Red Lineage

by Ozias Goldman

  “This creature should not be here.”

  “I know this wolf. It attacked me last time I was in the nether.”

  Her brows furrowed. “My fetish should have kept you from slipping between realms.”

  “I…didn’t have it on me at the time, but it was right beside me.”

  “Well let that too be a lesson. Keep the dagger on you at all times.”

  I nodded. “I will, Ms. Bezi.”

  “I have no doubt, boy. Remember, one week.” She rose higher into the air, and floated back, through the window.

  “Wait!” I called out, but she was gone.

  Shit… I brought a finger to the spot on my forehead where she had touched. What did you do to me? I noticed my hand then, and the transparent wisps rising from it, like waves of heat radiating from a hot surface. It was covering my entire body, even radiating through my clothing, and I couldn’t help but stare at it in wonder.

  It occurred to me I might have been going crazy. It wasn't just some fleeting thought either. I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced over at the corpse of the beast in the middle of the floor, then back down to my hands. I mean, that was better than the alternative…that I indeed had been possessed by a demon from another realm, set on fire yet somehow survived unburnt, killed three people including an innocent woman, was pulled from my body, traveled to different dimensions…it was too much.

  I stood and walked over to the beast. A familiar feeling washed over my body as I stepped to within inches of its hulking mass. It was a general foreboding, the kind of feeling I would get at random moments, of sensing something behind me, but when I turn around nothing is there. I stepped back, and the feeling went away, then forward again, and it returned, so subtle it would have been easy to ignore.

  Dismissing the creature as all in my head was hard. After all, I could tell something was off with DJ when Fati accidentally called me. Hell, I heard DJ myself, and there’s no doubt in my mind it was Red behind his voice. Yet, looking down at the spectral creature right in front of me, it was hard to believe I actually saw it there. It was hard to believe the best friend I'd ever had was a demon from another realm, that I'd fucked up my marriage and now my wife and son were gone, somewhere, both in danger.

  I took a breath and shook my head, returning to the present moment, to the pretzeled beast in front of me. I reached out and slowly brought my hand to the creature's flank(Linked Comment), noticing for the first time it too had transparent wisps radiating from its body, even harder to see as its form was not much more opaque. Instead of feeling taught muscle covered by thick, coarse, fur, my hand passed straight through the creature as if it wasn't there at all. I felt a wrongness that was vaguely familiar. Concentrating on that feeling as I moved my arm back and forth through the body reminded me of only one thing, the presence from the nether.

  I exhaled and walked out of the bedroom, towards the bathroom, and got a good look out of the windows at just how subdued the city looked under my new vision. It was shocking. The sky was clear, but looked muted and subdued, grayish, like a heavily overcast day, instead of the vibrant blue I would have expected to see. Staring directly into the sun did not hurt my eyes. My mind flashed back to the nether realm, the way the frozen land appeared dull and colorless until the demon grabbed hold of me and that world came to me in vivid detail. Would this be the way I would experience my realm now? I flashed back to my daily early-morning routine, watching the sky wash with color as the sun came over the horizon, a wave of sadness came over me.

  I took a long, hot shower, enjoying it for the first time in days. There was a comfort in at least knowing I had a chance, a means of saving them. When I stepped out, the world was still dull, but I felt more refreshed than I had in longer than I could remember. There was even a new spring in my step as I walked over to the sink and reached for my toothbrush, then hesitated when I couldn’t tell the difference between my dark blue brush and Fati’s deep purple.

  Shaking my head over actually having to concentrate on a damn color, I grabbed what I hoped was my brush and wiped the fog from the mirror, and froze. My eyes…they were now the same milky grey color as Bezi and that demon back in the nether. I poked and prodded at the skin above and below my eyes, leaning in until my face was just inches from the mirror.

  “What the fuck…” I whispered as I wiped the mirror with the heel of my hand again as it was already beginning to fog. Images of old Bezi inserting her fingers deep into the center of my forehead flashed in my mind. “What the hell did that old witch do to me?” I breathed.

  I reached out to the wall beside the sink and flicked the switch. The three large bulbs came on above the mirror, and the room brightened. But it wasn't the dramatic difference it should have been. I lifted up onto my toes and leaned in towards the middle bulb above the sink, until my eyes were just inches away, and held it there. Nothing. No glare that forced me to blink tears out of my eyes and look elsewhere. When I finally did turn back into the bathroom, there was no need to wait as my vision adjusted to the dimmer light.

  It must have been an hour before I finally left the bathroom, getting no closer to adjusting to my new vision than I had when I first re-entered my body.

  DJ came back to my memory in a rush, reminding me I didn’t have time for delay. Even if Red had a vested interest in DJ, it would have no doubt already begun spinning plans.

  I rushed back into the bedroom and jumped, forgetting the massive beast was laying in the center of the room, still twitching. I kept one eye on it as I dressed, opting this time for a simple black tee shirt, pair of jeans, and a comfortable pair of sneakers. I needed to be sure I'd be as agile and mobile as possible.

  The bone dagger was still where I had put it, atop the nightstand beside the bed. But it looked different now, somehow more substantial in a way I couldn’t quite place a finger on. The dagger was the only thing that seemed more than it was before the old shaman tinkered with my skull.

  I picked up the weapon and headed straight for the door. As I passed the dying beast, there was a slight tug on my arm that held the fetish, stopping me in my tracks. With the creature less than two strides behind, the feeling vanished, and I wondered again if my mind was playing tricks on me. The sensation had been fleeting, less than a fraction of a second, feeling similar to the pull of a magnet. I glanced down at the fetish, and then slowly lifted my arm as I leaned towards the beast.

  The feeling returned and seemed to strengthen the closer the dagger got to the beast. And when the bone closed to but inches away, the force of attraction pulled it the rest of the way faster than I could react.

  The bone made contact with the creature’s meaty thigh, and instead of passing clean through as my hand had done, the bone embedded itself deep into its fur, and the beast howled to life with renewed vigor. My eyes widened as I struggled to keep hold of the bone as it vibrated, heating more with each passing moment.

  Then the unbelievable happened, which is saying a lot considering the fact I was looking at a spectral creature in the throes of death on my bedroom floor. The creature’s flesh began to shimmer, evaporating off the way water turns to steam. But instead of it dissipating into the air as vapor, the mist-like wisps were sucked into the bone.

  The bone grew too hot to hold, and I finally released it, shaking out my hand to let the wind generated by the motion cool my palm. Instead of falling to the floor, the dagger sank deeper into the beast, stopping once it settled into its thick core. The process only became more intense, to the point the dagger glowed brightly with purplish-white energy as the wolf disintegrated in thick plumes that were pulled hungrily into the bone.

  I watched it wide-eyed until the very last of the beast's essence sucked into the bone, and the dagger fell to the hardwood floor with a gentle clack. I waited a few seconds before I finally reached down and tested a finger atop the bone. It was still hot, but cool enough to pick up. But when I did, I gasped. I could somehow feel the presence of the wolf trapped inside, raging to be
free.

  “What in the fuck…” I breathed.

  I stood and looked down at the bone one last time, realizing I honestly didn't understand the power the old woman had given me. Could this indeed contain a demon like Red?

  I left the room and went into DJ’s, and stood in the center of his junky room for several minutes as I stroked my chin, trying to find the perfect item to use. The first thing I thought of was his blanket, the same one he’d had since he first started sleeping in his big boy bed, but I ended up tossing it back on top his bed. Sure, he loved the blanket, but there had to be a better item than that. I pulled open a drawer and saw his favorite sweater next. He still wore it around the house even now, despite the summer heat, because the girl he’s been crushing on for the better part of a year gave it to him at the start of the last school year. No. I tossed it back inside his drawer, that sweater beat the blanket, but I can do better. I continued searching the room, considering a few more items like his favorite action figure, his video game console, but stopped short when I saw his basketball jersey.

  Smiling as I rushed over to his closet, I pulled it from the pile of clothes on the floor. He wore it the day he had made the game-winning shot in the tournament at the end of last school year. It marked a turning point of his young life, where the final two weeks of school he was popular with girls, gained a bunch of new friends, and according to him, even more followers on the social platforms they all used.

  I frowned as I stroked the number on the back, remembering how excited he was as he told me all about the game. I also remembered I couldn’t make it, as usual, even though he had begged me for a week straight leading up to it. I had promised him I would and had every intention of keeping that promise, until I made into work that day and saw we had a new receptionist in a fitted dress that perfectly accentuated her figure.

  Shaking my head clear of the memory before the guilt had a chance to set in, I brought the jersey through the apartment and into the kitchen and found a pair of poultry shears in the drawer. I cut a large piece of the jersey free. It pained me to have to do so, but DJ would have to forgive me after I got him back safely. I spread the fabric over my palm and placed the bone in the center, then wrapped the fabric around the bone tight as I could make it. It was perfect, keeping the wrapped bone small enough to remain pocketable—well, as pocketable as the dagger of this size was going to be—and it seemed secure enough after I tucked the ends into the cloth.

  It took a few seconds after I finished wrapping the bone for me to feel it, but when I did my heart skipped. A feeling, similar to the tug I’d felt from the bone towards the beast, pulled my hand in a specific direction. I turned my head to the direction and squinted, then walked from the kitchen, through the living room, and opened the terrace door. I stepped out and walked over to the glass barrier, holding the bone out and adjusting the angle to align myself with the direction it pulled correctly.

  Gaging the direction was made easy by the gridded layout of the Manhattan streets that ran north to south, and east to west. It might have been even easier had the park not dominated most of my view. But glancing from the street and out into the open sky a few times, I narrowed down a general north, north-west bearing.

  North-west? Being on the west side of Manhattan, that would eliminate anywhere else in the city. Actually, it would eliminate anywhere else in New York state. That trajectory could only be New Jersey; hell, I could see the shoreline from my terrace. I quickly pulled out my phone and opened my maps app. Fati’s grandmother lived in South Jersey, but that direction was wrong. But she had a girlfriend named Patricia that resided in Sussex County, and when I entered that into the app, my eyes widened when I saw it showed up in the north-westernmost point of New Jersey.

  I considered having Karl pick me up, but didn't want to have to explain the whole eyes thing. In truth, there was no explanation. Besides, I didn't exactly have an address to tell the man to take me to, so I'd need to take matters into my own hands on this one. When I stepped back into the apartment and went to the small table beside the elevator doors, it was the Chiron key I picked up.

  As I hit the call button for the elevator and stood to wait for it to arrive, I remembered I had no access to my accounts. But Fati and I had an emergency stash inside of our bedroom closet. I almost didn't even bother checking it considering the fact she up and left me on short notice. But I was desperate, and rushed into the bedroom anyway and found the tin case in the closet. I saw it unlocked, and my heart sank, but when I took it off the shelf and brought it over to the nightstand, it was light, but not as light as it should have been. I lifted the lid and smiled. A quick count confirmed that Fati, in her wonderful pride, had taken precisely half, leaving me with two thousand, five hundred dollars.

  The elevator dinged in the living room, and I scooped up the money and made it in time to catch the doors before they closed. Riding down to the garage level, I folded the money into a wad and slipped it into my pocket front pant pocket, then took out the cloth-wrapped bone fetish and kept it in my hands, shivering as a chill ran down my spine again as I still felt the creature’s presence emanating from within.

  When I got inside the car and started the engine, feeling the powerful rumble jolt my body to life, I realized the last time I had been in the seat Red had been beside me, urging me to approach Chocolate on the line outside the club…the woman that happened to be a mother of a small boy, who had also been a wife, despite her circumstances, and I had…I shook my head.

  Without an actual address to go by, I pulled out my phone and set a route that would take me to Sussex. Once there I'd have to drive street by street until I found them, letting the bone guide me. It wasn't the greatest plan, but it was the best I had.

  For the most part, things went as smooth as I had hoped it would at the start of the drive, well, as soon as I’d gotten over the incredible change in the way I perceived the world. Transparent auras radiated from everyone, but not all were the same. The young children's would almost glow it was so vibrant, so substantive, but the elderly, the visibly ill, and some others that looked perfectly normal, were so dim it was hard to see at all.

  But then I came to a muted red light and saw another beast in the ether realm, casually walking down the street just beside the car. It was somehow even more ferocious than the wolf by far and had the bulk and shape of a bear, but its head was broader, with a pair of long canines jutting upward in a long arc from its lower jaw. Instead of fur, it had leathery skin stretched taught around thick muscles. Its body, even down on all fours, was almost the same height as the grown men walking obliviously beside it.

  Incredibly, the people both walking alongside and directly towards the beast was not aware of its presence, yet they somehow avoided it, drifted around it, even large groups, as if they had an aversion to it. I watched in disbelief as it slowly lumbered to the corner and turned, and then craned my neck as it turned out of sight.

  Horns blared behind me, and I snapped my head back around to see the green light so faded it almost looked grey, and then I pulled off. I saw a half dozen more creatures before I even made it to the highway, which was just a mile or so away from the apartment. A few of them were beautiful beyond words, majestic being the only word appropriate enough to describe them. The most astonishing of all was a large sky serpent glowing pure white, whose body was half a city block long. I could have watched it for hours, feeding off of the slow, tranquil way it almost swam through the air.

  Once on the FDR, traffic was a bit heavy, but cars had a funny way of giving up the lane when a few million dollars pull up on their rear bumper. About fifteen minutes after I crossed the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, the force of the pull began to move, guiding me with subtle shifts in direction. I fell into a comfortable pattern as I drove down the quiet roads, heading in a generally westward direction until the bone's nudge felt about forty-five degrees to my right, and then I'd take that next turn. Eventually, the sensation would swing back the oppo
site direction, and I'd take the next available left turn. I had the GPS and maps app open on my phone just in case, but felt more confident in the bone's draw.

  The zigzag pattern worked well enough, with me only once having to glance at my phone after I hit a stretch of road that seemed to last forever, crossed a small bridge, and the bone's pull was coming from almost a ninety-degree angle to my right. The blue line on the app indicated I still headed in the right direction. When I finally saw the sign for Sussex County, I knew I was getting close.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I KNEW I was getting closer when the pull from the bone became so intense I had to hold it tight on my lap to keep it from rolling off onto the floor of the car. Five minutes later, after crossing a long stretch of empty woodland road, I saw the first signs for Montague Township.

  I took the exit, into what turned out to be a surprisingly beautiful town, passing one colossal house after another, with large, spacious front lawns and even bigger yards. It was a welcomed change to the quiet stretch of road.

  Following the bone's guidance was more natural now. This close to DJ, its draw was so directionally precise I had to avoid craning my neck to try and glimpse between the densely packed trees that lined the roads as I made my way through the neighborhood. But I didn't have far to go before I spotted the house they must have been inside. It was a large yellow house a quarter mile or so off the road, all by itself.

  Slowing to less than five miles an hour, I crept down the final road, careful not to rev the engine and break the thick silence. I turned in to the long driveway that was lined on both sides by large trees, forming a dense canopy of leaves that made almost a natural tunnel, making the property feel much more secluded than it otherwise would have. That secluded feeling only multiplied when I made it out the other end of the tunnel that opened up to a clearing, with tall hedges encircling the entire property that looked almost as high as I was tall.