The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  All the while, the House’s murmurs of anger continued. I was anxious, on edge, and I didn’t know why. But before we discussed my escape, I could deal with one source of tension. “Is there someplace I could wash up?” What I really needed to do was piss like a weatherman, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to say.

  “The kitchen is out and to the left,” said the Don. His obtuseness had to be deliberate, but I said nothing—I could find the bathroom, or the WC, or the loo, or whatever they called it here.

  The one I found was next to a master bedroom that had been set up on the first floor, allowing the Don to use the stairs less frequently. When I flicked on the light, everything seemed ungodly bright.

  In order to be somewhat truthful, after I relieved myself I rolled up my slashed sleeves to wash my face and hands and forearms, bloody from the fight—they might need something more. Once when I had visited the Mortons, Dale had told me, “Don’t talk like House isn’t there.” So with the cover of the running water, I had some direct words with the House of Dee. “You know, I realize I come on a bit strong, but other Houses have grown to like me. So just give me a break, and I’ll be out of your hair, or halls, or whatever.”

  A breeze like a sigh of exasperation chilled me. Oh, well, that would have to do. The sink’s water turned a dirty red as it ran over my arms and hands and down the drain. Guess I did need to wash up. The red thinned, and the draining pink seemed to form squiggly lines pointing down and up. I must be tired. I splashed and rubbed my face, then looked up into the mirror to see if I had missed any grime or blood.

  Lord help me—something was wrong with my face. I had a hint of a black-light glow. I shut off the bathroom light and saw the craft glow clearly. Oh no. I’d been touched by the Left Hand. Cursed. I couldn’t trust myself. I needed to warn Grace and the Don. I …

  Needed to get a fricken grip. The Left-Hand glow wasn’t coming from me. I scanned around the bathroom, but always came back to the mirror. The mirror had some random fuzziness about its edges, as if some stealth craft had been applied, then broken.

  “Major.” From the other room, Grace’s voice calling for me.

  “Just a minute,” I said.

  I wasn’t proud of prying into someone else’s medicine cabinet, but the necessity was obvious. What evil could this old guy have in there?

  A white cardboard box with a prescription label stood out from the common toiletries. Glycerin trinitrate—nitroglycerin for the old guy’s heart? No, the box was the source of the glow. With no time for precautions, I opened it. Inside, I found a metal syringe, brass colored like the alchemical alloys I’d seen in Prague and H-ring, with a plastic cap over the needle. Most practitioners wouldn’t have recognized it. I don’t think I would have, except ever since Prague I’d been expecting it.

  The waves of anger from the House were rising. No time for internal debate—I stashed the syringe in my jacket pocket. But the chessboard had reminded me to think a move ahead. I wouldn’t run out there fighting like I had in Prague, but I needed to leave, preferably with Grace. That meant I would have to distract Dee for a moment once I returned. For that purpose, I looked, really looked, for some antiseptic. I didn’t see any. Good.

  I returned to the den, even as Grace was again calling for me. I thought I saw a momentary flicker of annoyance from the Don when I re-entered the room, like I was some buzzing insect. Then, with some of his previous charm, he asked, “Were you looking for something, Major?”

  To play out my honest distraction, I showed him the cuts on my forearms. “I was looking for some antiseptic.”

  “You Americans are so fragile. Let me get you a first-aid kit.”

  Grace rose from her seat. “I’ll get it, sir.”

  “No, Grace, I will,” he said, sounding preemptive and a little snappish. He stood slowly and left the room.

  Time to persuade Grace to leave. I whispered toward her ear. “We have to go. I found something Left-Hand in his bathroom.”

  “Left-Hand? I cannot stand that American euphemism for evil.”

  “Neither can I, but let’s leave now and discuss it later.”

  Grace shook her head once in casual disgust. “Of course he has objects once used for evil here. They are the harmless trophies of a righteous life.”

  “I’m getting out of here,” I insisted.

  Grace’s lips parted as if about to reply, but then her eyes widened, and her face lost its usual cool veneer. From the direction of Grace’s gaze, I wasn’t the immediate problem; the person who had just re-entered the room was.

  “Stay seated.” The Don was casually pointing a gun at me. My mistake for letting an untrustworthy Dee out of my sight. The weapon looked like Grace’s own Walther PPK, which the Don could have retrieved through inside access to the milk box. “Major Endicott, do not move.”

  He was trying to command me. God help me, it felt like he was succeeding. Endicotts weren’t used to being commanded—not a pleasant sensation. For now, I didn’t attempt to resist and sat at perfect attention. His own power meant that I couldn’t command him in turn, not here on his home ground—no more than I could have commanded Dale Morton in his House.

  The Don sat, seeming at perfect ease as he addressed Grace. “I’m sorry, dear, but he is with the other side.” He was using a subtle suasion with her. “You can’t see it as clearly, but he’s glowing with his treason. He’s choreographed this entire scenario. He suborned our own people. From what the House tells me, I suspect he was about to plant evidence against me.” In response to this last, Grace’s face set back into its usual professional coolness. “Oh,” continued the Don, “did he already say he’d found something?”

  The House was now wailing in my ear: Fool! Fool! And I was—despite what the Don had just said, the House had been trying to help me all along. It had woken me from the attempt to lull me to sleep and guided me to his Left-Hand syringe. These old Houses didn’t like it when their owners went bad.

  Now that I was looking for it, I saw the glow coming from him. His pipe had provided a literal smoke screen, masking his unhealthy preservation in spiritual formaldehyde. His smile was ghastly, like a Red Death in training. I had a sense that dying here would be like all those who had died in the House of Morton—no one even saw their ghosts afterward.

  “We’ll have that information now, Major. How did you release Roderick? What did Abram teach you? Can you leave your body? Are you Abram, or are you Oliver Cromwell Endicott?”

  Yes, I bet he wanted the answers to some of those questions, desperately. If he could figure out the Left-Hand secrets, he wouldn’t need the supplier of his syringe. I saw ahead a couple of moves: this alchemical drug wasn’t likely to provide immortality; instead, it was probably a life-extending mix that would keep him going long enough for the next step, a step that Roderick could provide.

  The bit the Don had said about me being my dead father was to piss me off, so I channeled my anger in a different direction. “I have a question. If I’m so dangerous, why haven’t you shot me yet? Afraid that might seem excessive to Grace?” And was that gun he was holding, like its U.S. service equivalent, chipped against shooting her, so that her opinion still mattered? I was betting it was.

  “I’m sure my friend Grace can see that you’re with the so-called Left Hand,” he said. “If she’s not yet certain, she will be when she sees what you’ve been carrying. Hand it over.”

  Oh, he had been playing so well until then. He’d made two mistakes: trying the power of command twice on an Endicott, and showing his need. As if in response to his display of weakness, I felt again an external power that shouldn’t be available to me here flow up through my feet. This time, though, I had an idea where it was coming from. Thank you, House, I thought. I’ll do what I can with it.

  As if obeying the Don’s command, I brought out the syringe and offered it for a moment in my open hand, then grasped it tight and close. I smiled at him. “You want this? I’m guessing this stuff is pretty valua
ble, and pretty dangerous. I think to be safe, I should dispose of it right now. Detecting any deceit, Professor Dee?”

  Could Grace see what I saw—a junkie’s cold-sweat need? I couldn’t tell. Her mentor, a perfect detector of deceit, could also lie pretty well.

  So I kept talking. “Grace, how old is Chris here? Remarkably well preserved, isn’t he? Do you think this is the usual reward for a righteous life of spiritual practice?”

  “Dear,” said the Don. “I hope he’s not deceiving you. I need to know that you’re with me on this if I’m going to be able to continue my questioning.”

  Grace gave him an irked look. “Sir, you know I hate his Family. I will never trust them.”

  “I don’t mean to nitpick, but you’ve said a small untruth somewhere in there.”

  Grace’s eyes went to the ceiling, and she replied like a corrected student. “Hate is against my Christian duty, so I do not truly hate them all.”

  “Very good,” said the Don.

  No, not very good at all. My dilemma was elegantly simple. If I went for the Don, Grace would assume I was the bad guy, and probably kill me. If I gave the Don even a flimsy excuse, he’d shoot me.

  As if seeing the scenarios on my face, Grace said, “Give it up, Endicott.”

  I thought of one last way to complicate the situation and perhaps give me some maneuvering room. “Here, you take it,” I said, offering my open palm toward her.

  “No,” she said emphatically, “to him.”

  Was there just a flash of something in her eyes, or was that just the most misleading of my Christian virtues, hope?

  It didn’t matter. I prepared my prayers and one request. With as much disregard for its safety as I could risk, I tossed the syringe to the Don, as I prayed like I had as a little boy: Let’s go fast, Jesus.

  The speed of the world slowed. The Don snagged the syringe. Still a blur at this speed, Grace was up and moving toward her former mentor. “Still,” he said. Grace froze, caught by the Don’s word. She had tried to intervene.

  With Grace on my side, I could act against the Don. I sprang for him and his gun. With the fluid grace of a young man, he stepped aside. His hand lashed out, and a dark spiritual force pushed me hard to the floor. “Die,” he said, bringing the pistol into line with my head.

  But I had remembered how Abram and Joshua had taken the House of Morton with the help of the House itself, and even as he wished for my death, I made my request. “Hit him, House.”

  The bust of Richard III flew at the Don, and though he dodged a direct hit, it jostled him, and he fired a round that splintered his wooden floor. He’d get me next time. “Grace, in God’s name, act!”

  In a heartbeat Grace was on the Don, though this time all the artistry of the alley fight was gone. She stripped him of the gun with her left hand, and with blow after blow, she pummeled him to the ground with her right fist. “Why?” she said. “Why? Why? Why?”

  She was going to kill him.

  I was up on my feet again. “Commander,” I said. “We can’t.”

  “I fucking well can,” she replied.

  “It fits the rogue narrative.”

  She stopped. “Right. Let’s tie him up, then.”

  We bound him with the phone and computer cords. As we worked, the Don, animated by his hideous alchemical strength, regained consciousness. “In Jehovah’s name, not a word of craft,” I commanded, and again I felt the power of the House add to my authority.

  “Not a word,” the Don agreed, and he leered through blood and pain at Grace. “A shame. Immortality would have suited you, though some of my colleagues want only Anglo-Saxon stock preserved. You saw me as a grandfather figure, I dare say. Sit on my lap, and we’ll see what kind of grandfather I can be.”

  Grace slapped him once, hard. “Traitor.” I saw the tears threaten in her eyes and knew in an instant that I hated this man more than I’d hated anyone in the spiritual world, present or past, for bringing this woman such sorrow. God forgive me, but it was true.

  A noise put me back into combat awareness. It was a knock at the door. The Don chuckled quietly and whispered theatrically, “Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key.”

  From the door came a voice. “Professor, sir, are you all right? Let us in.”

  The House had locked the door. “Excellent work, House,” I said. “Please continue to keep them out.” Then, realizing that I didn’t know whether the would-be assistants to the Don were his own creatures or misinformed MI13 agents, I added, “Use any means short of killing them.”

  I heard a chuckle echoing in the water pipes. How did the Mortons live in such a place?

  Grace frowned with mild concern. “You’re talking to the House?”

  “Can’t you hear it?”

  She finished a last knot on Dee’s bonds and picked up the gun from the floor. “Let me know if it says anything important.”

  I would’ve advised her on House conversational etiquette, but the knocks at the door had changed to serious battering, followed by small-arms fire against the door. This was answered by windowpanes exploding, not inward, but outward against the intruders, who yelped in distress. Another voice from the door. “Don’t shoot, you might hit the Don.”

  “Dear Grace,” said the Don, “you should have been true to your ancestry and left this American to rot.” What the hell did that mean? “You’re on the wrong side of history, dear, and I’ve seen enough history to know. Genies do not go back into bottles. Why shouldn’t we have through craft what technology will bring within a few generations to everyone? We don’t have to persuade all of the mundanes to accept it. Only a few of the important ones.”

  I had ceased to listen closely, as this seemed designed to keep us from doing the obvious: getting the hell out of Dodge. Still, having thought through our options, I wanted the local expert’s opinion. “Word of two against one?” I suggested.

  Grace shook her head. “Even if they aren’t suborned, they won’t believe us.”

  I grabbed the syringe from where the Don had dropped it on the floor. “I’ll be taking this with us.”

  The Don convulsed in an effort against his bonds. “No!”

  I made a last prayer. “In the name of the Lord, sleep and repent.” The Don’s head slumped in its bonds. There, now he wouldn’t discuss us until we’d had a head start. I hoped he enjoyed being commanded as little as I had.

  The wind was building up in the House, as if a storm were breaking inside. I knew a few things about sentient houses with paranoid occupants, and one fact seemed particularly relevant now. “House, where’s the secret way out?”

  The door to the den slammed impatiently again and again as the gale roared. This way, this way and hurry.

  We left the den, and a door off the kitchen swung open. We peered into the darkness. Stairs, leading down.

  “Wait, I need my sword…” But even as I was speaking, a blast of air was carrying my sheathed sword end over end to me. I reached out and grasped it. “Thanks, House. You’re the best.”

  As we descended the stairs, we used our phones as lamps. That reminded me of an important duty. “House, please let me place a call.”

  “What…?” But Grace must have realized the necessity. The time to signal home was now, when the only place they could trace us to was already blown.

  I called the UK safe number for American spiritual agents. A woman’s voice answered: “Car service.”

  “Yes, for Mr. Sword,” I replied. “He’s leaving soon. There is more evil in the village than he can say.”

  A pause, while the poor rookie must have processed what that coded signal of local practitioner hostility might mean for her own future. “Understood,” she said. “Any instructions for the driver?”

  “Tell him we’ll have words when we meet.” Yes, Attucks, serious words indeed. “And be sure my friends know that I don’t intend to remain in the village, so stay away.” I ended the call.
r />   We hurried through the narrow passage with as much speed as our limited light allowed. Our escape route was more like a medieval tunnel than the terrible grandeur of the Morton subbasement, but some recent widenings and ornamentation with occult symbols indicated Dee’s future ambitions. Emerging from the walls, two centuries of Dee ancestors tipped their hats to us, though one or two spirits snarled. Left-Hand objects were arranged in niches, but not as the trophies of which Grace had spoken. Rather, saving things that God wanted utterly destroyed was the biblical sin of Achan, and all of these objects retained their evil power.

  We exited through a craft-hidden gap in a stone fence, which must have been at least two blocks distant from Dee’s house. Grace pointed at a car parked on a driveway. She said some words to the car as she worked a small bit of metal into the door lock and then into the ignition, and within seconds, we were driving off in our stolen Vauxhall Vectra, whatever that was. Its lack of style must’ve been killing Grace.

  As Grace drove us toward the center of town again to break the craft trail, she spoke rapidly. “I can try to get you to the Irish Republic on a fishing boat. The Provisionals did it all the time, so it can’t be too difficult.”

  “No,” I said, “I have to go to Ukraine. This is going to get worse.” Then, the tricky bit. “Will you come with me?”

  “Your orders, the reason you’re here…”

  “I don’t care. It’s the usual farsight bull crap, and I’m not playing for them anymore. There’s only one direction for me to go.” I was going for my friends, who must also be in peril. What would convince Grace to join me? “When you first heard about Roderick being back, what did you think?”

  Grace sighed. “Kill him. Kill him now.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do,” I said.

  “You know what happened to those Russians—seven of them—who went after Roderick? It’s suicide.” Even in service, a sin too far for her. Good.