Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  “Sindri! Caravaggio! Eleazar! You will pay for this!” Jeremiah shouted. “You’re all dead men! Let me out of here!”

  Eleazar sniggered as he switched on his radio and made his final broadcast of the evening.

  “Tranquility Base to Keebler One, Tranquility Base to Keebler One. The cookies are ready for the bake sale.”

  The sounds of a near hysterical spate of rattling, pounding and screaming drifted down the halls from the office.

  “’Tis a shame it will have to wait six hours for the Girl Scouts.”

  * * * * *

  The taxi pulled up beside the jacked-up Lexus, and Jeremiah wearily got out on the passenger side. By now, he was too tired to concern himself with why his feet stuck to the floor and what was that reddish-brown stain on the upholstery. The driver rolled down his passenger side window.

  “How much do I owe you?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents.”

  It was bad enough that he had to sit in his own office for over five hours while neither his cell phone nor office phone worked, even to the point of having to use his trashcan as a chamber pot. But to have to pay for the privilege was a bit much. Jeremiah counted off a wad of bills and handed it through the window, which the driver quickly counted.

  “One dollar and fifty cents for a tip?” he muttered. “Sure you can afford this, mister?”

  Jeremiah glared at him with a look that should kill. The taxi’s radio erupted in a wave of static and then shorted out in sparks and smoke. The taxi driver shrieked and drove away, very, very fast.

  Damn it all, Jeremiah thought, missed again.

  Jeremiah chuckled and he felt to be at least a shadow of his normal, evil self. He plodded up to the front door and turned the keys in the lock. He tried to open the door but could not grip the doorknob:

  Some cretin had completely coated it with Vaseline.

  Chapter 21

  Knight Errant with Craftsman Tools

  MARC STEPPED OUT OF HIS TRAILER and raised his coffee cup to Michael and Eleazar, who sat on the picnic table. He marveled at the end of the rain and the red-clouded morning sky. This was the beginning of a warm Indian summer day.

  “It’s miraculous,” Eleazar called out. “We lock Jeremiah in his office for one night and the rain withdraws. You’ve broken the curse, milord.”

  Eleazar sounded very pleased with the results of Operation Elfin Magic. Marc was just happy that the sheriff hadn’t been on their doorsteps when they awoke this morning.

  “It’s a high-pressure system out of Wisconsin,” Michael countered.

  “You simply love to suck all the romance out of life.” Eleazar didn’t seem to have the energy to put his heart into the argument. They were all a little short on sleep.

  “Occam’s Razor, my friend,” Michael stated. “The simplest explanation that fits all the facts should always be the truth.”

  Marc strolled over to join the debate.

  “And how do you explain witches, demons, and undead, skinless bunnies?” he asked.

  “Simple,” Michael said. “We’re living in the scariest place on Earth.”

  Eleazar raised his coffee mug.

  “Hear, hear!”

  Marc and Eleazar clinked mugs in a light-hearted salute.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Marc replied.

  The three took a brief moment to enjoy their coffee and the morning sun.

  “So, what is your plan for the day?” Eleazar asked. “Everything within sight is still a ball of mud, your Grace.”

  Marc surveyed the sky as he tried to fit the delays into his running “For Want of a Nail” mantra he had started in in September.

  “The sun is out,” Marc said. “That should dry up the puddles. Might as well do some digging where it won’t be too muddy.”

  Marc took another sip of coffee, trying to jump start his brain after only three hours of sleep.

  “Is the maze laid out, yet?” he asked Michael.

  “Just the outer perimeter,” Michael said. “Eleazar and I could have it finished by this afternoon, three or four at the latest.”

  “Not today.” Eleazar shook his head. “I’m doing some talent scouting. My actual official duties on this project, I would remind you.”

  “We have enough serving wenches,” Michael grumbled.

  “These are reenactors,” Eleazar replied. “Sixteenth century German mercenaries: very colorful. They call themselves ‘Die Teufelkinder.’”

  “’The Devil’s Children,’” Michael translated. “They must be great with kids’ parties.”

  “More Landsknechts?” Marc asked. Landsknechts didn’t annoy him as much as Goths, but they were in close contention.

  “And very anal-retentive about authenticity, too,” Eleazar chirped. “Real woolen costumes. Fourteen-foot ash pike poles. They even have working matchlocks.”

  “You know how Steve feels about black powder weapons.” Marc took another sip of coffee to wash down the taste of stomach acid in the back of his throat.

  Eleazar made a sweeping gesture with hands, encompassing an imaginary horizon.

  “But think of the impression they’d make on the Fourth Estate at our May Day Debut,” he said.

  “Imagine the look on Steve’s face as he clutches his chest,” Michael added cheerily.

  “You’re finally getting into the spirit of things here.” Eleazar clutched Michael’s shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie.

  “Okay. You go. Bring ’em back alive,” Marc waved Eleazar on. He turned to Michael next. “Do you have anyone on your foundry crew you could call in?”

  “There’s Anietra,” Michael said. “With her, we could be done by one or two.”

  “Oy!” Eleazar shouted at the implied slight.

  “I don’t have to explain complicated art terms to her,” Michael said. “Like arcs, chords, and straight lines.”

  Once again, Marc cut off the conversation before it turned into one of their usual pissing matches.

  “Burn up the phone lines,” Marc told Michael. “I’ll fire up the Ditch Witch and cut what sections you have finished.”

  “I’m on it.” Michael saluted and trotted back to his trailer.

  Eleazar sidled up to Marc, close enough for a conspiratorial chat.

  “Ditch Witch?” he said with a knowing sideways glance. “If Brenwyn could hear you talk.”

  “Please.” Marc rolled his eyes.

  “So, when you put the Ditch Witch to bed, will you be visiting the Good Witch?”

  Marc took a long, slow sip of his coffee rather than answer.

  “I want to go real slow on that.”

  “Is that your male pride, Eleazar asked, “or visceral terror?”

  “Half and half,” Marc said. “When I saw Brenwyn the other day, she looked as bad as me.”

  “That lovely woman?” Eleazar looked absolutely aghast. “Impossible!”

  “It’ll be damn awkward starting things back up with her.” Marc continued, ignoring Eleazar’s histrionics.

  “You, sirrah, are a bilious and contemptible coward.” Eleazar poked Marc in the chest to punctuate.

  “Give me a break!” Marc snapped. “My hair is just now growing back from my last date with the woman.”

  He ended the pointless discussion by stomping back to his trailer to prepare for a decent day’s work.

  * * * * *

  Marc and Michael sat at the picnic table and watched the sunset paint the tool barn a pleasing shade of rosy red. They had no further plans for the evening than getting pleasantly tanked on beer and wine coolers.

  They had a full day’s work behind them. Marc’s back, arms, and legs ached after ten hours of hard physical labor. With a beer in his hand, he was very happy with life.

  Eleazar’s gypsy wagon pulled in and parked opposite his trailer. He and a zaftig brunette emerged, she in a short wool coat and even shorter skirt, Eleazar in one of his usual gaudy outfits. Eleazar waved casually as he led the woma
n over to his trailer.

  “I may be a little fuzzy on my history,” Michael muttered, “but that doesn’t look like a Landsknecht.”

  “Maybe she’s like the group liaison?” Marc replied helpfully.

  “Whoever she is, a liaison is definitely in the works.”

  Strains of romantic renaissance music came from Eleazar’s trailer. After a few moments, Marc could hear them giggling.

  “See?” Michael finished his second wine cooler and started a third.

  Marc contemplated one of his “Rolling Rock” empties.

  “Two more of these,” he said, “and I’ll be able to sleep through whatever liaising he has in mind.”

  “You really shouldn’t over-indulge,” Michael warned. “We have a lot of catch up to do tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Marc sighed. “Maybe an hour or two of sitcoms to kill the same amount of brain cells and then bed.”

  “Will you be calling Brenwyn before you get too stupid?” Michael did not sound casual or disinterested.

  “Can’t you two obsess about your own sex lives?” Marc snapped. Michael looked up at him as if someone had just shot his puppy.

  “I guess I’ll just go to bed,” Marc muttered.

  Marc stood and walked back to his trailer, not too unsteady, just dead-dog tired.

  “We only nag because we care,” Michael called out.

  “Good night, Mom!”

  Marc waved behind him as he lumbered up his front steps, trying his best to block out the sound of renaissance romance coming from the next trailer. There were earplugs he kept in his trailer that would probably help.

  * * * * *

  Jeremiah was nearing the culmination of the ritual. It was either his third or fourth climax of the evening, but the count didn’t matter. The point of sex magick was to achieve a point of complete sexual exhaustion, to break down the rational mind and achieve a higher state of consciousness. He was near that state, unable to count or to think beyond absorbing the waves of input from his senses. The only higher function was the Great Intention, his goal for the ritual rendered down into two simple words. He kept those two words in front of his mind as he touched and was touched, thrusted and was pierced. Two words that would make all the difference in the world.

  Wearing nothing but the jade amulet around his neck, he laid back on the pile of furs and pillows within the protective circle drawn in chalk on the ground. Felecia slid up his sweat-slick body and fed him a lush breast that tasted of salt and spices and flying ointment. He could feel Lance nuzzling at his groin like a suckling pig.

  He wallowed in that configuration for several moments until it felt like he might succumb. Then he changed positions, placing Felecia below and Lance behind. Again they changed, and again and again. All the time, those two words were held in his mind. His two acolytes were a cloud of hands and skin and mouths, receptacles of flesh and desire. They spun out his rising sensations into what felt like hours or days. When the final moment came, he arched backwards and screamed those two words. Then, he fell exhausted into the bed set up beneath the trees.

  There was a noise, like metal grinding on metal, like the opening of a secret door. A wind from nowhere rose up and extinguished the candles. The only light was the orange sodium light from the center of the camp.

  Something stood in the containment space outside the protective circles drawn in chalk on the ground. It was no more solid than a mist or a reflection on the surface of a stream. There were eyes and teeth and tentacles in this thing and a malice born billions of years ago. A faint vibrato whistling came from it, an unnatural sound that ran fingernails up the spine of the listener. Felecia and Lance backed away from the thing, coming dangerously close to breaking out of the inner circle.

  Jeremiah silently gestured for them to hold still. A good thing this was just an avatar, a representation of what was waiting to be born into this world at the proper location. He stood and walked naked towards the outer edge of the circle where the construct pressed against its restraints. Jeremiah’s exhaustion was gone, replaced with exaltation. For decades he had sought to control more and more of this power. Thanks to the influence of Sindri’s noumena, he was at the moment of his greatest achievement.

  Jeremiah removed the jade amulet from around his neck. It was also a mass of tentacles and eyes carved in intricate detail. It seemed to squirm in his hands as he came closer to the ensnared being. Jeremiah stepped up to the edge of the inner circle, brass plates laid on the earth with the many names of God inscribed as protection. He held up the amulet and repeated the Great Intention so there could be no doubt.

  “Kill him.”

  The being in the inscribed circle disappeared, cleanly, as if it had popped like a soap bubble. Jeremiah looked around at his quiet bower at the edge of the trees, the silver trailers just close enough for Marc Sindri’s native abilities to enable the Great Intention.

  “We’d best pack up and be out of here, darlings,” Jeremiah said, “before things get interesting.”

  * * * * *

  There was little sign of human activity left at the site of Jeremiah’s Samhain ritual. The ash and charred wood of the fire pit had been cleared away and raked over. Eleazar’s work crew had removed everything else, down to the strings that hung the dead rabbits and squirrels from the trees. The only sign of previous activity were the stones that once lined the fire pit, which were now stacked in a cairn. They dimly reflected the early morning moonlight.

  A whirlwind swept up the loose leaves and grass in a spiral. A vibrato whistling rose up with the wind. It started out as little more than a whisper and grew steadily louder until it was deafening.

  The cairn fell over as if an invisible fist struck it straight down from the sky. The stones rose into the air and then rocketed across the grove in all directions.

  A raccoon along the tree line peered curiously into the grove. It took a violent dislike to the situation and reared on its hind legs, turning into a hissing ball of fur and teeth. The raccoon was seized by the invisible fist and hurled against a tree where it spattered like an over-ripe melon.

  * * * * *

  A noise, high, sharp, and fleeting, cut its way into Eleazar’s dreams.

  Slowly rousing, Eleazar pulled his hair out of his eyes. He saw that his lover still shared his bed and provided a most comforting cushion for his head. He smiled and pulled more of his hair away from her breasts. He kissed an exposed nipple with ultimate delicacy. She smiled in her sleep and pulled his head down upon her.

  Before things could go any further, the noise returned. It was a high, warbling whistle like nothing Eleazar had heard before. It seemed to be neither natural nor mechanical. The only thing he could say with surety was that it was getting louder, which no doubt meant it was heading his way.

  Eleazar felt immediately concerned and alert. With practiced grace, he slipped out of the sleeping woman’s clutches and dressed quickly but silently in the dark. Moving like a cat through the dark trailer, he grabbed his blackthorn club and slipped outside.

  Eleazar crept down the stairs, trying his best to look everywhere at once. At the bottom step, he quickly checked above and below his trailer. He found nothing at all, which was even more distressing. Pressing close to the side of his own trailer, he slinked over to Marc’s. The whistling continued, though slightly louder now.

  Eleazar pressed his back to Marc’s trailer and pounded vigorously on the door with his club.

  “All right. All right!” Marc shouted from inside. “Stop it! I’m up, now.”

  Marc swung the door open violently and stepped out. He wore the same clothes he had on yesterday, though far more rumpled now.

  “I swear, if you dented that door . . .” he growled. Eleazar stood on Marc’s top step and avoided making any sudden moves.

  “Okay,” Marc said more softly once he had a chance to look Eleazar over. “What is it?”

  Eleazar pointed to the sky.

  “That.”

  Marc surv
eyed the sky and then looked quizzically at Eleazar.

  “Crickets?”

  “Those are not Earth crickets,” Eleazar avowed, “especially not in November. It gives me a most unpleasant feeling.”

  Eleazar was not eager to voice his next thought. It was a toss-up which could be more dangerous: Marc’s reaction or whatever whistled in the dark.

  “I think we should call Brenwyn,” he said.

  “I am not going to call her,” Marc said firmly, “to rescue us from the seventeen-year cicadas.”

  Marc strode angrily across the yard to the tool shed. Eleazar stood aghast and agape on Marc’s top step.

  “What do you have in that mad mind of yours, milord?”

  “I’m going to go get my shovel,” Marc shouted back. “It’s the perfect tool for squashing big bugs.”

  * * * * *

  Eleazar slipped over to Michael’s trailer and rapped on Michael’s door. After a few moments of thrashing and mumbling, Michael emerged, wearing pajamas, robe, and mismatched loafers. He clutched his T-square to his chest.

  “What is it now?” Michael asked sleepily.

  “Something irredeemably odd is going on,” Eleazar explained. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Michael blinked the sleep from his eyes and listened.

  “Did anyone check the foundry shed?” Michael asked.

  This came as a total non sequitur to Eleazar.

  “What?”

  “If something like a kiln or furnace got turned on, it gets very hot and produces a lot of pressure, which can blow us all to Kingdom Come.” Michael, Eleazar realized, was one of those rare men who could lecture while still nine-tenths unconscious. “That sounds like a faulty pressure valve.”

  If this really was some lethal and supernatural threat, Eleazar regretted waking Michael for it.

  “Mayhaps it is nothing,” said Eleazar. “Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

  Michael was galvanized, instantly very awake and angry. He pressed the T-square into Eleazar’s hands.

  “Here. Hold onto this!” Michael disappeared into the trailer and returned with his cell phone.

  “Your phone?!”