Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  “Very nice,” Marc said, “thanks!”

  Marc turned to the remaining black robes. The two of them were alert and full of the vigor of youth. Marc felt like a hamburger ready to come off the grill.

  “If you two would like to surrender,” Marc said, “I’m willing to discuss terms.”

  One of the black robes, a blond Aryan youth type, picked up the discarded ritual sword while the other pulled a smoldering branch from the fire. They came at him slowly from opposite directions. Marc stepped back to pick up his shovel.

  “I sure hope you kids live long enough to get smarter.”

  His own life expectancy wasn’t looking so good, but he didn’t feel like sharing.

  The swordsman approached as the other stood ready to attack from behind. Marc held the shovel with its blade towards himself, using the length of ash wood like a kendo sword. The shovel handle still had reach over the sword and he started pushing the Young Aryan back inch by inch in a constant stream of jabs, slashes and parries.

  Marc’s seeming total focus on the one opponent gave confidence to the other. He rushed Marc from behind while screaming like a madman: not the best strategy for sneaking up on an opponent. Marc smiled and reversed his grip on the shovel. As the screaming black robe got within reach, Marc jabbed the wooden haft backwards hard. The screaming stopped as the handle caught in some soft part of the boy’s anatomy. Marc turned, changed his grip to standard major league baseball and swung for the bleachers. The blade made a ringing noise as it hit the black robe across the face and propelled him into Dreamland.

  Marc quickly looked over his shoulder to check on the swordsman. In a passable fencing lunge, he was making a thrust for Marc’s heart. Marc made a very ugly parry that deflected the worst of the damage. The dull, gold-plated sword made a painful slash across his upper arm. The swordsman stepped back, his eyes bright with pleasure.

  “First blood!” shouted the swordsman. “You desecrated our ceremonies and injured our master! Now you will pay!”

  “Did you actually say that?” Marc was aghast. “Inigo, you need a better writer.”

  Responding to Marc’s taunt, the swordsman attacked savagely. Marc retreated backwards towards the fire pit. Once he stood at the edge of the pit, Marc pushed back, putting the shovel into the face of his opponent as the swordsman back-pedaled and Marc stepped over to the pit. Marc quickly scooped up a shovel full of hot ash and embers and flung it hard at the swordsman’s face. The Young Aryan dropped his sword and clutched his face with a scream.

  Marc dropped the shovel and limped over to the whimpering young man. Marc clamped both of the boy’s wrists in his left hand and held his throat with the right. With negligible resistance, Marc walked him backwards to the base of a nearby tree.

  “It’s a goddamned shovel!” Marc spat. “You were surprised when I used it like one? Go to sleep now.”

  Marc slammed the swordsman’s head into the tree. His unconscious body slid down the trunk to the ground.

  With no one left to beat up, Marc felt every bruise and burn on his body. It seemed he was deflating quickly or the ground was trying to sneak up on him.

  “Brenwyn?” he called out weakly.

  She appeared right beside him like magick.

  “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.

  Marc smirked as he shambled toward Jeremiah, who was just now starting to move.

  “I’m fine, really,” he said. “Could you do me a favor?”

  “Anything you wish, my beloved.”

  He scuffed the chalk lines of the circle within the circle, erasing as much as he could as he approached.

  “Make sure I didn’t kill anybody. I mean, if I did, that’s okay,” Marc chuckled sloppily. “I can bury them. I’ve got the shovel.”

  Jeremiah was pulling himself up on one elbow and moaning in pain. A bruise the size of a grapefruit marked one side of his face. Marc planted a foot on Jeremiah’s chest and put his weight on it. Jeremiah made a satisfying noise as the air was squeezed out of his lungs.

  “There are nine of you and only one of me,” Marc said. “Do you think the cops would say anything if I kill you in self-defense?”

  Marc let up the pressure so Jeremiah could speak.

  “You wouldn’t do that, darling. Just think how much that would slow down your construction schedule.”

  “I don’t know. Nine sets of assault charges might be more trouble.” Marc pressed down again, playing Jeremiah like an accordion. “I’m keeping my options open.”

  “Oh, you’re being such a hard man,” Jeremiah wheezed. “Brenwyn, could you play the Holy Virgin and intercede for me with the higher powers?”

  “All the powers on Earth are higher than you, Jeremiah,” Brenwyn said with a sneer. She turned her back on him to speak to Marc. “The children are all alive and well enough to walk home. I encouraged them to do so as quickly as possible, before I was forced to call their mothers.”

  “Of course,” Jeremiah continued as if she had said nothing, “we both know she’s not a virgin, holy or otherwise. Or has she been holding out on you?”

  “Do not listen to him, Marc,” Brenwyn said. “His most dangerous weapon is his tongue.”

  “And you remember the interesting places I was able to put it?” Jeremiah simpered.

  “That’s it,” Marc said as he moved his foot towards Jeremiah’s throat. “I’m crushing his trachea.”

  “Do not let him bait you,” Brenwyn warned.

  “Besides,” said Jeremiah, “when the new boyfriend kills the old boyfriend, the authorities tend to notice.”

  Marc took a second or two to process that.

  “Is he for real?” He asked Brenwyn.

  “He is telling the truth,” Brenwyn grimaced, “but that was long ago, before I knew what he kind of thing he actually was.”

  Marc felt his stomach turn over.

  “As Brenwyn told you before,” Jeremiah sighed, “she has a history with metaphysics.”

  Marc took his foot off of Jeremiah’s throat and turned away.

  “Get him the Hell out of here—before I throw up on him.”

  Jeremiah slowly rose to his feet.

  “I had a wonderful evening, too.”

  He turned to Brenwyn with a leer.

  “And Maggie, that bit tonight, with you blowing out my fire. That was very nice. Better than I’ve ever seen you.”

  “You know why that is,” she said coldly.

  “Oh, yes. Samhain. The influence of his noumena.” Jeremiah blew Marc a kiss. “And he’s so pretty too. I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.”

  Marc grabbed Jeremiah by the robes.

  “Get out of here, now! Don’t bother with your things. I’ll send out a trash crew tomorrow morning. Now, go away!”

  Marc released Jeremiah. The man in the red robes staggered off-balance.

  “Too bad you could never get past your raging homophobia. Things would have turned out so much better.”

  Marc growled inarticulately at Jeremiah.

  “No need to get all bestial,” he replied. “I’ll be seeing you later, Maggie. Blessed be!”

  Jeremiah walked into the woods, making a jaunty figure when his feet remained beneath him. Marc wasn’t sure he could stand on his own much longer.

  “Another favor, Brenwyn,” he said.

  “Anything you want.”

  Though that was a very appealing proposition, there was only one thing Marc wanted.

  “I need my shovel.”

  Brenwyn retrieved the shovel and Marc used it to support his weight as he tried to leave the battlefield.

  “It’s amazing, what you can do with the right tools,” he muttered.

  Brenwyn slipped under his other arm to help him walk.

  “You can’t take my weight,” he protested.

  “Let me try,” she said. “Adrenaline was the only thing holding you up.”

  “I think I’m fresh out, now.” The process of deflation that had started a few minu
tes ago was nearly complete. The ground was starting to look positively comfy.

  “Um, Marc,” Brenwyn murmured. “I am sorry about tonight. I am not much good in a fight.”

  “No—you did fine. You were great.”

  “Thank you.”

  They ambled down the path through the woods, slowly making their way to Marc’s trailer. As they moved farther and farther from the bonfire, the more Marc wondered if it all really happened the way he remembered.

  “Did you ever see those demons?” he asked.

  “No, but I will take your word for it.”

  “But you did see the firebird?” he continued.

  “Yes.”

  “And the undead skinless bunnies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I feel better.”

  If he had a brain in his head, he would never have asked the next question. The men in black in black robes had beaten most of the brain out of him.

  “You actually dated that guy?”

  “Well,” Brenwyn said quietly. “It was nothing like actual dating.”

  “No?”

  “It was mostly just a lot of sex rituals in his inner sanctum.” She dismissed that with a shake of her head. “But that was a long time ago.”

  After the evening’s full serving of demons, evil magicians, and skinless zombie animals, Brenwyn’s past seemed like no big deal.

  “Oh, okay.”

  They limped and stumbled through the dark for several minutes in silence.

  “By the way, Marc.”

  “Humm?”

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter 14

  Knight in Charcoal Armor

  ELEAZAR’S CURIOSITY CONSUMED HIM. His own Halloween in Athens had been an unqualified success: he had found a lovely Lithuanian communications student with a diminishing facility for English as she reached her maximum capacity for alcohol. They had been able to communicate on a much more primal level and, in the end, created some truly magical memories. Even St. Marc the Asexual, with all his difficulties with the fairer sex, should have had equal luck amidst a dozen naked pagans performing a fertility ritual.

  Eleazar tapped on the door of Marc’s trailer, as a courtesy. When there was no answer, he pressed his ear to it. With no sound of heavy breathing within, he almost absently-mindedly tried the latch. The door opened and he slipped into the trailer as silently as he’d ever been forced to sneak out of any other’s.

  The inside of the trailer was only half-lit by dawn leaking through the parted curtains. Eleazar pressed the door closed behind him ever so gently. Turning back to what was laughingly called the bedroom in an Airstream, Eleazar picked his way through the dark landscape littered with tools, magazines, and discarded clothing. He stopped dead upon seeing a tableau worthy of a pre-Raphaelite painter. Brenwyn laid outstretched on Marc’s truncated couch in what looked to be blissful sleep. Her hair spilled across the pillow in waves of chestnut brown satin highlighted by dawn’s rosy light. Her cloak, which she had used as a blanket, had slipped to the floor. This left her exposed from the waist up. Her shift, as sheer as spiders’ web, covered everything and left nothing to Eleazar’s lurid imagination. As his eyes ran over her perfect breasts and belly, the more lustful lines from the “Song of Solomon” sprang to mind.

  “And God created Woman,” Eleazar whispered. “I commend Him highly for the effort.”

  An unfamiliar sensation interrupted his lecherous appreciation. He couldn’t be sure, having so little experience with the feeling, but he thought it might be guilt, or perhaps even shame. Whatever it was, it took all the fun out of voyeurism. Not knowing exactly why, he tiptoed precariously through the discarded clothing and debris on the floor.

  Once he reached the couch, Eleazar gingerly picked up the cloak to cover her again. He moved slowly and stealthily like a ninja tortoise. Halfway through the operation, Brenwyn moaned and shifted in her sleep. She seemed to be having a very good dream. She smiled enticingly as she stretched and brushed Eleazar’s thigh with her fingertips.

  Eleazar froze like a statue in all but one part of his body, which merely stiffened. Her noises of contentment nearly pushed his self-control to the breaking point. Once Brenwyn settled, he covered her up and tucked her in as well as he could. He exhaled carefully, shook his head and started tiptoeing back to the door.

  You are a daft one, Eleazar, he thought.

  He made two awkward steps and stretched for the third across a pile of debris when he heard Brenwyn speak up.

  “Good morning, Eleazar,” she said sleepily.

  A flash of this newfound guilt-thing paralyzed his mind for the slightest moment. Then, Eleazar turned back and flashed on his smile like an electric light.

  “Good morning, milady,” he said, layered on with as much charm as he could muster. “How are you on the break of this fine and sparkling day?”

  “Fine enough.” She stretched, risking throwing off her cloak all over again. “So, was it worth the wait?”

  “What is it you would be talking about, milady?” He gave the line his best simulation of innocence.

  “You have wanted to see me naked since the moment we met. I hope you were not disappointed.”

  “You were awake the whole time?” Eleazar felt twice the idiot now.

  “No, I woke up just now.” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Even that simple act seemed inhumanly graceful. “The sound of a man mentally kicking himself for being an idiot is hard to ignore.”

  Eleazar did his best to simply stop thinking then.

  “You can read minds!”

  “It would be to my advantage for you to think so.” A secretive smile worthy of the Mona Lisa crept across her face.

  So was that a denial or confession? Talking to her was just like talking to Marc, except she was so much more fun to look at naked.

  “I am sorry. I should not be tormenting you,” she said. “Could you please hand me one of his turtlenecks? It should be warm enough and then we will both be more comfortable.”

  She pointed to a pile of black laundry on the kitchen counter with a long elegant finger.

  “No, the clean one over there,” she said.

  Eleazar handed her the shirt and she disappeared under the cloak to change. Rather than watching her thrash around under the covers and imagining the spectacle, he poked around Marc’s trailer. He absently picked up the discarded shirt Marc must have been wearing the night before.

  “So, why were you sleeping on the couch?” Eleazar asked. “Did you two have a fight already?”

  “Actually, we did.”

  Brenwyn popped out from under the cloak wearing the black turtleneck.

  “But it was not with each other.”

  She tousled her hair, threw off the cloak and stood. Marc’s shirt fit her like a tight mini dress and it was quite flattering to her curves, even where her shift still bunched around her hips.

  “Oh, that will not do at all,” she said as she saw that.

  She turned her back to Eleazar as she wiggled out of the shift. The motion of her hips was hypnotic. Eleazar watched for a moment and then diplomatically turned his attention to the shirt in his hands.

  “If you enjoy it that much,” Brenwyn said without looking back at him, “you can watch. I know you would not try anything . . . inappropriate.”

  “I feel guilty,” Eleazar said for perhaps the first time in his life. “I mean you’re Marc’s . . .”

  Brenwyn’s head swiveled around to glare directly at Eleazar. He swore to himself he saw sparks coming out of her eyes.

  “I do not belong to anyone,” she snapped.

  Eleazar suddenly envisioned a short, unpleasant future as a frog.

  “Just as I cannot lock Marc into a gilded cage with satin bedding,” she continued in a much softer tone, “no matter how much I would like to try.”

  “I’m sorry, milady,” said Eleazar in the tiniest of voices.

  Brenwyn sighed and the fire went out of her eyes.
/>   “That is a very sore point of mine,” she said. “You are forgiven your slip—with my apologies.”

  She stepped out of her shift and folded it with her cloak into a manageable bundle. Eleazar finally noticed a hole burnt through Marc’s shirt. Not just some little hole burned by a falling ember. Eleazar quickly discovered he could put his entire arm through the breach. Eleazar looked suspiciously at Brenwyn and dropped the shirt. He picked up Marc’s leather coat, which had a matching hole. There was nothing he knew about Brenwyn’s pagan rituals that could explain that.

  “Is there something wrong, Eleazar?” Her attempts at feigned innocence were far less successful than his own.

  “I was just about to ask that meself.”

  Eleazar tried to be nonchalant about reconnoitering for weapons and bloodstains.

  A groan and the rustle of bedclothes came from Marc’s bed. Eleazar was embarrassed to admit he had forgotten about Marc. Now, he was horrified at what he saw when he looked his way. Though Marc was mostly covered, the bandages on the back of his head, both arms, and hands were painfully obvious. And obviously painful.

  “What in the bloody Hell did you do to him?” Eleazar exclaimed.

  Marc slowly pulled himself to sit on the edge of his bed.

  “Not so loud,” Marc groaned. “Brenwyn, tell him it was rough sex. I won’t get any respect around the camp, otherwise.”

  Eleazar looked to Brenwyn, who responded with a smile worthy of the canary that swallowed the cat.

  “There is no way that I am believing that,” said Eleazar. “No one really has ‘rough sex.’ It’s just a phrase scoundrels use after charges have been filed.”

  “Why are you yelling? I’m the one who got beat up last night.” Marc clutched his injured head with bandaged hands. Everything seemed to be too tender for the operation.

  “Did you take him to the ER?” Eleazar asked of Brenwyn.

  “He refused treatment.”

  He wasn’t surprised at that: Marc was damnably stubborn when it came to his sense of invulnerability.

  “If I went to the ER I’d have to file a workers comp claim and probably a police report.” Marc rolled his eyes, though even that seemed to hurt him. “There were some things that happened last night that I will never put down on paper.”