by Jason DeGray
She looked up, half expecting to see her father standing in front of her with an “I told you so” expression on his face. Instead, she saw Ragnar hovering before her as an ethereal spirit.
“Great. You’re gonna haunt me now. Don’t you have a mead hall in the sky to get home to?” she asked playfully, but the happiness and relief in her eyes were apparent.
The spirit laughed boisterously. “The light at the end of the tunnel led me here. Go figure. I told you I’d never leave you. Death cannot keep us apart.”
“That part was in the contract. ‘Till death do us part.’ But if I’m honest I must admit I’m glad for your irreverence toward contracts, husband.”
“We did it, love. We stopped my enemy, ended the serpent’s rise. But you must beware. She comes for you and your tribe. She comes, though not at her own behest.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“When she comes, don’t resist her. Let her flow past. Resistance is death. She knows not what she does. Be the river.”
“What are you talking about? Who is coming?”
But with the delivery of his message, Ragnar’s spirit faded into thin air.
It was three days before Ragnar’s cryptic warning came to light. David Red Deer burst into her house in a panic.
“Daughter, enemies are at our doorstep! The ancestors didn’t warn us. Why didn’t you warn us?”
“I did, father. I came to you immediately after Ragnar’s vision and told you what had happened. You didn’t hear it.”
“Because you spoke blasphemy against our people! Our ancestors! This is because of you!”
Just then, a ragged young tribesman stumbled up, bleeding profusely from several wounds.
“Chief Red Deer! We need you back at the town’s edge! They are advancing!”
“Who is attacking us?” Tracy demanded.
“Come and see,” commanded her father. “Look upon the destruction you’ve brought to our people.”
They ran frantically toward the danger, passing the elderly and children seeking shelter in the council hall. They got to the road leading into town and Tracy’s blood ran cold. Every able-bodied member of her tribe was caught in mortal combat with Faye’s half-lifers, the spirit directing the battle while hovering above the scene. Tracy’s people were losing badly, systematically beat back by the undead abominations seeking to overrun their town. They would soon be slaughtered and added to the foul spirit’s ranks. Tracy couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t allow it.
“Stop this!” she bellowed above the din, her branded marks flaring to life with churning light.
All action stopped and everyone living and undead turned their gaze in her direction.
“What do you want, spirit? Speak.”
Faye, now a mostly solid form, smiled wryly at Tracy. “I know you. You are the wife of the walking god. He’s dead, you know?”
“I know. Is that why you’ve come? To poke my wounded heart?”
Faye laughed. “No. Not at all.”
“Then why are you here? Because the Lord of Murder commands it? Are you to be his pawn?”
The spirit clicked her tongue much as she did when she was alive. “I am no pawn. To spirit or otherwise. I am free. I direct my own path.”
“And yet your path brought you here. Just as I was told it would.”
“Because a gate was opened for me here. By your husband and my Jonas.”
Tracy ignored the glare of her father. “Both of which are dead. You’ll find no rest here, spirit. Move on.”
“We cannot move on. Only through. This is our compulsion.”
“Never!” swore Red Deer. “You’ll not set one foot in our pueblo! You will not defile our land!”
The rest of the villagers mumbled in agreement, brandishing their weapons.
Chief Red Deer took courage from his people’s support and launched a new assault on the half-lifers. As soon as he stepped onto the asphalt divide, he was thrown back by gunfire peppering his chest. The burnt and mangled corpse of Commander Ashton ejected the empty clip and reloaded a fresh one while the rest of the sentient zombies rushed to meet the villagers in the road.
Tracy rushed over to her father and gathered him up in her arms. He bled from several wounds and his eyes, when they met hers, were already glassing over with death.
“Daughter. Save our people. Do not forget the ways of the ancestors,” he said and breathed his last breath.
Tracy’s brands flared and she ran into the fray, blasting half-lifers with the energy that poured from them.
“You cannot hope to win,” Faye taunted. “You will die with your father unless you let us pass.”
Be the river. Ragnar’s warning came back to her then and she let her hands drop to her sides. “Everyone stop! Stop it now!”
Her tribesmen looked at her quizzically as she stepped back onto the pueblo’s land. They followed her when she motioned them, never looking away from the half-lifers who had also ceased their fight.
“My father was a great man,” she told the crowd. “He loved our people and our land more than anyone. He revered the ways of the ancestors and celebrated the return of the true medicine. But for all his love and reverence for our tribe, he was blinded. He was so intent on looking in one direction, he missed the signs coming from other paths. And he passed this folly on to the council.”
People mumbled amongst themselves, trying to decide whether to listen to Tracy or throw her to the half-lifers.
“Please listen to me! The ancestors have given me a vision. And in this vision I was told of the coming of these abominations. And I was shown how to handle them.”
“How?” someone spoke up from the crowd.
“Lower your weapons. Put the fight out of your hearts and let them through. No harm will come to us. They will move along and leave us be. Isn’t that right, spirit?”
Faye nodded. “It is. We are compelled to move through. We can only meet resistance. Never cause it.”
“If you cannot trust me, then trust the ways of the ancestors. Trust in the vision I was given,” Tracy pleaded with those that remained unconvinced.
The tribesmen, looking at their dead and wounded, finally conceded and stood beside Tracy with weapons lowered.
“Thank you,” she said before turning to Faye. “Cross spirit and leave my people in peace.”
Faye directed her half-lifers to advance and they lumbered through the pueblo’s dirt roads, disappearing into the forest that surrounded it. Once they were gone, the survivors tended their wounded and buried their dead. Tracy retreated to her small house on the outskirts of the pueblo to mourn her second great loss in as many days.
DEBRIEFING
Barber sat in the back of an ambulance cloaked in a blanket and sipping a cup of coffee. The fire had finally been contained, though the damage was extensive. Over one hundred acres burned to nothing along with all the bodies and the ranch house to boot. Only the barn was spared and it stood lonely and stoic against the smoky night sky.
“I thought I told you to go home. When the hell did you move to Encino?”
Barber looked up and Lt. Loera stood in front of him, arms crossed, but a smile on his face. He tried to smile back. “L.T. Didn’t expect to see you out here.”
“Yeah, well, I got to thinking yesterday after our little chat. Turns out you were right about Spangler. I called the trooper up here to look into Sol Ranch and never heard back. That’s when I decided to come check things out for myself. What happened?”
Barber told Loera the version the lieutenant wanted to hear. Spangler and Sven were behind the Purple Gates murders. They gathered cultists with the promise of power and fled out here thinking they’d be able to work in secret. Barber stumbled on their ritual, scared them, and that’s when the bonfire got out of control.”
“Any sign of Wolf?”
“No,” Barber lied. “But his wife was strapped to the stone altar.”
“Wasn’t she pregnant?”
Barber nodded, a pai
ned look on his face.
“Damn. Sick fucks walkin’ around these days.” He patted Barber on the shoulder. “Hang in there, Frank. You’re a hero. I’ll take care of you.”
***
“Tracy.”
She opened her eyes and saw Ragnar hovering before her. “You weren’t kidding about death not separating us, were you?”
“I never joke about the Trick.” He laughed boisterously. “Though I was worried you wouldn’t take my advice with Faye.”
“It’s not me you had to worry about.”
“I am sorry about your father. He was a great man and your ancestors have taken him into their arms.”
“That’s a small consolation. What do you want, Ragnar?”
“To tell you that the mantle of my order has passed to you.”
“No. Your work was yours. They are not my ways. I won’t take them on.”
“All ways are one way. The trick is the trick. It doesn’t matter who gets it. The world needs looking after, Tracy. And you need to do it.”
“What about Victor? Or Jonas? Your students would be better equipped to continue your legacy.”
“Jonas met the fate he deserved and Wolf isn’t ready. Not yet. He has the artifact of the mantle, but not the responsibility. So the charge falls to you until he is ready to receive it. The trick is flowing back into the world for the first time in two thousand years. You have to be there to keep it in check.”
“But the ways of the ancestors…”
“Are the past. You said it yourself. And now, I too am the past. The way forward is new. A unity of everything old infused with the undefined future. This is hope. Not only of your people, but all of humanity. So the mantle of the Order of the Holy Sons of Thor falls to you. Take it and use it as you see fit.”
He faded away then, leaving Tracy in the dark mulling over his words. She didn’t want anything to do with Ragnar’s order or his work. She wanted to leave Victor Wolf behind and never think of him again. But she knew she couldn’t. She had been given a responsibility not only by Ragnar, but by the ancestors. She felt them guiding her in a different direction and trusted in her medicine enough to follow it in complete faith.
***
Miriam’s funeral, like the other victims of the Sol Ranch Fire, was a closed casket. Her body had been burned beyond recognition. The official headline for the massacre at Sol Ranch read, “Church Retreat Ends In Disaster”.
The retreat, sponsored by Grace Pentecostal church was led by Sven Jurgen at his ranch in Encino, the report said. Wind had blown embers from the bonfire into the dry underbrush and quickly grew out of control immolating all twenty-five people present at the retreat as well as the property.
Ragnar, Reverend Martinez, and Apocalypse Group International were not mentioned. The tragedy claimed at least one other victim in Miriam’s mother, Elaine. She had a stroke the day after she got the news of her daughter’s death. She would be buried next to her daughter.
Barber sat next to Wolf during the service, clasping his wife’s hand gratefully. Frank Barber was a changed man. He knew things now, had seen things that should’ve remained veiled. Though getting the trick was a very real probability, even though demons and spirits really existed, Barber had decided to turn his back on it. The world was a brutal enough place without the esoteric. He was more than happy to leave it behind. He’d peered over the edge and lived to tell about it. And from now on, he was sticking to the real world. In time, he knew, things would return to normal. Even Wolf might actually start smiling again. He squeezed his wife’s hand and she squeezed back, smiling.
Wolf was a different story. His ventures into the trick had not repulsed him, but steeled his determination to fight it. To accomplish that, the reality of the getting could not be ignored. He knew the Lord of Murder was still out there, waiting for another opportunity to break into the world. And maybe his child was alive somewhere. Maybe a cultist or mercenary had gotten away and taken the child with them. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give him motivation and hope. It was enough to inspire him to take his pain and turn it into strength.
He was The Ruined Man now and he would come to accept that. But his ruination hadn’t broken him. It hadn’t managed to extinguish all the light in his soul, though it tried. What rose from the ashes of Victor Wolf’s destructive encounter with the Lord of Murder was something more than human but less than divine. Something that wasn’t afraid to stand against the encroaching darkness.
Magic was real and it was a filthy evil thing. And he’d do his damnedest to ensure it stayed in the shadows where it belonged.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason DeGray lives, laughs, and loves in the Land of Enchantment. He has also been to Encino many, many times. Rest assured, it is as creepy as it sounds.