Pockets of Darkness

by Jean Rabe

  Adiella moved the rocking chair so it sat halfway between the space heater and the antique trunk. She opened the trunk and rummaged around inside. Bridget kept her attention on the demon. It crept farther forward, but did not pass beyond an arc-like symbol chiseled in the floor and filled in with a silvery metal. The demon snarled at the line, then looked around like it was studying the graffiti.

  “The demon doesn’t like this place,” Bridget said.

  “It is consecrated in an old, old way. It should not be able to come inside. No demon should be able, no matter how powerful. Perhaps not even the devil itself.”

  “Well, that gobshite of a beast hasn’t stepped past your line in the sand. So I suppose you’re right. But I don’t think it’s happy.”

  “And well it shouldn’t be. This ‘pit’ as you call it is sanctified and warded. I have the bone shards of three saints here.” Adiella made the sign of the cross. “That it came as far as the doorway is another testament to its power. Still, it cannot pass my ‘line in the sand.’ It can look all it wants, but it can’t touch. As I said, I doubt the devil itself could step beyond my ward.”

  Bridget wondered how many “pits” Adiella had in the city. And were they all sanctified and warded with saint bones? Tavio had talked of them, places in the earth where his mother had found a natural, arcane pulse that augmented her magic. Clearly the witch could live here if she had to, with the heater and the bed and the generator that probably bled electricity from a city power line. Maybe this is where she lived when she wasn’t in her rundown bookstore.

  Bridget noticed that Adiella was sweating and squinting at notes she’d pulled from the trunk and spread on the floor next to the chair. She’d brought out candles, too, thick misshapen things that she lit with a snap of her fingers and held to her nose, inhaling the smoke. She placed the candles in a semicircle. The marks on the wall—that Bridget had at first thought unfamiliar gang symbols—glowed. They were sigils the witch had put up, maybe protecting this pit, maybe boosting her spells.

  Bridget’s legs cramped, and still she couldn’t feel her toes. She wanted to sit, even on the brick floor, but she resisted and continued to alternately watch Adiella and the demon, which had turned its warty, puss-oozing back to her.

  There were odd symbols on Adiella’s pages, some of which she traced with a gloved finger, some of which vaguely matched some on the walls. With the other hand, she drew invisible diagrams in the air above the largest candle, the smoke from the taper holding her designs for a moment, then curling toward the fluorescent lights. She spoke in a monotone, singsong voice that Bridget figured was a spell and that went on for many long minutes.

  “The demon—”

  “Is still here,” Bridget said. “It reached a claw out, but it looked like something stopped it.”

  “Sanctified, I said. Protected. It cannot come in here.” Adiella resumed chanting, padding again to her trunk and sorting through things Bridget couldn’t see. She retrieved several stoppered vials, sat on the floor cross-legged in front of the pages, and arranged the vials in some sort of order. The chanting reminded Bridget of a CD she’d recently purchased, featuring Benedictine monks; there were no instruments involved, and yet the monks’ chanting tones suggested such. Bridget flexed her fingers and shifted her weight from foot to foot, still having no feeling in them.

  Adiella uncorked the first vial and gently spilled the powdered silver from it in a pattern. The next vial contained brass shavings, the final three appeared to be filled with red, green, and blue glitter that one could purchase in a craft store. She clapped her hands and a wind arose, swirling around her pit and whipping the various shavings and powders into a miniature twister that joined the tendrils of smoke rising from the candles.

  Bridget blinked, grit spitting at her eyes.

  The wind was gone as quick as it had come, and what spread across much of the floor were intricate lines of the powders and shavings. Glitter covered Adiella’s brow except for where she’d rubbed at her hairline. Bridget stared: the lines intersected with some of the symbols and diagrams on the pages, and at sharp junctures blobs of wax from the candles hardened. Wisps of acrid smoke spiraled up from the blackened wicks. Adiella adjusted her scarf, tucked in a few errant white hairs, and chanted once more. Her age had come back upon her, wrinkles everywhere and her back rounded like a turtle shell. Her shoulders shook, and Bridget believed it was from grief. She’d not given the witch any proper amount of time to deal with the loss of her son. In truth, Bridget hadn’t taken time to properly mourn either. Tavio had been her world many years ago, and no matter that the marriage had unraveled, that he’d repeatedly cheated on her, he hadn’t deserved to die like that. There’d been good times, she’d been happy with him when the marriage was new. There was Otter.

  Adiella had been right. Tavio’s death was Bridget’s fault. Had she not been tempted to pick up the ugly briefcase in Elijah Stone’s place, Tavio would still be breathing. Otter would not be in danger.

  And Bridget would not be freezing in this hellish pit.

  All of this was her fault.

  The numbness from Bridget’s feet had spread up to her thighs. She considered stepping in front of the space heater, but stopped when Adiella let out a hissing breath and looked up.

  “The demon—”

  “Try again,” Bridget remonstrated. “It’s still here.”

  “The satchel. Set it in front of me.”

  Bridget edged forward, pausing and looking at the arcane mess on the floor.

  “Anywhere here. Just set it down.”

  Bridget did, turning it so the buckle faced the witch. “That buckle, I was wondering—”

  “Hush. Stand back, over by that crack.” She gestured with her chin and Bridget took it to mean the coffin-thick crevasse they’d come through to get here. “Stand in front of that.”

  She complied, her legs feeling heavy and stiff like steel girders. From here Bridget could see everything in the room, and—if it was possible—it felt even colder in this spot. Maybe Adiella wanted her to block a draft or put her at the edge of pneumonia. Maybe if Adiella severed the demon she’d kill Bridget for good measure. Bridget doubted she’d stand much of a chance against the angered witch. Then Adiella would have Otter.

  The demon looked over what passed for a shoulder and set all five of its eyes on Bridget. Then it snapped its attention to Adiella, who was chanting and fluttering her fingers, calling up another wind that sent the powders and shavings swirling around the ugly briefcase.

  If only Bridget hadn’t taken the damn satchel from Stone’s apartment! Bridget wondered how she’d been set up, the tip about the ancient treasure not coming from one of her men, but a “friend” of one of them. A fellow named Harry Black or Brown or Gray. Somehow Elijah Stone had gotten the word out about some great treasure, and eventually that word had reached Bridget, who was quick to go after it. She could never have enough wealth or enough relics, the more ancient the better. Never satisfied, she’d brought this all on herself.

  If only another thief in the city had cobbled onto the lure first.

  Tavio would still be alive.

  Otter would be at Tavio’s condo.

  Bridget wouldn’t be shivering somewhere under the Bronx.

  Dustin? Certainly he was in danger too. And Michael.

  Her fault, but that blame was something she needed to discard. She couldn’t undo what she’d done, and regrets couldn’t bring Tavio to life or put everything back in its proper, comfortable order.

  Bridget realized how quiet it had become. There was the faintest vibration, a subway train trundling on some track, and Adiella’s monotone voice. But the beast was not prattling. It had quieted the moment the witch started on her serious magic. It was shaking.

  “The demon—”

  “Is still here,” Bridget said. “But you have its full attention. I think maybe it’s actually worried.”

  This time Adiella’s words were faster and spirited, her
hand gestures exaggerated and wild. Her scarf fell back and Bridget saw that the witch had a polished bald section on the top of her head, the white hair framing it, a tonsure like a friar’s. There was something like a tattoo on the bald space, but Bridget wasn’t close enough to make it out; she guessed it was another arcane sigil.

  Adiella’s voice rose and the demon howled, a mournful baying that reverberated off the bricks and jarred Bridget to her bones. Bridget threw her hands over his ears, finding that the noise lanced its way in nevertheless.

  As Adiella sprang to her feet the briefcase burst into flames, and the stench that billowed away brought Bridget to her knees. A wind came again, violent, mean, and wicked, disregarding Bridget’s coat and shoes and settling a cold so deep inside her she feared it would be her death. The wind went on for minutes, the demon’s scream accompanying its keening. When it finally subsided, Bridget raised her head to see Adiella slumped unconscious in front of the space heater, wrinkles thicker than she’d ever seen them, like old tree bark.

  The briefcase, powders, shavings, candles were gone too … not a trace of them even against the walls. But the demon was still there, in the entranceway, and it had started to chatter again. Its demeanor had changed for the worse, and the drool that spilled from its lips was acidic, striking the floor and sizzling.

  Was she free? Had Adiella freed Bridget of the demon? She stepped into the crevasse, the demon edging toward her, stretching out a claw. Maybe Adiella had broken the curse, but had not chased away the creature.

  “Christ on a tricycle,” Bridget muttered. She looked between the beast and Adiella; the witch had started to stir.

  Adiella struggled to her hands and knees, picked up something on the rug in front of her and tossed it to Bridget. She reflexively reached out and caught it. The buckle from the briefcase was searing cold like dry ice and she dropped it. But the freezing metal had done its damage. Leaving behind an image of the buckle’s symbol scarred into the palm of Bridget’s hand as surely as if she’d been branded.

  “That clasp,” Adiella said, as she levered herself up using the trunk. She righted herself and adjusted the scarf. Her breathing slowed and the wrinkles melted. “That sigil, clasp if you will, is what binds the foul soul beast to this world and to you. I can’t destroy it. I can’t get rid of the beast. That piece of metal, it is an anchor, ancient and powerful, and beyond my ability to affect. And unless you can get some unwitting fool to steal it from—”

  “I said I won’t do that. I won’t let that thing pass to someone else, the slaughtering continue. It stops here somehow, and—”

  “How the sigil came to be on that briefcase case is a mystery perhaps unsolvable, especially since the case is no more. That I was able to destroy that part of it, however, was some minor victory. But that odd clasp … it was fashioned by a witch far more powerful than I, long long dead and from far away, certainly filled with a hatred or purpose stronger than even mine. The witch involved in the making of that metal, I get the sense that she hated something beyond demons, perhaps ironically championing them … or at least the demon that crawls in your shadow. I get that sense from the magic.”

  “How can you tell—”

  The witch waved away Bridget’s question. “I used my strongest magic and could only best the skin of the briefcase.” Her eyes tore into Bridget. “That creature—” she pointed a finger, guessing correctly at its position.

  “—is still here,” Bridget said. “Try again.”

  “I know it’s still here.” The witch cackled, the sound adding to Bridget’s shivers.

  “Then try—”

  “There is no ‘again’ for me. I told you it defies my magic.”

  “But Otter—”

  “Otter is the only family I have left … you’ve seen to that, Irish bitch. And you’ll keep him safe, no matter what you have to do to ensure that. On your very life—”

  “The demon—”

  “That demon is bound to you, Bridget O’Shea, and to a cause. Settle up with the demon. Maybe it wants something … find a way to provide it.” Adiella eased herself into the rocking chair and thrust her hands in her pockets. “Satisfy the soul beast, meet whatever condition it demands, and pray that it will be mollified and simply go away. The magic involved in its binding is complex, but I believe that somehow that is the crux of it … satisfying either the demon or the condition of its binding. Now leave me to grieve for my dear Tavio. Leave me to grieve and find your way home.”

  “Adiella, I don’t know what it wants. And I can’t possibly figure that out. I just can’t—”

  “Can’t?”

  “It babbles. Not words. Not anything I can understand.”

  “Find a way to talk to it, Bridget. Find a way. You’re a resourceful skel. Elijah Stone couldn’t talk to it, so it killed the women in his life. The demon’s attendants before Stone apparently couldn’t communicate either … hence the string of dead bodies you mentioned. Threats, those corpses were; threats to force the attendant to do its bidding, most likely. But you’re inventive, creative, or so my dear Tavio believed.” She puffed herself up, eyes red-rimmed. “If Tavio had never met you’d he’d be alive today. A curse to him you were, Bridget O’Shea. A poison pill he swallowed. So you find a way to communicate with that demon. Because if that demon kills my grandson, you Irish târfă, I will do far worse than kill you. Find a way to talk to it and give it what it wants, or you will discover that your personal demon is just the beginning of your troubles and pain. I’ll find a way to bring all of hell’s minions after your soul. Now get out of my pit.”

  ***

  Seventeen

  “Find out what the demon wants, she said. Satisfy it. The witch makes it sound so feckin’ easy.” Bridget stood in front of the gas-burning fireplace in her study, absorbing the heat; finally sensation returned to her feet. She thought about a hot shower, as she’d picked up some funk from the underground and wanted to steam the stink away, but that could wait, as she had no company that would be offended. Everyone else in the house slept. When she finally stopped shivering, she laid her coat across a chair and settled onto the over-dyed Turkish oushak rug.

  The buckle—it wasn’t really a buckle, but that word came to mind—was in front of her, faintly glowing in the light that stretched from the fire. Bridget was exhausted, having arrived back at her brownstone slightly before three a.m. Adiella’s magic had taken many hours, and now it was time to try her own.

  Without realizing it, her fingers lingered on the rug fibers, and in the back of her mind she saw the image of one of the women who’d woven the oushak a little more than a hundred years ago. The weaver had a long face and kind eyes, and Bridget sometimes found a little peace just by watching this particular woman. She had a family, as Bridget had noticed a wedding ring on her very first foray into the rug and had spotted a young boy interrupt the weaver’s work a few times, and calling out “babaanne,” which she’d learned was Turkish for grandmother. And once she’d seen an aging man shuffle by, kiss the top of the weaver’s head, and move on. Perhaps a husband. Bridget had only briefly known what it was like to be part of a blood-family. Her father had brought them to New York when Bridget was eleven. He immediately joined the Westies, rose in their ranks, and was killed by police the day after Bridget’s thirteenth birthday. He’d drawn a gun on a couple of patrol officers. Perhaps that was the reason Bridget refused to own any firearms.

  Bridget’s mother had never approved of the Westies and their illegal doings, and after her husband’s death had tried to make an honest living working part-time in a department store and doing bookkeeping at night. She was so absorbed with work that it was easy for Bridget to sneak out. Their savings dwindled as the cost of rent rose. Bridget’s mother decided the city was too expensive. And she feared Bridget would follow her father’s dark path—discovering that the girl indeed ran with Westies boys despite her pleas not to. So she made plans to return to Ireland for a better life and to take Bridget with her.<
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  Bridget, fifteen by this time, impetuous and bullheaded, ran away before she could be plucked from her beloved city. The Westies hid her and took her in, and that became her family, and in the gang’s ranks she found purpose and clarity. If her mother had searched for her, she’d been unaware. But she had learned that her mother had eventually returned to Galway. Bridget sometimes wondered if she’d made a mistake, if she should have gone with her mother. Or at the very least, if she should have kept in touch.

  She envied the little Turkish boy who again appeared in the back of her mind, hugged the rug weaver, and said: “Seni seviyorum babaanne.”

  “Seni seviyorum,” the weaver returned.

  Bridget couldn’t remember if her own mother had ever said she’d loved her. Probably; mothers did that, didn’t they? But her mother had worked so many hours that she’d spent little time with Bridget.

  Bridget’s grandparents? They’d been pictures only, faces of people from Kilkenny. Probably dead, maybe her mother was dead too. In the past eighteen years, Bridget had made no attempt to contact her mother.

  She should have. One more regret to heap onto her soul.

  One more.

  Bridget had gotten her magical talent from somewhere in her roots—mother, father, or more likely grandparents or farther back, often talents skipped generations. Her parents had never displayed any arcane gifts. She knew that Tavio had inherited nothing arcane from Adiella, and for that, both she and Tavio had been thankful. Otter? Would some gift pass to him?

  And could Bridget somehow satisfy the demon so Otter would be safe? How could she learn what it wanted?

  The demon perched on a bench across the room, slimy face pressed to the window, the image calling up a dog looking out on the world. It babbled, but not loudly, the sound more of a susurrus that blended with the crackling from the fireplace.

  “What do you want? So what the bloody blue hell do you want?”