Is There Really a July Christmas?

 (BUF, NY)

Christmas Case # 008

Seeing Is Believing

No Goal

Julius slumped down the walkway, his sack encumbering him to the point that he was nearly bent over, but he moved on somehow; he wasn’t sure why. He was tall and lanky; his face was gaunt and, in truth, a little goofy. It had just started to drizzle. In the dim light, his face was mysterious and strange like that of a peddler just opening his sack. Julius had been raised by gypsies, and when they had realized he had a knack for deception, they had nicknamed him Ju-LIE. He then had taken that nickname and turned it into a summery Christmas in July. The year was 1999.

July shivered; the small Buffalo suburb already seemed practically deserted. Perfect, July thought as the wind began to blow stiffly. Despite it being June, it was chilly out. July shuffled down a deserted alley, looking back to make sure no one was following. When he got to the back of the alley, a place where the sun never shone, he looked behind him again to make sure he was not followed, and then he opened the sack. As July sorted through odds and ends, there was an eerie green glow coming from the sack. After moving several power objects aside, July lifted a small cell flip phone out of the sack. He was careful that no one notice the cell phone; it would still be a few more years before cell phones were wildly popular with humans. July touched a few buttons. Quickly, going through his contact list, he dialed.

                There were a few rings and then the sound of someone crunching on something. It could have been potato chips but did not quite have the same crackle or crunch. It sounded more like bones or bugs. Is Bub snacking on bugs? July thought to himself.

                “Yeah,” said a voice on the other end; the voice was not annoyed, more indifferent.

                “I gotta change towns again,” July explained.

                “So,” said the voice, “you should be used to it by now.”

                “Bub, I don’t have any money,” July reasoned.

                “Sell one of your magical items,” said the voice, crunching on what July hoped was a chip. “Be resourceful and stop bothering me.”

                There was some more crunching that didn’t sound like potato chips.

                July sighed heavily, closed the phone, and hauled his heavy sack out of the alley. The sack felt like lead tonight. Why is the sack so heavy? he wondered. It normally isn’t this heavy.

                A teenager in a backwards baseball cap was passing, a sucker by any standard. However, July was not looking for suckers. “Hey, boy,” July said, his eyes looking like evil hypnotizing idols. “You got any money you gotta spend? I’ve got some really cool stuff.”

                An overprotective mother, who was just out of shouting distance, seemed to sense the conversation July had started and felt it her need to intercede.

                “Christopher,” she yelled. “Stop talking to that bum and get back to the car.” The boy shrugged at July’s sack and walked away; July knew it was checkmate. He moved on in the drizzle, stopping under an awning; there were still a few stragglers left before the town shut down for the evening.

                “Buy odds and ends, which are so odd they’ll magically make your ends meet.”

                The street was starting to clear out, but an odd man was lurking just beyond the streetlights, waiting for something. July thought he might be the one.

                “I got everything from love potions to lightning in a bottle,” July ranted to the emptying street.

                The odd man stepped forward; he was a factory worker. He had buck teeth and half a mustache smeared across his lower lip. “How much for the lightning in the bottle?”

                July studied the odd man. “What you want with lightning in a bottle?”

                “I’m gonna set me up a roadside attraction. Gonna charge a dollar a head,” the odd man explained.

                July didn’t say anything, just continued to study the man as if he were looking for some defining feature upon the lines in his face.

                “I don’t suppose you got anything better?” the odd man asked.

                July scratched his chin. “I think I got something that might interest you.” 

                As he opened his sack, particles swirled outward, and the odd part was, they seemed to glow like tiny fireflies. “I’ve a picture you might be interested in,” July explained while sorting through his possessions in the sack.

                “A picture,” the odd man exclaimed. “What I want with a picture?”

                “It’s the image that’s been captured,” explained July.

                July pulled a rather antique frame from the sack. It was silver and had odd rune engravings on it. Although the frame was polished, it looked extremely old, ancient even. The runes sort of looked like letters or symbols but were indecipherable.

As the man looked at the frame, he looked completely past the frame to the picture inside the frame. He could hardly believe what he was seeing.

“Hot damn, that’s some crazy shit,” the odd man exclaimed.

“You better believe it,” said July.

“Is that what I think it is?” the odd man questioned.

“Sure is,” July maintained.

“Can’t be,” the odd man insisted. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

“Buyer beware, the picture will change you,” the peddler named July Christmas warned.

“I had heard stories, but well, now, I’ll be, I just don’t believe it,” stated the man again.

He was practically salivating.

 What the odd man didn’t know was that the frame was magical, and anyone who looked at it saw the thing that he thought was most unbelievable. Sometimes the unbelievable thing was something that would come true and sometimes it wasn’t. In this case, the rather odd man saw a picture of Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster. He was a bit of a conspiracy theorist and obsessed with cryptozoology. So, to him the photograph was the most unbelievable thing he could see; it verified his life’s work. July knew later it would show something entirely different. The man licked his lips; July could see the odd man was all but sold. Now to put the finishing touches on the sale.

The odd man’s hand was already in his pocket, fingering his loose change and bills.

“How much?” the odd man almost demanded, as if he had a birthright to the picture frame.

“The first thing you need to understand,” July rambled, “is that the frame is an antique.”

The odd man rolled his eyes.

“Secondly, that picture there is a collector’s item,” July muttered, “one of a kind.”

“Well, I don’t have too much.” The odd man seemed more reluctant.

I couldn’t possibly part with it for less than eighty-eight dollars.”

The man forked over eighty-eight dollars, and now July could buy himself some wine before he prepared to crash in someone’s doorway for the evening. He had to leave town before Game Six when the shit would go down. Chet would come looking for him. He hated Buffalo; he remembered all the trouble in 1991 when that kicker had missed the field goal. As he started to doze off, he could picture the man holding the picture. Yep, got far more than he bargained for, July Christmas thought to himself.  

Chester Swick was born outside of Buffalo, NY in Niagara Wheatfield. He had a strange sort of mullet haircut which was uneven in parts. Most of the year he just wore a mesh trucker hat to cover it up, but today, for some odd reason, he wasn’t wearing the hat. Despite his buck teeth and sloppy appearance, Chet was married. He had knocked up his childhood sweetheart when he was 17, and was lucky enough to get a job in a tire factory which made pretty good money. He purchased the enchanted picture frame, and his life was altered forever. Chet would always curse himself the rest of his days and wish he hadn’t purchased that damned frame.

When Chet got home, his wife Natalie was sitting on the couch watching TV and chain-smoking cigarettes. The announcer was talking about Domnik Hasek, who was the Buffalo Sabres’ unstoppable goalie, and pretty much the reason they had made it to the Stanley Cup. Chet sat down on the ripped couch. “Look what I got me here,” he showed Natalie. As Chet showed Natalie the picture, she did not see a picture of Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster. She, of course, saw the thing she thought was most unbelievable.

“Don’t you tell me you went and spent the beer money on a picture of a nekkid man with a giant dingus,” she said, sucking on her cigarette.

“Huh?” Chet stared at the picture; it certainly wasn’t no nekkid man. It was clearly Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster, as ridiculous as that sounds. There was no disputing; that was what the picture obviously was. Chet shrugged; Natalie had probably been doing some day drinking again.

Chet got off the couch, still holding the picture frame. “I got us beer for the dang Cup, don’t you worry.” Chet was shaking his head, “But I ain’t sure you need it.”

Tonight was Game Three of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Buffalo Sabres and the Dallas Stars.

Natalie was already confrontational. “You da one who drinks fifteen beers every game,” she shot back.

“I only drink fifteen beers cuz you know what the Cup means to Buffalo,” Chet said with a sad look in his eyes.

“We never won,” he said under his breath. “I never won,” he repeated.

“What you want with a picture of a nekkid man? Is this cuz I said your willy was small?” Natalie asked.

Chet did not say a word as he stormed out of the house going back to the car. The beer was in the trunk. He fumbled for his keys and dropped them.

“Dang it,” Chet said. “Darlene don’t think my willy’s small.”

Chet grabbed the keys and opened the trunk, picking out the 30 pack he bought for tonight’s festivities.

“Darlene is actually good in the sack, too,” Chet muttered to himself as he entered the house, slamming the door. He slammed the beer down on the kitchen table and walked down the hallway into the bathroom.

Game Three saw Buffalo lose 2-1 and be down in the series, ironically 2-1. Chet blamed Natalie, Natalie blamed Chet, and the night ended with a domestic disturbance in which the police had to intervene, pretty much your standard Saturday night as far as they were concerned.

Chet woke with a pounding headache and regret in his heart. Why had the Sabres lost again? Why did he spend all his money on that picture? Why did he always fight with Natalie even though he loved her? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. He often felt there was a force not his own controlling his life.

“God damn it,” Chet swore, sitting up in bed. Natalie was gone. Where had she gone? Was she cheating on him? He was cheating on her, so it would serve him right. He went into the bathroom and immediately began looking for a hangover remedy. He took four aspirin, washing them down with some Irish coffee. He was sipping his coffee laced with whiskey when he happened to peer at the frame he had bought yesterday. He was astonished to see the picture had changed.

“What the findmuck?” Chet muttered to himself.

The picture was now of his house, and there was smoke everywhere. It was pretty unbelievable what he was looking at. He could see a lick of flames in the corner of the picture, near where his Buffalo Sabres banner hung on the wall. Was his house on fire? Was the frame suggesting something to him? Chet scratched his balding hairline.

“Can’t be,” he said to himself. “Pictures don’t have minds of their own.”

 Chet tried to go about his day and ignore the fact that the frame was possessed. What did those odd rune engravings mean? There were three of them in a row on the left side of the frame. When Chet had time he meant to look up what they meant. Several hours later, to his dismay, the picture had changed again, and this time it really was a mindfuck.

The picture was now of his wife, Natalie. She appeared to be in a conservative dress, which Chet guessed she would never wear. She was doing something Chet couldn’t believe. Chet gulped for air, feeling as if he couldn’t breathe. What was she doing with her hands? Oh, my God. Chet had to rub his eyes. It was Natalie all right. He just found it so hard to believe what he was seeing. In the photograph Natalie was on her knees. Chet couldn’t believe it. Natalie was on her knees in a conservative dress, and she was, she was in church. And she was praying.

Chet went to the window and looked out. The street was vacant and there wasn’t a soul outside.

“Somebody gotta be messing with me,” Chet said to himself.

He went back to the picture, staring at it. It was indubitably Natalie.

“Can’t be,” Chet said, turning the picture upside down.

 “Is this some kinda joke?” Chet practically yelled to the empty room. Nobody answered.

Chet called his friend Collin. “Buddy, I need to show you something,” he told his friend. Collin was a born-again Christian, always Jesus this and Jesus that and sweet Jesus. Still he knew his friend would be honest with him and tell him the truth. If someone was playing a practical joke on him, he was going to get to the bottom of it.

Chet drove over to Collin’s house, the picture frame on the front seat next to him. Collin had just come home from church and was having a snack at the kitchen table. His children were playing in the backyard, and his wife was somewhere upstairs. Chet entered, unsure how to proceed. Should he show him the photograph and just ask him what he saw, or should he explain the scenario and how the image in the frame had changed from a photograph of Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness Monster, to a picture of his house on fire, to a picture of his wife praying? He wasn’t sure.

“I have something to show you, and I want you to be completely honest about what you’re seeing,” Chet told his friend Collin.

He handed Collin the photograph. Collin looked into the frame, and immediately his eyes had a look of horror upon them.

“Sweet Jesus, it can’t be,” Collin said, staring at the picture.

“I…I…I don’t bebelieve wwwhat I’m seeseeseeing,” Collin stammered, his voice breaking up.

“Collin,” Chet said, his voice a bit shaky, “I need you to tell me what you’re seeing.”

Collin did not say anything. He was visibly shaking and starting to cry. “How could you do this? Bring this into my home?”

Tears were streaming down Collin’s face, and he was turning purple.

“What is it?” Chet asked.

Collin threw the frame down and stormed out of the room, and Chet could hear him going upstairs. He could hear footsteps; then they stopped. Chet felt like an animal in the headlights of a car, and although he wanted to run, he was frozen. There was an uncomfortable silence. Then he heard someone talking. For a few moments it sounded as if there were a muffled argument, and then there was a THUD! Something or someone had hit the wall. Chet gulped, but still stood there. What was happening?

There was an odd silence throughout the house. Something had changed; Chet could feel it. He didn’t know what, he just knew something had. And Chet knew he could no longer just stand there in that moment. Instead, he fled the scene like a teenager fleeing from the police. Before he ran, he grabbed the frame he had purchased for eighty-eight dollars from July Christmas. He could not leave that behind.

Chet arrived home in a panic; he drew the shutters and sat quietly, hoping this was a bad dream. The picture inside the demented picture frame was changing yet again. It was changing to Darlene, Chet’s mistress. Although Chet could tell it was a photograph of her, he couldn’t make out what she was doing. It was all blurry. He wanted to punch that infernal frame.

Chet drank about nine beers and passed out. When he woke, Natalie was arriving home.

“Where the fuck was you?” Chet asked.

“Out,” Natalie answered.

Before bed, they got in a doozy of a fight. The police were not called this time, but Chet took an alarm clock upside the head, which really hurts, by the way.

Monday at work it was hard for Chet to concentrate. His head was aching and Game Four wasn’t until tomorrow. Chet didn’t want to think about the frame or what had happened at Collin’s. Had he imagined the sirens, or did something really happen involving the police? Was he responsible, or was the picture frame responsible? He didn’t want to think about it. After work he went to visit Darlene. She did not look happy to see him. She was wearing her red lipstick and was chewing gum.

“Look what the dog dug up,” she said when he walked in the door. Darlene worked as an attendant at the local gas station.

“Just seeing what you were up to tonight?” Chet asked, trying not to pry.

“You know I can only see ya on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Darlene said bluntly.

“You’re acting weird,” Darlene said, popping her gum.  

Chet thought about showing her the frame. Instead Chet went home and got drunk out of his mind. He woke on the bathroom floor clutching the picture frame. He was afraid to look at it. From the bathroom floor, he finally got the courage to see if the picture had changed.

“Whew,” Chet thought to himself; it was still of Darlene. It was no longer blurry, and he could tell what she was doing. Chet rubbed his eyes.

“Well, I’ll be a chicken wing on a string,” Chet said, still lying on the bathroom floor.

“That bitch.” In the photograph Darlene was stealing money from Chet’s dresser. Chet usually kept a wad of large bills in his top drawer. Emergency funds, but really it was just extra gambling and beer money. In the photo, Darlene was looking suspiciously behind her to make sure no one was looking, and she was taking a wad of cash from Chet’s underwear drawer. Was the picture telling him the truth or just messing with him? Chet wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to think about it.

Natalie came into the bathroom, presumably to urinate. “You gonna come to bed?” she asked. She stepped over Chet and pulled down her pants and started to pee.

“Damn woman, can’t you even wait till I git up?” Chet hollered.

Natalie continued to cop a squat and urinate. “You been lying there for hours with your weird picture.”

“It ain’t weird,” but he knew it was, “and you know I don’t like to be in the room when you going,” Chet complained as he started to sit up.

“Oh, please, a couple years back I caught you looking at videos of chicks pissing outside…though most of ‘em was like seventeen,” Natalie stated.

“I told you my friend Steve sent me that.” As Natalie walked by, Chet covered the picture so Natalie couldn’t see it was Darlene, but something told him she didn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t see Darlene anyway. He wanted to ask her what she saw, but he was afraid it would be Darlene at their house, and then he would be in for a doozy of an evening.

For Chet the day dragged on with his hangover raging, and try as he might, he couldn’t stop fighting with Natalie. It seemed as if she were being intentionally confrontational. Has she seen the picture of Darlene? He hid the frame and picture away in the closet; he didn’t like the way it was making him feel. He suspected it was evil. He needed to focus on Game Four. He went to the store and bought a 24 pack for tonight’s festivities. He figured the hair of the dog wasn’t a bad idea, plus it’d help him forget about the picture frame.

By game time Chet was already blitzed. Chet donned his Rob Ray jersey for the occasion. Rob Ray was a goon for the Sabres. He was basically a fighter, and, of course, Chet admired him for it. Natalie refused to watch the game in the same room as him. She was watching it in the bedroom on the small TV.

“Good, youz a jinx anyways,” Chet replied from the couch. Geoff Sanderson put the Sabres up 1-0 in the first, and suddenly Chet didn’t care that he’d probably have to sleep alone tonight. He didn’t understand what Natalie’s problem was. He worked like a dog, and all she did was bitch. Before intermission Dallas scored, and the game was tied 1-1.

During intermission, Chet went and tried to make amends with Natalie. She was having none of it.

“Throw away that creepy picture of some guy’s junk, and we’ll talk.”

Chet was not about to throw away the picture frame. He couldn’t have if he wanted to. He had noticed that since he had put it away, he was constantly craving it, thinking about it, almost longing for it. The night rolled on, although Chet would barely remember any of it. Waking up the next morning, Chet couldn’t even remember who won the game. The series was tied 2-2, but he felt lost. He did remember one thing from last night, that he had hurled obscenities at Natalie; at one point he even called her Darlene.

“What did you say?” Natalie countered. “Who the fuck is Darlene?” she shrieked, hurling not just obscenities but actual dishware at poor Chester. Chet was mostly unharmed; a dish did whiz by his head, but it only grazed him and shattered against the wall. A coffee mug bounced off his forehead, but Chester was tough. Natalie eventually went into the bathroom and locked the door. Chet tried to console her through the bathroom door, until the Sabres scored and took the lead 2-1. After that Chet was too busy dancing around the room in triumph, as if he had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. He forgot all about Natalie and started doing whiskey shots and eventually passed out in the space in between the couch and the wall.

Chet woke up, not knowing where he was; he was late for work and hungover miserably. He was so hungover, he had, in fact, left his new favorite possession at home in the closet. He lasted until about lunch before he felt as if he were about to burst. He honestly didn’t even care about Game Five; all he wanted was to hold that stupid picture frame. Even though the Buffalo Sabres had won, and the series was tied 2-2, Chester could feel that something was not right. It was as if something had taken hold of his mind. He rushed home during his lunch break. He made sure the coast was clear and Natalie was not around, and ran to the closet, clutching the picture frame. Was it his precious? That was ridiculous. It was a damn picture frame, and this wasn’t a fantasy novel set in Middle-earth. He ran his fingers over the odd rune engravings. What did they mean? Were they Nordic? Maybe the frame was magic. It certainly would explain the odd things happening. Collin had been arrested for assaulting his wife. Was it Chet’s fault? He had gone over there.

During lunch, Chet headed to the library to find a book on runes. The first engraving, he learned, was called the fire eye. It was basically just a three-dimensional diamond, or perhaps it looked like a kite or maybe the face of a Transformer robot. The symbol was supposed to be the all-seeing eye of Odin.

“Oh, that’s not gud,” Chet muttered to himself.

The second symbol looked terribly similar to the mathematical less than symbol (<), but Chet discovered that in Nordic or Viking or whatever language runes were from, it meant an opening.

The third symbol looked like two pennants or flags that were facing inward and touching each other. Chet discovered this symbol meant the self.

Fire eye. Opening. Self.

“Shit, so the frame is basically an opening from Odin’s all-knowing fire eye to the self.” Of course, most normal people would have had an intellectual debate whether it was possible that an extinct Viking god had dominion over the picture frame, but as previously stated and shown, Chet was hardly normal nor an intellectual.

Fire eye. Opening. Self.

Chet left the library looking as if he had seen a ghost. He did notice as he gripped the frame rather tightly that the picture was no longer of Darlene stealing money from his drawer. It was just a flurry of white, but he thought he could see two figures behind the whiteness. He was terrified of what it might display. Tomorrow was Game Five; he just needed to hold out until then. He put the picture frame in his backpack and took the long way back to work. Work was a bore; his head was still pounding, but he downed like four aspirin and was feeling slightly better. He was about to leave work for the day, when he saw something that disturbed him so much, that he stayed at work an additional hour. He had just clocked out for the day when he removed the picture frame from his backpack. He was stunned at what he saw. The flurry of whiteness had now cleared, but he couldn’t believe what he saw. He studied it carefully. His heartbeat quickened and his stomach dropped. It couldn’t be, but there was no other explanation. Was he seeing Lord Stanley’s Cup? Maybe even the final game? In the picture he saw a member of the Dallas Stars scoring a goal past the Sabres goalie, Dominik Hasek. The Stars player was 22. He knew that number. Who the fuck was twenty-two? The Stars player, he had looked up the number 22, was Brett Hull. The renowned son of hockey legend Bobby Hull with a hundred mile an hour slapshot. In the photograph, Brett Hull was clearly about to put the puck past Hasek, who was down on the ice. And he had an inkling that it was the game-winning goal. Was that what was going to happen? Were the Sabres going to have come this far, only to lose in Game Six or Game Seven? Chet couldn’t deal with this right now. He needed a drink.

Fire eye. Opening. Self.

When he got home, he went straight for the liquor cabinet. It was practically empty; there were only a few bottles with anything in them, and they looked to be watered down, so he poured himself a glass of Jim Beam and slugged it down. He felt slightly better, somewhat even. He inspected the picture frame again. The picture had not changed and was, in fact, clearer. Hasek, the Buffalo Sabres goalie, was sprawled out on the ice with his glove out, but Chet could tell he was not going to be able to block it. Nope, the puck was going into the back of the net, no question. There was another Sabre in the picture, or a Buffalo Sabre’s leg. The player, who could not be determined, was also trying to block Brett Hull from putting the puck in the net, but he, also, did not look as if he would be able to block the puck. Chet studied the picture. What was he seeing? Was this going to happen? Was this the future? It was driving him crazy. The peddling salesman had said, “Buyer beware, the picture will change you,” but Chet had no idea how much. He was visibly shaken.

Fire eye. Opening. Self.

Natalie came home a few minutes later. Chet tried to act normal, but she immediately called him out on his nutty behavior. “I told you to throw away that picture. Damn thing was taken by the Devil.”

She studied the frame, but obviously did not see the same thing Chester saw. “And how come you changed the picture from some guy’s enormous junk to a lotto ticket?”

Chet didn’t bother to ask her the numbers on the lottery ticket that she saw in the frame. He didn’t deem it important; had he done this and played the numbers, this story might have had an entirely different ending. In truth, Chet wanted to throw the frame away, except he couldn’t. It was as if the frame were part of him. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the smell of pancakes. Everything was nice and warm, like a sauna. Chet was having a lucid dream that his mammy was making him blueberry pancakes. It was so real, he felt as if he were there. He could even smell the maple syrup and blueberries, and when he awoke his house was on fire. Natalie had gone out, and Chet had to scramble in his drunken state just to avoid being burned alive. As it was, his clothes were lightly singed. Chet would credit his strong brain, though the narrator might be quick to point out there is a difference between strong and smart.

Chet awoke at his sister-in-law’s house where, upon seeing he was conscious, Natalie immediately began to assault him. “You burned down our house, you fucking cretin,” she insisted, throwing a flurry of slaps and backhands at Chester’s face and head.

“It wasn’t me, it was the frame,” Chet countered.

Natalie went ballistic. “The frame didn’t forget to put out its god-dang joint,” she screamed, and started swinging her purse wildly, connecting with Chet more than a few times. “You can take your frame and shove it up your ass,” Natalie was yelling, still swinging her purse. The jarring to the head must have knocked something loose.

“The frame?” Chet questioned. Chet looked around him and completely lost his mind. The frame was missing. He got up, and despite having only socks on, was sprinting down the driveway, toward his charred home. It was about a mile, but Chet made it in under six minutes, his socks blackened from the road. The house was destroyed, merely the frame was left standing, as Chet sorted through the rubble.

“If the picture frame was right about the fire, it’s probably right about the hockey game, too,” Chet said to no one in particular. He sifted through what looked like the charred remains of a box of magazines. He went to the closet, the place he had hidden the frame many times over the short tenure he had owned it, but it wasn’t there. He sat on the couch, or what was left of it; there was currently a giant spring sticking out of the left half of it. After about fifteen minutes, Chet came to the realization, “It ain’t here.”

“Someone must have stolen it, either that or Lord Odin took it back.” Chet could not decide which made more sense. Chet could not sleep, and he feared going back to his sister-in-law’s, so he went to a bar and got blackout drunk and woke up in the alley outside the bar. He had reached a new low thanks to the picture frame; you would think he would want nothing to do with it. Chet staggered around in the morning sunshine, not sure where to go or what to do. Game Five was tonight but somehow that mattered less than the damn picture frame. He went back to his charred house in the daylight, hoping the sunlight would bring more clarity. It did not. Chet was broken but proclaimed, “I know what I saw.” Chet went to work, a shell of his former self. He checked in with Natalie at lunch; she was still sore about the fire.

“It wasn’t my fault…that frame has the fire eye of Odin,” he tried to explain rationally.

“I told you to throw that doggone-it thing away. I’d swear you’re turning queer right before my eyes,” Natalie countered. It was tough to tell who hung up first, as they both slammed the phone down at about the same time. Chet checked in with Darlene; she hadn’t seen the frame either.

Chet left work about five but didn’t have the heart to return to his sister-in-law’s. Nope, he’d watch the game at a local pub. Chet got there nice and early; he knew it’d be packed. The place was called the Jolly Jug. As it was, he didn’t even have a really good seat, but it beat watching it with Natalie. There was electricity in the air, and everyone in the bar was on edge except for Chet, who was pretty sure the Sabres were going to lose. Chet had seen the photograph clearly. But maybe that was Game Six or Game Seven.

The television was already turned up and the players were warming up. The announcers were talking, and one of them said oddly, “We’re about to find out if there’ll be Christmas in July in Buffalo.”

Chet stood up from his seat. “What the fuck he just say?” About five to seven bottles crashed to the floor, causing glass to explode everywhere.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Is somebody messing with me? The announcer is in on it. I’m telling you,” Chet insisted.

The bar barely paid him any mind, so Chet decided to get louder.

“Ask him. He knows about the frame and about July Christmas. He’s fucking in on it. Ask him about the picture frame, I promise you.” Chet had to be calmed and he finally did, right before they were about to kick him out.

The announcers laughed, and Chet honestly felt as if they were laughing at him.

Game Five was about to start, but Chet had a knot in the middle of his stomach. He had trouble watching the game; he couldn’t take his mind off the picture frame. The first period went by, and the score was 0-0. The bar was hopeful, except for Chet. When the Stars scored in the second period, Chet had to go to the parking lot for a smoke. Chet did not need to watch the game to know the outcome. “I know what I saw,” Chet explained to Larry.

“Son of a bitch.” Larry was a little too preoccupied with the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Stars won 2-0 and were up 3-2 in the series. The bar slowly cleared out.

“I know what I saw,” Chet explained again. He went into great detail about the picture frame and all the strange things that had happened, but Larry was only half listening and still sore that the Sabres were down 3-2.

“Fucking Belfour,” Larry complained. Ed Belfour was the Dallas Stars goalie who had shut the Sabres out tonight.

“I’m telling you the frame was possessed or something. The rune was supposed to be Odin’s fire eye,” Chet was saying.

Larry said, “I gotta drain the wonder weasel,” and left Chet with his story.

“I was listening,” said Felix, a man who was next to Larry.

“So, what are you going to do, try and stop Brett Hull?” Felix asked Chet.

“Don’t know. What do you think I should do?” Chet asked.

“It occurs to me, in my finite wisdom, that trying to stop the thing you think is going to happen might be the catalyst that causes the thing to happen that you are trying to prevent.” Felix might have been buzzed as well.

“The fuck?” Chet questioned.

“Let it be,” Felix clarified.

“I don’t know,” Chet reasoned, “seems to me, if you have a chance to change the future, you change it…” Chet blacked out shortly after that.

Friday morning brought new challenges. Chet had no clothes for work, since most of his clothes had burned up in the fire. He had to borrow a shirt and some shorts for work from his sister-in-law’s husband. Chet’s life was a mess, but hadn’t it been one before he had bought the picture frame?

“Buyer beware, the picture will change you,” the salesman supposedly named July Christmas had said. He probably should have listened but that wasn’t Chet’s style. There were other obvious problems. Natalie was once again threatening to leave him, but honestly Chet was more focused on the picture frame and what it had revealed to him. The frame had been right about the fire. Why wouldn’t it be right about the Cup? He knew what he saw: Brett Hull was about to score the game-winning goal, put the puck past the unstoppable Dominik Hasek. Was it going to happen in Game Six? Game Seven? Chet feared the worst.

At lunch, he went searching for the frame once again, back to the charred remains of his once proud home. The frame simply wasn’t there. It was as if it had vanished into thin air, unless Natalie, that bitch, stole it and tossed it in the garbage. Chet half suspected she did, but it would probably do him no good to confront her. He went back to work, half considered visiting the dump after work. Eh, that’d be useless and waste the entire day. No, sir, most people would think a peon like Chet couldn’t interfere with something as big as a Stanley Cup Finals, but the butterfly effect is a real thing, and Chet was out and about in the Buffalo community and had a run-in with both Brett Hull on Friday night and Dominik Hasek on Saturday morning.

It is difficult to predict whether Chet’s actions had any effect on either Hull or Hasek, but here is exactly what happened, starting with the run-in with Brett Hull at Players Bar and Grill. Chet started drinking immediately after work and somehow ended up on Niagara Falls Boulevard at Players Bar and Grill. Although Players was a restaurant and club, it had the usual riffraff of barflies that lived at the lower bar. It was to this lower bar that Chet gravitated. The riffraff was unusually loud tonight what with the Sabres one game away from losing the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Don’t give me that Voodoo bullshit,” one barfly was saying. “We need two wins. I got five hundy on Buffalo.”

The larger one, who had an enormous goatee and who looked like a Hanson brothers reject from the movie Slap Shot, said, “I say we break both Brett Hull’s wrists and Ed Belfour’s ankles, just in case.” The bartender agreed, but what they didn’t suspect is, as the series had shifted to Buffalo, Brett Hull would be making an appearance at Players Bar and Grill that night. The fabled son of legend Bobby Hull and the star of Chet’s picture frame. Of course, by then they would all be shit-faced. Rumor also had it, according to Chet, who is not the most reliable source, that Brett Hull was heavily intoxicated when he showed up at Players Bar and Grill.

The large one with the goatee, I think his name was Gearbed or something to that extent, ordered shots for the entire bar. Gearbed, who used to have long hockey hair but had lost most of it a while back, actually considered himself to be the fourth Hanson brother who didn’t skate well. “Here’s to tits, clits and baseball mitts…may your hand always be in one,” he toasted; the rest of the bar saluted and did the shot. There were about eight to ten in attendance. Chet did a shot of whiskey, never suspecting he was about to come face to face with the man whom he had seen in the picture frame.

As the dinner crowd cleared out, the bar began to fill up with late night patrons; it was, after all, Friday night. Chet was leaving the bathroom when the commotion started. It was hard to tell what was going on, but he just followed the crowd, which had flooded onto the stairs where Gearbed was apparently involved in a stand-off with Brett Hull and another Dallas Star, Derian Hatcher.

“Well, we were gonna break Belfour’s ankles, but I suppose Hull’s wrists will do,” Gearbed exclaimed. Chet rushed to the front of the crowd; he had a beer bottle in his hand. Quickly thinking, or perhaps the opposite, Chet smashed the bottle on the bottom of the staircase, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. One of the shards happened to fly right into Brett Hull’s left wrist.

“What the fuck,” Hull yelled out, grabbing hold of his wrist.

Chet rushed at Derian Hatcher; Gearbed took a swing at Brett Hull but missed after being held back by two men in his entourage. A melee broke out. Punches were thrown, but very few were landed. Hull and the Stars seemed reluctant to start trouble in a strange town right before Game Six.

“The crease, the crease, your foot was in the crease,” Chet yelled out.

“What the fuck you talking about?” Hatcher asked, standing six foot six, above everybody in the bar except maybe Gearbed.

“The game-winning goal in Game Six or Seven,” Chet insisted. “Hull’s foot was in the crease. No goal. NO GOAL.”

“Ummm, yeah, buddy. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Game Six and Seven ain’t happened yet,” stated Hatcher, who had pulled Chet’s shirt over his head as hockey players are wont to do when they fight. Chet had literally tried to stab Derian Hatcher with a broken beer bottle, but found his shirt pulled over his head and his arms all twisted up.

“Fuck, Chet,” Gearbed said, “we ain’t losing Game Six or Game Seven.”

“The hell you ain’t,” Derian Hatcher yelled.

Hatcher threw Chet to the side like a ragdoll; he and Gearbed looked as if they were going to duke it out, but then it appeared Hatcher thought better of it. The two men who had blocked Gearbed from punching Brett Hull rushed the fourth Hanson brother. The first hit Gearbed across the face hard, which only seemed to piss off the large, hairless Hanson brother more. As the second man rushed in, Gearbed grabbed him by the shirt and spun him around, throwing him directly through the plate glass window at the front of the bar, which promptly ended the brawl.

“Mess with the buffalo, you get the horns,” Gearbed said.

Chet replied, “I ain’t so sure buffalo have horns.”

“They do…ya dumb son of a bitch,” Gearbed informed him.

With broken glass everywhere, Chet did a quick shot with Gearbed and got the hell out of there before the police showed up.

Chet woke up the next morning, vaguely remembering what had happened at Players Bar and Grill. Although it was early, Chet was restless in the fold-out sofa at his sister-in-law’s. He had a hangover and was sweating profusely; he told Natalie he was going out. Several hours later, he found himself in downtown Buffalo on the Elmwood strip. Chet wasn’t sure why he went there; call it a hunch, maybe he was still under the influence of Odin’s fire eye. He still thought about the picture frame about as much as a teenage boy thinks about sex, so it was possible, at least in his mind, that Odin had told him to go there. And it was here that Chet would have his second encounter, with the other person he had seen in the picture frame, the Buffalo Sabres’ impenetrable goalie, Dominik Hasek.

The whole incident took only a few seconds, but Chet was worried he had once again altered the course of Game Six or Game Seven. Had his bumping into Hasek caused a groin injury that allowed Hull to score on Hasek when he normally wouldn’t have? He had seen the picture, shit, he had practically memorized it; it was ingrained in his brain. Was it going to come true ? Would Hull score on Hasek? Chet was on Elmwood, and he saw a bar. It was a sign; it was called Good Bar. Chet was doing some serious day drinking. As he was leaving, he stumbled, bumped, and accidently knocked Dominik Hasek to the ground when he was out for his morning run. This couldn’t be happening; it was the damned picture frame. Hasek sprawled out on the pavement, and for a moment Chet thought, Oh, shit. Chet ran over to the fallen goalie, “Shit, I’m so sorry, I’m a huge fan.”

 “Vatch yourself, ve have the Cup tonight,” Hasek warned. The goalie looked shaken, but then went right back to running. Chet watched in horror as he jogged away. As the day bled into evening, Chet had to keep a strong buzz just to stop from going insane. He found his spot at the bar and hoped to God the picture frame was all a bad dream. By the third period, Chet could barely watch and started downing shots.

For those of you who are hockey fans, you probably know the rest. The game was legendary but controversial. The score was tied 1-1 at the end of regulation. The game went into triple overtime. And it was Brett Hull, just as Chet had envisioned, with his foot in the crease (a goal that many Buffalo Sabres fans insist would have been ruled out during the regular season) that scored the game winner, kicking the puck ahead and putting it past a sprawling Dominik Hasek.