Rise of the Warlock: The Beginning

April 2006: My Grandfather-1

April 2006: My Grandfather

I was fourteen and living with an aunt or cousin or some sort of relation on my mother’s side. The woman was a bible-thumping protestant who railed against everything, and only believed what she saw on the TCT network. So life was hardly ‘peaches and cream’, more like ‘the world was coming to an end and it was all the fault of muslims and gays and blah blah blah’. Frankly, I tuned her and her husband out once they started on one of their spiels. Their kid was a whole ‘nother issue; a whiny s**t used to having his own way and getting everything handed to him. I had been resisting the urge to break his face since the one good thing I had with this latest living arrangement was that I had my own room. However, that urge had been getting steadily stronger with each time the whiny f**k decided I should be his servant because I was just some unwanted orphan.

I never did get the chance to hurt him. I was trying to master telekinesis, one of the first steps in the mastery of the soul. My book was laid on the floor, a German-English dictionary on top of it. While I had not mastered telekinesis as of yet, I had read all parts of the book written in English, French, Gaelic, and Spanish. I was currently working on the German portion. Next, I was thinking maybe the Russian bits. That still left a lot more as there was also writing in Farsi, Hindi, Japanese kanji, Chinese calligraphy, and so much more, most of which I had no idea how to go about translating.

I could now levitate an object, though only with great difficulty. For example, during one of my early successes, I stared at a small round rock that was levitating all of two feet and wobbled like a drunk on ice. I could see my face in the full length mirror that was on the back of my bedroom door. I looked like I was suffering from constipation and trying to s**t. I was about six seconds from a blood vessel bursting when the door opened. The break in concentration caused the rock to shoot up and stick to the ceiling like it was glued there.

“Bart, while were gone I need you to do the dishes and laundry,” my Aunt Linda said.

“No worries. I'll take care of it,” I said with a tight smile while glancing at the stone and thinking, Well s**t! So that's the secret. She glanced down at the book, and just my luck it was on a page that I couldn't just explain away. The page was on making a ward designed to induce panic in those that passed them. Each one looked like a tiny man made of sticks with a bit of crystal bound up within. One of the tiny stick men would not cause much panic, but if you had a few dozen, and someone was a bit stubborn and kept walking forward, with each step their panic increased into delusions, hysteria, and eventually heart attack? Who knows. It didn't go into specifics.

My aunt, however, did experience the hysteria bit when she caught sight of the book. “What is that? Did you bring some satanic trash into this house?” she screamed.

“No. It's an encyclopedia on ancient cultures and their beliefs. This section deals with Germania, hence the german writing.” I explained/lied in a most convincing matter. At least I thought so. She, however, didn't.

“You lying little heathen. Give me that book,” she growled.

“No!” I snapped right back.

“I said give it!” she screamed into my face.

“No! f**k you! It's mine and you’re not taking it away from me,” I yelled into her face.

She got an odd look on her face and stepped back. In doing so, she ended up standing outside the door so I slammed it in her face. There was no lock so I just leaned against it. I was a big guy at fourteen years old. I was just under six foot and weighed around two fifty. I exercised every morning but I just couldn't cut that excess weight. I felt my aunt push against the door, then storm off.

I already knew what would happen next, so I stopped holding the stone against the ceiling and let it drop into my palm. Then I packed all my stuff into the large duffel bag which I always kept nearby. After packing my clothes and books, I sat down on the bed and began to lift objects around the room. Now that I’d stopped trying so hard it was almost as easy as if I just walked over and picked it up. I figured depending on who Aunt Linda called I would be waiting for quite awhile or not long at all. My guess was that she called Aunt Maureen, but she could have as easily have called the police or her husband. I doubted it was the police as I hadn't hit anybody, and I was hoping it was my Aunt Maureen. I always enjoyed seeing her.

As it turned out I was wrong on all counts as Aunt Linda called her pastor. I should have guessed that she would; the woman practically lived at the church. Perhaps she was banging the pastor. I heard the man outside the door, then it opened and there he was. A middle-aged man with long, brown hair, pulled into a ponytail, a practiced smile, and gray-blue eyes. “Hello, young man. I understand that you are a Satanist?” he said, while placing his hand upon my shoulder with a stern, but compassionate, smile that was as phony as a three dollar bill.

“No, Paster. I am not a Satanist, for the same reason I'm not a Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim or any other faith for that matter.”

“And that is?” the pastor asked.

“Because I see no point in begging others for the things that I want. If I want strength, I'll exercise. If I want knowledge, I'll learn. If I want power, I'll get it. And if I desire wisdom, I'll look inward,” I explained.

“So you believe God cannot grant you these things?” the pastor inquired.

“No. I believe that if these things are simply given they have no meaning, so I will gain them for myself,” I said.

“And when you die?” he asked.

“Then I die. I don't want some grand reward for a life lived in service. I simply wish for my life to end, for oblivion to take me for peace,” I said, standing and moving to lean against a dresser.

He stood as well. “Now son, Heaven is the embodiment of peace,” he stated.

“But whose, Pastor? Mine? Yours? Or that of God and his angels? How do you know it isn't a place where you act as a servant, waiting hand and foot upon beings who are not superior, simply different?” I asked.

“But God is great. He is a being to be worshipped and served,” he replied.

“And if a man came before you who could manipulate the world and make the dead walk—would you fall on your knees in worship? And what if he were then to teach you to do what he can—would you still worship him? Or would you realize that his superiority is an illusion and we all have power? Power doesn't come from believing in others; it comes from the mastery of oneself and the willingness to learn.”

Then he walked over to me and again placed one hand on my shoulder as he said, “Son, I can understand why you may believe as you do; you are young and arrogant in your beliefs. But I think you will find that the belief in something greater than yourself is—”

I interrupted the pastor as I pushed his hand from my shoulder and said, “Pastor, please do not touch me. And I just told you why I won't follow God or any other deity. There is no one greater than anyone else. I'm not greater than you, you are not greater than me. We are who we are.”

“God is great. It was He who gave us life and created this planet,” the pastor preached.

“f**k…Preacher, how about we do this—I concede that I won't change your mind, and you concede that you won't change my mind?” I said.

“Son, I can't do that, not without seeing the book that your aunt spoke to me about,” he said, reaching for the duffel on the floor.

I smiled as I grabbed it. “No. It's mine. You may not understand this, but I have very few things, but what I have is mine, and mine alone, Padre.”

He gave a slight scowl and tugged more insistently. “Show me the book, young man,” he growled.

“No!” I growled right back.

He gave a sharp tug and opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him with a sharp left hook to the jaw. He went down hard, pain written across his face. I grabbed the door but stepped back just in time to miss the door swinging open as the angry face of my aunt burst in.

“You filthy heathen! What have you done now? Oh Pastor Marx. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW!” she cried in quick succession.

“Already going,” I muttered as I pushed past her and headed out of the house. I barely made it a block before a pair of officers would collect me with a warrant for my arrest.

I stood waiting as my grandfather signed for my release. I was staring at his back, barely believing he was there. My grandfather was career military, and until that moment I’d seen him maybe five times my entire life. The last time I saw him had been at my grandma Hildee’s funeral. The two of them had been estranged for as long as I'd been alive but they had never divorced, and she had lived alone up in the boonies, where apparently I'd be living from now on. Grandma Hildee was awesome. The woman had a million stories, made the best treats, and always smelled of cinnamon and peppermint. My grandfather, well…he was a different story.

My grandfather could win a staring contest with Clint Eastwood and kick Chuck Norris’s ass ten times out of ten. He was tall and slender, with a whipcord physique of taut muscle. His left cheek was a mess of odd pockmark scars that I later learned were cigarette burns. He had steel-blue eyes and black hair, cut short. Every time I saw the man he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, combat boots, and old jeans. He was missing a finger on the right hand, and one on his left was permanently flattened. He had a pair of old taped-together dog tags around his neck. The only thing that was not rugged military was the steel chain leading to a silver pocket watch that was in the small top pocket of his jeans on the right side.

He didn't say a word to me, but when he turned to leave he had my bag so I followed him out. He dropped it near the back of an old Ford pickup, then walked to the cab and got in. He just sat there as I looked at the bag on the ground and then at him. I sighed, then tossed it into the pickup and got in the passenger side. He started the engine and off we went. In the back was an old military-issue rucksack and I could see the faded “Schultz” name tag on the side.

“So is this where you give me the ‘my way or the highway’ speech?” I asked.

“No speeches. No highway. You’re stuck with me,” he replied. I gave a snort in response as experience had taught me that nothing was permanent.

We drove in silence for over an hour, but when we stopped at a small family-owned diner for lunch, I couldn't help but ask, “Why’d you come back? Grandma always said you'd die in the army?”

“I didn't know your grandmother passed until I received a letter sent on by a lawyer almost a month after her passing. The letter informed me of your situation, and her last wish was that I come back and see to you so I'm here. I owe her that much.”

“You owed her a lot more than that,” I replied with slight growl.

“Listen Bart, my relationship with my wife is my business. But you’re right, I made a promise to her and I broke it, but she knew who I was when she married me,” he growled right back, a hard look upon his face.

He might’ve said more, but our food came and we both let the conversation drop in favor of eating our respective meals. He paid the bill and we both stood and left, neither of us willing to pick up the conversation. So we piled into the truck and off we went. I ended up falling asleep as my grandfather drove.

“Wake up. We're almost to the house,” he said giving me a hard nudge. “No one's been here since the funeral so we're probably going to have a bit of work ahead of us, and I expect you to help. Unless, that is, you prefer to sleep outside,” he informed as we bumped down the long dirt road that was the driveway to the house.