As Before So Begins

There’s times when I don’t feel like doing much at all. It’s cold, wet, aching, the swamp of things, or the sun’s hot, and that canary bright deters me from leaving the sanctuary of this small shed. The haze is my real home these days.

Cot’s been better lately. Thought I’d be used to it after ‘Nam; the wet, the hot, the cot, but the blue shade of the military hospital got me soft. That avaricious yellow, crawling under the crack of the board door. From my liminal space I can feel swelter and I’m staying under as long as I can. Nebraska summer.

Wasn't too long ago I was rolling high. Taut and fresh. Came across that Oldsmobile Omega after the score in Jersey. Coming off the fighting far-off I was strong. Once the military money ran dry I got me a crew. Crews never last too long ‘for disaster but that was a damn good one: Richie, Badboy, and Cary Q. We were flippin’ trucks and blowing down big on this and that. Hellfire.

All that’s gone now. All that before is dead. Now it’s just the occasional scam to fill my veins.

Here in my heroinized state I float back to the eternal thing. That little black haunt. It’s been lodged in as far back as I can remember. Shat out the back end of my mother, my earliest recollection is dreaming of the book. Reminds me of crying, reminds me of indigo times where you feel your gut snatching you.

And splash, gone. Fucking Artie with a flash of sun and bucket of cold water. “Get the fuck up ya ol’ cripple. We got work to do.”

I ain’t no cripple, I ain’t one of them limping Jimmy’s. A spat and groan rumble my vessel and rub my eyes. The damn knee aching, I slink out the hovel. Artie’s there, and he’s got the lemon running.

“Time is it?”

“Damn near a quarter to three. Here.”

He hands me a .45 and I shove it in my ass crack. “Just where we off to?”

“A spell.”

Land’s spinning bad. The white of the farmhouse Artie came across damn near blinds me. I say came across cause Artie ain’t never bought nothing long as I known him.

I came into town off hitched rides. Found Artie that day in a pool outside the bar in town. Went for his wallet, but he popped open and went for my neck. Been in a crew ever since.

“What kinda spell?”

“Gooden’, got a click on a bygone spot ain’t no one posted in. Some typa stache. In and out and we’re gon’ split quite a chunk.”

“Why the piece then?”

His expression changes, grinning like a fish.

“Well you never can know now can you?”

I squelch into Art’s lemon and we pull out through the sharp gravel air and onto the old Route. Some soft knife of a lady watches us go from the porch, Artie’s latest con.

We get going through town. Baked asphalt and department store day-goers unawares of the hyenas staring back at ‘em. Smiling, unawares of the devil dwelling underneath their feet.

I’m in and out on the way, shaking off the juice. Here and there the dreams trip my line. Pages turning. Artie flicks my ear and snaps me up.

Out long past the end of nothing, Art pulls off the Route and we bump down a befallen fence line towards a horde of trees. Trees out here ain’t like Eastways, smiling and claustrophobic. Here they hide from the ray like outlaws under the gun.

Artie pulls the car just short of the trees and twists off the wire. He makes no silence spanking closed the steel door. I follow him into the grove. Under the canopy yellow turns water green. Thick, I can’t see anything until about ten yards out.

There’s an single-wide trailer tucked in an uneasy clearing. Doesn't look like a soul’s walked here for a while. Rotten black mold creeps a corner of the place, a wall seam split there. Yard chairs ass out and legs snapped. Art walks up the door and opens it with a pinkie, pistol casual in the other four fingers. Artie might as well be whistling. I stand post while he portals through.

A couple minutes go by and I hear Artie heaving. He shouts for a hand and I walk into the door. He’s shirtless in the back puffing down on this big black safe. The two of us sweat the thing down the hall and in front of the open door. Backs to the counter, we boot the safe outside, pluming dust.

“How we gonna open this thing?”

“Make yourself useful and blast it. Told you we might need a little firepowered assistance.”

After a couple pops it’s toasted. The hatch swings and golden light pours out. It’s full of bills.

Hooting and hollering, dancing like prospectors, we can’t believe our eyes. We start stuffing our pockets full of the stuff. It’s too much to hold so Artie runs to get a sack from the car. Sack full, pockets overflowing, we’re about to bounce out when Artie realizes he’s still shirtless. Grinning like that fish, he disappears inside the trailer.

Half a beat after Artie goes dark I hear a yelp and a shot. Grins gone, hairs up. I’m through the door in a flash.

But Artie ain’t nowhere to be sensed ‘cept the casing on the ground. Arm stiff I walk through the thin hall to the back, calling out. When I get to the bedroom it’s just quiet musk, no Art, no nothin’. Poof. The glimmer through the shade casts a green blur across the room, and I get that feeling. Guts jumping and throat in that energetic swell.

Heebied, I turn to get outta here no time, but freeze on the swing.

There’s a hag woman in the hall, grinning like Artie’s fish. If I coulda shot I woulda but she’s got me piss frozen.

“I’ve been waiting for you, here and there, back and forth, through and through... you may not recognize me, but I recognize you...from high and low I’ve been, and here to you I finally meet.”

From behind her back she removes it. That damned longtime haunt. Same as always, thin and black, smooth as snake skin, only this time far from dream, in the flesh.

“A chronicle to you is yours to keep, unless opened prosperity you’ll reap.”

The ball in my throat swarms up my head and down my spine to my boots. I’m out of my freeze and fall into the black.

When I come to, I'm prostrate in the burning glaze. Trees, trailer, gone. Just grass and the fence line. A blazing crust forces its way through my pinhole pupils as the memory flood sweeps me.

The only things left of then is the full pockets and the black book situated next to the words of the witch woman. First thing I do is chuck the damn thing as far as my shoulder lets me. A cursed object. I hightail along the fence line to the Route.

Thumb-up, cars pass by no care until an old truck slows in my view. Some wrinkled cattle man pops his passenger latch. “Where to?”

“Just back on to town.”

After a hmph from the timer I hop in. Before the latch is clicked the truck screams forward. This cattleman gots some push on the pedal.

“Aren’t you forgettin’ somethin’ back there?”

“Pardon?”

Fields whirring by, he produces the thing from his door, grinning like the fish.

“Impossible to escape it, destination awaits it, my child.”

I sure as hell 'ain't taking that book after what happened to Artie.

“Fear not, for you know that what is sought can not be escaped.”

“I’m not doing nothing with no possessed object.”

“You misplace your doubt, for you know you are the true holder of this keyhole creature. It is only now that it meets you, but many times before you’ve met it.”

“What did you do to Artie?”

“I find myself in all things, for I am All. As above so below, and as before so begins. Take the book, for if not it will always follow.”

“What happens if I take it?”

“A chronicle to you is yours to keep, unless opened prosperity you’ll reap.”

I snatch the venomous thing. “So what now, witch?”

“Pardon me boy?” The witchgrin’s gone.

The cattleman looks at me like I’m some typa loonie, back in his own skull.

“You said back to town, well here it is.”

We’re just on the edge, but I must’ve scared the man with my witch talk and this is as far as he’ll go.

I climb off the leather saddle and into the dust, and the man’s gives me a bizarro before pulling off.

Walking into town something strange hits me. I’m thinking about the book, and about Art. Can’t reckon where Artie slipped into. Part of me thinks it was all a heroin hallucination and maybe Art just split on me.

My next thought is hitching some wheels, on account that I’m now dough’d up, and jumping from this freakshow town as soon as I can. As I get into town proper, outta Nowhere, there’s this local puttin’ a for sale sign in the dash of his 63’ Chevy Nova. I walk right up and ask “How much?”

“What’re you willing to pay?”

“How’s $200?”

“If you got it it’s a deal.”

It’s about this point I realize I look like a fried egg scrambled late. Some junkie who never had $200 he didn’t spend on H.

“Anythin’ wrong with it?”

“Nothing, just need the cheese more.”

Just like that, I pull out a wad of the stuff and fork out a couple bills. The burnout eyes my handful like a shark, and eats the two bills just as greedy.

“Where’d you find all that?”

“You mind yourself.”

Been a while since I drove, and with a bum left knee the clutch is like drinking malt through a straw. All said, starting a car without a slim-jim and a hot wire means I might as well be a king on earth.

Sun’s crawling below soil when I pull into the complex I score my skunk at. I stache most the cash in the glove compartment and walk up to the Serb’s apartment. Knock twice, pause, then a third. Pay the man and shoot some shit beanbag style in the Nova. I ain’t been this juiced in a minute, and the violet licks of sun wet my palate and set me droolin’.

Makin’ my way to the bar, I get real liquor’d up before easing out on the new wheels to make for Artie’s. When I pull in, the bunny chick’s foot-tappin’ on the porch. Night now, she’s on me and askin’ where her sugarbear is. I tell her we split ways, Art must be drowning in spirits down at the bar. She asks where I got the car, and I tell her we made out alright, so good I’m ditching the shed in the morning.

I’m so gone in my own substance at this point the day feels like some typa hazy dream. Only I know it’s no dream. There on the single shelf in my shed is the book. And I want to open it. I know the witch woman warned me, but hell what could go wrong? I got all I need right here. Cash, a car, an elephant of H. To hell with her.

I jump up and fling the thing open somewhere in the middle. As soon as it’s eyes are open I’m out like a light.

When I come to, I'm in cuffs. The cops are surrounding me tellin’ me I killed Artie and I ain’t never seeing the light of day again. No black book, no witch, nothing but disappearance. Stark reality of dreamscape.