“I’m not going to shoot him. He’s my friend.”
“Friend? You fool-hearted pansy. Ya can’t make friends with a driget. Everyone knows that.”
“I can and I did.”
Yammer gave a nod toward the fire. “They is good eaten ya know, drigets are. Taste like chicken.”
“What?” Carlos holstered his gun and pulled his bolo. “I bet you taste like chicken, old man.”
Tony said, “Carlos, don’t. He’s not worth it.”
“He’s just an old spectersoma. I’m gonna cut him up and feed him to the treklapods.”
“Wait!” I said. “He’s human.”
Carlos was nearly on top of him then, had him cowering on his knees with his back pressed tightly to the rocks. I could see the fear in the old man’s eyes, and his relief when Carlos turned back to look at me.
“Human?”
“That’s right.” I pointed to the fire. “Look. He’s cooking rat. Spectersoma don’t eat rat. They don’t eat anything unless it gets them drunk or high.”
He turned and regarded the man with renewed suspicions. “Is that right, gramps? You human?”
The old man nodded.
“You from Earth?”
“Earth?”
“Yeah, Earth. You know; sunshine, puffy clouds, green meadows, the place where rats aren’t any bigger than... well, rats.”
Old Yammer seemed to give it careful thought, as if trying to recollect details of a dream that had evaporated lone ago. “Sunshine,” he said, and even his voice sounded dreamy. “I remember sunshine.”
“How long has it been?” I asked.
He hooked his brow and seemed to guess at the answer. “Don’t know. Couple years, I `spect.”
“Give me a year.”
“Pardon?”
“When you arrived here. What year was it?”
“Oh well... let’s see now. Gertrude passed in ’46, the mule in ’48. I took to panning a few months later...” He began counting on his fingers until the tally seemed right, at which time he looked up and said, “1849.”
“What!”
“Yup. So what’s that make it now? 1851?”
Carlos laughed. “Are you kidding? I don’t know how to tell you this, old timer, but it’s––”
“Yes.” I said, shutting Carlos down with a glare. “It’s 1851. What my friend here was about to say is that tonight is New Year’s Eve.”
“You don’t say. So it’s 1852 already, eh?”
“Yup. Sure is,” Carlos replied. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Don’t it?”
“Carlos.” I returned that glare. “Don’t milk it.” He soured his face and stuck his tongue out at me. I walked over to Yammer and offered the old man a hand to help him back on his feet.
“Listen, Mister Yammer, we’re sorry about the confusion, but we––”
“It’s just Yammer. No mister.”
“Sorry.” I wiped my hands on my jeans to deposit the dirt I picked up after only touching him. “So, Yammer, we thought you were spectersoma. But see, here’s the deal.” I opened my sack and gave him a piece of brobble fruit. “We’re human, too. Fact is we didn’t know there were any other humans here. Thought only spectersoma and indigenous freakazoids inhabited this stinking rat’s nest.” I looked back at Jerome. “No offence, shorty.”
“None taken,” said Carlos.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
I came back to Yammer. “No hard feelings?”
Yammer let his guard down some, though not entirely. Only when Carlos and Jerome backed off, did he seem at ease enough to step away from the rocks. Clearly, he had learned to trust no one in a world where the dead lived and evil ruled.
Tony and I coaxed the old buzzard back to his campfire. We all settled around it and listened as he filled us in on his life in the ES. It turned out he got there purely by accident after stumbling through a portal in San Francisco.
“Damndest thing,” he said. “Happened while I was panning for gold. I`z on my knees, hunched over some god-awful cold stream, my sifting pan full of sand and water and not much else.
“Then I heard it, a strange voice calling to me from an abandoned mine up on the hill. I didn’t know what to think, but I knew I wasn’t havin` no luck panning, so I went up to have a look. I poked my head inside the mine and there it was, the biggest shiniest gold nugget I ever did see, just sticking out of the wall, waiting for me to come pluck it.”
“So did you?” Carlos asked. “Did you pluck it?”
“No, dagnabbit! I didn’t pluck it. I tried sure enough, but I never made it. I stepped into a puddle on my way towards the dang thing. The next thin` I know I was falling like a stone. Couldn’t imagine what kind of mineshaft went straight down for so damn long. After a while, I reckon I blacked out or some`um. Woke up later and found myself here in hell.”
“This is hell, all right,” I said.
“Yeah, except I ain’t dead,” the old man complained. “Least I don’t think so.”
Tony looked at me. “How could that happen?”
I shook my head. “Hard to say, but caves are known to sometimes populate their own conversion points through particle resonance due to natural frequency modulations in seismic activities.”
“Come again?”
“Spontaneous portals.”
“Oh.”
“Wow.” said Carlos. “I bet that means there are lots of other regular people here, too.”
“Yeah, too bad for them.”
“So, this truly is Hell.”
“What’s that you say?” asked Yammer.
“Forget it.” I handed him another brobble fruit. “Tell me. Have you ever heard of a man named Doctor Lowell?”
“The wizard?”
Tony and I exchanged glances. “Yes, I guess so. You know where we can find him?”
“Sure. He’s up in the Dark Fortress.”
“We know that. Do you know how to get there?”
Yammer took a big bite of the brobble fruit and swallowed seeds and all. “Might,” he said, “if you got another one of them brobbles.”
Carlos pulled out his bolo, leaned in over the fire and chopped the head off the skewered rat. “How `bout you just tell us, old man.”
“That-a-way!” Yammer pointed behind us.
“There?” said Tony. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Don’t`cha think I know my way around these parts after two dang years?”
Carlos laughed, but kept his comments to himself.
I said to Tony, “We came from there.”
“I know. That way takes us back to the desert.”
“Desert?” Yammer looked at us as if we had just fallen off the back of a treklapod. “Why, the desert’s a four day walk that-a-way.” He pointed in the other direction.
“Impossible.”
“You know, he may be right,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I drew his attention to the campfire. “Look where the wind is taking the smoke.”
“Yeah, towards the desert.”
“It looks that way, but I’m telling you, we left the desert with the wind at our backs.”
“So?”
“So, it was blowing in from the desert.”
“The wind changed direction.”
“I’m with Lilith on this one, Tony,” said Carlos.
“Big surprise. You’re always with Lilith.”
“I, too,” said Ursula. “The way forward is the way of the wind.” She pointed to the trees. All had a slight growth lean favoring the direction of the smoke. “Prevailing winds through desert sands doth coax the mighty tree.”
“What?”
“She’s talking about the prevailing winds,” I said. “They blow constant off the desert, influencing the natural bend in the trees.”
“Okay, fine. We follow the wind.” Tony gave Yammer a hard stare. “But if we come out at the desert and find we wasted a half day, someone’s going to pay.”
�
��Yeah, yeah, big man,” I said. “Come on.” I stood and helped Ursula to her feet. “We should get a move on. It’ll be dark soon.”
Carlos looked around, puzzled. “It’s always dark.”
“I know, but on every journey someone eventually says that. I just wanted to get that in.”
We headed out single file, following the wind and ignoring every instinct telling us that we were backtracking to the desert. Tony took the lead. He was certain we would pop out hours later at the edge of the desert and wanted to be the first to say I told you so. Ursula and I stepped in behind him. Carlos maintained a close tail on us and Jerome on him.
For the first few hours, things went smoothly. I didn’t recognize a single landmark and nothing about the path we blazed suggested we had past that way before. Then things got strange. I began seeing footprints, our footprints, sunk in the mud an inch or more and dried to a crusty flake.
“Hey guys?” I stopped and bent down for a closer look. “Check this out. These are ours.”
“Footprints?” said Carlos.
“Yeah.”
“I knew it,” said Tony. “Told you we came this way before.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“These footprints are all pointing in the same direction we’re heading now.”
“What? Let me see.” Tony got down on one knee to inspect the prints. “How can that be?”
Carlos looked back in the direction from which we came. “We must be going in circles. It’s the only explanation.”
“We’re not. Look.” I scratched at the dry ground with my nails. “These prints were made days ago.”
“Then they can’t be ours.”
“Oh, they’re ours all right,” said Tony, pointing at one of the larger sets. “See, these are mine. There’s Lilith’s. Ursula’s. These here are yours, Carlos, and look. Those are Jerome’s.”
“So, what does it mean?”
“It means we’ve been here before,” I said.
“It’s funny I don’t remember.”
Ursula said, “What shall we do?”
Tony stood and squinted into the darkness before us. “Let’s go make some memories.”
We pushed on, following a path that we had obviously traveled before, yet never set eyes on in our lives. I kept waiting for a feeling of déjà vu, some inexplicable sense of familiarity, perhaps triggered by a sight, a sound or aroma previously experienced. Yet even the fear of the unknown seemed fresh and new in a way never before realized.
We followed our footsteps another hour or so before Tony held his hand up, signaling us to halt. He lowered himself onto one knee again and swept the ground lightly with his hand.
I touched his shoulder. “What is it?”
His eyes were still scanning the ground, only now far beyond the reach of his hand. “Strange. There’s another set of prints now.”
“Other than ours?”
“Yes. Looks like we’re being followed.”
“Animal?”
He rolled his eyes up at me. “Man.”
We all turned instinctively and looked back at the trail behind us. We couldn’t see him, but we could feel his presence, whoever he was.
“Forget it,” I said, hoping to allay fears of something we had no control over. “It’s probably nothing. Likely someone followed the same path days behind us.”
“She’s right,” said Tony, but I knew he wasn’t buying it. The mysterious tracks he found were set just as deep in the mud as our own, indicating they were made at the same time. Still, he played it cool. “Let’s keep moving everyone, but stay vigilant.”
We continued walking, our formation tight at first, but as time passed, we inevitably spread out. Soon, our line stretched so thin that at times, thanks to the curves in the path, I lost sight of both Tony walking in front of me, and the others walking behind.
I remember thinking that we could probably all use a rest and stopping would allow us to tighten up our ranks again. I was just about to suggest that, when Tony pulled up short and dropped back to the ground. I hurried to him.
“What now?”
“The other footprints.” He looked up from the tracks. “They’re gone.”
“The follower?”
“Yes.”
Carlos came up behind us. “What’s wrong, Tony?”
“He stopped following us.”
“Who?”
“The boogeyman! Who do you think?”
“That’s good then, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s another set of prints missing now.”
“Whose?”
Tony looked up at us and scowled. “Jerome’s.”
We all looked back for Jerome. He was gone.
“Hey, where’d he go?” I asked.
“He was behind me a second ago,” Carlos answered.
“Look!” Ursula directed our attention to a new set of tracks heading off into the woods.
“That’s his,” I pointed. “That’s the stranger’s footprints. And look, those are heel marks.”
“They’re Jerome’s,” said Carlos. “Someone dragged him off. We have to save him.”
“No. Wait.” Tony snatched Carlos by the wrist and pulled him back. “We can’t go running off into the forest all half-cocked.”
He pulled his gun. “Then we go full-cocked.”
“Carlos, no,” I said. “He’s right. We don’t know who or what’s out there. We can’t risk splitting up.”
“I don’t care.” He jerked his arm free of Tony’s grip and leveled a hardened stare at him. “I’d risk it for you,” is all he said, and ran off into the woods.
Tony shook his head and took a deep breath. “All right, listen, you two. I want you to stay here and don’t move. We’ll be right back.”
Before I could insert a sarcastic, “Yeah, right,” into the mix, he was gone. I looked at Ursula. “You ready?”
“Doth thou enjoy looking at my butt?”
“Um, not exactly.”
She smiled devilishly. “Then move thee thy legs or my butt is all thou shalt see.”
“What?”
She peeled off into the woods in a sprint, gaining a dozen steps on me before I realized what she had done.
“You bitch!” I yelled, and tore off after her.
Now then, Ursula has never been a quick runner, always too ladylike for such things. You can blame her seventeenth century upbringing for that. It’s a shame, too, because she’s built exactly like me, and I can run the spots off a leopard.
But to hear her laughing as she ran, having herself a good old time even in the face of constant danger and imminent death... Well, it made me happy. Crazy, isn’t it? Happiness in the Eighth Sphere?
I purposely didn’t catch her until she met up again with Tony and Carlos. They were standing on a rocky ledge, overlooking a steep ravine. Ursula was shamefully out of breath. Tony, too. Carlos was breathing heavy, but his concentration had him looking sharp and alert.
Tony looked at me scornfully. “I thought I told you two to stay where you were.”
“You did. Don’t do that again.”
“He’s got him,” said Carlos.
“Who,” I asked.
“Yammer.” He pointed across the ravine. “See that flicker of firelight?”
“What, that tiny star spec that looks like glitter on a gnat’s ass?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s his campfire.”
“How do you know it’s Yammer?”
“I recognize the stone formation off to the right.”
“Get out. Really?”
“Wait,” said Tony. “It took us all day to walk around this entire ravine. How did he get back over there in just ten minutes?”
“I don’t know, but that’s him. He has Jerome.”
“So what do we do about it?”
&nb
sp; “What do you mean? We go and get him back.”
“How? We have no way of crossing this ravine. It’s too treacherous to even try.”
“And we certainly can’t go back the way we came.” I said, tapping my wrist where my watch would have been if I had one. “It’ll take hours. By then Jerome will be...”
“Dead?” Carlos finished.
“Well, I was going to say toast, but whatever.”
“Shortcut,” said Ursula.
“Excuse me?”
“Aye. What hath he that we hath not, but knowledge of a route much shorter?”
“Of course!” I snapped my fingers to punctuate my point. “A portal. That would explain the dry footprints.”
“I don’t get it,” said Tony. “Explain it to me.”
“Look. I think the reason Yammer was so surprised to see Ursula is because he had seen her before, and us, too.”
“He had? When?”
“About ten minutes from now.”
“Wait a second. Slow down. My head’s spinning. How could Yammer have seen us before we walked into his camp, if we haven’t yet walked into his camp?”
“Simple. There’s a time-space portal around here somewhere. I think he used it after following us in the woods and grabbing Jerome.”
“A time-space portal, eh?”
“Yeah, a wormhole or whatever you want to call it. That’s how we’re going to get back across the ravine to save Jerome. If it’s not too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well...” I made a tisk sound through my teeth and sighed. “You remember that rat Yammer had skewered over the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think it was a rat.”
Chapter Seventeen
We spent the next few minutes looking for the portal. Funny, you’d think it’d be easy. Just follow the footprints until they end.
Not the case.
“I don’t get it,” said Tony. “The footprints end here, but where’s the portal?”
Carlos said, “Maybe it moved.”
“How could it move?”
“It could,” I said, reminding him that conversion points were transient. “They come and go as they please.”
“If that’s true, how did Yammer know where to find it?”
“Good point. So maybe it hasn’t moved.”
“And maybe it was never here.”
“It’s gotta be here,” Carlos argued. “Jerome was with us a few minutes ago and now he’s across the ravine, probably roasting on a spit. They didn’t just fly across there.”
8 Gone is the Witch Page 20