by Joey Ruff
He turned toward the wall, to a bench I hadn’t noticed before just behind where he’d been standing. He took a seat and motioned for me to do the same. I did. He puffed on his cigar while he talked.
“First, think of the Earth as a living thing.”
“Okay…?”
“If petroleum is the blood of the Earth, tellur is the prana.”
“Hold on, mate. I’m not sure who you think you’re fucking talking to. What does this have to do with Anna?”
“Simmer down, fuck-man. If you did not amuse me so much, I would have already ground you back into the fucking dust you came from. You fucking stupid humans think you know the secrets of the universe, but you are so absorbed in your own existence that you can’t see the truth that surrounds each one of us.” He took a long pull of his cigar. “Tellur is the spirit energy of the world. You are aware of the human spirit, yes?”
I took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”
“The human spirit is the energy that holds the body and soul together. It also allows the physical body to communicate with beings of spirit.”
“Like you.”
He flashed me a quick smile of rotting teeth. “Ley Lines are the paths through which telluric energy flows. When the physical body dies and becomes petroleum, the spirit takes the soul to the Ley Lines. The spirit is recycled into tellur, and the soul flows through the Ley Line to the place beyond the Veil.”
I was growing further impatient. “And Anna…?”
“The portal you see is a gathering of telluric energy. Where Ley Lines intersect, it is not unheard of for the tellur to pool. Because the Ley Lines flow beyond the Veil, it allows a glimpse into the land beyond.”
“Why does this pool show Anna? Of all the people that have died… Why her?”
“Because of your connection to her.”
“Why is she…?” I looked down, imagining Anna as she appeared in the pool all of those times, with her eyes closed and her hands in her lap. “Why does she just sit there? Like she’s…waiting for something?”
“Because she is, fuck-man.”
“What? Me?”
He chuckled. “Self-absorbed, stupid human. Why would any of the dead wait on the stupid living? She waits for the day of Judgment, when the Son will come to judge the living and the dead. Like all the dead, she awaits her final resting place. Life everlasting or death eternal.”
I didn’t say anything, just thought of Anna. I don’t know if I had been holding out hope of some kind, that maybe she wasn’t dead… All of sudden, sitting there, everything felt very final. I felt my eyes begin to swell and wiped the tears from my cheeks clumsily.
Beside me, Samedi was still for a few minutes while I struggled to compose myself.
“Have I satisfied our deal?” he asked.
I didn’t look up. “Sure.”
Samedi stood from the bench and walked a few steps away. “I will meet you back here after sunrise, fuck-man. I will expect the poppet at that time.”
“What if I’m not here?”
“Then you will cease to amuse me.”
“I’m sure Aegir will love that.”
“He will not be too fucking pleased, but he will understand. We made a deal, after all.”
“Can I ask you something?”
He didn’t really say anything, just gave an audible nod, “Mmmh.”
“Do you know anything what’s happening here? I have reason to believe it may involve a knight of Hell. When I first saw you, I had the thought maybe that’s what you bloody were.”
“And now?”
“Now, I don’t think so. You’re too cavalier, mate.”
He laughed, rich and hearty. When he regained his composure, he said, “I know there is a lot of magic being thrown around, fuck-man. It is magic that is very old and very dangerous.”
“And you have nothing to do with it?”
“No. And I stay clear of the lives of you fucking humans, so long as you stay alive.”
I nodded, content that he was telling the truth. The Sidhe couldn’t lie, not directly. They could side-step an answer and go around the truth to mislead you, but a yes or no answer was taken at face value. Of course, Samedi may not have been one of the Sidhe, but there wasn’t anything inherently untrustworthy about him, either.
“Don’t suppose you know who the guilty party is, then?”
“Silence.” His voice was calm, but firm. He wasn’t angry, but hearing that out of him really annoyed the piss out of me.
I shrugged, looking back down at my phone. I don’t know how long I watched the spinning circle as the app attempted to find a connection, but when I eventually looked up, he was gone. I stood, thinking of DeNobb, and walked back around the corner to the bakery. As I reached for the door, my phone rang. It was Nadia.
I answered. “Did you find something?”
“Jono…?” came the reply. She sounded upset. “Jono, I…”
“Nadia? Are you okay?”
“I don’t…. Oh, God.”
It sounded like she dropped the phone. I could hear heavy breathing. Just before the call disconnected, Nadia screamed.
17
I was the first inside Ezra’s house, calling for Nadia as I leapt over the splintered shards of what was left of the front door. DeNobb was on my heels. As I ran back to the kitchen, he went into the living room. There was nothing. Broken chairs and a table in the kitchen, shattered china all over the floor.
“Ezra’s gone!” DeNobb called.
I turned to the back door, finding that shattered as well, part of it hanging crookedly still in the frame.
“What the fuck happened here?” I said.
“Living room is trashed, too.”
“Check the rest of the house. Then look around out front.”
“Swyftt…”
“Don’t say it. Don’t you fucking say anything until we know what happened. She’s okay.”
“I hope you’re…”
“She’s fucking okay, DeNobb. Check the rest of the house.”
I was out the backdoor before he said anything. The garden was mostly intact, though there were obvious signs that it had been trampled. I wasn’t concerned with that. I was looking for one thing, specifically. I found it on the wall of the shed. The peppermint spiral was painted in red. The symbol of the Ballad Nocturne. Whatever the fuck that was.
I went around the shed, found the door there open, but not damaged. The inside was left just as I remembered it, and I stood there inside the shed with my head spinning.
“You lost her,” said Alara’s voice. She was standing behind me in the doorway. “John, John. Whatever are you to do? Another daughter that you couldn’t save.”
“Piss off, Love. I’m not in the mood right now.”
“And you don’t even know what happened. Just like before.”
“Not like before,” I said. “I’m going to find what did this.”
“You sound like such a bully.”
“Right, because Lara didn’t fight for anything. Just ran when shit got tough. Run along now.”
“That was a low blow, John.”
“I don’t fucking care. I don’t have time for this shit.”
“Just admit to yourself that you aren’t man enough to be a father. Then I’ll leave.”
“You were never angry at me, Lara. Not about Anna. You know I did everything I could for her.”
“Do you really believe that? You did everything you could?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you?”
“No,” I said quietly.
“What could you have done differently?”
“I don’t know.”
“What can you do now?”
“I can find her.”
“How John?”
“By figuring out what happened.”
“How do you do that?”
“Using my ability.”
“So do that.”
I took a deep breath, but didn’t rea
dily move.
“What are you waiting for, John?”
“I’m waiting for you to shut the fuck up so I can think.”
“What do you need to think about? I’m already saying what’s in your head.”
She was right.
“Go outside, John. Use your ability. Figure out what happened.”
“On what? Everything’s wood. I can’t get a reading off bloody wood. It’s organic.”
“Check the tree line, John. You won’t like what you find, but it’ll give you a reading.”
I looked over at the golem, lying there, lifeless and utterly of no use.
When I moved toward the door, Lara was gone. I stepped outside, looking back toward the house. There, right above the troughs along the back of the house, was another red painted sigil. I turned to the right, to the rear of Ezra’s property, to the tree line. I scanned the nearest trees, not noticing anything, and then moved my gaze down the line. I saw what she was talking about. It hung on one of the lower branches, as if it were waiting for me.
Nadia’s amulet.
I stripped off my gloves as I walked toward it. Lara stood in the swamp, just beyond the tree line, watching my approach.
“You haven’t been using your ability lately,” she said.
“I’ve used it.”
“Not for important stuff. Not like you should. Why haven’t you?”
“I used it this morning. At the church. I used it at the Mountain yesterday.”
“Both quick and easy scenes, little more than sense impressions. Admit it, John. It scares you.”
I didn’t say anything. I knelt down in the grass, staring at the amulet that caught the last dying rays of the setting sun.
“Aegir gave you a power boost. You’re stronger now than you’ve been in twenty years, and it terrifies you.”
“He marked me, Lara. I feel the damn thing burn every time I take a reading. I don’t know what it’s doing to me.” The mark was on my right bicep, the same place Samedi had touched me. It looked like a simple tattoo, a cross between barbed wire and rolling waves, in red ink, a tribal pattern as long as my finger and about as thick.
“Take the amulet,” she said. “Learn what happened to Nadia.” She watched me. “Or don’t. And fail another daughter. How much does Aegir scare you?”
I grabbed the amulet firmly in one hand, felt the mark on my arm begin to burn like fire as the hum began to throb behind my eyes.
A wave swept over me that felt at first very cold, but I quickly realized that I had been so hot, the numbness of the feeling only appeared cold.
There was a temporary haze, as though the lights around me dimmed. When they came back up, it wasn’t as bright. I saw Nadia. She was in the living room, folded up into an armchair, staring down at a book in her lap. It looked like a hand-written journal. I wasn’t seeing from Nadia’s eyes, though, but the perspective of the necklace she wore. Being that I was looking through the amethyst, everything had a purple tint.
Ezra was still unconscious on the sofa.
For about ten minutes, everything was perfectly still. Nadia read, and I was bored. Then, out of nowhere, there was a scuffling outside the window. Scratching followed. After that came a knock on the door.
Nadia startled and closed the journal, setting it down on a side table, and stood. She crossed the living room to the hallway and opened the door.
There was no one there.
She took a step and poked her head out, looking around. The yard was empty. Everything was quiet. No more scratching, no noises of any kind.
Except for the melody.
It was a song, though I didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t loud and sounded almost like someone had opened a music box. The tune was upbeat, a lilting little diddy, but it wasn’t happy. Rather, there was something almost haunted about it. I didn’t know music theory, didn’t play an instrument. I couldn’t tell you the chord structure or the key it was played in. I know it sounded almost like whistling or maybe some kind of flute, and I know the melody rose and fell like the tide.
“Hello?” Nadia called. She took a few steps outside, looking around, but still not seeing anything. She shrugged and turned around, heading back to the house. She closed the door behind her, and as she walked into the living room, something burst through the window behind the sofa. The curtain blew in, raining shards of glass down like confetti.
There, curled into a ball of sorts where the coffee table had been, was a giant wad of dirty hair. Nadia froze. I couldn’t tell what color it was; it was all just shades of purple from my perspective. Slowly, the thing began to unfold into arms and legs, standing taller than Nadia. It was a Skunk Ape.
Bigfoot.
It didn’t look like the one I had met. This one looked younger, less lines around the eyes, I guess. I’m not sure how I could tell. It just seemed younger. Also, it was a bit shorter. This one stood maybe just under six feet, and it appeared angry.
Nadia backed up, but as she did, the front door exploded in. She turned, realizing too late what had happened, and threw her arms up to shield her face. A piece of wood about the size of a dinner plate struck the side of her head, forcing her to stagger backward as another Skunk Ape entered. It snarled at her and hissed. Then it charged.
Nadia threw her hand back and gathered energy into it, forming a disc in her hand, which she threw. As the creature sprang at her, the disc hit it mid-center and dropped it like a log.
The other sprang toward her, but she didn’t wait around for it. She ran into the kitchen, grabbing another energy disc, and was ready as a third beastie broke through the back door. This second disc must have been green in color, because when it hit the third, it sent the fur-ball flying into the yard like it was shot from a cannon.
As she moved to the door, the first skunk ape charged into the kitchen with a roar. Nadia heard it coming, spun on her heels and threw a deck of green discs at the kitchen cabinets. The doors sprang open and every dish inside catapulted toward the skunk ape, shattering either against it or on the floor around it. The skunk ape brought its arms up to shield its face and shrunk a little lower against the impacts before stepping back into the hallway.
Nadia was in the backyard. The third ape was pulling itself out of the trees about twenty yards away. It was dripping wet and covered in tangles of leaves. She ran to the left, cutting across the makeshift garden, hurtling over the raised beds, rounding the corner of the house. She had her phone in her hand.
“Jono…?” she said. “Jono, I…”
I could hear my own muffled reply.
“I don’t….”
A new skunk ape, number four, stepped around the front corner of the house. Nadia said, “Oh, God.” She tried to stop, but her foot slipped. She fell onto her hip and pulled herself up quickly. I didn’t see the phone in her hand. As she neared the back corner of the house, number three came around, trapping her.
She screamed.
That’s when a normal vision would have ended. The emotional strain of the event impacting the object being read normally ended the reading. It didn’t end there. What followed was chaotic and hard to follow. There were a lot of shadows and flashes of movement. Eventually, the motions stopped. I felt the necklace fall and snag on the branch. Then I watched as Nadia’s form was borne away on the shoulder of one of the skunk apes as the pack of them gathered and disappeared together into the bayou.
I willed the vision to stop, but it didn’t. It kept going. I saw empty forest for several more minutes. I heard the whistling flute song again, fading off, quieter and quieter until I couldn’t hear it anymore. Then, finally, the reading ended.
I stood with the necklace in my hand and leaned against the nearest tree. Not because I felt weak like I would feel previously from an intense and long reading, but just out of the sheer hopelessness of the situation. Nadia was gone. Taken by the skunk apes to… I didn’t even fucking know where.
DeNobb came around the corner of the house where Nadia had tried to
escape. He was holding something. Two somethings. “I found her phone,” he said, drawing nearer. “Looks like it was crushed.”
“Stepped on,” I said.
“You know what happened?” His voice was hopeful.
I nodded. “She was taken. It was the skunk apes. There were at least four.”
“Where did they go?”
I looked up at him. He startled when he saw me. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You okay? Your eyes…”
I wiped the tears away and pinched the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger, holding it there as I took a deep breath and said, “What else did you find?”
“That doll.”
I opened my eyes to see him holding the voodoo doll out to me. “It was lying in the front yard, just under one of those symbols like on your phone. The Ballad.”
I took the doll in one hand, the amulet in the other and stared at them both. I was overcome with a sudden rush of anger and powerlessness. I could hear Lara’s words echoing in the back of my head: “Fail another daughter…”
I wrapped the necklace around the middle of the doll and chucked it across the yard, toward the house. It hit the grass and bounced into one of the raised beds, disappearing beneath a bed of leafy cabbage.
“We’re going to find her,” I said.
“Sure, man. Of course, we are. You’re good at finding people. Just like that Beth gi…”
“We’ll find Nadia alive.”
“Right. I know. Bad example. Shit. Sorry.”
I walked past him and headed to the house. DeNobb was on my heels. “Where do we start first?”
“We figure out what the fuck this bloody Ballad is,” I said. “Huxley’s first rule: knowledge is power. If we…”
There was a rustling in the leaves to my right, and a voice said, “Come now, Swyftt.” It was a deep, rich voice that spoke in a Caribbean accent and pronounced my name “Sweeft.” “That’s more of a paraphrase.” The cabbage leaves parted, and the little burlap doll, no more than a foot tall, hobbled out like the bloody Gingerbread man, wearing the amulet I’d tied around it like a heavyweight belt, and wiggled its button eyes in my direction. I stopped and stared at it, dumbly. I could feel DeNobb over my shoulder, mouth agape.