FSF, October-November 2006

by Spilogale, Inc

  The very large dog standing behind her stayed outside. He looked about the size of a Winnebago, and plainly had already made up his mind about Angie. She said, “Nice doggie,” and he growled. When she tried out “Hey, sweet thing,” which was what her father said to all animals, the dog showed his front teeth, and the hair stood up around his shoulders, and he lay down to keep an eye on things himself. Angie said sadly, “I'm usually really good with dogs."

  When Melissa arrived, she said, “Well, you shoved it under the door, so it can't be that far inside. Maybe if we got something like a stick or a wire clothes-hanger to hook it back with.” But whenever they looked toward the neighboring house, they saw a curtain swaying, and finally they walked away, trying to decide what else to do. But there was nothing; and after a while Angie's throat was too swollen with not crying for her to talk without pain. She walked Melissa back to the bus stop, and they hugged good-bye as though they might never meet again.

  Melissa said, “You know, my mother says nothing's ever as bad as you thought it was going to be. I mean, it can't be, because nothing beats all the horrible stuff you can imagine. So maybe ... you know....” but she broke down before she could finish. She hugged Angie again and went home.

  Alone in her own house, Angie sat quite still in the kitchen and went on not crying. Her entire face hurt with it, and her eyes felt unbearably heavy. Her mind was not moving at all, and she was vaguely grateful for that. She sat there until Marvyn walked in from playing basketball with his friends. Shorter than everyone else, he generally got stepped on a lot, and always came home scraped and bruised. Angie had rather expected him to try making himself taller, or able to jump higher, but he hadn't done anything of the sort so far. He looked at her now, bounced and shot an invisible basketball, and asked quietly, “What's the matter?"

  It may have been the unexpected froggy gentleness of his voice, or simply the sudden fact of his having asked the question at all. Whatever the reason, Angie abruptly burst into furious tears, the rage directed entirely at herself, both for writing the letter to Jake Petrakis in the first place, and for crying about it now. She gestured to Marvyn to go away, but—amazing her further—he stood stolidly waiting for her to grow quiet. When at last she did, he repeated the question. “Angie. What's wrong?"

  Angie told him. She was about to add a disclaimer—"You laugh even once, Ex-Lax—” when she realized that it wouldn't be necessary. Marvyn was scratching his head, scrunching up his brow until the eyepatch danced; then abruptly jamming both hands in his pockets and tilting his head back: the poster boy for careless insouciance. He said, almost absently, “I could get it back."

  "Oh, right.” Angie did not even look up. “Right."

  "I could so!” Marvyn was instantly his normal self again. So much for casualness and dispassion. “There's all kinds of things I could do."

  Angie dampened a paper towel and tried to do something with her hot, tear-streaked face. “Name two."

  "Okay, I will! You remember which mailbox you put it in?"

  "Under the door,” Angie mumbled. “I put it under the door."

  Marvyn snickered then. “Aww, like a Valentine.” Angie hadn't the energy to hit him, but she made a grab at him anyway, for appearance's sake. “Well, I could make it walk right back out the door, that's one way. Or I bet I could just open the door, if nobody's home. Easiest trick in the world, for us witches."

  "They're gone till Sunday night,” Angie said. “But there's this lady next door, she's watching the place like a hawk. And even when she's not, she's got this immense dog. I don't care if you're the hottest witch in the world, you do not want to mess with this werewolf."

  Marvyn, who—as Angie knew—was wary of big dogs, went back to scratching his head. “Too easy, anyway. No fun, forget it.” He sat down next to her, completely absorbed in the problem. “How about I ... no, that's kid stuff, anybody could do it. But there's a spell ... I could make the letter self-destruct, right there in the house, like in that old TV show. It'd just be a little fluffy pile of ashes—they'd vacuum it up and never know. How about that?” Before Angie could express an opinion, he was already shaking his head. “Still too easy. A baby spell, for beginners. I hate those."

  "Easy is good,” Angie told him earnestly. “I like easy. And you are a beginner."

  Marvyn was immediately outraged, his normal bass-baritone rumble going up to a wounded squeak. “I am not! No way in the world I'm a beginner!” He was up and stamping his feet, as he had not done since he was two. “I tell you what—just for that, I'm going to get your letter back for you, but I'm not going to tell you how. You'll see, that's all. You just wait and see."

  He was stalking away toward his room when Angie called after him, with the first glimmer both of hope and of humor that she had felt in approximately a century, “All right, you're a big bad witch king. What do you want?"

  Marvyn turned and stared, uncomprehending.

  Angie said, “Nothing for nothing, that's my bro. So let's hear it—what's your price for saving my life?"

  If Marvyn's voice had gone up any higher, only bats could have heard it. “I'm rescuing you, and you think I want something for it? Julius Christmas!” which was the only swearword he was ever allowed to get away with. “You don't have anything I want, anyway. Except maybe...."

  He let the thought hang in space, uncompleted. Angie said, “Except maybe what?"

  Marvyn swung on the doorframe one-handed, grinning his pirate grin at her. “I hate you calling me Ex-Lax. You know I hate it, and you keep doing it."

  "Okay, I won't do it anymore, ever again. I promise."

  "Mmm. Not good enough.” The grin had grown distinctly evil. “I think you ought to call me O Mighty One for two weeks."

  "What?” Now Angie was on her feet, misery briefly forgotten. “Give it up, Ex-Lax—two weeks? No chance!” They glared at each other in silence for a long moment before she finally said, “A week. Don't push it. One week, no more. And not in front of people!"

  "Ten days.” Marvyn folded his arms. “Starting right now.” Angie went on glowering. Marvyn said, “You want that letter?"

  "Yes."

  Marvyn waited.

  "Yes, O Mighty One.” Triumphant, Marvyn held out his hand and Angie slapped it. She said, “When?"

  "Tonight. No, tomorrow—going to the movies with Sunil and his family tonight. Tomorrow.” He wandered off, and Angie took her first deep breath in what felt like a year and a half. She wished she could tell Melissa that things were going to be all right, but she didn't dare; so she spent the day trying to appear normal—just the usual Angie, aimlessly content on a Saturday afternoon. When Marvyn came home from the movies, he spent the rest of the evening reading Hellboy comics in his room, with the Milady-kitten on his stomach. He was still doing it when Angie gave up peeking in at him and went to bed.

  But he was gone on Sunday morning. Angie knew it the moment she woke up.

  She had no idea where he could be, or why. She had rather expected him to work whatever spell he settled on in his bedroom, under the stern gaze of his wizard mentors. But he wasn't there, and he didn't come to breakfast. Angie told their mother that they'd been up late watching television together, and that she should probably let Marvyn sleep in. And when Mrs. Luke grew worried after breakfast, Angie went to his room herself, returning with word that Marvyn was working intensely on a project for his art class, and wasn't feeling sociable. Normally she would never have gotten away with it, but her parents were on their way to brunch and a concert, leaving her with the usual instructions to feed and water the cat, use the twenty on the cabinet for something moderately healthy, and to check on Marvyn “now and then,” which actually meant frequently. ("The day we don't tell you that,” Mr. Luke said once, when she objected to the regular duty, “will be the very day the kid steals a kayak and heads for Tahiti.” Angie found it hard to argue the point.)

  Alone in the empty house—more alone than she felt she had ever been—Angie turne
d constantly in circles, wandering from room to room with no least notion of what to do. As the hours passed and her brother failed to return, she found herself calling out to him aloud. “Marvyn? Marvyn, I swear, if you're doing this to drive me crazy ... O Mighty One, where are you? You get back here, never mind the damn letter, just get back!” She stopped doing this after a time, because the cracks and tremors in her voice embarrassed her, and made her even more afraid.

  Strangely, she seemed to feel him in the house all that time. She kept whirling to look over her shoulder, thinking that he might be sneaking up on her to scare her, a favorite game since his infancy. But he was never there.

  Somewhere around noon the doorbell rang, and Angie tripped over herself scrambling to answer it, even though she had no hope—almost no hope—of its being Marvyn. But it was Lidia at the door—Angie had forgotten that she usually came to clean on Sunday afternoons. She stood there, old and smiling, and Angie hugged her wildly and wailed, “Lidia, Lidia, socorro, help me, aydame, Lidia.” She had learned Spanish from the housekeeper when she was too little to know she was learning it.

  Lidia put her hands on Angie's shoulders. She held her a little away and looked into her face, saying, “Chuchi, dime qu pasa contigo?” She had called Angie Chuchi since childhood, never explaining the origin or meaning of the word.

  "It's Marvyn,” Angie whispered. “It's Marvyn.” She started to explain about the letter, and Marvyn's promise, but Lidia only nodded and asked no questions. She said firmly, “El Viejo puede ayudar."

  Too frantic to pay attention to gender, Angie took her to mean Yemaya, the old woman in the farmer's market who had told Marvyn that he was a brujo. She said, “You mean la santera,” but Lidia shook her head hard. “No, no, El Viejo. You go out there, you ask to see El Viejo. Solamente El Viejo. Los otros no pueden ayudarte."

  The others can't help you. Only the old man. Angie asked where she could find El Viejo, and Lidia directed her to a Santeria shop on Bowen Street. She drew a crude map, made sure Angie had money with her, kissed her on the cheek and made a blessing sign on her forehead. “Cuidado, Chuchi,” she said with a kind of cheerful solemnity, and Angie was out and running for the Gonzales Avenue bus, the same one she took to school. This time she stayed on a good deal farther.

  The shop had no sign, and no street number, and it was so small that Angie kept walking past it for some while. Her attention was finally caught by the objects in the one dim window, and on the shelves to right and left. There was an astonishing variety of incense, and of candles encased in glass with pictures of black saints, as well as boxes marked Fast Money Ritual Kit, and bottles of Elegua Floor Wash, whose label read “Keeps Trouble From Crossing Your Threshold.” When Angie entered, the musky scent of the place made her feel dizzy and heavy and out of herself, as she always felt when she had a cold coming on. She heard a rooster crowing, somewhere in back.

  She didn't see the old woman until her chair creaked slightly, because she was sitting in a corner, halfway hidden by long hanging garments like church choir robes, but with symbols and patterns on them that Angie had never seen before. The woman was very old, much older even than Lidia, and she had an absurdly small pipe in her toothless mouth. Angie said, “Yemaya?” The old woman looked at her with eyes like dead planets.

  Angie's Spanish dried up completely, followed almost immediately by her English. She said, “My brother ... my little brother ... I'm supposed to ask for El Viejo. The old one, viejo santero? Lidia said.” She ran out of words in either language at that point. A puff of smoke crawled from the little pipe, but the old woman made no other response.

  Then, behind her, she heard a curtain being pulled aside. A hoarse, slow voice said, “Quieres El Viejo? Me."

  Angie turned and saw him, coming toward her out of a long hallway whose end she could not see. He moved deliberately, and it seemed to take him forever to reach her, as though he were returning from another world. He was black, dressed all in black, and he wore dark glasses, even in the dark, tiny shop. His hair was so white that it hurt her eyes when she stared. He said, “Your brother."

  "Yes,” Angie said. “Yes. He's doing magic for me—he's getting something I need—and I don't know where he is, but I know he's in trouble, and I want him back!” She did not cry or break down—Marvyn would never be able to say that she cried over him—but it was a near thing.

  El Viejo pushed the dark glasses up on his forehead, and Angie saw that he was younger than she had first thought—certainly younger than Lidia—and that there were thick white half-circles under his eyes. She never knew whether they were somehow natural, or the result of heavy makeup; what she did see was that they made his eyes look bigger and brighter—all pupil, nothing more. They should have made him look at least slightly comical, like a reverse-image raccoon, but they didn't.

  "I know you brother,” El Viejo said. Angie fought to hold herself still as he came closer, smiling at her with the tips of his teeth. “A brujito—little, little witch, we know. Mama and me, we been watching.” He nodded toward the old woman in the chair, who hadn't moved an inch or said a word since Angie's arrival. Angie smelled a damp, musty aroma, like potatoes going bad.

  "Tell me where he is. Lidia said you could help.” Close to, she could see blue highlights in El Viejo's skin, and a kind of V-shaped scar on each cheek. He was wearing a narrow black tie, which she had not noticed at first; for some reason, the vision of him tying it in the morning, in front of a mirror, was more chilling to her than anything else about him. He grinned fully at her now, showing teeth that she had expected to be yellow and stinking, but which were all white and square and a little too large. He said, “Tu hermano est perdido. Lost in Thursday."

  "Thursday?” It took her a dazed moment to comprehend, and longer to get the words out. “Oh, God, he went back! Like with Milady—he went back to before I ... when the letter was still in my backpack. The little showoff—he said forward was hard, coming forward—he wanted to show me he could do it. And he got stuck. Idiot, idiot, idiot!” El Viejo chuckled softly, nodding, saying nothing.

  "You have to go find him, get him out of there, right now—I've got money.” She began digging frantically in her coat pockets.

  "No, no money.” El Viejo waved her offering aside, studying her out of eyes the color of almost-ripened plums. The white markings under them looked real; the eyes didn't. He said, “I take you. We find you brother together."

  Angie's legs were trembling so much that they hurt. She wanted to assent, but it was simply not possible. “No. I can't. I can't. You go back there and get him."

  El Viejo laughed then: an enormous, astonishing Santa Claus ho-ho-HO, so rich and reassuring that it made Angie smile even as he was snatching her up and stuffing her under one arm. By the time she had recovered from her bewilderment enough to start kicking and fighting, he was walking away with her down the long hall he had come out of a moment before. Angie screamed until her voice splintered in her throat, but she could not hear herself: from the moment El Viejo stepped back into the darkness of the hallway, all sound had ended. She could hear neither his footsteps nor his laughter—though she could feel him laughing against her—and certainly not her own panicky racket. They could be in outer space. They could be anywhere.

  Dazed and disoriented as she was, the hallway seemed to go soundlessly on and on, until wherever they truly were, it could never have been the tiny Santeria shop she had entered only—when?—minutes before. It was a cold place, smelling like an old basement; and for all its darkness, Angie had a sense of things happening far too fast on all sides, just out of range of her smothered vision. She could distinguish none of them clearly, but there was a sparkle to them all the same.

  And then she was in Marvyn's room.

  And it was unquestionably Marvyn's room: there were the bearded and beaded occultists on the walls; there were the flannel winter sheets that he slept on all year because they had pictures of the New York Mets ballplayers; there was the complet
e set of Star Trek action figures that Angie had given him at Christmas, posed just so on his bookcase. And there, sitting on the edge of his bed, was Marvyn, looking lonelier than anyone Angie had ever seen in her life.

  He didn't move or look up until El Viejo abruptly dumped her down in front of him and stood back, grinning like a beartrap. Then he jumped to his feet, burst into tears and started frenziedly climbing her, snuffling, “Angie, Angie, Angie,” all the way up. Angie held him, trying somehow to preserve her neck and hair and back all at once, while mumbling, “It's all right, it's okay, I'm here. It's okay, Marvyn."

  Behind her, El Viejo chuckled, “Crybaby witch—little, little brujito crybaby.” Angie hefted her blubbering baby brother like a shopping bag, holding him on her hip as she had done when he was little, and turned to face the old man. She said, “Thank you. You can take us home now."

  El Viejo smiled—not a grin this time, but a long, slow shutmouth smile like a paper cut. He said, “Maybe we let him do it, yes?” and then he turned and walked away and was gone, as though he had simply slipped between the molecules of the air. Angie stood with Marvyn in her arms, trying to peel him off like a Band-Aid, while he clung to her with his chin digging hard into the top of her head. She finally managed to dump him down on the bed and stood over him, demanding, “What happened? What were you thinking?” Marvyn was still crying too hard to answer her. Angie said, “You just had to do it this way, didn't you? No silly little beginner spells—you're playing with the big guys now, right, O Mighty One? So what happened? How come you couldn't get back?"

  "I don't know!” Marvyn's face was red and puffy with tears, and the tears kept coming while Angie tried to straighten his eyepatch. It was impossible for him to get much out without breaking down again, but he kept wailing, “I don't know what went wrong! I did everything you're supposed to, but I couldn't make it work! I don't know ... maybe I forgot....” He could not finish.