White Trash Warlock

by David R. Slayton

  Robert expected it to be locked, but others were inside, waiting for the elevator. The sound of campy music and laughter rose from the basement.

  Argent pushed the up button. Robert wondered that none of the people in the lobby gaped at her, but none seemed to notice her ears.

  “Going up,” Argent said when the elevator dinged.

  The four of them filed in.

  When the elevator doors closed, Robert asked, “We’re not invisible are we?”

  “Us?” Adam asked. “No. Argent is. Sort of.”

  Robert glared, prompting Adam to explain.

  “Magical beings, it’s like they’re on another television channel. They leak through a bit, but they don’t come in clearly. Someone with the Sight can see them, really see them. Sensitives, people with a little magic sometimes can. It depends on how much power they have.”

  Robert could see Argent as clear as a painting. He blanched, feeling all hope for normalcy evaporate. Argent winked at him.

  The elevator dinged and they stepped into a clock. Not the clock tower observation deck or the mechanical inside of some small space. Robert had expected that. Instead they stood on an actual clock face, a round floor wider than the entire tower. At a distance, gears turned and cogs clicked. The works hung in space, unconnected to anything, floating beyond reach.

  They’d gone somewhere else, and Robert hadn’t even felt it.

  Annie hadn’t reacted, hadn’t changed expressions. It was like she’d shut down, was waiting for something to turn her back on.

  Their perch hung from an unseen ceiling by several thick cables, the steel kind used to maintain suspense bridges. Though black and dust-encrusted, they looked steady enough. Robert strained to hear over the grind of gears and faint ticking, but he felt certain water lapped against a rock. Beneath the iron and char of machinery, limestone and brine laced the air.

  Adam stretched out a hand, measuring his distance to the clockwork or to ward off something Robert could not see. Argent beamed. At Robert’s side, Annie stood fixed in place. He suspected the sights around them were invisible to her. He could not fathom how she even stood here, why she, so much more real than all of this, didn’t slip through the floor and drown in the sea hidden below.

  A bit of air unfolded, a slice of space blurred, and a trio of creatures stepped onto the clock face. Robert tested his footing in case they had to run. He resisted the urge to check his gun. He didn’t want to give the weapon away. He might need the element of surprise.

  The surface underfoot felt too slick for speed, like glass or crystal. The massive minute hand shifted slightly in their direction, as if to eventually pinch them between it and the hour hand.

  The creatures looked like elderly people, except for their squat height and bulbous noses.

  “What are they?” Robert asked Adam in a whisper.

  “Gnomes,” Adam said. “And they can hear you.”

  Robert hadn’t even noticed their ears. Large, pointed, they resembled outstretched bat wings.

  Their anatomy, the broad ears, the small dark eyes, indicated an adaptation to underground living. Biology failed him after that. They did not map to what he knew.

  “This is the prisoner?” one of the gnomes asked.

  “The patient,” Robert snapped.

  Argent’s humor dimmed. “The Gaoler expects us. It was arranged with him, not you.”

  “We are his servants,” the gnome said, its voice taking on a hiss. “Mind your manners, elf.”

  Robert looked to Adam.

  Adam shrugged and said, “They don’t all get along.”

  “Sometimes we even war,” Argent said with an edge that reminded Robert of sharp ice. “Take us to the Gaoler. Please.”

  Still sneering, the lead gnome nodded. Somewhere, a crank turned. The cables shuddered. The clock face descended. If Robert peered upward, he could see the winches that lowered them into the dark. He kept near Annie, did not move closer to the edge of the clock face and risk falling. Adam looked like he might go see. Robert tensed, ready to throw out an arm if Adam moved in that direction and wondered how his willful brother would respond to a soccer mom block.

  Argent perched on the hour hand, treating it like a bench. She affected a bored, distracted air, but Robert could tell she watched Annie from the corner of her eye. Robert inched closer to Annie. He did not trust these people, if they were people.

  Maybe I’m the one in Liberty House. And this is all a delusion, a psychotic breakdown.

  No. He was here. This was real. The pounding in his ears, the rushing blood, said he was here.

  No one teetered off the clock face, though Robert held tight to Annie’s arm just in case. It stopped its descent with a bit of rumble. He risked a peek over the edge, made certain Annie took no steps in that direction. They had not reached the bottom. Gloom shrouded whatever lay below. A cable bridge set somewhere near the twelve mark, led on into the dark.

  Adam looked nervous, skittish, all his bravado gone, like he’d been as a boy, the little brother under the bed, hiding from the monster.

  “Where are we really?” Robert asked, sidling up to his brother.

  “Here,” Adam said. “In the clock tower, but not in our world.”

  “You’ve been here before though.”

  “Not this exact place,” Adam said, shaking his head. “And never physically. I don’t have the power, not enough to step between places. This is where I go when I spirit walk, when you think I’m just sleeping.”

  Robert nodded toward Argent. “But she does? Have enough to bring us here physically?”

  “In spades,” Adam said with a hint of his earlier fear and what sounded like envy.

  So that was it, why Adam didn’t apply himself to life. He wanted to be more here, in his other world.

  It was like drug addicts, chasing their high. Lips curling into a frown, Robert took it all in. Whatever it was, you couldn’t live here. The carnival had to end sometime.

  The gnomes stepped aside, letting their visitors first approach the bridge of heavy, rusted pipes and planks of untreated wood. Robert helped Annie onto it, testing it with ginger steps. It swayed slightly in the mist-veiled darkness but held their weight. Clockwork giants, vaguely man-like, moved in the dark beyond them. One wheeled into sight and blinked eyes made of gear wheels and incandescent bulbs down at them.

  Argent moved to Robert’s side, her steps so light the bridge didn’t tremble. Pausing there, arms folded over her chest, she glared up at the thing. It rumbled away and their group walked on.

  Robert caught Argent’s expression from the corner of his eye. She looked predatory, ready for a fight.

  The mist kept parting, teasing what lay beyond, until the bridge connected with a cave, a hole in the side of a granite cliff. The air felt damp on his face. He smelled salt mixed with coal, but he felt no ocean spray, heard neither wave nor wind. The air warmed. Annie grew more animated, more alert. She looked about at the stone walls, their surface lit only by the dim light ahead and behind.

  Robert smiled to see her perk up. She hadn’t been interested in anything—life, him—in months.

  The rock walls glistened with water.

  “Do you remember, Annie?” he asked her. “It’s like that mine tour we took.”

  It had been a good day. A hike, pizza in a small mountain town, one of their best dates. It hadn’t been anything specific or special. She’d just laughed at some dumb joke he’d made, and he’d known she was the one. He wanted to marry her.

  Annie didn’t respond, but she flashed a knowing smile. She was still in there, the vibrant girl he’d married. Maybe everything would be all right.

  The sound of grinding gears, great and ancient machinery, rumbled around them. Robert felt the tons of rock and earth, incalculable, pressing in, pressing down, upon them. They were not beneath
Denver. They were not beneath anywhere. This place was impossible, something he wouldn’t have believed before tonight.

  The passage ended. The dim lights brightened by a shade or two. The four of them, followed by the gnomes, stepped into a smooth-floored cavern, a domed amphitheater larger than Robert’s house. Faceless, skeletal clocks, their gears and hands exposed, hung around them on cables. They curtained the room. Their numbers glowed, making a little more of the light his eyes craved. All were stopped.

  Stalagmites lined the back wall, like the uneven teeth of some monster sleeping with its mouth closed. They looked like mud dripped and dried, like the sandcastles Adam used to make on the shore of Lake Liberty. The cave had the same dampness as the hollows along the lake, the same kind of soggy air tinted with rot.

  He remembered their dad fishing while their mother laid out a picnic of potato salad and peanut butter sandwiches. No jelly. They couldn’t afford it.

  Squinting, Robert saw the forms trapped within the stone.

  “Gaoler!” Argent called. “We’ve come to fulfill our agreement.”

  The distant rumble thrumming through the floor grew louder, closer. Bits of clock assembled into a mix of brass and black iron. Two faces for eyes, a dozen tiny cogs for teeth. It had minute hands for fingers.

  Robert took several steps back as it rose. Lumbering, it stood twice his height.

  It lifted a hand and pointed to a circle of sand beneath a clock face, a gap in the row of stalagmites.

  “Place her there,” Argent told Robert, her tone gentle. “The Gaoler will keep her until we have an answer, a way to remove the spirit.”

  “What will it be like?” Robert asked. “What will she feel?”

  “She will sleep, out of time,” Argent said. “It will not pass for her.”

  Robert stared at the plinths. He saw then the faces and fingers, the forms trapped within the stone. The wall behind the Gaoler was a forest of such plinths, some of them as large as a house. He began to shake.

  “This place is a prison,” he said.

  “Yes,” Argent said. “The watchtowers guard the boundaries against threats, but we do not destroy when we can preserve.”

  “Boundaries,” Robert said. “Do you keep things in or out?”

  Argent said nothing, but the spark in her eyes, the faint starlight twinkle, glinted. He would not get an answer, but he had scored a point.

  “This is the only way?” Robert asked Adam.

  “I don’t have any other ideas,” Adam said, looking small and sad.

  Robert sighed. “All right.”

  He turned to his wife, “Come on, Annie. It’s time to sleep for a while.”

  Annie writhed like a child fighting a too-tight jacket, or a patient against restraint. She put her wrists together and shook, struggling against the thing that had her. Then she looked at him with eyes the color of blood. With a laugh, an inhuman choking sound, she drew Robert’s gun from her jacket pocket and fired several shots.

  22

  Adam

  The gun flashed. Thunder boomed in the cavern. Bullets split the air, then froze.

  Adam watched the spirit tendril inside Annie swell. It raged, held in place as the Gaoler held back the flow of time. A crushing amount of force came into play, squeezing the air from Adam’s chest. The bullets, paused midair, were aimed for Bobby. Adam moved, glad he still could, and pushed his brother out of the way. He slapped the gun from Annie’s hand.

  The spirit unleashed a wave of force, breaking the Gaoler’s hold. Time snapped back. The bullets sailed on into the darkness. Adam felt a rattling tingle throughout his body as Argent drew her sword.

  “Lady, hold!” he shouted. He did not look at her, but held up one hand and wrapped the other over Bobby’s eyes.

  “Let me go, Adam! Annie!”

  “Don’t look,” Adam said. “It will kill you to see her.”

  Even with his eyes squeezed shut, white light burned Adam’s lids. He turned his head.

  “Lady!” Adam shouted. “You said magic could not hurt it. It wants you to strike it.”

  He risked a peek at Annie. The spirit tendril had frozen. It had heard him.

  “You’re done playing dumb,” he said. “I’m on to you.”

  Argent paused. The world paled as she sheathed her blade and put aside her terrible aspect.

  “Put her in the sand,” she said in her normal voice. She still sounded terrible and commanding, the voice of a queen, but the ground no longer shook.

  Bobby, trembling as hard as Adam, helped him walk Annie to the circle. While her body had returned to docility, the spirit looked at Adam through her eyes with pure hatred.

  It didn’t fight them.

  The energy around Annie, angry and red, had dimmed.

  Adam felt for its power, and it seemed weaker. “You used up your strength against the Gaoler,” he told it. He turned, looked to Argent. “That’s why you wanted her to attack you, so you could drink her power.”

  Annie’s eyes tightened.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Adam asked.

  He flipped it off.

  Annie stepped into the circle. The sand came to life. It ran, bubbled, and swirled over her like a tiny storm. It settled into place, hardening into a shell. The tendril remained connected to her, but it had faded. It didn’t move.

  For all her power, Argent was impetuous, too used to being the biggest threat on the block. The spirit knew it too, and it had laid a trap.

  Adam could sense it watching him, a subtle focus a more powerful witch would not have detected. He took a few slow breaths, let them out. His gut churned. He had to end this thing.

  Adam looked to Bobby and found him gaping, his eyes shone with tears.

  “You can’t see it,” Adam told his brother. “But she’s already better. Its hold on her has weakened.”

  “But not broken,” Argent said. She eyed the tendril like she still considered cutting it. “We must sever its connection and root out the influence inside her.”

  “How?” Adam asked. “Your blade won’t hurt it. What will?”

  Argent did not answer him. Instead, she turned to the Gaoler and opened her hands, cupped, a gesture of supplication. She clutched a glass box. Fireflies glowed inside. “The payment for your aid.”

  The Gaoler lifted its arm, unfolded its minute-hand fingers. Argent opened the little box. The fireflies flew. One perched for a second on Adam’s hair before it joined its fellows. They rested on the steel fingers. One by one their lights blinked out as the Gaoler absorbed the magic they carried.

  “Wha—” Adam started to ask.

  Argent silenced him with a sharp glance.

  “Let us go,” she said, leading them back through the cavern entrance.

  They did not have to take the elevator. A steel door stood where the bridge had been. They stepped through, out into Denver’s downtown, but still on the Spirit side.

  Downtown, here, teemed with life and spirits. They drifted and danced. A giant couple, dressed like a gunslinger and a Victorian lady, strolled toward the theater district. Smaller things scuttled to avoid the sweep of skirts and falling boots.

  If Bobby could see it, it did not wow him. He followed along, shoulders slumped, staring forward as Argent led them back toward the car.

  “It’s crude to discuss money in public, Adam,” Argent said.

  “What did you give them?” he asked, looking at the brickwork buildings, the old-fashioned lights, and trolley cars.

  “What they most crave,” she said. “A few centuries of time. Gnomes aren’t like us, immortal, and there is more than a little resentment about it. They build creatures like the Gaoler to outlast them and perpetuate their work.”

  “You can trade time like poker chips?” Bobby asked.

  “More or less,” she said with a
flourish of her hand.

  They paused at the crosswalk to let a pumpkin-shaped carriage drawn by giant kittens cross. Adam blinked. He’d never get used to magical beings and their oddities.

  Argent continued when the mews and hisses had died down. “The gnomes will live a little longer, and in truth, I don’t mind. Life is life. It is to be preserved.”

  Bobby looked like he doubted her, but he said, “That’s why I’m a doctor.”

  “And yet you brought a gun,” she said, her tone sharp.

  “You brought your sword, right?” Adam asked.

  “I am not a healer,” she said. She exhaled, her expression cooling as she did. “But I see your point. We will do whatever we can for your wife, to keep her alive.”

  “And the thing that did this to her?” Bobby asked.

  Adam flinched at Bobby’s tone. He never could leave well enough alone. He didn’t understand what Argent was, that disrespecting her was dangerous.

  That was it. Bobby didn’t respect any of this.

  He’d gone to the Other Side without finding any of it interesting or awe inspiring. He really was that small, that unconcerned with anything beyond the little kingdom he’d built.

  “We shall see,” Argent said.

  23

  Adam

  Adam drove to work early, more than ready to research the spirit and escape the house. It felt lifeless without Annie.

  He checked in on Vic, reaching for him through their connection and taking some warmth from it.

  The English texts Argent had set aside for him were so old that it hurt his head to try to discern their meaning.

  The rest were in Elven. Written in spirals, the script wound in and out. He would have strained to read it even if he’d known the alphabet.

  He flipped through another book. This one, at least, had illustrations. It reminded him of comic books, with colorful drawings and vibrant figures. He wondered if it was an Elven children’s book, then figured it couldn’t be when he stumbled across a scene of naked figures entwined in a pile.

  “Nope,” he said. “Not for kids.”