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Authors: Mon D Rea

Tags: #afterlife, #angel, #crow, #Dante, #dark, #death, #destiny, #fallen, #fate, #Fates, #ghost, #Greek mythology, #grim, #hell, #life after death, #psychic, #reaper, #reincarnation, #scythe, #soul, #soulmate, #spirit, #Third eye, #underworld

Spirit Wars (9 page)

BOOK: Spirit Wars
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The
Sisters loomed over me with panic in their eyes. They were screaming my name
soundlessly. And right before I blacked out again, an ice-cold realization
seeped into my consciousness, which was turning against itself and denying any
knowledge of today’s events. The Spirit Sherlock would be the patsy in this
diabolical case. I’d be held accountable for my shameful moment of weakness,
for resorting to the most desperate act of suicide. The hero would become the
coward.

E
ven as I
lay there watching the concern in everyone’s faces, I knew that certain things
had been set in motion. The name on the guest register had already begun to
fade and the memories of everyone in the orphanage were right that moment being
altered. Soon no image of a crow-like man would remain, extinguished out of
every weak and mortal mind.

To
top it off, my limbs still had feeling in them but my supernatural senses
didn’t. My psychic talents were like a dismembered leg whose familiar weight I
could no longer feel.

I
closed my
eyes tight to trap the welling tears.

****

All
the other orphans stood crowding the second-floor balcony and looked down
shyly, awkwardly; many of them confused how they should feel. This was what
most farewells were like in that place, other than being a regular occurrence.

But
then Little Sophie who was the youngest of the batch uttered my name in her
still unformed language. They were the first words she had ever spoken. She
called out: “She-lak!” at the verge of tears, and suddenly all the others
started chanting, “Sherlock! Sherlock! Sherlock! Sherlock!” as I was led away
to a taxi.  

I was
moved to
the apartment of an unmarried social worker. It was ruled that I posed a threat
to the healthy environment of the orphanage. I overheard them saying how I was
a corruptor of impressionable young minds. But it mattered very little then
because I knew I wasn’t anything anymore. I’ve become nothing.

Chapter XI: Homeschool Hell

“Good
evening,” I greet as I shamble into Death’s office and Sephtimus utters a
stream of obscenities in classical Latin and ancient Greek. If sentences could
consist entirely of abuse, he was producing exactly those. I can tell even if
the ubiquitous skeletons (
My Helter-skeletals
, as Sephtimus fondly calls
them) hadn’t erupted in laughter.

I
feel like an exorcist about to face the biggest demon-possession case of his
life, but then it’s probably no more than what inner-city school teachers face
every day, I reassure myself. That’s when Sephtimus generates a ball of fire and
flings it straight at me. I shriek and escape incineration by the skin of my
teeth.

Probably
not.

I’m
panting like a fish out of water
, making echoey, overlapping noises that are
the hallmark of fershees, otherwise unscathed. Then I notice my normally
slippery backside has been charred and there’s this small matter of a flame on
my tail-fin.

A
hyperactive skeleton races to put the tremulous fire out. It runs screaming and
dragging what looks like giant innards but turns out to be a fire hose. Like a
demonstrator or an unwashed prisoner of war, I’m struck by a jet of foul swamp
water.

Sephtimus
and his Helter-Skeletals howl with laughter. The sound the reaper makes is that
of grinding tectonic plates transformed into a voice.

“Stop
it!” I shout, surprised to hear the thought automatically translated into
ancient Greek even though I’ve never learned the language in my life. I regret
the words as soon as they leave my mouth.

Sephtimus
abruptly stops laughing.

Your
unclean lips do not deserve the tongue of the Ancients
, he
communicates
to me telepathically before spitting to the floor. His attendants jump on the
chance to serve and polishes the floor back to a mirror-like shine with rugs of
human skin, all spread-eagled and papery.

You
are worse than a mendicant. They merely eke out an existence in places where
mortals do not turn their gazes.

Simultaneous
ly the
computer monitors flash pathetic images of street people: the self-exiled, the
graying, and those who have been driven away by their families and forgotten.

You, when you were borne by the Storks, the Crows were right on
their tails. Life and Death hovered over you on the day of your birth. A most
ambiguous existence, no auspicious event ushered your coming. No star marked
your place in the universe and no angels trumpeted your entry onto their list.

The monitors reveal the invisible battle of elemental forces.
Giant prehistoric birds that glow in immaculate whiteness - the Storks -
screech and snap at a volatile, writhing mass of blackness - the Crows - as the
second attempts to spirit the newborn baby away.

You are but the shadow of a man, a smudge or a blot that barely
touched the page.
The Grim Reaper smiles a crooked
smile.

I keep my head bowed. Viscous water oozes off my deformed exterior
and sullies the immaculate floor. Muted videos cast shadows all over the room;
all over Death, his henchmen, and me. I don’t need to look up at the monitors
to see what images Sephtimus has chosen next to demolish my very being. They’re
the slow and rhythmical movements of the umballici, an entire school of them
bobbing above their owners; every balloon connected to a human like a vertical,
translucent shadow.

You… are… a mistake… Nataniel Cuervo
.
Death
enunciates the words with pursing movements of his normally static lips and a
mad twinkle through the eyeholes of his Dia de los Muertos mask, which he
apparently never takes off.

I’m shaking not out of anger at all the lies coming out of the
reaper’s mouth but from fear of the words that I know deep down to be true.
Every human owns an umballicus except me. 

I fall
silent for a long time. But then I whisper,
“You’re wrong.”

Sephtimus explodes.
What did you say?
he roars as he leaps
up from where he’s been sitting. The skeletons that make up his throne whimper
and cringe back into the shadows.

He paces like a lion around my drenched form. I keep hiding my
face, not meeting his eyes.

What did you say, you rotten, stinking, flatulent bag of meat?

For every word of abuse he hisses, Death turns a foot taller and
grows horns that eventually curl up and around themselves. He’s the biggest,
scariest, most dangerous force in the universe, whose rank breath is enough to
shake me like a twig. Nevertheless, I stand my ground.

And as
I make this single conscious choice I
receive
courage from a mantric resolution
:

Out of the night that
covers me

Black
as the Pit from pole to pole

The words
rise from the same part of me
that has long been buried and forgotten, growing louder.

I thank whatever gods may
be

For
my unconquerable soul

Sephtimus is literally breathing down my neck, huffing and puffing
on the threshold of my sanity. But already I’ve begun to see him in a different
light. He’s no different from a human bully who feeds on the submission of
others.

In the
fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud

What keeps repeating in my head are the words of the poem
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley; something the Sisters taught me at Blessed Children’s
and I memorized as a child. I used to recite the same words to myself in
moments of extreme depression. I guess I forgot that I knew them, like many
other parts of my childhood.  

 “I said… you’re wrong,” I tell Sephtimus, a little louder
this time.

What? I can’t hear you. Humans cut off your tongue, little
monster?

I actually open the mental door and step out to face him.
  

Under the
bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

“You’re wrong.” I finally raise my eyes. And what Sephtimus sees
there is enough to make him do a double take.

My fish eyes, whose perfectly spherical lenses swallow the irises,
give me a constant startled expression. Right now I picture a flash of defiance
there that Sephtimus has encountered only a couple of times in all his
perpetual existence.

The computer monitors around us all shut down as though cut off
from Sephtimus’ thoughts and experiencing a black out.

Beyond this place of wrath
and tears

Looms but the Horror of
the shade,

And yet the menace of the
years

Finds
and shall find me unafraid.

It dawns on me that Sephtimus is incapable of understanding subtle
human emotions. He could be a mind-reading and mimicking reaper of the worst
kind but contradictory human sentiments, like hope in a hopeless situation, are
unknown to him. In a word, my spirit is inscrutable to him.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of
my soul.

What are
you doing?
Sephtimus screams inside my head. In the darkness, a lone screen
flickers to life.

This lone square of light projects a close-up of Sam’s wide smile
and radiant face. If eyes are indeed windows to the soul, then Sam’s as they
take me in are the clearest and most refractive.

Next, within a radius of two screens from the first, the other
monitors switch on by themselves. They play scenes of the many precious moments
I spent together with Sam – at the mall, at the park, in countless restaurants
and coffee shops. And in all these images, our happiness is overflowing.

Get out of my head!
Sephtimus wails.

You’re not the only one who can play this game
,
I speak telepathically while releasing a high-pitched, dulled boom out of my
lips like a fish spouting water. In the receding dark, I watch Sephtimus bring
both hands up to cover his ears.

Then, the whole room is bathed in light. The happiest and most
meaningful segments of my past life are on every one of the monitors. And the
genuine laughter from both me and Sam pierces Sephtimus’ heart.

Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting me!
he
screams. A child throwing tantrums.

“Not yet. I’m not,” I speak with icy menace. “Now sit your ass
down and let’s get started.”

 
Chapter XII: Infernal Affairs

First, a short history lesson from the Lachesis monitors:

In the beginning was darkness. And from it, light and life were
born. Light was varied, free, and unpredictable as embodied by the Spirits of
Creation, the Storks.  On the other hand, darkness was clean, still, and
barren as embodied by the Spirits of Destruction, the Crows.

Between these two camps, a pact was made to govern the comings and
goings of life into the mortal realm. The Fates, or the Wyrd Ones, arose upon
the principles of three counter-balancing functions:

First was Clotho, who spun the thread of life, the umballicus, to
grant entry unto the world by birth or reincarnation.

Second was Lachesis, who calculated and measured that which was
duly apportioned and owed.

Third was Atropos, also called the Grim One, who sternly cut the
thread of life to bring forth death.

I recognize the three characters from Greek mythology and again
marvel at how close the ancient Greeks got to actual fact. I assume Sephtimus
is Atropos, the one with the Abhorred Shears. Clotho I’m yet to encounter. And
Lachesis, well, Lachesis is supposed to be the supercomputer that gives out the
half-electronic, half-insectile noise; the hum of death I’ve been so acquainted
with since before I even crossed over.

****

The good thing is, language isn’t so different from mathematics
and I can reduce it into patterns and formulas. With these building blocks for
my diabolical project, we’re hoping we can accomplish in a week what human kids
have their whole childhood to learn.

 
I’m constantly reminded of how my role as Death’s tutor
is like that of a physical therapist. It’s dismal work directing monotonous,
progressive exercises. Walking may be the epitome of easy; except if you had
been severely injured in an accident then re-learning how to walk would be an
almost miraculous feat. Tissues would’ve stiffened with scars and atrophied
muscles needed to be stretched out and strengthened. Perhaps that is what I
need to perform: a miracle.

For simulation purposes, Death summons one of the Helter-Skeletals
and transforms it into an astonishing double of our target, Celestina “Lessa”
Conti; which makes me wonder why with this kind of power at his command
Sephtimus let his heart set on someone nearly unattainable. He could’ve just as
easily recreated any other woman, celebrated or otherwise, living or dead.

Our surrogate Lessa places herself in the middle of a makeshift
coffee shop complete with tables and gliding skeletal waiters. Sephtimus then
goes in as grim as an F-16 pilot while I hover back as his wingman.

Countless times Sephtimus insists I make a fixed set of dialogues
that he can memorize. It’s only with the longest explanations that I manage to
impress on him the dangers of mechanical speech.

****

Mind-reading is weird. It’s like listening to a really good
ventriloquist cast his voice anywhere except his lips. Your brain registers the
alien voice but you’re too slow and untrained to keep up. You keep looking over
your shoulder for the source, struggling to collapse nature back into a
familiar order.

I get more and more snatches of internal monologue as my ability
grows, filling me with the guilt of a voyeur.

****

At every conceivable opportunity I cram my mind with human filth,
this pitiful excuse for a language. Upon the counsel of the pedagogue, I have
documented the most irksome concepts on bright yellow pieces of paper called “
sticky
notes
” and attached them to the wall of my inner sanctum. The little patches
grew in number to the point that, to my great consternation, they began to
overrun the empty space: sideward and downwards, then heavenwards. They appear
to me like the phalanxes of great armies.

During the few rare occasions that I retire to my sarcophagus, I
gaze at the chamber’s ceiling to be reminded by these luminous “sticky notes”
before I succumb to the habit of sleep. And when I shut the lid to receive a
moment’s rest, endless words still float luminous along the lining. You may say
I wake and turn in as a scholar, so devoutly in fact that even in my dreams the
syntactic affliction will not leave me in peace. My mind seeks out the elusive
patterns of code, arranging and rearranging their structures in the vain hope
of breaking and stealing away their secret.

Infinity is where all the broken pieces of Babel have been flung
across, I understand this now. I suppose it is what the puny mortals have been
endeavoring to reclaim for ages as they search for the one word that will bring
back all the humans of earth under clear sky and banner. Ever since the day
their God smote the tower of Babylon, the tribes of man have remained
scattered, confused, and restless.

I sleep the sleep of the living. For the first time in my
clockwork existence, I find myself in great need of rest yet finding no comfort
whichever way I turn. And how I toss and turn in my coffin. How I long to go
back to my former state of indifference wherein I could fall into a
centuries-long slumber and lie still in a cocoon of dust.

Yet in one such fitful sleep, I vividly remember standing before a
wall of yellow and witnessing esoteric symbols come to life. I take one of
those human-made newspapers littered on the floor and behold the same tattooed
characters peeling off to sacrifice their gossamer bodies to me.

****

Sephtimus’ methods are sadistic. He has had all the
Helter-Skeletals tattooed from skull to metatarsals with practical yet
formulaic greetings, idiomatic phrases and grammar equations from my stock. He
even had the emergency evacuation map of Lessa’s favorite coffee shop inlaid in
one cranium.

Everyone’s forbidden to speak Latin and ancient Greek now that we
feel the deadline looming. Everyone mimics the tongue of man, English, no
matter how broken their version of it is and how interspersed with body
language. A big sign in the center of the office reads:
English-Only Zone,
Violators Will Be Cremated
. So from this point on everyone sounds like an
actor in a sitcom and there’s never a dull moment. Personally, I never imagined
hell could be so bizarrely familiar. 

To improve Sephtimus’ pronunciation, I advise him to relax his
throat muscles but he takes it way too literally in his sometimes cartoony
always topsy-turvy world. He dislocates and stretches his jaws to swallow an
entire warhead smuggled out of a certain rogue state, and then lets it explode
inside him to flush his throat like gargle. Afterwards, there does seem to be
less of a throat cancer stuck down the pipeline and he starts rehearsing like a
tireless opera singer or a news anchor with a mania for tongue-twisters.

A spare skull from the Helter-Skeletals comes in handy whenever I
need to show the position of the tongue for a particular sound of English. I
use a charmed owl as a projector and lay the skull in the grip of the talons.
The owl’s bewildered eyes cast a larger-than-life 3-D image in the middle of
the room and then I stand behind its giant mandible to demonstrate.

To hone his listening, I play dialogues of daily human
interactions back and forth on the screens. We tune in on CNN all day and play
a looped mix of American songs all night. Love songs naturally. And from the
artists I guess would be popular for a girl of Lessa’s age: One Direction,
Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, even the Backstreet Boys (
Everybody
is the favorite of the Helter-Skeletals).

Lastly, we watch Hollywood movies in what little spare time we
have. As expected, scary, gory flicks and global-scale disaster movies are
Sephtimus’ favorites; especially zombie apocalypses. We also squeeze in a bit
of time to figure out the social networks – Facebook, Twitter – and to
familiarize him with modern devices like the laptop, smartphone, and other
gadgets that bear the Apple logo (which I patiently explain isn’t the mark of
Satan from way back in the Garden of Eden).

****

“What do… you do…” Sephtimus tests the words on his tongue as
though he could feel their weight and texture. Then he asks telepathically:
This
feels strange to me. Are you sure you’re not teaching me wrong grammar?

Death always sounds fluent when he’s thinking instead of speaking.

“Considering where you started, I should be the one complaining
because it feels like you’ve been sucking all the good grammar and vocabulary
out of me.”

“What do you do… for a living.” And you say this is used to talk
about one’s job? 

“Yes.”

Hmm. Humans are indeed strange creatures. Why, in Necro City it’s
absolutely pointless to ask anyone about their job.

“Why’s that?”

Well, the whole of Necro is carved up into ditches or pockets
–“Bolgias” in your Italian dialect. So it follows that a demon’s standing is
measured by which hole he stands guard over and by how much access he enjoys.
The deeper the hole, the tighter the security and the more prestigious.

I quickly tuck the thought away in what I hope is a safe corner of
my mind; this rare piece of inside information about Hell’s prison system, for
whatever doomed purpose it may serve.

Sephtimus continues explaining,
Basically, we either just ask a
straight question like “What temperature are you in?” or guess by the shade of
tan the other guy has.

****

In
fulfilling my other duties as fershee reaper, I’m taught to stand in the middle
of the office and access the control console, also known as Hell’s Helm, which
rises from the floor on demand like Sephtimus’ ash tray. Via Hell’s Helm, we’re
able to mentally project ourselves
into
the screens.

It
turns out reapers never really appear in flesh and blood in the mortal realm.
In fact, extended stays on the surface world is fatal to any reaper that’s not
Crow. 

At
the Helm, I’m joined by the three other reapers who I met at the way station on
my first day and are summoned by Sephtimus with his variously styled gothic
rings – talon, jester and scorpion. Respectively they are
Kera, the evil Valkyrie, Ankou, the creepy clown, and Yama
Ranger, the four-armed and blue-skinned cowboy.

Together they call themselves the Infernal Affairs Division. Not
that they tell me things or they’re ever in a talkative mood. In fact, with the
exception of Sephtimus and Ankou, the reapers are taciturn to the point of
seeming mute. Ankou isn’t much of an improvement either with his posh British
accent and eternally frozen Cheshire-cat grin. His voice sounds more of a
recording than anything else.

Our
job is to keep the Crows in check as hell-spawned herders, which explains Yama
Ranger’s obsolete fashion sense. Kera has her wings, Yama Ranger a flying
tar-black horse aptly called
Nightmare
, while Ankou drives a horseless
wagon that creaks and groans as the whole thing flies across the sky; the
sleigh of an unholy Saint Nick. It has the same physics-defying dimensions as a
clown car in a circus in that it never gets filled no matter how many dead
bodies we pile on it.

As
for me, I’m able to levitate by riding the crest of an otherwise disembodied
tsunami. My very own black-magic carpet.

Kera’s
in charge of everyone who died a violent death, those riddled with shrapnel or
disease and torn apart by a car crash or a cold-blooded murder. She would slash
the umballicus with her razor-sharp talons or bite them off at the point where
it’s attached, the cervical spine, laying claim to the origin of all vampire
myths.

But
generally, whenever a mortal with psychic abilities happens to witness a
“reaping,” Ankou’s ready with his spine-whip or his ball of blood. Across the
human’s eyes, either a whiplash or a splatter of magic blood is enough to wipe
the memory clean.

Yama
Ranger does most of the labor of controlling the volatile mass of Crows by
trotting behind them and pushing them to forward, or riding alongside to make
them turn this way or that. I do my part by releasing an ultrasonic,
eardrum-shattering blast called the
Purgatorius Cantus
, the Cleansing
Song. I sometimes act as a living shield, too, and would inhale deeply enough
to pull a number of the Crows right into my mouth. Revolting as this may sound,
this is sometimes necessary to keep them from preying on unscheduled mortals.

It
doesn’t matter how we attack and hurt the Crows anyway; the pure embodiment of
negative energy is indestructible. Its elements would disintegrate and vanish
but would always come back.

I
must admit it gives me a certain amount of pleasure to, more than protect
innocent lives, inflict retribution on the Crows. I don’t care whether my
identity and close encounter with them on my death-day are buried under all
their voracious yet empty consciousness.

It’s
certainly a much easier feat than coaching Sephtimus on the tongue and customs
of man. In no time I come to be feared by the Crows and respected by the other
Infernal Affairs agents. I’m living up to the name they’ve given me:
Cyhyraeth
(Tuh-huhreth), the Specter.

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