by Steven Novak
Chris paused. His body shuddered. His heart skipped, flipped, twisted and began the process anew. A part of him already knew the answer to his next question. As improbable an answer as it was, as little sense as it made and as much as it terrified him to accept it as reality, he knew the answer long before his lips pursed and the sentence slipped past. “Tommy…what? What are you talking about?”
Nicky glanced away from the light and toward the wide-eyed, sweat-soaked face of his father. His voice settled as he attempted to curtail his excitement.
“That was Tommy.”
Slowly Chris turned away from his son and stared at the ball of light approaching the castle wall and heading into the heart of the battle beyond. His son was alive. His son was a god.
He couldn’t help but wonder if gods held grudges.
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CHAPTER 42
SO MANY BRUISES
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It didn’t matter which way he turned or how he positioned his body. Every movement hurt. Every pose made his eyes water, his head throb, and his teeth grind. Eventually young Tommy Jarvis resigned himself to an existence of pain. It wasn’t going away, no matter how badly he wished it would or how hard he tried to make it. There were too many bruises, and they were buried too deep. They weren’t going anywhere. They were a part of him now. The wooden floor of the newly constructed tree fort beneath him wasn’t helping matters any. It was rough and uneven, covered in splinters and in desperate need of a thorough sanding down. He wasn’t going to sand it, though. Too much of a hassle. Honestly, the boy was surprised he managed to construct the rickety fort at all, and he was even more surprised it didn’t collapse the first time he set foot in it. He’d figured he would bring Nicky by the following day to climb inside and have a look. After all, this place was as much Nicky’s as it was his. If it hadn’t been for his little brother, he wouldn’t have collected enough wood to make it. If it hadn’t been for Nicky’s constant prodding to continue the construction process, he doubted that he would’ve found the will power to finish it at all. The fort belonged to them both. They built it together, with their own two hands. It was a place they could escape on the days when their father wasn’t quite himself, on the occasions he let his problems get the better of him and his common sense fall by the wayside. The fort was a place to hide—if only for a little while.
Rolling onto his back, young Tommy Jarvis groaned and bit down on his tongue. Half of his back felt like a massive bruise, like thirty or forty of them all bundled up and knotted together so tightly the binds themselves became indistinguishable. The other half felt twice as bad. When the pain subsided, he opened his eyes and gazed toward the sky through an unfinished section of the roof directly overhead. Past the sparse bits of fall foliage and the tangled chill-crusted bark, his eyes moved to the half moon and lingered. Alone in the sky, it was watching him. Like a cartoonish yellow smile it was grinning in his direction: grinning and laughing under its breath against the starless black pool of space. It was mocking him and his predicament.
He hated the moon.
Through the window on the opposite end of the fort, a soft breeze snuck its way inside and lightly ruffled the three or four drawings he’d taped to the walls earlier in the day. What time was it, anyway? He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. It’s not like he was planning on going home anytime soon. Of this much at least, he was sure. Nicky would be alright alone in the house until the morning. Their father was passed out upstairs, tired from the day’s activities and weary from the evening’s excitement. If history was any indication, that’s exactly where he’d be when the sun came up. Nicky would get himself up and off to school hours before their father woke bleary-eyed, scrounging for a cup of coffee to take the edge off before reluctantly facing the day. He was safe until morning. Closing his eyes for a moment, Tommy murmured to himself and tried to work through a sudden jolt of pain shooting from his neck, down his arm, and back again. Part of him believed his shoulder might be broken. At the very least, it felt like it was fractured, or maybe just popped out of place. Whatever the case, it hurt a lot.
With a deep sigh he closed his eyes and allowed the memories of the last few hours wash across the delicate folds of brain, slide between the cracks and slosh around a bit. Unlike the resulting pain, he had no desire to forget any of it, not a single moment. He wanted to remember it all and he needed to keep it close. It had been barely three hours, three measly hours since he found himself lying on the floor in the guest bedroom downstairs, coiled into the fetal position with the faintest trickle of blood seeping from his left nostril.
Ten minutes his father worked him over. Ten long minutes that seemed to stretch and bend unending like a rubber band pulled to its limits before snapping back and being pulled again. The old man was in rare form. His slaps turned to fists quicker than usual. When his arms were sore and the skin on his knuckles enflamed, he opted instead to use his legs. He could get more mileage out of the legs. Arms had limits. Legs could kick for hours.
On his way upstairs, Christopher Jarvis stopped in the doorway, paused and set into a fit of coughs before sighing heavily. Turning around, he propped himself against the frame, struggling to stay upright. Everything was dizzy and blurry. The room was spinning and seemed intent on remaining that way. With his head hanging loosely atop his shoulders and his chest heaving, he stared in the general direction of his eldest son through half closed, faraway eyes that seemed almost to exist in two places at once. It wasn’t the bruised and shivering child sprayed across the floor that captured his attention, though; it was the bed beside him, the bed where his wife died. On the days when the pain of the disease tearing her apart became too much to bear and she simply didn’t have the energy to make it upstairs, this was where Megan slept. Near the end it was where she spent the majority of her time. At no point during the blur of the last twenty minutes with his eldest son did Chris realize that this was the room they were in. He wasn’t sure if it mattered anyway. An hour later he wouldn’t remember.
Ignoring the shadowy shape of his father in the doorway, Tommy Jarvis managed to coax himself onto his hands and knees. Reaching up, he wiped away the clumps of hair mashed into the layer of perspiration coating his forehead. With the hair brushed from his eyes, he attempted to steady his breathing. His body was burning, popping like fireworks from the still-fresh encounter with the creature his father had become. Somewhere in his bedroom upstairs, he could hear his little brother sobbing. At least physically, Nicky was unharmed, which is exactly how he would remain. This was the silver lining. This is what Tommy reminded himself. While every centimeter of his body was hurting, he knew from experience that the worst was yet to come.
Despite the claims to the contrary, time does not heal wounds.
Less than ten feet away, his ears caught wind of his father’s very nasal, very labored breathing. The old man was watching him, staring blankly in his direction with a pair of confused yet frighteningly content eyes as he bled onto the carpet and fought back a torrent of tears. Maybe his father had no idea what he was doing or where he was. Maybe that was his excuse. Maybe he didn’t recognize Tommy at all. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was looking at and couldn’t fully comprehend the things he’d done. Maybe he was simply admiring his handiwork. Tommy had no idea what the silhouetted shape of the old man was looking at and even less of an idea what he was thinking.
Truthfully, he didn’t much care.
He needed to stand. He needed to get off his hands and knees and back onto his feet. He needed the old man to see him. He needed for the heavy-breathing, foul-smelling thing he’d once foolishly referred to as Dad to see what he’d done and to realize that it didn’t make an ounce of difference. It didn’t matter how much he hurt, or what was broken. He needed to stand and he needed it more than he’d needed anything in his life. His legs moved and his feet followed behind. Once he was on his knees, the muscles in Tommy’s back struggled to pull his spine straight. Like a
scarecrow hoisted onto a cross, he awkwardly worked himself into an uneven, mostly upright position. Still unable to lift his head, he glared at his father through the stringy clumps of soaked hair dripping again in front of his eyes. The old man didn’t move. He just stood there, his chest heaving and his head dangling loosely from his neck. After somehow managing to get to one knee, Tommy felt his body begin to tip. To keep from falling onto his face, he reached out and grabbed hold of the bed nearby.
Instantly the father-thing in the doorway screamed, “No!”
Tommy turned to look in its direction. It was breathing heavier now, the father-thing. Its free hand lifted to its head and its fingers ran across its filthy-stiff hair. It was angry again.
Its words were a mashed up grouping of sounds with a vague sentence buried underneath. “Get. Your. Hands. Off. It.”
At first Tommy didn’t know what to make of the statement. Was it another form of punishment for the things the father-thing perceived he’d done? Was it simply gibberish? Did the lanky, silhouetted shape in the doorway even know what it was saying? Did it understand what was happening? The pale-skinned hand of the father-thing slipped from its head, stopped momentarily to massage the aching muscles in the back of its neck and then dropped limply to its side once more.
When it spoke, it spoke in languished breaths and disjointed mumbles. “Get up on your own.” Though Tommy could barely believe it, for a moment he swore he could hear its voice crack. “She—she can’t help anymore.”
Ignoring the aches in his back and disregarding the significant wobble of his spaghetti legs, Tommy Jarvis grunted through tear soaked eyes, and stood. Once there, he didn’t move. He didn’t sway, or shuffle, or slide. Not an inch. Not once.
The thing in the doorway offered nothing further. After a noticeably long pause, it simply huffed to itself, turned, and walked away. After a plodding, uneven trek into the upstairs bedroom and the slamming of a door, at last it was asleep.
The trip to the stream and the newly constructed tree fort took longer than usual that night for Tommy Jarvis. Simply remaining upright was a challenge, and walking, an even larger one. It was cold – colder than it had been in some time. He welcomed the chill though. It crept through the fabric of his flimsy t-shirt and felt good against his skin. While it wasn’t exactly healing anything, it was numbing, and numb was a nice change of pace. When he reached the stream, Tommy climbed the uneven planks of wood nailed to the sides of the tree’s trunk and into the fort teetering unevenly atop its branches.
Opening his eyes, he stared toward the half moon once again. It was standing motionless in the sky, refusing to move against the backdrop of black. It was alone. It owned the night.
Originally Tommy believed it was laughing at him, chuckling at his predicament from on high with a sarcastic grin. His eyes traced the almost perfect line of its yellow curve. It was so far away. While it looked pristine from this distance, he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen pictures of the moon’s surface like everyone else. It was covered in rocks and sand and uneven craters. It was cold up there, and it was all alone. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t laughing at him. Maybe its smile was just a smile and nothing more.
Maybe it even understood.
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CHAPTER 43
THE MAIDEN CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL ARTEM
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The newly appointed general of the Ochan army, Artem, was the first to cross through the doorway into the hundredth world. After days of nonstop work by as many digging creatures and slaves as they could muster, what was once a puddle too small for even a single soldier to pass through had become a lake. With two of his closest aides at his side, Artem stepped confidently into the water and walked forward until it swallowed him whole. This was not the first doorway the young Ochan had traversed. In his years as a dedicated soldier in the Dark Army, he’d moved between a number of worlds from Fillagrou to Tycaria to Elgore, and quite a few in-between. The sensations experienced while passing from one world to the next were often similar, rarely deviating from the norm. This particular doorway however, the doorway to this hundredth world, this was different in a way he neither expected nor was prepared for. The moment his head sank beneath the depths, the darkness melted around him, folded itself under the scales on his skin and dove further still. With the ideas of gravity and mass no longer a universal constant, he suddenly found himself weightless, drifting through a bizarre limbo of nothingness that was simultaneously an independent entity and yet still a part of him. These feelings were not entirely uncommon when compared to other doorways to other worlds. He felt very much the same on his initial trip to Aquari, and then to Rychlee, or any of the others for that matter. The noticeable difference in this journey was the pain. The pain was unexpected. The blackness rapidly overtaking him was not content with crawling inside and resting comfortably. It wanted more. When it should have stopped digging, instead it continued. It moved deeper into areas it wasn’t meant to be. It wrapped itself around his muscles and coated his bones. It worked its way into his joints, burrowing into the microscopic pores before mixing hungrily with the marrow underneath. It was almost as if it didn’t want him there, as if it were a living, breathing thing capable of making such a judgment. It was uncomfortable with his presence. While the darkness was forced to allow Artem and his companions passage, it seemed intent on making them aware of its displeasure. They were somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, breaking laws that were never intended to be broken. It wanted them gone. If Artem still had a mouth or organs with which to form sounds of any sort, there is no doubt he would have screamed.
The instant the general emerged from the water of the stream beneath the modest fort constructed by the Jarvis brothers, he gasped for air and punched at the muddy bank with a closed fist. With a growl he rose to his feet, stomped his boot in the mud, and began to pat his chest and arms. Though he felt as if he’d just been torn to pieces, everything seemed to be in order. His aides emerged a second later with equally frustrated scowls on their faces.
The larger of the two leapt to his feet, darted in the direction of a skinny tree nearby, and snapped it in two with his boot. “What was that?”
Artem didn’t answer. This was partly because he didn’t have an answer and partly because he simply did not care. They had successfully reached the hundredth world, the final world, the only remaining obstacle on the road to Ochan domination. This was all that mattered. Whatever foolish games the doorway seemed intent on playing were its business alone. In the end they were exactly that, games. In the end they would accomplish little. The pain involved with the journey would deter no self-respecting Ochan. It was an exercise in futility. It was of little consequence. Immediately the young general’s eyes moved to the poorly constructed tree fort less than fifteen feet away and twelve feet up. Though it was more than a bit out of character, he couldn’t help but chuckle. As far as first impressions go, it was utterly foolish.
This world would be easier to tame than he imagined.
Moving past his aides, Artem stepped from the tree line and gazed at the hill in front of him leading to the quiet town in the far off distance. Inhaling deep, he grimaced and turned his head. The air smelled awful: bubbly and even a bit soapy. It latched onto the interior of his throat where it chose to languish uncomfortably. The sky above was a pasty blue, and the clouds so measly they looked almost transparent. A flock of what seemed to be miniature Scarbeaks, so tiny they could fit in his palm, passed overhead in a V-formation while cawing softly. Reaching into a pouch dangling from his belt, Artem removed one half of the Rongstag and juggled it lightly in his hand. It was remarkably lightweight. This is what surprised him the first time he held it. For years he watched the deceased General Gragor carry it from world to world, and even once witnessed him put it to use. It felt good to hold it. It felt good to know that its powers were his to wield. While there were indeed a few less evolved members of his race pining for days long since past, who considered it
an affront to everything inherently Ochan, Artem did not count himself among them. The Rongstag was a tool of war the same as any. In his eyes it hadn’t so much given the Dark Army an advantage as evened the playing field. It was the great equalizer. Remembering the instructions of the king himself, Artem wrapped his fingers around the stone-encrusted amulet, lifted it high above his head, and grinned. While there was no physical transformation in the appearance of the artifact itself, almost instantly the sky above began to change. The clouds began to crinkle, their edges burning like paper ignited by the surrounding air. The innocent soft blue of the early morning sky morphed into something closer to purple before twisting into a deep, ugly red. The same as a single drop of blood might stain fabric, the discoloration spread outward in every direction from the point of impact. Behind Artem, the ground on the opposite end of the stream exploded. The screaming head of an enormous digging creature emerged from the earth and tossed thousands of man-sized chunks of dirt, grass, and stone at the reddening sky. The reminder of the beast’s body followed closely behind, destroying the already shattered earth further, a cloud of debris rising like smoke from a fire already beginning to encircle it. A hundred feet away, another head blasted through the soil and the stream, its massive jaws coughing mud and spittle. The great beast roared with such ferocity that the ground beneath Artem’s boots rumbled and he nearly lost his balance. Feet the size of dump trucks stepped awkwardly from the newly created cavern and onto solid ground. Three hundred feet in the opposite direction, another beast emerged with equally destructive force. After slipping the Rongstag safely into its pouch and securing it again on his belt, Artem turned to face the first of the mighty, snarling creatures. Craning his neck upward, he followed the length of its ungodly long neck into the sky. A grin stretched across his face. He watched as the gargantuan monster shook the loose dirt and mud from its skin before bellowing angrily at the suddenly deep red sky. When it took a step forward, one of its massive feet crashed into the top of the tree housing the Jarvis brothers’ fort. The weight of the colossal appendage reduced both tree and fort alike to little more than a cloud of dust and airborne splinters.