Work Text:
Alamogordo, New Mexico. 1924.
One of the local boys caught the edge of an old baseball with a resounding crack, sending the ball soaring over a quiet section of Pennsylvania Avenue. Another boy chased after it, and Sofie hung back, waited and watched, just like Jonesy had taught her, and then went tearing off toward the spot she knew the ball would land. But before its arc brought the ball anywhere near Earth, the boy seemed to make note of its path, too, and skidded to a halt in the dust.
“Aw, hell,” the pitcher muttered, and then raised a hand to wave at the makeshift outfield. “Billy, stop that nut before she hits the Lady’s place!”
“Kid!” Billy hollered after Sofie. She hadn’t bothered to introduce herself—boys liked it better when you threw a foul ball at their heads and caught a pop-fly for the last out.
“Hey, kid!” Billy tried again, the terrified urgency ringing in Sofie’s ears. “Get away from there!”
The ball hurtled earthward, and Sofie lunged. She caught it in her left hand, bare-fisted, and tumbled once in the dirt, then drew herself up and smiled triumphantly back at her companions.
But the boys were gone, scattered to the wind, her only hope of normalcy vanished just as quickly as she’d happened upon it. She and her mother had only been with the carnival a year or so by now, but Sofie had learned early that from here on out, she was going to have to content herself with life on her own. The small respites she found from her solitude, usually in the form of local packs of boys and the occasional tomboyish little girl, were few and far between, and treasured, and, for now, enough.
Sofie dropped her hand, though her fingers remained curled tightly around the ball, like a vise. She wasn’t going to let go of her victory that easily. Slowly, she turned back around, and considered the building that had sent the boys sprinting for safety. It looked like any other on street—in the town, even. It was wooden, weathered by the sun and sand, with an awning over a modest raised porch. The windows were cleaner than those on its neighbors, and behind the glass of the big bay window at the front of the shop were stacked assorted curiosities: talismans, totems, and tomes or all shapes and sizes; almanacs and books of spells stacked high and draped with spices, scarves, gems, and what appeared to be the skull of a wizened old crocodile.
The store was unmarked; it had no proper name, no sign, and no announcement of the wares it hoped to hawk. There was only, on the door, the image of a scorpion, deep crimson and impossibly dark, despite the heat and setting sun that should have faded it. Though the shop looked uninhabited, Sofie got the distinct impression that they—whoever owned the shop—considered themselves open for business, should you need them.
Sofie glanced at the baseball clenched in her fist, and then back to the store. She took half a step closer to the store and, experimentally, lobbed the ball at the front door. The baseball bounced off the wood with a dull thunk, rolled back across the porch, and dropped the six inches into the dust, where it came to rest. Sofie stepped closer once more, intent on retrieving the ball.
Something stopped her, as sure as if someone had walked up behind her and taken her arm to drag her away. Sofie looked behind her, expecting one of the boys to have returned, but there was no one there. She looked back at the big front window, and thought for sure that she caught a flash of bright eyes, just before a curtain of long, dark hair fell over them, a woman turning away from Sofie’s curious gaze.
She stepped back, and the grip on her shoulder dissipated. And Sofie turned tail and ran, leaving the baseball where it had landed and kicking up more dust than all the neighborhood boys combined.
The next day, Sofie returned. The neighborhood boys had watched in silence as she passed, she in her finest dress and the boys lounging in the shade of the chemist’s shop, chewing idly on stray wildflower stems. “Crazy sonuvabitch,” the smallest of them had muttered. Sofie had turned and given them her brightest smile.
She hesitated only a moment as she approached the shop, when the feeling again came over her that something—someone—was trying to hold her back. Her gait faltered for just one step, and then Sofie strode forward to scoop up the baseball that still sat in the dirt where it had fallen the evening before. Without breaking stride again, she stepped up onto the porch, crossed to the door, and entered the shop.
It was gloomy inside the building, all shadows and unnatural humidity. The very air seemed to be hung with a dank mixture of waiting rain and animal musk, and the lingering scent of a dozen candles, recently extinguished. There was just one defined path through the clutter of books and trinkets, and the circular path around the one-room store had been well-swept. The front window was clean, almost sparkling, and the arranged wares were well-maintained and looked fresh. In direct contrast, the stacked oddities that now flanked Sofie on either side didn’t appear to have been dusted since before she'd had been born. Before her stood two sturdy old bookcases, lined with the expected books, with the addition of jars of what Sofie could only describe as “things,” suspended in liquid tinged yellow, either by age or the poor light.
Sofie took three steps into the shop before she felt the breath on the side of her neck. A woman’s voice, a whisper only slightly tinged with age, said, “No one comes in the front door anymore.”
Sofie whirled around, raising dust around her shined shoes. There was no one behind her, and no sign of movement in the shop. Overhead, a mobile of small animal bones hung suspended. It didn’t so much as shift.
“You should go,” the woman’s voice whispered in Sofie’s other ear.
Sofie suppressed the shiver that threatened to slither down her spine and send her sprinting from the shop. Instead, she planted her feet and refused to turn toward the sound of the voice. “I have every right to be here,” she replied to the dead air. “It’s a shop, ain’t it? I’ve got money. I'm a paying customer.”
“Go,” the woman said. Her voice was now louder, firmer—more insistent.
Sofie turned back, sure she’d find the culprit waiting behind her. But the dust had not moved and the mobile remained ironically immobile, and Sofie crept back to the front door with the little scorpion painted on it and stumbled out into the desert sun. It occurred to her that the scorpion might be painted in blood. She then acknowledged that the whole place had to be coated in something serious, and something powerful, to keep folks away so effectively. She wondered if the bloody scorpion was the source of the store's strength.
And for the second day in a row, Sofie ran down Pennsylvania Avenue and away from the unnamed place, with every intention of going back once her nerve had returned.