The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series)

by Robert Chazz Chute

  Victor smiled and shook his head. “The blessings of many religions will do. Almost everything seems to work as long as there is faith behind it.”

  “Interesting. Mama will be pleased. She admits she’s not a very good Presbyterian, but once I tell her all this, I’m sure she’ll say a prayer over her cleaver and the steak knives.”

  Victor looked out over the city lights. He appeared to sober at the mention of my mother. “Well, Tamara, this is where we get to the uncomfortable part of the evening.”

  “Is it going to be worse than a serial killer holding a scalpel to my throat?”

  “Possibly. It’s about your mother.”

  “You don’t want me to tell her.”

  “No, no. You can tell her. She already knows.”

  Lesson 51: To survive Armageddon, don’t trust what you think you know.

  25

  “How could my mother know anything about this? When I told her I could see my dead boyfriend, she sent me to a mental hospital. Do you know what happened to me?”

  “Yes. I know. I’ve spoken with your mother.”

  That brought me to a dead stop and left me gasping. “Wh-what?”

  “You’re the last to know, I’m afraid. Before we continue, I must ask you two questions. First, why haven’t you tried to see your father?”

  I blinked back tears. “I don’t even remember him. I’ve been putting it off, trying to find an apartment and a job and…I just…I don’t know.”

  “Did you want to avoid disappointment, perhaps?”

  “I just wanted to get myself together before I opened up to meeting him. I didn’t want my father to think I wanted anything. He left when I was young. If I needed any help and he gave it, that would make what he did okay. Who leaves a wife and baby?”

  “Warriors,” Victor said. “In cases of war, many warriors must leave their loved ones behind in order to protect them. Even when…especially when those they leave behind are too young to defend themselves.”

  Before I could argue, he raised a hand. “But I think I understand your position. I just understand Peter Smythe’s position, too.”

  “Good for you. I don’t.”

  That was the first I’d heard my father’s name spoken aloud in years. Of course, I knew his name. I’d spoken it aloud to myself many times, usually as a little girl standing at my window hoping my father would finally come home. I never spoke his name aloud within Mama’s earshot.

  If she had to refer to her former husband, she’d say, “your father,” or, “that man.” As in, “That man left us with a ton of bills. I’ll be paying them off forever.”

  “Please,” Victor said, bringing me back to the present, “Come with me. I have something to show you. There are four buildings in the complex. You have toured three: the armory, the greenhouse and the library. The fourth begins at the far end of this wall. It is the barracks and the clinic.”

  We turned left into another building. From the outside, it looked like just another warehouse, hulking, black and windowless. Like the others, it was as long as a city block.

  “To house our army,” Victor said. The layout reminded me of a dormitory. It probably wasn’t much different from the university dorm rooms I should have been attending that fall.

  “What does this have to do with my father?” I asked.

  Victor appeared to be choosing his words carefully. “Before there was a barracks or a greenhouse, your father started the library. He had visions, just as you have had.”

  “Mama said it was schizophrenia.”

  “I have found several of our strongest warriors in mental hospitals, Tamara.”

  “If she knew my father wasn’t crazy, why did she say he was? How could Mama put me in a mental hospital if she knew the truth?”

  Then I remembered what she said as she left me at Shibboleth. “I don’t want to leave you here…but it’s the right thing to do. I want you cured, okay? I want you safe. I love you so much, baby girl.”

  I cried then. It wasn’t the kind of crying where silent tears slide down your face and you get to preserve a little dignity. I cried big, hot baby tears and I snuffled a lot. My nose ran and I wiped it away with my forearm. Victor offered me a handkerchief.

  “Don’t be too hard on your mother. Ellen wants to keep you out of the war.”

  “Ellen? You know her? Do you know her well? Like Sam?”

  For a moment I wondered if Victor was about to confess that he was my father. “That day at Holy Cross, did you follow me? That couldn’t have been a chance meeting! Are you my father?”

  “No.” Victor wiped away my tears. “I do wish I was, though. Your father would have been very proud of you. Ellen raised a smart and strong daughter. And yes,” he said, “I got you to come to me.”

  “How?”

  He shook his head. “It matters little, but it was a small charm, a stone actually. It has old magic. One of our seekers found it on the bottom of the Sea of Mull in Scotland. I had it with me that day. When I looked at you through the stone, you were drawn to me.”

  “My God! You roofied me! You magic roofied me!”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “Er…another way.” He looked flustered. “Your mother tried to protect you, but denying your talents is denying the inevitable. You’re safer among warriors now. You’re part of this. You’re one of us. You belong with the Choir.”

  “I could walk away.”

  “Doubtful,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you have genetic gifts that could help us win this war. If we lose to the demons, you’ll be in the war, anyway. Everyone and everything you have ever loved will be in the war. I’ll give you a hint. They are demons. They don’t have mercy.”

  Everything I ever loved would be in danger except the one person who mattered most now. Brad was safe from Armageddon. He could only have his arms ripped off and bleed to death once.

  I stared at Victor, trying to process all he’d said. Ghosts and demons were real. Magic was real. Magic had fallen out of fashion, but it had been around a lot longer than science and now magic was making a comeback.

  Victor and I stopped at a glassed-in catwalk high above a courtyard. I realized now that the four buildings of the complex formed a massive rectangle. When I went up on tip toes, I could see three courtyards. Two great stone walls cut through the center so the area in the middle was divided in thirds. I could make out the ruins of a church spire at the far end of the courtyard to my left.

  The parapet I’d walked atop was visible behind the library and the church ruins. I hadn’t understood how big the Choir Invisible’s stronghold really was until now.

  The high walls inside the Keep’s courtyards were not constructed of wood and black metal as they had been on the outside facing the streets. Each wall that rose from the courtyards was made of stone.

  In the center of each courtyard, young men and women in what looked like chain mail practiced with swords and spears and bows and arrows. Most of the swords were made of wood, but not all. I could hear metal ring on metal here and there as the Choir Invisible practiced. It looked like a scene from a movie.

  “The stones that line the courtyard walls are from ancient, destroyed churches from all over the world,” Victor said. “Quartzite, metamorphic rock, ordovician dolostone…even some coral.”

  I glanced back at the ruins of the church crumbling by the far wall. “Didn’t seem to help that church much.”

  “That collapsed from decay. This is strategy. The vibrations of millions of worshipers contemplating a blissful life eternal are trapped in those stones. The Corps of Monks say so, anyway. We look for any advantage over the demons. Those walls burn and repel the Darkness Visible.”

  I tore my gaze away from the sparring below. “Then why didn’t you put all that stone to good use on the outside walls?”

  Victor smirked. “We didn’t want to attract undue attention. Just mak
ing sure our little piece of Brooklyn is a no-fly zone costs millions each year. More important, this courtyard is a trap. The same battle that takes me will, I hope, trap the invasion force and end the war.”

  “I’m supposed to be blown away, huh?”

  “You’re not impressed by the Keep?”

  “Sorry, it’s just a bit much to take in all at once. Mama and I are going to have to have a serious talk about honesty. She freaked out when I lied about brushing my teeth at bedtime once. Her lies almost got me killed at Shibboleth.”

  “She was lying to herself as much as to you,” Victor said. “She didn’t want you to follow your father’s path.”

  “Looks like I am on his path now, doesn’t it? Besides, I really want to try on that chain mail. I’d look hot in chain mail.”

  Victor laughed, but he shut up when I shot him what Mama called, “the hairy eyeball.”

  “You haven’t told me where to find my father. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped talking around it?”

  “Peter Smythe is buried in the courtyard down there, at the foot of the wall. He died bravely. A demon named Cord, little brother to and bodyguard of Ra’s King Ba’al, killed him with a spear.”

  “When?”

  “Last spring.”

  “I see.”

  Victor put a light hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m feeling a little more sympathy for my mother all of a sudden,” I said.

  “And about your father?”

  “He’s already been dead a long time. To me, anyway. Where is Cord now?”

  Victor gestured to our view of the skyline beyond the Keep. “Here or back in Ra. He is one of those few who seem to be able to cross the barrier between dimensions with more ease. I have seen him. He often occupies the Ghost’s in-between dimension. I’m sorry. We have been unable to avenge Peter’s death.”

  “Where does this leave me?”

  “Here. Now.”

  I looked for a marker above my father’s grave but I couldn’t see it from where I stood on the catwalk.

  After a time, Victor cleared his throat. “People have forgotten what war is. We send a few dedicated people far away and the view most people get of what is done is sanitized. War touched us on 9/11. When the Darkness Visible breaks through, war will come again to New York and they’ll come to stay.”

  “How soon?”

  “We’re using strong enchantments to keep them out. No large force has broken through yet, but some demons get through, one or two at a time.”

  “So you don’t know when the attack will come?”

  “It could be in a month or a year. For now, it’s our magic against theirs. Across the world, there are monasteries of all stripes. The monks and nuns chant just as their orders have prayed for thousands of years. Whenever anyone says the words, ‘deliver us from evil,’ it reinforces the wall between our dimension and Ra. Still, that barrier is weakening. They have powerful magic on their side, too.”

  Farther down the catwalk, Victor showed me a better view of the central courtyard. Below us, the swordplay went on. Most of the duels took place on circular pads. The pads formed concentric circles that reminded me of crop circles. This was the Choir Invisible’s training ground.

  I watched as two combatants slashed at each other with sabers. They were a girl and a boy, a little younger than me. The boy had an excellent parry. Each time the girl lunged at him, he knocked her blade aside. He even managed to knock the sword from her hand several times in a row. Every time she dropped her sword, he allowed her to pick it up and try again.

  Mr. Chang would not have approved. “If you fail without consequence, you will repeat the mistake.” Every time I tried to throw Mr. Chang and failed, he would throw me.

  I looked at Victor. “You have a good defense. You can delay your opponents’ victory with a good defense, but you will never win that way. The fighter who hits hard has an advantage. The fighter who hits fast has an advantage. The fighter who hits first can win over the hard and the fast. A good offense is the only defense that lasts.”

  That’s Lesson 52.

  “Do you wish to visit your father’s grave and meet some of your compatriots?”

  I hadn’t seen my father since I was very young. Looking at the patch of grass that hid him away could wait.

  “I don’t know demons, sir.” I said. “But there is a doctor in Queens who is a homicidal maniac. I can identify him. We should go get Brooks.”

  “Is that a yes to joining the Choir Invisible?”

  “Like Mama says, let’s eat what’s on our plate first before we figure out if we have room for dessert.”

  26

  Vlad drove Victor and me to Queens in an old VW bus. A young man and woman sat at the back of the bus. They might have been twenty-five or so.

  The guy wore his hair long and loose and was dressed in black leather from head to toe. He carried a long walking staff. He wore one of those perpetual three-day beards that seem meticulously trimmed to look casually macho.

  The woman was one of those glamor girls with smooth mocha skin and, to the naked eye, it appeared she had no pores. It was as if a photoshopped model had stepped out of a fashion magazine cover in thigh-high boots. She wore big glasses with heavy black frames. Her hair was coiled in a tight bun and a long string of pearls hung over a plunging neckline. Her dress was black with a subtle flower print. The weirdest thing was she carried a white parasol with a golden fringe.

  I glanced back at them and asked Victor, “What’s with young Gandalf and the sexy librarian?”

  “Two of my best singers,” Victor said.

  I snorted, covered up, then burst into a laugh again. When I could control myself, I leaned forward to whisper to Victor. “If you people want to keep a low profile, I suggest you dress down. Nobody would notice an army of hipsters moving through the streets of New York. Give them all a Starbucks coffee to carry around and they’ll blend in. I looked at those two for three seconds and could pick them out of any police line up.”

  “Noted.” Victor smiled. “Thank you, Tamara.”

  Vlad, hunkered over the wheel, grunted. “That means he will not follow your suggestion, Miss Tamara.”

  “Thanks, Vlad. I got that. What’s the plan, sir? Find Dr. Carl Brooks in a compromising position and call the cops?”

  “Something like that.”

  I looked to Vlad. He shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  Victor leaned closer to me. “You saw what Carl Brooks did when you channeled the dead woman?”

  “That was channeling?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could change the channel. I didn’t expect to throw up at the end of the vision.” If I closed my eyes, I could still see the faces of those dead girls. Without teeth, their faces looked a third shorter than they should have been.

  “And you understand that Rory saw what Dr. Brooks is doing?”

  I nodded.

  “Would you say Dr. Brooks is guilty?”

  “Sure, I would.”

  “Just so,” Victor said. “And would you agree that the doctor is evil?”

  Vlad interrupted before I could speak. “It is possible there is not Evil with a big E. Actions can be evil. Perhaps the doctor is simply mentally ill in a dangerous way. This is an important distinction.”

  Victor sighed. “Making fine distinctions is how we will lose this war. Would you agree, Vlad, that the doctor’s actions are Evil, with a big E, whether he is personally evil or deranged?”

  Vlad nodded.

  “Then his actions are weakening the wall between us and the armies of the Darkness Visible.” Victor raised his voice so the pair at the back of the bus could hear him. He was not simply answering my question anymore. He was giving a speech. “Every act of evil counters the energy of a thousand prayers. The activities of every individual throughout the realms of the multiverse echo and impact the dynamics of the world that person inhabits. Our actions also affect the struc
tural integrity of the barriers between dimensions. By executing the guilty, our objective tonight is to stop not only the man, but to stop Hell itself from spilling over into our world. To strengthen the wall, it is insufficient to bring Carl Brooks to justice in our world. If he was to travel the long journey through the justice system’s machine, his emanations would still contribute to weakening the wall that keeps the Ra at bay. Brooks must be erased. Everything we think and do lends energy to or pulls energy from the architecture of the universe. This is a psychic war as much as it is a physical one.”

  My jaw dropped. If she’d been there, Mama would have said, “Close your mouth, Tammy. You’re catching flies.”

  His speech reminded me of Samantha’s words about the value of working at the funeral home. “This is a valuable opportunity to serve people when our service is most needed.” Sam was helping to keep the barrier against the demons strong, too. Despite wanting to opt out and pretend the world was more peaceful than it was, Sam was a warrior in her own way. She was a warrior in a way I preferred. Being nice to people and performing a random act of kindness each day sounded like an easier path than slaying demons.

  Finally, I found my voice. “Victor, you’re talking about murder.”

  “I’m talking about saving lives.”

  I looked to Vlad. He said nothing. My living lie detector kept his eyes on the road.

  “War has different rules, Tamara,” Victor said. “We are on the side of the angels.”

  Vlad cleared his throat and Victor jumped in, “Metaphorical angels, Vlad! It’s an idiom. I mean, of course, we’re doing what we must to stave off Armageddon. To keep the Darkness Visible out, we must slay the Darkness Invisible that’s already inside our borders.”

  “This is nuts,” I said. “You better let me out here.” I had no idea where I was, but I felt like I was in the wrong place with crazy people. If Sam could opt out, so could I. I’d keep my head down and be nice to grieving people and maybe chant, “Deliver us from evil,” a few times a day.

  “How long until we get to our objective?” Victor asked.