M. Hanover - Unclean Spirits

“Hey,” he said, “where are my manners, eh? You want a drink?”

“Um,” I said. And then, “Yes.”

He led the way back to the kitchen. I perched on one of the stools while he poured two generous fingers of brandy into a water glass. I’d seen pictures of people who survived horrific burns, and while he didn’t bear those scars, the effect was much the same. I could see it when his joints-shoulder, hip, elbow-didn’t quite bend the way they were meant to. He walked carefully. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t seem excruciatingly rude. I tried not to stare the way you try not to look at people with harelips or missing hands, but my eyes just kept going back.

Guilt started pulling at me. Even if it was officially my place, coming in the way I had was rude. Clearly Uncle Eric had been letting the guy crash here. He poured a glass for himself, then took a wood cutting board from the cabinet beside the refrigerator and a knife from its holder.

“So,” he said. “He didn’t tell you a goddamn thing about all this, did he?”

“Not really,” I said, and sipped the brandy. I never drank much, but I could tell that the liquor was better than I’d ever had.

“Yeah. Like him,” the man said, and put a cast-iron skillet on the burner. “Well. Shit, I don’t know where to start. My name’s Midian. Midian Clark. Your uncle and I were working together.”

If I pretended I was listening to Tom Waits, his voice wasn’t so bad.

“What on?”

A scoop of butter thick enough to make a dietitian weep dropped onto the skillet and started to quietly melt.

“That’s a long story,” Midian said.

“Was it why he got killed?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So you know who killed him.”

Midian shifted his head to the side, his ragged lips pressed thin. He sighed.

“Yes. If he got killed, I know who killed him.”

“Okay,” I said. “Spill it.”

He frowned quietly as he took a yellow onion, half a red bell pepper, and an egg carton out of the refrigerator. I drank more brandy, the warm feeling in my throat spreading to my cheeks. I cleared my throat.

“I’m not blowing you off. I just think better when I’m cooking,” he said. “Okay. So. There’s a guy calls himself Randolph Coin. He came to Denver about a year ago. He heads up a bunch of fellas call themselves the Invisible College, okay? They think that all the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties you’ve ever heard of really exist. Vampires, werewolves, zombies. People doing magic. You name it. You like onions?”

“Not really.”

“Not even grilled? Tell you what, just try this. If you don’t like it, I’ll make another one. So the Invisible College, they also think they know why all these things exist. It’s about possession. Something coming out of this abstract spiritual world that’s right next to ours and worming its way inside people and animals. Hell, sometimes even things. Knives.” He held up the cutting blade. “Whatever.”

“Demons taking people over,” I said. He looked up, smiling at the skepticism in my voice, as he sliced the onion in neat halves, peeled away the skin, and started dicing the pale flesh.

“Well, yeah, a lot of it is about demons. Or spirits or loa or whatever you want to call them. Seelie Court, Unseelie Court, Radha, Petro, Ghede. Ifrit. Hungry ghosts. All kinds of them. The generic term’s riders. They get inside a person, and they change them. Make them do things, make them want to do things. Give them freaky powers. Normal people who’ve got a feel for it and the right training-call ’em wizards or witches or cunning men or whatever-they can do some pretty weird shit, but nothing compared to what riders are capable of.”

“So not just demons, but magic too,” I said. He dropped the onion into the spreading pool of butter, where it sizzled angrily. The pepper was next for the block.

“Thing is, kid, the folks that believe that shit? They’re absolutely right. That’s exactly how the world is. Let me give you a fer instance. I know you’re wondering what the fuck happened to me, right? Well, how old do you think I am?”

“I…I don’t…”

“I was born the year they stormed the Bastille. The year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty motherfucking nine.” His voice had taken on an angry buzz. The blade in his hand flickered over the cutting board. “I crossed the Invisible College, and they cursed me. I’ve been wandering around ever since. Coin is direct apostolic line from the pig fucker who did this to me. He’s the only one who can take it back.”

He put the peppers in with the browning onions. Wisps of smoke and steam rose from the black metal.

“I came to Eric because he’s the kind of guy who knows things. Helps people. I needed help.”

“You’re telling me that a bunch of evil wizards killed my uncle?” I could hear the raw disbelief in my own voice.

His yellowed eyes locked on me. He took an egg from the carton and cracked it deliberately on the countertop.

“I’m telling you the world’s more complicated than you thought,” he said. “And I’m not wrong about that.”

While he whipped eggs in a tiny steel mixing bowl, I sat hunched over the breakfast bar, brandy in my hands. I felt like I’d been on an amusement park ride one too many times. Confused and dizzy and a little sick. We both knew he was giving me time to think. Time, specifically, to decide he was a nut or a liar. My first guess was both. But he was the only thread I had that might lead to Uncle Eric and whoever had killed him.

“Okay,” I said as he poured the yellow-white froth over the peppers and onions, “let’s say I buy it. What were you two going to do? Track this Coin guy down and give him a good talking to?”

“The Invisible College is here for a reason. Every few years, they have to come together to induct new people into the club. They have to call up a rider, open the poor sucker who’s signing up for the horror show, and infect them with it. Things start moving just outside the world like sharks coming up for chum. When you get too many riders bumping around, the barrier between the physical world and the abstract gets…well, not thin exactly, but weird. That started in April. While that’s happening, the Invisible College has its hands full. Eric and I were planning to disrupt things before they could eat the new crop of people. And while we were at it, kill Coin.”

“You were going to murder someone?”

He put his hand on the handle of the skillet, flinched back from the heat, and reached for a dishcloth to protect himself.

“Coin’s dead, kid,” he said. “Coin’s been dead since the day they made him Invisible. We were looking to kill the thing that’s living in his body.”

He lifted the skillet, and a flick of his wrist spun the omelet in the air, folded it, and caught it. The ragged lips twisted into a satisfied smile. He waited a few seconds, then flipped it to the other side.

“That’s how it works with them,” he said. “You take the unclean spirit inside, and it devours you. It’s not always like that. Other kinds of rider, you maybe don’t need a ceremony. You get bitten, you pick up the wrong guy at the bar. You get assaulted. Maybe it kicks you out of your body, puts you someplace else. Or it just hangs out in the back of your mind, making suggestions or taking over in little ways so you won’t even notice.”

“That’s…” I didn’t know whether I was going to say horrible or gross or implausible. Midian shrugged.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “Thing is, the Invisible College bastards? They’re strong, and they’re smart, and they’re organized. Every one of them that penetrates into the world makes Coin stronger, and the stronger he gets, the more he can protect his own. Think Amway, but for demonic possession.”