Elizabeth Miles - Eternity

The woods towered like a wall in front of them as JD parked the car. He got out and retrieved two backpacks and a can of gasoline from the trunk. Melissa eyed the supplies warily, hugging herself. The wind whipped her hair around her face. She looked so small.

“You have to trust me,” JD pleaded. “If not for me, then do it for Em.”

“Don’t try to make me feel guilty,” she said. “I’ve already agreed, haven’t I?”

That’s when he knew she was on board. He threw her the lighter of the two backpacks and clicked on his heavy-duty flashlight. “Follow me.”

She nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

They made their way quickly beneath stooped pines and the incandescent moon, moving at a pace that was somewhere between a walk and a run, even as the clouds continued to encroach on the sky and the wind tore shrilly through the trees. Branches tore at JD’s sleeves and backpack but he didn’t care. He had to keep moving. To stay still was to succumb to the evil that permeated these woods. As they walked, he gathered up pieces of kindling and small sticks to burn. Then there was a whistling behind him, in the trees.

“Is that you, Mel?” he asked sharply. It stopped.

“Is what me?” she replied. “I didn’t do anything.”

They knew. They were here.

By the time they stepped out into the gloomy clearing, both he and his sister were short of breath.

A few lights flickered inside the house, and the air was practically buzzing with energy from the oncoming storm—or maybe from the Furies’ presence.

There was no way of knowing whether Ty and the other girls were inside; JD just had to hope that the ritual would draw them in from wherever it was they existed. He felt sick to his stomach, nauseous with nerves and doubts. But he thought of the case inside the Furies’ house, the one with Em’s pen and Drea’s pin, and it stoked the fire of anger inside him.

He indicated silently to Melissa that they should go around to the back of the house. To the garden. She nodded.

They went as quietly as possible, staying close to the walls. JD was practically afraid to breathe. He kept imagining the shadows transforming, taking shape, morphing into Ty’s wide smile or Meg’s staring eyes.

“The garden is so beautiful,” Melissa whispered.

JD stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“What we’re walking through. It’s pretty.” She gestured all around them.

All JD saw was a charred patch of dirt, dotted with charred stumps and dead, strawlike stalks of grass. Errant stones, once part of a garden wall, lay scattered around the yard. Whatever Melissa’s joke was, he didn’t get it. “Whatever, Mel, let’s just keep going.”

“It’s hard to believe something so beautiful could be so bad,” she said, reaching up to make a picking motion with her fingers. Then she passed her hand toward him. While she was doing it, it looked like a miming exercise. But as soon as their fingers touched, JD felt a jolt run through him. He felt something between his thumb and his pointer finger, something like a stem. He blinked.

The garden seemed to grow in front of him, with greenery shooting up from the ground and pushing forcefully over high stone walls that were miraculously erected out of the rubble in a matter of seconds. It was like watching a movie in fast-forward. The enormous garden of flowers crystallized in a flash of magic, framed by drooping willows that sprouted instantaneously from blackened stumps.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

This was the place. It was time.

“Stay here,” he mouthed to Melissa as he started unpacking his backpack. With one of the sticks, he scratched a large protective circle in the ground. He motioned that she should sit in the middle of it. She did. Her eyes were big and scared. He kneeled down and took her shoulders. “Nothing will happen to you,” he said, digging out both snake pins from his pockets and pinning them hastily to her shirt. He had to move fast now. The moon was almost directly overhead. He arranged the sticks in a circle around her, some of them pointing vertically toward the sky, others in clumps on the ground, following the line he’d drawn in the dirt. He piled orchid petals, ripped from their stems, around everything. Then he ran back over to the supplies, grabbed the can of gasoline, and squirted a bit of that over the sticks. They’d been wet with spring rain. He needed to be sure they caught fire.

Melissa whimpered. “What are you doing?” There was panic in her voice.

“No matter what happens, don’t move,” he said. His hands were shaking. Then he repeated his vow: “Nothing will happen to you. I promise. Just don’t move.”

With trembling hands, he pulled a matchbook from his pants pocket. Was he really going to do this?

You know as well as anyone that this is dead serious, Ali had said. And she was right. He’d already lost one friend and he was in danger of losing another. All his paths were blocked. All except this one.

“You ready?” he asked Melissa.

She nodded but couldn’t contain another whimper.

With every ounce of false confidence he could muster, he smiled at her—the same smile he’d given her a hundred times, over board games or the dinner table or at their grandparents’ house when Grandma Rose started telling the story of the pickle jar. It was a smile that said, We’re in this together. I’m feeling what you’re feeling. I’ve got your back.

When she tried, and failed, to smile back, his heart nearly broke.

Now.

He lit the match, crouched down, and held the tiny flame to a piece of kindling. It nearly singed his fingernails. A trail of sulfur hung in the air once he shook the match out. Then another, and another. The branches caught fire almost immediately, and the circle went whoosh , up in flames like a domino chain of red heat. Then, crackling and popping, the familiar sounds of a campfire. He walked backward, taking in the scene.

“JD!” Melissa yelled, scrabbling toward the center. “What the hell? Where are you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, Mel.” JD tried to keep his voice calm. He yelled so she could hear him over the distance and noise of the fire. “It’s like a spell. I promise I won’t let it get out of control. You have to trust me.”

Melissa nodded, but she was shaking, and he could tell she was trying not to cry. In the light of the flames, her cheeks were pink-orange; her blue shirt looked black. Her eyes glistened, like tears were on the brink of spilling.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Just a few minutes. You’re safe.”

JD looked around, waiting for the Furies to appear. Praying that they would, yet dreading the moment they did. When they showed up— if they showed up—what would happen then? Mr. Feiffer’s letter hadn’t included a spell or a chant. . . . JD felt sweat beading on his brow. What if he’d missed something? What if this wasn’t right?

There was crashing in the underbrush nearby. Someone was coming. He and Melissa locked eyes, and he braced himself for impact. He waited to see Ali or Ty or Meg emerge from the trees. He spun in a circle, searching the darkness, his eyes already bleary with smoke, trying to guess where they would come from.

Then, a scream. Melissa. The crashing hadn’t come from below. It was from above. A branch, falling from the tall maple tree next to the fire circle. He ran toward her in horror, but he wasn’t fast enough—the branch slammed against the top of Melissa’s head, and she collapsed in a heap in the center of the flames.

Oh god oh god oh god. He edged close to the flames, trying to get past them, but they were as high as his waist and he couldn’t get to her. “Melissa!” he cried out. But she didn’t move.