by J. R. Rain
“Are you ready, young man?”
I tried to shrug in my position on the couch, but couldn’t. “About as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good.” He clapped his hands, then rubbed them together like a great chef eager to concoct a world-class meal.
He turned the book and laid it across his bony knee like a misbehaving child about to be spanked. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist, and mumbled a few words. He rocked back and forth on his stool, which thudded rhythmically against the wooden floor in a perfect metronomic tempo.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Do it for Petey’s sake.
“I will first remove the year from your life,” he said. Cold fingers touched my neck. Deathly cold, like those of Arctic mummies. The fingers tightened, and I opened my eyes to slits.
“No peeking!”
I sighed and closed my eyes again, and his fingers continued to tighten until I found breathing extremely difficult. My instincts told me to fight back, but I restrained myself. I tried to relax and get by on a limited amount of air. I heard each breath rasp in my throat, and I thought I heard Tabby gasp from somewhere outside the room, as if she’d been listening through the door.
But the room suddenly seemed so far away. Tendrils of black smoke swam behind my closed eyelids, pierced with flashes of white light. I felt as if I were viewing a very personal and malevolent aurora borealis. And then his grip loosened, and cool air poured freely down my windpipe like water, cool and welcome. I’d lived through it.
Unable to help myself, perhaps even drawn to the sudden, curious slurping sounds I was hearing, I opened my eyes.
The old man was greedily gobbling like a hungry mongrel in the dumpster of some alley. I sat forward, repulsed but unable to not look. In his hand was a gelatinous substance, yellowish and streaked with lace. It oozed between his fingers, and he lapped it up with his long pink tongue. Eyelids closed, he looked as if he were in his own corner of heaven.
Good Christ, what was that stuff?
He shoved the last bit into his mouth and licked his fingers clean, and my body went limp with weakness.
“What were you eating?” I asked. My breathing was difficult, as if my chest muscles couldn’t handle the weight of my ribs.
He nibbled under his fingernails contentedly, like a fat Henry VIII celebrating being a bachelor at yet another after-beheading banquet. “Your life substance, Albert. Very, very good stuff. Even for someone who has abused his liver as you have.”
“But what was that?”
Tabby came through the door, apparently hearing my panicky question. “That’s what it looks like, Al; or, rather, when it’s magically rendered down to its base elements, using, of course, advanced principles of the black arts.”
The old man’s eyes were closed, and his face looked slightly flushed. He was breathing deeply, strongly, as if he had just gotten his second wind. He’s a vampire, I thought. Maybe not a blood-sucking batboy, but a vampire all the same. An old decrepit leech, feeding on others.
“Now,” said the old man, “it’s time for the hard part.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
You’d think getting some of your life force gnawed on like a Happy Meal From Hell would have been the hard part, but there was more.
The pain was excruciating at first, but then I got used to it.
What I couldn’t get used to, though, was the sound of thousands upon thousands of claws scratching and scrabbling around the house. Apparently, the little shits had found me. So much for the theory that they were somehow instructed to go to my house. Hey, I was new to this curse shit—I was still figuring it out as I went. Anyway, the little pellet packers seemed to be trying to gnaw their way through the glass. The scrabbling of tiny nails against wood and glass blended into one giant buzz.
Sweat poured from my brow, down through my hairline. I felt myself losing it. Trust me, you would, too.
Christ, this can’t be happening.
I risked a glance to the left and the window was a sea of churning little bodies, each more desperate than the other to reach me. Soon, the sheer weight of them was going to rupture the glass.
The old man grabbed my jaw and forced my head straight.
“Better if you don’t look. You are hyperventilating.”
“Sorry. I get that way when a million mice want to eat me alive while I’m undergoing psychic surgery.”
“Slow down. Powerful magick. Powerful magick. Takes time. Mu-u-u-uch time. You made her very mad, indeed.”
Yeah, I was in a living nightmare. I glanced over at Tabby, who was near the couch but knew enough to keep a safe distance. Her face was white. She was shaking, staring at the window.
And now others were being forced to live in the very same nightmare. Nana’s curse had gone overboard, and I was counting on this greedy old goat to toss me a lifeline.
An old goat, incidentally, whose kid had died because of all this.
Because you cheated on your wife.
Tabby inched toward the window. She kept one hand over her nose and mouth, as if filtering the air through her fingers. Or perhaps an unconscious desire to keep the swarming little critters from running up and filling her mouth. She continued to edge forward, and I continued following her with my eyes until she was just about out of my line of vision. I didn’t dare risk turning my head, or risk another scolding from the old man and another shower of spittle. Plus, I really didn’t need to see a thousand black-and-white mice hurling themselves at the glass, either.
I heard the drapes rattling closed, plunging the room into further darkness, for the mice had yet to completely cover the massive floor-to-ceiling window.
I was thankful. I knew she was terrified, and even as she threw the drapes, a little squeak escaped her mouth. Then again, it was getting difficult to distinguish human squeak from rodent.
Please hurry, please hurry.
“I’m hurrying, young man. Don’t rush me.”
Great, now he’s reading my thoughts.
“Yes. The passing of essence is an intimate thing. I know most of your deepest, darkest secrets, and I must say, Mr. Shipway, I don’t approve of much of your life of late.”
“Thanks,” I said. I wondered if he could translate the word “asshole” into Latin.
He spent the remainder of the day hovering over me like a decrepit Macy’s Day Parade balloon, his skin aglow with new life—my life—prodding, poking and jabbing me with his cane. Each time, the tip flashed with electricity. Each time, I howled in pain.
“Nasty business, this curse,” he muttered.
I couldn’t help but feel he took a little longer than usual, just to torture me some more, and of course I had no way of knowing if he’d stuck to the bargain and only taken a year. I might be a bottle of Geritol away from adult diapers, for all I knew. But before I could dwell on it too much, Tabby shrieked.
“They’re in the house. They must have found a way in, or gnawed their way in.”
I could hear them. Scrabbling over the Italian tiles and polished wood, running over French statuary, swarming the Queen Anne furniture. Thousand of little feet pattering away.
Oh, God.
Tabby suddenly pointed and, despite myself, I looked up. There was an old-fashioned window vent over the library’s door. The window was slightly ajar, no doubt to air out the dusty library. Through this vent poured dozens and dozens of mice. More than likely, on the other side of the door, the mice were using themselves as a rodent ladder, piled high, stacking themselves, and then running up each other.
Pouring into the library.
A squeak escaped my lips.
Little feet clawing the library’s wooden floor. Tabby screamed, very un-coplike.
“Get on the desk,” I yelled.
Tabby did so, standing in the center of the desk. She’d grabbed a fire poker from the hearth and waved it arou
nd menacingly. From my peripheral vision I could see little black-and-white bodies scuttling across the floor.
“What about you?” she asked.
I was helpless. The old man was still on top of me, still hovering over me as if he had all the time in the world. His lips continued mumbling. I could almost understand what he was saying as if I were myself thinking these very strange and arcane thoughts.
Patterns crossed my mind, ancient words, complex arrangements of sound and sub-vocalizing, and sonorous chants.
They came up my legs first, crawling almost tentatively over my jeans, as if they themselves could not quite comprehend that their prize was so near at last. They were oddly docile, as if waiting for the word to charge. I could feel the weight of them, feel their tiny claws punching through the denim.
Oh, God. It’s bad enough to die. But to die like this. In the midst of my worse nightmare.
But wasn’t that the whole point? Wasn’t that the curse Nana had put on me?
“You will not die,” said the old man. “And I am not God. Close, but not quite. Give me a few years.”
I opened my eyes and could not believe what I was seeing. The couch was completely covered with the mutant mice. In fact, the whole room was covered with them. The old man himself was a sea of living rodents as they scrambled over him from head to feet. He cocked his head to one side and about fifty mice cocked with him.
And that’s when I lost it completely. I screamed bloody murder. Or maybe it was “Jimmy.”
My mind reeled. Hysteria and panic and something close to madness overcame me. I could not think, and I could not function. My fear, my worst fear, gripped me completely, and I was lost to anything and everything—
Take hold of yourself, said a voice in my mind.
The voice caused me to swim up from some dark and horrible void. The voice came down from above, as if through an opening into a well.
Calm down. You will be fine.
The voice pushed through the crazed thoughts, through the madness that threatened to scramble my brain. In fact, I could see the words materialize in my head: CALM DOWN. YOU WILL BE FINE. The words were scrawled in something yellow, against a fleeting and hectic background. I read the words over and over, graffiti on my turbulent mind.
They’re just a bunch of mice, pal.
But I hate mice.
Obviously.
I knew the voice. It was the old man. He was in my head. Simultaneously stripping my life and saving it as well.
Of course I’m saving your life. Wouldn’t do me any good to have you turn into mice food now. I need all the years I can get.
How old are you? I asked.
Old enough to forget, he said. Now come back, Albert Shipway. I’m right here. Open your eyes.
I can’t find my eyes. I can’t find myself. I’m...so...freaked. What about the mice?
The mice are gone. I’ve fixed that for you. They will never come back again.
Where are you?
Right in front of you, Albert.
I was spinning, turning and twisting, like a kite out of control. I didn’t know which way was up, which way was down. I couldn’t control my body and could barely control my thoughts. It was like drunken bed-spins without the drunk or the bed.
This was madness. Or maybe just another detour on the road to madness I’d been on for the last couple of days. An off ramp to Coo-Coo Land, fuel up and grab a Big Gulp, miles and miles to go.
You are not going mad. Take my hand.
Where is it?
I have you, Albert. Do you feel my hand?
No.
Panic set in again. I couldn’t feel my body. Hell, I’d rather feel scrabbling, skittering rodent feet than nothing at all.
A mighty tug yanked me forward through the void, focusing my thoughts and aligning my body.
Another tug. A light was coming toward me. I was able to orient myself. The spinning stopped.
Oh, God. I must be dead.
Another tug, and I flopped forward, and when I opened my eyes, I was looking up into the smiling face of the old man.
“Welcome back, Albert,” he said softly.
I looked around me, lying in a pool of my own sweat. Scuttling along the floor, drifting and swirling slowly, were hundreds upon hundreds of dust bunnies.
Or perhaps dust mice.
Tabby nodded encouragement at me from across the room. I had survived my worst fear.
But the day was young.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Tabby scrambled down from the desk. The sweat on her brow and upper lip was the only indication that her cop cool had heated a little. She gripped me under my arm and helped me to my feet.
“Quit your blubbering,” she said. “We have a kid to save and a murderer to stop.” She paused, and her face softened considerably, reminding me so much of Amanda. “But first, let’s get some food in you.”
“What, like some toadstools and bat livers?” My voice didn’t sound my own. In fact, it seemed better suited to a bullfrog. Maybe I’d been changed from the Prince Charming I’d once been. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I wonder why.”
“No,” she said, steadying me. “It’s from lack of energy. You’ve been sapped dry.”
“You know a lot about this shit,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the first person Nana’s cursed.”
And probably not the last. Even though she’s dead.
“Seems like a good gig,” I said. “Your grandmother curses, and your great grandad undoes the curse for a price.”
“The cursor and the cursee consume each other. She died cursing the two of you. In magic, what goes around comes around threefold. That’s one of the reasons I never took up the family trade.”
I almost feel bad for the crazy old bat.
I immediately regretted the thought. Could the old man still read mind? He hadn’t seemed all that worked up over his daughter’s death. I paused a moment, cocking my head, but there was no voice there. Guess the connection had been broken.
“Still,” I said, “look at him. The only one who benefits is him.”
The old man was standing next to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, smoking contentedly on a pipe. Piled outside the windowsill like gray snow were mounds of dust. The dust was quickly evaporating, blowing away in the Pacific breeze until it was easy to forget it had once been a million mice.
Unlike the dust, the old man looked positively vibrant. His skin was touched with a rosy pink. Hell, even the lines on his face seemed less defined. He looked a decade or two younger, and he whistled cheerfully around the stem of his pipe as if he’d just scored a date with Betty White.
I staggered to a nice long sideboard that bore a fancy crystal decanter full of amber liquid. “Just how much of my essence did he take?” I asked, yanking the plug with a moist bloop.
He turned to me, his hearing apparently strengthened by my stolen spirit juice. I think he chuckled a little under his robust response. “Just a few years. Tops.”
“The deal was for a year,” I exclaimed. “I told you this bastard wins.”
“No,” said Tabby. “He’s not the only one. You benefit as well. Do you see any mice?”
“Perhaps they were all in my head,” I countered.
She shrugged. “Perhaps. Then again, you are the one that must live in your head.”
She was right. I would have gone mad with fear. Or at least close to the edge. The old man had helped me deal with my fear, helped me come out on the other side.
Yes, I did.
You’re still here?
Not for long. The connection is fading.
You look great, I thought. You’re welcome. See what happens when I do THIS.
I took three big, painful slugs of the stuff. It must have been cognac, but it may have been as old as Napolean. I coughed and wheezed, but my blood warmed a little.
His laughter rippled through my head like from
a pebble dropped in a puddle, but it was already fading. Au contraire. YOU are welcome. Look at your arms.
I did. They were covered in tiny half-moon bite marks, each welling red and tender. Some had broken flesh.
They were real, I thought.
Real enough.
Thank you. Just hope I don’t get rabies.
He turned to me from the massive window and smiled kindly. His voice had faded to a whisper in my head. And you are right, she was a crazy, old bat. Wherever she is, I think she’s going to find great comfort in that.
He’d used the future tense, I noticed. Which made me wonder if he was secretly working on some sort of resurrection spell.
“Now go find my grandnephew,” he said. “He will be, I think, with my niece’s murderer.” He paused. “Find them both before the killer’s greatest fear finds her first.”
Her father. The back-from-the-dead, mountain-of-mud serial killer. A ghost with a bucket list.
He’s not a ghost. He’s a golem. I could now barely make out the old man’s voice in my head, and so I spoke aloud.
“Um, great. A dead serial killer gets an upgrade. So, any thoughts on how to stop a golem?”
I reached for the decanter again but Tabby grabbed my hand. “Even I know that one.” She pulled me through the library, leaving behind swirling gray dust clouds. She called over her shoulder, “Thank you, Dada. I owe you one.”
“This gentleman has fared better than many of your other dates,” he said, his voice even stronger now.
“This isn’t a date,” Tabby and I said in unison.
Outside, in the light of the setting sun, surrounded by a low mist of swirling gray dust, dust that had once formed the bodies of thousands of black-and-white mice, I asked Tabby, “How do you stop a golem?”
She cradled a sack she’d taken from the house, which I imagined was filled with shrunken heads, monkey paws, and other wacky talismans. “You remove its head.”
“Ah,” I said. “Piece of cake.”
“Now let’s get to that cabin.”