The Violet Book

written by Ræl H. Bishop

Artwork by ROADKILL FRANKENSTEIN & Ræl H. Bishop

They told Orwell to stay in the car. Seems simple enough. He sure didn't feel comfortable leaving this space-age car at sunset in a neighborhood with more felled trees than inhabitants.

But Orwell never sits still for long. His brain is always running, always bouncing around from topic to topic, daydream to daydream, like a thousand lightning bolts on a stormy sea. And sometimes, flotsam emerges from the strikes – a novel idea or an unseen pattern, raising more questions than it answers, leading him to search for more.

It was this constant neuronal mosh pit that let him skip four grades, climb out of the quicksand-like Deep South and into the jungle that is Miami. And his mind hasn't reeled more in his life than in the past 24 hours.

Even now, new questions begin to surge across his mind. Why did the three of them walk into this tiny, decrepit building? What could be hiding behind that ready-to-collapse door frame?

What's with this old, rhinestone-studded motorcycle parked next to the car? And who are those two shadows coming from the stucco building down the road? Why is the one in the shawl so big, so... lion-like? Perhaps it's a costume. But if so, how is it fitting through the doorway? And that regular figure in the front... is he wearing a rose lapel?

As soon as they enter, Orwell creeps out of the car and approaches the doorway. He moves across each creaking step as if it were made of glass, hesitating once he reaches the final one. The door is cracked, just a little...

He feels dream-like as he crosses the threshold, ambling blindly through the corridor of doors. Eyes adjusting, he backs from a massive wolf-knockered one, turning to see another opposite it. It's an unassuming door, red, of the kind that swings from the kitchen of a busy restaurant, complete with a non-functional window to one side.

There's a single sign above it, inscribed in a gently glowing, hand-etched print. It contains a single phrase, the culmination of this days-long wild goose chase:

❊

Friday, around noon. Orwell is running, satchel of books swaying in the wind, lab coat on. An assignment is clutched in his left hand, carefully rolled to avoid crushing the pages. He breathes heavily as he pounds the grey brickwork paths, swinging by medical offices, lab buildings, and the occasional tropical tree. His mind swirls with deadlines, papers on biochemical procedures, and dark figures of cells under slides. A psychedelic electronica beat as old as him loops in his head, keeping him going.

He doesn't stop for people, doesn't even think before turning a corner, simply weaving through crowds of folks half-a-foot taller than him.

Walking by the library is a girl, slender and punkish, about Orwell's age, carrying a satchel of her own. Her attention is drawn to a leather-bound book that wouldn't seem out of place in a museum.

Snapping back to reality, Orwell sees the girl a second too late; they crash, books and papers scattering all-around.

He grumbles from underneath his bucket hat, apologizing, trying to re-pack their satchels. His heart stops when he looks in the grass a meter away.

"Oh no..." He crawls over to the ancient book, muttering several dozen more "No!"s, doing his best to uncrumple the pages and wipe the dirt off. "I'm so, so sorry!"

"It's okay." There's no anger in her voice. "You'd swear it was your book the way you're cleaning it."

"I hate seeing a book get damaged."

"Don't worry, it's already seen better days." She receives the book; he feels guilty about a new tear on its cover.

The writing on the spine intrigues him. "...'Pseudodoxia Epidemica'?"

"Mh."

His face lights up. "'I've heard of that book! It's from… the 17th century, I believe, helped disprove a number of superstitions. Oh no... don't tell me it was a first print!"

"...it's not." (It was, but she figured this kid has enough to worry about.)

He sighs in relief. "What do you think of it?"

"...kinda hard to read."

"I know, right? I tried reading something else from back then... Priestley's “History on Electricity”, I think. The spellings are different, and there's long-S'es everywhere–"

"And everything's a big wall of text."

He snaps his fingers. "Yes! You get me! It's like they didn't know how to use a paragraph break yet!"

Orwell picks up her splayed sketchbook, glimpsing at what's inside. It's got pages of sigils and phrases written in a neat hand; they look like spells.

“Eugh, you buy into that crap?”

"I like to keep an open mind."

Other pages show a number of doodles — drawings of a skeleton in a nehru jacket, a man with horns playing a guitar, and some strange snake-human hybrid woman, among others. One figure that keeps appearing is given its own page; a rather gruesome creature that Orwell best describes as a ‘roadkill Frankenstein.’ Bones and flesh and fur are sewn together rather haphazardly. It’s given the name “BRENNOS LOBHADH.”

“These are very… imaginative.” He looks visibly distressed by the figure, so she closes the book.

“They’re people in my life.” She sticks her hand out and introduces herself as Maeve.

They shake hands; Orwell’s grip is uneasy as he introduces himself. Remembering the time, he begins hurriedly stuffing his books and papers into his bag — including one purple book that misses his sights.

“It’s nice to meet you, but I really should be going.” He dusts himself off. “I’ve got class.”

“Where at?”

“Here.”

“At UM?”

He agrees, then starts his rush down the cobbles, running past a man in a hoodie playing guitar.

“You look a little young!” she yells out.

He says nothing; it’s because he was.

❊

As the sun is banished beneath a neon sky, Orwell sits alone in a crowded train car. It's his weekly routine as an undergrad researcher at the Miller School of Medicine. Most nights he sits by the window, watching the transition from urban squalor to crusty courthouses, to high-rises owned by techbros and foreign oligarchs, to trains and highways curling around skyscrapers and convenience stores. A feast for the eyes that lets his mind wander, before returning him to the confines of the freshman dorm towers, better resembling Whovian prisons than living quarters.

Tonight, he finds himself looking listlessly at the crowd. For the first time, he notices his labmates blabbing on a couple seats down, the PI of a hematology lab tending to his rose lapel, the women carrying groceries and speaking Creole as they depart at the next stop.

For the first time in a while, Orwell feels out of place. He's always been a bit of a misfit, but that hardly bothered him when he's got so many courses to take and so many fascinating things to learn. Still, at night, when his roommate was out on ragers, his imagination would always wander into new horizons, filled with blueprints and biomechanical machines, political dramas and chromatic skylines, futures ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel... and yet, he had no one to share them with.

He thinks about that girl he met earlier, and how they connected. Not over a lab report or a lecture on gene transplantation, but on books and fantastical (if mildly disturbing) doodles. It's so philistine, so silly, he can't help but scoff at it... and yet, he misses it.

Scanning the car, he swears he can see her face for a moment.

Sighing, he reaches into his satchel for something to read – only to be vexed.

He can account for the rest: a notebook, papers, books on topics like quantum mechanics and oneirology, nothing out of the ordinary there. The books carry stickers stamped on the sides by the library, and proudly display their lengthy titles along the spine.

But in his hand lies something different. It bears no library sticker, no sign of being University property. Nor is anything written on its spine. The dust cover is various shades of purple, with a lighter violet sitting underneath darker patterns of indigo. He can't tell if the patterns are of flowers, birds, or some hybrid combination thereof. Only one thing breaks it up: a single design of a flower on the front, colored a reddish, tyrian purple.

He figures he must’ve picked it up outside some college department on one of his hunts for free books. Still, it doesn’t look familiar.

It feels light in his hand, like a cheap paperback novel, despite being a hardbound that refuses to bend. He cracks open the book to find a sparse copyright page.

THE VIOLET BOOK The Violetist Press Seventy-seventh edition MCMLXXI

The same flower ensign appears underneath.

There’s an inscription opposite the copyright page, written in a familiar-looking script he can’t make out. He finds it strange, but continues skimming the book.

Inside, the work is formatted like a travel guide. Cities are listed, sometimes divided into boroughs, and a number of addresses are displayed, with a pantheon of symbols next to each one. There’s no rhyme or reason to the addresses; some of them seem to be restaurants, others hospitals, parks, theatres, banks, hotels, even people’s homes.

Another thing that strikes him as odd is the way regions are demarcated. They aren’t grouped according to country or even continent, but by often archaic names. Ceylon, Formosa, Albion, Tartary, Gaul…

Some places in the book have been circled by the previous user, with notes in that same enigmatic script littered in the margins. A few locations seem to be in the same city he’s in now, part of the region of “Tegesta”.

As he explores further, he notices the page numbers spill into the thousands. The first six hundred pages alone are dedicated to (what he figures is) the Americas.

The book seems much too small to fit this many pages, and yet it does so without strain…

A feminine voice plays over the intercom, proudly announcing the train's arrival at University Station.

He sticks this Violet Book next to his book on da Vinci, lugs his satchel over his shoulder, and disembarks, mind racing with questions.

❊

"Now, Maeve, you mustn't forget to find the book. It is important that it does not fall into the wrong hands."

She stands before a desk covered in books, papers, and curiosities stacked to twice her height. She can't see who's behind it, though she knows him – and the sanguine miasma surrounding him – well.

"It's probably just around here. This is the last place I had it, where else could it have gone? Unless..." she goes silent.

There's a wooden creaking from behind the desk. "Unless?"

She turns away. "Nothing."

"I could read your mind, you know."

"Ew, no, don't."

"I won't, I value your privacy." There's the cracking of a book's spine from behind the stack. "But I also value transparency. If it's not a bother, please, tell me what's on your mind."

She casually explains the run-in with this bucket-hatted kid downtown; she thinks he might've picked the book up and pocketed it, mistaking it for his own.

The figure behind the desk goes silent.

"Gramps?"

There's another wooden creak – seemingly tense.

"Brennos?"

A low, rumbling sound emerges from the desk. "I hope you realize how troubling this is."

"Why? It's just a travelogue."

"A very special travelogue, and you know it. It cannot be found in any daywalker store, and for good reason. That book is dangerous in the wrong hands."

She tries quipping a response, but nothing coherent comes out.

"It can threaten our safety."

The girl looks at her feet.

"Find that book, Maeve."

She groans. "But Miami's a massive city! How am I ever going to track it down?"

"You're a smart girl, you'll figure it out. Besides, Orville–"

"Orwell."

"–isn't too common of a name." There's the sound of shuffling paper. "You might find him sooner than you think."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she sarcastically sighs.

"And bring your brother with you. A seventeen-year old shouldn't be wandering a big city alone."

❊

That same night, many miles away, an irascible man rummages through his sunroom-turned-study, packing books into cardboard boxes, writing an inventory. Tome after tome and dodgy article after dodgy article of paranormal knowledge lie on a shelf beside him – he keeps the best for himself. A trashcan with a foot-shaped dent lies on its side, spilling rejection letters from the Fortean Times and similar outlets onto the floor.

On a board behind him is a sea of newspaper clippings and crude sketches – a man in a motorcycle helmet, pallid and punkish; a shot of a large, sphinxian face; a patchwork creation of flesh and bone, bearing a coyote's skull and a sanguine smile…

A noise comes out of his dated monitor. His attention is drawn to the beige box and its deceptively modern display.

He grins devilishly, opening the cabinet, last-minute packing wooden stakes and silver bullets.

❊

"Do you have anything that can help me?"

Callista peers down from her shawl contemplatively. Nothing new, though; her broad face itself is always contemplative, sphinxian. Maeve worriedly raps her fingers against the wooden counter. The mystic shopkeep seems to tower over her from behind the half-lit counter, flanked by nondescript crates and overpriced statuettes, pagan and tantric alike.

Near the front, Stora stares at the jewels and prayer beads on display. Maeve and her brother look nothing alike – his round, wide eyes that never seem to blink and pointy nose make him more akin to a barn owl than a teenage witch – but they're siblings just the same.

"Sounds like your problem can be solved with textbook divination. I don't mean to pry, dear, but what is it exactly you are looking for?"

Maeve contorts her face, jogging her mind for the most vague way to put it. It settles on "...something."

"What kind of thing? A person, a grimoire, a keychain?"

"...it's an important thing. There was a person involved though, little shorter than me, wears a bucket hat, glasses, blue jeans, lab coat with a boring collared shirt–"

The shopkeep shakes her head. "People are too complicated, at least for an apprentice like yourself. Let's focus on the 'thing', for now."

With that, Callista turns 'tward a bead curtain behind her and leaves. Maeve starts to wonder how such a small store can fit someone so tall. A moment later, the shopkeep puts a sphere of perfectly polished crystal onto the counter top, retracting her feline hands.

"All right, my own magic crystal ball!"

She shakes her head oncemore. "See it as a scrying orb, a tool for divination. Any reflective surface will work, but it's best to practice with the classics." She lifts a candle and lights a stick of incense. "Now, to scry, you need to think about the object you're looking for, very carefully and in detail."

She closes her eyes and remembers the book. It's purple, that's for sure, and it has "The Violet Book" written on it... no, wait, that's not right, there's nothing on the cover... there's that strange wallpaper-meets-eldritch horror pattern on it... is the title written on the spine?

"Concentrate... get a good image of it in your head... now, look into the sphere, keeping the image in your mind..."

The incense flares in her sinuses, breaking her concentration for a moment; she coughs.

"Keep your breathing steady and low, steady and low. Don't think about it. Just focus on what you're looking for, and let your mind absorb into it..."

Meditation's never been her strong suit, something she discovered while taking lessons with the helmeted guy back at home. Thoughts like to dance across her brain like sparks in stormclouds, occasionally striking and landing her in a crypt or back-alley halfway across the globe.

Within the orb, she can see the book sitting in something black, something cloth... it's jostling up-and-down. She can see a hand sitting atop it... there's a street, street signs... somewhere in Coral Gables, somewhere busy and grimy… a station in the distance, with a bus-

"Aha! It's at the bus stop!"

Maeve leaps from her trance, knocking a chair back and to the floor. She swiftly tosses the crystal ball into her satchel. Grabbing her brother by the arm, she thanks the shopkeep profusely and rushes out the door, into the morning sun, sure as hell of the destination and completely clueless about the steps.

❊

Leaving a bus in South Beach, Orwell opens the book to find this circled entry:

He stands before the address listed in the book, but it’s not there. He expected to see some big sign with the place’s name, maybe some gems on display. Instead a pizzeria sits at that location. From the looks of it, it’s only been open for a few months — and based on the product sitting in the window, Orwell suspects it won’t be here much longer.

Scrolling through his phone, he finds few results for the place online. No website, just a few passing mentions in some archived newspapers. One shows a spotty photograph of the place, around the time of the book. He can tell it’s the same locale.

Looking around, it strikes him how much this city has changed since the picture was taken. It used to look so much livelier, so much more… neon-y. Now it's drained and dirty — trash on the streets, impossibly expensive apartments with empty rooms, drunken tourists leaving a mess everywhere… it’s a pallid shell of its former punkish self.

Much like that gentleman standing before the place. He’s been looking forlornly at it for some time now. Orwell’s not quite sure what to make of him, dress befitting that of a motocross rider yet lacking a bike entirely. How can he cover so much skin and not die of heat stroke? And why is he still wearing his helmet in broad daylight?

He seems eager to enter the place, yet unable to — like something is repelling him from within.

The man pulls out his phone rather cautiously, like he’s not used to it, and checks a message. With that, he heads down the street. He walks past Orwell, quietly counting every step as he walks.

Some time later, Orwell stops at the 11th Street Diner for lunch — the only restaurant, so it seems, on the strip he feels comfortable inside. It's a typical little box car diner in an otherwise atypical city, a city Orwell's seen more of today than the rest of the semester. Everywhere else he'd stopped was a dead end; he didn't know enough Creole to find the tailor in Little Haiti, ran like his ass was on fire from a tattoo parlor in Brickell, and was too creeped out by the lady with the massive face in the mystic shop to ask anything.

This jewelry store was his last lead, the last place in 'Tegesta' that mentioned 'the book'.

He sees the same helmeted man seated at a booth. Two familiar faces sit beside him in conversation. One is that of his labmate, Vrati, eyes strained, hair frazzled, hands clutching a cup of coffee to survive. The other is that guy who he’s seen busking on the medical campus. What was his name? Ted? Tex? The-

Oh shit. They saw him.

Oh god. She just called him over.

Orwell immediately averts his gaze, face reddening a little. He's never been one for attention, and he can think of 35 places he'd rather be right now than in this diner.

He gets called over again. He turns. They look happy to see him – save for the man in the helmet, whose face he can't tell at all.

He hesitates. Though he's still a teen, he does want to be seen as an adult. Here, some of the few people he knows in this city are offering him a chance to be a grown-up, not just work like one.

Vrati introduces him to the rest of the group; he bonds with Theo, hoodied musician, after learning they share a love for prog rock.

The helmeted man is revealed to be Phoebus. Orwell learns that this thickly-accented man once owned a jewelry store, but lost it some time ago; he prefers not to talk about it. He doesn't talk much, for that matter, choosing his words carefully and delivering them as if made of lead. He mentions someone Orwell's age coming to see him for crystals.

The teen prodigy listens to the group talk about their outings; going to clubs, museums, bars, sometimes just walking the strip at dusk. Occasionally the musician's boyfriend tags along, a one-armed marina worker that Orwell swears he saw blacked out on the bus ride over.

It sounds like fun. Most Saturdays, he would've spent his time gaming indoors or reading outside. Today, he's seen a whole new face of this city. Maybe he should do this more often. Maybe he's cool– no, adult enough to tag along with them…

Then, Phoebus' order of a 'Bloody Mary, ancient city style' reaches the table. Orwell's made uncomfortable by the drink. Alcohol's always made him uncomfortable on principle, but this smells nothing like what he made in the organic chemistry labs. It's too… metallic… and viscous…

Actually, it reminds him of earlier bits of the conversation that didn't make sense. They talked about going to the Everglades and meeting some redneck with tons of hair and a skunkish smell. Theo talked about needing something to treat horns, and Vrati complained about how hard it is to unwind and have a good bask outside of the beach.

This isn't what adulthood is about, is it? Increasingly weird smalltalk over drinks?

It's at this point Orwell looks at the time, and gasps.

The musician turns to him. "You okay, dude?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He stutters. “Thanks for inviting me over, but I’ve got a bus to catch.”

"No worries. Let's hang out again some time."

"...sure." He hurriedly slings his bag over his shoulder.

Vrati says her goodbye, saying she'll see him at the lab on Monday. Orwell replies in kind.

As he busses back over the intercoastal, something clicks in Orwell’s head.

The man he spoke with, Phoebus, seemed to have run the jewelry store since it started.

That was nearly a century ago.

❊

After a morning of chasing buses with her brother, Maeve lumbers onto a bench and puts her head in her hands. More sparks bounce across her brain, none of them striking. She figures she should just go back to Callista's shop and try scrying with her again.

Alas, the sun looms lower in the sky, and she hasn't a clue how to get back there.

Grabbing the next bus, she notices a flier in the distance for the Miami Book fair, running up until tomorrow.

If she can't find the book, then maybe – just maybe – she can find a replacement…

❊

One of Miami’s lesser-known amenities is its annual Book Fair, hosted downtown every November. All manner of publishers, peddlers, and purveyors of prose and poetry rent space and sell their works for all to see.

Orwell comes prepared, wallet full of cash and satchel ready for filling. That Violet Book sits in a pocket of the satchel, wrapped loosely in linen to protect it. Since he arrived a little after 2pm, he's been walking from stall to stall tirelessly inquiring about the strange book. Nobody seems to have information on it.

And a few stalls behind, Maeve hurriedly thumbs through the dustiest books she can find, hoping to find a 'good enough' replacement hiding between the Christian romance novels and the mold-covered Heinlein first editions.

Turning a corner, walking past the opposing Ahmadi and ISKCON stalls, a book catches his eye. “MYTHOSAPIENS AND THE AGARTHIAN PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA”, the cover loudly declares in Comic Sans. Its author is one ‘Professor Buchanan’. He looks up and sees a disheveled man behind the table, coughing incessantly.

He peruses the vendor's other books. Similarly deranged titles are concealed betwixt rather ordinary works on botany and traditional Chinese medicine.

Breathing in, he approaches the man, awkwardly refusing an attempted lecture on qigong, and pulls out the Violet Book. “I saw you discussing this in a thread online. Can you tell me more about it?”

Eyes widening, the Professor takes the pose of a wolf cornering its prey. “Oh my god…” He holds the book, inspecting it. “Kid, you have no idea how long I’ve been looking for this book!” He laughs. “I’ll give you five hundred for it!”

“What?”

“Six hundred!”

Orwell stutters. “I’m not here to sell it, I’m just looking for informati–“

“Seven hundred!”

Orwell puts his hand on the book. “Tell me what it is.”

“Why should I? I’m offering you money for it. Easy eight hundred bucks! Have you ever seen that much in your life before, kid?”

Orwell’s eyebrows furrow. “I’m not a kid.” He pulls on the book, forcing Buchanan forwards. “Tell me what this thing is.”

Buchanan pulls back. “It’s something you’re not meant to see, something I need.”

Orwell does the same. “Do you even know what it is, you kook?”

Enraged, the ‘Professor’ pulls even harder, knocking over his wares and flinging the teen onto the table. “You’re no different than anyone else! You couldn’t possibly understand! You and all the other left-brained nobodies, failing to see the world under your noses! Casting me aside as crazy because I speak the truth!”

“…what?”

“The cryptids, the undead, the creatures of myth, all hiding in plain sight! Nobody believes me! And now,” he laughs, “now I have it! The proof! Their haunts! All their secret hiding places! Hah! I’ll show them all! They’ll have nowhere to hide!”

“…what?”

Maeve peeks out from behind the plastic-covered pulpy paperbacks to check the commotion. She sees the two fighting over the book, Orwell’s frail arms weakening their grip. Recognizing him, she rushes back and drags her brother away from the stall of slavic cookbooks, pointing and explaining.

Yelling in his direction, Maeve lobs that beat-up first edition directly at the Professor's head – causing Orwell to wince as it crumbles into dust.

Stora bites Buchanan on the arm, releasing the book and landing Orwell on the ground. The mark the bite leaves seems like that of an owl’s beak. Before he can even react, Maeve grips the kid by the arm and starts running, snatching the Violet Book on the way.

Grabbing an antiquated bag, Buchanan knocks an orange-clad man chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ to the floor as he rushes after the triad, fidgeting with the contents as he does so.

Stora periodically turns his head to see the old man gaining on them, not being slowed by thick crowds or breakneck turns. Stopping for a second at a crossroads, lost, they start to panic. Orwell rapidly scans the names of street signs to figure out where they are, thumbing through intersections and bus routes, but nothing clicks. Maeve catches a glimpse of a wooden stake sticking out from the Professor's bag as he studies the crowd, watching like a perched hawk…

Something clicks.

Turning left, Orwell yells to the group and leads them streetward. Running by the food trucks, they head further down the street; the Professor bumps into a hoodied man trying to eat a falafel sandwich as he turns the corner.

They jump from block to block, past the old courthouse, under the elevated train station, periodically weaving into traffic as construction begins and the sidewalk ends. The streets start looking less familiar; cafes and condos give way to buildings with bars on the windows…

"I told you, we should've turned two blocks ahead!" She sighs in aggravation.

"There isn't anything two blocks ahead, that's the highway!"

"We can run across it!"

Orwell shoots her a thermonuclear glare. "Have you seen Florida drivers before? We'd be dead! What else do you suggest we do, swim across the intercoastal?"

"Hey, don't cop an attitude with me, you're the reason we're in this mess!"

He hesitates for a moment, stuttering. "Well… what are you doing carrying around some… non-existent, cryptic travel guide that makes old men homicidal?"

Maeve raises a palm and looks around. "... where's Stora?" She screams an obscenity. "Where's my satchel?!"

They both look around, cautiously-but-quickly searching. Orwell mutters under his breath; Maeve utters expletives.

Orwell catches something out of the corner of his eye, and feels the hairs stand up on his spine when an all-too familiar balding head emerges–

"He's over here!"

–and then disappears once he turns back.

They rush into the lobby of what used to be a bank, vault open and empty; a mosaic on the floor reads "FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD". Stora sits inside, cross-legged, concentrating intently on the crystal ball, her satchel to his right.

"You know how to scry?!"

Stora nods. "I've been doing it since I was nine."

"Why the hell didn't you say so before?!"

"I didn't want to steal your thunder…" He curtly mutters what he sees as he searches for help… a familiar man in a nehru jacket… he's standing somewhere by the sea… there's a sculpture of hands, rising from the ground…

Maeve notices a scuff on the crystal ball and groans. "Ugh, I didn't even pay her for it yet! Gramps is gonna kill me…"

"Think again."

An ear-splitting crack is heard as a silver bullet wedges itself into the tile, mere inches away from Orwell's beat-up sneakers. The three look up at the Professor, drenched in sweat, clothes tattered, breathing heavy, smile wide as the ocean and eyebrows furrowed like a valley, gripping a pistol with silvery bullets in its barrel.

"Hide and seek is over, children..." He speaks through his teeth, raising his gun to eye level. "Now, I don't want anyone to get hurt. Just hand over the book and we'll all be-"

Screaming in Spanish can be heard outside. A second later, gunfire echoes across the street; stray bullets hit the windows of the bank, one glancing his hand and causing him to drop the pistol.

The professor ducks for cover behind the old teller's desk; the three run into the old vault, straining to close it, leaving it slightly cracked.

The only thing Orwell can hear is the hurricane-like rush of blood pumping through his ears. Catching his breath and clutching his chest, he looks to the other two mortified teens in the vault and seriously reconsiders his stances on gun control.

As his eyes adjust, he sees the two's faces emerge from the darkness. Stora's peering from behind his steepled hands, unusually calm, as if he knows this isn't the end. Maeve, meanwhile, rummages through her satchel to find something, anything to help them, eventually dumping part of it onto the tile floor in despair. Though nobody sees it, a page falls out of the Violet Book, fluttering to the other side of the room…

He feels this must be what it's like the morning before an execution. It's fitting, in a sense; empty of tellers and tender, this lead-walled room feels more like a mausoleum than a bank.

Wait a second. Mausoleums... banks... something clicks in his mind.

He stumbles over to Maeve and picks up the Violet Book, using the crack of light from the door to quickly search for a page...

The address matches. There's a note underneath in that familiar script – Maeve quickly translates it. Stora looks over at the book; a plan hatches...

❊

After what feels like an eternity, the street goes quiet, the smoke dissipates. The Professor creeps out into the lobby and slowly approaches the vault.

Putting his gun down, he pries the door open – only to find no one inside. A misfitting piece of tile just misses his eyeshot – a piece of paper opposite it piques his interest…

Blocks away, Maeve crawls out of a manhole, covered in cobwebs and grime. Orwell follows, gagging. Stora emerges unphased. Noting the street corners, Orwell leads the three of them towards the spot earlier described. Walking past heckling pedestrians, parks, and valets, Maeve starts running once they see the statue and the nehru-jacketed man in the distance. Hurriedly, she explains their situation to him; he responds in a gravelly voice, beckoning them into his nearby electric car.

“WHERE TO?”

Maeve catches her breath. “Home. But take the long way — he might still be following us.”

“RIGHT.”

The car peels down the street, navigating its way through back-alleys and perpetually clogged thoroughfares like a snake sliding through a minefield, as Maeve and the driver (a certain Mr. Manson, as Orwell quickly learns) argue.

"HOW CAN YOU JUSTIFY TAKING HIM?"

"He's a smart kid, I think he'll handle it well."

"AND IF NOT???"

As Mr. Manson drives, Orwell notices how thin the man looks. The dancing shadows from bridges and buildings overhead make it seem as though hands of bone were piloting the car.

That’s just a silly thought, a flight of fancy… right?

Back at the Book Fair, the ‘Professor’ returns to his stall, legs wobbling and hands pressed on his palpitating chest.

A man in a tzatziki-stained hoodie flips through his commentary on the Huangdi Neijing. “Hey, dude, do you have any books on ginseng?” If one looks closely, one can see the faintest hint of ram-like horns underneath…

Buchanan slumps down into his stall and laughs manically. He holds a single page in his hand, tattered and torn, with one entry he keeps circling with his finger.

❊

Back in the present, Orwell stands before the threshold. A lead-like feeling in his chest tells him he should turn around and head back to the car, wait, and return to University like nothing happened and forget all about the book, ambling around ignorant like everyone else.

But where's the fun in that? How is a good scientist expected to get anywhere if he doesn't step into the unknown? If he doesn't step on the brink of the inane and the insane?

The thought strikes him that maybe we're not supposed to grow up, but outwards.

Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, and enters…

The room holds more red-and-black than a Wobbly convention, coated in a Victorian wallpaper with tears showing stone underneath. Wooden tables here, a bar there, some pool tables scattered in-between, with couches to the sides. He notices a stage, simple in design but flanked by silk-screen posters of skeletons and ghouls in dramatic poses (and a much cruder, hand-painted poster of a satyr in a hoodie).

Stora can be seen behind the bar, delivering a plate of… entrails? to a man with eyes as cloudy as his skin and the absolute worst set of teeth Orwell has ever seen. Catching sight of Orwell, Stora rushes into the kitchen. There's the sound of retching, followed by an owl flying through the pick-up window and out the door at breakneck speeds.

Seated at a table by the stage are the rose-lapelled man and the lion-like figure – a lady, so it seems, prim and proper, with massive eagle-like wings behind. They talk to each other cordially, the man discreetly sipping something red from a martini glass. Orwell's seen both of their faces before, and as they see him and resume talking in more hushed, seemingly embarrassed, tones, he knows the recognition is mutual.

Much to his surprise, he sees Phoebus and Vrati at the bar, though she doesn't look quite right. Her eyes look glazed over, probably from the emptied glasses before her. He figures it's the same reason her skin looks unnaturally green here, perhaps the lighting as well… until she gets up from the bar to greet him. Except she doesn't "get up" at all – where her shirt ends is where one long, scaly skirt begins, dragging onto the– and now she's blacked out on the floor. Okay, nevermind, that is definitely a snake's tail.

A one armed man, reeking of the sea and covered in scars, heckles her. He says something to the iron-masked man in Spanish beside him, with boisterous laughter following.

The one-armed man leans back too far in his chair, landing not just on his back, but careening his neck far back enough that a viscous crunch can be heard. Orwell can see a pool of black bile seep out from behind the table.

There's the sound of wet scraping; he can see flecks emerge from the bile.

Within a minute, the man's back upright, gripping the bar, hand and nape dripping, steadying himself, then patting the back of his skull, as if lodging its contents back into place. His head's structure shifts a little before bouncing back to its 'regular' shape. He slowly alternates between closing individual eyelids, before blinking twice, slapping his temples, and regaining his vision.

"Talk about a migraine!" Shaking the bile off his hand, he takes a swig from his bottle.

The teen prodigy stares at the one-armed drunkard. The man notices, and grins.

As he tries to process this anatomy... biology... physics violating room he's in, the smell of blood gently wafts into his nose.

Trying to convince himself that it's all some dream, he tries the usual lucid dreaming tricks. A sign on the wall not only stays the same after five or six blinks, but calls him out for peeping. His hands don't phase through each other, even after jabbing hard enough that he fears he'll give himself stigmata. And no pinches are needed after accidentally jutting his elbow with the sheath of some headless samurai's sword. It's not even a nightmare at this point, it's something infinitely worse...

There's the sound of the door bursting open, the same owl flying through the pick-up window... and then... a low, almost crocodilian growl...

Turning, the first thing he sees is a giant canid skull, hovering at least three feet, now seven feet, now five feet, now... one foot above his head.

It seems to be... inspecting him. With eyes like burning charcoals that seem to float in their sockets. They cast light on the skull, glinting its slimy, stretched skin surface. Blood-red teeth sit below, dripping, seeming almost to bleed with drool…

There's a huff from its nasal cavity, the scent of rotten flesh following. Pulling away, a pair of pince-nez glasses is placed on the skull's bridge by clammy, veiny talons. As it continues, Orwell's eyes follow the skull to its base – a long, lanky neck, covered in a patchwork of furs, with stitches lining up the sides helter-skelter.

He looks down to see a torso, itself taller than Orwell, neatly dressed in a black vest with red sleeves and pants. He's seen this figure before…

Oh god. No, it can't be.

But then there's...

Where even is he? Nothing seems familiar about this place. He's running through the trip over here in his mind, but none of the streets they crossed make sense. He has no idea where he is, or how to get home.

There's assignments to get done – there's one due tomorrow. He's already almost done with it, but... and then there's an exam on Monday, and two more on Tuesday, and an essay due on Wednesday, and two-and-a-half papers he was supposed to finish–

There's a pressure growing on his chest, like it's being squeezed. His heart-rate increases. His lungs grow shallow.

He clenches his chest. The thoughts spiral out of control; how is he going to get home? How's he ever going to get that assignment in? What if he isn't granted an extension? What if the rest of the semester is doomed? The year? What if he loses his scholarship? He can't possibly afford to pay it on his own, he'd be effectively homeless, jobless, his whole goal in life... is it still there? Has it gone? Is it too far gone? What does it mean anyways? Does he still have a chance?

Breathing is a laborious process. There's a furious beating in his chest, one he can feel surging through his veins. He curls over on his side, fearing he's dying. The pressure grows stronger; he screams.

Distant footsteps can be heard as Maeve enters the lounge. "...Orwell?"

She approaches the convulsed boy. Stopping between him and a scratched up poker table, she sees him, and he smiles momentarily. It fades, as fear and familiarity get transmogrified.

"Don't look at me!" His face turns red as his eyes shut. Tears begin streaming out of them. He cries, rather noisily.

She kneels down beside him and holds Orwell's hand. He continues weeping. She hears little pieces of his mind slip out of his mouth; he wants to go home; he wants it to end; he wants to breathe.

❊

"So... this is the real world, huh?"

"It's not any less real than your own," says a voice ten feet above him.

Orwell walks behind the lumbering roadkill Frankenstein, hand held by Maeve, head pivoting like a broken sprinkler system. Though the stench of blood still singes his nose, it's nothing compared to the sensory overload around him.

To him, the whole place is like a fantastical painting come to life. There's a sarcophagus with 'do not disturb' letters taped on, alembics and retorts noisily bubbling away beside it. Bones of a single-horned horse with goat's feet – a true unicorn – are assembled on something akin to an operating table. Anatomical diagrams familiar and truly foreign hang behind organs suspended in vials of black bile.

Somewhere up ahead, a horned ghost phases through the floor, leaving a small pool of ectoplasm that Orwell's phone can't seem to photograph. Even with the mild frustration, he still pivots his head around, mouth agape, as his attention darts between a suspended stuffed alligator and a hole in the floor with the tattered label "alkahest?" next to it...

Brennos stoops his neck to Orwell's side. "Having fun, are we?"

"I mean, it's... incredible!"

Maeve turns to the lowered skull. "I had a feeling he would enjoy the workshop."

"I don't understand any of it... it's... ineffable!" Not quite comfortable enough to make eye contact with a slimy coyote skull, he turns to Maeve. "Tell me, how does any of this work?"

"How else? Magic."

He shakes his head. "Magic isn't real."

She snaps her fingers, summons a blue flame from her palm, and laughs. "And yet... ow, fu—" she runs over to a watery cauldron and submerges her hand, flame – unfortunately – still alight under the surface. A slurry of butchered incantations follows.

"There's a logical explanation for all of this, right?," he says, cautiously turning to the head with a glint like raw chicken to his right. "N-nanomachines? Quantum... tunneling?"

Brennos jostles his head. "Laws and statistics only go so far, my friend."

("Did this eldritch horror just call me 'friend'?")

"No magic ever happens if people spend their lives pigeonholed into predictable rules and roles, especially ones that aren't their own. Magic is messy, untamed, so most prefer consistency, mundanity…"

Orwell's tongue and brain struggle to connect. "When... I mean, how long... wh..."

Brennos lowers a spindly hand onto Orwell's shoulder. "We've always existed. With different names, in different places, sure. Daemons, yokai, djinn, monsters, cryptids, mythosapiens... but if you look back through any chronicle or legend, you'll find people like us.”

The young scientist walks forward, slowly, hand still on his shoulder. "Why do you all hide from the world?

"Because the world hides from us. People fear what they don't understand, so some hide from it. They relegate it to a fiction, a fantasy created to... I don't know, the reason changes each decade. We're unpredictable, we're unprofitable, we're unorthodox...

"Then some ignore us. It's very easy to do: brains are very good at blinding themselves to what they don't want to see." He gesticulates with his upper hands, brushing a book that begins squirming away. "They'll see Manson walking down the street and say he's just ill, just a disorder, not a walking set of two hundred-odd bones just like them.

"And some, when confronted with us, go as far as to stop us. To hunt us down, to vilify us for things we have no control over. For just being ourselves."

He stops and puts his spindly hand atop a glass case, with a bile-splattered stake inside. "It's... crushed, the spirits of many..." There's a low, slow, sort of gargling sound reminiscent of a sigh. "But not all of us," he says, retracting his hand.

"So we come together, in places like these, to be ourselves. To live our 'impossible' lives as we best can."

Orwell stops at the threshold, staring at the floor, a whole world of thoughts trying to congeal in his mind. Behind him, Maeve returns to Brennos, excitedly showing her scarred-but-extinguished hand and accidental creation of Greek fire. Brennos gives her a pat on the back.

As the three walk back to the lounge, Orwell stops before the door.

"I just don't get why we can't have both. The magic and the mundane."

Brennos shrugs. "I think that's something folks in your 'ordinary world' need to decide. Folks like you."

❊

The Professor's den is dim this evening.

The jagged, balding man enters the room, lantern in hand. He takes a pin and a piece of torn paper, and searches the board for the right spot.

His finger navigates a map of South Florida before him.

He makes some notes in marker, then laughs.

It's a mad laugh, like that of a hyena.

In the lantern light, one taped-together entry can be seen on the newly pinned page:

❊

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