Thru the Badger Hole

by Taki Drake

  Madrik fell and fell.

  Chapter 2 – Hard Landing

  Madrik landed with a jolt that slammed his teeth together, spawning pain-filled stars that clouded his vision and left him disoriented. The travel through the strange fog had seemed to take forever. It’d been too cold to breathe, and the touch of that fog on his skin left him feeling unsettled. The end of the journey had done nothing to ease that.

  He was almost afraid to move. The landing had been especially rough. Carefully wiggling toes and fingers, he gradually extended the movement to his arms and legs and finally his torso. He hurt everywhere! But the pain didn’t seem to be indicating any critical problem. There was no sharp feeling or broken bones, no inhibition in his breathing.

  He sat up. The light was dim around him, and he could see that he was in an empty room, thick with dust and missing any signs of disturbance. It was obvious that no one had been here for quite a while. Madrik reached a hand out to lean on as he got up and stirred up some of the dust that was inches thick on the floor. Immediately, he went into a massive sneezing fit. The dust was cloying and stuck on the edge of his nostrils and tried to force its way down his throat.

  It felt like no dust he had ever touched before, not even like regular dirt. It had a density of something heavier than he was used to and a strange acrid taste that settled in the back of his throat. Nose running, eyes pouring with helpless tears, Madrik used his shirtsleeve to rub his face and get some relief. It didn’t help much.

  Glancing around in the dim light, he noted the size and shape of the room. It was roughly rectangular in shape with a heavy arched closed door to his left and three doors on the wall to the right. A fireplace adorned the wall directly in front of him. When he twisted his body around, he could see a large countertop or bar that covered most of the room behind him. He had landed in the middle of the room, almost exactly in the center. That realization brought him to his senses enough that he glanced up quickly, expecting to see a hole above him. Instead, he saw a beamed ceiling high above them with an intact roof.

  Now I know how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole, he thought to himself. Moving carefully, he started to get up again. This time he was determined not to end up with another sneezing fit. Almost holding his breath, Madrik managed to get to his feet without kicking off any further attacks.

  Madrik carefully explored the room. None of the four doors would open, and it looked like there was a bricked-up exit to a hallway, but it was equally impervious to his attempts at getting through. Apparently, he was supposed to be in this room although he didn’t see why or what he was supposed to do.

  The exploring man knew he was alone in the room, but there was a strange feeling of expectation in the air. He could hear weird little sounds, like a voice that was whispering and the random creaking of the building itself. The noises were not getting any louder, and so he filed them under the category of “things that need to be looked at, later.”

  Madrik felt like he was getting a headache. There was a pressure in the air around him like a big wave poised to crash down. This was an incredibly uncomfortable feeling for the battered man. The strangeness of the last hour and his abrupt transportation into this unfamiliar room was causing a collision in his mind of the things that he knew, and the things that his senses told him were happening.

  Maybe I’m really still on the bike path and the old man’s calling the guys in little white coats to take me away, he thought. It is that, or I really have stepped through the looking glass, and I’m not in Kansas anymore. Madrik snorted a little as he realized he had gone into mixed metaphor mode. Jenny used to say that it was his version of spoonerisms. Sometimes they would annoy her, and sometimes they would make her laugh. Luckily for him, most the time she just laughed.

  The pressure in his head was getting worse, and he felt like he was going to have a migraine blow the top of his head off any minute. About the only thing that worked to stop with the advent of this type of headache was a lot of water. He desperately needed a drink anyway between the dust and that horrible acrid taste in his mouth. Since he couldn’t get out of the room, perhaps he would find something behind the counter. It was the one area of the room that he hadn’t explored yet and the only one that offered any hope.

  Madrik carefully made his way to the end of the counter and looked at it to see what was there. The answer to that was pretty much nothing. Madrik couldn’t tell what the original purpose of the room was even yet. Maybe it had been a bar, or perhaps a meeting room. It could have been a room in somebody’s house or a place of business. There simply were not enough clues in the room to determine what it had been used for.

  Privately, Madrik thought perhaps it was a bar. That might be because he had some experience with bars and that’s how his mind was interpreting the shape and signs of functionality. After leaving the military, he had spent several years tending bar. He had moved up to management responsibilities but decided that he was adult enough to hold a regular job and had gone back to school. He had graduated and become very competent in his technical field. He and Jenny had been happy, a young couple in a group of other young couples. All of them working at achieving their goals and encouraging each other along the way.

  He really needed that drink. Madrik saw a rusty- looking faucet in a tiny sink tucked in the corner under the edge of the countertop. Making his way behind the counter was difficult because he couldn’t clearly see the floor. It was so dark back there that he kept bumping into things that threatened his equilibrium and sent shockwaves from his stubbed foot up through his body to explode in his head.

  Finally, he reached the faucet. The handles did not want to turn. But he concentrated on the right-hand faucet handle hoping that it would have cold water. With a screeching sound of grating metal, the handle finally moved. Crushing him in disappointment, nothing came out.

  It was just too much. Leaning his head against the edge of the countertop, Madrik allowed himself to simply feel the confusion and pain of the last hour. This was not grief or depression. This was sheer painful disorientation and frustration coupled with the physical need. He was so thirsty and so intensely frustrated that his emotions welled up and spilled out of him. There was nobody else around to see him. For once, the stricture taught him when he was young of “men don’t cry” held no sway.

  Leaning his aching head against the counter, Madrik let the tears fall uncontrolled from his eyes, dripping through the crust on his dusty cheeks and leaving the tracks of his tears visible to any who might see him. He simply didn’t care.

  His head hurt, he needed water. What was he going to do?

  His headache exploded in a snap of a resounding connection. It was almost loud enough that it trembled the air around him. The echoes crashed through his body, traveling down his nerves to make his feet and hands feel like they had just exploded. Madrik straightened in surprise as the empty faucet began to gush torrents of water.

  It was like a fire hose had started to blast through the small pipe of the faucet. Madrik knew in some part of his brain that it was impossible to have that much water come out of that small pipe. But he was so happy to see the water that he didn’t think. He especially didn’t think about any problem with the water. He just drank it.

  Cupping his hands under the gushing fluid, he used his palms as a cup to carry handfuls of water to his mouth as fast as he could. The water had a faint metallic taste to it but the feel of the coolness soothed his irritated throat, and he kept drinking and drinking.

  As Madrik drank the water, the headache started to recede, and the irritation in his throat disappeared under a wave of healing that seemed to reach to every corner of his body. It wasn’t just the sore places on his body that were being healed, but something undefined till now. He had not known how much it hurt until the water washed it away.

  Behind the healing, he could feel a shock of connection that reminded him of when a computer was plugged into a network and all of a sudden, it could talk to
the printer. It was more than a handshake, more than “hi how are you and here’s my plug-in.” It felt more like the warmth of a hug.

  There was another wave of bonding running behind it, one that he both trembled to see and for which he ached. It was a bigger, tighter, more comprehensive bond and it frightened him. His skin was prickled in expectancy and fear, and he could feel his heart pounding. The relief from the pain made his eyes smart with insipid tears, but the relief from the tension of that discomfort allowed him to take a deeper breath just before that other tidal wave of change engulfed him.

  This time there was no sneezing fit. The water had blasted out of the faucet and was now spilling all over the floor. Madrik could feel the atmosphere in the room change as the water seemed to scour out the nasty burning smell and taste of the dust.

  A question started to form in his mind. It was a query that was posed without words. That tentative touch carried the reaching out of another soul that was just as damaged as he. One that had also known immeasurable loss and that felt adrift and abandoned. The harmonic that he found in his own heart and soul to that other damaged being sang to him.

  In unspoken agreement, he reached out a mental hand of his own. It was joyfully met by a grip just as needy as his own. The shock of connection with that other being blasted all of his senses into overload. It was as if Madrik had expanded all over a small world. He could feel an unfamiliar area and knew exactly where he was in it. His smell, his vision, his tactile senses all had become one with that larger entity.

  His spirit zoomed and flew over this world. Madrik could feel and see damaged areas, could tell on the outside skin of his merged soul where the areas of quiescence were, those places that were just waiting like this one had been waiting for him.

  Madrik was not someone that was subject to flights of fancy. He believed in the things that he could touch and feel, and relied on the feedback of his own senses. But the expansion of those senses fed him information that he had difficulty reconciling. If what he was sensing was correct, he was in a different world. And he had just bonded with a being that wasn’t human.

  Choices and possibilities, my ass. That old man knew exactly what he was pushing me into. I wonder what part he plays this whole thing? Madrik thought.

  The shock of connection was smoothing out, and other feelings were starting to take its place. It took a little while for Madrik to realize that what he was feeling was peace. There was even a soundtrack running through his head. It was like someone singing a happy song, creating an aural tapestry of contentment and joy.

  It was very peculiar, but Madrik felt better than he had since that ill-fated doorbell had rung. If his choices led to new possibilities, then perhaps this is where he belonged. Responding to that thought, the joy and intensity of the song of home ratcheted up. He could hear his bond with the other entity filling with contentment and excitement. At some point, he was going to have to figure out what all of this meant, but for right now, he was going to take a moment to enjoy the relief of pain.

  Chapter 3 – Exploration

  Madrik didn’t know how long he luxuriated in the absence of pain. It could have been a minute, or it could have been an hour. The length of time was really unimportant. He roused from that self-indulgent moment determined to make more sense out of where he was.

  Straightening up, he realized that he could see better. The deep gloom had lightened although there were no apparent light fixtures or sources of illumination. Perhaps my eyes have adjusted to the dark better, he thought. Shrugging his shoulders, he walked from the back of the bar and toward the table in the center of the room.

  Slamming to a halt, he could not prevent an exclamation from bursting from his mouth, “What the hell? That wasn’t there just a little while ago!”

  There was a table in the center of the room. The floor was still dusty, and Madrik could clearly see that his footprints were the only ones that had disturbed its surface. Regardless of that evidence, there was a sturdy table in the exact center of the room. There was no way he could have avoided seeing that piece of furniture because the imprint of his body and the dust disturbed by the force of his landing were located next to the table legs. If the table had been there when he landed, he would have smashed into it. If it appeared while he was lying there, he would’ve been partially under it. This is too strange, he thought.

  Madrik examined the table carefully. It was sturdily built out of a strange wood that he had never seen before. Running his hands along the surface, he could tell that it had been sanded smooth and that there was some sort of finish applied to it. This would be perfect for a bar table since it wouldn’t pick up stains easily and it is sturdy enough to take a lot of abuse.

  Wondering what else had changed in the room, Madrik started to make his inspection circuit again. The room was definitely brighter than before because now he could see into the corners without walking over to them. He could even see up the stairs. Wait! There are stairs?

  Feeling like Alice in Wonderland once more, Madrik made his way up the stairs. Like everything else in the bar, the construction was sturdy, although not refined. The stairs were wide, capable of letting traffic go up and down on them simultaneously. There were no creaks or groans from the steps as he made his way up the stairway. The climb of the stairs matched the height of the ceiling, and he soon found himself at a landing on a second floor that stretched in three directions. The hallways were difficult to see down although one of them was more lit than the others.

  If I were in a horror film, bad music would be playing in the background, and the bad guy would be waiting just around the corner to jump out at me. Despite his misgivings, Madrik walked into the right-hand hallway and saw that there was an actual light glowing partway down its length. The light itself was a built-in sconce on the side of the wall next to a nice-looking doorway. Forcing himself to move despite a shiver of tension, Madrik opened the door and looked inside.

  There was nothing more exciting inside than a small sitting room that led into a couple of other rooms. Hoping that the door didn’t close behind him, Madrik entered, determined to explore. The small chamber opened up onto a bathroom and a room that was obviously meant for sleeping. There was a plain, raised dais that looked like it would hold a mattress and a wall that had interesting, rotating hooks and something he recognized as a mid-sized closet.

  Madrik walked back to the bathroom and was reminded strongly that this was no place like he had ever been. The function of the bathroom was fairly obvious by the presence of something that looked like a toilet. There was nothing he recognized as a flushing mechanism, and when he peered into the toilet, he could see no drain or another plumbing component. The bottom bowl was dry and dusty, but the form telegraphed its function, and he resolved to come back and look at it later. The rest of the bathroom was even stranger.

  There was a large bowl set on a slender stand that had a spillway down into a lower bowl. Peering closely at the bottom one, Madrik was unable to see its details very well because the light was so bad. I wish there were more light in here so I could see. It’s hard to explore when everything is so dimly lit.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his skin tightened as he felt that strange mental connection pinging. All of a sudden, there was light in the room. The illumination in the bathroom came from several plain looking fixtures that hung on the walls and indirectly from the ceiling. Spinning quickly, he looked back into the sitting room and saw that it too was filled with stronger light.

  Taking a deep breath, Madrik thought to himself, Well, it appears that whoever’s listening to me is at least friendly.

  Determined to finish his exploration, Madrik continued his poking about the bathroom.

  The next strange contraption that he explored had a similarity to the inside of a cheese grater. It had perforated ceramic walls on three sides with an open doorway, arched and tiled. There didn’t appear to be any plumbing inside of it, and he had no idea what the purpose of it
was. Once again, he resolved to look at it later. As he turned, his feet caught on a raised sill that was close to the floor and only a couple inches high. It separated the area inside the grater room from the rest of the bathroom. Based on that, Madrik thought that perhaps this was a showering chamber or someplace you could rinse your clothes.

  There were two other areas in the bathroom that he could not figure out. Both of them were small rooms and had bench-like structures inside. One had what looked like an elaborate samovar built into the center of it while the other had a tiled rectangular box set against one corner.

  Madrik spent some time trying to figure out what they were and finally gave up in frustration. He could always come back to them later, but right now he was going to figure out the last one and then head out for other areas. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what the last one was. It looked like a wide, deep soaking pool. Rather than climbing over an edge like his bathtub at home, there were graduated steps that led down into it. There was even some water at the bottom although Madrik wouldn’t voluntarily touch it. Yuck! That looks like sludge. I prefer my water clear and not contaminated with dust and dirt, he thought.

  Once again that tingling occurred at the back of his neck, and a feeling of being on the end of a conduit washed over him. Spinning around, Madrik couldn’t see anything that had changed around him. Perhaps the signal that he had identified as marking a modification to his environment was incorrect. He would just have to see.

  Shaking himself to recapture his own attention, Madrik said to himself, Madrik Norgren, you need to get focused and do some more exploration. At least, you found someplace that will provide you with a contained sleeping chamber if you don’t find anything better. It will be uncomfortable because it lacks blankets and a pad. But you have slept on worse. At least you know that there is clean water in the faucet downstairs and you can use that to get cleaned up.