Page 12 of Strange Lights

6

Noises in the Night

The vacuums are definitely fucking possessed, full of demons. Or something. Whatever the case, I’m intrigued.

I lock them both inside the Winnebago’s depths after we stop over the Kansas border. We’re camping out by a cornfield, far enough away from anyone and anyplace that it’d be quiet, lonely even, if it weren’t for the psychotic vacuums running rampant. I’m lucky that Winnie can drive herself, because I was more than distracted chasing vacuums that kept opening cupboards and drawers and dragging my things everywhere. Eldi watched the proceedings with great interest when she wasn’t immersed in cartoons on the tablet. The tablet that still won’t work for anyone but her. I had to plop Manny in the driver’s seat, in case someone noticed a Winnebago steering itself down a highway. A dark Jeep with tinted windows tried to get alongside us too many times today to be coincidence.

Calvin is busy recording a podcast episode. There’s no way I can convince him to stay quiet about these peculiar electronics malfunctioning left and right, but at least he’s waiting to air it until he’s found out more information. He’s got a lead on a smart-home hub in Colorado, and I’m hoping it’s the last of our stops before I go deal with the werewolves in Yellowstone. The longer I wait, the likelier a werewolf epidemic becomes. But something tells me it would be a mistake to drop the trail of haunted gizmos.

I scour the Winnebago’s library for anything that might shed some light on the vacuums. It’s useless. I’ve never seen anything like these things. The closest is Eldi’s watch, but after many years, even that’s still a mystery. The lab equipment gets me precisely nowhere, since I don’t know what tests to run. Nothing shows up on an X-ray or a CT scan. I won’t risk the MRI machine. They aren’t magnetic, and I can’t scratch or dent them. Microwaving one has no effect, though I do succeed in breaking the old kitchen appliance. I can’t keep them in the freezer or oven even if I hold the doors shut, and that’s how I make the unsettling discovery that the vacuums are strong enough to overpower me. I try casting a circle of protection with some salt, and all I find out is that the fuckers can vacuum if they feel like proving a point.

By now I’ve accumulated an audience. Eldi sits in a half-stuffed old beanbag chair, contorting her limbs in that unsettling way that’s only comfortable before the age of twelve. She’s making whistling sounds, humming nonsense words under her breath. Bandit waddles from hiding spot to hiding spot, surreptitiously reaching out a paw to stroke their shiny carapaces anytime one of the vacuums strays close enough to touch. Manny sits and watches the proceedings silently.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask Eldi.

“Helper,” she replies.

“You want to help?”

“No,” Eldi says, her voice dripping with disdain, as if she suspects me of being purposely dense. “Helper.” She enunciates carefully.

“You don’t want to help?” I don’t know how anyone communicates successfully with toddlers. It’s like we aren’t even speaking the same language.

“No! Helper!” Eldi shouts with a growl, taking out her frustration with a rapid lap around the room, startling Bandit from his latest hiding spot and sending a pile of stacked boxes tumbling. I wince at the sound of many small things rolling off in every direction. I’ll be finding pieces of whatever that is all over the basement for the next decade.

“Maybe if I try magic?” I muse. If these things are alive, perhaps they can tether. I’m sure there’re a few spells I could poke them with, see if that gets a reaction.

Manny cocks his head at me.

“I shouldn’t,” I tell him. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”

Manny gestures with his hand as if to say, “Go on, explain, then.”

I can feel myself entering professor mode. But Eldi, Manny, and even Bandit are looking at me with rapt attention. Class is in session, I think wryly. It’s been a while since I explained the intricacies of my favorite subject to upturned little faces like this, I realize with a pang.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should. Magic’s just leftover energy, after all. Whatever the universe doesn’t need. Entropy maybe? Leftovers. All the unusable energy, not so unusable after all, stored away in some metaphorical pocket realm. Energy there for the taking.”

“Take,” Eldi says emphatically.

“I could, but it’s dangerous.” Not everyone can use magic, but I was born with an aptitude for bending magic to my will. Mostly it runs in bloodlines, but some people find another doorway in⁠—werewolves, for example, are made, not born.

Manny and Eldi share a look. Manny shrugs. They don’t understand why it’s dangerous.

“There’s a cost; there always is. Pieces of yourself, what you’re willing to give back to the void in return. The bigger the magic, the more energy you need, the more of yourself you risk losing.”

With a pop, Manny detaches one of his arms at the elbow, holds it out to me.

“Thanks, but I didn’t mean like that. Not literally.”

I hide how touched I am by the gesture while Manny reattaches his arm.

“The real danger with magic is in falling into it, getting lost, alone in its depths. You need people, tethers, to keep you human, keep you earth-side. It’s too tempting to return to stardust or the essence of the universe or whatever magic truly is. Tethering is a delicate balancing act of proximity and strong relationships. That’s where the old-school stories about witch covens originate.”

“Bitch,” Eldi says, nodding sagely at me.

“Rude, and I said ‘witch,’ not ‘bitch.’ But you have a point⁠—sometimes I fit in both categories.”

“Me?” Eldi inquires.