Blood on the Bar

by Iain Rob Wright

  “Punished for what?” said Shaun, looking mortified by all the violence. “Being the freaking Devil?”

  “Yes!” said Vetta. “Last night, I see angel. It take away Lucas’s powers. It make him a man.”

  Jake frowned. “When did this happen?”

  Vetta glared. “It happen after you try to hurt me. Lucas saved me from you, Jake. You are monster that needs prison.”

  Everyone looked at Jake, but he gave no rebuttal. Instead, he looked ashamed and turned away. There was also a slight hint of confusion to his expression, like he genuinely didn’t know what she was talking about.

  Lucas watched from on his back until Annie came over and helped him to his feet. He had to clutch the bar to stay upright on his wobbly legs, but it was still better than the floor.

  Simon grunted, ready to go again, but Lucas kept him in place by raising a hand in surrender. “Whoa there, big guy! It wasn’t too long ago I would have dismantled you with a fart, but it appears I’m less capable nowadays, so just… take it easy, okay?”

  Simon folded his meaty arms and seemed partially satisfied by the plea, but to make a point, he grabbed Lucas’s pint and took a swig from it. A petty move perhaps, but pretty emasculating if Lucas was to admit it.

  “Look,” said Lucas, hoisting himself back onto his bar stool and leaning on the bar to keep from falling down again. “Can we at least keep things civil? It’s hard enough to think as it is without people beating me up.”

  “Then start talking,” demanded Annie. She may have helped him to his feet, but she clearly wasn’t on his side. She stood right next to him now and glared in his face.

  Lucas let his head slump forward. “You people don’t believe I’m The Devil, fine, but can you deny I healed Vetta right before your eyes?”

  Simon shrugged. “I don’t know her any more than I do you. You could both be a pair of scam artists for all we know.”

  “I am not this thing,” said Vetta. “I am not scammer artist.”

  “What would be our angle?” Lucas asked incredulously. “What could we hope to fleece from a bunch of confused labourers on their lunch break?”

  “Hey,” said Shaun. “I’m a mechanic—it’s a skilled job.”

  “And we’re both registered nurses,” said Shirley, gesturing towards Annie.

  “I’m just making the point,” explained Lucas, “that you’re not exactly a bunch of gullible sheiks. If Vetta and I were running some kind of scam, there are better targets.”

  “But you are responsible for whatever is going on,” said Annie. “We’re stuck in here because of you, right? Whether you intended it or not.”

  Lucas nodded. As little as he knew, that much was certain. “Yeah, sorry.”

  Annie went on, growing angrier even though her words became more conciliatory. “Vetta was at death’s door before you put your hands on her, I’m certain of it. I would have known if she was faking it. Somehow you fixed her, but I have no idea how that’s possible.”

  “Because he can heal people,” said Jake. “I keep telling you all!”

  “He is a magic man,” added Vetta, although she stated it as a condemnation.

  Simon sneered. “The Devil, you mean?”

  “I believe Lucas,” said Shirley, putting her bag on the table and pulling out some chewing gum and handing out strips to the group.

  Lucas gawped at the woman. “You believe me? You believe I am what I say I am?”

  The woman shook her head. “Not that you’re The Devil, no, but I believe you’re not the one doing this to us. Me and my Eric used to drink here all the time, years ago when the old owners had the place—two young girls, Kate and Laura. I don’t know if they were dykes, or just friends, but they were a lovely pair and ran a good bar. There was no reason they would have left so suddenly like they did. It’s always bothered me.”

  Max frowned. “What are you talking about? Julian’s always run the Black Sheep, long as I remember.”

  “And how long is that, Max? You’re what… twenty-one, twenty-two?”

  “Twenty,” said Annie, answering for her brother.

  “Exactly,” said Shirley, hoisting her handbag onto her shoulder as if she planned on leaving soon. “I’ve lived on this estate twenty years. The Black Sheep’s changed hands more than once, but Kate and Laura had it longest.”

  “And they just disappeared?” asked Annie. “With no warning?”

  “Yep! The pub closed with no notice whatsoever and was shuttered for months. Then, one sunny afternoon, I was walking by with some shopping, and the place was all lit up again, doors and windows wide open, smoke coming from the chimney. I went inside and found Julian stood behind the bar—said he’d bought the place, that Kate and Laura had moved abroad. Sounded iffy at the time, but who was I to stick my nose in? I thought maybe he’d blackmailed them on account of them being dykes or something, but I wasn’t about to get involved. It wasn’t until the local vicar went missing six months later that I really began to get suspicious about Julian.”

  “The local vicar?” said Max, intrigued like a child listening to a spooky campfire story.

  Shirley shrugged. “Malcolm was his name. Gave sermons at St. Peter’s on the corner. He and Julian used to hold all kinds of philosophical debates across the bar, and they both seemed to enjoy it, but one night, Malcolm got a little too drunk and started shouting about how he had discovered the truth about Julian. There was a bouncer back in them days called Carl, and he tossed Malcolm out on his arse. No one ever heard from him again.”

  “Shirley, you’ve never told me this,” said Annie.

  “The estate was a different place back then. You didn’t have Facebook or mobile phones. Sometimes you just stopped seeing people about. You assumed they moved away or were having problems. Haven’t given it a thought in years, but now, here we are, trapped with Julian nowhere to be seen. I’ve always had a bad feeling about that guy. My Eric never liked him either. We stopped drinking here after a while.”

  Once Shirley got talking, she was quite the authority, and her story had piqued Lucas’s interest. “Do you have any idea what the vicar was talking about the night you saw him arguing with Julian?”

  “No idea whatsoever. By that point he was the oldest piss-head in the pub. No one paid him much mind.”

  Simon was gripping the bar and shaking his head like he was going to kick off. When he spoke, it sounded like a bull snorting. “This is getting us nowhere. How do we get out? I’ve tried both exits and they might as well be made of titanium. I’ve tried the windows and they don’t even rattle. There’s not even…” His words trailed off, and he went back to brooding.

  Shaun, who was standing beside Simon, pulled a face. “What were you about to say, Si? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Simon scratched his beard, reticent to elaborate. “I, um, tried waiting at the window for someone to walk by and see us, but it’s like a ghost town out there. The chippy is open, but I can’t see a soul behind the counter. The supermarket on the corner is empty too. It’s lunchtime, and there’s not a soul walking by.”

  Lucas left his stool and went over to the long window at the front of the pub. The sky outside was grey, the weather non-existent. As Simon had said, the small shopping centre was deserted. The five or six shops all had their doors open and lights on, but no one came out and no one entered.

  “Ever see the Langoliers?” said Max, kneeling on the sofa beside Lucas.

  Annie frowned next to him. “That movie about the people on the plane and that annoying kid? What does that-”

  “It’s based on a Stephen King novella,” explained Max. “A bunch of people slip out of time and exist in an empty world. This is starting to feel a little like that.”

  “This isn’t like that,” said Lucas, putting things together in his mind, “but it’s not far off, I suppose. I don’t know how exactly, but I think Julian has pulled us out of reality and isolated us. The doors won’t open because they’re not really doo
rs. We’re stuck inside a cage, and even if we make it outside we will find ourselves no better off. In fact, we’d probably be in an even worse predicament. The only way to solve this is to get a hold of Julian and find out what he wants from us.”

  “What he wants from you,” corrected Shaun. “He has a grudge against you, not us. I don’t see why he won’t just let the rest of us go.”

  Lucas sighed, but had no recourse except to agree. “You all have the right to be angry at me,” he glanced at Vetta, wounded when she looked away, “but I promise I’ll try to fix this. You just have to trust me.”

  Annie cackled. “Ha! Sure, let’s trust The Devil.”

  “Yeah, well, laugh it up, because I’m the best you’ve got.”

  Lucas stood in the messy back-office wondering where to start. He’d expected things to be staged, but it appeared to be an actual working office, with genuine accounts and a lock-box full of petty-cash. He even found a chocolate bar in the top drawer of a desk. Whoever Julian was, he seemed to actually be running a pub—one that was losing money by the looks of things. But surely that had nothing to do with this? Had Lucas affected Julian’s business in some way? Was that what this was about? It seemed unlikely, but men could be needlessly petty. Julian was some kind of powerful warlock, possibly even a demon or a pathwalker, so it seemed trivial to be running a pub, but there was a reason for everything.

  What was the man’s true agenda?

  Someone walked into the room behind Lucas; it was Vetta. She struggled to meet his gaze when he smiled at her. “Thank you for healing me,” she said in a quiet voice, then turned to leave again. It seemed like she had come to talk, but then found herself without anything to say. She was beating a hasty retreat.

  “I wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t first…” He closed his eyes and fought a tightness in his throat. “Vetta, I’m so sorry for what I did to you. Being human is new to me. I acted before I knew what I was doing.”

  She glanced back and managed to meet his eye. “You did not know what would happen?”

  “No, I…” Don’t lie to her. “I knew what I was doing. I knew.”

  She turned away. He couldn’t tell if it was disgust, anger, or something else making it impossible for her to look at him. “I wish to help,” she muttered.

  “No, Vetta. Stay away from me. I’ve hurt you enough.”

  “Yes, and it is not over. We are all trapped here because of you. I will not do nothing. I will not be powerless.”

  Lucas looked at her, tried to read what she was thinking. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She folded her arms and locked her jaw even as she spoke. “When I was little girl, my papa used to let me help him around our little farm. I would help feed pigs and chickens, and plant tomatoes in ground. One morning, he take me to fix big wall around tractor shed, while my mama take my sister into town. He tell me to stand back, because wall is dangerous. He need to knock down and put in new bricks. I stand back and mix cement, and when I am doing this, I do not see snake in the grass. We do not have many snakes in Slovakia, but there was one right behind me. It slither onto my leg, and I scream. I am little girl and I scream like child. This frighten my papa. It frighten him so much he lose his balance and fall against wall. Bricks, they land on him, big pile, and he scream. I run over, and his head is bleeding. I see teeth broken in mouth. He is trying to speak but cannot. He is turning blue. I try to move bricks, but…” There were tears in her eyes. “I am just a little girl. They are too heavy to move. I cannot take them from my papa, and they crush his chest. He cannot breath. He die. My mama and sister are poor now because my papa is gone and cannot work farm, because I was stupid girl who could not lift bricks. Stupid girl who scream at snake.”

  She met his gaze then, and Lucas understood what she was saying to him. She couldn’t be a powerless bystander. She needed to take charge of what would happen to her next. She rolled up the bottom of her top and pulled down her jeans. On her hip was a tattoo of an adder. “This remind me not to be scared of snakes.”

  Lucas sighed. He had no right to show her horrors and then expect her to close her eyes. She was part of this now. “I need to know who Julian is,” he told her. “Can you help me search this office?”

  Vetta smiled and they got to work, sifting through piles of papers and ring-binders on the shelves. It looked like they wouldn’t find anything useful, but then Vetta discovered a safe behind an oil painting of a purple-flowered tree. She stood back and looked at the safe. “You think money inside, or something else?”

  “I don’t see a way of finding out, unless you know how to crack a safe?”

  Vetta frowned. “You cannot open with powers?”

  “I’m as human as you are, Vetta. More or less.”

  “You heal me,” she argued. “You cannot open metal box?”

  He decided she might have a point. He had lost his angelic powers, yes, but evidentially not all of them. What still remained? What could he do? Feeling idiotic, he placed both palms against the safe like he had when he’d healed Vetta and Jake. This time, he didn’t want to heal. He wanted to destroy.

  He felt something. A tingling in his fingertips. Vetta watched him anxiously, and he pictured her beaming as he burst open the safe, as if impressing her would somehow repair her opinion of him. A stupid thought. Why were human minds so prone to fantasy? Why did he care what this girl thought of him?

  “Nothing is happening,” Vetta eventually said, looking at him as if she was missing something.

  Lucas removed his hands from the safe and grunted. “I can’t do it. I thought for a second I could, but I can’t.”

  “Then we must try something else.” She felt around the edges of the safe but kept her eyes on him. “You say this place is no longer part of reality, so why not the safe be open?”

  “Because it’s still a safe. I can’t crack steel.”

  Vetta scowled at him like she was about to kick him in the backside. “Do magic! Like when you put Julian inside my body. You did magic then, do magic now!”

  Shame rushed to the front of Lucas’s mind and made him look down at the worn carpet they were standing on. She was right; he needed to try harder. He might not have the innate power he once did, but he still had some of his knowledge. Did he possess, somewhere in his mind, a spell that could get a safe open?

  Maybe.

  Probably.

  Yes!

  “We need to get the others,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  It was a tight squeeze, assembling everybody inside the office, and they had to back right up against the wall. Simon, being the largest of the bunch, had to scrunch up like a crisp packet. “What is this achieving?” he asked grumpily as he bumped up against the desk. “I thought you wanted the lot of us to keep out of your way.”

  “I changed my mind,” said Lucas. “We’re going to do a little magic trick instead. Let’s call it… Open Sesame.”

  “You want to get this safe open?” asked Shaun, frowning. With his tattoos and slick-backed hair, he looked like the type of guy who might have some experience in getting safes open, but it wasn’t to be for he gave no offer of help. “You have a stick of dynamite you’re not telling us about?”

  The next question came from Max. “What do you hope to find inside?”

  Lucas shrugged. “More answers than we have right now. I think I can unlock it with your help.”

  “You mean like when Vetta tried to help you?” said Annie. “That worked out really well for her.”

  Vetta started fidgeting with her top. She wouldn’t look Lucas in the eye again. “Last magic trick hurt me very bad. I not want to do another.”

  Asking Vetta to help was contemptible, but what other option did Lucas have? There was no whiff of a solution except for, possibly, getting whatever was inside this safe. “None of you will get hurt,” he told them. “I promise. My word means nothing to anyone here,” he glanced at Vetta, “and it’s downright tarnished for some, but I won’t p
ut any of you in unnecessary danger. I think I have a way to open this safe, but I can’t do it without the rest of you.”

  “Who cares what’s in the safe?” said Simon. “It’s probably just papers.”

  “We need to know who Julian is,” said Lucas. “Whatever is inside might provide answers.”

  “And money,” said Shaun. “If there’s money, I want some.”

  Everyone gave a chuckle.

  “I say go for it,” said Jake. “What other ideas do we have?”

  Max shrugged, seeming to suggest he was on board. Vetta stared at the floor, but she muttered her assent. They all wanted to get out of this pub.

  “I want to get to Bingo tonight,” said Shirley. “There’s a rollover jackpot, and if my Eric goes and wins it without me, the bugger will do a flit.”

  “Shall we get this over with?” said Simon, wincing as his hip crunched up against the desk. “I’m feeling claustrophobic.”

  “Okay,” said Lucas, feeling something bordering on positive as he contemplated finding some answers. It was a long shot, but at least it was something. “You won’t like this,” he said, “but we all need to hold hands. Magic needs a circuit, just like electricity, or it will drain away. Once we have the power inside of us, we need to keep it contained.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “What the hell, man?”

  “Just humour me,” said Lucas.

  Simon grunted, but he took Shaun and Annie’s hands either side of him without further complaint. The rest paired up as well, and together they made a ragged circle. Lucas caught Vetta staring at him, but she looked away as soon as he made eye-contact. Jake was grinning like he expected to be entertained, but everyone else just looked awkward and depressed.

  “We’re going to perform a simple unbinding spell,” Lucas informed them. “Egyptian priests used it to seal and unseal tombs. I’m pretty sure I remember the words, but while I speak them, I need you all to focus on the safe. I need you to will it open. I shall channel your demands and get them to the relevant authorities.”

  Simon pulled a face. “And who might that be?”