by Hamill, Ike
“We stopped it from attaching itself to real flesh.”
“But what about before that? It was made of nothing but…”
“Blood,” Ricky finished. “Just a fragile liquid creature.”
“Because those were the only building blocks it had to work with. We burned up Dr. Hugs in a big pile of ash and embers. That’s a lot of carbon that it could be working with. We’ll be lucky if the thing is even stoppable.”
“Then why are you being so calm about this, and why didn’t you bring it up earlier?” Ricky asked his brother.
George smiled.
“Well, it’s not exactly the kind of belief that one wants to broadcast widely. Even with all the witnesses to the last summoning, people who insisted that they had seen something paranormal were dismissed and ridiculed. And I’m also reasonably certain that we have the tools and skills to take care of this problem pretty easily.”
“Explain,” Ricky said.
“The Ceremony of the King’s Flame is just the calling spell. There’s a bookend to it to banish the entity once it has fulfilled its purpose. We have to execute the Moonlight Ascension, which opens up a rift to pull the entity back into its native realm. It’s the mirror opposite of what we’ve already done and we have to do it exactly at moonrise tonight, which is in one-hundred and forty-four minutes.”
Ricky nodded. “And what kind of entities will this rift pull?”
George scratched his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“I only really studied it in the context as the antidote to the Ceremony of the King’s Flame. The first one is supposed to be like the drawing of a powerful sword and the second is the sheathing of it. Why? What do you have in mind?”
“Hold on,” Ricky said.
# # #
“I think this is a bad idea, Ricky,” Amber said.
“How do we know until we investigate it? Listen, my brother is really smart. Tell him everything you know and he’ll be able to research it more. We only have a couple of hours. If he figures out that we can get a two-for-one, then we can put your problem behind us and focus on the other thing.”
“I think it’s a bad idea to even talk about it,” Amber said. “I was free from that thing for years until I talked openly with you about it at the beach. It’s entirely possible that I reactivated it somehow just by going through all those details. I mean, if it’s really attached to me then it could be that I was unknowingly feeding it by putting all that mental energy into remembering it.”
“And it’s also possible that the reason you decided to tell me about it was because you were already feeling that it was getting close to you again. This is all guesswork. That’s why we need my brother to look into it. He’s really good with this kind of research and the moon is going to be just in the right place in a couple of hours. If I’m wrong, and your thing shows up here, then the worst case scenario is that we have to deal with it now instead of later. I already agreed to help you with it.”
Amber scraped paint from her fingernail as she thought.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“How many days between us talking and when it was in your cousin’s house?”
“A couple.”
“So we would have at least that long, right?”
“How should I know? I can only guess.”
“Take a chance,” Ricky said. “Let’s fight.”
“Maybe your brother will know if talking about it is the reason it comes back.”
“Yeah,” Ricky said with his eyebrows raised. “Exactly. We’ll just talk to him and make answering that question the first priority.”
“I suppose,” Amber said.
Ricky led the way towards the stairs.
George had books spread around himself on the bed. He was paging through an old book with thin yellow pages. He looked up when Amber and Ricky came in and shut the door.
“So?” George asked. “What do…”
“Hush,” Ricky said. “Amber is going to tell you her story and I want you to hear it out and then figure out if it has a similarity to what we’re already doing.”
George nodded.
“That’s not the deal,” Amber said after backhanding Ricky’s shoulder. “First, I want you to hear the kind of thing I’m talking about and you need to research if it’s even safe to talk about. Given that…”
“Is this like the thing that attacked the Harpers?” George asked with a smile. “Are you going to tell me about something that becomes more dangerous if it’s named?”
“Maybe,” Ricky said. “That’s what Amber wants you to answer.”
George’s smile began to fade. Amber sat down on the edge of George’s bed and she told him the story with quick sketches. Just like when Ricky had heard it, she started with the death of her grandfather. George didn’t flinch at that part. He only appeared really disturbed when Amber talked about how afraid she had been to go home and how she had spent so much time at friends’ houses.
“Something like that almost happened to us,” George said. “Did you tell her about that?”
Ricky shook his head. “Another time.”
“Okay,” George said. “We’re going to have to start with affinity and coupling tests. That will tell us how much you’re involved and the nature of the entity that’s orbiting you.”
“What does that mean?” Amber asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” George said. “You’ll barely feel a thing.”
He began to clear the books from his bed and stack them up on his dresser. “Ricky, see if Mom has any saffron, yeast, salt, vinegar, and lemon juice.”
“We’re making a pie?” Ricky asked.
“Funny. Get a chunk of charcoal from the grill too, would you? And bring up one of the jugs of spring water.”
“Don’t start anything without me,” Ricky said.
George nodded.
# # #
George handed Amber the piece of charcoal and he held up his phone with the camera facing her, so it acted like a mirror.
“Draw a continuous line around your face, like a big circle of coal,” George said.
Amber began at the top of her forehead and angled the camera so she could see as she worked her way down past her eye.
“Wouldn’t this be easier if one of you did it?”
“Has to be you,” George said.
He leaned closer as she tilted her chin up and drew the line across her neck and then back up the other side of her jaw. Amber jerked back and swatted at the back of her head.
“What?” Ricky asked.
“Something touched the top of my head.”
She looked all around and then put down the phone so she could pat her hair. George motioned to Ricky and conferred quietly with him in the corner of the room.
“It’s here with us.”
“How do you know?”
“Watch. When she finishes the line, she’s going to feel something on her head again.”
Amber finished the circle around her face and then double-checked it, touching up a couple of places. The moment she set the charcoal down on the towel, she jumped up, startling Tucker. The dog stood up as Amber patted her head and spun.
“I swear, something just touched me. Is there a spider or something in here?” Amber asked.
George pointed at the piece of paper that he had flipped over and left near the jug of spring water on the table. Amber eyed him and then flipped the paper over. Her eyes scanned down the paper, she flipped it, and then read it again. When she looked at George, she looked a little frightened.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
George pointed to his ears and then nodded at her with wide eyes.
He pulled on Ricky’s sleeve and they all convened at the desk. George sat down and started typing on his laptop. They read the words as he wrote.
“There’s a difference between possession and encumbrance. The demon is attached to you—encumbrance—as opposed to possessing you. It was seeing and hearing th
rough your eyes and ears. Now, it can’t see, but it can still hear.”
“So what do I do?” Amber asked. She touched her head again after she spoke.
George typed the answer. “Right now? Nothing. I think it’s too dangerous. We don’t know the thing’s power, and it’s going to be ready for us. We need to learn more.”
Amber sighed. She sounded completely defeated.
“Yeah. You’re right,” Amber said.
“No,” Ricky said. “We can’t afford it.”
He pulled the laptop from George and typed his own message.
“Dangerous or not, we have to be free of this and Dr. Hugs. It’s going to take complete focus to deal with what we have to do. I say we finish Amber’s encumbrance right NOW.”
George locked eyes with his brother and then they both turned to Amber.
“You’re not afraid?” she asked.
“Of course we are,” Ricky said.
“That’s not the point though,” George said. “We will do it if you will.”
Amber looked between them and then her eyes dropped down to Tucker, who was sitting there looking up at her. When she smiled at the dog, he thumped his tail on the floor.
“Okay,” she said after a big exhale. “Okay.”
“Then we have a lot to do,” George typed. He began to list out the instructions from his research.
# # #
Ricky stood there for a moment, gathering his nerve.
His mother finally looked up from what she was painting.
“Where’s Amber? I saw her go out to her car. Did she decide to leave?”
“No,” Ricky said. “She’s sitting out there, waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“We need your help, Mom.”
Mary set down her paintbrush and wiped her hands on her apron.
“Okay? What are we doing?”
“We only have a few minutes. I need you to get Dad, get him dressed, and bring him out to the fire pit. We have to execute a Moonlight Ascension ritual in order to banish a couple of entities.”
His mother frowned and shook her head.
“Why is this the first I’m hearing of this?” she asked.
Ricky opened his mouth to blame his brother. George had only told him about the ritual an hour before, and everything had escalated so fast that Ricky could barely understand the progression.
Instead of blaming George, Ricky said, “Sorry.”
“Your father is going to be crabby about getting up at…” She checked her watch. “Is it really two-thirty?”
Ricky nodded. “I’ll apologize later.”
Mary nodded. “Okay. Fire pit. What do we need to bring?”
“We’re going to need more water, and you’re going to have to read a bunch of stuff. Bring your reading glasses and some flashlights. And don’t say anything aloud in front of Amber. It can still hear what she hears.”
Mary narrowed her eyes at him. “You roped her into one of your demon things?”
“No,” Ricky said. “She just happens to have a similar problem. I don’t have time…”
“To explain. Of course,” his mother said, shaking her head. She moved past him and headed for the stairs.
“He’s going to be crabby,” she said as she climbed.
Ricky went to the cabinet near the pantry and grabbed a trash bag. He started piling the unpainted rocks into it. George went by with an armload of old t-shirts and a couple of towels.
“Don’t forget the…” George started.
“Matches?”
“Yes. We have to start at three before the hour.”
“Get going. I’ll be there.”
# # #
Ricky rapped his knuckles on the car window.
Amber opened her eyes.
He mouthed the word, “Ready?”
She shook her head.
Ricky nodded and stepped back while she opened the door. She was perfectly capable of getting out of the vehicle on her own, but Ricky still put out his hand. Amber took it. He let go and took a deep breath before starting towards the woods. The path was easy to see in the starlight. His father had packed it down with his snowmobile countless times over the winter. Ricky stayed towards the center of the trail, remembering his father’s account of stepping off and tumbling down into a snowy trap. This snow wasn’t nearly that deep—in fact it was mostly all melted.
The shadows between the trees were deep.
Ricky could hear Amber breathing behind him. He wanted to tell her that it would all be okay, but he couldn’t lie to her like that. She had a lot more experience with the entity that she was about to face. It would be wrong of him to try to comfort her.
When Ricky heard the voices of his parents through the trees, he stopped and let Amber take the lead. She reached up and touched her head a couple of times.
George had explained it to Ricky earlier—“The entity is tethered to her, probably at the back of her head. Normally, she can’t sense it at all, but when it’s really agitated, she can feel it tug. People describe feeling like they’ve walked through a spiderweb, or like their hair is caught on something.”
Some of the words that his parents were chanting were familiar to Ricky. Years before, he had conducted a similar ceremony on his own. They were the voice of the Moonlight Ascension. George had tried to memorize the lines—they would have been more powerful coming from him. After debate, the brothers had decided that it was too important to trust to his memory. That’s why Ricky had asked his parents to help. Both of them chanting together would have to be powerful enough.
As soon as Amber crossed between the trees, into the little clearing, Ricky stopped. He fumbled with the matches and then got one to light. He touched it to the rag that George had put on a stick. Flame jumped out from the end of his match and raced down the rag to the ground, burning the puddle of fuel that Amber had just stepped through. They were erasing her tracks as the first assault against the entity that was trailing behind her.
She stopped at the edge of the fire pit and pressed her hand to the back of her head.
Mary and Vernon reached the end of the passage they were reading and they stopped. George circled the pit and doused the flames with his jug of water before they could burn out on their own.
Mary started reading from the next passage. Vernon began a moment later and read faster until he could catch up with her. They locked into a rhythm and their words merged into a single stream of syllables. Ricky fumbled his phone from his pocket so he could look up what his next action was supposed to be. The tension of the moment had knocked everything out of his head.
George was holding out his hand.
Ricky remembered. He passed the bag of rocks to George and they headed to opposite sides of the pit. They formed a triangle with Amber.
George looked at Ricky. “Count us down.”
Ricky nodded. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had a timer counting down to when the moon would officially rise. That’s when George needed to begin the formal offering to the light.
“One minute,” Ricky said.
George leaned down and touched his lighter to the candles arranged around the pit. Amber had her eyes closed—she feared that the entity attached to her would be able to see through her eyes, despite George’s assurance.
“Forty-five seconds,” Ricky said. His parents were speeding up in their incantation. Their job was to encircle the area with a protective net of words to contain anything that might try to slip beyond the ring of fire.
Ricky’s eyes went up to the trees. It was dangerous to do the ceremony outdoors, according to George. He had read of an ancient wizard who had attempted an outdoor Moonlight Ascension. The flames had attracted flying creatures from the night. One description said they were giant bats with translucent wings that bent the moonlight into ghostly shapes. Ricky thought he saw something dark pass between the bare branches overhead.
“Thirty-seconds,” Ricky said.
His brother w
hispered, “Look.”
Ricky took his eyes from the trees overhead and looked down to the ring of candles. George had laid out a fresh pillowcase, meant to symbolize the one they had burnt. Below it, a shape was already rising from the ashes and taking form beneath the cloth.
It was the right size and shape to be a baby, but Ricky knew it had to be Dr. Hugs under there. When Tucker was a puppy, he had inherited George’s teddy bear and carried it around. Ricky took it away from him when Tucker had eaten one of the eyes off of Dr. Hugs. They had burned it once. Now it was reforming from the bones of the dead fire.
“Fifteen.”
Amber’s eyes were open.
George was cradling some rocks near his mouth so he could whisper power into them.
“Ten.”
Ricky counted down the last five seconds. In the candlelight, George tossed one stone to Ricky and another to Amber. Mary and Vernon finished their verse and George took over.
There were ten syllables that George had to speak aloud. He said them carefully, enunciating each one with a gap in between. When he finished the last, the shape under the pillowcase began to squirm.
Amber held out her rock. It was her turn. She started strong, but then lost her way when she was halfway through her line. She stammered and Ricky and George both whispered the next word to her. Amber’s voice was shaking by the end, but she finished her incantation and then Mary and Vernon began chanting again.
Amber bent over with a shriek and pulled at her hair.
A moment later, there was another shape in the circle of candles.
# # #
Amber stumbled back when she saw the monster that was materializing in the candlelight. Gray smoke was rising from the ashes of the fire and it was trying to assemble into a howling wraith, shimmering in the center of their triangle.
George and Ricky stood strong, but the vision was too much for Amber. She tripped and spilled to the ground. Mary stumbled in her incantation and Vernon spoke louder to cover for her until she found her place again.
Amber’s entity reached a smoky hand towards her. She held up her rock to ward it off. The creature’s hand struck out and knocked the rock into the darkness. Ricky wanted to run to her and help Amber to her feet but he didn’t dare.
Beneath the pillowcase, Dr. Hugs was sitting up and was still growing.