Underworld Callers

"Hey, che diavolo! Turn off the overheads, Rory." Angelo said, rubbing his already bloodshot eyes. Rory noted that the oldest Boticello brother's Sicilian accent was getting thicker, and that meant bad times awaited. Angelo continued, "We gotta do this thing in candlelight or is no gonna work."

Standing tall behind Villa Palermo’s oak bar counter, big Rory Sears sighed and flipped the switch by the daily specials chalkboard. The dining room went dark, save for some light spilling in from Huntington’s Main Street, which glowed soft and pink through the restaurant’s dirty front window.

Angelo struck a match and began to light the red glass candles on the two-tops, which were positioned at the five points of the pentagram he’d drawn on the ground. His younger brother, Maximillian Boticello, sat on a booth tabletop in the corner of the dining room, his short legs dangling off the edge as he combed his hair

"Hey, you know those ain't real candles, Angie," Max said. "They's the refillable kind, I think. Whatcha call 'em?"

"Sterno," Rory answered in his low, flat voice.

Max nodded. "Yeah, that."

"Don’t matter," Angelo said, dipping the match into a red globe. "Bright overhead lights are no good, a capisce?" He blew out the match and lit another.

"I just don't wanna piss off whatever we got coming, alright?" Max said, running his comb through his hair once more before returning the cheap piece of plastic to his inside coat pocket. The ancient book, its leather binding cracked and dusty, laid on the tabletop beside him.

Rory poured himself a shot of warm grappa. Being associated with the Boticello family used to hold clout in Long Island circles, but the past year had been one bad beat after another. He had been at their side through it all, especially during the kicker of it all - Carlo "Knuckles" Boticello's grand larceny trial. Rory had done his best to help keep the head of the family out of the slammer, had even attempted to bribe two jurors who later went mysteriously missing (though they were replaced by assholes of equal morality). However, nothing seemed to stick, meaning that everything did. All done, Knuckles ended up with a 25-year sentence at Fishkill Correctional, leaving a power vacuum wide open for certain interested parties around the neighborhood.

However, Rory felt that the Angelo and Max’s new tactic was faced entirely in the wrong direction, somewhere south of desperation.

Angelo finished lighting the points around the pentagram. Rory shook his head for the hundredth time that day and slammed the grappa into his mouth. If the liquor was supposed to have a numbing effect, Rory didn’t feel it.

Angelo surveyed the space around the pentagram, craning his neck around the room to make sure no detail was botched. According to the old book, the lights had to allow shadows and the room had to be mostly quiet, which is why they were starting after midnight. Most importantly, the ancient text specified that the circle outlining the star of the pentagram must be unbroken. However, the piece of chalk he'd used to draw it on the floor was just a nub, left over from when Villa Palermo’s was still open for business and had daily specials to advertise.

"Hey, Maxie," Angelo said, squinting to see if he’d missed a section. "Get down. Wanna you make sure this outside line is no smudged and it’s got to be no gaps."

Max hopped down from the corner booth, grabbing the ancient book. When he got to the circle on the ground, he gingerly stepped over the outside line. The balletic maneuver caused Rory to roll his eyes. Max carefully laid the book down on the makeshift, three-sided altar at the center of the pentagram and inspected Angelo’s chalk lines.

"Okay, now Rory," Angelo said. "Need you to bring over some of that salt. And quit being such a stronzo, tu mi capisci?"

Rory understood the message, if not the exact translation. He grabbed the large cylindrical container with the umbrella girl logo and suppressed the urge to mock Max’s awkward grace as he walked inside the pentagram. Rory handed Angelo the salt.

"Lines look good, Angie," Max said. "Just like the book said. You want I should find the words now?"

"Yeah, do that." Angelo sprinkled some salt into his hands and tossed it on the floor inside and out the chalky circle of the pentagram.

The binding of the ancient book creaked as Max opened it to the section he and Angelo had bookmarked the previous week. They had grown up with the old tome, a winking gift by way of a great aunt from the old country, but never had it been more than a curious joke until the past year. Now it was the Boticello's secret weapon, maybe the only weapon left in their arsenal. Max carefully ran his finger down a partially-rotted page until he found the passage in question.

"Yeah, this is it. You ready?"

Angelo nodded. Max turned to Rory who signaled with a slight nod. They each took their place standing around the altar.

"Do we gotta hold hands or something?" Rory asked.

"Nah, nah. We only gotta stay inside the circle," Angelo said. He lifted his shoulders a couple of times and rolled his head in a circular motion, like a boxer who had just stepped into the ring. Closing his eyes and nodding feverishly, he said, "Okay. Hit it, Maxie."

Max removed a toothpick from the corner of his mouth and cleared his throat. The evening street noise had subsided for the night and every creak on the floor beneath them was audible in the echo of the dining room. Phonetically, Max began to read aloud the strange, foreign words from the ancient text.

"Flavus ama ferox...tracto aevum gusto..."

Max continued as Angelo impatiently bounced on the front balls of his feet, though his eyes were still closed tight. Rory saw that the dark circles had returned to their familiar home on his face. He couldn't say for sure that Angelo had started using again just yet, but he made a note to sweep the older Boticello's coat pockets later for dope. Angelo’s head tilted forward a bit as Max carried on, syllable by syllable.

"...suavis terni orior..."

Rory's thoughts wandered to the first time he had met the brothers, years earlier at a beach party in Montauk. They seemed like royalty to him then, holding court in a lush cabana, surrounded by beautiful women - not girls from the neighborhood, but real women. To Rory, the Boticellos lent the entire evening a feeling of importance, just by simply being present. Their confidence then, along with their solid leadership later, carried Rory through nearly a decade of loyal service.

However, those young princes were gone, replaced by two desperate primates that stood before Rory now. Of all the lines they had asked him to cross over the years, he never imagined the unsteady, chalky lines that outlined the pentagram at his feet. He looked at the rickety altar between himself and the brothers and imagined the discarded wooden crates from the alley behind the restaurant that they must have scavenged to build it. How could a royal family stoop so low so fast?

"...precor osculum linea tracto..."

Rory saw Angelo open one bloodshot eye to peer into the restaurant's shadowy dining room. His eyebrows furrowed in disappointment, as though he had expected the ceiling to be ripped off, or perhaps the floor to open up beneath them. Getting more agitated, Angelo opened both eyes and looked to his brother as Max finished reading the final words of the incantation.

"...ab perca gravis."

Max tensed as he stumbled to the end of the spell, like a marathon runner reaching an uncertain finish line. He tensed his shoulders, as though bracing for a cataclysmic event. But nothing changed and nothing arrived. After a moment, he relaxed and looked around. He popped the toothpick back into the corner of his mouth.

"Ah, well." he said, shrugging. "We had to give it a shot, ya know?"

"Yeah," Rory said. "Yeah, sure."

Angelo spun as he surveyed the room around them. He got on his hands and knees to inspect the pentagram's lines beneath them.

"No, no, no!" His voice cracked into a higher octave. "This ain't gonna do! We gotta get this right, guys." He stood up and Rory could see Angelo's eyes begging for a second attempt, perhaps a third and a fourth after that. But Max just yawned.

"I dunno, Angie," he said. "Maybe we've been looking at this thing from the wrong side of it, ya know? Maybe we need to reach out to the old country or something." Max took out his comb and ran it through his hair. He shrugged again and stepped away from the altar. "I could use a drink," he said and began walking toward the bar.

"Hey, Maxie," Rory said. "Hold on a second."

"Huh?" Max said, surprised to hear Rory call him Maxie. He was about to correct the misplaced familiarity as his foot crossed over the edge of the pentagram's outer circle. But before any of them could register the moment, Max was ripped from Villa Palermo’s, New York, and the dimension he had called home for thirty six years.

"Holy hell!" Rory screamed as he lost his footing and knocked over the altar. He quickly steadied himself and, in his mind, the boundaries of the pentagram became as concrete as prison walls.

"Maxie?" Angelo said. He walked to the edge of the circle where Max had last been Max. "Where'd you go, paisano?"

"Careful," Rory warned, his stomach fighting a violent wave of nausea "It got him. It got Max."

"Whatta you mean 'it'?" Angelo's eyes narrowed.

"Something took Max. We gotta stay in the circle now."

Angelo digested this information slowly. He walked along the borders of their symbolic cage. Finally, the corners of his mouth bent upwards into a nasty grin. He looked up to the restaurant's ceiling.

"You think you got Maxie, eh pally?" he asked the thing in the restaurant. "Well, listen up! You can give him back now, or give him back later, eh? But we got some things to discuss, you and me."

The world outside the circle did not respond.

"I said, capisce?" Angelo spun around to face all sides of the threat, letting it know that he wasn’t used to backing down. Rory, as frightened as he was, was almost inspired by Angelo’s defiant attitude. He’d seen a thousand tiny retreats over the past year, including the closure of the very building in which they were standing. It was almost nice to see the Boticello fire burning again. Almost.

Despite the token return of his general, Rory lowered himself onto the ground, fearful that Angelo might try to shove him outside the circle, Sumo-style, to prove some kind of point to their demon visitor. As Angelo shouted, the room outside the pentagram began to look less like itself and more like a suggestion of an Italian restaurant, and Rory shifted as close to the center of the circle as he could.

"First, we gotta get some rules going. I ain't gonna live inside this, what you call it, this thing on the floor, so first thing is that you no gonna grab me if I walk outside it."

Rory saw that Villa Palermo’s had completely faded away, and that they were surrounded by pitch black emptiness now. The cylinder of salt rolled back and forth on the ground, as if they were adrift on a dark ocean. As if to underline the sensation, Rory saw that the little umbrella girl on the logo had disposed of her umbrella and was now aiming a jagged harpoon at a severed foot. She smiled at Rory with shark’s teeth. He looked to Angelo, who seemed to not notice any of this as he ticked off more demands.

"Now, we get down to business. The Boticellos run Huntington, we run the northside of the island. Che diavolo? We run the whole damn thing from now on. Capos grande, that be us!" Angelo was now pacing, though he seemed very aware of his path. "Them other families are gonna stop harassing me and Maxie. And they gonna pay for not keeping papa out the joint – that’s the place from where you gonna bust him out."

Rory watched as Angelo continued to threaten the thing they had summoned, his accent becoming even thicker as his voice went shrill. Rory figured that Angelo might have lost his mind, but he couldn’t be sure that he hadn't gone off the deep end himself.

If I am, he thought, at least I'm aware of it.

In this clarity, Rory stood up, grabbing the altar as he steadied his feet.

"Hey, Angie," he said. Angelo turned to face him. Rory shook his head. "This was a terrible plan."

He threw the wooden structure hard at Angelo, completed the move with a hard, clumsy kick to the chest, which caused Angelo to crash through the invisible wall of the circle.

In the inky ether around the pentagram's boarders, Rory saw Angelo land on what appeared to be solid ground. He tried to crawl back in, but his body blurred and distorted when he pressed himself against the invisible edge. He began to scream.

Behind Angelo, Max emerged from the dark. The skin on his face sagged unevenly around his eyes, which were now a putrid cream color. The old toothpick was back in his mouth, but his teeth were much sharper. Angelo turned to see his new baby brother. After that, his screams turned into short shrieking bursts.

Rory closed his eyes and covered his ears as he again lowered himself onto the safety of the pentagram. He kept his eyes closed for a very long time, even after a dull white noise had replaced Angelo’s screaming inside his skull.

He opened them much later, after he realized that he might miss an opportunity for escape if he kept them shut any longer.

When Rory did open his eyes, the restaurant was back. Everything seemed normal, albeit wrecked from weeks of disuse and the Boticellos last ditch attempt to reach out for help. The altar Rory had thrown at Angelo had knocked over one of the two-tops, but was very much still there. He even saw Max's plastic comb on the floor by the bar. He knew Angelo and Max were gone for good though, changed forever by the thing they’d called.

Rory stood up, walked to the edge of the circle, and stopped. Sunshine pressed firm against the dirt on Villa Palermo’s front window. It was daytime on Main Street, though the caked filth on the outside glass obscured all but shadows of street lamps and a pair of city-planned sidewalk trees.

That can’t be right, Rory thought. Max read those words from the book maybe five or six minutes ago, and…

"Where's the book?" Rory asked the empty restaurant.

And then something else occurred to him, there in the silence of the morning.

Rory remembered the first time he every walked inside Villa Palermo’s. It was ten in the morning and Carlo "Knuckles" Boticello was sitting in the corner booth. Angelo and Max were behind the bar arguing about the restaurant's location. Max said it was great for foot traffic, but Angelo countered that there was never any peace from dawn till dusk on Main Street, that if it wasn't the big trucks roaring by, it was all the assholes shouting at each other. And Angelo was right. Both brothers had to yell at each other to fight the street noise.

So, why is it that don't I hear one person, one car, some trace of anything on Main Street now?

"You won’t hear until after you see," a dissonant group of voices said behind Rory, easing their way into the circle.