Hippies Use Side Door [Lux]

Mortimer could hardly believe they'd actually hired him, after he realised just who was running the show in this little town. Oh yes, a number of names had come up to him which he recognised from some years back, when his days had been filled with medications and therapy sessions. And dreams of Katherine, the pretty redhead half buried in the snow bank by Hadley's little creek. How exhilarating it had all been! Short of the dry spell that had followed for a month afterwards, the entire experience had been valuable to Mortimer, and indeed, he still possessed quite the stash of sketchbooks of various people composed in various states of death or drying. Art, courtesy of the self-proclaimed monster, Seth Hamlin. Mortimer had never really seen him as a monster, but perhaps that was because he didn't consider himself one either. There was nothing that needed fixing about him. He was just as he was supposed to be, and he was loving life. And death.

Green Ridge was perhaps not the very first place Mortimer ought really to have applied. But with a record like his, he had to be picky, had to look for the places that were not quite normal themselves. No doubt, though he didn't mention it on his application, the town must be aware of his previous proclivities. They were all in his criminal records after all. But they hired him anyway, and it had worked out perfectly. Leaving Concord, and his parents' business had been long past due. They'd never quite fully trusted him since he'd come home, and rarely left him alone in the mortuary, as if they still sensed something not quite right about him. But he had been the poster child then, keeping his nose clean, keeping the evidence cleaner. It had all worked out at the end of the day, and though the weather was overcast and drizzly, he wore a smile as he meandered through downtown Green Ridge and marvelled at his amazing luck. Or perhaps at his amazing penchant for spewing bullshit. Either way, his smile was contagious to those who passed him, and it was not long before he began ducking into store fronts to peruse the goods.

The hippie shop, as he would come to call it, was about his fourth stop along the way, and once he'd slipped inside the incense-laden premises, he took to poking around racks of trinkets and whatchamacallits. Concord, new Hampshire, had had quite the 'alternative' following itself. Little shops like this one weren't out of the ordinary for him, though he'd rarely gone inside, and certainly had never bought much. He'd had little time for curiosity, in juggling his school and internship. But now he had all the in in the world, having settled himself into his new house -next door to his old therapist none-the-less. He'd laughed about that after they'd passed in the parking lot, and she had departed. Funny ol' world. It was almost enough to make a young man believe in fate and divination, and all of that other clap-trap that he'd never bought into. Almost.

He picked up a book from a shelf as he thought about it. It was the perfect book for the mos abstract thought. Reading Tarot. A narrative for that concept of fate and divination he didn't believe in. For surely, no-one could read a person's life from some pieces of card-stock. It was just preposterous. he'd pondered a psychic reading of his own a few times as he'd passed stores in Concord. If it really worked, what would they find out about him? Would they see Katherine's spirit lingering around him? What about the other two? Could they read the blood on his hands in the fine lines of his palms? Could they sense surgical steel and formaldehyde in the faces of the tarot cards? He flipped through the pages idly, and then put the book back, moving farther into the bowels of the store, to pry about a shelf of various crystals and pendulum chains. If there really was such a thing as psychics, then surely he was fucked. Maybe they'd electrocute him. Or if he was lucky, maybe they'd hang him, gas him, inject him with poison.

That, was a thought to save for later though. It had no place in public, lest he attract the attentions of embarrassed or horrified passers-by. Best to keep himself on a short leash on his first day out.

If Mortimer had known that Lux had drawn a Devil card that morning and thought of him now in conjunction, he probably would have laughed out-rightly and considered that maybe these people weren't entirely full of shit. Or drugs. Of course, he had no idea what the devil card actually meant, but maybe it was fitting after all. That or the death card, he fancied, as layman are wont to do. No matter the actual, long-held meanings of the cards amongst those in the know. If he could have picked one from the deck just on pure picture quality, it would be that. He didn't really believe death was an entity, a spectre on a pale horse, or a becloaked skeleton with a scythe. It was nice imagery though, and Mortimer pondered it briefly as the shop's owner appeared and addressed him. He offered her a pleasant smile right back, and put down the trinket he'd been handling, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. She was talking about tarot, like those in the book he'd just perused, it seemed, ad he canted his head at her a fraction.

"Unusual experience? Well, I suppose it's possible, but I'm afraid I'm quite boring." A flash of pearly whites chased his face back to perusing the shelves briefly until she spoke again. Now, if he really did believe this was all bullshit, he didn't have anything to worry about, of course. But... But. But there was always a chance. Wasn't there? Is there? He paused where he was and finally looked at her properly. Really looked. She seemed wholly unassuming, but then maybe so did he. His eyes lit with curiosity, interest, the faintest of thrills. What if she really could read his life from cards? hat if she could see everything? What would she say? What would she do? The trill of the idea, the risk, was almost intoxicating in a way. Or maybe it was the incense filled room messing with his head. Was he seriously considering this? It's hocus. But he smiled, fingers lingering on the lip of the shelf in front of him while untoward visions danced in his head. If she found out, if she read it from his cards... His eyes briefly roamed her entirely, and he found that he was nodding. Ah well, too late now.

"Sure, if you want to. I should warn you though, I don't really go in for that sort of stuff. You know, fortune telling? I don't know if it will work on me." It seemed a reasonable assessment. Of course sceptics would never truly believe, so anything said to them would be interpreted as false, just as anything said to a believer could be interpreted as true. Maybe it wouldn't work because he didn't believe it would. Then again, maybe a part of him was almost holding out hope that it could work. Maybe a part of him was excited at the idea of letting someone glimpse inside his world, having known nothing about it.

"Do I have to grace your palm with silver though? 'Cause I've only got a Visa card on me." He smiled, a good-natured joke. The kind people made all the time in day to day life. So normal. That was Mortimer, alright. Normal, boring, kept to himself and drove an intimidating car that just happened to be the town's hearse. He was used to people keeping their distance from him, and it suited his lifestyle well.

She watched as his face brightened with a smile but there was something dangerous behind his façade, one that should see only with her mind’s eye. It was a strange feeling for Lux, one that she hadn’t experienced in the time she had been at Green Ridge. And while she wasn’t as adept at reading auras as she would have liked to have been, she was strangely compelled and enraptured by the feeling that exuded from the young man in front of her.

A quick glance to the clock on the wall told her that it was closing time but instead of asking for a return visit, the brunette nodded and pulled a key from her apron pocket and moved to the front door. Turning the sign from open (Come in for a Spell) to closed (Ding, dong, with Witch is gone), Lux slid the key into the bolt and turned. Locking herself in with ‘The Devil’ may not have been the smartest thing for her to do but what did she know? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Finally, she smoothed her hair back from her face and tucked the strands behind her ear and motioned for the back room. Once she got to the beaded curtain, she held it aside for Mortimer to enter. When he had settled himself into a seat, she took the opposite chair and lit the candle that had previously sputtered out. On the velvet clothed table, in between them sat her well worn tarot deck.

Taking the cards in her hands, she stroked them gently and in a loving manner. She shuffled once, twice, thrice and then grinned to the man across from her. “Take these cards, clear your mind. Normally, I ask folk to think on a question that they want answered but in the here and now, with your penchant for disbelief, I won’t ask that. Just shuffle them and when you do, reverse some as I have.”

Pushing the cards across the table, she smiled again. “Shuffle until you’re comfortable with how the cards feel in your hands,” she intoned huskily.

When he was done, she took the cards from him and moved the top card to the bottom of the deck. It was her signature, truth be told, to remove the top card from the deck and place it at the bottom; almost her way of tempting the fates to make a joke of her readings. But thus far, the fates had never steered her wrong.

Face down, she laid three cards. “The first card here,” she tapped it, “is your past.” Tapping the next, she explained that it was his present and then the last was his future.

Flipping the first card, her face grew serious. She was quite alarmed at what she saw but made no motion to show it. Inhaling deeply, she closed her eyes and placed her hand over the card.

“The tower is a powerful card. It indicates that in your past you went through a period of major disruption. There was a major change in your life, one that was very dramatic. Your well worn routines were disrupted, it overthrew your existing way of life. Perhaps there was a sudden and violent loss. But in the end, it brought you a sense of freedom and enlightenment. Sort of a rising phoenix.”

Lifting her head, Lux watched the man’s face. While she hadn’t caught his name, she thought of him (at least for this day) as The Devil. He was the sign of her cards. He was the one thing that brought flavor to her day. Interesting past, to say the least. Finally, she flipped the next card.

Her hand, again, went over the card and her eyes closed. Concentrating, she shivered a bit. This was a very dark spread indeed.

“Death is your present. While most people believe that death means true death, the meaning of the death card is about change. It can be both good and bad. Basically, it is the end of a phase in your life which has served its purpose. It indicates abrupt and complete changes in your circumstances, way of life and patterns of behavior due to your past events and actions. Your transformation is almost complete.”

Again she observed Mortimer. She gazed into his eyes and felt a chill down her spine. It was both fearful and exhilarating. Something unusual was happening here but Lux just could not put her finger on it. With a bit of a smile, she revealed the last card. But the smile fell as she looked down at the card.

“Oh gods,” she muttered before she caught herself. The candle flame sputtered and then went out, as if the mystical beings around her wanted her eyes shut on what she had seen. Clearing her throat, she reached for the matches and lit the candle once more. Knowing her face had grown pale, she tried to hide it with a smile.

Without closing her eyes, she tapped on the card and cleared her throat. “This card is your future.”

The card in view was The Devil... reversed.

“I... I’m not comfortable with this but I must warn you. And I’m not one to shirk my responsibilities. So, please listen closely because I will only say this once. Your future is... in jeopardy. This card indicates pure evil. I see an abuse of authority. I see greed. I see bondage to a person, situation or thing. I even see emotional blackmail.”

Scared out of her wits and now truly believing that Mortimer was the devil in which she was being warned about this morning when she did her daily card, Lux inhaled the light of the spirits around her to give her the strength to continue. He could be saved, she thought to herself. He could change his future.

“But the future is not written in stone, my friend. You can change the course of events if you are wary, if you are careful. Whatever avenue you’re traveling down now or in the very near future... be certain it’s the right one because once you start down it you will not be able to turn back. Only you can save yourself from whatever this fate is. True evil is waiting for you down that path. Don’t let yourself be lured into that darkness.”

Though he had never had his 'fortune read' he felt as if he already knew the drill, if only from television. His mind meandered to a thousand different screenplays unfolding on the old cathode ray television sets of his youth, and he smiled to himself as he passed through the beaded curtain and peered around the dimly lit interior of the back room. It was everything he'd imagined. It was almost worth spending the money on, if only for the build up. As to whether this was going to work at all, of course, he couldn't say. He wasn't convinced, but he was partly hopeful at the same time. Maybe there was some mystical mumbjo jumbo in the universe. And maybe, just maybe, if there was, he was royally screwed come judgement day. But at least he'd be able to say he truly lived, and wasn't that worth everything in the end? Sometimes he sat back and daydreamed of it all. That end. his end. How would it happen? Who would see it? Who'd be handling his corpse? Would he need a body bag? Where would he be?

He shifted through the darkness of the room with a steady, comfortable pace, as if this setting suited him, as if the shadows parted around his feet like disturbed water. A creature of the darkness, lover of the night. The night and death. The clinical hush of the mortuary at midnight, the slackened limbs of someone he'd never known and always knew. Their names no longer really mattered to him. What's in a name? They weren't people any more, but death. They were that sublime end. Once upon a time, he'd seen death as the perfect culmination of a life. He'd thought the dead deserved to be really loved, cherished each apart. A celebration of the flesh unleashed from the binds of a consciousness. But now? Now each of them represented the same, elusive, intoxicating thing. Death itself. Flesh turned stagnant beneath his fingertips. Death was the ultimate, the end of the line, and the closer he could dance to that line, the more arousing it was, the more glorious. Few live people ever came close any more, to rousing that interest in him. But for fleeting minutes at least, Mortimer's eyes watched Lux through the gloom of a psychic parlour back room, and he felt his heart pounding in his chest.

His eyes were dedicated to the motions of her hands upon the table, once the deck of cards had been handed back. They were difficult to shuffle at first, much larger than a regular deck, but he'd managed it, and his head was tilted to the side in genuine focus as her hands drew the three and began to turn them.

The tower. It looked ominous. A great bolt of lightning split a medieval, painted sky, while the residents of the tower left from it's fire-engulfed windows, undoubtedly to their deaths below. Mortimer managed not to smile when he saw it, not out of pleasure at the picture, but out of amusement that it should show up as his first card. He knew nothing about tarot, but you didn't have to be a genius to surmise that The Tower was a rather dark and violent card. It suited him, and he listened to her words with a carefully blank face and the requisite nod now and then. So far, so good. Naturally, this posed a problem for him. if it was working, right out of the gate, what else was about to come up? There was only one death card in the deck, right..?

The second card was... well, it was death. And while it must have seemed very inappropriate to anyone else, Mortimer couldn't help but stifle a quiet breath of a laugh when she turned it over. Quiet descended once again as she spoke, and this time he lifted his eyes to watch her explain, and listened to every word she breathed. Uncanny, really. His attention was rapt on the reader rather than the spectre of the grim reaper depicted on the piece of card-stock. If only she knew. If only she knew everything. What would she then think of the card? Oh, but it was so right, after all. Transition, change from one way of being to another. He was free now, alone in the world. He could explore anything and everything his heart desired, and if he died in the process, then that was just as good as the journey there. he was one of the few people on the planet, perhaps, that longed for a lingering death. He wanted to feel and process every second of it. He wanted it to last. he wanted to feel the cold veil descending over him, and the viscosity of dawning realisation and fear. The end. The very, very end. The point of no return.

He adjusted his seat slightly as Lux went on to the last card, reminding himself to reign in his thoughts and his imagination, lest he scare her more than that last card seemed to. The Devil. His card, apparently. He didn't believe in God or the Devil. But if they existed, he knew he would not go to heaven. And he felt comfortable with that too. He was at ease with the world and the hereafter, and throughout the reading, he looked perfectly relaxed. Apparently, he was not rattled in the least, though he listened intently to the warning. A future in jeopardy and darkness. What could be more sublime? He smiled at her reassuringly, seeing the discomfort on her face. There was such a temptation there, to tell her everything, to let her in on the secret behind this uncanny reading. But he wouldn't. Not yet. This was like a game to him, and he was enjoying it greatly. Finally, something had piqued his interest outside of work again. The last time it had happened, a young man had been left out in the middle of the woods, in New Hampshire's White Mountains. So far, the body hadn't been found. And he wished the authorities good luck on finding it besides. He was well versed in grave digging, after all.

"Don't look so worried, Lux. May I call you Lux?" His smile was still soft and reassuring. The smile of a sceptic, perhaps. He'd have to think long and hard on this later, but for now, damage control was probably in his best interest. It wouldn't do to go blowing his cover on his first week at Green Ridge. Besides, he wanted to know more. He wanted details. Maybe not now, but later. Could the cards tell him how he might die? Could they be that accurate? Could they tell him how Lux would die? Would it be by his own hand? He might have thought she wasn't his type, and she wasn't. But his type was not based on looks, but the progress of rigor mortis. "That's pretty uncanny though."

He lifted a hand and pointed a pale finger to the card in the middle. "I just arrived here a couple of days ago. I'm the town mortician." He laughed softly again. Normal. Boring. But her discomfort was still giving him a secret thrill. his eyes danced with mirth, and maybe a hint of something else, something darker, like that feeling reflected in the cards on the table. "My name's Mortimer Hargreaves. Nice to meet you."

When he had laughed, she had ignored it. She had imagined it as some form of disbelief in how ‘silly’ the cards could be; how silly it would be for a person to take stock in some wives tale of the future. She ignored it like she always ignored the nonbelievers. Lux didn’t even think to suspect that he would find it truly amusing. It would have been beyond her. She was a being of light and as a being of light there would be only trust in the good of people. Besides, there was always karma in the end.

What caught her off guard though was that this Mortimer Hargreaves had no idea how serious she was being or how fearful for his safety she felt. When he spoke to her as if there was nothing to be concerned about, it shook the foundations of her courage and she swung her head from side to side in disbelief.

“Mortimer Hargreaves, your name suits you. But I think you’re missing how truly scared I am about your future. This is not some parlor trick to scare you. In fact, I think I’m more frightened than you are. Please, just promise me you’ll heed my words?”

Quickly, she struck her hand out and pulled the cards together and formed them back in their pile. While she normally would have shuffled them once more and breathed her light into them, infusing them with her power... Well, this time she gathered them in a huff and stood from the table.

Walking to her china cabinet, turned storage, she unceremoniously plopped them down on a shelf and took down another set of cards. Silently and with her back turned to this Devil, Lux shuffled the set. The sound of cards shuffling together soothed her a slight bit and she closed her eyes to concentrate. Again the top card went to the bottom of the pile when she was done shuffling.

Her hand shook as she pulled her card and laid it on the sidebar of the cabinet. Shaking her head sadly, she put the card back into the deck. She shuffled to clear the energy and then finally returned to her devilish guest.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I get so caught up in my cards and in the readings that I forget my manners. This reading is on me. Consider it a welcome to the island gift, Mortimer. Come, I’ll show you out,” she smiled.

Realizing how horrid she must sound; like she was throwing out a guest. She mentally chastised herself and corrected the situation with a simple invite.

“Actually, have you eaten? The diner is lovely but I also hear tell that there is a karaoke thing going on at the tavern. I’ll be headed over there if you’re interested. They have some mighty good fries!”

Without another word, she began extinguishing the flames of candles and the embers of incense. She didn’t tell Mortimer that the card she pulled for herself, for advice on how to handle the devil in her midst was The Nine of Swords. She didn’t tell him that the card showed her deception or that it would herald nightmares for her. She didn’t even tell him that it showed suffering, cruelty, disappointment, violence, loss and scandal. This one card that she kept to herself was important because it showed her that all of it could be overcome with a little faith. Lux just wasn’t sure if it was her faith or his that would save the damned man. She just knew that she needed to act in one fashion or another.