Magic City Read online

  Ben Franklin chuckled mildly. He cocked an eye at Trey. “This performance is for you. All for you.”

  Trey stared at him, his mind teetering on the edge of a precipice. Davidoff, as silent as the crowd, stood nearby.

  “At the risk of being glib,” said the demon, “I think it’s fair to say that class is in session. You called me to provide knowledge, and I am ever delighted, as all of my kind are delighted, to bow and scrape before man and give away under duress those secrets we have spent ten million years discovering. It’s what we live for. It makes us so . . . happy.”

  When he said the word happy lights exploded overhead and showered the audience with smoking fragments that they were entirely unable to avoid. Trey and the others stood helpless at the edge of the circle.

  Trey tried to speak, tried to force a single word out. With a flick of a finger the demon freed his lips and the word, “How?” burst out.

  Ben Franklin nodded. “You get a gold star for asking the right question, young Trey. Perhaps I will burn it into your skull.” He winked. “Later.”

  Trey’s heart hammered with trapped frenzy.

  “You wrote the script for tonight, did you not?” asked the demon. “Then you should understand. This is your show and tell. I am here for you. So . . . you tell me.”

  Suddenly Trey’s mouth was moving, forming words, his tongue rebelled and shaped them, his throat gave them sound.

  “A careless magician summons his own death,” Trey said, but it was Davidoff’s voice that issued from his throat. “All of the materials need to be pure. Vital essences—blood, sweat, or tears—must never be allowed within the demon’s circle for these form a bridge between the worlds of spirit and flesh.”

  The big screens suddenly flashed with new images. Anthem. Typing, her fingers blurring. The image tightened until the focus was entirely on her fingernails. Nibbled and bitten to the quick, caked with . . .

  “Blood,” said Anthem, her voice a monotone.

  Then Jonesy spoke but it was Davidoff’s bass voice that rumbled from her throat. “A learned magician is a quiet and solitary person. All of his learning, all of his preparation for this ritual must be played out in his head. He cannot practice his invocations because magical words each have their special power. To casually speak a spell is to open a doorway that might never be shut.”

  And now the screens showed Jonesy reading the spells aloud as Anthem typed.

  Trey closed his eyes. He didn’t need to see any more.

  “Arrogance is such a strange thing,” said the demon. “You expect it from the powerful because they believe that they are gods. But you . . . Trey, Anthem, Jonesy . . . you should have known better. You did know better. You just didn’t care enough to believe that any of it mattered. Pity.”

  The demon stepped toward them, crossing the line of the protective circle as if it held no power. And Trey suddenly realized that it did not. Somewhere, the ritual was flawed beyond fixing. Was it Kidd’s sabotage or something deeper? From the corner of his eye Trey could see the glistening lines of tears slipping down Anthem’s cheeks.

  The demon paused and looked at her. “Your sin is worse. You do believe but you fight so hard not to. You fight to be numb to the larger world so that you will be accepted as a true academic like these others. You are almost beyond saving. Teetering on the brink. If you had the chance, I wonder in which direction you would place your next step.”

  A sob, silent and terrible, broke in Anthem’s chest. Trey tried to say something to her, but then the demon moved to stand directly in front of him.

  “You owe me thanks, my young student,” said the demon. “When the late and unlamented Mr. Kidd tried to spoil the results of your project by altering the protection spells, he caused all of this to happen. He made it happen, but not out of reverence for the forces of the universe and certainly not out of any belief in the larger world. He did it simply out of spite. He wanted no profit from your failure except the knowledge that you would be ruined. That was as unwise as it was heartless . . . and I paid him in kind.”

  The demon nudged the heart on the floor. It quivered and tendrils of smoke drifted up from it. Trey tried to imagine the terror Kidd must have felt as this monster attacked him and brutalized him, and he found that he felt a splinter of compassion for Kidd.

  “You pretend to be scholars,” breathed the demon, “so then here is a lesson to ponder. You think that all of religion, all of faith, all of spirit, is a cultural oddity, an accident of confusion by uneducated minds. An infection of misinformation that spread like a disease, just as man spread like a disease. You, in your arrogance, believe that because you do not believe that belief is nothing. You dismiss all other possibilities because they do not fit into your hypothesis. Like the scientists who say that because evolution is a truth—and it is a truth—that there is nothing divine or intelligent in the universe. Or the astronomers who say that the universe is only as large as the stones thrown by the Big Bang.” He touched his lips to Trey’s ear. “Arrogance. It has always been the weakness of man. It’s the thing that keeps you bound to the prison of flesh. Oh yes, bound, and it is a prison that does not need to have locked doors.”

  Trey opened his eyes. His mouth was still free and he said, “What?”

  The demon smiled. “Arrogance often comes with blindness. Proof of magic surrounds you all the time. Proof that man is far more than a creature of flesh, proof that he can travel through doorways to other worlds, other states of existence. It’s all around you.”

  “Where?”

  The screens once more filled with the images of Maori with their painted faces, and Navajo shaman and their sand paintings; medicine men in the remote Amazon, singers from among the Bushmen of Africa. As Trey watched, the images shifted and tightened so that the dominant feature in each was the eyes of these people.

  These believers.

  Then ten thousand other sets of eyes flashed across the screens. People of all races, all cultures, all times. Cave men and saints, simple farmers, and scholars endlessly searching the stars for a glimpse of something larger. Something there. Never giving up, never failing to believe in the possibility of the larger world. The larger universe.

  Even Bird’s eyes were there. Just for a moment.

  “Can you, in your arrogance,” asked the demon, “look into these eyes and tell me with the immutable certainty of your scientific disbelief that every one of these people is deluded? That they are wrong? That they see nothing? That nothing is there to be seen? Can you stand here and look down the millennia of man’s experience on earth and say that since science cannot measure what they see then they see nothing at all? Can you tell me that magic does not exist? That it has never existed? Can you, my little student, tell me that? Can you say it with total and unshakable conviction? Can you, with your scientific certitude, dismiss me into nonexistence, and with me all of the demons and angels, gods and monsters, spirits and shades who walk the infinite worlds of all of time and space?”

  Trey’s heart hammered and hammered and wanted to break.

  “No,” he said. His voice was a ghost of a whisper.

  “No,” agreed the demon. “You can’t. And how much has that one word cost you, my fractured disbeliever? What, I wonder, do you believe now?”

  Tears rolled down Trey’s face.

  “Answer this, then,” said the demon, “why am I not bound to the circle of protection? You think that it was because Mr. Kidd played pranks with the wording? No. You found every error. In that you were diligent. And the circles and patterns were drawn with precision. So . . . why am I not bound? What element was missing from this ritual? What single thing was missing that would have given you and these other false conjurers the power to bind me?”

  Trey wanted to scream. Instead he said, “Belief.”

  “Belief,” agreed the demon softly.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Trey. “God . . . I’m sorry . . . ”

  The demon leaned in and his breath
was scalding on Trey’s cheek. “Tell me one thing more, my little sorcerer,” whispered the monster, “should I believe that you truly are sorry?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Should I have faith in the regrets of the faithless?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I . . . didn’t know.”

  The demon chuckled. “Have you ever considered that atheism as strong as yours is itself a belief?”

  “I—”

  “We all believe in something. That is what brought your kind down from the trees. That is what made you human. After all this time, how can you not understand that?”

  Trey blinked and turned to look at him.

  The demon said, “You think that science is the enemy of faith. That what cannot be measured cannot be real. Can you measure what is happening now? What meter would you use? What scale?”

  Trey said nothing.

  “Your project, your collection of spells. What is it to you? What is it in itself? Words? Meaningless and silly? Without worth?”

  Trey dared not reply.

  “Who are you to disrespect the shaman and the magus, the witch and the priest? Who are you to say that the child on his knees is a fool; or the crone on the respirator? How vast and cold is your arrogance that you despise the vow and the promise and the prayer of everyone who has ever spoken such words with a true heart?”

  The demon touched Trey’s chest.

  “In the absence of proof you disbelieve. In the absence of proof a child will believe, and belief can change worlds. That’s the power you spit upon, and in doing so you deny yourself the chance to shape the universe according to your will. You become a victim of your own close-mindedness.”

  Tears burned on Trey’s flesh.

  “Here is a secret,” said the demon. “Believe it or not, as you will. But when we whispered the secrets of evocation to your ancestors, when we taught them to make circles of protection—it was not to protect them from us. No. It was us who wanted protection from you. We swim in the waters of belief. You, and those like you, spit pollution into those waters with doubt and cynicism. With your arrogant disinterest in the ways the universe actually works. When you conjure us, we shudder.” He leaned closer. “Tell me, little Trey, now that your faithless faith is shattered . . . if you had the power to banish me, would you?”

  Trey had to force the word out. “Yes.”

  “Even though that would require faith to open the doors between the worlds?”

  Trey squeezed his eyes shut. “Y—yes.”

  “Hypocrite,” said the demon, but he was laughing as he said it. “Here endeth the lesson.”

  Trey opened his eyes.

  -13-

  Trey felt his mouth move again. His lips formed a word.

  “Username?” he asked.

  Anthem looked sheepishly at him and nibbled the stub of a green fingernail. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

  Trey stared at her. Gaped at her.

  “What—?” she said, suddenly touching her face, her nose, to make sure that she didn’t have anything on her. “What?”

  Trey sniffed. He could taste tears in his mouth, in the back of his throat. And there was a smell in the air. Ozone and sulfur. He shook his head, trying to capture the thought that was just there, just on the edge. But . . . no, it was gone.

  Weird. It felt important. It felt big.

  But it was gone, whatever it was.

  He took Anthem’s hand and studied her fingers. There was blood caked in the edges. He glanced at the keyboard and saw the chocolate colored stains. Faint, but there.

  “You got blood on the keys,” he said. “You have to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is magic and you’re supposed to be careful.”

  Anthem gave him a sideways look. “Oh, very funny.”

  “No,” he said, “not really.”

  “What’s it matter? I’ll clean the keyboard.”

  “It matters,” he said, and then for reasons he could not quite understand, at least not at the moment, he said, “We have to do it right is all.”

  “Do what right?”

  “All of it,” said Trey. “The spells. Entering them, everything. We need to get them right. Everything has to be right.”

  “I know, I know . . . or the program won’t collate the right way and—”

  “No,” he said softly. “Because this stuff is important. To . . . um . . . people.”

  Anthem studied his face for a long moment, then she nodded.

  “Okay,” she said and got up to get some computer wipes.

  Trey sat there, staring at the hazy outline of his reflection. He could see his features, but somehow, in some indefinable way, he looked different.

  Or, at least he believed he did.

  Jonathan Maberry is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, writing teacher, and motivational speaker. Among his novels are Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song, Bad Moon Rising, and Patient Zero. Fire & Ash, fourth in the Benny Imura series, was published last year; Fall of Night, sequel to Dead of Night, will be released later this year. He is co-editor of the anthology Redneck Zombies From Outer Space and editor of the forthcoming dark fantasy anthology, Out of Tune. His has written comics and non-fiction works as well.

  The Cities: Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

  The Magic: Children growing up in our unfair, ever-dangerous world. One finds guidance in divination based on the I Ching and Ifa, but there’s always a cost. Only questions are: who is going to pay and how much?

  WALLAMELON

  Nisi Shawl

  “Baby, baby, baby! Baby, baby, baby!” Cousin Alphonse must have thought he looked like James Brown. He looked like what he was, just a little boy with a big peanut head, squirming around, kicking up dust in the driveway.

  Oneida thought about threatening to tell on him for messing his pants up. Even Alphonse ought to know better. He had worn holes in both his knees, begging “Please, please, please” into the broken microphone he’d found in Mr. Early’s trash barrel. And she’d heard a loud rip the last time he did the splits, though nothing showed. Yet.

  “ ’Neida! Alphonse! Come see what me an Mercy Sanchez foun!” Kevin Curtis ran along the sidewalk toward them, arms windmilling, shirt-tails flapping. He stopped several feet off, as soon as he saw he had their attention. “Come on!”

  Oneida stood up from the pipe-rail fence slowly, with the full dignity of her ten years. One decade. She was the oldest kid on the block, not counting teenagers. She had certain responsibilities, like taking care of Alphonse.

  The boys ran ahead of her as she walked, and circled back again like little dogs. Kevin urged her onto the path that cut across the vacant lot beside his house. Mercy was standing on a pile of rubble half the way through, her straight hair shining in the noonday sun like a long, black mirror. She was pointing down at something Oneida couldn’t see from the path, something small, something so wonderful it made sad Mercy smile.

  “Wallamelons,” Kevin explained as they left the path. “Grown all by they selves; aint nobody coulda put em there.”

  “Watermelons,” Oneida corrected him automatically.

  The plant grew out from under a concrete slab. At first all she could see was its broad leaves, like green hearts with scalloped edges. Mercy pushed these aside to reveal the real treasure: four fat globes, dark and light stripes swelling in their middles and vanishing into one another at either end. They were watermelons, all right. Each one was a little larger than Oneida’s fist.

  “It’s a sign,” said Mercy, her voice soft as a baby’s breath. “A sign from the Blue Lady.”

  Oneida would have expected the Blue Lady to send them roses instead, or something prettier, something you couldn’t find in an ordinary supermarket. But Mercy knew more about the Blue Lady, because she and her half-brother Emilio had been the ones to tell Oneida about her in the first place.

  “Four of them and four of us.” Oneida looked up at Mercy to see if she understo
od the significance.

  Mercy nodded. “We can’t let no one else know about this.”

  “How come?” asked Alphonse. Because he was mildly retarded he needed help understanding a lot of things.

  Oneida explained it to him. “You tell anybody else, they’ll mess up everything. Keep quiet, and you’ll have a whole watermelon all to yourself.”

  “I get a wallamelon all my own?”

  “Wa-ter-mel-on,” Oneida enunciated.

  “How long it take till they ready?”

  They decided it would be at least a week before the fruit was ripe enough to eat. Every day they met at Mizz Nichols’s.

  Mercy’s mother had left her here and gone back to Florida to be with her husband. It was better for Mercy to live at her grandmother’s, away from so much crime. And Michigan had less discrimination.

  Mizz Nichols didn’t care what her granddaughter was up to as long as it didn’t interrupt her TV watching or worse yet, get her called away from work.

  Mercy seemed to know what the watermelon needed instinctively. She had them fill half-gallon milk bottles from the garden hose and set these to “cure” behind the garage. In the dusky hours after Aunt Elise had picked up Cousin Alphonse, after Kevin had to go inside, Mercy and Oneida smuggled the heavy glass containers to their secret spot. They only broke one.

  When the boys complained at being left out of this chore, Mercy set them to picking dried grass. They stuffed this into old pillowcases and put these underneath the slowly fattening fruits to protect them from the gravelly ground.

  The whole time, Mercy seemed so happy. She sang songs about the Blue Lady, how in far away dangerous places she saved children from evil spirits and grownups. Oneida tried to sing along with her, but the music kept changing, though the stories stayed pretty much the same.

  There was the one about the girl who was standing on the street corner somewhere down South when a car full of men with guns went by, shooting everybody. But the Blue Lady saved her. Or there was a boy whose mom was so sick he had to stay with his crazy aunt because his dad was already dead in a robbery. When the aunt put poison in his food he ran away, and the Blue Lady showed him where to go and took care of him till he got to his grandparents house in Boston, all the way from Washington, DC.