The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

we were in the eighth grade, Parker smuggled in a Ouija board. I didn’t believe in that shit—I don’t think any of us did—but to ruffle the priests’ gowns, you know.”

“Rebellion,” I said.

“What can I say, we were little adrenaline junkies. You can only get caught smoking behind the chapel so many times before it’s time to up the stakes.”

I nodded as James took another swallow. He was beginning to loosen up.

“So, not really knowing what we were doing, we set up the board one night, lit some candles, put our fingers on that little plastic thingie.”

“The planchette,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever. At first we were just bullshitting. Will Mikey ever get laid?—crap like that. Then this feeling came over me, like I was being electrocuted. I went stiff, couldn’t breathe. And then something talked through my mouth. ‘Who’s going to die next?’ it asked. I remember the other guys laughing and tug-of-warring with the plastic thing, trying to spell out each other’s names. But I couldn’t move. I was suffocating. Felt like I was dying. All of a sudden, a force erupted through my fingers, and in three jerks, it spelled out a name: ‘B-E-N.’ And then I could breathe again. My buddies never noticed anything wrong. They were repeating the name to one another. Ben was this homely kid who lived down the hall. ‘Bedwetting Ben’ we called him, because, you know, he had that problem. The guys joked about him drowning in his own piss, but I was bothered, man. Had awful dreams that night, about leather belts and death. Next morning, the staff rousted us out of bed. We’re going to an assembly, they said. As we filed out of the dormitory, I could see an ambulance and a pair of police cars. Didn’t learn till that night they’d found Ben in the janitor’s closet. He’d cinched a belt around his neck and hung himself from the pipes.”

A chill went through me. “What happened to you sounds like demonic possession.”

“Ya think?” James took another sip from his bottle. “The demon hung around for a while. Didn’t take the Ouija board to call it up, either. For the next year, the feelings would just come out of the blue. I’d say something and it would happen. Always bad shit, though. Another suicide later that year. A fire in the administration wing.”

“So you developed precognition?”

“That’s what I thought. But then I started remembering the dreams more clearly. The one with the fire, for example. Word got around that whoever the arsonist was had set it with hymn books. When I heard that, I suddenly remembered dreaming that I’d stolen some hymn books from the chapel and was setting them around the inside of an office. Putting them under curtains and around wooden bookshelves—the things that would catch quickest. The dream was the same night of the fire. Freaked me out so bad, I told one of the teachers about being possessed. Thought I could trust him, but he got me to tell him about the dream, and from there, he and the administrators wheedled a confession out of me for the fire. Even though I still couldn’t say for sure whether I’d actually set it.”

“No exorcism?” I asked.

“Naw, they didn’t believe in the possession part. Guess that’s what I got for being a delinquent. They called the police, and I was taken out in cuffs. Tried and convicted in juvie and sent to a pen upstate.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah, thank God I didn’t say anything about the suicides, ’cause I had dreams about them too.” He sent down another swallow of beer. “Anyway, there was this gang in juvie, group of guys who trashed the new kid as a matter of course. I was there about a week when my turn came. We were out in the yard, and they bum-rushed me. Knocked me down, started stomping me. Then that cold feeling came over me, and I shouted a foreign word I’d never heard before.”

“A Word of Power,” I said.

“Felt like a stack of TNT had gone off inside me. Next thing I knew, the guys were scattered over the yard. Faces bloodied, bones broken, a couple of them throwing up. I didn’t know what the hell had happened, but the story got around. Guys steered clear of me after that.”

I thought about how my first experience had happened around the same age. I’d been thirteen when I entered Grandpa’s study by repeating a Word I’d heard him utter. He’d suppressed my magic, though, and it wasn’t until I called up Thelonious a decade later that the magic returned with a bang. James’s latent magic must have been sparked by whatever took him over.

“About a month later, I was told I was being released into someone’s care,” he went on. “An older woman showed up, red hair, long white coat. Elsie was her name. She drove me to a Victorian house up in the Catskills. I just figured she was some strange broad who couldn’t have kids of her own. I was looking forward to running roughshod over her, but that first night, she scared me straight. Hit me with a paralyzing bolt, then told me I was a magic born. She’d been sent to teach me how to use my gift. If I didn’t do what she said, she would deplete my magic and send me back into the system. That’s when I learned about the Order.”

“How long did you stay with Elsie?”

“Till I was eighteen. So, five years.”

“You got five years of training?” I’d only received a few months under Lazlo before returning to New York and being put under Chicory’s mentorship—which hadn’t amounted to much.

“Yeah, she taught me mental prisms, Words of Power, how to shape energy.”

“What do you use as a conduit?” I asked out of curiosity.

James reached into his jacket and pulled out a metal wand. He twirled it over his first finger and thumb like a drummer before sticking it back in his pocket.