She walked funny, like her arms and legs were separate organisms huddling onto a communal structure and as impossible as it sounds each limb swung independently and to a different time. Worse of all she seemed to have a slight arch to her back. I straightened my spine automatically before realising what I was doing. Wait, what was I doing. I'm coming to the door and I can't see me! I ran from the garden and saw the twig I planted, it looked shrivelled and dead. Still no time for that now and got to gather my stuff and hide somewhere. It took a moment to run to Adym's room and turn the key in the lock. I knew I would, in a very short time, be exploring this house for the first time and come across this one locked door. Events were starting to feel very familiar but from the wrong side.
Well, I was alone in a boys room, abet one he had only habituated for a couple of days, and I knew enough not to look around - especially in the bottom drawer or under the bed else I may have to start looking at him differently. There were no books worth reading in here, unless you count over inflated muscle filled model fronted fitness magazines or a collection of short war stories as the only reading material so I pulled out my phone and started to research the history of witchcraft and the evolution of the art through the centuries - this soon turned to playing brightly coloured games. I was here for a while, at least till after the encounter with Mad Melody outside in an hour or two followed by a very long night playing first with the girls in the pub and then in the mud by the river. As there were no obvious crossbows or rifles in the room with which to take a potshot at her as she walked up the lane I settled down on the bed and prepared myself for a long wait.
Halfway through a quest for bright pixilated fruit I heard the door knob attempt to turn followed by a couple of increasing bangs.
"I feel for you sister." I mumbled remembering the bruised toe I had just received and went back to my game.
18:00
My heart had sped with the thought of meeting Melody again on the steps in front of the house even if it wasn't technically ‘Me’ me doing it. The old me - or should that be the newer model as technically she's a week younger, and Melody was long gone from the house but I heard footsteps reverberating across the expansive hall and up the wide stairs. This I did not remember from before but I wasn't here at this time before. Could it be Adym or Harahel coming back to the house? I ruled this out because one did not have a key and the other only hesitatingly crossed the threshold under great duress and an expressive invitation gushing with praise for his incalculatedly essential assistance including how only such an illuminated intelligence could deliver me from the darkness of my ignorance - prooving free will is just as illusion as I really didn’t want to lay it on so thick.
The footsteps were getting closer, heading this way and I watched as the door rattled back and forth against the lock. I held my breath with the fear of discovery but relieved the door was locked with the key on my side of the door. With a squeal of protesting metal I watched open mouthed as the key started to turn as if an unseen hand had manipulated it in its lock. There was an aura-sonus permeating the currently closed door of a rapidly increasing metronome beat rising from 40 beats per minute to somewhere matching my present heart rate at 140 beats - and rising. As the key clicked and rested I picked up the only weapon at hand and then, with the door swinging inwards on its hinges I swung too, putting all of my strength and effort into it at head height. Hoping the tattoo I was given had some of its powers left and that they would come to my assistance as felt my make-shift weapon hit its unaware target.
*
The world didn't turn grey, I realised it always had been and all the colours, shades, shadows and lights were merely an illusion given to distract us all from the utter despair the real world held. Then, world turningly slowly as if needles had began to inject colour back into reality from the extremities of my vision everything pinged in one moment back to full speed life.
Xanthic was holding my by the wrist. There was no pain or pressure but I was held fast and immovable as if my hand was embedded into solid rock. Annoyingly he was smiling like a male crocodile in a river full of females in mating season watching a boat loaded with Viagra crates sink below the surface. I had been in the Grey and had been released once I had been deemed not a threat.
"I'll take that." my employed said plucking metal chest expander from my hands. "You most certainly don't need it."
I developed a red flush spreading from my head right through to my toes. "most people resort to 'good morning Boss' but I do appreciate the novelty of the welcome."
Some days unemployment doesn't sound too unappealing.
*
It was explained to me, over a cup of devilishly delicious calorific hot chocolate that our actions here had the desired effect and Xanthic had been contacted by those that believe they are his superiors to investigate. There was no information to guess at why they were interested and none were willing given. At first Xanthic had leaned on the idea of mutilated animals for no obvious reason had piqued somethings interest - or had blundered into something’s territorial pleasures and this something has taken offence; On the surface the facts lined up to my recollections. But He, the spirited Mr Xanthic had come up with another theory.
"So there is an elevated level of disruption to the normal energies? What does that even mean?" I asked trying to pull out of the conversation words I could understand and piece them together into something I could comprehend.
It meant something had changed the flow of energy, ley lines had bulged to avoid the area and a force akin to gravity had intensified causing a pressure to build: All accumulating in a bubble of charge threatening normal realities. Worse still, if you were of 'Other' decent, the normal rules for playing their game were being changed.
"Potentially souls could be lost to both sides," Xanthic explained "and I don't know what would happen if this thing grows. It may envelope a larger area and force an End-Game strategy if one side thinks it has a tactical advantage over the other or it might burst sending shockwaves of....." he didn't know of a word to describe it correctly, "...negative 'soulwaves' that could shield all souls within their shells."
"That’s good though, isn't it?" it was just me sounding out the idea. "if a soul can't be sent to Hell then happy days. Or have I got this completely wrong?"
"You have, imagine if your soul is trapped on Earth for all eternity, best case scenario is you wander as an entity with no mass or interaction with the physical reality. Worst case, the soul is confined and bound to its vessel, when the body dies you will stay self aware of everything, feeling the body rot away and dissolve as it's acids are broken down in constant torment.
"And that could really happen here?" I tentatively asked with another new nightmare to add to my increasing list.
"No, of course not. This is just a little blemish and soon cleaned up."
I hit him in the chest as playfully as I could, with it I pushed away all my recent anxiety and laughed joyously for the first time in as long as I could remember; or at least this week - all 13 days of it. So we're dealing with the World's acne and Xanthic was here to save us all - or at least earn a little for himself from whoever is going to pay for him to sort it out.
19:45
We had dinner with Hal in his hotel that night, it was light hearted and no one discussed the elephant in the room nor did anyone go over anything already discussed together or in Xanthic's absence. Apart from a polite nod between the two old friends as acknowledgment of deeds done we ate without a word being said deeper than the current good weather and state of the roads these days.
After we had heartily devoured our choice of desserts and the waitress had delivered our bill to the table Xanthic took the small slip case it was housed in, opened it, smiled, closed it back up and slid it across so it stopped next to the coffee cup of Harahel who didn't look overly pleased.
"Call it a bonus for information delivered ahead of schedule." the demon said.
"But I didn't know you had informati
on when this started." flowed the Angelic reply.
"So well ahead of time then." he finished and stood collecting his jacket from the back of the chair to signify the discussion was closed. He may have had the last word but Hal wasn’t beaten yet. The Angel patted down his pockets and gave the look of 'it must be in my other jacket' before holding his hands out palm up and empty.
"Let me get this one old friend." Xanthic stated flatly. "Tomorrow will be a busy day and you can pay me back."
Xanthic picked up Harahel's eye-line, held his hands out mirroring Hal's empty hands. He rotated them palm side down and slowly back again. In the open palms were a series of mixed notes and gold coins. He dropped them onto the slip case in a neat pile.
Harahel removed a slim book from the inside of his pocket and passed it over to me me whilst maintaining the stare with his counterpart. "We have to do this my way; I don't want anyone hurt if they don't need to be."
"We'll try it your way but if it looks like it's turning sour then we do it mine." Xanthic sounded as serious as I have ever heard him. He slipped his arms into his jacket and walked out of the hotel dining room. I offered my thanks for the book and wished the Angel a pleasant evening before following my employer outside.
"You could have been a bit more magnanimous back there." I said as I caught up with him, "he's only trying to help."
"His kind don't help anymore. You know something. I don't think they ever did." and with that he walked back to the Zaf and drove us back home.
*
"Tomorrow we have to go into the woods and smoke out Melody and make her tell us what she has been doing," I said once we had got back inside Fernum House. Xanthic had opened the door and marched straight off to the stairs, he stopped when I started talking. "and I don't want to be caught in a fight. Do you know how many times I have had someone want to hurt me over the last few couple of weeks?"
"And?" he said in reply. "do you want me to teach you self-defence or buy you a pair of running shoes?"
"I don't know, I just want to be more.....just more, do you know, more able. I want to learn about magic and witchcraft so I can defend myself." I felt like a small child asking for ice-cream before dinner but stood before him like a lioness full of confidence and fury.
"Come at me." he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Come at me, attack me, fight me." he said.
"No, I don't want to…….”
“Hurt me? Don’t worry you won’t.”
“I was going to say I don’t want to get hurt.” I replied
"Well there you go. Lesson One in self defence, don't start a fight you know you can't win. Now get some sleep, tomorrow will be a busy day."
"I'm not tired, I feel frustrated at our lack of action. Don't you remember those poor girls in London? How can you be happy to sit back and do nothing while new girls could be sucked into that nightmare each passing minute. For God's sake, I could have been talked into going to that place and been locked in a cage, experimented on. Hell I could be killed by people like that, girls are being killed and you don't see why I just want to get out there and drag that hag to face justice by the roots of her hair."
"Justice? Whose justice?" Xanthic said this dragging across a table from the side of the hallway and quickly cleared off its furnishings by sweeping his arm across causing bangs and crashes to accompany the cracking vases and splintering wood frames. "It may surprise you to know Heaven and Hell have their own ideas over what constitutes justice but whatever you think we're doing here, sitting around is exactly what we are doing. I'm not a superhero who flies off to save every lost child or kitten up a tree; I find stuff out and send in my reports to my masters just like every other working nine to five slave on this Earth. If they tell me to do something then I may just do something. If they tell me to stay out of it then, as sure as Hell is filled with people who think they know better, I will stay out of it. “
"You saved me, more than once."
"You're different. Look, sit down." on the table he placed a simple stick and a fresh egg - where he got them from your guess would be as good as mine, so I asked what we were doing and I hoped this wasn't all that was on the menu for dinner. He waved my comments away and sat on the far side of the table and bid me to sit in front of him. He produced a bag of soot and liberally powdered the table between the stick and the egg. With an extended index finger he swirled the grit around forming a pointed circle. He retracted his finger and with the talon-like nail of his little finger moving with practiced speed and precision a pair of interlocking characters formed. Once in place he reached forward and took up my hands in his. He fixed me with a stare and I felt one hand go very very warm as if you could boil a kettle by putting a scarf around it while the other rapidly cooled until vapours were visibly rising from my exposed skin. Xanthic quickly lowered his eyes and then looked back at me and lowered them again. I took the hint and followed his gaze. The eggs shell was marred and heavily wrinkled while the stick's brown bark looked shiny and bright and before my unbelieving eyes a small green leaf bud grew and unfurled. I must have broken the spell because I pulled back out of disbelief and wonder but as soon as my hands broke free of Xanthic's the magic dissolved causing the stick to loose it's shine and the leaf to crisp and die. The egg on the other hand seemed to swell as the wrinkles pushed out and the shell formed one smooth protective skin around its delicate contents. Xanthic took the egg and with one expertly manicured nail which grew to a point puncturing a hole in its side and breaking it into two clear halves. Falling from the two was a small damp chick - it looked as confused as I was.
"Life force cannot die, but it can be moved or used in another way. It’s like the conversation of energy, being changed from one to another in an endless loop. It's how I can take the energy from some to enhance mine own; I believe you once called it The Grey, and I assume from your point of view it must be as just take a small amount to slow your perceptions and in equal amounts speed up mine. That sign," he pointed his once again flat nailed finger at my left breast. "is one of protection, it says you have somebody watching over you, a big brother or guardian angel. It passes energy from that guardian onto the holder of the sign."
I took a moment to take this in and realised I was feeling the tattoo, from the outside this may have looked like I was feeling my own boob and I was glad Adym wasn't here with us or anyone else who might snigger.
"How did that work?" I inquired.
"It relies of the energy within everything alive and how life force flows. The chick I must admit was a bit of showmanship on my behalf after the original force was pulled back to its source. It does that a lot. Think about outer body experiences and then snapping back to wake up or white lights ahead. None of it is even remotely accurate but the human mind tries to explain things as simply as it can." he took up the chick and brought his two hands together as if in prayer and then a moment later opened them flat. The chick was gone and then so was Xanthic. He didn't disappear just rose in a stream of colour from the grey all around me and left a flash of dispersing shades in a path leading up the stairs.
Wednesday 7th May
10:00
Adym didn't come home last night which was a blessing as I came home really late while Xanthic and I were holed up in his room. Xanthic wasn't talking so to pass the time I read from the slim volume Harahel had passed to me. It was a concise essay on folklore monsters of England, their habitats and habits. I read of trolls, goblins, elves and fairies chuckling at all the errors and mistakes the author had made. An hour into my study I came across a page with thick circles made in red marker pen of a horror that haunted lakes of middle-aged England and my dreams, Ginny Greenfingers. An aquatic fairy that hunted in rivers and ponds feasting upon the tender flesh of young children who disobeyed their parents or those children who did disobey and went playing in the woods after dark and fell into moon lit waters drowned choking in weeds and reeds only to find themselves trapped below the water's surface only being releas
ed when another naughty child is out playing after dark. Reading between the lines legend had been twisted so all children were scared into doing as they were told by authority; but who knows if these things really did swim around once-upon-a-time. There was a paragraph on how evil they were, intent on only devouring all they could ensnare by the water’s edge. 'All God-fearing men will strike them down on sight', wrote the author of the book before going on to say 'by cutting off the head and removing every tooth less a fish picks them clean and bites the fisherman'. Turning most things into headless things tends to work and was good advice but the teeth? Surely that was pure old wives-tale? Something drunk men would get shown in taverns of Yore by a weary traveller after a bed and the loan of a few beers for the night? Probably a couple of sharpened dogs canines with the needle teeth of a fish thrown in for good measure. Still, something to file away for a rainy day. I even pointed it out to Xanthic who was reading an old Russian book he had brought with him.
Diary Of An Occult Resolution Assistant Page 31