by Kat Turner
“Sister Water, I, a spirit born, humbly call upon your powers. Please expedite my passage into the astral farther and send me to fight an imposter who loves me not.”
A fork of lighting slashed the sky, lighting gray electric purple. Helen clenched fists. She couldn’t wimp out due to a little rough weather.
“Sister Water, I, a supplicant, bow to you and request your assistance. I must accost a malicious doppelganger and transport its victim to safety.” Allegedly, the spell, if executed right, would empower Helen to pull someone else onto to astral road and teleport them right along with her. In other words, this was her shot to get her nude ass to the doppelganger, collect Brian, and bring him home.
A complex plan with a lot of moving parts, but she did not have a plethora of options.
Thunder rolled through the air in an unmistakable bowling pin crack. Okay, okay, this had to be Sister Water jazzing up the whole ordeal. No sweat. She couldn’t freak. No way would the elemental goddess she begged for help allow her to die by electrocution.
Right?
A foreshadowing note of ozone joined the airborne palate of pollution and autumnal ripeness. Drops of water struck Helen’s nose and forehead in a tepid trio of pats. She had to stay cool. For Brian. Fear raced through her in chaotic spurts but, nevertheless, she persisted.
“Sister Water, please deliver me now. Allow this physical coil to serve as my anchor as I detach and travel to my impostor.”
The sky parted in a godlike roar, a barrage of streams hurdling toward Helen’s upturned face as the storm launched an assault.
Concrete pressed hard against Helen’s skin. Her eyes burned. She lay in the fetal position on the floor of some kind of shed or storage room that smelled of mold.
The space held no packed boxes or crates, but it wasn’t empty. In front of her, hems of black robes grazed bare feet. A pentagram, the inside peppered with items, marked the floor in red. Inside the star sat a business card, a guitar pick, and a miniature tin of mints. The objects she’d taken from Brian’s hotel room.
Kris must’ve somehow pilfered Brian’s items from Helen’s suitcase during the fight with Tilly. Stuck them in her clutch.
Positioned in the center of the sinister drawing, something glasslike caught limited light—one of the clear crystals.
Act fast. Helen clawed her way over on her hands and knees and scooped up the assortment of objects. She leapt to her feet, an attempt to shout Brian’s name, stymied by a burning sensation in her lungs. A violent cough tore up her esophagus, bringing with it a stinging surge of water that she spat.
“Hey, what the fuck?” a man shouted, speech muffled as though an object covered his face.
“Brian.” Her word was a scraped croak. She sized up the scene. Three people in robes and silver masks. One clutched a tome to their chest.
The doppelganger held a knife to Brian’s neck.
“Drop the knife or I swallow this.” Helen hoisted the crystal in the air.
The clone released Brian and stalked toward Helen with the blade pointed. “I’ll cut you open and take it back.”
“You better not, because if you kill the hex generator this ends right here.”
“She’s right, we need her involvement.” One of the robed figures spoke in a tense male voice, putting his hands in the air. Great. She had the motherfuckers on the run.
“Drop the knife,” Helen said.
Snarling, the clone continued her menacing march.
“Jesus Christ.” Brian drew out every hushed syllable.
As if mocking his prayer, a guttural, screeching roar filled the small space, so loud and horrid the air shook in primordial trembles. The clone froze in her tracks. Helen’s bowels quaked with liquid doom.
A funnel of white mist poured from her transparent stone in a continuous, billowing plume. The cloud shot to the ceiling, where it coalesced into something with a sloppy form, but a form nonetheless. Beady eyes, two rows of jagged teeth filling a gaping maw, noodles of endless arms ending in bestial claws that flapped about as if hunting for flesh to tear. The longer she looked, the more the inchoate blob developed into a figure.
The clone dropped to her knees. She set the knife down with a soft tap and folded her hands in front of her chest. “Master.”
The masked men bent their faces skyward and gawked at the floating fiend.
Helen and Brian exchanged glances loaded with meanings. Fright, but not shock. Anticipation. The intellectual part-assembly feeling of hatching an unspoken plan.
Creeping on her tiptoes, Helen snuck up on the clone and snatched the knife.
Deep in reverence, the clone didn’t notice.
The three enraptured men in costume didn’t budge either.
The entity on the ceiling growled again, lowering itself and coiling around Brian. Puffs the color of engine exhaust wafted off the body, twisting around him as the thing raked cloud-claws on a spot above his hip.
“Do you forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining?” Joe spoke, upswing and shakiness in his voice.
“No,” Brian said.
The monster howled as if enraged by Brian’s calm demeanor. A smoky face and hands pressed, poked, and rooted around the same area on Brian’s body while he stood there as poised as a Buckingham Palace guard.
Helen squeezed the handle of her knife. Blood whooshed in her ears. Smells of dusty paper and rodent musk darkened the already dim space.
When her moment to act came, she would seize it. That moment was not now, though. The occultists outnumbered her and Brian, and she lacked a read on how the monster and clone would react if she charged their handlers.
“I order you to forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining,” Joe yelled in a tantrum-screech.
“It’s no use,” one of the other robed participants said. “He won’t comply. Our best bet is to attempt to control the hex generator and leverage her magic.”
“Hold up. I found something.” Masked Man Number Three waved his open book, brought it back in front of his face, and exhaled. “Hail to the four corners and the sentinels of the watchtowers. Sister Folly, I, chaos born, humbly call upon your powers. Please use your dark magic on this devil doll to give her the power to possess bodies. Muddle her essence with that of the hex generator and bend them both to our will.”
“What’s chaos born?” Joe asked.
“Shut up, I’m working. Sister Folly, I, a supplicant, bow to you and request your assistance. Meld the devil doll with the hex generator and make her porous and receptive.”
The monster raged and flew around the room in a frenzy. The clone sprang to her feet, eyes white and arms outstretched. A zombie, she lumbered toward Helen muttering in the ancient language used in the pit ceremony.
“What are you doing?” the non-Joe man without the book shouted.
“If we can bind the hex generator’s essence to the doll’s, we can get Master’s essence to possess her. Then with any luck, Master will be well-fed and strong enough to enter the target without his consent.”
“I don’t know.” Joe cowered as the smoke fiend blew past him.
“I bind you, hex generator. May our doll’s essence infiltrate your psyche and eat your soul,” Masked Man Number Three bellowed like a wizard.
“Nah, you can eat shit instead.” Clutching a death grip on the trinkets, Helen dropped the knife and grabbed the clone by the arm.
She ran to Brian, dragging the zoned-out double behind her, and pressed her body to his.
In a loud and assured tone, she recited verbatim the incantation that landed her in the storage locker.
Air rushed into Helen’s lungs as she broke through the surface of turbulent wetness. Waves crashed into her mouth in relentless, chlorinated assaults. She slurped air, blubbering out invading liquid. More water rained from the sky in merciless sheets. Electricity coursing in her veins, she swung legs in
a bottomless well, flailing and panicked. Where was she? Lost at sea, floating in stormy, open ocean?
“It’s okay.” Brian’s voice was as strong as his arm, looped around her midsection. “I’ve got you. Float.”
Hacking and spitting, she allowed herself to lean into his body. They drifted until she braced her feet on the rungs of a metal ladder. Right. She bobbed in his infinity pool. And he was here, meaning she’d rescued him from the clone. Speaking of the C word…
A cushion drifted on the water’s surface. Deck furniture lay upturned. But no clone swam with her and Brian or stood amidst visual reminders of the storm’s destruction.
Brian climbed out of the pool and hoisted Helen out behind him, her body a soaked rag doll in his arms. They sat on the concrete and hugged each other for a moment, each both a life raft and a drowning person. Rain drilled, gathering warm beneath their molded bodies.
“Quite a monumental end to the California drought.” Brian forced a chuckle and flung water from his face.
“It’s not over.” The masked men cast a spell. During her journey back to the pool with Brian and the clone, the double vanished. But Helen hadn’t sent her anywhere intentionally. Not good.
“It is for now.” He spoke with hope. “You saved me, Helen, saved my life. Thank you. I was a bloody fool not to see that it wasn’t you who approached me in the studio and led me to that locker.”
“No, the problem wasn’t foolishness. She’s adapting faster than we can keep up, and she’ll continue to learn. I need to work. I need to make sure she’s permanently banished.” Her circles and talismans were crucial, but the rain had washed them away. Shit, shit, shit. Upon feeling a lump in her balled fist, she calmed some. At least she’d recovered one of the clear crystals.
Brian stood and pulled her free hand, bringing her upright. “Where’s Tilly?”
“She’s with Jonas and his family, staying the night until I get this sorted out. Brutus is with her. I have to work. There are six circles, and something about chaos born. It’s significant. Meaningful.”
“No. Rest for the night. As of right this minute, the clone is dormant. Tilly is safe, and we’re safe together. After you get a good night’s sleep you can try some new things, but for now you’ve done enough.” He cupped her face in both hands, the look in his eyes a haven.
“It’s not enough, Brian. I can’t slow down. I can’t rest. Not until it’s over. Not until you’re saved.” Her voice broke, and tears wobbled in her vision.
The onslaught of rain continued, stinging her exposed skin as needling drops landed in a rapid blaze.
“Enough for now, love.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, the tenderness cracking what remained of her defenses. “Good enough.”
Those last words he spoke penetrated to her core. There, they went to work detonating years of residue and demolishing hurtful buildup. Brian spoke those words with a sincerity that ruined her. A cry broke from her throat, deepening into a sob to accompany the warm streams sliding down her cold cheeks.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry. If I could, I would go back in time to that day at Nerissa’s house and do everything differently.”
“Don’t apologize,” he whispered into the skin between her brows, like a deity delivering intuition into her mystical third eye. “It’s going to be okay. We’re okay. I’m okay.”
Tears fell, rivulets sluicing from her ducts. Had she ever cried like this, therapeutic sobs in the arms of someone she trusted? No. No, she had not. “I should apologize a thousand times, because all of this is my fault.”
With the pads of his thumbs, Brian massaged the straps of muscle running up her neck, kneading her like malleable clay.
“I don’t accept that. You’re just like any of us, doing your best. And don’t forget, don’t you ever forget, that the reason this is happening is because you saw something wrong and intervened to help me. You didn’t have to. You could have left me to my own devices, and I’d be dead already. Yes, it is spiraling out of control now, but all that means is that whatever we’re up against is mighty and intent on not giving up. But what’s important is that you took action. And you continue to take action to solve a huge, complex problem. I admire you, and I respect you. I’m grateful to you, grateful for your presence in my life. You’re a good person, Helen.”
Amidst the detritus of her disrupted magical circle, her sapphire stone gleamed in the halogen glare of Brian’s deck lamps. Except its hue had changed to a radiant amethyst that dazzled the night in blinks of iridescence.
Interesting, how the color of voice had morphed to the color of insight and intuitive awakening. She’d moved up the chakra line to the third eye wheel. Without a spell, no less. Upward progression in the absence of Left Hand magic renewed her faith in herself.
As she watched the luminescent twinkles of the stone symbolizing the third-eye chakra and its powers of intuition, Helen let go. Let go of her defensiveness, her anger. Let go of her sorrow, grief, and loss. Let go of a lifetime of fury and the suffering behind it.
And as she let go, the scabs that had grown over that third eye broke off and dissolved.
With that cruddy material gone, she was able to see Brian in his entirety. He was a person, as flawed and messy as any other, with a multitude of traits sometimes in harmony and sometimes at odds. He was meticulous and exacting, but wielding a wry sense of humor and a love of life that kept him from being stiff, boring, or unapproachable.
Artistically gifted and devoted to his craft, he didn’t mess around when it came to excelling in his musical talent.
Fantastically lucky, yet at the same time testimony to the power of a stalwart work ethic and unflappable determination to never surrender dreams, Brian served as inspiration to strive for goals no matter how lofty.
She saw how he loved his friends and daughter with fierce loyalty and gave others the benefit of the doubt until they squandered his goodwill. Then, watch out. He knew what he wanted and went after it. The man was honest to his core, a sound person who conducted his life from a place of integrity.
Brian complemented Helen, and he challenged her. He was a man she could look up to, and someone who motivated her to be better. Though she didn’t envy or crave his money or fame, they nonetheless symbolized commendable parts of him. Drive, determination. Dedication. Passion and conviction.
The crystal glimmering in the corner of her eye, she pulled back to match his stare.
Granted, there were many small to medium things she didn’t know about Brian. Factoids such as his favorite foods, pet peeves, general array of likes and dislikes.
Huge stuff was also missing from her repertoire of Brian knowledge, like how he felt about his early years. And stupid little bits of first date trivia like the one movie he’d watch a hundred times if trapped on a deserted island with that file and nothing else.
Yes, she had quite a bit further to go when it came to getting to know Brian. But in the depths of her heart, a place that could, if she let it, expand beyond its shrunken state, she knew something big.
I love you, Brian.
Yet she could not push the words out of her mouth. Because if she did, if she allowed herself to not only feel but to express that feeling from the most authentic space inside of her, would cruel forces snatch him away? Would the threat escalate?
Instead of confessing her truth, Helen fumbled out, “I’m glad you’re safe, right here in this moment. We’re together. That counts.”
His facial expression softened as he parted his lips then shut his mouth. Brian clearly picked up something in her voice, her holding back. But being the respectful man he was, he didn’t storm the gate of her one remaining fortress.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to, but at the same time she loved him even more for refraining.
“It counts for everything,” he said.
In the unspoken moment that followed, a look communicated what words still were not permitted clearance to articulate.
Their li
ps crashed in a collision of damaged hearts yearning for unbridled release. More license, more permission, more possibility. More chances to heal festering sores from buried years. In the freak rainstorm, two cursed souls trying to save each other, they kissed like their fates depended on it.
Nineteen
Brian walked out of the master bathroom shrouded in a white terrycloth robe matching the one subsuming Helen. But, at her behest, their meaningful breakthrough moments ago gave way to the demands of the mission. Curled up on his bed with the grimoire, she ran her finger down a page.
Everything about the ominous reading material vibrated with malice, from paper warped to the stiffness of preserved hide to the stains and drawings crowding out white space with the magnitude of their strangeness.
Her stomach seized every time she turned a page as she crawled to the finality of the entire massive tome, enduring the chunk of writing devoted to dark arts. The sixth circle of craft hid near the back, writhing in a twisted mass of scary.
“The sixth symbol matches the one you saw on that woman’s abdomen, and the element is Folly. Whatever that is. Children of Folly are chaos born. If I can grasp more of the concepts here, I might be able to head the black robe and mask brigade off at the pass.”
The bed springs squeaked, the spot beside her sinking into a slight depression. Brian stroked her wet hair, finger-combing out tangles in perfect pulls that tugged her scalp in all the right places. “Helen. It can wait until the morning.”
“I don’t know.” Runes and drawings crammed rough-looking end pages stained with old splatters of dark mystery fluid. Like some gnostic bastard of the Book of Revelations. She looked past the sliding doors to where the storm had slowed to a drizzle. The pool lolled, a slab of water rendered uncanny by fantastical underwater lights and an insidious undercurrent. “I just feel a weight in my bones. Like they’re plotting as we speak, that she’s stalking us right now.”
And she did feel heavy, stiff like she’d been sitting in a crappy plastic chair all day.