Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

Knight paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. His eyes locked with his friend’s, he said, “Once there, you’ll have to find this thing, drag it out of Debbie, and kick its literally Goddamned ass until it leaves her for good.”

“I just go into her mind and stop this thing, just like that?” Harper’s tone was a mix of incredulity and near-hysteria. “I mean, saying this is all real, this demon I’m going to go after, it’s been doing this kind of thing for thousands of years. How am I supposed to, I mean … shouldn’t I, I don’t know — what? I…”

The professor made to speak, but Harper cut him off, racing forward with his thoughts.

“I’m not afraid, not of dying — that’s not it. It’s Debbie. If something goes wrong, if I screw this up, I could be destroyed, wind up brain dead, or completely dead — right?” When Knight nodded, Harper went on. “Okay, say it happens. I’m not good enough. I go down. I’m dead. What happens to Debbie then? Who takes care of her?”

“You’re being straightforward,” Knight said, “so I’ll return the courtesy. The way Debbie is now, it really doesn’t matter who cares for her — does it? If you die, she becomes a ward of the state. She lives out her vegetable existence and then follows you into oblivion. End of the Harpers.”

Albert swallowed hard. Knight darted his head from side to side, checking the air around them, adding, “Madame Raniella has travelled the dreamplane before. She is one of the most reliable dreamwalkers to be found.” As his young companion simply stared, the professor added:

“She’ll take you inside, help best she can. You’ll find her far more vigorous in that realm than our own. No matter what she and I can do, however, the thing you must concentrate on is that, if you can catch this thing by surprise, you could give Debbie the rest of her life. If you can’t, then really…” Knight paused for a moment, then in a voice filled with nothing but cold practicality, he asked, “Is it actually going to matter to her how much time she has left … or if you’re there or not?”

The inside of Harper’s head fizzled with an anger tempered by practicality. Knight was correct, of course. He hated to admit it, but at present there was no connection between himself and his daughter. She was a lump of breathing meat that he cleaned and fed and dressed and put to bed. She could not button buttons, take herself to the bathroom, brush her teeth — none of it. She did not know who he was. If he was dead, she would not care.

She did not know how.

A tear on the verge of breaking free from his left eye, Harper growled, “Tell me one thing. If you’ve known all this for so long, why’d you wait? Why’d you fucking wait?”

“I’ll be honest,” answered Knight, his voice low, “yes, I did need to find someone like Raniella to assist, but also … I got distracted … and … please understand—” The professor coughed, excused himself, then went on.

“Listen, I’m certain if I were to go from hospital to hospital, I could find hundreds, thousands of cases like yours. I don’t go looking for horrors to combat. I’m not some supernatural policeman. Or demon hunter. I’m just a man. But you’re my friend, and once I was certain I was correct about Debbie, then I had to pull my courage together and act like your friend.”

“Yeah.” Harper spat the single word, his mind still reeling from all it had been asked to accept. Finally, after several seconds that dragged on for hours, he said, “I’d call you a bastard, but you’d still be right. So, okay, since you’ve got me in the mood where I’d like to kill something, let’s go see if I can.”

Twenty minutes later, it began. Upon returning to his home, Harper took Madame Raniella into the master bedroom while Knight remained with Debbie. Knight had started in with the same kind of distracting chatter the old woman had thrown at her, keeping the girl’s attention while the assault was prepared in the next room.

Giving Harper an opened bottle, Raniella told him, “Hold it under your nose. Breathe the fumes deeply.”

The pungent vapors began to relax him immediately. Then, while Harper stretched out on his bed, the old woman sat in a chair next to it, cautioning him not to wander off into his own dreams.

“You must stay focused. Wait for me to arrive. Once we find each other, we will then search for your quarry.” Harper nodded. Then, just as he was sinking into unconsciousness, Raniella added;

“And remember, dear boy, this is the dreamplane where we go. If you can imagine something, you can will it to be — as real as anything around you.”

“Meaning what?” Harper asked groggily.

“Meaning,” Raniella told him, “Whatever this thing throws at you, you just throw it right back…”

Everything worked as Knight had said it would. In seconds Harper was asleep. Remembering what he was supposed to do, he searched his memory, bringing the image of Madame Raniella clearly into his mind. The drawn face, silvered hair, delicate hands, stiff, slender body—

And then, suddenly the two were together, the scenery within Albert’s mind taking on a disturbingly real substance. The two stood on a vast and open plane, a red and purple expanse stretching in all directions. As vague bits of crimson dust swirled about them, she said;

“Concentrate, Albert. Return yourself to that first moment you saw your daughter, back in the delivery room — remember it, take yourself back to it — be there…”

Time shattered into millionths of a second. In each passing fraction Harper saw pieces of his most cherished memory reconstructed. Bit by bit, it fell into place — the unexpected cut, the gushing blood, his shock, the assurances, and then the nurse, walking forward—

“Would you like to hold your daughter, Mr. Harper?”

He took the bundle without hesitation. Held her for the briefest of instants, then raised the tiny, fragile body upward, touched his head to hers—

—flash—

Albert Harper fell to his knees, screaming. Bolts of pain shattered his chest and ricocheted off his nerves, blasting his senses, spinning him around, slamming him onto his back—

“Look at the maggot come to hold his little freak.”

Harper tried to drag himself away from the assault. Molten metal poured over him, searing flesh from bone, evaporating his skin, boiling his blood, dissolving him—

“I just knew I was going to meet you in here some day.”

The taunting voice did not issue from a mouth of any kind. It rode the electric jolts pummeling Albert, crawling into his organs and ripping them open one after another. It had a female lilt to it that somehow managed to be both familiar and frightening.

“I wish I could say it was good to see you again.”

That voice was one he knew. Recognizing notes, Harper began to identify its pattern. Despite the furious pain lashing every fiber of his essence, still he began to pull a face together within his mind.

“Linda?”

“Very good.” The voice chuckled. “Now I suppose you’re going to pull yourself back together and, how did he put it … kick my damned ass until I leave for good. Is that next, Albert, dear?”

Harper strained to open his eyes. Madame Raniella was nowhere to be seen. He was no longer in the delivery room, but further back in the past, sitting in a movie theater, the voice of the creature snarling behind him.

“This is where we met, isn’t it, darling? This is where you fell in love with me.”

Exactly as he remembered it.

“Is it all coming back to you, sweetheart? Is it?”

Harper remembered it all — being in a bad mood, going to a movie alone, not caring what he saw. He remembered throwing himself into the middle of the emptiest section of the theater. Remembered two women coming in and sitting directly behind him. The two talked throughout the film, but having his theater-going experience interrupted by the pair did not bother Harper for long. He was too busy falling in love with one of them.