This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
Mr. Curtis smiled and shuffled a deck of cards. I did not know where he’d gotten them from. He fanned them out, stepping closer and closer to the beast, writhing there. I could see friends, some family, our client Mrs. Smith and a ton of rolls and jelly donuts from which all hung tiny little wriggling things all around us. He shuffled them again, then fanned them out again, taking another step forward.
“Pick one, anyone.”
He held them out. As he walked into the middle, I got ready. To do what I wasn’t sure about. The silver ship gleamed, and they looked ready, either for an escape or a vacation, and I wasn’t sure which. They were loading the young onto the ship. People from around town, mice and rats alike, moles and rabbits, a few pigeons, stacked boxes of wriggling young while some lurched forward in their oddly possessed bodies. The larger one I found had a raccoon.
It held out a tentacle and drew a card from Curtis’s deck.
Curtis quickly grabbed it and turned it up. “This is your card? Memorize it!” He shuffled it back in, fanned the deck, then juggled the cards, zinging them through the air until they were landing in the faces of everyone all over the place looking at him.
It’s important when you’re doing a card trick. You do several things, lie to the audience, use misdirection, and tease them. You have to distract them for things like the fey. That this isn’t the deck you just licked your card from that I’m flinging all over the place.
He held up the original deck. Then pocketed it into his waistcoat again.
“But this is a deck of exploding cards I’m going to stop you with.”
Everyone gasped, including me. Several of the cards he was flinging came my way.
“But sorry, I lied again. Just cards, check them. Check them all.”
Everyone with a card turned it over. It was a match. We all had the card.
“That your card?”
Everyone nodded, holding their cards out, and showing them to each other.
“Sorry, I lied again. They explode.”
All the cards exploded, each sending a shower of salt which covered the room at once. The squid creatures writhed and flopped. Then Mr. Curtis was reaching into my pockets and lobbing holy water like they were Molotov cocktails. They exploded over the walls and the ship.
I broke out of my temporary haze and started lobbing my bottles, as well as dousing myself and Mr. Curtis. It seemed to keep them off of us. The room descended into panic. The creatures escaped their hosts, crawling and shooting from their throats. Some bodies hit the floor harder than others, but others just kind of gave a slight hiccup then blinked and saw where they were, which was in the ship, boarding with a box of wiggling jelly donuts, without disembarking, or watching Curtis and his magic trick. Everyone was coated in holy water, and the squid was rolling and trolloping for the ship.
I started checking people. It’s all right, no. Everything will be fine. I don’t know, is that a ship over there? I’m not sure where this is going either. Let’s check your heart and your blood pressure. No, I’m sure everything will be all right. No, I’m not sure. Aliens? In our town? They have little recollection.
They slipped and slimed aboard, and before we knew it, they were taking off.
Through the windows of the ship, I saw defeated, distraught faces and eyes, unsure if they’d gone about this the wrong way or wronged someone. They appeared hurt and stunned, more than angry or upset.
I felt like looking at them; I was sure they were confused and stung by their attack on us. They didn’t think we’d fight back and weren’t sure we knew what they were, which we didn’t.
Mr. Curtis bowed before them. Waving his arms, and laughed as the ship lurched up through what turned out to be one of the larger unused stacks around the city, then he turned and helped me, but not before shaking his fist at the ship as it rose into the air and flew into the sky until it vanished among the other stars in view.
“Take that, Yes. Yes. Take that back where you came from.”
“How’d you do it?”
“The trick?”
“Yeah. They were all aces of spades.”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“Give a demonstration?”
“Well.”
“Never! It’s magic!”
He pulled a coin from behind my ear and threw it up on the ground, and started helping me help people up.
Soon we had about thirty bewildered adults and a rat. I believe his name was frank and were bringing them up through the caverns.
The mushroom cave was lit with phosphorescent light. We walked through it like it was an underwater forest, filled with spiders.
We crawled up through pipes behind Mr. Curtis, who was better at that than I was natural, except sometimes I had to alter the course to accommodate frank. When we found a lantern, a little one, but a nice one, I gave it to frank because he could hold it higher than anyone else.
We climbed ladders, switched, and went down passages, and into actual pipes until we returned to the bakery. We climbed to the top, then stood to help the rest up. Frank was last.
It was a quiet night.
Mr. Curtis and I stayed, as well as a few of Mrs. Smith’s other employees, to help clean up the bakery. We wiped down the counters, cleaned the ovens, mopped the floors, and then Mr. Curtis and I stayed to clean up the dining room while others started getting ready for the day ahead.
Mr. Curtis and I moved into the dining room and set the tables and chairs upright with Mrs. Smith. We went back out to the loading area. Argus was there, with his coach making a morning delivery of supplies for the day’s baking.
“Argus,” I said.
“Morning sir. Lift anywhere soon as these gents unload me?”
“Yes, good morning Argus, stick around a moment.”
“I will,” he barked, shaking his head and fur for a second.
We hammered the last nail into a fresh floor shortly after that, blocking the drain for good, and another crew was sealing it over with gravel and mud before packing it in.
“Nothings ever coming up this way again, Mrs. Smith.”
“Thank you, boys.”
It was already showing the light of morning, so we took Argus’s cab back to our apartment on shadow street.
“Where have the two of you been all night?” said Mrs. Constellation.
She stands in.
“Covered in powder,”
“Flour.”
“Drenched, suits torn and destroyed.”
“Hello, Mrs. Constellation.”
“Get in here and clean up.”
She swept us into the house and batted us towards the stairs.
“That owl from the tower’s been flying around hunting all night.”
“Arthur.”
“Oh, we know his name now, do we? Hanging around with predators when you should investigate for that poor woman at the bakery.”
“Bakery.”
“Right, that’s what I said. Now, off with you. Get cleaned up. I’ll not have you two looking like a couple of roughnecks who are traveling the train tracks.”
“Interesting,” said Mr. Curtis.
“Now, get on..”
She shewed us like a couple of pests up the stairs.
We passed through the parlor and kitchen up to the sitting room Mr. Curtis and I used during business hours, and then up to our floor.
Mr. Curtis turned to me, fanned out a deck of cards, and said, “Pick one, anyone.”
“Curtis, I’m done.“
I was already unbuttoning my waistcoat, my jacket, and what was left of it over my shoulder.
“No, go on, pick one.”
I sighed and reached out, taking a card at random. It was the king of spades,
“Nice job mate, one of our stranger ones, right?”
“You know it.”
He dropped and sat on the floor in his doorway. I had my door open and was halfway in.
“Aliens? Or whatever. Possessing townsfolk? Odd.”
“Disturbing.”
“Arthur’s nice though.”
“The owl frightens me.”
“Well, he should. He could eat either of us in half a second.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Goodnight James.”
“Goodnight Curtis.”
I closed my door and sat in my second favorite chair, this one a little more comfortable, but a little worse for wear than the one I kept in the sitting room. My bed lay undisturbed, but I ignored it. Its curtains were open. Next to my chair was a small table lit by pale morning light with this journal upon it.
I pulled the shades. Made it as dark as I could, and fell asleep in my chair.
It was nice, the quiet. Even Curtis was still somewhere. Behind my eyelids I listened as deep in the house Mrs. Constellation was bumping around, and out on the street cabs were trotting by and people were getting back out into the city again.
I dropped off.
There was a thin line of light in my room through the shade.
There was a dream that I had. I was on the roof, meditating as a murder of crows swarmed around me, picking up mice in the field I was now in. My clothes were gone, and I was seated with my eyes closed, yet still observing the birds swooping this way and that, never catching me. They’d swoop, dive, catch a fresh field mouse, but I wasn’t there. I’d moved some distance away, without moving. I’d blink, my eyes still closed each time a crow was diving to attack me, and I’d see neither mouse get taken from thirty feet away, the line I simply blinked and teleported across the field. Soon, a second one attacked, and I blinked away. They were swarming all around me, but couldn’t touch me. Beaks snapped, and they made a kill of their prey, but it was never me.
Then I was in three places at once in the field, each watching my other two selves, unable to concentrate on one well enough to see the other, then there were a thousand of me across the world.
I woke up in a cold sweat, panting, naked, holding my tiny samurai sword above my head, unsheathed, aloft, and ready to attack nothing. There was no one with me.
I sheathed the sword, the only thing of my fathers I still possess, and placed it quietly back into the closet, hearing it thunk against the sidewall, and got out a fresh suit.
I washed up in my basin and dressed in a fresh shirt, waistcoat and jacket, and left to go downstairs.
The sword. I hadn’t thought of it in four years, not since starting up with Mr. Curtis, doing our brief investigations around town. It always stayed closed in the closet, behind door after door. I wasn’t a weapon guy. I didn’t have any training. When I found the sword in his things, I couldn’t believe it. It only had a note, a warning to keep it well, to take care of it. Every time I tried to sell it, I’d lose it. Each time I became agitated, it’d get in the corner.
I don’t move it around. I think it moves. I don’t talk about it much. Best I think to just keep it in this journal for now.
