Chapter Six
Weir Wisp Memories
The Weaver’s words felt even heavier than all the talk of hunting down Professor Minevur had threatened before Art left. This man seemed to know about things Art hardly felt comfortable questioning.
“Sir,” Art started when the Weaver handed him a cup of oddly colored tea, “I’ve come for your help.”
“Hm?” The man flashed him a look as if somehow he had forgotten Art was a guest and was suddenly surprised Art had an agenda. “You did? What is it?”
“My Haunting Weir,” Art paused at the smell of the tea, an equally odd scent to match its color tickled his nose, it is slightly open. I’m told I actually have two.”
“A crack, yes.” The Weaver nodded, not reacting as if this was a problem. The contrast to the serious words the he had just spoken before serving the tea had Art confused.
“I need to close it.” Art said plainly.
“Indeed you do,” the Weaver agreed, taking a sandwich from a stack of small sandwiches he had brought with the tea. “If you don’t, you’ll attract hordes of demons. Powerful, dangerous ones that will want to eat you, especially since you have all those psychic gifts. You’d be quite a feast, wouldn’t you?” He chuckled a little, darkly, before popping a cookie into his mouth and nabbing another sandwich. “They would gain great power by eating a talented young man such as yourself. If you got a smart one, an old one that had been around for a long time, it would know to keep you alive, and feed off your life force for a while. It would torment you, drive you mad. The energy and negativity that would generate would make you all the more nourishing to it. It would be a horrible, slow, painful decent into madness and then finally death. But sometimes these things don’t let you go even in death, and it will keep you inside it to watch it devour others, even seeming like you were participating. Your own personal hell.”
All hope Art had been nursing until this moment fell flat, crushed and dribbled on, by the dark chuckling that bubbled out of the Weaver. Art seriously doubted this man would help him. He seemed far more amused by the idea of Art being condemned as a prisoner of a devil than he seemed concerned or interested in the details as to why Art might need help.
“That aside,” Art said dryly, putting his untouched tea on the table. “I need your help to exorcise my Weir and close it.”
“What would you need my help for?” the Weaver popped up aggressively as if the very thought of Art coming all this way to bother him for such a thing was completely absurd. “Close it yourself. It’s what you people do, isn’t it?”
Art shook his head, the long cut strands falling into his eyes a little, “I can’t. No one in the Seminary could. My professor sent me to you. A very unusual thing happened to me during my final test to become a Weiriman.”
“Unusual?” the Weaver suddenly seemed very interested. “I like unusual. Explain, boy.”
The explanation still felt surreal as Art relayed all that he knew and all he had been told. The Weaver listened, half curled in his large easy chair, the back carved out of a huge tree trunk lined with pillows. He was still listening to Art describe the details of what the Guild had tried to do and their ultimate decision to leave it in Art’s hands, even though he knew even less than they did. When he finished his tale, the Weaver stared at him a long moment and then broke out into laughter. Art was frowning, but waited saying nothing, hoping this was just another eccentric outburst. Then the Weaver titled his body out of the chair and with an acrobat’s grace he lifted himself to his feet and moved towards Art at alarming speed. Confused and surprised, Art could do little more than bump into the back of his own chair and slightly turn his face away as the Weaver pushed his face within inches of the Weiriman’s.
He smelled of spice and herbs laced with a hint of something Art had only experienced while in the presence of a demon. The Weaver stared a long time, teal eyes large, the pupil widening so much that it almost overtook the color. Swallowing hard, Art tried to move, having no idea what was happening, but desperately hoping it would lead to a good outcome. He had little else to go on and had to put at least his partial trust in the odd man.
“Ahhhh,” the Weaver exclaimed deeply, his light voice dropping to a slight gravelled drag. “There he is, I sense him. It is indeed true, you are host and house to a Pith demon. Ancient, evil and very, very hungry. I can almost smell its desire to devour you and escape its fate. This won't keep you alive to feed on. This thing is already so strong. Eating you will free it entirely.”
“Can you do anything about it? Can you exorcise it?” Art stammered, wishing the Weaver would back up, but the man did not move, using unseen abilities to feel around inside Art’s psychic space.
“Don’t know anything yet. I’ve just got a taste of his air,” the Weaver snapped, rolling his eyes into the back of his head. “I’m going to need to do a more thorough examination. I need to pop inside your mind. Let’s go now.”
“Uh,” Art stammered, really wanting to say no but knowing he could do nothing but agree.
“You don’t have a choice, Weiriman. You either let me look or you go back to your useless colleagues and let them put you down. What’s it going to be?”
The Weaver leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest, smiling just slightly, as the fairies around them whispered in their own language. They seemed to understand what was happening, fearful of the thing caged within Art.
“What do I have to do?” Art asked quietly, hating his situation but refusing to relent completely to self-pity yet.
“Come with me.”
The house continued to amaze Art. They ascended another staircase in the back of the place made entirely of a long, stretching tree, bent and shaped to make both banister and stairs. His eyes fell on the large widow looking out into the back of the Weaver’s grounds. The sun was setting and it would be night soon. He had been lucky to be on a train the night before, and nothing had happened. Now he was in the woods, too near a haunted ground to know if this night would be eventless or not.
“Come on,” the Weaver said gruffly as he opened a large heavy door at the top of the stairs, carved with a tree relief that extended the entire length of the hallway. “This room will be best for this.”
Circular but small, Art craned his neck to the most pronounced thing in the room: a tall, narrow tree that snaked against a wall, its branches crawling along the skylight that took up almost the entire ceiling. In the center was a ring of sitting cushions and the Weaver motioned for Art to take to one opposite of him. Smelling more like the forest than the inside of the house, Art could not help but feel like they were actually outside. The large overhead window, showing the ever-growing evening, aided the feeling, and before long, he was experiencing a still chill. As he sat it started to feel even odder. Like the walls were thinning, the air turning foggy and slightly light.
“Don’t let that bother you,” the Weaver said sitting in a cross-legged position.
“What bother me?” Art frowned, wanting to pull his hood up, but remembering as he was still in the house and had been instructed to take it off. He thought it might upset the strange man.
“The feel of this room. It is more outside than in. It’s actually set just inside the Veil.”
Art was suddenly alarmed. “The Veil? Like the Veil, between the physical world and the realm between worlds?”
“There’s just the one still, isn’t there?”
He did not find the Weaver’s humor or sarcasm amusing. Going beyond the threshold of the physical world could be very dangerous. The Veil was the intangible corridor realm that connected the plains of existence together: physical, the hells, and the other places Art knew little about. It was always said that one should not cross the Veil unless the situation was dire. It opened up psychics, made them more vulnerable. There, things that did not have form had much more power and physical things had much less. One could easily be possessed there and get dragged off to a place best
left out of even the imagination. It was decisively unsafe for mortals with souls.
“I can’t be in here! It’s dangerous under normal circumstances but with my Weir slightly open I could be—"
“Could be what?” the Weaver leaned towards him, brimming with grinning. “Invaded? Possessed? My boy, if that happens whatever attacks you will have more than some little Weiriman to deal with. The demon inside you will completely consume anything that gets into your soul. The most you have to worry about is a demon killing your physical body and releasing that thing within you. You don’t want that. Now, be still. We are about to begin.”
Art was scowling heavily but obeyed, still not liking the idea of being within the Veil and hating the idea that the demon within him was so powerful no other demon beyond the Veil seemed to pose it much threat.
“Hey, are you listening to me?”
Art’s attention snapped back to the Weaver whose silver eyebrows were pinched together tightly.
“I’m sorry, Sir.”
“Right! Now, as I was saying, close your eyes. I need you to enter your mind as if you were going to your Weir. Once inside you will need to find the door to your mind and let me in.”
“That’s not my Haunting Weir?” Art asked confused. They had never done something like this in training.
The Weaver rolled his eyes, slapping his thighs irritably.
“They aren’t teaching you babies anything in that Seminary anymore, are they? The Weir is for incorporeal creatures. If you want to share a dream or allow someone into your mind, you use your Mind’s Door. Everyone has one, but a psychic’s is easier to find. Now, do as I say before I get bored with you and kick you out of my house.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, waiting for Art.
Art turned a lip up at that remark but had to ask, “Demons can’t get in through this door?”
The Weaver opened his eyes slowly and smiled, looking dark, even creepy before saying, “Most not. But there are a few who can slip in. Some Weirimen who have faced these great tricksters never lived to tell the tale. Their souls are likely still in torment, play things for the evil that found them. You always have to be careful, Weiriman. This is a dark world you navigate, but after seeing the Pith demon within you, I’m sure you know what I mean. You did not stand a chance against him, did you? It frightened you beyond your wildest nightmares, didn’t it? All that evil, all that power, all that intelligence honed in on the singular focused task of devouring your soul. I’m honestly very surprised you still want to be Weiriman at all. If you’ve seen a Pith demon, you’ve seen real primary evil.”
Art stared hard at the Weaver, the bleak honestly of his haunting statement rippling over the man. He had not allowed himself to dwell very much on the actual demon itself. The experience had been harrowing, almost too much for him to process. In the light of day it felt like an unreal nightmare. But when the Weaver spoke, a feeling inked back into him like needle on flesh. It carried a weight greater than anything Art had known.
“I really had not given the thing too much thought,” he said honestly. “But you are right, it is the purest form of evil I’ve ever encountered or even learned about. That’s why I want it out of me.”
The Weaver chuckled. “I bet you would like to know who put it in you too.”
Art blinked fast, he had not even considered that it had been put inside him. “What do you mean by that?!”
Again, the Weaver was laughing. “Boy, this thing didn’t just grow within you. It was put inside your double Weir. I’ve rarely seen one with two Weirs. So functional a prison: one keeping it out and another keeping it in. I won’t know more until we go see it. But if my instincts are right something put this thing inside you. You’re its jail, but not if your Weir is cracked open, it will get out. There is no stopping it, unless you figure out how it was imprisoned in the first place. Now, do as I say. Let’s go see your funny housemate.”
It took longer to go into his inner mind than it ever did before. The Weaver’s words left him shaken and angry. The thought that someone deliberately did this to him, blurred his concentration and it took several lectures and much impatient huffing on the Weaver’s part to finally get Art to calm himself enough to enter his inner mind.
Once inside the eerie place, Art looked around, completely confused. It was different. Before, when he entered his mind’s eye it had always been in the broken temple. Where he was now was outside the structure. Yet, he would have been less alarmed by that if the temple itself did not look so different. Most of the roof had always been gone but now there was a tall roof, with archways and pillars. A broken clock sat on the building’s face, everything covered in crawling ivy.
The spotty forest world around him was dark, so seeing nothing else to do, he headed into the building, pulling open a massive iron gate and pushing on the door beyond. The inside too was more intact, the floor still broken, the little river running through. However, the holes in the crumbling walls were repaired, even some glass hung in a few of the window frames. The ceiling above looked dark and black, but it was not the empty darkness of before. There was certainly form there now.
Unnerved, Art still wasted no time in looking for his mind’s door. All the walls around him showed nothing, but he paused when he got to his Haunting Weir. A chill crept over him, sending hollow frosty air into the marrow of his bones. The whispering was much quieter than it had been before everywhere but near the Weir. Remembering the weight of the voice of the demon, he turned on his heel, not wanting to give it the chance to speak to him again. Real fear rippled through his blood and he set to his task anew, wanting very much not to dwell on the memories and the fact that he was so close to the thing now.
Art left the Weir and headed back into the main part of the temple. There he glimpsed an old broken staircase that had always been just pieces of a long set climbing upwards. Art had never gone up them because they had been too heavily damaged and they seemed to lead to nowhere. Now with the building more intact, Art could see they snaked around a wall.
Though still full of holes, he was able to climb them, following their ascent about the temple’s outer wall, until finally they ended at a small door. Little with a rounded top, it was green, accented by amber. Curious, Art pulled the handle and gasped when he found the Weaver on the other side. Beyond, the man he could see the room in which they were sitting, even see himself, entranced, sitting across from the man.
“Ah!” the Weaver smiled. “Finally.” He got up and headed towards Art, but the young man had to do a double take. Though the Weaver had gotten up, his body also remained sitting, eyes closed, unmoving. It was as if a double of him had seamlessly separated itself from himself and was now free to enter through the door which Art had opened. “Let’s go then.”
The Weaver pushed past Art, telling him to close the door. Art found the experience dizzying. Though Weirimen worked inside someone’s mind to battle a possessed demon, often doing combat there, it was usually like it had been in the pit. It was dark, formless, just exorcist verses demon. There was very little scenery or confusing surroundings. Art worried he would not be able to tell what was real and what was in his mind if these kinds of activities continued.
At the Weaver’s insistence, he led them to his Weir and stood back, allowing the man to examine what he had come to see.
“Sit there, this could take a while,” the Weaver instructed and proceeded to stand in front of the thing, one hand on it, facing away from Art.
Anxious, Art did as he was told. He knew he could not rush the process and would likely just be in the way if he offered to assist. He had no idea what the Weaver was doing. He did not even know why he should put his faith in the strange person he had just met. He was beyond the Veil, let this person into his mind, and was near the Weir he knew he should not be messing with again after the last experience. Life events were turning out very differently from how he had imagined.
The thought
brought back memories of leaving the Seminary. No one but Senny had even come by to talk to him about what had happened. From her short conversation it was apparent they were talking behind his back. He had never been too social but he had expected one or two of them at least attempt to inquire. If things worked out and he was allowed to return and graduate, would any of them even want to partner with him? Would he be considered broken or tainted now?
No matter how he tried to banish the dark thoughts from his mind, Art could not keep them from rising to the surface. Even with the looming threat of his soul being eaten and his life being taken, he could not put aside that the life he had worked so hard for might never materialize. What would he do with himself if he failed to become a Weiriman? He never even considered the idea.
“Ahhh there you are. Aren’t you a beauty of a thing!” the Weaver suddenly exclaimed, startling Art.
The man’s eyes were still closed, a smile over his lips. He dropped his head, the hand not on the Weir, but rising up towards Art. The Weiriman paused, uncertain what was happened until the world around him started to rumble. Scared, but uncertain what to do, Art watched as figures seemingly made of smoke and color materialized.
“People?” Art questioned aloud as the smoky figures moved passed him, clearly not real but some shadow of who they represented.
Calming more out of curiosity rather than anything else, he watched nearly a dozen figures come out of the archways lining the temple. They were dressed like Weirimen, though their style seemed older than what Art was accustom to. None of them wore the insignia of the Guild anywhere, but many of them had the signature mask up over their mouth and nose, like the one Art usually wore when working. Many demons emitted a tasteless, odorless miasma, known as Sin Breath that could affect the mind and induce fear. The specialized Sin Breath mask invented by the Guild, lessened the effects and most Weirimen, who did not have a natural immunity to the substance, used the facemask.
He wondered if this was a Weirimen hunting party. Was he watching the events of an old hunt? They spoke to one another, their voices only hurried whispers that Art could hardly hear.
“It is here,” one murmured.
“Begin the ritual,” another said.
Confused, Art watched as the blurry figures moved, placing a lantern down in the center of the temple, chanting, moving. It was unclear what was happening. The lantern started to smoke; the candle inside burning more brightly than any regular flame. Peering closer, he noticed it looked strangely like the soul lantern Cindervail had given him.
He wanted to tell the Weaver. Perhaps, ask about the lantern and if it had some significance to his condition, but something was happening among the figures. Someone was suddenly screaming and a body flew across the room. Chaos erupted among the group. Weapons were flashing, spells being thrown, and suddenly out of the darkness of the ceiling, Art saw it. The same demon imprisoned in his Weir was towering over the Weirimen, long arms swatting and repelling people and weapons.
Art watched in horror as many of them were slathered, despite their obvious skills. The demon was far too powerful. Its size changed and morphed as it roved through the room dispatching Weirimen and others, tossing and tearing them open like dolls. The great horned demon rose above the broken group, laughing. The sound rumbled through the walls, deep, guttural and made Art feel sick at the very core of his stomach. Glistening with fresh blood, the thing’s maw looked even wider as it grinned, the empty eyes somehow conveying its glee.
“You will not contain me, mortals!” the voice was as foul as the laugh.
Art tittered to the side, bracing himself against the wall just as some of the group, who could still stand did the same.
“Now!” a wounded man on the floor screamed. “Use me, and do it now!”
A woman near him pulled out a long knife similar to the kind Art used. Dodging the grab of the demon, already bleeding herself from a previous injury by the thing, she leaned near the man. Coming together they starred at each for half a moment before she took her blade and plunged it into his chest. Art recoiled in horror and complete confusion; the demon reacting, similarly.
“You do my work for me now, woman?”
She turned, green amber rimmed eyes at the man, glaring, teeth clenched.
“Your ‘work’ in this world is finished, fiend!” Tearing the blade from the man, she lifted it over her own chest and drove it inside herself.
Art could only watch the milky figures, unable to take his eyes off the pair. The woman, near death, pulled the blade from her and slid it into a narrow opening in the lantern. Unable to do anything else, she fell back next to the man. Breathing ragged, the pair took each other’s hands, but Art could no longer watch them. The lantern was shining and the demon howling, making a sound that could cleave stone from the earth.
He had no idea what was happening but the temple was shaking, stones falling. The bodies of the demon’s victims were being swept up in the ensuing storm. He could see it and hear it, but he could not feel it. The smoky visual echo of whatever he was witnessing was peeling away from the real temple. He watched as the demon screamed, its form warping and wreathing in some horrific agony. Before Art could piece together anything more, the vision turned completely blurry, like reflections on a stormy lake and dissipated.
Art snapped his head to the Weaver who was now down on his knees, his face knotted in pain. Art started towards him when the man rolled his head up, snake like and suddenly rose to his feet. Art took a step back, instantly suspicious of the strange movement. The Weaver stood a long moment, unmoving. Art only waited, a hand on one of his knives. Then suddenly the Weaver turned towards him, his eyes springing open, completely black and empty almost like they had gone hollow.
“Ahhh,” a voice rumbled out of the man like a cave echo, deep and fathomless. “Thought you could take a look in on me and I would not notice your presence. Even one as skilled as you must know if you look at such a moment in my existence I would eventually see you. I am ancient beyond the growth of the forest, frozen in the flow of time. Nothing rots within me but I am the rot that always takes those who wade too deeply into the abyss. When you look into the Void, it is through my eyes you view eternity and the extinguishing of hope and life.”
Art’s blood ran bitter. The Weaver had been possessed by the demon. He had to do something.
“Your name demon,” Art spoke, but felt an awful pull on him like he had just slipped down an embankment. His demand carried no weight. He was fearful, not calm. He lacked the focus he needed to expel evil from another person.
The Weaver turned his face towards Art very slowly, the grin crawling over his mouth making the man look nothing like his original smirk. The expression was unsettling and Art tried to steel himself.
“Ahhhh, there you are again,” the demon chuckled, his voice embedded with age. “Boy, we were not properly introduced last we met. I am...,” the demon paused toying with a grin again, blinking his black eyes, teeth gleaming bright white. “Oh, but you know the power of a demon’s name, don’t you. How wonderfully amusing. You are a hunter, aren’t you?”
“A Weiriman,” Art corrected.
“Ahh, is that what they are called? How quaint. Much has changed since I have been gone from the world of flesh. But you have set me free, haven’t you? I would very much like to reward you but,” the thing crossed its arms, running one hand over the throat of the Weaver’s body, “the last step of my release from this timeless pit is to consume your shiny, new soul. How convenient dinner has been laid out for me at my very doorstep. I never knew they were growing a meal for me.”
“What are you talking about?” Art frowned, pulling his blade.
The demon laughed, but before he could answer the Weaver’s body convulsed. The head snapped back, the body bending painfully before curling up and dropping to one knee. Art watched, uncertain what was happening until the Weaver’s head rolled back up, his eyes havin
g returned to their natural state.
“You need to go!” The Weaver commanded, his breathing labored. “Go back to your consciousness and leave here. He has not fully possessed me. I will put him back in the Weir prison but you must leave. I cannot do this with him feeding on your fear. Go!”
Art did not question the Weaver, knowing full well he could not exorcise this demon nor force its name from it. Sheathing his blade, he turned and headed for the exit of the chapel. He glanced back only once to see the Weaver enveloped with light, touching the Haunting Weir again. Even though he did not need to physically leave the temple to re-enter his body he was compelled to put as much distance between him and the demon as he could.
Running out into the strange courtyard that seemed to have developed a few twisted dry trees around it since he had entered, he forced himself to calm. He had to clear his mind and not remind himself that even though he was not standing in the temple with the thing, and was no longer inhibiting the Weaver’s battle, it was still all taking place deep inside him. There was no place he could run from the monster he now knew had to eat his soul in order to gain its much desired freedom. Art burned for answers.