Mrs. Tarnish - Short Story

Mrs. Tarnish

By Jason Hill

The yellow house with white trim looked much like every other house along the street.  The lone porch light provided enough luminosity to reveal a front door framed with the same four rectangular windows as every house on the block.  All sorts of flying insects attempted to escape the cool of the autumn evening as they buzzed and flew around the warmth of the light.     The night was silent save for a few neighborhood dogs barking, the buzz of the insects and the footsteps of a most unlikely pair walking up the sidewalk. 

“There are rules, Ronald,” intoned the diminutive woman without looking up at the improbably tall youth who silently tread at her side. 

“Yes’m, Mrs. Tarnish” the young man replied dutifully.

Eleanor Tarnish gazed through round-rimmed glasses with thick, black plastic frames at the house straight ahead of them.  Her black, neck-length hair was the type that seemed to never, ever have a hair out of place.  These iron tresses framed a face pitted with more crevices and wrinkles than age alone could ever provide.  Her eyes, however, her eyes blazed with the fire of youth.  She wore a dingy grey wool overcoat and white cotton skirt.  Tarnish’s outfit ended with a pair of brown patent leather boots that matched the belt around the waist of her coat. Her expression turned dour as she stared at the seemingly normal house in front of her. She pulled black skin-tight gloves over her hands as she gazed upward into the young man’s green eyes, “Watch carefully.  Do what I tell you and nothing more.” 

“Yes’m.”  The response was ever automatic.  When Mrs. Tarnish spoke, Ronald did as he was told. 

“Rule One,” she started stepping towards the house steps as she spoke, “speak only when I direct you to.” 

Several years ago, Ronald heard this rule for the first time.  He had replied with his standard “Yes’m.”

Mrs. Tarnish had stopped, faced the young man and said, “I did not direct you to speak.”

Two days later, Ronald could open his left eye.  The six-foot-seven nineteen year old had replayed the scene a million times in his head and still couldn’t figure out how she had reached high enough to hit his eye.  It was a mystery that he didn’t need to solve nor a lesson he wanted repeated.

“Rule Two: do not run unless I direct you to,” the woman continued to stare at the door of the house as she grasped the handrail and began to ascend the steps. 

Once she reached the top of the landing, she paused momentarily to peer through the door’s windows.  The unlit interior of the house revealed only dark lumps and darker shadows.  “Rule Three: do not, under any circumstance, lose that bag you are carrying,” she looked back at the young man as she pointed at the brown leather doctor’s bag in Ronald’s left hand, “Even if I direct you to.”

Ronald nodded silently in response; he knew the bag’s importance. 

Mrs. Tarnish didn’t bother to knock.  She knew the door was unlocked. The door swung open and the pair was greeted by a massive cloud of flies striving to reach the exterior light.  “Blast.  Too late,” muttered Tarnish. 

The over-sweet smell of decay flooded their nostrils.  A light from a stairwell on the left side of the living room provided enough light to see several fly-covered misshapen lumps lying in the shadows of the living room floor.  Tarnish ignored the bodies and purposefully strode towards the staircase.  There was one person still alive in the house.  Perhaps, if they were fast enough, that one could be saved.

Movement! Something moved on the stairs!  Ronald reached towards the weapon holstered at his lower back before he realized the source:  a housecat. 

Mrs. Tarnish had seen the cat with the too-red chin when they had first entered the room.  Her eyes followed the animal as it bounded up the stairs to the second floor.

The steps of the staircase were smeared with bloody paw prints, footprints and a heavy blood trail. One or more of the victims had been killed upstairs and then dragged downstairs to join the other dead on the first floor. “Rule Four,” whispered Tarnish over her shoulder to Ronald, “never be unready.”

Ron nodded in response as he tried to avoid stepping in anything unpleasant while keeping his eyes on the top of the stairs. He pulled out his weapon with his right hand as he climbed the stairs behind Mrs. Tarnish--his left clutched the valuable leather bag.

The cat ran into the third room on the right of the hallway.  It was the only room with a light on and the door open.  Mrs. Tarnish almost ran to the room.  Perhaps it wasn’t too late. 

The room wasn’t anything unusual--a few posters of current teen idols hung on the walls, a lacey white bedspread draped over a brass four-poster frame, and a vanity in one corner was filled with brushes and makeup.  The cat lay on one corner of the bed licking blood off its paws.  The bedspread under the cat was stained in various shades of red--this must have been the cat’s accustomed lounging place after it had dined.  A teenaged girl sat looking at them through the mirror of the vanity.  With one hand she plied a brush through her long, blonde hair.  With the other she dug fresh punctures into the flesh of her leg with the point of an eight-inch butcher knife. 

“Hi!” the girl called out in a typical, teenager sing-song voice. “Are you looking for my parents?”  Neither hand stopped. One brushed.  One dug. “I think they’re downstairs.” Her lively tone belied the deadness in her eyes as she stared at Mrs. Tarnish.

Mrs. Tarnish paused at the doorway.  A surprised Ronald stood in the hallway behind her.  Mrs. Tarnish never paused.  

Tarnish gathered herself as she walked into the room, “I’ve already met them.”

 The girl set the brush down, turned around and smiled as she responded, “Oh? Then why are you up here?”  Blood stains peppered the front of her shirt and a pink sheen covered her teeth. The knife point still dug into the flesh of the girl’s thigh.   

Ronald blanched.  Mrs. Tarnish took another step forward.  “They seemed quite busy, dear. I need to talk to you anyway.”

At this, the girl’s head tilted to one side as she responded, “Talk to me? Whatever for?” The girl shifted forward.

“RONALD! NOW!”

Mrs. Tarnish shifted quickly to one side as the girl leapt out of the chair with her knife raised to strike down the wool-clad woman.  Ronald had been ready for this and expertly fired his weapon once then twice.  The girl hit the floor motionless.

“Hurry, Ronald!  Something’s different this time!”

Ronald grabbed the girl from the floor and threw her onto the bed.  The cat hissed at being removed from its roost so abruptly.  The young man then reached into the bag at his side to pull out several three-inch wide Velcro straps.

“The arms first, then the head!” yelled out Mrs. Tarnish as she hovered around the frantically working Ronald. 

Ron ran a strap under the bed, and then over the girl’s elbows.  He put one of the straps through a loop on the other end and then tightened it down.  Hard.  He repeated the same process over her forehead. The girl began to stir.

“Hurry!” exhorted Tarnish.  “She’s almost bypassed the neural shutdowns already.”  

Ronald quickly strapped the girl’s shoulders and hands.  He barely managed to strap her knees before she came to. 

“What are you pervos doing to me?!!” She yelled as she struggled. “Let me up!”

Ronald and Tarnish ignored her increasingly louder protestations as Ronald put the final strap across her ankles. Mrs. Tarnish unbuttoned her overcoat and found a non-bloodied chair to hang it on. Underneath the drab coat was a pure-white blouse that matched her skirt.  Her waist was wrapped in a thick gold cord and a large unadorned gold cross hung around her neck. Tarnish moved beside the bed to look down at the restrained girl.

“Shall we talk?”

“Talk?!” the girl’s voice was shrill with terror, “I’ll say anything you want to hear! Please don’t hurt me, lady!”   

Tarnish’s lips tightened into a minute smile as she leaned forward and stared into the girl’s eyes.  After a long moment, her eyebrows shot up in surprise from behind her glasses, “My! But you are a small one!”

Mrs. Tarnish’s smile became a mite larger and definitely satisfied at the results of her comment.  The girl’s face began to transform.  The edges of her eyebrows rose as her cheekbones grew and widened, causing the skin around her eyes and mouth to tighten while her chin grew markedly more pointed.  The girl’s eyes slanted up at an alarming angle and her lips stretched into a permanent rictus, exposing her too-red teeth.  Mrs. Tarnish always found ridicule to be effective in quickly drawing out the young or inexperienced ones. But one this small should not have been able to possess a human at all.

“Hmph. I was once much larger,” the reply was grinding and deep.  And surprising.  Anger and spittle and rage were usually the responses of a shade forced to come out of hiding.  Mrs. Tarnish found herself pausing twice in one night.  This was not a good thing.  She stared at the thing’s eyes.  The irises were no longer the girl’s sky-blue but were now a shade not quite black and the white sclera was now a bloodshot yellow.

Those who worked with summoned spirits quickly learned that eyes truly are the windows of the soul.  Mrs. Tarnish scraped and clawed her way through the darkness of this thing’s eyes to look at its soul.  Ah! There was something she missed.

“I see now,” Tarnish said to the creature living in the girl, “you are small, but you are very, very old.”

The creature’s only response was silence.

Ronald stood behind Mrs. Tarnish with the doctor’s bag open.  Tarnish briefly twisted around in the chair and pointed at a bottle.  Ron walked out of the room and down the hall to prepare her request.  Tarnish turned back to stare down her glasses at the not-girl.     

“One would think you’d be dying for adult conversation,” she said offhandedly.

The creature’s mouth split in a wide grin and a gravelly laugh of true amusement roared from its maw, “HA! There is only one type of conversation I enjoy with you cattle.” The creature’s grin disappeared and left a voice filled with only cold, cold malice, “But it does involve dying.”

Mrs. Tarnish was a little surprised the thing was talking this much.  They usually know talking only gets them in trouble.  She decided to probe for clues.

“There’s no sign this house is infected.  There are no gateways anywhere near here. How did you get in the girl?”

“She asked me to.”

Tarnish sat back in her chair at this.  The rules just changed.  What or, rather, who was this demon?  What did the girl do?  Mrs. Tarnish got up and took a look around the room.  Nothing unusual.  She made a circuit around the bedroom and noticed a crimson stain at the base of the closet door.  Tarnish opened the girl’s walk-in closet.  Things just became a little clearer. A summoning circle was drawn on the floor. 

The demon began its dreadful chortling again.  Mrs. Tarnish ignored the sound and stepped into the closet to investigate.  The circle was drawn in blood, but what kind?  If the girl had used her own, the demon would have been bound more securely and would have had a much harder time taking her over--especially so completely. She looked around the closet more closely. There!  The corner of a leather bound book peeked out from under a pile of clothes.  It was ancient.  The leather was cracked and the pages were yellowed and brittle.  Where would the girl find such a thing?   Tarnish cracked the tome open to get an idea of where to start.  The demon began laughing harder.  

The spell book was older than she imagined.  It looked like an early form of Etruscan. There was no way the girl could have read a book this old.  Sadly, the book had crude illustrations.  The girl had tried paint-by-numbers spirit summoning.  That never worked.    

A bright orange bookmark stamped ‘Megan’ stood out in stark contrast to the deep brown and yellow of the ancient tome. The pages crackled as Tarnish opened the book to the marked spot. The opened book revealed a summoning circle that Tarnish had never seen before--this was rare; she had been exposed to many circles.  This drawing was actually two summoning circles--a smaller inside a larger circle.  The interior circle was a snake eating its own tail and the exterior circle was made up of crude scarabs.  The two circles were intersected by a triangle of words written in Etruscan. The girl had obviously done her best to copy the circle from the book.  There was an illustration of a headless dog in the left bottom corner of the book--the family dog had likely provided the needed blood for the circle.  In the right bottom corner was a double-bladed Labrys ax--fool girl knew just enough about symbology to be deadly, and, if Tarnish didn’t act quickly and correctly, the girl would join the already dead.  

Mrs. Tarnish folded her hands into her sleeves and gathered her courage as she slowly walked back to the bed and the still-cackling creature bound to it.  Tarnish had seen many things in her day but this, this was new. None of her misgivings showed on her face as she adjusted her glasses on her nose, stared into the laughing creature’s eyes and firmly asked, “Who are you?”

The demon continued to chuckle for several seconds before it responded, “My name is not for the likes of you, tiny one, but I think I shall name you instead.  I name you ‘little morsel!’” A fresh burst of guffawing erupted from the fiend’s mouth as it continued, “Now tell me, little morsel, what is your name?”

Mrs. Tarnish pursed her lips and frowned at the bound creature on the bed.  She had little fear of telling the thing her name, however it was more than odd it didn’t already know her name.  She wasn’t exactly unknown amongst the spirits.  Exactly who was she dealing with here?

“Tarnish,” she softly answered while staring at nothing, “my name is Tarnish, demon.  You will not forget.”

Laughter from hell was the creature’s only response. 

Mrs. Tarnish looked up when Ronald reentered the room.  She left the bed and they momentarily congregated by the doorway.  Tarnish returned to the bed holding what Ron had given her in her hand, “Last chance. What is your name?”  

The demon strained against the straps with all the strength of the girl’s body as it responded through spittle and clenched teeth, “Last chance?! I have infinite chances!  If you destroy this shell, I will find another.  You saw the book, little morsel, I. AM. FREE.” 

Tarnish had no idea what the book really was or what this creature was free from but to see the girl destroyed was not an option.  That would never happen again.

     “Go ahead, Ronald.” At the command, her apprentice grasped the girl’s jaw and pinched the jaw muscles as hard as he could--the bruises would heal, being annihilated by a malignant spirit would not.  Mrs. Tarnish emptied the contents of her hand into the demon’s open mouth. 

     Immediately a purple froth bubbled from the demon’s mouth, “Obesus porcus!” Tarnish recognized the archaic Latin curse the fiend was using--finally, one more clue to this puzzle, “Vacca foeda! I will gorge on your soul and hollow your eyes out with your boy’s bones!”

     Tarnish was in control for the moment.  It was time to push the advantage. “That’s bluebell mixed with agrimony--you’ve no choice but to answer now, demon.  What is your name?” 

     Purple spittle sprayed out of the girl’s mouth as the demon answered, “Andras, little morsel. A name YOU shan’t forget.”

     For too many times in one night, Tarnish paused.  That name has been bound for over two-thousand years.  This child did not have the aptitude to call up such a beast; no one did.  Andras, one of the bound ones!  Impossible. Tarnish snapped her head to look up at her assistant. 

“Ronald!” A glance at the girl revealed she was out of time--the straps were burning or melting, “the bag! NOW!”

Ronald leapt across the room for the bag and threw it to Mrs. Tarnish who deftly grabbed it out of the air and began frantically rummaging through its contents, “Hold her down! Hurry!” The demon had completely taken over the girl’s body and was using her brain to focus all the body’s natural acids to burn through the straps restraining it to the bed--demons had larger knowledge of the human brain than humans themselves. 

The demon’s laughter became deafening.  Ronald jumped on its torso, knowing he would not have the strength to hold the possessed girl but he did as he was told. 

Tarnish ignored the grating cackling and found what she was looking for, “Hold its head!” The tiny woman desperately attached an earring to one of the girl’s ears. 

The demon’s laughter was cut-off mid-chortle with a surprised gurgle and changed to a cry of surprised anger, “WHAT?! You filthy cow! You will pay!”

Tarnish wasn’t concerned about threats at the moment and attached the other earring to the girl’s opposite ear. 

The demon left.  No explosions, no scream, no anything.  The evil presence that had flooded the house moments before was simply gone.

A heaving Ronald pulled himself off the now sleeping girl, “What happened?”

“There are rules, Ronald.” Mrs. Tarnish had stood up and straightened her blouse, “Even a marquis of hell cannot stand before the memory of iron.”  Tarnish indicated the plain iron stud-earrings in the girl’s lobes.

A mask of confusion covered Ron’s face as he waited for Mrs. Tarnish to continue.

“Metals have rules as well, Ronald.  Gold purifies, silver heals, and iron, thankfully, iron remembers,” Tarnish put on her familiar wool jacket, took out her phone to text the priests in charge of cleanup, and handed the now-closed bag back to her still-baffled aide.  “Iron fastened the Holy One to the tree and iron remembers His words.  No demon, no matter how powerful, can stand in the face, or, voice, rather, of iron eternally whispering His last words." Mrs. Tarnish turned from the doorway, took one last look at the girl sleeping peacefully and softly finished, "'Father forgive them; they know not what they do.'"