Lucille holds in her single hand a scrap of paper. The slip of permission granted. Domino sees the gesture and grabs it to read. This woman, here, sent by the witch LaCombe. She asks Lucille to sit, flashing eyes to the other arm, a ruin. The two find themselves opposite each other at a small round table in a darkened room, faint pink light with purple, the smell of mint and ginger floating thick on the air, odor rich like a mist, difficult to breathe. “Don’t worry,” Domino says, touching her lip, a long fingernail there, decorated different than the other nine. Her hair is red, her own, pressed to her forehead in the front with gel, the back an elaborate updo. Always she is careful with the hair, part of the mask of character. Yet still, some part is no mask at all. Some is nothing but the real. “How could I not? Not be nervous?” responds Lucille. She looks around with a twitch, as a bird surrounded by felines. The shop is wild and eclectic, full of the grotesque, the absurd, every shade of the occult laid out in obscure objects. Most near, a human skull is there with fire eyes that flicker. A holy pendant sits below it as a necklace, twinkling blue-black motes in the dim. Though there is much else to see, the skull and its subtle lights transfix Lucille’s gaze. She rubs the remainder of her right limb nervously, a habit, an itch. “Over here,” says Domino. The women place their palms upon the table, all three. A ritual will begin when they are ready. Forces from elsewhere pay mind to the potential opening of a gate, a heave to crack reality. Lucille sees the turning of the first card, one of a triad. Domino’s concentration is pressed forward, as an energy all its own. The women look down, expectant, anticipatory, lucid. They are one, briefly, an ephemeral bond of twinship. Domino shudders for her own fate, a beat. The skull cackles. Lucille jumps in her seat. “Ignore St. Meridius,” Domino suggests, knowing it’s near impossible. The long-dead saint is a mischievous sort who niggles at the boundaries of life, still, for his centuries, and the old priest knows something of what’s to come. His laughter is a warning, for he can no longer speak, all words lost in his slow decay. The skull rocks once from side to side. Lucille pretends she did not see it happen. Then, the tarot begins to tell a tale, ominous, the first card the Ten of Swords, so many piercings of the heart. Meanwhile, a ferocious entity, a named creature banned in the ancient treaties, waits just behind the door that could arrive. Lucille’s suffused fear may be enough, or the fact she is perpetually wounded. The hovering malevolence is Guul-Goodak-Gisii, or that is what the Toltec peoples did name him, a foul spirit of deep earth and caves. He is made of shadow, a feaster upon anxiety, and for all the eras of his skulking, yet longs to destroy. He wishes his taloned feet to be soaked once more in the liquid ruin of new-killed flesh. Domino pauses in the turn of the second card, the Tower, the prison in such a context, a mark of damnation. Lucille’s shoulders give a twinge. The skull, St. Meridius, the faded hero of lost worlds, makes another sound, a portent. There is a stink of candles burnt to the end, smoke of hair aflame; Lucille’s skin has been scorched for her left hand above the fire. She sucks on the burned digit to ease the discomfort, and Gool-Goodak licks his lips and fangs with the serpent tongues of his four mouths. He is hungry. The door may open yet. “I see here…” Domino pauses. “I see here signs of wicked things to come,” she says, with a tremble. Lucille shakes her head to know the truth, touching her chin with the wreck of her right arm, the memory of the awful attempt, a coma to starve flesh of oxygen for hours. In the wake of her accident, continuing to exist, she came to a reader for all profane things to be revealed. Her mind is weak and wandering, as if under the bridge of every overpass in the city, where her dreams live barely. Her hopes are metaphysically aimed, this time, to shoot soul heroin, the dope of despair. Even for her poor truthsight, Domino is keen. The woman before her walks the edge of the roof without a rail, seeking mercy, the alleviation of grief even it means a fall. Even a middling clairvoyant such as Domino knows well that when one is frail, the monsters salivate. “You were sent here by the white witch, Gizzy LaCombe,” Domino says. “Why go to her for help, then come to me?” Domino asks. The third and final card she holds in abeyance. Lucille feels only the pain, the phantoms that swirl in her body. “My mother died,” Lucille states. “She was all I had in the world. What’s more, Gizzy is not white in her ideals, more grey, sometimes crimson. She stinks of toad and turtle, perhaps as a witch should, but I was glad to be out of there.” “If that’s true,” Domino posits, “then I say tomfoolery. Why trust her? You don’t know me whatsoever.” “No psychologist or grief counsellor will tell me of fortune, when I’m near the worst,” Lucille contends, battling emotion just barely. Domino fingers the third card again, waiting, wondering what part hovers for the teller herself. No portal swings open without responsibility. There is magic in magic, doom in doom, and nothing holds back a destiny decided. Yet it remains wise at times to seek delay, a stitch in time to save all nine, or the teller’s skin if the game is rigged for blood. Domino knows there is risk if the candles blow a certain way. If the old saint and his skull will not be still. The third card waits beneath her touch. “Are you alright?” Lucille asks, sensing what simmers beneath, the third at the last. “No, no. I’m fine,” says Domino, a sweat, cold, a drip just below her hairline. The sheen of doubt must be visible, even in the murk of the shop, the darkness of illusions made real. Guul-Goodak snarls for the delay, understanding well the passkey. The Devil drawn as three of three will make for him the way, a venerable demon’s entrance unto the mortal world. Havoc awaits. “Should we turn the final card, then?” Lucille asks, and Domino gulps a bit of air to make sure her heart still functions as it should. The women breathe, every so light, both thinking on the rule of three, and perilous things that may come. About the author:
D. G. Ironside is an author from Canada, where they live with their lovely partner Stacey. Their work can be seen in Bewildering Stories, Dark Horses, and the premiere issue of Peasant Magazine, among other places.
0 Comments
|
