The Sunday Scaries
Volume I, Number 7
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

The Heliomagus

Appointments were rare and expensive. To be admitted into the presence of the Heliomagus was a rare privilege, and for those to whom it was granted, the restrictions were ironclad and grave: not a word of what passed in the presence of the Heliomagus, under pain of the most dire curses and nondisclosure agreements.
          When his servant ushered in a client, blindfolded, hushed and reverential, and sat the client in the hard chair on the far side of the huge mahogany desk, when the servant whipped the blindfold off with a practiced flourish, what the client saw was the Heliomagus in his beautiful Italian suit, his only occult marker the small solar pin on his lapel. The desk was bare except for a lamé-shrouded object, spherical in shape. A crystal ball? The Heliogabalus would chat with the client, not to put them at their ease exactly, while the servant brought the tea laced with a mild hallucinogen.
          When the Heliomagus deemed it time, he would slide the lamé drapery from the object, letting it pool at the base of the neck. It was the severed head of a man: his black hair in oiled curls, long black beard streaked with white, his eyes closed, but the client would see the eyelids twitch a bit, as if disturbed by the sudden light. The client, at this point, would recoil, but the Heliomagus would soothe them. This is Balthazar, he would explain, a most potent mage of Ancient Persia. An ancestor of mine.
          Eventually the question would be asked: One question, one answer, one hundred thousand dollars, this was the agreement. Will the investment succeed? Will the police find out? Does my wife love another? One question, yes or no, but the Heliomagus had never, never to anyone’s knowledge, been wrong. He removed the top of Balthazar’s head and rummaged his fingers around in his bloody brain, manipulating the hidden wires therein to cause the mouth to twitch and the eyes to roll behind their lids, to find the answer the client most needed. (Balthazar was an old drunk the Heliomagus had spotted on the streets of Boston, whom he had murdered for his marvelous beard.)
          Sweating but exhilarated, the client would depart, and the Heliomagus would wipe his fingers and light a cigarette. But this day, after the woman with the cheating spouse had left, he hesitated and turned Balthazar’s head around. The eyes, open, stared at him. The Heliomagus was afraid, but in the end he formulated his last question.
          Will I—? he asked.
          Balthazar said, No.
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