Parting The Veil of Worlds - John Stormm (red queen ebook txt) 📗

     Melanie was fourteen and a half years old, and very full of herself. Her dad had announced to the family that he would be preparing her to become the Storm Witch Clan’s next reigning matriarch. She was the eldest of the four Storm children, and since it was her job to supervise her siblings much of the time anyway, it made perfect sense that she should be their matriarch one day. It was like being a queen. Yes, the idea appealed to her. Queen Melanie… oh yeah!

     Her sister, Becky, whom everyone called “Bex”, was the second oldest, at twelve, and the prettiest of the girls, which served well to hide her darker nature. She was the most secretive about her studies of witchcraft. Her father laughingly referred too her as “Bad Bex,” which made her wonder how he knew.
Next in line was Jonathan. The only son, he was eleven, and idolized his father. He wanted so badly to have the pale blond hair like his dad, but he would be cursed to grow up with looks that would be described as “tall, dark and handsome.” For him, this was mortifying. He was determined to master invisibility and become the world’s greatest ninja.

Lastly of the Storms, was little, nine year old Tori. Seeing how the other children had taken to their father’s impossible notions and methods, her mother had demanded of her father, that Tori, being the last child she would bear, should be left to have her baby girl. Mom drove Dad nuts, and vice versa, but when she asked, there was nothing he could refuse her. So Tori took very much after her mom’s shy and timid nature when all of her siblings were larger than life in so many ways. Thus, Tori was the eternal baby girl.

Mom was a beautiful, Cherokee seamstress with a quiet, sweet nature. The kids inherited most of their dark eyed, raven haired, good looks from their mother. She was the epitome of a good Christian mother. A devout Baptist, Mom was more than a bit uncomfortable with her flamboyant husband’s pagan roots.



     Daddy, as Mel’s brother put it, was Batman, Bruce Lee and Merlin the magician all rolled up into one very tall, blonde, package. A master of Chinese Kenpo, he taught Mel and her siblings from the time they made their first fist. Dad was also a hereditary witch, born and raised in the craft by his grandmother.

     Great grandmother’s line of witchery reached back almost thirteen centuries to an Irish king who had only three daughters, and no son. Upon marrying one daughter to a foreign prince, who turned out not to be fully “human”, every third generation produced an adept of great power in the craft. Dad was such an adept. Since his clan was a matriarchal succession, Dad was something of an abomination to everyone but his grandmother. So the family was Dad’s attempt to bring up his own clannad of hereditary witches.

Daddy had converted to Christianity when he was in his early twenties. With his inherent pagan viewpoint, it was hard for the family to reconcile what their very fundamental Baptist church made of him. For the most part, Mel’s father would shrug it off that they really didn’t understand what a “witch” truly was as opposed to the demonic, Disney-fied versions that people were familiar with. Daddy had no tolerance for anything “evil”. Since Melanie had inherited her mother’s good looks and her daddy’s strength and intense nature, she thought she had gotten the very best of both worlds. If Daddums said he was a Christian, then that is what he was. Mel knew that a true witch’s power was in their will and their word. Neither were ever allowed to be broken.

It was the weekend before the summer solstice. Mom was away at work at the sewing shop, and Dad had taken the week off as a vacation to explore the ramifications of a druidic astrological wheel he had found. Dad would constantly be into the Internet discussing paranormal events and the mysterious “rifts” he found in various places around town and abroad. According to her father, at certain times of the year, a wizard could open gateways into other worlds. It was the stuff of fairy tales, and Mel was as fascinated as her father on the subject.



     Presently, there was the mundane chore of getting her siblings fed breakfast and dressed for an outing in the woods. The kids were making a mess of the milk and cereal and Mel lamented that it would take even more time to clean up afterwards before they’d be allowed to go with Dad on his experiment. There was a great deal of movement and bustling from her parents’ room upstairs. Dad was rushing to and fro in his frenzy to get all the equipment he’d need to do his rift experiment. His excitement was very contagious with his kids.

Melanie was getting more flustered by the minute, as the kids rushed about after breakfast, but three loud handclaps had announced that Dad was present and demanding their momentary, but undivided attention. Everyone stopped in place and looked to their father. At well over six feet tall, Daddy towered over everybody they knew. There he stood, dressed in his traditional black, with his shaggy blond hair, upswept elfin features and the mischievous glint in his eyes and numerous backpacks hanging from his strong arms, everyone knew it was time to go.

“But first,” Dad pointed out, “we leave this kitchen in respectable shape for your mother. We don’t want her to come home from a hard day’s work to a dirty kitchen.”

All the kids pitched in with Dad to help clean up. Jonathan emptied the garbage. Tori and Bex swept and picked up the kitchen while Mel and Dad washed and put away dishes. It was cleaned in record time, and the kids raced outside to the aging Oldsmobile to get the best seats. Dad threw the packs into the trunk, and with a smile to Mel, he reached down and grabbed the bumper and lifted the car on it’s springs, gave it a shake and dropped it to the pavement with a bounce. The kids in the backseat bounced about with the car and shouted at their dad. Mel knew that she would grow to be at least nearly as strong as her father, but was still amazed at what he could do. With that, Mel took her place in the front seat, next to her father, and the family set off on their Saturday morning adventure.

“So, what’s the plan today, Daddums?” she asked.

“We’re going to explore the Devil’s Bathtub today,” her father said.

“Cool beans!” shouted Jon and Bex in unison.

“Sounds scary,” whimpered Tori. “Will there be monsters to eat us?”

“Not if your dad can help it,” her father chuckled.

“Does this have anything to do with the rifts?” Mel queried.

“As a matter of fact, it has everything to do with rifts, Mel,” her dad said. “It’s one of those strange places where things of an otherworldly nature tend to happen. That gives me every clue that it is probably a rift area, an area where the veil between worlds is thinnest, which is why such strange things tend to occur near these places.”

“How does the druid wheel fit in with this today, Daddy?” Mel puzzled.

“According to my studies,” her father lectured, “the ancient druids were wizards who studied the complexities of nature and the universe. Their astrological wheel has script that indicates that at certain times of the year, gateways to other worlds open into this plane of existence. As we are moving towards the summer solstice, the gateway to the faery world of Gwynydd should be easily opened and accessible.”

“Are we going to see fairies?” Bex shrilled excitedly.

“If I’m right in my calculations,” Dad answered, “we should all see some very marvelous things, faeries included.”

Southward from the city of Rochester, they drove on into Mendon Ponds Park. True to their father’s description of strange places, the park was dotted with ponds and water filled sinkholes that some said connected underground. The ponds and adjoining forests were filled with all sorts of wildlife. In the wetlands there were all manner of ducks, geese, herons and beavers, muskrats, raccoons and the occasional otter. The forests boasted white tailed deer, and in years gone by, bears, wildcats and cougars. As they rounded one large pond, Dad made a hard right turn up a steep hill. At the top was another of the ubiquitous picnic pavilions and a parking area. They parked the Olds, and emptied out into the lot to receive their packs for the hike.

“Listen up, gang!” Dad instructed, “Here’s the plan… each of you has some bottled water and some hotdogs and stuff for lunch later. Mel will carry the camera equipment and I will carry my wizard’s bag. We stay together as we hike down into the crater and if I say FREEZE, you freeze on the spot. If I say RUN, don’t wait long enough to ask why.” With that, everyone’s eyes got big as saucers.

“Well, I COULD be wrong about this, you know,” Dad said defensively.

     Over the rim of the crater, was a wooded path, carved out with wooden steps down to a platform in a marshy area around a central pond called “The Devil’s Bathtub.” Mel and her siblings marched down in orderly fashion and staying to the firmer ground, examined the strange flora and fauna of the area.

“Those are called pitcher plants.” Mel pointed out to her siblings, “I learned about those in Earth Science. They eat bugs.”

“Cool beans!” said Jon, as he looked into one, “but this one ate a frog or something.”

“No.” Mel patiently instructed, “They have a smell that draws insects, and they get stuck inside and digested by the plant. An animal could easily get back out.”

“He’s right, Mel,” observed Bex, who was inspecting Jon’s find. “There’s a frog skeleton in this one.”

“Will the plants eat us?” little Tori whimpered.

“Not unless you climb in, you ninny!” Mel snapped, and stopped to examine yet another of the larger pitcher plants nearby.

“Hey Dad!” Mel called out. “C’mere and see this! Is this one of the strange things that points to rifts?”
As her father came over to look at her find, she took out her pocket knife and cut down the side of the pitcher plant to reveal the skeleton of a small rodent. The sap oozing from her cut resembled blood.

“Oh, that’s weird, Mel,” he said. “That’s a pretty good indicator that we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Mel recognized her father’s allusion to the story where Dorothy and her little dog Toto woke up in Oz. She stood up and started looking about with new eyes and renewed interest. The area, that was strange to begin with, didn’t really look like it had changed all that much. With the exception of the carnivorous plants, it looked like a normal shady bog. Jon and Bex were throwing stones out into the center of the pond.

“Just in case the devil is taking a bath in there,” proclaimed Jon, “I’ll hit ‘im in the head with a rock.”

“Yeah!” agreed Bex. “Take THAT, Satan!” she said, as she plunked a fist sized stone into the pond’s center.

“But, what if the devil gets mad?” Tori whined.

“Let ‘im get mad,” Jon bragged, “Deacon Miller says that the devil won’t mess with Dad, ‘cause he’s a big demon too.”

“Yeah!” echoed Bex, “A demon that fights with kung-fu… POW!” To this, their father’s brow arched half way up his fore head and he frowned.

At once, a thirty foot section in the center of the