Years ago, my early twenties I lived for a spell in Bristol, and it was there that i accidentally started collecting amulets and magical objects.
Bristol is a harbour city that’s evolved over centuries along the wide tidal estuary of the Bristol Channel. With the channel deep enough for the tall masted merchant ships, for generations they sailed in to dock there with everything from kidnapped human slaves to Chinese Porcelain.
Sometimes an Atlantic fog rolls in on the tide and up through the harbour into the narrow cobbled city streets, a cold thick mist that tastes of mud, pitch tar, and seasalt.
living in Bristol I always had about three jobs to make ends meet. One of these jobs was behind the bar of The Cadbury House; an old pub with wooden floors, low ceilings and a fireplace. Cosy and busy but also a bit of a dive. This was before Bristol got ‘gentrified’. When Stokes Croft was still full of crusty hippies and crack heads, and massage parlours with neon signs blinking above boarded up security doors.
it was a specially grim November night with the wind lashing ropes of rain against the windows when one of the regulars came in looking like a scene from a cheap film noir. Totally wrapped in an old fashioned long winter coat, hat and scarf, soaking wet and wild eyed. He squeezed up to the bar and was gesturing for me to come out and speak with him somewhere quiet, away from the rabble of drinkers.
I followed him out to the passage by the door where he stopped, glanced around, and whispered ‘i’ve got these things’ – and started digging out all these little bags and bundles from his pockets and inside his coat, – and handing them to me as fast as he could.
‘ Can you take them? Please take them, I don’t want any of this stuff any more, I don’t mind if you chuck it away or keep it, but I don’t want anything to do with it any more, will you take it?’
– and it was all this stuff like an eye of Horus amulet, a penknife, random Runes, anointing oil, a handmade Pentagram, bags of dead spiders, bits of feather, pins, and a smokey ball of crystal on a dragon footed stand.
He’d frightened himself somehow, i mean really frightened himself, but he didn’t seem to want to go into it, just that he needed me to take this stuff away from him, preferably as quickly as possible.
I’m not sure why he’d picked me for the dubious honor… I think the subject of magic or witchcraft must’ve come up before on one of those long quiet day shifts at the bar when you just chit-chat with the regulars to try to pass the hours .
He was a nice guy, soft spoken and very gentle, but I don’t think we saw much of him after that. It was such a strange night. Once the wind and rain died down a thick fog drifted up from river so you could barely see ten feet in front of you. I remember walking home from work in the quiet small hours after midnight, trying not to get spooked, with all these strange things weighing down the pockets of my coat.
Somehow i ended up keeping the Crystal ball on the dragon stand for years before eventually passing it on, but it was always just stashed away in a box somewhere or at the back of a cupboard. I have to admit – I never did feel much like staring into it.