I called Jared, who was minding Sybil’s Specialty Books at the moment.
Jared had been a quick hire after my previous assistant had turned out to be an operative conducting surveillance on my customers for an occult cabal of Ivy League professors. Jared’s employment had been an unspoken condition for his parents providing one of the emergency loans that kept my business afloat after my falling out with the aforementioned cabal.
He’d proven surprisingly competent and hard-working for a trust-fund kid on his eighth uncompleted major at NYU in two years. (That’s eight unfinished when I first hired him. I’ve stopped trying to keep count of how many he’s racked up since then.)
“I’ll be back late Thursday afternoon.” I said. “Keep an eye out for anything suspicious and make sure the security cameras are all working. If anything is odd call the police immediately. Also, find anything you can on Mesoamerican lore or mythology in the shop and pull it for me. If you get the chance browse it and if you see anything related to the picture I’m about to send you, tell me immediately.”
“Most people start conversations with ‘Hello.’” he replied.
“Most people waste a lot of time on stupid nonsense. And, they don’t have to deal with things like this.” I texted a picture of the thing in the codex.
“Most people actually enjoy interacting with other human beings.” he said, at which point he must have seen the picture. “Gck. Okay, never mind then.” He paused. “Are you alright?”
“Fine.” I insisted.
“Okay,” he backed off. “This isn’t going to be like the time with the voodoo punk band-cult-thing and the talking snake, is it?”
“Probably not?”
“That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.”
“Well, if you follow my instructions this time maybe you won’t get hypnotized and nearly lobotomized by a bokor again. Besides, I’m not sure that anything’s going to happen at all. I’m just contingency planning.”
“Fair enough.”
I hung up. I smiled to think that he was probably saying into the phone “And most people end conversations with ‘goodbye.’” I couldn’t help but like the kid (who was technically four years older than me.)
Back to work though.
My client probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he knew, but I made a scanned PDF copy of the codex before putting it in a vacuum-sealed bag and wrapping the bag carefully in cloth. Generally, my clients liked to ensure that they had relatively exclusive access to the texts I sold them, but that wouldn’t be possible in this case.
I spent the next three days fending off passive-aggressive invasions of my elbow-space from leering bus passengers, while diving into research using the codex, my own library (as Jared sent me scans of the books I needed), and reaching out to my contacts.
It looked like I was dealing with what the Aztecs called a Tzitzimitl. Finding the names of things is known as a source of mystical power for good reason. Even if it doesn’t give one direct control over the subject, like Solomon’s demons, it offers a touchstone for further research, a pathway to more knowledge. And as Sir Francis Bacon and Schoolhouse Rock tell us, Knowledge is Power.
For example, even though popular Aztec mythology had gotten some of the details wrong, corroborating texts on the Tzitzimitl supported them being right about its weakness to light and dryness. That would explain why our attackers wanted to completely black out Corey’s store. It could be my advantage.
After getting off the bus, I took care of a few errands, including dropping by my apartment, before heading to the shop, vacuum-wrapped book safely tucked into my satchel alongside a silver-plated ritual dagger.
I arrived at 5:30, an hour before closing time. I drank in the concentrated aroma of old books as I entered, the crisp air, the soft creak of the floorboards.
Oh, how I love to be home.
But, I cut off my indulgent reverie as I saw Jared’s lanky form loping down the stairs.
“Everything set?” I asked.
“Nice to see you too after a whole week.” he said. “I’m doing just fine and everything has been running smoothly here, nothing to report…”
He stopped at my glare.
“Yes, I got everything set, just as you asked.” he said.
“Thank you.” I replied, trying to put some sincere gratitude into it, though I think I just came off as terse.
As he headed back upstairs to close out the day’s accounts, I walked towards the counter, when I heard gentle ring of the entry bell behind me.
“Hello.” I said in a welcoming tone to the two women who had entered. “Just a minute and I’ll be right with you.”
I set my satchel carefully behind the counter and made sure that everything was in order before looking up at the customers.
They were immediately in front of the counter.
The shorter one was in a thick black burqa that covered her face entirely. She seemed to be shifting uncomfortably among the folds.
The woman to her left, who must have been over six feet, wore dark green veils that left only her eyes uncovered, and the wrinkled crow’s feet beside them. But what glorious eyes they were: dark yet fiery, like the piercing embers that persist by merit of their own intense heat even when the rest of the flame has guttered away. They were the eyes of a woman who commands not just men, but forces beyond the ken of mortals.
I might have been intimidated by such a countenance years ago.
Now, my primary thought was that she looked like a fairly good customer for my services.
“How may I help you?” I asked.
“I would like a text recently lost to me.” she said in a rich, rolling voice with an accent that I couldn’t place.
I felt my eyebrows shoot up. Shit.
“Lost recently?” I asked innocently. “I have experience tracking down recently lost books. What were the circumstances?”
Those black eyes smiled “It was stolen just this week by a highly-trained thief. I’ve already brought the thief to task and extracted a full confession from him of all of his sins. He was very contrite by the end. But, it would seem that he had already—what’s the word?—fenced?—yes, fenced it to someone else. This fence then recklessly attacked and grievously injured one of my disciples. I would be very happy to regain my book from this fence….And you shouldn’t have hit the panic button.”
How the hell did she know?
She uttered something which echoed strangely and once again I was plunged into blackness.
The sound of ripping cloth told me that that thing was tearing its way out of the burqa.
I grabbed the satchel and swung it around in a wide arc like a flail while screaming “Now!”
I felt the weighted bag collide with the tall woman’s head, producing a satisfying thunk.
I snapped the bag back, ducking behind the counter, and feeling for what Jared had stowed, but then I felt a wet tendril wrap around my arm. It pulled me with irresistible strength, banging my head against something hard, and then onto my back on what must have been the countertop, all while defiling the air with that hellish intermarriage of a demon’s roar and a baby’s cry.
Through the haze of my headache I expected to feel its claws tear my throat open.
Suddenly the room was flooded with light so bright that I could see it even through my closed eyelids.
That would be the emergency flood lamps and chemlights from our jury-rigged contraption to produce all the sunshine worthy of Mercury.
The light’s brilliance hurt my eyes, but by the agonized screech I heard, it hurt the Tzitzimitl a thousand times more. The tendril recoiled and I felt under the cabinet for our little stash of road flares. I untwisted the cap to light as I stared down at the twisted thing, writhing and convulsing in a desperate search for sanctuary from the omnipresent light. I leapt onto it, screaming and stabbing the flare into its face.
I thrust the flare at the monster again, and again, and again. It flailed wildly, its spines tearing in
to my clothes, but if any of them got through the thick leather I’d worn underneath, I didn’t feel it through the adrenaline. With its body a charred, ruined, mass, I quickly tore the sanctified knife out of my bag, unsheathed it, and ripped it across the monster’s trachea. The wretched hissing died instantly, but the infant only wailed louder, before it too started to fade.
As it did, I heard something behind me. I dodged forward on reflex, which probably saved my life, as I felt the tip of a blade only graze my thigh, rather than impale it.
The sorceress had come up to a crouch and tried to stab me. I whirled around when two men burst through my door. As they shielded their eyes from the blinding light, I recognized the first as the heavy-set thug from Corey’s and the second looked like his skinny brother.
The witch shouted something in a language I didn’t recognize, but which was probably a command to kill me.
Skinny-boy reached into his jacket for a pistol when I dived behind the counter again.
Bullets ripped through the wood as I looked around desperately to figure out what to do next. This wasn’t sturdy enough to provide any cover and I had a few seconds before one of the shots got lucky and hit me. My inner accountant moaned that the bullet holes would be very difficult to explain to my insurance agent without getting my rates raised, but I told her to shut the hell up and stop wasting precious brainpower: I wouldn’t be able to explain them to my agent at all if I didn’t focus and survive this.
Then I heard the sound of an aluminium bat striking a skull and a body thudding to the floor.
“The fuck?” said bulky.
I peeked up to see Jared with the bat standing over skinny-boy, apparently having jumped out from behind a bookshelf.
Bulky was quick on his feet, though, delivering a quick elbow to Jared and knocking him off balance, before pivoting to turn his pistol on Jared. But before he could open fire, I threw my knife at him. Bulky screamed as it dug into his upper arm and fired wide into the floor. Jared rebalanced onto his feet and gave the thug a good broadside across the skull, bringing him to the floor.
My elation ended prematurely when I saw the sorceress standing three feet from me with the skinny-boy’s gun pointed at me. She’d positioned herself so that I was completely exposed. There was nowhere to run.
“Hands up. The codex. Now.” she commanded. She turned to Jared, “And if I see you move at all, I will kill her instantly.”
“It’s in my bag.” I gestured lightly with my raised hands.
“Then get it out—slowly—with one hand.”
I carefully reached into the satchel and withdrew the vacuum-wrapped book, showing her the cover on both sides.
“Now place it on the counter.”
I did so.
She went around to the side and took it gingerly, keeping the pistol trained on me. As she slowly backed towards the door, I ran some game theory. I was only valuable to her as a living hostage to keep Jared at bay. If she shot me Jared became a risk, but as she got closer towards the door, he became less of a risk (she could easily shoot us both or shoot me and flee.) And, she might want to take vengeance on me so….
I dived to the floor just as I heard one shot…and then another….before she left with a little tinkle of the bell.
“Jared!” I screamed in concern, just as he screamed “Sybil!”
My heart raced as I hopped over the counter.
Jared was reaching towards me.
Blood from his mouth ran all over his white shirt.
He looked like he was in shock.
But he hadn’t been shot.
The sorceress had shot her own disciples.
The police interviewed Jared and me for what seemed like hours.
They were completely at a loss to understand the situation, particularly when it came to what the hell the Tzitzimitl was and what it was doing on my floor. I was pretty confident that they’d just file the whole case under a robbery attempt in which Jared and I had defended ourselves.
Bureaucracies usually take the path of least work, so if something doesn’t fall into one of the neat boxes on their little forms they typically just pretend that it doesn’t exist. It’s more convenient that way.
I wasn’t worried about the sorceress pressing charges for me having her stolen book. That would require admitting on the public record that not only did she have such books, but that she couldn’t fend off thieves. That sort of publicity can be lethal in our little world.
Jared was still pretty shaken, so I took him to one of my favorite coffee shops and reading nooks to calm his nerves.
Since he was still coming to grips with it, we mostly talked about other things: his parents, the newest one of his endless parade of girlfriends, the classes he was slacking off on. At some point after midnight though, we got around to him working through what had just happened.
“Pity she took the book, though.” he said, staring at the wall.
“No she didn’t.” I replied. “Well, I guess she took the cover.”
“What?” He cocked his head like a confused puppy. “Oh, were those pages blank?”
“Of course they weren’t blank.” I said. “What if the owner had looked inside before leaving? We would have been screwed.”
“So…then what was in it?”
I sighed dramatically, giving my tea a quick stir before knocking the lingering droplets off my spoon with the edge of the cup. “Yesterday I sent the scanned PDF of the codex to that chemist friend of mine, you know the one who sometimes helps us with authentication?”
“Yeah?”
“He printed it out with slow-disappearing ink onto faux-aged paper—”
“Wait, disappearing ink exists? I thought that was just in bad spy movies.”
“Yes.” I said, as patronizingly as possible. “An Argentinian publishing house actually did a whole run of disappearing ink books as pretentious gimmick a few years back. Naturally, the people at Cannes absolutely drank it up and gave it an award, pontificating on how it was a commentary on something or other. But anyway, you asked for me to explain everything to you. Are you going to let me do the Agatha Christie thing or are you going to keep interrupting me?”
“No idea what ‘the Agatha Christie thing’ is, but go on, Holmes.”
I smiled inwardly, knowing that my favorite little snarky underling was showing signs of recovery.
“I took the real pages out of the original binding. When I got back into town I deposited them in a safety deposit box and told our client where to find them. I then dropped by the chemist and bound the disappearing-ink pages into the original binding. As soon as our murderous friend takes her copy out of the vacuum-wrap the ink will be exposed to air, leaving a completely blank book within an hour—well, mostly blank. I left a little hand-written note saying that by the time she reads it, the actual book would be in the hands of our very powerful magician client, and thus well out of her reach.”
Jared was thoughtful for a moment, before “But couldn’t she still come back for you? Either to get revenge or to torture the location out of you to see if you’re lying?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I was rather hoping that we’d get the head of the cult incapacitated, imprisoned, or at least on the run with criminal charges, but best laid plans, etc. Still, without her pet monster or apprentices I doubt that she’d risk tangling with us again immediately. After all, when she had the chance, she shot her initiates, not us. That’s the act of someone driven by desperate self-interest, not revenge.”
We sat in silence for a while, as Jared drank all of that in.
“So why not just give them a PDF copy of the real thing? Wouldn’t that mean that she’d have less of a chance to come back and attack you?”
I stared out at the dark street. Shadows of people flicked by under the streetlamps. A million little myopic dramas constantly unfolding in their own little bubbles, each seeing all the other bubbles as nothing more than shades in the background.
“We deal in terribl
e knowledge.” I said without looking at him. “It gives people the capacity to do truly monstrous things in the shadows. I can’t be sure what anyone does with the power I give them. But, I can decide to not be complicit in giving power to those whom I know have already done terrible things with it.”
I drank my tea.
And watched the shadows in the streetlights.
THE END…
IMMINENT CAMPUS EVENTS by Chuck Von Nordheim
This alleged clipping of the Campus Events column from the Tuesday, March 20, 2018 edition of the University of Dayton Flyer News (vol. 65, no. 21) arrived in our editorial offices in an interoffice envelope sent from an unreadable location. Since the sender failed to provide any hint of the intent behind the clipping’s submission, this staff argued at length over the propriety of its publication. We decided in favor of its inclusion in our journal because the singed outline of a gripping hand that marred the envelope suggested the content below holds great, and perhaps dangerous, significance for some.
Campus Events
EGYPTIAN exhibit provides mummy close encounters
Tonia opened her nightstand and took out the scarab amulet she’d borrowed from the university’s museum. She whispered the Coptic endearments to it that her archaeology professor had taught her. All day, Tonia had felt sad because her pharaoh boyfriend only visited her three times a year during the full moons of first, second, and this third month of Shemu. Knowing she’d lose access to the amulet at graduation, she’d wept. But when he appeared at her door, Tonia ceased mourning the impermanence of love—especially the reincarnated kind—and lost herself in the magical suppleness of unwrapped, resurrected flesh.
Department of Psychology Reports Prototype Pilferages
In the Mental Augmentation Lab, Doug slipped a World-Shifter into his pocket. The wallet-sized device shifted sleepers to other realities by amplifying dreaming brainwaves. Professors had warned of glitches. Doug didn’t care. After Jennifer left, he couldn’t stand UD life. Everything—the chapel’s dome, Brown Street’s bars—evoked her. And, even after the breakup, Jennifer’s sorority friends mocked him. In his dorm, Doug chugged Nyquil and activated the World-shifter. He woke in an unchanged room. Then a cruel cackle. Beside him, a brunette in a Kappa Delta t-shirt. The stolen device had shifted him to a nightmare, not a dream.
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