By Jeremy Wright

He flicked Genghis Kahn on the nose. He gently massaged Cleopatra’s breast. He even traveled across the red plains of Mars without a protective suit.

Each night Harold Westcott did the same boring routine. The night watch duty at the museum was one of the dullest occupations he had ever subjected himself to. He had taken nearly every bottom rung job the city had to offer, but the solitude of working at the museum was almost enough to drive him mad.

In order to prevent actually dying of boredom, Harold moved around artifacts in the backroom that were not yet on display. He could only imagine the near panicked state the day shift staff worked themselves into while searching for misplaced items.

The thought about taking something valuable out the back door, placing it in his car until his shift was over, and then hocking it at the local pawnshop was tempting. Harold knew that he would be the first person to pop up on the radar should something go missing. He knew that he could probably alter the security recordings and leave no solid evidence to his deception, but he wasn’t ready to start job-hunting just yet. The gig was easy. All he had to do was make hourly rounds by triggering sensors throughout the museum that recorded each security check. The museum coordinator was pretty smart about putting in control boxes that had to be triggered certain times during each security shift. Otherwise Harold would find a comfortable chair, prop his feet up and sleep through his entire shift until he heard the morning staff clocking in.

Besides moving items around, Harold had one other thing that got him through most nights, and that was inspecting new items that came in.

A few nights ago, a meteorite that was retrieved from Utah came in the door. Before the meteorite came the bones of a pharaoh, and before that came a sword from ancient Greece.

Harold heard the news as soon as he clocked in that a spell book had been brought in. It was said that a recently deceased collector of unusual artifacts had placed in his will that the book would be donated to the local museum. The museum experts were still speculating the book’s authenticity, but they were quite certain that the book was once owned by one of the women who were hanged during the Salem witch trials.

Harold had patiently waited for the evening staff to exit the building. He locked the doors, made his first rounds through each wing of the museum and then headed directly for the back room in which new museum exhibits were held before being placed on display.

“Well, well, so this is where you’re hiding,” he said as he observed the tattered book under the protective Plexiglas. “It looks like you’ve been beat to shit, left in a sewer for the last two hundred years and then been baking under a sun lamp for the last week. But yet you’ve got some possibilities still left in you, I think,” Harold said.

Even though he was aware that the museum was empty, Harold looked over both shoulders to confirm he was alone. He unfastened the latch and flipped open the lid. Carefully he reached inside and stroked the backside of his forefinger against the brown leather cover. With the same finger he slowly opened the book and touched the yellowed pages. The paper was incredibly dry, brittle and made a crackling noise as he flipped through the pages.

The writing was badly faded and illegible in some parts. Whoever had taken quill to paper had an exquisite penmanship. The elegance of the words was certainly done with the gracefulness of a woman’s hand.

Harold gently pulled the book from the case, placed it on one of the cloth-covered tables and sat.

As he spent the next hour reading, Harold thought the book seemed more like a documentation of experimental herbal remedies instead of a spell book. There were many areas where the woman mentioned a combination of plants and minerals being mixed together to soothe achy muscles, stop headaches, to have regular bowel movements and other stuff that Harold cared little about.

“Come on. I can find any of these remedies at the supermarket. Give me the good stuff. Christ, if they hung you because you helped someone get rid of the shits, then gratitude was once a cruel son of a bitch,” he said.

When Harold reached the last dozen pages, he realized that what he found printed was worth its weight in gold. There were sections titled: Rotten Breath, English Death Dance, Pandora’s Secret and even Hell’s Fury. Beneath each title was a type of rhyme that sent an odd shiver creeping up his spine.

“Well, now we’re talking,” he said and began reading.

_________________

Finding a mark to work the spells on was no easy task. Harold wanted to cast a spell on someone who definitely deserved it. On Wednesday morning the mark had found him.

When the museum coordinator, Kenneth Stanton, asked Harold to join him in the office just after he clocked out, Harold knew from experience that bad news was rapidly on the way.

“I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. Westcott, that the museum takes great pleasure in showing rare items to the public like they’ve never seen before.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Mr. Westcott, hiring you was certainly more for your benefit than mine. I’m sure that you’re aware that I had done a background check on you before my commitment to bring you into our little family. I knew about your past and the trouble you’ve had with the law. Of course these offenses were minor, and that’s why I overlooked your criminal record. During our interview, you struck me as a man who wanted and even needed a second chance to find his place in society.”

“Yes, sir. I greatly appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me. I do enjoy working here.”

Kenneth Stanton leaned forward, placed his elbows on the desk and studied Harold for a long uncomfortable minute and then said, “I wonder if you really do, Mr. Westcott.”

“Yes, sir. The hours are perfect. The job is rewarding. I love having the responsibility of looking after priceless artifacts that have a long story behind them.”

Mr. Stanton retrieved the remote control from the desktop, swiveled in his chair and pressed the PLAY button. The television centered in the mass of bookshelves behind Mr. Stanton began to play a video.

“This is what I will refer to as your greatest hits,” Mr. Stanton said.

Harold felt his face flush as he watched a video of himself handling items in the backroom and shuffling them around. He hid a set of Roman coins in a small crate on second shelf of inventoried items that were most likely not going on display anytime soon. He juggled delicate clay pots discovered in the Andes that dated back nearly a thousand years. He even removed a fragile mummy from a casket, placed it on the floor, and morbidly took an hour-long nap inside the mummy’s resting place. One clipped followed another until the video reached yesterday. Harold saw himself removing the witch book from the case and reading the material. The video ended a few seconds after Harold had torn twelve pages from the back of the book.

“I would say that it’s hardly inspirational material to watch. In fact, I would title it as a complete lack of gratitude and respect for what it is we do here, Mr. Westcott.”

“I’m not sure what to say,” Harold said as he stared at the desk.

Mr. Stanton leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his large belly and watched Harold with distaste.

“You must believe that I’m a complete fool. Did you honestly think that you could screw with my museum and I would simply look the other way? Did you think that you could hide and even ruin my artifacts and get away with it? I gave you a great opportunity to become a member of the family at this facility. I have to say that I’m greatly disappointed. I could have you arrested, you know? The book you destroyed was priceless. It’s worth more than a pathetic twerp like you could earn in your entire lifetime. I want those twelve pages back, and I want them back right now.”

“There’s no excuse for what I’ve done here. I don’t know, maybe it was out of boredom. Maybe disrespect because I feel I’ve never gotten the chance I deserved.”

“Oh, you got the chance. I gave it to you. Give me the pages you took.”

“I don’t have them. I mean that they’re not here. I have them at my apartment.”

“Get them, bring them back to me within the next hour or the police will be informed of the destructive nature in which you live, Mr. Westcott. You have one hour. I recommend you start moving now.”

What was it? How did the curse go? Harold thought. It was titled: Rotten Breath.

Although he had only read the curse once, the strange words came tumbling back to his mind.

Harold looked up and caught Mr. Stanton’s eyes and said, “Of mouse paw and serpent spit, come germs of old which cannot stall. Each will decay to a blackened pit and with the next breath they’ll start to fall.”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Stanton asked.

Harold could see Kenneth Stanton’s face twist a little. At first the look was one given when someone felt a mild discomfort. Then Harold could see Mr. Stanton working his tongue around the inside of his mouth, probing areas.

“Something wrong?” Harold asked with an amused grin.

“Look, Mr. Westcott—”

Something tumbled from Mr. Stanton’s mouth and landed on the 1st day of May on his desk calendar.

Their eyes broke off from each other and slowly traced down. The tooth, which had been bright white, was now rapidly shading to a dark yellow, to brown and then as black as night. Before their unblinking stares, the tooth crumbled to a fine black dust as if incinerated.

Mr. Stanton cupped his left hand over his gaping mouth.

Harold reeled out of the chair and hit the wall hard enough to jar a picture loose. Harold was already pulling the office door open when the picture frame hit the floor and shattered. He ran past the secretary and tore off down the corridor for the front entrance.

_______________

“Impossible. It’s just a stupid book. It can’t really do the things it says. There’s no such thing as curses,” Harold said after he slammed his apartment door and sank to the floor. He held his head in his hands and stared at the dirty area rug. “Were his teeth already decayed and it just happened to fall out at the right time and made me believe that I had actually preformed a genuine curse?”

If there’s one thing he knew, it was that Mr. Stanton had clean white teeth. The man was always smiling at the goddamn customers and employees like he was a jack-o-lantern.

“It was all you, Harold, old buddy. You just got back at the son of a bitch who fired you.”

Harold started laughing, and he didn’t stop until the neighbor began pounding on the thin wall and barking for him to keep it down.

“It’s not a crime to laugh, partner. Just keep pounding and watch what will happen to you,” he yelled.

Harold retrieved the twelve spell book pages from beneath his mattress and searched through them. He counted the total number of curses. There were thirty-two in all. He read through them again. Most of them seemed harmless, more of a nuisance than anything else to the cursed person, but a few of them seemed downright nasty.

There wasn’t an explanation for what each curse actually did to someone. It was simple formations of the words that made him believe which curses could possibly do the most damage. He decided to take a chance on someone unwilling, but fitting for such a cruel curse.

Harold walked to the apartment window that overlooked 5th Avenue. The street was bustling with people motoring along. Across the street was the basketball court where low rent people played their low rent games. Harold knew drug dealers and whores hung out there at all hours of the day and night. If anyone deserved to be tortured by ancient curses, it was those people.

Harold flipped through the pages until he found the proper curse for a proper situation. He memorized the lines and found one unwilling member of the park grounds. He was a shifty eyed black man with his pants hung low, and his legs tensed and ready to take flight should a black and white suddenly appear. Harold locked his eyes on the subject.

As the first word started coming out, a pounding fist hit his door with urgency.

Harold lowered the pages to his side, turned from the window and stared at the door. He knew exactly who it was. The landlord was relentless at receiving his monthly check on time. There had even been some months when the man would stand at Harold’s door and wait in the early hours until Harold got home from his shift at the museum.

While being cautious of the squeaking floorboards, Harold moved to the door and peered out the spy hole.

“You unbelievable prick,” Harold whispered as he realized who it was.

Mr. Stanton was staring at the door as if he could see through it. His fist raised and rattled the door again with a half dozen raps.

“I know you’re in there. Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you realize that you’ve passed the point of no return?” Mr. Stanton bellowed out. His voice was slurred, almost making him sound drunk, as the lack of teeth was probably going to take some getting used to.

Harold wanted to laugh. He wanted to mock the bastard that had cost him another job. He wanted to open the door, grab the man by the collar and release a hee-haw of delight in the man’s face. He wanted to do all this, but the gun in Mr. Stanton’s left hand prevented him from doing anything.

“I’ve got something for you, Mr. Westcott. Why don’t you come out and I can show you what I’ve brought.”

Mr. Stanton took a long moment to study the spy hole. Harold instantly crouched when he saw the man step back, raise his arm and place the barrel of the gun against the fish-eyed lens. Before a bullet could tear through the door, Harold heard a familiar voice calling from down the hallway.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing, mister?”

Harold could hear Mr. Stanton shift around on the other side of the door. Harold stood and looked through the glass again. He saw his landlord, Frank Tipps, standing on the platform at the bottom of the stairs. All Harold could see was the landlord’s head staring up at the museum coordinator at his front door.

“Are you his keeper? Are you his protector?” Mr. Stanton said.

“What the hell?” Mr. Tipps asked.

“Did you know that he’s a descendant of evil? Do you know that he’s the offspring of the witches and warlocks that should have been finished off centuries ago? Why have you been hiding him?” Mr. Stanton said and raised the gun.

“Now just wait a goddamn second,” Mr. Tipps said. He received his one-second just before the gun roared and the top half of his head splattered the cornflower wallpaper behind him.

Harold’s eyes were wide as he saw his landlord casually lean against the wall and slide down, almost as if taking a rest from extreme fatigue.

Mr. Stanton tapped the gun against the door and said, “It’s just the two of us again. Sorry we were so rudely interrupted. I want to tell you something before I blow the lock off the door. I want you know that I have a passion for the Salem witch trials. I’ve always had this passion, because it’s a place I come from. You see that my ancestors were part of the committee who passed judgment on those witches and had them executed. I know such evil could never really die. I suspect that perhaps some of them fled before capture and moved across the country. You must be a living relative of one of those evils. I want you to know that when the book first arrived at the museum I had tried the curses, too. I had read them out loud to several people who I disliked, but the results were nothing. However, you rattled off a curse and my fucking teeth fell right out. That means you’re one of them. That means you must die, Mr. Westcott.”

Before Harold could mutter a denial, the deadbolt exploded in a shower of metal. A brutal kick was delivered to the door and Harold was thrown back. His calves caught the coffee table and he crashed to the floor. His elbow smacked the table and a thunder of pain shot up his arm.

Mr. Stanton stepped in the apartment and focused the gun between Harold’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’ll by you dentures. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right,” Harold shouted as he held his arms in front of his face.

“Relax. I’m not going to shoot you. A simple bullet isn’t fitting enough for unholy crimes. You’re an abomination to mankind. I have something else planned for you,” he said and stepped back into the hallway. He retrieved a five-gallon gas can and held it out so that Harold would fully understand his intensions.

“Some of the witches were hanged, and some of them were burned. I can’t even imagine the kind of screams someone makes while they’re burning, but I’m confident people will hear you from blocks away,” Mr. Stanton said.

“This is insane. You can’t really believe I’m a warlock. I’m a goddamn security guard. I’m nothing. I never have been and I never will be,” Harold said and tried to stand.

“Stay where you are or I’m going to blow your kneecaps off.”

Mr. Stanton set the can down, unscrewed the cap, and then casually used his foot to tip the container. Gas gurgled out, covered the throw rug and soaked the left leg of Harold’s uniform pants. Kenneth Stanton’s eyes were gleaming with delight. His smile was broad and almost sadistic. His pink tongue slid out from that toothless mouth and slicked across his lips.

“Burn, Devil,” he said and removed a lighter from his trouser pocket.

“Police! Drop the gun!” someone called from down the hall.

“Help me! He’s crazy. You hear me? He’s crazy. He’s trying to burn me alive!” Harold screamed.

When Kenneth Stanton’s attention was directed toward the police, Harold rolled away from the puddle of gas and reached for the dropped pages. He quickly found the curse titled: Hell’s Fury.

Gunfire filled the incredibly small space. Large pieces of wood tore free from the door as the police returned fire. Mr. Stanton fired three quick rounds and kicked the door shut. When he turned around, he saw that Harold was holding battered, faded, and ancient pages written by the spawn of Satan. Harold was muttering something as his eyes were locked Kenneth Stanton.

“What’s that you say?” Mr. Stanton and fired a round that caught Harold in the right shoulder.

Harold screamed and grabbed the wound.

The door violently came open as two police officers charged inside.

“Drop the gun or we’re going to take you down. Do it now!” one of them shouted.

It wasn’t because of the order the police gave, but he dropped the gun out of sheer bewilderment. He held out his left hand and stared stupidly at the lighter. The metal collar of the lighter was growing incredibly hot, turning a cherry red, and the fuel inside began to bubble.

“What the hell is with this thing?” he asked just before the lighter exploded in his hand.

A torrent of fire shot up his arm like a fast moving serpent and quickly consumed his jacket before the blaze nearly blinded him. The fire moved with purpose across his clothing. Mr. Stanton spun and as he did he screamed loud enough that people could actually hear him from blocks away.

Harold felt a laugh rumble from him. I am a warlock! You knew it before I did, Mr. Stanton. You brought it out of me and I thank you for that. With these pages I’ll no longer be a pitiful doormat of society. I’m going to show people what I can really do. I feel sorry for all those who cross me from now on.

Harold collected the rest of the scattered pages and in a frantic shuffle he moved for the door.

The policemen only gave him a passing glance as he brushed by them. The burning man and his nearly hypnotic dance had seized their attention.

When Harold hit the hallway, his foot caught the running stream of gasoline that ran from the apartment. He went down painfully on his back and his head snapped back and bounced off the floor. With blurry eyes he looked back and saw Mr. Stanton collapse as death finally grabbed him. His body hit the pool of gas and with a whoosh the fuel caught. The policemen and the apartment beyond disappeared in a bright orange flash.

Harold opened his mouth and started screaming as the fire ran into the hallway after him.

_______________

“Is there a damn war going on?” an old man asked as he poked his head out his apartment door.

“Yeah, something like that. You should probably grab anything important, because the building is on fire,” Harold said as he headed for the front entrance.

Fire engines rolled up to the building with a vicious wail. People crowded the streets and watched with amazement as Harold’s third floor apartment windows blew out from the extreme heat.

Harold brushed off a dwindling flame on the cuff of his uniform jacket.

One of the onlookers watched him with curiosity as he came down the front steps. With his uniform partially burned and black soot covering his face, he figured he probably looked as if Hell had just spit him out.

“Hey, man, was that your place?” the kid asked.

“Was.”

“You’re lucky as hell you made it out of there with your skin, man.”

“Yeah. I never figured that particular curse would actually work. So you can bet that I doubted the counter curse would actually make me fireproof.”

“Huh?” the kid asked.

Harold was already on the move down the street.

As Harold began tucking the slightly scorched spell pages inside his jacket pocket, a large man crashed into him and nearly sent Harold pin-wheeling to the ground.

“Watch where you’re going, peckerhead,” the man said with a scowl.

The man stopped after a few paces and gazed up to the fire consuming Harold’s apartment.

I’ll show you who’s a peckerhead, Harold thought and began shuffling through the pages. You just keep standing there looking stupid and that will be the look to permanently mark your ignorant face.

Harold found and read the curse titled: Medusa’s Eyes. As the last words left his lips, something knocked against the café window in front of him. Whatever had struck the inside of the window Harold couldn’t be sure, because the windows were mirror tinted. As he looked up, he caught his reflection and his appearance was appalling.

I’m going to need a doctor to fix my bullet-holed shoulder. I damn well need a bath to clean all this grime off my face. Then I think I’ll sleep for a week. Performing curses is one exhausting trick in itself.

Harold’s sight captured his own tired brown eyes in the reflection.

He felt the pain start somewhere deep down in the core of his being. It spread like the fire that had consumed Mr. Stanton. He tried to turn from the window. He tried to put his sight anywhere else. He tried to open his mouth and call for help or scream, but all of the pedestrians were watching the apartment fire. They were watching with unblinking stares at an incredible curse he had performed, but now they were missing his greatest and final curse.

As the pages fell from his stiffening grip and blew away in the breeze, Harold thought he could hear Mr. Stanton’s blackened corpse gurgling with laughter.

Harold’s mind slowed like a dying clock. He thought of the witches and warlocks throughout history that had been defiantly and even nobly hung or burned. Now he thought of the only warlock who would turn to stone by mistakenly cursing his own reflection.

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