Dark Arts by Randolph Lalonde Read Free Book Online Page A

long day.
    “Miss having you around, old man,” he said,
looking through the clearing in the trees to the scantly clouded
blue sky. “Don’t know what they want from me this time, but I’m
pretty sure it’s my fault for picking up the trail you were
following most of your life. Got what you were looking for, what
you didn’t even tell Allen about. I think they actually believe it
can resurrect the dead, change the world.” He never knew his father
as a young man, he was forty-five when Max was born, still vital,
but turning grey. Most of his memories of his father were of him
leaving and returning.
    There were the lessons, which were
unavoidable. Max learned about different religions, their origins,
the laws of the magical universe, and the ‘old ways’ as Max’s
father and his friends referred to them. He enjoyed most of the
history, but the so-called practical side seemed pointless, as good
as well wishing and hand wringing while looking up at the stars for
a response.
    In all the rituals and so-called magical
circles Max was forced to attend, the most magical sensation he had
was a case of the goose bumps. The most common feeling he endured
was having to go to the bathroom after the first forty minutes.
None of the high magic, incantations, prayers, invocations, charms,
or anything else seemed to do anything in the world. He could
recognize the comfort faith brought to some people, and that there
brand of paganism seemed to keep a large community together, but
that’s where the benefits ended for Maxwell.
    When he fell asleep exactly, Maxwell didn’t
know, but he started awake when his head rolled onto his recently
healed ear. He opened his eyes in time to see the headstone begin
to move, and rolled out from under it. The granite fell forward
with enough weight to crush his head and shoulders. He got to his
feet and stared at the blank side of the stone, wide-eyed, a
rotten, churning feeling in his gut.
    A chill wind pulled at his shirt and hair.
Looking up, he could see the church standing as upright as it was
when the congregation was in service, and the wrought iron fencing
standing around the small graveyard. At the end of the lane was an
arching tree with people hanging from nooses on three main
branches. The men and women slowly twisted in the wind, and Maxwell
recognized the scene from an old picture, but couldn’t quite
remember why they were killed.
    A slender hand landed on his back, and he
turned. It was a young boy. The family he hung with was around him,
looking to Maxwell mournfully. “Free us. Take us to water. Give us
peace.”
    A movement caught Max’s eye, and he looked
to the doorway of the church. The boards weren’t white the way a
whitewashed shingle building should be, they had the glisten and
yellow color of bone. The figure in the doorway was
square-shouldered, tall, his narrow face stern, and the clothing he
wore shifted as though it was made of shadow. It felt as though the
man’s steel grey gaze weighed Maxwell down. He took a step back and
tripped over his father’s downed gravestone.
    The clear day had returned, the cool air
replaced with the thick, humid heat of the afternoon and the tree
at the crossroads by the end of the church’s drive was gone along
with the people who hung there.
    Maxwell picked up his rings and tried to
pull the corner of his jacket free from the stone. “Fucking
geezer!” he shouted as he fought to retrieve his leathers. “I’m
either stoned or you were right, but it doesn’t matter now, because
I’ll never be back to clear your grave!” he freed his jacket and
put it on.
    The thought of those sandwiches being
drugged seemed ridiculous, but less so than having waking visions
of dead families, so in a demonstration of distaste for everything
his father believed in, he bent over and shoved two fingers down
his throat. He gagged and vomited up less than half of what he ate,
mostly forcing bile up. By the third try, he was down with one knee
on