Moon Rise

Chapter 20

"Everyone now knows all that we saw and did this evening. The source of our problem is, of course, the person in the mountain cabin. Her name is Twyla. She fancies herself to be a sorceress. She's a poor magician, at best, who thinks she can use a grimoire like a cookbook. Her father was a large animal trainer.

He went wherever he was needed training animals for movies and promotional spots. He even worked for a few small circus venues, helping them perfect their animal acts. Her mother was a waitress who could always be found working the night shift at truck stops and lounges because a little flirting with the half drunk customers always brought in big tips.

She met Twyla's father outside a roadhouse one night. He was on his way to his next job at a casino and had stopped hoping to get something to eat. They were both heading for the same door, when a fight that started in the bar came spilling out into the parking lot. He pulled her aside to keep her from being knocked down. After a few minutes he found out that he was to start work there that night and that she had been sleeping in her car.

He offered to put her up for the night at a little 'mom-and-pop' motel he had seen up the road and she accepted. The next day she followed him to the casino. There she got a job as a waitress and lounge while he trained tigers to placidly rum the grounds of the casino and do a few simple tricks on stage.

Before long Twyla came along. Her father worked any job he could find and rented a tiny apartment for them all within walking distance of the casino. He even paid for a babysitter so her mother could go back to working nights. They scraped along happily until Twyla was about eleven years old. Her mother became a hostess in one of the larger lounges. She also became fond of liquor.

Not only was she spending a large part of her paycheck on drinks from the bar, but she even finished drinks left by customers. This went on for about a year. It was then that the casino hired a magician to entertain in the lounge where Twyla's mother worked. She was instantly attracted to him and spent every moment she could around him.

He was handsome and worldly and very persuasive. He had Twyla's mother convinced that he was a necromancer and could travel into the Astral plane to bring back souls of the dead, and by so doing could bring them back to life with the help of his books. He only needed one thing in order to accomplish his feet. He called it an eye stone.

He swore that if he could find this Stone, it wouldn't give him enough power to transcend death. A few well done and well-timed magic tricks led Twyla's mother right down the garden path. She began taking Twyla with her in the evenings. Twyla would sit in the lobby while her mother and the magician 'spent time' together. The excuse of late school activities wore thin with Twyla's father.

He found out where Twyla was and brought her home. The fact that her mother didn't miss her was the last straw. The morning that followed when her mother came home caused Twyla's father to have a heart attack from which he never recovered. After Twyla's father died, her mother seemed to change. She started working days in order to be with Twyla at night. She brought home every penny and never smelled of liquor, but when his contract ended a few weeks later, Twyla came home to find the magician had moved in with them.

Twyla told her mother that she didn't trust him. Her mother said he knew where the stone was that he had been looking for, and would go get it the next day. That done, he would leave for his next job. That night Twyla locked her bedroom door and was glad when she heard someone trying to get in about 4 O'clock in the morning.

She asked her mother why she had tried to come into her room at that hour. Her mother told her it must have been a dream, but she gave the magician a strange look. Nothing else was said. The three of them got in Twyla's mother's car, and headed off to get the stone. The directions the magician gave brought them to a high rock face where a rock slide had created a cave.