Key Weird 03; Key Witch Read online

  “But there is a strength and power that comes with a group that is unlike anything we can do individually. As you know, in the sorcerer’s world four is a very strong number – the four winds, the four directions of the compass. Rosa knew Logan and I had trained you not only to be able to deal with the world of men and machines, but also to someday, the four of you, to be able to go into dreaming as one. There is so much power there if you want to catch a ride on it.

  “I had hoped we could work into it slowly, someday after you were all together again. Teach you girls how to dream as one so you could access worlds the sorcerers of antiquity experienced. Maybe take your dear old mom along.” A smile and a wink. “But if we’re going to try to use dreaming to find your friend, we’re going to have to go with what we have now and hope for the best.”

  ♦

  Brad wasn’t doing too good. He’d been shot with a stun-gun, trussed-up and left on a hard tile floor, had run for his life through the streets of Key West, almost had his knee knocked off with a car door, was jammed in a car trunk and then banged around by waves. The waves weren’t as bad with the tide going out and he finally gave into his body’s desperate need for sleep. His troubled dreams were of giant squid with guns.

  ♦

  Lydia went across the street to Brad’s house while Josephine worked on a sleeping potion that Wiola had started her on.

  “The more I think about this, the more it seems like one of my poorer ideas.”

  Wiola was having second thoughts. It was a tricky maneuver at best, and that’s with real dreamers in top form. The only real dreamer she had was lying in front of her and looked like a famine relief poster child.

  “Don’t worry mom, the girls are pretty tough. If we can get them into dreaming I’m sure they’ll give it their best shot.” Sara had just finished another bowl of the soup Josephine had made following her oldest sister’s instructions.

  “We’ll know soon enough, I guess. As soon as Consuelo gets back we’ll get everyone together for a rehearsal. You sure you’re feeling up to this, Sara?” As if on cue, Sara let loose a good belch and a grin. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

  The front door slammed and Consuelo headed for Sara’s room. “No sign of the white Chevy and the car’s almost out of gas. How’s it going Sara, ready to do some alligator-wrestling yet?” She got smiles from Sara and Wiola. Consuelo knew those smiles. Dead-serious smiles, something was up. She changed gears.

  “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  ♦

  Wiola had told Lydia to go to Brad’s house and ‘drink in his essence’. Whatever. She just felt like shit she couldn’t do anything for the man she’d fallen for so hard when he was in serious trouble. The fact that he’d gotten snatched out of her hotel while trying to help pretty much sucked as well. Usually when she thought about Brad she ended up dwelling on the gay thing. That seemed so trivial now.

  She lay on Brad’s bed and stuck her face in his pillow. The next thing she knew Wiola was there by the bed.

  “Come on honey, it’s time.”

  Lydia was a little groggy so Wiola hooked their arms together and led her back across the street. The three other women were standing in the darkened lobby huddled together holding on to one another. Wiola brought her to the waiting sisters who then formed a circle holding hands, with Wiola in the center.

  “Remember, if you’re alone and want to change dreams, or feel yourself starting to wake too soon, spin like this and say to yourself where you want to go and that you are dreaming. It will seem much too real to be a dream, so keep reminding yourself, or you’ll wake up or slip into a regular dream.” Wiola started spinning inside the circle with her arms out, but only for a few seconds. “When you’re in a group and dreaming together, you can’t break contact with the others. To change dreams you must rub your hands together like this.” She held her elbows out and started rubbing her hands together slowly. Wiola’s eyes were wild and she looked more like a sorceress than her daughters had ever seen her. The woman was witch to the bone.

  “Lock your arms together and rub! Tell yourself this is a lucid dream and hold your thoughts to your task!” All five women rubbed their hands in unison, faster and faster. “Not too fast! Remember we want to find – ”

  ♦

  Lydia felt a little dizzy while rubbing her hands together, but she seemed to wake up the rest of the way from her nap as soon as she stopped. It had gotten darker and she wondered where everyone else had gone without her noticing. She went to the back looking for them.

  ♦

  Consuelo slipped out the front door and walked down the dark empty streets of Key West. There was light upstairs at the rooftop clothing-optional bar, a place she had been to only briefly once before.

  She sipped a beer and relaxed looking over Duval Street while a body-paint artist drew a butterfly that covered her entire chest. He was a really cute guy and his brush seemed to be paying particular attention to her nipples.

  ♦

  Josephine went back to her room to wait for Wiola. She’d planned to check on the sleeping potion in her lab, but forgot about it when she saw her little Ben lying on the bed.

  “Josephine, my love, I have something new we can try in the hangover cure.”

  This sounded good to her. She hoped it was a mango, since the sight of her diminutive lover on the bed was giving her ideas.

  “Here it is, under the bed, Josephine. Give me a hand with it.” She reached under the bed and her fingers touched something mango-smooth, but there was something oily and stringy on it. She got a grip and pulled Jeremy’s severed head from under the bed.

  ♦

  Sara started to tell Lydia something, but there was a flicker of shadow across the room that caught her eye. It was Charlie. He must have been following her again, teasing her. The front door was open and she ran out the door after the shadow. She knew where he would go, back to the Indians he had been living with.

  She had found the Calusa tribe once before while searching for Charlie. They said they hadn’t seen any white man, but there was a wooden carving over the door to their shell mound temple that looked a lot like Charlie. She started to take a short cut to the mound when she remembered, then stopped in her tracks and started spinning with her arms out.

  ♦

  Wiola forgot what she was about to say. That happened a bit more than she’d like to admit these days. She figured it was probably all that peyote when she was younger.

  She watched her daughters leave, then went looking for Orange Dali. A powerful gust of wind rattled the window shutters of the old hotel.

  ♦

  There was something she was supposed to do, but Lydia couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was. She stopped wandering around the deserted hotel and concentrated. Call someone? Something in the oven? What was it? It hit her so hard she almost fell.

  “Brad!”

  It was very dark and she couldn’t tell where she was. She was lying on her side with her knees to her chest. Someone was lying there with her. She started to reach out her hand and everything bumped hard. Whoever was there with her started moaning.

  ♦

  Toby Smith had been crabbing for a living ever since he almost graduated high school in Key West. Crabbing was damn hard work, but it paid well. Bad part was the closed season. Stone crab season ended just before hurricane season started, and opened back up about the time the big storms were done for the year. Never could see setting out lobster traps for the hurricanes to wash away.

  Toby worked alone mostly, lived alone these days too. Had a wife for a while. Married a girl from Islamoranda not long after school and they settled in Toby’s ancestral shack over by the old Navy base. While he was out pulling traps and giving it his all on the water, she was stuck at home or giving it away down at the Navy bar. Wasn’t long before she was run off keeping company with a man driving a beer truck, and Toby was left keeping company with beer, one can at a time.

  But that
was years ago. He’d made a decent life for himself working his line of crab traps in one of the more prime locations around Key West. Had a good boat with a strong winch on back for pulling the waterlogged wooden traps up from the bottom. The boat didn’t have much of a transom at all – the big outboard was mounted mid-ships so he could leave the back open for pulling the heavy traps onboard.

  Off-season, Toby was the last one to make money the way his forefathers had. His family had been in the Keys for generations, all the way back to the days of the wreckers.

  Those were the days. Toby used to listen to his grandfather tell about how back before there was electricity and lighthouses, Key West was one of the richest cities in the country. Ships from all over the world came to wreck on the coral reefs. Storms would send the ships to their end on the reef and the wreckers of Key West would race in their boats to be the first to claim the cargo of the doomed merchant ships.

  These days there were lighthouses, and all kinds of navigational aids for the ships in the area, but just as sure as God made flotsam, there would still be storms.

  So, Toby the Crabber became Toby the Wrecker for a few months each year. It was more of a hobby these days, since most people had enough sense not to go out on the water with a hurricane coming. But he’d still find all kinds of plastic buckets, chairs, poles, barbecue grills, metal sheds, and every kind of crap known to man on the little islands after a storm. Sometimes he’d go out in the rough water during the storm if he saw something nice. Found one of those noisy damn jet-skis things washed up once, another time he found most of a flats boat. This was the first time he’d found a car though.

  ♦

  Lydia started to reach her hand out to whoever was moaning, but someone grabbed her hand and pulled hard. She was standing up and looking into the smiling face of Sara only inches away. They were outside, near the water. The wind was blowing her sister’s hair.

  “Sara!”

  “Don’t talk! Look around. Remember where we are. Don’t fix your gaze on any one object, just keep your eyes moving and memorize all you can.”

  There was some light from a house not far away. Lydia looked around, and then she was waking up on Brad’s bed.

  She ran out the door and across the street to the hotel. Her three sisters were in the lobby and just waking up when she burst through the door.

  “I know where Brad is!”

  The other women sprawled over the couches were having a little trouble coming out of it. Consuelo sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “Where? Is he in Key West?”

  “I’m not sure, probably. There was a weird boat with the motor in the middle and a big pole with a cable to the car. I was standing on the trunk of a white Chevy, and it was hanging off the end of this funny boat!” Then she remembered.

  “Sara! Sara was there!”

  All eyes went to Sara. She looked exhausted.

  “It was your dream Lydia, I was just trying to help you remember what to do. All I saw was darkness and you.”

  “Okay. Let me see, then. The boat was at a little dock, and there was a house, a tiny house on the shore. And a man. A man with a pot belly walking to the house from the boat. He turned and looked at me and that’s when I woke up!

  “We just need to find the man with the funny boat!” Lydia’s enthusiasm ebbed when she thought about what she’d said.

  “Where’s Wiola? And Dali?”

  “M-must have gone h-home.”

  “We need to find this guy with the boat. I’m sure that’s where Brad is!”

  “Taco B-Bob. M-m-maybe he knows who the m-man is?”

  “Yes! Good idea, Josey!” Lydia gave her sister a quick hug. She took a look at Sara. “You better stay here with Sara, get her back to bed. Consuelo?”

  “Always ready, Sis! Let’s ride!”

  They hit the still windy and deserted streets of Key West. Lydia was really wound up in the car.

  “What happened with our dreaming? I thought we were going to rehearse?”

  Consuelo, driving, shrugged.

  “Wiola gave us something to drink to help us sleep, then went to get you. I remember we were all together in the lobby with our arms locked together and she was telling us what to do. I thought it was just the rehearsal. Then I wandered off and ended up in the nude bar. I remember I was having a really good time.”

  Consuelo made the turn towards the marina with her sister staring at her, hard.

  “But it was only a dream, though. Right?”

  Consuelo had to think about it a few seconds.

  “Sure, a dream. It didn’t feel like one at the time though.”

  ♦

  After Josephine got a shaky Sara back into bed, she slipped into Jeremy’s room and carefully checked the snoring handyman’s neck. Only after she was certain everything was attached like it should be did she go to her own room.

  ♦

  There was a faint blue light from a television in Taco Bob’s houseboat. His eyes opened as soon as the weight of someone coming aboard make the boat rock just a little different. There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in ladies. Have a seat.” Like he was used to getting company in the middle of the night. No problem.

  “Hey, Taco Bob, we really hate to bother you so late, but we’re looking for someone and it’s really important.” A nod for Lydia to continue. “Okay, so I don’t know his name, but he has a boat with a big pole in the back. Kind of a flat boat with the motor in the middle.”

  “Sounds like a crab or lobster boat. What’s the fella look like?”

  “I didn’t get a good look at his face, but he was thin with a pot belly. Not a real big guy.” Lydia realized she needed more. “There was a little house not far from the boat, and I remember now there was a lot of things in the yard, like a junkyard.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. There’s a fella fancies himself a wrecker over by the Navy base. Name’s Toby if I ain’t mistaken. Crabs most of the time, got a boat with a big wench on it.”

  “That must be him!” Lydia looked at her sister, then at their host. “There’s one other thing. Our car is just about out of gas and – ”

  “Come on, we’ll take my truck. I wouldn’t want you gals going over to Toby’s alone anyway. Man’s been known to take a shot at strangers from what I’ve heard.”

  ♦

  On the way to Toby’s place Lydia filled Taco Bob in on Brad, the hoods from Miami, and the quarantine hoax. Consuelo sat in the middle, watching the slim, weathered-looking fisherman from the corner of her eye. She did like a man who drove a truck. Then again, she liked a lot of men, no matter what they drove.

  “So how did you ladies come to figure your friend Brad was at Toby’s place?”

  Lydia was hoping he wouldn’t ask about that.

  “I, uh, saw it in a dream, actually.” Then came over in the middle of the night to get you to take us there. Boy, that sounded lame.

  “A dream, huh?”

  “A special kind of dream. It’s like remote viewing through lucid dreaming, you probably never heard of it. I’ll explain it to you sometime.” This guy had been so nice to them, and he was giving her a really weird look now. He probably thought she was nuts.

  “I think this here is the right one. He lives at the end of one of these roads down by the water.”

  They parked in the overgrown yard near the front of a small tin-roof house. The rain had become a light mist.

  “I doubt he heard that horn over the wind if he’s over by the water.” There was a truck with its lights on pointed their way out back and more lights off to the side of the truck. They followed a path through the weeds and piles of junk to the back of the house. The truck was backed down to the water, and the boat Lydia had seen was there with a white car hanging off the back. There was a man in the shallow water hooking cable from the truck to the car so he could pull it up on shore. When the man looked up there were three people standing on the dock near his boat.

  “Ev
ening Toby! Nice car! Ladies just want to take a quick look in the trunk of your car here. Don’t mean any harm.” Toby stood still in the water and looked at his truck. That let Taco Bob know where the gun was. He eased over so he was between the man in the water and the truck.

  “This here is my car! I found her fair and square!”

  “Ain’t nobody going to try to take your car away, Toby. Just want to look in the trunk real quick and then we’ll leave you be.”

  There were lights on the boat and Lydia was looking for something to use on the trunk. Some magician she turned out to be, forgetting her lock picks the one time she really needed them. Consuelo, who’d been keeping a wary eye on the crabber, picked up a long pole with a hook on the end and headed for the back of the car.

  “Hold on there! Anything in the trunk is rightfully mine too, you know!”

  Lydia turned to the man.

  “We think there might be someone in the trunk, a person!”

  “Well shit, why didn’t you say so in the first place!”

  The man waded over to the car and opened the front door. The car was too heavy to get all the way up on the boat, so the front part was still mostly in the water. He found a single key still in the ignition.