"The Catch" by Tansy A. H. Pye

People were laughing. Even the host of the late night chat show was stifling the giggles; Meanwhile, the boy claiming to be the ‘Son of Satan’ continued his mumbling and chanting.

“Perhaps the line’s busy, you know; ‘Sorry, Satan’s not here at the moment, but if you’d leave your name and number....” Crazy Dave Walker, the host of the show collapsed in a fit of laughter, joined by most of the audience. The ‘Son of Satan’ didn’t even look up. He continued to draw his mystic runes, chanting his words. He couldn’t stop now. To stop now, even to lose concentration, could open a rift to hell and there was no telling what would come through.

“Mr Devon, I don’t think we have the time for an actual Devil manifestation.” Crazy Dave managed to get out between fits. “Maybe if we were to aim lower, a minor spirit, a sprite, an imp?” It was no good, Fifteen years as a chat show host didn’t prepare you for this, Dave burst out laughing again.

It had seemed such an easy task at the beginning. A man, claiming to be the Son of the Devil, wanted to summon his father live on T.V. Could he handle that?

“Sure!” he had promised. “Crazy Dave can handle anything!” Where did they find them? Ah well, he figured, he’d fit him in; Right between, ‘The woman, who married a halibut’, and ‘The man who thought he was a werewolf’.

The Son of Satan, however, had proved too much. It wasn’t just that he didn’t exactly look the part, being a little under five foot tall, of slight build and wearing the thickest pair of glasses Crazy Dave had ever seen. It wasn’t even the boys age, Dave put him at around seventeen, judging by the pimples and buck toothed, gangliness of him. The real clincher had been that the ritual to summon The devil had to be performed buck naked. And this kid had to have the funniest set of wedding tackle, Dave had ever seen. Not that the viewers at home were allowed to get a look at it, at least not since the boy had begun to get obviously excited. Then interesting camera angles and strategic clapper boards had to be introduced. Still this was one to remember, and Dave sure hoped a lot of people out there in T.V. land had set their V.C.R.s Because this was the one that would make his ratings soar.

Meanwhile Raymond Devon, was putting the finishing touches to his circle of binding. He wasn’t really Satan’s So; A thing his Ma and Pa could have testified to, had he not killed them two nights previously in preparation for this ritual. Nor was it actually the Devil that Raymond was summoning. In truth, he didn’t have the faintest idea what the spell was for, only that it had to be performed in front of a large audience at exactly midnight, using the fat of his parents for candle wax, and their blood for paint. He had given every thing to this spell and it had better work. He didn’t care what it did. He just wanted proof that the magic was real, other wise every thing his Grandpa had told him was a lie and every thing he had strived for all his life was nothing. In short Raymond was completely mad.

Raymond’s Grand father was the only one who was not laughing. He was dead, but that had mattered less and less to him these past few months. He was using his Grandson to get him energy. He sensed that this time he had pushed things too far. He had made the ritual up. There should have been no truth to it. But, it seemed, he wasn’t the only one to have noticed the raw power of the boy.

As the ritual neared completion, Raymond’s Grandfather began to realise; Just as he had been playing the boy for a dupe, something more powerful had been playing him more skilfully.
Whatever it was, it was using up a great deal of energy. Grandpa began to feel himself losing form. Everything he had worked towards, was disappearing. He had to do something. But what? If he didn’t do something soon things would become impossible. He racked his fast dissolving brain for something that could help him or his Grandson. Finally he saw it and with his last ounce of energy he did the only selfless act of his long, bitter life. He saved his Grandson.

Raymond felt something was amiss. This didn’t feel like any of the other rituals his Grandpa had told him to perform. Things were out of control. The ritual was taking on a life of it's own. But he didn’t know how to bring it under command. Things were nearing completion. Power unlike anything he had felt before was coursing through him. Something was ripping it’s way into this world from elsewhere and Raymond had no idea what to do. He began to panic.

In the rest of the studio, Raymond’s theatrics were getting beyond a joke. By mutual consent it was decided that he’d had his allotted time span. The werewolf was in the wings and Crazy Dave was being given the Wind- this- interview- up signal. Dave tried cajoling, he tried polite, he even tried down right insulting. Nothing was affecting this boy. He was in some kind of religious fervour and nothing was getting through. Dave gave a worried look to the floor manager, who signalled the security team to stand by. Dave was told over the radio com, he had one more try to get the boy off the stage then security would remove him by force. Dave gave an almost imperceptible nod to show that he understood and moved towards Raymond again.

It was the floor manager who first noticed the trails of power that were beginning to emanate from the circle. They started as an electrical eddy but soon escalated into a whirlwind. If she hadn’t been seeing it live she would have thought it was computerised special effects. Indeed as she watched, a detached part of her brain told her that that would be exactly what the people at home would think. If she survived this, she thought, it would be the greatest coup of her career. The rest of her brain was screaming.

As the power grew more intense, the electrical, and supernatural feedback began to grow unbearable. The audience was silent now. They wanted to scream, to run, but their brains had gone beyond panic and shut down. Some of the more strong willed managed to whimper, a couple of them wet themselves. In the wings a man writhed and twitched, his body thrown into a strange transformation. Otherwise all was still.

Whatever it was, it was almost here. If Raymond was going to do anything it had to be now. Then three things happened to him in quick succession;

What he had to do, was transmitted to him on the last waves of his Grandpa’s energy;

In front of him a rip was torn in the fabric of reality;

And Dave touched his shoulder.

Raymond grabbed Dave's arm and screamed the final incantation. The sounds of the rip were intolerable.

The world watched stunned as ‘Satan’s Son’ shouted something incompressible, then wrenched the Chat-Show Host’s head clean off his shoulders.

There was silence.

Crazy Dave’s head hit the studio floor and rolled forward, his body twitched and jerked like a thing possessed, it’s arm caught Raymond across the face, knocking him to the floor. It would have been funny if it weren’t so horrible.

Pandemonium broke loose throughout the studio. People screamed and ran. Many were crushed in the mass exodus. Somewhere a wolf howled. The cameras kept rolling, with no one to man them and no-one to say ‘Cut’ the cameras just kept on rolling. So it was only those watching at home and those people who studied the tapes afterwards who saw what ensued.

Inside the circle, the vampire stirred. A moment ago he had been watching the television with a few friends. The next thing he knew he was in a circle. He realised with not a little embarrassment that he was naked. And equally as awkward he was in true form. Quickly, he rectified that. He thought himself into human form and clothed. Then stood up. In front of him, lying sprawled on the floor was a young boy. Caleb sensed that this, as unlikely as it seemed was the mage who had summoned and bound him. Other than the unconscious boy the studio was empty. No, wait there was a werewolf patrolling the wings, it was beginning to move towards the mage, but with no orders to protect. Caleb was powerless to help him. Cautiously Caleb reached out a hand to check the power of the binding. The pain was great; The circle was very strong, the kid must have sacrificed his whole family for this, he thought. Caleb settled into a crouch on the floor and waited to see if the werewolf would find the mage, or if he would wake up first.

The werewolf had spotted the boy, but a memory from before the change warned it that this human may be dangerous, so it approached with caution. It was confused anyway. This was not it’s time. The human side of it’s nature should be in control in this season, it was not yet the time of the wolf. It knew that it’s early rise had something to do with the boy, but it couldn’t decide if that made the boy a friend or a foe. Slowly it advanced.

The body of Crazy Dave Walker, had fallen on to Raymond pinning him to the floor. He came to, in time to see the werewolf’s approach, but was unable to move. Beside him a man stood inside the circle and watched amused as the wolf approached him. His brain could not think straight, he couldn’t figure out where the man, or the wolf had come from. He didn’t know what the strange weight was that was holding him down, and where was his Grandpa? For the first time since his Grandfather’s death three years previously, Raymond was alone and it scared him. He looked back at the strange man.

“Who are you?” The question wrenched into the vampires consciousness, the answer came unbidden to his lips, such was the power of the bonding.

“My name is Caleb Alexandre.” Raymond could feel the breath of the wolf on his cheek.

“Help me.” He said weakly. The command tore the vampires nerves. He had to obey, but he couldn’t break out of the circle of warding.

“You must help me first; Break the circle.” The request confused Raymond, who was still unsure where he was, but he summoned all his strength and was able to reach his arm out across the chalk lines,

Caleb wasted no time, he stepped out of the circle and pulled the werewolf away. With a simple exertion of his will, he put the beast under his control and made it sit down a short distance away. He then lifted the body off the boy and helped him to his feet.

Raymond was weak and confused, The man from the circle, Caleb, helped him over to the sofa, upon which Dave usually sat his guests to interview them. Caleb then went over to Dave’s body and stripped it of it’s trousers and shirt, the latter was caked in blood. He brought them over to Raymond and helped him put them on.

Sarah, James and Gregory were round Caleb’s watching the ‘Evening show with Crazy Dave’, They did not know Caleb as Caleb, true names have power, they knew him as Christian.

He had been against watching ‘The Evening Show’ ever since the boy had begun chanting, he couldn’t give them a good enough reason not to though, so they had kept watching. As the ritual had progressed, Christian had become more and more uncomfortable, the others had put this down to his gentle nature, he hated to see others hurt or embarrassed, his sensitivity was one of the things they constantly jibed him about. He refused to watch horror movies and would turn the T.V over if there was even the slightest amount of blood on it. He never watch Medical documentaries and even refused to watch wildlife shows, in case some poor antelope got killed.

By the time it became apparent that some thing had gone terribly wrong on the chat show it was too late to turn over. Before their eyes Christian elongated and was sucked towards the screen. It looked like some really corny effect from some bad horror film, Shocker, or Demon 2 perhaps. If it was not Christian who was being pulled in, Sarah thought distractedly, he would not want to watch this, it would be too scary. James and Gregory were yelling and futilely trying to pull Christian back into the room, their brains trying desperately to make sense out of this madness. No matter what they tried, Christian was pulled inexorably into the Television.

When he appeared on the screen, he looked strange, you could recognise him, his face was the same. strikingly handsome in a slightly effeminate way, his long red hair was loose now not tied back in the usual pony tail, but definitely his. They could even recognise his penis, all of them had slept with him at one time or other and his strange slightly curved, almost sharp organ was familiar to them all. You could almost relax and imagine that some freak electrical accident had caused the T.V. to malfunction in some peculiar manner, if it wasn’t for the fact that the eye could not help but to be drawn to the huge bat-like wings that extended from his shoulders, or to his feet which tapered in claws not dissimilar to a bird’s talons, and they all agreed, there was something very wrong about the mouth.

The effect didn’t last long, there was a slight dizziness, then Christian stood there exactly as he had looked when he left, but for those that knew him, his true form was indelibly stamped on their minds. When they had seen it, their memories could no longer suppress the fact that this was how they had always seen him, and that they had just never seemed to notice it before. Sarah, Gregory and James sat on the sofa staring at the Television screen and went simultaneously and completely out of their minds.

Caleb, looked down at this sorry excuse for a mage, and thought about James, he hoped that his transport through the screen had shorted the set and that James had not seen the rest of the fiasco, but he doubted it, that just was not the way real life worked. In three thousand years if there was one thing Caleb had learned it was that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong.

He wondered at what point he could have prevented the whole silly mess. Perhaps he should have been more firm in his aversion to the show, after he realised that there was real magic afoot. But when he had noticed that, the spell had quite obviously been to open a rift to hell, it was nothing that would affect him. He had not been to hell for over three thousand years, of which he had spent the last one and a half denying his Infernal history. He had become a good Christian, both in name and deed, he deplored violence, he turned against his very nature. He hadn’t killed for blood for nearly six hundred years now. He had thought that hell could no longer touch him, but he had obviously been wrong.

When the kid had shut down the rift, Caleb had known that all that summoning energy would have to be used for something. He even knew that it would summon the nearest infernal, supernatural being. He still hadn’t worried. He didn’t think of himself as infernal any longer, and besides there was a werewolf in the wings he could sense it.

Then, using a lot of energy, it must have cost them dearly to do it, some thing pushed through the now almost closed rift and threw the energy at Caleb, neatly trapping him.

No, looking back on it there was no point at which he could have averted the catastrophe. Hell wanted him back and one way or another it would have got him. Now he was in some thing of a catch 22 situation; If he broke the Bond, he would be sent to hell. If he convinced the mage to release him, the kid would have to dispel him, thus throwing him straight back to hell. And, this one worried him the most, if the kid unwittingly stepped beyond the realms of the bonding, by asking Caleb to do something out side of his power, or some thing that would endanger him. Then Caleb would be released... Straight back to You-know-where! This one worried him most, mainly because the kid quite obviously didn’t have the faintest idea what he had done, or what he was going to do now.

David, the man who thought he was a werewolf, and apparently actually was! sat obediently where he had been told to and watched the vampire and the mage. He was becoming increasingly aware of the imminent arrival of the security team or the police. You just can’t expect to kill the host of a popular chat show without some kind of official repercussion. He was also painfully aware that he couldn’t move by his own will and that only either being released by the vampire or being carted off by the authorities would release him. He knew which he suspected would happen first. David, too believed in the age old axiom, if it can go wrong, it will!

He coughed quietly trying to get the vampire’s attention without the mage noticing. The vampire seemed to be thinking deeply about something, David didn’t blame him, he’d been doing some thinking too, especially since he had regained human form, albeit naked human form, some moments previously. He coughed again, this time more loudly. The vampire looked in his direction.

Caleb had heard the werewolf the first time, but had decided not to look to keen to speak to him. Upon the second polite cough, Caleb looked over. The werewolf was in human form and sitting, looking rather sheepish and embarrassed. Caleb felt immediately guilty for putting this poor innocent man in to the same position as himself.

“You are free to go.” Caleb said eventually, David, felt the vampire release him and ran into the wings to the spot roughly that he remembered beginning his transformation. He hoped he’d had the good sense to take his clothes off and fold them before he changed. It was a silly thought, he never did, but he always hoped afterwards that this time would be different.

When he eventually found the exact spot of his transformation it was as he had imagined and dreaded. He had changed in his clothes again. He picked up the tattered remains of his clothing and tried to put them on.

Despite filmic evidence to the contrary, David had always found that his trousers came off the worst for his transformations. In this case, the entire crotch area was a right off. His shirt had fared a little better, but not to a degree that would make him feel comfortable walking around in the street in it. He looked around for a piece of useful discarded clothing, but there was not so much as a coat in the immediate area.

It took him a few minutes to find his way back to the wardrobe department and find suitable clothes. No underwear, obviously actors brought their own undies, but he felt much more comfortable.

When he got back to the studio, he was surprised to see the mage and the vampire were still there. Judging by the lack of red lights on any of the cameras, David guessed that some one, probably the floor manager, there was a girl with a head on her shoulders, had had wits enough to end transmission. At least no-one at home was watching any more. It made him feel a little better.

Caleb was just as surprised to see the werewolf return, he had assumed that it would have taken the opportunity to escape. Time was pressing and the possibility of escaping was becoming less and less realistic. Caleb had noticed the floor manager enter the control booth and end transmission, if she had regained enough composure to turn off the cameras, he thought, then she could just as easily have contacted the police. He estimated they had roughly three minutes before the place would be crawling with mortals intent on their destruction.

“What are you still here for?” David addressed the vampire, obviously the brains of the group, judging by the way the kid was looking at his shirt and screaming silently, drool dribbling down his front.

“I have not been ordered to move.” Caleb knew that they needed to escape and figured it might fit in to the general ‘help me’ command that was the only order he had so far been given, but all attempts to achieve that aim had been thwarted by the strength of the geas. The boy obviously did not see the danger he was in. He seemed quite happy to remain where he was. Caleb was unable, because of the rules of this sort of situation, to advise the boy. All he could do was hope he snapped out of it... Unless?...

“Werewolf.” David looked at the vampire, who was obviously addressing him. “Perhaps you could help me?”

“My name is David, how would you suggest I do that?”

“I apologise for my manners, My friends call me Christian and though that is not my true name, it is what I am accustomed to. The mage you see before you, obviously has absolutely no idea what to do, and I can do nothing to help him unless he orders me to. I am also unable to tell him anything of the rules of this situation. You can see my dilemma.” David nodded. “You on the other hand I have no such geas with or orders against, do you see where this is heading?” David nodded again.

“You want me to tell the kid what to do.”

“That would be a useful beginning, yes”

“Great!... I see only one flaw in this plan, I’m kinda new at this werewolf thing. I probably have less of an idea what to do than the kid does.” Christian and David looked at one another for a while, then Christian sighed.

“Okay, let’s just begin with the obvious shall we. Without threatening him or touching him in any way that I might perceive as a threat to him. See if you can persuade him to tell me to get us the hell out of here.” Christian was feeling quite irate and not at all Christian at the moment, he thought he was handling the situation very calmly considering. He just hoped that some one ‘Up-There’ was taking notes and would look kindly on him for once.

David looked at the kid, drool still dripping down his shirt,

“Can I slap him?”

“No.”

“Not even gently? I promise not to hurt him.”

“No.”

“And if I did...”

“I would be forced to kill you, to protect him. I wouldn’t want to you understand, I wouldn’t have any choice.” David looked back at the kid.

“What’s his name? I wasn't paying attention earlier, when he was introduced in the show.”

“I believe it is Raymond.” David looked back at Raymond who had stopped dribbling and looked up at the sound of his name. That was a hopeful sign.

“Do you know who I am, Raymond?”

“Grandpa?” This wasn’t the response he had expected, he looked at Christian, who shrugged obviously as confused as him. Okay, he thought, it was worth a shot, it works in the movies.

“Yeah, Yes, I’m your Grandpa.” He should have realised, he thought in hind sight, that this was not the world of the movies. If this were the movie world he would have been left with a neatly ripped pair of shorts after his transformation. The kid started screaming and backing away from him. He looked nervously at Christian, expecting the vampire to tear him apart any minute. Instead, Christian had moved to intercept the boy and was holding him close to his chest.

Embracing him and rocking him to and fro, like a mother would her terrified toddler.

“It’s okay, it’ll be all right, I’m here.” Christian cooed inanities and downright lies at the boy, it seemed to be what he wanted.

“I want to go home.” Raymond sobbed. “Take me home.” That was good enough for Christian, he didn’t need to be asked twice. He swept the werewolf, David, into his embrace and teleported them all to the living room of his home.

To Be Continiued.