The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders)

by Joey Ruff

  “We’re here.”

  “She can’t see me. Circle the block, let me out, and come back.”

  She nodded and sped up a little. “So whatever happened to the Wendigo?”

  “I didn’t get him right away. He’d been living in the woods for some time, knew the layout better than I did, knew where to hide. Eventually, I caught up with him, took him down with a couple bolo rounds to the knees, and took off his head with my machete.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” I smiled at her.

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “A farmhand,” I said. “The same farmer that owned the well had taken in a vagrant to help with a few chores but he disappeared more than a month prior. There was no report; the farmer just assumed he’d moved on.”

  “So what happened to those missing boys?”

  “Like the kid said, they were eaten. Hence the Wendigo.”

  She made a face. “Cannibals?”

  “It’s dark fucking magic, old as shit.” I was watching the houses pass as I talked. “This is fine,” I said. “Stop here.”

  She did, put the car in park, and I opened the door. I looked back at her and said, “I’ll try to be quiet, but whatever you do, keep the bitch out of the kid’s bedroom.”

  She nodded, and I closed the door, watched the car drive away and disappear around the corner.

  The neighborhood was mostly young families. I knew this from prior visits. This time of day no one was home. No prying eyes watched as I walked to the nearest house and hopped the chain link fence into the backyard. From where I stood, I could see Toby’s house and Janice Hutchinson through the window that overlooked her backyard. She was sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a cup of coffee with the newspaper. Before she noticed me I ducked behind a plastic white play house, watched her through the crack in the closed shutters.

  I heard a car drive up and the engine shut off. Then a doorbell chimed. Janice looked up, folded her paper and set it on the table, crossed to the front door.

  The moment she turned her back, I leapt up from the playhouse and hopped her fence. Moved past the window, snaked along the side of the house, and found the side door. Locked. I pulled out my little tools and slipped a couple of them into the key hole on the knob and began to methodically fidget. Picking locks, if you have enough experience doing it, is not a difficult task.

  Slowly, I turned the knob, pushed the old, wooden door gently, and entered into a crossroad of sorts: a long stairwell leading down into darkness and a much smaller staircase leading up to a door, ajar enough to reveal the kitchen beyond.

  I crept forward and peered through the crack. Faint voices, Janice’s louder, said, “Of course, dear, just make yourself comfortable.” “Thank you.” “Something to drink, dear?” “No.” “I’m going to warm my coffee. Excuse me just a moment.”

  Janice appeared in the kitchen. Stopped at the round, wooden table, picked up her coffee mug and walked toward where I stood. It was dark in the hallway, but I backed up anyway, pressed against the wall and hoped she didn’t see me.

  She hummed something to herself, set her mug down by the coffee pot. She turned and for a moment looked straight at me, smiled. Then I heard the fridge door open and close. Janice returned to the coffee pot with a bottle of creamer in-hand. “Are you sure you don’t want any?” she called into the other room. “I can make a fresh pot.”

  A muffled answer and Janice resumed her humming. She put the bottle of creamer back, poured the coffee into her mug and took the cup back into the living room. “Alright,” she said, much quieter this time, further away. “What can I do for the department of child services?”

  I pushed the door open and entered the kitchen, moved quickly, stopped by the table to listen. “I just have a few routine questions,” Nadia said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Okay,” Janice said. “I’m happy to help in any way, of course.”

  I moved around the corner, sneaked a peak into the living room. Nadia faced me, sat up straight in a large armchair, legs folded, hair up. She had one pencil in her hand and another behind her ear, tucked behind wirerimmed glasses that were just for show. Janice sat on the couch, faced Nadia, her back to me. Nadia tried not to look at me, said, “Let’s begin, shall we?”

  Taking her cue, I moved down the hallway, to Toby’s bedroom, and entered without reservation, closing the door gently behind me.

  Despite his being missing for months, Toby’s room looked like he had gotten up this morning, made his bed and went to school. Not a thing was out of place or packed up, his dirty clothes were spilling out of the hamper between the dresser and closet, the lava lamp on the back of the bed was still bubbling and lit.

  For a minute, I felt a little nauseous, if for nothing else than realizing what a fucking nutter Janice Hutchinson actually was. She was one of those mourners, the kind that held on to the past, couldn’t move on, couldn’t face reality. If I went into the attic, I’d probably find her husband’s corpse, dressed in wedding tux, rotting flesh hanging in moldy clumps from his musty skeleton.

  Still, she practiced what she preached and held out for Toby’s innocence. Had he run away a thief, he likely wouldn’t return, but if it was something else – and she believed it was – he’d need his room again. She would have it ready for him. Just like he left it.

  I looked about the room and reached into my pocket, pulled out what looked like an old Gaelic coin, copper in the center and silver around the edges. It was a little thicker than a normal coin, but had no value.

  I set it on the corner of the dresser and started looking around the bedroom, rummaging through drawers in one chest, then the next. As I worked, something occurred to me. Beside him being a runaway, there was another reason I hadn’t grouped Toby in with the others: his age.

  Nadia had given me Detective Anderson’s fax, and I pulled it out, scanned down the first page, the second. On average, the missing kids were anywhere from five to ten years old. Toby Emmerich was, what, thirteen. It didn’t make sense.

  Or then again, maybe it did. Adam Gables was given friendship.

  Most of the other kids lived in stable homes in good neighborhoods. Toby not only lacked a solid home, but had a rap as a thief and a liar. And moving around constantly, I couldn’t imagine him having many friends.

  I looked over at the coin on the dresser. Nothing had changed. There wasn’t much time, but I could spare a few minutes to test a theory.

  I pulled a second, identical coin from my pocket and held it tightly between thumb and forefinger. Moved over to the closet, opened the door to an avalanche of books and clothes, coats, hockey sticks, and stuffed animals.

  My ear perked. Behind me, a fly began to buzz.

  I knelt at the closet door and picked up a dirty shoe, the laces tied in knots, and brought it close to my chest for a minute, not interested in footwear so much as looking busy. I stole a glance over my shoulder at the dresser. Although it was fuzzy, I could just make out a dark spot zagging back and forth in the air, slowing and coming to rest on the coin.

  I rubbed my fingers together on the disc in my hand as if a genie might pop out of it. Only, I wasn’t after a genie.

  When I was sure the fly or gnat, whatever it was, wasn’t going anywhere, I squeezed my coin. The one on the dresser buzzed and rattled and discharged a short, powerful electric current.

  Had it been only a bug, it would have popped from the heat and current that the coin gave off. But it wasn’t a bug. I turned in time to see it change, swell.

  I let off the trigger and the current subsided. Where the little gnat had perched a moment ago, sat a tiny man.

  “Bollocks,” I said. “Nadia was right. Toby Emmerich had himself a Leprechaun.”

  18

  The Leprechaun wasn’t a jovial red-head in an emerald frock coat and buckled hat what ate marshmallow kiddie cereal. It was an ugly wanker, just over a foot tall with pale, grey skin. The only clothing it wore hung
in tatters: a shredded red robe that did little to cover the scrawny and scraggly arms and legs, sunken chest, or the firm, round bulge of its stomach that recalled images of starving Somalian children. It was naked otherwise and equipped like a Ken doll. The crescent shape of its head was accented by the pointed, white goatee and stab of gray on top that peaked like an arrowhead

  Leprechauns were a type of Korrigan known as a Hob, a particularly malicious house spirit.

  Some Hobs were vandals, others caused illness by feeding on the lifeforce of people. The sort I was looking at was attracted to money, gold, jewels. If it sparkled, if it shone, if it had value, a Leprechaun collected it. It was a thief, pure and simple. It’s how it amassed its infamous pot of gold.

  “What kind of sorcery is this?” it demanded in a rough, smoky voice and Jersey accent.

  “No sorcery,” I said. “Just a little bit of science. See, a long time ago I worked with this group of hunters called the Hand of Shanai. Maybe you’ve heard of them?” I waited a minute, but the thing looked at me, dully.

  It said nothing.

  “Look. You have to talk to me, I know the rules or the code or whatever.”

  “There’s no code,” it said coldly.

  “Of course there is, arsehole. Trick a trickster, and it has to honor you.”

  “I’m not a trickster, I’m a Mammon, you brain-dead sack.”

  “I may be a meat sack, but you’re a dirty Kory.” The look it gave me was red-hot and full of venom; its dark eyes were barely slits in the clay-like skin. “Everyone knows that all Hobs love playing tricks. You may be a Mammon, but you’re still a trickster. Lying – directly or indirectly – is in violation of your code.”

  It laughed. “So what?”

  “You know what.” I was banking on the fact that it did know, because I sure as Hell didn’t. I only knew what I knew because years ago in Brussels, Hunter and I tricked another Leprechaun and he spilled the beans on the whole honor code thing. He was a little mum on some of the grander details.

  “How did you know I was here?” it asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Earlier, when I’d mentioned Toby being a rotten thief, Nadia suggested that maybe it wasn’t his fault. I swear she’d been getting smarter, almost as if Huxley’s amulet imparted some of his intellect.

  Most house spirits were tied to a specific location or, occasionally, a certain object. For one reason or another, this particular Leprechaun seemed to be attached to a person: Toby Emmerich. And because it was a shapeshifter, it was easy for it to follow the boy from home to home.

  “So whaddaya want, meat sack?” Leprechauns didn’t grant wishes if you found their pot, or stash, rather, but if you did happen across their hoard, they’d say damn near anything to get it back. They were liars, mostly. The same was true if you caught one.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “I ain’t giving you that.”

  “Remember the code.”

  “A code ain’t worth that.”

  Just about every culture in the world believed that to know someone’s name and how to invoke it would grant power over that person. I didn’t get it myself, but the way Huxley explained it once, it had to do with the power of the spoken word, the way, in Genesis, God spoke all of Creation into being.

  “Fine,” I said. “Then I’ll just call you…Paddy O’Brien.”

  “I ain’t Irish, you prick.”

  “You’re a wee little folk,” I said in my best brogue. “Now, Paddy, I need some help.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “The physics alone on that one… Do you even have a wee little pink thing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A pink thing, Paddy, like a dog has. Keep up. A winky. A John Thomas.”

  He took a deep breath, wrinkled his brow, and scowled silently.

  “Help me,” I said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  I held out the coin I was carrying, and it glanced between the one in my hand and the one at his feet. They looked real. “Because I will pay you, Paddy.”

  “I’m not giving up my gold.”

  “Calm down, I just want answers.”

  “Knowledge,” it hissed. “And what do I get out of it? You bring me gold? You bring me shiny stones?”

  I considered that a moment and then reached into my pocket, pulled out a shiny half-dollar. I set it down on the edge of the dresser, and its eyes locked on the coin at once. “That all?”

  “That and the two gold coins you see.”

  “It ain’t gold, sack. It’s brass.”

  “And brass isn’t shiny?”

  “It ain’t as valuable. What self-respecting Mammon keeps a pot of brass?”

  Annoyed, I said, “You could be the first.” Paddy didn’t look amused. “How about this then? You help me, you keep the shinies, and I won’t squash you.”

  The look on its face was spiteful and wrinkled with scorn. Then it nodded. “Speak then.”

  “Toby Emmerich.”

  “Who?”

  “The boy you’ve been following. How long have you been with him?”

  “Seven cycles.” I wasn’t sure what sort of calendar the Korrigan followed, but I knew from experience that a cycle was about 200 days.

  A little quick math and I said, “Almost four years?” I whistled. The kid was innocent then. “Did he have any friends?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You were with him for four years,” I said, frustrated. “Did he talk to anyone?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means everyone talks to everyone.”

  “Did he talk to anyone his own age, maybe?”

  “Kids at the orphanage.”

  “In the last few months? How ‘bout strangers?”

  “We weren’t best pals or nothing, sack.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Alright, then. Maybe Toby was given something in the weeks leading up to his disappearance?”

  “Like a disease?”

  “Not exactly, Paddy. Focus. Like a stuffed animal, maybe. A teddy bear? Something that he cherished? Something he thought was valuable?”

  It twitched, jerked its head suddenly to the side, blinked rapidly. “No. I don’t know. Why are you asking me?”

  “I thought so.” I reached in to my pocket and produced a pocket watch, trimmed in gold, a phoenix emblazoned on its polished, ivory surface. I clicked it open, the hands on the clock face were gold as well, and the chain that dangled from the watch was white gold. It was pretty.

  When I set it down on the dresser next to Paddy, the Leprechaun froze.

  “You were holding out on me,” it said. “Brass, indeed.”

  “Ever seen anything this nice? I’m willing to give it to you.”

  He didn’t look at me; he was transfixed. “Paddy.”

  “What do you want for it?” it whispered.

  “I want to see your pot of gold.”

  The trance broke, and it came alive again, eyes growing wild. It twitched and shook. “My…gold?”

  “Easy. You sure are high-strung.” I put a hand through my hair. “I don’t want it. I just want to look at it. I don’t need to take anything with me.”

  “And if I show you…?”

  “And let me touch it.”

  Silence a moment. “Fine. If I show you and let you touch it…”

  “Then the watch and the coins are yours. And I won’t squash you like a bug. I think it’s a pretty generous offer.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Piss off, Paddy,” I said. “You already know you’re going to take the deal. Let’s just get on with it. I have other places to be.”

  Mammon were compelled beyond reason by anything with a polished sheen, anything valuable. I didn’t know much about the watch, just that it was an antique. The fact I’d never seen anything like it – and I was willing to wager Paddy didn’t have anything that
nice in its collection – meant that it was under my spell.

  Slowly, the Leprechaun looked up at me with black, glossy eyes. Its little forehead wrinkled, and turned its mouth down in a smirk. Clearly, it wasn’t going to side with me peacefully.

  I took the end of the chain and dangled the timepiece in front of the Leprechaun. “Do it for the watch,” I said. As Paddy reached a cold little hand to touch it, I yanked the watch out of reach and slipped it into my pocket. Paddy watched, its dark eyes narrowing with malice and fury. Slowly, reluctantly, it nodded.

  It turned then, shook as it stepped from the ledge of the dresser, and quick as I could blink, became a flying squirrel gliding down to the floor. The change was so abrupt, so sudden and so seamless that it didn’t surprise me in the least. As it touched down, it shuddered again, and became a chipmunk, scampered across the carpet and disappeared under the bed frame and the canopy created by the overhanging bedspread.

  I didn’t wait long before the Leprechaun pushed a shoebox out into the middle of the floor. I’d known Mammon to stash their valuables in the wall or under a loose floorboard, never in such plain sight, but those were confined to a location. With Paddy, it made perfect sense; if anyone ever found it, Toby would look guilty as hell.

  The box was full of bracelets and necklaces, rings and wristwatches, and a handful of loose change. I dumped the box out, began to sift through the mound.

  I removed my gloves, let my skin touch each and every object in turn. I set aside bedazzled keychains, hunks of pyrite, a few smooth glassy azure stones that might have lined a fish tank, and a wristwatch whose engraving said, “To Mark Beasley for 40 years of faithful service in law enforcement.” I thought of the whole “self-respecting Mammon” crack. Brass didn’t look so bad compared to some of the stuff it’d gathered.

  I’d sifted through half the trove before I came across a small, opal locket. I’d suspected I wouldn’t need to read every object, that like the bear, whatever had come in contact with the grey blob would be so pregnant with the images the reading would happen on instinct.

  And so it did.

  When I touched the locket, my head began to spin. I felt the current of energy sweep over me, and this time, even the hair in my armpits stood on end. I don’t know if I closed my eyes or blacked out. Maybe I fell asleep, but however it happened, I was swallowed by a rush of darkness and overcome with the feeling of floating peacefully in a great expanse of cold water.