Windfall

by Tempe O'Kun

  “What?” She squawked and straightened. “No!”

  “Are you kidding?” He purred into a grin, then waved the phone to show he hadn’t actually been typing. “I don’t need more Karl in my life.”

  She shook her head, stooping to sort a box of dusty books. “Hey…have you ever noticed weird stuff around town?”

  The feline crossed his arms with a shrug. “All the time.”

  “Meaning…?” The otter waited, crouched.

  “We live in a tourist trap specializing in weird stuff. Some days I see five Martians before lunch.” He lashed his tail and leered at the shelves. “A shop down the street gives out anti-mind control pendants to trick-or-treaters.”

  “I mean weirder than puffy alien stickers and keychain voodoo dolls.” Her gaze never wavered from him. “Actual weirdness.”

  He brushed some dust from his paw. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

  Kylie stood, keeping the social pressure up. “I think you do.”

  The cat sighed. “Tourists and locals pull weird pranks and schemes around here. It’s the local industry. Sometimes, they even fool each other. Sometimes, you don’t know where something comes from or how they did it.” A spark of caution entered his slitted eyes. “If I were you, I’d be careful about sticking my neck out. Lot of people around here have a vested interest in the crazy. Nothing takes the fun out of the paranormal like someone asking a bunch of totally reasonable questions.”

  The otter processed that for a moment, then nodded…then realized that’s just what she’d sent her boyfriend to do. He was her boyfriend now, right? She’d never had a boyfriend, so she wasn’t sure how exactly when that became official. On TV, she’d have to fall into bed kissing him while the camera pans to a single long-stem rose or something; and then he’d awkwardly meet her parents.

  Setting that tangle of emotions for the moment, she texted him.

  Walking down the sidewalk, Max took a deep breath. He wasn’t excited about trying to interrogate from a bunch of strangers, but this was for Kylie, so he set his jaw and marched onward. At least he could hit up some book shops; the smell of books always soothed him. His phone buzzed.

  Kylie Bevy: {Don’t walk back without me.}

  Max Saber: {Hadn’t planned on it. Think you might need me?}

  Kylie Bevy: {Or need to save you. ; )}

  Heart still fluttering from Kylie’s kiss goodbye, the husky smiled. He wagged down the sidewalk, looking up paranormal gift shops on his mobile, which seemed to infest the town map. The nearest: Windfall Wonders, was right next door to the Kylie’s shop. It was also, he remembered, where Cindy worked. He glanced in the window, between light-up sea monsters, and found no trace of the cocker spaniel drama queen. The door set off a tinny, electronic burst of spooky organ music as he opened it and Max felt his expectations lower.

  The small store was a bewildering mashup of New England and paranormal bric-a-brac. A shelf of sensational town histories occupied one wall, flanked by Elder God snow globes and carved wooden fishing boats crewed by tiny aliens. Max spied himself and Kylie on more than one cast poster for Strangeville tacked up behind the counter.

  A middle-aged spaniel straightened and smiled, then handed a receipt to a pair of Pomeranians, who bounced with excitement at the counter. Taking their bags of merchandise, they bustled past him in matched UFO t-shirts, heading out to sniff out more treasures.

  “Well, if it isn’t our newest local celebrity!” He shook the husky’s paw, generous ears swaying. “Charlie Madison. How ya doin’?”

  “Pretty well.” Max shook back and smiled. “You heard about me visiting? I didn’t think that’d be news.”

  “Oh yeah!” His tan paws clapped on the countertop. “You’re all over that Howler app. Strangeville’s the best thing ever to happen to this town. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.” He punched Max in the shoulder with a wink. “The people who matter love the show.”

  “That’s nice of you—”

  “By which I mean customers. They can’t get enough of this junk.” A yippy laugh spiked through the shop. “You ever think about doing some merch signings here? Good for your career. Not to mention mine.”

  “Umm, I’m kinda still settling in.” The monochromatic dog rubbed his own scruff.

  “Of course, of course. We’ll plan that later.” The spaniel’s tail swished. “The Bevys came up at last week’s Chamber of Commerce meeting; some great promotional opportunities for Strangeville actors in this town.” He jerked a thumb at a rack of Strangeville t-shirts. “You got a moment to sign some of these babies?”

  “I guess? I mean, I was just wondering—”

  A stack of shirts flopped onto the counter in front of Max, followed by a marker, followed by three complete DVD box sets, a first season poster, some keychains, and a Cassie bobble-head. The spaniel grinned. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  The younger canine started autographing the garments with practiced efficiency. “I’m looking for information about Windfall. Any weird things that’ve happened over the years.” He glanced at the aliens riding snowmobiles. “You know, actually happened.”

  “Hmm, now most people who come through that door want to be entertained. You’re sure you’re not more interested in a storyteller? I hear rumors about a Strangeville series revival, maybe a movie.” His eyes gleamed, green as cash. “You know, the kind of projects that need a local expert…”

  “That’s all just rumors, as far as I know.” He set his phone on the counter, its screen beaded with red markers. “How can there be so many gift shops in one town?”

  His floppy ears drooped a millimeter. “Every diner and gas station with a knickknack shelf calls itself a gift shop in these parts.” He waved dismissal at the mobile and plucked a laminated map off a stand by the cash register. “Lemme give you the heavy hitters.”

  The Open Chakra glistened with price-tagged healing crystals, sitar music and incense wafting thick on the air. Bead curtains and gauzy textiles hung from the ceiling. Max stood in the entryway, taking stock of the place. Light glinted through a spectrum of potion vials behind the counter. Shelves of statuettes traced the motions of a strange dance. Bins of colorful gems glimmered with plastic promise. Some kind of hematite tiara gleamed on a mannequin head, with a sign explaining how its magnetic magic helped mental focus. The shop felt odd—perhaps because he hadn’t fought any dragons or trolls to reach it.

  Behind him, the bell on the door tinkled. Max turned to see a family enter.

  A middle-aged lioness prowled through the front door, a bouncing cub clinging to either paw. “Okay, kids, you can only pick out one healing crystal each. Mommy’s going to take one for the headaches.”

  The siblings launched themselves away from her and touched all the merchandise.

  The husky ducked under a hanging lamp, its dangling prisms clinking over his ears. A whiff of potpourri became a waft as he passed further into the store. Semi-precious stones at precious prices glimmered under a glass countertop.

  On a clearing between the shelves, an Afghan hound in diaphanous robes sat crosslegged atop a tasseled cushion. Her ears twitched once, then she lifted her long nose to him. Her eyes remained closed. “We are each the Universe experiencing itself. How has fate handled you?”

  Max weighed finding out monsters exist against Kylie kissing him. “Pretty well, I guess.”

  Ringed by candles, she rocked back and forth. “Tell me of your life, child. Are you overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? At the Open Chakra, we can help you meet your ideal levels of health and whelmedness.”

  “Really, I’m just looking for some information.” His gaze fell on a bottle of Eastern Essences-brand goji berry anointment, its label featuring a serene, if pixelated, wolf.

  A sigh stirred her long fur. “Oh, isn’t that just the way of the world? Everyone’s just looking for information. Better to seek fulfillment, don’t you think?”

  “Been working on that.” His thoughts flicked t
o Kylie for a moment, then back to the task at hand. Anxious paws needed a place to be, so he stuck them in the pockets of his jeans. “I was wondering about how the town got associated with the supernatural in the first place.”

  “Leylines!” Her eyes sprung wide open, but skimmed right over him. Her paws spread toward the smokey rafters, then sank to the woven rug. “Conduits of power deep within the earth, you know. Tapping them requires properly resonant foci.” She selected a rod of quartz from a velvet-lined shelf and cradled it in her paws.

  The husky leaned slouched a little, so as to appear less dominant if she ever looked at him. “I meant culturally.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You ask a lot of questions for a tourist.”

  “I’m careful what I buy.” He touched a bin of discount chi stones. “And not a tourist, actually. I’m staying with the Bevys.”

  “Ah yes! So tragic!” Her paws clasped melodrama before her. “A proud family tree pruned by madness!”

  “Yeah…” Max contemplated how to steer the conversation back to the specific weirdness he needed. “We’re all broken up about the…pruning, but—”

  “Ah!” The back of her hand swept to her forehead. “Step closer, young husky. I feel your aura…”

  He padded closer and wondered how Kylie would feel about strange women feeling his aura.

  Her pale paw shot toward him and quivered. “You’ve come a great distance, seeking your path in life.”

  Max shut his muzzle and waited to see if she’d reach a conclusion not obvious from his age and accent.

  “I’ve…” Exertion dropped over her face like a theater curtain. “I’ve seen you before. In a past life, perhaps…”

  After several seconds of silence, Max felt compelled to help. “A past life with television, perhaps?”

  “Oh.” Her long face fell, bliss giving way to belligerence. Her voice lost its musical lilt. “I thought you looked familiar.” She stood in a sweep of gauzy robes and cast him a cold look. “Windfall was perfectly respectable psychic energy nexus until your stupid TV show came along and made a mockery of us.” With polite firmness, pointed to the door. “I’m afraid you must leave. Much of my merchandise is delicate and I don’t want to risk it being corrupted by a Hollywood aura.”

  Max left without objection, dodging around the cubs while their mother scolded them for fencing with the rock-candy suckers.

  Across the street, Windfall Hunting Co. presented itself as a legitimate outdoors supply, though the rack of Bermuda Triangle shorts raised a red flag or three. A jackal in an argyle smoking jacket guided him through the aisles of firearms and optics, past a mannequin in new khakis and an antique pith helmet. A book entitled Monsters of the Windfall Woods looked promising until Max found out it had been the result of a writing contest. The svelte proprietor somehow pegged Max as a deer hunter and warned the husky of the notorious lack of big game in the area, but assured him that turkey and water fowl were always a decent challenge. Max, who valued sleep too much to be getting up at four in the morning for any size of game, made his excuses and left after getting an earful about the time “that damn crystal-wearing hippy” lit a funeral pyre for the owner’s hunting trophies.

  He passed a liquor store called Primordial Booze, which prided itself on mysterious and ancient grains. One beer, Hops Circles, featured labels with an aerial photo of the crop circle the wheat was supposedly gathered from. A more exotic bottle, Karmic Cleanse, offered to purge him of toxins in unspecified, likely antiseptic, ways. In the central cooler, and looking tame by comparison, both the oyster and non-oyster beers of the Thomas Creel Brewery sat in their seaweed-green bottles, proudly labeled as “local product.”

  Further down Main Street, the Mystic Eye had a mutant pickled pig fetus on display just inside the door, complete with name tags for each of its heads. The proprietor was nowhere to be seen, but wet noises and the thrum of a small motor echoed from the back room. Max left without asking about any of the other livestock oddities that leered down from the shelves.

  The shops only went downhill from there. Voice-changing monster masks, light-up ray guns, alien-shaped novelty candies: an endless parade of unhelpful trinkets. A trio of raccoons trundled a cart of squid-god-shaped cakes from Arkham Hors d’Oeuvres. He also passed what appeared to be a stag bar, The Hind Quarter, which he didn’t feel the need to enter. The street outside wasn’t much more informative: he passed a pair of armadillo twins conspiring in an unknown language and tourists waving strange detection equipment at every power line. At one point, a weasel in a hazmat suit skated past him, headphones pumping electronica.

  Finding a game shop, three blocks from the end of Main Street, came as a pleasant surprise. Finding the rhinoceros fan from the diner working inside was also pleasant, if less of a surprise.

  The rhino bounced around the shop, restocking games and tidying. A battered clipboard hung, dwarfed, from his massive hands.

  Max stepped through the door, which rang a tiny bell. He stood still and let his shoulders relax a little, so as not to be intimidating. “Hey.”

  “One second, I’m just—” The heavyset male jerked his head up from putting a game on a high shelf and jabbed his horn through the bottom of the box. “Hey!”

  The dog extended a paw to shake. “It was Karl, right?”

  “Yes! Hi!” The young rhino tugged the box off his nose in shower of game pieces. They plinked to the floor in a colorful spray. “Ummm… Don’t mind those.” He ducked behind the counter, shoulders bobbing as he picked them up.

  “No problem.” Deciding it would be rude to watch Karl collect all the plastic tokens, Max walked down the counter to inspect the wares, searching for a conversation starter. “Hey, is that the new Mana Clash set?” He picked up a booster pack.

  “You play Mana Clash?” Karl’s eyes went wide with glee as he dropped the tiny plastic cheese wedges into the box’s new hole.

  The dog shrugged. “I used to. Before the show. All my cards are in a shoebox back home.”

  “We have a pretty good pool of people who play in town.” Rump in the air, Karl’s tiny tail swished as he looked up with a smile. “I could lend you a deck if you want.”

  The husky gave a good-natured shrug. “Sure, but maybe later. I’m kind of on a mission right now: hoping to learn more about the town’s history, but all the places I’ve checked out are creepy or touristy.”

  Karl taped over the impromptu opening with delicate care. The side of a game, titled Gorgonzola, proclaimed: ‘Nonstop action! One look and she turns you to cheese!’ He pondered the patch for a moment, then nodded. “A few places in town are more historical. Pinchy’s has been here forever. Maybe the town hall or an antique store.”

  Max pondered, then settled on an angle the rhino might appreciate. “Yeah, I’m looking for something a little more in the theme of Strangeville.” He flexed his sore paw. “But without merchandise they want me to sign.”

  “You could check out Curios & Quandaries.” Karl spotted a stray plastic cheese and peeled back the tape to drop it in the box. “Mr. Tartle has some cool old stuff. Just don’t touch anything without asking him. It can be hard to tell what’s fragile.” He grimaced.

  “You’re pretty good at directing people around town.”

  With a smile, the rhino shrugged. “I didn’t get to be this influential in the fandom just sitting around. I’ve been researching the local origins of the Strangeville mythos and podcasting it.”

  The canine’s ears rose. “Are you the guy who figured out Cassie had psychic powers three episodes before the big reveal?”

  Tiny ears and massive fists twitching up, he brightened like a shooting star. “You listen to my podcast?”

  “Mostly before the show. The studio kinda discouraged listening to that sort of thing while we were filming.” He cast back through his memories. “Strange Times, right?”

  Giddy with laughter, the rhino leaned back into his chair, which creaked but didn’t buckle. “Wow, that’s so a
wesome!”

  “Well, I’m a fan too.” The dog leaned against the counter. “Still making episodes?”

  “Ever since the movie rumors tanked, it’s pretty much just a fanfic roundup. Sometimes we trade theories with listeners, but even that’s starting to slow down…” He wrung his hands.

  The dog looked up from the map on his phone. “Fridays?”

  “Mana Clash.” The rhinoceros swallowed, finding something urgent to look at through the glass top of the counter. “If you want, I mean. No pressure.”

  “Sure.” Max wagged. “I’m sure Kylie doesn’t want me in her business all the time.” He thought about just what kind of business they’d been up to lately and heat crept up his ears.

  “Is it okay to take a picture?” The rhino waggled his phone. “To prove you came to the store?”

  The dog woofed a laugh. “Okay, but only for you and the Internet.” He paused for the snap of a photo, then stuck the map back in his pocket. “Anyway, I’d better check out your lead.” He gave him a little nod. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Any time!” Karl squeaked with glee, tapping at his own phone before Max even got outside.

  After endless tourist traps, Curios & Quandaries stood with silent dignity, a shining beacon of authenticity on the coast of a sea of mood rings and plastic alien masks. The old wood siding wore a coat of new paint, the second floor windows veiled by tan curtains. Even the “open” sign had been inked by hand. All in all, the shop came as a breath of fresh air, even with its smoky interior. What seemed at first to be a den of knickknacks hinted at something deeper the further he ambled into the store. A schnauzer smoking a pipe paged through a clothbound volume at the counter. His slate gray eyes rose to meet Max’s. Something unnerved him about the other dog’s look, like he’d been expecting a visitor.

  The husky nosed around the store, with its rows of old books and shelves of curious objects. Strange stone faces, carved sigils, chunks of rock and metal in improbable colors. Max’s attention caught one item in particular: a small piece of what looked like bone, carved and burnt. Upon closer inspection Max confirmed his suspicions. The bone bore the same tiny holes and unusual protrusions as the disk from the shack.