“And do you think this pawn would have the understanding to confirm your report? Now, I’ll just slow traffic a little. Good. His battery will go flat before he can reach the parts store. He’ll be stuck with a non-functioning vehicle in a strange city missing his con and with no shops with an opening to do the repair. He’ll have to use your nature to repair it himself, and he’ll be in agony as he does it. I’ll suck the hope right out of him. The bits as you lick the near empty bowl are always the most delicious. Oh goody, he’s stuck at a light at a busy intersection.” The sadistic glee that spread across Hope‘s face caused Justice to turn away in disgust.
Builder motioned Justice from Hope’s chamber into a hall done in what looked like dark oak paneling. Doors opened off the hall at intervals. Justice followed his brother closing the ornate wood and steel door behind him. In blood-red letters on the door was written, ‘Abandon your hope to me, for I will test your brain and brawn and all shall be found wanting. I am the seductress tease that leaves you vacant and alone. Love me and know despair.’
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Builder leaned against the wall.
“She is out of control. What she is doing is clever, and skirts the rules, but the consistency of the persecution of her chosen pawns is beyond anything karma can justify. It offends my very nature to allow it. I’ve watched the pawn she focused on today for years. I like the little fellow, he tries to be kind, and I’ve known dogs that were less loyal. He is a bit tight with money, but given how he was raised this time around that isn’t surprising. If anything Hope’s attentions are making him less evolved, eroding the lessons he learned in earlier lives. He suspects that a higher power is persecuting him, but his cries have gone unheard. I think Hope is blocking them.”
Builder nodded in agreement. “I know’ He’s not bad with his hands, but when every nut and bolt falls down every possible hole anyone is going to have problems, and I can’t focus on him all the time. Dealing with this will mean getting Traveler to bring him here. That could annoy the High Ones, and it isn’t much of a reward for the little bugger. Still and all, we did manage to force through some small victories for him. I can steer another one of my pawns to pick up the thread of the ideas that Hope’s victim planted. His name won’t be completely forgotten.”
“I liked his books. Hope’s machinations with the dyslexia and sadistic teachers left their mark, but not enough to ruin his works. Maybe he’ll write in his next life,” said Justice.
“Not if Hope has her way. He enjoys it. He shares a large portion of both our natures. We can’t leave him to flounder any longer.” Builder sighed.
“We’ll talk to Traveler.” Justice touched his brother’s shoulder. “And if the High Ones object we shall fall together. Hope has forgotten that we have a duty to the pawns just as they have a duty to us.”
Builder nodded. “Together brother. The High Ones may be distant, but they aren’t cruel or unjust, I’m sure they would approve. The pawn will be better off in the long run than he will be with Hope dogging his steps in life after life. Better to abandon a single life early and be rid of the persecution for the lives to come. I’m sure Traveler will oblige. She hates the way this Hope plays the game.”
Hope cackled as the cheep, old car rolled back off the ice bank that filled the only open parking space and crushed the pawn’s leg. The pawn screamed. The other pawns who’d came to help her victim looked concerned and stayed long enough to be sure that he could still walk.
Hope sucked at the very roots of her nature in the pawn like a greedy child with a piece of hard candy.
Broken, driven by his duty to his wife, who he wouldn’t see marooned in a strange city, her pawn trudged to the parts’ store. He bought the sockets and alternator belt he required then trudged back to the broken car. Two hours later, filthy, soaked with freezing water and with the help of another pawn and booster cables, her victim started the car and drove back to the con to try and salvage some sales from the day.
Builder knocked on the heavy, wooden door. Red letters spelled out ‘Be yea rich or poor, just or villainous, none may gainsay our journey. I am the balancer of all things. I am transition and all will travel with me in their time.”
“Enter,” the voice was deep and resonant.
“Traveler is in a good mood,” remarked Justice.
The door opened onto a large chamber, tapestries covered the walls. Marble pillars supported the ceiling and a large, open balcony looked over a green valley with a stream running down its middle. A jackal-headed man rested on a couch in the center of the room reading a book.
“Traveler, we need to speak with you about Hope.”
The figure on the couch didn’t move but became a robed skeleton. A scythe appeared beside the couch.
“I told you he was pissed with her.” Justice became a blindfolded woman holding a scale. “Oh damn, she’s leaking conceptual manifestations. Builder, would you guide me to a chair? Traveler, please pull it in a little. I know this is your realm but some of us aren’t as functional in our modern European manifestations.”
“Sorry.” Traveler’s female voice was soothing and gentle. The skeleton seemed to concentrate.
A moment later the robed skeleton remained, but Justice was an elderly man in long flowing robes.
Builder was clad in the form of a sturdy dwarf with a thick, grisly beard and a hammer and smith’s tongs hanging from the leather apron he wore.
“Hope has gone too far.” Builder’s voice was like gravel.
“And you mean to do something about it.” Traveler sat up on her couch.
“We will need your help to succeed.” Justice took a seat beside his sister.
Traveler seemed to consider then became a handsome youth in a Greek toga wearing winged sandals. “It is about time the family stood up to her. By the time the pawns come to me most of them are wrung out. I don’t like the fear, but really, I don’t want them racing into my arms either. It ruins the taste. I know the Keeper is tired of them doing anything they can to delay going back.” Traveler shimmered and was once more the jackal-headed man. “To quote he who some call my stepfather, ‘Ma’at is with Osiris,’ and that is just not right! I’m in. Now what do you have planned?”
The pawn gritted his teeth and tried not to scream in agony. It was the day after the alternator belt had broken and now the retaining bolt on the alternator had snapped. His sciatica had shifted from chronic to acute. He looked and felt old. He’d spent the day getting the bolt and fixing the alternator now with the con almost over he drove in Toronto traffic with a bolt of pain coursing through him every time he pushed down on the clutch.
Hope shifted the spring in her pawn’s seat just enough that it would dig in a little more. “Maybe I can have your breaks give out. No, that might attract attention. I think I’ve done enough for one weekend. Hmm, I wonder how the mine tailings pool is doing. That crack shouldn’t take much to open up. All those homes destroyed, animals and people killed, it will be a feast when I drain my essence from the survivors.” Hope shifted her attention leaving her pawn to deal with the mess she’d left him.
Traveler watched in a scrying pool similar to Hope’s. He was once more the jackal-headed man. It was just over a year after the car problems and the pawn fought on. Hope’s machinations had worn on him and he looked old for his years.
“A simple little thing; make some bird houses, clean the wood up from the yard and make a buck or two. First the drill dies, then the vice table rots out, and then it breaks. Abandon Hope all yea who enter here, sounds like a good description of birth!” griped the pawn.
Traveler nodded. “Not how it should be, but for a moment at least she has no hold on thee. She has drained you dry of her nature.” He gestured with his left hand.
Pain exploded in the pawn’s chest and radiated down his left arm. Sighing with resolve he climbed the stairs to the deck behind his house and staggered into his kitchen. Another blast of pain sent him to his knees screaming. A l
arge tabby raced to the pawn’s side.
“I love you, my boy,” whispered the man. It took all his strength to stroke the tabby.
“Don’t worry, small one. I will bring you to him before long.” Traveler smiled to see the golden lines of love that bound cat to man and man to cat. Other lines reached out to the woman who raced up the stairs.” Traveler waited a moment so the pawn might be surrounded by his loved ones.
For the pawn there was the joy of being with those he loved then another bolt of pain, and quiet.
“Finally,” breathed the pawn as he took Traveler’s hand.
“You would abandon life so readily?” remarked Traveler.
“Life abandoned me a long time ago! I have existed for years. Anubis, I do not fear you. I will miss them.” The pawn gestured at his wife and cat.
“Not for long, I promise. Some of us have a job for you.”
“And they will join me?” The pawn asked with a smile.
“When it is their time. Your task will serve Ma’at.”
“Then it will be a noble endeavour. Lead on, dear friend.”
“Where is my pawn?” Hope stood red-faced with her hands on her hips in Traveler’s chamber.
“Did you lose sight of him? Did you so abuse him that your essence died in his heart? That is not my concern.” Traveler appeared as an imposing skeleton in black robes holding a scythe.
“If you are hiding him from me.” Hope shook her fist at Traveler.
“An empty threat. Be gone, you irk me!”
Hope stormed from the room. Builder and Justice emerged from behind a tapestry with the pawn between them. They appeared as Path and Thoth from the Egyptian pantheon.
“I like having a mortal around. It stabilises the changes leakage can cause.” remarked Justice through his ibis-like beak.
“I’m glad to be of service. So that’s her?” The pawn remarked. “I… I don’t know. I expected more. I mean Hope?”
“An essence can be for good or ill and humans have had a hard time clothing her concept, so she chooses to look as she did in her life long past. Fitting as she is as short-sighted now as she was before she took up the mantle of her power. Her predecessor moved on to stand with the High Ones and this one was in, as you say, the right place at the right time. Are you ready my small friend?” asked Justice.
“You’ll bring me my cat afterwards?” The pawn looked at Traveler.
Traveler looked to the golden cord that snaked off the pawn’s body and over the balcony. “You and your cat will bring you each to the other. There are powers I do not command. I will open the door for his time is now spent, and he has aided she who must wait a little longer in passing through the worst of her grief.”
“Then I am ready.”
“Do you abandon your mortal bias?” demanded Justice.
“Yes.”
“Do you abandon all traces of vengeance?”
“Yes.”
“Will you accept the mantle as the responsibility it is?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will join our family.” Justice gripped the pawn’s shoulders in a friendly way.
Builder slapped the pawn on the back nearly knocking him over. “Let’s do this thing.”
Traveler, once more in the guise of a jackal headed man, held a bone-handled long sword hilt-first to the pawn. “You didn’t get it from me if any of the Great Ones ask.”
“Do you know how to use it?” asked Builder.
“A little from my last life. A lot from the ones before it, unfortunately.” The pawn took the blade and tested its balance.
“Nicely answered,” said Justice.
“Let’s go. I sense that she will soon drive another into my arms before their time,” commented Traveler.
Hope laughed as the young author she’d chosen to replace her favoured pawn opened the rejection letter. She felt his will weaken as he read the form letter. He would never know that she’d arranged for the slush editor to be disturbed by a telephone con artist that made him late for his train, setting off a chain of events that made him grumpy and prone to reject a manuscript he would otherwise have passed to the next level.
There was a knock on the door and she sensed her visitors. Builder, Justice, and Traveler undoubtedly come to pester her again.
“Come,” she called.
The three entered standing very close together. Hope was too engrossed in dangling the carrot that was her nature in front of the young writer to pay much attention.
“What do you want?” She asked absently. “This one is coming along nicely. He’ll make a fine replacement for my pawn. Oh yes, Traveler, the mining executives in Colombia are hoping the gas extractor will last another six months, it won’t. You might like to plan for that.”
Nestled in the middle of Builder, Justice and Traveler, his energies hidden by their overwhelming presence, the pawn waited holding the long sword. Builder and Justice stepped to the side and the pawn rushed forward. So distracted by her sadism was Hope she didn’t sense the faint energy of her incoming doom until it was too late.
The blade cut deep into Hope’s back. Hope gasped and tried to turn but the pawn held the sword steady. Hope screamed in agony.
“Pay back is a bitch, you bastard!” The pawn twisted the blade and pulled it out. Lines of force tied the blade to Hope drawing energy from her and feeding it into the pawn.
“Brothers! Sister!” Hope staggered to her feet and turned to stare at the others in the room with pleading eyes.
“Come,” said Traveler. Her skeletal hand gripped the old Hope’s wrist.
The pawn took the empty seat at the table and stared into the pool. Energies coalesced around him. It was like listening to several symphonies at once. Focusing, he blocked the calliope of static finding what he sought. He fuelled the hope of a young chef working in a restaurant that the waitress on duty would say yes to a date. The daydream distracted the young man who didn’t notice the dirty mark on a plate that he was putting food on. A safety inspector in Colombia ate the food becoming ill. This forced his assistant, who wasn’t on the take, to inspect a mine’s gas extractor and insist that it be replaced. Hope would live on in the miners and their families for days past when loss and despair would have drained them of it. New Hope skimmed lightly from the hope they felt.
The form of old hope faded silently from the room.
New Hope shifted his focus and a random function in face book put up a notice about a small press opening to submissions on the discouraged author’s page.
In the pool an image of a baby being born came to view.
“So New Hope, what will be your action regarding your predecessor?” asked Justice.
New Hope watched the baby. There were a thousand things that could happen for better or worse, each of which could domino through the child’s life having larger and larger consequences.
“You can have your vengeance. She was capricious and cruel. It would be justice,” said Builder.
“No,” New Hope shook his head. “The rules apply to all or they mean nothing. This one I will neither help nor hinder.” New Hope looked to where a young man helped she who had been his wife bury an urn in their backyard. A mew reached New Hope’s ears and a familiar weight landed on his lap. He held a warm body and ran his fingers through soft fir and was rewarded with a hearty purr. There was joy in his heart.
“As was agreed,” said Traveler. “She who was and is your wife will take a few years more, but you will need that time to master your duties anyway.”
“I can wait. I’ll arrange for her to have a good job. That should make her happy.” New Hope kissed his cat’s head and a burst of golden light filled the room.
The walls of the chamber dissolved and they stood in a beautiful springtime forest meadow. Birds fluttered from tree to tree and the scrying pool became a clear pond that overflowed to water the meadow. A cool breeze swept across the area bearing the scent of hyacinth. New Hope sat in a lawn chair beside the pond clad in a t-s
hirt and jeans.
“Rather casual,” remarked Justice.
“I was never overly formal. I don’t see a reason to start now.” New Hope continued to pet his cat and stare into the pond.
“There’s the nexus.” New Hope caused a telephone solicitor to have a bowel cramp which meant an editor left their house in time to hit a light traffic flow. This meant the editor had time for a coffee before starting on the slush pile and in turn gave a manuscript a fair chance. And so hope was not abandoned and grew for a new talent waiting to be noticed. A talent that would spark hope in others that could be carefully skimmed to sustain the newest player in the cosmic game.
Builder, Justice and the Traveler stepped into the hallway outside Hope’s chamber and turned to look at the door. Golden letters appeared.
‘All yea who enter here know I am the spark the starts the flame. I am the siren’s call who summons the worthy to greatness. I abandon none unless they should first abandon me. And I shall fight on.’
The image of Thoth stood with his brothers. “Bugger, he is going to want my job next.”
The three laughed. An age had passed, a new hope was born, and, for a moment, all was as it should be.
A Beginning.
VAMPIRE DENTIST
(an excerpt from the novelization of the indie feature film)
Christine J. Whitlock
Prologue
Wispy clouds scraped scars against the face of the howling full moon. Tall trees stood sentry in the inner city park. With her long blonde tresses bouncing behind her, a beautiful young woman strode along a trodden grass path. Dressed in a low-cut red dress revealing her ample breasts, she contemplated what she would do if she were stood up again by that no-gooder boyfriend.
Something glittered up ahead. It was lying between some tall bushes in their archway. This was a short cut through the bushes instead of around them. Her high heel stuck in the grass and she lurched forward but steadied herself. A diamond-studded necklace lay sparkling in the rays of the overhead moon.
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