Black magic.
The silence broke when my rotary phone jangled about ten times on the kitchen counter. I picked up the receiver and remained quiet, about to crap my pants.
"Charlie?" The voice was deep, breathy but almost raspy. No one I recognized.
"Yeah?"
" You're mine." The phone went dead.
Goddamn Mondays.
Chapter 3
The Dork Of Darkness
Most people don't believe in black magic, but reporters…well,
good reporters anyway, should know a little something about everything. And if there's something a good reporter doesn't know, then he should have at least one reliable contact who does.
Darius The Dungeon Master. At least, that's what I called the greasy-haired twenty-five-year-old who still lived in his parents' basement and played RPGs-that's Role-playing Games to non-nerds-and World Of Warcraft at all hours. A real techno-geek. And my best source on black magic. He loved the nickname I had bestowed upon him, although he narrowed it down to Master. Of course.
"Jesus Christ, Landers, you smell like pig intestines."
"Nice to see you again too, Darius."
"What's that?"
"I mean,
Master," I mumbled.
"That's better. Now what brings you here? Business, or pleasure?"
I wrinkled my brow, unsure what in the world kind of pleasure he could be referring to. My guess was he had never been laid.
"Information," I said. "Right up your alley." Then, I removed my shirt.
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah, exactly. What can you tell me about them?"
He closed his eyes and touched the sigils. Abruptly, he wheezed out a strangled fear, and something threw him about two feet backwards. His back crunched and he stood up, holding his right side. He let out a long, deep breath and gave me a look that said,
What the hell was that?
"You get anything?"
"Never seen anything like it. Blew my aura to bits."
"Great," I muttered, more to myself.
"You're a dead man. I don't know who or what you pissed off," he said, voice low and trembling, "but I can't undo it. I can't help you."
The fog pulled a gray veil over my ride home. Old Forge Road sat close enough to downtown for the smog to prick my nose, but far enough out to hear the crickets and the peepers softly chirping. I buzzed the electric windows down to feel the cool air brush my skin, and listened to my tires hum over the smooth pavement. Autumn would be here soon. My eyes felt pasty with sleep-deprivation and fear lit up my body with adrenaline. I didn't want to die.
When I first pulled into my driveway, I thought an unfamiliar piece of statuary sat on my front lawn. It must have been the fog. I walked onto my back porch, closed my eyes, and put my arms out. Was I giving myself up for dead, or hoping I might fly?
A sudden image of a knife came into my mind, and what I had to do became clear. In the basement, I had a large, plastic tackle box filled with hunting supplies: arrow tips, tape, bungee cords, rope, and other various items. I found my black-handled skinning knife and went upstairs in search of whisky and rubbing alcohol. After disinfecting the blade as well as I could, I took a few deep breaths. This was going to hurt like Hell.
I ripped the knife across my chest in one swipe, making the cut neither superficial nor deep. Sweat beaded and then dripped over my blood, which poured and poured. So much blood that I wondered if I was going to die. At least I would go out with a fight. The idea was to change the sigils, not make them deeper, since I couldn't peel so much skin from my body without dying. Then, a thought occurred to me: what if I made it worse? What if I changed the sigils into something I couldn't fight? Well, I hoped I would be no worse off than what I was right now.
A cold breath shivered across my skin, covering me in ice. The ice cracked and fell off, the blood had dried, and the wheals returned to their previous state, glowing orange in a shimmering wave.
Shit. I was late for work.
Chapter 4
Dead Men Tell No Lies...for Obvious Reasons
Lieutenant Baker. His tough-talking, gruff demeanor demanded respect. He made perps pee their pants and cry for their mommies with a single glare. Those squinty, concentrated eyes probably came from a lifetime clocked on the shooting range. And he hated my guts.
Our usual conversations consisted of, "No comment" and a variety of grunting noises--his, not mine.
Most reporters tried to make friends with law enforcement. Some were successful, some not. Several years ago, when I first started at the
Gazette, I reached for a handshake; he leaned down and spit on my thumb. "Keep your nose out of my business, kid. People get hurt because of idiots like you." Not exactly a people-person. I returned the gesture with a hearty hocker of my own, which was greeted by his laughter and, "I like you, kid."
"Charlie here," I answered the phone, one foot out the door on my way to work. Baker
harrumphed and cleared his throat, not like some bigwig opera star gargling with hot lemon water before a performance but a regular Joe who never said anything regular. We never had a working relationship so if he had contacted me, of all people, I couldn't imagine that circumstances were exactly peachy.
Baker cut to the chase; his gruff voice made him sound like he was hitting the ciggies harder than usual. "You knew Darius, right?"
"Knew? As in, past tense?"
After a deep breath and a long pause, Baker answered, "Yeah."
"How?"
"Medical Examiner hasn't a clue. Kid like that…didn't get out much but okay in health. Not a heart attack, not like he could have died of old age, but…"
"But what?" A much longer pause followed. Baker had considerable power, which meant he had to be careful about what he told a journalist. "Off the record, Lieutenant. I knew the kid." Loose-lipped reporters ended up dead or unemployed. I had to know, for me. Darius rubbed me the wrong way, sure, but to me he was still a kid. Scary-intelligent, too. Given a little more time…who knows? He might have redeemed himself.
Baker gave a weighty sigh, probably considering his options, and said, "I don't know. Some
straaange things are happening in this city lately. All those marks…all that blood. A shit-ton of that kid's blood in his mother's basement and you know what we turn up? Not a scratch on him, not even a paper cut, except these faded marks, looks like he'd been branded."
The blood-smell clung to the musty air, sweet but metallic. Was the basement always this dark? I slouched against the white-painted cement block, unsure what held me up. Dizziness blurred the crime scene. My stomach roiled. Such a humid basement, with autumn almost here.
Slow, heavy footsteps labored towards me. High heels and sadness. "Hello, Charles." Darius's mother chewed her lower lip. "Baker just left." She hugged herself tight, below her ample breasts. "I'm glad you…"
I nodded. Blood blanketed the basement floor so heavily that it fed into the floor drain in thick, diagonal lines. The white disk in the floor had cemented with the stuff, which had dried an ochre color.
Someone or some
thing had painted the walls in blood. I recognized the images immediately as the ones cauterized to my chest.
Darius was my best, hell, my
only, chance to get out of this alive. And he was dead, murdered with black magic. I never would have believed it even a week ago, if not for the sigils that hummed with energy beneath my shirt. A slow, strangling tightness came over the skin of my chest, giving me a pronounced sensation of breathlessness.
Maybe we could get matching body bags.
Two inches through the
Gazette's door and my brain panted, Coffee coffee. My merciless mantra, the chant of brain-dead reporter drones everywhere. Well, and us shlubs about to die a horrible death from an undetermined cause.
I shuffled towards the coffee machine, one of those big stainless steel jobbies with a spigot. Too bad the bosses didn't provide an intravenous coff
ee drip. A little splash of said java just dampened my upper lip when an electric pain tickled and then slammed my chest, throwing me off-balance. I wobbled a few steps over to my desk. Then the phone rang.
"Hi, Charlie. I bet you remember me."
"You got a funny way of saying hello," I answered. Something broken-high pitched here, raspy there-replaced the previous masculine doom-n-gloom in his voice. Maybe this nut-job had a cold.
"If you want to live, you will do me a favor. If you refuse, well, I have your
soul. I can do whatever I want, to it and to you. Without your soul, little pieces of you can just…slip away."
"What do you want?" I snarled.
"A lock of your brother's hair. Doesn't have to be a chunk, maybe a few strands from a hairbrush."
Another man of my same comic persuasion might have laughed and said,
Yeah right. But I understood magic, its principles anyway. A strand of hair revealed scientific and magical DNA. Hairs, fingernail clippings, skin…anything once attached to your body could be magically manipulated. I would rather slit my brother's throat.
"Hello? You still there, Charlie? Your brother's name is Robert Landers, correct?"
"No," I whispered. "Anyone else."
"Oh Charlie Charlie Charlie," he said, making tisking sounds, "I was just starting to like you, but disobedience won't be tolerated, although I suppose there are worse things than death."
"Like giving your brother's executioner the axe?" Suddenly, lightning jolted my spine in a twisting arc, and I thought I was done-for. Tightness pulled at my chest, and when I opened my mouth to try to breathe, I couldn't. Soon enough, I caught my breath, I glanced down to see the sigils glowing orange. Did I mention I can be grumpy and stupid when I'm tired? In my defense, he didn't even let me have a cup of coffee.
"Three days."
Chapter 5
Oh Brother
My little brother Robbie walked around in Bermuda shorts and sandals stained with mud even now, while the leaves changed colors and the weather began to cool. He wasn't old enough to be a hippie, but that didn't stop him. A Bud Light in one hand and a heavy, metal spatula in the other, he didn't mind helping me cook out. Robbie was a wiz at outdoor cooking.
"It's been a long time since we just got together and you know, hung out. Thanks for inviting me over, big bro." His lackadaisical attitude always irritated me. Life, for him, was an ocean in the sun; it all came so easy.
Robbie had long yellow-brown beach bum hair, curly from infrequent washing. His wavy tresses flapped in the crisp breeze, tempting me. Presumably, one drifting strand could make life hunky-dory again.
My kid brother floated and couch-surfed through life without a care in the world troubling his empty head. Mom's favorite. He had a pocket full of dreams and a wallet full of lint. Society wouldn't miss him, much. We lost contact with each other for years at a time. His turbulent relationships sometimes made phone calls impossible. Bonded by blood and mitochondrial DNA, that's where our common interests stopped. We were as different as apples and elephants. But he was one funny dude, and I loved the hell out of him.
The grill's charcoal smoke whipped in long bursts, hot and high. Robbie coughed and waved at it. Something about that sooty air on an almost-autumn afternoon filled with fleecy clouds made me uneasy, to say the least. Bad omen, the darkness and heat. I never exactly believed in hocus pocus, but lately, my mind had opened wide as the Grand Canyon. Hopefully, I could persuade my brother's into opening another notch.
"I have to talk to you," I said.
He belched, beer in hand, and said, "Talk away."
So I told him everything, and showed him the sigils. His usual big dufus-y grin turned into a grim line. "Man, I'm not into self-mutilation. Not cool, bro."
"I didn't do this to myself." Remembering all the masochistic things I
have done to myself, I stifled laughter. "One day they just…showed up."
"Yeah right. And one day I banged the Tooth Fairy."
The lawn chair's webbing pinched my legs as I leaned back and put my hands behind my head. A light wind
shooshed fallen leaves across my yard, and then skittered them against each other.
"I just…." For a moment, I lost my train of thought. I needed him to understand the danger. "I need you to trust me."
Robbie laughed the way you do when humoring a child, and slapped my back. "No sweat, bro. Just don't mess up 'the do'." He licked his palm and slid it over his hair. How hygienic.
The little twerp didn't believe me.
Later that Evening
Tick-tock. Two days left and I didn't have a backup plan in case my brother thought I was making up the stupidest story, ever. If not for the look on Robbie's face, I might have been slower to take action, but I knew that look. The indirect stare in which someone thinks you're a raving loony but doesn't have the chutzpah to say so. Instead of making inane conversation about the weather and the ever-increasing aluminum siding prices, I made up an excuse about having to get up early for work, and rushed him out the door. Funny thing, too. My brother and I were never crossed-fingers tight, but our entire family knew hugs and kisses. For men, you could substitute with a hardy handshake or a masculine half-hug. Never that insecure, we always hugged--this time, I got a salute and, "We'll hang out again soon
."
Robbie jumped in his Yaris without buckling his seatbelt, and gunned it.
Dirty hippie.
I had no intention of planting my posterior in front of the boob tube, and letting my brain melt. Not with Robbie on the loose. Yet, I couldn't help but glance around for stray hairs, although not for long.
Grumble grumble grumble: Stupid, inconvenient conscience.
My spring jacket ballooned around me as I jaunted to my (somewhat) trusty Studebaker. Now was the perfect time for…a cup of coffee.
Sure enough, my car sprang to life with a precarious bang and a cough. Again, I turned the ignition, praying to the Grass Hula Goddess on my dash, and crossed myself as I threw it in drive.
A police car's lights twirled and the siren
blooped once as the black-and-white pulled in behind me.
I would call him a police officer, but the kid still had zits on his face. A real rookie, right out of police academy and diapers. He swaggered towards my car, right hand tugging his belt up, and held something unidentifiable in his left hand. Beside the car, he motioned for me to roll the window down.
"Charles Landers?" he asked.
"Yep."
"Mr. Landers, please turn your car off."
"Not a chance. Do you know how hard it is to get this thing started?"
He shook his head and leaned against the car. "Well, now, Mr. Landers, that won't be a problem. See, you're going to have to come with me. We got a report says you hurt yourself."
"That so?" I raised my eyebrows in astonishment, and didn't wait for his answer, instead pushing the accelerator to the floor and zipping around his police car. Siren wailing, his car peeled out behind mine--I didn't have to check my rear views to know he was gaining on me. My heartbeat went hyperactive right before further cop cars joined the chase, sirens swarming several miles off. Fuck.
A car chase with my Studebaker is like pitting a gazelle against an eighty-year-old man. The first word that comes to mind is pathetic. The second: hilarious. You're really rooting for the old timer even though he's pushing his oxygen tank with his walker. But sometimes, with age comes wisdom. I never met this kid cop before, which made me surmise he wasn't from around here, which made me guess he wouldn't know the fields like I did. So I plowed my Studebaker through the Dusker family's cornfield and hung a right, a quick left, and then a quick right, bouncing along fields until the sirens droned into something resembling mosquitoes in the far distance.
Boundaries Books and Media catered to old guys who sat around in their loafers, reading glasses perched low on their noses, crinkling newspapers they didn't read, yet gave them an excuse to sit around guzzl
ing mediocre coffee. The store hired good-looking young women with ponytails and thin smiles, and young guys who wore hoodies and conch shell necklaces.
New Age, crystals, pyramids, Bermuda Triangle…interesting, but I preferred things more grounded in reality. Like black magic.
Twenty or so spell books and grimoires lined the shelves, most with earthy or purple-and-black front covers. Love spells, love spells, and more love spells. Some hexes and curses, which involved things that seemed…messy. Finally, I found an easy good luck spell, and headed for the grocery store. I needed supplies.
In the Value Queen's crowded parking lot, my car stood out among the Kias, Camrys and Saturns. Only the elderly and myself owned slow-moving tanks such as this. I wrote daily columns for the
Gazette, which were lengthy enough to warrant a thumbnail photograph next to my articles…and would make it difficult for me to hide. Mirrored aviator sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt would have completed the ensemble. Either that, or a tattoo on my forehead: SUSPECT.
Gold candle, blessing oil (easy enough to find in a store with a large organics department), sidewalk chalk, and incense--check. The checkout girl chewed her gum slowly, and looked me in the eye. Hands shoved in pockets, I hunched down, trying to put out the any-other-customer vibe.
"Don't you work for the
Gazette?" she asked.
I crumpled small wads of cash in her palm, and said nothing. A silent entreaty:
please, don't rat me out.
Nobody used the public restroom here, better to hold it. But my can wasn't about to touch the toilet. Technically, I didn't need the chalk. I could have done this in my Studebaker, or I could have just painted a neon target on my back.
The water was a rusty-feces color and had stained the sink the same color around the drain. I gathered it in my hands and poured it on the floor, and then used the brown paper towels to soak up the water, cleaning the area as well as possible before drawing out a circle, clockwise, with the sidewalk chalk. All my supplies went inside the circle, except the plastic shopping bag.
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