September 2006 Issue The Horror Library, your Haunted Home for Horror Fiction, Dark Art, Horror Games, Movie Reviews, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction, Alternative Music, Horror Authors, Horror Short Fiction and featuring The Terrible Twelve - RJ Cavender, Bailey Hunter, Boyd E Harris, Megg Roper, Jason Beirens, CJ Hurtt, Eric Stark, Cordelia Snow, Chris Perridas, Curt Mahr, Stephen Sommerville, M Louis Dixon, Kerry Drummond
Mister Bellows sat with his hands folded in his lap. His head bowed looking at a stream of dark brown in the carpet. Joe and Eve sat across from him, waiting for answers.
"I did, didn't I?" Bellows finally said.
Eve stood up and Joe watched as she left the room, then slowly turned back to Bellows.
"What is wrong here? Something is very wrong?" Joe said.
"It's her. I think she is...unstable. She is breaking apart." Bellows said
"You think!? You're supposed to be all powerful. You have all the answers, and 'You think!'" Joe screamed
"She is breaking all the rules, as are you. She is magic made flesh, or a flesh equivalent, and you are bound to her for some reason even though you should be moving on with the others. Neither of you can see the others in this house, when you should only be able to see the others here. Certain rules shouldn't be broken, but you are both breaking them."
Joe huffed, "We are soul mates, that is why we are together, bound together."
"No, you aren't." Bellows put his head in his hands and breathed deep, "Please leave. Find Eve. Talk to her. Leave me to think."
###
Eve opened a door in the hallway, she was trying to hideaway, find someplace private to cry. What she found instead was the interior of a primitive hut. Warped boards underneath her feet, and a medicine man sitting in a corner.
"Where am I?" tears streamed down her face.
The shaman got to his feet. He wore decorative beads and a hollow piece of wood over his penis. His face was lined with age, his eyes narrow but kind. He reached out to Eve, placing his palm on her cheek. He began to sing, low and lovingly. It was rhythmic, the song of the shaman. Eve tapped her foot to the imaginary music accompanying the voice. She slowly sat on the floor of the hut and the shaman did the same.
When the song was done Eve stopped crying. Then the shaman spoke in broken English.
"You come from Bellows."
"How did you know?"
"Only he use that door. Door that is not there." he pointed behind her, she looked and the door was gone. She said nothing, but stroked the scar above her eye to busy her hands.
###
Joe walked the endless halls of Bellows' basement. There were doors everywhere, some seemed to even overlap. Every once in a while he would reach out to touch a knob, or feel the grain of a rough looking wood. Nothing. He was still getting used to being dead, to being a ghost.
"You know, most ghosts can touch, can feel."
"Who said that?" Joe turned in a full circle trying to find the source of the voice, "Bellows?"
"No, he is busy somewhere else again."
"Who then? You sort of sound like him?"
"He has lived in me for a while, I should think he sounds like me."
###
"What is going on?" Bellows asked calmly.
"Connection, it is rare, and this is a strange case, but it has happened."
"Why don't I know that?"
"You don't know everything Bellows."
"So glad that's true."
"When it happened before, neither were magic, and they were soul mates. The man, John, he passed on, and the woman fell ill, but lived for years and years. She was between worlds. She could speak to John and John to her, but no one else on either side dead or alive could get through to them."
"When did this happen?"
"Between June 14, 1634 to April 12 1653. In London."
"I can't have Eve and Joe in my house for near twenty years."
"Why not? You have plenty of room."
"I love people, but I can't live with them. Such filthy buggers."
"The situation will sort itself out, in time."
"Twenty years?"
"In time."
"Thanks God."
"No problem Bellows."
###
The shaman waved his hands in the air, above Eve's head, he sang quietly. His song lulled her to sleep.
Eve dreamed of the green glow, of the faces of her tormenters and their fate. She couldn't dwell on them for long. Such a strange sight cannot be processed, even by the most powerful magus on Earth.
She saw Joe sitting in a hall talking to himself. He was waving his hands around frantically. Something was happening. He was frightened, then he was laughing. The green glow was back. It filled her vision. She cried out and sat up violently.
The shaman continued to sing for a while longer. He waved a stick over her, beads and skulls jingled and clanked against each other. Then the song stopped.
"You are more powerful than me. I cannot help you. Bellows cannot help you. He can help to find teacher for you. One who can. If it her, listen, learn, but don't turn. She bad magic."
"Who? Where do I go? How do I get back to Bellows. Who's her!?"
Eve was about to scream out of frustration, anger, fear. Her eyes closed tight, her mouth widened, and just as sound was about to come out, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
