by Steve Curry
I kept entertaining myself with those images and similar entertainments while good ole Bill chanted a little and waved sage smoke around the tent with an eagle feather, or maybe a turkey feather dyed like an eagle. Whatever he was doing, it didn’t rid me of my excess “energy” from a week full of miseries and disappointment.
I was pretty thoroughly smoked and fuming myself by the time he got around to offering me some concoction that contained alcohol and maybe a few hallucinogens. In my experience, it’s usually a bad idea to imbibe mood-altering goodies when you’re in a negative state of mind. Then again, such goodies rarely affected me for more than an hour if even that long. I slurped his goop down and set the wooden bowl or cup or whatever it was on the blanket beside me.
My head didn’t start spinning at first. In fact, I was expanding on mental images of mayhem centered around my temporary spiritual guide when he flipped on the portable radio. Once more it erupted with the thumping or some techno racket that had a heavy bass drum beat infused with the typical electric instruments. When the rapid-fire lyrics started I tilted my head and temporarily forgot my formulae for torture. “That Yaqui or apache or Aztec or something?”
I saw a fuzzy-edged face swim into my peripheral vision. In the middle of blurry outlines were obsidian black eyes sunk between leather cheeks. Oh, and there were those obnoxiously pristine white teeth. “Would you believe Frenchies speakin Hindu? Looks o’ yer pupils it’s about time. Take a look at that snake hole in front of ya.”
I almost jumped right out of the tent when I lowered my head and saw a forked tongue flickering in and out of a small hole right at the base of the fire. I didn’t exactly remember such a big fire either. I tried to reconcile this man-sized bonfire with the smallish tent and the clay dish full of coals and small blazing twigs. The memory and the current image didn’t match but that didn’t seem too important.
My head shook slowly from side to side. It probably looked like I was impersonating a confused buffalo or a stumbling bear. The truth was I couldn't seem to put very much energy into thinking or shaking away confusion. Once more I thought I saw a forked tongue flicker in the shadows of that small hole. If I’d been thinking normally that would have been a signal to get the hel out of the tent. The problem was, my head wasn’t really working that well. So, of course, it seemed like a good idea to lean over and take a good look at that hole.
I must have underestimated the potency of Old Bill’s tequila or herbs. No sooner had I leaned over just a few degrees than my entire center of balance went. I found myself falling face-first at the ground as that little hole loomed larger and larger. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the shadows reached up and pulled me in.
There was an awkward moment or two when the earth seemed to convulse around me like a hungry maw sucking me deeper into the darkness. Except it wasn’t the earth. The entire hole for one brief instant felt like the gullet of some gigantic snake, or maybe a wyrm. Yea that felt right. An ancient wyrm gulping me down its fiery maw. At the thought of it, my skin began to itch then burn as if being digested. Unable to scream as my breath was robbed by the convulsing muscles lining that maw I writhed and was consumed by the acidic crushing walls of what modern people would call a dragon. To me, it was an Ormr, the greedy, rapacious and evil great serpent.
The thick ribbed walls of its gullet never relented long enough for me to catch my breath as flesh was ground away or burned away by acidic gases and bilious liquid. Then there was the sizzling of flesh from an occasional gout of flame as he belched or roared. I felt skin sizzle and bubble then peel away with chunks of muscle and sinew.
Unable to die, I was helpless as the very bones of my body were crushed apart to fall not into his giant stomach, but into a natural-looking cavern. The shadowy space was dominated by a small fire under a filthy black cauldron. A ragged old hag in disreputable rags used her stirring paddle to bat my bones into the cauldron as they fell from above. Most of them fell freely into the pot, but none of them got away from the old lady and her paddle.
Finally, she reached into the piled remnants of my corpse and drew out a singed and cracked skull. I found myself looking her eye to orbital socket. She started to toss an evil grin and a cackle at me. That suddenly changed from a malignant grin to a look of indignant surprise. “You be no dreamwalker! How does sich a fine empty-headed young bairn end up here?”
Just like that her grin was back happy but just as evil. “Young brainless boys have good marrow though. Let me find a good long bone to crack eh boyo?! I’ll just suck a wee bit o’ marrow while yer bones make me soup.”
She’d just grabbed what looked like a femur and bent it to the breaking point when a familiar voice echoed out of the shadows. “No old mother. He’s with me. No marrow for your soup tonight.”
I saw “Old Mother” turn to face a shadow that seemed empty. “Ah! Medicine Bill! Ye’ve come to warm granny’s bed of a night have ye? We’ll have a cuddlesome time and then slake ourselves with rich bone soup eh?!”
The bone was creaking. Despite being crushed and dismembered I could somehow feel the sharp agony as if my thigh were splintering. Before it exploded though I saw the Yaqui medicine man appear from the shadows to bow at the hag. An instant later he was gingerly removing my bone from her hand. He spoke to her in a language I could not understand. In a rhythmic almost crooning tone he spoke while his hand almost tenderly brushed the hair back from her face. One side remained covered by brittle grey tangles. The side he cleared though showed the time ravaged visage of a woman who might have once been beautiful. She had once possessed strong features that still stood out in a hawk-like nose and high wide cheekbones. Maybe strong features was a more apt description than beautiful.
It was almost uncomfortable to watch this strange intimacy between the shaman and the witch figure. I closed my “eyes” and tried not to listen to the whispering conversation. That is probably how I became aware of the trance music lingering along the edge of my consciousness. In fact, it almost seemed as if the music had replaced my heartbeat now that I was without muscle and organ to surround my singed bones.
Those singed bones were being moved as well. I peeked again to find Bill had stopped talking to the hag. She now sat in a rickety old rocking chair to clack knitting needles at each other while humming a tune that somehow reminded me of a young girl in the bloom of her youth and romance. Don’t ask me why. That’s just the feeling of her song.
While she hummed, and Bill sang softly in that exotic language, my bones were being gathered. The shaman carefully laid my bones out as if they were still articulated. Scooping a handful of earth and ash from around the cauldron he blew the mix on the bones. The dusty cloud of ash made me blink and I dearly wanted to cough. That’s rather hard to accomplish without lungs though.
As the cloud cleared around me, I heard a rasping wet cough in response to my own urges. Looking down I saw my body. Not the same corporeal flesh that I had worn in his tent. No this was my form in the prime of youth. I only had a couple of tattoos and none of the scars accumulated over several lifetimes of violence. It was if I had never found my way to Valhalla and the battles since then.
A distant part of me howled that it was false. But the sudden peace, the absence of such small familiar aches they were almost unnoticed, those things made it hard to deny this dulling of the senses. There was no pain, no worry, no stress. Just the crackle of the fire and the rhythmic creaking of her chair. I could have stayed there easily and just forgot how to feel or think or even remember.
“You gonna sit there with a stupid look on yer face or we gonna go find those memories?” I really hated his voice more than ever. But the shaman was right. If I stopped for even a minute too long here, I might never wake up. Don’t ask me how I knew that. It was just there summoned from the back of my thoughts by his obnoxious comments.
“Yea, I had to get grounded. This is all new to me...medicine man.” Even that much of a concession stuck in my throat. I mean I real
ly did not want to admit that this guy had anything in the way of mojo. But it was hard to deny my surroundings and everything that had happened. I mean maybe he was just a good hypnotist. But maybe that and dreamwalking had more in common than people would like to think.
Now that I was here though, it seemed like a good idea not to antagonize the “guide” too much. I mean hel, even if it weren’t real he could probably poison me in my stupor and claim some mystical dark force snuffed me out. Maureen seemed pretty convinced about the guy and would probably buy whatever story he came up with. Besides, I wasn’t certain he was faking this. It seemed pretty damned real.
“Ok. So what now?” I found myself whispering as well. Some of that same instinct about staying here too long warned me against gaining too much of the old lady’s attention. It was probably best for everyone if she sat there humming and knitting.
With his own cautious glance at the bedraggled figure in the rocker, Bill led me off towards those shadows he’d appeared from. He even went so far as to motion me to silence with a finger across his lips. Like I said though, I already had the gut feeling that the quicker we got away from her the better.
We entered that inky blackness at one side of the cave and walked through it for a while. I don’t know how long. It felt like several minutes. After some time though I began to see a faint glow that became brighter until we came out of a cave mouth or tunnel of some sort to face a huge bonfire.
Around that bonfire were a number of structures. The majority were made with mud and straw though there were a few sturdier structures of wood and sod. In the middle was a familiar longhouse using an old ship’s hull as part of the roof. It had a large A-framed front and sod covering the walls thick enough to hold grass and moss still living along its length. Inside just such a structure one of the old Jarls or chiefs of a powerful clan would live as well as house their most loyal thegns and warriors.
The jarl or chieftain would sleep with his wife, wives or concubines on a high platform or in a small room on the end farthest from the door. Twin rows of pillars would reach from the front to the back of the long narrow structure. There would be a platform that ran around the outer edge to provide bedding and storage for everyone but the landowner and his family. Rooms on the platform would be divided by hide, cloth or thin wooden partitions for minimal privacy.
This particular longhouse looked massive enough to hold dozens of such partitions. Maybe even scores upon scores. In comparison, the other buildings were smaller and more ramshackle. They were wattle and daub huts and half-dugout dwellings for slaves or the lowest of freemen. There were also some crude stables and barns about. In the middle of the village was the giant bonfire that illuminated all of the doorways. Rather it should have illuminated all of the doorways. Instead, each entrance was filled with impenetrable darkness or shadow. Across some of the doorways lay indistinct figures while here and yon a massive wolfhound sprawled to guard.
“Boy, when you get your teeth in a theme you go all the way don’t you?” I had been conscious of listening to Bill and answering him with just the smallest fraction of my attention while the scene built in front of me.
“What are you saying, old man?” Still, he got much less than half my attention. Something about those dogs and even more-so about those lumps across doorways held my attention. Maybe it was my imagination but they radiated a cold remorseless danger.
Okay, yea they were all in my imagination. Bill made that pretty clear in the next instant. “I’m saying you built this as the place your memories are hiding. Never saw the likes of such a place myself so this is all you boy. Now...where should we look for the memories? I got my own ideas but that’s the fastest way to turn a dream quest into somethin silly and meaningless. You gotta figure this out yourself boy. But listen for my voice. I can maybe pull you back out if you get someplace too dark.”
His flow of thoughts or vocalization or whatever faded for a minute. Then came back sharp and clarion clear for a brief second. “In fact, here boy. I’ve planted a couple of thoughts for ya. Just a tether to yank you out if I can, and a little nudge to keep you whispering about what all you’re seein.”
Just like that, I was alone. In my own head. Or maybe in my room at the asylum. The way things had been going I wasn’t entirely sure anything was real lately. “Thanks, Ole buddy Billy boy. I knew I could count on you.”
As far as I could recall this damned “journey” thing hadn’t been my idea. I hadn’t believed in it. I certainly did not expect it to get quite so palpable in short order. Nor was I certain I could wake up unassisted until his damned psychedelic concoction had worn off. Just on the off chance, I tried to will myself awake. The bonfire never even faded in brightness. So yea, I seemed to be stuck.
Well if I couldn’t get out, might as well do some digging around. I walked on proverbial tiptoes to the first hut. This one had a simple Irish wolfhound sleeping at the door. He wasn’t sleeping for long. As soon as I got within a few yards the damned thing flowed to its feet as if made of smoke. This was a huge specimen of the breed. His back would have reached higher than my waist. I was pretty sure he’d be able to get my entire head in his mouth if he bothered to tower over me on legs that I suspected were longer than my own.
A low growl rumbled toward me strong enough to shake what passed for ground in my dreams. I realized that I was growling back before I could help myself. A heartbeat later we launched at each other and clashed together in a whirling but a strangely silent blur of violence. Teeth flashed and struck my forearms. Instead of blood though, I saw wisps of smoke or fog rise from my wounds. At each snap of those jaws, a little more strength faded from my muscles and a little more chill seeped into my core.
By contrast, even my first full-strength blows thudded harmlessly into a rib cage seemingly made of oak and iron. The most I got from the beast was a grunt or two as I pounded hardened fists into it. One roundhouse swing turned its head halfway around on its neck. On a normal hound that would have snapped vertebrae. This beast just got angrier.
I felt my knees turn to water. Looking down I saw gaping wounds where the grey wisps curled up from my thighs. Bits of that same wisp clung to the hound’s rear claws where it had apparently been raking my lower body. There were similar wounds up from my thighs and groin into my mid-torso. Out of all of them, my essence seemed to pour forth leaving me weaker and less substantial. I had to start wondering, what happens when you’re reduced to mists and fog across the veil?
If, as many shaman believed, they were accessing the spirit world, or perhaps A spirit world, would that mean my return trips to Valhalla would end? That might be worth it. What would take its place though? Oblivion? Or some other afterlife I’d never seen or imagined? I tried to yell for the shaman to pull me back out. He said he’d tethered an escape somehow right? The weakness and chill from this battle had left me too weak.
The most I could generate was a low moan of fear, pain and the soul-searing cold. That was all the answer I needed about my possible fate in this shadowland. The aching cold of oblivion awaited. I’d not rest peacefully or see my loved ones again. I would fade away as if I had never drawn a breath. Despair tried to steal into my most innermost soul as my form became more wisp than solid.
None would remember. There would be no one to sing songs, lift a horn, tell the stories of Magnus and his life. All of the wyrd of my family before me would be wasted. I stifled a gasp and fell even further to both knees and a hand reached out for feeble support.
The shadow hound circled out of reach of any futile swing I might take. Without a weapon of some sort, it seemed immune to my attacks anyway. My hands rebounded. Kicks slid harmlessly along its body. It couldn’t be afraid. By extension that meant, the damned thing was gloating over my weakness and despair. And that sparked something new and fierce in my heart.
Kill me if you can. Strike me, taunt me, torture me in increments. But I will not be mocked and gloated over by some stinking creation of my own imagination. It
sensed the change in me. With a snarl, those finger-length fangs slashed to sever my head from the rest of me. It got my fist instead.
No helpless mewling punch this time, I grabbed for its tongue. With my last strength, I got a grip on the slimy thrashing appendage deep in the beast’s maw. Grasping the tongue back near its throat I jerked it towards me. My other hand fought for purchase and finally locked fingers in the thick curls of a hairy shoulder. With one final spine wrenching effort, I lifted the beast from its feet. Rolling over on my own back I got my bent knees under it and kicked out to send the beast spilling over me...right into the bonfire.
There was no crashing sound. No crunch of logs breaking under its weight. No explosion or sparks. Just a faint “whump” of sound as the creature vanished in its own puff of wisps and vapor. Gloat on that carrion spawn.
I lay there wondering if I had the strength to even get up much less carry on this insane quest. The answer came in a faint perfume of cinnamon, strawberries, and Maureen’s own special scent. I felt her hand on my forehead and heard her murmur something concerned and sweet but too distant and low to be understood. Then warmth spread from that contact on my head. The aching cold was chased away and I saw substance fill back into the spaces that had been ripped away from my essence. Even from across the veil between life and death my Celtic priestess could reach out and heal me. In that moment I loved her as fiercely as I’d felt anything in my life. Love and pride and desire all coalesced as my Maureen poured life energy into my weakened being and gave me the choice to carry on or follow Guillermo’s tether back to my body.