***
Keys in hand, Harmony was back in the gritty cellblock under the temple, talking at length to the caged Gorgon. "Do you promise?" asked the angel. "Do you swear it to me?"
"I swear it," replied the Gorgon, her voice muffled under the bag. "You have my word — I will not set sight on your friends."
And with that, Harmony unlocked her cage, removed the bag from the Gorgon's head and the ropes binding her wrists. Apart from the reptilian skin and scaly wings, the Gorgon was an alluring creature with a caring face and soft lips. Her eyes however were a frosty white, reflecting the form of whoever dared look. Harmony kept her eyes completely shut as the Gorgon rubbed an old crick from her neck. Then, an inch from Harmony's face, the Gorgon whispered a grateful thank you into the angel's ear.
***
I pulled my shield, short sword and dagger from the bag whilst knight and samurai protected me from the onslaught. Bog bodies were strewn everywhere — and reminding me of the horses they had earlier butchered — the bulk of them ran terrified around the enclosure, some even opening the gates to flee from the compound.
Once armed, I fought alongside my friends and precariously close to the Scurge. All of us ducked and dived from her swooping tail, and rolling, I slashed at any limbs within range of my sword. Parts successfully dismembered however, would regenerate in no time flat — she was immortal after all.
Near us, Grutas was tightening a grip on his axe and pointing out Kat. The samurai smiled back at him, then left us to face the giant.
"I will be your eye!" said Eddinray, covering my blind side as we fell back from the Scurge. "Back you villain! Back!"
I dispatched a bog to my right then jabbed again at the Scurge, before being abruptly knocked to a sick heap by a ferocious fire inside my head. I heard Eddinray cry out my name, then watched through a blurry eye as the knight took the Scurge's tail full in the chest, flinging him backward and crashing down on a derelict bog hut.
Kat strolled around Grutas, and Grutas around Kat. This mouth watering clash did not last long however, for when Grutas raised that heavy battleaxe, Kat lunged forward with a lightning cut across the giant's guts, then several more to separate the arms from his body.
Kat was extremely efficient, and glaring over his numb faced opponent, he amputated the giant's legs below the knees. Unlike the Scurge, Grutas would not regenerate, and Kat would not spare his life like he had Bludgeon's. With one slash of the sword, he removed that gargling head from its shoulders, then booted the upright torso to the deck.
Recovering from the fire in my head, I rolled onto my back to find Scarfell stood over me, arms raised and summoning another fireball between his hands. It hovered there like a new sun whilst he concentrated on cooking it. Digging my fingernails into the clay, I attempted to slump away, but my fried brain — in these vital seconds — had forgotten how to crawl or cry out; and without words or mercy, Scarfell threw the soaring comet at me.
Instinctively, I showed him my back, and Scarfell's star shot directly onto my shield centre. Searing temperatures roasted the armor white to completely melt the centaur's seal. Fortunately the image had its own charm, repelling that ungodly force back to sender, and consuming the wizard in a blaze of his own wicked magic. The shield incinerated, Scarfell screamed in a shroud of flames before bursting into a million sooty ashes over me.
Eddinray picked himself up from the broken shack, and then snuffed out the bog forking a blade at his chest plate. "Amateur," he huffed, wearily brushing off debris before joining Kat and me in the centre of the fort, Scurge and bogs moving in.
"I can rip them all," growled Kat.
"And the immortal?" I asked, wheezing.
A solution to that problem came with an attention-seeking shout from the temple. "Close your eyes boys!" announced Harmony, racing down the steps. "Close your eyes!"
She stumbled to scrape her knees as the Gorgon swooped out from the temple, a screaming torrent of vengeance. Gorgon flew low, her green arms swimming through the air and dodging the Scurge's tail with ease. Her cry was high spirited and her rage focused only on those creatures who imprisoned her. She dove upward and examined the compound with those pulsating, glacial eyeballs, then returned to transform five bogs to a harsh grey rock, and furthermore catching the Scurge in one of its three faces and six eyes. The Gorgon laughed manically, turned seven others to granite then flew a free woman over the tall trees.
Without wait, Harmony, Eddinray, Kat and myself bunched together to observe the Scurge's last transformation. Her arms stopped lunging, her tail stopped whipping, and that beetle body began a slow and painful looking crackle into stone — her immortal self buried alive inside it.
Harmony knew the way out of the fort so after her we followed, straying from the path and venturing through deeper jungle. She caught her cumbersome wings against branches which snapped back into our faces. We heard snorting bogs in pursuit, always in pursuit.
"Haste!" Harmony yelled at us. "Almost there!"
"Where?" asked Eddinray, struggling to keep up. "Why do we flee from these pigs?"
The dense forest was suffocating, and the surface slippery from lumpy boulders and moss. Puddles of tree sap snared our feet while hanging vines attempted to clutch back our wrists, as if to steal our souls for themselves. We batted free with weapons and fists ‘til the roots and vines got the message.
Without warning, Harmony randomly changed direction, leading us over a river of frozen ice. All but Kat spilled to backsides the moment our heels touched the glistening surface. Coming to my aid first, Kat took my forearm and heaved me upright.
"Mustn't linger," said Harmony, assisting Eddinray. "The ice is not as thick as it-"
Then, like the sound of a breaking egg, Eddinray's foot gave way and the ice sucked in his leg.
"Be still knight!" ordered Harmony. "Do not struggle!"
She snatched hold of Eddinray's hand and warned Kat and I not to come any closer. Further cracks escalated around Eddinray's leg and he shrieked at the alien thing swimming against it under the ice.
"I feel it!" he cried. "What's in here?"
"Dare you find out!" said Harmony, reaching her free arm back for Kat. "Pull me samurai! Pull us!"
Promptly, all of us made a human chain to haul Eddinray from the water. Behind, a dozen or more bogs spilled out from the forest, each spinning on the ice as we had done.
"Don't stop!" I said, watching the bogs make new holes over the ice-sheet. In my slippery stride, I turned to witness a spotty tentacle rise from a crack in the ice, coil then drag one terrified bog under the surface.
"Move on!" exclaimed Harmony. "Haste! Haste!"
We followed the flow of the river to its unfathomable end; a drop of petrified water. Ice poured over the edge like a chute; a crystal fall more than five hundred vertical feet down. The height was head spinning, nauseating, impossible — all the ice leading to an open mouth — the head of a colossal stone demon with the features of a deformed cherub.
Cracks intensified over the lake and the world rocked underneath us as eight prodding tentacles burst free for more meat. "What now?" I yelled, cold water spouting up between my legs.
"We jump!" returned Harmony. "We simply… jump!"
"Easy for you to say," said Eddinray, "you have wings my dear! I cannot do this! What exactly is this, and why am I a part of this fiction!"
"Take," she said, extending her hand. "We shall all leap together!"
Eddinray took the thin fingers on offer, and Harmony subsequently took my hand with her other. I then gripped Kat's palm and instantly felt his tug away. "Together," I stressed, and grudgingly he accepted.
We approached the edge of the glassy precipice now, a fall beyond words. "I've a nose bleed!" spluttered Eddinray. "Dear me, tell me… tell me what awaits this knight yonder?"
"Hell-fire" answered Kat. "On three!"
Harmony and I agreed with nods and gulps. Unfortunately the bogs where closer than expected, and the choice of
a countdown was removed by a flying hook, clattering into the back of Eddinray's head — knocking the screaming knight forward, and dragging us all head-first into a new nightmare…
20. Four More
I moved with purpose through vulgar lights and sounds. It was a minute before 8pm on a frosty November evening, but the fairground amusements caused those around me to forget the cold. I followed John Curtis to that dominating Ferris wheel; took my place in the cue behind him then set my gaze to the grass. The bastard hadn't seen me yet, perhaps he wouldn't remember my face.
The Ferris wheel was the star of the show here, standing nearly three-hundred feet with sixteen revolving gondolas around a blinking neon wheel, and peppered with smiling faces and hands waving from the heights. A young girl got on the first available ride with her boyfriend, John Curtis was due a spot next. When his gondola came round, I nudged past the stoned attendant and joined Curtis in our own private cage. The door shut behind with a satisfying lock, and the gondola rocked as we began to ascend the circle. Curtis sat opposite me taking in views of the night harbor. "Mr. Fox," he said, unsurprised. "Have you come to kill me?"
I swallowed hard but kept my cool. His face hadn't changed; it was everything I remembered from the trial; disappointingly average. Ordinarily balding for a man in his late forties, ordinarily carrying a little more around the waist, and ordinarily unlike any murderer you can imagine. The only unusual thing about John Curtis tonight was his smart corduroy suit, a three piece. This was an educated, well to do man who didn't belong amongst the high school kids below us. A man who, at the start of the evening, never intended to find himself in this grubby fairground."I've felt you on my back for the last hour," he said, unhurried; "and yesterday through the market, and the day before as I waved down a cab. Then there was Thursday, loitering outside my office, and there again Friday and the following Monday morning. A child could find better hiding places. You're my own little fan club."
"Why then," I asked, feeling the hand tremble inside my jacket pocket; "didn't you say anything?"
"It was harmless enough for the first month,” he shrugged. "To be honest I was flattered, amused. I mean all that fuss for little old me. Made me feel…important somehow. Notorious even."
"And now?"
"Now it's past harassment, and people are beginning to talk. Look around you Fox, hardly up-scale this place but you are the only one who looks like a bum. How many nights have you slept in those clothes? Do you think about anything other than me nowadays? Shaving? A shower? No?"
I did look shabby in my jeans, scruffy shirt and jacket, but this recent hobby of mine made all that junk seem so worthless.
"Gone on long enough," said Curtis, exasperated. "Tonight I wanted to have it out — so I walked — you followed, and here we are."
The wheel continued to creak on its revolution, and between the bars of our gondola, I could see the tacky merry go round, the young stuffing vending machines with coins and the bumper cars leaving trails of electric light.
John Curtis watched me watch him; he crossed his legs, lit a cigarette, and then offered me one from the pack. "Suit yourself," he said, on my refusal. "But we will talk Fox, or you will. After all that's what all this boils down to, me listening to you, isn't that right? So go on, get it off your chest. Say what you have to say then we can both move on with our lives. You've got my attention."
"There are two things I want from you," I mumbled, feeling the hand sweat in my jacket pocket.
"The first?" he asked, while I hesitated. "Well? Tell me!"
"Are…you sorry?"
Blowing smoke out his nose in a bored fashion, Curtis shook his head and smiled. "I might have known. You were always hell-bent on the status of my remorse. Didn't you visit me in prison once to ask that same question? Am I sorry?"
"You didn't answer me in prison."
"You weren't ready for the answer, Fox. You never will. Yes I am sorry," he said, leaning forward. "Sorry for you. Sorry you wasted your time. This sad obsession is taking over your life. It is your life!"
"Stop talking," I said, through clenched teeth. "Shut your fucking mouth."
"It's funny," he continued, unconcerned; "the former detective who sees so much of people. You observe men but cannot understand them. Should I be sorry? I am certainly not proud of what I did, but neither am I sorry. I was careless yes, but I cannot be sorry for the lessons I learned, and paid for with years! My debt to society has been paid."
"Not in full!" I growled, standing. "You killed six people you son of a bitch, four of them children, yet you sit here wearing that shit kicker grin and call it carelessness? Don't you have a fucking soul inside you?"
He laughed again, a condescending titter. "The soul is an invention to keep sheep in place, Fox. When I die there won't be any angel over me; just my rotting corpse with the worms and my mind enjoying everlasting peace from your footsteps."
The wheel creaked to its very top, — 300 feet above anything else. I could only make out a smudge below and twinkle of stars above. "What else?" he asked, taking a long drag from his cigarette. "You said there were two things you wanted from me? The second? Ride's nearly over and I want this finished."
I didn't keep him waiting. I removed the revolver from my jacket pocket, and still he didn't seem surprised. My hand quaked, but I wasn't afraid or morally torn in anyway. No, I was putting right a terrible wrong done to me and five other families; this was justice, a fate chosen for me a very long time ago, an action I was destined to take.
"My kid was 12 years old," I said, numbly. "She was shy and bright. Together we would swim, wash the dog or eat pizza, meaningless things that meant the world to me. You laugh through your smoke at me, but I haven't smiled once since the day I first heard your name. You took away everything I loved, and now that they've given you you're liberty back, I've got no choice but to take away the one thing you care about."
I aimed the gun straight between his eyes, and cocked back the hammer. “That…is all I want from you," I finished, squeezing the trigger.
***
This was the express chute to something more than an underground realm: it was a systematic examination of heart and soul; a prying, malevolent energy informing whoever it may concern that these particular individuals where now in Hell with the rest of them. Kat and Harmony received the most attention from this thorough investigation, a force glowing warm to have an exiled angel in its company, and a samurai's long awaited return.
Once this surveilling spirit had finished with us, it left us sliding down into a cold cave. We recovered on our backs from the fall, only for our noses to be assaulted by the stench of enduring excrement. "Wasn't me,” said Eddinray, blowing a frosty breath.
Harsh winter blues illuminated this tight cave, like a beat from inside the very rock. Eddinray stood but black ice returned him to his backside. The rest of us took care with our footing. I assisted the delicate looking angel upright, and then introduced myself. "Harmony,” she replied, smiling, but the unpleasant sight of my scabby eye turned her head.
Ashamed, I concealed that bloodied side of my face; but after composing herself, Harmony took my chin and examined the wound. "It'll need a tight wrapping," she said. "Such a thing should kill a man, Daniel. Be glad you're still with us."
Harmony proceeded to tare various lengths of material from the bottom of her gown and wrap them around my eye. "The wound will heal sooner than you expect, but I'm afraid the eye itself will never return…"
Her pressing cloth was an uncomfortable sensation, but I was grateful as she secured it around my head with firm knots. "Was not my intention to follow you down here,” she added, squinting back up at the butterfly inducing ice chute. "Alas…"
"That makes the two of us dear," added Eddinray, appearing gaunter than usual in this chilly glow. "Are you positive your wings do not work angel? Let me just prod that clasp with my sword."
"Fool," muttered Kat, taking charge through a burrow of pulsating rocks.
Kat stopped to hear but did not face me; the English knight and French angel meanwhile listened with open hearts and intrigued faces. Before we took another step in this under-realm, I felt a duty to make these newer companions aware of what they had let themselves in for. And so I told our story up to that point, the alphabet village, the Macro Mountain, the trials of Bludgeon, Scarfell, and the mission to the 9th Fortress. "The further we go the more terrible things we see," I concluded; "and it's beyond me to imagine or predict what's coming next. I don't know. Now, I cannot speak for Kat, but I promise to do everything in my power to see you both safely out of here. I'm willing to put my body, or what's left of it on the line for all of you."
Harmony and Eddinray were surprisingly calm, and unified in smiles.
"Wonderful!" Eddinray declared. "This is truly the adventure I have been made for! Homer and Dante will weep at the stories we shall tell!"
Whispers soon killed his cheer however, the hiding voices of a thousand ghosts echoing everywhere, yet coming from nowhere. "Four more!" they said. "Four more! Four more! Look at that one, his armor reflects the light! And her, an exile from the Heavens! Four more! Four more! The man covets the tiny dagger! Tell! Tell! Four more! Four more! The one with the scarred face, no stranger is he! Four more! Four more!"
The cave tightened the deeper we explored it, those whispers replaced by leaking water and muffled sobs in the distance. Cautious yet curious, we paused over slippery rocks to listen.
"Help me!” it cried. “I want my mommy! Where's…my mommy?"
"A child!" exclaimed Harmony, jostling passed Kat and running ahead.
"Harmony!" I yelled. "It could be any…"
The 9th Fortress Page 20