Goetic Justice 1

Chapter 1: Rock Bottom

Ryan mounted the steps, fumbling with his keys as he made his way down the carpeted corridor towards his apartment, finding the door already open when he arrived. Becky must be home, he thought to himself, stepping through into their tiny living room to see her sitting on the couch.

She put her phone down, looking up at him and smiling. She was wearing her pajamas, and her raven hair was unkempt, she must have just gotten out of the shower.

“Sorry I’m late Becky,” he said, fumbling with his tie to remove the stifling garment as he leaned down to kiss her. She pecked him on the cheek, then retrieved her phone and resumed whatever it was that she had been doing, Ryan making his way into the adjoining kitchen.

“I’m famished,” he complained, crouching to open the fridge. It bathed him in its yellow glow as he rummaged for leftovers, selecting a sandwich and a can of beer. “They kept us in late at the office, I got overtime pay though, Williams seems really pleased with my performance as of late. I think I might actually have a chance to move up in this company if I keep my head on straight.”

He flopped down heavily beside her, cracking open his beverage and taking a draw, the cold liquid soothing as it made its way down into his empty stomach. Becky was still glued to her phone, but he was too absorbed by his sandwich to notice.

“At this rate we might actually be able to take that vacation you keep asking for, assuming I can save up enough sick days,” he said as he swallowed a mouthful of tuna and tomato. It was store-bought, not very appetizing, but hunger was a seasoning that made any meal palatable. “What do you think of that? Becky?”

He reached over and placed a hand on the phone, lowering it to get her attention, and she turned off the screen as she looked up at him. She seemed distant, disinterested, but she couldn’t have gotten back from her barista job more than a couple of hours ago. She must be tired, she looked as if she had been about to get into bed when he had arrived.

He shuffled closer to her and curled an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him, the familiar scent of her preferred shampoo rising to his nose. It smelled artificial to him, but while he didn’t understand her taste in soaps and perfumes, he associated them with her all the same and that alone made them enjoyable.

“Hey, don’t be mad with me, okay? I know I’ve been working a lot lately, but I’ll make it up to you this weekend. We’ll spend all Saturday binging on TV shows, how about that? I’ll get us some takeout, and we can watch whatever you want until the sun comes up, no pants necessary.”

“I dunno Ryan,” she replied, “I kind of had plans this weekend. I’m going to a concert with my friends, we probably won’t be back until Monday morning.”

“Anything I might like?” Ryan asked, but his smile was met with a frown.

“Ryan, you know how my friends feel about you, and it isn’t anything you’d enjoy anyway. You hate live music.”

That put a damper on his good mood, and he shook his head in annoyance, releasing her from his one-armed hug.

“Come on Becky, it’s been months since I moved here, I can’t believe that they still hate me so much. I can’t even remember the last time I saw any of them. We’re not teenagers anymore, we all have jobs and lives, why do they still treat me like I’m trying to steal you away from them? I feel like any time we’re both free, they just come between us and-”

“Hey,” Becky interrupted sternly, “remember the promise that you made when you came out here.”

“I know, I know, you have your own life and I’m not going to try to interfere with it. I’m not saying don’t go to the concert, I just wish that you’d keep me in the loop is all. It’s hard for us to make plans together when you’re always springing these things on me at the last minute.”

“Maybe you need to make some friends of your own,” she said dismissively. He gave her a sideways glance, trying to determine if she was being intentionally hurtful. She had turned her attention back to her phone, and so he assumed that she was just tired and grouchy. He took another bite of his sandwich, mulling over his reply for a moment.

“You know that I had to leave all of my friends behind to move here. This city is your home, but it’s been a big adjustment for me. It was a downright miracle that I was able to find a position that would allow me to live here, so just try to be supportive.”

“I’m going to bed,” she replied tersely, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“How am I being controlling?” Ryan exclaimed, brandishing the phone as if it was proof in itself of her misdeeds. He was seeing red, anger and hurt tying a knot in his belly, and her reaction to his outrage just made everything worse. She was furious with him. Rather than the guilty apology that he had anticipated when he had confronted her, she was angry at being discovered. It didn’t make any sense, it followed no discernible logic. He had violated her privacy, but in doing so, he had uncovered wrongdoing of far greater proportions.

“You went through my fucking phone, you asshole!”

“You thought I wouldn’t notice how distant you’ve been lately? How you’ve been taking every opportunity to get away from me, how you’ve been hiding your phone screen whenever I walk into the room? Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”

“That doesn’t give you the right to go through my shit and snoop on my private conversations like some kind of fucking stalker!”

Becky was indignant, he was amazed by her reaction to being presented with the chat logs, she was trying to switch the whole situation around so that he was the villain for uncovering her cheating.

He wasn’t proud of what he had done, but his suspicions had only been confirmed. Whatever trust that existed between them had been violated long before he had taken her phone. It had been going on for months. Those sudden changes in her mood, those new clothes and the new attention to her appearance, none of it had been for his benefit. She had been seeing someone else the entire time, living in his apartment and sleeping in his bed while she had an affair, sending this person dirty text messages while they were in the same damned room. There was no concert, she wasn’t seeing her friends on the weekend, she was planning to spend it with someone else.

“Three years of my life, Becky, three fucking years and you flush it all down the toilet on a whim. I was going to marry you, I wanted to have kids with you one day, and for what? A cheap thrill?”

“You’re boring, Ryan! You never take me out, you never do anything that includes me, all you ever do is work and sit at that fucking computer like a zombie. I don’t want to just watch movies and play video games, those are your hobbies, not mine. Paul takes me out. We go dancing, and we eat at upscale restaurants, we hang out with his friends and talk about life. What’s there to talk about in your life, Ryan? Where are your friends?”

“Hundreds of miles away,” he snapped, “because I left them behind to move here with you!”

“Whatever, I’m glad that you found the chat logs, because seeing what a jealous asshole you are has given me the push I need to move on with my life. We’re through Ryan, I’m taking my shit, and I’m leaving.”

She stormed off into their bedroom, flinging a duffel bag onto the twin bed and beginning to cram her clothes into it, throwing empty drawers to the carpet as she cleared her belongings out. Ryan couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t parse what was happening, as if the universe had just switched to a foreign language that he didn’t speak. Yesterday everything had been fine, and today his life was in tatters. It was all happening so quickly. He paced around the small kitchen and wrung his hands. He wanted to shout and upend furniture, but as angry as he was, he felt as if all of the strength had been drained from his body. He felt ill, weak, like he had caught some terrible flu. He wanted to insult her, to say something cutting that would hurt her and bring her to tears, make her feel as bad as he did. Nothing came to mind as she slammed the bedroom door and made for the exit.

“You won’t even try to fix this?” Ryan asked in disbelief as she turned in the hallway to glare at him, the bulging duffel bag slung over her shoulder. “Just like that, you’re cutting me loose like a turd, you won’t make any attempt to reconcile?”

“I don’t owe you any explanation,” she hissed, her voice full of malice and venom the likes of which he had never heard from her before. It was like some demon had possessed her, or some doppelganger had replaced her, and for a moment he wondered how he could ever have loved her the way that he had. “Now give me my fucking phone back.”

He threw it at the wall behind her, the blocky device chipping the plaster and falling to the floor, its screen cracked. Becky stooped to pick it up, her green eyes flashing with rage, and for a moment he feared that she might turn and run at him.

“Real mature, I’ll send you the fucking bill,” she spat as she opened the door to the apartment and vanished into the corridor outside. Ryan stared at the space where she had been for a few moments, the door left ajar, before the realization of what had just happened hit him like a ton of bricks. He leaned back against the wall, sinking down to sit on the carpet, his face cradled in his hands as he choked back stinging tears. Whether they were born of anger or sadness, he couldn’t tell.

xxxxx

“I’m sorry Ryan, but there’s nothing more I can do. You were warned that if your performance kept suffering, you’d be let go. You’ve been warned, and you’ve been disciplined, but you keep showing up late. Your quarterly figures are down nearly forty percent. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this is a business, not a charity. We can’t afford to keep you on any longer. You’ll be getting your final paycheck at the end of the month.”

Ryan leaned across the desk, pleading with his employer, the bustle of the office almost inaudible behind the glass walls of the cubicle. There were decorative ferns made from shiny plastic, and metal filing cabinets placed against the walls, the man watching him disdainfully from behind a computer monitor.

“Please, you can’t do this to me Mister Williams! I’m going through some stuff right now, but I can do better! I need this job, I’m barely keeping up on my rent as it is. I’ll never be able to find work in this city on such short notice.”

“I realize that you moved here to take advantage of this position, but company policy is clear on this. You’ve been given second and third chances, but you’ve become a liability. This has already been decided, and the paperwork has already been filled out, there’s nothing more I can do for you besides wishing you the best of luck in finding gainful employment elsewhere.”

Ryan began to speak again, but Williams cut him off with a wave of his hand, and so he sank back into the uncomfortable office chair with a look of resignation on his face.

“We’re legally required to give you a month’s notice, but I’d like to ask you as a personal favor, not to return to the premises again.”

Ryan nodded and stood, defeated, but Williams cleared his throat to get his attention as he opened the glass door.

“You’ll still be covered by our health insurer until your contract is officially terminated. If you want my advice, use it to get some help. You’re a mess Ryan, your shirt isn’t even buttoned properly, and I’m pretty sure you’ve been drinking. Go see a shrink while it’s still covered by our plan and see if they can help you work this out.”

He hesitated at the door, then left without comment, Williams shaking his head in exasperation as he returned to his work.

xxxxx

There wasn’t anyone else, Ryan realized as he sat in the dark and stared at the flickering of his computer monitor. He had left all of his friends behind to be with Becky, left his family to accept the job offering in the city, and she was the only person that he ever confided in. Without her, he had nobody to talk to, he had neglected every other aspect of his social life. For the first time in his life, he was completely alone.

It had been weeks, but he didn’t want to date again, the wound that Becky had opened with her betrayal still festered. He felt as if he couldn’t trust anyone again. In accusing him of being jealous and controlling, she had inspired those very instincts within him. Every time a future partner answered a phone call, or checked their email, he would assume the worst.

Now he had no job, no family or friends, and he was on track to lose his apartment. Living in the city was expensive, there was no way he could afford to pay his rent, his meager savings wouldn’t see him through the next two months. He had been so secure, so confident, but now he realized that his entire life had been a house of cards that had come crashing down around him at the slightest gust of wind.

He knew what he should do, suck it up, get back out there. He should start looking for a new job immediately, take the one suit that he owned to the dry cleaner and go to as many interviews as it took. When he had secured a new job, he would start dating again. He’d find someone better than Becky, someone who would make him question if he had ever truly loved her to begin with.

But another, more destructive facet of his personality kept asking the same question. Why?

He had done everything that he was supposed to do, everything that he had been told would ensure his success. He had worked hard to earn his degree and then he had secured a steady job at a good company. Yeah, it hadn’t been the most exciting or the most intellectually stimulating work, but it had allowed him to live a modest lifestyle and it had given him the money that he needed to move in with his girlfriend. He had treated her as well as he knew how, but all of those nights that they had spent together on the couch binging on movies, and all of the time that he had spent trying to involve her in his hobbies had all been for nothing. She had been bored out of her mind, stewing in her silent resentment until she had finally sought excitement and romance elsewhere without ever having expressed her displeasure.

So what was the point? Why start over from scratch when the first attempt at creating a life for himself had gone so badly? How could he be certain that the same thing wouldn’t just happen again?

xxxxx

Another month passed, and he received his final paycheck, using the money to pay his bills and to buy enough food to last him a while longer. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do now. The defeatist in him wanted to just sit in his apartment, distracting himself with meaningless entertainment and drink until someone came to forcibly remove him. An even darker facet of his psyche considered the final relief of a bottle of pills downed with bourbon, but he shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind. He wasn’t quite destitute just yet.

He had gone too far down the rabbit hole, he had allowed his depression and his defeatism to get the better of him, and how he felt like he had dug a trench that he couldn’t climb out of under his own power. Maybe he should have taken what Williams had said to heart, perhaps a psychologist could have set him back on the straight path, but it was too late for that now.

He took another swig of amber liquid from his bottle, shooting at demonic enemies on his computer screen, playing the game on autopilot as he mulled over his sorry situation. Flashing skulls and sigils, the screeching hordes of the damned and horned goat monsters throwing fireballs in his direction, it was all a blur. He started to get an idea. It was a stupid, drunken impulse, but an idea nonetheless.

He had seen it on internet chat rooms and on the forums that he frequented. Ryan had always dismissed those people as role-players or trolls, but the subject matter remained strangely alluring to him. He had been fond of the occult for as long as he could remember, wiling away his free time watching trashy documentaries about the supernatural and horror movies filled to the brim with cheap jump scares and bad special effects. There was a fascination there, and now that he was at rock bottom, what did he have to lose by exploring it further?

He closed the game, turning his attention to his web browser instead, typing frantically and navigating towards his forum of choice. The people here were mostly nuts, obsessed with Bigfoot and UFOs, sharing stories of ghost sightings or demonic possessions. But among all of the paranormal bullshit, occasionally there surfaced a conversation that seemed too genuine, too detailed and researched to be fake. Sure, some people were just crazy, but it would have taken real time and real work to fabricate such a convincing lie. What would be the point? Why take it so far?

He scrolled through pages of blurry photos of angels and sasquatches, schizophrenics talking about the voices that they heard in their heads, and sufferers of sleep paralysis who were convinced that they were being abducted by aliens. Finally, he came across the thread that he had been searching for, demonology and summoning. There was a lot of garbage here, cartoonish depictions of horned, cloven-hooved monsters with red skin being invoked by human sacrifices and appearing in a puff of smoke. Pentagrams, upturned crucifixes, nothing of any use.

Boy, he must have been drunker than he had thought to consider this, it couldn’t possibly be real. But again he heard that nagging voice in the back of his mind, what do you have to lose by trying?

As he pored over the conversations and discussions, one subject stood out to him, one name that kept coming up wherever he looked. The Ars Goetia. He eventually tracked down a thread that was filled with instructions on how to draw runes and sigils, summoning circles and rituals that must be performed in order to invoke a spirit, extensive and detailed lists of Goetic demons and their associated seals. As he pored over the information, he began to realize that these were not winged beasts with pitchforks whose only purpose was to do evil, but that each demon had a realm of expertise and was said to bestow help or services upon the summoner. Some taught skills or arts, others revealed hidden truths, there was a demon here for every conceivable need.

One could summon Eligos to predict the outcome of a war, the creature appearing before the summoner as a ghostly specter riding a skeletal horse. There was Vaul, who could cause women to fall in love with his summoner, but who only spoke in broken Egyptian. Bifrons who would teach the arts and sciences, Foras who taught logic and ethics and who could make men eloquent and well-spoken, Stolas who took the form of a crowned owl and would teach his conjurer the secrets of astrology. It was a veritable shopping list of demons, seventy-two of them to be precise, along with the necessary knowledge concerning their summoning. The Ars Goetia, the source material was called, a Medieval text that detailed the exploits of one King Solomon.

There was so much information here, sources ranging from the seventeenth-century text all the way back to Biblical figures mentioned in scripture. Was this some collective insanity? Surely the sheer volume of information available lent some credence to its authenticity?

Ryan realized that trying this out would not be as simple as drawing on his floor in sharpie and then lighting some candles. If he was going to do this, really commit to it, then he needed to do the research. He had to pick one of these Goetic demons, choose one that suited his problems as closely as possible, and then figure out what he needed to do in order to invoke it.

He looked at the clock on his taskbar, noticing that several hours had passed. He had been so engrossed in his research that he hadn’t even noticed. He decided to sleep on it, if he still felt like doing this when he was sober in the morning, then he’d make some serious plans.

xxxxx

Ryan awoke the following morning with a renewed desire to see the project through, his sober mind now more convinced than ever that this was the right course of action. With no job to go to and no social obligations to eat up his time, he resolved to spend the entire day researching the subject.

He started on the forum, quickly realizing that the source material for these Goetic demons was split into several different tomes and grimoires. Some were ancient scriptures said to have been written by Solomon himself, pre-dating the advent of Christianity by a thousand years. Others were Medieval texts, and still more were relatively modern adaptations of the works that were overall easier to parse. He decided to start his investigations with one of those, the most famous of which was The Lesser Key of Solomon, a collection of transcriptions of ancient manuscripts.

He downloaded a PDF file of the book but quickly became discouraged as he scrolled through the document. There was a lot of detailed information here, along with lengthy descriptions of the demons and their sigils. There were meandering invocations, and chants that would let one greet or banish the spirits. It was all too much for him to parse, however, he didn’t know where to start. What he needed was a how-to.

He went back into the archives, sifting through the posts and conversations, before eventually finding exactly what he required. Aleister Crowley’s Illustrated Goetia. The book detailed the man’s own tentative explorations into the art of summoning, along with easy to follow, step-by-step instructions and a blow by blow account of what had occurred when the spirit had been invoked. All the better, it was only a few decades old and so was not fraught with Olde English and Latin incantations. There was no better place to start. He downloaded a scanned copy of the book, then transferred it to his phone and started to read.

Immediately he was struck by the narrator’s situation, so similar was it to his own that he felt chills crawl up his spine, his eyes scanning back and forth as he devoured the pages. Crowley had lost everything, jobless and contemplating thoughts that he described as too dark to entertain, he had turned to the Goetia in his time of need. In order to turn his life around he had chosen demon number fifty-five, Orobas, who was described as being trustworthy and able to grant the favor of friends and foes. Ryan admitted to himself that he didn’t understand precisely what it all meant, prelacies and true answers of divinity, but Crowley seemed to have thought Orobas perfectly suited to the task and who was Ryan to question the choice?

As he read on the narrator recounted the experience of his first summoning, along with the steps and preparations that he had taken, a veritable roadmap to anyone interested in trying it out for themselves. He had anointed himself in oils and then had created an improvised temple in his son’s bedroom, drawing a summoning circle on the floor using masking tape. He had used easily obtainable incense burners and candles, no arcane artifacts of any kind, and there had been no gruesome sacrifices or bloody rituals of any sort. When laid out like this, the whole affair seemed almost mundane, pedestrian.

Ryan had pictured a man in lavish robes, sacrificing a goat with a ceremonial dagger before some complex and intricate sigil, but a Goetic summoning could apparently be carried out with common household items. The elaborate and lengthy incantations detailed in Solomon’s Key seemed to be unnecessary too, more to put the summoner in a meditative state than any kind of code that would cause the demon to appear. The author had not performed them, and there had been no dire consequences. As the story went on Crowley detailed his first attempt at a summoning, clumsy and almost comically inept, yet successful in invoking the demon. Becoming frustrated with his initial lack of success, he had cursed out the spirit with a slew of profanities, and when it had reluctantly appeared, he had rubbed cinnamon oil in his own eyes by accident. Ryan was fairly confident that he could do better, if not in the ritual itself, at least in his composure.

The narrator had been successful, and the demon had appeared to him in the form of a tiny horse with a miserable expression, seen not with the eyes but as one sees an idea formed in their mind. A series of almost hysterical threats and promises had kept the creature under control, and after some back-and-forth between the two parties, a sort of contract had been formed. Orobas would use the spirits under its command to help Crowley get his life back on track, and according to him, it had worked as advertised. He had seen positive results that very same day in the form of an old friend appearing on his doorstep and giving him a car that he had desperately needed for transport. By the end of the afternoon, he had found a new job in the classifieds section of a newspaper.

Coincidence, some claimed, but the author was adamant that it was Orobas who had orchestrated his sudden good luck.

The only real problem was that the author had not started out on the same footing as Ryan, he had been educated in what he referred to as High Magick and had been tutored by a more senior Magician. Would Ryan be able to accomplish the same feats without that careful tutelage? Fuck it, this was the information age, he could obtain anything that he needed to know online. The worst case scenario was that it just didn’t work and made him feel foolish. What harm was there in giving it a go?

He resolved to follow the instructions laid out in this book, to obtain the necessary information and tool and then attempt to summon his own Goetic demon.

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE