The Wonderful Tricks of Benadar the Marvellous — Scribble #2
I stumbled upon this story beginning I wrote a few years ago—one of my few efforts to expand the VICTORIA! setting beyond the two main characters of Montgomery Renaud and Bradley Barrow. Introduced here are the green shoots of Thomas Morvell’s backstory, who appears in Hat Trick, which may or may not eventually see the light of day.
The question mark indicates this will likely not remain as the second chapter in this story.
The Wonderful Tricks of Benadar the Marvellous
By Peter R. Heaton Chapter Two (?): Soul-Eye to Soul-Eye
The third trick--the one I didn’t like using. A phantom from the past. Renee. She’d taught it to me--not him, not the one who had opened the box of unknown and unknowable things for me--and we loved each other for it; her love carried by the gift she gave and my love fanned by the fact that she had cared to give it to me to begin with. But the nature of the thing--of the trick--meant it could never last forever.
She smelled like over-ripe bananas--some weird scent-creature of perfume and sex-sweat. I would never forget that--did never forget her. Criselle, skin as black as her pupils, pupils that drank your soul whole and spit it back out, laughing.
“Are you sure?” Madeleine’s voice dragged me from my thoughts. Not wanting to break my concentration she hesitated, but could not contain herself,” Are you sure that is a good idea?”
I looked at the flask and shrugged. The flask looked back, nodding.
“I told you, you shouldn’t be here.” A game he’d played. She needed to be here though she did not know it yet. This orderly would be no old soul but I could do it. I can do it, I reassured myself, stealing a glance at Madeleine.
“And I insisted.”
“You do quite a bit of that.”
“A woman would never get anywhere without it. If there ever were a deafer sex…”
“Spare me, dear,” the flask said. I smiled at it, thinking it’s jab smart. I waved the scotch at her. “You’ll want this.” You’ll need it, trust me. But it’s better if I don’t tell you. Afterwards, there will only be fractured pieces. It will make it lesser. How often I made these decisions for those around me. Who was I to know what was better? But it was a disease, an addiction, as easily as booze down the throat.
She turned her nose up. “I think not.”
“Trust me,” I said, reaching into the bag and drawing out the decrepit hand. The scent of rot overtook her immediately--she gave a sharp inhale, and one hand reached up to smother nostrils and mouth. I breathed in deep, pushing my mustache up into my nose, breathing nothing but the sweet peat-infused scent of scotch. “You’ll want this,” I repeated and there was no argument this time.
“You won’t fool me. I saw you swigging.”
“Yes, well, that is the third trick. This,” I said, scrunching up my moustache again,” was my own concoction, though I did spend some time studying in a morgue…”
The candle was smooth, pearl wax. I couldn’t remember the parish’s name, but prayer candles were the only ones I trusted. Placing the candle in the severed and partially-pickled hand, I drew a match, and in one swift motion struck it and lit the candle.
“You are sure this is safe?”
“No,” I said simply, opting for a moment of bluntness to make myself feel better. “But there is a way to protect yourself--though it is a fine thing, finer than the neatest of stitches, finer than the thinnest silk. In plainest terms, the alcohol numbs the senses, and it is with our senses that the spirits find the easiest way in.”
The flask found my lips again. Too much?, a voice inside asked me. “But,” I continued, “numb the senses too much and you are certain to err in the preparations, or stumble over the words of warding, or lose strength of wit and will,” I made serious eye contact with her, thinking for a moment, that it might help steel her if things were to go terribly wrong, “for they are our most potent weapons against the unnatural.” I began to put the artefact through the motions.
“A fine thing—” I started to say
A sudden shift, like the falling feeling just before you wake from a daydream.
Back a few hours. I had been talking but now I was not. I was in the middle of setting my bag down. The circle had not yet been spelled out. I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. I didn’t understand what was going on--why it was happening, why time was spooling itself back up. My hand covered my mouth--a brief moment of nausea passing.
She was looking at me expectantly. I had yet to launch into my brief diatribe. Something gave me a change of heart--I decided this time I would be forthright. I found the flask--time’s hiccup had done nothing for my sobriety--and pushed it at her.
She frowned dismissively. “I asked for clarity, not, that.”
“I think a different approach is warranted,” I said more to myself than to her. “I had hoped to spare you--but never mind all that. When the geist takes form--well it cannot take form, it must take its form.”
Her eyes narrowed, confused. I shrugged and shook my head at the flask. A hand reached absently to feel the stopwatch’s gilded edge through my coat.
“Perhaps, you’ve had enough,” she said matter-of-factly, and took the flask from my hand. I smiled as she took a sip. Well, the means do not matter. “You were...trying to say?”
“Yes--” a hiccup interrupted me briefly, “the geist will take one of our forms. And, as only one of us has any experience in interrogating a thing that has existed beyond the grave, it has to be you.” As I finished, I motioned the flask back toward her lips.
“I’d rather a clear head--”
“I know, but there is a reason why they call it liquid courage. And, there is more, if you are inebriated it will attract it as simply as opposing poles--well, you are familiar with Franklin’s experiment? Think lightning finding the fastest route to the ground.”
I prepared for some shock or argument against my plan but Madeleine only nodded severly and took another swig. I paused a moment--surprised at the way she handled the weight of this thing.
“Of all the things we face before we might uncover your son’s killer--this will be the hardest. I am sorry that it must be yours to bare. But it shall be quick--a nightmare, no more, a moment of darkness and know the morning sun will not be far behind. Knowing that there is an end, well, it well help retain your ingots of sanity.”
Forward for the first time: whimsical wind tugging a handkerchief from present’s hand.
The words were spelled out on the floor in Sumerian, at least as best as I could manage. If my hand was as steady as it was when the watch was hanging from it, then they would know what we sought and that they would find no relief from their punishment if they were to waste our time. An undead advert, I thought, and laughed. Madeleine gave me a look that told me she thought (knew) me to be mad.
Madness, he had said severely, his face a granite block like those that litter the New England landscape, that is what it will cost you. Only with madness can you delve past the shallows. You might hold your breath for a time, but eventually, we all dive too deep.
Madeleine had gone quiet, but the flask found her lips often enough. Preparing herself. I had seen that look on her face, the same look she’d had when I first proposed this course of action. It was a willful look: a wall raised before an invading army, a door barred against the battering ram.
“You have a taste of an understanding of what is to come. That is good. It will help you.” I didn’t know what else to say or do.
Well, there was one thing.
I motioned for the flask and took another swig. I went to hand it back but then took another. Facing a geist was no thing to look forward to. I looked at Madeleine--but one taking you over; I shuddered at the memory. It was only like a nightmare. But it stuck with you for a lifetime.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
She took the scotch back and had another sip. “Yes,” she said. I watched her for a moment as she tried to find a place to put the flask down.
I took it from her gently and hugged her. “Relax. I promise, just like sleeping.”
Lighting the candle in the deadman’s hand proved trickier than normal. Too much, some part of me told myself but I pretended like I didn’t know what it was saying. It would all work out.
The words came to my lips--there were a few stumbles but on my third try, they flowed fluidly.
Darkness consumed; it was expected. I heard Madeleine gasp and realized I had not told her. Cold would be next, she would feel all the warmth draining out of--
A blanket of frost began to hug me, pressing its weight gently down--kissing my skin from toe to nose. That was wrong. I shouldn’t be the one to feel the geist’s touch.
A hand reached inside me and squeezed my soul-heart. My brain screamed--fighting a presence that was trying to snuggle up next to it and share the controls.
Madeleine, I tried to scream, but the mouth was no longer mine and I was no longer me and I heard the threat it uttered forth and the anger it had in its soul all the fumes of punishment it had been forced to inhale vomiting out of its mouth (A taste of knowledge, a flake floating into my reality, melted upon his tongue: they did not always come out angry but if you knew the manner to handle it, it could be easier when they did. But to the untrained it was certainly worse).
A rotten proboscis was sucking up the last of my soul.
Another flake came and melted as easily but this one tasted of sulfur and charcoal, deer piss and pine:
A statue of marble--its lips barely parting to speak the words:
What it will cost you? Madness.
The statue stirred: lids of bark lifted to reveal giant black pupils that whispered exotic and over-ripe insults.
The pupils spoke but it was wrong because it was her voice and it had not been her voice.
Only with madness can you delve past the shallows.
One inky soul-drop remained. The insectoid syringe fumbled about, trying to find it.
And then we saw each other. The geist and I, soul-eye to soul-eye. And I knew then that it was no simple geist but something even more chthonic. Grinning, it finished the memory for me, because, for now, it laid claim to the thing. It lay claim to all of me.
You might hold your breath for a time, but eventually, we all dive too deep.
I tried to scream. Fingers like decayed stalks of celery sprouted into my mouth. The cold, clammy, scratching hand reached deeper and stifled any sounds I dared utter.
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The last suffocation of my soul. The spirit had taken my form and I was elsewhere; it had been something other than a geist, which I had conjured, and as my soul took its last breath I realized: it wanted to take me and it had been seeking her.
Why, I asked myself but the word was lost in a twirl of thoughts, in vegetable-like digits scratching at my heart.
Tropic-scented words kissed my ear, finding the space between a gently humming tune:
We all dive too deep.
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A GRIFTER AMID THE NOTHINGNESS
Floating.
I am.
I am floating.
It was another world: the beckoning shadows when the root cellar door swings open.
I am.
Floating.
Nothingness on all sides.
Disorientation.
I saw myself through a looking glass and it came back to me. Recorpulation ensued.
This was different than I had expected. It had forced me completely out. Here: the un-Universe. The place of discarded things. Now that I was whole it began to take shape around me.
I was caught in a maelstrom: a planet had appeared and dragged me kicking and screaming towards it. For a moment I saw its face (faces). I knew what would wait for me on the surface and it was not a thing I dared face.
The un-Universe is filled with lost souls.
I crashed into terra fima. A finned snake-thing slithered out from the brush.
“Don’t feed the geese,” it said, taking a bite from my left leg. The planet laughed. Somewhere, nearby a star crashed into earth.
“Forgive me,” I uttered to the snake-thing, more out of fear than anything else. It stared at me, swallowing my flesh, and then undulated away. In the place where it disappeared a stone pile formed into a tremendous hand. At its peak stood a faceless child, faceless because it had been torn clean free, lidless eyes glaring, toothy mouth grinning.
“No,” the child replied calmly, plucking one eyeball out and offering it to me.
“Take a bite?” the child asked, now standing only a foot away, its tiny hand reaching up toward me, the eyeball waiting patiently in the palm, strings of gristle trailing streaks of red along pale skin. It stared at me, one-eyed and unmoved by my shock, as if it had always been there, as if it had always existed in the space directly in front of me.
“You’ll be hungry again.” The world was fading and so too was the voice. “You’ve a long way to go before the end.”
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