by Adam Dark
“For people to perform themselves today?” she asked.
“Right.”
“Well, I’d say the important things to preserve aren’t so much the exact same ingredients, I guess you’d say, but the purpose of their use and the intention behind preparing them.” Ben only nodded, feeling like an idiot because he just didn’t follow. His advisor smiled and folded her hands on top of her desk. “Take today’s practitioners of Wicca, for example. Or, as some of them prefer to call it, ‘natural magic.’. Many of their rites and rituals come from traditionally Pagan ceremonies, where groups gathered within stone circles for more important occasions or seasonal celebrations. They lived off the land and practiced a good deal of natural medicine with what was available around them, including their ritual tools.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of stone circles or natural medicine to be harvested from the earth in Boston.”
Ben couldn’t help it; he smiled, thinking he knew now where she was going with this.
“So,” she continued, “exceptions are made for the modern practitioner. Purchasing natural herbs and medicines from local apothecaries, ethically and sustainably sourced in line with a lifestyle of conscious consumption. Rituals that may have called for a number of practitioners in the past can be performed alone, if one doesn’t have access to others looking for the same type of community. Even writing incantations or prayers has certain wiggle room. There’s a lot of power there if a person can make their own ink from scratch, setting an intention for its use with every step of the process. But the effect isn’t lessened any if the time, energy, or funds can’t be applied to that kind of basic alchemy. A pen works, because that’s what we use today. What matters is the intention behind what’s being written and the spirit in which every action is performed.
“Keep in mind, a Wiccan or magical practice isn’t actually designed for summoning spirits.” Her head lurched forward, as if she were trying to weigh the consequences of comparing these two vastly different and still so similar types of ceremonies. “Especially not the malevolent ones mentioned in The Lesser Key. But if you’re rewriting a ritual in a way accessible to the modern person, with something of a comparative analysis tacked on for good measure, I’d say getting as close as you can to the original ingredients in terms of sourcing and intention wouldn’t be considered a gross adulteration by any means.”
This was the first time one of his questions had received such a detailed response from Dr. Montgomery; she’d given him nudges toward lines of research and tips to pursue, but never this much information on any of the topics he could potentially have been studying. Now he stood here in front of her, basically lying about why he’d asked her any of this in the first place. Ben’s curiosity got the better of him. “Do you practice this kind of magic?” he asked, thinking maybe he’d finally pinned down something about her personal life, which had never been offered in the three and a half years he’d been meeting with the woman every other week to make sure he kept his curriculum work on track.
“Personally? No, I don’t.” She blinked slowly and offered a smile that made him want to know exactly what she was thinking.
“Well, that was exactly what I needed to hear. Really helpful. Thanks.”
“Of course.” His smile felt particularly awkward as he turned away from her to head out of her office. “Ben,” she called.
“Yeah?”
“You know this is the kind of question you can ask me over an email, right? You don’t have to break up your day just to come all the way out to my office.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, rolling his eyes a little. “Emails are just”—he shrugged—“pretty impersonal, you know?” Not to mention the fact that he’d agonized over every sentence since he started writing them in first grade and still pecked the keyboard with two fingers like he had back then, too. “And I was on my way to the library anyway., Figured I’d drop in.” That sounded a lot less creepy than him not wanting to be impersonal with his curriculum advisor.
“Fair enough. We’re still on for our longer meeting tomorrow, right?”
Ben clicked his tongue and shot her a gun with his hand. “Nine-thirty.” Really? Flashing the gun? Right now?
The woman gave him the exact same look he’d gotten from April the day before at brunch—Aw, how cute. It made him want to bolt. “Perfect,” she said. “Have a good rest of your day.”
“Yep. You too. See you tomorrow.” He didn’t actually run back into the hallway, but it was close.
He spent the rest of the day outlining this “new addition” to his thesis, because he couldn’t go to his meeting with Dr. Montgomery tomorrow after their conversation and not have anything to show for it. He supposed the extra work was worth it; if he and Peter had any kind of success at all with what they would try to do on Saturday, it might even give him some extra material for his paper. It was so weird to be doing any of this and seriously considering how to mix real-life demons with getting his degree.
Then he spent a little bit of time researching how to make his own ink from scratch. The quickest recipe he found used activated charcoal and gum arabic, mostly, plus ninety-proof alcohol to mix it all up. All the others needed time to boil the color out of other random materials, and he didn’t really want to have to turn his entire kitchen into a science lab. He also didn’t want to leave out the black rooster bit altogether, but he didn’t exactly have any immediate ideas on what he could substitute without trying to catch the thing and drain its blood for his super-occult ritual attempt. Man, if he’d caught himself thinking like this two years ago—heck, even last week—he’d be the first person to say he’d finally stepped into the whacko role all those doctors had insisted he fill.
Before he went to bed, he got another text from Peter.
‘One four-inch crystal. Check.’
Of course Peter had picked the easiest thing to find.
11
He was back in that house again, walking through a darkness he couldn’t even feel.
“Ben.”
It was a whisper, so close behind him that it made him jump and spin around. Ian stood there in front of him, still in his twelve-year-old body but somehow level with Ben’s adult height. He wasn’t stuck in the ceiling any longer, but he really didn’t look any better for it. His pale skin glowed eerily within the lightless space, dark circles beneath his eyes making him look hollow—skeletal. And he flickered once from where he stood before Ben, his light dimming briefly before flaring back into existence.
“Ian…” Ben breathed, still entirely shaken by the sight of the boy he hadn’t seen in eleven years before now dreaming of him twice in three days. And yes, now he knew he was dreaming—or at least asleep.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked, his voice rasping out in a harsh strain as if he tried to speak louder but couldn’t actually find his voice.
“Um…”
“I told you to find me, Ben. You have to come back.”
Hearing his friend’s voice telling him what he already knew almost broke his heart. “I know,” he said. “We’re trying. We just have to figure out how to help you. I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You already have—” The rest of Ian’s words came through a harsh static, as if he’d spoken through a radio and someone changed the station to a dead frequency.
“What?”
“You have a key.” The last word wheezed out of Ian’s chapped lips. “It doesn’t open every door, but some of—” The static flared again, and Ian’s glowing form flickered.
“I didn’t hear that,” Ben said, feeling like he should be a little more anxious, given the circumstances.
“He’s trying… me from…”
Something groaned all around them, and the darkness Ben recognized within the rotting walls of the house from that night shivered. The floor he didn’t feel beneath his feet trembled, shaking him in all directions and none. “Ian?”
“Quit stalling!” his childhood friend yelled, and for a moment,
what had started to feel like an isolated earthquake stilled completely. “When you see the signs, Ben, don’t ignore them. And don’t take too long. I can’t—” With a crackling buzz like a dying lightbulb, Ian’s glow shuddered violently then went out with a loud pop. Now there was nothing but the awful rush of the ceaseless static, and Ian was gone.
Ben jerked awake and sat straight up in his bed with a gasp. The heavy static still buzzed around him, and then he realized it came from his alarm clock. His palm slammed down on the snooze button, and he slumped back onto his pillow in the relieving silence.
Yes, he’d learned the hard way that he still needed an alarm clock even though he had a smartphone; he’d gone one too many times without plugging it in before he went to bed only to wake up with a dead phone and a panicking rush to make up for being one or two or three hours late for something. Something must be wrong with the station he’d had it on for like a year. Or maybe he’d bumped against the dial without realizing it.
It didn’t really matter, though. He’d just had one more dream—or not dream—from Ian, and if it was actually Ian’s spirit and not some really messed up materialization of Ben’s own guilt, he and Peter were apparently on a time limit. Wasn’t that fun?
Groaning, he sat up again, gave his head a brisk rub, and shuffled to the bathroom. When he came back and checked his emails on his phone—which hadn’t happened to die overnight—he found a message from Dr. Montgomery. She had to cancel their meeting at 9:30 to deal with a last-minute personal issue and wasn’t sure when she’d be able to reschedule. But she did say she was excited to see how he incorporated his “ancient rituals for the modern practitioner” idea they’d discussed yesterday, which now meant he couldn’t say he’d changed his mind or talked himself out of doing it. Yeah, why not bind his super-creepy, paranormal secret life with his undergraduate dissertation? Just what he needed.
Well, then, he might as well take the morning to work on some of those “additions”. He’d already thought about trying to pick up some activated charcoal and gum arabic after his meeting, so at least then he could get his ingredient-hunting out of the way before the weekend. Honestly, part of him really didn’t like the idea of having to wait another five days to be able to try this stuff out with Peter. Not being able to know right now if any of those rituals even worked—if he and Peter would be able to prepare themselves for going back to that house or if they’d just end up storming in like idiot soldiers-in-training without weapons or armor—was really starting to rub him the wrong way. And they’d only just decided to put that book of rituals to the test two days ago.
The old grounds sitting in the used filter of his coffeemaker were just this side of sprouting mold. He hadn’t made himself a pot in maybe a week, choosing instead to stop by the coffee shop down the road in the morning and sit for a while to do whatever he could manage of his research for his dissertation. Ben would always choose somebody doing for him what he could do himself but never would, if he had the option. That included making his own coffee. But today, he didn’t have to be anywhere at any time, and he didn’t feel like driving yet. But he needed caffeine.
The trash can beside his fridge was also in need of some attention, namely in taking the overflowing trash bag out and down to the dumpster right outside his apartment building. He dumped the slightly stinking coffee grounds onto the top of the trash pile and told himself he’d take care of all that later. He hit the start button on the cheap black coffeemaker, then he got a text.
It wasn’t really weird that Peter was up at 7:20 in the morning; the guy’s first class started at 8:15 almost every day. But it was weird that Peter thought texting Ben this early would actually get him a response. He knew Ben didn’t get up before 8:00 at the earliest if he didn’t have to be anywhere first thing, and Ben knew he knew. Maybe Peter remembered him mentioning his now cancelled meeting with Montgomery.
All three texts came in quick succession, like the guy couldn’t stand to wait any longer than one sentence before sending them off.
‘My lab’s been cancelled. All my other classes today too. Something going on on campus we don’t know about?’
Immediately, Ben imagined some unstable gunman on the campus or maybe a bomb threat; of all the things he had to be worried about, that was what came to mind first? He shook his head, then thought maybe something else had come up—some larger, more intense, less escapable version of the demon he’d kind of faced but hadn’t actually defeated in the frat house on Friday night. His palms went all clammy in less than three seconds as he scrolled through the news on his phone, but he found nothing. Just a normal, fall-semester day at BU, as far as he could tell. He didn’t have any new emails, and it wasn’t like the school website posted the details of cancelled classes or the reasoning behind them; that was up to the instructors and professors.
‘Not that I could find,’ he texted back.
It was a little odd, to say the least, that both his meeting with Montgomery and all Peter’s classes had been called off last-minute, effectively clearing their schedules. His phone went off again.
‘You have anything going on today?’
He didn’t have to ask to know what Peter was trying to get at, here. ‘Not anymore.’
‘Wanna do it today instead?’
And there it was—the question he honestly expected Peter to avoid at all costs. It made him feel a little better about the whole thing, both that his friend’s freaking out at his suggestion of at least looking for Ian had been only a knee-jerk reaction on Peter’s part and that Ben now knew he wasn’t alone in feeling like they should try out this summoning stuff as soon as possible. Plus, after his recent lucid dream and Ian’s urgent frustration in those dreams, he couldn’t really say no.
‘Yeah. Gotta get some things first. I’ll let you know when I’m done.’
‘We should do it at your place. I just cleaned.’
Ben rolled his eyes. Yes, definitely. They could mix their own black ink and splatter it all over his apartment, maybe destroy the place if they summoned the wrong demon. Who knew? Their day might end with a little bit of blood on the walls, too. It wasn’t like he was particularly attached to the place—just his life.
‘Whatever,’ he sent back.
Peter didn’t text him again. He didn’t have to. This was real, and they were doing it today.
It surprised him how easy it was to get all the things he needed for the ink. Activated charcoal and the gum arabic were both at the Whole Foods—used as either alternative health remedies or in food—but he had to pop over to the Shaw’s for the smallest bottle of Smirnoff he could find. It was actually the first time he’d ever bought alcohol from a store and taken it home with him, but it wasn’t like they’d be compelled to drink it. Hopefully.
About an hour later at almost 9:00, he pulled back up into the parking lot of his apartment complex and had absolutely no idea what was going on. It looked like somebody was moving—in or out, he couldn’t tell—and had decided to bring a farm with them. Three dogs ran around in tight circles on the asphalt, barking and whining when they couldn’t figure out what to do about the goat. It had apparently stepped out of the trailer into its odd new environment, a rope still tied around its neck; the end of it dragged across the ground as the goat bent its head and lurched forward with tiny horns when one of the dogs got too close for comfort. One of the dogs Ben recognized as belonging to the old man who lived below him. The man also stood well away from the goat and whistled futilely at his overexcited black lab.
Another guy, who looked either Hispanic or Filipino, tried to shoo away the old man’s dog while shouting at the other animals by name and fighting to avoid the two chickens skittering around beneath all their feet in the chaos. He tried to snatch up the end of the goat’s rope, but the creature was probably too terrified now to realize that the man wasn’t another dog and just wanted to make sure this ended safely for everyone.
Ben sat in his car and stared at the explosion of fur
and hooves and feathers for a minute, then opened his door. As soon as he got out of the car, a rooster crowed somewhere, and he froze, trying not to laugh and wondering how this could possibly have happened in the first place. “Need any help?” he called, walking slowly toward the man’s trailer hitched to a bright-yellow pickup.
The man barely glanced at him before flicking his hand out to ward off the black lab he didn’t know. “You know how to catch a chicken?”
“Not at all.” The rooster crowed again.
With a grunt, the man waved him over. “If you can grab Tony’s lead and get him back into the trailer, that would be a great start.”
The goat’s name was Tony? “Yeah, sure.”
As soon as Ben offered his help, the man heaved a huge sigh of relief and stepped halfway up into the trailer. He grabbed two medium-sized metal cages and stuck them, swinging doors open, on the ground. “Thanks, man. I’ll go get the birds.”
While Ben had never actually tried to wrangle a goat before, the thing didn’t look like it was very old at all, all wiry legs and round, heaving belly. He stepped toward it, crooning what he thought might be something comforting, and completely ignored the dogs. He did know dogs; they responded to the energy around him, and he figured he could manage enough calm to at least not make it worse. The goat let him get just close enough, but when he slowly reached out his hand, one hard head and two tiny horns were lowered in his direction. The animal took one step forward and two wavering steps back, clearly hesitant. So Ben just steeled himself and snatched the rope. The goat bleated briefly, but when he put his hand on the thing’s head and told it he was just trying to help, all the fight went out of it. For a minute, he thought it might have been frozen in fear, its senses overloaded. But it didn’t tremble or lower its head again, and only its tail moved in a swift little flicker.
“Uh, okay,” he said. “So we’re just… gonna get you back into the trailer, I guess.” He only had to tug once on the rope, and not very hard, before the goat turned and clomped back up onto the trailer’s ramp with no resistance whatsoever. It jumped the last foot from the ramp to the bed of the trailer, then nuzzled a crate of hay in the corner and flicked its tail again.
