by Ward Parker
The rattlesnakes? The explanation for those was actually fairly simple. Kenny’s brother, Willard, was the pastor at a primitive Baptist church and was planning to introduce the practice of snake handling to his flock. When the Spirit was in you, Willard claimed, the snakes won’t bite you. It’s a testament of the Lord’s love for you and your faith in him.
The box of snakes was sitting on Kenny’s porch because Willard couldn’t bring them home, because of his dogs, and couldn’t leave them at the church, because of some silly town regulations. They would be here only until the morning when Willard picked them up for church.
Kenny had been planning to use the snakes for a practical joke, but could no longer remember what he had planned. That was an entire bottle of bourbon ago. Water under the bridge, as they say. Right now, he had wood to cut.
“Kenny! You moronic mullet-head, what do you think you’re doing?” Vicky yelled as she stood in the back doorway.
“What does it look like? I’m cutting this dang tree you’ve been on my butt about for days on end.”
“I asked you to do it this morning. Why the heck are you doing it now after you’ve been drinking?”
“I’ve been busy all day. And I just have a slight buzz on. Don’t worry, I am legendary for my alcohol tolerance.”
“That’s what you said when you wrecked the truck at the power substation. It’s too late to use the chainsaw. You’ll wake up mother and half the neighborhood.”
“Leave me alone, woman. I have a job to do.”
“One more thing, mullet-head. Why are you naked?”
Kenny looked down. Sure enough, he was naked. Though he was wearing his boots, which were critical. You don’t want to use a chainsaw when you’re barefoot. He couldn’t remember why he was naked, though. He must have been preparing to shower when he got distracted by something. Or the other way around. Didn’t matter, he wasn’t afraid of sawdust in his chest hair.
“You mind your own business,” he said. “Unless you want to head to the liquor store and pick me up another—”
Vicky slammed the door shut.
Okay, let’s get this over with, he thought. He checked the chainsaw, and it mercifully had gas in it. He pulled out the choke and yanked the starter cord. Nothing. He yanked again. The motor sputtered in a cloud of oil and gasoline fumes but didn’t start. He yanked again, lost his balance, and fell on his butt with the chainsaw falling in his lap.
“Good thing she wasn’t running,” he said aloud and laughed.
Something caught his eye. The stupid gnome in Vicky’s flower garden wasn’t where it was supposed to be. And there was a second gnome with it he had never seen before. What was that all about? She didn’t need another gnome.
Back to the task at hand, he reminded himself. Before he yanked the cord, he remembered to push the choke back in before the engine flooded. He tried again and this time the dang thing started.
In the faint light of the porch, he went to work on the tree. Cutting two sections of wood from the base of the fallen tree, he paused to rest, wishing he had some more bourbon. The chainsaw rumbled and sputtered as it idled in his hands.
Then he noticed something: The gnomes weren’t in the garden anymore. They stood a few yards behind him: Vicky’s gnome in the checkered shirt sitting on a mushroom and the new gnome with a crooked red hat. How had they gotten over here? He concluded that he was simply confused, and they had been here all along.
He realized he couldn’t cut any more sections from the bottom of the tree because it would collapse further and cause additional damage to the shed. And maybe to him, too. He needed to cut the upper part that was resting on what was left of the shed. He needed a stepladder or something, but he didn’t know where the dang ladder was.
Time to improvise. He rolled the two logs he had cut over to the shed, positioned them on end, and stood one foot atop each.
The logs were unsteady. This probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was impatient to get the dang job over with.
The chainsaw roared as he pressed the trigger. He leaned toward the tree, tottering on the unsteady logs. Once the saw made contact with the tree and he leaned into it, he felt more balanced. He’d just have to be careful when the blade pushed through.
When it finally did, sawdust flying into his face, he leaned backwards to compensate.
And something kicked the logs from behind. The logs tipped forward, and he fell backwards. He lost hold of the chainsaw and landed on his back, partly knocking the wind out of him.
He gazed up into the sky to see the chainsaw cartwheeling down toward his head.
He twisted aside just in time. The chainsaw landed right where his head had been. He was both relieved and angry.
High-pitched laughter came from nearby. That made him angrier. He sat up. The two gnomes were right next to him, standing beside the knocked-over logs. More laughter flowed, but the gnomes were absolutely still. There was no sign of their mouths opening.
And why would there be? They were dang garden gnomes. So then why did he suspect they were what knocked the logs over and almost got his head crushed by a fifteen-pound chainsaw?
The laughter continued—squeaky, rodent-like giggling. Those little lawn ornaments made him fall, and they were now mocking him as he sat on his naked ass. Anger surged inside him. It was the worst kind of anger, fueled by liquor and stimulated by whatever was in those perk-me-up pills he had taken.
Kenny got to his feet and grabbed the still-running chainsaw. He revved it and moved menacingly toward the two gnomes.
“You’re gonna miss having heads, you little maggots,” he said as he staggered toward the gnomes with the chainsaw pointed toward the new gnome.
They disappeared. No, they were a few feet to the right now. How did that happen? He didn’t see them move. Maybe they hadn’t moved after all. Kenny blinked. Was something wrong with his eyes? Or his brain?
He turned slightly and aimed the chainsaw at the same gnome, the one with the crooked red hat.
“C’mon and take your medicine!”
He stopped in front of the gnome, revved the chainsaw, its chain spinning in a blur, and lowered the saw diagonally onto where the gnome’s head met its body.
Except the gnome wasn’t there anymore.
And horrible pain flared in his left leg. Dang, when he missed the gnome, he nicked his calf. The blood was making him sick. But it also made him that much angrier. These gnomes would pay if it was the last thing he ever did.
The gnomes were again a few feet away from him, closer to the house now. He staggered after them and swung the chainsaw wildly. But again, they disappeared.
Either these little maggots were magical, or he was having a terrible head trip. And, dang, his leg sure hurt.
“Don’t mess with me! I’m gonna turn you into garden mulch.”
He followed them across the yard. Every time he lunged with the saw, they disappeared, a fraction of a second before the blade made contact.
Now he had them trapped against the base of the porch. He laughed the low, gloating laugh of a victor. Then attacked with the roaring saw.
The saw buried itself in the porch's edge, and the gnomes were gone. He pried the blade from the wood and checked the tension of the chain.
The rodent-like laughter came from above. The gnomes were on the porch, looking down on him with amusement.
He roared like a bull gator and ran up the porch steps, flinging the screen door open. He revved the chainsaw and gnashed his teeth in anger. A growl escaped his mouth.
“Kenny, get that chainsaw off the porch,” Vicky shouted from inside.
He ignored her. He had a score to settle. He didn’t care if the deck of the porch got scratched, as long as the gnomes ended up as little pieces of plastic.
“This ends here,” he said and attacked.
The blade ended up an inch deep in the floor. Oh, and the tip of his right boot was missing, along with the ends of his toes. Fine. Just fine. He didn’t friggin�
� care anymore. He wasn’t stopping until he won.
The gnomes were behind him. He swung the chainsaw like he was teeing off. Now they were on the chaise lounge. He slammed the saw down like an ax. The chaise lounge ended up in two pieces.
Now they were on top of a wooden crate. He chopped at them and the saw cut into the lid. The gnomes appeared in front of the crate. He thrust the chainsaw like a battering ram.
But as he did, a little light went off in a dark, alcohol-pickled part of his brain. Wait a minute, he thought, wasn’t this the crate that held the rattlesnakes?
Too late, the saw burrowed into the front of the crate and a big section of wood dropped to the floor. There was a big, gaping opening in the crate. Inside, rattles were going off like machine guns. And rattlesnakes came pouring out,
They were freaked out by the noise and chaos caused by the saw. And they were mad.
Kenny gasped and tried to jump backwards away from the dozen snakes slithering toward him across his porch floor, but he tripped on something behind him. And fell.
Right on the snakes.
After the first bursts of pain, he lost track of how many fangs punctured his skin. He found out that it really sucks to be bitten by a rattler, let alone a dozen of them. And it sucked even more to be naked at the time.
He rolled away and lay on the floor as his body went into shock and his body parts began swelling. One of his parts swelled to such a magnificent size that he had a brief moment of manly pride.
And then he died.
The headline of Matt’s story in the next day’s edition of The Jellyfish Beach Journal: “Naked Florida man found dead. Cause of death rattlesnake bites or chainsaw wounds.”
No mention, of course, of gnomes. The copyeditor removed that. But Matt saw the gnomes when he arrived on the scene, after he was alerted to the death by his police scanner.
There were two gnomes standing on the porch amid the crawling rattlesnakes. Later, when Matt looked again, there was only one. The other gnome had vanished.
14
The Arch-Mage Bob
Bob was not happy to see Missy. She poked her head in the board-repair room of Bob’s surf shop and enjoyed the look of dismay on his face.
Florence, his magically smart African Grey parrot, squawked with alarm from her nearby perch.
“Hi, Bob,” Missy said. “How’s the surf been?”
Instantly, a sonic force hit her and almost bowled her over. No small talk for Bob; he was going into battle. Fortunately, she had girded herself with a protection spell and amped up its power right before entering the surf shop.
“That’s no way to greet someone,” she said.
He stood up from the workbench where he’d been sanding a surfboard. He smiled and spread his hands in innocence. His eyes searched behind her to see if she was alone.
“You surprised me, dude,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you up here in San Marcos so soon. Especially after you stole my grimoire.”
“Do we really have to go through this again? The grimoire belonged to my father. He bequeathed it to me. You or someone else stole it from him after he died. Just because it ended up in your hands doesn’t mean it was yours.”
“I paid like big-time money to the city’s best vampire thief for it.”
Missy was stunned. Did this mean Maurice, who had tried to help her find the grimoire before, actually was involved in stealing it from her father in the first place? She wanted to find out, but that was a matter for a later date.
“And just so you know, I will get the book back,” Bob said. He was in his fifties, a little too old and too big in the gut to justify his surfer-dude look with shaggy blond hair, Hawaiian shirt, board shorts and sandals. “I put like hundreds of hours into studying the spells in the addendum. I was sooo close to figuring them out.”
“Why haven’t you stolen it back already?”
He smiled. His blue eyes appeared earnest. “Because I heard you have the Red Dragon.”
The Red Dragon amplified her power enough to be on equal footing with his, even though the Arch-Mage of San Marcos was much more experienced with magic than she was. The Red Dragon was her greatest weapon against Bob, but it also put her at significant risk. He would do anything to steal it from her.
“I didn’t come here to bicker about the grimoire,” Missy said. “I need some information.”
“Oh, sure, dude, you steal my book and you expect me to help you?”
“You tortured me. You remember that? You broke into my home and assaulted me with magic to force me to tell you where the grimoire was. You’re a man who committed violence upon a woman. You’re human scum.”
She tried to control her anger. It wasn’t helping with her diplomatic mission.
Bob stared at her without speaking. She tried to read his expression. Then he smirked.
“I used enhanced interrogation techniques, because you were totally lying to me.”
She couldn’t hold in her anger any longer. She grasped the Red Dragon talisman in her pocket, the heavy, metal figurine carved in a dragon-like shape. The moment she touched it, the sensation of an electric shock hit her hand and passed up her arm, through her chest, and into her head. Her scalp tingled and her heart raced. She recited silently the words of a simple levitation spell that worked in conjunction with her natural ability for telekinesis.
She launched the power at Bob.
An unseen hand grabbed his hair and yanked him into the air, arms flailing and legs kicking.
Florence flapped her wings and squawked, “Knock it off, witch!”
“So, Bob, I could report to the Guild that you used black magic to torture me,” Missy said. “You’d be removed as Arch-Mage and banished from the city, forfeiting all your property. Or I could kill you right now, in the most painful way you can imagine, because of what you did to me.”
She added a spell that constricted his throat, not enough to strangle him but enough to make breathing more difficult, which causes panic in any creature. It was against her ethos to use her magic to harm. She practiced earth magick. It was white, the polar opposite of black magic. And she was a nurse. So these “enhanced interrogation techniques” she was using were wrong in her heart.
But Bob deserved some payback for what he had done to her. She wanted to wipe that smirk off his face permanently.
“There’s another option,” she said. “You can answer some questions, none of which should involve any damaging information for you to reveal. Then I’ll be on my way.”
She released the pressure on his throat.
“Photocopies,” he said in a scratchy voice.
“What?”
“Make photocopies or scans of the pages in the grimoire’s addendum. That’s all I ask, dude.”
“But you need the physical book to be present when casting the more powerful spells, don’t you?”
“Yes. But many of those spells are for healing, which doesn’t interest me. There’s other knowledge in those pages I’ve been trying to decipher. There’s more to that book than magic spells. Secrets about life, death, and immortality, dude. It’ll blow your mind! This knowledge is nothing that I can use to harm people. It’s the kind of revelations that have only been hinted at for millennia. The stuff humans have lusted for since the beginning of time. I had only a taste of it and it’s enough to drive you freaking bonkers with the desire to know more. You dig what I’m saying?”
“I do,” Missy said.
“Give me copies of those pages and you can keep the grimoire with my blessing. I’ll be your ally moving forward. I’ll forget about your dragon dropping me in a cesspool.”
“He’s not my dragon. He’s just a friend,” she said about Ronnie, the dragon she had once rescued from the Everglades and who answered her call to save her from Bob.
It sounded harmless enough. But could she trust him?
She turned her back to Bob and sent out thought waves to call Don Mateo. He never showed up in a timely fashion when she
needed him, but at the moment she grasped the Red Dragon in her hand.
“Don Mateo, I command you to answer me,” she whispered. “Is it safe to give Bob copies of your addendum to the grimoire?”
She waited. Silence.
“Answer me, ghost. I command you with the power of the Red Dragon!”
Yes, a voice echoed in her head. It is safe.
She returned her attention to Bob. “Okay, I’ll do it if you promise to cooperate with me.”
“I will. Please let me breathe.”
She released his throat fully, but kept him hanging by his hair.
“Will you answer my questions?”
“Yes. Please let me down.”
“Do you know of a demon called Caorthannach?” Missy asked.
“No.”
“From ancient Ireland?”
“No.”
“Also known as the mother of the Devil?”
“That sounds vaguely familiar.”
“A sorcerer of some sort summoned her and ordered her to possess my garden gnome.”
“Your gnome?” He chuckled, despite being hung from his hair.
“Yes, my gnome. And my gnome has spread the possession to other gnomes. It’s like a gnome uprising.”
Bob laughed out loud. She started giggling, too.
“It’s not funny. They’ve been killing people. My neighbor died from a mango shoved into his throat.”
Bob laughed uproariously. Her amusement died down, though, when the true gravity of the situation returned to her.
“Do you know who the sorcerer could be?” she asked. “Someone skilled enough to summon not just any demon, but a specific, obscure one. And someone crazy enough to want to possess garden gnomes.”
“In case you suspect me, I’ve never summoned a demon,” Bob said. “Can you put me down, please? My scalp is hurting like a bitch.”
“You probably have the skills to summon one,” she said, releasing him to drop back onto his stool which nearly tipped over.
“I know how it’s done. But I’ve never done it. I’ve come across true black-magic practitioners before, but we’ve always run them out of town. A case of possession this weird, though, I don’t know. There’s only one sorcerer I can think of, but I don’t want to make any unfounded accusations. Remember Wendall, who I introduced you to when you came to San Marcos before?”