The Dark Lord of Oklahoma

by Ethan Richards

  A man wearing aviator style sunglasses, a makeshift bandana that covered his entire forehead, and a Picher letter jacket, stared at them. All three stood in silence for almost a minute.

  "Follow me."

  With that, the stranger made his way to a back-closet in the library. Sam followed him and Gavan did likewise. The man quickly climbed the ladder and the other two continued to follow him.

  Above the door frame was what looked like a wooden pathway with ropes on either side that formed the shape "V." The man went through the doorway, and then down another ladder that he had set up. Now, back in the wall way, the trio ran down the hallway before going down to the basement.

  "The basement?" cried Sam. "Haven't you ever seen...oh, I don't know, any freaking horror movie?"

  The man turned back to them. Sam and Gavan noticed he did not directly look at them. Instead, he turned his head as if to confront them with his ears. The man cupped his ear and remained motionless for about a minute. Then dropping his hand, he continued, going downwards.

  Without warning, the man stopped running. He went to a brick-covered wall and pulled out a concealed door.

  Zorin and Dorin stood behind the closed door.

  "How did you know where they were?" asked Gavan.

  "I know Picher,” said the man.

  "Wait! You left your baby out there?" asked Sam.

  "Don't worry we have a built-in dwarf alarm system," said Zorin.

  Before Sam could let words out of his open mouth, Dorin placed his hand on his shoulder and shook his head as if to say "you don't want to know."

  The room was dimly lit, and the two investigators relied on the night vision in the masks to see.

  "How did that trap not come down on us?" asked Gavan.

  "I moved it," he said.

  The stranger lifted his head back and sniffed through his nose.

  "The mutants," said the man, "they're gone.”

  “Those mutants,” said Sam, “we call them orcs-“

  Gavan screamed.

  "That! What, what is that?"

  Zorin, Dorin, and Sam turned to what Gavan was pointing at.

  They had so concentrated on the man that they didn't look around the room. In the corner was a preserved orc skeleton. Next to it was a wall with an assortment of green body parts, sketches of the orcs’ bodies, and large goblets of water. More body parts were preserved on the wall while miscellaneous appendages floated in liquid-filled mason jars. Heads undergoing varying degrees of decay made for another gruesome sight.

  A sign hung above the wall. The words, "Picher Museum of Natural History" were inscribed on it.

  "What is this place?" asked Gavan.

  "I've been busy," said the man.

  "Who are you?" asked Zorin.

  The man cocked his head towards Zorin and did not say a thing. He seemed to chew on his words. The man furrowed his brow and judging by his facial expression, Gavan could not tell if he remembered something or if he was shocked by the question.

  "Are you alright?" asked Sam.

  "The manners go by the wayside in the apocalypse," said the man.

  "I know you. I saw a special on you. You were the dentist who refused to leave this place. Weren't you like a single-action champion too?"

  "Another lifetime."

  "But that was you right?"

  "Yes," he said as he lifted his head and gave another signature blank stare. "The darkness changed a lot."

  "Darkness?" started Gavan who shot an inquisitive look at the man. "Terror from underneath the earth?"

  "Yes," said the unnamed man, "I know them. But they seemed to respond differently to you."

  "You know them?" asked Gavan.

  "Mutants, orcs, whatever you want to call them. I know them better than I care to They are terrified of me. Those freaks see me and whimper off like a whipped dog. They got pretty close today. Why?"

  "Because we are not tied to them," said Zorin. "They saw strangers armed to the teeth and they knew we came out to here searching for answers."

  "Searching?" asked the man

  "For answers," said Gavan "Are you sure we are safe here?"

  "You will be safer after you tell me what is exactly going on?"

  "There's been a lot of strange things happen in Oklahoma. I think it might have started with someone from here," said Gavan.

  "Interesting," said the man.

  "Do you know her?" asked Sam.

  "What are you talking about? Know who?"

  "Know her. Do you know her?" asked Sam.

  "Sorry, that is why we came. The person we were looking for information on was Sasha Ferrell,” said Gavan.

  "Ms. Ferrell, do you know her?" asked Sam.

  The man remained motionless as if staring at them behind his dark sunglasses. Then a broad smile crossed the unnamed man’s face.

  "The girl in the mine?" asked the stranger.

  "Wait...that was her?" asked Gavan.

  "She was a celeb. Governor came down to see her."

  Gavan's mouth gaped.

  "And the picture?" said Sam. "It doesn't look like her, but somehow I know, I know it was her. Is that her?"

  The man smiled, exposing his teeth. "That was her."

  "How could anyone forget Sasha Ferrell?" asked Sam.

  "That's the million dollar question," said Gavan.

  "The whole world did," the stranger gritted his teeth and shook his head. "But I didn't."

  CHAPTER 4: I AM PICHER, PART II

  Gavan - Picher, Ok

  "For starters, who are you?" asked the man.

  The group all introduced themselves.

  "Now for the million-dollar question, who are you?" asked Gavan.

  "My name is Richard Mathis. People call me Dick Mathis. Manners go out the window after an apocalypse," said the man. "When this first started, I would have been jumping up and down to talk to another person."

  Gavan looked around the room. The room sat in silence as the gravity of the situation hit them.

  "How has this man survived?" he thought to himself.

  “What is in this room?” thought Sam to himself, “I’ve got a general idea, but what is in this mess?”

  Sam adjusted his night-vision goggles and looked through the room in greater detail. Cobwebs covered the ceiling, with a few clear areas showing were the man had been. Dust settled all over the room. Inside of this post-apocalyptic catacomb was a miscellaneous assortment of things from before Picher's evacuation. There was a tuba with vines growing around the brass and a flower coming up from the brass bell. There was a mannequin wearing a band uniform with a Winchester rifle slung around its chest. It had a Western-style ammunition belt around its waist. Gavan noted the head of a stuffed buck hung against the wall. Deformed antlers protruded its skull and swirled around its head like a seashell. There were various scientific instruments and vessels that Gavan had only seen in classic science fiction movies. Finally, even further back there was a makeshift arms room with an odd assortment of weapons that had been left behind. It did not have the impressive number of arms that he knew the Nomads must have but there was still quite a bit.

  Closer to where Gavan stood, was a chess set laid out on a table. There was an open-mouthed skeleton on one end of the table dressed in 1700s style clothing, sporting a trifold hat. A gorilla statue stood behind the chess set wearing a maroon beret. Gavan imagined Mathis sitting at the table playing chess with the statue, engaging in incoherent dialogue necessary to keep the mind working.

  "Why didn't he just leave?" he thought again.

  "I wanted to see another person so bad," Dick said. "But I got distracted."

  He took off his leather jacket revealing a vest covered in what looked like the mangy fur of a coyote.

  "I know why you're here," Dick continued. "But let me start at the beginning."

  He walked past the skeleton and grabbed a glass of water from the table. The man drank it and rubbed his throat.

  "Excuse me," Dick carr
ied on after quenching his thirst and rubbing his throat. "It's been a while since I've talked this much."

  "That's like a medical training dummy skeleton thing, right?" asked Sam.

  "I'm happy to see people," Dick said and looked over the two twins. "Whether they are human or not. But I have forgotten what happiness feels like. There was a reason I stayed back here. There was a reason..." he trailed off.

  "What was the reason?" asked Gavan.

  "I loved Picher. I loved the people. Good god-fearing folk who worked hard. The mines were rich in minerals such as zinc, cadmium and platinum. They brought the people in and boosted our economy which helped the town. But we didn't know how to dispose of the zinc and chat. Science did not yet understand what the mineral was or how horrible it was.

  "But below Picher, there was something else," said Dick, and then turned to the group. "I knew you were coming."

  "How did you know?" asked Sam.

  "You're the reason I stayed back,” said Dick, “I knew there was a supernatural element to Picher, and I knew some day…someone would come to investigate.”

  "How did you know we'd come? How did you know we weren't bad guys?"

  "You don't stink like the other men. You can smell it on them a mile away. Some sort of drug."

  "They call it Zeta," said Gavan.

  "Well, they used to make it here. Something big had happened. I knew someday, the right people would come out here to investigate. Even after everyone left, I knew I had to stay. Oklahoma is a mix of a bunch of desperate people coming together. People tend to forget history even when they shouldn't.”

  "Back in the age of explorers, the French and English went north while Portugal and Spain went south. But don't forget Cornado and the Conquistadores came up here too. You've heard of buried Conquistador treasure in Oklahoma, right?"

  "Yeah, I think we all have," said Gavan.

  "Well something got buried but it wasn't treasured."

  "The Conquistadores, they started this whole thing?" asked Gavan.

  "The Conquistadores wouldn't have thought that. There was a sect of Conquistadores. Bizarre for their time, they were group Spaniards who hated Catholicism."

  "You're saying they were Protestant?"

  "Oh no," Dick shook his head as he responded, “they were not Catholic neither were they Protestant or Orthodox. They were something else. Let’s just say, it was not the ‘pray for your enemies' type of religion."

  "What religion was it?"

  "An unnamed religion rumored to be some forgotten religion of the Vikings. Sailors and pirates were a very diverse group. Well, this group had a Scandinavian sailor who introduced them to the religion. The religion had come from Scandinavia, but it had been forbidden to discuss it. Many feared that if there were any knowledge of it, the religion would come back into practice. Both the Spanish and the Aztecs shunned it."

  "But if there were no records, how do you know all this?"

  "I got it straight from the horse's mouth," Dick shuddered.

  "What does that mean?" asked Gavan

  "While this religion had no true deity, it was not without a supernatural element. Let's just say that it found ways, even after being buried, to convey its message.”

  "This band fell to the Quapaw Indians that were here in what is now Picher. It was thought that this cult had been destroyed. The Quapaws tried to burn all the remnants of the evil, but the artifacts they brought could not be burnt. So, they did the next best thing: they buried them.

  "But in a world where the ground has been undone, things that were buried can rise to the surface. Ideas deemed vulgar and pagan can be resurrected, and an old dark forgotten world once again has a voice."

  Dick paused. He stood motionless.

  "I can hear your breaths and your heartbeats," Dick said. "Some nervous about their safety here. Others, curious about my story. Again, you may still be asking yourself why I stayed. Why, after the tornado? Why, after the federal government tried to buy me out? Why stay here as an insane man living in a makeshift bunker. I told you I knew someday, someone would come searching for the truth, and I had to be here when that day came."

  He stared at them again and choked on his words as if he was becoming emotional.

  "I thought hope was lost. Do you want to know how I know so much about this religion?"

  "I can positively say no," said Gavan. "But, I think we need to know."

  "I had a friend, a Dutch guy named Van Sloan. He was a psychiatrist, among other things, with a whole string of letters behind his name. This guy was a brilliant scientist who wanted to come out to Oklahoma because he grew up on John Wayne. It's funny to think his movies brought him out to the Panhandle State, but they did. Anyways, Van went missing. With the exodus, certain things went by the wayside. The Picher Police Department was one of the best in the US. It was made up of brave men and women, but during the disaster, they focused so much on the living, that they couldn't help my friend. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation wasn't coming to this wasteland and the feds sure as heck weren't either. I knew the case would go cold and my friend's memory forgotten. Dentistry ain't just teeth, it's about people, and it is also science. And science is about the truth. It is man's primitive attempt at knowledge. I knew what I had to do. Dr. Van Sloan was missing, and while everyone left, my scientific mind told me to stay.

  "When everyone had left, these green-skinned monsters made themselves known. The mutants and the humans of the cult started to come, walking openly in the streets. Among themselves, sacrifices were thrown into a pit. Living sacrifices. In Christianity, the Shepherd laid down his life for his followers, but in this faith, the followers laid down for their leader. Symbolically with Communion, the Messiah's body is given to its adherents for consumption, but in this religion, it was the followers giving their body for its god's consumption, but-but I don't think it was symbolic. The mutants knew I was still in town and they wanted my body for their sacrament.

  "But my resilience was more significant than the will of brainwashed subjects, and I escaped. And with monsters, I grew notoriety. My heart grew callous, and to the beasts, I became a monster. Using my dental facilities, skills, and abilities, coupled with my desire for knowledge, I began catching mutants and experimenting on them.

  "Did you know that these beasts’ hearts are on the right side of their chest? Did you also know .223 or 5.56 rounds do not have the immediate effect on these creatures? I found this from trial and error. I was a good man once. Now my heart is stained with dark blood. I prayed for release, and now it is here."

  "But what does this have to do with Sasha Ferrell?" asked Samson.

  "With Ms. Sasha Ferrell?" asked Mattis. "Why everything. She is a tool of the monster. Time is running short; my mission I now give to you."

  Dick got up and handed them a cardboard box.

  "The mutants and the men, they have returned to Picher. They had gone south looking for something, but now they're back. The Quapaws had buried something, and now it was the mutants turn to bury something."

  "What is it?" asked Gavan.

  The man jabbed his finger at the box.

  "It was mine; now it's yours. Save my state. The fate of Oklahoma lies with you."

  CHAPTER 5: I AM PICHER, PART III

  Gavan; Picher, Ok

  "Your mask over there keeps on buzzing," said Dr. Mattis.

  "Whoa, did you realize this thing had a radio?" asked Sam.

  "Let me hear," said Zorin placing the mask to his ear. "We've got to go. We've got to go now."

  "But why? That's Dorin. Ragnog all over again. Orcs everywhere."

  "But he didn't say anything."

  "I know, that's Dorin. I know my brother. We gotta go!" And with that, the dwarf ran towards the door. He slid it open and bolted out.

  "Alright," said Gavan, his body visibly shaking. "Let's go get into a fight."

  "Stop!" Dick cried, and at a surprising speed he had caught up to Gavan and Sam, grabbing both of them by
their biceps.

  "That was never your job," said Dick. "I'll give you time, you guys just get out of here! I don’t want you fighting the mutant...orcs, you don’t fight. This is my fight!"

  "We will not leave you here," said Gavan.

  "That ain't your choice to make." Dr. Mattis turned and pointed at the various, decaying orc corpses arrayed on the wall. "Look at my walls. I can't go back to a normal life after that. But you can, now go!"