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

by Noah K Mullette-Gillman

  Nonchalantly, he picked up Mia’s book and made a great show of dusting it off. When he struck the book, the monster flinched. He smiled a delicate smile and almost managed a chuckle as he opened the old book to the back. His hands started to shake as he saw the instructions for the spell again. He was beginning to feel like there were cracks in his disguise. He looked up at the eyeless monster, instinctively looking for its eyes that weren’t there so he could see what it was thinking. The great and heavy skull slowly moved up and down with each breath. There was a rabbit’s foot in its beard.

  He was suddenly angry that it had done that to the helpless little bunny. Without looking at the spell a second time he held out his hand, holding the fingers hard – as if his hand was a claw.

  “Go back down!” He commanded in a deep voice. Then 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. He didn’t even have to do anything special to launch the spell. The anger he was already feeling was enough.

  The creature turned and launched itself back into the hole. Its body was so long that it took a full five seconds for it to move through, but finally it left. The tear began to shrink. As it did so, it seemed to thump, as if blood was pulsing through it. When there was only a thin pink line again, Edward blinked and then even that was gone.

  He dropped the book and launched his hands into his hair. Edward threw back his head and made a sound that was a part scream and part wild growl. He picked up the lamp that he had turned to stone and began to beat it against the stone wall. He hit it three times in fury and desperation before it shattered and cut his hand.

  A half hour later the doorbell rang. Without thinking, Edward answered the door. There were three devils on the steps.

  8

  The first devil was short and red. His hind quarters were hairy, like a satyr’s. He was cloven hoofed He wore no clothes, except for a heavy gold medallion and two obscenely thick gold bracelets. His horns were swirled and turned to weird angles. His face was fat and swollen. His lips were thick and fit his mouth loosely. His eyes looked sore. One of his nostrils was larger than the other, distractingly so.

  The second devil was blue, as blue as the sea, as blue as flowers in the spring. His horns were straight. His chin curved in and was cut into by deep rivulets, almost as if the skin were trying to imitate the shape of a beard. His ears were large and pointed. He wore a suit, a black suit, a cheap suit. It looked worn and old and poorly taken care of. It was the kind of suit that cost you job interviews. He apparently had feet, because he wore shoes: a new brown one on his right foot and a black scuffed-up one on his left.

  The woman’s face was smooth and elegant and ended in sharp points. Her eyelids were long and curved. Her eyes looked unusually moist. She was red, a deeper red than the man. Her horns were set farther forward on her forehead and her long black hair swept behind them, unfolding onto her shoulders. She wore a blue summer dress decorated with yellow flowers. It was torn in two or three places and stained with soil. She wore no shoes on her red feet. Her toenails were black.

  None of them were the devil he had escaped the spaceship with.

  “Invite us in,” the woman commanded.

  Wordlessly, Edward bowed and beckoned them to walk past them. The blue one snorted and the three devils filed past him, up the steps and into the living room. They all chose the red couch to sit on.

  In his mind, Edward pictured the long-necked reptile, and the foot in the circle. He was like a cowboy with his hand on his weapon.

  He sat down on the green couch.

  “Serve us,” the devil woman commanded.

  “No,” Edward replied.

  “Tell me that you love me and everything will be alright. Reach for me,” she commanded.

  Edward answered, “No,” but as he did so, he felt a twinge of regret, as if something inside of his heart had wanted to obey her.

  The blue devil snorted and then said something that sounded like, “Vool.”

  She smiled at him. It was sexy. “I think your name is Edward?”

  He nodded.

  “There has been a terrible misunderstanding. It’s not your fault. It’s too much for you. How could you ever do so much? It would be a relief!”

  “What are you talking about?” Edward asked.

  She smiled. “I know how it hurts. I know the way you feel.”

  “You should always obey her. Life is too short vor denying her,” The blue devil said sympathetically.

  Edward tilted his head questioningly.

  The blue devil leaned in toward the young magician. “You don’t have to do everything you’re told you should do. You don’t have to live up to it all. Sometimes, sometimes it’s better to do what she tells you than to be a slave.”

  “Wouldn’t that just make me her slave?”

  “It doesn’t veel that way,” the blue devil smiled. “Obeying her is the best kind ov vreedom.”

  “Why are you three devils here tonight?” Edward asked.

  “Eddie,” the blue devil answered, “you’ve stumbled onto powervul magic and it is going to destroy you. Iv you keep using it. You will lose your mind. You will become… terrivying!”

  “Like you?” Edward asked.

  The she-devil shook her head. “No, if you keep on, you will become strange. I don’t want to see you that way.”

  “What do you care?”

  The blue devil answered, “We are here to bring you a little mercy. We will take this burden from you. Give us the spell and then we will give you your live back. Everything can be normal again.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  The she-devil looked horrified.

  The blue devil looked at Edward very seriously. “It’s not what we’ll do to you that should worry you. Magic is wrong. Magic is bending, cracking, twisting the world. But you still have to live here. You’re bending yourselv. You’re twisting and soon you’ll begin cracking yourselv!”

  “What if I just give it up and don’t give it to you?”

  The blue devil snorted. “Your immortal soul is at stake.”

  “I don’t believe all that,” Edward waved his hand, as if dismissing the concept of the soul.

  The she-devil looked him in the eyes, “You don’t have to believe. You can feel it. All that want and nothing to relieve you… It’s more than your heart would cause. All that want…. You feel how much bigger than life your desire is.”

  The blue devil followed up, “Give us the spell. It will be as iv you’re giving us your sins themselves!”

  Edward visualized the inverted pyramid. He wondered if he could turn the three devils to stone. As he imagined it, he was surprised to feel a regret. His heart protested at the thought of turning the devil woman to stone, of allowing any harm at all to come to her. Edward had never felt so separated from his heart. It was as if they were completely different people.

  “Are you really from the planet Venus?” Edward asked.

  “The morning star,” she smiled.

  “We ARE Venus,” The blue devil replied. “Our whole race is the goddess ov love taken to vlesh. You’ve been told a lot lies. You’ve been made to vear us. They need you to vear us, so that the cold ones can control you. But once, a long time ago, we were the ones who took care ov everyone in this world. We were your gardeners. We were your shepherds. We taught you to speak. We taught you to think vor yourselves. We taught you to be independent. This is why they hate us so much.”

  “But I should trust you?” Edward asked with sarcasm.

  She answered, “I’d never lie to you about the way I feel – and nothing but the way we feel is worth a damn.”

  “And where are the aliens from?” Edward asked.

  The three devils exchanged glances, obviously surprised by the question.

  The blue devil asked, “They’ve come to
see you already?”

  Edward made a great show of laughing and running his hand through his hair. “I should say so! I spent forty years on a great round spaceship! You don’t have any idea who I am, do you?”

  He saw a moment of hesitation. They were uncertain.

  “You came in here assuming that I was new at this. You assumed that I only knew one spell. I am a powerful magician and you trifle with me at your peril!”

  The blue devil laughed, and then the other two joined in.

  “Isn’t he cute?” the female devil said to the red one who hadn’t spoken. He nodded.

  The blue devil stood up. “Well, iv you know all about magic, then we might as well go and leave you to it. I vor one, don’t want to get transformed into a toad.”

  The third devil laughed. They all stood and began to walk towards the front door.

  “Can I ask you one question before you go?”

  The blue devil walked past him, but the woman stopped. Her dress was turned to the side and her breast was exposed. She smiled again, apparently oblivious. So comfortable was her body language that Edward imagined she wouldn’t care if she did know.

  “How did you find me?”

  “My dear heart, you tore a hole in the planet. Be careful. They can see that in outer space, you know,” she spoke patiently and kindly.

  “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

  The silent devil opened the front door and stepped out into the night. The blue devil followed closely behind him.

  She reached out and wrapped her hand around the door-knob and then turned back. “Oh, I can’t go yet. I don’t want you to forget me. My heart would break if I thought you’d ever stop thinking about me.”

  She turned and began advancing on him. Her hips swayed back and forth as she walked. The two others walked back in, shutting the door behind him. She took him in her arms. He was trying to remember one of the spells, but the symbols were confused in his head. It was so much easier when he only knew one. He thought she was about to kiss him. He felt her lips, warm on his cheek. She bit him.

  The blue devil and his red friend laughed as they watched young Edward struggle. She lifted her leg up over his hip and pushed him down onto the floor. She kept her teeth closed gently over the skin and fat of his cheek. She brought her left hand and its sharp nails up into his neck and pinched.

  He kept trying to cast the spell, but couldn’t manage to get any farther than the inverted pyramid before the pain and the sensuous smell of her would fill his mind and undo the casting.

  She reached down between his legs with her free hand. The other two devils were laughing even harder now. She’d opened her teeth and stopped biting. She was kissing his neck now. He felt the urge to kiss her back. He turned his mouth towards hers. Her tongue ran over his lips. He opened his mouth wider, and then when he could, he bit her tongue as hard as he could manage.

  He had surprised her. That gave him a moment to push and to turn. She was still on top of him, but his head was free. He had a second. Without consciously picking, he closed his eyes and envisioned the long-necked reptile. He cast the spell to open the rift.

  As she bit down into his neck and turned him onto his back, he saw the little pink scar floating in the middle of the room. He couldn’t see it open. He didn’t see the monster begin to float out, but he knew what was happening.

  “I want you to have a mark on your body so everyone will know your flesh belongs to me,” she said in a thick sultry voice.

  He heard a growl and then a loud crunch. She let go and began to rise up. Parts of her fell back down and soaked him. He felt her blood in his mouth. It was warm like hot tea that wasn’t ready to be drunk yet. He had to wipe the bile from his eyes in order to see. Edward threw the pieces of her body to the side. Up above he saw the long hairy trunk of his monster. There were thousands of little skittering legs rolling over one another. The lion’s share of the she-devil’s body hung out of the creature’s mouth as it chewed. Her torn summer dress still clung to her ravaged body.

  He looked down towards the door and the blue devil was walking towards him. His hands were stretched into long claws and his mouth was open displaying sharp and nasty teeth.

  Edward closed his eyes. He felt more blood drip down onto his face.

  He turned the blue devil to stone.

  The third devil, the red one who hadn’t spoken, closed his eyes and looked at the monster above them. A great ball of electricity began to form in front of him. The lights turned out, but Edward could stills see by the light of the orb. Once it had finished gathering, the ball rushed forward, scattering the dangling and bloody remains of the she-devil which still hung from the creature’s mouth. It burnt into the monster’s underbelly, where it would have had a neck, and there was a burst of green liquid.

  Edward spat and rubbed the fluids from his face. He slipped and struggled his way to his feet. The third devil stood right in front of him, smiling.

  “You’re not the only magician in the galaxy.”

  Edward tried to think of a witty response, but instead just turned the infernal one to stone. He collapsed on the ground, slipping in the fluids and scratching his arm on the stone floor.

  9

  Edward cleaned up the dead bodies and buried them in the field. He took the two stone demons and put them in the basement with the alien, the policeman, and Mia. He felt sorry for her, being down there with all of those monsters. The room was almost full of them. The magnet still hung around the rocky body of the alien. He wondered if the devils had a similar weakness. In any case, the basement was almost full. If he kept turning people to stone, he would have to find a new storage space.

  When the monster died, the rift had closed. Edward had to take an axe and chop up the body. It took him all day to dig holes for all of the flesh. He spent an hour in the shower using every scented bottle Mia had to try and get the smell of alien guts off of his skin.

  He imagined himself contracting weird diseases and unheard of parasites.

  He wondered about his monster. Was that the end of it? Was the spell worthless now? Or did the spell create the creatures? Maybe the wooly beast had a family on the other side of the tear? Maybe there was a place in Hell infested with thousands of enormous hairy millipedes? He wondered what would happen if he had summoned one and left it loose in the world. Would it have babies? Would millions of them overrun civilization?

  He discovered that the devils had arrived the night before in an old fashioned carriage. There was no sign of a horse or any animal to pull it. Edward didn’t know if that meant the animal had escaped, or maybe they used magic to pull it?

  He waited until he had gotten rid of the dead, cleaned himself, and cleaned the living room before he investigated the carriage. The wood was mostly black. The glass windows were dark. Inside there were little red velvet curtains with yellow tassels.

  The door was locked, but Edward knew how to open locks.

  Inside, there was a young girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. She lay sleeping on the red cushions. An actual pitchfork stood leaning against the wall.

  Edward grabbed the pitchfork out and set it down on the lawn. He then climbed inside and checked the girl out. She was asleep, and she seemed to be a normal and healthy human.

  Her hair was red and curly. It was long and ran all the way down her back. She was dressed like a gypsy, in purple and blue. She had a silver crucifix around her neck and a small purse. She didn’t wear any shoes.

  He tried to wake her, but he wasn’t successful. Eventually, Edward picked the girl up and carried her into the house. He put her in one of the extra bedrooms. Taking one of the belled strings he had laid across the second floor, he tied it around the outside of her door, so he might hear her if she got up and came out.

  He started to think about magic. He didn’t know very much about it. He had always understood that magicians were intellectuals. They studied magic. They experimented. They spent their lives with their noses in books. B
ut the two spells he knew didn’t require any intelligence at all. You didn’t even have to know how to read to cast them. He wondered why the world wasn’t covered in magical symbols. Why wasn’t magic everywhere?

  Before leaving her to sleep, Edward took a moment to look through her purse. A little card had her picture on it and identified her as, “Romana Carrington.” She apparently lived in Virginia.

  He hoped that he wouldn’t have to turn her to stone.

  Edward walked back into the living room. There was still enough room to make a fire, so he set to work starting a nice warm blaze in the fireplace. He poured himself a glass of Mia’s wine and sat back on the green couch. He rested the half-full glass on the end table. He reached in and took out the little red crystal. Absentmindedly, he shoved it all the way up his nose. In a daze, he didn’t realize that the crystal was slipping right into his brain.

  With a start he snapped back into consciousness, and realized what he had just done.

  He felt a sharp stab in-between his eyes. He screamed and fell to the floor. He spilled the last of the wine in his glass, and in fact snapped the stem off. The wine dripped down onto his shoulder as Edward writhed on the ground and began punching himself in the head to try and relieve the pain.

  He saw the biggest and strongest man he’d ever imagined. This man was holding a lightning bolt. He raced through the forest, and as he raced, Edward could see what the man saw. He felt the hot and heavy breathing. He felt the mighty chest moving up and down. He ran and leaped and almost flew between the branches and brambles. His heart was beating so strong and so hard. Edward had the feeling that for his whole life he had lived inside of a child’s body, and now for the first time he was getting to experience the size and power which were the rights of all full-grown adults.