“There’s a punch line coming, isn’t there?”
“You’re a smart guy. Everybody in the building and in your cell know you’ve been in my office for quite a while. Your newfound buddies don’t know squat about you. My bet is the word is getting around that you’re an informer. And guess what? We’re going to bolster that belief by letting you walk.”
“Okay, which door do I leave by?”
“Smart ass. You know this means you never show your face in Portland again. You’ve got no friends.”
“I was just passing through.”
“Officer, get him out of here.”
On the wall, to one side of the door, I noticed a photograph of a boat at a slight cant, rolling with the waves on a choppy lake. Pine trees and a large snow-capped mountain dominated the background. The name of the boat, in gold script, read Cassandra’s Ride.
“Mister Putnam, is this your boat?”
He pursed his lips, tapped his cigar a few times, considered if I was worth answering.
“Yes, swiftest little sailboat on Silver Lake.”
“What mountain is that?”
“Mount Saint Helens.”
Chapter 44
So I roared over the Columbia river on my skyship with my knapsack, guitar, and wearing my Sasquatch disguise. The money, pencils, drawing pad, and the patch of golden radiance from the battle with Sheoblask were all intact. The police, not attuned to its glow, had listed that clue of demon skin as “decorative leather scrap.”
Ha.
I was humiliated by the thought that those souls who would be sentenced to jail for smoking some weed would go to their graves thinking I had ratted them out. But there was no way to try to convince them of the truth. Halfway across the bridge, I remembered there may still be somebody from that house bust who I knew would believe in me. She had appeared just after I had been interrupted trying to weave my magic gesture.
Breaking the deal with Putnam, I turned around and headed back to the university neighborhood. There was no sign of the police near the house. The broken doors were boarded with plywood. I found a section of gutter under a hedge and used it to smash the glass on one of the windows. After climbing through it, I ascended to the second floor, calling softly.
She rolled her eyes to watch me, but kept licking voraciously at the water dripping from the tub faucet.
“C’mon Piddles. We’re going on an adventure.”
She rode in a sling across my chest, protected by Scott’s coat. Her fur was completely black except for a little white dot on the left side of her muzzle. Like a star. Balancing on her nose.
I used up a day studying maps and rigging a crate for Piddles on the bike, outfitting it with a small screen top and a blanket, and then accessorizing her little cabin further with a soda bottle box stocked with cans of dog food. I bought an assortment of camping supplies, and after tying them to any available space, I zoomed northwards, anxious about what awaited me where Cassandra’s Ride did its sailing. A few hours later, Piddles barked crazily at squirrels in the trees and almost broke out of her crate at the sight of a family of ducks as we cruised the main trails around Silver Lake.
Small herds of cows grazed in some grasslands near a small town, so I pitched a pup tent, scouted for mushrooms without any luck, and lived for a week in the woods with a view of the lake and Mount Saint Helens. The mountain appeared as a majestic beacon, a beautiful solo peak, dotted with snow.
But I saw no lights in the skies.
I decided to make my way closer to the volcano and followed a logging road that ran alongside a river rushing down from the higher elevations of the area.
The land was rugged, the river impassable due to its width, whitewater, and cliffs. The trail became harder to navigate on the Harley. I bumped or scraped my way through acres of a land that had once been pine forest—now scarred by lumber and mining operations. Young saplings sprouted in the clearer spots, while old timber lay shattered, sometimes in piles, hindering my maneuvers toward higher terrain. Rocky streams with steep embankments blocked my path and required strenuous effort to traverse without wrecking the bike. Fifteen minutes after clearing away small boulders and ripping out bushes from one crossing, and I’d come to another swift and stony creek. Finally, I approached a moonscape of industrial disaster where erosion had dug a criss-cross of deep trenches that blocked my way. Trying to skirt around them by entering the thick overgrowth and forest proved impossible.
The Harley had to be left behind for me to continue my trek. Using some short logs and fir limbs, I built a shelter for the machine, then set out to find an area for a good base camp. Piddles sniffed pine cones, rocks, trees—everything of dog interest—while scampering in all directions. I decided it would be easier to follow her than try to convince her I knew where we were going. Besides, I had no doubt she was the magical spirit dog that had appeared to me over the last few years and knew better than me on how to trace a route into the unknown.
Within twenty minutes, she had found a stream of clear water gurgling over a bed of shiny black and white stones. Brambles and ferns and entangled vines ringed a clearing covered in pine needles. Across the narrow waterway, boulders rested, surrounded by evergreens rooted to the steep sides of a mountain ridge.
It took me five trips to carry our supplies to the site. After setting up the tiny tent, I stored the food in a duffel bag, looped a rope over a high tree branch, and hauled our stash into the air, hopefully, to hang out of reach of any hungry denizen of the forest. Piddles, the canvas covering, and a slow fire helped set aside my fear of the bears, mountain lions, and the odd rattler that stalked my mind on a wilderness night.
After hiking the area for three days, I had serious doubts about Cassandra finding magic cow mushrooms in that wild terrain. The day had been exhausting, and I was staring into my fire, scratching my head, wondering if I should go back to the pasturelands and look again for fertile manure patties.
If I was tripping, the traveler’s lights as they approach a portal might be easier to spot. Then again, portals don’t need to be near mushroom pastures, and I can see into that world anyway. Maybe I’m just in the wrong valley. Cassandra could have wandered anywhere. Maybe to that lake on the other side of the old volcano.
Piddles lifted her sleepy head, sniffed the air, then stood and yipped sharply. Just once.
A set of red eyes stared unblinking at me from the inseparable tangles and pine limbs and thick black air encircling the campsite. I recognized the burn, the hatred.
Although Sheoblask spoke in the menacing garble of his demonic tongue, I understood him perfectly. “You did it.”
“What?” My hand went to Piddles’ back. “Stay here, girl.” My throat thickened, and my heart thumped rapidly. I knew what he was going to say next.
“You ripped the time tunnel. When you ambushed me on the beach, the day you killed my son Sharatula.” He stepped closer. I could see the outline of his muscular body, the razor white of his teeth.
Piddles growled.
The demon’s alien features and aura of danger spoke of nothing but the strong possibility of violence erupting soon. Fear and adrenaline forced me to swallow back any empathy for his dead child I might have had. I stuck to the subject of the tunnel. “Yeah, man, I saw the tunnel beginning to shred as we fought.”
A loud, deep tunnel rumble passed overhead. This time I could hear ripping and cracking sounds straining within it.
He moved into the firelight, jabbed his chin skyward. “Listen.”
“I’m trusting it to guide me to the ruined tunnel.”
Sheoblask looked grim and determined as he focused his attention on the thunderous disturbance. His large white cross throbbed briefly with red light. “That’s the tunnel splitting. Amplify it a thousand fold and it’s the same roar I heard when the tunnel blew to bits.”
Remembering Shadow
Creature’s reassurances about everything falling into place, but feeling helpless in the knowledge of how tunnel events transpired, I shrugged, watching the demon carefully. Not wanting to tangle with Sheoblask again, I chose to babble. “We wouldn’t be here if the tunnel hadn’t already collapsed. We’re hearing the tunnel’s past, the beginnings of it being ripped apart.” The reality of being alone in the wild with Sheoblask pinched my voice with alarm momentarily, but I pressed on, letting any jumbled thoughts spill from my mouth. “That turmoil above is about to disrupt Pigeon and Steel as they’re preparing their jumps. Blind Tuma is in a tunnel near some Caribbean island. And feathers are about to rain down on three fishermen living on a beach four hundred years ago.” Sheoblask was staring hard at me, but he was listening, not attacking. I paused, trying again to wrap my head around what I had just said, then continued, “Incredibly, up in that rumble, the injured Shadow God doesn’t fully exist yet, does it? It’s just being born.”
The bizarre concept of past events not having happened yet and Sheoblask and me wrestling somewhere in time was beyond befuddling. I scratched the top of my head a bit more intensely than I normally did, wondering at it all.
Sheoblask spit a glob of something into the fire. Flares soared and flickered momentarily.
I had the feeling that if we fought again, we wouldn’t tumble through time. He’d just tear my head off before I wriggled my fingers or slipped into a tunnel.
I pulled out a pack of Kools and lit one. “I can’t begin to guess how a god, trapped back at the moment just before the birth of this universe, communicates to me. Its existence uses different rules than my perception of time. Has to—it appeared to me before you even smacked into the tunnels. Weird. That incident involved the damaged future tunnel before it had even been mangled. And now... it’s everywhere.” I waved my cigarette hand at the sky to exemplify the impossibility of trying to understand the ruined-tunnel-turned-god.
Sheoblask muttered something about smoking being a filthy habit, then squatted on the other side of the fire, glaring at me. “The injured Shadow God is an aberration of the laws of existence. So are you. Your energies found each other.”
The rumblings in the sky grew in sound, ricocheting off another, their echoes reverberating above the forest.
I met his eye. “So tell me—” A flame leaped, obliterating my view of his face. I looked skyward. “What were you... sounds crazy... or are... you doing while that pandemonium growls along overhead? Blasting through time or maybe through some unholy dimension in your fifty-nine Eldorado?”
His arm shot across the space between us, a giant clawed hand grabbing my wrist, smothering the palm and fingers of my right hand. He lurched forward, one knee in the inferno, and encircled his other talon around my neck. “If it was up to me, I’d incinerate you here and now.” The fire grew higher around his legs, reaching his waist, as if he was a source of indestructible kindling. He pulled my head closer to the hell. My beard crinkled from the heat.
I felt a warm stream on my wrist. His thumb claw had punctured my skin.
Piddles, all ten or twelve pounds of her, yapped and lunged at Sheoblask.
A tendril of flame shot towards Piddles. “Damn dog has been on my case for eons.” He let go of his grasp, shoved me away, and backed himself out of the fire. “There were rumors coming from this dimension of a human being who could jump and see into the tunnels without ever having eaten of the divine feast.”
My wrist seemed okay, but my neck felt raw, my hair singed. Smoke itched at my nostrils. I squeezed and rubbed at my beard, checking if it had caught fire, trying to smother any smoldering. Touching a finger to the soreness on my throat, I was reminded of the oozing and blistering of my burned hand from the Cadillac’s tail pipe.
Sheoblask grunted as he shifted his bulk.
“The masters learned about you when Pan’s minions started to investigate your power. Stogie the Tunneler saw you as an opportunity to cut off Earth’s main exit routes and called on me, Sheoblask, demolisher of enemies. My mission not only consisted of blocking Pan’s age-old transgressions but also to assess your abilities. We knew your energy was unsteady and dangerous in a tunnel. We would use you unless you proved too dangerous.”
“What the hell is wrong with all of you?”
He ignored my question. “I steered Destroyer towards Earth, caught a boost from you, and whacked out a wall of the tunnel at an intersection.”
“What boost from me? What are you saying, man?”
“My plan was to knock out the jump station in Monster Alley. Steel was calculating a time-jump, Pigeon about to do a minor hop to visit Pan in the Andes. You were in the neighborhood, unknowingly tapping into the tunnel energy and creating a disturbance field near the portal. I jumped directly from my home dimension, hit the area weakened by your proximity, and everything went wrong.”
“I saw them. Not you, though.”
“I pierced right through and landed in a dimension that was filled with prayers and curses. I lay there, dazed, with Destroyer stalled. Steel and Pigeon got mixed up in a brief battle with me as I flashed by, but being in the beginnings of their jumps, they were thrown off course by the impact. The way we pieced it back together, Pigeon was hurled into Steel’s time-jump while Steel was thrown into a local jump, landing on that beach in California. The same one you and I battled on. A time or dimensional-jump is a complex maneuver. Because Pigeon hadn’t planned to leap across the centuries, he was yanked back and forth through time tunnels. But he survived. When the dust settled, it was obvious time-traveling all across the universe had been damaged. In his wild ride, Pigeon was able to assess that tracks into the future were now twisted into the past, while the past branched into wreckage. Impassable gaps appeared, and routes became clogged. And of course, they then became impossible to find.”
“And our battle as we fell thru time was another aspect of the tunnel going out of whack.” I placed my hand on Piddles to calm her.
“That’s how I see it.”
“So how did it all go wrong?”
“We still suspect a missing ingredient, but Stogie God misjudged your effect, Steel didn’t understand your capabilities, and Pigeon was caught off guard. You had no idea what was going on, and, regrettably, my aim was perfect.”
“Stogie’s the god who created the tunnels. How come he couldn’t foresee what I can do to a tunnel?”
“No one saw your ability to affect the advanced jumps of interdimensional travel and the toughest one of all, time-leaping. They all knew your energy was disruptive, but early on, they believed it affected only physical-jump tunnels. We thought your erratic power would help knock out Earth’s access to mundane off-planet jumps, leaving me to take care of the more complex tunnels. Even with the possibility of another unknown catastrophic energy involved, there’s no question at the moment of my impact, your weakening of the tunnel drove the unexpected results.”
The fire crackled, sparks spat in different directions. Piddles climbed into my lap, licked my hand.
“Sounds like you blame me.”
Sheoblask shrugged. “I saw what your hand did to the tunnel walls as we fell through time together. The gods’ original plan had been to knock out Earth’s portals one at a time, stopping all but local jumps.”
“So time travel was scattered without rhyme or reason into the past or future in that moment of impact in the alley.”
“Exactly. Unfortunately, even though time itself is uninterrupted, time jumpers are stranded across different eras, or maybe injured or dead.”
“Okay, I get it. Man, rub it in, will you? I got a friend trapped in time somewhere. It’s heavy, man, but I’m not feeling particularly responsible for them. I had no clue then, and right now my job is to find and fix the ruins.”
But there was a lie hidden in my protestation. I did feel like everything that was transpiring centered on me.
&n
bsp; Where are you, Nando?
We sat in silence, two enemies in contemplation of how we had affected each other’s fates.
I stirred from my ponderings when Sheoblask stood and tromped into the blackness of the woods.
“Hey, you’re not staying for campfire singing?”
“I’ll be back when you locate the ruins.”
“Why?”
He turned and snarled, “At some point you’ll finish this quest, and it’ll be open season again.”
Chapter 45
Throughout the night, I heard the screams of creatures—a rabbit screeching as it was murdered, a large bird’s squawking with each throttle of its neck, and a thunderous roar turning into a yelping, squealing surrender. Around dawn, the red missile taillights of the black Cadillac passed through the dense forest, releasing its inhabitants from the demon’s terror.
Knowing Sheoblask had finally left, I drifted off to sleep.
From within a groggy stupor, amidst the early chirping of the morning’s birds, I heard the sound of a flute.
That melody... I remember... Pan in the woods behind my parents’ house. I had just kicked a ball straight up into the air and caught it with my hand. This hand. I can still hear the tune he was whistling. It was playful, carefree, happy. And the cows. They were Amelia, with her udder juggling, and Jenny, with markings on her hide exactly like her mother’s.
And as I awoke, I realized the flute sound was not just in my mind.
Somewhere in the woods the trill of Pan’s flute called.
Piddles was bouncing up and down at the tent flap. Then, seeing me roll from my sleeping bag, she yanked at the loose entrance-knots and wriggled outside. With an exuberant determination, she bounded over the roots of a hardwood tree and raced beneath ferns at the perimeter of our campsite.
I hastily grabbed my knapsack and Scott’s furry coat. Fearing I would lose sight of her, I ran barefoot after her.
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 29