The Screaming Skull

by Rick Ferguson

  “You’re not so different from the old Redulfo,” I said to the dragon. “Do you regret opening that egg? If you had it to do over again, would you do it differently?”

  With one taloned claw, the dragon pointed to the mirror. We saw that the carving atop its frame was in the shape of a bird. Not just any bird—it was a falcon. A blue falcon, in fact.

  Redulfo spread his jaws into a shape approximating a smile. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why don’t you ask me?”

  17

  Nine years earlier back at the Blue Falcon, the night just kept getting weirder. On the second floor of the inn, four heroes crept through the mirror outside the Workshop of Telescopes in the year 3965 and found themselves inside the Falcon’s Red Library in the year 3956. At that same moment, Amabored sat on the steps midway up Saggon’s Tower, watching the dark elf’s ass as she turned to descend. On the balcony overlooking the Grand Foyer, Malcolm stood with legs planted in front of the staircase, carving up the onrushing horde of imps with his blessed sword. In a second-floor hallway, the non-dragon Redulfo listened to the spell-music growing louder as he neared that same Library.

  Where was I? That depends on your point of view. When I was thirty, I was up in the Red Library with the boys. When I was twenty-one, I was trapped in some extra-dimensional space far below in the bowels of the Falcon, starring at my own skull as I held it in my hands.

  It’s an odd thing, regarding your own skull. I wouldn’t recommend it. Your first thought is wonderment at how delicate a thing it is; I could easily have shattered it against the wall like a clay pot. Studying its contours, I tried to make some connection between the reflection I saw in mirrors and the skull’s sharp cheekbones, the smooth curves of the eye sockets deepening into shadow, the slightly crooked teeth embedded in the jaw. The sight of it drove me careening between love and revulsion. It wasn’t quite the same thing as seeing your own soul exposed—a treat that Koschei himself would provide, a dozen or so years later—but it was a fair precursor. No one can say that I don’t know myself.

  Beside me stood Melinda, adrift in her own churning sea of love and revulsion. With a little effort, I found that I could project my sight outside of my body and see myself as she saw me—as a monster. Where my own head had once been sat a horned skull blazing with cold blue flames, the rune of Koschei glowing bright red in the center of its forehead. My body had expanded with rippling muscle, tearing my tunic to shreds, turning my studded leather armor into confetti. Around my burgeoning torso, my girdle glowed like gold melting in a forge.

  Centering my vision once again, I handed my skull to Melissa. When I spoke, the voice broadcast from the Screaming Skull was a deep baritone, amplified beyond all reason and projected straight from my burning brain. Something told me I should speak in short sentences.

  “TAKE THIS. KEEP IT SAFE,” I said.

  Her eyes wide, Melinda nodded. She tucked my skull inside the Screaming Skull’s padded box, and then placed the box into her satchel. She took a few steps back, her eyes searching for an escape path, though a blood worm in fact blocked the only exit. I felt momentarily bad for scaring her so, though the emotion was accompanied by a curious Zen detachment. I thought I might comfort her, if my touch wouldn’t make her scream.

  There was no time for further reflection. The worm emerged from the tunnel, shrieking its unholy cry of hunger and pain. Blood worms begin life about the same size as your pinky. Only by consuming the blood of living things do they grow—and they can grow as large as a brontosaurus. This one oozed out of the tunnel in repulsive waves, its massive bird-beaked jaws snapping and its multi-tentacled tongue undulating wildly at the smell of blood.

  “STAND BACK,” I said to Melinda. My voice boomed off the pit walls, and the beast recoiled. Sizing me up as its most immediate threat, it then leapt forward with surprising speed, its jaws descending upon the Skull. I pistoned out my arms to seize the worm’s beak with my now-massive hands.

  The worm’s sheer strength forced me back into the pile of bones, causing an avalanche that sent Melinda scurrying back against the wall. Then I got my feet planted under me, and we got down to business.

  With all the strength my cartoonish muscles could supply, I forced the worm’s jaws wider apart. It thrust its tongue-tentacles at me, seeking purchase, but my flesh had become rock-hard and impenetrable. Really, the beast didn’t stand a chance. I bore the power of the Deathless One, drawn from the wellspring of Hellfire channeled through a thousand different worlds. Who did this slimy piece of shit think it was?

  The worm’s jaws began to tear open from the pressure, its black, viscous blood flowing over my fingers and running down my arms. Its shrieks of pain were poison to our ears. It began to surge backward, into the tunnel, fighting for its life to break free.

  And then, the coup de grace: The blue flames cavorting around the Skull grew brighter, bathing the pit in neon. Bright, arcing tines of lighting burst forth from the Skull’s eye sockets. The lightning leapt straight down the worm’s gullet, lighting it up like a fluorescent tube. The whole beast grew rigid, its bloated length caught in mid-undulation. Then it exploded.

  Blood, tissue, and entrails spewed from the tunnel in a massive torrent, bathing Melinda and me in slime and putrescence. Hunks of worm-meat rained down on our heads. The walls of the pit dripped with wet filth. Melinda wiped the gore out of her eyes and stepped toward me. She was smiling.

  “Neat trick, that,” she said. “Now let’s see what you can do to that devil.”

  Creeping through the slimy tunnel, we emerged into another long tunnel-like corridor hewn from natural rock. To our left, the tunnel swiftly vanished into utter darkness. To our right, a strange reddish-orange glow beckoned. As light trumps dark, we turned right.

  The orange light grew brighter as we jogged forward. Soon the natural stone of the tunnel walls gave way to something far stranger: a glistening, fleshy surface that seemed somehow to pulse with obscene life. The orange glow radiated from this surface, suffusing the tunnel with lurid luminescence. Wearing the Skull, I could sense knowledge unbidden invade my mind, and I knew that we were leaving the Falcon proper and entering some twilight realm between Hell and Woerth.

  Ahead of me, Melinda stepped over to the walls for a closer look. I moved beside her. We could see beneath the fleshy surface branching violet and red lines coursing this way and that—veins and arteries, through which the blood of some abominable life flowed. Had I a real mouth, I would have vomited. As we stared, there appeared suddenly a horror-stricken face—bloodshot eyes, bulbous nose, and gaping mouth—bulging from the flesh-wall. Then it spoke in a terror-stricken, hoarse moan.

  “Bitchgotwhatshedeserved... onlymeanttoscareher… lovedherlovedherlovedHER…”

  Melinda jumped back as if the wall had reached out a hand to slap her. She looked to me, searching for a sign of humanity within the monster I had become.

  “Souls,” she whispered. “These walls are made of damned souls, Elberon. The Hellmouth is close.”

  “I KNOW,” my Skull-voice boomed. “BE CAREFUL.”

  And then—the sound of a child crying, somewhere farther down the flesh-tunnel. Melinda’s head snapped around, and she took off running. I followed. Another hundred yards or so, and we found the treasure we had sought: the children still trapped here, waiting for the devil to feed.

  There were seven of them: five boys and two girls, appearing to range in age from six to twelve. From the flesh-walls, a dozen or so pairs of human arms had sprouted to bind the children to them, with spindly, skeletal fingers wrapped tightly around their limbs, torsos, and throats. Their bare feet dangled above the tunnel floor. All appeared comatose, with mouths agape and blank eyes staring at nothing—but for one little blonde girl, who turned her head to mark our approach. When she did so, a hellish hand gripped her throat more tightly.

  “Thirsty,” the girl moaned to us, her voice scarcely a whisper. “So thirsty.”

  Melinda burst into tears. Yanking her c
anteen from her belt, she stepped forward and held it up to the girl’s dry and cracked lips.

  “We’re here, honey,” Melinda sobbed to the girl as she swallowed a few drops of canteen water. “We’re here. You’ll be free soon. I swear to you, you’ll be free.” Then she turned to me, her eyes filled with righteous anger behind her tears. “Free them, Elberon! NOW!”

  “RIGHT,” I said. Stepping up, I took one of the wall-arms into my two meaty mitts and pulled hard. With the combined power of the girdle and Skull, I was able to rip the arm from the wall with a crunching, ripping sound and a gout of ruby-red blood that sizzled as it drenched me. The remainder of the arms writhed and undulated, squeezing the children in a death-embrace. Still awake, the thirsty girl screamed.

  “Do something else!” Melinda cried. “The wall is killing them!”

  Without even consciously thinking about it, I did something else. From the Skull’s eye sockets emerged the same blinding blue flames that had preceded the blood worm’s demise. Lightning arced again, striking the wall-arms in a dozen places and turning them to ash. The moans and shrieks of the damned souls trapped within filled the tunnel with madness. The children, freed at last from their hellish grasp, collapsed onto the floor.

  Melinda rushed over to them, dropping to her knees to tend to them with her canteen. One by one, they sat up, dazed and blinking like kittens bathed in sudden sunlight. Spying me, their eyes widened—but not with fear, oddly enough. Despite my monstrous appearance, they seemed to know that I was a friend.

  “Gather yourselves, children,” Melinda told them, making sure each one could see her smile. “We’re leaving this place.”

  At that moment, a bellowing, chortling laugh rattled the tunnel. The sound sent the flesh-walls writhing with undulating life. The children screamed and cowered behind us. From the far end of the tunnel, silhouetted against a backdrop of nauseating orange light, appeared a towering, hulking figure dragging behind it a heavy iron chain. The light grew brighter, and behind the figure there appeared a pair of massive, obsidian, iron-shod doors, five men tall and carved with deep runes glowing red with Hellfire: The doors of the Hellmouth, through which Arturus had banished Beelzebub’s hellspawn army five hundred years ago, revealed to us at last.

  “NOT SO FAST,” said Malacoda, Dire Malebranche of the Eighth Circle of Hell. “FIRST, WE’RE GOING TO HAVE US A LITTLE PARLAY.”

  And then, unbidden, there came a voice in my head. It was a familiar voice, projected into my mind from somewhere else.

  “There’s still time to change things,” the voice said to me. “Stop her. Take her out of the city. Start the Quest now, just the two of you, together. You don’t have to hurt her.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I thought.

  18

  As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who got to have a conversation with himself. Far above the catacombs, Amabored was helping Lithaine to his feet. Reaching negative health points takes a lot out of a fellow, and the elf would need a moment. Time was short, however, not to mention fluid—so the barbarian allowed the elf only a few swigs of grog before forcing him up the steps.

  By their step count, they should have been midway up the tower. The spiral staircase wrapped around the inside of the tower wall, the diameter of which was wide enough for them to see the dim light from the Great Hall far below. This wasn’t just any tower, however—it was the tallest tower in Storm Stonegorm’s multi-dimensional masterpiece. So, as they raced up the steps, expecting at any moment to reach the summit and enter the maze that led to Saggon’s lair, the steps just kept coming. First dozens, then scores, then hundreds. Soon, their confident leaps turned into leaden staggering. Finally, they stopped.

  “Jupiter’s ball sack!” said the barbarian, doubled over with fatigue. “We should be a hundred stories up by now.”

  “Fuck this. It’s useless,” said Lithaine. “Let’s go back down.” As an elf, he was engineered to look untroubled by earthly cares, and only a slight increase in the pace of his breath hinted at his exhaustion. It was maddening, I tell you, and more than once I wanted to break his nose for it.

  “You got it,” said Amabored, sheathing his sword. “Saggon isn’t the prize. If he dares come out of his hole, we’ll gut him.”

  There came at that moment a gust of frigid wind swirling up from below, followed by the great rustle and flap of large wings. Then something swift and strong seized the two men by their wrists and dragged them into the air.

  Great wings beating the darkness, it hauled them upward through the tower. They alighted in the small vestibule outside the labyrinth on the top floor. The kidnapper dumped the two men onto the stone floor. Rolling to their feet, they leapt up with weapons drawn to confront—

  —Amabored.

  Not just any Amabored, mind you. It was nine-years-older Amabored, the same Amabored who stepped through Redulfo the Black’s mirror outside the Workshop of Telescopes and into the Red Library that very night.

  Imagine finding yourself face-to-face with yourself, only nine years older, or younger. Is your first reaction one of recognition? Revulsion? Love at first sight? If first impressions matter, then your first impression upon meeting yourself at a bend in time would be revealing, would it not? Most people couldn’t bear it.

  First, there was a moment of silence as the three men took stock of each other. Amabored the Elder grinned, pleased at the effect his presence had on the other two. The two barbarians looked much the same, provided that you ignored their complete dissimilarity. The younger Amabored was bare-chested, wearing his usual leopard-skin loincloth, his white hair flowing in the traditional Nomad mullet, his frame devoid of accouterments but for the scabbard strapped across his lean, lanky torso. The elder Amabored was dressed for the mountains in full studded leather armor, his frame bigger, his face fuller, his beard wilder, and his hair flowing past his shoulders like the mane of a rock star. And then there were the wings—full, luxurious, with thick down and feathers as long as your arm. Imagine wondering where those came from.

  Lithaine looked from one barbarian to the other. “Whoa,” said the elf.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked Amabored the Younger, thrusting the point of his sword under Amabored the Elder’s chin. The latter just widened his grin.

  “I’m you, you dumb shit,” said Amabored the Elder. “I’m future-you. Nearly a decade older than you, in fact, so you’d best show respect. And get this knitting needle out of my face.” Elder pushed Younger’s blade aside with the tip of his finger.

  “Is that so? Well, I’ve certainly gotten uglier,” said Younger. “And obviously more stupid. Touch my blade again and see where it gets you.”

  Elder laughed. “If I touch it again, it’ll be to shove it up your ass.” From its scabbard he drew the legendary Stormcrow, forged by the dwarf smiths of the Goldspur Highlands, its blade traced with fine filigree runes, its pommel wrapped with gold wire and topped with a blazing ruby.

  “Now here’s a sword,” said Elder. “What are you, Fourth Level? Thirty-something health points? You couldn’t even lift this sword, Junior.”

  “Ten years older, you say?” asked Younger. “What does that make you? Pushing forty? You’re on the downward spiral, brother. I’ll bet your reaction time is already for shite. Bet your recovery time is longer, too. Me, I’m in the full flower of youth.”

  “If you suck my cock, does that make it masturbation?”

  “If I skull-fuck your corpse, does that mean I’ll have ten years to live?”

  “If I cut off your fucking head, will I cease to exist? Let’s find out!” Elder swung his sword in a swift arc aimed at Younger’s neck. Younger brought up his own blade to deflect the stroke. The clash of steel echoed in descending notes down the length of the tower.

  “Knock this shit off!” said Lithaine, stepping between the two men. They both fell back, wearing nearly identical grins. The elf turned to the older Amabored. “Where did you come from? And where did you get those wings?”r />
  “It’s a long story,” said Elder. “The short version is that I brought you both up here to do your job, because I knew you’d pussy out. That thing inside is waiting, and you need something he has. You two need to take care of business. It’s part of the Quest.”

  “Quest? What quest?” asked Amabored the Younger. “That’s the second time someone has mentioned that word to me.”

  “Never mind what Quest. Just listen. You need to retrieve the petrified dragon-dick hanging above Saggon’s mantel. You know the one?”

  The two younger men glanced at each other. “Yeah, sure,” said Lithaine. “Why do you need it? Somebody going to peg you with it later?”

  “Yeah, your mom,” said Elder. “Never mind why I need it. Just get in there and grease that fat fuck.”

  “If it’s so important, why don’t you do it?” asked Younger. “You must be Ninth or Tenth Level by now.”

  “I’m busy, that’s why,” said Elder. “I have to grab Redulfo, take him back to my time, help him kill himself again, and then bring him back here. So, man up, youngsters. Just do what comes naturally.”

  The younger men exchanged another glance, then nodded. Elder extended his hand to his younger self. As the latter accepted his handshake, Elder’s face split once again into a wide grin.

  “You’ll be all right, kid,” Elder said. “Trust me. I’m standing here, aren’t I?”