Thanevon
“That’s all I’ve got!” Max yelled as the attacker waved his knife at him.
“You’re lying!” he snarled, patting him down as a security guard would if he were in a real hurry.
“Look man, if you’re going to mug people, you should go for the rich ones. Broke people like me are a waste of time!”
“Shut up or I’ll cut you!”
Max groaned. The blade was frighteningly close to his face. Suddenly it flashed away and the attacker released him. The threatening manner instantly evaporated. The knife clattered to the floor. Max found himself standing over the man, who was now cowering with his hands up in front of his face, palms out, as if trying to shield his eyes from an intense light. Perplexed, but not one to waste an opportunity, Max asked for his money back.
“Yes, yes I’m sorry,” the attacker quavered, his trembling hand holding out the meagre amount of cash he had just taken from him. Max took the money and kicked the knife into a nearby drain. Looking back once with a mix of confusion, pity and contempt, Max walked away. He wouldn’t be taking any more shortcuts through alleyways any time soon. He decided to head to the park a couple of blocks away just to sit down and gather his nerves in a relatively safe place. When he got there, he found a bench in front of a bushy hydrangea.
It faced a decrepit bandstand that Max thought the park could do better without. He sat there studying the peeling paint on its frame as people and their dogs walked between it and him. A young couple wandered past, arm in arm. As soon as they were out of earshot he heard a voice, right in his ear: “It was me.”
He spun around but there was nobody there. He peered into the bush and then under the bench. Nothing. He felt like he should be scared, but he had already used up much of the biochemistry needed for that with the knife-wielding mugger.
“It was me that scared him,” the voice can again. It carried a kind of mirthful evil.
“Who… are you?” Max asked, slowly.
“Aren’t you going to thank me? That bastard could have killed you!”
“Uh… Thank you! Thank you very much!” Max stammered. “How… What…How?”
I am not human, and my power is feared. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hang out with you for a while.”
Max felt his blood run cold. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. “Is this…?”
“Demon possession?” The voice prompted with malevolent glee. “Kind of. Not exactly. You wouldn’t make a very good host for an effective possession. Too easygoing. Too thick-skinned. Not disturbed enough. But that’s just what I was looking for. I work a little more subtly than most of my kindred shades. I don’t like to fully possess a host like they do. I don’t seek out hosts as much as... associates. As you’ve already experienced, my presence may be beneficial to you.”
“Do I… have a choice in this? I’m a bit scared.” Max felt a dark oscillation in the air around him. An extremely low-pitched chuckle. “No Max. No choice. But I prefer willing accomplices, or at least indifferent ones.
“I suppose this is okay for the time being.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Do you have a name?” Max asked. “You apparently know mine.”
“THANEVON” came the reply, more as a disturbance from within the ground than a voice in his ear.
“That’s just my nickname. You don’t want to hear my real name.”
“No, I’m sure I don’t,” Max replied, vigorously scratching the back of his head.
“So, Max, ever wondered what it would be like to wield demonic power?”
Max couldn’t say that he had.
“Think of it as me granting you a wish. Like the djinn from the story of Alladeen, or as you say in your country, the genie from Aladdin. That was my cousin, by the way. I only give out one wish at a time though. And I can’t guarantee that it will come true. But if you want to stack the odds in your favour, the eviler the better.”
Max was at a bit of a loss. He was quite a contented person and he didn’t want to change much about his circumstances. More money would be nice, of course, but getting it by means of demonic forces didn’t seem worth whatever strings may be attached.
“I never liked that bandstand,” he said eventually. “I always wished the council would either fix it up or just get rid of it.”
“Well I know what I would rather do,” Thanevon whispered, and in less than a second, a thunderclap tore through the air with a violet-fringed lightning bolt, smashing the rotting filigree of the offending structure. It burst into flames.
“Jesus Christ!“ Max exclaimed, smoking embers skittering across the path and coming to a stop just before his feet.
“Please don’t say that. I find it irritating” Thanevon grumbled.
“Holy shit!”
“That’s a bit better.”
The roof of the bandstand collapsed, sending up a shower of orange sparks. Max got to his feet. He had to go home. This was all getting too much.
“Hey man, are you okay?” a dog walker grabbed him by the elbow, his other hand cradling a shivering Scottie. “Yes, I think so,” he replied, letting himself get led away from the scene. The dog started growling furiously, the whites of its eyes showing even through its thick black fringe.
“Thanks for your help. I’ll be fine. I’m not hurt,” Max told the man. He hurried off to the other side of the park to get to the street that led to his house. Several people ran past him toward the burning bandstand. It had quite literally been a bolt from the blue.
Max got to the street, and using the noise of a firetruck wailing past to cover his voice, asked Thanevon why he hadn’t seen him like the mugger had.
“You have witnessed my power. I can appear to whomever I please. Animals are a bit tricky to hide from but humans are a cinch. Anyway, now that you’ve had your fun, I think you owe me one. Get on the number 48 bus.” Max couldn’t believe it. He had no idea the bandstand would be struck by lightning. He just couldn’t think of anything better to say when the wish was sprung on him. He owed him one? He didn’t want to argue with Thanevon though. He stopped at the nearest bus stop. The 48 arrived and Max got on.
“I’ll tell you when to get off” Thanevon said in his ear. Max had been wondering how to ask that in the crowded bus. While a little alarmed that his mind was being read, he was relieved that he didn’t have to carry on talking out loud. They rode in silence for a few stops until Thanevon instructed Max get off at the next one. He directed him through a residential neighbourhood to a house, distinct from the others on the street only by a horrible air of sadness and decay.
“Knock on the door and tell the person who answers you’re here to free Andrew. When you get close enough to Andrew, grab hold of his hand as hard as you can. That is all. I’ll handle the rest.”
“This kind of stunt can get me into a lot of trouble,” Max said. He was grateful to have been saved from the mugger, but doing the bidding of an evil spirit was definitely not what he had planned for the day.
“It’s not a stunt. It’s darker dimension business. You might find what is about to happen upsetting, but it is unlikely to get you into trouble.”
“Can I ask what this is about?”
“No.”
“Holy Jesus,” Max said under his breath.
“Please!” Thanevon breathed in his ear.
“Sorry! Fucking hell!”
“Much better. Now knock on the door.”
Max did so and a minute later a woman in her forties answered. She looked awful. Her face was drawn and her sunken eyes were framed by redness that seemed to blend their edges into the skin of her face. It looked like she had been crying for weeks.
“Um, hello. My name is Max. I’m here to free Andrew.”
The woman’s eyebrows moved closer together. “Free him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you from the hospital?”
“No.”
“Are you from the church?”
“No.”
“Neither of them could do anything.”
“I see. Well, I’m here to free him.”
Against Max’s expectations, the woman moved aside, allowing him into the gloom of the house. It felt like he’d stepped into a cloud of grief and anguish.
“He’s upstairs. First door on the right. Be careful.” Her voice sounded hollow.
Max trudged up the stairs and opened the door. He was assaulted by a horrendous smell. The best his mind could do to place it was burnt vomit. The space was dark and damaged; the wallpaper torn off in strips. A soft whimpering came from under a bundle of filthy bedding in one corner. A limp hand stuck out, its fingernails bloody and broken. Max clenched his jaw, strode over and grasped the hand. He almost recoiled immediately but Thanevon growled at him to hold on. Max felt worse than he could ever remember, as if the stink of the room was a fervent emotion.
“METHEPHYS. You are summoned.” Thanevon’s voice seemed to emanate from the walls, as if they’d become enormous leaden concert speakers. An awful, icy darkness flowed out of the hand and up Max’s arm. His very soul recoiled at the sensation and he felt himself float up above his body. From this perspective he could now make out the shape of Thanevon, a dark red, shimmering phantasm. He appeared to be holding on to Max’s head and sucking something out of his ear. An ethereal mustard-coloured slug, squirming in obvious discomfort and reluctance at having to move. It slid out of Max’s head, then burst from Thanevon’s mouth and onto the floor. Then it just melted away, like ice under a blowtorch.
Max noticed what looked like a tiny star floating near him. It shimmered, then descended toward the body that Max’s body was still gripping onto. It settled onto the blankets and then disappeared beneath them. Thanevon turned to face Max. He truly was a monstrosity. Max now understood how the mugger had suddenly become such a pathetic wreck, but he felt no fear as he floated near the pockmarked ceiling.
“What an amateur,” Thanevon spoke, rolling his hellacious eyes to the back of his hideous head. “Always getting up to the wrong kind of evil; disturbing the balance. I had to come up here to sort it out. Again!”
He motioned to Max’s body, which he appeared to be holding up by the head.
“You’d better get back in there. It’s going cold.”
Max felt himself sink back into his body. It felt like putting on a damp, ill-fitting suit, but the discomfort didn’t last too long. He let go of the boy’s hand and wrung the pins and needles out of his own to get the feeling back.
“The right humans for this kind of job are hard to find. You did great, Max. I never want to see you again, and I mean that in the best possible way.” There was a perturbation in spacetime and suddenly Thanevon was gone. The pile of blankets stirred and the boy dug his way out. He rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep and stared at Max for a moment.
“I’m Max. I’m the…”
“MOM! Mom there’s a man in my room!” He yelled.
“Andrew? Andrew! “ His mothers voice came from the bottom of the stairs. She came charging up, taking them two at a time, then burst into the room and rushed over to him.
“Mom! I’m confused! I’m sore! Who is that? Why does everything smell so bad?”
“You’re back, my boy! You’re back! You’re back!” she kept repeating through sobs of joy as she held him close to her. Max backed out of the room and was about to step down the stairs when the woman turned to him. “You freed him! You freed him like you said you would!”
“It wasn’t me,” said Max, going down the stairs.
“It wasn’t me at all.” He opened the front door, and then he ran.
And ran and ran.
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