The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

  As night began to fall, Ana decided to take her leave, hugged her mother, and staunchly refused a lift home. A walk would do her good, she insisted. If nothing else, it would help her clear her head, and prepare for the arrival of furniture from her grandmother's house. Bunkle had been a little overzealous with efficiency, and had arranged for it to be delivered that very day, and as Ana walked along a street round the corner from her house, her phone began ringing with an unknown number.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Brooks?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Got some furniture here for you, nobody's answering the bell?”

  “Oh, uh. . .” She hesitated, wondering if she could tell them she was out, delay delivery for a day or two.

  Ana could hear her grandmother whispering in the back of her mind, telling her that such a thing was dishonest, let alone dumb. One way or another, the delivery was going to happen, and putting it off was going to do nothing but inconvenience the drivers, perhaps also delay other deliveries they had to make. A cycle of pointless delays and unnecessary inconveniences going round and round, all because she didn't want to deal with the furniture then and there.

  “I'm just a street away,” she said, trying her best to stifle a sigh. “Be with you in a minute, sorry.”

  She hung up and picked up pace, coming round the corner, where a large moving van was parked up right outside her dainty little house. The truck looked wider than her property, and she feared how much furniture it might contain, picturing her living and dining rooms crammed wall-to-wall with couches and chairs that were being thrust upon her.

  It turned out that the fears were not necessary. The van wasn't even close to full. It surprised her how little furniture there actually was, given that her grandmother's house felt so homely. Two couches: a three seater and a two seater, the oval dining room table that folded up into slim sideboard―which was something she had never suspected about it, as the hinges and lines where it collapsed were so subtle when at its full length. There were six chairs that came with the table, which she had the men leave at the side of her dining room, unsure as to where they would go when the table wasn't out. And finally, there was the wine box.

  Ana couldn't remember seeing the thing before. It looked old, an antique for sure, and she wondered if the thing had been hiding somewhere in her grandmother's house, in a corner or something. It wasn't attractive, not in the traditional sense, but it had an elegance to it, a sense of history―although what that history might be, she had no idea.

  Standing almost two feet tall, a foot wide and deep, the dark wood was littered with deep scratches and scars, and it was almost black in some places, as if the box had been caught in a fire at some point. She attempted to pull the two slim doors open, but they appeared to be stuck fast. Given that she couldn't get it open, she ran her fingers over the surface, every side of it was covered in engravings, a language Ana didn't recognise, that looked Middle Eastern, Hebrew or Aramaic. It made her think back to the hastily prepared funeral, and before the funeral, to the night she and her mother spent with the body. That was a Jewish ritual. It felt too strange to be a coincidence that they were requested to participate in that ritual, and now here she was with a box covered in writing that may or may not be Hebrew.

  Ana shrugged it off. She was very much a believer in coincidences being just that. Plus, she was exhausted, and feeling a little malnourished, which was more of a priority than dwelling on the weird old box she had inherited.

  Leaving the thing sitting on the folded up table in the dining room, she retreated to the kitchen. After a minute of staring blankly into the refrigerator, she grabbed a bunch of vegetables, ummed and erred, then put them back, picking out alternative ingredients. Her head wasn't in the mood for a decision. She stared again at the fridge. It wasn't like it was even that full, just a bunch of vegetables, some cheese, beef cubes, yoghurt, and milk. The options were limited, and yet the possibilities for combinations felt endless and exhausting. After a long, heavy sigh, she grabbed the beef, a red pepper, and a red onion, and dumped them on the counter top. Her hand found the curved steel handle of a knife in a rack before her eyes glanced over to it, pulling it out with a whistling gasp that seemed to reverberate around her.

  The blade whipped against the chopping board, a gleaming blur quickly hacking the peppers into slim strips, the onion into eighths, and the plastic on the package of beef cracked open as the tip tore through to the meat encased inside. She threw the gas on, and placed a rectangular cast iron skillet on the flames, drizzling the grooved surface with olive oil.

  This will be fast, she thought, a quick meal to sate a tired body, and then maybe she could pass out and feel something close to whole again come morning.

  As soon as the oil looked as though it were ready to sear, she grabbed the package and dropped the beef onto the surface. The red meat sizzled on the skillet, hissing and spitting with futile anger at the notion of being cooked. As she watched steam rise around it, Ana could swear she heard whispers in between the gasps from the meat. She glanced over her shoulder, the whispers getting louder as her head turned. Reaching for the gas, she turned it down, then off, the sound of sizzling slowing and softening, the voices still hanging in her periphery.

  Stepping out into the hall, her ears pricked up. It was as if a hushed conversation were going on somewhere around her, but she couldn't pinpoint where exactly it came from. Tentatively, Ana stepped into the living room, taking slow, silent footsteps towards the far wall, pressing her ear to it, in case it might be her neighbour's television set blaring away.

  The whispers dissipated.

  She turned back towards the kitchen, assuming they realised just how loud they must have had the television, because the whispers appeared to have ceased, at least for the moment.

  Firing the gas stove back up, she took a wooden spoon and applied pressure to the meat. It snarled and spat as she drove the wood into its back. Grabbing hold of the skillet, she shook it back and forth, turning the cubes over. For the amount of time they had been sitting on the flame, she was surprised how red they still were.

  Turning up the gas a little higher, the oil in the pan began bubbling and growling in the grooves. She took the spoon again, putting pressure on the meat cube by cube. The colour didn't change, but as she squeezed the meat, the colour and texture of the oil was changing. The grooves in the skillet were becoming thick and red from the juices of the meat, and the more she pushed down on the beef, the more it bled, the buoyant cubes soon floating on a small lake of thick, boiling crimson that bubbled and spat as the flames beneath the pan cooked it.

  The spoon fell from her grip, as the level of blood rose sharply, over the top of the pan, into the hob below, putting out the flames around the gas ring. Something whizzed by her, thick and black and buzzing. It landed on the side of the skillet, a large, furry, black fly, supping from the bubbling scarlet pool. Another fly crawled up from behind the skillet, and another. Ana backed away as more flies whipped through the air, circling round her as they made the their way towards the pan. She batted at them with her palms as they ducked and dove through the air.

  A scream sounded out, shrill and high pitched. She looked around, no idea where it was coming from, an ungodly wail that dug a knife through her skull, setting off a migraine. Backing out into the hall the shriek became louder, angrier, from right above her. Ana glanced up, a tiny red eye blinking at her.

  It was the fire alarm.

  She ran to the dining room, grabbed a chair and came back into the hallway, hitting the reset button. She coughed on the smoke that was thick in the air, a steady stream of it coming out of the kitchen. Getting down off the chair, she poked her head back in to see the beef in the pan, a pillar of smoke billowing from it, coating the ceiling in a thick blanket. She rushed over, turned the stove off, singeing her hand as she wrapped her fingers around the skillet's handle, throwing it towards the sink and sending the taps flowing to drown the burned, black me
at.

  She opened the kitchen windows, then opened the front door to get air flow going through the house to dispel the smoke. Checking back on the kitchen, the smoke was almost clear.

  There was no blood. There were no flies. A trick of the mind.

  Still, the delusion had abated her hunger. It had been a long damn day, an emotionally exhausting day, and all she really wanted now was to sleep for as long as she possibly could.

  Chapter 9

  A cautionary tale

  The full moon hung high as the crane slowly swung across the speckled velvet of the night's sky, on its way to bring another shipment bound for the dock. Rafe watched it with an unblinking stare, eyes peeled for the insignia of the waybill he found after rooting around in the office at the Xpress Delivery depot. As the crane lifted a massive metal container from the ship, it was too dark to see if the symbol was on the side, he'd have to wait for it to be lowered into the spotlights of the giant city of containers to be sure.

  Not that it was going to be all that hard to spot the containers owned by the company that brought the damn box over from Australia, they were bright banana yellow, much like the waybill. Or, at least, they had been painted bright yellow at some point. As the crane brought the container closer to the light, it was clear that it must have been a while back since its last lick of paint, a tide of rust crawling its way up from the base. Either not painted recently, or not painted with longevity in mind, he reckoned. But at least it stood out from the sea of orange, red and mostly grey containers that made up the towers it was being lowered into. He knew he wasn't the only one that would be watching it. The dock workers would have their eyes on it, maybe there'd be representatives of the company there too. It was painted vibrantly so it would stand out, and couldn't get lost amongst the others. Probably spent days or weeks stacked with containers that were indistinguishable if not for colour and insignias, a miniature city of steel blocks dragged across oceans, looking like some giant child had constructed it and pushed it out on the waves.

  For a moment, he let his mind wander, picturing a child of that size in place of the crane that was relocating the shipping container. A chill ran down his spine. He had heard the stories of creatures of that size, and larger, that still slept in the depths of the ocean. As with all gods, even to just think of them gave them power, and he pulled the emergency brake on that train of thought before it came in to the station. It was foolhardy to risk giving such beings any more strength than they already had. Sure, they might be in a slumber that had lasted aeons, but it wasn't worth the risk. Plus, there were more important matters to deal with.

  From his hours of staking the place out, it was clear that the gates to the dock were permanently manned and monitored twenty four-seven. However, nestling up to the far side of the yard was a recently opened drive-in movie theatre, essentially just a derelict lot when a film wasn't playing on the massive screen erected with clumsily constructed scaffolding. Given that there was nothing of value in there, he was pretty sure they wouldn't bother with cameras, let alone security guards. He walked up to the gates and tugged at them. They were locked in place by a steadfast chain and padlock. He scoffed, as if that small modicum of a deterrent was going to make him quit. Grabbing hold of the padlock, he traced his index finger along the chrome rainbow that held it shut, moving down to the body of the lock and continuing to move his finger in a spiral to the centre.

  “Clickety clack,” he whispered out loud, but in the depths of his mind he pictured the intent, and was thinking of much older words, ones he had once heard, but could not pronounce with his human tongue.

  The lock responded to the words and his intent, clicking open, and he proceeded to remove the chain from the gates. When there was not a massive pressure on him, or he was not running for his life, this was how Rafe liked to implement what little magick he had left at his disposal: externalised phrases, often made up of onomatopoeia whilst the true magick was cast in his mind and mind's eye.

  Walking through the gates, he tugged them closed behind him, and swiftly made his way across the muddy lot to the far side, trying to ignore how much water his boots were soaking up, his toes feeling slimy and cold at their tips. Coming to the other side of the drive-in theatre, he discovered a chain-link fence was separating it from the shipping yard. Eyes fixed on the yellow container as it was dropping slowly all that much closer to the ground, Rafe knew he was going to have to act fast if he was going to get to it before the dock workers, and get a look at what else this damn company might be transporting. If they were indeed responsible for the box being shipped, then who knows what other kind of contraband they might be relocating.

  He ran straight at the fence, both hands out in front of him, index fingers dancing through the air before their tips met, circled one another, thumbs tapping twice as he said “Woosh!” and thought something much older.

  As his face connected with the fence, it tore straight through him, molecules dispersed by the millimetre-thin metal as he continued to run through it, his atoms recombining on the other side. He didn't usually like to be so cavalier about a dispersion, it was all too easy to find oneself on the other side of a fence or wall with the skin relocated to the inside of one's body. Or worse, eyeballs the wrong way round, with a close-up of the inside of one's eye sockets. Not that it had ever happened to him, but he had heard horror stories. . . Everyone who was taught dispersion had been told the tales―and those that taught them were never able to point to anyone in particular that it had happened to. But whether the tales were apocryphal or not, they still served as a cautionary tale for any magickian who attempted to phase in such a manner, the fear always on the forefront of their minds as they traversed through solid objects. As if thinking of the worst possible result warded them from such an inconvenient and grisly outcome.

  Fortunately, Rafe found himself in one piece, with his eyes the right way round, as he continued to run across the shipping yard. The yellow container was still within sight, three burly men standing around it, a fourth on top disconnecting the harness from the crane. One of them approached the doors, unlocking it. It was too late to be subtle, he would definitely not get a chance to peek in without an audience.

  “Hey!” he shouted between heavy breaths, thinking himself within earshot.

  The four men turned, catching sight of him. He let himself smile, hoping that it would be read as warm and friendly.

  “You don't want to do that!” he said, slowing as he came within a few feet of them. Leaning over, hands resting on his thighs as he caught his breath, keeping the smile fixed. People liked smiles, he reckoned, puts them at ease.

  Rafe might have only had a little bit of magick at his disposal, but had even less skill with human interaction. The four men did not look particularly pleased to see him. Their faces balled up into grimaces, tides of wrinkles flowing across their foreheads, and from their eyes down their cheeks.

  “I know it's probably your job, to open this guy up,” he said, standing up straight, breath caught. “But soon as you do, I'm pretty sure what's in there might have you trying to kill one another.”

  The four men shot glances back and forth, then returned their glares to Rafe. Their expressions did not change to indicate they believed him.

  He tentatively stepped a little closer to them, and they stepped around him in a circle, eyes fixed on his. “If you'll just let me do the honours, I'm pretty sure I can deal and seal this sucker, then you can get back to your jobs, no harm done. . .” He trailed off, all too aware that the three burly men had him surrounded against the chipped paintwork of the steel box, the fourth clambering down the side to join them.

  “Do you like cake?” he asked, a hand shifting behind his back, tracing out a pattern in the air, a sigil that he had used many times in the past to serve as a diversion: translocating a delicious baked treat from his favourite bakery.

  As he began to pull his hand from behind his back, a set of rock hard knuckles cracked loudly against his
cheek, sending him hurtling to the ground. A large, delicious-looking apple tart flew through the air, landing alongside him, smushing into the muddy ground.

  “What a waste of a good cake. . .” he muttered, just as a boot knocked the wind right out of him.

  The night, it seemed, wanted to prove itself as being just as bad, if not worse, than the day that came before it.

  Chapter 10

  Scar tissue

  Ana had passed out not long after her head had hit the pillow, even though there was still a slow, deep throbbing in her skull, and an empty pit in her gut. However, even though she was quick to fall to sleep, it was not a good slumber.

  The first sight, as her dreams came, was that of her grandmother. It was a face she was so grateful to see, a warm presence filling her from the inside out as the old woman's kindly eyes settled on her own, a smile on those pale, wrinkled lips.

  The smile did not last long. It contorted into a grimace, her eyes opening wide, whites shot with bolts of blood. The elderly woman buckled over, turned around, as her back exploded outwards, skin on either side of her spine flapping back and forth as if they were jagged flags in a heavy wind.

  She watched in horror, as her beloved grandmother's body fell to the ground, spine remaining erect, the tip turned left and right, then snaking off somewhere into the darkness. Ana was left alone, standing over the body, staring at the corpse, until she realised she was not alone.

  There was a man there, one she recognised, the Australian who had turned up at the cemetery. His eyes were fixed on the body, sparkling like jewels with their own private sun that did not illuminate anything else. His shirt buttons were open, revealing a muscular chest, hairless, not by nature or shaving or waxing, but because hair could not grow amidst all the scars. It was as though some infant had taken a knife to him, attempting to practice their ABCs on his flesh, and failed miserably. There were a few characters carved on his skin that felt familiar, and yet they were not English. She realised they didn't feel familiar from anything she had read, but because she had seen them carved on the sides of the box she inherited.