Inherited Magic

by Andrew Gordinier

  “I don't.” Owen handed John the small backpack. “Get out the police scanner and let's find this guy before the cops do.”

  The scanner was small and state of the art and made it easy to listen to the same nightmare that every Chicago cop was. There were 911 calls coming in from everywhere, there were suspicious characters in every alley, and every concerned or freighted citizen was dialing those three magic numbers like mad. In the midst of this chaos, someone was still running around killing people in a seemingly random manner with an unknown weapon that cooked people alive. The mayor was going on the news, telling people to stay calm and alert but to shelter in place, sirens could be heard everywhere, and overhead, news and police helicopters vied to be the first to get a glimpse of the villain of the hour. The city had gone mad and here he was, in a stolen SUV, with Owen at the wheel, outfitted for a war and calmly driving through the chaos.

  “How the hell do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Not let the craziness get to you.” John felt defeated.

  “You mean, not let the fact that I am out to kill a guy that my student screwed up piss me off?”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Look, kid. This ain't the time to be having a little heart to heart about things. I know it's rough to know things and see things that other people never can and it's only worse that you can do things they can't. It makes you feel powerful and alone at the same time, and that's a dangerous combination. People go crazy that way.” Owen paused and to listen the radio before throwing the SUV recklessly around a corner. “Ever heard of HP Lovecraft?”

  “No.”

  “He was a horror writer and one of his basic ideas was that true knowledge of how the universe worked was simply not something mankind could deal with. It would drive you insane to understand the true scope of things and our tiny place in it. There is a lot more to it than just that to his writing, but that’s what we got time for.”

  “So you're saying deal with it, or . . .”

  “Or end up like the asshole we have to kill.”

  Silence fell between them with a sudden finality. The radio barked out addresses and sightings, adding to the uncomfortable tension.

  Chapter 24

  Chicago is never truly dark at night. Shades and blinds only dull the orange glow from the streetlights and traffic. Inside the stolen SUV, though, it felt truly dark. The only window not tinted was the windshield, creating a strange feeling of removal from the outside world. As they hounded the same leads and calls that the police did, Owen and John stopped talking to each other: Owen because he was fed up and exhausted, John because he felt guilty and was plagued by Owen's disappointment in him. The only voices in the car were those of dispatchers and frustrated police, as they tried to figure out where and how to catch the maniac on the loose. This went on till midnight, when John couldn't take anymore.

  “What happens when you shatter a pattern?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You can't shatter a pattern.”

  “This guy can.” John thought about the damaged pattern he had seen in the man and the way he shattered others to fantastic effect.

  “Patterns follow the same law of conservation of energy as everything else; it never goes away, it just changes shape.”

  “He can do it.”

  “All right, kid. I gotta piss anyway.” Owen turned off the road and down an alley between warehouses. The large SUV seemed to fill the narrow space as Owen guided it to some dumpsters. “You see if you can do it. You got as long as it takes me to piss.” He killed the engine. The rumble and roar of it had been so loud and constant that the world seemed empty without it now, too quiet.

  John heard and felt the driver’s side door slam as he was getting out on his side. It was an expression of anger that John did not misunderstand. He pulled a tin can from the nearest dumpster and examined it. The can was crumpled, and its pattern was still fairly simple. He walked a short ways down the alley and then threw the can what he thought would be a safe distance.

  As he started to explore the can’s pattern, John realized that he had never just tried a random pattern to see what happened, to see what it would do. He had a brief and momentary thought that this might not be the safest thing to do. As you and I both know (some of us from experience), that thought usually occurs after or during a profoundly stupid act. Almost never before, what fun would that be? So John was getting lucky.

  John warped and bent the pattern, causing the can to change shape, color, and briefly glow white hot. He had no idea patterns were so durable and was getting anxious because he could hear Owen’s boots on the gravel as he walked back to the car. He looked closer at the pattern and saw that there was a central theme that kept repeating, a smaller pattern that built up to a larger pattern. This one was three or four threads curving and crossing, not unlike a complicated stretch of highway. It only took a moment’s effort to loosen one and the other threads fell apart, causing the can to begin to unravel.

  “Owen, I did—” And the can exploded, releasing all the energy the pattern had held in place. The force of the explosion threw John back several feet, cracked the pavement in a circular pattern, and shattered a few nearby windows. As John sat up, laughing, he could hear car alarms in the distance and Owen yelling at him. He hurt all over but was too elated to really feel it.

  “What the fuck?!” Owen pulled John up off the pavement. “Are you OK, kid?”

  “Yeah, I'm fine. It worked!”

  “No shit. How did you do it?”

  “I just looked really close at the pattern, found the small pattern that repeats, and unhooked threads till it unraveled.” The look on Owen’s face was a mixture of panic and intense interest. John hadn't figured out the panic part yet.

  Owen picked a small stone from the ground and threw it a short distance and focused on it for several heartbeats. It shifted color and shape at a blinding rate before Owen got it right, and the stone vanished in a flash of light and a respectable bang that echoed. John looked down the alley where the can had been and examined the patterns, they were a mess. There were black gaps, and random threads twisting and tangling in disorganized knots. The ugliness of it was unnatural, and it was big enough to take up most of the alley.

  “Do you think that's dangerous?”

  “I think it's about as safe as a hand grenade, but I'll be damned if I know what to do about it.” Owen walked over to some nearby trash cans and threw the lid of one like a Frisbee into the mass of chaos. It was deformed and mangled in mid air and altered course wildly several times as it traversed the damaged area. By the time it landed, it was partially liquid in places and in general looked nothing like the lid to a trash can. It was at that moment that a set of headlights appeared at the other end of the alley, and it dawned on John why Owen had a panicked, nervous look . . . Explosions in a large city tend to attract attention, especially when everyone was already on the lookout for a deranged killer. John felt stupid, and his self esteem plummeted when the siren suddenly gave a brief wail and the blue lights on the roof started their blinking.

  “Put your hands up and back up, kid. Do it real slow.” Owen led by example and John did as he was told.

  “Turn around and get on the ground! Now!” The voice amplified over the speaker was female and terrifying to John. The police cruiser's engine roared, and it crept further down the alley, like a predictable predator.

  “Owen . . .” The cruiser was headed towards the mass of twisted patterns, and John shuddered to think what that would do to a person.

  “I know, kid. Just hold tight. I got an idea about what’s about to happen. Just keep backing up.”

  “Halt!” Shouted the voice over the loud speaker as the engine roared and the cruiser leaped forward, bringing the front of the car into the broken patterns created by the explosion, and the patterns seemingly were sucked into the car. The engine died in an instant. The hood ballooned and bulged, popping off its hinges. Flames burst from un
der the car. One of the front tires shattered like it was made of glass, there was a loud double bang as both airbags deployed, and the whole car spun sideways.

  John stood shocked and horrified. Owen rushed to the car and quickly checked the driver and passenger. They were stunned from the air bags going off, but unharmed. Satisfied that no one was hurt, he pushed John back to the stolen SUV and they made their escape. Leaving two very confused officers to try and explain the impossible condition of their car to their superiors, who, as you can imagine, did not have a sense of humor about their officers staging an elaborate hoax. After all, what other explanation was there? With no video from the dashboard camera and a police car that looked like modern art run amuck, small minds could produce no other explanation.

  Chapter 25

  “Holy shit, kid.” It was all Owen had said for the past five minutes. “Holy shit.” Over and over again, in an amused whisper. John was feeling better about himself and proud that he impressed Owen. It almost made him forget the gun on his hip, and the reason they were out there in the first place.

  “Yeah, holy shit, but can we use it?”

  “Oh, yeah. We can use it. But this is bad for whoever this guy is.”

  “You mean worse than us looking to kill him?”

  “Much worse. You saw what that chaos did to the patterns it overwhelmed; imagine what that would do to a person. It explains what you said about his pattern burning in places. This is no longer us doing what the cops can’t; this is now a mercy killing.” Owen paused to light a cigarette. “Poor bastard must be half crazy and in incredible pain.”

  “So how can we use it?”

  “It means we can follow him. We just have to follow the damaged patterns.”

  As with many things, this is easier said than done, the exception being trying to explain to someone else how to solve a Rubik’s cube or maybe fix a problem with their internet browser over the phone. They doubled back and rolled through the North side of Chicago till at last they caught the faint and fading trail of chaos left behind by unraveling patterns. At first, the trail wandered and meandered from place to place, before heading north along a set of railroad tracks, heading away from downtown.

  Chapter 26

  The Morton Salt Factory on Elston was sandwiched between the expressway and railroad tracks on one side and the river on the other. It was one of those unintentional landmarks that everyone knew. As seen from the expressway, the roof, with its brightly painted logos, marked for many the place where they had to start looking for their exits to work or home. Commuter trains rolled past all day and late into the night with a good number of passengers using the building as their cue that they were only a few minutes from downtown.

  The building was a factory, simple and inelegant to look at; it was purpose driven. There were smaller office buildings attached to it, and there was a loading dock with a large parking lot. It was, to John’s mind, a place that looked strange without people working. With no trucks being loaded and no activity visible, it seemed a bleak and lonely place at night. It reminded John of a location in a cheap zombie movie. You knew something was gonna go wrong when you saw it. It was too much of a cliché for something not to.

  The trail of disrupted and destroyed patterns ended behind one of the office buildings and vanished into a doorway that clearly led to a basement. Owen killed the headlights and for a few moments sat still and stared into the empty darkness. He was trying not to let it get to him, trying to shake off that fear and anger that he always felt before a fight. Even as a child, he had hated having to fight, feared it, but he had channeled that towards his opponents and it often made the difference. He wasn't young anymore, but his emotions felt painfully fresh and familiar again, as if this was his first schoolyard fight.

  “Well, there's no getting around this. He went in there, and we gotta go in there.” Despite his words, Owen didn't move. He just took a long slow drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray.

  “You know those things are going to kill you.” John's voice had a flat, matter-of-fact tone, nothing hurried about it. He was hoping this was a bad movie scene and was unfortunately starting to sound the part.

  “I should live so long.” The doorway loomed before them, dark and ominous. “Don't use magic unless you have to. You never know where there are cameras, and it's a bitch to track down all the tapes.”

  “I don't suppose this guy is gonna think the same way?”

  “No. Wear this.” Owen produced a black ski mask from his pack.

  “Really?” As a response, Owen ratcheted the action on his shotgun and gave John a dirty look. John didn't notice because he had spotted the tribesman again. He was standing on top of a post that sported a no parking sign near a respectable office entrance to the building. He had an enormous plastic cup filled with bright red slush that John guessed was a case of cherry flavored brain freeze waiting to happen. The tribesman held a finger to his lips, clearly suggesting silence. “Owen, do you see that?”

  “See what?” Owen turned and looked in the general direction of the tribesman and apparently did not see him.

  “Right there, on the no parking sign. You don't see anything?”

  “No.” Owen looked back at John in a concerned manner.

  The tribesman smiled and waved, clearly mocking him.

  “Forget about it,” John muttered as he got out of the SUV.

  Chapter 27

  It is a testament to the civilized order of things that few of us know what it is like to stalk through the dark, cradling a weapon and trying to kill before we are killed. It is unfortunate, though, that this civil order is paper thin and depends on everyone agreeing on it. Nor should it be surprising when someone breaks the rules and people set about hunting each other; police hunting after gangs, criminals chasing after each other and everyone else. You will get no end of “why” in court and “why” from sociologists, professional and otherwise. The main thing is that we are all convinced we are the good guy in the movie and that the credits are about to roll for someone else, but never for us. The lie seems childish, till you think about the possibility that you are wrong—that you are the bad guy and today your story will end and the credits will roll, a truth that is difficult to face. So we lie to ourselves and turn away, even under the most dire of circumstances, lest we be paralyzed. The world will go on without us; in truth, it will not even skip a beat. It was this fear that crept into John as he followed Owen into the darkened factory with his shotgun clumsily held at the ready.

  Every shadow seemed to hide menace and he feared the sound of his breathing was enough to give him away, but John moved on into the shadows. This part of the basement seemed to store older machinery; there were racks and shelves full of motors and parts of various kinds, all covered in a thin layer of dust. One thing there was not was a trail of shattered patterns and twisted webs of chaos. He thought this might be an unwelcome sign. He wanted to tell Owen but was not so stupid as to break the silence. He consoled himself that Owen probably knew and already had a plan.

  Owen, on the other hand, was trying to figure out what the hell to do. Despite what John thought, he had no plan or even a remote idea of how to search a vast factory. He wanted to resort to magic, but all the ways of finding a pattern that he knew would lead right back to him. Just because this guy was using twisted magic and seemed to be half crazy didn't mean that he was stupid. The fact that he had figured out how to unravel patterns showed he might, in fact, be smart as hell. Owen was not about to take any chances; he had not gotten old by being careless.

  They stalked through rooms of salt bags, pallets stacked in racks, machinery sitting silent; it was a stark and cold landscape of shadows and industry. Owen cursed the cleaning crew for being so efficient; except for that first store room, there wasn't dust anywhere, and there wasn't a single track or scuff. What Owen didn't know was that the only reason the plant was shut down was for its yearly top to bottom cleaning, which they had just finished, a
nd things would go back to a busy round the clock schedule in the morning.

  Time crept by as steadily as the two creeping through the cavernous building. Owen was becoming worried about getting caught by the morning shift as much as he was by the killer, because, with every step, he was more certain that the killer was somewhere else. It would fit with everything neatly going wrong and straight to hell. The last thing he needed was to try to nail this guy in broad daylight with news helicopters, police, and everybody watching. His doubt was cut down in midstride, though, when he heard faint and distant snoring. He turned to John, who nodded. He had heard it too.

  They moved more slowly, trying to be quieter than they already were, and each tried to banish their reservations about murder.

  Chapter 28

  Jimmy had no idea what was happening to him. He had felt like a god after looking at that screwed up book. He had hoped there were answers in it, but he had lost it. He had stopped to kill that ass clown that owed him a couple hundred, which must have been when he dropped it. Oh, well, so much for that. It was starting to worry Jimmy though; he wasn't feeling right, not sick or anything. Just not right, like parts of him were vanishing and not coming back. He wasn't sure if he was losing his mind, selling his soul, or on a terrifically awful acid trip while he was trapped in his closet.

  All he knew for sure was that he was a killing machine and could finally do whatever he wanted, to whomever he wanted. So there were scores to settle and debts to “pay off,” all over town. Even though he had only been in town a short time, it was shocking the number of people that he could think of who had done him wrong or at least deserved to burn for one reason or another. Except for that kid. He almost felt guilty about killing that kid. He had been choking this guy to death while slowly cooking his guts (that never got old), when out of nowhere, this kid runs into the room with a fucking shotgun! The damned gun was bigger than the kid, and it scared the shit out of Jimmy. The kid started yelling at him to stop hurting his daddy and blasting away in every direction with the shotgun. Well, he wasn't about to stand there and get shot. Who would? Still, he felt guilty having killed the kid.