Friday morning, Roberto wasn’t feeling well so he skipped class and drove to town on the opposite side of the lake. In the pharmacy, the clerk showed him diet pills with caffeine, and imported slimming pills but Roberto didn’t want to lose weight. He was in great shape from daily runs through the wooded cemetery near campus. Even doubling up on food since September, he had gained only ten pounds. No big deal. What bothered him was the constant hunger.

This persistent desire had started a couple of weeks ago but lately it was getting so bad, it distracted him when he wanted to study, and he was losing sleep to a new compulsion for midnight snacks. Last night, rather than going out and buying himself a bag of chips or a sandwich and returning to bed, he had gorged himself on ice cream. He didn’t even like sweets, but he had driven to the convenience store, grabbed a bag of corn chips on the way in, and finished them while foraging in the freezer.

The next thing he knew, he was back in his car hunting for a spoon. He had a big tub of Kawartha Dairy maple walnut. He’d never seen such a flavor before, and didn’t expect to enjoy anything so sweet, yet he couldn’t wait to eat. There were no utensils in the glove box, so he spooned huge globs of ice cream into his mouth with his fingers. Once he got to the bottom, the last bits melted, and he tipped up the container to drink syrupy dregs.

Roberto stood staring at a shelf of useless medications in the diet aisle of the biggest drugstore in Loon Lake, but nothing there could help. He didn’t need his poncho-wrapped abuela to tell him this eating compulsion wasn’t natural. He came from a family that recognized magic.

He had caught the right kind of vibe from Helen’s Herbal Healing Shop when he passed it on his training runs through the cemetery, in what locals called the Village. He decided to get back in the car and go for a drive.

After the high-rise lifestyle of Lima, buildings here seemed ridiculously small. As he drove south out of downtown, the roads were lined with single family houses with backyards. He passed parks without fences, then turned west along Lakeshore, marveling how much public greenspace encircled the water.

At Kenny Road, he turned south and crossed the bridge, passing close to the cemetery on his left. The open fields to his right soon revealed a two-story log cabin. He had reached the Herbal Healing Shop, according to the sign painted across the front but he wasn’t quite ready to go in.

On a whim, he parked on the shoulder and crossed Kenny Road to have a look at the tree-filled cemetery. September’s changing colors intrigued him after the sparse vegetation on Peru’s coast, but by October the leaves were gone, leaving bare branches to scratch the sky. Shivering, he braced his foot on the fence’s lowest crossbar and leaned his forehead between the posts.

The people beneath these old stones would never move again, and the land looked like it was dying too. Roberto had seen too many withered faces in town, old people like leaves, waiting for their turn to fall to earth. Only Lynette made him feel alive. Without her he’d have flown back to Peru, even against his parents’ wishes. Let them disinherit him. He wasn’t helpless, at least, if you didn’t count this helpless craving for food.

Used to Lima’s ten million people and diverse districts, Loon Lake was simple and boring. When his parents had first tried to convince him, they claimed a town with 135,000 people would be comfortable and safe. He didn’t want comfortable and safe. He wanted thrills, and neighborhoods where life was passion. Campus was tame and generic, so he went hunting for real life, night life, the dangerous and exotic. In Loon Lake, sadly, the enticing English idiom “wrong side of the tracks,” meant nothing more exciting than a cheap subdivision north of town. Loon Lake’s main products seemed to be diplomas, cemetery plots, and trees. Why was magic attracted to such an ordinary place?

A few steps inside the fence, his eye was drawn up the side of an enormous tree, the tallest he had seen outside the rainforest. The earth around it was mounded and uneven and, when he strained to look, Roberto noticed ancient gravestones flush with the ground. The lettering was so weathered it was difficult to read. He would have liked to check them out, but not until he got treatment for this hunger.

The shop stood opposite the cemetery, banished from sanctified ground. He took a package of biscuits from his pocket and munched on them as he walked to the building.

Two stories tall and constructed of weathered logs, with modern windows, and a painted sign over the door; the shop stood behind a gravel parking lot. This wasn’t some multinational drugstore. It was special, but not centuries-old special, like Pucllana Temple in Lima. It was old by Canadian standards and as he approached, he sensed an aura of power.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

With renewed optimism, and cookie crumbs on his hands, he tried the door. Locked. The lights were off. Odd. It was already 10:30, but the posted hours were 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. He knocked hard, and when that didn’t work, he shouted:

“Anybody there?”

There was a crash inside the shop. His first instinct was to back away. The locked door and crash meant a robbery was in progress—except the guys on the cross-country team had told him Loon Lake had no crime. Could somebody be hurt?

He thought he heard a woman’s voice, muffled by the door. He didn’t want to run afoul of police or criminals, but it would be wrong to walk away. Roberto couldn’t force the door, so he pulled his fist into his sleeve and punched through the little window beside it. His heart accelerated, like the final push at the end of a race. He reached in through the broken window and unlocked the door, throwing it open.

“Hello? Everybody okay?” He took a step into the dark foyer and let his eyes adjust. Entering the shop, the wall to his left was dominated by a long glass case. It was the kind used for pastries, but this was no bakery. Exotic objects and herbal ingredients crowded the glass. Mounted on the wall opposite the counter, shelves displayed jars of odd preserves. He stepped closer, still unsure where the crash had come from. There was nobody here. He went around the counter to investigate a doorway which opened into the back room. Inside, there was a work table, floor-to-ceiling canning jars and, at the far end, a window. Curtains waved inwards with a cold draft. Broken glass glittered on the floor. He had interrupted a break-in.

Roberto wondered if he should leave when a feeble moaning came from close by. He stepped around the work table and found a woman, kneeling on the hardwood. The Señora’s thinning white hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her hands trembled.

She was stuffing handfuls of something into her mouth that dribbled down her chin. It was pinkish, pickled. It looked like a jar of fetal pigs! Her face twisted into an expression of disgust, and yet she kept shoveling it in without even pausing to look up. This was worse than his junk food compulsion, but would it be his fate? He looked at her chicken-bone frame. She might be eating uncontrollably now, but she was too thin to have been doing so for long.

Between mouthfuls she spluttered, “Don’t just watch me. Help.”

He reached out to her but although she looked at him with tears in her eyes, her body kept on eating.

Roberto came from behind and slipped his arms through hers. “Vámonos.” He dragged her gently away from the fleshy preserves. She clutched the last bloody morsels to her chest, but when they were almost at the door, he pried them from her fingers and tossed them into the garbage can.

“Don’t worry, Señora. I will take you to the medical center and they can tell us both what is making us sick.”

She nodded her head and let him lead her away. She was still chewing furiously and choking as she tried to swallow everything packed into her mouth.

“Take your time.” He led her toward his car.

“He’s getting away.” She pointed to a stand of trees behind the shop. “Stop him!”

Roberto could see a man in a leather jacket trotting away unevenly, as if one of his legs was longer than the other. His hair was a flash of white against brown as he receded into the trees.

“Run! Len’s had a hip replacement. You can still catch up. Bring him to me and I’ll know what to do with him.” She shot Roberto a lopsided smile.

“Are you sure?”

She wobbled and grabbed the side of the car to steady herself.

Why did she want to confront the intruder? It was dangerous, and he wanted to refuse, until she turned her deep blue eyes on him. He felt himself falling into their liquid depths, until they were linked and helping her felt as natural as breathing.

“Go,” she said. A whispering voice in his mind told him her name was Helen and he knew he couldn’t let her down.

Roberto jogged toward the trees at a rate that would easily catch the limping man. Question was, what would he do when he caught him? The old guy wasn’t feeble, despite his bad leg, but it wasn’t a fair fight. How could a big strong guy like Roberto tackle him? He was an old man, and he wasn’t carrying off any loot. It was confusing, but he felt strangely compelled to bring him back for Helen.

The man stopped running and turned to face Roberto. A smile crossed his face. Deliberately, he lifted his hands above his head.

“It’s okay,” said Roberto. “I don’t want to hurt you . . .”

A fireball came at Roberto. He dove to the ground but knew by the painful heat that his hair, and the clothes on his back were burning. Roberto rolled in the damp October leaves until he felt wet. He remained lying on his back, panting and thanking the Saints he wasn’t dead. What kind of burglar was this?

“You’re next, Helen!” The old guy strutted back toward Helen’s property. Roberto could see him, but no weapon. Had he used magic? No time to wonder. The flames had set several fires in the grass. He had to get back to Helen and protect her.

Flames streaked past Roberto as a bigger fireball struck the back of the shop. The back window was obliterated, replaced by a jagged hole in the charred cabin wall.

Roberto ran but couldn’t reach the Señora in time. Her legs collapsed under her and she fainted onto the parking lot.

Seconds later, he knelt and put a hand to her chest. Her heart was beating fast but feebly. She breathed in ragged little gasps. He dialed for an ambulance, but by the time he described his location to the dispatcher, the mysterious stranger was gone.