The Wizards on Walnut Street

by Sam Swicegood

  The

  Wizards

  On

  Walnut

  Street

  Sam Swicegood

  Dragon Street Press

  -

  Cincinnati, OH

  Copyright © 2018 Sam Swicegood

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Elsewhere Media Limited

  PO Box 12106

  Cincinnati, OH 45229

  Ordering Information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

  Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Elsewhere Media Ltd at (607) 4-GAMES-4 or (607) 442 6374; or visit www.dragonstreet.press for further information.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Also, wizards don’t exist. At least that’s what the Dragon of Cincinnati told me to print here.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  1 3 5 7 6 4 2

  ISBN: 0692129669

  ISBN-13: 978-0692129661

  To Mom

  who taught me that finishing a book is a journey

  not a destination

  Contents

  Exit Interview

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Except from A Brief History of Sorcery (1943) by Ramfort Yung, Esq.

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Dead End

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Shapes

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Apollo and Killian

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  First Day

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Exit Interview

  Bolts of lightning, as it turned out, did not tickle.

  Tom had wondered about that more than once throughout his career, watching them flash and flow freely out the tip of more than one aggravated wizard’s wand. He had watched the bright flashes that stunned and elicited everything from a surprised yelp to a groan of defeat. Once, it had brought an embarrassed string of curse words, as the target fell, paralyzed, backwards into a portable toilet.

  Lightning was, however, effective. It was one of the only offensive spells sanctioned for regular use in Cincinnati, due to its low potential for lethality. Tom had used it many times to stop would-be thieves thinking that a trip into a massive magic vault might garner them fame or fortune, only to find out that Tom was too brilliant and clever, and even if the massive assortments of sorcerous defenses failed, there was always a trusty lightning bolt to stop a bad guy in his tracks. From his perspective, though, the lightning bolt emitted only a mild buzzing sound and left his fingers tingly, with the hair standing on end. He wondered, sometimes, what it felt like to be hit with it, since his Employee Handbook described the effects as “mostly painless, I would wager.” Had no one actually tested that theory?

  Obviously not. The crackle of lightning felt like his back was being split open, and it took all of his strength and determination to wrench open the door to his condominium building and throw himself inside. There, he crashed to the ground in a sweat, shaking as the door clicked shut behind him. He was safe now—the protective wards across the threshold of the building would keep any intruder at bay…for a while at least. Just enough time to catch his breath and start to pack.

  He would have to leave, now that he had been discovered.

  How had it gotten this bad? Everything seemed to be working perfectly. No disruptions in his normal workday. No strange emails, no odd memos. There was utterly no sign anywhere of someone doing something devious. Had he missed a signal somewhere? Well, he had no time to reflect. He would have to get up and start a new plan to get out of the city before his pursuers could figure out a way to get past the wards. He had a little time, so long as none of them had gotten inside yet—

  “Get up, Tom.”

  He snapped his eyes open to find himself face-to-face with a black, inky-looking canine with bared teeth. He did as he was told, rolling onto his stomach and slowly pushing himself up to a standing position. “What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Special assignment,” it said gruffly, sitting back on its haunches and fixing the man with its glowing blue eyes. “You’ve got yerself in a bit o’ a pickle, haven’ ya.”

  “Yeah,” He said, running his fingers through his hair. Had he lost his hat? Dammit, that was a nice hat. “But I can fix it. I know how to fix all this. I just need to go upstairs.”

  “Not goin’ anywhere, for the moment,” the dog said. “Unfortunately, they’re already upstairs. So, here’s how it’s going to go.”

  “Wait, they’re here already?” Tom choked out the words and stumbled backwards toward the door. “They’re gonna kill—”

  “Maybe, but that’s not my business, now is it?” the dog snapped back. “I don’ care what they’ve planned out, and I ain’t here to get you out of it. I’m just here to observe, as usual.”

  Tom took a deep breath. “Can I get a last…request or something?”

  “If it’s something like a cigarette, then sure. If yer wanting a steak dinner, well…I’ve never been a good cook. Maybe I could whip up a bowl of cereal. Or a bag o’ chips.”

  Tom chuckled and pulled out a stick of gum from his pocket and unwrapped it. “No, nothing like that. Just…a couple minutes to relax. I haven’t really had that in years.” Popping the gum in his mouth he took a seat behind the dog on one of the lobby benches.

  “Can’t stall too long. They’re waitin’.” The dog hopped up on the bench next to him and curled up with its head in his lap.

  Tom petted the matted fur gently with his hand. “I had a good run. Did a lot of good things. Made some mistakes.”

  “Regrets don’ help nobody when the end comes, now do they? Regrets are just broken promises you made to yourself.”

  “Remember that time we chased trolls out of the fountain downtown? God…I smelled like bilge water for weeks. I regretted that.”

  “Never noticed. But maybe I was busy getting sick after biting one on the arse. Regretted that.”

  Tom grinned and leaned his head back. “Eh, you didn’t notice because you smell far worse.”

  The dog let out a deep laugh. “Well, that’s true.”

  They sat quietly for a short while, until the sugar in Tom’s gum had begun to fade. “So, what now?”

  “Well, I figure they’ll come down those stairs any minute now. Might want to get tha’ wand o’ yours out and ready.” The dog hopped off the bench and trotted over to a corner.

  Tom stood up, brushing off hi
s coat and pulling a dark wooden rod from his jacket. “Okay. They’ve got me outnumbered and outgunned. But,” he added as the dog sat down and seemed to blend into the shadows, “I am probably the best Wizard this city has ever seen. Think I can take them?”

  The dog shrugged and faded from sight. “Anything’s possible.”

  Tom took a deep breath as the elevator door at the top of the stairs lit up and the doors began to open. “Yes,” he said quietly as lightning crackled in his wand, “Anything is possible.”

  Chapter 1

  I first met them at Dad’s funeral. Of course, I had no idea who, or what, they were at the time, but they arrived in droves. Crisp black suits and ties, without a single decoration or distinguishing feature to adorn them, they arrived all separately and did practically the same thing while I watched them with suspicion. Each one headed to the casket and seemed to analyze the still figure lying there as though looking for something. Whatever it was, they did not find it, for each of them turned and passed to the back of the room, to sit in the last few pews of the church like a black mass in the back that seemed to be of one single mind and body.

  As the service started, I will admit, I didn’t grieve. If I tried to pinpoint exactly why now, I wouldn’t be able to; but I think that I simply didn’t have the energy or the will to let myself grieve just yet. There was too much to take care of first. Too much paperwork to do, people to see, and things to pack away. There was a whole condominium in need of organization, and apparently, I had been left the two-bedroom property in Dad’s will along with all its contents. All in all, I felt justified in my stoic existence, powering through the emotions in my stomach as the pastor read out words of comfort.

  I have never liked funerals. Not just for the obvious reason of someone having died, but because no one seems to really know how to react. Sometimes funerals are a welcome relief from pain. Sometimes they are a massive burden on loved ones. Sometimes they are expected and sometimes they are sudden. But no one, in my opinion, really knows how to have a funeral. They just play it by ear and hope that someone, somewhere, gets closure and comfort in the face of mortality.

  I recall that I took my turn at the podium, and the words that came from my mouth were carefully chosen and rehearsed; the last thing I needed was an anxiety attack to fall on top of everything else. But to be honest I don’t remember exactly what it was that I said up there. I do remember that as I looked out and saw that black conglomeration of suits in the back of the room I was taken aback momentarily and had to swallow a lump in my throat before proceeding. They were a disturbing sight, like a void where people should be.

  One of them took a turn at the podium as well. I hadn’t expected this, but when one of them appeared in front of the microphone I was overcome with a strange sense of misplacement, as though the context for this man himself was not right. As though he, whoever he was, should truly be anywhere but here, and that the world was somehow wrong for his presence in this faded church.

  “Tom was an asset,” He began with a voice that seemed to fill and permeate the still air and demand attention. “He was the kind of man you could trust to have your back and keep you in line. Never erring from his principles, never deviating from his vision. There are places in this world that will be the less for his absence, and on behalf of all of us,” he said, and his eyes swept the back of the room as though to lasso them all into a single conjoined entity, “I express my most heartfelt sympathies.” He looked over at the casket.

  He said something then that resonates with me to this day. It was soft, and his face was turned from the microphone. I don’t know if anyone else in the room heard it, but from where I was I could make the words out quite clearly, and I could not get them out of my mind. “We’ll get them back for what they did.”

  Few in the room would have understood the depth of those words had they been heard. Only a few people had known that Dad had been murdered, and so when I heard it I was stunned. I stared at the man as he got near me and reached out to stop him as he came into arm’s reach. “Hey—”

  He stopped and looked at me. “Hi. Andy, right?”

  I nodded. “What did you—”

  “Later.” He gave me a very warm smile and walked off, leaving me frustrated and confused. I took my seat and returned my attention to the next speaker, but his words remained in the back of my mind and begged my curiosity to sate it. The moment the service was over I rose from my chair and walked toward the back, but the entire company of suits had slithered away while I wasn’t looking and had disappeared. I asked mom who those people were. “Some of his work colleagues, I think.”

  ~

  I met them again when I went to check out my dad’s condo. Well, it was my condo now, technically, but I hadn’t really come to terms with that fact just yet.

  I had never seen where Dad had lived. His visits to Washington had always been on my Mother’s terms, and I never went to visit him in Cincinnati. Mom insisted that our visits were always supervised, and any attempts to convince her otherwise would lead to a long diatribe about how I clearly didn’t love her and just wanted to run away and be with Dad. To be honest, a part of me would gladly agree with her, but that wasn’t a fight I was planning on having anytime soon. Besides, Dad was a very busy man and I couldn’t imagine that trying to live in a house with a mostly-absentee parent would be much healthier than living with a narcissistic one.

  When I found the door open I wondered if my Mom had gotten a key of her own and decided to show up first. But the truth was far more disturbing—the people in suits were there, packing all my Dad’s things up into tidy boxes. They were in every room, touching and moving everything. Even the furniture. In my head I imagined the walls and floor covered in fingerprints, and I had to shake the anxious feeling from where it was trying to lodge itself in the folds of my brain in an exceptionally unwelcome manner.

  The one who spoke at the funeral was there and met me at the door. “Hello, Andy. Sorry, we weren’t expecting you so soon. We’re doing some cleanup here for you.” He seemed sincere and I swallowed my reactive anger, resisting the urge to begin screaming at them all to get out.

  “What kind of cleanup?”

  “Your dad, you know, he worked really hard. Brought a lot of work home. We’re collecting all those documents, so you don’t have to sort through them.”

  “What about the furniture? And everything else?”

  He shrugged. “There’s not much else, really. Your dad lived pretty minimalist. But your…let me see.” He checked his phone. “Your mom, right? She told us that it was her wishes as executor to have all of the furniture disposed of.”

  Oh, of course. Mom had taken control of the whole situation just as I knew she would. She just had to have her fingers in every pie, didn’t she?

  I sighed heavily, knowing it would be another fight if I talked to her about it, so I decided not to bother. “Right. Fine. Hey, while I’ve got you here…” I tried to formulate the words. “You seem to have known my dad pretty well. What…what can you tell me about him?”

  The man opened his mouth to speak but then appeared to think better of his initial response. He considered me for a moment and then spoke in a way that seemed very deliberate. “Do you know what kind of work your dad did?”

  I shook my head.

  That seemed to satisfy him. “He worked for a consulting firm,” the man said in such a practiced tone that I was pretty sure it was a go-to response of some kind. “If you want to learn some more, well…here.” He handed over a business card, and I realized that the suited people had disappeared out the door behind me, leaving the condo entirely quiet and empty. He gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and then followed suit, leaving me standing, alone, in an unfamiliar city, with far more questions than I needed, and one less dad than I wanted.

  ~

  Researching the firm had been relatively easy. The business card I’d been given included a web site, which I had spent an afternoon perusing and makin
g notes. It seemed to be entirely above-board, its fancy serif writing at the top spelling out “50 Thousand Consulting” in gold letters bordered by a black tessellated box. “Committed to Success and Lasting Results,” the headline read. Beneath that, in purple, the company touted itself as “one of the world’s largest alternative consulting firms” with “a global team that aligns our interests with those of our clients.”

  The pictures didn’t give much clue either to the mystery of what exactly this company did. A group of men and women in suits applauding under a shower of confetti, a picture of the Cincinnati skyline at night, a shot of a busy street filled with people…all high-quality stock footage that proved to be utterly useless in deciphering the code.

  Speaking of code, the site’s HTML was similarly unhelpful. A basic, out-of-the-box stylesheet and not a single commented line, the best I could decipher was that the person making the site was far too addicted to JavaScript and that there was probably some poor technical support guy who was getting java error calls all day because of how poorly it was built.

  In the end, I almost dropped the whole thing until I spotted a tiny “Careers” button near the bottom that caught my attention. A few clicks later I saw that the company was going through a hiring rotation for co-ops.

  “Potential hires must have the following,” it read, “(a) an Associate Degree or higher, (b) three or more years of experience in an office environment, (c) a strong desire to learn and a devotion to making people’s lives better.” It went on to include that such an esteemed person should be able to lift 60 pounds and communicate well by email, because why would someone be good at helping others and yet lack basic computer skills?

  After considering that I met nearly all the requirements, I briefly considered my life back in D.C. A life full of guilt trips and narcissistic family members…and I don’t think I need to explain the plight of a poor college-age kid in America to get the point across that leaving it behind wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.