Mother Dora was at our door the next morning after Anita called her for help. I tried to tell her that we really did not need to add a psychic to our motley crew, but, to my surprise, the old fraud could actually read Latin. She opened one of the books and flipped through the pages intently, her brow furrowing more and more as she made her way through the book. Occasionally, she’d let out an “oh!” or an “I see, I see,” until she slammed the book shut and laid it back on the table.
“So, what did you learn?” Anita asked her.
“Not much,” she replied. “Not much that could help you, anyway. Like I said before, you are fucked. That has not changed.” She looked at me. She wore a flowy purple dress and earrings that were shaped like bloodshot eyeballs. “I don’t think your disciples know what they’re talking about. I don’t know how in the world they managed to get their hands on books like these, and in such good condition...” Her voice trailed off at the end.
She picked up another old leather tome — a wrinkled black book with faded red lettering on the front that I couldn’t read — and flipped through it. She seemed more interested in reading the books than actually helping me. I tried to ask her again if she had found anything, but each time I would try to speak, she’d put a finger in my face and say “No talking!” Luckily for her, Anita taught me to never hit women — unless they were shooting iron balls at my head.
We all sat patiently as she looked through the old books, tapping our feet, twiddling our thumbs, and jumping with anticipation every time she made a sound. But after the fourth finger in my face, I couldn’t take it anymore. I snatched the book from her hand and she let out a startled shout like I had just shaken her awake from a vivid dream. Her wrinkled face contorted into a grimace in my direction. She clearly thought about trying to snatch the book back from me, but knew there was no point.
“You seriously don’t have anything to tell us yet?” I said. She looked at the book, not at me, when she talked.
“I do not have any answers for you, no,” she said. “There is nothing like your mark in them, only things that bear slight similarities. Slight similarities.”
“Like what?” Caleb asked with bright-eyed fascination. It sort of annoyed me sometimes how much he enjoyed all of this. He acted like we were all in a movie or some shit. I didn’t want to be the one to break his blissful childhood ignorance, though.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Well, there was something in the previous book about a summoning ritual that can fuse a human’s soul with the soul of a demon, giving them great and evil power,” she waved her hands around and bulged her eyes out like she was telling a ghost story. “But the demon soul would inevitably conquer the human soul within a day or two. There’s a section in this one that details the process of using an enchanted earwig to heighten a person’s senses and reflexes, and something about cutting scars in a certain pattern on a person’s flesh to imbue them with magic, but nothing about growing tattoos or spraying gunk from your pores.”
“Hmmm,” Anita said, “so the mark is a recent invention, too new to be in any of these old books?”
“Or too old,” Mother Dora replied. The room went silent. While I was stewing in the tension, Mother Dora snatched the book from my hand and resumed her reading. I left her to it, hoping that she would manage to do something useful for once if I gave her enough time.
Caleb, Anita and I sat in plastic chairs on the back patio to get away from Mother Dora’s oohs and aahs. We all had our substances of choice: Anita pulled on a Marlboro Red and exhaled from her nose, I took swigs from a 40oz Miller High Life, and Caleb was in the process of scarfing down a tower of at least fifty Tyson chicken nuggets. It was cooler than usual, so it wasn’t complete hell sitting outside while the sun was out. I was actually enjoying it, but there was a hint of sadness on Caleb and Anita’s faces. Anita was pulling on her cigarette like she was scheduled for execution in the next minute-and-a-half, and Caleb looked into the distance wistfully as he stuffed breaded chicken into his mouth. What the hell was wrong with them?
“Quiet moments like this, I can’t help but think of Newt,” Anita said, as if she read my mind. “He loved sitting on the porch with us, sipping his coffee and talking about his model trains.”
“He never shut up about his trains. Used to drive me crazy,” Caleb said with a nugget tucked into the side of his mouth, not turning to look at anyone.
I didn’t feel anything for Newt — my own dad — which made me feel like an asshole.
I was tempted to make something up, to try to sound like a normal person capable of empathy, but screaming from Mother Dora saved me from having to do that. Thank fucking God.
We sprung up and ran into the apartment. Blood dripped from Mother Dora’s left palm and pooled on the dining table, but she wasn’t screaming from the pain. There was happiness in her voice. She turned her bloody palm over so that it was facing the table, and the cascading blood stopped mid air, like it was suspended in zero gravity. She waved her hand around the blood on the table and it collected itself into a perfect sphere that she turned over and held like a baseball. She looked at us and smiled proudly.
“Holy shit,” she said. “Pretty cool, right?”
Only Caleb seemed to agree with her. Anita looked horrified at the sight of the blood ball, and I was wondering if I was going to have to fight a half-demon, half-idiot.