His Oldest Friend

Adam sat bleary-eyed, in need of coffee in front of the last microfilm machine in the row in the second sub-basement of the university library. It was two in the morning, and he was poring over newspapers from the 1970s, looking for stories of unusual deaths, all because Steve said the man that attacked him wore a jacket with unusually wide lapels. It wasn’t even a lead. It was the suggestion of a lead, the hope of a lead, or as Adam was beginning to believe, a shot in the dark masquerading as a lead.

Steve had literally crashed into Adam’s life two years earlier. He had been walking back to his apartment from that very same library late at night. As he rounded a corner, Steve barreled into him with enough force to knock them both to the ground. As the struggled to their feet, Adam looked up to see the reason Steve had been running, and he immediately felt the cold lump of dread from in the pit of his stomach, as if he had swallowed a lead ball bearing. He saw glowing red eyes and gleaming white fangs. He knew what it was. He had seen it before. He grabbed the crucifix that hung around his neck, and he thrust it in the thing’s face. It recoiled, but it didn’t retreat.

They were in a standoff. A vampire, facing Adam and his crucifix, and Steve behind Adam.

Adam glanced briefly over his shoulder at Steve. Steve held up a wooden stake carved out of a tree branch. Adam’s body blocked it from the view of the vampire. They nodded at one another and then they both looked back at the monster. Adam counted down from three on his hand held behind his back. When he reached zero, he dropped the crucifix and stepped aside. The thing lunged forward and impaled itself on Steve’s wooden stake.

Thus did Steve reintroduce Adam to the dark world of Powers and Principalities most people refused to acknowledge, and one he thought he’d left behind. The friendship that they had formed that night had endured despite challenged both supernatural and mundane.

On occasion, Adam considered that he could have just walked away. After all, Steve was the lightning rod for the forces of darkness, not him. But Adam didn’t believe that it was a coincidence that Steve had run into him. Adam was the one person who could help him. Steve could say on more than one occasion that he was alive because of Adam.

In a way, Adam could say that he was alive because of Steve, though associating with Steve probably shortened his life expectancy. Adam used to joke than an atlas his mother had given him when he was five years old was his oldest friend. All his life, he had trusted books more than people. People left. Books didn’t. Even if a book told lies, it was always there to tell them. Adam had had to trust Steve from the moment they met.

And so, Adam sat in the library at two in the morning reading old newspapers, because Steve, his oldest friend, needed him again. He wouldn’t have changed a thing.

 

Visions

“What does she see?”

Adam responded to Steve’s question by glaring and putting his finger over his lips. They were sitting across a table from an ample Creole woman. She hummed softly to herself as she drew cards from a deck and placed them face-up in front of her. Steve had been attempting to garner clues to her thoughts for the last half hour, but her expression remained inscrutable.

He shifted in his seat. The smell of incense filled the room. It was making him sick. They were surrounded by shelves laden with jars containing dessicated…things, and peering through the jars at odd intervals were carved wooden masks hanging on the walls. Their faces were not happy.

Mme. Lafarge owned a shop on the same street as Ford’s Theater. The shop sold perfumes and herbal remedies–in the front. In the back, where they were, she plied her real trade, negotiating with the spirit world. Apparently, the spirits were driving a hard bargain that day. In the time that they had been there, she had reshuffled and redrawn the tarot cards three times without saying a word.

Steve stole a glance at Adam. His eyes followed Mme. Lafarge’s hands as she drew each consecutive card and placed it precisely on the table. It had been his idea to come there, which surprised Steve. Adam was a good Catholic boy, and Steve hadn’t expected him to put stock in such things. Nonetheless, Steve had agreed to the consultation, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do.

The first time Steve was attacked by a vampire had been almost two years prior, right after moving to the city. He had dumb luck to thank for his survival. Since then, he had become quite good at destroying them whenever they decided to pounce on him. The attacks were usually random, and they never amounted to much more than a brute frontal assault. Lately, though, that had changed. The attacks, in addition to becoming more frequent, also seemed more planned, even coordinated. It disturbed Steve, because vampires were the ultimate sociopaths. They didn’t play well with others, not even their own kind.

And then there were the nightmares. They had been going on for over a month. They all started out differently, but they ended the same. The last things Steve saw every time were glowing red eyes and flashing white fangs.

Mme. Lafarge stopped humming. She removed her hand from the last card that she had placed, and she just stared at it. Adam grabbed the cross around his neck and began to mutter something under his breath. It took Steve a few seconds to realize what he was saying.

“Crux sancta sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro satana. Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas.“

Obviously, you could take the boy out of the liturgy, but you couldn’t take the liturgy out of the boy. Steve had heard him recite this formula before. Vade retro satana meant “Step back, Satan.” It was a spoken amulet against evil.

“What is it?” he asked.

Neither of them answered. They both just stared at the cards.

“What is it?” he asked again.

Silence.

“Fine,” he said, “I can figure it out myself. How hard can it be?” He leaned over the table to get a better look at the cards. “Okay, see that one that says ‘The Devil,’ that represents the vampires. And then the one next to it, the knight with the sword, that’s me. And then there’s the one that says. ‘Death,’ which can’t be good, but given the circumstances, I’m not surprised to see it. And the one next to that, ‘The Magician,’ that’s my friend Adam here, even though he’s a history professor. The next one, the woman holding the cup, that’s our friend Abigail, which makes sense because she’s right underneath ‘Justice,’ and her father was a judge. So, is this supposed to somehow represent my present situation?”

Mme. Lafarge shook her head. “Non, Monsieur, Dese cards, dey do not show your present. Dey show your future.”  She lowered a finger onto The Devil card. “De Debil, he does not represent de monster you fight. De Debil is you.”

 

Flavor

Booking Through Thursday

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s nonfiction or fiction or what genre it is, what puts a book into the category of “favorites” for me is the writing itself. I can enjoy and be entertained by a book, but if the writing is clunky, it won’t be one of my favorites. (I’m looking at you, Dan Brown.) Clumsy writing is jarring and takes me out of the narrative, which isn’t the desired result if I’m reading, whether it’s to escape for an hour or two or to learn about something new.

On the other hand, finding a book with beautifully written descriptive passages and clever turns of phrase is like finding a Van Gogh in a thrift shop (not that that’s ever happened to me, but, I’d imagine it would be similar). Here are some examples from two of my favorite books:

From The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, a description of Istanbul:

Fifteen hundred years of grandeur. Fifteen hundred years of power. Fifteen centuries of corruption, coups, and compromises. A city of mosques, churches, synagogues; of markets and emporia; of tradesmen, soldiers, beggars. The city to beat all cities, overcrowded and greedy.

From Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke:

At the back of the house in a smutty little yard there was an apple tree which had once been a country tree - until grey London had come and eaten up all its pleasant green neighbours. Once in a fit of industriousness some unknown person had picked all of the apples off the tree and placed them on all of the windowsills, where they had lain for several years now - becoming first old apples, then swollen corpses of apples and finally mere ghosts of apples.

 

New Old Blog Announcement

I wanted to announce for the people who read this blog (I’m assuming a lot, huh?) that after almost two years, I’ve relaunched my other blog Pack Your Fork.  It’s a restaurant journal/travel guide, and I’m excited about starting it up again.

 

Another Sign of the Economic Apocalypse

Yarn.  Yes, the ecomomic downturn has reached that far.  My wife, a knitter, has informed me that the price of a ball of yarn has increased an average of three dollars over the last two weeks.  When will it end?

 

Movies v. Books

Booking Through Thursday

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

I’ll start off by noting that movies, being visual, require more processing by the right half of the human brain.

I do not want a movie to inform me.  I do not want my thoughts to be provoked by a movie.  I want things to blow up.  I want people to fight with swords.  I want vehicles moving at high speeds.  I want superpowers.  (Actually, I do want superpowers, but that’s a different story.)  This, of course means that my movie interests are very narrow.  No dramas, no historical romances, no romantic comedies, no slasher pics, no torture porn, just lots of flashing lights and loud noises.  I am geeking out so much over this summer’s movie line-up–Speed Racer, Iron Man, Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II–that my wife may make me sleep on the couch.  I would do all manner of ethically questionable things if they would just hurry up and make the live-action Justice League movie.

Reading, on the other hand, engages more of the left half of the human brain.

My reading preferences are much more varied.  I read nonfiction, mysteries, thrillers, fantasies, literature, pretty much anything that looks interesting in the bookstore.  Sometimes I do read simply because I want to know more about a subject, or because I want to challenge myself by reading something different from what I normally would, or because I want a different point of view.

So basically, I have opposite attitudes to the two media.  I really do wish the halves of my brain were on speaking terms.

 

Search Terms that Ought not Be

Apologies for getting all meta with the blogging today, but I am just a wee bit skeeved by a search term through which someone found this blog.  Someone actually searched “hairy nuns.”  Seriously?  That’s just not right.  I had to think a while about how my blog would turn up in such a search, and I finally remembered that a short story I wrote, Hairy (as in “a hairy situation”), makes a passing reference to a soup kitchen run by Orthodox nuns.  I think Dr. Phil needs to make a house call on this person.  Or Jerry Springer.  Or both.

 

On Childrearing

We babysat the two-and-a-half-year-old son of my wife’s friend this weekend. He’s a fun kid, but it made me realize that perhaps I’m still a little immature to have children. If a child of mine came running up to me and asked me if he or she could build a trebuchet in order to fling chickens over the neighbor’s house, there is a very good chance that my reaction would be, “Cool! Let me help!” when I think that the proper response should be, “No.” I could be wrong, though.

 

Thoughts on Superpowers

Is there something wrong with me?

I’m thirty-three years old, and on occasion I still have an internal debate with myself about what superpower would be the most awesome to have.  Then it occurs to me that Superman has more than one superpower, so why should I shortchange myself?  I can stay on this train of thought for hours until I have to remind myself that Superman is a fictional character and that my chances of developing superpowers are very small.

 

Half of the Books

We’re trying to sell our house currently.  Not much luck.  We finally broke down and brought in a “stager” to make our house more appealing to potential buyers.  We have a lot of books.  They are, however, stacked nicely on book shelves.  Personally, I think they’re attractive.  One of the first things the “stager” said was that we needed to remove “half of the books”  to make the house less intimidating.  My mouth dropped.  It’s not like we’re leaving the books to loom over whoever buys the house, (Although that is a funny mental image.) or that we have copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and How to Hide the Body:  A Primer for Beginning Serial Killers on display.

I’m not so sure I would want to sell my house to someone who would be intimidated by all of our books.