J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (12 page)

“I don’t know what to tell you, Paul. I guess the best advice I can offer is that if it feels real, then go with it. If you’re hallucinating it won’t hurt to do so, but if it’s real and you ignore the dangers, you might end up very dead, or worse.”

That was the crux of the matter. In this strange new reality he’d stumbled upon, there were quite a number of fates worse than death. “So if we can get this demon to agree to give us some of its name, we can get some control over it?”

She ran her fingers through her frazzled hair and scratched at her scalp. The grit clearly irritated her as much as him. “Actually, no. With demon names it’s both easer and harder than that. It’s easier because if you can learn its name in any way, you gain control. It doesn’t have to be part of an agreement. But it’s harder because a demon’s true name is a highly kept secret. Names are one way in which we’re quite different from them.”

Paul thought of snake-legs, and bat-thing, and had an urge to snarl angrily that there were many ways in which they were different. But he swallowed his sarcasm and asked the final question. “So how do we get the hell out of hell?”

She shrugged, looked him in the eyes and said, “For the time being we wait and hope my father can do something. And if he can’t, then we’ll have to cut some sort of deal with that Secundus out there.”

Accompanied by Colleen and the two leprechauns, McGowan closed the workshop door and locked it, sealing them in. He carried a small cage containing a live chicken, Colleen carried a small paper bag, and they all wore floor-length, white, linen robes and thick slippers knitted from heavy cotton thread. Beneath the robes they each wore white cotton trousers held up by a belt of hemp rope, and a white cotton tunic with no buttons or opening in the front, forcing one to don it by pulling it over one’s head. Everything they wore had been woven from plant fibers of some sort, nothing made of metal or plastic, nothing artificial, and nothing made from animal tissue. McGowan had commissioned several such outfits long ago from a seamstress who was also a minor practitioner of the arcane, though for the leprechauns he’d simply cut two robes short with a pair of scissors.

Earlier that morning each of them had personally hand-washed their own outfit using crude, unscented soap, then hung them to dry through the afternoon. In the early afternoon they’d rested and slept, then in late afternoon bathed with unscented soap, and were careful afterward to apply no perfumes, oils, deodorants or after-shave, nothing that might contaminate the cleansing of their bodies and clothing. In the early evening a priest, a friend of McGowan’s and also a practitioner, came by and blessed the two humans, and anointed them with holy water. The leprechauns, having no souls, remained hidden while the priest was present. Then they’d spent the next several hours meditating and clearing their thoughts.

Colleen had dropped her shadows. “I’m frightened, old man. I don’t like the black arts, and I must confess I’ve never participated in a major summons before. I’m not terribly knowledgeable in sorcery.”

“Never?” he asked dubiously.

“No. I’ve avoided it. I’ve banished a few demons, but never summoned one.”

Jim’Jiminie said, “It’s going to be fun.”

Boo’Diddle added, “Exactly.”

McGowan strode across his workshop, put the chicken cage onto a workbench and turned to a tall storage cabinet. “As a rule I don’t like trafficking in demons either. But circumstances occasionally force my hand. All you need to do in this is guard my back, actually my soul. I’ll walk you through it.”

McGowan lifted a small copper dish out of the storage cabinet. He also retrieved a knife and four wax candles, each about six inches long, and a large, flat cardboard box. He opened the box, and from it he pulled a mirror about three by two feet mounted in an ornate wooden frame. He handed the mirror to Colleen and she noticed it did a poor job of reflecting her image. “That’s a dark mirror,” he said. “Essentially a piece of glass painted black on the back side. We’re going to use it to look into the darkness of the Netherworld.”

McGowan placed the four candles at four of the five points of the silver pentagram embedded in the floor, saying, “The point without a candle is the principal point of the pentagram, where I’ll be seated controlling the entire summons. When I light the candles I’ll do so with my power, not matches or any other physical means. And I myself will be the fifth candle, completing the symmetry of the pentagram, and defining the principal point with my power.”

McGowan then cut a few strands of his own hair and placed them in the copper dish. Colleen handed him the sack, and from it he withdrew two hairbrushes. That morning they’d returned to Paul’s apartment and stolen a hairbrush, then they’d stopped at Katherine’s home and stolen one of hers. He plucked a few hairs from each brush and dropped them into the copper dish, then placed the copper dish and the dark mirror in the center of the circle, arranging them so that when he sat down at the principal point of the pentagram, he could see his own faint reflection in the mirror, with the copper dish resting just in front of it. He sat down in front of the copper dish, lifted the knife in his left hand and cut into the flesh of his right hand. As blood flowed freely he held the hand above the dish and let the blood drip into it, saying, “The knife is made of cold iron, not steel. It’s rather soft and doesn’t hold an edge well, but it does the job.”

When he was satisfied he’d produced enough blood he used his left index finger to draw a small rune over the cut in his palm. After sketching it seven times it began to glow and the cut closed. He stood, crossed the room to the workbench and retrieved the chicken from its cage, then returned to the center of the hammered, silver circle. He knelt, held the squawking chicken by its throat in his left hand, and with the knife in his right hand he passed it over the chicken thirteen times, all the while whispering something arcane. Colleen felt the old man’s power begin to coalesce as the chicken slowly ceased screeching and calmed, appearing to drift into a still slumber. Then he placed the chicken on the floor in front of the copper bowl and cut its throat, severing its head completely. Bright red blood spurted from the severed neck for several seconds, and when it ceased McGowan laid the chicken’s body in the puddle of blood on the floor.

Colleen followed his gaze as he glanced at a clock on the wall: ten minutes before midnight. The clock was set to rotational time. It would hit the stroke of midnight only when the earth’s rotation placed the sun exactly opposite their position on the planet’s surface.

McGowan went to one of the four candles, paused before it, passed his hand over it seven times, again muttering something arcane, then lit the candle with a small fire spell. He repeated the procedure at each of the other three candles, taking care not to step inside the pentagram. Then he sat down on the floor at the principal point of the pentagram, facing the dark mirror. He instructed the leprechauns to sit to one side and Colleen to sit down behind him, adding, “If I appear to become unresponsive, or start acting strange in any way, banish the demon immediately, but don’t open the circle. After that, if I don’t return to normal, kill me.”

He handed her the iron knife. “With cold iron, in my heart.”

“Dragon-stink,” the demon called, “come out and talk. And bring your little witch.”

Paul and Katherine cringed, hiding behind the half-crumbled wall of the church. They sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. “Why does it call you Dragon-stink?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Paul said. He looked suspiciously at Katherine. “You’re not going to tell me dragons are real too, are you?”

She hesitated for a moment, and inwardly Paul cringed. She grimaced as she said, “Not  . . . exactly.”

“What does
not exactly
mean?”

Katherine got her feet beneath her, rose in a crouch and peeked over the edge of the wall. “He’s wearing the image of my father again.”

Paul rose up beside her and looked over the wall, and for him the demon looked nothing like McGowan. “For me he’s wearing that chicken-headed snake-legged image again. I hate that.”

“Come on out, Dragon-stink. I have all eternity to wait for you.”

Paul took hold of Katherine’s arm, pulled her down and forced her to sit beside him. “Tell me about god damn dragons.”

She shook her head and said, “There aren’t any dragons.”

“You don’t sound too convinced, or too convincing.”

“They don’t really exist,” she said, grimacing. “They’re myths. That’s all.”

She finally looked at him directly. “There’re Three Realms: the Netherworld, the Mortal Plane, and Faerie, sometimes referred to as the
three lives
.”

“Faerie?” he asked. “You mentioned that once before. You mean like elves and goblins and leprechauns and all that kind of stuff?”

She shrugged. “You’ve already met a couple of leprechauns. They’re drawn to you for some reason. But never trust them. They’re tricky little people. And above all, never harm a leprechaun. To kill a leprechaun, in anything other than self-defense, is to bring a hundred years of back luck. They’re kind of like the Swiss; they try to stay neutral as much as possible. Even a murderous demon will hesitate before killing a leprechaun. It still bothers me those two are giving up their neutrality to be involved in this.”

“Listen, I’ve seen a couple of midgets in clown suits. Why should I believe they’re leprechauns?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Don’t be stubborn. It’s either a straitjacket in an asylum, or  . . .” She opened her eyes and waved a hand casually at the dirty brown sky.

“You do have a point there.”

She continued. “The little people are part of the non-aligned fey. They bear no hereditary allegiance to either of the ruling courts, Seelie and Unseelie, Summer and Winter. Leprechauns, sprites, the black fey, pixies, they’re all non-aligned, though one might choose to swear allegiance to Ag or Magreth for its own purposes.”

“Ag or Magreth?”

Paul’s head was spinning and she smiled rather sympathetically. “King of the Winter Court, and Queen of the Summer. It’s a lot to take in, huh?”

“Ya  . . . a lot.”

“You mentioned goblins,” she continued. “They’re non-aligned. But pray to god you don’t ever meet a goblin. As to elves, don’t ever let a Sidhe Warrior hear you call him an elf. He’ll probably gut you on the spot. The Sidhe rule Faerie, and it’s quite rare to see one, rarer even to actually meet one. Most of us, even practitioners, live our entire lives without ever doing so. I personally have never seen one, at least not that I know of. But if you ever do meet one, remember you can’t trust them. They won’t lie to you, but they’ll help you fool yourself.”

“Dragons,” he said. He was rather proud of the fact he managed to keep all sarcasm out of his voice. “We were talking about dragons, McGowan.”

Apparently he let some scorn slip out because her eyes flashed angrily at him. “The Dragon Realm is the mythical fourth realm. Legend has it the Dragon Realm is the source of all magic, that Dragons are powerful beyond imagining, and without Dragons there is no magic. But it’s purely mythical. No one’s ever seen a Dragon, or spoken to a Dragon. No one’s ever been to the Dragon Realm, and Dragons have never visited the other Realms. They’re no more real than  . . .”

“Dragon-stink, I’m waiting.”

“No more real than snake-legged, chicken-headed demons?” he asked, and this time he made no effort to hide the sarcasm.

She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. “We have to go out and talk with it, probably cut some sort of deal. We can’t put it off any longer.”

Paul stood and helped Katherine to her feet. Even though her skirt was torn and ripped, it was still too tight for her to move freely.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said.

Chapter 8: To Hell and Back

McGowan fed power into the circle and the pentagram, and as Colleen watched the old man’s arcane strength accumulate she cringed inwardly like a child standing before an intense blaze that threatened to singe her hair. His power began to manifest in little motes swirling up and down his arms, and the hair on his head tufted and twirled in a breeze that didn’t exist. Then she felt the old man complete the circle and close it, like a heavy plank door slamming shut. He then cast a fire spell to ignite a small flame in the palm of his hand so magical fire now burned at all five points of the pentagram. She watched him focus on the dark mirror, focus on his own faint but visible reflection there. “Darkness rules the night,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Bring forth the night. Bring forth the darkness, and its minions.”

He repeated that thirteen times, and with each repetition the mirror appeared to become more of a mirror, his reflection more visible and defined. After the thirteenth repetition the mirror reflected his image clearly, like a fine platter of quicksilver. But his image quickly began to distort, to twist and spiral away from his regular features. It coiled into an unrecognizable swirl, then suddenly stopped. It remained still and undefined for several seconds, then began swirling again in the opposite direction, and as it did so it took on form and recognizable substance. When the moment came, when the image reformed fully, she could sense the opening into the Netherworld, a painful scar on the Mortal Plane.

The image in the mirror was that of Katherine, a tiny replica of Katherine that fit nicely in the small mirror. The Katherine image stepped out of the mirror to stand in front of it, standing only about two feet tall. But then she began to expand and grow, and in a wink she stood her full height, though the Katherine standing in the middle of the pentagram had a massive chest with quivering breasts, an abundance of cleavage erupting from her blouse, a full, rounded figure, luscious hips with curves any exotic dancer would envy, and swollen red lips puckered into a pout. In every other way though, it was Katherine, in one of her expensive business suits, though the skirt was practically a micro-mini. “Hello, Old Wizard,” she said in a deep rumbling voice that sent a shiver up Colleen’s spine.

McGowan remained silent for a moment, then asked, “Do I know you?”

The demon ran its hands over its breasts, down its belly, stopped at its crotch and fingered itself offensively through the fabric of its skirt. “Am I not your daughter?”

McGowan shook his head. “You look nothing like my daughter.”

The demon Katherine spread its hands, looked down at her chest. She pressed her hands up under her breasts, squeezing copious amounts of cleavage up from the blouse. “You don’t like this, mortal. Well then, let’s fix that.” Her breasts slowly shrank to the proper size, her figure and lips thinned and the skirt lengthened until she truly did look like Katherine.

Colleen knew the demon couldn’t read their minds, not while they remained outside the circle and it within. But somehow it knew Katherine’s image and her relationship to the old man.

As if it could read her thoughts, the demon said, “I own your daughter’s soul, wizard, and that of her lover. If you want them back, you’ll have to pay dearly.”

Paul and Katherine limped carefully down the steps in front of the church, stopped well short of the sidewalk where the demon stood. Paul had agreed to let Katherine do all the talking since he was wholly out of his element. And he now knew not to meet the demon’s eyes, so he focused on its beak when it spoke.

“Your father wants you back, little witch. But he told me I can keep Dragon-stink here.” It nodded toward Paul.

Katherine hissed at Paul, “Don’t believe anything it says. They’re masters at lying. They’ll put a tiny bit of truth into the lie to make you doubt everything.”

Unfortunately, Paul’s only experience with McGowan was that the older man had always been present with a bunch of Russian thugs and a demon that kept trying to kill him. It was all too possible the old man didn’t give a damn about him, and might gladly sacrifice Paul to get his daughter back. But now was not the time to reveal his doubts to Katherine.

Katherine snarled, “My father would never give up a human soul to such as you.”

The demon’s laugh came out almost as a growl. “And what do you know of
such as me
, little witch?” The demon leaned close, its beak stopping right at the edge of the sidewalk. “You mortals are consumed by your needs and cravings. I merely offer you what you want, and strike a fair bargain in the process.” It turned its attention to Paul, but still spoke to Katherine. “I should offer your companion his desire.”

Katherine asked, “And what’s that?”

The demon emitted a deep rumble in its throat and the chicken beak grinned. “He lusts after you with unbridled desire, can barely keep that cock of his in his pants.”

Katherine looked at Paul, threw a hip in his direction. “Really,” she said smiling, looking him up and down, stopping with her gaze on his crotch.

“That’s not true,” Paul pleaded. “It’s lying, making it all up.”

She frowned and said, “Ah darn, I’m disappointed.” She turned back to the demon. “I guess you are lying, demon.” Then she looked back at Paul and winked. “Though hopefully it’s not a complete lie.”

Paul shook his head, looked at the demon and it happened again:
blink
. Katherine said something to the demon, but the momentary flash of vision had distracted Paul. It was the same sensation he’d had when they’d first encountered it wearing the image of McGowan. He’d seen something of its true nature then, and he suspected he might’ve seen even more of its nature when it enthralled him.

Blink
. Something about the demon’s name came back to him. He could remember none of it, but he thought a bluff might not hurt, so he said, “I know your name, demon.”

The demon opened its beak and emitted a deep growl, and the ground beneath their feet shook as if in tempo to its grumbling. Clearly, it had some reason to believe Paul might have learned its name. “If you know my name then let it cross your lips.”

Katherine must’ve understood he was bluffing and spoke quickly to help. “The name of a Secundus caste demon is not to be used lightly.”

The demon threw its chicken-head back and roared with laughter. “Oh little witch, you know nothing.” It leaned toward her, stopping just short of the boundary between sidewalk and church steps. Katherine staggered back a step as it said, “I’ll take great pleasure in haunting your soul. You’ll be mine for eternity, little witch. Mine.”

Katherine’s eyes widened and she looked at Paul. “I think I was wrong. I think this thing might be Primus caste.”

Again the demon roared, and its image shifted rapidly from McGowan to Katherine to Paul. It ended with the snake-legged monster.

Paul said, “Even more reason to hold your name in trust.”

The demon’s serpent legs writhed and it turned its eyes on Katherine. “Your friend is a fool. He longs for a past that cannot again be.”

The demon’s image blurred, shifted, swirled and twisted, then coalesced into the form of Cloe, a perfect little Cloe without distortion or alteration. She had on her school uniform, her blond hair tied into two little pigtails on either side of her head. “Daddy,” she said. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”

He could hear the betrayal in her words. Somehow he’d failed to bring her back, failed to be there for her, failed at everything.

Cloe’s image blurred and swirled, and a moment later Suzanna stood there, the real Suzanna wearing a light, cotton summer dress with a full sweeping skirt. He remembered that dress. She’d worn it the last time he’d seen her. “Paulie-boy,” she said longingly. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Paul felt tears running down his cheeks, tasted the saltiness of his own sorrow as one touched the corner of his mouth. His Suzanna had a small nose in a long, elegant face, eyes with a slight slant as if she had a tiny bit of Asian ancestry far in her past. He missed those eyes, and he looked into them now—

Paul opened his eyes, laid there for a moment in the dark listening to Suzanna’s slow, steady intake and outflow of breath. He rolled over in bed to face her.

It was the middle of a warm night, and they’d both kicked off the covers. She was lying on her side with her back to him. He had the strongest urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her tightly as if he might never do so again. But he didn’t want to wake her so he just traced the curve of her hip with his hand, making certain it was properly and indelibly committed to memory. He watched the slow, steady rise and fall of her shoulders as she took one breath, and then another, and he tried to commit that to memory as well. In sleep her face was scrunched into a little pout, and that too he tried to commit to memory.

He slipped out of bed quietly, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, and crossed the room on tiptoe. He walked down the hall to Cloe’s room, found her sleeping soundly and had the same urge to wrap her in his arms. But he didn’t want to wake her either so he just stood there looking down on her for a few moments, and was content with that. In sleep, she pouted just like her mother, and he knew he must remember this, all of it, for eternity.

Out in the hall he met the tall black fellow with the coal black skin. The man wore an expensive dark suit that defined elegance. “Walk with me for a bit,” the man said.

It never occurred to Paul to do otherwise. The man turned aside, and Paul, now fully dressed in a dark suit much like his companion’s, accompanied the fellow down a pleasant path through a quiet garden. It was almost a jungle, dense, entwined foliage that choked the sunlight until nothing remained but shadow. They walked along a path of crushed, white stone, and they always seemed to be walking toward an impenetrable wall of vegetation just a few steps away. But as they approached it parted before them like the Red Sea parting before Moses. It wasn’t as if the leaves and vines moved aside, but more as if, within a certain distance from Dayandalous, they just didn’t exist.

“This is the first real test, Paul,” Dayandalous said.

Paul asked, “I know. But how do I pass it?”

Dayandalous stopped, turned and looked at Paul carefully. “You must remember. I can only help you so much, and the rest us up to you.”

“Remember?” Paul asked. “Sometimes I think I can remember it all, and sometimes nothing.”

“But what comes first to mind, Paul?”

Paul looked into the man’s eyes. They glowed red through vertical slits. “Katherine says I shouldn’t look into a demon’s eyes. And you told me that too. But you also told me I could look through its eyes.”

Dayandalous smiled. “Exactly.”

Paul frowned, “But I don’t know how to do that.”

Dayandalous shook his head patiently and spoke like a kindly teacher prompting a favorite pupil. “But you do, Paul. Look into your heart, look with the love you bear your wife and child, and you’ll find it easy to defeat such evil. Look through the demon eye, child. Look through the demon eye.”

Looking out through two sets of eyes from two different perspectives, Paul had to fight a wave of vertigo. He was standing on the steps of the church next to Katherine looking at the hoodoo, and at the same time standing on the sidewalk in front of them, looking thorough the demon’s eyes at him and Katherine, looking through a red haze of hatred and desire. “I have you now, mortal,” the demon rumbled into his thoughts.

In that instant Paul felt a strange urge, a compulsion to go somewhere as if being called from a great distance. It was as if he stood in a slowly flowing river with the current tugging relentlessly at him. It had direction and force, and the more he resisted the more it pulled him toward some unknown destination. On the steps of the church Katherine reached over, tugged on his arm and whispered, “I think I sense my father’s summons.”

The compulsion grew to such an intensity it became a need he could not resist, or perhaps a need the demon could not resist. Reality shifted along a sideways track, a slippery, unclean pathway and
blink
, Paul was now in a third place as well as the other two. He stood in the middle of a silver circle inlaid in a marble floor, with the circle surrounded by a silver pentagram also inlaid in the floor. Enormous breasts weighed down his shoulders uncomfortably. He looked down at his own chest, at the wealth of quivering cleavage exposed there. He ran his hands over his breasts, down his belly, stopped at his crotch and was surprised to find that, beneath the material of his skirt, he was no longer a man, but now possessed the genitalia of a woman. Confused, he explored the strangeness of it for a moment, then looked up and saw McGowan seated on the floor in front of him, and the older hippie woman seated behind him. McGowan sat at one point of the pentagram with the hippie woman leaning forward and whispering something in his ear. They both wore white gowns of some sort, and McGowan held fire cupped in the palms of his hands.

To one side sat the two leprechauns, dressed just like the humans. Both of them smiled and beamed at Paul, one of them winked at him comically, and the other flashed him a thumbs up. Then they high-fived each other.

Paul’s mouth opened through no volition of his own and he said in Katherine’s voice, “Am I not your daughter?”

Both leprechauns shouted in unison, “It’s lying.”