A closer look at energy cards in Wiz-War, plus the video!

On Wednesday, we heralded the triumphant return of Wiz-War! Now available at your local retailer and on our webstore, this classic board game of magical mayhem for 2-4 players pits wily wizards against each other in an underground maze and a magical melee. Players race to score two points by stealing rivals’ treasures or casting the knock-out spells to fell their foes.

Fuel your fantasy

At the root of all this wild and zany wizardry is energy. Not just the energy the players bring to their imaginative combinations of spells, but the energy cards that make up a good portion of each spell deck.

The rules of Wiz-War (available on the game’s support page) indicate two uses for energy cards: An energy card may be used to boost a wizard’s movement during his turn, or it may be used along with a spell to boost that spell’s effects.

Zoom!

While wizards weave magic that accelerates their progress toward your treasures, it may behoove you to move more swiftly through the sorcerous labyrinth.

Normally, the active player may move his wizard up to three squares. However, you can discard an energy card from your hand to move an additional number of squares up to the energy card’s value.

The yellow wizard races past the red wizard’s line of sight and expends five energy to rush all the way to his rival’s unguarded treasure!

Whether you seek to round a corner and gain Line of Sight to target your most terrific spells at nearby rivals or simply to hasten your heroic capture of an opponent’s treasure, the timely expenditure of magical energy may give you just the boost you need to succeed!

Supercharge your spells

Energy cards may also be played in conjunction with spells. Played this way, your energy cards can provide any number of effects.

A spell’s energy defaults to one, but you can choose, when you play a spell, to discard an energy card to fuel the spell. If so, you replace the spell’s energy value with that of the energy card discarded.

Some spells, like Add, indicate an energy value at the center of their bottom row. These spells may be cast for their normal effects, or they may be discarded for their energy value. Notice the Temporary duration symbol circled on Featherweight. Without an energy card to boost this spell, its energy is only one. Its player will place one energy token on the card when it’s played, and its duration will soon expire. A player may discard an energy card when playing a Temporary spell to increase its duration.

Flame on!

Sometimes, you may wish to use energy for your instant spells, like fueling the flaming fury of your Fire Darts to blast multiple combatants or fell a single foe.

The blue mage needs to stop the green wizard from stealing his treasure and wishes, also, to force his way past the red wizard. Meanwhile, he’s concerned about the yellow wizard’s ominous approach… He opens his door, casts Fire Darts, and expends an energy card with a value of three to fire three darts, targeting one at each of his foes!

More or less temporary

Other times, you may wish to extend the duration of one of your temporary spells, such as Golem Form, one of the game’s magnificent new mutations.

After the blue mage concludes his attack and movement, he finds himself surrounded by three stung mages! He transforms into a golem, expending an energy card with a value of five to ensure the mighty mutation spell lasts long enough to keep him safe.

While a wizard assuming golem form may stride more slowly through the subterranean labyrinth, he becomes almost impervious to harm, doubles the damage he deals with his powerful punches, and can lift treasures so easily, he needn’t end his turn to do so.

Want to see more? Watch the video teaser trailer (QuickTime, 12.4 MB) for a high-octane peek at the game’s fantastic themes and components!

Know when to hold them

In short, energy cards aren’t dead cards when you draw them. Rather, they’re the basic building blocks that fuel your most confounding combinations of sorcerous potential! To win the Wiz-War, you’ve got to know when to keep them in your hand, know when to fold them into your spells, and know when to use them to run!

Hello, all. As the new kid hereabouts, Chris suggested that I take this opportunity to introduce myself to folks who may not know me. I've been writing on a freelance basis in the role-playing game industry for about a decade, give or take a little here and there. I got my start with the birth of the d20 movement. My first published credit was fairly unorthodox, but definitely a sign of the times: Sword & Sorcery Studios' Relics & Rituals book, an open call sourcebook that was the second in a line of books that would eventually become the Scarred Lands setting (which I eventually ended up taking over as developer). In the time since, I've done tons of work for White Wolf, and dipped my toe in a couple of other places, notably Wizards of the Coast and of course Green Ronin. Four years ago or so, I pretty much dropped off the freelancer map, going to work first for White Wolf as an in-house developer, and then for CCP North America. Times being what they are, I'm back out in the world now, and happy to have found a home with Green Ronin as the Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying line developer. I have some pretty tremendous shoes to fill, let me tell you: the work that Rob Schwalb, Steve Kenson and Chris Pramas did on this system is fantastic, and I'm happy to be given a chance to help guide the vision of this line. I admit to being a bit of a Song of Ice & Fire nerd, truth be told. I love George R.R. Martin's setting: the intricacies of it, the nuanced characters, the rich history that doesn't just sit there, but rears its head again and again. It is quite literally a dream come true to be able to help shepherd the line for Green Ronin. My duties are the same as other developers: generating outlines for new books, hiring writers, editing their manuscripts, putting together art notes for the art department, and generally getting the manuscript ready to be handed over to production for layout. Once a pre-print PDF of the book is ready, I help go through it for mistakes, omissions, or just things that looked better as a word processor document, but definitely need tweaking when it's been put together as a real book. I'm also pretty active on the Green Ronin forums, answering questions, offering suggestions for game play, and thoroughly enjoying the write-ups our fantastic players provide of their home games. I admit that I'm the sort of developer who gives other industry professionals a bad name: I don't mind hearing about other peoples' games, particularly those that are in a setting I'm working on. Fair warning, though: what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I may just subject you to my own home game stories, too. At the current time, I'm helping get some of the line's previous products ready for production. Most of the hard work has already been done on these; I'm just helping spot mistakes that need fixing, and implementing errata here and there for new printings. I've done the final development work on the Night's Watch (again, following in the footsteps of a masterful predecessor, in this case the irredoubtable Jim Kiley). But with the upcoming Chronicle System PDFs, and further sourcebooks (and even a boxed set!), I'm looking forward to moving the vision of the line forward and more than anything else, continuing to create a fantastic system that our players and fans can get hours of fun out of.

Announcing the fifth Dwarrowdelf Adventure Pack for The Lord of the Rings

“Something has crept, or been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.”
    –Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Foundations of Stone, the fifth Adventure Pack in the Dwarrowdelf cycle for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game!

Deeper into the Dwarrowdelf

In the Dwarrowdelf cycle, several of Middle-earth’s heroes escort Arwen Undómiel safely to Rivendell. There, Elrond expresses his concern about the increased Orc activity the heroes noted through The Redhorn Gate and on the Road to Rivendell. He requests the heroes search the Misty Mountains for the cause of the region’s increased Orcish presence, and their search leads them first to the Doors of Durin, where they must battle The Watcher in the Water. Only after they manage to survive the perilous combat do the heroes enter Moria and wander The Long Dark.

Onward and deeper, they press into the mines of Moria. Hazards slow their movement and threaten their health. Orcs confront them at every turn, but with little sign of true leadership or organization. Still, the heroes feel they are ever closing in upon the true source of the Orcish activity. Their search leads them deeper and deeper, down into Moria’s Foundations of Stone.

Trapped!

The new scenario in Foundations of Stone traps the heroes in treacherous underground currents, washing them into the dark waters where the nameless things lair. Older and fouler than Orcs, they will test your heroes to the utmost limits of their resilience. Confronted by an Elder Nameless Thing (Foundations of Stone, 126), washed into the dark, watery recesses of Middle-earth, and with no one to rely upon but themselves, will your heroes survive the trials they face below the Dwarrowdelf’s Foundations of Stone?

Relics lost beneath the mountains

While heroes face all-new dangers and quest mechanics in Foundations of Stone, they find unexpected treasures far beneath the mountains. A pair of powerful Artifacts show up in the least likely of places–the encounter deck–that can give your heroes the edge they need to survive their battles with nameless things. Dwarf characters, especially, will take heart from the discovery of these items, including Durin’s Helm (Foundations of Stone, 120).

Discover Dwarven Artifacts, face the terrifying nameless things, and move closer to the root of the increased Orcish presence within the Misty Mountains when you travel beneath Moria’s Foundations of Stone.

Look for this thrilling Adventure Pack to arrive at retailers everywhere in the second quarter of 2012. Until then, join the conversations about this and other chapters in The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game on our community forums.

The Wiz-War FAQ is now available for download

With brilliant flashes of light and sulfurous bursts of smoke, four mighty mages enter a subterranean labyrinth. Armed with an arsenal of spells, each seeks to steal treasures or rout his rivals en route to winning their contest of wizardly wits. But in a shifting maze made of mortar and magic, one needs to find clarity amid the chaos…

Wiz-War, the classic board game of magical mayhem for 2-4 players, is now available at your local retailer and online on our webstore. In conjunction with the game’s release, we’re making available the first FAQ to address your questions and clarify the game.

The Wiz-War FAQ (pdf, 554 KB) is now available on the game’s support page. Offering clarifications to better help players understand the rulebook, version 1.0 of the Wiz-War FAQ clarifies concerns about Line of Sight rules, item tokens, game board design, and movement rules.

Head to the Wiz-War support page to downloaded the FAQ and dispel your confusion. Then brush up on your cantrips, young mage. The Wiz-War has begun!

A Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game spotlight by guest writer Marius Hartland

All the tribes made medicine against Yig when the corn harvest came. They gave him some corn, and danced in proper regalia to the sound of whistle, rattle, and drum. They kept the drums pounding to drive Yig away, and called down the aid of Tiráwa, whose children men are, even as the snakes are Yig’s children.
    –H.P. Lovecraft, The Curse of Yig

While you plan your strategy, you can look at your game as a straight line, from Point A to Point B, traveled at whatever tempo your deck can manage. It’s a simple picture: You start at the beginning, you know your goal, and you try to reach it as fast as possible. However, in Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, things often become a little more involved. Dealing with multi-dimensional beings means your actual strategy may hit a series of curves, and you have to find the shortest road through multidimensional space.

Sometimes, your strategy wants you to focus–focus all your efforts towards a single story, focus building up one large domain, or concentrate on winning the struggles associated with one particular icon. Other times, you’ll plan to spread out in order to take multiple stories at once, using multiple domains and fielding an eclectic mixture of icons on the table to deal with a wide variety of threats.

And while you consider icons, there is yet another dimension to take into account. While a character normally has a defined amount of any particular icon, some characters take this concept right out of the Euclidian geometry of your standard strategical matrix and force you to reconsider their effectiveness when they add what are called “Booster Icons.”

Multi-dimensional challenges

Booster Icons are the large struggle icons featured in the text area of a card. While they don’t actually help the character win at the associated struggle, Booster Icons add extra struggles to the story, making those icons more relevant to your characters. They’re even better when the character is really good at the struggle he is boosting; otherwise the Booster Icons may backfire.

This brings us to Lucas Corn (Written and Bound, 10) who forces your opponent to answer the question, “Can I deal with three Terror struggles in a row while my opponent’s character has three Terror icons?” And Lucas Corn forces this question for free. That’s rather powerful, especially when fighting decks that are low on Terror icons themselves and don’t have much access to Willpower. He can even enter play on turn one, and if you also play The Enchanted Wood (In Memory of Day, 37), you force your opponent to address these new concerns without the intrinsic protection Terror icons normally provide.

Scarecrow scares the characters away

Sure, your opponent can decide that Lucas Corn’s mere presence is too problematic and pitch a character from his hand to shuffle him back into the deck. However, in this case, Lucas becomes a form of pre-emptive character removal, which is also good. You know Lucas Corn will be back to haunt your opponent, eventually, and later can come quite a bit earlier when you have a Summoning Circle (Terror of the Tides, 74) at your disposal. The zero in his cost means that just exhausting the Circle is enough to bring him back, at which point your opponent can try get rid of him again. But if your opponent enters that race, he’ll probably run out of characters faster than you can activate the Circle. Eventually, your opponent will have to deal with Mr. Corn.

Blunt instruments and bags of tricks

Lucas Corn’s skill of zero is somewhat risky. A Shotgun Blast (Core Set, 16) can take him out for free. Then again, he’s also free for Unspeakable Resurrection (Core Set, 119). The fact he’s aligned to Shub-Niggurath means it’s easy for him to be reborn time and again in the Shadowed Woods (Core Set, 133)… once again, for free.

While his lack of skill also means he can’t claim success tokens on his own, he makes an excellent support character for the rest of your ghouls, monsters, and cultists. If all else fails, you can consecrate an Altar of the Blessed (Core Set, 135) to provide him just enough skill to matter.

In the end, you can find plenty of tricks for a character who’s free to play, even if those tricks may simply force your opponent into a bind as he chooses whether to confront the newfound terror or to buy him off and send him back to whatever dimension from whence he came.

Thanks, Marius!

Look for Lucas Corn to terrify investigators, faculty, and cultists alike when he seeks the secrets of Written and Bound.

Six months ago, Ordo Veritatis agent John Sheldon went off the organisations radar following an emotional breakdown in the wake of loosing his wife in a car crash. He held is sister, fellow Ordo Veritatis agent Caroline Sheldon responsible for her death as she was drunk at the wheel that night. Psychiatric Metrics feared John went out to perform a solo mission to expose the heart of an Esoterrorist funding network he had uncovered in Amsterdam. The proposal for that mission had been shelved months ago due to its low probability of success.

When his body turns up in Amsterdam, evidently the sacrifice in an Esoterrorist ritual, the eye of suspicion turns on the rest of his team he left behind. Are they guilty by mere association, or are they innocent of his fate? They are given a chance to find out what happened to their friend and colleague, and in the process clear them from any suspicion in the eyes of the Ordo Veritatis.

The Love of Money is an Esoterrorists adventure for 4-6 players from incredible GM and Pelgrane Crew favourite, Matthew Sanderson. It is designed as a single stand-alone adventure with pre-generated characters provided, but can be tweaked to accommodate integration into an ongoing campaign.

Esoterrorists: The Love of Money is available at RPGNow.com.

Welcome to the second installment of a new series that delves into the storied history of some of the most iconic characters and events in the lore of the Dungeons & Dragons game. This article sheds light on one of the most epic battles of all time: the clash of Corellon, god of the elves, and Gruumsh, god of the orcs.

Test your game knowledge in our D&D-themed crossword puzzle! Clues found from the Shackled City to the City of Towers.

For some, a game of D&D offers the chance to exercise their crafting skills.

Welcome to new column Tricks for GMs which today talks about Generating NPCs on the Fly. We've also got a review of Warhammer's new POD Cards,Faith of Sigmar.

Download them today, and prepare to decide the fate of a galaxy

Aboveground, even greater dangers lurked. In their region of the city, Sol patrols were to be most feared, but a thousand things could get one killed in the new Mecatol. Gangs of looters that would kill first and steal later. Packs of flying ruvar birds that, driven mad by the poisoned rains and desperate for food, had become feral and savage things. And there was the endless Sol bombings. While the explosions could kill one well enough, they left behind a broken landscape almost as deadly.
     – Rex: Final Days of an Empire

A sudden and unexpected attack has left Mecatol Rex, the galactic seat of power, in disarray. Now, the city’s ambitious factions have begun their diplomatic and military maneuvering, each hoping to seize authority when the dust settles. Through negotiation and guile, one great race will decide the fate of the galaxy... but who will it be?

A Guide to Mecatol City

The rules for Rex (12.7 MB), the board game of negotiation and warfare for 3–6 players, are now available for download from our support page! Set 3,000 years before the events of Twilight Imperium, Rex tells the fateful story of once-proud Mecatol City in the months and years following the death of the last Lazax emperor.

Rex is based on a game system originally designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, and Peter Olotka (Cosmic Encounter) and redeveloped for a new audience through the collaborative efforts of Christian T. Petersen (Twilight Imperium, A Game of Thrones: The Board Game), John Goodenough (Tide of Iron), and Corey Konieczka (Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, Runewars). This engaging game presents players with compelling asymmetrical racial abilities, as well as a myriad of opportunities for diplomacy and deception.

Download the rules today, then head to your local retailer to place your pre-order!

When my players see an adventure hook dangling in front of them, sometimes they bite, and sometimes they swim away.

END OF AN ERA!

Longtime scribe RON MARZ (ARTIFACTS, MAGDALENA) and artistic partner STJEPAN SEJIC (BROKEN TRINITY) conclude their critically acclaimed run on WITCHBLADE. In this volume, Sara Pezzini must defeat the ancient Babylonian goddess-queen Tiamat, who has returned after centuries with an ax to grind with the Witchblade bearer. Also in this volume, the over-sized landmark 150th issue of Witchblade where Internal Affairs closes in on Sara's mystical secret, forcing her to choose between her role as Witchblade bearer and detective.

Witchblade Redemption Volume 4 collects WITCHBLADE #145-#150 and is available now at DriveThruComics.com

Designers & Dragons: The Column is back for a second time this week to provide us with the Designers & Dragons Article Index.

Why do all of the difficult and dangerous work yourself when you can summon up someone—or something—else to do it for you? Summoning Powers are all about agents, non-player characters called up by Summon effects, and what you can do with them. It covers conventional minions from infernal demons to animated machines but also powers like duplication, combined forms, empowering, and anatomic separation! The power really is "all in your mind"! This 99-cent Power Profile PDF is for Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition. Mutants & Masterminds Power Profile: Summoning Powers

Forges across the Elemental Chaos produce powerful weapons used by the plane's mightiest champions.

it's the first of February, and you know what that means? ... Yeah, me either. How about some new reviews, though? That'll work.

From a somewhat disturbing post over on Story Games: And yet another different D&D freelancer friend said: “This is why D&D 4E is called an indie game. It tells you how to play. Many of us know that the rules are better than they have ever been design wise but that’s not the point. Look [...]

Imagine: A fantasy world, but not one based on Medieval/Dark Ages European culture and myth, but rather on the tropes of the Spaghetti Western and Chinese Wuxia. Add steampunk elements. Mix well.

A fantasy world that mixes the inspirations of Django and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon… The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and House of Flying Daggers… Fistful of Dollars and Fist of Legend.

A fantasy world that’s explored through a book series, a constantly-updated website, a tabletop role-playing game, comics, artwork, webseries and much, much, more.

This is FAR WEST.

Tales of the Far West is the first book in Adamant Entertainment’s Wuxia-Western mash-up, featuring a dozen all-new tales written by critically-acclaimed and award-winning fantasy, science-fiction, horror and adventure authors, including: Chuck Wendig, Gareth-Michael Skarka, Matt Forbeck, Ari Marmell, Scott Lynch, Dave Gross and more.

Tales of the Far West is available now in eBook format(s) at DriveThruFiction.com!

Designers & Dragons: The Column is back again to run down The Top RPGs of 2011.

Several Hunter and Demon books from the classic World of Darkness are back in print at DriveThruRPG.com!

Hunter: the Reckoning Now in Print titles include:

Hunter: the Reckoning
Hunter Player's Guide
Hunter Storyteller's Companion
Hunter Storyteller's Handbook
Hunter Book: Wayward
Hunter Book: Hermit
Hunter Book: Innocent
Hunter Book: Martyr
Laws of the Reckoning (Mind's Eye Theatre)

Demon: the Fallen Now in Print titles include:

Demon: the Fallen
Demon Player's Guide
Houses of the Fallen

White Wolf now has over 130 titles in the Now in Print program at DriveThruRPG and more are being added all the time!

Let's start with a couple of new reviews this week, and ease into things.

This is life in the big city, but no city like you've ever seen before. Here, it isn't liquor that gets you twenty years behind bars, it's magic, and private investigator Jefferson Carter has a license to practice.

But between the demonic femme fatales, the ghoulish gentlemen's clubs and the dead pale mob family with red eyes and sharp teeth, Carter is going to need every bit of magic he's got to keep himself alive.

No Loyal Knight is a modern horror and dark fantasy novel by John Wick (Legend of the 5 Rings, Houses of the Blooded) and is available now in eBook format at DriveThruFiction.com.

If you've been following along with our installments of the Ronin Round Table, you've gotten a glimpse at what several of our creative staffers do on a day-to-day basis and how we go about moving ideas into rules, stories, and pictures that fire the imaginations of our fans. Today I'm here to reveal a little more about what goes on behind the scenes of a company like Green Ronin that functions without a central office and spans several time zones. My name is Nicole Lindroos and I am Green Ronin's General Manager. In a larger company a General Manager might oversee a lot of other people and coordinate between different departments while tossing off industrial-strength buzzwords but, thankfully, Green Ronin isn't that kind of a company. My duties can best be described as taking on those inspiration-dampening tasks that might weigh down our creative staff, keeping an eye on strategic development and greasing the cogs and wheels of the business. One of my favorite duties, and one that is particularly on my mind at this time of year, is convention planning. This is the season of convention deadlines, many of which overlap and it's my responsibility to make certain they don't get overlooked lest we find ourselves without a booth or locked out of the hotel reservation system for an out of town show. The king of convention appearances for Green Ronin has always been Gen Con because we bring in every employee (and some of our most trusted freelancers) and believe it or not, deadlines for the show in August are already flying past by the time January rolls around. Booth payments are due, badge request deadlines are coming up, event registration is open, reservations for hotels will have to be made in the next few weeks and to meet those deadlines I need to have answers to questions. Since we have to pay for the booth, we must decide how big a space we're going to need. That means we have to have an idea of how much product we're going to have on hand, how many tables we're going to want for demonstrations and which games we'll be demonstrating in the booth. Will we have company-sponsored games listed in the program book? If so, we need to know which games and who will run them. What will our slate of seminars be and which staff members will be participating? For Gen Con in particular there are a lot of little pieces that all need to be fit together to make sure the whole thing comes off as planned but we'll have to do essentially the same thing for several events on our schedule every year. In the same way that our creative staff puzzles over the right stats for The Joker or whether those new Dragon Age backgrounds unbalance character creation, I'm the Ronin you'll generally find hiding out behind the scenes "statting out" our convention attendance. And making sure payroll is covered. And helping track down that mail order that never made it to Norway. And banning spammers from our message boards. And adjusting the inventory reports to account for products damaged in shipment. And... well, you get the idea.

Think all super-powers are physical? Think again... Mental Powers delves into the extraordinary abilities of the mind, from mind-reading and clairvoyance to astral projection and various mental tricks and attacks. Learn how to apply the "mind" descriptor and create powers focused on it and handle everything from possession to mind-switching. The power really is "all in your mind"! This 99-cent Power Profile PDF is for Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition. Mutants & Masterminds Power Profile: Mental Powers

Yesterday Wizards announced they’ll be reprinting the 1st Edition AD&D core books in new collectible (in the pre-Magic sense of the word, thanks) editions this April. We can only assume that the choice of reprinting this particular edition, rather than the white box or something else you can’t readily find in free boxes on the [...]

Sometimes heroes are made and not born, especially in the case of heroes who suit up in advanced armor, giving them capabilities to match the most powerful superhumans. Armor Powers looks at suits of power armor from weapons systems to defenses, movement and propulsion to utilities like communications and sensors, everything you need to create your own super-suits. In some cases, clothes really do make the (super-)man! This 99-cent Power Profile PDF is for Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition. Mutants & Masterminds Power Profile: Armor Powers

Taste the excitement. For those who missed, D&D Next (that’s all they’re calling it thus far) has been announced, and an open playtest set to begin in the spring can be yours if you go click on one of a selection of shiny red buttons. Here’s what I had to say on the Twits: I [...]

Risk Legacy is the game of the year. I know, I know, but: even if the persistent nuisance of the core Risk die mechanic isn’t something you can overlook, think of the effect that Legacy will have on future games from (the wealthier amongst) other game publishers. Specifically, imagine what co-op games will do with [...]

While some of the OgreCave crew have been taking a little time off (call ‘em mental health days, call ‘em school/divorce/new baby recovery days – whatever), causing us to skip this year’s OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide, longtime Cave Dweller Matthew Pook has scraped together a quick list of gift suggestions that would make any Ogre [...]

The Halo media franchise has created a rich narrative universe that you've never heard about.

Comics are proving to be fertile ground for expanding game universes.

Authors of tie-in fiction find a balance between tell new stories while staying true to the videogame worlds fans love.

Dora the Explorer is a videogame; you just don't play it.

There are many ways to enter the videogame industry; so many, in fact, it can be difficult to know where to start. Here's some practical advice to help you on your way.

This Week's Tips and Features:
How to Determine The Perfect Length For Your Campaign
Simple Three Tier System Unblocks Your Campaign Planning: Strategy, Tactics and Logistics for GMs
How To Reduce Combat In Your Games - 6 Easy Ways

Campaign Mastery Blog

This Week's Tips and Features:
Cunning Cohorts Build Character: Four GM Tips
Riddleport Session 21 - If He Has a Cape, Run!
Time Travel Tips From RPT Readers
One More Tip: Top 12 Ways to Stop Sounding So Damn Metagamey [Leonine Roar Website]

Campaign Mastery Blog

This Week's Tips and Features:
Watch Out For These Time Travel GM Traps
Dungeon Tile Mastery: 9 Ways To Get The Most Out Of Your Tile Collection
Review: Art of Wor City Tiles: The Stone Bard Inn
Super Heroes + Zombies? Book Review: Ex-Heroes

Campaign Mastery Blog

This Week's Tips and Features:
A Brief Word From John: Riddleport Session 20 – Showdown at the Gold Goblin
For Awesome Campaigns Build A Player Campaign Book
Free Heists Deck Helps You Run Awesome Heists
Hot Pursuit Tips

Campaign Mastery Blog

This Week's Tips and Features:
A Brief Word From John: Riddleport Session 19 - Power Struggle
22 Terrain Hacks For the Low Budget Game Master
Three Ways To Game With Casual Players
Organize Your Information With Evernote
When You Need To Cast In Secret
A Trick For Easier In-Game Communication
Speeding Up Combat
One More Tip: I Smell Props

Campaign Mastery Blog

CHAPTER 18

“Nobody touch nothing!”

“I think he’s missing some toes.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

“Just wait till he gets here.”

“What the hell is he going to find?”

“He’s gifted.”

“You really believe that? You really making this decision while thinking with your baby maker?”

“My what?”

“You heard me. You’re thinking with your Easy-Bake Oven.”

“Wow. You’re full of pleasant analogies this morning. I think he is gifted when it comes to this. I think this is an opportunity for him to get us information we could not otherwise obtain. Anyway, we’re about to find out one way or the other.”

“This is so fucking not a good test situation.”

“We’re fine.”

“We are not fucking fine. We’re leaving traces at a scene. I can tell you right now that we’ve already made six mistakes that we aren’t even aware of. Hey, I said do not touch anything!”

“So fix it.”

“Fix it!? You think I have that kind of pull? Christ! Hey, you two—wonder twins. Out on the front lawn, now! Or I’ll bash your empty skulls together.”

“All right.”

“Yeesh!”

Simon hears the voices as he approaches the open door. The Corbies cackle loudly in his head, the wormwood tree vibrating his spine to their cawed chorus of, “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!” Simon does his best not to giggle in anticipation.

He steps through the door just as Kenny and Zack are leaving. They stop and follow him back inside.

“Man of the hour,” says Officer Polhaus, unenthusiastically. “Meeks, you at least know what a bad idea this is, right?”

“Yes,” Simon says, trying not to drool and grin.

“Tell these folks not to touch anything.”

“He’s right.” Simon hardly notices anyone else, anyone but the body, anyone but his next patient. “Everyone should wear these.” He passes around a box of blue latex gloves and snaps on a pair himself. Four other pairs of snaps follow: Polhaus, Nyx, Kenny, and Zack.

The call woke Simon up at a little after 4:00 A.M. They told him to come and to bring his gear.

Simon licks his lips.

The ritual.

“Subject: Gregory Mitchell,” says Simon. “Male. Caucasian. Early forties. Cosmetic surgery.” Simon says that last with a frown.

“Why’s that important?” Kenny asks. Nyx hushes him.

“Subject has been dead over forty-eight hours.”

“This is how I found him,” Polhaus says. “I came to talk about Apex Consumers with him and—well, here he is. Looks like someone cut his throat. Cut off some fingers and toes and cut his throat. And over there—looks like he had a baseball bat as a weapon when they got him.”

“No,” says Simon. “The throat has been bitten out. The fingers and toes . . . were bitten off. Some of the fingers and toes were bitten postmortem.”

“Simon, can you do your, uh, thing?” Nyx asks.

Simon nods.

“Christ,” Polhaus mutters, “that’s going to be a mess. That’s going to be all over the crime scene.”

Simon nods and opens his case, removing a length of plastic tarp. They lay the body on the tarp and carry it into the bathroom, laying it in the tub.

“Rub-a-dub-dub,” the Corbies sing. “Rub-a-dub-dub, dead man in the tub. Dive in, Simon. The Dead Water’s lovely!”

Simon guzzles the absinthe from his Thermos.

The mirror in the bathroom bends and the tiles leak into one another. The wormwood nuzzles into the cracks of his brain, finding their old niches.

“Scalpels and brain knives and cranium chisels. These are a few of your favorite things,” sing the Corbies. Simon silently mouths the words along with them.

“May I?” Simon says, almost panting.

Nyx looks to Polhaus. They all look at Simon—differently.

What did they see, Jane?

“Fuck,” says Polhaus, deflating. “Yeah, go ahead. We’ve already fucked ourselves.”

Nyx nods to Simon.

“Oh, thank you,” Simon says with a sharp sigh as he falls on the corpse, the Corbies screeching in carrion glee at the appearance of the red, red Y.

“Thank you.”

* * * * *

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

* * * * *

Simon comes to on his knees in a world bleeding green. Everyone looks a little pale. Wide eyes. Kenny is in the front yard vomiting.

Something large and meaty slaps Simon’s face.

“Meeks,” says Polhaus, “you with us?”

“How’d it go, Simon?” says Nyx, more gently.

“It’s good,” says Simon, vaguely noticing the blood on his gloved hands and down his shirt. “It’s so good—it’s good—it’s good—it’s good . . .”

Polhaus lets go of Simon. “Jesus.”

The drunken scarecrow tumbles to the floor with liquid, inebriated grace, rolling on his back, catnip drunk and swatting at phantom yarn balls.

“He looks like a goddamn heroin addict,” says Polhaus. “What the hell were we thinking?”

Simon giggles on the floor. He rocks on his back. So relaxed. So good. The Dead Water plays demon fiddler tunes on his nerves.

“Scalpels and brain knives and cranium chisels. These are a few of my favorite things,” Simon sings.

“This is what he has to add to the Sanctuary?” Polhaus asks.

“Greg was expecting them,” Simon slurs.

“Oh, so it’s ‘Greg’ now?” says Polhaus.

“Yes, we shared,” Simon says.

Nyx notices Polhaus’s immense fists tightening and a grinding noise coming from his mouth. She puts a restraining hand on his shoulder, saying, “Simon? What did you learn?”

Despite him still rolling on the ground, Simon’s voice turns sober and clinical. “Members of Club Wendigo committed the murder. Greg was not surprised. He expected retribution from them. Hector was with them. He is a member of the club.”

Hector: the Hanging Man. Jack of diamonds.

“How do we know this is true?” asks Polhaus.

Simon looks at his hands, fascinated by the cold, thick blood. “Greg managed to strike Hector in the face with his bat before they killed him. You might find a gold tooth near the couch.”

“Got it!” calls Zack after running up the stairs. He holds up a gold-capped tooth, like one of Jolly Roger’s, only larger. It tapers to a ridiculously sharp point—a predator’s tooth.

“Oh, what big teeth you have,” Simon says. They’re the Corbies’ words, but they use Simon’s mouth. “The Big Bad Wolf fed her strips of human flesh. The moral: children who stray from the path get their innocence devoured.”

“Okay, so Club Wendigo and Apex Consumers are connected,” says Nyx. “What now?”

“I might have a little more information, but it’s just fragments right now.” Simon chuckles. “Strips of human data, not yet digested.”

Polhaus shakes his head, looking at the mess in the tub. “Too deep. We’ve gone too deep into this thing. Already.”

“John?”

“Fuck!”

“What?”

“No, I’ve got this,” says Polhaus. “Get everyone else out of here.”

“You can clean this up?” asks Nyx. “How?”

“Get everyone and go. I have to call in a favor,” says Polhaus coldly.

“John, I—”

“I—have—got—this.”

“All right.”

“Go.”

Nyx and Zack help Simon gather his gear. Together they leave the home of Gregory Mitchell.

“So I figured out what Simon does,” says Zack.

“What?” asks Nyx.

“He does what I do. He hacks for information. He’s a hacker.”

Simon laughs long and hard at the joke, laughs all the way back to the car.

No one joins him.

* * * * *

“You folks look lost,” says the muscular man with the shaven head. His two cohorts, equally well muscled but dangling with dreads, nod their agreement. Then all three draw guns and point them at Simon and Nyx. “Tour bus don’t go this way.”

I do not like guns, Jane. They’re loud and obscene.

Nyx seems unfazed. She looks up for a moment at the fattening moon, hanging over the South Side like a fist, then back at the trio. “The person we want to see isn’t on the standard tour. From that purple skull on the back of your hand there, I’ll bet you know where we can find Mama Bone-digger.”

Mama Bone-digger: the Crone. Queen of spades.

The name had come to Simon as they were driving away from Mitchell’s place the previous night. It was one of those undigested bits of data he was still processing, the largest one. The only one, it turned out, that wasn’t just mental detritus.

It happens sometimes, Jane. Stray dreams wander into the Dead Water—dreams that have nothing to do with my patient.

Nyx had told Simon to sleep on it. She knew the name, but would do some more digging. The two of them would then pursue whatever leads she discovered. And that pursuit had brought them, just one day later, here.

After their brief shock at Nyx’s bluntness fades, the three men holding the guns laugh, and that’s the moment that Nyx’s hands flash. Suddenly she’s holding a very large, very military-looking pistol and a red laser dot burns, menacingly, between the eyes of the man with the shaven head. Simon can’t decide from where she produced such a large gun.

She pulled out that big gun almost as fast as I can produce a scalpel. Eh, Jane?

The shaven head smiles, once again surprised. “That’s a nifty trick, Goth girlie, sexy even. But there’re still three of us. We still win. Now, I like you, but that just means we shoot your friend in the head and give you a warning shot—in the arm or leg, maybe—before we drag you in the alley there and take turns with that little ass of yours.”

“Huh,” says Nyx. “You and boyfriends think you can keep it up while I’m bleeding all over the place?”

“Why not? Be just like when my girlfriend’s on the rag.” They all three laugh, the sound harsher still.

Nyx grins. The red laser dot travels downward, from the shaven head to the man’s crotch. Then something in her tone goes mean.

“You’re right, Mr. Potato Head,” says Nyx. “I can’t imagine a variation on this scenario where my friend and I win. You’ll kill us or hurt us bad. But not before I explode your crotch like a melon. Rehabilitation will be painful. Years from now, you’ll still tell the story of how you ‘won,’ but you won’t be able to say it was worth it. Some in the neighborhood won’t be able to keep a straight face if you do. They’ll know. They’ll know that every time you’re nodding hard, you’re fantasizing about going back in time so you can change that one moment and keep your balls.”

The red dot glows, unwavering.

Tension.

Silence.

And then it’s all broken by the laughter of the man with the clean-shaven head. “Oh, I really, really do like her.” He raises his gun and waves his dreadlocked fellows’ weapons down. “Come on, Goth girlie. You want to play with voodoo—we take you to see Mama Bone-digger.”

Simon smiles, saying, “I’m with her.”

They all walk deeper into the neighborhood.

In whispers, Nyx tells Simon bits of Mama Bone-digger’s mythos. She’s an old voodoo mambo. They say she controls this neighborhood—a patriarch feared and loved. Everyone—criminal, citizen, and gangbanger—follows her lead. “Loved and feared,” she whispers to Simon, “They say if she licks your shadow, you die.”

Nyx pauses and says a little louder, “I thought she died years ago.”

“Doesn’t matter,” says the shaven head man. “Heaven and Hell don’t let Mama in. So she stays here.”

Alleys and doors and eyes and guns all watch their passing. Simon and Nyx travel through corridors of pungent scents—of sewage and sweet rot, of spices and meats and peppers.

Finally, they are led into a darkened tie-dye shop. “Mama teaches the little ones a trade,” says the shaven man. Simon looks at the shirts and sheets and colors. Some are abstract patterns, other pictures. A skeletal man in a top hat, a cigar in one hand, a bottle in the other, stares at Simon with crazed eyes from a sheet on the wall.

“Who d’at?” says a voice from a back room. “Who d’ere? James? D’at be you?”

“Yeah, Mama,” says the shaven man. “You have visitors. Pale pilgrims want to speak to the Bone-digger.”

A lithe little girl with dusky skin emerges from the shadows. In that same voice she says, “Who is this? Who wants to see Mama?” The speaker is only eight years old, at most, but the voice is not a child’s, the eyes are not a child’s. Simon watches her hands—he’s better with hands—and they are not the flighty hands of a child. They have poise and purpose.

“I’m Nyx. This is Simon.”

“Why do you bother Mama Bone-digger, huh?” says the little girl. “Dangerous ju-ju to come to me. Didn’t you know that? What you come for—a Petro curse on an enemy? Love potion for the one d’at snubbed you? Or maybe you looking for some necromancy, huh? Dangerous ju-ju if you want to commune with the restless.”

Smiling, James leans his head down, between Nyx and Simon, whispering in their ears, “Once upon a time, Mama Bone-digger was dying. She coughed up a black stone. When she died, her great-granddaughter swallowed the stone. Mama remains.”

“Mama Bone-digger,” says Nyx. “My friend Simon needs to talk to you. He is a necromancer, too.”

“Really?” says the little girl, suddenly interested. She walks toward Simon, her little hips swaying in a practiced, sensual manner. She sways like the tide, sways so fluidly it is easy to forget, for a moment, that she’s a little girl. Her hand reaches up with serpentine grace, grabbing Simon’s black, tattered necktie and pulling him slowly down to her level. Her full lips part a little, breathing him in. Simon can smell her, smell the sweat and jasmine and vanilla. Her hands caress Simon’s face, reading it like a blind woman’s hands, like a snake’s tongue. She removes his cracked glasses and stares into those malachite skull windows.

“Your handsome scarecrow can come in. You stay out here, girlie. This way,” she says, turning toward the back room. She pauses and turns back. “Come on, now. Or are you afraid I’ll lick your shadow?” She licks the air suggestively, then enters the back room laughing hard and loud.

They say, Jane, that you should never walk toward Mama Bone-digger in the evening, with your shadow striding before you. And they say that you should never, ever walk away from Mama Bone-digger in the morning, with your shadow trailing behind you.

Simon follows into the back room, where the jasmine and vanilla overpower. The little girl’s long black fingernails click-clack, like spider legs, across an altar that dominates the room. On the altar rests an obsidian cross and a clay bowl filled with oil and a single stone sprinkled with mirror shards.

The scratch-flare of a match, and several purple wax skull candles are lit, their faces melting into strange expressions. Illuminated in the flicker-flame is a scattered deck of playing cards, in various piles on the altar. The two upturned piles catch Simon’s eye: queens and jacks.

“I’ve been playing that game,” Simon says, removing his deck from his pocket.

“You playing jacks and queens?”

“Yes.”

“How goes the game?”

Simon pulls out the torn-up queen of hearts and lays her fragments on the altar.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” he says.

Simon lays the queen of clubs on the altar.

“I found my queen of clubs.”

Simon lays the queen of spades on the altar.

“And now I’ve found my lovely queen of spades.” Simon kneels and kisses the girl’s hand—doing the latter and using the word lovely because the Corbies whispered to him, telling him that she’d like that.

The girl gently touches Simon’s cheek and smiles. “Oh my. My handsome scarecrow says such things.”

“See,” whisper the wraith crows.

“And so,” says the girl, “you can’t find your . . . departed queen of hearts?”

“This is all I have,” Simon says, lifting up the card piece with the queen’s head. “She’s Jane Doe. She’s the golden-eyed cadaver.”

The girl nods. “I can help you with that. But first—first you gotta tell Mama about your necromancy. Sit.” She points to a chair. Simon takes the seat, and she slithers into his lap. “Now, whisper in my ear, sweet scarecrow. Tell me what I want to know. Tell Mama all about your necromancy.”

Simon whispers, explaining as best he can, the Dead Water, his addiction, his patients, and all the joys and loves and secrets and heartaches one can find in that Y-shaped door.

The girl listens. When Simon finishes, she looks at him with a wicked grin.

“I can help you, Simon Meeks,” she says. “But you gotta show Mama your necromancy.” She hops off his lap and rummages through a trunk, carefully extracting something large and leather. Then she gently lays the bundle—one almost too big for her little arms to carry—on the altar.

“This is my Henry,” she says, opening the leather bag. Inside, arms crossed, rests a shrunken body. It’s mostly bones held together with tendons and decayed skin.

“Hello, Henry,” Simon says.

“My Henry died many years ago. Though I’ve tried, I cannot talk to Henry. I never found out who did this to him. Some move on, past the station, across the water. Some souls are beyond my necromancy. But you, handsome scarecrow, your necromancy be different. Maybe your necromancy be not exactly necromancy.”

“I don’t . . . I’ve never worked on a body this old.”

“Expand your horizons, child,” she says, handing Simon a dagger. Simon feels the blades heft.

It wasn’t a scalpel, Jane, but it was sharp.

Simon takes a flask from his pocket and drinks down all the green witchfire from inside. The ghost tree bends and grows and the Corbies caw and sing at the unexpected treat. In the back room the little girl watches with that wicked grin built of many, many more years than those lips or teeth. She watches as Simon feels the Dead Water enter his body with a shudder—as he cuts into the papery skin and the withered guts.

* * * * *

Where are we?

Sleep has no place to call its own.

* * * * *

Simon comes to, full of dead love.

The girl stares at him, mouth hanging open, utterly fascinated. She looks at him in a new light. He looks at her differently, too, seeing her through Dead Water eyes. And they stare at each other: the girl with a crone in her belly, the man with a ghost tree growing in his head.

“Henry says, ‘Hi.’”

“What . . . what did he say?” asks the girl, for the first time faltering, off her rhythm.

“LeRoy killed him. Did it for the money. But he never got the money.”

“Where—?”

“It’s buried in Hyde Park. Henry said you would know where.”

“Did you tell Henry that I—?”

“I did.”

The girl giggles and laughs. “Thank you, Simon. Here—” She rummages through another trunk, pulls out a bit of cloth. Simon steps forward, making a faint sound in his closed mouth.

“That’s—”

“Yes, honey. D’is belongs to your golden-eyed cadaver—your queen of hearts.”

Folded in the cloth is a left arm, the stump sewn shut, the flesh persevered in some peculiar manner. The bluish tint to the dry skin is even deeper than Simon remembered.

“May I?” Simon says, trembling arms extended.

“You may, my handsome scarecrow, my ragdoll lover, my Rada doll. You helped Mama and she help you.”

“Who?” Simon whispers. “Where did you—?”

“From what you say before, you know the man—Reeves. When I need things for my practice, I buy from him.”

“Did he offer you any other . . . parts?”

Mama shakes her head slowly. “No. I was hoping it be the left arm of a sorceress—good for mighty powerful ju-ju. The body man said it was, but he lied. She something special, sure, but she not a sorceress, not exactly. When you was telling your story, I realized what I had, what that liar had brought me.” An awful light flashes in her eyes. “He pay for that dishonesty, honey. He pay big.” And then it is gone and another, more feral look takes its place. “I think I want to be helping you anyway. Mama think, maybe you’re not a man at all. Mama think, maybe you’re a ghede spirit taken flesh.”

The girl hands Simon the arm, and then wraps her arms around his waist, gently, expertly, rocking her pelvis against Simon as she speaks. Through his Dead Water eyes, Simon finds it harder and harder to see the little girl, instead, underneath, finding a full-grown, seductive woman. And underneath that, something far, far older.

“Spirits of sex and death,” she chants, “sex and death. We at our most human when we’re birthing, dying, fucking—all on our backs and the jazz-skull laugh. I’ve been ridden by many ghede during many ceremonies. Did you come down to earth to ride Mama physically, Simon-skull-spirit? You make me moan? Do you have what ghede have? What Papa Ghede got? What Baron Samedi got? Wicked-rictus-grin humor and a great, big—”

Mama Bone-digger’s hand snakes between Simon’s legs, groping. Simon shudders and takes a startled step backward.

“I’m sorry. I can’t . . . I—” he stammers.

“Oh. My handsome scarecrow, my ragdoll lover, has a sweetheart.” Mama Bone-digger looks at the door as if through the door. “But it ain’t your queen of clubs.” She looks at the arm in Simon’s hand and points. “It’s her.”

“Yes,” Simon says.

The girl claps, maniacally laughing. “Oh my, oh my, oh my! What to do when the romance don’t die? How ghastly. How romantic. You go, Simon Meeks. You finish your love story. You’re finding your queens . . . but what about your jacks?”

“I’ll find them, too,” Simon says.

“Tell me—your queen of clubs, she and her friends like you, don’t they?”

“Yes,” says Simon, a smile manifesting.

I’d never felt that, Jane—camaraderie and friends. I liked it. I liked it an awful lot.

“That’s because, my handsome scarecrow, you’re a Rada doll. Soon though. Soon you must be a Petro doll, and that will scare them.”

I didn’t know what she meant then. I do now. Eh, Jane?

Simon leaves, holding Jane’s hand.

INTERLUDE:

The Cookbook

“Gotta move on, Alex,” he said. “This is a whole new level. Don’t be sad. Be a multitude. We’ve got to lead by example.”

Gabe had been trying to cheer me up.

“What do you call that?” I ask.

“Moloch.”

“Really?”

“Moloch, Moloch, Moloch.”

“Smells good.”

“Wait till you get it in your belly.”

I look at the stove.

“Uh, Gabe—do you even know the meaning of the word satire?”

“No,” he says foolishly and then grins.

I finally laugh. It feels good, and I can’t stop.

And that explains the dog-eared copy of Swift’s essays, open to “A Modest Proposal,” resting on his kitchen table while the little legs and hands bobbed up and down in his stew pot.

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.

CHAPTER 17

“Hello, my name is Clara.”

“Hello, Clara,” answers the Obsidian Sanctuary.

Clara shivers at the response, nervous at the prospect of speaking in front of the strangers. They said this wasn’t even a full meeting, but the prospect is still daunting. They seem nice, though—encouraging. A small, mousy woman in her early thirties, all her plain features are eclipsed by the very large, very thick glasses that magnify her eyes to amphibian levels.

“I, uh . . . I was told maybe I could find help here. I don’t even know how to start.”

An encouraging murmur runs through the Sanctuary. Clara smiles, still shivering. She’s as awkward as a newborn fawn spat into a dark forest.

“I guess I have an addiction. I’m addicted to funeral food. But that’s a long story. Recently I joined a, uh, ‘self-actualization’ group. Apex Consumers. Now I think my hungers might have . . . changed.”

* * * * *

Nyx finds the door unlocked.

She follows the trail of dried mud to the bathroom and finds that door open as well. And she finds Simon, still mostly clothed, still wearing his cracked glasses, sitting in the tub, the hot water coming down from the showerhead, washing the muck away, soaking the tiled floor with its spray. Simon holds both of his mutilated forearms out, trying to keep the scalding water from torturing the bloody script of Jane Doe.

Nyx: the Maiden. Queen of clubs.

She does not scream. She does not gasp. She does not say a word, just helps clean Simon up. All the while, Simon tells her in a distant voice about how he found Mr. Knock. About the jars of unborn, the mad conversation, the cats, Jane’s head, the bone, and the bog. Nyx does not say a word, only dries Simon and wraps his arms in white bandages. But, as in Simon’s mind, she always bleeds through and floats to the surface. Red letters on white: Jane Doe.

Jane Doe: the Hanging Girl. Queen of hearts.

He tells her about all those roads and none of them leading home, the cracked world, the nonsense signs, the black dogs and bog bodies catching up. He details the next morning, finally being allowed to drive back to Chicago—a strange reef in a stranger sea.

The queen of hearts. Off with her head . . . off with her head. Eh, Jane?

Simon finishes talking and Nyx does not yell at him, does not lecture him on going off alone to explore the dark. She does not even give him a grim and grave “I told you so.” She just gives him a very hard hug and says, “Come on. We need to go eat some tacos and waffles.”

Simon stops short, his eyes turning less distant, snapping back to the now. “Why tacos and waffles?”

“Because,” Nyx says, “you need to commune with the living. Once a month the Obsidian Sanctuary has Taco-Waffle-TP Friday. That’s today. It’s tradition.”

* * * * *

It is not so very difficult, loveling, to picture the motel room door opening.

You can imagine the cleaning lady. You’ve seen her before, in one motel or another, pushing that cart of cleaning agents with all the enthusiasm of Sisyphus. Not too, too difficult to picture her stretching painfully, her back already throbbing the staccato Morse code message: Today’s going to suck. It’s the barest stretch of the imagination to name her pains: long hours, grinding monotony, escalating bills and out of control APRs, and domestic troubles recently aggravated by the discovery of her husband’s lust for hardcore amputee porn, via that copy of Humping Stumps discovered under his pillow.

Just a sketch of everyday life.

And there she stands in the doorway, when the banal line of her life interrupts.

The cigarette falls from her mouth.

It’s not the circle of salt on the floor. She has cleaned much nastier, more mysterious phenomena from the bed sheets.

No.

It’s there in the muddy handprints and footprints that run up the walls and along the ceiling. It’s in the way the mud glistens with moisture, never drying. It’s in the worm-orgy smell of fermented moss. It’s in the faint, dirty silhouettes smeared in the wallpaper and the inexplicable wrongness of their postures, like souls trapped in ash-shadow on still-standing Hiroshima walls after the sun split.

What conclusions go through her mind?

Who can say?

Omniscience has its degrees.

* * * * *

Strange pockets and hollows of safety and hearth can form in the ocean of late night. The Obsidian Sanctuary found theirs at a local diner. The restaurant is open twenty-four hours a day. The food is cheap and they serve both tacos and waffles. The late shift manager even lets Jolly Roger bring Byron into the building.

Simon and Nyx arrive to find a dozen Sanctuary members already present, already eating, gossiping, joking, and passing around the blueberry syrup.

“Taco-Waffle-TP Friday!” they chant.

“Why tacos and waffles?” Simon asks.

“Because,” Nyx says.

“And where does the TP come in?”

“You’ll see.”

Jolly Roger nods a greeting with his gold-platinum smile while feeding Byron bits of sausage. The black-and-white bird, perched on the Goth-pirate’s shoulder, greets Simon and Nyx by bobbing his head and singing:

                                     “T’was on the good ship Venus,

                                     By Christ you should have seen us.

                                     The figurehead was a whore in bed,

                                     Sucking a dead man’s penis.”

“Wow. Thanks for that, Byron,” says Nyx. “Roger, what the hell are you teaching this creature? That’s not Poe.”

“No,” says the gold-platinum teeth. “If it were Poe, the man would be living and the woman would be dead. I’m teaching Byron old maritime tunes.”

Byron continues singing:

                                     “The captain’s name was Lugger.

                                     By Christ he was a bugger.

                                     He wasn’t fit to shovel shit

                                     From one ship to another.”

Nyx and Simon take seats amidst the chaos of laughter, multiple layers of conversation, wildly gesturing hands, and eyes and mouths. Simon feels his heart pounding, the stabbing of social anxieties that he’s possessed so long they can almost be counted as comforts, but he resists the urge to hide in a closet.

Officer Polhaus shovels eggs and bacon into his mouth, arguing with another Sanctuary member between bites.

Nyx and Jolly Roger whisper something back and forth.

Zack and Kenny busy themselves in a discussion while building bigger and better catapults out of silverware, disposable tubs of cream being the artillery. They pause only to introduce themselves to Simon as the resident “techies.” Both are college students. They might be confused for twins if they looked anything alike.

“I’m telling you, man, the Sanctuary needs to raise money via merchandising,” says Zack, returning to the interrupted discussion.

“Merchandising? Like what?” says Kenny.

“Like things carved out of obsidian. Like jewelry.”

“And cutlery.”

“Yeah! Obsidian letter openers. Obsidian shot glasses. Obsidian toilet seats.”

“Who the hell would have an obsidian toilet seat?”

“Michael Clark Duncan.”

“Okay.”

Byron bobs and sings:

                                     “The second mate was Andy.

                                     By Christ he had a dandy.

                                     Till they crushed his cock on a jagged rock

                                     For cumming in the brandy.”

“Egads,” says Nyx. “That’s a pretty vile song, wouldn’t you say, Roge?”

“It’s supposed to be, poppet,” says Jolly Roger. “Debauched drinking song and all. You have a bunch of men on a ship and you’re not sure if you’ll make it to the next port ’cause you have to worry about illness and storms and starvation and pirates and the monsters. So you and your mates tell dirty jokes and sing dirtier songs. You one-up each other, making each verse more and more depraved, and you have a few laughs.”

Nyx ruffles the feathers on Byron’s head. “Well, Captain Nyx’s ship happens to have a pair of young ears aboard, mate.” She indicates Robin, sitting quietly at the other end of the table.

“Sorry, Mama Bear,” says Jolly Roger. “Once Byron starts, I can’t stop him. Animal cruelty and all.”

Nyx laughs and conversations resume.

Simon turns to Robin, sitting next to him, with her wounded bird stare, not paying attention to the conversations or her half-eaten meal. She instead draws pictures in crayon on her paper placemat, mostly of monsters and sharp teeth and eyes. Tonight she wears a Jason Voorhees hockey mask.

“Hi, Robin,” Simon says quietly.

Robin looks up at Simon and waves.

Loud, bawdy conversations continue. Simon’s order arrives but he only nibbles. He sifts through his breakfast skillet with a knife but only sees the clammy contents of Jane’s Y-incision. Simon sighs longingly.

He looks at Robin and her drawings—goes into his head and imagines growing psychic bat ears so he can decipher the memories and origins of those crayon-rendered echoes. It’s not a pretty picture. Simon steadies the shake in his dead-withdrawal hands and takes his napkin, expertly rolling and folding and working it until it is a white paper rose. Then the odd scarecrow presents the flower to the little wounded bird. Robin squeaks with delight, taking the flower as if it were a precious jewel.

Simon notices Nyx looking at him, from the other side of the tables. She’s smiling.

Byron sings:

                                     “The captain’s wife was Mabel.

                                     By God she was most able

                                     To give the crew their daily screw

                                     Upon the galley table.”

“Ohhhh,” Kenny groans, looking at his empty plate of waffles and his still half-full plate of tacos.

“You know, you don’t have to finish that,” Zack says.

“I must,” Kenny says, pointing to the remaining tacos. “This is my Everest.”

Still tentatively welcoming the camaraderie, but not taking direct part himself, Simon only samples the conversations around him.

“. . . so he’s just this guy they let work as an orderly on the weekends. Seriously retarded. I mean, he has trouble tying his shoes. Yet he somehow knows where to walk to avoid the cameras even as he’s swiping key cards and stealing bags and bags of blood. When we finally find him out, it takes five of us just to wrestle him to the ground. The whole time he’s sobbing and begging us to let him finish and . . .”

“. . . and that’s how I learned paranoia,” says Nyx. “From the song ‘Rock Lobster.’ It made me realize nothing can be trusted—even rocks are suspect. You’d think if there was one thing you could count on, it’d be a rock. But, no. Rocks might, as the song aptly notes, be something else. So everything is suspect . . .”

“. . . you gotta figure that ninety percent of it is all bullshit,” says Polhaus, showering his listener with bits of egg and pancake. “Complete, utter dog shit—bat shit crazy ramblings from crackheads and hicks, abductions stories from lonely losers, claims of psychic power by fat chicks who need a self-esteem boost. Then you got, say, ten percent—and that’s being freaking generous—of the stories that have some basis in . . . something. But then you gotta figure—tip of the iceberg. You’re not seeing the whole picture any more than one percent of the time. Then there’s gotta be that X percent to represent all the things that are not bullshit, that are out there, that we don’t know anything about. So you carry all the ones and zeroes, and you have to remember that none of us really know anything about anything. So the math is completely fucked. Take, for example—hey, Meeks!”

Polhaus points a meaty finger across the table at Simon, who flinches. That voice saying his name had never led to anything good.

“Yes?”

“How many autopsies do you figure you did last year?”

“Four hundred and twenty-six.”

“About four hundred and twenty-six?”

“Exactly four hundred and twenty-six.”

Polhaus stares a moment. “Yeah, right. Anyway, out of that number, how many stiffs were made stiffs by something unnatural?”

Simon has to think a moment. Given all he had seen recently, he might need to view some cases under different criteria, but all in all: “None, Officer Polhaus. None of the causes of death seemed conclusively ‘unnatural.’”

Polhaus turns to the teenager he’d been talking to. “See. Out of four hundred-plus bodies—nada. Yeah. They might be all around, but not every mugging, murder, or plot is supernatural.”

Conversations continue around the table. Simon slips inside his head; our misfit can take only so much unshielded socialization. He imagines the diner turning into a ghost pirate vessel: Nyx as its captain, wielding Bob, and Jolly Roger as first mate, hanging from the post as the living flag. The ship is piloted by a crew of Chicago’s cement skeletons, all singing filthy songs, led by Byron.

Somewhere, distantly, Simon is aware that everyone is discussing racehorse names. There is a pause in the background noise. With horror, and a flashback of blind date dread, Simon realizes he’s just been asked something and snaps back to the present. “Uh . . . what was that?”

“Come on, Boo Radley,” says Polhaus, with a smile or a snarl—it’s hard for Simon to tell. “If you had a racehorse, what would you name it?”

Simon thinks for only a moment. “Catherine the Great’s Death.”

There is a pause. Simon knows that pause. What comes after, he does not expect: laughter. There are exclamations of “Gross!” and “Oh, that’s wrong.” But laughter underscores it all. Even Polhaus’s scowl cracks.

“That’s—huh—that’s pretty fucking funny, actually,” chuckles the fat cop.

The Island of Misfit Toys. Eh, Jane?

The comment leads to a series of jokes about bestiality, which leads to jokes about dead hookers, which leads to jokes about dead babies. All of them gross, tasteless jokes that excite wheezing fits of laughter. All of them irreverent wards against the dark.

And Byron sings:

                                     “The cabin boy was Kipper.

                                     By Christ he was a nipper.

                                     He stuffed his ass with broken glass

                                     And circumcised the skipper.”

Finally Nyx gathers the scattered attention of the group.

“Okay, troops, game faces. Mama Bear says, shhhh.”

And with that, all is silent. Simon is admiring Nyx’s control of the group when he’s nudged from behind by another Sanctuary member who whispers, “They say she’s the daughter of an incubus demon.”

Simon nods. “I heard.”

“The Obsidian Sanctuary gathers for a reason,” says Nyx. “We give each other strength. We are stronger than the sum of our parts.” Heads nod. “I won’t spend a lot of time explaining that. You’ve all had a glimpse or a loss. Suffered your own horror story that brought you here. We gather to survive. Maybe to heal. And tonight we bring that strength to bear, to help a new member: Simon.”

Nyx indicates Simon with a purple-nailed hand. The gesture is answered by quiet applause.

“Simon is a gifted young man,” Nyx continues, with a wink aimed at Simon. “He’s a forensic pathologist. He has a gift with the dead.”

At this Simon hears, with a wince, the murmurs rise in the group, quiet whispers shared back and forth:

“. . . some kind of necromancer. . . ?”

“. . . special powers . . .”

“. . . maybe he can help me talk to my dear Jimmy, God rest his soul. . . .”

Simon shifts uncomfortably and stammers a whisper to Nyx, “I—I don’t know if you’d call it a—I mean, it’s not—”

Nyx doesn’t wait for him to finish. “Simon recently got his own glimpse of the dark. That makes him one of us.”

Fellow misfits and the supernaturally scarred murmur their agreement amidst the carafes of coffee and multiple flavors of syrup.

“A cadaver came to Simon. He came to know her as Jane Doe. Some of us knew her, too, but we never had a name for her.”

More energetic murmurs in the group.

“. . . those golden eyes . . .”

“. . . she healed poor Robin, you know . . .”

“. . . she was an angel sent to us . . .”

Whispered theories flit back and forth, and genuine tears streak down the faces of some of the misfits.

You were a saint to them, Jane. A ghostly saint. A fleshy holy spirit. And these dolls were damaged but not broken.

“Let’s call her Jane,” says Nyx, “for lack of anything else. We know Jane was murdered.”

More murmurs.

“Soon after,” continues Nyx, “Ichabod and his crew fell apart. Members lost it, got gacked, or both.”

“. . . they delved into some scary shit . . .”

“. . . Poor Neil, he was a bright boy . . .”

“. . . Jasper offed himself . . .”

“That’s why, before we go any further, I’m going to say it plain,” says Nyx. “We are not going down Knock’s road. We are not hunting the ultimate X-File. We are not discovering the secret of the universe. But we can help Simon. Carefully. As a unified force. We can—maybe—help set things right for Jane.”

Murmurs of assent.

Byron sings:

                                     “The captain’s lovely daughter

                                     Liked swimming in the water.

                                     Delighted squeals came when some eels

                                     Found her sexual quarters.”

“Right,” says Nyx. “John, tell us about the crime scene.”

Officer Polhaus takes a gulp of coffee and clears his throat, loudly. “Closed-down pub over on Lincoln. Set to be torn down and renovated. Big tree in the back beer garden was the hanging tree. They found . . . Jane, hanging there, in the beer garden. No eyewitnesses, except some poor kid who had the misfortune of seeing her dangling there.”

I think the boy was lucky, Jane, to see you dance.

“Didn’t look right. Definitely not a suicide. But it was a sloppy murder, too. I don’t know. You get the impression that the fucks who did this were interrupted, and not by no kid, but by something that made them rush out of there before they could tidy up.”

It was my shadow, Jane. Sometimes your shadow arrives before you, and sometimes it trails behind.

“What happened to Jane’s body?” asks Nyx.

“It vanished,” says Polhaus. “Queerest thing in the world. After she got shipped to the morgue, I kept on eye on the body and an ear to the ground because I, uh, recognized her.”

Polhaus’s mouth tightens.

Officer Polhaus knew you, Jane. He knew you in the before.

“One night her body’s there, next it’s gone. I mean gone. No records. No toe tag. Nada. No one remembers her being there. The world goes crazy. No one remembers—” again a meaty finger points at Simon “—except this guy.”

“Simon, what can you tell us about Jane?” asks Nyx.

Simon stammers to a start, the prospect of speaking in public again paralyzing. Then he remembers the ritual. He calls her name. “Subject: Jane Doe. Subject died by hypoxia. Subject had . . . beautiful eyes. Subject liked to play on playgrounds after hours, liked the chill of October sand. Subject—”

“The murder, asshole!” interrupts Polhaus. “What can you tell us about the fucking murder?”

Nyx glares, her humor vanished, replaced by something dangerous behind the eyes.

Polhaus looks down. “Sorry.”

“There were four of them,” says Simon. “There was Hector . . .”

The Hanging Man. Jack of diamonds.

“Joe . . .”

The Laughing Man. Jack of clubs.

“Gabe . . .”

The Question Man. Jack of spades.

“And Alex.”

The Crying Man. Jack of hearts.

“Hector held the rope. He’s very big, very strong. They raised her three times. Gabe asked the questions. Joe laughed when she choked.” Simon finds he has sliced his knife into the smiley face he made of his pancake. “Alex cried. She . . . kissed him before they killed her.”

“What happened to the body?” asks Nyx.

Simon tells the tale, in more detail, of “the Mondays,” the odd events at the morgue, Jane’s vanishing body and the vanishing memories, and the nightmare thing that stalked him. The Sanctuary listens in rapt attention as another story enters the tattered, autumnal quilt of their mythology.

Tensions tighten as the children huddle around the fire, fearing the wolves in the darkness.

And Byron sings:

                                     “The cook, his name was Freeman.

                                     He was a dirty demon.

                                     He fed the crew on menstrual stew

                                     And hymens fried in semen.”

Pepsi explodes out of Nyx’s nose and she coughs and chokes. “Goddamnit, Roge. We’re trying to have a serious meeting here!” But she does not resist the wave of laughter that comes, a laugh that grows contagious and sweeps across everyone in the restaurant—the collective, unspoken middle finger raised to the lurkers in the darkness.

“Moving on.” Nyx lays three pieces of paper on the table, very poignantly. “These belonged to Jane.”

Everyone peers in, as if at artifacts—as Simon might peer at a length of intestine or a ladleful of stomach contents.

“Let’s take these one at a time,” says Nyx. She picks up a pamphlet. “What do we know about Apex Consumers? Let’s start with the general info.”

Zack and Kenny stand up.

“Everyone here has probably seen Arthur Drake’s smiling face,” says Kenny.

“Either on one of his self-help books,” says Zack.

“Or an infomercial.”

“Dude’s more cheerful and peppy than that OxiClean psycho.”

“You’ve heard the cheesy slogans.”

“‘Be the apex consumer. Don’t be the consumed!’”

“‘Be at the top of your food chain, in business and in life!’”

“‘Start small, dream big!’”

“‘Take a bigger bite out of life!’”

“You get the idea,” says Zack.

“Drake’s built a self-help empire: the books, cassettes, classes, all that. It’s all about being more aggressive and getting what you ‘hunger’ for—money, success, etcetera,” says Kenny.

“But he’s also got the pyramid scheme going,” says Zack. “You can join Apex Consumers and buy and sell their junk and they promise you’ll get rich. There are even books and cassettes and classes you can buy to help you sell that shit.”

Zack takes out a laptop and positions it so the majority can see. “Here. A cable channel did a story on it recently, from the scam angle. I got a few clips.”

The video clips play. The handsome journalist reveals the “truth behind Apex Consumer.” Images flash on the screen—hidden camera footage showing a small recruitment gathering in the banquet hall of a Holiday Inn and then a large-scale Apex convention, with tens of thousands of people crammed into a stadium, holding up candles, chanting cult-like mantras, all worshiping at the altar of money, success, and self-rewarding dreams. Impassioned speakers screech catch phrases, show off their wealth, and promise the same to anyone who jumps on board, all while images of sports cars, homes, and yachts play on a big-screen backdrop.

“Start small, dream big!”

Cut to faces of attendees caught up in rapturous emotion. They weep openly as the speakers promise that they, too, can be rich if they simply apply the Apex principals and continue to demonstrate their dedication—that is, continue to invest rigorously in Apex products and services.

The handsome journalist cuts in to reveal that ninety-nine percent of these people will not get rich. They will, in fact, loose money through this system. The secret of Apex Consumers, he explains, is that only the tiny inner circle of Drake’s friends and colleagues get rich off of it, from income made speaking at the conventions and hawking special books and CDs not available for sale by the rank and file drones. The journalist transitions to a brief interview with Gregory Mitchell, a former member of that inner circle, who leans forward to spill a few secrets before retreating back into dramatic shadows. Then comes the predictable parade of sad scam victims telling tales that are all minor variations on the same desperate, misguided search for wealth and “the good life.”

Zack pauses the video.

“You get the idea,” he says.

Byron sings:

                                     “When we reached our station,

                                     Through skillful navigation,

                                     The ship was sunk in a wave of spunk

                                     From too much fornication.”

“So it’s a scam that sucks in desperate losers,” Polhaus grunts.

Nyx scowls and glances at an older woman sitting quietly on the fringe of the group. Polhaus, oblivious to the glance, snorts and bulls ahead. “Well, isn’t that all this Apex crap is—a scam?” he says, licking boysenberry syrup from his immense knuckles.

Simon plays with his silverware, performing feats of dexterity, listening in, ears at the ready for the sentence or phrase or bit of information that would bring him closer to Jane, or at least a part of Jane—a hand to hold, a torso to hug, eyes to look into longingly.

“There are some weirder rumors,” says Kenny.

“Yeah?” asks Polhaus.

“It’s mostly online,” says Zack. “Chatter from some folks who claim to have done the program, and speculation from the conspiracy geeks—”

“Geeks like me,” says Kenny.

“Like Kenny,” says Zack. “He’s a regular conspiracy nut, when he can pry

himself away from those phone sex lines.”

“Chat lines!” Kenny snaps.

“Whatever,” Zack says. “The point is this Apex stuff adds up to some weird mojo. The higher you get into the Apex pyramid, the less the whole predator the whole predator, king of the jungle bit becomes a marketing gimmick. It’s really a statement of Arthur Drake’s philosophy.”

“It’s pretty esoteric stuff,” Kenny chimes in. “I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of it is: the money and success and all that—they’re just a means and not an end. The whole point is the act of devouring. You’re devouring money and your desires and the things you want to achieve. It’s not enough to achieve them. It’s like you have to know how to digest them properly.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” asks Polhaus.

“It’s a spiritual thing, like meditation. You get the money, but you enjoy it on some higher level, too.”

“There are other rumors,” says Zack, “that this esoteric philosophy gets more . . visceral. One dude said that at this high-level workshop he went to—one that set him back a few grand to attend—they were eating bugs.”

“Bugs?” someone sneers. “Ick.”

“Yep. The attendees were handed one of those giant, hissing cockroaches, like the ones on Fear Factor. They were supposed to take the giant, squirming, nasty thing and say something like, ‘You are the yearly income I want to be making’ or ‘You are the sports car I hunger for.’ Then they had to bite into that crunchy bastard and chew it and swallow every twitching, chitinous bit. That supposedly moved them a step toward getting what they hungered for.”

Murmurs in the crowd.

Jane Doe itches in Simon’s forearms. He resists the impulse to scratch.

Your voice, Jane. I hear you in sweet scar whispers.

“The rumors get weirder from there, depending what you’re willing to believe,” says Kenny. “And, of course, we’ve not been to any of the meetings ourselves.”

“Hold that thought,” says Nyx. “Clara? Why don’t you come over here, honey?”

Owl eyes glance and blink through huge lenses as Clara meekly steps forward, taking a seat next to Nyx.

Introductions.

Pleasantries.

Story.

“A few of you have heard this before—the ones who were at the other meeting. There weren’t, uh, nearly so many of you there. Of course I’m happy to see you. I m-mean, uh—” Clara stutters to a stop, shivering, nervous. Nyx gives her a reassuring pat on the back. “It’s funny, actually—me being nervous around you. I think I’ve always been hungry for company. I used to be addicted to food at a funeral, but I think I was just addicted to food with company. Anyway. I got caught and had to give up sneaking into funeral parties. That’s when I found Apex Consumers. They promised to change my life. Make me more assertive. I don’t think I ever cared about money or luxuries. I just—I just liked the company.”

Simon notices Clara’s pallor and bloodshot eyes.

“Hasn’t been sleeping so good,” yawns a sleepy Corbie.

Simon notes her body language.

“Tightness in the stomach,” mutters another wraith crow.

And what is that mark on her arm?

“It was just like those young men described,” says Clara. Zack and Kenny beam. “The Apex people told you what you wanted to hear. They chanted catchy phrases. I went to one of the big conventions. It was almost religious. And I paid a little extra to go on a little side trip during the convention, a motivational outing to a nearby campground. It didn’t cost thousands, but it wasn’t inexpensive, either. We heard a speaker, around a campfire, and did a few activities. Then two men—they were motivational councilors for Apex or something. They whispered to me, said they were breaking off from the main group to have a midnight picnic—would I like to join them?”

Byron starts to sing, but Jolly Roger grabs his beak.

“I don’t know if we were supposed to break off from the group like that, but . . . they were both very handsome and—well, no one ever picks me for anything special. So I went with them. We walked through the woods, on a path of pine needles. Then they broke off from the little road of needles and wandered into the dark woods. I hesitated, but then strayed from the path.

“We had a picnic under some trees, by some wildflowers. It was a big moon. I brought little cakes and a bottle of wine. They brought a container of meat. It looked raw. ‘It’s so red,’ I said. They called it something fancy sounding—something tar-tare.

“‘Have a piece,’ one of them said.

“I didn’t want to be rude. He held out a bite to my mouth and I ate it. It was so good.”

Clara shudders, lips parted, at the memory.

She missed it, Jane. As much as I missed the Dead Water, she missed it.

“It was better than funeral food,” Clara says. “Better than anything. I ate more. They kept handing me strips of the red, red meat and I ate more and more and it was so good that I did not notice. I didn’t notice till it was all gone and my hands were red. Then I noticed them . . . laughing. I know that laugh. Like—like at school, when Bobby Barlow pretended to be interested in going to the dance with me and I was blushing and giggling and I didn’t notice one of the other boys sneaking dead toads into my locker behind my back. That kind of laughter. I hate that kind of laughter.

“‘What?’ I said. And they laughed harder. Something was wrong. The meat was so good, but something was very, very wrong. And they kept laughing. And I was in tears and I said something like, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ And they kept laughing. I ran away, into the dark, trying to find the path. I could hear them laughing through the woods, and—”

Tears fall below the owl eyes of Clara’s lenses.

“Since then . . . I don’t know. Something is wrong. I don’t know what I mean, but I feel it. Inside. Nothing tastes right. I feel watched. I feel stomach aches and guilty and I don’t know why and—”

The levy breaks and the sobs flow, wracking and harsh.

“I can’t—I can’t sl-sleep anymore. I have—these—horrible dreams—I—I’m at my father’s funeral and it’s really a feast—and I’m eating him—so red!—I’m eating him right out of the coffin! Or I’m at my therapist’s and—and—he’s asking questions—and I—oh God—I slice his throat and he falls on his desk—and—I—I start eating his—throat—but we’re also kissing—and I’m tearing him apart and—and eating him—but—but—we’re also having—we’re doing—it . . .”

Nyx stands up and puts a supportive arm around Clara.

“I wake up screaming—’n’—’n’—dry heaving—’n’—heaving—’n’—I don’t know what’s . . . wrong—with—me . . . just—I just want it out of me!”

The words drown in sobs.

Simon looks more carefully through his cracked lenses at the mark on her arm: a bite mark.

“From her own teeth,” say the Corbies. “She bit herself in her sleep.”

“Yes,” Simon whispers in agreement.

The restaurant manager comes toward the group, looking as though he intends to tell them to be quieter, but Polhaus stands, to full height and full girth. He shakes his head and gives the manager a look that sends the smaller man scurrying back into the kitchen.

“Samantha, why don’t you drive Clara home,” says Nyx. A teenage girl steps forward and helps Clara up. “Thank you, Clara, for sharing again so the whole group could hear this time. It’s brave of you. Please keep coming to the Sanctuary meetings. You have a place with us. Always.”

Clara nods vigorously, sobs subsiding.

Nyx hands her a card. “This is my private cell phone. You call that any time you feel like it. Doesn’t matter when. I’m a fellow night owl. I know the words to every infomercial. You call that and I’ll be right over with popcorn and some really bad movies and we’ll have ourselves a slumber party. Right?”

Clara intakes a big gasp of air, frown curling upward. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you.” Tears still streak, glistening on a wide-wide, grateful smile. Samantha walks Clara out.

Queen of lonely. Eh, Jane? All Clara ever wanted was company.

“What do you all make of that?” asks Nyx. “Is Apex Consumer more than just a scam?”

“She sounded sincere to me,” replies a voice from the group.

“We all like to believe each other’s stories,” says Jolly Roger. “But we have to be open to the possibility it ain’t true.”

“He’s right,” says Polhaus.

“Besides,” says Zack, “who were the two men who took her out to the woods? Was that standard Apex treatment or are they deviants? Maybe it was just a prank.”

“Or maybe . . .” says Kenny, trailing off.

“Right. Maybe . . .” says Nyx.

Cannibalism is the word left unsaid, its phantom hanging in the air.

“So what’s next?” asks Nyx. “Where do we begin further inquiry?”

“Easy,” says Polhaus. “That Gregory Mitchell guy, the former high muckity-muck that quit Apex. He’ll know what’s going on. News report said he’s local. I’ll go find him. We’ll have a chat.”

“After all the research Kenny and I did, we should—” begins Zack.

“No,” interrupts Polhaus. “We’re not fooling with your shenanigans. I’ll do it. And I’ll do it right.”

“Fine,” says Zack. “If you want more info, Nyx, I can try and hack into Apex Consumers’ email. That might turn up something.”

“You always have to do that,” says Kenny. Amongst the Sanctuary, Zack was known as the “computer guy.” Kenny liked gadgets and electronics and maintained the night vision equipment and electromagnetic field meters the groups used in their occasional ghost hunts. “Just because you know a little about computers does not make you a hacker. Don’t assume you can just break into the company’s system.”

“I bet I can!”

“Moving on.” Nyx grabs the Club Wendigo flier. “Roger, tell us about Club Wendigo.”

Flash of gold and platinum. “Not too much to say, Nyxy. They’re a floating club—change locations. Secretive buggers. Seem to pitch to the subversive sector. I think they’re some Tyler-Durden-wannabee-fuckers.”

“That’s it?” asks Nyx.

“Sorry, Mama Bear. I tried to get into a meeting. But everyone knows I’m Obsidian, and that seemed to queer my pitch and spook my leads. All I’ve got are a few random, unproven rumors.”

Nyx rolls her eyes. “Great. As if we didn’t have enough of those. Shoot.”

“Hunger themes, Mama Bear. Seems to fit tonight. I’d heard things about them, like they do some freaky-deaky ritual combat wiz or whatnot. Then the rumors start to sound a little familiar: raw meat eating challenges, meditative exercises to teach members psychic vampirism—”

“Is that real?” asks Simon.

“Don’t know,” says Nyx. “But Tuesday nights, Samantha teaches classes in aura reading and protecting yourself from psychic vampirism.”

Polhaus points at the invitation to a Gastronome Irregulars party. “What about that?”

“More eating,” says Nyx. “Gastronome Irregulars is some sort of Chicago elitist club that goes back a hundred years or more, near as I could find. They throw parties and eat rare and unusual dishes. Exotic ethnic foods, game animals, bygone recipes from the past. That kind of thing.”

“So it’s just about food?” ask Kenny.

“It’s not about food,” says Polhaus. “Same as with all that elitist crap. It’s not about the trappings of the organization, it’s about being in the most exclusive club—about being a powerful fuck and rubbing elbows with other powerful fucks. They could be the League of Extraordinarily Queer Stamp Collectors and it’d be the same thing.”

“How are they connected?” asks Jolly Roger.

“Well,” says Nyx, “when you get to the spooky rumors portion of things, it starts to get familiar. Supposedly, the Gastronome Irregulars got bored with merely strange dishes decades ago. They’ve evolved. They illegally acquire rare animals to eat. They keep track of endangered species lists and, if it ever comes down to extinction, they make certain they have the last specimen. Supposedly, they’ve cooked up frozen mammoth meat. They illegally purchase human organs from donation banks—or make secret, high-priced deals with the terminally ill or the financially desperate, to get their parts. To keep things fresh, they invite the debutante daughters of all their pals over and throw a big orgy to ‘devour’ the virginity of dozens of girls. And so on. Twisted stuff.” Nyx eats the last of her omelet. “Or it’s all PR-driven crap.”

“Okay, so we got a common theme with these groups,” says Kenny. “Fucked up gourmets. But how are they connected otherwise?”

“Well,” says Nyx, “maybe nothing. But Drake, as head of his own self-help empire, might be rich and powerful enough to be a member of the Gastronomes, or influential enough to wow his way into Club Wendigo.”

Several of the people gathered around the table nod.

“We need to check those kinds of connections, people,” says Nyx. “But—and I repeat and double repeat—we are not going the way of Ichabod Knock. You all understand? We take a peek. You get a funny feeling, you get out. You let others know where you are. Pretend you’re in a movie and if you hear anyone saying, ‘Don’t open that door!’—then, for Christ’s sake, do not open that door.”

“Yes, Mama Bear,” everyone replies, in practiced unison.

And then they talk and they laugh.

Byron finally, loudly, finishes his shanty:

                                     “Though our good ship was haunted

                                     The crew remained undaunted.

                                     We stayed right drunk and sprayed our spunk

                                     Till all the ghouls avaunted.”

They hold a syrup-drinking contest. Polhaus wins.

Outside, the darkness waits.

* * * * *

“Why the TP in Taco-Waffle-TP Friday?” Simon asks again as they leave the diner. Nyx informs him that on every such night, after the tacos and waffles are consumed, the Obsidian Sanctuary buys bundles of toilet paper and TPs the houses of local sex offenders until dawn.

And that night, they set out and do just that. They find the houses with a special application on Nyx’s smartphone. It’s the most fun Simon can recall ever having—without the participation of the dead, anyway.

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.

CHAPTER 16

The cracks, the wormwood, and the green . . .

Two absinthe bottles lay shattered, green droplets seeping through the jagged cracks. Simon’s malachite eyes stare, shattered, tears seeping out of the green and the jagged cracks of red. There had been romantic music playing. Now, only the sound of the record spinning.

Only the spinning record. No needle. No voice.

Only Jane’s eyeless head. No Dead Water. No voice.

She was not talking to him.

Simon staggers and paces his basement laboratory. The wounded scarecrow. Two bottles of absinthe and the walls bend and bubble, but no Dead Water. No Jane.

“Why, Jane?” he asks the lovely head, yanking at the brier patch of tangled hair, hands shaking violently in necro-withdrawal. Those empty sockets. No golden eyes. No peace. Why couldn’t he go to the ebony sea where she had animus?

He sits on the stainless steel table, hugging her lovely head to him, running a tactile-hungry finger over her Mona Lisa smile.

“You’re not all here, Jane. Not all here.”

Where is his Y-shaped doorway to paradise?

“Boy meets girl,” croon the Corbies. “Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back . . . one piece at a time.” The Corbies cackle and more cracks form in Simon’s eyes. “One piece at a time.”

“The bread crumb trail,” echoes Ichabod’s voice.

He holds up her head like a conch shell, presses the empty, ocular cavity to his ear, and strains to listen. He still cannot hear the dark ocean.

* * * * *

“Apex Consumers—take a bigger bite out of life. How may we help you?”

“She . . . won’t talk to me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Can I interest you in Arthur Drake’s Guide to More Powerful Relationships?”

“Your infomercials haunt me. You’ve always been there. Before this all started. My biorhythms . . . are bugged.”

“We are so glad you enjoyed our quality programming and will take the next step with Apex Consumers: Be at the top of your food chain in business and in life.”

“Jane won’t talk to me. I thought I might have done something wrong. I thought she was angry. But now I think it’s because I only have Jane’s head. I have to find the rest of her.”

“We at Apex Consumers would like to help you find the missing pieces in life, sir. Be the apex consumer. Don’t be the consumed.”

“I will find her. I will put her back together. I will find out how you’re involved.”

“Arthur Drake wants to be involved in your success, sir. Join the program today and we will help you achieve everything you have ever hungered for and everything you never knew you hungered for.”

“He warned me about you. He said pyramid schemes are dangerous.”

“Oh, we’re not a pyramid scheme, sir. We are a program of intense self-actualization, from the inside out, and an award-winning system that teaches you how to actively manifest positive realities. Anything is possible, sir, if you have the hunger.”

“Ichabod said you were zoophagy on a mass-market scale. What did he mean by that?”

“Could you hold the line a moment? My manager would like to talk to you. Sir. . . ?”

* * * * *

Simon drives northwest. Every few miles he reaches into his pocket and feels the leather shreds of flesh clinging to the ancient bone. Dusk creeps in, and Simon smiles.

These are good roads.

Forty-five miles and the highways and numbers blur by: 90 and 53 and 12. Urban gives way to suburban and wetlands and yellow and red and orange leaves—and then everything darkens.

Dusk saunters and struts, and Simon smiles.

These are good roads.

These back roads—twisted and windy, curving. Hug the curve, accelerate. Feel that happy rise in the gut. Twisted roads, not straight lines, no grids, no mundane workman’s web, no banality in the hissing leaves. They squirm through bog and wetland and river bridge. Good night-driving roads. More hobgoblins per capita here. A twisted trail straight into October Country.

Good and twisted roads. They are the spine of some autumnal god, and I a jolly shiver. Eh, Jane?

As a boy, Simon traveled with his parents far from the city, for visits to relatives or for fall jaunts to an apple orchard. Simon remembers his father accelerating on these back roads at night, on the way home. The soothing motion and dark safety. He was able to vanish inside his head, or stare up and out of the moon roof, mouth open in wonder. All those autumn and after-autumn skeleton trees. Bone-branch hands in silhouette, post-October claws—giant, scarecrow hands reaching for greedy handfuls of stars and moon. He was certain he was glimpsing, without really understanding, some kind of game that the scarecrow gods played, cosmic jacks in the void.

The spoils, Jane? I once heard that the moon starts the month empty and dark, then fills with luminous souls and, when full, releases the ghosts whither they go.

Simon accelerates.

Simon hugs the curve.

Sometimes, Jane, I wonder—are there any ghosts that resist the moon? Does the vacuum of space mute their howls as they claw the earth, gripping so tenaciously they tug the tides?

Simon accelerates.

The bone-tree claws snatch more frantically.

Maybe their game comes to a close.

And sometimes, Jane, I wonder—where do the moon-dumped souls go? Maybe they’re the winnings of some lucky scarecrow.

Simon accelerates.

Skeleton hands full of moon flash in the rearview mirror. The perfect song plays on the speakers. Simon leans into the curve at the perfect speed, the perfect angle. He bobs his head. It would surely look strange to a passerby. Simon bobs his head and cranes his neck, undulating, shifting his viewpoint, partly to the play of music, but mostly to make the moon, through his malachite eyes, dance in the perfect manner: bouncing through branches, alluding bone hands.

Simon does not need absinthe to hallucinate. The wormwood just lubricates the process.

Now, on the winding back road, he puts it all together, his multimedia artwork: the song, speed, curve, moon motion, and marching scarecrow deities. The result is a perfect moment—just a second—and a perfect expression. The moon oozes through the smudges in the glass, bleeding ghost blood down the dirty windshield.

“An Un-Still Life in Ghost Plasma.” Eh, Jane?

A truck passes on the road, high-beam bubble-bursting.

Simon snaps back and swerves.

Simon frowns.

Was he being silly? Spending too much effort for something too ethereal—just a moment for an audience of one? No way to record or crystallize or share. Even a passenger would have to look through his skull windows to see. But then, another fast curve seduces him.

The ethereal is important. Eh, Jane?

“It’s important that you do this, Simon,” caws a Corbie.

“Don’t stop, Simon,” says another.

“Don’t ever stop.”

Simon accelerates, maybe too much. Then again, lovelings, speed limits and No Smoking signs miss the point. A habit loses all its poetry if it can’t kill you.

* * * * *

The water was the color of strong tea, Jane. Darker than amber. Full of acid and memories and prehistoric bird cries. Brackish water turned my screams to bubbles. Old memories in the water, Jane, and they had a grip like iron.

“We’re locking up in a half-hour, sir,” the ranger says.

“Just going for a quick walk.”

Simon had parked down the street from the entrance to the nature preserve’s parking lot. Patience turns to hot wax in front of obsession; Simon had not heard from Nyx and all he had was Ichabod’s hint and an ancient bone in his pocket. He takes a handful of information pamphlets from a wood-and-glass box in front of the Volo Bog visitor center.

Simon feels the bone in his pocket, and a moment of déjà vu skitters across his brain as he tries but fails to recall a ghost story from his youth. It is a folktale, a spook tale. Perhaps you heard it, or one like it, as a child. They are called jump stories. You scream at the end of the telling and make your audience jump, the trick being to subtly talk quieter and quieter as you go, making the audience lean in closer and closer.

This is the story Simon was trying to recall. It goes: a boy (or maybe an old woman), who is in the garden (or maybe taking a shortcut through the cemetery), finds an oversized big toe (or maybe just a toe bone) sticking out of the ground. He (or she) plucks the toe (or bone) from the ground and hears a terrible moan. The little boy (or old woman) goes home and cooks up a pot of soup with the body part, a graveyard stew. While he (or she) eats, something outside keeps calling for its bone. “I want my bone back!” In the end, that something rushes into the house. That is when the storyteller screams and the audience jumps.

Remember jumping?

Remember wondering what that thing was that wanted its bone?

Simon steps onto a boardwalk that sloshes side to side, precariously, with no handrails.

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

Gray birds, standing almost as tall as Simon, sound their primordial trumpet as they wade in the marshy water with little fear or regard. A pamphlet informs Simon that they are sandhill cranes, one of the most ancient of the surviving bird species. Their call is full of Mesozoic reptile sex.

The bog has an old memory. Eh, Jane?

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

Another pamphlet goes on to say that the bog is a very unique slice of bio-landscape and habitat. Volo Bog is the only “quaking bog” in Illinois, this part of the state having been shaped by the lust between glaciers and earth in the long ago. The glaciers brought primal slices of rock and silt and ice from far away and deposited them here. Hunks of glacial ice sank into the ground where they melted, forming a deep, fifty-acre lake. Six thousand years ago, the lake started filling in with vegetation—sphagnum moss—that formed a thick, floating layer. The decomposing plant matter worked an alchemy on the water, turning it acidic and dark.

Every year, the sphagnum moss thickens, closes a little tighter, and the open mouth of water at the bog’s center gets a little smaller. One day, in millennia to come, that mouth will close.

One day, Jane, nature will cover something up, something cocooned in a coffin of ice from far away, something carrying prehistoric secrets.

Simon walks toward the bog’s center, the boardwalk swaying. He passes through vegetation zones, rings of dramatic foliage change, Dantean circles of the bog’s development. Patches of sphagnum moss blanket much of the water, so thick in places that shrubs and trees grow on top, floating over the acidic waters.

A pamphlet informs Simon that a person could walk on the moss mat, but such activity is against the law as falling through is very dangerous. The moss is like ice over a river—one might fall through it into darkness and never again find the way they entered.

Another pamphlet touches on the subject of bog bodies. In Irish and British bogs, cadavers of prehistoric humans have been found, their skins turned to leather and tanned, their clothes and flesh well preserved in the cold, acidic, low-oxygen water. Through the strange, primordial alchemy of the bog, the skin and organs—even the last meal in the guts—remain intact, but the bones are often dissolved. The effects of this preservation are so dramatic that it is not readily apparent whether a corpse was in the bog for decades or centuries. The oldest body discovered was carbon dated at over ten thousand years old.

The pamphlet shows a picture of a man over two thousand years old. His face is perfectly preserved, down to the creases and expressions on the face. He looks like the figure of a sleeping man finely crafted from brown leather.

Oh, Jane, to cut a Y into someone so old. For the feel of flesh and organs so transfigured between my fingers . . .

A true bog body had never been found at Volo Bog, though there are stories of escaped criminals who made a dash through the wetlands, or children who wandered off, never to be seen again.

Perhaps they are there, Jane, underneath. The bog embalming them right now . . .

Simon walks.

The Tamarack Ring: pine trees with soft needles grow. Not immortal evergreen pines, these needles turn brown and die in the autumn.

Golden needles.

Splashes of poison sumac red.

Moss flowing green over amber water.

Here and there, carnivorous plants, hungry for the nutrients of living prey to help them survive the harsh acidic water.

What was buried in the ice, Jane? What was planted in the ground there—so malevolent even the plants turn to predators?

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

Terrain shifts, progressing from vegetative zone to zone. Simon reaches the center, the open water mouth of the bog.

Or maybe, Jane, maybe it was not a mouth but an eye—an amber eye the color of strong tea, staring gigantically up at the sky.

He feels the withered bone in his pocket.

“I want my bone back!” yells the fiend from the partial memory of the childhood story.

Fish don’t last in this water, just bugs and reptiles and amphibians. Simon stares into the water—the amber water, dark and still, forming a polished mirrored surface, a dark looking glass reflecting Simon and the twilight.

Simon holds out the bone. And releases.

The water swallows it with barely a sound.

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

“Garoo-a-a-a!”

Simon stares at himself in the dark mirror. Prehistoric bird calls, then the silence of plants eating. The sun sinks, winking out on the horizon, the gesture of a shifty con man who may never return. And Simon stares.

Some things, Jane, are so small they are hard to find. But other things . . .

Minutes pass in weird, geological rates.

Simon stares and stares, realization finally coming in gradual degrees. He notices something. But what was it? His gaze shifts over the water, glimpsing pieces, trying to find the whole. Fear oozes into his stomach, then rises up the throat. Maybe a thousand feet, maybe a mile up, and he would have had a better view of the whole, the shifting movements under the water.

Some things, Jane, are so small they are hard to find. Some other things are so impossibly huge as to be imperceptible.

Croaking sounds now. Insects or amphibian calls. Were the amphibians awake this time of year? Simon cannot find the answers in the pamphlets before the papers fall out of his hand and scatter, snatched by a sudden wind. The croaking continues. Simon wonders if he imagines it—the name he hears in the croaking melody:

“Simon-Simon-Simon-Simon-Simon-Simon . . .”

He steps back. The wood underfoot disintegrates. No silent-screen acrobatics can stop him from falling over the edge.

Simon lands on his back. The world turns to Jell-O and the earth gives under his weight. The sphagnum moss trembles but holds.

Simon is suddenly aware of just how much he does not want the moss to give, does not want to fall into the amber depths where something too big to comprehend is moving. He lies still.

Something grips—

His wrists.

His feet.

Suck and slosh and the world above vanishes into amber shadows and screams that taste like acid. Simon thrashes in a world the color of strong tea. His hands cannot find an opening in the moss ceiling.

Living.

Squishy.

Hateful.

Finally he glimpses it, the open mouth—or the eye. He swims for it. But something locks a tight grip on his ankles. Bubbled screams churn the water. All he can see now is clouded tea and vegetation. His mind cannot decipher the movements in the water.

But he feels the hands. Patches of leather. All over.

Dead Water, Jane. I wanted it so badly I drowned in it.

He’d given the bone back to something—something frozen in time. Something ancient, deposited into the ground in a coffin of ice. Something lurking in amber, mummifying fluids. Something that turned the water to acid and the plants to killers.

Legions of hands pull him down. Swarms of silhouettes circle him in the dim. There’s a special purgatory in the amber water, liquid necromancy preserving the souls. Maybe the thing has the power to creep into the minds of locals and whisper to them, tell them how special this place is, how the mossy sarcophagus should be protected and preserved, murky and safe. It lures children, in dreams, occasionally convincing one to walk on out on the trembling not-earth. Or maybe it simply loves its visitors so much it preserves them in acid memory forever.

Nothing so sharp, at the edge of the Abyss, than the voice that screams, “Plunge!”

Leather hands grab Simon’s cheeks.

Murky face.

Leather lips.

A withered tongue enters his mouth. Simon tries to scream. Muck and brackish water flow down the throat like dead languages. This place has a very old memory. Simon has fallen into the soup—into the dark tea. Mr. Knock’s words burn in the memory:

“Down the rabbit hole, boy! Straight through the plate glass darkly, into the secret room where Alice plays tea with corpses. No deposit, no return. Once you see the Abyss, it sees you.”

* * * * *

White lines whip by like mad ghosts. They know where they’re going. Simon does not.

White lines.

Headlights.

Exit signs.

His escape from the bog was just a blur of memory and an awful, awful taste in the back of his throat. Coughing. Crawling. Something was after him. Something is after him. Something that will catch him if he stops.

White lines.

Moonlight.

Low-fuel light.

How long has he been driving? Time and space seem unscrupulous. Simon cannot seem to find the city again. The numbers on the signs do not make sense. He’s stuck in October Country.

We don’t really sleep in dreams, Jane. That’s the work of different parts of the brain. But who is asleep, who awake? There are somnambulists tripping the dark fantastic . . .

Simon drives. His world is cracked. Somehow, he’d held onto his glasses, but the fall into the bog broke them. Cracks down the centers split his vision. But he really doesn’t want to see. He knows that if he looks back as he drives he’ll find that they are catching up to him. Black shapes. Stalking quadrupeds and shambling bipeds. They were catching up.

White lines.

Exit ramp.

Brake lights.

He’s afraid to stop too long. Quick. Just enough for fuel and directions, and then go.

A fat, dying moth vibrates in circles on the pavement of the truck stop parking lot. Lost 3:00 A.M. souls lurch about inside. Strange writings on the walls in the entryway. The burnt-out husk of a man mutters incomprehensible poetry into his chili bowl in the diner. Lost souls. Simon wonders idly if he’s dead, if he and the rest are all trapped. The cashier tells Simon where he is, shows him a map. It all makes sense.

But as soon as he’s back on the road, sense vanishes. Where is he? The signs are vague, misleading. Voices come through the static of the car radio. The bog—it’s catching up.

White lines.

Headlights.

Hazard sign.

Is that the afterlife, Jane—stretches of gray purgatory and flickering white ghosts screaming past on parade? Truck stop soul stations. Moon-Pie or hotdog? Choose wisely or you will never ascend.

Simon drives. And dozes. The shapes catch up—black dogs and things less definable. Simon snaps awake, presses the gas pedal. The needle shivers. The shapes and shades recede. But he is tired and can’t keep this up much longer. Where is the city?

White lines.

Lunar madness.

Bog bodies and black dogs.

He hits the exit ramp doing seventy-five and almost spins out. Parking, Simon runs into the rest stop. He does not bother with the map, just jams two coins into the coffee machine. He hopes the offering is enough to get him to the other side of this netherworld.

In the bathroom, the stall walls are covered in limericks and obscenities, scratched and penned. On the door, Simon reads:

                                     One for God, and for Wod, and for Lok!

Writing on the stalls. Eh, Jane.

Chugging coffee, rushing outside, Simon hears children singing a familiar song:

                                     “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

                                     I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.

                                     Perhaps she’ll die!”

Simon looks around but sees no other vehicles in the parking lot. The singing is coming from the picnic tables.

                                     “There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,

                                     That wiggled and wriggled and tickled inside her.”

Several small figures sit at the picnic tables, in the dark.

                                     “There was an old lady who swallowed a bird.

                                     How absurd, to swallow a bird!”

A half-dozen small heads turn toward Simon.

                                     “There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.

                                     Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.”

Simon’s eyes adjust. He sees a half-dozen little faces—brown and leathery skin; bog water dripping in dark, amber gushes from the orifices in their mummy heads. They all stare through the hollows.

                                     “She swallowed the cat to catch the bird.

                                     She swallowed the bird to catch the spider.”

The little bog children rise from their table, reach putrid hands out to Simon. He runs back to the car, fumbling for his keys. Their voices, still high and twittering, turn to malevolent cicadas.

                                     “She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

                                     I don’t know why she swallowed that fly.

                                     Perhaps she’ll die!”

The car starts. The needle shivers. Simon speeds down the roads with no sense. His world is cracked. He fights the inevitability of his Jupiter-gravity eyelids.

White lines.

Black dogs.

Bog bodies.

I think Mr. Knock is still out there, laughing. Eh, Jane?

* * * * *

Simon snatches the key from the man at the desk and runs off.

It’s catching up.

Unlock the door. Shut it. Chain it. Put a chair to it. Grab a blanket from the bed. And huddle on the floor. Simon opens a greasy fast-food sack containing an order of now-cold fries and many, many packets of salt.

I could hear Mr. Knock laughing, Jane. I think I really could.

Simon casts a circle of salt around himself, on the floor. Pure white salt.

The only one to survive, Jane. Was he really crazy?

He had to ask three times for extra salt. He would have asked again, but then he heard the children on the radio, so he sped away.

Now Simon sits in his white circle, in the dark room. His hands dance, angrily. He tries to keep his hands busy.

Black silhouettes, backlit by streetlights, stand outside the curtained windows. All is silent.

Simon keeps his hands busy.

The silhouettes press their faces to the window. Out of the corner of his eye, Simon glimpses motion in his hotel room mirror, but he dares not look. He tosses the blanket over his head, crouches on the floor, in the salt circle, and keeps his hands busy.

Hands.

Busy.

Sounds of scuttling and scratching on walls—cicada voices.

Simon shivers like a speedometer needle. He keeps his hands busy. Something is trying to tear the blanket away.

Simon does not know any proper runes. He writes Jane Doe’s name on his arm, as many times as it will fit. The scalpel gleams.

I am certain Jane, if a cat had been there, I would have eaten it.

INTERLUDE:

Requiem for the Taste Buds

What can I say? They caught me.

It’s funny. Usually no one ever notices me. I, um—I’m sorry, how do we begin? I’m never comfortable with these things. They don’t seem so very productive. Who . . . uh . . . who cares whether I think that blob of ink looks like a hummingbird or Satan riding to earth on a chariot pulled by Martha Stewart?

Hmm? Just keep talking?

Okay.

It’s—well, I guess it’s certainly strange. I mean, not Hannibal Lecter “Hello, Clarice” strange. But strange enough that I’m talking to you.

How do I get in?

Well, I just sneak in and mingle with the strangers. It’s not all that difficult getting in. Just pretend like you belong.

Why?

Huh. Guess that’s the big question.

Morbid curiosity of death?

No, not really.

There’s just so many people to talk to, and they listen, and I’m so . . . I . . . have you ever heard of the Vegetarian Cannibal? He’s in the tabloids lately. Apparently some guy wanted to be a cannibal. The problem is he’s a vegetarian so he has to—

What? My family?

I really don’t have a family to come home to. No pets either. I tried. I have allergies. But I have a great home. It’s all nice and neat. Hardly looks lived in. My cupboards are full of those great single-serve soups. Just pop one in the microwave and eat it over the sink. Alone.

They don’t taste very good.

The food after a funeral is good, though! Oh my. Wedding banquets and Labor Day barbecues have nothing on a good funeral feast. Maybe that’s why I go—for the food. There are so many funerals, after all. I just look them up and sneak right in. I never thought I’d get in so much trouble.

Friends?

I really don’t—I mean, I try, but I’m always so . . . okay, maybe this will help explain: You know all those nine-hundred numbers they advertise late at night? Well, I just called one of those. Yes, from here—when the policeman gave me my phone call. Hey, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I just dialed the first thing that came to my head.

I watch a lot of late-night TV.

Well, this girl answers and says her name is Candy. I say my name is Clara. She says she’s wearing a sheer thong. I say I’m wearing a hand-me-down sweater from my grandmother who was put into a home when she went insane and started throwing roadkill at people. Candy sounded a little confused, so I explained that I was calling from a police station. She asked me to bend over so she could use the handcuffs. I said I didn’t have any, and then I asked her if she had ever heard of the Vegetarian Cannibal.

Then there was a long pause.

Then . . . I don’t know, something changed. Her voice changed and she said, “Clara Susquehanna Taylor, be warned! Dial no more nocturnal numbers. Do not join. Seek sanctuary. Beware the hunger!”

She said more, but I just got scared. I don’t know how she knew my last name, or my middle name. No one knows my middle name; I never use it. The kids in school were so very cruel, and—well, anyway, I panicked and hung the phone up.

What’s the first funeral I remember?

I don’t see what that has . . . all—all right. It was my father’s funeral. I was just a little girl. My mom didn’t spend much time with me that day, she was . . . she was always so . . . you know, we had the best fried chicken after that funeral! You want the recipe? You take the batter and just soak—

What?

I, um, I can’t quite say why funeral food’s so good. It’s—it’s like the taste buds sing a requiem for the deceased when you eat it. Sometimes it’s subdued and respectful, mourning a loss. Other times it’s spicy and festive, celebrating a life. You look at the lifeless husk in the casket and you think if you just keep breathing, keep eating, keep living, your turn won’t come. It tastes like salvation. You eat around people mourning death and you start to appreciate your own life more than you might normally. It’s a meal of rebirth. You say to yourself, “I’m going to finish this food and walk away changed for the better. This time around I’ll be more productive. I’ll learn to play the violin. I’ll meet new people and get out and show everyone the real me. I’ll floss.”

The feeling fades, though. I go from funeral to funeral trying to recapture it. But, inevitably, I’m back at home, eating over the sink, feeling only one thing: hunger.

Maybe that’s why I dialed the other number. The policeman was nice and let me make a second call. I called a number stuck in my head from an infomercial. Did I mention that I watch a lot of late-night TV? The number was just there, programmed in my head, and I called it.

It’s for a place called Apex Consumers. They promised to help me achieve everything I hungered for. . . .

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.

CHAPTER 14

“The first thing you need to know, Simon,” says Ichabod, “is that stories are dangerous. Information is alive.”

Ichabod Knock talks with his mouth full.

Ichabod Knock talks with his mouth full, sitting stark naked, body covered in the weeping wounds of symbols and glyphs carved into flesh. He points a large chrome handgun at Simon, who is equally naked, save for his socks and boxers.

Ragged strips of red hang down Ichabod’s chin. The gore catches and clots in his great beard, strings of viscera trailing down to the raw pile of fur and meat and organs and paws on his dinner plate. Ichabod picks something glistening out of his beard and eats it.

Events taken out of context may have a tendency to sound bizarre.

Backtrack.

* * * * *

Tensions bit deep at the Obsidian Sanctuary that evening, and Nyx decided to lead the guided meditations. She led them through the controlled breathing. She led them inside, made them climb into a secret place, the treehouse of the mind. Everyone had their own tree. Some climbed up rope ladders, and others up wooden rungs nailed into the trunk, and still others up the lower branches, hand and foot.

“Is everyone there?” Nyx asks.

Eyes closed, gathered in the church basement, everyone nods. Simon nods, sitting in the back row, but also sitting with the roosting Corbies in the ghost tree, hastily building a fort. Nyx leads them to a door in the tree-fort, and through the door, and everyone has their own unique door. She leads them into a room, and everyone has their own unique room, bigger on the inside than on the out. Nyx’s room, tonight, is a grand library. In the room, she leads them to a skulking creature.

“Do you see it?” Nyx says. “It has a long, prehensile tongue, and it has hollow teeth, and the teeth lactate black poisons dribbling out of the mouth. Do you see it?”

Everyone nods, eyes closed.

“It’s a damaged fragment of your soul, all your little insecurities, doubts, fears, all personified in one nasty imp. It’s the thing that keeps you up at three in the morning with anxiety. Its claws are clicking and it’s crawling toward you. Do you see it?”

Everyone nods. Some squirm in their chairs.

“Don’t run from the imp. Hold your ground. Open your arms to it. Step forward. Coo to it. Tell this creature you accept it. Tell it everything will be all right. Hug the creature. Embrace it. The imp is in your arms now, weeping black venom. Do you see it?”

Everyone nods.

“Now kill it.”

Silence. Mouths open.

“I said kill it! Right now. Strangle it, bludgeon it, bite its ear off—just kill the bastard!”

Dozens of foreheads wrinkle.

Nyx continues. “I just gacked mine—put a gun to its temple and bam! That’s right: it was me, in the library, with the revolver. I can hear its brains plopping out of the huge exit wound. I want the same from you. Take your lead pipes, your candlesticks, and your knives. I want you to brutalize your inner demon.”

Everyone holds a breath.

“Find the voices that tell you you’re worthless, that say you’re gross, that tell you to despair, that beg you to destroy yourself in tiny bites. I want you to focus and turn each one of those voices into an anthropomorphic creature, and I want you to execute every last one of the motherfuckers!”

The closed eyes squint.

“I know in this age of Oprah-wisdoms, we’re instructed to tenderly reconcile with all aspects of our being. That’s nice, as far as it goes, but sometimes, you just have to savagely murder the million little pieces of you that say you’re no good. Fuck ’em. So kill the imp. Put a plastic bag over its head and squeeze until it pops an eye. Throw it in a wood chipper. You take your doubts and you slaughter them. That’s called Mental Thuggee, my chickadees. It’s the vicious inner healing. You make your fears afraid of you.”

Silence. Everyone breathes heavily. Some have tears and trembling lips. But then, all at once, everyone is smiling and cheering, and some are laughing through the tears. Nyx blows the smoke from an imaginary gun.

“Over the next few weeks, I want to hear you all comparing heinous kills, outdoing each other with new and imaginative forms of impicide. I want grizzly details. Maybe we’ll award an imp-kill of the week. Zack, how did you just kill your imp?”

“Uh . . . I shoved a pencil through its eye.”

“All right. Samantha, how’d you end your imp?”

“I dropped an anvil on its head.”

“Sweet. Chaz?”

“I set the microwave on high and watched it burst.”

“Nice. Extra points for the Gremlins reference. Val?”

“I painted its face with honey and buried its head in a mound of South American fire ants. It’s still struggling.”

“Yes! Keep going. No one’s going anywhere until the inside of each and every one of your skulls is painted with imp guts. Semper Fi! Cobra Kai! Do or die! Huzzah!”

The basement fills with cheering, and Simon watches as unlikely hope spreads like a pathogen. He smiles as the Corbies dine on imp entrails.

* * * * *

“Icky Knock once performed an exorcism using Enochian phrases, while playing the double bass.”

“Icky Knock does shots of coral snake venom when he writes.”

“Medusa’s stare only gives Icky Knock an erection.”

After the night’s meditation, Simon had asked about Ichabod Knock. In response, several members of the Obsidian Sanctuary recited absurd jokes about the exploits of the one they called Icky. They formed a messy circle, starting a ritual Simon did not know.

“It’s just their stupid game,” Nyx says. “They call it Icky Facts. The challenge is to try to outdo the last ‘fact’ offered. The man does not deserve their worship.” Nyx did not participate.

“The devil waits at the crossroads, every thirteen years, because Icky Knock owes him five dollars,” says a Sanctuary member.

“Dogs go crazy and shoot people when Icky Knock whispers to them,” says another.

“A famous person once lost a bet with Icky Knock. Now, that person doesn’t exist, but no one remembers who it was.”

“Man’s a mad genius,” says a teenager in a T-shirt sporting a Gonzo journalism symbol. Simon recalls his name is Carl. “Years back, he was bass player in a string of short-lived underground bands: Vestigial Limb, Necro-Ophelia, Rambunctious Homunculus, Azathoth’s Taint, Banana Hammock—”

“Never heard of any of them,” Nyx mutters.

“You’re not a connoisseur,” Carl says. “Anyway, he decides to leave the music scene and write books about the paranormal. The man has been around the world, seen impossible things, parties with celebrities—we’re talking freaky orgies—and has imbibed every drug known to man and maybe some that aren’t. He’s like Hunter Thompson, Aleister Crowley, and Ozzy Osbourne all spliced together in a lab, with an extra gallon of pure elemental awesome thrown in.”

Even as they disagreed with Nyx, they tried to emulate her—those rhapsodic rants. Eh, Jane?

“You’re talking about a burnout who couldn’t cut it as a musician, who then fails upward, as a writer, into semi-celebrity, and is likely infested with every STD known to man and maybe some that aren’t,” Nyx says. “He’s like a bag of dicks in a blender with two cups of self-destruct and suck.”

“Actually,” says Carl, “Icky Knock has no STDs. They all killed each other in a massive Mexican Standoff gone horribly awry.”

Laughter. The game begins again.

“Icky Knock once caught HIV. The virus immediately fled his body, screaming. To this day, it gathers around campfires, with other STDs and tells horror stories of what it found in there.”

“Icky Knock once had sex with a six-foot Humboldt squid in the Sea of Cortez. It orgasmed seven times.”

“Icky Knock only exists because he opened a temporal portal, went back in time, and impregnated his own mother.”

Simon wanders over to a corner of the room where the Sanctuary has already constructed a shrine to Jane Doe: flowers, pictures, drawings, even a graven image in a bar of soap.

You were holy to them, Jane. The vision. The mystery. The golden-eyed Madonna.

Standing over the Jane shrine is a very short Frankenstein’s monster with a Hallmark card.

“Hello, Robin,” says Simon.

Robin waves. Nyx had explained earlier that the little girl had a whole collection of rubber Halloween masks and usually felt safer when wearing one. “October is the best time of the year for our Robin,” Nyx said. “She’s in season then.”

“I like your mask,” says Simon.

Robin looks up with a Boris Karloff stare and hands him the card. The words To my darling wife, on our 50th anniversary are crossed out with red crayon and written over with the message Miss you.

“I think Jane would very much like this card.”

The monster face nods, and Robin places the card among the drawings, photos, and flowers. They stand together, the macabre Chaplin and the little monster. Neither minds the lull in conversation.

“It is a common misconception that the monster is called Frankenstein,” says Simon.

Robin nods.

“The scientist is Frankenstein. The creature had no name.”

Robin nods.

“Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”

Jane stares back at them through the soap bar. Robin takes Simon’s hand. Meanwhile, an epic game of Icky Facts ensues.

“Icky Knock uses rattlesnakes as condoms.”

“That’s a Chuck Norris fact. You stole it from College Humor-dot-com.”

“They stole it from me!”

“You guys ever check out Icky Knock’s Twitter page?”

“Knock does not have a Twitter page.”

“It’s him. I swear. You can check it out at Twitter-dot-com-slash-Icky-Knock. You should see the things he posts.”

“Bullshit!”

“When Icky Knock has a sore throat, he sucks on adrenal glands.”

“Icky Knock understands the plot of each and every David Lynch movie.”

“When a pink elephant drinks too much, it hallucinates a parade of Icky Knocks.”

“Icky Knock once sent a series of drunk texts to Abdul Alhazred. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“There is only one porn movie in existence that arouses Icky Knock enough to jerk off to. We call it The Exorcist.”

“You guys seriously need to get a new antihero to deify,” Nyx says, and then she stalks off, taking Robin with her.

“Now you’ve done it; you’ve made Nyx mad,” Jolly Roger says. “She and Icky don’t exactly have a copacetic past,” he explains to Simon. “He’s got a history. Goes through colleagues like Band-Aids. Sometimes he gets some tagalongs on his little spook outings, and then . . . bad things happen. He’s come around here a few times. A few of us followed, like Neil Barnes.”

Everyone goes quiet at the name. The game of Icky Facts ends.

“The Imp of the Perverse,” Byron croaks from Roger’s shoulder.

“Last time Ichabod Knock came by, Nyx broke his nose,” Jolly Roger says through gold and platinum teeth. “Polhaus could just barely hold her back.”

Simon slips out, thinking Icky thoughts.

* * * * *

The chalk outline greets Simon. Orange lines mark the sidewalk with a hopscotch court, complete with a head on top and hands drawn on the cross-section ends to form a crude body. Wild orange hair splayed about, Xs for eyes, and the hopscotch girl stares up at Simon like a kindergarten crime scene. Simon stands in the orange square of her chest, looking down at her face. The drizzling rain washes it sad. The branches of the ghost tree shiver at the ambient vibrations.

The lines trap the echoes, and you take on the dreams of those who skipped there. Eh, Jane?

The wind blows and a crinkled sticker saying, Be Nice To Me—I Gave Blood Today, bounces by like a clumsy foreshadowing. All those messages and letters in the wind. A chain creaks as a wooden sign swings, and Simon looks up. House of Oddities, says the sign on the closed-up building. The place looks decades dormant. No lights; most of the bulbs on the sign were shattered long ago. Next to the locked, chained door is a darkened ticket booth. With brick walls painted purple, it’s easy to spot.

The locks are not difficult, just a series of tumblers to trip, a sequence of inevitable clicks. A bored graveyard-shift police officer had taught Simon how to pick a lock; for a time, Simon came to the morgue, not with his coins and cards, but with bags of locks bought at the hardware store, to work his surgical hands on, until that became too easy. Simon kept his little tools on his key ring.

The chain slides to the ground and then the door’s lock clicks into place. Simon enters yet another door, chased by memories of the flashing police tape: Do Not Cross.

“Ignore the bossy tape,” croon the Corbies.

Simon enters. Before he can strike a light, a figure springs up in the pitch-thick darkness, sending Simon sprawling to the floor. The figure towers over him, saying, “Welcome, ladies and gentleman. Step right up. Put a brave foot through the portal, bid the mundane world goodbye, and gain entrance to the fantastic. Have your tickets ready.”

Click.

Simon shines an LED flashlight on his attacker. The light reveals a man with no face, wearing a top hat. He strikes poses in jerky motions. His tuxedo is decayed and tattered. His face, torn off, dangles from the neck by a thread. But the exposed mechanical skeleton reels through its preprogramed motions, glass eyes staring at Simon through the clockwork skull. The animatronic barker continues his patter:

“Feeling brave tonight? How brave? Brave enough to tear the cloying shroud from your third eye? Brave enough to witness grotesque anomalies of nature, paranormal histories, and parazoological wonders? Step this way. Feed your perverse curiosity. You are certain to see much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might excite disgust. Have your tickets ready and shed that most persistent of illusions—reality.”

Simon gets to his feet and shines his light about. Reluctantly, the darkness gives up its secrets, revealing bars meant to herd visitors into lines that terminate in a turnstile, itself emptying into a walkway that leads away from the lobby and deeper into the building. Simon advances through the empty line. The barker barks on:

“Be advised that not everyone is ready for the twilight truths that lie beneath our universe. Those who are pregnant, have heart conditions, or suffer an imbalance of the humors are bidden to seek respite in the lobby gift shop. We caution parents to reconsider giving us your children, for the management does not promise to return them. For the rest—step this way! Enter this abode of curiosities, this home by strangeness haunted. Welcome to the House of Oddities.”

Simon leaps the turnstile. In the darkness ahead lurk shelves and dust and empty and half-empty displays. In the lobby, the barker concludes:

“Step this way. Have your tickets ready. You are already beyond the threshold. There is no turning back!”

Everything is shelves and darkness. The beam of Simon’s light ignites jars of viscous fluids in a blue glow. Jars with floating fetuses—some human, some animal, some less identifiable. Tiny eyes in strange places, watching. Vestigial limbs at odd angles. Conjoined twins sharing a mouth. Little creatures hunched over, serious, contemplating the cosmos. Beings that never knew open air or a mother’s touch, only primal womb stew. Odd primordial creatures of strange symmetry.

A womb, Jane, cannot be a very different environment than the blood-warm prehistoric oceans.

“Cold-cold tomb,” croon the Corbies.

Simon takes a large gulp from his Thermos. The wormwood slithers into place. The ghost tree grown bigger, the ghost crows more tangible. The lines bleed away and all those little eyes and mouths float through one dark sea punctuated by the blue glow.

“Cold-cold soup,” croon the Corbies.

Simon pauses, considers the scene. His light is no longer a straight beam. It is bent by the optic play of curved glass and embryonic fluid, refracted and redirected, zigzagging and igniting jar after jar in a ghost blood glow, lighting all those tiny bodies—a sepulchral prism.

Simon hardly breathes. He is paralyzed in a monomania. Only his fingers move, manipulating the beam of blue light, searching for the perfect angle to express something indefinable.

“A Still Life in Ghost Plasma.” Eh, Jane?

Monomania, and how many minutes had passed?

“Simon!” scream the Corbies. “Simon!” They shriek and cry and peck staccato SOS signals against his skull from the inside. “Listen, Simon. Listen!”

Simon comes to and hears it.

“Mmmmmmmmmm . . .”

Dead Water chill traces his veins. All those staring unborn, human and otherwise: two-headed, too many eyes, multiple mouths yawning in little bellies. All those eyes. Glaring. All those mouths. Malevolent frowns and silent, liquid screams. Tiny sculptures in pickled meat. The upside-down tree quivers, and Simon senses it—the wormwood branches picking it up like feelers—the air turning angry, movements in the formaldehyde-filtered light.

“MMMmmmmmmm . . .”

It’s that first sound: the sound of wanting, the sound of suckling, the first letter of the word for mother in so many different languages—a sound of deep want echoing across the decades. But this sound is twisting, twisting like the things in the jars, turning malevolent, growing into a keen. Innocent need becoming rancid. Simon senses more frenzied movement at the edges. Did he imagine that? Did he imagine that whine, like skin streaking across glass?

“Danger! Danger, Simon!” shriek the Corbies. “Fly! Let us fly!”

The angry dark closes in on Simon, a frenzy of peripheral movements. He can feel it, just centimeters from his skin. But Simon is an unlikely fellow. The same signal of horror, meant to excite our fight-or-flight instincts, bends and refracts in him, like blue light through a murky jar.

Simon’s eyes soften.

“Shhhhhhh,” he says to the mad, screeching dark.

His hands reach out to gently caress each jar. All those little misfits—little ones in need. Poor, pickled souls. All he sees are his littlest patients.

No one had ever cradled them, Jane. Death is the universal denominator of life, not birth.

“It’s all right,” Simon coos to the gibbering tide swelling around him. He reaches out, to each jar. “Shhhhhhh.” With the flashlight, Simon stages a shadow puppet show for the little ones in the jars. Then he performs card and coin tricks. And some of the screeching and wailing subsides. Simon does pratfalls and hat tricks and feats of vaudevillian, physical comedy. And more of the cries quiet.

The Corbies hum an ancient tune and Simon finds himself humming along. The Corbies sing the old, old lullaby. Simon sings and his mouth is their mouth:

                                     “Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

                                     Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.

                                      Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.”

The screeches quiet. The angry vibrations die away as the peripheral movements calm. Where had the song come from? Sixteenth century was it? The Corbies argue the lyrics, come to nanosecond agreements and sing. Simon sings with them:

                                     “O Sisters too, how may we do

                                     For to preserve this day?

                                     This poor youngling for whom we sing,

                                     Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.”

The jabber-cries cease. The phantom movements cease. All else is quiet except that barely audible sound, that pleading, needful, primal sound:

“MMMMMMMMmmm . . .”

And Simon sings:

                                     “Herod, the king, in his raging,

                                     Charged he hath this day

                                     His men of might, in his own sight,

                                     All children young to slay.”

The Corbies feed Simon the words and he wanders on autopilot, eyes closed, in the dark, in a waking wormwood dream, until—what? How did this happen?

The jar nearest Simon is open, its liquid contents sloshing about. Simon wonders when he did that—if he did it. He must have, for cradled in his arms is a tiny body, slick and preserved, sharp-smelling and pickled. All its limbs and limbs and limbs are loosely coiled about his arms. Simon does not recoil. Simon does not drop the child. He hugs the malformed little body to his chest, cradles and gently rocks it, oblivious to the chemical slime soaking into his suit and running down his sleeves.

Simon sings to it:

                                     “Then woe is me, poor Child for Thee,

                                     And ever mourn and pray,

                                     For Thy parting neither say nor sing,

                                     Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.”

Absinthe turns the room to gelatin, swaying to the soft beat of the Corbies’ lullaby. He stares down at the tiny, twisted body, as he cradles and rocks it, feels the dead love.

Simon longs to take out his scalpel, to draw a tiny Y into each and every chest. He longs to take all the little ones into the Dead Water, to hear their stories, then set them free into the ebony sea. The Corbies salivate from their branches, hungry at the prospect of all these little spiced bites of Dead Water.

“Feed your head, Simon,” sing the crows. “Feed your head!”

“No,” Simon says. “There is no time.”

He cradles the tiny body. He gently closes its eyes—all of them. He kisses it on the forehead, the formaldehyde goo burning his lips. Simon tucks the little one back into the jar and seals it.

Simon sings:

                                     “And when the stars in gather do,

                                     In their far venture stay,

                                     Then smile as dreaming, Little One,

                                     Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.”

Only then does Simon note the razor tears in this clothes, the clipped patch of hair falling from his shoulder, the tiny cut on his cheek.

“Little flesh gargoyles,” the Corbies say. They probe the catches and defects in the ether. “A set trap. Crafty trap. Your struggles kill you quicker. Your fear kills you. Your disgust kills you. Your horror harms you more, and the harm horrifies you more. Exponential death.”

Simon, following the blue glow of his light, finds a stairway and leaves the room of jars, careful to keep singing all the while:

                                     “Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

                                     Bye-bye, lulloo, lullay.”

And in the silence and the darkness, the unborn smile as if dreaming—and wait.

The door to the upstairs apartment opens easy—no locks to pick, only hasty glyphs and symbols carved in gashes into the door and frame. It slides open with nary a creak or complaint. No furniture inside, only dishes of water and cat food and litter boxes.

No cats, Jane. I saw no cats.

All the rooms are bare, except the study. Inside this room swells a storm, a living chaos of shelves and books and notebooks and pens and a computer and a radio scanner and words jotted on napkins and receipts and pages and pages. Sitting, in the eye of this storm, at his desk, is Ichabod Knock—completely naked, face dripping with feline gore, symbols and glyphs carved into his flesh, some old and scarred, most fresh or refreshed.

They were for protection, Jane. I could read their red, runic rhymes. I do not know glyphs or runes, Jane, but I can read scars.

Ichabod is tall, even sitting, and long muscled. His long, frizzy hair shocks out in all directions, matching his immense beard, black with bolts of iron streaking through. He looks, rather madly, like a fallen storm god baptized in blood—rather different from the clean-shaven, devilish grin on the dust jacket of his book. But the nose is the same—impossibly wonky. Simon can see stories in the crooked lines of that nose, all the angry faces in which it played a central role and all the times it was broken.

The cat on the plate is white.

Ichabod looks up at Simon, still outside the study, and he smiles. The thick blood of the cat turns the smile into a gashing wound in the beard. Ichabod motions Simon to enter and Simon does so, noting the little glyphs carved into the doorframe.

As soon as Simon’s foot crosses the threshold, Ichabod’s bloodshot eyes bulge and he stands, tall, exposing all his nakedness and the angry red, dead language of the runes run over every inch.

“No!” Ichabod shouts. There is the flash of a large, chrome handgun pointing at Simon. “Not another step. Your clothes, man, your clothes! They can hide under clothes. That’s how they got Taylor. Slurps you all up and all that’s left is husks and smiles—godawful smiles! And bad eyes! That’s how to know. Take off your clothes!”

Simon considers fleeing, considers the gun, considers Jane. He begins to take off his clothes, throwing them in a pile. Ichabod seems satisfied when he is down to his boxers and socks. The bloody-gash grin returns.

“Well, come in, come in, Simon Meeks,” Ichabod says, waving Simon inside with the gun. “You got past my security—my pickled punks. Curiouser and curiouser.” He motions around the room. “Sorry. Always get like this when I’m neck deep in scrivening a book.”

Simon enters the room and stands in front of the desk. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know your name, loveling. Simon means ‘he who listens,’ and you listen to the rots. And Meeks . . . well, that’s just too easy, in’it?” Ichabod speaks in a voice that is gravel floating in rich syrup. Simon guesses the accent is British, but it sounds corrupted, oily, and bleeding into lots of other places. “You know my name, don’t you, Simon? You must have heard of me.”

“Mr. Knock.”

“Goody. How’s Nyx? Still struggling with daddy issues?” Ichabod rubs his nose. “Precious. Do they still play that silly little game at the Sanctuary? Icky Facts, is it? Truth is stranger than fiction, Simon, and the little darlings try and exaggerate, but, well, what do they know about the things I’ve done? I’m Ichabod Knock! I’ve opened the walls of reality, groped insanity, seen the purple dimension, talked to the invisibles! Once, I had a threesome with both Olsen twins. That was before they were famous. . . .”

Simon creeps closer.

“Easy, loveling, easy,” says Ichabod.

Click, says the hammer on the gun. Simon remains still. Ichabod smiles and un-cocks the hammer.

“The first thing you need to know, Simon,” says Ichabod, “is that stories are dangerous. Information is alive.” The police scanner chirps in the background and a radio plays, set to scan, switching stations every five seconds, alternating between music and commercials and talk. “Every story is a doorway. Some doors do not open again once closed, the worse ones do not close once opened—and the nastiest doors you cannot come back out of . . . unchanged.”

Ichabod talks with his mouth full. Then he is only eating—slurping, masticating—loudly. Simon stands there, mostly naked, for several minutes as Ichabod eats, very unaware of Simon’s presence.

Simon looks about the room. Chaos. A dimension of notes and scribblings. Scratched in pen, on a crinkled bit of loose-leaf paper, a note reads: Talented schoolchildren of North Shore disappear. White vans. Where is the facility? Contact died of cardiac arrest.

Written on the back of a forest preserve pamphlet is: Children revere the tree. They bury their offerings. But it is hungry. The Halloween Tree is always hungry.

Written on a mustard-stained napkin from an all night hotdog stand: The rats . . . the rats! Chew holes in my mind. Nightmares fall out. Did I dream the rats? Did I dream the wolves that come for them? Or did they dream me?

Notes on the floor, hanging out of books, pinned to cork board. Shelves and shelves of books. Symbols carved into the desk and along the walls. Simon tried to find a sense in it all, an order . . .

“If this be method, then there is much madness in it,” say the Corbies.

“Blood, guts, and bone, we can smell our own,” says another.

“Whaddya think grows in his head?” asks a third, and the tree in Simon’s skull explodes with laughter. Simon wonders if Ichabod can hear it.

Simon’s eyes follow the symbols and come to rest on a fly pinned into the wall with a tack. He thinks of Mother and moths. Next to the fly, a large spider is transfixed to the wall. Next to the spider, a bird is messily nailed in place, its body broken and twisted from the effort. And next to the bird, a crushed cat’s head.

Simon’s eyes follow the trail—fly—spider—bird—cat—his mind threatening to fall into monomania again.

“There was an old woman who swallowed a cat—Imagine that, she swallowed a cat,” sing the Corbies.

Above, on the wall, in sloppy permanent marker, the decaying mosaic is labeled: Chart.

“That’s their system, not mine,” Ichabod says through a mouthful of entrails, breaking the silence. He doesn’t look up from his meal. “I don’t eat lives. Those pyramid schemes are dangerous—zoophagy on a mass-market scale. ‘Start small, dream big!’” He breaks into manic laughter, ending in a coughing fit. Bits of meat and organ fall out of his mouth.

When Simon turns back, the cat is finished. Ichabod has eaten it, fur and tail and paws and all. The plate is licked clean, except for a few bones and the head, which stares at Simon through eyeless sockets.

“Oh, Dinah-Dinah-Dinah-Dinah,” Ichabod says. “I’ll miss you most of all.” He spins the plate, staring intently—very intently—into the empty eye sockets. “The stories I could tell you about Dinah.”

Scratch. Flare. And Ichabod, face and mouth still slick with cat’s guts, lights a large, unevenly rolled cigar with a match. He puffs, filling the room with an alien odor. With red-veined eyes like cracked, stained glass windows, Ichabod stares at the flame for a long moment before putting it out.

“You start counting the lights yet, Simon?” Ichabod asks, coils of smoke filling the room.

“No.” Simon eyes the gun now resting on the desk.

“You will. First you’ll recall how light seemed so plentiful, once upon a time. Then you’ll become aware of light—hyperaware. You’ll notice the lights are feeble. The bulbs weak. The light falters, flickers. You’ll yell obscenities in public places when another streetlight skips. It’s all so fragile. You’ll lie in bed wondering when you changed the bulbs last. You’ll count the number of lights between your bed and the car, the number of streetlights between your home and the convenience store. You’ll huddle in the dark, no longer certain the sun will rise, not in this place.”

See them now: our silent film hero—shivering scarecrow, Dead Water junkie, corpse friend, cadaver lover—entrails-reading Simon, standing next to Ichabod Knock— spook seeker; cat eater; bloody, rune-written flesh parchment. Can obsessions and madnesses interact, echo to each other like radio signals or bat sonar? Can the shadows and glass shards crawl out of one set of ears and into another?

“I’m here for Jane Doe,” Simon says.

“Excuse me a moment, Simon. I have to take a slash.” Holding the gun again, Ichabod lilts his head to the side. A yellow puddle forms on the floor under his desk. “Now, what was that?”

Simon steps closer. Point blank. “Jane Doe. Tell me about her. Tell me about the hammer and Club Wendigo and Apex Consumers. Tell me about you.”

“Me? I’m a rancid piece of work. I yelled ‘Marco’ into the dark. It answered. I apologize, Simon. I would offer you something, but my cupboards are quite bare. Perhaps you’d like to hear about the time I paid a bearded woman to go down on Robert Downey, Jr.”

Ichabod watches Simon’s impatience and mouths the words before he can say them. “Mother Hubbard!” Ichabod says. “That’s your phrase, isn’t it, Simon? Motherfucker! You can’t say it, can you? Say it! Ha! You can’t. Fantastic! Even your profanities are all Mother Goose.”

“How—?”

“It’s very endearing. Like watching a three-legged dog walk.”

“How do you know what I—?”

“We’ll get to that,” Ichabod says, puffing at the cigar, his eyes getting glassy. The smoke and the odor are taking over the room. “Cigar? I roll them myself.” Ichabod nods toward a box.

Simon looks inside: plastic bags filled with brown sheets that look like ancient parchment or dried leaves. But on closer inspection . . .

“Toads?” Simon asks.

“Yeah. Particular species. South American. Chemical in the venom of the skin produces the most wondrous hallucinations when inhaled.”

Ichabod exhales brown smoke.

“Did you know, Simon, that the ayahuasca vine of South America grows in a spiral? Ingesting it induces visions of twin serpents coiling around each other. Shaman understood this to be the basis of physical existence.”

Ichabod spirals his finger through the smoke. “They painted cave walls with the twin snakes, one black and one white, active and passive, twisting into a spiraling double helix. They called it the sky ladder. Imagine—fucked up mystics in a cave understanding the structure of DNA thousands of years before it’s named. Cosmic serpents swimming in the void. The spiral! The shape of the universe. The shape of molecules and snail shells and hurricanes and galaxies and all of them spinning inside each other. The flight path of a carrion bird over something dead and bloody.”

Ichabod takes a long drag, exhaling more smoke into the room.

“You have to take something, dear Simon,” Ichabod says, “to solve this mystery; you have to take something to skew your view, to see the shadows in the fog—the skulls beneath the skin.”

“Absinthe,” says Simon.

“Oh, that will do. Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes. You’ve seen them, haven’t you, dear boy—after the witching hour, gnawing at the edge of your vision, that first time mommy took away the nightlight?”

“Look!” calls a Corbie, noting a circle of white salt around Ichabod’s desk.

“Protection!” calls another.

“It is all about protection,” say the Corbies. “The unborn, the runes, the circle, and the cats!”

Simon nods, the ghastly picture forming in his mind. The cats. Like everything Ichabod did, they were a protective ward against the things that hide under clothes and slither between molecules. Paranoia—stress—comfort food. In the lore of many lands, cats were a protection from spiritual evil. Even today there are those living in old farmhouses who claim their cats stare at moving objects no one else can see, that they chase off ghosts. Icky went into the dark—and Icky did fall—and Icky did break. His twisted synapses collided: the instinct for comfort food, the notion of cats as spiritual protection. The chemicals fused into a fiendish compound.

This preternatural eating disorder.

“You’re trying to protect yourself,” Simon says, “from the inside out.”

The gun lowers toward the floor, and all the wicked lines in Ichabod’s face fall to wariness, whole unexplored continents of caginess beyond anything Simon knows. Ichabod slumps in his chair. “Oh, Simon. You’re supposed to say exactly that, just now, and have those insightful thoughts about me. . . . When you enter the Weird, you have to invest,” he says in a near-lucid voice. “Or it eats you all up. You protect yourself from secrets with secrets, so you can get more secrets. You have to keep on top of that shit, like a credit card bill, but soon you find that the APR is too high. You invest—more deals, more pacts, more tricks—stranger and stranger, and worse and worse, and you’re always deeper in than when you started. No exit.”

The radio plays a toilet bowl cleaning jingle. The police radio squawks something about a domestic disturbance.

“Simon, do you know what kills people the most in this dark, dark world?”

“What?”

“Embarrassment. If you have no shame, you might survive another night.”

“Please, Mr. Knock, I need to know what you know about Jane Doe. Tell me.”

Ichabod bolts up, standing, the lines on his face changing back from wary to wicked. “What I know? I could tell you things, loveling, that would crack open your head and let the goblins in. I can whisper the words that will sacrifice the corpse of your inner child on the altar stained with Santa’s blood. I could tell you such things.”

Ichabod leans forward, so close that the brown tendrils of smoke reach out from his mouth and caress Simon’s face. So close that Simon can smell the burnt toad and raw cat.

“This is your last chance to go home, get under the covers, and pray the Weird forgets you exist.” Ichabod smirks. “But you won’t listen, will you? You’ll just keep knocking on doors. You’ll go . . . there.”

“Where?”

“Down the rabbit hole, boy! Past Hell, through the looking glass darkly, and into the secret room where Alice plays tea with corpses. No deposit—no return. Once you see the Abyss, it sees you.”

With one hand Simon slaps the gun from the naked man’s grasp, as the other snaps forward, holding a newly materialized scalpel to Icky’s face.

“My, my, my, but you are fast,” says Ichabod. “What a nifty trick.”

Simon carefully bends to the floor and takes the gun, points it at the eater of cats. “Tell me what I want to know, Mr. Knock.”

“You strike me as a man who cries while masturbating, Simon. Be honest, ever do any tearjerking by candlelight?”

Click, says the hammer of the gun.

“Please cooperate, Mr. Knock,” says Simon. “Or I will have to shoot you in the head and find the answers with my scalpel.”

“See the shy boy blossom in the dark. Lovely. What would you like to know, then?”

Keeping the gun on Ichabod, Simon takes something from the pocket of his jacket, still in the pile of clothes on the floor. “Tell me about Jane. Tell me about this.” Simon shakes open the folded Club Wendigo flier, the one from Neil’s planner, and holds it out.

Ichabod snatches the paper and looks over it as carefully as if he were deciphering cuneiform. “This? This is magic” the radio chatters, and Ichabod points to it, saying, “That is magic, too.”

A jingle plays on the radio, enticing the listener to purchase a half-pound burger with bacon and onion rings.

Giggling, Ichabod slaps the flier down on the rune-marked desk and slams a heavy book next to it. The dark tome looks ancient, some eldritch work of the occult. Ichabod gestures back and forth between the book and the flier. “It’s the only magic that’s ever existed, Simon. Pay attention!”

Simon watches the madman with every Corbie in his head.

“Language. Symbols. Signals. All floating freely,” Ichabod says. “Dangerous stuff. You see, my little dove, a grimoire.” Ichabod points at the old, occult book, “is just a fancy-fancy way of saying ‘grammar’ and casting a spell is just the act of spelling to the universe. It’s true!” Ichabod slams a heavy dictionary on the desk. “There is just as much here—” he points to the dictionary “—as there.” He points to the occult book.

The radio sings the praises of a certain brand of cola. The police radio squawks something about a high-speed chase. The cat’s head does not comment.

“Once upon a time,” says Ichabod, “the first shamans were storytellers. Writers. We forgot. We fell into the current paradigm and stupidly believe that art is merely cheap entertainment, something to make half-hour time capsules for skags to swallow while waiting to die.”

“Mr. Knock, what does Club Wendigo have to do with Jane’s death?”

“Once upon a time, bards were the most feared magicians. What would a witch do if you pissed her off—cast a curse? Twist your son in the womb? If you pissed off a bard, he could cast a satire on you. Ruin you in the eyes of your family, of strangers, in your own eyes. If he was really clever, they’d still be laughing at you centuries after you’re worm-shit and your basic essence is corrupted and you wallow in your own vile absurdity!”

“Mr. Knock, how is Apex Consumers involved?”

“Shapers shape the word, shape reality. The only warlocks left are the advertisers—spells and hexes through the media, cast by the jiggly breasts of plastic seductresses. They can hex an entire country, thewhole country, to think the same insipid thought at the same time.”

“Mr. Knock—”

“Information is a super weird substance underlining the universe, more basic and universal than gravity. This suggests that the physical universe is merely a byproduct of a primal information. Or, to put it more simply: In the beginning, there was the Word.”

“Mr. Knock, who was Jane Doe?”

“That is the most interesting question you’ve asked.”

“Who was she?”

“Life support. But she died. So you can imagine what happened to us.”

“What’s her name?”

“No. No names. Not in the game we played. She was just she. She was just a white rabbit, popping up in so many plots. I had to know what she knew! The whisper in the river. . . .”

Ichabod falls back into his seat and takes an enormous drag on his poisonous cigar.

“You are speaking too cryptically, Mr. Knock.” Simon presses the gun to Ichabod’s head. “Tell me how it all fits together.”

“Why didn’t you say so, loveling. You want the story. Your story. I can tell it to you. Word. For. Word.”

Ichabod looks up and his pupils fill the globes of his eyes. He speaks, and the words sound like arcane mumbo-jumbo to Simon—but they gain cadence, rearrange themselves until they make sense.

Knock says, “Would you like to hear a story? This is a good one. And very short. This is the story and the story goes: Simon meets Janie D. at work. She tells him who hurt her. She smiles. This is love. This is rigor mortis. The end.”

The words fill Simon’s head with deep-ocean pressure, cutting his thoughts with serrated migraines, distorting his balance. The reality of the room quakes.

Knock says, “There is a longer story. The devils all lurk in the details. It is a story just big enough to cram into a human skull.”

Dentist drills embed themselves in Simon’s nerve endings he drops the gun and grabs his head. “What are you doing?”

“I’m telling you the story,” Ichabod says. “There’s much, much more.”

Knock says, “It is quiet in the morgue on this side of the A.M.—just the young pathologist and the golden-eyed cadaver, both smiling, both tense, both afraid to make the first move. Simon stares at the smile and the impossibly large eyes.”

Simon can feel the suture-cracks of his skull breaking apart with a sound like the hellish feedback of a microphone brought too close to the speaker.

Knock says, “Simon cuts the noose from her neck, lovingly removes the rough locket and bags it. He leaves the knot intact. Knots have their own clues to offer.”

Simon falls to his knees. The room buckles and stretches. “Please. Please stop,” says Simon.

Knock says, “With the aftertaste of evil licorice, he feels the green alchemy, the roots of wormwood growing in his brain, the upside-down tree that grows in his head and feeds off the dead, and the Corbies, always the Corbies, shrieking apocalyptic limericks. Simon takes Jane’s hand.”

Simon collapses to the ground and curls up as wave after wave of agony savages his head. And then, it stops. The room is solid, the pain gone. Simon looks about the room, now empty of both Ichabod and his gun. Simon gets up and runs out of the apartment, down the stairs, and back into the House of Oddities, chasing the acid laughter of Icky Knock.

* * * * *

Icky Knock runs through the House of Oddities and Simon follows. Simon runs past the pickled punks and ancient carnival posters.

Knock says, “‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ Simon whispers to the fish. He kisses the mucous-slick of her face and, very sadly, lays her down to sleep. He consigns her to the beyond.”

Reality distorts, and Simon loses track of Ichabod.

Knock says, “Simon waits for the door to close, waits for the footsteps to trip-trap far down the hall. Then he places the teddy bear in the arms of the dead girl. ‘Sweet dreams, Tamara.’ Simon slides her back inside and shuts the freezer door. He misses her already.”

Reality cracks, and Simon trips over a box, falling into a dusty display of Houdini’s stage equipment.

“I’m sorry, Simon. You wanted to know the bigger picture. How everything fits together. Yes, let me see. Once upon a time—” Ichabod takes a deep breath somewhere in the dark “—there is a house in Englewood that bleeds from the pipes. Windows like staring eyes. . . .

“There is an orphanage in the southwest suburbs run completely by children. They all have an identical scratch on the cheek. The adults are gone. I barely escaped. . . .

“On the South Side, there is a black dog attacking pimps and protecting prostitutes. . . .”

Simon gets up and tries to pinpoint the voice as Ichabod continues to recite the fractured fairy-tales of Chicago.

“There is a renegade garbage truck that drives the streets at night, transporting bodies and secrets. . . .

“There are dead, walled-up stations in the underground El. One of these is a secret storeroom where authorities keep evidence from freak cases. . . .

“At the house of 3383, there is a space. A nothing. Anti-space. A black hole. It grows slowly. Drop a corpse into it and the corpse crawls out hungry. . . .”

Ichabod’s words spiral and spiral—spirals within spirals—through the House of Oddities, and Simon follows. He runs past cryptozoology displays, past impossible bones and objects of taxidermy: Big Foot’s femur and a wall-mounted fish with fur.

Knock says, “Jane is all tucked in, slid back into her refrigerator. Simon closes the door, then flips it open and closed, open and closed, again and again. You hang up . . . No, you hang up . . . No, you . . .”

Reality spirals, and Simon leans against a wax figure of Vincent Price until the dizziness and pain abate. Then he is chasing Icky Knock through the House of Oddities again. He hurries past broke-down penny arcade machines, past bizarre medical photos, past a waxen H. H. Holmes holding a bloody knife, in a display labeled Murder Castle.

Ichabod’s voice comes on, in a crackle, through a sound system. “Ladies and gentleman, please direct your attention to our newest attraction: the gentleman necrophile, the man who puts the ‘romantic’ in ‘necromantic’— Simon Meeks! See the Dead Water junkie, who imbibed small doses of the Weird for years. Has he built up an immunity to the dark? Will he go farther than those before, or will he crash, too many track marks on his soul, nature aborting this most depraved of chemical experiments? Find out!”

Simon searches about, finds himself in a display with the wax figures of Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and James Dean all standing around an alien medical table, dissecting and experimenting on Elvis, as little green men watch over and manage the proceedings.

“There’s one question you didn’t ask, Simon,” Ichabod’s voice says over the speakers. “The question you want to ask, but don’t want to ask. If you do indeed have the power of divination, what sort is it? There are so many forms of divination: hepatoscopy, necromancy, augury, haruspicy, extispicy. What flavor are you? Ever try cephaleonomancy, the art of divination through the broiled head of a donkey? You haven’t lived until you’ve seen infinity through the boiled head of an ass.”

Simon spies Ichabod and advances. The voice continues over the speakers.

“That’s the question, Simon. Are you a necromancer? Do you really commune with the souls of the dead. Or are you just a reader of entrails? Do you just squeeze cold facts from their guts? Is the Dead Water just a collection of these facts in a more pleasing form—the pathetic projections of a lonely mind?”

“No!” Simon yells, crashing into Ichabod, who breaks into jagged pieces, a funhouse mirror now shattered.

“Oh, my. Did I strike a nerve, loveling?”

Ichabod stands, lit by the red-orange glow of an exit sign. Simon gets up and advances.

“Limping on three shaky dimensions is no way to go through life, son.”

“I want Jane back.”

“That is precious. We live in a strange world, Simon, full of strange love. We live in a state where our impeached governor’s wife eats dead tarantulas on national TV in order to fund her husband’s legal defense. Now that, that is love.”

Simon charges.

Knock sighs and says, “Simon kisses her lips, cool like September sands, like the time in the year when everything turns sad and sweet. He blows living air down her mouth. Most of it escapes, but some rebounds, rushes back, just a little, the faintest bit; it echoes in her throat, just the tiniest bit, expels in the quietest of sighs.”

Reality hiccups and Simon stumbles. Laughter. When he looks back up, Ichabod is gone, the doorway open. Simon follows.

* * * * *

Simon catches Icky Knock on the rooftop and tackles him hard. They crash and roll and Simon pins Ichabod down, straddling his chest, holding his throat.

“Hello, loveling. You want to tussle with old uncle Icky?

Simon squeezes.

Knock says, “Hector devours the space between them, moving fast for something so large. Simon does not evade. He does not raise his arms—does not get ready for a fight. Simon cannot win a fight against Hector. He can’t beat something grown that huge on chemicals, human meat, and hate. Simon gives him a target with his grinning, Jack O’Lantern face.”

Simon can’t stop him once the words start, and the nausea and pain they unleash make Simon cry out. The world overturns. Ichabod sits atop Simon, their positions reversed.

“That really did hurt, didn’t it? ” Ichabod says, clutching Simon’s throat. “I’m sorry. I was skipping ahead in the story. That part hasn’t happened yet.”

Simon’s flicks his wrist and a shiny scalpel appears in his hand. He holds it to Ichabod’s throat.

“Where the fuck do you pull those things out of?” Icky asks.

“I want Jane back.”

“You never even knew her.”

“I know Jane. She taught me to play in playgrounds after hours.”

“Mmm, touching.”

“Tell me about the ones who killed her.”

“I’ll do one better, bucko. I can tell you where she is.”

“What?”

“You can see her pretty face right now.”

“I . . .”

“You have to promise to do me a favor.”

“What favor?”

“Never mind what it is! You’ll do anything anyway, so just promise.”

“I promise.”

“Swear on it.”

“I swear.”

“Swear on the Dead Water.”

“I swear.”

“Swear on Toby Reynolds’s wormy little soul.”

“I swear.”

“Great! Go have a look in the box.”

They both get up. Simon looks about the roof. A large ritual circle, with more mysterious symbols, is drawn on the roof’s surface in orange sidewalk chalk. Next to the circle sits a great weatherworn trunk made of leather the color of darkened tobacco.

Simon opens the trunk. His lips quiver. His scalpel clatters to the roof. The Corbies shriek.

Jane Doe’s head, partially wrapped in silk, stares up at him from within the case.

He lifts it out, hugs the weight of it to his chest, and falls back into a sitting position. He stares into the empty sockets that once contained those golden eyes.

Ichabod stands next to him. “I’m sorry, Simon. It would seem your employer sold her for parts. Someone else got the eyes. I used what contacts I could to procure the head.”

Simon runs a hand through Jane’s hair. “What favor do I owe you?”

Ichabod reaches into the trunk, pulls out a manila envelope and hands it to Simon. “My agent is looking for me. I owe a manuscript. This will explain everything to her. I need you to mail it for me.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Ichabod lies, naked, limbs splayed, in the center of the orange circle, staring up at the stars.

“What about the rest of it?” Simon asks. “The events at the morgue, the Mondays, the three strangers who attacked me, Apex Consumers, Club Wendigo. How does it all tie together?”

“There is one last thing in my trunk. Pull it out.”

Simon does so, removing an ancient-looking rib bone. Layers of mummified flesh, brown and yellow and leathery, still cling to the bone.

“What is it?” Simon asks.

“My treat. It’s a crash course, when you want to see. There is a bog—Volo Bog—forty-five miles northwest of here. Its water is the color of strong tea. Darker than amber. Go there. Drop the bone in the mouth of the bog.”

“What will I see?”

Ichabod, on his back in the circle, shrugs. “Simon, do you know why conspiracy theorists believe in the mega-conspiracy?”

“Why?”

“Because, my boy, the alternative is more horrifying.”

“What is the alternative?”

Ichabod only smiles and smiles and smiles.

“What is your interest in all of this, Mr. Knock?”

Ichabod stares at the stars. “You’d have to stand on the moon and look down to see the pattern of the plan that I’ve enacted. I’m going to change the number of my dimensions. I’m going to walk through the final door. I’m going to become mythos, and then they can’t hurt me.”

Simon stares into Jane’s empty sockets, running his hand over her cold, dry cheeks. Eventually he turns to leave, but then pauses. He turns back.

“Mr. Knock, why did you want Jane’s head?”

“I did me a ritual. Right here. In this circle.” Ichabod flaps his arms and legs, making invisible snow angels. “You don’t know what that cost me! I had to know what she knew. I don’t have your talents, so I had the ritual, and it cost me. I drew the circle. I held her head. I looked into the two ant-lion pits of her skull, and I said, ‘Doodlebug, doodlebug, come out of your hole. If you don’t, I’ll beat you black as a mole.’ And all the information came pouring out and into my head. It was too much to fit. My skull cracked.”

Ichabod twitches in the circle.

“It cost me. And the prize? It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t her knowledge. Instead, I learned about Simon Meeks—everything there is to know about Simon Meeks. Everything that will ever be known about Simon Meeks. You fucked up the works, loveling!”

Ichabod laughs, and the laugh goes from angry, to insane, to jovial, and back.

“That's the gag, Simon. Right now, this is happening. But somewhere else, I'm telling it to someone. And somewhere else, I'm reading it through her skull windows in this very circle. And somewhere else, you’re muttering bits of it in the dark.”

Ichabod laughs. Hard. He laughs with his whole body. He laughs so hard a blood vessel bursts in his right eye, painting it entirely red.

Simon leaves.

Icky laughs.

Simon finds and puts on his clothes and goes downstairs with Jane’s head and the mummified bone.

Icky laughs.

Downstairs, Simon follows the pointing finger on a sign that says, This Way to the Egress. He exits the building as the animatronic barker calls after: “Safe home, dear friends, and come again. But take a warning and a care, for though you leave this place, it does not leave you. Insatiable is the mind that tastes darkling truths. Henceforth, know that any doorway, window, or keyhole may lead you back into . . . the House of Oddities.”

INTERLUDE:

Julio tried to put his hand up my skirt. Now the doctor says he might never be the same again. Rosette said she let Julio put his hand up her skirt. The police found her parent’s lab in the barn last summer. Now Rosette’s gone. Maybe if I had let Julio . . .

We were under the tree. The dare tree. The hungry tree.

“Wait,” I said. We squirmed. I used to be able to just hang with Julio. No one wanted anything. But that’s been changing—fast. I always beat Julio at arm wrestling and when I pushed him away that day his elbow hit the tree. It was a rotten patch, so it gave with a sticky crack. Then everything smelled like bio class dissection and that time Julio’s pet snake got sick and threw up the half-digested rat.

Then the pickled punks all fell out. That’s what my grandma calls them. Says she saw them in the carny tents for a nickel a peek, and they stared at her through the jars and soup, through two eyes and one eye and three eyes and sometimes from no eyes—and no face—at all.

Some of the jars broke.

Julio screamed and kicked one. It popped. Julio puked—mostly Tater Tots. His hand didn’t try anything else after that.

I didn’t throw up. I stared. And they stared, through the glass and the soup and the shards.

Then the sheriff was there, and the sun somehow went out like a cigarette burn, and everything was flashing reds and blues, like the night they came for Rosette’s parents. I was cradling one of the naked punks. The police took it away. They had to pry it from my hands.

They removed thirty-eight jars from the tree.

You can see the tree, every year at Halloween, on the walls of the kindergarten classroom. That’s when you draw it. Everyone does. That’s when the dreams start. You draw the tree. Then the tree draws you.

A week after we found the jars, Julio was still not allowed out. Then the strange man came and told me all about the jars and the pickled punks. I said I shouldn’t talk to him, in case he was a bad man. He laughed, said he was a bad man, but he wasn’t there to be bad to me. He smoked strange cigars that smelled like leaf burning and bullfrog catching. His accent was funny and he told me about the carnival route that used to run through here—from up in Milwaukee and Chicago, through our town, and into Indiana. He told me about the freak shows, and how this was a popular spot. Some of the freaks even retired here. I wasn’t real surprised to hear that. Some folks in town still look weird.

The strange man told me about the poor family that once lived here. That they were poor wasn’t a big surprise, either—everyone’s poor here. But to make extra money, the wife in this family would get pregnant, and she would drink bad things, like turpentine and lead paint, and she would do bad things to herself, so that the babies came out curious.

“Showmanship!” the strange man said.

When the daughters were old enough, their daddy made them bake batches of pickled punks too.

That’s when the strange man smiled, and his smile was like Julio’s hand, and he asked me about the thirty-ninth jar, the one I’d hid in my bag.

“Mayhaps you and I could make a deal, eh, loveling?”

So I made a trade. Never mind for what. Never mind why I took the jar. It wanted so badly to be held.

The strange man actually got all the jars. He slipped the sheriff a lot of cash. I asked why.

“Security,” he said. “Can always use more—there’s always room for one more.”

Doctor says Julio may never be the same. But I’m mostly fine.

“You didn’t reject them,” the strange man said. “They don’t like rejection.”

I found my drawing of the tree with some of Mom’s old stuff. It’s crinkly and faded, but it still has the bare black branch-claws, thick leg roots, and hollow mouth—just like all the drawings hanging on the kindergarten class wall right now.

We all used to go there, to the tree, on Halloween night. We’d sneak away and line up in silent rows, row after row of little hobos and skeletons and monsters, like at church, and we’d bury offerings at the roots—candy, the orange and brown ones that nobody wanted.

One year, it wasn’t enough. That’s when Samuel went away.

I didn’t remember that.

I remember it now.

I don’t always remember that.

Only sometimes.

JOSHUA ALAN DOETSCH once built a flesh golem out of grave-robbed parts and leftover Halloween candy. By strange chance, this golem is fueled by rejection slips. Every day it begs and it pleads, “Please, kind sir, keep me alive!” And so Joshua writes. You can thank White Wolf for making the poor golem go hungry for another day.

Joshua is from October Country, Illinois, but currently writes video game dialogue in Montreal. He has a fondness for fedoras, does a mean Christopher Walken impersonation, and, once upon a road trip dreary, wrote a blues song about necrophilia.

This really sucks.
It seems that my repeated struggles with Podbean (the site where I host my White Wolf Blogcast) have reached a point to where I haven't been able to upload an episode in over a week. I just can't get the episodes to upload. As such, I'm going to have to unfortunately put the podcast on hold for a few weeks, while I explore a couple of new hosting solutions (including the possibility of hosting it directly here at white-wolf.com). Once I have new information, I'll try to get everything switched over as quickly as possible and get things back on schedule.
I'm sorry this is so abrupt, but I have tried everything I can think of to get this situation to work.

Version 1.2 Update: It’s with Apple now…

The Sparkly Good Fairy has dropped by Warehouse 23 -- just in time for Valentine's Day! There are two ways you'll be visited by the fairy featured in Munchkin Fairy Dust.

Y'all may not be aware that Munchkin has its own news page. In case you've missed it, here is a quick summary of the news from January:

Mythic Iceland Gigantic BRP sourcebook for Winter 2012.

Extreme Planets Chaosium is expanding into new lines of speculative fiction.

Wow. It has been a wild ride over the last year-and-change. I started with SJ Games back in November 2010 as assistant to Phil Reed, COO. Now I am managing Warehouse 23.

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land Releases January 30th, 2012. Red Wasp Design portable device game nearly here!

Hello, everyone. My name's Lenny Balsera, and for the past couple of weeks I've been working as Andrew's new Munchkin Hireling. That means it's my job to carry the extra treasure, follow him around dungeons, and polish his stuff after he kills monsters.

CALL OF CTHULHU: THE WASTED LAND Launches! Red Wasp Design's portable device game is here!

To define terms: