Magic Makes You Strange (The Brontosaurus Pluto Society Book 1)

by Noah K Mullette-Gillman

  “So why do you wear the cross? You didn’t just sit down and re-read the Bible while you were in Hell, did you?”

  Romana let the metal go. It landed against her chest. “My grandfather used to say that we were the Christians fighting the devils. But, if it’s more complicated than that? If its people against aliens and devils? That’s not the world he taught me about.”

  “Some things we’re just not meant to understand,” Mr. Grell smiled peacefully, as if he thought what he was saying was beautiful. “Maybe it’s a test?”

  “A test to see if we’re stupid?”

  “No, child, a test to see if you have faith; to see if you can believe a truth that your limited human comprehension is too small to understand.”

  Romana looked like her head was going to explode. “Did you ever read Orwell’s 1984?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “There’s a scene in there, where one man is trying to drive another man crazy. He wants him to - not just say that he sees something that isn’t there – but to believe it. The God you believe in, the way you describe him, is just like the sociopath in that book.”

  Mr. Grell sounded shocked, “That’s a terrible thing to say. I’m going to pray for you.”

  Another voice spoke, “Child…. We’ve been looking for you since… it feels like since Cain left home…”

  Romana and Mr. Grell turned around. Three faces were right behind them. One man stood there holding a gun.

  * ** *** ** *

  Edward rode back into town and then found himself walking through the city. He couldn’t believe how much it had changed. Everything was so new and shiny. There were so many cars. The sky seemed to be filled with airplanes. The air was so much fresher than he remembered. Really it wasn’t very different from Mia’s farm in Massachusetts.

  He still recognized some of the buildings. It was the same city he had known, but the more he wandered, the more he was struck by just how much time he had lost.

  He lifted another wallet and spent some of the money on a newspaper. The Germans weren’t the enemy anymore. It seemed to be the Muslims everyone was afraid of. Homosexuals seemed to be now a more or less accepted part of society. Everyone walked around carrying tiny little telephones in their pockets.

  He didn’t fully understand why he had missed all of those years. Mandelesian had said that it had something to do with how fast they were traveling, but did that really make sense? Why would the speed of his little spaceships make the Earth turn faster? What it really reminded him of was the stories his mother used to tell him about the men who accidentally wandered into the land of the faeries. They would spend what they thought was just a few hours there and discover that decades had passed back home.

  Edward didn’t believe the story that Lenore had told him on Venus, but he didn’t believe Mandelesian either, or the aliens, or Septimus. Mr. Grell was just a crazy old Jesus-fool. And Romana, well, it wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, but she seemed to be wrong about a lot of things. The devils and the aliens were different. He was convinced of that much.

  He had been told a lot of stories, but didn’t feel he had very many answers.

  He wasn’t completely sure that either one of them were what they seemed. The aliens might not have been aliens, just like the devils might not be devils. Was it all an elaborate game just to get him to write down that story about Zeus and Jesus? If so, why him? Edward wasn’t a poet or an author. He was a magician’s apprentice.

  And he still didn’t really understand why they took Nevil Dever. So what if he could make leaves and twigs sprout from cigarettes? Was that worth crossing the solar system for? Was that worth kidnapping the three of them?

  Not a lot in Edward’s life made much sense to him anymore. In a way, there were only two things that he felt like he could count on anymore: His ability to turn anyone he wanted to stone, and the fact that he could summon a great hairy monster from outer-space to fight for him whenever he needed one. Oh, and Romana. But that was complicated. He still felt like he was betraying Jenny when he felt anything for her. He did feel for her, and he felt very guilty about it.

  Edward realized that he had been walking to Jenny’s house. He hadn’t done it consciously. Maybe it was just out of habit. That was where he usually walked when he came into this part of town. For him, it had barely been a week since he’d seen her.

  She was certainly long dead.

  As he walked through the city, he found himself almost recognizing people. None of them actually were the people who he thought they looked like, but they were close enough that he kept expecting them to be the people he had known. He knew these streets. His eyes had expectations. He kept forgetting that he was in the twenty-first century now.

  Jenny’s building was gone. There was a restaurant there instead. He went inside and ordered a hamburger from the menu. He didn’t like it, and threw it half-eaten into the trash.

  As he walked out, he saw a blonde girl across the street. From behind she looked like his girl. She walked like Jenny did. As if pulled by a magnet, Edward started following her. He made no attempt to be discreet or to follow at a safe distance. His heart was pounding in his chest and he found himself hoping against all logic that the girl could somehow really be Jenny.

  She got to an apartment building and turned to walk up the steps. Edward got a look at her face.

  No.

  No, it wasn’t Jenny. She was so much like her, but the eyes were wrong.

  Edward howled. He made a noise like a dog whose tail had been stepped on. He leaned against a tree and used it to keep himself from falling to the ground.

  “Are you alright?” The girl asked. She had an American accent. Her voice was nothing like Jenny’s.

  Edward didn’t answer at first. When he did, he managed, “Yes, I’m sorry. I lived around here many years ago. You remind me of a girl I knew… when I saw you it just broke my heart…”

  “Piss off!” She said roughly, and turned away.

  “No, no. I promise. I wasn’t telling a story. Her name was Jenny.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Do you mean Jenny Wraithbone?”

  Edward nodded.

  “She’s my grandmother. You can’t have known her. You’re too young…”

  * ** *** ** *

  “The traitor. The Grell. We weren’t expecting to ever see you again,” the left head said.

  “We lost a lot of money when the Venusians took you to Eden,” continued the right head.

  “Eden?” Mr. Grell scoffed.

  Romana’s face turned red and she visibly filled with anger. She ran forward, growling like an animal and struck the middle head. There was a flash of red as her fingernails scratched into his cheek.

  Tres Horrendous took a half step backwards to steady himself. The middle head looked concerned, but the other two seemed excited. The left hand rose and pressed against his cheek, where she had hit him.

  “I knew that I just had to be patient to see you again. Did your summoner make it back to Earth with you?”

  Before she could answer, the short three-headed man grabbed her arms and twisted them behind her back. He shoved her against a tree trunk, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

  Mr. Grell closed his eyes and envisioned his spell. The power felt warm in his old bones.

  “Let her go, Tres.”

  The left head laughed. The right sloppily licked the side of her head. The middle spoke, “I will eat you both.”

  Mr. Grell launched forward with the power of a moving vehicle. He tore the dwarf off of Romana and slammed him down against the pavement. A crack more than four feet in length ripped open at the point of impact.

  The short and stubby arms wrapped around the old man and squeezed.

  Mr. Grell grunted in pain, then drove his two fists together into his opponent’s chest. The crack below them doubled in width.

  Romana knew that the old man h
ad no chance against the dwarf. The last time she’d seen the monster, it had been killing one of Edward’s Venusian caterpillars. Mr. Grell was old and thin and frail. Whatever spell he had would only do so much. The three-headed man was going to rip him to shreds.

  Mr. Grell landed twenty seven punches in the face of Tres Horrendous’ middle head. The skin turned purple. The eyes looked weak and empty. The right head laughed. The dwarf grabbed the old man by the balls and lifted him into the air.

  He threw the old magician through the windshield of a moving vehicle. Glass launched high into the air. The car turned sideways and then flipped upside-down as it jumped the curb and ran into a stone walk-up.

  Left and right heads turned and looked at Romana. The middle head was drooling, but the beaten eyes seemed to rise vaguely in her direction.

  “Can you do better?” One of the heads asked her.

  Romana cast her spell with her eyes open, afraid to look away. She imagined the symbols even while looking at the world around her.

  Her mouth filled with water. She swallowed the first few drops, then opened wide and let it flow. Buckets and gallons and rushing, rushing… A river began to flow out of her and straight at the monster.

  Tres Horrendous leapt twenty feet into the air, up into a tree. A river ran from Romana, around the tree and into the Thames. Once it got going, the water was eight or nine feet tall and more than fifteen feet wide.

  The heads laughed at her from above.

  “You need more spells, girl. It’s cowardly to only know one spell. It’s a choice, a choice to be weak and helpless!”

  The dwarf then jumped over Romana’s waters and planted a foot in her forehead.

  She fell back limp and hit her head on the sidewalk. Her ears started ringing. The water stopped flowing from her. The road was still flooded, but there was no force behind it anymore.

  She looked up at the three-headed man and discovered that her vision was blurry.

  “What do you care?” she asked. “What do you care if we know magic or not? You’re not a Venusian or a Plutonian, are you?”

  One of the heads answered her, “We don’t care. Howling tells us where to go, and we just like the sport.”

  All three faces were laughing. They had different laughs.

  Then the dwarf burst into flames.

  Mr. Grell emerged from the car crash. He was bloody. He had a tear in the skin of his face. He wasn’t walking properly. He held both of his palms out towards Tres Horrendous and smiled, even though blood poured down from his forehead and over his lips.

  The monster screamed and began splashing himself with the remainder of Romana’s river. It had been draining quickly, and the level was low by then. Steam began flowing up heavily from the three-headed man and his blackened clothes.

  Mr. Grell walked forward until he stood next to Romana.

  The three-headed man crawled further and further backwards, until finally he stopped. He stood up. Through the flames they could only see his middle face. It was beaten and burnt. The eyes looked black and gold and filled with rage. He seemed to make a silent promise.

  Then the monster launched up into the air again, and down into the Thames, where he disappeared in a puff of steam.

  Mr. Grell collapsed onto the ground right next to Romana, just as she was forcing herself up.

  16

  Edward begged Rose to take him to her grandmother. She wouldn’t do it. In the end, the best he could do was to get her to agree to take her a note. Rose had to go inside to get paper and a pen so that Edward could write to her.

  Dear Jenny,

  It has been a lifetime for you since we last saw each other. It has only been days for me.

  I didn’t choose to go, and I’ve been trying to get

  back ever since.

  I love you. I could never not love you. Please just let me see you one last time. If you don’t, I’m going to lose the last of my sanity. I will finally break into pebbles and fall upon the ground.

  You’re all that I have left.

  Love,

  Edward.

  She took the note. Edward pretended to give her back the pen, but he kept it. It was difficult for him to let Rose go back into her building, but he had no choice. As she disappeared through the doorway, Edward wondered if he could be the girl’s grandfather. He didn’t think Jenny had been pregnant, but it was possible. Was it possible that after all of these years he had still been the most important man in her life? Did Rose look like him? Well, they both had blonde hair at least.

  Once she was inside, Edward found himself wishing that he’d said more in the letter. Should he have given her a secret clue that only the two of them knew, so that he could prove it was him? What if this letter was the last communication they ever shared? The more he thought about it, the less satisfied he was with the letter. He hadn’t even given her any way to contact him!

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he started climbing the side of the building. It did not occur to him that this might be strange behavior.

  * ** *** ** *

  Romana and Mr. Grell retreated from the battleground and exhaustedly made their way back to the restaurant where they had planned to meet Edward. Mr. Grell ordered them a couple of beers. Romana calculated that they had enough for two rounds, but no more than that.

  “That was a spell?” she asked. “A spell made you strong enough to smash the pavement?”

  “It’s a battle spell. It makes you strong and fast and tough for a little while. It used to work a lot better when I was faster and tougher and prettier to begin with.”

  “Was he using the same thing?” Romana asked.

  “Prolly. Maybe. Who knows? Tres Horrendous is a monster, a real monster. You know, I’m still not sure if magic warped him into having three faces, or if he was just born a freak.”

  Mr. Grell took a long pull from his glass. When he set it down, his nose was bleeding. Romana politely pointed it out and he dabbed it with a tissue.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “No, I’m very old. I won’t die today, assuming Three-Face doesn’t come back, but I have no business doing what I did today. Magic or no, I’m well past fighting.”

  He looked at her silently for a while, sizing her up.

  “If you had a battle spell, no one would see it coming. You’re small. Even for a girl you’re slight. No one would ever expect you to kick any ass.”

  “Hey -”

  “Just a fact. But if I were to teach you the spell, maybe you could take on Tres next time?”

  “But it wasn’t the battle spell that beat him. You set him on fire?”

  “I brought the fire up in him. That’s another spell entirely. How many do you have?”

  “I told you, just the one. I can make a river.”

  The way she said it, he could see she thought it was an amazing spell.

  He shook his head. “That’s not a fighting spell. It’s a serious spell, but it’s not a fighting spell. When I’m gone you’ll have to fight. Anyway, shouldn’t Eddie be here by now?”

  Romana looked at the clock. He was more than a half-hour late.

  “How long have you known him?” Mr. Grell asked.

  “Since about five minutes before we went to Hell.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I know him. We’ve fought together, like army buddies. You know, they say you really get to know the real someone when you both think you’re going to die. We’ve spent most of the last few days in a state of ‘Oh God, oh God, we’re about to die.’”

  “Don’t blasphemy. What if he stiffs us?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if he doesn’t show? Then what are you going to do?”

  She drank. “If he’s more than an hour late, maybe we should leave? If he’s been captured, they could make him say where we are.”

  “That’s the truth. If he even is who he says he is.”

>   “You don’t believe him?”

  “I’m just saying, Eddie’s a professional actor.”

  “Magician,” Romana corrected.

  Mr. Grell shrugged. “He lies on stage for a living. All the world’s a stage…”

  “No. No, I believe Edward. He’s one of the good guys. He took care of me when we were in…Hell…” Her voice trailed off towards the end.

  “That’s good to hear,” Mr. Grell answered, unconvinced.

  * ** *** ** *

  Edward climbed up two stories and then opened a window. The window had been locked, but he used a piece of thread to unlock it from outside. It was a simple enough way to open a window, if you had been trained by a great magician.

  He was in what appeared to be a modern living room. A set of thick and luxurious couches were all pointed at a large black mirror. At first, he thought he was in the home of a very rich family, but there was garbage on the floor. There were old magazines. How could a family afford all of these fancy things and yet not manage a cleaning woman?

  On the coffee table, Edward found a five-pound note and several coins. He helped himself.

  Just as he palmed the money, a woman walked in from the kitchen. She was carrying a chocolate bar.

  She calmly asked, “What are you doing in my home?”, and then screamed.

  In the blink of an eye, Edward turned her to stone. He fired the spell off by thinking about the letter he had written Jenny.

  Her chocolate was made into rock, just the same as her flesh and her clothes.

  Edward took a moment to look around for money. He didn’t see himself as a criminal, not really. He was a survivor who had been thrust decades into the future. He didn’t have any legitimate ways to earn. Besides, someone must have taken the stuff he left behind in the 1930s.

  In her bedroom he found a purse with another twenty pounds in it. Again, he was amazed with all of the possessions she had, and repulsed by the filth. Was that how everyone in the 21st century lived? Where did it all come from?