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    The Grinning One
    The Grinning One
    The Grinning One
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    The Grinning One

    By Edmund de Wight

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Jonathan Pettigrew, a Vegas magician whose career has taken a dive after the accidental death of his assistant.
    When he discovers a devil once worshiped as a god in a small Mexican town things begin to go literally to Hell.
    Now he must travel far to gain power, even if it costs his soul, to control the evil one or die with the rest of humanity.

    A novella of magic, horror and Faustian deals. An exciting romp into the dark side.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIonosphere Press
    Release dateApr 17, 2022
    ISBN9781386079613
    The Grinning One
    Author

    Edmund de Wight

    Author of gritty, high octane fiction with a touch of terror and daring heroes and heroines! Visit his website and sign up for the newsletter to receive a free e-book and regular entertaining content.  Ed writes stories that can be classified as either Horror, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy or Thriller depending on the tale.  Some say Edmund de Wight was found wandering the desert as a baby, others say his mother won him playing craps, yet others say that aliens were spotted near Vegas on the night he was brought into the world. Draw your own conclusions. Edmund has always had a thirst to learn new things. He's pursued such diverse careers as a carnival barker, a cryptologist and linguist in military intelligence, a computer technician, bartender, and owner of a small retail business. He's traveled the world and managed to see the entire USA with the exception of two states. Ed brings a wide worldview to his writing. For hobbies, Ed has pursued hobbies as varied as wood carving, relief printing, sword fighting, and of course, never-ending efforts at home remodeling.  

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      Book preview

      The Grinning One - Edmund de Wight

      Published by Ionosphere Press

      For bible signers everywhere.

      And as always, for Sarah.

      1

      Jonathan Pettigrew paused, lifting his head from his frantic reading of the crumbling papers as the building shuddered. The deep moaning roar from below the ground vibrated his back teeth. He could hear the boards of the ancient home popping as the wood shook.

      He didn't think the house would last much longer. If it fell he wasn’t sure that the wards keeping that thing in the stone cellar would survive.

      He shuddered as visibly as the house at the thought of the black thing being free with no control. His conscious mind refused to recall what it had seen of the creature; all he could remember was blackness and the teeth, those horrible teeth. His mind may have refused to process the creature’s visage but he understood at an instinctual level, if it escaped unfettered he and many more would wish for death as an escape from its violence and hatred.

      He turned his attention back to yet another stack of yellowing parchment covered with scribbling. He cursed the penchant for sorcerers to hide their knowledge in codes and symbolism.

      This was not turning out to be the easy road to riches he had hoped.

      2

      L adies and gentlemen , the legendary Jonathan Pettigrew.

      How many times had he heard that introduction as he strode onto the stage like a God from the ancient days, prepared to bring wonder to the masses?

      Before what he preferred to refer to as ‘the accident’ Jonathan had performed on the largest stages in Vegas. His magic act had garnered him an HBO special and even a command performance for the Queen of England. Jonathan had been rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Supermodels wanted to bed him and the rich and famous begged for him to be their guest.

      Jonathan thought his greatest moment had been when he had displaced that boor Copperfield as the top earning magician and then taken his spot in the MGM’s main arena. Jonathan looked upon performers like Copperfield as a lesser life form; they were not of his caliber and didn’t deserve to share the same stage where he performed.

      Fame and glory had ended with a literal blast three years ago when his assistant and lover, Melody, had entered his famous Teleport Cabinet.

      The trick played out just as it had a dozen times before, Melody sashayed onto the stage and gave the audience an eyeful of décolletage before Jonathan locked her into the cabinet. He began his normal patter for the mad scientist bit which normally ended with him revealing that Melody had vanished from the cabinet. She would then miraculously appear in a new cabinet which descended on a cable from above the stage. Halfway into the trick Jonathan voiced his best mad scientist laugh and the teleport cabinet exploded.

      Jonathan spent a week in the hospital with shrapnel wounds. Poor Melody’s body was never found. Her family sued for wrongful death, the venue for loss of revenue and the audience had joined a class action suit for emotional trauma. By the time the courts finished with him, Jonathan Pettigrew was destitute and disgraced.

      Jonathan had no way to defend himself against the lawsuits; the court system was ill equipped to grasp the reality of magic. In his years on the stage Jonathan was one of the most mysterious magicians in the business. He never shared his techniques; no magician could crack his secrets. Even the top experts in the magician game had thrown up their hands in despair; his secrets were so well protected and tricks so subtle that no one could exactly duplicate his illusions. The problem for Jonathan’s potential imitators and the expose writers of the world was not a lack of effort to uncover his secret panels or hidden mirrors; the problem that forever stymied them was that Jonathan was not an illusionist, he was a true mage. No stage magician would ever replicate Jonathan’s feats no matter how skillful their misdirection, their efforts would always appear as pale imitations compared to the effects Jonathan created with a wave of his hand.

      As a young boy, Jonathan was rescued from his life in a string of foster homes by Madame Olivia Tregard, a tarot card reader in a small suburban neighborhood who also happened to be the reigning Magus Optimus of the Americas. She had spotted the rare mystic potential of the young boy when his most recent foster parent had come for a reading and utilizing her not inconsiderable connections had arranged for the boy to become her adopted son. Years of training had shaped Jonathan’s ability to control his mystical powers. Every day focused his life toward following in his adoptive mother’s footsteps as the Magus Optimus; until the day the call of the stage and its attendant wealth had drawn him away from the noble path of thankless service to humanity and set him on the road to riches and power.

      In the aftermath of the Vegas fiasco, Jonathan couldn’t exactly tell a judge that the explosion which had torn apart his finale was due to a sabotaged magical portal.

      After his release from the hospital, Jonathan had examined the wreckage of the teleport cabinet. There had been an obvious and poorly executed alteration to the magical fields he had built within it; he knew immediately what had happened.

      Melody had been a passable assistant. She had all the requisite talents: beauty, flexibility, a distracting figure and of course she had been dynamite in the sack. Madame Tregard had once told Jonathan to never allow the baser human emotions to drive his magical choices, especially in choosing an apprentice. Lust is the most dangerous emotion, she had once told him; it shut down the part of the brain that weighs the value of a person’s decisions. Jonathan had allowed lust for Melody to overrule his critical mind. Now, too late, he understood the admonition. The girl had wanted too much too fast. She didn’t have the patience to spend the necessary time to fully learn the laws of magic but Jonathan had not wanted to deny his paramour, so he had trained her.

      Melody had been a natural; while never being capable of playing in Jonathan’s league, she would have made a fine mage some day if she had continued her studies.

      He had sensed her aura’s telltale signature on the broken enchantments of the cabinet. His magical sight had revealed the alterations in the finely crafted matrix of spells; instead of teleporting, Melody disappeared into a random dimension. Quite possibly she was not dead at all. Of course there was

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