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The sun is just at the point in the sky where its light encroaches on the porch’s shadow, and Marvin has to pull his toes back a little closer to the wooden rocking chair in order to avoid the heat. He hums and turns back to squint through the window screen, catching 4:33 PM on the clock in the kitchen. Eventually, the sun will dip far enough below the shingled awning for the light to hit his eyes directly, lighting up the flakes of gold that rest in his irises, and he’ll have to go inside; for now, his red sunglasses are enough to block it out. He uses one finger to prop them up a little higher til they sit on the scar across the bridge of his nose, then goes back to letting his red-painted nails dry, holding them out on the armrests of the chair and rocking softly back and forth to the sound of cicadas, barking dogs, and the lawn sprinklers.
Soon, another sound joins the chorus, though it’s one less familiar to him. Something bouncing on the concrete, a giggle as the sprinklers turn left across the yard. He opens one eye to see a little girl, quite the ragamuffin in a denim skirt and faded old pink-camo shirt, both stained with grass and dirt and other things unknown. She’s dropped a red kickball on the sidewalk. She lets it roll into the grass so she can spin in dizzy circles as the sprinkler sprays over her, drenching a mess of choppy caramel hair as she finally cools off in the Texas heat.
“Does your mama know you’re wandering by yourself?” Marvin questions from the porch, putting one sandaled foot down to stop his chair from rocking anymore.
The girl hides her startled eyes with a bright smile, a gap-toothed grin of feigned innocence. “Mama’s out of town.”
“And your dad?”
At that, the girl just starts spinning in circles once again, and chases down the sprinkler as it tries to sway rightward. Marvin sighs, takes a sip from an ice-cold glass of lemonade, then speaks again. “Well, do you have a name?”
She spins, and spins, and nearly topples over to the ground when she turns back to face him, eyes not quite focused after making herself into a clumsy little centrifuge. “Darcy Brody. What’s your name?”
“Marvin. Are you a Brody like Charles Brody?”
Charles is not a kind man, nor a fun man, entirely unlike Darcy. Most of his interaction with Marvin consists of loathing glares and on more than one occasion a drunken exchange of joking insults - or, perhaps more accurately, insulting jokes. Other than that, the two try tirelessly to avoid each other, a hard feat for a duo three blocks away from each other in a tiny, isolating town. The task would be much more difficult if Darcy had any relation to him.
And unfortunately, Darcy nods. “Grandpa Charles was supposed to watch me, but he’s taking a nap. The house was boring by myself…”
“Well, you ought to go back inside. You’re too young to run around so close to the road,” Marvin chides, ready to close his eyes and go back to relaxing in his rocking chair.
Darcy’s gaze falls to her feet, kicking a bit at the wet grass with her clogs. “I can’t open the door.”
He hardly stifles a groan, “You locked yourself out?”
She nods. “But Dad said I go home at five.”
“Will he pick you up?”
One more nod, and Marvin mirrors the movement. “D’you know your daddy’s phone number, then?”
“I know there’s a number five in it… and that’s it.”
He hums in response, sitting up out of his rocking chair and tapping his nails to make sure they’re dried. “Alright, I’m not gonna be the one to wake your grandpa up. He hates me already… Tell you what, you wait right there, honey, don’t get any closer to the road. I’ll be right back.”
She nods, then plops down on the grass, as a promise not to stray too close to the cars. Most of her hair falls into her face over her now-closed eyes, the water sprays over her again, and she seems perfectly content to cool off right there. The pink in her shirt is starting to turn green with grass stains, but she doesn’t mind one bit.
Marvin smiles and leaves the chair to rock all alone, then slams the back of his heel against the door with his elbow holding down the handle. The warped frame sticks, but finally gives way with a quiet crack. The front room is all dramatic business, decorated with tapestries and sun-faded sheer print curtains, crystals and stained glass hanging in every window. Hints of the ugly plastic bug screens still show through, but only a little. A stacked deck of tarot cards, two empty teacups, a covered crystal ball, and an unlit candelabrum lay still on the center table, waiting for an anxious adulterer, superstitious traveler, or daring teenager to ask their advice. Marvin leaves his dusty shoes by the door. Lazily he shuffles through the beads and curtains guarding the hallway, revealing the more honest half of the building - all his personal rooms, including the hall closet he currently approaches.
Behind the broom and dustpan, and a bundle of woven grocery bags shoved ungracefully inside each other, sits a hefty cardboard box neatly labeled “YARD SHIT” in purple permanent marker. Marvin shoves everything else out of the way and rips open the most busted flap at the top of the box, happy to see his bag of sidewalk chalk is exactly where he left it: tossed right on top of a broken pink plastic flamingo and a particularly grumpy looking garden gnome.
He grabs the bag and pumps it into the air like an athlete raising a new trophy gripped with white knuckles, then stands fully back up and swings the closet door shut. He puts his shoes back on once he reaches the front doorway. After a moment to appreciate the air conditioner, far preferable to the heat outside, he finally makes it back out to the blistering sunset. Relieved to see Darcy still splayed under the sprinkler, he grabs his glass of lemonade from beside the rocking chair and leaves the creaky porch for the cement driveway.
Darcy leans up when she sees a tall shadow cast across her grassy resting spot, turning to curiously raise her eyebrows at Marvin.
“Here you go, Miss Brody! Brought you something to keep you busy.”
He drops the bag of chalk from the crook of his elbow, letting the contents roll out all over the concrete. As soon as the sight registers in Darcy’s eyes, she darts over to the shady side of the driveway, scooping up an orange piece of chalk and testing out the color. Marvin slowly sits criss-cross next to her, careful not to spill his drink, then picks up a green chalk. “I take it your grandpa doesn’t have much of this sort of thing?”
Darcy shakes her head, starting to sketch out the shape of a goldfish. “Nope. And the only board games he owns are about math and stuff.”
“Oh, my, not math and stuff!” Marvin exaggeratedly gasps, starting his own drawing with a looping figure eight. He briefly glances up from his handiwork to stare over at Charles’ house, making sure Darcy can be seen from the eldest Brody’s porch as well as the road. “That doesn’t sound very fun at all! But you can have this chalk when you go home, so you won’t get bored if you stay at his house again.”
“Really?” Darcy asks, scribbling some fins on her fishy drawing.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll make sure your dad takes ‘em when he picks you up. I never really use these anyway.”
Despite his words, he starts to doodle more details on his picture. Another parallel line curving with the first, ending in a set of fangs, a shiny eye drawn in black. Darcy takes the black piece from beside Marvin, and uses it to draw a round bowl around her goldfish. Once satisfied, she starts to fill it with bright blue water and tiny white bubbles. “Are you drawing a snake?”
Marvin hums out a quiet, distracted “mhm.” The snake bites at its own tail, so he picks up a thin sliver of a broken red chalk to start drawing a forked tongue.
“What’s its name?”
“Ouroboros, from an Egyptian story.” It’s a simple explanation, but small children most often don’t need to understand ancient metaphors for endless cycles of creation and destruction.
Darcy’s face lights up with recognition just enough, though. “Teacher said Egypt has lots of sand, and big pyramids, too. Have you ever been there?”
The man smiles. “No, it’s a little too far away… how about your goldfish, does it have a name?”
“Oh, it’s just called Goldfish,” she solemnly states, as the topic is quite serious to her. She adds some waves to the top of the blue water. “Fish don’t need names, because they don’t talk very much.”
Marvin nods quite sagely, agreeing with her thoughts. He can’t argue with that logic.
➳➵➸➼➽
It took about twenty more minutes for Darcy’s dad to arrive, pulling in front of Charles’ house in a dented-up car with three rows of seats and far too many bumper stickers. Marvin quickly waved him over and explained the situation, while Darcy kept on coloring her fish. By 5:00 PM, she had completed many more aquatic creatures, with creative names like “Shark,” “Crab,” and “Dolphin,” and had just begun to draw a new kind of animal she invented. She titled it “Sillyfish.”
With no desire to interrupt her masterpiece, her father and Marvin struck up a conversation instead of parting ways. The newcomer to town awkwardly introduced himself as Chase, a name his mother picked as a compromise so that his father wouldn’t insist on calling him Charles Junior. Chase looks like he was from an entirely different world than the boring Charles, decked out in a colorful tie-dye shirt and yellow sneakers, a row of about 9 tangled-up friendship bracelets stacked on his wrist, a patchy baseball hat, and a smiley face pin hanging lopsided from his pocket. The only thing he has in common with his father is a pair of matching eyebags, dark and heavy under his long blonde lashes.
“Thank you for taking care of Darcy,” he awkwardly says, glaring in the direction of the home she was supposed to be in. “I swear I’m gonna chew my dad out for at least an hour - I hope he doesn’t drive you too crazy, as your neighbor.”
Marvin waves him off, “He’s quite alright, what’s got you worried about him?”
“Oh, come on,” Chase grins. “He’s a total hardass on everybody.”
That only earns a stiff laugh, and Chase tries to coax more out of Marvin. “He used to half-jokingly say he should’ve beat me senseless because I wore… what was it… ‘too much lavender.’ Sorry for doubting his politeness towards you.”
He makes a little waving gesture with his hands, drawing attention to Marvin’s now-sparkly fingertips.
Ah. A bit of a frown pulls at Marvin’s face, but he shrugs. “Oh, it’s not as if I’m unaccustomed to it. On the bright side, most the Puritans in town are too worried about my evil witchcraft to be primarily concerned about the…glamor.”
Chase’s gaze leaves Marvin’s sharp features to drift over the house instead - getting a proper look at the neon sign shaped like an eye in the window, the Christmas lights hung around the patio, the sprawling word PSYCHIC in bold, tacked to the roof and painted with stars. Darcy pulls his sight away by tugging on the ankle hem of his jeans, trying to show off her next drawing, but a moment and a compliment later he’s already back to staring at the charming decor. “All that magic and mojo, that’s s’pposedly real?”
Marvin gives him a mischievous grin back. “Sure thing.”
“Oh, bull.” Chase says. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“Dad! Language!” Darcy scolds, slamming down her chalk with a scowl.
Marvin fake pouts, crossing his arms in a mockery of offense. “I would never lie to such a good man as yourself, Mr. Brody.”
That itself is a terrible lie, but it isn’t like Chase would believe him even if he was telling the truth. He scoffs, shakes his head, a playful smile still lighting up his face. Darcy is now staring between the both of them, curious as ever.
“I’ll prove it to you,” Marvin offers, one eyebrow raised. “I’ll even give you a discount.”
Chase finally breaks into full laughter, sighing in relent and shifting to pull his wallet from his back pocket. “How much I owe you, then?”
“Five bucks sound good?”
Stubby fingers rifle through the worn bills, before producing a ten. “Extra’s for the babysitting fee,” he teases, ruffling Darcy’s hair.
➳➵➸➼➽
Inside the house is much cooler in temperature, a welcome change to the sweat rolling like a river down Chase’s back. Darcy sits enraptured with the books on the shelf, flipping through fairytale illustrations and charts of the stars, while Chase has a couple of thoughts tumbling through his brain regarding Marvin’s choice of interior design.
“Ain’t that a fire hazard?”
Marvin furrows his brows. “Which part?”
Gaze trailing from the layers upon layers of fabric draped about, the candles scattered around every surface, the crystals hanging near the sunlit window… Chase shrugs. “All of it?”
The magician pulls out a chair for Chase, with an awful scraping noise against the thin and creaking wood floorboards. He drums his nails against the back of it and waits for his guest to sit, though Chase does so with a bit of hesitation. “Well, I’m sure the place won’t burn down in the next couple minutes. You should be perfectly safe.”
However unsure he may be, Chase still laughs, and tries to relax in the chair, arms wrapping around himself despite how warm he was before he came inside.
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous,” Marvin teases. He’s now across the table from Chase, and the latter of the two is becoming increasingly aware of just how much he has to crane his neck upward to meet Marv’s eyes.
“I- I’ve just never done this sorta thing before. Well, aside from a Ouija board in seventh grade.”
Marvin pouts, only a little. “It’s a fortune, Chase, not an interrogation. All you have to do is sit there and relax.”
“Alright, alright,” he capitulates, releasing the tension in his shoulders and shaking out his arms a moment. Once he’s settled, he leans forward, intertwining his fingers to rest his scruffy chin on his knuckles, and rest his elbows on the table.
With a gentle sigh, the magician lets a smile drift back onto his own face. “Good. Now…” he turns his attention to Darcy for just another moment, “My dear, could you promise to stay quiet down there for a little while?”
She nods solemnly, content now to flip through an old Cicely Mary Barker book of flower fairies, and mind a bit of her own magic.
“Thank you kindly.”
And with that, Marvin leans his head back on the chair. His sunglasses are now pulled up over his forehead, keeping his reddish hair from falling into his face. For a moment, he lets his eyelids stay shut. The breath he exhales seems to leave the room shuddering along with it, settling into its comfortable place. With it, he stretches his legs and relaxes. As if to open the gates to his heart, or unfurling some unseen map, his arms spread wide on the tabletop.
When he opens his eyes, the candles flicker with life between the two men, though they weren’t before. Chase looks startled, as if he was going to ask how - but is soon caught on another sight, stumbling over his astonishment - “Y- your eyes…”
Usually, guests come at night, when the shadows play more tricks. Sometimes, though, they see what Chase sees now: Marvin’s pupils blown inhumanly wide, like a cat trying to take in as much light as possible in a dim room.
Marvin presses a single slender finger to his own lips, shhh. Then, he trails his hand slowly across some invisible thread to the velvet cover on the crystal ball, pulling it away with a flick of his wrist. “Just parlor tricks, Mr. Brody. Try to focus.”
The look on Chase’s face tells Marvin that it will be a much harder task for him than anticipated, but Marv doesn’t mind. He finds the awestruck expression to be rather endearing. He almost giggles, though he feels a bit guilty, when he reaches across to take Chase’s right hand by the wrist and the poor guest practically flinches.
Still, Marvin guides him along, and Chase soon rests his calloused palm smoothly against the clear surface. Marvin places his own hands on the other side. When the magician takes a deep breath, sitting up straighter to stare into the globe, his guest naturally follows suit. Half a minute passes in near silence. The only sound remaining in the room is the papers moving while Darcy continues her quiet reading.
Marvin interrupts the tranquil, drags his hands away.
“Let me see his strings of fate.”
And with that, the magic obeys.
In the distorted light, a mirage comes to life. Two figures dancing across from what looks like kitchen cabinets, hand in hand dipping back and forth like a boat rocking on the sea. A child, maybe Darcy, scrambling after a cottontail rabbit. Sparklers leaving glimmering trails to red dirt, and the tiny snap of tweezers pinching closed. There’s the grit of soil, and the haze of grill smoke, and the crispness of cobbler baking in the oven.
“It’s lovely,” Marvin sighs, offering Chase just a hint of what he sees through his words. “Though you’re clumsy, Chase, you need to practice your two-step.”
Before the subject can further draw his attention away, Marvin searches deeper. This time, he speaks aloud.
“Charles is awake now. You’ve got a six pack of Shiner in the back of your car right now, and you’ll almost forget it when you go into the house. Darcy, very excited, will tell you she saw something in the woods-” he tries to read the shape of her mouth, though the image is hazy - “something I believe she’s calling a fairy. I don’t know when. And the next time you argue, your wife won’t yell back.”
He doesn’t question the last thing, only pressing forward into the thick of the magic. He swears the room grows brighter with every breath.
“You’ll find new friends here - your path is very intertwined with this place. Meeting someone at the motel, finding someone at the church… someone very…very shaky…? Wait a moment, that…”
The room doesn’t grow brighter this time. Marvin forgets how to breathe.
Chase nearly pulls away, but stops himself. “Is everything okay? You look lost.”
Something is not right about the man in the church pews. The images start flickering faster in the crystal, and Marvin’s hands begin to twitch.
There’s blood spilling over a stair, a shadow looming over it before a steel-toed boot comes crashing down into the red. Bony fingers with dirt-tipped nails pluck at fiddle strings. A silver pistol barrel first rests pressed against Chase’s temple, but traces down his jaw instead. Chains rattle and then tug tight in a steel hook. Tiny, dirty mud boots, decorated with pastel hearts, trample over the garden flowers, and leave behind prints that trail into the dark woods. Black ink seems to drip from the top of the scrying tool. It spills over its curved surface and pools inside.
“Marvin?”
The visions vanish, and are replaced by the image of a single, glowing green eye in the surface of the crystal ball, watching back at Marvin, whose heart is slamming against his ribcage in ecstatic terror.
“Marvin!”
Finally, he breaks away from his stupor, and stares Chase down. He remembers at last to inhale, exhale, stretch his fingers taut from his palms and force them to stop trembling. Chase looks equally disturbed, hand no longer anywhere near the crystal ball - which was clear quartz just a moment ago, but now looks more like something made from obsidian.
“What the fuck kinda parlor trick was that, Marvin?”
The candelabrum flames die of their own accord. Darcy turns to her father in a scandalized state, slamming down the worn copy of Flower Fairies of the Summer to put her tiny hands over her ears. Once more, she berates him - “Watch your language!”
Neither man even looks at her, but Marvin collects himself enough to respond, face devoid of any perceived emotion. “Darcy, your grandpa’s up. Go knock on his door, please, get your stuff to go home with your dad.”
“But I wasn’t done reading-”
“Please, Darcy,” Marvin tries again. There’s just a twinge of force in his voice.
She doesn’t move, not until her father nods in agreement. Once she has set the book back on the cluttered shelf, she dusts off her skirt and heads out, eager to pick up her new pile of chalk from outside. Her skipping steps have only faded off the porch for a moment before Chase is already back to his interrogation. At least he’s quieter, now, leaning over to half-whisper it in disbelief, “Are you high off your ass?”
Marvin shakes his head. “You need to leave.”
Chase leans away, pale eyelashes drawing closer as his brow furrows. “No. No, what are you on? Your eyes look like -”
“No, not ‘leave my house’. Leave town. And fast.”
Marvin is now up out of his chair, searching around the room for something he was hoping he wouldn’t have to use again. He remembers in his pacing where he tucked it months ago, and leans down to a low wooden cabinet on the opposite side of the room; when opened on its squeaking hinges, dust and cobwebs frame the entrance. He reaches inside and pulls out a thick black tarp, wrapped around something heavy. With none of his usual grace, he turns and drops it into the chair he was sitting in before.
“Leave t- why?”
Marvin raps his knuckles against the edge of the crystal ball, now too dark to be transparent. “Whatever brought you back to this place is something very nasty. I can see that now.” Then, he begins to unwrap the plastic tarp, revealing the weight inside - a hardwood-handled sledgehammer with a rusted ten-pound head.
Chase finally stands, shoving the chair back into its place beneath the table. It clatters against the uneven floor, warped wood threatening to splinter. “Yes, sure! Fine! We moved here because my brother-in-law died - dark, I know! Still, that doesn’t explain why I need to leave - or why you’re acting so batshit!”
“Your brother-in-law was a García, wasn’t he?” Marvin asks in a casual monotone, though it’s more of a certain statement than a real question. He sets the hammer on the table, and yanks the tarp open, shaking out the dust and splaying it wrinkled across the floor.
That stops Chase in his tracks, and he drops the defensive tone for just a moment. “Yeah, h- why?”
“Because-” interrupting himself with a groan, Marvin hefts the crystal ball off of its stand and leaves it in the center of the tarp - “It wasn’t an accident. I know who killed him, and I saw him again in your own future.”
Back to the accusatory tone, Chase’s mouth falls open in shock. “Bullshit! I didn’t see any of that!”
“Chase.” With a good bit of effort, Marvin swings the sledgehammer over his own shoulder, fierce and now-slitted eyes piercing into Chase’s heart. It’d be nice to imagine that the magician’s gaze was enough to intimidate him into taking a few steps back, but the large metal tool probably did most of the work there. “Nobody sees their own future. Now stand back.”
And once Chase listens, Marvin flips his sunglasses back over his eyes, like a last resort for protection. Then, he lifts the hammer and swings it down on the crystal ball hard.
It doesn’t shatter in a messy spray across the room, instead splitting in fractals with an awful crunch and dropping to the ground in a couple of pieces. Whatever has happened to it, it isn’t quartz anymore. There isn’t any light or clarity left in it, just shadow and jagged edges.
Once the job is done, Marvin drops the sledgehammer to the ground by the remnants of destruction, though it seems to shake the walls. He sighs, and turns to Chase, looking pale and a moment away from crumbling himself. “If you won’t leave town, at least take some of my advice. Don’t leave your kids with someone as absentminded as your father. Keep your eyes open, and talk to Henrik at the vet’s office when you need help.”
“The vet?” Chase laughs for just a single breath, discomfort and shock still clear. Despite the fact that the hammer is no longer being wielded, his body still trembles in alarm.
Marvin’s face doesn’t change, set in stone with a practiced determination. “Yes, the vet. He’s good at stitches.”
They stare at each other for another few moments. Chase looks like he’s seen a ghost, though Marvin’s the only one in the room who’s really seen several.
“I still don’t believe you,” Chase mumbles, his voice missing any of the frustration and volume it had before. He sounds more like he’s reassuring himself than speaking the truth.
Marvin shrugs, slumping against the table and turning to face the wreckage of the crystal ball. It’s not the only one he’s had to break so far in these past few years.
“Fine. But no refunds.”
Once the silence has continued long enough for Chase to feel safe leaving, he stumbles past the psychic and back out the door.
➳➵➸➼➽
The ride back to the late Javier García’s old ranch is quiet, and uncomfortable, the trees seeming to loom in their headlight silhouettes as if reaching out for the Brody family car. Darcy starts the drive restless, shaking around her bag of chalk, but is asleep with her face pressed against the window by the time they pull past the fence and down the bumpy road.
Chase replays the evening over a million times in his head, trying to imagine how he’ll tell Stacy. If he’ll tell Stacy. He doesn’t understand what happened enough to repeat it for her, so he decides to tell her an abridged version. One that lends itself to more believable ideas - just some clever little actor trying to scare Chase into falling for magic.
He’s so busy thinking over it, in fact, that as he walks a drowsy Darcy across the stone path to the front porch, he almost forgets that he left the Shiner six-pack sitting in the back of his car. Waiting, just as promised by that clever little actor.
Just a coincidence, surely.