Madam Magdalene’s Oracular Viewings

The silver bell adorning Madam Magdalene’s Oracular Viewings chimed over the soft swooping hair of the boy who’d just pushed through the door. Magdalene hastily slid her crossword under an appropriately leather-bound tomb sitting next to the register and watched closely.

 The bell was a trinket given to Magdalene by her mother, who’d received it from her mother before her, who had supposedly bought it off an old troll living in what was now the sunken city beneath San Francisco. A miniscule enchantment carved along its edges summoned the boy’s aura for an instant; it was peach, like his polo, and trembled with uncertainty where he stood locked wide-eyed and halfway over the threshold.

She jangled the bangles stacked up her arms to make up for the Levi’s she was wearing. Believers liked a little atmosphere, but denim settled even the most strait-laced skeptic. “Welcome.” She dug deep for her voice, and it came out gentle and echoey, as though from the bottom of a well.

The boy drew cautiously inside. A woman with short, curly hair and clear glasses wide as welder’s goggles followed behind, her lenses lit from below by the light of her phone. She chewed her lip, taking in the shelves of trinkets and talismans, the blacked-out plaster of the ceiling, the tapestries depicting battles and nudity.

Polo Shirt met Magdalene’s hooded eyes. “Is this the InkDot? The one on 51^st Street?”

The girl with the glasses clicked her phone off and nudged him with her elbow. “Does this look like an InkDot?”

Magdalene refused to let her disdain for the T-Shirt printing company that previously held Oracular’s storefront show. Instead, she plucked a painted teacup from the counter and studied the dregs inside seriously. She was a professional, after all.

“Catastrophe befell them at this location. The ghosts downstairs live to tinker with modern gadgetry.” She peaked up to see if this got a reaction. It didn’t. “I heard they reopened in Boston. Nearly two years ago.” Magdalene couldn’t help tacking on the last part a little resentfully. Her mother had survived off house calls to a few wealthy clients; bored and lonely, and likely doped up on either booze or oxy. Real whales in the industry. Now here Magdalene was—a woman with the Sight, her practice living and dying by Yelp.  

Glasses was back on her phone, zooming deeper into the screen. “There’s a FedEx on 4^th.”

Polo Shirt nodded as though that meant something. “Do they do work in fibers?”

Magdalene considered him. His was the type she imagined Travis sitting next to in his classes at university. It’d been years since the days of bloody noses and schoolyard bullies, but there were still times she chewed her cuticles over how her son—with his Electric Squid sweatshirts, expanding collection of piercings, and oracle mother—fit in with these children of doctors and real estate agents.

“You two.” Magdalene strode from her seat, her orthopedics silent as she glided over the carpet. “Are you together?”

Polo Shirt smiled wide and cheeky. “Almost a year now.”

“Such a critical time for you,” Magdalene said, and fluttered her hand to land on her chest.

His shoulders jumped almost to his ears. “It is?”

“Yes, very. I see the roots tangled between the two of you, but they’ve yet to sprout.” She splayed her ruby-lacquered nails in the imitation of a blossoming flower. The girl pushed her glasses up her nose. “Pay them the right mind and they will ripen to seeded fruits. I offer a discount for young love. With a bond as strong as yours, a reading would appear to me—” she sighed heavily, the movement clicking together the beads around her throat “—crystalline.”

Glasses leaned into Polo Shirt’s side and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “I already know what’s ahead,” she said.

He looked down at her and crooned. “Babe, that so sweet.”

Magdalene clicked a nail against her toothy smile and retrieved the gum from where she’d stuck it on the back of her molar. “How wonderful for you both.”

The troll bell tinkled wildly as the door burst open and bayside-fresh air gusted over the carpet. A sweatshirt-padded form swung inside and slammed the door closed. Travis turned and slouched against the glass, panting, his aura spiking dark and turbulent. He cast around before picking out Magdalene’s paisley blouse amongst the Oracular’s haze of textures.

“Mom!” he breathed and stumbled towards her, a crazed look in his eye. The young couple clung to each other as he passed, the phone cradled between their chests like a newborn. “Mom, you’ve got to help me!”

“My apologies,” she called out to the couple as they inched towards the door. “This should only take a few minutes!”

Polo Shirt flapped his hands. “Please no, that’s alright!”

Glasses tugged him through the door by the elbow. The bell showed Magdalene the white lie when she said politely, “Thanks for the info, we might actually stop here on the way back!” Then they were gone out the door. Magdalene massaged the lines of her forehead.

“Mom, I need you to do a reading for me.” Travis was halfway to the backroom where she kept a locked file cabinet hidden under a scarf and a low table with a deck of cards for readings. He waved at the air, as though trying to generate a current that might sweep her after him faster. Sweat glistened on his forehead and his cheeks were red.

“Did you jog here? I thought the doctor told you to cut back on building up your free radicals.” Apparently, her son’s heart was becoming too muscular to beat properly. Not a bad problem to have in Magdalene’s opinion, but Travis had been devastated to learn he couldn’t sign up for another marathon. She tried to recall the new exercise routine he’d told her about over the phone—something called body pump, she thought.

Travis choked. “What? Mom, just come on—please, there isn’t much time.”

She gave in and followed her son to the back room, crouching to fluff her pillow before sitting down at the table while Travis closed the door. He pressed his ear against it for a moment, then shook his head and paced over the carpet. A tag stuck up from the back of his shirt like a ruffled feather and Magdalene itched for a pair of scissors. “Sweetheart, your shirt’s on inside out. And come sit down! I haven’t seen you in weeks, at least tell me how your midterms went.”

“Finals,” Travis muttered. He bit at the cuticle of his nail subconsciously; a habit she’d thought he’d broken sophomore year of high school when he heard Trudy Bankmen laughing to her friends about it while they were stuck at a crosswalk. Travis hadn’t told Magdalene about that, but she’d seen it on him as soon as he got home. To this day, Trudy Bankmen suffered from a paranormal number of hangnails. The Sight still had some uses, even if paying the bills wasn’t one of them.

Magdalene caught her boy’s ankle and tugged him to be still. “Travy, what’s wrong?”

Travis ran a hand through his hair and took a huge breath. “Right, you’re right.” He plopped into the cushion opposite her and started bouncing his leg. He used to do the same thing when he was a child, waiting restless while his mom finished a reading before karate practice.

Magdalene’s mouth twitched to smile and she picked up a cup from the tray at the center of the table. “Tea?”

Travis dropped his head into his hands and breathed raggedly. “Holy shit. Holy shit. I-I—” he dragged his hands down his face and looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and tired. “I did something really stupid.”

Magdalene clicked her tongue and poured him a cup anyway. “It can’t be any worse than trying to chop Mrs. Dirkson’s balcony railing in half. I thought they’d give you a cast for sure.”

Travis laid over the table and caught Magdalene’s hands in his own. The full teacup rattled precariously. “Listen, I need you to listen, ok? I-I borrowed some money from some guys—just to sign up for this stupid licensing exam I have to take—but I couldn’t pay them back when I said. Then, it turns out they owe someone else money, and long-story short, there’s three of them and their huge and they’re after me!”

It felt as though a tiny robin’s egg were caught in Magdalene’s throat as she stared into her son’s pleading eyes. “How much was the test?”

Travis clicked his mouth shut and glanced at the smiling ceramic cat sitting on the shelf over her shoulder. “Two hundred.”

She pulled her hands from his. “Two hundred? I could have loaned you that.” She wrapped her hands around her cup, her silver rings clinking against its side.

“I know, mom. It’s just, you know,” he heaved a shaking breath and sat back. “I know the store isn’t doing so good. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

Magdalene realized suddenly that there existed a flat plane she’d built her life upon. She only knew this because now the plane was tilting, things were rolling and falling somewhere she couldn’t fathom. Travis used to ask for her hand before crossing the street, and complain to her about his teachers, and stew openly in the living room about girlfriends and championships lost. Despite the long shifts, the budgeted holidays, and the little idiots at school who told Travis his mom was loony, Magdalene had thought she must be doing something right. She’d been wrong, though. Her boy couldn’t come to her for two hundred dollars, and now he was in danger because of it.

In the other room, the troll bell tinged. Magdalene froze, one of her false nails cracking between her teeth where she realized she’d been gnawing on it. The bell rang twice more and though the voices were muffled, it was clear there were three men treading through her shop. Something glass fell from a shelf and shattered.

Magdalene tore the loosened plastic from her nailbed and spit it out onto the tablecloth. “Just tell me what you need.”  

Travis scrabbled for the file cabinet. He reached behind it and pulled out a 12-inch Bowie knife she kept sheathed against the wall in lieu of a gun. Magdalene hadn’t been lying about the ghosts tinkering—even the cash register started trouble sometimes. Guns were a liability around spirits, but steel ate flesh same as lead.

Travis crept over to her, knife in hand and knees bent, like he was soldier running through a foxhole. “Tell me what to watch out for,” he whispered.

“Don’t stab them.” Magdalene had hesitantly decided to downgrade the Oracular’s insurance coverage last year. They’d be lucky if it covered a broken window.

Travis guffawed. “Of course not—the insurance won’t cover that! I’ll just,” he waved the knife, “scare them. Right?”

She patted his cheek. “That’s right.” 

The doorknob rattled and Travis grabbed it, holding it tight to keep it from turning all the way. Voices sounded on the other side. Magdalene jumped when a fist banged against the wood.

“You in there, Trav? We’re just here to talk.”

In the background, the drawer of the cash-register cha-chinged open.

Magdalene gritted her teeth and straightened her back, widened the cross of her legs and rested her wrists on her knees in an open energy pose. Travis watched her, looking nervous. She gave him reassuring wink. “I believe in you sweetheart.”

Travis’ returning smile wobbled. He’d had the same look before his first wrestling match—he’d won then, and they’d gotten ice cream afterwards.

Magdalene turned away from the door and closed her eyes. She navigated her conscious intent to the back of her mind and passed through the lens of her Sight.

She awoke hovering bodiless over the reading table, the world expanded around her in a single wide lens. Below, her body sat rigid and Travis struggled to keep the doorknob from turning as his grip grew slick against the metal.

There were three people on the other side of the door. Two of them boys close to Travis’ age. One hung back against the far wall, sweating through his shirt. The other had his fists wrapped around the door handle, wrenching at it with both arms. The third man had a shaved head. He was older, and that worried Magdalene. Tucked in his belt was a blunt silver handle.

“He has a gun,” Magdalene whispered, and she saw her lips move where her body still sat in the back room.

Travis said nothing. He must have known about the gun. It was easy to stay focused in the energy realm without all the pulsing hormones of a body, but Magdalene made a mental note to have a serious conversation with him later. She refocused her sight on the future and couldn’t help but chuckle. “You’ll have an opening on the count of seven. Go for the gun first.”

On the dot, several things happened at once. It began with the bald man wedging his fingers into the till to scrape out the few dollars collected there. The register’s screen flared to life, emitting a string of angry ones and zeros displayed in ghostly green. With an aggravated cha-ching, the drawer snapped closed on the bald man’s fingers. There was a wet snap and he shrieked.

A second before, Travis had rammed his shoulder into the door, flinging the boy trying to get in back a step. He landed on his butt at the same moment the register closed.

Travis ran straight for the bald man, who was doubled over the register trying to pry open its drawer without twisting his fingers. By the time he noticed Travis pulling the gun from his belt, it was too late.

Travis stood looking between the bald man and the boy slowly rising from the floor, but kept kept the gun pointed at the ground—waving it around wasn’t safe even without the possibility of paranormal tinkering.

“Don’t forget about the third!” Magdalene yelled, though her voice issued from the back room in a monotone.

Travis slashed the knife threateningly and made a show of choking his grip on the gun’s handle, though he still didn’t raise it. “Neil, don’t move.”

The second college kid—Neil—yelped and raised his hands in front of his chest, as though he thought Travis might decide to chuck the knife at him and he might have a chance of catching it. He hadn’t been reaching for the ruby-pommeled sword tacked to the wall over his head, but he’d been close to thinking about it.

“Get out, all of you,” Travis said, his voice impressively steady, though he must be close to shaking apart from nerves.

The boy who’d been twisting the doorknob tried to smile. “Look man, there’s been a misunderstanding—”

Travis laughed incredulously. “You’re fucking right there has been, Mitch!” He nodded to the bald man, who was blinking through watery eyes and attempting to punch the cash-register into submission. The register chimed melodiously and began printing a receipt. In all caps it read, over and over, GETOUT GETOUT GETOUT. “You bring that guy with you, and to my mom’s house? That’s slimy business, even for you.”

Mitch’s smile wavered. “You were the one who ran in here,” he muttered.

“What did you just say to me?”

“Dude let’s just go,” Neil hissed, watching in horror as the receipt spilled over the countertop.

As though in agreement, the register dinged open, and the bald man snatched his hand away. He held his bent fingers and glared hatefully at Travis but made no move to approach without his firearm.

The three of them exchanged looks and backed for the door. “This isn’t over, Trav,” Mitch warned.

Travis sucked his teeth as he watched them leave. The bell chimed over their heads and Magdalene could tell from their auras that at least two of them took those final words seriously.

A worry for another day.

Magdalene closed her Sight and breathed through the headrush of returning to her body and all its moving parts. Her flesh felt dry and heavy around her, the rattling of the AC loud and tinny against her ears. A warm hand rested on her shoulder and when she blinked, her vision was narrow and resting on Travis.

“You ok?”

“As the Corral, cowboy,” she joked weakly. The whole experience had been thrilling, actually, but Magdalene kept that to herself. She climbed to her feet, her knees aching, and mustered a stern look. “I expect we’ll be talking more about this?”

Travis swallowed. He raised his hand to scratch his head only to see he was still holding the gun. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

Magdalene took the gun and the knife from him. “There’s some pasta from last night, and some port in the fridge. Pour me a glass and we’ll talk over dinner.”

Travis sagged. He was taller than her now, but when he gave her a quick hug, he felt like her little boy all over again. “Thanks mom,” he muttered.

She patted his back, careful not to stab him with the knife and breathed in the familiar scent of his shampoo. “Anytime.” She Paused. “But next time you make friends, maybe consider a computer science major, or someone from the arts college.”

Travis snorted and drew away. He looked Magdalene over appraisingly. “That was pretty cool, you know. Maybe you should consider fighting crime or something.”

“Get the commissioner to return my calls and we’ll talk.”

Once Travis had disappeared up the stairs and the pipes for the hot water were rattling through the walls, Magdalene patted the cash-register and flipped the Oracular’s sign to CLOSED. She smiled to herself; the Sight still had some uses indeed.