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Things You Need The Black Pyramid
THE BLACK PYRAMIDReverend Norman Akleyperused a table of odds and ends in front of Handy’s Pawn and Thrift, which offered its eclectic collection as part of Clifton Heights’ Monthly Sidewalk Rummage Sale. Norman’s right hand flitted from object to object, never quite touching but considering each as if his fingertips could judge value by intuition alone.Norman loved rummage sales, but only occasionally did he find anything worth consideration. When he did, he picked it up and examined it, wondering if it would plead to be taken home. Most often, however, he shook his head, noting a slight imperfection here, a stain there. He’d replace the item, offer the table’s curator a polite smile, and move on to other tables, their contents varied, sublime, ridiculous, amusing, or simply odd.The items on Handy’s table were varied indeed. A pewter beer stein, its embossed Viking bust glaring. Neat rows of used but polished tobacco pipes. Not-so-fine, yellowed china. A felt-lined box of
Things You Need 9.
9.I wasn’t dyingafter all. I heaved a big cough and blew little speckles of stuff—not insects, more like sand—all over me. Then I had a sneezing fit lasting about ten minutes or so before I finally cleared my throat with several hacking gasps.I blinked dust and grit from my eyes. My mouth and tongue tasted gritty, but I was all right. Nearly passed out after that dark sandy stuff puffed in my face, but I was all right. I dropped the black pyramid to the floor damn quickly, though. No more rubbing it and reading those weird-ass words, for sure.What was that stuff? I never found out. At the time I thought maybe it might’ve been some sort of hallucinogenic drug. Something that screws with people’s minds, makes them hallucinate. The things I saw when I accidentally snorted it was worse than any nightmare I’d ever had.I’m not sure how long I sat there, blinking and spitting. Felt like a long time. Weird images spun in my brain, the worst of them a snarling, hissing Jesus on a
Things You Need When We All Meet at the Ofrenda
WHEN WE ALL MEET AT THE OFRENDAThe horizon above Hillside Cemetery was slowly bruising a crimson-purple, shading to the velvet darkness of an autumn Adirondack evening. Night birds sang. The crisp air nipped Whitey Smith’s hands and face. Dry leaves rustled underfoot as he shuffled along the path leading toward the cemetery caretaker shed. His assistants, Judd and Dean, had raked leaves all week, but it hadn’t mattered. Never usually did. When autumn came, leaves covered the ground. This was the way of things.Flowers bloomed in spring. Crops grew during summer. Leaves fell in autumn, and things died during winter. Except Maria, who died a month ago of pancreatic cancer, which was the way of things.People died.He shuffled to a stop, grasped the knob on the shed’s door, swallowing a grimace as arthritic pain arrowed glass slivers into his knuckles.“Sonofabitch.”He turned the knob and tried to open the door but couldn’t. It had rained yesterday, and the door had swelled as it
Things You Need 10.
10.I cowered againstthe stairway, shaking. The hand clutching my lighter with a white-knuckled grip jittered, throwing its faint orange light over their withered faces. Lips peeled back from white, jutting teeth. Blind eye sockets stared, stopped up by crusty dead matter. Wispy cobweb hair—what remained—clung to skulls sheathed in tight, leathery flesh. Mouths gaped wide in silent screams.I can’t tell you how many there were, exactly—three or four—nor can I say how they were positioned, because I couldn’t hold my hand still. It kept jerking up and down, the light flitting across their faces, filling up their blind eyes. Maybe two of them were embracing, one’s head buried in the other’s neck. Lovers? Husband and wife?I’ve told myself maybe those weren’t real corpses at all. Could be they were old, cast-off Halloween decorations. Very genuineHalloween decorations. Made of foam, or something, and dressed in old rags. I’ve told myself this, and on some days, I actually be
Things You Need 11.
11.Did I pullthe trigger?It’s a helluva cliffhanger, to be sure. Maybe I pulled it, and the round in the chamber was a dud, or I got one of those two empty chambers. Or maybe it went off, but by some freak chance—you read about them, from time to time—the bullet got lodged in the chamber or something, and all I got was a painful mess of powder burns in my mouth.Did I pull the trigger?Helluva cliffhanger.I sure as hell wanted to. I was done. Maxed out. Brains fried. All that crazy shit happening to me? On top of a useless, nomadic life? I’d been carrying that .38 (which I recognized, now) around with me forever, always alone and never having nobody, coming from nothing and no one, with no place to go, nowhere to belong.So, yeah. I wanted to pull it. Bad. My finger tensed on it and everything.Putting the muzzle in my mouth and swallowing its business end while staring into that old mirror triggered it. Made me remember everything. My dad, Barry, the mill worker, who e
Things You Need 12.
12.So there’s notmuch more to tell. You’re probably expecting some big reveal, right? A twist? Maybe I signed a contract with the shopkeeper and traded my soul for my continued life, or existence, as the guy called it?Well, I hate to disappoint. No such thing happened. The guy shook my hand, took the gun from me, stood up, walked past me, down the long hall with no end (and believe me, in the time since I’ve explored it, and there is noend) and he disappeared, never to be seen again.I never did get his name.I sat on the floor for a long time. Finally, obeying an urge I didn’t understand, I got up. Brushed myself off, ran my hands through my hair, and got ready to open Handy’s Pawn and Thrift for the day.I’ve been here ever since.This town isn’t so strange, now. The people here in Clifton Heights are mostly good folks. Sheriff Baker is a good man, and I feel bad about him missing his wife. Gavin Patchett—the English teacher who took me out to dinner a lifetime ag
Things You Need 1.
1.How’d I endup here? It’s a long story. That’s the thing about life, though. Never can tell how it’s going to go. As Woody Allen once said: “Want to make God laugh?“Tell him your plans.”Anyway, I certainly didn’t figure on thisbeing my life’s work. But it is what it is. If you’re interested, I can share how I got here. To start the story right, though, so you can understand my perspective better, I need to ask: You ever get fed up?Y’know, your job sucks. The spouse is a pain. The kids are sucking your life away. Finally, one day, you blow your fuses and think: Hell with this. I’m out of here.Ever feel that way?Sure you have. Everyone gets fed up eventually. Unless you’re a robot. Or a Vulcan, or a Zen Buddha Hare Krishna Weirdo, and those guys haveto get fed up sometime. You show me a Zen-bot who never gets fed up and I’ll show you someone with a few interesting ways of blowing off steam.Me, I was lucky—or at least I told myself so. In my
Things You Need 2.
2.It was my first visit to Clifton Heights Junior/Senior High School. Right from the start, I thought Clifton Heights was a strange town. Nothing obviously wrong with it. Not on the surface, anyway. Place was the same as any of the hundreds of towns I’d visited over the last twenty years. Homey little department and hardware stores, restaurants, and knick-knack shops. A town hall, three churches, the requisite small town diner and two high schools. A library, a lumber mill, and a little creek running past the town, with a bridge over it called Black Creek Bridge.There was a modest lake—Clifton Lake—to the east, and folks referred to the hills as “the Heights.” The clean streets were patrolled often by Sheriff Baker and his deputies. He seemed a decent guy. Certainly not the stereotypical small-town crook, who ran his little kingdom with an iron fist. Trust me; I ran into plenty of that sort back in the day.The students of Clifton Heights High were a bunch of hard-working go-gette
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