Astral Echoes - A short story for Steemit. Finishthestory contest Week #22

The is an entry in the ongoing Finish The Story contest hosted by the almighty @bananafish. Contestants are asked to finish a story in 500 words. Go ahead and check it out and enter your own work!

Much thanks to @raj808 for the prompt.

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Astral Echoes

By @raj808

Rain bounces off the frying pan streets, dowsing the city’s mid-morning swelter. Bangkok on a Monday screams its frenetic cadence into my sleep-stained head as I leave my apartment for the breakfast of kings. A hastily wolfed helping of Khao Neow Moo Ping and I’m on my way. This meeting is important for my continued livelihood. A prominent business man is convinced he’s beset by demons. 'Fung shui gone wrong', the words of his PA echo in my memory as I hail a tuk tuk and jump in.

“Sa wat dee”. I greet the driver as I scramble into the cramped cabin.

It is advisable to enter your tuk tuk promptly as the never ending stream of scooters can sweep you out and away at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen a tuk tuk's door taken off by one of these suicidal bikers before now.

“Sathon Nuea road please.” Pulling off into traffic, I find myself staring into the frantic smog choked kaleidoscope that is Bangkok. Five lanes of traffic jostle for position as scooters whiz between them, reckless of traffic lights, wobbling with giggling teenage passengers stacked three apiece. The salt-singed smell of frying shrimp and coconut oil mingles with diesel fumes as I sit back into the sticky red foe leather and consider what I know about this particular clients Astral footprint!

***

A room bathed in a dull indigo with a bed by the wall pulsing with ethereal light. A book sits half open on the bedside cabinet, pages twitching in the gentle flow of my aura. Light envelops this scene, green through to red as my aura shifts with the pulse of the indigo ether. I drift over the open book, a single word jumps out of the page like a lightning bolt ‘FATHER’. It seems to echo in my mind like a scream. I glance to my left and my adversary is still moving through the treacle I’ve set in front of him. I still can’t tell whether he’s human! The impossibly wide smile, desperate and hollow speaks to me of one possessed. A soul lost in the astral, then found by one of Them.

BANG, I spin as the wardrobe door slams open and closed over and over. The noise echoes through me as an icy wind spills from the flapping doors. The indigo glow subsides to a dull shimmer as the room darkens and I turn back to my advisory.

He is there right before me. Mouth impossibly wide the teeth icicles and his breath covers me in the stagnant smell of the swamp as my bones numb and my knees give way. I choke as my breath sticks in my throat and the scene fades to night.

***

“What are the symptoms Mr Xioin?" His pallid face twitches as I stare into sunken eyes, unblinking, pupils wide. "How do these daemons manifest?”

“The night is where they reside. Between dream and waking. Sometimes I wake from a dream only to be enveloped by a strange light. After, I walk in the wakening world, around my apartment and... everything is enlivened." He breathes in short gasps as he talks. "It’s as if everything has a soul, the lamp, my leather chair even the books call out there stories, words that wash through me like fire." His head dips and rests in the palm of his hands. "There is no rest”

“Go on...” I lower my voice as I watch his body shivering in the pain of memory.

“Then there are the dreams that seem to be reflections of my life. I'm working at the company, except it’s like I’m looking over my own shoulder as someone else performs my daily routine. I’m convinced I’m awake until I actually wake and it feels as if I’ve never slept at all." He stares into my eyes, pupils contracting back to a normal size for the first time since I’ve been here. "Can you help me?”

***

My heart strains against my chest as I struggle to close my third eye, a dull ache in the center of my forehead. He smiles like a clown, an open wound across his face, mocking me. White mists swirl around us as a landscape forms in the astral firmament, his mind superimposing a tapestry in the space between dimensions. I look around searching for any clue to his nature. Any clue that will help me to defeat him.

My Ending

By T. Dalton

“Tell me about your family,” I said. Mr. Xioin sighed. The old man was gaunt, skin yellow. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Mother and father? Still living?”

“My sister was a singer. Beautiful voice. But she got in with an army general. Caught his eye. When he asked her for her hand, she refused. He didn’t like that. Pride. They found her floating in a hotel pool.”

“Brother?”

“A younger one. He was fast. I could never keep up with him. He’d run throughout Bankgok, sending our mother mad with fear. Got an athletic scholarship to a university.”

“And?”

“He married a woman who liked to gamble. She had debts before he even met her. Of course she said nothing about this to him. By the time she was pregnant with a child, the bookies were coming by. What can you expect when men come by on motorbikes, calling your pregnant wife a whore when your sister was just murdered? He attacked them and took a knife to the heart. Died right there.”

“I’m sorry to hear of such tragedy,” I said. I peeped out the window behind the bamboo curtain at the raging sun of the city. “How did your mother recover?”

“She never did. Not really. She preferred to drink it off. So there wasn’t much fight when the cancer came.”
“And you?”

“I put my mind into business. Into my empire. I gave my entire soul to this enterprise and I now own the three largest rubber plants in Thailand. They say you’re the best. A foreigner, but with a third-eye that can’t be beat.”

“I learned my vocation from the Indians.”

“Filthy bunch.” Mr. Xioin said. “Intelligent. But filthy.”

“What of your father?” I asked.

“That’s something I don’t wish to discuss.”

“You say you can’t sleep. That an apparition appears. I’ve seen it. At least, a form of it.” I tapped my forehead. “If you want me to help you, I need to hear it all.”

Mr. Xioin tensed, his head turning left and right. “No,” he said.

“Your father lost a son, a daughter and a wife. But he didn’t lose you. Why is that?”

“No,” Mr. Xioin repeated, his voice now grave. My third eye burst open, unable as I was to contain it any longer. The demon appeared, curled up against Mr. Xioin. Icicle teeth flaring in a malevolent smile. “No!” Mr. Xioin shouted, his voice now demonic. Each time he spoke, the demon opened its mouth. “I cannot discuss such matters with you.”
“What did you do to him? Where’d you get the money to invest in these rubber plants? Say it!”

Mr. Xioin cried. The demon squeezed his throat. I commanded him with my astral projection, and in the third-plane, the old man told the truth, his voice echoing his past.

“He owed debts.” Echoes. His sister at the pool. A knife in his brother’s heart.

His father seeing the hitman, his son.

The demon giggled. Mr. Xioin wept.