Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women

by Michael Bailey

  There’s a pair of turtle shell-frame glasses nested in Mrs. Z’s hair. She plucks them out, makes as if she’s going to slide them on, then places them on the desk and folds her hands. Her face is very serious. It’s Lecture Time.

  “Carrie, you have potential. Your little...academic detour aside,” Mrs. Zylinski says, tapping a finger on my file, “you’re clearly a very intelligent young woman, and I’ve heard nothing but praise from your teachers. I’m surprised and, frankly, disappointed you don’t have a plan for the rest of your life.”

  “Life has a habit of not playing along with my plans,” I say, and that gets a smile.

  “Life is what happens in-between the plans you make, Carrie. But think how much worse it would be if you let life make all your decisions for you.”

  Mrs. Z handed me a bunch of pamphlets, told me to think about my career options, told me to stay focused on keeping my grades up, and to “think about what I said.” Make plans so life doesn’t make them for me? Sure, easy to say, but how I could possibly make any plans so bulletproof they can’t be completely derailed by my side job (which, I would like to note for the record, was never anywhere on my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up)?

  “You think there’ll still be a market for web designers by the time we graduate?” I ask Malcolm, who sits next to me in my web design class. “I mean, technology isn’t going to leap forward so much that the Internet all goes right into your brain and makes web design an obsolete profession, right?”

  “I don’t think they’ll be wiring people’s brains for the Internet anytime soon,” Malcolm says. Oh, could I prove him wrong on that one. “I guess anything’s possible, but I think web design has a more secure future than, say, newspaper journalism.”

  “Maybe. I just don’t want to waste time learning a skill that’ll be useless by the time I hit the job market.”

  Malcolm turns in his seat to face me. “You got the talk from Mrs. Z, didn’t you?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Mm-hm. I had a similar anxiety attack after I met with her last year.”

  “So you didn’t have any grand life plans when you were a sophomore either?”

  “God, no. I wasn’t thinking about that stuff, not until she started hitting me with all these downer scenarios of me flipping burgers or mowing lawns my whole life, then I was all like, ‘Ahh! Must find life’s purpose! Must not toil in minimum wage service job!’ ”

  “Oh, you got the Scared Straight version, huh?”

  “Big time.”

  “Did it work? Are you now focused like a laser beam on your golden future?”

  “Hardly,” Malcolm says without any concern, “but I’ve got some ideas. I’m paying more attention to the things I like to do, the things I’m really good at, things I could maybe turn into a job...” There’s a pregnant pause. “I’m re-thinking some of my priorities.”

  “Like?”

  Malcolm looks around for potential eavesdroppers, then leans over to me and says in a half-whisper, “I’m thinking I might not go out for the team next year.”

  “Really?” I say, sincerely stunned. Malcolm is team captain, a killer wide receiver (so I’ve been told; I know jack-all about football), and all by himself, he balances out the bad rep the team gets thanks to obnoxious jerks like Angus Parr and Gerry Yannick. “Malcolm, that’s...that’s huge.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugs. “I mean, sure, I’d miss it, but that’s not where my future is, you know? There are better things I could be doing with that time. Hey, do me a favor? Keep that between us, huh? Last thing I need is to spend the rest of the year listening to Coach Fowle or the guys riding me about quitting.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I say. I mime zipping my lip. “Code of silence.”

  He smiles. “Thanks.”

  And that is the last dose of normalcy for me for the day.

  As per what has become standard operating procedure, the gang convenes at my locker so we can plan our after-school shenanigans. Granted, we rarely deviate from hanging out at Coffee E or the Carnivore’s Cave, but it’s the dead of winter in New England. Without snow on the ground to frolic in, build stuff out of, or stuff down each other’s pants, there’s not a whole heck of a lot to do that doesn’t involve sitting inside where it’s warm.

  “Crazy idea here,” I say. “We could go to someone’s house and get right to the homework.”

  “You’re right, that is crazy,” Matt says. “Jeez, Mrs. Z really got into your head, didn’t she?”

  “She didn’t get into my head, but she’s right, I should be — we all should be thinking a little more about the next few years. High school doesn’t last forever —”

  “Thank Cthulhu.”

  “— and I don’t want to leave high school only to get stuck at a cash register until I’m old and gray.”

  “We have jobs lined up,” Matt says like I’m slow. “They involve taking down bad guys and making the world a better place. Duh.”

  “That’s not a job, Matt,” Sara says.

  “Tell that to Concorde. That’s all he does.”

  “He doesn’t get paid to be a super-hero, dude,” Stuart says, “he’s, like, in that guy’s pocket, the tech company guy.”

  “Edison Bose.”

  “Yeah, him. Concorde’s his corporate mascot or something, right?”

  “He’s not a mascot. When he’s not a super-hero, he’s, like, a living public relations campaign for the company.”

  “Whatever. Point is, Stuart’s right,” I say. “Concorde has a day job, more or less.”

  “So does Mindforce,” Sara says.

  “And Natalie’s in college so she doesn’t have a job right now; but she’ll have a job when she gets out of school so she doesn’t have to be a super-hero all the time,” Missy says, “unless she goes to grad school, then she’ll still be in college and won’t have a job and will still be a super-hero. Maybe. If she wants to.”

  “So, what, after high school you’re going to quit the Squad?” Matt huffs.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, about anything!” I say. “God, Matt, life doesn’t begin and end with the team, you know.”

  Matt’s jaw drops open, as though my statement was the most scandalous thing he’s ever heard in his life. Thankfully, Sara cuts off whatever indignant rant he’s getting ready to spew out all over me.

  “Carrie, is that your phone?”

  I’m about to say no, it must be someone else’s, because I turned my phone off when I got to school and haven’t —

  Oh no.

  “What?”

  “That is my phone.” I doubt anyone else has Bruce Springsteen’s Rosalita (Come out Tonight) for their default ringtone. “But I haven’t turned it back on.”

  Missy’s eyes pop. “You don’t think...?”

  I do think. The last time my phone turned itself on, Archimedes was testing out his influence over all things electronic and computerized — but it can’t be him, right? He’s still in Byrne Penitentiary, right? We filled out depositions for his court case and everything! Concorde wouldn’t make us do that if he weren’t going to trial, would he?

  Sara, picking up on my skyrocketing anxiety, lays a hand on my shoulder. Human contact, it helps ground me.

  Teeth clenched, I look at my phone to see who’s calling. “Who’s Astrid?”

  “Who’s Astrid?” Stuart echoes.

  “I don’t know anyone named Astrid.” I press the little green phone icon on the touchscreen. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Carrie, this is Dr. Enigma.”

  “Oh, hi!” I say. Whew! Hooray for unfounded panic. “Hi, Dr. Enigma, uh, what’s up?”

  Matt and Stuart perk up at the mention of her name. Boys.

  “I have some information on your playmate from Saturday,” Enigma says, “thought you might want to bring your team by to get the low-down. You busy?”

  “No, we’re out of school for the day, so...”

  “You know where That New Age Shop is
in south Kingsport?”

  “I don’t, no.”

  “Forty-two Kingsport Road. My apartment is on the second floor, forty-two and a half. Take bus thirteen,” she says, and she hangs up.

  “What did she want?” Missy asks.

  “She wants to meet with us at her place.”

  “Oh. Wait, how did she get your number? And how did she call you when your phone was off?”

  And why did my phone bring her name up, when I know for a fact she’s not in my directory? And how the heck did she know which bus we should take?

  No, not creepy at all.

  SEVEN

  I bring the others up to speed. The boys gloss over the weirdness, and jump right into making themselves presentable for Dr. Enigma. As they primp and preen, they speculate about what she’s into so they can adapt their personalities to match. It’d be cute if it weren’t so pathetic.

  “I bet she hates stage magic,” Matt says.

  “Why would she hate stage magic?” Stuart says.

  “Because she can use real magic. People like Criss Angel and David Blaine, they’re, like, poseurs compared to her. It’d be like how Godsmack would feel watching a bad Godsmack tribute band.”

  “Ahh, gotcha,” Stuart says, now that the theory has been placed in a familiar context.

  South Kingsport has a heavier Old New England vibe than the center of town, with lots of old buildings that have been maintained and repaired, but never replaced or refurbished. Most of them look like they might have originally been houses or fancy seaside inns a century ago; the more modern structures are the oddballs in the line-up.

  The bus drops us off at the head of Kingsport Road, near (isn’t this convenient?) a corner coffee shop that Matt says is owned by the same guy who owns the Coffee Experience. The Isle of Java (love the name) is number five on Kingsport Road, so we cross the street and start walking.

  We find number forty-two a couple blocks down. The ground floor of this quaint brick building houses a New Age shop called, no kidding, That New Age Shop. I’m torn: is that clever or completely lame?

  “You said Dr. Enigma was at forty-two and a half?” Matt says.

  “Yeah,” I say, and I see what he’s getting at: there’s a small slab of brick wall where a door leading to the second floor should be. I’m about to suggest we look around back when a voice calls down to us. Enigma is leaning out a second floor window.

  “Come on up. The door’s unlocked,” she says.

  “What door?” I say. “There’s no door he—”

  There’s a door here.

  Dr. Enigma flashes a playful grin. No, not creepy at all.

  I expect to walk into an apartment decorated with animal skulls and an iron maiden, but the décor is surprisingly, disappointingly mundane. It has a first apartment feel, complete with mismatching furniture and a lack of regular housekeeping. Matt’s face brightens when he spots a Reservoir Dogs movie poster hanging on one wall.

  “Pardon the mess,” Enigma says. “Haven’t had much time or, frankly, inclination to clean.”

  “We understand. You’re a busy super-hero,” I say, and she laughs at me.

  “No, I am most definitely not a busy super-hero,” she says, her fingers making air quotes around super-hero.

  “But you’re part of the Protectorate,” Missy says. “And you have a super-hero name.”

  “I’m an associate member of the Protectorate,” she clarifies, tapping one of the fuzzy black ears on Missy’s cat ear headband for emphasis. “I advise them on cases involving anything supernatural, mystical, magical, or extradimensional, and on occasion, when they need some extra firepower, I lend a hand, but if I ever, ever put on a dopey costume — no offense — Mindforce is under orders to slap me. As for my name, it’s not my super-hero name, it’s my name.”

  “Your real name is Astrid Enigma?” I say.

  “Astrid Lilith Enigma,” she announces, “and I do in fact hold a doctorate, in parapsychology. But you guys can call me Astrid.”

  “We can do that,” Matt says.

  “Good. Can I get you anything before we get down to business? Soda? Juice? Coffee?”

  How about a mop to clean up the drool pouring out of the boys’ mouths? Enigma — Astrid is wearing plaid flannel pajama pants, a tank top that exposes a matching pair of tribal-style tattoos snaking across her collarbones, and her hair is up in a messy knot, but she might as well be prancing about in a skimpy bikini, the way Matt and Stuart are acting.

  “No, we’re good, thank you,” I say. “You said you had some information for us?”

  “I do. I thought you’d want to know what you’re dealing with.”

  “Yeah, absolutely, but, uh, isn’t the Protectorate handling this?”

  “This is your case, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah, we’re all over this,” Matt says with a hair too much enthusiasm.

  “Got some payback to dish out,” Stuart adds.

  “Don’t be so gung-ho, hotshot,” Astrid says. “This isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill super-powered nutter.”

  “Then what is she?” I say.

  Astrid leads us over to a dining nook with a high pub-style table, where an iPad lays incongruously among a half-dozen books, each the size of the unabridged dictionary in the school library. “The woman you fought a couple days ago, I’ve encountered her before. More specifically, I’ve encountered the thing riding her.”

  “The what doing what?”

  “Stick with me, because this gets a little weird. The woman you called Stacy Hellfire is the latest meat suit for a particular imp I’ve run into quite a few times. It’s a sick little thing. Prefers women for hosts, and likes to give them cutesy names like Stacy Hellfire. The last time we crossed paths, it called itself Dina Diablo, and before that, Acheron Jane.

  “I suppose you could think of it as a demonic mercenary. Most entities of that nature resent being summoned and bound into service, but this one, it loves the chance to cause trouble on our world. And it’s got a frustrating knack for escaping before I can snuff it.”

  “Um, question?” Matt says, raising a hand. “You’re telling us we fought a woman who was possessed by a demon?”

  “That’s the long and short of it.”

  “A demon,” Matt repeats. “From Hell.”

  “Hell’s real?” Missy squeaks.

  “The Hell, where the souls of the damned experience eternal torment to pay for their earthly sins? No one knows if that actually exists, not even me,” Astrid says. “That remains one of the great mysteries of the universe. What I can tell you is that there are several alternate planes of reality that have been mistakenly identified as Hell; everything people think they know about the Hell is based on these other dimensions — many of which are home to creatures one could rightly call demons.”

  “And this — what did you call it? — imp came from one of these not-really-Hell places?” I say.

  Astrid picks up, of all things, the iPad, and pulls up an image of a bizarre creature. It’s humanoid, in that it has a head, arms, and legs, but it’s twisted and hideous. Two corkscrewing horns protrude from its head, and a stringy tail hangs off its backside. The image is in black and white, a hand-drawn illustration, but I imagine its skin to be the color of rotting meat.

  “That, ladies and gents, is an imp. In Hell, quote-unquote, this is the lowest of the low,” Astrid says. “Imps are like cockroaches: numerous, stupid, filthy, and useless, except to demons higher on the food chain. However, even a weak demon is powerful by earthly standards, which is why some morality-impaired magic-users use them as servitors — disposable minions,” she says, predicting my next question, one of several whirling around in my head. Look, I’ve just been informed that I share the universe with parallel dimensions filled with monsters, so you’ll have to forgive me if my brain is not firing on all cylinders at the moment.

  “If it’s a minion,” I finally say, “that means someone sent her — it — here for a reason.”

>   “And I have a good idea who and why,” Astrid says, her tone turning dark. “The who is a necromancer by the name of Black Betty. She’s powerful, skilled, and an expert at causing trouble.”

  “Necromancer?” Matt says. “As in, she raises and controls the dead?”

  “That’s the colloquial definition, but in my circles it refers to anyone who deals with heavy-duty dark magic. As a rule, necromancers are bad, bad news. They tend to be unstable.”

  “Unstable. By which you mean —”

  “Screaming insane, and Black Betty goes above and beyond the call of duty there, which is what makes her so dangerous. Normally, it’s damn near impossible to figure out what her game is.”

  “Normally? You think you know what she’s up to this time?”

  Astrid pokes at her iPad, pulling up a map of Massachusetts. It’s marked with four red dots, starting up near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. “Four libraries have been broken into over the past week or so: the one at Bradford College in Haverhill,” she says, pointing to the first dot, “the Ipswich Public Library, the Boston Historical Library, and the Mugar Library at Boston University.”

  “That’s where my dad works,” Missy says. “Not in the library, he works in the genetics lab, but he told me someone broke into the library and trashed the place for no reason.”

  “Oh, there was a reason, all right. You might ask, what is so special about these libraries?”

  “Really awesome periodicals sections?” Matt says, eliciting a polite snicker from Astrid. A grin stretches across his face (and, I notice, a scowl of equal intensity appears on Sara’s).

  “All of these libraries have, in their respective historical collections, items once belonging to one Mister Howard Phillips Lovecraft.”

  Astrid says this with an air of gravity that is totally lost on me, but Matt and Stuart gawp in unison.

  “The H.P. Lovecraft?” Stuart says.

  “The H.P. Lovecraft.”

  “Who?” I say, and Matt reacts — well, like he always does when I say I don’t know someone.