The Spaces in Between (19 page)

The man in black whistled.

“I’m getting sick of all this foreplay,” Cameron said.

“Very well,” the man in black replied.

Magic doesn’t work they way it is often portrayed in fantasy literature and movies. An epic battle between wizards hurling fireballs at each other is simply unpractical and does not happen. Rather to say that it could, but to create a physical fireball from nothing would require so much energy it would be almost impossible to create. Not to mention if a passerby saw it and suddenly exclaimed, “Hey! Knock it off! That’s impossible!” Most likely the fireball would fizzle faster than an erection when the subject of mother in laws come up. Why go through all the trouble when a subtle change to the Astral could flat out kill someone? It’s much easier to do.

The average person has a great deal of immunity to the affects of magic since they are oblivious to the goings on in the Astral, but an accomplished magician has one foot in the Astral and the other in the Physical. A fight between magicians is pretty boring to watch since on the Physical it appears to be an intense staring contest. You don’t even get the satisfying nosebleed or headplosion like in
Scanners
. However, on the Astral it can be epic so we’ll keep our eyes there.

The Chosen swirled around the man in black and his stature grew to that of the
Hallow One
. He stood upon his ship and towered through space. Cameron joined him at that size on the aft of the ship.

“You should ask the Old Ones for some pants under that robe, Harvey,” Cameron said.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Harvey bellowed. That was the opening Cameron was waiting on. He thrust his fist into Harvey’s abdomen and detonated the three antimatter shells he palmed. The explosion tore through both of them and launched both from the ship. Cameron quickly reformed the arm and shoulder that bore the payload. The man in black was torn in half at the waist, which was still a grievous wound on the Astral where the center of energy rests in the abdomen.

Steam poured off the man in black, and while his stature was now slightly smaller, he was whole again. His hands turned to black tendrils and lashed around Cameron’s wrists before he could draw the Mehmet talisman on himself. He was dragged across space with great strength that Cameron could not resist without the talisman. Still even then, it might have been fruitless. He was face to face with the man in black. The man in black’s jaw became unhinged and slid down his chest.

Cameron felt an electric tingle as the tendrils from the man in black’s now void of a gullet brushed across his face. The breath he was expecting to be hot and obnoxious was neither. Icy air wafted into Cameron’s face and chilled him to the bone with a hint of cinnamon smell. That last fact was confusing and the most disheartening to the Pirate King.

Cameron quickly compressed himself again and all that energy suddenly releasing forced the man in black to the let him go. The man in black cackled and raised his palm to flatten Cameron.

“You know why your Old Ones have you after me? They came directly, already, and I hurt them pretty bad,” Cameron said and ran his index finger over his eye patch. “You’re Old Ones are frauds. Allow me to show the power of the real Old Ones, Harvey” Cameron pulled the eye patch off to reveal his blood red eye. The man in black screamed in rage, but caught Cameron’s glare.

His palm slammed into the ground, but completely missed the mark. His eyes darted around and he was surrounded only by black. The stars had gone out. The ships had faded away. He lifted his palm and found that Cameron was still there. He couldn’t make any details out except for Cameron’s red eye and his outline illuminated by the faint red aura surrounding him.

Despite the immense height advantage the man in black felt like an ant in the presence of the Pirate King. Above him space split and a giant red eye peered through. Light flashed between the man in black’s fingertips only revealing closed eyelids that outnumbered the stars they had replaced. Still he could make no detail of the Pirate King.

“What are you!?” the man in black screamed. He raked his fingernails across his own face. “You’re a monster! A monster!” He slid down and melted. He was now in the fetal position and sobbing. He clasped his hands over his eyes, but could still feel the glare of the Pirate King on him. The eyes opened all around him their light now visible through the backs of his hands. “A m-m-monster. S-s-s-pare me. Our c-c-church is y-y-ours. Please…just say something. Anything!”

The Pirate King spoke. On Earth a child was born with a full head of hair and mouth full of teeth much to the chagrin of her mother. In a desolate star system a star imploded taking the rest of the star system with it. In Baltimore every single child started bawling. Warren Elliot threw up. A statue of a powerful yogi in every Lemurian temple began to spurt blood from every orifice. Lord Sananda the head of the Ashtar Command, while enjoying his afternoon tea, felt a shiver like someone had just stepped on his grave.

“Fuck you, Harvey.”

Far beyond the comprehension of mortals in the maddening seas of
Ain
outside all Universes the dark wanderer Nyarlahothep opened his left eye. An emerald eye that contrasted the blood red eye greatly. Just where Cameron had left it. The eye of Nyarlahothep was upon the man in black and all there was to see was a horrible wretch of a man. Blood streamed down his face and patches of his scalp were missing from pulling all his hair out. He rolled on the ground as if on fire and screamed. And that’s how he would always remain trapped in that terrible gaze.

The eyes blinked, and the nightmare vanished. The man in black along with it. The Pirate King covered the dread eye with the eye patch and reopened the green eye. His skin had faded and his breath was heavy. One of his dreadlocks had turned white and a single tear streaked down his cheek from his right eye.

Intermission: Meanwhile with Warren Elliot

Warren Elliot woke up sitting in a bench in the Inner Harbor. A book was in his lap,
The Gunslinger
by Stephen King – his favorite. He had lost his place and flipped through quickly looking for any possible dog-ears. He noticed that he had marked the first page. The first phrase
The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed
had been altered. The words
the desert
and
gunslinger
had been crossed out with a mechanical pencil.
Space
and
Pirate King
were scrawled in overhead with the same pencil.

“The man in black fled across space and the Pirate King followed,” Warren read aloud.

He was having more and more of these spells since Janet had left him. He felt that it meant that he was to write another one of those stories about the Dread Pirate Cameron, but he really hadn’t the will to do so in him. Strange things were happening to him and these periods of blacking out where just the tip of the iceberg. Janet had left him the morning after the horrible day spent with the Irishman.

They had an argument. He couldn’t explain logically or illogically why on Earth monsters like the Irishman and his employer would be interested in him. The memories of everything that lead up to it where drowned like a dream and the details becoming fuzzier with each night’s rest. Though a good night’s rest was hard to come by. He was starting to see the Irishman behind every corner.

When Warren had returned to bring Janet a bagel from the continental breakfast downstairs, she was gone. Two grand laid on the nightstand wrapped with a note from the Radisson pad reading
Goodbye.
The suitcase with the rest of the money was gone. He really didn’t blame her; in fact, he was always confused why she stayed with him this long anyway.

Probably just out of pity over what happened to my arm.

Instead of charging out of the room after her, he collapsed on the floor and wretched. He lay there crying for the better part of his time before checkout and left without bothering. That night he walked back to their apartment and sure enough all of her things were gone along with their pet pile Steve. Janet’s engagement ring was on the kitchen area table. He went to bed and slept for two days straight. The song from the Rock Horror Picture show played on his mind on an eternal loop.

Dammit, Janet (slut!) I love you!

A sane person like Janet would have moved without leaving a forwarding address if they knew a monster like the Irishman had their contact information. Warren didn’t care anymore he would almost relish in the idea of the Irishman or his employer or those men in the black suits would come and finish the job. They might not have killed him, but his will to live was long gone.

When he finally woke up, Warren Elliot shambled through Baltimore like a zombie looking for food. He had no desire to live, but starving himself to death wasn’t the desired method. If he was going to take his own life it would be something painless, but deep down Warren was afraid he’s just screw it up. He considered going back to the abandoned hospital to scavenge his phone and laptop. He thought better of it also believing the Irishman not to be a painless death either.

That’s when the weirdness started up again. He was staring blankly for the sign to flash Walk. Something clicked inside his brain like a car ignition. Colored steam lifted from everyone around him like auras. The aura of each person that passed him appeared unique. He picked up bits and pieces of each person that passed him.

The man in the gray pinstriped suit was on his way to the law firm (the same one that Janet worked for), but today he was planning to leave early. He was meeting a woman he had met through MySpace. She was only sixteen, and that was the biggest selling point for him.

The woman in the maroon pantsuit had slapped her three year old this morning so hard that one of the child’s very tiny teeth was knocked clean out for drawing on the walls. She had told the nanny that the child had fallen down the stairs before going to work. She had called in to work saying that she would be late today since she was accompanying her child to the Emergency Room. In reality she was heading to the bad part of town to meet the man she was having an affair with.

A man in a blue jogging suit passed. If things weren’t going to drastically change for him he would be dead this afternoon. He would dart in front of a car to prevent a little girl from getting plowed instead. Granted this would only be if he decided against picking up the newspaper after his jog. Or if the little girl spotted the dog across the street and darted after it. These possibilities are branched out before him like a tree.

No! I can’t be doing this! I’m just making this all up!

Across the street he saw a man in a black hooded sweatshirt that had the face of a beast. It was an amalgamation of a boar and a tiger with tiger stripes and tusks jutting from the feline mouth. Warren stared at this hallucination fascinated. The beastman noticed that he was being wanted and glanced at Warren. He stared for a moment himself and recognition flashed in his aura. The beastman dashed across the street with preternatural speed.

He forgot his death wish and his convictions that this could not be possible. He pushed through the crowd, but he might as well have been pushing on a brick wall. The beastman was already on his side of the street. No one else seemed to notice it snarl and the spittle drizzle from its mouth. One man passed them on the street and he stood out to Warren. What first drew Warren’s attention was the man’s pristine aura, and the second was the claymore sword he nonchalantly twirled in his hand. The tip of the blade severed the beast at the abdomen.

“OW!” a man in a hooded sweatshirt yelped. “Watch where you’re swinging that thing!” He looked down at his stomach. “Am I bleeding?” Warren looked around and the auras had vanished.

“You’re fine,” the man with the claymore said, “Its blunt. Might bruise though. Sorry. Look if it does come by the Harbor and show it to me. I’ll give you a free reading. Day’s going to start looking up for you.” But the man with the sword’s eyes was not looking at the man in the hoodie, but at Warren Elliot.

Warren recognized the man almost immediately from schoolyard tales – the Urban Shaman. Before the hoodie man could protest the Urban Shaman walked away. Warren wrote the whole thing off to craziness and went home. He mindlessly flipped through the channels.

“Man on daily jog saved a young girl this afternoon –“ Click. “ – is currently in critical condition –“ Click. “I was glancing at the people and spotted her in my peripheral, and I thought to myself she was going to go. She’s ok, but I got clipped by the car. “ Click. “Astronomers across the country have been blinded by strange space light…”

Warren settled on To Catch a Predator. It took him a moment, but he recognized the man in the towel. It was hard to recognize the man without the pinstripe suit on.

***

Warren got up from the bench and rubbed his eyes on his right arm. He picked up the Subway bag at his feet and headed over to the cave-like monuments. Sitting at the mouth of the cave was the Urban Shaman. Warren handed him the bag. He took his pick and handed the bag back to Warren.

“You left half the sandwich,” Warren said.

“It’s an old rate. Come. Sit with me. Eat with me.” He patted the bare concrete next to him. “What is it that you want to learn about today?”

“Yes, it’s for my story.” The most convincing lies are the ones we tell ourselves. He scratched the symbol branded on his arm. “What do you know about a spirit named Teftin? Mythologically, speaking.”

“Well, nothing much. Not really mentioned in most of the grimoires, but I’ve heard something about him being a technology spirit. An angel from the highest levels, but I’m not entirely sure why.”

“Highest level?”

“Like I mentioned yesterday. Reality as we know it is like an onion with many different layers with us at the bottom. That is not to say we are separate from those realms, but we don’t directly interact with them because we’re on different frequencies. Things on one layer interact with one higher and lower without major change.”