Four on the Floor, Part Three - Steemit Exclusive Urban Fantasy

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Part Three

At least my music’s still playing, going into a new track. Siouxsie and the Banshees. I could think of a lot worse to die to.
It doesn’t take long for the spirit turn its attention back on me, and belt another scream that Siouxsie can’t match. It’s enough to bring me to my knees, but only literally. Figuratively I’m not backing down.
Its form flashes with violent streaks of color, dried blood reds and viscera purples and terrorizing grays. There’s almost a bipedal shape to it, but it shifts too much as it moves, too jagged, sharp to stay in one form for long. One thing’s for certain though as furrows carve in the floor behind it, it can affect this world as much as it wants to, and it’s rightly assuming that killing me is the key to shutting down its makeshift prison.
“Tell me his name!”
It’s the first thing I think to say as the blade of one of its limbs whistles through the air toward my neck.
It doesn’t stop right at the surface of my neck. It stops a few millimeters in, skin breaking, blood trickling down to my collarbone. While the pain is hammering through my thoughts to the live version of “Happy House”, I’m still impressed that I managed to say that in Sigil.
“I DON’T KNOW!” is roared in my ears with as much anger and frustration as can be expected.
“Then I humbly offer my assistance in that regard.” It’s very difficult to speak politely and calmly when an ectoplasmic blade is cutting into your neck. “That is why I am here this eve, to free your wronged spirit from your body and end your suffering. To find justice for you.” I’m fighting off a whimper. “Please, I beseech you to stop cutting me.”
The blade is pulled from my neck, the spirit taking a more human-ish form, but her limbs are mottled with spikes and blades that drip ethereal blood. Her face is a shifting blur, only brief flashes of something that could be recognized as a woman, but every expression is one of terror. Anger.
“He must die.”
“So it was a man, then.”
The spirit nods.
To my credit I don’t respond with, “Well, obviously.” I’m not that kind of “feminist”, I’m the kind that lets the statistics make that statement.
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
She shakes her head, the motion having a twitchy echo to it, making it seem far more emphatic that perhaps intended.
“Then you probably wouldn’t have been able to find him, not without hurting a lot of innocent people on the way.” I’ve got her talking, of sorts, so I can drop into more common diction. “And right now, you’re an unjustly murdered woman, you’ll be going to a better place, as it stands right now. If you start attacking people, that changes. Let me find him, find you justice. Believe me, even if you’re somewhere else, you’ll know. I can promise that.”
“How?” Her voice is calmer, at least, her face more focused, more similar to that of her body, but cut, beaten, bloody, and scared.
I motion to the circle, the oubliette that contains the room. “Magic. This is my job, my purpose. I do this service for the dead that have no one living to do it for them. Let me do it for you. Please. I can send you away from this place, to somewhere better.”
“To Heaven?”
“Wherever you’re meant to go.”
A few seconds pass, her form still tremoring, but just as the song fades from my ears, her ghostly eyes look deep into mine. It’s unsettling, likely for both of us, the eyes being the windows to the soul after all. Thankfully, I didn’t have so fucked up a life that she’s seeing anything traumatizing, though I can’t imagine anything being as traumatizing as what she’s been experiencing for the last week. What I see, though, is a terrified young woman, maybe two years older than me, her life still full of promise unfulfilled, events yet to happen, a destiny and story that might not have been world-shaking, but it would have been hers and hers alone. And then someone took it away from her.
“Promise me.” The words that follow are pleading. “Promise me, keth.”
I don’t ask anymore why everyone who isn’t human knows that word. I call myself a necromancer, it’s what I think of myself as. But a keth, as Pumpkin has told me, is a sorcerer.
So not too much difference.
“I’ll find him. I promise.”
There’s nothing more to say after that, nothing left but the work. I know what’s keeping her here, and I can ease her burden.
Sending a spirit on is a solemn affair, deserving of respect, ritual. It’s where a lot of our religions found their start, after all, yearning to believe that there was something else beyond the dark and cold of death, and that by saying the right things, making the right offerings, performing the right rituals, it would insure the dead would find their way to that better place. I’ve researched a lot of these methods, the various burials and rites that meander through the elements, through the darkness and light, and I’ve found they all have one thing in common.
You have to believe, your emotion must be real, your actions must be committed with full intent.
My phone slips into some Nick Cave, because that’s what it needs to be playing. The light in the room dims, because a life has ended, and the night is now upon us, and with strength, we will make it to the next day. And I dance.
I dance because this woman was a brilliant light in this world, a life made of beauty and intelligence and passion and emotion, and I will pay her proper tribute, show her there is a living memoriam to her existence.
My dance shows her joy, her sadness, her love and her rage, her pain and suffering, gives voice to the crime she can no longer testify. And with each step, her spirit calms, the steady dirge beat of the music lulling her anger to rest.
When I first sent a spirit on, I expected to see lights, or the fires of Hell, or some indication of their fate, but I’ve since learned that it’s not for me to see. She vanishes, like wind blowing a statue of sand into the void. I can only hope she found what she wanted there.
But now, I have to focus on what she wanted here.
I drop the oubliette, like relaxing a muscle I didn’t even know I was flexing, break the circle, and set to cleaning everything that I left here. After I’m finished, I’ll call the police with an anonymous tip, make sure that she’ll at least get a beggar’s burial out of the deal.
“You okay, A.J.?” Les is still standing in the doorway.
“I’m all right, Les, don’t worry. You did good tonight, she’s going to be okay. She’s in a better place now, partly because of you.”
To anyone else that half-rotted rictus grin out of a Clive Barker novel would be unsettling. “Thanks, A.J.”
He shambles off after that, likely back to his usual haunts out here in the Benedict, searching places he only vaguely remembers in the hopes that this time something will click. However long he remembers tonight, he’ll at least know that tonight, he did a good thing.
“Abby, that was by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”
“What do you want, Pumpkin? It’s my first murder, okay?”
Somehow a plastic skull can do a convincing throat-clear.
“Ugh. Fine. The second. You don’t really count though, I never saw your body like I did here.”
I pack up and leave the room, Pumpkin’s voice muffled as he apparently doesn’t consider the conversation to be over. I unzip my bag just enough to let him talk.
“…and you don’t make promises to the dead that you can’t keep!”
I stop on the landing and grumble at my open backpack, “If I didn’t I wouldn’t be lugging you around.”
“It’s different with me, you actually have the knife that killed me, you can use that. All you have with that woman is-“
“I am not going to give up simply because this is going to be hard.”
I continue down the stairway, and zip the bag back up. I freed her, sent her on, and I’m not going to let Pumpkin ruin my night.
It’s cooler when I exit the building, the streetlights have a flicker, and it’s eleven blocks to the Blue Line, the UTA train that’ll take me home to Beckettsville. The stars are out, a wind with a suggestion of winter’s chill making its way through the Benedict and the decaying tenements. A lot of horror movies usually start in places like this, but the weird Goth girl never dies first. Hell, we usually get outed as the killer.
But I’m in a slum, with various zombies in the alleys that leave me alone. What I don’t expect to see is a man short as I am with pale skin, cropped black hair, dead gray eyes, and wearing a finely tailored suit composed of black on black, and standing in front of a parked car worth more than my grandmother’s house upstate.
I walk past him, of course. “Points for effort but I’m not really into guys right now.”
I’m not really into anyone, to be honest. I believe in love, yeah, but not what this creep is likely angling for.
“Miss Ebinger?”
I stop, take a deep breath. Hard to stay cool when you’re dealing with a potential stalker. I turn and face him, slowly.
“Sir, it would please me greatly if you were to admit that you are an overzealous process server.”
“Far from it. I have people for that. I would like to speak with you about your… let’s call them nocturnal activities?”
“Sir, let us respect each other enough to be honest and direct.”
“Fair enough. Let us discuss your necromancy, Miss Ebinger.”
My etiquette drops. “How the fuck did you know-“
He holds up a hand, flashes a million dollar smile. “I know everything.”
The door to the car is opened, and he gestures for me to get in.
I, of course, don’t move. Way too many stories about getting into a stranger’s car that I don’t want to see the very bad ending to.
“Might I say that, in the future, if you wish to court a lady, you might find a better line.” I even manage a little curtsey before turning to leave. “Good eve, sir.”
“I am Hades, god of the underworld, where you have been sending all of your recent clients. It would be best for you to get in the car for a short conference between yourself and I, lest I resort to a cease and desist order. You wouldn’t like that.”
“And that would be because…?”
“My process server has three heads and little patience, but he would insure that you cease and desist your activities. Permanently, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t respond well to threats.”
‘It’s not a threat, Miss Ebinger. Yet.” He gestures again toward the open car door. “Worry not, it will be casual. And after your exertion, I don’t doubt you’re hungry.”
“If you are who you say you are, sir, you’re well aware I’ll decline any food or drink you offer. Politely, of course.”
“I’ve already asked for a stop at a drive-through. Not the one close to where you live, but the one you indulge at after a job well done.”
“How do you…” I hold up a hand. “No, don’t say it. You know everything.”
He manages a smile, even offers his hand to help me into the car, gentlemanly as possible. “Thank you for that. Most keth are too thickheaded to remember.”