by Rex Hurst
Most of all, fear that she would tell everyone. Even though he liked her a lot, she wasn’t the fantasy girl that his mind craved. His body would’ve taken anything, but his ego wanted that perfect woman to flash around and show up all the other assholes. His broken virginity needed to be shouted out and lauded over and Kathy Lauder was not the kind of girl you bragged about banging. Maria Maleventum on the other hand . . .
Kathy’s snore interrupted his lustful thoughts. Drool from her mouth soaked into his shirt. That ended that. He’d spent too much time fretting about it and poof, the virginity fairy had departed.
She obviously needed the rest. He pulled out the red edition of The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage and spent the rest of the afternoon boning up on Victorian Era interpretations of magic and its uses.
***
Sunday. A day of rest and worship for the good Christian. The start of a drudging work week for the Muslim and Jew. For the observant high schooler, it was a day of great ambivalence. You were off from school, but the knowledge that you must soon return to the hated halls loomed like Damocles’ Sword.
This Sunday found Jon knocking on the Dutch family’s door at one in the afternoon. His mother answered in a frayed robe, sticking a sippy cup into the mouth of a toddler. She looked at Jon without a hint of recognition.
“Is Michael home?”
She nodded angrily. All these annoyances. When would she get some me-time? A bellow was sent up the stairs. A gesture was tossed at Jon to either come in or fuck off. She wandered back into the kitchen and crooned along with a sappy song blaring from the radio.
Michael bounded down from his room in two mighty leaps. Sunshine sparkled from his face. He punched Jon’s arm playfully.
“Life is good, but I’m better.”
“I’ve been looking into this and—”
Michael shushed him and pointed upwards. The pair retreated to his room. Jon plopped on his friend’s bed, while Michael stood in the center of the room. He seemed to have grown three inches overnight.
“So, you’re ready to do this?” Michael asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Why the hell not? This is a major threshold we’re crossing. Contact with the Beyond. Think of what we could learn. What we could gain.”
“That’s the other thing . . . ”
He tossed his copy of The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage at his friend, bookmarked to the appropriate page. Michael looked at the page. His eyebrows raised sharply when he came across the passage describing Calach.
“That’s interesting,” Michael said. “But all it means is that we’re actually onto something. It’s already been done. We can do this again.”
“It’s not that. You seem really unprepared for this. This book talks about all sorts of pitfalls that can happen.”
“Books can’t actually talk,” Michael interrupted, smirking.
“Don’t be an asshole. You know what I mean. It states that months of spiritual and physical purification is needed, along with various sigils and magic squares, and very precise ritual presentation.”
“And yet we did it without any of that crap.”
“It seems incredibly dangerous. Apparently without the correct wards it leaves a body open to spiritual possession.”
“Which is why you won’t be summoning this thing. Crixen Runeburner will.”
“What?”
“You obviously didn’t listen to a thing I said last week. It’s all about being in the proper mindset. If bullshit rituals and incoherent mumbo-jumbo puts you there, great, but it’s about you, not them.”
“How can Crix—?”
“Names have power. Power to shape and mold. We can’t define this contact without it, but it goes in the opposite direction as well. They can use our names against us and probably will if given a chance. So we hand them a different name, a false persona to focus on.”
“That’s very weird.”
“No weirder than the actual game that created the persona. We’ve gotten rid of the random elements, the dice. Crixen Runeburner might have begun life on a sheet of graph paper, but now he’s entirely in your head. He’s a fully formed personality that you slip into when the game starts. I’ve seen it. Your face changes. The inflections of your voice alters. You know him intimately.”
This was true. He didn’t even need to look at his character sheet anymore. Crixen Runeburner was a part of him, an easy mask to slip on.
“Think of it as an ego shield,” Michael continued. “If the entity believes you’re something other than what you are and you believe it during time of contact, then the real you is safe from attack.”
How tempting this was. To see beyond. To grasp secrets only a handful of people in the world had ever understood. To have power over others. He rejected the idea. Shook it from his brain. What Jon really wanted to understand was what his parents were up to. If he could learn along the same lines as them, then he could ward off any malicious moves his family made against him. It would be purely for defensive purposes, nothing else.
But along with that, Michael had some explaining to do.
“How do we do this?” Jon asked. “I mean, do we have to use like virgin’s blood or—”
“No, no. We just play the game as normal, until contact is made.”
“I’m not sure we can get the others to go along with it. Louis has disappeared and I saw Kathy yesterday and she was still scared half to death.”
“We don’t need them. Just you and me, buddy. As it should be.”
“And where do we play? Back in Goodleburg? Can you get your uncle’s van again?”
“N . . . no. We can do it at the grain elevator in the midget room.”
“Why there? It worked at the cemetery.”
“A little too well. I’d like a lower burn, until we’re really sure.”
“You said you were sure.”
“As much as I can be, but we’re still walking into darkness here. Let’s go slow and take sure steps.”
Jon stopped. Now was the time. Michael was hooked, ablaze with the idea. Excitement twitched all around him. He was nearly hopping up and down at the thought. Perfect time to pump him for information. All he had to do was threaten to pull the rug out from under his plan.
“Where does the game come from, Michael?”
“What? I— I got it at the hobby store.”
“No, you didn’t. I checked there and at the mall. They never heard of it, couldn’t find it listed anywhere. Who gave it to you? Was it the same people who were at the cemetery on Friday? There was a car waiting by the van.”
Michael was silent for a long time. Each second compounded his guilt. What exactly he was guilty of remained to be seen, but there was something there. Michael had palmed a few of the jigsaw pieces and needed to cough them up.
“Dude, if you don’t tell me, I’m gonna walk.”
“You gotta believe me—”
“I don’t gotta do anything. Who was it? Who? Was it my father?”
Michael was taken aback. Genuinely so, Jon could tell.
“What would your . . . ? No! This doesn’t have anything to do with you, man. I wanted you in on this because we’ve always done everything together, but—” He shook his head and his tongue darted in and out of his mouth like a nervous tick. He growled, “This is my story. My story. You’re just along for the ride. A bit player to swell the progress. You’re not fucking Hamlet! You’re not fucking Hamlet!”
“What are you going on about?”
“I set this all up. I arranged it. And I’m allowing you to come along.”
“And I so much love being your fucking canary.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Man, you’re acting crazy. With all this insanity, I’d like a few answers. Please?”
Please must have been the magic word. Michael calmed down immediately, gratefulness and triumph flipping back and forth over his face. He sat down on the carpet and sighed, then sighed
again. Was he stalling? Or calming down? The outburst was something new. Jon never knew his oldest friend harbored this bizarre resentment against him.
“While I was looking into this stuff, I started where anyone would. The occult bookstores, the New Age dives, the herbal and fragrance stores, and by reading the flyers off their community bulletin boards. That’s the best way to find stuff, right? Well, I came across a flyer advertising classes in ‘thelemic mediation techniques.’ That set off some triggers and I went to a few classes, met some people, then got invited to a secret place where they all congregate. It’s called Snakeland.”
“Snakeland?”
“It’s not that far from where we game actually. An open patch in the woods where the religious cast-offs of modern society congregate to practice. All sorts go there. Wiccans, Druids, Pagans, you name it. Most of them are poseurs, but there was one guy . . . Brian Elder. You know him?”
“No.”
Michael stared at Jon’s face for a few moments then continued, “He knows his stuff and used to be part of a group that operated in this area. He hooked me up with this game. If there were people following us out at Goodleburg, they might be connected to him.”
“What kind of group.”
“An occult one.”
“That could mean almost anything. It’s like calling yourself European. Were they Satanists?”
“As far I could tell, yes. Brian Elder didn’t come out and say it, but it was pretty obvious. He’s also the one who loaned me the van to Goodleburg.”
“Sounds like he was using you as a guinea pig.”
“I paid him for both. So, I didn’t think twice about it. This group he was part of often contacted demons or so he claimed. He never demonstrated it to me. Told me to ‘find my own path.’ However, he did sell me the copy of the game.”
He should walk away, Jon knew. Hitch a ride out to California and become a surfer. But he couldn’t, a force pulled him back, something stronger than his flight impulse. There was a possibility to grab some actual power here. It was an opportunity he didn’t want to pass up.
“All right. I’ll help you. Just you and me. But I’m gonna want to meet this Brian Elder guy and size him up. Maybe he isn’t as disassociated with the Satanist group as he made you think.”
“Agreed. To Snakeland then.”
CHAPTER 8
Snakeland
Michael claimed he was fatigued, so they agreed to meet after school the next day to attempt contacting Brian Elder. The school day stretched on at an agonizing pace, until that blessed final bell released them all from captivity.
The day would’ve easily been forgotten, tossed into the lump of other boring days in their memory, except they were about to leave the building with a gaggle of Italians, led by the snarling Gabbaducci. As usual, the girls followed. Jon’s nightly fantasy girl was among them.
“I heard you’ve been telling people that I’m a faggot,” Gabbaducci yelled at Michael. His nose bumped Michael’s.
“I . . . I didn’t.”
And of course, he hadn’t. It’s just that the boy wanted to fight and rather than find a reason, he manufactured one to justify his assholeishness.
Gabbaducci slammed Michael’s head into the wall.
“You want to fuck me in the ass? How ‘bout I do it to you and we’ll see who’s the queer.” He punched Michael in the nuts and sent him sprawling. “You’d probably like it, too, you fucking homo.”
Hunched over the now crying Michael, Gabbaducci turned to garner laugher and kudos from his fellow thugs. His face was the textbook definition of stupidity.
Father’s words flooded Jon’s brain. It isn’t ‘nice guys’ that finish last. It’s weak men who do so. And before he knew it, Jon had stepped up to Gabbaducci and pushed the bully off his friend.
“Leave him alone, jerk.”
The bully actually backed up, incredulous that an invertebrate like Jon would dare step up to him.
His buddies mockingly chanted “Ooh.”
Gabbaducci glanced at them. All of Gabbaducci’s bully instincts tingled. Jon was an unknown quantity. He hadn’t been labeled an easy mark, so the bully was unsure of his success and might be beaten up, but if he backed down, his buddies would spread the word that Gabbaducci had pussied out. His tough guy image would forever be tarnished. Then no respectable Italian girl would fuck him. He had to act but decided on a tactic of ridicule.
“Look at this fuck,” Gabbaducci mocked, jabbing a finger into Jon’s chest. “You think doin’ this means my girl is gonna bang you? I seen you look at her.”
From the gathering crowd, a loud “Ew,” escaped the lips of Maria Maleventum. This hurt worse than any blow from her boyfriend could have. It reinforced every one of his doubts and kicked his heart into the gutter. Gabbaducci saw this and his laugh grew crueler.
“Jesus, I didn’t lay a finger on this guy and he’s going to cry.”
One of the others shot out a warning, “Mr. Sobel, Mr. Sobel,” and the crowd dispersed. The almost-brawlers separated. Jon helped Michael up, the latter wiping tears away and led him towards the bike racks. When the teacher walked past, it was as if nothing had happened.
“You’re fucking lucky,” Gabbaducci called.
“ . . . think I’d want to have sex with him,” Maria Maleventum’s voice drifted after him. “He doesn’t look Italian at all.”
They were silent on the ride to the old grain elevator, only slightly grunting to each other as they hid their bikes and negotiated the treacherous way up the fallen stairs and into the midget room. Michael had come prepared with everything needed.
Candles were lit. Dark Dungeons was laid out. The pair took one long look at each other before beginning. A new horizon was before the friends. They started a solo adventure. One where Crixen Runeburner ventured alone into the depths of a tomb brimming with horrors.
Attack, defend, heal, harm. With each action, each command, Jon slipped further into Crixen Runeburner’s skin. He stopped considering what his character would do and simply knew. The elf mage’s mind coalesced in Jon’s frontal lobe.
His mind populated an ethereal world conjured by Michael’s words. The sights of the ancient resting place filled his eyes: Cobwebs, opened graves, crumbling brickwork, traps, shambling undead, carnivorous monsters, poisonous scavengers. All the while, the sickening feeling, same as his cellar and the defunct cemetery, grew in his gut. Smells of dirt and rot and animal scat crept up his nose. He was there! He was there!
The last chamber was breached. The final enemy spirit was dispelled back to Hell. The idol, the goal of his quest, was before him. It shined white, unmolested by the taint of ages. Hammered into its base was a bronze plaque bearing the phrase, Speak the name of whom you seek.
“Calach.”
And it was so.
A voice slithered out of nowhere, faint, like a low wind, but distinct. Each vowel curled around Jon’s brain. Each consonant an ice cube down this throat. Yet, he kept on.
“Who be there?”
“I name thee Calach,” Crixen said.
“And Calach I am named. Who does so? Who calls me forth?”
Names have power. Names have power. “Crixen Runeburner calls you to treaty.”
“Crixeeenn Ruuuneburner,” the bodiless voice rolled the name around. “Stilted way of speaking. Not many alive know the name, Calach. You smack of fiction. Your face waivers like a heat vision.”
Fiction? A warning look from Michael. The low spirit, the demon, the entity from beyond, was trying to break through his persona.
“Hear and obey. I have summoned and named you. Calach, milky backed, you are bound.”
“Bound am I now?” it snickered.
“You are here to answer. You are here to obey.”
“Answer what? What can Calach tell you?”
The voice had grown in the air. Like crystallized syrup, sickly and sweet, it poured into Jon’s ear. All the while they spoke, both boys maintained the image from the gam
e in their minds. It was just another NPC encounter.
“I wish to know about the human, the pater familias, of the St. Fond family and his wife.”
“Calach doesn’t know things. Calach does things.”
Hex’s and love charms. He knew this yet had hoped there would be more. Well, if the ancient mages like Mather and Crowley couldn’t coax out more from the demon, what chance did he have?
“Who’s that poking out behind there? Does it have a name?”
Damn it. This was harder than he thought. Crixen Runeburner was mage extraordinaire, greater than any human mage. If anyone could get more from Calach it would be him.
The vision shook. The world lost mass.
“Are you there, Runeburner?”
Don’t lose focus. Don’t lose focus. But . . . but . . . what did he want? Knowledge. Knowledge.
“You will tell me. I command it.”
“There’s nothing I can say. Calach is a lowly name. It knows nothing. No one tells it anything.”
Was this true? If not Jon . . . Crixen was at a loss of how to compel the entity to cough up more. He looked helplessly at Michael. The ethereal world supported by their brains waived once again.
“A test then,” Michael said
“Who speaks?”
“I am the Game Master.”
“One among many. I see a blank face, an imprint of nothing, with the swirling universe as a cloak.”
Michael blinked, his face grew pale. Was the demon defining him instead of vice versa? Could it get the upper hand this way?
“If you know nothing,” he said. “We will test your limits. A hex and a charm.”
“Pity poor Calach. He’s cold and he’s mad,” was the sarcastic reply.
“Answer,” commanded the Game Master.
“Answer to what?”
“You will do these things.”
“That’s not a question.”
