Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 81
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
“I am. And he is.”
“But...”
“Think of it as the perfect confluence of talent, love and manifestation.”
“But he’s just a man. He’s not a god.”
But even as she stated that, she caught something else in my thoughts—and perhaps even something she was already aware of. I smiled, waited.
“But we are all God,” she said.
“And if we are all fragments of God, even tiny, tiny fragments, wouldn’t it stand to reason that some of us, perhaps in varying degrees and strengths, can access the God source within us? That some of us could, perhaps, perform miracles beyond comprehension?”
“But he doesn’t even know he’s performing them, Sam. He thinks his house is haunted, for crissakes!”
“Accidental creation might just be the most powerful creation of them all.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Just came to me,” I said, sipping on my Moscow Mule. “I know from experience that trying too hard can screw something up.”
“And maybe in Charlie’s oblivion...”
“Creation is pouring through him unhindered.”
“Unhindered?” she asked.
“It’s a word,” I said, “that I like to use from time to time.”
“But why are you calling him a creator?”
“Whatever this original source entity is, wherever he came from and whatever he’s trying to do, is invariably explored through more creation. More and more creation. We are such creations. And our creations are such creations. And onward and downward.”
“So, in effect, someone like Charlie is helping God, by creating more?”
“Yes. As do all of us. We’re all creating and manifesting, both big and small.”
“I’m hardly manifesting, Sam. And I can’t think of a single thing I’ve created.”
“Everything is creation, Allie. The cook is creating our meals. Someone created this table and chairs. City planners created Main Street. You have sculpted and created your body. You have created the look you are wearing now. Someone, somewhere designed and created the clothing you are wearing. All of life is creation, an ongoing, neverending flow of creation.”
She blinked at me. Then blinked again. And kept on blinking until she finally said, “We’re both crazy, you know that, right?”
“Life just might be crazier.”
“So we’re all creators in our own little way. Fine. Then explain how any of this actually helps God.”
“I don’t know, Allie. But whoever or whatever he, she or it has an unerring need to expand ever outward, out into infinity.”
“Why?”
“If I had to guess—”
“And you do,” said Allison, winking.
“I would think it is searching for itself.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“I’m not sure I am either, Allie, but—and I believe this might be true—I was just recently told that even God doesn’t know how big he is.”
“And he wants to know?” asked Allie.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“If I was God, who the hell knows. Wait, so you’re saying that me putting my hair into a ponytail helps him to somehow expand into this unknowable place? You know, since I created my hairstyle and all.” She winked again.
I looked at her and thought about it. “Yes,” I said. “In a small way, it does. In a small way, watching his own creations creating something of their own, helps him expand out, incrementally, into forever.”
“I think we need to start drinking more, Sam.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“And our friend Charlie?”
“He’s doing even more creating. Perhaps on par with hundreds of thousands of us, all rolled into one.”
“But if he’s doing all that creating...”
“Where are his creations?” I asked, finishing her thought.
“Right. We know—or think—one of them is showing up at his house.”
“And Max had a theory about that, too,” I said. “The world of Dur, he suspects, is now very much a real world. Not here, exactly, but perhaps nearby. Perhaps side by side with our own.”
“Like a parallel world?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So why is Queen Autumn showing up here, in our world? Why doesn’t she just stay in her own?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we need to ask her.”
Allie looked at me. We both cracked a smile at about the same time. “The world of Dur is real, then?” she asked.
“I think so, Allie.”
“King Philos? The Foul Wizard Xander? The First Knight Rory? All the warriors and ladies and squires... they’re all real?”
“More than likely.”
“Wait, Sam! Do you remember where Charlie left off in the story?”
It didn’t take me long to think about it. I, like Allison, was eagerly awaiting news about...
“Autumn’s baby,” I said, “was kidnapped.”
“And now Autumn’s here, supposedly haunting Charlie’s hallway.”
“But maybe she’s not haunting,” I said. “Maybe she’s here for something else.”
“Maybe she’s looking for help.”
I thought about that. Thought about it hard. Meanwhile, I didn’t have to read Allison’s own mind to know where it had drifted off to. She wanted to very much believe the world of Dur was real, and I didn’t blame her. If it was real, then it was populated with characters that we had both come to love, even if their stories weren’t finished. Yes, Charlie had done one hell of a job of creating a rich and magical world.
A helluva job.
“Sam, do we tell him?”
“Tell Charlie that he’s a creator, that he holds hundreds, if not thousands, of people’s lives in his hands?”
“Seems pretty heavy, I know.”
I thought about her question, and kept thinking about it all through lunch.
Chapter Twenty-one
“What?” said Anthony, looking up. He’d been sitting on the floor with his knees up and his head covered by folded arms.
Tammy knew he’d been talking to his father for most of the day, as he had been doing for the past few months. Funny how she rarely came up in their conversations. She’d never been that close to her dad. He worked too much, was out too late, and when he was home, all he wanted to do was get on his computer and work even more... or play catch with Anthony. Or go on long walks with Anthony. Rarely did they ask her to join them. Other than a goodnight kiss on her forehead, Tammy didn’t have too many memories of her father.
She told herself that she didn’t care that her father almost never asked about her—at least in the conversations she listened to. These days, she mostly tuned out the two of them. She could only stand so much of Anthony’s sports stories. Or how much he missed his dad. Or how he wished his dad was out of his head and standing here, with him. Her father, for his part, made no promises and only consoled Anthony, which she thought wasn’t too terrible of him. It would be worse if he was making promises he couldn’t keep.
Danny Moon was getting better at communicating with Anthony. Her father, she saw, was more lively and active these days, and seemingly resided in the very front of Anthony’s psyche, unlike Elizabeth who resided very deep inside her mom.
Was her own father trying to take over Anthony’s body? The way her mother feared Elizabeth was trying to do with her? Tammy didn’t know. Her gut said no. Her gut said her father was simply excited to be active in their lives again. And equally relieved to not be in hell. And Anthony was just as excited to have his father with him again. Side by side. Two peas in Anthony’s pod.
Now, as she stood in his doorway, she said, “Something’s... coming.”
“Yeah, my vomit if I have to keep looking at your face—okay, I know. Dad wants me to say sorry. Your face doesn’t make me want to vomit… very much.”
Tammy rolled her eyes. “Tell Dad to be quiet for a minute. And you shush too. Something—or someone—is coming. And I think it—he’s—coming for you.”
Anthony’s green eyes narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again. “You look scared,” he said.
“I am.”
Truth was, Tammy was feeling a little... excited too. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she knew what the word titillated meant, but if it meant what she thought it meant, then that’s what she was feeling. Tammy, of course, had never met the devil before. Only in her mother’s and Anthony’s memories. And the man who claimed to be the devil had been hunky as heck. Of course, she had also watched that same man explode into a bloody mist when the devil had made him walk in front of an oncoming train.
But he’s the devil, Tammy reasoned. Maybe he could bring the hunky guy back? From the dead and all that.
“Tammy—do you hear it?”
She did. Whispering. Lots of whispering. Hundreds if not thousands of voices whispering. Foul whisperings, too. Dark whisperings, hate-filled whisperings. Tammy was suddenly certain that she was hearing a legion of demons.
She couldn’t move. Vaguely she recalled her phone in her pocket. She knew she should call her mother. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. The whispering... so evil, so vile, so determined to destroy.
“C’mon, Tam!” said Anthony, rolling up to his feet effortlessly. As he dashed forward, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along. His strength was undeniable. Tammy couldn’t have resisted if she wanted to. As it were, she followed behind, sometimes stumbling. Aware that her brother moved like a jungle cat. Aware, also, that evil seemed to be pouring out of hell itself and showing up here, in their cul-de-sac.
She was back outside in the setting sun. Correction, the sun had just set. Her mother, she knew, would be at full power now. She blinked into the still-bright sky. The single tree in their yard swayed. Wispy clouds streaked the sky, like a paintbrush stroke. The street was empty, even of parked cars. Correction, not empty. There, down the street, maybe seven or eight houses away, was a lone jogger. A lone, female jogger, whose ponytail sashayed from side-to-side as she ran, whose hips moved in perfect rhythm to her churning arms. A jogger who kept her elbows in and hands up. To Tammy, the woman looked like she might have had some kick-boxing training or something. Then again, her mother had never bothered to take her to boxing or kickboxing lessons at Jacky’s gym. After all, the universe didn’t revolve around her, but it sure as heck revolved around her little brother.
“I don’t see anything,” said Anthony. “But I hear something, I think.”
As the woman approached, her long shadow stretched out before her. To Tammy, her shadow seemed maybe a little too long. And too narrow. And oddly shaped, too. Were those claws where her hands should be?
“It’s her,” said Tammy.
“Who?”
“The jogger!” she heard herself scream.
After all, the woman’s very strange shadows had literally risen up from the sidewalk and became anything but shadows. They morphed into something three-dimensional and huge and far, far scarier in real life than she could ever imagine. Yes, Tammy had seen the three-headed hellhound in her brother’s own memory—and even vaguely in her mother’s memory, although her mother’s memory had been a memory of a memory, and those were never very clear.
This was clear as day. This was real and it was happening now.
***
She heard her brother say, “Oh, my God,” as what had once been a shadow grew in size, and its massive claws dug deeply into the sidewalk, tearing up concrete chunks and flinging them everywhere. The creature rocketed toward them and all Tammy could do was scream.
Or try to.
In fact, before anything could escape her lips, something massive loomed over her. Something massive and fiery and towering over the house itself. Tammy knew what it was, but she was too frightened to look. Too frightened to think. Too frightened to do anything but close her eyes and finish that scream she had seemingly started so long ago.
The ground shook. A thunderous, cavernous roar froze her heart in place.
And as the ground shook harder and the cacophony of growls rattled her teeth—three growls, in particular—something superheated and bright flashed overhead. It could have been a lightning strike. It could have been a guardian angel racing to their rescue. But Tammy knew what it was. She had seen it before. It was the flash of a fiery sword.
And as it charged overhead, it was followed by an ungodly shriek that turned immediately into wails of agony. So loud, Tammy was certain that her eardrums would split open.
***
When Tammy cracked open her eyes, she saw the three-headed dog was now a two-headed dog and it was running in circles in her cul-de-sac.
The severed head lay not too far from their driveway, it massive bloody jaws snapping over and over. Jaws that finally stopped snapping. And not too far behind the injured mythological monster was the female jogger. To Tammy’s eyes, the jogger had never missed a beat, and had continued her easy pace unerringly toward them.
There was a monster in front of her, a gravely wounded monster running circles in the cul-de-sac where she had played soccer as a kid, and baseball, and learned to rollerblade. Where Daddy and Anthony had played catch. Now, a devil dog ran seemingly blindly, shrieking loud enough to wake the dead.
But something was above her, too. Above and a little behind her, and it was glowing with a furious intensity. She saw the white light of it reflecting off the tree branches and leaves before her, the same tree the little bird had just been sitting in.
And somehow, through all the wailing, she heard a fire crackling directly overhead. Crackling and spitting and roaring as if she were sitting in front of the world’s biggest fireplace. The now two-headed dog collapsed onto its front legs. Blood pumped from the open wound in the third neck, splashed over the ground. The nearest dog head tried desperately to lick the opening, but it seemed a futile effort, with all the blood.
Now, she slowly, slowly looked up.
And up.
Way up.
And saw fire, lots of fire. But the fire had shape too, the shape of a humanoid: two legs, arms, a torso, shoulders, a head. The head was a good deal taller than the roof of the single-story house. In its right hand, it held a fiery sword. In fact, where the hand ended and where the sword began was hard to discern.
She felt the heat, but it wasn’t unbearable. She also felt the wind too, which seemed to emanate from the fiery entity standing over. The heat and wind swirled and blasted her. It also had a chemical smell that she was not familiar with.
From her vantage point, she could see white flames snapping and curling out from the entity’s thighs and torso and chest and even his head. The flames turned to puffs of black smoke, and Tammy watched as blood sizzled on the burning sword. Sizzled and evaporated. There was a quiet calm about the entity standing over her. Perhaps strangest of all, she sensed her brother in there, looking out through an eyeless face, perceiving everything around them, including the demons that she could not see. Mostly, she sensed fearlessness and calm. Mostly, she sensed complete control and complete power.
Her brother’s focus shifted from the demons and the wounded hellhound, to something lower to the ground. The flaming sword in his hand shifted into the on-guard position. Now Tammy heard clapping from the sidewalk. It was the female jogger, who now stood just beyond the chain-link fence that encircled their property, the same fence that the hellhound had effortlessly leaped.
“Okay, now that was badass,” said the woman, as she continued to clap. “Seriously, I might not have seen anything like that in all my life. Except maybe when I watched you do the same to the werewolves. But this is no werewolf, is it? I have watched Cerberus single-handedly tear armies apart. In fact, until now, I had thought he was impervious to destruction. I guess I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong!”
Meanwhile, more dark blood pumped from the gaping opening, spreading like an oil slick across from the street. The creature’s screeching had turned to high-pitched whimpering howls. How neighbors weren’t pouring from their homes, Tammy didn’t know.
She cocked her head, listening, searching. Okay, she did know. The homes were empty. In fact, all of the homes in the cul-de-sac were empty, even many of those that stretched further down the street too. What were the chances that all the homes on the street would be empty?
“Not very good,” said the jogger, seemingly reading her mind. “Timing, after all, is everything.”
The female jogger stood with hands on hips and caught her breath and took in the scene around her: the dying dog, the fire warrior towering behind her. Interestingly, Tammy could no longer detect her father’s thoughts.
“Of course not, lass,” said the jogger, her voice suddenly a little grittier than it had been a few moments ago. “Your father—the sniveling, cowardly, no good rat bastard that he is—has been ejected to the Void.”
Tammy didn’t know what to think about the Void. The jogger before her was hard to read, but not impossibly so. The thoughts came quickly and were laced with fear and hate and anger and confusion. Mostly, there was something else going on. The jogger was thinking of... formulas? Arcane formulas. Secret formulas. All of which crowded her brain, filling the forefront of it enough so that Tammy couldn’t push through.
“I can’t have a little girl knowing my deepest, darkest secrets now, can I?”
The woman looked impassively upon the massive dog, which had dropped to its belly, whimpering. The severed head had long since stopped snapping. “A shame. There are, after all, only so many three-headed dogs in the world.”
“Will he die?” Tammy heard herself ask, although her voice might as well have been somewhere above her, somewhere in the area where the burning fire warrior was standing. But it was her voice, and it was distant and hollow and not quite filled with as much fear as she would have thought.
“Hard to say, lass. I’ve never seen anything hurt the old boy. I suspect he might power through. He is, after all, immortal too.”
“Maybe he can get by with just two heads?”
