Terrance parked his car and got out, zipping his coat up tight. He pulled the sheathed sword from the backseat and strapped it to his back. Peering through the blizzard in the direction of his destination, he could faintly make out a path through a densely forested area. He considered his options for a moment, then headed into the 7-Eleven.
The inside was nice and clean. This surprised Terrance for such an out-of-the-way place, but he figured it probably didn’t get very much foot traffic. Behind the counter stood a clerk with a mangy gray beard and a face lined by decades of hardship. Terrance waved hello and went to the coffeepots, where he filled a 20-ounce cup with the darkest roast they had. He carefully sealed a lid onto it, slipped on a paper sleeve, and walked to the counter.
“What are you doing here?” the clerk demanded. “There’s nothing but death out here.”
Terrance was a little confused. “And a Walmart, right?”
“Aye, and a Walmart. You’ll head out on foot from here, through the Grim Forest.”
“There’s some sort of trail, right?”
The man chuckled a little, ending it with a cough. “Getting lost will not be your biggest worry.” He carefully looked Terrance over. “You brought a sword?”
“Oh. Sorry. Is that allowed in here?”
“I care not, but do you think it will protect you from what’s out there?”
Terrance shrugged. “I don’t know; I just thought I’d bring it. What’s in the forest?”
The clerk smiled. “Trees. So what brings you here?”
“It’s the only Walmart with the video game I want in stock.”
“And that’s worth the danger?”
“Well…IGN gave it a 9.7.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“IGN is a game site and—”
“Nor do I care. It will be a dollar twenty-nine for the coffee.”
Terrance pulled out a debit card. He felt silly using it for such a small purchase, but keeping cash on hand seemed so inconvenient. When he finished the transaction, he headed back outside. He stood there for a while looking down the path, holding the coffee near his lips but not drinking, as it still seemed too hot. Then he remembered the video review of Legendary Quest, and all he could think about was how much he wanted to spend the weekend playing that game. Thus he ventured forth.
There was little to see down the path besides the snow falling down on him and the tall pines towering above him. He took a few sips of coffee while looking around. A couple of times, he thought he saw movement in the darkness beyond the trees. Then he heard a noise, a small sound, growing louder and louder.
It was his phone. He’d always set it to make a regular phone-ring sound, since he found anything else confusing, but out of whimsy he’d set it to play “The Imperial March”—one of his favorite songs—whenever Shannon called. He took off a glove and fished the phone out of his pocket, fumbling to swipe the screen correctly. “Hello?”
“Hey, Ance. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” Though he expected to miss her less if he got his video game. “I can’t believe you’re gone the whole weekend working.”
“Yeah, well, it’s really imperative we get to this little village.”
“You need to defend them against something?”
There was a brief pause on her end. “Not exactly. So what are you up to?”
“There was this big video game release this weekend—”
“The new Legendary Quest, right?”
“Yeah, exactly.” She got him. “I had preordered it, but it didn’t get shipped for some reason. It was sold out everywhere, but this one Walmart at Demon’s Peak has it. Except the roads don’t make it all the way there, so I’m having to hike through a blizzard on foot to get to it. That’s pretty weird, right? Why would a Walmart be so out of the way?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea how they decide where to put Walmarts. Be careful, though.”
“I will. The guy at the 7-Eleven was talking about how this forest is dangerous or something, but I think he was just trying to scare me. Plus I have—” He was about to mention his faerie sword but caught himself. “I’m prepared.”
“I’m sure you are. Especially if you run into a software bug.”
“Yeah. Maybe the whole problem with the forest is a malformed SQL query.”
There was another pause. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a programming thing.”
“I like it when you talk dirty to me. Still, I need to get off the phone; we have some prep work to do tonight. I’ll talk to you soon. Can’t wait to see you again.”
“And I can’t wait to see you. Try to stay safe.”
“I will, but there’s not really anything to worry about; the villagers are defenseless. Later, Ance.”
“Bye,” Terrance said, still trying to process that last statement. He decided to let it go.
He looked about him, but it was hard to see much through the trees, most of which were nothing but faint shadows. Then he thought he saw movement.
He immediately stopped and looked again: nothing but the tall shadows of trees. But one of the shadows drew closer.
He couldn’t tell if it was the trees that were moving or some creature as large as them, as there was too little visibility to make anything out clearly. Either way, it was a little scary. Or a lot scary. Especially since whatever it was appeared to be moving toward him.
Terrance backed away as he began to hear the loud thud of footsteps from the massive thing heading his direction. He snapped out of the fear long enough to try to think of an action, and remembered the sword strapped to his back. He reached over his shoulder with his right hand to grip the handle, and unsheathed it.
Or tried to. He couldn’t actually reach his arm high enough to pull the sword all the way out of its sheath. He thought he had seen plenty of people with swords strapped to their backs in movies and video games, and he didn’t remember any of them running into this trouble. He awkwardly tried to bend forward to give himself more leverage, and ended up falling over into the snow. The creature continued toward him, now only yards away.
Then it stopped, and so did the snow. Terrance could still barely make out the creature among the trees where it stood, but it appeared to be looking skyward. Suddenly, it turned and hurried away, shaking the ground with quick, heavy footsteps.
Terrance looked up as well, but all he could see was darkness. A moving darkness. Something massive was flying above him, temporarily blocking out the snow. Then the snow started again as all that was above him was the giant flying creature’s tail, which slithered after it in the sky like a huge, spiky anaconda.
After the flying creature was completely out of view, Terrance continued to stare at the sky for a few moments, with dread. He finally forced himself to his feet and ran down the trail. Soon he saw something glowing blue ahead of him.
The Walmart sign.
As he crossed the empty parking lot, he noticed a sign on a light post saying the area around the Walmart was monitored by security cameras. He hoped the creatures in the forest cared about that sort of thing, and headed for the entrance at a more reserved pace.
The glass doors parted for him as he approached, and inside was a smiling, elderly man in a blue smock. “Welcome to Walmart.”
Terrance smiled and nodded. “This one is kind of out of the way.”
The old man shrugged. Terrance continued into the store and noticed there were very few fellow shoppers—which wasn’t that surprising for a store hidden on a treacherous mountain. Even with everyday low prices. He scanned the area until he spotted a wall covered in flat-screen TVs marking the electronics section. He quickly headed in that direction, and as he got near he looked for the video games. Finally, in a special display only a few yards ahead, he saw it: one last copy of Legendary Quest.
Someone stepped between him and his game. It was a young woman in a white cloak with a hood, inspecting a set of steak knives she w
as holding. She then looked up at Terrance with a stare of recognition. It was the doe-eyed girl.
They locked eyes on each other. A number of emotions ripped through Terrance. Fear was one, for despite how small and innocent the girl looked, Shannon had described her as quite deadly—and he had even caught a glimpse of her in action himself. Excitement was another emotion…though he couldn’t quite comprehend why. He wanted to talk to this woman. She knew something he needed to know.
The last emotion was dread, because she was between Terrance and the last copy of Legendary Quest, which anyone could grab at any moment. He really wished he had snatched the copy, then run into her.
“You,” the woman finally said, moving toward Terrance. She brushed aside one of the dark strands of hair that poked out from under her hood. “You were there. You tried to stop them.”
“Well…it was more that I was just trying to get clarification about what was going on.”
“Your eyes were open. You saw what was going on.” There was a sharp edge to her voice.
“Yeah…it’s just that everyone else seemed to think—”
“You bear a sword,” she interrupted, looking over Terrance’s shoulder at the sword strapped to his back.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, this Walmart is really out of the way. Do you know it’s really hard to draw a sword when it’s strapped on your back?”
“It’s meant to go at the hip.” She pulled back her cloak, revealing two short blades sheathed at her hips, over her jeans.
There didn’t seem to be anything threatening about the woman’s movements, but Terrance was growing more nervous. Still, he decided to risk mentioning one thing, to possibly see what she knew. “Anyway, faeries gave me this sword about a month ago.”
She now stared at Terrance more intensely. “Faeries gave it to you?”
“Yeah, in some weird meadow I stumbled upon.” “Meadow” didn’t seem to be the right word as he remembered the vast mountains that stretched into the distance.
“They gave you the sword?”
“Yeah…I’m not sure what for.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, looking Terrance over. “Who are you?”
“I’m Terrance Denby. I design web applications.” He wondered right away whether he should have given her his last name.
She was quiet again.
“You know on websites how you click a button and it will process—”
“I know what web applications are.”
Terrance nodded, and they continued staring quietly at each other, the woman so intensely that it made Terrance very uncomfortable. “Um…and you are?”
“Talia. You don’t need to know my last name. Or my occupation.”
“Okay…um…so how did you end up…um…about to be fed to some underground beast thing?”
She smiled. The smile did not make Terrance feel more comfortable. “A good question, Denby. To answer simply, there are things very wrong in this world…as you may have noticed. Many ignore these things. They turn a blind eye to the evil even as it consumes them. But some fight. I fight.”
“Fight how?”
“Odd question from a man with a sword strapped to his back.”
Terrance was fascinated and wanted to ask more, but then he remembered Shannon’s warnings. “I heard that maybe faeries do…something to us. And that’s why I’m suddenly starting to…get weirded out by things that are actually quite normal.”
She took another step toward Terrance, getting right into his face. “So you think if it weren’t for the faeries, you would have considered it a normal thing, me being torn apart by a hideous beast while others watched? Is that a normal thing, Denby?”
“No…it’s just no one else…”
She stepped back. “Fools. Fools all waiting around until they fall into the maws of oblivion. So what are you doing here?”
It took Terrance a moment to remember: the game! He tried to peer past Talia toward it. “Well, this was the only store that had this video game I wanted and—”
“A video game!” she spat. “You’ve begun to realize things beyond this mere existence, and you want to deaden your senses with a video game?”
Terrance had never understood why everyone always had to hate on video games. They’re fun. “Well…you apparently have realized the same things and you’re getting steak knives.”
She looked offended. “Have you tried cutting meat with a butter knife? Steak knives are not for mere pleasure! This is a hard store to get to—I probably would not have ventured here had I not had a unicorn to ride for the journey. Thus, with the difficulty of the destination, I thought perhaps you came here with purpose. But you don’t have purpose, do you, Denby?”
He was getting a little tired of her accusations. “I don’t know what’s going on, okay? I don’t know why there are faeries handing out swords. Or why I’m suddenly noticing all these things that I’ve always known about but that now seem completely insane—like my boss is a demon and there is something living under my ground-floor apartment and there was this popular series where the vampires sparkled.”
“I liked those books,” Talia said.
Terrance decided to ignore that. “And what is this place? Why is there a Walmart on top of a mountain? Why do you have to go through a dangerous forest to get here? And why was there some creature the size of a whale flying overhead?!”
She smiled again, seeming to enjoy his frustration. “The large flying thing is Malcus. I think he is after me.” She looked proud. “As for everything else, think of it this way. Have you ever had a dream during which you realized it was a dream? Suddenly your mind is awake and you finally realize the ridiculousness of the situation you’re in—that you can fly, that monsters are chasing you, that you somehow got to school without your pants—when previously your mind was in a fog and you just accepted it all.
“That’s where you are, Denby. Your mind is awake. And you have a choice: Do you try to wake from the dream? Do you continue to tear at the foundation of the absurd situation you are in? Do you continue noticing what you ignored before? Do you continue exploring the places you had always overlooked? Do you begin to remember who you really are? Or do you grab your video game and pretend all is normal? Do you try to put your mind back to sleep and accept the dream as real? Believe me, even though it’s not real, there are things in it that can destroy you.”
For a moment, Terrance actually considered not getting the video game. But only for a moment. It had gotten really good reviews. “And if I continue…being ‘awake’…what then?”
“Then things begin. I’ll warn you, though: when you are not asleep like the others—when your eyes are open—the Hollow Ones may take notice of you.”
“The Hollow Ones?”
“The Dark Enforcers. The Sisters of Torment.”
Shannon? “I need to avoid them?”
“They are men and women who devote themselves to the darkness that traps us. They will fight for it without mercy, and they are quite powerful. You’ll know them when you see them, and if you see them, run.”
“I’ll…take that under advisement.”
“I’m not sure about you. But if…”
He noticed a teenager behind Talia, approaching the electronics section. Without thinking, Terrance stepped around Talia to try to finally grab his game, but he was too late and the teenager got to it first. Terrance turned around in defeat, and Talia was nowhere to be seen. So no game, and many more questions to be answered. Terrance sensed it was going to be a long weekend.
He headed to the grocery area to grab some beer.
Chapter 9
Terrance trudged into his apartment, dropping the beer and a Wendy’s takeout bag on the coffee table. He tried to pull off his coat, but the sword that was still strapped around him prevented that. He undid the strap and tossed it to the tiled entryway floor, where it landed with a metallic clamor.
There were loud thumps from below in response.
That was it. “Shu
t up!” Terrance yelled as he stomped on the floor. “I’m on the ground floor! You shouldn’t be there, whatever you are!”
The responding thumps were so strong that the apartment shook. He decided he wasn’t in the mood for a contest and pulled off his coat, tossing it over the back of the couch. He was about to plop down and finally relax, but decided he shouldn’t leave the sword sitting out. He walked over and picked it up to put it inside the coat closet, leaning it against a wall. Then he noticed something.
There was an outline in the carpet on the closet floor. Terrance moved a never-used tennis racket and a backpack out of the way, and saw what looked like a square trapdoor. He did remember seeing it when he’d moved in and assuming it was the entrance to a crawlspace, never giving it a second thought.
There was a handle in the center of the trapdoor, and Terrance used it to carefully lift off the cover. Below was not just a few feet down ending in concrete and debris; instead, there was a narrow tunnel with a ladder that went so far down, it disappeared into darkness. But at the very bottom of the tunnel—more than a hundred feet below—there shone a light.
Terrance stared at the faraway light for a moment. Finally, he yelled, “Hello!”
There was the usual loud thump from below in response, although this time it echoed up the tunnel.
Terrance remembered what Talia had said about noticing what he had once ignored and exploring the new places he had always overlooked. But he was already tired from the day. And his spicy chicken sandwich was getting cold.
Terrance had trouble sleeping that night. There were too many thoughts dancing around in his head. Talia had warned that his sweet, funny Shannon was dangerous…and this wasn’t easily dismissed. On the other hand, Shannon had said Talia was quite dangerous and had even killed her friends, and there was something quite creepy about Talia. Then there was the tunnel beneath his apartment and whatever lived down there that didn’t like Terrance making noise. And that stupid faerie sword he didn’t know what to do with.
Sidequest: In Realms Ungoogled Page 6