“Dunno,” I said, fighting my own fair share of post-spell-travel nausea. “Could be…anywhere, really.”
She shook her head. “The SATOR box…must’ve touched us. Thrown us…ugh, Jesus.” Rolling onto her knees, she heaved upwards, gained her feet and stood there, weaving. “Where…?”
I shrugged—then spat, and wished I hadn’t. “Damn if I know. Sorta looks like…Alabama, I had to take a guess.” Clawed my own way to standing, using a handy tree, and tried a weak version of my normal charming grin out on her: “Aw, but don’t you worry none, pretty gal—given all that excitement we left behind us, I’ll bet you five bucks she already must’ve dropped it.”
“You don’t get it, Alleycat. I need my damn sister!”
And: For what, exactly? I could’ve said. ‘Cause you feel guilty you can do things she can’t, and never will? ‘Cause you’re so all-fired hot to get back to killin’ things that’re more like you than she’ll ever be, just ‘cause your old man taught you to? Same old man ended up turning your Momma into hash, as I recall, ‘cause he couldn’t stand having another creature’s fingerprints left on her…and that was just too bad, by Dionne’s standards, wasn’t it? Too bad for your Momma. Too damn bad for you…
If this actually was Alabama, I knew a hill somewhere ‘round within walking distance where I could surely introduce her to the Daddy we both shared, for what I knew would be the first time. Put his one hand on the crown of her head, the other on her ankle, and know he’d answer each and every question she might have for him in between. We could be true sisters yet, dance at the Sabbat in our naked skins and sup on broiled corpse-flesh; ride the night astraddle like those carrion storm-birds of old Greece, seeking always for prey, and scour this land of any fool who dared think fire, or salt, or a whimpered prayer to some unhearing God would ever keep him and his safe for long from such as she and me.
But: Looking at her now, I knew it was far too late for that. Her hands were clenched against me, closed and hard like her heart; them ropes of Crossing the River were dug in too deep between the layers of her skin for anything short of a roadside conversion to ever disarm ‘em—though it’d have to be one gained on the way to Dis, Hell’s own lead-walled capital city, ‘course, rather than on the way to Damascus.
Ah well, I thought. And said, out loud—
“Suppose you probably oughta go back for her, then. While you still can.”
She knew what I’d done, then, without a doubt; got it all in one, like the brilliant bitch she was. And kept on looking at me nonetheless, appraisingly—less with hate than a vague sort of sorrow, albeit one which came liberally admixed with a caldera’s worth of barely-veiled, magma-hot rage.
“…I’m gonna find you, too, Allfair Chatwin,” she told me, without much affect, as the air between her long fingers began to spark and whine again. “Eventually.”
To which I nodded my head, briefly, in what probably looked—from her angle—like acceptance. And replied:
“Oh, but not too soon, I hope. Princess.”
—
Took half a second for the rift to pop open again, behind her, and the other half to close once she’d stepped back through. Then I was all by my lonesome in the dark, dark woods once more, a state of affairs which sure did seem to call for immediate relocation—so I started out walking, whistling softly; an old holler tune my Momma always used to sing me, back in the day, on empty nights like these…
Don’t the moon look pretty, shining down through the trees…/
Said don’t the shining moon look pretty, Lord, shining down
through the trees…/
Oh, I can see my baby, Lord Lord Lord…but he can’t see me…
I went looking around for a highway, found one. Started walking. And after a while—
—well, that’s when you picked me up. Didn’t ya?
Turn in here, darlin’.
SPECTRAL EVIDENCE1
“The dust still rains and reigns.”
—Stephen Jay Gould, Illuminations: A Bestiary
Preliminary Notes
The following set of photographs was found during a routine reorganization of the Freihoeven Institute’s ParaPsych Department files, a little over half a year after the official coroner’s inquest which ruled medium Emma Yee Slaughter’s death either an outright accident or unprovable misadventure. Taken with what appears to have been a disposable drugstore camera, the photographs had been stuffed into a sealed, blank envelope and then tucked inside the supplemental material file attached to Case #FI4400879, Experiment #58B (attempts at partial ectoplasmic facial reconstruction, conducted under laboratory conditions).
Scribbles on the back of each separate photo, transcribed here, appear to be jotted notes done in black ink—type of pen not readily identifiable—crossbred with samples of automatic writing done by a blue felt-tipped pen with a fine nib; graphological analysis reveals two distinct sets of handwriting. The original messages run diagonally across the underside of the paper from left to right, while the additional commentary sometimes doubles back across itself so that sentences overlap. Where indicated, supplementary lines have often been written backwards. Footnotes provide additional exegesis2.
—
1. Metaphorical license, naturally: Nothing here constitutes proper legal ‘evidence’ of anything, by any stretch of the imagination.