This one is a bit of exposition on the main character from a book I’ve been planning to write for a decade, so yes, there’s more to the story.
How I Got the Handbook
I stood outside the convenience store, hands stuffed into the pockets of my black hoodie, shifting back and forth from foot to foot. I’d dressed down – my oldest, most frayed jeans, the broken down black and orange Asics running shoes I wore to mow the lawn, and my favorite Lamb of God t-shirt. Okay, I hadn’t dressed down, but I really felt like I should be smoking or something, just to complete the gas-station-hanger-outer look.
The buzz of the fluorescent lights bothered me as I watched the aerial bug ballet and waited. The black metal watch on the underside of my wrist told me these jokers were 20 minutes late, which meant one of two things: 1) they were temporally challenged, or 2) they were waiting to see how patient I was.
I could answer the latter. Not very.
This was how these things had gone, however, and it had taken me months to get this far.
A 80s era IROC rolled into the lot, its metallic blue paint faded in splotches like a skin condition. But hey, at least the louvers and t-tops were mint. Sounded like lifters were shot, though. It looped around the parking lot before rolling to a stop next to me.
A guy with a scraggly, patchy beard and gaunt face looked up at me. Joker, then. Singular. His eyes were prominent. He reminded me of that character on Game of Thrones who lost his willy to the psycho. The show, not the books.
“You him?” He asked. I imagined, for a moment, he was pointing a gun at me through the door, because, yeah, that’s the kind of paranoid I am.
“You have it?”
“We’re here to take you to Ma. She’s got it.”
We’re? Of course, of course you want me to get into your Camaro with you and your imaginary friend and go with you to parts unknown with no back-up. I mean, yes, I had my phone, but I still had no back-up. Then again, who the hell was I going to call?
“How long’s it going to take?”
His hands clasped the wheel at the 10-and-2. He flexed his fingers open and gazed out the windshield.
“Look ‘ere. You want the thing or don’t you? If you do, get in. Ma don’t travel, and she don’t let anyone else handle the things. You come with us or forget it. ‘Sides, what’re you worried about? This ain’t Deliverance.”
I waited a minute, looked around. Fuck.
He tapped on the steering wheel. Tap, tap, tap, tap …
“What’s it gonna be?”
I walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger door, and dropped into the seat, which felt about as old as it looked. The driver stomped on the gas, lighting up the tires, and squealing out of the lot. He straightened us out on the two-lane and opened it up a bit. It felt a little better running wide open than it had sounded in the parking lot, which told me he liked to drive cars, not work on them.
He reached out with a bony hand and turned on the stereo. Some warbling country music blared out of the speakers. I fought the urge to groan.
I flicked my eyes sideways, checking the driver out without being obvious about it. There was a gun jammed between his hip and the center console. Motherfuc …
“You always carry?”
His head whipped my way, then back to the road. He reached down and patted the back of the gun, almost a caress.
“You don’t?”
I looked out the window. Twilight was bleeding off to full dark and I had no idea where we were going. It didn’t bother me much. After a minute, I answered. “Don’t need to, usually.”
“You think you not havin’ one’s going to make me not shoot you?”
“Are you planning on shooting me?”
“That’s not what I’m sayin’. But do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think I wouldn’t shoot you.”
I turned toward him. “I’m saying I don’t need one.”
He knew what we were going after, I assumed. I let his imagination run with it. He was quiet for several minutes.
“You got the money? Ma don’t like people wasting her time.”
“I have what was agreed upon, provided it’s legitimate.”
“You’ll see.”
That would be too good to be true, so I didn’t believe him.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked.
“Don’t need my name, do you?”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself. I just like to know who I’m dealing with.”
He slowed a bit, whipped the car off the highway and onto a gravel road that shot off the main at an angle. Gnarly, bare trees whipped past the doors, reaching for the car. Rocks pelted the undercarriage. It was loud, but at least it drowned out the country music.
“Rodney,” he said.
“Nice to meet you.”
I didn’t offer a hand.
***
Forty minutes later, I’d lost track of where we were. I could look up the night sky and figure out north from south, but I had no idea how to get back to the convenience store. I’d tried to keep track, but I’d zoned out, and so many of the gravel backroads were anything but straight. No landmarks. No nothing but trees and fields and red dirt.
“Rodney, you driving me in circles?”
He looked at me, grinned. He could’ve used braces.
“We’re almost there,” he said, then locked up the brakes, cut the car 90 degrees to the right, goosed the throttle and rolled down what looked like a graveled wagon trail. The Camaro bounced over a cattle grate, past a barbwire fence, and Rodney stopped the car behind a blue Ford Fiesta. The tag: GRMRPR. Nice.
I opened the door, put my feet on terra firma, and made fists with my toes inside my shoes. Rodney got out, then reached back in for the semi-auto, which he stuffed in his front waistband.
He skirted the back of the reaper mobile and made his way toward the house. It had a broad front porch, two giant square windows on either side of the dead-center front door. Rodney the door, pulled open the aluminum storm door and stepped inside. He didn’t look to see if I followed.
I checked my pockets. Still had my phone and my daily carry knife, which was a folder I’d gotten off a retired SEAL for $400. I loved that knife. I took a deep breath, stepped into the house, closed the door behind me.
Rodney wasn’t in the living room.
Sigh.
Apart from an old patterned couch and some ugly bookcases littered with Precious Moments figurines and small random jars of pottery, there wasn’t much to look at in the room. The old wood floor was pocked with burn marks, though there was no fireplace. It might’ve been my great grandmother’s with all the bright white paint and doilies. Two doors led out of the room, one to a hallway, one to what I assumed was the kitchen.
I began to get the feeling I wasn’t going to get what I’d come for, but then I started seeing the glowing motes and ribbons, currents pulling power from my room through one of the doors. I fought the urge to put up a buffer.
A short, old woman appeared in the doorway. Her upper body was round, but her legs stuck out of the bottom of a stained nightgown like withered twigs. She wore round sunglasses, and her head was covered in a tie-dyed bandana. She had no jewerly.
She looked me up and down while I was observing her, then she tottered to me, grabbed my hand, lifted it close to her face. She read my palm, I guess. She didn’t bite me, anyway.
“You know the art.”
“I … procure valuable works for interested parties.”
She gave me a look, one with an arched eyebrow, moved close enough to violate my personal space and then … well, she frisked me.
“You’re a practitioner. I can smell it on you. Where’s your book?”
I stepped back. “Must’ve dropped it in the car.”
Rodney entered from the kitchen, clutching a spoon and a can of Hormel chili, jagged lid pointing into the air.
“He didn’t leave anything in the car.”
She backed off, looked me over again. “What’s your area of focus? Ritual? Symbologic? Manifestations? What school have you attended? Who has been most influential on you … so far?”
Where did that come from? “I haven’t really settled yet, though I was intrigued by Mortensen’s methods of divination and energy control.”
She nodded.
“Rodney, be a dear and go to the study and get book off the fourth shelf, sixth from the right.”
He and his chili vanished down the hall.
“You haven’t studied under any one have you.” I felt the energy around her increase. She didn’t appear to be preparing to cast anything, but it was more than I’d seen anyone handle so far. I would see six, no seven distinct types swirling about her. Feeding her another line did not seem to be in my best interest at the moment.
“No, ma’am.”
She stood there, glasses pointed at me and did not speak. She radiated power.
Rodney tromped back into the room, handed her a largish, rectangular book wrapped in purple felt. She offered the book to me. I took it, started to unwrap it.
“Hold on. That will be $800.”
I could feel something emanating from the book in my hand. It felt heavier than it should.
“You want me to buy it sight unseen?”
“Yes.”
“How do I know …”
“That is the cost and terms. Take it or leave it.”
I reached into my pocket, fished out my wad of money. I counted out seven 100s, three 20s, three 10s, a five and five ones, which leave me with $4.15 to my name. I took a deep breath, then handed the stack over.
She said, “Done,” and I felt the book bind to me.
I looked from her eyes to the book in my hand, then carefully unwrapped it. It was … a goddamned first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook.
“Are you shitting me?”
She smiled at me. “You can drop by and thank me later.”
My face flushed. I’d been had.
She ushered me to the door, hand on the small of my back. “I know what you’re feeling right this moment, but trust me, this is the spellbook for you. I’ve been saving it for a long time. I knew you’d come eventually. I didn’t know who you were, but I’ve kept it safe for you.”
I felt myself pushed onto the front porch. I turned around to see her closing the door. I put my hand on it. She peered through the gap, then reached up to her glasses and pushed them up on her forehead. Her eyes were a solid milky white.
“I assumed you did not need a ride.”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t think of the words.
“Have a nice night.”
I let her close the door. I heard it latch, then the deadbolt clicked.
A fucking Player’s Handbook?
I pulled a Polaroid of a bedroom and a thumbtack out of my hoodie pocket and tacked the picture to one of the posts on the porch at about head height. The image stretched and warped, widening and dropping to the ground.
I looked at the book in my hand, and could feel something in it, but … A fucking Player’s Handbook?
I stepped through the pic and into my apartment.
skepticlysm 