The Cursed Codex

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Right there.” She poked her toe at the carpet, blinked, and put her foot down. “Oh. Uhh. I thought I stepped on something cold. Sorry.”

  “No problem.” Keith stood. “So, the skeletons are all dead. Now what do you guys do?”

  The door to the hallway opened, Keith’s mother leaning in. “Time, Keith. It’s almost eight.”

  “Aww, Mom. Why do we have to stop so early?” Keith started to glare at her, but redirected it at the wall. “It’s not fair. We’re not little kids.”

  Tira folded her hands behind her back and took small steps to her right to hide behind Carlos.

  “Dude, chill out,” said Elliot. “It’s only a game.”

  Keith, realizing his voice had been louder than he intended, bowed his head. “Sorry, Mom. We’re just having a lot of fun and I got into it.” What’s wrong with me? Ugh. I hate leaving the characters hanging. I gotta see how it ends. He stared at his doodled notebook. I want Kyra to avenge her friends. She’s so sad.

  While his mother stood watch, arms folded, his friends helped clean up the paper plates and plastic cups. Mrs. Gardner’s ziti had been a big hit, and there’d been enough for Keith’s parents to make dinner of it as well. Everyone but Carlos lived close: Ashur and Tira next door, Elliot a couple houses away. Carlos’ house sat two blocks back, but he rode his bike, plus had to be the strongest, if not close to it, kid around other than some of the high school crowd. Not that anything ever happened in their sleepy little town, but no one would bother him.

  Once everyone left, Keith shut the front door and turned to find his mother waiting for him.

  “Sorry,” he said as a reflex.

  “Is everything all right?” She stepped closer and brushed at his shoulder-long hair. “I’ve never seen you act like that before.”

  Keith shrugged. “Sorry. You remember how Gram used to get with her books? Like the characters were real people and it annoyed her when we bothered her?”

  “Yeah.” She pulled him into a hug and held on.

  Gram had been gone almost a year, but mentioning her still made his mother sad.

  “I guess it’s like that. Time vanishes so fast, and I don’t want the story to stop. I was wrong to get loud with you. I’m sorry.”

  She released the hug and held him out to arms’ length. “I’ve only ever seen you like that when you stick up for Tira. It’s almost like you’re trying to protect someone.”

  Keith thought about the girl he dreamed in his closet. “Nah, I’m just being a doofus.”

  “Don’t forget you’re supposed to help your father clean the garage tomorrow. How’s the homework situation?”

  “It’s a situation.” Keith shrugged. “I haven’t done it yet. It’s not hard, but there’s a lot.”

  “Is that why Ash hasn’t been around much? The two of you used to be in my hair all day long.” She grinned. “Hope things are okay for him.”

  “Yeah. His dad makes him play soccer with a league, and the homework thing… Probably going to get worse next year as freshmen.” Keith’s gut sank at the worry they might not have time for C&C next year, even on Saturdays.

  “All right. Why don’t you get started on that homework then? And maybe I’ll forget about your tone earlier.” His mother patted him on the shoulder and glided off toward the living room.

  “Sure thing, Mom.”

  He swung through the kitchen to grab a cup of iced tea and a two-pack of Hostess cupcakes before heading upstairs. Sitting next to the Crypts and Creepers books didn’t help his concentration much, but he mostly kept thoughts of Aldrenor out of his mind while dealing with the mountain of busy-work his teachers had given him. He didn’t rush, planning to finish about a third of it tonight before he had to sleep and the rest sometime tomorrow.

  At 10:06 p.m., his mother leaned in the door. “Still doing homework?”

  “Yeah,” muttered Keith.

  “Do you have much left?”

  He looked up from the workbook he’d been doing math problems in for the past forty minutes. “About halfway done.”

  “Wow.” His mother blinked. “Maybe they are giving out too much.” She chuckled. “It’s about time, but if you want to finish that assignment, go ahead.”

  “’Kay.” He nodded.

  Mom walked off, leaving the door ajar. He stared at the little gap into the hall, clicking and unclicking his pen. Figures. First time I get permission to stay up past ten, it’s for homework. Keith shifted his glance to the closet, trying to make something happen. After five minutes of staring, he looked down.

  And noticed the pack of cupcakes he’d never gotten around to opening.

  “Hmm.”

  Taken with sudden inspiration, he ran to the closet and set the cupcakes on the rug inside the door before closing it. He backed up a step, arms at his sides, fingers fidgeting at his pockets, hoping and waiting for something to happen.

  He gave it another few minutes before trudging back to his desk. Maybe he’d leave the cupcakes in the closet overnight. Those things would survive a nuclear winter, so one night in the closet wouldn’t hurt. He could eat them tomorrow after school.

  Sixteen math problems later, he closed the workbook at 10:32 p.m. and got ready for bed.

  His mouth tasting of mint toothpaste, he crawled under his blankets and lay on his side, staring at the patch of moonlight upon his closet door. Any minute now, he’d hear footsteps, or a girl calling to him.

  Minutes passed in silence before he failed his save against sleep.

  Sunday morning, the loud rattle of Mrs. Gardner’s muffler outside woke him. Her car was so old, no one even knew which company made it. The guys all referred to it as ‘the land yacht.’ It seemed odd for her to drive such a clunker, given how they kinda had money, but she never drove anywhere except for Sunday mornings. Keith stretched and yawned, happy to have parents who didn’t drag him to church at the butt crack of dawn. Getting up early was for school days. Weekends meant rest.

  Elliot once tried to weasel out of going to church with his mother by arguing if Sunday was a day of rest, why did he have to get up early? The only time Mrs. Gardner ever became remotely snippy or nasty—if anyone challenged her church. Otherwise, the woman gave off such sweetness that talking to her could give a kid the ’beetus.

  Mom would already be at work. Her dental office had short hours on Sundays; she’d be home by one if none of her patients had major problems. Keith sat up, wiped the crumbs from his eyes, and yawned. He frowned at his school bag, still with half-finished homework. Teachers: a character class primarily motivated by the desperate fear that somewhere, some kid would try to have fun on a weekend.

  Curiosity pulled him to his feet. He wobbled over to the closet and opened it to check on his cupcakes, not that he expected to find anything other than an untouched two-pack of double chocolate with crème filling.

  On the carpet, six inches in from the door, lay a white cardboard rectangle and a torn-open bit of cellophane wrapper. Both cupcakes were gone.

  “Whoa…” He took a knee and picked up the oily cardboard.

  The word ‘HELP’ had been gouged into it like someone tried to write with a pen that had run out of ink.

  He swallowed hard and stared up at his hanging clothes. “Kyra?”

  Two coats, a pair of boots, one skateboard, a bunch of dress pants, and a mess of old board games didn’t reply.

  “What’s wrong with me? Kyra’s a made-up character. And she’s like twenty.” He stood, frowned, and pushed the door closed. “Who ate the cupcakes?”

  The huge black wraith-creature with the elongated bony face came to mind, enough to startle him. Thinking that it might’ve eaten the snack cakes made him laugh, imagining the evil necro-voice going “Omnomnomnom” while crumbs flew everywhere.

  What was that thing?

  Keith ran to the bathroom, dressed, and hurried downstairs to microwave a breakfast burrito. His father walked in about a minute into the timer countdown, slurping coffee from hi
s #1 Dad mug.

  “Morning, bud.”

  “Hey.” Keith spun around. “Uhh, Dad? Would you drive me to the mall real quick so I can pick up a book? I know right where it is. Be in and out in like five minutes.”

  His father sipped coffee. “Hmm.”

  “I’ve got the money for it.” Other than Mrs. Norris’ lawn, which he did for free, he’d caught a few late-season neighbors who jumped at the chance to have someone else’s kid do their yard work.

  “Ehh, why not? But…”

  Keith braced for it.

  “I’m going to stop and get the oil changed. Been putting that off too long.”

  “Oh.” Keith relaxed. “That’s cool.” Worse trade-offs than sitting for an hour in a waiting room could’ve happened. “Umm, Dad? Would it be okay if we hit the mall first, so I can read when we’re at the dealership?”

  After his father filled a bowl of cereal for himself, he glanced back and shrugged. “All right. Nice forethought.”

  Keith grinned as the microwave beeped.

  Forty minutes later, Keith jogged into The Dragon’s Cavern and headed straight for the roleplaying game books section. He didn’t see Glen anywhere, and the two clerks working there at the moment both looked like teens, so he figured Glen was the boss and had weekends off.

  Keith located the Creepers Unlimited supplement, an entire book of monsters and bad guys with all their stats, special abilities, and illustrations. If any creature existed in the C&C world, it would be in here. The book was a little thinner than the Gamemaster’s Codex, and marked $14.99. Having expected to pay $18, he grinned and ran to the register with it.

  A disinterested maybe nineteen-year-old behind the counter tried to scan it while staring out the store’s window at a pack of teenage girls in the mall. This guy’s gonna be here all day. Keith nudged the book to put the UPC code under the laser, and the register beeped.

  Still, the clerk kept staring at the trio of high-school seniors giggling by the bench.

  Keith’s father ‘innocently’ walked over to the corner of the counter by the dice case, blocking the clerk’s view. Annoyed, the teen sighed at the register. Keith handed over money while grinning at his father.

  At the Toyota dealership, Keith found a nice blue chair as far from the television on the wall as he could. Their time at the mall took a little longer due to his father heeding a sudden inspiration. He’d stopped by a bookstore to get a ‘time kill’ for the waiting room, too.

  The Creepers Unlimited book didn’t have any sort of introduction. It started straight away with an Aaptylon, a creature that resembled a snake-alligator with feathery wings and six legs. Keith mostly looked at pictures, but he skimmed some of the stats while flipping, his eyes bugging out when he hit Cerydon, a monstrous level thirty enemy, part shark and part dinosaur. It had over a thousand hit points, well more than his entire party added together several times over.

  Holy crap. Its bite is at +22. It wouldn’t even have to roll to hit Fuegor. Carlos’ combat skill is a +0, so he can’t total over a 20. Keith’s mouth hung open when he read the bite damage: 6d10+10. I can’t use this thing… ever. It’ll wipe out the whole party.

  He gazed around the room at a couple other people waiting for their cars while wondering about what characters would be like at level thirty. I guess that thing’s balanced for a group with tons of magical weapons and stuff. A chanter that high could bring back the dead right in the middle of combat, so maybe part of the strategy was to expect a Cerydon to kill one character every two combat rounds?

  Ugh. That’s not fun.

  Keith flipped faster, eyeing the illustrations in the book, searching for one that matched what tried to grab him in his closet. Again, a handful of the undead-type monsters with shadowy ghost bodies came close, but none of them had the same exact combination of wraith body, stretched skull face, and bony hands. Another level twenty-nine undead had a special ability to kill anyone who made eye contact with it (if they failed a Physical save). Keith read: Player characters who declare they are avoiding eye contact with the Barrow Fiend suffer a -5 combat penalty on attacks.

  “Wow, the guys will kill me if I use any of these big ones.”

  “Hmm?” asked his father.

  “Oh. Some of the creatures in this book are really nasty. Just saying the guys would hate it if I made them fight one.”

  “Ahh. Well, that’s why they have levels or something right? So you can match creatures to players.”

  Keith blinked. “Uhh, yeah. How did you know that?”

  “One of my friends was into that stuff back in the day.” His father turned a page in his novel, barely hiding a smile.

  Keith stared straight ahead, eyes wide. Did my dad play C&C?

  Over the next forty minutes, he flipped to the end of the book, but not one creature’s illustration matched. After sighing at the last page, he let his head sag back against the cushioned chair, and stared at the ceiling.

  It’s not in the Codex, and it’s not in this book. It can’t exist. He raised his head. What did I see?

  14

  Age Progression

  School on Monday had been one ambush quiz after another—except for art class. Mrs. Pomeroy caused a stir among the students when she announced the class would be sketching a naked model. Nervous giggling turned into groans when she came out of the back room carrying a large, framed poster of a naked mole rat. Other than an art teacher with a lame sense of humor, the rest of the day had been a drudge.

  At least no one bothered Tira or Ashur.

  His best friend had soccer practice again, so Keith headed home alone and decided to pounce on his homework right away. As if the teachers had collectively realized they overdid it for the weekend, they assigned a rather light load. One poem to read and a vocabulary worksheet for English, four pages of reading for Social Studies, twenty math problems, and a couple pages of reading in his science textbook plus four questions to answer based on it.

  He finished a little after four.

  Keith leaned back in his desk chair, staring at the C&C books. Eventually, he grabbed the Gamemaster’s Codex and opened the front cover. The instant he laid eyes on the silver-ink handwriting on the blue paper backing, he remembered Mrs. Norris’ heartbroken expression and felt her sadness. He’d been reading over Sarah’s notebooks here and there, which contained notes from other adventures. Her sense of humor made him laugh and feel sad at the same time whenever he found one of her little jokes, which usually happened at the expense of something one of her friends’ characters had done. Apparently, Lindsey had Ashur’s luck and Shannon never found any challenge she didn’t try to solve with a giant sword (or a fireball). It felt like he’d gotten to know Sarah almost as well as her friends had… and that hurt down deep inside like someone he’d known had been murdered too young.

  He guessed that Sarah modeled Kyra’s backstory on her real life. Mrs. Norris hadn’t spoken too highly of her son, Sarah’s father, which made him wonder if she based ‘the father that always hit Kyra’ on him. The first game Keith had run, he imagined those three orcs as Kurt, William, and Henry turned green. Tira’d been ready to cry as soon as he had one of them throw her character in the barrel, but once she realized what he wanted to do with the scene—give her a chance to beat up the bullies, she loved it.

  Much of what he’d read in Sarah’s notes read like they could’ve been ways to cope with problems she couldn’t deal with for real. A nasty archmage who mentored Lindsey’s character sounded like a real life teacher. (One note commented she missed a game session due to being tutored). In a different campaign, a princess, daughter of a king who sent the players on a quest, always belittled Becky’s wizard character for being ugly. Especially the line of dialogue ‘no boy wants a smart girl.’ Someone had to have said that to Sarah for real.

  He stared at the ‘From the Library of Sarah Norris’ sticker, a little yellowed around its once-pink edges, and sighed. It made no sense for him to feel so sad over a girl
who’d died before he’d ever been born. She’d be older than his mother now anyway, if she’d run away as her father believed. And if that turned out to be true, how cruel of her not to at least tell her grandmother she was okay. That didn’t sound like her at all. He had to agree with Mrs. Norris. Sarah was far too thoughtful to do that.

  “Hmm.”

  Keith leaned forward and set the Gamemaster’s Codex on the desk before opening a web browser on his computer and hitting Google. Searching for ‘Sarah Norris’ brought back pages and pages of random women, far too many to make sense of.

  He tried adding ‘Meadow Grove’ and ‘missing 1987’ to the search.

  A little ways down the page of results, he spotted a link to a news article. She got a small write-up in a local newspaper, explaining how she’d disappeared from a ‘town where nothing like this ever happens’ in 1987. The paper had a blurry black-and-white portrait (probably her school photo) of a girl about his age with long dark hair. She smiled. Didn’t have braces, and appeared quite far from being fat.

  She is pretty. That stuck up girl’s wrong.

  The whole article plus her picture was an image. Keith saved it. Looking at her made him even sadder, but he also couldn’t stop staring at her, wondering who did what thirty years ago to a fourteen-year-old girl who lived in a town where nothing bad ever happened to anyone.

  He kept hunting for more information and found another picture of her from the back of a milk carton, though the same photo as the paper. Three lines down, a link mentioned ‘age progression.’

  Curious, he clicked on it.

  A new browser tab opened with a loading wheel spinning around. In a few seconds, a larger split image appeared. The original 1986 school photo sat on the left, in color, next to a ‘computer enhanced’ age progression of what Sarah Norris would look like today. Only, ‘today’ had been 1994 when she would’ve been twenty-one.

  Keith almost fell out of his chair.