The Midas Effect

Professor Fantastic Has A Very Bad Day

Case file: Darren Black, stage name “Professor Fantastic”, is a street magician, illusionist and arch-debunker of those who claim to have supernatural powers. Famously ill-tempered, he delights in the misfortunes of his rivals, and loves to stick a metaphorical knife in when someone is already on the ground. He has a prize on offer to anyone who can demonstrate anything resembling magic abilities, but somehow nobody has ever won it. That means he’s cheating. According to the report, he recently investigated the most haunted church in England, the infamous Wormsley Parish Church. Now, the oddest, most inexplicable things are happening, and they are driving him mad. Probably couldn’t happen to a more deserving chap, but I suppose we should look into it.

 

Team:

Ana: a solitary member of one of the allied werewolf packs.

Hyacinth: powerful frost witch masquerading as a sweet old lady.

Robin: chronologically challenged Neanderthal

Keira Sayles: Bad girl, crook, mistress of sacrcasm.

 

After turning up at Black’s house, the team met Geoffrey Collins, Black’s PA. Black himself was not at home. Collins explained that, ever since the church, Black had been having problems. Wishes were coming true in the worst possible way. Pressed for more information, Collins tried to give examples: he’d wish for a parking space, and a truck would crash through the car park, shoving cars out of the way. He’d express the desire to have cheese after his evening meal, and a lorryload would be dumped on the drive in the middle of the night. He could no longer so much as think about getting a hair cut, for fear of what might happen, and have you ever tried NOT thinking about something? He was becoming paralyzed.

Both Keira and Hyacinth immediately recognised this as a curse and asked if they had stolen anything from the church. The answer was no. Did they talk to anyone? No. Was he sure? Yes. Well, other than the sweet little girl who appeared in the graveyard…

Black came home while they were discussing what the little girl had said, and he was furious. He tried to make the team leave, but when he opened his mouth to tell them to get out, no words would come. A chair slid through from an adjoining room and knocked his feet out from under him, so that he was sitting facing them all.

Keira tortured him a little by repeatedly demanding he tell them he did not want help. Either the curse prevented him from speaking, or he was paralyzed with fear of what might happen if he expressed even a negative desire.

The Hunters established from Collins that the little girl had told them there was a cursed painting in the church, and the cantrip associated with it. Black, of course, in his role of arch-debunker, had chosen to go into the church and recite the cantrip in front of the painting.

Belial once and Belial twice /  Where flames once were / You now find ice / Grant me a demon to do my will / Should I ask for good, it shall do ill.

After that, the team headed to the church. They found the painting, but it seemed to be stuck to the wall and there was no way to remove it. Outside in the churchyard, nosing around, they realised they were being watched by a fox with piercing blue eyes. Ana gave chase, and finally caught up with the fox in the woods. The fox transformed into a feisty redhead with a predatory grin and a strong line in flirting, to which Ana was entirely oblivious. She called herself Red.

After some pressure from the team, which she seemed to enjoy hugely, Red explained that she was pissed off at Black because she’d tried to win the £1million prize, and he’d refused to acknowledge her power. She’s a god! How very dare he! All of this was her revenge. Said revenge wasn’t just getting him to activate the curse in the painting (which, by the way, she put there — it does not belong to the church), but also to set Black Agnes on him.

Black Agnes was a witch who was hanged in 1587. She escaped being burned only because she supplied fertility potions to the local Duchess, Eleanor of Lembury. She was accused of witchcraft by a local man who fell off a cart after he had been drinking and hurt his back, and could therefore no longer work. He accused her of cursing him, because she had been passing on her way to help deliver a baby. Eleanor and some of Agnes’s other clients arranged secretly for her to be buried in the cemetery. Her bones were dug up during some archaeological work and put on display in a local museum. Some years later, a local coven stole her skeleton and reburied it in a secret place within the church grounds. Red had taken the metal wire that had been used to articulate her skeleton and hidden it on Black. Now Agnes was on her way to hunt him down and get it back, because she considered it hers.

“Of course,” Hyacinth said. “Something given after death is still a gift.”

The team started tracking Black’s route back from the church, having got the details of where they had stopped from Collins. At the big Tesco on the outskirts of Eastbourne, where they had stopped for Collins to buy a cheese and onion pasty, they were met by DC Mark Rintoul and DCI Jane Reid. DCI Reid worked with Unit 13 on the Wendigo case in Scotland, and was more than happy to offer their co-operation. They were there because one of the security guards had attacked a colleague before walking out of the store. He seemed to be in some kind of fugue state or mental crisis, like several other people they had picked up that day already, and was currently still walking about 6 miles away while they waited for mental health support to come in and pick him up.

Keira said they would take care of it, then they drove as fast as they could to find the security guard. He was, as described, walking along the road, followed by a police escort.

Keira waved the police away and Hyacinth established that the guard had been possessed by Black Agnes. They persuaded her to get into their car on the basis that they could get Agnes to where she was going faster.

The drove where Agnes directed. Her host sat in the back and pointed with one arm straight out, occasionally demanding that they stop. Whenever they stopped, she would take her current host and find  new one — all people with whom Black had interacted.

Back at Black’s house, the team rescued Black’s driver from the shades Agnes summoned, then searched everywhere for the pieces of metal, but couldn’t find them. They called Collins and found out that Black was visiting his creative consultant — the man who designed his magic tricks for him.

Arriving at the warehouse containing the magical workshop, Keira shoved her way inside and yelled, “Oi! Dickhead! Bits of metal!”

Black had no idea what they were talking about. After a few minutes of arguing, Black’s booking agent, Cassie Foyle, revealed herself to be none other than Red the Fox. She said she might have hidden the articulation wire in Black’s jacket lining. With that information, they quickly found the wire.

Agnes still needed to go back to her resting place but needed a host to do it. Red eventually agreed to help, and turned up with a singularly intelligent looking cat. As for breaking the curse… All Black had to do was apologise and pay up, and then she would sort that out. As far as the team was concerned, this was between Black and Red, and so they left Black to stew in his own misogynistic, entitled bullshit.

Back at Wormsley, the cat led them to Agnes’s grave. The team buried the articulation wire, reuniting it with its owner, and so bringing to an end the haunting of Wormsley Church. They took the cat inside the church and had the bright idea of asking him how to get the painting off the wall. The cat extending one claw, inserted it into a very narrow slot on the side of the painting, at which point there was a click and the painting came free.

The team returned to base with the painting, with the exception of Hyacinth, who took the cat — now called Marcus Oliver Graves — home.