Reunited at Last

            The moment Jim’s words left Clara’s lips, Richard realized that in the end, he had been outplayed. He had chosen this particular demon because Richard believed that he would not be too powerful to control, but he would be powerful enough to be of some use. The most important factor was that Jim was of a class that Richard felt confident he could maintain control. The demon’s magical abilities were broad, but not so deep that Richard could not undermine them and bend them to his will.

            But such calculations were assuming a vacuum – two adversaries facing off on a featureless plane. Jim was thousands if not millions of years old, and though Richard felt Jim had bought in to his own demonic clichés a little too much, Richard was also prone to overestimating his own brilliance and underestimating his foes’.

            Richard was far better at burning bridges than building them, and so whatever network of old friends and allies he had mobilized against Thall had been a very small one. Certainly, the government and the RAS were hard at work hunting for the killer, but their strategy was very much a bottom-up approach, and Richard felt strongly that the only way to stop the killings would be to kill good old Henry.

            He had been so fixated on Henry Thall that he had grown complacent in his treatment of Whispering Jim, this ancient evil that was spoken of in legend and that Richard had employed in a manner not too dissimilar to a personal bodyguard.

            The moment Clara spoke with Jim’s voice, it became apparent what had happened. Jim had possessed her. As a demon, he could simply make another person’s body his own. Clara was trapped within, helplessly made a puppet by Jim’s will. Admittedly, after her veiled threat against his daughter (or so he felt her visit to his home to be,) Richard did not care very much about any strain she might be under due to the possession. But there was, of course, a shred of humanity remaining within his mind, and so even if Clara were a true villain, he felt a swifter and less ignoble end would have been more appropriate.

            But Jim had been clever. Some might object to an arcanist of his kind treating with demonic entities, but few would object to his dominance of such a creature specifically out of respect for the demon’s rights. To those who knew such a thing to be possible, a demon certainly had fewer rights than a pet rat – the demon may be more intelligent, but liberty for a demon is a far more dangerous thing than liberty for a rodent.

            There were no true laws on the books regarding the keeping of a familiar – demonic or otherwise. But the RAS did have some rather complex guidelines, none of which afforded a demonic familiar any sort of rights or privileges, and so the government was unlikely to object to the mistreatment of a demonic entity if the RAS was happy to look the other way.

            But Jim was no longer just a demon. Everywhere he went from now on (Richard knew possession was possible, but exorcism was another matter – typically exorcisms to his knowledge ended with the victim dead, and Richard even hypothesized that the practice itself merely killed the host in order to force the possessing spirit out) he would also be a human woman with all the rights afforded to her as a subject of the crown.

            And forced servitude was not something you could legally do to a human woman.

            Thus, the trap. Jim could easily portray their relationship as one of a deranged libertine, corrupting his daughter by keeping a former prostitute imprisoned within his basement. It would certainly fit with the narrative of his family. Yet another Airbright involved in some horrific depravity.

            And had it not been Jim’s idea in the first place to go and torment her with visions of terror? In a fit of paternal rage, he had agreed to a plan that Jim had provided. How foolish he had been, and now, here the demon had returned, a being of pure smug contempt, grinning at him with a stolen face.

            Jim had never been happier to see Richard. In the face of the unexplainable faceless men, Jim was certain that some true oblivion awaited him, and only through the gracious cooperation of this woman – who was perhaps less afraid only because she did not recognize how truly alien the faceless men were – had he been able to make his escape.

            Richard would know something. He would find a way to fight back, to protect them against the faceless men. They weren’t safe, exactly, but they would be safe once Richard had figured it all out.

             Admittedly, the expression on Richard’s face was a puzzling one – some place between fear, anger, and odd bemusement. Jim could not exactly understand what had brought it on, and he was usually so good at reading mortals.

            He would have to explain everything – the trap, Thall’s horrific abilities, and of course to explain everything he could about the horrific faceless men.

            Jim had seen terrifying things in his past. In the previous world, during the Great Cosmic War, there were those on his side of the conflict who had fallen to some force outside of what was ordinary, even for a group of spirits that identified as demons and monsters.

            Eternal beings did not have “beginnings,” just as they did not anticipate endings. It put every event on a continuum, and so Jim could certainly not say what his “earliest” memories were. Sometimes, to be sure, he would have flashes of a time before he and his brethren had committed to their dark incarnations. But these were formless and of such an alien psychology that even he could not recall exactly what the experience had been like.

            So aside from these odd flashes, his earliest memory was a vision of home – a vast cosmic expanse in which his brethren – spirits that took the form of streaks of energy or vapor, all dark browns and blues and blacks – circled around a sphere of infinite blackness. It was lazy, it was cold, and it was comfortable.

            Then, they became aware of the Spirits of Energy, those beings who would eventually take on the forms of gods and fairies and mythical creatures of all sorts, though only after they had encountered the human minds that thought them up in the first place, and the Great Cosmic War began.

            Jim had fought in that conflict. He wanted to see a dark world, a stable and slow and, well, dead world that mirrored his comfortable home reality. The cruelty and vindictiveness had really been an aesthetic choice in his pursuit of that goal.

            But something had come out of that dark sphere at the center of it all. The orb of infinite blackness had not been an object worth worshipping. It had been a hole. Into what? He could not say. No one could. It was a hole that cut out of his own universe into something that was not. And it was out of that hole that the strange and terrible presence leaked and transformed many of his kinsmen.

            They had lost the Great Cosmic War. And Jim, proud warrior though he had been, was glad of it.

            And though time meant different things in different universes, it was in this universe that he had spent… a million? A billion years? And he watched as this universe had developed its own human beings, its own cities and civilizations. Though perhaps not beset with quite as many systemic and institutional problems than the civilization of the previous world, its people were flawed enough to be corrupted. It was a playground for him.

            Until he saw those faceless men.

            He had never seen anything like them before, but it was as if there were a smell to them, or a vibration coming off of them.

            Or rather a lack thereof.

            Because Jim was certain that the faceless men had come from that same place that the hole in his universe had led to.

            As these thoughts raced through Jim’s head, Clara felt them as well. Because it was also Clara’s head.

            “I suppose I’ll speak first, if the two of you are just going to stare at each other.” She realized that it was an odd thing to say when it was her eyes that were staring at Richard Airbright.

            Neither responded, though she got the sense that they had heard her.

            “I have seen enough of Thall to want out of my arrangement with him,” she continued. “I do not want to go back to that house. I do not want to see those faceless men ever again.”

            “Faceless men?” asked Richard. To both Clara and Jim’s shock, there was a note of recognition in his words. “What do you mean, faceless men?” There, the veil was brought back over his expression. But Clara had seen it.

            “Thall is not working for his own benefit. He has an employer,” she said. “The killings and the rituals involving the bodies were all performed by hired hands. My job was to give out assignments. But these horrible men without faces would appear in the house and Thall seemed to communicate with them, though I never heard them speak.”

            “I do wish you would stop using her voice, Jim,” said Richard.

            “You misunderstand, Mr. Airbright. I am speaking of my own volition.”

            Richard glared at her – or perhaps more accurately, at Jim. Then he said “Nar’shastakala’xin, I hereby command you to stop speaking with this woman’s voice.”

            “And I am telling you, Mr. Airbright, that this is not Jim speaking right now. He shares my body now, but I am here as well.”

            Richard did not speak for several seconds, and Clara could see him contemplate what she had said. Whether he ultimately decided he could believe or not, he responded by saying “That complicates matters.”

            “I want to help you. I know I don’t deserve your trust, but you still remain in control of this demon, and he seems to have a direct view of my own mind, so if you do not trust my words or intentions, I invite you to ask him.”

            It was at this moment that Clara realized that Airbright’s teenaged daughter was peering at her from the top of the stairs. Clara fought the urge to make eye contact with her and potentially divert Richard’s attention from the matter at hand.

            “Jim?”

            “It’s true, Master. I think we have a legitimate defector.”

            “You think?”

            “Figure of speech. I know.”

            Richard straightened up, relaxing a bit. “Have a seat, Clara.” He gestured to a sofa in the living room. She stepped carefully toward it, carefully resisting the profound strength of her demonically-enhanced legs, which only moments earlier had seen her bounding from rooftop to rooftop, and sat.

            “Exorcisms generally kill the host. Do you know that?”

            Clara sought out Jim’s presence within her mind to refute this notion, though Jim was sheepishly silent.

            “I have a theory that exorcism is just a euphemism for killing the host, which winds up forcing the demon out. Despite its historical tradition within a religious context, the scholarship on the true arcane science of exorcism is practically non-existent.”

            He called behind his shoulder: “Isabelle, go to bed.”

            Clara heard the girl’s hasty footsteps and the closing of her door. “Clara, you have been an accessory to many heinous and brutal murders, all in the service of some dark purpose I have yet to unravel. You are currently possessed by my demonic familiar. Tell me, is there a good reason I should not attempt an exorcism upon you right now?”

            She tried to stand up and run, but the other person within her prevented her from moving a muscle. “Jim,” she thought to him. “Please!”

            But Jim was silent, that sheepish silence of a broken animal obeying its master.

            Richard held up his hand, and with a deft gesture, a golden knife appeared within it. “What is your value, Clara?”

            “Please, sir,” she started.

            “No, don’t play on human sympathy. You showed none to the people who died on your orders.”

            “They weren’t my orders, sir. They… I had to do what…”

            “You can always say no. You said yes.”

            Clara closed her eyes, but she could see the blade coming toward her in her mind’s eye. “I don’t want to die, sir,” she said. It came out flatter than she expected. There was a part of her that felt that none of this could be happening, as if she were dreaming or watching it all happening from far away. A small, logical voice in her head said “there’s no way he would kill you in his own living room. He wants something from you.”

            She suppressed a smile, even though she was still terrified. “I want to make this right.”

            When she opened her eyes, Richard had caused the knife to vanish. He even had the faint hint of a satisfied smile.

            “How can you help me, Clara?”

            “I can tell you what I saw. I can tell you names. Hired killers, targets, anything I can remember.”

            “Give me an example,” said Richard.

            She tried to think of something. That killer, Mr. Ford? Maybe the last person Thall had designated for a hit? She wanted something juicier. Then she thought of it.”

            “He thinks you’re jealous of him,” she said. “That you might have even chosen to help him if not for your sore ego.”

            Richard cocked his head at this. “My sore ego?”

            “Yes, I… don’t really know what he meant, but I gathered that you had known each other for a long time. I assume it is his power that you envied. He is clearly no longer human, though I would guess he was at one point.”
            “He was. We were friends at university.”

            “And is that when he changed?”

            “Yes.”

            “He seems to think that you envied him his transformation. That you worked to undermine him because of the power he had attained.”

            Richard let out a single puff of laughter. “Did he not know?” It seemed more a question to himself.

            “Know what?” asked Clara.

            “That the faceless men came to me first.”

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2018)