by Sean Stone
“I need to ask a favour.”
The worry on her face was unmistakable. “What is it?”
“Nothing that will put you in danger. Or your little one.”
“What do you need?” she asked again.
“I just need to look through your books.” Ashley’s mum, Margie, had owned a massive collection of supernatural books and I was sure that there’d be something about gnomes in one of them. Something more than what I’d got from Clarke. I could see that Ashley was having a hard time coming to a decision. Was it because she didn’t want to be around me or because she didn’t want me near her mum’s belongings. Despite Ashley telling me the contrary, I know she blamed me for her mum’s death. Rachel had forced Margie to kill herself to teach me a lesson. Clearly I’d need to tell Ashley the whole story to convince her to help me. “It’s the missing children. A gnome’s been taking them. I need to stop it.”
Ashley bit her bottom lip and then nodded. “Come on,” she said reluctantly.
Thankfully, her dad was away on business, as usual. He hated me with a passion; he too blamed me for Margie’s death only he did not deny it. Ashley sent Leah upstairs to play and then led me through to the living room where Margie kept her books.
“I haven’t touched them since…” Ashley said. She stood in front of the light wooden bookcase. I stood next to her and thought about giving her some kind of comfort. Holding her hand, or a pat on the head or something. I don’t really know how to comfort people.
“I know how it feels to lose someone,” I said softly. My own mother had been murdered in almost the same way as Margie. A razor blade across the throat. The order had even come from the same woman. So I was familiar with what Ashley was feeling. The difference was, I blamed Rachel rather than someone who had only ever been a friend to me.
“Let’s…” She gestured for me to start. I grabbed the first book my hand fell on and went to the sofa to start looking. She followed my lead and we got to work together in silence.
“It’s funny isn’t it? We first met because you came to me for help and now I’ve come to you,” I said in a lame attempt to strike a conversation. I figured I should at least try to rekindle our friendship. It seemed silly not to use the time we had together.
“You didn’t come to me, you bumped into me,” she said distantly. She continued flicking through the book. She treated the pages with none of the care Clarke did.
“I guess.” I let some time pass before attempting a conversation again. “This reminds me of when we went through all these books trying to figure what was killing people in Mote Park.”
“Turned out my mum had the answer. Shame she isn’t here to help us this time.” I was shocked at how callous she was being. I’d never seen this side of Ashley. I didn’t bother speaking again. I trudged through book after book in absolute silence save for the turning of pages. Ashley made no attempt to talk to me. A long time passed, or at least it seemed like a long time, before we found something.
“Here we go,” Ashley said. She sounded a bit chirpier, proud of her find. “Gnomes are creatures just outside the fairy spectrum and that has always invoked bitterness in them.”
“Yep, Clarke told me that,” I said. I supposed the fairy tale was true then, or at least partly.
“They have a bitter rivalry with imps. They don’t live in our world.”
“What? Where do they live?” I wasn’t aware of other worlds. Except the place where the dead go.
“The lower realm, also known as the fairy realm,” she read.
“So they live in the fairy world but aren’t fairies. I can see why they’re so bitter,” I said. “That must be where Panomie takes the children. How do we get there?”
“Uh… Doesn’t say. No wait… We can’t. Only those from the fairy world can come and go.”
“So, they can enter our world willy-nilly but we can’t enter theirs? Seems unfair,” I said.
“Put in a complaint,” she shot and then grinned at me. I grinned back. We were getting somewhere. I decided to be smart and not point it out to Ashley.
“Does it say what he wants the children for?”
“Yes. Well, no. There are some theories.” She didn’t sound very eager to read them out.
“Go on.”
“Well, it says that gnomes have been known to kidnap young girls but nobody has ever figured out why.”
“What are the theories?”
“The first is that the gnomes have no females in their species and use human children to breed.”
“That’s…”
“Disgusting,” Ashley finished for me.
“Yes, but also not possible. They can’t reproduce at that age.” All of the victims had been about five years old.
“Maybe they groom them until they’re old enough. Or maybe the age doesn’t matter,” Ashley suggested.
“It can’t be that. He takes a new kid every week. When he’s not on a break anyway.” He seemed to take breaks of varying amounts of time before he moved to a new area. “He can’t possibly be breeding that much. He alone would have populated a small country by now. What are the other theories?”
“There’s only one more.” Her eyes skimmed the page. “Children are a rare delicacy.”
“That’s certainly less disturbing than the other one,” I said.
“Not by much.” Ashley closed the book and put it down.
“Is that all there was?” I asked.
She nodded. Well that was that. I was still not better off and now my time with Ashley was over.
“D’you want to get a drink or something?” I offered. Maybe we could brain storm a bit more and try to come up with an action plan like the old days.
She gave me a pitying smile. “Eddie… Nothing’s changed. We still can’t…” She inhaled deeply and stood up. “You’ve got what you needed and now you need to go.” I could tell this was hard for her but I didn’t care. It wasn’t exactly easy for me.
“Really, Ashley? Really?” I stood up too. “Are you really doing this?”
“I am.” She avoided making eye contact with me and folded her arms.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Yeah,” I laughed bitterly. “Yeah I do. Because you blame me for something that was out of my control. You blame me for Margie’s death. What is it going to take for you to realise that that was not my fault. It was Rachel’s!” By the time I was finished I was shouting.
“I don’t blame you, Eddie!” she shouted back. “I can’t be around you because of that… thing that lives inside you. That evil entity. It makes you dangerous, it puts me and my family in danger.”
“The darkness did not kill your mum.”
“No. Rachel did. And that darkness makes you like her.”
“No it doesn’t! I’m nothing like her!”
“You killed three-hundred people!” Ashley screamed at the top of her voice. Her face was red and her eyes were bulging at me. When Rachel had killed Margie I’d lost control and incinerated an auditorium full of people. It wasn’t my finest hour. “Every time you give in to that curse you become a bit more like Rachel. How can I have that around me? Around Leah?”
“I have it under control!” I yelled back and several china ornaments exploded.
Ashley took a deep breath to reign her temper in and then raised a single eyebrow. “Really?” she said quietly. I noticed that the sound of playing upstairs had ceased.
I turned away and tried to bring my temper under control. “It wasn’t my fault, Ashley. I know you won’t admit it but I know you blame me. I tried…” Tears rose up and I couldn’t speak. Margie’s death hadn’t exactly been easy on me. I’d been quite fond of her. “I know why you blame me. Even I blamed me at first. But I tried to save her. I did everything I could. Everything. If I’d known Rachel would… I never would have challenged her.”
Ashley’s hand touched my shoulder for just a moment before she pulled it back again. “Eddie, I don’t blame you.
I’m just… I’m just angry. I never got to say goodbye to my mum and I can’t help associating that with you because you were a part of that. I just wanted to say goodbye. You know that feeling. Don’t you?”
I did know that feeling. All too well. And I knew that Ashley would never be able to move on and forgive me if she couldn’t close the door on that part of her life. As it happened, I thought I had the solution.
“Get your coat, Ashley. There’s something we need to do.”
13
I was surprised when Ashley did what I said without question. She got Leah, obviously, she couldn’t leave the kid alone in the house; especially not when there was an evil gnome kidnapping children, all of whom were girls around the same age as Leah. We didn’t want to tempt fate.
Ashley drove us into town, I don’t drive. I can drive, I just don’t like to. I prefer to daydream and you can’t really do that in the driver’s seat. Not if you want to live anyway. I had a few lessons but that was it. The instructor wasn’t particularly fond of me.
I didn’t tell Ashley where I was taking her because I knew she wouldn’t come, but once we were there she’d hopefully go though with it. She parked up in the Fremlin Walk car park. I had to pay for parking. I was surprised that she didn’t realise where we were going until we were right outside the building. The Hazlitt theatre. The place her mum had died.
“Eddie, no,” she said in a whisper.
“Come on, Ash. You need to.”
“I need to what? Go and have a look at where my mum died? Do you really think this is going to help?” she said angrily.
“You need to say goodbye.”
“Then take me to her grave. I’ll do it there,” she said in almost pleading voice.
“You don’t understand. Ashley, she died here. I can bring her spirit back and you can actually say goodbye,” I said.
“You can?” she looked at me dubiously.
I nodded. “I know how to summon spirits from the realm of the dead. I don’t know how long it will last but it should give you enough time to say goodbye.”
“I can’t.” She was shaking her head profusely.
“You’re scared. I understand why. You think if you see her then you’ll have to start grieving all over again after. You’re scared you’ll lose her all over again. You won’t. I promise you you will feel better.” It was a bold promise to make considering I’d never gone through it myself. There’d been no second chance for me.
“Did you do this when your mum died?” she asked tentatively.
“No. I didn’t know how when my mum died and by the time I learned it was too late. There is a time limit on this sort of thing. After a certain amount of time you can’t summon the spirit so easily. Not safely anyway.” After too long the connection between the two realms becomes unstable and any old spirit can hijack it. Very dangerous stuff. “Will you do it?”
She looked at me with wide eyes. Eyes that were pleading me to offer her a way out but at the same time wanting more than anything to see their mum again. “Yes.” She nodded.
“Come on then. Let’s do it.” She held out her hand instinctively and I took it in my own. Then with Leah’s palm in her other hand she let me lead her into the theatre in which her life had changed so drastically.
As we passed each member of staff I clicked my fingers and put them to sleep. Ashley said nothing but I could tell she disapproved by the way she pursed her lips. She kept hold of my hand until we were right outside the auditorium, then she tensed up and withdrew.
“Are you sure you can really do this?” she asked. She knew that I could but a part of her wanted out. She was scared. Of what I didn’t know. Maybe she thought her mum would be angry, or maybe she thought it would bring back all the emotions she’d managed to suppress.
“I can. I know you’re worried but this needs to happen. You need to move on,” I said gently.
She nodded. I put my hand on the door to open it and she stopped me. “Wait. We can’t take Leah in,” she said and nodded her head at the child who was engrossed in a leaflet advertising Sleeping Beauty the pantomime. The sight of the poster made me want to burn down the auditorium again. I hate panto.
“Okay, so we leave her out here?” I suggested. She seemed occupied enough with the wall display.
“Really, Eddie? With all the kids going missing you want to leave one unattended?” she said.
“Fair point. But we both need to be in there. I need to cast the spell and you need to talk to your mum.”
“So I’ll wait here whilst you do the spell and once you’ve done it, come and swap with me.”
“Alright,” I said and then walked into the auditorium alone. Whoever owned the theatre had decided to refurbish it exactly as it had been before. It looked like I’d never set fire to it at all. Red velvet seats were arranged in exactly the same rows as before. The walls had been repainted red, the same red as the curtains on the stage. Even the carpet was red. Somebody really liked red. Maybe it was a theatre thing. I hadn’t been in many theatres so I wasn’t sure.
I took a quick walk down the aisle, trying not to think too much about what had happened here a few months before. I’d tried to get the better of Rachel and she’d forced Margie to kill herself as a punishment. I walked past the point behind the stalls where I’d attempted to take Rachel’s magic. The place she had given the order from. I walked around the seats and climbed up onto the stage where Margie had pulled the razor blade across her own throat and then died in silence as her husband and daughter were forced to watch. I looked out over the auditorium at the empty seats only I could still see the charred remains of the people I’d burned to death. Not thinking about it was proving to be more difficult than I’d preferred.
Summoning the dead is not one of those spells that you can do simply by force of will. It’s a spell that requires a bit more ritual and a lot more magic. Usually I would have grabbed some of the magic I keep stashed away for scenarios such as this one, but I forgot. Luckily, there was an alternative. When a sorcerer dies their magic gets stuck in the place of their death. Unless a warlock steals the magic at the time of the death. In Margie’s case no warlock did. That meant that her magic was in the theatre. When magic is trapped in a place it can be used by other sorcerers but not taken. Even warlocks can’t take magic once it belongs to a place. I’m the exception, because I am a special kind of warlock I can siphon magic out of places unless it’s protected. I couldn’t imagine that anybody had come back and protected Margie’s magic.
I dropped to one knee and placed my palm flat on the wooden stage at the approximate place Margie had died. I didn’t need to be in the exact spot but the closer I was the easier it would be. I could feel her magic at once. Like a low vibration humming gently inside the wood. Margie was not a greatly powerful sorcerer but she had been a skilled one. Her skill was worthless to me now, it was all about power and I hoped that she’d left enough to give me the boost I needed. I’ve been taking magic for enough years now that I can do it with little concentration. Sometimes I come across some magic that is a tad more difficult to nick but Margie’s was not. I barely had to think about taking it and the magic flowed right into me. My hand trembled a bit and a small glow appeared beneath my hand. The lights around the auditorium flickered and the one nearest to me shattered. That happened fairly often when I took magic and I don’t even flinch anymore. As I withdrew my hand I got used to the feeling of the new magic inside me. I didn’t like having Margie’s magic, it felt wrong, like stealing from a friend. When all this was done I’d give it up. I couldn’t put it back into the theatre but I could get it out of me. As I expected, there wasn’t much power but it would be enough for the summoning.
I needed to pop out of the auditorium to grab something. I did so via the backstage doors so as not to make Ashley think I’d already summoned Margie. It took a while because I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the building but I did manage to find way to the staff room. There was a guy in a little red waistc
oat in there and I promptly put him to sleep. A bit of digging around in the cupboards and I found a massive pot of salt.
Salt is very useful as a containing agent. It protects against a good number of things and is great for trapping them, or keeping them out. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. When summoning a spirit from the dead realm, they can sometimes get stuck on the wrong side and stay in the land of the living. To counteract that I was going to create a salt circle and summon Margie into it, that way when I broke the circle she would disappear. Unfortunately it did mean that neither me nor Ashley would be able to enter the circle. Not a problem for me but I thought Ashley might want to give her mum a hug. Most spirits can’t take fully physical forms anyway.
When people try to commune with the dead on television or in books they always use candles. That is a misconception of how summoning the dead works. It’s not the candle that holds the magic — unless it’s an enchanted candle — it’s the fire. Fire represents life and can be used to draw the dead to it. If you use candles you’ll get a weak connection. That’s why I didn’t use a candle. I conjured a fire in the centre of the stage and let it rise to about four foot high. Don’t worry, I wasn’t about to incinerate the place again. The fire would not spread without my say so and besides, it would be trapped in the circle. Magical fire cannot pass over salt. I don’t know why, it’s just one of the rules. I poured the salt in a thick circle around the fire leaving a generous amount of space inside. The next bit was the the tricky bit. The reason for doing the spell here was because Margie had died here so it would be easier to form a connection with her spirit. It also meant that any other spirit who died here would be able to hijack that connection. I wasn’t a major issue because the circle would contain whoever came but it would be a bit annoying if I got the wrong ghost. I’d done this once before and it was so long ago that I was having a hard time remembering exactly what I’d done. Rachel had taught me the spell and she’d talked me through every step. Now I was on my own.
I took a deep breath and concentrated. In my head I called Margie to me putting particular emphasis on her name. I repeated the summons over and over again and then began to say it out loud. “Margie Sheridan, hear my summons. Come to the fire. Come to the living.” I repeated it over and over again, getting gradually louder. The fire disappeared and with it every light in the room went out leaving me in darkness. I held my breath. I knew something was happening I just wasn’t sure what. I don’t remember it happening like this when Rachel had taught me the spell. The lights went out and then the spirit appeared, the fire never ceased burning.