So in my last year of high school, I worked at the local Books-A-Million in Touristville, Tennessee. Although I was ostensibly hired as a stock guy, that was an abject lie, and they really just needed a gullible teenager to take all the least desirable closing shifts, particularly on weekends. Cue missing most of all the good parties senior year!
The other side of this meant that many nights, from 10-midnight+, it was often just me, a manager, and maaaaaybe one other employee in this entire enormous, book warehouse-esque store. The cafe was shut down, taking the 2-Cool-4-School high school layabouts with it, the families had mostly managed to disentangle their kids from the toy trains, and you were basically just left with the night owls and the genre fiction weirdos and the perverts nervously pacing back and forth in front of the black-masked porno mags. But I mean, bookstore, how weird can you get?
Anyway, on the cold (and probably foggy yet also somehow thundery) winter evening in question, Iâd spent some time COMPing (Clean Organize Maintain and something else I forget, but fuck corporate culture for lodging that term in my brain) the rear sections of the store, including the combined New Age Woo-Woo Bullshit/Self Help aisle, where I kept seeing the same unkempt, sweaty dude, mid-40s pacing back and forth, murmuring to himself. Whatevs, we got homeless people from time to time. He didnât seem to be hurting anybody, and I went on with my shift, hitting up other parts of the store.
So now weâre nearing store close, and the place is, as usual for a Saturday night, a ghost town. Iâm doing the final announcements on the PA while the managerâs in back doing financial stuff and the other employee on the floor is vacuuming at the rear near magazines. And here comes weird sweaty dude.
Heâs got wild, frizzled hair, a few daysâ growth of whiskers, and is wearing stained sweats and sneakers over a medium frame. Heâs got a double-armful of books clutched against his chest, and his wild eyes meet mine as he dumps them all on the counter, then they go down to the books. Itâs a pile of just about every book on witchcraft, spells, magic, Wicca, paganism, etc. that we fuckinâ sold.
âI ainât into none of that, you know.â I didnât know. âIâm a good Christian man, yâsee. Lord is my savior and protector.â His voice is husky and low, almost conspiratorial.
âSure thing. Uh, do you have a discount card with us?â
âNah, I never come here. But I had ta, ya see. Cuz of the witches.â
Well that broke through the âclose-the-store-and-get-the-fuck-to-sleepâ haze. He seemed to sense my curiosity, or maybe he just wanted to kill time while I scanned 15 odd books one by one.
âYâsee, Iâm beinâ hunted by a whole mess of witches. A coven, theyâre called. Theyâre cominâ after me, out at my house now. Musta done somethinâ to set 'em off, I dunno.â He stabs randomly at one of the books, providing inscrutable illumination to his larger point.
âAt first I was seeinâ em around, ya know. When I was out places, always seeinâ these witches, just lookinâ at me, all hateful and furious in their faces. It was awful. But the Lord, he looks out for his sheep, ya know?â
âYeah, totally.â I hadnât even officially left the Catholic Church yet at this point. Maybe this dudeâs onto something here about Jesus.
âStill, I didnât know for sure they was after me till one of them witches comes to my house in the night this week. I hear a knock, middle of the night, and I go up to the door and look, and thereâs this woman, all in black standinâ there, just like them other witches Iâd been seeinâ.â
By this point, the totalâs just hanging on the register, a forgotten relic of my life before this conversation began. Job? I had a job? No, that canât be. My only purpose in life was to hear more of this insane manâs tale before he was whisked away by vengeful witches.
âAnd she stabs a finger into my chest, and she says, âWe been tryinâ to curse your mind to bring you down, but we canât do it. All our spells are failinâ. In the Coven, we call you Stonewall, cuz your mindâs like a stone wall. But we ainât givinâ up. Watch yourself, Stonewall.â And then just like that, she was gone. Scared the ever-lovinâ hell outta men.â
Well fuck and shit, man, thatâs intense as hell. I shook myself out of it; brought msyelf back to reality. 11:04PM. The managerâs gonna wonder why I havenât brought back my money drawer if this keeps up.
âAnyway, thatâs why I gotta get all these here books on wiccas and stuff. Gotta learn their spells to protect myself. Them witches ainât gonna get me.â
I canât do much more than mutely nod at this point. Stonewall hands me a fistful of clammy bills, takes his change and his rustling bundle of bulging bags, and makes his way out, right back to muttering to himself. I close out my drawer and resist the urge to look out the big front windows to see if broom-mounted hexers cloud the moonless skies.
Closing shifts are weird as fuck, man.
