I didn’t supply that one. I found it on my porch the day after I moved in. I never found out who dropped it there, but tonight I think I can hazard a guess.
I strip off my shirt and toss it in the garbage. After everything I put it through tonight it isn’t salvageable. The jeans made it through without serious damage. God bless whoever invented denim. I open my belt and set my gun, holster and all, on the table. The slate joins me, thrusting at my face. He hasn’t changed the message, but he’s underlined ‘friend’ twice.
I brush him off, literally, shoving the slate away from me. “Listen, while I was there the delectable Miss Jameson brought him some kind of package. About so big,” I show the space with my hands. “Covered in some kind of leather or vellum.”
Markings?
I take the slate from him and rough out the closest facsimile of the scrawls on the package that I can. It isn’t exact, but fairly close considering the state of my head. The slate is plucked from my hands, rather peevishly, I think.
Assuming you got them right, they’re containment runes.
“I’ll bite. What are they containing?”
The chalk hangs suspended, hesitant. Judging from the script I’d say something demonic. As in from a demon.
“You think Remy’s box held a piece of a demon?”
Those are some serious runes, even accounting for your lousy handwriting. They have hints of angelic script mixed in with overlays in Norse, Greek and even some Celtic words. It’s no garden variety control hex. It’s definitely something from the Deep. I’d say demon.
That’s news I definitely don’t want. Even in my years with the Aegis I only had to deal with infernal involvement once, but that was enough for me to last ten lifetimes. True demons, genuine agents of Hell, are more than are commonly known. They aren’t the Fallen, the angels who picked the wrong side in Lucifer’s rebellion, as many think. Some theologians think they’re birthed in the Pits, born of the energy generated by humanity’s worst emotions, and on those rare occasions that they do the laws of Nature tend to rebel. I don’t know if it’s true, and likely never will, but I can say through personal experience that demonic presence twists and warps this plane, turning Nature itself inside out.
“Demons don’t usually pay attention to our world. What would be able to bring a piece of one here, and how would Remy come to have it?”
I’ve only heard of one way to get a piece of a demon. Make a Deal.
“What kind of a deal?”
The Faustian kind.
I groan. There has always been a fine line between obsession and foolishness, and Remy has danced on it before. “All right. Assuming you’re right, what exactly might we be dealing with? What part might be in the box?”
It’ll be roughly exact. You don’t want a lot of free space for it to breathe. Wrong shape for a head or foot. Too small for a wing. Part of a tail maybe?
“Could be.” I wash my hands thoroughly, then go to the fridge and pull out a bottle of lemon/lime Gatorade and a pot of leftover spaghetti and meatballs. I set it all on the table, get a fork, and dig in heartily, still standing. The Aegis tea was going to be pulling a lot of resources from my body to heal itself, and if I don’t eat and drink enough my body will start drawing on itself. Without nourishment, I’ll wake up so emaciated I’ll barely be able to crawl, let alone work.
“He knows a lot more than he’s admitting, and he’s not even trying to hide it,” I say through a mouthful of pasta. “If I knew for a fact what this damned razor does I might have something to work with, but I don’t even have that. I don’t trust him, Jamie. I don’t know what he wants.”
Yes you do.
My appetite fades. I drop the fork with a clatter, pick up the gun and start for the bathroom, closing the door before the slate can catch up with me. I set the gun on the sink and run a hot shower. I strip, not bothering to toss the jeans in the hamper. Before I get in the shower I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Another time, in another life, I might have turned a woman’s head on the beach. I’m not stiffly muscular like a bodybuilder, but I have a lot of lean muscle and a midsection that isn’t repulsive to look at.
The problem is that once my clothes come off my scars come out.
I turn away from the mirror, get into the shower and just stand there, reveling in the feeling of the days’ worth of sweat, grime and fear washing away. I stay there for ten minutes, letting the relaxing heat sink into my body. The Aegis tea is slow in working (it’s not a miracle drug), but just being home and clean is giving me enough of a boost to get me to bed. I turn off the water, pull back the curtain and see the words Jamie has written in the condensation on the mirror.
You do know what he wants.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Of course I do. Susan.”
Nine
It’s all happening again.
I can see it all. The ruined restaurant. The whiteout, wet snow plastering the windows. The shattered light fixtures throwing irregular shadows. And the invulnerable monster that went through me as if I was a paper doll.
I know what was going to happen and can’t do a thing to change it. Oliver’s grotesque face lashes down, ripping at my arm, those horrid teeth hacking and tearing, jaw chomping. I feel each individual tooth slashing and tearing through the skin and muscle beneath and I scream out a thin, plaintive wail. My arm is on fire, searing agony lashing through me like the wind outside lashing through the trees. Then the monster is gone, bounding over Becky’s lifeless body and vanishing into a wall of falling snow.
Hemorrhaging, barely conscious and as weak as a kitten, I drag my body across the sodden carpet. I can’t bear to see her again, can’t stand to see what it has done to her, but I can’t leave her alone. Not this time. Not again.
Tears streaming, I lean down and lay my palm on her shoulder. Even though it’s only my palm that touches her the feather weight of my touch is enough to roll her body to its back, exposing her face to the light. A narrow thatch of strawberry hair floats into the moonlight and my breath comes to a ragged stop.
It isn’t Becky. It’s Claire.
The jolt of adrenaline spears me out of the dream, shocking me upright. I look around frantically, finding only the shadows and stillness of my bedroom. I sit there, chest heaving from fright, cold sweat thick on my skin. While I try to steady my breathing I realize that it’s still mostly dark out. I must have only dozed off. What woke me up? I glance over at the clock.
8:36.
For a moment I think that I’ve only slept for three hours, then I notice that the light outside is fading, not growing. Jesus Christ. I had slept for somewhere around thirteen hours, and I’d told Claire I’d call her in four. I know that sometimes drinking the Aegis tea induces a long sleep as it forces the wounded body to do its restorative work, but this is the first time it has ever happened to me. Can’t say I like it too much. I swing my feet to the floor with a groan. The room tilts, but only for a second. Once I’m sure I’m not going to tip over I start deliberately fidgeting, taking an inventory of my injuries. I can’t find any serious pain, much to my relief, but there’s a cacophony of minor aches and pains that sounds out from the soles of my feet to the hair on my scalp. Christ, even my hair aches.
There once was a time when a cup of the tea would have healed me down to a hangnail. That’s the one drawback to the drink. The more it’s used the less it works. Tonight it has managed to smooth over the roughest edges of my injuries, but that’s about it. The day would come eventually when it would have no effect on me at all. A sobering thought.
Not as sobering as that dream, though. I can’t shake the lingering image of Claire’s body lying slaughtered on the Coachman’s floor. The dream itself is nothing new. It’s fairly common, waking me up every so often but with no discernable pattern. This is the first time the body on the floor has different, though. The change is not lost on me.
Without moving a muscle more than necessary I clumsily paw my phone and turn it on. I have seven mess
ages, more than I usually get in half a month, all from numbers I recognize. Locals, all of them members of the Grey. I listen to their voice mails, quickly noticing a common theme. A trove of pixies tore up the flower beds at Jack Lee’s hardware store, so I call him back and tell him to throw cracked black peppercorns in amongst the roses. Jimmy Scott, Superstition Bay’s psychic but still somehow inaccurate weatherman, left a message about what sounded like a group of Hollow Men wandering the beach with metal detectors. I call Jimmy and tell him to just go ask them to leave. Hollow Men are very cordial. Lastly Ellen Cambridge, owner and operator of a popular local steak house, apparently is having her establishment troubled by ghosts. There’s no over-the-phone fix for hauntings, so I call and tell her I’ll be by as soon as I can be, which might not be soon. She’s not happy with me but professes understanding.
Apparently, the invasion of Superstition Bay has begun. Madeline’s prediction is fast coming true, which makes me all the more nervous about Mr. Pale and his foretold calamity. I close the phone look up a phone number and dial. A quick conversation with a chirpy little desk clerk later and a completely awake voice comes on the line.
“I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Madeline barks by way of greeting.
“Sorry. There’ve been… complications.”
“I thought you had some kind of influence in this town.”
“Yeah, well, I’m only human. Any news on your end?”
“Nothing good, lots bad. I haven’t heard from Bruce, and your town is becoming a magnet for supernaturals, just like I said it would. Lots of unsavory people and not-people are landing here.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” I think for a moment. “Daylight would have kept most of them inside. The real monsters, at any rate. A lot of them won’t start rampaging under sunlight. They’ll wait for full night, either because they can’t bear the day or just to be stealthy. The human practitioners might be trouble, though.”
“I don’t know if you’ve looked outside yet, Ian, but the sun has already set. Whatever grace period you might have had is gone. Are you sure you don’t want my help?”
Jamie’s chalkboard whisks into the room, dancing in agitation. It thrusts at my face, but I brush it away as if it were a mosquito. “If you could help, you’d be welcome. Have you found a way to beam your powers to you?”
“Afraid not.”
The board flies at my face with renewed urgency. I grab it from his invisible hands and throw it in the corner, careful not to wing it so hard it shatters. “Then you’re still best off where you are. I’ll keep you posted.” I hang up, then mute the ringer. I have a feeling I’ll be getting more calls today, and I can’t afford to be distracted any more.
As I set the phone back down the relentless ghost jams its board practically into my nose. “Jamie, what?” I snap, then the word he’d scrawled come into jarring focus.
Outside!
The corner of the board waves towards the front of the house. I follow its lead, still wearing only the raw silk shorts that comprise my pajamas. Jamie leads me to the front of the house, then shrinks back to the hallway with speed. I don’t really want to think about what can scare a ghost inside a magically fortified house, but since whatever it is appears to be lurking outside I have no real choice in the matter.
I leave the lights in the room off. No point in ruining my night vision while simultaneously alerting whatever it is that I’m awake and alert. I crouch and crab walk over to the front door, slowly extending my body so I can look outside.
The last rays of the dying day gleam off the Jeep’s windows, giving it an insectile look. The trees are a sea of rich shadows, perforated by thin, hazy spears of wan golden light. Everything looks so perfectly normal that it takes a minute for me to realize that something’s wrong. It takes me another minute to figure out what that something is.
Outside my window the whole area has gone utterly silent. Normally the crickets make a blanket of noise but now not one of them is daring to use its voice. It’s more than just that, though. Not a shifting tree creaks, not a bird’s wing rustles, even the wind itself has gone alarmingly still. It’s as if something has put Nature herself in a choke hold.
I remember the last time I felt that alien stillness. I’ll never forget it.
I beeline to the hall closet, fling open the door and reach in. Past my raincoat, past my leather duster, until my hand falls on a cool metal cylinder. I feel the curve of the cylinder and recognize the feel of the twelve gauge shotgun mounted to the closet wall. I linger for a moment, debating. Twelve-gauge? Not enough. I reach deeper, settling on a wider, thicker arc of metal. My fingers close around the pipe and pull it from its mount, the muscles of my left forearm protesting.
The gun is a Barrett Model 95, the most monstrous rifle I’ve ever seen in person. It’s nearly four feet long, weighed nearly 25 pounds, and capable of throwing a .50 caliber round more than fifteen hundred yards. There’s already a five-round magazine in the gun so I brace it against the jamb and, with considerable effort, rack a shell (the words bullet or round just doesn’t seem to fit) into the chamber, then heft the gun and ease back over to the window.
I can’t make out anything dangerous out there in the night, but Jamie is deeply in touch with the bands of protective energy the Aegis have wrapped the property in. If he says there’s something wrong out there, then he’s right. I’m also far past the childhood belief that hiding under the covers will make the monster go away, and I’d rather face an enemy in my time and not theirs. Shading my eyes, I reach up and flick on the porch light.
The small lamps cast a bright circle of light that illuminated the front expanse of porch, the Jeep beyond and a stretch of gravel driveway, but fade just shy of a small copse of cypress trees. At the edge of its range the light dies to a wan glow that melds with the moonlight, reinforcing it and altering the shadows, the trees thin and lean at the edge of the darkness.
One shadow is different. Shorter. Thicker. With arms.
A shift in the light reveals just enough of the shadow to make it seem familiar. I can’t be certain, but it seems to fit the memory I have of whatever had slaughtered Madeline’s henchman and went through me like I was empty air. It isn’t moving, but it is watching. A cannonball of a head tilts back and forth, its eyes catching the moonlight and mirroring it like a cat’s eyes. The head dips, leaning towards the house. Towards me.
It knows I’m there, knows I’m watching it.
I brace myself, waiting for the charge, but it never comes. I see its body stir as it draws breath, as it shifts its weight from one foot to the other. But it never takes a step. What is it doing?
Finally, one arm moves. It raises its mammoth arm out of the shadows and into the outer reaches of the halo of porch light and extending a hand the size of a hubcap, finally ending with its outstretched index finger pointing dead at me. Then the finger curves. Extends. Curves.
It’s beckoning me.
A swarm of thoughts fires though my mind and I feel vindicated in the judgment I made earlier. Whatever the thing outside is, it tracked me down and now it’s making a gesture of communication. This thing is intelligent, at least somewhat. This is no mere monster.
I weigh my options. I doubt it can break in here as easily as it did the rental house. My home’s protection is limited to the enclosed structure itself and not the porch, which would have made pizza deliveries awkward. I’ve seen the spell at work before, and it’s horribly strong. Given the fact that it wasn’t rushing the door I figured that there was a very good chance the monster could see that the house was protected and is trying to lure me out where I’m grabbable.
On the other hand, I never stop a potential enemy from talking.
I open a large window in the living room, the conditioned air billowing out around me into the humidity of the night. The new night air seeps in replacing it, bringing with it a slap of moisture and the earthy scent of a damp forest. Along with it comes the same smell I found at the house where it h
ad killed two men. It’s the smell of old blood and rot, of sweat-matted fur and poisoned bile. I pop the Barrett’s tripod open, plant it on the railing and shoulder the butt plate, leveling the green glow of the night sights in the center of the moving shadow.
The shadow detaches itself from the trees, gliding around the limits of the light while never fully entering it. It stops where the shadows do, a full twenty feet from my porch, and waits with enormous patience.
“What do you want?” I shout into the night.
“It’s mine,” it growls in a deep rumble, barely recognizable as a voice, that shakes the night air. The words are off center, improperly formed, as if spoken by a mouth not made for words. “I want it back.”
“You want what back?”
“My sword,” it says.
“Your what?”
“My sword,” it repeats. “I want it. You find it.”
I take my eye away from the sight. What on Earth is this thing talking about? “I’m not looking for any sword,” I call.
The gigantic head ducks in a quick, and disturbingly human, nod. “Are. I almost had it. I missed it. You were there.”
That seals it. This is the thing that dribbled me like a ball off the lawn, and it wants the Cleave. “It’s no sword,” I yell across the darkness. “It’s a razor. Too small.”
The resonant growl ends with an impatient huff. Clearly, I’m missing its point. “Who are you?” I shout.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 10
