A Hard Night's Day

Chapter Two - Edgar

Edgar

I don't usually pick up everything in the middle of the night to go camping, but it seemed like the only rational thing to do at the time. It was either this or stay where I was, a silent, seething storm ready to unleash a raging torrent on the next person to look at me wrong. I don't have a good track record with displaced aggression... or maybe it's that my track record is too good? Either way, it's always a struggle to put the anger on the back burner, much more to get rid of it entirely.

It takes maybe five hours to get up to our old campsite in the thick forest outside of the Lakewood Heights section of Toad Hollow. Apparently, five hours wasn't long enough for the anger to burn out or far enough for the pull that the Overlord had over my emotions, the conniving bitch. I had to pay double close attention driving down the fire roads towards the campsite in the darkest hours before dawn. The old maples and bristling pines had grown in a bit since the last time I had made the trek and their sagging branches threatened to scratch up the sides of my truck, an old, alpine green 1980s model Ford. It was lucky that none of the woody limbs or trunks had fallen across the path.

The campsite itself was no more than a large ring of stones for a fire pit and a few logs for seats. I left the truck running and worked by the yellow light of the headlamps and the bluesy twang of an R. L. Burnside cassette. The log benches were rotted out in a few places and a fair amount of overgrowth, mostly Virginia Creeper, had invaded the space in the intervening years but it would still do just fine. I had to pull some of the vines away from the stones of the fire pit before I could get started, but they were more or less just draped lazily over the top. That was disappointing. I would have liked to rip something out of the ground. There was plenty of kindling to be had around and after a small exertion of magick to ask Brigid for the warmth of her hearth, the campfire blazed with merry delight in stark contrast to its audience.

I had had at least enough foresight through the haze of anger to steal some food that was meant for the party. It was your basic camping fare, only fancier because it was the Overlord's. She never spared on expense. There was some Mangalitsa sausage imported from Great Britain for roasting and crusty artisan bread in the cooler with a bottle of ten-year-old chianti to wash it down. And of course, I raided the massive dessert tray because fancy chocolate is truly the most delicious thing on Earth. I didn't take that much stuff, it wouldn't be missed at a party meant to cater to a few hundred, but she would notice and it would make her all the angrier that I had stolen from her before I skipped out. The look on her face, hah, it would be priceless. The thought made me smile for the first time in days.

So, of course, that would be when things started to get weird. I had just finished shaving down a sapling stick for a skewer and reached into the cooler for a sausage. What I pulled out may have been a magnificent Mangalista a month ago, certainly not the port-infused meat I had packed only five hours before. It was wrinkled in some places, blackened, and in others, it had patches of fuzzy, white, mold. I tossed it aside and looked into the cooler. The smell hit me first, everything was spoiled. The mold was growing up the sides of the cooler, across all the food. I pulled the cork out of the wine and took a whiff. Pure vinegar.

I frowned. I had never been that studious in the "Omens and Portents" classes at the Academy, but I was sure that this couldn't be a good one. Was something about to go rotten in Toad Hollow? The forest didn't feel quite so welcoming anymore. Despite the warmth of the flames, a shiver raked through my body that was more than the chill in the air.

The suspension under the bed of my truck groaned under some kind of weight, a metallic protest too loud in the night. I whipped around, nearly blinding myself in the headlamps. Something heavy hit the ground behind the bed and I heard the distinct sound of footsteps crunching toward me. Throwing my right hand behind me, I called some of the light from the campfire into my hand. The fire dimmed for a moment and I felt it's molten life in my palm. There was a huge figure rounding the truck, it was cast in shadow from the headlamps. I was about to hurl the bolt of nuclear energy in its direction when it said, "It's freezing out here. Where's your jacket?"