by Arjay Lewis
Ahbay smiled as Eddie dragged himself the last few steps. “Do not worry, your body will grow stronger each day you carry the staff.”
“But…but…” Eddie gasped, “How do you—”
“It takes time, Eddie,” Marlowe interjected. “You have been mortal too long. You still believe that your physical body rules your spirit, when it truly is the other way around.”
“I’ll…be glad…when I…understand…what you just said,” Eddie wheezed and leaned against the handrail that ran the length of the open hall. His mouth was full of mucus from the exertion, and he wished there was a place he could spit.
“I suppose we could’ve taken the elevator,” Eugenia offered.
“I use it so seldom.” Marlowe shrugged.
“Next time, I’m using it.” Eddie pulled himself along the handrail. The dark wood felt sleek under his hand, until it met something that moved.
Eddie straightened up and stared at his hand, just in time to see a green, glowing creature rise up between his fingers, making a horrid screech as it went.
Eddie yelled and took several steps back, to be saved from a fall down the stairs by Marlowe and Ahbay’s strong arms.
“Bob!” Eddie shrieked. “If you weren’t dead, I’d kill you!”
The small wraith somersaulted in midair, and chuckled with glee at Eddie’s reaction, its unformed face twisted in a huge grin.
“Bob!” Eugenia beamed fondly.
The spirit stopped spinning, and with a quick bark of glee, flew to Eugenia and nuzzled her face like a puppy.
“You’re still with Marlowe after all this time!” Eugenia cuddled the green glob.
“Don’t let him lick you,” Eddie warned.
“He has no tongue,” Marlowe said.
“He could manifest one, could he not?” Ahbay pointed out.
Eugenia laughed and gently pushed the affectionate Bob away.
“’Genia here!” Bob gurgled.
“Not now, Bob,” Eugenia lovingly pinched his spectral cheek. ”I promise we’ll play later.”
“Okay!” Bob rose up and vanished through the ceiling.
“What’s he got against me?” Eddie complained.
“You’re the first person he’s been able to scare in a hundred years, Eddie,” Marlowe insisted. “He’ll calm down when the novelty wears off.”
“Within a decade, I am sure,” Ahbay proposed.
“What?” Eddie gawked.
“He jests with you,” Eugenia encouraged. “Bob will grow to like you. He’s just literally a free spirit.”
“I got a jail cell I’d love to stick him in,” Eddie muttered.
Led by Marlowe, the group walked down the hall and through an open door into one of the large bedrooms. Candles burned on an ancient dresser, and there stood a four-poster bed, which cradled the inert form of Trefoil. On the covers next to him lay his staff.
“It doesn’t look like he’s breathing,” Eddie frowned as they drew close.
“He is quite alive,” Marlowe said.
“How can you be sure?”
“We can feel it,” Eugenia took Eddie’s hand.
“We must begin, Marlowe,” Ahbay urged.
Ahbay moved ahead of the others, and his cane shifted into a full-sized staff, as did Marlowe’s. Eugenia held out her hand, and the wooden clip leapt from her hair, and shifted to its true form. Eddie recalled the desire for his staff, and this time, saw it vault from his pocket and become solid wood in his grasp.
Each made a pass with their staves and their clothes transformed. Eugenia’s became a bright yellow tunic in a medieval British style, similar to Marlowe’s white robes. Ahbay's robes were a traditional Japanese kimono and haori in bright green silk and beautiful shishu embroidery.
Marlowe passed his hand over Trefoil, and his clothing became the blue African style robe Eddie had observed at the initiation ceremony.
Eddie gave his staff a wave and his red robes and tall boots appeared, much to his delight.
The four of them assembled around the bed, one at each of the corners, next to the upright wooden supports of the four-poster.
Marlowe lifted his staff and spoke. “We come here this day to aid our companion.”
The room seemed to grow darker around them.
Marlowe went on. “We carry the elements of the ancients. We call back a member of our sacred quintet, or should we fail, we release his spirit.”
If we fail, Eddie realized, Trefoil is dead.
Marlowe chanted, “Isa ya! We call upon the powers of the ancient elements, the power of the first of the wise who walked the earth. We call upon Air!”
A breeze filled the room, gentle and loving, and rippled through Eugenia’s hair. Her staff began to glow with a bright yellow light at its tip.
“Isa ya!” she said quietly. “The power that gives us the sweet breath of life, and brings the wind that fills the mariners’ sail, answers. Air is with thee.”
Marlowe gave a nod, and turned his head to Ahbay. “We call upon Earth.”
The breeze faded at once and a smell filled the room. It was the ripe scent of growing things, warm days and clear nights, just before harvest time.
“Isa ya!” Ahbay announced, the tip of his staff glowed with a green light. “The mother of us all, that brings us food from her bounty, from whose dust we were made and to whom we must return, answers. Earth is with thee!”
Marlowe gave a nod and faced Eddie.
Here it comes, Eddie thought. I hope I can do this.
“We call upon Fire,” Marlowe said, and Eddie heard a hesitancy like a whispered "I hope" in his voice.
“Isa ya!” Eddie forced himself not to look at Marlowe or his staff, afraid it might not light up. “The heat of the sun and the warmth of the hearth, answers.”
Eddie was pleased with the reply. It was as if the words just popped into his head. He glanced sidelong at his staff, where instead of a light, a small flame danced on its tip.
He returned his gaze to Marlowe.
“Fire is with thee,” Eddie gushed, impressed that he succeeded. He looked around the room and noted that it appeared brighter, warmer than it had been.
“We call upon Water,” Marlowe announced. The staff next to Trefoil on the bed shivered a bit and the tip began to glow a brilliant blue. “Isa ya! The power of the mighty ocean, the streams from which we drink, answers. Water is with us,” Marlowe held his own staff aloft and said loudly. “We call upon Spirit.”
His staff glowed with a pure, clear, white light, like the night Eddie stood before the coven.
“Isa ya! The power to bind the elements, to animate the flesh, and to bring miracles into this world, answers. Spirit is with us,” Marlowe said, and looked down at the figure as it lay in the bed. “We call to thee, Trefoil. Our combined power shall heal your body and return you to us. So mote it be!”
The staff next to Trefoil on the bed began to glow brighter, and a blue aura began to surround his body.
“So mote it be!” Eugenia declared as a beam of yellow light, shot forth from the top of her staff joining the blue aura, coloring it to an aquamarine.
“So mote it be!” Ahbay proclaimed as emerald light joined the irradiation around Trefoil and it shifted to a yellow-green.
“So mote it be!” Eddie focused his attention on Trefoil, wanted to help him. A brilliant scarlet light came forth which bathed his supine form in deep violet.
“So mote it be!” Marlowe professed, and a white light flickered on his staff to be united with the others, making the glow a regal shade of purple. It was a purple worn by kings and more royal than any blue could ever be.
Trefoil’s body began to rise from the bed, only about an inch or two, but suspended in beams of light.
There was a flash like distant lightning in the room, and Eddie started, as if struck with a cattle prod.
“What was that!” Eddie shouted. He found he needed to yell to overcome a terrible, ugly buzz in his ears, like a thousand large and a
wful insects lined the walls and floors of the room.
“Something is wrong!” Eugenia said, as there was another flash, much closer this time. Eddie’s body twisted and arched, and he could see the others were affected the same.
“We must stop!” Ahbay cried out. “Marlowe, release us!”
“I cannot!” Marlowe roared, as there was another flash of lightning, all around them this time. A crash of thunder and wind howled about them. Eddie grabbed the bedpost as rain pelted him combined with the awful energy of the lightning, making him twitch and bounce like a rag doll. He wanted desperately to let go of his staff, to withdraw the energy going to Trefoil, but his hand no longer obeyed him, nor did his staff.
“Our power is being pulled…twisted…,” Marlowe cried out over the noise of the storm that now, impossibly, was inside the room. “Withdraw, withdraw!”
“I cannot!” Ahbay shrieked.
Eddie knew this was bad. He could hear the panic in the others’ voices, as the thunderstorm fulminated all around them. His mind flashed back to a night only a few short months ago.
He and Luis served at Manhattan North Homicide, good at their jobs with a solid success rate. Until they were assigned to a “joint effort” between the NYPD and the FBI Urban Crime Task Force to track down a drug dealer named Viper, who had brutally murdered a witness.
It was their first meeting with agent Wilcox, who made it clear he was in charge from the beginning and wanted to be the one to bring Viper in.
It was all right until Luis received an anonymous tip, where they could find Viper. Eddie didn’t tell Wilcox, his captain, or anyone else. He and Luis decided to follow-up on the tip on their own.
It had been on a rainy night, when Eddie and Luis drove to the back lot of a Harlem Elementary School, where a small groundskeeper’s brick house sat. It was a remnant of a bygone era, when wealthy landowners made up a large segment of the uptown neighborhood.
They pulled their unmarked car in, and Eddie was on edge before they’d even parked. The rain poured down from the heavens in a steady stream, and there were distant flashes of lightning.
“Okay, Luis, let’s take a look, but if we see anything at all, we call for backup,” Eddie told his partner.
“Let’s find out if he’s even here,” Luis said as they exited the car. While they still had the doors open, they simultaneously heard the click of multiple guns being cocked. The two detectives crouched down just as a firestorm of bullets began to burst around them.
He and Luis dove behind a metal dumpster, drew their weapons and returned fire.
“It’s a friggin’ trap!” Luis screamed.
“How did he know we were coming?” Eddie could hear the fear in his own voice.
“I don’ know!” Luis shouted. “But he pops us and it improves his standing. He’ll be the baddest mofo in Harlem.”
“Until the next one comes along.” Eddie groaned. “Cover me,” He got up and as quickly as he could, dove for the car as shots rang out. Eddie could barely see the barrel flashes in the heavy downpour.
As the wind whipped him, he felt the terror, raw and angry inside him. He was convinced he was going to die, right here, right now.
Then a voice spoke to him, a memory of his father.
“The first thing a cop must do is not panic,” Lawrence Berman said as clearly as when he’d been alive. “Look at the situation, clear and calm, follow your instincts, and then take action! If not, you are nothing but a sitting duck.”
Eddie took a deep breath and focused on a window where he’d thought there’d been the flash of a handgun.
He fired at it, and shattered the glass. Then, he hit the ground, rolled, and instead of staying in the relative safety of the police car, ran straight for the building.
From the corner of his eye, he saw two figures rise up from behind garbage cans.
Without a thought, as if they traveled in slow motion, Eddie fired twice at the twin silhouettes. Slowly, they each fell, and Eddie kept running toward the building.
He saw two faces in the empty window frame. He immediately recognized Viper from his mug shot. He just stood there, surprised at this development, and next to him was a younger man with a very large gun.
A Magnum 45.
Viper’s mouth moved and Eddie could hear him say, “Shoot him, shoot him!”
Eddie pointed and fired at the younger man without even taking time to aim, and the young man’s head burst open with a red spray, as the body fell back.
Viper raised his own pistol. It was laughably small, nothing more than a .22.
Eddie ran harder. He planned to leap through the window, feet first, to stop Viper with the sheer audacity of his attack.
Only a large shape moved out of the shadows, got between Viper and Eddie as the shot rang out.
It was so loud and so close, it sounded like a bomb went off. At that moment, Luis’s huge body was in front of Eddie, and it fell back, back, against him. He was knocked over, as his partner pushed him down to the ground. Eddie’s head hit the pavement and he saw stars.
The world shimmered in and out of focus.
He couldn’t see with Luis on top of him. He knew his partner had been hit, but how bad? Was he dead? He tried to move but was pinned.
He could see a small slice of pavement, and the rain beat down, bounced and leapt as it struck the asphalt in a steady rhythm. A pair of shoes appeared in his line of vision.
Snakeskin boots.
Viper.
If Luis isn’t dead, he will be soon, Eddie thought, and so will I.
“You crazy asshole,” a voice hissed, mixed with respect and awe. “You killed my posse and then ran right at me. Damn.”
Eddie could hear the rat-a-tat of the water strike the top of the nearby police car, and not another sound. He lay there on the cold, wet pavement, and waited for the explosion that would end his life.
“Next time,” the voice said. And with that, the shoes turned and walked away. The click-clack of the heels receded as another peal of thunder crashed.
He let go of his pinned gun, and with all his remaining strength rolled his partner part way off of him, grabbed the cell phone from his pocket, and pushed 911.
Later that night, Eddie lay in a hospital bed as Luis was wheeled in from surgery, wounded but alive.
“You got lucky. Small caliber,” the doctor said. “Another quarter of an inch, and the bullet would have severed his spine.”
While Eddie and Luis were in the hospital, Viper was caught by Wilcox, who made headlines as “the Valiant FBI agent who caught the cop-shooter".
It gave the NYPD a black eye. Their commander, Captain Seville, immediately reassigned Eddie and Luis to the Twenty-Second Precinct for their failure to share information or call for backup before they entered a scene.
Eddie often thought back to that voice that came to him in his moment of need when his courage failed. Was it really his father or just a memory?
He realized what the voice pushed him to do. Not to panic, to let the cold part of his brain take over and take action.
Eddie needed to do that now, and hoped it ended better.
He pulled himself close to the bedpost, wrapped his left arm around it as the room shook under his feet.
Wind smashed his face, as well as another wave of heavy rain. He took his left hand, which still obeyed him, and grabbed his right fingers.
With a grunt, and no help from his inoperative hand, he pried a finger loose from the glowing wooden pole. His index finger came away and Eddie moved down the row. As his pinkie released, the staff fell away and clattered to the floor.
It was like a switch was thrown.
The wind, rain, thunder, and lightning ceased instantly, and Marlowe, Eugenia, and Ahbay collapsed, as if the only thing that held them up was the wind. Trefoil dropped the short distance to the bed, a puff of smoke rising up at his midsection. The room was plunged into total darkness.
“Lights!” Marlowe shouted hoarsely.
&
nbsp; The candles sparked into life, as Marlowe stood, wet, bedraggled, and wild-eyed, his staff at the ready.
“What happened?” Eugenia pulled herself up by her own staff, her hair wet and stringy, her tunic soaked.
“How could anything attack here in your home?” asked Ahbay, his hair askew and fear in his eyes.
Marlowe surveyed the room. “Something evil got into the house…”
“Look!” Eugenia pointed at the bed. Eddie turned his head to follow where she indicated.
Trefoil sat up and blinked his eyes.
“Trefoil?” Ahbay said, amazed. “You are awake.”
“Damn straight,” Trefoil looked around the room, and wiped water off his face with his hand. “I take a short nap, and everything goes to hell.”
Thirty-Five
Ahbay lent a hand as Eddie helped Trefoil out of the bed. Wet and bedraggled, the other four escorted him to the creaky elevator, which they all took down to the first floor.
They all moved, wet and shivering, in a state of shock to the breakfast room.
As often as he could, Trefoil would release his grip on Eddie’s arm and walk unsteadily but determined as he leaned heavily on his staff.
As they sat at the breakfast table, the others hid their staffs away.
“Let’s have some eats, Marlowe,” Trefoil said. “I’m hungry.”
“I can imagine,” Marlowe replied dully. “You have been unconscious for two days, old friend.”
“That s’plains it.” Trefoil seemed totally unaffected by the recent events in the bedroom. Then again, he’d been unconscious until the danger was past.
Marlowe rose and walked out to the tea trolley, just as Frisha ran into the room, followed by Bankrock.
The thin man wore a different tweed coat and appeared disheveled, his hair awry, his tie missing, his spectacles dirty. It was as if he’d shifted his clothes with as much inexperience as Eddie.
Bankrock stopped to stare at the others with their sopping clothes and windblown hair, then he uttered a soft, “Oh my!”
Frisha, on the other hand, was completely unaware, and with a great cry of relief, hugged Trefoil to her large bosom. Her flowing cloak practically hid him in its voluminous folds.