Short Stories

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To Stand


They had burst into her apartment so suddenly, screaming chants and incantations, knocking over lamps and ransacking the place so rapidly, that there had been no time to react. They found Terra’s roommate first, assaulting her in the small dining room, slapping her face and tying her up while demanding to know where Terra was. Terra prayed in a whisper, standing behind her bedroom door, body shaking with fear. She wanted to save her roommate Theresa – how long had the two best friends been “Terra and Terrie” or “The Two Terrs” to everyone at their university? She could hear Terrie crying and trying to answer them with swollen, bloody lips.

“Lord Jesus, what do I do?” she whispered. She didn’t have long to wait for the answer, as the bedroom door splintered, kicked open by a black, steel-toed boot decorated with buckles and metal spikes.

“There she is! Get her before she does something to us!” a familiar voice hollered above the chaos. Someone threw a dirty, woolen army blanket over her and then wrapped a rope about her chest and legs. She screamed and prayed as loudly as she could, hoping for rescue, but the blanket was then ripped off of her and a heavy hand slapped her across the face. “Shut up! Shut up now!”

Terra sobbed with pain and terror. Someone slapped duct tape across her mouth, then wrapped it around her head, catching her hair and ripping some of it out of her scalp. Her hands were duct-taped and the blanket thrown over her once again. Again a rope bound the scratchy, smelly blanket about her chest and legs. She could hear the muffled sounds of several people shouting orders at each other, then she was roughly lifted off her feet and carried sideways. She could feel them carting her head-first down the stairs of her apartment building, almost dropping her several times. There was more shouting as she was dropped into the back of a van or truck and shoved across the hard, bare metal floor. Then she heard the sounds of the engine revving and the tires screeching against the road. There was triumphant laughter and more shouting, and praises to pagan gods. She heard popping sounds, like cans of soda being opened, and then something spilled on her head. She could smell that it was beer.

Terra prayed hard, fighting panic with everything she knew. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil… thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…the Name of the Lord is a strong tower…the righteous run to it and are saved….

The verses swam through her head and heart, one after the other, and she felt calmer and stronger. Then a final verse filled her with light and confidence: Take unto you the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Terra felt the vehicle leave pavement and enter a bumpy dirt road. The pavement part of the ride had seemed very long, an hour or more, but the dirt road experience was short. The vehicle came to a screeching halt and doors were flung open. Hands roughly grabbed Terra’s legs and pulled her back down the hard metal floor. She was forced into a sitting position, then pulled out of the vehicle to her feet.

“OK, walk now,” some male voice said. He sounded familiar, but deeper and more hoarse than anyone she remembered.

Terra tried to take a step, but her legs were bound too tightly.

“How can she walk, stupid? You have to untie her legs!” a female voice shrilled. Terra recognized the voice – it belonged to a girl named Sharon. Terra had initiated her into the coven as Hecate, named after the Greek goddess of death.

“OK! Don’t yell at me!” the male voice shouted. The rope was removed from the blanket. “The blanket stays on until she’s inside. We don’t want her to know where she is.”

“Once she’s inside, she’s gonna know, stupid! Just take the blanket off!” Sharon shouted.

Oh, no, Terra thought.

The blanket was snatched away, scratching her forehead a little. “OK,” the male voice said, “you see the house, now walk into it.” By the glow of the vehicle headlights, she saw the man: it was Gareth, her former lover and second-in-command of the coven. No doubt he was still calling himself “Osiris.” In the uncertain light, she saw the steps of a too-familiar, rundown, abandoned farmhouse. Even in the dark, she could see that the inverted pentagram she had once painted on the front door had been embellished with more satanic symbols and refreshed with glow-in-the-dark paint.

“Heads up, guys!” Gareth yelled. “Our priestess is home!”

Terra shook her head, trying to negate Gareth’s words. Her mouth and hands were still duct-taped. He shoved her forward. “Walk!”

After being so long inside the stuffy, dirty blanket, the night air felt chilly and damp. Terra was wearing just a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. In the dim light, she saw people lining the porch steps to the right and left sides. She recognized a few of them – those she had initiated into the coven. Most of the faces were new, teenagers she had never met. However, some faces she might have expected to see were not there, and she was glad for them.

Gareth kept prodding her forward. As her foot reluctantly touched the first step up to the porch, he cried out, “All hail to the priestess Lilith!” The people lining the steps clapped their hands once in unison, made satanic gestures with their hands, and responded, “All hail!”

Terra cringed and pulled back her foot. Gareth shoved her hard. “Walk, now!” She shook her head. Then she felt something sharp against her back. Gareth hissed in her ear, “Get in there now, or I’ll cut out your heart with your own athamé! Right here, right now.” He prodded her with the dagger, and she slowly started up the creaking wooden steps. It was hard to climb them without holding onto a handrail. The house had been built on a natural rise in the earth, calculated to keep the house safe from large snow drifts, so there were many steps up to reach the porch. The irony of the situation did not escape Terra: the only item she had been unable to destroy when she’d left the coven was her ceremonial dagger, the very thing used to threaten her. She had buried it to keep anyone else from obtaining it or being affected by it. Evidently, Gareth had found where she’d disposed of it. She had once cherished it, considering it a beautiful piece of art, but it became ugly to her with its dragon design on the hilt and astrological symbols scratched into the blade. It chilled her to realize he had sharpened it for this occasion.

As she reached the top step, Terra smelled burning sage and candle wax. She saw the flickering light of many candle flames. Hide me in the shadow of Your wings, she silently prayed.

Terra had paused on the porch landing. Gareth pushed her forward with the tip of the dagger and said, “Welcome home, Lilith.” When she shook her head, he shoved her forward with his hand and hissed, “Get inside!” She slowly walked forward through the half-open door painted with satanic symbols. The spacious front room of the farmhouse – originally meant to greet visitors and seat people for dinner – was cluttered with burning candles of various sizes, most of them black or red. Various symbols from many different occult modes had been scrawled or spray-painted on the walls. There were single runes and rune-phrases, zodiac symbols, pentagrams, Celtic symbols, even a Yin-Yang symbol with Chinese and Japanese writing all around it…it was a crazy-quilt of occult graffiti, impassioned attempts to snatch supernatural power out of thin air. There were statues of gods and goddesses randomly placed around the room, competing with the candles for floor space. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture anywhere. Not one chair. There were some pillows and balled-up blankets strewn randomly about the floor. There was a faint stench of sweat and old beer, along with some old cans and food containers piled up in a distant corner. Obviously, someone was living here, somewhat. Why was there no furniture? And then she remembered: Oh, yeah, that had been MY idea.

“Welcome home,” Gareth hissed again. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable.” People were filing into the great room now. Gareth pushed Terra farther and farther into the room. “Someone get the priestess a pillow to sit on,” he hollered. Someone tossed a ragged old couch pillow on the floor near her. She walked over to it and squatted down, trying to ease herself down without using her hands.

One of the new faces Terra didn’t recognize gawked at her uncertainly. The girl was barely in her teens, but she wore many rings and necklaces with occult symbols and her arms were heavily tattooed. “Are we gonna untie her?” she asked meekly.

Sharon piped up then, “What if she puts a curse on us all?”

Gareth seated himself to Terra’s right, laughing in a mocking tone. “Naw, she loves us. Don’t you, Babe? That’s what you told me when you left. You love us.” He laughed again and started tearing the duct tape off Terra’s hands. Terra cringed at the pain of having duct tape ripped from her skin, but said nothing. Then Gareth pulled the tape from her face, which hurt much worse, yanking out more hair with it. He laughed again as she cried out a little. He balled up the tape and tossed it aside. He sat back and looked at her. ”You cut your hair,” he said as he now playfully tugged at the ends of her chestnut-brown hair. As a teenaged witch, she had let it grow down to her waist in an unkempt, frizzy mess, but now it was neatly cut into a collar-length bob. Or it had been, before the duct tape. She shrank slightly from his touch. His brown eyes glittered with mixed emotions beneath his scraggly red curls. He grabbed her hands and turned them over to expose her wrists and forearms. “You had your tats removed,” he said with disdain.

“Seven years ago,” she said softly.

He laughed with scorn. “I’ll bet that hurt,” he mocked.

“It was worth it,” she answered.

Gareth tossed her hands aside. Terra rubbed the skin of her hands some more, trying to soothe it. Her lips and cheeks were also stinging badly from the tape and other mistreatment, but she dared not touch her face for the pain. She kept stealing furtive glances toward the creaking, rotting door, which Gareth noticed. “Shut the door and bolt it,” he barked at the young people staring and chattering. A young man rose and obeyed, slamming a crude wooden board down into prongs jammed into the wall on either side of the door jambs. That was usually the signal for the start of a ritual, so the chattering crowd began moving into positions at the four compass points in the room, guided by symbols crudely painted on the floor.

“No, we’re not doing that tonight, not yet, anyway,” Gareth said. The crowd shuffled back more or less to their original positions and resumed gaping at Terra.

“Why are you doing this?” Terra asked softly without looking at Gareth.

“You have something I need,” he said, smoothly as oil pouring slowly. “Something we need from you.”

“It’s been seven years. What could I possibly have that you want?”

“Once a priestess, always a priestess, dear Lilith. You swore a blood oath.”

“That’s not my name. I cursed myself the night I took that name. However, that curse has been removed.”

Gareth drew back his hand and slapped her hard. “You swore allegiance to the god and goddess! How dare you call that a curse!”

Terra was still leaning away from the force of the blow to her face. Lord, give me strength. Give me wisdom. Give me…I don’t know what, Lord. Give me something, she prayed silently.

“You were our leader! You were a goddess among us!”

The crowd murmured. Some of the adults who had known Terra as teenagers seemed torn, not wanting to see her abused, their last shreds of conscience still intact, but too afraid to defy their coven-master Gareth.

“You will lead us again! You were the only one with the second sight! Right here, right now, you will do for us again what you had always done!”

“I have nothing to offer you but Jesus Christ,” Terra said.

The coven members gasped in unison. No one was allowed to utter that name, especially not in that room. Gareth slapped her again. “It doesn’t matter how many times you hit me, Gareth,” she said through bloodied lips. “I have nothing to offer you but Jesus Christ.” He drew back his hand again to slap her, but she whipped her head toward him and looked deeply into his eyes. “Go ahead. I will still have nothing to offer you but Jesus Christ.” This time, Gareth recoiled from her and shakily withdrew his hand.

“We were going to change the world,” he hissed. “We were going to make it a better place.”

“That’s what I’m about to do. I’m in my last year of medical school. I’m about to become a resident.”

“Oh, right, so you can join the ranks of the medical establishment, with your poison pills and Medicaid fraud. Right.”

Terra shook her head. “No, no private practice. I’m going straight into medical missionary work.”

Gareth laughed scornfully. “No, no you’re not. You’re going to stay right here. And you’re going to lead us again.” He reached behind him and told another coven fellow to hand him a certain box. Gareth turned back to face Terra with an ornately carved wooden box in his hands. He opened the box and said, “Take them. Read the cards for us. Guide us as you always did.”

Terra saw a thick deck of large cards inside the velvet-lined box. She shook her head.

“Take them. Now.”

She shook her head again, expecting a slap, but it didn’t come.

“You were the only one with the second sight. We need your second sight! Even old Christian people believe in the second sight. You were the only one of us who had it.”

“No.”

“You can’t withhold that from me! Take the cards! Lead us again!”

“I was deluded, Gareth! I was making it all up!”

He slammed the ornate box onto the rough wooden floor. “You liar! You knew what happened to me at camp when I was 10! You saw it in the cards!”

She shook her head. “Your brother told me. I’m sorry I lied. I did it to be cool. There was no second sight.”

He slammed the box to the floor a second time and some of the wooden pieces splintered and flew a few feet. “Liar! My brother killed himself. He didn’t tell you anything!”

“He told me the summer before he died, Gareth. He felt so guilty for not protecting you from that man in the woods. He was so sorry….” Her voice trailed off. Gareth was shaking with rage and deep emotions he did not wish to betray.

“See?” he said. “See? Now that you’re here, in this room, the second sight is active in you again. You just needed to be here.” His arm swept the room, indicating the occult symbols everywhere, but the gesture took in the random piles of garbage as well. Terra glanced up for a moment and saw that they had also decorated the ceiling…with a huge, spray-painted Chinese dragon. She shuddered in the stale air, choked with the heat of dozens of tiny flames and candle smoke.

“Do the cards,” he ordered.

Terra shook her head. “No. I won’t touch them.”

Gareth pulled out the ceremonial dagger again. “You don’t think I’ll really do it, do you?” She didn’t respond. He sliced the ball of his thumb in a thin line and showed her the blood trickling down to the floor. “I’ve kept it nice and sharp for you, my lady. Nice and sharp.”

“I won’t touch them,” she repeated. He nicked her upper arm, causing a small trail of blood to travel down to her elbow. “It doesn’t matter what you threaten me with, Gareth. I won’t do it. You can kill me on the spot. I’m not coming back to this.” He took the tip of the dagger and touched it to the side of her neck. She looked at him again with her deep green eyes, her jaw set in quiet defiance.

Gareth cursed. “Well, I’ll shuffle them then! Since you’re too good to touch them!” He picked up the deck, his large, pale hands shaking in rage, and shuffled them poorly, dropping some, and sending some of them flying across the room with the pressure it took to bend them into the shuffle. They must have been new cards; Terra remembered, reluctantly, breaking in her own deck. She clung to the memory of the last time she had seen that deck: it was the night she threw them into a bonfire, one by one, to burn with her occult books and other cursed objects. She had watched as each card curled and blackened, becoming ashes, releasing its grasp on her soul. She had never thought she’d be in the same room with a deck again, much less compelled to use them against her will.

“Listen and learn, little coveners,” Gareth quipped, as he started to lecture the group about the Tarot. Terra tuned him out, praying softly. Lord, I don’t want to die this way. Please rescue me, rescue me, get me out of here. Gareth instructed the coven members to come up one by one and touch the deck as he was shuffling. They had to keep bringing him the cards which were flying out of his hands as he shuffled. Finally, Gareth was done with his card-churning and placed the deck in front of Terra.

“Cut the cards,” he ordered.

“No, I will not,” she replied.

Gareth made a disgusted sound and cut the cards, sloppily, slapping them back together again.

“Deal them. You know how it’s done,” he hissed.

Terra simply shook her head.

“Here!” he shouted, his frustration boiling over once again. He dealt the cards out in a straight line in front of Terra, seven in total. “Here, it’s the quickie reading method, like you used to do as a phone psychic! Do it!” She shook her head and looked into his eyes again, defiantly. He slapped her again, her face whipping to the left again. When she opened her eyes, she saw the first card of the seven that Gareth had laid out. Her eyes became wide. Do not be afraid, the still, small voice inside her said. These cannot harm you. It was then that Terra understood: God had a plan, even for such a time as this.

She pointed with her trembling left hand. “Look,” she said. “Look what you dealt.”

Gareth leaned across her. She was pointing to a card whose main feature resembled something painted on the walls: the devil. Gareth breathed shallowly. “So? So what? Hail Satan. He’s come to bless us.”

“Hail Satan,” the crowd murmured.

“Look, Gareth. Look what’s on the card,” she said. He stared at the card, not comprehending. Like most people who dabbled in tarot cards, he had never truly contemplated the artwork. “Look at the two humanoid figures in the foreground. Bondage. They are chained by their necks. They could get themselves free by slipping off the chain, but they stand there, proudly. That’s what you are. A slave. Chained to the occult and its master.”

“Nnnn, no,” he stammered. “That’s not what it means. It’s a blessing from the great horned god!”

“Go look it up for yourself. Don’t you have a book?”

Gareth barked some more orders, and a slender book was produced. He hastily slapped through the pages until he found the right one. He barked more orders for a candle, and then he read the page. He glared up at her.

“I never touched these. This is what you dealt.” She took a slow, deep breath and pointed to the second card. It held a picture of a tower struck by lightning and disintegrating. People were falling off its balustrade…except the card was upside down. “Second card. Stagnation. Disaster, from which you can’t escape and can’t recover,” she said sternly.

“No, it means radical change,” he shouted, flipping through the small book again. “Radical change which seems unpleasant, but it leads to the greater good,” he quipped. “You’re not using the second sight! Use the second sight!”

“Not when the card is reversed,” she quipped. “Play by your own rules.” He looked at the book again and saw she was correct. “So far, you’re in deep trouble. You’re up to your neck in willing bondage to all the dark forces of the universe, and you aren’t getting free anytime soon. You’re in the ruins, and you’re going to stay there because you won’t let yourself out.” The crowd started getting angry and yelling at Terra, that she had to be wrong. “Look for yourselves,” she said. “Remember, I haven’t touched these cards even once.” People crowded in closer to see the cards, shoving each other and peering over others’ heads.

“Third card,” Terra had to shout above the noise. It was getting hard for her to breathe. This card showed a man hanging upside down from a hangman’s noose by one foot. His other leg crossed his bound leg an angle, turning his body into a number four. Terra was not going to go into the numerology of that. “Stagnation. Loss of everything, especially one’s own good judgment and sense. Fatal flaws. Mistakes that lead to condemnation and punishment.” Gareth looked at her with strange, roiling emotions. He was trying to cover over his fear with a calmness he did not feel.

“Fourth card. Justice, also reversed,” Terra pronounced.

“Are we going to get arrested?” asked a young girl, fearfully.

“This means the perversion of reason, common sense,” Terra said. “General lawlessness. Chaos.”

“There you go! Chaos! Chaos magic is good,” Gareth said triumphantly. “We just need to do more chaos magic. That will reverse our bad luck.”

“How much have you done so far? And has it worked for you?” Terra said, before she even knew the words were in her mouth. “The laws of God have been turned upside down by you. You will not prosper.”

“Those laws don’t apply to us!” Gareth hissed, but he didn’t sound as convinced as he had before.

“I would say that with the positions of these cards, you might want to rethink that.” She pointed to the fifth card. “Wheel of Fortune, reversed. Sudden misfortune. Sudden loss of everything. Total ruin,” she stated.

“So we are going to get arrested!” the same girl cried out as before. “My mom’s gonna kill me!” She started to weep. Sharon also became upset and shouted, “Why did you make me come here tonight? I didn’t want to duct tape her hands!”

“Shut up!” Gareth snapped, sending an angry glare her way.

“Sixth card. Death,” Terra stated.

“Wwwwell, death is good,” Gareth stammered again. He flipped through the pages. “Changes of the natural order. The circle of life. Change for the better.” He read quickly down the page below the picture of the card. “Yes, transformation. So after some trouble, things are going to change, and they will be better. See, things are looking up. It was good that we brought you back. Can’t you see that?”

Terra kept her sharp green eyes on Gareth’s while she pointed toward the seventh card. “Judgement.” Gareth started flipping pages again. Terra shook her head “No.”

“Don’t you see it? First the death card, then the judgement card.” He didn’t answer. He merely sat breathless with a blank expression on his face. “C’mon, you were in the same Sunday school class that I was in that summer. ‘Once to die, and then the judgement.’ That’s why there are no ghosts.”

“No ghosts?” another young girl asked, disappointed.

Terra shook her head. “No ghosts. Just demons. Trying to scare you and misdirect you into the occult.”

“But demons are our friends!” a young man called out.

“Oh, yeah? Just wait until they start coming into your room at night and giving you nightmares. Then tell me whether or not they’re your friends,” Terra quipped. The boy shrank back; apparently, that had already begun happening to him.

“Remember: I didn’t touch these cards. Gareth dealt them out. The message is clear: you’re all in a deep mess of your own choosing. You’re stagnating, and you’re stuck. You need to find the way out. And there’s only one way out.”

“What do we do?” sobbed the girl who was still in tears.

Terra gently wiped some of the blood from the side of her mouth. “Like I said already, all I have to offer you is Jesus Christ.” The coveners looked at each other. “Once to die, and then the judgement. You’re sitting in a firetrap right now. This whole house could go up in flames at any moment. Or you could be run down by a bus while crossing the street. You’re not promised tomorrow. You’re not even promised later on tonight. If you die with your sins still on you, you will go to hell.”

“’Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,’” Gareth quoted.

“You won’t be ruling anything in hell. You’ll be tormented by those demon buddies of yours.” Gareth made a rude snorting noise and swore. “Remember? The parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Not even one drop of water to cool your tongue. Forever.”

“I’m thirsty,” someone whispered loudly in the background. “Can I have a sip of your water?”

Just then, bright lights flared in through the windows of the old house, and a loudspeaker blared in a voice that was at once booming and shrill. It was hard to understand that distorted voice over the din of screaming teenagers, but Terra could just make out, “You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.” Some coveners were crying and holding each other, but others were shoving each other, trying to get into closets and cupboards along the walls.

Terra struggled to her feet, finding it hard to balance after her ordeal. “Everyone, calm down! Be quiet! Just unbolt the door and walk out, one by one!”

Gareth lept to his feet, the dagger in his right hand. “No! No! Don’t any of you walk out on me!” People shrank away from him in fear, not knowing what he might do with the dagger.

Terra shouted again, “It’s OK. You’ll be OK. Just walk out calmly.” She kept staring intently into Gareth’s eyes. He looked crazed.

Someone unbolted the door and eased it open. “Come out with your hands up,” the loudspeaker blasted again. The teens began filing out first, followed by the older coven members who looked back at Terra, but Terra waved them out the door, eyes locked on Gareth’s.

“It’s over, Gareth. Let it go. Drop the knife and just walk away.”

“I brought you back here and you took everything from me,” he breathed.

“You have a chance for something better now. You don’t need these rotten floor boards and Swiss-cheese roof. Drop the knife and walk out with me.”

“I loved you, and you took everything.”

“Gareth, walk out with me. You can use me as a shield. I won’t let them harm you. Just walk with me. Walk with me!”

“I’ll see you in hell first,” he said calmly, then slashed the knife against his throat. He stood trembling for a minute, blood rapidly soaking his shirt, then his legs buckled. Terra caught his head and partly eased him down to the floor in a crumpled heap. She threw the knife across the room, ripped his shirt off, and pressed the cloth against his neck, praying hard.

“Medic!” she screamed. “We need a medic in here!”
Uniformed men and women stormed into the house through the front and back doors. Terra would not let go of Gareth’s wounded neck until the paramedics arrived. Someone pulled her to her feet and started leading her away. Someone else gently threw a light blanket around her shoulders and led her to the safety of a car with flashing blue lights. People kept asking her if she was OK, if she needed medical attention. She nodded yes to the first question, no to the second. They gave her an ice bag for her injured mouth while she sat there dazed, then they drove her to a building she had never seen before and questioned her for what seemed like hours. While Terra was rubbing her eyes against the fatigue, someone came into the room and handed the officers a sheet of paper, then quickly left. She heard them quietly conversing, and then heard the word “Deceased” being uttered.

She looked down into her lap. “Gareth didn’t make it, did he?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” The two officers glanced at one another. “We have just a few more questions, then someone will drive you home. At least you’ll know he can never bother you again.”

“No, I’m pretty sure this will bother me for a very long time,” she murmured as she began to cry.

“We know you tried to talk him down at the end. You have to remember, you can’t save everyone.”

Terra sighed deeply. “Yes. All the more reason why I can’t let this stop me.” She gathered the emergency blanket about her like a mantle and continued, “I need to go to class in the morning. Because I need to graduate and then get out there and try to prevent this from happening to someone else.” They asked her the remainder of their questions, then as promised, someone drove her home. She whispered in the darkness of the back seat, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousands at your right hand, but it shall not come near you.”

The still, small voice inside her heart said, “Yes, that’s what it means.”

Terra sighed, then whispered, “OK, Lord. Your will be done,” as the car drove on, headlights piercing the thick darkness of the night.

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