Sam laughs so hard he falls over on the bed and curls up into a ball. Unable to resist, I pounce and attack. Most guys who stray into a lair of a vampiress are in mortal danger. My brother escapes with a ‘vicious’ tickling.
A few minutes later, we’re both laughing.
“I’m not collecting them,” rasps Sam between gasps for air. “Just making friends. And yeah, I’m sure he isn’t lying. Just kinda know he’s telling the truth somehow.”
Blix jumps up to perch on the corner of the bed and holds both thumbs up while murmuring incomprehensible demon warbles at me.
“He says we can trust Olmaz.” Sam exhales hard, then pushes himself up into a seated position.
“What’s going to happen if you let this demon out? Am I going to get kidnapped to Romania in six months by another group of angry mystics who put her in there?”
Sam laughs. “No. She’s not a ‘hurt people’ demon. Olmaz said she helps people feel good.”
Oh, crap. She’s probably a succubus.
Wonderful. Just what my reality needed… more demons.
22
The Mother of Nightmares
Sometimes luck and coincidence are awesome—and sometimes, they scare me.
At the moment, I’m talking about this museum my brother wants to burglarize. It’s not a major museum full of expensive artwork, state-of-the-art security systems and an elite team of private security guards like something out of a Mission: Impossible opening sequence. The coincidence part is the place is really close—only in Olympia. Roughly sixty miles in a straight line.
The luck part involves the place being tiny. Like I said, no laser grids or pressure-sensitive floors. It barely has a website. I’m sure most people walking by it on the street mistake it for an antique shop. A group of three sisters and a brother have spent ‘decades of their lives scouring the earth for the most eclectic assortment of rare paranormal artifacts imaginable.’ Yeah, I’m sensing a big, steaming pile of tourist trap.
A few items highlighted on their website have descriptions so overwritten and melodramatic it’s difficult not to laugh. They claim to have a dagger once owned by Alastair Crowley. Next image is an old iron candle holder they say belonged to a woman who called herself the ‘Faerie Queen of Ireland.’ She led a sect of now-extinct Celtic druids. Iron candle holder belonging to a faerie queen. Hmm. Something doesn’t seem right about this story. Oh, here’s the sacred spirit bowl responsible for General Custer’s defeat… and a green-glass desk lamp once belonging to Winston Churchill, which is possessed by the spirit of an unnamed German secret agent who tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him. I half expect to see them brag about having King Tut’s toilet seat or Cleopatra’s G string. I hear she had a nice asp.
This isn’t as much a museum as it’s a tabloid newspaper in building form. Four slightly crazy people collected a bunch of pseudo-paranormal stuff and decided to show it to the public. Okay, before I surrender entirely to judgmental skepticism, my kid brother has the word of a demon stating another demon is stuck there in some manner of vase.
Stretching logic, it stands to reason if they have one possibly legitimate item, not everything in their collection is guaranteed to be total nonsense. However, I am not going to expect too much from people who think a group called the ‘Witches of the Revolution’ existed who are solely responsible for America winning the Revolutionary War against the vastly superior British Army because they cast spells. Yes, this ‘museum’ has the entire tea service these women supposedly used to work their magic. I’m not sure how brewing and drinking tea cursed England and King George into losing a war, but hey, these cups, saucers, and teapot apparently contain a bunch of spiritual energy.
I’m so excited.
In fact, I’m so excited about visiting this place, I’m going to be humming that song by the Pointer Sisters the whole way there. No, I’m not. I lied. No music plays in my mind. For the entire flight there with my little brother on my back, I’m questioning myself for doing this.
Why did I agree to help him jailbreak a demon? The consequences are probably far more severe than jailbreaking an iPhone.
So why are we flying to Olympia?
Because I am an emotionally needy sap.
Sam said he loved doing ‘family stuff’ with his big sister. He hit me below the belt when he said he’s not going to be little forever, so he wanted to do fun stuff with me while he’s still young enough to have adventures. Who says only vampires have mind-control powers? Kids have them too, but they only work on people like me with an overdeveloped ‘aww’ response to cute faces and big, pleading eyes.
As soon as the sun went down, we took off.
I probably should be worried more about my mother’s response to ‘we’re going to rescue a kidnapped demon’ being “That’s nice, dear. Be careful, and don’t make any deals for your souls.” She also demanded I make sure Sam comes back with his soul. Either Mom thinks I’m amusing Sam by playing an imaginary game, she completely trusts me, or she’s tuning out anything too crazy sounding. Probably a mixture of two and three.
Due to this errand, Hunter decided to go to work. He can’t really help us out stealing a demon from a kitschy paranormal museum. No point in his sitting around at home being uncomfortable in bed. Hoping this trip doesn’t take too long, but we did have to wait for sunset. At least the afternoon was fun. Spent it hanging with the family having a board game day. Yeah, yeah. I know. We are tragically lame. Oh, shit. Dad still wants to screen the two ‘Escape’ movies tonight. Dammit. I hate when the Universe sets me up for such hard, life-altering decisions.
Oh, easy fix. I’ll invite Hunter over. Don’t have to choose between him or family then. After the movies, he can spend the night in my room. Insert evil laughter here.
And wow. I’m really about to help my little brother commit a felony.
Well, possibly commit a felony. Is opening a demonic jar against the law? He did say we don’t have to physically remove any item from the museum. So… just a stupid kid touching something he shouldn’t, right? Also, this isn’t a ‘real’ museum. They might not even care if people touch these obviously fake artifacts.
Winston Churchill’s possessed desk lamp indeed.
I fully expect to walk into ‘Aunt May’s yard sale’ disguised as a museum of paranormal curiosities. Them having one ‘real’ item doesn’t mean anything… right? It should probably be more alarming Sam isn’t the least bit nervous flying. Sure, I’ve taken him into the air at night before, but never sixty miles away from home, at 1,000 feet, or close to full speed. People don’t need a motorcycle helmet on to tolerate 120-140 mile-per-hour wind in their face… they need the helmet to be able to see at those speeds. Since I am not a ‘hover-cycle’ and my little brother isn’t driving me, it doesn’t matter if he keeps his eyes closed. Maybe not looking is why he’s not scared. Higher altitude makes me feel better since it gives me more time to intercept and catch him if he slips, but I figured it would freak him out.
My brother is scarily stoic.
Seriously. How many boys his age would find a demon portal in their closet and think ‘ooh, cool! Let’s see what’s in there’?
A little over twenty minutes after takeoff, we land in a swath of trees beside the north end of Capitol Lake in downtown Olympia. We’re not far from the ‘House of Mysteries.’ Seriously, they went with that for their business name. I’m wondering if one of their mysteries is how a place like this can generate enough money to pay the rent. Maybe the four owners are eccentric rich people who aren’t doing it for profit but the lols.
Also, yay for short-term memory.
With Sam on my back, I didn’t want to let go of his arms to check my phone. Before we left, I spent a few minutes staring at Google maps and navigated Olympia by sight. Downtown looks kinda like a scrabble board from the air. Neat, square tiles set in a perfect grid of road. One ‘tile’ contains a park of some kind, green with a weird glyph of pale sidewalks like some kid cut the initials DE in
to the side of a tree using only straight lines. Anyway, the museum is four tiles south from the green spot. Yeah, the giant lake is a big navigational assistant, too. Impossible to miss.
My little brother grins ear to ear as we walk out of the forest into a parking lot, then cross Columbia Street before heading down Tenth Ave. The place is still open for another two hours and fifty minutes or so, closing at midnight. You know, because haunted museums have much better ambiance after dark. From the outside, it could be easily mistaken for a fortuneteller’s shop or maybe an antique dealer… if not for the sign saying ‘paranormal curiosity museum’ under ‘House of Mysteries’ in big gothic letters.
Pretending to be ordinary people interested in the place, we go in the front door… and whoa. I’m totally not prepared for the wave of supernatural energy smacking me in the face. There is definitely something here. It’s weaker than the ‘otherness’ in the Aurora Aurea lodge where Sophia’s been learning, but wow. More in this room than one demon-containing vase has to be authentic. Who’d have guessed? I spend a moment gawking around at various random items arranged on long tables, shelves, and podiums. Small signs or displays by each object undoubtedly contain information about it. The layout definitely says the place used to be some manner of retail store prior to becoming this museum. Maybe ten percent of the stuff is secured inside glass cases, most of it out in the open—just like a yard sale.
Stunned at the potency of the ‘weird’ in the air, I stand there by the doors, staring around.
“Hello, my dear” calls a short, black-haired woman in her fifties. “Welcome to the House of Mysteries! I’m Ruth Blackburn.” She shows off an ouroboros medallion the size of a drink coaster in gold and black bearing the name ‘Ruth’ in a fancy ‘Egyptish’ font. “You must have a gift.”
I glance left at the woman standing behind a standard glass sales counter loaded with kitschy souvenirs as well as T-shirts. Her dress, dark sweater, and wood-bead jewelry is somewhere between ‘cool music teacher’ and the aunt who’s into new-age healing crystals and tries to sell some kind of multi-level marketing junk at every holiday gathering.
I remember reading about the owners. Three sisters and a brother. A grey-haired woman maybe a decade older than Ruth wanders on the opposite side of the room. She has to be Patricia Blackburn, the oldest sibling. She’s playing tour guide, talking to a pair of twentysomethings. The guy looks thrilled. His girlfriend-slash-wife, much less so. No, she’s not making faces like she wanted nice restaurant and got a trip to a monster truck rally. I think she’s terrified.
“My sister sees dead people,” says Sam, overacting a whisper.
I ruffle his hair, smirking. “The boy exaggerates.”
“You must have some talent, dear. Not many people make a face like that when they first walk in.” She winks.
“Hi. Found this place online. My little brother is super interested in paranormal stuff and ghost stories.”
“Hi.” Sam waves at her.
“You’ve definitely come to the right place.” Ruth smiles. “We ask for a donation of $10. Kids under twelve are $2 each.”
Sam stares up at her. “You sell kids under twelve for two bucks?”
Ruth laughs.
I grasp his shoulders and lean toward her. “My brother is a language nerd. Please forgive him. He doesn’t mean to be sarcastic.”
Sam gives me ‘oh, I very much did’ side eye.
Ruth misses his look or ignores it. “It’s no problem, dear. The donation covers as much time as you’d like to spend here. All of us wearing one of these”—she tugs at her medallion—“are here to answer any questions you have about the items or tell stories if you care to ask us.”
I can’t justify mind-whammying her over twelve bucks. Besides, we’re here to basically steal from her… sorta. And, the place does appear to be a little more legitimate than my expectations. You’d think being killed and turned into a vampire, seeing trolls, leprechauns, brownies, and magic would have made me less of a skeptic. Why is my initial reaction to a ‘paranormal museum’ to say ‘yeah right’?
Whatever. I’m still trying to be normal. Most people doubt this stuff.
I pay… and we start wandering around. Sam isn’t feeling a specific pull, so we head all the way to the left and follow the paths between tables like we’ve gone to Safeway, looking at everything from ‘Jack the Ripper’s knife’ to a mortician’s comb from the 1700s to seemingly ordinary—antique—household items. Their info displays claim the items came from haunted locations or happened to be present at sites of horrific events. A rusty lump is supposedly a lighter from a worker killed during the building of the Grand Coulee Dam. Stories claim people who have carried the lighter around have randomly died of suffocation, like it’s original owner who ended up being covered in an avalanche of liquid concrete. Another rusted spar sits on a pillow next to a sign proclaiming it a handbrake from a train involved in a crash in 1903 where 314 people died.
Oddly, the ‘lighter’ gives me the creeps, but the brake doesn’t.
The next table has a Damascus sword supposedly used by a ‘crusader’ to kill Abdul Alhazred, the author of the Necronomicon. It looks old and about as sharp as Bree Swanson. Wow. Someone needs to tell the Blackburn family they’ve been tricked. H.P. Lovecraft made that up as fiction. I am highly relieved not to sense any energy from the blade whatsoever.
Sam, predictably, finds everything fascinating and takes his time looking at all the signs and objects. Except for a doll, skull, crumbling left boot, and a few other things I can’t see clearly from where I’m standing enshrined in glass cases, the items are out in easy reach. Most of this stuff looks like junk no one would want to steal. They don’t have any signs up forbidding touching things. There are signs, but they say, ‘touch at your own risk. Management is not responsible for dark energies following you home.’
Might be tricky if the vase Sam recognizes is in a sealed case, but if not… this should be easy.
Assuming, of course, we aren’t making a galactic-level error by opening the demon jar.
“Achtung!” shouts a somewhat distant voice.
Neither Sam, Ruth, Patricia, or the pair of twentysomethings react to the voice.
I look around, but spot no ghosts. Shrug. We make our way to the end of the aisle and go around into the next one.
“Achtung!” yells the same voice. “Du, Vampir-Mädel, komm her.”
Okay, either a crazy telepath is doing a spot-on impression of the fish from American Dad, or I’m hearing a spirit voice. I don’t understand whatever language they’re speaking, but ‘vampire’ is fairly obvious.
Again, I look around.
“Hier drüben! Komm rüber!”
Flickering in time with the voice draws my attention to a small desk lamp. The base and shade are made from greenish glass, the frame brass. It looks like something straight out of a 1940s war movie or a private eye’s desk.
My jaw drops open. Oh, crap… Winston Churchill’s desk lamp? Seriously?
“Ja du. Ich sehe dich mich betrachten. Hol mich sofort aus dieser Lampe!” shouts the lamp, its weak bulb flickering as it speaks… sorta like those red dashboard lights in Knight Rider whenever the car spoke.
“Whoa, okay… this is too weird.”
Sam twists around to look at me. “What’s weird?”
“Do you see that green lamp over there?” I nod toward it.
He looks past me. “Yeah.”
“It’s talking.”
Sam laughs. When I don’t start laughing along with him, he stares up at me. “Are you being serious?”
“Yeah. Do you see it like it’s turned on? Flickering?”
“No. It’s dark.”
Whoa. Creepy. So, umm… wow. I leave Sam to wander the table where we were, and walk up to the giant wood desk near the center of the room. A sign beside the lamp indeed claims it to have belonged to Winston Churchill and sat on his desk during most of World War II. According to what they have written her
e, a German spy infiltrated Ten Downing Street and came close to assassinating him, but ended up being shot and killed before Churchill made it to the office one morning. Legend says the spy collapsed over the desk, smearing his blood on the lamp as he fell to the floor… and now his spirit is stuck inside it. Additional signs claim this desk belonged to Abraham Lincoln, the ashtray came from Al Capone, and the letter opener belonged to a guy named Robert Morgan, a rich pioneer who lived in the 1840s New Mexico and used it to murder nine prostitutes.
Eek.
Oh, yeah, the skull sitting next to it is supposedly one of those prostitutes.
Double eek.
It’s all supposed to be haunted-slash-cursed, but only the lamp gives off any noticeable presence.
“Es ist nicht wahr. Ich bin kein spion,” flickers the lamp. “Wenn ich ein spion wäre, könnte ich Englisch sprechen. Dies ist nicht einmal Churchills lampe.”
“Wow, umm. Okay. I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“Sare!” whisper-shouts Sam.
I twist to look.
He’s two tables over from where I left him, waving at me emphatically to come to him. He appears to be standing by an old-as-hell clay urn. Looks like something from the computer game Diablo characters can smash to find some gold coins or a healing potion. Or maybe a dusty clay pot recovered from a pharaoh’s tomb.
“Sorry, lamp. Gotta go.” I hurry over to Sam.
“Nein! Verlass mich nicht!”
My life just gets weirder and weirder.
When I reach my brother, he indicates the vase with both hands like a game show host. It’s somewhat bigger than a volleyball, wider at the top than the bottom, dusty, light brown, and old. The facing side has a small rectangular border around writing that is definitely not English. It kinda looks Chinese, but not quite the same. I’m tempted to say it’s probably a totally dead language. A tiny (comparatively) lid sits on top, sealed by what appears to be wax-caked rope. A few beads hang from the extra cord over one side.
Vampire Innocent | Book 11 | How To Stop A Vampire War In Six Easy Steps Page 21
