by Ben Zackheim
Would I do the same thing if it had been a female troll? Sure, but I would have whined about it more than she did.
The doorman rolled out the Troll Trailer from the building’s private parking garage. He hitched it to the back of our car and Dino stepped on. He was having a hard time fitting but he squeezed in, held the sides with his massive hands and called out, “Okay, go! Just hurry, please.”
It was a 30 minute ride to the airstrip. Once we got on the plane the troll was all-pro. The cockpit was customized to hold just him. The pilot and co-pilot chair ran on a rail and slipped into each other to make one large seat. He flicked a button and the lights on the dashboard adjusted to, I assumed, a single pilot mode.
He even secured a stewardess to take care of us. She arrived on the plane at 4am and she clearly had a thing for her boss. She was all smiles every time he talked. But Dino had his eyes on only one woman. Rebel. Or, as he called her, “Ma’am.”
The troll had us in the air in record time. We did a couple of barrel rolls somewhere over the Atlantic which had Coleslaw banging on the cockpit door in anger. We could hear Dino chuckling from behind the bullet-proof door.
The rest of the flight was quiet until Rebel looked out the window and said, “You have got to be shitting me.”
“What?” I asked going to her side.
“What the hell is Fox doing out there?”
She was right. Fox was sitting on the plane wing, covered in freezing cold water. He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. The wind didn’t seem to have an effect on him, but my guess was that it took everything he had to stay on the wing.
“Should we land?” Rebel asked.
“We’re over the Atlantic. There’s nowhere to land.”
“What a moron,” she whispered, but I could tell that she was concerned. We knew he’d be okay after the fight in the Vampire HQ but sitting on a plane wing for three hours wasn’t a good way to recover from being shot, Vampire or otherwise.
“No more barrel rolls!” I yelled to Dino.
“Okay, okay.”
We arrived in Iceland two hours later. It was a fast jet and we were surfing a strong wind. Fox had hopped off the wing when everyone was sleeping. I was sure he’d pop back into the picture at the most obtuse time possible, as was his way.
Dino had a friend who lived in a mountain nearby. The Troll brought his cell phone with him and said he’d be ready to fly anywhere we wanted whenever we wanted. I’d never heard him so accommodating. Love could even turn a troll into a blubbering idiot.
We decided to get a few more hours sleep and then head out to the museum at noon. It would take a couple of hours to drive there so the plan was to arrive just before it closed. Our hope was that we could avoid tourists and have a talk with the curator about his dick collection.
I checked the news while we rode the elevator up to our rooms. The top Icelandic news item for the morning was a mysterious, armored man appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the church. Bonehead didn’t make a scene. He just walked out through the front door. But the Prime Minister of Iceland happened to be in the church at the time so it was newsworthy.
I couldn't wait to get to a bed. But when I got to my room I could feel that something was off. Someone was in my room. Someone was going to try and keep me from getting shut-eye. I don’t respond well to that.
“You feel that?” I whispered to Rebel.
“Yeah. Whoever it is, he’s sloppy.”
I pulled out a Glock. She nodded. I pushed the door open.
Skyler was sitting by the window, feet up on my bed. He was drinking a wine glass of blood and reading an anatomy book.
“That’s anti-climactic,” I said. “Why are you in my room?”
“Hey Skyler,” Rebel said, pushing past me.
“Hi sweetheart.”
“Can I have a moment’s peace, please?” I said. Okay whined. “Just an hour without whatever bullshit he’s about to throw at us.”
“You’re looking for a god’s cock,” Skyler said, dabbing the blood trickling down his chin. He took another sip and looked at me as if he’d just asked about the temperature outside.
“See?” I said, pointing at him. “Just one hour!”
“How do you know it’s a god’s cock?” Rebel asked him, ignoring me.
“Because a demon told me,” the old vampire said.
“Demons lie,” I said. “That’s their thing.”
“Not this one. Not to me,” Skyler said. “You two don’t seem as surprised as I thought you’d be.”
“Harry told us about the member,” I said.
“Harry! How is that old son of a bitch?”
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Rebel said. “Which god?”
“No idea.”
“What’s a god’s dick look like?” I asked, trying to make a joke of it.
“Big is my guess,” Skyler said.
“Small is my guess,” Rebel said.
“Get out of my room and let me sleep, is my guess.”
“Come on, sweety,” Skyler said, gently gripping Rebel’s elbow. “Let’s let grouchy pants get his beauty rest.”
Chapter 32
The phallus museum was pretty low key for a phallus museum.
The block building lay low on the horizon which made me feel like I was walking into a 1980s porn hut in a strip mall parking lot.
The inside didn't fill me with the warm and fuzzies either. Dicks stuck out of the wall, framed in wood plates.
“It's like a wall of Glory Holes!” Rebel said, too loudly. “We should get Coleslaw out of the car and make him see this.”
"Can I help you?" An elderly man in a beige suit and gold-rimmed glasses shuffled up. His cane was, of course, topped off with his particular area of expertise. He didn’t have to say a word and I knew that this was not a man who would tolerate dick jokes.
“We're looking for a phallus," Rebel said, stepping in front of me. If she wanted to take point, fine. “We're not sure what it looks like but we think it may be human-ish and it may have a history that's...” She paused, not sure how to phrase it.
“Mysterious," I said. He looked at me like he just noticed I was there.
“Yeah,” she said. "Mysterious. You have anything like that?”
Finally, after way too long, he said, “Perhaps.”
I nodded. Rebel waited. He stared like it was our turn to speak. Just as I was about to break the silence with the more direct approach, he turned on his heels and limped off to a door in the back. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned.
“Hurry up before I change my mind,” he said.
The back room was pitch black. My hands went straight for the top Glock in my back harness. I couldn’t imagine this guy starting a fight but I’d seen weirder shit in my time as a Spirit agent. With a distant click the room lit up, swamped with a green hue of florescent light that made the place even creepier. The room had a low ceiling over where we stood. But the floor sloped down lie a ramp ahead of us while the ceiling stayed the same height. The bottom of the room was about 100 feet below us. We walked past metal shelves packed with boxes, some of them packed to the breaking point with who knew what.
“Are you the owner?” I asked.
“No one owns the museum,” he said in that clear way Icelanders speak. “It belongs to the people.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted,” Rebel said, looking around at the stock.
“Rebel…”
“No, it’s fine,” the man said. “I’ve heard every phallic joke you can think of.”
“Don’t challenge her,” I said. She smiled, clearly hoping he’d do just that. “I’m Kane. This is Rebel.”
“Your birth name is Rebel?” he asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“It’s unusual, no?”
“So’s framing antique dicks.”
“Fair enough. Are you one?”
“Am I an antique dick?”
“A rebel.”
I didn’t know ho
w the conversation was going to go. If he pissed her off he’d regret it. She smiled and I relaxed.
“I’m more of a dick,” she said.
His back was to us as he led us down the long hall, but I heard him chuckle.
“I’ve been called the same,” he said. “People enjoy making fun of what we do, but that’s just modern prudishness. The phallus has been a symbol of power since the beginning of time.”
“So we’ve heard,” I said.
“Not just human time, either. It’s celebrated in our myths, our religions, our architecture and in the very way human thought is structured. We can joke about it as much as we want but, in the end, it’s a symbol that will outlast humanity itself.”
“So you’re saying it has great stamina,” I said. Rebel snorted. Curator man didn’t say anything.
We reached the bottom of the long hall. I could make out the end of the storage space, a steel door about 50 feet ahead of us.
“We have here a bundle of unidentified specimens. Some may not even be phalli but we store them here until enough funds come in to study them properly.” He popped the top off of a wood crate. It was filled with bubble wrapped bundles. He pulled off his glasses and swapped them for some bifocals. He shuffled to a nearby work table where he flicked a switch and bathed us in even more green light from a lab lamp.
“Will you help me, please?” He gestured to the box. I hoisted it up and laid it gently next to him. All three of us reached into the box and spread the packages across the table. He sat in a high stool and turned to us with a big friendly smile. “I am Sergei. It is good to meet you both.” I guess we’d passed his test, whatever it was.
“Yeah, good to meet you too, Sergei,” I said.
He leaned over and inspected the labels. He made two piles. The packages on his left grew higher and higher, while the stack on the right trailed.
After ten minutes of sorting he sat up straight. The big pile was a couple dozen. The small pile was three. He shoved the small pile aside and handed me a specimen from the large pile. It was about five pounds.
“Unwrap, please,” he said while handing Rebel one of her own.
Mine was mummified. Its off-white surface made it look like a cucumber dropped in chalk. I guess it could have been human. I inspected it for anything unusual. Besides the fact that it was five pounds, mummified.
We got through about half of them before Rebel said, “Look at this.”
Sergei and I stood behind her. She held up what was clearly a human specimen. Three inches. We squinted to see where her long, sharp nail was pointing.
“Is that a tattoo?” I asked. It was a small bluish black blob to the naked eye. But it had a design to it which told me it probably wasn’t an ancient venereal disease. At least I hoped not.
“I think so,” she said.
“Hm,” Sergei said, nodding his head. “You would be good at this job. Let me see.” He grabbed it out of her hand and laid it on the table. I tried not to crack a joke but I was losing the battle. Rebel shot me a look that shut me up.
Sergei examined it under a large magnifying glass for a minute.
“So?”
He turned quickly, as if he’d forgotten we were there. His brow was tight. His lips were pursed. He was thinking about something. Hard. I knew we were onto something. I also knew he was trying to think about what he should tell us. The only way to stop someone from lying, in my experience, was to call them out before they said a word.
“Don’t lie,” I said simply. Nordic types like simple. He could tell I was serious. That’s also something Nordic types like.
He exhaled deeply and his shoulders hunched. He leaned on his cane and worked his way back to standing.
“It is a tattoo, yes,” he said. “I don’t know how we missed it before. The item came in during Silas’ tenure. He was awful at this job so that’s probably the best explanation.”
“What’s the tattoo?”
“It’s a Triskelion. Three legs running around a circle, like hands of a clock.”
“That’s the Celtic symbol for competition,” I said. “How old is it?”
“This phallus is dated to about 1400 AD but that is an estimate done by my predecessor.”
“Why is it with the unknown pile if you can tell it’s human just by looking at it.”
“I don’t know the answer to that, I’m embarrassed to say.”
“Don’t sweat it, Sergei,” Rebel said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Wait,” he said, eyes wide. “Look at this.”
There was another mark on the other side of the shaft. Sergei studied it under the magnifying glass.
“What is it? Another tattoo?”
“Two tattoos,” he said. “Mjölnir above Yggdrasil.”
Chapter 33
Wait.
A dick with three tattoos on it? First of all, what the fuck was wrong with this guy? Three tattoos on the sacred pole? Really?
Second, that meant he had tats of the Celtic symbol for competition, the Viking symbol for Mjölnir and the Viking symbol for the Tree of Life.
What came to mind? A simple, serious clue.
A competition for Mjölnir at the Tree of Life.
Could it be that straight forward? I guess Vikings weren’t known for their subtlety.
I could almost hear the brain gears churning in the silence when I thought of something else.
It was a huge leap of logic but leaps of logic were as common as leaps over thousand foot drops in this business.
But I was the only one with enough guts to say it out loud.
“So this couldn’t be Thor’s Jolly Roger, right?”
“Thor’s Hammer,” Rebel said.
“It always cums back,” I answered.
“Let’s assume it is Thor’s thousand watt lightpole,” Rebel said. “Let’s review. That means that the shield’s hidden message has led us to his member, which leads us to the tree.”
“And the competition will be at the tree.”
“Just to be clear,” Sergei said. There was a slight whine to his voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sorry, Sergei,” I said. “We need to get to the Tree of Life. Looks like we have some business to take care of there.”
“Valhalla,” he said, simply.
“Where the hell is Valhalla?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Sergei said.
Rebel frowned at him. “Excuse me?”
“My apologies,” the small man said, bowing his head. “There are two modes of thought about Valhalla among scholars. The first theory is that it’s a kingdom in the sky. The second theory is that Valhalla is underground. Somewhere near Hel.”
Rebel looked at me, eyes wide.
“The other big door,” she said.
“What door?” Sergei asked.
“When we were at Hel’s door to get the hammer, there was another massive stone door just across from Hel’s entrance.”
“You were at Hel’s door? Did you see the guardian dog?”
“He’s a cat.”
Sergei looked disappointed.
“But Coleslaw said that the church’s portal to hell is closed off,” I said. “How are we going to get down there?”
“We’ll have to find a way back,” Rebel said. “It’s our only lead.”
Sergei held his hands up like a traffic cop. “If you tell me what you two are up to I’ll tell you a secret that could help,” Sergei said.
“We need to steal Mjölnir from the Vampires,” I said.
Sergei wobbled and grabbed the edge of the table. “The Vampires have the hammer? The real hammer of Thor?”
“They got to it before we could,” Rebel said.
“Oh dear. That’s bad news,” he said. His unblinking eyes glanced off. He shook his head and pointed a long, bony finger at me. “You must get Mjölnir.”
“Yeah, we know,” Rebel said.
“Go to Dimmuborgir.”
“What’s there?”
/>
“Dimmuborgir is rumored to be the gate to Hel,” Sergei said. “It’s just a myth but that’s exactly what you’re dealing with, so…”
“What do we do when we get there?”
“Go to Hel?” he said.
“Yeah, I know, but is there a ritual or a spell?” Rebel asked.
“How would I know? I file phalli.”
“File Phalli,” I said. “That’s a great band name.”
Chapter 34
Hel’s gate was smaller than I thought it would be.
A stone arch in the middle of a desolate landscape dotted with volcanic boulders waited for us. We’d arrived a few hours after the peak visiting times so we had the run of the place. Good. I didn’t want anyone to witness the fact that this tourist trap with the name Hel’s Gates was actually a gate to Hel. Humanity was in enough trouble without knowing how to visit the underworld.
“I’ve never been here,” Coleslaw said. “Hilde wouldn’t let me visit it. She said it was too dangerous for my kind.”
“What’s that mean?” Rebel asked.
“No idea,” he said. “I learned a long time ago to not bother asking. Hilde was a discreet woman. She lived by a code of honor that I’ll never see the likes of again.” He was falling into a funk.
“Come on,” I said, trying to distract him. “Let’s check it out. We’ll cover you.” I winked at him. He just walked off, which made me feel like a moron for winking.
“Did you just wink at him?” Rebel whispered.
“I was trying to help,” I whispered back.
“Winking. No.”
“Got it.” We followed him to the gates of Hel to find a way into the one place most of us spend a lifetime avoiding. We stood at the entrance. It wasn’t a cave really. More of an arch. It was only a few feet thick, with a seven foot high ceiling. You could walk through the thing and come out the other side in four steps.
The cold wind blew through it, whistling as if waiting for us to make a move.
“I guess we walk in?” Rebel asked, taking a step.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go first.”