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  Gathering Gloom

  Martin Shannon

  Copyright © 2020 by Martin Shannon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents, are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, actual events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  I. In the Garden

  1. Night Jobs

  2. Rock On

  3. Words of Power

  4. Vested

  5. Free Beer

  6. Special Delivery

  7. Road Less Traveled

  8. Three's Company

  9. Reaver Fever

  10. Letting Go

  11. Razor Sharp

  II. Fruit of the Tree

  12. Scent of a Woman

  13. A Lovely Inquisiton

  14. Perks

  15. It's just Coffee

  16. Gift of the Magi

  17. Oh, Knots

  18. Withering

  19. Swan Song

  20. Confrontation

  21. Swear Words

  22. Negative Nelly

  23. Truth and Lies

  24. Eyes on the Prize

  25. Slip and Seal

  26. Shrouded

  27. In Your Eyes

  28. Goodbye, Shorty

  29. Getting Ahead

  30. Welcome to the Gloom

  31. Soot and Ash

  32. Under the Table and Feeling

  33. Dead Man's Tongue

  34. Staring into the Void

  35. Chaos

  36. Real or Imagined

  37. Small, Green, and Rubbery

  38. Knots

  39. Magnetic Personality

  40. On the Line

  III. Cast Out

  41. Deals

  42. Minor Problems

  43. Silent Partner

  44. Soul Weavers

  45. Matchbox Meetings

  46. A World on Fire

  47. Letting Go

  48. Hellfire

  49. Lost and Found

  50. Cheers for Fears

  What’s next?

  Beaten Path

  Steel-toe Slumber

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  On Newsletters, Writing, and Reviews

  Also by Martin Shannon

  To my wife, the Porter to my Gene.

  Part I

  In the Garden

  1

  Night Jobs

  Bzzt!

  “Dang it,” my roommate mumbled, mashing a handful of buttons on the vending machine’s aging keypad. “Come on…”

  Ed and I huddled just inside the dim halo of a snack dispenser on the second floor of the now closed accounting building somewhere in the bowels of the college of business. The blue display cast just enough light to see our faces reflected in the dusty glass. Behind those patchy beards and messy hair, an angry red exit sign lit the remainder of the empty hallway. The harsh light gave an already unpleasant location a malevolent hue. Small packages of salty snacks hung like expired stockings from narrow metal posts in the machine, their colorful wrappers muted in the gloomy darkness.

  My roommate banged on the glass. “It’s a simple transaction. I put in a dollar, you give me the crackers,” he said, frowning at the truculent machine.

  A tiny blue LED display popped up in glowing letters.

  NO SALE.

  Bzzt!

  Ed’s dollar rolled back out of the machine like impromptu origami. He sighed and rubbed out the creases. Nothing else stirred on the long vinyl floor, nothing except for my roommate and a persnickety vending machine. Pockmarked with closed doors and the occasional bulletin board, the hall was devoid of all life, just the way you’d expect a haunted building to be on a Friday night.

  Ed shoved the dollar in again.

  NO SALE.

  Bzzt!

  “Ed,” I whispered, grabbing his shoulder, then checking the hall for signs of ghostly activity yet again. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a snack.” My roommate flipped surfer-blond locks out of his eyes and rammed the dollar back into the vending machine yet again. “I never exorcise on an empty stomach.”

  Bzzt!

  You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Ed Lovely was quite the eater. A couple inches taller than me, and lacking my more rounded form, Ed had the body of a distance runner—light on the muscle and heavy on the sinew. Right now, that body was doing its best to hold up a fishing vest of tiny pockets, each one practically bursting at the velcro’d seams with all manner of oddball items.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be quiet?”

  The young man shrugged his thin shoulders. “I doubt it matters much. What time is it?”

  “Ten,” I said, holding my watch up to catch what little light trickled out of the ancient vending machine. “I think?”

  “We got at least thirty minutes, this place has been nothing if not predictable.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Ed nodded and flipped his long bangs out of his face again. “Completely. Besides, you finished the sigil and I’ve got Qulvers’s Infinite Keys.” He patted a lump in one of his vest pockets. “What are you worried about?”

  I checked the empty hall again. “I’m not worried. I just think we shouldn’t be making a lot of noise, that’s all.”

  Ed smiled. Those dimpled cheeks played well with his girlfriend, but I knew they were just an early warning indicator that almost always meant trouble. “You worry too much, Gene, relax. You’re a Magician, you got this.”

  Do I?

  My name is Eugene Law, and I’m a Magician—at least that’s what I tell myself. I don’t do balloon animals, or kids parties, and I’m not much for card tricks. I deal in real Magick, the cosmic powers of the universe, and all the baggage that comes with them.

  Bzzt!

  The machine ejected the mangled dollar, forcing Ed to rub the offending bill against the side of the display. “Do you have another dollar? It doesn’t like this one.”

  “I’m not your personal cash machine.”

  My roommate pointed to the darkened interior. “I think they have peanut-butter crackers.”

  Ed wasn’t a Magician, but he did know how to get me to magic up some dollar bills.

  “Fine.” I pulled out my wallet. “But I think I gave my last dollar to Morgan.”

  Ed rolled his eyes. “What on earth for?”

  “Because she’s my girlfriend and she asked for it?”

  Ed Lovely shook his head, his fishing vest of tiny pockets jingling along with it. “You do know just because t
hey ask you for things doesn’t mean you have to give it to them, right?”

  “I have a five,” I said, ignoring his comment. “But I don’t want—”

  Ed snatched the bill out of my wallet. “Excellent. I’ll get you change.”

  “But I—”

  “And peanut-butter crackers.”

  Sigh.

  “Fine.”

  Bzzt!

  My roommate scrunched up his face. “Dang it. Come on, you stupid machine. We have two hungry Demon Hunters out here who need to sustain themselves through the trials and tribulations ahead. Give us your bounty, oh great and holy—” Ed paused to squint at the tiny lettering just above the digital readout—“Apex Food Services Delivery Cash-n-Go. Bestow it upon your supplicants such that we may bask in the life-giving nourishment of preservatives and salt.”

  “Demon Hunters?”

  Ed kicked the machine. “Yeah, I lumped you in with me, just in case the machine was listening. Most of the time these things hate Magicians.”

  Whrr.

  My roommate’s eyes lit up. “See, I told you.” He pointed to a spot a few feet away, where we’d drawn the Velcurses Conundrum on the vinyl floor in grease pen earlier. “Stand over there, Gene, you’re getting Magick on the vending machine.”

  Demon Hunters…

  Ed Lovely wasn’t your typical roommate. To say he was eccentric would have been doing a disservice to truly eccentric people. Ed was wholly unique, and for a guy like me that worked out all right.

  My roommate had no Magickal power to speak of, his well was dry—bone dry you could say, but I didn’t, because neither of us talked about that. What Ed did have was an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things supernatural. The man was a walking field-guide to everything from Magickal Sigils to Demons, and, as luck would have it, hauntings.

  “I’m telling you, Gene, it’s a simple Poltergeist. Nothing major. We could totally handle it in a single evening,” my roommate had said only a few hours earlier.

  “I’m not sure… isn’t that the accounting building?”

  “Right! What’s it going to do, spreadsheet us to death? Come on. It’ll be good practice for you.”

  I’d begrudgingly agreed, then helped Ed into his Demon Hunting vest of trinkets and yard sale rejects—more than half of which I knew were Magickal, but had no idea what they did. After all of that I somehow ended up carrying his backpack.

  Ed’s keys had unlocked the main door, as well as the second-floor hallway. All of which had led us to this rather ornery vending machine. That was how we’d ended up here, in the accounting building, waiting for a ghost my roommate insisted would show up at ten-thirty.

  ‘This amorphous haunting is punctual, Gene. I’m sure of it.’

  “Yahtzee!” Ed cried when the first snack item hit the bottom of the vending machine.

  A cool wind kicked up and whistled down the empty hallway.

  “Ed…”

  “Damn, they’re cheese crackers, man. You still want them?”

  The exit sign flickered gently, its light popping on and off in rapid-fire succession.

  “Ed…”

  My roommate dug an arm into the machine and shoved it up to his elbow. “Don’t worry, buddy, I got you. I think I can reach them. It’s not really stealing if the machine doesn’t give you what you ordered.”

  The distant red glow winked out and left us with only the machine’s glowing digital readout to see by.

  “Ed!”

  “What?” My roommate contorted his body to dig deeper. “Can you just be patient a few more seconds? I’ve almost got it.”

  The young Demon Hunter’s fingers grazed the edge of a plastic-wrapped stack of crackers.

  “Ed, the sign just went out.”

  “Huh?” My roommate pressed his cheek against the display case.

  “And did you feel that breeze?” I asked, trying to find the grease-marked sigil we’d drawn in the machine’s dim light.

  Ed scrunched up his face and grabbed the lip of the dispenser slot. “Is it ten thirty?”

  “I can’t see my watch, but—”

  “Then we’re fine. I told you, this Poltergeist is punctual. It’s like clockwork. You could set your watch by it. In fact, my mom always used to say that if you—”

  “Ed,” I cried, pointing down the hallway, where a pair of red pinpricks glowed in the distant dark. “What’s that?”

  “I’m betting it’s the same thing that has my hand.”

  Bang!

  I spun around to find my roommate’s face smashed against the vending machine’s glass.

  A black-and-shadowy set of clawed fingers inside the glass-covered display case squeezed my roommate’s fingers.

  “It’s got your hand!”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know.” Ed pulled back with his arm only to get his cheek slammed back into the machine a second time. “It’s not ten thirty.”

  Soft whispers echoed in the hallway, hissing and angry as they bounced off the stark walls and hard floor.

  “And that’s not a Poltergeist,” I said, pulling on his shoulder.

  “Nope.” My roommate used his other hand to pry his face away from the display case. “Those are Shades—”

  Bang!

  Ed’s head hit the glass again. More red eyes twinkled like stars along the edges of the darkened hall. Sharp claws scraped on the hard concrete. “What do we do?”

  “You’re the Magician. Warm up that Magick while I get my hand out of this damn box.”

  “Okay, do I power up the Velcurses Conundrum?” I asked, trying to find the sigil in the dark hallway.

  “Yeah, wait, you need to—”

  Bong!

  My roommate’s face smacked into the display glass hard enough to leave a mark.

  “Ed?”

  My only response was the scraping of claws and glow of angry red eyes reflected in the vending machine’s dingy glass.

  Crap.

  2

  Rock On

  I grabbed Ed’s shoulder. “What? I need to what?”

  The clawed hand holding my roommate captive released its shadowy fingers, instead reaching for me through the dusty glass.

  “Ed,” I cried, yanking the dazed Demon Hunter free of the vending machine’s grasp. “What are Shades?”

  My roommate shook his head. “Huh?”

  More red eyes lit up the hallway, too many of them to count. They bobbed like angry fireflies, crawling along the walls, the ceiling, and the floor.

  I dragged the stunned Demon Hunter into the sigil and tried to make sure I didn’t smudge any of the complex lines in the process. “Ed, what do I do?”

  My roommate shook his head a few times. “Give me a second.”

  “We don’t have a second.”

  Shadowy claws reached up from the floor, their fingers searching, while all around us bright eyes pressed in closer.

  I slammed my palm against the ground and dug deep for the Magick I knew swirled around in my body. Using that power was always a risk. I hadn’t mastered much in the way of control—that was what the sigils were for—at least according to Morgan.

  God, I wish Morgan was here right now…

  My girlfriend would have known what to do. She was a master at these sorts of things. The brilliant gothic angel possessed a Magick that was as delicate as it was precise. She understood the power tucked inside those whorls and lines far better than I did, and even though we’d worked on them for next to forever, I still didn’t feel like I’d made any headway. But I did know one thing: a sigil’s power is tucked up in its design, and in how it manipulates the Magick you push into it.

  Pushing Magick—now that I can do.

  I directed that swirling cosmic power into the sigil, sending it racing down the complex lines and dancing between the twisting whorls.

  Come on…

  A dim glow drifted up from the concentric pattern, like the twinkling of stars at night. The faint light played off Ed’s fa
ce, as well as the scowling visages of hungry Shades.

  “What are you doing?!” Ed cried, suddenly very much awake.

  “You said to get the Magick going. That’s what I’m doing.”

  My roommate grabbed my arm. “You don’t pour Magick into the Velcurses Conundrum in the presence of Shades!”

  “You don’t?”

  Whispering mouths opened around us, their fleshy, cavernous interiors sucking up the sigil’s power like vacuums on overdrive.

  Ed shook his head. “No, you don’t. What is she teaching you? Crap. You just powered them up.”

  “I did?”

  Shades swelled around us, buoyed by the Magick injected into the Velcurses Conundrum and hungry for more.

  “Yes, you did,” Ed said, fumbling with one of the many pockets on his jacket. “Shades are creatures of the Gloom.”

  “Huh?”

  My roommate slapped his forehead. “Is she teaching you anything beyond how to undo a bra strap?”

  Morgan had taught me a lot of things, but it may have been possible my mind had drifted a bit from time to time. Hungry shadows swelled and filled the space around us. Red eyes glittered in the sigil’s soft glow.