On the sidewalk ahead, I saw a beat cop in his traditional blue uniform with a cap covering his dark red hair. When he saw me, his freckled face lit up in a grin that seemed deceptively friendly. Officer Toby McGoohan is indeed my Best Human Friend, but his friendly smile usually comes with consequences. He raised his hand in greeting as I came up to him. “Hey, Shamble! I’ve got one for you.” His expression became more eager, like a predator about to pounce. “What comes out of a ghost’s nose when he sneezes?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can talk you out of finishing the joke?”
McGoo cackled. “BOO-gers. Get it? BOO-gers. Ha, ha!”
“Hasn’t your sense of humor already gotten you into enough trouble? You should learn your lesson.”
“Some lessons can’t be taught.” He placed his hands on his hips near his police special revolver and in the opposite holster his police extra-special revolver loaded with silver bullets.
“I don’t have any time for jokes, McGoo. I’m on a case. I’ve been hired to track down a missing teenage werewolf. His mom says he hung out with a gang of low-life genies. Any idea where I should start to look?”
McGoo frowned. “Low-life genies? Might be the Baba brothers. Genies are usually high-class, but these boys are scum.”
“The Baba brothers?” I asked.
McGoo nodded. “Bill, Joe, and Frank Baba. They have their own territory. It’s an alley down in the Undertakers’ District.” He looked up, alert as he watched a full-furred werewolf amble up to a fire hydrant, then bend over, sniffing it.
I adjusted my fedora. “I know where that is. Thanks, McGoo.”
Ignoring me, he yelled, “Hey you, Wolfie! Don’t you dare lift your leg by that fire hydrant.”
Indignant, the wolf straightened and tried to be nonchalant. “I’m just looking for a friend.” He scuttled off while I headed in the other direction, toward the Undertakers’ District.
III
Even though I knew the Unnatural Quarter like the back of my cold, gray hand, the maze of narrow side streets and tangled back alleys is a labyrinth that even a minotaur could get lost in. I got so turned around that I had to ask for directions, despite being male.
Finally, by late afternoon, I stumbled upon my destination, isolated turf that the three Baba brothers had claimed as their territory. It was unofficially known as the Alley Baba.
As I turned the corner and shambled forward, I heard voices shouting, the rattle of dice in a cup, and the clatter as they ricocheted off the brick walls. “Come on sevens! Come on sevens!”
I saw the three genies, seedy-looking teens, their skin and silk garments glowing as they drifted off the ground. They wore colorful green pantaloons, their heads wrapped in identical scarlet turbans, which I knew were gang colors in the Quarter. Frank Baba, the oldest, lounged against a brick wall wearing a big, diamond-studded belt buckle that would have been the envy of any wrestler or country-and-western fan. Another genie—Joe—sneered down at the corner watching the dice clatter. The third and youngest genie crouched but floated just enough off the ground to keep his silk pantaloons from getting dirty in the grunge of the alley. Bill Baba rolled the dice again, chuckling. “Come on sevens! Come on!”
The pair of twenty-sided D-and-D dice rattled and came to rest, facing up, each showing the number seven. Bill let out a loud whoop. “Yesssss! Sevens! I win every time.”
Lounging against the wall, his brother Frank just sneered at him. “It’s not much of a game when all your wishes come true, Bill.”
I shuffled forward. “Hey, fellas.” I like to begin a conversation by showing I’m a friendly zombie and not one of the violent brain-eating types. “I could use your help, if you’ve got time for a few questions?”
The three genies swooped toward me like weightless thugs about to mug a pedestrian. Unobtrusively, I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket where I kept my .38. Before I was forced to exercise my second amendment rights, I realized the genies were all bluster.
“Why should we help you?” demanded Frank Baba. “Just cuz we’re genies doesn’t mean you can command us.”
“I wish I could,” I said.
“Don’t say that!” he cried.
“Yeah,” said Bill, “and if you try to rub my lamp, I’ll slap your hand.”
“We’re busy,” Joe sneered. “We have a lot of slacking to do, and only so many hours in the day.”
I used the pause as an opportunity to continue. “I’ve been hired to locate a friend of yours, Aldo Blankenship. I understand you hang out together?”
The three genies chortled in unison. Their combined laughter sounded like an odd hybrid of a bagpipe and a popcorn popper. Joe laughed so hard that he did a spinning backward barrel roll in the air. “Aldo? A friend of ours? That kid was just a useless wanna-be.”
“Right,” said Bill. “A whiny werewolf brat.”
“He wasn’t cut out to be one of us,” Frank said. “We tolerated him because we needed his smarts for a job, that’s all.”
Joe put his glowing face close to mine. Despite his magical properties, the young genie suffered from a severe case of acne. “Aldo was miserable about his parents splitting up. He came to us pouting, grumbling. He said he wished the world would just get back to normal. Ha, ha!” His face pinched up in an utterly humorless expression. “Back to normal! When you’re talking to genies, you better be careful what you wish for!”
Very little seemed normal about the situation, and I gave all three of the genies my best stern look. “Well, I wish I could find Aldo and close my case. You guys know where I should start looking? Give me a hint.”
Slacker hoodlum genie teenagers have no poker face whatsoever, which was probably why they played dice instead of cards. “We had work to do, so we sent Aldo on an errand. He helped us out.” Bill looked meaningfully at the bricked-up end of Alley Baba, where a battered red metal toolbox leaned against the solid wall. I didn’t know what the toolbox had to do with anything.
“But I don’t think the kid’s coming back,” said Frank. The genies had that guilty look any good detective can recognize immediately.
I crossed my arms over my chest just above the stitched-up bullet holes on my jacket. “You boys better start explaining yourselves. What happened to Aldo?”
Bill shrugged.
Joe adjusted the scarlet turban on his head. “It was an initiation and … it kinda went sour.”
Frank nodded. “Aldo opened a portal for us back to the mundane world, right here at the end of the alley. He wished for things to be normal, and we needed a portal anyway.”
“The kid went through the doorway back to the normal world, and he never came back.” Joe hovered over the red metal toolbox on the ground.
I was still trying to understand what had happened. “A dimensional portal? How did Aldo manage to create a portal?”
“It’s easy, if you know how,” said Frank.
“You can do anything when you have the right tools.” Joe seemed eager to explain, because criminals often do. “And we just happen to have this arcane toolbox.”
I bent down, flipped open the latch and lifted the lid, but the box was mostly empty, with only a flashlight and a measuring tape inside. I picked up the flashlight and saw mysterious runes printed on its handle. I realized the three genies looked worried. Bill continued, “Each tool has magical runes on it, a transport spell written in original Necronomic. But we, uh …”
Frank added, “We couldn’t read them ourselves. We missed that day in class because we were out smoking behind the school.”
“So we needed Aldo to read the runes for us,” Bill said. “We’re not too good at reading, especially in arcane Necronomic.”
Frank grumbled, “Now Aldo’s lost on the other side, and we can’t open the portals anymore.”
The case wasn’t much of a mystery, since the three genie brothers had babbled everything, but I still didn’t know what they were talking about. Aldo had wished for things to be ba
ck to normal, and he used that power plus these magical tools to open up a dimensional gateway to the normal world? For what?
And what was normal anymore?
I also knew these slacker genies could never have cooked up such a scheme all by themselves. “Who put you up to this? Who else knows how to open a portal to the mundane world?”
The genies hesitated, looked at one another as if daring someone to be first to answer. Finally, they spoke in unison. “You have to talk to Vlad the Fence.”
IV
Over the years, I’ve had a few encounters with Vlad the Fence, mostly at cocktail parties and ice cream socials. Vlad was one of the most infamous “liquidators” of stolen artifacts in the Quarter, but then he claimed he was going straight. Don’t they all say that?
I found the ramshackle storefront with a patched, gray-striped awning and a crackling neon sign that said High Stakes Pawn Shop. The narrow, dingy street was silent except for water dripping from gutters above. The dark alley had very little foot traffic and even fewer customers, which was probably the reason for the prominent “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS” sign hanging in the window.
I shoved open the door, and a delicate jingling bell announced my arrival. The shop was small and cramped, cluttered with more empty shelves than esoteric objects. Most of the inventory had either been sold or packed up. It was disappointing to see how far Vlad had fallen, because he used to be somebody, a powerful legendary figure who called himself “The Impaler,” like a Mexican wrestling superstar. But unlife hadn’t treated him well.
“Hello?” I called into the dark shadows. “Vlad! I need some information from you.”
In the back of the poorly lit shop, a figure let out a startled gasp. In a panic, Vlad the Fence dropped a cardboard box that crashed to the floor, then slapped his palm to his chest, gasping. “Whoa, drive a stake right through my heart, why don’t you?”
I tried to calm him. “Just because a zombie barges through your front door, there’s no need to be afraid. I’m sure you’ve had worse customers.”
He let out a sigh of relief as he recognized me. “Dan Shamble! Trouble follows you wherever you go.”
“It’s usually a few steps ahead of me,” I said. “I don’t go looking for it.”
Vlad had long, scraggly black hair, a narrow, pale face, a sinister mustache, and now he had bags under his eyes. He groaned at the clutter that had spilled out of the cardboard box he’d been packing. He dropped to his knees, embarrassed, and started to pick up the paraphernalia, spiked manacles, petrified claws, antique Pez dispensers.
Numerous cardboard moving boxes were scattered throughout the shop, some open and half-packed, others taped up. I stepped closer to him, all business. “I just have a few questions about a case and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Vlad finished stuffing the odds and ends back into the box and folded the four corners together, trying to figure out which order the up corner went amongst the down corners. “Can’t help you. I’m out of the business. Packing up and changing professions.”
“Are you going to have a garage sale?” I asked. “Or just donate all this junk to a charity?”
“Some of it is just junk, but other pieces …” Vlad stroked his long mustache and cleared his throat. “They’re dangerous and have to be disposed of properly.” He gestured to a secure, heavy-duty showcase cabinet in the back corner. It had a thick crossbar and latch, wrapped with barbed wire. Big signs were posted on each side. “DANGER. DO NOT ENTER. HAZARDOUS MAGICAL MATERIALS.”
“No special sale would get rid of those, and the liability is too much for me to handle,” Vlad said. “I did manage to liquidate the cursed artifacts, the bad luck gems, the Skull of Synthnoxx. It’s all gone, so I’m clean.” He stood up again, still panicked and nervous. “You’ve got nothing on me, Shamble. I’m just trying to make a living, even though I’m going out of business.” He shook his head, making his oily, black strands of hair flop back and forth like tentacles. “I would’ve thought a magical pawn shop was a recession-proof business, but times are tough, and I can’t afford the insurance anymore.” He chuckled to himself as he dropped the repacked box next to others on a shelf. “That’s where the real money is—insurance.”
“Insurance?” I asked.
Vlad’s shoulders sagged. “But even that’s complicated. How do you even write a policy for undead and unnaturals, and what do you cover? When can you accept a claim? I wish the world would go back to normal.”
I nodded in polite commiseration, but then I realized the werewolf kid had supposedly said the same thing.
Vlad was caught up in his indignant nostalgia. His chest puffed up, his shoulders squared, and his voice grew louder, deeper. “I used to be Vlad the Impaler, and armies trembled before me. I had five castles, countless women, dungeons full of gold!” He sighed. “Now, I can’t even make ends meet as Vlad the Fence. So, I’m retiring, to become Vlad the Insurance Salesman.” He deflated as he realized what he had said. “Yeah, times are tough.”
“We have our jobs to do.” I reached into the pocket of my jacket and withdrew the photo of the young werewolf with his bad fur cut, his glasses, the braces on his fangs. “I’ve been hired to find a missing boy.”
Vlad squinted, leaning closer in the dim light of the High Stakes pawn shop. “Never seen him before.” It sounded like an automatic response, and when I appeared to disbelieve him, he shook his head more insistently. “Honest, Shamble. Why would you think I have anything to do with it?” Vlad stuffed a couple of skulls into another box, packing them with Styrofoam peanuts.
“He got himself mixed up with some disreputable genies, the Baba brothers,” I said. “They’re the ones who pointed me to you.”
When I mentioned the genies, Vlad glared at me. “The Babas are a bad crowd.” He sighed. “But I needed their help. You know the saying, hire bad people to do bad work.”
“I’ve never heard that saying,” I said.
Vlad left the skulls and the Styrofoam peanuts, heading to the cabinet of dangerous items. He pried aside the barbed wire and pulled the door open to reveal that the cabinet was entirely empty. “As I said, I’m shutting down the business, and I had to liquidate the dangerous items. I didn’t dare keep them around—insurance rates, remember? A liability!” He reached inside, pulled out a handwritten inventory list. “You know, things like the Scroll of Vileness, the Balls of Testic, the Amulet of Apathy, the real high-end stuff.” He shut the metal door again with a loud clang. “So I paid the Baba brothers to get rid of the toxic artifacts.” He pointed a long finger at me. “We didn’t dare leave them in the Unnatural Quarter, so I told the Babas they had to dump them somewhere else. I gave them the tools they needed to get the job done.”
“Tools?” I asked. “Like a skill set?”
Vlad went back to closing up the cardboard flaps over the preserved skulls. “No, actual magical tools, a toolbox full of ensorcelled hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, tape measures. Each tool could open a portal back to the mundane world, an alternate Earth where the Big Uneasy never happened, and where magic doesn’t work.”
That sounded doubtful to me. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“You don’t believe in alternate dimensions?” Vlad said. “Don’t you read the Enquirer?”
I shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it. These days it’s not smart to disbelieve any ridiculous thing.”
“In order to open the portal, you have to read the engraved spell on the tool,” Vlad said. “It’s written in complex runes, and each tool only works once. You use it and throw it away.”
I found that disturbing. “Everything’s disposable nowadays.”
Vlad extended his other hand and pointed a different long finger at me. This one had blue nail polish. “The Baba brothers had the whole toolbox so they could open portals to a parallel universe, and they did the job—I’ll give them that. They got rid of all those Items That Shall Not Be Named.”
“Items That Shall Not Be N
amed? You hired the Baba brothers to dispose of your unmentionables?”
Vlad bustled around the pawn shop, using a tape gun to reinforce more cardboard boxes, then stuffed them with odds and ends from the near empty shelves. He kept busy as he talked. “Frankly, I’m surprised those screwups could handle the job. You have to read the incantation exactly right.” He sniffed. “I was surprised they could read at all.”
Now the pieces began to fit together in my mind. “Hmm, that’s why they needed Aldo’s help. He was a straight-A student and he knew how to read. He used the spells to open the portals, and he somehow got stranded on the wrong side after the doorway closed. Now I need to use one of those tools to get Aldo back.” I could just imagine how the three hoodlum genies had tricked the innocent little kid. “What’s the incantation?”
Vlad closed his eyes and recited something that sounded like a slurring drunk played backward. “Rutmo byachto seengac igsnat. It means ‘there’s no place like home,’ in Necronomic. Pronunciation is very important.”
“That sounds hard to remember,” I said.
“Not if you can read the Necronomic runes on the tools.” He tore a scrap of paper from a battered Egyptian scroll and scribbled a note on the papyrus. “Here, I’ve written it down for you phonetically.”
V
Back in Alley Baba, the three hoodlum genies were at it again, cheering each other as Frank rattled the twenty-sided dice in his hands. He cast them against the slimy brick wall. “Come on, sevens!”
The dice bounced and rolled, scattering a group of panicked cockroaches who were just minding their own business in the rotting garbage. The genies whooped in triumph. “Sevens, yes!” The Baba brothers high-fived each other.
“It’s your lucky day in more ways than one, boys,” I said, trying to sound ominous as I approached. “But you’ve got some explaining to do. I talked with Vlad the Fence, and I know what happened to that poor werewolf kid. Aldo wanted to be part of your gang, and you needed someone who could read Necronomic to work the spells on the tools.” I saw the battered magical tool chest lying on the ground against the brick wall.
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