by Richard Hein
Her mocking laughter filled my tiny apartment, so that I couldn’t help but share a sheepish grin. Her head drifted back up, tilted to the side, righted itself, and managed to get her eyes in the general direction of my face.
“The look on your face was worth it.”
“Anyway,” I said, “problem was, it worked some magic and E.T. called home. Both the possessed and native uglies can do that. Infection spreads. A couple of his bug friends were waiting for us and swarmed out into the hall like… well… cockroaches. Big mess. Alissa and I get separated from Jack but manage to take down the original bug and two of the others. Jack’s fighting through the abandoned apartments, dodging fire and this corrosive acid stuff they were vomiting up…”
“Ew,” she said, motioning for the bottle again. I took my drink and passed it back.
“When we find him, he’s covered head to toe in black goo that Entities let loose when you beat the universe out of them. He walks up to me, claps me on the shoulder with grimy hand, gives me a crazy grin and says, ‘It’s your turn to buy us dinner, son’. He never let it bother him.”
Her smile was warming like the alcohol that gave me sustenance. “I’d like to meet him when we go back.”
I turned to stare out the window. The rain had let up, but it was impossible to see anything in the night. Some things stick with you, and nothing really dulls the edge.
“He was torn in half by a particularly nasty thing we ran into up in Alaska,” I said, monotone. The alcohol helped.
It always did, at least a little.
“God, Samuel,” Kate said, leaning forward. “I’m—”
“Don’t say it.” I waved a hand in irritation. “Just don’t say it.”
We lapsed into silence. She spun the bottle around on the floor beside her, not daring to look up. I guess it came down to that, in the end. They always died. The how was different, but it wasn’t like the life expectancy could be terribly good when you’re up against that. I banged my head back against the wall, hardly feeling it as the booze did its dance within my body. Maybe it’d be my turn next. Everyone else would live, but this time I’d be the one dying.
That’d be a change of pace.
“You couldn’t have always wanted to do this,” she said. “What did you aspire to before the secret organization thing?”
Worlds of derision funneled into my snort. “Nothing. I was a kid just a bit out of high school, which meant that what I wanted to do changed depending on my mood. Mostly trying to figure a good way to getting out of working retail at Christmas. Another year with a Tickle Me Elmo or whatever the next fad would be…” I shuddered. “What about you? Who was Kate before she was stabbing demons in their non-existent heart?”
Her smile was distant and guarded. Tiny fingers drew absent circles on my discolored carpet as the silence grew between us. I’d pushed before, trying to get a picture of Kate. Part of it was professional curiosity. Knowing her past would help me understand what had happened with Ben, and why these things might be interested in her and her family. A decent portion was just getting to know another person for the first time in a few years. Sitting there, spinning the bottle back and forth between us… It wasn’t even that Kate was attractive, and that having the attention of such a person centering around myself was a decent ego boost. It was more primal than that, a connection between two people was something that had been sorely lacking in my life, something that the hours at my failing jobs hadn’t kindled with my nameless coworkers.
“No goals, no ambitions,” she said at last. Her fingers stopped their incessant circling. She gave a weak shrug. “It’s just enough to exist.”
“Well, I’m a firm believer in existing. It’s basically all I do.”
Her smile was thin. “There’s no point in planning for the future when it can all be taken from you in a heartbeat.”
That made sense in a sad sort of way. The loss of a loved one did that at times, shattering the views previously held and giving some a thirst to embrace the moment. I’d seen it before. Others went the opposite way, losing their path and simply falling by the side of the road. I nodded. There wasn’t much you could say to that.
“Well, you did good today,” I said, “pending we can get your more vicious instincts under control. Charging into a dangerous situation isn’t the wisest idea.”
She rolled her eyes. “You did. And before you spout off nonsense about having experience, you’ve been warming cubicles for the last few years and were getting slapped around a fair bit. Seems neither of us were up to the challenge.”
“Fair point,” I grunted, rubbing at my shoulder. It still ached beneath the warming magic of the alcohol. My eyes drifted closed beneath a blanket of haze.
“It’s that dangerous, then? Magic?”
I opened an eye. “Worse. Then more worse than that. Juggling armed nuclear weapons dangerous while someone kicks you in the junk.”
“The OFC is the only thing that combats it?”
The eyes closed again. “Officially, yup. There’s some other smaller talent out there, but the OFC is the only one with people that punch time cards.”
“How big are the other branches?”
I squinted at her, held up a hand and pressed my thumb and forefinger together. It looked like I was crushing her head. That was worth a chuckle. “Zip. We’re it. Sea-Tac flies international, though, and I have a lot of frequent flier miles racked up. You want to go to the Bahamas? I could cash in enough to get us there no problem. Maybe enough to fly the whole building. The people in it, I mean. Not the actual building.”
Her smile was warm. “Focus. That seems an awful lot to handle alone.”
I rubbed at my face. “Well, there’s also a number of watcher groups around the world that dial us up when they hear anything. Someone notices chupacabras… chupacabri… multiple chupacabra or someone spitting pea soup or whatever, they call us up. A network of supernatural spies.”
“Are they in the know?”
“Don’t think so. That’s The Boss’s department, but given how many countries there are, seems doubtful.”
“What about something more practical?”
I lunged forward, scrambling for the bottle, but deft and tiny hands wrested it from my feeble hands. She held it up over her head, lording it over me like a pitcher of water to a man in a desert. “Exorcism,” she said. “Help me even the odds.”
I stared. I mean, really stared. An eyes wide, unblinking, burning a hole in my retinas sort of stare. Her colored cheeks flushed a little deeper, but she gave the bottle of life-giving Scotch a suggestive little shake. I rolled to the side, sitting next to her on the floor against the couch, drew my knees up and planted my elbows onto them. My greatest scowl came next, though it was fixated on the floor. If it could have, it would have scoured the mildew away. Kate’s arm slowly came down. The bottle dropped onto the couch, forgotten.
“It’s not magic,” I said, tasting at the words, feeling at the reticence within me. “They’re related though. Anyone can do both with the right mindset and understanding, but it’s a fine line.”
“I’m not going to go and start hurling lightning from my hands when I get pissed in traffic, Samuel.” She chuckled. “That sounds amazing, though.”
My head bobbed like all the delicious booze had set up shop in my brain, sloshing about and turning me into a bobble head. I shook my head perhaps more vehemently than I’d intended. “Don’t ever get into that line of thinking. Never ever, not even joking Kate. Just… please.”
I saw her flush a little out of the corner of my eye. More, anyway.
“Magic and exorcism, or extra-universal eviction or whatever Daniel would call it, are related,” I said, holding up my hands before me. I made a triangle with my thumbs and forefingers. “It’s all about swapping little bits of our reality with another, okay? You need an anchor — that’s usually you.” I wiggled my left thumb. “A target — that’s the crap you want to blow up.” My other thumb did a little danc
e. “And then a conduit, which opens a two lane freeway between the two points and gets the job done.
“So, you’re the anchor, and you push your will on the target and swap a little bit of our reality with another one. If you want to say, shoot fire from your hands, you transpose the world that’s between you and the target you’re trying to crispy chicken up with a dimension that’s pure fire, or the heart of a star or something. If you’ve got enough will and focus, you rip out part of our reality and replace it with a possibility from the infinite ones lining up out there.”
The top of the triangle flexed a tiny bit.
Kate’s hand darted out and flicked my fingers. “Infinite possibilities, and you switch out some of our reality for one of those where the effect you want exists?”
My hands dropped. “Yup. Having the will is the important bit. It’s amazing that we as people can shift reality around like that at all, but it comes down to belief.” I held up two fingers and crossed them like you see in old and cheesy vampire flicks. “That whole bit about having faith as a mustard seed and hucking mountains into the ocean? Basically on the nose. If you believe it’ll happen, it will.” My head lolled back.
“That’s it?”
“It’s one of those things that’s really simple and absurdly hard at the same time. Everything is just willpower and focus, but actually having the belief it’s going to work and cramming all that will into the thought is beyond most people. A lot of folks can’t balance their checkbooks, let alone summon a breeze on a windy day. It helps to have a focus. It’s like a magnifying glass.” I frowned. “No, more like a funnel. It’s not like books of spells do anything. You could chant gibberish or Latin or recite Green Eggs and Ham and it’d all work the same, long as you believed it. Having a structure or a stick with a crystal on it or some candles helps focus the energy, though. I guess.”
“Sounds crazy to me”
“Honestly a bunch of robed cultists trying to summon up Nyarlathotep while reading from Dr. Seuss sounds hilarious to me.” I burped. “Aside from the whole bit about reality ending and madness.”
“Crazy,” she muttered. She rested her head on my shoulder. I froze. She smelled good. I felt a shudder within me, a stirring of heat entirely different than the usual pleasant flush of booze. Better, even, but something I hadn’t felt in so long. “So, it’s all about moving chunks of universes around? You want to summon up a creature from beyond, you visualize something and tap into wherever it exists in the great infinite whatever, and…” Her head lifted away. She wiggled her fingers out before her in a vague gesture.
“More or less,” I said, shrugging. I spun the ring on my finger, frowning off into the cold apartment. “Most people aren’t focused enough to cross that barrier, though. I mean, you could pull a jackalope out of a hat if you tried, but a lot of people also can’t visualize other countries and cultures, let alone other realities, you know? Of course, if you start to compound the effect, it gets cleaner.”
“Ritual summoning.”
“Or a few billion prayers.”
“Huh,” she said. Her head slumped back onto the seat of the couch behind us. “I guess you can do more than just summon up insect things and angels that drive like my psycho grandmother, though, right? Infinite universes, so just about anything should be available.”
“Uh, maybe we should—”
“I can see how it is tempting,” she said spinning around to face me, legs folded like she was a kid in grade school, eyes sparkling with that burning intensity that never quite seemed to leave, an eagerness that sang harmony to what I’d felt in myself all those years ago. She was beautiful and filled with life. Hunger. I found myself watching her, studying the soft curves of her face, the way her lips always seemed on the verge of a smile. “Imagine pulling through diamond statues of yourself. You’d be set for life.”
“Seriously, abort—”
“I know, Samuel,” she said, lips curling into a teasing smile. There it was. Even with everything, she was ready with a grin. I couldn’t understand that. I felt as if I’d traded all mine away somewhere in the distant, broken past. “If we can’t discuss this like adults without you expecting me to join the dark side the second you turn your back, this isn’t going to go well.”
“You didn’t look much like an adult when you were trying to shiv that Entity in its kidneys like a bad late-night prison special.”
“I was aiming for the heart. Besides, they don’t have kidneys I’ve been told.”
“Not a one.”
“And possession is the result of magic, then? When you’re switching out bits of reality, something follows your conduit back?”
“Yup. They take up residence in your mind and subsume you. From there, the infection can spread. Instead of swapping bits of reality around, they swap bits of your soul with something back from the home office. So you get a new resident because you dabbled with magic, and then the guy in your head starts pushing his friends into your friends and it all goes south fast. Sometimes they summon up their friends physically, like the bug guys I mentioned. They want to kick over your sandcastles. The smarter ones, though, they like to slip into people.” I shivered.
“Damn that’s messed up.”
“Exorcism is the same as magic, only different,” I said. “You don’t use yourself as an anchor, though. You’re swapping it back home, using your will to push the Entity through to the point of its origin. There’s no danger, other than the thing gnawing your face off while you’re trying to do it, or if you fail and it rips your skin off or something. Two parts of the triangle instead of three.” I frowned. “I guess that’s just a line.”
“That’s it?” She snorted and wiggled her fingers in a vaguely mystical fashion. “I can do that.”
“Just some will and some focus, sure. It helps to have a personal stake in the matter. A priest exorcising a demon,” I said, making air quotes with my fingers, “has better luck than any other random person that knows the method because of the whole Bible thing. They believe they have a signed and notarized, legally binding document that tells them they’re good at doing it, so it works better for them. Having a focus still helps here too. A cross, crystals or whatever. And poof.” My fingers wiggled.
“Destroying them,” she said, heat licking at her words.
I snorted. “Not at all. Just sends them home. Take Michael. If he were exorcised or discorporated somehow, he’d just head home for a little vacation until summoned up again next time. Same with something possessing a person.”
Kate’s head fell. “So there’s no permanent way to stop them from coming back? What’s to stop whoever called them up from doing it again.”
“There’s only one penalty for any use of magic anywhere,” I said. My throat ached as I pushed the words out. “Death. No exceptions. It’s too dangerous.”
“Jesus,” she whispered. “You kill them?”
My nod was almost imperceptible.
“In any case,” I said, trying to twist the conversation away from that twisting path, all lined with rocks and sharp stabbing bits, “you can also stuff magic into a device. Think of it like a battery. You can store that potential magical energy inside of an object and then use it as if you’d wielded magic yourself. The risk to your body picking up hitchhikers is still the same, though.”
Her eyes were distant, but she nodded.
I blew out a breath and ran a hand across the back of my head. “You’re taking this in stride.”
Kate’s laugh was golden, warming even through the haze of alcohol that blanketed my senses. “My stride has gotten a lot larger of late if you hadn’t noticed.”
Despite myself, a smile tugged at my lips. Maybe I hadn’t lost all of mine. Kate had a way of finding them in me.
My hand reached past Kate, arm brushing against her back as I snagged the bottle from the cushions of the couch and yanked at the stopper. My hand paused, bottle halfway to my mouth, amber liquid that some snob somewhere would probably call peaty
with a nasally voice. It was over half empty. I gave it a little shake, hoping to maybe dislodge some of the liquid from another dimension it might have been hiding in, but it remained devoid of only half its booze. I sealed it back up with a frown.
That was odd. I felt good, the feeling that never really washed away the problems but just masked them under a blanket of pleasant warmth and kept the mind dulled enough to forget, jovial but never happy. Except I was smiling and laughing, which felt strange. Like muscles you never use getting a workout. We’d spent the evening drinking and talking. That was all. Chatting and boozing. Except the bottle should have been about empty by then, with the way we were both passing it back and forth. My eyes traced over the label of the rather nice bottle of liquor, something I never would have treated myself to even in better days. It was beyond me, Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, something Kate had gotten for me because…
A frown settled in on my features. It was familiar with the lay of the land, a familiar tenant. This was Kate. A gesture of friendliness, or was there a hook at the end of the line?
I let it roll away across the floor, where it landed against the box that served as my desk, far from reach.
I stared at it. It sat there, liquid of the gods making waves within before growing still. It called, that old siren, but dull anger gave me the strength to resist. Between the two of us, a lot more should have been gone. I’d been drinking my healthy share, but that meant that…
“You’re a lot better at manipulation than I would have thought,” I said, voice flat. “I almost didn’t see it.”
Kate stilled beside me. Silence stretched between the inches that separated us. I shook my head, a bitter smile replacing the warm one that had grown there. “You thought you’d buy me a nice bottle of something to drink, get me buzzed, and I’d talk about magic. Is that it?”
“Drunk, but yes,” she said. “I’ve seen the kitchen, Samuel. You’re not someone that drinks for a buzz.”
The room rocked from side to side as I climbed to my feet. I needed to tower over her, to reacquire control over the situation. “You could have asked, Kate.”
