Unleashed

by Kristopher Reisz

  She stopped yearning for the ritual’s magic after that. She’d never wanted to hurt anybody, she’d just wanted some excitement and a few blank pages to fill in herself.

  Marc went to work for Spence’s dad, planting shrubs and hauling bags of peat, coming home every evening covered in sweat and dirt. The pay was good, the guys at work were teaching him to play pool, and he took every chance he could to walk around with his shirt off.

  Daniel started physical therapy for the torn muscles in his neck and got a job at the deli. Just as he was starting to accept that nobody could wear a harvest gold vest and a name tag without feeling like a tool, it was time for Misty and him to quit.

  When Ilie handed Misty her last paycheck, she blinked a few times, then said, “This is, like, twice what it should be,” she said.

  Ilie started writing on a Post-it note. “In Russia, there’s city called Tolyatti. Horrible city, nothing but old churches and Russia’s largest ammonia plant. The oldest church is the Transfiguration Cathedral, right in city center. My parents went there. I did too, before I left.” He jotted down the name of the city and church in English, then had to pause, remembering how to spell them in Cyrillic letters. “You and Softhead go, light a candle for me, and we’ll be even. Please?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” It threw Misty to hear Ilie say please. “Wait. Don’t we need visas to go to Russia?”

  “You’ll have to bribe some people. Don’t worry. Bribes are very reasonable in Russia.”

  Misty nodded and stared at the Post-it. “So, I’ve always wondered. When you left Russia, you could have gone anywhere. Why the hell did you come to Birmingham?”

  Ilie spread his hands. “What? This is Magic City!”

  They both laughed. Fiddling with his stereo, Ilie fell quiet for a while, then said, “There are easier places to live. So easy, nobody has to really believe in anything. Birmingham? You better believe in something, and you better never forget.” He shrugged. “I’m fat and old, Misty. I run a deli. I deal with teenagers all day. What do I have except what I believe in?”

  Misty smiled. “Ilie, that’s very poetic.”

  He grunted. “Also, I grew up in fucking Russia. I just wanted to live somewhere warm.”

  “Take care, Ilie. Thanks for putting up with me.”

  He grunted. “You too.”

  Val and Daniel were waiting for her in the parking lot. “What was that about?” Daniel asked.

  It had taken Misty a while to get used to the delicate rasp of Daniel’s once honey-sweet words, but eventually she’d decided it added character. Kissing him, she handed him the Post-it. “We’ve got a mission.”

  As she told them about her paycheck and what Ilie wanted, Val made a face. “God, you suck. It’s bad enough you’re leaving me, but now you get a bonus?”

  Misty laughed. Over the summer, Val had grown even more bored than usual with the deli. Misty suspected she’d move on too, before long.

  Val’s mood brightened a little when they met up with Marc. “C’mon, man. When are you going to let me give you cornrows?”

  “I don’t know. You really think they’d look cool?”

  “Yes, I’m telling you. Just grow it out a little more.”

  They walked through the humid summer night, smoked a bowl, and didn’t mention this was the last time they’d get to hang out together for months. The statue of Vulcan stood at his anvil high above the city. A church was having a late choir practice. The doors propped open to let some air in, quavering blue notes of “Hand in Hand” escaped, fluttering into the dark like moths.

  “So you’ll keep an ear to the ground for Eric while we’re away, right?” Daniel asked.

  Both Marc and Val nodded. Val had gone to the furnace twice looking for him. Not only was Eric not there, the Amanita muscaria had disappeared too. But Birmingham was full of dank ruins where the rot-eater god could bide its time. They’d all had bad dreams about Eric gathering a new pack around him.

  “I don’t know what we’ll do if we find him,” Marc said. “It’s not like the police would listen to us.”

  Val crossed her arms. “I hope if we find Eric, we won’t need the police. If I could just talk to him … I don’t know.”

  “You could convince him. I’m sure,” Misty said, glancing up at Vulcan again. “Just keep looking, okay?”

  Birmingham, built on fire and ore, didn’t raise its children so much as forge them. The city had seen firebombs and riots. Werewolves had raced through its streets, howling for blood. A few lines of poetry had held them back, though, because Birmingham tempered love and faith every bit as unyielding as its steel. The rot-eater god might fester at its edges. Eric might recruit more wolves. But as long as there was a voice left, singing, swearing, laughing, and refusing to fall silent, hardheaded Birmingham would stand.

  Misty only got a few hours sleep that night, but when her alarm clock went off, her eyes snapped open and she sat up in bed without any grogginess fogging her mind. She took a shower and got dressed. Her hands shook buttoning her shirt.

  Her mom was already cooking breakfast. Misty was too nervous to eat, though. Milling around the kitchen, they talked about small things, the apartment Marc was thinking about renting. The couple who’d moved in upstairs. That Misty should be drinking orange juice instead of Pepsi.

  “You scared yet?” Her mom asked. “I wouldn’t do it. Go off someplace where I don’t even know what people are saying.”

  “Yes I am, and you’re making it worse.”

  “No.” She rubbed Misty’s back. “You’re a lot tougher than me.”

  After Marc had finished Misty’s breakfast, Misty kissed her mom and promised to be careful, then lugged her huge backpack out into the morning gloom. Marc drove to Daniel’s house. Misty watched the still-dreaming city pass by.

  While Daniel double-checked to make sure they had everything, his dad said, “While you’re over there, why don’t you check out some of the universities they—”

  “Dad …”

  “I’m just saying, a semester abroad could—”

  “Dad,” Daniel said more firmly.

  “All right, all right.”

  Daniel said his good-byes and climbed into the old Lincoln. At the airport, Marc helped them pull their backpacks out of the trunk. Misty squeezed him tight. They’d never spent more than one night apart before. “Just stay out of trouble, okay? Please?”

  “Yeah, you know I will. So you think Val will go out with me?”

  “What? You think Val’s weird.”

  “She is weird. But she’s kinda cool, too, you know?”

  Misty rolled her eyes. “When you stood up for me to Keith and them, and then to Eric—after all that, Val said that she’d always thought you were funny and liked hanging out with you, but she’d never realized how noble you were underneath.”

  “Noble?”

  “Yes. Go talk to her before she remembers what a thick layer of dumb-ass there is on top.”

  “Right, but that’s the word she used? ’Noble’?”

  “I love you. Bye.” Misty kissed his cheek and shoved him aside. She walked with Daniel through the sliding-glass doors, then rushed back out. “When you talk to her, don’t wear so much body spray!” Misty yelled across the drop-off lanes. “You smell the way a porn set looks!”

  Marc cupped his hands around his mouth. “That’s what I’m going for!”

  Misty walked back in without an answer.

  The airport was full of sleepy-eyed businessmen and the aroma of coffee drifting from a little cafe. Sitting together, Misty and Daniel held hands, rubbing and gently pinching each other’s fingers. Neither of them said much.

  Then their gate opened, and they got in line to board. Misty couldn’t take her eyes off the jet. She could hear it rumble and hiss through the concourse window.

  “We really don’t know what we’re doing, you know?” Daniel whispered. “Honestly, we could be in way over our heads.”

  Misty snorted. “Story of
my life.”

  “So if this adventure goes bad, think maybe I could carry you to safety this time?”

  She laughed and remembered that awful, bloody night, lugging one hundred sixty pounds of slack basketball player out of harm’s way. “We’ll see.”

  They showed their tickets to the flight attendant and walked down a ramp into the belly of the plane, curious and nervous and thrilled to see what happened next.

  Here’s a taste of Kristopher Reisz’s first extraordinary tale:

  It was after ten on a nothing-better-to-do Thursday night. Hanging out at the gas station, Gilly sipped a Diet Coke and listened to Sam recount the three-way battle she’d gotten into with her mom and stepdad.

  Sam crashed on her brother Josh’s couch a lot, escaping the ground-glass angers at her own house. She had a key, but Josh’s roommate was a thug-wannabe full of crude words and wormy stares. Sam didn’t trust him alone, so she went to the Texaco where Josh worked and waited for him to get off at midnight. If she called, Gilly always came up to keep her company.

  “Okay, so you pin it up there, and your mom sees it first, right?” Gilly asked, trying to get the details straight.

  “Pinned nothing. I glued it up there.” Josh had stepped out back to smoke a cigarette, leaving Sam in charge. As she talked, she straightened the rack of charm necklaces sitting on the counter, separating the pot leaves from the Grateful Dead bears.

  “You did not.”

  “Hell, yeah, I did. That mother—”

  Both girls looked up when the electronic door chime sounded. The homeless man walked into the store trailing the smell of something gone sour. His skin was burnished brown like antique wood, stretched thin across knuckles and the knots of his collarbone. A tamed crow, sleek blue-black, nestled in the crook of his arm.

  His name was Meek. Gilly had seen him panhandling around Birmingham before but only once up close.

  After church one Sunday, her family had stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. Meek had been there, the crow perched on top of his battered rucksack. He wanted to get some food but only had a handful of change. The manager kept telling him to go, saying he couldn’t be there with the bird, anyway.

  As Gilly’s family walked in, the homeless man turned and smiled at her dad.

  “’Morning, Officer Stahl.”

  “Hey, Meek.”

  Her dad stepped into the argument and calmed the manager down. He wound up buying Meek an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee while the old man waited on the sidewalk.

  “You know that guy?” Gilly’s little sister Caitlin asked after their dad came back inside.

  “Oh, yeah. Meek’s been a legend since before I joined the force.”

  “What’s he a legend for?”

  “Says strange stuff sometimes,” he said through a mouth full of biscuit. When Caitlin pressed him on what that meant, he shook his head and shrugged. “Just strange stuff. Stuff that gets in people’s heads.”

  Now, as Meek entered the Texaco and approached the counter, Gilly noticed the milky blue cataract eclipsing his left eyeball. He said hello in a soft mumble and asked Sam for a pack of Marlboros. She rang him up, stabbing at the cash register keys with one careful finger. Gilly kept quiet, watching the crow watch her.

  “That’ll be four eighty-six, please,” Sam said.

  The old man made a show of patting his pockets. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.”

  “Well … I can’t really let you have the cigarettes, then,” Sam said. “Sorry.”

  “Suppose I gave you something better than money?”

  Sam scowled at him. “Like what?”

  “Well?” Meek looked down at his pet bird. “What does she want?”

  Gilly glanced at Sam, then at the silent alarm button underneath the counter. Sam just tried not to laugh. “Look, man—”

  The crow fluttered off Meek’s arm and landed on the counter. Both girls jerked back. Talons scratching across glass, the bird regarded them for a few seconds.

  “You want to go home,” Meek answered.

  Sam smirked. “Not quite. Actually, I’m—”

  “I know what you want too, honey.” He turned toward Gilly.

  “What’s that?” She wanted him to leave. His eye, like a dead fish’s, grossed her out. It made her squirm when he called her “honey.”

  “You’d burn the world down to become beautiful, wouldn’t you?”

  “What the hell?” Sam stared at him. “You’re walking around telling people who’s beautiful and not? You don’t have any fucking teeth, crackhead.”

  Meek shrugged. “There’s a difference between pretty and beautiful.”

  The comment made Gilly smile despite herself. She glimpsed someone new beneath the desperation and the tobacco-stained whiskers, someone who’d been charming once, someone poetic.

  “Whatever,” Sam said. “Look, if it was my store, I’d let you have the cigarettes, but it’s not. So—”

  “I’ll pay,” Gilly said.

  “What?”

  Pulling a five-dollar bill out of her pocket, Gilly offered it to Sam. “I’ll pay for the cigarettes.”

  Sam glared at her and took the money, handing Gilly fourteen cents change.

  “Thank you.” The cigarettes vanished into the pocket of Meek’s ratty coat.

  “So, now what?” Sam asked. “You read her palm or something?”

  He scooped the crow off the counter, cooing to it. “Aruspicy’s better,” he whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “Reading the entrails of an animal sacrifice.”

  “Huh?” Sam looked at the bird in his hands, then jumped back, smashing into a rack of cigars and rolling papers. “Whoa! No!”

  Hollow bones cracked and popped. The crow screeched. One free wing flapped madly. With steady, calloused hands, Meek tore the bird in two.

  “You motherfucking psycho! Get the hell out. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  Kool-Aid-bright blood pattered to the floor. It ran down his wrists and stained his fingers slippery black. Intestines and tea-colored organs dangled from the crow’s body. Meek dropped the halves of the bird onto the counter and began poking through its guts.

  Sam’s shouting brought Josh charging out of the back. “Hey, motherfucker. Hey!” Grabbing Sam, he jerked her away from Meek, putting himself between his little sister and the old man.

  Meek stirred the crow’s guts with his fingers, ignoring the brother-and-sister torrent raging on the other side of the counter. Gilly stood silent against the wall. She stared at the dead bird. Its polished obsidian eyes still watched her.

  Meek looked up. “The Witches’ Carnival is stopping in Atlanta tonight.”

  “Get out. Get the fuck out now!” Rounding the counter, Josh snatched Meek by the shoulder of his tattered coat as Meek snatched the torn-apart crow off the counter.

  “Yeah! Take your fucking bird with you,” Sam yelled after him.

  Josh almost had him out the door when Meek raised the mass of feathers, bones, and guts to his lips. He kissed them. The bird cawed sharp and angry. It beat its wings. Gilly and Sam both screamed as the crow fluttered up to perch on his shoulder.

  Meek turned toward Gilly. His blind eye seemed to pierce her chest. “Run fast. Leave everything behind. And you can catch them.” Stepping around Josh, he shuffled off into the night.

  The episode left Gilly so rattled, her hands shook for an hour. She’d been certain Josh would murder Meek. They helped Josh clean crow’s blood off the counter and killed another hour until the third-shift girl showed up.

  After Melissa finally arrived, Josh started his final check of the store. Gilly and Sam told Melissa about Meek, his crow, and the Witches’ Carnival.

  Melissa snorted. “My cousin has sworn for twenty years that he met the Witches’ Carnival down in New Orleans once.”

  “You think he really did?” Sam asked.

  “’Course not. He just drinks too much.”

  Gil
ly started for home around twelve thirty, the only person on the highway. The image of Meek’s eye, the color of a gathering storm, floated through her brain and made her skin crawl. She tried to figure out how he’d made tearing up the crow look so realistic. All three of them had been fooled. She turned up the stereo to keep from falling asleep. Her thoughts drifted toward the Witches’ Carnival.

  Rock is dead. Punk is dead. Everything’s dead.

  Hollow-eyed girls and empty-headed boys drifting through neon constellations. Hipster ghosts haunting black-light dance clubs.

  They were in New York before that. There’s always something ready to explode in New York. And the San Francisco thing before that, dirty feet and grotty acid rock. They skipped out before it went sour.

  And before that, howling nights in Mexico City. Smoke-filled jazz clubs in Paris before that, getting drunk and stoned with black GIs who never bothered going home.

  Before that, the Great War plunged Europe into darkness, lamp by lamp. But titles and peers held galas beneath twinkling chandelier light, certain the trouble would be over by Christmas.

  Before that, Vienna. Before that, London and Berlin. Before that, Renaissance Italy maybe, or Beijing’s Forbidden City or the music halls of the Ottoman Turks.

  Nobody knew where they’d come from, but like dragons and angels, the Witches’ Carnival tapped deep into myth and appeared in every culture. They were the Council of Spirits in China and the Wandering Lords of the Hindu Vedas. Homer wrote about the Lotus-Eaters, Shakespeare about Oberon and his court, and Jung explained the trickster archetype. According to what legends you believed, they might have invented tarot cards or could turn themselves into foxes.

  Nobody knew where they’d come from, but they’d been everywhere, climbing the Jacob’s ladder of man’s history. They’d borne witness to autumn decrees and October days during the French Revolution and had a lovely picnic on a grassy knoll in Dallas.

  A band of gypsies tramped across the earth, sweeping the bonds and boundaries of the modern world away with a brush of a hand. Nobody knew where they came from. Nobody knew where they’d turn up, but the Witches’ Carnival was always headed somewhere. They moved on the edge of your vision and melted away like fog the moment you turned to look.