Original fiction (or is it?) short story. PG-13 for Satanic themes and references to blood and absinthe. That’s as much warning as you get.

Note to stalker ex-husbands (all two hundred of you) and judgmental family members: I do not condone violence, Satanism, selling your soul, murder, bars in general, Old Ones, or Religion. But if it works for you, then that’s your bag.

DO NOT USE THIS STORY AS AN EXCUSE TO IRRITATE ME OR PUSH YOUR DOGMA ON ME, if you have any to push. I have been known to bite, and I have not recently had my shots.

There’s a bar in New Orleans, a very select bar. If you’ve been there before you’ll always know where it is, even when it’s in a different town, even when the same bar shows up in your own town. There’s no more than the average number of murders on this boulevard, but the manner of death will be of a more vicious and ritualistic variety.

On this street they wash the sidewalks every morning with bleach to cover the strange and disconcerting odor that rises from the concrete. Not quite unpleasant, the smell still hits the hindbrain with a signal of unease.

If you’ve never been to the bar, you must know the way in order to find it. First, you’ll need to find the boulevard. I’m leaving out the street names and numbers here – it is a very select bar. You’ll know it when you find a writing goods store beneath the sign of the crow. On the last Friday of a cold month stand across the street from the sign and look down the avenue into the sun as it is setting. Close your right eye and keep your left open. Don’t blink, for you may miss it.

As the sun touches the horizon you will see a flash of green light. Walk toward it in a straight line, still keeping your right eye covered. As you do this be mindful of oncoming traffic lest you become another of the curious statistics regarding this boulevard.

In your left hand you must have a silver piece, no denomination preferred but it must be an issued coin and not a blank. If you’ve timed it correctly you will see a dark door appear between suite 154A and 154B. The tarnished brass plaque over the door will call it 154Z.

There is a long thin slot under the doorknob where a keyhole should be. Insert the coin, turn the knob with your left hand, and walk in with both eyes open. It’s important that you see what you’ve purchased.

It looks like a normal bar as long as you don’t look too closely. Especially don’t scrutinize the other patrons beyond their comfort level. It’s best to think of them as other men and women in loose and dumpy clothing, almost all of them in wide-brimmed hats. They aren’t here to be seen. Only a few people come into the bar to gain status; they tend not to stay long. Safest thing is to sit at the bar. It may make your skin itch to turn your back to the patrons at the tables and booths, but the deeper danger is to make eye-contact or any gesture that may be construed as threatening.

The polished wood on the floor is as dark as that of the door; here in the lowlights it shines like a mirror. In that reflective surface you can study anything in the long main room of the bar – as long as your sanity allows. It’s elder wood varnished with some unknowable lacquer, and if one stares too long they may see the manner of their death. The bar itself is safer, though, because its surface appears to be maple. When staring down at it through a drunken haze the worst thing anyone has reported seeing is their own face.

The pictures on the walls are also interesting if you disregard the stains on the wall paper behind them (a quick glance will identify some as smoke, bourbon, and blood – yet leave others more mysterious). Many of the pictures are taken of happy celebrities smiling and schmoozing: Marilyn Monroe at a flattering fifty-two years old and at last comfortable in her own skin; Elvis with gray hair and grandchildren. These among others line the booths and walls. Some may be more personal to the viewer.

After you come into the bar, you must buy a drink. The bartender will accept any currency with no sign of dismay or surprise. The prices will be more than reasonable. If you go I suggest the absinthe cocktail, which is what I was drinking this evening. It gives you the strangest dreams.

“Now that’s one of the saddest stories I know of,” the bartender said to me on this occasion, indicating with a flick of his eyes the other human-shaped man at the far end of the bar, closest to the back door. (Do not go to the bathrooms in this bar, neither male nor female – some things tempt fate too much.)

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

“It’s a long story. You got the time?”

This is a cue; while the bartender also looks fairly normal he is more than what he seems. If he says this to you and you answer yes, you will gain a powerful piece of information about the non-mundane half of the world.

Of course I answered yes. The bartender puts away the glass he was polishing, ran a hand back over his sleek brown hair and leaned companionably in against the bar.

“His name is Edward Harris. Would you believe me if I told you that he is immortal? He sold his soul to Shaitan.” I expressed polite surprise and silently noted the unusual pronunciation of the name.

“It was back in 1886; the man Edward there was on a tour of Europe when he found a strange book in an old shop and purchased it. On his way back across the Atlantic to America he began to work on a transcription.

“The book was apparently written in 1642, and from a description within it was bound with the leather of at least one human victim, and the pages were parchment made from the skin of several others. It had a faint odor of cloves.

“The text was composed in the Early Modern English common at the time, and hand-written instead of printed, of course. If any authorities had been aware of its content, the author would surely have burned along with his work. The entirety of the book was devoted to the dark arts, culminating to the secret of eternal life gained in a pact with Shaitan.

“When Edward had reached the States again he was already beginning to master the simplest of tricks listed in the book… things like turning water into blood and killing lesser animals like birds and rodents with a look. There were intermediate and journeyman spells that turned his stomach with their perversity so he ignored them and instead involved himself in the last and greatest work. He memorized the chants required as he rode a stagecoach into the West.”

How horrible, I thought but didn’t voice. Passing judgment aloud in this room was unwise to say the least.

“Edward settled at last in Las Animas, Colorado, where he put down roots as a carpenter and day laborer. Although he had originally been an accountant he no longer had the will to do anything cerebral – his every waking thought was on the book and the learning and completion of the spell that would give him everlasting life until the end of the world.

“The spell grants total immortality; not just life but immunity from death. No sword can cut, no bullet can pierce, no disease can shake, no rock can crush the man or woman who has sold their soul to Shaitan. Such a person could lay at ground zero of a nuclear holocaust and rise up from it naked and unscathed. And such a man or woman would go on in this way until the Revelations come and the world ends. After that, their soul would join the infernal hosts as Shaitan’s slave for eternity. But who knows how long away that would be, or if it would ever even occur?

“The only trouble is that, among its many other dangerous and disgusting ingredients required, the spell called for the death-blood of nine young children. Each innocent life spilled would be the key to a still deeper circle of Hell. All locks must open until you can stand before the Dark Lord himself and offer him up your very being.”

Here the bartender paused, and quirked the corner of his lips in a half-smile. I begged him (respectfully, of course) to continue.

“Some say Edward went mad. Only madness could describe what next occurred, or so they think. Edward carefully prepared the ingredients of the spell as far as he could, then burned his notes and packaged up the book. He put it in the mail with a fake address in a far distant city. Then, he went to church.

“It was a Sunday night in a town somewhat civilized yet somewhat frontier. All the good men and women of Las Animas were standing in the little wooden church singing ‘Just As I Am’ according to reports, when a scream rose from the nearby building – the church nursery and meeting hall. A mother had walked the short distance to check on her children only to find them and several others dead. There were infants still at the bottle up to boys and girls ten or eleven years old. Exactly nine children were in the nursery that night, no more and no less. I suppose Mr. Harris thought it was serendipity. The woman watching them was knocked unconscious, bound, and stuffed into a closet; when they found her she was still out.

“But first they found Edward. Dear stupid Edward.” He chuckled and lowered his voice, his faint hint of an accent tugging at my ear. “Edward was sitting naked with his eyes rolled up into his head, covered in blood, in the middle of a massacre, in a room spattered with blood. Signs and sigils were written over the walls as required by the spell, also in the children’s blood. As guilty as a fox in a hen house! Luckily for him he had just finished the chant and came back to his body as the men of the town grabbed hold of him. In the strength of his panic he was able to fight them off and make it to a horse that he had hidden.

“Although he drove the beast to the brink of death Edward was at last cornered in a gully. Here at least he was smart: he’d packed the horse with a change of clothes and enough guns and ammunition to take out the whole town. In the course of an eight hour shoot-out he obliterated the townsmen who had followed and was able to escape. He washed up in a stream, took himself to the nearest town over, bought a new horse and rode away feeling pleased with the whole event.

“Here’s the truly unfortunate part of the story.” I lifted my eyebrow but took another sip and said nothing. “One of the people Edward so freely murdered that night was not only the preacher but also the law man of that city.”

With his right hand in the condensation left on the bar by my glass, the bartender drew first the five pointed star of the sheriff, then over it the sign of the cross.

“And God – or whoever or whatever in this universe that opposes Shaitan – raised the spirit of the law man and gave it the power to follow Edward, without tiring, without ceasing, into eternity itself. Edward’s crossed oceans a thousand times; the lawman follows walking in the darkness under the sea. Edward’s driven cars and ridden fast planes and done anything for more speed, more distance, but the lawman follows and never stops, never sleeps. I suppose that Edward *might* escape him if he was on a rocket into space, but even then I wouldn’t be sure. And should the law man ever catch hold of him, Edward’s body will crumble like Dorian Gray’s and his soul will be sent wailing into the empty wastes until the Dark Lord comes to claim it at the end of time.”

At this last the bartender leaned back and resumed his professional distance. Edward at the end of the bar stood up, laid down his money, turned up the lapel of his trench coat and snugged his hat over his brow.

“Can I use the back door again?” he said. His voice was small and meek; yes, the voice of a nervous pencil-pusher, not a psychopathic killer or a Satan worshiper.

“Of course, Edward.”

Without further delay, he hared off into the darkness past the bathrooms. I shuddered to think what could lie dormant and skulking in the back room of this very select bar. Could there be anything safe in this place, other than the sturdy maple under my palm?

“Did anyone ever find the book?” I asked.

“If they did, I’ve never heard of it,” the bartender answered. “I like to think that it’s circulating in the mail through all the cities of the world, its address perpetually misread, cycling over and over. Maybe opened, imbibed, then repackaged and sent on its way. Like a virus.”

Again, that odd half smile. I thought of another question, then instantly forgot it with the opening of the black elder door.

I could hear the stamp of boot heels on the mat just inside; the jingle of spurs along with them. I looked up and saw the translucent form – the long duster, the gun belt with its pistol on each hip, the open shirt, the tall hat with the bullet hole through it. The eyes of the figure were two shadows beneath the wide brim. The star on the lapel gleamed like a last hope.

He strode up to the bar, an inevitable fate on two legs. I leaned down over my drink with hunched shoulders, praying not to be noticed – I hadn’t killed nine children myself, hadn’t done anything nearly as bad as that, but who among us feels completely innocent in the presence of the authorities, either religious or judicial?

Imagine the shudder up my spine when he paused right behind me.

“He went through here,” the deep rough voice of the lawman said to the bartender. It wasn’t a question. The bartender met his eyes gravely.

“Of course he did.”

“Know you this,” the ghost grated. “I’m not here for you today, nor tomorrow. The Lord may never see fit to put me on your trail. But your doom is coming just as swift and sure. You are a vile thing no better than the one I follow.”

And with that, the ghost spat onto the bar only inches from my elbow and stalked past us into the back room and beyond. The bunched and shrouded figures at the tables watched him go.

His spittle was smoking where it ate into the harmless wood of the bar. The bartender sneered as he donned a rubber dishwashing glove and picked up a clean rag to wipe the slime away. He turned the glove inside out around the rag and threw both into a nearby waste bin.

I shook myself firmly (showing weakness also being unsafe) and remembered my question at last.

“Do you know if anyone else has made use of the book, sir?”

He picked up another glass and worried at it with a new rag. “Oh, about a few dozen, I’d say. Probably no more than fifty total.” His tone was conversational.

“They’re not all terribly bad people; just willing to do anything to live longer. The world is full of many mysteries, many beautiful things and many worthwhile hobbies. I knew of one gentleman who was a stamp collector… so obsessed with the little things that the worth of nine young lives was nothing compared to being able to see what stamps were made a hundred years from his birth.”

I drank the dregs of my cocktail, and politely waved away the offer of a second one. “You’d think that more of these people would get caught in the attempt, though,” I mused. “Nine missing children, nine bodies… wouldn’t that be difficult to hide?”

“The best way to achieve immortality is by being clever and patient; our unfortunate young Edward was neither.” The bartender looked up at me under his brows; I saw for the first time that the brown iris of his left eye had a red cast to it. He smiled the half smile that didn’t part his lips and I was glad of it – suddenly I feared to see what teeth were in that mouth.

“For example,” he continued, “when I wrote that book so many years ago, London did not keep so strict a count of its orphaned street urchins…”