“No, no, no,” said the man nervously. “I’m looking for something . . . occult.”
“Ah,” said Harold, understanding. “Did you have a particular title or author in mind?”
“Do you have any Grady?”
“Grady? Hmmm.” He thumbed his beard for a moment. “I think I ran across a couple of his somewhere. I sure don’t remember selling any recently. Let me check.” Harold leaned over the counter, looking past the stacks. As if summoned, Colby rounded a corner, arms overflowing with weathered old tomes. He craned his neck over the pile and made his best you rang boss face.
“Yeah, Harry?” Colby asked, anticipating the question.
“You see any Grady lying around the stacks?”
“Hans Grady? Yeah. Over in early American metaphysical.” He briefly sized up the customer. “I’ll show you where it’s at.” Colby set down the overwhelming mountain of books and beckoned the customer to join him, making his way back across the store. When the customer was close enough to hear a polite whisper, Colby lowered his voice, speaking with great care and discretion. “Now, I have to ask you, are you a collector or a practitioner?”
The customer anxiously fidgeted. “I really don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Well, not meaning to pry, but it’s important to know if Grady’s really what you’re looking for. I mean, if I were a collector, Grady would be an interesting name to have on my shelf. But if I were actually trying to get some use out of the book, well, I’d end up using it to steady my wobbly couch.”
The customer coughed nervously. “Really? And why is that?”
Still in hushed tones, Colby spoke, occasionally looking around to ensure relative privacy. “Grady’s ideas are all flash and no substance. The rituals he uses are purely for show, and the effects he gained from them, if any, would have come from his natural talent and not his work. His theories are hogwash and his calculations are scrawled twaddle. Now if I were looking for something with substance . . .”
“Um, well, I am something of a practitioner, myself,” said the customer proudly, trying his hand at modesty.
“Of course you are, and that’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of, especially here. What are you looking to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something . . . tantric?”
“You looking merely to increase performance, or are you looking to touch an external or internal consciousness?”
The customer looked him square in the eye. “I want to see beyond.”
Colby gave him a knowing look and a stern nod. “I have just the thing for you over here.” He reached back without looking, running his fingers along a shelf before plucking a book from it. The volume was heavily worn, its edges dulled by time, the binding a tad loose. “Now this is Donaldson. Not very well known outside certain circles, but excellent nonetheless. Here, open it.”
The customer took the book, handling it as if he’d just been handed the Shroud of Turin, examining every scratch and spot of wear as if they contained clues to the book’s origin. Opening the cover, he paged through it as Colby leaned over pointing gently at the margins.
“See those notes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Recognize that handwriting?”
“No, not right offhand. Should I?”
Colby was whispering very quietly now. “Now, Harry would kill me if I told you this, but I believe it’s none other than Crowley.”
“Alistair Crowley?” he asked, slightly louder than Colby.
“Sshh. Yes. There’s another sample later in the book that I believe belongs to Arthur Waite, but Harry hasn’t been able to get anyone to authenticate it. Now this text predates the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, so . . .”
“You think this is what inspired Crowley?”
“Might be. I promise nothing, except that the book is dead on. Its theories on celestial body alignment and its use in astral travel are the best found anywhere.”
“I’ll take it,” said the customer without hesitation.
“You also might want to check out Donaldson’s other works. We’ve got a few more behind the counter that we secured at a recent estate sale. Ask Harry, up front.”
“Thank you,” said the customer excitedly. “Thank you very much, sir.”
“Don’t mention it.” Colby winked. “Just be careful with that stuff. There are things over there that don’t like visitors.” The man smiled in return and made his way back up front.
Harold waited at the front counter, a proud smile on his face. He looked down at the book. “Donaldson, huh?”
“Yes. Your clerk said you might have some more up here?” The man peered eagerly around Harold, hoping to catch a glimpse of another volume.
“Donaldson’s a little pricey,” said Harold, slowly moving out of the way to allow the man to eye the stacks for himself. “But a few just came in this weekend. I can never keep this guy on the shelf for very long.”
“He sounds like he’s worth splurging on.”
“So I’m told.”
Though the man’s eyes bulged a bit when Harold handed him the total, he smiled as he wrote the check. He was no longer nervous, but elated. As he handed the check over to Harold and took his books, he glanced around and smiled. “I’ll be back.”
“We look forward to it,” said Harold.
The bell chimed on his way out, leaving Harold and Colby alone in an empty store. Harold smirked. “You know damn well that wasn’t Crowley’s handwriting.”
Colby poked his head from around a bookshelf. “Of course. It was McGreggor’s. But nobody knows who the hell that is—though they should.”
“Aren’t you the one who thinks Crowley was a cretin?”
“I . . . think those were my words, yes,” said Colby, playfully pretending he needed to remember.
“I’d hardly call the man a cretin.”
“The man sure knew how to write,” said Colby. “That’s why he’s famous. But he didn’t know dick about the other side.”
“Well, you just sold the guy a week’s sales’ worth of books with his name.”
Colby nodded, doing the mental math. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”
“Speaking of names,” said Harold, pointing a finger into the air like an exclamation point. “I’ve got something for you.” He fumbled beneath the battered wooden counter, rooting around and running his fingers up and down the broken spines of books until he managed to come upon just the tome he’d been looking for. Pulling it out, he spun it around, presenting it to Colby faceup. “I found a Ray at an estate auction this weekend, and I know of your fondness for his work.”
The book was very simple: a vanity-press printing with no art on the cover and the words The Everything You Cannot See by Dr. Thaddeus Ray in a nondescript, no-frills font. It had neither a dust jacket, nor any copy on the back cover. It was the literary equivalent of a brown paper bag. Colby politely took the book from Harold’s hands and nodded a thank-you. “I don’t know if fondness is the right word.”
“Well, every time a Ray comes up for auction, I spy you lingering over it for a few moments longer than the others. And since they’re so rare, and this woman clearly had no idea what her husband was dabbling in, I thought I’d get you one. This is his first, I believe.”
“Yes. First of four. Only twelve hundred and fifty copies were printed, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Well, now this one is yours,” said Harold.
“You know how much this would bring at auction? The sale of this would run the shop for months.”
“And I’m giving it to you. It wouldn’t be much of a gift if it were easy to part with, now would it?”
Colby nodded, smiling weakly, something of an achievement for Harold to have gotten out of him. “Thank you,” he said. “This means a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out of here. I’m closing up. Go home.” Harold smiled.
THOUGH HE OWNED a car, on days like this Colby biked to work. Aus
tin is a city swimming in trees. In the spring, every neighborhood is swollen with oak and pecan, branches arching over cracked suburban side streets; bushes bursting from the grass, threatening to swallow sidewalks whole. It is a green oasis surrounding a dammed-up river the locals prefer to call a lake. From the air it looks like a city devoured by a creeping green, its buildings like a series of tall, thin, Incan temples, destined to be overrun by jungle, left forgotten, to puzzle future civilizations. Of course, come summer, that shade is the only thing protecting residents from the harsh, bitter scalding of an unforgiving sun and its hundred-degree afternoons, when the green full beard of spring gives way to the brown withered stubble of drought.
It was spring once again: with its early-morning mistings, evening thundershowers, and temperate afternoons; a beautiful patch of green between the depressing yellow-brown of winter and the intolerable yellow-brown of August. This was the time of year Colby loved most. It was still early in the season, when the days could get well into the high seventies, but the nights were a brisk, wintery forty-five. Austin weather was like that this time of year: dysfunctionally bipolar. It was a time of year trapped perfectly between two very different worlds. And Colby Stevens felt a certain kinship with that.
Colby owned a small house on the east side of the city, squarely in the section of town teetering between hipster chic and too poor to live anywhere else. There was nothing special about it, a rather plain, unremarkable house on an ordinary, unexceptional street. He kept it in good repair, paying a neighborhood kid to keep the lawn up so as to not attract unwanted attention. It was a bar code of a property, generic, ordinary, and anonymous. Just as Colby wanted.
Colby opened his front door, breathing in deeply through his nose. There was nothing peculiar. He laid his keys down in the bowl sitting on an entry table just past the foyer, giving a good look around in all the nooks and crannies of the room. Closing his eyes, he concentrated deeply. There was nothing out of place and nothing present that shouldn’t be. Finally, he could relax.
He walked over to his bookcase, looked carefully at the shelf third from the top, and ran his fingers along four other copies of The Everything You Cannot See. The shelf was comprised almost entirely of books by Dr. Thaddeus Ray, filled in with a few other obscure reference manuals on the occult. Colby parted the four, splitting them right down the middle, sticking this new copy, his fifth, in between them. Then he sighed deeply, his only consolation being that Harold meant well.
“You have plans?” asked a voice from behind. Colby sniffed the air and immediately recognized the familiar scent of brimstone and gazelle musk. Yashar. He didn’t bother to turn around.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“Drinks,” said Yashar. “Lots of them.”
Colby nodded. “I think I can squeeze you in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SECOND STREET PREDATORS
Simon Sparks was an oozing slug of a man poured neatly into a three-piece suit. Well-dressed and impeccably coifed, he was like cheap scotch—just refined enough to seem classy to anyone who didn’t know better. Mid-thirties, condo, job in finance, a sleek car that could be started by remote, a band of pale flesh around his left ring finger, and a gold ring tucked neatly into his front-right pocket.
Simon had a theory about women, and if you knew him well enough that he both trusted and wanted to impress you, he would lay it all out. “They’re all broken,” he would say. “Every last one of them. Oh, it’s not their fault. It’s not biological either. I’m no sexist. It’s societal. We do it to them; we break them down, bit by bit, year by year. With magazines and commercials and movies starring big-breasted bimbos who can barely get a line out of their mouths before spilling out of their dresses. Women look around them, see a media full of undeniably—and unattainably—beautiful women, and then they look in the mirror and see a collection of flaws too numerous to name.” Then he would take a drink. He always drank right there to let it all sink in.
“ ‘My hips are too big, my ankles too fat, my nose is too long, my lips are too thin, my hair too stringy, my breasts a little lopsided, my nipples are too large or too small or too brown or too pink.’ And the worst ones, the very worst offenders of all, are the really, spectacularly beautiful ones. The ones who stop traffic.” He would take another drink right here, nodding, smiling, as if he were about to tell you one of life’s biggest secrets. “The ones the nice guys are terrified to talk to and who spend all of their time getting battered to pieces by the cocky assholes who do. Those girls are kicked to shit and left hungry for any kind of attention.
“Those are the girls that do the dirtiest stuff. They’ll let you do anything to them. They’ll drop down and give you twenty and beg you at the top of their lungs to give it to them harder, give it to them deeper, and give it to them in any place you want. As long as you give it to them. And don’t leave in the morning before getting their number. Because that’s what breaks them. That’s what they don’t understand. They think that if they were prettier, you’d call them back. That if they had done it right, you would call them back. That if they were only interesting enough, you would call them back. But you won’t. You will never call them back. Because pretty as they are, they are not worth the hassle with your wife.”
That was Simon Sparks. And Simon Sparks was once again on the prowl, once more hustling his wares in a walk-up Second Street bar too trendy to be open during normal hours on normal days. He made his way through the club, eyeing only the youngest and leanest of the night’s crop. Few paid him much mind; even fewer met his exacting standards. And then he saw her. Grace.
She was five feet nine inches of lithe, firm, blond dysfunction. Her confidence was faulty and laid on a bit too thick, but her dress was tight enough to reveal just how flawless she would look naked. Simon eyed her up and down, trying to figure out exactly which of her features bothered her most. Was it her lips? Her hair? Her thighs? If he guessed right the first time, he could shave a half hour off winning her over. Women were tricky that way. They wanted to be thought of as beautiful, but they only wanted you if you thought they were almost beautiful.
“My name’s Grace,” she said with a cute southern drawl. Georgia. She was definitely from Georgia.
“Simon.”
“What do you drive, Simon?”
“An A-6. You?”
“Tonight? Hopefully an A-6.”
Jackpot. Simon smiled wryly and cocked a brow. “You wanna get out of here?”
“That’s not how it works, Simon. First you buy a girl a drink. And then you ask her to leave with you.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Blue Label. Neat.”
Simon stuck a finger in the air without taking his eyes off her. “Bartender! Two Blue Labels!”
“Neat,” she said, sliding a hand up his thigh.
“Neat!”
SIMON AWOKE STRAPPED to a rickety chair in a dilapidated warehouse, hands bound together with duct tape, a sweaty sock taped firmly in his mouth. Groggy, he sifted through memories, trying to figure out exactly where he was. He remembered the blonde. Grace. Grace was her name. He remembered leaving with her, going to his car and letting her drive. Then he remembered drifting off in his seat, confused. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Grace had said. “Those are just the drugs kicking in.”
He looked around, frantic. The floors were stained with oil, smooth concrete marred with gouges from heavy machinery. The air was moist and rotten, like old death. And two shadows lingered just outside of the light.
“Look who’s awake,” said the taller of the two.
Simon immediately began to cry. And to sob. He shook his head, jumping around in his chair, clacking its legs on the cement, screaming through the sock, “MwomwoMWO! Mweee! MWEEEHEHEHEHE!”
The taller of the two stepped into the light. He was a thin, gaunt mutant, balding despite his youth, with hair combed over the scabby, bulbous portions of his head. One of his eyes was coc
ked to the side, and his teeth were feral—sharp, crusty, and yellowed. Knocks.
He smiled. “I’m sorry, Simon. I’m afraid I can’t hear you properly beg for your life. Let me help you with that.” He walked over and tore the tape from Simon’s mouth.
Simon immediately spat out the sock, heaving from the taste. “Please don’t kill me!” he shouted.
“Why ever not?”
“Let me go. Please let me go.”
“There’s no fun in that. Not unless we chase you and run you down. Dietrich!” He waved to the short shadow behind him. From the darkness it came, a malignant, twisted dwarf of a man wearing a sweaty red nightcap on a head two sizes proportionally larger than it should have been. The dwarf dragged a long tire chain that skittered, snaking across the floor.
“Please, God, no!”
Dietrich swung the chain across his legs, splintering his kneecap. Simon cried out.
“Please! Do whatever you want to me. But please, don’t hurt my family!”
Knocks and Dietrich stared, dumbfounded, with jaws slack, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“I’ll get you your money!”
“Money?”
“I told Jorge that I’d get the money and I’ll get it.”
Eyeing him up and down, Knocks sniffed at the air. “You’re not lying, are you?”
“No! Of course not.”
“You really are afraid we’re going to kill that cold bitch of a wife of yours?”
“Hey! Don’t you dare!”
Dietrich whacked his splintered kneecap again, this time shattering it.
“Don’t get sanctimonious, douche bag. Why else would you be prowling for southern tail, unless you had somehow convinced yourself you were entitled to it?”
“That’s none of your business, you son of a . . .” He stopped himself, trailing off immediately into regret.
“Dietrich, I think perhaps you’ll be killing his wife after all.”
Dreams and Shadows: A Novel Page 19
