by Rick Wayne
“I see.” Granny nodded. “We found this in your pocket.” She unfolded a sheet of white paper and showed me.
It was blank.
She turned it around.
The back was blank as well.
“You wanna tell me what it said?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust me, Doc?”
I laughed. It was her way of asking whether or not I believed she would really do all the terrible things she threatened. But to my delirious mind, it sounded like a joke, especially in that garden of all places, which you might have to be a biologist to really appreciate. I saw new hybrids—crossbreeds—of wolfsbane, hemlock, monkshood, and half a dozen other species. I saw red foxglove-like flowers almost certainly loaded with digitalis-derivative beta-blockers. I saw spikes and thorns covered in ricin-class neurotoxins. I saw beds of filamentous fungi filled with schizophrenia-inducing hallucinogens. Who knew what else?
Most of your wild-type poisons are easily diagnosable these days, even when present in trace amounts, but only because modern science has learned what to look for. And since most people work in offices rather than on farms and don’t have the knowledge or time to grow and isolate poisons, relatively few people are murdered that way anymore. But before the modern era, before the mass production of cheap firearms, when even a good sharp knife was hard to come by, poison was the killer’s first choice.
The plants Granny was breeding were 100% organic and could’ve easily produced entirely new compounds that silently induced heart or renal failure, central nervous system shutdown, or insanity—completely and invisibly mimicking normal-onset diseases like nephritis and dementia. To her victims—and their doctors—it would seem as if they’d suffered an unfortunate but natural calamity. Just plain bad luck.
There was no doubt in my mind that we had found the source of the mysterious mushrooms. But it also seemed clear she was merely the producer. Granny was a businesswoman, nothing more. She was paid to do a job, and she did it.
I wanted to be happy. I’d finally made progress, after all. I took a risk and it had paid off. I’d found the source. Theoretically, it should’ve been easy to get from there to the perpetrator—if right thn I hadn’t been five steps from dead.
Granny Tuesday tossed the paper onto her workbench. “You know what’s funny? That paper was all we found. No wallet. No car keys. No fancy cell phone. That says you came ready for this here eventuality. But . . . you didn’t know what the coin was fer.” She frowned. “So who sentcha?”
I didn’t answer.
“Awww, come on, Doc. Just ’cuz you come in here a patsy don’t mean you gotta go out one. Have a little gumption. Stick up fer yerself! Tell whoever sent you to shove off and give Granny what she’s asking for and you and me’ll be all right.”
“You gonna let me go, Granny?” I coughed again. I couldn’t help it. My throat was sand.
“Not at all. But I’ll kill ya quicker. That’s a promise.”
I laughed again. More of a giggle actually. I was so lightheaded. After the initial giggle, which sounded so ridiculous, I started laughing at my laughing. I wondered how much blood I’d lost and laughed at that, too.
“Alright.” She stood on her spindly legs. She sighed. “Alright, alright. What do you say we test her out then?” She held out a hand. “Horace, be a dear and hand me that shotgun.”
The white-shirted orderly from before, the linebacker-looking one, stepped from behind the planter’s box. He’d been so quiet I had no idea he was even there. For all I knew, there were ten more back there with him. He handed Granny a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun with two fat hammers. The stock was snub, more like a pistol than a rifle, and she had to grab the gun with both hands to cock it.
She held up the silver with one hand, shotgun dangling at her side. “Heads, we kill ya right now and be done with it. Just save ourselves all the bile and headache.” She turned it around. “Tails, we letcha hang on a day ’till them thorns start crawlin’ under your skin and you feel like squawkin’. Whaddya say?”
Before I could even raise an objection, she flipped the coin with her thumb. I watched it spin in the air and bounce off her open palm and hit the floor and roll under the workbench.
“Oh, poo!” She tossed the shotgun on the table—hard enough that I wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t go off right then—and carefully lowered herself to the mossy carpet like someone with bad knees and a stiff back. She groaned.
Finding the coin took some time and more than a little grunting effort. I waited with pounding head.
“Ah ha!” she exclaimed. I saw her lean into a long reach. “Well, lookit that.” She struggled to her feet. She brushed her hands. Then she showed me. “Tails.”
My head dropped in relief.
Granny Tuesday stood on bare feet. Her toes were wriggling. She was giddy. “Excitin’!”
She looked at the shotgun. “Best two out of three,” she said and flipped again before my stomach was out of my throat.
I saw the coin spin in the air. My heart was pounding so hard—half from blood loss, half from fear—that I could actually feel it moving my chest. She caught it this time and grinned like a little girl about to set her favorite doll on fire.
“Heads. Well, well. Now we got ourselves a wager. Anything you wanna say before I flip the last time?”
I wasn’t sure who I was protecting or why, but it hardly seemed to matter.
“I’ll make it easy for you,” she said. “I’ll say a name, and you nod your head, yes or no. How’s that sound?”
“Just do whate—” My throat snagged on itself and I started to cough.
“Alright,” she said. “Suit yourself.”
The coin flipped again. We both watched it spin. It hit her hand and slipped free and bounced hard on the work table and stopped. Just like that.
The Moirai Penny landed in a heavy groove between the slats. Neither heads nor tails was showing—or maybe they both were, like some cruel quantum experiment. The coin stood vertical, straight up on its narrow edge, immobile, perched so precariously that the slightest breath could’ve turned it over. For a moment, fate hung like a jury. Nobody moved. Even Granny was surprised. Our eyes met. I think in that moment we both knew what it meant.
Granny went right for the shotgun and swung it around as the barn doors burst open. She fired and the recoil knocked her to the ground. The first man through the door took buckshot to the chest. His smooth white shirt made the circles of blood easy to see. It was Virgil, the second orderly who had dragged me from Granny’s room. It wasn’t until he slumped to the ground that I realized Dench had been using him as a human shield. Dench had a large gun in his hand, but he was still at the other end of the garden.
The first orderly, Horace, picked up the shotgun as Granny moaned and tried to right herself. He cocked the second hammer and raised the weapon just as Dench fired the pistol, a .357. Big sucker. Even at thirty paces, the bullet ripped clean through Horace’s chest and broke a pot at the back. The orderly crumpled and went down like he’d been punched in the gut. His hands clenched as he fell, pulling the shotgun trigger. Buckshot from the second shell ripped through the glass in the roof and the pieces fell over me.
Milan strode forward and tugged at my bonds as Dench kept the Magnum leveled at Granny Tuesday. He walked slowly to the spent shotgun, which had fallen under one of the planter’s boxes, and kicked it out of the way just as the chef strode into the greenhouse, hands in his fantastic coat. He looked at the body near the doors. Virgil’s white shirt was riddled with buckshot holes. Leaking blood now covered most of his white shirt.
“Don’t you worry none,” Granny said to me from the ground. “Ain’t the first time them two fools got themselves kilt. They was dead when I found ’em. I’ll raise ’em again later.”
Étranger walked through the poison garden toward his host. “Hello, Livonia.”
One of my bonds came loose and my hand fell like a lead wei
ght. “You wanted her to use the coin,” I accused, my voice cracked and hoarse.
But he didn’t even look at me. He was watching Granny Tuesday. Intently.
“It gums up the works, right? That’s what she said. Turns everything upside down. You knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. All she had to do was flip it and—”
I fell forward, over the lip of the planter’s box and onto the floor, taking quite a bit of soil with me. My bonds had been loosed enough that my weight, which I was too weak to support, did the rest. I groaned. It hurt.
Milan pushed me back against the table. “He needs fluids,” she said to the chef.
Etude nodded to Dench, who walked to a sink at the back and got me a glass of water.
“Wash it out first,” Milan ordered. She glanced to Granny. “You don’t know what was in it before.”
Granny Tuesday sat up on the moss and dusted her hands off. She squinted one-eyed at the chef. “Had to try.” She motioned to the chair. “Have a seat. Take a load off. Give your dog a break.” She nodded back to Dench.
But the chef didn’t sit. He walked to Granny Tuesday and held out his open hand.
She sat with her butt on the moss and didn’t budge.
“We all have our time, Livonia,” he said. “We must each make the most of it.”
It was only then that I realized the coin was missing. I thought it must have fallen to the floor in the melee. I wondered how it had landed, heads or tails, and whether the result was binding.
Granny Tuesday scowled deeply. “Aw, hell.” She reached under her fat worm of a tongue and produced the silver Moirai Penny. But she hesitated. “I took it off him fair and square,” she objected, nodding to me. “Least you can do is trade me for it, rightwise.”
Étranger neither argued nor relented.
“There was a pocket watch,” Granny pleaded. “It was a gift from Mister Tuesday, inscribed with a little message. It were about the only nice thing he ever said to me, the sonuvabitch. I lost it. Years ago.” She motioned to the pockets of the chef’s fantastic coat. “It means nothing to nobody but the world to me. Whaddya say? A fair trade’ll keep the Three Sisters happy.”
That seemed to persuade the chef. I could see his hand move inside his coat pocket, like he was feeling around for an old receipt or something. He removed a closed hand. He held it out. He opened it.
In his palm was a brass pocket watch and matching chain. Granny Tuesday dropped the coin into the man’s tattooed hand and snatched her prize. She didn’t even look at it. She snuck it right into the pocket of her smock like she didn’t want anyone to see.
Étranger put the coin, and his hands, in his own pockets and sat in the open chair. “A circle burns around the city,” he said.
Granny got up slowly. “You’re a pox on two legs, you know that?”
“A circle that large can only have one purpose,” he countered.
Granny Tuesday pulled another chair from under the workbench. It had snails on its legs. “Don’t patronize me.” She sat. “It ain’t my fault they found your precious book. And I ain’t the one what wrote it. I’m a businesswoman. I provide a service. I don’t get involved in my clients’ affairs and I don’t take sides. Didn’t in the war. Don’t now. Certainly not with the likes ‘a you.”
Dench leaned in then and sniffed. Right over Granny’s head. And not like he was checking out her rosewater cologne. It wasn’t a whiff like when I pick a shirt up off the floor and try to decide if its dirty. This was deep, like two dogs greeting.
He looked at Étranger and shook his head in the negative, as if he knew the old woman was lying.
She cursed and spat. Then she leaned back and locked her fingers casually over her belly. “If you’re gonna shoot me, you heartless bastard, then do it quick.” She was talking to Dench. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t cock it up like you did with that Arab fella.”
“Keep it up, Granny,” Dench warned, brandishing the monster revolver in his hand.
“Who paid for the mushrooms?” the chef demanded.
“I don’t know anything ‘bout any mushrooms.”
The chef looked to Dench, who sniffed again and nodded as if in the affirmative.
“That can’t be,” I objected. “She has to be the one. She has—” I choked again and coughed.
“Calm down, Doctor,” Milan urged.
Étranger turned his gaze across the greenhouse, slowly, before stopping at the workbench where Granny had been standing when I woke. Whatever he saw didn’t make him happy. He stood and inspected the tea cup.
“Not sayin’ I didn’t. Seems like the kinda thing I’d do, to be honest. But if I ever did know anything ‘bout any mushrooms, I musta cast it outta my mind.” She waved a shaking, arthritic hand over her white hair. “Ain’t nuthin’ good can come from knowin’ some things.”
Étranger pinched some of the powdered leaves in his hand. Then he tasted them like a cop testing drugs. He dabbed some on his tongue and spit. He rifled through the drawers near the bird cage, then lifted a single leaf from a bin. It was vaguely hourglass-shaped. I didn’t recognize it. The chef turned to the old woman, holding it up as if in demand of an explanation.
“Oh, dear,” Milan said under her breath.
“What does it mean?” I asked her.
Granny started cackling. That’s the only word for it. The sound rippled through the room like the snap of wet logs on a fire. She threw her head back and everything, like someone had just told her the funniest joke of her life. I could see quite a few missing teeth.
The chef wasn’t happy. But he seemed lost in thought then.
“It sure seems like whoever you’re chasing,” Granny went on, “knew better than to leave ol’ Granny flappin’ in the wind. I had them leaves and some instructions what said if anyone was to come lookin’, I was to make myself a cup ‘a tea.”
Granny Tuesday cackled again, softer, at the look on his face. “New moon tonight. Dark tidings. Seems to me, if you’re right about that circle, then whatever it’s for is nigh upon us. Wasted too much time on this fella.” She spat toward me. The spittle darkened the dirt and contracted like a dead spider. Then she leaned forward to gloat. “He beat you,” she told the chef. “Admit it. He beat you.”
His reaction was intense but subtle. I could see a snaking vein on his bald head. He stared into the tea cup, tilting it slowly like he was reading the leaves and contemplating the future. Then he looked up. “The game is not yet over.” With that, he replaced the cup and strode for the door.
Granny started laughing again, even louder this time.
“Don’t you dare!” Milan barked at the chef. “Don’t you think that’s exactly what he—Dammit!” She turned to Dench. “Help me get him to his feet!”
As the three of us struggled to get my wobbly legs under me, I caught Granny peering at her prize. The pocket watch dangled in front of her face. I caught a glimpse of it then and did a double take a moment later. The numbers were backwards. Twelve was still at the top, and the hands still ticked forward, but the numbers counted down: 11 in the place of 1, 10 in place of 2, and so on.
“You should listen to your friend,” The old woman called after the chef. “He’s gnawing on your soul, you ol’ fool!” She cackled again. “Every time you use his chair. I can see it. You got teeth marks on your heart!”
Milan had turned turned pale. “Nononononono,” she chanted, unrelenting, as the three of us hobbled out the doors. “Nonono.”
We all heard the Jaguar start.
“No!” Milan let go and ran as Dench quickly braced my chest with an extra hand.
But the chef had already driven away.
I awoke curled across the back seat of an old Ford Bronco, bouncing with each crack in the road. It was dark out and Milan was driving. Fast. I didn’t remember feeling like I was about to pass out, but it seemed clear that standing upright had been too much for me and that I had simply blanked. The truck was clearly old, or so the cracked vinyl and the squ
eaking brakes told me. That and the smell: dirt and oil. There was some trash on the floor in the back. I had no idea where they’d found it.
The engine revved and I felt the truck pull hard to the right and around a slower vehicle. Seconds later, it happened again in the opposite direction. Then we braked hard, presumably at a light. The sudden stop nearly sent me to the floor. I was pretty sure an identical maneuver was what had woken me. I saw a half-empty water bottle in the center console between the front seats. I swallowed dry. I was about to ignore etiquette and ask for someone else’s drink when, without warning, Milan struck the steering wheel hard several times in anger.
“Shit shit shit shit!”
She gunned the engine a moment later and I rolled back against the seat as we wove back and forth through traffic. “He promised.”
Dench didn’t respond. He just nodded obliviously, as if merely acknowledging her remark without confirming or denying it. I was sure then that he’d never been married, or if he had, it hadn’t lasted long.
“He promised me he’d stop,” she added after a moment. “He sat right in front of me at Martin’s funeral and admitted it was a mistake and swore on the world tree that he’d never use the chair again. Ever. Not for any reason.” Again she braked hard again and I almost fell. I braced myself with an arm, but pulled it back quick when I realized it might give away the fact that I was awake.
Dench stared forward out the windshield like one of Granny’s zombies. Whether he was ignoring her or deeply contemplating her words, I couldn’t tell.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” she continued in a whisper before gunning it again. “Worse than killed. He’s going to get himself damned.”
Out the window, I saw a lighted green road sign announcing the upcoming freeway.
Dench scowled as if considering that for the very first time. “So why now? We’ve gotten this close before.”
She leaned forward to look up through the windshield at the night sky. “He thinks it will be out in the open tonight, out from wherever they’ve hidden it. They’ll have to read from it pages to complete the ritual.”
