Familiar Spirit

Sarah stared at the limp, warm mass in her hands. Then, as the blood began to crawl down her arm, she threw the cat away, crying out her disgust.

She turned to Valerie, then, meaning to curse her furiously, but the words died unspoken. Something was terribly wrong.

Valerie’s eyes had rolled up so that only the whites showed beneath fluttering lids. Always pale, she was now so dead white that the welts on her face stood out lividly and seemed to pulse. The muscles in her neck were taut and corded, and her lips stretched back from her teeth. Her chest labored; she was breathing, but seemed unable to draw a breath deep enough to satisfy.

Jade.

For a moment Sarah was frozen, staring, and then she remembered what she had to do.

She had to destroy the statue.

Trembling, she pulled it from her pocket, feeling as if she had been carrying a venomous snake in her jeans. Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she destroyed it when she found it? Was she so weak, so controlled by Jade?

Still she paused, holding the thing in her hands, looking carefully at it. It was oddly beautiful, and yet undeniably disturbing. A naked woman carved with great skill from a piece of jade, with such attention to detail that the lines and hollows that made up the tiny face became an expression of gleeful, individual evil. But it did not move as she stared at it, and she was aware, as she held it, that Jade had left only the faintest trace of himself in the stone, only an anchor. He must be focusing all his power on Valerie, struggling with her for possession of her body, hoping to win after all.

Sarah backed away from Valerie, recovered her hammer, and crouched on the floor, setting the stone figure carefully down. She gripped the hammer with both hands, then, and raised it high, and brought it down with all her might.

The hammer struck the wooden floor, the impact sending a teeth-jarring shock through her body. Sarah stared down in disbelief, but she knew she had seen it. As the hammer descended, the green stone had seemed to become pliable, semi-liquid, and it had squirmed to one side, just far enough to avoid the blow.

Valerie screamed.

Sarah looked around in time to see Valerie rushing at her, knife raised and threatening, her eyes wide. No time even to stand. With Valerie nearly on top of her, Sarah tackled her legs and leaned sharply to one side, toppling Valerie to the ground. Fearful of the knife, the blood pulsing loudly in her ears, Sarah managed to push Valerie onto her back without losing hold of the hammer.

“Valerie!” Sarah said sharply. “It’s me, Sarah. Don’t hurt me—I want to help you!”

Valerie’s face was contorted, confused, her eyes unfocused. Sarah imagined she could see Jade’s mastery coming and going, first one persona and then the other flickering out of Valerie’s eyes.

Sarah left her and scrabbled desperately on the floor to find the figure. Again she raised the hammer and brought it down. She heard Valerie behind her, but did not waver. The hammer landed hard and unerringly on the stone and cracked it in two, severing the head from the body.

Valerie screamed again, and Sarah felt a painful wrenching at her left shoulder, then a burning sensation in her upper arm. She whirled around and saw Valerie tottering and waving a bloody knife, her eyes glittering.

A quick glance sideways and down told Sarah that she had been cut; blood was soaking the blue cotton of her sleeve. She didn’t stop to think about it—time enough to hurt later. She could still use her arm, and she needed it. She took a firmer grip on the hammer, hoping she would not be forced to use it against Valerie.

But Valerie was no longer attacking. The deadly glitter had gone out of her eyes and she was terrified again. She still clutched the knife, but the arm that had held it aloft dropped to her side. She began to back away from Sarah, whimpering quietly. Sarah wondered what she saw.

The figure was in two pieces on the floor. Sarah bent to her work again, determined to pulverize it, to leave Jade no safe harbor. Her next blow knocked off another piece of stone. She pounded again and again, reducing the finely wrought figure to sharp fragments of stone amid a pile of pale green dust.

Her arm ached with a sharpness that brought distracting tears to her eyes. Sarah set her teeth and concentrated on each hammer blow. When she paused, she could hear Valerie’s breathing, loud and painful even from across the room. She risked a glance to see that Valerie was crouched on the floor behind the front door, her back to the wall, her eyes closed, her body hunched and tense. She was no threat.

Where was the head? The body was rubble, but the head was missing. After a moment’s fear she found it where it had rolled a few inches away, and brought her hammer down hard on it, wiping out those evil features forever. It was gone. Destroyed utterly.