A long black wick drooped out of the top of a purple wax candle. Andy struck a match and when she brought it over to the slanted wick it sprung to life against the flame. She waved the match out and set it down on a decorative plate beside the plate the candle sat on. Wispy gray smoke snaked up to the ceiling of the living room, disappearing high above her head, and it made the room smell of lavender and fire. Andy closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. The house was quiet. There was peace. In that peace, Andy hoped to find some resolution.
The room was dark, which made the glow of the candle that much brighter. Andy’s set up was simple. There were a handful of ceremonial plates spread out across a folded cloth. The burning candle sat on the center plate and dripped wax down to it. A knife sat beside the plate on the far right side, and a palm branch lay at the top, parallel with the folded cloth. The only other noise besides the crackling flame of the candle was the soft hum of the baby monitor that sat on the couch just above and to the right of Andy. The twins were calm and sleeping. The rest of the house was empty. Andy reached out and took the knife to get started before everyone came home and interrupted her.
“Mwen rele ou, gwo Ayizan, metrès nan komès,” Andy chanted in Creole and dragged the sharp edge of the blade over her palm. She squeezed her fist and bled into the open flame of the candle. “Mwen chache bon konprann. Mwen chache repons yo. O, gwo Ayizan. Ede m jwenn komès pouvwa. Koulye a! Koulye a! Koulye a! Give me the power, I beg of you!”
Shadows danced and a breeze rolled through the living room. Light wiggled and took shape and a shadow that stretched out from the candle across the floor in front of her widened and raised into a rounded edge. It reached to the far wall now and pushed up toward the ceiling. It was nearly seven feet tall, massive, but not intimidating. It had gentle curves and the faintest features that seemed human, but Andy knew she wasn’t looking at the shadow of a human. This was the shadow of a Loa — a goddess — the Loa Ayizan, ruler of the marketplace. Andy set the knife down and lowered her head to show respect.
“Why have you summoned me, child?” the shadow asked. She had a soft and calming voice that echoed across the room.
Andy raised her head. “I seek your guidance, great Ayizan. All other roads were blocked to me. I didn’t know where else to turn.”
“Go on.”
“A few days ago I encountered an anomaly in the sewers here,” Andy said. “There was a tear in the universe and things from another world were slipping out. Creatures, small swamp dwellers mostly — an alligator, a couple of frogs — nothing too dangerous. I closed the breach but it wasn’t the main one. I’ve been trying to track down the first tear but for some reason it’s been hidden from me. I don’t know why. I believe that it’s caused by some object somewhere, some enchanted item that’s seeping power from this other world and tearing open the space between worlds in the process. That’s why I called you, great Ayizan. There’s an unmonitored trade of magic from this world and the other, and I need your help to find a way to close it.”
There was a long pause before the shadow answered.
“I see,” Ayizan said. “I sense that the rift is near. It’s not just an opening to any world, child, it’s an opening to our world.”
“Your world?” Andy scrunched her face. “I don’t understand. Why can’t I find the source?”
“The source isn’t hidden,” the Loa said, “You just haven’t looked in the right place. Your eyes look out, but it’s time to look within. Only an object carved from holy wood could steal energy from my home like this, only an object charged with fear and anxiety could bind my world with yours without calling too much attention.”
“My home with yours…” Andy repeated her words and thought about it. A small croak caught her attention and she looked down as a tiny green frog hopped across her living room floor. “The rift’s here… the object is here… it’s in the house.”
“Flush the negativity away from the charged object and the bridge between our worlds will seal. But hurry, child, my presence here is a heavy stone to the fabric between yours and mine. The rift is tearing ...” An army of frogs, dozens of them, hopped all along the floor, swampies sneaking in from another world. Andy blew out the candle and the god disguised as a shadow disappeared. The baby monitor crackled and the cries of her twins waking up from their deep sleep filled the living room with a cacophony of wails and croaks. The rift was here. It was widening. And Andy needed to do something about it.
The upstairs hallway was dark and humid. Mosquitoes buzzed around Andy’s head and she had to swat them away as she marched down the hall — screaming baby monitor in hand — toward the nursery. Reaching the nursery, pushing open the door, Andy anticipated to walk into the panicked cries of her twin daughters, but when she rounded the corner and flipped the lights on the only crying came from the squawking baby monitor. Andy froze and looked at the machine that filled the room with staticky whines and wails from babies, but when she peered into the crib that the twins shared out of a desire to stay close to one another, the babies weren’t crying. They weren’t even awake.
Andy flipped the switch on the monitor and turned it off, and the room went quiet. Little Julia, with her tiny tuft of short blonde hair on her otherwise bald head, yawned and stretched, but kept her eyes closed. Andrea, mommy’s little redhead, slept with her mouth open and made adorable whimpering sounds as her chest rose and fell with each tired breath. Andy took a minute to admire her daughters. They were what she fought for every day. They were the reason she needed to find this riff and close it. They were her responsibility.
The pile of toys on the far end of the crib croaked and Andy squinted when one of the plush toys moved. A tiny emerald frog, green skin slippery and wet, hopped out from the middle of the pile, jumped on Julia’s chest, and hopped off. Andy caught the frog and removed it from the crib, setting it down outside the door of the nursery. It hopped down the hall. In theory, once she closed the rift everything that came through it should be sent back. Or at least she hoped that would be the case, because a frog infestation was probably just as bad as having a rift to another world open in your house.
A tiny cry pulled Andy back toward the room. She looked down at the baby monitor but it was silent. Sitting it down, she went back to the crib and found Julia stirring; the frog had woken her up. Andy scooped her baby up and comforted her with gentle shushing and humming and she managed to contain the cry before it grew into anything too big. Andrea slept through it all. In the hallway, Andy could hear more croaking, and buzzing, and dripping. She had to deal with this problem before it got worse.
“I need you to be a good girl for mommy,” Andy said in her soft mom voice while bouncing Julia on her hip. “Momma Andy needs to go fix a simple problem and make everything alright again. I just need you to stay calm for me and don’t wake your sister until I handle it, okay? Okay, who’s my good girl. Oh, Julia’s mommy’s good girl.” She set Julia down in her bouncer and made sure she was secure. She’d be content down there and she could squirm and play a little without waking up Andrea. Andy handed her the plush alligator she liked so much and Julia immediately stuffed it in her mouth. “Such a good girl.” Andy smiled, slicked back Julia’s blonde hair with her thumb, and leaned down to give her a kiss atop her head. “Mama loves you. I’ll be right back.”
Andy left the nursery and closed the door behind her. Had she known what was coming, she would’ve stayed put.
The hallway was a swamp by the time Andy returned. It was sticky and hot and the mosquitos almost tripled since she had been out there last. When she took a step forward her foot sloshed in damp carpet. It gave her pause, but she really wasn’t sure what to make of all of this. She needed to find the object that was tethering earth to this other world, but where to start?
A low rumble bubbled down at the end of the hall and Andy froze in place. Rushing water, it sounded like rushing water, but that was impossible, even with all of this there was no way that this rift could be opening up that quickly. She took another step and noticed all the frogs and lizards and swampy things that had occupied her home were scurrying away. When she brought her eyes up from the floor again she saw a wall of white and brown rapids pushing down the hallway. It was nearly up to the ceiling and it barreled down on Andy like a freight train racing down the tracks. It left no time to react, no time to hold your breath. Andy widened her eyes and it took her, swallowed her, knocked her off her feet, and then… it was gone.
Andy landed on her ass, back hitting dry carpet. She sat up and gasped. The rushing water was gone, and so was the humidity and the creatures. She patted herself and searched for evidence that what she just saw actually happened, but her clothes were dry. There was no rhyme or reason to this. The barrier between earth and the other world was thin. It wasn’t just that things were coming out, it was that things were intertwining. Time was of the essence before but now it was critical. If she didn’t close the rift soon, there would be apocalyptic problems on her hands.
Sitting up, Andy looked down the hallway and saw the mirror hanging above the stairs fogging up. There was a buzz and a sting on her neck and she swatted at herself, catching a mosquito mid-drink. A soft rolling thunder clapped from within the house, and something splashed against Andy’s cheek. She blinked and looked up. It was raining inside. She could almost see the gray clouds gathering around the ceiling, and then everything went dark. The water was back — turning the hallway into a river — and Andy was submerged.
“Gah!” Andy gasped when she surfaced after kicking up off the ground. She was able to stand, but the water was up to her chin and she felt herself being tugged and pulled down the hallway like the sudden river had a current. She held onto the door that led into her step-daughter Mollie’s bedroom, and tried to blink the water out of her eyes and think of a way to deal with all of this, but just as her vision cleared a new problem became evident. Something was splashing down the hall and it was coming right for her. Andy only had time to see the flick of a long scaled leathery tail before it dipped below the surface.
“Sh*t.”
Sharp teeth clamped down on Andy’s calf and pulled her under. It was a gator, a nasty sonofabitch that had more leverage than Andy in the swampy hallway. Andy screamed and her lungs filled with water. The alligator had his jaws wrapped around Andy’s leg and he thrashed back and forth, blurring Andy’s vision and slamming her up against the wall over and over again. Andy fought, and struggled, and kicked, but she was stuck, and the alligator pinned her under. The world went bright and dark, and bright again, and it was all slipping away. Andy could feel herself slipping away.
Luck — or maybe just a desire to stay alive — found Andy’s thumb gouging into the gator’s eye. There was enough pressure to catch the beast off guard and it let go. She twirled in the water, bleeding everywhere, no idea of which way was up and which way was down, and the world continued to blink light and dark as she slipped farther and farther away. Then she tumbled, and her head popped up over the surface. The water was more shallow here. Andy coughed up water and gasped for air while she held onto her torn leg. Looking around, she saw that she had been thrown into Mollie’s room. Luck… now this time it was certainly lucky, because sitting on a desk just ahead of her was exactly what she had been looking for.
The old statuette was carved out of dark wood. It was a statue of a crone, maybe a foot high — crudely done — and it had a noose around its neck and nails dug into its face. Andy didn’t understand the how, or the why, or the what of it all. None of that mattered though. Whatever that was, and however it got there, it was Andy’s way of turning this all around. She could reverse it all if she cleansed the figurine like the Loa told her to.
When Andy stood up in the shallow water if felt like her leg was going to snap in half. She cried out in pain but didn’t let it stop her. She grabbed the figurine and yanked the noose off from around its neck. The nails needed to come off too but when she pulled at them it only cut up her finger tips. She tried though, yanking, and yanking, and yanking until her fingers came up bloody. The water was getting higher and higher. More thunder cracked somewhere far off in the house. She could feel the foundation of her home shake beneath her feet. No, not just the house, it was the world. The world was coming undone as two realms became one.
“F***!”
Andy screamed and flipped the figurine over in her hand, grasping the wooden statuette by the feet. She bashed it up against the dresser, water rising all around her. BANG! BANG! BANG! Over and over again she hit it, slamming it down, desperate to stop all this and then… BANG!
The head popped off and the house went quiet. Andy looked around her. The water was gone. The bugs were gone. The thunder was gone. Some of the furniture in Mollie’s room was turned over, and there was a dent in her door, but everything was dry, and normal, and… safe. Everything was safe. Andy let out a sigh of relief and fell to the floor. Her leg was bleeding pretty bad from where it had been chewed up, but she’d live. She got to it in time.
She got to it in time…
A cry echoed from down the hall and Andy’s head perked up in the way a mother’s did when their child needed them. She dropped the broken figurine, content to figure out the mystery of where it came from and why it was in Mollie’s room another time, and she used the dresser to climb to her feet. She hobbled out into the hallway and saw that it was much the same as Mollie’s room. Some of the photos had fallen off the wall, but the carpet was dry and everything was normal. There wasn’t a mosquito, or a frog, or an alligator in sight. All was normal, but Andy’s heart sank when she got close enough to the nursery to see that the door had been ripped clean from its hinges. It was peppered in bite marks.
The pain didn’t stop Andy from running down the hall. She left a trail of blood as she ran and spun into the nursery. Andrea was wailing from the crib, and she ran to her and scooped her up and held her in her arms, soothing her and patting her back, trying to get her to calm down. The adrenaline left her blind though. She shushed and hummed and sang for almost fifteen long seconds before she turned and realized that she couldn’t hear Julia. The baby bouncer that she left her daughter in before leaving the room was crumbled up and chewed to bits in the corner of the room. It was empty and Andrea cried louder and louder.
Andy’s eyes stung but she refused to blink.
She got to it in time…
She was supposed to get to it in time…
