Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  Chop.

  “Seduced by another one.”

  Chop.

  “Who just happened to be sleeping with the whack-job who tried to kill me?”

  Marc sank the ax into the trunk and left it there. He finally looked her in the eye.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Is that what you think of me?” Brenwyn looked as if she’d been slapped.

  “What do your mystical powers tell you?” he sneered.

  She acted as if she was barely holding herself together at this point.

  “Act” was the operative word.

  ‘Marc . . . I do not know what you might be thinking—” she sniffled.

  “You’re a lying sack of shit!” he shouted, unable to stand anymore. “Just like your boyfriend.”

  “What?” Brenwyn’s eyes went wide.

  “No, you tell me ‘what.’” Marc stepped closer. Not close enough to touch, but close enough for her to see the blood in his eyes.

  “What happened at the movie marathon? At your bonfire? Why was everything bigger and better with me there?” He rubbed a hand over his stubbled head, what had been a decent crop of hair before he met her. “Why do you really want me around?”

  “I-I love you, Marc.”

  He expected her to say that eventually. It didn’t work that well on him anymore.

  “Do you have to say that to keep me on your leash? Do you really feel anything for me?” Marc made no effort to soften his words now. “Can you, or do you only look like a human being?”

  “How can you say that?” Right on cue, the tears were welling up in her eyes.

  Marc moved even closer, until their faces were just inches apart. His voice dropped lower on its own.

  “Is there something about me that makes me useful to you?”

  Brenwyn looked to the ground.

  “Yes . . .” Brenwyn said. “It is more than that, now.”

  “Now.” That word told Marc the whole story. “But you and Jeremiah were competing for me. Good thing for you I’m straight.”

  “It is not like that.”

  “Prove it,” Marc snapped. Then he realized that he didn’t really care anymore. “No, don’t bother. You both lose. I finish the faire and I am out of here with no forwarding address.”

  “Marc, please.”

  Marc could hear Brenwyn’s heart breaking in the strain of her voice. Marc almost relented at that point.

  Almost.

  “No,” Marc said finally. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  Something hardened in her expression with his last remark. The tears stopped pooling in her eyes.

  “Think carefully,” Brenwyn said with ice in her voice. “Is that really what you want to say to me?”

  “I’ve been thinking all night,” Marc said. “The next time I see you on the grounds, I’m pressing charges.”

  Brenwyn glared at him as if she wanted him dead, not that he was surprised it had come to that. As if they were reflecting her emotions, the clouds gathered and darkened over their heads.

  Marc felt the air around him grow colder as the light died away. The hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck began to stand up.

  Marc stared her down, unflinching, even when her eyes changed from pale violet to silver.

  “You had best leave the woods as soon as you can,” Brenwyn snarled.

  “Nothing short of dynamite is getting me off my job site.”

  “So be it,” Brenwyn snapped.

  There was a flash of light and the tree beside Marc exploded in a clap of thunder. The tree collapsed to the ground in flaming pieces. The air around him fluoresced violet for several moments.

  When his eyes recovered from the light of the lightning strike, he could see that Brenwyn was gone. A cold steel rain started falling then, soaking him to the skin.

  * * * * *

  The sound of thunder nearly vaulted Eleazar out of his high leather boots. As he wheeled around on his heel, he half expected to see a mushroom cloud rising up over the woods.

  “Marc was over that way,” Michael said. “You don’t think the lightning hit him, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t dare,” Eleazar responded.

  As they looked for some sight or sound of Marc, Brenwyn emerged from the woods. She held her embroidered cloak closed around her throat with one hand. The other arm pistoned stiffly back and forth as she strode fiercely across the job site.

  “Where the Hell did she come from?” Michael whispered to Eleazar.

  Eleazar glanced at her furious visage and plotted her path backwards to Ground Zero of the lightning strike.

  “Oh dear God,” Eleazar muttered, “She’s been talking to Marc.”

  Brenwyn ignored them and disappeared into the trees on the other side in a swirl of red and yellow and gray. The wind twisted the trees on their trunks and the clouds above them turned black.

  “’Tis the Crack of Doom,” Eleazar shouted. “A terrible sight for a sober man to see.”

  Lightning flashed across the dark clouds. Eleazar, Michael, and the other workers rushed back to the trucks for shelter as the rain fell over the job site like an ice-cold blanket.

  * * * * *

  Eleazar stood at the barn door watching the ongoing deluge. Marc was just inside, making a cell call to Steve to apprise him of their situation. When he listened carefully, Eleazar could hear Steve’s screams on the other end and perhaps the sound of fistfuls of hair being ripped out at the roots.

  “As the locals would put it: it’s like a cow pissing on a flat rock,” Eleazar said in a bemused tone. “Three straight days of it.”

  Eleazar called out over his shoulder to Marc in a cheerful tone:

  “I’m so glad you took time off from your dalliance with Brenwyn to get us back on schedule.”

  Marc glared at Eleazar, but continued his conversation without responding. Not getting any satisfying response from his lord and master, Eleazar retreated to the back of the shop where Michael was penciling designs on a large beam. Working from sketches, he was free-handing a Viking design of incredible complexity onto the wood.

  “Totally unfathomable,” Eleazar muttered. “You’re going to carve that mess of snakes into this block of wood?”

  “With luck,” Michael said without looking up from his task. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated.

  “You’ll be at it the rest of your life.”

  “Not with this.”

  Michael picked up a power carver, a device that looked like a heavy soldering iron with a v-shaped blade for a nose. It started up with a furious whirring noise. Michael quickly cut a curved line into the wood with much noise and fine shavings.

  Marc covered his cell phone with his hand and snapped:

  “Michael! Damn it!”

  Michael’s eyes grew wide as saucers as he realized his mistake. He switched the carver off quickly. To be safe, he unplugged it and shoved it out of the way. Marc turned his back to the two of them and went back to his consultation with Steve.

  “What happened to ‘We’re men with power tools and we’re not scared?’” Eleazar asked.

  Michael glanced over at Marc, who had spent the last fifteen minutes trying to talk Steve down from potential cerebral hemorrhage. Though Marc seemed to be making some small progress, Eleazar knew it was a task that could only be done properly in person. Even then, medication or a rubber mallet to the forehead would have to be involved.

  “Not all the power tools in this barn will protect me from him,” Michael said quietly. “He’s worse than usual.”

  “He’s the ultimate tool guy,” Eleazar observed, “frustrated because emotions don’t come in inches or some other unit he can lay hands on.”

  “Well,” Michael said as he went back to his sketching, “I hope he pulls things together before he takes us all down with him.”

  Eleazar watched Marc for a moment as he paced from one end of the tool barn to the other.
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  “I’m keeping an eye out for him,” Eleazar said. “Even I don’t enjoy watching him suffer this much.”

  Eleazar absently surveyed the shed while Michael continued his sketching. He saw nothing particularly entertaining except for Marc’s potential meltdown. Then, he spied a group of human-sized objects under green canvas tarpaulins.

  “Huzzah!” he shouted. “You’ve finished the targets.”

  “Sure. They were easy.” Michael kept his nose and pencil to the beam like a child at a coloring book. “Kind of fun, actually.”

  “Do you care if I drag them out for a quick perusal?”

  Michael waved off-handedly.

  “Feel free.”

  Eleazar pulled out the first target. It weighed perhaps thirty or forty pounds, but slid along the dirt floor easily enough. He removed the tarpaulin cover with a flourish to reveal the painted plywood stand-up: The Jester. Brightly colored in bells and motley, the mad capering figure had Eleazar’s face and red goatee.

  “A familiar face,” Eleazar murmured thoughtfully. “I daresay I know this man.”

  Michael shrugged and continued his sketching. Eleazar pulled out another target. It was a foul-looking, dirty bandit with a dagger in one hand and someone else’s purse in the other. He, too, had Eleazar’s face and red hair.

  By now, Michael had given up on his work and was watching Eleazar. Eleazar enjoyed having an audience, even if it was but a single art-nerd.

  “What a foul brigand! He has stolen my face,” Eleazar proclaimed. He pointed out the remaining target. “And lo, there is the last of his accomplices. Come out into the light, you filthy blackheart!”

  Eleazar pulled out the last of the targets. With a theatrical flourish, he pulled away the covering and cast it aside to settle over Michael’s head. This one was a well-fed monk with Michael’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t see you.” Eleazar looked quizzically at Michael. “Why your face?”

  “Just thought I’d be fair,” Michael said as he shoved the tarpaulin to the ground.

  Eleazar stepped closer to examine the monk’s face.

  “It does indeed look like the face of a priest who shouldn’t be left alone with young boys,” Eleazar said.

  “I’d like you to know,” Michael jabbed his pencil towards Eleazar, “that it’s straight guys that go after underage boys! Besides, I don’t think I need to take this crap from someone with less sexual self-control than Patient Zero.”

  Marc snapped his fingers and gave Michael an angry look as he pointed at the phone.

  “Better stop fighting,” Eleazar said. “Dad’s on the phone. All right if I give them a little test run?”

  Michael responded with a look apropos to Eleazar asking to put his puppy in the microwave.

  “Oh, come on,” Eleazar urged. “Somebody’s going to put holes in them sometime.”

  Michael still was not moved.

  “I promise to patch and sand them myself,” Eleazar said.

  Michael finally surrendered with a roll of his eyes.

  “I guess so.”

  “Huzzah!”

  Eleazar went to the alcove where he kept a little something for juggling emergencies. He pulled out a canvas pouch from a shelf and unrolled it with a sweep of his hand on the workbench. Within were six stainless steel throwing knives, each over a foot in length. He scooped up three of them and began juggling.

  “Come to me, my pretties,” Eleazar sing-songed. “See how they dance. See how they sparkle.”

  After a moment’s calculation, Eleazar picked the optimum distance for knife-throwing and scratched a line in the dirt with his toe. All the while, he kept the blades in the air.

  He caught them all in his left hand and then flipped one over to his right. He snatched the blade out if midair and threw it all in one motion. The knife lodged between the bandit’s eyes.

  “Serves you right, varlet, for stealing my face.”

  Another flip and a throw and a silver blade was lodged in the Jester’s forehead.

  “And thou, Foole,” Eleazar accused, “all full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.”

  Eleazar picked up the remaining knives. With an impressive flurry of motion, he flung the blades to strike the monk at the crotch, belly, throat, and forehead.

  Eleazar turned back to Michael his hands spread in apology.

  “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

  “That’s a lot of holes.” Michael seemed more concerned with the damage to his work than his symbolic murder.

  “Would you care to make a few of your own?” Eleazar offered.

  “I don’t know if you want me throwing knives,” Michael replied.

  “Don’t worry,” Eleazar reassured him. “I can dive behind something solid if needs be. Come on.”

  Eleazar pulled the knives out of the targets as Michael moved to the firing line. Out of the corner of his eye, Eleazar saw Marc quietly end his phone call. With a short backwards leap, Marc perched himself on the workbench. Michael seemed too consumed with nerves to notice.

  Eleazar positioned Michael in the proper throwing stance: right foot in a line behind the left, left arm forward for aim. Michael squeamishly held the knife by the blade the way Eleazar showed him.

  “Don’t worry,” said Eleazar, “it won’t cut you—unless you drop it on your foot.”

  “I’ll hang onto it,” Michael muttered.

  “But you have to let go at the end.” Eleazar tried to fill his voice with optimism and encouragement.

  “I’ve got that part.”

  “So, just pull back and let fly.” Eleazar mimed the whole process.

  “Okay.”

  “Any time now.”

  “Okay!”

  Michael threw. The knife spun end over end towards the target and struck the Jester in the face—with the blunt end. It bounced off and fell to the ground.

  “Well . . . That was good,” Eleazar said in as an encouraging tone as he could muster.

  “Good?” Michael protested. “It didn’t even stick.”

  “But your opponent would be stunned,” Eleazar said cheerily. “That would give you a chance to throw a second time.”

  Michael handed the knives back to Eleazar.

  “I think I’ll wait on that second throw.”

  Eleazar refused to accept the proffered blades.

  “Don’t be discouraged, man.”

  Eleazar pushed him back to the firing line.

  “You’ve got to suck it up and face your fears,” Eleazar urged. “When you get trampled by a horse, you have to dust yourself off and get right back under it.”

  Michael looked at him in dismay. Eleazar shrugged.

  “I got that from my Uncle Albert,” said Eleazar. “He took his own advice a little too often.”

  Marc slid off the workbench and stepped to the throwing line behind Michael.

  “Can I play, too?” Marc asked.

  “Certainly, milord.” Eleazar bowed him up to the line. Michael offered his knives, but Marc waved them away. He showed Eleazar a flash of a circular saw blade held flat in his palm.

  “Just stand clear,” Marc said.

  Michael and Eleazar stepped back. With a grunt, Marc flung the blade at the bandit target, Frisbee-style. The blade sank into the bandit’s throat with several teeth.

  Eleazar clutched his own throat in sympathy.

  “Some repressed hostility, milord?” Eleazar asked.

  “It’s not repressed,” Marc said. “We still have jobs, but only because I promised Steve I’d kill one of you two.”

  Eleazar walked over to the target and tried to pull the saw blade free. He hoped that Marc had no more saw blades.

  “Guess which one,” Marc continued.

  The saw blade was lodged too deeply in the wood for Eleazar to pull it free with his bare hands.

  Marc stepped up to the target and flipped open his unitool. He pried the blade out with the pliers-jaws and a quick flip of the wrist
. Afterwards, he ran his finger over the jagged hole in the wood.

  “Amazing what you can do with the right tools,” he said.

  Marc looked past the target into the shadows.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  There were two more painted stand-ups hidden away. Somehow, they had evaded Eleazar’s attention earlier. Like the others, they were covered with green canvas tarpaulins.

  “Aha,” said Eleazar, “that brigand had reinforcements secreted in the shadows!”

  “No, they’re for something else.” Michael was suddenly not eager to discuss his work, which was highly suspicious in Eleazar’s estimation.

  “What were you planning behind me back, you varlet?”

  “Just a photo op.” Michael was suddenly uncomfortable. “Backdrops for the tourists to use when they’re taking each other’s pictures.”

  “Good idea,” Marc said. “I’d like to see them.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Michael responded in a very quiet voice.

  “Why?” Evidently, Marc’s curiosity was just as piqued as his.

  “They’re not finished yet,” Michael replied. “They—they’re not ready for viewing.”

  Though Michael was indeed an accomplished artist, he was the worst liar in the room.

  “I don’t ever remember you being shy about a work in progress before,” Marc said.

  “Well, I . . .” Michael rolled the knives against each other in his hands rather than speak. Eleazar hoped he wouldn’t get blood all over them.

  “Eleazar.” With a wave of his hand, Marc invited Eleazar to retrieve the stand-ups.

  Eleazar nearly skipped across the barn as he was filled with joy over the possible spectacle to come. He whipped the cover off of the first figure. This was Marc in the crown and robes of a king. Eleazar carried it out to stand with the others.

  “Your majesty!” Eleazar bowed and backed away.

  Marc examined his own visage on plywood.

  “Very nice work,” Marc told Michael. “Very detailed. So I’ve been elevated to royalty from cruel overseer?”

  “You’re the king over our little fiefdom, at least,” Michael said.

  “It’s good to be the king.” Marc smiled with a self-satisfied bob of his head. “Does that mean that you two will obey my word as law?”