She awoke from her swoon as she was dragged along the stone and released to roll and sprawl along it, fetching up against a slightly rounded, abrupt rise. The bruising shock brought her fully awake and she pushed herself up onto her knees and then into a crouch preparatory to making a run for it. All thought of the abraded skin on her legs, arms and shoulders was driven from her mind. Her head swiveled back and forth and she was able to make out several dark figures standing around her in the mist. Each of them had humped shoulders and appeared to have somewhat square heads rising above the humps. The mist seemed to be even thicker here than it was everywhere else, shrouding the figures so that she could barely make them out.
A voice, low and cavernous but possessing a somewhat shrill quality, said, "Another of them. How much will the Lord give us for this one, do you think?"
A figure that she assumed was her captor alighted through the mist and it waddled forward, its talons clicking on the stone. It said, "Maybe one of the old ones is near death and he will give it to us. There is little meat on them, but their bones still have marrow to be sucked."
Still a third voice said, "Why not dispense with trading with the Lord and simply eat this one? She seems to have more mass than the old ones."
Her captor waddled near and bent slightly above her, allowing her to make out that her captors were incredibly large owls. Standing at least eight feet tall, the creatures seemed to be no more than they appeared, but the fact that they possessed speech belied their appearance. Her captor rotated its head until only the back of it showed.
When it turned its gaze back at her, it said, "He will want this one. Its companion had the Staff."
One of the other owls that seemed to be larger; hooed, ruffled the feathers of its wings and said, "Lackwit! He wants the Staff above all things! Why didn’t you take the Staff first? We could have gone back for the meat!"
"I hungered! I wanted the meat! He has gone without the Staff for so long now that a little longer won’t hurt!"
The large owl suddenly made a waddling charge through the mist, spreading its wings halfway through to lift itself from the stone and hurtle toward the other. Ducking, Petra scuttled to one side as the two tore at each other with their talons and beaks. The third owl, joined by a couple of others, surrounded them as they fought, calling encouragement in drawn out hoots to one or the other. Seeing them distracted, Petra made a crouching run into the mist, hoping she was running in the direction from which they had come. From the bearings she had taken, she thought that she was, but there was no way to know if the huge owl had circled before landing. She only knew that she was free and possibly heading in Brian’s direction.
Crossing her arms over her breasts in an attempt to gather the little warmth she possessed to her, she began trotting through the mist, her feet making wet, slapping sounds on the stone. She tried to trot without making noise, assuming that the owls could track her by the sound, but had little success at it. There was nothing Petra could do but go on through the mist, hoping that she could find Brian before the owls or something worse found her. Behind her, the sounds of the altercation continued.
* * *
Rage burned in his breast as he gathered their few belongings and stuffed them into the pack. Petra would need her clothes when he found her, and find her, he would. He cursed himself for thinking that the bubble of light and warmth, so foreign to anything they had found in this place, would act as some sort of protection against the denizens that dwelt here. That thing had flown right through the shrinking bubble and taken Petra from his arms. His hand went to the place on his arm where its talon had grazed him, leaving a wide scratch that oozed blood. With the mist around him and his damp shirt, the scratch wouldn’t scab over and he wondered if it would even heal in this place. It didn’t hurt so awful much, but it was a reminder that they couldn’t ever be safe here. They couldn’t ever be safe again until they escaped from this misty, benighted Hell.
Dressed once again and with Petra’s jacket thrown over his shoulders, he grasped the Staff and began climbing the stone above their ledge after eating another fruit. He had a feeling that he would need all the strength he could get from the thing. His fingers threatened to slip from the wet stone several times, but after a climb of about thirty feet, he clambered onto what he thought was yet another ledge, but proved to be the end of his climb. Brian wished that they had known they were so close to the top when they stopped to sleep; they could have had large, open spaces about them instead of being penned on that ledge when the thing stooped on them.
Once standing, he stared off into the misty gloom and wondered what direction to take. Any deviation from the flight path the creature had taken would result in losing Petra forever; and thus, his chance to get her back to the safety of his world. As he stood there, the mist seemed to thin ahead of him, offering him the first glimpse he had of the sky.
It was a nacreous grey, shot through with dark streaks that held a glimmer of purple about them that shaded off to a variety of pinks, roses and reds before being hidden again by the mist. He was sure a mountain range had shouldered in from one side and that a space near its foot was lighted. Maybe whatever creature it was that had taken Petra had a fire there.
Sighing, he hitched the pack higher on his shoulders, gripped the Staff in his hand and began walking in that direction.
* * *
Reaching the pasture just a few minutes before sunset, he dispensed with the gate by driving Lisa’s mother’s Cadillac through it, springing the catch and driving over the gate when it caught on the ground. Its metal scraped on the under-carriage of the car as it jounced over it and he heard one of the tires blow as it was punctured. He saw Lisa’s little sports car parked under the trees and drove toward it without letting up on the gas. He was going to give her something really special for putting him to so much trouble.
He didn’t see her anywhere near the car as the Caddy came to a sliding halt on the tall grass and in his haste; he jumped out of the car without shutting off the engine. Rounding the Caddy, he ran for her car and used his hands on its side to stop himself when he reached it. The top was up but the windows were down and there was no sign of her anywhere in the little car. Not even so much as a sweater in the space behind the seats.
He straightened up and looked toward the little stream where he and his world’s Lisa had made love before she left him and saw tracks in the dust of an old cow-path that led to the stream. Darting around the car, he ran to the tracks, thinking that she might have crossed the stream and made her way to the railroad tracks on the other side of the pasture. What he saw made him stop dead and squat down to examine the tracks.
There were two sets of tracks; hers and a pair of tracks from a man’s shoes. They led down the path to this point and stopped abruptly, as though they had left the ground. The phrase went round and round in his head until he changed the words to "left the earth". And it occurred to him that this world’s Lisa might have had contact with the nomad, might have learned how to cross from one world to another. And the man’s tracks made him think of the double that his Lisa, nomad that she was now, had sent here to retrieve this world’s Lisa. That they had returned to the double’s world was apparent to him and his lips stretched in a mirthless grin as he thought of the killing he would have before him when he arrived there.
Rising, he looked up at the sun and saw that it was nearly at the horizon. A thunderhead bunched near it and if the sun had set just a few minutes later, he wouldn’t have been able to see it. On several occasions, he had been forced to delay his crossings because of overcast skies and heavy rain, and he was already a day behind them as it was. He thought of this place and of Lisa beside him and stared into the sun until it kissed the horizon and then, closing his eyes, took a step forward as the winds began to swirl around him. There would be no great expenditure of energy this time; he was only crossing to one world, there would be no skipping worlds this time.
As his foot hit the ground on the other
side, he opened his eyes and saw the same pasture, but a different car; his car. Or, one very like his car. This one wasn’t dented and the old paint on it was waxed to a high shine that the light coating of dust couldn’t disguise. The convertible top wasn’t ripped just above the rear seat on the passenger side and the wheels on it were the fancy mags that had been on it when he bought it. He had sold the wheels shortly afterward for enough money to buy the insurance and replaced them with some crappy, old steel wheels.
Brian was forming a healthy dislike for his double; it didn’t seem right that his double should be better at keeping his car nice than he was. Then it hit him; Lisa and the double had left the other Lisa’s world, but they couldn’t be here. If they were here, they would have taken the car. He turned in place, searching the immediate area for them and finding nothing but a suit jacket and tie and a cheap ice chest with a bottle of beer and a bottle of soda in it. The bottles sat half-submerged in water and picking up the beer, he noted that having been shaded by the trees through the heat of the day, it was nearly cold enough to drink. Twisting off the cap, he guzzled half of it, belching slightly as he paused and considered what to do. While he thought, he picked up the tie and knotted it about his head to soak up the sweat that was threatening to drip into his eyes.
Gritting his teeth, Brian glanced once at the car and turned toward the railroad tracks; he would leave the car for them. He could get another car in town and drive out this way every day until he saw the car was gone; that way, he would know when they arrived. Until then, he would have to lie low and not kill anybody. Finishing off the beer as he reached the tracks, he tossed the bottle to shatter on a rail and walked toward town.
Chapter Six
She crept through the mist, shivering as she tried to take advantage of the stones standing about her for concealment. The fire among them put out little light, but she was sure that if any of the people moving about the fire looked out toward the misty reaches, they would be able to see her easily. Her body, white from so little exposure to the sun, or whatever they called the light source that seemed to hang unmoving in the sky, would reflect whatever light the fire shed and she didn’t want to be captured by anyone again.
Though the light was dim, she had noted that these people wore some kind of clothing and she wanted something to wear in the worst way; the cold of the mist was getting to her. And, they had spits turning over the fire that held some kind of meat. She wanted food, too. Where they had gotten wood to burn, she didn’t know. All she did know was that there was warmth, food and clothing within reach; all she had to do was find a way to take some of it. Some of all of it.
A big man strode into the firelight and cast something large onto the ground beside it which the others swarmed over, laughing as they tore at it, bringing gobbets of flesh to their mouths. With all of them illuminated by the fire and holding relatively still, she saw that they had preternaturally large eyes, like anime characters; big round irises that ranged from black and dark blue to a lighter grey. She supposed that with the lack of natural light, they had evolved such eyes over time in order to see in the constant gloom. The effect was startling when contrasted with the extreme whiteness of their skins. As their hands stuffed the food into their mouths; their fingers left bloody streaks on their lips, chins and cheeks. She couldn’t understand their words, but something seemed very amusing to them and as the last of the meat was torn from the thing the man had cast down before them, one of their number flung it out into the mist to roll toward her. As it came to a stop, she saw that it was the head of one of the giant owls, and they had been eating its brain and eyes. Shocked, but determined not to squeal, she passively gazed at the thing and wondered if it was the one that had torn her from Brian’s arms. If it was, then she was glad it was dead. The thought of the food it offered being so close made her stomach growl, but she felt an urge to regurgitate and decided that there were some things she just wouldn’t eat.
As the tall man reached toward the largest of the spits to tear a strip of meat from it, a bright light came into being among the group and it held all the aspects of the light produced by the Staff without actually forming a globe. The light seemed to come from everything around the group; the stones, the mist, the air itself. Ducking back from its brightness, Petra saw the people freeze into position until a pair of men, identical in most respects, appeared beside the fire. She recognized one of them as the man she and Brian had encountered, but the other man seemed coarser, less noble than the man she and Brian had met.
The coarse man shouted something at the man she knew before turning to walk away. Once he was gone, the man she knew ran at the people and began swinging at them. They swarmed over him in an instant, kicking and punching until he was down on the stone. Thoughtlessly, she darted from cover to help the man, and reaching him among the group; she grasped his extended hand, or tried to. Her fingers passed completely through his wrist and she knew then that this was some sort of mystical re-enactment and the people wouldn’t pay any attention to her until it was over.
Realizing that there was nothing she could do for the man and that she was pretty much free to do as she pleased while this scene worked it was to a conclusion, she darted to the fire and picked up the strip of meat the tall man had dropped. As she turned back, a woman was thrown from the group to land unconscious at her feet. Working quickly, she stripped the woman’s clothes from her and tucked them under her arm with the meat. A small, stone box lay beside the fire and from its waxy appearance; she recognized it as soap-stone. She lifted its top, which she saw held a series of perforations, finding it empty except for a few ashes and she knew then how the people started their fires; from coals that they preserved in the box. Taking it in one hand, she scooped a few coals into the box and clapped the lid tight over it. Turning from the fire, she sidestepped the group as they continued to pummel the man and made her way back to the outer edge of the standing stones.
Wasting no time, she slipped the woman’s clothes on, finding them loose but warm. The top was some kind of woolen stuff that fell to about hip-length and still held the heat from the woman’s body, though the smell was horrible. The bottoms, relatively close-fitting and long, were made of the same dark stuff and smelled even worse. She hesitated to have such terrible things next to her skin, but knew that if she didn’t have some kind of shelter from the ever-present mist, she would die of exposure.
Just as she was turning from the group and their fire, the half-cooked meat at her lips, the bright light was snuffed out; leaving only the dim firelight and she saw that the people’s faces held expressions of mixed distaste, guilt and anger. They appeared loathe to look one another in the eye until the woman who had been unconscious came around and climbed to her feet, remonstrating with the others for stripping her of her clothes. This brought gusts of laughter and rough horseplay at the woman’s expense until, shrieking; she set upon the tall man with nails extended and was slapped down, half-swooning on the stone. The tall man stood above her, glaring for a few seconds as she aimlessly kicked her legs at him until, he abruptly loosened his trousers and fell upon her. As the woman began to scream and the others leapt to help the man, some rudely grasping at the woman themselves, Petra turned away, sick at her stomach. Looking at the meat she held, she tucked it under her arm; it would keep until she felt well enough to eat.
With her feet slap-slapping at the wet stone, she circled the standing stones and set out along the path she had chosen to follow. If she was lucky, it would link up with Brian somewhere ahead; she had slept four times huddled against stones hoping for some warmth and estimated each of her sleeps as the end of a day. Occasionally, the mist would clear away partly and she could see mountains ahead and hoped that one of them was the stone that she and Brian had been climbing. At the foot of one of the mountains, a fire blazed and she reasoned that it might be Brian’s location.
After a while, she felt well enough to eat and began to tear at the meat, wishing that she had been able to w
ait a little longer till it had been cooked more thoroughly. She carried the soap-stone box wrapped in the bottom of her smock and was glad for the warmth that came from it, hoping she could find something that would burn.
* * *
Stumbling, he came across the field of bones and began to pick out heaps and piles of them in the mist; everything from small finger-bones to what appeared to be the thigh bones of giants. He stopped beside a small pile of them and noted that they were more or less laid out in the representation of a body. Apparently, this creature had died right here and rotted till there was nothing left but the bones. Stooping, he examined the skull and shuddered as he looked at the dentition; most of the teeth were at least three inches long, except for the canines; they were five or six inches. The creature appeared to have walked more or less upright and the length of the arms hinted at something like a gorilla, only bigger.
He heard a susurration in the air near him and spun in place, throwing himself at the last second to one side and was rewarded by a hoot of disappointment as the flying creature missed its kill. Its talons had been extended and its wings folded for its stoop, but it caromed off the stone where Brian had been squatting and slid to an awkward stop thirty feet past him. Spinning, it hopped toward him, wings extended to give it added lift. For want of anything else to use against it, Brian turned the Staff toward it and activated its power, creating a globe of heat and light just where the huge bird was passing next to the skeleton.
It Happens Every Day Page 9