CHAPTER 5
Kids, Stay Off The Internet
Manny’s kitchen resembled a circus tent on a Sunday afternoon. Jeremy was there, along with another Mountie, a Corporal Amanda LeBlanc. We’d worked together a few times when I was a grief counsellor for the Province. A sweating, red-faced Manny sat at the table, David flanking him.
Apparently, Manny’s mother was staying overnight in Deer Lake, so at least Manny could clean the basement up before she arrived. A small mercy for the kid, at least.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, and listened to the endless, useless questions. They all meant well, of course, but they were quizzing him on the basis that the Vikings were living flesh, not the immortal spirits of the dead.
“Manuel,” I said in a clear, raised tone so that it silenced the others. Manny flinched. “Why did you have a chalice and an anthame in your basement?”
Manny’s eyes grew wide and, I swear to the gods, goddess, and precious puppies, he let out a little gasp of horror. Corporal LeBlanc turned around in her chair and stared at me, while Jeremy just looked confused. David looked at Manny and back at me. “What’s an anthame?”
I let out a breath. I was about to ruin the rest of the kid’s teenage years, but I needed answers. “It’s a ritual dagger used in witchcraft.”
The explosion from David stabbed my heart. I cringed as he unleashed his verbal assault. “Witchcraft?” David shouted, “You’re worshipping the devil in my house?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Manny said, desperation in his voice. He looked at me, his expressing pleading. “Tell them.”
“Manny did call me when your house was broken in to,” I said, my tone calm. “That should count for something here.”
“Manny, why didn’t you just call us?” LeBlanc asked.
Tears welled up in Manny’s eyes. He wasn’t going to answer any more questions while his father continued to rant under his breath about his son’s eternally damned soul. Guilt pricked me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything and e-mailed or Facebooked him later.
“Answer her,” David said, his tone absolute.
Tears spilled from Manny’s wide eyes.
I could answer for him. It was the least I could do. “Corporal, Manny was afraid the Mounties would call his parents and tell them he was drinking in the basement. So when he called, I contacted Jeremy because I didn’t want to come here alone,” I said, scowling at David, “since his father thinks I’m a Satanist.”
LeBlanc rolled her eyes. “I don’t care about anyone’s religious beliefs. I just want to understand what’s going on here.”
“Did you summon those demons?” David asked, still not shouting, his voice still firm.
LeBlanc narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “Demons?”
I shook my head dismissively.
David ignored us. “You summoned demons! In our house!”
“Honest to God in Heaven, I didn’t summon no demons!” Manny turned his wide eyes to his father. “Dad, you gotta believe me. I didn’t do it!”
LeBlanc raised a hand. “What is going on?”
I waved her off. I wasn’t in the mood to explain the supernatural. “Someone had to summon those spirits. They generally manifest wherever the spell originates. That means, someone in this house called them. I doubt it was your parents.”
Manny slumped in the chair, his arms crossed firmly. Teenaged sullenness stretched across his face. David glared at him and demanded in a stern voice, “Sit up straight, young man, when an adult is speaking to you.”
Manny instantly sat up straight. I jerked my back straighter myself. I saw Jeremy flinch and sit up, though he caught my eye and smirked. David O’Toole had that voice, the kind that made you react before your brain even registered the words. It made him one strict terror of a father.
Which is why I knew Manny would never confess. Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I knew he’d done it.
“I’d like to talk to Manny myself.”
“He’s a minor,” LeBlanc pointed out.
“And my son,” David said.
“Your son isn’t going to answer any questions with you snapping at him. Jeremy can stay if you insist.”
He stared at me for a long moment. I returned the stare. LeBlanc broke the deadlock. “Come on, Mr. O’Toole, let’s make sure the fires in your front yard are out.” She turned to me. “Five minutes, and then I want to know what’s going on.”
I nodded my agreement. I’d get the truth out of Manny and then I’d prime him on what to actually say to her.
I looked over my shoulder and waited until the door slammed shut. I turned to Manny and said, “I’ll do my best to protect you, but I need to know the truth.”
Manuel shifted in his chair. “Look, my parents will kill me.”
I mustered the most exasperated expression that I could. “They will not kill you.”
“Close enough.” Manuel crossed his arms. “If they know I’ve been practicing witchcraft, they’ll homeschool me, cut off the Internet, TV—you name it. They’ll drag me to church and have an exorcism on top of it. Dad asked for a transfer to Newfoundland because of the trouble I was into back in Halifax.” He let out a depressed sigh, laced with guilt. “This is gonna kill Mom.”
I wanted to tell him that he was exaggerating, but we both knew he wasn’t. Until he turned eighteen or found a relative to take him in, the next couple years of his life would resemble an unimaginable hell. Yet, he’d made the choice.
“You should have thought of that before you involved yourself in something you couldn’t handle,” I snapped.
Jeremy gave me a reproachful look. “Rachel.”
“What? It’s a little too late for pussyfooting around.” I winced. “I can’t believe I just said ‘pussyfooting.’ “
Manny looked at me, his expression pleading. I ignored it. “Manny, if you don’t tell me exactly what you did, people will get hurt. Do you understand me?”
Manny’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. “But I didn’t mean to—”
I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter what you meant. You called for spirits and, worse, somehow you screwed up the spell and they’ve manifested in corporeal form. Now tell me what you did.”
He cringed at my tone. Jeremy glared at me.
I closed my eyes and counted to five before opening them again. “Tell me what you did; otherwise, the native spirits you’ve summoned might see the local people as invaders and come after all of us. I need to know so I can put them back before someone is hurt.”
Manny licked his lips before letting out a long sigh and slumping back into his chair. “I was only trying to contact the spirits of the Vikings. For strength and stuff.” He shrugged. “I get picked on at school for being fat.”
Contacting any dead spirit was a complicated, dangerous process for someone who’d never had experience doing it; however, asking the collective energy of an area for help was fairly benign. “How did you do it?”
“I downloaded a spell off the Internet and—”
“The Internet? You used a spell off the Internet?!” I rubbed my forehead. “What were you thinking?”
His face flushed even more. “What’s so bad about that?”
It took all my strength not to lash out at him in that instant but I recovered quickly. It was unfair to blame an isolated teenager for doing what teens do best: make mistakes. “All right, all right. Show me the spell you used. I might be able to figure out how to put them back.”
Manny said the spell was downstairs and left to fetch it. I looked at Jeremy and sighed. “Well?”
“LeBlanc is never going to stand for demon summoning.”
I rolled my eyes. “Spirits, Jeremy. They are spirits.”
“Whatever. The fact is, we have a couple dozen rampaging dead things and there is no way we can put that in a report.”
David came in first. I gave him a warning glare, but he ignored me. It was his strongest trait. “What’s going on? Tell me the tr
uth.”
“Manny summoned the spirits,” I said quietly.
“Manuel is engaging in witchcraft? We have murderous spirits in our town because of his devil worship?”
I shushed him. “He’ll hear you. First, witchcraft is not devil worship. Second of all, he didn’t understand what he was doing. I’m not excusing it, but let’s not jump down his throat. We still need to put these spirits back into the grave permanently.”
Jeremy chewed on his lip, then said, “Doesn’t sunrise automatically fix all the spooky things? That’s what happens in the movies.”
“Real life isn’t like Buffy. They’ll just disappear for the daytime, since the sun hurts some of them.” In other circumstances, I would have smiled. “They keep coming back.”
“Wasn’t your witchcraft powerful enough? Prayer can banish demons.”
I stared at him and let out an exaggerated sigh. “I sense the supernatural. I do not control it. I have almost no power of my own. My banishment spell, if that’s what you want to call it, was amongst the most complex that I’ve ever done and it probably didn’t do more than just annoy the spirits away. They will be back and, from the feel of it, a lot more are coming. I think he’s resurrected the entire lineage of the native people in this area by calling on the Vikings.”
David shook his head. “I don’t like all this witchcraft talk and I don’t like that my son is involved.”
Something inside snapped. I whirled on David and screamed at him, “If you’d spent more time paying attention to your son, rather than sticking conversion tracts to my front door, maybe your son wouldn’t have gotten involved.”
David rocked back on his heels. My heart thudded in my chest. “I saw the tracts in your basement.”
David squared his shoulders and raised his chin. “I will not apologize for trying to bring the word of God—”
“The word of God?” I snarled. “You’ve been taping those things about dying and burning in hell to my door!”
“I only want to open your eyes to what awaits you unless you accept Jesus—”
I held up a hand. “Don’t or so help me, I’ll get back on a plane and leave you all here to clean up this mess.”
David stopped speaking.
“So,” Jeremy said into the awkward silence, “let’s stay on target here. We all agree we need to work together so that the creepy, scary spirits can go back to wherever spirits come from and leave us alone.” Jeremy looked around. “Right?”
I frowned, a hint of heat rising in my face. “Yes,” I said, growling out the word. Then, I took a deep breath and settled my anger at David. “You’re right, Jeremy.” I turned to David and said, “I wouldn’t even ask you to be involved, except for Manny. He’s the one who can help. Can you at least understand that?”
Creases formed in David’s face and, for the first time, I noticed the worry lines around his eyes and how tired he looked. Manny was into the drug-and-party scene in Halifax. They’d moved to the St. Anthony area hoping a small, quiet town could help their son; instead, all the O’Tooles had gotten for their efforts was a son practicing witchcraft. I could understand their worry.
“I’ve seen demons cast out of people before,” David said, his tone flat. “It took a lot of prayer.”
I stared at David. “You’ve seen demons?”
“When I was a teenager. I saw that thing twist and churn while the pastors forced it to leave. We were there all night. Satan’s followers are real, Miss Mills.”
I chewed on that tidbit of information. In front of me was a powerful ally that was an enemy simply due to terminology. I let that sink in for a moment. Mrs. Saunders was right; not all Christians were bad. I mean, David O’Toole was still a prejudicial moron, but all my neighbours were some flavour of Christian. I reminded myself that, beyond the crazy-tract person or persons, my neighbours were always friendly to me. I swallowed my pride. I would work with this.
“Then, we’re on the same side. We both want these . . . whatever you want to call them, put back where they belong.”
He remained quiet for a moment before nodding his head. “I don’t want to see any of your voodoo near my house again.”
I lifted my hands in surrender. “I will do my best.”
“And stay away from my son,” he said, snarling.
“David, please—” I began, but he cut me off.
“And no devil worship. You’ve done enough damage.”
I glared at the idiot, but the pleading look from Jeremy was enough to keep my mouth clamped shut. Here was a man who believed in spirits, but wouldn’t let me do anything about them!
Manny returned and handed me three pages of printer paper. I folded them without looking; it would only make me angrier. I ran through some basic things for Manny and David to say in their statement. Jeremy frowned at me—I was breaking the law, after all—but he knew that putting “demon” or “flesh spirit” in a report would go poorly for everyone.
We went with the standard: gangs.
And with that, I headed home. With luck and several cups of coffee, I’d figure out how to put everything back together.