Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks October 2014: Halloween | Page 20

spindling letters of faded gold: ‘The Diary of Aleister Crowley
and Other Spells.’
Old Gobber spied the book, unable to keep the glint from his
milky eyes. His fingers crawled over the volume and she felt her
stomach turn as each ivory nail click-clacked against the stone
cover.
He stared up and smiled. She closed her eyes and counted to
ten.
This is the right thing to do.
She opened her eyes and pointed to a small jar along the back
shelf. Gobber sold much in the way of Occult, but it was his jars
of Hypotheticals that she needed. Jars of What If and Could Have
Been. Jars of Maybe and If Only. Jars of I Should Have – Jars of I
Shouldn’t Haves.
Old Gobber reached up to a small vial with swirling black fog
inside and brought it down, but as she went to take it he pulled
it back an inch, as if to give her one last chance to back out of
the contract.
This is the right thing to do.
She stretched and pulled it towards her, then placed it into her
bag.
A moment passed between them, a moment where the average
customer would say thank you and where the shopkeep would
reciprocate. Instead she nodded and he spat into his cup and
smiled as the gangrenous hand pointed and the rabbit’s head
supped lifelessly.
Outside, the moon was a faint idea in the stratosphere as a dark
rumbling approached from the horizon. She checked both sides
for souls but none ventured down these ways if they could help
it. She pulled the stopper from the vial and drained the plasma
from within. It was cold to the taste but she was used to it. This
20