“The Fortune Teller”

It was a cold spring morning, the type of weather that can confuse the soul. I thought we were past all of this. Everything in the world looks so kind and so friendly, so why does it feel so cruel? Outside the window, the fresh color and sunshine say, “come play,” but when you run out and greet the day with an outstretched hand, it slaps you and says, “stay away, you aren’t welcome here, unless you want to get hurt.”

These thoughts filled my twelve-year-old mind as I skipped out the front door and into the morning. Luckily, I was already wearing a suit jacket my mother had laid out for me, so the bitter cold didn’t cut quite as sharply. I still shoved my hands into the pockets of my slacks and pressed my chin against my tie as I made my way to the road, turning around and waving to my parents, who stood on the wooden porch of our modest one-story farmhouse.

“Be careful! We’ll see you there! On time this time, please!” my mother playfully hollered. Her Sunday best didn’t offer the insulation of a two-piece suit, so she wrapped her arms around the midsection of my father, who smiled and waved.

“See y’all there!” I weakly responded, still reeling from the chill. I was thankful that they finally let me do a few things on my own, even if it’s just meeting up with my friend Thomas and walking with him to church every week. I walked out of our gravel driveway and started down the road. We lived on the top of a hill that sloped about a half mile into a quaint little downtown, where our church steeple reached proudly up into the cold blue sky. I could see it clearly, even though I was only a few steps from my family’s mailbox. The ivory spire stood stark against the new life, green and smiling pinks and purples in the trees around it. I could see my sigh as I took it all in.

I shuffled my black loafers carefully over the road, not concerned with passing cars, for there were always so few, but to avoid the dirty creases in the asphalt and the icy-mud-filled potholes that littered the way. It was a harsh winter, with several potent snowstorms that always tore my poor little town’s infrastructure to hell. As per tradition, repairs wouldn’t be complete until late summer. I could still see fallen trees on most of my neighbors’ properties, cleanly sawed into what always reminded me of a sleeve of Ritz crackers.

About halfway between my house and the church was Thomas’ house. He lived right on the elbow of the only bend in the road, down right as the way started getting steeper. As I approached his driveway, my pace slowed even as my feet moved quicker to keep me upright, and suddenly I was off the road and facing the large wrought iron gate that stood guard for the Sanderson’s mansion. Twisting back up the hill from the gate was a cobblestone driveway that led to a large, three-story, gothic-style manor. I had never been inside, even though for the past year I had visited weekly. That suited me fine. Thomas’ house always felt dark, and mean, and sharp to the touch. Perhaps it was the color of it. Perhaps it was how ominously it stood on the hill, overlooking our humble, if not impoverished, town. Or, perhaps, it was the tragedy that always came to mind when I stopped by.

Thomas’ father had passed away just over a year prior. Dr. Sanderson had been a prominent pillar in the community, always respected, even seemingly worshipped at times. He was an elder at the church and the leader of several civil clubs. In the end, he was found in the backseat of his black Bentley Continental, pants around his Lucchese boots, with four bullet holes in him. His personal secretary and her husband had gone mysteriously missing the same weekend that he was murdered. The town easily put the pieces together. Not even a week later, the secretary’s body was found in the nearby Harpeth River. The scandal rocked the entire state.

Thomas’ mother hadn’t made a public appearance since the murders. She stayed holed up in their mansion, rumored to be eating pills like popcorn and washing it down in the depths of the wine cellar. I saw her a few times, peeking through the curtains of a bay window from up there at that cursed house, making sure Thomas and I made our way safely. Even from far away, she looked like a ghost, her pale face standing out harshly against all the black around her. Most of the time, I wouldn’t even dare gaze up there when at the gate.

As for Thomas, he was pulled from the private school he attended in the city and became homeschooled after the tragedy. He had a string of nannies and tutors who took care of him, none of whom stayed for more than a couple of months. Despite everything, I had admired his attitude. He seemed to always hold himself high when I was around him. Although we never really talked about his family troubles, I could tell that he was learning to be independent and resilient, knowing that whatever became of his life would be from his own hands. Well, that, and the millions and millions he stood to inherit. I guess, although he lost his childhood, at least he’ll make some money back from it.

Now, as I waited at the gates of any child’s hell, I could see him descending the driveway. We were the same age, so his black suit was probably about the same size as mine, though it was surely about the cost of my parents’ monthly mortgage bill. My eyes wandered up to the mansion behind him and immediately locked onto his mother’s ghastly white face in the window. I shot my eyes down to my feet, cursing myself for looking so clumsy. Oh, goodness, I could see how sunken and dark her eyes were. Why was her mouth wide open like she was screaming? Why did I look? Damn it, why did I look?!

I had to pull myself together as Thomas approached the other side of the gate, and it began to open outward toward me. He was a little taller than me, with dark hair gelled and combed neatly back against his head. In his left hand he held several light-purple flowers. He walked through the gate and up to me. He gave me a tight-lipped, squinty-eyed, freckled smile and extended his right hand.

“A good morn to you, sir,” he said aristocratically, the inflection in his voice spiking immediately, then dropping as low as a prepubescent boy can speak.

I shook his hand and bowed.

“And to you, my good man!” I matched his energy.

We laughed off the bit and I lightly smacked his shoulder.

“How ya doin’, dude?”

“I’m good! Be a lot better if it wasn’t so damn cold. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“I knowwww. What are those?” I turned my gaze toward his floral fistful.

“These are Siberian Irises. I was gonna use Yarrows, but with the cold snap I think these will hold up a little better. Do you mind if I stop by and see Dad before church?” he said with a slightly concerned brow.

“Oh man, not at all! That’s fine!” I was surprised, since Thomas had never proposed a visit to his father’s grave, at least not while I was with him. I made sure my body language showed him that it was indeed all fine with me.

“Ok. Thanks. We better get going then.”

As the gate slowly closed, we walked out of Thomas’ driveway and back onto the road. We followed the bend down into town, catching up with each other, talking about school and books and March Madness. We passed more and more houses as we got closer to the heart of town, being greeted by a couple of residents we knew. A man named Gale Carothers, who was in his early nineties, told us that we looked sharp. Tammy Hill, mother of another boy our age, Dylan, was getting out of her car with a grocery bag and walking up to her house as we passed by. She said hello and that she would be a couple minutes late to church, on account of getting “everything chopped and in the crockpot.”

We got to the sidewalk finally and had only a couple of closed storefronts to go before we crossed Main Street and onto church property.

“You really don’t have to tag along if you don’t want to,” Thomas said almost apologetically, stopping where the sidewalk crossed the stone pathway that led to the church’s front door. People were beginning to scurry from the parking lot into the building, all wearing their finest. The large brick church stood proud and welcoming. It would only be about thirty minutes before the bells within it would ring out the Westminster Carol, and services would begin.

“Oh no, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to come along. I’m not really in a church-talking mood yet,” I replied with a smile.

Thomas laughed. “I know what you mean. Alright, cool.”

The cemetery was right behind the church, and enormous. We walked the sidewalk around the building and up to the several-dozen-acre lot. The city had made it a top priority to beautify the area and make it look as uncemetery-like as possible, planting hundreds of trees, ironically converting it into a haunted forest.

Thomas and I began walking through the garden of death. I put my hands in my pockets, both because of the chill and also for the sudden nervousness and realization of the loss of life around me. We walked past the gravestones of strangers. We also walked past the stones of people we knew, smiling faces that we used to look up and see on a weekly basis. We walked past a sad little story of a boy that was born ninety-eight years ago and died ninety-seven years ago.

“Okay, man, it isn’t that much further now.” Thomas broke the silence, obviously sensing my uneasiness.

“No problemo,” I weakly near-whispered at my pacing dress loafers, not wanting to read any more sad stone-stories along the way. I kept my eyes down a few more seconds until I realized I couldn’t hear Thomas’ grass steps next to me. I stopped and looked back. Thomas was frozen, one eye squinted, looking dead ahead of us. I turned that way too.

About one hundred feet ahead of us was a wrought iron gated-in section, about the size of a tennis court. A freshly painted sign at the entrance read “SANDERSON,” but this isn’t what piqued my curiosity. Immediately inside the gate and throughout the area’s entirety was a mass of mist. A pale white, ever-so-slowly revolving cloud. I glanced around, finding not so much as a puff of morning mist anywhere else among the stones.

“Uh, Thomas?” I spat at my friend, who looked on at the phenomenon, silent and unblinking.

I turned back to the gated-in weather anomaly. The ivory vapor just slowly turned and turned like a time-lapsed video of a hurricane taken from space. Then, seemingly right at the center of the mist, came a slow, red glow, growing round and then tightening into a single point of light.

“There’s somebody in there,” Thomas stated confidently, before he angrily trudged the last few dozen feet to the black iron gate entrance by the sign that bore his name.

“You can stay out here, really it’s okay.” Thomas turned back and said to me, raising the bouquet of purple irises up almost like a toast. My hands were still sheepishly in my pockets, my face showing fear and confusion.

“Uhhhh…” I started. I had the out. It would be so much easier to just let Thomas go in and deal with it. It was his dad, after all. At least, it was. That was his name on the sign, not mine. Really, it was none of my business. It would actually be more respectful of me to hang back. The smaller voice in the back of my mind told me that was the fool’s excuse, though. That was his friend, and his friend was choosing bravery. Thomas was going to push through and address this issue head-on. I remembered the old John Wayne quote: Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. This was an opportunity for me to be scared to death and saddle up anyway.

“I’m coming with you,” I finally announced, before taking my hands out of my pockets and striding quickly to catch up to Thomas at the gate entrance. My friend gave me a small, appreciative smile. We both slowly and carefully marched into the mist.

We would’ve been walking blind if it weren’t for the small focused point of red light in front of us. It was only a water vapor that engulfed us, but the smell of smoke clung to our nostrils as well. Rich, well-seasoned tobacco smoke, along with a subtle rotten egg smell of sulfur. The red light fell from above our heads to down around our belt area from where we could see. We slowly walked on until we came into a clearing of the mist around the center of the Sanderson family plot. We stopped.

There was the gravestone of Dr. Eli Sanderson, an obsidian memorial with big white chiseled letters. It stood about five feet tall. A man stood there, too. He had an elbow rested on the top of Dr. Sanderson’s rock. He rose up at least six foot six. He wore a beige seersucker suit with a wide-brimmed white hat and matching shoes. He was slightly overweight for his height, probably two hundred and sixty-odd pounds heavy. He was older, and it seemed he was bald under that flashy white hat. He wore black circular glasses, held up by a pale, pointy nose and low-lobed ears. He flashed us a mouth full of immaculate pearl-white veneers. He held a cigarette up near that smile, the source of the mysterious red glow. He pulled it to his mouth and breathed in at the butt of it. To my amazement, I saw BOTH ends of the cigarette glow into a dull flame. He then held it away from his face again and then pursed his thin lips into an “O” and pushed out several smoke rings that grew and grew until they joined the rest of the slowly swirling cloud around them.

Thomas and I just stood and watched in surprise until he spoke up.

“Who ARE you?” he said at a volume that was trying to display confidence. The stranger wasn’t persuaded.

“Boys, it’s all right now…” he took his elbow off of Dr. Sanderson’s gravestone and began toward Thomas and me. He took his cigarette, pinched in his right hand, and placed it in his left hand, which closed up into a fist, somehow painlessly extinguishing it. Upon opening his left hand, the cigarette had disappeared. Soon he was standing over Thomas and me, with a big, toothy grin that would make any salesman proud. He stuck out a pale, fleshy handshake, first to Thomas and then to me. His skin was shockingly ice cold.

“My name is L.O. Kingfisher. I assume one of the two of you to be Thomas Sanderson, no?” His voice was low and rumbling, fitting for a man of his size. He had a matter-of-fact, Magnolia Moonlight southern accent. Thomas and I shared an anxious glance and remained silent.

“It’s okay, boys, really! Speak up now!” he politely commanded down at us.

“I am Thomas Sanderson. What do you want, sir?” Thomas flatly replied in a question that was more of an accusation.

“Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, my boy. I was wondering when I would FINALLY get to meet you, son.” Kingfisher leaned down and took my friend’s hand again in a stronger, longer shake. He retracted and put his hands on his hips, which boasted a large, silver horseshoe belt buckle.

“Who are you?” Thomas repeated, with more bass in his voice than when he had asked the first time.

“I’ve done told you that, son. I’m L.O. Kingfisher! I’m an old retired fortune teller of sorts, a soothsayer, they’ve called me too. I know I don’t quite appear how you would imagine an old fortune teller to look. That’s because, my boys, I am a REAL one. Shameful the stereotype that has emerged over the decades, the forehead beads and glass balls and what have ya. Oh well, phooey it. ALL THAT, and, Thomas Sanderson, I was a good, dear friend of your father’s!” He once again flashed us a bone-white smile. I thought for a moment that I could briefly see a soft, red glow behind each of his tinted, circular lenses.

“Daddy never mentioned you, and I’ve never seen you, either.” Thomas corrected the man.

“Oh, your father and I worked together looooong long before you were born, son.” Kingfisher’s toothy smile relaxed and his face became more stern. “We had some dealings far back ago when he wasn’t doing too well, you understand?”

I had never heard of the Sandersons ever being less than rich, so this statement took me by surprise. I turned to Thomas, whose cheeks had turned slightly red, out of either anger or embarrassment. Or both. Either way, he didn’t seem confused by Kingfisher’s words.

“What do you want…” Thomas softly barked.

“Well, boy, I’ll try my best to put it to you quickly…” Kingfisher began in a story and also in a slow pace around the clearing of the mist.

“Your father came to me when he was a young man, see? He was a poor, young soul, truly. How he found me, I probably won’t ever know. But he did find me, Thomas. He came to ME. You must understand that. This was back in the heyday of my fortune-telling days. This was back when I was really sharp. I could surely give a man his future. At my best, and for the right man, I could even CRAFT his future. WHATEVER he wanted, as long as he took my bestowed gift and made the world a more evil place in its wake… that’s what I get out of this, you see?” Kingfisher stopped his pacing and came over to us again, lowering his head to accentuate the certainty behind his words. There, behind his glasses, and this time brighter than before, his eyes DID light up an angry red. I began to feel very nervous. I shot a quick look over to Thomas again. His eyes were open a little wider than they’d been before, like he was filling up with a fearful realization.

“So Eli Sanderson and I made a deal. I was at the top of my game, and his devilish potential was too sugary to deny, so I formed together a wonderful, fortunate future for your father. He got it all, too. Every. Last. Bit of what I told him would happen. And what did he do to me, Thomas?! What did he do??” Kingfisher began to sound angry, his voice becoming more gravelly and the burning circles behind his glasses more inflamed as he talked down to my friend.

“What?” Thomas replied, intimidated but genuinely curious to hear where this was going.

“He broke the rules of our deal. You see, with my agreements, there are certain stipulations to ensure a maximum return on my end. I gotta know that the men I work with will drain as much goodness out of this world as possible. He broke the stipulation. Snapped it at the roots. Then he DIED, Thomas. He DIED before he could uphold himself to yours truly. He had until the end of his rich, tasty life to give me what he owed me, you see? Got himself shot to hell long before he was supposed to go. That’s a PROBLEM for me, Thomas. A BIG. PROBLEM.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Thomas said half-defiantly. “Why are you telling me any of this?”

“I’m very glad you asked, son…” Kingfisher began pacing again, and stuck a hand into a pocket on the interior of his beige seersucker jacket. He pulled out another cigarette and set it between his lips. He didn’t light it. He merely sucked in tightly and the thing lit up at both ends. This confirmed what was already swirling in my mind just like the white fog that was swirling around me. L.O. Kingfisher was not a man. He was something else, and he meant harm.

“You see, when I met your father, he was an ETERNAL bachelor…” Kingfisher continued, accentuating the word “eternal” with a flapping of his free hand that wasn’t holding the spontaneously lit cigarette. His cadence had become more like that of an old-time tent revival sermon.

“That was our deal, you see? He would have all the wealth and power and privilege that he could ever want, but the one thing he COULDN’T do was ever marry. What do you reckon he did to me, Thomas? What do you reckon he did to my perfectly tailored future I made for him?”

Thomas remained silent, not wanting to state the obvious.

“Yes, exactly! He married your mama. Now, usually, this would nullify the deal. But I, being the gracious old imp that I am, and seeing all the delicious evil that your father’s fortunes had turned on the world, I returned to him with an ultimatum: he would simply kill his wife, and then we would be back to fair and square.”

My hands shook, so I plunged them back into my pockets. Looking at Thomas, I could see his eyes twitching as his gaze remained locked into Kingfisher’s shaded, boiling red stare.

“Did he do that, Thomas? Did he uphold his end of a so mercifully augmented arrangement??!”

“Hell no he didn’t, and I thank him.” Thomas kept pulsating between boldness and shakiness, but I was glad to see him combating this strange man’s growing anger.

Kingfisher relaxed his face, gave a deep chuckle, and sucked another flame into his cigarette, blowing more rings right at the two of us boys.

“I’m not usually in the business of granting chance after chance here, Tommy, but I have your father’s last chance at getting flush with me. You are going to be his last chance at getting even, see?”

“I won’t help you do anything…” It seemed as though Thomas had kept his foot flexed on the bold pedal. I looked to him, and he was frowning up at Kingfisher, an icy certainty in his young eyes.

“You WILL, my boy!! And you will NOT deny me twice more or else this entire deal WILL BE NULLIFIED!!” The Fortune Teller erupted into a smoky-voiced warning over my friend.

The fiery orbs behind his black glasses grew brighter, and then calmed, along with his face.

“Please, Thomas. Help me help you on this one. It’ll only benefit you, after all. Do you enjoy how comfortable it is? You’ll never have to work a day in your life, or worry about a single crisp dollar in all of your years. You simply must uphold your father’s end of the deal. You must kill your mother, Thomas.” His voice had returned to an almost sweet sincerity.

“I won’t do that. I can never do that.” Thomas said as if he had seen this proposal coming a mile away. His voice had a slight tremble that I had not heard before.

Kingfisher puffed out his chest and once again crushed his cigarette into his fist, somehow blanking it from existence again. He took a big, angry inhale. I could see blue veins protruding underneath the pale skin on his neck and temples.

“Now, boy, that’s twice now you’ve denied me. Do you understand the power of your words, son?!! You haven’t even heard me out fully and you’re one statement away from ending EVERYTHING. Just hear me out! I am not an unreasonable man, Thomas. Notice how I’m here only now, many years after your father died? I wanted to give you time to grieve and grow before I threw such a task on you. Just do me a favor and reach into your left side pocket…” Kingfisher squatted down to eye level with Thomas, who lowered his left hand into his trousers and pulled out an orange pill bottle. He held it up to his eyes.

“What is it, Thomas?” I whispered through a layer of fear-induced phlegm, having not used my voice for the past several minutes.

“It’s my mom’s Xanax refill…” he whispered back with a heavy, defeated tone.

“Well, well, not just ANY Xanax refill…” Kingfisher proudly boomed from his squat. “This is a special recipe that I’ve cooked up in the past. Chemically identical to your mama’s medicine, untraceable by investigation. Yet, her usual dose, or her double and triple dose, as I would expect, will be enough to take her down, son. It’s that easy!” He remained eye to eye with Thomas, the color behind his frames suddenly a cooler bluish tone. Friendlier. He curved a warm smile to Thomas and clapped a heavy hand to his shoulder. Thomas flinched at the contact.

“C’mon, boy, you think she’s living now as it is? She won’t go out due to the scandal of it all. She coops herself up in that mansion and dies a little every day. Won’t ya be helping her out? Trust me, compared to my colleagues and their wretched ways, this is a very easy deal for you.” He closed a large pale hand around Thomas’ that held the pill bottle.

“Take it to her. She’ll be none the wiser. It’ll all be over, and I’ll be out of your hair forever and ever, Amen.” His face curled up into another big, scheming smile. The hues behind his dark glasses once again showed red.

Thomas stood there, staring into his closed hand. He remained that way for almost twenty seconds, unmoving and silent. The white fog around us continued to slowly swirl. L.O. Kingfisher stood back up and put his hands in his pockets, not taking his focus off of Thomas, waiting for a response.

After what seemed like an hour to me, Thomas suddenly sprang to action. He raised up the little pill bottle and threw it to the ground in front of him, then took his right foot and stomped it into shards of plastic, crushing most of the little white pills into powder.

“NO!! I WILL NOT DO THIS, I WILL NOT KILL MY MOM JUST TO KEEP THE MONEY!! NO NO NO!!” Thomas broke out into a shout, further stomping on the would-be murder weapon. Kingfisher’s eyes grew as bright and as angry red as ever, but his face remained a strange calm. He gave Thomas a close-lipped smile.

“Then there it is, Thomas. There it is. That’s a third denial if I ever heard one.” He spoke softly and assuredly.

I turned and saw tears pouring out of Thomas’ eyes. I threw an arm around his shoulder. I heard myself speak up to the big man.

“You aren’t anything but some old crazy trickster. Thomas is stronger than you’ll ever be!” My friend’s courage had somehow bled into me. I was scared to death but saddled up anyway.

“Shut up, boy. You’re out of this. Yeah sure, he’s a mighty little nugget for his age, but he really should’ve let me finish. You see, losing the money was the least damning part of all this for him.”

Thomas wiped his eyes and looked up into the lit charcoal that sizzled behind Kingfisher’s black circle frames. Once again he looked confused.

“What?”

“See, boy, I’ve been retired from the fortune-telling business a long time, but every now and then I can spit out a spare dandy. You, my friend, just put a brand new fortune into motion for yourself…” He squatted back down and was face to face with a wide-eyed Thomas, whose frightened look was reflected in Kingfisher’s lenses.

“Oh yes, I see it now…” Kingfisher flew out an arm at Thomas and snatched his hand like an eagle captures a field mouse. His voice changed into an almost sing-songy performative timbre.

“You will return to your allotted life and you will experience all of the same prosperity you are accustomed to. You will finish schooling and will excel in your studies. You will go on to Stanford University where you will soar above your peers with intellect and prowess. There you will meet the love of your life. Together you will both make great strides in the world of business…”

I stole a look over to Thomas, whose pupils had paled, like he was spinning into a hypnosis upon hearing the words of the fortune teller. So far I was pleasantly optimistic of my friend’s foretold life. Kingfisher kept on, the red growing brighter and brighter behind his shades.

“You will move to the sunny coast, having the business opportunity and the financial power to pick any seaside mansion you could ever desire. You will sell your father’s mansion here in town. You will take in your mother, who will become healthier and healthier as she spends more and more time away from that old place. From today, Thomas, you will experience 14 years of wonder and of effortless success. Fourteen complete years. On the first day of the fifteenth year, you will be comfortable in a corner office of a large building with your name on it. There, you will get a phone call. On the other side of that line will be a voice that will deliver bad news to you. BAD, BAD, AWFUL NEWS…” Kingfisher’s mouth sprang open and he flashed those big square veneers at Thomas, whose eyes were still milky in the trance of it all.

“OH, this news will break you, boy. It will BREAK YOU TO BITS!!! You will hang that phone up, reach into your desk and pull out an unopened bottle of single malt scotch whiskey. You will sit there and drink the entire damned thing. You will vomit all over the Turkish carpet in your corner office. Then, needing to further quench your thirst, you will trip and stumble out of that big building with your name on it, waving off concerned employees. You will stagger over to your hot red sports car and get in. Somehow you will make it to the liquor store, where you will buy another bottle of single malt scotch whiskey. You will sit in your car and drink the ENTIRE DAMNED THING. You will try your absolute best to drive home after that. You will take the curved coastal highway. Of course, you won’t go far. The first big bend of the road and you will swerve your drunkard ass right into the path of a packed van. You will black out and then reawake as you choke on thick black smoke. You will fight your way out of the wreckage, mostly unharmed. You will take a grand look at the twisted, burning metal mess you made. Sitting in the back of the van will be two black burnt children’s bodies. Luckily for you, Thomas, they will be killed on impact! The victims in the front, however, won’t be so lucky. The father of the two charred children will be sitting at the squashed-in steering wheel. He’ll raise a broken forearm to his neck, his windpipe having been crushed by his seatbelt. He will slowly turn to his side and see his wife, who will be gurgling and groaning in fatal pain as she looks down to see her sternum poking bloody out of her chest like an ivory spear. Bug-eyed, the two parents will look at each other and their respective wounds, before they notice the fire coming from the back of their vehicle. Only upon turning toward it will they realize they have lost their children. The noises you will hear them make will radiate through your bones and sting your ears for all of time, Thomas. ALL OF TIME. You’ll just be sitting there, drunk as sin, sitting on the shoulder of that twisted coastal road. The two parents in the front seat of that van will turn to look at you, the whites of their eyes will stretch at you with horrible realization. They will know it was you, Thomas. They will know. They will continue this hellish wailing of loss as the fire rages behind them. They will be stuck right in their seats. They will know their escape is impossible. The father will ache his broken forearm into the somehow opened glove box. He will reach in for a gun and find it, although it will burn him to the touch. He will fight the blinding pain and put that gun up to his ear. Right as he will cock that pistol, the entire car will erupt into an explosion. You will sit there and see the parents violently convulsing and hollering in the unreal pain of the flames. You will sit there and you will live with that image for ALL TIME. You WILL lose everything. EVERYTHING. AND MORE!”

My mouth had fallen open a while ago and I had just stared, frozen by Kingfisher’s words. Thomas had started to shudder under my arm.

Kingfisher got out of his squat and stood tall and proud.

“Well, there you have it, son. I bid you a good day.” He patted his jacket and then pulled out a third cigarette and sucked a flame into it, all while giving his flashiest, toothiest smile yet.

He walked back over to the gravesite of Dr. Eli Sanderson.

“Should’ve just did it my way, Thomas…”

Thomas finally broke his silence.

“Are you the Devil?” he asked, but he seemed to not have a doubt about it. He continued to tremble as I kept my arm over his shoulder. He felt cold. The fog around us began to swirl faster and faster and faster.

Kingfisher burst into a big, thunderous laugh. His eyes behind his circular lenses were as bright red as they had been this whole time. He slapped his knee with the hand that wasn’t holding the smoldering little cigarette. The white mist turned and turned.

“No son, I’m not the Devil. But, next time I see you, Thomas Sanderson, I will introduce you to him personally…”

With this, the fog spun and spun ever quickly. The Fortune Teller, L.O. Kingfisher, walked backward into the spiraling wall, disappearing from sight, save for one last glow from his cigarette, along with two burning red coal eyes. Soon those lights were gone too. In an instant, the fog itself dissipated, leaving the two boys back in the normal but chilly spring morning. They both looked around, making sure the man was really gone. Nothing so much as twitched around the entire cemetery. I kept my arm around Thomas. Then, right on cue, the church bells chimed out the Westminster Carol. It was time to go.

“Hey, don’t worry about that, buddy. It’s all gonna be okay. Listen to me. I mean it. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Thomas put his gaze to the ground.

“Let me take care of this and then let’s get out of here.”

He had held on to the Siberian Irises throughout that entire affair, so he took them and walked over to his dad’s grave and set them on the ground right in front of it.

“Rest easy, Pops…”

The two of us then walked back through the wooded cemetery and on toward our church, where we would act like nothing ever happened. It’s safe to say that the next fourteen years were the best of Thomas’ life.