by Ramy Vance
“Oh, you know. The usual.”
“The po-po on your back?”
“Yep. And where did you learn a word like ‘po-po?’ ”
“Kevin Hart. My last owner was a big fan.”
“I see.”
“Good owner. Lots of entertainment. I was almost sad to make him … you know.”
“Go insane.”
“That’s the one. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. So to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ester was trapped already, cursed to live in the box, and I wasn’t sure what the rules for curses were anymore. I had used the salt as a precaution, an extra layer of defense, but given how quickly she’d given up trying to get out, I didn’t think it was necessary.
“Your curse. I want to—”
“I don’t suppose you know how to break my curse, do you?” she interrupted, her voice so excited that the box actually rattled.
“Sorry—I have no idea.”
At this, she audibly groaned. “Only so much fun I can have trapped in here. Remember when you freed me the last time? Boy, did we have fun. I gave those kids a waking nightmare that had them begging you to eat them …” Her voice trailed off as she reminisced about the good old times.
Just when I thought she was done walking down memory lane, she chirped in a tone way, way, way too jovial given the topic, “Oh! Oh, oh, do you remember when we haunted the Skirrid Mountain Inn in Wales? How many teenagers ‘entering on a dare’ did we get in there? First I’d drive them mad, and then you’d suck them dry. What did you used to say after every meal? The insane tasted like Cajun chicken?”
“Something like that,” I said, unable to hide my shame. Justin’s hand tightened on my shoulder as the dybbuk casually talked about our shared past. As much as I wanted Justin to know everything about me, my human-eating days were one thing he didn’t need to know about.
“Yeah, something like that …” Ester repeated, her own voice taking on a curious tone, like she sensed my regret. Which, given my vampiric past, was unusual.
“Ahh, Ester … as much as I’d like to walk down evil memories lane with you, I’m on the clock here.”
“Ho-hum,” she replied. “So what brings you to my studio apartment?”
“A question.”
Her voice became very solemn. “An exchange.”
I shook my head. “No, just a question.” The dybbuk’s box stood silent for a minute, so I added, “Or I can leave.”
“But Ka-at,” Ester whined. Given her hag-like voice, it came out more like a ghost’s haunting groan than a plea.
Two people walked into the exhibit room, and not wanting to be heard, I leaned in. “Ester, if I were you I would whisper lest the humans discover your presence and perform an exorcism.”
I heard a low gulp before she whispered, “Kat, we’re friends. Introduce me to one soul. Just like the old times. Just one soul so I may play.” And therein lay the dybbuk box loophole. The box was not meant to be owned by anyone, but rather put somewhere and forgotten. If, however, the box was claimed, then the owner risked possession, and anyone the owner introduced the box to was subject to Ester’s powers of possession.
I owned the box for a few years back when. Ester, evil bitch that she was, tried to possess me several times, but one of the advantages of being a vampire is that your mind is so selfish that no one, be it by magic, guile or love, can possess you.
After a few mental battles which left Ester the worse for wear, she gave up trying to enter my mind.
I guess my inner workings are too messed up even for a demon. I would be Freud’s nightmare.
“No,” I said, “I’ve come seeking an answer to one question. A question I wish you to answer honestly … for old time’s sake,” I added.
“Oh come on, you don’t have someone I can haunt? A person to terrorize, just a little bit? We are connected, after all. You only need to introduce me and my magic—”
“Your magic,” I said. “Tell me, do you know of the limitations of magic in this new world?”
“Limitations?” she asked. “Ahh, I see what you mean. Time for magic, magic for time. I’ve heard that is the new world order.”
“Precisely. But your curse must affect how your magic works. Have you used your magic since the gods left?”
There was a long silence before she answered. “Yes, but why do you wish to know? Katrina Darling,”—the hag paused, and I heard an audible sniff—“you smell different. No blood. You haven’t fed in a long, long time.”
Ignoring her, I spoke in the insistent, demanding tone I often used as a precursor to a threat. “Tell me, dybbuk demon, have you aged since the gods left?”
“Aged?”
The trouble with spirits: they don’t always understand straightforward questions. And the concept of age to an immortal being was something most had yet to grasp. I tried a more archaic tact. “Does the march of time carry you in its wake and bring you closer to death with every ticking second?”
“Of course not, dearie. I am as I always was. As I always will be.”
Bingo! That was all I needed to know.
“Thank you for your time, dear Ester. May time never touch you.”
“And you, dearie.”
Pressing against Justin’s hand, I motioned for us to step back over the velvet rope.
Once across, I found his hand and put it in mine, leading him outside and away from the box.
We didn’t take two steps before Justin whispered, “Phew, glad that’s done.”
There was a cackle that scared the three people who had wandered in so much that they literally jumped before hurrying out of the room. “Thank you, Katrina. I knew ye would nae let me down.”
Looking at the box, I noted that the dividing rope was still lightly swinging from our exit. Stupid humans and their velvet ropes.
Curses—They’re Not Real … Are They?
“What did I say? What was the one thing I asked you not to do?” I screamed at Justin as I led him outside and across the street.
Once we were in an alley where no one was looking, I let go of his hand. As soon as I did, I reappeared. When he saw the fire in my eyes, he said, “You told me not to say anything, but Kat … I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what? Use that big mouth of yours to announce your presence to a being older than mountains and more evil than Skeletor, Azazel, Cobra Commander and just about every other evil character combined?”
“OK, OK—I messed up. But I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s just a voice in a box.”
“Not just any voice. The dybbuk’s voice. That’s one incredibly evil spirit.”
“Who is stuck in a box in a museum that’s miles away from where we live. What’s she going to do? Take an Uber and bug me?”
“You just don’t get it. She is evil incarnate. She could … she could …”
“What, Kat? What could she do?”
The truth was, I didn’t know. In the past, her magic only worked if her box was in the same room as those she terrorized. Justin was right: she was locked away in a museum in the middle of downtown. What could she do?
I would have to do research—yay, more books!—and figure it out, but just going off of what I knew about dybbuks and curses, I didn’t think there was much she could do.
Still, she was ecstatic when she’d heard his voice. And spirits like her rarely tip their hand unless they think there will be no blowback, or … or unless they’re messing with your head.
“I just don’t know,” I finally said. “Could be nothing, or she could come after you with the full brunt of her evil—”
“ness?”
“Yeah, that. Look, I’m not sorry I got angry, but I am sorry I put you in harm’s way. I thought it would be OK, and clearly it—”
“Was OK. Nothing happened.” He patted himself down. “See, no holes. I’m fine.”
“Maybe. I … I need time to think,” I said. “I’m going to walk home alone.”
His eyes flickered with p
ain. Oh Justin, he never could hide what he was feeling. He’d be a terrible poker player.
“I’m fine. We’re fine. I just need to think. You get that, don’t you?”
He paused and nodded.
“OK, I’ll see you tonight,” I said as I started to walk away. “And no going back into the museum.”
Justin shuddered. “Not for all the tea in China—whatever that means.”
“Actually, it’s an expression from—” Cutting off my own geekery, I shook my head. “I’ll see you later.”
And with that, I made my way back to Gardner Hall, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together as I did.
↔
The world is quite beautiful after a snowfall. Everything covered in white, fresh snow crunching beneath your feet. The air smells clean, as if all the smells of exhaust and dirt and people have been frozen under the blanket of newly fallen crystal fractals.
But that’s only after a fresh fall. As soon as the city wakes up, starts packing the snow beneath its boots and wheels and snow plows, Montreal’s dusting of serene white becomes a blanket of every shade of gray and black and guck that exists between white and black.
Since it hadn’t snowed in a few days, Montreal was practically a brown paper bag that day I walked up the hill to think about my boyfriend and the hag dybbuk.
Going to the museum with him was stupid. He wasn’t ready, but he was so keen to join the good fight, I thought I’d give him a taste of what the good fight really looked like.
And oh-so-smart, always-thinking-ahead me thought that “taste” should come in the form of this dybbuk—one of the oldest and most evil spirits I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing (of course, when I was a vampire, I would have substituted “displeasure” with “ecstatic joy”).
With everything going on with the superheroes and their absolute lack of aging—something that shouldn’t have been possible; in the GoneGod World, magic always costs time—I had a theory that magic might be limited, but curses might not.
The dybbuk was cursed to live in the box until the end of the world. In theory, that meant she would outlive us all. If, that was, the curse still held.
And I think it did.
My first indicator had come when the dybbuk hadn’t tried to shake the salt off the edges of the box. That meant she was still stuck in there. And what was more, the fact that she hadn’t aged despite using her magic meant her powers fell outside the rules of magic.
Actually, I didn’t think she was using magic at all, but rather, her evil was being fueled by the curse itself. In order to understand her better, I needed to remember her curse in its entirety. Luckily for my eye-fatigued reading habit, I have a damn near photographic memory and this dybbuk’s curse was something I already knew.
She was a chaos spirit, put on Earth to lead humans into evil. To—and I quote: “Infect their hearts with the desire to sin.” But at the turn of the century, she was captured by a group of rabbis who confined her to a box. There she would live until this world was no more.
But despite the gods leaving, this world ticked on. It still was, so the fine print of her curse remained. She would live until this planet literally blew up.
I doubted the rabbis understood what they had done, thinking that by using the words “world no more” they would be confining her forever. But they had also granted her the power to live forever.
And so she lived in her box, only able to harm those in close proximity. There was more to her curse—much more—but for now, that was all I needed to know. The truly cursed could not die, even in the GoneGod World.
Since magic meant trading time (or life) for power, it also meant that whatever—or whoever—was causing all these superheroes to fly around and use massive amounts of power did so without fear of burning so much time that they would literally turn to dust.
And putting two and two together (something I’m so adept at doing), I needed only to find a cursed Other to figure out who was responsible for all this.
Within ten seconds of walking into Gardner Hall, I saw an acheri, a troll, a yeti, an adze and a faun. I’d have to research each and every one of their backgrounds to see if they were cursed or not.
But I also saw someone else who might offer me a clue or shortcut for figuring this out.
Underdawg.
Up, up and away.
↔
Underdawg no longer wore his red costume or cape, but instead an old t-shirt with Voltron on it, shorts and an icepack he held to his head. He was watching TV from the couch in the common room, nursing what I could only imagine was one hell of a hangover.
I walked over and plopped myself in the chair next to him. With what I hoped was an inviting smile, I said, “Remember me?”
He looked over and groaned. “Listen, if I said or did anything last night to offend you, I am so, so sorry. I’ll never drink again. I swear.”
“No, nothing like that. Cassy and I helped you to your room, that’s all.”
“Oh. Ahh … thanks.”
“Nae bother,” I said. He gave me a curious look and I added, “No worries. It’s Scottish for … I’m Scottish.”
And as smooth as silk, I thought—in my head.
“OK. Thanks.” He turned back to the TV.
I touched his arm, a move that has gotten the attention of many an admirer. Underdawg—or rather, Boggie—didn’t look at me. Either he was having the worst headache imaginable or his nerves were numbed to the point where he couldn’t feel my hand.
The thought that he wasn’t interested didn’t cross my mind. Honest.
I squeezed his arm. “You know, last night you said some pretty crazy stuff.”
“I did?” He was still looking at the TV. “Like what?”
“You said you could fly and had super strength and—” I didn’t need to finish my thought because his eyes betrayed him.
He sat quiet for a long second. “I was drunk.”
“Just drunk?”
“OK, drunk and a bit stoned.”
“I’d say.” I smiled and gave him a wink. “What happened last night?”
“Ahh, nothing. Just a wild night, that’s all.”
I could tell he was hiding something when he turned his body away from me. But it was more than a secret … he was scared.
“Listen—Boggie, right?”
He nodded.
“If something is going on, you can tell me.”
“Nothing’s going on.”
He was getting defensive, and I could tell that unless I said something he’d get up and walk away. I’d been in the confiding zone with people hundreds of times over my long, long life, and I knew enough of how this all would go down to know I had one chance to get him to open up.
If he walked away now, he’d put me into the non-confiding zone and never let me in. Well, not without torture.
I had to break through, and the quickest way to get someone to open up is by telling them a secret of your own.
I grabbed his hand. “And you were super strong. And dressed like Underdog.” I touched his palm and whispered, “Sorry, I mean Underdawg, as in d-a-w-g.”
I was taking a risk by admitting I had been out in the forest, but it was a risk I had to take. The superhero problem was already out of hand, and these guys still didn’t know what they were truly capable of. It was only a matter of time before they started doing other, more nefarious acts that would probably involve tearing up banks, kidnapping the president’s daughter or worse.
But that wasn’t what I was really worried about. There were rumors that the fighting between Others and humans was getting worse. Much worse. Here in Montreal things were pretty tame—so tame that this city was a safe haven for Others and one of the few places on Earth where the multitude of species got along.
Human authorities were already blaming Others for the superhero outbreak. The last thing this world needed was an incident created by some stupid teenager with superpowers being pinned on Others and used as an excu
se for further persecution of an already villainized group.
Just when I thought Boggie’s eyes couldn’t widen any more, they opened so wide I thought his eyeballs would fall out. “You were there.”
I put a finger on the dale of my upper lip. “Shush. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“What’s there to tell?”
“Oh, come now. How you—Boggie, a seemingly normal kid—have superpowers, for one?”
“Look who’s talking.”
“I don’t have superpowers—I just have a mask, a dirk and a desire to throw myself in harm’s way. But you … you can fly. How?”
“I … I don’t know. I was hanging out with Cassy, showing her some old reruns of Underdog. We were laughing about how cool it would be to have superpowers and stuff and ...” He stopped, looking around.
“And?”
“You know how in Underdog he takes this pill to get strong and all?” he whispered. “Well, we were discussing what kind of pill I’d take to gain my powers, and we decided that it would be … you know.” He made the universal gesture for toking.
“Ahh. You into the reefer, mon,” I said in my best Jamaican accent.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Go on,” I said, lamenting how funny the elves found me, but how humans just didn’t seem to get my sense of humor.
“So … and you’ve got to keep this between us.”
“Hey, there are literally three people who know about my extracurricular activities—four, including you. I’m trusting you with my biggest secret, so …” I gestured for him to go on.
“So yeah,” he said, nervous. “OK. Cassy—and you’ve got to remember we were both really stoned—she starts crying and saying something I couldn’t understand. She had this really worried look on her face, like she was in pain but needed to tell me something really important.
“I tried to make her feel better—you know, comfort her.”
“I’m sure you did.” I winked.
“No, nothing like that.” He shook his head, and then cringed in hungover pain. “I mean, Cassy is gorgeous. But she’s a friend and she was really upset. The last time I saw someone so miserable was when my best friend’s dad died. He cried and I knew there was nothing in the world I could do or say that would make things better. Not that I didn’t try … with him, and with Cassy.