Ariel (6 page)

 
"I summon thee,
O Dweller in the Darkness,
O Spirit of the Pit.
I command thee
To make thy
Most evil appearance.
 
"In the name of
Our mutual benefactor,
In the name of
Lucifer the Fallen
I conjure thee
By his blood-lettered sacraments,
By Hell and by Earth,
To come to me now,
In your own guise
To do your will.
 
"I adjure thee
in the name of
The foulest of masters
By his loins,
By his blood,
By his damned soul,
To come forth.
 
"I order thee
By all the unholy names:
Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub,
Belial, Shai-tan, Mephistopheles,
Thy hair, thy heart,
Thy lungs, thy blood,
To be here
To work your will
Upon me."
 

He closed the book.

Ariel still wouldn't meet my eyes. "'To work your will upon me'?" I whispered. "Ariel, how could you?"

A ripple flowed down her flank. "I had to know. I'm sorry, but I had to know if I could beat it."

"You're sorry! That conjuration practically offers my life if a demon comes!"

She lowered her head until her horn almost touched the floor. When she raised it again there was a crystal-bright streak beneath each ebony eye. Tears stung in my own eyes at the sight. "Oh, Pete," she said softly. In her voice I heard that lost-little-girl voice from when I first met her, saying "bwoke" with such hurt pleading. "I was much younger then, and foolish. It was done from my ignorance and insecurity. I never meant to play games—stupid games—with your life, Pete. You know that."

"I thought I knew that." I was numb inside.

"Pete! You don't mean that." She looked in desperation at Malachi. "Why did you have to tell him?"

Calmly: "He deserved to know. You should have been the one to tell him."

"It was stupid; it was a stupid thing for me to do!" She stepped toward me but I held up a hand.

"No. I  .  .  . think I'll take a walk or something. I want to be alone." I wanted so much to say that yes, it was okay, it was no big deal, of course I loved her. But I couldn't, not the way I felt then. It wasn't so much that she'd used me, but that she'd never told me.

She was still talking, but she sounded far away. The walls closed in on me; I wanted out.

"Pete, please! It was long ago; I was still growing up. I didn't understand what any of it meant."

I paused at the door. "You still could have told me." I turned to go out the door.

Everything happened with horrifying suddenness, but with the slow motion of a dream. It felt choreographed, executed with precision timing. I grabbed the knob and turned it. Behind me Malachi yelled
"No
!" and I thought, fuck you, you can't make me stay, and I opened the door. I looked back as I did, just in time to see a white blur as Ariel cleared the space from the living room to the front door in one leap. With a movement almost too fast to follow she twitched her head, batting at something with her horn. I started to wonder what she was trying to do. The thought never had time to complete itself because a muscular giant buried a sharpened pickaxe in the middle of my back.

I looked down at myself as I fell. Something protruded from my stomach. I wondered what it was, but was interrupted by the distant thump of my body hitting the front porch.

Gee
, I thought,
it doesn't even hurt
.

A giant black heel came down from the sky and blotted out the sun.

Six

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide in thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrows? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?

—Job, 39: 9-12

It was dark out there.

That's all I remember thinking for a long time, that it was dark out there, that I was at the bottom of an ocean of black water and was fighting my way up to distant daylight. It was formless black and stagnant, no eddies or swirls.

Starless
, I thought.
Starless and Bible black
.

I couldn't feel anything. Why couldn't I feel anything?

Because someone stuck a giant hypo in your back and shot you full of Novocain. Whole
body. Numb. Numbnumbnumbnumb.

Oh, yeah. It's frightening to walk in the dark if you can't even feel your way around. What did that remind me of? Oh, sure. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Good old Poe.

Was there some deeper hole out there in that blackness, waiting for me to find it?

(Pete.)

Whoa. Where did that come from? I didn't say it. Did I?

(Pete.)

No, I didn't say that. Wonder who—

(Pete, I'm trying to help you. You have to want me to.)

I tried to talk. Mouth wouldn't work. Full of cotton. I turned the mental volume all the way up and shouted GO AWAY! I LIKE IT HERE. IT'S COMFORTABLE. If only I could feel something  .  .  .  .

Instantly I regretted the thought. I could feel again, all right, and what I felt was pain, pain and nothing else, not even any room for relief at being
able
to feel pain. The pain was a white spearpoint of light, a hot poker rammed into my back and spreading as though gunpowder laced my veins, and everywhere the light touched it set the gunpowder off. It hurt and I cried. What had
I
done?

The light burned through the fuse of my veins until it had seared through my entire body, reaching my head last. The points of sewing needles were jammed against my upper bicuspid molars and I was forced to bite down hard. White heat tried to melt all the bone of my skull, and everywhere the burning white touched it left a space, an empty spot, where the blackness used to be.

(Good, Pete. Help me.)

Vise grips clamped onto my lower back and stomach. They tightened and tightened and tightened. Internal organs were pushed together, a wet, rubbery, sliding feeling, and something gave like an overfilled water balloon:
poosh
! I vomited. It fell away into that blackness without a splash.

(Closer, Pete. We're getting closer.)

Closer to what? Fuck you, anyway, I liked the dark better. It didn't hurt. That's what I get for listening to voices in the dark. Who cares if I can see the light? Who cares if I can feel it? It
hurts!
I need more than that. I need  .  .  .  .

(Tell me.)

I can't! I don't know what it is. I need something  .  .  .  . A child's thing  .  .  .  .

(Tell me what you need, Pete.)

A  .  .  . teddy bear? No, but close. Something—something I can hold on to in the dark, something  .  .  . silken. I need a guide  .  .  .  . Something only I can touch because I am special. But there's no such thing; magical companions don't exist.

(Pete, listen. Please listen, Pete.)

From far away, like an old gramophone recording (those don't work anymore, I thought), came a voice, the voice of a lost child:

(For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast.)

Somewhere something stirred. A forgotten memory pricked up its soft ears. Silver.

(And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself must rest.)

Yes  .  .  . hooves, and—sparks, streams of sparks, falling like glowing red snowflakes onto asphalt. And a name—

Ariel
! The name was cast to me and I seized it before I could be pulled back under. Ariel. Help me, bring me back!

(Always remember that I love you, Pete.)

I was picked up and thrown into the middle of the blackness, and it shattered. The dark fragments fell away, and beyond them was light, not painful light, but the pure light from an ivory horn.

I reached out to touch it and pitched forward. Darkness reigned again.

* * *

The wait in the darkness was not as long this time, and when I woke up it was six years earlier.

Seven

May you live in interesting times.

—Ancient Chinese curse

As I swallowed the last bite of of Spaghetti-o's the phone rang and a car horn blared outside. I dashed to the door, stuck my head out, and yelled, "Be there in a second, Grace!" Behind the wheel of her Falcon—on its last legs, poor thing, but we still called it the
Millennium Falcon
with affection—Grace smiled and nodded. I ran back to the phone and lifted the receiver in mid-ring. "Hello?"

"Hey there."

"Hi, Mom. I hate to cut you short, but—"

"What time is your debate tournament?"

"Four, and it's three-thirty already. Grace just pulled up."

"Things would be a lot easier for you if you'd go to work and earn enough money to get yourself a car."

"Mom—"

"All right." Her voice warmed. "Do well at your tournament, hon."

I smiled. "Don't I always?"

"I wouldn't know. You've never brought home a trophy."

"'Bye, Mom."

"I'll see you when I get home."

I hung up, put on my ugly brown and green coat, and stuffed its non-matching tie into a pocket so I could carry the briefcase and card file outside. I hoped Grace wasn't pissed off; she'd gone out of her way to pick me up as it was.

Accouterments dumped into the back seat, Grace put the car in gear and we headed out. "Where is everybody?" she asked, commenting on the empty driveway.

I ticked them off on my fingers. "My brother has a soccer game in Miami Springs. My parents—my mom, I mean—is at work. I'm going to a debate tournament. I think our dog's out on the back porch. My father's dead."

"Not funny."

"So solly."

The rest of the drive to our high school was spent in silence. Grace parked in the senior parking lot because it made her feel superior; we were both freshmen.

At the cafeteria Grace and I spotted our school's other three teams.

"Master debaters," I announced, "we are here!"

Bill Thurgood looked up to regard me blandly with his pasty expression. "You'll pardon us if we don't stand up," he said.

I gave him my best diabetes-inducing smile. "I thought you
were
standing up, Bill." Bill was short.

Jim Allen, the club president, handed us a dittoed sheet still smelling faintly of alcohol. "We've got a bye in the third round." I pointed out the shadowed box to Grace.

"You've also got a round right now in two thirty-six. You're negative team."

"Wonderful."

The team was waiting for us when we got to 236. We set up quickly, shook hands all around, and got started.

The lights went out just as I concluded my rebuttal speech. It was four-thirty. We opened the shades to brighten the room and resumed the debate.

* * *

We had an hour-long break between first and second rounds. Grace and I went out to her car, planning to grab dinner at Burger King.

The car wouldn't start.

"Did you check the tires?" I asked.

"Funny." She turned the key in the ignition once more, pumping the gas pedal with her high-heeled foot.

"Alas, poor
Falcon
," I said mournfully. "I knew it well."

She shot me a hateful look. "Don't you know anything about cars? I thought all guys were supposed to."

"Fortunately, I am not the typical high school male. This is everything I know about cars: you put the key in and turn it. Through some mystical process I'll never understand, the engine starts. If you want to go forward you press your foot down. If something goes wrong you fix it."

"And how do you fix it?"

I shrugged. "You call a mechanic."

"Gee, thanks." She pulled the key out of the ignition. "I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that this is your way home tonight, too."

"Yes, it has. Look, your engine's not even turning over. It's probably your battery. Maybe we could get a jump from somebody."

"Yeah, okay. Good idea." Her tone said that she didn't think it was such a good idea, but that she had no better one.

I got out and walked over to another car with two guys sitting in the front seat. They looked familiar; I think they were from Killian High. I explained our situation to the driver and asked if he could give us a jump. Grace had cables in her trunk.

"Sorry," he said. "I can't get mine to start, either."

I frowned. Looking over the roof of his car I saw three people trying to push-start a Volkswagen at the far end of the parking lot. "Have you looked under the hood yet?" I asked him.

"No. It's probably the same problem you've got, though. Dead battery."

"Or a missing one." I pointed at the Volkswagen. "I wouldn't put it past somebody to come by here and steal batteries out of some of the cars."

He got out and opened the hood. The battery was still there. "Well, that answers that. Let's try something." He opened his trunk and pulled out a set of jumper cables. After attaching them to the battery's terminals he held the loose ends and touched them together. "Nothing," he said. "No spark."

"Holy shit!" yelled his friend on the passenger's side. "Did you see that?"

"What?" the driver and I asked simultaneously.

He pointed. "From out of the trees by the road there. It was  .  .  . huge. Some kind of animal. Like a lion, but bigger. Lots bigger."

"Bear, maybe?"

I made a rude noise. "Our school might be out in the boonies, but it's not that far out." The guy who'd seen the animal got out from the car. "Where'd it go?" I asked.

"It just shot out from between the trees and ran around the corner, that way." He pointed west. I looked at the intersection where he was pointing. The red light was out. Below it were unmoving cars.

Grace came up beside me. "It looks like everything's stopped at once," she said.