. . .
Actually, yes.
7
Andrew takes her home.
The grass is growing high now that summer has settled in for keeps, and the stars are an opera out here.
He walks around to her side and opens the door for her. The car is a ’68 Ford Mustang, so the door is heavy and squeaks on its hinge. She lets him let her out; it is her act of chivalry toward him.
“The stars,” he says.
“Yep.”
“I have something for you. It’s in the trunk.”
“Is it a puppy?”
“Well. Actually it’s a basilisk, so don’t look it in the eye.”
“What’s a basilisk?”
“Something you shouldn’t look in the eye.”
She goes to light a cigarette.
“Don’t yet.”
It hangs from her lip as he opens his trunk and pulls out something book-sized in oriental paper from the card shop in Oswego.
“You wrap like shit.”
“I only try when I care.”
She likes this.
She pulls a folding knife from her pocket and slits the paper, cigarette jutting upright Franklin Delano Roosevelt–style because she’s grinning like a little girl. Because nobody gives presents like Andrew Ranulf Blankenship.
Making Stone Move:
Including Revivification of Living Matter Made Mineral
Michael Rudnick (1990)
Orville Hephaestus Yeats (1867)
The book has a red cover and black print, cheaply glued bindings. Somebody did this at home, or maybe with the help of a FedEx Office. She thumbs through it, squinting in the starlight. The text is two thirds photocopied hand script from the 1800s, one third badly typed Smith-Corona, impossible to read in this dim light, but probably no easy task under a lamp.
“A spell book.”
“The originals are more powerful, of course, but that’s why they’re priceless. With study and practice you may be able to get a few tricks out of this, especially Rudnick’s stuff. He started as a potter, too. Working with clay and stone as much as you do should give you that sweet-spot intuition.”
“Can you do the things in here?”
“Not easily. Nor well. But I never tried very hard at these arts. Not my specialty.”
“How did you get this one?”
“With my specialty.”
She knows the answer even as she asks it. They rarely buy anything. They barter. They are a community unto themselves, spread out across the globe, known to each other by reputation and now, thanks to the Internet, able to communicate in real time with science’s answer to (and improvement upon) the crystal ball. No doubt Andrew performed some act of film necromancy (speaking with the dead via film media captured while they lived) for another of his kind who rewarded him with this book.
His kind.
A wizard.
But he hates that word.
8
“Thanks for the book, great wizard.”
“I hate that word. It sounds like something cold-blooded.”
“It is.”
He pantomimes punching her arm.
“So what do I call you?”
“There’s no good word for it. Most of us say user. But that sounds like a smackhead.”
“Magic user?”
“That’s Dungeons and Dragons.”
“Oh. I never played.”
“I did.”
“No shit, a dork like you. But what do I call you?”
He thinks. Plays with his samurai bun.
“I like magus.”
“Sounds pretentious.”
“I know. But it’s better than wizard. Magician’s a guy with a top hat who fakes it. Brujo isn’t bad, but Chancho makes a face when he says it. Male witch. Going to hell. Communes with demons.”
“Don’t you?”
“What? No!”
“What’s that thing by the train tracks?”
“Not a demon.”
“What, then?”
“An . . . entity.”
“That you summoned with a spell to do your bidding, but fucked up and it won’t go away now. Sounds like a demon.”
Andrew doesn’t say anything.
9
(From an Exchange on the MyVirtualAA Forum, June 2012)
Floridachica: I heard about something called a high-bottom drunk & then herd it again. Cab anybody tell me what that is?
BRUTUS: A high-bottom drunk is somebody who thinks his s*** don’t STINK.>>>>>>>>>
MikeTinfoil: That’s sorta crude but BRUTUS has the right idea. A high bottom drunk is someone who has yet to realize what alcohol means to take from him and tries to pretend he can manage. Can’t fully surrender. Will probably quit coming to meetings, relapse, etc.
Wookie: A High Bottom Drunk is like my dad, whose on his third wife and doesn’t know that the stuff he says while ‘buzzed’ is why they keep packing up and leaving and also why I left home in such a hurry-just cuz he keeps his job and hasn’t been to prison he thinks he has a handle on it.
PaulaQ: Wookie-Is your dad in AA?
BRUTUS: People gotta LOOSE s*** and thats HARDCORE loss I’m talkin about. We got low bottom meetings here. This s*** is REAL with HORSEMEN all FOUR of them. People think they’re all good 2 EARLY and they BLOW UP>>>>>>>>
Wookie: No. Hense drunk, not alcoholic.
Ichthus70: I think there’s a lot of confusion about what a high-bottom drunk is, and a lot of people with low bottoms are (understandably) chafed because they had to have such awful things happen to them before they “got it.” Everybody in recovery has one thing in common, and that’s the realization that their lives have gotten out of control, whatever that means to them. It’s like Matthew 20: 1-16. The workers were all called at different times of day, and they all got a denarius (NIV) or penny. Those that showed up early griped because the ones who showed up late got the same penny. AA’s like that. Whether you wrecked your car and killed people or just showed up with high blood pressure from drinking, you found you couldn’t stop so you came to the program. And you got the same penny or denarius. You got clean. Nothing more, nothing less. Take my buddy Ranulf. He got drunk on really expensive wine (the only kind he drank) and called up something he calls an “entity” (but it’s really a demon), and because he had ‘glass in hand’ the spell to send it back went wrong and, even though he has some control over it (the bigger the command, the more likely it is to be able to disobey-the more it disobeys, the more it CAN disobey) it lives semi-autonomously in a cave near his house. But did he give up tampering with magic? No. He gave up drinking! LOL!
PaulaQ: Are you really saying there’s a demon in a cave somewhere? This is a serious discussion, not a joke. But I like the first part of what you said, Ichthus70.
BRUTUS: F*** your demonz and s***. U want DEMONZ, we got em at our low-bottom meetings. >>>>>>
Ichthus70: No, it’s really a demon. As in “we are legion.” And, Brutus, I can’t help but notice you like to put greater-than symbols after your posts, but that the number of them varies. For instance, your three posts have gone from 9 to 8 to 6 >s. Is it that your passion about this thread is diminishing, or are you using a more complex formula obvious only to fellow juggalos?
Ranulf: How did you get a computer?
Wookie: I don’t like it when these things get all religious. Can we just stay on topic? And I thought a high-bottom drunk was somebody who
Ichthus70: I know what you thought, Wookie. But you were wrong. Just like you’re wrong about the rash on your girlfriend’s po-po. It actually is herpes-2, and you’re now a carrier, and, even though you’re lucky enough not to manifest symptoms, you will actually pass the virus on to one partner for every > BRUTUS uses in this thread.
Wookie: How did you interrupt me?
PaulaQ: Wher
e’s the moderator?
Ranulf: Sign off, Ichthus70.
BRUTUS: Think your SMART but I DON’T THINK UR SMART. OR FUNNY>>>>>>>>>>
Ichthus70: Alas, BRUTUS, that’s ten more itchy ladies in the greater Baltimore area. @Wookie: If I told you, I’d have to kill you. @Paula: The moderator actually had his first narcoleptic event, but he should be shutting this down within three minutes. @Ranulf: is that a command?
Ranulf: Yes.
Floridachica: LOL I live in Baltimore, too. Who are you, wookie? Better not be who I think you are ;)
Ichthus70: Protocol, sir.
Ranulf: I, Andrew Ranulf Blankenship, command you by the conditions of your entry into this sphere, and by the power of
Ichthus70: My HUGE penis
Ranulf: such bonds as I have lain upon you to immediately
Ichthus70: display my WHALE of a DONG
Ranulf: sign off this forum and make no further use of the Internet
Ichthus70: (Careful!)
Ranulf: for a period of 40 days and 40 nights.
Ichthus70: As you wish
BRUTUS: F*** BALTIMORE! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
10
Anneke leans on the car next to Andrew, their hips almost touching.
“So if I get good at this stuff . . .”
“Yes.”
“Become luminous, as you put it . . .”
“You are luminous.”
“But develop it.”
“Yes.”
Their faces are close enough to kiss and they probably would, such is the warmth between them, had they not already explored that dead end. The stars sing on, quietly, breaking hearts.
The 302 engine cools and ticks under the Mustang’s hood.
“Will I attract weird shit, too?”
A cool breeze makes the trees say hush.
Andrew turns his almond eyes up to look at the firmament. As in see where Christ’s blood streams in. As in The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus, by one Christopher Marlowe.
Who also played with.
Fire.
Attracted weird shit.
A murderer’s knife in his irreplaceable brain.
A satellite hurtles, a bright grain of fairy dust, a second hand overtaking the flashing minute hand of an airplane far and farther below it. The wonders one sees for the price of a head tilt, a second of humility and presence.
“The entity came because I called it, using a very dangerous spell book I was warned not to use at all.”
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
“But you attract other things. Salvador, for example.”
“I made Salvador.”
“I know. But there’s that lady. From the lake. The dead mermaid.”
“She’s not precisely a mermaid.”
“You said she has a tail.”
“In the water.”
“Not a mermaid.”
“Not like the kind you’re thinking of.”
“But she is dead.”
“She died.”
“But not really.”
“She came back with a tail.”
“I’ve seen her here, you know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? She smells like fish cunt.”
“One gets used to it.”
Anneke gives him a raised eyebrow that says, Oh really? So you’re actually fucking that? to which he flattens his mouth and blinks his eyes twice, thus responding, What if I am, my Sapphic nonpareil?
“I’ve told her not to bother you.”
“Well, tell her again. I saw her shiny raccoon eyes in the trees more than once, and she leaves that god-awful smell. She creeps me the fuck out. What’s the word again? For what she is.”
“Rusalka.”
“She better not be fishtailing around here stalking me in some jealous fit or something. Because (a) there’s nothing to be jealous about . . .”
“Well, not precisely nothing.”
“Nothing to be jealous about, and (2)—”
“(b).”
“Right, (b), I’m not to be fucked with.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s hope roosalsa doesn’t find out.”
“Rusalka. As in ‘a rusalka.’ Plural rusalki. And her name is Nadia.”
“Cute. I used to name my fish, too.”
“Do me a favor and don’t ever confront her. Or threaten her.”
“What am I supposed to do if she’s creeping around on my land?”
“Just. I’ll . . .”
“Talk to her, I know.”
“Just don’t go near the water if she’s around. Don’t let her talk you into going near the water. If you’re scared, turn on your oven. She hates dry heat.”
He’s looking at her with serious-Andrew face on.
“Is she dangerous?”
Andrew doesn’t say anything.
11
“It’s just that I was swimming and I heard Russian. I could not resist. I love to speak Russian,” Nadia says.
The next day.
Andrew’s house.
“What did you do with him?”
“I took him to the ship, of course, with the others.”
The man rolls his long, dark hair into a bun and fixes it in place with a two-pronged little cherrywood fork, samurai-style.
“I thought you agreed only to do that farther away.”
She nods gravely, playing with the three-tiered necklace of shells, to which she has added the dog’s tag.
Help me get home!
“It is June, you know,” she says. Andrew knows she’s referring to the festival of Rusal’naya, when her sisters dance in the fields and on the roads from Poland to the Urals, luring young men to watery deaths. “I cannot assist myself.”
“Help myself, you mean. And the Russian thing is no excuse. I speak Russian. You should speak it with me.”
“No,” she corrects, holding up a pale finger, “you read Russian. When you force it out from your mouth, it goes unwillingly. Stinking of Ohio.”
He smiles at her Slavic palatalization of the h.
“What do you know about Ohio?”
“I know Geneva on the Lake. I know Erie.”
“That’s Pennsylvania.”
“Is the same.”
He gets up from his couch and goes to the window that gives on the lake, turning his back to her, his shoulders hard and angular as though the antique Japanese robe he wears were hung on a block of tilted wood. She can’t see his face but knows he is smiling at the darkness on the horizon. A storm is coming, and he likes storms, especially these nasty little June squalls that form so quickly they shame the weathermen. It will come ashore within the hour, bringing Canadian air with it, and he will put on his leather coat and go out to the balcony.
The coat with the cigarettes in the pocket.
“Is not the same,” he says, mocking her accent.
“Give me a cigarette,” she says.
“You know where they are.”
“I know. I just wanted to see if you had become a gentleman yet. But you are still from Ohio.”
She gets up and feels around in the pocket of the leather bomber jacket hanging near the door, pulling his yellow packet of American Spirits out and tamping it against her hand to pack the tobacco. Never mind that he has already done this. She redoes everything he does to show that it might be done better. She pulls one out and lights it, frowning at it as though even she cannot believe that something living (or existing, if you prefer) at the bottom of a lake might need tobacco.
“I feel your . . . disapproval,” she says. “You have something else to say?”
“You know what I would say.”
“That you hate it when I drown them.”
“To which you w
ill reply that nothing makes you come as hard as drowning someone, and that you’ll come like that for a month afterward. Besides, it’s in your nature.”
“And you will say go to Oswego to do that. Or Rochester. Or Canada.”
“But Canada is so faaaar to svim, and I vill miss you,” he says, imitating her again. He takes the cigarette from her mouth and puffs it, ignoring the fishy, dead taste, as he has learned so well to do in other situations. She takes the cigarette back and reaches for the spray bottle full of lake water, misting her dreadlocked auburn mane until it drips.
“Then you will ask,” she continues, spearing each of the next words with the end of her cigarette as she enunciates them, “What. Did. You. Do. With. The. Dog?”
“You didn’t eat the poor thing.”
“I wanted to. He was old, but plump and spoiled with good meat on his thighs. But I knew you would be upset.”
“So you ate him and resolved to lie to me about it.”
“I cannot lie to you.”
“You cannot lie to me and get away with it.”
“Is same thing.”
“Is not same thing. Is question of intent.”
“I left him where he was. The door was open. He can stay, he can go, is up to him. Someone will find him. Maybe you? You want an old shitty dog?”
“Salvador wouldn’t like that.”
“No,” she agrees.
He lights his own Spirit and inhales deeply, exhales slowly, mouth closed, eyes closed, letting the smoke come out of his nose in a luxurious rush.
Poison.
Everything I enjoy is connected to death.
“Did you ever get the feeling that something bad has happened, something just outside your control, and perhaps outside your understanding, which will set in motion a series of events that will lead to deep tragedy? And great loss.”
She considers this. Draws smoke with difficulty because she has wet the filter. Lets it out of her nose, as he did.
“Yes.”
The Necromancer's House Page 3
