Chapter 19: Practitioner (10)

“Hello, Hallow.  It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Soft and smooth like velvet, enveloping me.  At the same time, it made me want to throw up.

Her hand.  It crawled out from underneath the cover.  Stuttering, like she was unused to the movement.  Jerky.  It reached towards the sandwich.  She dragged it back towards her.

Her nails had been clean.  Porcelain white.  But pointed.  Pointed, with fine fur around her knuckles.  White bluish-fur had covered her hand.

“Your offering,”  She said softly and I heard the smacking of lips.  Like a dog licking its chops, a slathering of saliva from beneath the hood.  “Is accepted.”

“Y-You know my name.”  I coughed, trying to hide the stutter.  But I couldn’t.  Not really, without making it even more obvious than it already was.  I knew for a fact that she noticed, even if she didn’t show it.

“Yes.”  She said simply.  Her fingers poked out from underneath the shawl, flat against the RV floor.  I tried not to look at them.  But I found my eyes continually drawn to the way that white-blue fur stood covered them.  Not too thick, but definitely more than just regular fuzz.

“–cold.”  She finished.

“I didn’t hear that.”  I had to get my act together.

“It’s cold.  Would you mind putting more wood on the fire?”  She shuddered at the end of the sentence.

I looked around.

“Or a blanket, to cover myself with?  It’s freezing.”  She added.

“One second,”  I turned around to head to the kitchen.  I didn’t even think twice.  That’s the issue with people as a species.  We don’t think.

The dumb ones die first.

As soon as I turned, a chill crept down my spine so fast I thought someone was playing chopsticks using my vertebrae as the keys.

On instinct, I froze.

Everything in me screamed that something bad had just happened, or almost happened.  That same feeling screamed at me not to turn around.  To just run straight ahead, into the bedroom portion of the RV and just lock the door and not look back.  To just wait for the morning.

She’d done something just now.  Or tried something.

“The blanket?”

Sweat beaded on the back of my neck and I felt my asshole flinch at the sound of her smooth, oily voice.

“So cold.”

I caught it then.

The soft illumination of the candles made the grey-refridgerator just glossy enough to show a reflection.  A reflection of… of some thing pressed up against my circle.  I could only make out a few parts, a stretched maw with hairy arms, a hulking female-spirit-creature that was caught in this perpetual state of a pounce towards me.  

It was a warped reflection that only made the Fox-sister’s true form barely tolerable to my freshly awakened practitioner mind.  Something that had a completely different evolutionary ancestor than humans, but evolved alongside us, to resemble us.  Because it made sense, to integrate itself into our society, to our villages and pretend to be one of us.  To hunt us from within, to prey.

It had the face, the arms and legs of a humanoid.  But it was anything but human.  Anything but.

Even looking at this imperfect reflection hurt, a dull throbbing pain that pierced through the brain-fog and pounded my head mercilessly.

I froze a moment too long and just like that, the reflection was gone.

When I turned back around, she was kneeling again.  Shawl draped over head to toe.  Pretending to be docile.  A little shiver for my benefit, to remind me that she was cold.

She had just tried to get out of the circle.

This was a mistake.

Licking my lips, I started saying, “I release–”

“Thousands and thousands of tongues, muttering the name, Jain Hallow.”

I stopped talking.

“Powerful names, warning, threatening, bribing.  Do not help the Hallow!.”  She made that noise again, somewhere between licking and smacking; a dog eating its food too fast.  It made my skin crawl.  “Rumors on the wind.  Carried to ears that listen.”  Then she said, “I have heard, but perhaps I will not listen.”

“So what?”  My voice was a squeak.

“I could help you.”

As she said that, her body trembled.  She raised her palms off the floor and I saw the nails making grooves on the flooring.

“Sorry, I’m not really looking for help.”  It sounded weak, even to my own ears.

She laughed.  A cackle, a mixture between a hyena and a wild dog.  It made me think of all the creepy animal documentary shows I watched.  The Harpy Eagle; the Maned Wolf.  All the odd beasts that sent a hollow pang ringing in my chest; a feeling of instant dread that stayed in my head until the flowers and the puppies came on.

“You should, boy.”  Her laughter ringed around the RV and it made me want to leave; except the memories of the other unknown spirits that lingered in the back of my mind.  Her tone turned pleading again, all polite and cold, mewling, “Please, let me help you.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She cackled again.  “The great flocks of the peninsula have been warned.  The packs, the hordes, even the dokkaebis.  The lands you call Europe will be the same.  The old spirits will not stir.  Only the basest of beasts will lift their claws to help you, Hallow.”

The Fox-sister bent low, arching her back –a sinuous motion that was both creepy and attractive at the same time.  Her arm flashed out from underneath the shawl.  Scraggly blueish-white hair covered her up to the shoulders.  “But I’m willing.”

“I’m not looking for a familiar.”  I gulped, “Not really… in the right mind space to be in a relationship, you know?  Kind of working on myself.”

She hissed and I took a step back.

Then she pounced at the circle.

The movement was so sudden that I fucking screamed and fell back, landing on some of the candles and knocking them over.

Then she slammed herself into the circle, again.  Crying out, no longer even bothering to make an effort to pretend to be something even remotely close to being human.  She yipped like a wild animal, a howl that sent a fresh wave of horror spreading to my fingers and locking me up in fright.

And I swear, my Sixth Sense felt the circle move.  Like a great weight being dragged against the ground, I felt the whole RV shake in tandem with the 

“I RELEASE YOU!”

I could feel her resisting, while my circle was working hard to contain her; but my command also had the strangest effect.  It was weakening the circle while trying to dismiss her.  Yet, through sheer will I could feel her dig her claws into the fabric of reality, trying to hold on, trying to linger.

Trying to haunt this place.

“By Hallow Blood in the Circle used to bind you, I release you! Go back to whence you came!”

She was salivating, just a wild animal with breasts hanging loose.  I couldn’t get a good look nor did I want to.  Fur halfway between animal’s and human’s, limbs too long for her body, yet something sexual about it –just the right proportions so that if I saw her in the dark, I’d mistaken her for a woman.  A software engineer furry’s nightmare come true; but for me I hadn’t felt this close to danger since the subway station.  Teeth too long

I spoke without thinking, cobbling together what I read in the book about summonings gone awry.  But I’d skimmed over it.

Thanks, Mom.

“Begone, Spirit! I, Jain Hallow, order you! Thrice I commanded, Thrice you disobeyed! I shall take your power as a boon!” 

The Fox-sister howled, high-pitched.  She wasn’t listening.

The circle cracked as she threw her body against it.  I had a feeling that creating two was the only reason she hadn’t broken it yet.

“I take it! I claim your power!”

And she fucking screamed.

The flames went out all at once and everything submerged into darkness.

Oh god.

Oh my fucking god.

I just sat there, my brain at a standstill.

My ears were super-sensitive, trying to pick up on the slightest sound.

But I knew deep down that she was gone.  By Sight wasn’t picking up anything.  No sense at all that there was anything supernatural in the RV with me.

Yet, I stayed that way.  Relying on my eyes and ears, things I’ve trusted for years to help me survive.  Skills that helped me survive abusive foster parents, the streets and bullies and school.  Helped convince me that ghosts didn’t exist, that the monster under the bed was just an overactive imagination.  After all, I never had parents to tell me that I was safe and tuck me into bed with a teddy bear bodyguard.  My eyes and ears had done that.

So I listened in silence.  

In complete darkness, I tried to see.

I heard soft footsteps and all but leapt out of my skin.  It took me a moment to rationalize that it wasn’t footsteps, but the snowfall outside.

…I repeated the cycle a few more times.

Until through the shutters, the slivers of dawn began to shine through.  Small beams of light that signaled that the night was over, that morning was here.

I stayed awake until the living room was in full view.  Until I noticed the horrendous ache on my left hand –hot wax from when I knocked the candles over.

Only when I was sure that everything was over…

I quietly picked up a piece of chalk, drew a circle around me.  With a soft murmur, I willed it to life.  Nothing supernatural could cross it.  Unless–

I didn’t finish that thought.

Exhausted, I fell asleep on the floor.