Kimo was at the Epistles Emporium scanning through books for his Wiccan Rituals class, trying to focus on the work before him. But the pages were beginning to blur together, and he could feel energy draining. Since Jonathan, Kimo had barely slept or ate. He shut the book, shoved a few in his backpack, and walked down the winding space.
The Epistles Emporium was close to the night school, on the border of the city, hidden in tall slabs of stone that ran up a mountain range on the east end of the city. The walk back took Kimo down a thin dirt road where cars never traveled, stepping on the rocks scattered across the ground that worked as a barrier for any non-users that could wander too close. It took him almost 20 minutes to get back to a paved road. When he moved out of the tree line his phone vibrated and he saw a text message from a number not saved in his phone:
It's Ariane. We need to talk. Please come to the Hallowed Grounds Café when you see this.
Ariane was waiting for Kimo in one of the booths at the corner of the café, a large cup of steaming tea in front of her. Her face lit up when she saw him and she looked just as young as when she was in high school. He suspected she had inherited an unusually long lifespan from her mother—he guessed if he read her palms he could be able to track her lifeline into the 100s.
"Thank you for coming," she said as he sat down. "Can I get you a coffee or anything?"
"No thank you," said Kimo, rubbing his tired eyes.
"Are you ok? You look like you haven't slept in weeks."
"It's nothing of your concern. What did you need to see me for?"
"I need your help. My father is missing."
"So? Report it to the police."
"I can't do that. My mother can't either…but I think that's the problem. There's something wrong with her. She's been off since I arrived, and I tried to keep shrugging it off—you know better than most that she's more than a little strange—but I haven't seen my dad for over a week and she won't admit anything is wrong. She keeps insisting he's gone out on a hunting trip or something. Says he'll be back in a few days. I think he's in some kind of trouble but for some reason, she won't see that. And then I found this…"
She pulled a postcard out of her purse and handed it to him, a black and white picture of thick tree trunks and mist lingering in the air. Colors faded in the background that looked like yellow eyes. Large bubble letters in the right-hand corner read: COME VISIT US TODAY! WE KNOW WE'LL MAKE YOU STAY!
"I found it on my pillow yesterday morning," said Ariane. "I've searched through hundreds of postcard photos and still have no idea where this is supposed to be. There's nothing written on it or anything that indicates it was sent by my dad…I know he's not a user…but something is telling me this was from him. Like he needs me to help him since my mother refuses to do so."
"Sounds like she's got some hallucinogenic block in her mind. Who—or what—took your dad does not want anyone to find him."
"Do you know where this place is?"
"I have a hunch…but I hope I'm wrong."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm pretty sure this is Occidens. The Wests."
Fear ruptured through Ariane's features. "Why would he be there? How could my mother not know?"
"Not sure."
"What do we do?"
"We?"
"Please, Kimo. My mother is in denial and I don't know anyone else like her and you and I just…" Tears were beginning to weld in her eyes.
"Ok, no need to break down. I can't promise you anything. There's a good chance he's already dead."
"I just need to know what happened. Know who did this. Right now all I need from you is to help me find some answers."
"Well, I know someone who might have more ideas."
Kimo pounded on Jumanah's door just as the sun had gone down. The dark hallway revealed the light shining under her door. Ariane was at his side, trying not to grip Kimo for comfort. Having never entered an ensorcelled building before, she was easily disturbed by the shadows and strange sounds, able to feel but not understand the energy radiating around her. Finally, Jumanah opened the door.
"What?" she snapped, a loose robe tied around her that looked 3 sizes too big, dreadlocks looped around the top of her head.
"I need your help," said Kimo.
"And why would I help you?" she asked.
"Because you're curious and nosy." Kimo pulled three gold tokens out of his pocket that Ariane had never understood but had seen a few that her mother owned. All she knew was they had great value. He dropped the coins into Jumanah's hand and she nodded stepping aside to let them in.
They took a seat on some of the floor cushions around the hookah while Jumanah brought coals and tin foil. She grabbed some herbs from her kitchen and placed them in the bowl, covering the top with tin foil that she punched a few small holes in with her nails. She placed the coals between her fingers and the coals began to glow before she placed them on top of the foil. She then sat back on a pillow and grabbed the hose.
"So what is the help you need?" she asked as she took a long drag from the hookah.
"My father is missing," said Ariane before Kimo could speak. "He's…what you might call 'normal', but I'm the daughter of Professor Vienna Gartiza."
"No shit," said Jumanah. "I didn't know she had any kids."
"Well, I'm not as gifted as my mother. But there is something wrong with her and she won't admit that there is a problem."
"How long has your dad been missing?"
"It's been eight days since I last saw him. I don't live here anymore, just visiting. But yesterday I found this on my bedroom pillow…"
Ariane handed Jumanah the postcard and she glanced at it for only a moment before confirming Kimo's suspicion.
"What do you think?" Kimo asked Jumanah. "Could it have been from her father? Or is this just a luring trick?"
"Hard to say," said Jumanah. "Would you happen to have anything of his on you?" she asked Ariane.
"I have his license. Was using it to show people his photo."
Ariane reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet, handing the ID to Jumanah who took it and stood up. She grabbed a jar from one of the shelves that contained what looked like a bunch of ash. Jumanah sprinkled a little on the ID so it covered the surface. She then centered the postcard on the floor in front of them. She lowered the ID so it was in front of the postcard and gave a gentle blow to the ash atop the license. The ash flew off the ID and swirled into the air, landing on the postcard. Then both the remaining ash on the ID and postcard began to glow a gentle blue color.
"Well, there is a DNA match, and given the color it can exclude the present company. So I think it is fair to say that your father was in some way responsible for this postcard."
"I don't know much about Occidens," Kimo admitted. "Just that it's hard to find and hard to get out of. And there are the beasts, which I do know enjoy mutilation and transformation…but I wondered if you had any insight."
Jumanah gave an honest grin, "I have been there once. It was a long time ago…"
Her eyes were locked in the past and Kimo realized from her expression she was chasing down a memory she had tried to bury for a long time.
"How did you get there?" Ariane asked, eyes wide.
Jumanah blew smoke into the air that twisted and changed shape into small fish that floated to the ceiling before evaporating. "I was younger," she began, "in a secluded town called Stafford in the Klamath Mountains. Occidens—or The West—is not on this physical plane but has entryways all across the planet. Stafford was unlucky to be constructed very near one of these openings. I was hunting down a bounty at the time and got stuck, not enough money to afford transportation out, and then heard about the numerous children that had been disappearing. I met with a mother whose daughter had disappeared two weeks prior and promised me a ride to the next town if I could find out what happened to her daughter.
"The kid wasn't too hard to track, a 12-year-old with dyed green hair a stand-out feature that made people in Stafford remember if they had seen her. I followed her movements from witnesses who saw her at school, at a market in town, and someone spotted her walking the streets of the west side of the town. The person who had spotted her then was another 12-year-old in her class and told me that a lot of kids go a little way up the mountainside where there was a crappy playground at a school that had closed down. Kids liked to smoke and drink up there, so I followed a man-made trail that led to the school. It was nothing special; had some swings and slides, the frames built of metal designed to last through the seasons. There were beer bottles and broken pipes all over, but I didn't see anyone while I was up there. But the place had a creepy vibe. I waited until sunset, but no kids showed up for me to question. It was once the sun was down that I saw the lights coming from the abandoned building.
"When I placed my hand on the wall of the building I swear I felt it vibrating, the whole thing shaking at a depth that I could feel in my bones. I didn't know what to make of it, but I opened the door, and the entire building was filled with fog. I don't know why I entered. But I did and I could feel the vibration in the place, could tell the walls were falling away around me. And then suddenly I was standing on a rocky slope, massive leafless trees scattered among boulders and a fog diluting anything within one hundred yards. Icicles quickly began to form on my eyelashes and my body started to shiver immediately, getting to the point where it was hard for me to walk because my legs were hurting so badly. Then I saw a beast."
Kimo's eyes grew wide. "You saw one?"
"For a moment. It was sitting in one of the trees; massive and hunched over, a creepy munching sound echoing across the rocks. It had massive ears protruding from its head and wings folded over itself. When it turned its head I struggled to see the details of its face but its massive eyes glowed like white spotlights on me. It was holding a human arm in its clawed hands. A child's arm."
"How did you get out?" Kimo asked.
"That part I am still fuzzy on. Like the place does not want you to know how to get out. But I remember running back the way I came. I had my ingress blade with me, and I think I used it to somehow cut myself back to reality. I think you need something from this world to bring you back. But I think a lot of it was luck. When I stumbled out of the abandoned school building the sun was rising again."
"Did you tell them?" asked Ariane, "The mother? About what happened to her daughter?"
"I wanted to at first—the woman being a user herself I thought I could get her to understand…but the portal vanished. I approached it later in the day and when I opened the door it was just a moldy building. I thought maybe the entrance matched up with the time of day or night, so I waited for nightfall, but when it finally came there were no lights in the building. I even opened the door again but it was the same. I checked the building constantly for a week. When I could bring no proof, I decided to spare the mother the grief of knowing what happened. I felt telling her what I knew would only damage her mental state.
"What I have been able to conclude is that these doorways move. They open and close for select amounts of time, making it easy to get trapped in there. Unless the doorway is nearby, there is no point rushing to it even if it's open; it will likely be closed by the time we reach it. What we need to do is track the movements enough to predict where one will appear next."
"How do we do that?" asked Kimo.
"The mother knows," came a voice from the corner of the room, where the doctrina stood in silence, Kimo and Ariane jumping in their seats as they had not noticed him in the corner, looking more human in the t-shirt and sweatpants he took from Jumanah's closet. "I would appreciate it if you could get the files of her work."
"Efe! What did I tell you about lurking?" Jumanah said in a tone pitched more to amusement than scolding.
"Is that…" Kimo trailed off as Jumanah nodded her head.
"I apologize, I was interested in your conversation," said Efe. "I would like the files on the mother's work; it contains rarefied information, and I'm certain it will have the answers you're looking for."
"Alright then," said Jumanah, turning to Ariane. "Let's find your mom's research."
***
Ariane let Kimo and Jumanah into her house the following evening when her mother was gone, leading them to a private, windowless room in the basement where Dr. Gartiza kept her most important work.
The office had ropes of small white lights strung across the walls, a large desk in one corner, and a couch along the back wall. There were soda cans on the couch and dust bunnies on the wood floor. On the walls were sketches and drawings of strange animals, maps of regions across the Americas and Europe, and a whiteboard with equations Kimo recognized as works of exotic matter dynamics and dimensional kinetics. Bookshelves were placed along every wall, little organization of the textbook's subject matter, and notebooks were piled on the desk. There was also a slim monitor and a small keyboard, a few pictures on the edge of the counter of Ariane and her father. Her mother was not in any of them.
"Try not to touch anything you don't need," said Ariane, "she notices little details."
"Don't worry about that," said Jumanah as she reached into her bag slung over her shoulder, and dropped a handful of silver marbles onto the floor. The marbles immediately began to roll across the wood, darting quickly over piles of books and dark-tolerant potted plants, zipping until they began to cluster around a section of the wall, balls rising from the floor and vibrating in place.
Jumanah approached the wall and grabbed the marbles, dropping them into a silk pouch and putting them back in her bag. She placed her hand on the wall, the surface vibrating beneath her palm. She recognized the presence of an arcane concealment charm, which used intricate arcane symbols written in a hidden ink that could hide objects by distorting the fabric of reality around them, rendering them invisible and immovable. She pulled a piece of chalk from her bag and began drawing symbols in a circle on the wall.
"Wait!" said Ariane, "I said don't touch anything."
"Don't worry," Kimo said while Jumanah continued to draw, "she'll be able to replace the charm when she's done." That was one of the advantages Kimo had found when taking classes at the night school—there are all sorts of loopholes.
When she was finished Jumanah put her hand in the center of the circle of symbols and closed her eyes for a moment as the wall began to glow, then vibrate, and then the wall itself peeled away to reveal a safe that opened at her touch.
Kimo and Ariane approached and looked into the safe; stacks of papers sat in the safe, files in folders, some sheets clipped or stapled together. Jumanah and Kimo pulled the papers from the safe, flipping through the thousands of pages of research.
"We'll give this to Efe," said Jumanah as she handed Kimo her papers, closing the safe. She drew the same chalk symbol on the door and muttered a chant under her breath: mrahc siht esare, mrahc siht esare. The wall reversed itself, the surface peeling back into place, hiding the safe and appearing as though nothing had been disturbed.
It took Efe 8 minutes to get through the research, the doctrina pleased to get such unique literature and told them of a chart Dr. Gartiza had created that measured fluctuations of temperature and sunlight that harmonized with the dimension of Occidens, with times of arrival and disappearance. According to the charts, there would be a doorway appearing in five days at a location fifty-four miles from the city.
"We're going to need some stuff," said Jumanah. She listed stuff like fog vision goggles, scaled armor, a mistfinder compass, an echo stone, a fogveil lantern, and (most importantly) a tracker.
"Where do we get this stuff?" Ariane asked.
"The Underworld Market," Jumanah answered. She was currently steeping tea in the kitchen while Kimo and Ariane sat on the floor of her apartment around her low table, many pages of Dr. Gartiza's work in front of them.
Kimo was looking at a segment of one of her papers: 'The Illusionist's Veil: Navigating the Labyrinth of Occidens Hallucinatory Phenomena'. The paper focused on understanding the fog that plagued the dimension, causing hallucinations and warping the mind. The ability to warp mind reality was a dangerous thing, as that perception can lead to real-world impacts with the power of perception that human users possessed. Dr. Gartiza wrote about witnessing such abilities, not in The West, but in other charms where someone imagined a 3-headed demon, or thought blood was raining down on them from a ceiling inside their home, and suddenly the mind brought those experiences or visions to life. She thought that the fog that circled the Occidens dimension had a similar effect on users. There were images she had taken when she entered the dimension for a short time, not wandering more than 50 meters from the doorway, but was able to observe the landscape in front of her. She had arrived in a vast expansion of trees, created drawings, and snapped photos of strange white spores stuck to the bark, looking like barnacles, gentle mist exiting from the openings. She suspected they were the remains of those who had gotten lost, recording and photographing some of the trees in 'mid-transformation' where fingers and feet stuck out of trunks, distant leaves dripping gentle streams of blood.
Ariane was looking down at some papers and sighed. When Kimo asked what was wrong she shook her head.
"Reading this stuff…it makes me feel like she is crazy," she said as Jumanah brought over the tea.
"Actually it's quite the contrary," said Efe, who had been sitting in the corner of the room. "The woman is on the edge of genius in some ways. The work in the occult field feeds off imagination. You have to look at all possibilities, all opportunities, and be open to breaking your understanding of reality. However, her mind is fading. You can notice it more in some of her most recent writing, the way words jumble together and she fails to lay out her hypotheses and observations in an understandable way."
"Is there any way to help her?" Ariane asked.
"It's possible…but unlikely."
"First let's focus on saving your father," Kimo said as he sipped the hot gold mint-soaked water. "So, I guess we're going shopping."