Bulldog didn’t bother with his seatbelt as he pulled out of the Liberty Hill High School parking lot, leaving Lucy scrambling to fasten hers. She inched as close to the truck door as she could without feeling rude and put her hand in the middle of the bench seat between them, intensely aware of its inadequacy as her only defensive barrier against this dubious new ally.
………..
“Deyan anay tasa Gaap! Deyan anay tasa Gaap!” Lucy slowly vibrated the enn chant with loud tones and long breaths, falling deep into the meditative state that had come to be her sole sanctuary. She sat cross-legged in the center of her bed with her cherished text open in front of her.
Just two years prior, the newly discovered Tome of Artemis had burst upon the world stage. A recent surge in nationalism across the globe had preceded a mass exodus from fundamentalist religions, and this newly discovered holy text was like an oasis for disillusioned spiritualists in many nations.
One of the myriad mysteries regarding the Tome of Artemis was the 144 empty pages at the end. They were prophesied to one day be miraculously filled as the apocalypse drew near. But it was the tales of Solomon and his Master Mason, Hiram Abiff, that revealed the esoteric universe existing just beyond uninitiated human perception.
These chapters detailed mental exercises similar in practice to secrets revealed by Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie of the Golden Dawn. Those traitors to their magical order had liberated this arcane knowledge from the esoteric few and delivered it to the unwashed masses. But the practice didn’t require or imbue any supernatural ability. Rather it comprised a set of visualization techniques well within the grasp of any human willing to brave the unexplored frontiers of their own mind.
Yet the text was far from a mere instruction manual. Where traditional occult lore like the Lesser Key of Solomon had maintained an ambiguous distance from the other side, The Tome of Artemis related an explicit dramatic narrative of the inner workings of the aether. It was a syncretic witches brew of ancient astrological pantheons, historical events, magicians, the vast hierarchy of Hell, and a few rare glimpses across the abyss into Heaven as well.
Like many others caught up in the furor over the Tome, Lucy had come to believe the stories and practices in this sacred text could elevate her potential and save her from the Hell on Earth her young life had become.
As her chants evolved from out loud to internal, she felt that familiar shift of consciousness wash over her. She embraced it like her dear friend, Tree, in the backyard. She was “in”. Inside her own mind. In a virtual reality of her own making that afforded her absolute peace and freedom.
Lucy imagined herself on a hilltop on a cool and sunny morning. She reached down and plucked a wildflower from the velveteen green grass, smelled it joyfully, and effortlessly welded it back in place on the stem.
“What to do, first?”
She sat down. Running her fingers through the grass with euphoric sensation, she called out to Robin in a sweet singsong voice but received no reply. She tried so hard to feel her sister’s presence, but it was like trying to grasp water. Sometimes she would see a strange spot in the sky, but not today. Frustrated, Lucy left the ground, flying high into the air. Rising over the clouds, she peered out across the marmalade skies and called for Robin. Higher, near the edge of space, far above the world, Lucy screamed the name. But still no answer came. She floated back down to Earth, pondering.
When she touched down on the hill, she began to pray to her spirit friend. “Lord Gaap, I know you are with me.” Lucy always imagined she could feel his aetheric presence, though she had never seemed able to create a clear image of him. “Once again, I need your help. How can I make Talia stop being mad at me without giving up your gift of Dantalion’s concert? I don’t want to lose my only friend in hopes of finding my sister. It’s so unfair! But she doesn’t believe in you like I do. She won’t understand why you’ve done this for me and what it means. Even if Jim were a monster who means to hurt me, I know you mean it for my good. I know I’m safe!”
“Just apologize and tell her that you love her and value your friendship. The rest will fall in place.” Lucy was never sure if she was creating the voice herself or if it was really her demon friend speaking to her.
Gaap certainly knew it wasn’t him and was a bit surprised to hear she was assuming his protection. Was this an obligation he needed to honor, he wondered? But he generally agreed with her personification of him and the advice it offered.
As she pondered the message, Lucy’s mindscape wandered off again. Her inner reality shifted like a dream, again replaying her conversation with Jim as he drove her home the day before.
“So, wait. You don’t invoke Dantalion? You invoke Gaap?” Bulldog chuckled. He held the steering wheel in a confident overhanded grip as he prodded Lucy’s ribs with his right hand. “But why? All your shirts, you know what I’m saying?”
“You hit me!”
“I didn’t hit you that hard.” Jim said, still amused with himself. “You don’t know what hard is!”
“Anyway, that’s the music. The band, not the demon. I understand Dantalion’s power, but he’s got no time for me. Whenever I’ve tried to invoke him, I felt nothing. Gaap isn’t preoccupied with so many Earthly affairs like Dantalion. He doesn’t run corporations and musicians and world leaders through avatars the way Dantalion does. He has time for little people like me.”
Bulldog guffawed and made an insincere effort to stifle his derision. “Yeah, ‘cuz he’s a peon. He has almost no followers. Nobody invokes Gaap!” He smirked and looked aside to catch Lucy’s reaction.
She turned red and crossed her arms over Dantalion’s sigil. “Well.” She paused to think. Then animatedly, “I just got a free ride to the show, didn’t I!”
Bulldog frowned. There was nothing he hated more than being outmaneuvered. On or off the football field. But Lucy beamed at him triumphantly and her cute smile and cocked head disarmed him. He pushed her shoulder. “Well, you got me there. But you should try Dantalion again. He can like, change people’s minds and manipulate them and stuff. You know what I’m saying? He makes it so you always come out on top. He can remove all your problems like that!” Jim snapped his fingers in front of the rearview mirror.
“Well, that’s why I’m so anxious to attend the ceremony. I really think he can help me find Robin.”
“Who?”
Lucy looked across at him incredulously. “My sister? I just told you about her. On the poster?” He seemed so obtuse. On their way to the truck, Lucy had told him about Alice destroying her only copy and needing to get a new one from the Police station. “Is he really this lame-brained?”
“Oh yeah, yeah. It’s just so cliché. Missing sister!” He waved his hands in mock mania. “You know what I’m saying? It’s like the plot to every teen fiction novel on Moonpad!” Jim gave her his best guffaw.
Lucy frowned. Now he was being mean. Like he just didn’t want to talk about her because it was a sad or boring topic. “How rude can he be? He probably never had to suffer anything like this! Golden boy!” Lucy mused and adjusted herself on his smoke-soaked truck seat.
“It’s so hard to imagine you meditating!” Lucy said with a derisive laugh.
“Who said anything about meditating?”
Lucy hopped up in the seat and returned his earlier incredulity, “You don’t use Solomon’s technique? Or even Hiram’s? How do you pray to Dantalion?”
“Oh! Well. It’s kinda meditative when I’m working out.”
“So that’s when you talk to Dantalion?”
It was Bulldog’s turn to squirm. “Well, no. Not… I for real do have a connection. But that’s my secret. Between him and me, you know what I’m saying?”
“Right!” Lucy smiled and thought, “He’s probably never even read the text. If he can even read. He’d lose his shit over the prophecies of the ascension of Artemis, anyway. What a poser. Makes fun of my practice and doesn’t even understand the first thing about…”
“Hey, listen, you gotta stand up to Alice. I’m not always going to be around.” Instinctually, Bulldog knew when he was being attacked, however subtly. He reacted in kind, reminding Lucy of her insecurities. His lashing hit home.
“She’s like half a foot taller!”
“That don’t matter. She won’t do shit if you stand up for yourself, but if you show weakness, she’s going to ride you ‘til the day you die.”
That thought petrified Lucy. “Can’t you just tell her this isn’t…”
The stock ring of Jim’s sparkling new, pearlescent Moonfön 13 interrupted Lucy's protestations. “Speak of the Devil!” Bulldog flipped the phone open like a switchblade and winked at Lucy. “Hey, Babe. What’s shaking?” Lucy couldn’t hear words, but the tone coming loudly from the speaker was clearly not happy. Jim seemed to darken and transform almost into another person. “Hey! Hey! Girl, if you can do better than me, then go! Just go for it!” He closed the phone and threw it at the floorboard narrowly missing Lucy’s foot. “Fucking cunt!”. Jim looked at Lucy and seeing her reaction, instantly reverted to his gentler voice. “Sorry, sorry. She brings out the worst in me. Probably better if we do split up.”
Lucy wanted to tell him she wouldn't interfere with their relationship but realized that might jeopardize her invitation and just squeaked, “It’s ok.”
“See, that’s what I was talking about, though! You gotta… you should have been all 'don’t use that sexist language around me asshole!’ you know what I’m saying? Imma grow you a backbone! That’s the real reason your demon put us together.”
“I’m not looking to go around starting shit. That’s not me. I just think... Well, I feel like there’s already so much evil and strife in the world. I want to be like, like… Gandhi! Show how we can be better. We’re all human. We’re all in this together! Everything we do affects one another. We should all be playing on the same team and then imagine what we could accomplish!”
“No, see. That’s what you don’t understand. Have you ever been on a team? My guys? They’re like sharks. Wolves. The wide receivers just want to be the one to get the pass. My blockers just don’t want to be the fuck-up who gets me sacked. They just care about themselves. They don’t give a fuck about any team. They pretend to. Maybe even believe they really do. But they really just want a scholarship and a contract. Half of them won’t even make a college team. They know it. It’s fight, fight, fight, or die. It’s a red tide. And I know I won’t be a professional ball player. But I know this position. I know the guys who think they can make it. They know the score. They know the Black guys just get the shit jobs and the white guys get the big bucks as QBs or head coaches. I don’t even have to make it past college ball. ‘Cuz I’m a white guy. From that point, I can be a coach or coordinator. Whatever. I’m basically already guaranteed a high-paying job at this point. See? We all just use each other for self-advancement. There is no team.”
“Jesus.” Lucy leaned back in the smelly seat. “That sounds like an exhausting way to live your life.”
“Hey. It’s suckers who believe that? That there’s any other way to live without being eaten up by the jackals? You sheep are the cannon fodder. We love you wimps. You’re no competition. I’m telling you. Learn to stand up now. You’re going to have to do it someday unless you plan to just lay down and die like that towelhead too. Alice is a bully now because she was bullied when she was in elementary and decided she was done being pushed around. She told me.”
“And she hit puberty.” Lucy rolled her eyes. Anyway, what about you? She can’t bully you. You pulled her off me. There’s always a bigger bully.” Lucy looked over at Jim, but he was no longer Jim. Staring at her with a wide, yellow-toothed grin was the junkie from yesterday! A needle and empty syringe dangled from the center of the arm that held the wheel and his skin was snow white like a corpse.
Lucy gasped as she violently yanked herself from her meditation. “Fuck!” She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to calm herself from the jolt. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and pushed back the panic. “I’m fine. That freak is not here!” But the image burned in her mind suddenly reminded her. The needles! She had taken John’s syringes last night and never went back to check on him!
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