The Stolen Karma Of Nathaniel Valentine (The Books Of Balance Book 1)

by Justin Bloch

  He knew that the Allamagoosalum was created when an angel killed a Resident. The creature’s name was derived from a Micmac word for ‘boogeyman.’ It was killing the reincarnated souls of the people Raymond had murdered. It could change form. It had drained Carli Barker’s blood, but it had beaten Darren Gast to death, and it had tried to convince Nathaniel to kill himself. There was something there, in that last bit, but it was skipping right on the edge of realization. He wished now he’d taken the time to ask Sol the minutiae of how the first four victims had been killed.

  Nathaniel watched as the Allamagoosalum entered the last aisle before it would reach him. It crept toward the end of it and paused just out of his sightline, as if to prolong his torment. It was different now, shorter, no longer human. It moved on many legs. His spine became a rod of ice radiating cold along his ribs.

  It shambled out. Nathaniel’s breath caught in his throat and horror flooded his mind as he stumbled backwards. The straight razor slipped from his hand, forgotten.

  The thing that stepped out of hiding and into view had the body of a wasp, enormous, standing almost waist high. Its abdomen was bright yellow with a scattering of barely visible hairs, fine as a newborn’s, and curving stripes of black crossed its top. Down the center line, each black band curved into a shape like a swollen drop of water hanging from the bottom of a table. The abdomen began as bulbous and round at one end and tapered down to the sharp, dark, dangerous point of its stinger.

  The thorax was broken into segments. The largest section was smooth exoskeleton, but the others were covered in bristles as thick as pencils and as black as coal dust. The hairs grew in a dense tangle, knotted and snarled, and some had grown far longer than others, as much as six or seven inches long, and these trembled and moved as the monster walked. Nathaniel imagined running his hand over the bristles and knew that they would be stiff and inflexible, like touching a living broom. A wave of revulsion swept over him and he shuddered, gagged.

  Its many legs grew from its thorax, as did its wings. Some of its legs were thick and covered in the same hideous bristles as the body from which they sprang, but the rest were thin, smooth, curved like horseshoe crab legs. They clicked along the tile, marking the creature’s progress toward its stunned prey. Its wings were long and membranous. Nathaniel could see the veins in them and actually make out the pump of blood, the pulse of the monster’s heart. As if it knew they were being looked at, the Allamagoosalum raised its wings slightly and fluttered them. The sound was like a swarm of locusts.

  The worst though, even worse than the stinger, even worse than the bristle hairs, was the creature’s head. Because it was not a wasp’s head that capped the terrible body, but a human one with skin pale, almost alabaster. It was thin, its cheeks sunken in under its cheekbones, and tufts of dark, scraggly hair grew in patches on the thing’s pallid scalp, as if it had gone through some horrendous chemotherapy and was now dying of the sickness. It had no ears and no mouth; its philtrum tapered away into the smooth skin of its chin. Its gray eyes were alive and intelligent and brightly aware. In them, Nathaniel saw emotion and cunning and hate, and it was that which frightened him most. He stood rooted to the spot, utterly terrified as the Allamagoosalum trundled out into the open.

  And then he remembered where he had seen the thing before, long ago, and with that piece of the puzzle fell two more, two bits of information that had seemed so inconsequential at the time. At last, he understood everything.

  When he was just a child, no more than five years old, he went with his parents to see an art show at the local community college. His mother had been a painter in her youth, and she still loved the arts. She hoped Nathaniel was harboring some artistic talent as well, and that he might be inspired. He enjoyed the show, liked the sculptures, was drawn to the bright colors of a group of impressionist paintings. His mother was delighted with his response, until the end of the show when they were looking at black and white pencil drawings and came upon a large drawing of a grotesque wasp with a deformed human head.

  Nathaniel remembered being absolutely terrified by the graphite monster rendered so realistically on the page. There was a white border all around the picture and some of the thing’s legs had run past that border, extending all the way to the edge of the paper, as if the wasp were trying to free itself from its two-dimensional prison.

  Now, it seemed, it had.

  The creature was an abomination.

  Nathaniel watched the thing close the gap between them. He was still scared, but his horror had passed, because now he understood what it was that was coming for him.

  He had been made invisible and unnoticed, something he had always feared.

  The wasp-thing had haunted Nathaniel’s dreams for weeks after the art show and had remained a recurring nightmare for the rest of his life.

  Richard History had said that the scariest book Carli Barker had ever read was ‘’Salem’s Lot,’ and she had been exsanguinated.

  Robber, in the all but forgotten dream of fives, had said that it was just a story, and that stories had only the power you gave them.

  ‘Allamagoosalum,’ a Micmac word for boogeyman.

  A boogeyman, a creature that preyed on terror.

  Nathaniel clenched his teeth and decided to take his cat’s advice.

  When it was twenty feet from him, the Allamagoosalum dropped the charade of its clumsy, awkward walk and leapt into the air at the frozen Nathaniel, its wings buzzing excitedly as they lifted it off the ground, its abdomen curving under so that it could extend its stinger toward its prey. It moved faster than Nathaniel was prepared for, and he dove to the ground and out of the way, realized for the first time that he had lost the karma policeman’s straight razor. He felt the rush of air as the creature flew past him, watched as it circled and came back for him. He scrambled across the rough, dark carpeting and grabbed the razor, flicked it back open and slashed wildly as the creature landed beside him. He tried to gain his feet, but the Allamagoosalum took to wing and jabbed its stinger at him twice in quick succession. He lost his balance and tripped backward, came down hard. The abomination darted at him, and he reacted on instinct, lashing out with his feet. He struck it on the thorax and it crashed to the ground, screeched piercingly inside his head.

  For a few moments it was a mass of tangled legs and bent wings, its stinger thrusting madly in all directions. Nathaniel rolled away and gained his feet. There was a freckling of blood on one forearm where he’d rubbed it raw on the carpet.

  The Allamagoosalum lurched to its feet, its eyes pulsing with anger. It launched its grotesque body at him and before he could react, the stinger sunk into the flesh of his left shoulder.

  Nathaniel sank to his knees, his left arm hot and throbbing. The force of the impact had whirled him around, and he watched as the beast landed lightly and turned toward him again, its movements agile, fluid. Nathaniel clutched at his shoulder as the wasp’s poison began to course through his veins, turning his blood heavy and slow. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the agony of it, felt his heart begin to lumber as the venom reached it. He collapsed and landed on his wounded left shoulder, which sent a fresh bolt of pain through his body, and though he did his best, he could not stifle the scream that rose to his lips.

  You will die now, the Allamagoosalum said inside his mind.

  No, he thought.

  The monstrosity came closer to him. Oh yes, it contradicted gleefully. Oh yes you will.

  No, I won’t, Nathaniel insisted, his left arm now tingling and numb. He tried to roll over and failed.

  The Allamagoosalum giggled in a way that reminded Nathaniel of the dead child Magdalene and stepped forward until it was peering down at him, its horrible, intelligent gray eyes mocking him. Have the good sense to die, Cipher. You were made to die.

  “No,” Nathaniel declared, and swung his right arm upward in a tight arc across his body. The razor flashed in the light.

  The wasp-thing shrieked again within N
athaniel’s mind, shambled backwards away from him, shocked eyes wide, a thin red line running across its throat from one side to the other. It stumbled, the strength going out of its legs, and lay on the ground.

  Nathaniel lifted himself off of the floor. A thin stream of blood leaked from the puncture wound in his shoulder, but the poison in his veins was gone. Or, more likely, it had never been. The Allamagoosalum had been rooting around in his mind, showing him his worst fears, playing with his head. Poison or a just a terror-induced heart attack, it didn’t matter now. It was over. He felt weak, used up. He took three wobbly steps to the Allamagoosalum and glared down at it. It stared back at him with glazed, gray eyes.

  “I’m not scared of you,” he coughed. That seemed to break the last of its spell, and the body pulled apart, went blurry, and disappeared. In its place on the floor was a crumpled boy with greasy hair, a bad complexion, a slit throat. Nathaniel crouched and closed the boy’s eyes. His dying thoughts played through Nathaniel’s mind: anger, the faces of his victims, a bit of song.

  The Allamagoosalum was slain.

  The world shifted then, or Nathaniel did. One moment he was standing over the fallen child killer, the next there was a sensation of sliding to the left and he was standing in the Walmart parking lot.

  The lot had cleared out. Nathaniel wondered exactly how long he had been gone if all of the commotion over a man being beaten to death had already concluded. There would have been cops and reporters and searches for evidence. It would have been hours. And there was light to the east, a deep crimson like the hot glow of a furnace. The night had slipped past while he’d fought the Allamagoosalum.

  The karma policeman was there, leaning against the side of Nathaniel’s car. Nova was inside, got out hurriedly when she saw him.

  Sol rushed over to him, face strained, taut, but stopped when he was still a short distance away, observing Nathaniel carefully. “It’s done?” he asked, sounding as if he almost dared not dream it. “You’ve killed it? You’ve finished it?”

  Nathaniel nodded and held out his hand to the karma policeman, the straight razor in his palm. Sol looked at it for several moments but did not move to take it back.

  “Here,” Nathaniel said. “I don’t want it anymore. It’s not meant for me.”

  Nova spoke up then from just behind Nathaniel, who jumped. She had moved so stealthily he hadn’t even heard her. “He’s right, Sol. Take your razor back. The Allamagoosalum is dead and now we can put this whole mess behind us.”

  The karma policeman hesitated, then reached out and plucked the weapon from Nathaniel’s open hand. He met the eyes of his charge for an instant and looked away. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for everything you have done.”

  Nathaniel bit his lip and shrugged awkwardly. Sol was visibly upset, and Nathaniel wondered if now would be a good time to try to dissuade him from going after Luna, from throwing away his life. He opened his mouth, but Nova spoke again from behind him.

  “Sol, this needs to end.”

  Nathaniel glanced at her curiously. Apparently, she had decided to try to convince Sol to give up his retaliation after all. He turned back to the karma policeman, who was gazing at his straight razor.

  “Thank you,” Sol repeated, before Nathaniel could join the argument. “Thank you for avenging my daughter.”

  “Finish this, Sol,” Nova said. Her voice was heavy with sorrow, and Nathaniel looked at her again, more confused than curious now. What was she talking about?

  “Thank you for saving her from another death,” Sol continued. A tear fell from his cheek and made a dark circle on the asphalt.

  “Sol. You are a karma policeman,” she said. When her brother did not respond, she went on. “Restore the balance.”

  “All things balance,” the karma policeman muttered. His eyes were locked on his razor.

  “I have asked you five times,” Nova snapped, “I will not ask you again. Do your duty, seraph. Or fall.”

  Five, Nathaniel thought, and comprehension fell on him like the light of the new day.

  Five is the number of your fate, the number of his fall.

  “I will not!” Sol cried and cast his razor away. It turned end over end and clattered to the ground beside one of the light poles. “He has saved my daughter’s life and I will not!”

  “So be it,” answered Nova, and the agony in her voice was like the crash of a dark tidal wave over a sleeping village. “Nathaniel,” she breathed, “I am so sorry.”

  Before he could reply, before he could ask what she meant, Nova gripped him by one shoulder and spun him around to face her. Her arm flashed by and Nathaniel’s breath caught in his throat. Nova’s face was wrecked and devastated. She was crying.

  Nathaniel’s knees unlocked and he sank to the asphalt. He raised a trembling hand to his neck and felt the thin line across it, the line that Nova’s pearl-handled razor had put there. He looked up at her, realized that she was holding him in her arms, tried to say that he forgave her, that he understood, but no words would come. Sol moved into his line of sight, and he attempted to make his traitorous vocal cords work, but they refused to obey. He smiled instead. A simple, peaceful smile, and the seraph smiled back.

  The Cipher Nathaniel Valentine’s vision darkened slowly, and the last of his life poured out of him. His soul slipped quietly away.

  Thus was the balance of karma restored.

  Chapter XXIV

  A silver dollar sun beamed above Philadelphia’s Love Park, sparkling in the water of the fountain, glinting in broad, blinding reflections off skyscraper windows. The weather had finally grown warm, and the park was crowded with people. Students tapped away at laptops, skaters tried to impress bored onlookers, parents watched as children ran around helter-skelter. Some of the kids had balloons tied around their wrists, bobbing along after them, glowing in the bright sunshine.

  Nova sat on one of the benches, sharing the seat with a friend, watching the children. They reminded her of the day she and Sol had sat together in one of the pocket parks of the Silver City. It was a happy memory, so it depressed her.

  “Pretty day, isn’t it?” she murmured to her companion, who looked at her and said nothing. She didn’t mind the quiet. She was making conversation to distract herself from thoughts of her brother. “It’s nice that everyone can finally get outdoors, get some fresh air.”

  Her friend declined to comment once more, and they simply sat in silence. The oddness in the pair went completely unnoticed save by the children, who still believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Good Will Toward Men and could handle a bit of peculiarity in their everyday life.

  The park was Nova’s secret spot. She supposed every member of the karma police had one, a place on Earth where they could go to watch the Residents they daily protected, a place they had cordoned off so that the mutterings of karmic interference were, if not gone, then subdued to little more than a whisper. Although she wasn’t sure where it was, she knew that her brother had one. Used to have one, anyway.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess I thought that he’d give up on Luna after the Allamagoosalum was dead. I should have known better. I know what he’s like.” A pause, a sad, resigned one. “Wishful thinking, that’s all it was.”

  She looked to her bench-mate, but he made no reply.

  “And now he’s gone off to get that…that…” Her eyes flicked to the side, where her companion was watching her carefully, and she finished politely (accenting her final choice so that, even though she did not say the word she had been thinking of, he would know what she meant), “Siren. And that’ll be the end of it. That’ll be the end of Sol.”

  Her companion kept mum.

  “I know you’re mad at me about Nathaniel. I know I shouldn’t have done it. He was my friend.” Just a friend? she wondered to herself and didn’t add. “But Nathaniel had to die. There was no getting around it, balance had to be restored.” She sighed and dropped her
head into her hands. “I know you’re mad. I’m sorry. I’m mad too, if that counts for anything.” She paused. Then, more to herself than to her companion, breathed, “It’s the worst thing I have ever done.”

  He leaned back and scratched thoughtfully behind his ear and said nothing. He was not, in actuality, mad at her, but his silence let her work everything out on her own.

  “The Cipher has to die in the end, immediately after killing the Allamagoosalum. That’s the only time his karma is completely balanced. If he were allowed to live, he might accrue more, and then it would have all been for nothing. Nathaniel…” She was quiet for a moment, listening to the laughter of the children in the park. “Someone was going to kill him, no matter what. It should have been Sol, but in the end, it didn’t matter who it was, as long as he was dead.” Her voice hitched at the end and tears slipped down her smooth cheeks. She saw him looking at her and didn’t care.

  Love Park. What a funny place she had come to get all of this out, to try to explain herself, to justify her actions. Love had, after all, been at the root of all of this, from beginning to end. Sol’s love for Bertha, for his daughter, for Nathaniel and for what Nathaniel had done for all of them…and now Nova’s love for Sol. That is why she had done it, why she had taken Nathaniel’s life. Wonderful, stupid, ridiculous love.

  She had thought…no, that wasn’t right, not exactly. She had hoped that she might be able to save her brother. Not from the death he seemed to be so intent on finding, but from falling. In the end though, it had been too late. It was Sol’s divinely mandated responsibility to kill the Cipher and he had refused it. He had committed the most heinous act a seraph could, had disobeyed the Source. Disobeyed and fallen. Nova had known what his rejection of duty meant, but she had been desperate to save him from disgrace, thought that she might have acted quickly enough to provide him with leniency. But in the ranks of Heaven there were those that saw everything, and it seemed they had been paying close attention to the events that transpired after the Allamagoosalum’s death.