I Am Never Alone

by Campbell, Jamie

  “I’m going to be fine,” I said quietly in the following silence. I’m not sure if it was to reassure him or me. Probably both of us.

  It didn’t really work.

  Oliver sighed and came closer, hovering over me like a helicopter. “Promise me you’ll stop if it becomes too dangerous. It’s not worth your life.”

  I had other ideas but it wasn’t smart to voice them right now. Instead, I just nodded. I wasn’t lying if I didn’t say anything out loud.

  I waited a few more moments to hear any further protests but they didn’t come. There was nothing left to do except start the spell. Soon, I hoped, I would be speaking to a demon named Kostucha.

  The spell said everything started with fire. There was nothing on the concrete floor that would actually burn so I had found some dried leaves and sticks outside earlier. I bunched them on the floor now, using a match from Jet’s supply cupboard to set them alight.

  It was only a small fire, barely even enough to cause a whisper of smoke. But it should have been enough, I didn’t need a raging inferno for the spell to work. Just the element of fire was sufficient.

  Once the flames licked the leaves I started to add the ingredients one by one. First came thyme, with coriander, samphire, and rosemary to follow it. The entire time, I recited the spell. “Evocatio daemon. Se dissolvent circumstantia falsa. Pareo pactum quod servo mihi. Recolligo, phasmatis flamma. Evocatio daemon.”

  The fire grew bigger and bigger with each ingredient. It was so large by the end that it was completely disproportionate to the size of the kindling. I shuffled backwards to give it more room, not wanting to catch any flying embers.

  The smell of the burning herbs filled the room. It was actually quite pleasant if you stopped thinking about the reason for the fire in the first place.

  Besides the growing blaze, nothing else was happening. While nice and warm, it wasn’t what I needed. If it grew any bigger, it would be licking the ceiling and that would not end well. Jet would definitely hate me if I managed to burn the whole building down. Who knew how many other people he was hiding on the other floors.

  “Maybe you should stop,” Oliver said.

  I shook my head and continued chanting. I had come too far just to simply give up. As much as the fear coursed through my veins in a fiery rush, I couldn’t just stop. It was conjure or nothing.

  Even if I did have to burn the entire building to the ground to do it.

  The spirits were worth it.

  My parents were amongst those trapped. I hadn’t seen them once since the Event but it was enough to know they were out there somewhere, restless and stuck with no promise of eternal peace.

  I had to keep going.

  “Evocatio daemon. Se dissolvent circumstantia falsa. Pareo pactum quod servo mihi. Recolligo, phasmatis flamma. Evocatio daemon.”

  I threw the last of the herbs I had into the fire, they were greeted with a puff of smoke and a sizzle. It reminded me of a small volcano, right in my living room.

  Still, nothing.

  “Evocatio daemon. Se dissolvent circumstantia falsa. Pareo pactum quod servo mihi. Recolligo, phasmatis flamma. Evocatio daemon.”

  My voice grew louder over the crackling fire. It was spitting, angry and raging. It wanted to hurt me, burn my skin and consume me like everything else in its wake.

  Without warning, the fire burst outwards in a deliberate stretch. I took a few more steps backwards, my back brushing the wall behind me.

  Then it started taking shape.

  The shape of a demon.

  Kostucha.

  His gnarled and twisted face manifested. His cheeks were flames, his nose nothing more than smoke. The general outline of his body waved and floated in amongst the angry torrents of fire.

  “How dare you call me to you,” he roared. His breath was hot, far warmer than the flames.

  Even so, my skin was covered in goosebumps as waves of a prickly sensation ran over me. It was the same kind of feeling you got when you thought you were being watched and knew it was impossible. Like there was something else there with you, something without good intentions.

  Evil was rolling off him.

  It made me sick to the stomach. I wanted to recoil, run away, and scream all at the same time. I could barely look at him for fear I might explode in a ball of fire or be contaminated with the same evil he was made of.

  His eyes, nothing but black balls where his sockets should have been, glared at me. They were endless pools that would surely go on for infinity if you were to fall into them. Perhaps that’s how he trapped people, with his eyes. It wouldn’t have surprised me.

  “Tell me what you want!” he bellowed.

  I hadn’t planned what I was going to say to him. I had never expected anything as terrifying as what I was seeing. I glanced away quickly, searching for Oliver.

  He was gone.

  I was alone with the demon.

  Pushing down the rising fear, I had to stay focused. There was a reason I had conjured Kostucha and I had to fulfill that promise. Now was not a time to be a coward.

  Now was a time to be brave.

  “I want to know if you are the one keeping all the spirits on earth, the one preventing everyone from crossing over,” I said. My traitorous voice had a quiver to it. I hated that quiver.

  The demon did something so unexpected, I didn’t know what to do.

  He laughed.

  Flames toiled out of his mouth, growing and subsiding with what would have been his breaths if he was actually there in person. “You must be special then, Spirit Talker.”

  Spirit Talker. I’d never heard my abilities called that before. I guessed it was appropriate.

  “Is it you?” I repeated. I didn’t want to be tricked into getting off topic. I wanted answers, it had to be worth those answers. This could not be for nothing.

  All the laughter evaporated as he took me in his gaze again. The nice scent of burning herbs was now replaced with a horrible putrid smell. It was the smell of evil. The smell of death.

  “Everyone’s got to eat, don’t they?” he replied. “I’m no exception.”

  “Eating? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Ah, dear child, you think you’ve got it all worked out. But you don’t. You don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Tell me then.” I really didn’t like his patronizing attitude. I felt like I was reduced to nothing more than a stick figure in his presence. Which was probably all I was, but still…

  “You expect me to tell you all my deepest, darkest secrets? Why would I do that?”

  “Because I summoned you. I called you here.”

  He laughed again and the flames exploded from his mouth once more. I couldn’t step any further back. “And you think that entitles you to answers? My dear child, you are sadly mistaken. I answer to no-one.”

  I got the feeling he wasn’t going to play ball just because I gave him a bat. I needed to think of some other tactic. Which was pretty difficult when I was raging hot and my brain was muddled. “Help me understand then. What is keeping the spirits from crossing over?”

  “Me.”

  “Did you cause the Event?”

  I could have sworn he shrugged.

  “Did you kill all the adults?” I rephrased the question, hoping to trick him. Like I could actually successfully trick one of the most evil demons in existence.

  “I told you, I was hungry,” he answered belligerently. He was barely tolerating me. I wondered whether he could leave whenever he wanted to or whether I was somehow holding him there until I released him and ended the spell.

  I might not have had much time either way.

  “What do you want with the spirits?” I continued, keen to make use of every second I had.

  “Child, you are not listening. Even someone as powerful as me needs to feed and spirits are delicious.” His flame lips smacked together, making a horrible crackling pop.

  “You eat them?”

  His laught
er filled the room, he was having a great time. I guessed I got my answer.

  Suddenly, the flames grew even bigger. The smoke was starting to fill the room and make its way down into my lungs. I coughed, unable to speak as it consumed me from the inside out.

  The fire erupted with a loud explosion, its flaming tendrils creeping everywhere all at once. My arms flew up to cover my face, trying feebly to protect me from the wall of burning embers. The heat was unbearable, like standing on the sun itself.

  And then, it all disappeared.

  The fire reduced to a small pile of ashes on the concrete floor. The smoke folded in on itself until it was nothing but a white wisp of cloud that soon disappeared too.

  My lungs were nothing but a mass of black sponge that prevented all the air filling them. I coughed in a fit, gasping for fresh air. Staggering over to a window, I slid it open and gulped.

  It wasn’t just the smoke making me crave more air. The demon may have disappeared, but it was like he had sucked some of the life from me, too. My energy had evaporated, been pulled involuntarily from my life force.

  I hated him.

  I feared him.

  In that moment, it was like there was no good in the world. Like the only thing that existed was evil and all hope was completely lost. Gone. Evaporated. It felt like nothing good and light could ever exist again.

  Like we were all doomed to fall into the pits of hell and never climb or find our way out.

  I wanted to die. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and allow Kostucha to take me, too. There was no future, no hope, no air in which to breathe.

  My heart was squeezing in on itself, holding me in a grip so hard that my chest was nothing but a mass of pain. But I welcomed it. It represented the pain in the world, everything that everyone was experiencing. It grounded me, reminding me of all the horribleness of every second that ticked by.

  “Everly.”

  The word was foreign to me. I wasn’t a person anymore but black energy, something that didn’t exist in the world as I knew it. I was different, devoid of anything that wasn’t hurt and destruction.

  “Everly.”

  He was distracting. Didn’t he realize how hopeless it all was? There was nothing left. I needed to curl up. I needed to die and let Kostucha take my soul. Feed from me and restore him so he could grow in power and destroy everything.

  “Everly.” Harsher now.

  How many times had he said that word now? Ten? Twenty? Fifty times? I couldn’t keep track of anything. It was all just a haze. A black cloud to hide behind and never return.

  “Everly, come back to me.”

  Oliver.

  The voice belonged to Oliver.

  He wasn’t black. He wasn’t darkness. He wasn’t evil.

  “Wake up, come on. Everly, you have to come back to me. Now.”

  So soft. So gentle. His voice was like a symphony played with flutes and violins. He was safety, he was light, he was goodness. He was my Oliver.

  “Everly, come on. Seriously, I don’t know what to do. I’m so, so sorry I left.”

  The hand around my heart relaxed its grip. Just a tiny bit. The pressure on my lungs, on my head, on my body, eased up. I could breathe again. Air filled my lungs and wormed its way into my bloodstream.

  “Wake up. Please wake up.”

  The darkness became gray. The fog started to lift. Hope. There was hope in the world. It all wasn’t lost until we all took our last breath. Until that happened, we could still do it. We could still change things, fix them.

  Survive.

  My eyes fluttered open. I was still in the apartment, underneath the open window. There was no smoke, even the fire had burned itself out on the floor.

  Oliver was peering over me, his forehead a mess of concerned wrinkles. They relaxed slightly. “Thank God. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

  I sat up, leaning against the wall as my hands cradled my heavy head. I could have been run over by a road train and it still wouldn’t have felt this bad.

  “What happened?” I asked. My voice was so husky I barely recognized it as my own.

  “Kostucha, he fed off your energy,” Oliver replied. His tone was strained, angry. His hands curled into fists at his side. I briefly wondered if he would be able to hit the demon. Would his fist go straight through him like it would a human?

  “It felt… like I wanted to die.”

  Oliver nodded, like he knew everything I had just gone through and completely understood.

  That wasn’t a good thing.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything. I had to go, he knew I was here and he was going to…”

  “Feed on you?” I finished for him.

  “He was already pulling on me. If I didn’t go-”

  “It’s okay,” I said. He didn’t need to explain. If Kostucha made him feel a fraction of what he did to me, it was the right thing to do leaving me. I wouldn’t have wanted him to go through that.

  But something told me it would be more than a fraction. The demon wouldn’t have held anything back on a spirit. He would have taken him right then and there.

  “So Kostucha feeds off spirits,” I started, moving on. I remembered the ghosts I had seen that had disappeared even while I looked at them. Were they going elsewhere? Or was their energy fuelling Kostucha and his insatiable appetite?

  The memories made me shudder.

  “He killed all the adults in the Event just so he could trap them as spirits and eat them,” Oliver said, his eyes staring into a faraway memory.

  “It appears that way.”

  He was lost to me, his mind someplace else. Wherever it went, it was not a happy place full of carousels and fairy floss. He was in a world of torture that Kostucha was responsible for.

  I hated the demon.

  I hated him with every fiber of my being and I wanted him destroyed. I had never been that angry before and I wished for a second round with him. If I’d had the ingredients, I would have done it too. I would have conjured up the demon and I would have slain him like the proverbial dragon.

  One look at Oliver’s forlorn face and I melted. Being angry would lead to irrational actions and there were no second chances there. If I was going to free the spirits, I had to go about it the right way.

  It was naïve of me to think just conjuring Kostucha and speaking politely would fix things.

  “Oliver?” I started quietly, giving nothing of the turmoil raging inside of me away. “How bad is it? Being trapped, I mean.”

  His gazed settled on me, like he only just remembered I was there and where we were. “You shouldn’t-”

  “Please tell me.”

  He looked down at the floor, avoiding my eyes. He didn’t really have to say anything to answer my question. I knew Oliver so well I could read everything in his green eyes. It was all there, the pain, the hurt, and the anguish. One glance told me everything.

  But I needed to hear it, too. I needed Oliver to know I could handle it. I was strong, he could use me for comfort just like I knew I could use him for the same thing.

  “Oliver, please.”

  He refused to look at me as he started speaking in nothing more than a whisper. “It feels like I’m lying in a bed of nails and its pressing down on me every second of the day. And it’s made all the worse because there is no end in sight. My spirit being eaten by Kostucha is almost welcome, just to end it all. Even if it means being sucked into hell to accomplish it.”

  I wasn’t going to cry. I was going to turn each of those would-be tears into resolve and keep them bundled up inside so I could use them to fuel my mission. They would be a constant reminder that what I was doing was the most important thing in the world.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Has it always been like that? From the moment you-” I couldn’t say the word died. Even now I wasn’t ready for it. Like if I didn’t say it, it still might not have happened.

  “I think it takes a few days for Kostucha to realize there is a new
spirit in his realm so there is time for respite. A few days before it really starts.”

  “That’s what you’ve been doing with all the new spirits, haven’t you? You’ve been helping them deal with the pain.”

  He nodded slowly, sadness covering his face like a mask. “They scream when it starts, it’s not… nice. I talk them through it, try to give them some hope that it won’t last forever. Even though I haven’t entirely convinced myself yet.”

  “I’m going to fix this, Oliver.” I had never said words with more conviction before in my life. There wasn’t any other option. I was going to kill Kostucha and I was going to rejoice in his death. The spirits were going to be free.

  Oliver was going to be free.

  I might dread the day he would have to leave me. He had promised me he wouldn’t go until I was ready. But I could never make him stay even a day longer than he had to. I would not extend his pain.

  Oliver reached for my hands before stopping himself and pulling back again. “I know you will. We’ll do it together.”

  I held up my palm between us, holding it still. Oliver did the same and gently placed his palm against mine. The coldness caressed my skin. We held our hands there, both wishing we could feel each other in ways other than temperature.

  “Everly, your arms,” Oliver suddenly said, taking his hand back. “You’re hurt.”

  I looked at where he was pointing. My arms were covered in burns, the wounds so bad my coat was sticking to the skin where I had held them over my face. They had been numb, my whole body had been.

  But seeing them now, I realized how injured I really was. The flames had licked at my skin and taken some of it with them. They were raw and screaming for attention.

  I put on a brave smile. “I’ll be fine. They just need to be cleaned.”

  “You should go and get help. You can’t let them get infected.”

  The thought of angry, infected wounds made me shudder. No, I didn’t want that.

  It was still light outside, probably safe enough to venture out for some fresh water. “I’ll go wash them.”

  Oliver accompanied me downstairs where I found a working faucet on the outside of the building next door. Taking off my coat was quite possibly one of the most painful things I had ever done. The synthetic fabric was melded to the skin, determined to not let it go. I had to wet my sleeves just so it would release its hold.