Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians by Mel Gilden

Author:Mel Gilden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hardboiled mystery, fantasy, dark horror, horror fiction, detective series
ISBN: 9781434437167
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2014-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC

A minute later I was riding down in the coffin-like elevator with a big woman who had a jaw like a satchel. She was a neighbor but I didn’t know her name. We both nodded and smiled before ignoring each other completely the rest of the way down.

I crossed Sixth Street and entered the La Brea Tar Pits. It was a beautiful park, a city block square, one thick side of which was burdened with art museums. Tar pits of varying sizes dotted the landscape, each surrounded by a municipal spell to keep out the curious and the stupid. A couple of kids were trying to get a kite into the air using only the wind, and not having much luck. A man and a woman sat on a bench beneath tall trees sniffing at each other’s throats. Following an asphalt path, I found what I was looking for—a small round building made of white-painted brick.

The inside was mostly taken up with exhibits telling the story of Prohibition; Prohibition was one of those ideas that seemed so good to some people that they decided God must be on their side. A woman named Anna Montaigne started the movement by single-handedly destroying a mom-and-pop spell store in Clarion, Pennsylvania. Ms. Montaigne was uglier than a dried-up apple and had no talent for magic herself, though her enemies claimed she was a witch. Her talent lay in public speaking. And before long she’d convinced a lot of people that all magic, no matter how innocuous, was the work of the devil. “Pick a card, any card,” became an obscenity. It meant the political life of any public servant to oppose Ms. Montaigne. Then rumors leaked out that Ms. Montaigne’s rhetorical talent came from a spell cast by her second in command, a tall thin geek named Charles W. McGonigal. The rumors increased both in frequency and severity until one day Montaigne and McGonigal failed to show up for an anti-magic rally. Neither they nor the movement’s operating funds were ever seen again. After that, the forces opposing Ms. Montaigne had no trouble pulling Repeal out of a hat.

Other exhibits showed examples of Prohibition magic, and pictures of guys like Al Capone, who in their own public-spirited way had supplied magic where it was needed. Nowhere was there any mention of Merlin.

On one side of the room was Ye Olde Gift Shoppe, where you could purchase souvenirs of your day at the Prohibition Museum. In the center of the room was a big square pit, which at the moment was lined with squirming little kids and a couple of harassed-looking women. The kids were leaning over a low wall and pointing things out to each other. “Cool,” seemed to be the most common exclamation, though I heard an occasional “awesome!” A man the shape of a bowling pin was talking to the kids in a high, nearly feminine voice.

I went to look over the heads of the kids into the pit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.