Baccha Yelin was online and hanging on the edge of his seat awaiting my response, presumably. I read his message once more:
Im assembling a search party to go into the woods, emphasis on party u in?
So the idiot wanted to go into the woods where, as Aunt Constance had just pointed out, from time immemorial bad things had happened. I thought of Jon Hodkins, the missing biker who'd dashed into the darkness and never came back.
Why u so keen on ur untimely demise? I texted.
Jon Hodkins was a regular at IS. Some of us know our way around the woods, he responded.
Hmm. I looked at the TV, then at the record player. I felt like I'd gotten all the mileage I could from them tonight. I'd spent the afternoon cooped in, and I just knew the night air would do me something good. Even if it meant that I'd be going into an apparently haunted forest.
My Aunt C. says I'm not to see you ever again,I sent.
Now you're just teasing me.
I smiled at the message. I already knew he was probably standing outside, waiting. I got up and walked over to the egress window. Yep, a pair of legs were there.
"Hiya, Baccha," I said.
He crouched down.
"Oh, hello gorgeous."
I pretended not to hear that.
"Are you already drunk?" I asked.
"Just one can, and a bit of something else, maybe," he sang out. Oh boy.
I motioned for him to come back in. I mean, what was Aunt Constance going to do, ground me for seeing him? As it stood, I could use his help finding out more about what she wasn't telling me.
"I'll go with you, but first sign of trouble and we're out, clear?" I began.
"You got it," he said, grinning wide.
"Let me change, and no, you can't come with me."
"You're no fun."
10 minutes later I'd finally found a top large enough to conceal my boobs, though it still needed a second layer to really cover it up. Instinctively I'd reached for a faded denim jacket, but at the last minute switched for a black Harrington with the classic checkerboard lining. I grabbed a green beanie too as I opened the door.
"I was just about to load up Metal Slug 3," Baccha said.
"How're we getting there," I asked as I accepted Baccha's hand and he pulled me out the window.
"Well," he began, but said nothing more. We both turned toward the road, where a motor's roar drowned out all other sounds.
A four-door convertible stopped across the street. It was painted glitter-silver, an image of what a child thought a sick car looked like.
As we got closer to it, I saw that there were two people in front. A couple.
"Your friends are wearing sunglasses," I whispered to Baccha, "at night."
"They're vampires," he whispered back, making zero sense. "Yo!"
They both turned and acknowledged us by nodding very slowly.
"This is Frank, and Lisa," Baccha said when we got in the back. They looked an awful lot like the cover of Sonic Youth's Goo record.
I recognised'Love Like Blood' by Killing Joke playing.
"Love this song," I said, and waited for them to say something. Frank returned his gaze to the front and drove off. I wondered if I should be nervous about Baccha's quip.
Baccha said, "Do you know that it's a New Moon tonight?"
"Not you too," I sulked. He gave me a quizzical look, but probably figured out who I was referring to. "Why's it relevant to Jon Hodkins?"
"The moon's phases play a big part in magic," he said, "Many mark the New Moon as a time to begin work on their intentions for the period, usually a ritual each day, escalating their desires as the moon waxes."
I thought that made sense. Witches harnessing nature's momentum, or rather working alongside it.
"The full moon is the peak?" I ventured.
"Yes," Baccha replied. "If you observe, things get a little intense in the week leading up to it. Couples argue, then make up like rabbits. More bar fights, accidents."
"Women's periods usually align with the moon too, right?"
"Yup. Makes sense if you think about it: The tides go high and low because of the moon's gravitational pull, and we're mostly water." He shot me a conspiratorial look, "Many cultures acknowledge a male cycle too."
"Okay," I said, deciding to steer us all back to the death trap we were fast approaching. "so, what, you think Jon's disappearance has to do with a ritual? He was sacrificed?"
"Something like that," Lisa said. She lifted her shades and our eyes met in the mirror. Her gaze was piercing, as if she was trying to decide whether to call me dude or dudette. But if Baccha hadn't told them anything about me, then he would've introduced me earlier. So I was certain that they already knew much, much more about me than I did about them.
I kept quiet then, deciding to let them talk, or not. All this new moon stuff, it felt like something important was going on, and that I was in the dark about it all. I felt the need to be careful, to be especially attentive to what was going on.
Frank had just parked outside the Invisible Scorpion when I realised my two new friends were high as fuck. Make that three. Frank and Lisa stumbled out of the car and looked around, as if blinded by the fuzzy orange glow of the streetlights, even with their sunglasses. I thought they were going to start hissing and dive back into the car. Instead they began trudging through the grass, towards the woods.
"What are you guys on?" I demanded. Baccha didn't hesitate.
"Mushies," he said.
"You weren't joking about partying," I fumed, because no one had thought to let me know, because Frank had drove us here while coming up on it, because maybe I wouldn't have minded taking a dose. What with the new moon being a special time and all that!
"Actually, the psilocybin helps with the magic. It might make it easier for us to pick up Jon's trail."
"Then why didn't I get some?" I asked.
He stopped and turned to me. "We had a feeling you probably didn't need it."
Uh, okay.
"So, are Frank and Lisa chaos magicians too?" I asked in a hushed voice. Not that it was necessary; they'd gone much further ahead. A pair of white lights in the distance bouncing about where all we could see.
"Are they chaos magicians," he repeated slowly, "I wouldn't say that. Do you know anything about the left-hand path?"
I shook my head and waited, looking up at the canopy through which I could faintly make out the slight crescent in the cloudless sky.
"Well, for the record, I don't consider myself a chaos magician either."
I couldn't speak. When I turned my gaze away from the moon it appeared like shadows were all around us. Running from tree to tree, stalking and lying in wait.
Baccha must've sensed them too, but we kept on walking, as if we knew that to stop now would've been the end of us. Forget this night air, I was suddenly filled with longing for the warm cocoon of my basement room.
Passing a tight bound of trees we emerged into a clearing, where Frank and Lisa were waiting. I couldn't believe it. I'd expected monsters, bats and snakes. I'd expected to find Jon Hodkins crucified upside down with his innards trailed over a bloodied shoulder.
It was a garden, filled with so many variations of roses.
I looked at Baccha, and found that for once he was just as surprised as I was.
"This is the place," Lisa said. Frank nodded.
"What place?" I asked, as a complex blend of floral, musk, and fruity scents hit my olfactory senses.
"This is where Jon . . . disappeared."
"You guys said he was part of a ritual or something?"
"Yes, and the ritual involves a portal."
"A portal?" Portals are real now? What else was going to happen? Would I eventually get abducted by a spacecraft?
"It's not how you're picturing it," Frank said to me, clearly out of sympathy for my confusion. "The portals we're talking about, you don't step through them."
"Then how . . ." I looked at the sea of red, pink, and yellow surrounding us. "The roses?"
"Yup."
"Like, you gotta pick the right one or something?"
"That's what we've been trying to figure out," Baccha said, "We've been visiting this forest for years, this spot. It's not always a rose garden."
"What? What else was here before, an amusement park?"
"Once, yeah." He was not amused.
"The travelling circus," Lisa remarked, "That was a wild weekend."
"Jesus." I remembered they were all probably tripping balls. None of them were laughing. Thankfulness surged in me; I doubt I would've been handling all this well under the influence of mushrooms, or even alcohol.
"So this time around it's a garden. And you've been coming here frequently?"
"Each new moon," Baccha said. "Anyway, about the portal. Each time, it's the same, regardless of whatever's out here. You have to walk around and find the object you're supposed to find."
"Most importantly, perhaps," he added, "what you gotta know, is, that each person goes separately."
"Excellent," I sighed, "to where?"
"That's the fun part," he said, slowly smiling.
I was about to ask if that meant that it was always the same place, or otherwise, but then it clicked.
Jon knew about this place. He'd been coming here for years with this trio of doofuses.
I saw Baccha give a knowing glance my way. He shrugged, as if in reply to my thoughts. Was he actually reading my mind?
"Yes," Lisa said, "we've been doing it since the shrooms kicked in."
"Pretty standard phenomenon," Frank added.
Ugh.
"One weird fucking thing at a time," I said, desperately holding on to the strings of information. "So Jon ran in here because he wanted to go through the portal. But he didn't make it out. Did he get lost?"
The three of them exchanged looks. This was when I realised that they were probably communicating telepathically. Of course, I made sure to not think it. Finally, Baccha spoke out.
"The shadows got to him."