by David Falchi
8
The golden medallion that I had around my neck had given its personal touch to the spell that I had just performed and so the circle of light around me produced some dazzles, and it was as if thunders were blowing on the ethereal surface.
I had no doubts: no dark force would have been able to cross the barrier without being damaged or injured.
It was very likely that the material shape of the entity would have been wiped out while its most intimate soul would have been sent back in the infernal abyss that had forged it.
However, I knew that the enemy wanted to destroy me and I had no doubt that it would have approached me. I wanted to study its reactions before I unleashed the beetle destructive force. With its aid, I was sure that I wouldn’t have had any trouble. Even the spell that I just recited didn’t use all the energy that I expected. Noah’s ancient necklace was even more powerful than I had imagined. I’ll tell him all about it when I’m home.
The door started to tremble, which meant that the being had decided to keep its human shape. Somehow, he was obsessed by the idea of looking just like me, and at this point, changing that physiognomy must have been pretty hard for him. That was another advantage. When the creature had a non-corporeal shape, it was more dangerous and unpredictable.
Somewhere in my mind, I could hear Lerner complaining for all those glares that must have invaded his world. My assistant must have been feeling lonely: he was used to chat with me during our investigations and he must have felt uncomfortable in that silence.
If everything had gone as planned, I would have awarded him with all the residual hauntings of the house. The soul of the drug addict who died inside those walls might have come in handy, after all.
The feast would have cancelled Lerner’s discontent.
The door opened wide with a thud and that’s when I saw myself entering the basement, with the gun still in my right hand. Again, I couldn’t help but notice the wobbly pace of my doppelganger in his desperate attempt to imitate the way humans walk.
He put his eyes on me and then I finally saw in his black iris the hint of an emotion: hate. Most of it was for what I represented and for the light that I had lit in a place ruled by darkness.
Once Again, he pointed the weapon toward me. The revolver had still one bullet. The spirits started to howl inside and outside my body, warning me of the imminent danger.
I didn’t take my eyes off the demoniac creature. I had nothing to fear and I was most interested in the way the creature thought. Then, he pointed again the weapon toward me, but this time he seemed determined to shoot. Apparently, he had accessed my brain and discovered that was the last bullet that he had.
«Don’t do it», I said. My words created vortexes in the light barrier, as if the particles had started to move quickly.
«You probably haven’t noticed but you are a prisoner here. And now I’m going to set you free».
His expression turned into something that looked like a smile, but it only made his lips bend in an unnatural way.
He shot but I was ready. The wall of light came forward, wrapping the bullet in a loving embrace. I watched the bullet dancing before my eyes, until the spirits found a way to stop it for good.
What was supposed to kill me had been stopped in mid-air. However, now I was done being the enemy’s target. With extreme concentration, I ordered my invisible allies to return the bullet to its sender.
I knew that it would have never reached the speed of a shot but that was not the purpose of my offensive.
The bullet draw an amber-colored arch in the dark room, ending its flight inside my enemy’s chest.
It was somehow disturbing to watch my doppelganger looking at its chest, where a hole as big as a fist had just opened.
A golden smoke started to get out of the wound. The being let out a savage groan from its throat, something that could only result from the most excruciating pain.
A dim light spread all over the monster’s body until it completely covered it. The groan turned into a scream of pain. If the being had kept its human appearance it would have been destroyed. Yet, I watched it continuing to fight against that unbearable pain. It was showing a kind of determination that wasn’t that far from mine. But, we hadn’t been fighting on equal terms. First, it collapsed on the floor, trying vainly to slither toward me. Its face was deformed by anger and pain, while its hands had turned into misshapen claws. A few years ago, I might have felt pity for that agonizing creature, but it had been a while now since that feeling had left me. I slowly continued to breathe and then I stood up – my heartbeats couldn’t increase their speed or I would have lost control of the barrier.
I lifted the arms, while I started to mumble the words of the formula that I’d chosen to use. It wasn’t a real spell. It was the extension of the protective spell that I had casted before. I hadn’t lost my strengths but I didn’t want to push my luck. I would have used the energies that were already on the field.
My doppelganger tried to lift himself for one last time, maybe guessing what was about to happen. But there was no way out. The enchanted bullet kept him nailed on the floor. And when the wave of light and spirits hit his body, he was still trying to move.
I could hear that unholy flash sizzling when it touched the ethereal matter of my assault, and the scream that the creature made was so loud that it almost turned into an ultrasound. If I hadn’t been protected that scream would have made me go insane.
Only a day before he had taken me by surprise. But now, things had changed. The being jumped forward, just like a desperate fish that’s trying to dive back in the water, but it’s already inside the angler’s boat. It was time to put an end to its pain. With an ultimate gesture of the fingers, I ordered the spirits to wipe out that sacrilegious mass of flesh.
* * *
I embraced the silence that followed like a desperate man who had seen a glass of water in the desert. I didn’t dare to let myself relax because I was afraid to lose the concentration, but I was kind of relieved.
The problem was that I had to watch my back even from my allies. In fact, in that moment, when my doppelganger was being swallowed by the darkness, the spirits were still trying to make a breach into my will to rule over it once and for all.
They must have perceived that I was very strong. And they probably thought that it would have been nice to use it for their purposes. I had to give the final blow to the presence that had been infesting the house, and then get out of there.
According to my experience, when a spiritual presence is forced to abandon its material form, it feels as confused as a soul that has just lost its mortal remains. Moreover, I believe that its soul must have been hurt by all the lights that I had used to hit it. At that point, I was almost sure that I would have defeated the infestation without having that many troubles. In another situation, I would have asked Lerner for an advice, but now, my head was telling me to hurry and be out of there.
I left my assistant where he was, in my jacket’s pocket – where I thought that he would have been safe – and then I tried to recall the words that would have allowed me to strike a blow against the enemy. Without the aid of the medallion, even trying this, would have been hard, but I was sure that the spirits would have helped me until there was something that they could get in return. I lifted my arms and I turned the palms toward the ceiling and then the formula flowed from my lips. The light barrier that surrounded me started to make a weak buzz that sounded just like the crackling of electricity.
As an extra precaution I repeated the words twice, reinforcing in this way the spell’s power. Then, I slowly lowered the upper limbs and I tried to head toward the basement door.
I was happy when I noticed that the barrier was following my every move without changing its extension. I was free to study the house under its protection. That good news made me feel relieved.
From what I had already seen, I would have found what was left of my enemy in the attic. Of course, since the be
ing no longer had a body it might have been able to free all its potential but I doubted that it would have been able to breach my protective barrier. Besides, I didn’t intend to give it enough time to prepare.
I took a few steps, while I kept repeating in my mind the formula that I was going to use to keep the barrier up.
Then I saw an object on the floor that reflected the same flare of the protection circle. After all this time I could finally smile. It was my gun. And I could finally have it back. Before I picked it up from the floor, I took a few more steps, to make sure that the gun had entered the bright circle. Then, seeing that there hadn’t been a reaction, I dared to grab it. I felt so much better. I hated the idea that I had lost part of my armory in that battle, and the thought that someone had pointed my revolver against me annoyed me even more. Now the weapon would have returned at home. I regretted that I hadn’t brought some spare bullets with me.
I climbed the stairs that led to the main floor. Silence ruled over the entire house, and it was as if the walls were following every move that I made. If, before, I could sense the hint of a threat, now there was another emotion in the air: fear. The being must have learnt a lot from me, but I had also taught it what it meant to be afraid.
The entrance door of the house was wide opened and the sunlight seemed to invite me to get out of there and enjoy the day. I didn’t think twice about taking its offer and fall into its deceiving surrender. On the contrary, I laid a hand on the banister and I got ready to go upstairs.
I didn’t hurry though, in fact I was trying to pay attention to my every move. When I got upstairs I noticed that there was a dark liquid on the floor that looked like bitumen. Despite its nasty aspect it didn’t stink and as for its consistency it reminded me of mud, or at least that was the feeling that I got while my shoes touched it. The only difference was that the fluid was trying to avoid any contact with the bright barrier around me. If that was my enemy’s blood, maybe there was a chance that it might be bleeding to death.
I laid a hand on the wall to help my body to stay up and then I headed toward the metallic stairs that led to the attic. I had no intention to slip in that slime.
And this was mainly because I could feel it moving around my feet, as if it was trying to grab me and slow me down. Without the proper protection, I would have had to fight against a puddle of spiritual shifting sands. I had already heard about something like that. No one ever knew what happened to the people who disappeared in that way. And not even the hopeless curiosity of a scholar was that eager to find that out.
I didn’t know what I would have found but I thought that I should have looked for some offensive spells. I wasn’t going to perform an exorcism, because it was a procedure that was too slow and that had the purpose of casting out an entity from a place. What I was going to do was a real assault. The power that was running through my veins in that moment could have wipe out any enemy that lacked of a body. That creature was too evil and I couldn’t let that it haunted the human world. It had to be eradicated.
I reached the stairs and I started to climb them, one step at a time. Once I had climbed half of the stairs I stopped. There was a threatening noise that came from above. I could hear a gigantic mass that was breathing with a steady beat. If the presence had first tried to tempt me by opening the entrance door, now it was trying to scare me. It should have known that I would have never backed down. After all, that thing had pretended to be me.
«These tricks don’t work with me», I declared.
So, for the third time I recited the formula that should have potentiated the defense system and then I ventured into the ample attic. I was ready to fight against the darkness and nothing would have stopped me. Except the darkness that I was carrying with me, and whose existence I completely ignored.
* * *
During the hunt, there’s a moment in which you realize that you’ve won. I wouldn’t know how to put it in words but it was as if my entire soul vibrated every time that this was about to happen. It must be the same feeling that a general that had been fighting a battle feels when he is about to shoot the last bullet or to give the final blow to the enemy.
And that was the reason why I lived, that moment in which I realized that men had triumphed over the supernatural forces, winning them at their own game. This feeling usually gave me an adrenaline rush that ran throughout my spine. And usually this bliss lasted until the moment in which the entity got banished, destroyed or absorbed. It was also thanks to these systems that I had been able to improve my skills. The more dangerous and threatening were the presences the stronger I became when I defeated them.
So, while I was entering the ample room in the attic I was feeling this familiar sensation. I was about to crush the enemy for good. Once again, I had demonstrated the superiority of the human intellect and the accuracy of science. The spirits that were still under my control, were dancing around me, as if they had been inside a swirling amber-colored kaleidoscope.
The being was breathing naturally, and my presence there didn’t seem to bother it that much; maybe it was too injured to even try to react. I didn’t know how much the loss of its material body had hurt it, but I did know what was about to happen.
I embraced the darkness above me with a scream of pure joy and then I prepared myself to flood that unnatural darkness with a flaming glare. There was a risk that the windows of the entire floor could explode in that moment, but I didn’t care.
I recalled the formula that was going to put an end to that thing, and in order to succeed I had to use a part of my soul to purify the area around me.
It was one of the most powerful technique that I knew and its use cost my body a whole lot of energy, but in that moment I couldn’t afford to think about that: I was in the middle of a fight and after a few weeks of rest I would have been as good as new.
When suddenly something changed in the air. The creature stopped breathing and for a moment the only thing that I could hear was silence. I wasn’t going to let it deceive me, so I continued to do what I was doing. It was a matter of seconds now.
Then, a deep and unnatural laugh resounded in the air, and it was heavy like hammer blows in an anvil. If, until that moment, the being had done everything in its power to look human, now it must have changed its game. That blast of hilarity had nothing to do with human amusements. It was an evil and threatening sound.
In that moment I saw something that undermined my certainties. The barrier’s flare was fading. At start, I thought that was only my imagination, but soon that impression turned out to be the true. The darkness around me was getting thicker and it was also getting closer. That sense of victory quickly turned into fear.
I left the assault spell in the back of my head, and I focused all my energies on a defense spell. The barrier couldn’t have used all the spiritual remains. I tried to repeat the formula but the spirits weren’t answering, and it felt like trying to catch an eel with oily fingers. They kept slipping away, looking incapable of following my orders. Then the darkness got thicker.
Feeling desperate, I looked down toward the medallion and I realized why this was happening. The beetle that had existed for centuries had been eroded in the blink of an eye.
Just a moment before it shined of a golden light, and now it was dark and worn out. It was as if the medallion had been dived in the acid for several minutes. For this reason, the souls that were trapped inside couldn’t help me: they had been here for centuries and now they were experiencing the end of their existence.
Apparently, since I’d entered the house, the enemy had been using all its power to attack the enchanted object that was causing most of its problems. The rest, had only been a diversion, a way to buy time. When I decided to come upstairs I had fallen into the trap that the entity had so carefully prepared. I would have been that meticulous if I had to deceive my enemy and change strategy.
The situation was too dangerous and now it wasn’t the time to panic. There was no point in keeping a ba
rrier that was about to collapse, so I decided to leave it to its destiny. I would have used the last minutes of that defense system to build another one. I could no longer count on the spiritual forces’ aid, so I had to seek help from my personal supply. I put aside the spells that I had prepared and I fished up something more suitable for the situation. If I had tried a frontal attack I would have faced certain death. It was just like in the old days, when, during my first cases, I could only rely on my own strength. Back then I didn’t have Lerner with me. I had found that particular ritual in a book in the town library. I’d decided to test it when I entered an abandoned house that the locals believed to be haunted. And as it turned out they were right. The ghost of a boy was continuing to wander around those empty rooms, howling his frustration and his anger against the void that surrounded him. When I entered the house the ghost had thrown itself at me and for a moment my heart stopped; it always happens when an ethereal body crosses a material one. It was then that, feeling terrified, I tried what I saw in the volume. And then I found out that it worked. Now, I was going to have a déjà vu. While the protection barrier around me was getting thinner, I cut my fingertip with the blade of a knife and then with my blood I draw a circle on the ground. I recited the words of a foreign spell that was supposed to reinforce the sacrifice that I had just made.
Then, I repeated the procedure, making a deeper cut into the flesh and drawing a second circle inside the other one. Once again there was an unbearable silence in the room, but I knew that the enemy was following my every move. I had been pretentious and the creature had used it to its advantage. It hadn’t lied when it said that it was me. Of one thing I was sure: I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
I recited the last sentences and then the blood on the ground started to produce a dim light. The glare wasn’t strong like the one that had protected me earlier before, however, it would have allowed me to buy some time and to think about a solution for the trouble that I’d just put myself into.
