A few vignettes

[DsGrouse]

I've been working on some short fiction using pictures that I find off the internet as my prompts.

I hope you like them.

If you follow me on substack, you'll get them as an email notification.
https://evandeshais.substack.com/

Vignette one.

The Bell Tolls,
The face of a knight who'd thought he'd put away the armor long ago. He knows all too well the horrors of what is about to come. He's battled old men, such as he now is, in his youth. Yet, he is there, in his armor, his resolve firm and at peace with the death that is about to come.


Vignette two.

Over the hill and through the woods,
I find myself back here. I'd forgotten the length of the journey in these long years; I remembered it much differently than it actually is. Over the hills, through the woods, there is no place like Grandma's house.

What made me pause was the running water. I am older now, wiser to the world, real and supernatural.

My grandmother's home is surrounded by running water. It is no place of warmth and memories, such as a child might know.

It is a prison, a confining cage for one such as the Upir of Haversham.


Vignette three.

Don't look in the basement,
It was supposed to be an idyllic retreat for my wife and me. She's the artist who hasn't been able to paint since the cancer diagnosis. The chemo took the fine motor control out of her limbs. The new clean bill of health and the doctor's okay for a weekend visit was the kind of gift I hoped would liven her spirits.

The stunning view of the home as we rounded the lake to the home prompted her to demand that I stop the car so she could paint. I pulled out her equipment from the back, and as she worked, I marveled at my luck for finding this place on such short notice. The price was right, too. We didn't have much left in the accounts; the medical treatments had exhausted our funds.

She has that clean bill of health, and as I told her, "I'd pay anything for that." This stay will only cost me a few hours of work. A former work associate contacted me and said he'd heard about my wife's cancer. I could stay here over the weekend if I wanted. All I need to do is clean up the basement.

So I wired my sister, and with her fronting a small amount of cash for gas and groceries, I packed up my wife, her art supplies, and her clean bill of health. My love remained quiet for most of the ride. When she did make noise, it was that small petite snore of hers as I drove.

As an autumn chill pushed across the lake, I helped her back into the car, packed her art supplies, and made our way to the house. I prepared dinner as she napped next to a fire. The cold had set into her frail frame, and the fire, with the aid of a few blankets, sent her back to sleep.

I knew what was in the basement; I'd been here before. I swore to her I'd never go back to this. One should never make promises; fates have a way of exacting their own deeper sadistic pleasures. For a man such as me, classically trained, with the years of experience I have, there are only so many choices. Once you are in the know, this isn't a profession you can walk away from.

Dinner was lovely, with quiet chatter about nonsensical things husband and wives talk about. I complimented her watercolor painting from earlier. She's just now gaining her strength again. The day was more eventful than any three she's had in the last four years, save for our wedding day.

I tuck my drained wife into bed and prepare myself for the work to come. I removed that old black Valise from the rental car; I sold ours a month after her diagnosis. The battered edges of the black leather remind me of the work I've done. A frightful shiver rolls down my spine as memories that humans should not have burst into active retrospection.

I pulled out the long silver key my coworker had given me and started deconstructing the warded locks on the basement door. The smell hit me as I turned the doorknob and broke the seals to the depths below: sulfur, brimstone, bile, and gore.

It's two dozen steps down to the sub-basement where my work lies bound in silver chains. It's a seeming of a kid, a girl of about 13. The beast is good, but like all of the demons from below, it doesn't understand humanity. The uncanny valley of reality's human imperfections betrays it for what it is.

The child's unearthly beauty is a giveaway: perfect skin, lustrous curly red hair, and not a strand out of place. I was told it had been caught here more than a week ago.

"Is that you, priest?" the masculine guttural growl nearly brings me up short, and only by grasping the handrail do I place my foot on the last stair step.

I look at the silver wards on the floor, on the walls, and on the ceilings. I inspect the knotwork of those meticulously poured lines of Vatican silver. They'd broken the barrier two decades before I was born, and humanity learned quickly that the ones from below don't see, smell, or sense silver, even when held by the material.

"So, priest," the vile beast says. There is a sniff, a pause, and then an inhumanly long inhalation of air. The laughter is coarse, grating, and vile like out-of-tune instruments plucked and played in a horrible concerto. "You are no priest," it says. "Not anymore."

I set my valise down on the provided workspace and undid the snaps. The sound resounds in the space just as the laughter did. There is no sense or need to communicate; all the underworld beast will do is lie.

I did tell the universe I would pay any price and do anything. Here I am, once again, doing what I am good at. I chuckle—no, not good, best at.


Vignette four.

The man who taught us to fight back,
"His name was Stanislaw Makarski. A veteran of the third European intifada," the man in the ecclesiastical robes denoting his station as a junior researcher assigned to give tours said.

I couldn't help but think how young I was compared to the man in this painting. I was just days away from my 18th birthday. How I ended up in the remains of old Rome, I don't know.

I'm not studious; I'm not, I chuckle at the thought, religious. Yet, I was the only one out of the greater Chicago public school system to be here.

"Lance Corporal Makarski was a devout Catholic," the man said as the group moved on to another painting of the scarred warrior kneeling in a pew. He figured out the relationship between silver and the hordes emerging from the Kola Borehole."

I turned my attention back to the original painting, which showed the warrior carefree of a death that might come. My gut told me that the cheroot in his lips signals the 'to hell with it' nature. I felt as if he was at the midpoint of inhaling the hand-rolled tobacco in the painting, delivering death to the demons.

What battle is this painting of? I thought to myself as I looked at the small brass plate at the bottom of the frame.

There is a sharp clap, and I turn from the painting of a man now dead 30 some years and spy the guide in the ecclesiastical robes waiting across the room for me. It was an uneasy few seconds as the rest of the "arbiters of faith," as we all hoped to one day be called, turned and looked at me.

"He's not using 'Vatican registered silver,'" I said, pointing to the painting.

"Lance Corporal Makarski only found the correlation between the Demons and silver, not the alloy itself," the quasi-priest said indigently. "The holy formula took a direct intersession from the Pope to God to achieve."

I forced myself not to roll my eyes and move towards the group of prospect arbiters.

"Next, we have the room where Pope Franklin the Fourth blessed the first Vatican silver," the man said as he swung the door open for everyone.

[Cofisher]

Grouse, you have a gift. Your examples intrigue me. I am more slanted toward technology, but, I am going to follow you.
Thanks for the invite.
Jim

[DsGrouse]

Thank you

[DsGrouse]

Wednesday's Vignette.

From Below

"The first demons emerged from our very catacombs," Prelate Brechet said. "They bore the guises of our honored saints. They knew not what our actual form was."

The screen behind Prelate Brechet begins to play. The screen shifts into six partitions showing intersections of hallways in what was once the pristine Vatican Museums. The hallways, with their hundreds of Renaissance masterpieces, are admired by the museum's tourists.

The video pauses, and Prelate Brechet steps in front of the screen. He draws his notched silver sword from its scabbard. Using it as a pointer he taps at one corner of the segmented screen.

"The camera started to move, shake if you will," Prelat Brechet explained. "It went unnoticed, even by the museum patrons."

The video begins to play, and in the upper left corner of the screen, the segmented image shakes. It's a small thing at first, but then it moves again, this time more erratically.

The Prelate hunched over and stepped out of the line of sight. I noticed it instantly. The crowd, which had been teeming with normal and everyday human movements, was now still. As the video played, I watched people clasp hands, put arms around children, and even draw spouses back from the nearest walls.

"We've no audio, thank the Lord and the Pope," Prelate Brechet said. "It was late January and cold." He shakes his sword at the stilled video. "That grace of our Lord saved many lives."

The video resumed, and the horrors of myth and legend became a reality.
Articulated bones clothed ancient ecclesiastical robes battered through the floors, doors, and walls. Each denizen from below had unnatural strength and vigor as they hammered themselves a path into our world.

The horror of what came next is something I'll not forget. One lady had a skeletal hand grip her shoulder; her efforts to back away ceased as pressure from the beast moved her away from her enshrouding arm. The husband fell mere moments later to a trio of bone walkers, his body eaten, ripped apart, or bludgeoned by bony hands, depending on the attacker's proclivities.

The video does not stop for those in the lecture hall, a new building wrought of stone scrolled with Vatican silver pictorials depicting scenes of the holy church. My peers here know why we are here, even those that are sick quickly return their gazes to the screen.

A hand goes up, and the video pauses, "Yes, Prospect Arbiter Melini?" Prelate Brechet asks.

"Why," Melini says in her soft voice. She gulps, straightens, and continues, "Why do they all attack differently?"

"They are not of our world, Prospect Arbiter Melini," Prelate explains, "Humanities notions and even our civilities are unfathomable to them. At this point, they hadn't even learned to replicate our language. They are here to feed, and to do that, they must kill." He moves to the front of the room, nearer his lecturn. "Who can tell me the five primary attacks you've witnessed in this video," his sword tip flicks to the woman under the skeletal grip

I don't know how I know, but I am sure of it even as his silver-embossed steel-clad left hand points right at me.

I begin to stammer, and the Prelate's face frowns, but I regroup before he can move on. "From the look on her face," I said, "That was a beast of Lust." I stand as I was ought to do before speaking, clasping my hands in front of me as our order does. "The man with her, her husband by the ring on his left hand, fell to beasts of gluttony, wrath, and envy."

"That is four," the Prelate chastizes.

I point to the corner of the screen, the one with the previously shaking monitor. "There, Prelate Brechet. The Swiss guard in the guard station set up to monitor the camera feeds fell to sloth."

Prelate Brechet raises a notched eyebrow, elongating the ragged scar across his forehead and cheek. He turns to the screen and harumphs, "How did you come to that conclusion, Prospect?"

I winced at the biting tone of his question. "Only the one monitor shook during the replay," I said. "You took care to point it out with your Vatican silver blade. You asked for five, but I did not see pride or greed in the video. My gut tells me that the guard was stationed there because of a slothful nature."

There is a deep inhalation from Prelate Brechet, "We don't know what got him. It might have been pride, greed, or, as you mentioned, sloth." The Prelate turned around and looked over the class. "Observation is the single greatest tool you will have as an Arbiter of Faith if you survive your training.

https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/wednesdays-vignette

[daytime dave]

I enjoyed these stories as I had coffee this afternoon. Thank you.

[DsGrouse]

Thank you.

[DsGrouse]

Vignette No: six


Sainthood
The phone call had beaten around the bush long enough. I'd not spoken to Prelate Brechet, now Pater Prelatus Brechet, the very leader of my order, in years. The quiet static of the line between us invaded the dying conversation.

"She is up for sainthood, as you know," Pater Prelatus Brechet said. The silence built again, and a wave of soul-wrenching memories flooded my mind.

"I disagreed with putting her in the impetus battalion," I mumbled quietly. "Her soul was too kind for such harsh work."

I remembered well the looks of my instructor, Prelate Brechet. As I heard his distinctive long breath, I awaited the lecture to come.

"She pushed for it; you'd remember her indomitable will better than any of us," Pater Prelatus Brechet said, "At the time, I agreed with you, though we did not know it. She had a meeting with my predecessors, and the result of that meeting is why her placement with the impetus battalion was approved." There was a long pregnant pause with a slight hum from my old instructor, "It is also why her sainthood, the first of our order, will be approved."

That bombshell weakened my legs, and I used my free hand to steady myself as I slid into a greasy chair in this rundown hotel room.
"You are in St. Louis, correct?" Pater Prelatus Brechet asked. The officialness, if that was a thing, of his voice returned, and it straightened my sagging form in the chair.

"Yes, Pater Prelatus," I responded in equal measure.

"His Holiness, the Pope desires an inspection of the portrait we commissioned of her," Pater Prelatus Brechet said slowly. "You two were," a short and soft pause interrupted his sentence. I heard a quiet voice in the background, one I listened to every Sunday, give a gentle assent. "Close, when you were younger, his Holiness feels that you'd be best in assessing the quality of the portrait."

Close is the polite term for nearly being thrown out. Our order can marry after five years of service, and training members of our order takes seven years. It was not uncommon for trainees to marry and work as a team. Melini and I did not marry. We loved each other in the way first loves can, but no, we did not marry. It wasn't a scandal, per se, but it was a blemish on each of our records.

I did not have time to say anything; my phone buzzed, and a quick look provided me with an address in New Orleans.

"I am finished here, Pater Prelatus," I responded with the requisite formality. "I will leave this evening."

"God goes with you, child," that familiar voice said from some distance away from the phone.

The line went dead, and I was only still long enough to organize my mind into the necessary steps to leave. I'd planned on leaving in the morning, but a quick call to the rental car company and I was ready for an overnight drive.

I stepped out of my rental, grabbed my valise, and looked at the building before me. It invited a chuckle from my dry sense of humor. The future Saint Melini portrait is being painted in a former paper mill turned artist commune right off the Bayou Lafourche waterway.

I walked across Joe Brown Road to what seemed like the main entrance. The old paper mill is adorned with thousands of paintings, artwork to some, graffiti to others. The loading dock doors are open and had a set of makeshift stairs into the building.

When inside, I found a man painting silver scrollwork across the doorway and floor. No, painting isn't the correct term; he was touching up silver preexisting scrollwork.

I quietly watched his steady hand deliver paint in smooth lines. I hoped that patiently waiting would give me an opportunity to ask the painter for directions.

"What is it, Father?" the man growled in disdain. He pointed the dry end of his brush at my nose. "Not all of us can afford Vatican silver. Not all of us can afford the fees for the church-blessed wards."

I blink in shock and look around at the interior of the commune building. Heads were starting to poke out of little cubbies and cubicles tented with blankets and plywood.

I turned back to the man, who was now off his stool and standing a few feet closer to me. I am not a Father; the laity often doesn't know the distinction. The standard attire for my order doesn't help.

I smiled and gestured to the scrollwork, "No need; this is solid foundational scrollwork. My guess is that the paper mill paid the local diocese a lot of scratch to have this done," I said.

The man paused his advance and turned his gaze to look at where my hand was pointing.

"Have you a jeweler here?" I asked.

The man frowned and turned back to me, "Several," he said.

I set my valise down on the floor and popped it open. "Purchase a tube of silver solder from him," I said. "Mix this in when you make your paints from the solder," I pulled out a small packet of silver dust. I looked around the space, the floors, and the walls and did my best to estimate the totality of the building's inscrolled silver. I pull out five more packets. "This should be enough. Are you familiar with mixing your paints from powders?"

The man nodded, dumbfounded.

"Good," I said. "May I? The blessing could be refreshed?" I proffered my hand to his brush, and he slowly offered it to me.

I stepped past him and moved to a wall, where a rectangular mark about eight inches by eighteen inches was.

"This is the foundational blessing," I explained. "It is the one piece of this inscrolling work you do not want to paint over or disturb."

With an equally deft hand, I began tracing the detailed work of the silver inlays. A moment later, the man handed me the bottom of the soup can he was using as his paint palette. It took me 45 minutes to properly outline and bless this foundational cornerstone.

I returned the brush and the palette to the man and smiled. "I've done far more with far less; the building is in good hands with your efforts," I said.
The man numbly takes his items and has to juggle the little baggies and the paint supplies.

"I'm looking for a painter who is making a portrait of one of my order?" I asked.

A new voice from behind me said, "All the way up top, overlooking the water, you can't miss her."

I am wordlessly guided to the stairs by pointing fingers. With my valise in hand, I make my way upstairs. I paused at the curtain of gauzy cloth that walls off the final chamber of this upstairs floor. Light from that space flits through the sheer fabrics and yet something about it holds me back.

I realized I had thoughts and feelings to deal with before I ventured forth. I last saw Melini five or maybe six years ago at a continuing education conference for our order. I'd thought that maybe there'd be a chance to start over as adults.

It was the Welsh countryside of Snowdonia; picturesque was and will always remain an understatement. I found her in a field the morning after I arrived. She'd risen before the sun and prepared to exercise her martial routines.

That is the difference between our places in the Swiss Guards. The impetus battalion is the quick reaction force, the soldiers of our order. They wear mail, silver-adorned plate armor, blessed steel, and silver weapons. My order is gray cloth, white collar, and black valise.

I watched and gazed in wonder and amazement at something I'd never thought I would witness. Sure, Melini was grace, beauty, and poise wrapped in the ability to deliver death and destruction, but that was not what brought tears to my eyes.

It was her faith; she'd come by it so completely that you could not unsee it. We'd shared an understanding of cynicism in our youth, but what stood before me washed my reservations of faith away. Before me stood an avatar of faith, bound to her life's work against the defilers we face.

When she finished her routines, she turned to me. Her smile was soul-wrenchingly painful. I understood, with the same clarity she understood her faith, that there was no future for us.

Melini sheathed her sword and walked to me. Her smile was warm and loving in all the ways I did not want to see.

"I am not for you," Melini said when we were near. "It is not to be. I could not bear the guilt if I took you from the love that is yet to come." Our foreheads touched, and she continued, "I have my own path, and you yours. What works I do will pale to the good of yours. You will know her, and the two of you have my blessings."

I wiped the tears from my eyes and straightened my uniform. I looked at the light coming through the curtain in the hallway of the artist commune. I hardened my resolve and swept the curtain aside. Three steps and a jingle of the curtain's metal weights, and I was there in a space of light, warmth, and wonder.

The canvas, as tall as I am, faced away from me. The metal disks at the bottom of the curtain jingled with pure notes—a vibrant woman in her youth peeked from around the corner of the painting. I caught a hint of a smile, courteous and joyous.

She laughed and said, "Ha! That is timing. I've just finished."

She stepped from behind the canvas, wearing overalls and a T-shirt covered with paints, oils, soils, and hues to brighten up a man's daily life.
She cocks her hip, and a quirky little smile plays across her face. It reaches all the way to the corner of her eye.

"Don't just stand there gawking," she said.

It was fear, really, that has held me back so far. Seeing the portrait of Melini would, could, might break my heart. I'm grounded to this spot by worry, concern, and a loss that I've yet to deal with.

A paint-smeared hand grabs mine and tugs me forward, closer to the windows and the light they delivered. I am pulled forward and then pushed from behind across the breadth of the studio. The young woman faces me out over Bayou Lafourche.

"One, two, three," she said before she spun me around.

There, on a canvas of oil and cloth, stands a Saint, Melini, who stood alone against a horde and won. It is not a rendition of her victorious battle or a direct portrait of her in her gleaming armor.

I fell to my knees and began to weep. It is an image of the moment before Melini sheathed her sword in that field in Snowdonia. A handful of moments before, she told me that our love could not be. It is an image, a memory only I could know or have, for we were the only two people in that field all those years ago.

Melini's bearing, that completeness of faith she bore, is recreated perfectly on canvas. I understand now so much more than I could have before. I let the grief flow. At some point, I am tugged into an embrace with a soul that matches my own. I am not the only one grieving.

"She said you'd come," the woman whispered. "She said you'd know this moment. She said I am to prepare you for what is to come."

https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/vignette-no-six

[DsGrouse]

Vignette No: seven



Whispers of a second life

The rain was still falling. It was the last day here at the lake house. I completed my work that first night. My wife's spirits are up, but I find myself remembering lessons from almost twenty years ago.

"The second evolution came nine months later," Prelate Opaki said. "From the depths of holes like Kola in Russia, Well of Barhout in Yemen, Cerro de la Muerte, Kondoa-Irangi Cave in Tanzania, and Krubera Cave, climbed a revised evolution of demons."

Across the classroom screen flitted a dozen images of boreholes, caves, and mines. From those places of darkness came clones of Earth's creatures.

Prelate Opaki's silver sword sang as it moved through the air to point at a Prospect Arbiter two rows to my left. The whoosh of the sword and snap of his vestments quieted the room.

"What was particularly important about this new evolution of Demon?" Prelate Opaki asked. "Complete answer if you please."

Julian, a man who was shorter yet carried more mass than I, stood up and clasped his hands in front of himself. "Prelate Opaki," Julian said, "The second incursion was differentiated from the first in two key aspects. First, the Demons were not wearing the seeming of humanity's dead; second, the forms they copied were of Earth's native species—snakes, rats, and vermin in general."

Opaki towers over everyone I've ever known. His face is stern and unforgiving. It wears a perpetual frown to go with its many scars. Opaki's lips tightened, and he sucked on them. The noise was distinctive, and everyone in the class understood what it meant. He used the stump of his left arm to gesture for Julian to return to his seat.

"Textbook answer Prospect Julian," Prelate Opaki said. His stump finds its way to me, as it usually did when he wanted a deeper explanation.

I stood, hands finding their place in front of me. "Prelate Opaki," I said. "It was not limited to vermin; there were more complex beasts as there has been since. What separated the first and second Demon seemings from each other was their enhanced use of the seven deadly sins."

At Prelate's nodded head, I continued, "Mount Laojun in China, the Taoist temple fell because of the sins. It is because of this temple, its lost sect of followers, and their efforts to document the phenomenon that we know how the Demons work. Once the Demons touch a human body, they invade the mind and can produce the 'whisper' effect, as documented by the temple guardians as they fell one by one. The Demons lie; it is all they do. They told the lies so thoroughly that one by one, the monks died."

***

"Are we ready?" My wife asked. "I wish we could stay."

"Would you like to paint?" I asked. "A few hours will not hurt our timeline. I haven't put your supplies in the car."

"Would you mind?" she asked me with that soft, crooked smile of hers.

The rest, the views, the art, had brought color and life back to her over the weekend. There was a bill, a bill that I knew would come due. I'd said I would pay for it. I'd left my former life as an Arbiter of Faith when we married and my mundane job when she got sick. We've scraped by ever since. We've only survived because of the generosity of family and friends made a long time past. I had no more favors that I might call upon. Now, more than ever before, I needed work.

I prepared her gear, setting her in a chair with plenty of blankets. She peered out the windows and into the drizzle beyond. What she saw I never knew, but each painting she made had a soul.

I stepped into the kitchen and picked up the phone resting on the wall. It was an antiquated piece of equipment with a cord. I fished out a slip of blue paper that I'd torn off a Chinese takeout menu.

I breathed deeply and steeled my nerves; after all, it was only thirteen digits. My thumb presses zero, one, one. I had a slight pause, but my memory kicked in, and I pressed three and nine. I start with the zero-six area code before glancing at my torn bit of menu.

There were four short beeps and one ring before an aged voice answered, "Did you have a good respite?"

"I, we, did. My work is finished. My wife is finishing a painting, and then we will be returning to Seattle," I said.

There is a long, cloying silence as I try to summon the will to ask.

"Thank you for the service," the deep voice of former Prelate Opaki said.

"I need work," I blurted out. "I need a job. We have bills, we have nothing," I pleaded. I knew it was a weakness, a plaintive emotional outburst, but I was desperate.

Opaki sucked on his lips, and the noise was audible 6,000 miles away. It was a gesture he usually did when one of the students got an answer blatantly wrong.

"You cannot come back, child," Opaki said. "You knew that. She is not Catholic. The rules of our Order," Opaki dithered with an audible "Hmmn," and it gave me nearly as much hope as my wife's clean bill of health.

"To say that I am desperate, well, that is an understatement," I replied.

"Wait there," Opaki said. "I will call back."

So I waited as my wife painted. They were not big paintings but small postcard-sized images of rain, lights, and drops working in concert to reflect images of the lake off the glass.

These small paintings had the kind of fine detail she'd not been able to achieve in many years. I sat at the counter and stared at one of the cards as it dried, my sandwich long since eaten. My wife had nibbled on hers; at least her appetite was returning. The sound of the phone startled us both.

"You have a vehicle?" Opaki asked.

"A rental, I am scheduled to return it in the morning," I replied.

"Extend it," Opaki said with no explanation. "St. Patrick Catholic Church, Father Bernard, Rexburg, Idaho," Opaki said in his flat, dry way. "A contemporary of his thinks he's got a problem. You'll need to make arrangements for payment and lodgings yourself."

"What is the nature of the problem?" I asked.

"A serpent whisperer," Opaki said. "I cannot offer you supplies or aid, and we have no other work to offer you...for now. This, my friend, is me paying my debt in full."

"You never owed me," I replied. "And Thank you."

***
"Do we have the money for this trip?" My wife asked as she watched the last of the lake disappear behind us.

"It will be close," I said. "Back in Seattle, I've got no prospects, and we've got nowhere to return to. I was three weeks late on rent. This, at least, I know how to do."

She turned to me, and her smile was lighter but no less remarkable, a match to the first one she gave me in her flat at the top of the artist commune.

"I'll see what I can do," she whispered, and her left hand reached out for mine. "I feel better, and doing something will help me recover."

We didn't have the cash to stop or waste fuel sightseeing. We ate sandwiches for dinner and drove through the day and into the dark of midnight. I'd spoken to Father Bernard while on the drive; he'd set aside a room for us in the mission for the night. The following morning, he'd introduce me to the Pastor of Grace Baptist.


***

"Pastor Ron," Father Bernard said, "This is our, well, the former Arbiter of Faith I told you about."

I extended my hand and nodded in Pastor Ron's direction. "My wife," I said, gesturing to our rental vehicle. "She's recovering from cancer; it's part of the reason I am a former Arbiter of Faith."

"I see," Pastor Ron said, eyes darting between Father Bernard and me. "He is capable?" He asked.

I took no offense at the slight. In general, people don't leave our Order except in two ways: insanity or death. To be a pariah of sorts is unheard of. Most of the other Faiths lack the bureaucratic structure to keep an Order like ours on staff. When they need a man such as I, one classicly trained, they go straight to the Order and broker a deal.

"He is," Father Bernard explained. "Magnus Opaki, the next inline to be Pater Prelatus of the Order, gave me his name."

That, I suppose, is the other thing: when my side of the Order takes our vows of service, we lose our given name. To have one such as Magnus Opaki utter a name is to provide weight that he knew me personally and long enough to know my given name. The impetus battalion suffers no such fate; their deeds are marked by their very identity. Ours are protected by the knowledge we bear.

Pastor Ron's mouth dropped open a small amount, and he turned back to me. "I don't know if we can afford him. Our congregation isn't large," Pastor Ron said.

"I've no other work," I said. "A place to sleep, cook, and clean up, enough funds to cover my bills for a short time, and supplies, if needed, are all that my wife and I ask." I watched the Pastor seemingly waiver between declining and accepting the offer. "I'm told you think it might be a Serpent Whisperer? What gives you that impression?"

The Pastor firmed his lips and kicked at the ground between us. "A child, a young teenager really, has been acting odd. They moved near and joined our church. Their new home became infested with snakes."

"That's not uncommon in the high desert like this," I mused, hoping for a bit more detail.

"The girl began to know things and secrets and utilized that knowledge against the other children in her school," Ron said. "It became an issue a month or so back. The parents moved homes, but," his eyes flit to Father Bernard, "early last week, their new home became overrun with snakes again."

There is a sort of private by-play between the two priests; a half dozen glances back and forth before Pastor Ron delivers a nod.

Father Benard departed wordlessly for his vehicle, and Pastor Ron turned to me. "Follow me. We have cottages as part of our marriage retreat courses," Pastor Ron said. "It's not much—a hot plate, a bathroom, and a bed. You'll need to do your linens and keep the place tidy, but it should do. "

Thus began my second career, this time as a freelance Arbiter of Faith. Over the next eleven weeks, I worked for nine congregations around Rexburg. Most jobs were small, enough to make headway on my bills. Pastor Ron allowed us the extended use of the cabin in exchange for fortifying the blessing bindings on the church's structures.

Our time in Rexburg didn't put us further behind in debt; in fact, it allowed us to avoid the cost of a rental in favor of a solid used station wagon. It did one other thing that I deemed insignificant at the time. It gave my wife a new purpose.

She joined me in my work. With her easel, paints, watercolors, and chalks, she set about incorporating the soul of my efforts into a codex. I gifted Pastor Ron with the first copy, even though it was limited to a scant few pages.

With a new goal and a fresh lead for work, we set out, this time to Connecticut, where a mortuary was having a problem with its graveyard.

https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/vignette-no-seven

[DsGrouse]

Vignette No: eight

Our first contract,


Even after the last few weeks of rest and recuperation, my wife did not have the stamina for multiple sixteen-hour days driving across America. Thus, our progress, while not slow, was measured. Our fortunes had turned for the better, but we did not have much in the way of excess funds.

What excess we did have went to pay portions of our late rent and doctor bills and repay my sister for her assistance a few weeks back. We slept in the back of the station wagon, and during the seven-day drive, we only sprung for a hotel once. Even then, it was only because a Nebraska state trooper rousted us awake. The shower that morning was divine.

We arrived in Darien, CT, seven days and fourteen long hours after starting from Rexburg, ID. Our first stop was a thrift store in Norwalk, as my wife found the early fall weather bitingly cold. She was a starving artist—well, she still was at this point in the story—and thus, her ability to thrift shop was second to none.

When I resigned, I returned the black woolen cossack tunic and jacket combo that was the hallmark of my Order. My wife found us a pair of matching overcoats and me a few retired surplus uniform tunics.

"You aren't in the Order," she explained, "but I see it in your eyes, love; make no mistake, this is your calling." Her quirky smile brightened her eyes. "Let me do this for you; I am the artist here; I'll make you look like the world's best freelance Arbiter of Faith."

The peck on the cheek she gave me caught me off guard.

"Is there such a thing?" I asked. "World's best freelance Arbiter of Faith, I mean."

That time, it was a slow, more passionate kiss with a tug on my lip when we parted. In moments like those, my wife had the uncanny ability to disrupt my heart's normal rhythm.

"There is you," she whispered at the base of my neck, "and me, so yes."

***

"He said he would meet us here at 3:15," my wife griped.

I watched her look at the ancient mechanical clock on our station wagon's dash. The time read 3:45, and we'd been here for more than an hour, and that last sixty minutes had been torture.

We were down to the last of our holdout cash, and we might need it for a hotel during this job, so the smell of hand-made donuts over the last hour had sent our stomachs rumbling.

"That's him," my wife said as she pointed over my shoulder. "British racing green Range Rover."

We waited as the younger man than I parked with a space between us. He was animatedly talking to someone. A moment later, he stopped, pinched at his eyes, and took a deep breath before stepping out of his vehicle.

***

"David Felonni," he said. "Felonni's mortuary and funeral home."

"Pleased to meet you," I said. "My wife and I are happy to be here."

David's phone buzzed once, twice, and before he could check it, the little black box chirped rapidly. Mr. Felonni gave the sleek screen a glance and frowned.

"Is this a bad time?" I asked hesitantly, praying we would still have a job here.

David waggled his phone between us and said, "For me, it's not great news; for you, it is perfect timing."

"You mentioned a problem with your cemetery?" I asked. "Have the blessings and wards on the gate's iconography been tampered with or damaged?"

A deep and guilty look of chagrin passed over David Felonni's face. "It's not the cemetery. It is the funeral home itself. I didn't know what else would get you out here. I didn't want to tell you that the Diocese said it wasn't demons, but as today's fiasco shows," he waggled his phone between us again. "Something is scaring, frightening, manipulating, and extorting my clients."

***

In general, my history and business dealings with mortuary men and families, like Mr. Felonni, have been shrouded in darkness and half-truths. The industry is often hereditary, and besides the apparent stigma of death, these families, at least the ones that need my kind of services, worship the darker nature of the industry.

My wife and I are thankful that, all these decades later, our first introduction into the industry and its cult-like veneration of death was not so. The Felonni family was a relative newcomer to the industry, having only started in the wake of the Spanish flu epidemic of the late nineteen-teens. Others we've worked with since had familial ties dating back five hundred years or more.

***

"So what do you think?" David Felonni asked.

I nearly choked on a bit of donut and waved my hand about in an effort to buy myself time to swallow some coffee. Mr. Felonni had sprung for donuts and coffee before explaining the last nine months of problems in greater detail.

"You paid the Order to come out and check your wards and blessings twice," I mumble with a bit of donut still stuck in my throat, "and they found no issues?" I asked to clarify.

"I paid them the first time," David said. "They came out the second time because one of the local Fathers was conducting a funeral ceremony and witnessed the kerfuffle that happened."

"These voices you mentioned," my wife said, "are they saying the same things to all the patrons?" She paused and pursed her lips before she continued, "Or is it unique to the attendants?"

David's eyes widened a bit. " You know," he said, "I don't know. That is an excellent question. Most of my patrons and guests are reticent to explain what the voices say."

"Are they equally upset?" I asked.

"No, some, yes. It is different with each client, but they all refuse to pay the balance of their bills," David said. "My attorney has sixteen open litigation for non-payment claims. Having to front this much overhead costs is killing us."

***

"You'll be fine here?" Mr. Felloni asked with what seemed to be great skepticism. "I don't think anyone's been up here in at least five years."

The apartment over his family's detached garage was cluttered with bins, boxes, and memorabilia from days prior to taking over the business from his parents. The entire space was layered in dust, grime, and the occasional rodent dropping.

"We'll be fine," my wife said as she walked by us.

"Really, Mr. Felonni," I said, "this is good. Thank you for the cleaning supplies. We'll work here a bit, then head on over to the funeral home and get started tonight."

David Felonni turned to the disaster that was an unused bathroom and shivered. I almost chuckled, but I held it back when I caught the stern look from my wife.

***

"It's been three days," my wife said with an exasperated yawn.

I turned to her and watched as she put her brush down and rubbed at her eyes.

"I don't understand it," I said. "Every ward of binding, every blessing, is in good shape." I stepped down from the three-foot ladder and waved about the space. "I mean, outside of Rome, this is as good of Vatican silver work as one could hope to buy. It's top-flight journeyman quality. "

"So the Diocese was right?" my wife asked. "I mean, he's paying our fee, but we can't take advantage of that."

A triple beep from the side entrance door signaled someone's arrival. I looked at my phone and realized it was already 8:30 a.m. David Felonni backed into the side vestibule we were in, gesticulating at someone.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Spunklekrief," David said exasperatedly. "You'll have to wait until ten am. It doesn't matter what someone told you during your sister's funeral. I have no way of knowing if you were illegitimate or not."

I raised an eyebrow and looked at my wife. David pulled the door shut and leaned his head against it.

"Problems?" I asked slowly.

"Yesterday's 2:00 service, Edna Weingarten, 93 years young," David said. "Some rumors started spreading about the will, adoption, and siblings birthed out of wedlock. Not the kind of thing we worry about today, no offense, Father, but to their generation, it matters."

I've told Mr. Felonni that I am not an ordained priest, but like those folks back in Rexburg, it did not stop them from using the appellation in lieu of a name I do not have.

David turned to look at my wife and me. His face was worn, drawn, and concerned. He explained, "Mrs. Spunklekrief is Edna's executor, paid in full, with 1400 attendees, graveside service, flowers, and the whole shebang. She's threatening legal action and has stopped payment due to the brawl that broke out. Five were arrested, and one was hospitalized."

I turned back to my wife, and she looked from me to David.

"Tell me you've figured it out," David asked with what seemed like the last amount of desperation he could muster.

"Whatever this is, Mr. Felonni," I said, "It's not demons. As I just told my wife, outside of Rome, this silver inlay is as good as one could hope for when it comes to journeyman work."

David groaned audibly and started to sag against the door.

"I've covered your buildings twice now," I said, "but I've done it at night."

David looked up to me and I suspect his look was one of puzzlement and some small amount of hope. Truth be told, I was at my last-ditch guess.

"None of your problems happen at night; they happen when people are here, during your business hours," my wife said. "When you have clients and patrons on site.

"We'd like to stay through the day, move about a bit, listen, and observe. Maybe if I see this disruption happen like the local Father did, well," I said. I stepped over to Mr. Felonni and offered a hand. It may give my wife and me a new perspective.

"Um, the first service is at 11:00," David said. "I've got some family viewing rooms you can wait in. We can hook up the monitors in them to display the services going on."

"Do they normally have monitors in them?" I ask, suddenly thinking Mr. Felonni's problem might be far more mundane than he thought.

"No, no," David said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "They are in the conference room. It's where we show potential clients the options available to them. It's all top-of-the-line gear. We upgraded last year after a break-in. You'll be able to watch any part of our facilities with the click of a button."

"Hmm, let's not rock the applecart yet," I said, "would you mind if we observed from there?"

David looked startled and shrugged then he said, "10:30? I'll have time to get you set up around then."

"We'll get showered, put on fresh clothes appropriate to the somber occasions, and be back by 10:30," my wife said. Dear?" she asked, sticking a hand out so I could help her up.

***

The shower above the garage is a single-person affair, and the modest 10-gallon hot water heater limits the time you have in it. I let my wife enjoy the warm water while I mulled over what I knew. During the process of checking off all the things I knew it could not be, my mind started to wander.

I'd been up early on top of switching my sleep schedule to days. It'd been forever since I'd been on a night shift, fire watch as my Order called it. Before I met my wife for sure, but when was the first time?

I chuckled. Ah, yes, the demerits for the brawl in the locker room. That earned me and the eleven other men in my company three days each of tours, fire watch, or runner duties. You were lucky if you got the runner duties or the tours. They were entertaining. Firewatch, sitting in a guard shack, and not falling asleep was not easy. The memory came to me.

"Screw you all," Kittleson had said. His Norwegian accent was thick with frustration. "We're here to learn, to find out how to battle demons," He griped, each word's volume building on the last.

Vanev kicked the whole thing off with his raucous laughter and the snapping of the towel. Oh, the jibe, that's right.

Vanev pointed his finger at Kittleson and hollered, "Kittleson's a Farie lover."

Kittleson's composure was gone, he'd lost it when Vanev's towel snapped him in the ass, and now he was within arms reach of a laughing Vanev who never saw the punch that laid him out.

"Fae, you xxxx," Kittleson said. "Elves, trolls, Mara, you illiterate backwoods Greek."

Vanev was from Macedonia, not Greece. Chronis, however, was from Greece, and well the fight was in full swing by the time Pater Brechet had walked in.

***

The kiss on my lips roused me. "There is some hot water left for you," my wife said.

I rubbed at my eyes and got out of the dusty armchair. "I'll be quick," I said. "Maybe we can grab some donuts and coffee on the way back?"

We were five minutes early, and David was nearly twenty minutes late, but it did not matter; he had one of the on-site staff get us set up. My wife pulled out her sketch pad, and I jostled the monitors around to better see the two services that the funeral home was preparing for.

"You think this is going to," my wife mumbled as she gnawed on a day-old donut hole.

Rich, we were not, and the day-old donut holes were one-third the price of fresh. Between the two of us, we owed a lot of money—nearly three thousand in back rent and untold thousands in medical bills. The hospital seemed to find new things to charge us for every time I logged in to make a payment.

"Help?" she finally said.

"Something's up," I explained. "Maybe it is just clients who watched the monitors like this or a staff member with loose lips. Mrs. Spunklekrief was the fourth client since we got here who's had problems."

It is depressing to watch those who grieve. The first two have services have only a hand full of visitors between them. The third was a minor local celebrity, a newscaster who died of an overdose. He had no family, but many of his fans showed up.

"We are here," I mumbled as I got up to refill my empty paper cup with the dregs of this morning's office coffee.

"We are here, and the 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. might be different," my wife said, looking at the schedule. David had dropped by around noon.

I slid my wife the cup, and she took a grimacing sip. I settled into an alternating watch of the four monitors we had going. My wife shifted seats and is now sketching me, watching the funerals of people I'd never met.

After the folks from the 3:00 service are seated and a chorus has been sung, I switch my gaze over to a different monitor and funeral room, where the family of the 5:00 p.m. deceased is talking to David about something. Ah, by the one lady's pointed finger, the flower arrangements.

"What did you say," my wife asked.

I turned, blinking my eyes, and replied, "Nothing, I've been watching the screens."

"No," my wife said patiently, "you said something about the three o'clock people being stupid for spending this much money."

I chuckled and stood so I could stretch. I made my way over to my wife as she continued to finish up a part of her sketch and asked, "How would I know what they paid?"

She stopped, cocked her head, and looked at me, "Wait, that wasn't you?" she asked.

I would have replied, but my eyes were locked on her sketch. Seven others were with us in this room. The people in her art are diminutive folk, a mix of males and females, all watching the monitors. They are seated at the edge of the conference room table, their legs dangling off the edge.

"Keep drawing," I said, tapping at her image. My wife didn't miss a beat once she cottoned on to the game. I eased down and around the edge of the table and listened.

Noises, whispers, chuckles, and guffaws were clear as day. I glanced at my wife, who was digging out her pastel chalks. The volume of the noise quieted down. I had a theory, a hunch that was really coming to fruition in my mind.

I waited. It took a while for my wife to set up the larger pad, organize her chalks, and begin her larger sketch in pencil. As soon as she started to put lines on paper, I began to hear the whispers again.

I gave my wife the thumbs up, and she grinned that devil-may-care smile I love so much. I pulled my seat closer to her and watched as she outlined the shifting forms of the Fae in the room. Why they are here, I have no idea, but they found this type of thing fascinating.

A section of her sketch has coins changing hands, and another section has two of the Fae pointing directly at the five o'clock monitor.

"Can you incorporate what's on the monitors?" I asked my wife.

"It's not so easy," she said. "They are moving about in the monitors while everyone's pretty still here in this room."

She gestures at her smaller sketch pad, and I pull it free for her.

"Three pages," she mumbles absent-mindedly.

I provided three of her precious pages; quality pastel boards are not cheap. While she worked on them, the whispered noise in our room died back down to nearly nothing. As I suspected, there were more of the Fae throughout both funerals.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. A short text is all my wife and I will need to send, I think.

***

We were out in the hall now. David was looking at the sketches even as the funerals continued.

"Elves, fairies?" David said mockingly.

"Fae," I said. “They love drama, tragedy, sport, secrets, lies, and emotional games." David looked from the pencil sketches to me. "Think about it: all the drama, games, and fights are reality TV for them. It's on-demand, and most of all, they get to participate unseen.

"We have a way to test this," my wife said.

"But," I said as a qualification, "We've some supplies to gather. I'm not flush enough with cash to afford them."

A bump and a shout sounded from the 3:00 p.m. service. Without a wasted beat, David asked, "How much?"

"Five hundred," I said, waggling my hand. "We need some more artboards and a bit of powdered silver."

David let out a strangled laugh, "You're going to fix this with for under 500 bucks in art supplies?" He pinched his eyes again and let out a groan. "Of course you are. How long?"

"Tomorrow at the earliest," I said hesitantly, "The day after would be better."

David groaned and shook his head in the negative.

"I have something you can try," my wife said. “Turn the cameras off."

It clicked, then. The newness of the surveillance equipment and the quality of the silver inlay provided a conduit for the normally unseen and unheard Fae to interact with humanity. The Fae exploited that to their wicked hearts' content.

"If shutting the cameras off works," David said, "the day after then."

***

My wife and I rested that night and most of the day after. Our supply trip to Jerry's Artarama in Norwalk panned out, though at a higher cost than either my wife or I expected. We were out 300 out of the five hundred in cash he gave us.

That put us well out of the price range of powdered Vatican silver, but I'm a resourceful, classically trained man. The percentage of metal powders that make up the Vatican silver alloy is taught to all of my Order. The next morning, we found our products at a local jeweler, and I kept within the budget given to us.

"I put the receipts in my purse," my wife said.

Later that afternoon, all three of us were in the conference room as new three- and five-o'clock services began.

"Come in, sit down on one side of my wife, and listen in," I said.

David and I take seats opposite my wife. She brings new black pastel boards from her portfolio. The sound returns as she starts to sketch the room, the two of us, and those inhabitants seemingly invisible to the realm of humanity.

If I had to guess, it is the same God-given talent that allowed her to make the portrait of Saint Melini or even the inspiring images for our Codex Arcanum and the Codex Iconographia. I've said it before: my wife's pictures have soul, and here, in this place, within the framework of Vatican silver wards and blessing, she can put the unseen to paper.

The whispers were faint as my wife rough sketched with pencil, but if the look of shock on David's face is any indicator, then he's heard it also. That all changed when the first of her pastels swiped across the board. She smudges an edge with her thumb and continues with her portrait of a gaggle of Fae holding court over humanity's mundane dead.

"Oi," one little voice said to the monitor, "Tell her there's gold buried in the backyard."

"Ekezial," said another, lobbing a little fist at the first's head. "Don't be daft. Humans don't use gold anymore. They've got fake representative currencies now."

"Don't be calling me daft," the first said. "I ain't the one thinking representative currencies are real."

And like that, whatever workings of fae magics they'd employed degraded slowly as my wife's pastels lay down solid linework. When she begins to smudge, layer, dob, and blend, the sound is perfectly audible. David and I watched in fascinated amazement as my wife's art drained away their invisibility and made the noncorporeal real, on paper, that is.

There is more to my wife's work and the Fae's argument about economies built upon fractional banking. While she sketches, I take my notes of a sort. For I, too, am a classically trained man. My work is primarily based on Iconography, and before I dive into the deep end of the pool, I have my tests to run.

I take special note of a few things in my wife's pastel painting, the primary of which is a small dangling charm that hangs from the neck of each of the conference room's Fae. We three are largely ignored in favor of the onscreen entertainment. Oh, they glance at us and make faces, but they do not comment.

"Love, I said. The monitors, if you would," I asked.

I hit the gold mine with her sketches of the Fae seen on the monitors as I sketched out recreations of the charms surrounding their necks. If my suspicions are correct, then I've got what I need. It remains to be seen if I have the will to see it done.

I nodded to my wife, who shifted to a new piece of black pastel board. I begin my own work on a granite stone tablet. A thin line of silver solder to outline the given name we heard moments ago. A second tube of solder outlined the crest of Ekezial's charm. From there, I lay ninety-nine percent of a banishment ward in powdered silver.

When confronting a demon for the first time, banishment from our realm is the preferred method. It's less taxing on your mind, and you have a much smaller chance of losing a part of yourself to the demon. These are not demons in our strict sense. I believe and hope that, conceptually, the process is similar.

Humanity has no magics per se, but we do act as a conduit for those powers that might be available. Being the conduit was the part that I least enjoyed. Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm good at it, but for me, it is the puzzle that is enjoyable, not the enacting of the solution. I bite the side of my thumb, enough to set it bleeding. When a drop is ready to fall, I place it squarely on the rune of blessing that I've grounded into the stone of God's wonderful earth.

"Ekezial," I whispered as I bound all that is my mind and soul to the working on granite. I believe that is what separated me from many of my peers in the Order. They always bound a portion, that which they deemed as all that was nessisary to achieve their task. I only know one way to do things, Iconography or love, and that is completely.

"Ekezial," I said for the second time. The room quieted as the Fae in my wife's pastel sketches looked about.

I cleared my throat and said for the third time, thus sealing my working and acting as its conduit, "Ekezial. We know it isn't real. We use it because we don't have enough gold to represent all the transactions we do. We call it fractional banking; you use what we call the gold standard."

The murmurs and chatting continued for only a heartbeat before the room went silent. In my wife's ever-changing portrait, the Fae turned to the three of us, and I grinned.

"Mind telling us why you are here?" I asked.

Like a leopard on the pounce, the drawing of Ekezial lept at me, a small knife in hand. A moment later a flattened Fae was taking form in my wife's art. I've done this work long enough to know the simple Iconography for barriers.

"You wish to bind me?" Ekezial said. "Mortal beast, toy, play-thing, face my wrath." His knife flashed, but unexpectedly, he did not slash at me again but at his own hand.

Ekezial lunged forward for the granite stone and said with a sharp-toothed grin, "Your doom awaits mortal."

I never gave him a chance. With a pinch of my left forefinger and thumb completed the banishment ward. I saw stars as the conduit for the blessing ward's activation. The ward powered the banishment iconography. His name flared first, and then, as I suspected, the Familial crest all in the room wore around their neck. The silver lit up, melted, and fused solid lines into the slab of granite.

There were concussions, a dozen little pops, as the image my wife drew shifted into small dusty clouds where the Fae had been.

"All be damned," David said. With what seemed a sheepish smile, he continued, "Sorry, Father."

"I'm not a priest," I said.

"He's not a priest," My wife said at the exact moment.

"But the collar?" David mused.

"A familial crest; demons do something similar," I said, purposely mistaking David's comment about my collar for Ekezial's necklace. "Humanity uses surnames." I pushed the granite stone with its cooling silver inlay to the center of the table. "That will keep him out so long as it remains in this building."

"But?" David said looking at the sheet where I drew more than a dozen other crests.

I sighed and turned to look at him. "You have a barrister? An attorney who deals in contract law?"

"Yes," David said. "Why?" he asked.

"The Fae," my wife said with a giggle, "in all the stories, they love their contracts."

"Call him," I said. "The sooner, the better, I think."

***

An hour later, David's barrister was there sitting quietly. I don't know what David had told him, but the man did not seem to be out of sorts. In fact, it seemed like he'd dealt with oddities of every humanly nature before.

"We're up," my wife said as she started sketching on a new black pastel board.

I shifted my second working and started sketching out this Fae's familial coat of arms on the granite. My wife's image shifted visuals as she narrowed down on the lone Fae in the room with us. It went from petite beauty to, well, something that wasn't not by human standards anyway.

"Hold mortal," a harsh, raspy voice said. "Why have you banished my vessel from this palace of entertainment?"

I clued into the finer details of the coat of arms she wore around her neck.

"Margravine?" I asked.

"Gerd, Margravine of Norwalk," She growled.

I nodded and started the outline of her name on my granite stone.

"A name was asked, a name was given," she said, her voice seething. "A name must be returned!"

"I have none," I said.

"Humans have names," she bantered back, "all humans have names."

"I surrendered mine when I became an Arbiter of Faith," I explained, my hand pointing at my wife. "She forfeited hers when we married."

"He is my husband," my wife said without looking up, "and I am his wife."

"Unbalance cannot be had," Margravine Gerd growled, "Their names then." Her little fist pointed to David and his Barrister.

"You'd demand a name from your host?" I asked. "As to that man," I replied, "I do not know his name."

Gerd's hand flung towards David before she said, "This is no home; it is a business, and there are no rights of hospitality."

"That is where you are wrong, Margravine Gerd," I said as I completed her name's outline on my slate of stone. "Do people rest here?"

"No, they do not, not at all," she said, "He napps, but that is not deep sleep, nor is it rest, and does not make this a domicile."

I grind a wolfish smile, and in my wife's drawing, Margravine Gerd drew back. I think she realized my trap. Words mean things.

"His guests," I said, pointing to David, "have never broken the rules of hospitality, yet you and yours have. Even though his guests are here for the big sleep, they slept here nonetheless, and to many of them, this is their eternal home."

Margravine Gerd was quiet for many long moments, her little form circling closer and closer to me and my slate.

I suspected it would come. I've only faced down demons like this twice. The first time was during my training in Rome, and the second was back at the lake house a few months back.

Quicker than Ekezial, her little dagger flashed, and her hand started to well up with the sickly orange blood. That could be because my wife didn't have a pastel color directly analogous to their blood color.

"Defend your binding mortal," Margavine Gerd announced.

I let my teeth show in a grin to match hers and bit my thumb again. In a swift movement, we placed our wounded appendages on the slate. This type of thing, as I mentioned before, is about how much of yourself you are willing to risk.

"The mind and soul are perishable commodities," Prelat Brechet had said. "We guard them with more than our very lives. For in our minds lay the patterns of our Iconography and the understanding of how to work them. Should that information fall to the enemy, who knows what damage they might devise."

Should I lose one, I would lose the other, and the loss of both would mean I would be a mental slave to Margravine Gerd. We've got a term for that: a Renfield. It's happened, thankfully, the impetus battalion was able to put them down before significant harm was done.

Each time, the Order has had to change much of our Iconography to adapt to a foe that is, at least in my opinion, nearly as smart and cunning as we humans.

Demons are the polar opposite of the human mind. We build up, learn, grow, and achieve prosperity. Their natures are to abandon reason, tear down, and let entropy win. The Fae, Margravine Gerd specifically, are not like humanity or the demons.

Her mind, her soul, if her kind has one, was waves of heat blown by a sirocco wind. No, it is a torrent of spring droplets on sodden, newly thawed earth. Wait, she is the northeast wind driving down from Canada into the heart of the lower forty-eight. I chuckle in my mind. She is the seasons of time, repetition within the solidity of our world's yearly cycles.

There is an understandable logic to her mind, and with that, I hammer down. Like I said, I do this with nothing held back. Maybe one day I will fail, but not today, not to Margravine Gerd of Norwalk.

I held my left forefinger and thumb over the last of the Iconography on my slate and asked, "Need I bind you?"

"You could not bind me ephemeral," Gerd growled.

I laughed with more vigor than I'd meant and said, "Margravine Gerd, I am more than capable. I've bested stronger demons than you; I was the lover of Saint Melini, I am known to the Pope himself, I am married to a Skald of old, a woman so gifted that her talent has pierced your seemings, mundane and magical with mere crayons."

With my speech given, I put a little 'English' on my will in an effort to grind Margravine Gerd of Norwalk into the tabletop. It did not take much of my will to hold Gerd flat to the table—well, that's what my wife's art showed anyway.

"No," Gerd grumbled. "I submit, I declare that me and mine have erred, and hospitality has been broken."

I released some pressure, and my wife's art shifts as Margravine finds a sitting position.

I asked, "Are you willing to negotiate with the host's agent and redress all grievances in good faith?"

"I am," she said with what seemed like an all-too-eager grin. Maybe for her kind, this is part of their sport, the games they love to play and watch.

It was then that the barrister opened his portfolio and began to outline, in harsh legal terms, the penalties associated with the games played and the damages done.

Five more black pastel boards were needed for the negotiations, but in the end, David, Margravine Gerd, and the barrister had signed.

"The wereguild will be paid on the morrow," Gerd said once everyone had signed. "Me or my agent will pick the representatives of my kind to watch, from this room only. Me and mine will not set foot in the funeral rooms directly upon the pain of banishment."

"Done and done," the barrister said, closing his portfolio.

"Host," Margravine Gerd says with saccharine ease. "I have a grievance to redress with another guest."

It takes David a moment to separate the potential payout he will receive in gold tomorrow from his thoughts. My wife and I suspected this might come up after dealing with Ekezial, but we decided to define our own contingency plan.

"What," David asked. "What kind of grievance."

"Your Arbiter of Faith, a vassal in your employ," Gerd sneers, "has banished one of my vassals and his family while he also incorporated the enchantment into your domicile’s defenses."

"Your vassal struck at me when I inquired what he was doing," I said. "I acted in self-defense. See, here are the images my wife, a Skald, drew earlier today."

I toss over our earlier pastel boards, and her eyes narrow. Gerd flips through them with no small amount of shock. Her eyes narrow, and she sets them down.

"We have broken hospitality," she said. "Arbiter and Skald, what do you demand as weregild?"

I looked at my wife, who'd started on a new portrait, one that focused solely on Margravine Gerd. I have Ekezial's name and Family crest, not to mention all the other crests I’ve copied down; I need nothing more than that, not to mention our agreement with David Felonni for a completed contract. No, I need good will, for the future at least. I've no favors to call upon if in need.

"A small recompense and a modest future favor," I said.

"What is the recompense?" Gerd asked.

"Have Ekezial produce a scholarly dissertation on why humanity has moved to fractional banking over the gold standard, how that relates to trade, the economy, and the prosperity of those in power," I said.

If this treacherous idea makes its way into the Fae courts, I'll laugh my ass off.

Margravine Gerd blinks rapidly. "You've met Ekezial," she said with a tight-lipped frown. "He's not the scholarly type."

"Life is learning; you die when you stop," I mused one of Magnus Opaki's favorite sayings. "I'll leave it to you and your honor to decide the merits of his dissertation."

"Done," Gerd said pleasantly.

In my wife's sketching, Gerd pulled a bauble off her necklace and rolled it across the table. I snatched it up.

"Your marker of a modest favor from the Margravine Gerd of Norwalk," Gerd said.

My wife set down her pastels and pencils. She blew on the pastel board, and a little dust flew. With a deft hand, she spun it around, pushed it forward, and said, "A gift from the Skald to the Margravine Gerd of Norwalk, let all in your court know of your beauty."

In the corner of a mostly filled pastel board, my wife drew the image of Margravine Gerd staring at her portrait. Gerd’s mouth was agape, and her eyes were wide with wonder. Like I've said, my wife's work has soul.



Margravine Gerd of Norwalk

Epilogue:

Our car was packed, and my wife was already inside. We are heading to a small job in Savanna.

I asked, "David, where did you get my contact info?"

"We are a tightknit trade," David said. "You probably can understand why, but after this started, I was talking about it at a convention in Rhode Island. The lady putting on the symposium passed me your name."

I raised an eyebrow and asked, "Oh?"

"Everyone calls her Granny," David said. "Look, safe travels, Father. I've really got to get back inside. All my clients are here to receive disbursements from the weregild."

If you like these please consider joining substack and following.

https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/vignette-no-eight

[DsGrouse]

This is a work in progress, and it needs a final review and edit. I’m posting it for chitz and giggles. Maybe some of you will enjoy it.


Art by Anna Podedworna

Our three-day job in Savannah turned into a four—then seven-week ordeal. We'd taken the excess payment from our CT job and paid off the last of our back-due rent and late fees from our time in Seattle. The landlord did what she could on the interest, but 3,800 bucks was owed. That left us with a small amount of working capital.

Our client, Dan of Dan's Garage, didn't have a suitable place for us to stay, so we rented a hotel room for four nights. On the morning of the third day, our station wagon decided to eat a piston. The resulting crash into a curb took out the right front ball joint. I knew as soon as we got out that the repair bills were going to be significantly higher than our remaining cash reserves.

"One step forward and two steps back," I mumbled in an addendum to a prayer of thanks for our not being injured. In half a block, I'd have been merging onto a highway full of traffic.

My wife's hand slid into mine, and she leaned against me. Her other hand gave me a tight hug. "There is always a reason," she said.

There always was a reason; it is one of the facts I've had driven home throughout my career. No matter our ups and downs, there was a grand plan behind it all.

We waited for the wrecker that Dan called for our car. The driver of the wrecker told us of a weekly flop house motel that would likely have room for us. On the positive side, it was closer to Dan's Garage. On the way to Dan's, he dropped us off and helped us get our few belongings out of the wagon.

The receptionist, a lady with straight-dyed red hair, stepped from around the counter, "Number three, that'll be your room sugars," she said. "My son, Stanag, will be home at 4:00 p.m. I'll have him show you where the tool shed is."

The hotel wasn't much—a dozen two-room suites with bathrooms and kitchenettes with hot plates and fridges. It's the type of Motel that was all over America's back roads up through the late 1980s. But, by the looks of this place, it's been struggling for a decade.

The hotel owner gave us a break on rent in exchange for helping out after her son returned home from high school. He and I tackled a lot of neglected maintenance.

***

It's nearly dusk, and finally, we've finished cutting back the kudzu, dead brush, and trees from behind the Motel.

"What's it like?" Stanag asked. "Out there, I mean. I've only lived here. Mom and Dad bought this place before he was reactivated."

"In some way, it is adventure, mystery, and endless sights to see," I mused, thinking of our recent road trips. My mind wandered up the incredible sights up the eastern US to Connecticut and out west to Seattle. My musings landed me in the basement that the Diocese lent my wife and me. "In other ways, Stanag," I said, "it is pure terror, evils waiting to steal more than your life.

"You left home early?" He asked.

"I was seventeen," I replied. "Chicago was bad before the demons arrived; it didn't get better when I was young," I said, looking at him. "My dad and sisters are still there and tell me it is better, but a young guy like me, well, I needed out."

I tossed some more debris we'd cut down into the drop box and watched Stanag. He didn't talk much or ask many questions, but the questions he did ask seemed to carry a lot of weight with him.

"Thinking about something?" I asked as he struggled to dump an armload of logs into a nearly full dumpster box.

"Yeah," he said. "Mom's putting the place up for sale; that's why we are doing this."

He dropped the subject while we picked up a few more loads of wood, twigs, and debris.

"I've been talking to a recruiter," Stanag said. "I'll be eighteen in a few weeks, graduation is around the corner."

"Have you talked to your mom?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said but didn't elaborate. "Let's call it a day; I want to shower before I head to Gary's for the game."

"I'll work a bit longer," I said.

***

Nine days and three drop-box dumpsters later, Stanag and I finished cleaning out the rear of the property.

"Any news on a donor engine?" Stanag asked.

"None," I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

"I'm going to get cleaned up and head to Gary's. The game's going to be awesome tonight," Stanag said with a bit of a twinkle in his eye.

"That look," I said with a chuckle, "what's her name?"

"Mildred," he said shyly.

I winced out of sight. That name has got to hurt, but hey, it's not any worse than Stanag. We part ways, and I head to our little suite.

***

"Dan called," my wife said with that quirky little smile of hers. "His cousin came through. They towed the donor car in this afternoon."

I stepped to the sink to wash up. "That's great news," I said.

"He doesn't know for sure yet," she said, "but it started up with a little bit of new fuel. "He recommends replacing the," she paused and slid a hotel notepad closer to her, "belts, water pump, pulleys, injectors, plugs, and wires."

I dried my hands and groaned, "Give me the bad news."

"Rough estimate," my wife said, "with the other repairs, brakes, both tie rods and ball joints, and installation of the free donor engine."

I closed my eyes and said a prayer, "Please, Lord, let it be under 4,200 bucks."

I'd traded some work, we have a little cash, more than we've had in a long time, but anything more than 4,200 would clean us out.

My wife got up and opened the fridge. She handed me a plate covered in tin foil and then pulled out a second plate for herself.

"Eat, Love," she said. "It will be all right."

I sat at the two-person table and uncovered my plate. It was a simple sandwich with a hard-boiled egg and some olives.

"I'm in awe of your optimism," I said.

"The homeschooling group in the church chat group reached out to me," my wife said between bites. "They want me to run a four-week art and choir camp."

I know my wife, and when her eyes meet mine, I am sure she is stalling.

"It's five bucks per class per student," she continued with cheer.

The more cheer my wife displayed, the more concerned I became over the cost of our vehicle repairs.

"The thing is," she said as I ate, "It's a four-week contract."

She's at the point where she's repeating facts; the bill must be higher than I expect. Her smile was genuine, and her cheer infectious, so the gloom and anxiety I had begun to build faded.

"How much," I ask after swallowing.

"Twenty kids per class, two classes a day," she explains with a grin.

"That's a chunk of change," I said. "But I was asking about the repairs."

My wife gave me a sheepish and guilty look, and I knew she understood what I'd been asking. She licked her lips and batted her eyes at me.

I laughed, and she smiled.

"Dan said it would be two and a half weeks, maybe three, to get the donor engine out, get parts for our old wagon, and do all the engine work. Another week to get the other repairs done," she explained with glances at her notepad.

I believe Dan's cutting us every break he can. I'm sure he could have it fixed in a jiffy if we had loads of cash, but we don't. On top of that, it's an old car, and we don't have the scratch to replace it with something large enough to continue doing the work we do.

I pinned my wife down with a stare.

"Sixty-eight hundred is on the low end," she said quietly. Glancing back down at the notepad, she said, "But 7,400 is more likely where it will land."

I didn't speak for a few minutes while my mind dealt with numbers and options. With her taking the homeschooling contract, it will be tight. During the days, I've found odd jobs all over the city. Some were Arbiter work, and some, like my evening work here at the hotel, were not.

"It's going to be tight," she said. "Gary's job is still there," she whispered.

It, Gary's job, has been a point of contention for us. Gary seemed like a good guy; we'd met him at church, but... I frowned.

"He's not that bad," my ever-intuitive wife said.

A knock at the door paused our conversation.

I got up and opened it. The red straight hair of Stanag's mother caught my eye.

"Oi," she said. "Glad I caught you. The back looks great. Once we get the bins out, I'll have you and Stanag start on the weeds of the side lots and the repairs to the pool."

I nodded, suspecting what this was. She'd done it every Wednesday evening that we've been here.

"You're staying through Friday?" She asked, and I nodded in affirmation.

"Looks like for at least four weeks," I said. "That's how long it will take to repair the car."

"Rent's due in my box Friday morning," Stanag's mother said and started to walk away. But she stopped halfway between our little doorway and the next. She turned back to me and said, "You know Gary? Right? The guy Stanag goes to for the games? When I picked Stanag up the other night, he asked me to put in a good word with you."

"I'll go see him," I said.

It probably wasn't because she put in a good word, so much as because the Lord opens doors. I may not want to do Gary's job, but it seemed like someone upstairs thought I needed to do it. I've exhausted all other freelance Arbiter work within the bounds of Savannah's bus network. It's time, I suppose, that I must check my professional pride and visit Gary.

I closed the door and heard a knock at the room next door. I turned to my smiling wife, who quickly hid her smile behind her sandwich.

"I've never done any work like that," I said quietly.

After I sat down, my wife's hand found its way across the table and held mine. That simple act is the kind of message that words are never sufficient for.

***

When I woke up early the next morning, the man I'd hoped to speak to was, to the best of my knowledge, halfway around the world. I didn't know how this conversation was going to go.

I grabbed my phone from the counter and scrolled through my contacts. For our division of the Order, for my old Arbiter group, my brethren and I relinquished our names. The contacts are simply phone numbers.

I tapped the dial button next to his number and waited for the tone to change. Six rings had gone by before I heard his distinctive "Hallo," the man once named Julian said.

"Hello," I said. "It's me."

The pause and silence between us were a rebuke of our past troubles and my decision to leave the Order.

"It's been what," my former prospect Arbiter classmate said, "Twelve years?"

"About that, yeah," I said. "I heard you were injured a while back."

"I was," he replied. "I heard you married out?"

"I did," I said. "She painted Melini's portrait." I paused, not out of memory of Melini but out of the joy, pain, and sorrow my wife and I shared the first time we met. "Pater Prelatus Brechet sent me there to preview the portrait."

"You left," he responded.

I suspect he wants me to admit that, in the end, it was my choice to leave, not the Order forcing me out. I'd known that when I left. I'd do it again.

"She's not Catholic," I said as a pathetic explanation, "We found out about the cancer during our marriage blood tests. It was a complete fluke that someone ran the wrong tests." I swallowed a lump that developed in my throat. "She's got a clean bill of health now."

The man who forfeited the name Julian whispered a prayer under his breath, and I quietly thanked him for it.

"Why call me?" He asked.

"Your injury," I prefaced. "Did you get light duty after that? I thought the rumor mill said you were doing community instructional training."

I heard him take a long drag on a cigarette, a habit it seemed he'd never kicked. I waited for him to respond.

He exhaled and asked, "I was with CI for three years; why do you ask?"

"My wife and I are trying to put something together," I explained. "It's freelance stuff for those who can't afford the Diocese. A local guy here wants me to do some classes for the elderly members of the community."

He remained quiet for a long time before he said, "Look, I'd have to run this up. I can't just give you materials..."

He left off with a pregnant pause, so I ventured, "But?"

"All the pamphlets and texts are available online," my former brother in the Swiss Guards said. "It's basic stuff to us, but for the laity, it's good to focus on the lexicon first. Make sure they understand the terminology. Then, you work them up to doing regular cursory inspections of the wards and blessings woven into their homes."

"What's not online?" I ask, searching for the missing link.

He laughed; it was that same little triple chuckle he was prone to during our training.

"Seven years of training," he replied, "and a dozen missions along with three or four years of experience under a Journeyman. You've got all that, regardless of not being in the Order."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll do some research and put together a plan before pursuing the contract."

"For what it's worth," he said slowly, "I'm glad someone is there picking up some of the slack. It's getting weird."

I wanted to ask more, but I knew he'd not say, and if he did, it would likely go bad for him with the Order's leadership. Magnus Opaki had said they had no more work for me.

***

"In conclusion," I said. "Tom, what's rule one?"

I pointed my hand to Tom Wild, a portly man with rosy cheeks.

"Observe," Tom said, "Draw it on paper, and don't poke at it."

"Right," I explained. "Whatever you do, don't poke at your home's wards and blessings." I smiled as I looked at the last class of the week. "A call to the Diocese for a check-up is far cheaper than a call to the Diocese for a guaranteed repair."

This week flew by. The first class was rough, but I covered all the bases. I'd done my best to prepare, but I am not one for public speaking. That night, I practiced my course on my ever-suffering wife.

Day two was noticeably better and more to the point, which reduced the time it took me to relay the information. I added some of their questions to my material to cover and prepare for the third lesson, which was later that afternoon.

The following two days, I had two classes a day, and as the last person filed out of their room with their little booklet of papers, I spied Gary, ushering them all out the main door and thanking them for coming.

A moment later, Gary stood beside me and said, "I think this week went well, and next week's schedule is booked up."

"I still can't believe I am doing this," I bemoaned.

Gary frowned and asked, "Are you too good for this?" His arms crossed, and his stance changed.

I blinked and chuckled. "Oh, good lord, no," I said. I pointed to the mural on the back wall. Gary, I'm doing this work, what I believe is God's work, here, in this little space, to people who can't afford to hire the Diosces every time their wards and blessings flare."

Gary's eyes follow my hand to look at the mural on the back wall of his little book slash game store's back room. It's a space barely large enough for ten chairs at the conference table. The rest of the walls are manufactured faux wood paneling, but the mural, now even my wife would say that was something.

"Isn't it something?" Gary asked.

"It certainly is," I said.

"It gets me in the mood to DM every time I host a game," he said with a big smile.

"It's perfect for that," I said. "A massive six-foot-high silver dragon overlooking a horde of gnolls is a bit unorthodox for my work."

Gary turns to me again, this time looking almost mad. I have a feeling he's defended his favorite hobby from church folks for most of his life.

I held up both hands in a placating measure, "I said 'a bit unorthodox,'" I reiterated calmly. Let me show you something," I pointed to my Valise. "It's going to blow your mind."

I'm not sure Gary's anger had lessened, but he at least seemed interested. I moved to my Valise and pulled out my wife's work.

I opened the sketchbook and explained, "This is my wife's Codex Arcanum." I smiled at him as I began to flip pages. There were hand-drawn images of the demons that my wife had drawn, followed by a summary of the traits each had that I'd filled in.

Ah, here you go, the Fae, "Here we go, the Fae of Norwalk," I said as I let Gary move closer to inspect. "She drew their human-like seemings, the mundane disguises they wore, and..." I turned the page, "and their true beauty."

The image of Margravine Gerd of Norwalk is a sight to behold, especially in her three forms.

"Is this real?" Gary asked.

"This was our contract before working for Dan's Garage," I explained. "They were holding court over the human dead at a funeral home," I said. "They turned it into a right mess," I chuckled, "but, in the end, I think it worked out equitably for both parties."

"So it's not just demons?" Gary said with awe. His eyes immediately flicked up to the majestic dragon on the wall.

I almost laughed but did not want to hurt his feelings. "This was a new one for me, but yeah, there are weird things out there. We don't know if it was the demons returning that allowed the weird things to pierce their veil or their return that allowed the demons to claw their way up from the depths."

The front door rattled, and Gary looked up, "Crap," he said, "It's game time. Let me introduce you."

Gary introduced me to eight people: three couples and two individuals.

"They don't like to wait; I better round up the love birds," Gary said.

"Love birds?" I asked.

"Stanag and Myldread," Gary said. "She spells it with a y, and d.r.e.a.d. You know what it was like to be that age, edgy angst." He poked his head out the door and shouted, "Oi, you two, get a move on."

A moment later, I nod to Stanag as he holds the door open for, well, edgy angst. She didn't go in for the whole goth look, but she certainly was pale and had dark hair. The upside-down cross she wore on the necklace almost made me roll my eyes.

"Stanag," I said. "Have a good time tonight."

"Um," Stanag stammered, "This is Myldread"

"Myldread," I said, using the correct inflections on her name. She didn't smile; in fact, the look she gave me was almost a sneer.

"Former priest," she said, and as Gary and Stanag headed to the back room, she whispered, "Or is it, failed priest?"

With that, she stepped past me and started after Gary and Stanag. This time, I didn't bother hiding it; I rolled my eyes.

***

I attended a Tuesday evening concert put on by the local homeschooling group. I'll be honest: My wife directed it; it was part of her Choir teacher contract.

It was, I think, like every other parent-child recital. If you considered the ages of the children and how long she's worked with them, well, it was outstanding.

What stood out were the dozen or so teens she taught. She'd broken them up into groups of three and had them harmonize the Coventry Carol. It was inspiring, to say the least.

I waited outside the rented multi-purpose space. I twirled a rose I'd just purchased from one of the homeschooling kids tasked with selling it to attendees.

My wife's arms wrapped around me from behind, and she leaned in and squeezed.

"How was it?" My wife asked.

I turned to find her smile bright and joyous. It is wonderful to see that kind of smile on her face once again.

"For a week and a half of lessons?" I asked. "It was spectacular. I enjoyed myself." I handed my wife the rose.

She accepted it with the shyness of a little girl. The twinkle in her eye and the grin let me know I'd done alright with the rose. We don't have a lot of money to spare, not with food, rent, bus fares, and upcoming car repairs.

"Thank you," she said and placed a peck on my cheek. "I wonder what I could do with a year or two as the Choir teacher."

I suppose at this time, my wife and I both still fantasized about a normal life, returning to the mundane modern world. Our daydreams of future civility, a home, stability, and all the joys that come with them were about to pass us by without our noticing.

I waved at Gary and two of his regulars. When Gary introduced me on Friday, they seemed a lovely young couple. I was surprised to see the man carrying a little girl in his arms.

"Oh, they must be Gemmi's parents," my wife said. She's a doll; her name is Gemma, but she likes Gemmi better."

"Gary introduced us last Friday," I said. "They are a pair of his regulars, Justin and Perri, I think."

I glanced around the space and pointed out another for Gary's regulars. "That's Brian," I said. He games with Gary also."

***

The rest of the week was busy. I taught two classes a day in Gary's back room and helped Stanag clean up the Motel's side yards. Next week, we are going to start painting the exterior of the building. We are only waiting on the cleaning company that his mother hired to pressure wash the outside.

When Saturday rolled around, I was looking forward to the weekend, but then I remembered my wife taught classes on Saturday. Sunday morning, we took the bus to mass, and we ran into Gary again.

"Ready for the week to come?" I asked Gary after shaking his hand.

"Oh," Gary responded with a long pause, "uh." Gary tilted his head to look behind my wife and me. He pivoted and twisted as if he were looking for someone.

"Did you lose someone?" I asked.

"Justin and Perri," Gary said. He shook his head and turned to me.

"Come to think of it," my wife said, "Gemmi wasn't in class yesterday."

"I see," I said to Gary. "Were you expecting them today?" I asked.

"Well, kinda," Gary said. "At the concert, they told me they were really looking forward to Friday's game night. It was supposed to be the kick-off of an epic battle, but they didn't show. I threw in a bunch of one-off fetch quests to better prepare the players, and we'll do battle next week."

"There is a nasty stomach bug going around the students," my wife said.

"I'm sure that was it," Gary said. "They must be really sick, as they didn't bother to text or call." He gave us a genuine smile and said, "It's another full week. Are you ready? I'll see you tomorrow."

***

Friday rolled around, and Stanag and I had finished painting the rear of the Motel. It was enjoyable teaching the young guy how to apply painter's tape and paper around the windows. He didn't do as well with the roller as he would have liked, but we got it done, and it looks good enough.

"It looks like crap," Stanag said.

"It's good enough," his mother responded. She turned to me and said, "Thanks for starting on the backside."

Stanag groaned as he looked at the side he painted.

"We'll wait until it dries and put another coat on it," I said.

"How come yours looks so much better?" He asked.

"We hopped a dozen apartments growing up," I said. "My dad always worked a deal with the super to do maintenance and repairs like this." I chuckled as I started to scrape the excess paint out of my roller, "Us kids were free labor. No matter where you go in life, this is a great skill to have."

"Can I be done?" Stanag asked his mom, holding up his paint-covered arms. "I've got the big game tonight. We're assaulting the castle and..."

"Go, " his mother said. Take a shower," she yelled after him as he ran off. "He has no idea how bad he stinks," she said with a laugh. "How that girl puts up with him, I don't know."

"It's getting serious?" I ask.

"For him, at least," his mother responded. "For her, who knows? She's a bit... prickly around me."

I chuckled, "She keeps calling me a failed priest."

His mom raised an eyebrow, so I explained, "We are not priests; we never were. My Order has always been part of the Swiss Guards."

***

Later that night, my wife and I were sitting in our room listening to her phone's recording of the students' latest practice. Her phone buzzed, and she looked up from her reclined position. Her hand reached out for her phone.

"Please," she asked, waggling her fingers like a magician.

I eased out from under her feet—the very ones I'd been rubbing—and went over to the small table and retrieved her phone. Once seated, she wiggled her feet to start the automatic husband-rubbing machine again.

"Mmmmhhh," she hummed with her eyes closed as I began rubbing again. "I'm not used to being on my feet all day with multiple classes." She rested the phone on her chest and seemed to soak in the continued foot rubs.

"How are the art classes going?" I asked.

"Crazy good," she replied. "There's some real talent in there. The kids are in the middle of a clay sculpture project." She giggled and smiled. "I had to put the kibosh on a few of the teenagers' projects; they were a little too provocative for the upcoming art show in two weeks."

I give my wife a gimlet stare, and she peeks at me from under her hooded eyes. "Teenage boys," she said with what I imagine as an eye roll.

I laughed, and she wiggled her feet.

Her phone buzzed again, and she glanced at it. Her eyes opened fully, and a moment later, she scrambled up.

"They can't find Gemmi's parents," she said. "She's been with her grandmother all week." She looked at me and said, "She's not been in school, so I asked one of her friends' mothers to see how they were doing."

The phone buzzed again, and she read the screen. "After school, she drove by their apartment, and the police were there." The phone buzzed in her hands. "They asked her about Justin and Perri. When the mom asked about Gemma, they said the grandmother asked for a wellness check earlier in the week."

Her phone buzzed again and then rang. My wife answered the phone and slid her feet off my lap. She pivoted and stood up. Our little weekly hotel room is not big, but between the 'uh-huh's, ah's, and oh-my's, I could tell it wasn't good news.

Ten minutes later, my wife hung up, crossed her arms, and leaned against me.

"The mom stopped by the grandmother's home and spoke with her while her daughter played with Gemmi," my wife explained. "The grandmother thought it was the flu. She was supposed to watch Gemmi all weekend, and they'd pick her up Sunday evening."

"She asked for a wellness check when she hadn't heard from them by Monday morning," my wife said. "The police went by, and said the place looked fine and that their car was gone, and they must be at work."

"The Grandmother called every day, but the police didn't get around to checking on the place until this evening," my wife said. "That's when they found out from this mother that Justin and Perri hadn't picked up their daughter from the grandmother. Now detectives are involved and at the grandmother's home. Gemmi's going to stay with her friend while the grandmother talks to the detectives."

***

Sunday mass is somewhat subdued. Everyone is wondering where Justin and Perri are. It is very unusual for them to leave their daughter for so long.

I spotted Gary and shook his hand.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

"Okay," he said. "I had to cancel the game on Friday. Some detectives stopped by, wanting to know if Justin and Perri had been there the Friday before."

"Poor Gemma," my wife said.

"Yeah," Gary said. "It doesn't look good, does it? They are just gone: cars, wallets, keys, phones, etc. Their apartment looked like they'd just stepped out to come to game night."

We all paused our conversation as others stopped by to chat with us for a few moments.

Gary turned back to me and said, "It's another full week. I'd thought the classes were going to taper off, but maybe this disappearance scared people."

"I'll see you tomorrow," I said.

Gary departed, and I looked around; something tickled at the back of my mind.

"Is there a problem?" my wife asked.

"No, not that I can put into words," I answered.

***

The painting went considerably better this week. Our pocketbooks, not so much. My wife and I had to pay the bill for the parts to fix our car. I don't fault Dan for that. We are an itinerant couple facing a massive bill to fix a car that might be worth half of that when working.

"Were you able to swing by the Garage and pay Dan?" I asked.

"Yeah," my wife said. "I think he was surprised we did, but he assures me that once the parts get here, our car will have a priority slot for the labor portion."

"I'm kinda liking it here," I muse. "We've settled into a routine."

My wife slid into my arms. She's so much stronger now than she was a few months ago. "I love you," she whispered. "I also like it here," she said. "The board at the school asked if I wanted to extend the contract another four weeks."

"Really," I said. "We could get an apartment," I mused.

She smiled as she looked up at me and then nestled her head back into the crook of my shoulder. A soft little melody escaped her lips, and we started to sway back and forth to her little hummed song.

"Wow," I whispered. "A real job. I'd have to get a real job. I can't keep teaching classes forever."

A knock at the door sounded. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. My wife and I parted. I walked to the door and opened it. Stanag's mother stood there, looking terrified and panicked.

"Gary called," his mother said with a blubber. Tears started to form. "Brian and Stanag didn't show up to the game. I dropped Stanag off at Gary's twenty minutes ago.

My phone rang; I knew without looking who'd be calling.

"Yes, Gary," I answered.

"Stanag, Brian, and Myldread are not here," Gary said.

A sinking feeling formed in my mind, and it took the second repetition of Brian's name for me to realize what I could not place after Sunday's mass: Brian had not been there.

I looked at Stanag's mother and mouthed, "Ride?" She nodded emphatically.

"I'll grab our stuff," my wife said.

***

Stanag's mother drove my wife and me to Gary's at breakneck speeds. We pulled into his shared lot a half dozen minutes earlier than we should have. Gary and his group of remaining gamers were waiting outside.

I got out of the vehicle and opened the other rear door for my wife. She passed me my Valise and her art supplies. I offered her a hand out of the car. She graced me with that quirky little smile of hers. We made our way to Gary and his Friday night patrons.

Stanag's mother was already there. I watched as she lowered her phone from her ear and said, "I dropped him off right here," her right index finger pointing right at her feet, "barely forty minutes ago."

"I saw Stanag get out of the car," Gary replied, "but he never entered the store." He turned to the rest of the players and said, "I'm going to put this session on hold. We are missing five players."

A round of well wishes and promises to stay in touch with Gary passed among the group. Stanag's mother gave out her phone number in case any of the other attendees heard from the missing gamers.

"Come in," Gary said. "I'll make some tea for everyone."

Gary held the door open, and Stanag's mother rushed inside and shouted, "Stanag, Stanag," as she moved through Gary's book slash game store.

Gary's store isn't a massive building; it's a dozen aisles and three back rooms. The first is the game room, which has a door to the other two back rooms. The second is Gary's office, and the third is the bookstore's stock room, which has a single bathroom and a small kitchenette.

My wife consoled Stanag's mother while I made tea. Gary was busy attempting to call Brian, Myldread, Justin, and Stanag's phones.

"I want to call the cops," Stanag's mother said as she accepted the mug of tea from me.

"I think we should," my wife said.

End of part 1
https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/vignette-no-nine

[DsGrouse]

Beginning of part 2

***

An hour and forty-five minutes later, we are still waiting for the police to show up.

"They said it would be twenty minutes," Stanag's mother griped.

I can't know for sure, but to me, it seemed like her fear for her son was rapidly replaced by anger toward the bureaucratic nature of large cities and their finite resources.

The front door rattled, and then a robust knock sounded on its glass. We all looked at each other.

Gary got up and said, "Must be the police; I'll let them in."

A moment later, I was able to make out a quiet discussion.

"Have you seen him?" Gary asked quietly but forcefully.

His tone led me to believe this wasn't his first time asking. I got up and moved closer to the front of the store.

"It's a simple question, Myldread," Gary said. "Have you seen Stanag this evening?"

"I don't like your tone," Myldread said with an air of petulance.

I rounded the corner of an aisle and looked at the young woman. Her hair was dyed darker, and her nails longer. She still wore that silly necklace, now with three, no, four upside-down crosses on it. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she seemed to be in a far more agitated state than that simple question warranted.

"You two have been hanging around each other," Gary said. "Doin' the googly eyes and suggestive banter between characters. You are nearly three hours late on a night when Brian and Stanag are missing."

Gary straightened up while Myldread's mouth wobbled a bit.

"I'll ask you again," Gary said. "Otherwise, we are going to wait here until the cops arrive."

"You can't keep me here," Myldread countered.

I glanced at the game room, and everyone had heard her. My wife and Stanag's mother looked at me from the doorway.

I put a little steel in my voice; it is the same intonation I use in my more confrontational work, "Answer the question. Or you can answer it when the authorities arrive," I said.

Her head whipped to me. It was an unsettlingly fast movement—something entirely out of character for a human. I glanced at the wards and blessings. They'd not been triggered.

She looked at me, from my toes to the top of my head. It was a look of appraisal, and from her feral-looking grin, I was found wanting. It was that malicious smile that gave me the last clue, that bit of information I'd not put together. Her teeth were stained dark, the gums swollen and bleeding.

"The failed priest speaks," Myldread said. She did her best to stand coquettishly in what I suspect was an effort to seem unworried. But for a girl so young, it simply looked pathetic.

I'd dealt with enough demons to recognize the behavior. Myldread didn't trip the wards, but this is straight out of a lust demon's playbook. Even a demon possessing a body would be barred entry from any window, door, or opening large enough for them to enter.

"Back away, Gary," I warned as much as commanded.

Myldread turned her whole body to me. She tried to rock her hips as she stepped away from the front door, but yet again, she didn't have the presence of vitality and grace that a woman would come by naturally. No, this looked forced, as if she were all knees, elbows, and left feet.

Myldread stepped past a display, trailing her left hand on it. Her movement lost the appearance of lust and became more confident—almost as if self-assured were a suit she could put on.

"I've been wondering if you failed priests are all that," Myldread said. "We hear things, you know—the boogeymen of the church, the hidden ones of the Diocese." She pauses, glancing from me to the wall. "There are more of us than there are of you."

"Get everyone into the back room, " I said to Gary without turning his way. "Get everyone out of here."

Myldread let out a warbling laugh as Gary closed the game room door behind him.

"As if," she said with a sneer.

I mirrored her movements; it wasn't long before I spied what I thought she was making for. A quick step to the side, and I am in a position to counter her. I raised my thumb to my lips and bit it. It isn't a whole lot of blood, but the amount makes no difference in the battle we are about to commence.

Myldread used one of her long fingernails to open up her palm; with another sneer and a sniff, she slapped her bloody palm against the Vatican silver wards that safeguard Gary's store.

Her ability to see the in-scrolled Vatican silver, let alone discern the Ward, proves that she is human. Demons cannot see, smell, or comprehend in any way Vatican silver. Had a demon crawled its way up through the floor and into Gary's store, the Ward would have held it in place with chains of Vatican silver, in the same way the demon in the lake house had been held.

No, Myldread was the worst kind of monster, a human one. I suppose, at this point, it matters little if she was a willing one or one converted to the cause.

I watched as the Vatican silver along the Ward started to glow, almost burning in the stonework that held it. I pinched my thumb and did my best to steady my mind. I do not know what I face; in all my dealings with the demons, I've never encountered this kind of thing. What had my former brother Arbiter called it? Weird, yes, this was certainly weird.

I pushed my thumb against the blessing ward, and as soon as I did, I realized how wholly unprepared I was for the evil that I found waiting for me.

***

My mind reels at the panoply of deranged minds in front of it. Through the Vatican silver, I've access to not one or two, but four demons and one human girl who seems giddy with triumph.

Avarice said, "I am the oldest and, in here, the most powerful of her benefactors."

Wrath replied, "You are not power." I felt a mental shove, and the will that was Avarice retreated, "You are the want of it." Wrath, the rage let loose upon a mind, flexed its metaphysical muscles and continued, "I am the implementation of power."

I felt it then, the subtle ego in the background. It's a whisper we all hear at some point in our lives. I've not faced one of its kind yet, but I suspect I will shortly.

While Wrath was busy explaining its superiority to Lust, Pride acted. I have to hand it to Pride; manipulating Wrath like that was masterfully done. The remaining three began an internal bickering fest as the mind of the girl, Myldread, shouted ineffectually at them.

Demons, I thought to myself, a possession? No, I can feel Myldreads will force itself against the Ward woven around this building. Combined with Pride's attack on the Ward, the pair were making significant headway into, well, I don't know. The closest thing I could come up with was that they were attempting to subvert the Ward and the Blessing of Gary's bookstore.

I layered my mind in the Blessing, my thumb was pressed against. I take comfort in the Vatican Silver inlays worked into the stone. I've confidence in this place like no other building I've worked in.

There is a surety that comes from teaching, a relearning of the basics and the intricacies of solid journeyman work. I've taught here for weeks, making multiple trips to the Ward and blessing each class. I know this place's strengths and weaknesses. I've put my will into this layering of silver defensive works twice a day for weeks.

I pulled my mind up short and told myself, "There is a difference between competence and confidence." I checked the influence of Pride and pushed back into the Blessing.

I felt the heat within the inscribed Silver bound to this building's stonework. The team of Myldread and Pride has captured, no, corrupted, one-third of this building's Ward against demons.

I needed a plan, one that Pride would jump at and Myldread would believe. That was the kicker: fooling a demon is one thing, but they do not cotton onto human ways of thinking. Convincing a girl, one who is likely jaded and cynical, is a different type of game.

A few desperate minutes later, I'd given up more ground. It was difficult trying to hold the Ward against two minds working in concert, even if those minds were inhuman and insane. Time and time again, my defenses were beaten back. I'm doing my best to hold the Ward while bolstering my will via the Blessing.

The mental slap sends me to my metaphorical knees. I dare not let my mind stay there stunned. I pull back, dodging and fleeing the long way around the building's Silver work as Pride's mental attacks chase my mind down the lines of Vatican Silver. I retreat, ignoring Pride's taunts and jibes to fight.

That's the flip side of a Pride demon; they are also self-doubt, self-recrimination, and self-loathing. I feel the waves of shame and fear as I let my mind retreat further and further down the line of Vatican silver inlays.

Myldread is there chortling, sniping, and poking fun at the failed priest running from its failures. It isn't long before my mind has retreated nearly the whole long way around the building's silver inlays.

I had thought about my timer here earlier at the behest of Pride, but I did my best not to think about it now. I've been here nearly every day for weeks. I've taught classes, I've taught people the basics, and one thing my Order of Arbiters knows is these wards. Specifically, for all its shine, the Vatican Silver isn't necessary.

Don't get me wrong; it is unimaginably helpful; if your enemy can't see the trap, smell it, heck, even comprehend it, you are better than one step ahead. It is those few steps ahead that Vatican Silver gets you.

But in reality, any old thing, like a mental construct, will do in a pinch. If the mental construct is sufficient, it will suffice for a trap, and I pray that neither Myldread nor her gaggle of demons will see it coming.

I've both of them chasing my mind now. I'm actively fleeing them up and down, in circles and diagonals. Dodging two beastly mental constructs is migraine-inducing, but I only need to do it a while longer.

I can feel the Vatican Silver under my thumb; it's painfully hot. I pray that I have the time and the will and that the burden I am about to shoulder will not be too great.

***

We are taught other Wards and Blessings. Oh, the public sees a ward and its distinctive iconography and believes it to be the entrapment ward. In truth, we rarely use other wards because the entrapment ward is the best first defense we have.

That doesn't mean the nameless men and women of my Order don't know, practice, and use other wards and blessings. Ward's and Blessings are classification iconographies, not a specific or singular pattern we use in the Vatican Silver inlays.

I chuckled to myself as my mind retreated to those last dozen corners. I don't know if my laughter carried through the in-scrolled Silver and Myldread caught wind of it, or if she was usually that cautious.

Myldread had the proverbial door slammed into her face. She screamed out loud, and her pained mental anguish was carried into the Vatican Silver inlays.

Pride, however, did not escape the binding. There is a difference between the chains our primary Ward uses to hold a demon and the binding Ward we can use to solidify a demon to a singular spot.

Doing such iconography is taxing, our bodies become the conduit for the wild magics humanity has no way of utilizing save for acting as a lightning rod.

"How," I heard Wrath roar. "We'd beaten him."

My head was dizzy, my mind was throbbing, and my knees were weak.

I felt Wrath's power build, but it was abruptly cut off. I watched Myldread crumple and fall to the ground. I staggered and nearly fell. I pushed my mind back out slowly, looking at the constructed binding I'd drawn while fleeing.

I couldn't believe that worked. Thank the Lord for Gary's silver dragons, I thought to myself. I didn't know why he spent the coin on a painting with real Silver in the paint, but I was happy for it.

I heard the entry door jingle and returned my mind to the here and now.

"She looks woozy," The first cop says. "The smoke in here is thick. Drag her outside."

There were a couple of coughs and an unpleasant groan from a female voice.

"I spotted another," the cop yelled over his shoulder. "Buddy, are you okay, come-mon? You're almost at the door."

I felt an arm slide around my chest and take most of my weight. "I got-choo," the officer said.

Two dozen steps, and I'm outside in clean, clear air. The Fire Department is already here. A moment later, I feel my wife wrap her arms around me.

***

In between coughs, I gasped, "Where is she?"

"Who?" the officer holding me up asked. "The girl my partner dragged out?"

I look about the parking lot, but I don't see her.

"Hey, Mike," the officer yelled out as he released me. "Where's the girl?"

"Ambulance," a voice from the other side of the fire truck yells back. A moment later, an ambulance rolls from behind the fire truck and heads down the road.

"Officer," I groaned, "That girl." I've got no voice left and nearly collapse in my wife's arms. A firefighter runs over and pushes a mask onto my face.

"Easy there, buddy," the firefighter says, "Deep breaths, deep breaths,"

I heard another firefighter yell out, "No fire, just smoke. Set up the fans to clear it out."

I looked up at my wife, and she was staring in the direction the ambulance had gone. I tried to stand, but the firefighter put a hand on my shoulder and kept me down.

"I need your pulse, BP, and to listen to your lungs," he said. "Sit tight, mister. Your girl is here with you; just sit tight."

My wife knelt and hugged me. A moment later, as my BP was being measured, I heard massive evacuation fans kick on and start to expel the clouds of smoke I'd failed to notice while trapping the pride demon.

Our battle had heated the wards to the point that they started smoking. I looked around as the firefighter moved off. Vast clouds of thick white smoke were being blown out the back of the building.

***

Already, the teams of firefighters were rolling up their hoses and gear. One of them, along with an officer, was talking to Gary. With my wife's help, I was able to stand and move out of the firefighter's way.

I made my way to Gary and the two other men. The officer turned to me and said, "This him?"

"Yeah," Gary said. "That's the man from the Diocese."

"He said the girl is trouble," the officer said. "Is that true?"

"Yes," I croaked. "I'm not sure what's going on with Myldread, and I'm afraid she might be responsible for the disappearance of four people."

The officer was about to speak, but the crackling of his radio paused him.

"4310," said a voice,

The officer reaches to his mic and thumbs the stud, "4310 over,"

"That 10-40 you are on," the dispatcher said. "We can't reach the medical that left your scene."

"According to witnesses, the person they are transporting, maybe 10-8, " he said.

"Armed and dangerous," Gary whispered, and at my look, he continued, "What? It can be boring in the shop on weekdays; I listen to the scanner app on my phone."

The other officer walks up, and our guy steps back to speak with him. A moment later, he waves Gary over. The trio talked for a while before Gary returned.

"They've got the fire department handling the investigation as an arson," Gary said with a frown. "The police have cars out looking for the ambulance that took Myldread."

It takes a good forty minutes to clear the store of smoke; even then, because it might be an arson investigation, we couldn't go in.

A firefighter comes out and walks over. "Mister," he said. "I think you dropped this on the way out when you stumbled." In his gloved hand was a sleek black phone with the Marine Corps logo on the back.

I stretched my hand out and accepted the phone. It wasn't mine; it was Stanag's.

"Thank you," I said, "Don't want to lose that."

I walk a little distance away to where Stanag's mother is sitting in her car.

"Do you know the passcode to his phone?" I asked.

"2-18-1980," she said. "The day his dad was born."

I nod and put the numbers in.

"What are you looking for?" She asked.

"Some way to figure out where he is or where the phone has been," I said.

"His watch," she replied. "He wanted it for years. It's one of them fitness watches. It tracks where he runs, times, etc. If he is in trouble, he'll turn it on.

I proffer the phone to his mother, and she flips through some apps and opens the page. She groans audibly. "It's syncing," she growls.

I put my hand out, and we shared a long stare between us. Stanag's mother looked at my wife, who responded, "Have some faith."

I nod to her as she hands me the phone. I slip it into my pocket and pull out my own.

"Did you grab our stuff?" I asked my wife.

"Yes, I have your Valise," she said, pointing to the corner by Gary's car.

I walked over to the car and pulled out my phone. I scrolled through my recent calls and found the number. He'd answered once before; let's hope he's feeling charitable.

***

The man who was once named Julian answered, "Yes?"

"You said things were getting weird," I remarked. "I've run across something weird." I took a couple of steps away from the fire engine and the noise of the fans. "A girl, maybe 19, had four demons bound to her. It wasn't possession; she tried to corrupt a shop's Vatican Silver Ward and Blessing."

There is a snippet from a vehicle's radio, then a long silence.

"What sins?" My former colleague asked.

"Lust, Pride, Wrath, and Avrice," I said. "You've run across this before?" That would be news to me.

Again, I hear the vehicle's radio for a brief moment before he puts his phone on mute. I wait while the others try and convince Stanag's mother to stay and wait. I twist and look over my shoulder; there is a near-hysterical look in her eyes.

The radio returns, "Yes," the man who used to be named Julian said. "It's how and what injured me. In my case, it was Gluttony. How badly are you hurt?"

"I am not," I said. "The girl; she's connected to at least four missing people. The most recent went missing as little as two hours ago."

He stammers, "How are you not hurt?"

"Pride," I said. "The Pride demon came after me while the others worked on corrupting the Vatican Silver scroll work and wards. It used depression, despair, and self-pity. They chased my mind through the Silver Wards and Blessings. The more it pressured me, the more I retreated. I lured it into a piece of Silver art connected to the in-scrolled Blessing."

"How?" he asked.

I chuckled, "I laid out a mental pattern of my best representation of Vatican Silver. I connected the Blessing to the static piece of artwork. I held the mental pattern as it chased my mind through the inscribed Silver. With my mind blocking the Blessing, even during a retreat, the others could not take complete control of the Ward inlay. We almost burned the building down." I paused and turned around to the group. "Once Pride was in the artwork, I cut my mental image, trapping it there. That knocked the girl and me out. She lost touch with the Ward first."

I waited for a moment, "I have to go," I said. "I've got a lead on the missing kid," I paused, "I wanted someone in the Order to know about what happened, should I fail."

"Where is your lead?" my former colleague demanded.

I thought about that question for a moment; there are two reasons to ask it.

"I am in town with two brothers from the Impetus Battalion. The local authorities notified the Diocese of a suspicious ritual killing ten days ago. They found the body of a man sacrificed on a bed and a woman slain in front of a wall of mirrors."

"Lust and Pride," I mused. I looked back over my shoulder. Gary was busy with the firemen, and my wife was working to calm Stanag's mother. I felt it then, as I had during my last meeting with Meleni and the first time I met my wife.

I was at a crossroads. The path I choose now will change my life, and with a heart-stopping realization, my wife's, too. I muttered a quick prayer and said, "I'm dropping you a pin. My wife and I are on our way."

"Thank you," he said, then the line went dead.

I let out an ear-piercing whistle, and heads turned in my direction. I looked at Gary and said, "Gary, I need your car."

My wife looked at me, and I nodded. She bent down and picked up my Valise and her Art case. I caught Gary's keys with my left hand and started towards his car.

***

I drove as my wife navigated. I was pushing Gary's car too fast; I knew it. But there was a growing sense of urgency and no small amount of doubt that I'd chosen incorrectly. I worried that sending my former Arbiter brother the pin with Stanag's watch's location was a terrible idea.

"The road past the next light," my wife said, "Yeah, that one." She pointed with her free hand, "the one that follows the river."

We flew, bounced, jolted, and swerved down the pothole-strewn dirt road. It was miles long and wound along the edge of the river's path. I nearly lost control a few times. Gary's little SUV was not meant for this kind of abuse.

"That must be it," my wife said, "over the little bridge."

I lifted my eyes off the road long enough to glance at an old fabric mill. The red brickwork monstrosity was surrounded by a rusted chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

"It looks abandoned," I said.

We came to a stop near another small crossover vehicle. The rear bumper had a rental lot inventory sticker. My former Order has already arrived.

"We'll have backup," I said as I popped my door open.

My wife met me at the front of Gary's car and handed me my Valise. With a nod to each other, we stepped forward to the pried-open gate. As soon as we were through, the shadows seemed to close in, and the temperature dropped. I paused, knelt, and opened my Valise.

"It's not much," I said as I handed my wife one, "But it will be dark inside."

I twisted the cap on the penlight, and it turned on. My wife copied what I did, and we continued onward.

The main open space felt off, as if this place was from a time before. Then it dawned on me that it was from a time before—a time before Vatican Silver. We crept forward through the empty lot, closer to the building and the lone metal door.

A loud clang and a terrible scream reminded us that this was no Sunday exploration adventure. I glanced at my wife, and she nodded. We made the last few steps to the door. There was only a slight pause as she moved to one side of the door. With a grunt, she pried it open, and I stepped through.

***

Rust, grime, and cold permeated the darkness. Our little penlights did their best, but the shadows were thick and swallowed the environs back into their embrace as our lights passed over them.

There were marks on the floor. Some looked like footsteps, and others looked like drag marks. A second scream drew us up short. This one wasn't a sound of pain but of exertion. A moment later, I heard more clanging. The types of clanging the Impetus Battalion tends to favor.

My wife and I passed down the wide corridor; stacks of old pallets blocked the doors at the end of the corridor. We turned left into a narrower hall—a sense of claustrophobia crowded in on me as my wife scooted closer. The hallway branched off twice, once to the left and once to the right. They were small offices with broken doors. A glance in tells me there is nothing of interest in the dirty, unkempt spaces.

The larger double office door at the end is a different story. Its glass panes are broken, and only the wooden frame remains. I smelled it, though, the coppery scent of blood, the odor of entrails, stomach acid, and rotting meat.

"This is going to get ugly," I said. “Are you up for this?" I turned to my wife. Her bright eyes were wide with apprehension and fear.

She swallows hard, purses her lips, and nods. I turn back around and whisper, "Stay close."

I keep my light out of the worst of the gore on the floor as we step through the broken doors. Bloody boot prints and drag marks lead us past this place. I pray that my wife doesn't light up the wall.

There was a squeak and a gasp from my wife. I stopped and turned my head until I found what her pen light was aimed at. It was words, a few short words with scrolls and loops.

"Myldread the Great" was scrawled on the wall in someone's blood. There were little embellishments and flourishes I recognized. They were attempts to create a Ward and a Blessing out of human blood.

My wife had her hand up to her mouth as she panned her light over the rest of that wall. Myldread had tried to recreate the Ward in Blessing with things other than blood. She used entrails, feces, flayed skin, and thinly sliced organ meat.

My wife turned to the right and pushed her light over my shoulder. I was thankful I was there to catch her as she fainted. It wasn't a long spell, and by the time I'd gotten her back on her feet, I, too, had a good look at what had been done to Brian, Gary's other missing game member.

What wasn't eaten had been nailed to the wall in a pattern. No, nothing so rudimentary and as a symbol, but it was a pattern nonetheless. My wife heaved, and I held her as her stomach loosed its contents. The sound of fighting forced us to break the silent hug.

"Get Stanag," I whispered, "Get out. That's our goal."

I guided her through the opposite doorway and into the vestibule of the main factory floor.

***

Twenty feet in front of us, propped up against a wall, was my old comrade. His right hand was missing, and blood was dribbling out. His left ankle had a metal rod, ah, a crude spear, through it.

His head turned to us listlessly.

"Love," I said as I quickly quick-stepped to him, "stop the bleeding."

I opened my Valise and pulled out two tourniquets. I turned to find my wife right behind me. She opened her artist kit and pulled out a medic kit. Oh, what a woman I married.

"Artists at the commune OD'd a lot," she whispered.

I felt a push to my shoulder and turned back to my bleeding friend. His stump pointed to my Valise, and I nodded. I spun it towards him. He smiled, and blood poured from his mouth. I pointed my pen light at his face and saw the bruising starting to form. One eye was completely shut.

I reached down into my Valise and pulled out a multi-tool. I slipped it into my pocket. He pushed at my shoulder with his left hand even as my wife worked on his right wrist.

"I'm going to look for Stanag," I said.

***

It wasn't like this mill was all open space. In fact, it was more like a rodent's warren; the looms and thread feeders to the looms created a maze. Webs of old thread loosely hung as they blocked otherwise accessible areas.

I followed the paths of destruction. I don't say that lightly. The Impetus Order is heavy on the destroy mindset. Boxes, pallets, benches, and tools were strewn about. It looks like they were backing Myldread up and forcing her to retreat. She's used everything she could to fight them off.

Helping them wasn't my focus. Finding Stanag was. I watched for signs of him or where Myldread secreted him. No, I didn't know if he was alive. I suspected he was and prayed that he was, and most of all, I needed him to be alive. I'd as much encouraged him to pursue a relationship with this girl. I felt responsible; I saw his burgeoning relationship through the lens of my first crush. I had no concept of the horror that was awaiting him.

I almost missed the drag marks; they were hidden behind a toppled set of pallets containing massive rolls of decaying cloth. I scrambled over the musty fabrics and made my way into the stack.

There, down a hidden path, was Stanag, gagged, handcuffed wrists and feet to a massive pipe. His eyes go wide at the sight of me. I uselessly held a finger to my lips. I moved closer after a look over my shoulder.

The day, though, had made me wary of deceit. I bit my thumb open for the second time that day. I pressed it to his forehead and pushed my mind forward. I met nothing, no demonic will hitching a ride like Myldread, no subverted demonic possession of the shell that would have been Stanag.

"Nod if you are okay?" I said.

There was a curt nod, and he blinked at my light. Ah, that's how Myldread did it. Only one pupil responded to the light in his eyes.

"You were drugged," I said. "Did you drink anything?"

He nodded a second time.

I started flipping through the tool heads on my Leatherman. I found one, a fixed and thin Allen head. I twist the handcuffs, and Stanag groans as I push his wrists out of the way. She'd attached the cuffs with the keyhole in the wrong direction.

Stanag grunted and groaned as I tried my best to open one of his handcuff tumblers. It took longer than I'd have liked, but I eventually got one. A moment later, his other hand was free.

The sound of fighting is nearing our hiding spot again. Stanag looked in that direction and started to work the gag-free. I turned to his cuffed and bloody ankles. Opening these handcuffs was going to be more complicated, as ankles don't bend out of the way like wrists.

Stanag had to lie on his back, feet up in the air, while I tried and get my little tool into one of the handcuff's key slots. The fighting sounded much closer, and it did not sound like the Impetus Battalion was winning.

I didn't have time to be kind and gentle. I needed Stanag out of here before Myldread got any closer. I pried his legs apart, and Stanag let out a short cry and groaned. It gave me the space I needed. I leveraged the Allen into the keyhole, found the tumbler, and twisted. A leg fell free. The other one is out of the cuff a moment later.

I proffered my hand to Stanag and held my other finger to my lips. As I helped him up, the fighting started up again. It sounds like it is on the other side of the pallets of fabric that are hiding us.

I held us there as the fighting passed our hiding spot, but now I was very concerned. Myldread and her demons were between Stanag, me, and my wife. I gestured for him to follow and crept back out of the pallets. We are as quiet as can be; I don't think it made much difference. The noise of sword on sword and sword on armor reverberated through this hollow space.

I helped Stanag over the tumbled-down rolls of fabric. The sight that greeted us was not reassuring. Myldread stood facing us, a sword in hand. She was fighting only one of the Impetus Battalion.

"Another," Myldread barked with a laugh, "I'll happily flay another failed priest."

I saw it then; her sword wasn't hers; it was one of the Impetus Estocs favored by my former Order. It was glowing from the hilt and a little past the guard. My mind reeled at that implication. She was trying to subvert the wards and blessings of the Vatican Silver wrought within the blade.

***

"Love," my wife yelled out. "He won't move; he won't let me drag him out."

I looked past the dueling sword fight and saw in the distance my wife's pen light flashing at me. I hoped the Arbiter knew what he was doing.

The fight between Myldread and the Impetus Battalion member intensified. She pushed him, drove him, and hammered him. I saw it; I'd seen it many times in practice during my seven years of training. The man was beaten, and he knew it; he didn't have her skill with the blade. I watched Myldread’s eyes as she toyed with the man in armor.

She was lighter, more nimble, and far more precise in her attacks. The armor sapped the man from Impetus Order's strength, and even though he was significantly stronger than she, that only counted if he could land a blow.

Myldread had copied my playbook from earlier. She fled from her attackers, forcing debris, gear, and obstacles in their path. She's worn them out long before they even got close enough to use their blades.

"Wrath," I mumbled.

"What?" Stanag whispered.

His voice brought me back around to my immediate problem: getting him out of there.

"I need to get you out of here," I said.

A strangled cry, muted by a gurgle, cut me off. I whipped my head around and looked back at Myldread. Her estoc blazed with heat as its point rested between gaps in the shoulder armor of the Impetus Battalion man. The blood was leaking from his nose. He heaved once, and a fountain of blood flowed out of his mouth.

"Circle around," I said to Stanag, "Get to my wife, get the injured man out, get out of here. This is not a battle you can help with."

***

I stepped forward as the man fell to his knees. I caught him and whispered the last rites of our Order. With one hand, I closed his eyes, and the other took up his blade.

"Oh," Myldread said, "the twice failed priest wants to play."

It'd been years since I held a sword. It isn't the way with my side of the Order. I am, in many ways, an artist and more like my wife than I am my former lover, Meleni. I unbutton the heavy tailored coat my wife had bought me to use as a uniform of sorts. It, I knew, would be too restrictive when buttoned up.

I favored the saber over the Estoc when in practice. The estoc was Meleni's tool, not mine. I'd seen her broken blade and crumpled armor when her portrait was unveiled at the Vatican City Museum. Meleni went down hard, broken blade tip in one hand, the shortened and bent Estoc in the other.

Against the dead and possessed, the Estoc was king. Against the living, unarmored girl in front of me, I wish I had even a training saber. I swapped grips on the sword briefly, opening my palm. It wasn't a big cut, just one large enough to contact the silver wire wrapped around the hilt.

"Who is it now?" I asked, "Who is guiding you, Myldread? Is it Wrath? You've given in to rage and revenge? For what? What did these people do to you other than show you kindness and trust?"

She charged, and I pushed my mind into the Silver. I half-stepped back and deflected her first blow, shifted my balance in another half-step back, and deflected the second. I countered with the point of my Estoc, which she barely deflected, and we separated as she gratuitously twirled out of the way.

Does she think this is a film, a movie with a choreographed set of flourishes? I think I see the issue now; she's downed three so far without loss or injury. She's good, mind you, likely the influence of the Wrath demon.

She dove forward to the point of her half-blazing blade, aiming to skewer me. The blows came in fast, harsh, and with more precision than one like her should have. I'd seen her take down one of my Impetus Battalion brothers; I should have realized the demon Wrath significantly boosted her natural abilities.

I was relentlessly pushed back down the way Stanag had fled. Myldread was driving me further from my wife and escape. I use this time to scrape the rust off of my blade work. With every evolution of her attacks, she controlled more of that blade. When I first saw her, it blazed just past the hilt; a moment ago, it was barely halfway up the blade.

Now, more than two-thirds of the blade blazes with burning Vatican Silver in-scrolled wards and blessings. I deflected a blow from her with my blade. My mind shudders as if it were battered with a hammer. I nearly stumbled to the ground.

I deflected her opportunistic follow-up blow, and I watched as our blades touched. Mine landed squarely on the blazing portion of her blade. I saw stars as her blows hammered against my mind. I'd never felt anything like this. I've never heard about this happening; it was not taught in practice, nor was it spoken about.

I realized this was how she'd been able to daze and debilitate two of our Impetus Battalion after physically exhausting them.

I rolled out of the way as her third blow skittered off my blade and into a pallet of fabric. She left the blade there, and the roll of cloth started to smolder. She grinned, stepped forward, and front-kicked me in the chest as I began to get up. I was thrown back onto my ass and had to scramble to retrieve my lost blade.

I gasped for air as Myldread laughed.

"You are pathetic," Myldread said. "You'll die here, then I'll take my time with your wife. They'll all die here."

I wheezed and backed up. I deflected two half-hearted blows as Myldread cackled. Each of them felt like a punch to the head. Something, though, kept trying to break through to me. An old argument, one I had long ago with a woman now a Saint.

"Why the Impetus Battalion, Meleni?" I'd asked.

"Because, Ward's and Blessings are fine and good," She'd said. "But the blade, that is an extension, a marriage, between his will and mine. It is power manifested into a cutting edge, not a cage."

Meleni had proceeded to trounce me that session. We didn't talk for a week after that. In fact, it was probably the deciding factor that cooled our relationship. Back then, I couldn't understand why she'd wanted to stick her neck out for people.

Where I grew up, you didn't do that. Sticking your neck out was a quick way to get kicked about and taken advantage of. Now, though, here in this mill, in this fight, in this place half a world and a lifetime away, I understood.

I sucked in breath through my teeth and tried something I'd never thought of. I put my mental mass into the blade. I created a weaving of mental silver in-scrollment and layered it into the sword.

The blade hummed in my hand.

I spat some phlegm and said, "I am not them, Myldread."

***

I had called my wife a skald a while back, but at the time, I did so as a light jest, a play on terms for a combination of reasons, such as her love of singing arias for a choir as much as for her artistic talents.

I heard her way back here among the rows of mills, weaving machines, and fallen bolts of smoldering cloth. I suppose I underestimated the power of song, but my wife had not. In this way, she is as much classically trained as I am in my calling; art and music are hers.

"Your little bird has a horrible voice," Mydread said, gasping. "I'll cut it out of her last."

"You've failed, Myldread," I said. "The Diocese knows your name, what you look like, and what you've done. They will hunt you to the end of time."

With a renewed vigor, Myldread advanced. We'd been at this a while now, maybe a couple of minutes. I've learned to brace my mind against her mental attacks via her sword. My own Estoc hummed in my hand, waiting, ready to deliver that blow.

"Just die," Myldread screamed.

"I told you," I said, "I am not them. I am an Arbiter."

"So, fucking what," Mydread growled as her blade hammered against my own.

"I know Wards and Blessings," I mused. "I also know the blade. For all the strength and skill Wrath has given you, it has not given you patience."

I pushed more of my mind forward. I'd always driven myself to the end, leaving nothing behind. Doing such a thing now was doubly difficult; I had a wife to think of. It wasn't so much a concern for her well-being but a selfish concern that I'd be forced to live without her.

I heard her song, muted and muffled by the vast cavern-like space. I applied that will to my counters and blocks. It took a while for me to put Myldread on the defensive, and after a few blows, she took her first step back.

It wasn't easy. The fight between us had its share of ups and downs. It was two steps forward and one step back. The demon of Wrath seemingly had an endless fount of energy, its only limitation being the Myldread herself.

"I'm going to gut you," Myldread growled. "Then flay you like a fish. What power should I take next?" She asked.

My wife's voice was louder as we neared the toppled rolls of fabric that had previously blocked my path. The one that had been smoldering from her previous sword strike had caught alight. It's not a big flame, but the smoke was noxious.

"For my blade instructions, I had but one training partner," I said.

Myldread chortled and said, "I'll gut them after your wife."

"You misunderstood me," I replied. "My training partner is beyond your reach."

The sword in my hand hummed, almost in a fervor, as my attacks backed Myldread up. I want to say I saw the opening come three moves in advance, but that would be a lie. I did have a feeling, but it was my rusted instincts that carried out the two parries and a thrust.

Myldread screamed as the Estoc's tip slipped through her lead leg's Achilles tendon. My foot kicked her leg out from under her. I jumped back as her blazing blade swung at my ankles. My sword thrummed at the cutting edge, and then, that fight so long ago with Meleni made sense.

With a flick down of the Estoc and my mind focused on the edge, I took Myldread’s wrists from her. She screamed a note so foul that the building rang, and dust from the roof fell. Her blazing sword was stuck in a pile of debris. Unlike the dampened cloth, these caught alight.

I landed on my feet but was badly off balance. As I righted myself, I said, "My teacher was Saint Meleni."

The world knows that name. Myldread howled, stood up, and charged at me. Myldread shoulder checked me out of the way. She disappeared into the hazy smoke. With wounds like those, she will not survive long without medical attention.

I scrambled over the rolls of fabric moments before they caught fully alight. The fire was spreading surprisingly fast, faster than I thought it should for such a damp and dark area. I rounded the corner to find my wife, mid-song, and Stanag carrying the limp form of my former college.

With one toe, Stanag pointed to the ground.

There, in blood mixed with silver powder from my kit, someone had drawn a Ward. I recognized it immediately; this fire, with its unseemly appetite, was bound.

"What's it say?" Stanag asked.

I reached down and snapped my Valise closed; I pushed my wife's art kit to her and stood up.

"Gluttony," I said, "He bound Gluttony to this building. Let's move; we have to get out of here. Run!

"That's good, right," my wife said.

"In a way," I remarked as I kicked the broken glass door frames wide open. "It also seems to have given it control over this building."

"Like in the game," Stanag grunted. "This is its domain now."

I turned and looked back over my shoulder and shuddered. "As apt a statement as I would be able to come up with," I said.

We ran.

***

I stood near a hospital bed while my wife slept in a chair. I looked upon my former colleague. He was in bad shape. Two of the Impetus Battalion stood outside the private room. His orbital socket was broken along with his jaw. He'd lost a number of teeth. As best we could tell, Myldread had emerged from the shadows and hit him with a big piece of pipe.

The two in armor propped him up before giving chase to her. She lured them away with the prospect of gain, and in the confusion, all of them paid a terrible price. She'd led them on a merry chase before doubling back. She's stuck Julian's leg with a makeshift spear. When the Impetus Battalion chased after her a second time, she returned with one of their swords and took the hand he'd been using to draw a Ward and Blessing in Vatican Silver.

A knock at the doorway woke my wife, but it wasn't enough to wake my Arbiter friend.

"We burned it to the ground," Magnus Opaki said, slightly coughing. "We had to cleanse the bookstore with fire. There was no saving it. I did release some funds to compensate the owner."

I turned to look at him and nodded.

"I am thankful you were there," Opaki said. "He'll ride a desk for the rest of his life, but it is a life saved, and for that, I am ever grateful. Tell me, how is it you survived the battle against the soul-bound?"

"Soul-bound," I muttered. "Yes, that's what it felt like." I mused a moment before responding. "An argument long ago," I darted my eyes to my wife and then back to Opaki. "And this," I said, reaching for a cloth bundle.

Even through the cloth, the sword knew me; it thrummed in my hands. I presented it to Magnus Opaki.

He reached out for it, his eyes going wide. His hands never made it to the sword. He withdrew them.

"Tell me," did you ever touch Saint Meleni's sword after her death?

"No, Magnus," I replied.

His eyes bore into mine for a long moment, "Keep it," Opaki said. "It is like her blade.”

I gave Magnus Opaki a confused look.

“You've bound this blade to you," he said as a way of explanation.

A second knock and orderlies enter.

"We are ready, sir," one of them said.

"May God's grace go with you," Opaki said to me and, most of all, my wife. "We are transporting him to Rome for better care."

The man, who was once named Julian, did not wake as they packed him on a new gurney and trundled him out the door.

***

"It's nice to be back in Savannah," my wife said. "It's been four months; I wonder how the choir sounds."

Since Savannah, we'd had stable, if small-time, work, and our car was running like a champ. We are back today to say a final goodbye to a friend.

I pull up in front of the Motel, now with a sale pending sign. Stanag's mother and Gary wave at us as Stanag shoulders his backpack. A moment later, he slides into the back seat.

"Thanks for the ride," Stanag says.

"Did you say your goodbyes?" I asked.

"Yeah," Stanag responded with a sniff.

"Where to then?" I asked.

"Charlotte, southern Diocese recruitment center," Stanag said.

"Not the Marines?" My wife asked.

I watched him through the rearview mirror. He only shook his head; he'd made his choice, much in the same way I had, painfully.

Eighteen hours later, we all stood outside the recruitment center.

"Stanag, may his grace go with you," I said.

"Arturious," he said shyly. "My father named me. Mom preferred the nickname Stanag."

I proffered my hand, and he shook it. In five steps, he was through the gate. A new life awaited him.

https://evandeshais.substack.com/p/vignette-no-nine