Keeping track of the occult mishaps of unsuspecting college students can be a full time job, even if its more of a personal mission than any sort of official post. Unfortunately, there are times of the year when a little 'mishap' can lead to far bigger problems. One of those times approaches...

Part 3 of my contribution to this season's Samhain competition. It starts to get a little dark here. Considering its part of a Terror contest, it may not be necessary, but I thought I'd offer warnings anyway. If you have PTSD issues from wartime situations, you may need to approach this with caution.

Part 3

It was small, even for an Afghan village, and close to the Pakistan border. We had been following some of the attackers who had hit Coalition forces a few weeks prior, thirty... maybe forty AAF. They had us well outnumbered, as they usually did, but we were keeping our distance and covering angles that might be more difficult for eyes overhead. Somehow, they evaded all of us; every one of them coming into this little place and now, not a sign of movement and no indication that anyone had left. At some point in the night, they had slipped away... and every one of us was on edge, waiting for the hiss of that first bullet.

We were wrong. The enemy hadn't found a way to leave unnoticed; they just weren't alive to show any sign of still being here. Something had, with inhuman strength, torn them up like so many paper dolls. Cold killers, experienced soldiers, were suddenly green with nausea. Limbs had been broken down into parts and tossed around haphazardly, a head here, jaw there. There's a vivid image etched in my memory of a tongue lying spread out on a windowsill, resting in the sun like a bloated cat.

A voice in my head was screaming “back back back back back!” but I looked to the LT for directions. It's alright to feel that fear bubbling up, but you have to be wary voicing something that can turn confidence in your unit into something uncontrollable. But gods, I wanted to echo it aloud... I should have echoed it aloud. But I didn't... and that's when the screaming began.

The first scream triggered an image of something I would likely being fighting not to see, for the rest of my life. The second spurred me into action. I spun, as quickly as a man in a monk's habit and wearing a sword can get away with... and saw darkness on the other side of the door. Something flickered, throwing sparks, in the far corner... someone trying to light a Bic, maybe. The music was all gone, which is why the screams were even audible. I started to relax, realizing that we'd probably just blown a fuse or tripped a breaker.

“Don't...” whispered Sophie's voice behind me. That voice started up in my head again “run run run run...” and I realized that the lights were still on in the bedroom. And in that moment, I slammed into the doorway. Where it had been like walking through a spider web coming in, the ward was now like a stone slab. A stone slab that was blocking the light of this room from crossing into the larger room on the other side of it. That was decidedly not normal... even by my definitions of normal.

The first strike of the staff hit the barrier center at shoulder height and I felt something give in the dense wood that had taken far greater punishment from physical fights in the past. The second shattered the trim along the door frame, proving that the rune markings on this side had nothing to do with what was keeping me in.... and evidently, everything to do with why we had still had lights. I dropped the staff, vaguely hearing it hit the wall and skitter along it to the floor. It was far too unwieldy for close quarters and was clearly not as useful as I'd hoped.

“No!” Sophie cried out, before her voice became oddly muffled and she let out a pained scream.

I didn't need light to get my athame into my hand or to select the long spine of quartz from the stones hanging at my neck. A quick pull snapped the leather thong and I lifted the stone into the air over my head, invoking it “Bright Lady, blessing of the moon!” The quartz crystal sang with the remembered light of the silvery moon, filling the room and pushing back the darkness. Most of the darkness.

Kneeling over Sophie, who had drawn back to the headboard of the bed and brought her knees up to cover her torso was a shadowy female figure. It was pulling something away from the actress, who was struggling and moaning with rising pain. The figure made a move like it was searching for more of something, and I was reminded oddly of the primates picking bugs off of each other. No matter, whatever it was doing was clearly hurting the girl and I'd be a poor hero if I screwed up and put her into danger and didn't at least try to stop it. I lunged forward with the athame, to slice through the shadow. It vanished immediately with contact. I looked around warily, this having been far too easy to believe it was over.

“Sophie,” I hissed, trying to get her attention without dropping my guard. “What was it doing... what is it?”

She sobbed once, then appeared to try to force herself to be calm. I'd see people do it before... usually right after they'd been given terrible news. She pulled her knees closer to her chest, though I noticed that she had somehow managed not to disrupt the layout of the Tarot cards. They seemed to glisten slightly in the memory of the moonlight.

“You really are... my Destroyer...” she whispered. “There's nothing left... just as it said.”

“Wait... I'm what?” Destroyer? That couldn't be good. I was trying to help her... sure, I had made a mistake, but she was still ok, wasn't she?

“Will you do the rest too? I don't want... I can't be... “ she sobbed again, mumbling incoherently into her hands.

Great. So I'm at least partly the bad guy in this scenario. Is this some sort of situation where I have to make a choice, somehow? Rescue the girl or rescue the other fifty people in the house? I couldn't accept that... if there had to be a sacrifice to get people out, I'd find another way. At worst, the sacrifice would be me. I wasn't going to get anything out of Sophie... so what other options did I have? Find the source of the shadow, maybe? I was better on the Ouija board, but there could be other options. And while I was looking for its source, maybe I could figure out where it had gone when I'd tried to cut it.

First part... get out this damn room.

I examined the doorway again, the glow from the crystal stopping as abruptly on reaching that barrier as the regular light had. My mind was whispering at me again and I let it. Clearly it was safer to stay hidden in this room, but I couldn't let whatever was happening out there continue. The obvious solution was to use the only tool that had worked so far; I tried slicing through the doorway with all the intent I'd use to open a breach in a circle. The blade skipped across the surface, throwing off sparks of... shadow. Alright, so shadow can spark... you won't find that as an answer on Jeopardy. Not only was it sparking, but the sparks and pieces of shadow were getting caught in some sort of orbit around the blade before being drawn into it. Like the athame had a sort of gravity field that worked on shadow sparks.

Not only had I never seen anything like it... I didn't think it could possibly be good. An athame is a tool representing the extension of the will. In the cycle of events esoteric, its an outward moving force. The idea that it could absorb something, draw something into it, was contradictory to everything about the concept. Wisely, I tried shaking it off. I tried throwing the shadow out of the blade. I tried pushing energy out through the athame to burn it clean. No shadow.

Then I noticed my hand. Something was... off. The skin was more pale... and less textured, somehow. And there was no hair on it. Had I burned it somehow?

I tried the blade on the barrier again, a heavier shower of sparks this time; none of which escaped the pull of the athame. It almost seemed like I was making some progress, slow but certain. But now I was sure of the changes to my hand and now my wrist. Whatever I was doing to the barrier, the sparks being absorbed by my athame were sapping some of the life or spirit energy from my body in the process... enough so that it was reflecting in my physical aspect, and that meant it was far more dangerous than I'd thought.

But danger or not... I had to get through that barrier to help the others. Wounds to the spirit could be healed, if slowly like nerves. I was proof of that already, and I bore the scars of it for evidence.

I sharped my will along the edge of the blade and cut deeply.