by A. J. Locke
I opened up the trusty flashlight app on my phone, and slowly turned the knob. It creaked in protest of its lack of use, and that didn’t make me feel good. If no one had been here in a long time, maybe that was because there was no one to find.
I pushed the gate open, though the creaking made me afraid the graveyard’s security would hear and come running. No one approached, and I opened the gate just enough for me to squeeze through. Once inside, I saw the stone coffin that sat in the middle. It was the only thing in the small space.
I put my phone on the ground so I could still use the light but have my hands free, then put my hands on the coffin’s lid and pushed. In a normal scenario like this, I’d be faced with a skeleton once I got the lid off. Ilyse had told me there’d be a staircase instead, but there was a small part of me that was bracing to see some garish remains.
The lid was heavy, but not impossible for me to move by myself. I managed to work it open, though I didn’t push it all the way off. I picked up my phone and tentatively shined the light in. There were no remains, thankfully. Just a cobwebby staircase. Ilyse had not led me wrong. She had a great track record with that.
With slightly less reluctance, I pushed the lid open more, then hoisted myself into the coffin and landed on a stair. Holding my phone out to light my way, I slowly descended, all the while praying that I wasn’t about to make this my own grave.
It seemed like the stairs went on forever, although I was sure that was just my brain trying to convince me that I was walking down so far I was about to meet the devil and be surrounded by fire and brimstone and all that.
It was deathly quiet down here. The graveyard at least had the wind in the trees and the occasional distant car horn to break the silence. Here, there was nothing. The sound of my uneven, nervous breathing was all I had to comfort me, and it was no comfort at all. I’d welcome a distant water drip or a mouse running over my foot to break up the stifling quiet.
And speaking of stifling, it was hot down here. Which made sense seeing as the air from outside could only reach so far. I was soon sweating, and my hair was matted to my head. I wished I’d brought a bottle of water with me.
Finally, I stepped off the last stair onto a narrow path. The ground was packed dirt, as were the walls on either side of me. There went my imagination again, picturing the dirt collapsing and burying me alive. I moved forward, walking a little quicker than I had while coming down the stairs. The faster I saw Magda or verified that she was not here, the faster I could get the hell out of here.
There were no other paths branching off from the one I was on, which I was thankful for because I’d hate to have to guess which path to take, and then double back if I was wrong and try again. After walking for about five minutes, I saw something that gave me a flare of hope, but also fear. There was light up ahead. I hoped that meant that Magda was present.
I slowed down the closer I got to the light. I trusted Ilyse, but she had advised me to be cautious. I was ready to snatch my rune gun out of its holster if needed.
I sidled up to the wall when I reached the opening and peered in. The first thing I saw were numerous, small lights positioned on the ground or pushed into the dirt walls. They were those battery-operated lights that could be turned on and off by pressing on them. Made more sense than trying to be old-school and use torches. In an underground room with no ventilation, that was asking for death.
It was slightly cooler here, and that was because there were several tunnels branching off from this area, which was roughly circular in shape. Maybe they led to exits in other crypts in the graveyard.
“Don’t be shy, come in.”
The sound of a voice made me suck in a gasp and jump back. I swallowed hard and forced myself to relax. She was here after all. That was a good thing, even if her throaty voice sounded like it’d be perfectly at home in a horror movie.
I eased into the space and turned to the right where I saw Magda seated in the corner behind a huge, cluttered, wooden table. You weren’t an Underground worker unless you had a cluttered workspace full of things you likely weren’t supposed to have. There were also bones everywhere. Skulls were embedded in the dirt walls as though the skeletons had pushed their way from their coffins to come say hello. Or they were strewn on the floor among other types of bones from the human body. It did not give me a comfortable feeling. I turned my attention back to Magda.
My first impression of Magda was that she was incredibly short, and then I realized that she was a little person. She looked to be around three and a half feet tall, and had a small frame to go with her short stature. Her wrinkle-lined skin was pale as though she didn’t see much sun, which made sense given where she set up shop. She was probably in her late sixties, but the eyes that were currently assessing me had a sharpness I didn’t see much in older people. My Grams had been like that too. She knew a lie was coming before it left my mouth.
“Come forth, girl. I don’t assume you came all this way to gawk at me.” She looked away and started fiddling with the objects on her table as though I had disrupted her from something she was eager to get back to. There was an electric charge to the air that gave me a sense of trepidation.
Power oozed from Magda. She was no ordinary dead witch. I had never felt power so strong from any dead witch before. Tielle might as well be a baby in diapers compared to what I felt from Magda. It made me feel more confident that she could help me, but it also made me feel as though I had to be extremely cautious around her.
I walked forward. There was a rickety chair in front of her table so I sat down. It was covered in dust that I hadn’t bothered to brush off, but it did indicate that it had probably been a long time since someone had made their way here seeking Magda’s services. If she was surprised or excited at the prospect of a customer, she did not show it.
Movement in my peripheral made me turn to the corner of the wall behind Magda. I was startled by a pair of glowing red eyes that stared at me from a face and body that was vaguely feline, but was larger than a regular cat. A long, shadowy tail snaked lazily through the air behind it. I was reminded of the monstrous ghost horse and dog I had seen in the In Between. My eyes widened as I stared at the creature. Darkness roiled off it. Needless to say, its presence did not help me feel any more comfortable here.
“How the hell do you have one of those things here?” I spoke before I could stop myself. Magda paused what she was doing and looked up at me, holding my gaze for a long moment. I swallowed hard.
“How can I help you, girl?” Clearly she was not going to explain her otherworldly…pet? The ghost cat didn’t move from where it was crouched, and kept its disconcerting gaze on me. Right now I didn’t have it in me to try and figure this out, so I decided to ignore the ghost cat shadow thing for now.
Magda had returned her attention to her runes, powders, and vials of strangely colored liquids. I was taken by the way her bone-white hair seemed to glow under the dim battery lights. It fell around her face in waves, reaching just past her shoulders. Every time she moved her hands, the light glinted off the numerous rings on all her fingers. There were also many chains draped around her neck, some thick and twisted, some delicate, with pendants of all kinds dangling from them. Some were rune necklaces, but I couldn’t really tell what kind. Her ears were graced by tiny, stud earrings from cartilage to tip, and she had a ruby stud for a nose ring.
“Um, I’m here on the recommendation of my friend, Ilyse Nurou.”
Magda looked up again. Her eyes could have been brown, but in the bare light they looked like pools of black. A smile tugged the corners of her mouth.
“Ilyse,” she said. “I remember her well. It has been many moons since I last encountered her. And her friend Amelia.”
“My grandmother. They’re both dead.”
“I know,” Magda said. “I felt their deaths.”
I frowned slightly. “Felt their deaths?”
“Those with power who know how to use it can do so much more than th
ey think can be done,” she said. “But I ask again, how can I help you?”
I opened the pouch and placed the binding runes on the table. Magda’s brows rose slightly when she saw what I’d brought with me.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me,” I said. “Since, uh, I don’t know if you get out of this place much…”
Magda laughed. “If I never left here, I reckon it’d smell a lot worse, don’t you agree?”
It took a second for me to get what she was talking about; then I realized she was referring to the fact that there were no modern luxuries down here, such as a bathroom. So she did leave her little hidey-hole. Boy, was I grateful. If she was the type of eccentric who didn’t leave, I didn’t think I’d have the stomach for this meeting.
“So I guess you’ve heard of me, Selene Vanream, and everything that’s been going on with me these past few months.”
Magda nodded.
“Well, as you know, I killed the man who stole my reanimation power. But instead of dying permanently, I died for two minutes, then fell into a coma for a month. There’s been speculation as to why I didn’t die for good, and I was able to figure out that it was because not all of my reanimation power died. Some of it remains within these binding runes, which I’ve used to hide my reanimation power every time the government did their check to root out and strip reanimators. Ilyse suggested that if anyone could help me get my power back from these runes, you could. I know binding runes are powerful and dangerous, so I didn’t want to try to get it back on my own and end up blowing myself and half of New York City to smithereens. So…can you help me?”
That ghost of a smile was back on Magda’s lips. She picked up one of the binding runes and gently turned it over in her hand, caressing it with her fingers. “Thrumming with energy, thirsting to unleash power.” She looked at me. “I gave your grandmother these runes a long time ago.”
“I know. And they’ve proven helpful in more ways that just hiding my reanimation power. Ilyse told me that a spark of my reanimation power always remains within the rune though, keeping it active.”
“That is right,” Magda said. She was handling the rune almost lovingly. “Binding runes used to be made from the bones of human skeletons, did you know that?”
I sucked in a gasp. “What? Are you serious?”
Magda’s smiled widened as she shook her head. “You textbook necromancers and dead witches, how I feel sorry for you. You go to school, learn what they choose to teach you, align with a ghost agency, leech house, or join the PTF, spend thirty years or so working with ghosts, then you retire thinking you had a life well-lived when there is so much you never knew.”
“I’ve come to realize that there are more things in the paranormal world than we know of.”
She regarded me for a moment. “Yes, I sensed it as soon as I felt your presence. You have walked a path very few have ever walked. And not just on this plane of existence. How far off that path will you continue to stray? That is the question.”
We were getting off topic from what I had come here for, but there was something about Magda’s words that made me want to know more.
“Many centuries ago they fashioned runes from the bones of the dead. Not just binding runes. They were ground up and compressed, then sparked to life by dead witch magic and manipulated into all kinds of runes. As society progressed, you can imagine such a practice was deemed too unethical to continue, so it was wiped out and semiprecious stones were used instead. But bone runes remained alive in the Underground until the art of making them became lost when the knowledgeable ones died out, which is why they are so rare now.”
I looked around at all the bones that occupied the space before turning back to Magda. “So…the binding runes you gave my grandmother were…”
“Old school,” she whispered.
A chill went through me. “Bones,” I whispered. “Used to make runes. Unbelievable.”
“Your textbooks would never teach you that, girl,” she said. “You must leave the lightened path and follow trails to darker places. That is where true knowledge and power lies. Not within the light, but deep within the shadows. If you fear them, they will engulf you and destroy you. If you embrace them, your eyes will be opened in ways you could have never imagined. There is much to see within the darkness. More so than within the light. Everyone thinks darkness hides and light illuminates. But what is hidden can always be found, you just have to know how to look.”
Her words were chilling, but also alluring. It hearkened to what that mysterious Rune Teller had told me when she read my cards.
“I have some experience with being off the lightened path,” I said.
“Yes, you are an interesting one. You underwent an incredible evolution of power only to have it taken away.”
“It caused too much destruction and death. Too much pain. Too many people trying to use me for their own evil purposes.”
“Yes, child, ignorant fools flocked to you aplenty. Yet you stand while they do not. You are a strong one. I can teach you many things if you are willing to learn.”
“Right now I just want to learn how to get my reanimation power back. Can you get it out of the binding runes in a safe way?”
Magda held up the rune to the light as though she wanted to give it a closer inspection, although I was sure she already knew that rune inside and out. “I feel it,” she whispered. “It has the same flavor as you do.” She lowered her hand. “I can do this thing you ask of me.”
I felt a knot of pressure release from my chest as relief washed over me. “Thank you. How much?” I had brought more than I’d ever want to spend, but I’d do it to get this done.
“You, I will not charge money,” she said. “What you have brought me is far more valuable.”
“The binding runes?”
Magda nodded. “I want these runes. That is payment enough.”
The smile on her face didn’t leave me with a good feeling. It was no big shocker that Magda craved power, it wasn’t like she’d gotten to be as strong as I felt she was just by wishing for it. I was sure she’d done things I didn’t want to know about in order to gain her strength.
That was the thing about those with power; they were never satisfied, they always wanted more. The danger came from what they did with that power. I wasn’t sure what Magda’s desires were. I had reservations about her choice of payment, but what other options did I have?
“Fine,” I said. “Now what?”
“Now we get to work. Go have a seat in the middle of the room. Take the binding runes and lay them in front of you.”
I picked up the binding runes, then walked a few feet away before sitting down on the dirt. I arranged the runes in a line in front of me while Magda gathered a few items from her table and came over to meet me. She was barefoot, and even her toes were covered in rings with glittering stones. It was probably hard to find shoes to accommodate all of that.
Magda placed her items on the ground, then sat down and arranged the skirt of her dark blue sheath dress around her. She’d brought over a few vials of rune powder, along with several runes. Two of them I recognized as the rune I was supposed to have used to take my reanimation power back from Renton.
She spent the next few minutes using the powder to draw a large rune circle on the ground. Inside the circle she drew a series of complex-looking runes. She then placed a binding rune on top of each one.
“The dead are powerful,” she said as she sat back on her heels. “Everyone focuses on ghosts, they give no thought to anything else.”
“You mean the corpse?”
“The spirit is one thing, the vessel is another. The dead can speak if you know what to listen for.” She took some of the skulls that were lying nearby and arranged them around her rune circle. I hadn’t thought skulls would play a role in this ritual. A thrill of fear went through me. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into and had to keep telling myself that Ilyse would not have sent me here to put me in danger.<
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Magda caressed the skull closest to her. “I find stories of the dead much more intriguing than that of the living.” She raised her gaze to meet mine and I hoped my fear wasn’t showing on my face. “In order for this to work, the binding runes have to release your reanimation power. But doing so will unleash not just your power, but all the power that has been stored and growing inside the runes ever since you activated them. If it is not controlled, it will collapse this entire graveyard on top of us.”
I swallowed hard. I did not like the sound of that. My first and only experience with unleashing a binding rune was still a vivid memory. Back then it had only been one binding rune and the collateral damage had been catastrophic. I didn’t want to imagine how bad it would be if all these runes were unleashed. Most of them had been active for years, so the amount of power that would have grown within them was something I didn’t want to think about.
“How does one keep a handle on power like that?” I asked, swallowing past the dryness in my throat.
“You divert it,” Magda said. “You send it somewhere strong enough to hold it.”
I looked down at the half a dozen skulls she had placed around the rune circle and a frown creased my brow. “These bones?” I couldn’t keep the skeptical tone from my voice.
“The binding runes are bone themselves, and thus they can be contained in the bones from whence they came. If you do not trust me, girl, we do not have to do this.”
My hands, which were resting on my thighs, were balled into fists. I was sweaty, tired, thirsty, and uncomfortable in Magda’s presence. But I didn’t have a fraction of Magda’s knowledge, and I couldn’t exactly do a quick Google search to see if I could find something that supported her plan for giving me my power back. I just had to go on instinct, and trust in Ilyse. I nodded.