by T. S. Mann
It spoke no discernible words, but somehow, brutal, prehuman concepts poured into Luke’s mind all the same, concepts that he was able to understand as clearly as any speech. Terrified, Luke staggered back from the Pit’s edge and fell on his ass. Shaking uncontrollably, he turned back to the old man and nearly shrieked.
“Wha ... what the ... fuck?!?”
“That was the Reaper, Luke, the embodiment of endings, the avatar of death, the true source of every single fear that mankind has ever had. But why does it frighten you so? You were ready for death just a few months ago.”
Nearly overcome with fear, Luke could barely speak. “That thing is ... it’s like ... it wants to eat ... everything?!?”
The old man laughed. “Eventually, perhaps. Right now, it is content to devour only those things whose time has passed. The universe has trillions of years left in it. Well, unless Lindsay’s masters have their way with it first.”
The old man pointed up, and Luke slowly followed his gnarled finger. The air itself seemed to shudder, and thunder rolled from somewhere in the distance. Then, for just a second, he saw the black sky above crack into a spider web of fissures before repairing itself back into perfect darkness.
Beyond those cracks, though, Luke could make out ... things straining to burst through. Impossible, unnatural ... things. His eyes bulging in fear, Luke turned back to the man who regarded him imperiously.
“Chaos. Madness. The undoing of reality itself. Death is a natural part of Reality, you know. However sad or frightening or unfair it is, death is necessary. Everything must end, or nothing new would ever start, whether that ending comes for a life, a love, or in your case, a childhood that has gone on too long. But if those who dwell Beyond have their way, even death will die, and all our sufferings will be truly endless.”
Around them, the bitter wind started to pick up, and the edges of the Pit started to crumble and fall.
“Your time here is ending, Luke. Your choice is binary, and it is stark. Accept what you have seen and embrace your destiny … or deny it and return to the living world as a helpless lamb ready for the slaughter.”
Luke held up a hand to shield his eyes from the rising wind. “If ... if it’s my fault that Matt’s in danger, maybe I deserve to die.”
The old man laughed again.
“As always, you’re so eager to blame yourself and demand punishment. What you deserve no longer matters, Luke. What matters now is what you choose. If you are responsible for your brother’s fate, are you not obligated to try and set things right rather than just wallow in your own weaknesses?”
The ground shook, and Luke struggled to maintain his balance. The old man raised his voice to be heard over the din.
“You know what your problem is, Luke? You’ve never been as afraid of death as you should have been. And you’ve always been far too afraid of death’s terrible alternative. You’re afraid that somehow, whether you want to or not, you’re going to live!”
“Who are you?!?” Luke screamed over the sound of rumbling earth.
The old man smiled at him, and his eyes flashed green, the same green as Luke’s own. “I’m your worst nightmare.”
Luke stared into those green eyes for a long moment as the wind picked up around him, and he slowly nodded his head in comprehension. Then, he closed his eyes, and agreed to a bargain he didn't even realize he'd been offered.
1 November 2010
A dingy basement somewhere just after dawn ...
Luke woke up with a gasp. He was somewhere else now, neither an abandoned church nor a blasted hell-plain. It looked like he was in a dark basement, and as sat up, he suddenly realized that his hands were bound to a metal pipe with manacles and heavy chains that gave him a few feet of play but not quite enough to stand. He looked around to take in his new surroundings by the dim light of a single hanging bulb.
A filthy concrete floor, cool against his bare legs. Dirty brick walls. A small wooden desk with a thick, leather-bound book on it. A few old chairs tossed haphazardly around the room. The smell of piss and shit, both which he was pretty sure were not his own. More pipes running to and from a large metal boiler. Apparently, it not a functional one, at least; the room was quite cool, and would have been freezing had there not been a small electric space heater.
Next to the heater was a ratty mattress with a disheveled sleeping bag and pillow on it, and on the floor nearby was a duffel bag and an electric clock unfortunately positioned so that he could not read it. Nearby was a wooden door, the only visible exit, which was well out of Luke’s reach.
Oh, and there was also a large goat tied to another pipe about five feet away to his right. That seemed out of place. The goat looked at him wide-eyed, as if to say: “Hey, don’t look at me! I don’t know how we got here either!”
What it actually said was: “Baaa!”
Luke pulled on the chains for several minutes without success. As he wondered what to do next, he suddenly noticed that a small medallion he’d never seen before was now hanging from his neck by a thin metal chain. He turned it over to examine it. It looked like a piece of turquoise with several symbols roughly carved into it.
He didn’t recognize the symbols, but they looked Norse, like runes or something. Then again, for all he knew of Norse runes, they could have been copied from an old issue of The Mighty Thor. Regardless of what the stone was, he decided that he didn’t want it around his neck and reached to pull it over his head.
Then, he screamed for about six straight seconds.
Luke had never been tazed before, but from the videos he’d seen, he imagined that it felt something like what he just experienced. He looked down at the stone, which was resting comfortably and harmlessly on his chest. He reached up gingerly and poked it with a finger. Nothing. He next tried lowering his head to see if he could get the chain to simply fall off.
Six more seconds of agonizing pain.
After he recovered once more, he leaned back against the wall and thought. “Okay. It doesn’t hurt unless I actively try to take it off. So intent matters. Like it can ... read my mind somehow.” He looked down at the glyph again and studied it. “So what’s it for?”
He looked over at the goat, who didn’t seem to have any answers either. Shrugging, Luke laid back against the wall to wait. Somebody would come ... eventually. In the meantime, he closed his eyes and thought about what he had experienced – both the night before and during his strange dream – and about what it all meant.
Sometime later, his patience was rewarded, as the door opened. It was Lindsay. She was wearing the same clothes she wore at the church, so Luke guessed it was sometime the next morning. She had a large shopping bag in one hand and what looked like a strawberry milkshake in the other.
Lindsay did not acknowledge his presence at first. Instead, she dumped the contents of her bag out onto the little desk: lots of candles, a lighter, three small paint cans, packages of art brushes and other paint supplies, and a McDonald’s bag.
Oh, and one very large knife. According to the packaging, it was one of those that could cut through a tin can and still stay sharp enough to slice a tomato.
“Or a throat,” Luke thought darkly.
Lindsay carried the sack over to Luke and tossed it into his lap before returning to the desk where she bent over the book and started flipping pages. From Luke’s vantage point, he assumed it was a spell book of some kind.
Silently, he opened the sack and emptied the contents onto the floor. There was an Egg McMuffin, a couple of hash browns, a plastic container of orange juice, and the receipt. He studied that first – the receipt had a time stamp for November 1st at 6:22 a.m. The food was still warm, so he guessed it was still before dawn. His stomach growled, so he unwrapped the sandwich and dug in.
“Don’t suppose you brought me any pants, huh?” he muttered just loud enough to be heard.
She smiled without looking up. “Silly Luke. You’d just get blood all over them.”
“Uh-huh.�
�� He held up the runestone and shook it in her direction. “So, what’s this thing for?”
She turned to him with a curious expression. “Really? Everything you’ve been through since last night and the first question you have to ask is about your new jewelry?”
Luke calmly took a bite out of his sandwich and answered between chews.
“Well, it’s still a little blurry, but I think I have the basics down. You’re an evil witch with magic powers. You tricked me and the rest of the coven into helping you so that you could sacrifice us all to summon some sort of Lovecraftian demon. But it all went wrong, so you kidnapped me and brought me here.”
He washed his food down with some juice and continued. “I’m guessing there are probably some technical terms you’d use in place of witch or demon or whatever, but that’s the gist of it, right?”
She seemed impressed with his deductions. “Not bad! Witch is very politically incorrect, though. Magical folks like you and I are called Strangers, nowadays. The demon was just a beyonder and isn’t directly connected with H.P. Lovecraft. That was just me being theatrical.”
Her face reflected a sudden curiosity about her captive. “You are taking this all surprisingly well, aren’t you?”
Luke nonchalantly continued eating his breakfast. “Nerves of steel, Lindsay. Nerves of steel. Also, you haven’t answered my question.” He jingled the amulet again.
Lindsay studied him intently for a few seconds before deciding to play along with his game. “The sigils have several purposes, but mainly, they’re to block the flow of juice into you so that you won’t be able to use any magic against me.”
Luke opened his mouth to reply but stopped, looked down at the juice container in his hand, and back at Lindsay.
“Different kind of juice, sweetie. The kind I’m talking about is also called mana, chi, orgone energy, quintessence, aether and who knows how many other names. It’s the raw magical energy which we Strangers channel to work our magic. I wasn’t sure if you’d wake up shooting hexes at me like your brother did last night but didn’t want to take any chances. If you do magic, it will be my kind of magic.”
Lindsay flicked her wrist and a chair that had been lying on the ground next to the wall behind her suddenly righted itself and slid up to where she stood. She sat down without even looking at it. With supreme effort, Luke kept his poker face. He took another sip of juice and then regarded his captor with as much disdain as he could muster.
“So … you want me to learn Chair Magic? If I master wooden chairs as well as you, do I progress to recliners and sofas?”
She opened her mouth in amazement and then smiled deliriously.
“Why you little ... are you actually trying to provoke me?!?”
He smiled mischievously. “Maybe. So, what exactly was the game plan last night, anyway? You obviously went to a lot of trouble to get twelve willing stooges for your ritual, so it’s not like any dozen or so homeless bums snatched off the street would do. What were you going to sacrifice us for? Money? Power? A lifetime supply of nachos?”
She took a long drag on the milkshake.
“All part of a grand scheme now aborted, I’m afraid. Phase One was for the entire coven to experience what Strangers refer to as the Insight, the moment when you accept the existence of the supernatural and become a part of it. The beyonder – that was the thing possessing all the melted wax – would ensure that you didn’t just embrace one of the Higher Axioms, you would be exposed directly to the Great Beyond.
“I figured at least half of you would not only go strange, you’d immediately become chaos-magicians like me. If that had gone as planned, Phase Two would have involved the beyonder implanting fragments of its essence into each of the chaos-magicians’ souls, combining us all into a single gestalt entity. Then, we’d use our united strength tomorrow night, in conjunction with the Day of the Dead, to break down localized reality in the Greater Boston area before moving on to the rest of the universe.”
For a second, Luke nearly laughed. She sounded like some sort of ridiculous occult-themed Bond villain with a diabolical scheme for world domination. Then, he remembered that she was a psychotic witch with frightening occult powers and a really big knife. Still, he had her monologuing, so he chose to continue.
“Ooookay. What went wrong? I vaguely recall my brother throwing fireballs, which, I must say, really pisses me off. I mean, I was the D&D nerd in the house, not him.”
Lindsay gave a frustrated sigh. “Your brother’s Insight came just a little bit before I was ready. Too much weirdness for him, I guess. Worse, he attuned to the Paragon, which is, like, the one Higher Axiom that would let him disrupt my ritual even without any training at all. Beyonders and holy fire don’t mix well.
“At the time, I was unsure as to whether you had gone strange as well, and obviously, from the look of your aura, you have. A necrotheurge, I’d say. I suppose you must have reacted to the sight of my fight with Matt and then later with Electra. You completed your Insight while you were unconscious, and you attuned to the Reaper, which makes sense for your dreary black-clad personality.”
She paused if distracted and then smiled excitedly at him. “Hey, did you have any creepy, death-related dreams while you were out? Ingmar Bergman meets Clive Barker? That sort of thing?”
“Uh, one that I recall. And that makes me a ... I’m sorry, a Necro-what?”
“Theurge. Ne-cro-the-urge. It’s a Stranger who attunes to the Chthonic Axiom, better known as the Reaper. It’s awesome! It lets you control ghosts and shadows and fear and the cold. It lets you walk into graveyards or haunted houses and make them do what you say. You can even raise zombies and make people commit suicide just by talking to them. You’re gonna love it. Well, if I don’t decide to kill you later, you’re gonna love it.”
With that, she winked at him, and then turned back around to her grimoire. Luke swallowed another sip of juice somewhat painfully.
“That’s ... that’s just ... swell. What happened to the rest of the coven?”
Lindsay shrugged without looking up. “Probably dead, comatose or irrevocably insane. They were useless to me after that point, so I didn’t bother to check.” She took another loud slurp at the milkshake.
Luke’s blanched at her coldness, but he quickly covered by taking another bite of the sandwich and chewing until he had gotten hold of himself. His coven-mates had mostly been poseurs and losers, but they were still friends, and looking back on his former life, he had pretty much been a loser and a poseur himself. It could easily have been him left for dead on a cold church floor. After he regained his composure, he continued talking conversationally, as if he were not speaking to a madwoman.
“And Electra was the girl on the bike, right? Friend of yours?”
“Yeah. Well, she used to be, a long time ago. Then, I went somewhere she didn’t have the courage to follow. She’s been jealous of me ever since. Still holding a childish grudge over a petty slight after all these years.”
“What sort of slight?”
“Well, we were both interested in a guy, but he picked her over me, so I tortured him to death,” she said matter-of-factly. “She took it entirely too personally. Like I said, she’s really just jealous.”
That time, Luke nearly choked on a bite of a hash brown. It was getting hard to keep up this cool facade when, on the inside, he was fighting back panic as Lindsay’s madness became clear.
“Well, I ... guess some people are just small like that. So, um, what’s next? For me?”
Suddenly, a plaintive baaaa! from nearby startled him. “And ... the goat, I guess.”
“Weeeelll, the goat’s probably getting sacrificed later. As for you, I’m not sure yet. I guess it depends on how long your sanity holds out. Remember Plan B? Since I can’t realistically summon the beyonder again without a sanctified casting area and a support coven, I’m gonna see if I can drive you insane so that you become a chaos-magician like me.”
She looked up at the ceili
ng as if trying to remember something important. Then, she shrugged and looked over at Luke.
“That’s as far as I’ve gotten on Plan B, so far. After that, we’ll probably just have to improvise.”
Luke just stared at her, slack-jawed. After a few seconds, she leaned towards him and spoke with mock concern.
“What’s the matter, Luke? You’re not spouting witty smart-ass comments anymore. Is something wrong?”
After a few seconds more, Luke slowly licked his lips. His mouth felt very dry, and he really needed to pee.
“Sorry, Lindsay. You just … kind of threw a lot at me there. Took the wind out of my sails a bit. So – again purely out of curiosity – is there a Plan C?”
She giggled. “See, there’s that funny guy again! Yeah, Luke, there is a Plan C. If I can’t make you fall to chaos by midnight tonight, Plan C is to sacrifice the goat to summon a lesser chaos demon and then just have it possess you. You won't last very long, probably no more than a few hours before it burns out your brain and leaves a soul-dead husk behind, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do. And speaking of what a girl has to do ...”
She turned back to her table of supplies, picked up the knife, and ran her fingers along the blade’s edge. Luke spoke faster, panic creeping into his voice.
“Hey, listen, I know you’re eager to get started, but we ... we should hold off for a bit. I mean, I ... I just ate, right? Doesn’t that mean we should wait a half hour or something before I get tortured?!?”
At that, Lindsay laughed out loud, not her usual random giggling, but a belly laugh in response to Luke’s diversionary humor. Shaking her head, she picked up the knife and used it to neatly slice open a package of thin wooden paint brushes. She pulled out one of the brushes, examined its tip, and then turned to look at Luke again.
“I want you to know something, Luke. It really does make me very happy to know that you’ve made it through this whole experience so far without losing your sense of humor. It really and truly does.”
