Here we go again

Even if massive sleep deprivation weren't making me physically incapable of doing anything substantive at work today, the Red Sox will have their home opener this afternoon when they square off against the Seattle Mariners at 2pm.

In the past I've offered up a link to one of the first short stories I wrote when I got back on the writing kick, a horror tale involving our beloved Olde Towne Team and the Curse of the Bambino (which was still in force at the time). While the Curse has been reversed, I still have a soft spot for this story, so I'm going to post it in its entirety today for your reading enjoyment - it's about 15,000 words, so make sure you're sitting down when you start!

BAMBINO
By Tom Bruno

Seventh son of a seventh son, Flynn had been a hot dog vendor at Fenway Park since he first could lift the big metal steamer and strap it over his shoulders. His father had sold franks at the beloved Boston ballpark until he was an old man and permanently stooped; so, too, did his father's father, when they were still called frankfurters and the Red Sox were still winning the World Series. Grandpa Flynnie may have been a seventh son himself, if he'd known how many brothers he actually had, but Mother never mentioned the ones that died early, either here in the States or back in Ireland. Selling hot dogs wasn't just something Flynn did for some summer cash - it was his birthright, and he accepted the family vocation with the same seriousness that a scion of a prominent Brahmin on Beacon Hill would reserve for his decision to go to Harvard, like all of his other distinguished ancestors.
Flynn was scrubbing the interior of his hot dog steamer with a brush and a pail of gray, soapy water. The game had ended hours ago, and most of the other vendors had long since fled for a nice cold beer at the Cask and Flagon, but he took pride in the appearance and cleanliness of his equipment, and had made a habit of lingering until he was the last person in the park. The groundskeeper, also a Fenway legacy, didn't mind Flynn hanging around, so long as he locked the service gate on his way out. Sometimes when he was in a generous mood he'd clean the other vendors' steamers, since he knew most of the kids only game them a quick rinse and were on their way, but most of the time he just scoured his own with loving care and reflected on the fortunes of the home team.
Today's game had been another disappointment in what was shaping up to be a thoroughly dismal season, and after such a promising start. Of course it almost always went this way in this town since 1918, when the owner of the then-champion Red Sox dealt away one of the greatest ballplayers ever in order to finance a theatrical production on Broadway. The play came and went, but the player - one George Herman Ruth, affectionately known as "The Babe" - became a living legend in New York and the stuff of undying nightmares here in Boston.
And so the Curse of the Bambino was born. Grandpa Flynnie used to tell him about how it started as a joke, the idea of a curse, some manner of hex hanging over the Green Monster at Fenway Park; but as the years went by and the Sox came up empty handed for a World Series championship time and time again, the “joke” started to be repeated by native Bostonians first with a scowl, then eventually with a whisper. "The Curse..."
At times it seemed like the bony hand of Fate itself, pushing up through the infield dirt to tug at Bill Buckner's pant leg and make him miss that routine ground ball in 1986. Flynn remembered that moment as if it was yesterday, the sickening instant when all of New England's hopes of disbelieving in something so silly as a curse were shattered forever. The monster was proved real there and then, once and for all; from that day onward, Flynn was a believer, an acolyte who served the most terrible mystery in all of sport.
This season was a perfect case in point of the cosmic deck being stacked against the Olde Towne Team, Flynn thought to himself as he finished toweling his steamer dry and reached for the metal polish. Going into the All-Star Break, the Red Sox had the best record in decades and a comfortable twelve-game lead over their American League East rivals and arch nemeses, the Yankees. It was the kind of year that even the Globe and the Herald's most jaded columnists were granting at least the pennant, if not the whole thing. Curse be damned, they said, this is the "Summer of the Sox".
Flynn knew better, though he held his tongue when hawking hot dogs in the grandstands until he was hoarse. The pattern was eternal, like the migration of a certain rare species of bird whose name he couldn't recall, although he'd just seen a documentary about it on cable the other week during the team's last road trip. He smeared some polish on a soft clean cloth and started buffing in a slow, deliberate manner.
The faithful would begin every year with Fear. Fear that the team would not heed the lessons of last year's shortcomings - bad starters, anemic hitting, an unreliable bullpen - and correct them in the off-season with the right acquisitions. Next would be Euphoria, when the Red Sox wintered in Florida and the press junkets cozied up to management (no matter how incompetent), and slobbered over the hired guns signed for millions of dollars from other teams.
Euphoria gave way to Opening Day jitters and the harsh realities of a new year. Sure, the big hitters delivered their promised firepower, measured in runs batted in and distance from home plate, and the aces on the mound never failed to demonstrate their artistry with a small stitched sphere marked Spaulding. But by the end of April, the seeds of the team's ultimate undoing were already sown, waiting patiently for their time to germinate into sorrow and loss. But these things were quickly forgotten in the exuberance of May, when the Sox would find their collective stride and inspire fans anew. Warts and all, Red Sox Nation would renew its vows of love for the team, and for a brief spell all would seem right with the universe.
Then would come the Slump. Flynn paused to look at his reflection in the metal, the rueful grin that had spread over his face from just thinking about it. The slump was sometimes big, sometimes small, but it was as predictable as Indian Summer most of the time, when the team would go into a sudden terrifying tailspin and squander whatever advantages they had accumulated in the spring, sending devotees from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Bar Harbor, Maine into a dark depression. Those in the know called it the “June Swoon,” and awaited it with the same dread reserved for a root canal or a sigmoid colonoscopy.
This year however the Sox had managed to forestall their slump until July, during which time the fans had allowed themselves to entertain unreasonable fantasies of how the season would unfold. The ultimate act of hubris was when one Globe sportswriter actually dared to compute Boston's "magic number" - that golden sum of Sox wins and other teams' losses that, when attained, clinched a trip to the postseason - in the first week of July.
Flynn couldn't help but chuckle. He still had a clipping of that column on his bedroom wall at home. The writer was roundly chided for counting the home team's chickens so soon, but the act of impiety, once committed, could not be undone. This year's slump began less than two weeks later, and even now showed little promise of ending, as the magic number seemed to slide ever farther away from attainment. The Red Sox would need a miracle to salvage the season at this point.
A sudden unnatural silence made Flynn look up from his hot dog steamer - there was a man was standing in front of him. It was a little late for this person to be a locked-in straggler from the game, and at first glance he didn't look like the breaking-and-entering type.
Well into his fifties, maybe even sixty, the stranger nevertheless had an impish quality about him that made him seem younger. Perhaps it was his shock of hair, still full, with only a touch of gray, and the telltale sign of hat-head. His faded Sox cap was in his hands before him, an anachronistic display of respect that set Flynn at ease. Nevertheless the intrusion upon his sanctuary annoyed him - who was this joker, and more importantly, how had he gotten past the groundskeeper?
"You know what the fine for trespassing is, don't ya?"
Hat-head was unfazed by the implied threat. "Mr. Flynn, I presume?"
"Depends on who's askin'."
The stranger tucked his cap under his arm and offered his right hand - Flynn regarded it with suspicion before shaking it. "My name is Davis. Art Davis. I'm a professor of mathematics over at MIT."
Great, he thought. One of those Poindexters from the People's Republic of Cambridge. "The game's over. We lost. Do you need help finding the exit?"
Davis laughed. "Actually, I was looking for you. The groundskeeper was kind enough to let me. He told me you’d be back here, cleaning the steamers."
"Well that's my job," Flynn said, now on the defensive. Davis didn't seem to mocking his vocation, but years of taking ribbing from his friends for being a hot dog vendor made Flynn a little thin-skinned when the subject came up.
"I meant no disrespect," Davis said quickly. "It takes a whole lot of stamina to do what you do. I think I've seen you selling dogs for the past twelve years."
"Thirteen."
"Excuse me then, thirteen. And long before that, you used to help your father as a kid."
Flynn squinted at the professor. "Now how the hell do you know that?"
"I didn't think you'd remember me. It was a long time ago. Your father and I used to be friends. We went to school together. South Quincy High, class of '57. We'd talk baseball. He would tell me all the old stories his father - your grandfather - told him and I'd entertain him with all the stats I'd memorized. He'd sneak me into games and I'd give him the insider information on that night's line." Davis smiled. "We had a wicked bad gambling problem back then, he and I. Your father would feel so guilty putting money on a Sox game - even to win - but that didn't stop either of us."
A light switch flipped on in Flynn's sweaty head. "Holy Christ, I remember you! You're 'Lucky', aren't ya?"
"You used to call me 'Uncle Lucky', way back when."
"Infield Grandstand, along the third base line," Flynn could see Davis now, sitting where he sat twenty-odd years ago. "You had season tickets."
"That was back when they were still a bargain."
"You'd always get five hot dogs. I couldn't believe it. You were a beanpole then. Still are."
Davis grinned.
"Where ya been? I don't remember seeing you here at the park for years, since... since." Flynn trailed off as his memories finally aligned. Since his father died.
Davis acknowledged what Flynn hadn't said with a nod. He stared down at his feet.
"Well, I've been away. I've been teaching at Cal Tech for the last ten years, until the 'Tute made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Besides, I couldn't take another season of California baseball! There should be laws for what they do to sports out there."
Flynn couldn't help but laugh at this; Davis chuckled, too, before his face became somber and his voice grave.
"I also left because of your father. He and I had some... bad habits... that were twice as bad when we palled around together, so we kept our distance when he met your mother and started behaving like a respectable family man. I saw him at games, and maybe we'd meet for the occasional beer, but that was it. Nothing like the good old days."
This conversation was starting to make Flynn uncomfortable. Hoping to change the subject, he asked "So what brings you here?"
Davis perked up. "I have a proposition that might interest you."
"A job?"
"Not exactly. More like research. But you'll get paid. We have a generous budget for this sort of thing."
"Who's 'we'? A bunch of mathematicians?" Flynn couldn't imagine a whole lot of money in knowing your multiplication tables.
Davis laughed. "No. Let's just say I freelance with some... interesting... people. This probably isn't the best time and place to discuss the particulars, but if you come to our office we'll show you what we're up to and how you can help."
Flynn asked the obvious question. "So why me? Why now? I haven't seen you in twenty years, Uncle Lucky."
Davis said nothing at first, but merely gestured towards a newspaper on the ground. The back page of the Boston Herald, normally reserved for the highlights of last night's game, was featuring a full color photograph of a handful of scuba divers standing proudly around a baby grand piano on the shores of a pond just outside of Quincy. The headline read, in a font normally reserved for acts of war or the Second Coming of Christ: "BAMBINO'S PIANO FOUND – IS THE END OF THE CURSE NIGH?"
Flynn almost choked. He'd bought the paper that morning but neglected to read it, already depressed as he was about the Sox's current slump. Why compound what he knew damned well on his own with a gaggle of sports columnists' doom and gloom? Now he stared at the broadsheet's main story and the piano in disbelief, his jaw opening and closing in an attempt to speak.
"W-w-w-w-when? H-h-how?"
Davis smiled gently, an expression of sadness and understanding on his face. "Here's my card, Flynnie. Give us a call and we'll set up a time for you to come in, so we can explain everything. Good to see you again, son - call us soon, okay?"
Uncle Lucky left as suddenly as he'd arrived. Flynn wanted to ask him more questions, many more questions, but the professor had already made himself scarce. So the hot dog vendor, seventh son of a seventh son, sat back down beside his half-polished steamer and stared at that unbelievable picture, that dark pond, the scuba tanks stenciled with the letters “M.I.T.”.
Flynn didn't go home that night.

"Jess?"
"That you, Jimmy?"
Flynn grunted a drunken mmm-hmm to his big sister, the only female of a moderately sized Irish-American brood of eight.
"Jimmy, where've'ya been? We were worried sick."
"Out. I needed to clear my head. You seen the papers?"
"Oh, god. The piano. I knew it had to be that. You okay, Jimbo?"
"I'm fine, sis."
"You've been drinking," Jess clucked.
"Given the circumstances, I think a pint to two wouldn't hurt."
"Or ten, from the sounds of it."
"Does Mom know yet?"
"Jesus Christ, no. We're keeping the television off in her room, just in case. Told her the cable was out. This'd kill her, Jimmy."
"It damned near killed me. Guess who broke the news, of all people?"
"Uncle Lucky." It wasn't a guess, just a simple statement of fact.
"He called you first. You bitch! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Settle down, runt. You were already at Fenway. What, was I going to leave you a message on the Jumbotron?"
Flynn sobered up at his big sister's scolding. "Sorry, Jess. Didn't mean to call you a bitch. It's been a rough night."
"I know, Jimmy. I know. So what did he want?"
"Said he had a job for me. Some kind of contract work over at M.I.T.. Said they'd pay good money."
"M.I.T.? Weren’t they the ones that found it?"
"Yeah."
Jess paused. "Did he talk about Dad any?"
"A little."
"Don't go over there, Jimbo. Whatever they're scheming, it can't be good. And it won't end well."
Flynn felt fairly sober now. "But what if I can get some answers, Jess? Wouldn't it be worth it, after all this time, a little piece of mind? Besides, these guys look like they've got deep pockets. Sure would be nice if we could catch up with the bills for a change."
"Just don't agree to anything until we've talked it over, you and me, okay?"
"Okay."
"Promise, Jimmy."
"Alright, alright. I promise. Simmer down."
"I don't trust him, that's all."
"Me neither, sis. But that fucking piano. It can't be a coincidence."
"I'm sure it's not. Just be careful."
"Relax, Jess, I'm just going for a visit. What's the worst that could happen?" he said, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"Don't say that, little brother." Her voice was a whisper, rasping and pleading. "Don't ever say that."

The next morning, Flynn called in sick for the very first time in his working life as a Red Sox employee and dialed the number on the card that Uncle Lucky had given him. The man who answered had an almost impenetrable accent, but he seemed to know who Flynn was and why a Fenway Park food service associate would be calling an office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Could he come in today, at ten o'clock? Sure. He wasn't going to be selling any dogs today anyhow.
"Iz good then. Vee vill see you at ten hundred hour."
Flynn hung up the payphone receiver and wondered exactly what he was getting himself into. Overhead the Green Line trolley screeched into North Station on tracks better suited for a Coney Island rollercoaster. A pretty girl hawked newspapers down below, bellowing out in a voice ten times her size.
"Get your Globe heah, hot off the presses!"
Flynn bought one, to see if there was any additional information about the piano salvaged from a South Shore pond. There was. Flynn felt his stomach churn, a reminder of the dozen pints or so he'd drunk at The Harp (he'd crashed there last night, the bar owned by a friend of his cousin's, and slept on a folding cot in the men's bathroom) and the greasy fast food egg sandwich he'd forced down his gullet an hour ago.
Someone had finally done his homework and combed the local newspapers for any backstory on this hunt, which appeared in the Metro section of the morning edition. Flynn swallowed hard and read what he already knew.
Twenty years ago, a man went into an area pond before the ice was even out and never emerged from it, for what were at the time unknown reasons. His name was Francis Doyle Flynn, father of eight, who had graduated from North Quincy High School in 1957 and who until his disappearance had been a long-time employee for the Red Sox organization. No one had thought to connect the stories until yesterday.
That was all the article had to say. Flynn breathed a sigh of relief, if only for his poor mother, but knew damned well that the story didn't end there.
The article failed to mention that this hadn't been the first time Mr. Francis Doyle Flynn had gone jumping into icy bodies of water in that region.
Nor did it mention that these eccentric dives always tended to coincide with Opening Day at Fenway Park. And fortunately, mercifully, the Metro story left out the most important of the details that only Flynn and a few others knew, that Mr. Francis Doyle Flynn had not in fact disappeared.
His body had been recovered, all right - or at least was left of it. His father's body had been mangled, almost beyond recognition, by an unknown force that even the county coroner was at a loss to identify. A snapping turtle must have found the corpse and mutilated it, the exasperated local official had concluded in the end. A rather large snapper. Case closed.
Never mind that the flesh wounds had in fact been the cause of death, not drowning, and that they did not match the bite or claw marks of any animal known to man. Flynn's mother had spent the family's entire life savings to hire a private investigator, who grimly informed her of these facts before drinking himself to death in a hotel room in Hyannis less than two weeks later. She never dared pry any further into the mystery of her husband's death, and settled into a long slow slide towards dementia.
Flynn had considered resuming the inquiry every now and then, but was wary of the publicity that it might inadvertently generate. Besides, with the family's bank accounts depleted and its chief breadwinner dead and buried - closed casket, mind you, as the funeral home flat-out refused even to try to put the Flynn patriarch back together again, despite his mother's frantic pleadings - there was nothing but work to do.
Grandpa Flynnie had built their Quincy home with his own two hands, but it would take the tireless labor of his eight grandchildren just to keep it off the auctioneer's block, especially with a matriarch who'd been bedridden for the better part of a decade.
So Flynn worked, throwing himself into the only job he knew, the one that had paid for the tuxedo he wore to his senior prom, his first car, his one bedroom apartment in Southie before his brother Ryan broke his back on a construction job and got screwed on his disability settlement; before his other brother Stevie was laid off by General Electric up in Lynn, where he'd worked for over fifteen years; before Francis Junior and Sean joined the Navy and the Marines, respectively, one of them becoming a full-time officer, another dying in the sands of Kuwait, killed by an American bullet; before Thomas got hitched to a girl and moved to California; before Jeffrey came out of the closet and got thrown out of the house by his mother; before circumstances had conspired to bring him back home to stay.
He and Jess kept the family together and under one roof, and Flynn never gave his bad luck much thought. The work at Fenway was good when the Sox were in town, and it gave him some measure of pride to carry on a family tradition.
Flynn trudged up the metal stairs leading to the elevated track of the Green Line. He felt his head pound with every step he took, and wished he had some Tylenol on him. No matter. He had an appointment to keep, headache or no headache. He got onto an inbound "E" trolley and rummaged the rest of the newspaper he'd bought. There was a story that wouldn't have caught his eye if not for the fact that it mentioned M.I.T. - he read the first paragraph:
"Cambridge, MA (Globe Staff Reporter). The provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday vehemently denied allegations of funding a 'shadow department' dedicated to paranormal research, despite the recent hiring of internationally renowned ghost-chasing University of Pennsylvania psychologist Gregor Illeyevich Ycpia, who before defecting from the Soviet Union in 1987 was the head of Moscow's ultra-secret research in the field of parapsychology."
Jesus Christ, Flynn thought. It was a fucking Russkie who'd answered the phone this morning, he was pretty sure. The Fenway area was crawling with them, ever since the Seventies or so, and some would work off and on as part of the groundskeeping staff at the park. He wondered if that was the guy he'd talked to. Ycpia. How the hell did you even pronounce a name like that?
"Pahk Street, change for the Red Line."
Flynn wadded up the Science section in his jacket pocket, disembarked from the trolley, and descended into the cavernous cool of Park Street station's Red Line platform, watching mice scurry along the hollow of the subway rails until an Alewife train rumbled on in. He got on, feeling uncomfortable with all of the tweed and the black overcoats, the politically active pins and the personal digital assistants. Flynn rode the Red Line all the time, but outbound to Cambridge it was a whole different ride. "Freaks and geeks," he and his pals used to call the people on the Alewife train. He grimaced through his headache. The freaks and geeks were now his best chance for solving a twenty-year-old mystery.
The Charles/MGH station whisked past as the subway broke above ground and crossed the salt-and-pepper shaker towers of the Longfellow Bridge. The Charles River, thick with sailboats, glittered like a promise. The train plunged back underground, its sleek automated voice intoning: "Kendall Square. M.I.T." Flynn got off, flagged down a passing student in a trenchcoat and a cowboy hat, and asked the way to Building Two.
Everything here at the Institute was numbered - not just the rooms, but the buildings, the class names, even the majors and the minors. Flynn had a classmate from high school he used to work with at the park who got into M.I.T.. He always liked to joke about all the numbers: "I'm takin' Three-Eleven in room Ten Two-Fifty as part of my prereqs for Course Sixteen." He wondered how his friend was doing now, whether he was an astronaut yet like he had always planned.
He navigated the labyrinth of M.I.T.'s high-ceilinged corridors until he found the office he was looking for. A black wooden door with frosted glass and stenciled letters read "Department of Alchemy." Flynn had no idea what alchemy was, but assumed that was probably a good sign that he'd found the right place.
He opened the door and walked in. There was a big, shifty-looking man sitting on the solitary desk in the room who was cleaning an automatic rifle, the shiny black metal gun lying in pieces on a big white cloth that covered the rest of the desktop, save for an office phone. The man was smoking.
This was not what Flynn had expected. He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure I'm in the right place, but I was--"
"You hot dog person," the smoking man said. It was the voice on the phone. "Iz good. I am Yuri." He extended a greasy paw that could crush a coconut. Flynn shook it.
Yuri took a long drag on his cigarette and pushed a button on the phone. "What is it, Yuri?" the rasping voice over the speaker asked.
"Iz here. Shall I send him back?"
"Spasebo, Yuri."
The smoking Russian laid the stock of his Kalashnikov on the desk and opened the door opposite the one Flynn had come through, next to a dry-erase marker board which read, cryptically: "Where is Alex?!?"
Yuri motioned towards the open door. "You come now. Iz okay."
Flynn took a deep breath and stepped through into a larger room, this one with windows and long wall-length marker boards; there were charts and photographs tacked up as well. Uncle Lucky was in this room, seated behind a desk with two other men - one old as sin and breathing supplemental oxygen through a plastic nostril tube, the other silver-haired and impassive. There was a fourth chair in the room, which faced the desk and the three men behind it.
Professor Davis smiled at Flynn, who was surprised to catch himself smiling back. After the chain-smoking goon wiping down an AK-47 in the front office, he was happy to see a familiar face. Even Uncle Lucky.
"James. So glad you could make it. I'd like you to meet two of my colleagues."
Davis gestured to the fossil with the oxygen tank. Flynn eyed him cautiously - the old man looked frail as far as his body was concerned, but his eyes blazed with decades of wisdom. If anything, his feeble exterior only magnified his presence in the room.
"This is Harvey Johnston, Professor Emeritus of Literature here at the 'Tute. He taught here for thirty years, before taking up the co-chairmanship of this department."
Professor Johnson nodded; Flynn grunted back.
"The professor's specialty was evil, the occult, and the supernatural in literature. The other English faculty members hated him to high heaven, but his classes had the highest enrollment rates for any humanities course offered at the university."
Flynn didn't even try to act impressed, but cut to the chase. "And this other guy must be the Russkie. Why-kip-eye-a."
"Ycpia," the third man corrected his pronunciation.
Flynn repeated what he thought he'd heard, mangling the name yet again.
Gregor Ycpia shook his head. "It does not matter."
"Okay then."
"But I am from Ukraine, not Russia. That does matter."
Davis was a little sheepish. "I guess you caught our little P.R. flap in the papers this morning."
"Why am I here, Uncle Lucky?" Flynn demanded of him.
"History, my boy," Professor Johnston wheezed. "History. How are you for dates? Let's take 1918 for starters."
"Jesus Christ."
"He has nothing to do with this, I can assure you,” the old man responded, without missing a beat. “Although we do have in our employ a Catholic priest whose services have proven invaluable over the years. Being a long-time employee of Fenway Park, I'm assuming you're aware of the Interfaith Coalition for the Exorcism of the Curse of the Bambino?"
"ICECOB." Flynn knew them well, as well as their all-night vigil on Yawkey Way every March, during Spring Training. What had started as a joke had mushroomed into an annual event where priests, witch doctors, and all manners of New Age weirdos camped out in front of the stadium and tried to rid the Red Sox of Babe Ruth's ghost. Flynn hated ICECOB. In the spring he always helped the groundskeeper's crew with the preparations for Opening Day, and those jokers always left Yawkey Way looking like a bomb had gone off. And since Red Sox Management had convinced the City of Boston to seize the road by eminent domain for baseball related functions, they always dispatched the Groundskeeping crew to clean up the mess.
If this had meant to impress Flynn, it had clearly failed. "A bunch of slobs."
"Quite right," Johnston threw him off by agreeing with him so readily. "And a bunch of quacks, as well, I might add. Father Mendoza was one of the original members who thought of exorcising the Curse, but he broke ranks with ICECOB when he realized they were nothing but amateurs. They had absolutely no conception whatsoever of what they were up against."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Flynn blurted out.
"The Curse, Mr. Flynn." Gregor Ycpia spoke now, his Ukranian accent thick like molasses. "It is real. That is why you are here, because you know what it is capable of."
Flynn felt his gut clench. "My father..."
"He did too much, too soon, my boy," Professor Davis - Uncle Lucky - said, his bright eyes crinkling. "Give your old man credit, when he got something by the tail he didn't let go of it. Only this time the thing he grabbed a hold of was stronger than any mortal man."
He lowered his voice, as if afraid of being overheard. "You saw what it was capable of, when they found your poor daddy's body floating in the pond."
"Oh, Sweet Jesus. No."
"I saw the coroner's report. Snapping turtle my ass. You saw those marks, those tears, made by neither man nor beast."
"Jesus," Flynn repeated over and over again, tears streaming down his cheeks. At last the missing pieces were falling into place.
"Your father and I didn't know what the hell we were doing back then. A couple of dilettantes, is what we were. All we had was a harebrained idea and an old Navy surplus diving suit. Your father always insisted on making the dives himself, while I monitored the machinery topside.
"We had gotten as far as figuring out that whatever it was that we were after, the piano had some kind of power over it. Made it vulnerable. I didn't understand why at the time, but now, with the help of my esteemed colleagues here, I do.
"Your father and I also knew that there was something special about you Flynns. Do you know how many seventh sons of seventh sons this family has had? I've been to Ireland, run down the records for as far back as I could. You've got magic in your blood, son - the kind of power that makes demons shit their pants."
"A demon, then?" Flynn pulled himself together long enough to make sure he was hearing correctly. "Are you trying to tell me that his here Curse is some kind of Satanic creature of the night?"
Professor Johnston almost snorted the oxygen hose out of his nostrils. "Let's leave the Prince of Darkness out of this, shall we? This sort of thing isn't his style. No, no, Mister Flynn, we're talking something much older than the Devil - or even God, for that matter."
"I don't follow you."
The retired professor of literature was clearly relishing this rare opportunity to lecture again. He cleared his throat. "In the beginning, before the Big Bang, they existed, those things we now call demons. In the formless chaos of Nonbeing, they reigned supreme for ages upon ages.
"Then the universe as we knew it began. Matter and energy, time and space - you know, 'Fiat lux' and all that. The demons loathed this new order of being, so definite, so full of light, and they fled to the nooks and crannies of space-time itself, where darkness continued to fester and anything was still possible. Black holes, quantum singularities, cosmic strings. These were their havens.
"Some, of course - the strong ones, the proud ones, the rulers of the old cosmos - didn't take this change of regime lying down. Not satisfied to haunt the interstices of reality for the rest of eternity, they lurked instead just beneath the surface of things, in the foam of indeterminacy, waiting for an opportunity to take their revenge on the creatures of definite shape and consistency who had cuckolded them out of their rightful home."
Flynn was never a patient student in high school before he’d dropped out, and his pulsing hangover certainly wasn't making him any more receptive to the learning process right now. "What the Christ does this have to do with Babe Fucking Ruth?"
"He's one of them!" Davis jumped in, announcing this as a kind of triumph, despite the look of total disbelief on Flynn's face. "One of the worst of their kind, to boot. This one has taken many names, assumed many guises, but for a human lifetime it was known as George Herman Ruth, and it played baseball in a way that had never been seen before and would never be seen again."
"This is total bullshit, Uncle Lucky."
"Is it? When's the last time you saw a pitcher who could hit like the Babe? He went from the top pitcher in the league to top hitter without even a transition period. Check your stats, son - this just doesn't happen in baseball. The odds against a ballplayer being perfectly built for both pitching and hitting are astronomical."
"It can still happen though, can't it? I thought you were a mathematician, not a two-bit psychic."
"There's more, Flynnie. There's more. Remember the 'called shot', when the Bambino pointed at a spot in the stands and hit it on the very next swing for a home run? We have the ball from that dinger."
Davis produced a tattered old regulation baseball from a drawer in his desk and tossed it to Flynn. He fumbled, but caught it. It just looked like an ordinary ball, well past its days of Official Major League game play, although he did feel a strange tingling in his left arm as he held it. Or was that just his imagination?
"Don't ask me how we obtained it - this crew has its ways, not all of them legal - but we got a hold of it. One of our little club here is a materials scientist, so we asked her to analyze it. It looks and acts just like a normal ball until you get down to the molecular level. All of the molecules in this ball - trillions of them - are mirror images of what they should be."
"So? Explain why a hot dog vendor should care about upside-down molecules."
"There are only two possibilities," Ycpia broke the impromptu science lesson with his abrupt Slavic manner of speaking out of turn. "The ball - composed from myriad component pieces - happened to be composed from pieces that were all naturally mirrored themselves--"
"Which I suppose is possible, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen again!"
Ycpia glared at the mathematician, and Davis fell silent. The Ukranian continued:
"Or, much more probably - though singularly improbable in and of itself - the base ball (Gregor Ycpia pronounced this American compound as two wholly distinct words) transited out of this dimension and back in again at a right angle."
Uncle Lucky spoke again, eyeing the Ukrainian warily to make sure he wasn't just pausing for dramatic effect before opening his mouth again. "That bastard knocked it clean out of our world, then back again, in order to make the shot. When a demon 'fixes' the odds like that, it leaves its fingerprints all over the place."
"Indeed." Professor Johnston had caught his breath, and was prepared to continue the tale. "And this isn't the only time we've caught the Bambino with his hand in the cookie jar."
He pressed a button on the desk - the lights in the room dimmed, and the blinds on the windows automatically pulled themselves closed as a projector built into the ceiling displayed a very familiar photo. Bill Buckner, Game Six, the 1986 World Series. A snapshot of timeless agony, with the second baseman's glove just ever so slightly not touching the ball, a ball that was destined to roll between his legs and doom the Sox to yet another heartbreaking failure.
“For a lifelong devotee to the Boston Red Sox and their fortunes - or shall we call them 'misfortunes'? - this photograph needs no explanation, does it, Mr. Flynn? Only this picture is slightly different than the average fan is accustomed to seeing.
"Our program was still in its infancy back then - the esteemed Dr. Ycpia hadn't even left the Soviet Union yet, although we were in correspondence and had spoken with one another frequently at academic conferences in Europe - but on a tip from Professor Davis, who was in California finishing his doctorate, we hired one of the best spectral photographers in the country to document the game."
Davis explained. "They're the guys who capture auras on film. They also try and take pictures of supernatural entities."
"Yes, yes. Quite correct."
"They were so pissed at me, Flynnie. I convinced them to drop thousands if dollars on a ghost photographer, and after burning through miles of special - not to mention expensive - film, they had absolutely nothing to show for it through five games.
"Then came Game Six."
Flynn gulped. He wasn't so sure of himself anymore, as these three perfectly sensible men of reason (or so they seemed at first) battered down his wall of skepticism so methodically, so expertly. He prepared himself for what he knew was coming next.
"It was a routine ground ball," Uncle Lucky continued. "Buckner should have fielded it, no question about that. I wondered immediately though as I watched the game from Cal Tech graduate housing, with a bunch of fellow Boston exiles, as I watched that awful moment replay over and over in my head - didn't it look like something was keeping Billy's glove from touching the ground? I mean physically, actually holding his hand back?"
Flynn shivered. The bony hand of Fate he’d always imagined suddenly didn't seem so far-fetched.
"My gut feeling was confirmed when I got a call from M.I.T. the very next morning. The spectral photographer had captured something, all right - Dr. Johnston?"
The wheezing old don pressed another button, and the projector advanced a frame. Flynn cried out in horror.
It was the same photo, capturing the same instant, only this time Bill Buckner was enveloped by a mass of greenish-yellow tentacles, each of them writhing with tiny tentacles of their own, each in turn topped with miniscule but unmistakable gibbering mouths. One of the arms of this apparition had twisted itself a dozen times around Buckner's glove arm, and in the eerie resolution of the parapsychologist's camera Flynn could see the upward force rippling through the feathery demonic tufts, the howl of triumph on ten thousand faces.
It was too much. Flynn screamed, "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
Dr. Ycpia nodded to Johnston, who pressed a button and made the evil tableau disappear. Davis continued softly:
"After this moment was captured on film, we knew we had it. Every home game and most of the away games since 1986 have been carefully documented, and this... abomination appears over and over again in the photographic record. A dropped ball here, a wild pitch there, sometimes an inexplicably broken bone, torn wrist ligament, or frayed rotator cuff. The Curse has been so busy thwarting the Sox that the players themselves reek of its presence.
"You see, Flynnie, everything this thing touches becomes invested with some of its essence. It's the bargain a demon makes in order to manifest itself in the world of matter. The bigger the object, the greater amount of power it sloughs off into it."
Flynn mumbled through half-dried tears. "The piano."
Professor Johnston was exultant. "At last, the scales have fallen away from his eyes! Most things an earthbound demon touches are small, like a fork, a pair of pants, or a baseball bat. Not much demonic essence in these items, because it all works exponentially. Half the size, a quarter the power - actually less, Dr. Ycpia was the one to calibrate that curve, but that's another story, and a long one at that.
"Other items, such as an automobile or a park bench, are large but too casually associated with the demon. The essence stored in such items is diffuse and as a result a lot less potent. Again, Gregor's done the math on this, and I'm sure he could take you through the equations sometime if you'd like.
"But this creature sunk a lot of energy into that grand piano eighty years ago. We've run some tests on the salvaged piano, and the readings go off the chart across the board. The demon definitely wanted to sink it to the bottom of the pond, that's for sure, although why is still a question we haven't answered to my satisfaction. It's like a textbook case of what a demon shouldn't do - invest your essence into an object easily weighing more than a metric ton, then preserve it underneath a body of dark, cold fresh water for decades.
"Every entity we've studied except for this one has been careful to cover its tracks, especially with the big items. This one, however - this Curse of the Bambino - has made a critical blunder that renders it vulnerable, more vulnerable than any other demon we've ever encountered. Up until now, we have had the wherewithal only to defend ourselves against these entities, to drive them off, exorcise them, but not destroy them. This piano changes the balance of power. The piano... and you."
"Me?" Flynn was beyond disbelief now, and merely accepted the fact that he had passed through the Looking Glass, and might never return to his own conception of reality again.
"You, Flynnie," Davis said, his eyes twinkling. "Yes, you. And your father, your grandfather, and his father before that. Seventh sons of seventh sons, all of you. I told you I've been to Ireland, seen the records. Professor Johnston has also shown me other stories about your family, a chain of folktales, legends, and myths that stretch back to the dawn of Irish history.
"Your father, he had the power, the blood of demon killers running through his veins, but he didn't have the knowledge he needed to do battle and protect himself. Neither of us did, son, and I can't tell you how much it turns me inside out that he paid the ultimate price for our ignorance, and not me. You deserved a father, growing up as a young man, and I helped take that away from you."
Flynn said nothing. What could he say? Davis fell silent as well. Gregor Ycpia fiddled with a five thousand-dollar Cross pen, as Professor Johnston broke the uneasy pause:
"It was Father Mendoza who enabled us to retrieve the piano. Say what you will about those Catholics - presently company excluded, of course Mr. Flynn - but they're useful when the chips are down, especially where the supernatural is concerned. Before leaving the Holy See, the good Father was one of the best investigators for the Council on the Doctrine of the Faithful, a.k.a. The Inquisition, so he knows all the guards and wards in the book. His help will be crucial in the battle yet to come."
"Battle?" Flynn had managed to muster a little bit of his old incredulity at such a prospect. "What battle?"
Ycpia spoke up again, his eyes fierce, his right hand making emphatic stabbing gestures with his pen. "Mr. Flynn, by affecting the material world on a continuous basis over the past one hundred years, this entity has made itself vulnerable. We intend to seize the initiative at last and rid the world of this Curse, once and for all."
"All this so the Sox can finally go all the way, huh?"
Ycpia sniffed. "I do not care one iota for your base ball, or your precious World Series. I have tracked this demon across the ages, Mr. Flynn, and I have seen the horrors it is capable of. I will send it back to the pit of Hell before I die!"
"Hell of course being a figurative term, since demons technically pre-date the Judaeo-Christian conception of the cosmos--"
"Enough!" Ycpia cut off Johnston angrily, and fixed Flynn with a stare that had seen far too much in a lifetime. "Now you know, Mr. Flynn. So now you must make a decision. Walk away from this, and we will not call you a coward. We will merely find another way to join battle. I will not lie to you, however, Mr. Flynn - you are our best hope!"
It was Uncle Lucky's turn to speak. "Well, son, what do you say?"
Flynn didn't hesitate:
"Let me sleep on it."

Jessica Marie Flynn, solitary sister of a seventh son, was neither impressed nor amused by any of this. "Are you fucking high, Jimbo? These guys belong in MacLean Hospital with tinfoil on their goddamn heads!"
Flynn had tried to explain, but somehow everything that had seemed so logical - however implausible - back in that room in Building Two sounded as fantastic to his sister as it had to him at first. He wished he'd brought Uncle Lucky along to connect the dots a little better, because this wasn't going well at all.
"No way, James. No fucking way are you gonna go play 'Ghostbusters' with this retarded little group of nerds and leave me here turning tricks to make the money you won't be bringing home when you get arrested, committed, or blown up by some piece of shit contraption that's supposed to vaporize the Devil!"
Flynn winced. "They said it was a demon, Jess--"
"I don't care if it was the ghost of fucking Tom Gordon, because no means no. We've already lost Dad to this stupid shit - do you really want to be next? Do you. What's so funny, douchebag?"
Flynn couldn't help it. He was laughing like a third-grader. "Tom Gordon isn't dead, you dope."
Jess hadn't yet unclenched her fists, but her brow furrowed in confusion, not rage. "He isn't?"
"No. I think he's playing for the Expos. Either that or the farm leagues."
"Wait. What's that Stephen King book then?"
"That's 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon', retard. I don't think he dies there either."
"No, no. What about the song they wrote about him? The Boss sings it!"
"That's Tom Joad. How much did you drink that night at Boston Garden - we snuck out of the house went to the Springsteen concert together, don't you remember?"
"That's right. I got wicked hammered, didn't I, Jimbo?" Jess had finally unclenched her fists.
Flynn smiled. "You sure did, sis."
"That was the summer before Dad died."
"Yeah."
"James?"
"Yeah, Jess?"
"Do you really think this thing killed him?"
Flynn paused. "You saw the body in the morgue. Did that look natural at all to you?"
Jess shuddered. "No."
"These guys are the first to give us an answer that's an answer, Jess, and not ten more questions."
"Yeah, but you gotta admit the answer they've offered us is a little fucked up, Jimbo."
"I don't argue with you there, sis."
"But you're going anyway."
"Yeah."
"They're still paying you, right?"
Flynn grinned. "They'd better, or else I'll go all seventh son of a seventh son on their asses!"
Jess laughed at this, then hugged her brother tightly, tears welling in her eyes. "Be careful, Jimbo."
Flynn kissed his sister on the forehead. "Don't worry. Tell Mom I had to run, okay? I wouldn't know what to say to her anyway."
"Go. I'll take of her. Just hurry back."
"I will. Don't worry."
"The more you say that, the more I do worry."
"Goodbye, Jess." Flynn headed for the back door of their Quincy home.
"Wait. Jimbo?"
"Yeah, sis?"
"So if you guys kill this thing, does that mean the Sox will finally win the World Series?"
"Not if their pitching still sucks."
Jess couldn't help but laugh. "Good luck, James."
Flynn left, and Jess stood in the kitchen and stared at the closed back door for what seemed like hours while she cried silently, until her reverie was broken by the doorbell. She dabbed at her wet, red eyes and went to answer the front door. It was a delivery man, holding a bouquet of flowers - expensive flowers.
"Flowers for Mrs. Francis Doyle Flynn. Are you her?"
"She's my mother."
"Ah. You looked a little young to be a missus, yourself."
Normally Jess knew how to take a compliment, but today she wasn't in the mood for flirting. "Do you know who sent these?"
"Sorry, miss. There's a card, though."
"Thanks."
"You all right, miss?" The delivery man couldn't help but notice Jess's puffy eyes and still moist cheeks.
"Yeah." She sniffled. "I'm okay. Thank you for asking. This arrangement, it's beautiful."
"I just deliver them. But I'll pass on the compliment. Have a good day."
Jess closed the front door and set the bouquet on the small table in the foyer as she reached for the card and opened it. It read:
"From an old friend."
So much for that. Well, Mom would appreciate them, Jess thought, picking up the flowers and walking them upstairs to her mother's bedroom. I wonder how many of her friends she remembers now, anyway.
Marie Anne Flynn, nee Shaughnessy, knew at once who had brought her the lovely cream and lipstick pink roses, interlaced with baby's breath, which her daughter brought into her room and set into a Lenox vase with a little water by the window. In all her years, only one person ever gave her flowers - her high school sweetheart, Artie Davis. The smell of fresh-cut roses cleared away Marie's dementia like a crisp breeze off Boston Harbor sweeps away the miasma of sweltering summer, if only for a brief spell, and she walked painlessly down the avenues of memory while the favorable winds held.
Marie smiled. Although she ended up marrying his best friend Frankie instead - the responsible one, who had a savings account and his own Ford Thunderbird by the time he turned sixteen - Marie remained close to her first boyfriend. Artie was such a romantic. He liked to call himself her Lancelot, and her his Guinevere; if Frankie had been any more of a reader, he probably would have been a little more jealous. But he and Artie were buddies. It never occurred to him that his best friend would have the audacity to pursue his wife right under his nose.
"You like those, Mum?" Jess asked with a bright voice. Marie burbled happily, and Jess smiled, opening the bedroom window curtain to let the sunlight stream in.
Although Marie and Artie shared their first kiss together, she gave herself completely only to her husband, until a day like this, almost thirty years ago. After seven children - her daughter Jessica and six handsome, strong sons - Marie let herself be seduced at last by her dashing Lancelot, making love to him in this very bed, the windows open, the sunlight on their naked bodies, a beautiful bouquet of roses on the sill. Miracle of miracles, all the children were out of the house, getting sunburn in the cheap seats at Fenway Park for a doubleheader against the Orioles while their father sold hot dogs.
Marie never regretted that stolen afternoon, nor did she ever feel the need to tell her husband about her infidelity. As always, Artie was a perfect gentleman about the whole matter, remaining tender towards her afterwards but never presuming that their one moment together could or should be anything more than just that. Marie smiled at the memory of him, lying beside her. Sweet Lancelot.
In fact, he was so nice that when Marie realized that she was pregnant, she didn't feel the need to burden the aspiring mathematician with the responsibility of a baby. Little James would be her secret, one that she'd carry to the grave.

Fenway Park. There had been a game that evening, and the floodlights were still blazing away, attracting countless mosquitoes and massive seagulls wheeling in and out of the darkness. A solitary hot dog wrapper rode a friendly thermal and danced a spiral three hundred feet over home plate. Flynn paid it no attention and scowled instead at the scoreboard, which told the sorry tale of the Sox's performance earlier.
He'd missed the game, calling in sick again so that he could prepare for this showdown. He wondered if the boys in the front office knew about what was going to transpire here tonight, when the hour of midnight came. They must know. Why else would they have allowed this motley crew of professional ghost chasers take over the ballpark after the last fan had filed out? Groundskeeping had been given an early night off, with pay, so Flynn was certain that money had changed hands between Yawkey Way and M.I.T.'s mysterious Department of Alchemy.
The real question was who had paid whom. Flynn knew only too well how desperate the owners had become to shake off an eighty-five year slump. After a long winless stewardship by the Yawkey Trust, the team passed into the hands of a committee of businessmen who immediately declared war on the Bambino's Curse, only to find that their quarry was far more elusive and insidious than they'd ever imagined. And then some. All the money and marquee players couldn't reverse the Red Sox's predicament, the new owners learned quickly. No wonder they were letting groups like ICECOB camp out and chant all night - they were willing to try anything to reverse the Curse.
Even this.
The grand piano sat atop the pitcher's mound, slumping a little to the right. Although preserved for the better part of a century under water, just three days of exposure to the air had set into motion the process of disintegration. There would be nothing resembling a piano in a couple of days, Flynn reckoned, just some ivory keys and a skeleton of wires.
Tending the piano was Father Joao Mendoza, a Catholic priest from the predominantly Portuguese Fall River diocese on Massachusetts' southern coast. "Former Catholic Priest! As in no longer!" he hissed when Davis introduced him to Flynn. The good father's inborn talents at combating the minions of Satan - including an exorcism of a seven year old immigrant girl from the Azores that made the headlines in the tabloids and was made into a very successful miniseries on television - at the parochial level attracted the attention of the Vatican.
In no time at all, Joao was snapped up by the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faithful and trained to be a latter-day Inquisitor, where he combined natural aptitude with the accumulated occult knowledge of the past twenty centuries. Father Mendoza was the Inquisition's most fearsome holy warrior, traveling the globe at the Supreme Pontiff's command, joining battle with demons, ghosts, witches, faerie folk, and every once in a while the Devil himself.
Then came the child molestation scandals. At first, Father Mendoza like many Catholics assumed that these reports were isolated incidents of priests who badly needed help. But when the cases began to multiply, and evidence of wrongdoing by the Holy See began to mount, he used what authority he had garnered over the past thirty years as Inquisitor to see the official Church records for himself. For one night he set aside the task of fighting the Vatican's enemies abroad and learned to his horror that her greatest and most twisted adversary was his brethren within.
He left the Church the next morning, formally renouncing his priestly vows, and started an autocephalous parish of equally-disgusted Catholics in his old neighborhood in Fall River. The Church of course decried this action, but fearing Father Mendoza's power, chose to leave him and his flock of dissidents alone.
Nor did the Vatican try to stop the former Inquisitor from operating as a freelance exorcist. Father Mendoza had sensed early on that there was something evil lingering over the beleaguered Red Sox, which lead to those annual blessings at Fenway Park and later, the formation of ICECOB. However, he always considered the matter to be a trivial one, a kind of supernatural hobby to toy around with when he wasn't fighting evil with a capital 'E', until the year that a group of Wiccans from Salem got a hold of - using the Internet, naturally, a Satanic invention if there ever was one - an ancient Etruscan exorcism spell inscribed on a metal tablet uncovered in the Italian necropolis of Cerveteri which actually worked and attempted to use it to reverse the Curse.
The results were disastrous. One witch had died of cardiac arrest, and the remainder of the coven was driven permanently insane, all of them kept in solitary confinement at MacLean Hospital to this day. Father Mendoza had been able to interview the most lucid of the survivors, and when he learned that Etruscan magic - the most powerful form of mortal sorcery, even though pagan in nature - had failed to dislodge the entity, he realized that this was no mere haunting.
Frantic, the good father attempted to disband ICECOB, lest another similar incident occur, but as the group had been becoming more and more of an event and less a ritual, no one on the current Steering Committee took him seriously. Fine. If he couldn't persuade people to leave this demon well enough alone, he'd just have to find allies who knew what was as stake, and end this Curse once for all.
Father Mendoza sprinkled holy water on the grand piano's already-swollen wood. The water had been collected from a spring in his native Azores which lay nestled in the bosom of a dormant volcano, and was said to have miraculous curative powers even before being blessed by a priest - properties that he had verified to be true as an agent of the Inquisition. Joao had kegs of the water shipped regularly to his home in Fall River, the gunpowder of his spiritual arsenal.
Already he had traced a seven-fold counterclockwise circle around the infield. This demon was strong, perhaps the most powerful entity Father Mendoza had faced, but at midnight the unbroken line would become an uncrossable barrier even it would not be able to cross, at least for the hour. Amateurs made their binding circles with sand, salt, or some other easily disturbed powder - all a trapped supernatural creature had to do was stand at the perimeter and blow, and the would-be exorcist suddenly became helpless prey.
He glanced towards home plate at his allies. A couple of them - amicable Professor Davis and that infuriating Johnston, who had persisted in teaching those classes on evil and the occult to countless M.I.T. undergraduates despite his official protests to the Administration and secret warnings to the doctor about imparting forbidden knowledge to the uninitiated - he knew from his work as a freelance exorcist. The learned Gregor Ycpia, however, he only had known by reputation until recently. A godless atheist of the Soviet mold, Dr. Ycpia's work nevertheless was studied religiously by the Inquisition, as his thoughts about the intersection of nature with what he called 'supernature' proved invaluable in solving some of the most ancient mysteries which had defied the Church's scholars and theologians for two thousand years.
Father Mendoza nodded at the battery of spectral photographers who would document this historic exorcism. They too were mercenaries in this business, and he and they had worked together many times before. One of the photographers looked up from his eyepiece and waved.
Owing to the special danger of this operation, the cameramen would record the particulars by remote control, safely ensconced behind the binding circle in a mobile home on Yawkey Way that had been modified to serve as the Department of Alchemy's field headquarters. Professors Davis, Johnston, and Ycpia would remain there as well, while Joao performed the ritual with the help of the heavily-armed Yuri - who had been an officer in the Russian Army's Special Forces before Ycpia hired him as a bodyguard to protect him from deranged doomsday cultists in Moscow - and the Scion, who was standing on home plate with what appeared to be a violin case strapped over his shoulder.
Father Mendoza looked Flynn over. Despite Art Davis' assurances about the boy's giant-killing lineage, the former Inquisitor had his doubts. There was something not quite right about this Scion.
Flynn noticed that the priest was staring at him. Already nervous, he strode up towards Father Mendoza and the waterlogged piano, forcing as broad a grin as his facial muscles could bear. "How's everything, padre? Are we finally gonna have a winning season when we're done here tonight?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"A lot of things, Senhor Flynn. Exorcisms aren't like having your tonsils taken out. There are always surprises, and any one of them could throw the ritual off and put us in jeopardy, if we're not careful."
Flynn had come to the mound looking for reassurance, and wouldn't be that easily deterred. "But Uncle Lucky said that you were the best, right?"
"Sim," Joao agreed, not out of pride but knowledge of the fact.
"And we've got the piano."
"Sim."
"And this crew is top-notch. They certainly seem to know what they're doing."
"Sim, Senhor Flynn. All of this is true."
"So I'm the weak link, then." Flynn was no fool, he could read the uncertainty in the priest's eyes when he met his case. "You don't think I'm up to the job, do you?"
Father Mendoza hastened to explain himself. "That is not what I said."
"But it's what you believe."
Joao sighed. "Forgive me if I have given you that impression, Senhor Flynn. This is no typical exorcism. The demon we are about to rouse is the most powerful any of us have ever encountered, so even under perfect circumstances we would find ourselves in for a fierce battle."
"Well you don't have to worry about me, padre. I'll stand my ground - just tell me what to do and it will get done."
"I have no doubt of that, my child." Father Mendoza clasped Flynn by the shoulder. "Prepare yourself now. It is time."

Doctors Ycpia, Davis, and Johnston had retired to the mobile headquarters, along with the spectral photographers and a few graduate students who worked as the department's technicians. On a hundred monitors, some tuned to visible light, others the far ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, still others specially rigged to detect unearthly emanations not found in any normal physics textbook, even at M.I.T., they watched the infield of Fenway Park. The technicians verified the operation of the equipment and patched an audio connection between the R.V. and the trio who would face the Bambino when the hour of midnight struck.
Yuri was checking that his beloved Kalashnikov had a fresh clip of the correct ammunition. The Department of Materials Science had cast for him a special alloy of wolfram and silver that had been sanctified in one of the Russian Orthodox monasteries on the peninsular retreat of Mount Athos in Greece. The resultant bullets were able to harm any supernatural entity, yet still could kill a mortal man if need be. Yuri grinned as the magazine snapped into the base of the rifle. He had a few other tricks up his sleeve for this "base ball" demon, should the priest and the hot dog man fail.
Flynn and Father Mendoza remained at the pitcher's mound with the piano. It was ten minutes until midnight. The priest issued his final instructions, which were carried back to the mobile headquarters over the audio link.
"I will start by casting the spell of binding, which will cage the fiend when we summon it. Then I will begin the exorcism ritual proper. With your help, Senhor Flynn, we will summon this Curse and force it to assume a corporeal form. This should weaken it significantly and make it more vulnerable, but it also exposes us to risk as well. The demon will attempt to confuse us during this period, and may assume the guise of people we know to elicit our sympathy. Do not be fooled!
"It is also of the utmost importance that you maintain physical contact with me and the piano once the exorcism begins. I will need the essence of the demon in order to complete the ritual that will destroy it, and you are the best conduit for that. Again, the beast will attempt to break this link, either by guile or, failing that, by force.
"You have seen with your own eyes what this creature is capable of. If it attacks, the urge to break the link and run will be overwhelming. You must resist. Yuri is here to defend us. Remember that. He is a cold-blooded killer, but he is good at it, and that is all that matters right now.
"Now. Are you ready, Senhor Flynn? Midnight approaches."
Flynn gulped, then nodded.
"Good. Are you hearing us clearly, Gregor?"
The Ukrainian's voice crackled over Fenway Park's loudspeaker, rattling through the empty bleachers and echoing along the imposing left-field wall known as the Green Monster.
"Yes."
"With your permission, I will now begin the binding ritual."
"Proceed."
Father Mendoza produced a large wooden crucifix onto which the Stations of the Cross had been carved in miniature. Flynn marveled at the craftsmanship, even as he tried desperately to keep breathing and not soil his pants. As the former Inquisitor began to chant in Latin, Flynn, who had served as an altar boy for his parish before devoting his Sundays to the Olde Towne Team, recognized a word here and there - power, glory, Satan, God, mercy, righteousness, and power once more for good measure. Then the priest gesticulated with his cross and fell silent, just as the stadium's digital clock flashed 12 o'clock.
"It is done."
Flynn had expected something a little more flashy - a humming, shimmering something, like what he always saw in the movies or on television - but everything was the same as before. The padre looked satisfied, however.
Then Flynn noticed the cameras. When the ritual had been completed, those devices set to record emanations beyond the normal pale of light, X-rays, and radio waves began to beep, whirr, and snap away. The thought that something had in fact changed made the hairs on the back of Flynn’s neck stand on end, or was that the something itself?
"Proceed with the summoning spell," Dr. Ycpia's disembodied voice commanded. Father Mendoza nodded to this invisible presence and turned to face Flynn.
"Give me your left hand, child, and place your right on the top of the piano. Remember, once I begin the spell, you must not break your contact with either me or the piano. Do you understand?"
Flynn croaked an affirmative response and gave the priest his hand, while he extended his other arm and planted his right palm onto the cover of the grand piano. He could actually feel the moist, rotten wood yield beneath his fingertips. The sensation made him even queasier than he already was.
He took a deep breath as Father Mendoza began to call forth the Curse from wherever it was hiding. Keeping one eye on the cameras, Flynn waited for it to appear, the murderer of the dreams of millions of New Englanders over a century.
The murderer of his father.
But something was wrong, Flynn could see it on the priest's face. As he neared the end of another round of chanting and waving the cross, Father Mendoza's Latin grew louder and angrier - as if trying to taunt the demon into revealing itself - until he finished the spell with a spittle-flecked shout that reverberated into the grandstands.
Nothing.
"Something is wrong, Gregor," Joao said, his dark Portuguese brow furrowed. "Are you registering any activity on your instruments?"
"No."
"I will attempt the spell again. Perhaps I mispronounced a syllable, though I doubt it."
"Proceed."
Father Mendoza inhaled and exhaled deeply, then attempted a smile for Flynn's benefit before beginning the summoning a second time. His Latin was flawless again, as were his accompanying gestures; nevertheless, the outcome was the same as last time.
Nothing.
"Still reading nothing, Gregor?"
"Nichevo."
"I do not understand what's going on here. If the demon is out there - anywhere out there - it has no choice but to obey this summons. The only way it could be avoiding the enchantment is if..."
Father Mendoza fell silent. Flynn glanced over at him, saw that the priest's gaze was riveted on a figure approaching the binding circle separating the infield from the outfield. It was Art Davis.
Flynn laughed. "Uncle Lucky, what are you doing out here? Thought you'd lend a hand?"
Father Mendoza cursed in Portuguese - or was it Latin? - then said, in a bloodless voice that sank Flynn's heart sunk into the deepest reaches of his innards:
"That is not Senhor Davis."
Art Davis smiled. "Sure about that, Inquisitor?"
A panicked shadow crossed Joao's face as he looked at the apparition, then Flynn, then Yuri, who was cocked and loaded and in position ready in the home team dugout.
"Gregor."
"Da."
"Is Professor Davis in the mobile unit with you?"
A pause, then a whisper.
"Nyet."
Art Davis laughed, and stepped across the binding circle. Father Mendoza gasped.
"Oh, yes. Forgot to tell you, Joe, we were all out of your special holy water, so I substituted some Poland Spring. That's not going to affect the ritual, is it?"
"Jesu Christo."
"I don't think he's coming tonight, Joe."
This was too much for Flynn to process. "What the hell is going on?"
Father Mendoza eyed Professor Davis warily as he circled the pitcher's mound deliberately in a long, slow spiral.
"It's your uncle. Art Davis. He's the demon. That's why the summoning spell failed - he was already corporeal. He's been in human form for decades.
"I can't believe it, all of those years, and he was right here, right under our noses. Watching. Plotting. Guarding."
Flynn laughed nervously. "You're shittin' me, right? Uncle Lucky..."
Art Davis shrugged. "Sorry, son. The padre's hit the nail on the head, not that it'll do him any good at this point. It took a lot of finesse to set this trap, and I don't think I've left anything to chance tonight--"
"Enough!" Gregor Ycpia's voice boomed over the public address system. "Take him, Yuri!"
A spray of gunfire erupted from the Red Sox dugout, and a nicely-clustered salvo hit Professor Davis square in the chest. He registered the impact with a gleeful cackle.
"When in doubt, wear Kevlar." He fixed the duo on the mound with a deranged grin. "And now Yuri will take the head shot..."
They could see the muzzle flash, hear the bullets whiz, then stop in midair. "...poor, predictable Yuri. Had he taken the sure thing first, he might have given me a nasty flesh wound..."
The hail of bullets suddenly reversed direction, spraying the dugout with friendly fire. There was a groan of pain from the dark recess, then a sickening thud followed by silence.
"...and if he'd worn a bulletproof vest himself, he might still be standing right now. He's a good worker, Gregor, but dumb as a post. I told you that you could do better, but you Russians were always a stubborn bunch."
"Go to Hell!" the Ukrainian spat.
"Oh, I'm going - and I'm taking all of you along with me for the ride. Gotta tie up those loose ends, you know!"
Father Mendoza grimaced. "You've been planning this showdown all along, haven't you? Gather the opposition and deal with them once and for all."
"You have to admit it's a lot easier than killing you one by one." Davis stared at Flynn. "Although that approach has its charms, as well, eh, Flynnie?"
"You fuckin' murderer!" Flynn yelled, and stirred to charge this thing that had masqueraded as his father's friend.
"Stand still, Senhor Flynn! Do not break the link!"
The demon smiled a toothy grin slightly wider than physically possible, contorting Uncle Lucky's face to accommodate the unearthly rictus. "That's right, boyo. Don't want to lose contact." He paced within arm's reach of Flynn, taunting him. "After all, you're the Scion. Seventh son of a seventh son, born to the greatest family of demon killers to walk the earth.
"Oh, I've tussled with the Flynns before. Hang around a few billion years and see who you don't run into! I remember a Seamus Flynn who gave me a good drubbing back in the Dark Ages. This guy didn't need spectral photography and a goddamned pinko commie head shrinker with a hundred degrees up his keister to come after me. He just came after me. That's what Flynns do, you see.
"Your grandpappy came after me, oh yes he did. He was fresh off the boat, and he knew exactly what I was when he first laid eyes on me, taking batting practice at the Huntington Avenue Fairgrounds. He couldn't kill me, but he managed to drive me out of Boston. Son of a bitch had a whole battalion of altar boys on his side. They believed a little more back then, the Catholics, back before getting a little underaged tail became their reason for getting out of bed in the morning, eh, padre? Needless to say, I wasn't welcome in ol' Beantown anymore, so I pulled a few strings and got myself traded for a song. The rest, they say, was history."
"Bullshit," Flynn stammered, in a failing attempt to convince himself that what he now heard was not the truth. "Bull-fucking-shit."
"Oh, don't look so surprised! Or didn't Grandpa fill you in on that crucial tidbit of family history - that the Curse was his doing? I was more than happy to make Boston my home, and Fenway Park the throne of a dynasty that would have put the Bronx Bombers to shame. But you didn't want it! Even back then, the Red Sox Nation's love for suffering eclipsed everything. I gave you happiness in the form of a baseball messiah, and all you could do was cast me out so you could bitch about it for the next thousand years."
Art Davis continued to circle the piano and the two would-be exorcists, his corporeal form now rippling with demonic potential. Father Mendoza attempted to shut out the beast's tirade with a desperate muttering prayer, but Flynn listened and tried to resist:
"I... I don't believe you."
The demon cocked an eyebrow clear off his human face. "A little spirit in the face of certain death - I like that. Your old man had that kind of dumb moxie, brimming with the blood of warriors but raised without a clue as to how to channel it. All I had to do is keep close - staying away from Grandpa, of course, until he was so far gone I could have appeared to him in all my incomprehensible splendor and he wouldn't have batted an eye - and fill your dad’s head with all the wrong ideas until he didn’t know which way was up."
Something resembling remorse swept over the demon's face. "Poor guy. Can you believe I actually liked him? He was nothing but good to me, which is actually rarer than you think in this world."
"Sure," Flynn shouted, livid. "You must have loved my father an awful lot to tear him to pieces!"
Art Davis snapped. "If Frankie could have left that goddamned piano alone, none of this would have happened! The one idea I didn't put into his walnut-sized brain, and he had to go and run with it. Of course I knew he didn't have a clue as to what he was doing, but someone who did would inevitably get wind of the search. Believe it or not, sonny boy, killing your father wasn't part of my plan..."
At that the monster's smile grew even wider and more impossible, and Flynn swore he could see Davis lick his lips before saying what came out of his unnatural mouth next:
"...although fucking your mother was!"
The bottom fell out of Flynn's world when the import of those five words registered. The revelation jarred Father Mendoza out of his shell-shocked mantra as well. "My God," he whispered, his olive complexion suddenly gone white as a hospital bedsheet.
"Fuck you!" Flynn cried out. He wrested against the priest's viselike grip to haul off and pound his tormentor, demon or no demon, but controlled himself at the last second, as the thing continued its incitement.
"That's exactly what she did, Flynnie - fuck me. Your mother wanted it so bad, she practically begged me for it. So I obliged. Give Frankie credit where credit's due, but after a daughter and six sons he wasn't much of a Casanova anymore, you know what I'm saying?"
"Stop it," Flynn whimpered. "Shut the fuck up..."
"Oh, your mother was so delicious that afternoon. I'd made sure that the time of the moon was right, and her egg was right there in the Fallopian tube for the intercepting, but it wasn't all about business, son. Can I call you 'son'? Because you sure as hell aren't a Flynn, seventh son of a seventh son. No, I saw to that. But can I tell you something now that we're all out in the open here, my boy, just between father and son? Your mom was one sweet piece of ass."
Flynn lost it. Wrenching his left hand from Joao's grasp and his right from the piano, he lunged at Davis, both fists flying.
"Noooooooooo!" Father Mendoza screamed. But it was too late.
The demon laughed at his offspring's attack, taking a sock to the jaw like a father tussling with a newborn baby. Davis brushed the boy aside and moving effortlessly towards the priest, who was frantically reaching for his mammoth wooden cross, and snapped his neck. Joao slumped lifelessly onto the dirt of the pitcher's mound, front side up. His face was a frozen mask of horror, upturned to the floodlights, the circling gulls, and the washed-out stars.
"So long, Joe." Davis turned back towards his son. "Don't feel too bad, Flynnie. He wouldn't have had a chance anyway, even if you'd stood your ground. You just put the padre out of his misery a little sooner than I would have.
"Speaking of which, you might want to close your eyes for this next part. I promise to make it quick and painless - it's the least I can do for my own flesh and blood."
Davis chortled and moved in for the kill; Flynn, eyes wide open could do nothing but watch the demon approach.
Suddenly there was a cry from the home team's dugout, followed by the flash of a muzzle and the sound of gunfire. Whap! Whap! Whap! Yuri didn't take any chances this time around, as three hollow-pointed bullets of wolfram and silver slammed into Davis' head, blowing it apart in a shower of brain and putrescent ichor.
The beast crumpled down onto its knees in the infield, howling half through what was left of its human mouth, half through those myriad microscopic mouths that comprised its true nature.
Flynn just stood there.
"Run!" Yuri cried out. "Iz only stunned."
Flynn tried to move, but his legs felt like lead. He looked back over at what was once his Uncle Lucky, now a hideous tangle of human flesh and feathery tentacles.
Yuri sprayed the demon again with his Kalashnikov, leaving the machinegun on automatic until he'd emptied the mystical clip of ammunition. The beast writhed and screamed as it shed itself of its human husk entirely and began to surge outward with its long spiral arms. The mercenary charged the pitcher's mound and grabbed Flynn by his shoulders.
"Stupid hot dog man! You must run now."
Flynn blinked at the Russian. Yuri smacked him across the face, hard. That got his attention. He stared at the swirling demonic form just to their right and at last the urge to flee returned to his lower body, filling his entire frame with adrenaline and fear.
He ran, not even looking back to see if Yuri was still with him. Out of the infield, into the Red Sox dugout, down the stairs, into the clubhouse, through a side door leading to the main concourse that ringed the park and opened onto Yawkey Way and Landsdown Street. He ran past the shuttered concession booths for beer, pretzels, steak tip sandwiches, hot dogs, Chinese food; past the kiosks that hawked baseball caps, t-shirts, souvenir pennants; past the foul-smelling entrances to the lavatories, which stank even when scoured with bleach; past the ramps that lead back into the bright lights of the playing field, where Flynn could hear what he imagined were Yuri's death screams over the howling of the beast.
He tried the Gate A exit, where the R.V. headquarters had parked. The metal gates were locked, and Flynn's heart sank when he saw that Ycpia and Johnston had turned tail and fled. Fuckers. He rattled the chains and the metal bars impotently before running to the next gate with a yell. Gate B, Gate C, Gate D, all held just as fast as the last. He was locked in Fenway Park with this thing that claimed to be his father, who once he was done with the crazy Russian would surely chase him down to finish the job. What a way to go.
Flynn leaned against the nearest support column to catch his breath and remembered suddenly what he'd strapped to his back before leaving home that morning as it now poked into his spine uncomfortably. He unslung the case from over his shoulder, opening it with trembling fingers to reveal the swaddled treasure within.
He unwrapped the protective shroud; a baseball bat gleamed in the darkness. No, not a baseball bat, Flynn thought to himself, feeling its heft. A weapon. If he was going to die tonight, and Fenway Park was to be his tomb, by God he was going to go down swinging.

Grandpa Flynnie had been no fool. Well aware that he'd only won the battle, and not the war, he had kept a watchful eye over Fenway Park and the family line, preparing for the inevitable final showdown between man and demon. He suspected that the Bambino was working his dark magics on the Red Sox from afar, and did his utmost to combat them when he could, although as his health and then his mind began to falter, he had to pick and choose his battles.
So when his son Francis fell in with bad company - in the guise of Art Davis, who thought he was being so clever by playing hide and seek with his old nemesis - although Grandpa could smell the demon's influence, he did not provoke an open conflict. Too much was on the line. An old coot like himself wouldn't last a minute against the beast, nor would his son, who despite his lineage lacked a warrior’s spirit.
No, the culmination of this fight lay in the future - this much Grandpa Flynn could divine. What he didn't see coming was the end of the family line, a maneuver that the Flynn patriarch had to concede to the demon’s cunning. After centuries of stalemate in the arena of physical combat, getting close and wiping out the Flynns with a single misguided act of love was a bit of brilliance, one that called for an equally clever response.
Fortunately Grandpa Flynn was up to the challenge.
Even though he knew the child was an incubus, even though he could feel the demonic energy like a wicked case of static electricity when he tousled the boy's hair, even though when he looked into those baby blue eyes he knew he was looking into the eyes of the Adversary and the end of his clan, Grandpa Flynn chose to love little James as if he were in fact that seventh grandson. Join hate with love, he thought, and let’s see who's left standing in the end.
Grandpa's greatest act of bravery would be the faith he entrusted to this demon child the family raised as its own, completely unaware of what James was. It pained him to abandon his own son Francis to his fate, but it was the only way to fool the demon into thinking it had triumphed in this chess match of Fate. Only long after his own death would the beast learn of Grandpa Flynn's final gambit; but it was in the end up to the boy, and the boy alone.
Well, not entirely the boy. Grandpa had one last trick left up his sleeve, a parting gift he left for his grandson in name and spirit - if not in blood - to aid him in his hour of need. In the old country they called it a Shillelagh, and it was the traditional weapon of Celtic warriors for millennia. The Flynns had mastered not only the art of crafting such war clubs, but also the considerably more difficult skill of enchanting them as well, for the purpose of fighting far more potent foes than rival clansmen.
This particular Shillelagh wasn't made from the traditional oak or ash, however, but crafted from a baseball bat - a very special bat. Flynn took a practice swing with the enchanted club and felt the wood sing to him. His muscles rippled strangely, crackling with latent demonic energies. Despite the fact he still thought he faced certain death, an inexplicable sense of exuberance coursed through his blood.
James had discovered it on his twenty-first birthday, a year to the day after his father had turned up dead in that half-frozen pond. While moving a bunch of old boxes around in the basement that hadn't been touched since Grandpa had originally put them there, decades ago, he had found the strange instrument case covered with mildew and must. Inside the case was this bat, with a letter written in Grandpa's hand that was addressed to him!
The note told him where this bat had come from, and why Grandpa had seen not to pass it as an heirloom to his son Francis, Flynn's father. Francis had a gambling problem, his grandfather's dead hand revealed to Flynn, and who knows what he'd do with such a priceless artifact, should he start betting over his head again.
"Keep this bat safe, Jimmy - you will know when it's time to use it." Until this very day, Flynn did not understand what his Grandpa had been talking about. “Use it?” What would he use a baseball bat for anyway, except a little home run derby? Although he had felt compelled to bring it along with him for this final showdown, until this very moment, he didn't realize what he was supposed to do with this...
Shillelagh. He hadn't heard that word since he was a little kid on St. Patrick's Day, but now it rolled off the tongue. That's what he held in his own two hands, his own two not-entirely-human hands. A Shillelagh.
At last Flynn realized and understood. With a laugh, he strode up the nearest ramp back towards the infield of Fenway Park, gaining strength with every step he took.
It was time to do battle.

In a voice that was not entirely his own, James Michael Flynn called the Curse of the Bambino by its name - its true name, which Grandpa Flynn had burned into the wood of the baseball bat many years ago. The demon heard and coalesced back into human form with an angry roar, this time into the likeness of the Babe himself.
Flynn trembled at the sight of George Herman Ruth appearing before him seemingly out of nowhere - in Yankee pinstripes, he couldn't help but notice - in between him and the piano still atop the pitcher's mound. Yuri was nowhere to be found - Flynn didn't have time to speculate as to whether this was a good or bad thing, but instead gripped the bat tightly and stood his ground.
"You should have run when you had the chance, son. You may know my name, but that won't keep me from tearing you limb from limb!" The Babe spoke with the voice of Art Davis, but neither guise fooled Flynn now. He knew what this thing was, could smell its fear as if it were his own. Its threats were empty now.
Flynn took a step forward.
"The piano won't help you now, boyo. You and the padre drained it dry, exorcism or no exorcism. Might as well throw in the towel now, and maybe I'll even spare you."
Flynn took another step and raised his Shillelagh. The Babe's eyes widened in horror.
"What... Where... How?"
Flynn smiled. "You remember your old bat, don't you, Dad? The first bat you used playing for the Red Sox? Well, Grandpa Flynn thought you might like it back someday."
Now the Babe could sense the Shillelagh's presence, hear the cursed wood sing a song of betrayal and vengeance. He could feel his son's strength waxing and his own waning as Flynn closed the distance between them, bristling with demonic essence.
Damn that old coot - Grandpa Flynn had checkmated him after all, snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat. So this is how eternity would end.
"Jimbo," he pleaded, his voice - the voice of Uncle Lucky - cracked and waivering. "Don't. I'll lift the Curse, get out of town for good, anything. I swear. Just don't kill me. Please, son."
Flynn said nothing, only pointed his weapon at the newly-installed bleachers atop the fabled Green Monster, which yawned over left field. He was calling his shot, the demon realized with an unearthly shudder. Just like he had, all those years ago.
Flynn swung the bat; the Babe screamed.

A month later, Flynn hefted his steamer trunk up and down the infield grandstand seats, selling hot dogs as he had for years before, and would for years to come. It was a good day for baseball, sunny but not too hot for a late summer's afternoon. It was a good time to be a Sox fan, as well - having snapped their seven-game losing streak, the Olde Towne Team had gone on to win twenty-seven in a row, a new Major League record, and were three outs short of winning number twenty-eight.
Sports pundits couldn't quite put their fingers on it, but things just seemed to be breaking the Sox way these days, as if a breath of fresh air had blown through Fenway Park and cleaned out the cobwebs of gloom and doom. As the postseason approached, and spirits were at an all-time for both players and fans, no one however was so foolhardy as to declare the Curse to be dead and buried.
Nobody but one, that was. Flynn smiled as he looked out over the infield towards the Green Monster, which was bright as an unbroken promise in the early afternoon sunshine.
It was going to be a season for the record books, he thought. Red Sox Nation was owed as much, after close to a hundred years of pain and suffering. And Flynn would see to it, at least for this season.
After that, they were just going to have to break down and do something about their pitching.