The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  Examining the bolt cutters’ result, though, Hiram found that the sign was not completely interrupted. He applied his clasp knife to the task, gouging out additional gray twists of lead until the blade poked entirely through the window, and Hiram felt a cold squirt of air through the hole.

  There. That sigil was now damaged, and its operation should be interrupted.

  He moved the stool and did the same thing with the second window.

  Were there other signs? Hiram checked the other windows and didn’t see any. If there were painted signs, say, on the floorboard or on a wall, Hiram couldn’t see them in the darkness, and of course if there were signs embedded within the walls or the door, as Hiram had done, placing the lamen of protection within the Double-A, Hiram had no way to know. But in any case, he must have interrupted some of Gus’s power.

  But what he had come here for was knowledge of what the signs meant. He studied the sigils carefully with his eye, trying to memorize the irregular curves, the curl at the one end and the arrow at the other, the way the sign seemed to creep out larger than its actual dimensions to dominate the space around it.

  To be certain, he tore a scrap from the corner of an old page in Gus’s account book, and with the pencil lying beside the book on the countertop, he drew the sign.

  He took the nickel from Gus’s revenue charm, tucking it into his own pocket. The poppet stared accusingly at him, its empty eye sockets seeming to follow him from side to side. Hiram resisted the temptation to smash the poppet flat with his fist. For good measure, he also took the Bible off Gus’s butter churn and hid it on a shelf behind stacks of Henry Ford reprints of McGuffey’s Readers.

  Finding and fixing these little faults might keep Gus distracted.

  Hiram really wanted to eat something, a cookie or a Snickers bar. He didn’t. He couldn’t. To steal Gus’s food would be simple burglary, and a sin. Hiram’s charms wouldn’t work for a mere thief.

  He crept from room to room, searching.

  He found the dogs, lying on their bellies in a pantry in front of a wall of dried beans, tinned tomatoes, and salt crackers. They had their paws over their faces, and didn’t look up as Hiram stepped past them.

  He checked the windows of other rooms, but didn’t see the strange glyph repeated there.

  The downstairs was all store and storage, so Hiram tip-toed up to the second floor.

  Around a central landing area huddled five rooms. Their doors were open, so Hiram peeped one at a time into each room. He spotted Gus, sleeping alone. There were also a couple, and a woman alone, and two rooms full of little children.

  But in his squinting into the upstairs bedrooms, Hiram saw no signs of any books. No ceremonial swords or staffs, no visible lamens.

  If Gus was a witch, were all his accoutrements in the store? If so, Hiram’s mission was doomed to disappointment. He had learned all he was going to learn, and the curious signs in the windows would remain mysteries.

  He should ask Mahonri Young. He could call from the boarding house’s telephone in the morning. He could describe his sketches of the signs to Mahonri, who would be disappointed that Hiram was once again asking him questions concerning the occult, but would help, anyway.

  But no, if Gus was indeed drawing arcane symbols, then he had a dictionary somewhere, a symbols list. The signs of the planets and celestial and infernal beings were simply too complex to know by heart, unless you worked with them constantly. Gus must have at least a card, a sign list. Hiram could read that, or he could take it.

  He considered the layout of the building: had he missed a secret room somewhere? To the best of his spatial estimation, all the room was accounted for.

  But Gus’s shop stood on high ground, far above the creek. There could be a basement.

  Hiram descended again to the ground floor and retraced his steps. Here, too, he could find no space not accounted for. He looked inside the washing machine, and behind the goods on the shelves in the shop and in the storerooms, and found nothing.

  Standing in the pantry beside the two Rottweilers, who still pressed themselves flat against the hardwood floor, he wondered what he could have missed. Could Gus have an office in a separate building elsewhere? But there wasn’t so much as a springhouse in sight, and if you were going to keep valuable ritual gear, you would store it on your person or close to you, so you could watch it.

  Could a list be taped inside one of the McGuffey Readers? Hiram didn’t think Gus would risk the chance that a customer might find it. Maybe in the safe deposit box of a bank? Helper had a bank. Maybe Hiram could investigate in town in the morning.

  Hiram could go out to the Double-A and get one of his forked hazel rods. Did he have time to peel it, carve it, and sanctify it as a Mosaical Rod, and then still have time to use it?

  Hiram sighed. He didn’t.

  Perhaps he’d have to come back again and search the property the following evening. Tired as he was, and having driven the truck up alone in the dark, and standing as he was in another man’s house in the middle of the night, the thought was daunting.

  Then he noticed the dogs.

  They lay flat. Not cringing as if in fear, and not just silent, but pressed flat to the floor.

  That didn’t seem like the effect of his charm.

  Crouching, he grabbed one dog and dragged it aside. The dog wiggled from his grasp and immediately rushed back to lie in the same space—but not before Hiram saw the outline of a trapdoor where it had been lying.

  Hiram considered his options. He had to get the dogs out of the way and keep them out of the way, and they were big enough that he could only carry one at a time. And the rooms on the ground floor had no doors to shut them in with.

  He could take them upstairs and shut them into bedrooms. But that might wake the people who slept in those rooms.

  Hiram picked up one of the Rottweilers. It struggled, but it didn’t bite him, so he carried it to the front door of the shop and pushed it outside, shutting the door behind it. Could he do it again, and put the second dog outside without letting the first one back in? It wasn’t likely. The dogs were drawn to the trapdoor.

  Crossing the shop, he had a better idea.

  Picking up the second Rottweiler, he carried it into the shop. There he lowered it into the drum of the washing machine and closed the lid.

  Thank goodness for the dog’s tongue in his boot. It kept the Rottweilers from complaining.

  Hiram looked outside: pale gray light suggested dawn was approaching. Given the month, it was likely that the only reason the family was still sleeping was Hiram’s charm, and that couldn’t last much longer.

  He opened the trapdoor and shone his flashlight down. Iron rungs descended a shaft made of red stones, mortared thickly together.

  There was no more time for consideration; he sat on the lip of the tunnel and then lowered himself in. Once he was fully inside, he shut the trapdoor overhead.

  A whisper of air rustling up inside the leg of his overalls gave him a moment’s pause; there must be a connection below to the outside. He forced himself on, and when he reached the bottom of the shaft, he shone the light around.

  He was in a square-cornered basement, all of mortared local stone. In one corner, the stones had cracked apart wide enough that a man could crawl through into darkness, and that was the source of the cold breeze. A long table filled the center of the room. Here were all the things Hiram expected to see in the house of a prosperous worker in the ancient lore: tablets and paper for creating amulets, a sword, candles and matches, wax seals, stones of various colors and sizes, and alchemical flasks and tubing about which Hiram knew nothing. Resting on wooden blocks, there was a book in the process of being assembled; virgin paper, carefully cut, was bound between two metal lamens. Hiram examined the metal plates. The first was made from a yellow metal, brass or bronze, and bore sacred names and astral grids. That struck Hiram as a lamen for binding or protection. It was not lore he’d mastered, but Grandma Hettie had known such arts
.

  The other plate bore a series of images that Hiram thought were astrological in nature. Curiously, the plate was made of lead, which suggested that, like Hiram’s ring, it was Saturnine: that might connect it with dreams, melancholy, and insight, but it might also indicate that it was destructive in intent. The lamen bore two short lines; one was in Latin, but the other was in English: Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city.

  He knew the words. Where did they come from?

  Hiram had never seen such a book, but he’d heard about them from Grandma Hettie, and he’d read of them: Gus Dollar was preparing a Book of the Spirits. The thought of Gus summoning and binding creatures beyond Hiram’s craft made Hiram’s blood run cold.

  Ordinarily, a Book of the Spirits was used to summon and contain a spirit, and the two binding lamens that made up the covers would trap it. But this one was different. The brass or bronze lamen was likely a binding charm, but the bottom lead cover? That seemed to have been crafted to destroy something. But what?

  A city? Which city had the Lord given?

  Jericho. Jericho, whose walls had tumbled down when Joshua’s men had shouted.

  Hiram shook his head, not entirely sure what he held in his hands.

  While the Book of the Spirits was still half done, there were also completed books.

  He couldn’t let himself be distracted. Nor could he carry away all the volumes. And, dog’s tongue charm notwithstanding, might the beast in the washing machine whine loud enough to wake its master? Sweating despite the cold, Hiram grabbed the books and flipped through them. He wasn’t looking for text, but for diagrams, and not just any diagrams. He ignored astrological charts, and number charts, and esoteric alphabets, and had gone through three books and was into a fourth when he finally found what he’d been seeking: the glyph that appeared in lead in the shop’s windows, one of a long series of similar diagrams, each surrounded by several long paragraphs of text in tiny gothic letters.

  The words were in German.

  Hiram stifled a curse.

  Above him, he heard footsteps. He tucked the book, which was a small volume, into his coat pocket, and stood at the bottom of the shaft to listen.

  “Boys!” he heard Gus Dollar call. “Boys?”

  Hiram reached into his bib pocket and pulled out the Colt. If he had to, he could shoot Gus. Gus was no innocent man, no mere shopkeeper. Gus dealt with demons and strange craft, and he was a threat to Hiram, Hiram’s son, and all people everywhere.

  But killing a man was a hard, hard thing to do, and a harder burden to bear, afterward. Even when the man was a witch.

  Hiram eyed the crack at the corner of the room. There was a breeze, so, somehow, that gap in the wall led to the surface.

  Crossing to the split, he passed the Book of the Spirits again. He couldn’t leave it with Gus. He didn’t want to take it, either.

  And he had already left plenty of evidence that someone had been here. He tore both lamens out of the book and inserted them into the inside pocket of his coat. With his Zippo, Hiram set fire to the virgin paper. It was a desperate move. It would certainly be noticed, and it might even risk burning the shop down. Gus was awake, dealing with his dogs, so he would notice the fire. That would prevent any loss of innocent life; the old German would have counter magic against fire.

  The orange flames cast only very little light ahead of Hiram as he crawled into the crack, but his flashlight let him see his path. To his relief, in a few short feet, it opened onto a passage tall enough for him to crouch in, and he waddled forward at a reasonable pace.

  Small objects struck him in the face. Insects? Flying insects, beneath the ground, in February? He swatted one against his own forehead, and when he examined it in the light he found it to be a fly as large as his pinky nail.

  Fear and nausea fought for control of Hiram’s stomach, and nausea won. As he finished vomiting into the side of the passageway, he heard screaming behind him.

  Gus had opened the trapdoor and seen the fire.

  Hiram raced ahead. In another few paces, he found himself at a fork. One passage dropped steeply to his left, and the flies seemed to swarm thickly there, boiling out of the depths of the earth. The stink of rot came with them. To his right, the passage rose; Hiram felt the breeze again, and was that daylight?

  He scrambled on, and when he could see the light of morning for certain, he switched off the flashlight. The passage opened in an oval-shaped egress bounded by stone, turned to face parallel to the canyon and hidden from the view of travelers by a large stone slab.

  As Hiram stepped through exit, sudden pain wracked his entire body. He felt as if he had been cast into a fire, and he fell, tumbling down the scree at the base of the canyon wall.

  Vision swimming, he held onto consciousness by a thread. Gus knew he had been there. Gus could be coming after him. Hiram lurched to his feet and raced across the canyon, keeping junipers between himself and Dollar’s as much as possible. When he rounded the bend and found the Double-A waiting where he had left it, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  Hiram started the truck and his incantation against the falling sickness at the same time, and drove as fast as he dared back toward Helper. He had reached Michael’s alluvial fan and was dropping down toward the river when he realized that he smelled burnt herbs. Reaching into his pockets to examine the bay leaves and also the peppermint, he found it all dried and brittle, shriveled up, and scorched black at the edges, as if it had been thrown into a fire.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The sun shone down on Helper by the time Hiram reached Main Street. He didn’t want Michael seeing him, and he was too anxious to wait any longer, so he pulled over in front of a restaurant that was clearly closed, its curb empty. There he cracked open Gus Dollar’s book.

  If he’d hoped that during his drive down Spring Canyon, the text would be miraculously transmuted from German to English, he was disappointed.

  Of course, there were plenty of Germans up at the Kimball Mine, and one of them might help Hiram read the book. Or for that matter, there were Germans at other camps, in Spring Canyon or in the other canyons around Helper. There were probably German-speakers living down in Helper, running a restaurant or working in the department store.

  Only Hiram had no desire for Carbon County’s German community to be talking about that strange traveler, the demonologist Hiram Woolley. If word got back to Bishop Smith…Hiram preferred not to think about the consequences.

  He found the sigil in question quickly and double-checked that he had the right one by comparing it with his own sketch. Hiram had learned a smattering of phrases as a Doughboy, and he looked for them now. He found isst—wasn’t that is? But then here was ist—were they two spelling for the same word? He looked for gut, and schlecht, and kann, and muss, and found none of them. He gave up, but in searching for words he knew, he found two words, appearing several times each all in capital letters on the page with the glyph in question, and, as far as he could tell from a quick page-flipping, appearing nowhere else in the book.

  mahoun.

  samael.

  Hiram didn’t know the lore of demons. You didn’t have to know such lore to cast devils out; you needed it if you wanted to summon and command them, and Hiram emphatically did not want a demonic ally. That made you a witch or a sorcerer.

  Still, he thought he knew the name Samael. Samael was a demon, a fallen angel. He didn’t remember whether he’d read the name alongside such names as Semyaz and Azrael in the apocryphal books like 1 Enoch, or if perhaps Grandma Hettie had told him the name in one of her rocking-chair sermons, but he was confident he knew the name.

  Curious that Samael and Samuel were so similar. Coincidence?

  Mahoun, though…nothing.

  The sigil was the sign of a demon, Samael, with Mahoun maybe being another name for him. Or could they be names for two different demons? Why would Gus Dollar want such a sign? To summon the being? To channel its power? To command it?

  Some c
ombination of all of those?

  A drunk staggered into the side of the Double-A, startling Hiram out of his train of thought. The sun’s height in the sky told him that more time had passed than he’d planned.

  The Denver lawyer might be available.

  He reparked the truck in front of the Buford’s Boarding House and went inside. It was morning and the smell of bacon frying and coffee dripping filled the place. To ward off the worst of his hunger pains, he grabbed a handful of mints from a crystal dish in the front hall and choked them down, almost without chewing. They were sweet, they pushed back against his hunger, and the mints had the added benefit of sweetening his stale breath.

  He knocked on the Bufords’ door.

  Again, the woman answered and this time wore a turban. Slippers fuzzed her feet. “You again. Out late. Up early.”

  He winced shook his head. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. Could I possibly use your phone?”

  “That’ll be a nickel.”

  Hiram produced the coin. She let him inside the entryway where the phone was connected to the wall and snatched the coin out of his hand. “Make it quick. And keep the door open. If you come any farther into my room, my husband will give you the what-for.” She retreated.

  He unhooked the receiver and placed it to his ear. He spoke into the transmitter attached to the ringer box, tripping over his own tongue with the sudden flood of saliva stimulated by the mints and the smell of the bacon. When the operator asked for the exchange and number, Hiram gave her the number for B Y High.

  A secretary answered, which was unsurprising, since the one telephone in the building was in the central office, but she quickly brought Hiram’s friend to the phone.

  “Mahonri Young.”

  “Mahonri, it’s Hiram.” Hiram hesitated. “I have a…a strange question.”

  He listened to Mahonri’s deep breath and exhalation.

  “What kind of strange?” Mahonri asked.

  “Well, I’m not in jail, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  The joke brought a laugh from Mahonri, and then a touch of relaxation to his voice. “Okay, Hiram. Fair enough. What do you want to know?”