Now
“Johnny …”
I awoke with a start, and looked over at the window, where the wind was softly blowing the curtains into the room. Reaching for my glasses, I glanced over at my wife, who was still sound asleep next to me. That was just as well. Though we were still together after all these years, it was out of habit more than anything else, and I think that while she would always care for me, she’d fallen out of love with me years ago. We never talked about it, never acknowledged it, but it was there just the same. It used to make me sad, but I’d long since accepted it and had moved on. These days I preferred to be alone, anyway.
Carefully getting out of bed, I grabbed my robe from the chair next to the nightstand and put it on, the spring air feeling chilly to me even through my pajamas. I quietly walked over to the window, opened it up the rest of the way, and stood there, letting the gentle breeze caress my face as the silvery, ancient moon bathed me in its ethereal light.
“Johnny …”
Spring #14 — Moving On
Life, as it tends to do, continued.
I never really did figure out how to tell my parents about what really happened with Mary Jane, because how in the world do you explain something like that to your parents? So I told them that Mary Jane was having a really hard time over Kristine’s death, blaming herself for it because of the argument at the party, and she’d gone back up to Terrace Green to stay with some other relatives, because staying around Norton was too hard for her at the moment. At first, they asked a lot of questions and wanted to know how Mary Jane was doing, so I gave them vague updates now and again, subtly trying to insinuate that Mary Jane was going to stay up there and that we were losing interest in one another. As time passed, they stopped asking, and the whole thing just faded away, as relationships sometimes did. To keep things simple, I just told the guys and everybody else that asked the same thing. Except for Eddie.
Spring #13 — Forgiving
As I walked along the concrete towards Mary Jane’s porch, my soul was heavy with dread and sorrow.
I had to tell Mr. Carter what had happened, everything that had happened, regardless of the consequences. As much as he loved Mary Jane and as much as he’d given for her, he had to know the truth, even if it hurt. He didn’t deserve to be hurt, but he deserved to know what had become of his daughter. Though I knew things had been largely out of my control, I still felt tremendous guilt for letting him down when he’d trusted me to look out for Mary Jane, and I still couldn’t escape the feeling that I could have done something else for Mary Jane, that I could have made a difference somewhere. I’d failed him, I’d failed Mary Jane, and I’d failed myself. It had been too much for me too handle, but what kind of a weak excuse was that? I loved Mary Jane more than I could put into words, and I’d told Mr. Carter I’d do right by her; I should have done more.
But just what that was, I didn’t know, and maybe never would.
When I looked up towards the porch, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Mr. Carter sitting on the steps, in the same spot he’d been when I’d first met him. He looked like he’d been crying.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him, suddenly terrified. He knew. I didn’t know how, but somehow he knew, and he was waiting here for me because he’d also known I’d come here first, even before going back home.
We gazed at one another across the concrete walkway, which was still in the shadow of the house. The sun was up, but it was still very early in the day, and most of the town was still wrapped in the slowly dying shadows of the previous night. Neither of us said anything for a long time, and though the twittering birds did their best to dispel the silence, even they couldn’t make a dent in it.
Spring #12 — Witch Of The Wind
I awoke to near-darkness, a gentle breeze playing over my face, seeming to whisper my name as I tried to gather the fragments of my sleep-disjointed mind. I was so cold that I was shivering, and when I reached for my covers, intending to wrap them tightly around myself like I did in the winter, I couldn’t find them. As my shaking hands searched for them, I discovered that I was still in my clothes from the day before, and I frowned, wondering why that was. I usually only did that when I’d gotten drunk and passed out at somebody else’s house, and I was pretty sure that I was at home, in my own bed. Plus, wasn’t tomorrow, or today, rather, a school day? Sometimes I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to drinking, but I never got hammered on a school night, because the thought of trying to go through a day of school with a hangover was a pretty unpleasant one. Had I gotten drunk, come home, and then passed out on my bed?
But while I was extremely cold and my mind was blurry from sleep, I didn’t have any of the usual hangover aches and pains, which I always had after getting smashed enough to pass out. So I was pretty sure that I hadn’t gotten drunk, but that still didn’t explain why I was still in my clothes. And why the hell was it so damned cold? It felt like the middle of the winter, and even though the weather could still get chilly at night until almost June, it never got this cold, not by the first week of May. Even if I’d left my window all the way open when I’d gone to bed, it shouldn’t be this frigid in my room. Was I sick? My hands searched around for the covers again, and found them this time. Unfortunately, from the feel of it, I was laying on top of them. Dammit.
I was still asleep enough that I really didn’t want to move at all, but my teeth were starting to chatter, and if I got much colder, I wasn’t going to be able to fall totally back to sleep again. So with an annoyed grunt, I sat up in bed, forcing my bleary eyes open, wondering if I could somehow manage to get under the covers without having to get off of the bed or use too much energy. But all thoughts of going back to sleep vaporized when I saw the dark figure standing right in front of my window.
It was Mary Jane. That was my first surprise.
The second one came when I realized that she wasn’t standing. She was floating. Her bare feet were hanging almost a foot off the carpet. The steady, icy breeze was emanating from her, making her black hair slowly whirl and twist around her head like a dark halo.
Spring #11 — Brooding
“Man, this is so fucked up,” said Duane, finishing his bottle of soda and leaning back against the wall of the garage.
“Yeah, no shit. It doesn’t seem real.” Dusty, who didn’t have even the slightest hangover despite the ungodly amounts he’d drank last night, idly toyed with a wrench as he sat in the open garage door, looking out at the darkly-overcast afternoon. “I always figured if anybody was gonna check out early, it was gonna be you.”
Duane scowled at him. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Dusty shrugged. “Just trying to lighten the mood, is all. You are always getting into fucked-up messes.”
After thinking about that for a moment, Duane sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Makes me wanna not ever drink again, though.” He looked over at Eddie, who was sitting in the driveway, leaning against one of the tires of his pickup. “That’s what the cops said it was, right? She was drinking and … well, you know.”
Taking a drag off of his cigarette, Eddie nodded. “Yeah. That’s what they’re thinking. When I went in to the cop shop to give my statement about what I’d seen last night and everything, I asked ‘em about it, and from what they could find out from everybody still at Cindy’s, it sounds like she just got drunk, wandered off while she was angry, and … you know.” He took another drag, and then looked over at me. “How’s Mary Jane taking it?”
I was leaning against the garage doorframe a short distance from Dusty, and I shrugged. “About at well as can be expected, I guess. She took it kinda hard, and wanted to be alone after I talked to her for awhile, but that’s understandable, really.”
“Keep an eye on her,” said Eddie. “This wasn’t her fault, and she shouldn’t let it eat her up or anything.”
I nodded. “I will.”
Spring #10 — Loss
I awoke the next morning to an insistent, but relatively light pounding on my shoulder, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my younger sister standing beside my bed, contentedly beating my arm with a coat hanger through my covers.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growled, blinking my bleary eyes.
“Ummm! You said a bad word!” she admonished, smacking my shoulder extra-hard with the wire hanger, and then dodged out of the way when I tried to grab it out of her hand and return the favor.
When I looked at the clock on my nightstand and saw that it wasn’t even eight yet, I snarled, “I’ve got a right to! What the fuck are you doing waking me up so early on a Sunday? Grandpa isn’t even gonna be here for two hours yet!”
She held up the phone and waggled the receiver at me. “Eddie’s on the phone. He interrupted me when I was reading the funnies!”
“What’s he doing calling this early?” I muttered, sitting up in bed and rubbing at my eyes. “He probably stayed out later than me. Gimme that,” I said, grabbing for the phone.
She held it away for a few seconds, and just when I was about to yell at her, she tossed it on my lap, hit me with the hanger one more time, and then ran off downstairs, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t very fast when I first woke up. “Ha ha, retard!” she called out once she was safely out of punching range.
“I’ll get you later,” I muttered. I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, sorry to wake you up so early, but it’s kinda important.” Indeed it was Eddie, and he sounded pretty serious. The last time he’d called this early, he’d gotten stranded outside of town when his truck had broken down on him, and had desperately needed a ride.
“Transmission fucking up again?” I asked, yawning. “Need a ride?”
“No. I wish.”
“Say what?” What the hell did that mean?
He sighed. “I guess there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it, all right?”
“Uh … okay,” I said cautiously, my stomach starting to tighten.
Spring #9 — Child Of The Air
“You want me to come in?”
Mary Jane shook her head. “No, baby. I just need to be alone for a while. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
We stood by the steps leading down to Mary Jane’s bedroom, still holding onto one another even though we’d probably been standing out here in near-silence for over a half-hour now. Mary Jane kept saying that she needed to go in, but at the same time, she seemed unwilling to leave me. I just stayed where I was, determined to be there for her if she needed me, despite how conflicted I felt.
The way she’d slapped me and then blew me across the porch still bothered me, and in all honesty, it scared me, too. From watching the way that Mary Jane handled herself in Chicago and against the likes of Abigail, I’d known she was formidable as hell for a long time, but I’d never really given thought to just how formidable she was. Taking her magick into consideration, she could do considerable harm to somebody; hell, she could kill somebody. What if something went horribly wrong and the power she wielded got turned on me?
Spring #8 — The Party
Cindy Johnson’s parents owned a big two-story house, complete with a finished basement, out by Norton Lake, with an enormous backyard bordered by the woods, so when her parents weren’t around, it was the perfect place for a high school party. Throughout my four years at Norton Senior High, I’d been to more parties out here than I could remember, as had many of the people in my grade, and Mary Jane had come with me to a couple of them, so even she was no stranger to the place.
When I pulled my car up to the top of the winding gravel driveway and found a place to park in the grass of the side yard, Duane, who was sitting in the back with Alicia, asked, “So you think she’s still gonna be throwing parties here after she graduates? Or think this’ll be the end of it?”
I put the Chevy into park and turned the key, pondering the question, which hadn’t occurred to me. Prom was next weekend, with graduation only two weeks afterwards, and that was going to be the end of high school for all of us, except for Lee, who had one more year to go. Cindy was graduating in our class, and it was no secret that she was going to go away to college somewhere in California, where rich girls went, and if she wasn’t here in town, she certainly wouldn’t be having any more parties, regardless of whether her parents were in town or not. No more high school, no more big parties at Cindy Johnson’s house.
I gazed up at the huge, well-lit house, which was already populated with a good number of people from Norton High, along with some beyond that, like Dusty, and most likely a few had brought along brothers or sisters in junior high, to show them what “big kids’” parties were like. Damn, it was a weird thought that this might be the last party at Cindy Johnson’s house, and one that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around, or maybe I just didn’t really want to. Those parties had practically become an institution since the first one Cindy threw a couple of weeks into our freshman year, and the end of those parties was just one more unwelcome reminder that a chapter of our lives was coming to an end. I knew there’d be other parties, if not here, at someone else’s, but even then, it wouldn’t be quite the same.
Spring #7 — Boiling Point
“They’re driving me fucking crazy!” Mary Jane growled as we walked along uptown. “I swear, I’m gonna kill one of ‘em at this rate!”
We’d just finished eating dinner at one of the little eateries on the town square and were idly wandering around as the sun slowly set, killing time until the movie theatre opened for the evening. After talking about plans for prom, which was closing in fast, conversation had turned towards Kristine and her bunch, who’d been hounding Mary Jane for days now, wanting to get her involved in the whole deal they’d built around the dug-up Witch Stone. They were convinced that they were the only ones that could save the town from some impending, witch-oriented danger, and were working overtime, in a figurative sense, to find a way to stop it. Mary Jane kept trying to diplomatically put them off, but they weren’t taking no for an answer, and continued coming back for more.
I put an arm around her and squeezed. “I know it’s nutty now, but they’re gonna forget all about it sooner or later. They’ll move on to something else, or otherwise decide that the ‘witch’ decided not to mess with the town after all. I’ve seen this kind of thing out of them before, and it always blows over. The town’s already got the hole in the cemetery filled back up, and Eddie said he heard they were pouring a new sidewalk early next week, so by next weekend, everything will be back to normal in Whitewood. Even more so, since the Witch Stone won’t be around anymore. Trust me, they’ll get tired of this soon enough, so just ride it out and you’ll be fine.”
“I know,” she said, kicking at the sidewalk with her boot as we walked along. “It’s just frustrating. I wish they’d leave that shit alone and leave me alone.”
Spring #6 — Stone Overturned
I was between classes and getting a drink from the water fountain next to the teachers’ lounge when I overheard Mr. Zeitel talking to Mrs. Keeler about something he’d heard on the way to work. Mr. Zeitel was a stocky, compact man with a booming voice and a mischievous personality that made him a favorite among many of the school’s students, and even those that didn’t like him at least respected him, because he was a former Airborne Ranger that had proved he could knock the shit out of troublemakers if necessary.
“You’d never guess what I heard from Jerry this morning,” Mr. Zeitel boomed from within the teachers’ lounge, his voice carrying out into the hallway where I was parked over the fountain, trying to get a good drink from the miserly thing.
“Jerry?” Mrs. Keeler, who was a really nice lady but a monster of a taskmaster in her classes, asked. “Don’t think I know him.”
“Oh, he’s that cop buddy of mine. You know, the guy that comes in every spring and gives the kids in the health classes the drug talks and all that.”
“Okay. I do know him. Officer McGruber.” Mrs. Keeler’s softer voice was a sharp contrast to Mr. Zeitel’s thunderous register, and I smirked at how much noisier he sounded just by talking with her.
Spring #5 — Lakeside Conversation
“Duane’s going to prom?”
I nodded. “Screwy, ain’t it?”
Kristine laughed and shook her head. “I’m impressed, actually. How’d she do it?”
“Implied sex and a lot of screaming.”
“Sounds about right.”
I pitched a rock into the gently stirring surface of Norton Lake and then looked up at the dark, cloudy sky overhead. A few feet away, Kristine was sitting on the end of the concrete boat launch, the water just a couple of inches away from covering it over. While the boat launch normally projected a short distance into the water, making it easy for people to (what else?) launch their boats into the lake, we’d been getting an abnormally high amount of rain this spring, and if it kept up, the boat launch was going to go under. But for the moment, it was still a nice, dry place to sit on cool spring nights like this one.
Spring #4 — Seeing Things
I hopped out of my car and stepped up onto the curb, cutting across the sidewalk towards Mary Jane’s backyard. I stumbled before setting foot in the shady grass, and cursed as I flailed around, trying not to fall on the concrete. Managing to catch myself in time, I looked down at my feet, having felt a familiar tug just as I’d tripped, and saw that one of my boot laces had come undone and I’d nearly taken a header into the ground when I’d stepped on it with my other foot. Again.
“Motherfucker,” I growled, crouching down to re-tie the lace for the third time that day. It seemed like no matter how hard I tied the thing, it’d just work itself loose whenever I wasn’t looking and nearly kill me every time. The laces were getting old admittedly, and I probably should’ve replaced them, but it irritated me because the laces on the other boot never did that, and they were the same age as the offending ones. “Fuckin’ things, I’m gonna just take you out and fuckin’ burn you and—“
My tirade came to an abrupt halt as I caught sight of Mary Jane hurrying down the cellar stairs towards her room. I heard the door quickly open and close a few seconds later.
“What was that all about?” I idly murmured as I finished double-tying my troublesome laces. She’d zipped downstairs so quickly I hadn’t even had a chance to call out to her. I stood back up and headed across the yard, figuring that it was probably some girl thing.
Spring #3 — Karma?
“So you gonna wanna go with us to Peoria on Saturday or what?”
Duane snorted and took a drink of his soda. “Yeah, probably. Alicia’s been bitching about needing to go buy a fucking dress, so that’s as good a time as any. At least Mary Jane can help her pick something out so I’m not stuck there waiting while she’s trying on a million dresses and asking me which ones make her ass look fat.”
Finishing off her sandwich, Mary Jane said, “Don’t expect a miracle cure from me, pal. I’ve got problems of my own, ‘cuz I’ve gotta find a dress that doesn’t make my ass look fat.”
Leaning against the gas station wall next to her, I added, “Besides, it doesn’t matter how many times you reassure her that it looks fine: she’s just gonna say you’re lying and pick out something based on her own opinion anyway.”
Instead of arguing, Mary Jane nodded. “This is true.”
Spring #2 — Questions
“That was a clusterfuck.”
“Tell me about it,” I said as we finally stepped out of the high school’s crowded auditorium and into the lobby, which was far less crowded, but still busy with students and the occasional teacher milling around before classes started for the day.
I could hear the rumble of thunder above the chatter and rustling, and when I glanced out the big windows at the front of the lobby, I saw that it had gotten even darker outside than it had been earlier. Though rain hadn’t started to fall yet, it was only a matter of time; the bushes out in front of the school were swishing this way and that in the strong gusts of wind that had been blowing since I’d got up that morning.
Mary Jane glanced at the chaotic auditorium behind us, where at least a hundred students were still waiting to sign up for prom, many of them in a less-than-orderly fashion. “I’m glad I got up early today and dragged your lazy ass in when I did. If we’d fucked around and waited like Duane, Alicia, Lee, and Tomomi did, we’d be in there all day.”
Looking at my watch, I said, “Or would’ve had to come back and try to sign up at lunch, which is what it looks like those four are gonna have to do.”
Spring #1 — Making Plans
“Hey, check it out! Tires!”
“All right!”
“Hooray for tires!”
Duane, Mary Jane, and I all hurried down the train tracks towards the small pile of discarded tires, leaving behind Alicia, who’d never been along with us during one of our walks and wasn’t used to the things we found fascinating. Understandably, she was rather confused.
“What’s the big deal about tires?” She picked up her pace, wanting to keep up with us, but at the same time lacking our enthusiasm. “Duane, you’ve got a bunch of old tires in your garage and you don’t pay any attention to ‘em. I was sitting on a stack earlier, as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah, but those tires are there, and these tires are here,” Duane said as he and I set upon the pile and started separating the worn tires.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Winter #12 — Ashes To Ashes
“I thought you said no more magick.”
Mary Jane gave me a quirky smile and held up the bat-pan, which was straight as an arrow once again and completely undamaged. “It was for a good cause.”
“But still …”
I looked at the array of notebooks, dusty old manuscripts, amulets, rings, strange little statues, pieces of stone, chips of paint, and so many other things scattered over her bedspread, feeling a sense of foreboding just from gazing upon them. When I turned my eyes back to Mary Jane and the bat-pan, that foreboding increased.
Winter #11 — Chicago: Storm
“Hey, you ready to go?”
Mary Jane, standing on the edge of the gas station tarmac and looking up at the falling snow, didn’t give any indication that she’d heard me. After she’d gotten us to the highway and had driven us several miles outside of the city, we’d stopped to refill my car, having discarded the idea of dinner and movie, the both of us just eager to get back home after everything we’d been through today. While I’d been gassing up my Chevy, she’d given me a playful swat on the ass, then had walked out into the snow to gaze at the black sky, and had been out there ever since.
“Yo! The wagons are ready to roll! Don’t wanna be left behind!”
When she still didn’t respond, I walked out to where she was, stopping next to her and looking up at the sky. “Snow’s picked up,” I said. “Probably best we get moving before it gets too heavy. Wouldn’t want to get stuck in this shit.”
She kept her eyes skyward, not even making a sound of acknowledgement, and I tapped her on the shoulder. “You okay?”
“I don’t like this,” she said, her voice low. “There’s something in the air, and it’s getting stronger.”
Winter #10 — Chicago: House Of Ice
Mary Jane unerringly guided me through a maze of side-streets and increasingly rundown neighborhoods, drawing us deeply into the urban sprawl. I’d been up here several times in the past, both with friends and on school trips, but I’d never been to any of the places we traveled through on the way to our destination. These were the places that I’d glimpsed from the safety of the highway arteries that threaded their way through the massive giant of Chicago: the decrepit homes, abandoned warehouses, overgrown train tracks, and crumbling wastelands where the city’s dregs were condemned to roam. As we made our way along the streets, I saw hard-looking people going about their daily business, huddling against the cold in threadbare clothes and tromping through the thick snow in tattered shoes, not even bothering to give us a glance as we drove by. As the conditions of the neighborhoods worsened, I found myself glad that my car looked so gawdawful on the outside, because I was sure that if I’d had it all painted up nice and pretty, it would have drawn a lot more attention. But as it was, it fit right in with the other cars we saw: old and adorned with shitty paintjobs.
I tried not to stare, but it was difficult to fight the impulse. These neighborhoods made the worst places in Norton look like paradises, and some of the people I saw would’ve sent Norton’s worst running for cover. It was depressing on these dilapidated streets, and I got just a glimpse of how hard life could get if you were stuck in the wrong place; for the first time in my life, I actually appreciated what Norton had to offer me. It may not have been the greatest town in the world, but damn, it was better than what these poor fuckers had, and they lived on the periphery of one of the biggest, best-known cities in the world!
“You actually used to hang around here?”
Winter #9 — Chicago: History Lesson
“What in the world is that thing?”
Eddie and I both turned and looked at Mary Jane in exaggerated horror, unable to believe she had no idea what it was that Eddie had just removed from under the seat of his truck.
It was still about an hour before noon, and we were out in the driveway of my house, getting ready to leave for Chicago. After a mostly sleepless night, Mary Jane and I had gotten up early, made breakfast at her house, and had headed over to my place to tell my parents that we were going up to Chicago for the day to go goofing around and find something to do, which was basically the truth, except that we omitted the fact we had an actual purpose behind our trip, as opposed to it just being a routine teenage roadtrip. Mary Jane had told her dad the same thing when he’d called to check in that morning, and we figured it was the safest course of action, so that nobody with parental authority freaked out because we were gone all day. That would’ve been a drag to go all the way up there, deal with whatever it was that needed to be dealt with, and then come home to the third-degree because we didn’t tell anybody where we’d been. Such are the hoops one has to jump through while living under the roof of their parents.
Winter #8 — A Call
The sudden jangling of the phone made the both of us jump nearly out of our skins, and Mary Jane almost slid off the side of the bed.
“Whoa, damn!” she squawked, clutching at me even more tightly than before in an effort to avoid hitting the floor.
The phone rang once more.
“Hang on, I got you,” I mumbled, trying to get my hazy mind focused on the task at hand, but the fact that Mary Jane was completely naked didn’t help me any.
The phone rang again.
