Aces & Eights

by Dale Lucas

  “Who sent you?” Randolph asked.

  Dub shook his head. “Nobody, Mr. Randolph. I came here to solve a personal problem of my own accord.”

  “What sort of problem?” Randolph asked.

  “That’s none of your business at this point,” Dub answered. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit coat and produced the paper on which he’d scrawled the strange symbols he remembered from the mojo in the cellar of Aces & Eights.

  “I need these symbols identified,” Dub said as he handed over the scrap of paper. “I’ll be happy to reimburse you for your time.”

  Randolph snatched the paper from Dub’s hands and studied it. Immediately, something changed in his countenance: the suspicion was gone; the furtiveness vanished. The bookworm had a problem to solve—a real problem, suited to his peculiar skills!—and he surrendered himself to it. Dub even thought he saw something resembling happiness and ease on the man’s pinched face and narrow, pursed lips.

  Without another word, he pushed past Dub, bent over a hip-high pile of books and magazines teetering against one of the high shelves, and reached for a tome above him. When he’d eased the dusty old book and its yellow pages down, he turned to Dub and waved him out of the chair.

  “Move,” he said. “I need to sit down.”

  Dub moved, and Randolph took the chair. He placed the book in his lap, fanned it open, and started searching its pages, all the while clutching the scrap of paper in his right hand.

  “I could give you some time, if—”

  Randolph raised a finger. “This won’t take long, I assure you.” Then, he raised his dark eyes and skewered Dub with them. “But I’ll have to charge you for a full hour’s work, I’m afraid. Can’t charge in quarter-hours, after all.”

  “Can you identify it?” Dub asked impatiently.

  “If you leave me be for five minutes,” Randolph said with notable prickliness, “I can most likely translate it. Was this a particular sequence, or just random symbols you copied?” He lowered his eyes to the book again.

  “That was a particular sequence,” Dub said, stepping away to give the fellow some room to work. “There were more, but that was the only one I could remember.”

  “Where on earth did you find it?” Randolph asked, nose still in the book in his lap.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Dub said, voice trailing off, settling into a slow perusal of Randolph’s book collection as the strange little man went to work identifying the symbols. In the midst of his perusal, his eyes fell to another haphazard pile of pulp magazines, specifically, Weird Tales. Dub fanned out the pile a little, noting that the publication dates were all from the past year, and that nearly every cover to every issue bore the same name.

  Howard Randolph.

  In this issue: The Festival! The Unnamable! The Temple! The Vault! The Outsider!

  All by Howard Randolph.

  Dub might have dismissed the fellow’s work as the product of an overly-fanciful or diseased mind, but there was still the great intellectual weight and eclecticism of the books on his shelves: Sir Richard Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights; Paracelsus; Cornelius Agrippa; Eliphas Levi; Carl Jung; Nathaniel Hawthorne; William Blake; Edgar Allan Poe; George MacDonald; Lord Dunsanay... and all of those puzzling tomes on subjects that people weren’t known to read of for mere pleasure: history and geology; the Chaldean Oracles; the Apocrypha; the Book of Enoch; the Enuma Elish; the Sephir Yetzirah; and some narrow but well-worn little leather-bound folio called the Necronomicon. Quite the heavy handle for such a slim volume!

  “You’ve got varied reading tastes, Mr. Randolph,” Dub said.

  “That’s why you came to me, isn’t it?” the little man muttered.

  Dub shrugged. Yes. He supposed it was. He turned. Randolph was making some pencil notes on the scrap of paper that Dub had given him.

  “Well?”

  Randolph raised his eyes, now alight and downright proud; clearly the work of solving a mystery, however briefly, had brought the sickly little man to life. “Glagol. That’s the alphabet. Slavic. Ninth century.”

  Dub stared, as though he could not believe what Randolph told him. Randolph, seeming to sense Dub’s incredulity, stood and offered the book in his lap. Dub took it and studied it. It turned out to be a survey on the history of European linguistics. There on the moldered page was a chart showing the Glagol alphabet, clear as day, though the shape of the letters, as Dub remembered them, clearly reflected a more primitive, less refined version of those letters.

  Dub looked at Randolph, duly impressed by his investigative abilities. “Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Randolph smiled crookedly. “I suppose for someone who didn’t know what they were looking for, it might have been. But I was just looking at this book a week or two ago—research for a story I’ve in mind—and so it was fresh.”

  Dub suggested the scrap. “You translated it?”

  Randolph nodded and presented the scrap. “That’s the really puzzling part. The alphabet is Glagol—Slavic—but the translation I get is a name out of Greek myth: Megaera.”

  “Megaera?”

  “One of the Furies,” Randolph continued. “Nemesis, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. Some say there were only three, but Nemesis was clearly associated with them; some say there were many more. But those are the central four. Now, then—would you like to tell me why anyone in Harlem would be using ancient Slavic letters to invoke a chthonic Greek deity?”

  His tone implied that no one in Harlem could possibly have a working knowledge of, let alone an interest in, either. Dub licked his teeth, his patience at an end. After a moment, he shook his head and held out his hand for the little slip of paper. “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. He’d had enough of the fellow’s impertinence. “How much do I owe you, Mr. Randolph?”

  The pale Mr. Randolph narrowed his eyes and pursed his thin lips, clearly frustrated. “You can tell me what you saw,” he goaded. “I’m prepared to believe you.”

  Dub raised an eyebrow. “Are you?” he asked. “Because if I see even a hint of condescension in your face, or if I hear words like ‘quaint’ or ‘superstitious’ come out of your mouth, I can promise you, Mr. Randolph, this meeting will not end well.”

  Randolph seemed insulted at first—then something else came over him. A strange sort of determination; a quiet acceptance. He nodded and folded his hands before him. “I apologize for my rudeness, doctor. Clearly you’re a man of learning. Once I heard the nature of your request and bore witness to your interest in my books, I should have respected that fact.”

  Well, here was progress. Dub was duly impressed by the fellow’s willingness to apologize. And he was knowledgeable. Perhaps storming out over a case of bad manners was an overreaction.

  Besides, a man who lived in such a cramped little hovel, wrote spook stories for fun, and found occasion to casually research Slavic alphabets might not think him mad when he offered a frank explanation. Dub sighed. “It was inscribed on a skull; part of sculpture of sorts; sort of a talisman.”

  “Like the skulls employed in vodou?” Randolph offered.

  Dub nodded. “Something like that. There were four skulls, each with a different name, in those letters, written on its forehead. They were arranged in a cluster, each facing outward, and beneath them were a pair of crossbones, along with some other stuff: crow feathers and animal skulls, teeth and nails and whatnot.”

  Randolph stared, almost as though Dub’s words were winning his heart of hearts. “That’s extraordinary,” he said breathlessly.

  “It was that,” Dub said.

  “Do you mind if I use that?” Randolph asked.

  “Use it?”

  “In a story?”

  “Do what you like with it when I’m gone, Mr. Randolph. But here and now, I need your best guess on what such a thing might be, and who might have made it.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Hidden in a place of business. In the cellar. Under
an old, plugged manhole cover.”

  Randolph considered this. “Does the proprietor have enemies?”

  “She does,” Dub said. “Most assuredly.”

  “Then it’s a curse engine,” Randolph said. “Someone wanted the owner of this place of business to fail miserably and planted that talisman, as you call it, to curse the place. Have there been strange events of late? Discord? Violence? Deaths, perhaps?”

  Dub nodded. He’d heard all he needed to. “All three. Guess I need to get that thing out of there.”

  “You mustn’t! It’s a curse engine, Dr. Corveaux! It spews malignity like a still drips liquor. It’s probably already infected the place, and will continue to, regardless of its physical removal. And if you lay hands on the thing—you didn’t, did you?”

  “I wasn’t able to,” Dub said. “Just as I found it, there was a... disturbance. I wasn’t able to touch it—”

  “And best you didn’t!” Randolph said. “No, sir—the only means of lifting the curse now is either to employ the engine’s maker, or some powerful, apposite magical rite to clear the air.”

  “Any ideas on whom might have made such a thing?” Dub asked.

  “Glagol,” Randolph said, shrugging and indicating the scrap with Dub’s notes on it. “Slavic. Invoking the name of an ancient, chthonic Greek deity. I’d say your mage is Eastern European... probably very old, and very Old World, if you get my meaning.”

  “I think so.”

  “Likewise, there’s the subject of this curse to consider. Who is he? One of your kind?”

  Dub felt his teeth grind. “Yes. She is.”

  Randolph seemed puzzled by that. “A Negro businesswoman? How extraordinary.”

  Dub didn’t know how to read the thin man. He seemed to alternate between being an egg-headed, arrogant, bigoted know-it-all and a wondering, wide-eyed babe in the woods. And his astonishment at both Dub’s monetary means and the notion of a Negro businesswoman was nothing short of infuriating.

  Still, he now seemed willing to help—more focused on the problem itself than on his apparent disdain for the Negro seeking aid. Dub supposed that was a step in the right direction. The horse-faced little prick could just as easily have refused him outright... or sent him packing with nothing more than the alphabet, sans translation, his wallet lighter and the mystery he was pursuing still no closer to being solved.

  Randolph interrupted his moment of cynical introspection. “I take it the place of business in question is in Harlem?” he asked.

  Dub nodded. “Correct.”

  “In magical terms, Harlem has its own gods and its own pagan protectors, like any minority enclave.”

  Dub felt a little flush of pride. Pagan Protector, at your service, Mr. Randolph. Dub shrugged, trying to remain noncommittal. “I suppose.”

  “Then clearly this magic isn’t African or even Caribbean in origin. The one who contracted it might be, but they would’ve gone far affield, to try and fetch some means of cursing a fellow Negro that Negro folk magic would have no means of countering.”

  “Could there be someone out this way, capable of—”

  “No no no,” Randolph said, waving away Dub’s suggestion, annoyed. “These are all Mediterranean sorts hereabouts—and Jews, who you can probably discount, because the letters would be in Hebrew and the gods invoked would never be Greco-Roman. Were your cursor Jewish, they’d most likely invoke some Judeo-Persian angelic or demonic name. No, the script is the key. Clearly, you’re looking for someone with very ancient knowledge, most likely of a Slavic descent.”

  “The Lower East Side?” Dub offered.

  “Magda!” Randolph breathed, suddenly seeming to discover the name of his own accord.

  “Excuse me?”

  Randolph looked around, found a slip of paper, and scrawled some hasty directions upon it. He offered it to Dub. “I’ve heard of her, but never seen nor spoken to her. I’m not even sure where she lives, exactly. But she’s well known below Canal Street. There’s a fine old Moldavian Jew thereabouts. Owns a pharmacy. Tell him I sent you, give him the thinnest of explanations—please leave out your rather vivid description of the engine itself—and ask him to point you toward Old Magda. If he refuses to help, there’s nothing more to be done, save wandering the Lower East side and asking strangers. One of them might take pity on you.”

  Dub took the paper and studied the little man. Randolph held out his hand. “Twenty-five dollars, please.”

  Dub gave the strange, thin fellow with the horse face a full thirty, then hurried on his way.

  XX

  Come late afternoon, Dr. Dub Corveaux found himself in a dishwater corner of the Lower East Side, wondering just how stupid one black, college-educated physician was capable of being. If he had come down this way in the dead of night, horsed and armed, he might have felt safe. But here and now, late in the day with the sun hidden behind the glowering tenements and the populace staring at him like the devil incarnate or fresh meat or both... well, he had to question his own judgment. Dr. Dub Corveaux could talk his way out of most trouble and scrap his way out of the remainder, but given his druthers, he didn’t want to see which would be necessary to get out of the Lower East Side alive.

  Yakov Spiel had been the Moldavian pharmacist whose name Randolph had offered. Spiel had looked Dub up and down with respect and pity: he didn’t give him the normal cold shoulder that a lot of Old World mocks gave a Negro in a decent suit, but neither was he eager to help.

  “You look for Magda,” he said, after Dub had introduced himself and explained his presence in the briefest manner possible. “Why you seek Magda?”

  “I’d just like to talk to her,” Dub answered. “Ask her some questions.”

  “She won’t talk to you,” the old druggist said.

  “Let me worry about that,” Dub answered.

  “She’ll curse you and feed you to her little maziks,” he said. Dub didn’t know what a mazik was, but he didn’t like the sound of it. “You go now, huh?”

  “No,” Dub said, trying to stay firm. “I came a long way. Help me. What happens to me when I walk out this door isn’t your concern.”

  “Fat lot you know,” the old man said, shaking his head. “Every man is every man’s concern, huh?”

  Dub started to say something glib but thought better of it. “Please,” was all he could manage, and Spiel gave him directions. Two rights, three lefts, then right, then one more left; this street, that street, this street, etc. Dub’s head nearly swam, trying to soak up the directions as they were given; he didn’t want to ask a second time. Then he bought a Coca-Cola from Spiel, paid for it with a half-dollar, and was on his way.

  Now the Cola was gone and he stood in the shadows of a towering, frowning old shithole of brick and ash-colored mortar that was probably older than the whole Lower East. The place looked so ancient and rotted it might well have been standing when the Dutch cheated the Red Men out of Manhattan. It sported the same rank plumage as its neighbors—seemingly forgotten laundry flapping on dry-lines stretched like the decrepit, soot-besotted webs of old, dead spiders in the alleyways, climbing all the way up the sides of the tower, with gaping forward windows barely retaining any glass and a general feeling of wrongness about the whole mess.

  Beneath his shirt, against his skin, he felt his Legba veve pendant lifting from his chest, pressing gently against his shirt, drawn to the magical cesspool that stood before him.

  Well. Guess this is the place.

  Dub marched right up to the cancerous old brickworks and only stopped when a pack of dirt-faced little ruffians—the oldest no more than eight or ten years old—blocked his path. They appeared quickly, scurrying out of the forward cellar windows and the many trash-piles thereabouts like a bunch of two-legged rats. They fanned out and surrounded him before he even had the chance to say hello.

  Maziks? he wondered.

  He tried to smile and felt his grin failing him. “Fellas. How do this afternoon?”

  No ans
wer. The tallest one, whom he assumed to be the leader, glared at him, dark eyes big in his bony, grimy face.

  Dub suggested the building they guarded. “This where the old lady live? The one they call Magda?”

  Again, no answer. Dub offered his empty Coca Cola bottle. “You wanna take this back to the druggist, he’ll probably give you the deposit. That should be a few pennies, I guess—”

  The lead urchin snatched the cola bottle, and in one swift movement, bent and smashed it on the pavement. Now, holding its neck, he raised the jagged fragment, lunged, and took a swipe at Dub.

  Dub slid backward and arched to keep his middle clear of the whizzing bottleneck. He felt a sear of pain in his left thigh, heard fabric rip, and knew the little bastard had drawn blood. With-

  out stopping to check the wound, he hopped back three more steps, putting a good distance between he and the now-closing street urchins.

  “Little man,” he said, putting on his best stern schoolmaster’s voice, “you’re in for a heap’a trouble over—”

  He saw one of them lunge in the corner of his vision; heard a barely-perceptible whizzing. He ducked instinctively, and he was lucky; a fat chuck of broken brick—probably with a jagged edge—sailed right past his crown and hit the pavement on the far side of him. If he hadn’t ducked, it would’ve hit his temple square-on. Might have put him down, dazed and starry-eyed.

  And he didn’t want to find himself in that state, at the mercy of these little cretins. The demonic brats meant business.

  Another one lurched at him from the left, swinging what looked like the broken shaft of a broom handle. Dub swirled the overcoat draped on his left arm round to blind the kid for a moment, danced back a few steps, and suddenly found himself sprawling: one of the little buggers had thrown himself down in Dub’s path, tripping him. Down he went, whacked his head good and hard on the littered pavement, and amid the swirls of darkness and fireflies, saw the ghostly figures of the filthy little blood-mongers closing in around him.