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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Avenging Earth
A Guest Quarters story
By
David W. Landrum

 
Kathy Farisi knelt in the cool and quiet of Saint Isidore's church and began to pray. She knew the Fusco family. As a teenager she had babysat Alana. She loved both Paul and Ann.  Kathy knew her credentials with God were not particularly good, but she felt she had to do something, anything, after what had happened to them.

She was halfway through her rosary when she felt the presence of someone sitting beside her. She looked up and saw Alessia Bernini.

Fear shot through her as her eyes fell on the young, beautiful woman who was also a strega. Her mouth went dry.  The breath went from her lungs. Alessia slid into the pew right beside her.

"You look frightened."

Kathy licked her lips.

"I didn't expect to see you here."

Alessia smiled. "Really, now.  We strega practice natural magic, not sorcery. I go to church every Sunday."

"What do you want? I did what you told me to do."

"I know. That isn't why I came to see you."

"Why then?" she demanded, heart still pounding.

"Calm down. It isn't anything bad. I need your help."

Kathy felt less fearful now. Alessia had not come to "collect"?to exact concessions or (Kathy shuddered) claim her soul because she had not lived up to some part of the bargain they had struck months ago. Kathy tried to smile, though she did not completely succeed.

"You need me to help you?"

"You came here to pray for Alana."

"And her mother."

"Ann died ten minutes ago."

The news struck Kathy like a blow. Her eyes filled with tears.

"I know the family. I share your grief?and your desire for justice. That is why I need your help, Kathy."

 "You can tell me about it after I finish praying."

"I'd like to pray with you, if you will allow me to do that. I imagine most of the things I do don't win me much admiration with God, but I think I can still pray."

Alessia slipped down on to the kneeling pad beside Kathy and gripped the rosary with her, their fingers touching as they went over the beads. She prayed the remaining prayers with her and then the two of them went outside. Alessia lit up a cigarette. Kathy still felt frightened despite her assurances that she would make no demands on her. Alessia exhaled a lungful of smoke.

"If you'll let me buy you a drink I'll explain this to you. I truly need your help, Kathy. This concerns the Fusco family."

Kathy pondered a moment.

"Okay, where?"

"The Ruby Tuesday's on Beltline?the one by the old Barnes and Noble store. I like it because it's quiet. I'll meet you there."

They parted.  As Kathy drove, she thought of what had happened to the Fusco family. The FBI had named Corey Allen as the prime suspect. He was an eco-terrorist who had bombed research labs, set fire to housing developments, slashed tires and threw paint on SUVs in the lots of dealerships. Now he was a suspect in a bombing that had killed Paul Fusco, a developer building houses near Albright's Wood.

Albright's Wood was a stand of timber once owned by a Michigan lumber company. It had never been cut, and the State of Michigan had purchased it and kept it as a natural area and park. Its old-growth pines towered two-hundred feet. Trees with massive trunks and roots stood as witness of the old forests that had once covered the state. Visitors marveled at the wood's magnificence.

Paul Fusco's development project had not encroached on Albright's Wood, but Corey Allen thought it was coming too close. He had bombed Fusco's office and left a video in the police station claiming responsibility for the act. When the bomb went off, Paul Fusco's wife and daughter were in the office visiting him. His wife was injured?now dead?and his fifteen year-old daughter blinded.

Kathy Farisi came into Ruby Tuesdays. Alessia sat at a booth. Kathy sat down across from her.

"How did you know Ann had died?" she asked.

"Nothing magical. I heard it on the radio driving over to see you." She paused. "Is your marriage going well?"

"Very well. You probably know I went to Sossity and asked her to forgive me."

"That was not something I required of you."

"I know, but after you arranged for us to meet it was the only thing I could do."

Two years ago, Kathy had become involved in an affair with her best friend's husband. When it broke up their marriage, Kathy had become suicidal. She had gone to Alessia at one of her aunts' insistence. Now married to her friend's husband, she had recovered and they were building a life together. The situation, though, was still ugly. The woman she had wronged, Sossity, her former best friend, had forgiven her but was still hostile and Kathy still ashamed and guilt-ridden.

"Give the matter time to heal," Alessia said. "It may take many years, but I think it will eventually turn out for you. You did what was right. That's why I've come to ask your help. Arrigo Corsi has asked for my help."

Kathy wanted to make a crack about how powerful Alessia must be if the Arrigo Corsi, the don of the local mafia, had come to her for help, but she decided it would not be appropriate.

"Help for what?"

"For locating Corey Allen?the man who bombed the Fusco offices."

"I know who he is. But that shouldn't be a problem for you. Can't you use your powers to locate him?"
 
"No, I can't. He has powers of his own."

"He practices magic?"

"Not exactly. But he is very much in tune with the rhythms and power of the earth. He is only partially aware of this, but aware of it enough that he does draw on the force of nature to conceal himself. That is why he has committed so many high-profile crimes, boasted about them in the papers and on the internet, and no one has caught him."

She fell silent.

"And?" Kathy prompted.

"There is a way to find him, but I need your help, and the help of others, to do it. One does not confront the power of Earth Our Mother on one's own. I need those who have covenanted with me in the past."

"Okay," she said, not certain she fully understood.

"I can't confront this presence by myself. It is too powerful. But if others will stand with me I can enter into it for the purpose at hand."

Kathy sipped her drink.

"Sounds dangerous."

"It is?much more for me than for you."

"But it could be dangerous for me?"

"It might be."

"I'm not sure I want to risk it, Alessia. Are you ordering me to do this?"

 "I can't order you to do anything. But a wife and husband of a family are dead. A fifteen year-old girl we both cherish is blinded and scarred. Two of her fingers had to be amputated and she will probably not ever have full use of her left hand. If you care about her?and I know you do?join me in this."

She remembered Alana:  pretty, full of energy, athletic, on the doorstep of adulthood. Now she was blind, maimed, and orphaned. Kathy feared Alessia, but as they sat in the bar?the air conditioning on so high it had made her go gooseflesh?she felt ashamed of her reticence.

"I'll think about it."

"You don't need to be afraid. Earth will not tolerate evil done in her name. We simply must be reverent. I'll wait for your answer, but I need to know soon."

She made as if to go, but Kathy took her hand.

"Wait. I want to ask you something else."

Alessia settled back into her seat.

"The thing with Ramona?what happened there?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I loved her. I want to know what happened to her." She hesitated then went on. "You've asked me to trust you. I can't really do that until I know what you did to her. I don't think I'll be of much help to you if I have doubts about your . . . motives."

"You surprise me at times."

"I know you think I'm only an airheaded little slut, but there is more to me than that."

"There is more?much more, and if I've given you the impression that I think that way about you, I apologize." She sighed. "All right. Ramona wanted to see your cousin, Thomas, healed. She was willing to give up her life for that."

"You killed her to heal him?"

"No. His healing came through the agreement, but I do not kill. She gave her soul."

"She sold her soul to you?" Kathy asked, aghast.

"Ramona loved Thomas. She was not married and did not want to grow old alone. And the phrase 'sold her soul' is not the way to say it. It was not her immortal soul and she did not sell it to me so I could deliver it to the Devil, as you're probably thinking."

"You remember I was there with her and Aunt Nina when you two made the agreement. Why was she so afraid?"

Alessia looked reticent. Kathy tapped her knuckles on the wooden table between them.

"Tell me or it's no deal."

"And if I tell you, it is a deal?"

Checkmate, Kathy thought. She decided to risk it.

"Yes."

"What she did was not a pleasant thing to do. She gave her soul?by which I mean her life, her energy, the vital spark that animated her body?to me to do with as I please. And she knew what that would mean. She knew the suffering and anguish she would endure."

"You said"?

"Listen. She is at rest now. I'm sure she has found healing in heaven with God. But in the months before she died"?she stopped and then went on. "When someone gives her life to me, or when they come by default into my power, their soul/life becomes mine. There are beings?neither angels nor demons?who feed of the life energy of other beings."

"And you supplied them with Ramona's soul?" Kathy felt nauseous.

"I did?at her insistence. She went into a coma, as you know. The spirits I spoke of fed off her for a few months, and then she died."

Silence fell once more. Appalled, Kathy stared.

"Ramona willingly gave her soul so Thomas could be healed. There was no other way to do it. The beings of which I told you live in the power of life?in the power of the earth, the very realm into which we will enter when we do the ceremony. I could not heal Thomas?his infirmities were too serious. Only they could. Ramona gave herself so he could be healed. The miraculous correction of his physical and mental condition that so baffled the doctors came from those beings, though me."

"And they?fed off her for those months she was in a coma?"

"Yes."

"Almighty God! You are an evil woman."

"I am that. Remember, though, that Thomas is healed. For a few months Ramona suffered the horror and anguish that comes when one's soul is violated. Now she is at rest."

A miserable silence settled. Kathy slowly felt the nausea in her stomach and the faintness in her head fade. A feeling of weariness and despair replaced them.

"You had to ask," Alessia finally said.

"I did."

"And, of course, you agreed to help me. So if you fail to participate in the ceremony, you yourself will fall under my power and you will find out what Ramona so feared?you will experience what she experienced."

"I haven't drunk your wine. That's what seals the covenant. I remember that from when I made an agreement with you and when Ramona did."

"You are a perceptive woman."

"I will drink, though. I want to see justice done for Alana."

Alessia did not lift her hand from the table but wiggled her index and middle finger. The whisky sour in Kathy's glass turned red. She smelled the fragrance of a rich, strong vintage. She hesitated only a moment and then drained the glass and set it down.

"You use very good wine."

"Only the best. Thank you, Kathy. That you have entered this covenant willingly makes our undertaking all the more auspicious."

Kathy nodded. She did not want Alessia to know how terrified she was?though she suspected the strega already knew.

***

The next night she got a phone call from Alessia.

"I'm at Logan's Alley," she said. "Can you meet me?"

"I'll be there in half an hour."

She told David she had to go somewhere, kissed her son Alex goodnight, and drove to Logan's Alley, a small bar on Michigan Street. Alessia sat at a table near the front. Next to her sat a young man. His name was Vince, Alessia's boyfriend.

"He's got to go to work," she said, "But I wanted you two to meet."

After a while, Vince excused himself, kissed Alessia good-bye, and left by the back door.

"How long have you guys been dating?" Kathy asked.

"About a year. He's a sweet man. You seem surprised I have a boyfriend."

Not able to think of an answer, she shrugged.

"More wrong ideas about what a strega is. Did you think I was a virgin?"

"I guess I thought that was part of the price you pay to get your magical powers."

"Not for us. Women who sell their souls, yes. They pledge themselves to the Devil, give up sex, live lives of virtual slavery to their attendant spirits, and then are damned to the fires of hell when they die. I've never understood it. If you're going to give up something, I think you ought to at least get something worthwhile in return."

"What did you give up?"

"Normalcy. And even with that, I still will marry, have children, and enjoy life. But being a witch is limiting. I like you, and I'd like to be friends, but you're afraid of me and appalled at some of the things I've done. I run into that all the time."

"Maybe we need to get to know each other better."

"I'd like that."

"If you don't sell your soul, how do you become a strega?"

"The old way?you learn how. You do an apprenticeship. I started when I was six. My family has historically supplied learners since the middle ages, so when Vittoria asked me to learn the craft, I wanted to and my family agreed. You learn magic like you learn to cook or play a sport. Then you practice to get good."

Kathy decided to get off the subject of sorcery and the occult. She and Alessia talked about men, music, the Pistons and the Redwings. Finding they were both hockey fans, they made a date to go see the Grand Rapids Griffins play. After they had enjoyed a good conversation and started to get drunk, Alessia took Kathy's hands.

"Tomorrow at four," she said. "I know David is taking Alex to a Tiger's game. We will assemble at the Signature Oak by Albright's Grove."

Kathy nodded. They drank more, said goodnight, and went to their homes.

***

Everyone in town knew the Signature Oak. Massive and beautiful, it was an iconic sight in town and marked the trailhead of a walking path that went through Albright's Grove. As Kathy walked up to it, she saw four men, probably from local crime families, and three women her age, standing with Alessia. Alessia, barefoot, wore a coarse, rough smock. She looked solemn. Kathy nodded, feeling it would be inappropriate to speak.

"Form a circle around me," Alessia said, her voice quiet but strong. "I'll lead you to the place."

The women formed a cordon around her. The men walked, two before, and two behind. Majestic trees towered all around them. They saw deer and rabbits. The sky shone blue with large white clouds, grey the center, scudding through the air, driven by high-level winds. Alessia kept a steady pace. Finally she slowed.

"Here," she said, gesturing. "This way."

They walked through a line of trees and came into a circular meadow bordered with daffodil and wild iris. Once in the center, they halted not far from a brook that cut the grassy circle in two sections.

"Post yourselves by the trail," she told the mafia men. "Don't let anyone in here. If anyone enters the circle of trees, or looks in, the spell won't work?and I'm toast."

They nodded and melted back into the tree-line. Alessia looked a little afraid.

"Ladies, friends, post yourself. Mira, here; Yvonne; Elaine; Kathy." She pointed to an exact spot for each woman. "Face in, face me, keep your eyes on me at all times. Don't stop looking at me, whatever happens; and whatever happens, stay where you are and don't come over to me, touch me, or speak to me."

Having said that, she let her arms hang at her sides. She took a deep breath and seemed to focus. Then she pulled off her smock.

She wore nothing underneath. Kathy, who was directly in front of her and only about three feet away, noted what a strong, beautiful body she had: strong shoulders, well-shaped breasts, a slender waist, a powerful, flat stomach, an abundance of black hair at the juncture of her long, shapely legs.  She stood a moment in the sunlight, knelt, put out her hands and slowly settled so she lay face down on the ground, arms and legs straight before and behind.

For a long while she lay there. Then she began to tremble.

Kathy resisted the natural impulse to go to her. She began to shake violently, so much her head and legs banged the ground and she made the noise a person makes when being punched. At the same moment, the sky darkened. Heavy clouds rolled above them. A chilly breeze swept the meadow. The brook seethed, its waters troubled and violent. Alessia began foaming at the mouth and convulsing like someone having an epileptic seizure. Kathy watched in despair, remembering what her friend had told her about the dangers of approaching the power of earth. Alessia thrashed and shook and then froze, arms out to her sides, shoulders elevated from her hips so her upper torso arched toward the sky (it looked like a yoga pose Kathy had seen people do). After that, she sank down, folding her hands, resting her eyes on them, and relaxing. She lay so still, Kathy wondered if she were dead. The cold breeze died down and the sun broke through with welcome warmth.

After a time?she thought it was as long as five minutes?Alessia got up on her forearms, pushed herself to a seated position, then stood up, legs wobbly.

"Come quickly. I'm about to fall over."

Kathy leaped forward and caught her. Another of the women supported her and then the other two. She breathed in deep gulps, as if regaining her breath. Finally she stood up straighter, no longer wobbling, and managed a crooked smile. Her color began to return so she did not look so pale.

"Thanks," she said.

Kathy and another woman helped Alessia put the ragged smock back on. She sent Elaine to get the mafia men and conferred with them. The whole group walked back to the Signature Oak. The men drove off. After kisses, hugs, and expressions of thanks, the others left. Kathy lingered because she sensed Alessia wanted her to stay.

Alessia came up to her. She had changed into shorts, a Detroit Tigers t-shirt, and sandals. A cigarette dangled from her lips.

"Going where I went is hard on the body," she said.

"I could tell."

"But my journey was successful. Corey Allen has misused the power he encountered. The earth has withdrawn her protection from him."

"Did the earth tell you that? Did you hear the voice of Gaia? Did she speak to you?"

"Yes, Gaia did speak to me?but not with a voice, and certainly not with the voice of Whoopie Goldberg. Reality is different where I went, and so is how things are communicated. But I found out where Corey Allen lives and told the guys."

"So now they whack him?"

"He doesn't get off that easily. He has offended the earth and me?and you too, and the whole community here. He gets something infinitely worse?something I don't want to do to him but will do because I have to do it."

"What?"

"You'll see. I want you to be with me. I don't want to be alone. The guys will be there, but I want someone who cares about me at my side. I want a friend to stand beside me. Will you agree?"

"I'm not sure, if it's so bad you don't want to tell me about it. I don't want to see him killed. I don't want to witness a hit. Are the guys going to take him out?"

"No. It will be worse."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"I told you, I don't kill. The rules of our coven stipulate that we may not take life. There are some things that are worse than death." When Kathy did not reply, Alessia added, "And there are some things a woman should not have to face alone?even a strega."

Kathy saw the fear and pleading beneath the calm in Alessia's eyes. She saw it on her face, just below her normal, confident manner.

"Okay. Tell me where."

"Be here at the oak?sunset tomorrow, which is at 9:40. Be assured no harm will come to you and no one will die. You don't understand now, but you will understand after the deed is done."

Kathy nodded. She wanted to say more but there seemed nothing to say until Alessia said, "Thank you."

***

They heat of day had faded as Kathy got out of her car. She saw someone standing by the signature oak. He waved to indicate he was her contact. Tall, blond, very un-Italian in appearance, he led her to the same secluded area they had been to the day before. Alessia was there with someone who appeared to be another mafia figure. He smiled but did not speak when Kathy came up to them.

Alessia wore the ragged smock she had worn the day before. It had probably been passed down for hundreds of years from strega to strega, Kathy surmised, and probably had magical powers. She smiled a sad smile but did not speak.

As the shadows grew longer she heard noises. Five beefy guys pushed a small, wiry man with a beard and short sandy hair into the center of the grove. They stood in a semi-circle a little distance back.

Alessia walked toward him. A breeze began to blow. Kathy could see well enough to recognize Corey Allen from newspaper photos. He had been beaten. His eyes were blacked, his face webbed with bruises. Alessia walked forward and stopped only a foot or so from him.

He looked up at her, his eyes fearful but also evaluative and cool. Kathy remembered he was a criminal?a terrorist whose actions of sabotage had killed several people, including two police officers?not to mention the Paul and Ann Fusco. He seemed to register that Alessia was unarmed and perhaps thought to rush her, seize her, and use her as a human shield to escape his captors.

If this was his plan, he did not have time to put into action. Alessia raised her hands. Her eyes focused on Allen, her gaze intense and cold, her hands stretching toward him.

As Kathy watched, some of the same things that had happened yesterday happened again.  The brook began to roll with waves, the wind blew hard, clouds rolled in. She felt a splash of icy rain across her face. Then Corey Allen convulsed in pain. Kathy in fact wondered if, despite what Alessia had told her, one of the mafia men had shot him using a gun with a silencer. Then it happened.

A transformation started at Allen'a face and spread over his whole body, as if he had turned to dirt. For a second he looked ashy, like a mummy. Then his body broke apart and fell in a heap to the ground. Kathy gasped. Her heart felt as if it had stopped.

She heard a man's scream.

The heap of dust into which Allen had collapsed resembled a human form. Suddenly the wind struck it, blow it into the air. Another scream rent the silence. She saw Corey Allen's form, his face distinct in the swirling cloud of dust the wind blew violently into the water of the brook. After another pause, she saw a wave rise?a wave that bore Allen's horrified, astonished likeness a second or two. She heard more screaming as the wave dissolved into the streambed.

Kathy turned to Alessia, who looked grim. A man she recognized as Arrigo Corsi walked over to her.  A deep silence fell as the sky darkened and Venus appeared above the treetops.

"You understand?" Alessia asked in a flat voice that was both a question and a statement.

The man nodded. "Will he be this way is forever?"

"As long as earth endures he will suffer like you just saw."

He nodded to one of the others, who came up to her with a suitcase. He opened it. It was full of bundled hundred-dollar bills.

"Give it to my friend, please," Alessia said, nodding toward Kathy.

The man closed the suitcase and gave Kathy the suitcase. Alessia said nothing more.

At that moment a swirl of wind blew leaves across the meadow?the leaves that fall in thick forests and never break down to humus. Everyone there heard moans and cries of pain. As the leaves scudded across the grass, they could still make out, in the gathering darkness, Corey Allan's form, hands and legs flailing, face outlined in the leaves, drawn in agony,. It congealed and then, when a sharp gust of wind broke up the human shape, disintegrated with howls of torment that echoed across the still, shadowy meadow.

Corsi nodded, turned and, with his associates, left.

Alessia closed her eyes. Kathy stood there, holding the suitcase. It was so heavy she had to put it down. She wondered if Alessia was okay. Finally she spoke.

"Can you get my clothes? They're in the red gym bag in my car."

When she was dressed, they headed back to the parking lot. Alessia turned to Kathy.

"Thank you. Thank you for coming, Kathy."

"Sure."

They walked down the path to the parking lot, Kathy carrying the payment money. The lights of a passing car illuminated Alessia's face. Tears ran down her cheeks as she silently wept. Kathy set down the suitcase and put her arms around Alessia. As the darkness grew complete, she held her friend as she sobbed and shook.

Off in the distance, low moans broke the silence of the summer night.

David W. Landrum teaches English at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His horror/supernatural fiction has appeared in such journals as Sinister Tales, Macabre Cadaver, The Horror Zine, Death Head Grin, and many other journals and anthologies.

Story by David W. Landrum, Copyright 2010
Image by Amber Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2010