The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice
Constance Barker
Copyright 2017 Constance Barker
All rights reserved.
Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.
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“But you see if it wasn't for bad luck,
Trying to tell you son,
if it wasn't for bad luck, now, now,
Oh, oh, I wouldn't have no luck at all
Would you believe I wouldn't have no luck at all.”
From the song
“If It Wasn't For Bad Luck”
by RAY CHARLES & JIMMY LEWIS
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
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Chapter 1
"Run, Cecilia!"
His shouts had an element of panic in them as Clarence scrambled behind me running awkwardly down a narrow path that led through the thick underbrush.
"I'm running faster than you," I shouted. "You just keep going or you’ll have me running up your back."
Some distance behind us, I couldn't tell how far back they were, I could hear the noise from the people chasing us. They weren’t even trying to be quiet about it. It was a rather angry group of people and we’d given them the motivation to want to catch us. Along with the various profanities they were yelling, I could hear them calling out instructions to each other. That they were attempting to hunt us in an organized fashion worried me more than the anger.
Thinking about it, they had every reason to be upset with us and we had something they wanted—badly. These folks had based an entire cult around an artifact and Clarence and I had stolen it from them. It didn’t look like much. It was a small chunk of the hull of the first space shuttle. It’s pedigree was impressive and tragic. Space Shuttle Columbia (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-102) was launched in April of 1981. It was in service for over 22 years, completing 27 missions before disintegrating during re-entry near the end of its 28th mission, on February 1, 2003, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members.
When we heard about the artifact Clarence had done his usual thorough research job. In reality, which is a word I use more carefully these days, for all that history, what we held now was just a piece of scrap metal, if you took it at face value. But symbiotic magic is pretty heady and compelling stuff, and the fact that it had been in outer space and made it back was enough to make people want it. The various bits and pieces that survived were prized by collectors. So it was valuable.
When you factored in that someone, at some point, had put a curse on this particular chunk that gave it the power to nullify gravity (for a time, and at a price) it gained a lot of momentum and traction in the category of religious artifacts. The fact that it seemed to allow a person to levitate was obviously more than enough of an excuse to make these people think this otherwise useless bit of high-tech scrap metal was a precious gift from God. Their God.
That a priest, or whatever, could use it to defy the laws of physic was sufficient proof of the general rightness of their beliefs. And it was their artifact, their sacred object―even if it had been stolen from NASA and the federal government might object to their claims of ownership on some, undoubtedly secular, level.
We wanted to keep that curse from being used and the only way to do that was to take the artifact, the chunk of high-tech metal, out of circulation.
Needless to say, when they walked into their temple and caught us in the act of taking it, they weren't amused. And they caught us fair and square. I had boosted Clarence up on their altar and was balancing it while he unscrewed it from a large wooden board. That was the moment they walked in on, spoiling the mood. It’s at times like that, when you are doing something you feel you need to do and suddenly find yourself with your hand in the cookie jar, as it were, you automatically feel like you are in the wrong. They certainly thought we were.
At those times, even if your goal is pure, your motives good and worthy, hanging around to explain them isn't usually the best strategy. Rationality isn't necessarily your best defense against a lynch mob, especially one that is convinced you just desecrated their place of worship.
So Clarence grabbed the scrap metal and we ran.
We'd dashed out of the building without a plan. The temple had once been an old cinema; it sat at the edge of a decaying part of the town. It had probably been cheap. There was little there other than the would-be worshippers arriving for an unscheduled service. Now that they were turning from a congregation into a lynch mob we had one goal—to stay out of their hands. As they were coming out the building and from the surrounding parking lot, we ran headlong out into the undeveloped land that surrounded the cinema. This was unknown territory for us and we had no sense of where we were headed, except away from this angry horde.
In retrospect, running into rough land that we didn't know probably hadn't been the best plan. We should’ve scouted things out more carefully. Unfortunately, we were winging it, making our plan up as we went along. I’d insisted that we moved when the opportunity presented itself; Clarence had wanted to wait. I talked/berated him into doing it my way.
Improvising can work well and I love it. But you need to stay loose, be paying attention to your partner, reading the signs and reacting quickly. Lately, Clarence and I hadn't exactly been on the same wavelength. Things were a touch strained between us and even got heated at times.
It was unpleasant and forcing Clarence to do things my way had probably not been a good idea. But my patience had worn thin.
"You just had to insist that we grab it now!" he complained as he ducked through a grove of trees that grew close enough together that we had to turn sideways to make it through.
"If you hadn't hesitated, insisted on checking the area three times, we would've been long gone by the time they showed up."
It wasn't an argument either of us was likely to concede (or win) anytime soon, and we both knew it. Another thing we both knew all too well was that wasting our breath arguing about it was not helping matters.
We flew around some boulders and Clarence pulled up short. I almost ran into him. “What the…?” Then I saw Edgar in front of him, holding up a hand.
At the best of times it can be difficult to see Edgar and at anytime it's always eerie, if not, please excuse the pun, spooky. You see, Edgar is a ghost. He haunts me. Well, that's the consensus. All of us, including Edgar, think he's a ghost, even though none of u
s is clear on what a ghost is or, for that matter, exactly what Edgar is. We know he is part of a curse placed on a pen. As I opened the pen box, I’m cursed with Edgar, whatever he is. We aren’t even clear if he only exists because of the curse, or was cursed to remain after he did. But we do know that he's ethereal, can’t go more than a hundred yards from the pen (neither can I) and his manifestation in this world and place and time is a bit thin.
In this bright afternoon sunlight, he appeared to be little more than a man-shaped mist in Victorian clothing.
"You don’t want to go this way,” he told us as Clarence wiped sweat from his own face.
Clarence glanced behind us. “We don't? Why not?”
“A group of them circled around to cut you off. It was a rather elegant ploy, and they went rather fast, taking a shortcut. So at the moment, they are straight ahead of you… waiting for you. They seem to know the area quite well."
I could hear the group coming up behind us closing in. They were energetic (too much so) and aroused. “We can’t wait around here. Company is coming.”
“I hear them,” Clarence agreed.
I heard something else, too. "Hey, there’s a waterfall," I said. I pointed off to my left, through a tangle of bushes.
“We can sight see some other time,” Clarence said.
I tugged at his hand. "It’s this way." Clarence stared at me as I let go of his hand and turned to cut through the underbrush. It was thick and prickly and I knew I was collecting various bits of brush and sand spurs on my jeans as I made my way toward the sound. I preferred that to collecting blows on various parts of my body.
"Where the heck are you going?" Clarence called from behind.
"Away from them. The waterfall might give us a way out."
"Might…" I was sensing a pattern. In times of stress, or just when he felt cranky, Clarence had started picking at my words, finding the tiniest negative things or uncertainties whenever I expressed an idea. So I did what I always did—I ignored him.
As I went toward the sound Edgar drifted around me. He had to. I had the pen he haunted in my pocket. Ever since I'd succumbed to curiosity and opened the box the pen was in I'd been the recipient of the curse. Until someone else accepted the pen from me, which wasn't likely, I was stuck with Edgar. He was tied to the pen. I couldn't leave him behind either. I'd tried and found that I wasn't able to go more than a few feet away from wherever I left it.
As a representative of the ghostly realm, he was rather uninformed about what went on, but he could sometimes sense artifacts, which proved useful. He'd led us to this one.
Edgar was scouting for us, using his ability to travel ahead slightly before whatever connected us reeled him in.
"It’s quite a lovely waterfall,” he said. “Rather high and shallow, but it catches the light magnificently.”
“Where is it?” I panted.
“Oh, it’s straight ahead of you along what is passing for your path. It’s about fifty yards from here. You won’t be pleased with it, I suspect.”
I could hear Clarence as he broke through the underbrush behind me. He was having trouble getting through some of the brush and that was resulting in more colorful complaints that I would’ve thought he was capable of. "Edgar, tell me why I won’t be pleased."
"Well, mostly when you get to the waterfall, you’ll be forced to stop. You’ll come to a cliff. There is no way around it, it’s a long fall onto rocks, and you are currently being pursued by a large and angry mob that is gaining on you."
"You're saying we are cornered?"
"I'm only offering my observations."
"Where are you going?" Clarence called from behind us.
"Into a dead end," Edgar said unhelpfully.
"I have an idea," I told him, which was true. I just didn't want him to worry about the fact that I didn't exactly know if my idea would work. I couldn't know until I saw the waterfall… well, I wouldn't know if it was a good idea until we tried it. It either worked or it didn’t. Clarence gets all nervous about that sort of open-ended, out of the box thinking. Not telling him was a kindness—it saved him unnecessary worry.
Besides, arguing on the run wasn't a good thing.
When we got to the waterfall I saw what Edgar had meant. “You were absolutely right, Edgar. The waterfall is both spectacular and intimidating.”
“You don’t seem worried,” he said as I looked down. The fall was at least two hundred feet straight down. At the bottom of the cliff, the moderate flow of water cascaded over rocks that looked quite sharp from up here. There were pools of water, but they were shallow; the rocks sparkled where they were damp.
"Now what?" Clarence asked, staring down and then looking behind him in the direction we'd come. I found it oddly comforting that he sounded as out of breath as I felt. “We don’t have much time.”
"We have plenty of time to jump," I told him.
"And die a horrible death as we crash on the rocks?"
I took out the artifact. "We jump and live."
"Let's consider this," Clarence said. His pupils were dilated and we could both hear the angry cultists approaching fast now.
"No time," I said. Before he could react, I pushed him off the cliff. I waited a beat, watching him flail his arms and then, as he toppled and went over the edge, I grabbed his arm followed after him, holding his arm tightly.
We knew, well, we were pretty sure, the artifact worked. How it operated was something that, as a girlfriend who is an engineer always said, “Is something to be determined empirically.” This, my friends, was as empirical as things ever get.
As we fell we naturally began accelerating toward the ground, but then our speed steadied, then slowed. I felt the annoying dizziness that often comes when the artifacts, or their curse, kicks in and, as usual, it passed quickly. I watched the walls of rock drift by us as we descended at a leisurely pace. When we reached the ground, we bounced once, rising up about ten feet, and settling back down.
"Sweet," I said. “It worked.”
Clarence snorted. "So you didn't have a plan at all." He started brushing himself off, pulling thorns and cat’s paws out of his blazer and torn slacks.
"Sure I did. I planned to use the artifact to break our fall. And that’s what I did."
"That’s not a plan. You didn't even know it would work. You never tested it."
I pointed at the angry crowd two hundred feet up staring down at us. "If it didn't work that bunch wouldn't have wanted it back so badly. Besides, we didn't have time for any testing."
"You are reckless," Clarence said.
I was thinking of a witty, caustic comeback when suddenly we were both slammed to the ground. Clarence landed on his butt—hard.
"What?" Clarence cried.
"The payback," I said. "The price we paid for using the artifact to neutralize gravity." I could barely move. I weighed several times my normal weight.
"An educated guess would conclude that the intensity and duration of this phase is probably proportional to the benefit you gained by using the artifact," Edgar said, smiling as he watched us floundering on the ground.
He was right and I could feel it starting to ease up. "Karma?"
He shrugged. "Just an aftereffect, as far as I know. Not nearly as cosmic as karmic. A localized effect."
Clarence struggled to his feet. "We need to get out of here."
"I need another minute," I said. "Let my weight drop below two hundred pounds and then we can walk downstream until we find a path away from the true believers."
"I still can't believe you pushed me off a cliff. I thought we were friends."
"It was because I care about you. Would you rather that I'd jumped alone and left you to face that crowd?"
"No. But you could’ve warned me what you intended to do."
“And you would’ve argued with me about how illogical it was.”
He nodded. “Not to mention being pretty damn scary.”
“I did what had to be done, so just put
a sock in it Clarence. If I waited for you to get your nerve up before I took any actions we'd never do anything."
"And your unthinking actions are putting us at risk."
I looked around for Edgar, but he'd made himself scarce—something he had a knack for. I felt a warmth in my pocket that told me he'd retreated to his, or my pen.
When we walked downstream neither Clarence or I said a word. I was angry at him and couldn't understand how he could possibly be angry at me for saving his life. I had to admit he probably saw things a lot differently, but still.
The silence grew heavy between us and even when we walked out of the undergrowth and reached the parking lot where we'd left my car, it remained… dark and impenetrable.
It was sad, but this partnership was having its difficulties. I hoped we would get over them soon.
Chapter 2
None of us said much on the drive back to Destiny's Point. Clarence and I were both sulking, licking our wounds from our scrapping and about what had gone wrong with the mission. There wasn't much more to say than we'd said already.
Mostly we were weary and crashing from the wild escape. Edgar was staring out at the scenery as if he couldn’t absorb it all. I wasn’t sure how much of the world he’d seen since he died. Of course, I wasn’t sure he was dead. When it came to Edgar we all had more questions than answers.
Clarence leaned over. “You don’t need me to go to see Enid. Can you drop me off at the shop?”
The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Page 1
