by J. R. Rain
As much as it pains me to stop snuggling into Caius, I sit up and hold Elise’s other hand. “What was bound can be unbound. You are no longer facing this entity alone. We, the coven―and that means you, too―will hurl this thing back where it crawled out of. I kicked it in its shadowy nuts and sent it squealing into the woods.”
Elise’s crying hiccups into a giggle.
“I chased it off, but it’s not gone. There’s only so much I can do on my own, that any of us can do on our own.”
“She is gifted,” says Abigail, squeezing Elise’s shoulder. We all knew that, of course, which is why she has become a full part of the coven rather than a foundling living in the house. “Her talents are particularly strong with binding entities, and communicating with the dead.”
“Both dangerous paths to walk,” says Caius in a quiet voice, glancing at our youngest member. “For the body as well as the mind.”
Elise rakes a few strands of blonde off her face and hooks them behind her ear. “Yeah, figures, right? Two paths that’ll drive me equally insane.”
“The art doesn’t cause insanity. Calling the wrong thing through can.” Abigail hugs her. “I’m sure you had no idea what would happen when you first tried. You had no instruction.”
I cradle Elise’s hand in both of mine, but dial back on the ‘talking to a traumatized child’ voice. “If I can chase it away, you can probably dispel or destroy it… and all of us together will crush it. But, we need to know what happened to you, Elise. Please, tell us. I give you my word it will not change how I feel about you.”
Elise glances sideways at me. “How do you feel about me?”
“Truth?”
She nods.
“Like a younger sister who needs a bit of help but can’t ask for it.”
“You’re not afraid of me?”
“No. We all know this stuff is real. None of us think you’re crazy, violent, or making any of it up.”
“Yeah, well, Colleen doesn’t like me,” says Elise, head bowed.
Abigail fidgets.
Well, if no one else is ever going to say this, I might as well. “Colleen is very protective of Abigail. At first, you showing up with a wild story raised her suspicions, but she doesn’t feel that way anymore. When we say ‘perfect trust,’ we mean it.”
Elise takes a deep breath, lets it out, and nods. A faint smile flickers across her face. “I really appreciate that. I’d never do anything to harm Abigail or any of you.”
“I know, dear.” Abigail pats her on the hand.
“My mother died when I was fifteen,” says Elise. “We were super close. I was a real misfit, yanno? Antisocial, I think they call it. Didn’t like being around other kids. After she died, I didn’t know what to do without her. My house―I mean the place I grew up in―had a bunch of ghosts in it and I could sometimes see and hear them.”
Caius sits forward, draping himself over me from behind. I tilt my head against his.
“A couple months after the funeral, I asked the ghosts to knock once if Mom was around, twice if not… they banged twice. I couldn’t understand why she’d just leave me like that.” Elise chokes up. “I didn’t wanna be without her. Dad came home early that day, or I might’ve killed myself.”
“Elise…” Abigail pulls her into a hug.
“I’m so glad you didn’t.” I clutch her hand tight.
She clings to Abigail for a moment before looking around at us. “I’m not suicidal. Wasn’t then either… I mean… I guess I’m making up a technicality, but I didn’t want to die; I just wanted to be with my mom. But Dad came home right after I got in the bathtub, and I realized if I did it, he’d find me. And Mom just died, and I thought about how he’d feel if he lost me too, so I didn’t.”
We’re all quiet for a little while, except for Elise sniffling.
“So… I changed my mind. I couldn’t go to be with Mom, so I wanted to bring her back. Got some books about witchcraft, but I don’t think they were all really witchcraft. Some of it was pretty dark. I didn’t touch any of the really bad stuff, but I found a couple spells and rituals. One needed her blood, but I couldn’t get that. No way was I gonna, like, dig her up or anything. Took some hair from her brush instead, and I tried to call her ghost back. Only, this other thing happened.”
“Do you remember anything about the ritual?” I ask.
“I made a circle with five candles, all white ’cause Mom was really sweet and nice. I don’t remember the exact words from the book, but it said stuff about opening a pathway and calling her to come through.” She bites her lip. “I think I opened a door, but that shadow man came out of it before my mother could. I panicked and blew out the candles.”
Abigail winces.
Crap. She didn’t close the ritual properly. That house might still have an active gateway.
“The door closed before Mom came over, but that shadow started haunting the house. The other ghosts all left. It would whisper in my ear at night, trying to make me do bad things like start fires, steal stuff, hurt myself, hurt other people.”
I wince.
“The entity wanted to spread ruination to your life,” says Abigail.
Abigail shakes her head, grumbling.
“So, this thing keeps whispering in my head, trying to get inside. I don’t remember a lot of what happened for a while. My sixteenth birthday just doesn’t exist in my memory. They told me I went all weird and wild. Started wearing black. Got caught with some drugs. Got caught shoplifting. Got into fights at school and broke some other girl’s lip open. Everyone thought I went mental over my mom, and I’d been so quiet and shy before they kinda went easy on me. Wound up in the kinda hospital they lock the rooms at, yanno? I guess the shadow got bored being locked up, so it left me.” Silent tears roll down her cheeks. “Three days after they let me go home from the hospital, it killed my dad. It got into him when I was away, but it waited for me so I could watch.”
I bite my lip, thinking back to my phone conversation with a Detective Keef from Elise’s hometown in Kansas. Her old man hopped in a car and went on a rampage that ended with the police shooting him after he tried to run them over. No need making her think about that again. Time to redirect her before she dwells too much on her father. “Thank you for telling us that, Elise. It sounds like you didn’t directly summon this entity, so it’s not bound to you by anything other than its own wants.”
“Perhaps, or perhaps there’s more.” Abigail squints into the distance, lost in thought. “The rite she used may have invoked a lesser-known being of power, which sent forth a minion to do the summoner’s bidding in exchange for a tithe. However, it sounds as though she aborted the ritual without making a demand, so the entity has found itself on this side of the veil with no restriction on its activity, but it still intends to take its tithe―Elise’s life, or her sanity.”
The girl shivers.
I nod, as does Caius.
“Mesopotamian or Assyrian?” asks Caius. “Shadow figures are often confused with ‘demons,’ and equally often mistaken for ‘bad ghosts,’ despite never having lived as humans.”
Abigail ponders for a few seconds, tapping her finger at her lip. “I think you’re close, but this entity did not feel like one of those, although I did get a distinctly Old World whiff from the bastard while he prowled the outskirts of the grounds. My opinion would be the kind of vengeful entity the old Druids might’ve called upon for dark purposes.”
“Druids?” I ask, both eyebrows up.
“Oh, they weren’t all about fluffy animals and flowers.” Abigail purses her lips. “The Romans believed sects of cannibalistic Celts roamed the forests, beholden to dark gods.”
“I’m sick of being terrified,” mumbles Elise, her voice quivering. “Can I stay here, even if that thing is gone?”
“Of course,” says Abigail, her mood brightening in an instant. “Why would you think you’d have to leave?”
“Absolutely.” Caius reaches out and pats her shoulder. “Thi
s is your home now, not merely a place to shelter from dark magic.”
I grin. “You bet.”
Elise shows off one of her rare smiles. “Thank you! I knew I’d be safe here… I…” Her usual flinchy nervousness returns. “After it attacked Derrick, I ran away. Got on a bus without even looking where it would go. I’m not really sure how I found this place, but I think I had this feeling guiding me here. Maybe it was Mom trying to help me. As soon as I saw this place, I felt the energy in the air, and knew I’d be safe here.”
“And as you all know, Charles found her asleep in the stable,” says Abigail, smiling.
“I was too scared to go to the door,” mutters Elise, a hint of blush in her cheeks.
I lean back into Caius’ embrace again.
“So… dinner?” he asks.
Everyone, even Elise, laughs.
“Men.” Abigail smirks playfully. “Well, I suppose we can formulate our plan over a nice meal.”
“This thing so far appears to exist for chaos and darkness,” I say, extricating myself from Caius’ embrace and standing so I can pace. “We need to understand what it wants.”
Elise curls her toes into the carpet. “I know what it wants.” She hesitates for a moment, then lifts her head, staring at me with the huge, hazel eyes of a frightened little girl. “Me.”
Chapter Eleven
Disturbance
Wednesday Night – July 12, 2017
The room hangs in awkward silence.
I open my mouth after a half minute, but Elise jumps to her feet before I can speak.
She wanders about in front of the sofa, gesturing at random. “It wants me to expose myself so it can kill me. Every night I go to sleep, it’s watching me, but it can’t do anything inside the house. He keeps showing me people it’ll hurt if I don’t let it take me. It hates that I live here.”
“Child,” says Abigail, “it will cause harm no matter what you do. This entity knows you are empathic. It’s trying to use your kindness against you. Do not blame yourself.”
Elise stares at the floor. “But I summoned it. I’m responsible for everything it does.”
“No.” I stand and grasp her shoulders. “You were a distraught child at the time, and you made a mistake, not truly understanding what you were doing. Many young people fiddle around with the occult, not really expecting it will work.”
“You possess a strong gift,” says Caius, stepping next to me. “At the time, did you really believe magic would do anything?”
“Umm.” Elise rubs her hands down her sides, hunting for pockets she doesn’t have. “I knew ghosts are real, so I thought doing magic might work, but I didn’t know for sure… until that thing appeared.”
“There you go.” Abigail stands, smiling. “Guilt is normal. But don’t shoulder the same amount of guilt than someone who has taken life intentionally.”
Elise nods.
“Promise me you won’t succumb to its taunts, and stay inside here where it’s safe,” I say, squeezing her shoulders. “Don’t listen to it. We will deal with this thing together.”
“Okay.” Her lip quivers like she’s about to burst into tears.
“You can return to balance by helping us destroy or banish it,” I say. “It knows you have guilt, and you blame yourself for what it did. Refuse to let it use your emotions against you.”
She pulls back her tears before they fall and stands a little straighter. Right before my eyes, she goes from a shivering teenager to a moderately-freaked-out young woman. “Okay. Umm. How about this: use me as bait. Handcuff me to something so I can’t hurt anyone, and I’ll open myself spiritually and draw it inside like a trap. Then, the rest of the coven kills it.”
“No.” Abigail claps a hand on her leg and stands. “Absolutely not. Too dangerous. Do not let it in. Even if we were able to eradicate it from inside you, it would surely do damage. You may not emerge the same person.”
Elise swallows. “It got into my head before.”
“Indeed,” says Caius. “However, it left on its own power when you were confined in the hospital. That is much different than it being torn out of you.”
“Oh. Yes. You’re right.” Elise bows her head, her long, straight blonde hair falling off her shoulder.
The golden strands transfix me for a second, and kick off a chain of thought. “Idea!” I hold up a finger. “We let the entity think it’s going to get her.”
Everyone looks at me, but only Abigail’s expression is unconfused.
I reach out and catch a few strands of Elise’s hair. “A fetish. We make a doll.”
A broad grin spreads over Abigail’s lips. “I like the way you think.”
Laura pokes her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the meal is ready.”
“Thank you, Laura,” says Abigail.
Abigail waves for us to follow and walks toward the door.
We migrate down the hall to a dining room. Being waited on by people who act like servants bugs me, but my discomfort lessens when the whole staff joins us at the table for the meal. Charles, Laura, Meredith (another housekeeper), and the kitchen workers, (James and Renee) sit with us like they did at the Esbat.
Over dinner, conversation about how to construct a small doll to resemble Elise interweaves with ordinary chat. I don’t mean physically resemble… The general idea would be to use a few strands of hair and a spell to cause a wooden effigy to ‘smell’ enough like her that the shadow thinks she’s gone outside the range of the wards. Of course, this means we can’t use the big pentacle outside since it’s within the boundary. Abigail plans to shield Elise with a potent, but short-lived, protection spell that ought to stop the entity from sensing her at all so it only has the decoy giving off her ‘feel.’ Caius, myself, and the others will enact a binding ritual on the doll, essentially making a glue trap for dark energy. It won’t hold the shadow forever, but it ought to give us enough time to conduct a banishing strong enough to punt it back across the veil and out of our world.
When we’re finished with dinner, Abigail hops up to help the kitchen workers carry in dessert. As they’re walking out, Elise crumples over the table, her head on her folded arms.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, placing a hand on her back.
“I’m sorry,” mutters Elise into the table. “I’m sorry for being such a disturbance and making things so hard on everyone.” She sits up and looks over at me with red-ringed eyes. “It’s the last thing you guys need on top of that crazy preacher.”
Click.
I blink. “Son of a bitch…”
Chapter Twelve
Faith
Thursday Morning – July 13, 2017
Talk about trouble sleeping. Even with a Caius to cling to, it took me forever to pass out once we got home. And once I did, it was fitful at best.
Come morning, I rush into the squad room a few minutes after eight, but Greer isn’t about to complain since I didn’t leave yesterday until two hours after my ‘official’ shift. Then again, shifts for detectives are a lot like political promises: they look great on paper but hardly ever wind up meaning anything.
So, with my enormous coffee (the people at Starbucks had no idea what piscina was in terms of size)—damn, I wasted two minutes on Google Translate for a joke that the half-awake kid behind the register totally missed—I settled for a venti instead of ‘swimming pool.’
Finally, at my terminal, I can properly misbehave. I should be working on finding Mr. Gibson’s killer, but that can wait for the ten or fifteen minutes it will take me to check something else. I won’t be any good to our murder victim if I can’t sleep again.
I hunt down Emmett Waters in all the systems I have access to. Elise’s comment got me thinking that maybe this head-up-the-ass preacher is another victim of the shadow. Technically, it is possible for one of those old-school ‘kill everyone who disagrees with us’ kind of preachers to show up anywhere in the country, but it is not normal for him to go after my coven like that. It’s not like
we went out in public and tried to introduce Wiccan workshops at the library or started a lawsuit to allow rituals during school hours for our kids or anything. We got no media coverage at all, just kept to ourselves, and somehow this guy winds up not only aware of us but determined to see us run out of town? That does not make sense.
My search turns up a record of Emmett Waters pulling a six-year stint in county jail for fraud. He ran some kind of investment scam involving a fictitious company he had no intention of actually starting, and used it to obtain a bunch of venture capital under the false name Brad Marston. He got a hair over a million dollars then tried to disappear, but… they found him. That’s one sure way to wind up in jail in this country, steal from the wealthy.
His background before that is a treatise of mundanity. He’d worked low-to-middle management at a bunch of companies located around the Midwest, mostly Nebraska. Sears, couple of grocery stores, and so on. He moved to Bentonville, Arkansas in 1977, taking a mid-range managerial job with Walmart Corporate―where he’d been when he got the genius idea for the scam. His resume upon release is considerably less impressive, mostly the sorts of jobs you’d expect to see high school kids working in, plus a brief stint as a janitor at a warehouse that ended a month or so before he moved into this area. There’s nothing anywhere even remotely connected to religion of any kind. Detective Kee said something about his prison intake paperwork. I pull that up and, sure enough, he put down atheist.
Well, other than war, prison seems like the most likely place to have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment.
Hmm. I glance at Rick, who’s absorbed in the work I should be doing―finding Mr. Gibson’s killer. This drifting shadow is as much a threat to random innocent people as the serial killer we’re possibly chasing. Hell, that woman in the Beemer and her two kids could’ve been mangled or killed if I hadn’t hung a protective ward on my rearview mirror. I don’t think Colleen or Tamika warded their cars, so… Yeah. This is not a waste of time.