Goetic Justice 2

Chapter 2: Summoning for Dummies

“Hi, do you have, uh … Myrrh Oil?” Ryan stammered, the shop assistant giving him a strange look as he read from his shopping list of ingredients. He was in a holistic medicine store, the only place that he could find that might have the component oils required to make the Oil of Abramelin described in Crowley’s Goetia, apparently necessary for the ritual.

“We do,” she replied, leading him towards one of the shelves in the cramped building. There were dreamcatchers and charms hanging from the ceiling, little porcelain models of fairies and dragons behind glass cabinets, and the walls were lined with jars and bottles containing all manner of plants and herbs.

“What do you need it for? It’s great for treating fungal and bacterial infections, and new studies have shown that it has anti-cancer properties.”

He choked back a derisive snort. He couldn’t stand these new-age hippies, but he quickly realized that attempting to summon a demon was hardly a more credible use for the essential oil than treating athlete’s foot.

“I need some other things too,” he said, showing her his list. She paused for a moment, reading the crumpled piece of paper, then handed it back to him.

“We do carry cinnamon oil and galangal, but you’d have to get olive oil from a supermarket or maybe a general store. What’s this for, if you don’t mind my asking? I might be able to make some suggestions if I know more.”

“Oh, my girlfriend loves this stuff,” he said. “Got any candles too, maybe some incense burners? It’s her birthday, and I want to treat her to a relaxing bath.”

The woman clapped her hands together gleefully, apparently pleased by his reply.

“Of course, and you’ll be wanting some relaxing bath salts too, we have some lavender bubble bath that’s just lovely. Might I recommend a CD also? There’s a recording of rainforest sounds that will just release all of that negative energy, you know?”

“Oh yeah, negative energy. Can’t be doing with that.”

Before long he was leaving the store with a biodegradable carrier full of oils and candles. He didn’t necessarily need a lot of the soaps and salts, but Crowley had taken a lengthy bath in order to cleanse himself before the summoning, so he should too. Next stop was the general store to pick up some olive oil, a Goodwill to pick up some clothes that he could use as robes, and then a hardware store for the metal plate that he would need to engrave the demon’s sigil onto.

Although Crowley’s first summoning had been somewhat makeshift, after doing some more research Ryan had decided on following at least some of the more detailed instructions listed in Solomon’s Key, chiefly the use of wards and protections that would serve to confine whatever entity he managed to invoke and protect him from any harm that might befall him. He also kind of just wanted to draw on things, and making occult robes would be a lot of fun.

xxxxx

Ryan sat at a desk in his apartment, he had cleared out the small living room and had ended up with a space of roughly eight by eight feet of hardwood flooring, the furniture pushed up against the walls to make as much room as possible. It was on the small side, and the book stated that nine feet was necessary, but it would have to do. The grimoires didn’t account for magicians living in apartment blocks.

He was hard at work drawing sigils on pieces of card that he intended to attach to a bathrobe that he had acquired from the used clothing store. It wasn’t quite a wizard’s robe, but it was more than Crowley had available when he had summoned his first demon. Ryan was copying the elaborate drawings from Solomon’s Key, doing his best to replicate them. These were not necessary to bring the demon forth but rather to ensure the optimal containment of it and the protection of the summoner. It was all quite elaborate, and again the sheer quantity of information gave the whole affair credence.

First, there was the Solomon’s Sexangle, a figure that resembled a Star of David contained within a circle, decorated with writing and runes. He would find a way to hang this from the cloth belt of the bathrobe, he was supposed to flash it at the demon when it appeared, which would supposedly compel it to be obedient and to take a humanoid form.

Next, he would make a Pentagonal Figure of Solomon, a pendant to be worn around the neck with a ward intended to protect the user on one side and the sigil of the chosen demon on the other. He could use some string and thread it through a hole in the card. Nowhere did it state that these had to be made from any specific material like metal or wood.

The final piece of his costume would be a Ring of Solomon, a circular ward containing odd writing that would be worn on or near the face to protect him from acrid fumes, sulfur and brimstone and all that. He would draw it on a piece of card and staple it to a sweatband, easy. There was one more ward listed, the Secret Seal of Solomon, but that was to be used for containing the entity within a brass vessel, like a Genie in a lamp. Ryan had no such vessel, nor did he have any desire to attempt to confine a demon should he succeed in invoking one.

He had chalk for drawing the magical circle which was going to be an absolute bitch, along with the Triangle of Solomon that was used to confine disobedient spirits, a sort of time-out for naughty demons. The circle was going to take the most time to make by far, it was full of Hebrew nonsense that he didn’t understand, and sigils within sigils that looked especially hard to reproduce.

He had fashioned a wand from a stick by shaving away the bark with a pocket knife, and he had all of the candles and incense that he had bought on hand, unsure of what scents a demon might prefer or even if it mattered at all.

There were a few other complications. Some demons could only be summoned at certain times of the month depending on their rank in Hell’s armies, and some of the invocations required that the summoner hath not defiled himself by any woman in the space of a month. That last part wasn’t going to be an issue, and for a moment he considered asking the demon to make it so that Becky ended her days in the company of two dozen cats.

Speaking of which, he still hadn’t decided which Goetic demon he was going to attempt to summon. He couldn’t continue much further without choosing one, as its sigil was required for several of the wards. The problem was that there were so many to choose from, and the archaic language used in Solomon’s Key made many of their attributes vague at best. How the hell was he supposed to know what he changeth ye dead bodyes and putteth them into one another’s places actually equated to? Fortunately, Crowley’s Illustrated Goetia contained just that, illustrations of all of the demons along with some brief descriptions in modern English.

As he examined the extensive list, he began to realize how arbitrary some of their stated powers and areas of expertise were. If you wanted to bend trees for some reason, then you could summon number sixty-seven, Amduscias. He was your guy when it came to tree bending, and that seemed to be about all that he did. Number thirty-one, Foras, could make you invisible and also lecture you on logic and ethics. Many of them seemed to have artistic or academic pursuits that they would teach you, from foreign languages to philosophy and painting. Perhaps risking your immortal soul was preferable to dealing with student loan collectors.

He was somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of demons that could allegedly be summoned, it was like going through a list of goddamned Pokemon. They could do everything from transmuting metals to gold, to making women fall in love with him, and they could even teach him to speak to dogs. He had to think hard about what would actually solve his problems, as the author of Crowley’s Illustrated Goetia had been very specific about only asking for things that you actually needed from the demons, as if they would somehow be able to tell if your motivation was greed or lust. Ryan was confident that his own needs were severe enough to warrant the intervention of a demon, and so he wasn’t too worried about that. As long as he chose his invocation wisely, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Perhaps he should just go with Orobas, the one that had been summoned in the story that he had read. It was a fairly low-level demon, and it was described as being loyal and reliable. It had helped Crowley get out of a similar pickle. No, he needed to make the right choice, he needed a demon that perfectly suited his needs.

xxxxx

Ryan had finally narrowed it down to three demons. Dantalion, Gamori, and Orobas. He rubbed his eyes, checking the clock on his phone. It was already past midnight, he had spent the whole day researching demons and preparing his ritual.

Dantalion was number seventy-one, a genderless creature that appeared to the summoner as a mass of shifting heads. Its domain was teaching arts and sciences, it had the ability to read minds and to relay the thoughts of others to the summoner, and it could also cause women to fall in love. Those were all useful to Ryan. He could learn a profession that might land him a job, know the thoughts of employers in order to influence them, and he could have any woman of his choosing it seemed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that last part, it seemed a little too close to brainwashing, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Gamori was the fifty-sixth demon listed in the Goetia, and she appeared before the summoner as a beautiful woman riding on a camel. Her area of expertise was telling the future and causing women to fall in love. The power of prescience would help him in all manner of pursuits, from job searching to dating, and again the demon appeared to grant the love of any woman that he desired. As much as he did indeed desire the love of a woman, he wasn’t sure if he needed it so severely as to invoke a demon. He was perfectly capable of dating under his own power.

If he asked for something that wasn’t urgent, or too difficult for him to achieve by himself, it seemed as if bad things would happen. There was nothing explicitly forbidding it, at least not that he could find, but everything pointed to it being at best a faux pas and a worst a grievous offense. Better to just keep things simple. Asking for invincibility and riches would surely backfire in some ironic way, and any demon that could bestow such things was of high rank and no doubt beyond his ability to control.

Lastly, there was Orobas, as described in Crowley’s first summoning, who appeared in the form of a horse. He could grant dignities and prelacies, though Ryan wasn’t quite sure what those were yet, and he could grant the favor of friends and foes. He could see the past, present, and future, and he was described as being especially loyal.

Fuck it, Orobas it was. He would begin carving his sigil into the metal plate that he had purchased at the hardware store, and start drawing it onto the back of the Pentagonal Figure of Solomon. That should be everything. There was some nonsense about astrology and planetary hours and all kinds of other minutia mentioned in the guides that he had found online, but Crowley had not bothered with that and so neither would he. There would be no chants or prayers, no meditation, none of the intricate and overly complex steps that would draw this out for longer than he had the patience for.

After all, what did it matter if he invoked a demon through a complex and rambling chant that had to be memorized, or through simply asking it plainly to appear? Crowley had hurled insults and expletives at Orobas, and it had manifested itself all the same, which led Ryan to believe that many of the more elaborate parts of the ritual were just there for flair.

If any of this was to be believed, then it was a kind of science, albeit an arcane and spiritual science. As long as he followed the steps as they were outlined, it should work, and the more religious and superstitious aspects could be glossed over. He chuckled to himself, realizing how stupid that sounded, criticizing the superstitious when he was about to attempt a demon summoning.

It had gotten late, but everything was ready. He would get some sleep and perform the invocation the next day.

xxxxx

The summoning circle was all drawn out in chalk on the hardwood floor of his apartment, this might be a pain to clean up, but it wasn’t as if he was going to get his deposit back anyway. It had taken him a couple of hours, writing out all of the little Hebrew incantations and drawing all of the pentagrams, making sure that it was lined up with the cardinal directions and triple checking that everything was properly transcribed from the Lesser Key of Solomon. He had his own little triangle to stand in that was decorated with wards, and there was the containment triangle which was intended for trapping unruly demons within its confines. He remembered that the instructions had asked for a nine-foot circle and about twelve feet of space overall, but he had to make do with what was available. If this didn’t produce any measurable results, then so much might have gone wrong that it was hardly worth sweating over the details.

Even stripped of its more flamboyant elements, the ritual seemed needlessly complex, with layers of dependencies where one misstep could cause a cascading failure. He was confident of his wards and sigils, however. He was about as defended from hostile entities as it was possible to be without having a proton pack on hand, unless he had completely misunderstood some crucial element that would result in his soul being immediately devoured. Oh well, he didn’t have much going on these days anyway.

He had taken a long and thorough bath, using the soaps and salts that the insufferable woman at that new age store had sold him. Apparently being clean in body was as important as any of the spiritual aspects of the summoning. After all, you wouldn’t invite a guest into your house and then greet them unwashed, that was just bad manners.

He was wearing his bathrobe, the material was linen, which also seemed to be important and was mentioned frequently enough that he had sought one out. He had stapled the Sexangle drawn on card to the belt, which was supposed to compel the demon to be obedient and to take human form upon request. Then there was the Pentagonal Figure that hung from a piece of string around his neck, designed to ward off danger, and finally, the sweatband with the Ring of Solomon attached to it. As a complete package, it looked like one of those budget cosplay jokes, where somebody used household items to approximate the costume of a superhero or a cartoon character in a way that was intentionally terrible. But insofar as he could tell, his getup was perfectly in line with the rules.

He switched off the lights and then walked around the circle, lighting his candles one by one, contrasting scents of lavender and vanilla wafting through the air. He lit the incense burner too. It was some scent called dragon’s blood, but to him, it just smelled like hand cream. He found himself wishing that his Ring of Solomon worked against regular smells as well as the sulfur spewed by demons, his apartment was starting to smell like a goddamned massage parlor.

He closed the blinds to ensure that the room was as dark as possible, the flickering firelight from the candles casting long, dancing shadows on the walls. There was a haze in the air from all the crap that he had lit, it was all finally starting to feel like a genuine summoning. Get some teenagers in here and give them a Ouija board, and they’d scare themselves into hysterics within minutes. He had done a pretty good job of setting the mood all things considered.

Ok, time to do this.

Ryan stooped to pick up a small vial, the Oil of Abramelin that he had mixed from its component ingredients the night before, and anointed himself with it. He dipped his finger into the liquid and touched it gently against the psychic centers of his body that were described in the books. The top of his head, between his eyes, his throat, chest, navel, and groin. He winced, it fucking burned. He could have used some of the shit your pants hot sauce that was sitting on the kitchen counter and saved himself the trouble.

There were some rituals listed in Crowley’s account of his summoning, and so Ryan performed them as the author had. He held up a printout of the Lesser Banishing Ritual and the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia, reading from the texts and trying to put on his best commanding voice. He waved his makeshift wand as he chanted the invocations, feeling somewhat foolish, like a character from one of those wizard movies that had been so popular a few years back.

When he was done, the next step was to focus on the triangle that he had drawn on the floor, to concentrate on it and will the demon to appear there. He pointed the wand at the chalk drawing, illuminated by the flickering candlelight, and spoke in the most confident tone that he could muster.

“Orobas, I summon you!”

He stood in silence for a few moments, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing. Not to be so easily discouraged, he pointed the wand again and repeated the demand in a sterner tone.

“Orobas, I summon you into the triangle!”

Bupkis. He was feeling a little disheartened now. Should he repeat the invocation, or had the lengthy diatribes described in the Lesser Key actually been necessary after all? No, Crowley had not used them, or he would surely have documented it in his book. Maybe he should add a little flair after all, perhaps the demons appreciated the theatrics? He cleared his throat and gave it another try.

“I hereby command you, Demon Prince Orobas, to appear before me. By the true name of the God whom you are bound to serve, and by the names of the Kings that rule over you, I conjure you.”

Ryan felt a chill crawl up his spine. He had the sudden sensation that he was being watched, as if there was some unseen presence in the room with him. He felt his heart quicken, looking around the gloomy apartment yet seeing nothing. Could this really be working? Was it all true? No time to contemplate the implications, he had to stay on track, courage and concentration were central to the ritual. Trying to banish the creeping feeling that someone was lurking somewhere behind him, his animal instincts urging him to run as his veins were flooded with adrenaline, he pressed on.

“I summon you into the triangle, Orobas, obey my command and do not delay.”

He fumbled with the sheets of paper that he had printed out. He wanted to read off some of the names of the demons and angels that were said to compel the thing to do as it was told. While Crowley had not used them, Ryan had most of the information from the Lesser Key on hand just in case he needed it. There were fucking dozens of them, and he wasn’t even going to attempt to pronounce the name Escerchie. He’d just have to keep making it up as he went along.

“Orobas, great and mighty Prince of Hell, answer my summons and come before me so that you might aid me in my hour of need!”

Ryan couldn’t be sure if it was just the candles and incense, but the air seemed to be getting thicker, fumes swirling in the darkness as if some electrical appliance had caught fire. Hoping that wasn’t the case, he waved his wand at the triangle, trying to will the demon to manifest. He concentrated, fixated on that chalk drawing, trying to picture what it might look like in his mind’s eye. He was startled by a gust of wind that almost blew out his candles, the flames sputtering, despite all of the windows being securely closed. Things were starting to get seriously spooky, and some part of him almost wanted to back out, to abandon the whole venture while there was still time to pass everything off as coincidence or a trick of the light.

The temperature was plummeting, like somebody had been messing with the thermostat, and for a moment he could have sworn that he saw ice crystals in his breath. His eyes were playing tricks on him, mistaking the dancing shadows cast by the candles for figures moving around him, losing their definition when he managed to focus on one. He almost jumped out of his skin when he heard a loud bang from the room above, his unruly neighbors stomping around no doubt. But there was doubt, and he heard it again, it almost sounded to his frightened ears like … hooves. Clop clop clop, like there was something heavy marching around in the apartment above him, or perhaps on his ceiling? He looked up frantically. He couldn’t see anything, and yet the hairs on his arms and neck were standing on end.

He regretted doing this, what the fuck had he been thinking? Why didn’t he just sign up at an unemployment center, move back in with his parents, or even just take the hit and live in a hostel for a while? He felt like a suicide jumper who had just let go of the railing, his stomach lurching as he started to fall, a million better options flashing through his mind now that it was too late.

Ryan suddenly felt drawn to the triangle, magnetized to it, as if gravity was concentrating there and drawing him inexorably inward. He stared through the swirling haze, his eyes struggling to penetrate the vapors, and then he saw it.

There was some … thing in the triangle, a formless, writhing shape that was impossible to make out clearly. Only he didn’t really see it, not with his eyes at least. Like a hologram projected onto a building, it cast itself into his mind like an idea. It was as if he had just discovered some new sense, sight without light, and even when he shut his eyes tightly to be free of the churning mass of malformed flesh … it was still there.

He couldn’t undo this now, it was too late, he had to stay the course. Driven more by his surging adrenaline than by courage, he pointed his wand at the demon, praying that his voice sounded more angry than hysterical.

“Take form, Orobas, and no shape intended to offend or repulse!”

It became more solid, as if it was phasing in from somewhere else, almost as though it was emerging from behind a pane of frosted glass. After a moment there was a little horse sitting in the triangle, scarcely larger than a dog as it stared at him with its miserable eyes. They looked too big for its head, watery and expressive, and Ryan kept his wand trained on it as he tried to regain his composure.

Holy shit it was a demon, sitting right in the middle of his living room, holy shit! He didn’t know whether to be elated or horrified, and then the thing spoke, hoarse and distant as if heard from far away.

“What … is this?”

Ryan got the distinct impression that it didn’t want to be here, that it resented being confined to this triangle, but he flashed his Sexagonal sigil at it all the same.

“I have summoned you here, Orobas. You see this sigil? It means that you have to obey me.”

“Obey thee?” it asked, its tone derisive. “Thou art no Magician, what manner of farce is this? Dost thou mock me, mortal?”

“I’m … no, I’m not mocking you. I summoned you here. It worked, didn’t it? Now follow the rules, you have to do as I command.”

As afraid as he was, Ryan was becoming quite annoyed with the weird little pony. This was his moment of triumph, and yet it seemed to think that the whole affair was some kind of practical joke. Did it not believe that he was the one who had summoned it?

“Who hast taught thee these things?” Orobas asked in its rasping voice.

“Nobody,” Ryan replied tersely, “I taught myself.”

“Thy sigils art scrawled upon paper, thy runes and thy incantations art as if drawn by the hand of a child, thou weareth a bathrobe. This should not have worked. How didst thou succeed in summoning me here with so little care and preparation?”

“I followed the instructions, and the fact that you’re here talking to me right now proves that I did it right, so stop complaining unless you want me to burn your sigil.”

He raised a slip of paper with Orobas’ seal crudely drawn on it in pencil, holding up a lighter to it.

“No!” Orobas snapped, “do not do that!”

Ryan pulled away, alarmed by the intensity of the creature’s objection. Perhaps the threat was more severe than he had realized. The thing seemed to calm down, sinking back into its position inside the triangle. It turned its eyes to the sigil that contained it, as if trying to find some error in the Hebrew script or the placement of the runes, something that might let it break loose. There were none, Ryan had taken great care to transcribe them properly, and so it turned its attention back to him.

“What wouldst thou ask of me, novice?”

Ryan collected himself. This was the most crucial part of the summoning, he needed to make sure that his request was phrased clearly and could not be misinterpreted either by accident or intention. He had thought long and hard about this, and he had decided on what he wanted to ask the demon.

“Orobas, I beseech you to use your powers and all of the spirits under your command to help me turn my life around. I lost my job and my wife-to-be, I’ve run out of money, and I’m going to lose my home. My luck has soured, and nothing is going right for me. Summoning you is my last resort. I want to be financially secure again, a steady job that pays enough for me to live comfortably, and that I enjoy. I want to be happy again. You have two weeks, it needs to be done before I get evicted at the end of the month.”

The demon seemed to consider for a moment, Ryan watching it with bated breath, until it finally replied in its rasping voice.

“This I can do, but speak plainly. Art thou sure that this is thy request?”

“Yes.”

“And what favors willst thou grant me in exchange?”

“If you succeed in your task, then I will order fifty tin plates from the hardware store. I’ll get them engraved with your sigil, and then I’ll scatter them all over the city. Laser etched, real nice, people will be finding those things for months.”

“This is … acceptable, but heed this warning, novice. Thou art clearly ignorant in the ways of magick, and this work will nary be simple or quick. Be patient and follow my instructions, and thou shalt prosper before the fortnight is through.”

“So we have a deal, then?”

“Aye, I accept thy terms, now see me on my way.”

“Oh, right,” Ryan said as he fumbled with the printout and cleared his throat. “Because you have answered my summons and have appeared before me in good faith, and now that our contract is sealed, I hereby release you to return from whence you came Orobas. Go now peaceably, with blessings and thanks, and be ever ready to return to my side again should your council be required.”

The grotesque little horse bowed its head, and then as quickly as it had come, it was gone. The air cleared instantly, the oppressive haze lifting and the cold retreating, Ryan sensing that he was alone once again.

His heart was beating like a drum. His mouth was dry, and his hands were shaking conspicuously, but his terror had been replaced with elation. He had done it! He had summoned a demon, and it was all real! He hurriedly walked around the circumference of the summoning circle, blowing out the candles and dousing incense burners, then he raised the blinds and turned the lights back on. There was no sign that anything had been here, no ghostly residue in the triangle where Orobas had sat, and no hoof prints on the ceiling.

Would the demon really do as he had asked? How would it influence his life? Would he wake up the next morning with a job offer from some big IT firm waiting for him on the kitchen table? Orobas had said that it would take time and that he should be patient, but he could hardly contain his excitement.

He removed the sweatband from his head, along with the Ring of Solomon that protected him from foul odors, and his nose wrinkled at the smell of sulfur. It was faint, but it was there, overpowering the scents of the candles and incense as they faded.

He would leave the circle and the sigils on the floor in case he needed to contact Orobas again. There was no reason to clean them up when his landlord wasn’t nosy, and he had no friends or family who might visit him here. He could do with changing out of his bathrobe, however, and opening a few windows. The vanilla candles were almost worse than the demonic odor.

xxxxx

Another day passed with no sign or show from Orobas, and with nothing more pressing to occupy his time Ryan spent it catching up on TV shows and video games. He had moved some of the furniture back into place just so that he could make use of the seating and the television, but he could touch up the circle with chalk if he needed to.

He was sitting on the couch, eating a slice of pizza with his controller in hand when the smell of sulfur overpowered him, a freezing cold coming over the room as if it had just been transported into the Arctic. He dropped what he was doing, shivering as he watched his breath condensate. Was Orobas returning? What should he do, did he need his robe and his sigils? Could Orobas appear of its own accord without being summoned?

He heard footsteps, heavy hooves on wood, there was no mistaking that sound. His ears tracked what his eyes could not yet see, something heavy walking across the ceiling, formless shadows dancing on the walls as if cast by ethereal candles. There was a haze in the air, those same fumes manifesting out of nowhere, this time stinging his eyes and making them water due to his lack of wards.

He suddenly became aware of something that was standing in the corner of the room, its silhouette seen more by his mind than his eyes. The amorphous mass took shape, becoming vaguely humanoid, yet tall enough that its head scraped the ceiling. This was not Orobas, unless he was taking a form that was not described in any of the grimoires, and Ryan felt a pang of fear in his belly. Had he done something wrong and let some vagrant entity into his apartment? It was said that summoning demons and playing with the occult would open one up to invasion by hostile spirits, like leaving your door unlocked in a bad neighborhood. He had no sigils on hand, no wand, nothing that might help him to protect himself or repel it.

He heard the knock of hooves on the wood floor, heavy and loud as the entity began to walk towards the couch on two jointed legs, like the hind legs of a goat or a deer. It was slowly taking form, coming more into focus as it neared him, Ryan rubbing his eyes in a futile attempt to clear them as he cowered. It shook the floorboards beneath him, far heavier than any man, and it sported a mane of twisted horns that scraped along the ceiling like nails on a chalkboard as it approached him.

As it came into focus, the haze parting before it, more of its features jumped out at him. It was undeniably female, strikingly so, such that for a moment he was completely distracted from his fear. Her torso was that of a woman, developed and shapely, soft around the belly and hips. Two heavy breasts immediately drew his gaze, pert and firm, some kind of wool or maybe feathery fur beginning between them and covering her neck in a sort of ruff. The same fluffy material was present on her shoulders and lower arms, which ended in three-fingered hands with black nails that were almost claw-like in their sharpness. Her stomach and thighs were clear, covered in smooth, pale skin that was unnaturally white. Below her burnished thighs were the legs of a Satyr, like some historical depiction of a devil, ending in the cloven hooves of a cow or a goat and covered in that same downy material.

He craned his neck to see her face, struck by its odd shape, not quite that of a goat and not quite that of a human. The features were softer and more subtle than those of an animal, with an almost imperceptible snout and the clear skin of a woman, yet the nose and ears were undeniably ovine. Half a dozen black, twisted horns sprouted from her head like a crown, protruding from amidst the feathery wool that served as her hair. Her eyes were what stood out to him the most, amber in color, and with the horizontal pupils of a sheep. She peered down at him, batting her long eyelashes as if waiting for him to make the next move.

“What … are you?” Ryan mumbled.

“I am of the Seirim, bound to serve my master, Prince Orobas.” She spoke with a husky, feminine voice, strangely musical as if it was being run through a synthesizer.

“Orobas sent you here?”

“I have been assigned to you as a familiar. My master cannot remain in the mortal realm long enough to achieve what you have asked, and so I will act as a guide and intermediary.”

“Oh!” Ryan stammered, knowing where she had come from not doing much to alleviate his terror. “That’s … good! So you’re like, going to help me out, or something?”

“My spirit is bound to yours until the contract is completed. I will carry out the instructions of my master and guide you in your efforts.”

“Okay, cool, so where do we start? Are you going to use your magic powers to find out what job openings there are within commute distance?”

The demon cocked her head at him, scrutinizing him with those yellow eyes, and he shrank back into the couch.

“You are no Magician, you know nothing of our ways, yet you succeeded in invoking my master and binding him in a contract. How did you accomplish this?”

“I-I looked up the instructions and followed the steps.”

“It takes years of study and meditation to truly understand the nature of the sacred texts. Learning the invocations and ceremonies of the Lemegeton is the work of a lifetime in itself, it takes an accomplished and learned practitioner of the magickal arts to even make an attempt to summon a demon. Tell me, are you familiar with the Grimorium Verum, or the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum?”

He shook his head.

“Who taught you magick?”

“Nobody, I read about it on my own,” he snapped. “Listen, I’m getting pretty tired of you people questioning my competence. All that matters is that I summoned Orobas and that we have a contract. You have to do what I say, and I say that I don’t need to know the ins and outs of what’s going on as long as I get results. Whatever goes on under the hood is your business and not mine.”

She seemed taken aback by his sudden fearlessness, blinking her ovine eyes at him.

“Very well. Magick is subtle. Far from producing instant results, it takes time and preparation to achieve what you desire. You asked for Orobas to find you work and to turn your life around, the simplest way to do that is through your own efforts, aided by his powers and counsel.”

“Well we have two weeks, so the sooner we get started, the better.”

She nodded her head, and Ryan wondered how heavy those horns were, or if she was even a physical manifestation and had any mass at all. He wanted to reach out a hand and touch the downy, wool-like material that covered her body in places, but he didn’t dare. While he presumed to be in control of these demons, he didn’t want to push his luck. The relationship felt tentative enough as it was.

“Very well, I will commune with my master and return shortly.”

“Wait!” Ryan blurted as he gestured for her to stop, and she blinked at him with those inhuman eyes. “What should I call you?”

“Nahash.”

And just as quickly as she had come, she was gone, the lingering smell of sulfur the only evidence that she had ever been in the room. Ryan sank back down into the couch, a cold shiver running down his spine, and he lifted the upturned slice of pizza from the faux leather cushion that he had dropped in his alarm when she had manifested.

It was one thing to summon a demon, but it was quite another to have them randomly popping in and out of reality like fucking whack-a-moles. He put a hand to his chest, feeling the rapid beating of his heart, and he wiped cold sweat from his brow. He didn’t really feel in control of the situation anymore. He had made a contract with Orobas, not with this Nahash who claimed to represent him, but at least things were moving along.

He picked up his controller again, turning his attention back to the television. There wasn’t much he could do right now other than wait for her to reappear.

THE END OF CHAPTER TWO