21 Cemetery Road Read online

  “You will tell the truth,” he shouted, “or you will suffer. What is your name?” The swirling cloud was silent “Tell me your name or you will suffer.”

  “Very well, so be it; I name you Trevor.”

  “Bollox.”

  The creature's voice was lower now, like a bored teenager. Thor took a deep breath and called out arcane words that formed on his lips like a cloud of stinging wasps that flew buzzing around the cloud but fell lifeless to the stone floor with a soft patter.

  “It isn’t working, is it?” I whispered.

  “No.”

  “Can I ask it a question?”

  “Sure, why not, it has to tell the truth, but it looks like its staying quiet.”

  I could hear the defeat in his voice; this damned thing was beating us.

  “Why do you want our souls?” Again there came silence. “Thor, does that triangle of art hold it securely even if we are not here?"

  “Yes, but only for as long as the blue candles are lit ‒ they should last about two hours.”

  “Can we leave the circle and wait upstairs for a bit?”

  “Yes, but why? I don’t think boredom will bother Trevor after being down that pit for Gods know how long.

  “Oh, I have something that will keep him from being bored.”

  I dug out my wire player and placed it on the floor within the circle and switched it on. Sweet music filled the cellar, and the bright glowing cloud bounced around the triangles invisible bonds testing for weakness, desperate to break free.

  “What’s that?”

  “Cliff Richard Sings your Favourite Hymns. Shall we go and have some tea with Liz?”

  “He is a good singer you know,” Liz said, as we sat around the table upstairs in the kitchen,

  “Mother has all his spools.” She had to raise her voice over the colourful swearing coming from below. “Anyone for a biscuit?” Then came the cry of anguish and Liz flinched. “It breaks my heart to hear that,” she said. “I can’t stand to see a creature in pain, do we have to do this?”

  Thor still in his crimson robes turned slowly and gave her a cold look.

  “Liz, you're too soft-hearted. Trevor would have taken our souls and sold them on; creatures like him have no heart or soul.” He gave a grim smile as screams echoed around the cellar.

  “If I remember rightly,” I said, “the last track is The Lord’s Prayer, and it's coming up now.” We sat in silence as Cliff’s song reached its end and calm again filled the house.

  “Right, that should do it,” said Thor. He rose and thumped the floor with his staff. “Let’s go and see what we have.”

  BEING FAMILIAR

  Down in the cellar, we stood again in the circle. Thor ran his staff around the outline, leaving a trail of blue fire as it passed. The thurible still smouldered, and when our eyes got used to the dim candlelight, we saw a small pink glow in the triangle.

  “Is he dead?” I asked as the cellar felt different, less threatening and chilly.

  “No, and he will answer.” Thor stood taller and looked more commanding than before; he radiated power. “Trevor, answer to my question. Speak.” The glow in the Triangle of Art flickered and brightened. “You know what I can do; speak, or it’s the Salt Lake City Mormon Choir next.”

  “Ask what you will.” The voice came subdued and soft.

  “Are you a Demon from the Infernal Realms?”

  “No.”

  “How come you to be here in this place?”

  “I was called from the earth by a magician like you who wanted to gain power over his rivals.”

  “When?”

  “Many years ago, when this house was new; my master promised me freedom after I served him, but died before he could undo the spells that bound me to him.”

  “How did he die? Did you kill him?”

  “No, he tripped and fell down the well. I am still bound to him alive or dead; I may not leave this pit.”

  “Is he telling the truth?” I asked Thor.

  “Oh yes, he has to.”

  “Why did you want our souls? Only demons do that.”

  “A demon heard me call out in the darkness and promised me my freedom if I could collect souls for him. He told me what to do and what to say.”

  “That is very bad of you ‒ evil,” I said.

  “What is evil? Is wanting to be free evil? What is good or bad? I had to think these things out myself for such a long, long time down there in the dark. The old man taught me nothing except the greed of man.”

  “Time to go back to your place, Trevor,” said Thor. His hand on the staff trembled, and his eyes once bright with stars looked dark and sunken.

  “Good. I would like to return to the cool, quiet darkness.”

  “Trevor, you are dismissed in the name of angels and of those powers...”

  This dismissal went on for a while as the cloud dimmed; then it winked out like a blown candle. I knew enough to stay where I was until the last word of the banishing was over, and I got the nod from Thor that the ritual had finished.

  “Okay to go?” I asked Thor.

  "Yes." He took a deep breath and slumped holding onto his staff for support. "I am totally knackered; those kinds of incantations drain you. Come on, I could do with a stiff drink."

  Upstairs Liz helped him remove the crimson robe of power and hung it on the back of the kitchen door.

  “Sit,” she ordered, “and I’ll give you a cordial to restore your energy. Will, how about you, are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine, but I’ll have a whisky.” I reached over and held Thor’s icy cold hand. “Thor, that was impressive, it’s the first time I’ve seen a real calling forth and a banishing other than the practice sessions in school. Seriously impressive that.”

  As Liz mixed the cordial, I told her and Gordon what I'd seen and what we managed to get out of Trevor.

  “Drink it now,” said Liz, handing him the glass full of green swirling liquid.

  “Yes,” said Thor, “but if that thing had any real power we might have been injured, killed or worse. We’re lucky it’s so young.”

  “Young?” asked Gordon. “You mean it’s a kid?”

  Both Gordon and Liz turned to Thor, and I could feel the tension crackling around us.

  “A child?” asked Liz in a dangerously level voice.

  “A power that is over a hundred years old is no child," said Thor with a grim smile. “Some forms like his are aeons old, old when the city of Ur of the Chaldeans was built or the demons conjured and bound by King Solomon to build his temple.”

  I watched Liz relax, and Gordon’s frown smooth away.

  “What are we going to do with it? Sorry, Trevor,” I asked. “We’ve learned tonight that we have an unregistered being of power along with the bones of a long-dead magician in the cellar.”

  “Those bones would be worth a lot of money to those shamans who want to add extra power and depth to their calling,” said Gordon thoughtfully, “if we could get them out.”

  “Necromancers,” said Liz, shuddering, “will kill us to get at them if they ever find out.”

  In the silence that followed, we looked at each other and knew that going back to the idea of a free and easy life with our small magics was over. We had the equivalent of an unexploded bomb in the cellar.

  “We have to call the Dark Council,” I said. “There’s no way around it.”

  “I think,” said Gordon tentatively, “I think we could ask Ms Black before we do anything.” I nodded; maybe some fresh, level-headed advice from our School Mentor was needed.

  “Good idea,” said Liz and yawned, “but not now, we need sleep and guys, look at Thor.”

  Exhausted, he had nodded off while we talked. I woke him, and we all went to bed.

  INCANTATIONS

  After breakfast, I phoned the school and was put through to Ms Black.

  “Good morning, Mr Greenwood. I trust you are doing well after leaving college?

  "Fine, yes, thanks
, Ms Black, but as you know, Liz, Gordon, Thor and I share a house and, "I hesitated. "We've found an unregistered power trapped in a well down in the cellar."

  “How did you find it?” It was the question I was dreading.

  “We, er, used a spirit board.”

  I waited for the acerbic response she used on erring students, none came.

  “I’m coming over, and yes, I have the address. All of you, please stay in and keep out of the cellar. Goodbye.”

  Everyone listened to the conversation crowded around the phone then wandered back to their seats.

  “What’s going to happen?” asked Liz as she picked up crumbs from her plate and absently ate them.

  “Can we be fined?” asked Gordon.

  Thor shook his head.

  “It’s not like we are back at school and get detention or write out this spell one hundred times. Using the Ouija board isn’t illegal, and I don’t think the Dark Council will be worried.”

  “But?” I asked, waiting for the flip side of the statement.

  “Well, what we did was stupid, and we all should have known better,” said Liz.

  “And if that thing did have any real power, we could have been dead or worse,” said Thor. I saw his eyes darken as he realised what the outcome might have been.

  “But it didn’t,” said Liz. Gordon jumped up, his chair spinning away.

  “I’m fed up and sick with all this. When I left school, I thought that we would have more freedoms, like it says in its motto, ‘Wider Horizons’.” He towered over us, fists on the table, angry and tense. “All I see are rules and restrictions.” He gave a frustrated growl as Liz stood and calmly faced him over the table.

  "Gordon, please, dear, sit down. We all have these things we have to do, it's called responsibility, and it's for our safety as well as those Mundanes around us. Remember what happened to Nigel Pemberton?"

  A moment's silence fell over the table. Nigel was a well-liked young man and in the same class as Thor in Thaumatic Studies and a close friend. Both had studied and passed they're spoken, casting and written exams with high marks. Thor was always the more cautious of the two and was away in Prague studying at the time of the incident. From what his friends told the Dark Council later, Nigel had attempted to bind or banish an apparently minor power that was bothering his landlady; things were thrown around, pools of water mysteriously appeared, the usual poltergeist haunt. Whether from poor preparation or mispronunciation, the ritual failed catastrophically as the entity was more potent than it seemed. The landlady recovered after therapy, but the house had to be demolished after a thin film of Nigel over everything in the house made returning unhygienic.

  “Horrible,” Liz shivered, and Thor stood up and silently hurried from the room.

  “What’s biting him?” asked Gordon. I gave a deep sigh; Gordon, sometimes a pillar of strength, took a while to grasp the subtler points of sorcery and its perils.

  “What’s biting him,” I said, “is he knows that it could have been us splashed all over the neighbourhood.”

  “Oh, yeah, well, sorry.” Liz rose and stalked over to the sink, lips compressed, staring out of the window, her hand gripping the rim. I waited for the explosion of hot words, but instead, she leant forward over the sink and looked out of the window, down to the graveyard.

  “That’s odd,” she said. Gordon opened his mouth to say something, but I put my finger to my lips and glared at him. He shut his mouth.

  "What's odd, Liz?" I asked, in a level and controlled tone.

  “Those people; come and see.”

  I stood and went over beside her.

  “All I can see are a woman and two men dressed in black, laying a wreath on a grave. So?”

  “This private graveyard was closed in the nineteen-twenties; they're a bit late for a wreath, aren’t they?"

  “Maybe. Some people do like to trace their ancestors and find their resting place,” I said, but she was right, all of our nerves had been jangled and tense since the appearance of Trevor.

  “Maybe they're just Mundanes,” said Gordon coming to stand next to me. “But call me paranoid, because with the entire graveyard out there it’s a bit too close to the house for my liking.”

  “No, it’s just coincidence,” I said, still watching them standing with heads bowed, dark shapes against the withered grass and weeds.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Gordon.

  “Um, perhaps,” said Liz. We watched the small group by the old tombstone link hands then turn to look at our house. I could see their faces clearly or at least where their faces should have been; they were all as white as bleached ivory but without any features, just a smooth surface. In my mind, I saw a great wave of pale, cloudy grey rise from below their feet and roll towards the house, towering like a great Tsunami. It was evident from the other's faces that we all sensed it, and as one, we dropped down behind the sink. I sat on the floor with my back against the cupboard and took deep breaths.

  “Bastard Necromancers,” growled Gordon. Being Magicals, we are all aware when things suddenly turn metaphysical and dangerous. My spine tingled; we were being overlooked, spied on by those out in the graveyard.

  “Okay,” I said, “it’s not a coincidence, but we have the usual basic protecting spells around the house, and that should be okay.”

  “If they are dark Necromancers, we are in deep slurry,” said Gordon. He rose cautiously to peep over the sink. “No, they’ve gone.” I was about to add my thoughts when the doorbell rang.

  “The Necromancers,” Liz gasped. We heard Thor walking up the hall to the front door.

  “No.” Liz sprang to her feet and sprinted from the kitchen. “Thor, don’t open the door. Don’t let them in.”

  We all ran after her, but it was too late and watched horrified as Thor opened the front door and invited whoever was outside in.

  BATTLE STATIONS

  “Well now,” said Ms Black, looking around. “You have done the place up nicely.” She paused and glanced at the three of us, standing close to one another. “I don’t know why you all look so scared; we all make mistakes. I’m not going to bite you, but I’ll hear all your stories after someone makes me a cup of tea."

  “Thank the gods I tidied the parlour yesterday,” Liz said with a sigh of relief as Thor showed Ms Black to the sitting room. “I’ll make the tea ‒ can you remember how she likes it, milk, sugar?”

  “Black, no sugar.”

  “Obviously,” said Liz, with a wry smile and hurried off. I opened the front door and looked suspiciously up and down the street. Opposite were the remains of the massive Council Municipal Baths, now filled with rubble and weeds, having been blown up by a Zeppelin in the World War One. It had been fenced off with peeling security walls and barbed wire and on it was a notice which proclaimed ‘Coming Soon ‒ The Site of Dubai Towers, an Executive Building of Superior...’ The rest of the message was swamped by a coiling explosion of eye-watering graffiti. Next to our house on the right, the rusty ornate gates of the old Cemetery, set in the wall, leaned against each other, ready to collapse, only held together by ivy and bindweed. Apart from a few crows circling overhead in a cold, cloudless sky, nothing moved in the deserted street, lined with its shabby Victorian villas.

  I joined the others and relaxed as Alice brought in the tea and ginger Hob Nobs on a trolley. We now had with us a highly respected practitioner of the Arts who had taught and mentored us through school. I felt it gave us a sense of security and someone who could advise.

  "Right," said Ms Black. "Start from the beginning, Liz, and leave nothing out."

  Liz recounted the drunken episode on the Ouija board with some embarrassment, then continued to tell her how Thor and I descended to confront Trevor. I watched Ms Black's face during the recounting and saw not a flicker of emotion on her perfect face.

  "Very well, thank you, Liz. Now you, Thor."

  He took a deep breath and continued on from when we both went down into the cellar. Ms Black stopped hi
m when he started to recite the Names of Power he used.

  “Thor, you should know well enough not to use those Titles of Power outside the circle.”

  He had the grace to blush and continued on to the point where he recounted my use of the wire player with Cliff Richard singing hymns.

  "Oh my," she said, laughing. "Very inventive and certainly within the remit of a Chaos magician. Please, Thor, continue."

  She listened intently until the end and only when Thor told her of how the power was bound to the bones of the long-dead magician did a flicker of sadness cross her ageless face. At the end of our stories, she sat for a while as waited for a judgement or worse.

  “Show me.”

  “Now?” said Thor.

  “Certainly, and after that, we can discuss what three dark Necromancers are doing, trying to look innocent in the Cemetery and why any of that Dark Temple cult would be lurking around here. They’re more interested in fresh dead bodies because those out there in their graves are just dust. I’m assuming you have at least the basic defences up and operational?”

  She gave Thor the long and meaningful stare she had used in the past to reduce us to feeling like naughty five-year-olds.

  “Yes, er, but I think after this I’ll freshen them up.”

  “And I’ll spin a warning web about the house,” said Liz.

  “I’ll form a small tulpa and have it guard the entrances,” said Gordon.

  “Well,” Ms Black said, looking at me, “Will, what have you got up your sleeve. I don’t think hymns are going to prove so effective this time."

  “Sigils would be my first bet, but I’ll come up with something better and unexpected." She gave a little frown; I knew she never approved with my Modus Operandi ‒ far too chaotic an approach for an ordered mind. Somehow though, I got through the Chaos Magician exams, which depend on using whatever came to hand. It is chaos based, but never disorganised. On my wall, over the bed, is a small poster on which are these words:

  Three things the Chaos Magician attests,

  Steal what works,