They Used Dark Forces

David Steel awoke. Sweat trickled down his forehead, and pooled in his chest. The mattress underneath his paralysed body leached the dampness through to the very bed-springs. Gasping for breath, he reached for his phone, buzzing on the bedside table.

Nothing happened.

He knew who it was, and he knew why she was trying to reach him: Alex and she had had the same vision. This wasn't the first time a vision had coincided with paralysis, nor the first time he and Alex shared a vision; he knew it would not be the last, but often he wished that it would be.

Slowly, his arms twitched as painful, agonizing motion returned to his leaden arms, and he found he could shift slightly in the drenched bed which was now starting to chill his body which hung like a dying albatross around his tormented soul, pulling him down into an ocean of despair.

Grasping desperately, he clutched his phone, straining with every sinew to get it to his ear.

"Alex," he gasped at last, "I'll be over in an hour."

An hour and forty three minutes later, at 5 am, David was standing outside the Seven Moons Occult and Witchcraft Shop, waiting for Alex to let him in.

He was never fully comfortable coming here. Mostly it was out of necessity, although a few times he had appeared just to see Alex. It was a phase of infatuation that had certainly dwindled, to be sure, but that had not quite entirely extinguished. The libertine, free spirited nature of many females involved in witchcraft and the occult cooled his ardour for Alex. She should never have encouraged him to study the works of Janet and Stewart Farrar. Perhaps he would have made a move, but now he would not ... perhaps in the future-something about which with their combined gifts they should know a lot about.

The door opened. Behind it was Alex with an alluring, charming smile.

"Hi, Dave, I'll get the coffee on."

"That'd be great."

She could tell from his face that her vision had gone a lot easier than his.

David sat at a table in the ersatz 'coffee-shop', complete with several bookshelves stuffed with occult literature. This addition to the shop was a nice little earner, pulling in hundreds of dollars a day. Dave glanced around, trying to mentally calculate the value of all the paraphernalia and occult tomes. His estimate had reached just over $100,000, when Alex broke his reverie.

"Dave, we need to talk." The phrase saw David shift uncomfortably in his small plastic chair. He almost expect its follow up, "It's nothing personal, but ..." until he reminded himself that getting fired or dumped would be a lot easier to handle than what was really about to happen.

"You know," she went on, "that we have to go. We have to get him out of there, and we have to do it straight away."

"And do you know what you are saying? At the very least, I will lose my job; fall behind in my studies, and likely lose my apartment. Sure, you'll be okay when we come back to Maine, back at the shop with your aunt Jessica and cousin Nancy, but I'll come back to nothing. If we make back at all."

Alex took a deep breath to dismiss her growing irritation at David's contempt and fear. Then she fired back, "So, you're scared of losing a dead end, go nowhere, job as a temp cycle courier?"

"It's not just that-I've got my freelance work as a technical illustrator."

"Yeah-freelance, by that you mean scraps of work now and again."

"Hold on! It's not like any of that's permanent, once I finish my psychology degree ..."

"Dave, hear me! You are the most naturally talented psychic we have ever met at this centre. Do you know how hard we all work to mimic your abilities? Hours or meditation, astral projection, study, hypnosis, trance, ritual, spells, incantations ..."