Pockets of Darkness

by Jean Rabe

  “As you command, Bridget.”

  The shop was warm and the strong scent of clay reminded her of Hilimaz’s pottery shop. Finished pieces were arranged on shelves. Some were beautiful with bright, glossy glazes, solids and patterns. Others looked crooked and primitive, and the signs underneath indicated the young age of the potters.

  At the back of the shop was what Bridget was interested in.

  “Can I help you?” The woman who walked up between the aisles of pottery was tall and stocky, gray-brown hair pulled back in a bun, and her face was dusted with only a smidgen of makeup. Bridget guessed her to be about sixty.

  “I want to throw a couple of pots. I see you have a wheel.”

  “We have afternoon classes. Eight-week sessions—”

  “—for three hundred dollars. I saw your ad in the Yellow Pages.”

  The woman smiled. “Beginners to advanced and—”

  “I’m a little of both.”

  The demon started chattering at her side. “Rip out the heart of this woman, Bridget, I could. Smash the skulls of—”

  “How about I pay you three hundred for a couple of hours?” Bridget still had a wad of cash from when she’d escaped from her brownstone. She peeled off three hundreds and pressed them into the woman’s hand. “I only want to make two pieces and get them fired.”

  A few minutes later, Bridget was working the clay on the wheel, sluicing up the water like Hilimaz had done. At first her efforts resulted in something silly and crooked-looking, but she kept at it, the demon softly babbling the entire time about his Aldî-nîfaeti allies and what all of them could do to “take control of this land with Bridget leading the way.” Though she’d not worked the clay in ancient Sumer, she’d watched Hilimaz each time she’d made a bowl, so closely it seemed like her own hands were doing the forming. Bridget recalled an old movie she’d watched many years ago: Patrick Swayze’s Ghost. There’d been a sensuous scene where Demi Moore was working clay on a wheel, and Patrick Swayze was there with her. At the time she thought pottery might be a good activity. But the movie over, a young Bridget lost interest in that notion.

  She actually liked the feel of the wet clay against her fingers, and she wished she’d brought Otter with her. It would have been a good idea to let him watch, hear the spell she would work into the clay. Hilimaz said anyone could catch a demon if they knew the words. And though Hilimaz also said that women were better suited to such work because of their clever minds, Bridget knew her son was very bright. She ought to teach him this one arcane thing; if demons indeed lived forever, who knew how many were wandering around in this present day? She had half-glimpsed odd and shiver-inducing things during some of her forays into the subway and particularly with Jimmy. Maybe there were demons down there.

  The shop owner was fortunately busy with other customers when Bridget started engraving the spell. She kept her voice low, with a melodic sing-song lilt that she’d heard Hilimaz use.

  Bridget started at the center of the bowl, where she drew a stick figure using the tip of a key she pulled off a ring. The key was useless; it had been to her beloved brownstone. The characters she etched spiraled away from figure. “I Bridget the strong-willed call Yaqrun, Aldî-nîfaeti, slayer of farmers, destroyer of children. I take her by the tentacles. I pierce her dark and evil eyes that she may no longer look upon the people of New York. Sahtiel help me in this catching. Aid me that I might grab Yaqrun by her many limbs and by her thick neck and say ‘remove the curses and the pain from the hearts of those you have raged against.’ I adjure you in the name of Ruphael and Sathietl and in the name of Prael the great and under the eyes of Inanna of the morning and evening. Bother no more the people of New York City. They must be teased no longer, teased nevermore, cursed no more, Aldî-nîfaeti-vexed no more. I am Bridget the strong-willed, the binder and the cleanser. I turn away all things fetid and foul. I protect the people of New York City. I bind. I bind in clay and powerful words. I heal and annul. With these words I catch I bind. Weapon of clay, mother wet-earth, in the names of angels Sariel and Barakiel and Prael the great. Under the gaze of Inanna of the morning and evening, I Bridget the strong-willed shackle the Aldî-nîfaeti named Yaqrun, slayer of farmers. In so doing I free the hearts of the people of New York City. I ease their troubles. I Bridget the strong-willed protect this city from all vileness. Bind and seal and capture forevermore the Aldî-nîfaeti named Yaqrun.”

  “Bridget, please do not do this thing,” her demon practically whimpered.

  She placed the finished bowl aside and reached for another clump of clay, starting the process over again. “Ijul, what is the name of the other Aldî-nîfaeti that I released with Yaqrun?”

  “Bridget, please! Together we can attain greatness and rule this land, crush—”

  “Give me the feckin’ name of the putty-beast, Ijul. Now.”

  “Kaliv-re, Bridget.”

  She stopped herself from saying “Thank you.” This bowl did not take as long, and she’d made both relatively small and thick. In her time with the old potter she’d learned that the size of the bowl didn’t matter—so long as they were large enough to hold the words to the spell. Hilimaz had made them various sizes depending on her mood and how long she wanted to work at the wheel. Neither did any glaze or paint need to be poured across the characters for them to be more easily read; that was just for esthetics, to make her customers believe more work and magic had been incorporated.

  “I need them fired,” Bridget told the shopkeeper. Hilimaz hadn’t always waited for her pots to dry before using them to catch Aldî-nîfaeti. But the ancient Sumer city was nothing like New York. There were so many people here in a hurry, jostling each other on the sidewalks and in the subways and on the busses. Bridget had never seen a soul bump into Hilimaz. “They’re stronger fired.”

  “Definitely. I’ll have a load ready to fire in three or four days.”

  Bridget peeled off another hundred. “I need them fired now.”

  “Well … all right. Still, it takes time. I mean, I fire them now, you’re not going to get them until—”

  “How long?”

  “If I fire them now, the kiln should be cool enough to open tomorrow. We open at eleven. So you could come back then.”

  Bridget pulled out the rest of her money, keeping a hundred and twenty back in case she needed something for bus or subway fare. “Open early. Really early.” She waved the money at the woman, who screwed up her face in puzzlement.

  “Eight,” she said.

  “Seven. And all of this …” Bridget counted the money, reserving the hundred and twenty. “Three hundred and sixty-three dollars. I’ll give it to you at seven tomorrow morning.”

  Bridget didn’t stick around waiting for the potter to ask what the rush was for.

  Ijul in tow, she stopped at a Chinese take-out place and spent the hundred dollar bill on an assortment of dishes and a two-liter bottle of Coke, then went back to Adiella’s pit to tell Otter she hoped to have the demons caught in plenty of time for Tavio’s funeral.

  “I’m not ready to say it’s safe out here yet. Give it a while longer.”

  “Dad’s funeral tomorrow,” Otter prompted.

  “We’ll make it in time.”

  She ordered Ijul to stay put in the crevasse, and to not touch a single human, even though he mentioned to her again just how delicious warm hearts tasted. Bridget briefly entertained the notion of delving the buckle. Indeed, she intended to do that—get to the crux of the entire matter with Ijul, but not now. She worried that she might encounter another witch like Hilimaz who could hold her in the past; she didn’t want any more days passing by down in the subway. She wanted Yaqrun and Kaliv-re securely ensconced in clay, Tavio laid to rest, and Otter and the others safe.

  Then she’d peer into the buckle.

  Bridget propped herself against a wall and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. She didn’t want to deal with all of their questions, especially with Quin asking if she’d seen his bro
ther Alvin. She would tell Ijul to move the body before the night was up. Through the stone, she felt the faint and pleasant vibration of a subway train and inhaled the scents of Chinese cooking.

  ***

  Thirty Six

  Bridget and Otter had to walk a few miles to the Red Hook Grain Terminal.

  “I needed to get out,” Otter said. “That cave, pit, hole, whatever you want to call it. Felt like a coffin.”

  She didn’t say anything. Bridget had said plenty earlier, demanding he stay in Adiella’s pit until this matter was resolved. He decided otherwise and promised to sneak out if she didn’t take him along. So rather than risk that and risk him running afoul of something human or otherwise, she’d grudgingly agreed he could come with her … after demanding that Ijul protect him.

  “Three days down in there, Mom. Really, it felt like I was in a coffin, you know. I need a hot bath. I just feel so friggin’ dirty. I’m going to All is Well when you’re done doing whatever you’re doing here.” All is Well was a men’s spa in the Flatiron District. Bridget knew Tavio used to go there and no doubt had introduced Otter to the place.

  Otter had no trouble keeping up, despite the fast pace Bridget managed. One thousand five hundred and seventy-six steps, the lower third taken two at a time, in the Empire State Building run. Maybe next time she’d invite Otter to participate in the Run Up.

  But “next time” was going to be a while off, she suspected. As much as she loved New York—and never in her adult life had been out of the city—she was starting to question staying here. Her brownstone gone, her antique store and the warehouse. She had plenty of investments so that she could rebuild. But should she?

  Should she start over somewhere else?

  “This is a creepy place we’re going to.” Otter pointed ahead. His breath was puffy against the frigid air, like he was smoking an invisible cigarette. Bridget thought his face appeared hard and had lost the boyish charm she’d noted only a handful of days ago during his birthday dinner. His eyes were marbles, the sparkle gone.

  Fifteen, not fifty, she thought. Losing his father, seeing a demon burn down the brownstone. How much had all that aged him? Certainly there were things he’d never un-see and would disturb his dreams for all the decades of his life.

  “Maybe we should’ve taken a cab.… provided a driver would’ve risked coming here. The place looks haunted.”

  Bridget had to admit that it did look eerie. And if it had been just her, she would’ve taken a cab from the last subway stop. But with Otter along the fare would have exceeded the twenty bucks she’d left herself. And the banks weren’t open yet to replenish her funds.

  “Looks like it would make a great set for some horror movie, Mom.”

  It is the set for horror, Bridget mused. The Red Hook Grain Terminal was where Ijul directed her. The demon said Yaqrun was living somewhere amid the concrete silos. Her demon could apparently sense where others of his kind were.

  “Place hasn’t been used for half a century.” Bridget finally said something. A heavy layer of frost covered everything, but the black mold on the concrete was still visible beneath. “When the barge canal was dug, rerouting the Erie Canal, they built this place. The Red Hook waterfront used to be a busy place, Otter.”

  She’d first discovered the place in her youth in the company of the Westies boys she ran with. There were fifty-four silos, and once upon a time grain was mechanically hoisted into them from the bellies of ships that had pulled up. It was considered an engineering miracle in its day, but it had too-fast become obsolete as the grain trade in New York declined. It had become cheaper to unload grain in Philadelphia and Baltimore. So the jobs vanished, the docks decayed, and the area’s residents took up living in “Red Hook Houses,” ugly public housing projects. The place became thick with crack cocaine, and despite the gentrification in the area—all the specialty shops and wine bars that were moving in—drugs were still around.

  Bridget hadn’t been back since she explored the place with the Westies boys. Even they had been intimidated by the criminal element that clung to the abandoned terminal’s fringes and they’d never ventured there after the sun went down. There were scattered news reports in the past few years that the owner of the industrial park was looking to build the property farther out into the bay by laying in a landfill made of sludge and concrete.

  Cradling her box with the fired bowls nested inside, Bridget nudged Otter toward the closest silo. “See there?” She kept her voice down and nodded toward an ash-gray van. “Security.” It must have pulled up recently, as there was no trace of frost or snow on it.

  “Who’d want to protect this dump?” Otter worried his foot against a piece of cardboard frozen to the ground.

  “They’re probably not protecting this place so much as trying to prevent people from getting in and hurting themselves.”

  Otter chuckled, and then dropped his voice. “Oh, I get it. Urban explorers, huh? The urban explorers ought to go check out Grandma’s little cave in—”

  A piercing “ahhhhhhooooooo” sliced through the air. Bridget thought it might have been a boat horn. But it came again and ended with the loud clanking of metal on metal, coming from a nearby silo.

  “Yaqrun,” Ijul said. “I told Bridget I smelled Yaqrun in this direction. Yaqrun cries a kill.”

  “Wonderful,” Bridget said.

  “What’s wonderful? This place is—”

  Bridget’s scowl stopped Otter from saying anything else.

  “Bridget, once more I ask you not to do this horrid thing. Do you not realize that with Yaqrun at our side, you and I can defeat an army? With the powerful Yaqrun, we can—”

  She scowled at her demon too, but that did not shut it up. The thing continued to prattle on about conquering New York City and then the land and the sea beyond. The ooze that ran down its sides this morning was thin and sluggish, and frost covered its warty hide. She wondered if it felt cold or heat.

  “I still think this isn’t the best idea, Otter, you coming along.” But she hadn’t stopped him, and she hadn’t given him the slip when she could have. She really was considering teaching him the art of demon-snaring. But she hadn’t even practiced it yet herself, only lived it vividly by watching Hilimaz.

  “Better idea than staying down in that hole with Michael and—”

  “Then c’mon, and watch yourself. I’ll be too busy to watch out after you.” She cut a look to the demon.

  “Protect Otter,” it said.

  Everything inside that wasn’t concrete was rusted. Evidence of urban explorers was on the walls—spray painted initials, gang symbols, a caricature of a big-nosed woman who was perhaps a singer or other celebrity. A door had been painted turquoise; it looked recently done, with IOII stenciled in bright white on it. All the details were easy to see as light came in through broken windows. Not a pane of glass was intact. An attempt had been made to cover some of the windows; dingy plastic hung over a few in tatters, flapping like agitated ghosts. Through a gap in the plastic, Bridget saw part of a building a hundred feet away that had collapsed into the canal.

  “So … this demon you’re hunting,” Otter said. “It’s in here?”

  “Apparently,” Bridget returned. “And they’re actually called Aldî-nîfaeti. I think I’m going to teach you a little Sumerian when we’ve some quiet time. A pretty language; you’ll probably catch on quick.”

  “Cimmerian?”

  “Su-merian. Conan the Barbarian is not involved.”

  A rust-covered ladder with high steps led up. Her demon squatted at the base.

  “Yaqrun is above,” Ijul said.

  “Yeah, I figured.” There was no trace of the demon down here, though charred spots on the concrete floor indicated that maybe it had consumed someone here, maybe a vagrant, a blanket and an empty peaches can against a wall suggested someone had stayed here. Maybe Yaqrun had torched a security guard.

  She took a step up, looked down. “Ijul, protect Otter, remember. Always
protect Otter.”

  Otter opened his mouth to say something, but apparently thought better of it.

  Bridget climbed higher. “You coming?”

  “You talking to me? Or you talking to your invisible demonic buddy?”

  “Yes,” Bridget said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She guessed it was about ninety feet up to the top level. And with every other rung she climbed she said “Yaqrun.” Saying its name would hold it in place. That, and its arrogance and lack of fear. Hilimaz said Aldî-nîfaeti feared only the gods—some of the gods—and that for the most part they were unaware Enlil had learned how to capture them and passed that knowledge to his chosen people.

  “Yaqrun,” she said.

  “Please do not do this thing, Bridget,” Ijul grumbled.

  “What did I tell you,” she shot back.

  “To protect Otter. To not feast on human hearts.”

  She should have worn gloves. Bridget cradled the box to her with one hand and kept her other hand on the railing. Not that she needed help in climbing, but she worried that the steps were so rusted one might give way and she wanted something to cling to. She hadn’t given a thought to what would happen to her if she plummeted dozens of feet and hit the concrete below; her concern was for the bowls she’d crafted and inscribed.

  The higher she went, the colder the railing became. It wasn’t her imagination. It was bone-numbing cold of the sort that no matter how many blankets you piled on or how close to a fire you sat you could not feel any warmth.

  Some Aldî-nîfaeti exude cold, Hilimaz had told her one summer day, particularly if they are happy. “I do not know why,” the old potter said, “only that they do it. Some say hell is cold, and my husband’s mother—who spoke directly to Enlil, who had been banished there for a time—claimed that hell freezes your eyes open and your throat shut. That Aldî-nîfaeti would be pleased if the world became so cold like unto hell, like their home.”

  “Yaqrun,” Bridget said again. “Yaqrun. Yaqrun. Yaqrun.”