Summer's End (3 page)

That brought up a new question
in my mind: Why had they called me in? There was surely nothing I could offer
above what was in my books. There had to be some other reason they hadn’t
revealed yet. Maybe they were just doing a documentary for The History Channel
and needed another talking head.

So I said yes, and by 8 p.m. I
was parked and making my way across the campus grounds. It was a mid-October
night in L.A., which meant it was still warm enough to need only a light
jacket. The campus was mostly empty; in fact, it seemed too empty. Surely
classes were in session in October, and a state university must have certainly
offered
some
evening classes? I saw only a handful of students, all
hunched over and hurrying somewhere as if anxious to escape a chill that didn’t
even exist.

I was just passing a thick
growth of shrubbery ringing the edge of one of the great brick-built halls when
I first heard it: A slight rustling of the leaves. The night was still, there
was no breeze to blame, and I swallowed down a small jolt of unease. I scanned
the low bushes, trying not to appear too obvious, but saw no movement, nor
heard anything else. A squirrel, then, or maybe a cat strayed over from the
surrounding residential area…

Something struck the brickwork
ahead and to the right of me. The tiny, metallic clang was followed by what
sounded for all the world like a stifled laugh.

This time I did stop, peering
into the dark corner from which the sounds had emanated. I wished then that I
carried a flashlight, one of those little mags that dangles on a keychain; or
even a lighter. As it was, I could make out nothing in the black shadow
surrounding the looming three-story building.

I waited for a few seconds,
ears straining, but heard nothing else. The echo of a distant cell phone
conversation, yes; or something coming from within the building, possibly
traveling through a ventilation duct. That was it.

I continued on; the hall where
ó Cuinn had said his temporary office was housed couldn’t be more than a
hundred yards off now. I was sure it was the next building ahead, and I’d be
safe once I was inside—

Something scuttled through the
bushes just a few feet to my left now, and all speculation was done. I reached
into the jacket pocket where I’d put my car keys, and wrapped a fist around
them; if I had to fight off an attacker, they might think twice after getting a
key wrapped between two knuckles in the face. But I still started walking fast,
toward the building, trying not to look over my shoulder, trying to ignore the
obvious sound of something now following me, something getting closer with each
step. Suddenly I was shivering, and my breath puffed out in front of me—how was
that possible?—and I almost ran the last bit to the double doors leading into
the hall, to the warmth and safety of the well-lit interior beyond…

What if the doors are locked?
That thought flickered through my growing unease as I leapt up the five steps
to the landing, reached out for the door, tried not to imagine being caught
there, in front of the doors, alone, by whatever tracked me…

I flung the door open and
stepped through.

As the door closed behind me, I
turned and looked out.

There was nothing there.

I actually walked right up to
the glass, scanning the night. I’m not someone who frightens easily; maybe it’s
because I explore fear so often in fiction. I have no phobias, and being a
lifelong city dweller (and occasionally working as a screenwriter in the film
industry, where the writer is everyone’s doormat), I’d developed a tough hide.
I’d been followed before…but I’d never been followed like this.

“Ms. Morton?”

I spun so fast I nearly tripped
on my own feet. Conor ó Cuinn stood behind me; I’d been so intent on looking
outside that I hadn’t heard him approach. I have to say that as much as he put
me on edge, he was still preferable to whatever had just followed me.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I…sorry, I think someone
just followed me here.”

ó Cuinn’s reaction to that was
unexpected, to say the least—he glanced quickly past me, and then smiled. “Yes,
well…perhaps we can talk in my office.”

It was such an inappropriate
response that I wanted to shout at him; I would’ve turned around and left,
except that something was still out there. Something that didn’t seem to shock
Dr. Conor ó Cuinn.

It crossed my mind then to
wonder if what had followed me had been ó Cuinn himself. Could he have somehow
beat me to the entrance, or used some other way into the building? Or even put
someone else up to it? But why?

“Dr. ó Cuinn…”

“Call me Conor.” He gestured
down the hallway. “Please.”

I followed him. At least that
way he was ahead of me, always in sight.

ó Cuinn’s “office” turned out
to be little more than a storage closet, with boxes lining two walls, a window
with the blinds drawn over it on a third wall, and beat-up metal desk and
threadbare chair against the fourth. On the desk were a tablet computer and
plug-in keyboard, a pen, a pad of paper, and a few books. He gestured at a
metal folding chair pushed up against the cardboard crates, and he took the
ancient rolling chair behind the desk.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have
anything to offer you…” He waved a hand around the space, indicating the lack
of coffee maker or even water cooler.

“That’s okay, but I…” I decided
to be honest with him and see how he reacted. “Something was definitely after
me just now, outside.”

He peered at me for an instant,
and I found myself disliking his narrow features and dark eyes (black Irish)
all over again. After a few seconds, he looked away and asked, “So, you said
you’ve read most of the manuscript?”

“Most of it, yes. I haven’t
looked at some of the longer sections in detail yet, the…”

“Spells?”

“Well…yes.” There were lengthy
sections of the manuscript that seemed to be little more than very precise
descriptions of rituals and ceremonies, or how to gather and dry certain herbs,
or how to enact what could only be called “spells.” I’d glanced at a few of
them, but had tuned out when I’d seen words like “wand” and “sacrifice.”

I should probably mention here
that I’m a confirmed, die-hard skeptic, and always have been. I’ve never
believed in ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, Nessie, reincarnation, conspiracy theories
(most of them, anyway), demonic possession (although I’d like to—it would
explain a lot), Echinacea’s ability to prevent a cold, Mount Olympus,
trickle-down economics, chupacabras, magic (other than illusion), vampires,
werewolves, or any religion you’d care to offer up. I’m a longtime subscriber
to Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and for entertainment I enjoy watching YouTube
videos of James Randi debunking various so-called “paranormal” happenings.

I mention all this to explain
why I’d done little more than scan Mongfind’s descriptions of various occult
practices and ceremonies. And to offer some insight into my reaction when ó
Cuinn said, “You should read the spells more carefully.”

“Why?”

“Because then you’d know about
the one I’ve cast tonight.”

I smirked. Perhaps it wasn’t
polite, maybe it was rude and condescending, but I couldn’t avoid it. “You cast
one of the spells in Mongfind’s manuscript?”

“Yes.”

“I hope it was something on how
to brew beer.”

He answered only by nodding at
the covered window. “Pull up the blinds.”

What the fuck?

I almost refused. I almost got
up and left, whatever was outside be damned. ó Cuinn was playing with me, and
I’ve never been much for games.

“Why should I?”

“Because it’ll make the rest of
what I have to tell you easier to believe.”

Or it’ll give me the power to
tell you, Conor, that I’m out of here and don’t want to hear from you again. I
reached out and grabbed the cord that controlled the blinds and pulled.

The blinds drew up—and beyond
the glass, outside in the night, something was peering in at me. The face was
so white the skin was slightly blue, the ears were long and with pointed tips
poking up through lank, pale hair, and the corners of the thing’s grin reached
all the way to the bottom of those ears. The teeth were jagged and sharp, the
eyes red.

It vanished almost instantly,
but it’d been enough to send me up out of the chair and stumbling back. ó Cuinn
leapt to his feet and moved behind me, whether to steady me or keep me from
running I wasn’t sure.

“It’s all right, it won’t hurt
you,” he said.

I turned to look at him. He was
confident, even smug. “You’re going to tell me that was the spell…?”

“Yes. I summoned the
sidh
.”

“The
sidh
…” I’m sure my
mouth must have fallen open for a second, in disbelief. An esteemed
archaeologist was standing here, in a well-lit, modern office in the 21
^st
century, trying to tell me that he’d performed an ancient magic ritual and had
called down the
sidh
—the Little People, the Good Neighbors…
fairies
.
“That’s ridiculous.”

“Then what did you hear
outside? What did you see just now?”

As I stared at him, his gaunt,
stubbled cheeks and sunken eyes and shock of coal-colored hair, I wondered:
What was he trying to do? Why had he tried to scare me? Was this about to
become a pitch to finance some project of his? It wasn’t uncommon for people
who only knew me through my work to assume that I was pagan; that I believed in
the things I wrote fiction about. Was ó Cuinn pagan and thinking I was a fellow
believer? Or had he thought maybe he could scam me?

“What is it you want?”

He looked genuinely perplexed (I
wondered if he was just a good actor), then he said, “I want you to understand.
It’s very important that you do.”

“Understand what?”

“What Mongfind has left us.
What your role in this is.”

Was he coming on to me? That
notion forced me to stifle a shudder. “What if I say I don’t want a role
in…whatever this is?”

“You will, when you see what we
have a chance to do. And you and I are the only ones who can do it, because
we’re the last Druids.”

Now this had taken on such epic
proportions of lunacy that I openly laughed. “We’re Druids…you and I…”

“Yes. Think of what a Druid
was: Someone who studied Celtic ways for years, who stood apart because of the
specialized knowledge they possessed, who could create something from nothing.”

“If I could create something
from nothing, I’d have a lot more zeroes on the amount in my checking account.”

“What do you do whenever you
write? What else is fiction but a form of magic?”

That stopped me, because it was
something that even I—the hard-bitten skeptic—believed. Even if I accepted that
writing was just neurons in my brain firing, an immensely sophisticated organic
computer transforming tiny electrical sparks into thoughts, thoughts that my
fingers then translated into letters, it felt like magic, and I was the
magician, creating (from nothing) whole worlds that would eventually be shared
by others. Yes, writing was a form of magic, and a powerful one at that…but I
wasn’t about to believe that my ability to tell stories somehow made me a
priestess for a long-dead people.

But Conor believed that.
Absolutely and without question, he believed that he and I were Druids and that
he (we) could perform spells that would create more than just words on paper. I
had a moment then of pity for him; I could only imagine he must have been a
lonely and lost man.

I looked down at his left hand,
and saw that he wore a simple gold band. “Are you married?”

He blinked in surprise. “I was.
My wife died three years ago. A rare form of cancer. We had six weeks after she
was diagnosed.” He turned the laptop towards me so I could see the desktop
photo, which showed a fair-haired young woman, a baby, and a Conor who was not
just younger, but almost a completely different man, with a fuller face and
bright, almost kind eyes. ó Cuinn had been hollowed out by grief.

“You have a child?”

He nodded, and the smile that
touched his lips made me want to like him, despite my misgivings. “Alec. He’s
five now; I brought him with me, to America. He’s in our temporary apartment
just a mile from here, with a student I hired to help me look after him.”

I started walking toward the
door, letting him know I was done here. “Go spend time with your little boy. I
don’t know why you’re trying to scare me—” He started to protest, but I cut him
off, raising my voice as I went on, “—but we’re done. I don’t think you really
need me for this project anyway.”

I left and he didn’t stop me;
but when I reached the hall, he stepped out behind me and called, “Try one of
the spells yourself. That’s all I ask.”

I stopped and turned, ready to
respond with some quick sarcastic remark, but all I could manage was, “That’s
crazy. Really. The Druids have been gone for fifteen hundred years, and they
were really just tree-huggers, not magicians.”