A Wizard Named Harry

My name is Harry and I’m a wizard.

I know what you are thinking, you have heard this story before, but I am not that Harry. Do I seem like a bespeckled little shit who hangs out with a ginger and is too naive to know that I could hook up with carrot top’s girlfriend? Not Likely! I prefer a smooth aged bourbon over butter beer and a Cuban cigar over snot flavored chocolate frogs.

You may have also been thinking about another somewhat famous wizard in books, Harry Dresden. The woe-is-me, down on his luck, warlock who lives in Chicago and has a staff disguised as a hockey stick. Isn’t that cute?

That said, I do like the fact that he enslaved one of his enemies by binding his spirit into a skull. That is some gangsta wizard shit right there, but playing the part of an aww shucks dolt who is afraid of the “wizard commission” isn’t my type of role.

And before any of you think it, I’m not like Harry Houdini either. Comparing me to a dime store charlatan who escapes primitive shackles for the cheers of simpletons is downright insulting. If I lived like that I would wake up every day and have to make a conscious decision not to eat a gun.

If you want a Harry I can relate to, think more like Dirty Harry. Well, more like Dirty Harry if he were the love child of that guy who’s name you can’t speak and the evil Disney hottie, Maleficent. Maybe Henry the VIII, but no one called him Harry.

So you see, I’m not a student, a gumshoe, a circus act, or a promiscuous royal. I am a wizard, a mage, a warlock, a fucking necromancer! And because of that I live my life how I want to.

That said, being a wizard isn’t free, I do need to keep my car insurance paid up and my Netflix subscription going. You guys watch Queen’s Gambit yet? So when I need money I can always do my wizard thing.

There was this one time in Malta where I became the doppelganger of a Russian crime boss. It’s an open secret in banking circles that the institutions on that island are money launderers for the Russian mob. So I walked into the bank where this particular boss’ and his organization keep their deposits and had the manager drain the accounts. I then had the funds wired to the accounts of a number of shell corporations. Within hours I was churning that money through the ether with a few dozen other wire transfers, hiding those transactions behind holding companies, crypto currency and some straw men I had created. I finally landed with a few million in Belize and Switzerland and then parked the rest of the $337 million in an account in Nevis.

I have it on good authority that the manager from the bank in Malta, where the accounts were originally drained, disappeared a week later. You see his spirit attempts to haunt me. Well, he was tortured for a few days before finally being shot in the back of the head. They took his body, placed it into a 55 gallon drum, loaded that barrel on a cargo ship heading to Odessa, and then kicked it over the side a few hundred nautical miles short of their final destination. His cylindrical metal coffin now sits at the bottom of the Black Sea under 1,200 meters of dark blue water. I would say it's a lonely grave, but aren’t they all?

Then, three months after the bank manager’s disappearance, the crime boss I imitated, Leonid Tarkov, also met an early end. He and his driver were careless and died outside his dacha near Yekaterinburg. He was going to see his mistress that evening, an actress in the local theatre circuit, when his car exploded from a bomb placed in the trunk. It would seem that everyone answers to someone. Well....I should say everyone but me!

Now, being a wizard isn’t all sunshine and smiley faces as we have our failures too. And when we fail, it is usually a biblical level fuck up! Ha ha ha.

There was the time I was in a Romanian nunnery at Kirtsa attempting to summon a major demon. A demon lord! That is always dangerous! A truly hair raising evocation. So I chose the location because it was remote, sat close to an ancient energy source I wanted to pull power from, and I needed help from one of the sisters.

The incantation was extremely complicated too and it really strained my conjuring abilities. I knew this demon lord’s true name, and that gave me a lot of hold over him, but not complete control. So once I summoned him into this world, I was going to bind him into a totem figure, or what you would probably call a voodoo doll. By doing this it would allow me to manipulate him easily and use less energy. Think about it, I would own a demon lord and that is a lot of power indeed.

But in order to complete the summoning, and weave those invisible enchantments that would chain a spirit of his strength, I needed the blood from a sacrifice. Specifically I needed blood from someone who had taken the life of an innocent, and that’s where the sister entered the picture. My plans were to take an older nun, a sister who was called Dorothea. Her name literally means “A Gift from God” and ironically she was going to be my gift to a demon lord.

I had chosen her because I was told she had become pregnant when she was younger and killed the child by asphyxiation right after he or she was born. That was not an uncommon practice for people in that region to do in order to save the family from shame. Afterwards her family sent her away to the nunnery to join the order and live out the rest of her life seeking forgiveness.

Imagine how surprising it was to find out that the story behind Sister Dorothea was only a baseless rumor. Sadly I learned this the hard way after I fulfilled the conjuration and had already summoned the hellspawn. Because the blood I needed for the binding wasn’t tainted by the taking of an innocent life, the creature was able to break the ring of “Infecta Sanguine” that was meant to keep it contained.

I stood in my own protective circle for 9 straight days drawing what powers I could from that nearby ancient source so I could keep myself safe in an encirclement of charms. Over those days I listened constantly to the blood curdling screams of the nuns. I heard them pray in futility trying to cast this creature back to the netherworlds. I watched them present their crucifixes like a shield in an attempt to hold this unholy monster back. In the end this creature would slowly torture, kill and drain all 17 nuns inhabiting Kirtsa of their blood. It only left when the portal began waning and was about to close.

That was a few years ago and now I can see some ironic humor in it because the nunnery was located in the southern part of Transylvania. You know, getting drained of blood, Dracula’s tale and all that. Of course, the important thing is that I learned an important lesson and I will never make that mistake again! Just watch!

“Okay, hit stop! I’m sick of listening to this loon,” Stevens said as he leaned back in his chair enough to peek through the one way glass into the interrogation room. “I think he is a few eggs short of a full dozen. I mean he is totally batshit crazy.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Cahill stopped the recording from playing and added. “Do you think he is trying to set the stage for an insanity plea?”

“Who knows!” Stevens answered. “Look at him, he is just sitting there mumbling to himself now.”

“Guys, you aren’t going to believe this shit!” Davidson called over from his cubicle

“Did his fingerprints come back with a hit?” Stevens asked as he and Cahill walked over and stood behind Davidson.

“No but I sent a request to Interpol asking about a missing banker in Malta, the Russian mafia boss getting blown up in Yekaterinburg, and a bunch of nuns getting exsanguinated in a Romanian nunnery. I wasn’t expecting a response right away because of the time difference. Hell I really wasn’t expecting a response at all but I just got 3 files emailed to me almost immediately...one for each of these cases I inquired about,” Davidson excitedly explained

“Fuck yeah!” Steven blurted out. “I’m going to go in there and break this motherfucker! He’s going to tell us who he really is and then I’m going to put this crazy fucker away for good.” he continued to say while he walked toward the interrogation room where Harry was being kept.

As he moved closer Stevens looked through the one way glass and saw that Harry wasn’t sitting at the table, he wasn’t handcuffed to the steel ring welded to the table, nor was he anywhere to be seen. Stevens rushed into the room cursing because he knew there was no place for Harry to hide, and certainly there was no way he could have escaped without being seen leaving.

Cahill tried following his partner into the room but was suddenly pushed back by a wave of heat as flames rose from the floor. In front of Cahill there now stood a wall made up of a green blaze that separated him from Stevens and kept him just outside of the door. The heat was overwhelming and he brought a hand up to shield his face while he attempted to look through the fire and find Stevens.

“And so here we are Officer Stevens,” Harry calmly spoke as the two men stood opposite of each other.

Stevens stood with a look of disbelief on his face and scanned the room as the flames quickly encircled the two of them. “I don’t understand! What is going on here?”

He tried moving but his legs wouldn’t respond and his arms hung powerless by his side. Stevens was cognizant of everything that was happening, and could speak, but found the rest of his body paralyzed.

“You understand completely Officer Garrett Stevens! If you listened to what I said, and I’m sure you did, I explained everything.”

Stevens heard what Harry was saying but was focused on trying to move.

Harry continued, “You see, I made a huge mistake when I was in Romania because I sacrificed a life that didn’t have innocent blood on her hands. It almost cost me dearly with my soul following those unfortunate nuns to whatever plane of hell they now inhabit. But you…...three years ago were cleared for the on duty shooting of a 7 year old girl. You and I both know you were high on meth and fentanyl. Those were facts that were left out of the shooting investigation and toxicology report. I guess being a childhood friend of the physician on duty at the time has its advantages.”

Harry smiled, “I still know the true name of the demon lord I want to bind into servitude.”

Stevens took in what Harry just said, and at first he wondered if he was just imagining what was going on, but he was also trying to think of a lie to tell and worm his way out of this. But then Stevens noticed the pentagram that Harry was standing in, and as he moved his eyes to the ground around his feet, the blood drained from his face when he saw that he was standing in one as well.