Bum Magic: A Tale of Sludge and Slime

“Can you be more specific?”

Mother Dora flipped a switch under her desk and the room went dark. The only source of light came from her crystal ball, which illuminated her leathery face. She waved her bony hands over the ball and hummed while gazing deeply into it, occasionally letting out a “yep” or an “I see, I see” when the orange-lit smoke changed direction. This went on for a couple of minutes while the rest of us just sat there with our thumbs in our asses, but eventually, she stopped and turned the lights back on.

“Yep, the crystal ball also confirms that you are fucked,” she said with a grave look on her face.

“That wasn’t more specific,” I said.

She huffed and started flipping through the dusty black book she took off of her cabinet of curiosities.

“Did you find the symbol from the Iron Granny’s back in that old book?” I asked. The thought actually made me kind of nervous.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, “and that’s the problem. This is Liber Magus de Symbolis! The Big Book of Symbols! This has every single religious and occult symbol, constantly updated for the last fifteen-hundred years, and that symbol is nowhere to be seen. But I saw it on the backs of many others, who are still alive and want you dead.”

“Isn’t it possible that the authors of your book missed a symbol?” I said. “And we already kind of figured that there were more of these guys out there, so you haven’t exactly—”

“NO.”

Mother Dora slammed a fist onto her desk. Her gray-black hair fell from behind her ears, covering her face, and the lights flickered on and off. I wasn’t sure if the lights couldn’t handle her psychic flare up or if this building was just a piece of shit. The lights steadied, and Mother Dora took a deep breath to compose herself.

Then she put one of her hands over Mickey’s and one of her hands over mine. The look in her eyes confused me. Though her expression didn’t change, the intent behind her look seemed to change every second — anger one second, sadness the next, then bewilderment after that, then back to sadness. She opened her mouth and spoke in a croaky monotone.

“The spirits have spoken to me,” she said, like she hadn’t already said that two minutes ago. “They warn me of horrible things to come for the two of you — and for the rest of us. Before either of you have a chance to turn gray, you will accomplish terrible things. You will reckon with your creator, and you will both cease to exist. The reward for your journey of self-annihilation will be the end of the world.”

Mickey guffawed so hard that some spit splattered onto his chin. He took his hand away from Mother Dora to wipe it off.

“That was real fuckin’ spooky,” he said. “How much do we owe you?”

Caleb and Anita were taking her words much more seriously behind us. Caleb’s skin had gone from a shade of light pink to ghostly white, and Anita had the same grim look she had on her face when I tried to convince her to let me drop out of high school to become a traveling sword juggler (I don’t know how to juggle, but I was going to learn).

“You two shouldn’t brush her off so easily. I can’t tell you how many cases she’s helped me solve. She’s never once given me a false lead.” Anita put her hand on my shoulder. She had never been the affectionate type, so even this small touch felt heavy and awkward. It felt like something she would only do if she thought I was about to die.

“If she’s such a brilliant psychic detective, why does she operate out of this shithole in the corner of a hookah lounge?” I said.

Mother Dora smiled passive aggressively and put her hair back behind her ears.

“I have all I need here, and I like hookah. What, should I move to some fancy gray office in the city to win your approval? I think I’ll stay here and smoke. I’m going to do that now, actually, while I still can. Have a good rest of your life, Gus and Mickey. Please leave now.”

She stood up and walked to her curtain, nodding to Caleb and Anita before pushing through them into the smoke room. We were left alone in Mother Dora’s reading room. Just out of curiosity, I went to the other side of her desk and looked into her crystal ball, but I didn’t see anything.

We drove for a couple more hours until we were clear out of Little Rock, and then stopped at a hotel for the night. It was a Motel 6 — a little hoity-toity for my taste, but Caleb and Anita were used to the finer things in life, like towels and roofs. Plus we had money to burn, so fuck it.

We got three rooms: Anita and Caleb shared one, and Mickey and I got our own. Sitting in that hotel room was the first time I had been alone in awhile — since I had entered the compound to kill Mickey. Oh, how things had changed; now we were best buds, a dynamic duo, off on a quest to end the world, and ourselves, apparently.

I didn’t know what to think about Mother Dora. I still wanted to call her a fraud, but Anita’s not stupid, and if she said she really helped her on cases, I’m inclined to believe her. But even smart people have blind spots. Isaac Newton tried to create the Philosopher's Stone. Steve Jobs thought he could cure cancer with cranberry juice. I couldn’t decide if Mother Dora was a blind spot or not.

I tried to lay down on the bed and sleep, but it felt wrong. The room was too small and the bed was too soft. Most people felt security indoors, but I felt trapped. The air was too still without the sounds of crickets chirping in the trees or cars driving over my head, so I took the blanket off the bed and went outside searching for the nearest patch of trees to sleep between.

They weren’t far. You’re never too far away from the woods in the South. Right behind the motel was a dense thicket of woods. I wrapped myself in the thin, itchy blanket and searched for a flat patch of grass big enough to host me for the night.

The woods were well lit by the full moon, but I couldn’t find a nice spot. Deeper and deeper I went until I couldn’t even see a sparkle from the streetlights behind me anymore. No matter how far I moved forward, it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere, just walking on a never ending loop of annoyingly thick woods.

I came to the realization that I wasn’t even tired, I just thought that I should be because I hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. But did I even need to sleep anymore? Did I only need an hour or two of sleep a night? My body was a finely tuned machine now. Maybe I didn’t need as much routine maintenance. But humans were supposed to sleep. I wanted to sleep. The fact that I didn’t feel the need to sleep scared me. It made me feel ashamed. This mark wasn’t making me superhuman. It was making me inhuman. I was a fuckin’ creature of the night now, I guess.

Which meant that Mickey was too.