Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  “Everyone’s been pussyfooting around this one subject—except Jeremiah,” Marc said. “What is it about me and magick?”

  “Besides your overwhelming, unreasoning fear?” Her eyes actually seemed to twinkle now.

  “The reason I have trouble working and playing well with witches is the gut feeling that I’m being played for a patsy,” Marc grumbled. “Your free advice has done nothing but reinforce that for me.”

  “All right,” she started. “There was a friend of mine and his best friend was a stage magician. A very talented performer, even though he didn’t have an ounce of real magick. My friend stopped going to the magician’s performances, though, because every time he was in the audience, none of the tricks ever worked. Something in his spiritual makeup would thwart the magician’s best efforts.”

  “So, I’m the other way around: I project magic enhancing rays?” Marc repeated back what he thought she’d said, just to be sure he had it right. “Is that why I’m the prize pig in this little town?”

  “Yes and no,” Musetta said. “It’s your noumena.”

  “I heard Jeremiah use that word.”

  “No doubt it’s part of his coursework on Metaphysics 101,” she smiled. “Your noumena is your personal collection of intangible concepts that controls the functions of your mind.”

  Marc felt well out of his depth in a discussion of abstracts and magick. That was more Allen’s department, and he had been a paranoid schizophrenic. Marc, despite years of aversion, did his best to think like him, now.

  “A belief system?”

  “More than that,” she replied. “It’s like your metaphysical architecture and your set of tools for handling things unseen.”

  “Tools I can understand.” He felt himself moving toward the shallow end of the pool there.

  “Most people, their internal architecture is a Quonset hut with a dusty shrine in the corner for the holidays. If they’re lucky, they have a hammer and a bent-up screwdriver in a rusty toolbox.” Musetta chuckled to herself. “Jeremiah, he has a gothic castle with a chamber of horrors in the basement, but no indoor plumbing. You—”

  Marc looked sideways at Musetta.

  “You’ve been looking at my noumena, have you?”

  “Can’t help it,” Musetta said. “Behind your eyes is a factory floor with painting and assembly robots and dozens of red toolboxes on wheels.”

  Marc, in spite of himself, puffed up with pride.

  “Certainly sounds like a manly noumena.”

  “When you’re near someone practicing magick, you don’t simply amplify it,” Musetta explained. “You unconsciously fix it.”

  “That makes this yammering pagan madness seem a lot less scary.”

  “With proper instruction,” she said, “you could even become a practitioner yourself.”

  “No thanks,” Marc said quickly, his hands coming up on their own. “All this bell, book, and candle crap is too close to schizophrenic delusions for me.”

  Musetta half-frowned at his remark.

  “No offense taken.”

  “Sorry.” His innate ability to annoy, offend, and damage people must have kicked into overdrive since he came to Arcanum. “What’s all this mean to Brenwyn?”

  Musetta took the herbal book from his hands and went back behind the counter.

  “You’ll have to ask her,” she said in a very noncommittal tone of voice.

  Marc suddenly felt a flutter of hope that he could patch things up with Brenwyn. He was surprised with how desperately he wanted that.

  “Would she—would she actually talk to me, you think?”

  Musetta absently dropped the book into a bag behind the counter.

  “Certainly,” she said after a moment’s deliberation, “but first she would be consumed with rage and cast a spell on you which would reduce your genitals to something with the consistency of over-crisp bacon.”

  He gaped and worked his jaw, but no sounds came out. Musetta grinned broadly and Marc realized that he had been punked.

  “No,” she said as Marc started breathing again. “What would you do if she appeared on your doorstep and said everything was forgiven and forgotten?”

  “You know.”

  “And you know, too,” she urged. “You just need the strength, or the humility, to make the first step.”

  “That’s the scariest thing I could imagine, and I’ve been up against some really scary stuff lately.” Black magic, insanity, or an active love life, they all seemed a toss-up to Marc now.

  Musetta shrugged.

  “Don’t forget your merchandise,” Musetta said as she held up the black plastic bag with the red pentagram.

  Marc took the bag and tucked it under his arm.

  “Well, thanks for the information.”

  “My pleasure,” Musetta said cordially.

  Marc was already weighing possibilities and consequences as he ambled to the door. The number of possible disasters alone was staggering

  “Marc!” Musetta called out to his back.

  “Hmm?”

  Marc looked over his shoulder, but his mind was still mired in disaster recovery plans.

  “Brenwyn has been wanting that book for months.”

  Musetta’s face was still, but her eyes gleamed.

  Marc smiled tentatively.

  “Thanks,” he said, though he was not sure he meant it. “I’ll see you around.”

  Marc slipped through the door and out into the rain. He was very careful that the bag was double-folded over his prize to protect it from the elements.

  * * * * *

  On the fourth day, Brenwyn attempted to work. She trekked down the stairs, across two feet of rain between awnings, and into the store. She still didn’t escape the fog she had been in since her fight with Marc.

  Brenwyn started with an herbal mixture of chamomile and peppermint. Normally, she would have inspected the herbs and reinforced their essence with healing vibrations and intentions. Instead, this evening she was distractedly dropping individual leaves and flowers into the tin one at a time.

  A frantic tap at the front door broke Brenwyn out of her fugue. She looked up to see Feather, her anguished face pressed to the glass. Her silver hair was piled high on her head and held in place with jeweled hairsticks. The rest of her body was swathed in black, making her head seem to float in space against the charcoal grey of the storm outside.

  Brenwyn pushed away from the counter and hurried to the door. She was embarrassed to realize that she was still wearing her embroidered slippers and the Starwood tee-shirt with the hole just below the left nipple. After Brenwyn unlocked the door, Feather entered in a mincing erratic walk. Brenwyn quickly made sure the sign on the door still read “CLOSED.”

  “Oh Bren,” Feather whined, “you know—ow—I wouldn’t disturb you at a time like this—aah. But this is a – ahh- real emergency.”

  “Do not be silly, Feather.” Brenwyn took Feather by the upper arm to guide her into the store. Feather gasped in anguish and Brenwyn released her quickly.

  “Sorry,” Brenwyn murmured.

  She saw now how Feather walked so no part of her body would rub against another, even her fingers, all the time gasping in pain or muttering instructions to herself:

  “Don’t—scratch. Don’t—aw—scratch. Don’t scratch, don’t scratch.”

  “What did you do to yourself now, Feather?” Brenwyn asked.

  “You’re more than a little bit distracted, aren’t you?” Feather said. “You usually have me diagnosed before I’m all the way through the door.”

  She held her arms out wide, though nothing showed but her black sweats.

  “This is the work of my loving husband.”

  Brenwyn pulled a stool from behind the counter and patted the seat.

  “Here. Sit down,” Brenwyn said soothingly.

  “No, thank you,” Feather snapped back. “I definitely do not want to sit down right now.”

  “What did he do to you?” She reall
y had no idea what had happened, which would have concerned her if she was concerned with anything at all.

  “Randy came home early one day this week and he was—well, randy.” Feather waved off-handedly and apparently rubbed two tender parts together. “Oww! He had all my clothes peeled off before I even got to the couch.”

  “Oooh. The spark is still there.” It was reassuring for Brenwyn to think that there was still some romance left in the world.

  “It would have been nice,” Feather explained, “but he’d been messing around in poison ivy and didn’t bother to wash his hands.”

  Feather pulled down the scoop neck of her sweatshirt to show the red-blistered rash that ran across her breasts and up her neck. Brenwyn winced in sympathy at the sight.

  “Every erogenous zone on my body is itching like it was set on fire,” Feather grimaced. “Aah, like that one—ouch! You have any of that slippery elm poultice made up?”

  “Of course.”

  Brenwyn eagerly went to the shelf of salves, lotions, and poultices and she stood on tiptoe to pull down a glass jar from the topmost shelf.

  * * * * *

  Marc trotted down the sidewalk and tried to work out how he could get his gift to Brenwyn. His biggest fear was that she would turn him into a newt before he had a chance to apologize. He stopped dead when he saw the women in the shop. He cautiously stepped back into the shadow to watch.

  He recognized Feather from Brenwyn’s coven. She looked anguished. Brenwyn looked just as miserable. Though she had obvious dark circles under her eyes, Marc thought she was still as beautiful as ever. Marc could feel the dopey smile he hated so much steal across his face.

  * * * * *

  Brenwyn opened the jar with a satisfying “pop” as she walked back to Feather.

  “How did Randy get into poison ivy this time of year?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’s working the crews on the new renaissance faire.” Feather looked stricken as she realized what she had said.

  Brenwyn smiled ruefully, saddened more for the pain Feather felt on her part than anything else.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Bren.” Feather looked like she was going to rush over and hug Brenwyn, but then thought better of it. “If I ask him, Randy could drop a tree on that jackass.”

  “That is not what I want,” Brenwyn said forcefully.

  “So what—Ah-ow!” Feather interrupted her thought with a cry of pain as she moved and rubbed herself the wrong way. “Could we try some of that on me now?”

  “Sorry,” Brenwyn murmured.

  Brenwyn gently dabbed the reddish-brown past on the rashes exposed as Feather pulled down her top again.

  “Oh, that’s working already.” Feather luxuriated in the sensation for a moment before returning to the important topic left on the table. “So, what do you want? Have him back and give him another chance to rip your heart out?”

  “Of course not that,” Brenwyn said. “But you have lived with Randy for twenty-five years. He certainly has done some things that literally made you want to kill him?”

  Feather pulled her sweatshirt forward and glanced down her cleavage.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  Brenwyn went back to slathering Feather’s breasts with herbal paste.

  “Oooh, put lots there. It’s really bad,” Feather crooned. “I suppose if it weren’t for forgiveness, I’d have smothered him in his sleep years ago.”

  “Then you know what I want.” Brenwyn half-smiled at Feather.

  “And I hear you’ve seen all of it,” Feather leered back. “Aagh! Do you think we could just do all of me right now? I don’t think I could stand the ride home.”

  “All right, Feather,” Brenwyn nodded firmly, “come into the back room and strip down. My rubbing herbs all over your naked body where anyone could see might attract the wrong clientele.”

  “And don’t ever mention this to Randy. Ow!” Two more tender regions rubbed against each other as Feather started for the back room. “He’ll have a whole new fetish.”

  Brenwyn placed a reassuring hand on Feather’s shoulder and guided her through the curtain to the back room.

  * * * * *

  Marc watched the two women disappeared into the back room. He couldn’t hear a single word they said, making the last few minutes a weird spectacle worthy of Arcanum’s reputation.

  With the book in his hands, he opted to simply stroll into the shop. He froze at the door, unable to force himself to enter.

  “Damn! This is stupid,” he muttered to himself. “I whack demons with a shovel, for God’s sake.”

  Marc pulled a pen from his pocket and wrote a message inside the book’s title page. He dropped to one knee and pried the door open, just far enough to squeeze his hand and the book through. Marc set the book on end to lean against the door. He closed the door quietly and faded back into the shadows.

  Marc crumpled the bag from Arcana and stopped as he noticed a lump inside. It was a smaller drawstring fabric bag from Musetta’s shop. He emptied it into his hand and found three engraved silver and ivory amulets and a note.

  The note read:

  “For moving unseen against one’s enemies.”

  Once again, Musetta knew what he needed long before he even realized it. He was, however, catching up quickly.

  Marc chuckled. He flipped out his cell phone and placed a call as he strolled towards Mr. Fixit.

  “Tweak? It’s Sindri.”

  He took a moment to catch up on events before launching into his proposition.

  “Tweak, I need to make a few calls.”

  “And you need them to be totally untraceable?” Tweak replied. “No problem.”

  “Great!” Marc said. “Here’s what I had in mind . . .”

  * * * * *

  Feather sighed as she came out of the back room, obviously relieved. Brenwyn, feeling a bit better herself, walked Feather to the front door. Feather’s body made a crinkly sound as the plastic Brenwyn had wrapped her in rubbed against itself and the fabric of her clothing.

  “Oh, you’re such a lifesaver, Bren,” the older woman said.

  “It was a pleasure to be able to do some good again,” Brenwyn replied. “I have been perfectly useless lately.”

  Feather moved her limbs as a test and smiled. Evidently, nothing caused any sudden pains.

  “Well, you did right this time,” Feather assured her.

  “And I will get back to my equilibrium,” Brenwyn said. “I have done quite well without a love life for years. I can go on for a while, yet.”

  “Just like your jackass,” Feather added, “except he has to do without because of his winning ways with women.”

  The reference to Marc, even as “your jackass,” triggered a feeling of loss and longing in Brenwyn. She defended him automatically.

  “Don’t be cruel,” she said, “as much as Marc has done to deserve it.”

  Feather shook her head as she pulled on the door. The large book set in front of the door fell over at her feet with a slam. Both women jumped with surprise. Brenwyn suddenly realized that she had left the door unlocked.

  “Damn!” shouted Feather. “What was that!”

  “A book,” stated Brenwyn with her hand clutched to her chest. Her curiosity was piqued as she recognized the Llewellyn herbal. “A book I have been wanting for quite some time.”

  “And someone just left it there?”

  “So it seems.”

  Brenwyn picked up the book and opened it to the title page. She found a note in Marc’s handwriting: “Delivered by Elves. Love, M.S.”

  Ridiculously enough, her heart fluttered like a teenager’s. Brenwyn giggled and held the book to her chest.

  “So he leaves you a book and a love note,” Feather grumbled, “and you’re ready to give him another chance?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Brenwyn said. “You would do the same for Randy, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not until I beat the piss out of him with a broom handle, this time,” Feather said
. “I’m keeping a broom ready for your boy, too.”

  Chapter 20

  Operation Elfin Magic

  MARC WIPED RAINDROPS OFF THE ZIP LOCK that he had used as an incredibly cheap waterproof housing for the camcorder. The combination proved to be a serviceable low-budget night vision scope for inclement weather. Jeremiah Stone’s home was a tiny doll’s house on the two-inch screen.

  Jeremiah lived in a Victorian monstrosity commonly called a “Painted Lady.” In daylight, it was a ghastly combination of turquoise, red, and yellow. Through the camcorder’s low-light function, it was a more appropriate grey and black. All it needed was a swarm of bats and a few gargoyles to make it look like a fitting home for an assistant professor of Metaphysics and Demonology.

  The important thing to Marc was that there was no sign of movement, no lights in the house, and a bright, shiny Lexus parked in the street. Satisfied, he stowed the camcorder in a side pocket of his backpack.

  Marc flicked on the talk switch of his radio headset.

  “Keebler One to Tiny Bakers . . . Keebler One to Tiny Bakers,” Marc said in his military radio voice. “Prepare to initiate Operation Elfin Magic.”

  Eleazar’s voice came over the radio as a gleeful chirp:

  “Tiny Baker One to Keebler One. I am in position and awaiting orders, your worship.”

  “I’m ready, Mar—” Michael started.

  Marc shut him down instantly.

  “No names over an unsecured channel, soldier!” Marc snapped.

  “I read you, Keebler One. Do I really have to use ‘Tiny Baker Two?’” Michael whined.

  Marc sighed. These plans would go so much more easily if he had enough excess that he could afford to execute one or two evil minions as an object lesson.

  “Your only other choice is ‘Mr. Pink,’” Marc said.

  “Mr. Pink to Keebler One, I am in position and awaiting orders.” Marc heard a quaver of fear in Michael’s voice. “But could you hurry it up? This place gives me the creeps.”

  Marc stretched and his wet suit made a rude noise. Dressed as he was, in a black wet suit, balaclava, gloves, and kneepads, he was either prepared for a covert amphibious operation or a really kinky party.