Blessed by Fire

by P W Hillard

  “D.S Singh?” A young woman knocked on the divider as she spoke. She wore a light blue blouse and a black pencil skirt. Her hair was mousey brown, cut into a short bob. She was holding a large brown envelope in one hand.

  “Yes?” replied Rajan, trying to slide himself into a more professional posture in the chair. The material was oddly slippery, causing him to struggle awkwardly.

  “I’m done with the translation, sorry it took a while.” The woman smiled awkwardly. “I’ve never had to translate something so old before, it was a little tricky.” She held out the envelope. Rajan stood up and took it from her.

  “Thank you, I know it’s a little unusual.” He opened the envelope and peered inside. A typed translation was nestled in with the photographs he had given her of the scroll.

  “You’re telling me. Normally I just get emails, texts, whats app messages, you know standard boring stuff. This was pretty interesting. Also, pretty weird. Where did you get it?” enquired the woman.

  “Found it searching the flat of a guy we arrested for burglary. Must have taken it assuming it was valuable. Hard to find the original owner when we don’t know what it says,” lied Rajan. “Thanks Miss…err sorry I didn’t catch you name earlier.”

  “Mina,” she replied. “I hope it helps, but that translation is pretty bizarre. It’s instructions on fighting Jinn, which is a kind of demon.”

  “It’s not a demon” corrected Rajan before he could stop himself. “Uh, I read a lot of horror books, it’s a slightly different thing. I think.” He tripped over his tongue trying to reverse his mistake. Mina giggled.

  “You don’t look the sort,” she said. “I love a good Horror. Maybe we can chat about them over a coffee or something?”

  “Oh, yeah, I would like that” replied Rajan, blushing. “I’ll email you, let you know when I’m free,” he said, tapping the work email she had written on the envelope.

  “Please do,” said Mina. She winked and walked off across the office.

  “Fuck,” muttered Rajan to himself, “better go the library. I’ve got some reading to do.”

  Martin sat at his desk, staring at the monitor screen. Through his headset his customer was screaming the word fraud over and over because his company had dared to send her a bill for product she had received and used.

  “I was one hundred and fifty pounds in credit!” she shrieked down the line, “this bill you’ve sent me is for three hundred pounds! I never used that much, and I never got my credit! Where is my money, you stole it from me! Theft! Fraud!”

  “As I explained, you were one hundred and fifty pounds in credit, but you used four hundre- “Martin was cut off as the woman resumed her rant.

  “Where are you getting four hundred from, this bill is for three hundred! And you still owe me money!” Her voice was high pitched, causing the phoneline to buzz slightly.

  “You used four hundred and fifty pounds, minus your credit that leaves a bill of three hundred pounds to pay. Four fifty, minus one fifty is of course three hundred,” Martin explained.

  “Are you calling me stupid!” The woman screamed. Martin desperately wanted to reply in the affirmative but held his tongue. “I can do maths!” the customer asserted, despite all evidence to the contrary. “You’ve taken my money and used it without my consent! That’s theft!”

  “We’ve just deducted the credit off the bill. Why would we refund you one fifty only to send you a bill for four fifty, that doesn’t make sense?” questioned Martin.

  “I’ll tell you what doesn’t make sense! Four hundred and fifty pounds. I never used that much! How could I possible use that much! It’s not right. Who told you I used that much?” There was a loud thud audible down the phone line as the woman had clearly slammed something on a table.

  “You did?” said Martin slightly confused. “You requested that much, submitted the order forms, signed for the delivery and then signed when the driver came to collect the empty pallet. That and it’s been three weeks. What we sent you only had a shelf life of five days. And I can see a new order form has been submitted for another delivery. You know how much it costs per unit, you know how much you ordered, this isn’t a surprise, you knew how much you order would be when you submitted it.”

  “It’s theft I tell you! You’ll be hearing from my solicitor!” the woman slammed the phone down with a loud click. Martin sighed. He took off his headset, typed a quick note and then leaned back in his seat. Around him his co-workers were talking to their own headsets, taking orders and discussing bills for the fruit and vegetables the company delivered across the country. Across the office his boss shot him a disapproving glare. Martin sighed and placed his headset back on. There was no respite, no time to rest. Call after call after call, nonstop. Martin often thought that working in a call centre was just the coal mine of his day. Instead of chipping away at the rock face, they chipped at “customer satisfaction” and what sometimes felt like Martins own soul. He gripped his mouse and clicked the button to take another call.

  “Hello Martin” said the voice at the end of the line.

  “Uh, hello?” said Martin confused, the horrid high-pitched beep that signified an incoming call was missing. “You’re through to Vale Produce how can I help you?”

  “It’s about how I can help you Martin,” replied the voice.

  “I’m sorry, who is this? How did you know my name?” Martin asked. The voice coming from the phone line was oddly soothing.

  “No-one cares about you here. Just a cog in a machine designed to take abuse and turn it into money. Nobody worries about you. Not the bosses, not your co-workers and certainly not the customers. I think they quite like unloading abuse on someone they are safe from. It’s sick really,” said the voice.

  “They don’t mean it, they’re just upset,” asserted Martin.

  “You don’t really believe that. Humans will take any excuse to be monstrous to each other,” came the reply. The word humans struck Martin as an odd choice, but he couldn’t help listening to voice, somehow, he knew it was speaking to what he truly felt. “I can help you. Follow these instructions I can help find a more… meaningful existence.”

  “We hit the jackpot Dale,” declare Rajan as he strode from the elevator across the office. He was holding a brown envelope over his head triumphantly. He stepped over to the desk and threw it down with a slap.

  “Something good?” asked Dale, picking up the envelope and sliding out the paper inside.

  “Yeah, something really good,” he pulled out his phone from his pocket. “Mark will love this.”

  “Not a clue,” replied Mark looking down at their captive. “Whatever we do, we need to be quick about it.” There was a loud ringing emanating from the house behind them. “We need to do it quick, fire brigade can’t be long.” A melodic tune played in Marks pocket. He pulled out his phone and answered it. “Hello? Raj, excellent timing mate. Oh, fucking fantastic.”

  “What is it?” asked Jess.

  “Raj I’m going to put you on speakerphone mate,” stated Mark.

  “Morning all!” said Raj, his voice scratchy and faint through the speaker. Rain splashed off the phone screen as Mark held it out. “We found a recipe on a scroll. Supposedly it can cleanse a person of a Jinn.”

  “Great, well we happen to have one on hand at the moment. What do we need?” Jess said.

  “Ok so you need some honey that’s the easy part. You also need black seed oil, apparently, it’s pretty popular with new age types so I would start there. Last thing is you need some water over which something called an ayah has been spoken,” said Raj.

  “That’s from the Quran. I guess a bible verse is the closest thing I could compare it to,” answered Aasif. Jess shot Mark a disappointed stare.

  “Yeah, uh, thanks whoever that is. Otherwise it seems like you just mix them all up and apply to the possessed person,” continued Raj.

  “Right got it, thanks Raj, we’ll let you know how it goes.” Mark ended the phone call. “Right
so we probably haven’t got long, how the hell do we put these together?”

  “We go back inside,” said Jess gesturing to the still smoking building. “There has to be honey in the kitchen. Maybe one of the residents was into alternative medicine? “

  “What about the water?” asked Aasif. Mark pulled out a small brass key from his coat pocket and tossed it to him.

  “The trunk in the boot has a Quran, left hand side at the top. Try not to touch anything else,” Mark grinned as he spoke.

  “Is that going to work? I’m not practicing, not since my dad passed.”

  “With these kinds of things, the intent is more important than the specifics. It won’t matter,” answered Jess. She tore a strip from the bottom of her blouse and held the cloth out flat with both hands, letting the rain soak it. “Right, quicker we do this, quicker we can get out of this shitshow.” She placed the soaked cloth to her mouth and jogged off towards the building.

  The back door had been left open when Ethel had tried to make her escape. Jess stalked the back smoke-filled corridors. Her eyes stinging, she tried to work her way to the kitchen. Mark followed behind her trying to cover his own mouth with his coat. They reached a branch in the corridor. A sign was screw to the wall. The recreational room was to the right whilst the kitchen was to the left. Jess nodded to mark before taking the left-hand path. Mark set off the other direction. Jess continued her walk. The joins between the older and newer sections of the building were obvious, the walls uneven despite the tepid beige paint that had been laid over them. She pushed open the double doors to the recreational room releasing a cloud of smoke that caused her to double over coughing. Catching her breath, she stepped into the room.

  The circle of blood had been broken by the creature as it had lumbered after them leaving a long smear of blood across the floor. The room was cracked, its plaster coating torn from it, dust covering the ground. Jess looked around, stepping slowly forward, eager not to meet any surprises. She stopped when she saw a stack of small plastic bags and bottles that had been stacked up against one of the chairs pushed to the wall. The ingredients Ethel had bought from the Chinese medicine store. She picked the bottles up one by one. She let out a loud laugh as she found one that read Black Seed Oil. Their luck was turning. Pocketing the oil, she continued onward to the other exit and peered round. She looked over her handy work. The walls of the corridor were cracked and warped from the blast. Several metal chunks were imbedded into the brick. There was a large pile of black ash, the remains of that nightmare thing. The fire had consumed it entirely. Her morbid curiosity satisfied, Jess turned around and began her journey back outside.

  “Anything?” asked Mark as she emerged from the house.

  “Yeah,” she held the small glass bottle between two fingers. “Got the oil.”

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Mark, “I figured that would be the sticking point. Where the hell did you get it?”

  “Our friend actually had it. It was one of the ingredients for their ritual.” Jess placed the bottle back into her pocket.

  “Guess that makes sense, if they use it in their magic maybe that’s why it works against them?” Mark tapped his chin as he considered it. There was a loud thud as Aasif walked up to them, dropping a large plant pot at their feet. It was full of water.

  “Closest I could get to a bucket. Filled it with a hose by the patio.” Aasif said. “I just read the first ayah. I did it in Arabic, I wasn’t sure, so I just went with that.”

  “You did good,” said Jess, patting him on the shoulder. “Just need to see if this works. I assume you got honey from the kitchen.”

  “Yep, so how much of each do we use?” asked Mark.

  “All of it I guess? Kind of an all or nothing thing,” replied Jess.

  “Right ok, well here we go.” Mark pulled a half used squeezy bottle of honey from his pocket. He held it over the bucket and squeezed, a golden streak of honey splashing into the water below. Raindrops bounced off the surface of the mixture.

  “Hey, you awake down there!” Mark shouted down the well.

  “I’ll kill you!” came the reply from within. Ethel was leaning against the bottom of the well. Her legs were broken, twisted spurs of blood and bone. Her stomach had split, intestines spilling out from under her night gown. The real Ethel was dead, now just a flesh puppet for some twisted entity.

  “Eh, well something will get me eventually,” admitted Mark. “Don’t think it will be you today. What did you do with Claire’s body?”

  “Who?” asked Ethel.

  “Young girl murdered a bunch of people, first one was in the park?”

  “Hah, not me! I’m not the only one here. I’m thinking you’re after the one who opened the door for us.” The Ethel corpse grinned manically.

  “Right. So, I’m guessing you aren’t going to tell me how many of you there are and where they are?” questioned Mark.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Didn’t think so. Ok guys, time to test this stuff.” Mark beckoned to someone Ethel couldn’t see. A dark shape appeared at the lip of the well. It tipped slightly water splashing onto her. Ethel screamed. The water hissed as it hit her skin, as though she was incredibly hot. The scream became shrill and unnatural. It stopped abruptly, the now silent form of Ethel sitting perfectly still, mouth still agape. There was a faint glow and then a jet of flame burst forth. It twisted mid-flight hitting the floor of the well. The flame stretched upwards, its flicked in an odd way. Mark could have sworn it looked humanoid for just a second.

  “You will pay for that!” said the flame, pulsing from orange to blue in time with the words.

  “Ok, dump the rest!” said Mark. The pot on the lip of the well tipped again, the water crashing into the flames. There was a loud high-pitched shriek and then nothing. The fire died down and went out. No smoke drifted from it.

  “Is it gone?” asked Aasif, peering over the wells edge.

  “Seems like it,” answered Mark. He gripped the iron grate, sliding it off the top of the well.

  “What are you doing?” Aasif said.

  “Making it look like the well was open, so she fell in. I know, don’t give me that look. Doing this job means bending the truth a little.” Mark thought for a moment. “Ok well, a lot. Imagine if people knew what was out there. We already have problems with people finding out and deciding to take things into their own hands. If everyone knew, we would have neighbours killing each other out of paranoia in the streets. There are plenty of supers who are upstanding citizens, doing something like this protects thousands. It’s not nice, but it is right.”

  “I guess...” replied Aasif, clearly unsure. “We better get moving then. Before the fire brigade shows.”

  Aasif sat at the end of Jess’ hotel room bed. She was taking out small bottles from a plastic carrier bag and was stacking them onto the small table in the corner of the room. Mark was outside, on the phone to his superior.

  “How do you do it?” asked Aasif?

  “Sorry, do what?” replied Jess.

  “This,” he said stretching his arms to indicate he meant everything. “The lies, the death, the nightmares.”

  “I have a daughter. Something came for her once. Something called a changeling. I stopped it, but that’s how I got into this. Honestly, I keep doing it for her. The thought of some other mother losing her child to some other thing, I can’t bear it.” Jess put the bag down and stepped over the bed sitting down next to Aasif. “My wife wants me to stop. I don’t see either of them as much as I would like. But every time we finish a case, I just know I’ve made the world a safer place for the both of them. At least that’s what I tell myself. I have to, otherwise you’re right, the world would just be too dark.” She patted Aasif’s hand.

  “I have no-one. Been on my own for the last few years. What do I do? How can I carry on knowing all this.” Aasif said, tears forming in his eyes.

  “I think, if you can help people, you have to at least try. Yes, people died today, but t
hink of how many we potentially saved. Think of them, and that’s how you get through.”

  Chapter 15

  Bill sat in a black folding chair, his legs resting on a metal barrel in front of him. Light danced from his phone, projecting the video onto his face in the dark.

  “Police continue their hunt for a suspected serial killer in the South Wales area after a second body was discovered early this morning. Eyewitness accounts say the victim was displayed in a gruesome manner similar to the earlier victim a- “Bill’s attention dropped from the news he was watching as he was interrupted by tall imposing man.

  “You actually going to help or just play with your phone?” asked the Man. Like Bill he was wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie. His head was shaved, a thick stubble covering his head. His suit barely fit him, his muscular frame causing it to stretch precariously as he spoke.

  “This is research innit,” Bill waved the phone as he spoke. “Need to keep an eye to what’s going on.”

  “In other news,” said the newsreader on the phone, “a fire at a care home claims the lives of eight staff and fifteen residents in what is being said to be a freak accident with the homes oxygen supplies.”

  “Like that!” said Bill raising his voice. “Isn’t no way these fuckers aren’t responsible for this Aaron.”

  “Maybe so,” replied Aaron. He was carrying a tin of red paint and a paintbrush. Whilst they were around the same height he dwarfed the much thinner spindly Bill. “I’ve started, you can finish.” He held out the paint can and brush.

  “Fine.” Bill took the painting supplies from him begrudgingly. “You always do it wrong anyway.” He dropped his legs from the barrel with a slap and leapt out of the chair. Aaron shot him a piercing glare as Bill walked off, disappearing into the dark of the warehouse they had chosen earlier.

  The Jinn that possessed Martin pressed the plunger from the soap dispenser, squirting a pale blue foam onto his hands. A slow trickle of water hit the back of his shoes and split, continuing its grim expansion past his feet. The body of Martins’ previous manager still twitched, its head submerged in water than now poured over from the side of the toilet. The back of its neck was bruised from where Martin had forcibly held him under. Martin stretched out his soap filled palms under the tap. It was an expensive piece of equipment the call centre had installed with much pomp and circumstance. The tap looks like a set of handlebars. The centre poured water when it detected hands beneath whilst each bar contained a drier. He reached under the centre and rather than water pouring out, the driers came on, spraying soapy foam across Martin. He sighed and tried again. Water cascaded across his hands this time. He moved his hands under the bars and the driers came on, until he moved his hands slightly too far for the temperamental machine which poured water again, undoing its own drying efforts. The entity possessing Martin slammed his hands on the counter. It had existed beyond countable time, from beyond the barriers of reality. It had seen civilisations burn and gods cast down. It was a being of much purer essence than these mortals’ fragile forms. Magic was it’s to command. Yet, it had been defeated by this sink. It turned and left the bathroom, shaking its hands dry instead.