Dark Arts

by Randolph Lalonde

  He throttled up; passing a car with reckless weaves in and out of the opposing lane and didn’t slow down after. He tried to focus on the road as the trees along side changed color from lush green to rust red, then grey. The vista opened up to each side, revealing a dead marsh with fallen trees, still water and decades-old, thick tree stumps that would have been removed from the landscape by the organisms that flocked to rotting wood, but that process never took place, the organisms were as dead as the fallen grey trees that surrounded the still waters. A pair of smoking stacks rose up on the horizon, and Max couldn’t help but feel like he was returning home.

  He was raised in England, bouncing between cities there with his father until they moved to Sudbury when he was eight. He met Bernie and Scott then, and his years of playing with his guitar instead of other children paid off. They were inseparable from that point on, ignoring the strange pursuits of their artifact-seeking fathers as much as they could while they played music in the barn. Other kids joined in when they could, especially when they got a little older. Every girl in the neighborhood seemed to want to take their turn singing like Brenda Lee, or some other radio siren, but they got bored before long, except for Miranda, who wanted to sing songs from the Beatles and Rolling Stones. She was the little girl with the big voice, and the fourth member of their barn band. That was until her mother died, and she left with her Aunt when Max was thirteen.

  Bernie was a rhythm section magician by the time he was fourteen, pounding on the drums like a cross between Bonham and Pert before those gents were famous. He wasn’t as talented on the bass, but he loved the instrument much more than the drums, and Max learned to accept that Bernie would rather play bass than drums. Scott, who was never far behind his older cousin, learned to play drums from Bernie, and said so little about playing with the band that it was years before Max knew for certain that Scott enjoyed it. He loved it, in fact, and found playing any other instrument intimidating, singing included.

  So they wrote music together and eventually formed their band – Road Craft. The name had a ring to it, but Maxwell didn’t like where it came from. Bernie’s entire family was life long nature worshippers, and, like Max’s father, believed in superstition, magic, and the power of spirits. While Max had an appreciation for nature, he had no use or belief in those other things. He enjoyed dark music like Black Sabbath, loved playing in the devil’s scale on the guitar, and horror movies, but that was as close as he got to believe in the occult. For him, the closest he got to believing in the occult was artifact and book hunting. Scraping after rare artifacts and forbidden books was a way to earn money, and he’d learned from one of the best seekers on two continents – his father.

  Max slowed down to turn into a curved section of road that had been cut through high black stone. Flat, unforgiving faces of rock rose up along either side of the curve, they were driver killers, regardless of whether someone was in a car or on a motorcycle. Fly off that corner, and the unyielding stone would turn man and machine into a terrible wreck, he’d seen it more times than he could count. You could test yourself, find out how fast you could make it down the road, but you couldn’t test stone.

  He made it through the dark corner and accelerated until he hit ninety miles an hour, nearly twice the posted limit. He shifted his shoulders so the guitar case strapped to his back was centered and watched the road carefully. The dead stone and fallen trees along side the road were ignored, slowing down for rock cuts; bad sections of road and turns were his focus.

  Before long he arrived in Sudbury, the highway becoming the Kingsway. The road was newer, straighter, cut in a better line through the dark stone the mining city was built on. Instead of dead trees, there were car dealerships, their lots brimming with glittering vehicles.

  The single yellow arch of the Deluxe Hamburger place made his stomach rumble, but he pressed on, headed for the down town center of the city. He slowed down as he came around the last corner, and sat up straight in his seat. After seeing Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and so many smaller cities between that summer, Sudbury seemed small and dirty.

  Even so, the brown brick buildings of the modest downtown center, a few rising as high as four and five storeys were a welcome sight. The place was alive with shoppers on Elm Street, so much so that he slowed to a cruising speed, catching the eye of more than one pedestrian through his dark sunglasses. Leather clad motorcyclists weren’t common, were sometimes completely unwelcome, and the low rumble of his Harley drew attention.

  As Maxwell passed the Woolworth’s and turned onto Durham Street, he noticed a dark figure in the crowd; Miranda, looking right at him with her brown eyes, her long sable hair stirring in the air. He flashed her a grin the instant before his front wheel caught a pothole, nearly ripping the handlebars from his grip. He recovered and rolled on, finishing his turn. “I’m a bloody git,” he said under his breath.

  Seeing her on the street corner, years after her sudden departure when they were children, in a black leather jacket with long fringes, wild long hair, and the full figure of a woman was a shock. Those eyes were instantly recognizable, but the wear on her leather, how she wore it, and her steady gaze on him, however brief, spoke of a worldliness that he already found seductive.

  He decided to look for her later. They both stood out, it wouldn’t be hard to find her. For the time being, he had business to attend to at Harmony Music. The place stood out from the other shops, marked by a two story G-clef. Max drove into a side lane, stopped, and dismounted, trying to put the vision of Miranda out of his head. He loosed the homemade straps holding his guitar case to his back and carried it by the handle down the street.

  The sound of the bell on the door of Harmony Music sent several heads turning in his direction. All Along The Watchtower was playing softly inside Sudbury’s largest music store. Brass and wind instruments were along one wall, the drum section was in front of that, with orchestral strings to the right. On the opposite side of the store were guitars, basses, with stools in front of the racks. Bins with music notation books filled a space between the door and the guitar section, with a glass case between the counter and the door. A stairway by the door led downstairs, where there were pianos and more sheet music. “Max, you’ve got to see this!” said one of the younger patrons standing in front of the case.

  Max wiped his boots on the mat at the door, a habit that didn’t much matter to the store, since the brown carpet was in fairly bad condition. Paths were worn from the door to the counter and to the three walls of guitars to his right. There was much less wear and tear towards the drums and orchestral instruments. “Hey, Toby, what’d they find for the case this time?”

  The high schooler with shaggy blonde hair waited for him at the case with two of his mates. Inside was a pristine white Fender Stratocaster guitar. “New Strat,” Max said, looking into the case. “If that’s your love.” He looked around the store and didn’t see Angelo, so he moved to the side where he could see the only guitar in the shop he wanted. “There’s a beauty,” he said, not surprised that it was still there. It was grossly overpriced.

  “You and Les Pauls,” Toby said. “Clapton plays nothing but Fender.”

  “Everyone wants to be Clapton,” Max said under his breath as he eyed the ebony Les Paul Custom in the case, his focus drawn towards the golden hardware almost as much as it was to the price tag, $999.99.

  “Man, Max is right,” one of the teens said. He had no idea who the shaggy kid was. “Besides, I was in here the other day with my dad and he said that Fender was like a girl who’s too pretty – if you’re afraid to play dirty with her, there’s no point.”

  “I wouldn’t repeat that around town,” Max said with a chuckle. Freddy Mann, one of the owners of the shop came towards him with the keys for the case in his hand and a grin on his face. “Oh, no need to open it up,” he told the shop keep. “I’m here to see Angelo. He’s expecting me.”

  “You sure you don’t want to try her again, Max?” Freddy asked, twirling
the ring of keys around his finger. The bell on the door rang, Miranda and a friend with long blonde hair in a summer dress entered. They both flashed him a smile and walked downstairs. “I’ll let it go for nine hundred, c’mon, have a seat with that Gibson and fall in love all over again.”

  “Came to get paid, not to fall in love,” Max said. “Angelo?”

  “Upstairs,” Freddy said, thumbing towards the narrow staircase behind the counter.

  Max met Angelo half way up the stairs and looked him in the eye. The man’s forehead was wrinkled with worry, an exaggerated expression thanks to the pocked, loose skin on his head. “Just coming down to get you,” he said quietly.

  “I got the number one item on your list,” Max said as he followed the man upstairs to a small office. He was in his late fifties, and seemed too thin. The ledger and checkbook were out on the desk. The small sofa in the room was covered with paperwork. There was an old French horn hanging over a window overlooking Durham Street. Angelo closed it. “Lost part of an ear for it, almost lost my head.”

  “Close the door, Max,” Angelo said.

  He shut the ill-fitted old door behind him then put his guitar case down on the sofa. Max opened it, lifted his old Airliner guitar and retrieved the book he’d taken from Panos. “Here it is.”

  “Oh, my God, you really got it?” Angelo said. “I mean, I don’t even want to know how, but you got it?”

  “Sounds like you sent me on a fool’s errand, Angelo.” Max held the book out between them, but didn’t cross the two feet to the desk. “Why don’t you want to know how?”

  “Listen, I got a request from someone in town to get that, someone none of us like, not you, your friends at the farm, or anyone you know, and it was so much money that I couldn’t believe it. I put that on my list just because the client was willing to pay so much.”

  “I know about the money,” Max said. “You made sure you told me about the money before we went on tour.”

  “I know, and I know your dad could find anything, that’s how he made a living, and you’ve done really well since,” Angelo stopped himself and swallowed nervously. “You’ve done really well, and you got paid, I got to keep providing certain groups of people with some interesting stuff, and there are people around town who know how good you are at this. They even feel they owe you something, but this is not the same. I never thought anyone would be able to bring that back when I put it on the list, and when I heard that your band was making its way back and I didn’t get a call, I was assuming you didn’t get it. I already told the interested party that they weren’t going to have it.”

  “But this is it,” Max said, holding the book up. The leather cover wasn’t stamped, but branded with symbols from seven cultures from what Max could determine. “I managed to read it from cover to cover – the English translation, anyway. This is the kind of shit that would get a Catholic schoolboy tossed out of school, home and church. It’s yours, for that ten thousand you put up for it.”

  “I don’t want to know what’s inside,” Angelo said, putting his hands up as though he was pushing the idea of the contents away.

  “It’s all translated, old text on one line, the Queen’s English on every other. Just like you described, just like your man wanted. So, cash, money, paid – that’s what I want to be.”

  “Listen, Max,” Angelo said, turning red. “A lot of people have been by the last couple months since you’ve been gone south with your band. I don’t know how, but they knew you were looking for that, that most of the people who can find that sort of thing were looking, and they told me it couldn’t be here, it couldn’t be in Sudbury. They say bad things would happen, bad things like –“

  “You keep your superstition, your fucking twisted midnight shite, and give me my money!” Max shouted, slamming the book onto the table. “I’ve seen oracles, old friends of my Dad’s who I’ve never wanted to see again, even a shaman, and then I had to set a bloody gun-toting monk on fire to get this fucking thing! Paid! That’s what I’ll be as soon as you write some numbers down on that fancy cheque book of yours!” He riffled the pages of the large business class cheque binder and shoved it towards Angelo. “Then we’re done, it’s been a good ride, but there are other dealers down south who don’t get the jitters when they see old writing about resurrection and life eternal. There was a reward of five thousand dollars beside this book’s name on the list, and here it is.”

  Angelo pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and fussed with it. “I can’t use the company cheques, I keep the music and the magic separate.” He opened a drawer and retrieved a battered lockbox. It was unlocked and flipped open in seconds, revealing a modest pile of bills. “I can’t give you the five thousand, but I can give you something for the running around.”

  “I went to Detroit tracking this, you wanker, and we only managed one gig while we drove a week out of our way.”

  “I know, you had to do a lot of research to get that,” Angelo counted out a stack of fives, tens and twenties.

  “Research? If I believed what the oracles told me about that book, I wouldn’t have even come back to Sudbury. The last one said I should give up on finding this and go to California, take Bernie with me. California! Didn’t sound too bad, if I’m honest, but I’m here instead.”

  “What else did she tell you?” Angelo asked, deadly serious.

  “Cash!”

  The sounds of hurried footsteps on the staircase were too short a warning before Freddie opened the door. “What’s going on up here? The customers can hear you,” he said, brows furrowed.

  “Your partner here is refusing to pay for delivery,” Max said.

  “Here, it’s three hundred fifty seven,” Angelo said. “Keep the book, I don’t want it.”

  Max let Angelo put the money and the book in his hand, speechless at the shortfall. He glanced at Angelo, who was staring at him, sweating, then looked to Freddie. “Your uncle owes me five thousand and he pays me three hundred bloody fifty seven.”

  “Keep the book,” Angelo said.

  Max regarded Angelo and asked; “Who wanted it? I should just sell direct, yeah?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Angelo said. “I’ll lose my business, both my businesses. Too many people want that out of Sudbury.”

  “You believe this?” Max asked Freddie, who was turning red like his uncle. “Can’t get paid properly, can’t find whoever wanted this in the first place.” A thought occurred to him then. “Freddie, go get the case for the Les Paul, the one I was just staring at. Get it out from behind glass, put it in the case and in my hand.”

  “The Les Paul? No, I mean, that belongs to the store,” Freddie stammered.

  Max picked the ledger up off the desk and shook it in the air. “Then fucking pay me!” he thundered. “Or find a way to grow the bottom part of my bloody ear back.”

  Angelo was startled, whether it was just the sound of shouting, or the ledger being rustled to pieces, Max didn’t know. He was happy to have found a raw nerve. “Go ahead and get that ready for Maxwell, Freddy,” he said.

  “But it’s the Les Paul,” Freddy said.

  “It’s all right, go and do that for me,” Angelo reassured.

  Max put the ledger down and folded the stack of bills before putting them in the inside pocket of his jacket. His finger brushed the shard that he’d found in the book. “Oh, and I’ve found something else inside this book. Maybe you’d like to take a look.” He held the thing up. It was the first time he’d seen it in raw daylight, and he was immediately sure it was petrified wood.

  Angelo’s eyes went wide. “No, I don’t know what that is,” he said. “Can’t be important.”

  “Are you sure?” Max said, aware that the appearance of the thing made Angelo nervous. “Looks like you swallowed a bug.”

  “Your father was right, you’re a thug,” Angelo said. “No more business from me, there are other people who can do your work.”

  “You sure?” Max said, happy to be out of the man�
��s address book, but eager to taunt him one more time. “Bernie’s not going to go running for you, his father would never have it, and no one from the Circle will talk to you.”

  “I’ll make do without hiring thugs,” Angelo said, slamming his lockbox shut. “Take that with you.” He pointed at the book on the edge of the desk.

  Max took it and slipped it inside his jacket. “I’ll go get my guitar now, you can have the Airliner in trade, overprice that too.”

  The teens were gone when he arrived downstairs, and the black Les Paul Custom was in its velvet lined case on the counter. Miranda was standing beside it, a little smile on her lips.

  “Here you go, Max,” Freddie said, gesturing dismissively and retreating upstairs.

  “Never heard anyone give someone shit like that, and I’ve lived in Italy,” Miranda said as she watched Freddie disappear upstairs. “Owed you a lot of money, huh?”

  Max closed the guitar case and slapped all the latches shut, trying to cool down at the same time. “Sorry, luv, I’d have a sweeter first meeting after not seeing you for so long.”

  “Hi, yourself,” Miranda said. “Always loved your accent, it’s better now though.”

  “So are you,” Max said, pushing through the nervousness that was replacing his anger. “You need anything?”

  She stared at him for a moment before comprehension dawned on her. “Oh, here? No, I left my gear at the farm. I’m staying with the Webbs for the Gathering.”

  Max’s heart sunk a little at the thought of Miranda believing in the occult. Some of his nervousness at seeing her subsided. “We’d best be off, don’t know if they’ll change their mind on this,” he said, hefting the guitar case a little for emphasis. He grabbed a handful of picks, stuffed them into his pocket, leaned over the counter, grabbed a pair of harmonicas, then helped himself to a few sets of strings and finished filling his pockets. It lacked class, but made him feel better.