House of Chaos

by K. R. Alexander

  “You think all is simple,” he snarled. “You wouldn’t even let me tell my story.”

  “Go ahead. Tell your damn story!” It made me feel so much better to shout back at him, I felt my mind turning over again, breaking free of the fear.

  “This time, you’d best pay attention.” Pressure on my throat, leaning down at me.

  “Oh, I’m paying attention, ass-hat. I’m already learning. Stuff like maybe your side could have won if they’d had fewer douchebags poisoning the ranks.”

  “And your side might have won if they’d had a competent witch instead of a child in clown shoes pretending to cast spells.”

  “Don’t mock my shoes! It’s not my fault I have big feet!”

  “Don’t mock my intelligence! Hardly my fault you are the best I’ve found to capture and feed on in years! If I’d had someone more sustaining you would still be seeing my face, feeling my body owning yours.”

  I snorted. “You could have ten bodies and twenty balls and you’d still never own so much as one of my eyelashes, you arrogant, power-hungry, petty, male-chauvinist pig.”

  Wham, a force like several bricks crushed on my throat. There was nothing to fight.

  I just choked out, “This might be your last chance for an audience in another three decades or whatever. Are you telling me your story or not?”

  The force subsided. The energy rippled, cold and powerful with bubbling rage above me.

  “What’s your name?” I panted.

  Pause. “Xaphan.”

  “Yeah, right,” I snickered. Probably something like Corporal Harvey Honeywell back in the day.

  I felt the ripples growing stronger, air around my face filled with an acrid tang.

  “I mean … cool,” I said. “Xaphan. I guess you already know all about me. So … yeah. I’m listening.”

  Sure enough, like so many pricks in the living world, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pour out his cares and woes.

  18

  I already had the gist of Xaphan’s story. While serving in the Confederate Army, his unit had come through Midway City, heading north, never expecting fighting could reach so far into their home turf. Billeted in the town, he’d met the daughter of the wealthiest landowner around, who also happened to be mayor of Midway City, and lived right here in this house.

  Xaphan had swept the beautiful daughter, Claribel, off her feet. She’d promised to wait for him, then waved him off down the dusty road to rejoin his unit and move out.

  Short months later, Xaphan had been back in Midway City, the civilians driven out, fleeing south as refugees, and he had been one of the thousands who fell that day in the Battle of Midway Ridge, practically in sight of the peaked turrets. He returned to the house to wait for her. She had promised. Here he was. No biggie.

  Claribel did indeed return home eventually, which was when things started to get strange. Not in the story. Who knew what really happened there? But in the way he told it.

  I could no longer feel or see him. I just lay on my back on the dusty old bed in the dark, listening as he poured energy to manifest rushed, furious words, growing more wrathful with each phrase, until his voice seemed to crackle with sparks and clatter with switchblades.

  “Ignored me, no matter my efforts. She strolled about the rooms and went into town and hosted luncheons without a word, no gesture, no wave. I held her hand and she pulled away. I kissed her lips and she looked past me. I reminded her of her promise, of our future together, and she turned her back. How she taunted, how she flirted, always to sigh and push me away. You cannot imagine how she tormented my every moment, sunup and sundown. Yet it was nothing, nothing, to him.

  “When the Yankee came to take her away, she would not leave, clinging to me and her home. So he kept her here. Here in this room, where she got all she deserved for all the wicked she had done. I would never have harmed her, no matter how enraged. It was his force and lust she would satisfy, not even screaming, never escaping him, while I could only watch another man break her—hold her down and pleasure himself with her body like a toy.

  “All for what? When she could have had me! When she could have abided by her promise! Instead, she was pinned to this bed, day after day and night after night, used by a filthy carpetbagger like a spittoon. No matter what I did, she remained his vessel, enslaved and broken before him. When I tried to shoot him, he complained of a headache. They were invincible, her indifferent to my rage and locked in her own pain, him laughing in my face. When I could stand it no longer, I tried to take what he had. Never had I forced myself on her as he did, until a night I broke and had her for my own in her dreams.

  “She was in ecstasies. At last, she responded to me, longing for my touch, as if we reunited for the first time, as if she had never turned her back. No brainless fornication of the man holding her captive, I offered her pleasure, showed her all she had missed. I was part of her, leaving her euphoric, when the Yankee saw her touching herself and hurled me aside, claiming his ‘rightful place’ to show her whose pleasure mattered.

  “She wept. At last she had a glimpse of what she was missing without me. At last she felt regret. Too late for her. I can show you. You’ll know how much she lost.”

  Cold breeze on my face and a sharp jab at my groin made me jump. Like someone trying to open my jeans. Or maybe clothes were a moot point and this was already the feeling up part? With these sorts of touches, I couldn’t tell.

  I recoiled, trying not to, but breathing fast as my heart hammered again and I could not pretend calm. Nor could I think of a way out. I couldn’t cast any more than maybe a faint light in my hands, even now. I needed a good night’s sleep to really bolster myself energetically. Obviously, physical fighting was also out of the question. Sure, I could throw myself off the bed. And then what? Listen while he laughed? What did that leave?

  “You’re not like her.” That touch again, some weight behind it also. At the same time, I saw a shadow of his form, the vague idea of a man lying on top of me, feeling between my legs, while he fought to manifest as solid. “But you’ll do. You’ll appreciate how much she could have had. All she would never know.”

  He couldn’t, could he? Like, if I totally ignored him, would it even make a difference? Obviously, he existed in his own version of reality. Did he convince himself he was experiencing physical contact, or did he actually get it?

  Either way, I found that the one alternative I could not tolerate was lying there and taking it.

  I eased away, slipping along the bed, subtly changing position as I talked. “You didn’t tell me what happened to her. Obviously, she’s long gone and you’re still here. I mean, you know it’s the twenty-first century, right? Not the nineteenth? So, all this time later, what happened to her?”

  “She found another. She had found another after me, then she found another after him. One brute to the next. Promises meant nothing to her.” He kept pushing.

  I kept moving. “So she managed to get out from under the northerner asshole?”

  “Only after I saved her. Not that she ever returned a kiss, but I would do anything for her even then.” Pressure everywhere, feeling the weight of him. Not weight like a real body, but hints of it. Touching and pushing on chest and hips and pressure force my legs, yet mostly as nonspecific as having a heap of beanbags dumped on you.

  “You drove that guy off?” I was lying diagonally across the bed now. I glanced at the book. His diary from the field?

  “Yes. I killed him.”

  “You what?” I paused.

  “It took a great deal of time, hard work and dedication to save her. I fed on his spirit, I gobbled his light, dogged his steps, and haunted his dreams. When he climbed on her like a rutting buck, I gave him my face to look at. When he listened to music at the bandstand in town, I gave him cannon-fire to hear. When he stroked a dog, I made it bite him. When he shut a door, I made it lock. When he lifted a pen, I made his hand tremor.” By now the demon was laughing, seeming distracted from his
lust. “Until, finally, haggard and broken, sleepless and hallucinating, blood burst in his brain and he died. She was free again. While I feasted upon his soul as a python swallows a whole pig.”

  “So her price for being rid of him was you growing in strength.” A few inches more to the right while he reminisced. Such a slender book. Something a soldier could have carried, even if he wasn’t supposed to. Why did it feel so important? If I had his real story, what he wanted, what would get him to let go, either voluntarily or by force, I could break him. Wade and I could figure out the spells if we had all the other pieces.

  He was talking about how good it felt, how he could do more after he’d consumed another soul, how he could manipulate things like oil lamps and rustle drapes. While delighting in these happy memories, he started getting pushy again. He shoved apart my legs, which I hadn’t thought he could do—appalled by the sudden strength.

  “Then what?” I gasped, willing myself not to fight a battle I couldn’t win, but focus on what I could do. “Once the first bastard was gone, there was another guy? Did she leave you here? What happened to her family? Why was she trapped with him in the first place?”

  “She remained with me. Every now and then she would notice me, we would sit together. There were others from the battlefield and fires and destruction in Midway City. Once I knew how to be the python, I went hunting. I grew fat, better able to gain her attention. She hadn’t totally forgotten me after all.”

  Pushing between my legs. Again, it was a sort of beanbag feeling. I squeezed my eyes shut. I was smart. My parents had raised a doer. I could figure this out. Even the most power-glutted, vicious demon in the world was still a dead, incorporeal being at the end of the day. By the time the sun came up, I would still have my body. He wouldn’t have his. If I couldn’t figure out how to outwit someone without even a skull to keep his brain, I had no business in this business anyway. Forget about the curse.

  The curse…

  “Then,” Xaphan snarled, crushing me, “the next beast arrived to take her away. The same all over again.”

  Could that poor woman never meet a decent guy?

  But what had I just been thinking? As Xaphan started telling about this next stupid male who had defiled his Claribel, I tried to recapture the thread of my own thoughts. The curse and … what? What had just flickered through my living, breathing, racing brain?

  Then I happened to look beyond the foot of the bed as I had inched myself even more over, creeping toward those window seats, and I got a glimpse into the vanity mirror, despite the dark. When I saw that, I forgot all about both the story he was telling and the one I was trying to hunt down in my own head.

  19

  I shouldn’t have been able to see a reflection in the mirror at all, the room was so dark. Somehow, though, there was a faint glow to the figures reflecting on the bed, as if hit directly by moonlight outside. One way or another, they were perfectly clear.

  A man and woman on the bed. Us, it seemed, seeing the vision of the demon’s body when he had still been a young man, thin and awkward and supposedly ready for war. Yes, I was sure that was him, no uniform this time, but naked. The woman on her back was equally exposed. Still, I thought for a moment it was supposed to be me until I saw this woman was skinnier. Like him—war-deprived skinny. Also blonde, maybe even younger than me.

  Her hair was fanned out over the bed, her arms thrown back, nipples stiff while sweat gleamed on her skin in the summer heat. Her legs were raised against the young man, wrapped around him, knees against his sides. He was on his knees and upright, holding her up and pulling her against him as he thrust. There was nothing of a rhythm or love-making in the desperate speed, the way he grabbed her and pumped seemingly for his life, close to climax. Her mouth was open and eyes closed, moaning, crying out with the pleasure of her own awakening, though reflections make no noise.

  It was his reflection, his mirror, how he had seen his one moment of sexual gratification with her, enhanced in his own awareness to be something not only real and physical, but mutually enjoyed and seen by both.

  He kept thrusting—way past a count allowable in an R movie—and still I kept watching, mesmerized by the placement, how I was in her spot, watching something in this spot, only not. A screen into another place and to this one, a glimpse of fantasy, history, and lost opportunities.

  I lifted my knees against him, watching her move. The weight rose off my chest.

  He was telling me how many years it took him to kill this one because the man traveled and Xaphan got to enjoy her all to himself so much. Then he would be back and Xaphan would go to work on him again. All the children complicated things because they were more perceptive about disturbances, and their being upset all the time upset Claribel.

  At last, Xaphan had to follow the man out and spook his horse in order to kill him. Another soul to munch.

  All the time he talked, he pushed against me. All the time I failed to listen; I watched the mirror. She was shouting, back arching, her breasts lifting to him as if begging to be touched. I remembered him saying she never even screamed. She screamed now, arms and legs wide, drawing him through her, channeling his energy to her fingertips. While she boiled over, the soul-muncher kept hammering into her, eating her up with the others—although she had no idea.

  “Take off your clothes,” he ordered, as if just noticing my attire.

  I unbuttoned my jeans, still watching the mirror. “What happened to her? Did she live in this house for the rest of her life?”

  “We stayed for a time with her family down south, where she had me to share her bed.”

  “Not forever?” I unzipped my fly.

  “No.” Fresh rage. “Yet another tormenter, bent on her destruction, now after her offspring as well.”

  He was coming inside her. Thrusting as deep as he could reach, holding in, then pumping again. He talked, crying out as she had, his head thrown back.

  “What did you do to him?” I asked.

  “I had grown weak. I needed more energy, my home, this house. It was not the same. But I fed on the living, her family, young and old, easy to drain, and had to bide my time.”

  Still, he thrust, at last weakening, spent, covered in sweat that made his skin shine in moonlight. He bent over her and she curved up, sitting partway to meet his kiss, their mouths open and wet, lose, yet hungry kisses before she fell back, one forearm draped across her brow, both worn out.

  “Undress!”

  “I am.” I pushed at my jeans an inch. “Go ahead and touch me. So you killed a third man?”

  “Eventually.” Cold breeze where my skin was exposed on my abdomen, making me shiver.

  Still I watched the mirror, holding on, breaths very deep, feeling the heat and force and energy from that memory and desire, that passion and giving up of one’s own force swirl and settle as I grabbed it. It was his as well, here and now, but he didn’t know. He was still talking, voice fading. He had talked for so long, manifested so much, even his touch was growing faint.

  How long had it been since he’d had a captive audience? Such a thrill for a lonely old demon?

  After the third killing, and only once she was an old woman, with the house still in the family, she had returned here to live out the rest of her days with Xaphan.

  “That’s sweet,” I told him calmly, fingers flexing, crackling with a silent buzz. “So you got your happy ending, even if she never looked you in the eye. Why stick around, though, once she was gone?”

  “This is our home. I defend what is ours, drive out beasts like you and your gang of vandals. While I protect our home, I wait for her.”

  “Wait for her?” I blinked, looking up in the dark, dragging my gaze from the mirror for the first time in many minutes. “Um, you know she’s crossed over, right? She’s not coming to find you.”

  “Keep your propaganda to yourself. I know what you want. What they all want: me out of here. But it is mine. Just as she is and will return. And you are mine.”
<
br />   My curse. I remembered.

  “If I had my curse back, you wouldn’t have to struggle to manifest. I’d be able to see you. I’m having trouble with it right now, but I used to be able to see people like you all the time. Too much, in fact. I’ve been trying to get it back, only I’m not sure how. You’ve been around the block for, like, two hundred years. Know anything about people who see spirits? How or why?”

  “Only children and animals see regular spirits. If you no longer can, perhaps you are no longer a child.”

  “Well, hey, good news then. Worth asking.” I zipped up and buttoned my jeans.

  Just as he was barking another order, I blasted his ass off the bed.

  20

  Never let someone else take your power. Okay, demons might be a special case, but generally speaking, no one—not a boss or boyfriend or stranger or some asshole on the highway—can take your power unless you willingly give it up.

  A break to catch your breath, and someone else using up power, while you gather, making yourself stronger and sharper and more grounded, can be a quick jumping off point to start over.

  I didn’t have much. I was still worn out and sore and hot and just plain scared. But he’d been pouring out power like a faucet and I’d been able to draw enough from our little porno and trip down memory lane for one last try. If it didn’t work, it would literally be my last try.

  A quick wall of magic, throw back the energy, which was all he was, holding smoke at bay for ten seconds.

  He yelled, cursed—bad move, more strength wasted—and I had already rolled the rest of the way off the bed on the far side. I hit the floor on my feet, grabbed the diary, and ran for the door like that room was being sprayed with machine gun fire.

  Xaphan shrieked as I hurled open the door, and tore down the hall, remembering the furniture along one side and keeping to my right.