Magus

by R H Frye

  The scene of the battle faded into an argument between an older version of the same boy, now recognizably a much younger John Raintree, and the old man from the funeral. Heated words spewed from John’s young lips, causing pain and frustration to the old man. The old man pleaded with John one last time, but his arguments fell upon deaf ears. John eventually threw up his hands in disgust and turned to grab a ratty Army duffle bag from the ground. He strode rapidly away from the old man and threw his bag in the bed of a battered old pickup. He climbed up after his duffle and slapped the roof of the truck to tell the driver it was time to move along. As the truck lurched away from the small house that had been the scene of so many arguments, John sank to the bed of the truck and kept his eyes firmly in his lap to hide the tears of frustration and relief that flowed from his eyes…

  Sarah watched as John (now the same age as the man that sat before her) entered a clearing somewhere in the forest. She watched as John investigated the articles strewn about the clearing and held her breath in horror as John discovered the evil altar that had been freshly unearthed. The snapping of twigs alerted her to the approach of another person before John was even aware of the malevolent presence that had joined him. She witnessed the stunning confrontation that occurred between the dangerous stranger, John, and the animals that suddenly rescued him. She stared in awe as John disappeared into the forest more quickly than she had imagined was possible. And she remembered the name that the man had flung at John just before the animals attacked and the forest exploded in flame…

  Sarah slowly opened her eyes as the last of the lucid images faded from her mind. John sat calmly looking back at her, his hand still entwined with hers. She returned his gaze for long moments as her mind struggled to accept all that she had seen and heard. At long last, she leaned forward to ask a question. “John, do you have any idea who that man is? What was his name? Maraydel?”

  As soon as the name passed her lips, the bright sunlight that was shining through the window behind them faded. As the room darkened into an untimely twilight, a hazy figure formed in the center of the room.

  The figure seemed to be formed from the darkness in the deepest corners of the room, except for two dancing specks of flame that marked the location of the creature’s eyes. An evil hiss of glee escaped from its mouth as it turned those hideously dancing orbs on the pair of unsuspecting humans shivering in a sudden chill that pervaded the entire room. The creature’s hiss of glee could barely be discerned as one long word, “…mine.” The creature began to move quickly towards John and Sarah just as John’s head snapped around to see the menacing figure’s approach.

  John felt a glowing force erupt from the center of his being. Without a single conscious thought about what he was doing, he bolted upright from the sofa and stretched his right arm towards the creature. He felt shining energy flow upward from a point somewhere behind his naval and brilliant sparks of light began to dance across the fingertips of his right hand. With an intuitive act of will, he focused the energy that had so suddenly infused him towards the palm of his hand. A brilliant beam of light, more luminescent than the brightest spotlight but warm and golden instead of cold and harsh, sprang from his hand to slice into the living darkness of the creature.

  The creature’s gleeful hissing was immediately transformed into chilling squeals of pain. Wherever the light touched the creature, large holes were ripped through its darkness. It attempted to flee, turning to race towards the far corner of the room, but its attempt was in vain. Mercilessly, John turned his hand to burn the darkness of its dissolving form into nothingness.

  When the last vestiges of the living shadow had disappeared, the warm glow of the sun reappeared through the window above the sofa. As the glowing force within him waned, a suddenly exhausted John felt his knees give way and he was just able to muster enough strength to land in a quivering heap on the soft cushions behind him, narrowly avoiding an undignified trip to the hardwood floor between the coffee table and the sofa. He sagged forward to rest his head on his hands while he struggled to come to grips with what had just happened.

  Sarah sat, stunned into immobility beside John. She gradually became aware that her mouth was hanging open, and she closed it with an audible click as her teeth came together. The summer heat that was streaming through the window behind her seemed powerless to touch the chill that had settled into her bones. Questions chased haphazardly through her uncomprehending mind. What was that thing? Where did it come from? What was it doing here, IN MY OWN HOUSE? What did John do to get rid of it? Just WHAT THE FUCK has suddenly happened to my life?

  Anger slowly began to replace the horrid chill that had wormed its way into the core of her being. At that moment, she did not care how much attraction she felt towards John. She was going to throw him out, have a drink, and try to forget that she had ever seen him.

  As she turned to John, angry words danced on her tongue…and for the second time in one day, they died as quickly as they had formed. John sat sobbing beside her, his head in his hands. Pity, and a more primal instinct, the instinct to mother and protect, overwhelmed her anger. She impulsively leaned over and gathered him in her arms.

  “What the hell is happening to me?” John sobbed as all the misery and tension of the last two days overwhelmed him.

  With the renewal of their physical contact, a contact that was more intimate than the mere holding of hands that they had shared before, Sarah could only feel shame at the anger she had briefly felt towards John. Perhaps it was the time they had spent together, or perhaps she had simply grown more in her abilities than she had ever realized, but the link was reestablished, stronger and deeper, but this time it did not convey images. This time the link drowned her in the emotions of the man that she held. She could feel his sadness as he grappled with his emotions after losing his grandfather. She could feel the fear that threatened to send him running home to his “normal” life. She could feel his awe over his newfound abilities. And she could feel the exhaustion that was threatening to overwhelm the vast, untapped energy that John carried inside him.

  “John, it’s okay,” she whispered in his ear as she held him awkwardly in her arms. She felt his arms slide around her and he clutched her closely to him. She felt his embrace grow almost painfully tight as the storm of his weeping broke over her. He buried his face in her shoulder, and she felt his tears stain the shoulder of her shirt. She began to relax as the last vestiges of her ire fled from her and she gave herself over completely to the moment. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Okay?” she asked. John’s panicked grip began to loosen, and his breathing evened as his crying began to taper off.

  Finally, John sighed and pulled away from her embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “For what?” Sarah gently grasped his chin in her fingers and turned his face until he met her gaze. “I understand now. At least, I understand some of it. So why are you sorry? You didn’t ask for that to happen, did you? In fact, you didn’t ask for any of it. I know that. And, no matter what happens from here on out, I’m glad you’re here.”

  A lot of the tension drained out of John’s face in response to Sarah’s kind words. A small, embarrassed smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he fought for words to express his gratitude for her understanding. After a while, he settled for, “Thank you Sarah.”

  A radiant smile lit Sarah’s face and she replied, “No problem.” She snickered as she added, “What else are us psychics for?”

  The struggling smile broke on John’s face as he joined her in a shaky laugh. He took another deep breath before he asked, “Um…so what do we do now?”

  Sarah leaned forward and brushed her lips across John’s before she answered his question with, “I can think of a few things.” John’s look of happy surprise evoked a full-throated laugh of amusement as Sarah leaned towards him to renew their embrace from a few moments earlier.

  Chapter 7

  A shout of pain caused Carol t
o awaken from the nightmare that had held her tightly in its grasp.

  Her eyes snapped open to bright spears of light from every working fixture in the room. As her awareness fought its way free from the prison of pain and fear that had held it, she realized that she was lying naked on the rough comforter of a bed. The shock of the situation sent her scrambling to yank the same rough comforter around her in an attempt to recover some semblance of dignity.

  Carol’s abrupt movements awakened a cacophony of muted aches and pains that had lain dormant, awaiting her return to awareness. She moaned as separate and competing aches settled into her privates, her breasts, and her rectum, each throbbing in sharp counterpoint to the other. She looked down and was immediately revolted at the sight of large, angry welts on the delicate flesh around her nipples. Further inspection caused her to realize that both sensitive openings below her waist felt sore and tender, and she was horrified to see that a thin layer of blood had dried to a flaky crust on her upper thighs.

  As the cries of pain that had brought her reluctantly to consciousness continued unabated at the distant edge of her awareness, Carol was forced to accept the horrible reality of her situation. I’m not a virgin anymore, she thought. As the enormity of that thought rang through her mind, she realized that such a simple statement fell far short of summarizing how drastically her situation had changed. Not only was she no longer a virgin, there was no longer any part of her that was pure and untainted. An aching jaw was added to the extensive catalog of insults that had been heaped upon her innocent flesh as she clenched her teeth to deny the reality of all that had happened to her. And she could still feel the burning scars on her chest, arms, legs, and throat where a knife had begun the work that had been continued by the monster that she could hear howling in pain in the background.

  Carol clutched the comforter more tightly about her injured body as she struggled to sit upright on the side of the bed. Fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to send her retching to her knees on the floor, she forced her stunned senses to take stock of her surroundings. She swiveled her head towards the sounds of pain she had heard and took a small amount of comfort from the condition of the man before her.

  Maraydel lay curled on the floor by the foot of the bed. An overturned chair lay where it had fallen by the room’s small table. Crystals formed incomprehensible geometric shapes on one corner of a table that was covered in untidy stacks of US currency. The shapes that the crystals described were etched forever in the surface of the table by black lines of fire.

  Carol forced her eyes from the table to study the figure of the unwholesome man that was lying on the floor.

  Blisters were rising from Maraydel’s bronzed skin. Carol’s mind struggled to present some plausible explanation for the wholesale destruction of so much naked flesh. Her mind was unequal to the task.

  As Carol watched, a large patch of blisters on the man’s back coalesced to form one large blister that burst and oozed clear liquid. Maraydel’s moans peaked into another howl of pain as the massive blister released its contents. Carol was suddenly struck with the wild hope of the evil man’s demise. One thought led naturally to another, and she cast her eyes about the room in search of the hunting knife that had caused such intense pain over so much of her own body. Her eyes narrowed and her pain was forgotten as she finally noticed the knife resting unattended on the dresser that occupied most of one wall of the room.

  Moving carefully to avoid awakening her body’s symphony of misery, Carol rose to her feet and moved slowly towards the knife and the unwitting figure on the floor. She hardly dared to breathe as she clutched the comforter more tightly around her body. Step by careful step she crept towards the knife and her attention dilated until there were only three items in the room: Carol, the knife, and the horrible person that was writhing in pain on the floor.

  As Carol neared the dresser, she was dismayed to realize that she would actually have to step over Maraydel’s blistered legs to reach the dresser and the knife that she sought. She hesitated briefly with indecision…but only briefly. Abruptly she cast the comforter to the bed that she had left and hopped over Maraydel’s legs to land beside the dresser. The movements caused her own aches to shriek in protest, and she was gasping from pain, terror, and wildly growing excitement as she grabbed the knife and whirled towards the writhing man on the floor. She dropped to one knee beside Maraydel and raised the knife high above her head, grasping the weapon’s hilt in both hands. She was just about to plunge the knife downward into the back of Maraydel’s defenseless neck when she heard a door open behind her.

  Carol spun to face the door, and a dim part of her awareness was savagely happy as her right foot slammed into Maraydel’s shoulder, eliciting a fresh spate of moaning as a patch of blisters loosed their contents onto her ankle. Danny stood framed in the doorway for a moment before understanding flooded his face and he darted into the room, quickly latching the door behind him. Carol maintained her position as she watched him quickly toss several bags of groceries onto the nearest bed before he turned to her and said, “Carol, honey, you can’t kill him.”

  Carol could not have been more stunned if Danny had suddenly confessed to being from another planet.

  “What the fuck do you mean I can’t kill him?” Her eyes narrowed as a sudden rage that she had never guessed could reside within her erupted in her heart and in her mind. “This raping bastard has used and abused me for the last time. He stole my virginity in every single way that it could be stolen. And you don’t want me to touch him? Maybe I should just fucking start with you instead?” Her inflection and expression turned her last statement into an urgent question as she rose to her feet and took a menacing step towards Danny with the knife pointing steadily at his stomach.

  Danny backed away a step towards the door that he had just closed. “Please just hear me out. And believe me; I want him dead as much as you. But there’s a problem. One big fucking problem, to be exact.” Danny paused for a moment to try to order his thoughts into something that resembled a coherent explanation. As he hesitated, he was relieved to see that Carol’s fury faded a little and the wild threatening tension eased from her body as the point of the knife dipped towards the floor. He took a deep breath and finally began, “Carol, if you stab him, you won’t just be killing him. You’ll be killing yourself. Or me. Or both. I’m not really sure which.”

  Carol paused to consider what Danny had said. After a few seconds, she turned to angrily plunge the knife into the dresser beside her. It stuck quivering in the wood, and she turned back towards Danny, crossing her arms over her chest in the classic pose of a person that is about to hear something she does not want to hear. “Maybe you’d better explain. And make it quick. I may still risk it, and if I do, I want to do it now while he’s lying there helpless on the floor.”

  Danny took a moment to briefly explain the results of his own attack on Maraydel. “So, I guess it’s the spells he put on us out in the woods or something, but you can’t attack him,” he finished. “If you do, he’s not the only one that will die.”

  Carol stood looking at Danny so intently that he started to feel very uncomfortable. Just as he was about to say something, anything, to break the silence Carol beat him to the punch. “Turn around and pull your shirt up in the back,” she demanded.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just do it, Danny.” When he hesitated, she turned without another word and plucked the knife from the dresser. She ignored him as she started once more towards the suffering figure on the floor.

  “Okay! Okay! Just wait a damned minute.” When Carol slowly turned back from her approach of Maraydel, Danny quickly turned around and yanked his shirt off over his head. He tossed it on the bed and studiously ignored the urge to glance over his shoulder to watch Carol’s approach. He crossed his arms and waited, uncertain of what to expect. A few seconds passed before he felt the feathery touch of her fingers on the tender flesh of his aching back. As light as the touch was, the bruis
e on his lower back still began to throb as an angry reminder of the injury that he had suffered, and he flinched away from her hand. He heard a relieved sigh and succumbed to the urge to see what was happening behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he was relieved to see a small, tired, but very loving smile surface on Carol’s face.

  “I’m glad you were telling me the truth, Danny. I don’t think I could stand it if you lied to me,” Carol said as she stepped forward to wrap her arms around him. Danny knew that it was somehow dreadfully inappropriate, but he was acutely aware of her firm young breasts pressing into the naked skin on his back. Any physical reaction from him was staved off by the nearly unbearable guilt he felt about her death and their present circumstances. Emotions that he had avoided only by functioning in a primitive survival mindset suddenly crashed down on him, and predictably, he crumbled under their attack.

  “Oh God Carol, can you ever forgive me?” he sobbed as he sank to his knees with his elbows propped on the bed and his face in his hands. Carol went to her own knees beside him as she realized how guilty, tired, and afraid he must feel. She embraced the sobbing young man beside her and comforted him as many mothers had comforted their young since the beginning of the species. Her own aches and pains were nearly forgotten as she pulled Danny’s sobbing head to her shoulder and held him close.