"Okay, so I think I'm starting to follow what you're talking about here," I said after a while. I looked at the old guy, then looked at the mostly-empty bottle of Wild Turkey that sat on the table between us. Given his relative size, I was honestly surprised the amount he'd consumed in the past fifteen minutes hadn't killed him, or at least knocked him into a coma. "And you are making much more sense than you were several minutes ago. I mean, I've heard of high-functioning alcoholics before, but-"

"Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to hear you say 'I think I understand', only to have you follow it up with a sentence suggesting you don't?" he asked, his words coming out articulate and precise, despite being half-slurred. "In those cases, behavior is perceived as normal despite the depressive effects of ethanol, which have a measurable impact on the imbiber but not enough to compromise or debilitate higher brain function. In my case, it's the exact opposite."

"So, in a way, you need alcohol to function properly?"

"I need gaba to function optimally!" he corrected angrily, shaking his head before pointing at the base of his skull with two fingers, like he was holding a gun at his brainstem. "Dysgenesis of the corpus collosum - the nerve bundle you've already correctly cited as the connective pathway between the two hemispheres of the brain. And to be more precise, I need allosteric modulators of gaba receptors, and- . . . never goddamn mind. The mechanisms behind it are too complex to get into, so for the sake of economy let's just say that my brain does far, far too much, and that drinking makes things so foggy and slow that I'm merely a genius."

With that, he took another swig of bourbon. Then, after setting the bottle gently aside, he glanced over at the tray containing his odd assortment of items and scowled. He picked up the tray, emptied the contents into a slightly palsied hand, then dropped them back onto the tray as though he were rolling dice. He inspected the results briefly before dropping the tray back onto the table in disgust.

"Fuck," he said, simply.

"So, is that Vodou, what you're doing with the bones and the whatnot? I mean, do you actually see stuff in that?"

"No, idiot, it's that I can't not see. There's a difference." He looked at the bones again, briefly. "I see everything in everything. That's the problem."

"Sounds like it'd be pretty handy, actually."

"Yeah?" he snarled. "You ever try to drink water from a fire hose?"

"A point, I suppose. Still, I don't really see what being all-seeing has to do with mysticism, or rolling a bunch of stuff into a tray."

"Excogitate this allegory, then," he said, leaning forward over the table in order to look me in the eyes. "Let's say that everyone in the world is myopic. Nearsighted. They can't see past what they can touch. You, on the other hand, have twenty-twenty vision. You can see a cloud - cumulo fracto nimbus - and you spy a flash of lightning in the distance. You know light travels faster than sound, so you say to people around you 'here comes a loud noise from the sky' right before the sonic shock wave, and when it does come suddenly everyone's amazed and asking how you knew what would happen. Now, consider all of the things you're presently aware of. This place, this table, me, all the things you've done today. Think about all the stuff you've noticed about my shop while in here . . . how much you've observed. Then, take a moment to realize that you're the blind man in this scenario." He sat back in his chair a ways and crossed his arms. "What I see is on a different level of magnitude altogether. I see seemingly unimportant things, and I make connections between them, because I can't help it. Sometimes I don't know why things are connected, but it doesn't make the connections any less true. When seemingly unrelated things are always occurring together, you start to catch on. Everything's connected to everything."

"Really?" I lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "I'm sorry, but I tend to distrust those sorts of blanket statements on principle. I mean, not everything is connected."

"Everything," he replied, and with a note of finality to it. "You generate a magnetic field. It interacts with the earth's, which interacts with everyone else's. And that's merely the literal one . . . the most obvious way we're connected. Hell, all the matter in the universe was in essentially the same spot at one point. There are connections everywhere you look. This," he indicated the tray, "isn't the act of me seeing into some 'spirit world', or any nonsense like that. I make connections. I don't see things that aren't there . . . it's that you don't see things that are."

I gave the bones a fairly dubious look, but began to nod my understanding.

"Okay, so you're saying it's not really mysticism, because all you're doing is seeing details I don't even know exist, and because I can't factor those details into my thinking, your thoughts and subsequent reactions to them merely seem like mysticism to me."

He considered me for a second, then snorted.

"You know, getting a statement like that from you actually took less time than I thought it would," he said, grudgingly.

While not precisely a compliment, I decided to interpret it that way.

"Hey, I'm not saying I buy into it, just that I sort of understand what you were trying to explain just now. I like to maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to the absurd, especially given the number of people I've met lately who talk about the living dead like it's a real thing. So, as the proverbial 'blind man' in this scenario," I said, gesturing expansively at my chest with both hands, "please provide me with convincing evidence that we're talking about a something real, and not some superstitious delusion that's been conveniently slapped atop of a bunch of strange but explainable things that nobody's quite figured out yet."

There was a good half minute where he just stared at me, like he was putting something together in his mind.

"You've seen evidence of this thing you're so desperate not to believe." He gestured across the table at me. "A skeptic who comes out and announces he's a skeptic, then sits there defensively, arms crossed. Troubled. You're here because you've become concerned that your skepticism will lead to failure. This worries you, or some part of you."

Damn, I didn't realize my body language had become all closed up as I'd spoken.

"I'm just trying to find out what I can, if only to dismiss certain possibilities. Gathering intelligence is never a waste of time," I said, uncrossing my arms while sitting up a little straighter.

"That depends on the intelligence. I'm routinely overwhelmed with information, and find I need to prune it of things I feel are unnecessary, or a waste of time." He gave me an odd look. "An example - I'm not going to waste time falling into your trap, the one you laid just now. You're not here to ask me to convince you of anything."

"Really? I'm not?" I asked bemusedly. "That's odd. I rather thought I was."

"No, you aren't. You'd never be satisfied with any argument I could provide you, regardless of how convincing I was, so why should I bother giving you a convenient, pre-packaged explanation? What you're looking for is proof, not mere persuasion. You fancy yourself a scientist ... a philosopher, yes? A skeptic? A disciple of Skeptikoi ... school of Pyrrho of Elis? You believe absolute knowledge is impossible, and so you lay your doubts before you like playing cards, hoping to acquire relative certainty. If I simply hand you this information you're after, give you this explanation you seek, it's dismissed - becomes nothing. Actually convincing you requires I do the opposite of what you think you've asked of me just now. Thus, you're here to see if you're capable of convincing yourself."

My head was beginning to hurt a little bit.

"So, essentially you're saying I need to figure out this riddle on my own and form my own explanation for it to have any meaning. Fine, let's start with a few questions. You seem like you've got intelligence to spare, and yet you surround yourself with a bunch of mystical weirdness." I motioned to the tray of objects on the table. "Stuff like these books, and bones, and other whatnot. They seem important to you, or at least for this whole 'wise old man' mystique thing you've got going on."

"None of those were questions."

I sighed through my nose.

"Okay, fine. Why are these bits of whatnot important to you?"

"They are connected to things."

"Yeah, yeah . . . but everything's connected, right? Who was it that said that again?"

He fixed me with an unsteady glare, and sighed a slightly drunken sigh.

"I'm glossing over some concepts to facilitate conversation, creating ideas that can be grasped readily, obviously. If you wish to try cleverly picking my words apart, and if you're not doing anything for the next week, we can go into as much granular detail as you like." He gestured at the tray. "They're connected to things in a way that tells me things."

"So, they tell you the future?" I asked, hoping some small measure of my doubt came through in my tone.

"They tell me the present."

"Oh? Well, that seems a little more reasonable than the answer I was expecting, actually. Far less mysterious. Well then, if they can do that, why don't you go ahead and tell me all about my present? Doubtless you've seen a thing or two by now, what with how many times you've rolled those things."

He gave my words a quick shrug of his shoulders. "You have a problem."

"Heh. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Now tell me something I don't know."

"You don't know about this problem. Not entirely . . . not yet. If you did, you wouldn't be here asking me these questions. But yes, you have a problem. This," he said, picking up one of the slender bones from his tray, "wants to point to you. When it does, it's relaxed. when it isn't, it's trying to, like gravity exerting pressure on a pile of snow, wanting to start an avalanche. This one," he said, grabbing a second square-ish bone from the tray and holding it up, "wants to be a camel, even when it's a horse."

"Okay . . . was sorta with you up until that camel-horse bit."

Sighing, he held it out for me to see.

"Shagai . . . an anklebone. Camel, horse, sheep, goat," he announced, rotating the bone to different positions for each. "When this is a camel, it's fine. When it's a horse, it wants to be a camel. When it's a goat, this," he said, his finger pointing to one of the objects in his tray, "doesn't want to tell me anything, and these four fuck off into the night! And when this one doesn't come up as 'earth', it comes up as 'death', and these ones here say to look past the South line, which-" He caught my expression and scowled, shaking his head. "Gee, I've never seen that look before. Listen, I can sit here and waste twenty years of your life trying to explain all of this to you, or you can simply roll them and let me tell you what your exact problem is."

He dropped the two bones he held into the tray, then slid the collection of objects over the table and toward me with two careful fingers.

Though I strongly felt like I was playing along with some kind of cosmic gag, I picked up the tray, deposited the bones and wood chips and other stuff into my right hand, dropped them back onto the tray, then slid the whole thing back to him just as he'd done with me. Once that was done, I resisted the urge to sit back in my chair and cross my arms, just in case he was still aware of my body language. This whole thing seemed like a joke, but I had a feeling he'd be more communicative if I didn't outwardly express that sentiment.

He wasn't looking at me, however, but at the tray.

"See? See that?" he asked, half-standing out of his seat and pointing a finger at where the feather was currently situated. "Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick! Life, tied to black . . . camel, ivory is active, not passive. These scattered, two and two, which is violence! Everything arranged out from you just so, like a fan." He sat back down in his chair, crooking his head slightly as he looked at me. "Death. They're practically singing it! Death like I've never seen before, and you're involved, obviously. As-" He peered at the tray a second time, and with a slightly troubled look. "A . . . hunter? But how it's sitting, that doesn't quite make sense."

The old man studied the tray for what felt like a long time, peering at this and that, reaching out as though about to touch something and mouthing words under his breath. Then, all at once, he seemed to realize something. Looking up from his tray, his eyes focused on me, and they narrowed.

His chair creaked loudly as he shifted back down into it. Arms crossed, he leaned his torso as far away from the table as he could manage while still sitting down.

"Assassin," he murmured, a note of accusation in his voice. Actually, it wasn't exactly a 'note' of accusation. It was more like an entire symphony.

I gave him a patient, long-suffering smile.

"Okay, so we've already established that you know things. In some cases, surprising and somewhat dangerous things. Things you might not want to say aloud too many times, if you catch my drift." I shrugged congenially at him. "I don't really see how you think you can extrapolate details like that from bones, wood-chips, and a couple of teeth, but fine . . . let's say you can, and through the miracle of divination you're exactly right about everything so far. On the other hand, let's also say that you may have been contacted by my employer, already knew about me and the nature of my problem, and you're doing this stuff in front of me just for kicks. I no longer really care, because I have, as you've acknowledged you're aware, a problem. Let's discuss that, shall we? Now, what does the word 'revenant' mean to you?"

"It means everything I've seen these past few weeks is beginning to make sense," he said, darkly.

"Wonderful. Brilliant. I very much enjoy it when things make sense." I waved a gesture for him to continue. "Go on . . ."

He took a slow, careful breath, like he was readying himself for something. I didn't react to it - I'd already determined that this guy was no threat to me, physically.

"It also means that I'm probably very uniquely positioned to dispense information," he said, giving me a calculating look. He uncrossed his arms in order to briefly scratch his nose, then crossed them the other way. "You mentioned my money problems, earlier."

"I'm about to mention the possibility of health problems as well."

"There's a book in here that mentions revenants," he said, ignoring my gentle threat with supreme aplomb. "From what I recall, the information it contains is very illuminating. Given what I figure the nature of your 'problem' must be, I'd even venture a guess and say you might find it very useful."

"That's great. I'll buy it."

His eyes narrowed further. "It's very old."

"Which means it'll be pricey. Whatever. I'll buy it."

"It's written in Welsh-Romani."

"I'll . . . okay, I'll buy it, as well as any Welsh-whatever-to-English dictionaries you have lying around. Unless you care to, say, open the book and tell me what it says instead. The fact you know exactly what kind of gibberish it's written in sort of suggests you're able to."

He took another deep breath and let it out slowly, swallowing a couple of times before speaking.

"I will translate the pertinent section of this tome for you in exchange for two things." He held up two fingers, and gestured to each in turn. "Two-thousand dollars, and your assurances that I'll never see you in my shop ever again."

With that, he sat back even further in his chair, waiting for me to respond.

I raised an eyebrow, and spent a little time trying to think of something to say that would cause him to lean even further back, because I sensed he was fairly close to falling out of his chair. Sadly, I couldn't think of anything.

Giving him a tight smile, I slowly reached into my inside pocket and pulled out my envelope of hundreds. Then, I counted out five-thousand dollars onto the table, taking note of how wide his eyes were getting as I did.

"Five-thousand dollars, you do it in half the time you were about to tell me you were going to do it in, and I do come in here again," I said, sliding the bills towards the center of the table.

He frowned at the money, and then at me.

"Five-thousand dollars, you get it by tomorrow, and you come in here once more to ask questions, no more than five minutes. I don't want to be involved in this thing you're mixed up with."

"Five-thousand dollars, I get it by tomorrow morning, and I get twenty minutes for questions."

"Ten minutes."

"Fifteen."

"Done," he said, snatching the money from the table and standing up from his chair. Almost immediately, he stuffed the wad of bills into his front jeans pocket. "You'll have what you need tomorrow morning."

"Excellent, uh- . . . you know, I didn't catch your name."

He studied me, as though debating whether or not to tell me.

"Atticus," he said, finally.

Atticus. At least now the name of the store made a little bit of sense.

Well, no . . . not really, I suppose.

"Well, thank you in advance for all of your hard work, Atticus. My name's Joe."

He snorted. "Sure it is."

Standing up from my own chair, I reached into my pocket for a pen and one of the small, blank business cards I used for making notes. Scribbling down the address for my bar, I held it up for him to see before placing it face-down on the table.

"I'll be at this bar most of tomorrow morning. There's a phone number for the place as well, just in case."

"Don't bother," he said, indicating the card with his chin. "There's ridiculously hard-to-miss things happening around here at the moment, and you're right in the thick of them. I doubt I'll need something as mundane as an address to locate you."

With that, he ignored the card on the table altogether, briskly walked past one of his large, ancient bookshelves, and disappeared into the back room.

I really hate theatrical exits . . .

The door chimes jangled discordantly once more as I left the shop and stepped out into the street.