The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (21 page)

Michael looked from Paul to Martin. Some part of his soul was trying to wake him from this spell he was under, urging him to run as fast as he could. But a new, different voice was calling even louder, “
Stay
…(what happened to the girl?).
Learn
…(who
are
these people?).
Listen!”

Michael listened.

“The sobbing girl was the least of Martin’s worries,” Paul continued. “Firth’s boy was circling him to the left, not the best direction to approach him from…and even though he’s not the best knife man, he had a long, sharp dirk in his boot and…”

FWHHHIIIISHHHH
Martin threw his knife down the length of the table, straight at Michael’s heart. Martin had moved so quickly, flipping his grip from the haft to the blade and flinging it in one single sidearm motion, that Michael wasn’t sure what happened until he saw the glint of steel.

“Fuck!” he yelled, the knife flying at him so quickly he only had time to scream in horror. There was no chance at all to move out of the way. He just wasn’t fast enough.

Paul was. He grabbed the knife in midair, only a few feet from Michael’s chest. He grabbed it by the blade. Michael clutched his chest, coughing with terror and relief, his eyes glued to Paul and the knife.

Paul wasn’t moving. He looked like he was frozen in time and space, his smile unwavering, his arm stock still, his hand tightly gripping the blade. If it weren’t for the blood dripping between his fingers onto the plywood table, Michael would have thought he was staring at a photograph or maybe a hologram. He looked unreal. But what was even more inconceivable than the sight of him, still motionless after seemingly endless seconds had passed, even more astonishing than the act of snatching a knife in midair that was traveling at the speed of a flying hockey puck…was the unimaginable yet undeniable fact that Paul
never changed his
position
as he stuck out his arm to grab the rocketing knife. He didn’t turn to look at Martin, or the knife. Paul was looking at
him
the whole time.

Michael grabbed his chest as the truth of it sank into his brain, so overwhelmed by the patently impossible feat that it took him another few seconds to tear his eyes away from Paul and gasp at Martin with rage and terror, “Why the fuck did you do that?”

Martin rose silently from his chair.

“Nice throw, but I think you’ve lost a bit off your fastball over the years,” Paul drawled, finally moving, but only enough to drop the knife onto the table, the blade sticking into the splintery wood with a loud
thuck
as it wobbled back and forth.

“I guess I need more practice,” Martin said, standing fully erect, as indifferent to Paul’s acrobatic prowess as he was to Bean’s question.

“Indeed, you do!” Paul shouted, wrapping a dirty napkin around the gash in his hand without a glance at the wound itself. “If you’d been as lazy with Firth’s poor lad, maybe he’d be having dinner with me tonight instead of you!”

“I’m pretty sure we just had him for dinner,” Martin said, his gaze riveted on Bean.

Paul stared at the roast with a wicked grin. “Well, now that you mention it, I’ll be damned if he didn’t pay me a visit two nights ago. I’m not sure how he survived your blade all those years ago, or how he kept off my radar screen…but he strolled in here just as pretty as you please to make one last play for the book. He was even bigger than I remembered…and armed to the teeth. Put up quite a fight, he did, but in the end…”

“I’m done with this,” Martin said, clenching his uninjured fist, relaxing every other muscle in his body, ready to face Paul’s full wrath if necessary.

Paul didn’t make a move or say another word. For a few seconds.

“Done?” he shouted, laughing almost as loudly. “You’re
done?
You leave me to clean up your trash twenty years on, then tell me you’re
done?
We have unfinished business, boy!”

“Is that why he’s here?” Martin asked, pointing to Bean without looking in his direction. “You want another duel? See if I can finish it?”

“A duel? Between you two lads? I wouldn’t dream of it. This fine young fella’s never seen a fistfight. What would be the sport of that? A duel, indeed.”

“If I really wanted a duel, it would already be over,” Martin sneered.

“Oh, I see. You were just showing off then? Puffing out your chest? Illustrating the story, like a kiddie’s picture book? Or maybe you were testing me, aye? Maybe you wanted to see how much I care for my newfound friend here? How far I’m willing to extend myself? Well, now you know, don’t you, lad?”

Martin stopped walking, more perplexed than ever at Paul’s declaration. Even so, he didn’t want to stay another minute asking the questions Bean was much too frightened to pose or even think about: What was he doing here? Why did Paul tell him that story?

Martin didn’t say anything. He turned around, walking toward the hallway.

“So that’s it, then?” Paul yawned, fingering the knife in the table.

Martin kept walking as if he hadn’t heard the question.

“Well, before you prance off on your merry way, there’s something else I need to remind you of…”

Martin spun around as quickly as he could. The knife was flying right for his face at twice the speed he’d hurled it earlier. He didn’t catch it. But he managed to tilt his neck at a forty-five-degree angle just in time to feel the missile whiz by his temple with enough velocity to bristle the tiny hairs inside his ear canal.

“Hhmmph!” Paul snorted, clapping his hands with delight. “Maybe you’ve been doing your homework, after all. Even so, you’ve forgotten the most important lesson of all. Don’t ever turn your back on me, boy!”

Michael gasped so loudly that Paul gave another booming laugh, craning his face to the ceiling like he was howling at the moon. Martin remained still for a moment, looking at both of them. Then he walked backwards out of the room facing Paul every step of the way.

“What were you guys playing at back there with all that knife throwing shit?” Michael asked nervously, hurrying to catch up with Paul as he stomped to the front windows.

“Exciting, wasn’t it?” Paul replied, peering through the dirty glass at the street below.

“Way too exciting,” Michael mumbled, clutching his chest again.

“I’ll bet you felt alive though. More alive than you’ve ever felt?”

Michael stopped to think about it. It was true, he guessed, not that he wanted to admit it, or even think about it. His head nodded anyway, as a more urgent question surfaced. “Why was that nutjob so pissed at me? I was totally cool with him and he tried to kill me!”

“Rule number one: never say anything about anyone that you wouldn’t have the sack to say straight to their face. Martin is far from a ‘nut job’ by any standard of assessment. As to his motivation for assaulting you, I’m certain he was much more irritated with me, dear boy. You simply presented him with a more vulnerable target for his frustration. I believe that’s called transference. My tale stirred up some uncomfortable memories for the lad, as I expected.”

“You were
trying
to piss him off?” Michael asked, his mind spinning.

“If that were my sole intention, I would’ve taken a more direct approach. As you’ve probably noticed, bluntness comes naturally to me. My prodding was more of a wakeup call. Martin is a very special man, with a very special destiny. The story I was telling of our encounter with Clan Firth marked a turning point in our relationship. Ever since that day, Martin has been running away from himself, his heritage and, most importantly, his duty. I was simply steering him back on track again, though apparently he doesn’t see it that way.”

“What happened? How did the story end?” Michael asked, his curiosity in overdrive.

“Stories never end,” Paul grunted, “at least not the ones I tell.”

“But what happened with the duel?” Bean asked, though he really wanted to know what happened to the girl.

Paul turned to look at him. To look through him. Michael recoiled and Paul turned away, staring down at the street again. When Martin emerged and walked down the steps, Paul’s stony expression melted into a smile. “That man down there, who was more boy than man on that fateful day, dispatched with Firth’s son in the time it would take me to trim my mustache. We assumed he was dead, not much of a stretch, given the scope of his lacerations. But as you’ve heard, he lived to fight another day, sadly for him. At any rate, with all the blood gushing from the poor lad, Firth knew all was lost, so he turned on Martin, determined to settle the score.”

“Wow,” gasped Michael. “What did he do?”

“Martin was always a force to be reckoned with, even back then,” Paul said, watching Martin’s slow, determined progress up the sidewalk. When he crossed the street, Paul stomped back down the hallway to a large closet with double doors. “Firth never knew what hit him. I pulled Martin off after the first few stabs, so I could relish his final humiliation. Then the girl started screaming and ruined that perfect moment.”

Michael stared at him speechless. Paul threw open the closet doors so forcefully that the doorknobs dented the plaster on either side. He bent over and opened a chest filled with every type of weapon imaginable. Michael gawked at the array of handguns, knives and other exotic killing instruments, some weirder than anything he’d seen in the movies.

Paul grinned and asked, “Don’t you want to know what happened to the girl?”

“Uh, yeah,” Michael muttered, unable to stop staring at the shiny weaponry.

“Martin tried to save her! He pleaded with me, begged me, in fact, to spare the girl…going so far as to forfeit his share of the treasure we’d plundered from old Lord Firth, even all that gold Martin loves so much, if only I’d leave her be.”

“The gold?” Michael asked with a greedy shiver.

“Oh, yes. Firth had gobs and gobs of the stuff. Martin was willing to trade it all away for the skinny runt. Well, he wasn’t talking sense, now was he? He certainly wasn’t being financially prudent. And since he wasn’t of legal age, and I was his de facto legal guardian, I needed to make sure he didn’t squander all his rightful earnings. So…”

Paul paused and stared at Michael, as if debating whether to continue.

“So…” Michael repeated, goading him on.

“So…” Paul continued with a sigh, “I told Martin that his wish was granted…that the girl could live, and because he’d been so noble, not only could he keep his share of the gold, but he could have all of mine as well. And we all lived happily ever after.”

Bean didn’t know what to say. He held the gaze of Paul’s twinkling eyes far longer than he would have thought possible, before his brain kicked his mouth into motion again.

“Did you get the book?” he asked. It wasn’t what he really wanted to know but it felt far safer than asking the other question nagging away at him—about what really happened.

“Hhmph.” Paul chuckled. “Now what do you think?”

Michael turned away sheepishly. “I guess you did,” he mumbled.

“Very good! I do believe you’ll be a full-fledged wizard in no time at all. But here’s a secret I don’t think you could anticipate so easily: I knew where the book was hidden before we even knocked on Firth’s door.”

“Then why go through all that stuff with the offers and the duels and all that other shit?” Michael asked, incredulous. “Why didn’t you just walk in and take it?”

“Well, my little friend, I can see you have very much to learn indeed. I did ‘all that other shit,’ as you so eloquently put it…simply for the fun of it!”

I hid in the shadows by the stoop and peered up at Rose’s window for a very long time. God, she was so beautiful…and so unreasonably happy.

Martin. Fucking Martin. It wasn’t long before I ceased basking in the warm glow of her beauty and began writhing in the molten lava of my shame, loathing and hatred.

The sound of a broken bottle and loud laughter coming from up the block shook me from my seething contempt like a train whistle. I craned my neck around the stoop and stared into the darkness, trying to make out the shapes under the broken streetlights. A group of five young toughs were on the other side of the street about forty feet ahead, muthafucking this and that as loudly as they could, laughing and swilling malt liquor from the requisite brown paper bags under the sole functioning streetlight. They looked like they were auditioning for an Off-Off-Off Broadway production of
West Side Story
.