By Al Bruno III
November 17th: As I have said before I live in an apartment two floors above a pawnshop owned by Claretha Vincenzo, an old family friend who is both my landlady and employer. She is a great lady and, in many ways, my savior. She is also very patient, often helping me when I am being detained by representatives of local police departments, hospitals, and, on one occasion, the security department of the local branch of the Church of Scientology.
But to tell you the story of Claretha Vincenzo I need to tell you about her husband. Joseph Vincenzo told anyone at would listen that he saw his pawn shop as a way to help the less fortunate in his community, that he felt what he did was no different than a bank or a credit union. What he didn’t tell anyone was that his little pawn shop also laundered money for the Polish Mafia.
A lot of people have blamed his untimely death on his ties to Werdegast crime family but who am I to make such wild accusations? Maybe there is a perfectly rational explanation for why he drowned in raw sewage.
All Joseph’s left behind for his wife was a mountain of bills and some very shady mobbed up pawn shop. Other people might have sold everything, tried to start over someplace far away from all those bad memories. Not Mrs. Vincenzo though, she stood up to the creditors and somehow got the business untangled from the people that thought the Godfather was a training film.
I guess she has a soft spot for lost causes. Which explains why she puts up with me…
####
On this particular Monday, I was manning the pawn shop by myself while Mrs. Vincenzo was off organizing a food drive for her church. It had been a good morning; I had successfully avoided mistaking fake jewelry for the real thing. I had a bad habit of buying cubic zirconia as if it were real diamonds, but not today.
Unfortunately, I did pay two thousand dollars for a 'Rollex' watch.
Sadly, that last sentence was not a typo.
Under the register, a homemade meatloaf sandwich was waiting for me. Mrs. Vincenzo fed me relentlessly, but I was too busy researching.
That's right. Many of you are wondering when I would do something about the witchier version of Sara Bishop, Gorgo, Mormo, and Luna. Despite my distractions with slashers, ghost buses, and zombies, rest assured I've been actively researching the issue. I've enlisted the help of some of the most prolific members of the FEAR AND TRUTH forum—50Fingers, ShortRoundNinety-Two, SacredGhost, and TrueSeeker. Additionally, I've been tapping into my other resources.
There’s Tegan Blue, an inept dime store psychic who somehow came into possession of The Spirit Board of Shizhen-Fuld. Then there's Atwater, a former NSA agent whose career was sidelined by cannibalism charges. And let's not forget Isaac Zamorano, a coked-up Bigfoot hunter.
Here’s what I have so far:
Isaac Zamorano is sure it has something to do with Bigfoot. Naturally.
Atwater informed me that there are approximately four hundred seven women in the United States named 'Sara Bishop.' Two of these four hundred seven are currently incarcerated, which is a higher rate than statistically probable. He has no idea what this means, and that makes two of us.
Tegan Blue warned me that I'd soon encounter a tall man with a handlebar mustache, which sounded like I might either join a barbershop quartet or end up in a brawl at a Steampunk convention. However, this didn't address my current predicament, so I asked her to use her ancient and eldritch spirit board. She replied that she and it weren't on speaking terms at the moment.
TrueSeeker took a half-hour drive to the New Castle Library and used her contacts to get into the Historical Texts and Documents section. There, she found a letter from accused witch Hannah Smith to Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland. Why would a woman acquitted of consorting with the Devil in sixteen fifty-eight be writing to the Director-General of the future colony of New York? Thankfully, she took pictures of the letter and sent them to me.
Honored Sir,
I write to you with great peril, having narrowly escaped the charge of witchcraft. It is my duty to inform you of a woman with whom I shared my confinement. Her name was Sara Bishop. Though you may judge me mad, I must attest—of all the accused I encountered, she alone wielded powers dark and unholy. Each night, she whispered promises of vengeance upon my accusers, invoking what she called the true trinity—Gorgo, Mormo, and Luna. She spoke of her imminent transformation and enticed me with the safety of her subterranean tunnels beneath the hills near Fort Orange.
In prayer, I resisted her temptations, yet she conjured visions within my mind's eye—owls and serpents speaking as men, a moon shattered like glass. She moved between the cells like smoke, tempting others unseen by the guards. Then, on the eve of Walpurgis Night, she and her three acolytes vanished, leaving behind whispers among the guards who claimed only three had escaped. Shockingly, they denied Sara Bishop's existence entirely.
I implore you to seek out this malign woman and consign her to the flames before her prophesied metamorphosis comes to fruition.
Yours Obediently
Hannah Smith
I sat for a long time looking at the letter. The implications were deeply disturbing, and deciphering old-timey cursive on 400-year-old parchment on an iPhone screen was no easy task. I wondered if I should send it to Sara but decided against it; this was the kind of thing you discussed after a quiet dinner.
And yes, Sara and I had been having a lot of quiet dinners lately.
But I had to set those thoughts aside when my Cousin Roy walked into Vincenzo’s Pawn Shop. Roy Foster Jr. was the kind of guy who could turn a simple sowing of oats into an accidental burning of bridges. Disheveled, dark-haired, and shifty-eyed, he was one of my last two living relatives and the only one I was in contact with. I don't believe in a benevolent higher power, but if there is a God who looks out for idiots and small children, Roy must keep Him very, very busy.
“Hey, Cuz!” he shouted. “When are you gonna pay me back for that ID?”
“I said next week,” I reminded him. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, but I need it sooner. I got a date tonight.”
“A date, huh?” I said, not quite believing him. I knew Roy had gotten into the habit of getting advances on his paycheck so he could buy cocaine. The thing is, his dealer and his employer were the same person. It was only a matter of time before Roy found himself working in a kind of indentured servitude. The only good thing was that his boss, Peter ‘Bootsie’ Werdigast, always made sure Roy had enough money to cover his rent.
That’s right, mobsters treat their customers better than Wells Fargo. Make of that what you will.
Roy walked up to the counter and leaned across it, resting his elbows on the DO NOT LEAN ON THE COUNTER sign. “No, really. This lady is amazing. She’s got a top-tier satellite TV package. I could watch a different ball game every night.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Mary Jean.”
“What’s she like?”
“Like 30-40,” he answered.
“No, I mean what does she look like? What is her personality?”
“Ehhh…” He shrugged. “Short hair, kinda roly-poly. A real scrapper.”
“Oh.” I had no idea what he meant by a scrapper. Did she like to get into fights or collect old metal and furniture? I thought it best not to ask.
The door alarm buzzed, and a stooped man wearing a baseball cap entered. “Welcome to Vincenzo Pawn,” I called out. “Let me know if you need anything.”
He didn’t say a word, just headed over to the landscaping equipment.
“So…” Roy forced his grinning face into my field of vision, “about that cash.”
“It has to wait until next week,” I said. “I have a big investigation going on, and random expenses keep coming up.”
Actually, the expenses were the dinners with Sara I was talking about earlier, but Roy didn’t need to know that.
“Man,” he said. “When are you gonna give up looking for ghosts and goblins?”
“There is no such thing as goblins.”
“Ever since your Grandma died, you have been on this Boogeyman kick, wasting your time looking for weird stuff. You have been getting arrested more than me these days.”
“Actually, I mostly get detained.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the fingerbanging version of getting arrested.”
I groaned. “And there’s a sentence I could have gone my life without hearing.”
“So what kind of case are you working on now? You looking for Slenderman’s home address?” he said mockingly.
Out of annoyance more than anything else, I recounted the story of the Graveyard Game to him. With every twist and turn in the tale, his disbelief grew. When I finished, he had just one question.
“You getting it on with that Sara girl?”
“What?” I asked, caught off guard.
“Not the dead one,” he clarified with a smirk, “I mean the crazy rich girl.”
“No!” I half-shouted. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“A pretty monastic one,” Roy’s smirk deepened.
“And who taught you that word?”
My phone rang. From the ringtone, I knew who it was. I grabbed it immediately, and Roy chuckled, “Guess I know who that is.”
Sara was supposed to be on a mandatory excursion with her family. I put my hand on Roy's shoulder and said, “This could be important. Please watch the front.”
“Sure, sure,” he replied, stepping behind the counter.
I took the call alone in the back room with unsorted sports equipment, guitars, and TVs. The conversation with Sara was frantic; I barely got a chance to say a greeting. She had been on her uncle’s yacht on Lake George, watching her family celebrate her aunt’s birthday but not enjoying it. Her relatives were either ignoring or condescending to her. Sara had excused herself to use the bathroom because she felt sick.
“It’s always an open bar,” she explained. “They don’t care how old the kids are. We all drink. I had too much.”
“Wait,” I said, “You’re not twenty-one?”
“I splashed water on my face,” she continued. “There was this sound like electricity. I straightened up, and when I looked in the mirror, my face wasn’t there!”
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said. “Just take a deep breath.”
Sara continued, “It was a kaleidoscope, but with no colors, just cracks and light.”
I asked, “Where are you? When can you get here?”
“It wasn’t my face, but I felt like maybe it should be my face.”
I could hear Cousin Roy raising his voice out in the store, but it might as well have been a million miles away. “Sara,” I said, “You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve almost got this all figured out.”
A total lie, I know, but what else could I do?
She said, “Sometimes I think that it was my grave all along. That’s why the statue was there. It was saving my place.”
“No,” I said. “No. No. No. This is nothing like that. It is going to be all right. I am going to make it be all right.”
The raised voice in the front of the store had become a full-on commotion—the kind that usually escalates into an incident. Rather than intervene, I stuck a finger in my ear.
“Yeah, maybe,” Sara’s voice trembled. “I need to go.”
“I understand,” my voice was trembling too. “I can fix this.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’ll talk to you later. I love you.” And I hung up the phone.
###
Feeling dizzy, I stepped into the store. The front counter was deserted, and Cousin Roy's voice echoed from the collectibles section, blending indignation with a hint of panic. I hurried over to see what was happening.
The collectibles aisle wasn't anything special—just shelf after shelf of novelty mugs, souvenirs from long-forgotten vacations, miniature statues, glass animals, paperweights, and off-brand tie-in merchandise. It was, truth be told, a tchotchke graveyard. And there was Cousin Roy in the middle of it, shouting at our only customer while waving his half-eaten meatloaf sandwich threateningly.
Then I saw the man Roy was yelling at a figure in a ratty overcoat and a ballcap jammed over a mass of curly hair. His face was painted bone white with wet black rings around his mouth and eyes. He reeked of motor oil and was smashing Precious Moments figurines on the floor, one by one. He looked up at me and grinned.
"What the Hell kind of customers do you have in this store?" Roy asked.
"He's not a customer," I said, stepping between Roy and the clown that wasn't a clown—this Bozo from Hell.
"Sara Bishop's not for you, doo-dah, doo-dah," the Bozo began to sing, his voice an approximation of Larry from the Three Stooges, his lyrics matching the cadence of "Camptown Races." He threw an angelic figure to the floor, shattering it and sending slivers of porcelain everywhere. "There's not a thing that you can do, oh, doo-dah day."
How do you stare down a nightmare? I don't know, but I tried.
"You can run all night, you can run all day," Crash! Another figurine shattered at our feet. "But you can't hide from those monsters inside when the witch queen comes out to play."
"What are you?" I whispered.
"Oh, the owls and the lizards and the big broke moon, doo-dah, doo-dah," Crash! Another figurine shattered. "The sacred moment's coming soon, oh, doo-dah day."
With exasperation in his voice, Roy said, "Fuck this guy," shoved me aside, and punched the Bozo right in the nose.
The Bozo tumbled backward into the opposite aisle, sending dozens of videotapes clattering to the floor. He went down on one knee and then stood, his greasepaint smeared but not bloodied. God, how I wished there had been just a little blood. Smirking, he turned to go. When the pawn shop door closed, another Precious Moments figure toppled from the shelf and shattered into pieces.
"Worst fuckin' mime ever," Roy said before finishing the meatloaf sandwich in his hand with three gulping bites.
It was at that moment that I realized Roy had stolen my lunch, but before I could say anything, I realized a moment later that I had told Sara I loved her.
No comments:
Post a Comment