by Harvey Click
MAGIC TIMES
A NOVEL BY
HARVEY CLICK
Also by Harvey Click
Demon Frenzy
Demon Mania
The House of Worms
The Bad Box
Text copyright © 2015 Harvey Click
All rights reserved
Original cover art by Keith Draws
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For my wife, Rose
Table of Contents
Part One
The Hell-Bound Car
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part Two
A Fist-Sized Ball of Snot
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Three
Easy Is the Way
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Four
Lovebirds
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Five
What Is Home?
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Six
The Night Watchman
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Seven
A Weariness of the Flesh
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Eight
The Fourth Apostle
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Part Nine
Into Darkness
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Part One
The Hell-Bound Car
Chapter One
1979
“You getting in, kid, or are you going to stand there gaping at me all day?” the driver asked. His old blue Hudson idled with a noisy shake.
Jason spat his tobacco ball into the roadside dust and wiped grime from his forehead onto the sleeve of his grimy gray shirt. “Where you headed?” he asked.
“Hell. This is the hell-bound car.”
The driver’s middle-aged baggy face bore only the faintest resemblance to Humphrey Bogart’s. He wore a brown fedora and an old brown tweed suit.
“You headed for Columbus?”
“I was, and if you ever get in maybe I will be again.”
Jason threw his brown leather jacket and his duffle bag, made from an old pillowcase, into the backseat and got in front. Before he could get the door shut, the car lurched onto the highway with a sick whine.
“Call me Hatter,” the driver said. “Madison Hatter. What do you call yourself?”
“Jason.”
“Hmm. You off looking for the golden fleece, Jason, or just a good piece of ass?”
Jason blew his nose into a red bandana and didn’t answer.
“How old are you, kid?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Sure you are. Where you from?”
“Glum Fork, down ‘round Bald Hump, thereabouts.”
“That would be in West Virginia, I presume?”
“Yep.”
Hatter knocked an unfiltered Chesterfield halfway from its pack and offered it to Jason.
“Nope, I give up smoking,” Jason said.
The driver stuck the cigarette in his own mouth and lit it with a lighter that shot flames nearly to the brim of his hat. “What are you up to, Jason?” he asked. “Coming to the big city to score some good dope, are you?”
“I’m looking for a girl.”
Hatter chuckled and coughed. “Any girl in particular or just anything with boobs, butt, and a bodacious bellybutton?”
“Her name’s Holly,” Jason said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Hatter said. “What does this Holly look like? Maybe I know her.”
“She’s got long brown hair and her eyes are sorta like honey color.”
“Tall, short, fat or skinny?”
“She’s kinda plump but not too.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hatter said. “She sounds just like the girl I saw a few miles back, hitchhiking in the other direction.”
Jason jerked up straight in the seat. “How far back was that?”
Hatter chuckled again and the Hudson shimmied. “Come on, kid, you’ve got to be sharper than that if you want to make it in the big city. How many fat girls do you think there are with brown eyes, anyway?”
“I didn’t say she’s fat. I said she’s plump but not too. She’s pretty ‘nough.”
“So you’re looking for a plump girl from the hills, are you? Well, Columbus certainly has its share of them.”
Jason, not much pleased with the driver’s manner, tucked his shoulder-length blond hair behind his ears, leaned his head back against the seat, and shut his eyes. He saw his mother’s hand waving goodbye.
“Everyone’s always looking for something,” Hatter said. “Everyone’s on the prowl. What’s so special about this particular plump girl anyway?”
Jason murmured vaguely. Behind shut eyes he saw Holly naked. He let out a slumberous moan as he watched her plump breasts jiggle.
“Go ahead and sleep, kid, I don’t care,” Hatter said. “I’m used to talking to myself. My life’s been one long monologue from the word go.”
Jason could see Mr. Hempy, a hefty, drunk silhouette in the yellow glow of a window. “Throw them off!” he raved. “The government is a clown suit made of stolen cloth! Rip off the emperor’s rags! Be naked and free!” But Jason and Holly scarcely heard him as they made the tiny tree house rustle with their hot, secret motion. “When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,” Jason’s mother sang from afar, and Jason began to tumble from the tree.
“You see what I mean?” the driver was saying. “No matter how they start out, they all end up in the same horrible little box. No light, no sun, no air, no life. Dead. Just plain damn dead, like all the others. To hell with them.”
Jason opened his eyes. “Are we there?” he asked.
“Yes. What you smell is Columbus.”
Jason’s left eye, the better of the two, beheld cars, lights, and a whizzing black pavement that shuddered to a halt.
“I admit it,” Hatter said. “I’m an out-and-out phony. But who gives a damn?”
“Musta dozed off,” Jason said. “You know where the university is? Ohio State?”
Hatter chuckled and coughed. “I’ll bet you’ve never been here before, have you, kid?” He skidded the car around a corner to the right and nearly hit a woman getting out of her parked car. “This is High Street,” he said.
Jason stared at a tattoo parlor with a sign that read “STONEY KNOWS HOW.” He stared at a run-down bar called the Old Dutch Café. He stared at an old lady in a tattered brown dress pushing a shopping cart full of junk.
“It’s not there anymore!” the driver said, looking at a building on the right. “Molly McGuire’s is not there anymore! This world’s going straight to hell.”
“Look out!” Jason shouted.
Hatter had veered over the center line and was about to collide with an oncoming pickup truck. He hit the brakes, swerved right, and laid on his horn.
“Hell’s bells!” he yelled. “Get in your own damn lane, you half-witted hill-jacks!”
“Shouldn’t ought to drive an old car like this,” Jason said. “Sounds like them brakes is shot.”
“There’s nothing wrong with old Jane Hudson,” Hatter s
aid. “She’s my pride and joy, best girl I’ve ever known. She’s good for another hundred K without even trying.”
“I could fix them brakes for you pretty cheap.”
“I said there’s nothing wrong with my damn brakes.” Hatter pulled over and stopped beside a no-stopping sign. “There’s campus,” he said. “Is this where you want me to dump you out?”
Jason stared at lots of big buildings on his left.
“You getting out, kid, or you going to sit there gaping all day?”
Jason reached in the back for his duffle bag and jacket. Hatter’s right hand twitched a couple of times as if it intended to shake Jason’s. The third time it raced to his mouth to muffle a cough.
“Well, there’s an idea,” he said. “Kismet, the moving finger! Mayhap we’ll meet again in pages as yet unwrit. What do you say, kid?”
Jason quickly got out, having decided the driver was probably insane, and the car pulled away with an alarming clatter of gears.
***
Jason gazed across the busy street at the expanse of buildings, which looked to him like many hospitals and prisons crammed together. He was hungry and had a headache. If he couldn’t find Holly today, he’d need to find a place to stay—and since there was no accounting for Holly’s moods, maybe he’d need to do that even if he did find her. He felt in the front right pocket of his jeans to make sure his wallet was still there.
A minute after he started walking, a skinny woman hurrying by in the opposite direction shoved a sheet of paper into his hand so swiftly that the edge of it sliced a long, deep cut in the ball of his palm.
“Hey there,” he mumbled, but the woman was already half a block behind him. He sucked blood from the cut while he read the flier:
LOST?
LET DREW BE YOUR GUIDE!
Drew Dieborn is versed in the
Arcane Arts
of
Numerology, Tarot
and
Astrological Charts
both
Natal and Mundane
with
Adept Knowledge
of
Goetic Theurgy
and
Benign Sorcery
(reasonable rates)
“Hmm,” Jason said.
The advertisement showed an address on Frambes Avenue. He had no idea where that might be, but just a few blocks later he saw a street sign with the name. He headed right onto the narrow street and before long came to a dilapidated clapboard duplex with one apartment downstairs and a fire escape on the side leading to another apartment upstairs.
He deliberated for a moment by carefully picking each nostril of his nose and then climbed the steps to the little front porch of the downstairs apartment. He heard an accordion playing within, but this ceased when he knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Jason.”
“Are you a Jehovah’s Witness?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to sell something?”
“No. I’m looking for a Mr. Dieborn. Somebody give me your ad.”
The door opened and a plump man in a wheelchair peered at him through thick glasses with red frames. At last he scratched his round bald head, smiled, and said, “Won’t you come in?”
Jason entered a small sparsely furnished living room.
“Please sit down.”
Drew placed his accordion on the coffee table while Jason dropped his duffle bag on the floor and sat in a wooden armchair.
“Now, how may I help you?”
“I’m looking for someone. She’s my girlfriend down there in Glum Fork, only she ain’t there no more. She and her pa disappeared ‘bout a month ago. They’s talk about a reason, but I don’t want to get into all that. I got nowhere to stay nor any money hardly, and I’d like to just find her and get on outta here right quick.”
Drew set his second chin into his chest, having nothing that could properly be called a neck, and frowned. “You say you have no money?”
“I got a hundred bucks and that’s it. You don’t know any cheap hotels ‘round here, do you?”
“What’s that on your shirt?”
Jason glanced down at a red smear. “I dunno. Maybe blood I guess.”
Drew scooted his wheelchair away hastily and rotated his shoulders with distaste. “My usual fee for this sort of work is considerably higher than what you can afford,” he said, “but as a special favor I’ll settle for fifty.”
“But you ain’t done nothing,” Jason said.
“It’s a retainer, my dear boy. For this small fee I shall remain at your service for a full week or until we find what you’re looking for, whichever happens first.”
“Well, I dunno. I mean like that’s a lot of money.”
“I’ll tell you what, Jason, you seem like a nice young lad, and I happen to be a real sucker for nice young folks, so let’s just call it forty and you can give me the other ten after we’ve found her.”
Jason reluctantly reached for his wallet, counted out four tens, and handed them to Drew.
“Good. First we shall have to do your astrological chart, of course.” Drew took a pen and notepad from an end table and said, “Place of birth?”
“Glum Fork, West Virginia, down ‘round Bald Hump, thereabouts.”
Drew scribbled in his notepad and said, “Hmm, that’s quite interesting. And when?”
“September 15, 1961.”
Drew let his notepad fall to his lap. “Well,” he said. “This is far more interesting than you can imagine.”
He wheeled his chair up close to Jason and perused his features slowly and deliberately, shifting his position now and then to approach the face from different angles. He lifted his glasses, and so intent was his gaze that Jason believed he could feel it like a warm breath moving across his face—but then he realized he was actually feeling Drew’s warm breath, which smelled of garlic and onions.
For many garlic-scented seconds Drew scrutinized his blue eyes and his lips and nose, which Jason’s mother had always insisted was neither too long nor too short, and then he moved back a little to get the effect of the whole, lingering for a while on the rosy blush that tinted the creamy skin of each smooth cheek. But what seemed to fascinate Drew most was Jason’s long, wavy, golden hair, dirty as it was, and while he studied it his large hand drifted up to touch the waves.
Jason jerked his head away and made a soft growling sound in his throat.
Drew backed away to a more proper distance and said, “And why do you think this young woman is here?”
“I just think so, that’s all. Her pa useta come up here pretty regular to preach to the college kids, and I bet my ass he’s up here preaching right now.”
“What is he, some sort of Jehovah’s Witness?”
“Nope. Old man Hempy preaches ‘bout how much he hates the government. Here’s something he give me once.”
Jason dug in his duffle bag and handed a large coin to Drew. The center depicted a bearded man identified underneath as Lysander Spooner. “TAXATION IS THEFT” was stamped above the picture, and smaller print underneath it said, “CONSCRIPTION IS SLAVERY.”
“ ‘Governments are gangs of criminals,’ ” Drew read aloud from the other side. “Interesting. What does this man Hempy look like?”
“I dunno, he’s kinda big and ugly and got a big ugly beard.”
There was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Drew called.
“Rue.”
Drew opened the door and said, “I didn’t expect you back so soon. Did you hand out all my circulars?”
“Yes.” Rue looked past Drew to Jason.
“As you can see, you’ve brought me one customer already.”
“Did I?” Rue’s icy green eyes made Jason squirm a little.
“His name’s Jason, and he seems to be adrift. He turned eighteen just two weeks ago.”
“You’re pretty,” Rue said with a cold smile. “Has anyone ever painted you?”
“Jason’s looki
ng for a girl,” Drew said.
“Oh?” Rue smoothed her long purple skirt against her long skinny legs and gave Jason another chilly smile.
He recognized her long black hair. In fact he now remembered having glimpsed her narrow, pale face when she slid the flier into his hand. Her lips were thin with blood-red lipstick that matched the paint on her long fingernails. Jason couldn’t decide how old she was; at one moment she looked about twenty-five and the next moment, when she turned her head a little, more like pushing forty.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” Drew said. “He has barely any money and no place to stay.”
“Fifteen dollars a day for room and board,” Rue said. “But I’ll make it five if you pose for me.” She wrote something in Drew’s notepad, tore out the page, and handed it to Jason. “Here’s my address. I’ll be home at 6:00.”
“Well then, that’s all nicely done and settled,” Drew said. “You may leave now, Rue Anne, and we’ll have our session tomorrow.”
After she left, Drew smiled at Jason and said, “There now, you see how easy things become when you let Drew be your guide? Well then, I’ll see you at precisely 9:30 a.m., and don’t be late.”
“Late for what?”
“If we go any later the sidewalks will be too crowded for my taste,” Drew said. “Fall quarter has begun, and these damnable students annoy me, the way they whiz around. In the afternoon I have clients to meet, and in the evening my true work begins. Therefore, you’ll have to come for me no later than 9:30. As for this coin, I’d like to keep it if you don’t mind. Well-handled objects are invaluable in my line of work.”
“What are we doing at 9:30?”
“Why, we’re going to find your sweet princess, of course.”
Chapter Two
Rue lived on a narrow avenue many blocks south of campus. Having asked directions, Jason wended his way past shops and apartments and tiny restaurants that eventually gave way to shabby houses. Remembering the story of Hansel and his breadcrumbs, he carefully memorized street signs and oddities so he could eventually find his way back.
