Opening Gambit...Conclusion

The narrow doorway led directly into a cramped area that was still crowded with bookshelves, although these were now empty, except for dust, cobwebs, and a number of the small, green lizards that were so common to South Florida. They little critters scurried away as I entered.

Bob’s glow shed soft, yellow light upon the room, which only served to highlight how long it had been since any humans had been here. Ravyn and Zenny followed closely behind Bob.

I pushed past the rows of empty bookshelves towards the short hallway that led back to the room where in some small way I had lost a part of my humanity. It was back there that I had succumbed to the drugs in the tea and cookies that El Diablito had given me, only to wake up in the morning to discover the Chakra necklace handing around my neck.

There had been a small envelope with an airline ticket back to Washington and instructions to leave the necklace on at all times. I wouldn’t learn of the true importance of wearing that cursed thing for several more years, but that story has been told elsewhere on this blog.

At the moment, I was more concerned about any surprises the bastard may have left for unplanned visitors than I was about my own checkered past. Collapsed baton still held firmly in my right hand, I edged down the hall, ready for anything…or so I thought anyway.

A second curtained doorway obscured the large room that I knew to be in the back of the shop. I stepped up to the curtain, flicked out my baton to its full extension, and used it to brush aside the raggedy curtains. The only sounds to be heard were the heavy, expectant breaths of Ravyn and Zenny, the skittering of tiny clawed feet as the little lizards sought their refuge and Bob’s happy chirping sounds as he floated above us, happy to be exploring new environs.

When I had last been here, this room had been furnished with a number of mismatched, battered couches lined up along three walls, while the fourth wall had been taken up by a curtained off stage set between two doorways. The center of the room had been occupied by a cluttered table and its own mismatched wooden chairs. Now when I looked in the barren room, I was impressed with its size. It easily took up over half of the room of the entire shop. But what immediately drew my attention was the telephone sitting in the middle of the floor of the vast room.

It was one of those old rotary phones. It was deep red in color, reminiscent of the phones shown in old Cold War movies that sat on the desk of the President of the United States and in the Kremlin.

Bob floated into the room above me and naturally gravitated towards the center of this vast new space to explore, while Ravyn and Zenny slipped to either side of me.

I stood there unmoving, just inside the doorway, staring at that damn phone. There was something very odd about that phone sitting there, but I couldn’t place it immediately.

Ravyn was the first to break the silence of our group. “What is it Rusty?”

“That phone. It wasn’t here before.”

“So?”

“There something wrong with it. But I just can’t place it.”

Zenny touched my shoulder with her right hand and pointed with her left hand. “Why would someone leave an unplugged phone sitting in the middle of the floor?”

I smacked my forehead with my left hand. “That’s it. There’s no line leading up to. It’s not plugged in. They must have just left the old thing sitting there since it probably couldn’t be used anymore.”

Relieved at having figured out what had me so unsettled, I moved towards the phone.

It rang.

It was loud, bell clanging ring that caused both of the gals to jump back and catch their breaths.

It rang again.

I scanned the room with normal vision and then again with eye towards the Shadowland, just to be sure there wasn’t some hidden trap. The only thing that registered as out of the ordinary was that phone. As it rang a third time, I noticed that it glowed with a magickal energy that perhaps explained how it could be ringing without being connected to any actual phone line.
I moved to the center of the room, standing over the phone.

It rang a fourth time.

I reached down to pick it up, reasonably certain that I would be talking to an old foe. “Yeah?”

That familiar cackling laughter came through loud and clear over the phone’s hand set. “So you’ve finally come back home, eh Bones?”

“What do you want, old man?”

His voice took on a serious tone. “We need to talk, Bones.”

“What about?”

“We have many things to discuss, Jason. I understand that you don’t trust me right now, but we need to come to an understanding. I’m not Drake. He’s gone now, so there is a new order to be established.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed audibly. “Drake was driven by certain things from his past. You know about those things as well as I do now. I don’t have that same baggage that he did. I can acknowledge my failures in dealing with you and your friends in the past and I can move on from them. I would like us to arrange a meeting where we can hash out our differences in an amicable way. I have no desire to keep you as an enemy, Jason; we can do so much more together than we can separately.”

Ravyn and Zenny had both moved in close enough to me now to be able to listen in on the conversation as well.

I looked from Zenny to Ravyn to see if either of them had any input. Zenny pursed her lips in concentration, but just shrugged her shoulders. Ravyn’s eyes were narrowed in concentration as she motioned with one hand that I should keep talking.

“OK, I can see some possibilities. Where would you want to meet with me?”

He laughed. It was a hearty, deep laugh that sounded disturbingly normal for this crazy old coot. “Well, I doubt that saucy, red-headed wench friend of yours will allow me to set the meeting place. Why don’t you ask her where she’d like us to meet?”

Ravyn’s mouth dropped open as she heard that. “Why I never…”

“I think she should come along for our little meeting. I look forward to showing her my hand, thanks to that dreadful bird of hers.”

I waved Ravyn quiet with my right hand, letting the baton slip to the ground next to the phone. “Look, old man, where do you want to meet with us then? It should be somewhere nice and public. I don’t want any damn surprises.”

He sighed again. “Fine, take all of the fun out of this, will you? How about we meet near your hometown, in one of those casinos in Detroit? You name the particular place and time. That should be public enough for all of us.”

I nodded. “Fine. Let’s meet in Greektown exactly 24 hours from now, bring that prick Dick Arnold with you as well.” I looked at my watch to fix the time in my head.

“Done.” The phone went silent.

Opening Gambit...Part 3

I stopped just before I touched the door, hand still extended. “What?”

Ravyn reached out and brushed my arm aside. Her voice grew louder in her impatience. “Don’t you see the damn door isn’t locked? Do you think a Caster of El Diablito’s ability is going to leave one of his haunts completely unprotected? Sheesh! After all of this time and after everything you’ve been through, you were just going to barge in there without thinking, weren’t you?”

I raised my hands in surrender. There was certainly no arguing with her when she was this fired up. “OK, OK. Do whatever you think you need to do to make it safe, I’ll be a good little zombie and wait for the mighty Caster to do her work!”

Ravyn’s eyes flashed as she turned to respond. Her mouth opened as if she were about to respond when Zenny slipped in between us, her back to Ravyn.

She looked up at me with disappointment in her eyes as she placed a hand on my forearm. “That was uncalled for, Rusty. Ravyn is thinking only of our safety.”

Her almond shaped brown eyes reflected a level of sadness that drew me up short. I looked away from her in shame. “I’m sorry Ravyn. I don’t know why I said that.”

Zenny turned to Ravyn and spoke in a very soft voice before Ravyn could reply to me. “Please, allow me.” She nodded towards the door.

Ravyn alternated looking between Zenny and me as she backed away from the door to allow Zenny to use her skills.

Zenny pulled the thin deerskin glove off her right hand and stepped to the door. She leaned in close to the door, placing her palm flat on the door at about ear height. She turned her head to the side as she did and closed her eyes. Her lips parted ever so slightly as she began to concentrate on what the door could tell her.

Ravyn watched her with concern, her own hands clenched with the tension of the unknown that hung heavy in the suddenly silent and still night air. Even the creaking of the sign had finally stopped. It was as if all of south Florida was waiting for the results of Zenny’s contact with the door.

After several tense moments, Zenny stepped back from the door with a sigh. As she turned to face the two of us, she brushed a stray strand of her dark hair back under her hijab. “This door has not been opened in nearly a year. The last people to use it were manual laborers of some sort. I don’t sense any about the door that would be of concern in opening it.”

Ravyn nodded. “That’s good. At least we know it’s safe to open the door.”

Zenny shuddered. “I did get a feel for this person you have called El Diablito.” She looked directly at me. “Rusty, I don’t think that I will ever be able to think of you as Shaitan again. That man has truly earned that name.”

Concerned, I put a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

She shook her head. “That is something we can discuss at another time. Let’s see what awaits us inside.”

Zenny moved to the side, allowing me to reach out to the door as she carefully put her glove back on. She wore them almost all of the time since her talent was always active—giving her impressions and information about everything that she touched, unless she was wearing something as familiar and safe as those gloves.

With my left hand on the handle, I glanced back at Ravyn to make sure that she was ready and then flicked my right wrist to allow that baton to drop into my palm. I let it stay in its collapsed form for the moment.

At Ravyn’s nod, I yanked the door open and slipped into the doorway just in case there was a surprise waiting for us. The dark, dusty interior of the empty shop greeted me with bored indifference.

I recognized the skeleton of the once cluttered shop that I had visited those many years before. But the racks and shelves that had once been full to the point of bursting now stood empty like the bones of a long dead beast picked clean by scavengers.

“It looks abandoned.” I walked in towards the counter where the cashier used to stand. The light switch on the wall next to the ancient cash register was unresponsive.

Behind me, I heard Ravyn whisper. “Bob, you stay close, OK?”

I heard the cheery warble of ‘Bob’ reply as I looked back to see Ravyn on one knee at the doorway of the shop. She had taken her small backpack off and was holding the top flap open so that Bob could float out.

The soft yellow glow that Bob gave off when he was happy to be exploring a new place helped to illuminate the shop further. As Bob floated happily to the top of the room, the harsh, skeletal shadows retreated to their corners.

Ravyn stood up and swung the now empty pack back across her shoulders as stepped into the shop. Zenny followed behind her, smiling in wonder at the bizarre, orb-like creature that was now happily whistling as he drifted along the ceiling.

After taking stock of the clearly empty and abandoned shop, Ravyn turned to me. “You were here once before, can you lead us back to any office he might have had? That’s probably the place where we are most likely to find anything he left behind that Zenny might be able to get a reading off of.”

I nodded and pointed towards the curtain hanging just to the left of the cashier’s counter. “If go through there, we’ll pass through the used book area that he had and down a hall towards the back. There’s a large ceremonial room where he drugged me when he was making my Chakra. There’s a small office and kitchen area back there as well. If he’s been here in the last year, that’s where he’s most likely to have been.”

Ravyn pushed back the holey curtains, putting her hand to her face to protect herself from the dust cloud that act generated, and waved me through. “After you.”

(Conclusion of Opening Gambit due tonight…)