To Summon Nightmares (3 page)

Now it was all over. The pain was gone, blissful relief in its stead. There was a light shining, insistent, behind his eyelids, and he was stiff from lying on the cellar floor. He opened his eyes and coughed at the dust that he lay in, looking around for Jacky. Light streamed down from the open cellar door, sparkling on the dust motes. The remains of the summoning lay strewn about him, melted candles and lines of chalk, scuffed and smudged by his writhing in the night. His bag lay open, its contents scattered and he noticed, his mind still hazy, that his books were missing.

His eyes were stinging from the dust. He rubbed them and rolled over onto his back to stare at the ceiling. The light bulb was still burning, dim compared to the bright morning sunlight. Where was Jacky? He must have left, because the cellar door was open and they'd closed it last night. Why hadn't he woken Niall up?

The sound of his mobile ringing startled him. The ringtone was familiar, oddly so, as if it belonged to something from a past life. It was coming from his bag, where he'd stashed his phone last night. He leaned towards the bag, several meters away from him, and suddenly the phone was in his hand.

What? No, that wasn't right; it had been in his bag, across the room. He stared down at the phone in his hand, the small screen lit up with an incoming call from his parents. Shit, his parents. He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear.

"Hullo?"

"Niall, thank god! Where the devil are you?" His father's voice was loud and angry with a note of panic.

Niall groaned, rubbing his eyes again. "I'm fine, dad, I'm at Jacky's. I—I spent the night."

He heard his father relay the information to his mother, and then her sigh of relief. "What kind of game are you trying to play, son? You have to tell us where you're going, you know that!"

"I know Dad, but it was important." Niall screwed his eyes shut, trying to think. There was something he was forgetting. Something important.

"Oh? And what was so important?"

"I have to," Niall shook his head. "I have to find Jacky, Dad, I think he's done something horrible."

"What? All right, Niall, stay there, your mother and I are going to come get you."

"I... all right." He had begun to shake, as if his shoulders could no longer support his weight. His hands were trembling and his stomach felt sick. Jacky. What had Jacky done? "See you soon." He snapped the phone shut, swallowing hard. "J-Jacky?" He took a deep breath. "Jacky!"

No answer. Slowly, he stood, shoving his phone into his pocket and struggling to find his footing. He stumbled up the stairs, flinching in the bright light. "Jacky!"

The door to the house was open, banging against its hinges in the cold breeze that had picked up overnight. Niall stepped inside, his footsteps echoing on the grimy linoleum floor. There was a reason Niall never spent the night here; the place was a dump. Beer bottles covered the counters and floor, perched precariously on the edges and spewing out of trash bags, and the buzz of flies sounded from the dish-filled sink.

He called Jacky's name again, wanting very badly to leave. He wandered over to the sink to look at the flies, swarming over an old ground beef package. One buzzed near his face, and he swatted at it distractedly. He felt his hand make contact with the insect's body, and then a flash of sizzling heat. The fly's body dropped to the floor. Niall stared at it. It was smoking.

That sickness was back in his stomach again. He backed away from the sink, lifting a hand to stare at his palm. It looked perfectly normal. What had happened? What had he done?

"Jacky!" he called again, hearing his voice croak with panic. He turned to run, he didn't know where, and nearly ran into Jacky. His face was close to Niall's, his eyes bright and his mouth in a wide smile, and Niall felt the strange urge to back away.

"Niall!" said Jacky, his hands clenching around Niall's arms. "Niall, he's gone! I've looked everywhere, he's not here!"

Niall tugged away, trying to break free of Jacky's iron grip. "Who's not here?"

Jacky's grin expanded. "Who do you think? My dad, he's gone! The demon did it!"

"Gone?" Sickness. Sickness in the pit of his stomach, spreading through him. He was going to retch. "Gone where, Jacky?"

Jacky shook his head, his eyes still wide and wild. "What does it matter? He's gone! Niall? What's wrong?" Niall felt himself collapsing and Jacky reached forward. Suddenly there was a chair right under Niall, where he could have sworn there wasn't one before. "Did you see that, Niall? Did you see what I did?"

"Jacky, you've got to calm down." Niall forced himself to breathe. Forced himself to think. For Jacky. "Something... something bad has happened to us. Something dangerous."

"It's not dangerous," said Jacky. "I can—" He turned suddenly to look out the open door. "Who's that?"

"My parents," said Niall. "Jacky, we should tell them what happened. We need to... to go to the hospital or something."
You need to go to the police
. But what would he tell the police? That they'd summoned a demon? That Jacky had...

"Niall!" His mother's voice was coming from the drive, and he could hear the car doors slamming. "Niall, are you here?"

Jacky was tugging on Niall's sleeve. "Come on, let's go talk to them."

Niall forced himself to stand, to walk to the door with Jacky. His parents were coming. Everything would be okay. Everything would get sorted out.

"Mrs. Daly!" called Jacky, stepping into the cold wind. "Mr. Daly, hello!"

"Jacky, what's going on?" Niall's mother squinted as Niall emerged after Jacky. "Niall, thank god!" She pulled Niall into a tight, comforting embrace, but Niall pulled away quickly. He shouldn't touch her. It wasn't safe. Not until... He swallowed.

"Mam," he said, his voice cracking.

"What's going on, Niall?" she said, smoothing his hair from his face. "Why did you run away last night?"

"I was gonna come back," he said. "I didn't mean to worry you."

Niall's father was peering around Naill into the house. "Is your father here, Jacky?"

"My father?" said Jacky. "My father doesn't live here."

Niall swung his head around to stare at Jacky. Was he going insane? Niall's parents
knew
that Jacky lived here with his father, ever since he was a child. "Jacky, what?"

But Niall's father was looking at Jacky curiously. "Oh, of course, you're right. I'm sorry."

"Nothing bad's happening," continued Jacky. "Niall just spent the night."

"No," said Niall. "No, something bad
is
happening." He could feel something at the back of his throat. Like a lump of energy, like something he could spit out along with his words. But he didn't want to.

Jacky was doing it, though. He could hear that energy in Jacky's voice as he spoke, explaining that Niall had spent the night, like they'd planned, and they were just heading out to school now. His parents nodded at him, their eyes strangely glazed.

"Mam, Da, stop, we need to go to the police." The lump at the back of his throat again. He could
make
them believe him, if he wanted to. But he didn't. The thought made him sick. "Jacky, what are you doing?"

"Hush Niall, it's fine," said Jacky. He was still grinning at Niall's parents. "So we'll see you tonight," he said.

His parent's blinked rapidly, as if the glaze was clearing from their eyes, and then Niall's mother pulled him close for another hug. "See you tonight," she said. "Love you."

"Mam!" he shouted, but she was already turning away, heading back to the car.

Jacky turned to Niall, a look of triumph on his face as the car drove away. "Did you
see
that?" he squealed.

"No, Jacky.
Jacky
." Niall let that energy pervade his words now, although it didn't seem to have much of an effect on Jacky, besides to make him smile widely at Niall.

"Ah, look, you can do it too! Brilliant!"

"It's not, Jacky, you—it's not brilliant, it's dangerous! What if you hurt them?"

"I didn't hurt them, I just persuaded them. It's magic! Like I asked for! Like you do!"

"It's not what I do!" said Niall, his voice becoming louder as he spoke. "That's black magic, Jacky. It's dangerous! It's not safe, you could hurt them! You could seriously damage them, do you understand? My parents!" He choked. He could feel himself beginning to cry. The warmth of his mother's hug was slipping away.

Jacky looked concerned for a moment. "I'm sorry, Niall, I didn't think."

"You're right, you didn't!" said Niall, forcing back tears. "You've done something awful, Jacky, and we need to... we need to figure it out. I don't know how, but somehow we've got to get rid of these... these
powers
before we hurt someone!"

Jacky shook his head vehemently. "I don't want to get rid of them though. I'm finally free."

Niall felt his heart drop into his stomach like a rock, sending ripples of disgust and despair through him. "Jacky, your father is... your father is
dead
. You killed him!"

"I didn't," said Jacky, reaching for Niall, who tore his hands away. "Niall, the demon did it, not me!"

"You..." Niall's legs gave out again, and he sat down heavily on the porch. He pressed his face into his hands. What was he going to do? There was something wrong with Jacky. Something he hadn't realized before, although he should have. The person standing next to him, the person he
loved
, wasn't who he thought he'd been at all. Was this what had been lurking under the surface all along, just waiting to come out?

"We've got to get to school," said Jacky matter-of-factly.

Niall looked up at him, incredulous. "
School
?"

"Yeah. Why, what do you wanna do?" Jacky's face lit up. "Niall, we could do
anything
."

Anything. He could do anything at all. But what should he do? That was the question. "Let's just go to school. We'll... we'll figure something out tonight."

They walked to the bus stop in silence, Niall's mind racing, but when the bus came and they boarded it like every other day, he could almost convince himself that it had been a horrible dream. They sat in their normal seat near the back, and huddled together while the other kids talked loudly and noisily about their plans for the weekend. It was like normal. Maybe everything could just keep being normal.

Except how could everything go back to how it was when... No, he couldn't think about it. Not yet. Just follow the routine. Say goodbye to Jacky, open his locker, collect his books, and slump to class.

He sat in the same chair, in the same room, with the same teacher's voice wafting over him. Yet everything was different. He could feel things about the room that he hadn't been able to before. He knew things. Things he couldn't possibly know. The teacher's first name was Mitchell, and he was going through a divorce with his wife. The girl next to him thought she might be pregnant, and was going to kill her boyfriend. The boy in front of him, the one who always teased Jacky and called him queer, was thinking about fucking men, picturing it vividly in his head.

No! It was too much, pressing into him; he was going to go mad. He stood up abruptly, and the entire class turned to look at him. "Niall?" asked the teacher, the one with the cheating wife, and the secret sock fetish, who wished his mother hadn't left him as a child—
no, stop it!
"Is something wrong?"

"It's nothing," said Niall, his mouth dry. "I just... I have to go to the toilet."

There was a knock on the door, and the teacher turned from the strange look he was giving Niall to go answer it. Two men stood there, one with pale skin and short ginger hair, the other bald with dark brown skin. They wore plain black suits, and their eyes were frighteningly similar, cold and narrow.

"Hello," said the black man, his eyes glancing around the room. His accent was smooth and English, and Niall was reminded of Khireneth, the memory accompanied by a burst of nausea. "We're here to collect Niall Daly. It's a family matter."

"Oh," said the teacher. Niall was still getting information from him, spurts of childhood memories, colours, flavours. But from the two suited men, he got absolutely nothing. Wasn't that strange? "Of course. Niall?"

Niall stood frozen for a moment. Family matter. Had something happened to his family? Something Jacky had done to them? His stomach lurched. "Coming," he said, quickly reaching back to grab his bag and rushing to the front of the room. "Are they okay?"

"Your parents are fine," said the ginger man in an Irish accent indiscernible from Niall's own. "This is about you."

"I don't understand."

"You will shortly. This way."

They led Niall out of the school, and Niall thought for a moment that he should check out at the office. But if this was really an emergency...

The two men led him to a black van parked in the lot, and slid the door open. Niall only glanced in for a moment before he began to scream for help. Jacky lay on the floor of the van, his eyes closed and his body still. Niall couldn't tell if he was alive or dead. His scream was cut off by the black man, who clasped a hand over his mouth. Niall tried to scream, but he could barely breathe. The man's hand smelled like sweat and metal.

"Get him in," he nodded to the Irish man, glancing around nervously. Niall tried to struggle, but they were much too strong. He tried to remember what he had done to the fly, the flash of heat, the burning.

"Ouch!" said the Irish man. A few strange words escaped his mouth, and Niall felt the fire being extinguished, as if doused. "You don't want to do that," hissed the man. "Your friend tried to struggle." He jerked his head at Jacky, and Niall could feel his eyes widening, panic setting in. The men managed to get a proper grip on him and tossed him into the van, the door sliding closed behind him.

Niall screamed, shoving himself at the door, lashing against it with everything he had, his fists, and his new raw magic that he was so terrified of. It
hurt
, touching the metal walls with both skin and magic, shocking him and burning him, until he was nearly sick and unconscious, crying on the floor.