Magic Dude

by Lee Hayton

  “Here you go.”

  Candy plonked the glass in front of Tyler. Beads of condensation grew on its icy sides. When he lifted it, they clung to the palm of his hand. A soothing balm that he’d missed for far too long.

  “Here’s to Candy and the return of her stone,” Tyler said. Wilma glared at him, crossing her arms. “What?”

  “Bad enough that no one even bothers to ask if I’d like a soft drink,” she said. “But now you’re doing toasts just to rub it in?”

  “I can go back—”

  “Don’t bother,” Wilma said, cutting off Candy’s offer before she could get it out.

  “You know that Wilma’s favorite thing is sulking.” Gary softened his words with a smile, earning himself a poke of Wilma’s tongue. “Let her be as happy being grumpy as she can be.”

  “Hear, hear.” Tyler chinked his beer glass against Gary’s and Candy’s, raising it up to Wilma who continued to scowl at him. He lifted the glass up to his mouth, his throat and stomach arching toward it, craving its bitter quenching.

  The foam on top hissed. Instead of swallowing the first mouthful, Tyler gave a bark of surprised laughter and held it close to his ear.

  Hiss. It sounded like a snake coiling out of somebody’s midsection in the trials. An echo of the snake that Gary had felled with one stamp of his boot.

  Tyler slammed the beer down on the table and stared at it, wide-eyed with horror. He rubbed his temple. A headache dug sharp claws into his skull.

  “Where’s your son?” Tyler looked over at Candy, wide-eyed. Fear crawled onto his back, like a long-lost pack settling back into place. “Your little boy? What happened to him?”

  Candy frowned and shook her head. “I don’t—”

  This time, Tyler cut her off, “You do. You must.”

  The claws at his temples turned into spikes, hammering deep into the side of his brain.

  “What are you talking about?” Wilma unfolded her arms and put her hand on top of Tyler’s. He stared at it. So tiny. A child’s hand. A curse that the stone hadn’t been able to break. The foam on his beer hissed.

  “In the trials, you had a small boy.” Tyler looked back up at Candy, his eyes pleading with her, begging to be wrong. “I sat and had breakfast with him.”

  “I don’t understand.” Candy shook her head, looking to Gary and Wilma for help. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a son.”

  “Tyler?” Gary snapped his fingers, drawing Tyler’s attention. He saw a frown of concern etched on the warthog’s face that he didn’t want to see. “You said yourself, the trials were just a dream.”

  “No.” Tyler shook his head violently. It rattled his brain around in his skull, amplifying the pounding already in place. “Everything that happened in them is repeated here.” He stabbed his forefinger down at the table. “Everything!”

  “I don’t know what you mean by the trials,” Candy said. “I’m not in trouble with the law if that’s what you’re implying.”

  Tyler shook his head again, his vision now pulsing red. Nausea rose in his stomach. The hiss from his beer scratched fingernails down an internal blackboard until he couldn’t stand it any longer and smashed the glass to the floor.

  “Hey!” the bartender yelled. He walked to the hinge in the counter and flipped up the top to step through. “You can’t go doing stuff like that in here. You’ll pay for that.”

  “Tyler?” Wilma looked at him with big, blue eyes. Her face was kind. When had Wilma ever looked with kindness at somebody, let alone him?

  Knowledge settled on him like a shroud.

  “This is a mistake,” he whispered. Tyler looked at his hand. It strobed between clean and covered with blood.

  He looked at the concerned faces of his friends around the table. A table in a bar with a drink in front of him. All he’d ever wanted out of life.

  “I’ve made a mistake!” He stood, knocking over his chair then stumbling on its exposed legs as he turned and tried to run away. The beer on the floor hissed at him still. As Tyler watched, it formed into a long trail of brown ale that solidified into a glistening green snake. He stopped short, fear bubbling up into his throat and choking him.

  Candy put her hand on his shoulder. “Calm down. Everything went exactly as it was meant to. Things may be a bit difficult to follow at the moment, but once you’re all healed up, you’ll understand.”

  Tyler shook his head, withdrawing a step from her. “You’re not the rightful owner of the stone.” He snatched at Candy’s hand, grasping her wrist so hard that he could feel the bones grinding together.

  She shrieked and struggled to pull away. Tyler held on, fighting to keep her close.

  The bartender put a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, spinning him around. “Get your filthy paws off her.”

  Tyler ignored him, digging his fingers into Candy’s hand, tearing at her skin, clawing into her flesh. He wrenched her fingers back at an impossible angle, feeling the bones bend and then snap like twigs.

  “It’s not yours,” he shouted in her agonized face as the stone popped free.

  For a second, it slid between Tyler’s fingers, slick with blood, then sprang upward, jumping into the air. Three hands reached for it as the stone spun, over and over, impossibly hanging above their heads. Then it socked into Tyler’s palm, safely at home.

  “I made a mistake,” he whispered into Candy’s appalled face.

  Ignoring his injuries, Tyler ran.

  Chapter Twenty

  The oppressive concrete stairwell didn’t cast its fears over Tyler during the second descent. He didn’t have time to think, too engrossed in escaping the men and women chasing, and the horror of what he must do next.

  The snakes. It always came back to the snakes.

  Tyler’s unspoken ambition in life was to move to Ireland or New Zealand. Some nice little pocket of the world where his nemesis wouldn’t always lie in wait, disguised as a hose or a stick for careless boys to pick up on their path home.

  The freedom of living in a country where you didn’t have to hold that fear at bay all the time just to live. That would be paradise.

  Thus far, the furthest Tyler had gotten in his ambition was to identify where to go. The means to get there and set up a successful life were still a quandary, waiting to be solved.

  The soles of his feet began to hurt, slapping against the concrete with such force. Tyler jumped two or three steps at one time, pushing through the wall of exhaustion to come out the other side, sweaty and still with an impressive run in front of him.

  How many stories left to go? He couldn’t remember. That’s what happened when you spent half your life drunk and slumped in a chair. The most ambitious thing he’d ever done was sell weed on the side to pay his rent. Job done. His easy smile and casual manner earned him a reprieve from having to hit the streets and sell every day. No one—not even the most crazed meth dealer—would look at Tyler and think soldier. No one would believe him hard-working, even if he tattooed it on his face.

  Oh, God. Tyler realized he was too laid-back to even be successful at the one thing he bothered to do.

  Another flight. Tyler couldn’t tell if the footsteps that engulfed his hearing were coming from above him or were his own echoing back. Despite his anxiety about the coming task, claustrophobia began to make inroads again. Nibbling through the walls of heightened terror so they could snuggle in, nice and tight.

  The door.

  It was sooner and later than he’d wanted. Tyler leaned against the wall outside, panting as his breath tried to catch up with his newfound determination.

  His lungs burned, the fire almost as bad as when the man had stabbed him. Anxiety poked and prodded at Tyler’s mindset: what if the actual owner had already gone?

  The snake that Gary had crushed with his foot sat inside the small first room. Its body had begun the long, slow task of decomposition. Even being so clearly dead, didn’t ease Tyler’s revulsion. His guts churned, already stirred into unrest by the long ru
n downstairs.

  Just do it.

  Now that he’d stopped running, Tyler could hear the progress his pursuers were making. He hoped that Wilma and Gary were okay.

  What if Candy turns on them?

  Then she’d probably end up with a surprisingly robust fight on her hands. Stop thinking up excuses!

  Tyler pushed himself away from the wall and stepped into the chamber. He ignored the trails formed from his blood the last time he was here, being carried through.

  The second room still held its bounty of death. Tyler’s gaze locked on his father’s, the eyes unseeing. He might even be technically alive, but his brain capacity had departed long ago.

  A hiss came from behind him and Tyler turned, familiar tentacles of fear creeping up his spine. As he watched, wide-eyed, mouth dry, a snake slithered out from base of the wall, an impossible feat. The creature ventured forward, tongue flicking out to taste the air. It reached the cage in the middle of the room, wriggled in through the bars and then coiled into a circle.

  Tyler looked at the wall. The plain concrete stared back at him. Outside, the echo of footsteps became steadily louder. Soon, others would be joining him. If Tyler was going to do this thing right, he needed to do it now.

  He pressed his hands flat on the wall and started to feel for a gap with his fingertips.

  There!

  His fingers found a slight depression on the wall. Tyler pressed against it, nothing happened. There was absolutely no give.

  “Come on,” he muttered under his breath. There had to be some way through. A snake couldn’t slither straight out of concrete!

  Tyler dropped to his knees, feeling low along the floor. Although his eyes insisted that it was flush with the ground, his fingers told another story. They squeezed inside a gap, to his eyes molding with the flat gray expanse of the wall. When he’d wedged them as far under as they’d fit, Tyler hooked them, pointing upward, and pulled the door open.

  The snake woman from the trials stood inside.

  Tyler backed up, his feet moving so fast that he almost tripped over himself. When he staggered, his flailing hands found the bars of the cage and gripped tight.

  The creature in front of him was every bit as disgusting in real life as she’d been in the trials. Every part of her body was in constant revolting motion. Snakes slithered and hissed, forming the bulk of her body, her limbs, her hair, her face.

  Tiny snakes coiled into eyes then straightened, forming into a blink. They spiraled until Tyler’s brain insisted they were eyes watching him again.

  You need to give her the stone!

  The job he’d run down here to do—that he’d damaged sweet Candy to accomplish—suddenly didn’t seem important.

  What Tyler should really do was head back upstairs and order another beer. One that he wouldn’t smash to pieces on the floor. Yup. A great idea. A refreshing beer and good company and he could forget that there was a snake-creature haunting the deep bowels of the hotel.

  She tried to step forward, maybe to reach her arms out toward him like the worst horror movie monster ever created. Shackles held her in place. Tyler’s relatives had chained her inside a hole in the wall.

  A fucking great idea. Shut the door and walk back upstairs.

  Tyler looked down at the stone in his palm. Useless again, it sat still and colorless. The play of light that he’d thought an integral part of it had ceased as soon as he stepped into this chamber. The humming and pulsing that he’d grown to accept and even love, stilled.

  Down here, it was just a rock.

  The creature stretched out a snake. As Tyler watched, it broke free of her body and slithered across the floor toward him. It touched his foot while he stayed frozen in terror. The stone glowed with the faintest pink light.

  A sign. The woman had sent him a signal because—despite knowing what he had to do—Tyler was still behaving like a baby.

  They’re just imaginary. Dream snakes can’t hurt you!

  In apparent protest at his thought, the snake at Tyler’s foot lunged forward, plunging teeth dripping with venom into his leg.

  The action broke Tyler’s paralysis. He reached down, clutching at the snake and digging his fingertips into its body with a sneer of revulsion. It let go, slipping through his hand and sliding back to its owner.

  The footsteps outside grew louder. Tyler could make out individual treads inside the noise. Another minute, a few seconds, they would be here.

  He closed his eyes against the horror, then snapped them open again. To not be able to see the writhing creature in front of him was worse.

  In her belly. You have to put the stone in her stomach.

  No. No. No. Don’t touch it!

  Tyler shuffled forward like an old man with limited mobility. His torso arched away as his feet stepped closer. The hand with the stone crept up behind his back, hiding from the sight that Tyler knew would shock him from his dreams forever.

  Close enough, he reached out his hand and stuck it inside the tangled mess of snakes that made up her belly. As he did so, the others arrived, panting, at the door.

  “Stop it!” Candy stepped forward and grabbed at Tyler’s shoulder. “Get your hand out of there.”

  Tyler fended her off with one hand, while the other stayed embedded in the creature. The stone in his hand hummed, pink light spilling out through the gaps between slithering snakes.

  Gary walked hesitantly up beside him. “Tyler, that doesn’t look very safe, dude.”

  “It’s what I need to do.”

  Wilma spoke up, “Are you sure? If the stone is meant to go to a relative of yours, are you really banking on the snake demon to be that?”

  Tyler looked into the snake creature’s eyes. The tiny bodies making up her face creased into a kind smile. He shuddered with disgust. The revolting sensation from the snakes touching his flesh crept up his arm and spread out across his skin until each inch of it was crawling. Tyler’s mind retreated to a corner to rock back and forth, muttering “No.”

  “You can let go now.”

  The creature’s words slipped into Tyler’s ear like a flicking tongue. He wrenched his hand back out of her belly, cupping it in his other hand, gagging in distress.

  One by one, the chains popped off the creature. It stepped forward into the room, its eyes glowing pink.

  “Dude, I think we’d better get the fuck out of here.”

  Tyler tried to move, tried to get to Gary’s side so they could leave together. His feet were glued to the floor, frozen in place with a terror that was too big for his mind to endure.

  Then a slow clap sounded behind him, and the room plunged into darkness.

  Tyler screamed.

  # # #

  “Hey, buddy. No need for that.”

  The lights turned back on. An illuminated pink sign contoured to the room announced joyfully, Third Trial – complete! On the floor around Tyler, dead men picked themselves up, reassembling their wounded bodies into operable carbon-based life forms.

  “What?” Tyler stared around him, trying to work out what was happening. Wilma and Gary shrank back against the wall, fists raised in defense.

  That slow clap sounded again. A man walked out of the smaller room, a smile of joy on his face. “Give the stone back to him, Patricia.”

  The snake creature transformed into a dowdy woman, aged in that impenetrable spread of late-forties to early-fifties. Her hair was iron gray, and the skin around her eyes and mouth told of a long life spent smiling. She bounced the stone on her hand a few times, then offered it to Tyler.

  “What? No.” Tyler looked at the man who’d entered. “The stone belongs to its rightful owner.”

  The man nodded with good cheer. “For the time being, that’s you.”

  Tyler looked at the stone, colors shifting and dancing on its surface again. His palm ached to hold it, have it back where it belonged.

  “This isn’t right.” His mind still felt broken and paralyzed. New information slunk inside and
sat in the corner, unprocessed.

  “Here you go.” The man plucked the stone from Patricia, now looking more like a friendly librarian than a creature who would haunt Tyler’s darkness. “It’s all yours.” He pressed it into Tyler’s palm. “Not to mention”—the man pulled a book out of his inside pocket—“these instruction manuals are also now yours.”

  Tyler looked at the book. A thought connected to another one. He frowned in concentration, waiting for the final piece that would make it a whole idea. “This was a trial?”

  The man leaned forward with a grin, buddy-buddy. “Don’t tell management, okay? We’re not meant to offer do-overs of the trials. A one-time-only deal is the rule of thumb we’ve been living by. However, I made an exception in your case.”

  The stone felt good in his palm. Right. Tyler closed his hand over it. “Why would you make an exception?”

  The situation was so strange that Tyler expected at any moment it would again change, into something better or far worse. He felt as stupid as if he was questioning a dream.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since one of your family members passed the second test of the trials?”

  Tyler looked at the man, shaking his head.

  “Two hundred and fourteen years. I’ve been sat out in that hot desert every day, waiting to pass on that stupid manual for centuries.” He bowed low. “You’re welcome.”

  “What?” Tyler decided to stick with his original question.

  “I sit out there, and the challengers come through at least once a week. Got to give your family credit, spawning a multitude of progeny is a talent that almost all of you possess.” The man wiped his hand across his brow. “It’s been three generations since anybody even made it through the first one.”

  The man leaned forward and tapped on the book. “I thought that I’d be lumbered with that thing forever. Then you came along and got so close…” He shrugged. “I decided to adjust the rules slightly to give you another go.”

  “Who are you?”

  The man stuck out his hand for a shake. “I’m Albert. I’m the Knight of the Stone. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”