Timothie Hill And The Cloak Of Power

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

“Wow, Timothie, I love the purple spikes.” The older woman perched on a silver chair while her stylist twirled his hands through her lavender hair. She settled the salon’s cape around her shoulders.

          “Why don’t you try this, luv?” he asked and spun on one shiny black boot, the silver buckles sparkling in the sun that poured like honey through the spacious windows of his salon. “I can put you under the dryer, and the color will last longer. Then style your hair like this and this – that’s right. Come with me. Magazine? Coffee? Is the music too loud for you?”

          “You promise you’ll make me look young again?” The woman pulled at her left earlobe and smiled. She strode to the dryer and settled herself under the hood. Timothie brought her black coffee. The roar of the dryer drowned out the sound of Jann Arden singing “Under June.”

##

In the district of Oliver, across the city, Timothie’s old friend and nemesis hunched over a pentagram carved into the floor tiles of his condo penthouse. Something sloshed in the basin by his elbow. New York, where he’d last worked in advertising, was a checkered memory. Only Edmonton was real; the gateway to Hell.

Reginald Smith chuckled. New York hadn’t worked out. They’d hated him there, like the company he worked for in Edmonton hated him until he’d promised to make them billions with an invention from the dark side. TopStrategy Marketing didn’t know they were dealing with the dark side. They didn’t care to know.

Thick clots of blood and smoke combined to choke the stocky blond man, who peered into the eyes of the summoned apparition. Bael, the head of sixty-six legions of demons in Hell, desultorily granted supernatural powers to his minions on Earth. Reginald’s lip curled below his blond mustache. He seldom made use of invisibility. Surely, there were other, more potent, superpowers denied to him.

He poured the holy water into the middle of the pentagram. Bael roared and flowed clockwise down the drain set into the blue tiles and the symbols that had summoned him. It was not yet the demon’s time to make his presence known to Earth. Reginald would help it with that awful task when the time came. This was only a trial run for the man and the demon, and Reginald made sure he was in control. He feared the power of the demon but was excited, as well.

##

Timothie threw the black cloak with the silver stars across his bulging biceps. A blast of cold air buffeted the glass doors and rattled the sign in front of his salon.

Maude slipped out the side door, knowing more than she ought to know in this moment of his transformation.  

“Turn off the lights,” she called as she strode to her 1979 Mercedes Benz parked at the curb. Smoke coughed from the exhaust as the engine roared to life. She and her vintage automobile vanished from Timothie’s sight as they rumbled beneath the Old Towne of Beverley sign and west on 118 Avenue.

“’Bye, Maude,” the hairstylist whispered. Since his assistants, Skye and Paula, had gone home, the salon now sat in darkness. As he glided outside, the wind whipped Timothie’s lithe form to an angle reminiscent of the superhero he really was. His cloak billowed over his broad shoulders. He rose into the air. All dust, wind, and fury, the Angel of the West flashed by, and Timothie was held in her arms, invisible, and hurled to the pinnacle of the tallest building in this city of champions. In a spacious room at the top of the towering apartment spire, he confronted his old friend, Reginald, who cowered as the dark froth that had been Bael swirled down the drain to the nether regions.

“What is this?” Reginald asked and held out his arms. “Timothie, you must be a ghost.”

Reginald intermittently still clung to Timothie and the hairstylist’s goodness. Timothie’s superpowers were a surprise when he unveiled the Cloak of Power that allowed him to fly and granted invisibility. His friend’s secret weapon, the Cloak, was alarming to Reginald, whose own secrets were darker and far more dangerous.

Timothie’s baritone voice soothed the hunched figure who sprinkled holy water across the cursed blue tiles of his penthouse floor. “I’m the spirit of Draxxt, not to harm a soul on this enchanted planet, Earth.”

“Draxxt, that planet you say you’re from? You’re a hairstylist from Vancouver. You don’t seem to have a family. Maybe you are a ghost; a disembodied spirit who can fly through walls. I know you, old friend. You can’t fool me. I haven’t seen you for months. Now you just appear here, and I must have left the door open, because I don’t believe in aliens who can fly through walls, and I don’t believe in ghosts. You’re not welcome. Get the frig out, little bastard.”

“I was born with two good parents. Both were killed in the Troll Wars. The king was like a father to me. You choose not to believe that I’m the favorite of kings.  Now there’s something bigger than both of us that needs our attention, because you’re smack in the middle of something dreadful.”

“You didn’t grow quickly; you grew crazy, dude. What’s this about Trolls?” In the background, a small TV droned on about the President of the United States, Dennis Ducksworth, and his policy against globalization. Somehow the news of the day seemed to fit their conversation.

“The magic of the Trolls threw me back to Earth, darling. You know that, and I think you’re afraid. I’m a superhero on Earth, Reginald. You never believed that part of me. It’s only now coming out, the magic, the blessing, the Angel from God.”

Reginald rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know you as Superman,” he said. “I know you as an old friend. I think you spout nonsense, dude. You aren’t from another planet, though I’ve often thought you were! If anything…” The hunched man placed the basin by his feet and stood. “…if anything, Tim, you’re a fool. I knew that all along when I was abusing you, when you left our relationship, and now that you’ve come back like this, when I don’t need you anymore, I think you could be an angel. Marriage was too easy here in Canada. It didn’t work out. You see now what I am?”

Timothie frowned. “Yes, and it doesn’t change anything between us, anything we thought we knew about each other. Both of us are spiritual in our own way.”

A faint whiff of sulfur curled among the beams above his head. “Though spiritual can be a two-edged sword, my old friend. You chose the dark side, and Draxxt be damned.”

His friend snorted. “You’re wrong, darling. Everything’s changed now that I’ve reached my maturity.” He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Now, we have a demon to engage, I think, and soon, too.”

“No!” cried Timothie. “Don’t interfere with my powers!”

“That’s my destiny.”

Timothie chewed on his lower lip. “I’m a force of good in a universe of evil.”

Reginald smoothed his fair short-cropped hair. “I’m not evil. Bael is evil. He’s my servant. He does what I tell him now that I have my mother’s old book of spells, and I use him for good purposes. He has power, and I have the destiny. Now get out of our friggin’ way.”

“Impossible. You don’t use evil for good purposes. He’s twisted your brain, Reg. I’m here to help you overcome what could be the biggest mistake of anyone’s life – getting involved with the dark force.”

“Not all bad,” Reginald said, his hazel eyes glinting with an unholy light. “It’s pleasure, Timothie, not pain. The dark force uses pleasure to get through this unholy life that God has given us.”

The penthouse seemed to sway with the force of the gale outside that pounded the glass windows and whipped blinding sleet against their reflections in the pane. Timothie’s black, star-speckled cape swung about his manly shoulders as he levitated three feet above the floor. Invisible to anyone else, the Angel of the West embraced the stylist with the salt and pepper hair, the dark eyes, and the stubbled chin, and loved him with tender eyes.

“I love you, too,” murmured Timothie to the Angel. They joined hands and disappeared through the wall of the apartment.

Reginald was sure this apparition of his old friend and the heavenly host had something to do with the demon Bael whom he had summoned a short time ago. He glanced at the wall clock. Three o’clock in the morning! The tiles were dry, the basin emptied, and Bael gone.

“I’m not evil,” Reginald objected.

“You’re just drawn that way, like Jessica Rabbit.” A deep hollow voice guffawed from the corners of the room – whether the voice originated with Bael, Timothie, or the Angel of the West, Reginald was uncertain. The cream-colored walls of his entertainment room erupted with filthy cartoon pictures, caricatures of famous presidents and premiers, he and his former partners posturing obscenely across the expanse of wall to the gold Venetian blinds where the black sleet pounded on the windows. There was Nancy and John, Little Jim, Brandi, Maryjane, Klein, rabbits and Elmer Fudd, the fat boy in the striped shirt with a hard-on for Lucy, and his mother and father! His friends and family, and there – there was a young Reginald, doing what he did behind closed doors coming out of the closet where he had melted the hangers and hinges. There was his first piano teacher he called Mr. Roboto, and then – marching across the walls in a riot of black and white, the pictures changed to neon colors and slithered out the window into the night where, Reginald was sure, the entire world would learn of his infidelities and the obscene drama of his life.

##

Timothie, secure in the arms of the Angel, plummeted down to Ada Boulevard where he lived in a condominium with a southern river view fronting a quaint old Victorian mansion. Wrapped in his cloak, the stylist’s limbs and body remained warm and dry. Suddenly, he was home. Timothie’s bedroom sparkled with fairy lights. A Himalayan salt lamp burned cozily like rock candy. He pulled back the crazy quilt on his double bed and spread the black velvet warmth of his cloak over it. What a day! He couldn’t sleep.

True power did not come from a demon like Bael. The demon would grant power to those who spoke the correct incantations, but Reginald could not summon the entire coterie of attending sprites. His spells summoned only Bael, and Bael was limited when alone. Timothie’s cloak, however, possessed abilities beyond anyone’s imagination.

The Troll, Mindbender, provided the perfect opportunity to leave the security of Draxxt and engage in the magic which brought Timothie to Earth. He found the old magic and the old books. The blessed prayers taught to him by the great Troll would eventually summon an Angel to help him in his new life on this confusing Earth. Maude, a witch on Draxxt, came with him to assist.

The Angel of the West, alive in fire and kindling crimson eyes, warm arms, and powerful beating wings, offered a direct link to the existence of the God whom Timothie only recently comprehended. The cloak served as a bedcover at night, slipping him into restful dreams. It tendered protection and power during the day. It loaned invisibility when needed, the ability to fly beyond his dreams of flying, and the ability to see spirits. The cloak was his lover and friend, and he needed no other. Except, of course, for the Angel who had supplied it.

He knew that to an orphan and superhuman traveler such as he, magic had its price, and he may pay dearly for the privilege. Somewhere in the night, he knew, the Angel shielded his home with relentless huge and beating wings.

His protective Angel of the West. Timothie shuddered. “I love you, too,” he whispered.