Riding off to Bedlam

      It was vivid in blue and white and the black of pure pitch. Alive in its own way, even without the veins that should be lacing bright red across it, almost thrumming where it sat. One could immediately tell that the thing had power. Such power...

     "I'm sorry old boy, but I'm won't pay you a cent over £5,000." Rodger set down the pendant, laying the evil eye face up towards the ceiling. He turned the hazy purple glow that filled his sockets to the dealer sitting across from him. He looked none too pleased.
Thin and far too pallid for a man just arriving from the sunny stretches of the United Arab Emirates, Samuel Espinoza glowered back at Rodger. "What do you mean 'not a cent over £5,000'? You said you'd pay £10,000 at least if I found the real deal!"
"Exactly," Rodger replied, folding his hands over the head of his cane. "That's the point, sir. It's not the real deal. It's good. Quite good. But far from the real, raw stuff that I needed. I'll pay you half."
He reached for an attaches case sitting beside his armchair, liberating a small cut from the total sum settled into its bottom. The £100 notes were crisp, fresh from the bank that morning.

     Samuel's expression soured further. "How can you just pay me half? I spent five months tracking this thing down! Five months! You can't just--"
The stack of bills slapped down onto the polished top of the table between them.
"I can just. I have just. You forget your place in this arrangement, dear fellow. I am not seeking to cheat you. I am simply paying you for what I was presented with. An inferior product." He settled back in his arm chair, ever grinning skull expressing his amusement at all of this. "Now, you have two choices as far as I see it. You can be a good delivery boy, take your money and buy yourself some better informants. Or, you can be made to leave."

     Those last words hung in the air. Perhaps idle, perhaps not, either way they made the living man pause for just the briefest moment. He'd known that just dealing with the...thing, Goodnight, wasn't going to be like a normal job. He was used to hunting down cheap old baubles for half-crazy collectors. No big pieces of magic, just the fragments that were passed around. They were small time though, tourists in the world of things far greater than man. Goodnight wasn't even a man anymore. What could he do?
"I, I don't think you would do that." Samuel said slowly, voice even, but only just. That damn grin was getting to him.
"Oh? You don't think I could entertain a bit of nastiness to see some unwanted annoyance away from my person?" Rodger mused. He drummed the fingers of one hand against the back of the other. The sound droned on for a minute, a moment, a time...

     Small beads of sweat formed on Samuel's upper lip, making his thin mustache look all the more limp and greasy. He swallowed loudly. "No, I don't think so."
Rodger's fingers stopped drumming. The silence abrupt and unexpectedly loud.
"Well then. That's quite a gamble, old boy." He lifted the formerly drumming hand to the brim of his hat, gripping it to take it from the white dome of his skull. "Quite an interesting gamble at that." The hazy purple in his eyes blaze brightly for one moment, then was eclipsed by black velvet. Samuel's fingers tightened on the wooden arms of his own chair. He should run. That had been the wrong thing to say, the absolute wrong thing.

     Rodger dropped his hat and the twisted face of some red skinned, blighted creature grimaced at the man across from him. "You think you can bargain me, mortal?" He boomed, rising from his chair, horns breaking from bright red skin and curving away from his brow. "You would haggle over deal struck with the Pit?" The suit split at the seams, tearing with the bulge of the great beast's muscles. A cloven hoof came down on the table, crushing it into pieces, the money set upon it crumbling to ash. Whiter than ever, Samuel fell back from the devil with a shriek, throwing his chair to the floor and skittering away like a cockroach from light.
"Oh god! Oh god, no! No please! I-I, I didn't know! Oh sweet merciful..." He turned onto all fours and scrambled for the door. He could feel the heat of the eternal fires raging at his back. Hand set to the knob he chanced a look back over his shoulder, almost knowing that he'd see...nothing?

     Rodger stood smartly, one hand holding his cane, the other taking up the money set on the table to return to his case. His ever grinning skull regarded the trembling man at his door.
"Do get out, Sammy. Before I feel the urge to truly set Old Hob upon you." Samuel pawed at the knob with a whipped dog's whimper and bolted out into the street, Rodger chuckling as he watched him go. Mortal men were just too easy to play. Crossing to the door to see it closed, he had only begun to turn around when there was a knock.

     That was, unexpected. What could possibly have come up to the door in time for him not to have noticed? He turned to face it again; solid ruddy wood, but fitted with no peephole. He could try to peek out, but anything that could come up that fast was surely capable of bullying its way past a cracked door. The knock came again and was followed by the call of "Letter for you, sir." The voice was low, gravely, like that of a heavy smoker. There were no messages he'd be receiving at this time of night. If someone had gone through all the trouble of hiring a courier though, must be of some importance, to them at the very least.

     Tempting fate he pulled open the door, but had to pan down to notice the dwarfish figure on his stoop. It looked to be no more than a collection of smoke, wispy and billowing away in the air, poured into a charcoal suit. Only hazy hands and a lozenge shaped swirl of a head peeked out. One hand proffered a roll of paper.
"Letter for a," the figured cocked its head to the side "A, Rodger Goodchild."
Had he the lips, Rodger would have frowned.
"Goodnight, it's Goodnight. No 'Goodchild' lives here. No children of any sort really..."
The creature's hand didn't waver. As if he hadn't said a word it growled out its line again.
"Letter for a Rodger Goodchild."

     Narrowing his eyes Rodger reached out for the rolled paper.
"I'm only taking this to keep your superiors - whomever they may be - from my door. Understand?" The suited smoke man gave no indication that it heard or cared. Wishing again for lips he rolled page over in his hands and stepped away from the door, closing it on the smoke man.

      In the full light of his living room Rodger could see the stamp that had been pressed into the wax sealing the letter. While not as well versed in the Christian mythos as he was in others, he recognized the inverted pentacle immediately, though the goat head starting at him from the center of it did help a great deal. Taking a corner of the letter he broke the seal with a sharp tug and took in the briefest whiff of ash and sulfur. With the letter unrolled, he could feel that it wasn't paper at all. The surface was too pliant, almost rubbery in a way. Velum. He doubted that it was tanned sheepskin given its supposed point of origin.

     The hand writing was terribly concise. That of some long suffering functionary. It read:
"To: Mr. Rodger M. Goodchild

Mr. Goodchild, it has come to my attention that you are an occultist of some renown. I do not often write to those of your ilk as they tend to be far too ready to sell their soul, wife and first born child for any chance at infernal power. You, however, have proven to be a very special case.

I am well aware of the "trick" you pulled to keep yourself out of the system. That particular technique has not been used since the time of the long dead Cornelius Agrippa. Unfortunately for him, he was on the wrong side of the deal I am prepared to offer you.

One of my employees has been derelict in the performance of his duties as of late. Despite his protests I believe an assistant is what he needs to right himself and maintain his quota.

So, it is my privilege to offer you an opportunity to fill this position. I have organized a tournament of sorts to decide a new deputy reaper to assist the current Death. You will be pitted against other mortals of your caliber for this role. If you are capable of besting all of those you are set against I will guarantee the preservation of your body and confer unto you all of the power befitting your earned title.

In closing I would like to note that, if you choose to refuse this invitation, I will likewise refuse to provide any aide come your eventual death and my creator's adjudication of your case. I can predict that he will not be pleased with how you have kept yourself out of the system for so long.

Consider your options Mr. Goodchild. I await your reply.

Cordially,

Lucifer the Morning Star."

     The painstakingly perfect writing ended there, followed by a flourish of a signature, written in some language that was beyond even his occult knowledge. It looked less written onto the page and more branded into the hide.

     Not so much an invitation as a summons it seemed. Either he went ahead into this contest that could very well see him killed, or he could make an enemy of the second most powerful being of the Christian deities and be banished to his lands shortly after death. The prospects of being trapped in hell with a rather miffed Lucifer were frightening to say the very least.

     As if knowing he'd make the right decision, the smoke man was already at his door by the time he turned around. Holding it open, it gestured to the street. Lit by the bright white of halogen street lights, a carriage sat beside the curb. At once squat and spindly, it looked like a frilly spider, a frilly, hungry spider. A mix of ebony wood and deep red cloths formed the quarters and head, tattered red lacing edging the doors. Lantern hooks sprouted out beside the driver's seat, twitching like pedipalps.

     The driver held tight to the reigns of jet black horses that dripped some sizzling ichor onto the pavement. Oddly enough, the demon driver himself looked quite like illusory creature he'd taken the shape of to frighten off Samuel, though he appeared to have feet, squeezed into a pair of wingtips.

     "Well then, riding off to Bedlam!" he declared, stepping out of his door and up to the carriage. Sweeping past him the smoke man pulled open the door and Rodger folded himself into the center of the seat. He was relieved to find that the leather he sat on only looked like raw meat. The slime it might have left on his coat...

     Door shutting with a sharp click, the driver snapped the reigns and set them in motion. "I say, how exactly does one get from Brighton to Hell? I don't suppose you have some sort of infernal Map Quest do you?" Rodger asked through the driver's window. The large daemon ignored him and snapped the reigns again, spurring on the horses. They moved from a trot to a more solid gallop and went speeding down the street.

     Before the carriage could reach the intersection; the black top cracked and buckled, rising with a tortured groan. It yawned open, a wide, black mouth, only the barest flicker of red fire shining out. Before Rodger could even begin to wonder the horses plunged into the gap and went on galloping down, dragging the carriage in close behind. With the back wheels free of mortal pavement the road came down hard, sealing with a hiss of steam. There was not a sign of where they had gone. Nothing to mark their passing beyond a misty cloud.