by Ward Parker
Missy threw on jeans and a T-shirt, slipped into her sandals, and went to her hiding place for the talisman and the grimoire. She had originally hidden it in this spot without a lot of forethought, afraid the Arch-Mage Bob would steal it from her. It turned out to be a brilliant hiding place since Bob and his thug weren’t able to find it, even after tearing her house apart.
The hiding place? One of her cats’ litter boxes. She had improvised a false bottom of sorts and the cat pee along with a simple grounding spell kept away human hands as well as searching spells.
The litter box was in the laundry room. First, she cleaned it, because her cats had been quite prolific since yesterday. Then, from beneath the liner in the bottom, she pulled out a Ziplock bag inside another bag. She took the centuries-old book and talisman out and carried them to the kitchen.
Soon, she had her magick circle drawn on the floor, with a lit candle at each of the five points of a pentagram. She performed her usual mind-clearing and entered a meditative state as she marshaled the energies within her body, and from the earth, air, and ocean.
She chanted the summoning spell she had tried the other day. It was one that Don Mateo had inscribed in the back leaves of the grimoire nearly 400 years ago. Partly, the words of the verse were intended to put her in a hypnotic state to channel her energies into magick. But the words had power of their own.
The gnome from my garden, so cute and wee
I now beseech thee to return to me. . .
There was the tingle of magick in the air around her, a faint humming in her ears, and the slightest vibration in the floor.
It was time. She grasped the two-and-a-half-inch metal figurine that looked more like a fish than a dragon.
An electric shock hit her palm and ran up her arm and into her heart. Her hair stood on end and she levitated from the floor a few inches.
“Enchanted gnome of mine, I command thee to return to me. I compel thee, my earth magick compels thee, the power of the Red Dragon compels thee.
“Return to me now! You have no choice but to obey.”
All the pent-up energy and tension within her rushed out like a wind.
She dropped the talisman. It clattered on the tile floor. Her body felt like it was crumbling as it relaxed, and her head sagged. She resisted the urge to lie on the floor.
Clapping came from above her. Don Mateo sat on the kitchen island, his ghostly legs dangling a few feet from her. He wore scuffed, black leather boots that, of course, were only an apparition. But they smelled bad anyway.
“Bravo,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
She blinked as she tried to overcome her sleepiness and stretched her arms.
“Be careful not to break your magick circle.”
“What now?” she asked.
“We wait.”
“How long does it take a plastic gnome to travel across town?”
“I don’t know how garden gnomes travel,” he said. “What is this thing you call Uber?”
“No, that wouldn’t work. I wonder how they walk. I’ve never seen one move. Does their rigidity vanish, and they move like a normal creature? Or do they just magically appear where they want to go?”
“I would wager they move like gargoyles. Their rigidity disappears and they move naturally, but often faster than the human eye can register.”
As if to answer their questions, a loud BAM came from the living room. Don Mateo vanished.
“Your front window is shattered, but not broken,” he said from behind her.
“Impact-resistant glass,” she said. “I got tired of putting up hurricane shutters. These new windows are expensive.”
“Now you have to replace one.”
The doorbell rang.
“You can break the magick circle now,” Don Mateo said.
She wiped away a section of the chalk circle and went to the front door. When she opened it, her gnome stood on her front porch, looking just like he always had, an impish grin on his bearded face.
“Welcome home,” Missy said.
She had placed the gnome atop her kitchen island, on spread-out newspapers, because who knows where this gnome had been? She and Don Mateo had been studying it to no avail. She probed it with her mind and immediately sensed that it was still enchanted with the sentinel spell, but couldn’t sense any defect in that spell or any traces of an additional, foreign spell.
“Do you have any revealing charms?” Don Mateo asked.
“I can make a potion, but it will take a while,” she said, knowing there was no such thing as “a while” for a ghost.
In her garage was a small workbench where she made charms, amulets, and potions. Many of the ingredients could be noxious, so she didn’t like doing it in the kitchen. She simmered a small stew of ingredients in a saucepan on an electric burner. Eye of toad and tail of newt were one thing, but heating up corpse flowers really smelled horribly.
One of her cats shrieked. She rushed inside. Brenda, a gray tabby, was dangling from the gnome’s right hand that clutched her by the scruff of the neck. His little arm extended straight and unmoving from his body. This was the first time she saw the gnome in another position.
She grasped the Red Dragon talisman in her pocket.
“Drop the cat,” she ordered.
Brenda landed on her feet and yowled as she raced from the kitchen.
Don Mateo chuckled from somewhere unseen.
Missy returned to the garage and checked on the potion. It looked ready. She removed it from the burner and let it cool for twenty minutes. Then she poured it into a plastic spray bottle and brought it to the kitchen.
“Don Mateo, are you around?”
He materialized sitting on one of the bar stools at the island.
“Thank you for sticking around,” she said. “It’s always such a pain to get you to show up when I need you.”
“Ghosts do their own thing. In this case, I am eager to see if this potion works.”
The revealing potion was one he had developed with the shaman of the Timucuan people he had lived with in northern Florida 400 years ago. Made with Florida plants, herbs, minerals, and other natural ingredients—including some nasty insects—it was activated with a spell designed by the wizard. She had invoked the spell before cooking the smelly stew.
She repeatedly pulled the trigger of the spray bottle, covering the gnome with the slightly brownish liquid from head to toe. The arm that had held Brenda somehow had returned to its normal position while she was out in the garage.
A revealing potion does exactly what it sounds like: It reveals stuff. If a Timucuan leader suspected a rival had poisoned his venison, the potion would light up where it came in contact with the poison. If his spear had been enchanted with a spell, the potion would tell him.
And, yes, if your computer has been infected with a virus, the potion will tell you that, too. Just make sure not to spray too much on your machine or it will fry.
The beauty of the spell that powers the potion is that it ignores any spells you put on the object yourself. Only foreign magic and materials will activate it.
With the gnome now fully covered by the potion, she studied it closely for a reaction. She waited.
And waited.
Nothing. There was no change in color in the liquid whatsoever.
“Darn it. What does this mean?” she asked the ghost sitting on her barstool.
“Assuming you made the potion correctly, it means there is no spell enchanting the gnome aside from the original one.”
“Well, duh.”
“‘Duh’?”
“What does it mean if there’s not another spell on this thing?”
“Let us use simple logic,” Don Mateo said. “The first possibility is that when you originally cast the sentinel spell, you did it incorrectly and cast quite another spell instead. But I was with you at the time and I can attest to the fact that you did not simply bungle it. Another possibility is that another spell was cast by s
omeone else, or by you, inadvertently, that perverted the workings of your original spell. The potion showed us that is not the case.”
“Well?”
“That leaves us with one last possibility: possession by a demon or some other malevolent spirit.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, that’s a problem. A big problem.”
“What do we do now?” Missy asked.
“We have to communicate with the demon, find out who it is, and convince it to leave. There are instructions for summoning demons in The Book of Saint Cyprian, The Key of Solomon, and many other grimoires. But all those books were written for laymen and are full of gibberish. I would instruct you what to do myself, but the last time I summoned a spirit it did not go very well at all.”
The last time Don Mateo summoned a spirit, it was the last act of his life. His ghost claimed that the sorcerer had been drinking with a friend and wanted to amuse him by summoning a harmless spirit. Don Mateo mispronounced the spirit’s name and inadvertently summoned a demon instead. The demon tore him to pieces, which did not amuse the friend. Or Don Mateo.
“I know someone with experience with demons I could call,” Missy said. “He also had a mishap with a demon, but he’s still alive.”
“Please do not rub it in.”
10
Too Many Possessions
“To be honest, I’m not eager to meet another demon,” ex-Father Marco Rivera Hernandez said over the phone.
“I understand,” Missy said. “It might not be a demon. Maybe just a malevolent spirit.”
“That’s not much better.”
“People are dying, Father. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Okay. I’ll see if I can help. I have a hard time believing you about the gnomes. It sounds like a bunch of accidental deaths. But I’ll take a look at your gnome. A garden gnome? For Lord’s sake.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Missy understood why ex-Father Marco would be reluctant to help. He had been one of the few Catholic priests in Florida to perform exorcisms and had earned a reputation as an expert demonologist. Unfortunately, during a difficult ritual with a teenage girl, he rid her of her demon, but it ended up possessing him.
Ex-Father Marco was not at all disabled by this possession. But the problem was, the demon took over at inconvenient times. Defiling the altar during a mass did not go over well with his parishioners. Attacking a caddy and calling down brimstone on a fundraiser golf tournament was equally a black mark on his record.
He was summoned to explain himself to the bishop of the diocese. Since the demon often made ex-Father Marco blurt out offensive comments as if he had Tourette Syndrome, the meeting did not go well. As open-minded as this bishop was, he did not enjoy being called a “two-bit, scum-sucking, hairy-legged, man-breasted scalawag.”
Of course, it was the demon calling him that, not the ex-Father. It didn’t matter, though. Marco was defrocked and excommunicated. He stooped to making a living as a bingo-caller for crowds of blue-haired old ladies at the local Indian reservation casino. But he continued to be a scholar of demonology.
Missy heard the throaty rumble of his 1965 Ford Mustang pulling up in front of her house. The sun had set, so she grabbed the gnome off the kitchen island to make sure it didn’t disappear on her as it was wont to do. Night was when the gnomes were active.
“Hello, Missy,” the ex-priest said when Missy opened the front door. “You’re holding the gnome like it was your child.”
“Well, it turns out they can be just like children. You’d think gnomes would stay wherever you put them in your yard, but it’s no longer true. You can’t let them out of your sight, or they’ll disappear as soon as your back is turned.”
She stepped aside for Marco to come in, but he hesitated.
“I felt it right away,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s something evil in that gnome.”
“Will you still examine it?”
“I told you I would.”
He followed her into her kitchen. Ex-Father Marco was tall, thin, and elegant, with thinning black hair and a pointy beard. He looked like a Spanish conquistador from Don Mateo’s era. His eyes darted frequently in nervousness, as if looking for escape routes.
Missy placed the gnome back on top of the newspapers on the island. To her it looked just as kitschy and insipid as it always had, even though she could now feel the evil energy like the ex-priest did.
“A full exorcism is a very lengthy procedure that could run for days,” Marco said.
“I’m not asking that of you. Yet. But please let me know what’s inside there and how it’s spreading to other gnomes.”
“Demons normally possess one host at a time. But there was one case I worked when a child was possessed, and then his three sisters each became possessed in a progression. Then the parents were taken as well. All by the same demon. The original possession resulted after the demon was summoned through black magic by an enemy of the family. I believe something about the black magic allowed the demon to spread its influence over multiple hosts.”
“Oh my,” Missy said. “That would explain what’s going on here. Would we have to do an exorcism on every single gnome that’s been affected?”
The ex-priest shook his head. “That would be impossible. I believe that if the exorcism drives the demon from your gnome and sends it back to Hell, it will be driven out of all the other gnomes as well. At least I hope that’s the case.”
“Okay, well then I guess I am asking you for an exorcism after all,” Missy said.
“Perhaps there’s another way to defeat this demon, but I’m not a witch or wizard. This is the only way I know. Now what I’m going to do will look nothing like your spell casting, so please be patient. First, I have to pray.”
He clasped his hands, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. His lips moved soundlessly as he prayed. This went on for a while. Occasionally, he flinched as if in pain.
“Even though I’m excommunicated, I’m still a child of God. But Satan thinks of me as family, so praying can be difficult at times. And painful. Ouch! Stop it, Beelzebub!”
The gnome began vibrating atop the kitchen island. The vibrations were so intense they sent the gnome scooting slowly across the surface, knocking Missy’s teacup off. She had enough presence of mind to use her natural telekinesis to stop the cup from smashing on the floor. She moved it to the sink among the other dirty dishes (please don’t judge her housekeeping habits).
Ex-Father Hernandez continued praying, mumbling and moving his lips at a more frenetic pace. Missy jumped up to prevent the vibrating gnome from pitching over the edge of the island. She returned it to the center of the surface.
The ex-priest stood and faced the gnome. His face was dark and full of fury. He raised his arms as if he were about to tackle the gnome.
“Dark entity of hell who has invaded this innocent, disarmingly cute lawn ornament, I command you to depart. The power of God commands you! The power of Christ commands you! The power of the Holy Spirit commands you!”
The gnome stopped vibrating. The kitchen was silent. No one moved. Missy realized she’d been holding her breath.
And then a chittering, rodent-like laughter came from the gnome. It didn’t move. It just stood there, arms cocked on its hips, its smug little gnomish smile seeming to mock the ex-priest.
Then it flew across the counter and hit the ex-priest squarely in the chest, bowling him over. Marco landed on his back on the floor with the gnome standing atop him like a victorious gladiator.
“Maybe being ex-communicated and defrocked made me lose my juice,” Hernandez said. “Maybe demons believe I’ve lost my authority.”
Missy put the gnome back on the island. That was the first time she had seen it move on its own in her presence. She helped the ex-priest to his feet.
“Don’t give up, Father Marco. The only thing I know about exorcisms is what I’ve read in novels or seen in movies, but they’
re supposed to take a long time, right? Like days or weeks?”
“The last one I performed took weeks. Convincing a demon to leave its host is harder than weaning a rich kid off his allowance. But the gnome is not a living creature, so this process could be super easy or freaking impossible. Who knows?”
Suddenly, the gnome flew across the kitchen and smashed into the window over the sink as if trying to flee. Tiny cracks spread throughout the impact-resistant glass, but the gnome couldn’t penetrate it. It dropped onto the dirty dishes in the sink with a loud clatter.
“That’s another expensive window I have to replace,” Missy said. “I need to cast a quick spell to immobilize this little bugger while you’re praying.”
This didn’t require a magick circle on the floor or the Red Dragon talisman. She merely held the power charm she always kept in her left pocket, chanted the proper words in Medieval Middle-English, and drew an imaginary circle in the air around the gnome with her right hand.
“That should do it, at least for now,” she said. “Do you want to try again? He’s not going anywhere.”
Ex-Father Marco sighed and moved a barstool from the island to the sink. By the defeated expression on his face, he didn’t appear to be very motivated.
“Cheer up, Father, I know you can do this.”
“From your lips to the demon’s ears,” he said.
He resumed praying. The kitchen was silent except for the low mumbling from his lips. It was fully dark out now, so Missy mentally probed to make sure the immobilization spell would prevent the gnome from escaping.
The ex-priest stood. He removed a glass vial from his pocket and removed the stopper.
“Time to go nuclear on this chump,” he said as he poured the clear liquid onto the gnome in the sink.
“Holy water?” Missy asked.
“Even better. Holy vodka, blessed by Russian Orthodox monks. Like anything else, you can find it on the internet.”
Missy drew closer, hoping to see smoke coming from the holy vodka as it landed on the plastic gnome. That’s the way it worked in horror movies, but apparently not in her kitchen.