by Simon Archer
“What’s going on?” Andi’s legs had turned too.
“I don’t know!” I yelled out. Suddenly, both of us were being pulled away.
22
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious when I finally opened my eyes. A stabbing pain jolted through my head, and I remembered hitting it on something. As my vision began to clear, fuzzy shapes and dark colors surrounded me. I definitely wasn’t in my car any longer.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and held it. I needed to clear my head. A horrifyingly present sense of danger enveloped me, and I needed my faculties to face it. When I opened my eyes, my vision was still coming into focus, but it had improved. I tipped my head down and could tell I was sitting on broken asphalt.
I stared at a single rock until it became clear. Then I looked at a crack a little further away from the rock and stared until that became clear. Slowly I worked my eyes further from me, trying to regain acute vision. When I felt I could see well enough again, I tipped my head back up. Directly across from me, there was a table. It was still a little blurry but not too bad. I couldn’t make out exactly what was on top of the table, but I realized quickly that it was my table.
I kept blinking until, at last, my vision cleared completely, and the table came into full focus. There was a brick wall behind it, and strangely enough, Jack’s golf club was one of the items on top of it. I turned to get an idea of where I was, but the pain in my head intensified, so I stopped moving. I slowly touched the back of my head, and my hand came forward with blood on it.
“What the hell?” I moaned to myself. It was then I found out I wasn’t alone. Footsteps sounded in front of me, and I raised my eyes. I could only lift my head high enough to see two legs standing in front of my table.
“Ah, you’re alive,” a disgustingly cheery voice said. I didn’t have to look any further to know who was speaking. It was Dave Klerik.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“Oh, you are in the alley where you found the magic box thing,” he answered happily.
I hadn’t expected him to reveal to me where I was, much less refer to magic. My attention to the pain in my head instantly switched to the overwhelming need to deny any knowledge of magic.
“What box?” I muttered. I put my hand on the ground to push myself up on my knees.
“Of course, what box?” Dave mocked. “You aren’t going to fool me, Bennett. I know you have a magic box.”
I continued to struggle to get up, still not able to move my head more than a few degrees in any direction without searing pain.
“You’ve lost your mind, Dave,” I hissed at him.
“Oh, good! You know who is going to ruin your life! I was afraid I was going to have to go to the trouble of introducing myself.” The sarcasm in his voice was mixed with a tone of madness.
I finally got to my knees and tried one more time to lift my head. I was able to get it high enough to see his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was splotched red. He had an evil grin that was more ugly than scary.
“What the hell do you want, you psycho?” I spat out. I started to pull my foot forward with the intention of attempting to stand, but he kicked it back, and I nearly fell over again.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You aren’t going anywhere,” he laughed. He walked to the table and picked up a piece of rope. He returned, pulled my arms behind my back, and tied my hands together.
When he appeared in front of me, I tried to move my leg again, but it wouldn’t budge. In fact, I couldn’t move my body either. The only mobility I had was in my arms and neck, but my arms were tied.
“What did you do?” I demanded, struggling but unable to move.
“Don’t you mean, ‘what did you do, psycho?’” he mocked. “Do you really think I would have gone to all the trouble to summon you here just to let you walk away? I’m not stupid!” His voice continually elevated in pitch as he spoke.
I took a deep breath and calmed the swirling confusion in my mind.
“Dave,” I started calmly. “Why am I here?”
“’Why am I here?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘What box?’” he screeched. “How about you shut up and listen instead of peppering me with pointless, lame questions!”
My first instinct was to spit in his shrewd little face, but I couldn’t tip my head up quite that far.
“Okay, Dave,” I said, keeping my calm. “I’m listening.”
“Good!” he spat out. He went to the table and leaned against it, crossed his arms, and laughed. “I knew you had no clue what you did, but deep down, I think I hoped you’d have some inkling of it.”
“Of what?” I asked, forgetting my intent to listen.
“Shut up!” Dave stood up and screamed. “Shut up, or I’ll kick that broken head of yours right back into the wall!”
The man was insane with rage. I didn’t say anything for the simple fact that I was, indeed, at a temporary disadvantage. He slowly leaned back against the table and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to a normal volume.
“You ruined my life, Bennett. You and whatever that magic box did, ruined my life,” he seethed. “Your little mix up with the deliveries last year cost me my allowance, my inheritance, and my family. Sure, they didn’t like me much, but at least they weren’t in jail!”
I had an idea about what he was referring to, but I decided to let him rant instead of asking for clarification.
“Then suddenly, there you were, Mr. Fancy House, with your millions, and your perfect girl, and your chummy boss, just living it up like nobody else in the world mattered!” Dave knelt down and looked at me on face-level. “You didn’t even care that I didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I’d saved my allowance for months to draft the fake Will, but thanks to you, the government took all my parents money, so the Will is useless!”
The pieces were starting to come together for me.
“The Bakers were your parents?” I asked before thinking better of it.
Last year, I had accidentally delivered an envelope from the Bakers to the district attorney’s office. It turned out the couple was under investigation for massive amounts of fraud and embezzlement, amongst other things. I’d known they’d had a grandson, but was under the impression he’d been raised by a single mother.
“Oh, it’s coming back to you, is it?” he hissed.
“I didn’t know they had a son. I only knew their grandson, Blake.” The name instantly enraged Dave.
“That scummy useless bag of shit didn’t deserve anything! My parents treated him like royalty and me like dirt!” he yelled into the air as though trying to announce a public message.
“Blake’s last name was Hudson, though. Is he your son?” I had begun ignoring Dave’s insane variations of voice.
“Hell no, he’s not my son. And what is a last name, anyway? My last name isn’t Baker. Why does that matter? My mom had me before she married Bill Baker. My ex-wife had Blake before I married her. Somehow my mom and Bill decided that my ex-wife and her precious asshole son were more a part of the family than I was!” Dave was pacing back and forth now. He had stopped staring at me, so I took the opportunity during his rant to look around.
I forced my head to turn through the pain. We were in the middle of the alley, not far from where I’d wrecked my bike the day I’d found the box. The watch the genies were in had been inside that box. Dave didn’t seem to know about the genies, though. He only mentioned the box being magical.
I turned my attention to the table. I saw a pot, a worn piece of cloth, and what looked like a necklace sitting with Jack’s golf club. It was clear by the careful layout that Dave planned on doing something with the items, so I thought it best not to ask him about them and speed up whatever he had planned. For the moment, I was going to keep him ranting so I could devise a way out.
“They still gave you money, though, right? Why would they do that if they didn’t consider you family?” I asked, hoping to keep him talking.
It seemed the more enraged he got, the more he wouldn’t shut up.
“Why did they give me money?” he repeated my question, laughing suddenly. “Because they wanted me to leave them alone. They wanted me to leave, period. You know, they even tried to get me to move out of the country? Offered to buy me a house and everything, those imbeciles.”
“Why didn’t you take them up on their offer? It doesn’t sound like you were happy here.” I made sure to keep my voice low and calm, so he’d focus on my questions instead of feeling like I was questioning him.
“Because fuck them! That’s why! They thought they could buy me out of their lives. I wasn’t going to let them get rid of me that easily!” Dave paced furiously and started muttering to himself. He was losing it more with every evil, nonsensical sentence he spat out.
While he raged, I tried to look back at my hands to see what he’d tied me with that made it so I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t twist my neck that far, though. When my eyes came forward, I saw an outline through the pocket of my pants. It was the money clip. A flash of relief poured through me, instantly followed by fear.
I was certain Dave didn’t know about the genies, and there was no way I was going to bring them here if that was the case. However, if he got his hands on my money clip, he would have control over Andi, and Vila.
“Don’t even think of trying to get away, Bennett,” Dave hissed in my ear. I was so distracted by the money clip that I hadn’t noticed him stop his pacing to crouch down in front of me.
“I just wanted to see what the hell you tied me up with,” I spat at him. I was done playing nice. If he wanted to feel sorry for himself, I was going to help him along.
“You wish you knew the secret, do you?” he cackled. “Too bad, Bennett! You aren’t the only one who can play with magic!”
“You’re a total nutjob, you know that?” I laughed at him. I plastered a dramatic frown on my face and decided to go for gold in pissing him off. “Poor baby Dave didn’t amount to shit and blames his thieving parents. Maybe if he plays with dirty ropes and people’s hand-me-downs, he can make himself feel like a man.” How good I was at mocking him shocked me.
“You shut your fucking mouth! They are magic, and you know it! You have the magic box!” he screamed.
“Does a sad little Dave pop out of the box when I wind the handle?” I continued hazing him.
He spun around and punched me in the stomach. Even with all his might, he didn’t even knock the wind out of me. The more I saw of this man, the more pathetic and weak he seemed.
“You know what, you arrogant prick? I was going to wait, but now I’m not!” he yelled as he stormed over to the table. “I was going to make you tell me where the box is, but I think I’ll just go to your house and find it myself!” He picked up the cloth from the tabletop and put it over top of my head. It was just large enough to drape over my eyes, so I couldn’t see anything above a few feet off the ground.
“You aren’t going anywhere near my house, you fuck!” I hissed.
“Who’s going to stop me?” he retorted snottily.
I turned my head back and forth, fighting the pain in my head to get the cloth to fall off. My efforts weren’t working, though. I needed more time before he did whatever he had planned. He wasn’t magical himself, but he thought he had the ability to use magic, for some reason. I couldn’t imagine how, but I wasn’t in the position to test his abilities just yet.
“You’ve lost your damn mind, Dave!” I laughed exaggeratedly. I heard him pick something up off the table and walk over to me. He began rubbing what felt like strings over my shoulders and chanting. It was the opportunity I needed to redirect his focus one more time. “Been practicing your Rosetta Stone, have you?”
“You only wish you could have my power! Did you know that I was the one who caused the tornados? I was the one who controlled Mother Nature as I felt the need to!” His voice was dripping with self-satisfaction. “If only that punk archaeologist knew what he had in his hands when he showed up to my apartment… but he didn’t! Lost, found, lineage, stranger, I don’t give a damn! He handed me the answer to all my problems!” He continued rubbing the strings over my shoulders as he went down the rabbit hole of lunacy with his ramblings.
I realized a very important fact right then, however. It was possible the items he had weren’t just pieces of junk. I hadn’t considered that they might have magic attached to them somehow. There was no reason for me to think he’d done any more than finding the possibility of magic somehow.
After he mentioned the archaeologist, however, my mind changed. If an archaeologist had found something, there was a good chance it had been uncovered and very old. Dave had mentioned something about ‘lineage’ as well. Had the items been traced to him somehow?
I needed to know where those things came from and what Dave thought he would do with them if I had any chance of getting loose. More importantly, I needed to know in order to keep the girls from in his possession, in case he figured any more details out. Since Dave had already made plans to go to my house, I changed my earlier decision and decided to bring the girls here.
He already knew about magic. It was time to show him what real magic looked like.
23
Since I could hear people on the street lazily strolling by, I figured Dave had found a way to shield the alley from view. That being the case, I wasn’t sure calling for the girls would work. That might give Dave a heads up that something would happen, and I didn’t want him prepared at all. My only choice was to rub the money clip.
I decided to start to act like I was squirming to get away from the strings he was rubbing over my shoulders. I threw my head from side to side, using the pain the movement caused as motivation to yell out at him. The aim was to get his focus jumbled. Meanwhile, I was straining with all my might to pull my arms to the side far enough to reach into my pocket. I let out a particularly high-pitched yell, and Dave paused for a moment.
My antics were working. He went back to his chanting and started moving the strings again. I got my arms far enough to the side to hook one of my fingers on my pocket. The arm I used to pull burned with fatigue, and my opposite arm strained against the joint from being pulled too far at an unnatural angle. I didn’t have time to let either rest, though. I used my fingers to pull my hand into my pocket, but I couldn’t get my arms to go any further to the side. Instead, I started bunching the material inside my pocket up under my fingers to raise the money clip to me. It seemed like I worked at the material for hours before I finally felt the metal under my hand.
Then I used the last bit of strength I had to rub one finger across the clip.
Two balls of light, one purple, the other blue, shot out of the clip. The blue one narrowly missed hitting Dave. The light balls zipped around at an amazing speed, and I heard a sparking hiss as they bounced off the brick walls on either side of me. Dave’s feet jumped back and spun around. He took a step backward and tripped over a crack in the asphalt, forcing him to drop the strings on my shoulders so that he could catch himself.
The lights stopped moving just above the ground beside the table, and they both grew so bright, that even though I was mostly shielded by the cloth on my head, I still closed my eyes. Dave fell on his back when he put his hands up to shield his eyes, and I heard his head hit the ground hard. The second the flash dissipated, I opened my eyes and saw Andi and Vila’s mist floating beside the table. I couldn’t see their faces, but I didn’t have time to explain anything to them, anyway.
“I wish to have the ability to see the complete history of any item I want, simply by touching it!” I yelled loudly, careful to speak every word perfectly. I immediately heard one of the girls snap her fingers.
I looked over to Dave. He still had one arm up in front of his eyes and was holding his banged-up head with the other. He hadn’t seen the girls yet. Since I had made my wish before they had the chance to say anything, he hadn’t heard them either. I saw my opportunity to keep them
a secret and mentally crossed my fingers in hopes that it would work.
“Go home!” I yelled at the girls. If they could disappear before Dave uncovered his eyes, they would be safe. In less than a blink, they were sucked into the money clip, all evidence of their presence gone.
Dave groaned as he rolled around on the ground. He slowly uncovered his eyes and timidly looked around for the lights. He looked at me, and his face morphed into that of an angry slug.
“What the hell are you yelling about?” he screamed at me. He hoisted himself up, checking for injuries. When he felt the back of his head, I heard him wince audibly in pain.
“Those little bumps on the head feel good, don’t they?” I mocked.
“I don’t know what you’re so smug about. Didn’t you see that?” He was jumping all around. “It’s working, and you know it!”
It took me a moment, but when I realized he thought the lights were a result of whatever spell he was trying to work, I started laughing hysterically.
“You are the most idiotic imbecile I’ve ever had the comedic pleasure of meeting!” I shouted between laughs.
“You’ll see who the imbecile is just as soon as I get my head bandaged!” he hollered as he walked to my left and out of view. I could hear him rustling around in something that sounded like a duffle bag. This was the chance I needed.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on one of the strings sitting on my shoulder. My sight went black, and images started flashing in front of my eyes. They were so fast I couldn’t actually see any one image. In less than a second, they stopped, and my vision returned to normal.
I reeled for a few seconds, trying to figure out how this new wish had worked. I thought of the string again, and then I knew. The images had been implanted in my mind as memories. I could ‘remember’ everything about it. Actually, it wasn’t just a bunch of strings at all. It was an ancient mathematical device, called a quipu which Dave had gotten from Lottie. He thought it would just be a way to connect her to the spell he would do, but he realized later it had remnant magic. Huh, that was a new term to me.
