Debris & Detritus

by Robin D. Owens

  Stephen grunted in agreement, and the two gods exchanged long looks, silently communicating their disappointment with the modern world and its inhabitants.

  “Do you have some tea?” Susan asked. “Not for them—that’s what started all this. But I’m gasping.”

  Stephen opened the door to the left to reveal a neat but snug kitchen, well equipped with all the equipment a budding chef would need and which would also usefully double up as a necromancer’s tools of the trade.

  She hoped he cleaned his tools between uses.

  “Earl Grey, or something more robust?” he asked.

  She followed him into the kitchen, pressed up against him so she could feel the heat of his body and catch the scent of herbs in his hair. Stephen wasn’t objecting to her closeness.

  “Earl Grey will be fine,” she replied. “Have you any ideas about how to get rid of our guests? They say they can’t go home until they’ve answered my prayers and I don’t have any that need answering, unless you count the trains running on time, and I don’t think they’re powerful enough to sort that out . . . ”

  Stephen snorted with laughter. “I don’t think anyone is.”

  “And they can’t go home, even if they wanted to,” Susan continued. “Apparently, they don’t know how.”

  Stephen filled the kettle, and set it to boil. “Standard dismissal charm work, level one, with a couple of extra ounces of salt should see them off. But not until you’ve had your prayers answered. Of course, you could always argue that they’re too late, they were already answered when you met me.”

  “You’re cute,” she said, and nudged him with her hip to ease the sting of her words. “But not that cute.”

  “I’ll settle for cute,” he said.

  “And I really am grateful for your help with these two,” she added. “Can you imagine what havoc they would cause on a job?”

  As it turned out, they didn’t have to imagine.

  Susan got another text, another job, another trip across town, and two bulky shadows who refused to be left behind.

  “What if you need us?” Debris said.

  “You’d look very silly getting yourself killed when we could have saved you by answering a prayer,” Detritus said.

  So, in the end, Susan took Debris and Detritus along with her and couldn’t prevent Stephen from following along behind. Not without a strong hex, and hexing is no basis on which to form a relationship; certainly not in the first few months, anyway.

  “All right, but we’re going by taxi this time,” she said.

  Her employers had an account with a taxi firm. It was supposed to be for emergencies, because even they had to admit that you couldn’t take a tentacle monster on a bus, even in the shabby parts of town.

  Debris and Detritus took some persuading to get in the back of the car, eventually taking the long seat at the back, leaving the two smaller facing seats to Stephen and Susan.

  “I could get used to this,” Stephen said. “I usually get a bus, not a taxi.”

  “The London commuter is a patient unquestioning beast, but there are limits,” Susan said. “I just dread to think how long it will take me to get my expenses back.”

  “We could help with that,” said Detritus.

  “Best not,” Susan said. “I can’t imagine what the finance department would make of divine intervention, but it would probably lead to additional forms to be filed in triplicate and probably docking my pay to boot. Gits.”

  “If you’re sure,” said Debris.

  “Very,” Susan said firmly.

  They made the half-mile trip across London in the rush hour in forty minutes, which seemed suspiciously fast, but both the gods denied divine intervention.

  “Probably just Luck,” said Debris. “She’s always been very helpful to us. I think she likes Detritus.”

  Detritus blushed.

  “You don’t owe her any prayers though,” Debris added. “She’s funny about that sort of thing. Whenever you call on her, she goes away.”

  “If only,” Susan murmured.

  The taxi drew up outside a typical Edwardian-style north London villa, red brick with white and black bricks picking out a geometric pattern above and below the bay windows surmounted with pitched roofs. A man was standing outside, looking up and down the road with an expression that hovered between worry and hope.

  “I believe you’re expecting me,” Susan said, holding out her hand in greeting. “I’m Susan.”

  “I’m Nigel. I was told it was just you,” he said, peering at her companions with suspicion.

  “They’re trainees,” she said. “They’re accompanying me on a learning experience. Gives them a taste of field work in a supervised and safe environment and gives me someone to help carry any equipment.”

  “Oh,” Nigel said, his brow clearing. “That makes sense, I suppose. I suppose you’d like to come inside?”

  “I don’t think we want to attract any more attention than we have to,” Susan said.

  “No.” Nigel looked down the road again, checking for twitching net curtains and worrying about the effect of this on house prices. He gestured for them to go through the front door ahead of him. The entrance hall had the original flooring tiles, or good reproductions, and tasteful cream walls with cornices and a ceiling rose round the light fitting. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Not for the apprentices,” Susan said quickly. “And not for me, either. I’d like to get started straight away.”

  Denied the usual courtesies, Nigel floundered for an instant, unsure how to handle the arrival of paranormal specialists in his home. “Right. It’s upstairs.”

  “What is?” asked Stephen.

  “The ghost,” Nigel said uncertainly.

  “Trainee,” Susan mouthed, and shook her head despairingly at the difficulties of educating young people today. “Upstairs you say?”

  Nigel nodded. “Do you want me to show you?”

  “That’s all right. We can find our own way,” Susan replied. “It’s safer if you stay down here.”

  Nigel didn’t argue.

  Susan headed up the stairs in the lead, with Stephen close behind, and Debris and Detritus bringing up the rear with a noisy clatter.

  The ghost was easy to find. There was a large damp patch in the middle of the hallway with a faint smell of the afterlife, mainly mould with a sharp tang of pain, and above it floated an ethereal figure wringing their hands and weeping.

  “She’s new, is she?” Susan shouted down the stairs.

  “Yes,” Nigel shouted back. “We’ve lived here twenty years, and this is the first time we’ve ever seen her.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to help her move on to a better world,” Debris said.

  “Or anywhere else really,” Detritus added. “I’m not sure we could get her into heaven, not looking like that. Her hair is a dreadful mess.”

  “Er, I’m not sure that . . . ” Stephen began, only to be cut off by Susan opening of negotiations with the errant magical being.

  “Right.” Susan fixed the apparition with a hard stare. “So, why are you haunting this house?”

  The pale woman made no reply, but just moved her lips in a soundless moan.

  “I can see you’re going to be difficult,” Susan said. “That’s all right, I’ve got all day.”

  “Perhaps we can help?” Debris offered.

  “Though I’m not sure we’ve got any dominion over ghosts. They’re not our bailiwick, as it were,” said Detritus. “Always happy to give it a go, if you’d like.”

  Debris stepped forward to look more closely at the ghost, stepped in the slime puddle, and lost his footing. He put a hand out to steady himself to no avail, crashed to the floor, putting his arm through the wall to make a large hole. “Oops,” he said.

  “No, thanks,” Susan replied, not taking her eyes off the ghost. It appeared to be smirking, and that wasn’t a good sign. It would be vomiting ectoplasm next . . .

  “What’s happ
ening?” Nigel shouted.

  “Just some preliminary work,” Susan replied. “There may be some slight scuffing of the paintwork, but we will take care of any damage tomorrow.”

  Detritus helped Debris to his feet, dusting him down and ostentatiously checking for injuries. He murmured something to his companion, but it was all Greek to Susan, largely because it was Greek.

  “I was just testing her reflexes,” Debris said.

  “Yeah,” said Detritus. “She seems a bit slow.”

  The entity snarled silently and poked a bony finger at Detritus, who stepped back, bumping into Stephen and treading on his toes.

  Stephen bit back a swearword and pushed Detritus forward again.

  “If we could all keep still for a moment?” Susan narrowed her eyes, assessing the haunting more carefully. Ah, there it was—the shimmering mark on the forehead, a sign to all who could read it that this was a supernatural entity of quite a different kind.

  “Perhaps you’d like to explain why you’re passing yourself off as a ghost?” she said.

  The figure drew itself up to a full seven feet, its head curling round to peer down at their little group, then stretched out long, clawed hands towards them, fingers passing through Susan’s body with a cold burn. Its mouth opened in a silent scream.

  “Seen it all before,” Susan said. “And better.”

  “Oh, be fair,” said Stephen. “The bad breath is quite impressive. It could melt paint at forty paces.”

  “You never met the demon of Pinner.” Susan shrugged. “Now that was bad breath. It took the paint off the skirting boards and melted the carpet. It was acrylic, being Pinner, but it was still impressive.”

  The demon glared at them.

  “Now, are we going to do this the hard way or the very hard way?” Susan asked. “And when I say hard way, I mean hard for you. I’ve had a bad start to the day, I’m dying for a cup of tea, and I’m not in the mood to be messed around by minor demons dripping all over the hallway floor. So you can bugger off back to wherever you came from and leave this family alone and save me the effort of a full exorcism, or I can make you. Which is it?”

  The demon waved its hands in the air, as if it were pleading for mercy.

  “Two choices,” said Susan. “Count of ten.”

  The demon shifted and swirled in an agony of indecision.

  “Ten, nine, eight . . . ” Susan marked the count off on her fingers, before she could reach seven, the pale figure shifted, shrank in on itself, and then finally disappeared.

  “That went well,” Stephen said.

  “If you can trust it not to come back as soon as my back is turned,” Susan replied. “I’ll get the clean-up team to check up tomorrow, and sort out the watery mess while they are at it, and the hole in the wall. The technical geeks would love to get their hands on some samples to run tests on.”

  Debris and Detritus said nothing but shambled after Susan and Stephen as they descended the stairs.

  A nervous homeowner was waiting for them. “That sounded . . . noisy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susan said. “It wasn’t our best work, I admit. The stain on the carpet was already there, but the hole in the wall is new.”

  Nigel spluttered. “That’s not good enough.”

  “You are free of a ghost,” Susan returned coolly, “which was actually a demon, so it could have decided to eat you when it got bored, so a hole in the wall is a small price to pay. However, some of my colleagues will be round in the morning to help with the tidy up.”

  Susan paused. Nigel said nothing.

  “There’s no need to say thank you,” she said. “Come on, you lot. Let’s get out of here.”

  They were followed out to the kerb by the sound of Nigel muttering something unflattering about trainees under his breath. Clearly, he didn’t want to risk the return of either the ghost or Debris and Detritus.

  “Shall we smite him?” Debris said.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Susan replied.

  “Not our job,” Detritus said. “We’re not bad gods, tempting people from the path of good. We leave that to others.”

  “Zeus,” Debris said, very quietly.

  “Aphrodite,” Detritus said just as quietly.

  “All of them, really,” said Debris.

  “They’re just looking for an excuse for a smiting,” Detritus said.

  “They’re no fun,” Debris concluded.

  It was a sombre group that headed back to the warehouse in another taxi summoned by Susan. She didn’t want gods hanging round any longer than necessary, but they were harmless and good natured, if clumsy, and she had some sympathy for their position. Gods were bastards, and the problem with Debris and Detritus was that they weren’t bastardly enough.

  And she didn’t have time to teach them how to be gits before she sent them home.

  “Tea?” Stephen asked as soon as they were through the front door.

  “Thanks,” said Susan.

  “Yeah,” said Debris.

  “If we could,” said Detritus.

  Stephen looked at Susan, then shrugged. “Ok, tea and biscuits all round, and you can owe me a favour.”

  “It’ll have to be a small one,” Debris said.

  “We’re not much good,” Detritus added.

  “Nonsense,” Stephen replied. “You’re just not suited to the rough and tumble of demon smiting. It’s only to be expected—you’re only trained to smite humans.”

  “You’re just being kind,” Debris said.

  “Yeah,” said Detritus.

  They collapsed into a small heap of godly misery on the broad sofa, and watched whilst Stephen and Susan made the tea and put biscuits out on a plate for them all to share. The two of them eyed the offerings, then snaffled the Jaffa cakes.

  “We will hear your prayers,” Debris said, his voice muffled by crumbs.

  “Mmmph,” added Detritus.

  “The bookcases,” said Stephen.

  Everyone turned to look at them.

  “I need more room for books,” he said. “And I can’t put up more in here without disturbing the dark magic flows. So, I was wondering whether you could, in answer to my urgent entreaty, knock through into the next universe so I can put up some extra shelves.”

  “Yeah,” said Debris.

  “Easy,” said Detritus.

  There was a strange sense of the world pressing down on them hard, and then it eased off, and there was a dark gap between two of the bookcases about a book’s depth across, but stretching off into a dark, fathomless void.

  “Cool,” said Stephen.

  “Very cool,” said Susan.

  Debris and Detritus perked up a bit at that.

  “Maybe the other gods are missing you by now,” Stephen said.

  “Maybe,” said Debris.

  “We still can’t go back until we’ve answered your prayers,” said Detritus.

  “You’ll just have to come up with a prayer for them to satisfy,” Stephen said. “Salting them just won’t work otherwise.”

  “I can’t accept any favours from a supernatural entity. It’s against the rules—you never know when if you’ll end up in their debt if the favour is bigger than your payment, and, frankly, the forms you have to complete to record it go on for pages and pages.” Susan shook her head at the heavy burden of bureaucracy she had to carry whilst saving the world.

  Stephen nodded. “It’s why I prefer to freelance. No one audits my expenses, no one second-guesses what I’ve done, and my Friday nights are my own.”

  Susan flinched at the mention of expenses. “Do not bring audits into it.”

  “I could always have a word with Hades,” Stephen said. “He does fall within my purview as necromancer, even if I’ve retired. A bit retired anyway.”

  Debris sighed. “He’s not very fond of us.”

  “Not fond at all,” Detritus said.

  “So you want some leverage to bring to bear on him,” Stephen said.

  “Well, now I may b
e able to help there.” Susan grinned the grin of someone with a good idea and a big enough lever to move a god.

  The process for summoning Hades for, as Stephen put it, a friendly chat was quite simple. There was no blood involved, no chickens, no Latin incantations, and the circle was already drawn and built into the floor, which saved a lot of time.

  Hades was summoned using Greek, of course.

  He was shorter than Susan expected, and very hairy. He wasn’t the most godly god she had ever seen and definitely warranted the lower case nomenclature.

  “Evening, Hades,” said Stephen. “Nice to see you—how’s things keeping?”

  “Well enough,” replied Hades. “And why do you summon me, mere mortal? And how are things going with your young lady? Have you fed her some pomegranate seeds yet?”

  “Early stages,” Stephen said, with a sideways glance at Susan. “Plenty of time for the pomegranate later, I always say.”

  “Meet the mother first,” Hades said. “That’s my advice. Always meet the mother before you start sharing fruit with a desirable maiden. I’d have had a lot less grief in my life . . . ”

  Debris coughed. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” said Detritus.

  “What are those two doing here?” Hades asked, and there was a hint of thunder and smiting in his voice.

  “They need to go home,” Susan said.

  “No,” said Hades.

  Debris and Detritus tried to look appealing, and failed.

  “I am not giving them house room,” Hades said. “Heaven isn’t big enough for the both of us.”

  “I’m sure we can to some arrangement.” Stephen waved his hands in an encouraging manner. “A favour for a favour—Susan here is very persuasive. She can persuade the tits off a demon. She could persuade Persephone to stay in Hell with you for a bit longer this year, or at least persuade her mother to allow it. It’s not as if anyone would mind spring being a bit shorter this year. What with global warming and all, hardly anyone would notice.”

  “My wife and I are perfectly happy with the arrangements as they are.” Hades frowned. “If you spend too much time together, the magic fades.”

  Stephen snorted in disbelief, which he turned into a cough.