Third Magus
Really Really Experienced
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2003
- Posts
- 324
It was an old trick, one of the oldest.
“It’s a gramophone record”, Mordecai said, moving around his small, shabby office, the light from the end of his cigarette the only illumination the room had. “The first time you were here, looking for relief from the ghost of your murdered husband, I recorded you on it, saying some very mundane things”
His client, Mrs Anita Hopgood, widow of the late Michael A. Hopgood, nodded, as though she understood.
Mordecai removed the needle of the gramophone and held it up. “Acting on a hunch, I called in a favour from an old friend; a warlock uptown, and had him perform a simple spell on this needle. I then placed a drop of your husband’s blood –obtained, with some difficulty, from the coroner’s office, on the edge of the needle and played the record again.
Mordecai replaced the needle and spun the disk.
The wet needle made unpleasant damp shrieking sounds as it moved across the record’s grooves. Just audible in the static was Mrs Hopgood’s voice, politely saying “Hello, how are you?” into the gramophone. On the edge of hearing, the thin, distorted echo of her voice in the static could be heard saying: “I killed Michael Anthony Hopgood”.
Mordecai looked at her expressionlessly.
“And there’s your answer, Mrs Hopgood. Your husband is haunting you because you murdered him”
There was a long, awkward pause. Mrs Hopgood seemed to shrink into herself, as if preparing herself for fight or flight.
“What will you do?”, she asked at length.
Mordecai shrugged. “Myself? Nothing. I doubt the police would accept a bewitched gramophone record as adequate evidence. And even if they did, that is not the kind of justice I concern myself with. I’ll return your deposit, Mrs Hopgood, less thirty dollars’ expenses in cab-fares, cigarettes and bribing the coroner’s assistant. I’m afraid I can’t help you get rid of this particular ghost. As a piece of free professional advice, I would inform that often the process of exorcising ghosts is the process of amends. Good day”
After the pale and shaken woman had left, Mordecai returned to what he considered his most important present work: finding the Slayer. He pushed aside yet another memo from the Watcher’s Council on his desk, advising him of the urgency of the task, as if he were already unaware of it. The Watcher’s Council. What did they know, in their occult fortresses in England, what it was like working in the shadows over here, underpaid (or not paid at all), understaffed and overworked? Convict Mrs Hopgood? He had to laugh at the idea of expending that much time and energy on bringing a one-time murderer to justice while vampire-gangs and demon-cults had practically free reign over Chicago’s streets.
But the Slayer… Mordecai was usually good at these kind of puzzles; finding lost people, or people who wanted to be lost. They appealed to something in his rational, analytical mind; breaking down the chaos of the city, seeing the underlying patterns, restoring things to their place. But every time he thought he had the Slayer pinpointed, thought the rumours of a girl with unnatural strength fighting vampires pointed directly to a certain area, new reports would come in and break the grid. It was almost as if they were coming from two different areas. Vincent had seemed sure of his information, and Mordecai thought he could trust Vincent that far, but once again it just distorted the pattern.
Mordecai sighed. He knew what he was going to have to do, and he didn’t like it. Kabbalah, the magic of numbers, always gave him a headache. Still, he had no other leads.
Taking down a worn phonebook from a shelf, he set to work with scowling concentration, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing the thousands of phone-numbers according to ancient, mystical formulae. Later on, he began counting up the number of letters in each name and adding them into the formulae.
It was a process that required several hours and more than sixty cigarettes. Twice the phone rang but Mordecai ignored it.
Eventually, he got a seven-digit number, the result of his labours. His head hurt, his throat felt raw and bruised and the room swam before his eyes, but he was sure this was the phone-number he needed. Lifting the reciever to his mouth, he dialed the number. He knew the person on the other end would be the Slayer.
“It’s a gramophone record”, Mordecai said, moving around his small, shabby office, the light from the end of his cigarette the only illumination the room had. “The first time you were here, looking for relief from the ghost of your murdered husband, I recorded you on it, saying some very mundane things”
His client, Mrs Anita Hopgood, widow of the late Michael A. Hopgood, nodded, as though she understood.
Mordecai removed the needle of the gramophone and held it up. “Acting on a hunch, I called in a favour from an old friend; a warlock uptown, and had him perform a simple spell on this needle. I then placed a drop of your husband’s blood –obtained, with some difficulty, from the coroner’s office, on the edge of the needle and played the record again.
Mordecai replaced the needle and spun the disk.
The wet needle made unpleasant damp shrieking sounds as it moved across the record’s grooves. Just audible in the static was Mrs Hopgood’s voice, politely saying “Hello, how are you?” into the gramophone. On the edge of hearing, the thin, distorted echo of her voice in the static could be heard saying: “I killed Michael Anthony Hopgood”.
Mordecai looked at her expressionlessly.
“And there’s your answer, Mrs Hopgood. Your husband is haunting you because you murdered him”
There was a long, awkward pause. Mrs Hopgood seemed to shrink into herself, as if preparing herself for fight or flight.
“What will you do?”, she asked at length.
Mordecai shrugged. “Myself? Nothing. I doubt the police would accept a bewitched gramophone record as adequate evidence. And even if they did, that is not the kind of justice I concern myself with. I’ll return your deposit, Mrs Hopgood, less thirty dollars’ expenses in cab-fares, cigarettes and bribing the coroner’s assistant. I’m afraid I can’t help you get rid of this particular ghost. As a piece of free professional advice, I would inform that often the process of exorcising ghosts is the process of amends. Good day”
After the pale and shaken woman had left, Mordecai returned to what he considered his most important present work: finding the Slayer. He pushed aside yet another memo from the Watcher’s Council on his desk, advising him of the urgency of the task, as if he were already unaware of it. The Watcher’s Council. What did they know, in their occult fortresses in England, what it was like working in the shadows over here, underpaid (or not paid at all), understaffed and overworked? Convict Mrs Hopgood? He had to laugh at the idea of expending that much time and energy on bringing a one-time murderer to justice while vampire-gangs and demon-cults had practically free reign over Chicago’s streets.
But the Slayer… Mordecai was usually good at these kind of puzzles; finding lost people, or people who wanted to be lost. They appealed to something in his rational, analytical mind; breaking down the chaos of the city, seeing the underlying patterns, restoring things to their place. But every time he thought he had the Slayer pinpointed, thought the rumours of a girl with unnatural strength fighting vampires pointed directly to a certain area, new reports would come in and break the grid. It was almost as if they were coming from two different areas. Vincent had seemed sure of his information, and Mordecai thought he could trust Vincent that far, but once again it just distorted the pattern.
Mordecai sighed. He knew what he was going to have to do, and he didn’t like it. Kabbalah, the magic of numbers, always gave him a headache. Still, he had no other leads.
Taking down a worn phonebook from a shelf, he set to work with scowling concentration, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing the thousands of phone-numbers according to ancient, mystical formulae. Later on, he began counting up the number of letters in each name and adding them into the formulae.
It was a process that required several hours and more than sixty cigarettes. Twice the phone rang but Mordecai ignored it.
Eventually, he got a seven-digit number, the result of his labours. His head hurt, his throat felt raw and bruised and the room swam before his eyes, but he was sure this was the phone-number he needed. Lifting the reciever to his mouth, he dialed the number. He knew the person on the other end would be the Slayer.
