Beginner’s Guide to Magick
I rode my board down past all the paint peeled row houses and blackened gum covered streets with chipped slate sidewalks. It was brighter when I got to the main road. A small strip of businesses that made up our downtown. The usual places, Frisky’s Ice Cream Shoppe, Pizza Girls, the Western Union, and Rita’s Bar. Everyone knew Rita’s was where all the well to do businessmen and lawyers went, and the women hoping to snag one.
The library was one of the oldest structures in town with rumors that beneath it were tunnels that lead throughout the city. Our own personal catacombs filled with the skeletons of citizen’s past. And everyone knew the library was haunted, I mean it looked haunted, especially at night. I’d heard way too many stories of people who’d had books mysteriously jump off of shelves and hit them. And people seeing ghostly faces in the windows when the library had long been closed.
“Lemm,” said the librarian, Sebastian Brown.
Everyone that knew me called me either Lemm or Rams. Only my mother called me Charly.
Sebastian had been running the library since as long as anybody could remember. And he wasn’t even that old, didn’t look a day over thirty. He had dark hair, glasses, and always wore the sweater over a dress shirt combo. He knew all the kids in town by name, and especially me. The library was like a second home to me. The library was open late most nights, probably because Seb had nothing better to do.
“Did you like that book I recommended?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, I wasn’t expecting to be by, otherwise I would’ve returned it, “I need another one.”
He bowed, “Your wish is my command.”
He wasn’t a bad looking guy and I’d never seen him with anyone ever. There were rumors that he was gay but no one had ever seen him with a man either. In fact, he was pretty good looking, had a sexy nerd thing going on with his always ruffled hair and sometimes slightly wrinkled dress shirts that made it look as if he rolled out of bed and came to work every morning as is.
He came back with a black leather book, it was hard to read the title, what once had gold lettering was all but faded. I opened the inside, seeing yellowed pages. My favorites were really old books.
“Beginner’s Guide to Magick,” I said and snorted, “You know me all too well, Seb.”
“Lock up behind you when you leave.”
I was at the library so much I practically worked there, in fact sometimes I did. I’d check out books for people and even shelve them if Seb needed help. I nodded and he went to the back, enclosing himself behind a door. I’d never been beyond that shiny green door, the place where he called home, I guess. I wondered if he lived in the library or if that door lead into a tunnel or something that he took to his true home. Maybe one day, I’d ask him.
And the book he gave me hadn’t been checked out since 1905, I could see in the card catalogue on the back of the book. I walked over to the table nearby the window to watch the nighttime hustle and bustle of downtown. Without trying to, I caught sight of my mother. She was dressed really nicely, a slinky black dress and high heels. Hot date? That John guy, perhaps? I wondered. But then I saw the last guy I ever expected to see. Mr. Elion Delacruz, Clemm’s father, placing a hand on the small of my mother’s back as he walked her out. I saw the whole thing in slow motion. What the literal fuck?
I slowly rose out of my chair as he walked her to the car. Bending forward even to kiss her cheek. In the middle of the fucking street, a publicly known figure who is also publicly very married. No way…I couldn’t believe it and I swear, even though I was in the library across the street looking out from the second-floor window, he saw me. His eyes, went directly to mine. So I ducked, flattening myself practically to the floor. I laid there for at least 10 minutes before I got up and both of them were gone, including my mother’s car.
Unsure of what I’d just seen, I tried to absorb myself in the words of the book I’d been handed. I must’ve read the first paragraph a million times before the words finally registered.
So, you think you are Magick? Magick is a gift, bestowed upon very few selected humans. In order to fully utilize this book, one must discover if they have the gift or not. The easiest way to do it, is this:
Hold out your hands, imagine a red light gleaming off your skin. If you can manifest this light, you have magick, if you cannot, you do not. And there’s no need to read the rest of these pages. Nor, will you be able to.
I flipped to the next page and it was blank, and all of the other pages were blank.
There was a book sitting on the table where I sat, History of Everton, more interesting than the one Sebastian had given me. So, I flipped through it, falling asleep eventually over the pages, waking up with ink smeared over my cheeks. Fuck.
“What the heck, Seb?” I said. I forgot that he wasn’t there anymore. I figured it was time to leave. I did not want to be in that library alone and at night too. I cut off the lights and headed out the door. I was in the space between the two doors, when I saw him.
Fucking Clem Delacruz. Him and his lackeys were standing beyond the door, sharing a cigarette. What the fuck where they doing out there late at night? And, Trent saw me, his hunter green eyes came right to mine, as if he’d sensed me before I did him. I tried to decide what was more dangerous, the ghosts of the library or Dawsons.
I didn’t know what they did to me in those woods. I didn’t know if anything happened. All I knew, I was terrified of Clemm and Trent. And his sight made me literally sick. I could feel my stomach churning even then. But I had to face my fear, right? He’s just a guy, I reminded myself, taking a deep breath to exit. The three all turned towards me. I remembered the switch blade knife I had in my back pocket too.
In one swipe he’d snatched my book.
“What you reading, Roach?” Trent asked. I jumped forward to get it back but expecting this, he shoved my head back with his free hand.
Surprisingly, he had nothing to say about my choice of literature, he glimpsed the cover and then held it up to Clemm who took it.
“You can read this?” Clemm asked.
“The pages are blank,” I told him. And he tossed the book into a puddle in a clogged gutter filled with dirt and dead leaves.
“You fucking jerk!” I screamed. But I was glad that he was leaving. The boys all walked away. I reached for the wet book, drying it a bit with my jacket.
“Shouldn’t be out this late, kid. Bad things happen in the night,” Clemm said. And he knew all about that. And I love how he always called me kid like we weren’t the same age.
Even the bar across the street was closing, it was that late. And I went home. With a running start jumped on my board and slicked away. The town looked haunted in the night, huge Victorian houses looming over while the wind screamed through the trees. Owls hopping suddenly off of branches and staring at me with accusatory eyes and loudly hooting. Shadows chased me on my board, and I’d turn to see nothing. Bad things happen in the night, Clemm had said and he was the bad thing.
“Don’t,” I heard the voice of Trent. I was woozy, lying on the ground and it seemed like the dankest scent of alcohol like I was soaked in it.
The two stood over me while I lay there weak and defenseless unable to move as if they were staring at a dead body they were trying to get rid of. And I heard the laughter, the harsh discordant sounds of their laughter like nails over a chalkboard and the sound wouldn’t stop.
And why did it smell like piss and death?
“This time you went too far,” said Trent. I felt his hands over me as he pressed my body into the damp ground and the tips of dead leaves pricking into the back of my neck. He was surprisingly gentle in the way he released me onto the ground as if he was afraid he would break me.
Before I went to bed, I held out my hands in front of me, willing them to glow red. Like it was so stupid. If I had magic like the girls in the stories, if I could be powerful, I could make all of them pay and they wouldn’t even know it was me.
Fitful sleep. Tossing and turning in bed in the night. Saying things to myself like Get away from me. Don’t touch me.
I was on my knees next to Clemm in the dirt, he stroked my hair, pet me like I was a dog.
Adam and Tom and Rowdy were standing across from us all in their underwear though it was a cold night. And they were shivering but still there, mostly naked with this dull look in their eyes like there was nothing there, no one home in their bodies.
Should we make them fuck each other?
And the laughter, harsh laughter, echoing over and over the trees, faces turning red as people choked on their own breath from laughter.
And then I felt hot all over and sweaty. I woke up choking and smoke filled the room and the fire alarm was going off and my bed was on fire. Small flames at both of my sides and my hands, glowing red. I threw myself out of bed. My mother came running in in her night gown with a flame extinguisher and put out the flames while I sat with my butt pressed into the cold clay floor. Burnt spots now over the mattress from where my hands were laying.
“Are you okay? What happened?!” Mother screamed.
“I don’t know,” I said.