In the Dark of Night – Part 3
I spent two days in the hospital last week.
It nearly cost me my job.
If I have to go back to the hospital, it will cost me my job.
Our country is deeply flawed on a lot of things, not just race.
I can’t do anything about it, so on to the story.
In the Dark of night – Part 3
I grabbed my satchel and my faded red hoodie from their hooks as I went out the door shouting my goodbyes. I walked to school every morning. Mom said it helps fortify my constitution. I always replied that it gave me the moral authority to complain about walking to school uphill both ways.
Both of us were just talking our way around the hole in our lives where a car should be.
Per usual, I had managed to secrete two pieces of bacon out of the house. Mom turned a blind eye because she wanted me to have enough nutrition. Abigail wrote about it in her notebook. Riley had given me the napkin.
Upon further reflection, my stealth skills might need a little work.
Once I had made it a kilometer from the two story house in the sticks that dad had also abandoned, a creature of supreme grace and beauty arrived. It was a raven, only twice the size of any of its kin. Its feathers were a vivid midnight-black with eyes of sparkling sapphire. It landed upon a fence-post that ran along our neighbors cattle pasture. In the clean, crisp autumn sunshine, the creature was majestic.
“Took you tucking long enough. What the puck Claire? I’m starving my brass off!”
The long, sable beak hadn’t moved, yet I heard the words clear as day. A product of the mental link I shared with my foul-mouthed familiar Jacob. Per usual, I was forced to tweak the link so I didn’t have to listen to him swear. I remained convinced he only did it so much to annoy me.
“Let’s get me my breakfast then. What the chuck do you want me to do, start bucking molting over here or what?”
I shot him a stern look, which Jacob ignored. He’d only entered my service a few months ago but nothing I’d done has broken through the barricade of foul language and manners used to keep me at wing’s length. He hadn’t told me what had killed his prior master, but given the nature of his imprisonment, the word ‘grisly’ would feature prominently.
“I do not reward unpleasant behaviour, Jake, and you know it.”
His feathers ruffled, beak open in anger. My ears were full of caws and my mind drowned in filth, but I was smiling as I walked past the large bird. I’d hit Jacob where it hurt; the stomach. Bacon would allow him to feel almost human for a few minutes. If I didn’t give in to his tantrum he’d have to dumpster dive for his vittles. Then he’d spend the rest of the day trying to wash the smell off.
Between school and the boiling brood that made up my family, I had long ago lost the ability to be goaded. I’d endured far worse, and Jacob knew it.
The tirade was over before I’d walked more than a block or two. The cawing stopped, the feathers resettled, and Jacob took to the skies as the watered-down cursing came to a close.
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
“You could ask me nicely, you know. You might even try saying please.”
The raven gave me a gimlet stare, and somehow managed to roll his eyes even though he was ill-equipped for the gesture.
“Fitch, please.”
I mustered all the strength of character and willpower I could, but it wasn’t enough. I started laughing. I stopped walking, hands across my stomach as I guffawed into the gravel road. That was probably as close to civility as I would get.
I raised the white paper-towel in surrender. Fighting giggles, I straightened up and crooked an elbow. Jacob practically strutted through the air onto my arm. He began striking the bacon in earnest, and I wasted no time in preening and stroking his beautiful feathers. I received a mental huff for my efforts, but he didn’t ask me to stop. He lingered on my arm for a few moments of amicable silence after the bacon was gone. Once he’d had his fill of companionship, he took to the skies once more. He flew lazy circles in the air above me as I continued walking. An idea came to me then, and I knew I’d score my second victory of the morning with it.
“I need you to fix something for me Jake. Mr. Bigglesworth suffered a tragic accident last night, and I’d like him to be mended by the time I get home. I’ll lend you enough power to get it done and… ”
A dust-trail appeared around the bend, interrupting my offer. The advance notice of oncoming traffic it offered was the only saving grace of the blasted gravel road which served our end of ‘town’. A well-used but strictly maintained station-wagon came into view, kicking up gravel as it went. I stepped back towards the fence, waving for all I was worth. Jacqueline was too cautious a driver to wave back (her hands were perpetually glued at ten and two while she did five under the speed-limit) but I saw the flash of white that signified her expansive smile.
Jacqueline wasn’t family, but she’d adopted us all anyway. There wasn’t a day during the week where she wasn’t watching the kids, watching a movie with me, or just watching over the Miller household in general. I don’t know which guardian angel had been at the helm when we’d gotten Jacqueline for our social worker, but I gave thanks to them every day regardless. You don’t argue with a gift like Jacqueline; you just make the most of every second you’d done nothing to deserve.
After the car and its occupant had passed, Jacob came down to rest upon my arm once more. His avian form wasn’t able to convey expression with any eloquence, but I could sense his unease.
“Why the tuck is Mr. Bigglesworth broken?”
I thought back to last night. The shaking of the bed. The smell of sulfur. The crack of the bat as it connected. The terror of that moment, of what could happen if I had missed, bubbled in my stomach like bile. Some of my turmoil must’ve made its way to Jacob along the link we shared, because his voice was honest-to-goodness solicitous as he asked another question.
“How bad was it?”
The concern in his query wasn’t entirely magnanimous. He received power from me in exchange for using it as directed. More importantly if I went to the great Himeji Castle in the sky and Jacob couldn’t find another wizard in time, then his probation would end with a one-way ticket straight back to the hotbox.
Whenever I talked about the demons that hounded me, I could feel the ice thawing around his tiny heart. We both needed him to open up, and that meant rewarding his attempt at fraternity with the truth.
“They sent a disciple of Azazel, Jake. A thrice-crowned disciple, at that. Directly into my bedroom.”
Jacob went still on my arm. I kept walking because the routine of my day was the only thing keeping the same panicky thoughts away. Sending such a major demon across the veil separating our reality from the hereafter was already hard enough. Getting a demon past the veil and the web of nascent life-energies that all wizards carried with them was an entire order of magnitude more difficult. The rotten cherry on top of this moldy sundae was the fact that the demon had begun manifesting in my freaking bedroom. It could mean only one thing: someone with a frightening amount of power was helping them.
Which meant a warlock and trouble that humanity hadn’t been forced to deal with since the last one started World War II.
I shivered in the warmish fall air, trying to burrow into my hoodie as I went. A warlock loose in the modern age, free to augment the fruits of their foul bargain with the wonders of human ingenuity. If Jacob hadn’t been sitting on my arm, I would’ve been hugging myself. Jacob, for his part, had put his beak down into his chest in defeat.
“Well muck. My failures condemn yet another to the frying pan. Mother-trucking sons of witches and their blind-sass plucking greed…”
The cursing continued for the rest of the walk to school. I don’t suppose I could blame Jacob for his attitude. If I were the one who had written the blueprint for selling my soul in exchange for power, then had an angel haul me out of the pit by the short and tenders, only to have my soul stuffed into a bird while being ordered to fix the mess I had made or die trying, I’d swear a lot too.
I came to Mrs. Van Deburg’s cute bungalow and steeled my courage. My school was down the hill, a serpent coiled in its lair. I girded my mental loins and prepared for whatever fresh nightmare today would bring.
Mother-Truckerfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
