I Got Him

Restored from Writers Café, 2006.

I Got Him

  

It had been drizzling earlier, but by the time he got off the bus, the skies had stopped crying. A cool Friday breeze swept down 22^nd Street. Marcus, pardoned from dank, eternal imprisonment inside the bus, now had the street to himself the second his shoes hit the pavement. He angrily rubbed his swollen arm.

As the bus roared hastily away, Marcus sucked in the coolness, letting it talk to him. Suggest things to him. Letting it tell him how to get revenge.

Beyond the dead-end street were woods, wild and undeveloped and vast. This is where Marcus often retreated. Usually to calm himself.

Reset. To serenity.

Not today. Every time he moved his arm, it felt like a blade was splitting it open. Jack would pay. Marcus would get him back.

Marcus dumped his booksack in front of his house and sprinted into the woods.

 

He didn’t know how long he had been walking through brush, ducking under overgrowth, crawling under vines, and leaping over creeks, but soon a dim glow began to fade in the West. Marcus had been plowing deeper into the woods than ever before, his mind lost in a wilderness of its own. But he still didn’t have his answer. His arm throbbed.

Though frustrated, eventually he had to turn back toward home or else get lost forever out here, so he chose the quickest path back and started.

As he crossed a grove of hickories and over a random scattering of smooth stones, he discovered, chillingly, that someone had been here. He braked.

In a clearing, a circle or oval-shaped enclosure of jagged little rocks rested, like rings, three of them, ten feet wide. And there were multicolored candles (or at least, candle hulks, as they had burned all the way down long ago). Incense holders, a small gray stone platform… Very old.

Marcus tingled.

Somehow this reminded him of something. From television? Comic book? Classmates? Foggy source.

Still, Marcus was interested enough to forego plans for revenge long enough to research the structure. It was starting to drizzle again, and he was still far from home, but he vowed to go online tonight and look it up.

 

He spent all night at Grimoirearmory.com.

And afterward, with a fatigued grin, an enlightened Marcus thought of Jack. Now he knew exactly how to get him.

 

So on Saturday October 12, Marcus gathered a CD player, a knife, and a bag of materials and headed back out to locate the circle.

First he purified the jagged stone-enclosed space, cleaning debris and sprinkling saltwater, whisking away the filthy old candles and setting up new ones, placing incense and adjusting the altar, until he could finally, as the sun was dipping into the horizon, re-cast the circle, invoke deities, and post himself, quiet and focused, in the center, to concentrate.

With the CD player outside the circle, pumping melodic, intoxicating drum rhythms, for an hour, Marcus began to feel an energy coursing in. Times long ago and places far away whispered in his mind, guiding him slowly into a trance. Winds rushed in, nearly extinguishing the ethereal glow, branches swayed, shadows against the star-speckled sky, the music thumped, power crept up like an invisible hand, urging him to his feet; then the images built to a roar in his mind, he saw robes, he clasped the blade, he moaned, the moan had an echo, he saw a salamander flash by then a wild boar then a water dragon he howled louder into the gushing wind tight on the blade mind on Jack arm throbbing bleeding bus school October midnight stones hissing runic woods lifetime dark lost hatred follow study innocence burn revenge power power power he was dancing wildly he had the power he was screaming screaming hate hate hate I’m gonna get you I’m gonna get you

And out of the corner of his eye he saw the hickory grove and the smooth stone rubble and it wasn’t rubble it was a triangle and in the middle of the triangle was an infant and infant with red eyes

Marcus screamed and screamed

 

The infant looked at him he had no mouth the dragon the salamander the triple circle the infant made noises

 

Marcus screamed and screamed

The infant stepped beyond the triangle the storm came in screaming

 

The candles burned all the way down into hulks, surrounding an empty circle.

The woods were reset. To serenity.