by D O Thomas
“Two grand as agreed, Wiltsha,” said Noir.
“YOU CHOSE THE RIGHT VESSEL, THEN,” emoted Wiltsha.
Wiltsha’s enormous vocal chords caused his voice to overpower any eardrum. If the man were to raise his voice, anyone in a five-metre radius would be deafened, while anyone standing nearby would more than likely die from brain haemorrhaging.
“What have you been planning, Noir?” interrupted Balthazar, who was finding it hard to concentrate without a drink in his hand.
“Just a small contingency plan,” replied Noir.
“I WILL HOLD THE SOUL UNTIL YOU WANT IT RETURNED.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible. Something…happened. The body was completely destroyed and rebuilt by the moon’s beam, and the new soul inhabiting it is that of pure shade. At least, that’s what Mie-Mie tells me.”
“A SOUL OF SHADE? PERHAPS I COULD ACQUIRE IT WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WITH THIS SHADOW-FIEND.”
Wiltsha was a devil’s advocate; he bartered in souls. The title of devil’s advocate, was given to his kind by his peers. They were originally created by Satan to tempt mortals into renouncing their souls in return for the fulfilment of their dreams and aspirations. After God and Satan had given up on their game of soul acquisition, all advocates had lost the meaning in their existence. They drifted for hundreds of years without ageing, needing no sustenance to survive.
It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the demons realised the worth of a human’s wants. Most of the advocates made a fortune selling humans the ability to amount to everything they aspired, gaining countless souls over the years. The more souls the demons held, the stronger they grew. They began to become addicted to the power they gained from each one, and so most put themselves in places that would draw those who were susceptible to the corruption of unfulfilled dreams. 109 belonged to Wiltsha. It was his home, his place of work and the breeding ground of his prey. In the multi-storey club he was a god.
Chapter 10
Silence had been sitting motionless on Noir’s barely used sofa for at least half an hour. While regaining the ability to think, Jaydon’s voice popped into his head. The journal, he thought. The boy said it will help me understand, but where am I supposed to find it? Silence searched the dust-covered bookcase in the dining room side of Noir’s through-lounge. The books he found had questionable titles, they were aged and upon a quick skim, most of them were handwritten.
The book titled De Vitae Sensu contained, from cover to cover, a single equation ending with the number forty-two. Silence took a few books on wizardry and a small pamphlet on witchcraft from the shelf. He found it odd that there had been only a mere black- and white-printed pamphlet on witchcraft, while the thirty or so books on wizardry were labelled by volume, dressed in leather bindings and written in elegantly formed cursive, on pages of gold leaf.
After a time, Silence had finished the books and returned them to their place within the dust-filled bookshelf. He had learnt a lot about wizardry from the books he rapidly read, such as the fact that wizards ramble often and pay attention to every single detail, especially the little ones, for that was where the magic was stored. Silence had also learnt significantly more about witches from the small pamphlet, compared to the three books of wizardry, which also taught him the fundamental differences between wizards and witches. But the most important thing he had learnt was that he merely had to look at a page full of words and his eyes would practically read for him, dashing from top to bottom, absorbing information in seconds.
If it hadn’t been for the wizards’ constant back-referencing and mind-numbing equations, the Shadow-Fiend would have finished the books in only a few minutes. As he stood, Silence felt the weight of his short night upon his shoulders. He needed rest; even though he had only existed for a few hours, he felt exhausted. Silence switched off the living room lights and made his way up the stairs, avoiding the grubby handrail.
As he opened his bedroom door, his phone began to ping. He took the phone in one hand and with the other, switched on the light. Lying on the bed was a book in a thick black leather binding. The edges of the pages were a dilapidated yellow, similar in colour to the teeth of a century-old pensioner who had never caught that lung cancer promised to him by his long-perished father. They were damaged and stained with blotches of a dark faded red. Silence prodded the flashing button on his phone and a message appeared on the screen.
My journal… for your reading pleasures. Noir.
Silence flicked through the pages of the journal. The dates were spread from 1760 to 1991. He thought that perhaps this was a family journal containing the writings of Noir's lineage. The journal was more disorganized than Noir's shady character. The first few pages were blank, the fifth page contained only a symbol in the top left corner, a hand with just three fingers clasping an orb. Silence skimmed through the badly scribed pages and happened upon an entry that drew his mind like a fish to a lure. The page read:
September Ninth, Eighteen Eighty-Eight.
It happened again. I awoke drenched in her blood. Another poem written in this journal. I'm not sure if I can control this. It’s not me. I'm not the one killing them, am I? She wasn't a villain, just a victim of my frayed mind. I remember her face; I can see it clearly as I close my eyes, but her name? Her name escapes me. If only she had. I need Seriph. He could stop the madness that holds me. The darkness consumed me. It wasn't me. It was me, it had to be. The real me, he warned me of this. If I let myself lose focus, it won't stop.
Silence turned to the page before, and as his eyes met the decrepit paper, the words blurred for a second, and the content felt most odd. Silence didn't want to read what was on the page, he wanted to put the journal away, but the blood-stained paper drew him in, like a moth to a flame.
The heart and mind are all that hold the body's soul intact.
The blood that drips from off my blade brings freedom from the track.
One’s eyes were closed and now the lids are cut from sullied flesh.
The gut that held the seed of men, removed to make her fresh.
This painful death allows the wench to be pure for evermore.
The poisoned veins that held her sin, flood thine aged floor.
No fate for this young wounded whore. Instead, a choice of true divide.
In the place of lost and worried souls. From time, she may choose to hide.
If heaven’s light is in her heart, she shall ascend to reach the golden gate.
But if hate is held within her mind, she shall become the devil’s mate.
To fall or rise or stand and stay. These things are as true as love.
To allow false fate to guide the way, is a curse from worlds above.
Silence felt the words reach out of the page, as if they were as animate as the mind he read them in. A chill as sharp and cold as the night’s gale ran down Silence's spine and derailed his train of thought. He closed the journal and placed it in his bedside table. He would attempt to read it again sometime. Perhaps once he had seen something darker than the soulless words that would now forever linger in that corner of his mind where he dared not tread.
Chapter 11
It was a cloudless night with the new moon resting unseen; the few stars that lit the void in its stead sat like minuscule diamonds in the onyx sky. Although the streets were at peace, the rushed patter of awkward footsteps carried across the warm air.
Jaydon was running, from what he wasn’t sure, but the fear in his heart allowed him to push past the burn of his underdeveloped and overworked thigh muscles. Sprinting down the barely lit street for longer than his body could suffer, he knew he needed to rest. The young wizard dipped down a wide-set alleyway. After checking to be sure he had evaded his pursuers, Jaydon allowed himself to catch his breath. He felt disorientated, his legs felt like jelly, his chest felt as if it might cave in. He wasn’t sure where he was, he had tried to read the street signs as he sprinted by, but the letters were incomprehensible.
Ja
ydon couldn’t see out to the end of the alley, darkness covered his path, and as he held out his hand to summon his staff, no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t recall the word necessary to invoke his metal companion. Upon hearing the hurried pounding of feet slapping the pavement not far from the alley, the boy decided to continue into the darkness. It wasn’t long before his eyes adjusted to the treacherous depths of the pitch-black alley, and what looked like a ferocious beast lurking in the darkness merely turned out to be overgrown foliage and the waste left behind by a common fly-tipper.
Jaydon pushed past the obstacles in his way and out of nowhere a light practically blinded him. As his eyes adjusted once more, it faded. The light had been his exit, but now blocking his path to salvation was a group of men. He approached carefully, still not sure of what he had been running from. Reaching the tip of the alleyway’s other side, the men stood in unison. Jaydon’s heart stood still and his spine seemed encased in ice. The men weren’t men at all; they were corpses. Jaydon’s mind sprang back into action and with his eyes watering from the stench of rotting flesh, the boy backed away.
The corpses entered the alley. Jaydon’s eyes were fixed on one, the face of which had been lacerated and its throat ripped out. The corpse stared back at Jaydon, pungent mucus dripping from the wound in its throat as the corpse mouthed something with its pale lifeless lips. Backing away, Jaydon couldn’t remember a single spell. He felt the sharp pinch of the overgrown holly bush he had previously pushed past, but this time there was no pushing, because his way was blocked. The bush was now a solid mass, sharp and impenetrable.
As Jaydon looked up towards the oncoming corpses, the alley stretched once more into inimitable darkness. He was stuck and unable to think, as the corpses before him slowly marched down the infinite alleyway. They didn’t get much closer before Jaydon managed to swallow his fear. With a dry, scratchy gulp, he clenched his fists and darted forward unto his undead foe. Focusing on the corpse with the lacerated face, he leapt with the full force of his exhausted young legs, gripping the gash in the corpse’s throat. The boy flew through the air, clutching the ragged remains, pulling the corpse with him as his feet collided with the chest of another corpse. He landed, decimating the first corpse’s skull with the hard, cold ground, but now he was surrounded. The corpse whose chest Jaydon had successfully dented, reached out, grabbing the boy by his thin gangling arm.
Jaydon tried to scream out, but he produced no sound, and from behind, another corpse pulled at his other arm. The pain was insupportable, as Jaydon felt his arms tearing out of their sockets. Tears streamed silently out of the defenceless wizard’s eyes as two more corpses took up his legs. He felt every tear of his skin made by the remaining corpses scratching at his stomach. He prayed to bleed out quickly, but the pain only grew as he watched his organs fall to the ground.
Jaydon felt cold throughout his body, the only comfort from the pain was the warmth of the fresh blood, from the torn flesh of his stomach, gushing down his legless pelvis. The corpses tossed his limbless body into the holly bush and the sharp pricks of the leaves of the bush held the boy in place. Jaydon forced what was left of his neck to pivot his head upwards. The night’s sky quelled his agony; all that was left was the dampness of the blood-drenched rags that used to be his finest robes. With the stars twinkling in the moonless void, Jaydon smiled and allowed the darkness he had feared before to consume what was left of him.
Jaydon opened his eyes to the sticky-backed stars on his bedroom ceiling and raised his arm to view his watch. It was six o’clock. He didn’t have to be awake for another two hours. After eventually feeling the surprisingly familiar moisture, he rolled out of his bed, ripped off the warm, damp sheets and quietly hurried down the hall. Jaydon knew the procedure; the washroom in the over-grads’ dorms came complete with a rapid washer/dryer. Reaching the dorms’ washroom unseen, he threw his drenched pyjamas in the washer/dryer with his bedsheets and rushed into a shower cubicle.
Jaydon washed the sticky urine off his body and he held out his hand. He whispered, “Apparere”, and instantly a brushed metal staff as tall and as thin as the boy, with a dense platinum orb hovering over its peak, filled the boy’s outstretched hand. Jaydon smiled as he let go of the staff, allowing it to disappear. He jumped out of the shower, took his bedsheets and pyjamas out of the washer/dryer, its job finished mere seconds after Jaydon had turned it on. Then he dressed himself and snuck back to his room, evading the acknowledgment of a student who had only just returned from his ‘magical’ night out on the town.
Jaydon flipped his mattress, fitted his bedsheets and once more returned to bed. Although his mind was ablaze with the significance of such a vivid premonition, the boy managed to centre himself.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispered, as his eyes, fixed on the sticky-backed stars, filled with fearful tears. The boy wizard managed to sleep soundly for the next two hours until his alarm caused him to wake. Jaydon leapt out of bed and donned his black robes. There were four sets of robes in the boy’s wardrobe; black, green, purple and a chestnut brown. The colour of a wizard’s robes signified what his role within the U.A.K. was. The colours and roles were:
black - lecturer
variation of green - Dean
purple - graduate
white - master
pale brown - neophyte
dark brown - acolyte
chestnut brown - scholar
grey - faculty
blue - teaching aid
orange - technician
After a short walk, Jaydon stood outside a classroom looking up at the class number. He thought about his dream as the dazing haze of déjà vu washed over his barely-awakened brain. He tried to think past the sight of the stars. He tried to forget the pain he would feel, he tried but failed. The boy shivered helplessly, telling himself it would be alright. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open.
The room was filled with men ranging from young adults to grey haired mid-life learners, all sporting chestnut brown robes. They were sitting on a column of oak stalls, which Kristophe had acquired, along with all the other furniture, for the Boston Manor campus of the U.A.K. The students were seated according to skill level and knowledge, with the least knowledgeable sitting at the front. Jaydon shuffled over to the large oak desk situated in front of the waiting students, and pulled a stall out from under it, adjusting the legs as so he could sit with his arms resting on the desktop.
He glanced over the paper spread upon the desk so that he could verify what part of his future he was reliving. He looked up at the much older students and cleared his throat.
“First off, Sires, did anyone manage to harness the power of last night’s moon?”
Chapter 12
Noir drunkenly stumbled down an empty twilit street a few kilometres away from his house. The streetlamps had gone dark and only a few cars slowly crept along the dampened road. The rushing of the rain muted the ringing in his ears but added to the pounding in his head, while the sour taste of liquor filled the steam of his breath as he swayed like an out-of-time pendulum.
Noir didn’t drink very often but when accompanied by his brother, he would find himself in the same mind-set as his alcoholic sibling, although his body never seemed to build up the same tolerance. He was struggling to find his footing when a large weighted dustbin managed to find itself in his path. After clearly being assaulted by the street bin, Noir stopped and stared at the unscathed thing.
What’s its problem? How dare it nearly knock me to the ground!
A form of embarrassed anger filled his muddled mind as the bin seemed to ignore him. Noir’s body steamed with the heat of rage as he clenched his fists. He looked around to see if the bin had any back-up and upon acknowledging that his enemy was indeed alone, he took a slight step back and booted the heavy street bin onto its side, spilling its contents onto the ground like a slaughtered beast. Noir looked over his beaten foe for a moment. He prodded the bin with his soaking shoe to ensu
re the thing was defeated, and with his signature grin, he swayed on down the road.
The rest of the short journey to his house had Noir watching out for any more ominous bins that might have been out to avenge their fallen brother. Having made it safely home, Noir scraped at his door with his keys, clearly struggling, and swaying back and forth inside his porch. After a while he finally managed to insert a key; unfortunately, it was the wrong key. He tried again, swaying more and more as his frustration grew.
Noir leaned on the door and searched through the inside pocket of his coat, and he bore a sinister grin as he slowly pulled out a wand. He placed the tip of the wand on the lock and whispered, “Unlock,” but nothing happened.
“Please unlock,” he whimpered as he tried flicking his wrist some more. He was helpless, stuck outside his own house. Noir grimaced as he decided upon his next action. He knelt down and placed his lips on the keyhole and whispered into the tumbler, “Recludam.” Hearing the click of the tumbler turning, Noir pushed the door as quickly as he could. He was in.
Not yet ready to celebrate, Noir became focused on climbing up the stairs on all fours. The wizardry he’d just used had doubled the nausea caused by his recent alcohol abuse. On reaching the top step, Noir discovered that Silence's door had been left open. Shadows danced across the wall in Noir's line of sight. He crawled closer, propping himself up with the bedroom doorframe.
The dim light of the streetlamps shining through the lightly netted window projected shadows from Silence's resting body onto the bedroom's grey wall. There were three silhouettes; one was unrecognisable and much larger than the others. Noir noticed that one of them was in fact his own shadow and the other was of course Silence's. The shadows fought, fumbling across the wall like wild apes. Noir watched for a while, laughing at his shadow’s attempt to overpower its giant enemy, while Silence's shadow rolled around, writhing in what looked like pain.