Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  “Good morrow, milady.” Eleazar made a small bow and flourish as the beauty arrived at his trailer. “How may I serve you?”

  “Good morrow.” Her voice was a gentle purr. Her tone and her gaze made Eleazar feel as if she had been somehow warned about him or as if those violet eyes could see right through to his less-than-pure heart.

  Marc, too, must have been roused from his lair with the woman’s arrival. He came out of his trailer, six-foot-three of excessive manhood clad only in his black jeans. The woman looked appreciatively at the muscles and assorted scars as he pulled on his black tee-shirt.

  Eleazar’s heart sank. Though he was charming and a practiced flatterer, the jongleur knew he couldn’t compete with washboard abs and pectoral muscles fit for a gladiator movie.

  The woman walked over to Marc’s trailer, dismissing Eleazar.

  “You are Marc Sindri,” she said.

  “I am,” Marc answered, his tone only mildly confused. “And you are . . .”

  The woman extended her hand in a gesture of pure grace.

  “Brenwyn,” she said with a smile. “I am pleased to meet you.”

  They shook hands, holding the clasp just a moment longer than necessary while looking into each other’s eyes. Eleazar saw it was time for an intervention.

  Eleazar sprinted around the corner of his trailer. Once Brenwyn’s hand was free, he moved in, kissing it. This close to her, he could smell her perfume, a unique mix of patchouli, sandalwood, and some subtle musk.

  “What a lovely and exotic name, so befitting an exquisite flower like yourself. I am Eleazar, the Jongleur.”

  “Why, thank you,” she responded with an embarrassed expression. “Though actually, that is my craft name.”

  “So you’re a hand crafter, like with jewelry or candles?” Marc asked.

  “No,” she said. “Witchcraft.”

  Eleazar dropped her hand as if it were on fire. He knew several women whose only interest in neo-pagan religion was a way of doing awful things to men’s testicles at a distance. His wife Alice was one of them. Fortunately, the trick escaped her for the moment.

  Brenwyn went on with only the slightest smile and a look his way.

  “I am the head of one of the local covens,” she said. “Mr. Edwards, the former owner, used to allow us the use of his land on High Holidays.”

  “High holidays?” asked Marc. Marc, to his credit as a poker player, did not display his prejudice towards believers in the supernatural on his face.

  “Samhain, Yule, Beltane, Midsummer’s Eve,” Brenwyn turned back to Marc. The simple list of holidays sounded like poetry to Eleazar. “A few others you would not recognize. There is a clearing over that direction where we build our bonfires every year. I was hoping we could make some kind of arrangement with the new owner.”

  Eleazar’s mind, in spite of a healthy fear for his testicles, accessed the smoothest propositions he had used before out of habit. “I’m sure, milady—”

  “Not that kind of arrangement, Eleazar.” Marc was always trying to cut short his fun. “Just a few questions first. Has anyone ever gotten hurt at one of these . . . events?”

  “Nothing major, the kind of bumps and sprains you would expect with a bunch of people dancing in the dark,” Brenwyn said. “There have been a few women whose skirts have caught fire. I am sure you know how that goes.”

  The tone of her voice intimated that she knew all the details of the serving wench who had fallen into the cooking pit of Steve’s other ren faire less than a fortnight ago. Eleazar felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

  “Yes, I do,” said Marc cautiously. He must have picked up on the unspoken message, too.

  “That is why most of us dance sky-clad. Naked, that is,” Brenwyn continued, “though it is officially clothing optional.”

  Eleazar’s heart leaped. Her coven might be thirteen castrating harridans, but they would all be naked. If the others were half as beautiful as Brenwyn, he could die a happy eunuch. Marc glared at him to remain silent.

  “And there are no problems with the locals or the police?” Marc asked. As always he was too cautious where there was any chance of excitement. Marc must have been born under a wet blanket.

  “You have not been in Arcanum very long, have you?” Brenwyn’s mockery seemed affectionate. Marc smiled sheepishly. This was a bad sign for Eleazar’s intentions.

  “Now let me see if I am hearing you correctly, milady,” said Eleazar in quick summary. “You’re asking for permission to host naked pagan rituals on Steve’s property, complete with dancing around a bonfire in the dark?”

  “I suppose that is one way of phrasing it.” Brenwyn looked away from Marc for just a moment. Perhaps, she was amused, maybe even charmed by Eleazar yet.

  “I hear heart palpations coming on,” Marc said cheerfully.

  “A ruptured aneurysm, if we’re lucky,” Eleazar added.

  “Oh, we’ll definitely make the arrangements,” Marc stated. Marc and Eleazar took it as their special mission in life to torment their employer. Few men deserved it more. The liability risks dancing through his head would boil Steve’s blood much more than imagining naked pagans did for Eleazar.

  “Thank you,” said Brenwyn.

  “You’re welcome,” said Marc. He seemed to be warming up to her and Eleazar didn’t know whether to resent the competition or pass on his condolences.

  “Is there any way I could mayhaps finagle an invitation?” asked Eleazar.

  Brenwyn assessed him carefully, with a cool look and pursed lips. Eleazar felt his testicles trying to retreat into his body cavity.

  “Certainly,” she said evenly. “You could even bring your wife.”

  Eleazar looked quickly at his left hand, checking for any telltale mark from the ring he seldom wore, and then hid it behind his back.

  “Who said . . . ?” Eleazar started, then shifted to an unusually honest tack. “I mean you wouldn’t want that. I’ve seen her ‘sky clad’ and she takes up much more of the horizon than you.”

  “It is your choice,” she said easily. She glanced expectantly at Marc. “Well, I must be leaving. I have to be another place in half an hour.”

  Brenwyn stood there, looking enticing, but made no move to leave.

  “Let me walk you to your car,” said Marc.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sindri,” she said. Her smile was like sunrise over a field of gold.

  “Call me Marc.”

  Eleazar watched them walk side-by-side to the battered car. Marc was a full foot taller than Brenwyn. Many women found that vulgar display of mass and muscle to be attractive. No doubt, having the beautiful woman always looking up to him would have some reciprocal effect.

  “You know you are welcome to join us,” Brenwyn said as they reached the car. “I am sure you would like to keep an eye on things.”

  Marc raised an eyebrow and smiled. Eleazar saw some part of Marc’s protective shell crack and was amazed. It actually looked a bit goofy. Eleazar scoffed in spite of himself and Marc fired an angry glare over his shoulder

  “To make sure nothing goes wrong with the fire, of course,” Brenwyn amended. “Besides, I believe you can be a gentleman, in spite of the company you keep.”

  “Are you sure your people won’t mind my being there while they are . . . you know,” Marc couldn’t even say the word “naked” in polite company.

  “The human body is not an object of shame,” Brenwyn said.

  “It depends,” Marc responded, “on how you wind up with a body on your hands.”

  Marc opened the door and Brenwyn slipped in with a rustle of skirts and petticoats.

  Rescue is out of the question, now, Eleazar observed. Far too late.

  “I shall see you later,” she said pleasantly. “Blessed be!”

  “Bless . . .” Marc started to reply, then cut himself off. “I mean, bye.”

  The car started with sound of mechanical grinding and a puff of black smoke. It lurched backwards out of its parkin
g spot with assorted ticks and rattles, which Eleazar ascribed to deathwatch beetles in the bodywork.

  Marc awkwardly waved as she drove away. Eleazar noticed the car’s rear bumper seemed to be held together with two purple stickers: “Magick Happens” and “My other car is a broom”. If she was able to keep that wreck moving in the shape it was in, maybe that was proof she did indeed have magical powers.

  “You know you dinnae have time for this, milord,” Eleazar said smugly as he sidled up behind Marc. Marc looked to be on the horns of a dilemma, and it was time for Eleazar to push him to sit on one or the other.

  “You’re right,” Marc said. He unconsciously massaged the back of his head as he watched the Impala disappear around the curve of the gravel track. “I suppose you do?”

  “There is always time for that,” Eleazar said.

  Marc looked at the retreating car, then the acres of uncleared forest behind the barn. He shook his head and strode back to his trailer. In celebration, Eleazar did a little jig in the dirt.

  Michael finally came out of his trailer, having taken the time to get fully dressed, coordinated, and tucked in. He ambled over to Eleazar as Marc walked away.

  “So what do you two have going on so early in the morning?” Michael asked Eleazar.

  “Nothing you would appreciate,” said Eleazar cheerfully.

  “Women? Already?” Michael sounded, as he usually was when speaking to Eleazar, both incredulous and disgusted. “What do you do, have them shipped in by air?”

  “Mayhaps, by broomstick,” Eleazar said hopefully.

  Chapter 2

  Strong Backs and Weak Minds

  MARC CAME OUT OF ARCANUM’S Student Discount Center with a one-pound ream of fluorescent yellow paper in his hands. The stack of fliers gave Marc the giddy sensation of a brand new power tool, charged up and ready to be tested.

  He peeled off the top sheet and held it up in the late morning sun. The glare reflecting off the bright yellow paper burned the image into his retinas. Michael had filled the margins with fancy filigree with a steel quill, the text of the message laid out with a precision that rivaled a computer graphics program. It started:

  SEEKING STRONG, COMPETENT MEN & WOMEN.

  Eleazar’s original wording had been “virile young men & women,” but Michael pointed out that sounded like they were hiring for an entirely different line of work. Michael also refused to include Marc’s favorite phrase “possessed of strong backs and weak minds.” The flier instead continued on in a business-like, humorless style:

  FOR MASSIVE LAND CLEARING & CONSTRUCTION PROJECT.

  GOOD PAY, TRANSPORTATION PROVIDED.

  The flier closed with:

  FREE ENTERTAINMENT.

  Eleazar had insisted upon that line. The rest was contact information, giving the number of the new cell phone Marc had purchased for this area code.

  “Yeah,” Marc said, “that ought to do it.”

  He divided the copies evenly between himself, Michael, and Eleazar. Michael tried to square the ragged edges of his stack. Eleazar rolled his eyes at the display of OCD.

  “We have a lot of ground to cover,” Marc said, “so let’s split up.”

  “We can do more damage that way,” Michael said as he slipped the pages into his messenger bag.

  “Exactly,” Marc continued, pointing as he spoke. “Eleazar, you take the northeast quadrant, everything on the other side of Athanor. Michael, you take the campus, past Quicksilver.”

  Eleazar’s face fell.

  “There be coeds on campus, milord,” he whimpered.

  “And intellectuals and artisans,” said Michael. “People you have nothing in common with.”

  “Enough, children,” Marc said for perhaps the thousandth time in his life. “Let’s get the job done. Meet me at the park on Hermes by noon.” Marc watched for a moment as Michael and Eleazar went in opposite directions and then he turned into the current of foot traffic on Alembic Avenue.

  * * * * *

  Eleazar, dressed in garb of purple and blue to complement his screaming yellow fliers, walked up to his first utility pole. He posted the notice in a space clear of concert announcements or “work from home” ads and secured it with a flurry of attacks with his hammer stapler. He slid the stapler back into his belt with a flourish and shouted:

  “Huzzah!”

  He checked the pedestrians around him, if not exactly expecting applause, at least recognition. A few of the comely young ladies with fair faces and figures smiled at him as they passed. Eleazar thought that to be a good omen.

  Arcanum proved to be a whimsical town. Several of the trees had been “glamour-bombed,” wrapped in crocheted sleeves of acid green and pink. Barbie dolls dressed as fairies, complete with gossamer wings, dangled from another.

  A young man in cargo shorts and a Boiled in Lead tee-shirt came wheeling down the sidewalk on a unicycle, a metaphysics text under his arm. Eleazar handed him a broadsheet on the fly.

  As the unicyclist banked around the corner, Eleazar noticed a tiny performance space. It was a yellow wooden deck only big enough for two people, a busker’s stage raised two feet above the sidewalk level. He had seen others scattered throughout the town, some occupied by hammer dulcimer players and the like, but now he felt an irresistible draw. He set down his fliers, removed two rubber balls and the rubber chicken from his bag, and started a simple juggling pattern.

  “Hear ye, hear ye,” Eleazar called out to the people of Arcanum. “The faire is coming to town, come be a part of the greatest show on Earth! Men, women, children and sheep! All are welcome!”

  Most especially women, Eleazar thought. Several of the Fairer Sex gathered around. White and black and several appealing shades of brown, his impromptu audience was a rainbow with breasts. He was beginning to think that Arcanum could be Heaven.

  * * * * *

  Arcanum, Marc decided, was a lot like a ren faire itself. At first glance, it could pass for the small town set from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with brick buildings, brick streets, and well-pruned trees. A few oddities stood out, like the all-glass Arcanum City Bank building or the purple clapboard House of Wines adorned with fake grapevines and rubber grapes. Then there were subtle clues of something more arcane: pentacles and goddess figures appeared everywhere, and almost all of the shopkeepers were women. Nearly all the shops had cats.

  One end of the main drag, Alembic, was a five-point intersection that sat beside Paint Creek, a poorly conceived traffic hazard that was probably the result of three cow paths crossing. Halfway down the street was a building with brick walls that undulated like heavy surf. A placid Buddha, also carved of curving bricks, overlooked its patio.

  It struck Marc as a normal university town posing as a secret haven for witches posing as a normal town. He expected to look behind the building facades to see false fronts propped up like old-style movie sets. The place was mixed-up, but not as much as the inhabitants.

  Punks and preppies shared the sidewalks with Mennonites in straw hats. Students in tie-dye and macramé filled in the dull spots. And everywhere, there were Goths. The ostentatiously depressed children of doom annoyed Marc. He always considered them as adolescents who discovered their own mortality and then went into a decades-long pout. They had gathered in numbers at the ren faire, wearing their twenty-first-century dress-up clothes instead of the appropriate sixteenth-century garb. Marc once tried to convince Steve that they needed to spray for Goths, but the boss felt their money filled his coffers the same as anyone else’s. Since he didn’t control the streets of Arcanum, Marc had no choice but to ignore them.

  Outside the local movie theater, under the marquee that proclaimed “The Mahabbarat — REmastered. Bad MagicK Marathon Oct 25th. Plenty of Ju Ju Bees,” Marc cleared a spot for yet another flier. He registered most of the other postings as being for local bands or university events. The other postings he didn’t easily understand, filled with obscure references, like “Samhain Sabbat,” “Faerie Tradition,” a
nd “Reformed Order of Druids” that echoed the line of nonsense from the woman visitor at Camp Arcanum. He shook his head and went on to the next shop on Alembic.

  A man opened the shop’s door and stepped out, holding it open between them, as if to use it as both a shield and a barricade. Marc made a quick assessment of the man with the same two questions he used on all adult males:

  One: can I take him in a fair fight?

  He was a pale, wide-eyed waif with a mysterious smile and too much eyeliner. His head was a glistening black mop of curls. It was hard to pinpoint his age under the costume and make-up, but Marc guessed somewhere in his thirties. Like Marc, he wore all black, though the stranger’s wardrobe leaned towards velvet and lace instead of work clothes and military surplus.

  Two: if not, how unfair can I make it?

  The man’s size and clothing seemed to make him no more than a trip hazard in the dark.

  Uber-Goth, thought Marc, no threat, but no friend either. Though this stranger wasn’t big enough to be dangerous in a fight, Marc felt there was something definitely wrong with him. Marc was immediately reminded of his brother in the months before he was committed.

  The stranger’s smile flickered, turning into a critical smirk.

  “Well, Mr. Sindri, I don’t think you’ll suit my purposes either,” he said. His speech and gestures trod that thin line between effeminate and psychotic—Hannibal Lector without the charm.

  “Excuse me?” Marc asked. This was not the first time this morning that a stranger knew his name.