Aeon of Wonder

by Carey Henderson

  Each of the three remaining all began to gather their things. There was nothing more to say to Robert. All of them knew that so long as you didn't cross him, Brook's brother was one of the coolest old guys they knew. But you just didn't cross him. Not the way they all just had.

  "Uh-uh," Robert said. "Leave the weed, the pipe, the papers, the alcohol and that freaking Ouija board. That's your penance, children."

  Nick looked at Robert as though he'd like to kill him. Robert pointed at Jonas, now leaning against the wall gathering both his breath and his pride. "Want the same?"

  "Do you know who my dad is," Nick asked.

  "I do. Board of directors at one of the largest firms in this part of the state. I do work for him from time to time. I've worked with him since before you were in high school. Which one of us do you think he'll believe?"

  "I'm his son," Nick said. "He'll believe me." He pointed at himself as he said the words.

  "All right, then, come on," Robert said.

  Nick looked at him for a moment, then reached down and swept up his jacket and phone. He pouted past Robert and out the door.

  "Kelly," Robert said. "Don't you know better than this? Cain? Really, girl, of all of them, you ought to know better than to play with such things."

  "Oh for... look, Bobby, I'm sorry, ok. We all are. We just wanted to have some fun."

  "That doesn't answer my question."

  Kelly threw her phone into her purse, tucked her hair behind her ear and sighed. "It's all bullshit anyway, Bobby. Just old stuff by old world people who believed in superstition. Don't tell me you believe in that kind of shit."

  "Thousands of years of history you're ignorant of, Kelly. You've absolutely zero idea of what you're playing with. None. Now, come on. Let's get out of here."

  ****

  Two weeks later, the four of them gathered again, this time in Nick's apartment just off campus.

  "Ok, are we sure your brother isn't in town?"

  "Yes," Brook said, "totally sure. He's in Atlanta. I think he's working on a book or something."

  "He's writing a book in Atlanta," Jonas asked, already baked to the point his eye whites nearly glowed red.

  "No, you idiot, he does voice-over work. He's in Atlanta reading a book."

  "Oh."

  "So," Kelly said, "are we all ready this time?"

  "Yep," Nick replied.

  Kelly brought out the new Ouija board. "Got it off eBay. New ones suck," she said. "This one's like thirty years old."

  So again the four of them placed their hand on the planchette and Kelly spoke her poem, this time finishing the full incantation. Nick, Jonas and Brook were all frightened by the ancient-sounding words coming out of her mouth with such ease, as though she'd had them memorized for a long time. But none said a word. None wanted to look scared or admit in belief in superstition.

  When she was done, the apartment was silent.

  "Anyone hear that," Nick asked.

  "What?"

  "Nothing. Nothing at all. No TV from the upstairs neighbor, no cars passing by, most of all, no sirens."

  They all noticed it as soon as Nick said it. Inside the city limits, especially close to the college, the sound of police and ambulance sirens was almost a constant. But there was a hush over everything.

  The planchette started to move. No one said a word, they all watched as it spelled out the word:

  HELLO

  "Holy shit!" Jonas said.

  "Shhhh!"

  Kelly spoke up next. "Are you Cain, the one we have called to from afar?"

  The planchette slid to "Yes."

  "Will you do our bidding for your freedom," Kelly asked. Her friends looked at her but didn't say a word.

  The planchette spelled out the word:

  MAYBE

  "What must we do for you to do our bidding?"

  For a moment, the planchette didn't move. Jonas was the first to remove his hand.

  "No," Kelly said, taking his hand and putting it back onto the planchette. "Not yet. Just wait."

  So they waited, all of them frightened by the lack of sound outside the apartment. Brook suddenly wanted Robert to burst through the door again. Maybe beat some more sense into the boys. But there was no Robert to rescue them this time.

  The planchette began to move so fast they almost couldn't keep their hands on it. It began to spell out an entire paragraph full of instructions.

  FIND ME VICTIM TO OWN. GIVE HIS NAME. ALL MUST SAY MY NAME TOGETHER. ALL MUST GIVE BLOOD TO THE MARK OF CAIN. ALL MUST GIVE BLOOD TO THE MARK OF CAIN. ALL MUST GIVE BLOOD TO THE MARK OF CAIN.

  "Wait, wait, wait," Brook said. "Like, what does he... it mean find it a victim?"

  "Someone to torment," Kelly said. "Someone to fuck with," she said. A crooked smile crossed her face. "It isn't real, you know. So it's not like it'll really happen."

  "I don't like it," Nick said.

  "Sure?" Kelly asked. "You can't think of anyone at the moment you'd like to see get a little torment? No one, well, like maybe someone who ruined our weekend?"

  "You're talking about my brother, aren't you, Kelly?"

  Kelly merely smiled.

  "I'd like to see him get his ass whooped," Jonas said. "Do you have any idea how much money he cost me that weekend? I paid over a hundred bucks for that shit I brought. I'll bet he smoked it, too!"

  "Oh, you know he did," Brook said, "but that doesn't mean we should do this, does it?"

  "Brook," Kelly said. Her tone was comforting and calm. "Honey, this isn't real, ok? This is just an old game people play to do what we're doing now: to get a silly, fake thrill. Like you've never wanted to see Bobby get his! So, you can't think of anything he's done over the years you'd like to see him pay for? Nothing? Wow! He's like a perfect brother!"

  Everyone laughed. Brook chuckled, too. She didn't agree but was scared to say.

  "It's just, well, we've all watched those movies, you know? With stuff like this where, like, stuff nobody believes in kills them, right?"

  "Movies," Jonas laughed. "They're just movies, Brook. We're just having some fun here. Come on."

  Brook leaned back for a moment, never taking her hand from the planchette. She thought about it all for a minute and felt herself embarrassed for taking it all too seriously. She thought about the fact that maybe Bobby did need a good scare after all, if it were all real. "Ok," she said, "Fine."

  "There we go," Nick said. "But are we really going to do the blood thing?"

  Kelly already had a knife from out of her purse. Jonas grabbed it from her.

  "Dude! Where did you get this? It looks just like one of mine."

  "It is, you dork," Kelly said. "Like I keep knives!"

  And with that, they each said the name "Cain" together several times, then each made a small cut into their finger with the knife.

  "Shit this thing is sharp," Nick said.

  "Where is 'the mark of Cain?"

  "The planchette," Kelly said.

  So they all dripped their blood onto the planchette. They were all disappointed when nothing major seemed to happen. The only thing that changed was the sound of the outside world slowly fading back into audible range.

  An hour later, they were all home in their beds.

  ****

  Robert was walking back to his truck from the studio in Atlanta. The parking garage was nearly empty so late at night, and Robert enjoyed the night air and the quiet. He got so lost in his reverie brought on by the cool night breeze that he forgot where he'd parked. He hit the panic button on his key fob. As soon as he heard the horn and made out the direction, he turned off the truck's alarm. Not like anyone ever pays attention to car alarms, he thought, might as well make some use out of the technology.

  One level down on Level 8 he saw his truck. For a moment, it looked as though someone was sitting in his front passengers seat. He stopped, put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the bright, sodium light above him, and focused. It was a trick of his mind, he determine
d, and kept walking. When he got to the truck, he pressed the unlock button on his key fob, turning on the interior lights. No one in the passenger’s seat, so he looked through all of the windows, at the seats and floorboards, just to make certain no one had broken in while he was at the studio and waited to ambush him.

  He opened the door, got into the truck and sat for a moment, remembering from nowhere the weekend two weeks prior. Stupid kids, he thought. They don't know much, if that. Save how to be completely unsocial via so-called "social" media. He'd blame the parents of the world, but Brook was raised by the same parents he'd been raised by and yet she lived as most young people did today, which was glued to her phone, laptop, television and movie screens. She lived on the surface of life, with morals he didn't approve, she drank too much and was too prone to go with the flow of her peers than she should be, given her upbringing. It was just the world they lived in, he figured. The barrage of encouragement for these young people to live in these unhealthy ways was constant and slicked up with fantastic graphics and the best in production values.

  Most of them never stood a chance at seeing life as anything but a surface experience, trading meaning and substance for flash and fun.

  Robert jumped slightly as he looked in the rear view mirror. A man sat in his backseat. He whirled around, already reaching for the .38 snubnose pistol tucked into the console of his truck, but when he turned, no one was there.

  Robert wrote it off to being very tired and mentally worn from dealing with a very prima donna author. What should have taken an hour to read had taken four. It was as close as Robert had come so far to telling the client to shove their book where their brain clearly was: up their rectum. But he'd finished and been paid, so it was time to drive home.

  As he drove away he didn't look in his rearview mirror again, thus he didn't see the man standing in the shadows where his truck had been parked. Had he seen him, and looked closely, he might have thought the man had on a hat or some kind of horn on his head, like a bipedal unicorn.

  The trip home was a three hour trip. Overcrowded Atlanta was the shortest but worst part of the entire drive. Robert hated the city. Just too damn many people for his liking. But as crazy as Atlanta drivers were, Robert noticed they were especially insane as he hit a really busy section of interstate. Anytime someone would pull up close in behind him, they'd suddenly swerve either to the right or left. Some people honked their horns at him.

  He turned off the radio and listened, just to make certain he didn't hear a muffler dragging, or perhaps his bumper had fallen off, and heard nothing. Had he left the tailgate down and something was sliding out? Robert looked in the rearview mirror and the tailgate was up. Nothing blowing around that could have flown out. A glance in the passenger's side mirror gave him a start. He could have sworn that, if only for a split second, he saw a person's head look over the tailgate. Another car honking the horn brought him back to reality. A look in all three mirrors showed nothing back there.

  Finally people began to drive normally around him. The whole scenario had made him somewhat uncomfortable, which is bad in Atlanta traffic. He found himself lagging behind, getting caught in the wrong lane at the wrong speed and he missed an exit and had to drive three more miles until he found the next exit.

  Robert stopped at a gas station after taking the exit and slid his card into the reader on the gas pump. After putting the nozzle into the tank, he walked to the back of his truck. He saw nothing unusual back there. Kneeling down showed him no hanging muffler or anything else. A good tug on the tailgate, just to be certain. There was a sudden feeling of someone walking past him; he turned and no one was anywhere around. When the nozzle shut itself off he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  He was thankful that the rest of the trip was boring and uneventful.

  ****

  Robert lived in a very old house just outside of the city limits. He put it at around 90 years old, if not more. The exterior was beige with white trim. The interior was beige with white trim. There were the usual furniture items. A couch, a loveseat, and in the far corner a refrigerator in the small living room which led into a kitchenette with a double sink, microwave, toaster oven and a traditional oven. What it lacked were other traditional things like pictures on the walls, any sort of decorative touch at all, really, and no television anywhere in the house. When he did have the occasional visitor, Robert always noticed how uncomfortable it made most everyone when they didn't see a television. Like maybe they'd have to actually talk using words and the like. But he did have books and plenty of them. They lay haphazard throughout the old house.

  A misty haze, like an old Ridley Scott science fiction film, often hung about the place, the result of Robert enjoying what he knew to be too many cigarettes. The damp air from the window unit a/c's seemed to somehow catch the smoke and keep it suspended; tiny little bubbles filled with nicotine.

  Adjacent to the living room was the master bedroom, not much larger. Upstairs, Robert had turned one room into a place to put his musical instruments and the other into a guest bedroom. Both floors had a small bathroom, neither floor was even one thousand square feet.

  He walked in the door, expecting to be greeted as per the norm by his two cats. "Brutus, Cassius? You're never not hungry. I'm suspicious."

  Robert walked through the living room and to a small corner hallway leading into his bedroom. On his bed sat Brutus and Cassius staring at the closest wall corner to the bed, growling and occasionally hissing.

  "Oh," Robert said. He stopped.

  "You two see something, I take it."

  Brutus increased the volume of his growl and both cats had begun to swing their tails wildly, ears pinned straight back.

  "Relax, both of you," Robert said.

  ****

  "So, like is anything serious gonna happen to my brother, Kelly?"

  Kelly and Brook sat at a table at the local mall having dinner. They'd been shopping and had decided to just eat at the food court. The massive atrium above showed the night sky but no stars in the city. Kelly looked up into the night and smiled slightly before speaking.

  "No, I wouldn't do that!" Brook noticed that Kelly's voice took on a sing-song quality as she finished, "I totally like Robert, you know."

  "Um, no you don't! You've never liked him. Uh, like, didn't you just post on Facebook about what a self-righteous sexist he is?"

  "Well, he is," Kelly said. "His ego is mind-boggling."

  "Look," Brook said. "He's just brash and gruff. He's really not a dick. Well, at least not a total dick. Besides, you egg him on."

  About fifteen feet to the left of Brook and Kelly the tables ended and a large fountain took over the food court. People threw coins in it and made silly wishes. The sound of the water splashing had begun to work itself into Kelly's head. She couldn't figure out why and it threw her.

  "Are you ok," Brook asked.

  For a moment, Kelly merely looked at her. Then she said, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I guess I do egg him on, huh?"

  Brook's eyebrows shot straight upward. "Did you just?"

  "Yes. Shutup." But Kelly smiled.

  In Kelly's head, however, the sound of the fountain had become something seducing her to look in that direction. She wasn't certain what confused her more, whether it was the sound itself or the fact that she felt herself terrified to look.

  "Kelly," Brook said, "you look like something's wrong."

  Kelly turned her head to the left and began to shake.

  "Oh my God, Kelly! What is the matter with you?"

  Kelly's face had gone white. She didn't look at Brook when she spoke next.

  "Brook?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Do you see... is there a person, over there, like standing in the fountain?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Will you just fucking look, please?"

  "God, ok." Brook turned her head and sure enough, a naked woman stood stock still in the fountain. Brook could not get past how tall the woman was. Well over
six feet. Standing ass-out nude in the water.

  "Uh, Kelly?"

  "Yeah."

  "There's a naked woman in the fountain. A very really like big naked woman."

  "Oh, thank God."

  "What? Thank God for what? That there's a nak..."

  "No. Thank God you see her. Look around, Brook. No one else does."

  Brook looked around the food court and saw that she was right. No one saw a thing. She looked back at the fountain, where a married couple had just given both their children quarters. The children giggled and tossed them in the water. The wife told the husband she didn't think he should fill their heads with silly superstitions. None of them so much as batted an eye at the naked woman.

  "I think we should go," Kelly said.

  "Kelly?"

  "What, Brook?"

  "The fuck did you do to us?"

  ****

  Robert unbuttoned the shirt he had over a tee shirt. He took it off and hung it on the footboard of the bed, still watching his two cats hurl all sorts of feline invective at the corner of his bedroom. He thought about it all for a second and then spoke right to the corner, as though someone was listening.

  "Ok, I'm somewhat impressed by the fact that you actually made it in here. You're too weak to do any harm now though, so split. Go bother someone else. There is no place for you here, not even in the dusty corner. Out. Now."

  Within ten seconds, the cats had ceased growling. They were both turned, looking at Robert and Cassius was purring.

  "That's better, fellas." Robert gave the both a bit of attention and then fed them. As they ate he said, "I think maybe that sister of mine who knows better and her friends got further than I'd thought. I guess that answers the question I asked when I barged in on them the other night, eh?"

  Both cats purred and continued eating.

  Robert got in bed and fell asleep.

  ****

  Brook had nearly begged Kelly to stay at her apartment with her that night. She couldn't understand why Kelly didn't seem more scared. Brook was terrified. She didn't know if she'd ever sleep again. They'd seen the naked woman on three street corners beneath the yellowed sodium light on the way to her place. Kelly merely watched them pass. Brook tried to keep herself from crying. Finally, Kelly had agreed to stay.