Stone's Shadow

by Martin McConnell

  “I think you’re starting to buy into some of the myths you read on the Internet. Your friend probably just got spooked and doesn’t want to leave his house.”

  “Maybe.”

  Anything was possible. This could have been part of Richard’s game. Maybe he was dead, and maybe he wasn’t. There was no evidence to prove the monster got him, one way or the other.

  Epistemological thoughts ran through Scott’s head, and he probed once more into his semester of investigations on the nature of truth. Was the scream justification to convict a monster of murder? Was Richard’s behavior enough to prove a clever deception on his part? He realized that his eyes were swiping side to side as he spent far too much brain power arguing with himself over the matter.

  Serena leaned forward and winked. “He was probably just trying to scare you.”

  A smile broke across Scott’s face. “So you think you can get rid of it?”

  “Absolutely.” She didn’t miss a beat. Her confidence gave him strength. The dreadful thoughts drifted away.

  “Okay, let's do this then. You ready to banish a monster?”

  “It’ll be the event of the season.” Serena smiled as they stood. Coffee in hand, she followed him back to the apartment.

  19

  The place was a mess. Wet clothes dried slowly on the carpet while attracting mold spores. Pill bottles were scattered here and there, from the desk to the coffee stain, which was beginning to grow a layer of white fuzz.

  “Yeah, I know,” he sighed. “Haven’t really done a lot of cleaning this week.”

  “You could at least toss your clothes in the hamper.”

  “Does it matter?”

  She surveyed the apartment, then turned to face him. “Everything affects everything. I can’t do the ritual unless we clear a spot. Don’t worry, I usually prep with some kind of cleanup anyway, even if it’s only a symbolic sweeping, so I’ll help you tidy up.”

  Scott nodded. They started with the bed. The two of them turned it sideways against the wall, with the headboard blocking the window. He grabbed a trash bag from the kitchenette and stomped around, dumping empty pill bottles and coffee cups into it, while Serena vacuumed the carpet. For twenty or thirty minutes, the apartment underwent a complete transformation. She even cleared the remainder of the coffee stain with supplies she found under the sink. He couldn’t help but think that she should have been charging him. He could always thank her for killing the demon by purchasing one of the crystal balls from her shop. He didn’t care about the price tag. Every day after this would be a blessing.

  “Sorry again about the mess,” he said, tying the garbage bag. He set it to the side in the kitchen area and returned to the main living space, which now stank of bleach.

  “Rituals start by creating a sacred space. Wouldn’t feel sacred with wet, dirty jeans laying in the middle of the room, would it? Much better now. I think we’re ready.”

  She crossed to the desk where her purse had been sitting and dug through it, pulling out several artifacts, some of which Scott recognized from the magic shop. A glass jar full of salt, another with water, some tiny brown vials, and a bunch of miniature dishes.

  “Why do you keep all of those pill bottles?” she asked.

  “I used to need them when I went to fill my prescriptions. When the doc has you on so many, it pays to keep them around so you can remember the names.”

  “But you had dozens of them.”

  He stared at the carpet in shame. “I don’t know. There was one time when I didn’t have the right one, and forgot the name Temazepam. Guess that sparked a habit of keeping all of them.”

  Serena moved her stash of magical items to the center of the room, halfway between the bed and the desk. She arranged everything neatly on the carpet while frequently looking at her phone.

  “Expecting a call?”

  “Just going over my checklist. Don’t want to get started and then be missing something.” She looked over the setup again. Each trinket had a place. She touched each of them, adjusting their placement this way and that like an obsessive compulsive.

  “All right,” she said. “Stand here.”

  He followed her instructions, standing on one side of the pile of trinkets as she knelt on the other. She sprinkled some of the salt into the water glass, and stirred it with a crystal.

  “Some kind of magic potion?”

  “Hush.”

  His lips pursed as he watched in silence. She took up the water dish and drew a circle on his forehead with marks inside or around it. It was hard to tell which from the sensations alone. She then proceeded around the room, sprinkling water as she went, and stopped for a moment at the desk, the bed, and each of the walls, tracing out a circle with her steps.

  When she returned to the arrangement, she lit a candle, and placed it on a small plate. She grabbed a small black puck from a foil bag, and held it over the fire until it caught flame and sputtered sparks. Ash coated it as the glowing orange line of embers marched from one side to the other.

  “That some kind of incense?”

  “Charcoal brick.” She placed the smoking puck into a brass bowl, and sprinkled a yellow-green powder over the top before covering the whole thing with a matching metal lid filled with holes. “I use resins for smoke. The charcoal keeps them hot. Now hush.”

  White smoke plumed upward from the shiny holder, and Serena picked it up by three chains attached to the rim. She waved it between them before proceeding again around the room, following her previous circular path and hitting the light switch on the way. Other than some light creeping in over the headboard from outside, and a crack under the door, the room was lit only by candlelight.

  The aroma of the smoking bowl filled the air with the same odd scent from her previous blessing. The tiny candle cast undulating shadows that seemed almost alive. Scott watched them dance around the room as Serena revisited the pile of magic stuff to swap the smoking bowl for a crystal.

  The candle licked at invisible currents of air, flickering in the darkness. Whenever she moved past, or stood, or sat, the quivering flame increased in both movement and intensity, causing Serena’s shadow to dance in theatric resonance with the wispy wall lighting. As he watched, he couldn’t help but wonder if at any moment, the shadows would come alive.

  Something itched at his cheek, and he swatted at it, realizing a moment later that it was only a wayward strand of hair, which he combed back.

  “Try to relax,” said Serena. “Concentrate on your breathing.”

  She fiddled with her magic kit some more. Opening bottles, mixing things, smearing oil on everything, including the candle and his own forehead. After what seemed like way too many steps, she negotiated her legs underneath until she sat cross-legged, and motioned for him to do the same. She closed her eyes, and sat quietly for a while. Scott stared at the flickering shadows. No red eyes. It won’t attack while she’s here. He slowed his breathing, and his eyes seemed to drop closed under their own power.

  “I need you to close your eyes and concentrate,” she said in a gentle voice. She must have not checked before speaking.

  Her voice carried him into a relaxed state. He felt the soft drumming of his heart against his ribs. He heard his own breathing, and hers. Instinct told him that they should be in sync. He paced himself to mimic her lead.

  “Tighten all the muscles in your hand, and then relax your fingers, and let any tension drift away. Totally relaxed. Now do it again, feel the tension melt from your forearms through your hand, and out of your fingertips. Totally relaxed. Now tense your biceps.”

  She continued like that, working through every muscle group of the body, one at a time, until he was relaxed to the point that parts of him seemed to fade out of existence. His arms had disappeared, and his chest became invisible. A heartbeat, some lungs, and cool air across his upper lip were all that remained.

  She started the healing light meditation. In his mind, smoke seeped from his pores, and even though he could
n’t see it, the room around him shrank and swelled with every breath. Perhaps it was his own body growing and shrinking.

  He didn’t want to speak, so he assumed the sensations were normal.

  His eyelids glowed with a dim red light from the candle flame, and something appeared in the radiance. Details emerged. What started as wispy shades sharpened into the features of his room. He saw the outline of his bed, then the walls, and the lady sitting across from him. He could see the candle dancing between them.

  He squeezed his eyelids to ensure they were closed. He didn’t know how, but he was seeing with some sense other than his own vision. Maybe this was some kind of trance.

  “Repeat after me,” said her voice.

  Scott repeated her words at every pause.

  “Creature with the red eyes. Creature with the shadow skin. Creature in the darkness. We order you to show yourself. Come forward. Be warned, this will be the last time you visit this apartment. This will be the last time you visit Scott Stone.”

  Scott's eyes flashed open, and he refused to shut them again. His heart quickened. Serena's face, lit only by the candle, remained calm as a sunrise, while her shadow twitched and flickered on the wall behind the bed in apparent distress.

  The shade of her silhouette wasn't the only thing that moved. Those red eyes, the same as before, drifted from right to left behind her, and a dark mass followed. He couldn’t look away. His eyes followed the red glow from side to side. The longer he stared, the more it came into focus.

  “Concentrate on your inner light, Scott. Sense it radiating out into a cone around us.”

  The dots stopped cold, staring back at him. The dark mass came into focus, the snout of of a beast. Around its head, a lengthy mane of black-velvet fur waved through the air, even without a breeze. The candle burned steadily. His own breathing had stopped.

  The creature’s features distorted. The head appeared close, and everything around it blurred into the background. Tunnel vision. Each pulse of his heart caused the monster’s shape to throb. The eyes pulsed in cadence. This is it.

  “Scott?”

  The hair of the creature turned to tentacles, and they inched closer. The eyes grew bright, their red edges sharpening as the glow inside changed to a single point. Fading beams radiated from each stellar core like starlight.

  His mouth hung open, frozen like the rest of him. He heard a faint squeak, followed by a cluster of scratching claws from every corner of the room.

  “Keep looking. Just a bit longer.”

  It paced again to the right, never breaking their shared stare. More details came into view. It walked like a dog, the body arching higher than the head. A thick tuft of fur stood from the back, like that of an angry cat. Massive legs stomped across the ground as a long tail lashed silently through the air.

  The tail ended with a sharp talon. The eyes moved over Serena’s head, coming closer, and hovering just above her.

  “Scott. Do you see it?”

  He couldn’t move, not even to speak.

  “Command it to leave.”

  The eyes nodded up and down. The mouth opened with a faint golden glow shining behind sharp fangs. A roar of laughter shook his insides. The synthetic sound echoed through the room, and pulsed in his mind. One laugh broke into a dozen, and then a thousand. The echo turned into a symphony, resonating louder and faster as the pitch increased to a scream. Then silence. Then it spoke.

  “Command it to leave,” growled the creature. “Foolish girl. Go ahead. Command it to leave. Command it, Scott.”

  A few bursts of air popped from his mouth, but failed to form words.

  “Scott, you have to command it,” she said. “Focus on your light.”

  The creature reared onto its hind legs and bellowed. “You thought it would be that easy? You thought your little witch could stop us?”

  “Creature,” interrupted Serena, “we command you to leave this place forever, and return to where you came from.”

  “You thought she would save you. You thought the priest would save you. You belong to us, and you’ll be with us soon.”

  Tentacles wrapped Serena’s waist, and coiled upward across her stomach.

  “Crea—I—stop.”

  “What is it?” asked Serena. “Is it gone?”

  Scott became aware of a stream of whimpering noises pouring from his trembling lips. The tentacles transformed from a coil to a solid sheet of darkness that wrapped her from belly to bosom, and she failed to notice.

  “You're already dead, and so are they. Just like this one.”

  Her voice broke. Her eyes welled with tears. Even if she couldn’t see the monster, she could see the horror on his face. “Scott?”

  “We’re older than your priest's religion. We saw the birth of it, and the death of the city that bore it. We saw it burn over and over, and others.”

  “Scott,” she insisted.

  The darkness swallowed her from the neck down. The creature leaned close, and licked at her nape while she shivered. Her face became white as milk. She must have felt something. Twinkles of golden radiance jumped from her like showers from a sparkler.

  “This one will make a snack for the pups.”

  The scraping and scratching became deafening, attacking his skull. Shadows swirled the room to accent thumps and hammering racket. Louder, faster, tearing at the walls like a stampeding herd. The eyes vanished, and the darkness eclipsed her face.

  “Foolish girl, keep looking. That's right. Just a bit longer.”

  Serena gasped, and rays of golden light flashed from behind the creature. A slurping sound followed as tiny sparks blasted across the room, dancing toward the door and window. The eruption of sound snapped his body free, his hands pressed against his ears, his whole face clenched.

  And suddenly, nothing. Dead silence. His muscles relaxed, and in the light of a single candle, he found himself staring into the lifeless eyes of Serena Skygoddess.

  20

  Scott didn't know it yet, but the creature watched from above. Minutes went by without any movement but the fountain of pheromones spraying into the room. The pups scratched at sparkles for nourishment. Take him? No, not yet. He was still too valuable. There was plenty of time.

  It felt like hours, staring at the cooling body that lay limp three feet away, but it must have been only minutes. He snapped out of the trance. His body quivered. His internal trembling had become external as he struggled to free the phone from his pocket. He took care to manipulate the touch screen without hitting the wrong buttons. His hand quivered millimeters from the surface, and his finger struck the buttons one at a time. Eventually, the contacts list appeared, and the name was selected. He tapped the speaker-phone option.

  “Scott. I've been meaning to talk to you. You were right about that Richard guy. Police said they responded to a 911 call last night in that neighborhood and found him dead at the scene. First name Richard.”

  Paul waited for a response, and then continued, “The cause of death was cardiac arrest. Scott?”

  “There's been another incident.”

  “What happened?”

  “Do you know where the coffee shop is on Cedar Street?”

  “I do.”

  “How soon can you meet me there?”

  Scott stared at his coffee cup. He had removed the lid to let it cool while gazing into the steam hovering over the black pool. Tiny bubbles swirled in the center, like a miniature hurricane. He didn’t always add sugar, but he needed it tonight. Caffeine alone wasn’t going to cut it.

  The pattern in the cup turned like a galaxy, tiny bubbles were the stars of a whole system that drifted round and round, occasionally morphing from spiral to blob and back. In his science survey courses last semester, they talked about different kinds of galaxies, and how they had formed. He wondered if it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe such a complex swirling mass exhibited all possible structures over the course of its life, each for a limited time. Galaxies that didn’t look swirly might
only remain disorganized for a short blip in their existence. But of course, from the perspective of his short life, he would never notice a change.

  Every time a chair leg scraped the linoleum, or a blast of air shot in from an opening door, he jumped in his seat. His focus shifted toward the disturbance, and then returned to his coffee. New puddles of brown liquid had appeared on the table surrounding it. Some of them dried into circles of whatever remained from evaporated spills. It was probably the same stuff that was in those instant-mix coffee cans. Every outburst or sudden exclamation broke his breathing, and every spray of steam into a froth cup shook his memory back to the reverberating howls of a creature he didn’t understand. The place was nearly empty, but he didn't feel alone. The creature might have been sitting right next to him, hiding in the shadowless light of the café.

  No scratching. No darkness. But somehow, he knew. In a state of heightened senses, human beings pick up on things they otherwise wouldn't see or understand. It was similar to stories of a mother knowing the moment her child was injured or in danger, even from the other side of the planet, or thinking about a person right before they called on the phone. After the fact, we call them coincidences. But sometimes, people just know. Maybe it was part of the subtle energies that Serena talked about.

  A change in pressure sparked another jump. His head snapped toward the door. The table popped as his hand slammed into the edge. There in the doorway stood a very professional looking man, dressed in black from the shiny leather shoes all the way to the dark buttoned down shirt and matching sport jacket. A gold crucifix sparkled from under his lapel. Paul stared down at him, wearing no hint of emotion.

  “You look like you've seen a ghost,” Paul said nonchalantly. “And I would know. Give me a minute.”

  He strolled to the counter, returned with a hot tea, and sat across from Scott. The eyes of other patrons fixed on the two of them. Paul bobbed a teabag up and down in the paper cup.