The Unseen

by Bryan, JL

  “That’s for the best.” Her mother brought tissues from her purse, dabbed her eyes, and offered one to Cassidy. “I had best return to work, then. We’ve been out here for some time.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve dreaded this day for years, Cassidy. I’m happy it’s done with. Like a dark cloud off my head.” She smiled, and it was possibly the most relaxed and easy smile Cassidy had ever seen on her mother’s face.

  They walked around the pool, where the little boy of nine or ten walked the shallow end with his eyes closed and his arms extended.

  “Marco!” he shouted.

  “Polo!” shouted back his younger sister and his father, who were near the pool stairs. The girl giggled brightly.

  As she left, Cassidy felt a twinge of jealousy for the boy—walking in the dark, calling for his father, never doubting that his father would be there to answer back.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Eli Bernham, the founder and prophet of the Church of First Light, shivered as he descended the dark, winding staircase beneath the sanctuary floor. He was sixty-eight years old and didn’t look a day over thirty, thanks to the dark power glowing inside him.

  The initiation was a success, though only a minor one. He had use for the young man called Peyton.

  His knees shook harder as he walked lower and lower. The staircase ended at a single black steel security door, which was locked even to him, though most believed he was in charge of all things to do with the church. In truth, the entire religion was merely a front, and Eli humbly served a much greater power than himself.

  He touched the button beside the door.

  “It’s Eli,” he said, glancing up at the security camera. He tried not to let his fear show in his voice. The presence of the one he’d come to see still terrified him, even after his decades of faithful service.

  A series of metallic thuds sounded as the door unlocked. Eli took a deep breath and pushed it open.

  He entered a narrow, high concrete hallway lit by sporadic bare light bulbs overhead. This lowest chamber had been remodeled from an old and forgotten nuclear bomb shelter, a lair created by human fear. It was rough and unadorned, unlike the fancy sanctuary above it.

  The slaughterhouse smell hit him instantly, the stench of blood so intense it stung his eyes.

  The hallway widened into a round room of rough concrete, lit by more bare bulbs. The floor was painted black, and on top of that was a giant thirteen-point star drawn in bright blood. The monks painted it fresh every day. Eli did not know where they got the blood, or whether it was animal or human, and he didn’t dare ask.

  One monk sat in meditation at each point of the great gory star. They wore black hooded robes, the front of each hood sealed by a shroud of black cloth stitched in place to completely conceal the face behind it. The monks were like statues, not moving at all, not stirring when Eli entered the room.

  The overlapping lines of the blood star created an open, nearly circular space at its center. In this circle sat a hospital bed, surrounded by monitors and an IV drip. The heart monitor only beeped once every five seconds, and the EEG monitor showed slow, deep delta waves.

  The bed was slightly inclined. Its occupant looked like a withered, disease-ravaged old man well past the age of a hundred, his limbs and joints knotted with tumors, his fingers crooked and twisted together. Liver spots and open, necrotic sores covered his body. The man did not stir when Eli entered, but he watched Eli with sunken, cataract-clouded eyes.

  Eli knelt on the concrete floor, between two of the meditating monks, who seemed to radiate coldness and silence. He bowed forward until his forehead touched the floor.

  “Holy Lord Nibhaz, Giver of Visions, High Scribe of the Infernal Empire,” Eli said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. The room was cold, and he could feel dark energy thrumming invisibly in the air around him. “Your servant answers your summons.”

  “Rise and face me,” the man in the bed commanded, his voice raspy and thin.

  Eli stood.

  “Speak,” the shriveled, diseased old man said.

  “The news is good, Great Lord,” Eli said. “Our youth mission has attracted the boy, Kieran Dolan, son of the sorceress of Darmoughan.”

  The old man snapped up to a sitting position, his eyes suddenly wide and alert. His body swelled and rippled with strangely placed muscles, and his rotten, toothless jaw dropped and dropped, becoming far too big for his head, and rows of long, shark-like teeth sprouted inside. The milky cataracts of his eyes turned solid black.

  The heart and EEG monitors went wild, the heartbeat accelerating as though the man were suffering cardiac arrest, the brain waves spiking off the charts. The thirteen monks did not stir or react in any way—their entire focus was on keeping the archdemon inside the decaying flesh, and keeping the flesh itself alive.

  When he spoke again, his voice thundered and echoed through the room, rattling Eli’s nerves and bones.

  “You are certain?” Nibhaz asked through his rows of teeth.

  “Yes, Great Lord. He visits every day and seems interested in discipleship.”

  “You must bring him in. Make him choose initiation.”

  “Yes, Great Lord.” Eli opened his mouth to say something else, then thought better of it, but the archdemon noticed.

  “You hesitate,” Nibhaz snarled. “What do you have to say? Keep nothing from me, Eli, or your punishment will be eternal torment.”

  Eli swallowed. “I only had a thought unworthy of sharing with the Great Lord Nibhaz.”

  “Speak it.”

  “I...have doubts about the line of Darmoughan.”

  “You know nothing,” Nibhaz growled. “I fought those bitch-curs a thousand years before you were spat out of your father’s feeble cock into your mother’s foul cunt. They are as powerful as any mere bag of flesh can hope to be.”

  “Yes, Great Lord, but there are signs they have suffered a great decline in power. Their ancestors may have wielded immense magic, but today they have been entirely forgotten in the world of men.”

  Nibhaz stared at Eli with his black eyes, and then a malicious grin spread across his face from ear to ear, splitting the papery skin of the body he inhabited.

  “We smell your motives,” Nibhaz roared, amusement and rage mixing in his tone. When he moved from referring to himself as I to we, it was a sign he was unhappy. “We have explained. Your flesh is too weak, Eli. We have given you as much of our power as your pathetic body-form can hold.”

  “My Lord has been more than generous,” Eli said. Unlike most of the disciples, Eli was not possessed by an ancient, independent demonic entity. Instead, Nibhaz had given Eli a nameless imp, which the archdemon claimed to have created out of his own semen. The imp had only a distant echo of the archdemon’s true power, though that was enough to give Eli extended youth and longevity. “Perhaps the Great Lord’s imp has strengthened my body, expanded its capacity for power.”

  Nibhaz laughed, and it was a terrible sound, like gravel and grinding stone.

  “We would destroy you if we entered you,” Nibhaz thundered. “Look on this carcass of a body. Remember how it was only four weeks ago—youthful, strong, healthy.”

  Eli nodded. The body had belonged to a sharp investment banker, only twenty-six years old, athletic and handsome. A month of Nibhaz’s presence had ravaged it to the brink of death. No normal human could long contain the immense power of an archdemon.

  “I will take the body from the line of Darmoughan,” Nibhaz said. “If it has only a thousandth of the power of its ancestors, it will serve us usefully for years. We are weary of shifting from one weak flesh-body to another. Who are you to question us, Eli?”

  “I did not mean to question my Lord,” Eli said. “I did not even wish to speak my thought.”

  “You mean to speak it, or you would not have let it show upon your face.” Nibhaz laughed coldly, and the sound was like shattering glass stabbing into Eli’s ears. “Bring me the
body I desire. Prepare it for initiation.”

  “I will do as the Great Lord wishes, as always,” Eli said.

  “Do it quickly. This body grows useless to us.”

  “Yes, my Lord.” Eli knelt again, touching his head to the floor, before he left. None of the monks had moved a muscle or made a sound while he was there. Their stillness was eerie, their entire minds focused on the unseen world.

  Eli trembled as he left but felt relieved. He had seen Nibhaz lash out on a whim, killing any who displeased him, no matter how useful they had been to the archdemon in the past. Eli certainly wanted to stay on Nibhaz’s good side, if the powerful ancient god could be said to have a good side. Eli had enjoyed great rewards in the archdemon’s service—money, power, debauched sex with pretty young things recruited by the youth ministers, and every pleasure the flesh could experience.

  The monks had taught Eli, though he was not one of them. He was only a lower-level initiate.

  Eli had sought out the ancient monastery, hidden high in the sharp, cold mountains of the Dinaric Alps in Greece, based on a few scraps of information painfully dug out of old libraries and archives. He had been a young man then, only twenty-two, driven to find answers neither science nor religion could provide.

  The monastery had been founded by the Church many centuries earlier. Its remote location resulted from its original purpose—the study of forbidden magic, demonology, and the occult. Their research was meant to help priests confront the forces of darkness.

  However, the monks themselves had given in to the temptations of power. With their library of arcane manuscripts and grimoires painstakingly gathered from all corners of the world, the monks became the world’s most powerful cabal of dark magicians.

  When the Church Patriarchs finally discovered this, they excommunicated the entire monastery and declared the monks heretics. The monks struck back through the political influence they’d quietly cultivated, encouraging dissent and division between branches of the Church, and had played a major but unseen role in the Great Schism into Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. The monks continued to encourage fragmentation of the Eastern Orthodox Church throughout history.

  Eli had known little of this when he’d first arrived at the monastery, but the monks had found him worthy and taken him in for instruction. Eventually, Eli would come to understand that his own family’s wealth, initially derived from the mining of gold and silver in the American West, had made him an appealing pupil for the monks.

  He had studied with them for four years. He was not brought into the inner circle of the order, a process that required decades of study and practice, but rather sent back into the world with a specific mission: to create a recruiting mechanism to find young people who would consent to demonic possession.

  Over the years, he’d slowly built his new church through trial and error, and now it had truly begun to flourish. He had disciples in several cities, young people hosting demons in their own flesh. All these little demons were loyal to the archdemon Nibhaz.

  When Nibhaz was finally moved into a solid, permanent host that could handle his immense power, then the church would become unstoppable. Eli feared that day, but also longed for it, eager to see the great archdemon made flesh and unleashed upon the Earth.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  After talking with her mom, Cassidy made one last effort to keep her life normal—working, hanging out with friends, getting high.

  Cassidy was in trouble at work for refusing to do “negative” tattoos, beginning with a girl who wanted a poison bottle over her heart. She’d imagined stoppering up her power inside herself while she worked, and that seemed effective for the moment. She hadn’t had any more strange complaints from clients, but Jarvis kept threatening to fire her, reminding her she was the most junior artist at the shop and “not valuable enough to go all prima donna and expect it to be tolerated.”

  He hadn’t fired her yet, but she was nervous.

  She also felt torn about Ibis. On the one hand, she obviously owed him an apology, since he had only tried to make her see the truth. On the other, she’d told her mom she would avoid getting involved in the supernatural, and calling Ibis was a step towards just that. He’d called himself a “magician,” and Cassidy was now fairly certain he wasn’t the kind who pulled rabbits out of hats and sawed women in half onstage. He called a couple of times, but Cassidy didn’t answer.

  All around, it was a stressful week.

  Thursday afternoon, she was just waking up for work when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, so she let it go to voice mail, then played it as she brushed her teeth.

  “Cassidy, this is Tamila...Evans.”

  Cassidy gaped at her reflection. Tamila hadn’t needed to say her last name, or even her first, because Cassidy recognized her old friend’s voice instantly, though six years had passed.

  “I know it’s been a long time, but I really need to talk to you. I think your brother might be in a lot of danger. I know that might sound crazy, and you’re wondering why I’m calling you out of the blue after all this time, but...just call me back, okay? It’s really important.” That was the end of the message.

  Cassidy checked the number again. It was local. Had Tamila moved back to town, too?

  Like Reese, Cassidy thought, wondering whether Tamila was also going to try and recruit her for some freaky cult.

  Cassidy called back right away, wondering what Tamila meant about Kieran being in danger.

  “Cassidy, thank God,” Tamila answered. She spoke in a strange, hushed whisper. “Listen, I’m at work right now. Can you meet me about seven?”

  “What’s going on with my brother?”

  “That’s what we need to discuss.”

  “He’s in trouble?”

  “Not like immediate right-this-second trouble, but there are some things you need to know about. I don’t have time to explain right now. You’ll meet me tonight?”

  “If he’s really in danger, I need to know about it.”

  “I’ll explain everything. I really need to get back to work. Seven okay?”

  “Sure, whatever. My last car died a couple months ago. Can you meet me here? I live in Little Five now,” Cassidy said.

  “You should meet me on Cheshire Bridge,” Tamila said. “That’s close to where your brother’s been hanging out. You might be glad we’re near there after you hear what I have to say.”

  “That’s kind of inconvenient for me—”

  “Enat Ethiopia Cafe, seven o’ clock.” Tamila hung up.

  Cassidy stared at her phone, stunned and worried. There had been no catching-up pleasantries. Tamila had sounded scared, and that worried her. She saved Tamila’s number, then hurried to get ready for work. If Cassidy was going to take a long dinner break to meet Tamila miles away, it would help if she showed up early to work this afternoon.

  Barb gave Cassidy a ride to the tattoo parlor, since there was a drizzling rain, and Cassidy told her about Tamila’s call.

  “Can you come with me?” Cassidy asked. “Reese and Tamila both showing up after all this time is freaking me out.”

  “Me, too. I don’t know if I can get off work. If not, you can borrow my car. Do you think she’s talking about that cult your brother’s into?”

  “Probably,” Cassidy said. “If she knows anything about them, I want to hear. I can’t find anything on the Web. My brother’s really straightened out since he got involved with them, though.”

  “Maybe that’s just on the surface. Could be a prelude to something worse.”

  “I just want to know what she has to say.”

  Cassidy was anxious throughout the afternoon, barely able to focus at work. The day grew dark outside and the rain grew heavy, which made business slower than usual. Her brain felt itchy. In her rush to get to work, she’d forgotten to have a drink first, so she saw the ugly transparent worms and bugs everywhere.

  She left at twenty minutes until seven, telling Jarvis her bre
ak might run long, which only made him shake his head and purse his lips. Cassidy knew he wanted to fire her, and maybe was already petitioning the owner about it, but she had to look out for her brother.

  Barb was swamped at work and couldn’t get away, but she tossed Cassidy her car keys and wished her luck.

  Cassidy drove north through pounding rain and slow traffic. Her right leg ached more than usual, and she thought of how old people with arthritis complained about the rain making their joints hurt.

  The Ethiopian restaurant was a freestanding building on a stretch of road with lots of chain-link fences, concrete parking lots, and nondescript little warehouses overlooking a stretch of weedy railroad tracks. Cassidy parked by a large mural painted in warm tones on the front of the restaurant, depicting a woman cooking in a pot over an open fire while three more people sat waiting at a table, all of them sheltered by a straw roof.

  Cassidy stepped inside, breathing in the aroma of simmering ginger, peppers, onions, and exotic spices. Her stomach growled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day.

  Tamila waved at her from a small table with a bright red cloth. She had a different look from how she’d been in high school—her long, flowing, straightened hair was now cut shorter and twisted into little braids, and she wore glasses instead of contacts. She was dressed in a black business suit with a long skirt, a sharp contrast to Cassidy’s ripped, paint-spattered jeans and black crop top embellished with pink-skull polka dots.

  “Hi, Tamila,” Cassidy said, while Tamila stood to embrace her. “You look great.”

  “So do you.” Tamila pulled back, and they looked at each other, smiling as childhood memories flickered across both their brains. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s been a long time.” Cassidy sat down with her under black and white photographs of Emperor Haile Selassie. Cassidy recognized him because Bob Marley and the other Rastafarians had believed he was the messiah; Ras Tafari meant “King Tafari,” his name before he was declared emperor of Ethiopia. “What were you saying about Kieran?”