Winterland Read online

  Eunice opened her mouth to speak, but found no retort. After fumbling about for one, she said, “You’re mean.”

  “The truth hurts.” Reverend Ash casually inspected his nails. “Or so I hear.”

  Eunice turned away from Reverend Ash and hurried to Joseph’s side. But there was no consolation for her. Between Mordant and Ash, she could see why her mother had gone mad.

  A growing dread of this person Sybil loomed on her mind. If she were to be stuck here, would she go insane? Even worse, would she be trapped in some type of hell?

  They walked on. Her thirst became insatiable. Eunice licked her parched lips and fatigue tugged at her mind. The dry blasted Plain was wearing on her. Even summer in SoCal was better than this blighted interstate.

  “Oh-h-h,” Mordant cried out. “Not doing well. Mmph! Must rest.”

  She turned to see Mister Mordant plop onto the cracked earth and slump forward, blubbering.

  “We’ll never make it. Prt-fff!! Trials and torments. Misery’s the lot. Aw!” Tears tumbled from his face, splashing on the hard dirt. “Doomed, we are! All doomed.”

  Eunice came to a stop, as did Reverend Ash, who rolled his large eyes at the pathetic creature. But watching Mordant slumped there seemed to magnify Eunice’s own exhaustion.

  “He’s right,” she said. “We should sit down. Just for a minute.”

  And before she knew it, Eunice was sitting cross-legged on the ground across from Mister Mordant. He dabbed the tears from his eyes and snuffled his approval.

  “I’m so thirsty,” she said, brushing the hair from her face. “And tired too.”

  “Thirsty, yes,” Mordant said. “Cinder does that. See? The pretties need rest. Mmmph! Hard, I tell ya. The stew needs stirrin’. And the rot—oomph! Better to burrow.”

  “You shut up!” Eunice shot an angry glare at Mordant. “I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  “Rt! Not listening to your old friend?”

  “We aren’t friends.” Eunice yawned. “Remember?”

  A great wave of exhaustion seemed to be upon her. She groggily turned toward the Plains of Cinder to see Joseph standing some distance away, silhouetted against the angry sky. She wanted to call out, but thought it best to conserve her energy. He would wait for her. She just needed to close her eyes.

  “So tired,” she slurred, and lay back on the ground. “Just a minute. Tell him… to wait.”

  She could hear Mister Mordant speaking, but he seemed to be far away.

  “…ret inside… mergen… un…”

  Those words…

  “to the… over aw… stit…”

  And then came the smell of exhaust fumes and burning rubber.

  It was never far away—isn’t that what Joseph said? But if she left now, what would happen to her mother? Eunice had promised to fight. But matches like this never ended in a draw.

  She tried to open her mouth to speak, to shake herself from the malaise. But a deathly cold seemed to drape her.

  “The four of us.” It was Mordant’s voice. “Together. Mmph! We can sleep here. A long sleep. Then we’ll never have to be alone.”

  She nodded to herself. Sleep. They’d walked for miles and seemed no closer to her destination than when she’d left. Besides, if this were all a dream, then she would wake up on the other side of this with only a vague recollection of Winterland and its bizarre inhabitants. That wouldn’t be all that bad.

  Eunice groaned. A chill swept by and she shivered. She was tumbling into the restful dark. Where people were waiting for her.

  When she was a child, sleep had been a way of escape—escape from her parents’ divorce, escape from her mother’s prostitution. Escape from her abandonment. Perhaps this was why so many fairy creatures came out at night. Peter Pan. The fae. Goblins and ghoulies. Sleep was their playground, and now they were coming out to play.

  “Eunice…”

  The voice was distant. Maybe it was Granny Em, summoning Eunice back to the cottage of misery.

  “Eunice…”

  Perhaps it was her father. How long had it been since she’d heard him? Did he know how much pain he had caused her? Did he realize he’d short-circuited her adolescence and forced her to grow up?

  “Eunice…”

  Then again, maybe it was the Lexus man, calling her back into the land of the living where a freeway full of pissed off commuters were waiting for her. Her playtime was over and now it was time to go and face the stark realities of her life.

  “Eunice!”

  She awoke with a start. A dark shape was huddled over her with sickly red eyes, full of hate and hunger. Rank breath pelted her and on it was blood and death. She gasped for breath, but the air had been sucked out of her lungs. No! She couldn’t die here.

  Eunice forced out a scream and scrambled to her feet, flailing at the dark shape huddled over her.

  But no one was there.

  Reverend Ash stood alone, some distance away, picking at particles on his clothing, while Mordant had managed to scratch out a hovel and lay squatted inside it. They both gawked at her.

  She gripped her throat just to make sure the deathly dream presence had not remained.

  Joseph stood on an escarpment looking out on the barren plain. But something had changed. Something about the smell and lay of the land was different. He turned and anxiously waved her forward. Eunice glanced at Ash and Mordant, recalling her claustrophobic nightmare. She walked toward Joseph, peering at the changing topography. And what she saw stopped her in her tracks.

  A war zone spread before her.

  Craters marred the landscape, bomb-blasted cavities that sent threads of smoke writhing skyward. Behind them laid an enormous ribbed structure silhouetted against the awful sky. And Eunice stood gaping at what looked like the hull of a massive structure collapsed on the tarmac.

  It was the remains of a blimp.

  TWELVE

  “Blimps weren’t exactly my thing,” said Eunice absently. “Or my mother’s.”

  “They don’t have to be,” Joseph said. “Just part of the psychography. Got dropped into the subconscious somewhere along the way, took root and fermented. Random firings, maybe. Either way, it’s there so… C’mon.”

  Then he lurched onto the highway, limping straight for the cyclopean dirigible.

  “But what does it mean?” Eunice called after him.

  He didn’t stop to respond.

  The wind picked up, whipping her hair about her face. The red sky was now a nuclear copper, weaving threads into the inky black sky. Dante’s choir had resumed its hellish cantata, a macabre soundtrack to the proceedings.

  “It’s her,” a voice gasped at her elbow.

  Eunice spun to see Mister Mordant at her side, biting his nails, staring wide-eyed at the war zone before them.

  “What an ungodly habitat,” Reverend Ash droned from the other side.

  “What?” she said. “Who?”

  “Sybil. Br-r-r.” Mordant shook his jowls. “I knew it. She’s havin’ us for dinner. Aw-w! Misery, woe, stitched for travel! Pllt! Playthings on a sinkin’ ship—that’s all we are!”

  “Dinner?!” Eunice swallowed. “But I’m not hungry.”

  Reverend Ash lifted his chin. “I go to my death with dignity. Stay behind if you must, Spawn.” He lurched forward.

  Mordant muttered something, threw his hands in the air, and burst after Reverend Ash with a frothy cry.

  Eunice remained, watching the three of them descend toward the blimp. “Fight,” she said to herself, trying to be convincing. “You gotta fight.” Then she hurried after them.

  The terrain grew more blasted and treacherous as she went. Piles of smoking debris glowed here and there. They passed the fuselage of a plane and shards of shrapnel. She even glimpsed the barrel of a canon protruding from an ash heap. The 210 had seen its share of road rage and fender benders, but Eunice could not recall a civil war having been waged here. Yet if this was her mother’s world, civil wars were probably a regu
lar occurrence.

  She maneuvered her way through a series of potholes and small crevices and joined Joseph.

  He glanced at her. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

  Eunice stared up at the gargantuan blimp. “My mother lives here?”

  “Your mother? No. It’s Sybil. Reverend Ash was right about one thing—without the Law, she’s got more room. And apparently, firepower. Whatever you do,” Joseph said, “stay on your toes. Okay? She’s slippery.”

  The red, hate-filled eyes Eunice had encountered in her dream seemed to hover in her mind. She forced the vision out of her head and then nodded.

  Mounds of gravel and tarmac, upturned by some cataclysm, opened along the way like huge abscesses in the highway. The closer they got to the ribbed structure, the more Eunice began to approximate its size. Massive curved planks rose into the sky like the scaffolding of an ancient coliseum. It was far bigger than any dirigible she had ever seen. Twenty, maybe thirty stories high. It stretched across the entire highway, its nose collapsed into the earth. Tattered skin draped its framework, flapping in the breeze like banners from a bygone crusade.

  They passed a smoldering crater. Then another. Finally, Joseph hiked up the side of one of the burning pits and stared down into it. “Eunice,” he called down to her. “You should see this.”

  “Ohhp!” Mordant yelped. Then he pressed his finger to his lips. “Shhh! Monsters. We don’t wanna waken the monsters.”

  Monsters? Eunice gazed at him.

  “You pathetic worm!” Ash stared down his nose at Mordant. “The only monsters are the ones in your head. Superstitious twit!” He spotted soot on his shoulder and quickly brushed it off.

  Joseph continued to motion her forward.

  She looked from Ash to Mordant, and then climbed up and stood on the edge of the steaming pit.

  Embers crackled inside and the soil revealed strata embedded with unusual shapes and fragments. Something had been unearthed by these blasts. She covered her nose and bent at the waist, trying to identify the puzzle of objects entombed in that blackened earth. An ivory tusk. A breastplate with ornate carving. A fair winged nymph lying in a fetal position. Eunice gasped and rose slowly. The entire crater was lined with fossils and artifacts. She was walking across the graveyard of some rich, fantastical world.

  “What is it?” Eunice said. “It’s beautiful.”

  And indeed it was. Precious stones glinted in the light, jade and jasper, amethyst and ruby, strewn amidst other treasures. It was as if some splendid antediluvian world had undergone the wrath of Vesuvius. This was once her mother’s world, a rich subliminal gallery now blasted from her mind by madness. Angels, fairies, valiant warriors, and maidens, torpedoed and left to ferment under this hellish sky.

  Eunice could not help but feel they were on holy ground.

  She brushed a tear from her cheek. What could have caused this? What monstrous thing would have—?

  “Look!” Mordant yelped.

  His cry tore Eunice from her thoughts. She turned to see a child, slight and nimble, running through the debris field.

  “It’s her!” Joseph navigated his way down the crater, fumbling for Eunice’s hand as he went.

  “Her who?”

  “Sybil!” He yanked her forward. “She’s the last one. The strongest of all three.”

  “I beg pardon.” Ash looked haughtily at Joseph.

  “Did she do this?” Eunice pointed at the crater. “Did she destroy those… things?”

  Joseph turned and looked at her. “Those things can’t be destroyed. Buried? Yes. But it seems like this war, and whoever waged it, might have accidentally jogged her memory. C’mon.”

  Joseph hurried after the child, dodging shrapnel and glowing pits. Eunice was at his heels, her mind going a hundred miles an hour. What other wonders lay just below the great highway? But she didn’t have time to speculate. They entered the blimp, passing through two massive joists that formed an archway. Before she knew it, they had entered a wall of bushes. Tall, thorny brambles rose on each side of them. They were on a trail, zigzagging through a vast maze of shrubbery. The bushes blocked out everything but the tumultuous sky overhead.

  This child was leading them through a maze.

  Or into one.

  “We’re gonna get lost,” she called to Joseph. “Be careful.”

  Left turn. Right. Another right. Then a long corridor with multiple adjoining branches. The child stopped and turned, daintily brushing down her dress. She was a nymph-like figure with skin so fair and white it might have been porcelain. She met Eunice’s eyes and giggled, before playfully bolting into another row of brambles.

  Ash and Mordant barreled from the hedges behind them and skidded to a stop just as Joseph and Eunice went the opposite direction after the little girl.

  “Wait for me!” Mordant yelped. “Ain’t made for bushies!”

  Their trek through the bramble maze was dizzying. Eunice’s arms were scratched and her clothing was tattered by the prickly limbs. The exhaustion seized upon her again. She couldn’t go on much longer at this pace. In fact, curling up for a nap seemed altogether reasonable. Just as she was about to tell Joseph to stop, they turned a corner and she tumbled into a grassy clearing.

  The Garden of Eden spread before them.

  Eunice sat up, awestruck. A lush carpet of green descended to a crystalline pond. The scent of fresh spring grass reawakened senses she thought had been cauterized by this viscous world. Was she even breathing? For a moment, she forgot everything, entranced by this Shangri-La inside the ruined blimp. Eunice brushed her fingers through the grass, drawing in its scent. It was like a revelation! How could it be? She rolled onto her back doing snow angels on the lawn.

  Mordant and Ash stood over her, gaping in astonishment.

  Overhead, the framework of the fallen blimp formed a massive dome. From its planks and beams hung lush plants and flowering vines. Eunice sat up to take in this astounding new world, for the biggest surprise of all awaited her: a spire of rock from which tumbled a gurgling fountain. At its base, white swans lazed amidst lily pads and dragonflies zipped between smooth boulders. Seated atop one of these boulders sat Sybil.

  Eunice scrambled to her feet, trying shake off the intoxication of the scene.

  Sybil spotted her and waved. “I’m glad you came. Come look!” She pointed excitedly into the pond.

  As Eunice stepped forward, Joseph put his hand on her arm. “She has to come, Eunice. It’s the only way.”

  Eunice nodded dimly, remaining fixed on the porcelain princess. Before she knew it, she had brushed Joseph aside and began walking along the lawn to the child.

  Sybil smiled as Eunice approached. “They told me you were coming.”

  “Who?”

  The girl smiled and pointed into the pond.

  A school of large red goldfish lolled below the surface, looking as if they were waiting to be fed.

  Eunice turned back to the child. Her complexion was flawless and she exuded an aura of innocence. Who could this little one be, out here in Nowhere Land?

  Eunice squinted at her. “The goldfish told you I was coming?”

  Sybil giggled. “No, silly. They did.” She pointed to Joseph, Mordant and Ash, who stood at a distance, watching their exchange.

  Eunice drew up her courage. “Then you know I’m coming to take you back to my mother.”

  “Oh my dear.” Sybil placed her hand over her mouth. “Then they haven’t told you.”

  “Told me what?” Eunice asked skeptically.

  The little girl gazed at Eunice. “You died in that car accident.”

  THIRTEEN

  Eunice swayed, then steadied herself and refocused on Sybil. This would explain everything. Eunice had died in the car accident! How else could such a vivid world and such exotic, terrifying fauna, be possible. And seem so real. It was real! But if she was dead, where was she? Perhaps this wasn’t a test about her mother at all. She had died and was passing to heaven. All that stuff a
bout traveling through a tunnel of light was wrong.

  Then again, maybe all this proved was that even after death, she could still over-think things.

  Joseph approached. “You’ve done enough damage, Sybil.”

  “Me?” Sybil said to Joseph. “Why, you haven’t even told her the truth.”

  “What haven’t you told me?” Eunice said to Joseph, with far too much suspicion in her tone. “Are you keeping something from me?”

  Joseph peered at Sybil, appearing to be mulling something. “You’re right. Maybe it is time I told her the truth.” He turned to Eunice. “Your mother has nurtured three spirits. Sybil’s one of them. They’re parasites, consuls of hell—all of them, concerned with only one thing: maintaining real estate. They’ve been passed down through your family for generations. Well, when you went to rehab, you interrupted the food chain. And they don’t like you. They never liked you. But now it’s an issue of survival—theirs or yours So don’t let them fool you, with their looks,” he gestured to Sybil, “or their words. Because if you don’t destroy them, your mother will be crowned Queen of Winterland. And their circle will remain… unbroken.”

  Sybil slipped off the rock and ambled to the pond, apparently unconcerned about Joseph’s indictment. She began gathering wildflowers from amidst the boulders, bundling them into colorful bouquet.

  Eunice looked from Joseph to Sybil, and back. “Then I didn’t die in that accident?”

  “No,” Joseph said flatly. “But if you get stuck here, then all bets are off.” He shrugged. “I told you there was risk involved.”

  “Generational spirits?” Eunice said to no one.

  Joseph nodded. “Think of it as your spiritual gene pool.”