find.
I went through every nook and cranny. I unrolled my scrolls, threw down my books, forced my fingers into every chink in the walls. I looked under my washbasin, in my glasses, among my silverware. It was nowhere. The ring had rolled away, and with it no doubt any chance of my avoiding the noose.
I resolved right away to pack and leave the country. I could perhaps manage a spell to fly away—of course I would have to leave most of my treasures here. My precious books and scrolls! The wealth of a lifetime of learning.
I was packing a satchel when the knocking began. I had never heard so loud a series of knocks in my life.
“Open up, Robert Griffith. I have come to arrest you for the murder of Winslow Carvenell. If you don’t open this door, I shall break it down.”
I uttered the word, which opened the door.
“Caught you before you could leave!” boomed Constable Gager.
With him were Count William, a tear-stained Shina, and a burly peasant man I’d seen once in the farmer’s market.
“This man says he saw a figure dressed in red armor leaving the home of Winslow Carvenell and going toward your door. When I questioned Shina Auw she broke down and confessed having found the ring from your costume at the scene of the murder, and giving you said ring during a period of poor judgment.”
I had to hand it to Gager, a lesser man couldn’t have boomed his way through an utterance so long. At least if I am hung swiftly, I thought, I would not have to listen to his annoying voice too long.
“Where is the ring that Shina Auw gave you?” asked Gager.
I was pondering the reply when Count William walking past the constable said, “Here. On his desk.”
There was the ring all right. Had it been there all along mocking the mind I was clearly losing?
The Count walked to my desk. He reached to grab it, when it seemed the ring of its own accord rolled over and slipped onto his hand.
“No,” he said, “It’s a trick. It isn’t my ring. It’s his. I didn’t steal it from him. I didn’t.”
The Count’s face was white with fear. He was trying to pull off the ring but couldn’t manage it. Blood poured from his finger.
The Constable hesitated, not know whether to grab the Count or me or both.
The Count’s struggle was both comic and terrifying. He bellowed in pain and rolled on the floor as thought fighting a score of men. A huge bear of a man—his fight against a simple band of gold made no sense. I have heard few men be really afraid. Men talk about fear, or whisper about their fears, but only animals whimpered like this. I was appalled and enthralled.
The Count said, “I’ll confess. I killed him.. Just get the ring off. It bites.”
The Constable ordered me to remove my spell from the ring. I started to say that I hadn’t put any spell on it, but then I remembered my failed invocation from the night before. I said a couple of words to end the enchantment.
The ring came off, and the Constable took the Count away. The ring had bitten the Count severely; his finger was hanging on only by a scrap of bloody skin. I guess the enchantment had opened its mouth.
Over the next few months we learned the story. Winslow Carvenell had discovered a document describing the birth of the twins. The first-born twin had a large birthmark on his back, the younger was unblemished. Winslow, with the ugly strawberry-colored blotch on his left shoulder, was the true heir. The doctor who had delivered the children had mixed up the details later, and the old count was happier with an unblemished heir anyway.
Winslow had approached William asking for the title and lands. After all, Winslow would only get to enjoy it for a few years, and then it would pass back to William. William didn’t want to relinquish power—even for a few months to the grumpy old scholar. He decided to slay his uncle.
He knew that I had often quarreled with old Winslow. One day the Count had visited me hoping to find some way to incriminate me. I remember he had asked to borrow some ancient book of poetry, as I had searched among my badly organized library he noted that I was using the ring as a paperweight. This proved to him that I didn’t know the value of gold, and was therefore unworthy of it. Or at least was unaware if it. He stole the ring to plant in the scene of his crime.
William resides in the king’s dungeons, where I hear he has very bad dreams. The fonder of the line, the red knight, had been known for fearsome forms of justice. Apparently William dreams himself as a guest in his ancestor’s dungeon-courts.
I live much as I did before, but increasingly wonder if I should die ring-less. Now that I have penned this little story, perhaps I should try a sonnet for Shina.
Shall I compare thee to the mystery of dream?
Thou are more mysterious and more rare.
A good start....
THE SYRINGE
Mr. Randolph Holland’s prize possession was an old-style glass hypodermic syringe. It had served him and his habit well for twenty-five years. Despite what you may have read on the subject, junkies can live a very long time— long, anonymous, gray lives in cheap boarding houses—with two-bit jobs which have only the function of serving the monkey. Such syringes used to be the rule, but plastic with its disposability now dominated the market.
“Never misses the vein,” he used to boast. “Always hits blood.”
Mr. Randolph Holland not only lost his prize possession but also his life (although in a sense he had lost it years before) to a pair of the street thugs named Crazy Eddy and Rico.
“Man, this guy didn’t have shit,” said Eddy cleaning out the boarding room with leisure. Mr. Holland had been quiet about his going, so the boys weren’t worried that his neighbors would be dropping in. They had watched the old junkie.
“Let’s pull him off the bed,” said Rico. “We can stay here for a while, sell his shit tonight.”
They pulled him off the bed. Rico took out a package of condoms and they amused themselves.
Later as night fell, Rico asked, “You want to shoot up his stash? There ain’t enough to sell.”
“Nah, I don’t do that stuff. Makes you too slow.”
Rico was more catholic in his tastes than Eddy. As he prepared his fix, he said, “I ain’t never seen a syringe like this. I bet that old cocksucker used this for years man. Look the metal’s
“I washed it man. What are you worried about. Maybe it’s haunted. Maybe it’s used to biting the blood of the living every night.” Rico managed a pretty good Lugosi for the word
“Don’t talk that stuff with him stuffed under the bed.”
“We didn’t wake him up before, we’re not going to wake him up now.”
Rico went to shoot up. Suddenly his arm jerked and the syringe plunged full into his shoulder.
“Shit.”
He injected the entire contents and then pulled at the hypo. The plunger on the back came out and blood pouredf rom the device.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
He was loud, very LOUD.
All Eddy could think of to do was hit hard. Ring his bells. Quiet him down. He punched Rico’s nose, and Rico fell.
Eddy didn’t even breathe for a while. Just listened. There were people talking, and toilets flushing, and TVs —but no knock on the door.
He checked Rico. Rico was not going to get up.
He would stay here a few hours, then clear. He gathered up the money from the two bodies, and he turned off the lights so it would look like no one was home.
It was a long wait. Everytime he heard somebody in the hall, he damn near pissed himself. All he could think of was “drinks the blood of the living.” What a stupid bastard to say something like that. Better not think it too
