Jennalise opened her eyes. Something had awakened her. By the movement inside her tiny cottage she could tell that something had woken her animals as well. A sound? No. She had always had very acute hearing and over the years she had trained herself to open her ears and her mind further. To hear sounds whose resonance still hung in the air after it was past hearing. Nothing.
She swung her feet over the side of the bed and enjoyed the cold delicious feel of the hardwood on her bare feet. Without bothering to light a lamp she brushed her long gray hair away from her face and made her way to the door, carefully stepping over the silent but alert mastiff that lay protectively across her doorstep. “It’s okay Bayou” she said to him. The moment she opened the door both her cats leapt silently over the dog’s hulking form and scampered out into the night. She nodded once at the dog and then closed the door behind her. She stood in the grass, wet and dewy and let the mist wash over her. Her thin nightshirt slowly was becoming damp. God she loved it up here. The weather, the thickness of the air, was one of the main reasons she had chosen to live up on this hill surrounded by the dense and pulsating city below. The air was thicker and there was more energy in it. All those lives and thoughts and words seemed to become almost trapped in the foggy mists that blew perpetually over the city. Some nights you could pull whole sentences, whole emotions from it. Most of her kind preferred the tree-covered hills to the north. Of course most of her kind also preferred being part of a coven. Not Jennalise. Aside from the training she had received from the old woman she had always worked alone. She found that solitary practice allowed her to dispense with needless ceremony and focus on her work. She didn’t bow and scrape to ancient god and goddesses. She listened and learned.
Tonight there was something in the air. Again. In the last month she and her animals had been woken in the middle of the night several times. Slowly she walked to the base of the huge Redwood tree that grew in the middle of her yard. At least 100 years old, it was huge and gnarled and strong. Taking a deep breath, she slowly relaxed her body until it was pressed completely against the tree. Her cheek resting against the bark, she slowed her body and her mind and let herself feel nothing but the tree. There it was. Just for a second she picked it up. One transient thought. Evil. And it was near enough that some of it had been caught in the branches of the tree. Evil on her mountain. She steadied herself, patted the bark of the tree appreciatively and walked forward towards the back door of the main house that lay 100 feet in front of her cottage.
She quickly punched in the 5-digit code that dismantled the burglar alarm and then opened the door. She reached for the light switch and the kitchen lit up. She looked around and made a mental note that she really needed to dust in here. She had purchased the house seven years before because she had wanted the cottage and the tree that stood between the two structures. The large front house was her screen and she tried to maintain it. It was furnished and decorated and looked, she hoped, like the house of a very Spartan person who just didn’t remember to dust very often. She had the lights in the rooms on a very elaborate timer system so that they went on and off as seemingly randomly as the lights in the other large expensive houses around her. She spent very little time here, preferring immensely the tiny cottage with its wood floors, piles of books, tiny wood burning stove and comfortable single bed beneath the window. A witch didn’t need all this space to fill with possessions and distractions. The one thing she did keep in the main house was her computer. Unlike many of her kind, Jennalise didn’t shun technology. At 47 she could have justified technological ignorance with the “I’m too old to learn all that new fangled stuff” excuse but she hadn’t. The Internet had opened up a whole new world of exploration to her. She walked down the hall to her study, a room with a desk, chair and computer, and turned the machine on.
Three hours later, as the sun was just beginning to color the sky, she turned it off again. She gathered up the files she had printed out and hugged the pages to her chest. Three dead bodies on her mountain. No determination to the cause of death on any of them. Jenna knew that all you had to do to kill someone was take his or her life. That tiny fragile flicker was all that kept people going. With a shiver she quickly made her way back to her cottage where Bayou, her ever-faithful guardian, was still waiting patiently. She smiled and squatted down to pet his silky coat. “Good boy” she said to him, “Go on outside and have a romp. I’m fine.” The dog looked at her questioningly for a second and then got to his feet and padded outside where he immediately began sniffing a bush. Jenna smiled for a second and then closed the door firmly. She had work to do.
Bayou sniffed again. He trotted over to where the edge of her garden backed into the woods and sniffed again. Lingering in the air above the smell of ragweed and dill he caught the faintest whiff. They had been there. He had seen them. Yellow eyes watching him from the trees. But no sound. No howl or bark. Just the watching hungry eyes. The eyes that were growing in numbers. He looked back at the cabin. She didn’t know about the silent eyes. He marked their territory again, his only spell, and then padded back to the cabin and scratched politely at the door. When she opened it he stepped inside and then waited for her to resume whatever task she had been about. As soon as she sat back down at the small table, piled to overflowing with books, he placed his giant head in her lap and looked at her. Hard and unblinking. A few times before he had been able to get a hazy thought across to her. Somehow he had to make her aware of the not-wolves.
“Bayou” Jennalise gave his head a playful shove, “I appreciate the adoration but I’m working right now. Go lay down.” The dog merely continued to stand his ground and look at her. He tilted his head up so that, with her seated, their heads were almost level. As she reached for another book he laid his paw over hers. Startled she looked back at the dog. “Bayou?” she laid a hand on his head and met the dog’s gaze. Rarely had he looked at her that intently. “Okay boy” she said quietly “Okay.” She took a deep breath and then let it slowly out, emptying her mind of all the thoughts that had been swirling around a moment before. Jenna pressed her forehead against the dog’s brow and waited. A hazy image flickered in her mind.
Yellow eyes…
Bayou felt her eyes start open and sat back on his haunches to look at her. Her face was white and she was sweating. He licked her hand and then walked slowly over to his post by the door. She knew now and he was tired. Turning around three times he laid down and quickly fell asleep.
Jennalise sat at her kitchen table with Bayou lying across her feet. She nudged his heavy frame with one foot, “Where were you, you silly swamp mutt?” She hadn’t been able to find him all afternoon, and then she’d thought she’d heard the faint ring of the doorbell of the big house. But when she’d finally pulled herself out of the cottage, crossed the yard, and opened the front of the big house, there was no one there, though she could still faintly hear a doorbell ringing. When she’d shut it and turned around, there was Bayou. “How did you get in here?” She asked him. He’d been acting strangely lately. The house was curiously silent, even more silent than usual. She listened again. No doorbell. Jenna patted Bayou on the head and walked back out the back door, making sure he was following, set the alarm again and went back into her cottage. Bayou only stopped once, perking up his ears, and looking back at the big house. Jennalise stopped too, calling him, and then stopping in the middle of his name. She could almost swear that she heard a little boy talking, but then the sound was gone.
In the last few days she had spent many hours on the Internet and even more reading through her oldest texts. Last night she had laid awake all night with the windows open, trying to pinpoint the source of the evil. Bayou had disappeared several times in the last few days. She hadn’t worried about it too much, he was his own dog, but she wished she knew what his canine senses had detected. She wished they could compare notes. In the morning all she knew for sure was that it was close. She sighed and decided to make herself a cup of tea. Stoking the wood stove she put on the kettle and then opened the cupboard and pulled down a loaf of bread, cutting off a slice and munching as she waited for the water to boil. She thought again of Bayou’s absences. She wondered if they were looking for the same thing. Tonight she would take him for a walk. Hopefully, he would walk her.
