Dark Lord Rob's DarkForce

Episode 3 - A Battle of Wits

     Nathan looked him in the eyes and grinned innocently. "We'd like a reading, Mister Dark Lord, sir. We'd like to know the future."
     The Dark Lord grinned back. "Okay. Would you like fries with that?" And he pulled out a battered old deck of tarot cards from some hidden drawer. He began laying them out on the table, humming to himself.
     "What song is that?" I asked.
     "Spanish Flea," he said. "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass." And he did a silly chair-dance to go with it.
     I looked over at Nathan who looked pretty confused. "Aren't you going to ask us about ourselves?"
     "What, you mean go fishing for info? 'Is there someone important to you whose name begins with the letter "D"?' Ahh. Who cares about that crap. You want the real deal. Let's look into the future."
     He lay the tarot cards across the table in a weird pattern. Shana, who dabbles in the mystic arts, or so she says, studied it for a moment. "What sort of layout are you using? I don't recognize it."
     "It's a 'Miskatonic Spiral'. Very ancient. Very powerful."
     Nathan laughed. "You made that up!"
     "You dare to challenge the Dark Lord?" Rob said in a stentorian voice. "Of course I made it up. So what?"
     "Isn't that a little misleading?"
     "Does it say on my business card 'No made-up layouts'? I don't think so. A layout is just a pattern of cards, a focal point for the energies. Any pattern is as good as another. Like so:"
     He gestured to the cards on the table. "The cards tell me that it is not I, but you who are here under false pretenses. Hmm? That you have come to 'debunk' me and expose me as a conman and sham-artiste. Correct?"
     "Where does it say that?" Shana asked.
     "It's there, it's there. But what they say about the future, now, that is more important."
     Nathan tapped his fingers on the table. "And what do they say?"
     "They say that you will walk out this door into the national newspapers. Just like you want to. Your face, Nathan, on the six o'clock news. And more. Shana, you will confront the Mysteries that you seek. Maggie, you will find the heroine within. And Twonky..."
     I gulped. How did he know our names? "Yes?"
     "Never turn your back on the Devil."

Next: Next: Rolling the Dice