Magic Falls Part 25

The face in the fire looks at me as the long, slender fingers of the thing that had been snaking around the circle wrap themselves around me. I struggle against them, but their strength is enormous.

As they wrap around my throat and force their way into my mouth, I can see that the thing's other hand is doing the same thing to Maria.

"...off me! Get - " she says, before the fingers worm their way down into her throat, and deep into her stomach.

I know that is what it is doing, because I can feel it doing the same thing to me. It's fingers are cold, heavy and feel like they're screaming.

I am lifted off my feet, as is Maria. The face in the fire grows and we are moved to it.

I/WE COULD HAVE SO MUCH TO TEACH/LOVE/CUT YOU... BUT THIS WILL HAVE/NEED TO SUFFICE

The thing begins to spread its fingers, and I feel the pressure pushing against every inch of my being. It forces itself into my brain and the visions and feelings overwhelm me. I cannot see or hear anything other than its will.

I/WE


ARE
FOREVER
AND
YOU
CANNOT/WILL NOT

EVER

HARM 

I/WE/US/ME

TELL

MY/OUR

SON

THAT

The words burn into my head, my vision, my hearing.

It is all I can see. All I can feel.

All that I am.

And then they are gone.

Not just the words. But the face in the fire and the thing that was around the circle.

For a few long moments, I forget how to breathe, but then I manage to inhale several large gasps before I throw up a mixture of vomit and blood.

The room is still coming back into focus as I remember Maria.

I look over to see if she is okay, and I see that she is doing much the same thing. Her face is still smeared with the bloody tears and she is wiping blood from her mouth.

"What...." she is breathing shallowly and quickly, trying to get herself under control. "...the hell...have you done?"

I try talking, but burst into a painful coughing fit instead. When I can actually form words again, I say "I don't know."

"You...you just pissed off the elder gods," she says. I try to tell whether she is angry or scared. Or both.

"I don't even know what they are," I say. "Not until they...not until they were inside us."

"How did they....?"

"I don't know how they knew about me." I swallow back a mouthful of bloody bile. It tastes like copper.

"They could have killed us."

"So why didn't they?"

She stands up, and crosses the circle, moving over to her armchair, where she sits back and breathes slowly. "Gods," she says. "You take for granted how good air tastes when you're not suffocating on....whatever that was."

I stay kneeling. Moving my head is making me dizzy, and I'm worried about what will happen right now if I try to stand.

She watches me. "You know," she says. "That big display of power that thing did to pass on a message. That seemed very much like a threat to me."

I can't help but smile a little. "You don't say."

"It felt like grandstanding. Bloody effective grandstanding, but grandstanding."

"What do you mean?" I ask, taken aback by how quickly she is able to talk. I can still barely gasp.

"They're not just pissed off at you, Darren. They're scared of you. In awe."

I take the chance and stand. "It's not me."

"Who is it then?"

"The message wasn't for me...." The dizziness overwhelms me, but then I can feel it drain. I can see clearly, and feel my feet under me gaining steadiness. I can breathe again properly. "It was for the son of the devil."

"And who is that?"

"...I don't know."

She brings her head forward, her fingers splayed at her temples. "I can't help you any more, Darren."

"I didn't want this to happen," I say quietly. It doesn't matter. I know that.

"The money..." she says. "The money that turned up in your account. I won it. I know I said I wouldn't use it like that, but I did. And I put half the money in your account, because I know you're doing something even if I don't know what it is. But I can't do anything else. I'm done."

I stagger across to her, and half-kneel, half-collapse in front of her. She leans forward and we hug.

"I hope you find Nina. I hope she's okay. And I love you very much. You're one of my best friends. But I can't see you for a while now. This is too much."

I nod into her shoulder. "I understand."

"Darren?"

"Yes?"

"Stay alive. Please. Promise me."

I hold her tighter, but I don't promise anything.



*******************************************************************


I hear you.

Through the earth.

From where I have waited so long.

My love.

My one true love.

It has been so long.

I am coming for you.

Magic Falls Part 23

“What do you want?” I ask the eyes in the flame, not entirely sure how or why I am staying calm. Insanity seems like the correct response as a face begins to form around the eyes.

No. Not a face. That’s not the way to describe the thing that I am looking at. It’s too… wrong for that.  It’s a huge gaping maw, and it’s the abyss itself. Death and hatred and hunger and fear all at once, looking at me out of the flame.

The words do not come fully formed. They’re in an entirely other language… something that should be unspeakable, but I understand anyway. The sounds change shape by the time my brain processes them, and change into something more coherent.

YOU SUMMONED/WEPT/PRAYED TO ME/US

I think there are words that he is saying that don’t make sense in our languge. Maybe in our understanding. 

Instead, it comes through as a combination of all of the closest words. I can feel it happening in my brain, and it feels like trying to see around a paradox.

“What are you?” Maria says to the flame, her eyes still locked on the thing behind me, and dark tears still running down her face in the darkness.

BEYOND/ABOVE/BELOW YOUR COMPREHENSION/ABILITY

“We didn’t summon you.” She says. “We were trying to perform a séance.”

A SÉANCE/SUMMONING/PRAYER FOR ONE WHO IS NOT DEAD/BORN?

My heart leaps, as I realise part of what it is saying.

“She’s alive?”

The thing looks at me, and for a moment, it falters.

NO/YES… IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO –

I look at Maria, confidence building within the terror.

“It’s possible that…” she began to say. “A séance for someone who wasn’t dead…”

YOU CALLED/PRAYED/BEGGED TO ME/US

“Beg forgiveness,” Maria hisses at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the flame. “It was…unintentional. We were searching for someone.”

YOU FOUND OTHER/ME

“Yes. We’re sorry for…”

YOU CALL US… YOU, THE KILLER/MURDERER OF ALL

I stiffen, like someone’s flushed ice through my veins. I feel it wash down from my brain through my body.

“I’m not that.”

THE KILLER/MURDERER OF ALL

“Why do you call me that?”

THE GOD/ME KILLER

“You don’t know who I am.”

YOU ARE THE MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING

I realise that Maria is looking at me rather than at the thing now, her eyebrows knotted in confusion.

“What’s it talking about, Darren?” She asks, and now I can see that it is blood on her face.

I look around, looking for the long limbed thing that was outside of the circle, that put us in darkness.

HE IS NOT TO BE FEARED/LOVED…. HE IS JUST KEEPING/HOLDING THE CIRCLE/SUMMONING/PRAYER, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING… KEEPING/HOLDING YOU HERE/THERE

“Why do you call him….king?” Maria asks.

HE IS THE MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING, THE KILLER OF ALL

“Are you going to kill him?”

NO

“You sound scared of him.”

NO…NOT SCARED….IN AWE

INTERLUDE

I feel you.

From down here. Down in the centre of the earth.

My resting place.

I feel you.

Your call to me.

Your song.

I have so far to climb to reach you.

But your song, it moves me, and even in the heat, I begin to move. I begin to climb and push and tear my way through to you.

It will be slow, but I will make it.

For you.

My love.

It has been so long.

So long.

But I am coming for you.

Once again, we will be together.

END INTERLUDE

“Please,” I say. “Can you clarify… my wife… is she alive?”

I’m not comfortable with what it has been saying, but the fact that it has engaged us at all makes me feel less trapped. More like this could go somewhere.

I don’t know what it wants, but if we’re talking, I’m going to use it to try and find out more about what has been going on.

I wish I was more scared by how calm I am.

SHE IS THERE/ELSEWHERE

“What does that mean?”

SHE IS OUT OF EVEN OUR/MY AWARENESS, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING

Maria has her eyes closed, while she tries to clear her head. I can still feel the thing behind me squirming, but it doesn’t seem to be crossing the circle.

“Can you help us find her?” I ask.

SHE HAS BEEN TAKEN/KEPT

“Who could have done this? Who could have taken her so completely away?”

THERE IS ONLY ONE, MAN/BOY/PRINCE/KING…

“Who?”

THE CHILD/SON OF THE DEVIL/DEMON

Magic Falls Part 22

“Look at me,” Maria says. “You’re not saying what you think you’re saying. Do you know what you’re saying?”

I nod, but I keep saying it.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh cthulhu r’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

“Do you know what it means?”

I shake my head.

“No,” she says. “Nor do I, but I’m worried.”

She looks around. “I’m going to break off the séance. You need to stop chanting, okay?”

I look at her, trying to stop.  But it carries on.

“I don’t know what you’re chanting…what you’re calling, but we’re not in control of this.”

She lets go of my hands. “I want you to concentrate on the candle. Focus your energy on that, and I’m going to blow it out. When I do, I want you to stop chanting.”

She kneels up, and leans forward into the candle to blow it out.

She blows, and the candle flame flickers, but doesn’t go out.

I feel the chanting continuing.

She blows again, and I think of novelty birthday candles, the kind that you blow out and blow out but they keep relighting, and I giggle, but I keep chanting and then…

And then there is a jet of flame rising up from the candle, rising feet in the air.

Maria falls backwards, startled.  She brings her hands to her face, but she’s not burnt.

The chanting stops,  and I feel like I can breathe again, but when I breathe in, it’s hot and sore, due to the heat of the flame.

I scramble around the flame to Maria, to check she’s okay.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t… I couldn’t control what I was saying.”

“I know,” she says. “Something was controlling you.” She gets up, and looks angry. It takes me a moment to realise it isn’t aimed at me.

“What the Hell is going on?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

On the periphery of my vision, I see one of the candles to my right, outside of the circle, go out.

And then a second is extinguished.

“That’s…not good,” I say. “I don’t know much about séances, but that’s a bad thing, right?”

And then a third.

Maria is looking over my shoulder.

“Darren…” She whispers, her outward calm covering whatever she’s feeling inside

The rest of the candles go out. Except the one in the middle, burning more than it’s possible to burn.

But the light of it, while piercing to look at, doesn’t extend past the circle. I can still just about see out of the circle, but the light from the candle stops. We’re sat in a large, round, beacon of light.

“…there’s something behind you.”

I freeze. “Where?”

“Behind you, to your right. Outside the circle. It’s difficult to see, but it’s there.”

I go to turn. “No!” She says.

“Why?”

Her eyes are swimming now. “It hurts to look at.”

I turn anyway, but she’s right. Something about what I see hurts my eyes, and I can’t quite focus on it.

I turn back a little. “What is it?” I whisper to her.

“I don’t know.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see it better now, in the darkness.

And then I realise it’s been there for a lot longer.

It’s been in the darkness.

It is the darkness.

I can only see the shape of it, but it’s inconsistent. It looks like a man in a plain black suit, but I can tell it isn’t.

It’s too long. It’s arms, its limbs, they’re too long.

They’re really all I can see. It’s limbs.

Long. Slender. And just slightly moving. But not in a jointed way.

More like tentacles.

Something ageless and old and dark, something inhuman, wrapped up in a man suit.

“What’s it doing?” I ask.

“It’s just looking at you,” she says, and she’s crying now. “I think.”

Her tears are darker than they should be. In this light, I can’t tell if it’s her mascara or blood slowly trickling down her face.

“You think?”

“It doesn’t have a face, Darren,” she says, and she’s shaking now. “It doesn’t have a face!”

I can see its arms moving slowly around the side of my vision, and I am filled with dread. Its arms outstretch and they repulse and comfort me at the same time.

Its arms call to me.

Its eternal embrace.

Calling me home.

And then, while Maria is transfixed on the faceless thing behind me, I look back at the flame.

I can feel the heat scorching my face, but the flame calls to me.

It flickers red and yellow, dancing upwards, but in the centre of the flame is darkness. And that darkness is growing.

Growing larger as the flame grows. Inside all of the brightness and heat is a pure black centre.

And it opens its eyes and looks at me.

Magic Falls Part Twenty-One

NOW

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

I look into the black eye, and I cannot look away. I continue to chant.

“Isis Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

It draws me in, as Maria begins the invocation.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

The words begin to feel formless, but I keep saying them. I am unaware of what Maria is saying, but she has explained that she is calling on the dead. Calling on them to answer.

To help me find Nina.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

THEN

“I wouldn’t have taken you as the kind of guy who believes in séances,” Maria says as she arranges the room.  Large cushions on the floor, with a candle between them. She lights a number of candles around the room while we speak, but she leaves the one in the middle alone. I have been forbidden to touch any of them. Not because of her Wiccan beliefs, but because she just does not let me touch any of her things other than those she hands to me.

“What kind of guy would you have taken me as?” I ask.

“More the arrogant atheist arsehole type,” she says without pausing. “The kind who would come up with some pseudo-psychological explanation for what actually happens if they can’t explain it any other way. Perhaps involving some patronising element about shared hallucinations or something like that.”

“Remind me why we split up?”

“We split up, my love, because we couldn’t stand each other as a couple. I’m far less likely to kill you as a friend than I am as a partner.”

“That was it. Along with you being generally annoying,” I say, trying not to smile.

“That was deliberately cultivated,” she says, closing the curtains and dimming the lights one-by-one, until we’re entirely in candlelight. The room is large – although it makes up roughly half the size of the flat. “If I’m not allowed to stab you repeatedly, I at least relish being able to get under your skin easily.”

“There are times I’d rather you stab me,” I say, unable to hold the smile back any longer. “That’d probably have healed by now, whereas you’re still annoying.”

“Does she really not like me?”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want her to like me.”

“Maybe if you didn’t call her a skinny bitch all the time? That’s just a suggestion, you understand.”

“Where would be the fun in that? It’s a term of endearment.”

“Skinny bitch is a term of endearment?”

“You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand. In my experience, for all the rubbish men talk about being the more logical gender, your penises seem to act as a more irritating Jiminy Cricket. Just with a libido instead of a conscience. Sit down there.”

I take a seat on the cushion to my right, where she gestures. “That’s actually not a bad description.”

“I am marvellous at descriptions. Which is why I’m going to repeat myself for a change, and point out, again, that you do not strike me as the kind of person that believes in séances. No, sit cross legged.” She sits down easily and demonstrates.

I try to fold my leg the way she has, but it seems surprisingly difficult. “I’m not. Not usually, anyway.”

“What happened? Your right ankle goes underneath.” She gets up again, and continues the preparations.

“Thanks. I spent three months in the faerie kingdom. It changes your perspective somewhat.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s not so much about what I believe,” I say. “I think it’s more about the nature of belief. And right now, I believe that this could work.”

She looks at me, and for a moment, I think she’s going to call the whole thing off. But then she bends over, and in a more dignified manner than you’d think possible, starts drawing a large circle around the two of us. 

“That’s basically what this is,” she says.

“What is?”

“The whole point of the trappings, of the ritual, everything like that. It’s about focusing belief. That’s the point of the candle and the circle. It’s not important what you do, except that it helps you to focus belief. Whatever the explanation is for what actually happens during it, a lot of it is about the shared experience.”

“That sounds like my atheist arsehole explanation.”

“Isn’t that strange? It’s almost like it’s both, isn’t it?”

“Almost.”

She sits down and lights the candle with a match. “Look, here’s the thing. Tarot cards don’t tell the future. Only charlatans and frauds pretend that. What they do is help you explore the present. One way of looking at it is that the Tarot gives you an empty canvas to project cold reading onto. Another is that, by forcing the connections between the cards, you’re forced to think more about the question you want to ask.”

“That’s what I’d always assumed.”

She looks at the candle, and, satisfied, settles back. “But here’s the thing. If I sat and tried to cold read someone without them, I don’t think I’d be able to do it. You can perform tarot with a deck of playing cards, more or less. But if I try to do it without the deck I usually use, I can’t do it.”

“But you’ve had multiple decks. I’ve seen you use different ones.”

“I know. I only use one at a time, and I have to go through a ritual for them to work. Is that because they won’t work without the ritual and the belief, or is it because my belief in the ritual stops me from being able to do it? I’ve tried doing it with different cards, and it just doesn’t work for me. Whether it’s causation or correlation, it doesn’t work.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s the same for a séance. I haven’t done one before, but if we didn’t do it properly, we’d just be sitting in a room asking ghosts to talk to us, and only crazy people do that.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.” I say, and smile. She smiles back, and reaches her hands forward.

I take them, and we hold our hands on either side of the candle.

“So,” she asks me. “Do you believe?”

I think of Nina. The rest is easy. “I believe.”

“Then look at the candle,” she says. “And the first thing we’re going to do is to call on the goddesses to protect us. So you need to repeat after me… Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“What is that?” I ask.

“It’s the names of the Goddess. We’re appealing to her to protect us, and chanting their names to honour them while I start the ritual. Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“Isis, Istarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Khali,Iyanna.”

“And again.”

“Isis, Istate, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Khali, Iyanna.”

“Keep doing it,” she says. “I’ll do it for a while, then start appealing for a guide to help us find someone with information about Nina… if we can’t find Nina herself on the other side.”

I do so. I concentrate on the flame, which is red on the outside, then yellow, and then black in the middle.

The black draws my eye, and I find myself staring at it while I chant.

NOW

The blackness seems to grow larger. I want to blink, but I can’t.

I keep chanting.

I become aware of Maria, who is talking.

“Are you there? Are you there? I need to find someone, and I’m asking for your help. Are you there? Are you…”

She looks at me. I can see her on the periphery of my vision, in somewhere that is not the dead eye of the candle. The words continue to form on my lips.

“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna.”

“Darren?”

I try to look away from the candle. It won’t happen.

“Darren, you need to stick to the chant. Please, for both of us.”

I try to tell her that I am, but I can’t stop myself from chanting.

And I realise that my chant has changed.

“Isis, astarte diana, hecatagen, fe’nglooee, miglu aknaf cuth ooloo, relyeh, wagar, nagal fetagen”

“Darren, stop.”

Fetagen, fengluee, mglu aknafcuth, ooloor’lyeh, wgar, nagal, fetagen.”

“Darren, stop” She screams, but I can’t.

“Ph’nglui, mglw’nafh, cuthooloo r’lyeh wgah’nagl, fatagn”

I try to move, but I can’t.

The words keep forming.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh cthulhu r’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Magic Falls Part Four

Back to Contents

The snow isn't overly heavy, but it does slow my journey down. A tube journey, a train and a bus, until I’m at a familiar block of flats. In the lift on the way up, I regret misleading Nina. She thinks I’m at work, but this is a visit that I have to make, and it would involve too much explaining right now.

When I can explain it to her, I will. I promise that to myself.

I get to a door that I haven’t been to in some time. If I hesitate, I’ll change my mind, so I don’t dare. Trying not to think about what I'm doing, I knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Maria calls from the other side of the door.

"...it's Darren," I say.

"Darren?" She says, and opens the door as much as the chain inside will allow. "What are you doing here?"

I wish she could just open the door. It's going to be difficult enough to get her to talk to me without having a door between us.

"I came to talk to you."

"You never come to talk to me. We sometimes talk online. You maybe sometimes walk wistfully in the park and think about calling me and then don't. Why have you come to talk to me?"

"It's about the lottery," I say.

“What does that have to do with me?” She asks.

“The numbers from ‘Lost’ and ‘forty-two forty-two’?” I say. “Who else could it be?”

She closes the door in my face, and I hear a metallic rattling on the other side. A moment later, she opens the door to let me in.

She looks tired and stressed. She doesn’t wear any makeup, and she’s dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie with the logo of an obscure folk-rock band. This means that she hasn’t been out today, which is unusual for her.

I walk behind her as she makes her way towards the kitchen. She doesn't acknowledge me in any other way than to continue talking.

"They're going to burn me at the stake for being a witch. I'm genuinely worried about that."

"They don't do that any more, Maria." I point out. "Nobody would even know how to do it."

"Rubbish. Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The small, evil little harbingers of death. They'd set the fire while the rest of them just wait and watch."

"So, it was you?"

"Burning me at the stake would be very bad. I'm allergic to fire."

"That's a yes, then?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean to do anything, but that doesn't count for anything when the Judge decides that my sentence should be death by molotov cocktail. Would you like a cup of tea? If I'm going to die, I should at least be caffeinated."

"A cup of tea would be good," I say. "Maria."

"Yes?"

"How are you?"

She laughs somewhere between nervousness and hysteria. "I'm genuinely quite frightened, Darren."

"That's why I'm here," I say.

"Does Nina know you're here?"

I wish she hadn't asked that. "No, she doesn't."


***************************************************************************

Maria writes the horoscope for a number of websites, and at least two popular women's magazines. We were also in a long-term relationship before I met Nina.

We split up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we were better friends than lovers. Or at least, we would have been if we hadn't been lovers. It was too awkward and too difficult for either of us to overcome to the point necessary to be casual enough to be friends. Instead, we drifted into being acquaintances. Although every now and then we tried.

Nina hates her. I thought they would get on, and introduced them to each other. It didn’t work out.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t stand her,” Nina told me later. “I’m sure she’s nice… well, I’m not, actually. That’s the problem. There’s something about her that makes me think she’s sneering at us behind our backs.”

“She’s not like that,” I told her.

“So when you were with her, she didn’t sneer about people behind their backs to you?”

“No. Well… no. She could be a bit…” I wanted to say ‘bitchy’. “…judgemental, maybe.”

“Well, I don’t want to give her more ammunition to judge me. It’s not that I’m being jealous, and I don’t entirely know why I’m reacting to her like this. But I am. Maybe I am being jealous. I don’t know. But I don’t think I can be around her.”

I hoped she’d come around eventually. “Okay.”

“I’m not stopping you spending time with her. I get why it’s important. I just don’t want to spend years pretending to be friends with her.”

I was a little thrown and upset by this, but I didn’t try too hard to bring her round on it. Things were too awkward with Maria anyway.

At the same time, I thought Nina misjudged her. Sure, Maria could be a bit gossipy at times, but she wasn’t the kind to sneer about people behind their backs.


******************************************************************************

“How is skinny bitch?” Maria asks, passing me a mug of tea.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she still skinny?” She sits down on a stool.

“Yes.”

“I hate her. Luckily, she hates me, so she’ll enjoy seeing me burnt. I am glad I can sacrifice myself for your happiness. This will give me comfort when the smoke is suffocating me and the heat is overwhelming me. At least skinny bitch will be happy and Darren’s life will be easier.”

“They’re not going to burn you.”

“They burn witches. They just keep it quiet.”

“Yes, but you’re a white witch, so you’ll be fine.”

“I am not a white witch, and saying so suggests a level of research that begins and ends with The Wizard of Bloody Oz. There’s no such thing as a White Witch, in the same way that we’re not Devil worshippers, because in witchcraft, there’s no such thing as Hell. It’s a Christian concept that got forced onto paganism, and you’re smiling because you’re mocking me, you unspeakable bastard. I know seven ways to kill you with this teaspoon and none of them involve magic and only three of them aren't excruciatingly painful.”

She stops and then stands up and  turns away from me. I recognise her bursts of energy followed by crashing from our time together. I knew she would do this, which is why I teased her slightly. I needed to ride the wave a little bit so that I could get her to actually talk.

“Maria?”

She doesn’t turn around, but says in a small voice “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“What happened with the lottery? How did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened.” She is agitated.

“Tell me about it, then.”

“I… it started happening a little while ago.”

“Things coming true?”

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, they’re horoscopes. They’re not true. I know they’re not. I write them, and I make them bloody up.” She grasps the counter, and I see her knuckles are pale.

“When did it start?”

“I’m not sure. I just noticed somewhere along the lines that I was hearing about events that I’d predicted. Nothing major, just… a pisces friend getting a new job the day after I had that written down. A Scorpio meeting a new love interest hours after the print run. Nothing major, but it was happening often enough to be noticeable.”

“You started testing it?”

“Just a little,” she said, as her knuckle continued to whiten. “I started putting slightly more specific details in, and I kept finding out about them coming true as well. It bothered me. It wasn’t something I could control.”

“So you thought you’d push it further?”

She turns around and looks at me. “I put something ridiculous in. Douglas Adams and a TV show and the lottery. And it came true too. And now I don’t know what that means, and I’m scared.”

“Where did you publish it?” I ask.

“In one of the magazines. Not the ones with big sales numbers, thankfully. Nobody’s been in touch, which means nobody’s noticed, which doesn’t do huge amounts for my ego, but I think is probably a good thing overall.”

“More than likely. For the time being, you’re going to have to hold off doing anything with it.”

She nods. “I know. I’m not going to say anything controversial. I’m going to try and get paid work doing something else.”

“This is only going to get worse.” I tell her. “I’m sorry for that, but it is.”

“How did you know?”

“I just know that it’s going to get worse. You’re going to have to let other people in, and talk to them.”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t ask you how you know. I asked you how you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that it was me?” She says.

“I told you. The geek references. It was obvious. It had to be you.”

“No, I mean…” She stops, and looks at me, scared now. “How did you know that what I was writing was coming true?”

"Ah," I say, and I put the empty mug down.

"Darren, really." She says. "How did you know that all this was happening?"

I look at her, and after a moment, I respond.

“That…” I say, “is where it gets complicated.”

Part Five