Magic Makes You Strange (The Brontosaurus Pluto Society Book 1)

by Noah K Mullette-Gillman

  “You know the reason why! Your master had forbidden knowledge!”

  “The spell. You wanted if for yourselves?”

  “We wanted no one to have it! Your master will be removed from existence, and everything he knows will go with him!”

  Edward pretended to yawn. “And you destroy all magic and all magicians this way?”

  The eyes said, “No.” The alien didn’t answer with words. They shared a moment in which they each understood that the alien had revealed something that it didn’t mean to.

  “So, there was something special about Nevil Dever? Well, that’s no surprise. Or…was it not him? Was it the spell?”

  “Your mind is on loan. Anything forbidden will be erased. This is not new,” the alien said with malice.

  “You are the most unpleasant individual I have spoken to all day!” Edward said with mocking theatricality. “It looked like the spell made the plants grow. You don’t like when plants grow?”

  The alien simply glared at him.

  “If I’m just going to have to answer all of my own questions, maybe I should turn you to stone again?”

  The alien pursed its metallic lips. “You be careful with that magic. It will drive you crazy.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It will drive you insane!”

  “I think I can manage. How about you? Do you Plutonians ever use the Venusians’ spells?”

  “No. We use our own.”

  “Can you teach me a spell?”

  The alien simply grunted with disdain.

  “I think I have a bright future ahead of me. I don’t think there will be many magicians on stage who practice real magic. It will almost be like cheating -”

  “You will never stand on a stage again. We will find you. They will find you.”

  “Who?”

  “You have been so quickly and easily convinced that the infernal ones are really your friends. Do you think we created the lie? Do you think we wrote the Bible? Cut the stained glass? He needed you, but the devils are devils. If you see your friend again, he will burn you!”

  Edward didn’t know if he should believe that or not.

  The alien began slowly pulling at the ropes. They were straining. Edward became aware that he had a limited amount of time left to talk with the silver man.

  “Where are they taking Nevil?”

  “Our homeworld.”

  “How do I get him back?”

  “There’s nothing left to get back.”

  “How did you find me?”

  The alien snarled. “You’re so careless. It was easy!”

  His left hand popped loose from the binding.

  Edward turned the monster back into a statue. The young magician collapsed onto the red couch, exhausted from the stress.

  7

  With great effort, Edward took the alien down into the basement. He left one of Mia’s magnets on a string around its neck, just in case. All the same, he didn’t feel good about leaving her down there with it.

  Edward walked out into the backyard. The rabbits were everywhere. He went back inside and got a bag of their food. He left it out where they could get it. They were chewing on the grass just fine, but he was sure it was a new experience for them.

  As he went inside, he was trying to figure out what to do next. Then he realized that he had just stuck the red crystal into his right nostril. With great confusion, he ran into the bathroom and carefully fished it out.

  Once he thought about it, he could remember doing it. He had had an itch, and he had idly thought that was the best way to relieve it. As much as he didn’t want to give the alien artifact up, he decided to leave it in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

  He decided that he was going to have to learn how to use one of the vehicles. It was just getting dark then. Twilight in the country was beautiful. Edward walked out to the cars with Mia’s keys and a small bag which contained a sandwich and Mia’s spellbook.

  Young Edward eventually figured out the basics of getting an automobile running. As he went down the country roads, he kept the car under ten miles an hour. It seemed a dangerous speed to him. He spent some time discovering what all of the buttons and knobs did and, as a result, he discovered the radio.

  First of all, this allowed him to confirm that he was in the States. Secondly, it gave him his introduction to the popular music of the nineteen-seventies. He hated it! As he drove along, Edward kept changing the stations and hoping to find something nicer, something “gentler.”

  It started to rain and Edward didn’t know how to use the wipers. He drove even more slowly, weaving back and forth on the country road. Several times, he considered pulling over and waiting until the rain stopped. He found himself thinking about Mia’s spell. He hadn’t tested it. He didn’t know what it did. It could cause fire to shoot from his hands. It might summon dragons. Or, maybe it was a trap and whoever cast the spell would go blind?

  Everything that he knew about magic he’d either learned from a devil or an alien. Well, that wasn’t really true, was it? Nevil Dever had been teaching him. It was a different magic. That was legerdemain. But in the end, Dever had known real magic, hadn’t he? There was more to him than misdirection and sleight of hand. There was enough to bring intelligent life from other planets to come and see his show.

  Edward did feel cheated though. Dever had so many tricks that Edward hadn’t been able to solve yet. Whenever he did figure one out, he was so proud of himself. Dever was proud of him too. But every once in a while, Edward had been unable to figure out how Dever achieved some of the marvels. The great man had always smiled and said, “That’s because it isn’t a trick. It’s real magic.” Edward had assumed the magician was teasing with him. Now he wasn’t sure. Maybe quite a few of the tricks had been spells?

  He wondered what magic was capable of doing and not capable of doing. Could it send him back forty years? Could it stop someone from getting old and dying? Could it help him hide? He knew the one spell. He knew how to cast it, but understood nothing of the principles that made it work. How did imagining all of those symbols turn living matter to stone and back again? Could there be another spell that turns a man into a banana and back? He didn’t know what was ridiculous, what was reasonable.

  Behind him, he saw a flashing of red and blue lights. It appeared to be coming from another automobile. Edward waited for a while and continued to drive. Then finally, he decided that he should stop the car and see what was happening. Perhaps the other driver was attempting to communicate with him?

  With a jerk, Edward stopped the car in the middle of the road. He didn’t pull over. He just stopped and turned the vehicle off. A policeman got out of the car behind him and began walking up. Edward only had a few quick seconds to think of a story to tell him.

  The policeman looked to be about forty five or fifty years old. He was a little overweight and his skin looked rough, grey and red. “Is there a problem?”

  “Thank you so much! I’m just trying to find my mother-in-law’s house. I know it’s along here somewhere. That’s why I’m driving so slowly. I was afraid that I would miss it.”

  “License and registration, please,” the policeman said.

  Edward reached over into the glove compartment and began fumbling through the papers. Finally he found something that he thought might be the registration and handed it to the policeman. “Here’s the registration. I… don’t seem to have my license. I suspect we must have left it in the other car…”

  “You keep your license in the car?”

  Edward smiled and nodded, as if that was a normal thing. In fact, he had no idea if it was or not.

  “Just a moment,” the policeman said with annoyance and then went back into his own car.

  When Edward heard the policeman shut his door, he started the car up and pulled away slowly.

  This infuriated the policeman who raced his car ahead of Edward’s on the little road. He turned it sideways to block the way. Edward stopped, but he didn’t do i
t quickly enough. He almost hit the police car. The officer leapt out, gun in hand and pointed at Edward.

  “I want you to step out of the vehicle and place your hands on the hood!”

  Edward slowly got out. He understood that the officer was angry, but didn’t really understand why.

  With a smack, Edward found himself on the ground. The policeman was furious. He had hit Edward on the back of the knee.

  “You want to play games? Let me teach you how we play!”

  Young Edward could see that the man in blue meant to hit him again. He lifted up his hands defensively, but then winced in pain as the officer struck him in the fingers with his club.

  Edward imagined an inverted pyramid. He imagined a grey - ow! The officer hit him in the head.

  “You think you can come in and do your drugs and just treat our homes like your playpen!” The officer shouted.

  He imagined an inverted pyramid. He imagined a grey sun. He pictured a black - ow! Edward was hit again.

  “Not on my watch, scum bag!” The officer snarled at him, then hit him again.

  “Officer, please, there’s something you need to know… I have a medical condition!”

  The policeman paused for a moment.

  He imagined an inverted pyramid. He imagined a grey sun. He pictured a black dog. He remembered the shape Mandelesian had made with his fingers. He thought about the sound of running water pulling a rock away from the shore. And then….he imagined the policeman hitting him.

  The officer was turned to stone.

  The statue began to topple over onto Edward. He reached up, and pushed back against it, but it was heavier than he expected. It hurt his wrist. The young magician held as long as he could, and then rolled out of the way. As the statue landed, two of the grey fingers snapped off.

  Edward considered running off into the woods, but decided that that would be foolish. In the end, he wrestled the petrified policeman into the back seat of Mia’s car. He turned around and headed back towards her house.

  He drove faster this time, despite not being able to see very well through the rain on the windshield. Was this how mass murderers got started? Was the devil at fault? He had been taught how to cast the spell by a devil. Maybe there was a curse that went along with doing the magic that devils teach you?

  Just as he got home, the sky cracked open and a torrential rainstorm began to fall. By the time Edward had dragged the stone officer into the basement, he was soaking and shivering. He set about making a fire in Mia’s fireplace and lay down on the rug in front of it. As he closed his eyes, a white and brown lop-eared critter bounced happily by, oblivious to his presence.

  * ** *** ** *

  He woke up in the middle of the night. The fire was only smoldering by then. The storm was loud and rude outside. It sounded like it was trying to beat through the roof and the ceiling. Well, every other force in the universe was out to get Edward.

  “Why not?” he thought. “I’ll just turn the storm to stone when it comes to get me.”

  He discovered that he was holding the red crystal in a loose fist. He didn’t remember going to the bathroom or taking it out of the medicine cabinet. “Are you following me?” he asked it.

  There was a small pile of logs next to the fireplace. Edward had used about a third of it when he’d started the blaze. As that was just about burnt up, he took a little time to get it going again. He added two more logs and prodded at it until there was red and orange licking over the wood.

  He sat back down again, where he had napped and looked at the crystal in the fire-light. He watched the flames through the prism of the gem.

  He reached behind him and fished Mia’s spellbook out of the bag. The pages had gotten a little wet. The cover was actually soaked. He should have been more careful. What if the ink had run? He could have lost a magic spell because of his carelessness. Maybe it was time to find out what the girl’s magic did?

  “It probably allows her to pull rabbits out of various items of clothing!” He joked out loud. The sound of his own voice in the big empty house was strange. He felt a shiver in his spine. He took a few moments to look around to see if there was anyone else in the room. It made him feel somewhat like a child looking under the bed for the Boogie Man.

  Edward took one of the remaining logs that hadn’t gone into the fire yet. He stood it up on one of its ends on the carpet. It took him a moment to balance it so that it wouldn’t fall. Standing there, the way it was, Edward noticed that it looked a little like a man whose arms had been cut off at the shoulders. He almost thought he could see a face in the wood where the grey bark and the brown hard wood met.

  He closed his eyes and held his hand out towards the log, imagining that the magic was coming out of his palm. He didn’t realize how much he was influenced by all of the magic shows he’d seen.

  He pictured a long-necked reptile. It changed into a circle with a foot inside of it. He imagined the fancily drawn number four, then the weird looking flower, then the boat. The boat shifted into a simple rectangle. Finally he imagined a clockwise spiral. To launch the spell he thought about the three victims he’d turned to stone and left in the basement. He opened his eyes.

  There was a little red scar in the air. It ran up and down, like a little red-pink mark where there had used to be a wound in the nothing. It seemed to have depth to it and mass. The more Edward looked at it, the more he thought it really did look like the faded reminder of broken flesh.

  Then, a drop of pretty pink blood fell from it, and the scar began to bleed and widen.

  The air around it started to shimmer, like there was a great deal of heat coming from it, but Edward didn’t feel any of it. The scar tissue thickened and widened. He could see subtlety in its colors. There was purple. There was white.

  It began to open. Through the hole Edward saw swirls of light: orange, yellow, grey. Then a face appeared and began to move out through the hole.

  The first thought Edward had was that it looked like an eel. The prehistoric and vicious jaw made him think of the swamp creatures. But it didn’t have proper eyes. There were sockets, which made it seem like it had evolved from an eyed ancestor. Instead there was a series of long brown whiskers which grew out of that part of the face. They looked sensitive.

  As the creature moved through the opening, it seemed to have a long snake-like body. He didn’t see any arms or legs. Strangely, it had a very thick coat of brown fur. The hair was heavy, like a bear’s or a mammoth’s - almost like wool. The creature moved side to side, like a fish swimming through the air, as it moved farther and farther into the living room. At first it was heading right towards Edward, but it began to gently turn. The head stood still in a fixed spot while the body flowed out through the hole and curved through the room. Its face was only a little larger than a human face, but it was long like an animal’s instead of tall like a man’s.

  As more of the creature entered, Edward could see that it wasn’t really like a snake. The underbelly was covered with hundreds and hundreds of little spiky arms. If it set down on the ground it would have been more of a wooly millipede than a serpent.

  Edward hadn’t moved. He was silent. He couldn’t tell if the creature was aware of him or whether it was a threat. The way it had moved towards him and then retreated seemed to suggest that it knew he was there, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Was it waiting for him to command it?

  “Hello. How are you?” Edward said in a calm and even voice. A solid second after he spoke, it reacted, as if only then aware. It turned, pointing downwards at him. But it didn‘t attack. That was a good sign.

  “What do you -” Edward started to ask. But the monster moved suddenly, launching itself forward, over his head. Only then did it finish moving through the opening and into the room. Its full body was at least twenty feet in length.

  The monster landed on the carpet, not so far from where Edward was sitting. It leapt up onto the wall and began to move across it like an insect. There was
a squeal, and then a rabbit dashed out from underneath one of the couches. Edward watched as the long hairy body reached forward, the hind portions of the body still clinging to the wall, and the mouth closed down around the top half of the rabbit. There was a burst of blood and the back legs fell down in a puddle of intestines and fur.

  Just like a seagull, the monster tilted its neck back to swallow the first portion of the meal. The crunching was loud and gave Edward the shivers. He watched, paralyzed, as it bit down and grabbed most of the second half of the rabbit. There were still a lot of gooey pieces on the carpet.

  Edward was terrified. He felt like he was sitting in front of a feeding Tyrannosaurus. It was an animal. It wasn’t a devil or an intelligent creature. He could tell that. It was powerful and wild and dangerous. He felt like it could break holes in the house if it wanted to. He couldn’t imagine how it managed to hold up its whole weight by grabbing onto the walls and didn’t even seem to be leaving any marks in the wallpaper.

  He wanted it to go away. He didn’t care if it was going to obey him. He wanted it gone. The feeling was like lying in-between the tracks of a train and understanding that the train was going to pass over you, but not being willing to take the chance. It was too big. He could smell the fur. It was wet.

  He decided to cast Mia’s spell backwards, but couldn’t remember it.

  The book was just out of reach. He only had to lean forward and grab it, but he was too afraid.

  He imagined an inverted pyramid. He imagined a grey sun. He pictured a black dog. He remembered the shape Mandelesian had made with his fingers. He thought about the sound of running water pulling a rock away from the shore. And then….he thought about the monster eating him.

  The wall behind the creature turned to stone. What had once been wallpaper turned into patterned rock. A chair and a lamp were petrified along with it, but the monster was unaffected.

  Edward eyed the creature carefully. “Where did you come from?”

  He stood up. “Did you come from Hell? Did you come from Pluto? You’re mine. Do you understand me?” He tried to show that he wasn’t afraid. He was very careful with the tone of his voice. “I imagine you’re just like a dog. Dogs may not speak English, but they usually understand what’s said to them. You understand that I’m not afraid. You understand that I am the master,” he lied. He was a complete fraud. But he knew how to lie.