Hotel of Madness Read online

  He stops abruptly and faces me. His expression is an odd serene thing, as if this conversation was happening somewhere else.

  “You don’t become a Necromancer,” Derek's smile grows wide, his face seeming to stretch to accommodate the sheer malice as his eyes light up in a dark green tint that causes an involuntary shiver, “if you don’t see everyone else as nails.”

  * * *

  Derek paces back and forth. We spent ten minutes navigating the stairs to get back to his hotel suite. Lucky for everyone attending the convention, the wide berth afforded by Derek’s ward prevented the con-goers from getting infected with his geas by proximity. This is a small consideration if he actually intended for that to happen. However, what he most likely cared about was that no new variables were introduced by the seething mass of cosplayers, anime enthusiasts, and basement dwellers. Worst case scenario is that I escape in a crowd. Also, stairs are much faster than elevators when attending an anime convention of significant size.

  No one running into us in the hallway is pure luck. However, 8pm is still early for the thousands of con-goers seeking the many hotel parties happening after hours. Even if I could will something or someone to appear, there is still the small matter of being in a narrow hallway with three men, two of whom are armed. Not being bulletproof, I’m left to sit patiently as Igor and Jim secure me for their master by tying me to a chair with rope. I really have to ask about the bondage rope. But in the meantime, the suite looks like a tropical storm looking for a several hundred thousand-year-old book came roaring through, tossing clothes, electronics, and haphazardly hurling several suitcases and book bags in a desperate attempt to undo a very expensive fuck up. Even the cabinets aren’t spared its wrath.

  “Do you know how to find the book?”

  “What? No explaining your evil plan?”

  Derek scowls, takes a step toward me, followed by a deep exaggerated breath. He steps away, paces, exhales, and then takes another deep breath to gather himself.

  “Where is the book!” Derek’s voice echo’s with an otherworldly sinister intent as if speaking from a microphone tethered to a grave. The echo carries a compulsion that hits my conscious mind. At the same time, the geas flares up to override my subconscious. I rock in the chair, my subconscious and conscious mind being pulled in one direction as my will is flung aside in the face of the onslaught. Thirty years of defending this shit hole against ancient Gods of dread and eternal malice only to be done in on my day off. My fucking day off! The image of the drooling police officers is grasped firmly and placed as a totem to lean what’s left of my consciousness against. I can feel the rope tightening as I strain against the compulsion, the geas, and my physical restraints.

  His spell won’t move me. “Fuck…. you!”

  And then the hurricane is gone, I would breathe a sigh of relief, but there is the smaller matter of me being tied up in a room with two brain-dead police officers and a pissed-off Necromancer. That was significantly worse than the episode I had when calling the Feds. It wasn’t the compulsion, even though that wasn’t fun either. No, the geas by itself is behaving like a virus in a nonsuperficial way. It's not simply contagious; it’s also actively eating the parts of my subconscious that are deemed not needed to fulfill the conditions set by Derek. Hence the malleability of Igor and Jim's minds. They, unfortunately, don’t have the natural defenses that I do.

  Is it a bug or an intended feature? In either case, I’m very fucked.

  “Look,” Derek begins, “we can have a ‘you go your way, and I go my way’ kind of relationship here,” he propositions, his face slightly moist from the effort to bully me into submission. If I’m lucky, he may have burned some valuable reserves.

  “Look, you hold all the cards here. A deal requires leverage, and I don’t have any.”

  Derek goes back to pacing and then stops, “But you do have a way to find the book?!”

  “If you had asked nicely, I could have helped you from Istanbul.”

  “But you weren’t going to.”

  He got me there, and though this really wasn’t a time to be a smartass, I just couldn’t help myself.

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You mean you don’t have time.”

  “I know what you are.” The impatience in his voice is becoming palpable now.

  I shrug my shoulders, which are starting to seriously hurt, by the way. “I’m rather famous.”

  He looks at me, walks away, and returns with his smartphone. Of course, it's an apple. Reading from it, he begins, “Arthur Curry, age unknown, date of birth unknown, place of origin unknown.” He looks at me before continuing, “Destiny alignment: Hero. Official title within this plane of existence; King of Atlantis. Likely origin, destiny entrapment, geas activated by certain coincidences between his lineage and an ancient Hero who most likely died on an alternate earth. Possible reincarnation theory.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Unless I'm missing something, you're supposed to stop the end of the world if you can help it.”

  “Unlike what you did, my contractual obligation leaves some room for negotiation.” I smile, big and toothy with the unintentional menace of shark, “And I have a strict your fuck up your problem policy.”

  He takes another deep breath and walks right up to me, face inches away from mine.

  “I tried asking, I tried negotiating, let's try to do it the right way again.” He grabs my face in his left hand, and the immediate revulsion is replaced with tears of joy. Skin is an excellent conductor of energy. A good necromancer knows this and avoids touching people they don’t intend to hurt, or they can hurt them. And I know I can hurt Derek!

  I leap my consciousness into the point of contact and feel something sharp almost rip my metaphorical head off.

  As I grimace, a cheap smile spreads across Derek’s face, like a goblin watching an undefended village begging to be raided. “I had to take into account many possible scenarios. So adding the condition that hurting me, or people who work for me, is off-limits seems to have paid off.”

  “All this time you wasted for little old me, you could have found the book by now.”

  He laughs, “Not true at all. Look, this may look bad, but this is really all just a misunderstanding. My friends who I’m sharing this room with—”

  “You're sharing a room!”

  “Yes”

  “With regular people?”

  “...Yes”

  “With the Book of the Dead in a suitcase?”

  “I don’t see what you're getting.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot.

  He lets go of me and then punches me square in the jaw. I smile; he at least managed to split my lip with the effort.

  “So what, your stupid fucking friends went through your shit and coincidently stop answering your calls? Or did the room service lady take it?”

  “I just need you to tell me where the book is so I can clear this all up. They can’t even read it, so the worst that can happen is that they leave the hotel with it or sell it.”

  “So the worst case is that someone inevitably finds out there is a wild copy of the Necronomicon and inevitably traces it back to you.”

  He really doesn’t like it when people point out that, despite all his supposed talent, he is really just a stooge who got rather lucky. So as he fumes internally, I think about my most likely options for escape. Ah, there is but one.

  “Ok, ok. I’ll help.”

  Derek looks at me suspiciously, but some of the tension leaves his body.

  “You don’t have to untie me, just give me something with a little juice and place it on my lap.”

  At this, Derek doesn’t hesitate. He grabs a ward he keeps on his person and tosses it at me. It lands with a small thud, as a ward is just a regular rock with some blood etched on top and a little bit of soul infusion for flavor. Looking down, I see he made up his own shorthand. Magic is more about intent, no need for dead languages. So the ward could be
designed for anything or nothing specific at all. I focus on the little bit of “other” inside the small rock and feel it heat up from the effort.

  “That shouldn’t be enough for you to break the geas.”

  “Yeah,” I look down at the pitiful amount of energy contained, “I know.” Then I focus on the book.

  A Written Perspective

  You don’t spend 72 hours constructing something nicknamed the Book of the Dead without a means to spy on the buyer. A Necronomicon is several parts; blood, bone, flesh, muscle tissue, bone marrow, topped with one human soul. Don’t think too hard about where or how I got it all. Just know that adding a tiny prick of your own blood and skin in the formula can give you a rather crude but effective GPS. In the business, it’s called scrying, which has various applications, none of which are enjoyable. Here an example of why.

  With focus comes the perspective shift, as my mind shrinks and then rapidly expands. With a burst of dulled yellow light, I can see, no, no… this less than sight. More a sense. I sense two presences. Familiar, one very familiar. Overly familiar. But the other? Alien, but I know that one… one too… a D… D…

  And then the light dissipates. An abyss of shapes and no sound, a dark unfriendly void devoid of everything but the smallest, most insignificant form of life. This won’t do, this won’t do at all. No. Fuck. You are Arthur Curry. Arthur. Curry. This… I’m the book. This… oh, so that’s what the inside of a suitcase feels like. Very disorienting, aw I see.

  Something enters the void, at first shallow but then rapidly expanding. Two somethings, three somethings. Energy. Oh yes, sound waves, heat waves! Oh yes, the smell! Prime age, prime for use. Oh, come closer. Please. No. The energy, the life, moves away. No, scatters, simply scatters. Still here, still close. Vibrations, footsteps, solid material... luggage. Yes. They won’t leave. They can’t leave.

  “Hey, you think—”

  “No man—”

  “Got invited to—”... “Room 12312.”

  “Lets—”

  “Phone is dead-”

  Yes, a small source, need, oh I need. They shuffle and shuffle. Voices, too far away. I… am Arthur Curry. The book is still in the hotel. Must be Derek’s friends or room buddies. Party, shit the room again. 12312. Fuck so cramped, so cold, can’t keep my thoughts… together…

  “Hey, what's in here?”

  WARMTH! Flesh. Blood. YES! Boy. Human. Child. Seeker? No, but that can change. Will change.

  “Hey, doesn’t this look like a copy of that book from the Evil Dead, bro?”

  “Oh fuck, yeah it does!”

  “Evil Dead or Army of Darkness?”

  “EVIL DEAD!”

  “ARMY OF DARKNESS!”

  “Alright, I’m taking this to the horror-themed party. Derek wouldn’t mind.”

  “Can’t send him the deets, though.”

  “We’ll borrow someone's cell at the party, bro. Let's enjoy this shit.”

  Perspective. Control. Need, I need it back. The book is held by moron number one in a book bag. Even if I could see, there wouldn’t be much to report. Fuck! Now there is the book itself, which is very much alive, in an undead way. Possessing consciousness and will. You see, scrying dumps you into the perspective of what you’re looking for at the latest point of separation. This isn't a problem with a simple bit of objectivity, but this book is… more complicated than a kidnapped middle school teacher. My added tidbits don’t help with the perspective shift but ensure that my search is for “my” copy of the book, which is important. Scrying is more art than science and comes with its own risk to match its reward.

  Staying focused, excruciating hard. The group of friends, three in total, move in a close pack as they high five and “NICE COSPLAY” their way through the crowd. They go into rooms packed full of sounds, smells, and life. They sit, they cheer, they exude waves of nostalgia, contentment, and… appreciation? And the pattern repeats itself, three, four, five more times before something tells them they gotta go. They’ve got to go to room 12312, they almost forgot. The party no doubt has started, and the anxiety of missing the fun before hotel security shuts them down propels them forward at lightspeed.

  Perspective. This happened…not too long ago. Not long at all.

  I exit the scry, visibly tired and rather sweaty.

  “They’re in room 12312. They spent most of their time—” trying really hard to collect my thoughts, “—going to the panels before then.”

  “Thank you,” Derek is now pacing back and forth but then comes to a decision, “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to keep you here and see if that checks out.”

  “Let me guess? If I’m lying, we do this the hard way?”

  “By the time I come back, if I don’t have the book, it should be easier to ask you to try a little harder. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “So if you find the book, you’ll let me go?”

  Derek shakes his head. “No. No. If I let you go, you’ll remove the geas. Remove geas, call my bosses. And while granted, it's your word against mine at this point... I’d rather not take that chance. And besides, if you die here, you’ll just reincarnate.”

  Now I could argue, but I don’t because I really need him to leave. And after taking some time to check for his phone and wards, he does. I have maybe 30 minutes at best for this plan to work, so I wait and watch Igor.

  Igor, or the first police officer infected, is swaying back and forth slightly. Lacking a way to tip him over, I start to count the rising and falling of his chest. At first, I thought it was too slight and shallow to notice. I close my eyes and listen and listen very hard; Jim is still breathing, though mostly through his mouth. But Igor… oh Igor, your about—

  Igor hits the ground with a thump, his eyes glazed over, and his jaw slacked to the side. He lands face first and doesn’t make a sound in protest. The geas burned through his brain with the efficiency of lit firewood. His subconscious is gone. Not even the basic act of breathing is remembered. If he had stuck around a few more seconds, Derek would have been here to witness the end result of his recklessness. But knowing that fucking goblin, he probably wouldn’t even care.

  I assume Igor stopped breathing about three minutes ago. In another 120 seconds, the man should be dead. And while I’m sure the man had a family that loved him, I really need a corpse right now.

  Simple Necromancy 101. Magic is the application of energy drawn from Other. Other is anything not from our reality. Sounds like a catch twenty-two, but conveniently enough, there is a source of Other in every rational universe. Life. You see, life in any form, no matter how small or simple, contains some bit of Other. Other being a shorthand for the irrational side of the Multiverse. The stuff that Daemons and old ones are made of. Now necromancy simply takes advantage of the one time when Other can be harnessed, which is death. Keep in mind, death, from the point of the Multiverse, is simply the separation of what belongs to the logical universe, matter and energy, from the illogical universe, the spirit, the essence, the soul. This separation is akin to nuclear fission and powers people would call magic.

  So all magic is inherently necromancy. Being sensitive to that separation between life and death is the first step to being a practitioner. And taking advantage of it is second nature, so when Igor dies 190 seconds later, I was off my 60 seconds, his soul is promptly put to good use.

  “Rise.”

  The empty husk, formerly known as Igor, obeys my compulsion. I lend him a little bit of his own spark to help with locomotion. I didn’t create a zombie. Those are autonomous. This one is merely following my command or my intent word for word. His soul, damaged as it may be, has more than enough spare juice to force my will upon what's left of his brain. Meanwhile, Jim jerks slightly to acknowledge the new development before continuing to drool on himself. If there is anything left of the cop in there, it won’t be long before it’s snuffed out too.

  Yeah, can’t save him. “Release my bonds.” The former Igor complies, though he doesn’t do
a great job. Untying a knot is an apparently upper brain function, and he really just hacks the rope with his bare hands until it falls to pieces.

  Free, I stand up only to be met by Jim’s Glock. The cold metal touches my temple forcing me to sit back down. I look at Jim, whose eyes gaze at me and not at me at the same time, and I sigh regretfully.

  “Shoot him.”

  Apparently, old Igor was a gunslinger in his day. The bang comes before I even finish saying “him.” As I attempt to repress a headache, the body of Jim drops to the ground, blood and brain matter decorating the luxury suite. Now being a black man with two dead cops in a hotel room does not look good. However, there is one small inconvenience I have to take care of first. Besides, what's the worst that can happen in ten minutes?

  Madness Beginning

  “I bring you,” my Holder brims with excitement, his body swelling with goofy pride, “THE NECRONOMICON!”

  “EVIL DEAD! EVIL DEAD!” chants the friends of the Holder.

  “Nice!” speaks a stranger, female by the inflection, “But does it really beat a Death Note?”

  “Is Death Note even a horror franchise?”

  “Wouldn’t a real-life death note be terrifying?”

  The Holder nods to his friends. “She’s got a point.” Before movement begins, the Holder must present me to the various denizens of this gathering. His companions scatter, their voices mixing in with the crowd. However, the Holder continues; conversations lead to drinks, the drinks cause intoxication, and the intoxication allows greater influence.

  Oh, how I try to influence. The mind of the Holder is a simple thing. Unwarded, unpracticed, utterly ignorant of his purpose. I can feel it, the curiosity of a Seeker, the birthright of his species churning inside of him. Seeking what he should not know, seeking his true origin amongst the stars.

  Oh yes, he is still drinking.

  “Come on, man, I brought the best thing here.”

  “Did you get that from the dealer’s room?”