White Trash Warlock

by David R. Slayton

  Bobby flinched. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again.

  “Well you’re going to need a bigger ward,” Adam said. “With beds for about a dozen.”

  Anger and curiosity warred on Bobby’s face.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “She’s not the only one,” Adam said. “What has a hold on her is big. It’s old, and it’s got someone more powerful than me spooked, and it’s connected to people all over the city.”

  “Bullshit,” Bobby said. He clenched his fist, the old denial flaring.

  Adam thought Bobby might punch the wall, like Dad would have, but his brother forced his hands to open. He ran his palms over his jean pockets.

  “I can prove it,” Adam said. “I just need to track them down.”

  “Fine,” Bobby said, raising a hand in surrender. “It’s late and Mom’s waiting with supper.”

  “What time is it?” Adam asked, realizing the light from the basement window had darkened.

  “Nine o’clock,” Bobby said.

  “Man,” Adam said. “I didn’t think I was gone that long.”

  He felt drained. The spirit walk had taken a lot from him.

  “Mom must have decided you needed to sleep,” Bobby said, leading Adam out of the basement.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” Adam snarled. “And I didn’t come here for you to mock me.”

  “Whatever,” Bobby said, already heading up the stairs.

  Adam clenched his fists, but he followed without argument. He wanted to eat more than he wanted to go another round.

  Climbing the stairs, he could smell his mother’s cooking, salmon patties and steamed green beans. The memory took him back to Guthrie, to eating outside when it got too hot in the trailer. He’d douse the greasy little cakes in ketchup, craving the sugar more than the fried fish and breadcrumbs.

  Their mother had worked long hours at the gas station after their dad left. She’d kept them fed, but hadn’t had the chance to cook. Adam’s early years were filled with cheap microwave dinners, popcorn, and boxes of off-brand macaroni. Bobby learned to cook out of necessity, though he never managed anything more complicated than pasta and meatballs. He’d cook in bulk, and they’d get by on a stock pot of pasta for a full week, digging down into the noodles for whatever bits of flavor and sauce might remain near the bottom.

  Adam would go to his grave hating spaghetti and that cheap Parmesan cheese that tasted like sawdust. He and Sue ate cheap, but she spared him that, even if it meant they sometimes ate instant oatmeal for dinner.

  Upstairs, his mom had set three places. Bobby looked at the unset fourth spot with open sadness.

  No one spoke as forks and knives scraped plates. Adam almost asked his mother how she’d been, to at least be polite and ask what she’d done with the land and trailer back home. He knew it was important to her. She’d always insisted on keeping it, even when Bobby and Adam were gone. But he bit down on the questions, afraid the acid roiling in his gut would spill out.

  By the time he rose to rinse his plate in the sink, his jaw ached.

  He sat back down.

  “When did it start?” he asked.

  His mother and brother exchanged a glance.

  “I can’t help if I don’t know the details,” Adam said.

  Bobby took a long breath, let it out. “We tried to have a baby. She miscarried, got depressed. It happens, but she never came back. Then, this.”

  Deflated, Bobby ducked his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said, meaning it, though the news didn’t really help him. Depression might open a door, something the spirit could exploit, but it didn’t explain it. He braced for a harder question.

  “Before, did Annie have any Sight? I mean, is she like me?”

  “No,” Bobby said, shaking his head without looking up. “She’s normal. Completely normal.”

  Normal.

  The urge to lash out rose in Adam’s throat, but he swallowed it down.

  “You said there were others?” Bobby asked.

  “Yeah. I need to find them. Do you have a computer I can use?”

  “It’s in the den,” Bobby said, nodding to a room just off the dining room, down a few steps, though his eyes didn’t look that way.

  “Okay,” Adam said.

  The den had an air of disuse. Books lined the desk hutch. Things were organized in a haphazard way that could not have been Bobby’s doing.

  The computer, an older desktop with a large monitor, woke up slowly. It wanted about a million security updates. Adam told it to run them later. He didn’t want to wait all night. While it booted, he scanned the books Annie had stockpiled: How to Raise Happy Children. How to Help Your Baby Sleep through the Night.

  Despite Bobby and his mother, despite the ball of black and red in his throat, something blue poured into Adam’s heart. He squeezed his eyes shut, let the weight of it press him into the chair. This wasn’t any kind of life like what he wanted, but this was Annie’s dream. Kids. This ugly house. Bobby. It all floated around him, soaked into the walls and carpet.

  “I’ll help you,” Adam told her picture, a smiling photo from their wedding. “I’ll figure it out.”

  The local practitioners were dead, and that was another thing he needed to understand. Without them he had far fewer options for help or information, but it also meant a lurking threat might be gunning for him.

  Spirit walkers were rare. But sensitives, people who might feel the spirit realm but not see it, were common.

  Maybe the local sensitives could feel the spirit hovering over the city without attracting its attention. There had to be something on the internet, something someone had spotted and reported.

  In high school, when his Sight became unbearable, all he’d wanted was for his mother and brother to understand it. Understand him. Now he had to wonder if their safety wasn’t worth his loneliness, if having more Sight would have made them targets too.

  If the spirit had killed the local practitioners, then why hadn’t the watchtowers intervened? The Guardians were supposed to protect the world from larger threats, and it didn’t get much larger than a giant floating organ hanging over the city.

  A browser window finally opened. Adam wanted to search for pawn shops on Federal, follow up on the warlock, but the spirit had to come first.

  There were always portents when the spirit world began bleeding into the mortal. A quick search told him the Denver airport was the center of some conspiracy theories. Most of them revolved around an apocalyptic mural, showing native people being destroyed by fire. There were gargoyles, statues of them climbing out of suitcases. From the air the entire airport looked a lot like a swastika. There was talk of bunkers, underground structures, and of course, Saurians.

  Closer to the city, there were ghost stories, and tunnels running between them, the train station, and the old downtown brothels. The jarred, pickled heads of two outlaws went missing from the capitol building. Nothing pointed to the spirit. Then he found an article on the old sanitarium and dug a little further.

  Adam squeezed his eyes shut, counted to ten, and went to find his brother.

  Bobby sat in the living room, an actual newspaper in his lap. He just needed reading glasses and a pair of slippers to finish looking like he’d time traveled from the 1950s.

  “What hospital do you work at?” Adam asked.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “It’s Mercy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Bobby said. He’d changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. Both appeared new, like casual was a look he was trying on for an evening. “Why?”

  Adam leaned against the doorway, already tensed to walk away.

  “Mercy tore down its old psych ward recently,” Adam said. “I think they set something loose.”

  “Why would you think
that?” Bobby asked.

  “Three of the hospital personnel have been committed in the last month. You didn’t hear anything about it?”

  “A hospital is a big place, Adam,” Bobby said. “This can’t be about Mercy.”

  Adam sighed. “Spirits have to be summoned or set loose. It had to come from somewhere. This one is threaded throughout the city, connected to different people. I’d bet these are them, that they’re all in the same state as Annie.”

  Bobby nibbled his lip, calculating, and said, “All right. What do you need?”

  “Get me a look at the construction site.”

  Bobby was already prickly. No need to tell him everything. Adam also needed a look at the personnel files of the possessed, to see if there was something in their background that might hint at a magical bloodline or a history of sensitivity. “I’ll see if there’s anything to it.”

  “Okay,” Bobby said. “Come to work with me tomorrow.”

  9

  Adam

  Adam hadn’t brought anything close to business casual in his backpack, so he met his brother by the front door in clean jeans and a checkered button-up. His jean jacket had some vaguely brown stains on the lining that were probably coffee, but it would pass muster so long as he didn’t take it off. He’d at least gelled and combed his hair.

  Bobby gave Adam the once-over and led him out the door.

  “You look good, Adam,” he said when the car was in motion. “You should always dress like this, tone down the redneck thing you’ve got going.”

  “I look like a missionary,” Adam said.

  “Is that so bad?” Bobby asked.

  Adam clenched his jaw, uncertain if Bobby meant to tease, provoke, or if he really just didn’t know. Adam kept his mouth shut and settled into the Audi’s leather seat. He had to admit it was a nice car, but like all things Bobby, it had a dickish quality to it, and was nice and new without feeling comfortable or personal. He’d take the Cutlass along with her dents and the bailing wire holding her together.

  The hospital looked Spanish in style. Old, more like an apartment building than a medical facility. Adam could see why they were demolishing part of it. He checked it with his Sight, saw no sign of the spirit. In fact, he didn’t See or sense any magic.

  Adam blinked, shaking off the empty feeling he got from the place as Bobby parked in a space with his name on it.

  “Come on,” Bobby said, leaving the car with a little too much enthusiasm.

  He wants to show off.

  Like Adam’s approval should matter. Like anything should matter except Annie.

  The hospital’s interior felt like an RV, all plastic walls and manufactured parts. Adam could have touched the low ceiling. He wondered if it was an effect of its age or if they’d built it that way on purpose, if smaller spaces prevented infection or the prefab walls made it easier to clean up the blood. It kind of reminded him of their trailer, his childhood home in the Oklahoma woods, only cleaner, newer. Maybe that’s why Bobby liked working there so much.

  Bobby preened at the staff’s friendly respect. Other doctors nodded. Nurses smiled in passing. They called him Doctor Binder, which sounded a bit like a super villain. It wasn’t the life Adam wanted, even if some of the nurses were attractive guys.

  Adam noticed a few of them moving through the hallways as Bobby took him through security and got him a visitor badge. He couldn’t say what kind of life he did want. He’d done odd jobs for years now, not thinking about much beyond surviving or finding his dad. Sometimes he felt the future stretching out before him, and his stomach clenched at the thought of facing it alone. Bobby had Annie. She should be more important to him.

  “Wait here,” Bobby said, pointing to a chair. “I’ll get someone to show you around.”

  Adam took a seat, dismissed the stack of magazines, and folded his hands together. He forced a smile for the nurse watching from the corner and tried not to fidget.

  The hospital felt all wrong. He’d driven Sue to doctor’s appointments from time to time. Sensations, worry, frustration, and suffering permeated places like this. But he got nothing from Mercy. No feeling at all leaked through his defenses. Adam pressed his back against the wall and squirmed, trying to scratch an itch in the center of his back. Life was everywhere. Even the most remote area had something, some sense of spirit.

  Careful of what he might find, Adam trailed his senses out around him, casting them like fishing lines. Nothing. No tremors of activity in the spirit realm, no ghosts.

  Eyes wide, breath held, he tried to accept what it meant.

  He’d never felt anything like it. He’d never been anywhere so void of energy or feeling. A hospital, a tornado of life and death, should teem with emotion.

  Someone cleared his throat, drawing Adam out of his thoughts.

  He opened his eyes and faced a cop. He didn’t look much older than Adam. Tall, lean, and Latino, his uniform lay tight across his shoulders.

  “Can I help you—” Adam paused long enough to get the catch in his throat under control. He leaned forward to read the badge pinned to that built chest. “Officer Martinez?”

  “I’m supposed to help you,” the cop said. Smiling, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Doctor Binder asked for someone to show you around.”

  “Yeah?” Adam asked, returning the smile.

  “Yeah,” the cop said. He had short black hair, the natural glossy kind Adam had so envied in his emo days.

  He stood, shook the cop’s offered hand, and cut the eye contact before it went on a little too long.

  “He said you wanted to see the construction site,” the cop said.

  “Yeah, it’s for a thing.” Adam suppressed a wince. He was forgetting the story he’d come up with. “Officer Martinez.”

  “It’s just Vic,” the cop said with a laugh. “Unless you’re in trouble.”

  Adam focused on Vic’s shoulders as he walked away.

  You’ve got a job to do, Adam chided himself and caught up.

  “Does the hospital always use cops for tours?” he asked.

  “Just for security,” Vic said with a little shrug. “It’s some extra money for off-duty police and extra experience for us rookies.”

  They passed open rooms with sleeping patients and silent nurses. Some energy lay there—fresh sadness and grief, boredom—but not the deep well of feeling an old hospital should contain. It shouldn’t be this way.

  Adam didn’t even need his armor, the walls he used to keep such things from overwhelming him. He felt naked without his defenses, but he left them down in case they caused him to miss something.

  He had no proof the spirit was connected, but his nerves thrummed with warning. Something wasn’t right.

  “What kind of thing?” Vic asked, drawing Adam back from his thoughts.

  “Huh?” Adam asked. “Oh, I’m a writer. Or at least I want to be.”

  “Yeah?” Vic asked. “What do you write?”

  “I’m working on a book,” Adam lied. “A ghost story.”

  It sounded childish and he held in a wince.

  “Oh,” Vic said, perking up. “My brother likes that stuff. I’m more of a sci-fi and fantasy guy myself.”

  Be still my heart.

  “How many brothers do you have?” Adam asked without thinking. He hadn’t come to flirt. He’d finish seeing what there was to see with Vic, then figure out how to get into the hospital’s records.

  “I’m Mexican,” Vic said. “Lots. A dozen.”

  “Really?” Adam asked.

  “No,” Vic said, dark eyes sparkling. “Just one.”

  He was still chuckling when he pulled at his ID badge. It came on a retractable wire, like a tape measure. Vic pressed it to unlock a door. Adam was going to need one of those.

  “If you’re writing a horror story,” Vic said. “
Then you gotta see this.”

  This part of the hospital felt older, condemned, if not ready to collapse. A floor of chipped linoleum lay beneath fluorescent lights. The air was desert dry, like all of Denver, apparently. Most of the bulbs were out, and the AC was off, making the hall warmer than he’d expected.

  It should have had some energy, some aura or impression left from its former life and occupants, but the void, the magical nothing, only deepened.

  “Where are we?” Adam asked, turning about. He hadn’t seen this from the street. It must lay behind the Spanish facade where Bobby had parked.

  Some of the doors were sealed with sheets of taped plastic. Adam half expected a movie zombie to crash through them. He stepped closer to Vic. The cop smelled faintly of cologne, like oranges and sandalwood. Combined with Vic’s warmth and proximity, it lightened the heaviness that had filled Adam’s limbs.

  “The old psych ward,” Vic said, taking a flashlight from his belt. “They’re tearing it down soon.”

  “I thought they already had,” Adam said. “I read it on the internet.”

  “Not all of it,” Vic said, leading Adam deeper into the hall. “Some of the buildings, like this one, have asbestos sealed in the floor. The removal takes time, but they’re going down. It’s too bad. They’re kind of pretty.”

  Narrow windows let a little light in. Vic bounced the flashlight’s beam over the tiled floor and dusty ceiling.

  The magic void opened beneath them, an empty maw only Adam could sense or fall into. It no longer felt restful, more like a lurking, open-mouthed monster, ready to snap shut and devour his meager power.

  Adam shuddered. This, all of this, was too big for him. He hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but he wasn’t going to be able to save Annie on his own. He was already in over his head.

  After a while Vic asked, “You going to take notes or anything?”

  “Nah,” Adam said, turning in place. “I’m just going to, you know, soak it in.”

  “You look like you already have,” Vic said.