OtherWorld

"Fuck me, please, now..."

No...

Jeff quickly hooked his fingers through the waistband of her panties and expertly slid them down her shapely legs. He tossed them to the floor, and she wrapped her legs hungrily around his hips...

Stop, not now, not her...

He reached for his zipper, practically in a frenzy, his hands shaking as he began to take down his zipper...

STOP!

Without warning he cried out and pulled away from her, sweat dripping from his head, his breath coming in quick shallow puffs. His eyes dropped away from her to the floor, his face flushed red and hot, and he felt as if he might faint. Lauren watched him with a mixture of shock and disappointment on her face.

"Jeff? What is it?"

He tried to slow his breath, but felt as if he might be having some sort of panic attack. He bent over, his hands on his knees like he'd just finished running a marathon. "I can't--I can't...I'm sorry..."

Lauren hopped off the table and pulled her skirt back down, an action that seemed to embarrass her more than make her feel comfortable. She approached Jeff slowly and laid a hand lightly on the back of his neck as his breathing began to slow.

"It's okay, Jeff, it's alright. Here, have a seat." She pulled out a chair from a nearby table, and he immediately dropped into it. She knelt down beside him and grabbed his hand. The red began to drain slowly from his face, and his breathing returned to normal, but he looked tired and embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," he said weakly, "I don't know what happened, I just...I wanted to, but I couldn't."

She stroked his cheek again, and it seemed to comfort him a little. "It's okay, I understand."

"When you said you could help me, is that what you meant?"

"Not at all, that was just...that was just what felt good. I don't know what happened to me, I didn't ask you here for that."

"Then what did you ask me here for," Jeff asked, "I'm guessing it wasn't for a French test."

"Every once in a while," she said, stroking Jeff's hand lovingly, "people call out to me. It's not something I can explain. I wouldn't call myself psychic because it doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes, very infrequently, I can hear people, I can hear their thoughts."

"So, you can hear my thoughts?"

"Sometimes, yes. Other times, it's more of a feeling, like a strong magnet pulling me towards someone or someplace. The other night, I got a stronger feeling from you than I've ever gotten from anybody."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know," she said, "it means different things for different people. It's why I asked you here, and now I know where your pain lies, but I don't know how to fix it."

Jeff wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and took a deep breath. Everything had been moving so quickly for the past two days, and now time seemed to be suspended. His mind was working frantically just to keep up, let alone figure out exactly what was going on.

"Lauren, I don't understand any of this. I mean, what the hell just happened here?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, that's never happened to me. I've never felt so out of control, all I could think of was..." Her voice trailed off as her face turned red with embarrassment.

Jeff looked up at her earnestly, his body finally pulling itself under control, his hands shaking less. "How are you supposed to help my pain?"

Lauren looked away from him. She slowly got to her feet and pulled over a chair from the table, kicking coffee soaked French notes sheepishly out of her way. She sat down near him and let out a deep breath.

"All I can tell you will be pretty unclear. If I could be less vague, I would be."

"Well, you brought it up. So tell me."

Lauren smiled at him, then crossed her legs, being careful not to let her skirt get too high. "Wiccans, like Lilah and me, celebrate Halloween as a sacred holiday called Samhain--"

"Sow-what?"

"Samhain. It's the name used by the ancient Celts, Gaelic for 'summer's end.' The night Lilah was killed, when she woke up in a panic, you thought she mumbled something about Halloween and fixing clothes. Sowing. Samhain. Close, but no cigar."

"That explains a lot," Jeff said with a tone of resignation.

"Anyway, Samhain has nothing to do with masks or candy or black cats or goblins or ghouls. Wiccans celebrate Samhain because it's believed to be the most magically potent night of the year. We believe it's also the perfect night for divination--"

"Tarot cards, runes..."

"Right, whatever your thing is. I'm glad you're following."

"I'm following," Jeff said, "but I just don't understand what any of this has to do with me."

"They say that the eve of Samhain, Halloween night, is the night when the veil between our world and the spirit world is thin enough for the dead to cross over. I think this is important to you."

Jeff was silent for a long time as his brain attempted to process this information. Everything Lauren had told him made sense, and it would have seemed entirely plausible, except that Jeff in no way believed in magic and ghosts. At the same time, he didn't believe in people with psychic powers, yet Lauren had managed to read his mind several times since they'd met. Then again, it could have been a fluke.

"So what you're saying is..."

"I don't know what I'm saying," Lauren said.

"You'll bear with me if I find all of this very difficult to swallow. First, you're telling me that, uh, you can read my mind. Now you're telling me that...well, I guess you're telling me that Lilah could come back."

"I'm not necessarily telling you that--"

"Then what the fuck are you necessarily telling me, Lauren?" Jeff jumped to his feet and began pacing impatiently as Lauren watched him with a hurt look. "You know, tell me something or don't tell me anything, but if this is some kind of fucking game--"

"It's not a game!"

"Okay, okay, fine. But what it really comes down to is that you have nothing particularly useful to tell me."

"I guess not," Lauren said impatiently.

"Then go," Jeff ordered, "go now, Lilah, because I really can't handle this shit right now, and I want you to leave before I say or do something that I'll regret."

Her expression looked like she'd been hit with a truck. She stood slowly and turned her back to him and gazed out into the cold night.

"My name is Lauren."

"What?"

"My name is Lauren. You called me Lilah."

Jeff's stomach dropped. Had he? What exactly did that mean? Probably nothing, his mind was racing, twisting everything together. What the hell, his tired mind reasoned, one Wiccan is as good as another.

"Sorry," he said softly.

"It's no big deal," she said, her head dropping down and looking at the floor. She scanned the floor for a moment, then found her panties near the table. Watching her pick them up off the floor and pull them back on underneath her skirt sent a shiver of guilt through Jeff's gut. It was something he had seen Tracy do many times after a quick, meaningless fuck, a tawdry action that a girl like Lauren should have never had to do. Jeff looked away.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you."

Lauren knelt down and began gathering her coffee soaked French notes. "It's okay."

"Lauren, when we were...I heard a voice telling me to stop, telling me it was wrong."

"I heard it too."

"What was it?"

She finished gathering her papers, then stood up straight and looked at him. "The voice didn't say it was wrong. It said, 'not her.'" Again, he could see hurt in her eyes, but she was doing a good job of hiding it. She turned and headed for the door.

"Do you need me to walk you home?"

"Jeff, let's not make this into a big deal, okay? We made a mistake, let's not dwell on it. I'll get home fine, and you can pretend not to know me again tomorrow."

"I won't--" Before he could get another word out, she was gone into the night.

Sixty miles per hour on the Blue Ridge Parkway of North Carolina was a suicidal speed, especially at night with cold weather rolling in. Even with high-beams on, it was pitch black outside, the road was difficult to see, and there was no telling when a big buck might come dashing out of the woods into the road.

Despite all that, Jeff was driving seventy, well above suicidal speed, with no high-beams on, just headlights. The drunk driver who had killed Lilah had been driving seventy, and the crash had been catastrophic. And yet Jeff had only limped away with a shattered ankle, which he now used to press down on the accelerator harder.

Images swept through his mind as he sped through the darkness. The crash. Lilah's broken and bloody body pinned into her seat. The dizzying flash of police lights. Steel. Glass. Blood.

She hadn't even screamed.

Thinking back to the accident, thinking back to catching Tracy cheating, thinking back to the day before when Lauren hadn't even been able to look at him, Jeff could only feel emptiness.

It was pitch dark and cool as Jeff unloaded his backpack from the trunk. His self-destructive drive down the parkway ended safely as it did every year, and he found himself once again wandering the trails deep into the forest, searching for a campsite by the light of a small, gas-powered lantern.

After negotiating the twists and turns of the backcountry trail for nearly an hour, Jeff found a suitable spot to set up camp. According to his map, he was deep in the Linville Gorge wilderness, exactly where he wanted to be. It took less than twenty minutes for him to get settled in, and by then, the sounds of the woods at night began to swell, serving to take his mind away from everything else.

On his left, the crackle of a tree branch. On his right, the snort of a buck. In front of him, the subtle gurgle of the creek in the gorge below him. And behind him, in the distance...

Laughter?

His mind was playing tricks on him. There were a dozen animals in the wilderness that made sounds like laughter, this according to countless hours watching the animal channel on cable. This deep in the wilderness, away from the noise of civilization, sound carried differently. He couldn't let Lauren's tales of Samhain get into his head, her tales of magic and otherworldly veils. None of it existed, and as far as Jeff was concerned, ancient Celtic tradition or not, Samhain was just as hokey as modern day Halloween.

He removed the tiny gas-powered stove from his pack, his stomach growling to recharge after the hike. Back in the world, except for his skills with a coffee machine, he was considered a lousy cook, but out here--

There it was again. Laughter. On his six, as his father used to say.

He turned around and peered through the darkness behind him looking for some sign of life. This late in the season in this particular area, it was unusual to find any other hikers, but not impossible. He turned his attention back to preparing his meal, but not more than a minute went by when he heard more laughter. A woman's laughter, or more specifically, a girl's laughter.

A loud sigh escaped his lips. Would he be able to relax for the rest of the night without finding out what it was? Common sense told him he'd been unlucky enough to come across a group of hikers in all these acres of wilderness. If he had, and they were planning on being loud all night, he'd have to pack everything back out and find somewhere else to stay.

He picked up his lantern and headed off in the direction of the laughter. As he wandered deeper into the woods, the trail he followed became narrower and narrower. At some point, the laughter died down, and Jeff stopped in his tracks, listening carefully. Seconds ticked by, then minutes, and as he was about to turn around, the laughter began again, cheerful laughter, the laughter of celebration.

Jeff continued to trudge on through the darkness with no concept of how long he had been walking or how far he had gone. The laughter had seemed so close when he was setting up camp, but as he followed the sound, it seemed to stay the same distance. He had unwittingly become a man obsessed, and despite the fact that he no longer knew where his camp was, he had to find the source of the laughter.

Making things worse, his head had started spinning again, like the night when he had been with Lauren, and he wasn't sure how long it would be before his legs gave out from underneath him. Here in the woods, deep in the woods away from his camp, it could be entirely unhealthy if he passed out. Through the trees, the laughter died away, and quiet voices began speaking in unison, wavering in and out, Jeff only able to catch small bits of what they were saying...

Bide the Wiccan laws we must, in perfect love and perfect trust...

On and on he walked until, finally, the gas in his lantern burned away entirely, and he was left in total darkness. The night, the pitch black, was dizzying, and Jeff no longer had any concept of time or direction.

...when the wind blows from the West, departed souls may have no rest...

Jeff blinked his eyes desperately trying to see through the darkness, trying to hone in on where the voices were coming from. Off to his left, there was a faint blue glow through the trees, and Jeff followed it. As he drew closer, he could hear the voices louder...

...and mind the Wiccan law ye should, three times bad and three times good...

Jeff stumbled through a collection of brush, and found him at the edge of a tree line. Through the trees, he could see a small clearing, the source of the blue light. In the middle of the clearing sat five young women, all entirely naked. Between them, painted onto the grass, Jeff recognized a pentacle, a five-point star enclosed by a circle.

...eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill, an harm ye none, do what ye will.

The Wiccan Rede, Jeff remembered it vaguely. Lilah had taught it to him once long ago, but not being a particularly spiritual person, he had lumped it away in the back of his memory, along with the Lord's Prayer and a host of other spiritual rants he had little interest in.

A voice inside Jeff told him that he'd found what he was looking for, and now it was time to go, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He watched the girls; most of them couldn't have been any older than he was, the youngest probably about twenty. They had no source of light, no flashlight, no lantern, and yet all around them was the soft blue glow that Jeff had followed.

Jeff's attention was pulled away by a short crack behind him as if someone were approaching. He turned, but there was nothing. Without warning, however, he could feel something, or someone, beside him in the dark, and as he turned, his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

Lauren.

Where there had been nothing no more than a second ago, stood Lauren, watching him, dressed casually in jeans as if she'd been hiking all night. It suddenly occurred to Jeff that he had to be hallucinating. The fits of dizziness, the irrational behavior, the loss of time and direction, the hallucinations. It could all be explained easily, probably by a brain tumor, and Jeff made a mental note to visit a doctor when he regained control of all his faculties.

"You don't have a brain tumor, Jeff," Lauren said, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"It's the only way to explain what's happening to me. I'm lost in the woods with five naked witches, and you're here. I either have a tumor or I'm losing my mind."

"The eve of Samhain is a powerful night, I wish you could understand that."

"Then explain how you found me out here in the middle of nowhere."

Lauren smiled at him as if he were an escaped mental patient. "Your entire being is surrounded by the most potent magic force I've ever experienced, and somehow I've become attuned to it. I could find you in the middle of an avalanche if I had to."

Jeff's mind was swimming out of control once again. All he wanted in the world was to understand what was happening to him. He'd never felt so lost in his entire life.

He turned back to the clearing and watched the young women. Two of them, a tall girl with long black hair streaked with red, and a shorter girl with sandy blonde hair, had converged in the center of the circle, kneeling, facing each other.

"What are they doing," Jeff asked quietly.

"This is a Samhain ritual. They've created a circle of power, and soon they'll call upon the spirits of their ancestors to come and bless them. They'll take that energy and release it into the universe for the benefit of humankind."

"Humankind?"

"Just like in other faiths, we believe everything is connected," Lauren spoke in a whisper, "we're all part of the energy of the planet. We all share power, and when we take power from the spirits, it's never for selfish reasons. Tonight, in the Samhain ritual, we bid a temporary farewell to the God before his resurrection at the Yule. It's this time, when the God crosses over, that the doorway to the spirit world is open."

Jeff nodded absently.

"I know these girls," Lauren said, "they're from a coven in a little town called Valley Crucis, just south of here. The two in the middle, the blonde is Amanda, the black-haired girl is Cassie, they're the most powerful of the group."

Jeff laughed deliriously. "And here I thought all witches had names like Sunset Moon or Raven Byrdshite."

Lauren smiled at him, her eyes gleaming through the darkness. "Drunk on powerful magic, and you're still a wiseass."

Jeff turned back to the girls in the circle. The blonde named Amanda slowly reached her hands up to Cassie's face, gently running them down her neck, over her breasts, down her entire body. Cassie's eyes closed, and a slight smile played on her lips. As Amanda's hands reached the ground, Cassie reached up and performed the same motion with the rest of the group watching.

As Cassie's hands reached the ground, she slowly leaned forward and placed a light, soft kiss on Amanda's lips. Jeff could no longer hear what any of them were saying, but he could see Amanda's lips form the words, "love me."

"What are they doing now," Jeff said, his head spinning, his mind hardly registering the words coming out of his mouth, "are they lesbians?"

Lauren laughed softly. "Not necessarily. One of the Wiccan laws is that love, love under will, is the only true law. Some witches believe that an act of pure, true love, will strengthen the circle of power, open the mind, free the spirit."

"An act of love..."

The two girls leaned toward each other again, their lips pressing together, their mouths opening. Amanda's hand reach up and fondled Cassie's breast, her fingers squeezing the nipple gently. Amanda broke the kiss, and ducked her head to slowly run her tongue around Cassie's hardened nipple. Cassie dropped her head back and closed her eyes, her arms reaching around Amanda's neck to pull her closer.

"An act of love opens the mind..." Jeff mumbled absently. Lauren, paying little attention to what was happening in the clearing, was gazing at him steadily.

"That's right," she whispered.

The two girls in the circle moved closer to each other, each one straddling the other's thigh, their arms wrapped around each other. Their hips began slowly rocking back and forth against each other, quiet moans coming from both of them as they locked their lips together.

"...frees the spirit..."

Their motions became faster and more frantic as each one reached a shivering climax and continued on. Jeff glanced around the outside of the circle, watching the others who were engrossed by the scene. One of the girls turned and looked directly at him, and his heart skipped a beat. Her eyes were black, completely black and empty, but she was looking at him. Her face was familiar...

Lilah.

When he blinked, the girl was once again watching the other girls. Her eyes were normal, her face was unfamiliar. But Jeff had seen enough.