by Joey Ruff
“Yeah, he did that to me, once. Said it was an old hoodoo trick. Jes’ gotta know how ta work de Psalms,” I said in my best imitation of Huxley’s voice. He had that thick, Caribbean accent. “I didn’t realize you knew Greek…or Hebrew.”
“I don’t.”
I pushed myself to my feet, bounced a little as I did just to make sure the pain hadn’t come back. It hadn’t. I helped Nadia up and said, “Thanks. You won’t be offended if I go for a run now, eh?”
“Go for it. Just don’t hurt yourself again.”
“Don’t worry, I got a hoodoo woman to heal me up right.”
As I started to move away, she said, “Oh, you left your mail out.” She pointed to the kitchen table in front of the windows. “I hope you don’t mind, I sorted through it.”
“Anything good?”
“There was a letter from Janice Hutchinson.”
“Joy.”
“Looks like she’s getting a lawyer now.”
Janice Hutchinson was a foster mum. Two months ago, she hired me to find a boy in her care called Toby Emmerich. He’d run away, and she wanted me to bring him back. The problem was, Toby was in a bad way, always moving from family to family. He was moody, angry, and a thief: jewelry, cash, anything of value. It was suspected by his previous families that he was on drugs and stole out of necessity to feed his habit.
Janice, however, didn’t agree with the evidence. She held that Toby was a good kid, that he wouldn’t run off on his own. He was scared, didn’t have a lot of friends, and would act out. She’d gotten to know him, and he wasn’t like they said.
I gave the case a fair assessment, followed the usual leads, took my readings, but everything I found led me to side with the other parents and the case worker. Toby was disturbed, took what he could, and bolted.
Of course, Janice didn’t like my assessment. She’d paid half up front but refused the rest on the grounds that I didn’t do any real work to find him. She said I had my mind made up before I took the case, played her for a fool to make an easy buck. She demanded I refund the money she’d already paid, and I refused. Now she was getting a lawyer. Now she intended to sue me.
“Let her,” I said. “We’ll counter sue. She signed a statement to procure services. Her signature says she agreed to pay.” I finished my coffee. “Lady didn’t want to admit she’d been taken for a fool by that kid. She can go to hell.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“It’s business. Was there anything else?”
“Electric bill for the office.”
I nodded. “Put a check in the mail for me? I gotta go talk to Ape.”
11
After a short hike past the stable and down to the lake, I entered the mouth of a hedge maze, navigated the wide corridors of eight-foot shrubs. Around a few curves, I found the beginnings of the inlaid brick walkway and followed the path under the weathered iron arch at the garden’s wall. Then took the steps into the sunken garden.
It was Eden after the fall, once abandoned, no one left to prune the hedges or keep the place up. Yet, there was a special quality, an echo of a thrum of some dormant magic that pulsed as you walked the trails, and you couldn’t pass among the foliage without imagining what it had once looked like: low-lying shrubs formed into diamonds or narrow, pointed circles like Egyptian eyes, the centers filled with brightly-colored blossoms. Small topiary bushes twisting like soft-serve ice cream cones. That was a long time ago.
Now, vases that held bouquets of bright lilacs and tigerlillies were reduced to heaps of broken pottery shards and spilled dirt. The benches they flanked had grown over in thick beards of moss, and vines twisted up the ornate legs. Statues once bearing the images of swans or naiads or dancing women had cracked and crumbled. The fountain that stood in the center had faded and greyed, going green along every crack. The water it held was old and stagnant, covered in a film of fallen leaves. It stank like a sewer.
Half of the trees hung heavy with their own greenery, and leafy vines that wound among the branches and fell around the trunks created make-shift weeping willows. The other half were dead, and their twisted, skeletal branches raked toward the sky while their boughs held an outbreak of yellow-green mistletoe.
At one point, the place had been alive with vibrant color and sweetly-smelling aromas, but when Mr. and Mrs. Towers died, Ape put the garden to a more practical purpose, replaced the uselessly pretty flowers like tulips and daisies and marigolds with flowering herbs like Meadowsweet and Vervain. Made the place a storehouse of home-grown weaponry. He was no Huxley, of course, but Ape was fairly competent at making certain potions, and other herbs worked fine raw.
I found him in a grove in the far corner. He knelt over a green, flowery bush with purple flowers, pruning a few leaves with a pair of gold-lined sheers.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Jono?”
“Catch you at a bad time? You’re not taking a shit, right? I know it feels like home out here, being the jungle and all.”
He flashed me a smile, teeth and all, dripping with mock-humor. “Hilarious. What are you doing out here?”
“This is where I stash my cannabis.”
“You can wait for me in the house.” He returned to his plant, examining the top and bottom of each leaf before he clipped it or moved on to the next one. “After all, you kept me waiting last night.”
“I’m sorry, Mate. I had no idea you were so sensitive. You get your feelings hurt? Think I abandoned you?”
“Please, stop.”
“Didn’t Nadia tell you I called?”
“You were flaking off responsibility again. We were supposed to go by Julie Easter’s, remember.”
“Flaking off responsibility? Is that what you call taking a new case? Besides, you weren’t even here.”
“I was here more than you. Long enough to run some tests on the samples we took from that house.”
“What was that room?”
He moved on to the next plant, examined that like the one before. He shrugged at my question. “I have no idea. The samples I took from the wall, they were silk.”
“Okay, so let’s go back and get some more and we can make a couple of shirts.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. I don’t have a good silk shirt.”
“Forget it.”
I found a rock to sit on. “Are you sure it’s silk?”
“I ran the test three times.”
“I should get a reading from silk.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I had plenty of time to think last night when you stood me up.”
“Is this about the strip club? Did you wanna go look at titties with me?”
“You went to the Siren’s Song last night?”
“Maybe.”
“I thought you said you…”
“I needed to talk to Seven, Mate. He was there.”
He breathed slow. “Silk is a natural fiber.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Silk is comprised of amino acids, which are biochemical. They’re organic.”
And then I understood. “Like spiderwebs and that shit those little worms make.”
“You mean silkworms?”
I didn’t acknowledge that. “So this bum was papering his walls in biochemical organic shirt fabric? Any idea why?”
“Still working that out. I have a theory or two, but…”
“Maybe he was a fashion designer. Everyone’s going green, these days.”
He didn’t say anything. He clipped another few leaves, stuck them in a pouch he wore.
“Why are you collecting shrubbery? Usually you just come out here and spray the hose a bit.”
“I’m making something, Jono. I need some herbs.”
“Happy brownies?”
He rolled his eyes. “Something practical.”
“You only know three potions.”
“I found something ne
w in the library.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. Do you need any help?”
He looked up at me. “I’ll be okay. I’m working on a case of my own.”
“Yeah, I heard all about that. Uncle Arthur. Tell me what you got.”
He turned away as he said, “All due respect, Jono, I’d like to handle this one on my own.”
He was a big boy, he could handle himself, do his own things. So what if he didn’t want me involved. Still, his words cut me. “Why?”
“There are several reasons.” He seemed a little more frustrated than he had before. “For one, Uncle Arthur’s family. It’s personal. I need to do this on my own.”
I waited a few seconds but he remained silent, pruning away at his bushes. “What’s the other reason?”
“The other…” He sighed. “You don’t appreciate me, Jono. That whole thing in the car on the way home yesterday. But not just that, there’ve been a lot of times lately I’ve felt neglected.”
“And what, now you want to start seeing other people?”
“No. I just think we need some time apart. I think it’ll be good for both of us. If I’m not there to hold your hand, you’ll have to focus until the case is closed.”
I rolled my eyes at him this time. “This is mental. You need my help with Arthur. I’ll get a reading, we’ll find him in a few hours. He’s probably just lying somewhere in that forest. He got a burst of strength, tried to have one of his adventures, slipped and rolled down the hill. He’s bleeding to death slowly in the underbrush.”
“You aren’t helping anything.” He moved on from the plants he’d been working on to another patch nearby. I recognized it as High John the Conqueror, a popular hoodoo root.
It was used for various things: achieving success, protection against evil, cure for depression. Huxley used it for more things than that, even going so far as to make a soup from it for church potlucks and family get-togethers. While most of his ingredients he just bought, he used so much of the John Conker, as he called it, it was cheaper to grow it himself.
“If you must know, I’m making a mojo bag to help me track him. I found a box of photo albums, love letters, and baby books in Arthur’s room. I’ve got a lock of his hair. So, no, I don’t need you.”
“You’re making a seeker sack?” My unofficial name for it. “I guess that’ll work.” Years ago, Huxley showed me how to mix one, but in my line of work, it wasn’t very reliable, as it required you to have a connection with the person you were looking for and I was mostly hired to find strangers. Reason being is that Mandrake, the key ingredient, not only led its bearer to hidden treasure it was also used in love potions. The John Conker was for success and luck, Lucky Hand Root was used for safe travel, and either fuzzy weed or yellow evening primrose helped in the hunt. Combine all of that in a little satchel with something that belonged to the person you’re looking for and, so long as you carried the sack on you, eventually you’d walk right into them.
“Did you test his blood?” I asked.
“Arthur?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, the dirty tramp.”
“Yes, I did test his blood. The white cell count was higher, but other than that, he was fine. Tox-screen came back clean, too. He wasn’t on anything.”
“So he was just naturally feral and crazy. Comforting.” I stood; the rock wasn’t comfortable anymore. “Well, when do you want to go by the Easter home?”
“What time works for you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out here, jackass.”
Ape snickered at me a little.
“What?” I asked, annoyed.
“You’re becoming more American. You used to call me ‘arse.’”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m almost finished here. I’ll meet you at the house and we’ll go?”
“Fine.”
It didn’t take long to walk back to the house, and I spotted a few downed limbs from the night’s storm. At second glance, I noticed Crestmohr, the groundskeeper, with his broad shoulders and shaggy head, dressed in a red flannel shirt and torn jeans, under an apple tree Ape had planted as a boy, chopping the larger branches into smaller ones with a hand axe, tossing the little pieces into a wheelbarrow.
When I walked into the kitchen, I took another slice of cake, another mug of coffee. Picked up the phone, dialed information, took a stool. The name of the Elementary school that Adam went to, Moreland, was written in Eric’s journal. I had the operator connect me, munching and slurping into her ear as she did so, and spoke with a receptionist who gave me the name of Adam’s teacher. I set up a meeting with her at 11:30, during her free period, and the woman on the phone took my name. She sounded old.
I hung up the phone, glanced at the clock. A little after nine. If Ape hurried, I’d have time to drop him back off at the house before I went to Moreland. I glanced out the window, but there was still no sign of him.
I went down to my room, gathered my gloves and jacket, ran a comb through my hair, and grabbed Eric’s journal. It had some stuff in it about the school, thought it might be helpful to take with me. After that, I headed upstairs, and Ape was waiting in the kitchen. He’d poured himself a cup of coffee and read through the paper.
“Déjà vu,” I said.
He looked up at me. “What?”
“Nothing. You ready to go? I got a thing in a couple hours, let’s get this over with.”
He put his mug down, closed the paper. “You have the invoice? The teddy?”
I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket. “The bear’s in my car.”
He nodded and stood, and I noticed he’d changed from the garden. He wore grey dress pants, a white buttoned-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to provide an ample view of the red-brown fur underneath. The suit vest and fedora that completed his outfit matched the pants in color and fabric.
On his feet, he wore his ninja shoes, though they looked like house slippers, and that was a lot for him, as he preferred being barefoot. Naked feet, especially hairy ones, didn’t fly so well in strangers’ homes. They didn’t exactly match the rest of the ensemble but damn if he cared, right. He was a fucking monkey.
As he moved to the door, he said, “I’m driving.”
12
The car Ape drove was a 2008 Lamborghini Reventon. It was one of only twenty on the planet, and for a cool million Euros, the car went 0-62 in 3.4 seconds. With all the hard angles and clean surfaces that reflected light like an alien spacecraft, it looked like the love child of Knight Rider and a time-travelling DeLorean. He mostly kept it in the garage, and it was rare as rocking horse shit he ever drove it.
Before I realized, we’d arrived in Crown Hill, pulled on to the Easters’ street, where twelve-year-old boys played hockey and parted for us to pass. Their game didn’t resume right away as the whole gaggle of them stood gawking at Ape’s car, and we climbed out to cries of, “Hey Mister, nice car,” and “Whaddaya think something like that costs, anyways?”
For a second, I almost remembered what it felt like to be young and adventurous and play sports. But everything I had seen ruined me, took the joy out of the mundane – hell, even the spectacularly ordinary. After throwing down with a murder of centaurs or a legion of demon-possessed pigs, the world’s largest ball of twine seemed somehow less…magical.
I didn’t turn to look at the kids or pay too much attention to their Lamborghini-inspired cat-calls, but I did give them the finger, over my shoulder, as we walked up to the house. I don’t know if it was them I was telling to fuck off or the innocence they represented that I knew I’d never get back. Probably both.
One of the boys said, “Ooooh, big man.”
Another said, “Come back here, old dude, and say that to my face.” I considered it a moment, decided against it.
As we climbed the stairs to the front door and Ape rang the bell, I couldn’t help but think that those little shits had no idea who they were tangling with. I’d gone toe-totoe with the old gods, been be
aten this side of oblivion by a major demon, and skull-fucked a couple of serial-killing werewolves. Shit, just yesterday, I’d taken the head off a feral bum.
What were they going to do, hit me with a slapshot?
I caught Ape looking at me, a wry smirk playing in the corner of his mouth. “What?” “Those kids getting to you?”
“You wish.”
Ape rang the bell, and we waited another minute. “Are they home?” I asked.
“I called before we came. They told me they’d be here.”
“Maybe they’re having sex?”
And then like a summoning charm, the door opened, and there was the scholarly-featured Mr. Easter, glasses on his nose, sweater vest over a plaid shirt, dark hair greying at the fringes. He didn’t look sexually satisfied, nor happy to see us, though I can’t say I blamed him. He hired us to find his daughter and all we brought home was a sodding teddy.
He didn’t smile, just nodded, a look of understanding, and held the door open for us.
We crossed the threshold and he closed the door behind us, ushered us into the living room and asked us to have a seat on the sofa. “I’ll go get my wife,” he said. His tone was bored. “If it’s all the same, she’d like to be present.”
“That’s completely understandable,” Ape said. I just took a seat.
The man nodded. “Make yourself at home. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
Then Ape and I were alone, and I had a moment to look around the little room. It was formal, a fireplace set into the wall facing us, hardwood floors covered by a nice patterned rug that looked Indian or something just as fancy, probably expensive as fuck. The furniture was modern, spotless like it had never been used, a couch and a couple armchairs, some side tables, a coffee table, all dark woods and soft, welcoming fabrics. The walls were even painted a homely shade of red and hung heavy with family photos, the Mister and Missus and a little blonde girl.
In one picture, her fingernails were pink.
We were never given the grand tour of the house, but from what I’d seen, these people worked very hard to make it a home, what with the fancy art and photos and clean surfaces and a kitchen smelling like baked cookies and apple-pie potpourri. But there was something off, as well, because for all its pleasantries and decorations, the house didn’t feel any more like a home than a Holiday Inn. There was just something…missing.