It was working.
“Are you quite certain you wish to see me?” the child’s voice asked.
“I will see you!” I screamed, as I tried to force my brain to see what my eyes inexplicably refused. Beads of sweat formed on my injured forehead, causing a corrosive sensation inside the wound.
Silence.
“Then look upon me!” the voice boomed, sending me tumbling backward and crashing into a solid object.
Suddenly, an unearthly crimson light flared up and revealed that I was in an enormous stone chamber. I spun around to see Stella’s naked and unconscious body lying against a massive boulder with a glowing red spiral. I looked up. The walls were composed of a chalk-like substance with a bramble of veins stretching out in all directions. The ground beneath me was a fleshy substance that felt like velvet against my hands but was hard as granite. My eyes followed the floor to a cluster of boulders fashioned into what looked like a large chair, each with a glowing red spiral.
Seated in the chair was the figure of a small boy.
“Hello, Vanguard,” the boy said, in an innocent sounding voice. “You were expecting someone taller, yes?”
I rose to my feet and kept a healthy distance. He was of average height for a boy of perhaps six years old. He had thin shoulders and a narrow chest with skin the color of ivory. He was bald and had a sickly appearance, which immediately made me think he looked like a child going through chemotherapy. His thin lips curled upward into an amused smile as he sized me up with a pair of sunken black eyes that glinted in the crimson light.
And he meant business.
“You have delayed our plans,” he said, standing up. “I’ll admit that I didn’t foresee your kind’s reaction when they learned of your existence.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said sarcastically. “Where’s your army of followers?”
“Here,” he said calmly. “With us.”
I looked around, expecting to see a host of God knows what, but we were alone.
“Oh, you cannot see them?” he asked innocently, his eyes filled with menace.
Something crashed into me and sent me reeling into the chamber wall. I landed with a loud thump, and then dropped to my knees.
“But they can see you.”
I looked up and he was gone from his place in front of the chair. Then a razor sharp pain seized the small of my back as he lifted me off the ground and hurled me like a rag doll against the boulder beside Stella.
“What makes you believe you can destroy me, Vanguard?” he asked, kicking me in the ribs. “Others have tried, yet I am still here. Curious, don’t you think?”
He grabbed a handful of my hair, and I shrieked as he dragged me across the floor. I wrapped my hands around his thin wrist and tried to pull him off, but his grip was too strong. It was like trying to pull a tree out of the ground.
“How does this end?” he asked, his voice sweet as syrup. “Do I destroy your soul and let my hoards feast on your flesh, or should I keep you here as a pet?”
“Screw you!” I spat, swinging my body around with all my strength, connecting squarely against his face with a roundhouse. He sailed through the air and was about to crash into a wall when he suddenly stopped.
“Clever,” he smiled and stretched his palms outward. Then, in a hurling motion, he sent a ball of blue energy rocketing across the chamber and slamming into my chest. The impact blew me out of my boots and I sailed into the stone chair, landing with a bone-jarring crunch.
“Goddammit!” I huffed, trying to get up. The kid was laying the slippers to me, and somehow he’d created a barrier of psychic energy that kept me from fueling my powers from the evil surrounding him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Your powers don’t work? Pity.”
“Bite me.”.
“Yes, well you can never be too careful when a Vanguard is close by,” he sneered. “Your father wasn’t a careful Vanguard, and neither are you. Perhaps it runs in the family.”
“What about my father!” I screamed, seething with rage.
“Nothing you don’t already know,” he said calmly. “Perhaps you’re thinking I sent one of my minions to kill him like I killed the old hag.”
I’d had enough.
The kid might have built a protective barrier, but this was a realm of dark magic and I was a sorcerer.
I closed my eyes and stared at the boulder in front of me. I made a mental image of him jettisoning across his chamber and crashing into the boulder next to Stella. Then I concentrated. I poured my anger and frustration at losing Ruby, at the deaths of eight innocent people and spun around.
“I hate kids!” I roared, and he sailed across the chamber, smashing into the boulder.
I charged at him, throwing the entire weight of my nearly two hundred pounds straight into his midsection and he flew off the floor, crashing into a pillar.
He quickly got up and brushed himself off.
“Death, is it?” he sneered. “You care to exchange blows with me, then? Yes?”
“It’s not my first choice, but you don’t look like the kind of guy who negotiates!” I shouted, hurling a boulder at his body.
He smiled, his shining black eyes sizing me up. “Your powers are returning. You’ve found a weakness in the barrier.”
“Maybe I’m just a helluva lot more powerful than you expected, asshole!”
He raised a tiny index finger over his lips and tilted his head. “Shh. Let’s test your theory!”
Suddenly, he doubled over onto his hands and knees. I recoiled in horror as I saw a bloody fissure form over his spine, splitting his back wide open. His ivory skin drooped loosely over his shoulders while a heavily muscled back covered with pulsing veins pushed up through the opening. An arm the size of a tree trunk reached outward, straining to free itself from the skin surrounding it. I heard a sickening tearing sound as his muscular back arched, and Grim Geoffrey’s head twisted its way out of the skin in a hideous parody of birth.
Then he rose to his full height, ripping the skin cocoon from his body and throwing it against the chamber wall. A pair of large yellow eyes fixed on me and the tight red flesh of his massive face pulled back, revealing a grinning set of razor sharp teeth. Two long black horns protruded from either side of his skull, and each horn contained numerous spiral engravings that glowed like molten rock.
He had no neck. Instead, his head was fixed firmly between two massive shoulders. A clawed hand, similar to an eagle’s talon, pointed toward a bright light suspended between two pillars that opened and closed like a freakish mouth.
“That is where my kind and I will enter your realm, Vanguard,” it grumbled in a baritone voice that shook the ground. “Nothing can stop that now.”
He took a step forward with a large cloven foot. I heard the scurrying of countless creatures moving in unison and took a step backward. He reached behind his head and pulled out the largest two-sided axe I’d ever seen.
Then he came for me.
“Now this ends,” he hissed, wrapping a talon around the wooden handle. Instantly, the edges of the axe burst into flame with a loud whump, and he made a powerful swing at my torso. I darted to my left and the axe grazed my jacket, then crashed into a boulder with explosive force, splitting it in two. There was a searing pain in my side, and I reached around to feel a large gash cut through my jacket through to my skin. Unfazed, he spun the axe around a second time, missing my head by a fraction of an inch. I made a throwing motion and sent a lash of energy toward him. He swung the axe like it was a baseball bat and deflected the blast, sending it harmlessly into the air.
Grim Geoffrey was powerful, there was no question.
But he was also slow.
He lumbered forward, raising the axe above his head, then swung downward, like he was splitting a rail. I jumped to avoid the blade and it smashed into the ground, creating a tremor that sent me flying headfirst into a pillar.
I got to my feet, dazed, while he bore down on me. His eyes were lik
e fire and he wore a grin that could scare death itself as he brought the axe above his head. I raised my hands above my head and made a snatching motion, tearing the giant axe from his clawed hands and sending it end over end until it lodged in a chamber wall. He stared at his hands with a surprised look on his face, then swung at me with one of his large clawed hands.
It connected with my chest, tearing a large hole in my leather jacket and ripping the flesh beneath.
I screamed in agony and doubled over, clutching my chest. Blood poured from the wound and I could feel the bones of my rib cage against my fingers. He swung at me again, this time connecting with my back and tearing a large chunk of flesh.
“Enter the portal, minions!” he bellowed. “Fill your bellies on mortal souls!”
The air filled with the sounds of screeching creatures and the ground shook as thousands of feet raced toward the portal. I felt the life draining from my body, my stamina almost at an end. I spotted the large boulder beside Stella, then squeezed my eyes shut and reached out, willing the boulder to move with every ounce of energy I possessed.
“What?” Grim Geoffrey howled.
I opened my eyes and thrust my arms toward the portal, sending the boulder jettisoning through the air and crashing at the portal’s base.
“Move the stone!” he commanded, his voice insane with fury. His minions raced forward, revealing their true forms in a living mist of twisted limbs and distorted faces. They enveloped the boulder, sliding it across the chamber floor.
My energy spent, I fell to the floor face first.
Grim Geoffrey wrapped a talon around my body and lifted me up like a child snatching a marble. A razor sharp claw hooked the skin of my neck as his hollow eyes bore down on me.
The end was coming.
His wrapped a talong around my neck and squeezed. “Now you will die, Vanguard!”
Then out of nowhere, a weak female voice.
“M-Marshall?” Stella whispered, weakly.
“Eh?” Grim Geoffrey twisted his head to see where the voice was coming from, so I thrust my hand into my pocket and pulled out the shard of sentient quartz.
“Eat me, you slimy piece of shit,” I snarled, as I thrust the sentient quartz into his chest.
Instantly, I sailed through the air, landing in a heap about twenty feet away. Grim Geoffrey screamed in a voice that would shrivel God’s testicles. His skin became translucent, and my nostrils filled with the stench of burning flesh and brimstone. He scraped and clawed at his chest, ripping out chunks of bloody pulp trying desperately to get at the shard of sentient quartz.
Then his body split open, releasing a blinding storm of spectral fire and ash. A blast furnace of wind raged like a hurricane as Grim Geoffrey’s essence formed a funnel cloud of light and smoke that fell into the shard with a blinding flash.
Silence.
I opened my eyes and looked up at the moon. Puffy black and gray clouds skirted across the sky, and a damp breeze blew against my smoldering body. Ice-cold drops of water splattered against my face, and I opened my parched mouth, drinking in the evening rain.
In the distance, I heard a familiar voice.
“Storch, where are you? Storch?”
I got to my feet and spotted the Gazebo. The lifeless body of a man lay on the wooden floor, just as it had before I entered Grim Geoffrey’s realm.
“Storch, dammit, get out of that tree,” Stella warned.
I staggered to, taking off my leather jacket and wrapping it around her naked body. Walter jumped out of the tree and landed at my feet with a loud chirp. I spotted a flickering green light through the corner of my eye, and hobbled toward it.
The shard of sentient quartz rested in a smoldering circle of burned blood. I picked it up and ground it into a powder, then wiped the residue from my hands.
We were alive.
Epilogue
I’d like to report that life in Greenfield returned to normal after my little scrap with Grim Geoffrey. I was lucky... end of story. Sure, I could say that I’m some kind of hero because I destroyed him along with the portal into the near world, thereby saving the city from becoming a happy hunting ground for his followers. Of course, it nearly killed me, and it cost the life of Ruby Thiessen.
I’m not a hero, and I never wanted to be one.
Stella and I made it back to The Curiosity Nook after I’d raided a nearby clothesline and swiped a comforter for Stella, who’d finally noticed that she was as naked as the day she was born. If I’d had my clothes blasted off my body, I would have flushed with embarrassment, but not Stella. She was livid as she recounted that the last thing she remembered was a corporeal entity flying through the hole in the roof of her store, straight into her body.
“I warned her,” Stella chided, as we walked in the front door. “I warned Ruby that dark magic was forbidden.”
She was still dazed, but had regained her faculties enough to know that something had gone horribly wrong when she and Ruby had prepared the dark spell in the back room of The Curiosity Nook. As we surveyed the damage, she told me the slimy creature lying against the back door was a Slave Golem that Grim Geoffrey dispatched to prevent the spell. I asked her how he would have learned about the spell, and she shrugged her shoulders.
“I suspect he knew what we were planning all along,” she said, pointing at the spiral engraved rock on her desk next to Ruby’s broken body. “If the rocks were a beacon, then Grim Geoffrey was likely privy to everything that happened from the day I met you.”
I nodded my head as I wrapped a bandage around my torso. I must have experienced a kind of accelerated healing after I’d come through the portal. I was no longer bleeding, and scabs had formed around the tears in my skin. Stella told me I’d received spectral wounds and since I’d destroyed the creature responsible for inflicting them, they’d eventually disappear.
“She was an amazing woman,” I said, covering Ruby’s body with a blanket. “I only wish I could have saved her.”
Stella put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “She saved herself, Marshall. That’s why she came to Greenfield. She wanted to make amends for past mistakes.”
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“She was a witch.” Stella said. “She’s still entitled to the rite of sacred cremation. I’ll contact my coven and they’ll arrive before morning.”
“And the Golem?”
“They’ll want to study its anatomy.”
That made sense.
I looked at my watch. I had to meet Marnie at the truck stop before morning. Stella gave me a change of clothes and I took to the sky through the hole in the ceiling, arriving at the fireguard within minutes. I hobbled along the Interstate for a half mile and then went into the restaurant. Marnie sat at a table with a worried look on her face, chewing on a french fry. I waved and she ran to the entrance, throwing her arms around me.
“What happened?” she asked, elated that I was alive.
“I survived,” I said wearily. “You didn’t fax that news release, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, I was going to wait until morning, just like you told me.”
“Thank the stars,” I exhaled, relieved. “Do you have enough money to call us a cab?”
“Sure do.”
“Good, let’s go home.”
We sat in silence as the taxi drove up the Interstate and headed back into town. I’d fall asleep for a few minutes, then the cab would hit a pothole and I’d wake up, look around, then fall asleep again. When we got back to my building, Marnie helped me into my apartment and I collapsed on my bed in a heap.
“You need to get your ankle looked at,” she said.
“It’s just a sprain,” I said, too tired for the pain to register in my brain.
She chewed her lip. “Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?”
I yawned, waving her out of my room. “Eventually ... right now I need to sleep.”
Marnie headed to the door. “I’ll check on you in the morn
ing,” she said. “I’ll destroy the disk and the news release. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”
I gave her a weak smile. “Thanks.”
And then I went to sleep.
When I woke up, I was dressed in clean pajamas and there was a cast around my left ankle. The sun beamed through my bedroom window, bleaching the entire room in brilliant white light. I looked at my watch, the calendar said it was June 23rd. I’d slept for over a day and a half. My mouth was parched and my bladder was full as I raised myself onto my elbows and tried to get my bearings.
“It lives!” Stella announced, standing in the doorway. “We thought you might need a magic kiss from a dashing Prince Charming to wake you up.”
“Thanks,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“Your friend here came to my store yesterday morning and told me that you’d broken your ankle,” Stella said, gesturing with her thumb.
Marnie poked her head around the doorframe, beaming.
“Who set my ankle?” I asked.
“Oh, just a coven of busy-bodies,” said Stella. “We didn’t have to resort to a potion to keep you unconscious. Boy, do you ever snore.”
I glanced at Marnie and then back at Stella with a confused look on my face.
“She knows, try to relax.”
I plopped back down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
I should have been relieved that somehow I had prevented all hell from breaking loose. Instead, I felt a little bit lost.
Ruby had told me the chickens were coming home to roost in the days leading up to her death. Retribution arrived in the form of a huge creature composed of mud and pure evil that pummeled the life out her. I knew she would never have gone down without a fight, and a part of me questioned whether she knew Grim Geoffrey would send something to kill her. If she did know, she hid the truth to protect Stella and me, and that was a true heroic gesture.
Maybe she knew that coming to Greenfield would be the end of he road. Perhaps somewhere deep down inside that hard-drinking wrinkly exterior, she wanted to make peace with whatever demons she’d carried all her long life. I’d like to think Ruby lived and died on her own terms, and at least she hadn’t died behind a curtain in a hospital bed, not that it mattered much. Despite a plethora of factors that were out of my control, I still felt somehow responsible for her death. It was a bitter lesson.
Marshall Conrad: A Superhero Tale Page 26