Journal entry from Tuesday, August 9, 2011

6:00 a.m. in Los Angeles

I look up from the Salvia journal to find the morning sun flooding my bedroom. Rhythmic footfalls across oak flooring tell me George is awake and pacing. Ken and Martin crashed just as the sun came up about an hour ago.

Too wired to sleep, I slam the journal shut, tuck it under my arm, and join George in front of the picture window in the living room. I shove the leather-bound book into his chest. "Read."

With a groan, George takes the journal from my hands and opens it to the page marked with a worn leather strap attached to the spine. His eyes follow my scrawl across brown, unlined pages. When he reaches the bottom of the first page describing what happened last night, his eyebrows lift in recognition. "Square, one-story wooden building with a pitched roof and a hitching post out front. Sounds like the Log Cabin Mercantile on Lake Manor Drive."

I nod as George continues reading. After a few moments, he stops to point an index finger at the center of the second page. "Rectangular shack with a flat roof, a buckling slat board porch, and casement windows either side of the double front doors." George snaps his fingers. "The Hillbilly Haven."

His forehead crinkles in a frown as he turns toward the picture window overlooking the Chatsworth Reservoir. The morning sky is clear and cloudless. Sunlight flashes off the windshield of a car cruising on Lake Manor Drive along the reservoir's northern border. George's eyes flick westward along the road toward Amber McBride's house atop Lizard Hill. "The volcano."

With a sigh, he closes the book and rests his forehead against the glass. The faraway look in his eyes tells me he's thinking about last night's kiss from the Celtic Goddess Brigid.

I want to slap that love-sick look off his face, but a deeper unease seizes my gut. A memory surfaces about the Celts, something I read during one of my classes at UCLA.

Worship of the gods requires human sacrifice.

Grabbing George by the shoulders, I turn him to face me. "Snap out of it! She's luring you into a trap."

George shakes me off and shoves the journal into my hands. "You wouldn't understand."

As he turns back toward the window to stare at Amber's house, I deliver a vicious knuckle punch to his upper arm. "Pendejo. Google 'Celts and human sacrifice.'"

I leave him at the picture window and return to my bedroom to finish the account of last night's fucked up (even by LA standards) events.

Sometime between 3:00-4:00 a.m.

Black smoke billows from burning buildings as the broken cars littering the dirt road explode. The air is heavy with the hellish scent of Sulphur. Amber's mother is shaking, and every tremor threatens her collapse. She's staring at Amber-now-Brigid, making out with George. Behind Aislinn hovers the Chatsworth Reservoir portal.

Seamus O'Donnell lets loose a predator's roar and sweeps his cloak over Brigid's head. I grab George's right arm and yank him in my direction. Lightning fast, his left hand shoots out to grab the Goddess's arm. She dissolves into sparkling white light as George pulls her away from the sorcerer.

His momentum knocks me off-balance, and I stumble backward into Aislinn. Releasing George, I pivot and reach for her. My hands catch air as she's sucked into the portal.

The sorcerer's face screws up with rage. He opens his mouth abnormally wide to release a cloud of black flies. They swarm George and I in a buzzing whirlwind, plunging us into darkness. Covering my mouth with my left hand to keep the flies out, I yell, "Is that all you've got, asshole?" My right hand finds George and I move into a fighting formation behind his back.

At eye-level, sparks of white light pierce the darkness. They coalesce into a ball, then whirl around our heads in a halo. Tiny bolts of lightning shoot from the circling light to zap the insects. The halo spins in a blur as it floats above us, then flips sideways and drops to waist level. At its center, the portal reappears.

George moves to my side, his arms wrapped around Amber's unconscious stick figure. I nod, and we leap through the opening.

We float away from the flames and explosions. The portal shrinks to a pinpoint, then disappears. We're suspended in white, soundless nothingness. With both hands, I grab belt loops on George's jeans to keep him from drifting away. His face is buried in Amber's hair, which floats around her head in a red halo.

Something cold brushes my right ear as a voice whispers. Mijo, go home.

I turn toward the sound, but there's nothing in an ocean of nothingness. Memories of this past year flash rapid fire across my mind.

Dawn is breaking and I'm atop the Twelve Apostles. At the bottom lies Mama in a blood-stained wedding gown, her body broken and twisted. I'm frozen at the cliff's edge. Do I run and get my brothers? Call 9-1-1?

Rogue emotional waves swell and crash, trying to take me down. After Papa died, I kept my shit tight. Swallowed my grief and stepped up as the man of the house. But Mama's suicide unleashes the floodgates. I drop to my knees and weep. Pent-up sadness bursts to spill onto the sandy soil.

By the time I dust myself off and rise to stand, the sun hovers above the eastern skyline. I breathe deeply, then retrieve my cell phone from my back pocket and call 9-1-1. Turning toward the long dirt driveway leading up to the house, I steel myself to face my brothers.

Fuck this pity party. Anger swells from my gut to seize my throat in a growl.

George raises his head and looks over his shoulder. "You talking to me?"

Beyond his head, greyness seeps across the blank canvass. Damp mists roll from the darkness as it devours the purgatorial nothingness.

Suddenly, George is pulled from my grasp and the firmness of earth is under my back. Aislinn's voice cuts through the heavy fog, but I can't understand her. Rolling onto my left side, I reach for George, but my hands clutch sandy dirt.

The mist slowly retracts, and the savory scent of black sage rushes into my nostrils. I'm looking up at the star-studded night sky. The Chatsworth Reservoir erupts in coyote howls and cricket chirrups. I'm lying in the dirt center of the stone circle atop the mysterious hill.

I push up from my stomach to my knees, then stand. Three feet from me, George is in a crumpled heap atop Amber. On the opposite side of the hilltop, Aislinn's pacing. Her long red hair sways as she walks. Mama called her a whore; said she should die.

As she turns to walk toward us, new white streaks at her temples gleam under the moonlight. Lines crease her formerly smooth forehead. She stops next to George and Amber. "Get off her!"

With a groan, George rolls off the skinny teen.

Aislinn drops to her knees and leans over Amber's unmoving body. "Honey, wake up." When Amber doesn't respond, she sits in the dirt to cradle her daughter. Aislinn kisses her forehead and whispers something in her ear.

George rises and walks to stand next to me. "Are you okay?"

I want to punch him for asking such a stupid question, but my attention's focused on the pair.

Minutes pass as we wait for Amber to regain consciousness.

Buzzing erupts from my cell phone. I pull it from the front pocket of my jeans and answer. It's Ken.

"Where the fuck are you? We've been home an hour."

I nudge George, who shakes his head and crosses his arms over his chest. Amber's witchy transformation must've scrambled his brain. "You're pussy crazed."

Loud swearing bursts from the cell phone. I step away from the others to snap at Ken. "Dickhead, I wasn't talking to you. What happened at the Garcia's?"

"We found Fernando standing outside one of the windows. Guessing it's Marisol's bedroom. Soon as he sees us, he asks us to protect her. Then poof! He disappears. But get this! He left Fiesta flowers underneath her window."

This bombshell leaves me speechless. Anyone who's encountered ghosts knows they can't impact the physical realm. Without muscles and a body, they can't move shit. So how did Fernando manage to leave flowers?

I find my voice. "We'll be back soon." Then I hang up and walk back toward the others.

Amber's sitting and blinking with wide eyes. George kneels at her right, Aislinn to her left. Her eyes find George and she blushes so deeply, it's visible under the moonlight.

George leans in to whisper in her ear. Amber covers her eyes with her hands. As George's left arm wraps around Amber's back, Aislinn straddles her daughter. She pulls Amber's hands away from her face and leans in so close she's nose-to-nose. "Where's Conlan?"

Without answering, Amber turns away from her mother to bury her face in George's chest.

I chime in. "Christ Almighty, give the kid a minute to recover." Damn, she's a shit mother.

Aislinn ignores me and grabs Amber by the chin. "Tell me!"

The skinny teen's oily long hair falls around her face in a curtain. "I don't know."

"Brigid possessed you, and she knows!"

George's right arm shoots between the two to push Aislinn backward. In a catlike motion, she leaps to her feet and kicks him in the chest. As he's knocked away from Amber, Aislinn drops to her knees to straddle her daughter. Aislinn grabs Amber's shoulders and forces her backward into a prone position.

George jumps to his feet and we approach the pair to rescue the kid. Aislinn's screaming in her face as Amber lies motionless on the ground. As we reach them, Amber's hands suddenly shoot up to shove Aislinn in the chest.

With a scream, Aislinn jumps to stand. "You burned me!" Grabbing her shirt, she pulls it up and over her head. Creamy C-cup boobs are cupped by a lacy red bra. Her white skin is marred by a red welt slashed across her chest. With effort, I force myself to look away.

As Amber pushes into a seated position and adjusts her t-shirt, two tiny points protrude from her formerly flat chest. Dios Mio! I don't want to see Amber's tits. I turn away from the circle's center as George extends a hand to help her stand.

I can't unsee the skinny teen growing a pair of tatas, so I force myself to focus on the hilltop crowned by granite boulders. At eight to ten feet in height, they block the view of the surrounding reservoir. Although sumac blooms along the outer edge, nothing's growing inside the stone circle.

A hand grabs my shoulder. Turning, I find a solemn George with his left arm wrapped around an unsteady-looking Amber. "I'm going to walk her home."

Behind the pair, Aislinn lets out a shriek. "What about Conlan? Open the portal!"

My chest tightens in annoyance. "You open it, witch! But you'll end up a withered old crone if you do."

Still shirtless, Aislinn walks around George and Amber to stand three feet from me. Her hair swings with the movement and she gasps as a long strand of white hair falls over her shoulder. Fingers fly to her face. When she finds the creases bisecting her forehead, she whimpers. For a second, I almost feel sorry for her.

George nods at me, then pivots with Amber to walk between two boulders and toward her home at the western edge of the reservoir.

Aislinn hesitates. She bends to pick her shirt off the ground, then twists it between her fingers as she scans the barren hilltop.

I close the gap between us and grab her pale, skinny biceps. She smells like a combination of lavender and toilet bowl cleaner. "What is my mother to you?"

In one motion, she drops her shirt and shoves me in the chest. I hold steady. As I move my hands from her upper arms to grasp her wrists, my fingers brush scar tissue running from the inside of her elbows and along her forearms. Shit, she's a junkie.

I squeeze her wrists. "Talk."

With a groan, she stops struggling. "Fine! We were friends when we were kids."

No way Mama was friends with a drug addict. I raise an eyebrow. "Were?"

Aislinn looks down and to her left. "We used to write to each other. Lost touch as we got older."

Liar. "Mama never mentioned you, so you must've been dead to her." My fingers curl tighter around her wrists as I pull Aislinn close. "What did you do?"

She raises her head so we're nose-to-nose. Green eyes fill with tears that stream down her cheeks. "I loved your mother like a sister."

Aislinn's shoulders slump and she collapses against my chest in heaving sobs. Her grief hits me like a rogue wave that churns all the heavy shit I've kept a lid on.

Fuck this. I release my grip and step backward to distance myself from the heaviness. Aislinn's eyes widen at my retreat. For several moments, she's still, a pale silhouette under the moonlight.

Bending forward, I snatch her shirt and rise to throw it at her chest. She catches it with one hand as I turn north toward the Twelve Apostles and exit the stone circle.

AUTHOR NOTES:

Banner photo of the Twelve Apostles taken by the author

Playlist Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue

https://youtu.be/utyXQqZ35do