IGMS Issue 46 Read online

  The greeting he wanted stuck in my craw like a jagged bone. I lowered my hands and backed up 'til my butt hit the counter on the other side of the kitchen. This far and no more, I'd said to my reflection weeks ago. But I'd gone farther, way farther, and now, and now . . .

  "Brick, I'm so . . ." But I trailed off 'fore the apology could get past my teeth.

  "Hello, Dennis, hello," he said, lowering his hands.

  I couldn't stay. The gaunt ached for violence and misery-making, my palm still tingling pleasantly from where I'd slapped Brick across the face. No way I could let it have another go at him.

  I fled to the bathroom. The gaunt wanted misery? Wanted violence? Well, I knowed a good couple people to practice on. I opened the cabinet 'neath the sink and kicked the bend in the PVC plumbing a couple times 'til it shattered.

  The Pearl of Great Price spilled out of its hiding place in the bend. I scrubbed hair and toothpaste scum off of it and shoved it in my pocket.

  Brick was still crouching on the floor when I came out. His eyes were huge and wet. He snuffled.

  "Stay here," I said.

  "Dennis, hello," he said.

  But I left him there, alone.

  The Pearl of Great Price is the kingdom of God.

  Tale is that for every righteous or innocent man, woman, or child that dies, a little bit of Heaven's added to the Pearl, the idea being that bit by bit it'd get bigger, more beautiful, and more valuable, a right and true symbol of the beauty of virtue and of righteous living.

  Or something like that.

  But the Pearl ain't no bigger than a bean. Lots of wizards, sages, and jewelry makers've been surprised 'bout that. More than one's sniffed or laughed at it. Maybe God's standards is too high. Maybe the righteous ain't so righteous after all.

  'Course they can't latch second sight eyes on it like I can. The Pearl don't grow outward; it grows inward, kind of curling into itself like a seashell. And within that infinite curl are runes written tight and sharp. Private runes, mostly. Names. They spiral forever and ever through the Pearl, taking up no space at all, 'cause they drive through the fabric of the world, on into Someplace Else.

  I closed my hand 'round that Pearl and all its etched names when I walked through front door of Asmodeus's building. The guard at the security desk took a look at me and waved me through. I skipped the elevators for the stairs, jogging up 'em one at a time, loosening my legs, warming up my muscles, getting my heart thumping in my chest.

  The gaunt egged me on. Violence, it hummed, and pain. Revenge!

  "All that," spoke I to the empty stairwell.

  There was still a few folks wandering 'bout on the fifth floor, carrying file-folders or laptops or talking on smart phones. I asked after Shelly and got pointed toward a corner office.

  She opened the door 'fore I reached the knob. "Mr. Mallory," she said. She didn't look surprised.

  I pushed her back into her office and closed the door.

  "I'm in," I said.

  "You brought the Pearl?"

  I opened my hand and showed it to her.

  She frowned. "It's tiny."

  "You're going to give it a complex," I said.

  She pulled a smart phone from her jacket, dialed a number, and said, "I have it. We move now." There was some garbled speaking on the other end of the line; Shelly interrupted. "It doesn't matter. We move now."

  The phone disappeared into her pocket and Shelly plucked the Pearl from my hand. She held it between her thumb and middle finger, peering close at it. "Can you see the names?" she asked.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "I wonder what kind of wizard you'd make. Able to see the magery of others and not just your own work. That's a powerful talent, Dennis. I would really love to help you explore all your opportunities."

  "You offering me a job?"

  She turned her smile on me again. "Certainly. Why not?"

  "I ain't much for wizarding. Never made it past grade eight theosophy."

  "Oh, knowledge." She never took her eyes off the Pearl. "It's overrated. We need motivated, practical experts who look beyond the traditional paradigms of arcana, demonology, alchemy, and theosophy. Men and women who dare push toward brighter horizons, more liberated modes of operating."

  "I'm a thief," said I. "Not a wizard."

  She put her hand on my shoulder. "Dennis Mallory. You're a power."

  I shivered. The gaunt shivered.

  The door to Shelly's office opened and a broad-shouldered party boy walked through. "We're set," he said. "Only way Asmodeus gets out now is through the window."

  "Get some men on the street. Wouldn't be the first time he's jumped to escape me," Shelly said.

  "You've done this before?" I asked her.

  "Twice," she said. She kissed the Pearl. "Third time's the charm."

  The party boy flanked me, latched a hand 'round my arm asking, "This?" He looked me up and down.

  "He comes along," Shelly said.

  I pulled my arm free. The gaunt cackled. "Just the three of us against a King of Hell?"

  Shelly fondled the Pearl. "For the moment."

  I cussed myself. Too late to run, now.

  There wasn't no one in the halls as we walked toward the stairs. I hadn't been in Shelly's office for more than five minutes, already all them tablet-carrying, smart phone-talking, suit-and-skirt-wearing peons just up and got gone. Couldn't help but look for bloodstains, but I didn't see none.

  Two more party boys joined us in the stairwell. Up we went, their hard-soled shoes clacking on the steps. Fifteen floors climbing up, up, up, not a one of them was so much as breathing hard. We passed the twenty third floor, shots and screams rang out. The broad-shouldered party boy touched his ear, but he kept climbing.

  "Not much farther," Shelly said.

  The chief party boy stopped at the sixty-sixth floor and peered through the narrow glass window. He motioned and the other two joined him. One opened the door; the chief and the other moved through it, weapons drawn.

  I followed them into a corridor filled with smoke. Against the wall in the middle of the corridor, the elevator was a wreck of warped metal and charred plastic. Beyond it, I could see into Asmodeus's penthouse office. The demon hisself stood up behind his desk, grinning at us.

  Grinning at me. 'Cause Brick was kneeling in front of his desk with his arms and legs wrapped up in chains.

  Brick's face brightened when he saw me. "Hello, Dennis! Hello--"

  Asmodeus shot him in the head. Brick dropped face first to the carpet, his eyes wide, his mouth open.

  I didn't have time to scream.

  Four gun barrels appeared around the side of Asmodeus's office door and roared. Devil guns, so it wasn't just gunpowder booming -- there was rage and despair in the sound.

  Two of Shelly's party boys went down, clutching their bellies. They curled 'round themselfs weeping midnight-black tears. The seal Asmodeus had placed upon their eyelids bloomed so bright, I didn't need no second sight to see it.

  The chief party boy slit their throats with his knife before they lived to do worser to us. With one hand he cut; with the other he aimed his demon-weapon. Pockmarks stitched 'round the office door, and the attackers pulled back long enough for me to find some skinny shelter in the ruin of the elevator doorway.

  "Metatron," Shelly said. She crouched across the hall, rolling the Pearl in her palm, chanting, "Metatron, Metatron."

  The chief party boy flung a grenade through the doorway. A second later, an explosion rocked the room.

  A brighter flash burst from the Pearl.

  "Metatron!" Shelly howled. She thrust the Pearl forward, at Asmodeus's office.

  Gauzy, white light filled the doorway. My second sight was open wide to it, but couldn't grasp it. Vast and pure, whatever Shelly had summoned wasn't cottoning to my kind of viewing. There weren't no symbols, nor runes, nor shapes that could define it. It was so beyond, my mind couldn't even start to put a form to it.

  The light flowed into t
he room, questing the bodies of the living and the dead. I stumbled forward, the gaunt eager to witness Asmodeus's end. But the man in me only saw Brick's motionless, breathless form, face-down on the floor in a pool of blood.

  Asmodeus waddled in front of his desk, standing over Brick's body. "Shelly, this is what you've come up with?"

  The light quivered at his voice. It speared toward Asmodeus's mouth, sharp and deadly-pure. One moment, a gauzy-fog; the next a shaft of white heat. Asmodeus's fat fingers caught the light. He bent it, knotted it, squashed it in his hands.

  "Trifle," he said. The light writhed, but he held to it, squeezing and molding until it was the size of his palm. In my second sight, his mouths and tongues bit and poked the struggling light, and finally engorged it. It winked to darkness.

  Shelly heaved a breath. "No," she said.

  Asmodeus shrugged. "You brought an unwilling spirit into the world and didn't even provide it a body. What did you expect it to do, Shelly?"

  She drew her gun and fired. A trio of raging bullets struck Asmodeus in the chest. Shelly's party boy stormed the room with her, bringing up his silver knife. Asmodeus caught his attack and snapped his arm. He caught the knife as it fell, drove it into the party boy's throat, and flung the body away.

  A slow leak of blood drooled from the wounds on Asmodeus's chest. Wheezing, he pointed at the Pearl in Shelly's hand. "Go on. Summon more little choirboys. I'll give them plenty of flesh to choose from."

  He shot the men that remained. Three bullets, powpowpow. It surprised me, somehow, that an ordinary gun could be so loud. His men died without a groan.

  "Go on," he said to Shelly. "Summon another holy emanation. Plenty for them to inhabit here, go on . . ."

  Shelly said nothing. She ejected the magazine from her pistol and loaded another.

  Asmodeus guffawed and slapped his thighs. "You never learned another name, did you, girl?"

  She shot him again, taking out his kneecaps. The wounds on his chest had already sealed. Asmodeus howled, then pulled toward her violently, using just his arms to skitter hisself across the carpet. He bowled her over and the Pearl dropped from her hand. Shelly's pistol screamed three, four, five more times, and then her only noise was to gurgle and hiss as Asmodeus closed hands 'round her throat.

  "Three men, a thief, the Pearl, and one holy name," Asmodeus said to her. "That was your coup? The dead retard could have planned a better assassination."

  I crept forward and snatched the Pearl. As Shelly and Asmodeus wrestled, I slipped up close to Brick. The chains round him were all magic chains; links of darkened, splintery wood, held together by a complex sigil. I stuck my fingers in the sigil, no mind how it frozed and burned me, and I obliterated it. Foul chains coiled off of Brick's body, sucking down to a length of black cord.

  "I would have thought you would have had sentiment burned out of you by now, Dennis Mallory," Asmodeus said. He clambered toward me, leaving Shelly sucking for air. "Coming back for the retard's body? You should have run. You are going to have to learn some sense, boy."

  He latched a paw 'round my leg. I let him see the Pearl.

  "Told you. Don't never call Brick a retard," said I.

  And then I whispered the name I knowed into the Pearl. "Hi, Brick."

  The light swallowed Brick up. Eager, it stretched from the Pearl, flooded into Brick's body. Neither my flesh-and-blood eyes nor my second sight could follow how it mended what'd been torn.

  "Dennis, hello," Brick said. "Hello, hello!"

  I didn't reply, 'cause Asmodeus had pulled me into a chokehold.

  "Stay back," he said. He thumped the side of my head with a meaty hand. "I'll snap his neck."

  "Dying is not a hard thing," Brick said. He stepped forward. "It is not even scary. Dennis, do not be scared."

  "Dennis won't get his name written in the Pearl," Asmodeus said. He put his mouth next to my ear. "All your murderous thoughts, your bullying, your cowardice . . . Your gaunt and hollow self, there's no place for you in there. So tell him to back away, or I end you forever."

  Brick paused.

  "Tell him, Dennis," Asmodeus said. He let up on my windpipe.

  The gaunt gurgled in my brain, it spat and hissed for life, life! "For the love of God," I said. Didn't know I could manage prayer no more. "Kill him, Brick."

  Brick put his fist through Asmodeus's face. At the same time, Asmodeus twisted and pushed, and a bright, hot agony flexed in my neck. I toppled as Asmodeus fell and my sight went dark.

  But my second sight remained awake, watching Brick tear apart Asmodeus's cloud of teeth, tongues, and tentacles. Oh, that ol' devil tried to scatter, but once Brick gets a hold, can't nothing escape, not even a King of Hell. Brick battered and stomped and squeezed Asmodeus 'til he wasn't nothing but a pile of goop on the carpet. The last tongue flopped and lay still; the broken fingers dissolved to smoke, and disappeared.

  "Hello," Brick said, a whisper in my ear. He patted my cheek, gentle as he could with his big, rough hand.

  I tried saying goodbye. Just one word 'fore I went to wherever thugs and thieves go these days. But my mouth didn't work, and I faded without pushing out a breath.

  Wasn't no devil-healing that woke me up. It was plain and ordinary agony.

  I screamed.

  Meant to scream, anyway. I couldn't get much breath. Some white shapes came 'long, muttering at me. I heard the word 'morphine.'

  The agony eased. I stopped screaming.

  "Hello, Dennis," a voice said.

  I meant to say hi back, because that's what you do. But I couldn't manage.

  That happened a lot through the next couple weeks. Wake up; scream; morphine; Hello, Dennis; and the greeting I never got to say.

  'Til one day, the agony wasn't so bad that they had to put me all the way under. I whined for more morphine. I begged for it. And when Brick wouldn't give me none, I cussed him with every foul word I knowed to say.

  Except one.

  Months passed by, and Brick got me out of bed. A year gone by, and he got me out of the hospital into a rehabilitation facility. Another year, and I was walking 'round on my own, without leaning on Brick too much. Shelly sent me flowers and a picture of her posing provocatively on top of Asmodeus's desk. Her number and extension was scrawled on the back of the picture, along with the words, "Need you."

  "Miss Shelly," said Brick, seeing the picture. "She is not a nice lady, Dennis."

  "She is paying for all this, Brick." I waved my hand 'round at the physical therapy room. Outside, seagulls floated below a perfectly blue sky and coconut palms twisted toward the ocean.

  "Miss Shelly is not nice," he said again, frowning.

  "You want to go kill her?" I asked. Only half-joking.

  He rolled his eyes at me. Can't say where he learnt that. Maybe the Pearl.

  "We should not kill her," he said. "Yet."

  "Not as long as she's paying my medical bills."

  "I have an idea," Brick said. He rolled the Pearl of Great Price 'round in his big palms. "It is a good idea, I think."

  I ain't no prophet. My second sight sees the truth of things, but I ain't no mind-reader. I knowed Brick, though. And he hadn't let go of the Pearl ever since I'd woke up. Always kept it in hand. And I had to think, what'd the boy see inside there that made him cuddle it so? Centuries of names. Eons of names, spiraling forever on, so far not even my second sight could see the beginning.

  Names of the righteous. The innocent.

  The divine.

  "You gonna tell me this good idea or not?" said I. My heart thumped like I'd just run up sixty-six flights of stairs. I wanted him to say it. I was scared to death of what he'd say.

  He looked me up and down, kind of squinting. Taking my measure, like. "Not yet," he said.

  "Well. When you do decide to tell me, Brick . . ." I had to stop. Swallow. "I am your man."

  Liveboy

  by Nathaniel Lee

  Artwork by Andres Mossa

  * * *

&nb
sp; My husband was grinning when it came home. It always grins, though, so that doesn't mean much.

  I think it might have been in a good mood. Or angry. Maybe it was angry but liked being angry. I gave it dinner and it went to the living room to hold the day's newspaper up in front of its face, like an incompetent spy. I know it doesn't read them; I once sneaked it yesterday's paper, and it sat there all the same, just as long and just as quiet, grinning away behind the gray newsprint, where I couldn't see.

  Today, though, I could tell something was different. There was an electric energy to my husband, almost like it was alive. It didn't say anything, though.

  That doesn't mean much, either.

  Once it was safely ensconced, I slipped to the pantry and shut the door with me and the phone inside, and I called Lori. Lori lives next door, but her husband doesn't like visitors, so we call each other. Of course, my husband doesn't like the phone -- I once saw it try to bite it when it thought I wasn't looking, just opened up those wide, even teeth and chomp right into the plastic; I still can feel the dents with my fingers when I cradle the handset. But I can hide in the pantry or the garage, and really my husband is pretty tolerant of my little idiosyncrasies. It's never tried to bite me, not once. It might have thought about it, but it never said if it did. Maybe that doesn't mean much.

  Anyway, I called Lori, and Lori knew right away what I'd called about. I think she'd been waiting by the phone.

  "It's a live boy," she told me. "There's a live boy in town."

  Well. Imagine that.

  Lori and I caught a glimpse of the live boy when we went shopping the next day. It was double coupon day at the Fresh Market, and the place was full of women out shopping for their husbands. Josephine had brought her husband with her -- the nerve of that woman! -- but other than the little pool of silence around them, the store was absolutely abuzz with the news. I confess I'd dabbed on just a little extra perfume myself that morning, just in case. They say live boys can smell perfume.

  "I heard he came down the river from the city," Vicki told us at the service desk. "Just showed up on the bus, bold as you please."