That perked me right up. “That’s awesome! Jen, how are you feeling? Are you…”
Jen stood up and started to speak. It was a stream of unfamiliar words. The words and flow became musical, sort of like a melodic rap. I would have enjoyed the sound of them except for the odd, intent look that Jen gave me. She advanced on me with determination on her face. I backed away, wondering if Illyrian facial expressions translated straight across to English. I backed right into the door frame and smacked the back of my head. Jen wasted no time closing the distance to me.
She continued her rap song as she stopped in front of me. Perhaps a “cant” would be a better word for what she was crooning at me. The words caught at my attention like a hangnail on a bed sheet. It was eerily familiar, and it bothered me that I couldn’t pinpoint where I had heard it before. I grew more intrigued and began to listen intently as she came up to me and put both her hands on my chest.
I felt as if I were watching performance art. There was some meaning, some intent to her motions that I was tantalizingly close to understanding. It mesmerized me. Her hands found the caduceus under my shirt. It was a light button down cotton summer shirt, so it didn’t put up much resistance when she tore it open. The buttons flew through the air in an achingly beautiful ballet. The tune surrounded the spinning buttons and filled their every tumble with meaning.
For a brief time, I fought the tune when I realized what she had done. I started to react and said, “Hey!” Then she had it in her hand, and she totally rufied me—without having me drink a thing. The song swallowed my world, and everything she was doing was part of the song. It was right for her to have my caduceus, it was right. Her beautiful voice washed all my worries and concerns away. When she snapped the string holding it around my neck, it was a necessary part of the song. I didn’t mind. Her song grew more intent, and I knew that the only way to complete it properly was to sleep.
I dropped to the floor and sat against the door frame, falling asleep while she stepped over me and walked through the door. It was so comfortable and cozy there. I was content, but my dreams were decidedly strange. I dreamt that I got up and ran after her. I yelled at her, “You bitch! Bring that back. That’s ours!” That didn’t seem a particularly nice thing to say, but apparently this was someone else’s dream, because I kept shouting it and kept running and running…
***
Finn! Wake Up!
I came to awareness bent over, panting, and shaking with exhaustion, in the middle of a wood. I stumbled over to a tree, sat down in the shade, and tried to wipe off the sweat that was flowing down my face. Damn, it was hot! I sat at the edge of a clearing that looked out on a small pond. I tried to remember how I had gotten there, but like a dream, most of the details sat blurred and out of my reach in some foreign corner of my brain.
Even through the thick fog in my brain, one point of illumination hit me clearly: Jen had put some sort of whammy on me with that song. It only took a moment’s thought to realize that Spring had taken over and run off after Jen while I was snoozing. It was a disturbing realization. More disturbing was the fact that I was lost, and Jen was gone. I poked at Spring. She just mumbled something before metaphorically turning over and pulling the covers over her head. I was too tired to even swear—until I put my hand automatically to my chest to touch my caduceus. Then I started cussing so hard, it burned my own ears.
The heat of my anger burned away the remaining fog and kick-started my brain but didn’t do much for the exhaustion. I patted around my pockets until I found my phone. I called Gregg to see if he knew anything more.
Gregg answered, “Hello?”
Before I could say anything, an angry, powerful voice said, “Give me that.” Then that voice was yelling directly into my ear: “What did you do with my daughter, you son-of-a-bitch! If you hurt her, I’ll flay you alive! I will beat—”
Message delivered and understood. I hung up. After a moment’s reflection, I called Dave.
He answered quickly and without preamble said, “Finn, what the hell happened this time?”
I guess he’d heard about it—oh yay. “Dave, I need you to come pick me up.”
“Okay, where are you?”
I looked around at the pond and the woods surrounding it. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. Don’t you think that’s going to—?”
“Look, just head towards Shady Oaks and I’ll try to figure out exactly where you can pick me up.”
I could hear the laughter in his voice when he said, “Damn, Finn! I’m so glad you’re my friend! Life would be unutterably mundane without you.”
“Gee, thanks. I feel so loved. I’ll call you when I get out of this forest.”
I hung up and looked at the long list of missed calls. Greg’s phone had called back while I was talking to Dave and several times before that. There were also calls from Dave, Jeff, Mom, and Dad and a few people whose names I didn’t recognize. I certainly didn’t want to hear what they all had to say, so I put the phone back in my pocket and pushed myself tiredly to my feet. One direction seemed as good as any other, so I turned my back to the pond and started walking. The underbrush was dense and difficult to move through, but even so, it didn’t take me long to get to the edge of the woods and find a road. Of course, the road didn’t have a sign on it. At that point, I had to smack myself on the head. I pulled out my phone, pulled up Google maps, and let my phone’s GPS tell me where I was.
Apparently, according to Google Maps, I was in the ocean somewhere off the coast of Jupiter, Florida. Presumably, I was in a boat, because I was pretty sure I wasn’t drowning. This time I did have enough energy to swear. Replacing my phone in my pocket, I picked a random direction and started walking. I watched warily for any cars, ready to flatten myself in the ditch that ran along the road. If I was a wanted man, there was no use making it easy on any searchers. I briefly thought about ditching my phone, so they couldn’t trace me, but I loved my phone, and I didn’t know if any of that spy-tracking stuff was actually real. I’d rather take my chances being caught than lose my phone. If those priorities don’t confirm I’m a geek, then nothing does.
A long, hot, sweaty walk brought me to a crossroads. To my immense relief, there were actually road signs—not a given in rural Ohio. I called Dave and sat down on the side of the road to wait. About fifteen minutes later, I saw his beaten up Mustang coming up the road. He stopped for me, and I ran up and threw myself in his car. When I pulled hard to close the door, I realized what I was doing and put my foot down to stop the door from slamming. It still slammed—just on my foot. I swore, pulled in my broken foot, and then closed the door. I swore some more while Dave laughed at me.
Dave controlled his mirth poorly and asked, “So, where to, Clyde?”
“Does that mean you’re Bonny?”
His grin widened, “Nope, your Bonny is six inches tall, size 34D and lives in your imagination.”
“Laugh it up, monkey boy,” I said.
He did.
Before his mirth could run its course, Dave’s phone went off. “Hey Alan, no, I cannot officially say that Finn is standing right on the road next to me. Anyone who says that is a liar… What? Holy shit!”
Ah, frack. Maybe I should just bend over now.
“That’s messed up… okay… thanks, tallboy.”
“Guess what?” said Dave.
I braced for bad news by grabbing the suicide handle Dave had installed. “What?”
“You know how Alan’s dad has got that old police scanner?”
“Am I going to have to beat this out of you?”
“No, better! Snakeboy has been spotted near here. He got a face full of bird-shot from a farmer and took off.”
“Ah, crap! What if he runs into Jen?”
“Okay Mighty, this is where the rubber meets the road, where the shit hits the fan, where the chicken gets cho…”
“Dave!”
“Okay mighty one, where are we going?”
Aw turkey tits. I had to admit to myself that I had no clue where to go.
Dave and I went over our options. Apparently, I was on the backside of the woods that Shady Oaks snuggled with. The facility was only a few miles away, and the run had almost killed me. I really thought I was in better shape. I couldn’t even catch a girl who had been sick for a month. Sheesh, what happened? I prodded Spring but got no reply.
Dave put his hands on the steering wheel with a slap. “Okay, all joking aside, where to?”
“All joking aside, I have no idea.”
“Okay… want to fill me in on what happened to you?”
“Turns out that an ancient warrior priestess from a magical crystal city knows how to sing someone to sleep.”
We both said in unison, “Who knew?”
The shared humor helped, but didn’t give me any direction, so I laid out everything to Dave. I finished with, “And, now, Jen is out there running around with no clue about anything and Snakeboy Parmely is out there, somewhere, looking for something tasty to chew on. We’ve got to find Jen, but I’ve got no idea how to do that.”
We sat examining our navels for a few moments when Dave’s phone rang again. He looked at the number and shrugged.
“Go ahead, answer it.”
He answered. “Yo…Hey, Gregg! What’s this number? Oh, good thinking… Yeah?… Yeah…”
This time I wasn’t going to be cut out of the conversation. “Put him on speaker!”
He waved me away and said, “Yeah, we’ll meet you there.” He disconnected.
“He’s only a couple of miles away at that Quickie-Mart.”
We popped over to the Quickie-Mart and met Gregg there. He hopped in the car while I kept down so no one could see me. Once he was in, we pulled back onto the county road and went over everything we knew again. It was Dave who finally had the bright idea.
“Finn, I’ll head back to where I picked you up. Then, you give me your bear whistle, and I’ll turn into a bear that can sniff out Jen’s trail. Bears have one of the sharpest senses of smell of all animals. They put hound dogs to shame!”
“Dave, that’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard!” I said.
Cue yet another ironic scene shift. Wipe to three boys standing on the side of an Ohio county road, the skies are heavy and gray, and a storm is brewing. The black boy is dubiously opening a gym bag.
“Gregg,” said Dave, “it’s got to be me!”
Gregg sniffed gingerly into the ripe bag that carried his sister’s soccer gear.
“No, she’s my sister. I know her best. Besides, you dork, you’re wearing a red shirt. You should know better.”
Dave plucked his shirt out. He laughed.
“That’s only for Star Trek, this is more like Harry Potter. Besides, you’re the only one Jen-The-Priestess knows at all! You have to be human so you can talk to her. She’ll freak out if a bear comes after her.”
“Gregg,” I said. “He’s right. We need you around. Besides, it won’t work. Give the bag to Dave, and let’s just get this silliness over with.”
Gregg reluctantly handed Dave the bag. Then the hardest part came. I had to give Dave the whistle. It was hard, but I did it. Without the bear or the caduceus, I felt utterly naked and alone.
That got me worried about Spring. Anxiously, I searched inside myself and there, deep down inside, I found her. She’d wrapped herself into a small seed, quiet and unresponsive, but she was there. I started to relax just as I heard Dave blow the whistle full blast. I cringed at the shrieking tone and waited, but as I expected, nothing happened.
“Dave,” I said. “I’m almost certain there is a tune you have to play to make it work. I heard the ghost play it before he turned into a bear.”
“Okay, hum it for me.”
I would never forget that tune, so I hummed it and then I chanted nimakwa-kitathaya, the words I had heard the ghost of the mound use. My voice isn’t any great shakes, but I can carry a reasonable tune, and after a lot of experimentation, I had Dave going in the right direction.
Once he got close, his eyes lit up. “Hey! I can hear it now.” He closed his eyes, said, “It goes like this.” He brought the whistle to his mouth and played.
The complicated two-tone rhythm came out just as I had remembered it. He nailed it.
With the last note, Dave changed.
The change occurred swiftly. He grew to easily twice his normal size, filled out, and sprouted fur. There was no cracking of bones or splitting of skin—just the tearing of his clothes. It was as if someone had taken Dave and blown him up into a giant bear balloon—a furry, musky smelling, bellowing, bear balloon. He towered over us. He was massively thick and at least ten feet tall standing on his hind legs. When he let out a bone-rattling roar, Gregg and I jumped back with a shout. I guess, until now, none of us actually believed that something might happen. I sighed: toss conservation of mass right out the window. Somehow, Dave had gone from a 150-pound human to a 150-ton bear.
We scrambled away as Dave the Bear dropped down to four legs. Even then, he was as tall as us. I suddenly had a butt-puckering, visceral understanding why bears were one of the most feared predators. This was no Teddy. I could easily believe his claws would shred us like tissue paper. The bear looked at us, then it waved its snout back and forth making a mournful sounding cry and bounced up and down on its front legs.
Gregg raised his voice over the noise and said, “He sounds like a Wookiee!”
To me, his cry sounded distressed, but I didn’t speak bear.
I was just deciding that it was at least as likely that he was laughing, when Dave the Bear turned around and ran off at high speed, crying out mournfully the entire time. Somehow, one of the lower buttons on his shredded shirt hung on, and the shirt flapped on Dave’s back like the world’s worst cape.
I had no idea that bears could run that fast. I cried out after him, “Dave! You’re heading the wrong way! I lost her back in the woods this way!”
The last I saw of Dave, he was charging into the woods at high speed, his little red cape fluttering over him. I stood there in the gathering gloom of the storm. “Did he even sniff the bag?”
“Fuck!” Gregg started to run after Dave.
I ran after him, hindered a bit by my foot, which was still sore from slamming the door on it. I called out. “Gregg, we’ll never catch him! I’m sure he’s going the wrong way! Stop!”
We did. Dave was gone. My whistle was gone. My caduceus was gone. Jen was gone. The songs in my head were gone. I was so hosed!
Really Big Game Hunt
It turned out that Dave’s keys were gone, too.
We were stuck. We discussed it briefly. Our only useful option seemed to be going back into the woods to search for Jen. We had no real hope of finding her, but searching for Jen beat sitting in Dave’s car and hoping he would come back.
It was getting darker, and it wasn’t from the sun setting. We were in for a major downpour. We headed toward the boundary of the woods.
“This is turning out to be another day where I wish I had stayed in bed,” I said as we reached the trees.
“I wish you had, too.”
“Ouch.”
We were tramping along through the underbrush when we heard and felt a deep rumble of thunder cross the sky. A few moments later, the rain started. We were under the trees, most of the time, but that didn’t buy us much dry. In minutes, rain soaked us, and the gloom grew deeper. By some minor miracle, we found the pond again. It was a singularly minor miracle, because we couldn’t see any tracks leading from the pond when we circled around it. Davey Crockett was never around when you needed him; he only showed up on oldies channels after midnight. Our best guess was a slight animal trail that led away from the pond. Again, moving seemed better than sitting in the rain, so we followed the wet trail, hoping to find Jen before we found Erik. We hoped even more that Erik was somewhere far away digging bird-shot out of his ass or eating someone else.
The trail wound through
the woods for a while before it dumped us out onto a growing wheat field. Across the field, there was a small farmhouse surrounded by the usual farm bric-a-brac. We headed for it. If nothing else, it held the promise of shelter from the pouring rain. The rain, having absorbed the heat from the summer air, started out warm but was getting colder, and Gregg and I were starting to shiver. We hoped that if Jen had seen the small house, it would have drawn her as well.
We ran the last hundred yards for the house and were on the front porch before we saw that the main door was open behind the screen door. We called out a hello through the screen. The inside was dark. There were no lights on, and there was a definite smell of rotting meat coming at us. We looked at each other for support. I nodded and Gregg opened the screen door and peered in. After a pause, he crept inside, and I followed. The smell inside was nearly overwhelming. It didn’t take a genius to see the source.
There was an old man sprawled out in the hallway that led to the kitchen. He was dead. There was enough light to see flies buzzing joyously over the gore and the maggots having a party in his eye sockets. Gregg almost ran me over me in his haste to get out. I stumbled out of his way and followed. We ran off the porch and back into the rain. This time the deluge was welcome as it washed the stink from our noses and some of the horror of that vision. Gregg bent over and vomited. Just the noise put me over the edge, and my empty stomach tried to throw everything out as well with predictable results.
I’d never seen a dead body before this week, other than my grandfather’s, and that was at a funeral home. I had thought seeing one wouldn’t bother me because of all the cop and horror shows I had seen. Turns out, I was wrong. Who knew?
Gregg stood beside me with his hands on his knees and spit out the last of his lunch. He stood up, took a shuddering breath, and waited for me finish. When I stood up again he asked, “Did you see his face?”
I shook my head and said, “I only got a glimpse before you ran me over.”
“He had a big puncture wound on the side of his face. It was all swollen purple and black.”
I spat to get the residual taste out of my mouth, “Shit.”
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