Bretigne Shaffer's Blog, page 3

Elixir of Fear

And then, finally, it was Halloween. Ordinarily, Harrison would have been getting his costume ready for tonight, or maybe making Rice Crispy treats to take over to a Halloween party someone from school was having. This year it just seemed like any other day.

But Harrison knew that it wasn't.

His parents were not happy about the Halloween party his grandparents were holding. But since he was over there all the time anyway, and it was Halloween, and there wasn't anything else for him to do, they didn't tell him he couldn't go.

"It just doesn't seem the right thing to do," his mom said from the couch.

"It's like they're thumbing their noses at the families of those who've died," his dad said. Harrison decided this was not a good time to tell them about the "dry tinder" effect.

He ran out the door and up the hill to his grandparents' house. There was nobody out on the street, which just felt completely wrong to him. This was Halloween! So what if there were no Halloween decorations up save for those at his grandparents' house? It was still Halloween night and every kid over the age of two knew it! They knew it in their bones!

And he knew Gramma Rose and Grampa Lewis would know it too. He ran all the way up to the top of the hill. He heard one man call out angrily as he ran by: "Where's your mask?" But he just kept running.

Harrison got to the front door, and he knocked. Gramma Rose came to the door and opened it.

"Oh Harrison!" She cried out, reaching to hug him. He froze in his tracks. She was wearing a mask.

"Uh... Gramma?" He said. "Wh-why do you have a mask on?"

"Is that our Harrison?" He heard Grampa Lewis call out from the kitchen.

"Yes, he's here!" She called out, reaching again for Harrison. "Come on inside, and we can all talk about it..."

Harrison felt a little uneasy. Something about Gramma Rose's manner seemed off. She was being very lighthearted, yet also seemed eager to get him to come inside. And why was she wearing that mask? Still, it was Gramma Rose. Surely there was some reason for her odd behavior. He stepped inside, and she led him by the arm into the kitchen.

Grampa Lewis was seated at the table. He also had a mask on.

"Hello Harrison!" He said cheerily. This was not the same man who he had seen chew out multiple shop employees for demanding that he put a mask on his face. Something was wrong.

"Grampa," said Harrison, "what's going on? Why are you guys wearing masks now?"

"Well my boy," said Grampa, "we've just been thinking about it, your Gramma and I, and we realized we're no spring chickens! This illness, it's killed a lot of people, and... well, you just can't be too careful!"

Harrison just stood there. This was definitely not the same man he had spoken to yesterday. Gramma Rose chimed in:

"And this doctor friend of yours," she said, "you know, we don't really know that much about him. It sounds like he could be trying to help you!"

"Gramma," Harrison blurted out, "is this a joke? Because it's not very funny!"

She looked at him quizzically. He looked over to his Grampa, who had much the same puzzled expression.

"Harrison," he said, "we just want what's best for you! Maybe you should go meet with this guy after all. You did say he's a doctor, right? Why not listen to him?"

Harrison could feel himself starting to sweat. This was no joke. Neither of his grandparents were capable of going on for this long without bursting into laughter. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

They had fallen under the spell.

"Yes," said Harrison angrily, "he is a doctor... with a horse and wagon from the nineteenth century!!!"

They were unmoved by his outburst.

"Still," said Gramma Rose, "who can we trust if we can't trust the experts?"

"I think you should try and calm down Harrison," said Grampa Lewis. "How about some nice hot cocoa?"

"Look," said Gramma Rose, moving over to the stove top where sheets of freshly iced cookies lay, "I made cookies! These ones are jack-o-lanterns, and these ones are ghosts, and..."

Harrison turned and ran for the door. He flung it open and tore outside and ran as fast as he could back to his own house.

"Harry, you're back!" His dad was surprised. "What happened?"

"Nothing Dad," he panted. "I just forgot something... for the party."

Harrison raced upstairs. He had hit upon an idea, but he would have to act on it quickly.

He logged on as fast as he could. Yes! There was CubeSquared. He started typing:

"Hey," he wrote, "remember when you asked me if there was anything you could do to help?"

A few minutes later, his gym bag over his shoulder, Harrison ran back downstairs and out the back door. He could hear his parents and sister behind him:

"Better hurry Harry, curfew starts in fifteen minutes!"

"Mommy! I want to go trick-or-treating!"

"Not this year honey, we explained this before."

"But I'm all better now!"

"Hey Sarah, have you seen my cell phone anywhere?"

"No, honey! Jennie, come here, let's watch the Great Pumpkin together..."

And Harrison was out the door.

He ran down the street. It was still dark and desolate. He looked up at his grandparents' house, and couldn't see any activity there. But he was not going there now. He had urgent business to attend to and he had to figure out a way to get there without getting stopped by the police.

He decided that if he did get stopped, he would just say that he was on his way home, and continue going in whatever direction he'd been going in. The curfew started at 9:00 and he'd be at his destination soon past then, so it was completely believable that he'd be running a few minutes late to get home. Getting back would be the harder part.

Harrison knew that he didn't want to get too close to Dr. Faustis' wagon. He felt that somehow, if he were close enough, the doctor would sense his presence. In fact, he didn't even know for sure that the doctor didn't have some way of observing him when he was far away–of finding him, as he had that night in the kitchen. He had to admit that it was possible the doctor knew all about his plans with Gramma and Grampa, and that he had no intention of showing up at the hotel tonight.

Still, this was the only thing he could think of to do now. His only two allies, his Gramma and Grampa, had been incapacitated by the spell and he had to do whatever he could to get them back!

He found a place to wait. He had made it all the way down to the old downtown area without anyone stopping him, and after first making a stop to drop something off, he was now on Spring Street. He stopped a block before the Lens Crafters and old movie theater block, and ducked inside the doorway of what looked like a bakery. It also looked like it had been closed for a long time.

Harrison stood there, his face pressed against the edge of the doorway, just poking out enough for him to see down to the next block. And he waited.

He waited that way for a long time. Sometimes his legs got uncomfortable, so he would sit for a while, and then he would stand again. Ordinarily, waiting in a place like this for so long would have bored him out of his mind. But tonight, he was too scared to be bored. He kept hearing noises that he thought might be the doctor sneaking up behind him, and one time he felt something touch his shoulder and he almost jumped out of his skin. But it was just part of a board that had been put up over the front windows, and was sticking out into the doorway.

Finally, when it must have been nearly ten thirty, he saw movement up ahead. He tried very hard to stay still.

There he was. Up ahead, just past the Lens Crafters building, a dark figure stepped out onto the sidewalk. The figure was wearing a cape, and a tall hat, and carried some sort of bag or suitcase. Harrison's heart raced.

He watched as the figure walked up the sidewalk, away from where Harrison stood watching, but in the direction he would need to go to get to the hotel. And then, before Harrison's eyes, the figure disappeared into thin air!

For a moment, Harrison just stood there dumbfounded. What had he just seen? It was dark, but there was enough light for him to see the figure, which could not have been anything other than Dr. Faustis. And he could still see things up ahead of where he had disappeared, so it could not be that he simply disappeared into the darkness. Harrison did not know what to think. But he did know what he must do. So, after waiting a few more minutes to be absolutely sure that the doctor was gone, he stepped out from his hiding spot and walked toward the empty lot next to the Lens Crafters building.

He stepped onto the lot. At the back of the lot, up against the chain-link fence, stood the doctor's horse and wagon, just as it had on his previous visits here. The horse nickered softly as he approached, but had a feedbag attached to its halter and soon went back to chewing.

Harrison walked slowly up to the back of the wagon. There was a little wooden set of stairs coming down from the back, leading up to the door. Harrison took a deep breath. He looked all around him. No sign of the doctor, or of anyone else. He stepped on to the bottom step.

The step gave a creak, the wagon moved slightly, and Harrison's heart leapt. Then he stepped up onto the next step. Another creak, and more movement. Then the third step. He stood facing the door.

He took another deep breath. What if the doctor had put a spell on the door? What if it set off some kind of magical alarm that let him know if someone was trying to break in? What if he reappeared here just as quickly as he had disappeared?

Well I can't just stand here all night wondering about every possible thing that might go wrong, he told himself. And he reached down and took hold of the doorknob in front of him. He tried to turn it, but it was locked. He was prepared for this. He knelt down, set his gym bag down on the step and reached into it. He pulled out a flat-head screwdriver, and tried jamming it into the space between the door and the door frame. He could feel something metal–the bolt of the little lock. He pushed against it, dug into the wood around it, pushed and pulled, and after huffing and puffing for several minutes, something went "snap!"

Harrison jumped back. He tried the doorknob again and this time it turned. He pulled the door open. He was inside the doctor's wagon!

He reached back into his gym bag once more and replaced the screwdriver. He pulled out a flashlight–having learned his lesson from his trip to the hotel. He turned the flashlight on and shone it into the wagon.

It was an odd assortment of things that the doctor had inside here. The back part of the wagon seemed to be a kind of sitting room, with two old-fashioned chairs and a very small round table, and shelves built into the sides of the wagon. There were books on the shelves, and also objects: Bottles, and tools of some kind, and a stuffed fox!

Further into the wagon, Harrison could see a little cabinet, and beyond that what looked like a bed built into the front of the wagon, but with curtains in front of it. There were odd objects laying about throughout the space, and Harrison took his time shining his light on every inch of it, so as not to miss anything.

Outside, the horse gave a whinny. Harrison froze. Had the doctor returned? He looked for a place to hide. The cabinet! Quietly, he made his way over to the cabinet, and quietly he pulled open the door. He stopped and listened. He heard nothing from outside. The horse had gone back to chewing its food. Harrison stood there frozen for another moment, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

He started to close the cabinet door, when he looked down and saw... Gramma Rose's umbrella! It was there, tucked into the bottom of the cabinet, underneath where the doctor's suits and coats hung. He reached down and grabbed it. It was just as he had given it to the doctor, unharmed. He carefully put it into his gym bag and closed the cabinet door.

He shone the light around the wagon once again. What could he find here that belonged to the doctor that might be of value to him? Something that had a strong connection to him, and could be useful in casting the spell?

The light shone into the far corner of the sitting room. There was a picture hanging there, a photograph taken over a hundred years ago from the look of it, of a woman. He moved the light to the right of the picture. Bookshelves. And a little chest of drawers beneath them.

Harrison moved over to the chest of drawers. He heard a noise. Rustling. But not outside the wagon, inside. His heart started to pound. He stepped back and waved the flashlight across the room. Something glittered, and he waved the flashlight back to it. Eyes! He froze. There, on one of the chairs next to the little round table, sat a small black cat, and it was looking right at him.

He hadn't seen the cat before. In fact, as he had looked very carefully over every inch of this part of the wagon, he was pretty sure there hadn't been any cat. He eyed the cat warily, and it eyed him back. What now? Did he dare to go over to the chest of drawers and see what might be inside?

He thought of his grandparents. About what his Grampa had said to him that day at his kitchen table. "We will use everything in our power to defeat him..." He remembered the look on his face. And he remembered his Grampa tonight, wearing that mask, and trying to talk Harrison into going to see the doctor... as if every trace of the original Grampa had been erased. Harrison knew that he had to do everything in his own power to get it back.

“I'll go see the doctor alright!” He said to himself, as he moved over to the chest of drawers.

***

It was cold outside. Frosty. Harrison shivered as he raced back to his grandparents' house. It must already be 11:00, he thought. And while the little trick he had thought up would probably delay the doctor for a while, it was only a matter of time before he realized that Harrison wasn't actually there. And who knew what he would do then.

Harrison moved as quickly as he could. But he also had to do his best to stay out of sight, in case anyone was out enforcing the curfew. So he tried to stay in the shadows, moving alongside buildings as much as he could. And when he got back to his own neighborhood, he slowed down, walked very quietly, and if he saw a car coming, hid behind a nearby tree or a car.

Finally, he was there. At the foot of the hill leading up to his grandparents' house. He started to climb. He could see that the little gate was closed. That was odd, as it had been open when he left, and it was normally left open. It must be the spell, he thought, getting his grandparents to fear even an unlikely visitor to the house.

The house was dark, except for the light that was still on in the kitchen, and there were no lights outside. The jack-o-lanterns and other decorations had been taken down, he noticed with disappointment. He told himself it was to be expected, given the power the doctor's spell had over his grandparents. He made his way over to the gate, so he could unlatch it.

And there he was.

Standing just to the side of the gate–had he been standing there, or had he just appeared out of thin air?–was Dr. Faustis. And he was holding Harrison's father's cell phone up in the air!

"That was a clever trick, my boy! Hiding this... device... in the hotel, having your friend speaking through it, pretending to be you!"

In fact, Harrison did think it had been a rather clever plan. But just now he was too terrified to remember that.

"Fool!" The doctor spat. "Did you think I would not find it? Did you take me for a fool?"

Just then, and before Harrison could respond to the doctor, from the other side of the fence, came his Grampa's voice.

"Listen to him, Harrison!" Grampa called out.

Harrison could see both Grampa Lewis and Gramma Rose come trotting out from the house, still wearing their masks, and imploring him to listen to the doctor.

"Don't worry," called out Gramma Rose. "Everything is going to be just fine! You just need to come inside with us and we can all sit down and have a talk with this nice doctor!"

Harrison could not believe what was happening.

"...only don't touch anything!" She added. "And be sure to wash your hands!"

"And you'll want to put this on too..." Dr. Faustis was holding something out to Harrison in his other hand. Harrison looked–it was the same horrible mask, the mask with the face of a child, that he had worn in the ceremony in the hotel!

From the other side of the fence, his grandparents continued to beg him to come inside with them.

"You can't run, boy!" The doctor sounded like he was laughing, as he stepped closer to Harrison. "Nowhere to run to! You should listen to your grandmother. She cares about you, wants what is best for you!"

Grampa Lewis chimed in: "Just do what he says, Harrison, and everything will be fine!"

The doctor stepped closer. Harrison took a step back, but he knew the doctor was right: There was no place for him to run to. No place where the doctor couldn't follow him.

His grandparents were approaching the gate now, telling him to put on the mask, to come and have a talk with the doctor. They were only a few feet away now. Harrison knew what he must do, and he had only an instant in which to do it.

Dr. Faustis stepped forward again. "What do you say?" He smiled broadly.

"I say BITE ME!!!” Harrison shouted as he quickly reached behind his back, grabbed the handle of the umbrella, and in one swift movement, swung it up into the air and over the fence.

"Catch, Gramma!" He yelled with all his might. And she did.

There was a flash of purple electricity as she caught it, and she stumbled backwards. She took a moment, as if re-focusing her eyes, and then she bellowed:

"Harrison! You get away from that man!" And then to Dr. Faustis: "Don't you dare come near him!" She ripped off her mask.

Grampa Lewis stared at her, baffled. "Rose Rita, why what's gotten into you..."

She tossed him the umbrella.

"Here!" she called out to him. Grampa Lewis caught the umbrella, and there was another flash of purple light. He gasped. "Oh my goodness! Harrison!" He threw his mask to the ground and turned his ire to Dr. Faustis.

"Alright, you've had your fun!" He yelled. "Now skeedadle! There's nothing more for you here! You can't make the boy afraid of you, and he's just beaten your spell against us into the dust!"

Dr. Faustis laughed. "Oh, is that how you see it?"

"Yes, that is how I see it! Now go!"

"You heard him!" Shouted Harrison, full of new-found courage now that his grandparents–the grandparents he knew–had been returned to him. "Skee-Daddle! You can't defeat us!"

"Oh I won't need to!"

The doctor–or rather, the wizard, for that is what he was–stepped forward, and with a grand flourish, like a magician performing an elaborate trick on stage, swept his cape out before him, revealing the hillside below them.

At the foot of the hill was a cluster of lights. Harrison looked closer. It was a large group of people. It was their neighbors and townspeople, dozens of them, some carrying lighted torches, a few with baseball bats or pitchforks, all wearing masks and plastic gloves, and a few in clumsily put together hazmat suits.

"...they will!" He proclaimed with a flourish, and Harrison stood helplessly and watched as the mob–for it was a mob–moved quickly towards them.

"Quick, Harrison!" Grampa Lewis called out. "Get into the house!" He rushed to unlock the gate and let Harrison through before the mob arrived.

But it was too late. Already, the mob was beside Dr. Faustis, and as Grampa Lewis started to pull the gate closed, two of them grabbed hold of it and pulled it open. More followed and helped them pull the gate open, while others marched through and up to Harrison and his grandparents–who he noticed for the first time look just a little frail.

The crowd reminded him of something. What was it? Then it hit him. That movie he saw when he was too young for it and he was scared of his own shadow for weeks afterwards. What was it called? It was in black and white, and it was about zombies who roamed the countryside in search of people to kill so they could eat their brains... that's what these people reminded him of now. A shiver ran down his spine.

Then he remembered.

"Quick, Gramma Rose!" He shouted as the mob lumbered around him and Grampa Lewis. "The bonfire!"

Gramma Rose gave a big thumbs-up and ran to where they had prepared the bonfire, right in the front yard. She pulled a box of matches from her apron pocket and picked up some of the crumpled newspaper they had stuck in between the kindling at the bottom, and lit it. Harrison thought he heard her utter some words as she did so.

All of a sudden, there was a burst of purple and yellow light, and the bonfire was roaring!

Harrison knew that the objects that needed to go into the bonfire were still in the kitchen–unless his spellbound grandparents had done away with those along with the Halloween decorations. The mob was momentarily distracted by the burst of fire, and Harrison took the opportunity to make a dash for the kitchen door.

Behind him, he could hear the people screaming at his grandparents: "You're putting everyone at risk!"

"How dare you!"

"...selfish!!!"

"Entitled..."

"You don't care about anyone but yourselves!"

Gramma took a look at the person who had just screamed this at her. A young, twenty-something man wearing a mask and plastic gloves and some kind of plastic thing around his head that made him look like an astronaut.

"You stay indoors if you're so afraid of it!" She shouted at him. "And for the love of God take that ridiculous contraption off your head. You'll frighten the children!"

The trunk was still in the kitchen, on the floor. Harrison grabbed it in both arms and ran out the door again. He had his own bottle of elixir in his gym bag, to add to the fire. And the object he had found in the doctor's wagon.

Gramma Rose turned from the bonfire to go into the house and get the objects to throw in it, and she saw Harrison racing towards her with the trunk.

"Good boy, Harrison!" She called out.

Grampa Lewis now appeared by her side, ready to begin the spell.

Harrison set the trunk down in front of his Gramma and Grampa. When he stood up, he saw him standing there in front of him:

Jason.

He stood there surrounded by a small gang of friends, all wearing masks and blue plastic gloves. One of the girls carried a lighted torch, and one of the boys had a baseball bat in his hands.

"Well!" Exclaimed Jason. "Look what we've got here!"

The gang of friends moved in closer to Harrison.

For a moment, Harrison and Jason just stood there, face to face, neither saying a word. Then, Jason began to taunt Harrison, as he had done nearly every day in school:

"Hey Harrison, whatcha doin? Hangin' out with your grandma and grandpa? Think they're gonna protect you or somethin'?"

The gang around him snickered and moved in closer.

"Hey Harrison," Jason called out again, "remember the time I put bugs in your lunchbox and you ran screaming out of the room?"

The gang snickered again.

Something was different. Harrison was accustomed to Jason's taunts, and to the mindless laughter of the kids who followed him around school. Ordinarily, it made him want to sink into the floor, or run and hide somewhere. Anything, just to get away from it.

But not this time.

This time the words did not have the same impact. And as he looked at the group of kids standing behind Jason, hiding in their group, covered in masks and all manner of Personal Protective Equipment, he saw–perhaps for the first time–just how ridiculous they were.

Jason seemed confused that Harrison was not responding. He kept on going:

"Skeerdy cat, skeerdy cat, skeerdy skeerdy skeerdy cat!"

Harrison just looked at him.

"You sure about that, Jason?" He asked, with a puzzled expression. "I mean, you're the one wearing the mask and plastic gloves."

For a moment there is only silence, and the crackling of the bonfire. Jason seemed to grow a little bit smaller. And Harrison felt himself grow stronger.

All of a sudden, the bonfire shot up into the sky. Gramma and Grampa both jumped back from it.

"That's it!" Cried Harrison. "He feeds off of everyone's fear! It makes him stronger! It doesn't even matter what we're afraid of. But when we're not afraid, it weakens him! And it strengthens us!"

"You're right!" Called out Grampa Lewis.

"That's great honey," said Gramma Rose, as she used her magical umbrella to fend off the chanting neighbors who had now descended upon the bonfire. "But we've got this great angry mob in front of us and they're full of nothing but fear!"

In the distance, Harrison could see Dr. Faustis still standing by the gates. He was watching the events unfold before him, and he had a big smile on his face.

Grampa had already started tossing some of the objects into the flames, and he was reading out loud from a big leather-bound book as he did so. Harrison could not understand what he was saying, it was in some language he had never heard before.

None of this seemed to affect the doctors' powers though. He still stood at the gate, smiling broadly, as the gang of neighbors and townspeople continued their assault. The yard was completely overrun with them now. They did seem to fear the bonfire though, and would not get too close to it–although Grampa and Gramma still had to poke at some of them with the umbrella to keep them at bay.

However some of them had now turned their attention to the house. A group of them were taking whacks at the posts on the front porch, and a chilling cry had erupted:

"Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!"

Now Harrison felt afraid. He looked, and saw the doctor's smile grow even broader. The bonfire started to dim just a little.

"Harrison!" His Gramma called out. "Don't you worry about a thing! You just help us cast this spell now!"

Grampa Lewis handed the great leather-bound book to Gramma Rose, and she began chanting, and every so often reaching into the trunk for another object to throw into the fire. The trunk was almost empty now. But the doctor's power over this raging mob did not seem in the least impacted.

And no matter how hard he tried not to be, Harrison was genuinely afraid for his Gramma and Grampa. And for their house! What if this unruly mob succeeded in burning it down? And Dr. Faustis didn't seem at all concerned about the counter spell he could see they were in the process of casting.

The bonfire dipped even lower.

Grampa Lewis looked over at Harrison. He could see how afraid he was.

"Harrison," he said gently. "Listen to me. I know that Dr. Whatsis seems awfully powerful right now. But I want you to remember something. There is one fundamental difference between him and us. Do you know what that is?"

"Um..." Harrison was trembling, in spite of himself. "Is it that... he's a wizard, from another era? That he doesn't belong here?"

"Not quite, Harrison, although that is true too."

His Gramma continued chanting, but the trunk was now empty.

"What I'm thinking of," his Grampa continued, "is something that he doesn't have. Something that's missing. From what we know of this Faustis character, he is motivated by a quest for power and nothing else."

Yes, thought Harrison, and he seems to be succeeding pretty well in that quest!

"He seeks control over everyone else, and his main weapon is fear," said Grampa. "But human beings aren't held together by control, or by fear. Oh sure, fear can bind people together for a short time, while they face a common enemy. But it's not the glue that holds us together for very long. Do you know what is Harrison?"

The gang at the far end of his grandparents' house were disappointed to find that the house itself was made of stone. But they had managed to set fire to some of the furniture on the patio, and were starting to hurl burning chunks of wood toward the windows. Harrison's heart was pounding now. Was this really the time for a philosophical meditation on the deeper motives of the man behind all this?

But his Grampa continued.

"It's love, Harrison. It's the stuff that makes moms take care of their babies, and it's the reason your Gramma is over there shouting gibberish at a bonfire instead of trying to save her own house. Human beings aren't held together by power or by control Harrison, or even by fear. They're held together by love."

"I could use that elixir now Harrison!" Gramma Rose was yelling from the other side of the bonfire. Of course! Harrison had forgotten that he still had his objects with him! He pulled his gym bag off his shoulder and dug into it and pulled out his two bottles of elixir. He tossed them both to Gramma Rose, who caught them expertly and tossed them into the flames as she said more words from the spell book over them.

The bonfire took a small leap.

"Oh, and this," said Harrison, remembering the object he had found in the chest of drawers in the doctor's wagon. He pulled that out too and tossed it over to Gramma Rose.

It was awkward, and flipped over and over several times as it flew over the bonfire and into Gramma Rose's outstretched hands, sending out flashes of light each time it turned. The object was a small hand-held mirror, and as it flew into the air something about the doctor's demeanor changed. He stumbled back. And his smile disappeared.

Gramma Rose flung the mirror into the flames, and Harrison watched, astonished, as the doctor crumpled forward as if he had been stabbed.

"We got him Gramma! We got him!" Harrison cried out.

"Not yet we haven't!" Grampa Lewis pointed to the gang that had been trying to set fire to their house, and which had now turned its attention to the three people by the bonfire. As if they could sense that those three had just harmed their master.

"'Night of the Living Dead'!" Harrison cried out suddenly. "That was it!"

Gramma and Grampa turned to Harrison, frowning.

He turned a little red.

"The... the movie..." he stammered. "...that those people reminded me of. I was trying to think of the name..."

"Watch out!" Grampa Lewis reached across Harrison's face just in time to knock a flaming rocking-chair rocker off it's trajectory and save his grandson's face.

"We may have put a dent in his powers," said Grampa, "but he's not gone yet! Come on Rose Rita, let's keep going with that spell!"

It was Grampa's turn to read from the book now, so Gramma Rose handed it to him and he began to chant. But as he did so, the mob descended upon them. The only thing holding them back was the bonfire itself, which they still seemed to fear.

Grampa Lewis finished reading his passage and he looked up.

"Give it here!" Said Gramma Rose, holding out her hand impatiently. "That's it," said Grampa. "That's the end of the spell. We've done it all."

The three just stood there staring at each other for a moment. The crowd now had them completely surrounded, and Dr. Faustis was standing again. He was no longer smiling, but nor was he defeated.

"Wh-when does it work?" Asked Harrison feebly.

Gramma and Grampa both shook their heads. "We don't know, Harrison," said Gramma quietly. "We just have to wait and see."

All around them, the crowd was rumbling, and chanting: "...entitled!" and "Selfish!" Some would throw objects: Rocks, sticks, pieces of half-burnt furniture. And they made it clear that they weren't going anywhere.

And then Harrison saw them.

In the middle of the mass of people that surrounded them, just in front of him and a little to the right: His parents. They both had masks on, and his dad was carrying the heavy rake from the back yard. They were yelling something. His mom still looked pretty sick. Did they even know what they were doing? He wondered. Did they even recognize him or his grandparents?

Harrison looked over at Gramma Rose's face. She looked as pale as a ghost. She had seen them too.

Dr. Faustis started to walk slowly towards them. His smile had returned a little, along with his confidence.

"That's right!" He called out. "You cannot defeat me, nor the army I have created! Even your own family is with me now! What then is left for you boy, but to join forces with me and end your despair, your angst. Think of it–my elixir will protect you from any illness, any harm at all... and all you need in order to have it is to put on this mask..."

Again, he held out the foul-looking child-faced mask.

Harrison looked up helplessly at Gramma Rose and Grampa Lewis. The bonfire sank lower than it had been all night.

Suddenly Gramma Rose shouted out:

"Fear!"

Harrison and his Grampa looked at each other.

"That's his weapon, right?” Gramma continued. “So if we give in to it, we're making him stronger. But we can fight him back with its opposite!"

"But how..." Harrison began.

"Exactly!" Shouted Grampa. "Don't fear him back! That's how he wins! Number one: Don't give in–don't fear him, or this army of sorry vandals he's created. Number two: What's the opposite of fear?"

"Love?" Said Harrison tentatively. He had no intention of wrapping his arms around any one of the enraged people standing in front of him, no matter what his Grampa had to say on the matter.

"That's right!" Grampa cried out, triumphant. "Don't fear them! Welcome them in! Comfort them! Ease their fears. Do whatever you can to reassure them... remind them of who they are..."

Harrison nodded uncertainly.

"Look..." He said to the people closest to him, breathing heavily behind their masks, "we're not sick. None of us are. So how can we make you sick? And if you're really afraid, well go on home and stay there. Nobody's coming after you. I promise."

"Here," said Gramma Rose, "have some cookies! I've made cookies for everyone!" And then Grampa Lewis stepped up to one of the men in the mob.

"Joe," he said, "remember me? We helped you find your dog the time he went missing. And your wife brought us a tuna casserole the time Rose Rita fell and sprained her ankle..."

The bonfire was starting to grow again. And Harrison swore that he smelled a strong spicy smell... a pipe... just before it shot up once more.

But Dr. Faustis was still standing. Weaker than before, but still there, still smiling at what lay before him.

"You will never defeat me," he grinned. "You will never..."

And then, out of nowhere, a girl about Harrison's age came running up the hill. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and had a backpack on her back. Her face was red and she was out of breath and she looked like she had been running for a very long time.

The girl burst through the gate and ran toward the bonfire. Angry cries of "where's your mask?" went up from the crowd, and she pushed her way through. The people yelled at her, but quickly jumped out of her way as if she were carrying the Bubonic Plague. She went straight up to Harrison.

"Are you Harrison?" The girl asked, between gasps for air. Harrison nodded, dumbfounded.

"CubeSquared," she said, thrusting her hand at him. "Pleased to make your acquaintance!"

He took her hand, and in that moment, the bonfire leapt up once more, the pipe smell became overwhelming, and a purple haze filled the entire front yard. The bonfire grew even bigger, and cast its light over everything before it. It might as well have been daylight now–a very purple- tinted daylight.

Then Harrison watched as the mirror he had brought from the doctor's wagon, the mirror that Gramma Rose had thrown into the fire and that Harrison had watched burn up... now floated up out of the fire. The mirror rose high up, above them all, and then turned itself so that it was pointed directly at Dr. Faustis.

Down on the ground, the doctor was frozen in place. He was looking up at the mirror, transfixed, and he was no longer smiling. He looked frightened.

And then, a light shone out of the mirror. Harrison thought that it looked like someone had pointed the mirror up at the moon and it was now reflecting the light down onto Dr. Faustis. The light was too bright for Harrison to look at, so he turned his eyes away. But not before he saw it hit the doctor. And in an instant, where the doctor had just been standing, there was nothing but a patch of blackened, charred earth.

Elixir of Fear

As the day approached, Harrison found himself growing more nervous. A few days before Halloween, Harrison and Grampa Lewis went up to the big room upstairs where Harrison had found the trunk and the poster, and they brought the trunk downstairs.

Harrison's heart had been pounding the whole time. He half expected there to be a spell on the room that wouldn't let them in, or an apparition to scare them away. But when they opened the door–quite easily this time–the sun was streaming in, and it just looked like an ordinary, albeit very large and cluttered, room.

They lugged the trunk downstairs and set it atop the kitchen table. Harrison again expected something frightening to happen when they opened it, or for the poster to disappear in a puff of smoke. But when Grampa Lewis pulled open the trunk's lid, everything was there just as Harrison had seen it before.

"This is good," said Grampa, nodding his head. "These are all things that are closely connected to the Wizard Fusty-bus. When we build the bonfire, these will go in along with the poster and the elixir... and of course whatever else you are able to find."

Harrison nodded. He was transfixed by the sight of the poster again. There it was: the crinkly old piece of paper that had started all this trouble. It just looked so harmless and normal.

He noticed that Grampa seemed transfixed too. He just sat there staring at the contents of the trunk.

"Grampa," Harrison asked, "do you think... do you think that Dr. Faustis intends to... to kill me... in the ceremony on Halloween?" The words sounded very tiny when they came out.

Grampa Lewis turned to look at Harrison. He looked at him as if he had never seen him before, and for a moment Harrison thought he was about to cry. But then a look of rage such as he had never before seen came across his grandfather's face, and he said, very quietly now, not bellowing as he so often did:

"Harrison, I want you to understand me when I say that whatever that dark wizard has planned for you–and I don't doubt that it is something very dark indeed–your Gramma and I are not going to allow it to happen. We will use everything in our power to defeat him, and we will defeat him!"

Something occurred to Harrison. "But..." he said, "Gramma Rose doesn't have her umbrella."

"No," said Grampa, "no, she doesn't. And she's not going to get it. I don't know what we were thinking before, but your safety is far more important than getting that magical brolly back.

You're not to go anywhere near that slithering old snake-oil salesman ever again, you hear me? You'll stay right here with us! We'll just have to do the spell without the benefit of Gramma Rose's umbrella!"

Harrison didn't think he had ever seen his Grampa so upset before. Oh he'd seen him rail and roar against incompetent store clerks, or voice his opinion loudly on many an occasion. But this was different. Grampa seemed deeply upset, and afraid for Harrison's life.

Harrison knew that his Grampa was trying to reassure him. But he found that he was now more frightened than he had been before.

A little while later, Harrison's dad called to tell him that he would have to be home before dark, because the city had implemented a curfew for the next few nights.

"They're calling it a 'social togetherness' curfew," his dad said. Harrison repeated it back to him, while catching his Grampa's eye. As expected, Grampa Lewis exploded into a fit of expletives, and Harrison stifled a laugh as he imagined his dad's reaction on the other end of the line.

Once Harrison had hung up though, Grampa turned serious again.

"We'll have to figure out a way to get you over here on Halloween night then," he said. If there's a curfew, that's going to make it more difficult.

Harrison agreed.

"I know!" he said suddenly, "let's tell them we're having a Halloween party! Just for us!" Grampa Lewis nodded. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "And it's even kind of true."

***

Later that night, in the town of Milford, a few miles north of New Zebedee, someone was trying to destroy CubeSquared's bed.

Most of the usual players weren't on the server tonight, so CubeSquared had gone on a different server to play a game of Bed Wars. It wasn't the best game in the world, but it was alright and Cube was pretty good at it.

There was a new player on tonight. Someone CubeSquared had seen around a few times in the past few weeks: ImAGamer. Cube was on a team with ImAGamer tonight, and they had just delivered a devastating blow to the team they were playing against, demolishing one of their beds in a surprise attack. Now the other team was coming at them full force, and Cube was racing back from the site of the bed blow-up to go defend against this attack.

All of a sudden, the landscape of the game changed. What had been green hills, stretches of ocean, trees, a blue sky and clouds... in a flash became something else. Now it was a bare, desolate landscape. Dead trees stood against a pale grey sky, and there was not a blade of grass on the mottled grey ground. A pale yellow light barely peeked over the horizon.

CubeSquared frowned. "What the..."

Something appeared in the chat window. Cube looked. It was a message from ImAGamer:

"Hello CubeSquared," the message read. "How do you like the new world?"

CubeSquared was confused. ImAGamer typed some more:

"I have a message I'd like you to relay to your friend Harrison..."

Everyone on the platform knew that Harrison and CubeSquared were friends, so there was nothing unusual about this.

"...tell him that his Gramma and Grampa have a very special surprise waiting for them!"

A chill went up CubeSquared's spine. Harrison had spoken about his Gramma and Grampa to CubeSquared privately, but nobody else on this server or the other one could have known that.

In an instant, the screen changed back to the normal one–just in time for CubeSquared to see the team's bed get blown to smithereens. But CubeSquared just sat there for a long time staring at the screen.

Elixir of Fear

The very next afternoon, there was a surprise phone call from his grandparents. They called on the landline, and Harrison heard his dad pick up in the hallway. At first it sounded like they were just calling to check in with his parents, but then he heard his dad say:

"Harrison? Sure, he's right here, let me get him..." Harrison's heart started to pound. Something must be up.

"Hey Harrison!" His dad called out, "Your Grampa wants to say hi..."

"Me too! Me too!" Jennie's voice screeched from her bedroom. She was still getting over her bout of Budgie Flu but was well enough to yell at the top of her lungs when she felt like it.

"Harrison first, honey, then you can talk to them."

"No, that's OK," Harrison called out, "let her talk first!" He had a feeling he'd want to have more time to talk with his Gramma and Grampa and he didn't want his little sister pestering him for the phone the whole time.

After Jennie had gotten on and said hi and told them about her new My Little Pony castle playset, and how she was almost over her cold but she still had a lot of sniffles, and she was going to have a big pink cake for her birthday which wasn't until June, then Harrison finally came to the phone.

Grampa's voice sounded distressed.

"Harrison, it's much worse than we imagined!" Harrison's felt a jolt of fear.

"Your Gramma and I were up all night looking through Old Wilfred's books, trying to find more information about the ceremony Dr. Fusty did with you. Well, we found it alright... and none of it's good!"

Harrison had pulled the phone into his room. He sat down on the floor now, his heart pounding.

"Go on," he managed to say.

"What you described," Grampa Lewis continued, "is no ordinary ceremony. And this Dr. Faustis is no ordinary wizard. What he had you do, with the robe, and the mask, and the flames and the chanting... it's only one part of a series of rituals, culminating in one final ritual... we think that's the one planned for Halloween!"

"The giveaway was the mask you described. The books are full of rituals and ceremonies involving circles and symbols painted on the ground, fire, cloaks and robes... even masks. But that specific mask, and the fact that you said you weren't able to move while you wore it and he was chanting... well, those are specific details that belong to only one kind of ceremony, for one particular spell. And it's not a pleasant one!"

Harrison felt himself shiver.

"The purpose of this spell, Harrison, the purpose of all of these ceremonies this 'doctor' is performing–some of which don't even involve you, by the way–the whole purpose is to give the wizard who performs them complete power over all of humanity!"

Harrison didn't mean to, but he laughed out loud. It sounded like Grampa was reading from an old comic book, talking about a supervillain who was about to get defeated by Superman or Aquaman or the Green Hornet or something.

"I know," said Grampa, "it sounds preposterous doesn't it? But that's what the books tell us. There's no mistake. The purpose of this spell is to give whoever casts it total power over every single person on earth. To have them under their control."

And when Harrison thought about it, it suddenly didn't seem so preposterous after all. Didn't the people around him already seem as if they were being controlled by some force outside of themselves? But no–the idea was absurd. How could anyone control all of humanity? For that matter, how could he be sitting here with his Grampa on the phone, talking about wizards and spells as if they were real?

And yet, when he had that mask on, and Dr. Faustis was chanting, he could not move a muscle. That had been real. He listened as Grampa Lewis continued.

"The way it works," he said, "is that each ritual or ceremony builds up fear. When you started taking the elixir, that started it. That was the first 'ritual', the first act that got the fear going. Then at some point, after you had taken a few doses I'd guess, Dr. Futzis launched a separate spell that got the mystery illness going."

"But when you met him for the second time, you were supposed to be deathly afraid–that was part of the magic–and you weren't. That's why he was so upset. If you weren't afraid at that point, it meant that his magic wasn't working as it was supposed to. That's why he got so upset with you. He was trying to make you be afraid!"

"And he did!" Said Harrison. "It was really scary Grampa!"

"Maybe so, Harrison, but as scared as you were in that moment, you didn't stop thinking. You didn't fall under his control in the same way so many of the other people in New Zebedee seemed to, did you?"

"I guess not," said Harrison, remembering some of the things he had seen people around him doing. "But why?"

"That I don't know, Harrison," said his Grampa. "But I'm just glad you didn't. We'd be dealing with a much different problem if you had."

"So," Grampa continued, "each stage of this spell, each piece, it's supposed to build the fear up, until it consumes a whole bunch of people. And then, when the final ceremony is completed, then the spell is complete. The fear spreads out from this first group, and latches hold of everyone on earth! Once that happens, there is no stopping it. There's no turning it around! Every single person on earth will be consumed with fear, and will do whatever the wizard who cast the spell asks of them!"

Harrison remembered back to the ceremony, with the mask and the robe. He remembered how helpless he felt and how afraid. But he also remembered just wanting to get out of there. Wanting to run and get as far away from Dr. Faustis as he could.

"But Grampa," He said, "when he did that ceremony on me... I mean, I was afraid, but I couldn't wait to get away from the guy!"

"Yes," said Grampa, "as I said, you reacted a little differently to the spell from how everyone else did. It's true. But ask yourself this: Were you prepared to cut off your dealings with Dr. Fusty at that point? Or were you still going to come back for more of the elixir?"

Harrison had to admit that up until he first spoke with his grandparents about this, he had had every intention of going back to see the doctor on Halloween night, to get the rest of the elixir. So he would have enough for his parents and his sister and his grandparents.

"I guess I was going to go back," Harrison admitted.

"You wanted to help your family," said Grampa gently. "I understand that. But imagine how much worse it would have been, how much stronger his hold on you might have been, if you had been as frightened as all the others were."

Harrison tried to imagine that.

"When the spell is complete," Grampa continued, "all of those under it–everyone on earth, is what the books say–will be under the sway of the wizard who cast it. They will do whatever he asks of them, even things they would never before have done, things that go against their own sense of right and wrong. And why?"

Harrison did not know.

"Because of the elixir. Because he has the magical potion that can protect them from all that they fear. That's why."

Harrison felt a little ashamed. That was why he had wanted the elixir too.

"And for that, they will give up everything else," said Grampa. "They will do absolutely anything, all because they are afraid."

"Of course," he continued, "what they really ought to be afraid of is Dr. Fuss-bus himself!"

Harrison sat silently. Well at least he had gotten that part right, he thought to himself. He was now terrified of that man.

"Oh and there's one more thing," said Grampa Lewis. "The final ceremony?"

"Yes?"

"It requires a blood sacrifice."

Harrison swallowed hard.

"I don't want to say too much over the phone Harrison, but I'm concerned. I'm very concerned. You stay put! We're coming back!"

"But Grampa, what if the spell takes you and Gramma Rose over too?"

"Don't you worry about that!"

"You hang tight! We're coming back! Your Gramma is packing our things now."

"What will I tell my mom and dad?"

"We'll just say we decided to come back a little early. That's all."

That night after dinner, Harrison was playing Minecraft. CubeSquared was online and they started chatting.

CS: "You seem kind of distracted. Everything OK?"

H: "Yeah, all OK."

CS: 👍

H: "I mean..."

CS: ???

H: "Well, my mom has been sick, and also my sister. And I might have done something kind of stupid and now it looks like..."

CS: ???

H: "Maybe we should go into a private chat."

Harrison told CubeSquared that he knew this was going to sound crazy, and then he told the story of the poster and the meeting with Dr. Faustis and the elixir... and once he had said everything, he did feel a little foolish. Both because he knew that it did all sound a little crazy, and maybe now CubeSquared wouldn't want to be friends with him anymore, but also because he felt that he had been foolish to have trusted Dr. Faustis, and that his foolishness was the cause of this whole problem for everyone else.

He bit his lip and waited for CubeSquared to reply. After waiting a few moments, he typed:

H: "I know, it sounds crazy."

CS: "Yeah, it kinda does. But I'm glad you told me."

And then...

CS: "I've had some crazy things happen in my life too you know. I don't think you're making it up."

That made Harrison feel better. And then:

CS: "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Harrison thought about it for a moment, and then wrote back:

H: "No, I don't think so. But thanks for asking!"

***

Grampa Lewis and Gramma Rose were about a day's drive away from New Zebedee. They didn't want to drive at nighttime, because they were worried about falling asleep at the wheel. So they got a good night's sleep and started out first thing in the morning. They had told Harrison they should be there by dinner time.

In fact, because they were both so concerned about what Dr. Faustis might be getting up to, neither of them wanted to stop even for lunch. They did make a few bathroom stops, and filled up the car with gas. But they just ate sandwiches in the car, and ended up getting into New Zebedee just after four O'clock in the afternoon.

As soon as they were at home, they gave Harrison a call.

"So... the spell's not affecting you guys?" Harrison asked cautiously.

"Not at all, Harrison," Gramma Rose said. "You see, we found a few protection spells in some of the books we were looking through–we brought a lot of them back, by the way–and we've also got an odd trinket or two here at the house that just might protect us!"

"Um... Gramma Rose?" Harrison figured now was as good a time as any to tell them about the umbrella. "There's... there's something I should tell you..."

Harrison told them about sneaking into their house to steal the umbrella, that Dr. Faustis had demanded that he bring an "object of great value" to the last ceremony, and that he must still have it.

Gramma Rose and Grampa Lewis were very understanding, but they were also concerned.

"If he has your magic umbrella," said Grampa Lewis to Gramma Rose, "that could help to give him power over you!"

"Fiddlesticks!" Said Gramma Rose. "I've got other charms to protect me, and we've already laid those new spells. I'll be fine!"

From the way she was talking, Harrison got the idea that she and Grampa Lewis were more familiar with casting spells and doing magic than either of them had let on. But he didn't say anything.

"Even so," said Grampa Lewis, "we really should get it back. If it was important for him to have for the ceremony, that tells us that it's likely an important piece of his power now. And it would sure be good to have its powers to help us... on Halloween!"

Harrison realized that he didn't really have a clear idea of what was going to happen now on Halloween, now that he wasn't going to meet the doctor for the ceremony, or of how his grandparents planned to defeat him.

"So," he asked over the phone, "what is the plan for Halloween?"

"Let's go over that tomorrow," said Grampa Lewis. "Your Gramma and I have a lot of unpacking to do, and we're pretty tired from driving all day. Why don't you plan to come over in the morning for breakfast and we'll fix you up some blueberry buckwheat pancakes and we can go over everything then?"

That sounded good to Harrison. With school still closed, he didn't have to be anywhere in the morning, all he had to do was send his homework in to his teacher by the end of the day. So he said yes, and hung up the phone.

***

The next morning, Harrison sat before a huge pile of blueberry-buckwheat pancakes smothered in butter and maple syrup. Privately, he asked himself why he didn't come over to his grandparents' for breakfast more often.

"You see, Harrison," Grampa Lewis was saying, "we don't think Dr. Fuzz-toss was just angry at you when he saw that you weren't adequately fearful–we think he was afraid."

Harrison frowned.

"Harrison," said Gramma Rose, "Whatever it is he seeks to accomplish with this spell of his, it seems to depend on everyone being very afraid–and that includes you. In fact, maybe especially you!"

Harrison frowned some more.

"It's possible that he needs you to be afraid more than he needs anyone else to," continued Gramma Rose, "because you were the one who–unwittingly, of course–brought him back. I suspect that it is more important to him that you be under his spell than that anyone else is. You are his connection to all the rest! You're the one who started all of this! If he has no control over you, then he can never be really confident in his control of everyone else."

Harrison took a big bite of blueberry-buckweat pancakes and thought about that.

"So it's a very good thing, Harrison," said Grampa Lewis, "that for whatever reason, you weren't affected the same way as everyone else was by the spell."

"So why wasn't I?"

"Who knows?" Gramma Rose shrugged. "Maybe it's just something about your particular makeup. We may never know. But let's just be glad you weren't!"

They then explained to Harrison the plan that they had come up with.

"His power comes from fear," said Grampa Lewis, "so we fight him with the opposite of fear."

"With courage?" Harrison wondered aloud.

"Well, yes," said Grampa, "it will require courage. But our thinking was that the opposite of fear... is love."

Harrison wondered if he was right about that.

"And no, before you ask, I wasn't about to suggest that we all run up and shower old Fusty-Pants with hugs and kisses," Grampa added.

"What then?"

"Only that, in addition to the counter spell we will be casting, that we remember who we are, and that we remember who the people around us are. That as frightened and irrational as they may be now, they are still our neighbors and our friends... and that we love them. That's all."

"Lewis, you surprise me!" Harrison thought that Gramma Rose did look genuinely surprised.

"Now part of our spell," Grampa Lewis continued, "will be a bonfire, into which, at the appropriate time of course, we throw a few meaningful objects: The poster, from the room upstairs, that started all of this; the bottle of elixir, of course; and one other object, something with a personal connection to Dr. Futzit. That's where you come in." He looked at Harrison.

"I don't know what that would be, Grampa!"

"Well, we don't need to know right now," said Grampa Lewis. "We've still got another twelve days before Halloween. But we should all be thinking very carefully about this. And of course..." he hesitated, "...there's the matter of Gramma Rose Rita's umbrella."

"I need to get it back, don't I?"

"Well, someone does," said Grampa. "We're really going to need its protection, and on top of that, we just don't know what old Fuss-Budget might do with it. We can't take the chance that it might actually give him more power."

Harrison suddenly felt awful.

"This is all my fault," he said glumly.

"No Harrison, this was not your fault!" Grampa Lewis exploded. "This was the fault of a dark, evil force that took advantage of your fears and your weakness. None of this was your fault! Only a diabolical and deranged person would have put you in a position where you had to choose between protecting your family and stealing from your grandparents! And look around you–all these people–look at how easily they've been overcome by his spell! They've behaved even more shamefully than you have! This was not your fault."

Harrison knew inside that he should not have taken the umbrella. Still, he appreciated his Grampa's words.

The three sat silently for a moment, and then Gramma Rose pushed her chair back from the table, stood up, and announced:

"Lewis, you and Harrison go over the rest of the plan–I'm going to go down in the basement and dig out all of our Halloween decorations so we can get them up before the end of the day!"

"That's my Rose Rita!" Exclaimed Grampa.

Then, he and Harrison sat down at the table and he started to explain the plan to him.

"First, we need to go and retrieve that poster you found. And anything else in that trunk. In fact, we might as well just bring the whole trunk on down here."

Harrison nodded.

"Destroying that poster is going to be one of the most important pieces," said Grampa Lewis. "That's what started the whole thing, after all. It had a spell on it alright. Remember how you said that you were surprised to see the next day's date on the poster?"

"Yes," said Harrison.

"Well that was no accident," said Grampa. "That was part of the spell. Whoever would have picked up that poster, and whenever they picked it up, they would have seen the next day's date printed as the date of the doctor's appearance."

Harrison nodded again.

"When we destroy it," said Grampa, "I expect that some measure of the wizard Fat-cheeks' power will go with it!"

"I sure hope so," said Harrison. But he wasn't so sure.

"Remember Harrison, Halloween night is when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. So while that will undoubtedly give him more power, it is also our opportunity to strike at him! And that's exactly what we're going to do. You know, you can't spend your whole life playing defense. Sometimes you have to go on the offense!"

At that moment, Gramma Rose came up the basement steps, her arms loaded with big plastic jack-o-lanterns.

"Look at you," she laughed, "talking like you know anything at all about sports!"

The following days were filled with preparations for the casting of the spell. The big questions that remained were: What object belonging to Dr. Faustis could they procure... and how was Harrison going to get that umbrella back?

What's the Word for this?

 

It's not schadenfreude, because I'm not happy any of these people are dead. To be clear: Yes, they were horrible people. The things they said about us, and their unrepentant desire to force a medical treatment on the rest of us, are unexcusable. But did I hope they would DIE? No, of course not.

When I see posts like this - and there are many - the same feeling rises up in me, but I don't have a name for it. The closest I can come to is this: That I'm watching a terrible terrible accident unfold in slow motion, that some of the people in the "accident" are just assholes, but many are people I know and love, and even though many of us tried to warn them, spoke out about the dangers of the new experimental thing, about how it wasn't even needed, let alone safe, let alone effective... almost none of them listened.

So it's like watching a train roaring off an enormous cliff. And the people onboard had many, many chances to get off the train, many of us were screaming at them: "GET OFF THE TRAIN!" But not only did they not get off the train, they wished death on those of us who didn't get on the train, and they tried to have us silenced when we said they should get off the train.

And now, a whole bunch of them are dead - the idiotic numbskulls. And no, that doesn't make me feel vindicated, or good in any way. I'm not sure I'll ever have a word for how it makes me feel.

 

I have produced a video clip featuring a group of individuals, including Brian, who tragically passed away unexpectedly after mocking others. I invite you to watch this clip, which has already garnered an impressive 100,000 views. pic.twitter.com/OAqfNRKabn

— 🇦🇺OurVoicesMatter (@OV_Matter) May 13, 2023

More here. I wonder how many of these people are still alive.

Until the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s vaccination decree, he tried to demand that we fire all unvaccinated personnel – some of our finest people https://t.co/Li1E8Pif5M

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2023

        Related StoriesWTMWD #85: What is a "Directed Evolution Experiment"? And Are we Living in One? - with Kevin McKernanWTMWD #83: How the West Brought War to Ukraine - with Benjamin AbelowWe Are More Free to Create than We Realize 

WTMWD #87 : Why Does there Need to be a Food-Freedom Movement? With Niti the Farmacist

 

 

The Rogue Food Conference starts today, so I thought it would be a good time to share my conversation with Niti Bali - the "high priestess of the pasture", according to Joel Salatin. 



We cover a lot of ground in this one, from the centralization of food, medicine, and most other important aspects of our lives, to the difference between religion and morality, and the legitimate role of experts in society. 



But the overarching theme is that of taking radical responsibility for our lives at all levels.

Niti's website is here, and you can purchase her book here. 

 

         

WTMWD #86: Do Goldbacks solve sound money's biggest problem?

 

 

 

Goldbacks are shiny! But what else makes them special? I ask founder Jeremy Cordon.

We talk about the practicalities of Goldbacks, how they are made, how to use them, and how to know they are what they say they are. We talk about why Goldbacks are legal, and how they are different from other atempts at implementing sound money. And Cordon points out that these bills go a long way to solving the age-old problem of divisibility into small denominations.

Which is huge. But even more impressive: Goldbacks could potentially solve the problem of Gresham's Law.

Let me back up. At around 38:00 we talk about this, but I realize that we don't really explain what we're talking about. So here's the explanation:

Those of us who oppose fiat money do so because it is essentially a mechanism for stealing the wealth created by individuals in a society. Governments that "create money out of thin air" are engaged in a kind of counterfeiting, whereby they "print" money that they can spend with the same purchasing power of existing money. Only later - after the state and its cronies have benefited - does their inflation of the money supply result in price inflation (theft) for society as a whole.

You would think that the solution to this costly corruption of money would be for someone to come up with competing forms of money that cannot be counterfeitied or otherwise inflated. But the problem - aside from any legal barriers - is Gresham's Law.

Gresham's Law  tells us that "bad money drives out good." What this means is that when there is "bad" (inflatable) money in an economy, people will want to spend that money, and hold on to any "good" money they may have. If the dollar is inflating, then there is very little incentive to spend your precious metals. The sensible thing to do is to hang on to precious metals and spend your dollars.

And so, because of Gresham's Law, it becomes very difficult to introduce sound money into an economy where unsound money is already circulating. (An aside: Until hyperinflation hits. Here's  where I saw that happen  many years ago.)

Well Goldbacks may have just solved that problem. How? It's all in this episode!



Learn more about Goldbacks here. 

 

         

WTMWD #85: What is a "Directed Evolution Experiment"? And Are we Living in One? - with Kevin McKernan

 

 

 

I speak with Kevin McKernan about the recent Project Veritas video in which a Pfizer employee claims that the company is contemplating directed evolution experiments with the SARS-Cov-2 virus.



Kevin walks us through the reasoning behind his view that we are already witnessing a massive directed-evolution experiment in the real world, as a result of the medical interventions introduced in response to Covid-19.



We also talk about the some of the fundamental problems that lie at the heart of the dysfunction in medicine and medical research that we've been living through – and some practical ideas for fixing it.



Kevin is CSO and founder of Medicinal Genomics. His Substack articles on directed evolution are here, here, and here.



The work on directed evolution by Tawfik and Griffiths that he mentions can be found here.



The John Goodman books Kevin mentions are here and here.



Kevin and I spoke about the responses to Covid-19 and problems with PCR testing here, here, and here. And about problems – and some solutions – with peer review here and here.



You can follow Kevin on Substack and  on Twitter.



...and if you want to support Project Veritas, you can do so here.

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Get Your Free Copy of "Urban Yogini: The Christmas Episode"!

 

 

For a limited time, I'm offering a free download of my comic book "Urban Yogini: The Christmas Episode".

In this episode, the Urban Yogini and her friends learn what it means to "love thy enemy" in a world of fearmongering and divisiveness.

Her guru-cat buddy Krishna Purr is back too, along with the giant purple octopus who runs everything from the bowels of the Big City central bank. And all the while, a lone cowboy economist passes on lessons about subjective value and the importance of profits as he makes his way across the land.

(The original Urban Yogini comic, to which this is a sequel, can be found here.)

Just go here to get your download. And Merry Christmas!

 

         

WTMWD #84: When the Criminal Gangs Fight Amongst Themselves, with Tom Luongo

 

 

 

 

We all know it's "one big club, and we're not in it..." but we also know it's not quite that simple. What happens when things start to go not so well for the "club", and the members start fighting with each other?



Tom Luongo explains - in plain language, for those who might not be following these folks as closely as he is - his view on the infighting that's happening right now. We talk about the nature of empire, who really controls Congress... and why the Fed might be one of the good guys at this moment in history.



...Sort of.



I'm really happy with this episode, because I think it's one of the clearest explanations of where Tom is coming from on all this. He goes into much more depth and detail elsewhere (see his podcast), but if you're not at all familiar with his position, I think our conversation here is a great place to start.



I was a guest on Tom's podcast, "Gold, Goats 'N Guns" recently. That episode is here.



You can find Tom's work here, and he is also on Twitter.

         

WTMWD #83: How the West Brought War to Ukraine - with Benjamin Abelow

 

 

I talk with Benjamin Abelow, author of "How the West Brought War to Ukraine."



Ben explains what's wrong with the narrative you'll hear on TV about this conflict, and gives a brief rundown of the decades-long history that led up to it. We then talk about the psychological and financial incentives that drive the war machine, and he gives his thoughts on the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, and what we might do to encourage peace in the world.



Abelow's book is here, and David Gordon's review of it is here.



His interview with Tom Woods is here.



His interview with Useful Idiots is here.



The books he mentions are:



"War with Russia?" By Stephen Cohen



"The War State" By Michael Swanson



"Nonviolent Communication" By Marshall Rosenberg

 

 

 

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