Sunday, February 13th, 2000
We arrived at a ritzy hotel in Boston. It used to be better than now, but it was still frequented mostly by the very wealthy. The thirty or so of us needed a place tom stay for awhile. More like a temporary residence than a hotel stay. We were to be given a seldom-used wing of the third floor, mostly unfurnished and inconvenient to get to. Of the hundreds in the hotel, only one staircase led to it, and so it was only forgotten. We followed our guide, an old black man who worked there, through a mall-type area and up an escalator, then through grand hallways and empty ballrooms, then up another escalator, around the left to a set of four stairways. The third went down only a third of the length of the others. So half a flight down was another hallway, with a lower ceiling than the rest, leading to an entire section of rooms including one large ballroom with a sort of patio toward one side of it where there were still tables, as though food had once been served there. I and some other girls were given a tiny room edging on the patio. It was very cramped for three or four people, and we couldn't quite figure out how to set up the furniture.
I got frustrated and went for a walk. I went up the half-staircase, took a right in the big empty room at the top, then a left at the corner into a smaller hallway with doors to a lot of suites. Somewhere along there was another section of stores and restaurants, fancier this time. I felt terribly out of place among the wealthy people shopping there.
I also had another problem. My thinking was getting fuzzy. With a vague feeling that I shouldn't be where I was, I tried to find my way back to my wing. But somewhere I'd gotten all turned around, and I got lost among the empty, echoing rooms. One room I passed through was a ballroom much like the one near my room, with its ceiling a sort of dome of dark orangish-red glass. I couldn't find my staircase, and I had wandered far from any people. I eventually found my way downstairs, with the thought of retracing my steps from the entrance to the room, but everything was starting to get blurry and make no sense. I felt drunk, or drugged, and when I found a courtyard entrance finally, I couldn't for the life of me tell if it was the same one from before, or what to do if it was. Reentering the hotel, on some side passage of that mall, I saw hundreds of people partying. There was to be a wedding on the fourth floor, and the whole hotel was celebrating. Most people were near drunk on champagne already. I found a man who looked to me like a local cab driver, and not too far gone yet, and asked him if he knew how to get to the third floor. He looked at me oddly and asked if I really meant the third, and I said yes. He shrugged and said he wasn't really sure, but he had an idea. He led me to an escalator upward, and told me how to get to the right place on four to find my staircase. I stumbled up to four, and found among the people preparing the ballrooms and halls for the wedding a woman, and asked her the way. She had to show me the way to the set of stairways and almost push me down the correct one, because I couldn't even comprehend what she was saying anymore, or see more than ten feet in front of me. I stumbled down and found most of the other girls running around like crazy with wedding favors and such. The whole section of the floor right near the foot of the stairs had been converted into a brightly lit sort of wedding museum, and the girls were having a ball dressing up and stuff. I wasn't. I felt more confused every moment. I found the man in charge of us and got him to point me to the correct hallway to get to my room. When I got there, the girls had been busy. They'd pulled up the curtains over the windows on the side toward the patio, and discovered that they were all actually French doors. These they had opened, and claimed the patio as additional room space, so our furniture was much more spread out. I was shocked temporarily into coherence, and admired the newer, ore opulent setup at the same time I was a little nervous about breaking the rules maybe and having our room open to that huge unused ballroom where the daylight filtered in through that red glass.
Then suddenly I felt very lightheaded and said I had to lay down. I lay on my bed feeling like I was burning up and freezing all at once. I felt my forehead. It seemed to scorch my hand. I called one of my roommates over to tell me if I really did have a fever. She touched my forehead then backed away quickly, looking a little scared, and said I should just lie still with a fever like that. The other girls went to find the man in charge as I began to toss and turn, the light hurting my eyes at the same time everything was going fuzzy and dim. I thought I saw the man hurrying to my side as everything went black.
The dream bothered me so much in part because it took place over hours, basically in real time, as I slid in and out of deep sleep one afternoon. I knew I was dreaming the whole time, but no matter how scared I felt, I couldn't wake up. I would struggle against the dream until I was conscious of my room and the approximate time of day and then slip helplessly back under. I didn't wake up entirely until the dream decided to let me go.
Thursday, March 29th, 2001
Bridget was the youngest of three girls. She lived with them that winter in a glorified log cabin, and secrets started coming out. There had been a fourth daughter, who had been fey. She was going to marry a very important man (like a Kennedy) but she died first. Her eldest sister had a hand in it. Her task was not completed, though. It was rumored that somewhere in the cabin, the dead girl had hidden a secret she’d held about her power. The eldest sister searched for it in vain. Hannah, the middle sister, didn’t want her to find it, and worried for Bridget, who seemed to receive most of the eldest’s anger. Bridget hadn’t spoken since their sister’s death, and didn’t seem to even remember it. She seemed so fragile. The man’s family, meanwhile, claimed that the sister who found the secret should go to them. One night, after the eldest had yelled at Bridget and left the room, Bridget climbed to the very top bookshelf (12 ft. ceilings) and against the back wall was a piece of wood with the initials F.B. carved into it. Those initials were not familiar to Bridget, precisely, but she knew they meant something. She pried off the piece of wood and it opened into a cavity in the attic. Hannah saw her and gasped. Bridget quickly replaced the wood and climbed down.
Later she climbed up again and handed one by one various objects hidden there to Hannah. They were little brass candleholders, open on top and with arched openings on two sides. Seven of them had bits of colored wax in them from old candles, one for each color. The last three were unidentifiable. Bridget and Hannah looked them over closely, and found that each had a small piece of paper against the back wall. “Gold,” one read. “Slvr,” another. The last: “Cpr.” Each was signed “F. B.” They hung them up in two rows on each side of a doorway, put candles of the correct colors in each, and lit them. As the warm, multicolored light spread through the room, the eldest sister entered. She raised her hand and moved to attack Bridget, when suddenly the whole house seemed to shift around her. She hesitated, and suddenly Bridget, who had been silent since her sister’s death, drew a breath. Her eyes, which had been empty all that same time, cleared. She was whole and free again. She remembered her dead sister, and knew her secret.
“It’s the house,” she said clearly and with authority. “She made this house; she put herself into it. She didn’t hide any power of hers here.”
The eldest sister, almost frightened suddenly, lowered her hand.
“She didn’t hide any power here. She is this house.”
As if in agreement, the candle flames rose in unison, and in their light the sisters saw something new. Bridget was as fey as her sister had been, and all along had known as much, if she had been able to remember it. Now she was come into her power.
In the end she wed the man her sister had loved. He walked with her along the lantern lit path to the edge of the lake where the people waited. He didn’t know what to make of Bridget. She was silent again, eyes turned inward. He worried that she was withdrawing again. Hannah came to him and said quietly, “she may not say much, but her mind is everywhere—a million places at once.” She smiled.
Then Bridget turned to him, and in her eyes he saw hundred of worlds. She smiled and the colored lanterns doubled their light, making Bridget’s eyes sparkle.
“Come,” she said, taking his hand, “they’re waiting for us.”
He followed his wife and goddess to their friends and family, knowing that their lives would be full of joy and wonder.
Saturday, March 31st, 2001
In a small Midwestern town there were four friends: Michael, Laurel, Emma, and Julie. Sadly, Emma had died. She wasn’t gone however. She was a vampire. Well, not exactly. See, she follows the general rules for vampires about invitations and being undead and damned, but I have no idea if she drank blood and I doubt sunlight was much of a problem, although she was mostly nocturnal. Anyway, to make it simple, she was a vampire. Her friends, for a time, hid that from their parents. Julie, Emma’s best friend, had even invited Emma into her home on a couple of occasions. After a while, tragedy struck. In the end, all four friends were vampires and Julie’s parents knew it (but were in denial). They had an uneasy “let me forget you exist and we won’t have to get nasty” truce. Emma and her friends ended up living in an old house a few hundred yards distant from Julie’s old house. It had a bit of a “genius loci” or whatever you call it (geni locus??). There was a lot of energy in the old place, and that energy could be manipulated by the wrong kind of people. Emma, Julie, Michael, and Laurel prevented that from happening.
One night, there was a break-in. The four responded to it and it ended up being a group of high school kids trying to scare themselves. The friends convince them in the strongest language to leave (without revealing that they’re vamps) and then there’s another break in. By the fourth false alarm that night, they’re pretty tired of it. They walk into the garden where a girl is pretending to raise her “dead” friend and just roll their eyes. Julie tells the girl to her face how ridiculous she looks pretending to be this medium and all. Laura kicks the “corpse” awake, and they instruct these people to leave. Emma is the only one not bored. She thinks the four break-ins have to be more than coincidence. Then the first group of high school brats gets locked in a room by Ms. Medium and her boyfriend and they have to let them out and again try to send them home. Stuff like this goes on for hours. All night practically it’s false alarm after false alarm. Emma keeps saying that there’s something behind it. The others roll their eyes and solve the next problem, proving again and again that no big evil was behind it. Finally they get rid of all the dumb people, and the house begins to shake.
They run to the windows and there’s this big-ass train the size of a skyscraper headed toward them. They run out to the front deck (2nd story). Emma just keeps going and jumps the railing while the others go down the stairs. They ran through the woods. Across a gully was the back door of Julie’s house. Her parents had opened it and were looking out to see what the noise was about. Julie, Laurel, and Michael shout up to Emma, “Are you sure this is a good idea?” “You got a better one?” she asks and leaps across the gully and through the open door. Julie’s parents are a bit shocked. “Invite them in,” Emma says. The other three leap to the door and bounce off an invisible barrier. Julie bounces so hard she ends up hanging from one hand off the edge of the deck.
“Invite them in,” Emma says again. The big-ass train comes into view. They invite them in. Once everyone is inside, Julie’s mom, a bit pale and staring between her dead daughter and the train, asked, “What are we supposed to do about that?”
Emma said, “It’s evil. It follows the rules. You haven’t invited it in.”
Mrs. is incredulous. “That won’t keep that thing from running over this house.”
Emma shrugged. “Then pray.” The train was getting close. “Pray, god damn it!” Emma shouted, but no one moved. Emma grabbed the cross from Mrs.’s neck, and her hand started to smoke. “God damn it! Pray!”
She turned toward the door and, holding the cross up, began to pray the Hail Mary. Her hand occasionally flicked with flame. Her whole body smoked. “Holy Mary, mother of God,” she shouted, and finally the parents joined in. “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Just before the train hit the house, it vanished.
Emma handed the cross back to Julie’s mom, holding it now by the chain. Julie’s mom grabbed Emma’s hand and held it open. A deep, cross-shaped burn, already scarring over, marred her flesh.
“How can you do that? The damned can’t pray.”
“We still have free will, Mrs.”
“But God wouldn’t hear you.”
“God hears every prayer uttered on earth, regardless of who says it.”
“But…” Julie’s mom said, helplessly indicating Emma’s scarred hand and scorched clothes, “what does that mean, then?”
“It’s a deterrent, Mrs., that’s all.” Julie’s mom hugged Emma.
Meanwhile the other three are aghast. They know what kind of pain Emma endured. “You saved my aprents,” Julie said. “Thank you.”
Later, months or years later, the four are living in a city on the eastern edge of a lake.
Emma found out that Laurel helped James Earl Jones (in other words the VERY BAD, EVIL, SUPERNATURAL guy) enter this world. There had been a little friction in the group since the praying incident, but Emma never acted as though there was a problem at all. She remained in their confidence. After all, she’d been their friend in life and death for a very long time. She killed Laurel, though, to keep her from giving James Earl Jones more power. Then Julie decided to help James Earl Jones. She was almost dating him, almost certainly falling in love with him. She was dressed in an evening gown, ecstatic about the coming evening when she would help James Earl Jones achieve power in this world, when Emma killed her. They’d been best friends forever, and Julie couldn’t believe it. Emma was almost crying. “I’m sorry,” she said,” but I just can’t let you do this.” In Emma’s mind, it was better for Julie to die than to bring such evil into the world.
Finally it was just Michael and Emma in the mansion on the crag in the middle of the lake. Michael was determined to help James Earl Jones and become his second-in-command. James Earl Jones found out how Julie died, and sent Michael to kill Emma. Now James Earl Jones had a servant named something-Ed. He was a kind of lower demon still trapped in the other dimension, more dog than man. His sense were incredibly keen, and he was strong and cunning, but he was baser than a human somehow. Michael knew how to call on Ed’s power and use it in this world as his own.
Michael went after Emma, but she was stronger than he’d ever expected. They fought to a stalemate.
“Finish her,” James Earl Jones ordered. Michael disobeyed. If he pushed on now, he knew she might end up killing him instead.
“Not now,” Michael told James Earl Jones. “I don’t know that I could destroy her now. I’ll wait for a better opportunity and call on more of Ed’s power. When I fight her again, it will not be an even match.”
“Be careful,” James Earl Jones cautioned. “If you draw on Ed’s power now, you will bring some of him with you when you come to power at my side.”
Michael wasn’t impressed. He stalked out of the room.
So you’ve got a mostly helpless James Earl Jones and Emma left in the room. She’s too beat up to try anything. He can’t. So…they talk.
“Isn’t that how it always works?” she asks.
He looks at her enquiringly.
“That’s always been power out there for the taking, but the form that power takes is entirely dependent on the character of he who calls it.”
