The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

Adam set his master's writing notebook open to the next available page and placed his quill near the ink well for the approaching interview with his prospective client.

While Prim found each newly introduced device of modernity useful at times, he did not develop a reliance on them for there could come a time when they all would be useless, leaving behind an unobservant, dependent herd easily controlled by the singular dictates and machinations of their leader.

The clairvoyant gypsy witch was quiet now as was her way, for she only spoke in a accordance to the oracle of Romany.

"I am not interested with Romanian," Gordon gave a knowing smile having caught Cassandra in a lie of translation from the spirit world, "or French stories of werewolves." He turned toward his bookshelves of hand written maps many drawn from memory and others meticulously set down from the priceless originals, for he was a well-studied adept of cartography of ley lines and nodes. "I bade both of you safe and prosperous passage until the setting of the sun, for you shall always be wanderers and wily beggars by the destiny of your profession. Neither of you are to approach or speak with members of the Chicago thrall without my advance instruction. I am neither superstitious nor lead into dangers by the promise of dreams or vexing nightmares; however I have had a rather troubling reoccurrence of wakeful precognition regarding de la Sang, king of the Ghouls."

Prim's gypsy servants departed through the hanging arabesque rug and ascended the narrow stairway together to the nondescript doorway which opened again, unattended, on to their daily existences along the sidewalks of Belmont Avenue.

He poured the remainder of the heartsease tea into the cup procured from long ago. The assigned hour of his meeting with Mason and a potential new client was nearing, so Prim carefully began to memorize a map of a nearby temporal-distant node.

The familiar perfume and unseen stealthy footsteps padded across the oriental rug and his senses became heightened and intellect enlightened by wild beats of Jazz. The state of mind was mystically unique derived neither of chants or doctrines of posers. The remainder of the day passed in what seemed like an instant in time.

Energized by his meditative trance, he realized the busy din of the surrounding streets had grown silent with the arrival of the dusk. The cup of heartsease tea had grown cold, and the appointed time for Underwood and the potential new client had come and gone without their arrival. Having learned this wise understanding over years of experience, he did not question the rightness or wrongness of the dark mysticism that had rearranged the day's events.

Business hours having ended, the shop keeper of the Mad Habadasher secured the doorway. The new Chicago thrall sought out their evening safe haven at the Gargoyle and Gin as they entered the portal along the ley, one by one. Inside, vampyre royalty and all their court danced magically and performed bloody, vaudevillian skits on stage, while the Goths danced not with one another but together as one.






©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: eerie fiction]