by Lee Isserow
Chapter 9
The least of their worries
Thunderous footsteps made their way to the door, screams accompanying them as the couple burst into the hallway, joining a torrent of men, women and children that were running from their rooms in terror.
The flock fled for their lives, none of them noticing the glossy black door that pushed its way out of red and white flock wallpaper. The knob turned, door opening just an inch to wait for the coast to be clear. As soon as the flood of footsteps made its way round the corner towards the stairwell, Ana stepped through, followed by Rafe.
She looked up and down the hall, “Any idea?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black dish, a shallow pool of water on its surface that did not appear to spill beyond the edge of the concave metal. He turned it to the right, where the water remained still, then turned it to the left, where a ripple shuddered across the surface.
“This way,” he instructed, strutting down the corridor towards the source of the ripple. The dish directed him to a door, and his gaze lifted from the water. “It's here.”
“You sure?”
He glanced at her with a confident smile. “Always.”
“Okay,” she shrugged, his unwavering confidence did not fill her with confidence―quite the opposite, in fact. Her fingers hit the air in front of her, sealing a sigil she had begun casting as they walked down the hall. The door exploded off its hinges, flying right out of the frame, twisting through the air and shooting straight through the window at the far end of the room.
Rafe stared with wide eyes as the whole door and a glittering rain of shattered glass plummeted down on to the street below. “Little dramatic, don'cha think?” he mumbled judgementally, as he tore into the suite in search of the bathroom. He arrived just in time to see a fountain of water spurt up from the toilet. . . but no sign of the creature.
“It's moved on. . .”
“So I get to blow more doors up?”
He glared at her. “Let's try not to trash the place more than we have to.”
Ana snarled. She was enjoying the chance to play with the new castings she had been taught.
Rafe glanced down at the water in his dish as he walked back out to the hallway, it was rippling all over the place. “Let's split up.”
“Your crying pool not working?”
“Scrying pool, and it is, but. . . thing must be going back and forth in the sewage system.” He pointed to the next door on the left, and took the one on the right. With a deep breath, he dispersed himself through it, and headed straight towards the bathroom.
Pushing the door open gingerly, a crash sounded out, and he sighed. Ana was not good at subtle.
In the bathroom, the toilet seat was down, the sound of splashing water coming from beneath it. Rafe eyed it suspiciously, his left hand casting as he reached towards it with the right. He readied himself, and flicked the seat up, firing a blast of green fire at the bowl.
The water bubbled and spat at him, but there was no sign of the creature. “Dammit!” he grunted, turning back out of the room, and storming towards the door. He took a breath and walked straight into the solid wood with a thump that resonated through his whole body.
“Dammit!” he shouted again, reaching for the handle and tugging it open. Standing right outside was Ana, who stared at him with a wry smile.
“Did someone use a little too much magick today?” she scoffed, grabbing hold of his hand and tracing out a glyph on his palm with her thumb. A tingle shot across his body as he felt his blood replenish the magick he had wasted during their interrupted training session.
“Thanks,” he grunted reluctantly.
Heading back to the first room they broke into, he pulled a vial from his pocket and filled it with water from the toilet.
“You collect the weirdest mementos,” she chuckled.
“Call us a door to the top floor.”
“Please would be nice.”
“Please was implied.”
“You know they have elevators, right?”
“Door.”
“You're grumpy today.”
“Woke up on the wrong side of walking straight into a door. . .”
“Smile and the world smiles with―”
“Door!”
“Fine. . .” she said, calling for one with another wry smile. “Takes more muscles to frown than it does to―”
“Is that door coming yet?”
“They say a picture's worth a thousand words.”
“That one's not even about smiling. . .”
“Cheered you up though,” she said as the door appeared in front of him.
They walked through it, to confused gasps and squeals, as a naked couple in a bed tugged the covers up to hide their modesty.
“Is this the presidential suite?” Ana asked.
The man nodded with wide eyes, and Rafe walked straight past them to the toilet.
“You don't look like a president.”
“It's. . .Just the name. . .” the man mumbled.
“You're certainly not acting presidential, unless you're trying to raise a tiny flag,” she said, pointing at the raised triangle of sheets at his loins, cackling as she followed Rafe.
“You remember how to do this?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Of course.” She dipped her little finger in the vial of toilet water, and drew it across the inside of her palm. Her hand navigated around the vial, and Rafe let go of it as he felt the weight shift in his hand.
It remained in the air as her fingers danced in the air around it, tracing out a sigil. Ana muttered indecipherable words under her breath, whilst concentrating on her intent in mind's eye.
The water became a luminous pink, steam rose from the top of the vial. She laid her hands out on either side of it, and sealed the casting. As soon as the intent was made flesh, the vial dropped into the toilet bowl below, and shattered on impact.
In an instant, the water became bright cerise, with a slight bubbling on the surface. Rafe lifted up the lid of the cistern, the water inside was taking on the same hue, as all the water in the hotel would. The casting was working as intended, seeking out the creature they were hunting.
“Someone's going to get up off the toilet and think something is really wrong with their insides. . “
“That's the least of their worries if they're on the toilet when the akaname swims on by. . .” Rafe sighed, as he turned his back to the bathroom
“How are we going to know if this worked?” Ana asked. Before the words left her lips, a blaring, high pitched alarm screamed through the halls. The sound came into the room and howled around them. “Take it that's the sign it worked?”
Rafe nodded.
“Not subtle. . .” she huffed.
“More subtle than throwing a door out a window. . .” he barbed, as he lead the way back to the hallway.
She lagged behind as he ran over to a panel by the elevators, a light flashing on the display indicated that there was a fire on the second floor―but he knew all too well that there was no fire.
Rafe jammed his thumb on the button for the elevator. It refused to respond, automatically deactivated by the fire alarm system.
He grunted, and burst through the door to the stairs. His body was on automatic pilot, running at speed. When his legs were taking too long, he leaned on his elbow to slide down the banister. Up ahead, the residents had began to burst out of the corridors, and as he came down behind them, he clambered past the panicking guests, jumping down half-flights at a time when he got the chance. His heart was punching through his chest as he slammed a shoulder into the door to the second floor.
As he emerged into the hallway , sweat on his brow and lungs desperately trying to replenish oxygen, he found himself staring at Ana, who was staring right back with an incredulous expression.
He shot her a confused look as he huffed for breath, and she threw a thumb over her shoulder to the door she conjured.
&nb
sp; In his haste he had forgotten how easily she could summon one. The years of having to call Tali for a door had marred his memory. Rafe rolled his eyes, glyphed himself to recover from the run, and led the way through the corridor until they found a the source of the fire alarm.
A large set of mirrored double doors stood ahead of them, pink smoke coming from between the cracks, a sign above it reading 'The Great Room'.
“What's so great about it?”
“Great as in size, rather than good-ness.”
“So, like a ballroom?” Ana asked, as Rafe reached to push the door open.
“They have a ballroom, this is bigger than the ballroom. Greater, you might say.”
“What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?” shouted an angry, gruff voice from behind them.
“You'd be surprised how often we hear that,” Ana said, glibly.
“I have guests running from every floor of the hotel, panic flooding the streets, the news will catch on to this and―”
“You called us,” Rafe reminded him. “Would you rather have flustered guests, or dead guests?”
The manager did not respond, but his scowl spoke volumes.
“Let's go snag us a critter,” Ana said, as she pushed past Rafe, and threw open the doors to the Great Room. With just a few steps beyond the threshold, she had completely disappeared into the thick cerise fog.
Chapter 10
It was increasing
Another day, another tattoo, Peter thought, gritting his teeth as he sat back in the chair. Yet another black bar destined to join the countless others.
They weren't countless, they could most certainly be counted, but he thought of them as countless. There were now so many of them, it was starting to feel as though he were more ink than man.
He knew he should be more concerned, knew he should see a doctor or therapist, or get himself locked up if needs be. Whatever the hell was happening to him was starting to get out of control.
It wasn't just the one message a day now, it was increasing, and those were only the ones he could see in the mirror.
The latest ones, they had been different to the initial notes that appeared on his skin. They were no longer thoughts that had been floating through his head, it was as if his subconscious had been brought to the surface, written in black or blue in his own hand.
'You should see her' was the first.
'Talk to her' the second.
'Strike up a conversation' the third.
'She likes you, don't be shy' the fourth.
And on and on it went. Each of them blacked out, as he tried to ignore the messages. He knew what it meant, those thoughts had at one time or another floated through his head, but he had never acted on them. Not yet.
But as the intense vibrations continued to pound away at his skin, covering over the notes left from the night before, a calm fell over him. A moment of serenity. And for one, brief moment, he imagined how good it would feel to follow through on the words' advice.
Chapter 11
High five
As the pink smoke cleared, Ana's eyes went wide as she took the room in. A huge smile crawled up her face as she started to be able to make out the tall ceilings, epic balconies, winding staircases and massive chandeliers. It seemed as though tables were laid out for an event, with candlesticks intertwined with flower arrangements as their centrepieces, cutlery and glasses waiting for guests to arrive and imbibe heartily.
“Oh this is so Ghostbusters!” she said with glee, eyes skirting the ceiling for the critter.
“It doesn't fly all that much,” Rafe said as he sidled up beside her, redirecting her gaze to floor level. “And you really have to start reading those books I gave you.”
“Shame. I was looking forward to crossing some streams. . .”
“The books are just being used as paperweights, aren't they.”
“Not paperweights, that would be disrespectful. . . Six of them are acting as doorstops.”
Rafe kept a judgemental retort to himself, it wasn't the time for such things. A lighter pink mist was still spewing from behind a door at far end―the creature was there.
Slowly, and cautiously, he walked towards the source of the fog, fingers dancing through the air, as he prepared to cast.
Before he could act, the door flew open, a billowing stream of pink bounced to and fro across the room. The beast screamed a deafening wail as it tried to shake off the searing smoke that wafted from its skin.
“Will it die of its own accord?” Ana asked, a little deflated at the prospect.
“Nope.”
“Good!” She threw her fingers up ahead of her. Reality cracked at the centre of the room where the critter was―but it was too fast, hopped clear of the oscillating shattered refractions of the room before she had a chance to react. Ana sneered and punched another crack between realms, and another, and another, each one missing the creature entirely.
A scowl etched itself onto her brow, she grit her teeth and threw her hands upwards. Three cracks formed at the ceiling, and three chandeliers hurtled down and crashed to the ground, taking tables with them, throwing the centrepieces high into the air. They clattered inharmoniously on the floor, a rainbow trail of petals raining down above them.
Silence fell on the room. Ana narrowed her eyes, scanning the scene for signs of the creature. There was no more pink smoke, no more squeals.
“Did I get it?”
The doors burst open, and the manager waddled in, anger radiating off him in waves. “What the hell was that―What the hell have you done?!” He caught sight of the destruction, which only served to fuel his anger. “You've destroyed the ballroom!”
“Great room,” Ana corrected. “And you called us!” she spat. “This is a hazard of doing business―you have insurance, you angry little man!”
“I called you to exterminate the creature, not destroy the original 1765 ceiling!”
“That's a really old ceiling. . . it probably should have been redone sometime soon anyway―”
“Not the time to be glib. . .” Rafe muttered under his breath.
“If you think for a second that we'll pay you for. . .” The manager's words trailed off, his eyes went wide, a whimper coming from his lips as his jaw dropped. He tried to scream, to squeal, to throw out any kind of sound, but nothing came. A thin, pale pink mist wafted out from behind him.
“Oh. . . Eww. . . Is it. . .”
“Crawling all up inside him? Yeah.”
“How do we. . . Should I try to shatter it off him?”
“Only if you wanna risk shattering him too. . .Your aim isn't exactly spot on.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yours. You repeatedly refuse to practice.”
“I'm running out of things in my house to smash. . .”
“Can we do this another time, You need to take a trip over a realm”
“Really? I've got to go pull the poop demon out of the angry man?”
“They prefer filth licker.”
“I don't think angry little men prefer to be called names. . .” she said with a chuckle, tipping back on her heels and falling back through the air towards the floor.
Reality shattered where she fell, as if the air were glass. The world around her shifted and reshaped sending her head over heels until she was the right way up again―but in the Mirror Realm.
The Great Room was a refraction of itself, glistening sharp edges where smooth, dull textures once were. Every object was where it had been, but in the Mirror Realm they were semi-transluscant simulacrums of their Natural World counterparts. Not just the objects, but Rafe and the hotel manager too.
Ana circled the angry little man, looking through his glassy form to the creature that had burrowed up inside him. The body of the monster was hanging from the man's rear, barely a foot long, reminding Ana of a duck hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant. The comparison was apt, as it had a single, long tentacle that came from the creature's body, looking as
though it had gone straight up the man's anus, forcing its way the wrong way up his colon, and was in the midst of slinking its way along the larger intestine with intentions of heading deeper into the digestive tract.
At the front of the tentacle, the thing had a sucker that looked almost like a human mouth. It lacked the teeth, but was making up for it with a long, spindly tongue that licked the walls of the intestine ahead of it. The creature was making fast work, slipping and sliding along, undulating and rotating the tentacle to push onwards, whilst chugging back and forth rigorously as it gobbled up every speck of pre-digested material, sending it along the tongue, and back down the beast's long and winding throat
Grimacing, Ana grabbed hold of the creature's body in the Mirror Realm. She tried a short, sharp tug, but it was stuck fast to the manager's body. With a sigh, she reached a hand through the man's reflective representation, probing the insides of his body. She set her intent, harnessed her gift with the realm to make herself solid when required, and not wanting to make too much contact with the poop-licker, flicked at the tongue. There was no reaction from the creature, it continued to chow down on the all-you-can-eat buffet inside the man.
Ana was getting bored. She rolled her eyes, raised her hand, and once again set her intent. Whipping her fingers into a fist, shards of razor sharp reality pierced between realms, tearing into the creatures tongue and tentacle, all along the manager's digestive tract. Within the Mirror Realm, she had full control over how she used her gift, and was able to see the vile fiend clearly enough to shatter the thing without harming the man that was its meal.
The tentacle began flicking back faster than she could rip it apart, retracting through the digestive tract into the main body like a tape measure.
Her stomach twisted and turned as she was thrown head over heels, and as she arrived back in the Natural World, she grabbed hold of the creature's body before it could have a chance to skitter off. She bit her lip, trying to hold back the disgust as she dug her fingers in to the squirming, seared flesh. A queasiness rolled over her stomach as she recovered from the flip, and she presented the wriggling beast to Rafe,