by Rose, Rhea
“I think I’ll pass on meeting Emilia. I prefer to work alone.”
“I know what you mean. But in this business we can’t work alone. I have to put up with Devon.”
“Do us both a favor, get rid of Devon,” I said.
“Devon has his uses,” she said.
“Is he rejuvenating, too?” I showed her his card. Maisie took it from me. She put it back in the box.
“He is,” she said. Maisie picked up the death card and looked into it. “Emilia, are you ready?”
Like a pro, Maisie flicked the card three times with two fingers and then handed it to me. It now held a card with only a silhouette, no picture of the fighting form of Emilia Darkiness that moments ago filled the card.
Again, I heard the flush in the bathroom.
I’m not sure what happened next. But it went something like this, the bathroom door crashed open -- an explosion of energy tumbled out, somersaulted over us to the front of the shop, proceeded to tumble and do gymnastics through the tight little store aisles, and not a single item fell or broke away from the shelves.
Emilia Darkiness, the woman from the death card, came to a dead stop and screamed martial arts style, “HiiiiiiiYaaaaah!” Then she pulled out one of her two swords and began slashing at the air, stepping steadily toward us.
“Uh, Maisie, do you have a magic word to make her stop?”
“She’s showing off.”
Maisie’s show off death dealer sliced the tarot table in half.
I ran.
Before the votive candle hit the ground, she diced it into four pieces. Maisie didn’t look impressed.
The swords woman had my respect, but Emilia Darkiness wasn’t done. She then took her moves out on the nice comfortable chair Maisie had for readers in the front of the shop. She turned the overstuffed chair into small pillows. Meanwhile, I hid behind a bookshelf wondering how to climb back into the Star card.
Emilia slowed a bit and instead of cutting everything up in her path she began hacking the air in crisscross patterns and shouting. “Ha, ha, Hiiiiyaaaah.” She’d bring her sword within centimeters of a precious object and stop.
I loved watching Maisie’s face twitch with annoyance.
Then Emilia stopped her antics.
“No!” I said to her. “Don’t stop.” I wanted to see Maisie squirm some more.
That’s all it took, a little encouragement. Emilia started on another round of moves and slashes. I found myself clapping and cheering her on. “Yeah, twirl it, like a baton!” I yelled.
We made eye contact and she flashed me a smile and away she went again. Then, as it was bound to happen in the tight little shop, Emi, I decided I’d call her Emi, bumped a small crystal ball and it rolled off the shelf, crashing to the ground, smashing into powder. It looked really cool, but when I looked at Maisie her face shaded over and scowled. Her posture became menacing. It was clear she’d had enough. She walked over to Emilia and tapped her with the tarot card.
No more Emilia.
I was afraid that she’d tap me with a card to send me packing, so I ran from the shop straight home and decided to get outta Dodge, just like I’d promised myself.
Chapter 4
The Sun Card; Glowing Girls
…theknowitall journals, cont’d…
I went back to my condo and grabbed my suitcase. I threw in panties and bras, swim wear, thong, and tops, and a few other necessities. I didn’t plan to be gone for good, but my plan included a little trip to Vegas to let this nonsense with Maisie settle, then come back when she’d forgotten me. I figured I’d go back to Manuel’s and convince him to go with me to Vegas, his favourite playland and I’d use him as a bodyguard of sorts, in case anyone of these crazies followed me there. Even though he was my abusive ex we still had each other’s back, sort of.
My biggest worry was Sia.
I decided I’d call Glendie and have her come by and watch out for the missing cat. Glendie got to my house before I did. She’d let herself in and grabbed a beer from the fridge – Fleming’s Irish Red, to be exact.
“I’m outta here. Something’s up. I don’t have time to explain. I’ve got to hide for a while.”
“Is it Manuel again?” Glendie was about my size, so much so, that we sometimes shared clothes, but not often because we had directly opposing tastes. She was a natural brunette with shoulder length hair and some very subtle but swish copper highlights. She always wore false eyelashes which gave her a kind of ingénue quality to her look. “How long will you be gone?” Glendie asked. I packed while she followed me around drinking her beer out of a long neck bottle. Glendie worked part-time at Koldwell Bank and she had the day off. She dressed more conservatively than me, but she was a real wild woman at times. I liked that about her.
She seemed different today. Normally she’s perky and cheerful and fun, but today she was over the top happy. She seemed to glow; her aura bulged out around her like she was back lit by a Hollywood light. Maybe it was the banana yellow and orange organza sundress she wore, embellished with a crystal sash, over dressed, or what?
I put sunglasses on to give her a hint.
“How long?” she asked again.
“Not long,” I said. “I don’t know, long enough,” I said, trying to convince myself. But I really didn’t know how long I’d be gone. I still had a month of summer holidays left. I hoped I didn’t have to stay with Manuel too long. “What’s going on with you today? Why so, so, so glowing? I’ve got to put my sunglasses on when I’m near you. You’re like a nuclear blast in midsummer.”
“I will take that as a compliment.”
“Oookay,” I said, not really meaning it as one. “About Sia.”
“Shoot.”
I gave Glendie the low down on Devon and Maisie.
“What is the Cheshire Society?” she asked.
“With all that’s happened they’re the least of my worries.”
“Well, a guy was here earlier looking for you. He said he was from the Cheshire Society and he gave me this card.” She handed the black card to me.
“What did he look like?” I asked dumb founded, and stared uncomprehendingly at the card.
“He didn’t look like anything.”
“Tall? Short? Fat? Thin? Give me something to work with.”
Glendie took a long gulp of the beer. “Hmmm. He stood in the shadows. He wore a hat of some type, a toque, and a long coat and dark sun glasses.”
By the time she finished describing him, I was packed. “Okay, don’t worry about him. He’s a sales man. But if Sia does show up, don’t take off her collar, only then did I remember I had her collar in my pocket.
“Oh, no.” I pulled it out and gave it to Glendie. “Here, make sure you put it on her if you can, although I don’t know if you’ll be able to see her because she needs to wear the collar to be seen.”
“What?” Glendie looked at me like I was a lunatic.
“If you get her back into her collar and she gets out of her collar put it back on her immediately and don’t you wear it.”
“Why would I wear her collar?”
“On your wrist, I began to demonstrate. Never mind. I will leave her collar in – I thought a moment – in the fridge! I need you to do me a huge favor. I need you to go to Maisie’s shop and steal her tarot deck I told you about. It won’t be difficult. She leaves it on the table in the back room. Pick it up. Put it in your purse and leave. I will meet you at the railroad tracks in the old part of town. Bring the tarot deck there.”
“Are you crazy or just high?” she looked askance. “There’s something different about you.”
“Crazy, I’m pretty sure that’s it.” I dragged my suitcase to the door. “Please, you know I wouldn’t ask if, if…my life didn’t depend on it,” I said, trying to sound pathetic.
“Really?”
“Yes!” I grabbed a pair of my Ray Bans and tossed the pharmacy sunglasses on the couch.
“Can I wear your blue Dolce and Gabbana ruched?�
�
“No, no not the blue one!”
“Then no deal.”
“Alright, alright, but if there is so much as a piece of dust on it—
“I’ll be careful.”
“But only if you bring me those cards!”
“You got it,” she said, overly cheerfully. She had this sickly sweet quality that I hadn’t ever noticed before. “And…” She looked at me patiently, waiting for me to agree.
“And…What?”
“Help pick out the tattoo I’m gonna get.”
I think she was getting drunk on that one beer, but at the moment I’d agree to anything.
“Okay, let’s do it. I’m packed and I want to get out of here. Meet you on the edge of town in an hour.”
“Promise? About the tattoo?”
For the entire year she’d talked of getting a tattoo but it became obvious to me that in the case of the Glendie-tattoo it was all talk and no walk.
“Whatever,” I said, walking out the door.
*
I waited on the outskirts of Meadowvale for an hour and a half. I knew Glendie really well. She worked in a bank. She was punctual, but not today, which only meant one thing. Something had gone wrong!
I tried calling her on her cell, but of course no answer. I didn’t want to drive back into town, to the store and find her, but I felt I was obligated.
First, I went past her place and knocked, but I really didn’t expect to find her there. I even cruised by the local bowling alley, Glendie’s other favorite pastime, to see if maybe she decided to play a game, or maybe she’d forgotten to do this job for me. At times she was flakier than me, which hardly seemed possible, but I didn’t see her car at Ten Lanes.
I tried to think of all kinds of sneaky ways to approach and walk into the Curio shop and look for Glendie, but none came to mind. The direct approach was the only way. I did park my electric blue Kia Rio a block down from the shop. No point in being overly obvious. I didn’t see Glendie’s lime green smart car anywhere and I circled the block a few times to look for it.
I went into the shop. As usual no one appeared to be there. I went straight to the backroom and saw the deck of cards on the table. I looked left and right. I saw the camouflaged closet washroom, but no flushing. I grabbed the deck of cards, dropped them into my purse and turned on my heels to leave.
I walked right into Maisie.
“Going somewhere?” she asked, pleasantly. I didn’t answer but quickly stepped around her, and even more quickly headed to the door.“Glendie came by,” she called out. I stopped in my tracks. “Thanks for sending her back to me. When they come into the shop, and they must come to the shop, you touch them with their card and, voila, they’re back in the deck.
“Only about twenty more to go,” she said.
I reached the door and started to push it open, but she stopped me. She got really close to me, and in my face she said, “Real people can’t be free of my control and live their mundane, lives in peace until all the cards are returned to the deck!”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about. Maisie smiled pleasantly, then cast her look at my purse and gave it a knowing nod. I left feeling like my heart raced two blocks ahead of me.
*
I ran to my car, dropped my keys twice before I made them work and got inside. I sped to the edge of town and stopped there to recover.
*
I found myself parked in the deserted train yard. Maisie’s sudden appearance and her all-knowing demeanor unnerved me so much I was still breathing hard. I reached into my purse and pulled out the tarot deck. With a shaky hand I pulled off the lid to the beautiful twilight colored box, and set it on the passenger car seat. I didn’t have to flip very far through the deck to see what Maisie was getting at.
The top card in the pile was the Sun card and the picture of the woman on the front looked exactly like Glendie, for a moment I thought she was holding a beer bottle in one hand, but on closer inspection it was a short scepter. Glendie looked beautiful. Her hair, long and dark, fell far below her shoulders and that crowning glory of hair was shot through with golden rays of sun.
She wore a metal outfit, like a gold sheet hammered to fit her form.
“Get me out of here!” she screamed at me from the card.
Startled I dropped the box of cards, of course like all things dropped inside a car many of the cards slipped between the seats. They were next to impossible to dig out. I grabbed a pen and tapped the cards out from between the cracks, but it took a while.
“Glendie?”
“Uh, huh.”
“You never told me you were the Sun card in this deck.”
“You don’t have a beer on you do you?”
It dawned on me then. The card spirits had flown from Maisie’s shop and taken over some of the town’s people. And Glendie had been one of them, and so was I. I wondered who else was now possessed by the escaped spirits and I wondered if they, like Glendie, would be enhanced, or perhaps diminished by the possessing tarot spirit. I wondered if others like Glendie would even know, or notice anything different about themselves.
Did I notice anything different about me? Not really.
“I’m gonna drive outta here,” I said to Glendie” Then I think I know how to free you.” I carefully put her down on the seat beside me. I tried to prop her card up so she sat next to me like a regular passenger.
As I drove out of town my mind ruminated: Glendie must have gone into Maisie’s shop to get the deck of cards like I’d asked her to and was returned to the deck when Maisie touched her with the Sun card. The Sun spirit inside Glendie returned to the deck, taking Glendie with her. Omg. It didn’t seem right that Glendie had to become part of the deck just because the Sun spirit had chosen her body and life.
What was it Maisie said?
All the spirits must return to the deck then the folk of Meadowvale could return to their regular, mundane lives. If that was true then I had to get them all back to free Glendie of this possession. I knew how to free her momentarily from the card, but how to give her back the life that was rightfully hers was more difficult.
I got the car into gear and got going, but by the time I’d hit the freeway, Glendie started screaming and the box of tarot cards was making a god-awful noise, like a motor with no oil. I pulled over on the shoulder, cars raced by honking and drivers gave me the finger. I turned to Glendie and picked up her card and nearly dropped the smoking hot piece of cardboard. I swear I saw smoke rising from it. Glendie’s little card voice called up to me. “Whatever you’re doing stop. I’m burning up in here.”
“Here. I’ll turn on the A/C. Look for the bathroom door. I’m getting us out of town away from that effing sorceress.”
“What? The bathroom door? Get me out!” she shrieked over and over. “You can’t go out of town!” She screamed at me.
I waited for a break in traffic then did a U-ie and headed east to get as far away from Meadowvale as a tank of gas in a Kia could take me and normally that was pretty far, but no, not today.
The farther I drove the more strangely the deck of cards behaved. First it started jumping as if a thousand jumping beans infested it, then it vibrated across the dash, then the lid flew off as if possessed. Meanwhile, Glendie’s little voice on the passenger seat beside me turned into high pitched yelps, then blood numbing screams. I made another U-ie and headed back to the train yard on the outskirts of town and, as I suspected, all the commotion with Glendie and the deck came to a halt.
All was quiet, as I sat a moment to collect my thoughts. I stared at the box of cards. Quiet.
I reached for the Sun card, Glendie still on the picture like a very sexy statue of liberty, the sun still balanced on her scepter. I flicked the card on the corner, three times, the way I’d seen Maisie do it on Emi’s card
Glendie now sat in the passenger seat, all normal, except for her incredible shiny charisma. “Well, the deck of cards can’t be taken out of town,” I said. “And p
robably can’t be destroyed without killing off the person the spirits have connected to,” I continued, “And you’re not Glendie,” I said. You’re Glendie with the Sun card spirit attached to you.”
She looked at me and smiled, and I had to put on my Ray-Bans.
I shook my head sadly. This was some pickle.
“And you’re not Jane,” she said, brightly and all knowingly.
“You’re the Star spirit!” she continued, sickly sweet, like Shirley Temple in a rerun, as if that was the most wonderful thing in the world.
“Maybe,” I said, “At least some of the time.” I agreed. I knew I wasn’t myself after sitting in Maisie’s card for a while. I knew Glendie was right. I was the Star card spirit, even if I didn’t want to admit it. But I didn’t feel like I was about to spontaneously combust while driving out of town. So, I was the Star spirit, but I was different. My transformation was different from Glendie’s; more subtle, or perhaps not completed.
If I’d continued driving out of town, maybe I’d have eventually combusted myself, but I hadn’t felt like I was burning up, so maybe if I’m not in my card I can get out of town. But what about Glendie? I wouldn’t abandon her like this. I had lots to figure out here, but if nothing else, Glendie as the Sunny spirit and me as the Starry spirit, working together in this crazy tarot town takeover had the nights and the days covered.
Chapter 5
Toot, Toot
According to the journals Maisie kept in her shop, under the front counter, (magical journals that recorded the details of her minions whereabouts in Meadowvale), a very drunk Devon staggered his way down Portman Street, an out of the way avenue in the older part of town. But I’d been on the street many times and knew it was a quiet, kind of run down area. Rental of store frontage was cheaper. It was in that area that Devon had taken old Joe Seer’s wine bottle; he’d lifted it from under the train and kept it half hidden in a brown paper bag.
Later that day, Devon came upon ten year old Bobby Bentley. The kid was learning to skateboard when Devon startled him by walking right into his board.