Sil in a Dark World: A Paranormal Love-Hate Story

by Brindi Quinn

  “What are you doing here, Tran?”

  “What are you doing here, pudge?”

  “I have a right to be. Unlike some shifty, untrustworthy, freeloading strangers.” He checks to make sure Sil is fully distracted. She is. She’s asking something of the on-death’s-door librarian. Keek goes on, “And what was Sil talking about your perversions? If I find out you’ve been trying stuff with her, you’re dead meat!”

  The minion is threatening me? Hah! “Listen, Keek. Menace me again and I shall steal into your room in the middle of the night and slit you open from groin to throat using whatever serrated object I happen to find in your mum’s bathroom.” I smile pleasantly. The minion is horrified. “By the way,” I add, “Siiiil tastes like spearmint. You should have a lick sometime.”

  Keek balls his squishy fists.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” I say. “My Sil returns.” Indeed, she is nearly within earshot again. Nay, she is within earshot.

  “Who’s yours, demon boy? Certainly not me.”

  Hmph.

  She continues, “The librarian gave me the go ahead to use the computers. Keeker, why don’t you start over in the Religion section. Your dad doesn’t think the symbol has to do with Day of the Dead, so start by looking at cults and stuff.”

  “Sure thing, Sil.”

  Ever the eager pleaser. Sick.

  Sil takes a seat at the rubbish computer. “Demon boy, you can go look at the Mythology section. I figure it suits you best.”

  There she goes again with her blatant racism. And she even has the audacity to order me around? You’d think she’d have learned her place; after all, I already came yae close to killing her today. No matter. Mythology IS the section I would have chosen myself – many of the truths of Dhiant are seen as myth by the ignorant mortals – thus I refrain from speaking against her. Suppose I’ll humor her for now. But before that, I have to ask something.

  I wait for Keek to leave. “What’s that boy doing here, Sil? You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

  “About?”

  “You twit. The white ash, of course. The shadow-brought fire?”

  Sil doesn’t look up from the computer. “Well, I really don’t have anything to tell him, do I? You haven’t exactly told me much.”

  True. “So you’re saying that if I told you something you’d immediately share it with that troll?” I implore.

  “Not necessarily. And calling my best friend a troll isn’t very royal of you, is it? Maybe you should try something nicer?”

  And just how often does she use my proper name? “You’re one to talk, Sil.”

  “Well, I’m not a prince now am I?” she says.

  ‘Prince’? Not ‘princess’? What’s wrong with this girl?

  “No, Sil. You aren’t a prince.”

  She stares at the screen and begins to chew her lip. I linger there, admittedly like a lurker, and watch the chewy bit of flesh move between her teeth. Siiiil.

  It’s almost as though she’s doing it on purpose.

  Holy piss! IS she doing it on purpose? The thought occurs to me. I know Sil is nefarious, capable of manipulation and the like, but is there a chance she’s toying with me this very moment?

  “What do you want, creeper?”

  I want to rebuke her, but she has a point. My behavior is . . . unsettling. Even to me. No, especially to me. I answer her nothing and tartly stomp to the Mythology section. Keek is nearby in Religion, already surrounded by towers of books. In his hand he holds a small slip of paper. Most likely taking notes on his findings.

  Brownnoser.

  The Mythology section proves to be lacking. Nothing more than a shelf and a third all butted up next to the fairytales. I can already tell this isn’t the section for me. Religion isn’t either. Nor History. Nor Self-help. In fact, this whole endeavor’s most likely a waste of time. What are the chances of genuine underworld knowledge being contained in any of these books?

  “Sil! Check it out!”

  I speak too soon. Keek seems to have found something worthy of crying out obnoxiously in the center of the library. It should warrant some sort of discipline. The nearly-dead librarian’s hearing is shot. She says nothing.

  Sil looks up from the computer. “What is it, Keeker?”

  “This!” The minion proudly bobbles to her holding a dark plum book in front of his fat face. “See?!”

  Sil squints at it first. And secondly – “Wow, Keek! Where’d you find this!?” She turns the book over with fervor.

  “Right over there!” he beams.

  “In with the other books?” Sil asks, surprised.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because . . . this isn’t a library book. There’s no barcode or anything.”

  “Weird! I didn’t even notice that. Maybe they just forgot? Anyways, this is it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re looking for?”

  “Think so!”

  I edge a little closer to them, but can see nothing, for Sil has taken the book and transferred it to one of the study tables. Keek leans over Sil so that his arm is resting against hers and his nose is within sniffing distance of her hair. Maggot.

  “Hold on, is this handwritten?” Sil leafs back and forth through the pages while Keek pretends to be interested – all the while stealing drags of Sil’s mint. My annoyance is piqued. So, too, is my interest. The pair of them are positively giddy.

  “Well, well,” I drawl. “What has the minion found?”

  “Come see, Wayst!” Wayst. In her excitement Sil’s forgotten to insult me.

  I ask for repetition, “Come again? I didn’t quite catch that, Sil.”

  “I said: Come see, Way- . . . demon boy.”

  Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. I stifle my interest and walk to them nonchalant.

  But at the edge of the study table, I cannot contain myself. This is no ordinary book. It is not like the others on the stacked shelves. Not only is the cover dark plum, its pages are written in deep colored ink – a purple so dark it is almost black. And yes, they are written by hand, not press. The edges of the pages appear burned, while the exterior is heavy and of a strange binding that is alike the softest leather.

  I snatch the book greedily and flip page to page.

  “About halfway through,” instructs Sil. “That’s where it is.”

  Halfway through I find the thing the humans were so eager about. There it is. Drawn at the bottom of the page, the heptagon waits filled with scrawl – a perfect copy of what was once at the cemetery.

  “Too bad none of it’s in English. What language is that anyway?” Sil’s inquiry catches me by surprise as I realize: There’s something wrong. This script. I recognize it. But I cannot read it.

  “It’s from . . .” I can’t very well say ‘Dhiant’ while the minion is about, so I resort with, “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Can you read it?” Sil wants to know.

  “Uh. Hm.” How might I explain it so that the minion doesn’t become suspicious? “I should be able to read it,” I tell her. “I . . . studied it once. But it seems I’ve forgotten.”

  The truth of the matter is I can no longer understand what I once could. Without my horns, the ancient languages of Dhiant are lost to me.

  “So what you’re saying,” Sil says slowly. “Is that this is something from your old . . .”

  “Country,” I finish.

  Keek looks between Sil and me, unconvinced. “I thought Tran was from North Carolina,” he says.

  “Yes, but I’m originally from . . .” While I try to think of a plausible lie, lovely Sil interjects,

  “Botswana.”

  Botswana?! That’s hardly believable!

  Even so, the minion simply says, “Oh, weird.”

  Of course it’s weird, you numbskull!

  I can’t leave this book with the likes of them. “Well then, I’ll be taking this.” I slip it beneath my arm and make a move for the door. Naturally the minion sees the need to speak his piece.

  “You can�
�t just take it, butthead!”

  There isn’t time to brutalize him for his disrespect. The book is too important. I give him the benefit of pausing at the threshold, though I have no intention of listening to a word he preaches. “And why is that?” I say.

  “Don’t know how it is in North Carolina, but that’s not how it works here.”

  “He’s right,” agrees Sil. “You’re supposed to check it out.”

  “AND,” continues Keek, “since there’s no barcode, that probably means it CAN’T be checked out. We’re just gonna have to make a photocopy.”

  The minion makes an attempt for the book, but I hold it out of reach. “Twaddle.” I tell him. “Because it’s lacking a barcode, that simply means they won’t notice if it’s gone missing. And besides –” I look to the librarian who appears to be either asleep or dead on her feet. “It isn’t as though that old creature will come running after us.”

  Without giving them another chance to spout their idiocy, I move through the belled door. Keek and Sil don’t come after me, and although I find their absence strange, I persist home all the same. This book is unquestionably a tome of my people, and there’s no way I’m leaving it behind. The second I reach Sil’s home, I’ll figure out a way to translate it. I ought to have a little power left at least. And if Sil’s sex-deprived relative is still there? I’ll bring the book to the cemetery where it shall be translated in peace – away from the prying eyes of dreadful Sil and her squishy friend.

  But that dream is shot down even quicker than it comes. Sil catches up with me at the school’s corner. She is both without breath and minion.

  “What?” I turn up my nose. “What took you?”

  Panting, she holds up a large, flat book titled Tide’s First Climb. It does nothing to explain. “I felt bad leaving without checking out anything, so I just grabbed the first thing I saw,” she says.

  I eye the book. Colorfully decorated with cartoon drawings, it is clearly intended for young children. “You plan to read this?”

  “Well . . .” She stands dumbly and scans the book’s cover as though seeing it for the first time. “N . . . No. Not exactly.”

  Not exactly? Come now, Sil. Let me get this straight. She rented the damned thing solely to make that croon feel . . . needed? I can’t help but find that . . .

  For some reason, the absurdity of the matter makes me laugh. Once. Twice. Five times or more, I laugh. She is such a fool. Such an incorrigible stink! And as she stands, holding the children’s picture book, she is the most humorous thing I’ve seen since arriving in this place.

  “Huh? What’s with you, demon?” Sil doesn’t understand.

  Neither do I. The moment of humor passes easily. “Come along then, Sil.” With a firm hold on the newfound book, I take the lead.

  Today I came awfully close to killing her. Awfully close, and yet she lives. Will that change, I wonder, in the days to come? Will Sil breathe her last at my hand?

  These are the things I ponder as I walk a few paces ahead of her, lit by mortal’s puny light, surrounded by the ground-running leaves of fall, and filled with bouts of stolen mint.

  Delicious, Sil. Simply delectable.

  Chapter 5: Choose Your Weapon

  Sil is out.

  I, on the other hand, am in.

  And in an attempt to avoid Lady Libido for as long as possible, I’ve holed myself up in Sil’s room. Not for fun, mind you, but because I’m on a mission. A mission to find Sil’s dastardly notebook.

  And just what brought on this ardent search?

  It happened again today, whilst sitting in the middle of class, listening to the intrusive buzzing of the tick behind me. Sil was sketching with roguish deportment. But not only was she sketching; she was also looking back and forth from me to said sketch and smirking a smirk so maniacal I couldn’t help but become obsessed. Today is the day. Today I’ll figure out what she’s been doodling. I must.

  The plum tome sits mockingly on Sil’s bed – a reminder that I’ve accomplished nothing since coming to this mortal-infested place. I bring it with me wherever I go in hopes of igniting a bout of memory, per chance I come across a bit of netherworldy power to borrow. Until then, the writing’s gibberish. Frustrating, tiresome gibberish.

  At least it’s still in my possession. I’ve had to keep my guard upright to make it so, as Keek wants more than anything to try his hand at translating the thing. He eyes my rucksack voraciously on the way home from school each day. He wishes to solve the mystery first, so as to appeal Sil.

  How much time is left now? Two and a half weeks? Is that really all there is?

  Sigh.

  Sil and I haven’t tried again since discovering the symbol. Suffice it to say I’ve been preoccupied. For all I know, a binding spell may have already been cast, and if that’s the case, even if we get our mission to work, it won’t do a damned bit of good. There’s no way of knowing for sure.

  Truthfully, I’m feeling inadequate. Quite possibly that’s the reason it was so easy for me to become obsessed with this new mission. Not that it’s new, really. I’ve been wondering about the doodles for the better part of my stay.

  Now then, where the hell did she stow the nipper? Could be anywhere in this slop of a room. I choose to start at the place most obvious – her rucksack. No such luck. Because that would’ve been far, far too easy. I move to the dresser next. Sil’s dresser holds not clothes, but trinkets. Pens. Empty gift boxes. Fishing lures. Her clothes, contrariwise, are in mounds sprinkled about the floor, the biggest of which sits at the base of her closet, blocking a few perfectly good unused bookshelves.

  I switch to the desk. And then to the sidetable. And by the time I get to the space beneath her bed, I realize:

  This is pointless.

  In such a filthy place, I wouldn’t be able to find a rabid centaur, let alone a single flat notebook. I need to approach this another way. I’ll start at the closet. The bane of all things orderly. If I can move the clothes from the floor to the empty, mismatched hangers, I’ll be able to shift the random books littered about the room to the bookshelves at the back of her closet. A majority of these loose books are beneath the bed, and the notebook may very well be among them.

  I search through the ominous mound of attire and begin to sort. The clean ones I hang. The smelly ones I toss into a cardboard box I’ve deemed a suitable temporary hamper. The bottom of the pile has a strange stale smell. All of those clothes, clean or not, find a home in the box.

  From there, I move to the underbelly of mire, Sil’s below-the-bed cave of wonders. Book after book I pull and stack into the now accessible shelves. For the rest of the rubbish I commission her desk – previously a holder for stray socks and unopened granola bars.

  The underbelly of the bed is empty. Yet the notebook remains to be found.

  The dresser? I’ve already checked therein, but there may be a chance I’ve missed it. The cycle begins anew as I begin to shift through the drawers. The top drawer becomes a receptacle for all things office-related. The notebook will join them, should I ever find it. The bottom drawers I appoint for CDs and the five videotapes Sil forgot to return to the rental store back when they still carried VHS. Conventional utilization of a dresser? No. But I don’t really give a damn.

  At this point I stop. Much of Sil’s bedroom floor has been cleared, so . . . where the fruck is the blasted thing? Not beneath Sil’s pillow. Nor in the folds of her blankets. And the bathroom? I cleaned there last week, vanity and all. Surely there’s some corner of this room I’ve yet to look. There must be something I’ve missed.

  No. In the darkest parts of Sil’s closet I find nothing but a few more CD cases; behind the now-overflowing trashcan, a pair of black panties I fling into the hamper box with the rest. The remaining furniture hides a handful of other stragglers that forewent my attention on first runthrough. All of them are paltry. None of them are the notebook.

  Piss.

  I fall onto the bed that’s been made for the firs
t time in . . . forever maybe, and swear at the ceiling.

  Is it somewhere else in this hovel of a house? God, I sure as hell hope not.

  “Did you . . . did you clean my room?”

  I bolt into a sitting position. I didn’t hear the stealthy bit enter, but there she stands in the doorway, arms crossed and mouth agape.

  “Of course I didn’t!” But as I look around the room, it becomes terribly obvious that I’ve cleaned the entirety of her room. That wasn’t my intention at all!

  “Wow, demon boy. You must’ve been pretty bored.”

  “Not at all! I was . . .”

  Grumble. There is nothing I can say. If I tell her I was searching for the notebook, it’ll only push the thing further from my reach.

  “I could hardly let you continue to live like swine. Any bugs you attract will swiftly move on to my chambers. It was merely an act of self-preservation.”

  “Oh.” Sil believes it easily. “Okay then.” She slumps into her cushion-worn desk chair and begins to spin. “Still, ever consider the fact that I might have liked it like that, Mr. Demon?”

  “Hm?” Why would any person in their right mind like it that way? Then again, Sil isn’t at all in her right mind.

  “Never mind.” She shoves the question away with another wild spin. “Anyhow, that brings me to my next question.” She halts her spin to preen at me with a look that says ‘I-know-all-of-your-perverted-perversions-you-big-demon-pervert’. “And that is: What exactly are you doing in my bed while I’m out of the house? Seems a little suspicious, eh?”

  “Quit it. That expression is appalling. And I’m not IN your bed. I’m on it.”

  She keeps it up, making her top lip to wriggle and pulling down the bottom lid of her right eye. “So then what are you doing ON there, deviant?”

  “Really, Sil. Stop.” I push myself from her bed because I can’t stand to see her make that face any longer. “Goodbye, Sil.”

  Inside, I’m shaking. Today was a complete waste of time. I head to my room to sulk. Sil stops me at the door. “Hey, demon boy, do me a favor.”