Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) Read online

  He couldn’t be blamed for forgetting; she had only left the day before. When she had failed to get the fire extinguisher, Jonathan had hoped she had simply decided to grab a breath of fresh air.

  He had to accept that he’d lost yet another secretary.

  The hand assaulting his door didn’t seem to be doing so in anger and so Jonathan assumed it wasn’t another attempt to dissuade him from meddling in company affairs.

  As he got up, Jonathan realized the nature of the knocking belonged not to someone who wanted in but someone who needed in.

  He opened the door separating the offices and the stagnant air escaped with the speed of a diesel truck backfiring. Through the frosted glass of the front office door, he saw the person turn away.

  Jonathan slowed.

  But the dark blob of a hand rose again. With a groan, Jonathan took the last few steps and swung open the door.

  In the hall towered a lean man. His true height Jonathan couldn’t approximate from the way his shoulders rolled forward over his chest.

  A wide-brimmed hat, squashed on hair that looked like a pile of straw, seemed designed to obscure the man’s identity.

  Jonathan might have been worried about that if wasn’t for the other unmistakable oddity; the lower portion of the pallid face was spotted with tiny wads of tissue paper, most with a crimson center.

  “Mr. Alvey?” queried the man with a voice possibly unused in the last decade.

  “That’s what the door says.”

  “You are, though, right? You’re Alvey, the private investigator?”

  Jonathan reached up to the top of the open door with his fingers and studied the man’s face.

  Resisting the urge to flick the pieces of tissue from the stranger’s jawline, he wondered why they always asked that question. What sort of sacrament made them want to hear him speak those specific words?

  “Yes, I’m Jonathan Alvey. I guess you’d better come in.”

  Jonathan stepped back, allowing the man he tried desperately not to think of as Lurch to enter.

  The man slipped the hat from his head and walked in. Jonathan swung the door closed and marched past his guest into his office.

  In the short time the door between the rooms had been open, a reasonable portion of the accumulated smog had dissipated. Jonathan felt somehow vulnerable without it.

  He sat behind his desk and waited for his latest client to accomplish the feat of settling himself into a chair. Once the glum man was seated, with leg twitching and finger tapping the crown of the hat in his hands, Jonathan reached once more for his smokes.

  Opening the silver case, Jonathan made sure he could actually see the man’s reflection in its smooth exterior as he withdrew a cigarette. Having satisfied one curiosity, Jonathan extended the case towards his guest.

  Perhaps, Jonathan thought to himself, it’s the haunted look in his bloodshot eyes that makes me think he’s glum.

  The man’s square jaw swung slightly from side to side. “No, I quit—” he started to say. But then suddenly, and vehemently, he exclaimed, “Oh, what the hell does it matter now?”

  He leaned out and grasped the case long enough to slide a cigarette from it. Jonathan put the case back on the desk, relieved that the man had been able to touch silver. Made the odds better that he was human.

  He lit his cigarette then slid the lighter to the scarecrow across the desk. Jonathan took one deep drag. “So, how is it you’ve come to be in my office this evening, Mister . . . ?”

  “It’s my life,” the man blurted out.

  “Come again?”

  “My life,” the man croaked. “I’m here for my life.”

  “Someone stole your life savings?” Jonathan tried to hook one single barb into the wriggling fish of this man’s conversational gambit.

  “No.” He took a deep drag and Jonathan watched the tip burn bright and hot.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mister . . . ?”

  The man moved his mouth oddly. To Jonathan, it looked as though he was trying to tie a cherry stem—only this stem fought back.

  After a minute, he vaulted out of the chair.

  Just as Jonathan became convinced he’d have to ram a stick between this guy’s teeth while dialing nine-one-one, his potential client landed back in the chair.

  He had produced a small card from his back pocket, which he smacked down on the desktop with one long arm before dropping back into the seat.

  Jonathan leaned over to investigate the item before he considered touching it. It looked quite familiar and, as the protective wards tattooed like a necklace around the base of his neck were not flaring up, Jonathan reached out and slid it closer.

  Made of stiff paper with an inked outline; it called to Jonathan’s mind the title card which popped up between scenes in silent movies. Inside the simple, yet elegant, border were six words. They did wonders to clarify his client’s statement.

  Printed in a simple font was the phrase: ‘You will die in three days.’

  Jonathan looked up from the card to the man across the desk from him. No hint of amusement tugged at the man’s tight lips. No humor danced in the wide, brown eyes. Truth be told, Jonathan only saw the hazard signs of someone breaking under the burden of stress.

  Whether the statement was threat or prediction, his client seemed to believe the validity of those six words.

  “All right, Mister—what is your name?”

  “Uh . . . Courtney,” the man wiped a long-fingered hand over his face. “Wendell. Wendell Courtney.”

  “Okay, Wendell, is there anyone you know of who might have a reason—any reason at all—to want to hurt you, or even just scare you?”

  The head slowly went from one side to another. A single flake of crimson-dotted tissue paper floated towards the floor.

  “Are any of your friends pranksters?” Jonathan asked, looking for a nice, normal reason for this man to be in possession of such a card.

  Once more, the ponderous turning of the head one way and then the other.

  “All right, Wendell, I think you had better start at the beginning. Take your time and let’s see what there is to make of this.”

  When his client didn’t speak, seeming once more to have forgotten how to form words, Jonathan began to despair of having any patience left.

  He wished he had thought earlier to call for an order of Singapore noodles from The Lucky Monkey restaurant across the street. Accepting it would be a while before he got to eat, Jonathan pulled out the bottle of bourbon from his desk drawer.

  He filled his glass, took a coffee cup that didn’t appear to be dirty, and sloshed some of the bourbon into it as well. The mug he slid towards Wendell.

  The gaunt man didn’t hesitate over the liquor. He took the cup, gulped back a slug, and did a damn fine impression of a consumptive cat ridding itself of an aggressive fur-ball. However, he took another drink and, eyes watering, began to speak.

  “The card—I got it at an antiques shop. A machine, see? That’s what unnerved me at first. I’ve always found the things quaint, a memento of a different era. But now . . .”

  Wendell took another drink, but before Jonathan had a chance to interject one of the questions already swimming in his not yet sufficiently bourbon-soaked mind, the man went on.

  “I ran out of the shop, and when I got to my car, I found the card still clutched in my hand. I tossed it onto the passenger seat and drove home quickly. I’d calmed down a fair amount by the time I’d driven back to my house.”

  Wendell turned the mug ceaselessly in his hands.

  “I still thought then that I was being silly, see? I mean, I told myself, who knows when the machine had been filled, or by whom, or even what for? I was foolish enough to tell myself it probably wasn’t even a real antique but a movie prop that the bastard in the store hoped to pass off as an original.”

  Wendell gave a weak, deprecating laugh and then drained the last of the bourbon. Jonathan thought about refilling the mug, but
at the rate his client seemed prepared to suck it back, he’d never get a coherent story if he obliged every time it emptied.

  “It wasn’t until a few hours later that I read the morning paper.”

  Jonathan flicked his eyes to the folded paper on the far corner of his desk.

  “And then I began to really freak out.”

  Jonathan had grabbed the paper from off of the bus stop bench outside his building. It had already been well-read before he had gotten it and now it had a felted look.

  He had skimmed through most of it as he did every morning. He liked to make sure it contained no news that actually impacted his life, such as new by-laws, price hikes in the cost of gas or tobacco, graves that had been displaced or bodies disinterred over the night—the standard stuff.

  Jonathan couldn’t bring anything to mind from what he had read, that would, in any way, connect to the card before him and his client’s ramblings.

  “I was born on the fourteenth of September.” Wendell informed Jonathan as though understanding his thoughts.

  With the same reluctance he once had for putting his hand into his grandmother’s purse, knowing she stored her not-yet-ready-to-be-discarded tissues and her hard candies made sticky by spilt perfume, Jonathan picked up the paper and found the horoscopes.

  He quickly scanned until he came to Virgo and read what it had to say.

  This week will be good for most Virgo’s. Mercury is in the ascension. Use this week to forge a new friendship. Be wary of lending money to family during the month. If you were born on the fourteenth of September, this will be your last week in this life cycle.

  He laid the paper aside.

  Wendell’s eyes, devoid of emotion, looked past him. Jonathan felt he should say something. He had no idea what though. ‘Do you like long walks on the beach?’ didn’t seem appropriate.

  Wendell spared him.

  “I got quite unnerved. I confess I drank a bit, then.” Wendell glanced to the mug he’d placed on the corner of the desk.

  With a sigh, Jonathan leaned out and poured a measured amount of the bourbon into it. He topped off his own glass and then pointedly put the bottle away in the desk drawer.

  Wendell took the mug, wrapping around its sides fingers long enough to verge on being tentacles.

  Jonathan knew this could all still be a set-up. A well-placed bribe gets the paper to print a certain line in the horoscopes. Cue the actor carrying a printed card with hopes of playing the assigned role well enough to earn a few hundred bucks. A half decent actor could manage the body language and facial deadpan.

  Jonathan had no problem thinking of people who would actually bother.

  Apatedyne was obviously the first to leap to his mind. It seemed a little out of their style, however. His second guess came quick on the heels of the first.

  There resided in the city a certain Welshman named Owen Braith Davies, who had long been a thorn in his side—and to be fair, vice versa. Davies hadn’t made a move in their on-going chess game for several weeks now.

  If it was a con, Jonathan had no problem playing it out a bit longer. He had no pressing cases. He could do so long enough to spot the reason for the diversion and turn it around on the perpetrator.

  It was always good to know one’s enemies and how they thought.

  However, if this guy was being straight with him, then Jonathan had to admit his interest was piqued. In truth, Jonathan thought if it was a con, it was being played on Mr. Wendell Courtney.

  Still, he was a private investigator—somewhere he even had a license to prove it—and a job was a job. He could use the money. It would be nice to earn on a job not involving cleaning up after Apatedyne, especially if his last secretary did find her way back to the office. He owed her a few days’ pay.

  Okay, Mr. Courtney,” Jonathan said. “I’m willing to take on your case and look into who’s doing this to you.” He opened up his cigarette case.

  “No, you don’t understand,” Wendell nearly wailed. “Damn! He said you’d take me seriously.”

  “I am,” Jonathan replied calmly, fishing out another smoke. “Wait. Who said?” He straightened up. The cigarette broke half way out of the case. “Shit,” he mumbled.

  Taking out another cigarette and lighting it, Jonathan asked. “Who, Wendell? Who told you I would be able to help?”

  Here we go, Jonathan thought, now we come to it.

  “The policeman,” Wendell explained.

  Jonathan took a drink. He dragged deeply on his smoke, and then dove in. “A policeman?”

  “Yes. I went to the police before coming to you. See, I thought—like you seem to be thinking, though you’re wrong, I assure you—someone was messing with me, maybe actually threatening me.”

  Wendell grew progressively more animated the longer he talked.

  “I went to the police and they basically laughed me out of the station. It was humiliating and scary. I didn’t know what to do next. Then, one of them from inside came out and stood near me.

  “While he lit his cigarette, he said into his cupped hand that I should seek you out. When I asked him what he meant, the officer took out his cell phone, and though he acted as if he spoke to someone on the other end, what he said was directed at me, see?”

  Wendell took a drink and Jonathan held his tongue waiting for his client to finish the whole tale.

  “He said that you, Mr. Alvey, were the only person in New Hades who could or would help me. He said where I could find you and that you would believe me.”

  “Yeah, I think I know who you’re talking about.”

  Jonathan remembered his father’s body on the ground, the blood pooling into the carpet around it, the knife handle sticky in his grip. He remembered the looks on the cops’ faces and how the cuffs had dug into his wrists. The trial, the questions, the sentencing—he remembered every second of it.

  He also remembered the one cop who had shown the slightest sympathy towards his plight: a man by the name of Lamont Bonham.

  As time went by, Jonathan had sent certain clients to Bonham, knowing he was an honest and open-minded cop. And over time, if Bonham came across people whose trouble couldn’t be handled by mundane means, he would direct them towards Jonathan.

  “So . . .” Jonathan began, but before he could assemble a conceivable response to all he’d been told, Wendell jumped up.

  “Wait! There’s also this. I found it in my closet after being at the police station. I had tried to convince myself that everything happening to me indicated I did need the help of a professional when remembered I had it.”

  Jonathan bit back the remark that Wendell should have chosen the professionals with the white coats and padded rooms. There remained a possibility these occurrences were paranormal in nature. A well-phrased curse could mess with a person in such a way.

  The curse would carry no actual potential for harm, but it could mess things up. If someone would go through the effort of hexing a person in an attempt to kill them, they wouldn’t bother tacking on a warning spell first. Unless, Jonathan told himself, they were truly twisted.

  Wendell had gained his feet and loomed over Jonathan’s desk, a cross between Quasimodo and an NBA player. He pulled a large black orb from his coat pocket. Instinctively, Jonathan brought his ring and index fingers together and began an incantation.

  Then he saw, on the side of the globe, a white circle with the number eight on it. Jonathan forced down the energy he had summoned. What Wendell had produced from his coat pocket was a ‘Magic 8-Ball.’

  Dry-mouthed and sweating, Jonathan fought back the desire to finish the incantation.

  The need to perform the magic consumed him. His body vibrated and every particle within called out with the necessity to use.

  Jonathan downed a mouthful of bourbon in an attempt to gain control of his addiction. If Wendell noticed any of Jonathan’s struggles, he made no show of it.

  “You try it first,” Wendell insisted, setting the novelty item down on the desktop
.

  Jonathan thought he could predict the outcome of the exercise but wanted to play it out anyway.

  Picking up the 8-Ball, Jonathan turned his hand and looked at the little, circular plastic viewing window at the bottom. ’Answer uncertain’ floated in the window.

  He turned it away and shook it hard before turning to look at it again. This time Jonathan read, ‘Signs point to yes.’ Turning the orb a third time, he looked to Wendell and read the dour acceptance on his face.

  Jonathan concentrated. He cleared his head and thought of a question. Only one question came to his mind. Thinking only of it, he turned the Magic 8-Ball over and looked at the answer.

  In context, the result could be considered a bit unsettling, but Jonathan already believed Wendell’s answers would be worse. The answer to the question, ‘When will Wendell Courtney die?’—the only question he really could ask—floated up.

  ‘Outlook not so good.’

  Jonathan set the oversized pool ball on his desktop.

  “All right, Wendell. Show me.”

  The man nodded and reached out for the thing as though it was a severed head. He shook it and turned it so Jonathan could see it.

  Jonathan would have liked to say he was surprised by what he read, but he’d be lying.

  ‘You will die soon’ was the message printed on the tiny card floating in front of the plastic window.

  Wendell didn’t bother checking what the outcome had been. Jonathan guessed he’d already spent a few horrible hours turning the ball over, and over, and over.

  Wendell shook the ball and held it for Jonathan to read once more. Jonathan had to admit, he had just become more intrigued. The message had changed. It remained just as grim and definite, but the words were different.

  If this was a hex, curse, or spell, it was a complex one.

  Now, instead of ‘You will die soon,’ the small clear circle revealed the words, ‘Outlook is death.’

  To make the novelty item display one dreadful message over and over when Wendell touched it would require a tricky, but attainable, curse for a proficient practitioner. Different messages on the same theme changed the game significantly.