by Peter McLean
It had been fucking plaguing me ever since that night in the hotel room where it had literally frightened the piss out of me, but two dozen times in six months was one thing. Now it was tormenting me almost every fucking day, when I had more than enough woes of my own. Why?
I simply had no idea, and I still didn’t know if I really believed it was the ghost of the McRoths’ grandson or not. In fact I doubted it, but it didn’t really matter in the great scheme of things. When I saw it… yeah, let’s just say it was real for me at the time when it was happening. It was fucking terrifying, that’s all I can say, but all the same I was getting well and truly fucked off with it now. It wasn’t as though being dragged naked through Hell by the withdrawal was bad enough, I had to have some snot-nosed ghost giving me grief as well? Fuck that.
I seemed to have finally stopped throwing up so I dragged myself back into my bedroom and up onto the gigantic bed. The bathroom was en suite so it wasn’t too far to crawl, I supposed that was something. The bed was at least a king-size, probably whatever the next one up from that is called. I flopped onto the sweaty Egyptian cotton sheets and pulled the blanket around me, shivering and crying.
This was fucking inhuman, and I would have given anything to make it stop.
“I know you,” a soft voice said from beside the bed.
“Oh piss off,” I groaned.
The thing was, I was so fucking ill and pitiful and sorry for myself that I couldn’t spare any mental energy to waste on fear any more. It was a hallucination of a dead child, or the ghost of a dead child, or whatever it fucking was but he was dead either way and I wasn’t, for all that I was fucking praying for someone to put me out of my misery. The bottom line was there was nothing I could do for him now and if he wanted to hurt me he’d have to get in the queue behind the fucking withdrawal that was hurting me more than I had ever dreamed it was possible to be hurt. Even my fucking bones hurt.
There is no flu on Earth that feels this bad, trust me. My leg kicked involuntarily as another spasm of muscle cramps hit me, and I only wished I could have kicked the ghost in the face to shut it up.
“You’re a bad man.”
“I know and I don’t care!” I screamed at it. “Fuck off!”
The door opened and the child vanished as Trixie walked in.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You were shouting again.”
I sat up in bed and stared at her.
“All right?” I yelled. “Am I fucking all right? Do I fucking look all right, Trixie? Do I?”
She gave me a sad look.
“You will be,” she said. “Soon, I hope. There’s someone here to see you.”
I could have strangled her. If the Burned Man hadn’t been suffering almost as much as I was, I really think it might have gone for her throat right there and then, but thankfully it kept its mouth shut for once. All the same, the last thing on God’s green bloody earth I wanted right then was a visitor.
“I’m not really in the fucking mood for visitors,” I said through gritted teeth.
Trixie walked into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I’m afraid it’s not really optional,” she said. “Menhit is here.”
My heart almost stopped. I didn’t think I could have felt any worse right then but suddenly I did. Menhit was there? Of all the people I didn’t want to fucking see, Menhit was right at the top of the list.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” I said.
“No, I’m afraid not,” she said. “Mazin and I have, let us say, phrased our explanation carefully.”
You’ve lied through your teeth to her, you mean, I thought. Thank fuck for that.
The door opened again and Menhit swept into the room closely followed by Mazin.
Menhit, the Black Lion of Nubia. Menhit the Slaughterer. Mother of War. She Who Massacres.
Menhit the living goddess.
I nearly shit the bed, or at least I would have done if there’d been anything left in me to come out.
To be fair she didn’t look quite as much like a resurrected Nubian war goddess as she had the last time I had seen her, but she was still terrifying. She was well over six feet tall, black as a desert night and visibly muscular even in a well-fitted business suit, but at least her eyes weren’t glowing with that unnatural golden light any more. That made her a little bit easier to look at, but not a lot. I could still feel the air in the room growing tight the way it does before lightning strikes. Her hair hung about her face in a hundred thin black braids that brushed her shoulders as she strode towards the bed.
“My Keeper has been poisoned?” she demanded.
Trixie gave me a long look, and swallowed.
“Yes, Mother,” she said at last, “he has. In a manner of speaking. He was taken away from us by a poison of the modern world.”
Menhit nodded and I stared up at her broad, flat features. She really did look like a lion, I thought. I started to sweat all over again. Dear God but she was scary. I mean so was Trixie of course, but I was used to Trixie. Sort of, anyway. I was also hopelessly in love with her, which obviously made quite a bit of difference. I was simply terrified of Menhit. Papa Armand must be off his head, sleeping with that.
Menhit, in case you don’t remember, really was an actual living goddess. Menhit had slain the fallen Dominion in single combat. Menhit was death walking. She was magnificent and she was terrible and just her very presence made me want to piss myself with fear. That is what a real live goddess is like, believe you me.
She was also my boss.
“Mother,” I managed to croak, bowing my head to her in respect. “I beg your forgiveness but I am… unwell.”
That was the Burned Man talking, of course. It was surprisingly good at the diplomatic shit, I had to give it that. I let it speak, just grateful that I didn’t have to.
“Who is responsible for this outrage?” Menhit demanded. “I will rip their heart out and eat it.”
Oh shit, that was an awkward one. I mean obviously I was responsible, but I could hardly tell her that. Thankfully the Burned Man could put a positive spin on anything when it had to.
“Those responsible are already dead,” the Burned Man said for me, and I realized it was right.
Those responsible for my posttraumatic stress and subsequent addiction were definitely already dead, because I had fucking killed them. That was the whole problem, but as usual what the Burned Man said was technically true if not entirely said in the spirit of good faith. Christ, I don’t think the Burned Man would have known the spirit of good faith if it had bitten it in the arse. All the same, that really didn’t matter so long as it stopped Menhit from tearing my head off and shitting down my neck.
Menhit nodded her head in understanding, however misled.
“This is good to know,” she said. “I am pleased that my Keeper has taken his own revenge on those responsible. That shows initiative, and the ability to act. These are traits I value in a Keeper.”
I let her have her delusions of my competence. No one had actually lied in this conversation, and if we were talking a little bit at cross-purposes then that wasn’t my fault.
“Thank you, Mother,” I said. “Although I must confess the poison is causing me some discomfort.”
Some discomfort? Some fucking discomfort? I was past caring about mortal sins by now, and if I had had any way to kill myself I honestly would have done, just to make it stop. Discomfort had to be the understatement of the fucking decade, but all the same I knew the Burned Man wanted this to stop as much as I did. All I could do was let it keep talking and hope for the best.
“I see,” Menhit said.
She was standing right beside the bed now, towering over me. She reached out one large hand and put it on my forehead. I managed to stop myself from cowering, but only just.
I heard Mazin gasp. Somehow I got the feeling that Menhit didn’t usually go in for healing people, or even touching people come to that. Not unless she was about to hurt them very
badly, anyway. She was war personified, after all, and war isn’t really about helping people whatever shit the politicians might like to have you believe. I realized I was holding my breath, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop.
“He is unwell,” Menhit said after a moment. “An illness I do not recognize.”
No, they hadn’t invented heroin back in the bronze age, had they? I thought. Did they have any sort of addiction back then, though? I didn’t know, but I hoped not. If she realized what was actually wrong with me I was going to be in a truly immense amount of shit, I knew that much. The prospect of being in the shit with Menhit didn’t even bear thinking about.
“Something of the modern world as I said, Mother,” Trixie said, and I noticed the nervous tremor in her voice. “I am sad to say it is beyond my abilities to help him.”
I winced. There were a number of ways I could take that and none of them were good. Menhit just nodded.
“Few things are beyond my abilities, Guardian,” she said, “although healing is not my forte. If I do this he may experience some distress.”
Distress? I had a nasty feeling that was an understatement of the same magnitude as discomfort had been, and that alone was enough to make the shakes come back. I shuddered helplessly on the bed, starting to go into spasms all over again.
“He will cope, Mother,” Trixie said, as though they had both forgotten I was actually right there in the fucking room between them. “Please, do what you can.”
Menhit nodded again, and I felt a bolt of pure magic shoot down her arm and into my head.
I shrieked.
* * *
Some. Fucking. Distress.
Yeah, it was safe to say I experienced some fucking distress all right. I have no idea what she did to me but it fucked me up good and proper. My head was all over the place, and I mean that quite literally. I don’t know how much you know about astral projection but I’m going to take a guess at not much. The first time you experience true astral projection – the out-of-body-experience type, not the navel-gazing-and-making-it-up type I mean – it’s bloody terrifying.
Imagine you’re a balloon, weightless and at the mercy of the wind. Now release that balloon into a hurricane. You can’t control yourself and everything happens in a headlong rush, only this balloon isn’t even solid and it can fly through walls and ceilings if the wind blows it that way.
Now, I didn’t just fall out of a tree and I had done conscious astral projection before. Well, I’d had it done to me anyway, so I wasn’t quite as helpless as the poor kid who spontaneously leaves his body in his sleep one night and prays to all the gods he’s ever heard of to make it stop and never happen again. All the same I can’t say it was exactly my strong point, and it’s never been something I’ve learned to enjoy.
I felt sick as I shot through the ceiling of the bedroom, flashed through the building’s attic and out into the overcast Edinburgh night. I realized immediately that whatever Menhit had done to me had torn my astral body out of my physical one and basically just thrown it into the air like a discarded wrapper. I could only assume this was a side effect of her brutal healing magic, which was probably so bloody hideous my astral form had fled my body to get away from it. A lot of the accounts you read of spontaneous astral projection are from people at death’s door in hospitals, after all, looking down at themselves on the operating table and all that. I could only assume this was the same sort of thing.
Whoa there, Don, I thought, consciously slowing my careering astral form before I went into the stratosphere. I managed to get some sort of control and after a while I was able to make myself float unsteadily along above the street.
Astral projection sounds cool, and people who are really good at it can do useful things when they’re out and about in their astral bodies. When you’re out of your body you can theoretically go anywhere you want to, see anything you want to see. You could supposedly drift through the walls of the Pentagon or the GCHQ Doughnut and peek at whatever the hell they do in there, if you wanted to. Remote viewing, the spooks call that, although the jury’s still out on whether they can really pull it off or not. I still suspect most adepts just spy on whoever they happen to fancy taking a shower, to be honest. Either way I’m not good at it, and I don’t like it.
I tried to remember how this worked. You have to sort of swim, if that makes sense. You’re not solid, not even a shape really, although normally your mind fills in the gaps and makes you see a ghostly form of yourself. I think you’d just go nuts otherwise, being a purely disembodied consciousness. No one’s really ready to cope with being a ghost, are they? I looked down and yeah, I could see a semi-translucent version of myself, sort of silvery and shiny and embarrassingly naked. I have to admit I don’t look good naked, but then most people don’t.
There was a bright silver cord extending from just below my bellybutton and down into one of the roofs below me. That was good, that meant Menhit hadn’t completely severed my astral body from my physical one. If she had I knew I’d have been dead in a few hours, but with the silver cord intact both body and soul were at least still connected if nothing else. Also, of course, it meant I could find my way back.
This is a bit fucking different, innit? I thought at the Burned Man. I haven’t done this since you were teaching me.
Of course the Burned Man had made me astrally project when I was still a student, back before Professor Davidson died, and it had dragged me straight into the summoning and sending business. Astral projection is a useful skill that any true adept should know how to do, but all the same I had never really got the hang of it and I can’t do it by myself. The Burned Man had been able to coax me out but on the rare occasions I had attempted it since then I’d had no joy. All the same, now that I was getting the idea I found it wasn’t as bad as all that. The Burned Man was curiously quiet, though.
Mate? I thought. You awake in there?
There was no reply. I made myself sink slowly down through the air until I was sort of perching on the roof of the house that contained our apartment, my non-solid arse hovering just above the chimney pots. I formed the astral equivalent of a frown and dug around inside myself, looking for the Burned Man.
It wasn’t there.
Well fuck me, isn’t that interesting? It seemed that when I had invoked the Burned Man I had drawn it into my physical body but not my astral. The two overlap each other most of the time of course, to the extent that the vast majority of people don’t even realize they have an astral body and that they’re two different things. They are, though. And if the Burned Man wasn’t in my astral body…
Jesus wept, I could have kicked myself all the way down the street and back. I could have been doing this instead of filling myself with poison to get away from the little shit. If all I had to do was leave my body… I thought about that for a moment.
It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
I didn’t see why not. I mean yeah, I couldn’t actually do it by myself but if this was the result then I was bloody well going to make myself learn how.
I sat back against the chimney I couldn’t feel and looked up at the sky, feeling truly relaxed for the first time in months. The sky was a solid bank of cloud, reflecting the streetlights of the city back down at me in a dull orange glow. Stars would have been nice, but I suppose you can’t have everything. It was wonderful just to be away from the Burned Man for a little while. I loved Trixie dearly but I had to admit it was nice to be away from her too – I know we’d only been back together for a few days but I had been so fucking ill that her stern refusal to let me out of her sight had been really starting to get on my tits. I knew she was only trying to get me off the smack but… shit.
Smack.
For the first time in months I had just thought about smack without my mouth watering with need. I plucked up my courage and thought about it again, deliberately this time. I thought about using. I thought about shooting up, the needle pushing its way into my diseased arm, and the whole idea f
elt utterly repellent. There was no longing there at all, not even any desire.
Fuck…
My astral body wasn’t addicted to anything, of course, and whatever Menhit was doing to me down there seemed to have already cleared my mind if nothing else. I was so, so relieved. I felt happy for the first time in six months. That lasted about a minute and a half, by my reckoning.
“I know you,” a soft voice said beside me.
If I had been inside my skin I’d have jumped out of it, let me tell you. I shot up off the chimney pots and stared down at the ghostly figure of Calum McRoth standing on the roof looking up at me. No five year-old should be that scary, but he was.
“You’re the bad man,” he whispered, and he reached up towards me.
His arms grew and grew, talons extending from his hands while I felt like I was mired in treacle. All that balloon-in-the-wind shit was just gone and I was stuck, helpless as he reached for me with those awful claws.
Fucking do something! I shouted at the Burned Man, before I remembered it wasn’t there.
I had got so used to having the little bastard in my head that I had come to rely on it in times of need, I realized. And now it wasn’t there, and I was all on my own.
All on my own with the ghost of the child I had killed.
Chapter Seven
“Get away from me,” I shouted at it, or tried to anyway.
An astral form can’t shout, of course. Or even really speak, come to that. Even so, it seemed to hear me the same way I could hear it.
“I know you,” it whispered as its taloned hands closed around my throat. I struggled, tried to swim my way up into the air, but it was no good. The ghost or whatever the hell it was belonged on this plane and I really didn’t. I was out of my element, quite literally, whereas it had all the advantages. It shot towards me, its freakishly extended arms seeming to retract into itself as it drew closer until its blind, bloody eyes were only a few inches away from mine.
“You’re the bad man,” it said, its voice now a low growl of menace.
