Thrilled to Death

by James Byron Huggins

  She murmured in Spanish to her father, translating everything that had been said. The blast of the shotgun in this Pleasantville-esque neighborhood was going to be problematic and, with as colorful as my history was and a job I was barely skirting by at, I really didn’t want to be here when the police stopped by. “That thing is pretty heavy stuff, Maria.” It was taking everything in me not to start humming the main song from West Side Story. I was a mess. “Nobody sends something that bad after a newcomer.”

  The newcomer bit touched a nerve judging from the prideful squaring of her shoulders. She was gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that kept you from thinking straight. Five foot nothing but with curves most women fight a lifetime for, and her modest makeup only emphasized her natural allure. Probably just into her twenties. There was some old scarring on her cheeks and the photos on the walls showed a girl whose expression said that she preferred there not to be photographic evidence of her teenage years. I’d guess she was an ugly duckling type, the kind of kid who got picked on in high school and turned to the strange and occult for some semblance of acceptance. Most of the time people cruised through that phase without running afoul with any kind of issue, but once in awhile someone stumbled over something real enough, and that was when all the worst kind of bad would come crawling out. What should have been a gimmick book was actually an old journal of a real conjurer, or maybe an authentic how-to for summoning dark spirits and demons. It was worse if they had a natural inclination or talent, and even though she hadn’t smoothed over all those rough edges, Maria was brimming with raw power.

  Get a young kid who was ostracized by community and peers, compounded by the tragedy of a missing or dead parent—a snapshot judgement I was making about her based off the fact that there wasn’t a mother in any of the pictures decorating the house and the father was still wearing a wedding band—and bam, we have a renegade in our midst. “Renegade” was slang in our world for someone who not only happened upon all this stuff on their own, without guidance or help, but had a real potential to tap into some pretty considerable force. They were the equivalent of giving an eight-year-old an Uzi. I couldn’t remember the last time the term “renegade” came to mind, or any of the old colloquialisms from my past life for that matter, but I could feel the memories stirring.

  “I know what I’m doing.” There’s the wail of a siren, the hallmark of an authority figure who was not going to buy the whole illegal-discharge-of-a-weapon-because-a-demon-dog-was-chasing-us excuse. “Plus, wh—”

  “That thing is going to follow you to the end of the Earth.” Interrupting wasn’t usually my style, but the small window of time was fast closing and this girl had attitude written all over her, even if she was scared half to death. “You need my help, and if you want me to help, you have exactly...” I paused, more for effect than anything else to pull back my sleeve and stare at my old, rickety timepiece. “One minute. Otherwise? They get my statement, you get a smile, my job gets to fire me and I get to be at the bar before happy hour is over. Do you even know what the hell that thing out there was? Because either you’re the strongest practitioner in the city by a long shot or you have no idea what the hell you’re doing and you’re trying to save face right now. That thing out there? That’s an apex predator, a great white shark; it’s as old as time and has remained at the top of the food chain since the dawn of it.”

  “Why do you even think it’s after me?” she asked heatedly, and gestured toward her father. His frustrated rambling had become a kind of white noise to all that was happening. “My father has been losing sleep for a week, saying he’s seen a Devil after him.” I knew she didn’t believe it had been set after him, I could tell by the look that washed over her picture-perfect face.

  “You’ve got an emblem of your belief on you somewhere?”

  She gave a hurried nod, pulling a necklace out with a pendant that represented a faction of witches of Gaelic origin.

  “It probably used him to find you; that probably shielded you. I don’t really have time to give you a whole breakdown of this stuff right now.” Another cry of a racing cop car stressed my point for me. “Why the hell would something like that be after you?”

  There was something incredibly cute about the way she deliberated on whether or not to tell me. That was also a sure sign that this was going to become a complication I couldn’t afford on a laundry list of stuff already well out of my price range. In short, a pretty woman was going to make an impossible situation more difficult. With an indignant huff of air and nod she relented.

  “I did a spell for a client about two months ago,” she said, tucking a wild strand of sun-kissed brown hair behind her ear—dammit, focus. “It was just a tracking spell. I don’t know who the guy was but he paid in cash.” The way she bit her lip told me there was a whole lot more to why she accepted, but judging from what I’d heard about the economy going to hell and the hardship of middle America, it wasn’t hard to guess why it was she’d take a shady, back alley deal in a crunch. “All I had to do was use a piece of what he was looking for and perform the ritual. That was it, I swear. My coven recommended me to him.”

  I believed her. Well, I was an idiot with women and I was always going off believing them, but between the confusion of her father, the wailing siren and the adrenaline starting to wear off from staring down a literal nightmare I didn’t think she had enough in her to lie.

  “And no name?” I asked. I expected the shake of her head. “Anything you remember at all?” We were pressed for time and to make it worse, I had to coach them through some kind of fake alibi for when the cavalry did arrive. “Tell me everything, even stuff you think is insignificant.”

  ***

  Usually I’d throw myself in front of the investigation to try and stall, but time was of the essence and there wasn’t a lot I could do from behind bars. We cooked up a story about a would-be robber trying to get the drop on me and her father coming to my rescue. Of course, that meant I had to get a black eye to sell it, which didn’t take as much convincing as I would have liked. An old friend once told me I had a punchable face, but I owed him money so I took that opinion with a grain of salt.

  I’d written down every detail she told me about the man who’d hired her and, after making her review those notes a second and third time, I instructed her to stay in the house until I could contact her with more information. The sigil wasn’t going to hold very long but it was the only place I knew for her to weather the proverbial storm. The symbol, now correct, wasn’t going to hold because of the quality, forget the mind-numbing attention to detail necessary to perfectly replicate the painstaking intricacy required for each rune to work, the base wasn’t facing the right direction, the circle wasn’t chiseled, the networking of lines that started every symbol and ultimately decided just how powerful it would be would have taken me a week to get down and that’s a rush job. There wasn’t enough time to perfect the sigil, but for the day it would hold. It’s not just about an obstinate, uncompromising eye for detail but belief, too. I hoped that the Stalker would lie low for a while so the shoddy work wouldn’t be so big a risk. Not to mention there was something about the way it looked at me that told me in no uncertain terms that it may have a keen interest to rip me limb-from-limb first.

  Small victories. Hooray.

  CHAPTER 2

  Re-Initiation

  I went home. I lived in a cheap, generic one-one apartment. My dog was rowdy and poorly trained, but he was the only creature not pissed off at the sight of my face so I tended to let him get away with a lot. Max was a fawn and white pitbull, somewhere between a brawny fifty to seventy pounds, depending on the weather and depression (I ordered a lot of pizza when I was down and he was good at getting the crust), and an absolute lover. The breed was misunderstood and I could relate to that, so adopting one only seemed natural. I kept all of my old equipment in the back closet of my modestly sized bedroom and, for someone who was only twenty-five
, it was a lot tougher than it should have been to kneel down and pull the big cardboard box from out of the back. Duct tape robbed me of any attempt to look dignified in my nostalgia while fighting to get to my stuff. Each artifact rifled through was like shotgunning a whole bottle of booze, that flooding fire of unease stoked by embers of melancholia. I guess in the end it was just a painful experience, digging through a past I wasn’t satisfied with.

  I’d cut my teeth as a two-timing hustler, a pauper prince trying to become some kind of concrete king. The city I came up in was a cesspool of violence and crime. I love Cleveland, but it’s a rough town. It’ll unapologetically eat you up and spit you out if you’re not up to snuff. It was even tougher if you were in the lifestyle. That meant anyone who couldn’t carry their weight was bound to find themselves in a shallow grave at an early age. I’d had an affinity for addictive behavior, the best kind of bad was my vice: whenever I came across some cold hard cash I doled it out to whoever had the fix of the week.

  That changed when I tried to pick the pocket of someone who had a hand twice as fast as mine, which at the time was saying something. I didn’t live a lavish lifestyle, but between a forgivable smile and some charming quick-talk, I could escape most of the trouble I stepped in.

  At sixteen I ended up working as the help in a second-hand store owned by the guy who had caught me trying to pick his pocket. The store was a front for a kind of trafficking I’d never imagined. The whole sordid history isn’t important, but suffice it to say I got to look behind the curtain: that thing going bump in the night is very aware you’re looking for it and no matter how far we’ve come as a species, we’ll forever be a staple in its diet. The man who took me in owned an antiques store with a makeshift cafe attached to the side of it. Our clientele was what made the place unique. We didn’t cater to renovating housewives; we instead made our coin bartering with the unbelievable. Witches and wizards were the steadiest customers, but we got it all. It took me a while to believe, but seeing is believing and while I only got a glimpse in the beginning, it was enough to sway me. I was a trickster, so when I tell you they sold me, they sold me.

  Still, it didn’t take long for me to get burned out on that life and, after losing pretty much everyone I’d come to care for, I got out as best I could. Dead mentor, estranged parents, and a nonexistent social circle don’t add up to a very cheerful holiday season.

  I had to get away from any piece of good in my old life. I couldn’t handle this new world. The impossible came with an equal price to pay for it; nobody died clean here and that’s how it ended for all of us. Facedown in a nameless alley killed by some dark piece of modern day walking macabre.

  I’d never been a promising pupil, and I fancied myself something of an anti-hero, so after getting my ass handed to me countless times, I finally curbed the headlining act and relegated myself to the background. The guy who took me in didn’t mind; he used to prattle on about how the biggest difference is made by the smallest influence, but now that I’m on the late side of my twenties and the wrong side of fate, I thought it was best to try and move on.

  After shrugging into an old jacket, boots, and hat, I set aside a belt and continued my search. The shoebox I was looking for was secured in the farthest corner and by the time I got to it, I’d had more than enough time to realize how bad of an idea this was. The problem was that there wasn’t anyone left in this town to take up this fight. They’d died half a decade ago. Better men and women than me. They died and left all the innocence in a sinful city without a champion.

  I shook my head while trying to shake off those thoughts. Opening the shoebox revealed my old life, and I was quick to stow it away in a series of pockets all over my person. It was bittersweet, the feeling of that old weight in my jacket was a cold comfort and yet again I was ushered back to a time much better than this one. Notebook and pencil, two bracelets, a necklace with a pendant that was less a symbol and more a bunch of intersecting metal, a small bag of marbles, a broken watch to replace my slow one, and finally a leather wrist band. You know those really awful ones that got popular for a little while? Yeah. When you create a tool, don’t disguise it in something that’s a fad. Rookie mistake, but I was young then.

  I didn’t carry a gun. It wasn’t that they weren’t effective or that I was against them, but me, personally? I was an awful shot and it’d end up being a liability instead of an asset. Still, a twelve-gauge slug will knock the stuffing out of a lot of things, so I never discouraged someone from picking one up. Sunglasses were the last bit of the ensemble, and once again I was a victim of youth because they were more fitting of a highway patrolman or a cocky fighter pilot. Unfortunately for me it was tough to craft an item and without my mentor being there to walk me through it, I didn’t have the talent to construct anything of worth.

  So, I was stuck with the classics. The jacket, leather band, excessive trinkets, wristwatch, and sunglasses all banded together to make a perfectly ridiculous outfit. I spent a little extra time feeding my dog, then left a voicemail to the closest thing I had in the way of a friend to be on alert that I may need him to stop by and take care of the mutt.

  ***

  It was a cold night. The chill was going to remind me that I was in a leather jacket for most of the day, and already the leather of that comically out-of-style band was irritating my skin. It was closing in on nightfall by the time I poured into the beat up pickup truck I tooled around in. My first stop was the Last Love, a swanky little bar with a nightclub ambiance. They stuck to postmodern blues at the insistence of the owner. Not my scene. My scene was a rom-com on the couch while devouring take-out and having a one-sided conversation with my dog while he gave me very tolerating, humoring looks in between gazing at my food. This was the only thing that might help me get on the right track, though. It was a kind of unofficial gathering for all of those who are in the know. Even I couldn’t help from frequenting it once in awhile.

  It was run and operated by a woman named Gale, no last name. She was the bartender; she didn’t take orders. She’d pour you whatever she was feeling up to making, and she was a profoundly frightening woman. In a world where most of the unbelievable like to name-drop and posture, she was incredibly secretive—even by our standards—and it seemed that nobody ever had any interest in making trouble at her establishment. There was no neutrality banner, no ceasefire agreement; the peace was kept by the threat of Gale and the doorman alone.

  I got there just before dark. The horizon was broken shards of fire combatting the calming black of night. The skyline was made sharper by the contrasted lighting, inspiring a gothic feeling when staring at it. That, or I had just read too much noir.

  The doorman was big. Uncomfortably so. Dead between six and seven foot, he had the frame of a truck to match. A Stetson sharply cut over half his face and yet somehow he was able to make it work. Dressed in loose flannel and denim that was faded and torn by work and wear, not styling, he was a cowboy, down to the tanned leather skin and hide boots. Muscle strained against the fabric, enough to make someone wonder why he wasn’t pile-driving quarterbacks into turf for millions of dollars a year instead of standing idly beside a small club door. Well, the everyday patron might wonder, but we didn’t. They called him a lot of names, but best I could tell the real one was Xander—and big-bodied Xander was looking quite comfortable despite being perched on so small a stool. In fact, I was almost convinced he was dead asleep, a mistake many people had made in the past.

  Beside him was a smaller fellow, one dutifully asking for identification and quickly scanning it. He was a studious looking man with a stare so keen and sharp it cut clean through you. He wore generic clothing that was tailored to him, despite being cheaply made. There was no hint of personality or care in that listless stare, he just mechanically went about the job he’d been tasked with. I hadn’t seen him before and thought I’d do the courtesy of introducing myself.

  “Hey, I’m—”
<
br />   “Janzen Robinson,” the small one said.

  “Uh, yeah—”

  He interrupted me a second time, except this time it was with a finger signaling for me to pause instead of that monotone voice. It was annoying, I decided just then, but I had to choose: me or my ego. “She’ll see you after the first set.”

  I must have watched a dozen people walk in before me and not one got checked, and yet when I moved to enter I ended up colliding with a wall of scratchy, bourbon smelling mass. I didn’t get a thorough pat down; instead, the doorman leaned into my personal space to take an intrusive sniff. It was a none-too-pleasant reminder of the Stalker I had just tangled with. Between what I’d heard about this man and the spellbinding color of his stare, I wondered whether or not he was wholly human. His eyes were decidedly reptilian, a kind of brown and gold agglomeration that dimmed and brightened based on temperament. His rough face may not have given anything away, but those damn eyes did.

  “Nice bracelet.” He was posturing, although making fun of my excess of jewelry and the leather band I was wearing was certainly warranted.

  “Yeah? Well your hat is stupid.”

  That earned a chortle from the small sidekick, and while I felt as if I’d effectively signed my own death warrant, I tried to keep my stare steady and my smile smug. They exchanged a look after the short one seemed to hear something the rest of us couldn’t; whatever passed between them garnered me entrance. Before I could make it all the way through, the doorman and I checked shoulders. I saw it coming, so I put every bit of my two-hundred-pound frame into it.

  I stumbled through the door feeling like an asshole who just tried to tackle a brick wall.

  Inside was spacious and dimly lit with the kind of atmosphere that would be ideal after a long week. The music was magnificent, even though I wasn’t a jazz guy. Give me alternative any day, you know, wayward revolutionaries and misguided angst. That was me. I sidled up at the bar and waited patiently. From here I was able to watch the dozen or so nobodies populating the place. Everyone was giving the talent on stage his proper respect, and while quite a few of the glasses were empty, not a single complaint was being voiced. From here I could see Gale’s back. She was leggy, lost between a well-lived forty or a hard-partying twenty. She had a kind of realistic ageless quality, really, because no matter where the truth lay, she was still impossibly lovely. Her auburn hair flowed freely down to a wasp waist; the curved line of her body continued down into toned legs crossing one another. I’d speak on what a great ass she’s got, but I like to think myself better than that.