Erik was waiting in the morning mist, standing in the middle of the street and looking up at her bedroom window. He waved. She stared. The curtains closed with a flick of her fingers. He sighed. 

 

Fifteen minutes later, she emerged; black leather jacket, rolled up blue jeans, and combat boots with her hair in a high ponytail. She stopped in place some five feet away as Erik gave a thousand yard stare simultaneously at and beyond her. She broke the silence.

“Let’s get this over with. Walk with me.”

He nodded, swallowing with a dry mouth and averting his eyes at all cost. He knew how it would look if he stared, yet he couldn’t begin to comprehend what she had in store. The thoughts swirled and taunted him like a vortex, vying for his attention as he struggled to focus on not tripping from the edges of the sidewalk. 

 

“I have questions for you, and I need them answered. Truthfully. I’m not answering anything until then.” Agatha said with some uncomfortable assertion.

 

Erik kept his eyes glued to the asphalt, afraid that anything he said now would indict him. Surely, the ground was his closest ally now. It kept secrets so much better than he could; the thought that his eyes were windows to the soul was enough to keep them away from her. 

 

Agatha growled in a low register and grabbed him by the chin, turning his head. His pupils shrank.

“Am. I. Fucking. Clear?”

 

He nodded.

She refused to let go, giving him a look over. He chose to wear a school sweatshirt hoodie despite P.E. being yesterday. He was wearing a pair of baggy long shorts that met his ankles, with the rest of the length covered by stark white socks. His face was barely visible from under the hood, but she could see the faintest look of something. Shame, or maybe… she stowed the thought. She let go, and they continued walking. 

 

“That spell you showed me last night. Who taught you that?” She asked, in a more subdued tone.

 

Without hesitation, Erik answered, “So, my father and I were obsessed with ghost hunting years ago.” 

 

Agatha gave him an intensely inquisitive look, but allowed him to continue. 

 

“We took a trip to the desert, on the border of Idaho. There was this abandoned cement factory that everyone said was haunted. He’d heard about it from a friend, and we went on a trip. We brought these camcorders he’d just bought…”

 

Agatha was clearly not sure where this was going, and in seeing her patience run out he gasped for air before continuing, “We didn’t see ghosts. We saw people. People in the silo. They were chanting and moving in weird ways. I climbed up one of the ladders, got some footage of them, and when my father wanted us to leave, I fell. I woke up the next day, and my father didn’t remember any of it.” 

 

Her demeanor had shifted, and he felt a bit more comfortable with taking his time. His eyes wandered to her jacket in the middle of the quiet. Her ability to look at home in that expensive leather was admirable. She walked these streets like she made them, and the fog parted for her, not against her. A deep feeling of yearning stabbed him from somewhere far away. He ignored it fiercely, and resumed his story.

 

“So… before we left for home, I snuck off back to the cement plant. I found the camcorder,  completely busted in the bushes below the silo. The tape was still intact.”

He could tell she was scrutinizing him in some way, but the look was drawn ahead to their apparent destination. The fog obscured everything, but she could see clearly. Through it. Through him. “My dad… he can’t see what’s on the tapes. It’s like he sees nothing but static. He gets angry when I try to talk about that day.”His voice trailed off as he realized Agatha had stopped. He clearly said something that was upsetting her. 

 

“Erik,” She said, with a voice that could cut piano wire, “How many people have seen these tapes?”

 

His heart rate rose sharply, suddenly realizing the predicament. She doesn’t want anyone else to know? He hastened his explanation, “My Father can’t even comprehend what’s on the screen, I’m the only one who remembers.”

The world seemed to bend around her as his field of view left his body and his mind seemed to dip backward like a bad bout of vertigo. Her eyes were simultaneously too far away to see clearly, and the only thing he could comprehend.

“That isn’t what I asked, Erik. I asked you…”

Her trailing off seemed out of character, until he could feel her thought pierce his cranium from every angle in agonizing harmony:

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THE TAPE

 

Erik folded like an accordion and fell backward from the overwhelming sensation of gravity being rearranged. He scrambled to answer, “Three, three people- Dad, me, and Todd! We were high and he thought it was fake- or a movie or something, and I was too high to do the spell and prove it. I’m sorry. I fucked up…!”

 

Agatha had disappeared. He frantically looked around, finding that the fog made it nearly impossible to see anything beyond his hands now. Just then, activity in the vapors became noticeable. Erik believed momentarily that the fog was rising rapidly from the black asphalt, like steam, only to realize that it was the opposite: a sickening hiss foretold the cracking and breaking all around him before causing the ground he stood on to fall into an endless black void. Only the fog being dragged from above painted the black canvas in any discernible detail. The air whistled painfully in his ears, screaming from the sheer force of being subjected to terminal velocity. The slab of street he rode in on buckled and abandoned him, only to be shattered by some unknown force. He screamed. 

 

YOUR LIE OF OMISSION WAS CARELESS

 

THERE IS TOO MUCH ON THE LINE TO TOLERATE THIS

 

Whether from the force of the endless fall knocking the air out of his lungs, or the shock of the accusation, Erik had no retort. No defense. He knew exactly what he was avoiding with the answer he gave. The windows to the soul were hers to spy through, he now realized, and there had been no point in hiding the truth behind them. There was something comforting about that for a fraction of a second, before he noticed the hulking figure in the black void: a giant, disembodied arm with sickly navy flesh, withered fingers, and yellowed nails rising from the depths and poised to snatch him. 

 

There was no room for action or reaction, just disbelief. The impossibly large and rotting limb made the kind of sound a large freight elevator makes when traveling from the top floor to the basement in rapid succession. Erik had no time to fathom the force of the impact, only the fear and disgust of the decaying giant encompassing all but his head in a surprisingly nimble motion. Paralyzed, but not dead. Immobile, but not for lack of ability, just silent withdrawal. 

 

She floated out from the darkness, bringing with her the only color of the world he could recall now, the white fog plumes of the world above. They swirled and coated her atmosphere like a school of fish, and she paid them no attention. Her eyes were again, fixed on his windows. The blinds could not be drawn.

She asked, “You lied to me once already. How can I be sure you’re worth the trouble?”

The discomfort of the massive hand’s index finger jabbing into his sternum notwithstanding, he answered, “I’ll never lie to you again. I’ll let you know anything you need- anything you want to know! I’ll do anything fo-”

He stopped himself before he could say something that he was sure would be misconstrued. Agatha waited in silence, the uncanny vision of her standing on the void itself above him making it hard to clear his mind. Eventually he calmed down long enough to give a statement he felt comfortable with, if it could be called comfort. 

 

“Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.”

 

She clicked her tongue, and gave a noise of disapproval, before saying, ”I don’t think you have the context to know what that entails.”

The hand’s grip had only tightened as Erik struggled against it, saying shortly, “Anything would be better than this!” 

 

She glided closer, leaning into him effortlessly, commanding her angle and pitch in the air like a puppeteer would a marionette. She was close enough to his face to feel her breath in the cold void… but there was no breath. He was suddenly aware that neither of them were breathing. He gasped, and no air came rushing out to meet his lungs. Her icy blue eyes had something to say. Or perhaps it was her voice in his head again. It was impossible to tell, but the message was clear: She was familiar with fates worse than death, let alone those of being clutched by dead hands in black voids. Erik met her stare, for the first time, unwaveringly. This was his way of saying, so be it. I will do it. Whatever ‘it’ is. 

 

Her immediate answer to his thought was unexpected. “Is that so? OK.”

 

Her hair billowed in the draftless air in response to her arm extending outward from her side. SNAP. The decrepit hand obeyed her clear command, and unfurled the fingers wrapped so gently around the boy to allow him to stand on its palm. It had an aspect of tired patience to it, as though it relished every command, but could barely muster the energy to carry them out. He stood there, still not on equal footing with the floating girl as she touched down onto the middle finger with a single boot.

 

She started with a sharp tone,“When you cast that spell in front of me, you did something dangerous and stupid.” The other boot fell, and she stepped forward. He did not move. She continued, “Practitioners, magic users like myself, are bound to secrecy by means of something called The Covenant. When you cast that spell in my presence, I was given a vision. An ultimatum. Two choices, Erik. It’s always just two choices...”

Her approach stopped some five feet from him, about the same distance as they had been above, yet she seemed closer somehow. She sounded somber now. “In my expanded lifetime, I may pick a pair of people to enter into The Covenant. My first candidate is reserved for a debt I owe. A great debt that I cannot ignore, or substitute.”

Erik could see where this was going. The guilt was welling inside of him. She looked distressed, and turned away before saying, “I was saving the other for someone special. Someone I could share my life with…” the look on her face contorted into pain and resignation. 

Erik dug his heel into the dead flesh in defiance, and said, “This is absurd! That… might as well be asking you to pick who you’re going to marry! All for what, seeing me pull a magic trick?! You’re only, what, Sixteen? They already want you to be ready to pick-”

She interrupted, angrily, though not directed at him, “I’m not Sixteen, Erik.”

 

He stopped dead in his tracks. The implication was maddeningly simple, but he didn’t dare cut the tension now by asking how old she really was. She wouldn’t elaborate, so he changed the subject again in frustration, “Well I certainly don’t want you to have to throw that away for me! Do you really have to do this? Isn’t there someone we can talk to? There’s got to be something else!”

 

“I think you know what my other option is, Erik.” Her voice strained the last syllable in an attempt to stifle the blow.

He was incredulous. No ruler or governing power could be so cruel and bizarre as to charge someone with the task of execution for witnessing something, or so he told himself. He asked, “So what, they’ll kill me? Is that it? Just say it! How am I supposed to know what I’m agreeing to if you don’t say it? Give me a fucking choice in this too, god damn it!”

The void howled and a cacophony of banshee screams filled the emptiness around him and attacked the edges of his mind.

DO NOT FORGET WHO YOU ARE SPEAKING TO

 

The reminder of her temper had not gone unnoticed, but rather than recoiling in fear, he found himself bracing for more in indignation. When none came, he opened his eyes. 

 

She sighed then said, “You’re better off not knowing. I’m not going to kill you, Erik. I can’t. That’s what’s so frustrating. No matter how they frame it, I can’t see killing an uninitiated as justifiable. You had no idea what the ramifications would be, and you forced my hand… but there’s no one to blame. No one but the only group I am incapable of challenging.”

A smile escaped from Erik, despite his best efforts to conceal it. “So I’m in? You’ll get me in this Covenant thing? Does that mean you’ll teach me how to do more magic?”

“You want me to save your life and tutor you?”, She said. He looked dejected, before she laughed and said “Hey, I’m kidding. I’m not wasting  a covenant on someone I can’t make into an apprentice, anyway. You’ve got some talent for this already and I need someone who can keep up with my teachings. You might just be able to.”

“So…” He started, bashfully, “I have so many questions. What else does this thing entail? Who do we answer to? What else can magic do?”

“Whoa whoa whoa, one thing at a time kiddo,” she said, “The Covenant means you’re under the thumb of some elitist prick wizards. No sharing magic, no talking about it with anyone aside from me, OK? That’s all you need to know about it for now, nothing else is immediately relevant. We’ll get you initiated later today.”

 

Erik shuffled around, still uncertain about this and uncomfortable with how fast she was trying to move things along. She seemed to notice. He groaned, and said, “So I guess that makes these assholes both of our bosses? They must be hot shit if you can’t threaten them with…. This thing.” he said, trying not to look down at the flesh he stood on. It writhed under his feet in response. 

She gave a halfhearted chuckle and said, “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.”

Erik gave a surprised and puzzled look, before answering, “That a song? By who?”

“The Smashing Pumpkins. Bullet with Butterfly Wings?”, She said.

 

Erik gave a confident but inquisitive, “-Yeah, I’ve got their album, they don’t have any tracks by that name.”

“-Forget I said anything,” she dismissed with a note of embarrassment, adding, “We have more important matters to discuss when you wake up.”

Wait, what? His eyes went wide, and the behemoth’s fingers began to close around the both of them. Dead, clammy flesh was replaced with warm clammy sheets as he bolted upright from his bed. The discomfort of the night terror, his own cold sweat, and even the chill of the misty morning were nothing compared to what he knew was waiting for him outside. 

 

Agatha was waiting in the morning mist, standing in the middle of the street and looking up at his bedroom window. She waved. He stared in abject terror. The curtains closed. She sighed.