Diary Of An Occult Resolution Assistant

by Chris Norgate

  The story moved onto what happened in The Jolly Reaper leading up to my egress through the restroom window and my subsequent collection by my heavenly rescuer. I laboured on detailing how the atmosphere in the pub changed from friendly banter and into unbridled aggression.

  Xanthic had his own theory on this and tried to tell me but as it's my tale I stopped him mid way saying.

  "I knew a science teacher who was convinced the universe and everything was controlled by tiny little things. He showed me one night in a pub how little electrocutes can pass out and leave marks like a ball but also surf a wave and that small thing means planets and space can too. Drink had flowed so I'm not sure if he was as accurate as he could be and then he went on about a dead cat in a box, and that's where I really became interested." I knew what Xanthic meant, I once had an 'Uncle Geoff' who forgot about a birthday present he had for me and when he finally remembered I had nightmares about a stiff dead hamster for months.

  ''I think his little pre-evolved human brain was thinking about this guy called Schrödinger, who by the way now tutors developing demon pupae in comedic timings.'' Xanthic poured himself a drink from a decanter of wine on the side of the room, I looked at his full glass and mined the universal hand symbol for him to duplicate it for me. He failed to notice.

  ''The guy thought about how electrons could act both as a particle and as a wave, think bowling ball and the flow from a knocked over glass.'' he casually knocked his wine glass over and his wine flooded out and across the table as Harahel dynamically lifted the laptop up and away to the safety of his lap while the wine flowed out in an increasing v shape from the glass.

  ''The point of this was a pure thought experiment; with elements we can all imagine to illustrate his point. A cat in a box with a bottle of vapour poison and a decaying particle or uranium that should decay in an hour. If the particle decays the bottle opens and the cat is poisoned; if it does not the cat is safe sat next to a sealed bottle. Without direct observation on that particle after one hour no-one knows whether the particle has decayed and claimed the life of the cat or not; thus proving observation of any environment is changed by the observer no matter how independent or removed they believe they are; although I have collected a few soiled souls from people who put it into practice and gassed themselves along with the cat when they opened their boxes. These people now know how much the big guys down below love their cats. Which by the way are evil personified, don't believe me? Then ask a mouse.''

  My arse had set hard into the deceptively hard chair and I had to shift myself to reawaken those parts of me that I like to shake on the dance floor.

  ''OK I get that, but I've always been confused about him squishing the cat through a slot to leave marks on the end. Trust me, I saw a cat stuck between bricks in a wall and there was some serious marks left on the fireman's arm when they tried to free it.'' from the look of the two men opposite I had obviously got my GCSE science a little confused.

  Xanthic took three of the A4 sheets that constituted my diary. folded them in half and placed them on their side in an upturned v on the table end. He moved the folded sheets apart to make two gaps between them, one in the middle and one each side all parallel to another couple of sheets he managed to stand upright on the long side straight up without the paper wanting to fall. He took a bag of peanuts from one of his bottomless pockets and then tipped the nuts out. They rolled across the table, some peanuts hit the folded sheets and stopped, others rolled through the gaps and rested against the edge of the table in two piles roughly in line with the gaps.

  ''It's not exactly laboratory conditions but you get the idea. Particles will leave two equal patterns of impact marks that match the holes. But electrons can travel as waves, like the spilled wine and spread out from the gaps leaving marks strongest between the middle area of the gaps, where the waves of both gaps meet and are strongest but also to the left and right of where these two piles are here.'' he said hovering a finger over the peanuts.

  ''It's sometimes referred to as a stripy interference pattern. By direct observation a scientist can see a collection of single electrons behaving like the peanuts but taking a step back and watching the whole he'll see the wave and see the stripy pattern. In actual fact both can happen depending on how closely you observe the experiment. The same is with Angels and Demons walking amongst you all; by us being there humans behave differently and a crowd observed by a Demon out for amusement can turn bad tempered and could, with a little push, turn to violence or rioting. But one individual with specific demonic persuasion could be lifted to great acts of negativity against society. So if an 'Other' were stood in a crowd, the whole would be affected, but a single person selected for individual attention would take a role of ringleader and focus the group in one direction. If it were an Angel the group could achieve great things; if it were a Demon then something akin to a football riot can occur. It's deeply fascinating if dirtying the greatest number of souls with the least amount of effort is your goal. I believe the instant and intense negativity in a confined group would have originated from a source that wanted it. Interesting."

  I didn't take in half of it, but if he was right it meant someone had been affecting our emotions and caused a reaction of fear in some and aggression in others. I was scared and I let the two men discuss the implications of this. Then after a period of time their focus came back to me and then bid me continue.

  The discussions held on the journey out into the countryside and the actual message Xanthic left for me was a hot topic, the boys rehearsing their lines so not to get them wrong when they had to do them later lifted my mood. They were very interested in why I had been asked to go into the mound and why everyone was interested in the package as neither knew what I was expected to collect but, as they theorised, they had a couple of days to find-out before I was sent and it explains why Xanthic was so positive I could handle myself on this mission as he was yet to send me on it. He was more distressed than I when I mentioned the Zaf, and why I had it as the Jag was totalled. I never thought a Demon could cry but with the news he would soon lose his beloved car he openly howled.

  When I had no more to add, and after I had answered both their questions to their individual satisfaction we broke for tea, which surprisingly was still hot and brewed to perfection.

  02:00

  "Now, you've had a lot out of us and I want something out of you."

  The boys had been walking around like caged animals and I could tell Xanthic was eager to act.

  "And exactly what would that be?" Hal sounded calm but I enjoyed times like this, when I know Xanthic has something over the competition anticipating the coming comeuppance, and everyone here knew it. So he sounded calm but he owed this Demon a favour.

  "I want to know who the mother bird is." Xanthic said looking straight at the Angel who steely returned the stare.

  "I have no idea what you are on about." came the reply after a marked pause. "This is London, there are pigeons everywhere; just go and look."

  "You know exactly what I mean and that was the poorest attempt at sarcasm I've heard since Noah moaned he forgot to pack his coat and got wet on the ark. Somewhere there is someone trying to change the game and isn't playing by the rules. Who are they?" Xanthic's words urged for an honest answer and at a pace. Harahel appeared to me to want to get up and leave the room. "I want to know who or what is causing ripples in my pond and I want it now."

  "I don't know what you are on about, I really don't." was all he could utter.

  There was a building of tension and the musical aura that swam around each of these creatures from the extremes. It was like a night at the opera and the Hero was about to fight the Villain in the finale.

  "Play it that way if you like, but I know that somewhere in there." he pointed at the library laptop, "Is the answers that I need. I am hunting someone who has decided to cause chaos and gather souls without letting the humans decide their fate. I want their name."

  "I could look to
see if there’s any talk about where it's happening if you care." Hal was cut off in his response by my employer who leaped the ten foot distance between them in a single bound and stood nose to nose with the Heavenly agent.

  "I know the where, I want to know the who."

  "You know where?" Hal said in astonishment, he beat me to the question by fractions of a second. I wasn't following everything here but could he possibly mean Wykeham was the centre of an unholy cesspit of damnation, it seemed such a nice place and more to the point the bastard had sent me there alone......but.....didn't he go off somewhere on his own?

  "Yes, you're going to tell me in a minute." he paused letting this sink in, "But I'm going to follow this crying lady that attacked my assistant in the hospital back to her nest to find out what she actually is. So look in your books and tell me who is mucking about in my parish before I have to smack you around the head with one."

  Harahel looked and sounded - in my head anyway, affronted. "There is nothing in here, " he tapped his laptop carefully with his palm. "If someone’s playing outside the game let me assure you my side would come down incredibly heavy on them.”

  It was explained to me at a future point when Xanthic wanted to demonstrate his superior knowledge and experience that Angels are there to save souls and Demons do their very best to tarnish them; anyone with a vague association with the stories of pretty much any religion know this. But the great game, which has been going on for many thousands of years, would end when one side has an overall majority of souls tallied against their score. Demons tempt and dirty innocents to convert them to their side and if they do it right that one human would go on to torment and agitate others and cause them to soil their own purity. The older Demons, who are set in their ways would offer moments of sheer pleasure or revenge and claim one soul; but as Xanthic pointed out if you tell one human that all humans that don't look like them are wrong, then that one human would influence others and cause hatred and fear which would spread leading others to do the job for him and he, with a bit of free time, can go for a curry and pint with the lads. Angels are playing the same game but offer ways to dry-clean dirtied souls and offer forgiveness to those who can forgive themselves. But Xanthic said this side had to work too hard to get anywhere close to a score draw. Both sides worked out many aeons ago that any soul stolen meant it went somewhere neither side could claim and then a lot of aggravation was expelled by everyone to sort it all out. That and if one side got close to holding an overall majority and the World really would come to an end, then there would be no little country tea shops with which to exchange pleasantries in or expensive London bars in which to tell bankers they are heroes and should try a bit harder to take more money from the plebs and go back to the business of herding the souls until eternity ends; and where is the fun in the stagnant routine of mucking out the humans’ cages when new adventures and distractions turn up every other day in the sunlit world.

  To take a soul and deliberately leave it in limbo was seen as the utmost in distaste and should stopped with prejudice permanency at the earliest possible opportunity.

  Harahel looked at his laptop and his attempt to appear light and breezy as if merely checking his email by tapping the odd key with one finger turned to two hands and then a fury of finger strikes across the keys until he was hunched over like a virtuoso composer at his grand piano banging out more notes than possible in the shortest possible time.

  "I don't understand. I really don't understand this. There seems to be information missing......no not missing, edited or deleted. This is unacceptable at the highest order. Someone has taken from my library and if you pardon my ancient Greek, shit on my Heavenly ordained task in the most unforgivable act of treason. I don't even know how they could have got into the library let alone remove things.......I am not omnipotent, but I have the knowledge of God at my fingertips for all things possible in Heaven and on Earth, yet I find myself at a loss."

  I could see his frustration; I felt for the man; Xanthic on the other hand looked upon this from a different point of view.

  "So you can't tell me one thing made in a bargain and agreed upon between equals. You know what this means."

  "I do." the Angel appeared smaller by the moment and although Xanthic never moved I could see by the shadows that were not there a huge fanged figure rising over a cowering mouse with claws ready to lacerate and rip.

  "Yes, it’s your turn to buy the cakes, so let's get on shall we." Xanthic's feet went back up onto the table. "Oh, have a look at this will you. I think it’s more your sort of thing than mine. Make a nice wood flute don't you think?"

  Xanthic withdrew the stick, once attached to Hastings' crutch, and threw it lazily to Harahel who plucked it out of the air and then, as animated toddler in the biscuit tin, started running around flapping.

  "This is, it is isn't it? It's really.....how did you get this? We've been looking for evidence of.....for almost all of time, how?...."

  "Ha, I take it your lot already returned our wayward knight. Pity, he may have told you more. I wonder what that package was that Valey didn't get if he was second prize." Xanthic got up, closed his coat around him and reached for my hand. "Time to go, now." We were halfway out of the room when Harahel chased after us.

  "This is from the Tree?"

  "The tree of knowledge sat at the centre of the universe and the first life to spring from the earth under His eyes. Yes, I believe it is. You have work to do, I want that name so go and find it. I imagine you'll be calling in some assistance and I don't really want to be around when this place is filled with holier than thou or pious bastards who don't recognise a decent pint and bacon sandwich when they see it. I'll email you my video." He then pulled me out of the room.

  "What video?" Harahel called holding the stick and lovingly looking down at it as if it was a newborn baby.

  "Well you have a damsel in distress to collect in a couple of days, and I'm in a rush, people to see, dogs to run over, that sort of thing. Haven't you got a twig to look at and laptop to fiddle with?"

  Harahel looked back at the laptop and then at his precious cargo. "Yes, yes, so much to do. See yourself out." he went back to his tasks and a thin reedy sound burst forth tone and pace as the Angel was engulfed by the work ahead of him.

  Xanthic pulled me at pace towards the door, collecting Hasting’s staff and throwing us out of the front door and into the Jag just as quick as he could. "Good job he didn't see this bit." he said tossing the staff into the cramped rear of the car. "Now let’s get us to your hospital, I'm sure they'll let us in before visiting hours."

  And, with a screech of tyres and a roar of an engine this select street was so unaccustomed to witnessing, we sped off into the lightening morning.

  04:32

  We got to the hospital as the rays radiating from the sun first broke the horizon lifting the dark night a crack from the pitch land. I was advised to stay in the Jag for a couple of reasons. First, the human mind is a fragile thing and Xanthic did not know how I would cope if I saw myself walking around while sat in my sick bed. Second, the nurses will get confused if they saw a patient out of bed and looking better and third, and probably the main reason, the Jag was abandoned in the ambulance bay and a traffic warden was sniffing around. Xanthic collected the small pile of books from the back of the car, his present of reading materials for me and left instructions not to move either myself or the car from this spot under penalty of sarcasm - Much worse the death as Demons can be sarcastic in this world and the next, but he left the keys just in case.

  Using the time productively to scribble down notes in my diary and to brush the increasing number of knots from my tangled mess of hair whilst keeping one eye on the traffic warden as I knew he had spotted the Jag because he kept looking in my direction with an eagerness to approach. There was a ticket with our numberplate on it but it's affixiation to the Jag’s windscreen was held at bay by the long line of nurses cars which were parked on the grass just off the road due t
o the criminally crippled parking space allocation for staff and their desire to arrive on the wards in time to start their life saving shifts. I waved at the man as he eye balled the Jag, almost willing the car to fly out of its current position, and I could tell he wasn't impressed at my attempt at friendliness. I kept waving anyway, annoying parking wardens - especially hospital carpark ones, should be a National requirement. I considered blowing him a kiss but someone else caught my eye.

  Behind a bus shelter, one of those plasti-glass tunnels, where new sick people not ill enough for an ambulance arrive, had disembarked with an assortment of people of all sizes, most looking ill and coughing, disturbingly most were in nursing uniforms, but a figure on the outskirts of the group moving in the shadows of the hospital via a side door and out through the carpark and service buildings was a very familiar figure. Her hands over her face and hunched over as if in a personal agony was the crying lady.

  I slipped out of the Jag and sprinted to the side of a van parked near where I saw the evil child killer scurry like a cockroach from shadow to shadow. There was a low wire fence leading out to the wider world and an array of shadows to slink in.

  I raced back to the Jag and kicked myself hard; in front of it and slapping a small self adhesive plastic bag to its windscreen. The look of self satisfaction on his fat pimply face was enormous and then he waved at me and blew a kiss of his own. My only working knowledge of witchcraft was wards and protections learnt from paperback spellbooks and my early experiences revolved around finding your soulmate with fruit peelings and love spells; lucky for the warden I didn't know any boil in your own blood or explosive bowels spells or he wouldn't be looking a fraction as smug as he was. So instead I opted for good old plan B and gave him a right earful in my highest pitch voice possible. It washed over him, he pointed out the correct and legally displayed signage and walked on whistling towards a double parked Ford.