The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  I shook my head and said, no Daddy. I didnt know nothin about Agents of Satan. I didnt know nothin about demons. I didnt want Momma to leave us neither, but didnt she leave us years ago? When she got sick? Left us bit by bit?

  Daddy held me and we both cried, though I think for different reasons. Daddy just didnt want to let Momma go. I wanted her back. I’d do anythin to have her back, but I didnt tell Daddy that.

  * * *

  First thing this mornin I sneaked out to the barn and looked at Momma. She was just layin in her stall, the chain still round her neck. Her face was blue and bruised. Her eyes wide open and already a fly settled there.

  I closed her eyelids and untangled the chain. Once I got to the leather collar at her neck I took it off. Underneath, the skin was calloused in places, rubbed raw in others. There was nothin I could do about it without goin back to the house for the iodine. Did it matter? Would Momma feel it when she woke up in a few hours? I thought she would. She’d be weak and tired and probably in a mood. She’d be hungry and she’d want to eat.

  When I went back, everyone was still sleepin. I took the iodine and some bandages from the bathroom cabinet and two apples from the kitchen. On my way out I spotted Momma’s Bible layin on the kitchen table and I took that too.

  Momma still werent awake when I got back so I dressed her wounds and waited. I sat on an old musty straw bale and ate one of those apples. It was sweet and fresh and the juices ran down my chin and onto the Bible as I turned its thin pages. I read about Lazarus and how Jesus knew his friend was sick but let him die anyways. So that God’s Son may be glorified, thats what John wrote. I didnt like the way Jesus used his friend to make himself look good in front of people. I felt sorry for Lazarus.

  When I looked up I found the sun was full up and I had eaten both the apples. I felt bad about that. I looked at their teeth-stripped cores and knew Momma would be needin more than that anyways. I thought on what I could fix her to eat and all that readin about Jesus and Lazarus made me think.

  * * *

  I’m sittin in my bedroom lookin out the window. Waitin for Daddy to go out and see what all the ruckus is about. It hasnt started yet but it will soon and I have to be ready when it does.

  Daddy went out watchin Sunday football and gettin drunk with his mates but now he’s snorin on the couch. I’m sure the noise will wake him though.

  Momma woke up a coupla hours ago, but I aint fed her yet. Only time I went out there was to put the radio on for her real loud and close the barn doors. I’ve got my own little radio set up next to me. I hear the end of the news and then the weather and through the window I can see the big green cross still painted on the barn doors. My heart is beatin real hard. When the weather stops playin my heart skips the beat of dead air. Starts again with a rush at the sound of the next program.

  Prayers and blessings listeners, a familiar voice says. You are tuned to Reverend Steve Stevens Miracle Revival Hour. We’ll take some talkback soon, but lets start the evening with some music.

  The Reverend plays Abide With Us, The Day is Waning and then Rise From Your Graves, Ye Dead. I can hear it not just from my radio but comin from the barn too, I’ve turned the radio up that loud. I hate to do it cause its really botherin Momma. I can hear her screamin and shoutin like a banshee.

  Half way through There’s A Light In The Valley, Daddy comes rushin out the back door. Its good that he’s drunk cause he’s stumblin and not fast, which gives me time.

  I get up and rush down the stairs and out the back door too. I catch up just when Daddy’s gettin to the barn doors. He’s got his shotgun with him and he puts it down to open the doors. It doesnt take much for me to keep runnin, my arms out in front, and I push Daddy into the striped lights and shadows of the barn. I dont even think. I just slam the doors and pick up the shotgun and jam it barrel first through the handles to lock them shut.

  I can hear Daddy shoutin at me and bangin and I can hear Momma makin that sound like a dog barkin. The Reverend is on air for just enough time to introduce the next song, and then the screamin starts. For the first time ever its Daddy not Momma makin the noise.

  I walk back to the house and In Our Day Of Thanksgiving starts playin. I know the words and I sing along. When I get inside I’m goin to make a phone call. When they answer I’ll say, hello I’d like to offer a prayer for Lazarus. I’d like to have my Momma back.

  Soul Partner

  Imogen Cassidy

  I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to go east in my job—for some reason the beach wasn’t a hotspot of supernatural activity. I guess it could have been all that sun and sand, or maybe it was the combination of wealth and youth that stopped people from being upset about things like ghosts and spirits and the occult . Or perhaps in some cases they took it too seriously and didn’t want an actual practitioner like me mucking up their idea of how it should work—even after the magic came back there were still a lot of people out there who wanted to make their own interpretation of spirituality. The real occult avoided that sort of thing.

  I parked the Echo right outside the address my potential client had given me, grateful for small mercies. It was the middle of summer—logically I should have had to park kilometres away and walked up and down the whole of east Sydney searching, but miracle of miracles, there was a small spot just outside the place, looking out over the water. I paused for a minute after getting out of the car and rested my elbows on its roof, gazing out across the green park and strip of yellow sand before the water.

  “Ms Foster?”

  The voice was warm and rich, hitting a lot of buttons that I didn’t necessarily want hit right now, and coming from somewhere behind and above me. I turned and looked up.

  My client—I assumed that was who it was—was standing on a glass fronted balcony with a slightly better view than the one I had until a moment before been contemplating. She was dressed in a pair of cut-off denim shorts that exposed a long length of brown leg, and a loose white shirt over an equally white bikini top. Sunglasses covered her eyes and most of her face, and she held a martini glass in one hand.

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  She looked puzzled. “Ms Foster?” she said again. I shook my head and grinned.

  “Don’t mind me,” I said. “Ms Paine, I presume?”

  She smiled, showing perfect white teeth, and motioned with her free hand. “Come in and up, Ms Foster. The door is open.”

  “Of course it is,” I muttered, and locked the Echo, walking across the street and up to the lavish double doors. I debated touching up my hair in the brief moment I would be out of my client’s gaze, but decided it wasn’t really worth the effort of a glamour spell. Sometimes you just can’t look good next to someone—the best you can hope for is that you find someone who doesn’t care if you don’t.

  The thought of Gloria made me square my shoulders and smile a little as I walked up the open plan staircase towards the balcony where Ms Paine was standing. Just because I wasn’t tall, dark and mysterious didn’t mean I wasn’t loved.

  She was sitting when I got there. White marble and glass created a lot of glare and I was glad I had my own sunglasses as I sat on the chair she offered to me. I tried not to sprawl in its unexpected comfort and put on my best professional face, while she set her martini glass down on the glass table with a delicate clink and rested her (perfectly manicured) hand next to it.

  “You wouldn’t go into any detail on the phone,” I said. “Which is fine. But you said you needed the services of a wizard.”

  “I do.”

  I spread my hands. “I know I’m not exactly Gandalf, but you did look me up before you rang? At least I’m presuming you did.”

  “The occult and I aren’t exactly strangers,” she said, “but this is a delicate matter.”

  I tried my best reassuring smile. “If you weren’t looking for discretion you would have gone to the police, Ms Paine,” I said. “I’m good at discreet.”

  She took a sip of the martini, s
eeming to consider again. This was no skin off my nose—if she didn’t want to hire me, she was still obliged to pay my call-out fee, that was very clear in my telephone spiel. I lost nothing but a nice afternoon drive and the company of a pretty woman for a short conversation if she decided I wasn’t good enough for her troubles.

  Mentally, I prepared myself to take my kit and go home.

  Then she spoke. “I’m afraid someone is attempting to steal my soul.”

  “Ah.”

  “I need you to find out who.”

  “Oh.”

  “And stop them.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Can you do that?”

  I rubbed a hand through my hair. “Well, there are a few options with soul stealing. Most of the time the demon in question can’t get through a simple magic circle. I can teach you a basic household protection spell that will keep you safe at home, and make you a charm to carry around with you to stop them from . . . ”

  Ms Paine was watching me with a small smile. It was the kind of smile that made you stumble and forget words.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I think you’ve misunderstood me, Ms Foster,” she said, then reached up and took off her glasses. “The soul that they’re trying to steal is not a human soul. As such the kinds of protections you talk about will not work.”

  I blinked, looking for the first time at her naked eyes.

  Yellow.

  Slit like a cat’s.

  “Ah.”

  * * *

  Magic isn’t a simple thing, it never has been. It’s always been there—at least that’s what the foremost wizardly minds were saying these days—but it’s never been taken that seriously. Practitioners who are any good at it are pretty rare, and when something magical happens most people are happy enough to convince themselves that it didn’t. Or at least, they were, until late 1945, when a hole opened in the universe and more magic than we’d ever been exposed to poured back into the world and set up residence, a bit like an elderly relative who doesn’t know what time it’s suitable to turn off the lights when he’s staying at your house.

  You can’t explain away something that big. You can’t say you don’t believe in magic when six people on your street start being able to light fires with their brains. Or you can, but you better have good insurance.

  It settled down a bit after that. There were a rash of magical talents, but most faded back into simple sensitivity and everyday life continued on. A percentage of them, though, developed into full blown adepts—like me and like my uncle—and it became pretty obvious that it was genetic in some way. It skipped my mother and my brother. But I got the full kit and kaboodle, as they say. Not much chop, having a wizard for a daughter, especially one who likes fire, so my parents sent me to live with my uncle at a pretty young age. He taught me what I knew about magic and a lot more besides, and passed on his wizarding business to me when he got on the wrong side of an ice demon.

  I still missed him. But I wouldn’t deny that it was nice being my own boss.

  * * *

  Ms Paine was obviously a demon, and Uncle Tim had been pretty firm on what we did with demons. I stood up, and stepped back, managing not to look totally incompetent, and started to sketch a banishing sigil in the air.

  Ms Paine held up a hand. “Ms Foster, don’t.” She stood as well, and as she did she touched a finger to her cheek. Her eyes changed—moving from yellow to deep brown, and she smiled—a completely different smile to the one she had been giving me before. This was younger. More uncertain.

  I frowned. “Lady, you have a demon inside you, I need to exorcise it.”

  She shook her head. “No. Please. This is why I called you and not the police. I don’t want it exorcised. That’s the whole problem.”

  “Wha . . . ?”

  “Sit down and let me explain, if you would. It’s a complicated story, and I really do need your help.” She paused. “We both do.”

  She wasn’t following the regular formula for demons, I had to give her that. The last time I’d faced down with one it had flattened a warehouse before I’d managed to banish it back through the rift. At least this one was pretty and didn’t try to eat me.

  I sat.

  “Okay, Ms Paine. You’ve caught my interest, I won’t lie. But forgive me if I’m not going to take this case with no questions asked.”

  “I would not hire you if you did.” I lowered my hands, but not my guard. Ms Paine smiled wryly, then nodded. “It’s true, I do have a demon . . . ah . . . inhabiting me. But it was a mutual decision. A . . . partnership, if you will. The demon—Fiducia—had something I needed, and I had something it needed.” She spread her hands. “Simple really. No-one was hurt by the deal, and no-one will be, of that I can be absolutely certain.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. She’d named it. She’d named it trust. Obvious demon was obvious.

  “Look, Ms Paine, I don’t want to be a downer here, but demons are good at making you think everything’s going to be okay. It’s kind of a thing with them.”

  She shook her head and looked down. When she looked up again her eyes were yellow. “You’re an adept, Ms Foster, and I am familiar with some of your work.”

  I swallowed. It wasn’t necessarily a good thing to be known of by a demon. “Oh?”

  “Your uncle made many enemies among my kind.”

  “He was good at that, yeah.”

  “I was saddened to hear of his death, however. And I believe that humans . . . overreact to us. We do harm because we are used to having limited access to your world.” She spread her hands. “We are long lived, and change is anathema to us.”

  “Hey we’re short-lived and not so keen on it either,” I said. “But I hope you’re not suggesting that we all sign up for demon passengers in order to better human/demon relations because I don’t think there’s many that are going to be keen the way Ms Paine was. Or seems to have been.”

  “You do not believe this was voluntary.”

  I sighed. “It’s possible. But I’m betting there’s no way she would have known the full consequences of agreeing to the deal, and if I’m going to help you and not . . . you know . . . exorcise you. You’re going to have to convince me that she hasn’t changed her mind.”

  “I haven’t.” Paine’s voice changed at the same time as her eyes, but there was a steel to it that hadn’t been there before. “It’s . . . not exactly what I anticipated, I won’t lie; I wanted this. I searched for a compatible demon. She helps me.”

  “How?”

  Paine’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need to go into the advantages of possession, surely, Ms Foster? Or are you not as knowledgeable as your resume would suggest?”

  Demonic possession granted the body inhabited by the spirit certain advantages. Strength, speed, better concentration, the ability to wield magic if the host had even a slight talent. Most possessions didn’t last very long, however. “How long have you been in there?”

  “Four years,” Paine said, smiling slightly.

  I took a breath. “Okay, so you make a deal with a demon, you get certain advantages, the demon gets to touchy feely in the real world and now someone is trying to forcibly evict it. Who knows about your deal?”

  “My family. Some of my colleagues. A few of my friends.”

  “You’re awfully open about this, Ms Paine.”

  “They’re all people that I trust.”

  “It’s possible someone is attempting to make a similar deal to the one you already have, in which case they would simply be calling your demon by name. No connection to you whatsoever.”

  Paine nodded. “We have considered that, and are confident that you could track someone who was attempting to unseat our hold on this body.”

  “I could . . . probably wrangle something, yeah.”

  “It would be appreciated. My dream wards are working when Arietta is her most vulnerable, but you would know that they’re not—”

  “—A good idea to keep up forever
. Yes.” There was gear I would need to do this ritual, another thing I probably didn’t need to explain to the demon duo, and really, not very much else to discuss. Aside from one important thing.

  I took a breath. “If I find out this was done without consent I will exorcise you. And Arietta, if you need help—”

  She smiled. “I believe you are the right person for this job, Ms Foster,” she said. “And it pleases me that you have Arietta’s safety as your primary concern. I do assure you it is also mine.”

  “Yeah. Well. Your idea of safe and my idea of safe are probably a little bit different.”

  “Good luck, Ms Foster.”

  * * *

  I drove home. Gloria was there when I let myself in, but she was in the shower, so I limited myself to poking my head around the curtain and giving her a kiss before I started assembling my kit. A few ritual objects, a focusing crystal, nothing too bulky. Soul stealing wasn’t a subtle art and I doubted I’d need a lot of magical muscle to get a psychic imprint of whoever was bothering the demon duo. The problems would start after I’d identified them.

  That would be the interesting thing. There weren’t many magic users in Sydney I didn’t know, and most of them weren’t the type to try to steal demonic souls from people who had willingly agreed to take them on. There were plenty of demons out there if that was all they wanted, so why not get a different one when Arietta’s decided to be stubborn?

  There were a lot of strange things about this case.

  Gloria came out of the bathroom just as I snapped shut my goody bag. “Client turned out to be a winner then?” she said.

  “Not sure yet,” I said. “But whatever this is it’s worth investigating.”

  “Gumshoe Jill.”

  “Something like that.’ She kissed the top of my head and started pulling work clothes out of the wardrobe.

  “I’ll be out late tonight, I think,” I said. “Ritual.”

  “Mmm. Should be home after you any way—we’ve got a few late tables.”