joegoda: (StoryTeller)
[personal profile] joegoda

25103 / 50000 words. 50% done!



Christie was very gracious and agreed I should spend the night there, rather than at a hotel. She seemed a terribly concerned when I told her I planned to meet with Lawrence the next day.

"Oh my, oh my." She said and wrung her hands. I had never seen someone actually wring their hands before. It was a bit disturbing to see her with her face screwed up in great concern and her hand going round and round over each other.

"Christie," I tried to assure her, "I will be all right. I don't think that he'll try anything in the middle of the day." I placed my hands on her shoulders, looked her deep into her eyes, and told her about my meeting with Bob.

"Bob didn't give me any indication that he thought Lawrence would make a move before he was ready." Okay, so that was a bit of a lie. "Bob told me that Lawrence was a coward, and I don't feel any movement of the 'Bads around. Do you?"

Christie quit her hands and pulled them through her hair, brushing my hands away from her shoulders in the process. Her eyes rolled up to look above her hairline and her lips pursed. After a few moments, she nodded. "No, you're right; I've made sure that they didn't know you were here. I don't feel them around in any great number, and if Bobby thought it was all right..."

She shivered, violently and it passed quickly. "There is always a few of them around, mind you. This is such a sad little town." She turned from where we stood on the back walkway and opened the back door. "Maybe some hot tea will help calm my nerves. Come in when you're ready," she called to me over her shoulder. "I'll have some coffee waiting for you. Maybe a cookie or two."

"Hey!" A pixie sized voice called from the garden. "Those are mine! You keep your cotton pickin' hands off of them, buster!"

"Don't worry, Cat," I assured her. "I know how pixies like chocolate. I'll not mess with 'em."

"Good," she said, buzzing up to face level with me. Her face was scrunched with concern. "You sure you're okay, Chester Beebe?"

"I'm okay, Catherine o' the Garden." I smiled at her and nodded. "I have a momentary sense of self that I'm sure will pass in time, but right now, nothing can mess with me. Not even myself."

"You know," she said, buzzing over to sit on my shoulder. "I don't understand a single word you just said. Sometimes I think all humans are crazy. You're a good man, Chester Beebe." She planted a tiny kiss on my cheek. "Crazier than most, I think, but a good sort of crazy. You're welcome to my garden any day, and if you need me, just whistle." She flew off of my shoulder and headed back to her dollhouse. "You know how to whistle, don't you?" She winked at me, and flitted into the front door of the dollhouse. A dim light came on in one of the upstairs windows and the shade closed.

"Goodnight, Cat." I waved at her, knowing full well that she couldn't see me and went through the doors into the kitchen of Christie's house.

I found her sitting in the dining room, on the same chair that she sat on earlier that day. I poured a cup of freshly brewed coffee, using one of the porcelain cups she had set out for me. I pulled a chair off the wall and joined her at the table.

She was very quiet, both hand holding her cup of tea, and her eyes looking far away and misty. I let her sit, because I know that sometimes, there are things that just need to bubble to the top and simmer for a while. I sipped my coffee in quiet, thinking about my experiences of the day.

It was odd to find Robert Plumb after all these years. Well, I didn't really find him, you know. He was dead for a couple of decades now. What I found was some weird Obi-wan recording of him. Not exactly a hologram, but damned if it didn't look and sound like him, back in his prime.

And what did I learn? Just that I need to quit feeling so useless and have more faith in myself. Like I hadn't heard that before. Maybe this time I will... again, and maybe this time it'll stick. I mean, he was right, after all. I'd whipped the tail of some pretty big bad guys, and recently. Maybe I was more than a hedge wizard. I certainly felt that way at time.

And this Lawrence guy. If he was the vessel of Ammit, who I still didn't know much about and didn't really care to, then how bad could he be? Maybe he did eat the face off poor Marian, back in Tulsa. Maybe he was the soul sucker I beat back. That didn't seem so tough. I mean, it's not like he was some super powered god or something. He was an Aspect. How strong could he be?

"Don't kid yourself, kid," Pan muttered darkly. "Even an Aspect has some of the ability they had when they were really in the world. Don't discount that sort of stuff. Look at Angelina and her Aspect, Demeter. You really want to take that on, when Demeter is in full blow?"

I thought about what she had done to the coven that had gathered at her father's house. It was a sure sign that Aspects were more than just shadows of their former selves. Demeter, once freed of Angelina's resistance, had torn twelve grown men and women apart and scattered them with such force that there wasn't anything left but a lot of blood and bits of bone and skin.

"Good point," I told him. "I'll be careful."

"If I was you," he shot back, "I'd be more than careful with this guy. I'd be careful carrying a big ol' shotgun, a knife, an Uzi, and maybe about hundred of your closest friends."

"Okay, okay." I was getting a bit irritated at how everyone was telling me to watch my back. "I'll be very careful."

"How was he?" Christine broke her silence, and interrupted anything that Pan might have said, for which I was grateful.

"Who? Bob?" I sipped politely at my coffee. I knew who she meant, but I wanted to bring her back to earth a bit more.

"Yes," she said, blinking back some tears. "Bobby, of course. It has been so many years since I last saw him."

I reached across the table and patted her hand. "Bob has passed on, Christine. All I talked to was just a shade of him."

She nodded, sadly, slowly. "Yes." She sighed. "Still, it is nice to know that a part of him is still around."

"I think," I said gently, "that you might be able to go to the windmill and see him yourself, Christie."

"I might...," she paused and a look of serious grief passed across her face. "No." Her face hardened. "No, Chester. He left me long before he made that recording. Long before he was killed. I don't want to talk to a shadow of him that barely remembers me. I don't want to go to him looking like... this." She shook her hair out at me. "I was still a bit blond when he left, you see. I was much younger then." She grew resolute. "No, this is for the best. Perhaps, when I finally cross over, and if you've taken care of what you need to take care of, I'll see him again, regardless."

She smiled at me, softly but still with sadness. "Thank you for the thought, but no." She drew herself up, went into the kitchen. I heard a bit of rattling and she soon returned with a plate containing four chocolate chip cookies.

"I thought those belonged to Cat." I didn't accept the plate when Christie passed it to me. She sat it on the table and took one of the cookies for herself.

"Oh, that Catherine. So stubborn." Christie chuckled as she bit into the cookie. "As if she thinks I only bake for her." She waved her hand at the plate. "Take one, please. I'll just make her some more. Take two, because I never made that dinner I promised and here it is nearly bedtime."

I looked at the clock display on my phone, and its face showed me it was nearly nine pm. Bedtime for me was normally two or three in the morning. Maybe tonight I'd make an exception. I took a cookie and bit into it. Warm chocolate and tender walnuts rolled happily on my tongue, wrestling for dominance.

"Nearly bedtime is right, Christie." I bit into the cookie again. "So, I imagine I'd find Mister Lawrence at?" I left the question open.

Her face turned down and her eyes grew hard. "I'd hardly call him a mister. I'd never call him at all, if I had my druthers." She bit hard into her own cookie and sipped a bit of tea. "But yes, I suppose you need to meet him, if only to verify for yourself that he is as real and as bad as Bobby says he is." She sighed and looked away. "I suppose you need to."

Christie rose from the table and disappeared into the kitchen again. I heard some rummaging around and after a few minutes and another cookie eaten by me with lip smacking appreciation, she returned, carrying a large bundle of quilt and pillow.

It was an old patchwork quilt, easily as old as Christie herself. The pillow was a blue and white stripped ticking pillow, filled with goose down. It smelled a bit of mothballs and reminded me of my grandparent's house and years of summers spent there.

"This will be all right, I hope," Christie said as she place it on the table between us. "Thom McCann will be where you find him on Sunday. He doesn't go to church, as you probably expect. McCann's is where his church is."

She yawned greatly, and came to put her hand where it lay on the table. "I have to sleep, Chester. I've been doing a lot of work today to keep your presence hidden, and its plumb tuckered me out."

"You didn't have to do that, Christie," I said sincerely.

"Oh yes, I did!" She pulled her hand out from under mine. "I'm tired of being trapped in this little one horse town and I want to go traveling. I want to see more of the world than this little house and this little garden."

She walked to the doorway to the kitchen. Turning towards me, she said grimly, "If I have to keep any of the Shadows from knowing you're here, then I will, just to make sure you can finish what my Bobby wanted. You're going to beat them, Chester Beebe. You're going to win me my freedom." And with that, she went to bed.

I woke the next day, feeling a bit sore from having slept on a hard leather sofa, but not to terribly. I wandered into Christie's kitchen, to find a note and hot coffee waiting for me.

"Chester," the note read, "I won't be here when you wake up. I was called to a farm about 30 miles away. Go meet Lawrence, but don't let him catch you off guard. Don't stay longer than five or six minutes around him, as he'll suck your soul dry. Best of luck to you. Christie."

Hmm. Okay, so she was called away. That could have been anything. In little farm communities I know that things happen all the time, and with Christie being a witchy kind of woman, then there were probably a few... more than a few farmers looking for some out of the ordinary help.

I poured and drank a couple of cups of coffee, sitting on the back porch, watching hummingbirds come and go, smelling the blooming of flowers that were far out of season. Cat was no where to be found, and even Pan was quiet. He must have worn himself out yesterday. He doesn't pop up so often. Probably tuckered him plumb out, as Christie would say.

I wasn't ready to leave when I rinsed the cup out in Christie's sink, but it was heading toward the far side of ten o'clock. I absolutely refused to do a noontime showdown. Besides, I just wanted to size this guy up. Let him know that there was a new sheriff in town. I wasn't going to order breakfast and drink coffee with him. I was just a calling on him.

I decided to walk, as the restaurant was only four blocks away and it was a crisp autumn day.

I stepped onto the sidewalk that ran along main, and found the yellow brick road. And Becky was right. It wasn't brick at all. Just formed concrete, painted yellow, with names form into it. I found three presidents and a couple of president's wives and a vice president. A whole bunch of folks I never knew and never would. There were advertisements for businesses and some bricks dedicated to class years. Pretty cheesy and kinda sad, but kinda neat too, in a totally self-serving way.

I passed by the Emmett Kelly museum, which was closed as Becky said it would be. It, too, was a sad testament to a lack of... well, I guess I'd call it heart. This just seemed to be a town whose heart had dried up and it just simply didn't care anymore. The windows of the museum were dirty, and the lettering that had once proudly proclaimed what the place was and who it was for were peeling and pale. It made me feel a bit depressed to think of the man the museum was for, knowing that the town in which he was born cared so little for his memory.

Then it hit me and I realized that these weren't the signs of a town that didn't care. These things, the cheesy bricks and the faded museum were signs of a town that had lost hope, that had actually had hope stolen from it. And that, rather than depress me, just ticked me off. If depression is anger turned inwards, then anger outwards cannot be depressed.

I strode up the sidewalk, stepping and dancing on the concrete bricks of gold, whistling a merry turn of "If I only had a Brain." A bit fitting, in more ways then one, I thought.

I reached the corner of Main and Chautauqua Street and turned to cross over. A red ford F150 zoomed around the corner, just as my foot stepped off the curb. The driver shouted a few things out his window I didn't really catch, but I suspected that none of them were friendly. I just smiled and waved as he rocketed down the street.

On the south side of Main and Chautauqua, I turned back east and walked past an empty store front that looked like it used to contain a general store. Now there wasn't anything in it to sell, just a few wooden saw horses, some empty pop bottles and an old electric fan. Sad, sad, how this town faded. Well, if I had my way, the state this town was it was gonna change, and how.

I opened the door to Thom McCann's and was greeted with the noise of a full establishment. Seriously. I closed the door and looked up and down the street. There wasn't a single car in any of the parking spaces. I dunno where all those folks came from, but it was weird to see a full place of business from folks that must have just walked there. Okay. So it's a weird town all around. I opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

And stopped with one foot in and one foot out. The threshold was one of those magical ones that a serious wizard can set to keep IN specific sort of folks. I have an idea that this one was set to catch other wizards walking in the door. No biggie. I wasn't just any other wizard, but I was a bit thrown off by it. I sniffed the air and pulled Pan up by his bootstraps and asked him to sniff too.

"Smells like icky stuff to me, bud. Still, I don't think it would be that big a thing to you. You still know how to do a Whistletoo. You can't be trapped, chum, long as you got that little ace up your sleeve."

"True that, Pan," I said cheerfully. A Whistletoo is a little semi-intelligent gateway that is really old magic. Really, really old. All the way back to Pan's first reed whistle, I think.

A wizard can call it up with a force of will, which means it is part of the person that creates it. Then it gets programmed to respond to a series of notes. You can use it to transport all sorts of things from here to wherever. I used one to pull my bacon out of the Abyss once. I think I may have mentioned it, once or twice. A Whistletoo is also a one shot deal, once used, it fades into the nothing it was created from.

I crossed the threshold and stood in the lair of Andrew Lawrence, the man who held the Aspect of Ammit, the Eater of the Dead.

The first thing I noticed, besides the crowd in the place, was the smell of the food. It was really, really good food. Fresh coffee from fresh ground beans. Hot apple tarts and crisps. Gravy, dark and savory or white and peppered. Biscuits and breads and roll smells floated all over the place. My mouth was overflowing just from the smell of the place.

"Be careful, son," rose a voice from in my head. "Things are not always what they seem. Check out the people."

Good advice and one I took. There were, as I said, lots of folks in the restaurant. There were so many, that I didn't see an open seat anywhere. They seemed, at first glance, a happy bunch, talking and clinking glasses and flatware as they chatted and ate. That is, they seemed this way with first human glance. I opened my Sight.

Lord almighty, there was nothing but shadows there. Not real people at all! It was as if someone had found a clay made from the same stuff as the 'Bads were made from, and then molded them into people shapes, chained them to a chair and table and ordered them to pretend to be happy folks. Every seated person, every eating or drinking person, every one of the wait staff... all of them were nothing but Golems, formed from the same stuff as the Something Bads.

A shudder of absolute horror ran though me when I realized what sort of power it would take to create what I was looking at.

"Don't let it throw you, boss," Pan offered. "You're just as tough."

"Can I help you?" A voice, deep and cultured came from my right. I turned and my Sight caught the shape of something large and horrendous, with the head of a crocodile - all sharp teeth and narrow snout, and the fore claws of a lion. Granted, it wasn't a clear image... mostly fuzzy and really out of focus because it was something that didn't want to be seen.

"Umm... maybe." I clicked my Sight off. I saw a man, tall and white haired looking at me curiously. "I heard that Thom McCann was the place to get biscuits and gravy this time of the morning."

The man was wearing a black herringboned, single breasted suit, with a smoky gray tie. The tie was tied back with a blood red stone. His face was chiseled and his lips were thing and his eyes were... his eyes were horrible to me. Deep black, as black as any well, as black as any hell. And yet, there was something in them that made me want to surrender and give in. I don't know how better to describe it.

"I'm sorry," he said, and sounding every bit as sorry as his words. "We don't serve just biscuits and gravy here, sir. It will be a bit of a wait, if you'd like to try our full breakfast menu."

I looked around without benefit of Sight and not a single person was eating biscuits and gravy. There were large portions of eggs in pretty much any form you would want eggs and ham, and steak and chicken fried steak and chicken fried chicken and... Well, if you wanted breakfast and were willing to give up your soul to get it, then this was obviously the place to be. There was a chalkboard with a specials list. "Chicken fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans - $17.95" is what it read. Kinda pricey, I thought.

"No thank you," I said to Mister Lawrence, "my friend must have been mistaken."

"Ah," Lawrence said. "And what would that friends name be?" He drew a bit close and started to grab my arm. "It wouldn't be Robert Plumb, would it?"

"Andrew Lawrence," I said as calmly as I could, "your days are numbered. Tell your Aspect that next we meet will be your last. Robert Plumb asked me to finish his work, and that is what I intend to do. Be gone before I return."

"What makes you think you will be leaving?" As soon as the words were uttered, I could see Lawrence's shape start to change, just as I had seen Angelina's change back in Oregon. The people seated at the tables started to shift and move as well, and all their eyes were turned toward me and their bodies had started to take on an undefined quality. They were turning into the 'Bads or what was left after the 'Bads had possesed them. I got the impression that their teeth were growing very long and sharp and their eyes were glowing green and red.

"Boss," Pan muttered, "Time to be a-going' don't you think?"

"Yes," I thought back to Pan, "it is.

I quickly whistled the eight note sequence that defined "If I Only Had a Brain." The world spun and turned and the Whistletoo dropped me off at the ruined entrance to Potbelly's, back in Tulsa.

"Man," Pan snickered, "I'll bet old Lawrence is gonna be pissed!"

"Yeah, I bet he is," I agreed. "Time to call the old gang together for a powwow."

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