Chapter 1 #2
Raido, the rider, was the rune nearest her.
That always happened because she was controlling a powerful force, guiding much larger beings in the direction she wanted them to go.
The nauthiz rune was nearest to Chapman, speaking of need and constraint.
No great surprise there either. The other three landed on the eastern edge of the cloth.
Left was kaunaz, which meant fire or torches, injury or death. It pointed roughly to the space beside the TV, and Hazel glanced there quickly, but her half sight didn’t show her any threats. Still, it probably wasn’t a good place to cross the border.
One of the last two runes had fallen on top of the other, making a sort of cross at the cloth’s right corner—the top was thurisaz, the bottom algiz. The symbol for protection lay below the rune meaning giant or thorn or, often, trouble specifically from men.
Clarence could certainly be trouble—the client often was.
Good people could get haunted or cursed if they accidentally moved into the wrong place, picked up the wrong object, or pissed off the wrong person.
The nasty ones drew otherworldly parasites like rotten meat drew, well, flies, and generally for the same sort of reason.
She scooped the runes back into the bag, folded the cloth, and got to her feet.
Protection was protection, even with trouble added. Hazel set her first candle in the right-hand space that the mixed runes had signified, lit it, and began.
With the candles lit, the room grew darker.
Shadows that had seemed too long on Clarence’s bed and too dark in the corners sent out tendrils like little fingers, finding other patches of darkness and knitting themselves together.
The overhead light faded to almost nothing, the candle flames burned blue, and the room took on a chill that matched the cold sinking into Hazel’s flesh.
A rhythmic tapping mingled with the voices behind the humming, starting and stopping erratically, like a giant hand running toward her on its nails.
Hazel had been pretty sure Chapman’s haunting was hostile—insects were usually a bad sign—but she’d been hoping it wouldn’t be quite so strong. Communication was probably off the table, and there was a chance she’d have to temporarily seal the place and come back with reinforcements.
Chapman was staring at her, so expressionless that a witness in the material world might have thought he was dead. He’d folded his hands over his chest, which didn’t help the impression, and his spindly fingers stretched too far down their backs.
At least he wasn’t asking questions or telling her to hurry up.
Hazel pulled her attention back to her work; the sooner she got on with it, the sooner she’d be done with the house and the man.
Picking up the flask of blessed water, she poured some of it onto a square of white linen, then dragged the cloth along the blade of her knife, calling its power back to the surface. The silver began to glow.
Hazel breathed deep, dragging chilly air into her lungs despite their protests, centering herself in herself and in the connections she’d made over the years as she raised the knife above her head.
On the exhale, she brought it down in one smooth movement.
It cut cleanly through the barrier between worlds, and its radiant trail hung in the air for a moment.
Then the other side rushed in.
Once Hazel had opened the way, transition was instant.
Darkness filled her sight for a second, and when it passed, she was standing by a bed made of crude iron.
The dresser and its pills had vanished, leaving a mirror that took up half the wall and was even more warped than the one in the material plane.
Bulges pressed against the wallpaper, each shaped like a reaching hand, and Hazel saw a spot near her where the bloody ends of fingers had broken through.
The mouths of the trophy heads opened, and long, red tongues hung out, nearly reaching the bed below them.
This was Clarence’s true home. Consciously or not, he’d molded the ethereal to his deepest impulses over the years, and what he’d shaped was decay and carnage. Hazel turned to stare at the man who’d hired her. “What are you?”
Her voice came out in a whisper. He didn’t respond.
Across the room, the air began to squirm.
Empty space writhed before Hazel. Her eyes stopped focusing for a second, her brain’s desperate effort to save itself, but that didn’t spare her completely.
Space tore itself apart around two figures.
The one on her right was tall and lean, wearing a black robe fastened with brass buckles that shone slickly in the room’s uncertain light.
The robe’s hood shadowed its face except for a pair of glowing red eyes.
The figure on the left, by Clarence’s bed, sent panic surging up Hazel’s stomach and into her throat.
A headless figure covered in bubbling red skin nearly scraped the ceiling with the top of its torso.
It was almost as skeletal as Clarence, but with none of his fragility—its spindly arms and legs were clearly very solid, and its feet and hands had talons like razor blades.
A pair of very human-shaped eyes, completely white except for the pupil, stared at Hazel out of the middle of its chest.
Two mouths lay below the eyes. The bottom one was expressionless as far as Hazel could tell, a lipless gash with fangs. The top one, unnervingly toothless, was smiling triumphantly.
Clarence smiled almost exactly the same way.