Page 27 of Darkness

“Very good!” Austen’s overexuberant praise brought to mind a mother giving too much credit for some child’s simple accomplishment. Like not eating a crayon. “That gives us a starting point.”

Morrisey took in his surroundings once more. He wouldn’t like what came next if Ms. Ferguson’s creative writing class provided some kind of basis for anything. “Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why are we in the pits of hell? I mean, how many floors down are we?” Might be better not knowing. Already, the room felt suffocating, a sense of heretofore unknown claustrophobia setting in.

“Funny you should mention the pits of hell.” So, Leary planned to take part in this conversation after all, instead of watching Morrisey’s every reaction. "Have you ever seen documentaries about unexplained phenomena?"

“Like Area 51?” Craig loved documentaries about anything unusual. Morrisey watched with the express intent of scoffing at everything anyone on the show said. Would there one day be a show about Morrisey?

“No. More like demons, werewolves, that sort of thing.” Leary made the concepts sound so reasonable.

Farren winced at the word “demon,” muttering “Daemonium” under his breath.

“I’m not a horror fan.” What an understatement. Morrisey wasn’t a big fan of many things. He witnessed enough horrors in daily life not to subject himself to more during his free time.

Austen shifted his chair to face Morrisey fully. “The other night, the suspect should have died from the shot you fired.”

No shit. “And?”

Austen took a long breath, exchanging one more look with his boss. “The body would have died if not possessed by something people might call a demon who knew the body was dying and needed a new one to survive.”

Morrisey gave a nervous laugh. He’d had dreams like this—usually after drinking too hard. “This is pretty elaborate for a joke, don’t ya think?”

“Detective James, this is no joke, I assure you.” Leary studied Morrisey intently. “The world you live in, the one you know, is but one plane of existence. There are others. At times, they touch, allowing contact between worlds. Other times, someone with more knowledge than sense pulls an entity through, or they stumble through.”

Morrisey glanced from Leary to Austen and back. Both wore serious faces. “Are you honestly telling me a demon attacked me?” Neither man joined in Morrisey’s laughter. Which cut the laugh off in mid “Ha!” He eyed Leary, then Austen again. “You’re shitting me.” Oh, shit. Morrisey barely held in a scream, and his every muscle bunched to run.

With his softer voice, Austen delivered the news much calmer than Leary’s outside voice inside. "I can promise you we're not. Which explains why we’re hidden underground. Can you imagine the panic if the public knew strange creatures walked among us?”

“Your assistant is a demon?” Morrisey shot out of his chair, breathing hard. Calm the fuck down, motherfucker. The worst scenario imaginable was to pass out in front of these two, even if they showed no evidence of horns or tails.

Had there been wings?

Leary chuckled. “Don’t let Arianna hear you call her that. She may be little, but she’s tough.”

Austen continued the story. “Just like in this world, in the others we speak of, there are people, and there are animals. People think, and most are decent. Animals live instinctively and aren’t so discerning. Criminals exist in both. Arianna is a person in either realm, though you, like myself, see her both as she is here and with traces of her own home. Her true physical form cannot survive here, only what you might call her spirit, but when she crossed planes, she came across an accident victim near death and claimed the body.”

He leaned closer. “You might also see deeper, to her character. Say, if she was a bad person and what you saw reflected that.”

“Like having horns and a tail?”

“Sometimes, the mind tries to tell us things but lacks a proper frame of reference, like, for instance, someone in ancient times seeing an airplane. Their minds might think ‘bird’ because that’s the closest comparison. It’s rare, but sometimes a human sees something unusual about those from another realm. Their minds try to explain things with limited understanding.”

Like one face on top of another? One of which doesn’t look entirely human? Merely a suggestion of a face.

Austen kept a close watch on Morrisey, who dared not make a move lest he haul ass out of here. “But imagine if, say, a lion was to inhabit a human body, a sadistic lion craving fear for a meal.”

Morrisey shuddered. “Like a horror movie monster?”

“Right again, Detective.” Leary slouched in his chair, far too at ease for this bizarre conversation.

“So, those… things just take over bodies?” Someone hand Morrisey a drink. And a cigarette. Possibly something stronger and less legal, and to hell with department random drug tests.

Leary made Morrisey jump with his too-loud voice. “There are a few ways to get from there to here. Some accidentally stumble upon a rift between worlds, like our dear Arianna. First, she tried to return but couldn’t. There were other humans she could have claimed, but she’d never force someone out of their body. She needed to find someone willing to share, or the body of a dying or recently deceased person. Because of her nature, she was able to perform minor healing on an accident victim and continued to survive. She intervened after it was already too late to rescue the body's previous owner."

Austen regarded Morrisey quietly for a moment. “Others aren’t so scrupulous. They’ll force someone out and take over. Still, others from another plane are summoned here for nefarious purposes. Have you ever heard the term succubus, originating from the Latin succuba?”

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