“What?” Blythe and I say at the same time.
“The game we used to play when we were kids. This is just like that,” Aaiden says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Oh right! Remember you used to make us play gargoyles with you? You gave us names and we would fly around the playground at recess fighting each other.” Fiona’s eyes light up.
“Oh wow, yeah, you called me Sapphire.” Blythe giggles staring off to the side. “It was so fun,” she says wistfully.
“I was Mira,” Fiona tells me.
“You tried to name me Broccoli, but I changed it to Aaiden the assassin gargoyle! I was amazing. Some boys played ninja turtles, I played gargoyles with a bunch of girls. It really was an awesome childhood.”
I halt, trying to remember. My time with them is hazy. I have no memory of that game. None. “I don’t...I don’t remember that,” I say. I made them play gargoyles? And we just saw gargoyles, gargoyles that said they were linked to me and knew me? My mind whirls.
“You didn’t remember the dog-cat either. Did no one else notice a dog turned into a cat, because that is insane.” Blythe seems chipper again.
“Zombies are also insane,” I say.
“All of this is insane, and I love it!” Fiona bounces. “I’m glad you’re on board, Blythe.”
“I guess I am. I mean it’s all is starting to make sense; maybe there is a reason you came into our lives and I’m finding out the supernatural exists. Maybe it’s a message.” She looks towards the Torah.
“I believe it’s a message too. One of those girls is my soul mate,” Aaiden gushes causing all of us to groan. “Okay, so it’s more than that. I always knew we were a weird bunch, and now life is about to get a whole lot weirder. The zombies scared me, more than I’ve ever been in my life. I didn’t freeze though, or pee myself, because that was totally on the table. I survived, we survived. Then the gargoyles...I don’t know how to explain, but it has to mean something. So, I want to know all there is to know. Have you tried using magic again?” he asks me.
My eyes widen. “No. I didn’t - it wasn’t me. I didn’t use magic; the book is magic.” Even as I say it, I know it’s a lie. I sigh when they all give me differing versions of a snort. “Okay, maybe I did, not just when holding the book either.” I decide to tell them about the room I envisioned.
“Wow, was there anything else?” Fiona asks me.
“No, but something happened when I passed out.” A vague memory comes back as I search my mind. “I was in the room again. With more doors. Someone...” My head starts to hurt the more I try to remember. “Someone spoke to me and told me to trust the gargoyles.”
“Who?” Blythe asks.
“I don’t - I can’t remember. It’s like trying to hurts my head.” I focus, but nothing more comes.
“Okay then, we need more information.” Fiona nods.
“You’re right.” All of their confidence in the situation and remembering as much as I can about the dream is helping my resolve. We need to know what’s going on and the only way to do that is investigate. “Where do we start?” I wonder aloud. Fiona seems to be the only one with a plan still.
“Madam Leticia,” Fiona says.
“Wait, shouldn’t we get the book first?” Aaiden offers.
He’s right. Before I go talk to someone who may or may not know something, I need to find the book that definitely knows something. I twitch my lips to the side thinking. If the gargoyles had the book and they wanted to meet me at my uncle’s then there’s reason to believe the book is in the estate. But where could gargoyles hide there? It doesn’t hurt to try to find it. I guess I have to go face the memories today.
“Yeah, we should get the book first,” I tell them.
“Where at?” Blythe asks.
“Let’s go to my uncle’s place,” I say.
“Great, first zombies, now ghosts,” she says shivering.
“The only ghosts there are memories, and I have to face them sometime,” I say.
Blythe nods. “Maybe it won’t be so bad with us there. If it gets too hard, we can always leave and go to Madam Leticia first.”
I give her a small smile.
The drive back into Concrete isn’t long, but the drive up the mountain towards the estate is. The road is an old logging road long abandoned. Now locals just use it to go up to the lake or go ATV riding on old mountain trails.
We all somehow squeezed into Aaiden’s tiny three-seated Toyota. The ride up the mountain is bouncy with Blythe ending up on Fiona’s lap. Aaiden has to slow down to miss large pot holes and ravines where water running down the mountain has changed the structure of the road.
“I wonder how Irene gets all the equipment up to the house,” I muse.
“Wh-a-a-at do you mean?” Blythe’s voice bounces with the truck.
“Well, she said the estate was in complete disarray and neglect. She had to truck up landscapers, renovators, and a slew of workers and equipment to fix the place up. My great uncle was very sick the last year or so of his life, so he couldn’t keep up with it. Ezzie said it looked like a haunted house the first time she took him.”
“That’s because it did!” Fiona says confidently.
Blythe’s eyes widen. “Shut up!” she says under her breath.
“What are you two talking about; how would you know?”
Aaiden sighs. “Just don’t get mad, okay.”
I’m unable to answer as I’m bounced up and down over another cluster of pot holes.
“You were gone a long time and, well, a tradition started in town.” Blythe peeps at me.
“Every Halloween there’s a thing some kids do, they come up here and see who has the guts to go up to the Kai Castle.”
“And?” I say because Aaiden’s face is telling me there is more.
Blythe’s teeth show full force as she says, “Knock on the door then run away.”
I feel a strange feeling bubbling up; it hurdles up my throat and out of my mouth. A laugh escapes from me. A full-on belly laugh. My body is wracked with it, I shake and bounce even more than the Toyota through pot holes. They all glance at me like I’m insane, but it’s just so funny. My childhood vacation home is their childhood scary house. “You’re telling me,” I breathe in deeply to try to stop the laughs, “that you would all go prank my uncle every year out of fear?” I can just imagine how annoyed he was. I didn’t know Eugene super well, but I knew him well enough to remember his face and how he looked when he was annoyed.
Blythe giggles. “I guess it is silly.”
“Most people don’t make it to the door. Once every couple of years someone does, then they get props until the next one gets the guts. There’s a tally kept at devil’s tower.”
“What’s devil’s tower?”
“It’s an old shut down mill, there’s parties there sometimes. They always suck,” Fiona says.
“Oh yeah, this is definitely a small town,” I laugh more, “but I just also have to say, it’s not a castle and it’s not haunted.”
Just as the words leave my mouth, I notice some old spray-painted pressboard signs on the side of the road. They were up on posts, but someone has ripped them down and set them against some saplings. The messages are clear in red paint, “Keep-Out,” “Beware Kai Castle,” and “The dead walk here.”