by Lee Isserow
Coming back onto the landing, Rafe ducked out of the corridor as the footsteps drew nearer. He looked around for somewhere to hide: a grandfather clock on one side, three suits of armour on the other, and two sets of curtains by massive bay windows. None of the options were perfect, and without a thought, he picked the most Scooby Doo of the hiding places on offer, sneaking behind the armour, trying to slow and limit his breathing as the footsteps emerged from the hallway.
He took a moment, as he froze in silence, to appreciate just how clichéd the décor of the mansion was. His stomach grumbled in agreement, and the footsteps came to a sudden stop.
“Hello?” the voice sounded old, female.
He said nothing, stood perfectly still. His stomach, however, decided to respond with another gurgle.
The footsteps came closer. “Who's there?”
He really didn't want to have to do what he was about to do, finger dancing through the air as the footsteps came right up to the suits of armour, reaching out and tapping the old maid on the forehead. As her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and her consciousness fled, he quickly ducked round to catch her as she fell to the floor. He was faster to act than with the policeman, and dragged her body to his hiding place, hoping she wouldn't wake up until he was long gone.
Rafe had wasted enough time, needed to get back to the job at hand. Heading back round the corridor, he went straight to the third door on the left. The Earl's private study. It looked exactly as he expected, identical to every aristocratic room from every television show and movie he had ever seen, as if everything from the furniture to the fixtures had been bought from the wealthy person's exclusive version of IKEA. Rafe tried to suppress the thought, but still ended up imagining the store would be named IKEAffluent, and chuckled to himself as he crossed the room.
There was a large painting hanging behind the desk, and with a sharp tug at the right hand corner, the painting swung from a hinge on the left, revealing a safe. If nothing else, it proved to Rafe that some clichés are clichés for a reason. However, this safe was not a standard movie safe. Rather than being made from metal and having a dial or keypad, this was a solid block of wood. Something that Slugtrough had failed to mention, which sent Rafe's hairs standing on end. He had seen this kind of safe before, and it meant that the Earl of Chichester was significantly more magickally inclined than he had been lead to believe. . .
It had been a while since he had been forced to crack one of these damn magick-organic locks, and Rafe knew all too well that the enchantment was damn-near impenetrable without the right voice in his ear. Given that he was flying solo on this, the only way in was with the sigil that unlocked it.
Slipping his hand into his pocket, Rafe tried to grab hold of the pocket scrying pool he kept in his magickal money pocket―remembering all too late that he no longer had the pocket, and that was why he was in this mess in the first place.
He turned to the desk, his second notion just as dumb as the first, searching through the drawers, hoping and praying that the Earl was as stupid as the guys in offices that leave post-it notes with their passwords lying around.
The drawers were all empty, but running his fingers along the underside of the desk he hit paydirt, a scrap of paper taped to the wood with a sigil drawn in fountain pen. He looked at it, then to the solid wood of the safe, reaching his finger towards it―stopping himself. It was stupid to trace it out half-cocked. He had to be certain the sigil was invoked correctly to open the door, otherwise the damn thing might destroy everything inside, including his bounty.
Rafe stared at the symbol, paying close attention to the saturation of the ink. The Earl had made it too easy, letting the nib of the pen sit on the paper before he made each stroke, the line slimming as he pulled it away. Still doesn't tell him which order the lines went in, but tracing his finger over the paper, only one way felt natural, working from top to bottom―he just hoped that the Earl thought the same way he did.
Putting his finger on the wood, he drew out the sigil in the same order as felt natural on the paper. The wood seemed to gasp as he completed it. Thick, deep indents appeared around the edges of the surface, a hinge growing out of vines at the side. The panel sighed as it popped open, swinging like a door. Inside were piles of mundane money of various currencies, leather pouches that looked not unlike Rafe's old magickal money pocket, folders full of papers that looked like they might be deeds, or something else that he wasn't interested in. The thought crossed his mind, that it would be so easy to just take the money and run. . . but his conscience got the better of him, he wasn't a damn thief. Getting his head back on track, he searched through the contents of the safe until he found his prize, nestled away right at the back. Pulling it out, he realised just how grotesque the charm truly was―worse than anything he could have imagined. It was only an inch and a half long, had the hair of a rabbit on the contorted foot of a tiny man, with four short and stumpy toes, each with large nails that curled around on themselves, as if they hadn't stopped growing after the thing had died. He grabbed hold of it and slammed the safe shut, just as an angry, gruff voice shouted “What the bloody hell?”
Rafe glanced over his shoulder. A man in his late fifties staring back with angry viridian eyes, bushy eyebrows angled down with a tide of V-shaped wrinkles hanging above them.
“I'm guessing you're the Earl?” Rafe asked with a shrug, hoping that his shroud was still intact. He sauntered over to the man with his hands traipsing through the air, surreptitiously etching a sigil as he moved towards him. “Terribly sorry old chap,” he said, mocking the older man's accent as he dabbed a finger on the Earl's forehead. The digit bounced off the man's skull with no effect whatsoever, he didn't so much as yawn, let alone collapse into unconsciousness.
“Huh,” Rafe said, tapping the angry aristocrat again, to an identical lack of reaction, looking back and forth between the finger and the Earl. “Well, that was unexpected.“ It was, but not as unexpected as the Earl's eyes bursting to life, a vibrant glow emanating from their sockets as the viridian became encompassed by a ring of bright yellow flames that shot across them.
Rafe could feel a heat radiating off the man, and took a step back, just in time to see both the Earl's hands ignite with serenely beautiful purple flames.
“Y'know, they say purple is the colour of sexual frustration,” Rafe quipped.
The older man did not take kindly to this, and threw one of his hands in Rafe's direction. A dazzling shock of violet flames launched themselves towards him.
Rafe lunged out of the way, the fire almost singeing the nape of his neck as he ducked under it. He looked wildly this way and that, there had to be something he could do to distract the pyromancer, somewhere to hide or run.
He glanced over to the window―it was one hell of a drop. Even if he could disperse through the glass, and disperse again as he landed on the ground, he wasn't sure he'd have the strength to put himself back together after the impact.
There was a bellowing roar from Earl's direction. Rafe jumped to the window, grabbed hold of the curtains, and whipped them back towards the inferno, just in time to catch another blast lurching towards him. The fabric exploded in his hands and he jumped over the desk, cowering behind it. He took a deep breath, held it as he tried to listen through the crackles and spits of the fire around him for the Earl's footsteps. They were closing in, coming around the desk. He had to get the hell out of there.
Launching into a run, he felt the flames on his heels as he hit the wall, dispersing through it and ending up back in the hallway. Something was off, felt wrong, and as he glanced down to his fingers, discovered the charm had become entwined with his own fist, and his damn fingers wouldn't open.
“So much for being lucky,” he grunted, as he ran along the corridor and barged through into another room, slamming the door just as a violet blaze erupted behind him.
“Oh my!” a woman shrieked.
He turned, to discover a woman bathing in a claw-foot tub at the c
entre of a large, ornate bathroom.
“Terribly sorry about this, miss,” he said, doffing a mimed hat at the lady.
She did not seem amused at this. The bathwater began bubbling, thick steam rising as she in-turn rose, completely naked from the tub. Her skin burst into blue and green flames.
“Gods dammit! What are the chances of a whole damn family of firefolk. . .”
She threw her arms outwards, a massive column of fire shooting out towards him.
“Ahh, screw it,” he muttered, dispersing straight through the floor.
Rafe expected to put himself back together mid-fall, landing on the ground with a clumsy elegance. But he didn't have the magick for that much of a dispersion, and found himself dangling from the ceiling of the first floor library, hanging with his coat fused to the ceiling.
He struggled with his arms, lifting them, both feeling close to dislocating as he tried to escape the coat. Without warning, his arms slipped out of the sleeves and he fell, landing on the floor in a heap.
“Ow,” he grunted, picking himself back up to his feet, glancing mournfully at the loss of a coat he was quite fond of―suddenly realising just how close he had been to pulling his atoms back together in the centre of a chandelier. On the bright side, however, he was holding the charm again, rather than having it fused to his fist. . .
He tore into a run for the door, through the hallway and down the stairs to the ground floor. The carpet seemed to scream in agony as blue and purple flames exploded around him. The Earl and the naked lady were leaning over the second floor balcony, casting blasts of fire in his direction, seemingly more concerned with roasting him than not setting their house alight.
Rafe kicked his legs off the stairs and slid down the bannister, the two fiery aristocrats giving chase, but too far to catch up. He turned down the hallway toward his point of entry, and tried with all his might to ignore the great howl that screamed through the air as he closed in on the room.
He kicked through the door, turning to slam it, wishing he hadn't caught sight of the great purple and green serpent of pure, angry fire that was rocketing through the corridor towards him. Running to the wall, he took a breath and dispersed through just as the door exploded, the room becoming instantly engulfed in flames as he darted across the treeline.
Running back towards the station, a great pillar of fire burned in the distance behind him, thick black smoke wafting up to the heavens from the Earl of Chichester's estate. He glanced at the gnarled, disgusting little charm in his hand, considering that maybe it was a little lucky after all. . .
Chapter 21
Daymares
Ana discovered that there were no exorcists in the phone book, mostly because there were no phone books, but the internet wasn't much help either.
She continued to sit at the bar, Googling for exorcists and feeling very stupid for doing so. It didn't help that all the websites she found looked as though they had been cobbled together in the nineties and left that way. Time capsules of an era before anyone thought about design. Each of them with almost identical red and black colour schemes. They suffered from the same problems: all plain and flat and ugly, with a MySpace page's worth of stock pictures and illustrations. A lot of them had been written in nothing but bold capitals, some claimed to have performed hundreds of successful exorcisms, and none of them came off as being particularly convincing.
Mallory glanced over her shoulder as she passed by with a couple of empty glasses destined for the dishwasher, laughing out loud as she caught sight of the screen.
“That's not helpful,” Ana mumbled.
“Come on, An'. You've got to laugh about it, this is just your mind playing tricks.” She put the glasses on the bar and pulled up the stool next to her. “It's got to be hard, y'know? Having your grandmother die so horribly and all.”
“It's not my imagination! If it were the same thing happening over and over, then yeah, I'd say it was a psychosis of some kind, but each of these. . . manifestations is different!”
“Manifestations?” Mallory scoffed at the word. “Well don't go calling up some crank online. . . They'll probably turn out to be some kind of serial killer. Remember that guy I dated, claimed to be a maths prodigy?”
“The one who had a room full of notebooks?”
“A4 notebooks, full of random equations that didn't make a damn bit of sense―you can't square root the square root of a square root of an algebra A, and call yourself a prodigy.”
“Hardly the same situation. . .”
“It is! I met him online, can't trust anything people on the internet say. . . If you really think this is some kind of spiritual thing, go ask a priest or something.”
“They'll laugh at me.”
“Well, I'm already laughing at you. . .”
Mallory grabbed the glasses and took them back to the sink behind the bar as Ana opened her map app, and searched for the nearest church.
“What's the difference between Catholic, Protestant and C of E?” she asked Mallory, weighing up the options of the three closest churches.
“I think C of E will have better biscuits.”
*
Fifteen minutes later, after a shot of coffee and a walk around the block to sober up a bit, Ana walked into a church. It was hauntingly quiet, the pews completely empty, vaulted ceiling hanging high above on massive pillars, with stained glass apostles watching her every step.
As she came to the end of the rows, it seemed as though she was the only person in the building, just a pulpit and organ standing between her and a stained glass Jesus in the window.
“Hello?” said a voice from the far side of the room.
She turned, startled, as a young man walked towards her, dressed all in black but for a square of white at the collar.
“Uh, hi,” she said, eyes skirting the floor. She hadn't expected the priest to be so young, let alone attractive. All the priests she had seen on television were wizened, kindly old men with grey hair and spectacles.
“You've missed the evening Mass, I'm afraid.”
“Oh, I'm. . . I'm not here for Mass. . .”
“Well, what can I help you with?” he asked, taking a seat on the pew, beckoning for her to join him.
“It's. . . well. . . I've been. . .” Ana stumbled on her words, trying to work out where to start. She felt foolish for turning up, expecting answers, let alone an exorcism. “My grandmother died. . . Horribly.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” he said, with a kindly smile that reminded her of the empathetic training she reckoned the doctor had. “No wonder you're having nightmares!”
“It's not just nightmares, it's daymares too. . . At home, at work, at my friend's bar―wait. . .” Something didn't feel right. “I didn't say anything about nightmares.”
“Do you drink often in the day?” His voice sounded deeper, tone almost wry.
“What? No!”
“I bet you do, you little slut!” he said, a rumble to his voice, as if some demonic essence was speaking through him. His hand shot across, fingers curling tightly around her wrist. She tried to struggle free, his eyes burning into her with intensity that looked somewhere between passion and rage. The glare was searing and lustful, spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth, as he chewed at his lip, eyeing her up lasciviously. The teeth were tearing through the meat of his mouth, blood starting to drip down his chin.
“I can feel the lust coming off of you, you want a nice, hard seeing to, don't you? Want the father to be your daddy?” His free hand grabbed for her other wrist.
In an instant, she sobered up, remembering every single second of her university self defence training. Instinctively, she rose to her feet, twisting around on the spot as she did so, pulling him closer and slamming her forehead into the bridge of his nose. Her vision turned red as blood exploded from the priest's face, his body falling to the floor between the pews.
”Why would you do that!” he squealed. “I was only trying to help!” It was his voice a
gain, no longer the demonic tones that she had heard from his lips only moments earlier. Ana backed away, breaking into a run out of the church as the priest picked himself up.
“Wait! You need help!” he shouted, through his broken face, but Ana was already out the door.
She knew full well that she needed help, but it was clear that the kind of help she required obviously didn't exist in the house of God.
Ana picked up speed as she hustled through the streets, once again finding herself walking with no direction in mind. It felt as though she just had to keep moving. If she kept moving, it―whatever this thing was―couldn't keep up with her.
Or so she hoped. . .
Chapter 22
Middle distance
Two hours later Rafe was back in London, after yet another uncomfortable train journey, stepping back through to Slugtrough's parlour at The Randy Dowager.
“You smell burnt.”
“That's gonna happen when you break into a house full of fire adepts. . .”
“The Earl! Really?” Gryph feigned shock. “I honestly had no idea!”
“Sure. . . If you were trying to get me killed, better luck next time.”
“You know I'd never wish you any harm, Ralphy.”
“Save it. Here's your damn charm.” He threw the lucky rabbit-leprechaun foot at Slugtrough. “Where's my money?”
“Does this have some of your scars on it?” Gryph asked, examining the charm.
“Minor mishap, still works fine, I'm living proof.”
“Buyer won't mind either way, foot's a foot, am I right?” Gryph said, sliding a small leather pouch across the table. “You can keep the bag an' all.”
“How thoughtful,” Rafe muttered, as he grabbed it and peeked inside to confirm the money was all there. “You owe me a new damn coat.” he spat, as he turned his back on Gryph and went out in search of something to sate his hunger.
