Pockets of Darkness (22 page)

Twenty Nine

“What the hell are you doing in my shop?” Adiella glared daggers.

Bridget wondered how the witch got in. She hadn’t heard the door open, or the floor creak. Was Adiella so powerful that she could appear out of thin air?

“Irish guttersnipe!” Adiella continued. “You’ve no right to trespass. I will—”

Bridget dropped the crumpled business card on the counter, smoothed it out, and pushed it toward Adiella. Though with all the creases and in the poor light it couldn’t be properly read, apparently Adiella recognized it. She folded her arms in front of her chest and put on an imperious look. The witch might indeed have appeared out of nowhere. She wasn’t wearing a winter coat, just a thick cable knit blue sweater that looked expensive. Her customary overly large jewelry—a brass and wood bead necklace with a stylized sun fob, earrings that dangled to her shoulders, and bangle bracelets, were probably made to her unfashionable specifications. Her long nails—Bridget likened them to claws—were painted a shimmery gray and tipped with black lines. Odd to be dressed to the nines so early, she thought. Or maybe it was late; maybe Adiella had been at some coven gathering.

“You will help me,” Bridget said, tapping the card.

“You want to know why I did it?” Adiella glanced at the card. “Why I seized upon the opportunity?”

So the witch was actually admitting it. Bridget hadn’t expected that.

“No. I honestly don’t care why you did it.”

“You’re a thief, Bridget O’Shea. You stole my son and his affections, kept him from finding a good woman. Kept him from giving me more grandsons. You steal the air from the righteous that walk the streets in this city, defiling it with your presence. You steal. ‘If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that she die, there shall no blood be shed for her. If the sun be risen upon her, there shall be no bloodshed for her, she should make full restitution—”

“I can quote scripture, too,” Bridget cut in. “Once upon a time I was a ‘good Catholic girl.’ Suffer not a witch to live—”

“You can’t even get that right,” Adiella spat. “Exodus: Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live. And I am no sorceress.”

The demon trundled closer, looking between Bridget and Adiella, its fifth eye closed tightly, but the other four open and glimmering with obvious curiosity. It belched, the noxiousness wafting up and smelling like a carton of rotten eggs.

Bridget came around the counter and watched as the witch’s expression withered. Fear? Did Adiella fear Bridget? “Well, you damn well better hope you can cast spells like a sorceress, ‘cause you’re going to help me.”

The witch backed up, giving herself more space; the demon watched only Adiella now. “I told you I cannot dispel the demon. I didn’t lie to you. It is an old one, a powerful one, more powerful than anything I’ve encountered before. It can hide from my vision. Satisfy it, you Irish
târfă.
Find out what it wants, I told you. Do whatever—”

“Oh, I damn well know what it wants, Adiella. I managed to share a handful of words with the beast. It wants me to free all the demons in the city. I already let two loose.”

“Then just keep—”

“Letting demons run amok? Hell no. I’m done trying to satisfy this warty gobshite. Now I’m going to send it back to whatever layer of hell it came from. And you’re going to help me. Send it back and catch the ones I turned loose.”

Adiella opened her mouth, but Bridget didn’t give her a chance to protest.

“You’re going to help me, or I’ll suffer a witch not to live … just for spite. Your blood on my hands? That’s nothing next to what I caused last night. And you set it all in motion by saddling me with a feckin’ demon.” Bridget took a breath.

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon said. It was staring at Bridget now.

“You didn’t have to steal the briefcase from Elijah Stone. I didn’t
make
you steal the demon, Bridget O’Shea. I didn’t
force
you to do anything. I might have presented you with the opportunity to steal it, but you didn’t have to do it. Your decision. Your action. It’s all on
your
head. Tavio’s death. It’s on you. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not ever steal!”

Bridget grabbed Adiella by the arm and tugged her toward the front door. “Too bad you didn’t wear a coat. You’re going to be awfully cold until we reach your pit.”

“How dare you, Bridget O’Shea. Trespass in my—”

“Yeah, well, Otter’s trespassing there too.” And Michael, Marsh, Rob, Alvin, and Quin. The witch was just going to love having Bridget and her entourage gathered in her bones-of-saints sanctified hidey hole.

They made one stop, at a rundown twenty-four hour corner bodega above the subway entrance. It sold questionable looking fruit, as well as cigarettes, snacks, and soda. Bridget found energy drinks at the bottom of a cooler and bought all of them: four cans of Red Bull, two Monster, three Rockstar, and a one Full Throttle. The clerk claimed not to have change for the hundred she slapped on the counter, so she added a half dozen packs of Twinkies, a stack of Hershey bars, a
New York Times
and a
Daily News
, and a cheap-looking keychain flashlight. The clerk double bagged it all in plastic sacks that appeared to have been used several times before.

“Do you have any notebooks? Notepads? Anything to write on?” Bridget craned her neck this way and that in the cramped, dirty confines of the convenience store. She saw a large cockroach meander slowly across a shelf. The place was probably infested with them. Adiella stood just inside the entrance, making sure she didn’t touch anything, shivering, and glaring at Bridget the entire time. “Anything?”

The clerk shrugged. “Postcards. I have postcards.”

“Great.” Bridget grabbed the entire stack and pocketed a pen that was on the counter. “Keep the change.” Then she ushered Adiella outside and down the stairs, waited for the train to pass, and disregarded a pair of beggars who tried to stop them from climbing down near the tracks. She turned on the tiny flashlight, and prodded the witch toward her pit.

O O O

The demon seethed. It squatted in the crevice at the entrance to Adiella’s pit, acid drool dripping from its lower lip and hissing against the floor. It had tried to enter the chamber several times, and tried once again now as Bridget watched. It closed its four main eyes and opened the fifth, made a scritch-scritching against the stone with a talon and then tentatively raised that talon and prodded forward. Rebuffed again, it appeared to doze.

“It’s there,” Bridget told the witch, pointing. She talked softly. “My demon. It’s angry.”

“I can feel that. It is palpable,” Adiella said. She also kept her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You have trapped us here, Irish
târfă
. If one of us dares to leave, that thing will—”

“—rip out your heart. That’s what it does. And eat it.” Bridget sat cross-legged in a corner, under the spray-painted caricature face of Bob Marley. The pit smelled fusty and damp, but the air was ten times better than usual because the reeking demon could not get close to her.

“Jimmy’s heart,” Michael said without turning around. His back was to Bridget. “It ate Jimmy’s heart.”

“Then by my hairy word we had better be successful, eh, Adiella? Or these men will either die of old age here or die to the beast you’ve saddled me with.”

Thou shalt not steal
, Adiella mouthed.

Otter still slept, thank God, on the bed against the opposite wall. Alvin and Quin sat side by side, coats pulled tight, guns on their laps, watching her and the witch, but with eyes that could hardly stay open. Their heads bobbed; they’d be sleeping soon. Rob and Marsh were on either side of the vintage Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunk, using it as a table and playing cards, both feasting on the Twinkies she’d bought. But both men were clearly more interested in what Bridget was doing than in their game. Michael sat in front of the space heater, deliberately not looking at her, running his thumb around a can of one of the energy drinks.

Bridget knew Michael would be leaving her employ if she managed to find a way free of the demon mess. He’d seen Jimmy’s body, and so the threat of that happening to him was holding him in place at the moment. Alvin and Quin, she knew they’d be done, too. Despite them witnessing the tentacle beast turn her brownstone into so much kindling, she’d had to practically physically force them through the abandoned tunnel and into this graffiti-coated den. “We’re too old for this shit,” they repeatedly told her.

Rob and Marsh? The latter would probably be on his way; she’d beat him up pretty bad at Otter’s birthday dinner, had never treated him with much respect … one more regret to add to the ton she’d already logged.

One more.

Rob would stay, to the death of him. He’d grown up in the Westies with her, and she knew he’d always harbored a crush … and also always known nothing would ever come of it. Rob was more of a brother than a love interest. With the exception of Tavio, she hadn’t allowed herself to get so close to another. Dustin? Had she loved him? she wondered again. Maybe. But not with the intensity she’d once felt for Otter’s father. She’d never allow herself that intensity again. She started to cry and brushed away the tears.

“Got something in your eye, boss?” Rob asked.

“Just memories,” Bridget answered.

“What is it you want me to do?” Adiella was in the rocking chair, stack of postcards in her lap, pen ready. “What am I supposed to write?”

Bridget carefully unwrapped the package Rob had brought. She noticed the demon had its eyes opened again, thin slits that added to its evil-looking countenance. Again it tried to breach the entrance, and again it couldn’t come an inch closer. She moved aside the shredded packing material and brought out a small bowl. The lighting in the pit was just enough so she could make out the details. It was etched, like the ones had been that she’d broken in the museum, and there were little stick figures … people maybe, or demons.

“What am I supposed to write?” Adiella persisted, raising her voice enough so that Otter stirred. The boy rolled over and continued sleeping.

“Whatever I say.” Bridget could tell that the other bowl was a little larger. The packer had nested them together. She didn’t have a lot of room to work, so many people in this chamber made it rather cramped.

The demon saw the bowl and became more animated. “Unshackle,” it said. “Bridget unshackle.”

“I want to find the spell written on this bowl, Adiella. I want to somehow be able to repeat it and for you to record it. Then I want you to use it against my … companion … over there.” Bridget didn’t know if it would work, but the demon hadn’t wanted to be too close to the bowls when they were in the museum. She’d thought the beast nervous then. Now, it was clearly furious, and yet also seemed excited at the prospect that she might release another of its fellows. It pantomimed flipping the bowl over, just like it had in the museum.

Adiella was right, Bridget thought; the beast would no doubt slay whoever left this room.

She popped the top on a can of Monster and started slugging it down. The taste was strong and sugary, like liquid carbonated bubble gum. She nearly spit it out. Bridget had never tried an energy drink before; it had better work to keep her awake. She managed to chug the rest of it.

“I have to pee,” Rob announced. He stood and brushed his hands against his pants and took a step toward the crevice. “Is it all right if I—”

“No!” Adiella and Bridget shouted practically in unison.

Otter woke and sat, the bed creaking. “What’s … mom? Grandma Adiella? Mom! What happened to you?”

Bridget pulled up the hood of her coat to cover her nearly-bald head.

“Really, I have to pee,” Rob said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next. “It’s gonna be running down my leg if I don’t—”

Adiella gave him a dirty look. “There’s a pot, under the bed. Use it.”

“In front of God and—”

“—everybody,” Bridget said. “If you want to keep breathing. Don’t leave this hole. And Otter, I’m fine. Had a little hair trouble.”

“No hair, no trouble,” Marsh whispered.

“Christ.” Rob looked under the bed and found a polished brass chamber pot. Marsh sniggered. “Laugh it up, buddy. Wait until you have to take a turn.” He squeezed behind the witch, apparently thinking her and the rocker afforded some measure of privacy. “What the hell? Where did my—”

“You think I would have my warren fouled with the smell of waste?” Adiella said.

“It disappeared,” Rob said. “My piss. It just…” He shrugged and zipped up, replaced the chamber pot and reached out to tousle Otter’s head.

The boy pulled back. “No-no. I know where that hand’s been.”

Rob returned to the card game. And he and Marsh passed cards back and forth while keeping an eye on Bridget and Adiella.

“This might take awhile,” Bridget told the witch. “Just listen, and when I repeat something that sounds like a spell—”

“I know, write it down,” Adiella said. “Whatever it takes to keep Otter safe.” She smiled sweetly at the boy. Bridget thought the expression did not suit the witch.

Bridget gently rested her fingers on the edge of the bowl and dipped her senses into the clay. She hadn’t read the ingredients on the side of the Monster drink, but whatever was in it had given her a burst of energy. The delving came easy.

Maybe too easy.

***

Thirty

Bridget was enveloped, the sensation bringing to her mind the image of being wrapped tightly in blankets. There was no warmth or comfort, just an oppressive sense of binding. It was as if she’d gone blind, but instead of a sheet of solid blackness, it was red-brown.

Clay.

She was seeing the clay of the bowl, effectively inside it and trying her damndest to look out, mind all jittery from the energy drink, heart racing. Fighting down a sense of panic, she explored further, her senses circling and finding the wall of red-brown interrupted by slashes—the characters that had been carved into the bowl’s interior. The symbols were artful and precise, laid into the clay with an expert hand. Her mind continued to circle the bowl, around and around like a merry-go-round, traveling up and down and all the while around, finding the stick figures that either represented men or demons.

Bridget felt water sloshing against her as she dipped her mind farther back into the bowl’s history. The clay she was inside came from a riverbank, dug by hand—the fingers of the digger thrusting into the ground and pulling her up, casting aside stones and the bones of fish. Her clay self was plopped into a wooden bucket and carried somewhere, the distance traveled not seeming far, listening to the measured footfalls of whoever toted her. Birds cried, and children laughed nearby. A man shouted. The strains of a wind instrument briefly played. She nudged time forward and felt herself lifted from the bucket, plopped on a hard, flat surface, fashioned by strong but elegant female hands, turned on a wheel. The spinning sensation relaxed Bridget, like hands working her muscles at a favorite massage parlor. Around and around like a merry-go-round. The sound of the wheel, and of the potter softly singing, was restorative.

Like Dustin’s feathery touch on her bare skin.

Around and around, hands sluicing up water to make the bowl she was becoming uniform and perfect, clay pulled off to make the bowl small. The song mesmerizing.

Around and around and around. She should be dizzy, a child trapped on a carnival ride, but it was so very calming. For the first time since she’d acquired the buckle, she felt true peace. Bridget knew she should be seeking a way to trap a demon, just as whoever had made this bowl intended it as a trap. Fast-forward, she told herself. There was Otter to consider.

And Michael, Rob, Marsh, Alvin, and Quin to protect.

She should be using her psychometry to pursue the information she craved. But she’d suffered so much, physically and emotionally these past few days. Tavio’s brutal death, Jimmy’s heart ripped out, Dustin most assuredly slaughtered by her demon, Otter in her less-than-stellar mother care, the beloved brownstone in ruins, her antique store and its precious and priceless treasures slagged, on and on and on and on.

Around and around.

The wordless song of the potter continued, like it was a spell cast on her.

The hands working the clay-that-she’d-become felt like a lover’s caress, sluicing away at the horrid memories of the past few days and making her memories of Dustin clearer.

Around and around.

Enjoy this for just a little while.

The woman’s hands on the clay-that-she’d-become were restful and addicting and at the moment oh so necessary to ease her tortured, splintering soul.

Around and around.

Enjoy this for just a little while longer.

The potter’s sweet song became her breath.

Around.

There was Otter to consider.

Was it that she wouldn’t pull herself from this relaxing sensation … or
couldn’t
? Would this be the closest thing to heaven Bridget would ever experience? She’d damned herself, with her thieving, but more by releasing the demons in the museum. Ashes to ashes, the guards’ bodies. Their deaths on her. Her soul destined for the bottom of hell.

Around and around. Make the memories go away.

Around.

For just a little while.

One more turn.

One.

More.

Wait. What was that? A different impression. Suddenly a cold and prickly wave rushed through her, no longer the welcome massaging pulse. But whatever uncomfortable numbness it had caused, it was fleeting, and so Bridget again concentrated on the strong, elegant fingers, the water sluicing up, and the rhythm of the wheel. The beautiful song.

Around and around.

Seeing the red-brown of the clay she’d become, cut here and there by the stylized characters, vaguely wondering what they meant, and then—

—being assailed by the cold and prickly touch again.

Bridget was jarred as if she’d just slugged down another of the syrupy sweet Monster drinks. She tried to press her mind outward, to get beyond the present memory of the clay and away from the prickly sensation, like forcing the fast-forward of a CD. This time the painful chill did not pass. It persisted. Think about Otter! Get free!

But something prevented that and held her fast. She felt a coil loop around her and tighten. The rhythmic sound of the wheel and the potter’s song that had been worked into the fabric of the pot vanished to be replaced by a sibilant string of words. Foreign and exotic-sounding, it was as if a sultry Etta James was speaking ancient Sumerian. And because she was part of the bowl, her gift mentally translated each word.

“Morsel you are, come to share my prison.” The coil rose higher, circling all of her essence; she felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Morsel feels sweet.”

I’m not a morsel!
Bridget raged.
I am a visitor, passing through the clay.

“Not I think,” the voice continued, deepening to a baritone. “Not passing through. Staying in my prison, sharing my prison. Wonderful company for eternity. Companion until the end of everything.”

Bridget felt the chill increase, like she was stuck in a forming ice cube.

“The end of time.”

No! I am passing through.

“Caught as Ku-Ninsunu is caught.”

Is that your name, demon? Ku-Ninsunu?

“Aldî-nîfaeti.”

Is that your name, Aldî-nîfaeti?

“Ku Ninsunu is my beautiful name. My beautiful self. She who was spawned by the river, it means, though no river was involved. Caught as Ku-Ninsunu are you—”

Bridget.

“Bridget is caught with Ku-Ninsunu forever.”

The demon was female? Did her own demon have a sex? Male? Female?

“Ku-Ninsunu and Bridget caught until the end of time. Caught by Hilimaz, Ku-Ninsunu and Bridget. Together forever. I will eat you slowly. Nibble by nibble so you last a very long time.”

No!

“Else unshackle Ku-Ninsunu. Together unless Bridget unshackles Ku-Ninsunu. Eat you ever-so-slowly, piece by piece, unless Bridget unshackles Ku-Ninsunu.”

Hell no!

She was indeed trapped … with a demon named Ku-Ninsunu inside the bowl she’d dipped her mind into. Trapped as tightly as if she’d been placed in manacles, sucked in like the demon had been pulled inside however many centuries past. What would happen to Otter now? Had she done this to herself? In allowing herself a few moments of pleasure feeling the potter work? Had Bridget doomed herself to an endless mind-locked existence with a piece of ancient pottery?

“Forever with Ku-Ninsunu. Eat you piece by piece.”

By all that’s holy!

“No, Bridget. Nothing holy is here.”

Just passing through.

“Pass back, Bridget, and unshackle Ku-Ninsunu. Pass back. I will not let you go farther. Only despair is here. Captured until the end of time. Free Ku-Ninsunu, or Ku-Ninsunu will not free you.”

No. I am passing through!

“Pass back and unshackle Ku-Ninsunu.” The voice was louder and hurtfully angry now.

No! No and no!

The red-brown clay cut through with the characters became a wall of black, changing again to swirling shades of grass and ocean. The colors shifted and settled and sharpened to form the blue-green scales of the coil that had wrapped around her.

Ku-Ninsunu.
She was seeing the demon.

“Yes, Ku-Ninsunu. I am the vexer of farmers, wilter of crops.” The demon was a long snake, its hues transitioning in brightness until they glowed electric. As it coiled more of itself around Bridget’s delving presence, the colors ran like a sidewalk chalk painting caught in the rain, the edges coming in and out of focus. The scales seemed to grow and shrink in size, but she realized that was just the beast breathing. It relaxed its grip and the coils dropped farther down so that its head lowered even with her eyesight.

As beautiful as the shades of its scales were, the head that crowned the body was in even measure hideous. Looking like a plague-pocked mandrill, the face was twice the size of a human’s. Its lips were covered with thumbtack like spikes, and the tongue that darted out over them was bloated and black and dotted with open sores. The beast’s eyes were round, the irises a dark purple, and the pupils shiny red like drops of fresh blood. When it turned, she saw that instead of ears it had nickel-sized holes from which ooze trickled, reminding Bridget of her own demon and its never-ending rivulets of goo. It had a second set of eyes, one above each ear, both with hot red pinpricks in their centers. It was not bald, but neither did it have hair, rather a gray-green mass of short wriggling worms, each with tiny bright eyes that flared like matches being struck.

The Aldî-nîfaeti stank of myriad spoiled things, reminding her of the garbage-choked alleys she’d chased the Westies boys through twenty years ago. Two decades, that was but a heartbeat compared to the eternity she was facing inside this prison with this hell-born monstrosity.

“Unshackle Ku-Ninsunu. Free the wilter of crops.”

Seriously?
Instead Bridget decided she had better free herself.

If the beast could hold her inside the clay, her mental presence might also have some sort of a physical quality. She envisioned herself moving her legs, meeting resistance against the Aldî-nîfaeti’s coils. Working harder, imagining that she was pumping her legs in a run up the Empire State Building’s stairs, she made a little progress. Eighty-six floors, she’d managed the run several times. One thousand five hundred and seventy-six steps, the lower third taken two at a time.

The muscles in her legs strained.

The coils seemed to loosen.

Faster, the steps two at a time, she imagined that her arms were swinging at her side, that she was working to keep her feet free of the other runners, her breath puffing and her lungs filling with the demon’s stink.

Faster! Bridget pushed out with her imagined arms against the thickest coil that pressed against her chest. The scales were smooth and cold and felt oddly good against her palms, one big muscle that she fought against to get her more breathing room. She fancied that she was lifting weights, which she often did to keep her mind off her business worries. But when that connotation came to mind she saw Jimmy laid out on the weight bench, ribs broken and a gaping hole where his heart had been.

“Unshackle Ku-Ninsunu.”

Like bloody blue blazes I will, you Aldî-nîfaeti fecker!
Bridget’s simmering hate fueled her, and she pressed harder still, the snake-demon a three-hundred pound weight she was hell bent on lifting. In her mind’s eye she saw her knees raising and lowering like pistons.

One thousand five hundred and seventy-six steps.

“Caught forever,” the demon purred. “Unshackle Ku-Ninsunu.”

You sons of a bitches don’t have much of a vocabulary. Unshackle Ku-Ninsunu. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti.
Bridget strained that she imagined the veins in the sides of her neck were going to pop.

“Morsel for Ku-Ninsunu.”

One more step!

One more!

Sol’s Gym had been an old clothing factory on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. It was near a stretch of row houses and rundown warehouses, and it had recently been converted into a boxing gymnasium. Bridget and some of the Westies boys went there after the place closed for the night and they were certain the infrequent cleaning crew was long gone. They’d sneak in through a side window over an alley. It never latched properly, and they would have to climb on a Dumpster to reach it. They’d shimmy in and turn on only a few lights, none in the front of the building where someone passing by might see. Though who would have called the cops? It wasn’t a good neighborhood, and it wasn’t a store someone would break into to steal from. Looking back, Bridget realized they were needlessly worried of discovery.

Bridget and her friends were thieves, but they never stole from the gym, they only used the equipment for a few hours, taking turns holding the punching bag, and then setting up matches in the ring. They didn’t let Bridget spar the first several months of their forays. They said it wasn’t that she couldn’t fight; they well knew she was strong and quick. They said that they didn’t want to fight her, didn’t want to risk marring her pretty face.

So while they boxed she hit the weight equipment, her presses in time with their swings and grunts. Sol had posted signs on the ceiling for the boxers to read while they bench pressed. Dig Deep, was the largest. Want It More Than Anything. Ambition Is The Road To Success And Persistence Is The Vehicle You Drive. What Are You Waiting For? Never Give Up. Great Effort Springs From Great Attitude. One More.

That last slogan had become Bridget’s catch phrase for all her teen years.

One More.

One more push up, sit up, bench press. One more set at the punching bag.

One more match with her Westies friends who had finally relented and fought with her.

And lost to her.

Not one of them had bested her, though she wondered now if they’d pulled their punches to “not mar her pretty face.” And one night she’d clobbered Seamus Doyle so hard he hit the mat like a dropped sack of potatoes. They had to carry him out, and it hadn’t been easy sliding him through that alley window. He didn’t come to until they were halfway down the street and in the shadows the row houses cast in the streetlights.

One More.

The memory of that one sign on the ceiling became thicker in her mind than the coil that tried to tighten its grip.