The murderer screamed for help for the fifth time in a row. I'm usually very patient with murderers, having come to understand (if not sympathize with) them over the years. For the most part, they were cowardly, weak-willed individuals with poor impulse control. Many had some truly terrible luck with their parents, education, and their place in society.
But some—well, some implies it was a small portion but in my experience is a hefty percentage—like murderer #13 here, were just absolute garbage people who liked to hurt others for their own amusement.
He wasn't a big man. It wouldn't be accurate to call him small, but it would be more accurate than calling him average. His hair was greasy from excessive sweating—likely due to the near-constant state of anxiety and fear he has been in since waking up in my trunk this morning—and clung to his high forehead in an unappealing way that showed how thin it was. He was nude save for a blindfold made of duct tape and a pair of old underwear that really should have been replaced by now, judging by how many holes there were near the elastic band. His arms were chained to the floor with some manacles I had bought off of a middle-aged woman I found on Craigslist, and purchased with a money order.
If the authorities ever investigated why someone would need to buy authentic manacles and try to track down the individual who had bought them, they would get a vague description of a taller-than-average man who wore a hoodie, hat, and large sunglasses and didn't speak much, with a large chin—almost comically large. If they followed the money order back to the 7-11 I had obtained it from, they would see much the same as described previously. I had paid cash.
Note: I did not have a large chin. My mom had called it “pronounced,” like my father's. I had worn a chin prosthetic to exaggerate it and had spent several weeks watching youtube videos on makeup appliances to get it to look convincing. I had modeled it after Jay Leno.
But that had been years ago, and I had since done a lot more incriminating things since I started to kidnap murderers.
I straightened from where I had been working on the floor, etching arcane formulae and symbols into the floor with a long, thick stick of chalk. The murderer shrank into himself as he heard me approach. (You probably guessed that I don't refer to them by name, and you'd be right. Names are for people who don't tie people up in a shack in the woods and slowly, over the course of many days, skin them alive.)
I squatted next to him and leaned close so he could hear my whisper.
“If you scream again, I will crush your larynx so that you will have difficulty breathing and will no longer be able to scream,” I said in a tone that I hoped conveyed that I was being serious. “I am not whispering to be quiet, I am whispering so that you will not be able to tell anyone what I sound like.”
That got his attention. If I was afraid of him reporting me, then I wasn't planning on killing him. Which I wasn't. He was the murderer, not me.
“Wh-wh-what--” he began.
I made a clicking sound with my tongue and shushed him. “You don't get to talk,” I whispered. “If you do what I say when I say it, you get to go. You will not be hurt. You can tell the authorities whatever you want. But until I let you go, you do whatever I want, when I want it, and you will do it silently. Nod if you understand.”
He nodded.
“B-but--”
My fist caught him below the ear with enough force that he was launched sideways, arrested by the manacles which resulted in his head hitting the floor. The blow with the floor was spoiled a bit by his shoulder so he wasn't knocked out, but he was still dazed. I waited patiently for him to gather himself and once his confusion cleared I leaned down over him and issued in the same tone of voice—whisper?—as before:
“You do whatever I want when I want it, and you will do it silently. Nod if you understand.”
His nod was much more emphatic.
I stayed squatted next to him, close enough that he could hear my breathing, just watching. After a solid five minutes where he uttered not a peep, I slowly stood and went back to my formulae and chalk.
This particular circle was taking longer than usual as I was implementing some improvements I had developed over the last six months. But this was the first time I'd actually used them, so I was taking my time and double and triple checking all my work. I would then check again once it was all done, and then check one more time after eating lunch.
Such caution was necessary when summoning powerful entities from the plane of existence colloquially known as Hell. You only get to mess up once.
Though, after long association with Axtrixxinizinia (she allows me to call her Trix for the sake of my thick tongue), I was having my doubts as to that. I'd never, ever, EVER put them to the test, but from our brief interactions, she didn't seem to even want to be here, on Earth. She always reacted to the summoning as if I had interrupted her favorite show and couldn't pause it.
Usually writing painstakingly accurate arcane mathematics and weird, Cockney-Rhyme-Slang-esque hieroglyphs on the floor killed my knees. Today, along with my new formulae, I was testing out knee pads I had bought from Home Depot that I had seen carpet layers on YouTube use. It was such an improvement I berated myself mentally for not thinking of it six years ago when I started down the path of becoming a warlock.
Murderer #13 behaved very well. So much so that I decided to reward him with a large milkshake when I ordered my lunch. I walked down the block to retrieve it, having told the delivery app to leave it on the doorstep of a business I knew to be closed.
As I reentered the abandoned building, I took stock of everything to make sure nothing had changed during my brief absence.
Murderer #13 was still manacled to a bolt in the floor. His wrists did not show any new signs of struggle, nor was there any new shine of sweat on him. I placed the food and drink tray on a little table I had placed near the wall and checked every window for tampering, every doorway. The tape I had placed on each was unmoved and unbroken.
After checking the possible entrances I allowed my perception to sweep across the interior. We were on the second floor of an office building, abandoned during the last recession and allowed to gather dust. I had spent five days setting up minor wards of irritation to get all the rats, bugs, and vagrants to leave the premises. I had then spent a few days going through the building, making sure it was secure and closing every entrance except the one in the back that I'd be using. I then reinforced the irritation wards with a ward of fear and a ward of forgetfulness, so anyone focusing on the building would be hit by waves of anxiety until they decided to leave. It wasn't foolproof—someone with significant reason and willpower could push through the wards—but I'd chosen this building for the purpose that no one had any reason to be here. The wards were just an extra layer of paranoia that had seen me to safety in this rather dangerous career I'd chosen.
Once that was done I entered the building, went to the second floor, and began to push all the leftover office equipment to the walls, clearing a big space in the center. This had the added benefit of adding a little soundproofing to the walls. I then ripped up the carpeting and whatever you called that layer of padding under it to reveal the wood flooring beneath, which was needed for my chalk. I had gone to every wall, window, and door and drew wards of silence so no noise from inside could leave the building, but I could still hear noises from outside should things not go to plan.
Lastly I cast my eyes to my stuff that I had left on the same table with the food, my messenger bag, and a bound sheepskin scroll.
Everything looked the way I left it. I went over to where I had left the food and the milkshake—now probably a bit warmer than was desired but still not completely melted—and took the latter to murderer #13. On the way over I grabbed a little TV tray I had found during my prep and placed it so that it was up to chest height of the kneeling murderer.
“I assume you are hungry,” I whispered, placing the milkshake on the tray and guiding the straw to his mouth. “I won't free your hands to eat so you'll have to do with a milkshake—do not thank me. Remain silent.”
He nodded emphatically and began to slurp noisily at the straw, realized he had made noise, and recoiled briefly before taking the straw back into his mouth and drawing on it more sedately. I returned to my food, sat next to it on the table, and began to eat mechanically. I would prefer not to but something about the summoning required a full belly to reduce the detrimental effects, usually vertigo and stomach cramps.
After I finished the last fry I walked over to the only large piece of equipment I had brought, a Plexiglas blast shield roughly 4 feet wide and 6 tall. I picked it up awkwardly (it was heavier than it looked and balanced to not tip over) and placed it between murderer #13 and the summoning circle.
Sighing my anxiety out, I went over to the circle and went over it once more, agonizingly slow. It took the better part of an hour but when I was done I was as sure as I could be. I took my place at the north side of the circle, the murderer to my left, and prepared myself for the spell.
To murderer #13, I said in a stage whisper: “There will be some noises and conversation. Remain silent.” He nodded.
The spell was already cast, technically. It was on the floor. I just needed to activate it. I pulled my pocket knife out of my pocket, flipped it open, and drew it quickly over the top of my left hand, letting the blood well and drip onto the top of the circle.
“By my blood do I summon, by my art, you are bound. Come, and bear witness to my bargain.”
Technically I didn't need to say anything, but I felt that Trix was amused by the invocation. Also, it felt more... polite? It felt akin to referring to your secretary by name, rather than her job title.
Not that Trix was anything so simple and non-lethal as a secretary.
The first time I had summoned Trix, I had expected a big flash or power, or smoke, or fire, or to just die. Instead, she was just... there. Like she had been standing in the middle of the circle the whole time and I had only just now realized it. It was far more alarming than any of the big showy appearances I had imagined.
I had also imagined a succubus or demonic-looking entity, akin to the succubus from World of Warcraft or the Devil from Legend (boy would I have been THRILLED if Tim Curry's Devil had showed up), but what I got was Trix.
Trix looked normal every time I summoned her. I mean normal in that she looked human. But she always looked like a different human. Sometimes she appeared as a celebrity, my high school crush, a porn star—a time that stands out was when she appeared as Bette Midler, the only form she had taken I wasn't attracted to (sorry Bette, nothing personal).
Today she wasn't anyone I recognized, which was another first. She looked in her late teens or very early twenties, with a figure that screamed “INSTAGRAM MODEL.” She was wearing a skin-tight tank top and a pair of shorts that were so short that they seemed to exemplify the definition. Her hair was black, a black so dark it seemed to have a blue sheen when the light hit it. Her eyes were large, also dark, and very expressive. Plump lips were quirked in an amused grin and were, I would hazard, very kissable were she not a being of unfathomable power and likely very fathomable wrath. The last thing I noticed about her appearance was her nose, which I would term “cute.”
As I mentioned, Trix usually looked annoyed when I summoned her, and took a while to warm up to me. This time she was admiring the new circle, which alarmed me greatly. Was there a flaw? Was I about to die? God, I hoped not. Maybe she'd just take my soul and leave me dreading my death for the next 60 years until I finally did die from an anxiety-induced cardiac arrest.
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“I like the new circle,” she said. “It doesn't hurt like the last one.”
I blinked. “It had hurt?” I was so surprised I had forgotten to whisper.
Trix smiled knowingly and put a finger to her lips. I cursed mentally. Trix waited for my attention to be on her again before elaborating.
“Yes, it did,” she said, gesturing vaguely with a fine-boned hand. “I would say all human summoning circles hurt one way or another. That is—before today I would have.” She turned in a slow circle, admiring my work. “This is almost ######## level quality.”
That was her word from where she came from, and it sounded like static or screaming in my ears, depending on how it was said. (Murderer #13 whimpered when he heard it.) This conversation lent context to suggest that it wasn't her term for her plane of existence, but a society or organization.
She finished her circuit and turned to meet my eyes. “Well done, little warlock.”
She was in a very good mood. Usually, I'd have to flatter her or bribe her with porn (she loved porn, for some reason, but only the porn with shitty plot and humor in it) to get her to talk to me about anything other than my eventual demise at her hands.
Remembering to speak in a whisper, I said: “I had noticed the old form wasn't efficient, and lacked a... robustness—“
“It was weak, and you were afraid I'd break it one day and feast upon your immortal soul,” she interrupted.
I shrugged. “That, too. But mostly the inefficiency. You know how I like to reduce risk. This design also incorporates location calculations, so the only thing I have to calculate the next time I use it would be the wormhole energy use and the planar distance.”
Trix was one of the only beings I could talk shop with as I didn't know any other demons/extra-dimensional beings or warlocks (aside from one special case but he never spoke, so). It was frustrating.
She nodded appreciatively, looking over the circle. “Your line work is improving too. You better be careful or you'll start drawing attention.”
THAT sent a shiver down my spine. I fought the urge to ask the obvious “from who?” as she would likely bargain for that information and I already had a bargain with her.
“I—I uh, noticed you're in a better mood than usual,” I began, my voice a hoarse whisper. “Would you be willing to accept payment?”
She seemed disappointed I hadn't taken the bait but nodded graciously at my offer. “I would.”
I let out a shaking breath and crossed the room to where I had left the scroll next to my messenger bag. I undid the twine holding it together and pulled a simple Bic pen from my pocket. I crossed the room again to kneel next to murderer #13. He flinched away from me, knocking the tray and toppling his mostly empty milkshake. It rolled off the tray and hit the floor, the lip popping off and a splatter of liquid hitting the plexiglass shield I had just placed.
I felt a moment of vindication as that was the first time the thing had been used for it intended purpose since I made it. Holding in a sigh I rolled out the lambskin on the tray, laying the pen on top of it.
I placed a finger on the cuff of his right manacle, then hesitated. “Are you right-handed?” I asked.
He nodded. I turned back to the manacle and with an effort of will, unlocked it. It rattled off his arm and he jerked away from me in surprise, only to be caught by the remaining manacle. I caught his free hand and held it in a grip that to him must have felt akin to another manacle.
“It's almost over,” I said, soothingly in my whisper-voice. “All I need from you is your signature and a single drop of blood. And then you're free.”
“And that's not a figure of speech,” I continued because this had come up before. “I will literally free you from the manacles, escort you outside, and tell you to walk for thirty seconds. You will be then free to remove your blindfold and run to the cops, should you wish. Though we both know you don't want the attention of the cops.”
I placed the pen in his grip and moved it to the signature line of the lambskin document. If his eyes had access to light, he would be able to see that he was signing away his soul which would be collected upon his death, the second of four installments. Upon completion of the fourth installment, one “Colm Edwin Avery” would receive the power requested and specified in document 1A, of which he was currently signing 1B.
“Your hand is on the line now,” I said. “Just sign and you have one last step to freedom.”
“I-I-I can't see what I'm writing,” he whispered pitifully.
“It's your name,” I said. “Surely you can write your own name without having to see it. It doesn't need to be pretty.” It doesn't need to be legible, either, so long as it was written with intention.
“W-what am I signing?” Murderer #13 asked.
I used to lie to these individuals, but that got to be a pain in the ass. “It's a contract to a demon, to be paid upon your death. I'm a warlock and I'm using your soul instead of mine because I don't want to go to hell and you already are for what you did in the woods.”
He froze as I finished the sentence, turning his sightless face toward me. I had intimated before I knew about his crimes, but this was more concrete confirmation. “You know--?”
“I know,” I said. “And if you don't sign, I will stop being nice. I will stop feeding you, I will not allow you to use the bathroom, and I will beat you once in the morning and once at night until you sign the document.
“Besides,” I continued, more gently. “Everyone knows demons and warlocks don't exist.”
Murderer #13 sobbed and wrote his name. I watched to make sure that he was actually writing his name and not someone else.
“Very good,” I said soothingly, taking the pen from him and replacing the cap. I took his hand and gripped his pinkie while pulling out my pocket knife. “You'll feel a prick on your pinkie, and then I'll need you to press it next to your name.”
Without waiting for a reply I jabbed his finger with the blade, getting a good bead of blood going. He yelped. I ignored him and guided his hand toward the sheepskin. I released his hand and guided him verbally.
“Lower, higher—little higher. Perfect. Press down.”
He pressed his little finger down, creating a messy dot of red at the end of his name.
As he did I could feel the metaphysical bonds slide into him and tighten around the space that some would consider the soul. He let out a coughing cry of—not exactly pain but definitely a surprise. Before he could react I caught up the lambskin contract, rolled it up, and tied it tight with the twine I had kept hold of. When my left hand was free I touched his remaining manacle and it fell free.
Leaving him for a moment I walked around the Plexiglas barrier and offered the contract to Trix, without crossing the circle. The contract gently lifted from my hands and floated into Trix's, who opened it and examined the contents with an amused tilt to her lips.
I turned back to murderer #13, who was still on the floor in shock. I lifted him up like he was a child who had scraped his knees and escorted him downstairs to the back door. I pointed him down the alley.
“This is where we part ways,” I said. “Walk forward for thirty seconds before removing your blindfold. If you do it before then I will have to shoot you in the back.” I didn't have a gun, but he didn't know that.
He nodded emphatically. I waited for him to start walking, then got impatient and gave him a little shove. He stumbled a bit but began walking. I turned around and went back inside, closing the door gently behind me. When he removed his blindfold he'd be so disoriented that, coupled with all the wards I had plastered the building, it would make it impossible to ever find this place again. He was also unlikely to report me to the cops since he was, you know, a murderer, and he knew I knew.
I stopped by the bathroom where I had stashed a mop and bucket and brought them upstairs with me, careful not to slosh the bucket around. When I got up there I was surprised to find Trix was still in the circle.
I carefully set down the mop and bucket and approached the circle. I cleared my throat because I had only technically used my voice once in the last week when she had surprised me earlier.
“Wh--” I stopped myself. I had almost said, “what can I do for you?” I now knew enough about demons and demon summoning to know that verbal contracts weren't binding, but I tended to err on the side of “offer nothing, take nothing” when acting outside the lines of a formal contract.
“Did you have something you want to ask me?” I asked instead.
She glanced down at the circle. “I was examining your circle while you were with the payment,” she began, smiling at me in a way that made me feel like I was talking to my first pretty girl. “And while it is definitely more secure, I can tell that was almost an afterthought to the design.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I wanted it to be more efficient. I noticed there was a lot of... I guess you can say feedback? When I used the other model.”
Now that you mention it, I wasn't feeling the wave of weakness and nausea I usually felt after a summoning. I said as much.
Trix nodded knowingly. “The older circles tend to use the summoner as a backup when things don't go well. Did you find your first circle in the Tetric Grimoire, by chance?”
I normally don't like to give her more information than was necessary, but... she was pretty and friendly enough. Also, I had no one to talk to about this stuff and I wanted to know if I was as smart as I thought I was.
“It formed the basis of the one I would come up with, which I used with parts from the Unnamed Book, Book of the Devil's Eyes, and the Black Book of St. Galisthamene,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting across from her. The kneepads had helped tremendously, but I had still been on my hands and knees for several days, with one break to grab #13. My back was killing me. “The one where we met was... done by someone else.”
She blinked prettily at me. “You... combined several circles?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “Not really. It was more... like when you pull from several recipes of the same dish. I looked at as many sources as I could for similarities, what I thought would work and what wouldn't, combined the former and discarded the latter. Now that I have a much greater access to accurate tomes—or at least tomes that have actual magical theory in them and not just incense burning and poorly disguised orgies as rituals—I looked over what I had done and saw room for improvement.”
“Improvement indeed,” she said. “Normally I charge for this kind of critique, but I am so comfortable on this plane for once that I will give you this for free—the discomfort and inefficiency you noticed were because the circles you created previously were less like invitations and more like shooting a toothpick sized harpoon into my calf and gently tugging until I relented and came to see who the hell had jabbed me with a toothpick.
“You have to understand, time back home doesn't move parallel to time here. I understand that my arrival here is pretty instant from your perspective, but from mine, it can take days or weeks or months, or years to answer a summons.
“But this new circle,” again she smiled at me like we were sharing a naughty secret. “It was more like... you leaving the door open. I could drop in whenever I wanted. And it was so—you were right to use the word—efficient, I barely had to supply any energy for the journey. So, take it as a compliment, my second-favorite mortal: you made it so it was not painful to be in this world.”
And then she was gone.
My mind reeled. She had just given me so, so much context for formulae and spells that I had just been guessing at the purpose of. I started to make connections, and—I dashed over to the circle. That there, those numbers must link the different time st—no those, those are the time streams and this here equalizes the metaphysical pressure. Oh my God.
So much was clicking in my head as I studied the circle—I could improve it so much more! My word. My God. Holy Funky Butt-lovin'.
I grabbed my phone and started to dictate my revelations into it, pure stream-of-consciousness stuff so I could review it later. I didn't want to stop any thought connections I was making and just let the understanding flood in. I soon became hoarse and had to drink the dregs of liquid at the bottom of my soda from my meal, which only slightly resembled soda with all the melted ice in it.
I was about to call it a day after a few hours. It was highly unlikely #13 would be able to direct anybody here, but I was pushing the bounds of my paranoia by remaining in the location of my crime. (Kidnapping. Demon summoning was not illegal in California. (I had checked.)) I also had several parcels of evidence I had found at #13's house I needed to mail to the lead detective on his old case (Who was still working, thankfully. The last case I had worked, none of the cops that had worked it were still cops and it was a pain in the ass to get any traction going with the new personnel. Getting cops to do their jobs was fucking difficult, especially when you were avoiding their notice.) and leave an anonymous tip at the first payphone I could find. I knew I should have looked for one last night but I had put it off and here we are. I sighed as I grabbed my mop to erase the circle… but slowed to a stop as a thought occurred to me.
I could apply those theories to other spells, not just summoning.
Trix had given me an incredible gift, free of charge. If—she had to know that. She had to know. And she'd called me her “Second favorite” human. Was someone else summoning her? What happens if we summon her at the same time?
I really needed to get something better to drink and a bunch of notebooks. I wanted to get to my study to take notes, but it was 5 hours north near the border of Oregon and I needed to capture all these thoughts before they faded. I reluctantly grabbed the mop, wet it inside the bucket, and began to erase the circle.
I hoped my next one impressed Trix even more.