by Julia French
“I can’t, it’s Saturday.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her why. “What about Monday?”
“Monday I have two healings and a lost cat to find.”
Finally they agreed upon a day. She wasn’t to bring her notebook, for True didn’t have patience with note taking. He would rather repeat something a dozen times, he claimed, than wait forever while she scribbled it down, and on that note, she left for home.
As the miles flew by, Rachel had time to think. What on earth had possessed her to sacrifice a piece of her precious free time? The answer was simple—she felt sorry for him. Stuck in rural isolation, True needed someone to talk to, and she had proved to be a good listener. She wasn’t doing this for herself, she was doing it for him. Warmed with her self-sacrifice, she vowed that she would give True whatever attention she could spare.
As she drew into her tiny parking space in the alley a scruffy black bird flew up from the pavement and settled upon the edge of one of the dumpsters. The alert and shining eyes regarded her with so much lively curiosity that she had the urge to explain to it what she was doing in the alley. Ravens were highly intelligent birds and normally shy of people, but her nearness didn’t seem to bother this one. If the bird was someone’s pet it would be accustomed to human contact, and therefore a treat from her might be welcome.
Rachel made a mental note to put some unsalted crackers in her pocket the next time she went into the alley. As she reached the door of her house the bird took off. Buoyed upward upon a random current of warm air, it flapped lazily over the tops of the houses westward.
Chapter Eleven
The raven came in for a landing, angling its wings and alighting on the upraised arm of the man. The man and the raven could have been brothers. The man was slender in build, his black hair matched the feathers of the raven, and while the irises of his eyes were brown, they were almost obscured by the black, searching pupils that resembled the bird’s eyes.
“Well?” the man asked.
The bird bobbed its head and cawed passionately, stretching its neck out for emphasis. It was an earsplitting display, and only the man could have deciphered anything from the racket.
“That’s what I thought. What a clever idea. Go ahead, then. See what else you can find out.” The man threw his arm upward and the bird launched itself again, circling the trees in ascending spirals until it disappeared from sight.
The man lived in a slate-roofed cottage of mortared field stone. In contrast to the rough, countrified exterior the inside of the cottage was pathologically neat. There was no dust anywhere, nor any disorder, nor any of the usual traces of normal living. A scarlet-red glass vase was centered precisely in the middle of the polished teak coffee table, which was set upon the maroon and blue oriental carpet. The expensive sofa, positioned in the middle of the north wall, was perfectly clean and showed no signs of wear. An unused large-screen, high-definition television lurked inside the closed doors of the entertainment center. An Italian marble chess set populated with medieval figures gleamed softly in the recessed track lighting illuminating the end table at the far end of the room. There were no pictures upon the walls.
The kitchen, dining room, and bedroom were furnished equally expensively and gave off the same austere feeling as the living room. Bland and sterile, the interior of the cottage divulged no information about the true nature of the man, for his real life centered around the laboratory in the basement.
The walls of the basement laboratory were lined with rare and dangerous books which had taken the man more than eighty years of buying, bargaining, and theft to acquire. The books did double duty, serving as reference works and also as soundproofing for his other activities. Against the east wall of the basement stood a steel table with thick leather restraints, and to one side of that was a heavy wooden workbench with a high intensity lamp clamped to one end. Upon the workbench the fresh piece of skull, the jars of flies, a large lump of red pottery clay and other items were set awaiting his use, including two faceted rubies of excellent quality. The man had bought the smaller one with his own money. The larger ruby had been wrested from someone’s dead hand, but he had come by it a long time ago and could no longer remember whose.
After his business with the raven was finished, the man went inside and down into the basement, where he rolled up the sleeves of his crisply ironed white shirt and commenced kneading granules of yellow sulfur into a lump of the moist pottery clay. Within a half hour he had incorporated into the clay almost all of the other materials he had collected including a generous handful of decaying dog flesh and one-half cup of grated orris root.
Gradually the shape took form under his hands, and after some minutes of pressing and pulling he put the final touches on the form, stepped back and studied it, and was satisfied. Next, taking the piece of skull in his hand, he poured water into the ghastly cup and breathed upon it nine times, exhaling into the water so that it rippled. He sprinkled the water over the clay figure on the table, made four counterclockwise passes over it with his left hand, four with his right, and said the words. Left hand, right hand, and the words. Over and over, again and again and again. The man’s voice rose and fell, rose and fell. Every fifth set it went up to a shout, then fell once more to a barely audible chant.
The unrelenting rhythm continued for an hour. The man’s face streamed with sweat and his arms were lead pipes. Finally he stopped, fumbled in his pocket, and dragged a white cloth handkerchief over his flushed face. He had followed the ancient prescription exactly. Were his materials imperfect? Had he missed something, or misread the directions? The manuscript had been translated from the Sumerian language into ancient Greek, medieval Spanish, and then into relatively modern English, and there was no telling how much of the original information remained.
At any rate, he was wasting his time. Tomorrow he would dismember the clay shape and start over. His shoulders sagging, the man mounted the stairs, his back to the worktable. A noise came from behind him that made him jerk around, a whispering sound like the rustle of a million tiny wings.
The creature’s squat, pudgy body was the size of a cocker spaniel’s but not exactly like a dog’s body or exactly like a lizard’s, and not at all like the eel whose body mucus the man had patiently massaged into the surface of the clay. Its feet were paw-shaped, with opposable thumbs, but the thick, curved claws resembled those of a monitor lizard. The sound that had caught the man’s attention was coming from the rows upon rows of fly wings he had embedded into the damp clay skin. It was the most beautiful creature in the world.
His expression transfixed with wonder and triumph, the man descended the stairs, plucked a couple of wingless flies from a jar and extended his hand to the creature. It hissed and retreated, backing away from him to the edge of the worktable. The man wasn’t sure whether the creature had assumed the bioelectrical properties of the eel from the mucus and so he didn’t try to touch it, but instead watched as it coiled its reptilian tail around the base of the lamp, as if to anchor itself there permanently.
The thing’s distrust didn’t worry him, for it would pass. After they had forged a good working relationship his homemade animal would obey him in every way. According to the Grimoire of Sumerius Risus his familiar was supposed to “doe every thing that its creator would bid it doe.” In his turn the man was to feed it and protect it from discovery or harm. It wasn’t a bad deal, provided the familiar fulfilled its side of the bargain. If it didn’t he could make another one, for he had plenty of clay and flies.
As if reading his thoughts, the over-wide mouth of the familiar grinned up at him ingratiatingly. Disgusted and elated, the man turned and climbed the basement stairs to the kitchen.
Chapter Twelve
“I can’t keep anything down.” The plump woman’s chins shook. “Nothing except water. I can’t live on water!”
“Did you go to a doctor?” True knew the Bartletts couldn’t afford to see
a regular doctor, so his question was a formality.
“My husband Darryl, he said I should come and see you.”
“When did you eat last?”
“Four days ago. I had a spoonful of soup yesterday but it didn’t stay down. I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”
“Do you have any fever, chills, or a sore throat?”
“I feel sort of faint.”
The faintness was probably from lack of food. He would prescribe some peppermint tea to settle his patient’s stomach, and while she drank it he would encourage her to unload her worries. A few kind words and a listening ear, and she would probably get up and dance her way back home. It was a simple and straightforward case except that a minute after the woman swallowed a sip of the tea she gagged and retched, spewing the fragrant liquid over the checkered linoleum. In the cramped room the pungent odor of mint mixed with the sharp smell of bile made True swallow hard. He handed the woman a ragged square of paper towel and forced himself to look at the small stream of vomit creeping across the table. The color was an odd yellowish-green.
“Do you have any pain in your side, Mrs. Bartlett?”
The woman dabbed at her lips with the paper towel. “No, no pain.”
“Pardon me for asking, but are you in a family way?”
“Good heavens, no! At my time of life!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. In the last four days, did you fall and hit your head?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think you might have the flu?”
“I’m not sick. I just can’t eat.”
He felt the woman’s wrist. Her pulse was rapid and shallow, but not unusually so for her anxiety. The whites of her eyes were clear. There were no cracks in her tongue, which would have revealed malnutrition caused by chronic poor digestion, and there was no telltale crease in her earlobe that would have indicated a heart condition and symptomatic nausea.
“If you don’t mind telling me, Mrs. Bartlett, what was the last thing you ate?”
“Chicken with gravy, a sourdough biscuit, and a piece of lemon pie.”
“Was the chicken maybe bad?”
“Lordy, no! It came fresh from the henhouse that very morning, and you can’t get any fresher than that.”
True agreed with her. Food poisoning didn’t seem very likely. Besides, she would have been complaining of diarrhea and stomach cramps. He was well and truly stumped, but there was one last possibility.
“Mrs. Bartlett, I’d like to ask your permission to do a test.”
“A doctor test?”
“It’s not a doctor test and it won’t hurt you. Give me your right hand, if you please.”
She held out her hand for True’s inspection.
“Now, don’t mind what I do.” He took her pudgy hand in his, flattened it palm side up, and reached behind him for a container that looked like a large salt shaker. When she saw the black powder she tried to jerk her hand away. “It won’t hurt you,” he reminded her, grasping her hand more firmly and sprinkling the powdered charcoal over the surface of her palm. When there was sufficient charcoal he turned the woman’s hand upside down. Most of it fell onto the tabletop, but a black residue remained in the creases of her palm. At True’s elbow was a lined school tablet. He tore off a clean sheet of paper and pressed the woman’s hand upon it, and when he lifted it back up he had a reasonably clear print of the lines in her palm. He studied the print carefully, hoping not to find what he was looking for, but it was there. “Look at your palm print, here on the paper.”
The plump woman squinted at the piece of paper. “Where?”
“Here, in the middle.” Among the intersecting lines was a rough shape outlined in graphite.
“It looks like a diamond.”
“That’s not a diamond, ma’am. Look closer.”
“Why, it’s a coffin!”
The more a patient fussed and carried on the harder it was to help them. True kept his own voice quiet and steady, knowing his calmness would influence her. “Is somebody mad at you, mad enough to do you a bad turn?”
“What does the coffin mean? Am I going to die?”
“You’re not going to die if I can help it,” he said grimly. “Did you cross someone on purpose or do something that another person would take as bad, even if you didn’t mean it so?”
“I haven’t done anything to anybody!”
“Are you sure?” True urged her. “Think hard.”
The woman pursed her pudgy lips. “Well…when I was at work last week.”
Finally he had a clue. “Did you see or hear anything strange?”
“Strange? At a truck stop? I see strange every day, Mister Gannett.”
He laughed. “What I mean is, did anybody get mad at you there or take a dislike to you for no reason?”
“A man come by one of my tables, a short little guy with a pale face like he never got outside. He ordered pancakes and hash browns, but he wouldn’t touch them. He said I let his food get cold on purpose just to aggravate him.”
“Did he say or do anything after that?”
“He gave me this mean look, got up, and left. I had to throw all that food away!”
“The man gave you a look?”
“A real mean look like he would’ve killed me if he dared, but there were people all around so he just left.”
If Mrs. Bartlett’s man had the power, one look would have been enough. “Now this is important and I want you to listen to me good.” True took both of the afflicted woman’s hands and pressed them to emphasize his words. “If you see this man again, stay away from him. Don’t talk to him, don’t go near him, don’t look in his eyes, and don’t touch anything that he touches.”
She stifled a sob. “I didn’t make his food cold on purpose.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Don’t give it another thought. I believe I can fix what’s wrong with you.” He handed her another square of paper towel to wipe her charcoaled hand. “That man wasn’t expecting you to get help from someone like me so it’s bound to be a simple curse, easy to get rid of.”
“Curse?” Mrs. Bartlett’s voice rose to a squeak.
Silently True willed her to stay calm. “Do you like ginger spice?”
“A little bit, in cookies or a cake.”
“Do you have ginger in your cupboard right now?”
“There’s some from my Christmas baking.”
“Every morning when you get up I want you to put a pinch of ginger in a cup of warm water and sprinkle it over yourself. That’ll keep you from harm all day long.” He reached into a drawer and drew out a twig of rowan wood. “Keep this with you day and night for the next seven days. Put in your pocket or—”
True glanced at her too-ample bosom. “In your pocket is fine.” Rowan wood, or mountain ash, gave protection against evil, and the twig had come from the tree in his front yard.
Mrs. Bartlett gazed at the twig with reverence and started to get up, but True wasn’t finished. He took a raw egg out of the refrigerator and handed it to her. “Careful, don’t break it.”
She tucked the twig into her pocket and cradled the egg in her cupped hands.
“Breathe on it, a big breath like this.” To show her True expanded his chest as far as he could, then exhaled. “Think about how bad you’re feeling, and pretend you’re blowing all your sickness into the egg.”
When she had done it True took the egg and held it up to the light. There it was, nestled inside the egg: a fat, curled-up shadow like a slug.
She regarded the egg with wonder. “Is that my curse?”
“Yes, ma’am. You can go home and eat now, but don’t stuff yourself. Do the ginger and water every morning, and keep the twig by you all the time. If you get worse, come back right away and don’t wait. Now say it all back
to me so I know you’ll remember.”
Mrs. Bartlett repeated his directions word for word, and then started to open her purse, but he demurred.
“Thank you kindly, but I don’t require anything today.”
“But you healed me! I feel better already.” She declared, rummaging in her purse, but True held up a hand.
“It wasn’t a real sickness, so I didn’t really heal you. Abe Campbell told me the other day that you’re saving up to see your grandson.”
“I’m flying to Cleveland in three weeks.”
“I hope you have a nice flight, ma’am.” He ushered her to the door. “Come by in seven days and let me see how you’re getting on.”
Mrs. Bartlett assured him that she would.
After she left True set the egg on the table and regarded it with a mixture of admiration and disgust—admiration for a man who was powerful enough to let loose a curse with a mere look, and disgust for someone who dared to put a spell on an innocent woman who had meant no harm. In front of him the egg rolled to and fro as the slug-thing curled and straightened inside it. Fighting the urge to smash the egg with his fist, he confined it in a soup bowl, and wondered about the man who had created this tangible evil.
In his everyday life True sometimes came upon bored and lonely men or women who claimed they knew how to make the rain come, or make the chickens lay more eggs, or keep the deer out of the garden, but it wasn’t hard for him to see through their pretense. Other self-important folks, craving attention, would boast about having some mysterious dark power or secret knowledge, and he tended to avoid these folks not out of awe or fear, but because oftentimes he saw genuine magick wielded without wisdom, like a man chopping down a tree heedless of where it would land. Then there were the true esoterics, the men and women of power who felt it to be their calling, those ones who learned deep things and practiced them, had respect for the power, and took responsibility for what they did. The man at the truck stop was none of these but something more powerful, more sinister than True had ever seen. Such a man, living without moral restraints, could do a lot of damage in a small town like Maddington.
