CZM Book Club: The Barrow Will Send What it May, Chapter Three
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I was doing more of like a spaghetti western type deal. Yeah, well, fortunately we were like really in sync with each other. So that's really what that matters. That's what made it work. Yeah.

Well, welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club that you don't have to do the reading for it because I do the reading for you. There might be other book clubs where you don't have to do the reading. Actually, every book club I've ever been part of as an adult is a book club I didn't do the reading for. So I feel like this is a we're like well in line with normal book club behavior, I think. Yeah, yes, absolutely. And to keep in line with it, I also brought my sword to this book club.

Oh, I'm ready. That's a nice sword. Thank you. It's based off a sword in a novel that I read recently for a new fantasy series. Okay. That a bladesmith I know just happened to also read and made this sword. And I said, I will buy this sword. And now I have it. It's a good sword.

I recently, I did a bunch of episodes about the Raiders on Harper's Ferry besides John Brown. Yeah. And I went to Harper's Ferry and I took photos of the sword that, the bleeding Kansas sword that he had. Or that the other Raiders had. And I was like,

Talking about the sword and how I thought it was this one French artillery sword. But then a listener told me that it was actually the American copy of the French artillery sword. And I found a place and I bought one. And then like two weeks later, I got an email telling me that actually they were out of them and they were going to give me my money back.

That's heartbreaking. I know. I know. I had actually bought two, one for someone else. Well, I am also on a John Brown related arms quest. I'm having my blacksmith put together like a short spear with a bowie knife type tip to it. A good old pike. It's more of a glaive, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Inspired by the John Brown. I definitely was looking harder for the John Brown pikes than I was for the John Brown sword, but I did not find the John Brown pikes.

Yeah, that makes sense. But what I did find was my own copy of my book. I actually had to go buy the e-book of my book because I don't know if people know this, but when you send a book off to a publisher, they do like final edits that are not in your file. So you don't have a copy of the final book on your own computer. But I do now. Anyway.

We're on chapter three of The Barrow Will Send What It May, the second book in the Danielle Cain series. By the time you're listening to this, you missed the Kickstarter or participated in the Kickstarter for this book. But don't worry, there's pre-orders for the third book in the series. But that's not what we're reading. We're reading the second one. Hell yeah. Chapter three. Morning came too soon for my taste. I'd scarcely been asleep before the first birds announced their desire to herald the dawn.

Brynn was spooning me, and the idea of staying there, like that, was a lot more interesting than getting up to go chase down, what, a demon? A resurrectionist? Zombies? There'd be coffee, though, if I woke up. Sometimes I think I let myself get addicted to coffee not because I liked it, not because caffeine did me any favors, but because it takes the urge of a physical addiction to provide any kind of upside to getting out of bed in the morning.

It didn't bother me, thinking like that. Brynn liked coffee even more than I did. So as the dawn light came in through the window, I untangled myself from her and went off to figure out the kitchen. Vasilis was already there, chopping potatoes. He brought the blade down slowly with each cut, working silently so as to not wake the house. I found myself the coffee grinder. It would be fine. Waking up was fine.

Over breakfast, we worked out our plans. Vulture and Thursday would take the library's car, actually the old bookmobile, and head up to Glacier for the day, see what they could find. Doomsday and Vasilis were going to go through the library, see how much information they could dredge up about the Book of Barrow and Resurrection. The rest of us, Heather, Bren, and myself, would see what we could find out in town. Presumably, we'd start by talking to Isola and Gertrude.

We'd reconvene at sunset, or whenever the boys came back from Glacier. Now that I was awake, fed, and caffeinated, I was actually fairly excited to get this thing figured out. Everyone likes a good puzzle. Turns out, a puzzle with magic in it is twice as interesting. Bryn, Heather, and I hopped on bicycles, janky old cruisers perfect for a town as flat as Pendleton, and went off to find a sola. I had my travel pack with me, emptied in case we found anything.

The few people we saw looked friendly enough. Outside the gas station slash grocery store slash diner combo, an older fellow waved at Heather, who waved back. The tattoo on her arm was fresh, a simplified Ouroboros. "'This town actually likes its punks?' I asked. "'We run the library. Vasilis and Asola are from here, too. Well, Vasilis is from Greece, but he's been here twenty years.'

People don't really understand us, but they also don't really mind that they don't, if that makes sense. It did. I'd never really stayed put long enough to get that kind of feeling in a town, but I'd met a few folks who had over the years. It sounded nice. A bit lonely, though. Living in one place always sounded kind of lonely to me. It took us maybe 10 minutes to bike out to the western edge of town. It had been a tourist town, that was easy to see.

The gateway to the great outdoors or some shit. We must have been closer to Glacier than I realized. The last block of town held four bed and breakfasts in a row. One of them, the first we passed, even looked like it was probably still operational. The lawn was maintained, and a little fountain shot water up about a foot from some rocks in the front yard. The other three B&Bs, though, were boarded up and overgrown and, to my eye at least, all the more beautiful for it.

This one's it, Heather said, parking her bike along the wrought iron fence of the last house on the block. The building itself was small, barely more than a cottage, but its yard was expansive and it backed onto forest. If I was rich, I would live somewhere like that. Or, you know, since I was poor, I'd squat someplace like that. It would be nice to live somewhere where you didn't have to worry about the cops kicking down your door. But the trade-off of being law-abiding didn't sound worth it.

We didn't lock the bikes. We didn't even have bike locks. You two might want to go up there alone, Heather told us. I think if a solo wanted to talk to me, she would have by now, you know? So Bren and I opened the iron gate and started up the front walk. Never been on a zombie's doorstep, I said after I rang the doorbell. I figure it's more like Lazarus's doorstep. The guy Jesus resurrected? That's the one. What's the story with him, I asked.

Hell, if I know, just that Jesus brought him back from the dead. Why was he so special? Go away. This last bit came from inside the house, right on the other side of the door. Brynn and I looked at each other. We come in peace, I offered.

And if you want to come in peace, you should bring a peace offering. A peace offering like the things that you can get from... Oh, I thought you were going a very different place when you said come. No, no, no. All of our products... I was like, oh, are we advertising for HIMS again? Great. That's right. HIMS and their other product, THEMS, which I'm very excited to see hit the market. And here are the ads for that.

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"'I'm gonna open the door, but only because I'm too tired to yell through it,' Asola said. "'You can't come in.' "'All right,' Brynn agreed. The door swung open. "'I don't know why I expected her to look like a zombie or something. "'I mean, I'd met Gertrude already, and she looked normal enough. "'But I legit assumed Asola was gonna look like a zombie. "'Asola didn't look like a zombie.'

She looked instead like, well, one of us. She wore a slip dress that showed off her full figure, and her hair was tied up in a loose bun, revealing tattoos across her neck, even though she probably wasn't a day over 22. She had a claw hammer in her hand. No, wait, both hands. She had a claw hammer in each hand. It's just that only one of the two was raised. Instant friend crush.

What are you doing here, she asked. You're going to get yourself killed. On a long enough timeline, Brynn agreed. She had her hand hovering near the folding baton on her belt. No, I mean, if anyone sees me talking to you, I don't know what's going to happen. You might wind up dead. That's an argument for letting us inside then, I offered. That's an argument for y'all leaving, she countered. True, I agreed. But we didn't go. Who would kill us? Barrow? I don't know. She thought about it.

"'No, not Barrow. "'What happened to you and everyone up at Glacier?' I asked. "'She put the hammer down and met my gaze, unflinching. "'Somehow, this was even more intimidating "'than when she had the weapon raised. "'We all died. "'Okay, that's all I'm going to say about it. "'Okay.' "'I waited for her to tell me more anyway. "'Look, you're wasting your time talking to me. "'Who should we talk to then?' I asked. "'Gertrude? "'What's she got to do with it?' "'No, no, Gertrude's innocent.'

I don't think she knows anything. A soul aside, then set the hammers down on a table near the door. Look, if I tell you where to look next, I am guessing you'll die. Magic is too fucked up to be safe at all for anyone. Hunting down madmen with access to it, that's worse. You really, really should just skip town and never look back. Forget the name Barrow. Forget the name Pendleton. Forget me. Forget Gertrude.

"'Ain't gonna happen, though,' Brynn said. "'You wanna know what's going on? "'You want a man named Sebastian Miller. "'Gertrude's husband?' "'Ex-husband,' Asola said. "'He runs the gift shop on the east edge of town.' "'With the dinosaurs?' I asked. "'With the dinosaurs. "'Don't confront him. "'Don't let him know you're investigating him. "'Don't let him know you exist. "'Don't tell him I talked to you.' "'Thank you,' I said. "'She started to close the door.'

Wait, I said. I still have so many questions to ask. Yeah, well, I've got about three more seasons of Xena I plan to watch while I pretend like I don't exist. So I'm afraid I'm too busy for questions. I'm sorry, Bryn said as the door was closing. I'm sorry about whatever happened to you. The door hesitated. Thank you. The door closed. We reconvened with Heather out by the street and told her what we'd learned. Hey, that's more than I've gotten out of her, Heather said. And we used to live together.

So, Sebastian Miller, I said. I bet he's at Dawson's right now, the diner or grocery store or whatever. He's there most weekdays, only opens the gift shop on the weekends. Do we go to Dawson's or the gift shop, I asked. Are you kidding, Bryn asked. Asola's pretty clear about that. We'll go to his place now while he's not home. And just break in, Heather asked. Yeah, Bryn said. Heather seemed to think that over for a minute. All right.

We had to bike down side streets to avoid Dawson's, but it still didn't take us longer than maybe 10 minutes. Everyone we passed looked friendly, but riding through town during the day, you could tell that the town was poor. Destitute, maybe. About a third of the houses were abandoned, and most of the rest were poorly maintained. Every road but the main one was full of potholes. They were probably maintaining the main road for the sake of tourists. If one day, the tourists came back...

Or maybe they were maintaining the main road for their own sake, for their own dignity. It was hard to tell. We cut through an alley, the small-town kind that goes between backyards instead of brick buildings, to approach the gift shop from the back. It was easy to pick out the right place. A 20-foot-tall brontosaurus with purple paint chipping off its concrete kept watch over the backyard. "'How will we get in?' Heather asked. "'What are we looking for?' I asked."

Don't know and don't know, Bryn said. We'll know it when we see it, to both questions. The building was a plain cube, two stories tall and peppered with windows. I went to the closest one, popped the screen out, and tried to lift the glass. Locked. I put the screen back in and went to the next one. You get much crime in Pendleton? Bryn asked. No, not really, Heather answered. No cops in town either. Sometimes the county sheriff comes in to handle something. But we're pretty much on our own.

People usually lock their windows, I asked. The next window was locked too. No, Heather said. Asshole has something to hide, Bryn said. I mean, we are trying to break in, I said. Kind of justifies his paranoia. Help me up this Apatosaurus, Bryn said.

It was deceptively hard to get a hold of since the ridge of its back was just out of reach from the ground and the whole belly of the thing was round. I think it's a brontosaurus, I said. I gave her a boost with my good arm, and she straddled the beast like she was riding it. Vulture would have wanted a photo for his Instagram. Hell, I wanted a photo, because Brynn looked awesome as a cross-punk dino-riding cowboy. But, you know, you're not supposed to take pictures of yourself at the scene of any given crime in progress.

I thought brontos weren't real, Bryn said. I thought they were all apatosauruses now. Nope. My youngest niece had been obsessed with dinosaurs last time I'd gone to see her in Illinois. She'd schooled me good when I'd tried to say that brontos weren't real. They count as real dinosaurs again. This, by the way, unrelated is how I feel about Pluto.

Yeah, I feel strongly this way about brontosauruses. Yeah. Because it's one of the dinosaurs that I used to know all of the dinosaurs, Margaret. Yeah. When I was like a little six-year-old kid, I had an 800-page dinosaur encyclopedia, not a kid's book, like very small print. And every dinosaur in that book I knew. I could recognize them from their skulls. Hell yeah. I can name like four dinosaurs today. Yeah.

It's like all the Latin I learned, it's just gone. You know, as a teenager, I was translating the fucking Aeneid into English and I have like four words now. See, I took three years of Latin and I only learned four words the whole time, but that had more to do with the teacher who let us cheat. Right, right, right. Yes, yes. Before he got kicked out of the school for acting inappropriately, but that's besides the point. Ah. We all liked him because he let us cheat.

Yeah, my best teacher also got kicked out of the school for something, a way he broke the law, but not that way. So it's fine.

Yeah, is this like a completely normal thing that if you go to high school at some point... He was just a drug dealer in his free time? Yeah, like... Yeah. We had a teacher who was... The art teacher was stealing kids' paintings and putting his own name on them and selling them. That is... That's actually kind of awesome. And... That's fun. That's a good grift. He was passing... I don't think he knew any art. And he was passing... Like, he would print out from course catalogs from colleges...

their art and put it up on the wall as like his art as an example of what we should do amazing i know and then when he got kicked out everyone like threw well he actually got kicked out for another inappropriate thing he was doing with students right right of course yes that seems obvious yeah anyway uh something about brontosauruses so oh geez okay well i didn't look at the next line uh-huh

Next thing you'll tell me, that Pluto is a planet. Brynn reached down to help me up, but I waved her away. My shoulder was way too still stitched up to climb something like that. Brynn started to climb up the beast's neck towards the building. You think it'll hold, I asked, by which I meant, I don't think it'll hold. But in a second, she had scrambled up to the little brano head and was looking at the wall of the building about five, maybe six feet away. She was gonna jump.

She would have to cross the distance and get a hold of the narrow window ledge, pull herself up, then hope the window was unlocked because there was no other logical way down. Hey, uh, I started. I'd really rather you didn't, Heather shouted. Brynn jumped. Time didn't slow down or anything. Maybe it sped up. One second I was yelling, and the next second, no, the same second, Brynn was clinging to the windowsill, which couldn't have been more than three inches deep.

She pulled herself up and crouched on the sill. Brynn should have been a cat burglar. Actually, for all I knew, she was a cat burglar. She got the window open and disappeared inside. What do we do, Heather asked, unspoken. Do we try to follow her because I don't want to? No, I said, answering her unspoken question instead of her spoken one. I went to the closest window. About ten seconds later, Brynn was on the other side of it and let us in.

And what was inside Robert Evans was the most amazing deals. Just... Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like... Yes. Yeah. I didn't have anything funny to say. Yeah, no. Probably... Roll the ads. Please, get out of here. Here we go. Yeah, gambling. I love gambling. Yeah. Sports gambling. Good idea. Yeah, gambling. You always... What they say... Let people gamble on everything. People who gamble all the time are always doing great. That's what everyone says. Uh-huh. Yeah.

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But on the upside, you continued your addiction to dopamine. That's true. Which is constantly spiking every like six seconds as a result of all of the different compulsion devices that have been forced into your life. That's a good point. So with the story, I wonder what was going through the head of the person who decided that the world needed hundreds of shot glasses with the words Pendleton, Montana emblazoned on the side because I didn't share that particular opinion.

But what do I know? Maybe they'd moved thousands of them already. I pocketed one, then spent a full minute having an ethical argument with myself. I don't have any particular issue justifying theft of necessities or from big box stores. But a shot glass wasn't food, and this wasn't exactly a Walmart. The store looked like any roadside bullshit gift store anywhere. On the other hand, the guy who owned the place was probably a bad man. Isn't that why we'd broken into his place?

That was terrible logic. That was state logic. A man wasn't guilty just because he was being investigated. I put the shot glass back. I am pretty sure 18-year-old me would have laughed at 28-year-old me. But 18-year-old me was kind of an asshole, so I didn't really hold myself responsible to her. I also didn't need a shot glass. There wasn't much we could imagine him hiding inside the store itself, so after the briefest of searches, we went up the stairs to his apartment.

Heather took watch by the front window, since she knew what the guy looked like and the truck he drove. Bryn and I combed through the apartment, careful to set everything back into its right place. Since we weren't wearing gloves, we absolutely should have been wearing gloves, we wanted to make sure he never even suspected we were there. It was frustrating, anxious work. One slip-up could land us in prison. Even the natural joy of snooping was diminished by how careful we had to be.

There were two photos framed on the wall, one of Gertrude and a man who must be Sebastian holding hands on a mountaintop with a valley and a river in the distance below. He was an unremarkable old white man, hard to distinguish from any other. The other photo was of a younger couple in the same place, probably the two of them 30 years earlier. Younger, he looked happy and handsome. The difference between the two made me sad. Happy old couples give me a sort of hope.

But judging by these photos, the happiness had been gone for decades. There were glaciers in the background of the older photo, but they had melted by the time the newer one had been taken. More sadness. Why should the march of time be inherently melancholic? It didn't seem fair. I opened the frames carefully. No hidden notes, not even a date written on the corner to sate my curiosity. I hadn't done snooping like this more than a handful of times.

The first time, a couple of us had robbed some rich asshole's house and sold his stuff for food. I was young, reckless, and I'd never been to jail, so it was just kind of fun. The second time, the whole affair had been deadly serious. My friend's mother had been trapped in an abusive relationship, so he'd broken into the man's summer home for blackmail to hold over his head so that she could leave him in comparative safety. That time, the stakes were too epic for it to be thrilling. But righteousness imparts a kind of high of its own.

Both of those men had had entertaining secrets like embarrassingly crass porn collections or a false bottom drawer with cheesy ninja weapons hidden inside. Sebastian Miller had an easy chair, a bed, a bookshelf full of mediocre but not embarrassing books, and a fuck-off big TV, a mounted deer, nothing impressive, and a run-of-the-mill hunting rifle hung on the wall. My pack stayed empty.

They're a basement, I asked at last after I checked every damn horror book on his shelf for a hidden compartment. Maybe through the office downstairs, Heather said. Okay, office, basement, and then I give up. We'll find something, Heather said. What's he like, I asked. He weird or anything? I never thought twice about him until Gertrude came back, Heather said. He drives a 1950s truck. That's about the most interesting thing about him.

He used to come by the library sometimes, check out thrillers for himself, romance for Gertrude. Called her Gertie. He was the only one in town who called her that. I don't think she liked it. The office door behind the checkout counter of the gift shop was locked with a deadbolt. I got out my tools. I keep a tension wrench and a basic rake in a hidden pouch on the waist belt of my pack, usually to break into dumpsters for food, and set to work. Who the hell are you people? Heather asked.

climbing into second-story windows, busting out lockpicks like it's nothing. Brynn laughed in that out-of-character giggle of hers. We told you. We're demon hunters. We should get a crew name, I said. The Ulyssians, Brynn said without hesitating.

We can't name ourselves after a demon we banished, I said. No, no, think about it, Bryn said. Ulysses wasn't bad because of what he did, stopping those who wield power over others. He was bad because he was a single manifestation of that ideal. We could do the same work, but as people, not omnipotent. It doesn't really roll off the tongue, Heather said. Fine, Bryn said. Fine. The tension wrench gave way in my hand. The lock turned over and I opened the door.

"'Just an office. Well, an office straight out of the 80s or 90s or whatever. Big, ugly monitor on a big, ugly desk, and the carpet was about twice as thick as could be reasonably justified. There were two other doors on the far wall. "'One of you a hacker, too?' Heather asked. I shrugged. "'Sure,' Bryn said. "'Vulture is.' We went through the drawers, found nothing but business receipts and junk mail. "'To be honest, I don't think we'll find anything on the computer either,' I said. "'I think this whole thing is a bust.'

I opened one of the two doors, a closet with cleaning supplies and office supplies. I opened the other door. Now here was something interesting. The door led to a short hallway, about 10 feet long, with another door at the other end. Above the door, someone had crudely carved in Greek letters, Tipota Zantana Den Parasai. Bryn and I stared blankly. Uh, Heather said, squinting. Tipota Zantana Den Parasai.

"'What does that mean?' I asked. "'No clue. I can't really speak Greek. I just learned how to sound it out a couple of years ago. "'Bacillus is Greek. I think I was trying to impress him.' "'How long have you and him?' Bryn started to ask. "'I don't know if she trailed off because she was shy to ask with me around, or she realized it wasn't the time and place. "'Five years,' Heather said. "'It's good. Mostly.' "'She opened the door. A set of plain wooden steps led down into darkness.'

I sometimes wish, I don't know, Heather said. I wish things were easier between us, more relaxed. He's not controlling, but somehow I just, I wish I felt more free. She took a step through the doorway. This time, my perception of time slowed down. I saw her hand move and green light rippled out across something. Like someone had strung an invisible window screen across the doorway. Her whole arm pierced that veil and she screamed.

She didn't have time to stop. Momentum carried her forward. Every bit of her on the far side of the doorway glowed with green fire. I grabbed for her. The fingers of my hand, my goat-bitten hand, went right through the doorway and it tingled. My wrist, though, passed through and it hurt like fire. Well, most of the times I've gotten burned, fire only hurt later once the nerve endings started growing back or whatever. This time, it hurt immediately, like how fire hurts later.

I got a hold of her jacket and yanked back. She fell on top of me. She stopped screaming. If she was breathing, it was too faint to hear. Dun, dun, dun. That's the end of chapter three. Hell yeah. Well, what an episode. It's a book. All right. See you all next week. See you all next week for more chapter.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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