by J. R. Mabry
“It’s not so bad,” Susan said. “Just call in sick. Consider it being down with the flu for a few days. You have your own room, you’ve got internet access, and Brian’s a hell of a cook. And the company’s not so bad, is it?”
Kat looked at Mikael and tried not to blush. “Looks like I’m camping out.”
“Could be worse,” Mikael smiled a weak smile.
“It could be, yeah.”
“What about me? I saw the sigil, too,” Mikael said.
“That’s complicated,” said Richard. “We’ve got to figure out what Kat’s brother was up to. I think Dylan and I should go check out the scene of the ritual at Kat’s brother’s house. I don’t want to go in there alone in case there’s still demonic activity. Terry, can you go and visit…what’s your brother’s name again?”
“Randy…Randall.”
“Terry, you visit Randy, and see what kind of reading you can get off him. See if he’s in there, the condition of his soul—whatever you can glean.”
“Will do.”
“What about me?” whined Mikael.
“You and Kat can give Brian a detailed description—verbally, mind you—of that sigil. Then you and Brian hit the books. If we’re lucky, we can find out which demon we’re dealing with here. Then, I want you to run down whatever addresses we uncover at the scene. I want to find out who Randall Webber was working with and where to find them.”
“But wait, he can’t leave the house. He’s in as much danger as Kat.”
“Terry, how hard would it be to ward Mikael’s car?”
“Not very. I could do it in about ten minutes.”
“Fine. Mikael, burn gall to get out to your car, and keep that shit handy just in case. You cannot leave that car, you hear me? If you have to stop for gas, burn the gall. If you have to pee, use a Snapple bottle—make sure to take one with you. If you have to shit, burn the gall all the way in to the gas station loo and all the way out, devil may care who sees or what they think of it. You got it?”
“Got it, chief.”
“All right. Mikael, you could be gone all day, so make sure to phone Susan every hour on the hour to check in. The rest of us, shall we meet back for lunch?”
Nods all around. “Then let’s get cracking.”
16
Dylan turned the key in the lock and entered the room tentatively. “Should we do a banishing?” he asked.
“Good question,” said Richard as they hovered on the threshold. “If we do, we clear out the space of any negative energy and protect ourselves, and that’s good…”
“But we also dispel any readable energy as well,” Dylan finished his sentence. “What do you want to do?”
“I say we preserve the scene and risk it,” Richard decided.
“Imitatio Christi, dude. Let’s sacrifice ourselves!”
“You know, for a straight man, you’re absolutely the biggest damned drama queen in the order.”
“Ah weel take that as a cahhmpliment,” Dylan drawled exaggeratedly, his best Scarlett O’Hara impersonation.
They entered and waited a moment for their eyes to adjust. At first, it seemed to be a typical single man’s home, except for the clammy feeling of cosmic dread that hung heavy in the place.
“You feel that?” Richard asked.
“Oh yeah. Heavy nasties goin’ on in here, that’s fer damn sure.”
Dylan went off to the right to investigate the bedrooms. Richard glanced at the piles of gaming magazines, the less-than-tidy kitchen. Then he rounded the corner into the living room. “Fuck…” he breathed.
Dylan caught up to him in a moment. “Hey, dude, bedrooms are a disaster, but nothing paranormal—whoa…”
Together they stared in awe. It was, in their eyes, a thing of beauty. The Circles of Evocation had been literally burned into the hardwood floors, creating a permanent working space that was both functional and elegant.
“God, how many hours must this have taken?” Richard wondered aloud, squatting to get a closer look. “It looks like it was done with a pen wood burner.”
“Some project, that’s for sure.”
The outer circle was about nine feet in diameter, a second circle set within it about a foot all around. Within the second, smaller circle, four Stars of David were set in each of the cardinal directions. The bottom tips of each of the stars formed the corner of a square in the center of the circle, each side of which was inscribed with one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. Just to the east of the circle was a triangle, each side about three feet long, with one side facing the circle. Within it was a little table containing a small white triangle of paper propped up behind a censer.
“Ain’t no question what this guy was doing here,” Dylan said, walking around the circle, still in awe.
“No, and he wasn’t taking the easy way, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, most magickians who know what they’re doing use the Heptameron grimoire—it’s the simplest and most foolproof method. But this isn’t the circle described in the Heptameron. This is the one from the Clavicula Salomonis, which is outrageously complex. Most people who use it are dabblers, and of course it always backfires on them because they’re just after kicks. They don’t want to do five years of preparation for a simple ritual, and so they cut corners and end up frying their livers when their evocation only results in a partial manifestation of the demon.”
Using a handkerchief, Richard picked up a wand from the floor and studied it. “This is almond wood. This guy did the prep, all right. He knew exactly what he was doing. And he was definitely raising demons, but to what end? What was he up to?”
Dylan wandered to the bookcase and whistled. “Quite a library, here, dude.” There were new, critical editions of all the major grimoires, and some ancient-looking leatherbound volumes he did not recognize.
Richard continued to study the circle, noting that just inside the circle was a table, and beside it on the floor, a crumpled tablecloth. In his mind’s eye Richard reconstructed the scene—the evocation, the magickian passing out, catching the tablecloth on his way down, pulling it all to the floor. Gently, he parted the folds in the tablecloth. A boat containing the Perfume of Art—otherwise known as incense, and a metal censor. “He’s lucky the house didn’t catch fire when this shit fell,” Richard said aloud.
Dylan was still studying the library. “Dude, Ah shouldn’t be looking at the books on the shelves—but the ones off the shelves!” He picked one of them up. “Milton,” he said, “Opened to the scene of Satan’s initial oration in Pandæmonium.”
Richard nodded and continued to study the triangle. “Here’s another one, dude,” Dylan said, moving to the sofa. “This one is describing…holy cow…it’s in Latin, but Ah think it says, ‘The Displacement of Souls.’”
He had Richard’s full attention now. He vaulted over the wreckage of the room to where Dylan was standing, hunched over a volume on the couch. The text was in Latin but was pretty standard stuff, and Richard was able to scan it pretty easily. It wasn’t a spell or a collection of spells, exactly. More of an analysis of the possibility of removing a soul from one body in order to reside in another. Near the bottom of the page, the names of two demons leaped out at him.
“It looks like our boy might have raised a demon—either Cephrastes of Crete or Articiphus—to remove his soul from his body and place it in another,” Richard said.
“So…if his soul was separated from his body, wouldn’t it be dead—the soul, I mean?”
Richard continued scanning the text but didn’t find anything relevant to Dylan’s question. “I would think so, but perhaps he’s running some kind of maintenance spell to keep the body going even if no one is home.”
“That sounds plausible.”
“So, the question is: Whose body is he in? And what’s happening with that person’s soul? Is it just being pushed aside? Or is Randy just sitting inside his or her brain, watching?”
“New adven
tures in espionage?” Dylan asked, carefully setting the book on the desk beside the Milton. He then reached for another text that was laying open. “Swedenborg, eh? Heaven and Hell. At least it’s in translation. Ah always loved Swedenborg.” He looked over the page.
Richard looked over his shoulder. It seemed to be a description of a particular neighborhood in Heaven—standard Swedenborgian vision stuff.
“What’s he interested in the geography of Heaven for?” Richard asked, moseying back to finish his investigation of the triangle.
“Ah don’t know, dude, but this section seems to be describing the downtown civic center area of Heaven.”
Richard picked up a cloth crumpled on the floor and shook it out. With a clatter, a cell phone fell from its folds to the floor. “Bingo,” said Richard.
“Whatcha got?” Dylan said. He marked places in all three books and put them in his shoulder bag before joining Richard in the circle and kneeling to examine the find. “Oh, it’s one of them old LG jobbers—Susan calls them ‘Barbie’s laptop.’ Was it flipped open like that when you found it?”
“Yeah. What does that mean?” Richard asked.
“Well, dude, that means that either he was text messaging someone during the ritual—highly unlikely, as you really don’t want to take your eyes off the demon, as you well know—or he was in speakerphone mode.”
They looked at each other. “Dyl, he wasn’t in this alone.” Richard fumbled with the controls. “I’m sure we can see what numbers he called just before the working, but—”
“Dude, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’d better let me handle it—or better yet, Susan. Don’t want to erase anything accidentally, and this is a pretty weird phone. As Ah recall, the reviews Ah read said the controls were not exactly intuitive. Let’s just take it home and pull up a PDF of the instruction manual and get at the info the right way. But yer right, we should be able to see who he called—or who called him. Might even give us the name, if it was a number he called regularly.”
“Okay. I think we’ve got enough for now,” said Richard, putting the phone in Dylan’s jacket pocket and fastening it. He patted it, and they both nodded—it was safe, and they both knew just where it was. “Let’s do one final sweep of the house to make sure we didn’t miss anything obvious,” Richard said. “But let’s take different rooms this time—I’ll take the bedrooms and bath; you take the garage and kitchen.”
“Check.”
Just as Richard emerged from the bedrooms after a fruitless sweep, he waited in the foyer for Dylan and felt a rush of excitement. Between the phone and the books—and the evidence at the scene—they had a lot to go on. As he was musing, Dylan wandered out from the kitchen, an odd and curious expression on his face. “Dude, what’s with all the avocados in the fridge?”
17
Terry arrived at the hospital in full clerical dress. He was always amazed at the nearly unlimited access his priestly uniform afforded him in such places. As long as he was wearing his priest’s collar, no one questioned him, no one stopped him, and nearly everyone gave him a deferential nod whenever he caught their eye. Only occasionally did someone look close enough to notice his earrings, and he always enjoyed the double take that precipitated.
He strode confidently to the information desk. “Randall Webber, please.”
The young student volunteer set her hand tentatively on her computer mouse like it was a dangerous beast she did not know how to control. “Uh…let me see…Webber…Webber…oh, here he is. Room 2107. The elevators are right through there.”
“Thank you.”
Terry found the room without any trouble and went inside. He had been curious to see what the magickian looked like. They all seemed to be of a type, in his experience. Randall was no exception, he was not surprised to note. Skinny, malnourished, usually asthmatic. But this magickian was also unconscious. Terry took a seat as he studied him.
With an effort of will, he softened the focus of his eyes and summoned forth his second sight. The web of energy that was what all things were made of became visible to him, and he marveled at the beauty and intricacy of it.
His jaw dropped, however, as his gaze was drawn to the magickian’s head. His crown chakra seemed to be spitting blue fire like the back end of a rocket. The force of it seemed positively violent, and Terry wondered how such a stream of energy could possibly be maintained. He saw the drain on the magickian’s body but also intuited that much of the energy came from another source. And not a good one, he thought.
He approached the body and laid hands upon it, feeling for the presence of some entity within, human or demonic. He was expecting to detect the presence of the magickian’s soul, incapacitated by a chakra system blown to shit, like so many exploded fuses from one end of his torso to the other.
What he found made him pull his hands back in shock. What he sensed within was not human nor demonic. He looked again at the blue light and noted a slight violet tinge to it. “Holy shit,” he whispered to himself.
Terry laid hands on the magickian’s body once more and felt into him with the energy of his own body. The doctors apparently had been quite correct. Except for the deterioration one would expect from a body as sedentary as a computer programmer’s, one that subsists almost entirely on Pringles and Coca-Cola, he was perfectly healthy. Terry detected two minor cysts and a few cancerous cells that were, even as he detected them, being adequately defeated by the magickian’s immune system. As normal as normal could be.
Except, of course, for the energetic anomaly, and that was quite a thing to behold. Terry felt around for the presence of some entity and was beginning to think that the body was vacant, being kept alive by some sort of demonic life support when he encountered the Sleeper.
It was a subtle presence, almost undetectable. He thought at first that it might be a very weak demon, but the energy was all wrong. He surrounded the Presence with his own energy and examined its nebulous edges, its interface with the body. This, he found, was nonexistent.
Terry was not sure what to do. Should he leave the Sleeper as he was, unconscious and trapped in the magickian’s body? Or should he try to connect the two, give the being a chance to emerge into consciousness? The image he got was of a fetus curled into a ball, protected from the wild world in a womb of alien flesh.
Terry hesitated. Who was he to bring forth this life into consciousness? Could he even do it? Should he? Terry considered phoning Richard or Brian, but then he glanced out at the hallway and wondered just how long he had before his presence would be detected, and perhaps challenged. He could hardly justify a pastoral visit to an unconscious patient that lasted more than five minutes. His mind raced—what to do?
He swallowed and made his decision. He laid hands upon the magickian once again and felt out for that place where the seat of the soul connects to the meat of the body. With quick but uncertain movements of his mind, he joined the two and then fell back on his ass as the magickian’s mouth snapped open and emitted an overpowering and unearthly howl of pain.
18
Kat looked up from where she was seated at Dylan’s computer station and stared for a long moment at Susan, who was up to her eyeballs in a web design project. She admired the older woman’s style—full figured yet with an awareness of her beauty, her hair cut short and her glasses set into thick black retro frames. Kat smiled as she realized just how hot Susan would be considered by most of the dykes she knew. In fact, she thought she was pretty hot herself.
Susan sensed her eyes upon her and with effort dragged her gaze from her screen. “What? Do I have spinach in my teeth?”
“No, I’m just…admiring how pretty you are.”
Susan scowled at this, an odd compliment coming from a woman nearly twenty years her junior, seventy pounds lighter, and, she was very much aware, much more conventionally attractive than herself. “Uh…thanks, I guess. You able to log on to your email okay?”
“Oh yeah, it’s just a Yahoo account. No sweat.”
Susan turned back to her screen.
“I’m really grateful,” Kat said.
Susan looked up at her again, this time with a real turn of attention. “Grateful?”
“Yesterday at this time, you didn’t know me from Adam—or Eve, I suppose. And now, well, I may be trapped in your home, but nobody seems to mind. I feel so welcome, so…strangely at home. It might have been very different. Not everyone would have made me feel so welcome. So…thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Susan said. She removed her glasses and smiled at Kat with real feeling and sincerity. “It’s part of what we are called to do, you know? We were all strangers once, and God makes of us a family. Hospitality is part of religious life. The guys here would hardly be good friars if they didn’t welcome the stranger as if he or she were Jesus himself.” She stretched. “My eyes are getting crossed, staring at that screen. I need a break. How’s about we get some tea?”
They moved to the kitchen, and Susan put the kettle on.
“I’ve never been to a monastery before,” Kat said.
“It’s a friary, not a monastery,” Susan corrected with a smile. “But it’s a common mistake.”
“What’s the difference?” Kat asked, sliding onto one of the benches at the table.
“Friars live in friaries, so they have a communal religious life, but they work out there”—she pointed out the window—“you know, in the world, side by side with ordinary folks. Monks live shut up in monasteries, by and large.”
“So, that’s what I am now that I can’t leave—a monk!”
“Well, technically, I think you’d be a nun—it’s genitalia-specific,” Susan giggled.
“Okay, a friary, then. Still, I gotta say, I didn’t expect it to be anything like this. I mean…” she pointed to an enormous bong on the shelf next to the fridge. “These guys aren’t like any priests I’ve ever met. Not that I’ve ever actually met any before, to my knowledge, at least. Still, they’re not what I…” She trailed off, her face screwing into a look of confusion. “Now, just how is it they are…friars…at all? I mean, some of them are Catholic priests, right? Like your husband?”
