Dybbuk

Twenty-four Hours.

It had been twenty-four hours since Lina visited the Monocle with no help what-so-ever from Mr. Weisman. Well, maybe “what so ever” would be unfair to say. He did point her in the right direction, even if he didn’t know it himself. That direction happened to be the local Shepard, or Seraphim as Mr. Weisman put it. Not everyone knew Jeri was one of the Seraphim. Hell, even Lina wouldn’t have known except for an accidental reveal a few years back.

Ben still didn’t like to talk about it.

Either way, Lina had a source and she was never shy about using it. Sure, she had her pride, but sometimes one needed to accept the fact that there were bigger things out there. Lina accepted that long ago. The one thing she didn’t accept, however, was tardiness.

Jeri was late.

Lina stood by the front register of Espiridion. Her fingernails tapped the aged wood.

“Stop it,” Siobhan said, “You’re messing with my readings.”

Lina stilled her fingers. Her friend sat on a stool behind the counter. Siobhan sorted through a new box of forgotten items. Found at an estate sale by Lina’s mother, it was Siobhan’s task to muddle through them and see what could be sold and what should be kept from the public. This used to be Lina’s task, now it was Siobhan’s.

“I’m sorry,” Lina balled up her fists, then flexed her fingers. “I just really want to get this cleansing done and over with. My cuts and bruises aren’t healing no matter how many times I clean them. And, and every time I close my eyes for a quick second, I have that same dream. I can’t even remember the whole thing. I wake up with a feeling that I’m forgetting something really important to me. Not to mention poor Victor—”

The shelving and windows rattled a bit. It was followed by a small wail and the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs. Then the shop went silent.

Lina sighed.

“Can’t you do something for him?” Siobhan asked.

“Not without knowing the specifics of his death.” Lina picked a small medallion from the box, letting is sway and dangle on its tarnished chain. There was a buzz to its chain and tingle to her fingertips. “If we’re lucky, Victor might remember something now that he’s experienced his death again.”

“And again, and again,” Siobhan mumbled.

“But,” Lina interrupted, “I can’t seem to break him out of it long enough to ask him. Nor will I until this box thing is sorted out. I mean, he seemed alright when I left to see Mr. Weisman yesterday. Then when I got back, this.”

Another rattle and wail.

Lina placed her head on the counter, and closed her eyes.

“Why are Jewish ghosts so complicated?”

“How can you tell Victor’s Jewish?” Siobhan asked.

“No,” Lina mumbled through her elbows, “The dybbuk. It’s a Jewish ghost. Everything about the Jewish culture is so guarded. Complicated. Esoteric. Add to that the Kabbalah schools of Spiritualism? Crap in a box, I just want Jeri here so we can take care of it and Victor.”

Lina heard her sifting through the box.

“What about his body?”

Lina peeked through one eye. Siobhan picked out a porcelain thimble. She watched as Siobhan’s fingers caressed the rim and crown, getting to know the little object though touch. She put it on her thumb, wriggled it about, then shrugged.

“I mean, if you can’t ask the ghost, why not see what his body has to say?”

“That’s the thing.” Lina brought her head up, giving the medallion another swing. “I can’t find anything. People die every day. Especially people in Victor’s age bracket.”

“I think he’d take offence to that.”

“I take offense to his death loop and my lack of sleep.” Lina snorted, “Point is, I can’t help simplify the search. Not to mention his body may not have even been found— and if that’s the case then I’m really at a dead end.”

“In more ways than one.” Siobhan put the thimble back and began to dig again. “Have you actually asked the police?”

Lina lifted her head. “If they’ve found a body?” She mimed holding a phone with her hand and held it to her ear, “Excuse me, Clarion Police? Can you transfer me to the morgue? I need to see the dead bodies you have there. Or do you think homicide would have a better idea? Why do I ask? Oh, I just have a ghost that’s stuck in a death loop at my occult shop. No, I’m not on any medication. Sure, I can stay right here, why do you ask?”

Siobhan made a face. “A simple ‘no’ would have been enough.”

She stared at the medallion swinging from Lina’s pantomimed phone. It was small moments like these that always messed with her. Siobhan was supposed to be blind.

“What about Wilc?” Siobhan reached out and ran a thumb over the medallion.

“Yeah, no.”

“He is a Detective.” She weighed it between her fingers, “he could, you know, detect?”

“I’m not involving him more than I have too. He’s just too…”

“Distracting?”

“Mundane. I don’t need him accusing me of anymore murders or getting in the way.”

Siobhan weighed the medallion again. It was a large, maybe four inches in diameter. It looked to be made of copper, or bronze with the letters AGLA and a few sigils inscribed on it. What a random find. Of course, anyone could buy these on the internet, problem was, sometimes, they were the real thing.

“He only accused you that one time.” Siobhan pointed out.

“Twice,” Lina corrected. “Once because we were dumb enough to ask for his help. The second was during Beer Fest.”

“With that Hunter? He was dreamy.”

“You couldn’t even see his face.”

“But I could hear his voice.” Siobhan sighed, “And he had this light about him.”

“Jeremy was a vampire.” Lina argued.

“No one’s perfect.”

“Point is,” Lina pushed forward, “I don’t want there to be a third time. Besides, he hasn’t answered his phone.”

Siobhan let go of the medallion. “So you do have his number.” She smiled wide.

“Don’t go reading into it. I called the station yesterday and they transferred me to his desk. So I left a message. He might be mundane and always blaming me for things I didn’t do, but I figured maybe by the time I got this dybbuk thing cleaned up, I’d have a better idea on how to help Victor. That’s assuming Jeri ever shows up.”

“Speak of the devil.”

Jeri’s familiar undercut of lilac hair and peacoat walked past the display window.

“Finally.” Lina huffed and handed the medallion back to Siobhan.

Her friend shook her head and pushed it back.

“Keep it, you might need it.”

Lina looped it over her neck and tucked it under her shirt without a question.

The door chimed open.

“Sio, lock the door. We’re closed until this thing is sundered.” Lina pointed at Jeri, “you’re late.”

“Huh,” Jeri looked at his wrist. There was no watch.

“Funny. Come on.” Lina started towards the back of the shop. “Did you get everything?”

There was a rustle of items from his bag, “Yes ma’am, why do you think I’m late?”

“All things in their own time,” Lina said as she unlocked the door to her work room. “Or something angel-y like that.”

“You never talk this way to Ben,” He sighed.

“That’s because no one talks that way to Ben.” Lina hadn’t opened the door yet, but the handle was hot to the touch. The thing trapped inside was stronger, darker than most. Lina looked back at Jeri, “Don’t cross the Circle.”

Seraphim he might be, but Jeri always afforded her respect that few others of his kind or rank did. It was one of the things that made her trust him and his companion. Jeri nodded, but Lina noticed his mulberry eyes weren’t on her. Rather, on what lay passed the threshold. His nose twitched.

“That is a rank smell.”

“Wait until I open the door.” Which is exactly what Lina did and entered.

Normally, this room was a place of safety and contemplation. Not now. Now is was straining, fighting a corrosion and oppressiveness that pushed the limits of her wards. Lina walked along the outside ring of her Solomon’s Circle. There was a click and turn of a lock as Jeri shut the door behind them.

The air got tighter.

As if the room itself couldn’t bear to hold all three of them.

It would have to.

Jeri made his way to her work bench, circumventing the Circle. He began to unpack while Lina checked her burners. Sage for cleansing. Myrrh for healing. There was a spicy undercurrent of Frankincense too, but Lina knew that wasn’t coming from her burners.

“Leave those open,” Jeri said from the work bench. “You’ll need to add these to them.”

He waved a palm frond in her direction.

“You raid Meadow Park for this?” Lina made her way back. “It’s illegal you know.”

“Tsfat, actually.”

“Tsfat?”

“It’s a little holy town off the Jordan River.” Jeri sniped a few leaves, “We needed the frond of a date palm that had yet to bear its first fruit.”

“You couldn’t go to Home Depot?”

Jeri held out his clippings, “Put these in the burners.”

Lina took them. Already she could feel a pureness from them that she hardly had a chance to enjoy. Pity they had to burn.

“You know Psalms ninety-one?” Jeri asked.

“Do you know what a silly question that is?”

“Verbatim and in Hebrew?”

“Latin only.”

Jeri dug around his bag. “Can you read Hebrew?”

“No. If I did, I wouldn’t have gone to Mr. Weisman in the first place.” Lina made the rounds, and came back towards Jeri he as pulled out a slip of paper. He handed it to her.

The characters were in Hebrew.

“I told you, I can’t read this.” Lina looked up at Jeri, “Even if I could read the phonetic spelling, it wouldn’t do anything because I don’t understand it.”

Jeri reached out and touched the middle of her forehead, there was a pop of static shock and a ringing in her ears.

“Don’t say I never gave you nothing.” Jeri pointed back at the paper.

Lina rubbed her forehead, glancing at the paper. It was Psalms ninety-one.

She could read Hebrew.

“Don’t get too excited.” Jeri said. “The gift of language is on loan for about twelve hours or so.”

It was odd, knowing another language perfectly. Maybe he could touch up her English too. There was a clink and Lina put the paper down. Jeri placed one last item on the work bench.

A ram’s horn.

A curling, ebony rams horn. It gleamed in the low candle light of her work space.

“That’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Jeri said. “One of my finer creations. This Shofar is older than most things in Clarion, which as you know is an accomplishment. Lina, why did you go to Emmet? You know Ben and I will always help when we can.”

Lina turned to look at the box. Its sickly scent permeating the sweet palm smoke.

“Ben was gone and you were running the café.” Lina looked back at the horn. She wanted to touch it, but something warned her not to. “Haven is neutral ground. I try not to get you two involved unless I have no other choice. No need for making all things Weird in Clarion think I can’t do anything without some heavenly backup. Besides, it may have been a good thing, visiting Mr. Weisman. It’s something I may have to do again in the future.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why—”

“Now,” Jeri clapped his hands together, “time to snuff out a very angry soul.”

“…Alright. Well, I’ve been reading and apparently it’s easy enough to get a dybbuk to move along, but something else entirely to sunder it.”

“Yes, which is exactly why I’m here and you are going to read Psalms ninety-one.” Jeri held up the horn. “The verse helps loosen the hold a dybbuk has on a person or object. Then the blowing of the shofar—only by a man’s lips sorry Lina—should get it to move on.”

“Yeah, I read that too.” Lina huffed out, she hated gender-based magic. It was so, biased. “A ram’s horn because it’s sacred to God, I get, but the man thing?”

Jeri shrugged, “It’s just the way it works.”

“But I thought Seraphim were genderless?”

“I love how casually you throw that around.” Jeri adjusted his coat. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, we are unless we’re here, with you mortal lot. Point is, that rule doesn’t really apply to me, because I am Seraphim. Also because I am Seraphim, it means when I blow the horn it won’t only vanquish the dybbuk, but sunder it as well.”

“Which is a better solution than burying it.”

“Is that was Emmet suggested?”

Lina nodded. “So, oh Heavenly Host, should we start?”

Jeri gestured toward the box, “If you would be so kind.”

Lina took a breath blotting out all else, and began to recite the verse.

“O thou that dwellest in the covert of the Most High, and abides in the shadow of the Almighty…” Lina crossed over the branded lines of her Solomon’s Circle.

“I will say of the Lord, who is my refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust… That He will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence…”

Crossed over the dark lines and sacred names of God.

“He will cover thee with His pinons, and under His wings shalt thou take refuge; His truth is a shield and a buckler…”

Through the ribbons of prayer.

“Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flieth by day; of the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the destruction that wasteth at noon day…”

And straight into its center.

“…For thou hast made the Lord who is my refuge, even the Most High, my habitation… There shall no evil befall thee…”

This was her Circle, one she had built plank by plank.

“For He will give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways…Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him…”

And line by line.

“I will set him on high, because he hath known my name…”

Cast and created by her blood.

“He shall call upon me, and I will answer him…”

Only she could cross it while active.

“I will be with him in trouble…”

She knelt, her hand just hovering over the golden handle.

“I will rescue him, and bring him to honour.” Lina looked at Jeri, the horn already at his lips. The handle was warm to the touch as Lina gripped it. Turning the handle, music began to play. It was a tune she ought to know, but found it hard to place. A note off here and there, she almost stopped turning.

It was the music from the dream.

“With long life will I satisfy him,” The verse was almost done, there was a click. “And make him my salvation.” The lid opened.

Nothing happened.

There was no rush of wind. No wail of anger. No spark of malevolent energy.

Nothing.

Just the little wooden music box. Lina peered inside, it was lined in gold and held three tokens. A lock of hair. A coin Lina had never seen, and a prayer stone. She leaned back and looked at Jeri.

“Where is it?” he asked.

Lina shook her head. “I don’t know.”