The Lady at the Emporium

An old lady with long white hair and piercing green eyes tracked them like a hawk as they entered the tiny little shop that was nestled cosily between a coffee shop and a clothing store at the end of the main street.

"Can I help you, boys?" Her heavily accented voice cracked like a whip across the aisles before they could move further into the shop. Frank supposed the reason for the suspicion they could hear clearly laced in her tone was due to the fact that they hardly looked like her usual array of customers.

"Uh, hi," Joe summoned up a charming smile and walked over to the counter where she was waiting. "Maybe you could–"

"Wait," the woman said, her features scrunching up in a frown. "I know you."

"I, um, was here before with my girlfriend once," Joe admitted, ducking his head.

"Where is she?"

"She passed away recently," his brother said quietly.

The woman crossed herself and muttered something softly in what Frank was sure was a foreign language. "I'm sorry," she said. "How can I help you?"

"We are looking for information," Joe said, exchanging a glance with Frank as he moved closer. "Some books or magazines if you have any about, uh, the supernatural…"

Her suspicious glare made another appearance as Joe trailed off. "Supernatural?"

"As in restless spirits and ghosts and things…"

She stared at Joe for a long moment, with a strange yet intense look in her green eyes. She looked like she was trying to see deep into his brother's soul or something. It was not an expression Frank could easily decipher.

"We are not trying to do anything funny–" Joe flailed, knowing the news of his girlfriend's death and the search for supernatural beings would look like they were up to something nefarious to the old woman. "I mean–"

"I know," she said, cutting him off, before moving around the counter to walk towards the back of the shop where Frank could see the shelves full of books. "You need all the help you can get," she gestured to them as they both stayed where they were unsure what to do. "This way."

Joe looked at Frank, wide-eyed. It sounded awfully like the woman knew more than she was telling them. Maybe it was an act to go with the nature of the products she sold, Frank wasn't sure.

"Have you seen anything of supernatural nature lately?" she asked them as they joined her. There were rows and rows of books and manuscripts neatly stacked on the entire wall full of vertical, wooden shelves. She was on a short ladder, moving the books around on a frame that was about six feet above the ground. "Is that why you're looking for books?"

"Um, maybe…" Frank hedged.

"Like what?" She looked down and pinned him with a frown.

"Weird storms that come and go out of nowhere," he shrugged. "The dead girl's parents and her brother have seen and heard her a few times."

She turned back to the sack of books and hummed. "Let me see," she mumbled softly, almost to herself. "Angry spirits. Powerful. Can manipulate nature, grow strong with time…need to be sent back as soon as possible before they kill."

Before either of them could ask her about that appalling claim, she looked down again and focused on Joe. "Any strange dreams lately?"

Joe blinked, surprised. "Uh, yeah."

She hummed again. "You or him?"

"Me."

She nodded to herself once more and pulled three ancient, leather-bound books from the stack and dropped them towards Joe, whose quick reflexes allowed him to catch them before they ended on the floor. A cloud of dust rose around him in a halo as the old books bumped against each other in his hands.

"Read them, pay attention, and when the time comes, you'll know what to do." She added cryptically, climbing down the ladder. Then she turned to Frank and wagged her finger at him. "And you, do not let him out of your sight, yes?" she demanded.

"Um, okay," Frank agreed reflexively, thrown off guard by her strange demeanour just like his brother was.

"Good. Now, off you go," she made a shooing motion, towards the door.

"How much for these?"

"No charge. They're yours. Go do your job," she shook her head as Joe tried to protest. "Go now."

"Okay, alright," Joe muttered, as they were more or less shoved out of the shop. "Thank you very much for your generosity." The last of his words were cut off by the closing door and tinkling bells.

"Well," Frank said, looking away from the antique shop to Joe. "That went well."

"Wish the lady could have told us a bit more," Joe groused, frowning at the stack of dust-covered books he had in his hold. "She picked up too many things in too little time."

"She did give us three books," Frank said. "Hopefully they are in English," he opened the one on top and thumbed through a few pages without taking it off of Joe. That one looked like a collection of printed pages and hand-written accounts bound together. Although the font, writing and even the colours changed from page to page, he could read most of the text without much effort. "Looks like it."

"Great," Joe sighed and started walking towards the direction where they had parked the van prior to going to church. "Let's get home and get started."

…..

They were both sitting on Frank's bed this time and had the three old books open between them. Idly reading a handwritten, ink-smudged poem about a sick child and a dead pigeon, Frank remembered something that had nagged at him back at the antique shop.

"Your job," he said, startling Joe to look up from his own reading. "What the hell did she mean by that?"

Joe winced and averted his eyes, instantly rousing Frank's suspicion. "I don't know," he mumbled, shrugging. "And it's not the first time I've heard that phrase."

"Oh?"

"I hear it in the dreams too," he admitted quietly.

"Every time?"

"Yeah," Joe sighed wearily before looking back at Frank again. "That's what wakes me up, a voice asking me to do my job."

Frank felt a shiver, that had nothing to do with rainy weather, run down his spine at his brother's words. "This just keeps getting weirder."

"Tell me about it. Anything interesting there in your book?"

"I don't know," said Frank, going back to the poem he had been reading. "...There she awaits her death, staring at the veins in her arms, reminding her of poisonous dark serpents on snow. There she waits, staring out of a window, life moves on, blossoms bloom, children play and the sun shines upon bright laughter. There she waits, watching the dead pigeon under the hawthorn bushes no one sees, no one cares, only the stray that sniffs at it hoping for food. There she waits, wondering if she shall also be just as forgotten, lest she stays, forever lost in Cailleache's bosom…" he read aloud, stumbling over the unfamiliar name.

He looked up when there was no response from his brother only to find that he had gone pale, staring into space with a glassy look in his eyes.

"Hey, Joe–" he waved a hand trying to snap Joe back from wherever he had gotten lost.

"Cailleach," Joe mumbled the word in a strange pronunciation, still stuck in a stupor. "You can call me Callie. Answer when I call you, little one…"

Frank had a feeling Joe wasn't referring to his long-time girlfriend. His voice had a soft, faraway quality to it as if he wasn't really aware that he was speaking.

"Joe, hey," he called out loud, his unease growing as Joe stayed frozen and unresponsive. "Come on. Snap out of it. Brother, you're scaring me."

When the words failed to reach, Frank did the first thing that popped into his panicking mind. He smacked Joe in the back of the head with an open palm, not hard enough to hurt, but with enough force to make him feel it.

"Wh-what?!" Joe blinked back to life the moment he felt the impact on his head. "What was that for?" he scowled at Frank, rubbing the back of his head.

"You zoned out completely. I tried to talk to you and you couldn't hear me," Frank defended himself. "You mumbled something about a Cailleach and Callie."

Joe blinked some more and grabbed the book out of Frank's lap to read the poem again. Then he looked up with a baffled look on his face. "She calls herself that," he said. "They are the same."

"Who is she, Joe?" Frank asked in exasperation. He was rapidly losing the plot among all the unconnected, inexplicable and bizarre things happening around them. "Who calls herself that?"

"I don't know!"

"Joe-" Frank warned, getting tired of the things that didn't make sense and his brother's sudden need to be all secretive.

"Frank, I'm being honest," Joe said earnestly. "It's just that name is familiar, and I remember hearing that. I don't remember anything else," he ran both his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration and squeezed his eyes shut. "God, my brain is a mess."

"Okay, alright," Frank said softly, backing off from confronting his obviously worn-out brother for the moment. "Now we have a name that elicits a response. So, it's connected to whatever that's going on. Let's look for more information about this 'Callie.'"

His brother stayed quiet, wincing and rubbing his temples.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, my head hurts. Just gimme a sec and I'll get on it."

Frank didn't like the strain in his voice. "Do you need anything?"

Joe's breathing turned shallow and rapid as he watched, intensifying his worry. He could tell that Joe's headache seemed to be getting worse at an alarming rate, and his brother was trembling in an effort to push it away.

"Joe–"

"Water," he rasped.

Before Frank could get off the bed to get water, Joe slumped sideways, his body going entirely limp as he toppled off the bed from the opposite side of the bed. Frank lounged across the narrow bed and ended up on the floor next to his brother's prone body just as Joe hit the floor with a muted thump.

Oh, God. What's happening to you? Frank helplessly watched as his brother's body continued to shake on the floor. He hurriedly checked his pulse and found out that it was entirely too rapid. His skin felt freezing cold to the touch as Frank gently turned his face sideways to allow his unconscious brother to breathe without being smothered by the carpet. His eyes were moving back and forth behind his closed eyelids as if he had just slipped into REM sleep instead of passing out.

"Come on, brother, wake up," he begged, holding onto Joe in a death grip. "Wake up, damn it!"

The shaking intensified and Joe let out a whimper, sending Frank's own pulse skyrocketing. He was torn between leaving his brother to grab the phone to call an ambulance or staying with him to see if he would snap out of it. Joe's right hand tightened around Franks' left wrist on its own accord, as if he had sensed Frank's dilemma, making the decision for him.

Only a few minutes had passed, but Frank felt like it had been a few lifetimes when Joe let out a small groan and shifted, his hand tightening around Frank's wrist in reflex. The trembling in his body faded and his entire form relaxed. Frank felt the heat rising back up through the skin on Joe's face, just as rapidly it had plummeted, as he continued to hold his face.

"Come on, kiddo, open your eyes," he cajoled, sensing that his brother was finally waking up from his sudden collapse.

"Frank…"

It was a weak mumble but sufficient and Frank let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. "I'm here, I'm here."

Joe blinked a few times tiredly and looked around, realising for the first time that he was on the floor. "I think we need to go," he said, focusing a gaze full of residual pain on Frank.

"To the hospital, yes," Frank nodded and stood up. Then he extended a hand and more or less hauled his swaying brother off the floor and gently lowered him back onto the bed. Whatever mysterious illness Joe had contracted after Iola's death was getting worse, and Frank was absolutely sure that they couldn't keep ignoring it anymore. Joe needed to be assessed by a medical professional and needed to have some tests done to see if there was something seriously wrong with his health. "You just keeled over and had some sort of a mild seizure."

Even as he said it, he saw his brother shaking his head in disagreement. He was already half sprawled over the pillows, still very weak from whatever he just went through, and he was being stubborn.

"Kid–"

"We need to go to Morton's farm."

Joe's quiet declaration was the exact thing that Frank was dreading. Joe didn't look like he could get off the bed without help let alone go back to Chet's. But at the same time, Frank heard the determined tone he had heard from his brother the other time when they had gone and gotten trapped alongside a freaky, deadly column of unnatural wind.

"Crap," Frank swore. "Not again."

"That's the only way to end this."

"Not yet, Joe," Frank said, pleadingly. "We don't know anything about what's going on, and our first and only clue so far is the name of some woman we have absolutely no idea about. We need to learn more before we go back there again–"

"Please, Frank," Joe whispered, straightening himself enough to sit on the bed with effort. Frank moved closer instinctively, not wanting to let Joe do another face-plant on the floor when he inevitably stood up. "We don't have time–"

"Yes, we do. At least to finish reading these three books–"

Joe pushed himself off the bed and leaned into Frank for support to keep standing. Then he pinned Frank with a look of pure terror and uttered the words that Frank knew would seal their headlong rush into unknown danger, once again.

"They took Chet."