The Secret Book of Spells

His first question was, "Did you bring the book?"

"It's in a safety deposit box," I answered. "I can't get to it until tomorrow." I wondered what Gus down at the gym would think of me calling one of his lockers a safety deposit box.

"It would have been better if you could have brought it with you today," the doctor replied. "Tell me how you came to have it in your possession."

"I bought the contents of a storage locker at an auction yesterday," I answered, figuring it was easier to stick close to the truth unless there was a reason to lie.

"There were some papers with it that indicated that it had once belonged to Dr. Michelson." OK, that was a lie, but I didn't want them to know I had opened the book. I looked down like I was reading something in my hand and finished with, "I called the phone number on the card, and here I am."

I waited a moment to check his reaction and then asked, "May I speak with him?"

"That might not be advisable," he answered. "He is very delusional and sometimes prone to... to... accidental violence."

There was something about the way that he had to search for a word to describe what happened that made me wonder. If you have to pause several seconds and the best you can come up with is "accidental violence," then some really weird shit must be going on. I decided to push it and see if I could speak with Dr Michelson.

"Perhaps if I just met him for a few moments and asked if the book was his?" I suggested. "If it is, then tomorrow I can bring the book out and we can discuss it further."

The doctor looked up at a tall, blond nurse standing in the doorway and nodded his head. She disappeared around the corner and returned in a few moments to say, "He seems to be pretty calm right now. He must have allowed his meds to work."

'Allowed his meds to work?' Medication either worked or it didn't. You could refuse to take it. I've heard of mental patients hiding pills under their tongue until the orderly walked away and then spitting it into the sink or toilet. But how in the hell can you "not allow" your meds to work?

"Nurse Murphy will accompany you," Dr. Roberts said gravely. "But if she tells you to leave, you must leave immediately. It is for your own safety. Don't ask why or delay in any way, just leave."

He turned to face me directly and said in his most professional demeanor, "If you are willing to accept those criteria, you may visit with Dr. Michelson for no more than five minutes. Is that acceptable?"

"Of course, doctor," I answered with what I hoped was a sincere smile.

He nodded again at the nurse and she motioned with her hand for me to follow her as she took off at a rapid walk. I didn't mind following her down the long hallway. She was young and pretty with a very athletic body. She also had a really great ass that bounced and bobbed very nicely in her white dress as she took long strides down the hall. She opened a locked door with a swipe of her ID badge and started down a shorter hall with just four doors.

"Doctor Bill is in room three," she said over her shoulder as she continued at her brisk pace. I noticed that the other rooms in this section were empty. I was starting to wish that the hallway had been longer. I was really enjoying Nurse Murphy's ass as we walked along. For just a moment I thought that it would be nice to take "naughty nurse" Murphy to a Halloween party some day.

Another swipe of her card and the door to room three was open. She motioned for me to enter and then stepped through the door behind me. Dr. Michelson was sitting at a small desk singing to himself. "You have a visitor, Dr. Bill," the nurse said in that cheerful, overly-condescending way that people automatically use when speaking with someone they know is mentally ill.

He looked up at me smiling broadly and said, "Welcome, my strange young man. What brings you to visit me in my kingdom?"

Well, they had warned me that he was delusional. I glanced over at Nurse Murphy. She was leaning against the door trying to project bored indifference, but I could tell she was very carefully taking in everything that was happening. She had lifted one leg slightly and was resting the sole of her foot against the doorframe behind her. The pose really showed off her shape, but I doubt that was why she was doing it. It also gave her the leverage to launch herself across the room at either of us if things didn't go the way she wanted.

I paused to enjoy the display her posture gave me.'That would look even better in a naughty nurse costume,' I thought to myself and then turned to ask Doctor Michelson about the book.

There was a sudden screech behind me and when I spun back around the nurse's uniform had changed. The long white dress was gone and in its place was a very abbreviated skirt that ended just below her asscheeks. She had on transparent white stockings that ended mid-thigh and white very high-heeled shoes. The top barely came below her tits and was held together with a single button between her breasts. An old-fashioned nurse's hat with an oversized red cross on it was perched on her head.

"Dr. Bill!" she screamed. "What have I told you about doing things like that?!"

In the meantime Dr. Michelson was giggling wildly and clapping his hands together. He looked over at me and bounced up and down in his chair. "The book found you! The book found you!" he said between giggles. He clapped again and held his hands together as he looked at me and said, "The book found you, didn't it, my strange young man?"

He was now starting to laugh continuously. His eyes were very wide open and wild looking. He leaned in close to me and stopped laughing. Then he said quietly, "Remember, always use the feather." Then he said a little more loudly, "And don't wish for happiness or you will end up in here with me."

After another burst of laughter, he took a deep breath and drew himself up straight like he was struggling to break through something. His eyes cleared for a moment and he said in a clear, quiet voice. "We only have a moment. To understand what is happening, you must read Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger and watch the movie DUMBO."

He laughed again and clapped his hands and said with a joyful shout, "It's all in there." He sat there shaking his head up and down as he repeated, "It's all in there. It's all in there. Just look for it. It will explain everything."

He stopped his bouncing and giggling and began quivering like he was forcing himself to once again grab hold of a moment of sanity. Then he continued in almost a whisper. "The feather can be anything. It doesn't have to be the book. Walt used a little image of Mickey that he always kept with him."

His eyes started to glaze over again and he started to giggle. "Don't forget," he burbled, "a key has two uses." He giggled again and moved his finger up and down. "Just like a light switch."

I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but suddenly the room was full of people. These new arrivals weren't dressed in hospital whites. They were dressed in camo body armor and were wearing what appeared to be protective face masks and breathers. "Time for the king to go back to sleep," I heard one of them say as he pushed a hypo injector against the doctor's arm. There was a slight "pffft" and Dr. Michelson dropped as if he had been shot.

Two of the intruders laid Dr. Bill carefully on the bed and turned to face me. One of them nodded his head at me in a way that indicated that I was to follow them. I walked back up the hallway with one of them in front of me and one behind me. His ass was nowhere near as interesting to watch. In any case, I was much more concerned that I was about to get mine kicked– in one way or another.

We were almost all the way back to the front area when the front escort suddenly stopped and spun around to face me. I half-way expected him to attack me, but instead he motioned with his hand at a doorway and nodded his head indicating for me to enter. I did and found myself in a small conference room with Dr. Roberts and Nurse Murphy.

"There are some papers we need you to sign before you leave," the doctor said firmly. I looked over at nurse Murphy. She had a hospital style robe over her naughty nurse costume, but she still looked very interesting.

"And if I don't sign them?" I asked.

"You don't leave," she answered. Her voice had none of that artificial cheerfulness that I had heard earlier. She now sounded more like a Marine than a nurse.

"What do they call a female SEAL?" I asked. I wasn't really sure where that came from or why I said it. But it was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

She gave me one of those "you are an inch from dead" looks and answered, "Ma'am."

I got the message. "Yes, ma'am," I said. "What do I need to sign?"

She set a stack of papers in front of me and walked out of the room. The two burly orderlies stood by the doorway. Their masks and filters were in their hands and I could now see their faces, but it didn't make them look any less threatening.

"These are basic non-disclosure papers," explained Dr. Roberts. His tone was no different than a loan officer at the bank explaining a car loan. "They say that you acknowledge that you have been made aware of top secret government information and will not disclose it to anyone, at anytime– ever."

"And if I slip up and tell someone?" I asked.

"Then we have the excuse to arrest you," he answered. His eyes narrowed, "Or at least explain your disappearance." His voice wasn't so cheerful as he said that.

"Understood," I said. "May I ask why all of this hassle over an old German diary?"

"The book is in German?" he said with surprise.

"Yes," I answered, hoping I sounded very believable.

"Bring it out here tomorrow, and maybe I can tell you."

I got up from the table and started toward the door. I wasn't sure if they would let me leave, but it was worth a try. I was sure that I didn't have a chance in hell of getting through the two "orderlies" unless they were willing to let me go.

To my surprise, the two large men in camo stepped aside. Dr. Roberts, if he was really a doctor, accompanied me to front desk. Nurse Murphy was right behind him, now dressed in a set of green scrubs. As we approached the front door, he said, "Make sure you bring the book back here tomorrow. We know its not in a safety deposit box because you haven't been in a bank in the last two days."

I must have looked surprised because he grinned at me and said, "Security cameras. Facial recognition software."

Nurse Murphy walked up to me and took my hands in hers. She looked directly into my eyes and said, "I know that you really want to bring that book out to us."

I felt a strange warmness in my hands. It was as if something flowed out of her into me. At the same time, I felt a similar warmth move down from my shoulders. There was a sudden heat at about my wrists and Nurse Murphy quickly let go of my hands. Her eyes were wide in surprise, but she said nothing and made no other indication of anything being strange.

She turned and looked over at Dr. Roberts. Her face was turned slightly from me, but I could see that she made a very small motion with her head. It looked like she was shaking her head "no".

He turned back to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He tried to sound fatherly as he said, "We don't want to hurt you. And we don't want to cheat you out of anything. We know you paid $2,730 for the book. When you bring it to us tomorrow, you will leave with a check for $10,000. That's more than three times what you paid for it."

I smiled back at him and shook his hand. That same warmth flowed down from my shoulder as I said, "Sounds good to me, but I prefer the $50,000 in cash."

I was waiting for him to correct my amount, but instead he answered, "Cash it is." Then he added, "But if you aren't here by noon..." he nodded his head toward the two orderlies and nurse Murphy. "... they come looking for you."

I really hope I only thought and didn't say, 'I wouldn't mind having Nurse Murphy looking for me.'

***

My first stop after I left the clinic was the kid's section of the video department at the local WalMart. Actually I went through the grocery section first and picked up some dark ale and other necessities of life. After I was sure that no one was actually following me, I headed for the video section.

I selected three DVDs just to confuse anyone who might be watching on the security cameras. I had no need for Lion King or Cinderella, but I really needed to see DUMBO again. I vaguely remembered seeing it as a kid. It had something to do with a circus and a flying elephant. I remembered hearing something about it in the news recently because one group or another was objecting to it being re-released because it had old-fashioned racial and ethnic stereotypes in it. I didn't care about that. I was more interested in something else it evidently had in it– Mortimer's feather.

When I got home, I dug through my stack of old, useless shit I had from previous auctions and found the German diary. It was exactly like I remembered... old, leather, and filled with a very precise hand telling of who knows what... I can't read German.

What was in it didn't matter. It was more or less the same size and color as the book in my gym locker. It even had the fold-over flap with a lock on the front. I had a feeling I could take care of any other minor discrepancies later.

I set it on the table and went out on the internet to look up Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger. I had never even heard of it before. It's a weird ass story about some angel that comes to this kid in the Middle Ages and raises all sorts of hell with his life and the life of just about everyone else in the area. The important point for me was that near the end of the story, the kid wanted his father or uncle or whoever the hell it was to be happy and the angel makes him crazy because "No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane"

Dr. Michelson evidently wished for happiness and ended up insane. He even believed himself to be a king. In one of his moments of almost sanity, he must have written the warning about not wishing for happiness. Then he must have hidden the book in a storage locker with a long-term contract paid in full. I wondered how long he had been in his kingdom at the government nuthouse before the payments ran out.

Next I watched DUMBO. I sort of remembered a feather in it somewhere from when I saw it as a kid, but didn't know what it meant. In my memory all I could see was the baby elephant flying with a black feather held tightly in his little trunk. I nearly dropped my beer when the movie finally got to the part where DUMBO loses the feather and the little mouse has to tell him the secret of the feather. "There is no magic feather," says Timothy Mouse. "It was you all along."

I replayed that segment about five times before it finally hit me. "Holy SHIT!" I exclaimed aloud, this time actually dropping my beer into my lap. That was me at the hospital! They thought Dr. Bill changed nurse Murphy's uniform, but it was me. I thought of her in a naughty nurse costume and suddenly that was what she was wearing. And I didn't have the book with me!

That's why he knew that I had found the book. No! That's not what he said. He didn't say I had found the book. He said that the book had found me. What else did Dr. Michelson tell me in all his crazy babbling?

I tried to pull the conversation back into my mind. "It doesn't have to be the feather..." There was something else. "A key has two uses..." And then he said something about a light switch.

Did he mean that the book unlocked something in me? It must have. I obviously no longer needed the book to make things happen. But if I didn't need the feather– I mean the book– to make things happen, why would I need it at all?

"Click!" The lights came on in the room.

I know I didn't think about that. I didn't wish for the lights to come on. I wasn't even thinking about them, but the light switch moved on its own and the lights came on.

"What the hell?" I said aloud.

"Click!" The lights went out.

"Oh!" I said and started laughing. I almost shouted "He was telling me that a key also locks things. I need the book to turn it back off so I don't accidentally wish for happiness and end up at the funny farm."

I was practically bouncing up and down in my chair.'Don't go getting too happy,' I told myself. I just need to keep this under control. And I don't need the book itself. He told me that Walt used a small image of Mickey that he always kept with him. I seemed to remember one of the online stories saying that Walt had a golden Mickey on his keychain.

I couldn't see myself with a Mickey Mouse keychain. That would create some really interesting problems for me at the gym, not to mention the fact that it was too easily lost. I wanted something a little more permanent. I imagined little Timothy with the feather in his hand and suddenly there was a stinging on my left arm. A tattoo of the mouse in full uniform holding the feather had appeared on my forearm.

"Too much," I said aloud. Then I thought,'But the right idea.' The mouse disappeared from my arm. There was another light stinging sensation and a small black feather appeared on my left ring finger between the first two knuckles.

I touched it and said aloud, "Off."

I suddenly felt empty, as if something had drained out of me.

I touched it again and said, "On."

The strange warmth that I had been feeling since I first touched the book returned.

"It's good to be the king," I yelled aloud as I reached for the ice cold glass of dark ale that had just appeared on the table in front of me.

I was beginning to understand why the government wanted this book. What government wouldn't want soldiers who could just imagine something blown up or make an incoming missile disappear with just a thought? I had no doubts that Dr. Roberts and his cohorts would do anything necessary to obtain the book. A fake German diary wasn't going to cut it.

I picked up the old diary. It was close, but no cigar. I tried to remember the original book. The outside said... what the hell did it say? If I could only remember it exactly, I could make this book the same.

The diary shook slightly in my hands. It was suddenly darker and, I think, just a little bigger. On the side of the book it now said, "Secreta Libro Cantus." I opened it and found that the title page also said "Secreta Libro Cantus." Beneath that were the words, "He who possesses The Secret Book of Spells has the secret to all of Mortimer's spells and incantations."

I found myself laughing aloud. I knew that wasn't what it said in the original book. In the real book it said, "He who possess this book has the secret to all of Mortimer's spells and incantations." I, or anyone who had seen the true book, would be able to tell immediately that this was a phoney. The two hand-written warnings were also absent from the title page. Like the original, the rest of the pages were blank.

I finished three more dark ales and went to bed.

***

I fell asleep almost immediately, but had weird dreams all night. I don't know if it was other feathermen speaking to me or what, but by the time I got up in the morning, I knew exactly what I had to do and how to do it. First on the list was to take the fake book to Dr. Roberts.

I got there at 8:30 and he met me in the lobby. I held the book up so he could see the name on the spine. "Maybe that isn't German," I said, shrugging my shoulders, "but I still can't read it."