Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

“Not as much as I do…”

Both Albert and the Linda thing turned toward the new voice. Hands made of lightning and fire grabbed up the creature, squeezing its insides into jelly.

“You made my mommy leave me!”

The shape of Linda Harper disappeared, replaced by a noxious form, a repulsive creature comprised of a squat, flaccid body animated by long, angular hind legs. Its eyes were a frightened yellow hue, bulbous sacs filled with a red liquid which sloshed freely inside them. As the monstrous thing bellowed, its voice echoing raggedly across the dreamplane, the blazing hands tore it into smaller and smaller shreds, finally incinerating the bits when they were too tiny to grasp.

Albert Harper watched as his daughter dispatched the last scraps of their foe. Smiling, he attempted to rise to his feet. Finding he could not, he tried to speak. No words came forth, however, and he collapsed in a broken heap, all the fight gone from him.

Silent, but content.

“Well, look who’s awake.”

Albert blinked. The room was only dimly lit, but even the single, shaded bulb was more than he could take. Feebly placing a hand over his eyes, he croaked:

“Wha — what, what happened?”

“Shhhhhhhhh,” answered Knight. “Don’t try to talk. You rest. I’ll explain.” Albert nodded weakly. He could just make out the figure of Madame Raniella somewhere in the background behind the professor. His body hurt so fiercely, he felt that the only thing keeping him from screaming was the simple fact his voice could barely work.

“If you’re thinking you were sent into something all the facts, it’s true,” Knight said. “Why this thing chose to bring you suffering, as I said before, there’s no way for us to know. But, once you stepped onto the dreamplane, I was certain it would leave Debbie’s mind to get at you.”

“So … what’d that accomplish?”

“After Raniella led you to it, she abandoned you to face the demon alone. While you held it off, we repeated the same procedure with Debbie.”

“I, I don’t…”

“Albert, please, don’t try to talk. You’ll only injure yourself further. Anyway, the rest is simple. Remember, with the demon no longer blocking Debbie’s higher functions, she could think as clearly as anyone else.”

“Your Debbie,” Madame Raniella said, “once that horror left your mind for hers, she could think as clearly as anyone. It took me but a few minutes to inform her as to what was happening. She knows who you are, Albert Harper, and all that you have done for her.”

“You have to understand, Al,” Knight said softly. “She’s always known what you were doing for her, or at least, half her mind has. The demon sat at the juncture between those sections of the mind where knowledge’s stored and where it’s utilized. The block removed, she could suddenly make sense of all she’s learned over the years.”

Albert blinked, the pain from the effort nearly unbearable. Although his encounter had left him with no actual physical damage, his nerve endings were afire, all his muscles bruised. As he pieced together what Knight had told him, he whispered.

“You mean…”

“I mean, there’s someone here who wants to say ‘hello.’”

And then, the professor and his companion stepped away from each other to allow Debbie access to the room. Heading for her father’s bed at a run, she threw herself through the air, arms outstretched, hair flying wildly, eyes ablaze with happiness as she screamed:

“ Daddy! ”

With some 60 books under his belt, author C. J. Henderson, creator of supernatural detective Teddy London and, now occult investigator Piers Knight, welcomes all to come to www.cjhenderson.com, to comment on his story here, and to read others which he posts for the enjoyment of all.

Museum curator Piers Knight is a quiet fellow who likes good food, quiet evenings with a pot of tea and a good book, and being left alone by all the world. While usually well fed and well read, he rarely gets more that a week or two to himself before Fate, Destiny, or some other joker comes knocking at his door, bringing him all manner of bothers.

As mountains go, Albuquerque’s Sandia Peak was not especially tall; the great mountain ranges of the world were not much intimidated by it, I would imagine. Still, it had a certain austere, ragged beauty. Time and friction hadn’t yet smoothed the jagged edges of its peaks and ridges, although the desert had clothed them in green, tough scrub brush to blur the raw cutting surfaces. It had been a long, difficult climb to the summit, even for someone as agile, strong and long-limbed as me, and with as little fear of death or injury.

I had not been born human. It was still difficult to truly understand fragility, after so many millennia spent as a Djinn, a spirit of fire and power, immortal and untouchable. But oddly, being Djinn had proved to be the ultimate vulnerability. It takes only a stronger, more determined Djinn to rip away all your power, your fire, your existence, and trap you in a form like this.

A human form.

It had not been my choice to become human, but I have made my peace with it, in most ways. I no longer flinch when touched, or experience uncontrollable flares of fury when I clash with others. Perhaps that is all I can ask from this experience — a teaching, finally, of patience.

I might have wished for a less direct method of instruction.

I had come up here, to this deserted and quiet place, to listen to the earth around me. Connected as I was to Luis Rocha, a Warden who wielded power through the rock, the living things grounded in it, I could feel the slow, steady heartbeat of the world as clearly as I sensed the smaller, faster pumping of the heart within my body.

And I could feel where shadows had fallen, in this sunlit and unforgiving place.

I reached in my pack and brought out the news stories I’d printed from Luis’s computer. There’d been a string of odd disappearances in this part of the mountains — three female hikers over the past few months, yet no bodies found. Traces of them had been discovered in the form of torn clothing, along with abandoned tents and gear. Added to that, there had been two undeniable deaths, but not of women — of men, lone male hikers torn to pieces by some savage animal. Mountain lion, it had been speculated. Possibly a bear. The corpses had been too deteriorated to be certain, or so the official stories claimed.

I wondered.

It was, in fact, no affair of mine at all, and it had merely been an excuse to indulge my wish for solitude. I was more than prepared to forget the dead and missing hikers and spend the rest of the day — and the night — admiring the hush and whisper of the wilderness.

I did not get that chance.

The first warning came as a scrabbling fall of stones far down the trail, then a muttered curse in Spanish that carried clearly in the thin air. Then more rattling rocks, thumps, more cursing.

Eventually Luis, my Warden partner, came into view, puffing and sweating up the steep, treacherous trail. Reaching the ledge where I sat, he heaved in a deep breath, and collapsed in a heap at my side. “Holy crap,” he said, and took out a bottle of water, most of which he downed in a desperate gulp, then dumped the rest over his sweat-soaked head. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and blotted his face with the sleeveless shirt he wore. I cast him a quick look, then went back to my contemplation of the view. Not that Luis was unpleasant to look at; he was, in fact, quite lovely, for a human. Tall, strong, with black hair and skin the color of caramel. Flame tattoos licked up both arms in still-life flickers. “ Madre, woman, I’m an Earth Warden and even with all that connection to the Earth this is a crazy hard climb. You could slow down a little.”