Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 12

by Arley

  Those words would soon come back to haunt her.

  In the meantime, her new assistant, Marigold, was worth her weight in moon dust. She turned a blind eye to Agatha's appearance and a deaf ear to all of her spells and incantations. Without that latter virtue, Mari would have shape-shifted more often than the pantyhose of a yo-yo dieter who also suffered from gas.

  Although otherwise highly compatible in the workplace, the two women were quite different in one regard. While Mari was computer literate and technologically savvy, Agatha was not. Using her laptop computer, Mari surfed the internet to find suppliers of arcane amulets and artifacts with which to restock the shelves in the curio section of the store. In addition, she routinely logged onto social networks in search of potential customers. After a series of not-so-subtle hints about a pressing need for efficiency and the value of at least every now and then getting a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, she even persuaded her boss to take a reluctant baby step into the information age: with Mari's expert coaching, Agatha managed to record a message on the shop's answering machine. It stated: "For non-emergency situations, take two sips of witch's brew and call me in the morning."

  Mari was good with people face-to-face, too. Despite a significant amount of foot traffic through the shop, she instinctively distinguished between casual tourists and those visitors who were the real McCoy in need of special attention. Soon Agatha's business was booming.

  The first indication of trouble came one afternoon when Mari returned from a routine trip to the grocery store. "I think I was followed," she said.

  "By your stalker?" Agatha asked.

  "No, by somebody I've never seen before."

  "Could it be your stalker in disguise?"

  "I'm sure it isn't," Mari said emphatically. "Maybe I should have tried to lead him away from here, but I didn't know where else to go. I think he may still be hanging around outside."

  "If he is, I'll deal with him," Agatha said. She took a pinch of powder out of an unlabeled canister.

  Once she herself was outside, Agatha had no difficulty whatsoever in spotting a man who was trying just a little too hard to be inconspicuous. She walked right up to him and blew some finely-ground powder into his face. The man gave a little shake of his head, and then stood quite still.

  "Who are you and what are you doing here?" Agatha demanded to know.

  "I'm Sam Parker, a private investigator. I was hired to locate Marigold Jones."

  "And do what to her?"

  "Nothing much. I'm to follow her everywhere she goes and report in by cell phone any time she stops someplace."

  "Who do you report to?"

  "A cash customer. I don't know who he is. I only met him once."

  "What does he look like?"

  "He was dressed entirely in black. Other than that, he reminded me a lot of my uncle Ambrose," the private eye said. "Especially his smile."

  Agatha would have compelled the investigator to call in a false report to say that he was mistaken about the identity of the woman he'd followed, except the man would be unable to tell a lie until the effects of the powder wore off. She let him go.

  After a couple of quiet days, Agatha assumed the matter had been put to rest.

  She was sorely mistaken.

  Early one morning, her assistant looked perturbed as she came haltingly down the stairway into the shop.

  "Did you sleep well, Mari? I thought I heard you thrashing around in your bed last night."

  "That's possible. I was having a really bad dream when your cat woke me up. By the way, you haven't told me your feline companion's name."

  "I don't know what it is," Agatha responded. "She won't tell me. I just call her Cat. You were saying?"

  "When I awoke, there was an afterimage of a man hovering over me."

  "Naked?"

  "No, fully clothed."

  "Not an incubus then. What did you do?"

  "What could I do? I kneed him in the groin. Then when I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I realized it was all in my imagination—there was nothing there."

  "Have you been favoring your right leg this morning?" Agatha asked.

  "A little bit perhaps." Mari pulled up her dress. There was a dark bruise on her right knee. "I don't remember getting that. I must have bumped into the furniture yesterday and then forgot all about it."

  Agatha shook her head. "I don't think so. What did the apparition look like?"

  "Except for the red eyes it looked an awful lot like my stalker," Mari said.

  "Curses! An astral projection! Does your stalker dabble in the occult?"

  "Not that I know of, but then he told me very little about himself."

  "How did you two meet?"

  "I was set up by a married friend of mine who said the guy had a beautiful smile."

  "Did he?" Agatha asked.

  "Not in my opinion."

  "Why didn't you continue to see him?"

  "I didn't like his rude and arrogant behavior. He snipped off some hair without asking me first. Then he put it in a gold locket and told me he'd keep it next to his heart so we'd always be linked."

  "Well, at least we're not dealing with a warlock. If one of them had a sample of your hair, he wouldn't have needed a private eye to find you."

  "It wasn't my hair. I was wearing an extension."

  "A thousand curses!"

  "What's wrong now?" Mari asked.

  Agatha hesitated. "Maybe nothing."

  "What are you thinking?"

  "Your stalker's powers are uncommon. It's likely he's made a diabolical pact that calls for a human sacrifice, and you're it."

  "Why me?"

  "Because you're special in some way. It's odd, though. Now that he knows where you are, I'm surprised he doesn't meet you face-to-face in the temporal plane."

  "He already did," Mari said. "He came by here to invite me to dinner at his place, but I turned him down."

  "Was he anywhere close to the counter where we keep the cashbox?"

  Mari nodded her head. "For as long as it took me to persuade him to leave. About five minutes maybe."

  "Come with me," Agatha said. "Maybe I can put a face to the evil that pursues you. Let's go look in the mirror."

  "You mean that really big one with the twenty-two-karat gilt frame? Does it have a security camera built in?"

  "Something like that. How do you know the purity of the gold?" Agatha wondered.

  "I tested it, right after I finished polishing the mirror."

  "Did you get a shock?"

  "That may be too strong a word. I did wonder, though, how you felt secure enough to leave such a valuable object unattended in a shop that's never locked."

  "I meant an electrical shock that's powerful enough to knock you off your feet," Agatha explained. "I guess you really are immune to my magic."

  "You're a magician? I thought you were an herbalist, a homeopathic practitioner, or—dare I say it—a witch?"

  "I'm all of those things. They're not mutually exclusive, you know."

  As soon as they were positioned in front of the mirror, Agatha waved her hand. An image appeared of a dark-clad figure with a scowling face.

  "See what I mean about his smile," Mari said.

  "Yes, it's more like a rictus, or a risus sardonicus. That expression would feel right at home on a death mask. He looks like evil incarnate."

  "Why don't other people see him that way?"

  "Apparently, he alters their perception somehow."

  "Can you do anything about him?"

  "Possibly. Did your stalker give you anything personal?" Agatha crossed her fingers. "A lock of his hair, perhaps?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  Agatha sighed. "We'll have to do it the hard way then. I know a surefire method for breaking through his defenses, but first I need to go to the desert for a special ingredient that's far too dangerous to keep in stock. While I'm gone, I want you to stay wide awake and not let Cat out of your sight."

  "That's ea
sier said than done. Cat likes some private time with her litter box."

  "I don't care if you do it the other way around. You stay where Cat can see you at all times."

  "I'd like some private time, too," Mari said.

  "All right, already. Leave the door open and make sure Cat is within shouting distance."

  "How am I supposed to manage that?"

  "I'll explain it to her. She'll listen to me without asking a lot of fool questions. For your part, Mari, under no circumstances are you to leave the shop before I return. If all goes well, I'll be back long before sundown."

  Agatha rented a four-wheel-drive pickup and headed out of the city. While underway, she kept her traffic-cone-shaped hat on the front passenger side, secured by a seatbelt. In due course, she parked beside a secondary road, put on her hat, and walked into the desert. The only extra equipment she carried with her was a powerful handheld magnifying glass. After a great deal of looking, she found a clump of plants in full bloom, verified the variety with her glass, and collected the specimens she needed.

  She straightened up and stretched to get the kinks out of her aching back, then turned around and looked at her footprints in the sandy soil. She'd come quite a long way from the road. In the far distance, she spotted something that hadn't been there before. At first, she thought it was simply a mirage produced by the shimmering heat of the mid-afternoon sun. The object appeared to be moving laterally, though. Maybe it wasn't a mirage after all. As a precaution, Agatha decided to detour around it by taking a circuitous route. She'd gone only a few steps, however, when the moving object also changed direction, seemingly following a tangential course that would cross Agatha's projected path well in advance of her reaching her parked vehicle. She started walking faster, counting her paces and comparing her speed to that of the object. She was the slower of the two. She changed direction again. The moving object compensated for the altered trajectory. Agatha thought about removing her high-button shoes to see if she could walk faster in her stocking feet, but she was prevented from doing so by her fear of stepping on a sharp rock, a cactus, or a scorpion.

  She considered her other options. Agatha hated flying, but for one of the few times in her life, she fervently wished she had a broom with her. It wasn't really flying in the aeronautical sense of the word anyway. With direct contact, she had the ability to levitate certain kinds of cured wood. The straws of the broom acted as a combination stabilizer and rudder. She'd even have taken her chances of getting splinters and spinning out of control in an attempt to get airborne, if only there'd been some driftwood handy. There wasn't.

  While her attention was turned inward, Agatha had continued to walk, but without consciously looking where she was going. Now she refocused her eyes and saw that the object had moved significantly closer. So close, in fact, she could make out details she'd missed earlier. She was being stalked by a mummy.

  Agatha nearly cackled out loud with relief. What did she have to fear from some mindless relic whose brain had been drawn out through its nostrils and stuck in a jar somewhere? She was embarrassed to think that its aimless wandering had fooled her into believing it was actually pursuing her. So, why not waggle her fingers and turn the mummy into a harmless bunny rabbit, or better still a tortoise? The reason was simple. Her transformation spells only worked on living organic matter, so it made perfect sense for her to avoid the musty marauder altogether. With renewed resolve, Agatha started to walk away at a forty-five degree angle from the mummy's path. The mummy instantly changed direction. As it did, sunlight glinted off of burnished steel. The creature was armed with a dagger.

  Agatha quickly reassessed the situation. That last course correction could not have been a coincidence. The mummy was being guided by some outside intelligence. The answer came to her almost at once. Marigold's diabolical stalker!

  Although disheartened, Agatha would not give up. She'd once seen her mother confine a demon within a pentagram. At the time, the exact shape of the drawing and the accompanying incantation had been seared into the youngster's brain. Could she remember it now, as an adult, in sufficient detail to save not only her own life but that of her assistant? She could try.

  Since she was not speedy enough to encircle the moving mummy, Agatha would have to stand within the completed diagram and trust it to repel a demonic assault from the outside. If successful, she could then safely position herself on the opposite side from where the mummy was halted, erase one-half of one of the triangular points of the pentagram in order to break the spell just long enough for her to step out and the mummy to step in, and then she could redraw the line, thus trapping the mummy on the inside.

  Although Agatha thought through her strategy in less time than it takes to describe it, the mummy continued to advance all the while, so that even so slight a delay as this might prove fatal. She began to scratch the pattern in the sand, using the handle of the inverted magnifying glass as a stylus. Agatha concentrated on her work so intently that she temporarily lost track of her adversary. Moving clockwise, she had completed four points—only one more to go—when she heard the susurrus of the mummy's feet sliding over the sand. The sound was too close for comfort. She took a quick step to the right and looked up in alarm. To her dismay, she saw her nemesis was directly in front of her with its dagger held aloft, ready to strike. While uttering the incantation her mother had used, Agatha bent forward from her waist and was pleased to see she was in a perfect position to finish the drawing. An untimely muscle spasm in her lower back momentarily prevented her from bending any lower. Then there was no time left. Her gaze was directed downwards, but the vision she perceived in her mind's eye slowly turned from a diluted pale pink to a vivid blood red as—frozen in place—she awaited her fate. Agatha shuddered imperceptibly in anticipation of the dagger piercing the nape of her neck and severing her spinal column. Every nerve in her body was on high alert—countless synapses were firing in her brain—but the only physical sensation she felt was a trickle of something wet moving sluggishly down her back from the vicinity of her hairline.

  For several heartbeats nothing else happened. Agatha opted not to make any sudden moves, assuming she still had a conscious choice in the matter. There was always an off chance the mummy had been conditioned to attack only a moving target. As soon as her initial panic subsided, she let her eyes roam around freely. The sun was at her back. Mirabile dictu! The shadow cast by her pointed hat had completed the pentagram. She would be safe as long as she only moved her head in tiny increments that matched the movement of the sun. Agatha fully realized the reprieve was only temporary. Her arms were not long enough to complete the drawing from her present position, and she was afraid to get down on her hands and knees for fear of a misstep causing her head to wobble. She might have to try that maneuver later on as a last resort—just before sundown—when she would otherwise face almost certain doom.

  The mummy's lower torso was clearly visible just beyond the outer edge of the pentagram. Agatha considered, and quickly rejected, another doomsday scenario. She could try to conjure up a demon within the pentagram. She would be its first victim and the mummy would be its second. That sacrifice would do nothing, however, to protect Mari. Besides, Agatha vividly remembered the demon her mother had trapped, and she refused to be responsible for introducing such an abomination into the world.

  Fighting fire with fire was not the answer, then. Or was it? Agatha had both seen and heard a demon while it was restrained within a pentagram. At the same time, she had smelled nothing out of the ordinary, even though her mother told her the beast usually gave off a terrible, sulfurous stench. Agatha pondered the significance of those facts. Smell depends on the dispersion of tiny particles that have real substance. An aroma could no more penetrate the force field than the mummy's dagger could. In contrast, light and sound both traveled in waves. What if Agatha could concentrate the rays of the sun?

  Holding her head steady as a rock, she lifted up the magnifying glass and held it against the spe
ll-induced force field where she estimated it would be in alignment with the mummy's chest. With four or five hours of daylight left, she had the luxury of moving the glass very slowly and methodically—tilting it one way then another, with long pauses in between—while hoping, sight unseen, to produce a laser-thin pinpoint of fiery light at a favorable spot. Time passed. A lot of time, as she rotated slowly in lockstep with the sun. An occasional tremor in her elevated arm reminded Agatha of her mortality. She began to lose hope. Presently she might also lose the last rays of sunlight and, immediately afterwards, her battle against the stalker's death-dealing proxy.

  Was that the rush of blood through her ears she heard, or was it the faint roar of a fire? Agatha couldn't tell which, at first. Were those dark ashes dropping on the mummy's feet? Yes, without a doubt. The three-thousand-year-old wrappings had finally ignited and soon thereafter a loud whoosh let her know the desiccated corpse within had also burst into flames. A smoke-smudged dagger fell to the ground. Agatha waited until there was nothing left in front of her but a pile of ashes. Only then did she raise her head and break the spell.

  Agatha lowered her arm and sank down on one knee, resting for nearly a minute before slipping the magnifying glass into a deep pocket of her dress. Then, after wiping the perspiration off the back of her neck with a monogrammed lace hankie, she picked up the fallen dagger, got back on her feet and—with a pronounced stoop—walked slowly toward her rental truck.

  As soon as she got back to the shop, Agatha gulped down an analgesic potion, and then set about carefully mixing and brewing—in a glass beaker heated by a Bunsen burner—a potent mixture that included the ingredient she had acquired in the desert at such great cost.

  When she finished, she gave explicit instructions to Mari.

  "Call your stalker and tell him you've changed your mind about having dinner with him."

  "Okay," Mari said. "I sure hope you know what you're doing."

  "Me too."

  Some time later, a vision of feminine loveliness descended the stairs, hesitating every few steps to preen herself. She licked the palms of both hands then used them to sweep back her hair.