“It’s yucky. And it smells,” Charlotte said as she handed him the matchbook.

“They serve beer,” Madison added.

The matchbook was for a bar on the north side of downtown, an area that had attempted a cultural renaissance fifteen years ago and failed. Now the neighborhood was home to tweakers and welfare moms–and bars like the one Dale was now headed to.

“We don’t know that they’re there,” Charlotte had said.

“We’re not sure,” Madison said.

“But we get feelings about things sometimes.”

Dale had accepted this. He still had their first payment in his pocket. This was the only tip he had to go on, and, who knew?, maybe their feelings were justified.

He sent them home, telling them to be careful and if they saw anything at all out of the ordinary, anything that made them suspicious, they were to call the cops first and him second. Even if that meant getting their parents involved.

“Anything at all,” he said, as he stood up to see them out of his office.

“We got it, Mr. Dale,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, we got it,” Madison said.

And then then were gone and Dale was left standing there wondering just what the hell he was doing. They’d given him a wad of cash and a set of vague instructions and not a whole lot else. Dale had pulled out the money and looked at it. If you’d asked him why he was doing this, he’d confess ignorance. He just didn’t know. There was something about those two girls that made him want to figure it out, for them. He couldn’t think his way around that simple fact. He wanted to solve their problem because he just knew it had to be solved.

Now he pulled into an empty meter spot half a block from the bar and killed the engine. This area of town was shit. Poor folk sat on their front porches, drinking cheap beer and cheaper wine, and watching the cars drive by with the jolly fascination of those who knew, no matter where the rest of the world was headed, the people in this neighborhood were going nowhere. The houses pushed close together, the lawns dead or dying. Alex opened his car door and got out.

He walked the rest of the way to the address on the matchbook. The bar was tucked into the bottom floor of a larger apartment building, taking up one corner and sharing the ground level with a cigarette, milk, and prepaid phone card store–according to the white, hand lettered sign–and a joint selling mobile phones and pagers. The bar’s sign, which said only “Bar” in red neon, hung only a few inches above the recessed entry and the last letter flickered as Dale walked underneath.

He pushed the door open.

Charlotte was right. The place smelled like hell. Dale couldn’t place exactly what it was: musty, yes, but also sour. The bar was small, with only a few tables and a line of booths along one wall. Behind the counter, a fat black man in a grey t-shirt handed a beer to a beer to a diminutive Mexican in a straw cowboy hat. Dale walked to one of the booths near the middle of the row and sat down. besides the Mexican, he was the only customer.

He waited. After a few minutes, the bartender waved at him and asked if he intended to order anything. Dale called back that he’d take a Coors Light and got up to take it when the bartender put the open bottle on the bar. Back in the booth, Dale leaned into the corner, sipped his beer, and returned to waiting. This was his only lead, after all, and the girls had paid him. He figured his constitution could handle a few hours in a place like this at the very least. Dale wasn’t counting on lucking out, but you never knew.

He’d brought a book, a biography of Charles Dickens, and he pulled it out of his jacket, flipped to his dog eared place, and began to read. He made it through three quarters of a chapter before anyone new came in and two more before anyone interesting showed up. This interesting group consisted of three guys–two white, one black–matching the description Charlotte had given him. “They’re like punk rockers,” she’d said.

“With tattoos,” Madison had added.

They ordered drinks, sat down, and started to talk.

“I think you’re right,” the black guy said.

“What about?” one of the white guys, skinny with a blue, Caesar like crown tattooed around his head said.

“What you were saying before. About the trouble with people getting choices.”

“Oh, that.”

The second white guy–fat with tattoos limited his is forearms–said, “Jesus, I can’t listen to this shit.”

The black guy said, “I mean, I get it. Let folks make choices, they’ll make bad choices, and then what’ve we got?”

“Bad choices,” Caesar said.

“Right. But the thing I don’t get is, what do we do about it?”

“We don’t let them,” Caesar said. The fat one stood up and walked over to the bar. He sat down and said something to the bartender which Dale couldn’t hear.

“Don’t let them what?” the black guy said.

“Make choices.”

“Somebody’s got to, though.”

“Us.”

“We can’t make them all,” the black guy said.

Caesar shrugged. “Soon,” he said. “We’ll be making them all soon.”

The black guy leaned forward. “Is that what it’s for? Does it do that?”

Caesar shrugged again.

Alex put down his book and inched closer to them along the booth he was sitting in. Was it really this easy? Were these the guys Charlotte and Madison had sent him to find and now here he was, not ten feet from them?

Caesar said, “Could be.”

“Sweet Jesus,” the black guy said.

The bigger of the white men, the one who’d left when the conversation started, had his drink now and came back to the table. “You fucking stupid?” he said, sitting down.

The black guy turned. “What’s that–”

“Talking about this shit? In here?” He looked at Caesar. “I thought better of you, you stupid prick.”

Caesar shook his head. “Sorry, man,” he said.

The black guy said, “It’s not safe? You don’t think it’s safe? You think somebody could be watching us?”

“Maybe.”

“Who? In here, who’s gonna be watching us?”

The big one looked around. “I don’t know. Anyone. Him, over there.” He was looked at Dale.

Dale sat still. He didn’t move except to take another sip of his drink, trying to look like he wasn’t paying any attention.

“This is shit,” he told the waitress when she walked by and she shrugged like she knew, because of course it was shit, but what could you expect for $3.99? She didn’t bother to refill his coffee.

Jimmy had found this place on the way home from the bars a week ago and it was now where he had his dinner/breakfast every day. His job didn’t make a lot of money and, no matter how bad they were, the night owl specials filled him up. Sometimes he didn’t even feel the need for lunch.

The restaurant was two stops from his hotel. Jimmy’s routine was to sing at the bars until tips dried up or last call, take the bus here and eat, and then go back to his room to sleep until noon or one. Then he’d kick around the city, waiting for the bars to fill up and the process to begin again. Not the kind of life he’d envisioned for himself when he’d been catching punts and screwing chicks in high school, but it sure as hell beat working for a living. And it was easy, ever since he’d found that book and discovered what he could do. Karaoke for tips? Most people would think that’s crazy, but Jimmy’s talent gave him a way about him, an attitude bar regulars liked throwing money at. He’d do it until it didn’t work any more and then he’d find something else.

He flipped through the city’s free weekly newspaper, looking at bar ads. Sometimes they had karaoke competitions, when he could make a lump sum and take a few days off. But none looked to be in the cards this week. Jimmy closed the paper, pushed it across the table away from him, and stared at the biscuits. One and a half left and he wasn’t sure he had the stamina to finish. He made up his mind and pushed these away, too. Tips had been good, he could afford to swing by Subway if he got hungry later.

Jimmy left cash on the table and waved to the waitress on his way out. She was cute, but too tall for his taste. But if he got board, he could always use his latent mojo to score a little action. When you got down to tacks, Jimmy Pete loved his life.

He trudged to the bus stop. Once there, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the tuna can. Jimmy pushed away the foil on top and looked in at the beetle. Weird motherfucker, that guy who’d given it to him. One of the weirder ones he’d met since beginning his journey into the under society of mojo. Jimmy didn’t care for the freaks. They offended his blue collar upbringing. They didn’t realize how good they had it, especially the ones who could use mojo like he could. Or no just like he could because, as far as Jimmy knew, nobody could do that, but he hated the way so many of the freaks he’d met were all down on their luck when they could do such amazing things.

Like the guy who could eat playing cards. He showed Jimmy the trick once. An ace of spade held up, so Jimmy could see, and then he stuffed it in his mouth and chewed. Once it was down, he waved, palms out: nothing. “Deal me a hand,” he told Jimmy. Jimmy did. “There an ace in it?” Jimmy checked and saw that there wasn’t. Then the card eater spread the hand out, face down, across the dirty table in the back of that midwest bar, and had Jimmy turn them over one by one. The last one, right there, was the ace of spade.

“It’s a trick,” Jimmy had said.

“Of course it is,” the card eater said.

“No, I mean it’s a trick like a magician does.”

“Naw,” the card eater said. “You can check. It’s not that kind of trick.”

Jimmy did, watching him do it over and over again from every angle. There was no illusion here. This was the real deal. “I can feel it,” the card eater said. “I can’t see it–and neither can nobody else–but I can feel the card moving from my stomach to my hand than then it just kind of oozes out onto the other ones. It’s the craziest thing.”

But it didn’t make him happy, he told Jimmy. You’d think something like that could make you a ton of money, playing blackjack or poker, but it didn’t work. The cards they used now a days are all plastic. You can’t chew them.

Jimmy figured the guy could’ve come up with some other way to make a killing off his talent, but the card eater didn’t seem to want to. He was, in Jimmy’s estimation, a lazy bum.

Jimmy looked around. There wasn’t any bus in sight and it got cold this time of night. He stood up and began pacing to keep himself warm.

That’s when he saw the van. It was parked half a block away, on the other side of the street. As soon as he looked at it, Jimmy’s finger began to itch and then the itch became a burn. He reached behind him and picked up his briefcase from the shelter’s bench. He wasn’t scared or worried, not yet, but he knew there was something wrong with that van.

Jimmy held his hand out and waved it. The itching got stronger as it arced in the van’s direction, then died down again when it was pointed away. “The fuck–” Jimmy said, but was cut off when the van’s lights came on and the engine roared and then it was driving straight at him.

The synesthesia had been with him for as long as he could remember and now, twenty two years into his life, he’d come across a word–a phrase–whose color was wholly new. And so he stared at it.

The culture box. Danny had no idea what it meant and, under most circumstances, he’d have ignored it. The IM window was open to a chat bot, an artificial intelligence program designed to mimic the responses of a real person. He’d been playing with it for ten minutes, mostly asking it questions about sex to see how faux offended he could make it, when it wrote:

“You must find the culture box, Danny Weeks.”

That it knew his name wasn’t startling. The program might have run a look up on his IM profile. The information was public. And the weirdness of the statement was to be expected from a chincy, web accessible AI. But the colors of those two words was startling.

Danny was diagnosed with synesthesia at the age of four. He’d been an early reader and his parents grew concerned when he said things like, “I know that says ‘cat’ because ‘cat’ is blue.” The family didn’t have a cat and, if they did, the chances of it being blue were slight. Statements of this sort continued and eventually they took him to a specialist, who told them about the hiccup going on in his brain, about how he associated different words with different colors and that it was all nothing to worry about. The synesthesia just made their son unique. It made Danny special.

To Danny, however, the words and colors were just the nature of the world. To have it be otherwise was akin to flavors not having taste or sounds void of pitch. Language and hue were inseparable in his experience. That was why, when some new color came along, he took notice. And the colors of “culture box” were as new as any he’d ever seen.

He typed back: “What’s the culture box?”

The program responded: “Why don’t you tell me what is the culture box?”

He rephrased the question, tried again. And again. But the chat bot had settled into the endless loop of non-logic meant to mislead the user into thinking the program understood input about which it was wholly clueless.

He switched to a web browser window and typed “culture box” into the search prompt. The results were as useless as the chat bot’s responses. Techno music. A tourist information site for London’s South End. Danny poked around for ten minutes, reading sites, trying other search engines. He gave up. No other mention of “the culture box,” even when he found that exact phrase, shimmered the way those words did in the chat window.

Danny switched back to it and stared. He leaned in close to the LCD until he could see the individual pixels. The colors blurred over and between these, unbound by the limits of the screen’s technology. This was expected, of course, since the colors weren’t actually there, weren’t a genuine product of the computer’s display, but instead a construct of his mind.

He stared, unfocusing his eyes. He let his attention wander. This was a technique he’d learned years ago, one that, on occasion, made the colors go away. The effect was always temporary, but Danny wanted to try it here. He wanted to see if getting rid of them in this particular case–and then letting them come back–would effectively reboot his brain. The shimmer might only be a random misfiring. Danny knew the first thing you always do when something stops working is turn it off and then back on again.

It was working. The colors faded. The double image of the screen warped and shifted–and then went blank. Danny snapped his vision back into focus. His hands were on the keyboard and, without being aware he was doing it, Danny had turned the display all the way down to black. Weird, but it was a weird kind of moment he was having. He thumbed the brightness up again.

But the image that came in was not the browser windows and other applications he’d had open before. The image that came in was only three words, the letters tall and narrow so the text filled the whole of his screen, the colors muted, but still swimming between hues. “FIND IT NOW,” they read.

Danny flinched away and slammed the computer shut. The points just under the skin of his temples screamed. He shook his head, pressing his palms to his ears, and shut his eyes against the threat of those words. He was losing it. His goddamn mind had turned against him. He wanted to drink something, anything, even if it was just water. He wanted to flush his system.

He slid the laptop all the way to the back of the desk and stood up. The pain in his head was fading and there wasn’t any sign of the words. It’s nothing. He breathed. It’s nothing but staying up too late and staring at a screen too much. He had to limit himself to just a few hours a night from now on, maybe even use the time to focus back on his studies. His parents were only letting him live at home as long as he was a full time–and fully successful–student, and nine hour sessions of World of Warcraft had brought him awfully close to being kicked out of the house.

The words were gone. He didn’t dare open the computer to be sure, but he’d let the assumption stand for now. No use checking.

Jesus. He sat down on his bed, propping his elbows on his knees and putting his head in his hands. Jesus Christ. It was just the pain, really. That’s what had him so freaked out. He was used to seeing things, it was the nature of his condition. Some words–even crazy ones, even ones that weren’t supposed to be there–shouldn’t have his heart pounding. Maybe it was only a migraine. He’d never had one before, but who knew if those kinds of things can just start up out of nowhere? Wouldn’t be any stranger than seeing words in color. The pain from the headache had fried his nerves, which lead directly to this fit. It made sense. And the headache could’ve been coming on before he even noticed it. In fact, the words might have been the first indication.

He stood up. He’d get that drink of water and watch television for a while. Danny pushed the pillows around on his bed, a pointless task to clear his mind, and then walked around the piles of books and papers that cluttered the floor of his room. He twisted the knob and pushed, but stopped when he saw the green squiggles on the dry erase board hung on the inside of the door. Danny didn’t remember drawing them, but right in the middle, clear as the after image on the computer screen, was written, “FIND IT FOR ME.”

But it was a Saturday afternoon and Alex Dale was bored. He showed them the seats in front of his desk. They sat down and leaded together, chatting in whispers. He let them, waiting to see what would happen.

Eventually they stopped. The teenybopper on the left flexed her bicep. The muscle failed to puff her lacy shirt. “I’m tough,” she said. “Grrr.” She put her arm down and laughed: bright, liquid, and like teeth on pavement. “But you gotta be careful, right?”

Alex Dale leaned forward across his desk, his face coming out of shadow and into the glare from the office window and reflections off the girls’ jewelry. “What do you want?” he said.

She giggled again. “Oh, rad! Yeah.” She turned to her friend. “See, Madison? What did I say? I said, ‘It’ll be just like on television.’ ‘What do you want?’ Like in a movie!”

Madison grinned and clapped her hands together. Dozens of plastic and rubber bracelets on her wrists clattered. She said, “Noir.”

“Right on!” the one who wasn’t Madison responded. “Noir.”

Dale’s temple twitched. “What do you want?”

“Things,” the little one said. “Me, I’m Charlotte, this is Madison, and we kind a want to hire you.”

“For?”

“He’s silly,” Madison said, her hand–decked to bursting with rings of silver, gold, and candy plastic–held in front of her mouth.

Charlotte waved her off. “For protection,” she said. “That’s what you do, right? What you people do? You protect clients.”

“We wanna be your clients,” Madison said.

Dale sat back, returned to gloom. “No.”

“What?” Madison said.

“Why?” Charlotte said.

Dale craved a cigarette. “You need protection, that’s what the police are for. Or your parents–which is who you should be talking to if you’re scared. I’m not the person to help. I don’t protect kids.”

“We’re not kids,” Charlotte pouted.

Madison said, “We’re tweens.”

“Right,” Dale said.

Charlotte stood up. She smoothed down the front of her dress, closed her eyes, and inhaled. Then she let the breath out and opened them. “Mr. Dale–detective Dale–we need your help. It’s not like we’re little children. We’re pretty much grown up. Madison will be able to drive in only a few years. I can drink coffee sometimes. We’re old enough to know that we really need your help.”

Madison sat forward in her chair and put her hands on Dale’s desk. “Mr. Dale, can you please just listen? It’ll only take a minute. Then, if you want”–she looked at Charlotte–”you can call our parents.”

“Yeah, you can call them then,” Charlotte said. She sat down.

Dale sighed. The hallway outside his office was empty. Nobody was waiting for his services. If these girls could pay…

“Tell me exactly what you want me to do,” he said.

“There’s this thing. I guess you could say it was kind of lost,” Charlotte said. “These guys are looking for it.”

“What does that have to do with protecting you?” Dale said.

“That’s the thing. We need you to protect us, but that’s because we think they think we know where it is. But we don’t–”

“No idea,” Madison said.

“These guys,” Charlotte said, “they’re kind of hard to track down and so we don’t know how to, I guess, keep us safe ourselves. And so that’s kind of what we want you to do. We want to you to figure out where these guys are, you know? And then get them off our backs. ‘Cause it’s totally not cool that they think we stole their stuff, because we didn’t.”

“How am I supposed to get them off your backs?,” Dale said. ” If they’re threatening you, like I said before, you need to call the cops. That’s what police are for. I’m a detective. I find things, I find people. I’m not a bodyguard.”

“Oh, but see, that’s what we want. The cops–”

“These guys would totally fuck the cops,” Madison said.

Charlotte turned on her. “Don’t talk like that!” she said. “This nice man is going to help us, and you go out and try to ruin it all by swearing? Gosh, Madison, you’re so dumb.”

“It’s okay,” Dale said. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said, still glaring at Madison. She let her gaze come back around to Dale and continued. “We’re pretty sure the only way these guys are going to leave us alone is if they stop this stupid idea that we have this thing. We’re good at hiding things–”

“Really good,” Madison said.

“–and so, I guess, maybe these guys aren’t totally crazy to think we put it somewhere.”

Dale said, “But you didn’t.”

“Swear to God,” Charlotte said. “And to get these guys to believe us, the only thing we can do is find it ourselves and give it back to them. Because we can’t kill them.”

“No,” Dale said. “You can’t.” Charlotte’s “can’t” sounded more like “aren’t able to” instead of “shouldn’t.” There was something wrong with these girls. He couldn’t identify what, but it was there–and it made him curious. He decided to take their money, if they had any, and see where it lead.

Charlotte looked at him. She was quiet. Her eyes were big and pleading, an expression she’d clearly practiced.

“You want me to find it?” Dale asked.

“Yeah,” Charlotte said.

“What is it?”

Madison stood up. “It’s the culture box,” she said.

Charlotte rolled her eyes.

Elliot and Evajean have done their part, but I’m not quite done with mine. What’s been published here, semi-regularly for the last year and a half, is the first draft of the story. I posted as I wrote and, now, I get to move on to that crucial next step: revision. I’ll be using the comments gathered along the way, and all new ones between now and when I’m finally done. Then begins the hunt for a publisher and, if all goes well, the thrill of seeing the book in print.

As a continuation of this experiment in online novel publishing, I’ve made the THE HOLE available for the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. If you have a Kindle and would prefer to read it that way, here’s the link to grab it. And even if you don’t have a Kindle, I’d love it if you’d head over to the book’s Amazon page and leave a comment or review. Tell me what you thought–I’d really appreciate it.

Finally, as promised, I’m not leaving readers hanging without something new to check out. I’m happy to present the launch of my new, and different, serial novel, KARAOKE QUINTESSENCE, a tale of occult crime and mischief. I hope you like it.

Thank you all again.

-Aaron

“And you know what the shittiest part is?” Jimmy said to the blonde guy next to him at the bar. “It’s the way them chicks call you up, whining and moaning about how you ruined their life, like it’s not their fault they fucked you.”

The blonde guy nodded.

Jimmy continued, “So I said to ‘em, you just go get an abortion, you don’t want the kid. But the funny thing is– You know what the funny thing is? They can’t. That’s right. Those eleven babies will cling on and fight off any drugs you pump in there and if you go in after ‘em with a coat hanger, they’ll just grow back.”

The blonde guy laughed.

“It’s funny, huh?” Jimmy said. “Shit like that makes my goddamn day.”

He stood up, grabbed at the pile of quarters he had to cover drinks, dropped them in his pocket, and picked up his briefcase. He knocked the blonde guy on the shoulder. “You been real good company,” he said.

The blonde guy nodded. He shrugged. Jimmy dropped him a few quarters, smacked his back again, and walked back to the front of the room. He stepped up onto the little wooden stage and set his briefcase down on along the wall under the retractable screen. He put his hands up in the air. “My good, dear folks,” he said. “I’m back to please the hell out of you. Anyone got something in particular they’re just buzzing to hear?”

A table of Mexicans near the front started laughing. One took off his hat. He waved it at Jimmy and shouted a slur of words in spanish.

“Don’t know that one,” Jimmy said. “Sorry, mi amigo.”

The Mexican waved his hat again, a gesture of dismissal this time.

“Anyone else,” Jimmy said. No one was forthcoming. “Come on, folks. I got a repatuar, that machine back there’s got its own, and they overlap in a big sweet spot of musical bliss I’m sure one or two of you have a favorite in. So go ahead and choose.”

Someone near the front worked up courage–or worked through boredom–and shouted, “Led Zeppelin.”

Jimmy grinned. “Yup,” he said, “I think I can do that.” He turned and whispered to the dude running the karaoke machine, who fumbled buttons, digging through the play list.

Thirty seconds and he got a thumbs up: song found, get ready to sing. He looked around, over the heads of the small crowd. Maybe thirty people were sitting haphazardly at the twenty or so tables in the bar. It was a dive, Jimmy knew, but he had the feeling he’d get thirty bucks–if he was lucky, fifty. People always tipped. And his finger had been itching something mad.

Jimmy kicked into Robert Plant. He gave the room a whole lot of love and somewhere in the North African desert, the real Robert Plant stopped paying attention to the native music festival he was attending and hugged himself, feeling like he’d had too much to drink on an empty stomach.

People cheered. Some clapped. One or two coughed. Jimmy hit it harder, drawing the song in, channeling the falsetto. He gave it his all and, when he finished, a table full of ladies–nurses, some with fancy jackets pulled over their scrubs–begged for more. The drunks really liked this short, Italian looking dude who could sing like a Seventies rock icon on cue.

It all ended forty-five minutes later, Jimmy up seventy bucks in tips and grinning huge, the room not quite ready to move on to the typical karaoke experience of brave drunks slurring their adolescent favorites–and shy housewives mumbling lyrics to Shania Twain, while feeling like they were putting one over on their domineering husbands back home.

Jimmy was happy to relinquish his spot.

He grabbed his briefcase, shoved his tip money into it, and jumped down from the stage. He took found a seat at the bar and ordered.

“I can come back,” Jimmy said to the bartender.

“Yeah?”

“Couple a days, I’ll come back and do some more.” He gestured at the drinkers. “Seems good for business.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna maybe advertise?” Jimmy said.

“No,” the bartender said.

Jimmy nodded, grabbed a ten from his pocket, and handed it to him. “Couple a days.”

“Gotcha,” the bartender said.

Jimmy finished off his beer and left the bar.

He walked a block north, keeping an eye out for street signs. He didn’t know this city, had only come into town a few days ago, and he was still adjusting to the new geography and bus schedule.

Fifteen minutes later he saw a shelter, a gang tag spray-painted on the glass. He sat down on the plastic bench and looked around. There was a black guy across the street, looking both ways, back and forth, but not actually crossing. Jimmy figured he was selling crack–or coke or heroin or whatever people were into now–and was waiting for some BMW to pull up, roll down its window, and a white hand to come out holding a fold of bills.

“Fuck BMW,” Jimmy said.

He took another quick look around, just to be sure. There was no one but the dealer, who was too far away to see anything.

Jimmy opened the leather brief case, a gift from his mother when she’d thought he was heading off to college, and rooted around for a transfer. He found one tucked inside his Heather Graham novel. The transfer’s ink was smudged, the edges ripped, the date a few months passed. Jimmy ran his thumb along the surface of the paper and the smear of ink reformed as numbers and locations, changing an expired Omaha RTD transfer into one that’d work locally. He stuffed it in his pocket, closed the brief case, and waited for the bus.

When it arrived, Jimmy got on, handing the transfer to the driver, who took it, gave it a once over, and slid it into the metal box to the right of the steering wheel.

The driver smiled at him. Jimmy smiled back. He stepped over outstretched feet on his way to an open spot to sit.

He sat quietly, tapping a beat into his briefcase. There were supposed to be three stops until his hotel but, for some reason, when that third stop came, Jimmy didn’t get up. He thought his finger was itching. He couldn’t be sure, but the bars were closed and he wasn’t in a hurry to get back.

Jimmy rarely knew exactly where he was going. Rather, he followed a faint left/right sense, a tingling in one hand or the other that, when obeyed, usually led him to good money, free drinks, and, on one or two occasions, a warm bed and someone to share it with.

The bus did two more stops before Jimmy knew it was time for him to get off. He couldn’t tell where he was–he hadn’t been paying attention to passing signs–but it seemed residential. He pulled the metal cable and the “Stop Requested” sign dinged red.

The bus stopped along a strip of grass and sidewalk. Jimmy worked his way back up to the front and climbed out. He stepped onto the wet turf near a parked Honda, looked around, and headed in the direction he figured was south.

The streets were empty. It was nearly three. Jimmy walked a quarter mile before his patience with his itching fingers began to wear out and he thought maybe he’d just picked up an indecisive rash.

Then it came on strong. He was standing at the mouth of an alley formed by the backs of the houses in a long row. He could see parked cars and trash cans lit up here and there by lights above one-car-garage doors. Jimmy didn’t particularly want to go down there. The houses looked nice, the kind likely owned by young couples on their first mortgages, and he knew those sorts of homeowners were terribly prone to dialing 911 at the first sign of anyone walking anywhere near their love nest palaces at the wrong time of night.

Jimmy had been arrested before. He didn’t feel like going through that again, but he’d never ignored the itching before, not at least since he’d figured out what it was good for. He shrugged and headed into the gauntlet of garages.

He’d walked about half the alley, trying to stay out of the circles of light, when his foot caught on something and he looked down. A Chicken of the Sea tuna can had flipped over when he kicked it and now rested upside down against his shoe. He bent down, picked it up, and turned it over. Inside, a few pieces of salted fish stuck to the corners and a beetle with a blue shell crawled around, seeking cover.

He put his thumb in front of the bug, letting it crawl onto his nail. It stopped as soon as it touched skin and waited. Jimmy stared at it, then flicked it at some bags of garbage to his right.

“That’s a special bug.”

Jimmy whirled. An old man, mid-seventies maybe, was leaning against the brick wall along the back of one of the lots, filing his fingers with what looked like a long screw.

“It was?” Jimmy said.

“Still is.” The old man pushed himself off the wall and walked a couple of paces closer. “I’d try and find it, I were you. You might be needing it.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh.”

The man was black and had a grizzled look. His skin was shiny and scars covered his cheeks like cresting worms. A long, grey scarf was draped over his neck, its frayed ends stopping just above a wide, yellow belt clasped with a huge bronze Scooby-Doo logo.

Jimmy said, “This about my singing?”

“Your singing?”

“The way I can sing like people? I figured it for big mojo when I found it, bigger than the other stuff. I figured that might put me on somebody’s radar.”

“Oh, that.” The old man looked around. “Don’t rightly know. I was just told to make sure you get this stuff. Don’t know what it’s all for.” He screwed his lips to one side. “Though, I suppose it could have something to do with you belting out the tunes.”

Jimmy said, “Who are you?”

The old man grinned all big and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Ellison. Like the guy invented the light bulb.”

Jimmy reached out and they shook. “Jimmy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jimmy. Hope I’ll be seeing you again.”

Ellison let go of Jimmy’s hand. He turned around and walked away down the ally. Jimmy didn’t bother to follow.

When Ellison was gone, Jimmy dug through the garbage bags. The blue beetle was on top of one of them, its legs going in circles on the plastic like it was treading water. Jimmy picked it up carefully, found the tuna can, and searched around some more until he came up with a piece of aluminum foil and a rubber band. He made a little cage for the bug, poked holes through the foil, and slid the whole deal into his coat pocket. He hoped the tuna would keep the thing from starving until he needed it. Because he knew he’d be needing it someday. He’d learned, over his years of exposure to the world’s more odd secrets, that people like Ellison, people with that sort of wise vibe, were best paid attention to.

He shrugged and walked back to the bus stop.

If you want to keep up to date with each new chapter of KARAOKE QUINTESSENCE, you can subscribe to a feed of updates to my site here.  If you’d rather get updates in your email–or have no idea what “subscribe to a feed” means–you can do so here.  Both of these include not just the novel, but also my short fiction and essays: everything I write in one convenient place.  Welcome to KARAOKE QUINTESSENCE.

A time later–his sense of the passing minutes had become fluid–he opened his eyes. Ahead he could see a dock built out from the beach and into the water. As the Nephites cleared, he saw that it stretched the full distance to the temple. This was the path they’d take to enter Moroni’s domain. When his foot first landed on the wood, he realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out and concentrated on walking.

The crazies milled about at the perimeter of the light, stretching their arms toward Elliot and Evajean, calling out to them, pleading. Elliot wondered if they knew what was happening, if they were aware that these two people had come to destroy their god. He thought so, but he felt no pity. They had ended his world and now he was going to end theirs.

Half way along the dock, Elliot noticed a hump rising in the water. As he watched, it settled back beneath the surface, only to return a distance away. Elliot’s attention felt slow in shifting, his skin pleasantly warmed by the light from Evajean. But he was able to focus on the thing out in the water and, after a moment, he saw it breach. It was one of the creatures, the same as those that’d chased them in the truck and had eaten Melvin. They were swimming in the Salt Lake, doing laps around Moroni’s temple. This is where they had come from, then. They were beings from the same realm as the mad king.

The crazies had dropped away as they progressed along the dock. A few swam along side, but most remained on the shore. Those on the temple kept their distance, too, jumping into the water as the sphere of light approached. Soon the path between Elliot and Evajean and the steps leading to the top of the temple was entirely clear. At the top of the pyramid, hovering above the apex, was a purple ball of light, no bigger than a man. Elliot could barely make out a flow of energy coming from this, erupting up into the sky. He looked up and saw it spread away into the distance in all directions. The clouds above shimmered. The temple was the source of the creatures and, it seemed, the barrier as well.

Evajean stopped walking. They were within only paces of the temple’s stone steps. The light no longer came from her but, instead, from all around them. Elliot could feel it inside his body, shedding heat as it burst forth. Evajean whispered and, over the sound of the water and the calls of the crazies, he heard her.

“We’re nearly done,” she said.

There was a moment, the briefest of flashes, when Elliot wanted to turn and run, to return to Virginia and let the world end without him. He could still save Evajean, even as he’d failed to save Callie and Clarine. But the moment passed, so quickly he barely remembered it. He turned and put his arms around Evajean, squeezing her against his chest, smelling her hair and the dust in her clothes. Her jacket smelled of Hope, too, the dog’s scent rubbed deeply in by all the times she’d cradled him close to her.

“Then we finish it,” he said into her ear.

She nodded and pulled away. She looked up into his face and smiled. “I think we already have,” she said. “It’s over. He just doesn’t know it yet.” She tilted her head in the direction of the temple’s peak.

Elliot looked–and would have fallen back except for the supreme calm that had washed over him earlier. Moroni climbed from his fortress, a beast easily matching the horrors he had wrought.

Arms clawed up the sides of the temple, dozens of them, twisting and loose like tentacles but with recognizable joints and huge hands. These were covered in fingers, grey and slick and hooking out in all directions, like a carnival freak in a jar. The arms pulled the mad king’s weight out of the water, a semicircle of toothy flesh that surrounded the pyramid on three sides. It was like a hood unveiling, as if the temple being prepared for rain or protected with shade. This slid upward until it had reached the temple’s height and then came forward and down, smothering the stone and steps. The arms continued all across its surface, groping bristles of vaguely human appendages. The palm of each opened into a black hole, not a mouth, but an empty cavity, out of which came a thousand screeching babbles, the calls of the crazies, but terribly magnified and shrill.

Moroni finished rising from the waters of the Great Salt Lake and hovered over the temple, a god atop his throne. It’s body rippled and writhed, the hands along the underside holding fast to the stone, while those across the top grasped futilely at the air. Steam rose from it and washed over Elliot and Evajean. And then, out of the cacophony hands, a voice emerged.

I DESPISE YOU, it said, in a myriad of pitches and volumes. I HAVE DESPISED YOU SINCE I FIRST WAS.

Elliot ignored it and kept walking. Evajean paused only a moment before following. She caught up to walk along side him, taking his hand again. The light was blinding now, Moroni only visible as a silhouette.

YOU ARE NOT READY FOR THIS, the god continued. TURN BACK AND I SHALL CALL OFF MY ARMIES. TURN BACK AND I WILL PROTECT YOU.

Elliot shook his head. “No,” he said softly.

I WAS FIRST, Moroni said. The arms twisted and snatched at the sky, more frantic than before. THE OTHER IS AN IMPOSTOR. HE WILL NOT SAVE YOU. YOU ONLY GIVE THE WORLD OVER TO HIM.

“Others will see that he fails, too,” Evajean said. They were half way up the side of the temple, Moroni’s bulk blocking out the sun. The light filled the cave of flesh and stone.

YOU CANNOT DO THIS. YOU ARE NOT ABLE. YOU WILL FALTER BEFORE THIS ENDS.

Elliot knew what would happen then and, remembering Callie and Clarine and all the other deaths he’d experienced, he was glad for it. What was left for him? He felt Evajean’s hand relax in his. She knew it, too. They finished their walk.

The hands strained for them as they took their final steps up the pyramid’s slope. But Moroni was forced back by the light. Mighty and strong, Elliot thought. Together we are mighty and strong.

The last of the steps passed beneath their feet. They stood on the peak and looked into the sphere of light, the hole through which Moroni had come, the hole they had set out to find.

“Elliot,” Evajean said, and even over Moroni’s screaming the words were clear.

He took her into his arms and, together, they walked through.

* * *

The boy blinked. His hands hurt and he dropped the stone he’d been carrying. It was small but its edges were rough and it was heavy for a boy so small. He watched it roll away from his feet, then rubbed his palms on his jeans.

Overhead, the sky flashed, like lightning from everywhere, and then faded to its original color. The boy wondered what that color was, realizing he remembered nothing of where he was or how he’d come to be there. He looked around.

A warehouse was off to his left and on the right was a ring of trailers, shining in the morning sun. He appeared to be alone. Behind him, the skyline of the city was unfamiliar, as was the landscape it rose out of. He recalled seeing pictures in a textbook once, and knew he was in the West. He wondered at this, too, for he’d been born in Boston and spent every year of his life there.

The trailers had windows and doors and looked like tiny houses. He began walking toward them, hoping somebody would be home, somebody who might be able to tell him how he got here.

He made it to the first one and tried the door and found it locked. There were many other trailers, however, and the boy wasn’t concerned. He’d find another person eventually. He wasn’t hunger or thirsty and he didn’t have to pee. He had time.

Three more trailers yielded the same result. He was at the door of the forth, reaching out for the knob, when he heard the sound from inside. There was a scrambling and then a dog barked. The boy smiled. A dog wasn’t as good as a person, but it was good. He grabbed the door and discovered it was unlocked. He pulled it open.

A small, black puppy stood there, staring up at him. The dog began to growl, then stopped and sniffed the air. It glanced up at the boy and yipped. He bent down and reached out with his hand. The dog took a step forward, stretched its neck, and smelled him. Then it barked again.

The boy made a calming noise and patted the animal on the head. The puppy pushed against his hand. “Hi there,” the boy said. The dog cocked its head. “My name’s Rodney. My friends call me Rod.” He rubbed the dog behind the ears. “You can call me Rod if you want.”

The dog nuzzled into his arms. The boy picked it up and scratched its stomach. Then the two of them set out toward the city.

THE END

Thank you for reading my first novel. I do hope you enjoyed it. And, if you did, my second serial is already available. It’s something completely different: KARAOKE QUINTESSENCE.

“No…”

“Again.”

He shook his head. I hit him—more teeth.

“Okay.” The words were thick. His mouth bubbled. “Goddamn it, stop, okay?”

I held up my fist. Levett talked.

I left him there: broken, beaten, alive—and better than he deserved.

****

“You’re sure?” Legerwood’s eyes were wide. He leaned across his desk. “Tonight?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what he told me.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

****

A dog was tearing at the wall. I walked by, shoved it away. “Get,” I said. It barked—and ran.

I walked a quarter mile, followed the slope upward. Levett had told me all he knew—and did it without most of his teeth. I was impressed.

Up ahead, at the eatery and drinking den, is where he’d met them. Four guys, one woman—all high, he’d said. Levett didn’t get high himself. He couldn’t stand the smell when users scraped the stuff. But these junkies had funding. The pay would be good.

****

“They’re not here.”

“Where’d they go?”

“The hell should I know? Really, you think I pay attention to these people? That I care where they go and what they do? I don’t. Long as they pay me, I sure as hell don’t.”

“They gonna come back?”

“I don’t know that, either. Damn, man, I just give them drinks.”

“Do they usually come back?”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

“How often?”

“Every couple of days, okay? Now can I get back to it? I got thirsty customers.”

****

Every couple of days: too long. Levett said they’d do it tonight.

I went outside. The dog was back. I shooed it and it ran.

****

“Nah, I ain’t seem ‘em. Lady, you said?”

“One lady, yeah. And four men. Five altogether.”

“Five of ‘em? All in one group like that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. They could be alone, too.”

“I ain’t seen ‘em.”

I held up a sketch of Levett. “How about him?”

She held it close. She squinted. She gave it back. “I seen him.”

“When?”

“This morning. Or last night.” She shrugged.

“Who was he with?”

“Two big guys, real ugly, and– Hey! There was with a lady, too.”

I dug for a coin. I held it out to her. She stared. “You’ve seen them before?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Who are they?”

She gave me their names. I gave her the money.

****

Six hours. Ten at most. A dearth of time to stop total destruction.

****

Legerwood couldn’t help. More resources would raise questions. More men would spook them.

I had to find the conspirators–the terrorists. I had to do it alone.

Five hours.

****

A squat shack, pressed against the wall. Rust mixed with seepage where they joined.

A woman leaned against the side, hands in her pockets, chewing.

I could smell it. Decay.

I shot her. She fell. The fat came out of her mouth and bounced in the dirt.

I ran to the door. Voices from inside. Men.

I toed it open–just a little. Four of them, around a table. A bundle on the warped wood.

That was it.

One leaned forward, reached into the sack. He fumbled a moment, then twisted something inside.

The bundle shook. It glowed. The men stood up.

I slid the door open, pushed into the room. Stayed low.

Another man carried it to the wall, slid it into a hole they’d cut. The edges sucked shut around it.

I shot them. Four shots, four bodies. Too quick for them to do a damn thing.

****

The hole throbbed. I reached inside. The sack was a foot deep. I pulled.

It stuck.

I could feel it. Vibrations. Heat. The wall writhed around me. The ground shook.

No time. None.

I pulled. It came free and fell out onto the floor. I stomped it to paste under my feet.

****

The news said it was quake. An unexplained rupture beneath the surface.

I knew better. Muscles creaking to life. Organs shifting. Not a quake but an awakening.

But I’d caught it in time–stopped the processes.

Our world–our vessel–still slept.