Earthly Powers: The Adventure Begins

by DC Alexander

  I raced after him down the stairs, he was sprawled at the bottom but he was getting up. I hit him in the side of the head with the shotgun stock. I made sure I didn’t get in front of the barrel; I didn’t want to get shot if it went off. It knocked him against the wall but he wasn’t out, I gave him another lick. He went down loosely and stayed, sprawled out mostly on his back.

  I kicked him a couple times to make sure he was really out. He stayed limp and unconscious as I slid my two by four under his neck, stretched his arms out as far as they would go and wired his wrists to it with clothesline wire and pliers.

  I put a two by four under his ankles and spread his legs out and wired them to the board. The clothesline wire slid on the board so I put a decking screw through the wire at each ankle to hold them apart, then I did the wrist ties. He moved and made noises, I got the last screw on the wire at his wrist as he opened his eye. I stood and backed away, unsure what to do now.

  A little sick at the stomach from reaction, I stepped away and looked the scene over.

  Lying on his back with his arms and legs spread way out, he should be helpless. He couldn’t turn over. He was a magician. I couldn’t afford to lose sight of that and let him get set.

  He was missing some teeth. He mumbled “damn, what are you doin, let me go, you can’t do this.” He wasn’t talking too well but I could understand him.

  I hadn’t planned anything past this point. What to do with him now was the big question.

  He grunted and moaned, “I been shot, you gotta call the law. They put yo ass away a long time for this kinda shit. You better hope the law gets you, I got people that gone come lookin for me, they fix yo ass up good” he glared at me, he was one tough bastard.

  Sudden alarm struck, if he could talk could he take my mind over again? I grabbed the rags of his shirt and put my knee on his chest to jam the folds in his mouth. I wadded it in fighting to keep his jaws apart till he couldn’t do more than grunt, and that was muffled. I pulled over the roll of clothesline wire and tied some around his head to keep the gag in. That was close; what else had I missed?

  “If people comin to look for you I better finish this so I can deal with ‘em.” I picked up the cordless drill and a couple screws from the box and kneeled down with one knee holding his head steady, mashing his ear on the floor. “You screwed with me, I reckon I’m gonna screw with you.” I watched from somewhere outside myself, this wasn’t the hot raging persona that responded to attack; this was cold and logical and remorseless as death itself. I put the screw on the screwdriver. A little plastic tube held it in straight and in place. I took my time and made sure it was on nice and straight and tight.

  I sat back and considered my next move. So many things were wrong with this situation. Hurting him in a fight was one thing, this was completely different. Or was it? If he somehow got me down I had no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate. I couldn’t talk with him. If I removed the gag he might be able to do something to me. I had him scared but was he scared enough not to try anything? I debated and watched him test the fastenings, he couldn’t move anything except to twist his head.

  I explained what I was thinking about. Belligerence changed to horror as he understood. what I was doing. His eyes got bigger and he struggled to speak.

  I said “I just don’t know where to put this screw. If I put it straight into your head I think it will kill you. I hate to kill you, I’d have to do something with the body and that’s a lot of trouble, plus it’s evil and I already got some problems there. I don’t want to keep you, I know you’ll get loose somehow and that will be the end of me. So what am I gonna do? I don’t see a lot of choices.”

  I kneeled down by his head and pressed, looking for a flat spot, where should I put the screw? I continued discussing it; “ I got to do something with your body. I hate to have a body down here and have to figure out what to do with it. I guess I have to take it to pieces and get rid of the pieces. Hey, I can sink them, I bet nobody find them. ” I brightened up, that was a partial solution if I had to do this.

  He tried to buck his body of the floor, move his head, he struggled with everything he had but he couldn’t get the leverage to do any good. I held his head steady, put the point of the screw on the side of his head above his ear and held the drill up straight and hit the trigger. Faster than I expected the screw bit in and started into his head, it was a lot quicker than I’d expected. It hit bone just that quick and had a couple turns on it before I could stop. He screamed through the gag and blood welled up around the point of the screw. I would have puked but that cold, hard logical part of me was unmoved. I said “I’m going to take that gag out. You need to be quiet. Nobody will hear you down here but I don’t like noise. You don’t want to aggravate me.” I went up to the kitchen and got a box of salt and went back down there. I went around him with the salt and left a little gap I could reach through. I made sure I was ready, then reached over and cut the wire. I got ready, then quickly pulled the shirt out of his mouth and poured the salt to close the circle. I dropped the shirt and salt and snatched the shotgun off the floor, pointing it at his head. “The first thing I hear out of you that sounds like magic, I’m pulling the trigger. We’ll see how you do with a load of silver buckshot in your head.”

  He worked his mouth till he got the gag loose without making any noises, turning his head back and forth and pushing with his tongue.

  He said ‘I got no magic, I can’t do magic, I bought what I used and it’s all gone.” I held the gun steady and tried to sense if he did something to me. He said “Honest to god, I got an amulet around my neck. It had the magic. I bought everything I used and I got nothing else.” His lips were sticking together. He wasn’t speaking plainly and he was carefully quiet.

  A round gold colored disc showed through the rags and blood on his chest. It had a shiny spot on it. I peered close as I could, part of the tine off my silver fork stuck out of it and a crack extended from that point across the medallion.

  He continued, he swore he’d tell me everything he knew. There wasn’t anybody going to look for him. He would do anything I wanted.

  “Can you fix it so I can be safe around you? I aint turnin you loose if there’s a chance you gonna turn on me or go back to using girls.” Squatting so I could look him in the face “I aint playin. If you can’t make me believe I can trust you I got no choice, I gotta kill you. I can’t let you go back to what you was doing, that aint happenin.”

  He thought hard. I knew he thought if he could get some time something would change, a chance would come up.

  “You’re not gettin time, there won’t be a chance to get loose, cast a spell, somebody to come rescue you. We’re goin to settle this now; when I go up the stairs I own your ass or you’re dead. I can’t take a chance with you. I don’t like hurtin you and the wires are cuttin your circulation off, you gonna lose your hands and feet if I don’t get them off you pretty soon, you need to tell me somethin now, ok?” I could cripple him. But then I’d have to tend him.

  He coughed “I aint got no way to guarantee nothin like that but I give you my word. I don’t break my word once I give it.” he squeezed his eye shut and lay his head down on the floor.

  “Earl. You know better than that. I told you what I got to do. When I start I’m not goin to stop. I’m goin to gag you so I aint got to listen to you while I put you down, once I do that, it’s all over. If you ok with that, then we’ll get started. If you want something different you need to tell me right now. This is the final offer.” I steeled myself for what was to come. Damn I didn’t want to do this but I fully expected him to pull some surprise move at any second, the longer I waited the more exposed I felt.

  He said “wait. Wait a second, you aint got to do that. Ok, there’s a way. If I tell you about it, you gone ever let me go?”

  “Earl, I don’t trust you. I think I better make sure you can’t hurt anybody.” I picked up the wad of cloth and sat it close where I could get to it easy, maybe I could grab his ja
w, open his mouth and put the wad in. If I did it fast I wouldn’t have to use tools. Ok, don’t think about it. I felt that cold person taking over. I didn’t even want to see what was going to happen.

  “Earl said “Hey, here, I can make you easy, I can fix this, listen to me, here is what you do.”

  I caught his lower jaw with my left hand and pulled it down hard and thrust the wad of cloth at his mouth.

  He twisted his head away from me and shouted desperately “You aint got to do that! I show you how to be sure. I can give you control of me, you gone own me! Please, just listen a second, you can take a second, you don’t want to kill nobody, listen!”

  He sounded serious. I didn’t want to kill him. I was a sucker. I told him “Go ahead. You wastin my time, but I aint tough enough not to take the chance, this one time. Make it good.”

  “Use a Gris Gris. That do what you want. If you gotta do somethin do that, don’t kill me!” His voice was cracking.

  “What is a Gris Gris? They aint no point draggin this out, we both know this is over.” I was going to have to turn his head and kneel on him to hold him still.

  “The bag of herbs like you had on you. It’ll work on me too.” It was a thought, but he probably had some way to get out of it.

  “Earl, I got away from that, I aint got no doubt you can too. You probably immune to it and you got magic.

  “They aint nobody immune to that shit and I aint got no magic in me at all. If I had magic you would be laid out, I aint got a bit, I wish I did but I don’t” He was babbling, desperate for anything he could get. I shouldn’t argue with him, I knew what he was doing.

  “Earl, I hate this, but you know I seen what happened when I shot you. You got magic and I don’t know what you can do.”

  “That the amulet, it got the magic, I aint got no magic, I bought that thing and you broke it, it don’t work no more, you can have it, it there around my neck.” He gasped, “I telling the truth, just listen to me, take the amulet off, put a Gris Gris on me. You know what that do, all you got to do is give it a little time and I won’t be able to do anything, you leave me tied till you see it workin” gasp, “please don’t put that gag in, just try it, I aint got no magic at all, I just somebody tryin to make a livin, I’m sorry, oh shit I’m sorry, please listen.” He was crying. Damn it.

  He went on “you put some of yo blood in the bag, just a drop or two. Don’t touch the bag till after you put the blood in or it stick you and you get woozy and drunk. Put the bag on me. It take me over, seven days, yo blood in there protect you from it and make you the boss, I got to do what you say. You do that you aint got to kill me, please don’t kill me!”

  Unbelieving, I watched as I reached over left handed and jerked the amulet from around his neck, breaking the heavy gold chain and incidentally the salt circle. My right hand held the shotgun steady pointed under my reaching hand at his ear “If this shocks me or somethin the deal’s off. There aint gonna be no second chances, I aint feelin easy about this anyway.” Maybe I had split personalities; the one of me watching didn’t like this at all. I didn’t have any better ideas but I would have sat there and dithered.

  “It’s broke. You shot the damn thing, it quit workin, it wasn’t for nothin but to stop me getting hurt.”

  A little gold turtle shell the size of a silver dollar was fastened so it wouldn’t slide on the chain. It was cracked. It looked broken, but what did I know, it might be supposed to look like that. I tossed it away in the corner, far as I could get it away from us.

  Earl muttered “That damn thing cost twenty five hundred dollars.” He lay limply. His hands had swollen so I couldn’t see where the wire went around his wrists.

  “I got to go see if I can find one of the bags to use. Your hands aint lookin good, you be still, don’t pull on the wire and make them worse. They gonna be hard enough to get loose already.” I got up and went up and out the back door to try to get one of the bags back.

  I sat down and tried to calm myself, “Hello?

  An immediate answer, great! I sent images and feelings about what I was doing and I needed one of the bags. The ground moved and one of the fetishes pushed out, the way it pushed up looked obscene, like something giving birth. The plastic bag pushed up next to it, I picked it up with the plastic protecting my hand and thought ‘Thanks!’

  I got ‘Gratitude returned’, which contained overtones of ‘get this done and ready for other tasks’, and ‘there was blood in the fetish combined with the herbs, it separated out, do you want it?’ Communicating with this thing is strange. I still didn’t have it down but it was working better. ‘No I don’t want the blood, do I need it?’

  ‘no.’

  “are you ok with me using this, it’s magic, right?”

  “Already stolen.” Which seemed to mean sure, go ahead, the damage was already done.

  I returned to the cellar, stopping on the way to get my knife. I scratched myself with the knife, it hurt a little but I didn’t get enough blood to puddle, it was just a white scratch. I hated to cut myself, it was hard to do. I finally hid the entire blade but the last quarter inch in my hand, and stuck my leg hard. It took a couple of tries till that cold persona took over ,then it hurt like hell but it made a hole that leaked blood. I got some on my knife blade and stuck it in the top of the bag and quickly pulled the drawstring to close it. I wrapped it up in the plastic bag again. That put a little blood in there, maybe a drop or two, I’d wiped inside as good as I could. I rushed back down to check Earl out.

  “How much blood do I need to put in the bag? Is they some way to tell its working?”

  Earl said “Any at all will do it. When you get it set it won’t work on you no more till its reset.”

  “How do you reset it? You aimed it at somebody, won’t it stay that way?”

  Earl said “It works for the last person to set it. The last one that put blood in it owns it unless they already under it.”

  I dragged him to the wall and got him sitting with his back against the wall and his legs splayed in front of him. I squatted down in front of him with the plastic wrapped bag “Earl, if you shootin me a line it’s gonna cost you. You need to be real straight with me. Why don’t the bags make everybody around them drunk?”

  “I tell you what I know about it. You feed it yo blood and it works for you and don’t sting you if you touch it. Whoever it stings, all they gotta do is touch it and it sting them, they go under. It got to stay on that person seven days, while it touching that person it won’t make anybody else high. After that you can take it off them and you own them, they do what you say without the bag from then on, they be trained. You got to give them a taste of the powder ever two or three days, they be addicted and need it, if they go too long without it they get sick and maybe die.”

  I tied the string together to make a loop and reached out and put it over his head, I had to get close and personal to do it. My chest was on his face but he didn’t move. I pulled the plastic bag off the fetish and it fell on his chest.

  I held my breath to avoid the fumes. I stepped back and cautiously took a sniff to see if I could smell it; all I smelled was him and me and blood and the basement, and just a touch of the bitter chemical odor.

  “Earl, is it workin? Do you smell it?” It might have lost whatever made it work while buried, or maybe my mental buddy changed it.

  “It’s… yeah, it’s workin.” He was on the verge of drooling just that quickly, lips slack and eyes unfocused. I crept closer, wary of smelling it and getting trapped again, the pupils of his eyes were huge.

  The wire was out of sight in his flesh, his hands looked like they were about to burst open with the swelling, I couldn’t see the joints in his fingers.

  I untied one of his hands and unwrapped the wire. I checked to make sure he couldn’t get his legs loose. The wire wasn’t cutting into him as badly on his ankles.

  “Move your hand around to get some circulation back in it.”

  He lifted his arm, his hand
flopped. He stopped. “Do that some more.” He complied listlessly. Now what was I going to do with him? I got a wet washcloth from the bathroom and took some water in a bucket and cleaned him up. Trips to the bathroom might be a problem. Was I planning on keeping him? What the hell would I do with him, I was pretty sick at what I’d done but I didn’t see where I had any choice, and now I had to keep him?

  I cleaned him and patched him up with band aids and butterfly stitches. The eye was ok, the eyelid was torn, I put it back as good as I could. There was a shiny glint in the eyelid, I got the tweezers and worried at it and pulled out a piece of silver, part of one of the charms. He gave no indication that he felt any of it. His expression was frozen.

  He pants were still unzipped, it gave me an idea. I laid my knife on his belly and stepped back. “Cut that dick off, you aint gonna need that anymore.” He reached down with his free hand without hesitation, fumbled at the knife and picked it up awkwardly. He had trouble reachin himself and his hands didn’t work well. He concentrated, sawing away, he wasn’t holding back. It convinced me, mostly.

  “Stop.” He was a robot. The switch turned off and he quit moving. The lack of expression gave me goose bumps, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I knew just how he felt in that nightmare. “How do we turn them girls loose you did this shit to?”

  He looked at me and moved his mouth but nothing came out.

  “Can you turn them loose?”

  He looked past me, not quite focused.

  “I want to you to go get them girls you hoodoo’d and bring them back here to me. Don’t bring anybody else with you, don’t tell anybody where you going, lie if you have to.”

  He tried to get up but his feet and one hand were tied. He didn’t try to untie himself. He flopped and wiggled and reached out with his free hand as though he were swimming. He stopped and looked at his feet, then at his hand, and made a move toward the tied hand with the one that was loose, and then he went back to dragging toward the stairs.