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The Faustian Bargain
Episode Nine- The Faustian Bargain

Episode Nine- The Faustian Bargain

Sean and Lindsey spent hours debating different choices and lots of googling on their smart phones before finally deciding on a little port town in Jamaica. Along with his luxury yacht and the promise of a new van when they returned, Samhain had apparently given the two plenty of petty cash to spend.

Billy spent several days watching as Sean and Lindsey drank like frat pledges and smoked like Rastafarians. He had long since begun to feel like the third wheel on their little expedition, but he was also in no hurry to move on.

He didn't know anything about Bune, the demon Sam had sent them to, but after his last meeting with a supernatural being, he wasn't much looking forward to the experience. Sam had been a lot to take in, and he was an angel.

Sean had met Bune, and it was plain that meeting the demon again was something he had hoped never to do again. He'd argued with Lindsey several times, trying to convince her to stay behind while he delivered Billy to Bune alone.

These arguments were not the kind of shouting matches Billy's had with his wife before his divorce. Instead Sean and Lindsey sat across the yacht's dining room table furiously signing back and forth. Billy had learned enough sign language by now that he could recognize what his own name looked like, and while he had no idea what was being said, his name did feature in their conversations regularly.

Their fifth night there, the two got into it again. Rather than try to decipher what he could from their conversation, Billy left the boat to wander about the small resort town by himself. He had not left Sean's side more than a few hundred yards, and tonight he decided to test the limits of his tether to the medium.

When he left Sean for too long, he'd noticed that he started to feel weak and wan. After a few hundred yards, every foot felt like a mile, and his vision would darken until he could only make out what was directly in front of him. He had tested these limits several times, it was nice to be able to feel something, even if it was exhaustion.

Billy started toward the center of Falmouth, the small touristy town that Sean had docked in. From what he'd seen of the place, it was an innocuous resort town, built around the tourism industry. Billy made his way down the main road, peeking into the beachfront bars as he passed.

By the second bar however, he'd slowed to a crawl, and tunnel vision had set in. He was about to give up and return to the yacht, when he noticed a change in his vision. He noticed a small side street that when he looked down, his vision would clear up slightly. The darkness faded and he felt lighter.

Distracted, he made his was down the side street. It was clearly taking him farther away from Sean, but his sight continued to clear and he felt renewed, like waking up from a good sleep.

Several blocks later, he realized he'd traveled well outside of the portion of town meant for tourists. The well-kept hotels, restaurants, and bars had given way to cement huts, usually with peeling paint and corroded tin roofs. It was the kind of neighborhood Billy would have avoided in life, but he figured there was nothing left to hurt him now, so he continued on fearlessly.

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At a tight intersection clearly meant for foot traffic, no car would have made the turn here, he looked down another narrow alley, and there he saw an older house. Only slightly better kept than the huts surrounding it, this house would have escaped his attention under normal circumstances, but tonight, he was enthralled.

The house was glowing. The beams and bricks themselves gave off a faint aura, and beams of light shone through every window like the signal of a lighthouse.

Mystified, Billy approached the house with caution. There were several signs around the house, apparently advertisements of some kind, but all were in a language Billy didn't know, Spanish or maybe Portuguese, he thought. Above the front door was one word, hand painted in black: Obeah.

Billy took a brief moment to curse himself for not being more attentive in High School Spanish class. He had never been good at languages, and he'd spent most of his class time flirting with the pretty girl that sat in front of him. If he'd known it would have been so pertinent to his afterlife, he would have paid a little closer attention to Mrs. Ortega.

He looked at the word Obeah for a long moment. It stirred a distant memory, he'd heard the word before, but the meaning escaped him. He considered returning to Sean, and talking to him about this strange house, but he was sure by now Sean and Lindsey had finished their little spat and were busy making up. Twice.

Instead Billy peeked through the front door. He just slid through the wooden door as if it were nothing and he was in the house.

It was set up to be a small store. Handmade necklaces and charms hung from hooks behind a counter, with more on display below a glass countertop. Everything in the room was immediately ignored by Billy though, as he spotted the source of the light. On a high shelf behind the counter was a carved wooden mask.

The mask looked like many he'd seen from movies and television, in fact it strongly resembled the one Jim Carrey wore in The Mask. He could see the wooden carving, but more importantly, superimposed over the carven features, in light, was his own face.

He drifted up close to better see the strange sight. There was no doubt, he was looking at himself. It looked just as had the last time he'd looked in a mirror. The carving beneath his image didn't quite match, it was more generic, but somehow this mask knew him.

He reached out to touch it, as he would have if he'd still had arms. The light flashed blindingly bright, blinding him to everything around him, and then.. he was the mask. He couldn't understand what had happened. One moment he was looking at the mask, the next he was resting on the shelf, staring fixedly across the room at the door he'd just come through.

He tried to turn, he couldn't. He tried to move down off the shelf, he couldn't. He thrashed wildly as he could against every sliver of the wooden mask he was trapped in, there was no affect whatsoever.

"Well, well, well, now." Came a woman's voice, cracked with age. Billy tried to move to see who was speaking, but as he couldn't move in the slightest.

His view changed as the mask was hoisted down off the shelf and suddenly he was looking into the face of a very old black woman. her hair fell in grey dreadlocks around her dirty face. She was missing most of her teeth, and the few she had left were black with rot.

"What have we caught today?" She asked, then cackled long and loud.

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