by N. P. Martin
On that alternate field of vision, I saw a small orb of fiercely hot green energy. It resisted my magic every step of the way, and for a moment, I didn't think I would be able to fully extinguish it. But finally, the green flames died out for good, leaving nothing but smokey devastation behind.
Completely drained, I fell to my knees, glad the magic had done its job, but gladder still that the whole ordeal was finally over.
Or so I thought, for only a few seconds later the world around me was pitched into complete darkness.
41
Revelations
THE DARKNESS DIDN'T last long before it gave way to a sickly yellowish-green light that seemed to seep in around me like a creeping fungus. My previous surroundings had all but faded to a ghostly outline in the background. As I looked around me, I could make out nothing but endless space. I didn't even appear to be standing on solid ground. It was like I was suspended in the weird greenish light, like a specimen in a jar.
Mr. Black. It has to be.
"How right you are," a voice said, a deep, almost silky voice that seemed to come from all directions as it echoed around me. Although sounding less distorted this time, I still recognized the voice as being the same as the apparition's.
"You again," I said, my own voice echoing weirdly around me within whatever dimension I was suspended in. "What do you want?"
Mr. Black laughed. “That’s the burning question, isn’t it, August? Excuse the pun.”
No one had called me August in a long, long time. Almost everyone knew me as Creed. A few called me Gus. No one used my first name of August. Only my family ever used my first name. At that moment, a chill ran down my spine as it felt like someone had walked on my grave. “Why do you use that name?”
“Is August not your name?”
“I prefer Creed.”
“Yes, but that isn’t your proper name either, is it?”
Again, only a few people knew that I had changed my name long ago. Leona was one. Sanaka and my uncle were the others. “How would you know?”
“I know everything about you, August McCreedy.”
It was jarring to hear him say my first name, and once again a horrible chill went through me, but I didn’t let it show. “Is that supposed to impress me? That you used your formidable dark power to do a background check? Well done.”
A lightening bolt of pain stabbed through my chest. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like a dragon's claw had punctured my sternum and was rooting around inside me. Needless to say, I screamed like a bitch. "Mind your manners, boy," Mr. Black said, his voice now reminding me of someone, but I was in too much pain to figure out who exactly.
Only when the pain had subsided did I manage to speak again. "What is it you want with me?"
“With you? At first, nothing. Then you started chasing me, interrupting my work.”
“Your work?” A bitter laugh escaped me. “You kill people.”
“Mere sacrifices. Pawns in a much bigger game. You had it all figured out once, Creed. You knew everything.”
"Which is why you erased my memories of you."
“Yes. I didn’t need you breathing down my neck in these crucial final stages.”
“Final stages? You mean allowing a Dimension Lord to come to this world and destroy it?”
“You always did have trouble seeing the bigger picture, August.”
“What?” What did he mean by that? There was something in his voice, something familiar, a note of authority that I knew I recognized but couldn’t quite place. “Who are you? Tell me.”
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained," Mr. Black said, his words heavy in the thick air around me, bringing with them a memory of someone who used to say those exact words to me whenever I dared to question his motives.
“William Blake,” I said in a low voice. “From The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell. My…father used to say…” I shook my head, not liking where things were going, but also desperately wanting to know who I was dealing with, even though, deep down, I already knew. I just didn’t want to believe it. “Who are you? Tell me now!”
"Wake up, August!" Mr. Black shouted. "You know full well who I am.”
“But it can’t be…”
"Did you think I was gone forever, August? That my soul could be kept down? A man of my power?"
“No…no…you’re…you’re dead…”
A wind blew around my head as if a spirit form was on the move. "You know better than that, boy. Death is for Sleepwalkers, not the Enlightened. There is no death for people like us, only change. Didn't I teach you that?"
I grabbed my head with both hands like I was trying to stop it from exploding. “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it. You’re lying, you’re not him. You can’t be.”
“Why not, August? You know in your bones it’s me. You’ve always known. You just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Know what? What are you talking about?”
“That it was me, August. That I killed them, your mother and brother and sister. That I sacrificed them all to the demon!”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
“It’s time to face the truth of your past, August—”
"No--"
“I let you live, August. You were supposed to join me, be by my side—”
“NO!”
"LOOK AT ME!" The voice boomed inside my head, rattling me to the core. I froze in fear just as a figure materialized in front of me. A tall figure of a man in a dark suit, with broad shoulders and thick, graying hair. I didn't have to look into those intense and frightening gray eyes to know it was him.
My father.
Christopher McCreedy.
His ephemeral form floated right up to me and placed both hands on my shoulders. Then suddenly I was a kid again, staring up at my impossibly tall father, scared to even look into his stern face. “Leave me alone,” I said, my voice now sounding childish and afraid. “Please…”
"Look at me, son," my father commanded, leaving me with no choice but to obey his command like I did when I was a kid. "I am your father, and you will obey me. Is that clear?"
I found myself nodding, unable to resist him. “Yes.”
"You have hidden from the truth for too long, August. It's time you remembered."
He placed one of his large hands on my head then, and that's when the memories were unleashed in me, like a pack of wild dogs who had been locked away in my mind before now, snarling and slavering as they ripped my mind to pieces.
And I had no choice but to let them.
42
Growing Up
I PROBABLY GAVE you the impression before that I had an idyllic, privileged upbringing in Ireland, what with the big house by the lake and all my father's wealth to keep us pampered; and that because there was all that cool magic around, the family home was like Hogwarts, with spells and fun times had by all. Well, there was spells and magic, and occasionally my siblings and I managed to have some fun, but mainly my memories of that house and my upbringing were not what I would call happy ones, and this was mostly due to my father's constant overbearing authority and strict discipline. He made our home into a bootcamp where the priority was always exercising discipline and studiously learning how to channel and wield magic without causing a disaster.
Most of my memories start around age four or five. I don't remember much before that. I had the sense that I was a loved child, and this was only down to my mother and older brother and sister, who always had a smile and a hug for me (or a punch to the shoulder in my brother's case).
My father remained aloof for the most part. When I did spend time with him as a child, it was never to play, but to be exposed to the concept of magic.
The first time I saw any kind of magic was when my father conjured a small sphere of dark blue energy in one of his large, long-fingered hands. The swirling blue energy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen at the time. When I went to touch it with a curious but te
ntative finger, my father slapped my hand away, the sting of the slap bringing tears to my eyes (in hindsight I suppose this could've been the first sign of what was to come). "Not yet," I remember him admonishing me. "Only when you’re ready."
“When father?” I would say back.
He would stand over me, tall and domineering. “When I say you are.”
As things went, he thought I was ready by age five, and I joined the regime my older brother and sister were already on. My brother, Fergal, was eight years old and my sister, Roisin, was seven. They were both experts in magic already, or so it seemed to me at the time. They could do things with magic that I couldn't do yet. I barely knew what magic was at that point. That all changed, however, when I had to start getting up every morning at 5:30 a.m. If my father were around (which he usually was), he would lead us around the grounds of the house and through the neighboring forest on a long run, believing as he did that a good wizard needed to look after their physical body because it was the conduit through which their magic flowed. The morning runs were hateful and grueling for the first couple of months. Though because I was so young, my father allowed me to walk whenever I got tired, while he and my brother and sister carried on running. This usually meant that it took me a long time to make it home for breakfast. It didn't matter how wet or cold it was outside. We never missed a run. If I was late getting back for breakfast, I had to go without (although Roisin always saved me a piece of bacon or sausage, just one of the many exemplary reasons why I always loved her). Needless to say, I soon learned to keep up.
The rest of the day was structured around various classes and tutorials, as we were home schooled at my father's insistence, because that's always the way it had been in the “McCreedy household”. My mother Brenda, a beautiful woman with long, curly red hair and kind blue eyes, handled the standard education that most kids get, teaching us literacy and numeracy and a whole host of other subjects; including art, which I always loved (and still do to this day). My mother's classes were usually relaxed. She tried to make learning fun for us, and even though we were all at different levels, she did a great job of educating us.
My father's tutelage was a lot less relaxed, and he was always dominant with us, explaining that magic had to be taken seriously, and was not to be messed around with. His teaching sessions were grueling on every level. He usually started with magic theory, forcing us to memorize huge chunks from antiquated books that most of the time, were written in some obscure language that was difficult to get your tongue (or your brain) around. If you messed up your recital, you got a slap on the back of the hand with the thin willow stick my father always carried in the classroom. If you really fucked things up, you got the stick across the back of the legs, and let me tell you, my father didn't hold back. Your tears and pain meant nothing to him. In his eyes, that was how you learned not to fuck things up again. My brother and sister were used to this kind of brutal instruction, but I wasn't. I don't think I ever got used to it. My father's stern and often aggressive behavior had me constantly on edge, which meant I fucked up a lot. The only way I could advance in my studies was to spend what little free time I had trying to learn or master whatever I was supposed to have learned in class. On my own, I picked things up pretty quickly without the overbearing presence of my father there to fluster me.
That was my life for nearly eighteen years. We were allowed weekends off unless my father had arranged for us to study under a different teacher, which he often had, bringing in his wizard friends and acquaintances to teach us specific magic techniques. Some guest speakers had quite a fun approach to teaching, but for the most part they were simply a reflection of his own dark views, and his approach to teaching. I often thought if becoming a wizard made you so damn serious and joyless, what the hell was the point?
Thank God for my mother, who always made a point of taking us places on our weekends off, where we at least got to mingle with other kids our age. My favorite place was always the cinema. Now that was true magic, and over the years, those films were the only real window I had into the rest of the world. Sad, I know, but when you're a kid, you need some sort of escapism. Needless to say, my father knew nothing of these cinema visits. Otherwise he probably would have banned them, like he did most things that involved fun.
That was my life, pretty much, right up until the night my father performed the demon summoning that changed everything.
The day before that happened, my father called me into his study, a memory that I had forgotten for a long time. My father sat behind his imposing oak desk and had me stand (as always) opposite him, hands clasped behind my back, head up, staring straight ahead like a soldier standing in front of their superior officer. "What I'm about to tell you, August, must go no further than this room. Are we clear?"
Of course we were clear. I wouldn’t have dared to disobey him. “Yes, sir.”
My father interlocked his fingers atop his desk, a gesture that always preceded him saying something important. “Things will change around here soon. I need you to be ready for those changes.”
“Changes, sir?” I asked, confused. Nothing ever changed in the McCreedy house. Everything was always depressingly the same, so what was going on?”
“What is the only thing that matters?”
It was a question we had been asked a thousand times over the years. “The pursuit of greatness, Father.”
“And at what cost?”
“At all cost, sir.”
My father nodded. "That is correct. At all cost. Do you believe in that doctrine, August?"
Of course I didn’t. Neither did Fergal or Roisin. But what was I going to say, no? “I do, sir.”
His intense gray eyes stared into me, and as always, it felt like he was reading my soul for the truth. “Good, because you know, out of the three of you, you have the most potential, August.”
It was the first kind of praise I had ever heard come out of his mouth. My eyes met his for a brief moment before looking away again. “Thank you, Father.”
"Don't thank me, boy. It is a matter of not wasting that potential. I intend to see to it that you don't."
“What do you mean?”
“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. I taught you that, didn’t I?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
"My own desire has been shamefully weak of late," he said, adjusting the cuffs on his dark suit. "Progression is called for."
"Progression?"
“Yes. Advancing to the next level of power. You understand?”
"Yes." I didn't though. The desire he saw in me was merely the desire for greater learning, as, by that point, I had developed a deep and genuine appreciation of the arcane arts. Granted, I never had a choice in the matter, but like it or not, magic was in my blood. It was a part of me. Sure, I was always striving to increase my skills and the potency of my magic, but that striving was never motivated by some all-consuming lust for power or the desire to rule the damn world. I hardly knew the world at that time anyway, having spent most of my life within the walls of the house. The desire my father was talking about was merely the desire for raw power, or power for power's sake. It was a level of ambition I couldn't relate to, but I wasn't about to tell him that either, which would have been like telling Adolf Hitler he was taking things a bit far.
“Good,” he said, nodding. “Because sacrifice will be required. You understand the need for sacrifice, don’t you, boy?”
I was no stranger to sacrifice, but sacrifice had limits. There were things I would never think of doing in the pursuit of power. That especially included not hurting other people. For my father though, I knew there were no limits as to what he would do for more power. The constant glaring ambition in his eyes said it all, an ambition that was much too strong for me to even think about arguing with, so I simply said, “I understand.”
My father looked at me for a long time, as he liked to do from time to time. Under his glare, I felt nak
ed and vulnerable, sometimes shameful. “We shall see,” he said, finally taking his eyes off me.
The next night, the summoning took place, and I saw firsthand just how much my father was willing to sacrifice in pursuit of his goals.
43
Fatherly Love
“YOU KILLED THEM!”
The memories of that night came rushing back into my head like an out of control freight train. All too vivid images flashed painfully in my mind: the violence inflicted by the demon on my poor mother, and on my brother and sister; all the blood and screaming.
And my father’s face. His face as he watched his family get torn apart by a monster he had summoned. He knew what was going to happen, had planned it all, in fact. He had watched his own family get killed with hardly a look of remorse on his face. And when I screamed his name, begging him to help, he merely looked at me as if to say that it had to be done.
My father's look from that night was now seared into my brain, and I screamed and attacked him, swinging my fists at his face, wanting only to pummel him to death, to rip him apart the way the demon had ripped my family apart. But my fists went straight through him like I was punching only air.
“You have no physical body here,” he said like he was talking to a child having a temper tantrum. “You might as well stop.”
Fuck him. I wasn't going to stop swinging just because he said so, though eventually, I did give up on trying to hurt him when I lost the energy to do so. I backed my spirit form away and glared at him. "I'm going to kill you."
