58

“Why should we go look at something?” asked Kent, and I heard a nervous waver to his voice. Something was hitting him harder than the rest of us. He was the most steady of us, and his reaction made me wonder what the rest of us were missing. Kevin turned back and looked at Kent, who gave Kevin a sideways glance, and a slight nod, and the two of them went from magicker to cop in an eyeblink. “Fern, we're going back across the bridge now. You and Cobb are coming with us” Kevin said in a flat voice the brooked no argument.
He looked at Kent. “How bad?” he asked. “Real bad Lovey-boy, real bad, we should be moving.” Kent said, and his eyes and head were suddenly on a swivel, looking everywhere for something, anything that might clue him in to what he was feeling. Kent pulled the dagger he had carried and was holding it point back along his forearm, in a martial art style fighting grip. Kevin was clumsily trying to string the bow Cobb had given him and after a wuick moment, gave up and grabbed it like a club, and moved shoulder to shoulder with Kent, who had placed himself between me and the shore.
“Move you two, now!” Kent growled. I could see his teeth bared as he looked back towards the shore. “How fast would it take to knock this spell down if we have to?” Kent asked Kevin, Cobb and I forgotten in the tension they were projecting. “Don't know if we can” said Kevin. “Think the car would do it?” “I don't know Nixy, all fae-boy said was that it would screw the pooch on his glamour, Fernie put the bridge up, not him.” We were all trotting by now, and fighting the urge to run in a blind panic towards the shore. Kent and Kevin were close behind Cobb and I, and Cobb ran to the edge
Kent grabbed him as he tried to stand his ground. “Damn fool, move your punk fairy ass!” Kevin shouted. I looked back beyond them, and saw a kind of sluggish, gelatinous fog roil slowly up the bridge. The sight of it sent a tingle of fear down my back, and I knew that fog was what had so badly rattled Kent. He could feel it. “No, we have to fight here!” snarled Kent. “We can't beat it to the other side. We gotta fight here.”
“Can we make the portal?” I asked. I didn't wait for an answer, but took off as fast as I could run. “The portal's the answer Nixy, we clobber the ring, it can't get through! I made the damn thing I can bring it down!” All three men pounded after me and we raced as fast as we could across the bridge towards the portal through the barrier. The fog moved faster than we did, but we had a long lead, and stumbled past the portal gasping for breath. Kevin turned and began chanting, and Kent started the same chant with him. I didn't know what else to do so I started in as soon as I could follow the cadence, and we called and channeled power to the portal.
The circle started to glow, and We could feel the rigidity of the circle start to fray. I looked up and saw the fog was about twenty yards away, and I could sense a hunger in it that frightened me to my core. It felt like nothing that belonged here on this earth. I chanted louder, and backed slowly away from the hole as I did so. Kent and Kevin were doing the same thing when the fog got to the portal edge and struck. A flash of sparkling mist burst from it like a breath on a cold day and enveloped Nix, and he screamed in agony, and aged before our eyes and crumbled to rotted skin and bones. The mist recoiled to the fog and gathered and as it shot forward the circle collapsed, snapping the barrier into place over the bridge.
The bridge shook as the spell was attack by the barrier, and we could see just through the brittle grey the bridge to the island collapse upon itself and dissolve away. The fog or whatever it was, dropped through the insubstantial bridge and hit the water with a bare ripple, and it was gone. Kevin grabbed me by the arms and yelled “brace it Fernie! It's collapsing, brace it!” I started in on the chant I had used to power the bridge, calling on my own resources to hold it in place.
There was a draining sensation as the spell grabbed me and started draining off my life to stabilize itself. Then there was a strange sensation like when your ear pops from an altitude change, and I was pulling power from some other source. The bridge stabilized and locked down again, and we stood, looking back at the barrier a mere four meters from us. “What the hell was that?” Kevin asked us. I had no answer, and apparently neither had Cobb. Kevin emptied his backpack and gently gathered up Kent's remains, leaving everything on the bridge. Cobb gathered up those belongings and carried them back across to my car. I got the shakes as we crossed onto solid ground, and collapsed on the grass and earth, and clutched it until the shaking passed.
Kevin called Halifax and told them what had happened, and that we would be back in a day with the remains. Cobb had left us as soon as we had packed to go back to Pictou, saying that he would contact me again soon, and that we would discuss the service. I had resisted the urge to punch him in the face, and settled for just leaving him there on the shore near the bridge. Kevin and I rode in silence back to Halifax, and on Tuesday, we attended Kent Nix's funeral.
It was a full affair, for an officer who fell in the line of duty, and I was numb through most of it. It was the vision of him being aged to death that haunted me in my dreams for the next week, and it still does some. Cobb has yet to contact me and Kevin has taken a month's leave from the department. The bridge is still there too. Cobb's glamour was destroyed when the portal collapsed and the bridge is visible, leading right up to th barrier. We're alive, which is something, but so is that thing, whatever it is, and if there's anyone still alive on Prince Edward Island, they have my sympathy. I'm never going back there again. I'm not even sure a mandate from God himself could make me go.
I have other, more joyous and human things to celebrate. Fawn's starting to show, and we have a baby shower tomorrow for her. Since I don't know whether it's going to be a boy or a girl, I did the sensible thing and got Fawn a trip to the local spa for a massage.