to by those with the knowledge to do so.” “Seems kind of anticlimactic,” Steve said.
Mike grinned at him. “Let the Lords of Chaos be the judge of that,” he said. “Who knows what miracles lie at the farther edge of infinity?”
I took the dagger from him.
“You can’t be serious, Charley?” Steve said. “Don’t—I mean, maybe we can figure something else out—”
Coughing and sputtering, someone slammed onto the granite floor from the portal.
“Quickly, now!” Mike said. He began muttering to himself as he uncapped the flask of Witch’s Wine. “You must do it right as I complete the utterances!” “Son of a bitch! Where is she?” It was Booker’s voice, screaming. Two more bodies were suddenly in the room. “Get that stuff before he empties it!” Steve slammed into one of them. My heart was thumping through my chest. Mike had entered some kind of trance, and continued to mutter as he dribbled the contents of the flask into Laban’s grave. A shimmering iridescence began to emanate out of the blackness within, and a purplish-mauve mist began seeping out over the edges of the stone walls.
I heard more scuffling. I lifted the dagger and prayed mentally for just enough time—
“Get off of me!” That was Booker’s voice. “Barton! Get him! Do something! ”
A peculiar bright-pink glow began emanating from me. Why was I glowing?
I looked down. The source of illumination appeared to be my left pants pocket. I reached within it—and clasped my fingers around the little plastic sandwich sword. I pulled it out of my pocket and held it out in front of me, on my open palm.
The lunch ornament began to grow, both in weight and in size, remaining a translucent, glimmering, radiant pink nonetheless. Inadvertently, I dropped it, and it clattered onto the stone floor.
I chanced a look behind me, and almost dropped the dagger in amazement. It was Steve—but it wasn’t—it was—
“Graxx!” I shouted. Steve/Graxx the Half-Elf Thief was holding his own against three of the hunters, who crowded into the room.
But where was—
Booker lunged around the opposite side of the portal. He shrieked, a looked of crazed fury twisting his face, as he sprinted for Mike, then leapt for the flask of Witch’s Wine, hands outstretched, fearing neither fate nor anything.
Of its own volition, the sword—now full-size— lifted itself vertically, point upward, and levitated to a spot directly over the shimmering blackness of Laban’s grave. Immediately, there was silence, utter and complete. Booker and the other hunters froze— both in time as well as in space—spellbound, their eyes transfixed by the radiant Hot-Pink Sandwich Sword That Could.
Steve’s/Graxx’s eyes widened. “The Sword of Astonishment!” he yelled. “That’s it!”
“What do I—” I started.
Before I could finish speaking, Mike leapt onto the edge of the stone wall of Laban’s grave, then directly onto the point of the glimmering, hovering sword. A look of bewilderment crossed his features. Blood burst forth from the wounds in his chest and back.
“I’m—” he said. Weakly, he lifted his face in an attempt to regard me. The sword held fast, still floating above the pool of shimmering color now mixing with his heart’s blood. Something like a smile crept into the grimace of pain on his face. He wavered uncertainly, blinking a stream of tears out of his eyes, coughing blood. “I’m—sorry. I—never meant—”
He collapsed utterly, along with the sword, into
the cavernous tomb. One last burst of radiant color, shimmering, blindingly bright, cascaded out and around the stone room.
I fell back against the ground.
When I opened my eyes, the room appeared roughly as it had been when we entered it. Steve stood where the portal once was, gazing at the little figure of Graxx in the palm of his hand.
“The Silent Goblin Gang,” Steve said, shaking his head and smiling. “I should have fucking known.” He looked up at me and waved his hand at the four bodies collapsed around the room—now four piles of dust, merely remains of the corpses they had always been.
The portal back to Tulsa had disintegrated the moment Michael Flowers sealed the gate in Laban’s tomb. Steve and I managed to find an exit behind one of the tapestries in the room.
“The right-hand portal!” Steve said as we exited into the room at the base of the stairs leading out. “Goddamn my luck!”
Our trek back out and down the pyramid was colored with a weirdly increasing sense of elation. Steve couldn’t be brought down; he constantly made D & D references, and replayed the scene of his battle with the “Silent Goblin Gang” at least four times. I noticed the play-by-play getting increasingly elaborate with each repetition.
“Were you really gonna stab him, though?” he asked me as we stood in the fresh air of the Place of Solace, gazing out in the direction of the Dreamkeeper’s Emporium. “I mean, seriously? Really?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wrapped up the Silver Key, shoved it into my backpack, and pulled out a dented can of—
“Milwaukee’s Best?” Steve shrugged. I cracked it open and let the watery sludge fizzle out for a moment onto the side of the pyramid. “I guess so.”
Steve pulled out his flask and took a swig. “This is the best-tasting liquor in the entire universe,” he said, and took another.
I guzzled the awful beer and tossed the can aside. “I think I’m going to need several handfulls of painkillers,” I said, gingerly peeling back one of my shirt sleeves.
Steve handed me an orange pill bottle without hesitation. “I already took one on our way up.”
“Do you think Julie’s—” I started.
“—at the Emporium?” Steve finished. “God, I hope so. I mean, who the fuck else are we going to tell the end of this story to? Roland? Something tells me he already knows it.”
As we strolled through the empty streets, marveling at the place and its infinite beauty, I formed a plan. I had a sinking feeling that Julie wasn’t going to be there when we arrived.
But I had another feeling, a better one, that Julie was alive and well, and like the way the rooms in the Dreamkeeper’s Emporium would seem to change to accommodate what you expected and desired, if I could remember all of our story, every last detail, then we would find her again, and we could all come back here together to this wonderful, safe, and happy place.
epilogue
THE GODS ARE FORGETFUL
Yes! The gods are forgetful. But we humans can be even more so—and with less good reason.
That is why Julie Evergreen did everything in her power to preserve the memory of what had happened in that flotsam of mind-stuff she knew as Golem Creek. It was a real place; this formed the basic premise of her existential argument. Whether it was idios kosmos or koinos kosmos—that remained to be seen. But it was real.
This she knew; this she kept to herself.
There had been a blip, a deletion, a skip in the record. That was the portal, the shimmering darkness in Laban Black’s tomb.
Then awakening to her alarm clock. But it was— Fall Break. First semester at the university. She was going to have to drive back home tomorrow for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house in Oklahoma City.
This also she remembered.
But she would need something to read—something not school related—to get through that trip. So that’s what she would do. She’d head to Gardner’s today and get a couple of used books. Enjoy herself tonight. Drive out some time tomorrow, make it to OKC by evening.
Gardner’s Books was the usual chaos of stuff piled everywhere, but at least it was kind of quiet today.
Julie headed over to the fantasy paperbacks. As usual, she couldn’t see much on the top-top shelf, nor on the bottom-bottom shelf, without a bit of straining. Damned aisles barely large enough for her, and she fell easily below the featherweight range. Wh
at about all those massive Tulsans out there? The ones who seemed to make a regular habit of restaurant-hopping?
She ran her fingers over some of the titles. So many old friends here...she skipped through the names, desperate for something she hadn’t already read. Bellairs...Duane...Herbert...Lackey... Le Guin...Leland...
Her hand stopped instinctively. Leland.
A battered paperback. She could barely make out the title from the spine. She pulled it out from the shelf, and her breath caught.
Fear Club: A Confession, she read. By Charles T. Leland.
The cover was a panorama, marred by numerous white creases, bends, folds, and tears. The image on the front had been mercilessly battered, but she could almost make out the likenesses of three figures. They were in a cemetery, it seemed, hovering around a grave.
The first few pages appeared to have been torn or fallen out, but a super-weird “dedication” page before the start of the book proper remained.
Box 1132
(I’m pretty sure it will work.)
Julie noticed a rush of blood to her head, her heart pounding, as she started to turn the dedication page.
Someone bumped into her from the side. “Oh! Pardon me!” a girl’s voice said as Julie
turned around. “Cramped aisles.”
The scent of strawberry licorice and bubble gum met Julie’s nostrils in force mere moments before sight of the girl’s unparalleled magnificence. Julie stepped back inadvertently, unready for the potent onslaught.
“It’s—fine, really,” Julie said. How did one choose words in the presence of such a creature? “I was just—”
“Interesting book,” the girl said, gazing at Fear Club.
“Have you read this?” Julie asked, waving a copy of the book before her. Gods, the girl was beautiful...but the uncanny aura about her seemed even to absorb any sensations of littleness or lack Julie might otherwise have felt outside of its radiance.
“Oh, that one?” she answered. “Yes, I have.”
Julie felt herself practically trembling with excitement.
“So you think I should—” she began.
“You should,” the girl said. She put one immaculately manicured hand on Julie’s shoulder and gazed directly in her eyes. Pools of fire—that’s what Julie thought she saw in them. Pools of lavendertinged fire. “In fact, I insist that you read it. And let me know what you think?”
The girl removed her hand from Julie’s shoulder and extracted the book from the latter’s benumbed grip. Moments later she handed it back, having inscribed her name and phone number on the inside front cover.
“Give me a call once you finish it,” she said. “Any time.”
“Any time?” Julie repeated in a daze. “You’ll answer?”
“Yes,” Molly replied. “I will. Yes.”
THE END
of
BOOK ONE
Damian Stephens lives in Virginia with his wife and cats. He began his writing career in elementary school with an intense, passionate stage play in which Dracula murders twelve people in three acts. (It ends with him wondering what’s for dinner.) Damian has—almost—many official professional titles. He would be thrilled to hear your reactions to this book. Even if you don’t want to be nice. Everything is data. Send him an email care of [email protected]
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