by S. A. Hunt
“What do you think about the ring, anyway? Have you ever seen anything like this?” asked Robin. “I’ve heard of relics with symbolic importance and holy character—like the Shroud of Turin, the Spear of Longinus, the Sacred Cloak of the Prophet, the Osdathregar. And I know you can alter the properties of witch-magic by inscribing runes and other symbols like the algiz on yourself, your car, your house. But this is the first time I’ve seen a contemporary object that isn’t the Osdathregar created for, and dedicated to, a specific purpose.”
“I have an idea about that,” said Heinrich. He picked up a book, Western Applied Invocation, and leafed through it.
“Well?”
Heinrich eyed her. He shut the book with a dusty clap! and glanced at Wayne, and said, “I didn’t want to get anyone’s dander up, or lead the boy here down a deep, dark rabbit hole. But there is a precedence for this sort of thing. The organization I used to be a part of creates, collects, and uses relics like the Osdathregar and Wayne’s ring in their work, and the people who curate that collection are referred to as the Origo. They’re specialists in a technical discipline called ‘conductive semantics,’ and they’re a kind of esoteric quartermaster.”
“Are you saying the person that made this ring was an Origo?”
Chills ran down Wayne’s arms at the idea that his mother, Haruko, could have been involved with these people and this secret war against witches and demons.
“What I’m saying is, becoming one of the Origo requires decades of training, meditation, attunement, research. But some Origo are recruited because of a natural talent for handling and crafting magical conduits like this ring. Whoever made this ring might have possessed this latent ability for crafting objects capable of manipulating paranormal energies. And going on how powerful those two wedding rings are, I’d say they could have made one hell of an Origo.”
“It’s dawning on me there’s something you’re not telling me,” said Robin. She’d put on a heavy-looking hoodie and now sat slumped back in a chair, one hand bundled into a pocket and the other clutching a burrito.
“It’s a long story, and we’ve got a long road trip to get back to Texas.” Heinrich picked up another book and opened it to the middle. “Right now, it isn’t important. What you need to focus on is getting into that house and ending that coven, and then figuring out what to do with the green-eyed monster. We can worry about the past when we’re done with the present.”
“No, I think I want to know now.” It was the one dark spot in Robin’s mental picture of Heinrich Hammer, the renegade witch-hunter and thief of esoterica—the cult he’d escaped from almost twenty years before. He’d never told her anything about them, only that they were bad business.
“They were incredibly dangerous people,” said Heinrich, becoming visibly agitated. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I barely got away from them by the skin of my teeth. I don’t want you getting caught up in their ways, and the less you know, the better. I’ve bent over backwards these past several years, keeping you off their radar—if I start giving you specifics, I know for a fact you’re going to go looking for ’em, ’cause that’s the kind of girl you are, and that way lies trouble.”
“Maybe before!” Robin was almost shouting, gesturing wildly. “But now we’ve got things like Wayne’s ring, which was made by his mom, who may or may not have been something from this cult called an Oregano, and you’re still telling me this isn’t important?”
“Yes!”
“Too bad! How about I kick you in the fuckin’ balls until you start talking?”
Heinrich laughed, which earned him a boot in the shin under the table. “Ow!”
“Hey, ease up on the cussing, please,” said Leon from the other room.
“Look,” said Heinrich, “like I said, we’ll worry about Origo and rings later. Right now, we know it works as intended, and we know we have a dangerous coven on our hands. How the ring was made and why aren’t salient to this. Look, I’ll tell you the story about the cult on the way home. And when we get back to our books in Texas, we’ll investigate this shenanigan with the ring.”
* * *
Opening one of the books on the table, Robin pressed a fingertip to a grotesque picture at the top of the page. “I’ve been researching the demon,” said Robin. “Okay, Wayne here calls it Owlhead.”
He peered over his shoulder at the picture. The left-hand page had a detailed but primitive drawing of a man with a bird’s head and huge staring eyes. His right hand clenched a broadsword, and his left hand was up in the air as if trying to get someone’s attention. It didn’t quite look like the thing in the Darkhouse, but Wayne could see how somebody could extrapolate this drawing from what he’d seen in there.
“This guy right here is the closest I can find to what we’re dealing with,” she said, holding up the book so they could all see it. “He’s a killer spirit, a chaos-maker.”
“A cacodemon,” said Heinrich.
On the right-hand side was a long passage. “The sixty-third spirit is Andras,” she said, reading from the book. “He is a great Marquis of Hell, appearing in the form of an angel with a head like a wood-owl, riding upon a strong black wolf, and having a sharp and bright sword flourished aloft in his hand.”
“If that was the body of an angel,” said Wayne in disgust, “angels are freakin’ hairy.”
“His office is to sow discord. If the exorcist have not a care, he will slay both him and his fellows. He governeth thirty legions of spirits. The Ars Goetia. And this is his seal,” added Robin, holding up the book to show them a convoluted pentagram full of angles and squiggles.
“What’s the Ars Goetia?” asked Wayne.
“One part of a very old spellbook called The Lesser Key of Solomon. Basically a demonic encyclopedia. Not the original, of course. This one is four transcriptions removed from that one.”
“So, Owlhead’s real name is Andras?”
“I don’t know,” said Robin. “Maybe.”
She stared meaningfully at the corner of the kitchen next to the back door. Heinrich shifted in his seat to look, and a thrill of adrenaline buzzed through Wayne’s system. “Is he there?” asked the boy, his voice barely above a whisper. “Can you see him?”
“No, but I can feel him. You know when we were in the bathroom? I could feel him in the house. Like heat coming off an oven.”
“I have a theory,” said Heinrich. For the last few minutes, he had been folding a piece of paper into what had turned out to be a tiny figure of a dog.
“Lay it on me.”
“It explains why Cutty used a familiar to murder your mother, and why they haven’t preemptively attacked you.” As if to illustrate his point, he thumped the paper dog across the room. It landed in the sink, settling into the drain. “They’re afraid of the demon.”
“Weaver came into the house, though. She wasn’t afraid of him. And I could feel him in here, looking at her like she was a cheap piece of meat.”
He gathered up a fist with an elaborate gesture. “Demons eat their energy. They’re psychic vampires. Like a poltergeist feeds on emotional energy, demons feed on paranormal energy.”
“They don’t eat the witch herself?”
“Not that I can tell. I’d have to see what Andras would do if he and the witches were in the same physical space, but unless she uses her magic in the house, he can’t get to her from where he is. Which I’m calling the Dreamlands, by the way. From the old H. P. Lovecraft books.” Heinrich picked up a book and studied the cover. “Anyway, the demon is keeping us safe. I don’t think Andras can see us on this side—he can only detect you if you’re expending spectral energy, like some kinda heat-seeking missile. Weaver didn’t use it here, so he couldn’t see her. I think if any of them deadheads up there try to use their power here in the house, Andras will tear into their heart-roads. And they know it.”
“If only we could get Andras out of there,” Kenway said through a mouthful of food. “Maybe we could lead him up to their house
and let him go to town on ’em. Sic him on ’em like a dog.”
Robin smirked. “You want to let a ‘Marquis of Hell’ loose in the material world?”
He paused. “… Yeah, now that you put it that way, maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. Maybe we could trick the witch into going into one of Wayne’s doorways.”
Robin gave Heinrich a sidelong look. “There’s a thought.”
“Maybe.” A distant look came over his eyes.
“What is a heart-road?” asked Wayne. “You guys keep saying that and I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s where the witches get their power.” Heinrich clutched his chest as if he were having a heart attack. “When they become witches, they undergo a ritual where they sacrifice their heart, Kali-Mah!, to the goddess of death, Ereshkigal, and she replaces it with a direct line to her power.”
“What does she get out of it, though? Why?”
“That’s a good question,” said Robin. “I never bought the hearts thing. Like, does she have a big box of hearts out there in Purgatory, or something?”
Heinrich crumpled a taco wrapper into a ball. “The more power Ereshkigal can put into the real world, the easier it will be for her to manifest here. She’s always trying to lay the groundwork for her return to the physical plane. The stronger her network here, the stronger she’ll be when she finds a way back. And her coming back is not something you want—all those witches, all those Gifts they have? Illusion, healing, telekinesis, transforming, scrying, body-hopping, elemental manipulation … each one is a fraction, a splinter, of Ereshkigal’s power. She’s all those witches combined into one. She’s the Mega-Witch. An actual god.
“And believe me,” he said, free-throwing the wrapper into the garbage, “we don’t want that on our hands.”
4
A half an hour to six, Robin took Wayne into the cupola to have him open the way to the Darkhouse again. But before she could close the stairwell door, Leon put his hand against it, holding it open. “For the record, I want to vote against this.”
“Vote against what?” Robin and Wayne sat on the stairs, and her camera was attached to her chest harness, ready to record her foray into the strange other-version of the house. “Opening this door?”
“That too, but I’m talking about attacking those women. I haven’t seen any hard proof they’re…” Wayne could tell Leon hated even saying the word. “… witches. Hell, even if they are, what’s to say they aren’t good witches?”
“There’s no such thing as good witches, Mr. Parkin.”
“What about your mother?”
Robin bit back any further words.
mom made me forget something
words in there, thoughts, crusted in the darker corners of her brain, that her mother’s spoon couldn’t reach
She had a toothpick in her mouth in that Sly Stallone takin’ care of business way, and as she let Leon’s admonishment slide unanswered, the toothpick rolled around in her teeth.
“They paid my son’s medical bills.” Leon gestured to Wayne, beckoning him down off the steps. “Paid ’em off, every red cent. Even if they were bad people—and I haven’t seen a bit of evidence to support that claim—I don’t know if I can condone this.” Leon rubbed his scruffy chin and folded his arms. “I’m sorry … but if you do this, you’re gonna have to do it without me or Wayne.”
With a heavy heart, the boy stood next to his father, pushing his glasses up his nose. He tried to apologize to Robin with his eyes. I’m sorry, lady. I got to do what my dad says. She was crestfallen, but only briefly. Robin’s face hardened and she stared at the steps between her knees. “I understand.” Getting up, she sidled past them and went downstairs.
They found her in the living room with Heinrich and Kenway. “Change of plans,” she told them, standing in the doorway. “I’m going to dinner with Parkin and his son.”
Heinrich put down the book he was reading. “What? Why?”
“Because I want to talk to Marilyn Cutty face-to-face. I used to consider her a grandmother, and I want to see the evil in her eyes before I go through with what I came here to do. And…” She took the toothpick out of her mouth and glanced at Leon. “Mr. Parkin has reservations about what we’re planning on doing. He’s not going to let me use Wayne’s ring to traverse into the Lazenbury.”
The old witch-hunter got up off the couch and came in close, talking in a low, venomous tone everybody could hear. “What Parkin thinks don’t matter. They been killing children for years. You know. Andras showed you. That run-down amusement park out there wasn’t no fun-joy-happy-happy place—it was a goddamn slaughterhouse. Those women are singlehandedly responsible for nearly every missing-persons poster and cold case in the Blackfield Police Department. And when your mother tried to stop them, they killed her and imprisoned her soul in a fucking tree.”
“You seem awfully ready to put boots on the ground when this morning you were ready to call the game on account of rain.”
“I didn’t think you were ready,” said the old man, picking lint off of his black cowboy hat. “In light of what you just said, I’m not sure. A parley? Really? What’s next, a knitting circle? Necromancy book club? ‘Come and kick back with a cold one’?”
“Parkin deserves to see proof before I enlist his son into being my secret weapon. I want to show him the dryad. They’ve been through a lot, and I owe them that much. They deserve to see the truth. And I deserve—”
“You’re lettin’ them use him against you. You think Weaver bein’ out there in them woods was an accident? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one that planted that snake out there for the boy to find in the first place.” He threw a hand toward the window, toward the mission house. “You know what this tells me? This tells me they’re afraid of you.”
“Why on Earth would they be afraid of me? And why don’t you want me to talk to them?” Then something occurred to her, something so staggering she actually recoiled. He was trying to keep them from talking to her. And he had been trying to keep them from fraternizing ever since her mother’s death, taking her out to Texas and steering her away from Blackfield, everywhere in North America but here. All her fervor faded and her guts solidified into ice cubes. He knew something he didn’t want her to discover. But what was it? What was the biggest remaining secret she had left to sniff out here?
She now knew what the monster was.
A demon.
Who brought it out here?
Her mother.
She knew why—to protect the house, and by extension, Annie, against retribution from Karen Weaver and possibly the whole coven, and how—a Germanic cacodemon-summoning ritual. The only item she had left to suss out was how Annie had paid her end of the bargain to get Andras to stick around and be her guard dog. And to her horror, she realized, her mother had been hiding something from her, using her Gift to make Robin forget—forget the things she’d seen, forget what Cutty had told her, forget to ask questions.
Was it the price her mother paid? Was that the secret at the bottom of it all?
“You know, don’t you?” she said.
“Know what?” Heinrich stepped away and went to the window to stare out at the early evening, as if he were running away from the interrogation.
“What happened to my mother after she summoned Andras,” Robin said in a leading tone. “I told you what happened in the vision the demon gave me. She opened the house to possession and invoked Andras into it, but he caught her before she could escape. But he didn’t kill her. She made a bargain with him. You know what happened down there, don’t you?”
Heinrich said nothing, his hands clasped behind his back, turned away from them.
“What did she trade for his protection?”
“I think you know already.” The old man sighed, his shoulders rolling. Robin’s accusatory finger sank to her side and she stared at his back.
Oh, God.
Her face gradually twisted into a mixture of disgust, horror, and …
relief? She went to the couch and sat down, staring at the TV as if it were on.
“I am completely lost,” said Kenway.
Leon put his hands in his pockets. “You ain’t the only one.”
Clearing his throat, Heinrich spoke to the window, quoting the Ars Goetia. “He is a great Marquis of Hell, appearing in the form of an angel with a head like a wood-owl. His office is to sow discord, and if the exorcist have not a care, he will slay both him and his fellows.” He glanced over his shoulder.
“I know that much,” growled Robin, glaring.
Heinrich didn’t return the glare. “What the Ars Goetia doesn’t include is that in addition to being a cacodemon, Andras is known to some demonologists to also be an incubus. He doesn’t always slay the exorcists tasked to remove him, or the individuals complicit in his invocation. He can be persuaded to serve the invokers, but they must pay a heavy price for his service.”
“What’s an incubus?” asked Kenway.
“I know at least this much about demons, being a literature teacher,” said Leon. “A succubus is a female demon that ambushes sleeping men and has sex with them.” Leon’s face darkened and his chest heaved as if thinking about it winded him. “An incubus is a male demon that preys on women the same way.”
“The demon took advantage of my mother.” Robin was staring at her hands as if she were on a bad acid trip. Realizing she had the GoPro attached to her chest, she turned it off. She drew her legs up under her, boots and all. “She gave herself to a demon to protect us. To protect me.”
Sympathy and dismay gave Kenway the expression of a man visiting someone in the cancer ward. Heinrich, in comparison, observed her impassively—coldly, even.
“Must have happened when I was a baby,” said Robin. “Witches can’t have children, because they’re undead and barren. She’s had that scarred-up tongue as long as I can remember.” Tears stood in her eyes. “Now I know why my mama turned her back on magic and went to religion the way she did. She was scared straight.”