"It's beginning to change around here." Suzanne announced approximately three minutes after the last of seventeen or eighteen Will o' Wisps had left them traipsing through a particularly nasty group of thickets. The group stopped walking.

"What do you mean?" Terry questioned in curiousity. He then seemed to catch himself at something and straightened his stance with a stiff movement.

"Yes. I wasn't sure about it, but I've noticed something, too. Like this particular area is guarded. A totem spirit has been called to watch here." David began to look around more carefully.

"A ward? Something like a ward?" Suzanne asked David. Terry began a slow, nervous shuffle. They all looked at Rachel who looked back at them less than blankly.

"Are you saying that you all sense some kind of presence here?" Terry's irked question caused him to stand still.

"No; it feels more like a trap." Suzanne answered plainly.

"Or a howe," added David.

"Both," Rachel confirmed. "I have some bad news for you, Terry; there are manifestations of sin about." In spite of the candor in her voice, Terry seemed offended.

"Alright. The joke ends here," he said with staunch conviction. Suzanne and David accepted this news differently, though, and tightened the ranks.

"Are you sure?" Suzanne asked Rachel. "I'm only getting the feeling that something HAS happened here."

"Not exactly here, but close." David said, taking the staff-sized stick from Terry whose expression was beginning to change to one of mild shock in the realization that none of them were joking.

"Don't wink out now," Rachel advised Terry. "Not after chasing down Saint Elmo's Fire with us." She placed her hand on his shoulder.

"I..." He stammered.

"There!" David pointed with the staff at what may have been another Will o' Wisp. They all looked in the direction he pointed only to be distracted by movement from behind them. Four different thickets suddenly had new inhabitants as a screeching laugh afflicted the wood.

"There's two," Rachel said to the others.

"These bushes really aren't going to help us," Terry noted.

It came into sight, scanning low to the ground. A hissing locust-like sound approached from one side. The huge bat-wolf creatures were not ten yards from them, and though they appeared to be searching, it was obvious they already knew exactly where to look.

"They are magnificent," Suzanne commented without realizing it. And they were.

"But not in a nice way," David said while preparing to stand. Something snapped beneath him, gaining the directed attention of the creatures. Baleful, seething eyes were firmly locked onto David as he stood in a posture of 'I give up.' No mercy was intended. The nearest creature's remarkably humanoid arm lashed out, taloned fingers spreading to eviscerate him.

"I REBUKE YOU IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST!!" Terry shouted urgently while leaping from his thicket. This alone did not help David much, but when combined with a sharp frontal blow to the creature's shoulder from the point of the staff David carried, its talons missed him just barely enough. The other creature began to giggle as David and Terry chased its gaze for a moment.

"Oh, but you're next," declared Suzanne from her bush. She tossed a roundish white object lightly at its torso. Suzanne and Rachel pushed forward through the brush.

David and Terry knew before they had begun that physically battling this thing would be a big mistake. So, as Terry gathered his concentration and the strength of his faith, David called forth the spirits of his power animals to protect his physical body and to aid his spirit-self in battle. "By our Father and all the good He possesses, I banish thee to hell,..." Terry began.

Now certain his self control was fully in place, David began to howl like a banshee. Terry was paralyzed for a moment by David's cry, though his concentration remained unbroken. He took a deep breath and continued. "By our Father and all the good He possesses, I banish thee to hell." Terry stated solidly, somehow instantly oblivious to the caterwauling, eerie sounds David was producing.

David, aware that his soul-speech of destruction now held the demon fast within its physical form, called forth the avatar of his divine self and wielded his astral legend-staff against its wraith aspect. "By our Father and all the good He possesses, I banish thee to hell," Terry concluded. The righteous energy Terry summoned through his words and his faith compelled an awesome silence to fall on the area.

David continued his attempt to subdue the creature's spirit by attacking it, his intention to dispell the physical manifestation of the entity through damaging this much more undisciplined self. His actions seemed effective if only because it appeared completely unprepared to fight him in this way.

"Uh, God, NOW would be a good time...." Terry ammended his rebuke after a few seconds, once he saw David's strained expression and somehow empty stance. In a whining buzz which trailed off through the total blackness of night, the creature disappeared. Terry and David fell into stunned relaxation.

Suzanne and Rachel used much the same tack on the other creature. Suzanne assaulted its psychology and grasp on reality by immediately shoving at its spirit with feelings of despair, of the impossibility of its existence, of the understanding that it should not be; feelings she drew from horror within herself and from the woods around her, refocused and refined into a decided one-way telepathic command. When Rachel grabbed hold of the skull Suzanne had thrown, she recoiled for just an instant from the disturbing death its owner had experienced, then she prepared the skull to be a stake for the creature by binding the creature to the knowledge of its own nature.

"I know what you have done," she stated coolly to the thing, as though it would be willing to sit and have tea with her to discuss the matter. A queer sort of wailing song began, fortunately it did not distract either Suzanne or Rachel. The creature seemed to cringe slightly; unused to being coerced into considering anything so simple as its existence. At the same time it was fully understanding the implication of Rachel's words, if only because it was now vulnerable to believing in consequence.

Suzanne blasted at it. Because she could not allow this command to rebound onto either Rachel or herself, she began to draw more from around her. Suzanne quickly became a conduit for forceful declamation, though she would soon suffer from such an overabundance of negative energies rushing through her psyche.

"This binds you, you know," Rachel said conversationally to the creature while holding the skull out and shaking it a bit. She could only hope that Suzanne would hear her words and pick up on her intention despite the screaming that was going on near Terry and David. The creature, evidently doubting this, tried to knock the skull from Rachel's hand, its movement sluggish and clumsy. Rachel dodged easily and began tugging gently at the creature's spirit, threading it through the cracks and holes in the skull. This she knew would bind the creature more securely to the inanimate physical object, incapacitating its physical form, leaving its spirit stretched taut, defenseless. "It does," she insisted in an almost condescending manner.

Suzanne had heard Rachel's intention and gladly realigned the energies battering the creature's spirit, shifting the command into one of stagnation and isolation. A sudden silence deafened the woods and the creature dropped to the ground. Rachel and Suzanne approached it. It shuddered slightly when its companion was dissipated.

Suzanne backed well away, wondering if any damage had been done to Terry and David while she closed off the ends of her psyche. Rachel began examining the creature in the same way a scientist would regard a unique though extremely toxic substance. There it lay with nearly-vacuous eyes still struggling to be malicious, its body still trying to give the impression that it was poised to gaily deal bloody death. Wisps of its spirit were almost perceptible as filaments between its body and the skull. The skull itself seemed webbed with a vitreous tarnish, and moments from being shattered by that stain.

David and Terry regained their ability to stand.

"Is everyone okay?" Terry asked wearily, brushing dirt from his pantlegs. Then he noticed the captive. Suzanne helped Terry by lightly smacking dirt from his coat while David walked to where Rachel was kneeling over the creature. She was staring into its eyes.

"Who made you?" She asked it. "Surely you were made...." Her demeanor seemed to indicate that she received at least a partial answer to her question, though the creature gave no sound or gesture. "And, no doubt, there is a way to un-make you," she added, glancing from its wings to its feet, then returning her dissecting glare to its eyes.

David struck the skull sharply with the point of the staff. The skull collapsed in splinters. A wind-like moan and a washing sensation of fear spread from the uncanny, scathing light of this creature's dispelling. Terry, Suzanne, and David were knocked backward while Rachel fell forward onto the spot where it had been. They all rubbed their eyes.

"I wanted to study that," Rachel complained in David's direction.

"Yeah? Well you can have the next one," he groaned at her. "I wasn't about to take any chances...."

"NEXT one?! I couldn't possibly fight another one," Suzanne's voice said from nearby.

"At least not for about ten years," agreed Terry. "Or longer," he added after less than a moment's consideration.

No one spoke. The quiet lasted only long enough for everyone to notice that there were no sounds of any kind from around them.

"Okay, so we're all blind for a minute," Rachel announced in an irritated voice.

"Yes," Suzanne concluded, "Thanks, David." And then quickly, "But I do mean it; thanks."

"Do you suppose that we may have just annoyed those...things...into going away?" Terry asked.

"Absolutely NOT," replied David.

They stayed quiet while their eyes slowly readjusted to the natural physical plane. It seemed to be nearly a minute before their vision returned completely from the sight the eyes they used in their separate spiritual ways gave to them. Then, slowly, they also regained their night vision. Except everything seemed darker.

"Where did the moonlight go?" Asked Suzanne, almost unnoticeable as a dull splotch against indiscernible other splotches, one that proved itself to be Terry.

"The air feels damp; it might rain," he said.

"Just what I wanted," was David's sarcastic comment.

"Don't you smoke, David?" Suzanne's voice and splotch asked.

"It's a religious thing, yes--I've got a lighter!" Then came the sound of searching through innumerable pockets, and, at last, "Here it is." A flame appeared and with it the four. The light went out.

"David!" Suzanne exclaimed.

"Well, I don't want to waste it if it's all we've got!" He explained. "Everybody look for something to use as a torch."

"Your stick," said Rachel. The flame appeared-disappeared again, "For one."

"And I've got a bit of string." Terry mentioned, "Don't ask me why."

"But that's still not going to do us any good." Suzanne said, "Especially if those things come back...."

"They won't be back." Rachel told her.

"They'd BETTER not be." Terry interjected.

"But you can bet that there are more of them."

"Shutup and look for stuff to make a torch with," David stopped the discussion with a flick of his lighter. Eventually they got a temporary torch together from things they had in their pockets and some dried underbrush.

"This is only going to last us about two minutes," Terry stated while tying off the end of his string. "And it's likely to be quite messy about burning, so I suggest we decide what we're going to do with it BEFORE we light it." The murk was not as miserable as it had first seemed. After several minutes of uninterrupted darkness they all found they could make out the shrubbery pretty well. They had decided that the moon must not be gone entirely, though it probably would be soon enough to consider it already gone since they had been in the wood for more than an hour. The moon had been on its descent when they began to follow Will o' Wisps.

"Where's a Will o' Wisp when you need one?" Terry asked in general.

"Do you really need an answer for that, Terry?" Rachel wanted to know.

"No, but it was a thought."

"What did you see earlier, David? Right before those creatures showed up," questioned Suzanne.

"You mean those 'manifestations of sin'?--"

"I was trying not to scare the Christian!"

"--I thought I saw some kind of structure. But I wasn't sure. It looked like a lean-to or something."

"That sounds like a goal. Do you have any idea which direction it was from here?" Terry pressed. The lighter flared.

"Jesus, David!" Rachel complained.

"I slipped!" He defended himself, "But now I'm REALLY going to light it. And blunder around for awhile until I can figure out where that lean-to is. Cover your eyes," he advised. David sacrificed his night vision in search of where he had been when he saw what may have been a lean-to. The others covered their eyes with their hands and waited patiently. Or not.

"Warmer," said Rachel.

"No, no; he's DEFINITELY getting colder," disagreed Terry.

"I don't know because I can't see a thing," Suzanne remained neutral and laughed quietly.

"There it is," David finally announced. "Yes, I'm sure that's it. Ow," he crunched through a bush. "Damn!" And a lull, "You can open your eyes now."

They did. "So, do we light the torch and all go blind now, or do we leave David stuck where he is for awhile and follow his pointing finger into the unknown?" Was Rachel's request for a vote. David struggled within a blob of shrubbery.

"I think we should wait until we get near enough to the structure to examine it before we light the torch." Terry suggested.

"And we can all spit on it if it gets out of control," Suzanne added in a surprisingly snide tone. "I'm sorry, Terry," she caught herself, "I don't know why I said that. What's over that way, David? Does it seem safe to use the torch?" She asked.

"I know I don't like what I'm standing in," David said, straining to release himself. "And I don't mean this bush." He jerked himself free of the bush so that he fell forward. He landed on what sounded like a small pile of sticks.

"I think I'm going to be ill," Suzanne said. She put one hand onto her forehead and braced herself with the other. Terry moved over to support her.

"Any objections to lighting the torch now?" Rachel took the torch from Terry. "Thought not." She stood quickly and stumbled her way over to David who was just lighting his lighter.

"Oh my God," they both said.

"What? What is it?" Terry asked while trying to comfort the crumpled Suzanne.

"Get Suzanne as far away from here as you can, Terry. I'll light the torch. Make sure you know where we are when it starts to go out." David's voice left no room for argument.

"Yes, get me out of here." Suzanne began to move frantically though slowly away from David and Rachel.

As Terry struggled to help her he asked, "Why? What's over there?"

"You know that skull we found?" Rachel asked.

"Yes," Suzanne choked, nearly cutting Rachel's words short.

"All its cousins and farm animals for generations are over here." David said, flicking his lighter against the torch Rachel held down to him. "And we can count how many ribs Adam had, too." The torch caught and for an instant a large radius was well-lit. "We're in a graveyard," he finished.

"What do you want to bet that the lean-to is some sort of repository for savory bits?" Rachel asked David in a low voice intended for David. It was obvious, though, that Suzanne and Terry had heard her from the gagging noise Suzanne made.

"You look; I've had about enough of this," David said, suddenly overwhelmed by the unrest and the immensity of the work required to settle all the spirits that were most definitely trapped in the area. They said nothing for a short while. David freed his right foot from the bush, dislodging a small bone from somewhere inside its branches.

"You hold the torch, and I'll go," Rachel finally acceded. David glanced at her. "We have to know if it gets any worse, don't we?" It was a rhetorical question; she didn't wait for any answer, but placed the torch in his hand and walked toward the heap of well-arranged timber.

David looked around to find that the bones were set in a definite pattern. He'd begun to stand when the torch started to sputter. "Hurry up," he urged Rachel.

Suzanne and Terry watched from about twenty yards away; the closest Suzanne felt she could be to all the turmoil they were stirring up by shuffling about in the graveyard. They saw David stand and stomp out some burning pieces of the torch which had fallen to the ground.

"Ohhh," Suzanne moaned in dread of what he might have crushed in that process.

"Don't worry, Suzanne; I know they're okay." Terry tried to comfort her.

"What are they doing?" Her voice was that of disbelief and curiosity mixed.

They watched David take a few steps in the same direction Rachel was going. Then he changed his mind, apparently, but did not go back to where he had been.

"I'm sure I don't know." Terry said to her, sounding genuinely confounded.

Rachel reached the mound of branches and wasted no time tearing it apart, keeping her wavering shadow out of the way. "Gak," she said to herself, but David heard her.

"What's there?" He asked. Her shadow jumped crazily for a moment, "Hurry up Rachel; this thing's about had it."

There were, indeed, some disgusting things stashed there, mostly still connected to body parts and former body parts. But there were also quite a few almost useful looking things; carefully kept things as well as torn-to-shreds things. These objects are what Rachel concentrated on, grabbing a camper's backpack and utility bag before the light flared and dipped sharply.

"Dammit!" David exclaimed. "I can't keep this lit!" He shouted to Rachel, then dropped the torch and began stomping furiously. The cracking and snapping sounds seemed unusually loud, but were thankfully brief compared to his Killing the Flame dance.

She tried one last sortie, nabbing what had looked like a flashlight-lantern, then pushed herself hard and away from the mess she had made of the lean-to. She dragged her loot as she raced on elbows and knees to reach David before the torch light was completely gone. They sat there and breathed for awhile, apparently trying to remember just exactly when last it was they'd had this much fun together.

"You two doing okay?" Terry queried from a distance.

"Oh, I suppose." Rachel responded a little too loudly. "We'll be right over."

"I'll keep talking so you can find us," Terry boomed. "If you haven't moved since David finished extinguishing the torch." He paused. "We should be about fifteen or so yards in front of him."

"But be careful," Suzanne added, "There's alot of gullies and brush between you and us."

"You ready?" David asked Rachel.

"Yeah. Take this," and she shoved the utility bag in his general direction, accidentally punching him in the arm.

"So, how's school going, David?" Suzanne asked.

When they helped each other stand the backpack made a clanging sound.

"What's that!" Terry shouted urgently.

"I've found some plate mail armor, and I'm sneaking up on you now!" Rachel shouted back. She turned to David and said, "I think we'd better not actually walk. I, personally, did alot better with crawling."

"I found a backpack, Terry," Rachel shouted in the direction of Suzanne and Terry. "And I think I've got a flashlight, too." She fumbled with the large plastic case and found a switch. A weak orangish glow came from the nearly-dead lantern head.

"That's good!" Suzanne declared. "Terry will come to get you."

"I will?" Terry asked Suzanne. Pause. "Yes. I guess that would be best."

By the time Terry had taken Rachel and David back to Suzanne, their night vision had returned. Except everything was darker.

Rachel turned off the lantern and set it on the ground. She took the earthy smelling backpack from her shoulder. It clanged.

"Now what?" David asked her.

"Let's see what we've got, then get out of here," Rachel suggested while sitting down. "Let me have your lighter in case I need it." David gave her the lighter without comment.

"Are you okay?" Suzanne asked her, leaning over to touch her shoulder. She dodged.

"Believe me, Suzanne, you don't want to know." Rachel unzipped the main pocket and began fishing around inside. Suzanne sat down beside her.

"You found this stuff in the lean-to?" Terry asked David, "Those creatures kept stuff?"

"They were alot different than they seemed," was David's cryptic response.

"How do you mean?" Suzanne asked while taking the things Rachel handed her and stacking them neatly to one side.

"There was organization over there. And they're keeping things..." David started.

"Well, I don't think their master knows about all this." Rachel flicked the lighter, "Daddy or Mommy Evil Spawn is obviously not keeping track of what the creatures do in their spare time."

"Those things are controlled?" Suzanne was surprised.

"Yes; I got that impression, too. But I'm wondering what the point of all that over there was," David said. They thought about this for a few seconds.

"Individuality," Terry said. "If there are more of them--"

"And there are," Rachel interjected, "Make no mistake of that." She unzipped another pocket.

"--They might be developing a kind of society for themselves. A life." He was awed by his own thought for a moment. "How many do you think there are, Rachel?"

"I'm not sure...." She seemed to want to search the backpack faster, "Couldn't be too many, but I'm positive we haven't really impeded their master's purpose by banishing two." She stopped. "Aha!" and set an object beside herself instead of giving it to Suzanne. "If we HAD we'd definitely know about it by now. Give me that mess kit, Suzanne." Pause. "Please."

"Well, how do we know that this 'society' isn't going to hunt us down?" Suzanne asked while handing her the mess kit.

"We don't," David answered, "But I think that we'd be dead by now if they knew what we've done. Or maybe they're just busy right now." The conversation ended.

There was a foom and a light. Rachel held a tin pan with a lit sterno can in it. "Ta da," she said. "And there's another can, too." The others clapped.

"Let's get out of here," Terry suggested.

"Wait a minute, Terry." Suzanne said, "Not that I want to stick around here, but we should probably check out the other bag first."

"Yes. Right." Terry agreed hesitantly. "David?"

David and Terry sat. David put the utility bag on the ground between himself and Terry and opened its clasp. "A journal?" David asked, removing a black bound book from the bag. He flipped through the pages, "No; better make that a grimoire. Does anybody mind if I keep this?" He looked at the others.

"I don't see why not," Rachel said.

"We banish the beastie, we keep the treasure?" Terry asked in an offended tone.

"Whoever owned it before is not going to need it now," Rachel educated him with a 'shutup' inflection in her voice.

"Let's just try to stay civil, shall we?" Suzanne advised. "Keep looking, David. We'll take the whole bag with us and see if there's any deeper answers in it later."

David set the grimoire aside, "Herbs, a knife --no doubt an athamŽ-- a map." He stopped and unfolded the large sheet of paper. On it were highway 224, the woods, and some odd-looking symbols. "Have a look at this, Terry. See if you can figure out where we are." There were details within the woods, among which were two noticeably marked areas and a spot labeled "font".

As David passed the map to Terry, Suzanne pointed and said, "Look at those lines in blue. Could those possibly be ley lines?" She intercepted the map and switched places with Rachel, sharing light with Terry to examine the thing.

"There wouldn't happen to be a compass among the other gear, would there?" Terry asked Rachel.

"Nope. Not that I know of. You can look through the stuff again just to make sure, though."

"What's this?" David asked, holding up a wad of cloth. He unwrapped the cloth to reveal a wood-and-glass object with a stopper. He held it closer to the flame, "How interesting. Runes..."

"Please put that thing away and keep looking," Suzanne said curtly. "It's giving me the creeps. And we really shouldn't stay here longer than we have to...." The last was given as a half-apology.

"It looks like an alembic. Or an ampulla. Something like that." Terry was interested, but stopped himself. "It's not something we can use right away, so let's move on, please." He looked back to the map and returned to his study.

"A fetish!" David was truly surprised, "It has to be a fetish!" He held up a small suede bag with feathers dangling from it.

"That's nice....What else?" Rachel urged him impatiently.

"Well, not much." He stirred the rest of the bag's contents. "A traveling toothbrush of all things, some pens, a ruler, tweezers, some pieces of bark, a couple stones, a pot pipe, and what must be a bag of weed." He stopped stirring, "Your basic voodoo survival kit. That's all."

"Apparently someone else already knew the woods were interesting," Suzanne completed his thought.

.