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Overstory
The world of evolving
human souls is protected against psychic predators who would invade the
human psyche and "consume" bits and pieces of the mind like physical
predators tearing apart the flesh of flesh and blood prey. These
predators, if they manage to penetrate the outer defenses of human
existence, seduce their victims into lowering their inner defenses by
coaxing them to believe that their lives are without hope and that the
future holds nothing of any value for them. Some "evil" humans are
nurtured and encouraged by these "demons" so that they can spread despair
and despondency like seeds that take root and grow into crops to be all
too easily harvested.
The Coven at World's End
is one such outer defense outpost, although it has no knowledge of its
higher purpose until danger looms. It is challenged to engage and defeat
just one of these evil and primitive, god-like psychic entities they will
come to call Malthog. In the process of defending the human world against
forces that would see it devoured, the Coven discovers that it is like a
cell of the body that has no knowledge of its higher purpose, but responds
to it when needed. Members of the Coven are like T-cells, or antibodies
in the human bloodstream, unconsciously on alert for invaders and
intruders. The most powerful of the "evil" psychic gods in the universe
are like the AIDS virus, smart enough to attack the body's defenses before
tackling the body itself.
The Coven discovers as
well that it could not function without the intervention of Sarah's
"fairies" who may be the engineers of the gateways and managers of the
human worlds. Humans and fairies are strange bedfellows, but fairies are
antipathetic toward "demons" and summarily destroy them. If one of the
witches, Juliana, who goes berserk at the end with her telekinetic powers,
is devoured by Malthog, she can also have been "infected" early on with
Sarah's fairies, and recently have discovered the secret that the demons
have been trying to keep, that the fairies are deadly to them. Just when
it appears that evil has triumphed, Juliana pretends to have exhausted her
ability to defend herself and sacrifices herself knowing she contains the
seeds of the demon's destruction.
Detail
Familiarity breeds, if
not contempt, then at least complacency. The inhabitants of World's End,
Massachusetts, take far too much for granted. They take their psychic
abilities for granted. They do not question why they alone know of the
gateways that exist between the worlds. They cannot explain how they use
them to find their way to a town that exists on no map in the ordinary
world. They do not know why visitors from the ordinary world lose their
memory of World's End when they leave.
They have never studied
their alternate universe and cannot explain why their sun is larger and
dimmer than the sun of the ordinary world, nor why the vegetation and
animal life is not quite of the same species. They do not know what lies
in the forests beyond their little town clustered close to the gateway to
the ordinary world.
They have never imagined
that their ignorance could pose a danger to their survival. It could be
that they are afraid to question too deeply.
The destruction of the
Coven of the previous generation is common knowledge, although little is
known of the events that transpired. Madness and death reigned, both
within World's End and in the ordinary world in nearby Oak Grove. The
death toll reached thirty-six, and those of the Coven not killed in the
melee spent the remainder of their lives in psychiatric institutions in
the ordinary world.
Only the children
returned to World's End, seeking refuge from the coarseness and violence
of the ordinary world. They, like their mothers before them, fell prey to
the unearthly beauty and deceptive peacefulness of World's End, and the
cycle began anew.
All of the original Coven
were female. Their children were not fathered by men of the ordinary
world. Elizabeth Mannhardt, an independent investigative agent of what is
now called the Council of World's End, has always been haunted by memories
of a platinum-haired man with blue-gray eyes she met as a girl in the
strange oak and poplar forests surrounding World's End. Her platinum-haired, blue-eyed
daughter, Sarah, has recently turned sixteen, and in all the time that has
passed since her birth, Beth has never found the gateway into that other
world where Sarah was conceived. It is Beth's greatest fear that the same
fate will befall Sarah in the magic-laden forests of World's End, that she
will meet a man, and be left to raise a child alone. It is the primary
reason she has sent Sarah to school in Oak Grove, in hopes that she will
take root in the more familiar environment of the ordinary world.
But it is already too
late to take refuge from the unknown. World's End stands guard between
the ordinary world and the infinite worlds of the gateways for good
reason. It has had every reason to believe World's End and its mysteries
to be the manifestations of a higher intelligence, and themselves the
unwitting tools of that greater power.
Sarah Mannhardt recruits
a boy at school to help her with her deceased grandmother's rite of passage, a
family tradition described to her by her mother. Leo Danson is confused
by Sarah's unexpected interest in him. Besieged by family and personal
problems, Leo finds the white-haired girl a breath of fresh air in his
life. He picks her up after school on his motorbike and takes her down a
familiar country road.
But he emerges from a
wooded ravine in a place has never seen before, one he is certain could
not possibly exist. It is a world with a golden sun and squat, massive
black oaks and more distant forests of giant poplars. In a clearing
surrounded by the exotic oaks, they kneel face to face, and Leo is
introduced to a form of mind-to-mind sharing that is as extraordinary as
his surroundings.
The first hint of trouble
arrives in the form of fireflies from the depths of the forest gathering
in strange fashion in the clearing. These fireflies, like everything else
in World's End, cannot be taken at face value. Leo grows agitated and
self-defensively angry and is mischievously attacked for his bad manners.
He is driven in a blind panic from the forest, and then from World's End
itself. Sarah is left behind, exasperated by both Leo's belligerence and
the fairies' curt treatment of the only friend she has ever brought into
World's End, but hardly traumatized by the experience.
Once back on familiar
highways outside Oak Grove, Leo's memory of his visit rapidly fades to
obscurity. He returns home to his ongoing crisis with his abusive parents
and later visits his pathologically needy fourteen-year-old girlfriend who
is threatening to tell her parents of their illicit affair should he try
to leave her. It is a turn of events that could send him to prison.
During a conversation
with her mother at breakfast the next morning, Sarah Mannhardt expresses
her concern for the strange behavior of her fairies. Beth, too, has
sensed something amiss in the psychic void. When Sarah leaves for school,
she pays a visit to her next door neighbor. Rebecca is an autistic woman
without a sense of identity, or perhaps one that resides most often in her
cat, Pywacket. She also possesses psychic abilities and a raw
intelligence unmatched in World's End. Employed as a medical
transcriptionist, she conducts her business over a modem, translating
scanned, handwritten notes into flawless text at an astounding rate of
speed. And as she types at over two hundred words a minute, she engages
Beth in casual conversation.
She confirms Beth's
detection of an unease in the psychic void. She suspects it is
precognitive in nature, a portent of events about to intrude into their
personal realities. Rebecca suggests that Beth speak with the eccentric
Montegarde sisters in search of intrusive psychic disturbances.
The sisters are psychic
explorers, having dedicated their lives to contact with distant
intelligences in the void. The two are also aging twins, the sole
survivors of the destruction of the original Coven, although neither have
they any clear memory of what happened.
More than any other
inhabitant of World's End, the Montegarde sisters would fulfill the
ordinary world's stereotype of conventional witches. Even the old
Victorian mansion they had moved piecemeal into World's End during the
thirties sustains the atmosphere. Agnes and Delores even abide by the old
trappings of the occult, using a Ouija Board as a psychological talisman
to detect conscious intelligence in the surrounding universe and query
into the nature of reality beyond the illusions and distortions of the
physical human senses.
Agnes is the more
aggressive and talented of the two. Delores is the stable, passive
safeguard with the greater power of discrimination. Predatory forces
capable of ensnaring the unwary lurk in the psychic wilderness. The
sisters assure Beth that they have sensed nothing of Rebecca's unease and
agree that it is probably precognitive in nature, which is not their
specialty. In payment for their cooperation, Beth gives the two blue
crystals from a nearby river, stones which the sisters believe heighten
their abilities.
Immediately after Beth
leaves, Agnes tries out the Ouija board in conjunction with a crystal and
finds herself in immediate contact with an entity that calls itself
Malthog. Operating alone in her frenzied zeal at discovering an
intelligence of such power, Malthog identifies itself to Agnes as an
explorer seeking rapport with humankind. As a demonstration of its power,
it provides her with an illusion of her long lost youth, but insists it
cannot maintain its rapport because of nearby interference.
Delores is that
interference. Delores is beside herself with anger that Agnes would
operate the board without the safeguard she has always provided. Agnes,
though, believes that her sister has become a liability. They have been
together for seventy long years and death is all that is left for them to
share. Malthog's gift of her former beauty and the long-lost strength of
youth is a temptation she cannot resist.
Delores tries to destroy
the Ouija board in a frenzied attempt to break Agnes' rapport with the
entity. A fight ensues between the two sisters. Delores is killed.
Agnes' victory, however,
is short-lived. Her rapport with Malthog becomes a channel through which
alien parasites invade her mind and begin to infiltrate World's End.
Without Delores' discrimination and caution to temper her judgment, she
has become nothing more than a channel for destruction.
Delores Montegarde spend
two years in a psychiatric hospital following the destruction of the
Coven. During that time, she was raped by a caretaker and gave birth to a
daughter, Jessica. From the moment of her birth, Jessica revealed herself
to be crippled by psychic powers she could not control. All the inner
rage and emotional turmoil of humanity poured into a mind that lacked the
most basic ability to block it all out. Overpowered from birth by the
chatter of innumerable minds, Jessica has been unable to develop a mature
mind of her own. Nor has she acquired more than an elementary level of
education. Her sanity would not have survived her disability had not her
mother intervened to shield her from the static during the long hours of
the night.
Unwilling to live in
World's End where she would be thought of as a cripple and an unwelcomed
guest, Jessica has been raised in Oak Grove. The protective bond between
mother and child that Delores kept secret from Agnes became largely
unconscious. Only at the moment of Delores' death is Jessica aware of how
critical her mother's protection has been to her sanity. With her mother
gone, she can expect no support from the untalented, ordinary world and
those who have branded her mentally handicapped.
Jessica vicariously
senses the horrible death of her mother at the hands of her hostile and
hateful aunt. Hysterically, she manages to find her way back to World's
End, a feat she could not have normally achieved on her own. Agnes
attacks her in the basement of the mansion and dies in the frenzied
attempt. There, Jessica confirms her horrific vision. Her mother lies
broken and bleeding at her feet.
But as she turns away to
flee the house and leave World's End forever, she is infected with the
parasites Agnes has let into the world. She sees them as black,
shadow-like insects that penetrate her flesh and bury themselves deep
within her mind. There, they radiate an energy that rises to the surface
of consciousness as a dull, chronic feeling of fear, anger, and dread.
Driving through the
unseen gateway in the gloomy ravine outside World's End, Jessica's car
collides with an approaching motorcycle. After a fight with his parents
and a confrontation with his girlfriend, Leo Danson has returned to the
area in search of Sarah Mannhardt. A frantic effort to help the boy
accomplishes nothing but to infect him with the parasite Jessica is
carrying inside her.
Leo is left bleeding on
the roadside as Jessica rushes back to Gordy, the man she has lived with
in recent years, an eccentric recluse who has supported her and helped her
avoid the mind-destroying crowds of the towns and cities. Gordy, too, is
infected and becomes alarmed by Jessica's behavior. He has heard her wild
stories of a world inhabited by witches and the trials of her own
half-breed status too many times before. She's at it again, this time
trying to use it to cover her involvement in a traffic accident.
Gordy has spend many
years in prison for a crime that he has buried so far in his mind that
even Jessica has not been able to access the details of it. His phobia of
the police, though, is a blatant one. Fearing the police will blame him
for Jessica's accident, for allowing her to drive his uninsured car
without a valid license, Gordy is panic-stricken. Jessica must be
destroyed if he is to avoid a fate of his own worse than death.
Jessica senses that his
dark thoughts and growing bloodlust are being fueled by the parasite she
has passed to him. She cannot hope to convince him of the true depth of
the insanity engulfing the world as she is dragged to the woodshed out
back to be murdered.
World's End is
immediately aware of the infestation of psychic parasites. They are
little more than an irritant to the inhabitants of World's End, but Beth
calls a meeting of the Council to warn that one has escaped into the
ordinary world with Jessica Montegarde and will multiple into a horde.
While World's End bickers over its responsibilities to the outside world
and denies the evidence that is tying together unfolding events with the
terrible destruction of the Coven in the first half of the century, Beth
sends Sarah to monitor events in the ordinary world. Sarah is more than a
match for even the most violent of ordinary men, but the fairies have set
the forest aflame with a haze of mysterious light, and Beth wants her
daughter away from the terrifying phenomena.
Sarah arrives in Oak
Grove in time to rescue Jessica Montegarde from Gordy's murderous rage.
She learns of Jessica's handicap and the nature of her personal crisis now
that her mother is dead. Jessica, however, refuses Sarah's urging that
she take refuge in World's End. Despite the sleep deprivation and the
terrible consequences she will suffer, Jessica decides to try to warn the
authorities of the cause of the rash of violence breaking out in Oak
Grove. The task is futile. She cannot think clearly, and she knows
nobody will believe her. Suicide seems her only escape from the world
thundering inside her head.
Local authorities in Oak
Grove have requested emergency help from the state. Lieutenant Farrell
Gannon Katz, Gant to his friends, has arrived in Oak Grove from Boston
along with his partner and superior, Captain Sherrod. They will turn the
reigns of command over to more professional investigative teams by
daylight. For the night to come, it's their job to contain the
inexplicable violence in the small town and to come up with something in
the way of an explanation for it. On both counts, they seem bound to
fail.
Captain Sherrod brought
Gant along because of his talent for talking desperate individuals from
acts of violence. On his first call, he takes a twelve-year-old girl from
the roof of an elementary school building. During the night that follows,
Jessica Montegarde and Gant meet, and Jessica discovers an ordinary man
with an extraordinary power to block the roaring psychic static that has
been drowning out her own identity for thirty long years. He is like an
umbrella capable of smothering negative stimuli from the surrounding
environment. For Jessica, the analogy is more than just an explanation.
Gant is her only hope for survival.
She tells any story and
says anything that has to be said to keep Gant at her side. Before he
becomes aware of what she's trying to do, Jessica uses her own telepathic
abilities to shield Gant from harm, first from a sniper, and then from the
chaos in general. The infestation has swept through Oak Grove and is
threatening to spread.
When Jessica offers an
explanation for her behavior and the nature of the nightmare going on
around them, Gant has no choice but to believe her. She has proven
herself beyond question. The two become an inseparable team as events
unfold.
Meanwhile, Sarah is
driven back into World's End by Leo Danson. Leo has become a murderer.
Behind him in Oak Grove, his parents and his girlfriend lie dead by his
hand.
Leo has been possessed by
Malthog, the entity organizing the assault unleashed into the human world
by Agnes Montegarde's blunder. Malthog and his minions are psychic
predators who feed on souls as a carnivore in the physical world would
feed on flesh. Recognizing Sarah as the most powerful of the witches of
World's End, and the most potentially dangerous to him, Malthog drives
Sarah through a series of gateways into worlds in which her chances for
survival dwindle. Accompanied by her fairies as her only allies against
the unknown, Sarah is forced to find ways to defend herself against the
inhuman forces Malthog is pitting against her.
Sarah proves to be a
tougher victim than Malthog anticipated. He has never encountered a mind
so expansive and so well organized. Rather than simple destroy this
fabulous being, he begins to yearn to possess its attributes for himself.
He will draw her into his realm and consume her both body and soul for the
trouble she has caused him.
Malthog does not realize
that Sarah is accompanied by the fairies. When that becomes apparent,
Sarah learns that the fairies are Malthog's nemesis. The two life-forms
are the veritable antithesis of one another, the deadliest of enemies.
Malthog redoubles his efforts to destroy her. However, having acquired
the knowledge of where to find Malthog and how to destroy him, Sarah
fights her way back to her own world. Coached and trained by allies she
has met along the way, she escapes Malthog's most desperate ploys.
The fairies, though, do
not take Sarah home. She finds herself instead in the one world most
vital to the survival of World's End. She meets a boy with platinum hair
and blue-gray eyes like her own and discovers the second half of her
genetic heritage. Their world is similar to World's End, a refuge near a
gateway protecting some other part of the ordinary world. It is a realm
inhabited by warlocks, counterparts to the witches of World's End.
Back in World's End,
Elizabeth Mannhardt believes she has forever lost her daughter. She and
Rebecca stand bravely alone against the terrorized community as the crisis
deepens. This was how the attack on the original Coven began, with a
surge of violent deaths in the ordinary world. But from what source will
the madness that destroyed the Coven itself arrive?
It arrives in the guise
of gentle giants from the forest, man-creatures with golden skin and
sexual appetites exacerbated by the psychic parasites. It is an appetite
a few lonely souls of World's End fall prey to far too easily. The
Goliath's handsome appearance is almost a comic relief to the tension that
has accumulated in the wait for catastrophe. They are clearly harmless
even as they are goaded on by the parasites they harbor.
The Council warns the
women of World's End keep their distance from the visitors. In some
fashion, they must be the vanguard of the attack upon World's End. But
those few who have become agoraphobic in their fear of the ordinary world
are desperately lonely and cannot resist the temptation of the Goliath's
gentle expressions of affection.
A feverish dementia soon
falls upon those who do fall prey. Virulent sperm from the Goliaths is
discovered in their bloodstream, penetrating the tissue of the body,
including the brain, and causing extensive, eventually terminal damage.
The Goliaths were clearly never engineered to mate with human females.
Only a small portion of
World's End has fallen prey to the unfortunate incompatibility with this
quasi-human species native to World's End. The town would like to believe
that it has largely escaped the fate of the original Coven, but Beth warns
that they, too, may be subjected to a terrible violence from its own side
of the gateway.
It comes from the female
counterparts of the Goliaths, shrieking, feral vampire-like females of the
species that come to be known as Banshees. Physical defenses alone prove
futile. Their psychic defenses are marginally adequate at holding the
horror at bay, although World's End cannot hope to hold out indefinitely.
Members of the Council
living outside World's End are called in to help with the battle. Armed
men are invited to help with the defense, but are too easily overpowered
by the Banshees. And the Banshees, females of the dominant species of
World's End, are without number.
The only defense adequate
to the task would require the erection of a psychic barrier to hold the
alien life form at bay. And the only mind with power of that magnitude is
a rogue psychokinetic named Julianne who could prove as dangerous to
World's End as the Banshees themselves.
Two people are at
Elizabeth Mannhardt's disposal who can safely fetch Julianne and escort
her to Oak Grove. They are, in fact, uniquely qualified to do so, the
new team of Jessica Montegarde and Farrell Gannon Katz.
Rebecca, the autistic
telepath, finds a way to disable the virus-like psychic parasites
infesting both World's End and Oak Grove. The violence in the ordinary
world and in World's End is stopped, and the Banshees and the Goliaths are
driven back to the forest by Julianne's self-sustaining barrier.
Beth is reluctant to
consider the battle a permanent victory. Julianne is crucial to the
maintenance of the barrier and becomes rapidly unmanageable among her own
kind. Her uncontrollable anger and her undisciplined talent are as great
a hazard in the long run as the Banshees themselves.
But then Julianne is
mysteriously spirited off by the fairies. She returns rendered alarmingly
docile, disarmed of her deadly talent and convinced that her unbearable
life will end as a sacrifice to the survival of World's End. At the same
time, Sarah Mannhardt returns home with her newfound friends who have
unsettling information to provide the Council of the nature and reason for
Malthog's attack upon them.
It's not going to be
enough to defeat Malthog in World's End. The battle must be taken to
Malthog's world and the entity physically destroyed. Otherwise, he will
regroup his forces and strike again and again. Even if he is defeated,
there are others like him in the universe, predators in search of easy
prey among the infinite worlds.
A war party is gathered
from among the survivors at World's End to begin the journey through the
gateways to Malthog's world. Malthog is engaged in battle when they
arrive, but it soon becomes apparent that the being is invincible.
Julianne's attack upon him is equally futile, but she captivates his
attention. Sarah is inaccessible, but Julianne is as great a prize. She
is taken. Malthog makes a public display of her terrible destruction.
But like a calm before a
storm, Sarah and the others pause before conceding defeat. The fairies
are deadly enemies of Malthog and his kind, and Malthog's defenses against
them been impenetrable until now. But what about Julianne's alliance with
the fairies?
Julianne has enabled the
fairies to penetrated Malthog's defenses by incorporating them into her
psychic being. They launch their counteroffensive within, and Malthog is
destroyed.
The battle is won. The
warriors are now free to return home. Life can return to normal, whatever
the gauge of normalcy may be for the weary group. They know now that the
Coven at World's End are guardians of the gateways, at best low-echelon
soldiers of the fairies who protect the evolving souls of humanity against
the predators of the psychic wilderness. So it has always been. So it
will always be, whether the Coven at World's End are consciously aware of
their place in the universe or not.
Jessica and Gant return
to the ordinary world to live out their lives together. Elizabeth
Mannhardt has sacrificed enough of her life for the benefit of the
community and leaves through a gateway in the company of the father of her
daughter. Sarah, though, decides against leaving World's End. Rebecca
needs a friend and a helping hand to cope with the world. World's End
needs a leader to keep it strong and prepared for the next assault from
the psychic wilderness.
Only after Sarah leaves
her young male lover irretrievably behind does she discover that she is
pregnant. As Beth feared would happen, she will follow in her mother’s
footsteps until the distant day the fairies release her from her duties
and she, too, can find refuge in a more peaceful world.
The fairies have a hand
in everything. If the Coven at World's End is the guardian of one
gateway, the fairies are the rulers and perhaps even the engineers of the
infinite worlds that lie beyond. Sarah is certain they are the
controlling force in human evolution and have always been so.
Story Rationale
The world of evolving
human souls is protected against psychic predators who would invade the
human psyche and "consume" bits and pieces of the mind like physical
predators tearing apart the flesh of flesh and blood prey. These
predators, if they manage to penetrate the outer defenses of human
existence, seduce their victims into lowering their inner defenses by
coaxing them to believe that their lives are without hope and that the
future holds nothing of any value for them. Some "evil" humans are
nurtured and encouraged by these "demons" so that they can spread despair
and despondency like seeds that take root and grow into crops to be all
too easily harvested.
The Coven at World's End
is one such outer defense outpost, although it has no knowledge of its
higher purpose until danger looms. It is challenged to engage and defeat
just one of these evil and primitive, god-like psychic entities they will
come to call Malthog. In the process of defending the human world against
forces that would see it devoured, the Coven discovers that it is like a
cell of the body that has no knowledge of its higher purpose, but responds
to it when needed. Members of the Coven are like T-cells, or antibodies
in the human bloodstream, unconsciously on alert for invaders and
intruders. The most powerful of the "evil" psychic gods in the universe
are like the AIDS virus, smart enough to attack the body's defenses before
tackling the body itself.
The Coven discovers as
well that it could not function without the intervention of Sarah's
"fairies" who may be the engineers of the gateways and managers of the
human worlds. Humans and fairies are strange bedfellows, but fairies are
antipathetic toward "demons" and summarily destroy them. If one of the
witches, Juliana, who goes berserk at the end with her telekinetic powers,
is devoured by Malthog, she can also have been "infected" early on with
Sarah's fairies, and recently have discovered the secret that the demons
have been trying to keep, that the fairies are deadly to them. Just when
it appears that evil has triumphed, Juliana pretends to have exhausted her
ability to defend herself and sacrifices herself knowing she contains the
seeds of the demon's destruction.
END
