Conjurer's Oath

By Malachi Stone

What if all those spooky stories you heard as a child were literally true? A teen on the verge of adulthood unlocks the secret of time travel. Thirteen-year-old Dennis Krause embarks on his adolescence living in the small town of Hades, Illinois, a steaming David Lynchesque slice of middle Americana in the early sixties. No one pays any particular heed when a Chicago psychic warns of a huge explosion that will soon destroy Hades. After the prophesied explosion strikes during a weekend family outing, Dennis and his family join a weird religious commune run by a radio evangelist--a charlatan calling himself Possle Strong. Dennis and an enigmatic young girl known only as Rahab discover that Strong has strange conjuring powers, including time travel and second sight. Strong pays special attention to the two teens, teaching them private lessons in what he calls "catty chism" after first swearing them to secrecy. When they discover Strong's plans to fake the resurrection of his dead wife, Dennis, his mother, his sister and Rahab flee the commune and take to the road, where, pursued by Strong and his confederates, they encounter sudden violence, spiritual visitation and redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Malachi Stone
• Release date: Jan 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215331286

Malachi Stone

Marlon Brando on Larry King Live quoted an unknown Louisiana woman who said, "Anybody who shows his face in public is an ass." (1) Mindful of those wise words, I created the pseudonym Malachi Stone to author my novels and short stories because, as a practicing attorney in a conservative community, my natural inclination was and still is to avoid notoriety and controversy wherever and whenever possible. That being said, my secret identity affords me a perverse Zorro-like gratification. I've been writing for more than twenty years. For a three-year period I was represented by a fine literary agent (2) in Manhattan, who tried valiantly but without success to place my novels in traditional publishing. Allegedly, objections were raised to negative protagonists and explicit sex. While I am convinced those objections are groundless, I am weary of arguing the point. I'll simply let you, the readers, decide for yourselves. I have garnered many good reviews over the years. See, for example, Elizabeth White (3). Interviews of me may be found on the web, for instance, Steve Weddle, Fiona "McDroll" Johnson, Paul D. Brazill and Ian Ayres (4-7). Please feel free to post reviews of my work, good, bad, or indifferent. Only be sure to remember that most of my books, especially the later ones, are self-published without the dubious benefit of copyediting, content editing or censorship of any kind. So if you post reviews carping about bad language or finding flaws in punctuation, paragraphing or font, I frankly don't care. I'm putting these books out there for the sole reason I wrote them in the first place - to be enjoyed by readers. As my law practice has become more active recently, I have taken a sabbatical from writing but hope to resume soon. My personal and private email is: [e-mail]. I'd be delighted to hear from you!1. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/02/lklw.00.html2. http://variety.com/exec/stacia-decker/3. http://www.elizabethawhite.com/tag/malachi-stone/4. http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2011/04/20/conversations-with-the-bookless-malachi-stone/5. http://imeanttoreadthat.blogspot.com/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html#!/2012/01/american-banshee-by-malachi-stone.html6. https://pauldbrazill.com/2012/01/19/short-sharp-interview-malachi-stone/7. http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2010/09/dancing-with-myself-malachi-stone.html

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CONJURER’S OATH

A novel by Malachi Stone

Tenth Edition

©2023 by Malachi Stone

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 as amended, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

All the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All the characters in this book are over eighteen years of age.

If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contact with the author of this work at: [e-mail].

Cover photo © Anna Yakimova

Author image © goodluz

To my darling wife Maria. All good things come to those who pray with faith.

Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God calls back the past.

Ecclesiastes 3:15

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE - POINTING OUT THE POPE IN HADES

CHAPTER TWO - ENTRY OF THE GLADIATORS

CHAPTER THREE - HEISTESED BY HIS OWN PEEDER

CHAPTER FOUR - ALL EXCITED OVER HALLOWEEN

CHAPTER FIVE - MISTER CARPENTER

CHAPTER SIX - GOAT MEN

CHAPTER SEVEN - EVERY BIT AS GOOD FOR THE GUY

CHAPTER EIGHT - WEEDING OUT THE QUEERS

CHAPTER NINE - THE BOY

CHAPTER TEN – BUD

CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

CHAPTER TWELVE - BAD PEOPLE’S CLUB

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - FACE FIRST IN SWISS CHARD

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - ONE CRAB LOUSE ON A MOTORCYCLE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - LOOKING BACK

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - THE TWINNIES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – CLAUDIA

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE CATTY CORNER CAFÉ

CHAPTER NINETEEN - TERMITE TRAILS THROUGH TIME

CHAPTER TWENTY – WHIP INFLATION NOW

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CONNECT WITH ME ONLINE

CHAPTER ONE

POINTING OUT THE POPE IN HADES

The next color slide was the Pope; one of those store-bought ones Veneta Sharples had picked up at a cute shop off St. Peter’s Square run by the funniest little Eyetalian feller you’d ever want to meet.

See that look in his eyes? Charlie Sharples sang out from the back, more than loud enough to be heard over the projector fan. He’s saying ‘you’re evil, all of ya.’ Charlie Sharples was a funny guy, a plumber out at the factory. His voice always sounded like he knew a dirty secret and might be persuaded to tell it; the kind of leering voice you’d expect a man to have if he was trying hard to talk some woman out of her pants. Charlie was the sort of guy you just knew had a great big collection of nudie pics and Hot Nuts party records stashed away somewhere.

Seemingly oblivious to the interruption, Veneta resumed her dingdong narration. Now on this next one here I must have shook the camera, as you shall see. Charlie? The carousel clicked and jumped, replacing the color-balanced closeup of the pope with a washed-out and smeared wide shot of an enormous stone edifice. And if you look kinda hard you’ll see the Holy Father himself leaning out his palace window and giving us his blessing. That’s him there in the white.

I can’t see a damn thing, Louie Cravat groused.

Charlie, honey, whyntcha use the zoom on it, so everyone can see. There was a mosquito whine from a tiny motor. The image blurred, then refocused, narrowing down to a few windows in the facade.

Zoom in even closer than that, Charlie, Veneta whined, louder than the zoom motor.

That’s all the zoom the old girl’s got in her, Charlie said.

Where the hell’s he at? Louie persisted.

Veneta clamped her mouth shut and hissed air through her nostrils from irritation at having to stand and point out Pope Paul VI to a man who wasn’t a blood relative of hers or even a Catholic; a man wearing pleated pants shiny in the seat, whose beer belly strained and ballooned against the buttons of a robin’s egg blue shirt with a tiny horse head insignia sewn onto the pocket; a man who after two beers could be counted on to start singing Now is the Hour in a bawling baritone at the top of his lungs at picnics, and who always made fun of her weight. She lumbered through the sparkling dust motes that swarmed like lightning bugs in the projector’s headlight glare. Blocking the beaded screen, she squinted directly into the white light like someone annoyed at being awakened. Distorted images reflected off her red horn-rimmed glasses and her mammoth low-slung breasts.

Hold still, I think I see him now, Louie crowed, in what they call that Cinerama like they got up there in Chicago.

A nurse for going on thirty years and a stout woman for even longer, Veneta had learned to ignore the jibes of rude men even as she acquired that professional tolerance to the bedpan stenches, the soiled bed linens, and all the other daily affronts to the senses that a nurse’s life affords. Jaded to disgust, and no stranger to revulsion, she was more than a match for any taunts Louie Cravat could dish out. She and her Charlie both worked in shit one way or another, Veneta always said, her being a nurse and him being a plumber. With gloved fingers, she’d even dug shit out of Ma when the situation demanded and never once complained, that time Ma’d been laid up in the hospital bed in the front room after she’d slipped on the ice and broken her hip, then got impacted from inactivity and all the pain meds. Whenever Ma squawked Veneta told her it wasn’t the first time she’d dug shit out of a patient and it wasn’t likely to be the last.

Charlie, honey, grab me that poker over there by the fireplace.

Temporarily leaving his post at the projector, Charlie obliged. When Charlie handed over the poker to Veneta, Louie cringed with pretended wariness, as though fearful she might start thrashing him with it. Instead, Veneta stepped aside and pointed with the business end of the poker at a blurred white speck in one corner window. See? Here’s the Holy Father himself, right here. Oh, you should of heard that crowd when he popped up at his window. Charlie?

Another mechanical click. Another mass-produced commercial slide for the tourists. Now that funny pointy thing you see is what they call the obelisk. They say it marks the very spot where Saint Peter was martyred. They say he was crucified hanging upside down. They say it’s the only one of these obelisks in Rome that’s still standing; they say all the rest of them tipped over for one reason or other. Isn’t that something? They say—

Who’s this ‘they’ you keep talking about? Louie needled her. Louie, a nominal protestant who hadn’t been inside a church since before the Great Depression, nevertheless relished debating any Catholic—even a stout Catholic woman with a fireplace poker in her hand—about questions of faith, especially holy tradition.

It’s the only one still upright; all the rest of them tipped over. It kinda makes you think.

Whyntcha sit down, hon, Charlie suggested. Take a load off.

The obelisk in St. Peter’s Square spilled over Veneta like a moving reflection in troubled waters, its base even lighting up her shoes. Veneta always wore the big white nurse’s shoes with the thick white non-slip soles over the white hose even when she was off duty. If anyone ever asked her about the shoes, she would explain how she was always on call day or night at the hospital and how there might not be enough time to change in case of an emergency, and besides, the shoes were really quite comfortable.

In a way, the shoes had come to define Veneta; she had worn shoes like these ever since her capping ceremony as a first-year nursing student in Peoria before Pearl Harbor and her ensuing stint as a navy nurse in World War II. That was where she’d first met her Charlie, in the Pacific. The white of the shoes was the color of brides, of purity, and of angels of mercy. Veneta kept her nurse shoes white as the driven snow, white as the knuckles of the patients to whom she gave hypos or from whom she drew blood. The white rubber corrugated soles grounded her in a world of service. Orthopedic nurse shoes the color of a well-scrubbed toilet were her twin badges of homely compassion; the footwear of a tireless worker of countless corporal acts of mercy. Only Charlie knew whether she wore them to bed at night, and he wasn’t telling. All he would let on was that he had a thing for nurses: Nursie nursie, I’m a’gettin' worsie, he’d always say.

Veneta sighed and slumped through the broad beam of light once more, heading back to her seat in one of the kitchen chairs they’d dragged into the living room and set up along with the dining room chairs, the folding chairs from the card table and the funeral home chairs to accommodate the whole Neighborhood Gang. As soon as Veneta turned away from the screen, Charlie deftly slipped in another slide: a vintage sun-worshipper shot of a woman wearing nothing besides an Andrews Sisters henna coiffure and a red slash of lipstick, proudly baring her mango breasts and dark mohair bush to Old Sol and the whole Neighborhood Gang.

All the women started reacting as if the Whore of Babylon had popped up uninvited at a St. Roch’s spaghetti supper, clucking deprecations like oh, that nasty woman, the crust on some people, and no more decency than an alley cat. Veneta’s live-in mother Ida Mason, known to all as Ma, whooped, Ooh, I could just scratch her eyes out! Ma had no upper lip to speak of, as though it had rolled up under her nose like a runaway window shade. Her chin, pointy and with two long hairs like a Halloween witch’s, worked and worked all the time like she was chewing gum, even though she wasn’t.

Ma had lost her right leg below the knee. She wore a peg leg to get around. It was made out of polished walnut, like the leg of a table, as if Ma had begun a metamorphosis into a piece of furniture. The peg leg used to scare Dennis when he was little, especially when its black rubber tip squeaked against the floor. It reminded him of that Captain Ahab guy in Moby Dick, but no great white whale had claimed Ma’s leg; it had been a thirty-nine Packard. Seeing what was coming, Ma had braced her right foot against the floorboard. The crash shattered the bones in her leg beyond the skills of any country doctor to mend them. Ma took her case to court, but juries back then didn’t think much of people who sued for money, so in the end all Ma wound up with was the peg leg. Now the doctors out at the hospital were telling Veneta they could put a plastic leg on Ma that looked just like the real thing. The trouble was, it would take an operation, and what with her sugar diabetes and all, Ma didn’t want to mess with it. The peg leg suited her just fine, she always said.

Veneta was scared to death of getting the sugar diabetes like Ma had. A person could lose their leg just from the sugar diabetes. Veneta liked to tell about old Chuch Bierwerth—old Chuch, not young Chuch—and how he’d wound up losing his leg from the sugar diabetes, because the doctor told him he better not eat pie, but old Chuch liked pie so much he wouldn’t listen to the doctor. Old Chuch went ahead and helped himself to pie any time he wanted, and that was all it took. Old Chuch ate pie and ate pie until he ate his own leg off in the process, and all because he couldn’t leave the pie alone.

Now that’s what I call new diddity, Louie leered. That gal sure has herself a purty hairdo, and she ain’t the least bit shy about showing it off, neither.

Perhaps because she had been raised on a farm and had never set foot in finishing school, Veneta’s invariable manner of sitting down was to collapse, her ass cheeks hitting the chair like two enormous sacks of feed heaved from the haymow. She didn’t notice the substituted slide until after she had plopped down. The outrage of it brought her to her feet again like she’d been goosed. She tried to block the screen, shaking a reproving index finger at the projector and at her husband the puckish projectionist. The breasts and thatch hair of the woman in the slide superimposed on Veneta like an anatomical overlay in a nursing text.

Charlie Sharples! Take that filthy slide out of there and quit embarrassing the both of us! In case you’ve forgotten, this is our trip to Rome, not some Moose lodge smoker!

Now how’d that one get in there, do you suppose? Charlie mused playfully.

Veneta put her hands on her hips and shook her head. What if Donny had come out of his room right now? Wouldn’t he of gotten himself an eyeful?

Might have made a man out of him at that, Louie piped up.

Donny Sharples was a galumphing cow of a boy in a crew cut and hers and his eyeglasses identical to his mother’s. Veneta always referred to him as her change of life baby. Donny had spent the better part of the evening shut up in his bedroom cutting out pictures from old issues of the Saturday Evening Post with his battery-powered scissies, as he called them, for pasting into his scrapbook with glue his mother made for him out of water and flour. From time to time the electric-shaver buzzing from his labors could be heard over Veneta’s interminable travelogue.

Well, what about Dennis, then? You think Dennis ought to be seeing something as smutty as nudity? He’s only twelve, for heaven’s sake—the same age as Donny. Charlie! Are you listening to me? Take that dirty slide out of there this instant or I will!

Dennis Cross, actually age thirteen at his birthday last July, now sitting flanked by his parents Phil and Jean, cringed at the mention of his name. It was Dennis who had been responsible for Donny acquiring the rounded-tip safety scissies. Donny’s first pair had been real plug-in electric scissors with crimping blades and a green metal handle that looked like an alligator. The first scissies committed scissie suicide when Dennis had tried using them to cut through their cloth-insulated cord, causing a short. Sparks flew, Donny cried and Veneta blew a fuse. She gave Donny some Bosco; that always did the trick for quieting him down.

Dennis couldn’t take his eyes off the lewd image of the woman now playing over Veneta like a gauze tapestry stirred by a teasing wind. His jaws began to tighten and ache from a new and strange feeling akin to an undiscovered bashfulness.

With a tiny clink, the room went dark. There went the bulb, Charlie announced.

Well, first you need to take that smutty slide out of there and throw it in the trash where it belongs, and then I guess you better go and fetch the spare bulb off the top shelf in the hall closet if we’re ever going to finish the program, Veneta ordered.

"That was the spare," Charlie said.

Oh, Charlie!

I’m serious; that was it. Show’s over, folks.

Audible sighs of grateful relief swept through the crowd as the lights came up; no one cared whether Charlie might have been lying through his teeth about the bulb. The women fanned themselves from the heat of the summer evening with paper fans advertising one of Hades—pronounced Haids—Illinois’s two funeral homes: Barnum’s, which had also provided five folding chairs that made up the front row, the chair backs stenciled Barnum’s Funeral Home in black. Veneta could call upon Barnum’s for favors because she set hair as a sideline, and Barnum’s used her now and then because she didn’t mind setting the hair of the dead. So did Bailey’s, Hades’ other funeral home.

As soon as he’d come in and seen the chairs set up in the living room that evening, Louie had wondered aloud, How much you figger they get for them false teeth they sell at the undertaker’s? Now he said, Time to take a piss pot break.

Take one for me too, Charlie said.

All the women made it a point to ignore Louie when he offered, Any a you girls wanna come in and hold it for me? Huh? Anybody?

Veneta’s live customers came to her beauty shop for their hair appointments. Veneta’s shop was set up in the addition to the house. Facing the street there was a big plate glass picture window with gild letters that said Veneta’s Beauty Shop. Veneta’s Beauty Shop was off-limits to Donny and Dennis on those times when Dennis came over, ever since the day Dennis showed Donny how much fun it could be to sit in the barber chair and spin. Donny, who never knew when to quit, spun and spun in Veneta’s barber chair until he got so dizzy he threw up all over himself. The smell mixed well with the stench of ammonia from the permanents.

Donny took both tap dancing and Grecian dancing lessons downtown at Papa Gus’s Terpsichorean, the more expensive of Hades’ two dance schools, located one flight up from Worrell Drugs. The other—Spitz’s Ballet Academy—was across town in a converted barn behind Alice Spitz’s house in the third ward, and offered only tap and ballet. At Papa Gus’s, you had to take the Grecian dancing in order to get the tap.

Dennis would ride bikes to Worrell Drug now and then with his best friend Wayno Montgomery and hang around after school. People said Dennis and Wayno were always together; some took them for twins, but not the identical kind. They even shared the same birthday. Their mothers had been roommates in the maternity ward and stayed friends ever since.

Dennis and Wayno ran errands now and then for Old Man Worrell, who in turn let them squat Indian-style behind the magazine rack and read comic books as much as they wanted. Mad magazine was the best, but Cracked and Sick were okay, too. Old Man Worrell let them read for free all afternoon sometimes, as long as they kept their sweaty mitts off the men’s slick-paper magazines along the top shelf, at least when there were ladies present. The men’s pulp-paper magazines weren’t all that dirty, not like the slick. The pulp ones had women showing their breasts, in pictures airbrushed to remove every trace of nipple, the expressions on the women’s faces like those of housewives in magazine ads proudly displaying a holiday roast on a serving tray. Until the first time Wayno showed him a slick-paper magazine foldout one afternoon when Old Man Worrell was in back mixing up a prescription for a waiting customer, Dennis had always assumed women’s breasts looked the same as the ones on his sister’s Tammy doll: fleshy protuberances devoid of nipples, having no function except to excite and preoccupy married men like Charlie Sharples and dirty old bachelors like Louie Cravat.

That was two years ago. Every weekday afternoon since then, the thunder of tap dancing feet pounded against the hardwood floors of Papa Gus’s and boomed down through the high molded ceilings of Worrell’s, keeping time in an unsteady rhythm that sounded like a kid shaking his marble collection in a cigar box.

It was at Worrell’s that Dennis first learned what rubbers looked like, and how in the old days it used to be illegal to sell them right out in the open. Dennis wasn’t quite sure yet how rubbers worked or why people wore them. It had something to do with VD. Dennis wasn’t entirely sure what VD was, either.

On the back counter of Worrell Drugs stood a huge standing show globe in a filigreed brace. The globe was kept filled with ruby liquor. Above its silver spigot a label etched in the glass read, Terpin Hydrate and Codeine Cough Elixir. Beside the show globe there rested a carved oak countertop nameplate that said simply, Q. Howard Worrell, R. Ph. Whenever anyone asked him what R. Ph. meant, Old Man Worrell would always try and give them a funny answer, like remember Pearl Harbor. For the men he’d usually give them a dirty answer, maybe rubbers prevent headaches or rear penetration hound. Old Man Worrell had a million of them.

Old Man Worrell mixed his medicines behind the back counter. He kept his sundries hidden behind the back counter, too, because even though rubbers were legal now, Old Man Worrell subscribed to the philosophy that you couldn’t be too careful; the customer had to go up and ask for them.

You’d never believe how much screwing around these high school kids do, he confided to Dennis and Wayno one lazy afternoon. And not just your high school kids, either. Time was there used to be this little greasy-spoon café in that old two-story brick building settin’ catty-corner to the train depot. Matter of fact, that’s how it got its name: folks took to calling it the Catty Corner Café.

So? Wayno and Dennis both knew the boarded-up building with the tattered sallow window shades on the second floor.

In the back room they had them some overstuffed chairs and such for special customers, and a darky to fetch everybody drinks. Never mind your whiskey and tap beer: fancy drinks, like your mint julops. Feller played pretty good pye-anny, too, as I recollect. See, the thing is, that there café had a second story to it.

What was up on the second story? Wayno asked.

Well, that’s another story, Old Man Worrell laughed.

C’mon, tell us. What was up on the second story?

Well by God I’ll tell you what was up on the second story, since you got my arm twisted behind my back. Monkey business, is what.

Yeah? What kind of monkey business? Wayno leered, glancing aside at Dennis.

Oh, nothing special, Old Man Worrell teased, fingers twiddling, thumbs hooked under his volunteer fireman’s galluses. Just a little old two-bed flatback whorehouse, is all.

The boys’ eyes widened. Wayno said, Man oh man. His explosion of freckles reddened until they looked like paint. Then Wayno began asking Old Man Worrell pretty much everything Dennis wanted to ask.

How much did they charge?

Five bucks a throw. And that’s when a dollar was a dollar. It was a lotta money back in them days. It still sounded like a lot of money to Dennis.

What all did they have to do for it?

Whaddaya think they do in a whorehouse? Dennis thought they probably got all naked and pranced around, and then maybe let the man feel them up or something. He wished Wayno would ask.

Wayne did. So you mean the girls would let the customers go ahead and lay with them for five bucks?

Ain’t that what goes on in a whorehouse? Old Man Worrell asked rhetorically. That darky could play him some pretty good whorehouse pye-anny, he had a mind to.

Did you ever go upstairs there and pay them to, you know, do it?

I’ll never tell, Old Man Worrell winked. Ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.

There were girls that’d really let you do that kind of thing to ‘em? They musta been crazy.

Well, thanks for the compliment. Course there was girls. Wouldn’t of been much of a whorehouse without no girls, now would it?

Regular girls from around here? They musta been crazy.

On loan from your Peoria cathouses mostly, Old Man Worrell said. They’d rotate every month or two, to keep it interesting. Some of them were cute little things. Passed around a lot of VD back then: syph, clap, what have you, and that was back in the days before penicillin.

Did you ever catch the clap off one of them, Mr. Worrell?

Like I said, ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.

Just what is the clap, anyway?

Climb on up the stepladder and fetch me that wooden box from the top shelf of the apothecary cabinet there, beside the camera counter. Right there, next to that box a’ trusses. Worrell’s offered a wide selection of trusses from three ninety-five on up. You want to know what the clap is, I’ll show you the kind of thing we used to have to use for it.

Wayno climbed down and handed Old Man Worrell a wooden box that looked like it might contain dueling pistols. Old Man Worrell slid a tiny hook from an eye, opened the lid of the box and showed Dennis and Wayno the antique treasures that lay inside on a contoured bed of blood-red velvet: a set of slender silvery probes. Old Man Worrell explained how they were for opening the bore of a penis blocked by the clap.

I always keep these here on hand for my special friends, Old Man Worrell said, his eyes gleaming like Torquemada, "and I only show them to special