The Warlock's Curse

by Hobson, M. K.

  “That wasn’t the intention of the gift,” Father said mildly. The conversation was drifting onto treacherous shoals. Will didn’t care. In fact, he was glad of it.

  “I know exactly what the intention of the gift was,” Will said. “It was supposed to make me feel better about not going to Detroit. And like I said before, there’s nothing that’s going to do that.”

  “Detroit?” Jenny asked. “What’s in Detroit?”

  “You know Tesla Industries, right?” Will said.

  “Of course!” Jenny said. “Who doesn’t? All the kids in San Francisco are just mad for their wireless musical cabinets. Teslaphones beat Victrolas all cold, not having to buy discs.”

  “Teslaphones are just toys compared to what Tesla Industries is really doing,” Will snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Tesla Industries is the leading center of Otherwhere research in the country—in the whole world. They’ve got an apprenticeship program that only accepts a tiny number of applicants every year. One of my teachers at the Polytechnic put me up for it ... and they offered me a slot.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Jenny gasped and clapped her hands together.

  “Yeah, isn’t it?” Will shot an acid glare at his father. “At least, it would be, if I could go. But it’s been decided that it’s not in my best interests, you see. I’ve got a power plant to rig up, after all—”

  “Really, Will, do we have to go over this again?” his father said wearily. “Now? At the dinner table?”

  “We can talk about it anywhere you like. All I want is one reason for not letting me take the apprenticeship.”

  “I have already given you several—”

  “One good reason,” Will spoke over him.

  Father lifted his hand wearily, raising a single finger. He looked at Will long and hard. “Traveling two thousand miles away from home and putting yourself under the complete control of a man like Nikola Tesla is idiotic.”

  “He won the Nobel Prize last year!”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t a genius,” Father said. “But even geniuses—especially geniuses—can surround themselves with the wrong kinds of people. His company’s policies regarding secrecy and privacy and the abdication of rights on the part of his contracted employees are completely outrageous. Did you even read the apprenticeship contract, Will?”

  Will was hot with indignation. “Of course I did!” he said, even though he actually hadn’t, as that document had been a hundred and thirty-two pages long and printed in very small type. But he had very diligently skimmed it.

  “Then perhaps you simply failed to notice that they do not allow you to have any contact with your family? Indeed, with anyone outside the program at all?”

  “Surely they’re doing research that could make them millions of dollars, Mr. Edwards,” Jenny said, wide-eyed. “Of course they must be secretive. They have to protect their intellectual property, don’t they?”

  “I suppose they do, Jenny,” Father said, apparently surprised at suddenly finding himself in a two-to-one battle. Will was surprised too, but grateful. “But I would be shocked if their apprentices were made privy to work of such extraordinary value. Rather, I suspect some form of indoctrination—”

  “Indoctrination!” Will blazed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, William,” Father said, in a warning voice, “that corporations—all organizations, as a matter of fact—must compel the loyalty of their workers. In the army, they call it basic training. Tesla Industries probably draws future employees from their pool of apprentices. And so they swear them to this absurd secrecy in order to make them feel like part of the group.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Will said. “It sounds wonderful to me! I would be happy to stay as an employee of Tesla Industries.”

  “Of course you would!” Father said. “That’s the whole point, Will. Organizations of this type do not give you a choice. You will be happy to be an employee because they will make you happy. They will make you part of a machine. Your ability to think for yourself will be reduced to what is good for the company.”

  “Yes, unlike here, where my ability to think for myself is reduced to what’s good for the family,” Will shot back.

  Father sighed. “Will, I know how intelligent you are, and how talented. But as I have said, I do not believe Tesla Industries is a good place for you. Not right now.”

  “Mr. Waters can vouch for the program personally!” Once again, Will attempted to invoke the name of Herman Bierce Waters, M.E., Vice Director of the California Polytechnic, whose strong recommendation had gotten him the apprenticeship. “He would hardly do that if it wasn’t completely trustworthy!”

  “Mr. Waters’ assessment is immaterial,” Father said, icily. Then, clearly searching for a way to pour oil on troubled waters, he said: “How about a compromise. If you will wait until the spring, we will discuss it again then.”

  “They probably won’t even want me anymore by then! Besides, what’s going to be different in the spring than now?”

  “Lots of things. The foaling will be done and—”

  “The foaling?” Will was furious now, and everyone at the table was riveted to the awkward scene. “If you’re going to make up excuses, can’t you at least make one up that doesn’t insult the intelligence you claim to believe I possess? Nate’s always taken care of the foaling, and besides that, he’s got two dozen rancheros to help him—and even the greenest one is more use than me! There’s only one reason to wait until spring—so you can keep me under your thumb, wiring up your goddamn electrical plant, long enough for the offer to expire!”

  “There is only one reason you need concern yourself with, young man!” Father roared in return, all patience lost. He slammed the table with his fist. “Because I am your father and I say so!”

  “Oh, Wordsworth, please don’t yell,” Ma’am said. She always called Father by his despised middle name when she was annoyed with him.

  Frowning, Father returned his attention to his dinner plate, responding as he always did when he was annoyed, in a tone mild yet palpably acerbic: “As you wish, my goddess.”

  “And you, Will”—Ma’am glared down the table at him, a look sufficient in intensity to make him curl back in his seat—“your father has made his decision. You’re needed here. We’ll discuss it again in the spring. If they want you now, they’ll want you then. Honestly, a few months isn’t going to make a bit of difference—”

  “It makes a lot of difference to me!” Will said, standing abruptly and throwing his napkin down with a melodramatic flourish. “But as usual, what’s important to me is the last thing anyone in this family concerns themselves with!”

  “William, sit down.” This, from Uncle Royce. It was the last straw.

  “Ben has the right idea,” Will snarled. “About all of you. No wonder he didn’t come home.”

  Will stormed off to the barn. He climbed the ladder to the hayloft, then threw himself down on a pile of old feed sacks in a narrow, awkward corner—no good for storing hay—that a much younger Will had appropriated as his own secret fortress.

  Everything was just the same as he’d left it when he’d gone away to school three years ago. There were still dozens of dogeared dime novels (now thick with dust) shelved on a pair of milk crates stacked atop each other. There were a lot of Vanguard Girl adventures. Also the Rover Boys, Pluck & Luck, Diamond Dick, several numbers of the Tip Top Weekly, a few Brushfork Banditos—and dozens of editions of the most popular of the pulp series, the True Life Tales of Dreadnought Stanton.

  Oddly enough, of all the books on the shelves, only one was actually his. The Adventures of Pinocchio, the gift Uncle Royce had given him on his eighth birthday. He’d hated it from the minute the woodcarver Master Cherry hit the wood with the axe and the wood shrieked in pain. But apparently Father had thought there was something important in Uncle Royce’s gift; enough that he felt compelled to read it to Will. It was a trial for them both, and perhaps one of the only things t
hey’d ever agreed on—they both hated that book as much as Uncle Royce seemed to find it admirable and instructive.

  All the other books were Jenny’s, brought out to the farm with her during the summers she’d come to stay. Like every other American kid below the age of dull maturity, she had adored dime novels, detective magazines, adventure serials ... anything with a generous helping of adventure and danger. She had been particularly partial to the Dreadnought Stantons, and there were at least four or five new ones of those every year, each more lurid and hair-raising than the last. Jenny found them especially interesting because they were about a real-life person—the warlock Sophos of the Stanton Institute in New York City.

  When he and Jenny were kids, the first thing she always did when she came to visit was show him the new books she’d brought. She’d always hoped Will would share her excitement over them.

  But Will never could. Reading had always been difficult for him—so difficult that a specialist doctor in Sacramento had been consulted. The doctor had said that Will suffered from a condition called “word blindness.” Will had (and still did) thought the diagnosis silly, for he could see the words just fine. It was just that they tended to slip and slide around, as if he were trying to pick a ball bearing out of a bowl of peeled grapes.

  As he’d grown older, Will had learned how to muscle his way through a text—he could hardly have kept up with his classes at the Polytechnic otherwise. But even now, he found reading a tedious, headachy chore.

  Not wanting to forestall her own enjoyment, but still wanting to include Will in it, Jenny had come up with the idea of reading the books to him aloud. And this Will had enjoyed very much, because Jenny had a flair for the dramatic. In this way he and “Scuff” had passed many a fine hour.

  But he wasn’t a kid anymore, and there was really only one thing up here that now interested him. Reaching past the books, he felt around behind them for the half-empty bottle of rye whiskey he’d hidden up here long ago. Like everything else, it was covered in a layer of dust, but he ignored this as he pulled out the cork with his teeth. He took a pull, finding it no mellower than it had been when he was fifteen, but the harsh burn of the alcohol nicely reinforced his feeling of being unfairly treated and all-around hard used.

  “Did you even read the terms of the apprenticeship contract, Will?” he mimicked Father’s voice to himself. He took another swig. “Bastard!”

  He threw back a few more angry mouthfuls, but getting plowed was not really what he wanted to do. He suddenly remembered the letter in his pocket—a letter from Ben! He drew it out quickly. It was thin and light in his hand, but at least it was something. First, he examined the seal. Will wouldn’t put it past Uncle Royce to have read the letter before handing it over. But the seal seemed intact, and if it had been steamed the ink would have smudged.

  He tore it open quickly. To his surprise—and dismay—it contained only a single sheet of paper. It was a very fine piece of stationery, bordered and engraved with a rampant eagle which had clasped, in its claw, a two-sided scroll. One side of the scroll read “Ex Fide Fortis” and on the other side, “From Faith, Strength.” Beneath the eagle were the words:

  THE STANTON INSTITUTE

  NEW YORK CITY

  A beautiful piece of paper, clearly swiped from Ben’s employer. But it hardly seemed worth the swiping, for Ben had only written eight words on it:

  Dreadnought Stanton 32: “The Warlock’s Curse.” Page 153.

  Will puzzled over this for a moment. He knew what the writing referred to, of course; Volume 32 of The True Life Tales of Dreadnought Stanton. Ben didn’t even have to give the volume number. While The Warlock’s Curse had always been one of the lesser known installments, the fact that Edison Studios had recently selected it as the basis for the first-ever Dreadnought Stanton photoplay had caused it to skyrocket in prominence. The motion picture was to debut with great fanfare on New Year’s Day, and all the movie magazines were filled with news of the production, which was rumored to be the most lavish and expensive Edison had ever undertaken. Even Walnut Grove, the small town nearest the Edwards’ ranch (which didn’t even have a moving picture theater) was plastered with handbills from rival theaters in Sacramento and Stockton advertising the film’s premiere.

  The Warlock’s Curse was among the many volumes that Jenny had left behind. He pulled it from the shelf and blew dust off it. On the cover was a picture of a young man’s face drawn in two halves—one half that of a nice all-American boy, the other half twisted and sneering, demonic. The picture gave away just about all there was to the plot—the kid on the cover had inherited a family curse or something, and Dreadnought Stanton had to defeat the evil spirit who possessed him.

  Will quickly turned to page 153. It was a page of illustration, showing a magical sigil, but with no other explanation. Will flipped back a couple pages and was laboriously scanning the text to try to figure out what part of the story the illustration was in support of, when a voice called from below:

  “Hey, you up there?”

  It was Jenny. Goddamn it! But of course she knew where to find him, this was where they’d played together as kids. Still, it annoyed him that she assumed she’d find him here—as if nothing about him had changed or ever would change. Why did everyone treat him like that?

  “What do you want?” he growled forbiddingly. But Jenny had already climbed the ladder to the hayloft and was settling herself in next to him, taking care with her tidy costume. A shining curl had escaped from the thick mass of hair piled atop her head. Her very presence here seemed outrageous. It was one thing for her to come up here when she was a girl, with scuffed knees and freckles. But now she dressed like a woman and smelled like a woman, and it was a clear violation of every secret hideout code ever written.

  Will quickly tucked Ben’s letter into the pulp novel, and shoved them both inside his coat. Jenny didn’t notice, too busy eyeing the dusty bottle of whiskey in his hand.

  “Thank God!” She seized it and wrenched out the cork before Will could protest. “I was hoping you’d have a drink. And I wasn’t about to squeeze in between Laddie and Lillie looking for one. Those two are like the stones of the pyramids, you can’t get a piece of paper in between them!”

  Will did not comment, but watched Jenny take a long swallow of the rye. She only gagged on it a little, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “And of course, after you stormed off, your father felt it was his duty to make small talk with me. You ever try to make small talk with your father? Especially when he’s mad?” Jenny shivered at the memory. “Your family tires me out.”

  “You too?” Will said. Jenny took another snort, then capped the bottle and settled back comfortably, looking around. “Hasn’t changed much,” was her conclusion. “You’ve still got my books!”

  “Yep, it’s like I’m still twelve years old,” Will said bitterly.

  “Boy, I sure liked the Dreadnought Stantons.” Jenny looked over the titles, smiling. If she noticed the absence of Volume 32, she didn’t mention it. “You remember the fight we had over those? I wanted to be Admiral Dewey and you gave me a bloody nose.”

  Will rolled his eyes. It had been a ridiculous fight. Jenny had been reading him an especially patriotic Stantonade in which the great Sophos was called upon by Congress to investigate the magical theft of a jeweled sword presented to Admiral Dewey by President McKinley. They’d both been so excited by the action in the book that they’d quickly dispensed with Jenny just reading it and went on to playing it out. It had been great fun—until Jenny demanded to play the role of Admiral Dewey. She said it was only fair, because Will had gotten most of the other good parts. But he found the idea so preposterous he’d been forced to object to it just on principle. She called him a nincompoop. He told her to both “go soak her head” and “dry up.”

  Perhaps it was the contradictory nature of these two statements that had made Jenny shove him. Will had shoved her back. And then there had been hair
-pulling and fists started to fly, and finally Jenny ran to his mother, crying, her nose bleeding. Ma’am, who tended to be quite democratic about such things, did not scold Will for hitting a girl, or even for hitting someone younger than him. Instead, she had given Jenny a clean rag to staunch the bleeding and then told her if she wanted to be Admiral Dewey she had to keep her guard up. Additionally, she confided that, like the Spanish Pacific fleet, Will had a tendency to leave himself open on the right. Jenny was an apt pupil; the next time she and Will got into a scuffle, she walloped him handily.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Will said, watching as Jenny smoothed her serge skirt over her thighs. Her button-top shoes peeked out under the ruffled hem of her silk petticoat, and his eyes wanted to linger on her slim ankle. He looked away, clearing his throat. “Now, I’ve bought you a drink. So why don’t you go ahead and get lost? I’m sure Ma’am will wonder where you’ve gotten to. Sorry I can’t offer you any Sen-Sen, but there’s peppermint growing just outside the barn door if you want to chew some ...”

  She frowned at him. “What do you have against me, anyway? We used to have lots of fun together. You got a girl or something, afraid she’ll get mad at you for sitting with me up in the hayloft?”

  “No, I don’t have a girl,” Will said. “I’m twelve years old, remember?”

  “Oh, cut it out. You’re being mulish, and it doesn’t pay,” Jenny snapped. “You and I have more in common than you think. Probably more now than we ever had when we were kids.”

  Will smirked indulgently. “What do you figure we have in common?”

  “Everyone expects too little of us,” she said quickly. “You always hear people complaining about how horrible it is when others expect too much of them. But it’s worse the other way around. Isn’t it?”

  Will pondered this, then nodded in slow agreement. “But you’re an heiress. Why should anyone expect anything of you? You don’t have anything to prove. You don’t have to make a living. You just have to sit back and let everyone treat you like a queen.”