Words Burned to Flame

by Brian S. Wheeler

  * * * * *

  That smell slapped me when I stepped into Mr. Turner’s kitchen, and it was very difficult for me to wait while my old friend prepared a plate of bacon, pancakes and eggs for me. I doubted I’d ever felt so hungry. The pancakes were a little doughy in places, and the eggs might’ve been a little runny for my preference, but I couldn’t keep from asking for second and third helpings. I couldn’t shovel the food into my mouth quickly enough to appease my growling stomach.

  Mr. Turner accepted my paper bag offering and sipped from his medicine of gin and tomato juice. He didn’t look well. His face seemed to tighten each time he winced, and he often coughed into a handkerchief, leaving traces of crimson on the cloth that he failed to hide from me before returning that rag back into a pocket.

  My stomach finally settled halfway through my third plate, and I suddenly felt a little nervous.

  “Am I going to get sick like the other boys?”

  “Of course not, James. Though you might’ve gotten sick if you had thrown that stone through one of my windows. But you don’t have to worry about throwing up on your shoes since you stood your ground. You certainly deserved that breakfast.”

  “The smell of that bacon was another example of your magic, wasn’t it Mr. Turner?”

  He nodded. “True. I threw some special ingredients only a boneshaker knows about into that breakfast, and I mixed everything together just so as to impact only those boys responsible for ever shattering my windows.”

  “What would’ve happened if I had thrown that rock?”

  Mr. Turner winked. “Oh, you’d probably still be vomiting, and you’d be in no condition to enjoy that breakfast. But you wouldn’t have been beaten either, James, and a spoiled stomach recovers much speedier than do busted teeth.”

  “Could you have done something worse to the boys?”

  “I could’ve,” softly answered my friend, “but you have to understand that my magic, especially when cast to harm, demands that I pay a price. It always demands that I give something of myself to it.”

  “Is that why there’s so much sweat on your forehead? Is that why you look so white?”

  “It’s why my insides are so sick, James.” Mr. Turner rose from the table. “I’m very proud of the mettle you displayed when you refused to throw that rock. You’re going to need it if you still want to know what’s truly in the hearts of those who call this town their home.”

  “I still want to know.”

  “Then follow me, son.”

  We walked through the front parlor filled with leaning book towers and entered the long hall that cut through Mr. Turner’s home. A den waited for us at the end of the hall filled with oddities. A roll-top desk occupied the center of the room, slips of paper covered in the dark scrawl I first saw on Mr. Turner’s paper swans stuffing all of the desk’s shelves and crannies. A hawk and an owl glared from roosts in the room’s corners, both preserved with such care that ire remained burning in their eyes. More bookcases clung to the walls, and the tomes upon those shelves looked ancient and dusty, bound in leather rather than glossy cardboard, with clasps and locks that held their pages tightly closed. There nearly appeared as many bones strewn about the room as there were books. The skeletons of two small felines served as bookends on one bookcase. The intricate bones of a hand’s fingers and wrist curled upon the desk to serve as a kind of holder for golden ink pen. There were assemblies of bone I couldn’t recognize – an animal perched on a nightstand that possessed the vertebrae of some strange fish and the skull of a sharp-toothed rodent, a strange turtle that seemed like some armored spider for the eight legs that extended from its shell.

  Those skeletons were strange, but they were far from the most chilling of items found within that den. The wall opposite to the den’s entrance remained empty of bookshelves, where illustrations and photographs presented a gallery of ugly, distorted faces defined by suffering. A face born without any sockets for the eyes frowned in one black and white photograph. A massive, root-like tumor exploded from the nose of a man illustrated within another frame. One watercolor captured the mad smile of one unfortunate fellow born without lips. No face went without a deformity or scar. The side profile of an elder woman centered upon an ear of notches created by a knife taken to the skin. All those portraits seemed to me photos and drawings of people who rarely walked beneath the bright sun, of a race that kept to the shadows, of a silent breed of woman and man who hurt with each smile.

  Mr. recognized how those portraits captured my attention. “Those are my ancestors. They’re pictures of my bloodline. All of them possessed the name ‘Turner.”

  “Does everyone in your family have such a painful face?”

  Mr. Turner slightly shook his own ugly face. “None of the Turners have ever been beautiful, but only the faces of those who choose to become boneshakers become so ruined. It’s another price we pay to peek through the veil separating the living from the dead.”

  “Will you tell me now what a boneshaker is?”

  Mr. Turner nodded. “We are searchers for the only answer that matters, James. We are researchers of the grave.”

  I thought a moment on that response before replying. “Do you know what happens after we die?”

  Mr. Turner sighed. “Sadly, I do not. Despite all that they have given, there’s still not a boneshaker that really, truly, knows, though rare glimpses likely allow a boneshaker to guess better than most. But enough questions about the dead, James. In time, perhaps you will turn to them, but I will not expose you to the powers required to commune with spirits and shades. You are too young, and your face is not yet so ugly. I will let time decide whether or not you might ever lean towards a boneshaker’s study. Today, you’ve come to gaze into the hearts of the living.”

  Mr. Turner slapped the side of his desk, and a hidden compartment popped open upon the opposite side. The doll Mr. Turner had taken from one of our trees waited within, along with a black bag of cloth that jangled as Mr. Turner placed both items upon his desktop. My old friend then strolled about the den, tightening the curtains before striking a match and lightening several kerosene lanterns strewn about the room.

  “Do this old man another favor, James, and turn off the lights. What I need to remove from my bag doesn’t tolerate typical illumination.”

  A spectacle of shadow rewarded me when I extinguished the lights. Strange mechanisms whirled within Mr. Turner’s lanterns, slowly rotating the lamp shades so that the shadows of skeletal ballerinas pirouetted to an unheard melody across the walls. I was a boy who pumped quarter after quarter into my favorite games at the arcade at Miller Junction, for the shapes of pixelated space monsters and blinking trolls always hypnotized me; but I knew the moment I looked upon those ballerina’s twirling across Mr. Turner’s walls that the video games would scarcely any longer impact my imagination. I fell still further for Mr. Turner’s magic.

  Mr. Turner smiled. “You seem to see well enough by the light of my lamps.”

  “Their lights are lovely.”

  “Ah, but they do little to push aside the dark.”

  Mr. Turner opened his black velvet bag, and the smell of those strange, white flowers that bloomed upon my mother’s shop filled my nose. Mr. Turner waited for the scent to fill the den and then tipped his bag to deposit a pile of ivory tiles, the size and shape of dominoes, onto his desk. Each bone-white square possessed a strange shape, a kind of rune, scratched onto both sides of the tile. Those symbols meant nothing to me, but I recognized many of those shapes as those Mr. Turner had previously drawn upon his paper swans. I held my breath. I think I sensed how Mr. Turner valued those tiles.

  “These are bits of an uncompleted alphabet,” Mr. Turner spoke, “pieces of an ancient, lost language that once allowed the living to communicate with the dead.”

  “Didn’t you say you didn’t know what waited beyond the grave? How do you know there’s anyone there to speak with you?”

  Mr. Turner smiled. “I said we get occasion
al glimpses, and if all the runes of this alphabet could be pieced back together again, we could finally removed the veil that separates us from our ghosts. My family has given everything to gather the tiles kept in my black bag.”

  “How many more do you still need?”

  “I don’t know. The number of runes needed to compose that alphabet remains another part of the mystery. Perhaps I only need one more. Perhaps I still need another dozen.”

  Mr. Turner then turned his attention to the doll. He gently cleaned her face with a cloth. He combed her hair with a tiny, toy brush. He worked his crooked fingers as carefully as he might so that the doll’s dress properly fit. It was strange to see Mr. Turner hold and touch that doll so gently, but I neither chuckled nor smirked. Mr. Turner hardly breathed as he tended to that figurine, insuring that she appeared just so before wrapping a small band of fabric around the doll’s eyes to serve as a blindfold.

  He then shifted through the tiles scattered upon his desk, pushing and pulling one rune before and after another, as if he was constructing words from their strange shapes. Many of his tiles went unneeded in his current magic, and those he carefully set back into their bag, which he then returned to that hidden compartment of his desk.

  Mr. Turner leaned back into his chair. He closed his eyes. He slowed his breath. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and growled.

  “Achne Methlyen Consute Rah B’Elyh! Roh Megyl! Abernath!”

  The skeleton ballerinas ceased dancing upon the wall, and each shadow dancer turned her head towards the plastic doll seated upon Mr. Turner’s desk.

  “Achne Methlyen Consute Rah B’Elyh! Roh Megyl! Abernath!”

  Fear clutched my throat as I watched the doll’s painted eyes wink and open. Her lips twisted, and I heard the doll draw a long breath into her lungs before she screamed. Her shrill echoed through my ears and filled my teeth with pain. I instinctively stepped away from that doll, but Mr. Turner gripped my arm, and his fingers dug into my bone as he locked me in my place.

  “We’ve called the voices, son. Now we must listen.”

  I froze as the screaming doll’s eyes turned upon me. Her arms bent at unnatural places as that doll lifted her hands to feel at her face. Her eyes widened, and the doll’s scream collapsed into a fit of broken sobs as her hands kept moving about her body, as if searching for flesh instead of plastic. I wanted to look away. I wanted to retreat to a time before I ever witnessed any of Mr. Turner’s magic. I didn’t want to believe that a toy could feel such hurt. Yet I knew I couldn’t close my eyes. Mr. Turner summoned life into her so that I could learn more of the hate that lived within the hearts of town. I would make that doll’s suffering useless if I ignored her.

  Mr. Turner again clapped to demand the doll’s attention.

  “Achne Methlyen Consute Rah B’Elyh! Roh Megyl! Abernath!”

  Mr. Turner’s magic turned the doll more terrifying. Voices of men and women, voices that couldn’t have been shaped by a doll’s tiny, plastic lungs snarled from the lips that twisted upon the doll’s face. And the doll screamed to me of what resided in the hearts of that town my family tried to call home.

  “They smile while we suffer!”

  “They steal our money for that useless library!”

  “They think they’re better than we are!”

  “They think they’re smarter!”

  “They think their books make them better!”

  “They’ve been ruined by so much education!”

  “They no longer believe like we do!”

  “They want to teach our children to follow the wrong ideas!”

  “They want to teach our children to worship false idols!”

  “That’s why they’re friends with Mr. Turner.”

  “That’s why they defend his book!”

  “They want to ruin this town!”

  “They want to pervert us!”

  “We have to protect our children!”

  “We have to drive the monsters away!

  I couldn’t take any more. “Make it stop, Mr. Turner! Make it stop screaming at me!”

  Mr. Turner once more clapped. “Achne. Roh Megy! Achne Abernath!”

  The doll slumped lifelessly forward. Mr. Turner again did his best to comb the toy’s hair and he gently readjusted the fabric of the doll’s dress. I wondered why I had failed to notice it until that point. I must’ve been too young. My thoughts must’ve been on the report I needed for school. I must’ve been thinking of the smell of those strange flowers that bloomed on my mother’s storefront. I had to be occupied by the crowd who shouted at my father’s library. I watched Mr. Turner gently return that doll to that compartment within his desk, and I realized that he was a very lonely man, one shuttered within his home, forced to listen to the sound of glass shattering as the children of Addieville cast stones through his windows.

  “This is a terrible town.”

  Mr. Turner set a hand upon my shoulder. “It’s a dead place, James. Addieville died a long time ago. It lived a very short life. Now, it only waits for someone to bury it.”

  “How can you live here?”

  Mr. Turner frowned. “I no longer can. I fear I can no longer keep my words locked behind my door, not after seeing how these people treated your family. It’s time the people of Addieville feel the words they’ve inspired. It’s time I give my poetry a little of a boneshaker’s magic. It’s time I tricked this community into swallowing my poetry.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’ll give them just what they want,” Mr. Turner winked. “I’ll set fire to all of my books. Will you help me, James?”

  “Of course.”

  My father raised me to value ideas, and he taught me that the pen was mightier than the sword, that words could provide woman and man a semblance of immortality by remaining long after the poet entered the grave. My father dedicated his career to preservation and keeping of pages. He worked to hold history and art dear. He served as a caretaker for the books stacked within his library. Yet I didn’t hesitate to offer Mr. Turner my assistance. I felt no trepidation when I pledged my support for his book-burning endeavor. Mr. Turner’s magic – his paper swans, his pungent flowers, his screaming dolls – captivated me far more than my father’s books ever did. Those tiles kept in Mr. Turner’s black bag possessed too much of a pull upon me. Mr. Turner’s face was not handsome, and those portraits upon the walls were so ugly that they were painful. Yet I still wished to learn more about a boneshaker’s journey. Regardless of the toll Mr. Turner warned such study placed upon the body, I vowed I would work to find the missing runes of that alphabet the living required in order to communicate with the dead.

  I owned no sympathy for Addieville. I felt no loyalty towards any of my neighbors. I would happily burn books if doing so helped to finally turn that town into a tomb.

  Mr. Turner smiled. “I knew you would help me, James. I knew the moment you smiled at my paper swans.”

  * * * * *