Dark Fairy
AN UnderBelly Case File
File#: 02
BY: Steve Campbell
Not all fairies are cute and small
CHAPTER 1
Just going to work
So it was a sunny LA morning, and I was stuck in a traffic jam as usual. Unlike most times, though, I wasn’t moving at all. Some people were actually parked in the road, dancing in the street in the heat. People always find a way to surprise me, even when it feels like a hundred degrees out.
While I was sitting there, I started flipping through my stack of LA smut news—the papers with stories the real news wouldn’t print or even look into because of the outrageous calls of insanity. Some of these articles expect you to take them in stride, no questions asked. My favorite was from a few months back, when a guy accused a dinosaur of walking away with his new motorcycle while visiting a lake, which is why he called his insurance company. Please, come up with a better story than that. But to some people, that was news.
As I was thinking through the madness, I came across an article from Mays Street. Right on cue, I looked up and saw the sign: Exit to Mays Street, East and West. I figured a few feet of off-roading might get me closer to what could either be a story worth a laugh or something else entirely. The article didn’t list any names, just the store where the people worked, so I headed over to the “Life of a Wizard” shop on Mays Street West.
I have to say, if this article was actually a sales complaint in disguise, someone deserved a prize. There was no parking in the lot, and no parking for blocks in either direction. There were even signs saying $10.00 parking for the Wizard Store. I bargained the guy down to eight and walked two blocks to a shop that claimed to know where the wizard world really was, all because of a pesky fairy that told him.
The store was packed. Whatever wizard thing he was doing clearly worked, judging by the number of packages flying out the front door. I grabbed a bench seat and just watched the place for a while. That’s when I noticed something you don’t usually see in a small business like this. Every single person— not just couples or groups, but every person—walked out with a bag. Everyone bought something.
I started wondering where they were even getting the product from. The place was about the size of a gas station office, and the bags just kept coming. I checked my watch. I’d been there for two hours, and not one empty-handed customer had left. That told me something was going on.
The problem was how to go inside without becoming a buyer of some trinket I’d later regret, preferably in a permanent way. With no clean path to information-only peace, I did the next best thing. I emptied my pockets. No credit card. No cash. No loose pennies hiding in a side pocket. No ID. Nothing.
I sealed it all in a Ziploc bag, taped it shut, and locked it in my trunk. I felt secure knowing that if, for some strange reason, I did come out of that place with a need for money, maybe by the time I went through all the steps to access it, whatever it was would have worn off.
At least, that was the plan.
So after preparing for what seemed to be a thing already happening here, I went into the store with no way to pay, just to get information. I walked around a bit, looking at what seemed to be completely full shelves. That alone bothered me. Where did the purchased items come from? Or more to the point, where were they going, if the shelves never looked touched?
Then I looked at the counter.
There was a pile of these little, nothing carvings sitting there. No sign. No explanation. Just a neat stack. I picked one up and looked at it, and one of the three counter clerks asked if I would please put that down unless I was going to purchase it.
It wasn’t what he said. It was the way he said it.
So I answered, “Well, sir, if I do not look at the item, how do I know if I want it?”
What I got back was a strange, rambling statement that sounded more like a line than an answer.
“If you think, if you want, or if you wish is not important here,” he said. “What is important is that you must, and you need to own one of these. And yes, you can touch and love it, but only after you have agreed to care for this lovely token of true happiness, sir. That would be sixty-nine dollars now, please.”
I will say this plainly: I found myself feeling in my pockets for money without deciding to do it first. My hand moved before my mind did. That bothered me more than the price.
I said, “Sorry, friend. Got no money today.”
The next thing I knew, I was on the street.
Someone was screaming at me from almost a block away, and I realized I was nowhere near my car, which was parked in the other direction. I did not remember walking that far.
I got in my car, and I knew I had my next big adventure. I did not know what it was going to be yet, only that it had already started. And then something even stranger happened—I found myself thinking it was going to be interesting. Loving. With care.
CHAPTER 2
The Returning
That thought was enough to make me pull over immediately.
I looked at myself in the mirror and said out loud, “What the hell are you saying, Karl? Loving and with care? Wake up, man, and move in your own mind.”
Sometimes I have to do that—set myself right before something else does it for me.
At that minute, I knew just who I needed to go see, at the bar off Eagle Lane on the hillside.
I parked on the hill and had to use more force than I liked to set the brake, remembering how I rolled into another car the last time I was here. That memory sat wrong with me, like it was waiting to repeat itself if I did not pay attention. As I walked in, Aaron, behind the counter, said, “Karl, you gonna hit anything today?”
I did not answer. I just kept walking.
I went to the back corner of the building, where there were a bunch of book piles stacked around the corner, almost like a new kind of blocks being used, except they were the ends of books instead of wood. The spines were turned inward, hidden, and that bothered me more than if I could see the titles. At the table, pulled out a few feet so you could still walk behind it, a larger man was sitting there.
So I pulled out a chair and sat, already feeling like I had stepped into something that had been waiting for me.
“Willy,” I said, “I have a problem you might be able to help me with. That is if you read these books all over and do not collect them just to save the planet or something like that.”
Willy looked at me for a long moment before he spoke. “Karl,” he said, “why, my lad, are you bothering to take up my space there after you ran out of here last time without even a bye? And please take off that hat to respect the people you are with now.”
That made my stomach tighten.
I took off the hat and said, “Willy, who am I with besides you?”
He did not smile. He put his hand on one of the books in the pile, palm flat like it was alive. “Karl,” he said, “why is it you do not understand that these writers put their very soul into every page? They should be honored as if they were standing here whispering in your ear, man. And then again—maybe they would, if you asked the right question, finally, as they do mine, you see.”
That made the hair on my arms lift.
So I asked, carefully now, hoping I would get an answer either from his mouth or straight into my head. “Willy, I would welcome an answer by any means I can get here, my friend. Is there any way to stop from being enchanted by some means—maybe even a fairy spell of sorts—without the enchanter knowing you were protected?”
Willy looked at me and said, “Why should I tell you that after you ran off as you did, Karl?”
I put my hands on the table and leaned forward, feeling the grain of the wood under my palms. “Willy, my friend, my car was rolling down that damn hill you’re on here. Sorry, I did not come back and chat after my run. I really was not in a good mood.”
He studied me, thinking. “Well,” he said finally, “that might be a good reason to run off. I would not know. I own no motor car myself, you see.”
Then Willy put his hand back on the book pile and repeated my question verbatim, word for word, exactly as I had said it, like he had recorded it somewhere inside him.
And I swear the room got colder right then.
I kept hearing a bug in my ear, over and over, the sound of it just enough that I kept wanting to swat it away even though there was nothing there.
Willy started to laugh. Not loud. Not friendly.
“Karl,” he said, “if you ask a question, you must let the spirits of the word answer you, my friend. They told me that you refused to listen. What they said is this: the only way to stop an enchantment is to be enchanted in one’s own mind.”
He watched my face closely.
“I can see by that look you have no idea what I am saying,” he continued. “So I will tell you the secret of self-enchanting. The easy way to achieve it is by wearing crystals, Karl.”
I stared at him. “What, I just go get some off the ground and put them in my pocket?”
That got me a look I never want to see again. Cold. Flat. Finished.
So I said quickly, “Willy, I do not know—no offense—but I do not wonder where you go to find crystals, Willy.”
I could feel the tension ease just a little when his face softened again.
“What you will need,” he said calmly, “is five crystals you can place around your neck and leave them under your shirt. They do not need to be seen, Karl. Please write this down so I do not have to repeat myself. I dislike that very much.”
I nodded and wrote.
“You will need a Black Tourmaline for negative energy. Obsidian for grounding. Amethyst to stop lower-frequency energies. Hematite or Bloodstone as a deflective energy. Then put salt in your shoes to stop energy from traveling up behind the field around you.”
He leaned closer. “Did you get all that, Karl?”
I nodded again.
“I have them here,” he said. “I sell the kit with a stainless chain. Twenty-eight dollars. For you, I could do twenty-five.”
I paid for the stones. Then I stopped by the local store, bought a small bottle of salt, and poured it into my shoes right there in the car.
Only then did I feel like I could breathe again.
I was ready for another visit. I hoped it would work. And I left my money in the car again—just in case.
Sometimes you plan for the thing that you want or expect.
As I walked up to it, I was told they had no more things to sell today.
So I said, “Interesting, since there is still a line outside. Should I turn your open sign to closed for you?
Let me do that for you so we can talk in peace.”
And I turned, started toward the door I had just walked in through, my arm already coming up to reach for it.
Then right before I got there—right before my fingers could touch anything—I heard an older voice behind me.
“Karl,” it said, “is it I would like to talk to you myself, sir. And we can do it back here, so we do not bother the others that might want what we still have available, sir.”
I did start walking that way, but with the knowledge I never gave anyone my name either time I entered this place.
So I was on very high alert by then.
The older man opened the door I had peeked into first, and I went in and sat down. The room felt smaller than it should have, like it had been built to keep voices from traveling. I said, “It is strange, my old man, to find you here in the back as all the young ones sell your goods. That is, unless you're doing something different back here to help them.”
The man made it to his chair and literally fell down into it with an audible thud.
Not eased. Not sat. Fell.
I could even feel it, like he weighed hundreds of pounds, and the floor accepted it like it had done it before.
Then he started lighting a few candles and said, “You see, Karl—”
And I cut him off, because I could not hold it inside any longer. “How do you know my name? I never gave it.”
The old man looked up at me slowly and steadily and said, “You do not have to give it. The spirits around you share it openly with those who know how to ask for it, Mr. Kolchak, newsman for L.A. Daily.”
That hit me like cold water.
Then he added, as calm as if he were talking about the weather, “If you want, I could tell them to stop that for you. All you would need to do is remove that chain from your neck so I could talk to them. You see, I am being blocked now to tell them anything, Karl.”
At that time, I was feeling that this was way over the limits of what I knew.
But I also knew one thing for sure.
That chain was never coming off my neck until this case was done, and I figured out what was going on here.
So I said, “This chain might stop you from talking to help; however, it also takes me out of your game of buying the trinket and rotting your soul. So I think you can get my name and even my address from the pesky spirits in return for me knowing what I do and not being drawn around like on a rope.”
And right then, the nice old man was no longer nice, and no longer a man.
He became a she.
And she had a long snake around her neck, hissing at me as she came closer like the air was pulling her forward.
I moved back without meaning to, my body doing it before my head caught up.
“Karl,” she said. “Karl. As we know, someday you might be a power to reckon with. However, today you are just a Karl, and you have no way to escape unless you answer one question, as the rules say I must ask.”
I said, “OK. I can play your game, but only if I get something in return if I answer your question correctly. And it must be something I could know. Don't ask me how much your snake weighs or something ridiculous.”
My mouth was talking steadily, but my chest was not. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.
“So what I will get,” I continued, “is you tell me exactly how I can stop the spell you gave everyone here, and you must leave with no argument from the area.”
The now old lady looked at me with that snake still hissing like it was listening too, and she asked her question in a simple way, almost gentle, which made it worse.
“What am I?”
And with a surprise that I thought was exposed to anyone looking at my face, I said, “You want me to tell you what you are? That is all?”
She looked almost offended that I asked, and her voice went smaller, tighter. “Yes,” she said. “I would like you to answer that simple question now. Then we can go down two roads.”
I got out of my chair and walked around the room for a minute, because my mind needed space even if the room did not give it. Then I sat back down and told her my calculated guess from what I knew so far.
“So you want to know what you are,” I said. “But I will assume you already know that. And at the same time, it is not obvious, and that can only be because you have the ability to hide your true form from me.”
I kept my eyes on hers. I did not look at the snake. I refused to let my focus slip.
“Now you are here making people buy trinkets to take home,” I continued, “so we now know you can control or enchant those around you to do and think what you want them to. Also, we have to add that there is an item that might have also been given a dark or evil purpose to all who have it around.”
My hands came together as I spoke, the way I was told a while back—close the circle of protection you always carry.
“You see, we have three things,” I said, “and then there is a fourth.”
I leaned back a little, just enough to breathe.
“And that would be that you like what you are doing,” I told her. “Because you dragged things out, and you're here even though you know you do not have to be. So you like the evil in people’s hearts.”
I stared at her, not blinking.
“So should I tell you what you are now?” I said. “My little dark fairy?”
Then I added, not to be brave, but because I needed to know if I was right.
“Oh yes,” I said. “Let me also add, not to my answer but because I want to find out if I am right here. Are you making people destroy their lives and property so you will someday have the world back to the stone-throwing days?”
The fairy turned into a very beautiful lady with deep blue eyes, as if she was trying to make my mind forget everything else in my past or even my future, and focus on her only.
And she said, “Why, Karl, do you want to accuse me of being such an evil thing?”
I looked at her, at the way her blouse was falling off like it was supposed to be a distraction, and I said, “It does not matter what you're outside looks like, lady, for now. It only matters what you're inside looks like, and that is rotten.”
My voice did not shake, but inside I did.
“So keep our bargain,” I said. “Give me the cure. Then remove yourself from anywhere I might find you.”
And then I stood there with my arms crossed, waiting for whatever battle she was going to give.
Then the woman looked at me with a deep stare and said, “You know, Karl, you do realize that the land around you works on rules and bargains to change or bypass those rules. And when you make bargains, sometimes you need more paper than a pen will write, because you need to sort out what could be, should be, and might be the answers of who you give that bargain to. Unlike you just now, Karl, you have made no extra demands to protect yourself, your property, or your loved ones.”
I felt that land on me like a weight. Not a threat you could point at, but something that settled in the bones. Like she was not warning me for my benefit. Like she was reading the terms out loud because that was part of the fun.
Then I responded, “You must just mean me since I have no loved ones… unless you want to destroy my car. That is all I have.”
I could hear how small that sounded the second I said it, and I hated that I said it anyway.
“So I will be on my way,” I added, forcing the words to stay straight, “with the purpose of this shop and what must be done to stop you.”
And I turned away from her.
I stood by the counter waiting.
And I could see that everyone inside was starting to move outside now, leaving without their special item. If I looked out the windows, the crowd was dispersing and moving on like the whole place had lost its purpose in a single breath. I suddenly started getting nervous, because now there were no witnesses, and I did not like how fast that happened. One minute, there were bodies everywhere. The next minute, there was space. Too much space.
I stood there computing my life goals and how many I still had to finish—most of them—when the original old man came around the corner and told everyone that today they were closing early, so don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Then the old man looked right at me and said, “Well, Kolchak, you should be happy with yourself. My whole operation has to close in this area. I was doing so good. However, the rules of the Realms are true and must be followed.”
And right then I said, “The rules of the what? Did you say realms?”
The old man’s face did not change. Not even a little. Like it was obvious. Like it was supposed to be obvious.
He said, “Either you listen or speak, but while you prattle on like this, it annoys me immensely.”
So I stopped talking, because I was there to learn, not to give speeches, and my mouth was starting to feel like a weakness.
Then he started up again, voice smooth, voice tired, voice mean in a polite way.
“Good,” he said. “I can get through this and go start someplace else. Yes, Karl Kolhook, you never said I could not start again as long as it was not in this area. So is that a block, a city, or even the street? So as you can see, I will be open in just a day at another location.”
He leaned in a little, and I felt the air shift, like even the room wanted to hear him finish.
“And as far as your safety,” he continued, “there is no limit to what I can do to maintain my business or cause, as long as—well, no limits.”
That line crawled under my skin because it was said too easily.
“So as you see,” he went on, “your swift bargain can be your doom now. I can open when I want, do what I want, and bother you how I want. But you must also remember, “I can also curse you, your friends, and all who call you as such, Karl Coal Shack.”
He smiled then. Not with kindness. With ownership.
“So your bargain did nothing for me and also nothing to your own well-being, my little Kolhack. You see, Karl, you did nothing but bring yourself right into my view, so I now know you are out there like a flea on a dog, and I will get you off soon.”
My throat went dry. I stayed still anyway. My body wanted to step back, but I refused to give him that.
“So for your information,” he said, almost bored now, “all you need to do is find them and have them look in a mirror, saying, I am not free, and all will be done. The trinket is from China, you see. It does nothing but be there as a thing.”
His hand moved across the counter as if he were wiping away dust that did not exist.
“I could have given them your old shoe and said nothing more,” he finished, “and it would have been worshipped like it was a god if it was what I wanted.”I stood there, staring at him, feeling my bargain tighten around my neck like it had hands.
I looked him in the eyes and asked, “So I can go now, and you will be gone, correct?” The old man nodded, with nothing more to say. So I left the shop and turned to get a trinket for myself, and the door—everything behind the door—was gone with no sign it had ever been there. Right then, I knew I needed to visit someone with a book collection again.
CHAPTER 3
IS THE PAST AS IT SEEMS?
I was off to that damn street again, and I made sure the brake was on, and I was in park as well. Then, and only then, I opened the door and went inside, directly to the same chair I was in last time. I put my hand over my eyes and said, “I saw, heard, and felt something that could not be real.”
Willy just said, “So you want your mommy now?” and he started laughing.
Then I asked, “Would you consider us friends?”
Willy looked at me and said, “I guess I would be, Karl.”
I looked right back at him and said, “There you go. You might be dead, as well as I.”
He said he was going to “curse you, your friends, and all who call you as such.” When I finished repeating it, he stared at me and only said, “He said that just like that, with no changes at all?”
I added, “He said something about realms or whatever—”
Right then Willy started digging through his stack of books, not caring where they fell, like nothing mattered but finding one. He pulled out a book that looked real old, and he started looking down every page, searching hard, like he was chasing something that could disappear if he blinked. The book looked as old as Earth itself.
And when he got to the page he wanted, his voice changed. It got deeper and demanding, not like him at all.
“And the realms were closed, and there was a big drum of the land settling to be their own time again. Then over the sound of the damned, the witch all knew as being the leader of the dark stood in front of all who were there and stated she was going to ‘curse you, your friends, and all who call you as such,’ before the very end of the realm system activated and all were alone in the dark.”
Then he turned to me, laid the book down, and said, “Okay, Karl. Let’s go through all that happened there.”
I said I would, and when I got to the test thing, he stopped me.
“Karl, you have to look at it all like a game. I have to know—did he ever change his appearance?”
I looked at him and said, “Once when we started to bargain, then to a third person when we—when I was attacking her with words to try and find out what they were doing there. Why do you ask, Willy?”
Willy started mumbling to himself, and I called out, “What’s up, man?”
He looked at me with a haunted expression and told me, almost in a whisper, “The magic we live in around us is tricky by all means, Karl. What I mean by that is there are rules in the underworld that cannot be broken. But I know of another set of rules that I have no knowledge of as I sit here in front of you, and those are the rules of the true world around us and under us, my friend.”
He swallowed like his mouth had gone dry.
“And with those rules, what I know is a fairy cannot change its looks more than two times in as many hours. In other words, if you saw it change its appearance to you three times in only an hour, you were not talking to a fairy. And what you dealt with was not what you said it was.”
He stared at me like he was trying to measure how much of that I could survive hearing.
“And that means you did not win. So why did she—or it—act like you did, Karl?”
As he spoke, I looked at him differently. To be honest, I always thought of Willy as a broken-down drunk in a bar. But now, thinking back to the three years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him drink anything but water and ice.
And that made something colder settle in my stomach.
Maybe he wasn’t here for the bar.
Maybe he was here for the safety of always having people around him, twenty-four hours a day. Maybe he was scared of something, and the noise and bodies made it harder for that something to reach him.
So with that in mind, I asked him, “Willy… from what you’re saying, should I be scared of what is coming now, man?”
Willy got up and walked to the front windows. He looked outside like he could see what wasn’t there for anyone else to see. Then he came back, moved his chair around to the same side of the table as me, and sat so close our knees were almost touching.
His voice went even lower.
“Karl, I do not think you won today. I think you got stuck in a test. A test of you, to see how you think and work. No, she did not want all those people. But she needed you to believe she was not what she is.”
He leaned in.
“So my friend… You are being hunted. I would not know why. I do not know when she will return, or what she will want. But I will say this: be careful.”
He tapped the book lightly, like even touching it too hard could wake something up.
“Because that statement you were told is an exact copy of the statement that was told to a crowd who shamed a very powerful person. And Karl… that book has been carbon dated by me, when I was in the system before I left.”
He paused, like he hated saying the number out loud.
“That book, my friend, is over nine hundred years old. And it will not age a day. I have even tried to burn the cover, and it will not be affected by direct flame.”
Then he nodded toward the piles around him.
“These books I have piled up, my friend—”
And then Willy leaned in close to my ear and whispered, so low it barely counted as sound, “They are all here so it can be lost in the numbers. That is the only book I will never leave without. The rest are disguises. Some are even copies through the pile, my friend.”
He pulled back as if nothing had happened and went back to his side of the table. He started stacking the books again, and his face settled back into that sloppy, half-drunk look, as if he were putting on an old mask he’d worn for too long.
And I sat there thinking, who is this man really?
I have no real name for him, which made me think, who could he be? The name I knew is just “Willy,” like an old jeep. But he has no car. No house. No history. Not even a real story. Who or what is he really hiding from?
He pulled back like nothing had happened and went back to his side of the table. He started stacking the books again, and his face returned to that sloppy, half-drunk look like he was putting on an old mask he’d worn for too long.
And I sat there thinking, who is this man really?
I have no real name for him, which made me think, who is this man? The name I knew is just ”willy” like an old jeep. But he has no car. No house. No history. Not even a real story. Who is he really hiding from?
Then he spoke like the last conversation never happened at all as he returned to his normal slurred voice .
“So Karl, my friend, remember to listen to the spirits of the books next time you’re asking a question. They might tell you something you need to know. You want lunch, buddy? I’m cooking iguana today from Florida. The new jungle.”
I told Willy, “That’s okay. I’ll get something on the way.”
And I left that little mysterious bar on the hill and drove to the sign to sit and think. I didn’t want anyone to bother me, and I didn’t want anyone to hear what I was about to say. I needed to put this down on tape, because in case I wasn’t here in the morning, there would be a trail of why.
What to do now is my only question.
I started this to stop the abuse of people’s minds, and that has stopped. I wanted a drive due to traffic, and that is gone. So now what is my means to go where?
I have no direction.
So I guess this file is done, with more questions than answers…
ONE WEEK LATER:..
So I didn’t want to leave this in an incomplete state, so over the last week, I visited the people I knew were affected by that trinket from the shop. I knew this because I took pictures of the cars that were parked there, then followed which ones left with bags. It wasn’t official, but it needed to be done, because if I was a pawn in a game about me, I wanted to know. And if I were the king in a game of chess with real people… well, I wanted to know that too.
Out of the twelve people I had on my list, three of them sold me their token for twenty bucks, without even knowing why they had it. The others acted like it was insane that I would be standing there in the middle of a workday asking about a wizard trinket, and they said I was crazy. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable conclusion for them to land on.
But no one was stopping their normal lives. No one was acting like they’d been borrowed for a day and dropped back into place. It was like nothing happened at all.
Except I knew something did.
Because for a moment, they were part of a game of chess. A game with only two kings on the board, and no clue where the rest of the pieces are, but I will be looking for a knight for sure in my path of life.
