Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black)

by R. M. Ridley

  “Big order, thought I’d have to make two trips,” Quan joked. “My uncle told me about your plan. You are a good man, Mr. Alvey.”

  “Ah, you’re just sucking up for another big tip.”

  “Don’t know what to do with them. Bought my uncle a nice watch with what you gave me.”

  “And you say I’m a nice guy,” Jonathan smiled. “Look, Quan, I’m feeling a little worse for wear. Got into a bit of scuffle the other day.”

  “The man with the blue suit?” Quan said, reminding Jonathan just how astute the kid was.

  He chuckled. “Yeah. Listen, there’s a case of beer and some bottles of bourbon in the trunk of my car. The bottles I can do, but the case . . .” Jonathan shook his head.

  “I’ll bring them up, Mr. Alvey. No problem.”

  “Great. Thanks, Quan.”

  Jonathan tossed the keys at the kid, who scooped them out of the air like a harpy going for a man’s heart.

  Jonathan looked at the bill stapled to the brown paper bag. He dug out his wallet and simply placed everything left in it on the desktop beside the three large paper bags.

  When Quan came back up, he had the bourbon on the top of the case of beer. He tried to dicker over the money, but Jonathan remained obstinate.

  He opened the case and offered Quan a bottle of beer.

  “Better not, Mr. Alvey,” Quan said with some reluctance.

  “Your uncle wouldn’t approve?”

  “Oh, it’s not that—but we are a bit busy, so I should get back.”

  “Quan!” Jonathan exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have made you do my menial labor if you’d said something.”

  “That is why,” Quan said with a grin. “You never ask for my help with something, Mr. Alvey. I figure that if you are asking me now, you must really not be in any condition to carry the beer.”

  “What would I do without you and your uncle, Quan?”

  “I suspect, get very hungry,” the kid said and then, looking at all the alcohol on the desk, added, “and very, very drunk.”

  “Get outta here,” Jonathan grumbled with a smirk.

  “See you later, Mr. Alvey.”

  “Take it easy, kid.”

  Jonathan put the paper bags full of food beside the desk on the floor. He got up and placed the bourbon in the filing cabinet. Then he opened the case of beer and gratefully took one out.

  It was nice get the breakfast you wanted sometimes.

  He enjoyed his first beer and allowed himself a second. Before he cracked the third, Jonathan did some further preparation for the night.

  It took time to carefully complete the warding symbol outside the elevator doors, especially since he wanted it to blend into the scuffed, mock marble floor.

  He did the same ward outside the door to the stairs, and on the second-to-top stair itself.

  These marks would alert him should anything step on them, giving him precious seconds to be ready.

  Feeling good about his accomplishments, he had the third beer and waited.

  After almost an hour had passed, Jonathan got what felt like a kick from a teddy bear on the inside of his head. A moment later, Wendell walked into his office.

  “Hey. I have beer, bourbon, food, and smokes. I’m going to complete some last minute preparations, so I advise you take this opportunity to use the washroom down the hall because once I’m done, it’s bottles and buckets.”

  “Think that might indeed be a good idea, then.”

  Wendell excused himself and Jonathan called up the elevator to prepare the last of his defenses.

  When it clacked and shuddered to a stop, he blocked the door and went to work.

  First, he laid a confusion sigil over the button for his floor in clear nail polish. He then placed the same ward he’d laid on the floor outside the elevator on the buttons for both floors above and below his office.

  He let the elevator return to its normal functions and, seeing Wendell had returned, poured the salt across the doorway.

  Jonathan had done the last of the preemptive maneuvers that he could. If Wendell could manage to remain in the protective circle for twenty-six hours, then he should be safe from whatever sought to harm him.

  Wendell was looking at the case of beer when Jonathan returned to the office.

  “Do you think that is such a good idea, if we are relieving ourselves into bottles?”

  “I wouldn’t want to try it for longer than twenty-four hours, but I think we’ll survive. I also picked up some Coke and Red Bull, just to even it all out.”

  “So . . . now?”

  “Now? Now, we wait. We run out the clock on your expiry date and come out the other side.”

  Jonathan picked up one of the bags of food from the floor. Opening it, he asked Wendell what he had done with the rest of his day.

  “I slept. I didn’t think it fair for you to stay up all night while I got to sleep. It is because of me you’re doing this, after all,” Wendell replied, opening a beer. “What did you do, Mr. Alvey?”

  “Slept, like you. And please, Wendell, it’s going to make the next—” Jonathan glanced at the old clock above his door, mechanically ticking away the minutes. “—twenty-five hours and forty-four minutes really long if you keep calling me Mr. Alvey. For both our sanity, I really think you’d better start calling me Jonathan.”

  “Jonathan—right.” Wendell sat down in the same chair he’d occupied the night before. He impressed Jonathan by making sure not to disturb the protective salt circle as he crossed it.

  “I got enough for both of us,” Jonathan said, motioning to the bags on the floor. “Dumplings and some beef in black beans; it’s quite good, probably my third favorite dish.”

  “I think I can guess what the first is,” Wendell commented with a chuckle.

  Jonathan shrugged and shoveled a mouthful of the spicy Singapore noodles into his mouth.

  A question came to him once he had swallowed. “When you first came here, Wendell . . . ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your face was dotted with tissue paper. Did you shave especially to come see me?”

  Wendell’s pale face flushed. “Um, yeah. I know it seems silly—worried as I was—but I wasn’t thinking straight, see? I didn’t want to come in looking like a wild man, so I shaved, thinking I would look more . . .”

  “Believable?”

  “I guess. But I’d already shaved that morning, see? I always do. So, all I really managed was to nick myself—everywhere.”

  “You know your hair was a mess, right?” Jonathan pointed out with a grin.

  “I was quite stressed.”

  “And yet,” Jonathan couldn’t help but get into it, “now, here we are on the cusp of the day predicted, and you are calm and collected.”

  Wendell nodded.

  “Not quite as much as I might appear. I am scared and anxious, Mister—Jonathan—but I have had a few days to wrap my mind around a whole lot, magic for one thing. I think the fascination is helping to dull the fear, see? Plus, well . . . I trust you.”

  Jonathan sighed. He couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  “Don’t worry,” Wendell said. “I’m not trying to put this all on your shoulders. I simply meant I believe you have done all that anyone could, see? I don’t know what is going to happen in the next day, but I feel that what happens now, happens. Better to enjoy what there is to enjoy,” he lifted his beer and smiled, “than to be all worked up and fretting. Besides, I can’t see how my being a spaz right now would help you do your job one single bit.”

  “Huh. You are an interesting fellow, Wendell Courtney.”

  “Also, did I mention I hardly ever drink?”

  Jonathan laughed and raised his beer in salute.

  For the first couple of hours, Jonathan and Wendell managed to make small talk.

  Wendell spoke of his life growing up in a small town, spending his summers corn de-tasseling or picking tomatoes to save enough to pay for his college tuition.
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  He’d graduated from a notable business school and landed a job in the company where he still worked.

  He had met a girl his final year of college and they had been in love, but she’d had a heart condition and died in her sleep just after he’d graduated.

  Jonathan momentarily thought of pursuing that avenue, but a ghost couldn’t do everything that had happened, especially without leaving some evidence of its interference. Besides, a vengeful girlfriend after twenty-some years had to be one of the thinnest straws he’d tried to grasp at so far.

  Having told his tale, Wendell asked Jonathan how he had gotten into the line of work of Private Investigator.

  At first, Jonathan’s reaction was to shut Wendell down. He always found himself reluctant to share; too many painful memories were wrapped up in it.

  But he realized he did want to talk about it after all. He offered an abbreviated version of his life.

  He spoke of his childhood and his seeing the souls of the departed from early on. How it had been a sometimes terrifying and often confusing thing, made more awkward by being the son of an Anglican priest.

  Wendell seemed to intuitively understand the complications that such a situation could cause, sparing Jonathan from explaining the troubled relationship he and his father had shared.

  Instead, he spoke of how he had wanted to go into law enforcement as a way to help those who had passed on, but had dropped out when he realized it would never work.

  “Finally, I became like a psychic, ghost hunter . . . thing,” Jonathan said, unable to keep the bitter humor from his voice.

  They had switched to Bourbon when the tales got personal and painful. Jonathan had drained his glass and refilled it to gain the courage to continue his tale. He offered to top off Wendell’s, but the man declined.

  “Then I got a case that wasn’t a ghost. A young boy was infected with something. Something I feared was a sort of demon.

  “I had no idea what to do. That was, at the time, out of my league. So, finally, I called my father. Anglicans don’t usually do exorcisms, but they can, and he came.”

  Jonathan took another drink.

  “You don’t have to,” Wendell said.

  “I was never allowed to keep it to myself. Twelve good men and women and a whole lot more circus performers,” Jonathan replied. “And perhaps it’s time I spoke of it more.”

  He shrugged then went on. “My father came. Despite not having talked much over the years. He didn’t like that I had gotten involved in what he considered ‘the Lord’s work’ as a secular boy . . . hell, he didn’t like that I grew up a secular boy.

  “But still, he came. And the four of us, the boy’s parents, my father, and I, did what we could to rid the boy of the thing riding him.”

  “The boy died, didn’t he?”

  “No, the boy lived. He currently resides in San Diego. He’s a lieutenant in the Navy.”

  He took a drink, lit a fresh smoke, and as he blew out the first puff, Jonathan continued the tale. “After thirty hours, my father finally forced the thing out of the boy, but only by taking it into himself.”

  Wendell hung his head.

  “The thing didn’t want my father, though. He wasn’t going to be an easy pawn. It wanted the boy, something easier to manipulate and corrupt. So, it was fighting to get free and my father . . .”

  Jonathan paused, drained off half his glass, and took another long drag on the cigarette.

  “My father knew—once it was in him—the only way to stop the thing from getting back in the boy was to kill it, but . . .”

  “That meant your father . . .”

  “Yeah.” Jonathan looked many years into the past and nodded.

  “Anyway, I couldn’t do it, not at first. My father, though, he started begging me to do this thing. He said there was nothing more right than defending the innocent—no matter what the cost.”

  Jonathan ran his hand through his hair. “But I don’t know if he was right. I still don’t know if the cost is worth it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan.”

  “Because of the testimony of the parents and the boy, and the diagnosis of a couple of psychiatrists, I served three years in Saint Dymphna Institute for Mental Health. I used the time to research and, when I convinced them of my sanity, I started doing this. Maybe it’s a calling; maybe it’s just misplaced vengeance.”

  “Thank you,” Wendell said.

  “For what?” Jonathan asked, confused by the man’s sincere comment.

  “For sharing. Just that,” Wendell looked at the ceiling, “and maybe for putting a little perspective to my life, see?”

  “Your life is far from over,” Jonathan said firmly.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  After that, they fell into silence. The night crawled into the early hours of morning and they smoked, ate, and drank, with only the most perfunctory of words exchanged.

  It wasn’t until near three in the morning that anything broke the quiet. It started with a tingling at the base of Jonathan’s neck and transformed into a feeling of dread.

  Jonathan sprung from his chair, startling Wendell, who also started to rise.

  “Sit down! Don’t leave that circle!”

  Jonathan closed his eyes. He tried to orient himself to the cause of the sensation. To figure why his hackles had risen.

  He touched malevolence; the energy of malice, woven with the sucking sensation that he associated with poltergeists. These sensations didn’t help. They only served to bewilder him.

  He spun and looked out the window towards the source of the malignancy.

  At first glance, he failed to see anything peculiar. However, off in the far west, what he had thought just a layer of clouds began to angle in against the wind towards them.

  “We have company coming. I don’t know what it is yet, but it sure the hell ain’t Glinda the good witch.”

  Jonathan turned away from the window and spun around the desk to his accumulation of spell components. He ruled out the grave dirt right off, but grabbed the sulfur, some rue, and the silver flask of holy water before going back to the window.

  Whatever was coming was eating up the distance fast.

  It almost looked like a large flock of birds. Jonathan’s mind went to the ravens from earlier. It took him no time to discern that what approached dwarfed the largest of ravens.

  Something about the scene caused alarms to sound in the dark storehouse of knowledge lodged in his head. What the klaxon signified regretfully eluded him.

  Jonathan checked to make sure the salt across the window bases hadn’t been disturbed, while trying to haul the cause for the alarm into the light of conscious thought.

  Every time he thought he’d gotten a hold on it, it scuttled out of reach.

  For a moment, he stopped to scan westward. Jonathan thought the dark swarm to be comprised of Harpies. He leaned closer to the glass and watched the approaching cloud. After studying the phenomena carefully, he realized whatever approached, they moved completely wrong for Harpies.

  The things comprised in this mass swirled and swooped like a murmuration of starlings. They were clearly too large for any bird native to this area, however. Jonathan thought they might be too big to be birds from any area.

  “All that damn work and they’re still targeting you. Shit!”

  The simple hope that the weasel from Apatedyne might also get visited by what approached now comforted Jonathan through his failure to mask Wendell’s energy against attack.

  He would never know for certain.

  The little trick he’d done with the mirror should be bouncing a lot of Wendell’s essence toward the other man.

  If the shmuck did get harassed, even by just a small portion of the force coming at them, then Jonathan could find a reason to smile.

  The fact still stood that the spell he had cast should have confused anything searching for Wendell.

  That his client was still being targeted scared Jonathan on a level he was un
willing to acknowledge. All he would let his mind admit was they were up against something serious and he had better be on his toes.

  Jonathan looked at Wendell. All too clearly, he could see the strain in the man’s face.

  It had to be hard to just sit back, literally, and do nothing when it was your own life at stake.

  Jonathan couldn’t worry about his client’s stress right now, though. He had to be focused on the threat coming from the west. And like that, Jonathan knew what he had been looking at.

  The knowledge left him momentarily flabbergasted.

  He turned to watch the cluster of shapes spinning and swooping towards the building. They were now no more than a half-mile away.

  And he knew them to be the Sluagh.

  Even in their homelands on the Isle of Britannica, to have contact with such phenomena was rare. Here, in North America, Jonathan had thought such a gathering impossible.

  In the lands of the Bretons, the Sluagh had originally been a Celtic curse. Jonathan knew only too well that with the spread of people and their beliefs came the creatures from their myths, and the monsters from their mountains. Yet he still couldn’t wrap his mind around this fact.

  “Sluagh,” Jonathan spoke the word aloud. He hoped hearing it would solidify the reality and dredge up what little he knew about them.

  “Pardon?” Wendell asked, and although Jonathan answered, it was for his own benefit more than Wendell’s education.

  “Myths similar to the wild hunt but not as powerful—not ‘wild magic’ as it were. Spirits made from the tattered soul of sinners. Most likely powered by entropy or, perhaps, chaos energy.”

  He watched the swarm get closer and closer. “Come on, come on—think, man.”

  He wasn’t even sure if the salt he had so carefully laid out would stop them. They were far from normal ghosts.

  “They come from the west and try to enter a house where someone is dying to steal the soul and . . . and, for that reason, people kept their western windows shuttered. Okay, but was it the shutter stopping them . . . or . . . or the wood?”

  Jonathan cursed. Although he didn’t want to leave his post, he thought it might be wise if he got some wood just in case.