Storm Chaser: A Novel of The Black Pages

by Danny Bell

  “I don’t like this.” Elana jutted a thumb at the demon just outside her pathetic little circle, the one panting heavily, not the chubby one rubbing its chin absently. “Not just the lying, but whatever this is. I have an idea, though.”

  Suddenly filled with renewed strength, Elana looked at the Knowing—

  What she thought was the Knowing—

  And she found its eyes, finding its gaze—

  But she was compelled to look away—

  And yet she dared not, she could demand its attention, turn the tables on—

  Something so beyond her, something impossible to comprehend—

  And now; now! Something trapped, changing into something else, something…different, and if she held this gaze, she could—

  The Knowing bristled, I felt it bristle. It was oddly comforting. I was disoriented, I didn’t know how to begin describing what I just went through, but it felt wrong. Even a deep breath felt wrong here, but only in the way that nothing felt right.

  “How are you sleeping these days?” Dr. Bey asked nonchalantly.

  “What?” I asked, giving my head a little shake. I moved my hand to my head a little too fast, and one of my rings caught on my scarf.

  “Your sleep,” Dr. Bey reiterated.

  “No, I heard you, I just…” I was muttering my answer, and even with the veneer of saintly patience, I could tell he was annoyed with me. What was I doing before this?

  “Maybe we can switch gears a moment,” he said, adjusting his glasses, and I adjusted mine as well. Whenever I caught myself mirroring someone, I was always annoyed at myself for doing it, something Dr. Bey had opinions about. “How was your birthday? Forty is one of the big ones.”

  Of course, he was bringing this up. Dr. Chester Bey had been my therapist for the better part of a year and a half now, and he knew the anxiety I’d held for so long about turning forty. In the end, that day came and went like any other day, and I’d been worried for nothing. Time didn’t stop because I turned forty.

  “Just me and the cats,” I admitted. “Not like I have time for much else, the store is barely staying open. It’s everything I have to keep it going.”

  My therapist studied me calmly, measuring his reply, not realizing I could see the gears moving behind his eyes. “And your partner?”

  “Traveling. Again.” I sighed.

  “You sound frustrated,” he observed.

  “We said hi, we’ll celebrate later.” I wanted to rush away from where that line of conversation led. “Maybe a dinner or something.”

  “I see.” Dr. Bey nodded. “And you still don’t think it may be healthy to sell the store?”

  “Never said it wouldn’t be healthy,” I corrected with a sniff. “Just that I wasn’t interested.”

  “I believe last time you said, ‘ready,’ not, ‘interested,’” he corrected me, taking his turn there. “You still haven’t let go of her.”

  “No,” I said sadly. “And don’t expect me to.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  I tried to blink back tears after a moment. “I miss her every day, you know? Do you still have your mom?”

  “I think we should keep the focus on you.”

  “Well, Claire was the closest thing to a mother someone like me could hope to have,” I said. “And she should still be here. With me. That’s her store, not mine.”

  “But she left it with you,” Dr. Bey pointed out gently. “Do you resent the burden she left with you more than the fact that she’s gone?”

  My chest hurt suddenly, a tightness that came too quickly. “Both? I don’t know,” I choked.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to just walk away.”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t, that was her dream, and she left it to—”

  “It’s not your problem, Elana,” Dr. Bey insisted. “Walk away.”

  Something in his voice didn’t sound right. I’d been seeing him for almost two years now, and he never sounded like that before. “Did I do something to offend you?”

  “What are you trying to solve here? With me?” Dr. Bey asked setting aside his pad. “Because every session with you goes the same way. You feel stuck, nothing brings you satisfaction, you harbor resentment toward anyone who offers you any kind of stability up to and including myself, and it’s frankly infuriating. So, do everyone a favor and walk. The hell. Away.”

  It was crushing to hear him say this, but maybe Dr. Bey had been holding this back for a long time and was just tired of me waiting to get to the punchline on my own. I didn’t know that he was right but just hearing those words so stark like that, knowing that he must’ve meant them, was just so…

  I looked down at my feet. Well, not just my feet, I was pleased to realize that I still might be wearing Chucks when I’m older. A memory flashed, and I remembered that I started to wear them again last year. Huh. No, it wasn’t the shoes that I saw, but the ground. When I looked at it, really looked at it, it didn’t match the cozy decor of the therapist’s office, but that’s only because I can’t imagine that under my chair is the best place for a small patch of dirt and a protection circle.

  My face grew hot with anger mixed with embarrassment, and I flared up a little. “Oh, you can go fu—”

  I reacted to the tree branch crashing into the window a full second too late. “…what?”

  Saying my friends laughed at me would be a stretch. Not because they didn’t laugh—all four of them laughed more than enough to make that qualifier accurate. It was the “friends” part that was dubious. “My friendly classmates laughed at me” would probably be closer to the truth.

  “Are you planning to drink all ninety-nine bananas, or you thinking forty-five oughta do it?” Ransom asked wryly.

  “You wanted me here,” I slurred, tipping the bottle in her direction. “Didn’t say sober.”

  “Oh yeah,” she grinned stupidly, snuggling into Herb’s chest. “Cool.”

  Ransom Daniels and Herb Jameson, two of the people from my class study group or whatever this was supposed to be, were visibly high. They’ve been higher. I guess a shared love of weed and Chaucer finally brought them together.

  “Let me try,” Hope asked from my right. There was something about me and terrible liqueurs, and that something was that I was mighty suggestible.

  I gave her the bottle, and she took a swig that I heartily approved of. She immediately choked and coughed like she was going to expel a lung.

  “S’good for you,” I remarked, taking the bottle back. When she could finally talk again, Hope looked at me with something between a laugh and anger.

  “Why would you drink that?” She gasped.

  “Stole it from the Ralph’s,” I admitted with a shrug. Liqueur also makes me a truth-teller. Also, it’s okay to steal from grocery stores. Pretty sure that’s a John Rawls quote and that’s why I go to college.

  Hope shuddered from either the taste or the alcohol hitting her stomach. “Never again.”

  “Everything in moderation,” I replied with a flourish. “Even…the bananas.”

  “Stop quoting Oscar Wilde,” Saul chided from my left. He was the only one completely sober, which probably explained his annoyance. “It doesn’t make you clever.”

  “I’m so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying,” I muttered with a sour face, putting the bottle back to my lips.

  “That’s probably enough,” Saul said, taking the bottle from me. “Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

  “Bold of you to assume I’ll make it to class.”

  “You won’t graduate by paraphrasing Wilde and knowing the most about Spider-Man,” he chided.

  “I’m twenty-one, I’m allowed to like Oscar Wilde,” I protested weakly. “And Spider-Man.”

  “We were all stupid enough to major in English Lit,” Hope offered. “And none of us are getting a job next month, might as well get hammered.”

  “Yeah!” I shouted to no one.

  “Hey, Elana,”
Herb said dreamily. I waited for him to finish, but he never did.

  “Yes, Herbert?”

  Another too long moment, and I wasn’t sure if he was even here or not. Finally, he said, “You know, you can just chill. You don’t have to be…”

  Again, he didn’t finish his sentence. Dude looked far too comfortable. “And yet, I continue to be,” I said with a flourish.

  “Right, so are we doing this?” Saul asked impatiently.

  “I’m down,” Hope added.

  The less inebriated of our little group, Hope Hodgson and Saul John, were referring to the Ouija board in the center of our small circle. We were all together at Ransom’s sorority house for one last study group before we all graduated next month, but they weren’t really friends, I kept telling myself. Just people I could kind of hang out with when I’d been drinking. And we had the house to ourselves, the power was out, so what else do you do in this situation but try and summon the dead by candlelight?

  “I’ll start.” I burped, grabbing the planchette and loudly asking. “Oh, spirit, are The Canterbury Tales good, or do you agree they’re a bit shit?”

  “Hey!” Ransom exclaimed, but then lost her heat.

  “You can’t just grab the board and go to town,” Saul sighed. “You need to read the ritual, and we all need to hold hands.”

  A few months ago, I figured out how to make myself fictional, and I’ve been places where ghosts are real. If we’d been in a horror movie, I’d probably say this was a bad idea. But this is college, and the only thing I’m haunted by are my life choices, so screw it. Let’s grab some hands.

  Saul spoke solemnly and from memory, which is kind of weird, right? I guess not. I know some poems too, that jerk isn’t special. Goth jerkface. With his goth poem. Oh, right, we needed to hold hands.

  “For thee unmourned, for thee done wrong. Give voice, give council, give outburst. Find purpose, find anger, find movement, find justice. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise! Rise!” Saul intoned the words but was shouting by the end, and if anything was going to sober me up, that was it.

  “Dude?” Hope asked, almost looking offended.

  “Yeah, man,” I reiterated. “That.”

  “Okay, what should we ask?” Saul clapped his hands together, a somehow wholly different person than who he’d been just a moment before.

  No one wanted to say anything, that was weird, but maybe not end the night weird. “Maybe their name?” Hope offered.

  Saul began to move the planchette around the board.

  D-O-N-T-A-N-S-W-E-R

  “Where is that from? Italy?” Random asked. “Like Donte?”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, and I jumped as a landline phone rang far too loudly from the other room. “Got it!” Ransom said, bounding up over the couch like she hadn’t been too stoned to walk five minutes ago.

  “You have a landline?” Hope asked quizzically.

  I was about to answer when my body went rigid at hearing Ransom scream from the other room. Herb was on his feet in a second, looking as terrified as I felt. “Honey?” He called out uselessly. Panic makes people say dumb things, I observed.

  “Come on, let’s ask it another question!” Saul asked gleefully.

  “Stop playing, man! That sounded real,” Herb chided, then called out, “You okay?”

  I watched in stunned silence as the planchette began to move on its own power.

  D-A-R-K

  Herb took off into the other room, and to my continued shock, I watched as even the ambient light to the other room was enveloped in shadow so dark that when Herb stepped through the threshold, it was like he was swallowed.

  Saul turned on Hope and I just then, grinning too widely, and asked, “Who wants to go next?”

  This all felt out of nowhere. Something happened to Ransom, maybe Herb and Saul as well. I’d never seen Saul like this and had certainly never heard him sound like this. Hope was terrified and confused. I could feel her wanting to crawl away.

  “Hey, this isn’t fun, guy,” Hope stammered. “Can we just go?”

  H-U-N-G-R-Y

  Hope screamed in terror as mushrooms began to sprout up all around her, just as rapidly as I could blink, and some of them even appeared impossibly as if they were growing out of her. Hope dashed away from us in a panic, and the screams abruptly ceased.

  I was on my feet now, looking at Saul for the predator he was, trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

  “One more, Elana,” he cooed. “Ask it a question.”

  “I…I don’t want to,” I said shakily.

  Saul, previously short and skinny, someone typically shy and who had a hard time looking anyone in the eye, began to grow grotesquely before my eyes, gaining at least six inches in height and stretching his clothes, nearly tearing them, as muscle grew from seemingly nothing. “Ask it!” he repeated.

  “I…I…” I wanted to get away from him and was backing away without realizing it, when I looked down to avoid his gaze, and I saw it. A circle of brittle grass, mostly dirt. A protection circle. “I can’t believe this!”

  I was suddenly furious, and I used that anger to step forward, careful not to break the circle, and give Saul a shove. He went down a lot easier than I—

  Thunder cracked the sky. It was a lot closer now. We didn’t have many places left to run. I stared out through the window of Cafe Mak, now long abandoned, and my rod felt suddenly heavy in my hand.

  “This didn’t happen,” I said softly to myself.

  “Well, it’s sure as shit happening now,” Olivia grunted behind me, pushing furniture in the other room.

  “No, I meant—” I was cut off by Bilyana pushing open a door down the hall with just a hair too much effort.

  “We’re just about good outside,” she stated coldly. “All good in here?”

  “We will be,” Olivia replied.

  “Wait,” I began. “What are we doing?”

  Bilyana let out a groan of frustration that sounded like she wanted to hit something. “It’s fine,” Olivia tried.

  “No, screw this,” Bilyana said as she marched toward me. “You wanted to be General Elana, so step up, because our asses are all on the line here. So, say it for me and my sake. Why are we here?”

  “I had saved a spell here, in the wood,” I began, remembering everything through a haze. “The Orochi formed. The city fell. I’m teleporting us away once I have everything. Can’t stop it.”

  “I still say we can, but while you’re in charge, I guess we have to follow you.” Bilyana was impatient with me. She wanted to fight, but we couldn’t. “The longer we run, the more people we lose for nothing. So, tell me this, little miss red: When are you going to stop running from the storm and start chasing it?”

  “Jason, Claire, Teague,” I began softly, looking back to Olivia. “Are they good?”

  Olivia stopped what she was doing just then, still as deep water, and took a breath. “I’m not going to get mad at you since you’re probably still in shock,” she began carefully. “But you know Claire and Jason didn’t…you probably didn’t mean…all non-combatants are out of the city.”

  Horrible memories, things that couldn’t have possibly happened, played as clearly in my mind as if they were happening right in front of me. I shook the image out of my head and focused on Bilyana. “Let me know when we’re ready to—”

  A deafening roar from something monstrous was coming from outside now. There were immediate screams, and then gunfire, and then worse gunfire.

  “The Orochi!” Olivia gasped.

  “Elana, focus!” Bilyana shouted at me. “Fight or run? What are we doing?”

  “Elana, we have to go!” Olivia pleaded, motioning me toward her.

  “No, with me,” Bilyana insisted. “With your magic, we have a chance!”

  An entire building was ripped away from my view in seconds. A roiling, massive eight-headed snake monster began whipping its head about, smashing through concrete, flinging cars skyward, swallowing soldiers
whole. I looked to the two of them and considered a plan.

  “Neither,” I said, tossing Olivia my rod. She caught it awkwardly and looked at me dumbstruck. “Olivia’s got this. Billy, I’ll take an Americano if there are any beans left in the back. You ever used a grinder? I mix in a pinch of salt, myself.”

  “My friends are out there dying for you!” Bilyana boomed, her face contorting.

  “No, they’re not.” I shrugged.

  “They’ve kept you alive!”

  “No, they haven’t.”

  “Elana, we can’t stay here!” Olivia whined. “It’s going to get us!”

  “See? That right there,” I told Bilyana. “Olivia doesn’t sound like that. And that’s not even what the Orochi is supposed to look like. It’s like you stopped trying for this one.”

  “This what?” Bilyana spat.

  “This this.” I gestured around me and then to the floor. “I’m really sorry to cut this short, but I figured out the trick. These illusions, or false memories, or whatever they are, they’re getting worse. I figured this one out pretty quick. It’s not going to work anymore.”

  The ground beneath my feet, the brittle grass, expanded out, slowly melting away the illusion of the cafe, and I found my sitting again with staff in hand. Trembling and weak.

  “That’s only because you’re almost gone,” the Knowing said, more somber than sinister. “Really gone. So, this is it. Last chance. Step out of the circle, give me the children, and be restored. Yes or no?”

  I tried to feel for the children through the ground, and it was like putting my hand into a bucket of thumbtacks. I was too weak, couldn’t tell you where they were if I tried. Bigger parts of me were floating away now. I wanted to say something cool—these were my last words, after all—but instead, I violently coughed up blood. I settled on, “No.”

  The strength failed in my hand as a portion of my wrist vanished, and my staff fell to the earth unceremoniously. I closed my eyes and willed the last pieces of myself into the circle.