Abilities
17 Dec 2020No prompt today – this was just something I thought of this morning and wanted to write.
The wraiths appeared out of the blue and immediately started stalking you. They are tall, humanoid apparitions with bony hands and various animal heads. Their sunken eyes peer from dark hoods. They’re semi-transparent, but you don’t want to know what happens when they touch you. So as soon as you first saw them, you turned your wheelchair around and cranked like mad on the pushrim.
Fortunately for you, they’re pretty slow-moving. Not that you’re slow in your chair – your upper body strength is pretty respectable, and you keep your chair well maintained. You might not be ready for the paralympics, but you’re pretty fast. But the wraiths are entirely unimpeded by obstacles. You realized this when you turned your head and saw one with the face of a jaguar pass right through a woman pushing a stroller.
Does no one see them but you? None of the oncoming pedestrians seems to register anything out of the ordinary. Some people are staring, but as usual, they’re staring at you, like they’ve never seen someone in a wheelchair before. You glance behind you again. Besides the jaguar, there’s a wraith with a giant curved beak protruding from a hood, and another with a long, toothy horse’s mouth. You redouble your efforts on the handrim.
More wraiths seem to be coming from other parts of the neighborhood. You’re still outpacing them, but only barely, and even if they don’t manage to flank you, you can’t do this forever.
You round the corner toward the public library. One of the librarians is outside collecting books from the book drop. She looks up with an expression of alarm and waves you toward the library. You’ve never moved up a wheelchair ramp so fast in your life.
You press the automatic door buttons, wheel yourself inside, and glance back. The wraiths have come to a halt in a semi-circle around the library doors. It’s like there’s some sort of penumbra around the building preventing them from entering. Library patrons pass through the wraiths as they huddle shoulder-to-shoulder around the building in the gathering dark.
You hear footsteps approach behind you and turn. It’s the librarian. “Sorry – had to put away the book drop cart,” she says. “Now let’s see what we can do about those zoogeists.”
“Zoo-o-geists?” you reply. “Wait, you can see them?”
“Zoogeists can only be seen by those who have a special ability – some call it a ghost eye,” she says.
“Are you saying I’m the chosen one?” you say, a smile teasing across your face.
“… or by those they’ve marked for death,” she continues.
“Oh,” you say.
“Come on. I recognize these guys, but I don’t remember everything about them. If you want to live, we’ve got research to do.”
The two of you make your way to an elevator and up to the fourth floor. The librarian leads you to an unlabeled door with a window in it. There are no lights inside the room. She punches in an access code and opens the door.
“Welcome to the occult books section,” she says.
It’s amazing. The props department for Buffy the Vampire Slayer would have killed for books like these. Everything looks super old and super creepy.
The librarian is looking something up on a computer. “Let’s see, zoogeists, zoogeists … looks like we’re looking at a Dewey number of 130.540.” She moves quickly to the correct shelves, scanning rapidly through the spines until she finds the volumes she wants. She pulls three books from the shelf and heads to a nearby table. You wheel over.
She opens one of the books, glances at the table of contents, flips to a chapter about midway through, and hands the book to you. “This one’s kind of your general lore, history, that kind of thing,” she says. You notice a woodcut illustration of two people with lion and rabbit heads wearing hooded cloaks. Definitely your guys.
“Would there be anything in here about how to stop them?” you ask.
“That’s probably in one of these two,” she says. She grabs one of the books and turns to the index, then flips to a page near the end of the book and begins reading silently. You reach for the other book and look in the “Z” section of the index. “Zoogeists………..549,” the index says.
You read. “Not much is known about these mysterious phantasms” … blah blah blah … “can pass through solid matter” … yadda yadda ….
“There’s something here about them not being able to enter consecrated ground, except under certain circumstances,” you say, pressing your forefinger to the page.
“Well yeah,” the librarian says. “That’s why they’re not here now.”
“So I could just hang out here? Or a church or something?”
“I wouldn’t rely on that too much,” she says. “Those loopholes can be pretty big. For instance, I’m pretty sure the library only counts as sacred ground during business hours.”
As if on cue, a voice comes over the loudspeakers: “The library will be closing in 15 minutes.”
“Here we go,” the librarian says. “The zoogeist can be banished from this plane by using a Charm of Clariand to perform the necessary rites.”
“How do I get a Charm of Clariand?”
“My guess would be Madam Zara’s might have them in stock,” the librarian says as she walks back to her computer. “They’re on … 36th and Pike. Not too far from here. Looks like they’re open until 10. And … ooh, looks like they’re advertising a special on charms, and the one in the picture looks like a Charm of Clariand, so with any luck they’ll have it.”
You wheel over next to the librarian to get a look at the picture of the charm. It’s on a website reminiscent of Geocities. There’s also a photo of the storefront. It looks easy to pick out even in the dark.
“What are the necessary rites it was talking about?”
“Oh, the shop should provide you with those when you buy the charm.”
The loudspeaker crackles. “The library will be closing in 10 minutes.”
“There’s just one problem,” you say. “How do I even get there? These zoogeist things were surrounding the library last time I checked.”
“This book was able to help us out with that as well,” she says, turning back to the page she had been studying. “‘In the absence of a Charm of Clariand, the Zoogeist can be temporarily dazed and kept at bay by chanting the Ward of Martell.’ Which is on page 26….” she says, turning the pages.
“Awesome, can I check that out?”
“I’m afraid it’s a reference book only,” the librarian says. “I could make a copy of it, but … can you read Latin?” she asks, holding the page up to you.
“Uh, no,” you reply.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” the librarian says, taking the book with her and walking toward the door. You follow her to the elevator. “We get to the front door. I recite the ward. While the zoogeists are dazed and confused, you make a break for Madam Zara’s.”
You nod. The loudspeaker erupts: “The library will be closing in 5 minutes.”
The librarian stands next to you, book in hand, near the end of the wheelchair ramp. One of the zoogeists charges the invisible barrier around the library and jolts back. You get the impression that the librarian was right – the penumbra won’t hold forever. Just until closing time.
The librarian begins chanting, and the zoogeists writhe. Her voice rises to a crescendo, and a bolt of light penetrates the night sky. You blink, and then you see them – all the zoogeists, toppled to the ground, struggling to get up.
“Go go go!” the librarian urges, and you race your wheelchair in the space between an anteater wraith and a giant ghost ferret and on toward 36th Street.
You’ve reached 34th when you start to see the zoogeists again, but at this point you’re only about three blocks away, and there aren’t too many pedestrians around. At the wraiths’ speed, you should be able to make it to the magic shop in time.
35th Street. 36th Street. Left turn, and there it is – Pike Avenue. And there’s the awning you saw on the website with way too many fonts – Madam Zara’s Magic Shop. A grin explodes across your face – and then vanishes when you see what leads up to the front door of Madam Zara’s.
Stairs.
Think. Think. How do you get around this? There’s no one in sight, except the zoogeists half a block back. You wheel your way toward some gravel in a gutter and scoop it up. You chuck a rock at the door to Madam Zara’s. You miss. You throw another rock at the door. This time, you hit it, but the sound barely registers. You wind up for a third throw, and suddenly the wraiths are upon you, their bony claws feeling every bit as real as the pebbles slipping from your hand.