Case 30: Entry 6

I decided to take the day off from working on Los Susurros. After all, if I win the bet tonight then I'll have done far more for the good of the collection than was ever expected of me, and if I lose then Gil-Martin will have me (probably in ghost form) and all my knowledge to help him get rid of the books. Of course, I've already given the relevant agent a heads up in case I lose, but the point still stands. However this turns out, taking the day off isn't really a big deal. On the other hand, I'm starting to think there might be something to the whole stay-busy-to-escape-the-weight-of-existential-dread thing. Or at least, there is when the existential dread is the fact that you're waiting for a match with centuries-old Aztec abomination.

It's not like I can really walk away from this, but I still kind of wanted to today. I mean, it's not like I could stand any chance in a straight fight. There's several stories about the Quoalkuns (should I put that "s" there? it feels wrong) in Los Susurros, and not all of them have happy endings. As I did research looking for weaknesses to exploit I caught myself trying to think of ways to weasel out of the deal. And then there were times when I was fantasizing about having never made the deal and having some other way of beating this or of just never having gotten around, which is a really stupid thing to do. Eventually, I had to sit down and deal with my own fear. I to stop pandering to it, and get pissed. Despite what Gil-Martin and the Agency both think, this isn't just about preserving some profiles on some nasties. There's people whose culture has been completely eradicated except for these stories, people who deserve to some part in the continuing story of humanity. But even that isn't all there is. There's also the time, energy, and passion that went into this collection both from the people who made the stories and the people who collected them. This tree has been cared for and tended for hundreds of years, and it is not okay for it to be torn down right before it can bear fruit.

When I was in early elementary, I had a book of Aesop's fables that I read every night. By the time I was in the fifth grade I had moved on to fables, fairy tales, and myths from all over the world. At the same time everyone wanted to be Batman or a Power Ranger or something, I was walking around with a Coyote lunchbox. Seriously, I thought Coyote was the coolest character ever, and an aunt of mine wound up painting a lunchbox and even making some clothes featuring him just for me. So when I say that I take this personally, understand that I really do mean it.

So yeah, I'm still up against something that I could never beat in a fair fight. Yeah, I'll probably only have one chance to sucker punch him. But someone really needs to throw that sucker punch at that asshat, and it might as well be me. Now it's time to get back to work.

* * * * *

I went out tonight with pretty decked out with much ever protective charm I own or can make on short notice. Almost as soon as I left the hotel I felt the altered reality of the duel settle in. There was only the predator and the prey, with everything else reduced to a simple background. The adrenaline surged, my focus intensified, the power in which I had draped myself flared up. In about ten minutes or so, I could already feel the fiend's eyes on me. A little later I heard cars honking and the skidding of tires just behind me, and I smirked. I've always felt that the best defense is not to be noticed in the first place, and most of my amulets focused on screwing with my enemies' ability to perceive me. I kept on walking.

Then I started hearing him prowling. There were noises like a jaguar might make coming from behind me, from the the buildings above me, from across the street. I started to pick up the pace. Then I heard him closing in, and I ran and jumped the fence into a nearby alley. I think the last sound was a little bit like a laugh before I dropped a canister. A spray containing pretty much everything I thought might hurt the bastard shot out and filled the alley as I covered my eyes and put a rag over my nose and mouth. Then I heard a thump and some coughing behind me as the spray settled down, and I wheeled around with my knife. I only had a few seconds to make use of my advantage, but a few seconds was all I needed.

I may not have grown up learning these streets the way the trickster who fought the three Aztec fiends grew up learning the jungle, but Google Street View is a beautiful thing. 

Case 30: Entry 5

I've decided the only way to deal with this problem is to go to the source. So I decided to find the crossroads fiend who had put out the hit. Although I'm not sure "hit" is the right word. I called some of the reputable mediums and seers in the area, and I soon had a name, one which didn't surprise me in the least. It's a demon commonly known as Gil-Martin, who is known to assist in monstrous activities and to have a particular fondness for games.

I have a couple rugs in my trunk with different kinds of circles inscribed in them. As soon as I knew who I needed, I grabbed a summoning circle, rolled it out on the floor of my hotel room, and went about preparing for the summoning. It took me about fifteen minutes to get everything I needed, but it took another forty or so minutes of prayer, study, and rest before I felt I was ready. Then I stood in front of the circle, and said the words. Half a second later, a tall, slightly bulbous man with slitted, vibrant green eyes stood in the middle of my rug.

"I'd heard this might happen," said Gil-Martin with a Southern drawl and revolting smile. "You must be Mr. Underhill."

The demon offered me its hand, and I was immediately glad I lacked any kind of social impulses. Putting my own hand out over the line in the rug might break the circle's integrity and leave Gil-Martin free to move about as he pleased. I didn't have any illusions about keeping him locked up long-term, but I generally prefer to negotiate from a position of power. So instead I started reciting the Nicean Creed. Then I went on to the Beatitudes, and I finished with the Shema.

"What the hell was that for?" demanded the demon after I had finished.

His ears were bleeding.

"There's plenty of reasons," I said with a shrug. "Do I really need to pick a specific one?"

The truth was that I wanted Gil-Martin to be thoroughly pissed with me. I needed my own doom to be an enticing prospect for him. When I made this deal with the fey lord I used the game as bait, but I needed something else to draw the demon in.

"Now that we understand each other, I'd like to make a bet with you. If I win, you cancel whatever bounty you have on the collection and hand over any information you have on anything not inclined to back down. If you win, I will be your servant (body and soul) for one hundred years."

I could see the greed on Gil-Martin's face as he considered the offer. Then I reminded myself not to be an idiot. A tempter is never more dangerous than when you think you're the clever one. Even if it's true. Which it probably wasn't. In any event, we reached an agreement, and everything was put on the line for a single showdown between myself and a devil of a man who had been reborn to dark, Aztec witchery several centuries ago.

There's several entries in Los Susurros about such creatures, even apart from the story of the trickster and the three fiends I mentioned before. I'm still not sure that'll actually help me, though. I could always get some help from the Lord of the Wilds. Actually, it might be safer to just take large amounts of cocaine.

Case 30: Entry 4

Okay. It's been a week since I started working on authenticating Los Susurros, and things have gone a little more crazy than I'm comfortable with. For one thing, I severely underestimated how difficult my report would be to write, especially after I got asked to look at several items not on my original sample list. For another thing, there's been eleven bouts with supernatural nasties since that imp was beaten. What's really fun about those is that more than half of the nasties weren't from any stories in the books and instead showed up because a certain crossroads fiend has apparently put a price on keeping Los Susurros away from the public. At least, that's what the Agency got out of one of the vampire thugs. As for the ones from the stories, there was one of those corpse-possessing serpents mentioned in the last entry, a kind of bogey called a "scuttler", and a swamp hag.

A scuttler is a creature mentioned in several rhymes from Scotland that were recorded in Los Susurros which feeds on fear. In fact, it seems to be a living nexus of fear. It's a shapeshifter that has adapted to perfectly camouflage itself into any background, and it can only emerge from hiding when someone touches it and receives a portion of its fear. At that point, the victim (a woman who was analyzing the materials of the books) becomes haunted by an emblem of their ultimate fear which they then see hidden everywhere they go. The only way to defeat the scuttler (which will at that point be roaming freely and inspiring fear for it to consume) is for the touched person to pass through a door marked by the emblem and face whatever they find there. Once they do that, they have the power to hurt the scuttler. Fortunately, the woman in question was in on the supernatural scene, or at least open to it. The scuttler probably thought that would make her easier to intimidate, but if it did then it also meant that she knew to take the stories in Los Susurros seriously. I don't know exactly what happened, but I do know that by the time the agents got there she'd already hacked the scuttler in half.

What I happen to know a bit more about is how things went with the swamp hag. You see, the original story around her is that she inhabits bodies of fresh water and that any place she makes her home is cursed. But she doesn't have to stay there. If someone makes a deal with her she can go out of the waters and roam freely. In the story, she was approached by a man who was jealous of his older bother and wanted her to ruin his life. The thought festered in his dreams for weeks before he went to her home and made his wish, and when she was free she took his infant son as payment. Then his wife got involved. First she went to the ocean (this was somewhere int he vicinity of modern day Virginia) and filled a skin with water. When it was full, she drank from the waves until she was sure she couldn't drink anymore, and then she went to see the hag. When she got to the pond where the hag still rested each day, she poured out the saltwater from her skin. Then she knelt down and vomited out the rest, because she knew that the sea was toxic to the hag. Finally, the fiend leapt out of the water, and then the mother dragged her from the shore and used the hag's own hair to hang her from a tree limb, and swore that she would leave her then unless the hag told her where her son was. I was expecting the whole thing to get pretty gory at that point, but instead the hag just said some incantation and the child just floated out of some mud and woke up from some kind of stasis.

Anyway, my experience with the hag was a bit different, mostly because in my case she was the one who arranged the meeting. I think she came out of the sink or something, because when I woke up this morning (and by "morning" I mean "at two") Nox was hissing and spitting and she was backed up and hunched over just outside the bathroom. Then I said something groggy and nonsensical, and Nox decided that his job was over with. The little bugger ran away. Fortunately, I still had enough of my wits about me to go for my suitcase. I grabbed a conch shell that was supposed to have belonged to a naiad or something, and blew on it. That seemed to work, but only for a second. The hag covered her ears and shrieked in pain, but as soon as the sound ended she began to settle down. I was still processing that when she took her hands away from her ears and snarled right at me. She dove right at me, but I was still right next to a suitcase full of supernatural artifacts. I grabbed the knife, the one charged with a bit of the power of the Lord of the Wilds, and jabbed it out in front of me. Fortunately, that worked better than the conch shell did.

I need to figure this out. I can't just keep dodging assassins. Oh yeah, and all the other people in the way probably can't either.