by Jason Murphy
Copyright © 2021 Jason Murphy All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Beaumont and Crane, Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7359761-1-2
Cover design by: Todd Gimbeltaub
Printed in the United States of America
For Jeff
It’s just a novella. Don’t make it weird.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
CLARK
REZ
ZEKE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I didn’t know this book was going to happen. I thought the next book was going to be the direct sequel to “Killer Candy.” But a novella is a way to cheat. It’s a way for me to fill in some gaps that maybe don’t fit into a full-size novel and a way for you to get to know the trio at the center of the Occultex universe. While I was trying to flesh out their backstories, I started to get a better understanding of who these people really were. I won’t spoil it for you yet, but all three of them are kind of sad and broken in their own way. Don’t worry. The path to becoming the ghost-fighting jackasses you know from the first book is clear. I hope to have some more novellas to fill the spaces in between the larger stories, stories about Violet, Dominic, and the rest of the degenerates.
Speaking of degenerates…
Thank you, Jeff. I think you’ve read everything I’ve ever written. Not a lot of people can say that. And your notes are always superlative. Your insights have been invaluable in shaping these books.
Rod your enthusiasm for my work sparks real excitement. I love the anticipation of getting my stories in front of you.
Marrit, finally I’ve found an editor I can trust. You get it. From the first words on the page, you’ve sharpened every line here. I’m grateful.
Cargill, for being a dear friend and a never-ending supply of writing advice and encouragement. One day, you’ll make a decent writer and probably find some modest success. My fingers are crossed for you.
John Hornor Jacobs, working with you has been a highpoint. Your work makes me want to be better (or just say fuck it and go back to my desk job).
Allison. Always Allison. If not for you, I’d still be at that aforementioned desk job. Thanks for saving me.
And to you, readers, I can’t express how thankful I am that you’re along for the ride. It’s going to get weird.
Now … let’s go fight some monsters.
CLARK
Clark Vandermeer’s boss wasn’t a drug dealer.
That didn’t quite do it justice. Drug trafficker? That was closer, but still not it. What do you call something between a drug trafficker and a cartel? Kingpin? Kingpin was pretty good. But more to the point, what do you get a kingpin’s mom for her birthday?
That was the question Clark asked as he ransacked the shelves at the Re-Mart. He couldn’t get the old bag just anything. It had to be special. Not special like a cameo necklace or a LEGO® Millennium Falcon™. Special like the Necronomicon. Special like a skull that could tell your future. Weird special.
Magic special.
The odds of finding it at a thrift store after ten p.m. were just about nil.
The others were sure to present Abuela Cabrera with a framed family photo or a handmade dress from Milan or some shit. But not Clark Vandermeer. No. As the Cabrera family’s resident mystic, more was expected of him. That was his job. Seek out and find special magical things to add to the family’s collection. But the Re-Mart didn’t have a section for secondhand occult artifacts.
This is what you get for lying on your résumé, kids.
Sometimes you have to convince a middle manager you’re a master of spreadsheets when you can barely erase the tentacle porn in your browser history. If you’re really lucky, you have to convince a kingpin you’re an expert occultist trained by the greatest mystics from across the globe—if you want to keep all your teeth.
Then you’re in a thrift store that’s trying to close, searching for something vaguely spooky among beat-up suitcases and strollers. It had to look at least a little wrong.
Clark had tried to pass off something mundane as haunted before. It was a giant phone, the kind for children, with big plastic buttons in primary colors. But this wasn’t just any toy phone. No, this phone was a supernatural relic, he’d said. You see, in 2002, a rival gang raided a meth lab outside of Odessa, Texas. There were fires, explosions, and lots of guns. Poor Becca Kennedy, age three, was caught in the crossfire. She died clutching her favorite toy, her phone. While the bloodstains had been cleaned from its scuffed and yellowed plastic, nothing could wash away the stain left by her departing soul. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Clark claimed, the phone would ring. It would ring and ring and if you answered it, little Becca Kennedy would ask why? Why did the bad men shoot me?
Through his connections in the occult underworld, Clark had acquired the phone for his bosses, Marco and Rubi Cabrera. The cost was great, he’d told them. It was five figures of their vast fortune of dirty money, and a debt he now owed to a warlock—a debt that one day would come due.
It was a hard sell. Clark had paid two bucks for that phone. It was the story they paid him for. That’s he told himself during the feats of moral gymnastics to justify robbing them blind. And they were psychotic drug dealers. So, fuck them. And if they were stupid enough to fall for his nonstop bullshit—and they were—then double fuck them.
Usually, Marco and Rubi smiled at whatever accursed tchotchke he brought them, with the same wide-eyed awe people had for expensive antiques or pet cobras. A ridiculous statue he bought at a gardening store became a fertility totem for a cult of Nepalese nomads. The painting he bought off Etsy from an unemployed grad student became the only known work of an artist who had gone mad and butchered his family after staring too long into the abyss. Clark paid less than fifty bucks for the painting, charged the family ten grand, and pocketed the difference. He was building up quite the nest egg. Just a few more cons and he’d be set. Vandermeer the Mystic could disappear into the night, leaving only a trail of arcane mysteries in his wake.
His stories behind the artifacts were solid. They always were. The Cabreras’ lack of imagination was the real problem. When he’d handed them the toy phone, their quivering anticipation wilted into disappointment. He felt the room turn, so he immediately launched into the story. With his ass on the line, he conjured an award-winning performance full of blood, danger, and human misery. With every trembling explanation, Clark imagined Marco Cabrera going for the pliers he kept in his pocket. Clark didn’t want to see the pliers. Ever. He knew what Marco did with them. He’d rather get a bullet to the back of the head than get the pliers. But if the family ever discovered his grift, he’d probably get both.
In the end, they fell for it. One haunted Fisher-Price phone was added to the vault of painted animal skulls and ceremonial daggers he bought at the mall. Lesson learned. If he expected them to believe him, he had to make it easy. It had to look haunted or evil, but tonight, fifteen minutes after the Re-Mart was supposed to close, Clark wasn’t finding anything evil. He needed something evil by noon tomorrow. His teeth depended on it.
As he looted the shelves and rummaged through bins, he pushed away the thoughts of all the things he was touching and all the people who had touched it before him. Golf shoes. A fanny pack. An actual protective c
up, like for your balls, when you’re playing sports. Why were these sold USED? Clark wasn’t a germophobe, but no one sanitized their trash before they dumped it at the thrift store. He could almost feel the stink of the place clinging to his red brocaded tux jacket. He’d have to Febreze the hell out of it after this. He couldn’t attend the birthday party tomorrow smelling like thrift store, that distinct smell of soft decay and fermenting farts, like a couch left on the side of the road.
“Sir, can I help you find something?” the clerk said, with all the zest of the living dead.
She looked at Clark, her entire body sagging with disappointment that she wasn’t yet far, far away from this place. Clark, elbow deep in a bin full of second-hand boots and shoes, looked up at her.
“Got anything here that looks evil?”
Her lips twisted with the hint of a snarl. She was clearly trying her best not to say, “Get the fuck out, dude.”
“Haunted,” Clark said. “If was one thing in here looked haunted, what would it be?”
She didn’t answer.
“Like an old mirror,” he said as he continued to dig through the bin. “Or maybe some jewelry? Doesn’t have to be nice. Just … weird-looking.”
“Sir, do you need me to call someone for you? Like a friend or relative?”
Clark withdrew from the bin. He almost planted his face in his hands, but stopped short, remembering where they’d just been. The clock over the front door read 10:20 p.m. Everything was closed but for the convenience store by the highway. Maybe he could get a Satanic bag of pork rinds or an accursed mango-scented air freshener.
“Goddammit,” he said to himself.
“Sir, if you can’t decide on a purchase, please come back tomorrow. We open at—”
Clark pushed past her. There it was, tucked away on a shelf behind a blender missing its power cord and a small television with a cracked screen. A humidor. He pulled it from the shelf like it really was haunted. The cherrywood finish was scratched and scuffed, but that was fine. That told a story. It was particle board, though, the kind of thing you’d buy for your father-in-law out of a catalog on an airplane. He turned it over in his hands, reading the engraved plate on the front: World’s Best Boss. Okay, so that would have to go, but everything else… He cracked it open, and for the first in this place of castoffs and old farts, smelled something nice. The felt-lined inside was still redolent with the scent of cigars. And a story started to take shape.
Clark bounced on his toes as he watched the clock. The clerk jabbed at the keys on the register to punctuate her dissatisfaction. Clark slid the company card across the counter but snatched it away just before she could grab it. Her eyes rolled, and he thought she might go for his throat.
“Hang on,” he said, and dug through his jacket pocket for cash. A transaction at Re-Mart on the company card might raise some eyebrows.
He remembered he wasn’t Clark. He was Vandermeer. Vandermeer didn’t shop at Re-Mart. Vandermeer, the Cabrera family’s in-house occultist, would never be caught dead at a thrift store. He was accustomed to the finer things in life—silk shirts and delicacies from the Far East or some shit like that. Clark paid in cash.
The doors slid, open and the November night air gripped him like ambrosia. Fried food from the chicken place across the parking lot and clouds of exhaust from the intersection. All of it was better than the smell of a thrift store. Clark fished for his keys but stopped. He turned and stepped back inside. The clerk’s eyes flashed with the dull hatred only retail workers were capable of. Clark shoved a crumpled twenty into her hands.
“I was never here,” he said.
***
With the humidor riding shotgun, Clark steered the Jag up the winding driveway to Villa Cabrera. It looked like the setting of the final shootout in an 80s movie. Dolph Lundgren would storm it to avenge his family. There would be explosions, lots of Wilhelm screams, and plenty of machine guns that never needed reloading.
Rubi Cabrera had this place so well-kept it didn’t look inhabited. Not a blade of grass out of place on the lawn. The white limestone of the Spanish-style buildings power-washed weekly. The guards with fresh haircuts and pressed suits. That’s where the machine guns came in. passed at least three of the thugs. There usually weren’t this many. Sure, there were always enough to fend off a small invasion, but this weekend, the big guns were out. Rubi, in a coke-fueled rant, demanded they put on a show for Abuela.
All this for the old crone’s birthday. Crone was a sexist term, and one he would never utter anywhere near the sprawling compound in the California desert, but if there was a better word for the geriatric matriarch of these lunatics, he couldn’t think of one. It was her ninety-fifth birthday, and the family decided to go all out. The main house had been a hive of planners and clipboards and screaming for the last week. Clark stayed in his room playing video games. He hoped he could just dodge the entire thing. If necessary, he had a story. He needed to meet with an old associate about casting a spell of protection over the family.
Any thoughts of skipping out had been obliterated about an hour ago. Alejandro, Abuela Ernest’s creepy assistant, knocked on Clark’s door to present him with the weekend’s itinerary. It was two pages long and printed with embossed letters. There was going to be a mariachi band and food and a tarot reading and on and on. Fucking rich people. Why couldn’t they just go to Outback Steakhouse like everyone else? When Clark tried to wave away the itinerary, Alejandro grabbed his wrist with squid-like fingers. Too damp. Too clingy. The hairless assistant –boyfriend? Servant? – grinned with all his teeth, and Clark knew what the smile meant. There would be consequences for missing the party, consequences involving a pair of pliers.
Alejandro’s voice quivered as he spoke. “Vandermeer, you simply must attend tomorrow. Mrs. Cabrera has mandated that everyone pay tribute to Abuela.”
“Tribute?” Clark asked. “Like … do I need to sing a song or something? Or is this a Hunger Games thing?”
The beads of sweat on Alejandro’s slick scalp glistened in the soft glow of the hallway lights. “Oh, Vandermeer, so clever you always are. No, you must present a gift, a gift befitting the stature of the good lady. Abuela Ernesta is particularly looking forward to your tribute, as the family’s resident occultist.”
“Oh,” Clark said and swallowed. “Of course. I have just the thing.”
“And what might that be, dearest? I’m making a note of all the gifts so that there are no … unpleasant surprises tomorrow when they are presented to Ernesta.” His voice crept across Clark’s skin. It was like if that snake from the Jungle Book was also a pedophile.
“Tomorrow,” Clark said.
“Yes. Tomorrow,” Alejandro said with his twitchy smile. He pointed at the itinerary in Clark’s hand with a long, moist finger. “There. At noon. You do have something for the good lady, do you not?”
“I do,” Clark said. “Final preparations are being made. This gift will not disappoint.”
“And what would that be? Miss Rubi has insisted that I complete the list. You know how important this celebration is to her,” Alejandro said. He steepled his fingers together the way only supervillains do.
Think. A book? What do I have here? Anything in the closet I can give her? Under the bed? Anything other than Xbox controllers or comic books? A haunted issue of Spider-Man? Sure, the old hag would love that.
Clark cleared his throat and looked down his nose at the little weirdo. “For the occasion of the good lady’s ninety-first—”
“—ninety-fifth.”
“Ninety-fifth birthday, I have acquired the Habbanatu Serratum itself. I assure you, Alejandro, this gift I bestow upon Abuela Ernesta will outshine anything else at the celebration.”
Taken aback, Alejandro narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry, did you say, Habbanatu …”
“Serratum,” Clark said and nodded, narrowing his eyes right back at him.
Habbanatu Serratum. The word salad didn’t mean anything. Clark crossed his ar
ms, a signal for the little creep to go bother someone else.
“And that would be …” Alejandro asked.
“In the Witch Tongue, it means Vessel of … eternal smoke.”
Shit. Clark thought. Shit shit shit.
Alejandro put a finger to his lips and said, “Very well, then. I’m sure Ernesta will not be disappointed if you’re confident in this vessel of eternal smoke.”
“You may not be familiar with the Habbanatu Serratum, Alejandro, but the good lady will be speechless. She will understand the lengths I went to in order to acquire such a treasure for the celebration. It was an exchange I … I shouldn’t speak of.”
Clark let his last words drift. He stared past Alejandro’s shoulder, lost in some haunting memory.
“Hmm,” Alejandro said. “Excellent. I look forward to learning more about this mysterious artifact. Good night, Vandermeer.”
Now, sitting behind the wheel of the Jaguar, Clark shuddered at the memory. He painted himself into a corner and had to deliver on this lie, on this made-up eternal smoke thing.
“Creepy little fucker,” he thought and killed the headlights.
The guard by the side door—there was never a guard by the side door— fingered the MAC-10 slung over his shoulder. Clark tucked the humidor into a shopping bag, stepped out, and gave the thug a steely stare.
Don’t search the bag. Don’t search the bag.
“Mr. Vandermeer,” the man said. He held the door open and stepped aside.
Clark looked past him, without acknowledging the man. Vandermeer the Mystic didn’t bother with the help. Vandermeer the Mystic was too busy delving into the dark corners of reality, unraveling its riddles, and pretending he had no interest in the matters of commoners.
The inside of the main house was heavy with incense, cumin, and steak. The kitchen crew made enough fajitas and tortillas to feed the Western hemisphere. Clark slid through the kitchen, bypassing the main hallway so he wouldn’t be seen, and pilfered some grilled chicken wrapped in a fresh tortilla.
