Jerald Hawth had to get out, quickly. He was lucky that he had seen the dead man
so quickly, he hadn't done enough to erase proof of his presence yet. He'd have to
write tonight off as a loss. Robbing a dead man was a bad idea, the odds went up
on the cops finding you. It was only when he was back home that he found the pen
in his pocket. He remembered reaching down to pick it up off the ground, but then
he saw the body and he didn't actually remember picking it up. It was some kind of
antique, he wouldn't be able to get rid of that easily. It was too late to worry about
that now, he needed some sleep. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Lawlor was found at his desk by his daughter on one of her irregular visits.
His son didn't hear confirmation of the rumors until much later. Publicly, Simon
Lawlor was a little known author of supernatural thrillers. In the shadows; where
lived the men, women, and creatures that were the basis for many of his those
stories; he was well known as mage of considerable talent. It was difficult to believe
in the deaths of such people. On first glance it appeared only as if he had fallen asleep while writing some story
or another, but the pen he used to handwrite his most successful stories was not
there. There was only a manila envelope. The words "To be opened by my
children. An explanation of current events", were printed in the precise handwriting
he adopted when shaping thought into reality. Simon's death was barely noticed by the public, a few comments in the odd
magazine, an obituary in the paper, but that was all. Even in the shadows the full
details were not known. It had become immediately apparent that the pen was
missing, and Sarah had hidden that fact. She wanted no competition in finding the
talisman, it was too dangerous to allow just anyone to have it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerald woke up feeling drained, he had a nightmare last night. He walked into the
kitchen of his apartment and looked down to see the writing all over his table. The
pen he had accidentally pilfered sat off to the side, where the writing ended. He
didn't bother to read the words, merely set about trying to wash them away. He was
making some progress when he caught sight of the police pulling up alongside his
building. By the time the first cop knocked on his door he had his gun aimed at the door. At
the sound of the words, "We're from the police department," he fired. There was
the sound of somebody falling downstairs and then somebody fired into his
apartment. Then Jerald knew no more. "Shit!" Mary Ashbranch shouted after ascertaining that the suspect was dead.
"Larry are you hit?" she called to her fallen partner. "No," the other cop answered. "I tripped down the stairs when I heard the gun
fire. I'm a little bruised, but fine otherwise." "I hope he was the guy we're looking for," Mary said, after her partner limped
back to the apartment. "But it is impossible to be sure unless somebody else gets
robbed." "We could always have wait until he started on your neighborhood," Larry joked.
Mary had inherited some money about ten years ago, while she was still in collage,
and had invested it into a series of stocks and bonds. It sometimes made for an
uncomfortable atmosphere with her fellow police officers. She went to the phone and made a call. Picking up a paper and the pen on the
fountain pen on table, it looked like some kind of antique replica, she took down the
note. She looked down at the kitchen table. "Look at this," she called to Larry. "He was writing on his table." "What's it say?" Larry called from the next room. Some of the ink was smeared, but it seemed to be remarkably resistant to blurring.
The words on the table seemed to be warped perception of events similar to what
happened. "Seems our thief is a bit paranoid. This would explain the shots." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarah had no luck in her search. The pen defied any attempts at clairvoyant
searching, all she could see when seeking it was a dense fog. She had even given in
to need and told a few trustworthy allies about the problem. There was still no word
on the pen. While Sarah sought the pen, one of her spirit allies went in search of her brother,
Logan. It was a year before the messenger found the nomadic sorcerer and
informed him of matters. At the end of that year they were standing together in
Sarah's house, a private setting on the edge of a small New England town. They seemed two very different people. Logan had followed the warrior's path,
like his mother, Carla Lawlor. Unlike her he had somebody to teach and train him
as he grew up, that is, until their mother's death. Sarah had also learned some skills
from their mother, but preferred the quiet life of a scholar. The difference showed
in how they focused their powers. Logan was one of the new breed of mages, that
focused their wills through science and technology. Sarah followed a more archaic
method, she was one of those rarely seen mages that seemed to have stepped out of
the pages of the Lord of the Rings. Ancient Languages and arcane formula were
her cup of tea. The fact that neither had taken to their father's method of focus was commented
on in the shadows, but not often. It wasn't considered an important fact. The days
when families of mages all followed the same tradition were quickly fading away. Logan stared into the night sky, avoiding the sight of the envelope that had
brought them together. He hadn't seen his sister or father in something like five
years. He hadn't been comfortable too close to them. He felt an outsider around
the two scholars of his family. He didn't think about any of it much, instead
concentrating on preparing to search for the pen himself. Sarah stared at the paper intently, unable to deny the truth that such a message
implied. Their father had killed himself, written himself out of the story, and she
was afraid to know why. "Let's get this over with," Logan snapped. He twisted sharply about and barked an
order to his wrist computer. "Run Wine version 2.3, Burgundy." A glass of wine
appeared in mid-air, and floated to his hand speedily, spilling most of the contents to
the floor. Sarah didn't even notice, if she had, she wouldn't have cared, carpet can
be replaced. The watch-sized computer was a construct of true magick, designed to store
programs and run them with a voice command. Logan had obviously gotten the
idea from their father's pen, though he had yet to duplicate that masterpiece. His
device lacked the sophistication that could prevent such errors as spilling the wine,
and it wasn't as if he could do anything about it. Once the command was given it
was in the computer's hand, and it couldn't be undone. The pen had defeated that
problem somehow, something he hadn't quite grasped. The pen could actually
change reality on its own, all it needed was somebody to supply the energy and
the scenario to be made real. "This will gnaw at us until we know," she agreed softly. Sarah picked up the
envelope and opened it with a trembling hand. The papers inside were inscribed
with the same careful, precise handwriting as that on the envelope. She began in an
unsteady voice. "When I seal this into the envelope, I will be dead. There will be no physical
cause, no poison, no heart attack. I will simply cease to live. I leave this to you my
children as a warning against pride and foolishness. It serves more importantly as a
plea for forgiveness. You obviously have many questions already, but all will be
made clear. I promise you." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary took the pen out of her pocket and began to write in her to do list for the
next day. She noticed that it was the pen from the thief's apartment earlier in the
day. It really was nicer than it had appeared on first glance. It was probably worth
something, and she would have to take it back to the evidence locker, but it was too
late today. She didn't remember putting it in her pocket anyway. "Report in, evidence locker, go over evidence, laundry, shopping, tape
'Undercover Blues,'" then she thought about the fact that she didn't have to be in until
late the next day and wrote "crash." at the end of the list. She felt momentarily
exhausted for some reason, and then pen slipped in her hand, spilling what was left
of the ink. The black mark at the bottom of her list was ugly to her eyes. "Just as well I'm taking it in tomorrow," she thought. "I couldn't stand having to
refill this thing with ink all the time." It somewhat a joke, once she realized that she
still had it, there was no doubt as to where it was going. Larry met her outside the station the next morning. "You look a little tired, Mary," he said. "Get enough sleep?" "I almost overslept," she responded. "This case has really had me on the ropes, I
walked off with some kind of antique pen yesterday, taking it in today. "That could have turned out badly." "It still could," there was something bothering her about yesterday's encounter.
"Say do you remember what led us to that guy in the first place?" "I don't really know for sure, his priors suggested a similar M.O. It just seemed a
good idea at the time." "Strange, I usually have a more definite idea of what I did, and why write on the
table like that?" "What, do you think he predicted us coming or something, a psychic thief?" "Don't be stupid, it just seems to convenient, that's all." The man at the evidence locker didn't give her a second look when she turned in
the pen. He probably would have preferred that she had kept it. Several people
commented on how tired she looked, somebody even went so far as to say she
looked gray. Later that day, as Mary was watching and recording Undercover Blues off one of
the movie channels, she discovered that she had forgotten to get beer while
shopping. She left the television running as she walked out the door, after all she
was recording this. She hated pulling out of her complex's parking lot, it was hard
to see things coming. Things were a little easier at night, because you could see the
headlights before the car showed up, but it was still dangerous. Mary pulled out into the road cautiously and drove towards the turn, she never
saw the truck careening down the road without its lights. The truck swerved
sharply seeming to aim deliberately for her car. Before she realized the source of
the noise her neon was crushed broadside between the truck and a telephone pole. The truck, cushioned by her car, pulled out and drove off with little damage. It's
driver scared out of his mind, wishing he had never taken his eyes off the road to
grab the phone. Emergency vehicles were on the scene scant minutes later, to pry
her unconscious form out of the car and take her to the hospital. It would be six
months before she could walk again. The pen was auctioned off perhaps four
months before that. She was given the choice of a desk job or a medical discharge,
she chose the discharge. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I remember seeing your mother die. We had thought ourselves invincible, I, a
mage, she a warrior. Nothing could defeat us when we were together. That is what
we thought. "I had almost banished a demon, a vile Lovecraftian thing. I shall not write of it,
indeed, before I filled this pen with ink I wiped the memory of it from my mind. If I
described it or even named it, this pen might conjure it, and bring more suffering to
our world. "Carla had left me to handle the demon while she hunted those lunatics that had
summoned it. She had been returning from this task when the thing happened. She
noticed the fluctuation in the shrinking portal almost immediately. She was already
moving before I knew anything was happening. "The demon had ceased to fight my magick, and instead launched itself into a
physical attack, knowing my death would abort the banishment. Carla knocked me
out of the way as a spear flew rapidly out of the closing portal. The portal closed
fast enough to slice through most of the spear's length, but one foot still remained to
thrust through Carla's body and stick in the wall on the other side of the room. "It was a scene from my nightmares. I clearly remember her gun clattering to floor
as she slumped to her knees and her body seemed to shrink before me, as if the skin
was falling to fill in the spaces left behind, by the lost blood. For a moment her face
gave me hope. She had given me that expression many times, a look that translated
into 'I can't believe I'm still alive.' I believed that she was still alive until a second
later I called her name and she fell to the ground dead." Sarah stopped reading there, and stifled a developing tear. She had guessed right
about the motive of their father's suicide. Logan turned back to the window, his
connection to the family received its first cut that day. Sarah remembered the night
before, when she and her brother had combined together to sneak out to see a
movie. She didn't pause long, their mother's death had been a long time ago, and
death had to be an accepted part of their lives. They had too many enemies just on
the merit of what they were. Still, the time was fresh in their minds. The night
before was especially fresh in Sarah's mind, perhaps due to a little guilt regarding the
selfish nature of the night's acts. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Are you sure about this," Sarah whispered nervously. "Won't he feel it?" "Only if we're not careful," Logan answered. "Do you want to see this movie or
not." "Okay," she gave in. "Let's weave the magick, but if they catch us, you'll be falling
asleep during your SATs." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What are you going to do," Larry asked her quietly as she collected her things.
He couldn't keep his eyes off her cane. "Did you forget," she said. "I'm independently wealthy." "You're not that well off." "I can survive well enough," she paused. "If I need any help I'll call. Does that
make you happy?" To herself she thought, "I'm going to find where that pen came from." She had followed it's path a little ways, as a curiosity to begin with. It had been
sticking in her mind since she had discovered it in her pocket. Maybe it was the
writing on the thief's table, but it was more likely the unbelievable fact that she had
actually walked off the scene with it. That wasn't something she did, ever. Despite
that, it had seemed to her silly to blame it on the pen. That was of course until she
began to notice an alarming trend in the pen's owners. There were three people she knew for sure had used the pen after its auction. One
of the owners had been struck by lightning on a clear day and died. The next owner
had been a friend of the first. One day he found catatonic in the first's home
clutching a journal. His doctor's think the last sentence, "I wish I could ignore
everything," might bear some importance to the man's case. The third had made a
deal of money on the stock market, gotten engaged and all his rivals had fallen in
some way or another. He had worked with both of the other victims of the pen. She would have gone looking for him, but he had died only a few weeks before she
had traced it to him, of exhaustion. From there she lost the track of the pen, but
maybe she could backtrack to its origins. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "You remember me coming home, after that trip. You were both in high school
then, and just learning your natures. No need to repeat those events the funeral, the
grief. What you don't remember, what you don't know, is what I found on my desk
when I finally sat at it again. There sat a pile of papers handwritten out of the night
before we had left to do battle. "That is the night that has haunted me to this point, the grave. I had filled the pen,
activating its magick, so that I could more efficiently and quickly prepare the
safeguards and wards for tomorrow. It had always been easier since I made the pen,
though Carla never liked it. She didn't like the idea of giving any amount of control
away, no matter how small it seemed." Logan frowned as Sarah read, this was an odd thing to write about, what was so
important about the casting of a few magicks before entering battle? "I couldn't keep myself awake, I kept fading off," Sarah gasped and paused in her
reading. She continued speaking a quick, loud tone. "Perhaps the pen had drawn a
little too much energy from my being, perhaps I was just getting old. For whatever
reason I fell asleep that night." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finding the origin of the pen was harder than it had seemed at first glance. It was
only a lucky stroke that Mary found the obituary of Simon Lawlor in back records
from the time she had first acquired the pen. It had been seven months now. It
seemed that a writer who lived in the same area of all the thefts had died the day
before she and Larry had killed Jerald Hawth. A writer who would perhaps have
owned an antique fountain pen. She started researching into the life of Simon Lawlor and was disappointed to find
very little information to follow. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I awoke the next morning in a cold sweat. I barely restrained a scream at the
already fading nightmare. I noted the time on the clock and rushed to get ready
with out checking the papers I had already written. Almost as an afterthought I
emptied the remaining ink out of the pen. My cursed pen, there is no telling how
many times I have failed to find a way to destroy it." Sarah's voice had grown quieter again, and now it had faded almost to nothing.
Logan almost had to strain to catch her words. Sarah's mind carried her backward
again to that night. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I thought he was supposed to fall asleep," Logan snapped as quietly as he could. "He would be already if you had put as much effort into your half as I did," Sarah
was always more patient along with more reluctant. "Don't worry we have plenty of
buffer space between now and when we meet everybody." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Upon coming home from the funeral and after you were asleep I set about
cleaning my desk. I found the papers I had left behind that morning covered in a
chaotic sprawl that I couldn't..." Sarah's voice faded to nothing as she approached that last word and she let the
papers fall to the ground and fell back into her chair. Logan turned to snap at her for
turning silent, but saw the expression of shock on her face and instead picked up the
papers himself and continued where she had stopped. "...that I couldn't recognize as my own handwriting. "Upon those pages was described the entire scene of your mother's death. In
perfect detail, no one could have had a better representation of that damned event
even if they had been there. The realization of what had happened struck me almost
instantly, I had killed her. In my sleep with that pen still channeling my thoughts
with free access to that store of reality's essence I had within myself. I had worked
the magick that killed my wife and your mother, Carla Lawlor. "I had a duty to remain alive then, for your sakes. Yet the burden grows too great
and I can no longer abide this life. Thus I am carrying out my death sentence with
this letter. I suicide and a suicide note all in the same envelope." Logan collapsed into a chair across from his sister, who still stared into space. He
looked at the computer on his wrist then tore it off. It was no longer a useful tool in
his eyes, but a viper waiting to turn on its owner. He stared at the crushed pile of
mini-circuits on the floor. He would build another computer, one without the
capability to weave magick itself, something that left all control in his hands. "We did it," Sarah breathed softly. "What are you talking about?" Logan snapped. "You read the thing, the old man
fell asleep at the wheel and his nightmares killed her." "Remember the movie," Sarah yelled. "Why was he tired Logan? Why!" She calmed down again, her voice sounding almost dead as she repeated her first
sentence. "We did it." Logan's eyes widened then, as he realized what they had done. He could easily
remember how clever he had felt, using newly developed powers to trick their own
parents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mary had found the address of Simon Lawlor's daughter. It was a little town only
an hours drive out of the city. Sarah Lawlor was supposed to be a serious
researcher of the occult. Finding out that much had taken the last few months,
Simon Lawlor seemed not to exist on computers outside a few small references.
Any records of him or his family were few and far between. Hopefully all the work
would be worth it and Mary would have some help in tracking down this demon
pen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a pawn shop across the state, a young man entered a pawn shop intending to
buy back a small statue he had pawned a month ago. The pen caught his eye almost
instantly. The shop owner gladly handed him the pen along with the statue. It was
an old style fountain pen, apparently from the last century. Apparently the young
man was on his way up. He had just published his first novel, and what better way
to celebrate than to buy a pen.
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