Post by Grimm on Jul 28, 2020 15:56:11 GMT -5
And when he had departed the crossroads, pondering the things which sayest the Man in Black, lo, Jack-Of-All-Trades (to whom we have not been witness for nigh on a year) came unto him, saying, “You better get to the bookstore, Phinehas. Something’s happened.”
Without further discussion, the pair continued on the lonely road as it cut a crooked path through the corn. Stalks, green and as tall as a man, lined the way. The air redolent with corn silk and honeysuckle. And also, when Phinehas turned his head just right, the tang of diesel from a barge on the river, or creosote wafting up off the railroad tracks.
They came out of the corn into a field where they caught glimpses of the first inklings of town. The path moved from pine needles and clay to gravel, to field stones, and, finally, the edge of cobbles marking the beginning of Hangtown proper. There at the edge rose a free-standing building leaning out over the boulevard, casting a perpetual shadow (a relief on a day such as this) on anyone passing by. The two of them walked to it and Phinehas reached for the latch on the oldest door in town. He pulled it open and a draft of chilled stagnant air greeted them. Stepping into a gloom darker than the shadow at the threshold and ignoring the door to the left, Phinehas and Jack-Of-All-Trades climbed an off-kilter stairwell. In the past Phinehas had noted runes and forbidden alphabets scored into the walls, but today he paid no mind to the peeling paint and water stains. He and his accompaniment offered only cursory glances at the cast plaster faces leering at them from the ceiling.
On the landing, Phinehas saw the splintered doorframe. The sealing wax that had been applied to the edges, scattered as so much dust. The hinges, kicked into a rusted oblivion. There had been no attempt at stealth here. They stepped into the room and looked over Bad Omens Booksellers. The dark burrowed into every nook and cranny despite the rising of the sun, and so Phinehas pressed a button to his right and a single bulb popped to life above him in a flash of ozone. The filament blazed forth in a light insufficient to the cause, but once they stood there for a scattering of moments, it came into focus.
The Ransacking.
Tables and chairs overturned. Shelves tipped to the floor. Books and papers scattered here, there, and everywhere. Manifestos, grimoires, and almanacs indiscriminately defaced. Drawers yanked out of the map cabinet and left where they fell. The desk where the register sat, though, that’s where they (whoever they had been) had focused most of their attention. It had been beaten within an inch of its life. Meaning…
They had been searching for a most particular Book.
Phinehas crossed the room, the hobnails in his boots click-clacking on the wooden floorboards with more urgency than usual. He moved aside debris of tatters and shards and took a deep breath before checking [REDACTED]. He checked again. It had not been tampered with…and he would know. Exhaling, he [ANOTHER REDACTION, GEE WHIZ] to gain access, only to find a great abyss where that most particular Book should have been resting.
The abyss stared back at him.
Phinehas straightened. Blinked. The odor of dissolving horse-bone binding glue grew stronger than ever. Jack-Of-All-Trades watched him, then followed as he rushed out of the room.
~~~~~~~~~
”Ruth.”
They had marched out of town, up All Souls Hollow, and into the House of Dillinger, where Phinehas said, with a sense of zen intensity familiar to those who had watched him over the years, quite simply…
”Ruth.”
And Ruth had leaned through the doorway from the kitchen.
“What?”
For the second time today Phinehas exhaled a great breath.
“Someone wrecked the bookstore. I was afraid…”
Ruth nodded. “Oh, I know. I’m the one who sent Jack to fetch you.”
Phinehas turned to look at the messenger. Jack-Of-All-Trades smiled as he curtsied, than walked backwards out of the house and disappeared through the weeds before Phinehas had a chance to decide how he felt about the matter. Turning back, he said, “The book’s gone. There’s no way they could have found it, and I’m positive [REDACTED] hadn’t been touched.”
Ruth tilted her head and grinned.
“What, this book?”
Reaching into the folds of her patchwork skirt, she pulled out a most welcome-yet-bedraggled sight. Phinehas saw a cover of leather, cloth, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac. Tattered edges of pages clung in various shades of brown and yellow. He could smell old book dust. The age and rot and ruin recorded within.
The Book of The Black Hand.
“But…”
“Who do you think keeps up with this thing when you’re off spreading grimm tidings?”
In his relief, Phinehas perceived a strong presence of vinegar and garlic. It was one of his top ten odors. A sigh, and then, “So you knew? You know?”
Ruth said, “Fancy some tea?”
“Please,” said Phinehas.
Ruth stepped away and her brother followed her into the kitchen. She poured water from a kettle into a stoneware mug, stirred it just enough, and brought it to Phinehas at the table. He watched tea leaves swirl in their own tiny maelstrom as Ruth leaned back on the counter.
“Yes, I knew. Well, as much as anyone could really know anything reading this thing. You of all people know how much the present changes the past. How the past influences the future. Looking back through these pages, you won’t find what you’d left behind.”
Phinehas did not look up from the mug. “But it’s accurate up to now, at least. Right?”
Ruth shrugged. “I suppose so.” She pulled the book back out and flipped through the pages, not without care. “You know, in the grand scheme of things it puzzles me why such happenings are recorded in here. But I guess as a member of the Black Hand they find it necessary…yep, here it is. It’s a footnote, but never the less, Rick Majors pinned you fair and square at Return to Glory the Eleventh. Hmm, says for the first time in a one-on-one match. That’s a shame.”
“That it is.” Phinehas blew on the tea.
“The question is…well, among others at the moment…how do you follow up on that? How do you deal with Gerard Angelo this time?”
Phinehas paused as he brought the mug to his mouth for a sip.
“Gerard Angelo? How do you know about that?”
Ruth tilted her head and tapped a finger on the Book of the Black Hand.
“Oh, right. Well…I reckon I’ll target any one of his previous injuries. He loves it when I do that.”
A beat.
“All things being equal…does it say?”
“Oh, now, Phinehas, we both know you don’t want any spoilers. Besides,” and Ruth lifted the book and leafed through the pages.
“I know. Nothing’s certain yet. It is an interesting take, though. It’s not often Gerry and I meet with nothing on the line. It must only be all the more frustrating for him.”
“Do tell.”
Phinehas managed to take a long draught of the tea.
“Just look at his little meltdown at the pay per view. He took it as a personal insult to be booked against Razor Blade. And in an attempt to make himself feel better, he fell back on how he’s here to make history…to build a better future…to remake the federation in his image, even.”
So Gerard Angelo recreated PCW in his own image, in the image of Gerard recreated he it; Pure Class Wrestling recreated he the company. (Authorized King James Version, 1611)
“Whatever that means,” said Ruth.
“Exactly. It’s become a trope regurgitated by someone every time the cameras come on. Granted, it’s not just him, but even so…they’re the only ones insisting that PCW’s past is not relevant. That the future is where it’ll all be sifted out on the threshing room floor. While all the time, there’s only the here and now. While he’s despondent over one booking decision, growing ever more depressed and anxious over who else if fighting for what else, he allows his victories in the Deadly Rumbles, the IITs, the Icey Awards, to be overshadowed by some vague disappointment and regret. That has become Gerard Angelo’s here and now.”
Phinehas stopped to consider his own successes.
The World Championship (times seven!).
The International Championship (times four!).
That gruesome Tag Title run with his beloved brother.
The Deadly Rumble (times two!).
The Icemann Invitational Tournament (that one time!).
Even the Abomination of Desolation was not immune from the lure of achievement. But even so…
He shook his head and shrugged as Ruth stood, patient as ever.
“I can’t speak to his other days in other federations. ESW, CWA, GWO, ULW, CDC, ABC, Do-Re-Mi…for I only know this one. The only one still standing, if I was a betting man. Gerard has spent his entire time here wandering a labyrinth. Thinking about how one of these days, he'll finally wind his way through and reach whatever position it is he so craves, if only the rest of us would allow it, and how most excellent it will be. Imagining that day may keep him going, but he’s never going to reach it. He just keeps using some ill-defined future to escape the present. And if he continues to refuse to deal with that present – this present – well, then, this ‘nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms’ narrative will move closer to becoming reality."
Or even worse, he’ll come face to face with…
*shrug*
”Meh.”
*gasp*
The dreaded indifference.
A scratch of the chin under the GingerBeard of Doom.
“Besides…the question remains…did The Hollywood Hero…
…The Living Legend…
…The Man Without Peer…
…even follow through with the insistence on making Razor Blade relevant?”
Phinehas turned up the mug and finished his tea. Setting it down, he squinted and looked at the dregs congregating at the bottom. Hmph. They told him nothing.
“Not so much.”
Ruth turned to a page and marked it with her thumb.
“Are you about through?”
The Destroyer At Noonday watched the light dapple across the table. True, it remained July, but still…the sun sat lower than it had. This was a quality of light particular to summer in Hangtown. The shadows moved differently. They arrived earlier, and lingered longer. The heat would argue otherwise, but summer was working its way out. The Dimming was on the move.
“Yes,” said Phinehas.
“Good. Because I believe this is what your old friend at the crossroads may been talking about.”
Ruth opened the book and handed it to Phinehas. He took it and read the passage on which her finger rested. The Hangtown Horror’s eyes…those eyes…shifted. The pale blues from those most frigid of glaciers melted, leaving behind evidence of another age. A hidden stratum darkened by ash from ancient peat fires, from bone fires, from volcanic eruptions. Those two orbs of dark ice narrowed.
“Bastards."
Without further discussion, the pair continued on the lonely road as it cut a crooked path through the corn. Stalks, green and as tall as a man, lined the way. The air redolent with corn silk and honeysuckle. And also, when Phinehas turned his head just right, the tang of diesel from a barge on the river, or creosote wafting up off the railroad tracks.
They came out of the corn into a field where they caught glimpses of the first inklings of town. The path moved from pine needles and clay to gravel, to field stones, and, finally, the edge of cobbles marking the beginning of Hangtown proper. There at the edge rose a free-standing building leaning out over the boulevard, casting a perpetual shadow (a relief on a day such as this) on anyone passing by. The two of them walked to it and Phinehas reached for the latch on the oldest door in town. He pulled it open and a draft of chilled stagnant air greeted them. Stepping into a gloom darker than the shadow at the threshold and ignoring the door to the left, Phinehas and Jack-Of-All-Trades climbed an off-kilter stairwell. In the past Phinehas had noted runes and forbidden alphabets scored into the walls, but today he paid no mind to the peeling paint and water stains. He and his accompaniment offered only cursory glances at the cast plaster faces leering at them from the ceiling.
On the landing, Phinehas saw the splintered doorframe. The sealing wax that had been applied to the edges, scattered as so much dust. The hinges, kicked into a rusted oblivion. There had been no attempt at stealth here. They stepped into the room and looked over Bad Omens Booksellers. The dark burrowed into every nook and cranny despite the rising of the sun, and so Phinehas pressed a button to his right and a single bulb popped to life above him in a flash of ozone. The filament blazed forth in a light insufficient to the cause, but once they stood there for a scattering of moments, it came into focus.
The Ransacking.
Tables and chairs overturned. Shelves tipped to the floor. Books and papers scattered here, there, and everywhere. Manifestos, grimoires, and almanacs indiscriminately defaced. Drawers yanked out of the map cabinet and left where they fell. The desk where the register sat, though, that’s where they (whoever they had been) had focused most of their attention. It had been beaten within an inch of its life. Meaning…
They had been searching for a most particular Book.
Phinehas crossed the room, the hobnails in his boots click-clacking on the wooden floorboards with more urgency than usual. He moved aside debris of tatters and shards and took a deep breath before checking [REDACTED]. He checked again. It had not been tampered with…and he would know. Exhaling, he [ANOTHER REDACTION, GEE WHIZ] to gain access, only to find a great abyss where that most particular Book should have been resting.
The abyss stared back at him.
Phinehas straightened. Blinked. The odor of dissolving horse-bone binding glue grew stronger than ever. Jack-Of-All-Trades watched him, then followed as he rushed out of the room.
~~~~~~~~~
”Ruth.”
They had marched out of town, up All Souls Hollow, and into the House of Dillinger, where Phinehas said, with a sense of zen intensity familiar to those who had watched him over the years, quite simply…
”Ruth.”
And Ruth had leaned through the doorway from the kitchen.
“What?”
For the second time today Phinehas exhaled a great breath.
“Someone wrecked the bookstore. I was afraid…”
Ruth nodded. “Oh, I know. I’m the one who sent Jack to fetch you.”
Phinehas turned to look at the messenger. Jack-Of-All-Trades smiled as he curtsied, than walked backwards out of the house and disappeared through the weeds before Phinehas had a chance to decide how he felt about the matter. Turning back, he said, “The book’s gone. There’s no way they could have found it, and I’m positive [REDACTED] hadn’t been touched.”
Ruth tilted her head and grinned.
“What, this book?”
Reaching into the folds of her patchwork skirt, she pulled out a most welcome-yet-bedraggled sight. Phinehas saw a cover of leather, cloth, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac. Tattered edges of pages clung in various shades of brown and yellow. He could smell old book dust. The age and rot and ruin recorded within.
The Book of The Black Hand.
“But…”
“Who do you think keeps up with this thing when you’re off spreading grimm tidings?”
In his relief, Phinehas perceived a strong presence of vinegar and garlic. It was one of his top ten odors. A sigh, and then, “So you knew? You know?”
Ruth said, “Fancy some tea?”
“Please,” said Phinehas.
Ruth stepped away and her brother followed her into the kitchen. She poured water from a kettle into a stoneware mug, stirred it just enough, and brought it to Phinehas at the table. He watched tea leaves swirl in their own tiny maelstrom as Ruth leaned back on the counter.
“Yes, I knew. Well, as much as anyone could really know anything reading this thing. You of all people know how much the present changes the past. How the past influences the future. Looking back through these pages, you won’t find what you’d left behind.”
Phinehas did not look up from the mug. “But it’s accurate up to now, at least. Right?”
Ruth shrugged. “I suppose so.” She pulled the book back out and flipped through the pages, not without care. “You know, in the grand scheme of things it puzzles me why such happenings are recorded in here. But I guess as a member of the Black Hand they find it necessary…yep, here it is. It’s a footnote, but never the less, Rick Majors pinned you fair and square at Return to Glory the Eleventh. Hmm, says for the first time in a one-on-one match. That’s a shame.”
“That it is.” Phinehas blew on the tea.
“The question is…well, among others at the moment…how do you follow up on that? How do you deal with Gerard Angelo this time?”
Phinehas paused as he brought the mug to his mouth for a sip.
“Gerard Angelo? How do you know about that?”
Ruth tilted her head and tapped a finger on the Book of the Black Hand.
“Oh, right. Well…I reckon I’ll target any one of his previous injuries. He loves it when I do that.”
A beat.
“All things being equal…does it say?”
“Oh, now, Phinehas, we both know you don’t want any spoilers. Besides,” and Ruth lifted the book and leafed through the pages.
“I know. Nothing’s certain yet. It is an interesting take, though. It’s not often Gerry and I meet with nothing on the line. It must only be all the more frustrating for him.”
“Do tell.”
Phinehas managed to take a long draught of the tea.
“Just look at his little meltdown at the pay per view. He took it as a personal insult to be booked against Razor Blade. And in an attempt to make himself feel better, he fell back on how he’s here to make history…to build a better future…to remake the federation in his image, even.”
So Gerard Angelo recreated PCW in his own image, in the image of Gerard recreated he it; Pure Class Wrestling recreated he the company. (Authorized King James Version, 1611)
“Whatever that means,” said Ruth.
“Exactly. It’s become a trope regurgitated by someone every time the cameras come on. Granted, it’s not just him, but even so…they’re the only ones insisting that PCW’s past is not relevant. That the future is where it’ll all be sifted out on the threshing room floor. While all the time, there’s only the here and now. While he’s despondent over one booking decision, growing ever more depressed and anxious over who else if fighting for what else, he allows his victories in the Deadly Rumbles, the IITs, the Icey Awards, to be overshadowed by some vague disappointment and regret. That has become Gerard Angelo’s here and now.”
Phinehas stopped to consider his own successes.
The World Championship (times seven!).
The International Championship (times four!).
That gruesome Tag Title run with his beloved brother.
The Deadly Rumble (times two!).
The Icemann Invitational Tournament (that one time!).
Even the Abomination of Desolation was not immune from the lure of achievement. But even so…
He shook his head and shrugged as Ruth stood, patient as ever.
“I can’t speak to his other days in other federations. ESW, CWA, GWO, ULW, CDC, ABC, Do-Re-Mi…for I only know this one. The only one still standing, if I was a betting man. Gerard has spent his entire time here wandering a labyrinth. Thinking about how one of these days, he'll finally wind his way through and reach whatever position it is he so craves, if only the rest of us would allow it, and how most excellent it will be. Imagining that day may keep him going, but he’s never going to reach it. He just keeps using some ill-defined future to escape the present. And if he continues to refuse to deal with that present – this present – well, then, this ‘nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms’ narrative will move closer to becoming reality."
Or even worse, he’ll come face to face with…
*shrug*
”Meh.”
*gasp*
The dreaded indifference.
A scratch of the chin under the GingerBeard of Doom.
“Besides…the question remains…did The Hollywood Hero…
…The Living Legend…
…The Man Without Peer…
…even follow through with the insistence on making Razor Blade relevant?”
Phinehas turned up the mug and finished his tea. Setting it down, he squinted and looked at the dregs congregating at the bottom. Hmph. They told him nothing.
“Not so much.”
Ruth turned to a page and marked it with her thumb.
“Are you about through?”
The Destroyer At Noonday watched the light dapple across the table. True, it remained July, but still…the sun sat lower than it had. This was a quality of light particular to summer in Hangtown. The shadows moved differently. They arrived earlier, and lingered longer. The heat would argue otherwise, but summer was working its way out. The Dimming was on the move.
“Yes,” said Phinehas.
“Good. Because I believe this is what your old friend at the crossroads may been talking about.”
Ruth opened the book and handed it to Phinehas. He took it and read the passage on which her finger rested. The Hangtown Horror’s eyes…those eyes…shifted. The pale blues from those most frigid of glaciers melted, leaving behind evidence of another age. A hidden stratum darkened by ash from ancient peat fires, from bone fires, from volcanic eruptions. Those two orbs of dark ice narrowed.
“Bastards."
