Josh and the Magic Vial

by Craig Spence

  Startled, Frank leapt back from the bed. Then a strange thing happened. For a second he thought he saw shapes writhing in the darkness all around him. The phantom creatures had joined some kind of battle. They clawed and kicked at one another, and again he heard the faint rustling of wings and the gabble of ghostly voices. Through it all Josh mumbled fiercely and punched at things in the air.

  “Josh!” Mr. Dempster shouted, switching on the light, then hurrying back to his son’s bedside.

  “Get them out of here!” his son yelled. “Get them out!”

  “What, son!” Mr. Dempster cried. “What is it?”

  “The minions,” Josh moaned, retreating into the corner where his bed met the wall. “Get them off me!”

  “Son!” Mr. Dempster shouted. “There’s nothing here. Just you and me. Wake up!”

  Josh was awake, though. That’s what terrified Mr. Dempster. His son was trapped in waking nightmare. What could a father do about that? How could you fight what you could not see?

  Suddenly Mrs. Dempster flew into the room. “What’s going on!” she cried, hurrying to her son. Josh didn’t seem to recognize her. He struggled when she tried to hold him, cringing farther into the corner. “Hush!” she crooned. “We’re here my love. We’re with you.”

  Mr. Dempster heard sadness and resignation in her voice. He couldn’t help hearing it, even though he tried to shut it out, for it resonated with his own inner despair. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “I’m going to get dressed,” he said. “We need to get him to the hospital.”

  “Hospital?” She looked confused for a second, then she nodded gravely. “I’m afraid, Frank,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he answered. “Me too. We have to get him in right away.”

  She knew that of course, but Alison Dempster’s body wouldn’t consent. She said nothing, but stared back at her husband blankly. Finally she put her face in her hands and wept. “Oh my God!” she sobbed. “This can’t be happening, Frank. Tell me it isn’t happening.”

  43

  The minions buzzed thick as bees around Josh. He was vaguely aware of being guided downstairs and into the car. The swarm followed, pulling at his T-shirt and hair. The car door shut them out and Josh was grateful for a moment’s respite. Exhausted, he rested his head on his mother’s shoulder in the back seat.

  He tried speaking to his parents, but it was like talking from the bottom of a swimming pool. His words simply could not make it into their world. This frustrated him. He tried harder, talked louder, but all his mother and father heard were squawks and grunts — farmyard sounds that frightened them coming from their child.

  Hadn’t they seen the minions? Heard them? For a couple of seconds when his father had entered Josh’s room there had been a look of awareness. His father had believed. But Mr. Dempster had denied the evidence of his sixth sense and switched on the light, blinding himself to Josh’s reality. Only a highly developed occultist could see minions in the blare of daylight, Puddifant had said.

  Where was Puddifant anyway? Josh knew the inspector had not abandoned him. He felt Puddifant’s presence. But he could not see or hear him.

  Streetlights slid in and out of view. Josh, his head lolling over the back seat, watched them through the rear window as Mr. Dempster sped to the hospital. Then he found himself indoors under fluorescent lights. A doctor peered into his eyes using some kind of scope, then he was escorted into a curtained enclosure and left alone for a few minutes while the doctor and his parents talked in whispers.

  They had escaped the minions during their ride to Children’s Hospital, but Josh knew the reprieve would be short-lived. “ Minions are like mosquitoes in a swamp,” Puddifant had said once. “You can evade them for short periods by moving about but as soon as you stop to catch your breath, they’re on you again.”

  “Puddifant?” Josh moaned.

  The inspector appeared instantly, sitting on the rail of the bed. “I’m here my friend,” he said.

  “How am I doing?”

  “Bravely, lad,” the inspector smiled. “You have proved your mettle and must continue to fight against Vortigen no matter how desperate the situation appears. Resist my boy. Resist with all your heart,” he said emphatically and then he began to fade.

  “Where are you going?” Josh cried.

  “I am with you. I shall always be with you,” Puddifant promised. But as he spoke he vanished, a pulse of his light merging with the garish florescence of the hospital emergency room.

  Josh settled back into the pillows. That instant, he heard a gabbling from down the hall and the unmistakable sound of wings flapping. The minions flocked into the room. The air was filled with squawking and jabbering as they perched on the curtain tops and lined the rails to his bed.

  “He gave us the slip for a few minutes, but there’s no escape,” one of them cackled.

  “Vortigen will soon be on the wing. Then the chase will be over once and for all.”

  “Aye, and we shall be able to go home to Syde.”

  “Is he the one?”

  “He looks too scrawny to me, but only Vortigen can tell, eh?”

  44

  He comes!” a minion cried.

  The pack had followed when an orderly wheeled Josh up to the ward. They roosted wherever they could find room, waiting for their master. It seemed a long wait and Josh lost track of time, drifting in and out of sleep. He was aware of the minions and of Mrs. Dempster, huddled in a chair beside his bed . . . and suddenly of a distant pulsing sound coming from outside.

  Roused by their lookout’s warning, the minions shook their feathers noisily and hopped about on their perches. Others picked up the shout and turned it into a chant. “He comes! He comes! He comes!” Then suddenly the flock took wing, whirling round and round the room, a cyclone of misshapen spirits.

  Josh looked outside, straining to see what the minions were so excited about. It was near dawn, that interlude when the the stars seem most remote. He could see nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, the harder he looked, the more aware he became of a strange sensation, which he would later describe as “looking through worlds.” Bit by bit a new reality replaced what he’d always known. The hospital room and the scene beyond looked the same but everything was changed. The very structure of his bones had been altered. He shivered, elated and terrified at the same time. His bed, the instruments blinking in the grey light, the seemingly solid walls, the night sky . . . all of it had been dissolved and rearranged.

  “He comes!” the minions panted.

  Whump, whump, whump.

  Josh heard it first, then saw something. Or was it an aberration of his senses? No! There! He detected a form moving against the night sky. Whatever it was had compounded itself out of the dark soul of the universe. While Josh watched it took shape: leather wings rowing the heavy air; a muscular torso, flesh above, scales below; a face that seemed half-human, half-eagle. This was the creature that had haunted his dreams and infected his art. Only now it was real. Closer and closer it came. Josh cringed, expecting it to crash through the hospital window but it passed through as if glass were an illusion. Vortigen alighted beside Josh’s bed, shook his wings, then folded them at his back.

  “Hail Vortigen!” his flock cried in unison.

  “Begone!” he dismissed them.

  Twittering in panic and excitement the swarm dissipated, hurtling out the window, under the door, through the walls. Josh and the Lord of Syde were left alone, with Mrs. Dempster still sleeping in her chair.

  “The witch Endorathlil has summoned me with magic,”

  Vortigen informed him. “She has cast the Spell of Transmigration and offered you as a candidate.”

  “I’m not your heir. I don’t want anything to do with you,”

  Josh scowled.

  “Nevertheless, you will come with me this night and if you choose not to do pleasant duty in Syde, then I suppose unpleasant duty shall be your lot.”

  “But I don’t want to go!” Josh p
rotested.

  “What you want does not matter. Not even I can unsay the spell Endorathlil has uttered. The Ancient Law must be fulfilled. Kick and scream if you like, still you shall come.”

  “And my parents? What of them?”

  Vortigen sighed, whether out of sympathy or impatience, Josh could not say. “They shall suffer the greatest loss parents can know — the loss of an only child. Their pain cannot be averted.”

  “Yes it can!” Josh yelled.

  The creature stared impassively. Had it shown the slightest twinge of emotion — even anger — Josh would have felt a little better, but Vortigen did not flinch. He stared with unblinking, yellow eyes. “The Ancient Law will be fulfilled,” he repeated. “I am the Ancient Law. I cannot alter by so much as a jot what must be. You will come with me, Josh Dempster, and dwell in Syde.”

  “I’ll hate you forever.”

  “So be it,” Vortigen said, still unmoved. “But I believe your mentor has counselled otherwise. Love, not hate, is the weapon you must wield. Remember?”

  Was Vortigen mocking? Josh couldn’t tell. “You don’t think I can hold out against you,” he retorted. “You’re too arrogant to even consider that.”

  “Tut, tut!” Vortigen yawned. “I’m no such thing. It is not in my nature to doubt 10, 000 years of experience, however. No one has ever undone the Spell of Transmigration. You must try, of course, and in trying you shall learn the futility of resistance. After that, we shall come to terms.”

  “Terms?”

  “Aye, lad. That is the best we can hope for in the beginning. Perhaps with the healing of time, terms will give way to genuine trust.”

  “Trust!” Josh yelped. “Never! Not in a million years!”

  Vortigen received this outburst calmly, almost with disdain. He looked around the room, his eyes coming to rest on Mrs. Dempster. “Your parents are good people, Josh. I do not mean them harm.”

  Rage boiled deep in Josh’s gut. “Kidnapping their son isn’t harmful?” he snarled.

  “That is Endorathlil’s doing. She cast the spell, I simply uphold the Ancient Law. As I’ve already told you, I cannot do otherwise for the Ancient Law is my very nature.”

  The demon was inches from Mrs. Dempster, studying her closely. Josh struggled, but could not free himself from the binding force of Vortigen’s will. “Leave her alone!” he shouted.

  “Mum!”

  She is in another dimension. She cannot hear you,” Vortigen informed him. “You can only see her because I have kept the window open between our two worlds. That is one of my powers — overlapping dimensions. You will think it child’s play someday, jumping from one world to another, one century to the next.”

  “I don’t want your power.”

  “In her world you are still in a coma,” Vortigen continued.

  “If she awoke and looked at you now, she would see a sleeping child. I would not be here. The minions would be invisible too.

  She cannot see anything outside her own world.

  “Your other self may dream of this dimension. The human mind, primitive as it is, can maintain that much of a connection. Your other body will mumble my name and talk a lot of nonsense about places called Ormor and the Emerald Palace but no one will understand.”

  “Bastard!” Josh yelled.

  “They will attribute all your gibberish to the coma and forget about it soon after your other body dies, Josh.” Vortigen stepped away from Mrs. Dempster and looked straight at Josh. “You do understand that your other body is going to die? This is your world now. You will be born to it on the night of the New Moon but that is a mere formality. Your other body will never wake up again and already it withers.”

  “I hate you!” Josh sobbed.

  “You’ll be able to visit your old world, of course, if you accept your rightful position in Syde, for astral voyaging is one of the powers conferred upon the elite. If you reject what I offer, Syde itself shall be your prison. You will never be able to venture beyond its boundaries. Think hard on that, boy. Think what a torment it will be to know you shut the prison door yourself and threw away the key.”

  Josh said nothing. He stared angrily at Vortigen, hatred blazing in his soul.

  Mrs. Dempster opened her eyes and wondered for a second where she was. She had fallen asleep sitting, which left her with a crick in her neck and stiff muscles all over. The nurse had offered a cot, but she’d turned it down thinking she would not be able to sleep anyway. Now, as she recognized the dim outlines of the room, she wished she had done the sensible thing.

  “Oh God!” she moaned, hardly able to believe their circumstances. How could this have happened? Josh had hardly been sick a day in his life. Now he was wilting like a cut rose in a vase.

  She shuddered, remembering the dreams that had disturbed her fitful sleep. A swarm of hideous creatures had plagued her first. Like a cloud of wasps they’d infiltrated the room, too many to ward off. Then another more ominous presence took their place. An evil she could not even begin to describe had stooped next to her studying her with the cool calculating eyes of a bird of prey. She’d almost awakened but the spirit had paralyzed her with a potent spell.

  As soon as he released her, she bolted awake in the chair.

  “Josh!” she whispered.

  The slow rhythm of her son’s breathing told her he was asleep. Might he be aware of her anyway? She combed his hair with her fingers. His forehead was hot and damp. Perhaps he’d been dreaming too, wrestling in his sleep. Perhaps he’d been struggling against the imaginary beings that plagued him. Mrs.

  Dempster sighed unhappily.

  “Mum!”

  Startled, she looked at her son. “I’m here,” she said, taking his hand.

  “Mum, I can’t hold on anymore.”

  Mrs. Dempster’s heart contracted. “Josh,” she cried. “Don’t let go. Please, don’t”

  “I love you, Mother. You and Dad, you’re the best parents.

  The best!”

  “Josh!”

  “I have to go, Mum. Not forever. But I have to go.”

  “Josh! No!” she wailed, his name torn out of her.

  Then he lay very still. At first she thought he’d stopped breathing but with a shudder his chest rose then fell, rose and fell. Josh was alive, but barely. Alison Dempster knew her son had slipped into a coma from which he might never awaken.

  45

  For a moment Josh broke through the barrier into his former world. Had Vortigen permitted this? Josh couldn’t be sure, but he was glad he’d been able to say good-bye to his mother.

  Then the pull of Vortigen’s will overpowered him and he slipped into a twilight zone. A part of him realized that he was between worlds — in a state where all places, all things, and all ideas existed at one and the same instant. Nothing was complete. You could not see things, or hear them, or touch them, because the moment something existed that way you would have to be somewhere looking, or listening, or reaching out with your finger. This was a sensation of being everywhere at the same time.

  “From here you can materialize anywhere you please,” Vortigen informed him. “You can become whatever you want. Worlds come into being from this place. Everything that is born begins here, and everything that dies returns.”

  Despite himself Josh asked what the place was named.

  “It is not a physical place. It simply is, always. It exists outside space and time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You are not meant to. The soul of the universe is and always shall be a mystery.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I am only revealing what you have always known. Enough! Now we must re-enter the realm of sense. We could, of course, simply appear in Syde or anywhere else, but I like to make something of a grand entrance when I’ve been away. It reminds my subjects who I am. So we shall go in procession. Prepare yourself, Josh Dempster, for a trip the likes of which you have never experienced.”

  Suddenly the t
wilight that had shrouded them dissipated. “Arghh!” Josh cried, for he found himself suspended outside his hospital window — three floors up. He caught a fleeting glimpse of his mother cradling him in her arms, then felt himself turning and floating up into the indigo sky, higher and higher until the city spread out below them, its lights twinkling like a net of diamonds cast over the rumpled landscape. Off to the east, beyond the ragged rim of the Coast Mountains, dawn already warmed the waking planet, its cheerful light tingeing the sky.

  “From this vantage your world is beautiful, is it not?”

  Vortigen said.

  Josh did not answer.

  “You will be able to visit any time you like, of course. That will be your privilege. But why would you restrict yourself to this middling planet when there are so many others to explore? Worlds beyond worlds await you. Worlds whose wonders eclipse anything you will ever see here.”

  “This is my home,” Josh said.

  “Home to an ant is a tiny mound of dirt,” Vortigen mocked.

  “He cannot imagine anything more grand. Home to a dog is the backyard of his master’s house and perhaps a few blocks in the surrounding neighbourhood. That is the extent of his knowledge. Home to most humans is a city, or perhaps a country, or — for an enlightened few — the entire earth. But to an Astral Voyager home encompasses the universe. There is no place that is not home.”

  “That’s the same as saying you have no home at all!” Josh objected.

  “You are a keen observer and thinker, my friend,” Vortigen laughed. “In time I hope to have an answer to that remark, but you are not yet ready and we must go.”

  Before Josh could say another word, they rocketed into the brightening sky, the minions trailing like the tail of a comet. “Yaaaa!” Josh yelled, half in terror, half in delight. Higher and higher they zoomed, until the twinkling lights of the city merged and were transformed into a glittering gem in the velvet folds of the Fraser Valley. To the east, the sun blazed majestically; to the west, the sequined cloak of night fled over the Pacific.