M.L.N. Hanover - Vicious Grace

Ex surveyed the circle of dirt, his expression sour. He didn’t find anything to object to. I watched David watching him, and I could see the fear in his eyes like fish swimming under ice.

“We should do this soon,” David said. “Before I chicken out.”

“You won’t,” Ex said. “You’re too strong for that. It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m going to die,” David said.

“We all are,” Ex said. “Sooner or later. This just means you’ll see God’s face before I get to.”

David blinked and managed an amused smile, then twisted in the narrow space, digging at his sock. A moment later, he handed my paper talisman up to Ex.

“Hey, if I’m supposed to get possessed, I probably shouldn’t have this, eh?”

Ex’s face went grayer. I wondered what would have happened if David hadn’t remembered it.

“No, probably not,” Ex said.

“Okay,” Kim said. “I think we’re ready.”

“You should lie down, David,” Ex said.

Slowly, David lay back, folding his arms over his chest. I heard Ex whispering a benediction as he made the sign of the cross in the air. Then the four of us took our places at the cardinal points. Ex began chanting. Kim and Aubrey and I came in one at a time, like kids singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The comparison struck me as hilarious, and I had to bring my focus back to the moment before I took out nos dico vobis and put in life is but a dream .

I couldn’t tell if the shuddering was the power of the qi flowing among us, the rider becoming suddenly aware of us, or my own exhausted body. My eyes closed, and I tried to keep my intention tightened down to a single point. The flutter of up-all-night random thoughts was my enemy. I couldn’t afford to worry about Chogyi Jake or the guards we’d hurt. I couldn’t wonder what Oonishi was doing, or whether Eric had planned to do something like this, or what I was going to do about changing my ringtone. There could only be the words, cycling around all of us.

I became vaguely aware that I could feel the others: Kim and Ex and Aubrey. I knew that Kim’s left knee was aching badly. I knew that Ex was suffering a headache that he hadn’t mentioned. They were becoming part of my own body, unfamiliar and immediate and close. I’d never been part of a circle like this before, and the intimacy of it was startling. I felt Kim’s desperate hope. Aubrey’s guilt and confusion and discomfort at his psychic proximity to Kim and me at the same time, and I knew when he felt my amusement, remembering what he’d said about not liking the idea of a menáge à trois. And Ex. His mind was a furnace: powerful, unnerving sexual desire; guilt as black as ink; and a bone-deep resolve that felt like a mother bear ready to kill and die for her cubs. Our minds slid into one another, the barriers between us softening, weeping, being erased in the whirlpool of our combined intention. We reached out for it.

And then we had it.

The rider’s howl was inaudible and deep as a well. Its rage raked cold teeth against us, tearing at our minds. It gathered itself and launched a furious assault on the combined mind we had created. I pushed back, or Ex did. Or Kim. It was a distinction without a difference. We shifted, pulling the rider down. I felt the words of the chant roughening in my throat. I wanted to cough, but I didn’t dare to. My spine and knees ached, and I was sweating like I’d been put in a fire. It had to go down, into the coffin, into David’s waiting flesh. I bared my teeth, forcing out the words. My jaw hurt. The rider didn’t move. I felt it floating in the air that was either graveyard-still or hurricane-whipped or both. I knew that if I opened my eyes, it would be there, just like in the dream. Its inhuman fingers brushed against me, grabbing at me, trying to break my concentration. We could not make it move.

And then it slipped. It caught itself almost immediately, but it slipped. I felt the surge of joy from all of us, and our gestalt mind redoubled its effort. The rider threw images at us like stones. Worms crawling through living flesh. Fire-charred bodies. A naked woman stretched upon a cross while a pale man did something unspeakable. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. Of burning skin. The smell of the vast, cold ocean, lifeless as a desert, and more hostile. A woman’s voice, soft and throaty, offered obscene things and a man’s low growl threatened force. Every time it came too close to a weakness, every time one of us recoiled in fear or shame, the others flowed in. The rider could have broken any of us, but together we were more than four fragile, imperfect, wounded people.

Together, we were Legion.

The rider slipped again, and for a moment, David was in the unreal struggle too. I heard him crying out in the old civil defense ward, miles away from me and close enough to touch. He fought, pushing the rider away in mindless panic. I felt him drowning in the filth and ice water; I heard his heels kicking against the bottom of the open casket.

It’s all right, we thought to him. This is the worst part. It’s almost over.

David’s scream was despair and fear. Something in our group mind reached out, and the rider recoiled. I felt David grow calm and his resistance fade. The rider slid into his flesh, unable to find a handhold. The silence was so sudden, it seemed loud. My eyes fluttered open.

The ward looked just the same. The lanterns were still glowing. The ruined boxes and machinery stood where they had been. Tremors shook my body, seeming to start in my belly and grow more violent as they radiated out my arms and legs. Aubrey, across the pit from me, was soaked with sweat. Kim’s eyes were still closed, and I didn’t need the magic of the ceremony to feel the raw exhaustion in her. It was too much like my own. Ex only seemed a little more drawn than usual, a little harder. I could still feel my connection to them. I knew that if I pushed my awareness to the back of my mind, I could find my way into them all, and the knowledge was as eerie as it was comforting.

“Not done yet,” Ex said. “Almost.”

I risked a glance down. David Souder was gone, and something demonic was staring out from him. His eyes glowed a cold blue. The light spilled out his nose. When he opened his mouth, his lips forming threats I could understand but not hear, his mouth was bright, his teeth sharp and glasslike, his tongue tar-black and unnaturally mobile. His fingers had sprouted extra joints. I knew that the man was in there, trapped behind those evil, luminous eyes, but I couldn’t see him. All sense of David vanished, and the Beast Rahab, Angel of Shells, was in his place. Its presence still pressed against me like the chill of an opened door in the dead of winter. The sigils and marks that lined the coffin swirled with something that wasn’t quite light. The prison was ready. All we had to do was close the door.

“Help me,” Ex said, but not to me.

Aubrey rose to his knees, and together he and Ex lifted the black plank of the coffin lid. Gingerly, they positioned it over the silent, screaming man.

It almost worked.

I couldn’t tell which of them slipped, only that the lid twisted, and Ex bent hard, trying to catch it. Kim leaned forward, putting out her hand to steady him. Her leg went out behind, balancing her and scraping a break in the thin line of dirt. I felt the connection to the others vanish. With a shriek, David’s spirit-ridden body boiled up out of the coffin, wide, meaty hands batting Ex away like they were slapping a fly. Kim screamed and Aubrey dropped the coffin lid.

The circle was broken, and the beast was loose.

I didn’t think, didn’t consider. I dropped back a few inches behind my eyes, and my body leaped forward, shoulder hitting the rider’s side. It was like trying to tackle a wall, but the haugsvarmr stumbled. I swung around, driving my elbow in toward the small of its back, but the rider had already moved. It wore David’s body like a shawl. I could see the force of its will making the air shimmer, heat waves off a highway, and I noticed again that David was really a very large man. Ex scrambled backward, cursing furiously. Kim and Aubrey stood caught between fleeing and fighting. The rider’s hand shot out, grabbing me by the head, lifting me, and tossing me across the room like I weighed about a pound. I landed on my back, the wind knocked out of me.