really could've used a drink. The street was empty, save for Frank's obnoxious car, glittering in the yellow lamplight. We stood in the middle of the asphalt, as if being out in the open so boldly might lessen the chances of anything bad happening to us.
Baccha had just taken his cigarette pack out. Aunt Constance snatched it and pulled out a cigarette. Retrieving a Bic from her pocket, she lit up and took a long drag. She never took her eyes off him. I was surprised to find that I didn't feel the tug to light up myself.
We waited, all eyes glued on her ejecting cloud after thick cloud of smoke upwards. Even Frank had given up trying to communicate. Finally, she lowered her head slowly and scanned our faces.
"This better be good," was all she said.
Baccha shrugged. "Jon Hodkins," he said, holding out his hand.
She gave him the pack. I was relieved she didn't tackle him or something. The anger on her face hadn't relaxed, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why. I mean, it couldn't have been just about me going into the woods, right?
"He was my friend, too," she said, "but what you did tonight, what you've been doing all this while, what Jon was doing before he–" she stopped, her jaw doing that thing where it went sideways, canines tapping. Translation: you fucks are fucked up.
"I think you're going off on a limb here," Baccha began.
"I wasn't anywhere near finished. I know exactly what you lot are."
"And what are you," Lisa said, so quietly I almost didn't hear her.
Aunt Constance puffed the smoke out from a thin slit in the corner of her tightened lips, the cheek on that side puffing out.
"I," she said, "am everything you are not."
"Then we have nothing more to say to each other," Baccha said tartly, and as he did so he looked at me. Compassionate eyes, that knew what he'd just said immediately placed me between both parties. I didn't even know such a division existed.
Everything was quiet; even the wind seemed to have given up, or found a better place to blow.
"What about Frank?" I said, to break the tension but also out of genuine curiosity.
"Oh, don't worry about it." Baccha said, "He'll be back to his normal self soon. Once he's done eating it."
"Okay." So many questions, but not really.
"So I guess this was a blazing success then?" I said to the trio. Then turning to Aunt Constance I said, "and I guess we're going back home?" Not that I was dying to return to my parents' house, and my basement room.
"You're your own person, and I know you're going to do what you want, go wherever you want" she said, "like you've always done. But that also means you have to choose carefully. Now more than ever." I knew of course that she wasn't just talking about going home.
She flicked the cigarette downwards and I watched her departing figure until it reduced to mere outline, then nothing at all. I don't know what I'd been expecting when she stepped onto the scene, but that wasn't it. Talk about singling out the perfect moment to be vague, right? She'd managed to make me feel like I was marching merrily on the path towards letting the whole world down.
I stared down the smoldering cigarette butt, looked at the Invisible Scorpion longingly. Ugh.
"Hey." It was Lisa. I turned to look at her.
"Maybe this will help. My portal trip took me to the old promenade. You know where they used to have the Sunday Specials, with the backdrop of an opened-up conch? An old friend of mine, Sassy, would be performing in a octet vocal group that evening. I'd stand off to the side stage, wincing because of a single LED spotlight beaming my way. Everything in my body yelling at me to move, for god's sake, move. Even just an inch, but I wouldn't. Couldn't, because I needed to hand her the flowers I'd brought along."
She clasped her hands and twisted her lips together, indicating that was all.
"Thanks, Lisa," I said. Her little contribution was right on theme, and I wasn't even going to attempt extracting an explanation.
She smiled, took Frank by the arm and began towards the convertible. "Talk tomorrow," she said to Baccha.
"She can drive right?" I asked Baccha; Frank was nowhere near being his old, jolly self just yet.
"Oh, yeah," he said, scratching at the nape of his neck. It was just the two of us again.
I looked at him. He looked at me. We both looked at the car backing out, waved, unsure if she'd seen or returned the gesture, watched the car head off and disappear in the opposite direction Aunt Constance had gone.
"So," I said, dragging the lonely word off into a soft finish.
"So. I know I promised you a party in the woods," he said, unexpectedly. "I do feel like kind of a bastard."
"No harm, no foul," I said. "Sorry about Constance."
Putting up his hands, fingers widely spread, "No, no, she didn't do anything wrong. In fact . . ."
"She's magic, isn't she?" I said, "As in, she knows–" I couldn't even summon the right words to describe what my intuition was telling me. Was she some other denomination of witch, magician, sorceress, embodied demi-divinity?
"Yup. She's of a more traditional strain, which is why she seemed so uptight about all this. But she's powerful; she definitely saved our asses back there."
No kidding. Maybe it wasn't as apparent before, but now all it once it was: we were spent. Despite their being used to their trials, Baccha, Frank and Lisa had all bore the same look of routine exhaustion when they returned. I guess you never got used to somethings. Reliving it only vamps up the horror.
I shivered then, not from the lack of wind. That thing, back there . . . Baccha put his arm around my shoulder and we began to move. "I'll see that you get home safe, then. I'll even unpack what your Aunt said on the way, tell you everything I know."
"Could you do the same for Lisa's trip?"
A side smile. "I'm good, cutie, but I'm not god."
Sure, I could've just let him walk me back to my parent's place, right up to the little egress window that let to my basement room. And then, once I'd got in, pull him down by the leg of his pants. Fake an excuse, hey wanna pick up where we left off on Metal Slug? But, chaos magician or not, after the night's sequence of odd, non-sequitur and indirect messages, I think we both were in dire need of some direct meaning.
I stopped us in mid-walk, turning my body to him.
"I want you to come home with me, and I'd like you to stay the night again."