Edward began to smell a woman. He understood that that was why they were running. The man was possessed by the most powerful feeling of lust Edward could ever imagine – much stronger than he’d ever experienced. They burst through the trees together and came upon a dead woman. She was the one they had wanted. All around her stood an army of angels, armed with flaming swords. Edward felt the anger. He felt the rage, and he felt the boiling blood in his legs as they leapt into battle…
The pain subsided. Edward pushed himself up from the carpet. He wiped the drool and froth from his chin and the wine from his hand. He went and washed his face in the bathroom, then walked upstairs and found a pen and some paper. He started to write.
As Edward wrote down the details of the vision, he began to remember. He saw the aliens outside of his window when he was a boy. They used to stand right outside the glass. Then they would wait in his closet. Eventually, they would stand right in the middle of his bedroom and watch him while he was sleeping.
He remembered telling his parents. They would walk right up to the monsters and not be able to see. They would get angry at him and say that he was “being a baby” or lying. He remembered his father hitting him on two occasions when he’d insisted that they were real. After that, Edward didn’t talk about them anymore. He’d sleep with them watching him. He would fall asleep with his eyes and his cheeks covered in tears. There was no one he could talk to about the monsters.
Sometimes they would run their cold bumpy hands over his face while he was sleeping. Sometimes they made little huffing sounds, which he understood was them laughing at them.
He used to ask them what they wanted. He used to beg them to leave him alone or to tell him who they were.
He was ten before they started talking to him.
Edward realized that the alien on the spaceship must have known all of this. He must have known that they had been stalking him all of his life. The monster had pretended they were meeting for the first time, but he wondered, had that same silver fiend been in his bedroom terrifying him when he was five years old?
And how had he forgotten? He didn’t remember ever having seen them, or how angry his parents had been with him. They had been there for years. He had known them longer than any friend he’d ever had. Only his parents knew him better… or maybe the aliens knew him more completely than his parents had? Neither his mother nor his father had spent so many hours simply watching and observing him. They had haunted him, and then he had forgotten.
When the aliens had started talking, they didn’t answer his questions, or even respond to him. They had told him a story again and again about a God named “Zeuspater,” Neptune - the God of the Ocean, the devil – Satan himself, a tree spirit named Golgee. They had gone down into the Underworld looking for the God of Death together, and ended up on the planet Pluto. Now that Edward could remember, he realized had been told that same story thousands and thousands of time. He knew it better than he knew the Bible or Dickens or Shakespeare, or even his magic tricks. He knew that story like he knew the words to a song.
Edward had recently met and even fought aliens and devils. He’d turned people to stone. He had summoned a monster from another world. He’d abandoned his master the good Nevil Dever on a spaceship. He’d traveled forty years into his future and lost everyone and everywhere he’d ever known… but it was at this moment that he felt like he didn’t know who he was anymore.
How could he have forgotten the most important recurring event of his life?
He decided that he had to keep writing the story down. He was hoping that if he did, he could understand what he was experiencing a little better, he was trying to hold onto his sanity. He wrote his introduction:
“If inspiration means the spirit comes in, then how does man take any pride in the art he creates? I am a pencil. I am a piece of victimized paper. I am limp carbon programmed by a spiral of prehistoric commands plotted out by ethereal forces. I am exactly what the universe wills me to be.
This is not my story. This is the story that I was used to tell. It was put into my mind, like false evidence placed into a suspect’s car. The television does not create the images that flicker across her face. These are not my thoughts. This did not come from my dreams. I have been a passer-by. I have simply watched my disloyal hands typing.
So, none of it is my fault. Please keep that in mind and be charitable.
My name is Edward Whistman. I was born in Wales, but my family moved to London when I was two. I don’t know when they found me, or why they picked me, but they were always there in the darkness. I understand that now. I remember.
I told my parents that there were faces in my window at night. I’d point to where they were standing; right there in my room with the light on and no one else would see them. I had to learn to sleep with them standing there and watching.
I was ten years old before they started talking to me.
They’ve been talking to me for many years now.
Now, if I were you reading this, I would assume that the author was hallucinating. I’m not. I’m not crazy. This is real. This is no different than the blue sky above me or the pavement under my feet. I’m just not the kind of person who would make this up. I don’t want attention.
They started telling me this story, and then they told me again and again. I’ve heard that thousands of years ago the bards and poets used to learn how to memorize long works like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and they could just recite them by heart. I don’t have that good a memory, but they’ve told me it so many times. I know this story like I know the lyrics to all of my favorite songs. I know it like you know the Bible.
It repeats itself when I’m sleeping, like the words of my parents.”
He sat back and lay the pen down. Really, he hadn’t written any of the story yet, but he felt exhausted – like he’d been running for hours. His forehead didn’t hurt anymore, but he could hear his heartbeat and felt like his body was shaking with each throb.
A small rabbit hopped into the room and looked at him like he was being ridiculous. It sniffed the air for a moment, and then dashed underneath a dresser.
* ** *** ** *
When Romana found him, Edward had fallen asleep on the wooden floor. His feet and legs rested on a small worn area rug. His face lay right on the hard wood. She’d seen drunks pass out that way, but her nose told her that he hadn’t been drinking.
Still uncertain of whether he was a threat or not, Romana walked over to the table and read the page he had written. She didn’t know about aliens, but he sounded like he had been a victim of the devils. She pushed against his shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. She wanted to see his face, so she could decide what kind of a person he was.
The man’s face was smooth and soft. He wasn’t much older than she was. His blond haircut was weird, and very old-fashioned. He looked a little like a stage magician, from the old movies. That struck her as funny. She’d met more than a few wizards, but never a wizard who was a magician as well.
She thought he was cute, but he needed a bath. There was dirt under his nails and even in his ears. His skin felt clammy. He didn’t look mean. That was the most important thing. He was strange, but Romana didn’t think he was a villain.
At least he only had the one head on his shoulders.
She grabbed him by the arm and dragged Edward across the hallway to one of the bedrooms. He was a little too heavy to pick up and put in the bed, but she put him on the rug with a pillow under his head and a blanket over him. He grabbed the blanket in his sleep and turned. He looked happy. Romana smiled.
She went through his pockets.
It was all very strange. He had English money, without the presidents’ faces on it. He had a few playing cards, some magnets, and a weird metal disc. It kind of looked like a toy flying saucer, but it was heavy enough to convince her it wasn’t meant for children. Maybe it was a paperweight? But who carries a paperweight in their pocket?
He had been writin
g when he passed out. Romana picked the pages up and read them through once. It was all very queer. She wondered if he meant that the devils had been watching him. It didn’t sound like something they would do, but if one of them went crazy enough, they might decide to spend years haunting a child. They were so cruel. She imagined what it would be like to grow up being watched by monsters, and your parents not even believing you. He must have felt very alone.
She went and explored the house. Up on the second floor, she almost tripped over the belled strings. One of them did get stuck around her foot and she had to untangle it. She was surprised to see that it had been tied in the weirdest way, so that it wrapped itself around her foot when her stride pulled it loose. Whoever had laid it knew a lot about tying knots and setting traps.
There was one rabbit up on the second floor and a few on the first. They ran around loose and seemed to do what they wanted. The whole place smelled of animals. She wouldn’t have guessed that the man she’d found owned so many pets. He didn’t seem the type.
Down on the first floor, she was surprised to see so much fantastic stonework. Part of the floor and part of the wall was made of stone. But it wasn’t a whole wall. When the house was built they had filled the planks and the rocks together, so it gave a very modern effect. It even looked a little sloppy, but she guessed that that was the artist’s intension.
She opened the back door and walked out into the yard. Nothing seemed particularly strange. She walked around, past a flower garden and about a dozen more rabbits, and she found the devils’ carriage.
Seeing it again bothered her more than she expected.
She stepped closer, intending to open the door and look inside. She stepped on a hard metal pole. She shrieked in pain and grabbed her foot, massaging it. Down on her knees she saw the shining ruby metal and realized what she was looking at. Romana picked up the pitchfork. As she held it she was terrified that its owner might be nearby watching her. No devil would ever give up its weapon. They wouldn’t forget it or misplace it. They’d kill her to get it back.
But she brought it with her when she went back into the house.
She found the spellbook in the living room. Romana opened it and glanced at the spell. She got as far as the long-necked reptile and shut the book as quickly as she could. The last thing she needed was another spell infecting her mind. That Edward would leave the book on the carpet like that told her more about him than anything. He was an amateur. He didn’t know what he was doing.
He’d left the pitchfork on the lawn when he brought her in. That was almost as bad. Would he leave a shotgun in the garden? Eventually they would have to get rid of the carriage. Burning would be best. They didn’t want to leave a trail that led the devils to them.
Of course, they needed to leave as soon as possible.
She thought about just washing it all away. Was there a river nearby? She didn’t really care if the whole house went down, as long as the devils wouldn’t be able to find her again.
10
In his sleep, young Edward Whistman dreamed of the magician Nevil Dever. No one smiled like Dever, or frowned. It was as if he could control the faces of everyone else in the room by manipulating his own. Edward imagined long silver strings stretched out from Dever’s cheeks to the corners of all the women’s mouths, all the men’s beards and moustaches. He would tell them when to be amazed, when to doubt him, and when be afraid.
“We all believe our souls to be safely locked away in our chests where no devil can find them, but who is to say that our sad mistreated spirits haven’t all abandoned us long ago?” There was sympathy on Dever’s face. He looked like he understood a secret loss.
A blue light descended from the ceiling. Indistinct images moved around each other gracefully, gently, as a delicate music played. Slowly, they began to look like people. They began to dance with one another. A little at a time, the lights became clearer and clearer until the audience began to make out the faces of the beautiful dancers hovering just above.
They were familiar.
One at a time, the men and women assembled began to realize that they, every person in the audience, were mirrored by the faces of the spectral dancers.
“These are your ghosts. These are your lost and hungry spirits, homeless and aching, lonely and regretful. They left, uncertain of whether your bodies were still alive or not. You neglected them. You didn’t feed them. You didn’t give them all the love they needed, but they forgive you now. I return them to you.”
The blue lights shone onto the audience, eventually right into their eyes. Hands went up into the air. There was ecstatic shrieking. Two women fainted. Edward watched from backstage. He knew the secret.
In fact, the projection wasn’t of the audience at all. It was blurry, blurry and ordinary enough that the audience could be made to think they knew the faces. Nevil Dever had taught Edward that the human eye always looks for the familiar. When it doesn’t find it, it imagines the comforting and old. This is why so many people imagine they see Jesus’ face in loaves of bread. This is why you think you see your friends walking past you when you visit other countries. And it is why two dots and a line will always look like a face. We find the eyes and the mouth. We need it and we’re happy to lie to ourselves to have it.
In his dream, Edward watched the blue phantoms. He thought he saw his parents, his girlfriend, the devils, and the aliens. He saw Mia and the policeman. They were all dancing.
* ** *** ** *
Edward woke up on the floor. He was in one of the bedrooms. He was sure he hadn’t fallen asleep there. Checking quickly, his pockets had been gone through. Nothing had been taken, but it was all in there in the wrong order. Logically, it wasn’t likely that the devils or the aliens would bother to put anything back. His first thought was that the girl must have woken up.
He reached under his shirt to scratch an itch and felt a weird smoothness on his skin. His first thought was that something had been spilled on him in his sleep, but he looked at his fingers and they were dry.
He walked out into the hall and into one of the bathrooms. The young man pulled his jacket off and his shirt up to look in the mirror. There was a patch on his skin, blue-silver. He reached down and rubbed at it, thinking that he needed to pull it off. He watched as the patch got irritated. He scratched it with his fingernail and confirmed that it was actually his skin.
The magician climbed up onto the sink so that he could get a better look in the mirror. It wasn’t quite the same. It was bluer, but Edward recognized the flesh. It looked more like the aliens’ skin than human.
Was he sick? Did he catch a disease? Was he turning into one of them?
He began to wonder if all the stories he’d been told about Pluto and Venus were lies. Maybe the devils and aliens were humans from Earth? If that were true, then Dever would still be on Earth.
But then again, if he didn’t leave the planet, where did the last forty years go?
He thought about Mandelesian’s warning, “The more you change the world, the less you will belong in it. Don’t let too much magic into your life. Don’t let any more in than you must. It will destroy any hope you have at happiness.”
Did magic have…side effects?
The doorbell rang.
Edward put his shirt back on and tucked it in. He grabbed his jacket and slipped his arms into it as he left the bathroom.
He walked down the stairs and cautiously approached the front door. The door was open and the red-haired girl was standing in the threshold, her back to him. An elderly man and a woman who looked like she might be his wife stood on the porch talking to the girl. The man looked worried. The woman looked impatient. Judging by their clothes, he had gotten home from work without changing. He worked in an office, not outdoors.
“I’m sorry, she gave me strict instructions not to let anyone inside,” Romana told the couple.
“It’s all very strange,” the woman said, with skepticism.
“Can I help to straighten
things out?” Edward walked up smoothly, smiling. He did what he imagined Dever would have done.
“That’s my brother.” Romana pointed at him and smiled with embarrassment.
She looked back at him, smiling and lying. He looked into her eyes, challenging her, but she didn’t blink. She knew how to stay in character. Did Edward have to worry about her? Was he sure that she had been the devils’ prisoner and not in league with them?
“We’re going to have to come inside and make sure everything’s alright. I know that’s what Mia would want,” the man said, with an aura of authority.
“I’m sorry. Mia was very clear. We’re not supposed to let anyone in until she gets back,” Romana stepped in the way and held up her hand, having to physically block the man from coming in the house.
“We promised Mia,” Edward lied.
“Well, this is ridiculous! We had plans! She would never go out of town and not tell us!” The woman sounded hysterical.
Edward stepped forward and put his hands over hers. He could tell by her body language that she was about to do something drastic. “Dear, Mia has been going through such a hard time lately. Please don’t make it even harder for her. We’re doing all we can for the poor child -”
She pulled her hands away, violently. “James, get the car. We’re going to the police!”
Edward panicked. He didn’t want to turn them to stone, but he didn’t know how else to stop them. In any case, he could always just release them later and they wouldn’t be hurt.
He closed his eyes and pictured all the symbols. He pictured a long-necked reptile. It changed into a circle with a foot inside of it. He imagined the fancily drawn number four, then the weird looking flower, then the boat. The boat shifted into a simple rectangle. Finally he imagined a clockwise spiral. To trigger the spell he thought about Jenny again. Edward opened his eyes and saw the pink wound in the air.
Magic Makes You Strange (The Brontosaurus Pluto Society Book 1) Page 8