by Frank Lamour
He had woken up early evening, sky starting to cloud again. He’d been asleep for hours. The house still seemed quiet, Sarah still out and he wondered if she was sort of punishing him some way—resentful maybe of how he was changing, getting better.
As he pushed up off the bed, Pinchas had been suddenly seized by an overwhelmingly terrifying certainty of a presence in the room with him, behind him.
Pinchas had turned to look.
Floating up toward the ceiling in the dark was a disembodied eye. It was as if it was still in a face but the rest of the face, a la the Cheshire cat, rubbed out.
Pinchas had stared at vision, completely panic stricken.
The eye stared back at him coldly. And then blinked. Unsure why, but the feeling of terror had that washed over him was so all-encompassing, that it had appeared too much for his little body to handle. He’d started to convulse, his misshapen frame seizing as he collapsed to the floor.
The next thing Pinchas remembered was waking up on the floor in the dark room, body aching as if he’d just run a fucking marathon. Somehow, he knew it wasn’t rational, but he just knew—it was an entity. One of Tjaart’s fucking “mind parasites” that the freaking nutcase had sent to spy on him.
After several more attacks over the next few days, Pinchas, had returned to the House of the Vegetable, to try and apologise, to beg Tjaart to somehow remove the thing, call it off. The tall man however had refused to even come out to see him, staying locked up in his rooms above the garage.
The attacks had continued, at least several a week. When or where they would strike was completely unpredictable and Pinchas vacillated between being sure that it was something paranormal and just thinking that he’d somehow fucked his brain in with the new brew.
Unsure what to do Pinchas had made an appointment with his GP. He’d related his symptoms (though leaving out all mention of DMT or mind parasites. The doctor was an old conservative guy and Pinchas thought he might not entirely be sympathetic with someone who had blasted out his sanity with drugs).
The doctor had told Pinchas that it sounded like a case of late age epilepsy. The vision of the eye was simply an “aura”, an image or sensation that preceded an epileptic seizure. He said that auras were common and known to be at times very strange, and always varied from case to case.
He’d tried Pinchas on a variety of meds but nothing had even touched the problem, some of it making it worse and all just adding a bunch of awful side effects.
On the doctor’s advice however Pinchas had discovered, after a time, that if he didn’t turn to look at the eye, he would thankfully not seize. Even just thinking about turning could sometimes cause a seizure.
The aura, as he now referred to it, though, could last for hours. And the awful sense of this… presence, boring into the back of his neck, and the overwhelming desire to turn to face it, or feeling it might do something terrible, was at times impossible to resist.
Pinchas eventually found that the best thing to do was to lie down. When he did, the location of the feeling of the presence often shifted to up somewhere above. In this case he’d just refuse to open his eyes and would do his best to wait it out, heart racing a mile a minute, until it passed.
In the end he’d just had carry on with day to day life, telling his wife (although having managed to keep it a secret from her for a while—it still a secret from Joel) he had epilepsy.
In his line of business he needed to show toughness, and when the aura hit he just became a bundle of nerves, weak, stupid, gibbering. He refused to be seen like that and the fear of the attacks had kept him increasingly isolated.
Throw a physical object in his path, he thought, and he could handle it but this, this psychological warfare was… was just fucking bad form.
◆◆◆
Pinchas stood and made his way, with the help of his cane, over to one of the two wing-backed chairs he had in the corner of the office and as Tjaart de Pooter—now, he supposed, Thornapple—was shown in.
Sat in the soft leather chair Thornapple looked awkward, although as Pinchas recalled the guy had always seemed to look pretty much awkward anywhere other than maybe in a beanbag or on a filthy mat on the ground.
Thornapple seemed to take some time staring off at various spots at the wall, at nothing in particular.
Pinchas thought the shaman looked skinnier, still dressed in all green, his usual boardshorts and T-shirt, today a giant pendant of smoky black crystal around his neck. He was barefoot.
The left side of his jaw was swollen and blackening with a nasty looking bruise.
“What’s with your face?” Pinchas asked after some moments of uncomfortable silence.
Thornapple lifted a hand to his jaw and it looked like he was trying to hold it in place as he spoke. “Fell,” he said, shrugging.
The shaman didn’t look at all with it, Pinchas thought, possibly concussed. “You drive here?”
“Nutmeg,” Thornapple said. He spoke without moving his jaw, still holding it with one hand.
Pinchas remembered Nutmeg, a weird exhibitionist character he’d known better as Rene.
“You want me to get Joel to take you to the hospital?” Pinchas asked. If he could get into Thornapple’s good graces again maybe the man would lift the curse—or at the very least it would discourage the big man from conducting any further magical warfare on him.
Thornapple shook his head like this was an absurd idea. “I need your help,” he said.
“Of course. Of course,” Pinchas said. “Just tell me what I can do?”
Thornapple sighed, seeming to be gathering himself up to relate the story. “A guy joined up with us about a week ago. Dan. Young guy, maybe twenty.” Thornapple shrugged. “He seemed okay. I did sense something was off but then everyone that has joined up with us is a bit fucked,” Thornapple laughed. “And I haven’t been my strongest self lately. Anyway, I had some money stashed in my room. A sizeable donation I was given.” He stared at Pinchas.
Pinchas imagined Thornapple was waiting for a comment, a judgement, but chose to keep quiet.
“I don’t know how he found out about it,” Thornapple continued. “I don’t know where he’s from. Maybe he’s had instructions from opposing entities. Anyway, around four this morning, I’m woken by the most Goddamn almighty crash coming from the bathroom. I went through to look what the hell was going on and found this guy, Dan, Betelnut, lying on the toilet floor, sink busted, clutching my bag of money.” Thornapple paused. “After that I don’t remember much. He had a little blackjack thing.” Thornapple pointed to his jaw.
Oh sap, Pinchas thought.
“Nutmeg woke me having heard the noise,” Thornapple continued. “Betel had already taken off. He wasn’t long gone, I roused some of the guys to go look for him. We set out in the two vehicles, me and Nutmeg, Valerian, Ephedra in the Golf and Acacia, Mandrake and Kratom in the van.”
Pinchas didn’t know all the names, obviously some had joined after he’d left.
“Me and Nutmeg rode up and down for, I don’t know, an hour. We found nothing except passed an accident on Empire.” Thornapple sighed. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but when we got back, we found Kratom laid out in the ceremony room. Dead. Mandrake had gotten into a fucking firefight with the police and fucking Krayt ended up getting shot.”
Pinchas did his best to follow. Things had obviously changed a bit since he’d been there.
Thornapple sighed. “It’s my fault. I just wanted to motivate everyone to catch the guy, so I came up with the story that the money that had been taken I’d been saving to pay property taxes in arrears. I don’t know I just made something up. I said if I didn’t get it back I might lose the house. Mandrake was supposed to have spent some time in the army, in Israel, but she, uh… it was probably a mistake to give her the rifle.”
Pinchas tried to take it all in. “How much are we talking about?”
“About nine hundred and fifty,” Thornapple said.
&n
bsp; “Thousand?”
“Maybe less. I spent some of it.”
“Shit,” Pinchas said, leaning back in his chair. “Why didn’t you launder it? Put it in a bank? Put it in a safe? Just record it as rent? I mean… taxes, but I… I could have sorted something out for you.”
“Nah, I don’t know about all that,” Thornapple said. “First National Bank for one is run by a coven of witches.” He met Pinchas’s gaze. “That’s a fact! Look it up.”
Pinchas was not sure how to respond to this.
“When me and Nutmeg got back we heard what happened,” Thornapple continued. “But Acacia and Mandrake, still thinking they could catch him, had just dropped off Kratom’s body and headed back out. I don’t know.” Thornapple shook his head. “They said they’d seen which way Betel had taken off and reckoned they could try catch up with him. Acacia told me he felt like he’d been guided.”
Pinchas listened as Thornapple filled him in on how the van had caught up to this guy Betelnut… Dan… or whatever. About how Betelnut had jumped the fence, setting off the alarm, and there was some kid in the garden with what looked like a machine gun.
“Christ,” Pinchas said, after Thornapple had finished. “So he’s still there? Whose house is it?”
Thornapple shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s close to here.” He told Pinchas the address.
Pinchas thought the street name and number sounded familiar. It took him a moment to make the connection and then possibilities began to flower up in his mind.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Thornapple was saying. “Krayt’s still there. I thought of burying him out in the back yard. Then I thought of you and, you know? This is your sort of thing. And if you could, you know, I also wouldn’t mind getting the money back.”
Chapter 28
It was light outside when he was brought to by an insistent rising and falling melody.
Don blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to get his bearings. He felt groggy as hell and for a few moments thought he was on his little mattress back at the House of the Vegetable, up soon for another morning of leisurely work in the garden. But then the events of the previous night all came crushing back.
As awareness filtered in Don became aware of just how terrible he felt. Thoroughly unrested. The sleep had felt far too brief and his body craved to return to it. He felt like he had only shut his eyes for a moment before the melody had awoken him.
Don was lying on his back and now became aware of a heavy weight on his stomach. He lifted his head to see the huge, medicine-ball-like cat lying on his gut.
The little melody persisted, ascending and descending. Don craned his neck to locate the source—a cordless phone in its charging cradle on top of a tall end table, behind the fur covered armchair.
How long had it been ringing? Did he need to answer? Surely that was the Beppe’s job. But then why hadn’t he already? Maybe still in a deep booze, weed and anime inflicted sleep.
Don left the phone to ring. Surely the caller would just give up in a moment. What was the time anyway?
The ringing persisted.
Don tried to think who it could be, not Lesley, as he’d surely get hold of the kid via his cell.
Unable to go back to sleep now, Don, thoroughly irritated, lifted the cat off him with some strain and rose.
The fat cat loped over to the hairy armchair and began struggling to get its bulk up on to the seat. Don helped it up on to the chair then stalked off down the passage to Beppe’s room.
The guest room door was closed, and Don rapped his knuckles on the wood, phone still ringing in living room, and perhaps also upstairs.
He was beginning to get a bad feeling.
“Beppe?” Don called. No answer. He banged the door again and then entered.
The bed was mussed but empty, the cupboard hung open, not much sign of anything inside and Don saw the bank bag and Rizlas were missing from the bedside table.
Don pushed back out into the hall, heading for the kitchen. He felt a low rising nausea, realing what now should have all the time seemed inevitable.
“Beppe?” No-one in the kitchen. The ground seemed to shift. He put a hand on a counter to steady himself. He still felt sleepy as hell.
The phone fell silent.
Don headed back into the living room, now moving fast. He walked over to the entrance hall where, next to the bathroom, was a door that through to the garage.
In the garage there stood a single car. A vintage, silver-grey Aston Martin. Don didn’t know enough to say what model. Not quite the one in the James Bond films, this having more of a sort of hatchback. On the odd occasions that Lesley had stopped by the shop Don had only seen him in a white Toyota Corolla. This had to be his “PUA” vehicle.
As for Beppe, did he even have a car? Or was he just pedalled powered like Don?
Don turned and headed back through the house, up to the second floor, taking the stairs up two at a time. Briefly he checked each room, not sure why though, as he was increasingly certain what had transpired.
In the master bedroom, Don sank down on to the bed. He stared at a door hanging open on one of the built-in cupboards, where the bowl-cut kid had no doubt stashed the maize bag. But just long enough for Don to fall asleep.
Damn, why hadn’t he been more careful? Maybe he’d just assumed the guy would be as afraid of Lesley as he was? Maybe Beppe had just gone for a pack of smokes? That was it. Surely. He was just getting paranoid.
Sitting on the bed, despite everything, Don felt so much like just crashing back, forgetting about everything and returning to a nice deep and all-encompassing slumber.
He really did feel drowsy as all hell—but then it was something else over and above just normal tiredness.
Despite the pull, Don gathered what will he could muster and pushed up off the bed. He walked through into Lesley’s en-suite, ran some cold water in the basin, splashed his face and head and took a long drink from the tap before heading back downstairs.
Halfway down, the phone started to ring again.
Don ignored it and headed back into the guest room. He went over to the bedside table, opened its top drawer, then the next and in the bottom drawer found it. What he was sure was it. A box of Zopimed. One loose blister pack, the paper insert half unfolded. Label indicating the prescription was made out to Mr L Lam.
Don picked up the paper insert and quickly scanned it. Some other boxes too, although unopened. Xanor, Calmettes. Had Beppe raided the Lesley’s stash of script meds, deciding on which to slip him?
Most of the Zopimed blister pack was empty. Christ. Had some been taken before or had he just slipped Don the whole bunch? It certainly felt like it.
No problem, Don thought, doing his best not to freak out. He just had to find Beppe. Just find out where the Goddamn bowl-cut bastard lived and get the money back.
Surely Beppe couldn’t be long gone, Don thought. He himself would no doubt still be fast asleep if the phone hadn’t woken him.
His attention turned again to the phone. The ringtone was still rising and falling through in the other room.
He stood, walked back to the living room, went over to the little side table and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Hello,” Don said, his throat all scratchy and dry.
There was silence on the other end before the voice of Lesley bellowed down the line. “Who the fuck is that?”
Chapter 29
After Thornapple had left, Pinchas returned to his Aeron and swivelled it round again to stare out the window.
Gazing out over the sea of trees from above, he tried to pick out roughly where Lam’s might be. A few years back, after learning there was a new rival in the neighbourhood, Pinchas had commissioned some intelligence on Lam.
A good fifteen plus years younger than him (Pinchas himself now into his sixties) Lam had, up until his move, been based in the Cyrildene area (the new “Chinatown,” after the one on Commissioner pretty much died), still living with his parents and i
nvolved in various short-lived businesses, including the setting up of an alopecia clinic and the online peddling of some kind of herbal Viagra.
His family, also a bit sketchy though, it seemed, appeared to be involved in the running of a number of brothels.
Actually Lesley was quite a smart guy, Pinchas had surmised, not that one would have guessed. The fat man had a degree in engineering that he’d never put to use, instead opting to faff about with nonsense.
It was only after moving into his current place that Lam had gotten into narcotics. Maybe inspired by the large student population in the area, or the slightly counter-culture demographic, or maybe just freed up after having moved out of his parents,’ (who knew, maybe they were okay with prostitution but not with drugs) he’d started with a couple of guys peddling on Seventh. Mainly Cat, coke, meth. Lam had, unfortunately for himself, not realised that when it came to the distribution and sale of illicit drugs, black market did not mean free market. Pinchas controlled the local scene and had done for years now, and anyone wanting to get into the business, in any kind of meaningful way, more than a little bit of weed here and there, needed to clear it with him first.
Pinchas had headed over with Joel and a couple of other guys to Lam’s new digs, to give the man the lay of the land. The deal was Lam could sell anything he wanted as long as it wasn’t cat or coke and as long as he agreed to pay a monthly tribute.
It hadn’t taken much, just playing him a video, and the reputed bad-ass had just rolled over, and the money had started rolling in.
So dealing his bit of Cat, running his crazy bookshop, that was fine, but now he had apparently commissioned a burglary.
Lam needed to be put back in line.
Pinchas pondered his next move.
Get the cash back to Thornapple. Then maybe get hold of the thief, the burglar, this kid who’d stolen the money and rough him up a bit—or a lot—and send him back to the fat man with a message. Ja, kill two birds with one stone. Get in better favour with Thornapple and for good measure keep that shithead Lam in his place.