After-review day edit:
Shadows wriggled in the house, eery and sharp. Sounds from the past wormed its way to me—tile floors creaked like wooden panels, the dry bathroom sink made dripping noises. Despite the thermostat and internal heating, cold drafts seemed to chase me everywhere. It had been a long night, and I goosebumps raised my flesh after having the spirit silent for so long. I hated being toyed with.
“Charles? Charles, come out please,” I said, exhausted from chasing after the creaks and groans in the house. No reply came. I whispered, “Railey?”
A ghost formed next to me in the dust caught by a beam of a nightlight. She stood tall for a ten-year-old, her height coming from long legs covered in denim overalls, her pigtails ruffled with spider webs clinging to them. Her round nose wrinkled in disgust.
“I'm not having any better luck,” she snipped at me, stamping a bare foot without making a sound. She glared at the floor and stomped again, and was rewarding with a pat similar to a cat landing. It made her half-smile, but I saw worry wrinkle her eyes. I worried, too. Her presence faded with each day.
“Are you sure it's a little boy and not a bogart or wisp or residual haunt?” I said, taking a long swig from my water bottle. Even I knew it wasn't residual—it responded to where we were, harassing us at one point, then luring us up and down the stairs. For each tick of the grandfather clock, I had been hopeful that the spirit would decide to come see us, but we had been met with little more than what cleansers before us had encountered. Once they left and the couple moved back in, the haunting returned with even more malice. I wondered initially if the couple had a good imagination, but after a loaf of bread fell on me, I knew the spirit lurked this house with a reason. Railey said the spirit wanted to topple the entire fridge on me, but she chased him off. Since then, it had been like this.
“It is a boy.” she said with fierce finality. “Nothing else.”
I sighed. “Is it me, or are we being crankier than usual?”
She glared at me with her 'You-Are-Stating-the-Obvious' look. I gave her my 'Are-You-Miserable-Enough-to-Try-Something-New' smile. She crossed her arms and turned her back to me, refusing the very suggestion.
I shrugged and said, “Are there any spells on the place?”
“There's something cold coming from that room we aren't supposed to go in.”
I'd had a feeling we were going to have to violate the one condition the clients had given us, and I mentally debated between breaking in and risking any trap spells they put on it and asking them to open it. Maybe it wasn't a question of what room he was in, after all.
“Railey, is there any way he will come talk to us, even if we break into that room?”
She closed her eyes and glowed a little, then the glow left with a breeze. “No. He wants his mother and father.”
I raised my hands and said, “We need to call the parents.”
Railey tsked at me, slung her arms into a hard cross, and stuck out her bottom lip. While I was hesitant to call in more people, she downright deplored the very thought. She thought other people ruined our system, demanding explanations, jumping at nothing, talking over real noises, and in general getting in the way. I wished it wasn't that way, but not everyone grew up raised by demon-hunting parents, being taught what was and wasn't good to do. While Railey was alive, she hadn't cared to know. She just ran into whatever trouble she found and hoped for the worst to not happen.
I looked at my phone—a prepaid minute-by-minute thing I had to use since I was cursed. I still had a slim roll of unused parchment and a lighter I used to have late-night conversations with Railey and Lilly. We would burn each other messages all night, or until a parent told us we weren't going to burn down the house tonight, it was time for bed. I hadn't ever mastered fire, not even forming a small flame. While I could still receive messages, I couldn't send them. My parents had a phone, and so did my brother, in case I ever had something follow me home from one of their visits. It had happened, and I felt barely capable of delaying the thing until help arrived. Ghosts and bogarts and brownies were about my limit, not particularly powerful creatures but they could be cunning and sly. How else would they manage to survive?
I thumbed through my phone to the received calls and pressed Send. It rang and rang. I hung up and tried again. They answered.
“Hello?” came the father's voice, hesitant and fumbling as though he wasn't sure he had pressed the right buttons.
“I'm here—don't press anything, just talk,” I said. “When you want to shut it off, press the red button.”
I assumed it was red.
I heard a muttered conversation, then a woman's voice called into the phone,
“We know that. Of course we know that. Why do you think otherwise?”
I choked back a cough, “Because there isn't a single 'lamb' device in your house and it is coated in spells?”
“...oh.” she said. They were one of the purists, accepting normal technology only when they were adequately convinced that the item in question had been created by a wizard or at least a wizarding family, and was therefore a piece of wizard technology with very little magic required to use it. Like plates and forks and refrigerators. I took a couple steps back to the fridge and noted it did have the logo of possibly the only shop selling wizard-approved appliances. No microwave, ironic, as that was still the only appliance that puzzled me. Phones were credited to wizards, too, but weren't popular, it was seen as reinventing burning letters but with a monthly price tag. I would have been glad to do without mine.
I rolled my eyes, glad they couldn't see me do it.
“Listen, I think I know your problem, but I need you here.”
“Why?” the woman said, her voice dripping with doubt. “What can we do that you can't?”
“Magic.” It still stung to admit that. Railey raised guilty puppy eyes up at me and I turned so I didn't have to see her, so I didn't have to be reminded of how her rashness lead to this mess. I still wondered what she had been thinking, and I always came back to the conclusion that she hadn't been. I tried to not linger on it.
“Oh.”
There was some muttering.
“Tell me right now: How do you know all this when you haven't a lick of magic to your name?” the woman said in a matronly tone.
“My family's all magic.” I missed them and my voice came off very soft. I shook off my longings and huffed, “Now, will you get down here or should I leave you to be badgered by a ghost?”
A bright light flashed in the hallway and voices drifted to me. No matter how long I'd been around the magics, I would never grow accustomed to their instant appearances and disappearances.
“We're here!” came the father's voice both over the phone and in the hall. I hung up.
“Good. I want you to come open this door.” I said, realizing if I was going to address them I would have to actually remember their names. After so many clients, it wasn't coming to me. I thought the man's name started with a E, something like Eli, but not Eli; and the woman's was something like Jazzie or Jasmine. I gave up trying to remember.
They'd stopped in the center of the hall, gazing at each other at my odd request. I waved my fingers at Railey and she slid closer to them and relayed bits of the conversation, invisible to all but me. That wasn't quite true. Some self-proclaimed psychics really could see her, and she was every bit a child when she realized she had an audience.
“She can't know that much.” said the wife
“She'd know enough to turn us in.”
“Posh. Who would listen to a lamb?” her statement won the dispute, and I pretended to have been very interested in a painting on the wall.
“What do you want us to do? Just open it?” the wife asked.
“I need you to open the door and call for your son.”
“Our son?” gaped the wife, her wrinkled face sagging in horror, “But...how could this be him? He was a happy boy. He should be gone to...there is a place to go?”
“Of course he went to heaven!” cooed the father, then looked at me with scorn, “How dare you insinuate our boy was responsible for making that dreadful racket?”
“I'm not saying he lead a sad life. Sometimes children die and get scared about going someplace strange. You need to talk to him, comfort him.” I said soothingly as I could muster, even though what I really wanted was to demand the full story. How was I supposed to help these people if they kept things hidden from me? I could see them hiding that they were magicians, but even with my discovery they treated me as an adversary instead of someone they called to help.
Railey pointed to the door, where I saw skeleton fingers wrapping around the cracks. Railey frowned at me, and I did my best to keep my own horror at bay. The poor child had been watching his grave and understood he was dead. He would have seen other graves, too, and would take his form in varying states of decomposition. I had nightmares about these cases, and I knew the next few nights I wouldn't sleep at all and would rely on Railey's constant presence to stay assured of my safety.
I mentally took back what I'd said to the parents. Children hiding from a new place did not dwell on their own demise. I never told the parents about the appearance of their children in these cases.
“I feel him! I feel him!” cried his mother. “Charles, come here!”
She knelt, and I heard scratching on the door. I suppressed a snort at her drama. If she hadn't known it was him before, I doubted she knew it was him now.
“He's locked in,” said Railey.
I made a subtle motion gesturing between the two parents to ask her which one he was upset with, but this close up it seemed the mother was too animated.
“Her,” Railey said, “But he's angry with his father, too, for hiding—”
She stopped short and changed forms into a hound as the father twisted the key and pulled open the door. It swung wide into a child's room with toys strewn over the floor, ten years worth of dust coating everything. Railey growled, and both parents jumped.
“What was that?” said the father.
“My protector, it's fine,” I whispered, annoyed that he disrupted my concentration. I lost what little track I had of the boy, and now I regretted letting him loose upon the house. Railey had gone from my sight, too, and we waited in silence.
“Charles! My son, come to me!” called the wife.
“Quiet!” I hissed. The house creaked and groaned and the air became thick and muggy. I'd missed my chance to snare him, and now I hoped Railey would catch him before he gathered up his energy caches.
The father sniffed the air and whispered, “What's rotten?”
I smelled decomposition too, a scent I would be lucky to get out of my nostrils within the next week. I berated myself for taking their case—I should have walked, but they had been so desperate. This boy wasn't a simple case of child crying at night for comfort—he'd been crying to feed off their fear, and possibly to build enough strength to take revenge. Once a ghost deteriorates this far, little was left of what they once were.
“What is that?” he insisted.
A loud thump vibrated against the hall wall, and noises of scuffling claws on tile came to us, then a boy's scream and a hound's snarl.
“My boy!” cried the mother, fetching a wand from her pocket.
I backhanded it away, my hand connecting with it midspell. The wand shot into the ceiling, and a backfire threw us all hard. The mother ended up in the bathroom behind her, the father in a corner, and I was tossed into the boy's room, nursing my jarred senses the way I had learned to when my brother had gone through his backfire stage. I took a few breaths and forced my eyes open, making them focus on anything I could find...and that's when I saw the writing on the wall, the careful brush strokes of a spell hidden as a decoration. I read it, and cold seeped into my very bones. An inducing spell. People murdered to keep their black magic from being revealed—especially if those people were otherwise law-abiding and in good standing in their community. I looked away, but it was too late—the wife had seen me read it.
“Dear, look!” cried the woman, pointing at me. The husband saw me and his eyes narrowed.
“Wait, let's talk—” I started to say, but the door slammed in my face and locked. I yanked on the handle, but it sizzled on my skin and I dropped it immediately, trapped as the boy had been. It was times like these when I was grateful for the trinkets my family gave me—and more so for Railey outside. We all heard her and the boy struggling, and I knew I would be needed very soon. I took a stud out of my ear piercing and pushed it into the door like a thumbtack, then stood back.
In some ways, I had compensated for my magic. But once my bag of tricks ran out, I didn't stand much of a chance. It was all surprise, look the other way, and strike quick. Not to mention, I had only to hope that my trinkets wouldn't break while I was using them. They normally lasted a lifetime, but when you inherited the goods, who knew which lifetime they were from.
The door glowed red, then vibrated the door and the wood burst into flames and was gone. I caught the earring from the smoke. I slid the earring back in my lobe, walking through the doorway to the astonishment of the couple. Their door didn't even have a cinder left to it, all evaporated in a wisp of smoke. I would have felt bad if they hadn't locked me in there to start with.
The father threw an electric bolt at me—I ducked and it singed the wall behind me. Before he could toss another thing at me, I yanked off a citrine ring from my pinky and used it to copy what I looked like at that second, then I reached up to my charm necklace and slipped an invisibility ring on and darted away, leaving an illusion behind. The father loaded my illusion with more electric bolts, and the illusion puffed into a cloud of dust.
He hadn't given me time to get into position. I yanked off a forefinger ring and hurled it behind him. He whirled to face it, and a confused silver eagle stared back at him. I wondered if she would return to the ring after this, even though it was her home, she decided if she wanted to stay in it—and with me. It was a recent gift from my brother, and I hadn't had time to properly introduce myself to her. Being tossed into the middle of a fight was hardly the best greeting I'd ever given. She puffed out her feathers and raised her wings in threat, and the man refrained from attacking her. Silver eagles were known for their defensive abilities, and attacking them was considered more a waste of energy than treadmills. He turned from trying to find me and instead comforted his wife.
“I think she ran,” he said, worried. I hadn't, of course, though I was increasingly tempted to leave these people to their fate and wash my hands of this job. I did my very best to walk on the runner and make no noise.
“We're doomed for certain,” the woman cried, a heavy cry with snot and blubbering including.
“Now, now, dear, who would believe a lamb could read spells?” crooned the husband, stroking her back with a shaking hand. His eyes ran over me several times, wide and a little watery. He couldn't see me, I knew, but I always felt a chill when someone looked right through me. I wondered if Railey felt this way.
I searched in utter silence for her—and found her dragging a boy through a wall into the hallway. I glanced over the scene, digging out my bottle of holy mud from my pack. I popped the cap open and squirted a healthy circle around the boy as soon as Railey hauled him free of his hiding place. She almost was trapped in the circle herself. Her hound form slit its eyes and glared at me.
“I got him before he could retrieve all his energy stores,” she huffed, returning to her girl form again. She had transparent holes and scratches riddling her body, and her entire shape was hazy and frail. I was about to lose her. I felt sticky scratches appearing on my own skin and my body ached; it was part of the sharing of life when you have a personal ghost.
I took off my invisibility ring and called to the couple.
“I have your son; he's safe. Will you please come and talk to me? No more throwing spells at a person who can't return the favor.”
If they decided to attack again, I might not have much choice but to make a run for it. Possibly ensnare them with my lotus ring, but I wouldn't be able to release them again without unleashing everything that came before. Not a pleasant thought.
They came forward, taking hesitant steps and looking at anything but me. I couldn't see very well, but the woman was stiff and shy as though she was blushing.
“You...you won't tell?” asked the mother.
“Tell who what? I'm a lamb. Why would your Magic Constable listen to a person who can't do magic? Besides, you would have the room scrubbed down before he got here. Just...put this straight.” I said and rubbed my forehead.
The corpse rallied and thrashed against the mud circle, yelling how he hated his parents and wanted to see them drove to their insanity. Some of his words must have gotten through, as his mother sobbed harder and his father looked up at me.
“What do we do?” he asked. The boy looked angry he couldn't reach through the circle and feed off their emotions.
“Start from the beginning. Tell me how it got like this.”
“What...what's that circle made from? Will it hurt him?” said the mother suddenly, reaching out.
“Don't touch it! No, it won't hurt him. It's holy water and consecrated ground a priest gave to me.” I snapped, ready to give up on this job right now.
“A...a priest?” her eyes opened wide, “Are you a demon hunter?”
“No, that would be my parents.” I said and spoke quicker, “The priest had another priest ghost who wanted to touch his congregation on the head to bless them, and that freaked some people out. That's all.”
“...oh.” she seemed both comforted and even more distressed, “...We must seem terrible to you.”
I shook my head and otherwise ignored her comment, saying,“Tell me what was going on—why the spell to induce magic?”
The father started, “He was being bullied. All his siblings had magic and all our friends and their children did...and he...he was a lamb.”
The thing in the circle looked like he had been while living—a sandy blond boy all arms and legs and massive dome-shaped head. He had a black eye. It was as though he was responding to his parents' emotions, turning into what he thought they wanted him to be. I took it as a sign that he might recover.
“And,” said his mother, “he begged us to do anything at all to make him normal.”
“And you eventually put him in an inducing spell.”
“...yes. I cast it, I thought we could abort it...” said the father.
I'd heard that before. Parents that desperate always thought they could stop it if it wasn't “working”, but the trouble was, that magic always worked given enough time.
“But I suggested it. Suggested it, that's all. He always blamed me.” said the mother, having regained some senses.
“Charles,” I said, “do you remember this?”
He began to sniff and he looked like Railey usually did—a little transparent and with a distinct glow. His glow was red and yellow, where Railey's was white-ish blue.
“I remember,” he whispered and tears started to tumble down his cheeks. My circle was cutting his spirit free from the spell and thankfully he was a strong boy, and he was reclaiming himself. I'd trapped one child who, deprived of the spell, shriveled to nothing but a dust ball.
“Why hasn't he left?” asked the mother.
“The spell is black magic, anyone locked in it for long will develop magic but it will never be for good. His spirit was trapped with that spell, and he learned to frighten your family and store that energy in caches. Once you let him go, he went straight for them.”
“...with them, what could he do?” asked the father.
“At worst?” I raised my eyebrows and chewed on the corner of my lip, “At worst, he could have suffocated someone and trapped their soul with his. My protector stopped him and got rid of the caches, but you can see on me how he hurt her.”
They called up a soft light ball and gasped at the web of fine scratches marking my arms.
The boy snickered and I sighed, knowing it would take a while longer before he was completely himself again.
“Tell me what his favorite thing was. We need to focus on the positive now.”
It took a few minutes before it came out that he loved anything to do with toys—playing with them, designing them, and making them. I started up a working dialogue between the three and let them share in favorite memories, everyone commenting on how he could make anyone smile. I talked between them for quite some time, and I saw each of them drop their strained faces and soon they were laughing and smiling.
“Oh, how he could make a person smile!” said his father.
“That was his magic,” I said.
“What?” asked the mother.
“You said he could always make people smile—the girl who stumbled in the park, his brother when there were carrots in the pot pie, you when you lost your uncle. Even now, he's making you smile at the memory of him, talking to him. That is his magic.”
His father pondered on this, then he said, “He could do it when no one else could. It was magic, just not how we were used to thinking about it. I can't believe how big of a fool I was.”
“Your family has been living this secret for far too long. You need to have a professional come in to clean out that room. Then you can have your son released. You said he has a great-uncle waiting for him?” I asked, feeling fatigue wreak havoc on my neck and forehead.
“Yes. Donnie.”
Railey returned to me, tattered and worn through. She gave me an all-clear sign and let herself fall into nothingness. I felt her absence and it made me both scared and relieved.
“You two, stand around the circle and join hands. Pray for Donnie to come to the boy.”
“Pray?!” the mother screeched, “Pray like some magic-less, powerless lamb prays to their 'almighty' god or gods? The thought is simply...heathen.”
“I agree,” said the father, “What else would you have us do?”
I repacked my water bottles, “Nothing.”
The mother gaped, her mouth hanging open, swinging side to side for a few seconds before she said, “Certainly...there must be something we can do!”
“Nothing,” I said, positioning my small pack on my shoulders, “Nothing at all. Can you cast a spell to conjure down you uncle, force him to pick up your son and take him someplace safe?”
“Black magic,” hissed the father.
“No!” said the mother, “There must be something, I have power, I...”
“You have no power over Death and his dealings. You have no magic that can make your son better. In regards to him, you are powerless.” I said fiercely, then relented with a sigh, “You can only reassure him. The wizards have long banished religion, maybe it was because the churches banished them, maybe it was because the wizards feel as you do now. But I have to ask you: Do you want all the weight on your shoulders, or do you want to trust it to someone else? You are in a desperate time, perhaps you should consider some less conventional means. It might make you feel better, if nothing else.”
“We are not some of these—these New Age Wizards.” snapped the father. I didn't know about these people he talked of—it must be a new group indeed.
“So,” I snapped back, “You believe in heaven but not in prayer?”
The husband looked awkwardly at his feet, realizing the hypocritical situation he had placed himself in. I hadn't come to debate this. I didn't care what he believed.
“Fine.” I said. The word came out sharper than I'd intended and the mother winced. The father shifted his pointy black shoes, ruffling up the runner and smoothing it out again. I wanted to leave right then, but I felt somehow obligated to remain.
The father spoke slowly, “Wait...your name, it's familiar. Fera-linn?”
“Fera-line.” I corrected, though I'd grown used to answering both pronunciations. Mother had named me after some family members, some of the many I had never met.
“Feralyne Swift...you're that kid, that one from years ago, who ran into that black magic...who was the other girl?”
My heart sank far into the pit of my stomach and I suppressed a groan. That 'other girl' had been Railey. “Please tell me people aren't talking about that.”
The mother wasn't yet ready to ignore her dilemma, pouting over being told she could do nothing but pray like a powerless heathen. The father, it seemed, was seeking a distraction from having to deal with his situation. I intended to cut the conversation off as quickly as I could, and made to leave.
“Don't be like that. I think I should warn you: the community is divided, they don't know who to blame.” he said quickly. I considered that he was trying to do me a small favor instead of merely seeking a distraction. Perhaps it was both.
“Thanks,” I said, “I don't think I will ever be going back to the wizard community, but I appreciate the caution.”
I began to hobble down the hall, but the father's voice halted me. Again.
“Are...are you going to tell about this?”
I frowned and turned to meet his eyes in the early morning light. “I used to belong to your world. I don't anymore. I have no one to turn this in to. I can't. But you can.”
The silver eagle flew to me, carrying her ring in her beak, and slipped back into it as I put the ring back on my finger. I went to leave. The wife rushed to hand me an envelope—payment, she whispered—and I left the house, heading into the sunrise in hopes of finding a park to wash up and rest at.
