The Ledberg Runestone

by Patrick Donovan

  “You look like hell, by the way,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Long day.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “I need some help.”

  “So you said. What kind of help?”

  “I need to unload a couple of books, one of them is a summoning book. I’m not really too sure on the who’s or the what’s. I’m going to need the skinny on a hunk of rock, too.”

  “Hunk of rock?”

  “Woman wants it bad enough to pay me four figures. It’s got a little something to it, but I wanna know what.”

  “Well, show me what you got.”

  I pulled out my phone, flipped it to the pictures I’d taken and tossed it to him. He caught it, turned to his desk, and hooked it up to some wire. A second later, a grid of pictures of popped up on the monitor. Gus opened the first image, the summoning book, the picture filling the entirety of one of his screens.

  Gus whistled.

  “Where did you find this?” he asked.

  “You sure you want to know?”

  “Hit me.”

  “Stole it from Mama Duvalier.”

  Gus blinked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me,” I said, a hint of pride coloring my tone.

  “Are you absolutely brain dead?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  I pulled the book out of my bag and handed it to him. He opened it at random, placed it on a photo scanner, and let the machine do its thing. While it did that, he pulled up the picture of the next book, stared at it for a moment, then slid over to the next picture, the piece of stone that Lysone had wanted me to procure.

  “Huh,” he said, more to himself than to me. “That’s…huh.”

  Gus settled back into his chair.

  “I’m gonna need a little time for this one,” he said, nodding towards the screen. “The first book, too. The other one is just a codex. Nothing too fancy. I can get you a few hundred bucks for it.”

  “That works,” I said.

  “Give me a few minutes to work,” he said, stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles like the world’s most disheveled concert pianist.

  I paced around Gus’s place. Every now and again, I’d stop and peer at some of his pictures and connections. It would seem, in Gus’s worldview, there was a connection between the United Nations, the Kardashians, a small earthquake in Siberia, and the collapse of a small Internet provider in Wisconsin. This in turn branched off to a swarm of Killer Bees in Africa, the sinking of a cargo ship off the coast of Taiwan, and the death from drunk driving of two sorority girls in Tucson.

  “Oooh, well now we’re getting somewhere,” Gus said from somewhere over my shoulder.

  “What’d you find?”

  “Huh? Nothing.”

  I shook my head and went back to tracing my way through Gus’s web of conspiracy. Honestly, after about fifteen minutes, some of it made a little bit of sense. Not a lot. Just enough to make me start wondering about my own sanity.

  You know, in case the prior thirty-six hours wasn’t enough.

  “Alright, got it,” Gus said.

  I walked over to him and peered at the monitors over his shoulder. He reeked of sweat, but my presence there made him a little uncomfortable, so I stuck it out. You know, for my own amusement. Gus stared up at me, narrowed his eyes in a glare, then turned back to his own privatized version of NORAD.

  “You want the intel on the book or the stone first?” he asked.

  “Book.”

  “Alright, from what I can tell the book originated in the Appalachians,” Gus said, punching a few keys. “You can tell by some of the writing. It has a very distinct vernacular. Also, if you look at the leather of the cover, which is absolutely beautiful—”

  “Appreciate the assessment of its artistic value, but that’s not really what I’m looking for.”

  “Alright, you want the dirt. I get it. Here’s the skinny thus far: the book’s a summoning book. Mostly Fae, from what I can tell. Heavy hitters too, named stuff. Sort of a rolodex of badasses. There’s some other stuff in some Scandinavian runic language, Russian, a little bit of Greek, but it’s mostly Fae.”

  “You can move it?”

  “For the normal fee.”

  “Done. What about the rock?”

  “Well now, that one’s interesting. It would seem what you have in your hands is a hunk of the Ledberg stone.”

  “A runestone. Yeah, I know.”

  “Right, scholars argue over what it depicts. Either it’s the end of the world or some poor bastard getting beaten in a fight. Point is, a piece is missing. You have that missing piece so you can finally answer that question once and for all, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

  “I’m not. What’s it worth?”

  “In the right hands, a lot.”

  “More than five K?”

  “Oh yeah, a lot more.”

  “Excellent.”

  “There’s more.”

  I quirked a brow.

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “If you look here,” he said, tapping an image on the screen with a dirty chopstick, “You see those marks?”

  I nodded.

  “Those are inscriptions. They’re time-worn, almost to the point of being indecipherable, but they’re there.”

  “Okay? And?”

  “Give me a day, maybe two, give or take, I can probably track it all down and tell you what it means. It could be something that’ll up the value or it could be Great Aunt Helga’s mead recipe.”

  “Sure, why not? Let’s chalk it up to academic curiosity.”

  “In other words, you want to see if you can squeeze more money out of your buyer,” Gus said.

  “Basically,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “Alright, Gus, work your magic. I’m gonna step outside, make a call.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Uh, okay?”

  “You need to go at least two miles in any direction.”

  “What?”

  “Cell phone jammers,” he explained. “I have them strategically placed to limit communications. You’ll need to drive at least two miles to get out of their radius.”

  I blinked.

  “You put in cell phone jammers?”

  “And RF Frequency blockers, some homemade thermal dampening. Oh, and carbon monoxide detectors. I work in mysterious ways.”

  “Right. Of course you do. Can’t be too safe, right? Call me when you have something?”

  “Sure,” Gus said, getting back to his typing and forgetting about me almost instantly.

  Chapter 20

  I called Lysone on the way back to Asheville and hoped to God I didn’t pass a cop. I had a bottle of rum in one hand, was trying to dial a cell phone with the other, all while trying to steer with one knee. At the moment, I figured I was pretty much the poster boy for poor driving decisions.

  Once more, she answered the phone before it even rang. I had to admit, it was more than a little creepy.

  “Mister Heywood,” she said, voice cool, calm, and collected, every last syllable all business.

  “I have your rock.”

  There was a pause that lasted so long I thought she’d hung up on me.

  “You have it?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Where would you like me to meet you?” she asked, and something in her voice had changed. There was an anticipation there, something bordering on desperation. It set my nerves on edge. I’d hear that sort of tone in addicts who needed a fix and weren’t above doing very bad things to get right.

  “Are you opposed to meeting me at Jack of the Wood?” I asked.

  “It’s not my preference,” she admitted.

  “Good. Meet me there in say, two hours?”

  �
�Are you sure that’s the proper venue?”

  “Sure enough that that’s where we’re going.”

  “If I must.”

  “You must. Two hours.”

  “Why the delay?”

  “Because I’ve had a really long, really shitty day and I’d like a shower,” I said, catching a quick glimpse of my face in the rearview. I actually wasn’t sure a shower was going to cover it. A few specks of dried blood still hung to my cheek, mixed in with a fair amount of smudged grime. My hair was standing up at angles that were most likely only found in some kind of Lovecraftian geometry. Heavy bags had collected under my eyes, my skin had a washed-out, pale, cast. Overall, I just looked like utter crap.

  “I see.”

  “God, I hope not,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Nothing. Two hours, Jack of the Wood. Doable?”

  “Very. Do not be late, Mister Heywood,” she said and hung up.

  I tossed the phone onto the seat beside me and turned into my trailer park. The trailers, most of them already in varying states of disrepair, had a looming, almost graveyard-like quality. Maybe it was the dilapidated cars in the driveways, their hoods left open to the night sky. Maybe it was the unkempt lawns, forgotten toys, and tarped-over riding lawnmowers. Either way, home base seemed creepier than usual.

  I pulled into my driveway, shoved my bag under the seat, locked the doors, and trudged inside. Given that I was only walking about twenty, maybe thirty feet total, I left my cane in the truck as well. If I needed it, I had more inside.

  Once I entered, I stripped down and hopped in the shower, taking care not to get the veritable army of stitches holding my face together wet. The water was glorious. Say what you will about my little shanty, but the water heater was awesome. I had to replace the element more than once, and I’d finally decided to put in one that didn’t exactly meet specifications. It blew the breaker, more often than not, but it was pure, molten, scalding goodness after a long day. I closed my eyes and reveled in it, letting the water beat at my aching muscles.

  I was midway through my shower when the power went out. There’s vulnerable, and then there’s standing in a two by two stall, naked, soaking wet, and covered with lavender and green tea scented soap suds vulnerable. I was horribly, frighteningly vulnerable.

  I stood stock still until my heart rate returned to normal, turned off the water, and took in the sudden silence. There was no hum of floorboard heaters, no ticking or whirring from the refrigerator, nothing. Just an eerie quiet that seemed to settle over everything with an oppressive weight.

  I pushed the stall door open, stepped into the bathroom, and started feeling around blindly for a towel and my clothes. It took a minute, but I managed to dry off and get dressed without falling over, knocking something down, or stepping into the toilet. Of course, that feeling of relief slipped away like sand when I heard the steps on the front porch and the screen door open and shut.

  There was a chance that it could’ve been one of my neighbors stopping by to check about the power. It could’ve been Rick, the cable guy who lived in the trailer next door coming to tell me about his most recent service call turned bored housewife rendezvous. Or, it could’ve been Sherri, the stripper. Somehow, I doubted it was any of them. Call it a hunch, the law of probability, or hell, call it the fact that everyone I’d met over the past forty-eight hours had tried to kill me, but I wasn’t feeling confident that things weren’t, once again, going completely pear shaped.

  I was in a trailer bathroom, with one exit that led into a small, cramped hallway, no cover, and walls that were about as thick as construction paper. The only window in the room was roughly four inches tall by twenty-four inches long, far too small to serve as an exit. As far as weaponry went, I had a bottle of shampoo, a cheap dollar store razor, a plunger, and a few bottles of over the counter medicines.

  I couldn’t sit in the bathroom all night, nor could I make my presence known. So, I cracked the door and stuck my head out, ever so slowly.

  In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the most sound or well thought out strategy.

  I saw a shadow, a blur of movement. After that the lights, both metaphorical and literal, went out.

  Chapter 21

  The first thing I saw, when I opened my eyes, was stars. Not the cute little animated stars like in the cartoons, but real stars dotting a night sky far overhead. After that came the pain. This time it was a nauseating, skull-wrenching headache. Just turning my head made me feel like I was going to violently expel any food I’d recently eaten. I could feel a patch of heat against my back, not painful, but warm enough that it was uncomfortable. A moment later, the rumbling of an engine filtered in, followed by the vibration of motion and the occasional bone-jarring bump. My arms were bound behind me, and judging from how wide the bindings felt, it was probably duct tape. I tried to move my legs and found them stuck together at the ankle, no doubt bound with the same roll of tape.

  It took a minute for me to sort through the varying sensations, but I eventually came to the realization that I was in the bed of a truck. Then the familiar rhythm of the engine struck me, and I realized I was in the bed of my truck.

  I cannot even begin to put into words exactly how much this pissed me off. If I’d had a girlfriend, I’d be less upset if I’d caught the mystery driver in bed with her.

  I tried to sit up, but whoever was driving was obviously paying attention, because as soon as I made the attempt, the truck swerved hard to the right, slamming me back down to the sheet metal and sending me sliding across the bed.

  “Oh c’mon,” I muttered. “Alright, think Heywood.”

  My bag was still in the truck. The stuff inside of it would be pretty damned useful if I stood a snowball’s chance in hell of actually getting to it. Given my situation, I had a feeling that that was becoming increasingly unlikely. I had to figure out a way to work with what I had.

  I took a quick stock of the crap in the back of my truck. There were some pine needles, which would be absolutely awesome if I wanted to purge my truck of negative energies. There was a whole crap ton of acorns, which, given the fact that I wasn’t having fertility issues, were useless. If I’d had more time, I could use them to make a protection charm. Since there wasn’t a hostile spirit driving my girl and holding me hostage, that wouldn’t really do me any good either. The tire iron was in the cab. That left me with a few empty fast food bags, a gas can, and about a hundred empty beer cans of varying vintage to work with.

  The truck jerked to the side, sliding me across the bed in the opposite direction, and the sound of tires on pavement was replaced with the crunching of gravel. Where the sky had been open only moments ago, trees now stood in my periphery, throwing spires of shadow against an already dark sky.

  Whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it really quick.

  I rolled around in the bed of the truck, grasping blindly until I felt my fingers close around one of the beer cans. It took me a minute to get it flatted out, given that I couldn’t get that much leverage with my hands taped together. Once I’d flattened the can, I started working it back and forth until the aluminum tore. Once it ripped and I had a makeshift blade, I started hacking at the tape as best I could.

  The trees around me blotted out the stars and cast even more shadow across the back of the truck, which had slowed to a crawl. The bumps were hitting harder and more frequently now.

  I was halfway through the tape when the truck came to a stop. The door opened, slammed shut, and a moment later Cash Carver was standing beside the bed of my truck, his elbows resting on the sheet metal, staring at me.

  I wish I could say I was surprised.

  “Hello Jonah,” he said, twirling my keys around his finger, before slipping them into his pocket.

  “Cash,” I said, rolling up onto my side, holding my makeshift blade in my hands. “Judging from our situation, I’m guessing you’re a little miffed right about now.”
r />   “I’m not pleased, no.”

  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t be interested in a conversation of some sort? Maybe a bit of parlay?”

  Cash stared at me.

  “No? You sure?”

  That same dead stare.

  “Cash, listen to me. You kill me, you don’t get your money,” I said, trying to keep a rapidly growing note of panic out of my voice.

  “Surprisingly, that’s not entirely a concern of mine at the moment. You have something of mine already.”

  “I do? Want to share what that is?”

  “When I was younger,” Cash explained, ignoring my question. “My Uncle’s neighbor had cats. A lot of cats.”

  “Uh, okay?” I said, trying my best to saw at my bonds as inconspicuously as possible. For the time being at least, it seemed, it was working.

  “I stayed up there during the summer every year,” Cash explained, his voice strangely nostalgic, almost wistful. “These cats, they were in heat a lot. Always yowling and carrying on. Kept me awake more nights than I can count.”

  “They do that,” I agreed.

  “They do. It drove me crazy,” he said.

  “Oh, so that was it. I thought it was daddy issues.”

  Cash ignored me.

  “So, one day, I get an idea. I’m going to make them stop and I’m finally going to get some damned sleep,” he said, staring off into the distance. “So, that’s what I set out to do. First, I got me a possum trap. One of them cages with the little snap-down door. Possum goes in, starts eating the bait, and the door shuts. Very humane. Once they’re caught, you take them out in the woods and set them free. The problem is, animals have a way of finding their way back home.”

  Cash pulled a lighter out of his pocket and absently started flipping the top open and shut while he talked.