by Kat Turner
The stage was a structure fire of controlled arson. Explosions boomed into bonfires. A gigantic, thundering flame erupted, giving Brian a fiery wingspan spanning the stage floor.
Pyrotechnic fire shot from the horses’ eye sockets. Red flames spewed out of the demon horse, and white blasted from the Pegasus.
Then came a massive snap.
A single scream set off a domino effect of vocal panic. The smoking set prop sagged toward the ground in stretching slow-motion, the upended bulk garish and out of place, a violating disarray.
Performers scrambled offstage as the disaster hit the ground with a biblical crash. Alarms blared, emergency siren howls mixing with shouts and cries in a cacophony so brutal she had to cover her ears to think.
Bodies darted in every direction, uncoordinated roaches scattering.
Red lights lit up the perimeter, blinking. Whistles blasted. Security guards performed crowd control. The stench of burning plastic rotted her lungs, seared her eyes.
Sprinklers released, dampening her face with mist.
And then she saw it. Out of the vacant socket of the crushed set prop, the demolished and broken horses crackling with residual sparks as they lay caved in to the elevated ground, slithered the phantom. The murky color of air pollution, her nemesis crawled from the dead eye like a tapeworm and slipped to the side, vanishing offstage.
Helen dashed in the direction of a barricade cordoning off the backstage area.
A guard grabbed her arm. “Evacuate to the nearest emergency exit,” he shouted, echoing robotic instructions blasting out of loudspeakers.
She linked in with the crystal, blanked her mind, and teleported to the other side of the metal gate. “No can do.”
He gaped, rubbing his eyes. “How did you do that?”
Amidst the onslaught of alarms and indoor rain, Helen raced down the corridor, tracking the fog monster. Better not call Brian’s name and risk drawing attention to herself or him. But she didn’t have time to waste on a blind hunt, either.
Helen ducked into a supply closet and, standing in the middle of piled speakers and amplifiers, visualized her target and tranced out.
In five seconds, she was astral and floating. She flew through the air, wiggling through jelly walls as she swam through the backstage bowels.
Nobody was around, they’d all evacuated. Classic distraction, basic bitch of a ruse.
An almost-noise as subtle as the musical hallucination of a remembered song sneaked in below the blasting screech tearing through the arena. No mistaking chanting. She followed it until it got louder, weaving through corridors and hallways and down staircases until she hovered at the threshold of a door the color of rust.
Ancient pipes bellied the ceiling, and water-stained concrete the color of old meat covered the floor. The alarm was muted down in this secret place, overtaken by the clunk and gurgle of some sort of boiler. Louder, though, was the chanting beyond the door. Choral, ritualistic, hauntingly familiar.
Steeling her resolve, Helen pushed herself through the barrier and confronted a horrible sight. Pentagram chalked in red on the dirt floor. Guts in the middle, trinkets positioned in the tapered corners of the star.
A man, face hidden by a gold mirror-mask, read from the same fat tome as the one from the storage locker. The weird language tumbled from his mouth. Two others chanted in unison.
Brian lay on a cot, tied down and unconscious. He was clothed, but his pants were disrupted enough to reveal the bruise on his hip. The monster hovered in the air above him, hissing.
Helen zapped herself into physical form and pointed at the innards on the floor. “Greetings, assholes. Stepping things up a notch with a little good old fashioned human sacrifice?”
The phantom snarled, revealing two ghastly rows of crooked fangs.
“I knew Clyde would be more use to us dead than alive,” a masked man said. He gestured to the guy with the book. “Dispatch this stupid cunt once and for all, boss.”
Gone was the incompetence, the bumbling idiocy. These guys had stepped it up a notch. They knew what they were doing now.
Book Man read. The others chanted, those same gurgling demon-sounds, the mystery and power behind it all frightening and awful.
The reader broke into English. “Sister Folly, send this enemy to suffer in the realm of the shadow ones and return our devil doll in her place. We command you to overtake this man so he may do our bidding.”
Capillary networks of red webbing spread over the smoke being, stitching its amorphous shape into a body with contours and edges, form. Humanoid, but a few feet taller than the tallest man. Skin as red and glistening as a newborn mouse coated spindly arms and legs. Head bald, ears pointed, eyes pits of ink. The demonic, demented creature from her apartment vision descended upon Brian and knelt on his chest. It aimed knifelike claws at his mark.
“No!” Helen’s scream was impotent, too late. She snapped into nothing.
Singing cicadas and croaking frogs woke her up from dreamless unconsciousness. She opened her eyes to gunmetal dusk. The soles of her shoes sank into sucking mud.
To her left, willow trees’ drooping foliage wept into glinting, placid water, thick roots carving cubbyholes in the dirt. Helen walked along a soggy, untrodden path, bayou night air rich with brackish odors. A Chinese lantern of a yellow moon, full and bright and presenting its leaping rabbit, hung high in the sky.
Several feet ahead, faint rustling sounds fluttered.
“Welcome to your new home. It’s awful, but you sort of get used to it. Not me, though. That’s why we’re gonna trade places.” Helen’s own voice spoke, and she turned in the sound’s direction. The double leaned against a hefty tree trunk, a slinky evening gown the color of spun gold twinkling in the moonlight. Of course. The Golden Phase was underway. Not for long, though.
Helen pulled the clear crystal out of her pocket and pointed it at the clone. Energy poured from it, a glitter cloud made up of winking shades of honey and amber and vanilla ice cream laved in caramel. The heavenly light, humming and pleasant, oozed from the stone and hung in the air.
The double stepped closer. She poked the crystal with the tip of a finger, and the beautiful energy turned gray and fell to the dank ground as particles of ash. “My realm, my rules. I caught the song dedicated to you. Your boyfriend was quite the poet.”
Helen’s eyes watered at the stench of death breath. “Is.”
“Nah. He’s done. And so are you.” A mean hand grabbed Helen’s hair and bashed her head into the nearby tree.
Dazed and hurting, she blinked, fighting for consciousness.
The other woman dragged her a few feet and trudged into the swamp, pulling Helen behind by the hair. She fought in vain, cold water seeping up to her knees, her thighs. Something taut swam past, brushing her hip. She screamed.
“Atta girl. Get scared. This place is scary as fuck.” The clone shoved her down.
Helen’s head plunged under water. She rebelled against its fetid flavor, gagging and struggling until her lungs hurt. The double pulled her up, and she gasped, her world an upside-down of misery.
“It’s always nighttime and always wet. There are venomous snakes and alligators and giant leeches and nowhere warm and dry to sleep.”
“I can help you,” Helen stammered, spitting out silt and algae. This miserable place was some self-created hell born of negative energy, she bet, and if granted a moment to concentrate she had an idea for how to transform it.
Changing base elements into refined ones was the essence of alchemy, and she could do it. Heal her own energy as she switched from Left to Right for good and elevate the clone’s in the process. She clutched the crystal as tight as she could.
“God, you’re dense. You’re helping me by taking my place so I can go up and party with the dime store Satanists as they execute their Golden Phase.”
Helen went back under and up again, dead leaves and soaked hair sticking to her face, her scalp in agony from the hard pull.
&
nbsp; In the dark pit of despair, Helen felt the crystal, pure and good and tingling, in her palm. She knew its love, in her, along with Brian’s. Helen focused everything she had, every ounce of her being, on the love in her heart.
A column of energy, soft white and shot through with golden slivers, charged through her body and burst from the crown of her head. In her, with her, and all around her. Pure love, expansive love, love for people and animals and everything that ever was or could be. She visualized a habitat of kindness, a place where intentions were kind and happiness reigned and no living thing had to suffer ever again. “I’ve got your Golden Phase right here.”
The clone morphed into the monster up in the secret room, all claws and teeth, leathery red skin. “Don’t you fucking dare! You will not interfere with the sacrifice. You will not.”
An image from childhood registered in Helen’s brain. The monster before her resembled the one Little Helen had imagined lived in her closet.
The thing about monsters. Helen’s mother’s voice spoke in her head, kind and clear and soothing. She pictured the woman, savored one of the few good memories of her from the time before she’d snapped.
Helen was four, perhaps, trembling under the covers and terrified of the dark.
Dolores sat on the bed, maternal and loving, looming large as a giantess and projecting comfort. In that rare moment, her unreliable and unstable mother was a goddess.
Monsters can only hurt us if we let them. If we choose to see the good, then that’s what we will see. Don’t notice the monsters. Choose not to see them, and concentrate on something beautiful instead. Like how much your mama loves you.
The bedtime monster never bothered Little Helen again, and a lesson from decades ago rang true at last. There was always—always—love to be found.
Even in the most hopeless places. Even in the butchered depths of her heart, in the wounds her mother and the foster families had inflicted, love could grow.
Forgive. All of it. “You’re cancelled,” Helen said.
Helen’s skull cracked open without pain. Light spilled out of the cavity, overtaking the fiend with its glittering bronzes and sparkling snows and luscious hues the color of baked, spiced apples. Sparkly vines, golden ribbons of love, engulfed every inch of the monster’s scarlet flesh.
The thing faded, magic encircling its red arms and legs. For a second she swore she caught an expression of peace on its hideous face.
The nasty swamp transformed to a resplendent tropical beach. As the force radiating from her crown chakra tapered to a trickle, a pod of pink dolphins broke the water’s surface and romped.
She and her sister Maya spied dolphins during a Disneyland side trip to the Pacific Ocean the summer before their world crumbled. They’d huddled together on the sand, squealing, each looking through one lens of their shared binoculars. The dolphins, she figured, represented an auspicious sign of closure with the past. All was right in the world now. A wound had healed.
Well, almost all was right in her world. Time to get home to Brian.
“Don’t forget about me.” The doppelganger spoke.
Helen turned around.
On the frothy, lapping shoreline sat the clone. Aquamarine and mint green waves sailed past her bare shoulders, and hardened plaques of seaweed served as a tube top. Silver and blue scales dusted her skin, beginning mid-waist and increasing, ending in a fishtail. Two rows of gills pulsed on her neck. The doppelganger slapped her shiny fin into wet sand, grinning at it.
The women’s eyes met.
“Dude. You turned me into a mermaid.”
“Looks like it.”
“We always wanted to be a mermaid.”
“Yeah.” Helen’s intuition spoke. She’d lifted the hex, and Brian was alive. “We did.”
Something beautiful came from the ugly and transmuted base energies into gold. Her shitty past afforded her magic and forgiveness grander than she’d ever dreamed. A phoenix rose from the ashes of Helen’s defeats. Alchemy for the win.
The mermaid said, “I’ll do my own thing here, you do yours back home. If we cross paths again, are we good?”
Now that the doppelganger was comfortable in her home environment, she wouldn’t get up to mischief. “Yeah. We’re good.”
“Alright, well, I’m off to go search for a shipwreck or something.” The mermaid turned around and floated into the ocean on her back.
“I better get going, too.” Understatement of the century.
“’Kay. Happy witching.”
“Happy mermaiding.”
The other woman darted off and swam deep into rolling water until her shimmery tail blended in with the waves. A bit of an awkward goodbye, but as far as paranormal encounters went, she’d take awkward over some of the other alternatives any day of the week.
Time to haul ass back to Earth, save Brian, and resume living her best witch life. She squeezed her crystal and leapt into an oncoming wave. “Sister Water, please grant me safe passage through the astral farther.”
Twenty-Three
Helen’s world spun as she struggled to find her footing. The soles of her feet were on the floor, and her stomach turned in roiling nausea. She blinked until dizziness ceased whirling and her surroundings came into clear focus.
The pungent, sour stench of the sacrificial entrails grounded her with an overpowering blast. A new clamp of sickness gripped her belly, but she defeated the urge to puke.
Brian still lay bound on the cot but had worked his hands underneath it, where they moved in subtle yet sustained back and forth motions. He caught her gaze and nodded, and she nodded back. A few feet away from him, the three masked men stood hunched over their book, grumbling the ancient language in a tense, rushed tone while flipping pages.
“Hey!” One of the masked occultists shouted and charged Helen. “Where is he? What did you do with Master?”
Think fast. Helen pulled the clear crystal out of her pocket. “He’s in here. Trapped forever.”
As if tendering an acknowledgement, the stone pulsed with three phosphorescent bursts that reflected off of the cultist’s golden mask in starburst shimmers. Cool. Silent, begrudging props to Master for the confirmation.
“Give that to me right now.” The man grabbed Helen’s wrist, his hold hard and mean.
A theory forming in her head, Helen ventured, “It won’t do you any good. I’m the only one who can free him. I’m your little mist demon’s master now.”
The stone illuminated with the phosphorescent glow. Boo-yah. Her genie-type theory had to be right.
“Let Master out, or you will regret it.” He wrenched her arm, causing a sharp pain to surge from elbow to fingertips, and pried at her fist. But Helen clenched the stone.
In her peripheral vision, something fell soft and slack to the floor. She slid a sidelong glance in the direction of the movement and swallowed a gasp. The top part of Brian’s ropes lay beside the leg of the bed. He sat up and worked on the cords binding his ankles.
The other two captors remained engrossed in their book and didn’t notice. Meaning Helen needed to keep distracting the third man until Brian broke free. She might even have a plan.
“Take off your mask.” Helen spoke into the mirrored shield, addressing the reflection of her own face twisted in pain. Though hurting, she held control over her powers.
“Why?”
“Because I fucking said so. You want to see your master again? Do it.”
He slid the mask to the top of his head. Hello, Elwell from the Denver research.
“Ah, shit,” one of the others barked with a mixture of anger and frustration. “Bad move, buddy.”
The other two must have noticed Brian breaking free, because they sprinted to him. Brian jumped off the gurney and kicked a length of rope to the floor as he got on his feet.
A sickening crunch of bone, flesh and plastic colliding assaulted Helen’s ears. One of the occultists fell to the ground. A scuffle ensued, marked by a blend of male grunts and shouts in
two distinct voices.
Brian had his captor in a headlock when Elwell put both hands around her neck and squeezed. “Release. Master. Now.”
Instead, she locked in with his pale eyes and clicked hers to white. Relying on the same technique she’d used to subdue Joe, she pushed his essence from his body and stuck it on the ceiling. He let go of her neck and dropped his hands to his sides. She sucked down a cool, relieving breath.
Brian’s struggle continued in thumps and thwacks, groans and snarls. Her head throbbed, eyelids begging to blink. She slipped and allowed her lids to fall for a second, and when they did Elwell’s consciousness drifted down and hovered halfway between the ceiling and his body.
“Brian, how’s it going? I’m losing him.” She squinted and pressed her fingertips to her temples, massaging the site of burning tension.
Brian let go, and the man in his grasp sank to his knees, muttered gibberish, and flopped unconscious beside his pal.
In Brian’s hand, a thin point of silver glimmered in the dark room. He ran to Helen and jabbed a needle into Elwell’s arm. Elwell’s mouth gaped, and he hit the floor with a satisfying thud. Helen released his essence and rubbed her aching eyes.
The needle fell from Brian’s grasp and landed on concrete with a clatter. He swept Helen into his arms, and she melted into him.
A phantom muscle made of stress and worry unclenched deep in her body. She clutched his life, his physicality. “You’re okay.”
They embraced in silence for a bit, breath and heartbeats. They had survived. Survived together.
“I love you, Helen.” Brian caressed her scalp, his body against hers an anchor of home and stability and caring. His touch augmented every syllable of his admission.
“I love you, Brian.” She poured the words, the sentiment, from an unlocked space deep within. Alignment emerged where things had once been skewed.
She didn’t have to fight anymore. She could go with the flow, chill, float down that elusive lazy river of peace. Love Brian, and love herself. Love life.