The Hermit's Fortune

Stanley Bosko’s house is made up of normal things, but thrown together it all seems just a little bit removed from reality. Returning has felt like walking into a place frozen in time while also falling headfirst into one of those I Spy books from my childhood.

The five hundred some-odd tobacco pipes on display in front of me merely enhance that sense of unreality. I was already sweaty from rushing up the hill to get to the house early, and now I’m also sneezy from arranging the front portion of the attic for the appraiser to access. The same appraiser who just cancelled abruptly, with no mention of rescheduling.

A strangled meow and crash from the back of the attic is the distraction I need. Order in this house feels entirely dissonant and having to navigate piles of books to investigate the commotion makes things feel chaotically correct again.

Aidoneus, the black and russet tortoiseshell cat who has been avoiding me for three weeks, peers up at me expectantly. He knocked over a pile of photo albums and his claw is caught in the ribbon bookmark of a small black leather-bound journal. I kneel on the floor and free his claw.

Stanley always kept notebooks on him and was very private about them. He’d scribble down just about any thought he had, in shorthand, and leave me notes in a scrawl I could barely decipher. The content of this notebook is no different.

Quickly flipping through the sketches and notes, I’m about to close it when a mark catches my eye. It’s an ink stamp of a plant with serrated teardrop-shaped leaves and small clusters of flowers. There’s a symbol under it in the same shorthand, darker than the rest as though it had been written with a firmer penstroke. It looks like a long horizontal half music note.

I look over at the cat. “Are you hungry?”

He leaps past me, meowing chattily and bolts to the stairs, disappearing before I can even stand.

The dimly lit foyer still has all of Stanley’s personality: the wall over the stairs cramped with mismatched art, the ornate mirror above the cluttered console table, a baby animal calendar from ten years ago next to it.

By the time I reach the ground floor, Aidoneus is purring loudly at the foot of the stairs. He detours and darts down to the basement as I head through the wide arched doorway to the back hallway.

“Breakfast is this way, bud,” I call after him.

I click my tongue to beckon Aidoneus and hear a complainant meow. Something clatters. With a sigh, I flick on the lightswitch and descend the carpeted stairs.

“If you just came home with me, you could be having much more fun with your sister and Romulus,” I grumble, wondering if he’s bored without his nineteen former playmates or whether the empty house is a newfound playground for him.

I find him trying to catch a moth at the end of the room, which he pursues to the left down an aisle between bookcases.

He knocked a small picture frame off the wall, where now a discoloured rectangle remains in its absence. The picture isn’t broken, the cardboard boxes beneath it probably cushioned its landing before it slid to the middle of the floor.

I go to replace it but do a double-take at the art just above the empty space. It’s a framed drawing of the same plant stamped in Stanley’s journal.

I grab a dust cloth from a nearby cleaning bag and wipe off the glass. The text under the drawing reads: Mint Study; Catnip.

A meow behind me makes me jump. Aidoneus has slunk onto the top shelf of the bookcase behind me, with the moth in his mouth.

“I don’t want that, but thank you for catching it.”

He leaves it on the shelf and leaps down onto another cardboard box against the opposite wall, leaving me to tend to the insect myself.

I grimace and reach up to cover the moth with the dust cloth, but it sputters. An alarmed squeak leaves my mouth.

“You didn’t even kill it!” I complain, grabbing a glossy book off the shelf and dragging a small step stool over with my foot. I slam the book down onto the moth with a mercy Aidoneus hadn’t extended. I do it again for good measure, quickly collecting the moth and shaking it into the garbage bin before brushing off the book.

As I replace it on the shelf, I look over the titles of its neighbours. I spy a worn hardcover book with gold ink on the spine and a catnip stamp under the title.

Strength. I pull it out.

It’s not a book.

“Stanley, what is this?” I whisper, opening the false book box.

It’s full of twenty-dollar bills. I count them twice. The false book has one thousand dollars in it.

What else might Stanley have hidden on these shelves? I scan each worn spine for the catnip stamp, the anticipation making my heart thump hard in my chest.

A few shelves over I find another: Le Soleil. This time the thousand is made up of fifties.

An urgent tickle crawls up the back of my nose and I sneeze hard, my eyes watering. There’s a milk crate full of toy robots by the stairs that I upend and put the books in before rounding the corner to the next aisle.

The next title I find is Justice.

“Strength… Soleil, the sun?… Justice… that sounds familiar.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and search the titles.

Tarot cards. Seventy-eight cards to a deck; Twenty-two cards in the Major Arcana. Twenty-two cards. There must be nineteen more books. I put my phone away, getting on with my search.

I look over the next aisle of shelves twice before finding The Hierophant, and three aisles later, I eventually find La Luna.

Aidoneus is sitting pretty at the top of the stairs when I leave the basement. I’m so sneezy that I have to take a break. Aside from the eyesore of a paint job, radioactive green ceiling-to-floor, the kitchen is the cleanest room in the house. I blow my nose, take some antihistamines, and finally prepare the cat food the way Stanley showed me five years ago: kibble, wet food, warm water, then stir.

I head back to the attic after I give the cat his breakfast. I might have a harder time getting around with the piles of books on the floor, but compared to the six-shelf-high basement bookcases, the built-ins at the back of the space only have three shelves and the freestanding ones only have four.

Five years ago I made most of these piles, hauling books up here from the spare room in preparation for a visit from Stanley’s brother. My arms were mottled with bruises for a week. The brother cancelled last minute.

On my hands and knees, maneuvering over books and photo albums, I find The Emperor and La Haute Prêtresse near the window on the bottom and middle shelves at the far left of the attic. Aidoneus appears and starts rubbing my legs as soon as I find The Devil on the second-to-last shelf on the other side of the room.

I climb out and place the books aside, holding my hand out to the cat. He headbutts me and I scratch him behind the ears, breaking into a grin when he trills contentedly.

“Been a while since you let me do that,” I laugh, getting up to stretch before continuing my search.

I spy The Tower and Temperance on opposite ends of the middlest bookcase.

The tall ceilings on the second floor make it feel easier to breathe.

Stanley’s office is cluttered with odd figurines, tech and supplies he never used, and bookshelves full of many glossy softcover how-to books. The sense of childish glee I feel finding La Mort, The Empress, and The Chariot in close succession is incomparable. This is I Spy on X Mode.

On the bottom shelf under a two-tiered table holding paperweights and rude mugs full of pens, I pull aside a box of printer paper and find Les Amoureux.

Sweatier and grimier than when I began the day, I take a seat on the floor, leaning against a desk, and close my eyes. Stanley left so much shit behind and I still don’t know why he chose me. No contact for five years, though I tried, and then I learn he died during an extended stay in Belgium and requested me to take care of his house and cats. His strict, paranoid posthumous requests to let no one in uninvited and keep mum about what I’m doing here are no different than when he was alive. The compensation is well needed though and better than what he used to pay me.

Aidoneus gets in my lap and licks my nose. I turn my head away with a huff of laughter.

I spy it on a shelf hidden behind a telescope stand. The Magician.

Sick of the office, I leave the books by the stairs and go to the spare room at the very end of the narrow hall, next to the old servant’s staircase.

The bookshelves take up a single wall but are as tall as the ceilings, necessitating a library ladder. At the very top of the shelf, I spy The Star. The ladder protests with a metallic screech as I move it along its track, and I only climb up three rungs to reach the book. I toss it onto the bed and scan the shelves in view, finding The Hanged Man three shelves over on the right. I climb down and get on my hands and knees again, finding Judgement on one of the bottom shelves.

I’m about to take the books down to the kitchen when Aidoneus darts past me, doing a jump twist as he play-hunts sunbeams on the carpet and then scurries into Stanley’s bedroom.

It feels like a violation of privacy to go in. I’ve only entered once to clear out the mountain of stuffed animals he kept on his bed. Part of me is glad he didn’t die there.

A delicate ornament hangs in the window, scattering twinkling spots of light around the room. Aidoneus bats at it from the sill.

Built-in bookcases frame the plainly made bed, decorated with glass figurines that Stanley had specially made with the ashes of his deceased cats, shaped to appear as though they’re sleeping.

Behind one such figurine, I spy a catnip stamp on the spine of a large book.

I take off my shoes and climb onto the bed, gently moving two sleeping cats aside to get a better look.

The Hermit’s Fortune.

I take it down and sit in the middle of the bed. There are two thousand dollars inside. I lean back against the headboard.

On the squat little shelf directly across from me, I spy The Fool’s World. The same large size as the book in my hands.

Stanley must have kept these here as some kind of reminder for himself.

I get up and take it off the shelf, sitting on the edge of the bed to open it. There is only a note inside, thankfully legible.

Anyone who wants anything from me is barred from my house, so I must have invited you. If you found the rest of the Major Arcana you can keep the 20k. If I didn’t invite you, you’re richer today, but you will rot with me in Hell.

PS. I’d better be dead.

I’ll keep climbing that damn hill every day. I’ll take care of things exactly how he wanted. This doesn’t change anything for me, except it changes everything.

Aidoneus scratches at the window and meows.

And then the doorbell rings.

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— Rooney