Every first day in a new school, Casey kept his head down, his mouth shut, and tried to blend into the background like a ghost in a graveyard. It never worked. There was no cafeteria at this school, so the five bucks Mom had given him for lunch was useless. Casey’s stomach chewed on itself and the last remains of the toast he’d had that morning. At 3:15, he was the last one out of the classroom. He saw the bus revving up and heading out.

He ran, waved his arms, and yelled, but all he got for his troubles were a bunch of sadistic laughs and grins from the packed faces at the bus’s back window. Now he was lost.

“Kingston sucks!” he screamed.

“Hello.”

He almost jumped out of his skin. Behind him was tiny Alison, the braniac whose smile seemed glued on regardless of how much the class hated her getting all the answers right.

“Damn, you’re sneaky.”

She was still smiling. It was an uncomfortable sight. Maybe she is retarded, he thought.

“You missed the bus, too, eh?” he said.

“I walk home.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Not really. Cool kids take the bus. Do you walk home?”

“I guess I have to.”

“Cool.”

He laughed, but he couldn’t tell if she said it as a joke.

“So,” Casey said, “where do you live?”

“Seven eighty three Johnson Street.”

That’s my street. She lived a few blocks away from him. Before he could find anything to break the silence she marched down the sidewalk, saying “Goodbye.”

And she knew the way home.

“Hey, hold up!”

They walked and talked. “It’s more fun if you think of the way home as a maze,” Alison said. “Your home is at the centre. Mazes always have something interesting in the centre.”

With Alison, going home was a maze. They cut through church parking lots, crossed a bramble-infested field by the highway, and they must have passed one 7-11 at least three times, each from a different direction. For Casey, new to the city, it seemed normal.

She spoke at Mach-three speed about everything: the stores he should go to for cheap cola; the park he should avoid where boys went to kiss other boys; how the marina with the best view of the St. Lawrence was near Kingston Penitentiary, or, as she called it, “KP.” Casey listened and said “wow” whenever she took a breath before starting up again.

As the sun tipped to the west they made it to the familiar one-way drag of Johnson Street.

“You live up there, near the crossing lights,” she said and stopped in her tracks while Casey wondered what this strange kid didn’t know about the neighborhood. “I live here.” They were in front of what Casey thought was an abandoned shack attached to a paint-stripped garage, complete with a thrashed car in its maw. The whole contraption looked like it would crumble if you burped.

“Oh. It’s nice.”

“No, your house is nice. This is functional.”

That was strange, but Casey no longer thought she was retarded. Just weird. “Are your parents home?”

“Dad’s asleep. He works nights.”

“Doing what?”

“Odds and sods.”

“What about your Mom?”

“She lives in the cemetery. He put her there.”

Casey’s guts went watery. “Oh crap, I’m sorry.”

“Not the bad way.” She was quiet. “He pulled the plug. She was in a coma.”

“Wow. How long?”

“From the day I was born until I was one.”

The wind blew an apple blossom breeze and Casey gulped it, looking for a way to break this conversation of dead parents, comas and “functional” houses.

“Well, thanks for helping me get here.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and felt the crumpled five-dollar bill. “Crap, I forgot about this.” He pulled it out, kicking himself for not grabbing a Snickers at the 7-11. Then he looked at Alison standing in front of her dumpy home. She probably ate less than he did. “Here, thanks for showing me your ‘maze’ route home. I know you didn’t have to.”

She raised her hands. “I didn’t earn that. I just walked home and you followed me.”

“Ok,” he said, but felt bad. “Say, I might have a job for you. What are you doing tomorrow?”

*

Mom apologized for leaving him to clean the basement on a Saturday all by himself. “They’re having a meet and greet for us wives at the Command College. I’ll be back by five.”

She was never back by five. “When’s Dad back from training?”

“A week.” She always said a week.

Casey wiped off her tattoo kiss and kept his plan to himself. If Mom knew he’d made a friend that was a girl, she’d embarrass him to hell and back.

Fifteen minutes after she’d left, there was a knock. Alison wore the same jeans and t-shirt she’d had on the day before, but now sported a bruise on her left cheek the size of a crabapple and the colour of overripe banana skin.

“What happened?”

“Dad hit me because I was late.”

Casey fidgeted. “Uh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “And he’s at work now.”

“Sure. Oh, here.” He handed her the five-dollar bill, feeling like a tool. “That’s for helping clean the basement, in advance, so it’s okay to take it.”

She took the five and folded it neatly before placing it in her dirty sock.

“Why did you put it there?”

“No one looks for it in my sock, so I don’t get robbed anymore.”

“You’ve been robbed?”

She shrugged. “Not since it’s been in my sock.” She smiled, and Casey thought of that classroom of jerks. Alison was easy pickings. He wondered if her “maze” route home was more for survival than strangeness. He thought of her dog-patch home, and the man who slept in it and hit her hard enough to bruise. “Courage is what separates us from the animals,” Dad had said. “Feel the fear, let it sharpen your senses, but then tell it to go to hell. Don’t let it rule you.”

“C’mon,” he said, “let’s see what the old owners left us.”

All hope of hidden coin collections, treasure maps or rare paintings was dashed when the sixty-watt bulb flicked on. Paint cans and pieces of lumber littered the basement floor, and everything was dusted with wood shavings. Every so often they’d stumble on a stray hammer or other tool that seemed to have been dropped and abandoned in random fashion.

“Lazy bums,” Casey said. “Every time I move, I spend my first weekend chucking out someone else’s junk.” The windows were jammed, making the dust swirl around the room with nowhere to go but Casey’s eyes. He held them shut until the itching passed.

“Mr. Hessle lived here,” Alison said, piling up stray blocks of wood. “He went into the hospital before you moved in.”

“Why?”

“A bad heart. Had an attack while he was out on his lawn. He’s been in the cemetery a year.”

In the corner of the room was a stack of stinky cardboard boxes. Casey pulled them off, revealing a large mound made from an old blanket. “Big house for one guy.”

“His family moved away three years ago. He lived here alone. I used to play chess with him at the park.”

He grabbed a handful of the blanket. It was thick and itchy–wool. “Jesus, you play chess?” Many geniuses were weirdoes, he knew.

“Only with him.”

“Why?” He yanked the blanket off, revealing the human form beneath its skin.

“Because no one else would play with me.”

He was too scared to scream. He stared at the thin, unblinking eyes in front of him. It looked just like…

He ran up the stairs with Alison in tow, slammed the basement door, and threw his back against it.

“Did, did you see him?” he whispered.

She shook her head, calm and collected. “Who?”

“It looked like –”

“Who?

“Fu Manchu.”

“Who is that?”

“He’s a Chinese magician with evil powers.” Now it sounded stupid. But there was someone down there, with the big moustache and that strange hat, just like on the cover of Grandpa’s old magazines (now resting in peace with Casey’s comic collection in Winnipeg). “Look, someone’s down there, okay?”

No sound came from the basement.

“I want to see him,” she said at regular volume.

“Are you nuts?” Casey was struggling for breath, about to piss himself silly, and she was as cool as a snowcone. His father’s words poked his brain. “Courage separates us from the animals, Case. ”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “Okay, but we go down together. Deal?” He extended his hand.

She shook it hard. “Deal.”

They got to the bottom of the stairs. Before he could grab her, Alison ran to the form.

“Casey, look!”

He stopped beside her. There was a form all right. But it made no sudden movements. It made no movements at all.

The Asian figure, complete with white puffy hat, had a smooth, wooden complexion and contemplative features. Rumpled clothes of faded blue and green, all ripped and frayed, hung like rags over its thin frame, exposing the old wooden skeleton beneath. In its right hand was a pipe the length of a man’s arm and as thin as a reed. The left hand hovered above the surface of the giant desk that the Asian was attached to.

“What the hell is it,” Casey said.

“Looks like a mannequin. Maybe Mr. Hessle made him.”

“That explains the sawdust. But he looks ancient.”

“But the desk smells new.” It did, all fresh cut wood and varnish and something he couldn’t place. The Asian sculpture may have been an antique, but he sat at a newly finished desk. “Oh wow!” Alison said.

On the new desk was a new chessboard. On top of it were ornate but old chess pieces of black and white marble. Remarkably, they had not been knocked down. Casey didn’t know chess from nuclear physics, but it looked like there was a game in progress on the board. In a split second he grabbed Alison’s hand.

“Don’t touch it.”

“But I can beat him.”

“He’s not real. He can’t play.”

“So let me finish the game.”

He felt stupid enough for thinking Dr. Fu-Manchu lived in his basement. “Fine.”

After looking at the board and her frozen opponent, Alison made her move.

“Checkmate,” she said.

“There,” Casey said, “now let’s finish cleaning up this junk.”

Alison came over, uninvited, the same time on Sunday, to find Casey on his bed, reading a book, looking pale and tired. Waiting up for his mom the night before, he had forgotten to lock the door.

“Hello,” she said, out of breath.

“Hey,” he said, gravely.

“I knocked, but no one came.”

“I didn’t hear you.” He didn’t mention that he was alone, that his Mom was still at her “meet and greet luncheon,” forcing him to make the only dinner he knew: toasted hamburger buns with ketchup, a la Casey.

“What are you reading.”

“Mr. Hessle’s diary. It was in my parents’ room. It talks about that thing in the basement” That night, Casey had looked for spare change in their closet, thinking such a trespass would surely bring his parents home to catch him, when he’d pulled the book down from the top shelf. “And I think we’re in trouble.”

Alison sat on the bed as he told her what he discovered. That the Asian was a two-hundred-year-old machine called “The Turkish Chess Player.” That it had beaten everyone it had ever played, even Napoleon. That some thought it was a real Turkish chess genius that the “inventor”, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had imprisoned in wood with magic. That Edgar Allen Poe had seen it in action and called it a hoax. And that Mr. Hessle was von Kempelen’s last descendent.

“It’s an O-Tom-O-Ton, a wooden robot. It plays chess by some secret combo of levers and pulleys. It could be taken apart like a car, and that’s how most of it got trashed. The desk pieces got burned in a fire in 1834, and the other parts of the Turk were lost all over the place. But the diary says some student went hunting for all the leftover pieces for a school project years ago. When he got them all he sent them to Hessle as a gift. He put it back together.”

“And Mr. Hessle made the rest of the desk and chessboard?”

Casey paused. “Yeah, this student left him old plans for it.” They were kept in the back of the diary and looked about as complicated as the blue prints for the International Space Station: the Turk alone must have had over a million parts. “But it’s what he made the chessboard out of that scares me.”

“What?”

He cleared his throat. “A coffin.”

According to the diary, Emil Hessle’s first son, Marcus, had died of small pox at age three. The child was cremated and his ashes buried in a coffin at their home. “Some kind of family tradition. When he finished the Turk, he dug up the grave. He took the ashes and mixed it with paint for the wood. Then he used the coffin to make the board.”

“Why would he do that?” Alison said. He couldn’t believe how calm she was. Then again, these were just words to her. He’d seen the tearstains on the page where Marcus was mentioned. He’d gone out back and seen the tiny patch of dirt near the crab apple tree. Just like the diary said.

“I’m not sure. The diary starts going into a different language in that part.”

“It must be German. He was Austrian.”

“Oh. But I have an idea. The diary says people thought the Turk was magical, and that if you could beat it you could get a wish. I think the coffin was like a sacrifice, you know? A token he needed to give so he could get a chance to play.”

“But he died.”

“He’d been playing against the Turk for a week straight when he died. Look at the handwriting near the end, its crazy, he was losing it. Then it just stops. A year ago.”

Casey sucked the remains of bread from between his teeth. “I think he wanted his son back, that’s why he played so hard and went nuts. Probably why his family left him, too. They didn’t want to touch the damn thing so they just threw some crud on it and sold the house. To us.”

Casey exhaled heavily, bit the inside of his cheek, and closed the book. “I gotta show you something.”

*

Alison beamed. “You set up the board for a new game!” She moved her hand to grab a pawn. He stopped her.

“No,” he said, voice shaking. “I didn’t. They were like this when I came down this morning.”

She gave him a disgusted look, but it soon faded. “That’s impossible.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the Turk. “It’s also impossible to beat him. But you did that, too. You did what Hessle couldn’t, what Napoleon couldn’t. I guess you get a wish.”

Alison folded her arms and smiled her ugly smile. “That’s baby stuff. I’m in gifted.”

That’s when the house shook as if the front door was about to explode. A haggard, razor-blade voice yelled from outside. “Don’t you run out on me! Get out here now!”

Alison froze. “I guess he followed me when I ran.”

“Get out here now before I send you to your mother!”

Casey’s guts swelled. “Did you lock the door?” She shook her head and dread punched his heart. “Crap.”

“He’s worse when he’s up early.” For the first time, Alison looked scared. Then, quietly, she said, “Help me get away.”

In that moment, all the stories of men falling on grenades, of storming hills against the rain of fire, of going back to hell’s mouth because your buddy was still in enemy hands, they all made sense. He nodded.

Fear shook him as the moment crystallized. Casey sweated bullets, bit his cheek to bleed, and ran up the stairs screaming, reaching the top as the front door’s handle began to turn. This is what separates us from animals, he thought, charging against the dark form that blocked sunlight in the doorway. He had to stop him.

Alison’s father was a monster caged in denim trousers and a stained flannel shirt. Casey threw one mean kick at a huge knee.

A grunt.

Then it all went to hell.

The back of his giant hand smacked Casey face so hard his vision blurred and gravity took him in a thick embrace. Blood dripped from his nose, lips and cheeks. He could hear the thump—thump of giant boots going downstairs echoing in his hollow head. Now she was trapped.

His dad’s voice ran like a broken record in his ear. The pain lanced through him as he got on to one foot and ignored the urge to throw up his Cheerios. Feel the fear. “And screw the pain,” he coughed. “To hell and back.”

It was a killer leap from the top of the stairs, but Mr. Clark was an easy target for a human bullet. Casey threw himself above the stairs and hit Mr. Clark with everything he and gravity could muster. Both smacked the floor. “Run!” Casey screamed, then an elbow jammed his mouth. His front teeth shook.

She got as far as the stairs before a dirt-stained hand snagged her hair. She didn’t make a peep.

“You, you’re a waste of flesh,” Mr. Clark mumbled, getting to his feet. “She was perfect and you, you’re all that’s left! All that’s left!”

Her body went rigid. He slapped her harder than boys hit baseballs and Casey thought he would be sick.

No cavalry was coming. Casey raised his head and the room circled. Then he saw the Turk, swirling, waiting.

Casey was out of strength and ideas. “Make a wish, Alison!”

Mr. Clark grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, his knuckles tattooed with the initials K.P.

“I’ll kill you for touching what’s left of her!”

“Dad.”

He turned to his daughter. Her top lip was busted and three times its thin size, her left eye swollen shut, and the day-old bruise throbbed. Blood ran down her quivering lips as the words shot out of her like machine gun fire.

“I wish you lived with Mom in the cemetery you son of a bitch.”

He snorted. “You’ll see her long before I do–” but then his voice was drowned.

A clickety clack of gears and rivets filled the air like a carnival’s rides revving up at daybreak. Casey saw the Turk move.

His sinewy, wooden arms brought the thin, long pipe to his hole of a mouth. A deep rumble came from his inner chamber as the smoke flared from the pipe’s end. A faint smell like fresh, dark coffee filled the air. The Turk turned its head smoothly, and with a single breath filled the room with a rich, purple smoke as its eyes rolled in its head.

Everything went soft and rubbery and soon Casey felt Mr. Clark release his shirt shrieking “bloody trick…you’re mine…you’ll always be…” until his voice just vanished…

Darkness fell.

*

Mom said he didn’t have to go to school but he went.

At lunch he went looking for Alison on the school grounds when he got a tap on his shoulder.

“Hello.”

“Hey.” She was wearing a different set of clothes, the others having too much blood and dirt. “You doing okay? You look pretty swollen.”

“Just my head,” she said. “No worse than you.”

He’d laugh, but it hurt too much.

“Mom said you can come for dinner. You can sleep over, too.” Mom’s screaming had woken them up from the weird sleep that had grabbed them. After hearing their story, she had called the police, but Mr. Clark had had yet to be found. One cop said he’d be high tailing it out of town because he had a record.

“Maybe. The police are waiting at my place. They say I have an aunt. She’s coming to look after me.”

“Sure. Look…” his throat swelled, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

If he didn’t speak the tears would stream. “Because I couldn’t stop him. I tried, Alison, I really did, but he was like a freight train. I hit him as hard as I could and jumped on him like an anvil but–” He bit his cheek and reopened his wound to stop the sadness from swelling. He might not be a hero, but he wouldn’t let her see him cry about it.

“I know,” she said, matter of fact. “I asked you to.” Then, quietly, she said “Thanks.”

He nodded, sniffed, and waited for the water in his eye to recede. Not a tear dropped. “You, uh, saw what happened, right?”

Her face crinkled. “I was there.”

“I mean the Turk. The pipe. You at least smelt it, right? The smoke? The wish? ”

But she hadn’t. None of it. Her back was to it all. She thought she had passed out from one too many blows to the head. She hadn’t even heard the sound of the wooden machine as it came alive. Casey couldn’t stop thinking about it in his painkiller dreams – Mr. Clark buried alive in his wife’s coffin, gasping, turning blue next to her skeleton as he screamed through six feet of dirt. But Alison looked like she’d rather eat glass than talk about it. He didn’t push the point.

*

Before dinner, Casey took a deep breath, and headed down the basement steps.

The Turk had gone back to its original pose, the pieces ready for a new game. Casey faced the Turk, preparing to do what he thought was right.

“I don’t know how to play chess,” Casey said. “Even if I did I know you’d probably kick my ass.” The smooth features of the Turk watched him with inhuman persistence. “But I know what you did. I saw it. I don’t know what side you’re on, but…” He clamped his teeth, hands turned into fist, and spit out the rest.

“I just wanted to say thank you. For saving us when I couldn’t.” He swallowed hard. A single tear tickled his cheek as it ran down from his stubborn eye. The Turk didn’t move an inch. “Maybe I am nuts,” he said, sniffing, wiping his face, “I’m talking to a doll.”

He was half way up the stairs when he smelt smoke. He rushed back down to see a purple haze in the corner.

It was the Turk. He was thin, wrinkly, but real: human. He stooped in front of the desk, the chessboard gone, and all the ivory pieces in his large left hand. Scars snaked about his flesh like the outline of a jigsaw puzzle; his face now seemed to be made of a hundred parts. Purple smoke curled around him like a shawl of interlocking clouds. His ancient eyes looked at Casey before he spoke with a voice as rich as a church organ. “Then may I go?”

Casey, shaking, nodded. The Turk nodded back before taking a mighty drag from his pipe and vanishing from sight.

---

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About the Author

Jason S. Ridler’s fiction has appeared in such magazines as Flashquake, New Myths, Necrotic Tissue, Big Pulp, Dark Recesses, Nossa Morte, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. His story “Billy and the Mountain” appeared in Tesseracts Thirteen, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell. His popular non-fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Dark Scribe, and the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. Visit him at his writing blog, Ridlerville, http://jsridler.livejournal.com and on twitter at http://twitter.com/JayRidler.