Europa Journal

by Jack Castle

  Khaos picked him up by the throat and pinned him against the wall. “Want to know a secret?” he said in an almost mortal voice.

  “A secret? That’s funny, coming from you,” Leo barely managed to choke out. His legs dangled off the floor, and he had both hands wrapped around the deity’s wrist, trying desperately to free himself.

  Ignoring him, Khaos continued, “Do you know why God loves you insignificant mortals more than what you call ‘angels’? Your ignorance. You humans, with your miserable mayfly existence, have only your faith to guide you. Angels cannot have faith because they already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God exists; they interact with him every day.”

  Khaos squeezed his fingers around Leo’s neck and was rewarded with the sound of cracking bones. “WELL WE DIDN’T ASK TO KNOW!” he shouted.

  “RELEASE HIM!” called an ethereal voice.

  Khaos fell to his knees and grabbed his stomach. Leo slumped to the sandy ground, his entire world narrowing to the air flooding his lungs.

  Gasping from a mortal blow, Khaos asked, “Why? How can this be?”

  Leo lifted his gaze and saw that the SongBird Goddess had risen from her tomb, which was now nothing more than a muddy pit. The scepter of power glowed like a radiant beacon in her delicate hand.

  Khaos turned, and his eyes opened wide in astonishment when he saw something he had not seen in over a millennium: the SongBird Goddess stood before him in solid form.

  She walked over to Atum Khaos and knelt beside him. After gently laying her hand on him, she said, “You have exceeded you timetable, brother.” Her aura then began absorbing both his ethereal and physical forms.

  Before he faded completely from sight, Khaos cried, “DAMN YOU, SISTER! DAMN YOU TO HELL!”

  #

  Commander Mac O’Bryant knew this was her end, though, if anyone had told her it was even possible to die fighting a hoard of three-legged alien centaurs on a distant planet that was controlled by the precursors to Earth’s own gods, she would have laughed in their face and assumed they were nuts. Well it was a good thing she had no bet to lose over it because apparently that was exactly how she was going to die –– skewered by a hundred Tripod tridents after her co-pilot had been hijacked by a living god.

  At her back, a very bloody and worn Fu-Mar growled at their encircling foes. Mac was sure it was his glare alone that was keeping the Tripods at bay. No, she hoped it was that; she couldn’t stomach the thought of being saved as Khaos’s plaything, or worse. She’d already faced that possibility once and once was enough.

  Suddenly she wished she’d saved her last bullet. After all this, after losing Tae and Brett, after Joan had risked everything to warn her, she’d still failed to save Earth, save Emma. She’d rather die than watch that failure bear fruit. But then, she realized, it wasn’t in her to go down without a fight.

  She cast her gaze around for a weapon and found a knife at her feet in the hands of a dead Mook. The creature had died with its eyes open, war paint smeared across its face, completely free in its moment of death. Mac decided there were worse ways to die.

  She grabbed the knife and charged the nearest Tripod.

  Her Tripod target stiffened in surprise and Mac found a grin on her face. The creature swept with his trident and Mac ducked. She dove between the creature’s legs and stabbed the knife into its underbelly. The Tripod screamed and reared. Mac scrambled away as the thing came down in a storm of thrashing limbs, its death knells echoing across the vaulted throne room. The shock rippled through the other Tripods.

  Behind her, Fu-Mar roared defiance. The Awumpai surged forward as if a tether had snapped; as if he had been merely awaiting her choice.

  Mac found herself another Mook knife and she raced to collect it as the Tripods refocused. Her hand closed over the crude hilt. A ring of tridents descended. She closed her eyes and … nothing.

  She peeked with one eye and then stared in confusion at the Tripods which seemed to have been frozen in time, their arms drawn back for the blow and the deadly points of their tridents perfectly still in the air.

  Fu-Mar roared and chopped four creatures in half before he seemed to realize they weren’t fighting back. His arm dropped, his massive sword dripping gore from its tip and providing the only sound in the room besides his panting breath and the thudding of Mac’s heart in her chest.

  “What?” she asked. As if the word had been the key to a spell, every single Tripod crumpled like a marionette with severed strings.

  Mac stood in the center of the carnage, struggling to understand what had just happened. Fu-Mar gazed around the room and then he did something that jolted Mac back to awareness, he tipped his head and began to laugh.

  Khaos was dead.

  #

  Leo lay against the wall, unable to move his unresponsive body. His labored breathing was the only sound in the room. Mustering all his remaining strength, he was only able to raise an arm toward the SongBird Goddess, and it was a feeble gesture at that.

  The goddess knelt by his side. Stroking his hair, she said, “You have freed me.”

  “What about Khaos’s warships?” Leo asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “They’re in orbit … They’ll head for Earth.”

  “Shh, shh, it’s all right. Do not fear, little one. My brother’s forces will never reach Earth.”

  “What? But how?”

  “On my command, they will enter the wormhole, and when they do, it will close around them.”

  “But how is this possible?”

  “Because you and your friends have freed me.” The SongBird Goddess smiled. “Now that I am free, I am able to manipulate the cosmos once more. It seems I have been forgiven by the Father, the one True God. Your actions have restored my grace and have restored balance to the universe. And for that, I am truly grateful.”

  “Then we did it. We saved Earth. We saved them all. My friends, they didn’t die for nothing.”

  “That’s right, Leo,” she said, smiling once more. “You and Mac will go on to be emissaries of worlds.”

  Emissaries of worlds, Leo thought, not bad for a couple of glorified truckers.

  Leo suddenly heard a familiar voice. “Leo!” it called over torrents of wind. Oddly enough, it sounded a lot like his future mother-in-law. Leo turned and watched Mac step through the vortex. The moment she did, it began to shrink closed behind her.

  “The doorway — it’s closing!” he yelled, but by the time Mac turned around, the vortex had vanished.

  Mac helped Leo stumble to his feet. “What about Harry?” she asked, her voice breathless. Her eyes snagged on the pilot lying at the edge of the pit.

  Leo shook his head. “He’s gone.”

  “Oh, Harry,” Mac breathed, blinking back her tears. “It happened after all. I’d hoped … I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  Scanning the room Leo saw the SongBird Goddess had also vanished. He and Mac were the only ones left, alone in the tomb at the bottom of an ocean of an icy moon.

  Raising his hands in frustration Leo shouted, “So what the hell do we do now, huh? You just leave us to rot so we can find three corpses in the future instead of just one?”

  Mac gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stop it, Leo. It’s over.”

  Angry, Leo shook himself free and continued to yell at nothingness. “No! We save her, and the whole damn universe and this is what we get?”

  An ethereal voice cut him off. Gently, the SongBird Goddess said, “Oh, Leo. Even after all you have witnessed. Still, you do not believe.”

  A new burst of wind gusted at his and Mac’s hair and after it died down a second voice was heard. A voice neither of them had heard in a very, very long time.

  “Mom? Leo? Is that you?”

  It was Emma.

  As one, they whirled around to see that a second spinning vortex had opened. Mac�
��s daughter was standing on the lush green grass of her college campus holding her books to her chest. “Mom, what’s going on, what is this?” Her eyes roved over them and past them to the hieroglyphs on the wall and the carved picture of the Europa Moon pyramid.

  “Go to her,” the SongBird commanded. “Go to her now for I cannot hold this portal through time and space for long.”

  Mac stepped forward as if there were not a doubt in her mind but Leo hesitated.

  Mac glanced back and quirked an eyebrow, “You gonna sit around here on your ass all day or are we gonna get out of here?”

  Leo grinned and decided that maybe he could have faith in something after all. He grabbed her offered hand and together they leapt through the vortex seconds before it winked out and sealed the tomb for another time.

  #

  In the tomb, the light faded from the closing vortex, but another softer glow soon replaced it.

  The SongBird Goddess returned. She knelt next to Harry, folded his hands on his stomach, and cradled his head in her hands.

  Although he couldn’t hear her, she said, “Sleep, faithful one. Your wife and daughters are waiting for you in the afterlife. Your long night is over.”

  The angelic goddess gently laid his head to rest next to the circular grave that had been her tomb. She gently kissed his forehead and bade him farewell.

  Captain Harry Christopher Reed was dead.

  As an afterthought, the SongBird Goddess removed Harry’s journal from his coat pocket. She scribbled something on the last page, her thoughts serving as the ink for an invisible pen. When she finished, she replaced the journal in Harry’s right hand and began to fade from the temple and the mortal plane of existence.

  Her departure created a fierce wind that opened the journal to the last page, the page on which she had inscribed these final words: “To the reader of this journal, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”

  # # #

  BEDLAM LOST

  The next new novel by Jack Castle

  Chapter One

  Hank

  “Please…please don’t kill me.”

  The disembodied voice sobbed in the darkness, begging for his life. The hammer of a heavy-duty revolver drew back…

  A tiny light in the distance: a pinprick of light at the end of a long tunnel moved rapidly closer. The growing hot white light, accompanied by a roaring sound, increased in severity and relentlessness.

  CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

  Hank McCarthy bolted awake to the sound of a roaring locomotive heaving straight for the car. He flashed open his eyes, squinting from the light and found himself sitting behind the wheel of a crimson red Ford Explorer. He jerked back, but there was no place to go. Far too late to move, he braced for final impact.

  As the deafening train ripped past his SUV a scant few yards away, he realized he was idling parallel to the railroad tracks. The intense pain of the train’s horn still registered in his ears and his body trembled violently for a few seconds while he emerged from his deep slumber. It took him another moment to realize he still wasn’t in danger of becoming track paste.

  Where am I?

  A light touch on his shoulder revealed creamy white, French-manicured fingers. Their owner lovely: almond-shaped eyes, perfect white teeth, and curly nutmeg hair framing a face that would make even a fairytale princess envious. His wife, Sarah.

  “Wow, babe,” she laughed nervously. “I knew you were tired but you were really out there.” He had been driving for a long time. She gave him a funny look. “You want me to drive the rest of the way?”

  Hank’s throat was so dry his tongue had swelled two sizes. When he finally managed to talk it was above a hoarse whisper. “Honey, where are we?” He wanted to scream the question at her. The whisper was all he could manage.

  “Are we there yet, Daddy?”

  A glance in the mirror confirmed what he already knew: five year old Annabelle sat strapped in her car seat by a five-point retention harness originally designed for fighter pilots. Little Annabelle shared her mom’s good looks, but had inherited his limited patience.

  “Almost there sweetheart,” Sarah answered for him. “We just have to board the train.”

  “But I’m so-o hungry,” Annabelle complained.

  “Have some more Goldfishes, honey,” Sarah answered. Without missing a beat the box came over the seat with two quick shakes, and Annabelle beheld the delicious golden baked treats.

  Annabelle was placated for now. She stared out the window with her mother’s hazel eyes as she absentmindedly devoured the helpless fishes in her hand.

  One year old Henry snoozed soundly in his car seat beside her. When it came to the looks department, Henry took more after his pop. Dark wavy hair, firm jaw affixed to a kind face. And dark blue eyes, somehow sweet and fierce at the same time.

  Hank took this all in, but none of this answered the question that still burned in his aching head: Where the hell am I?

  He peered through the SUV’s open window. A majestic wilderness with snow-capped mountains, stitched with evergreens, sprawled out around them seemingly endless. The overcast skies and down-creeping snowline suggested winter was closing in. This looks like the Pacific Northwest? That didn’t make sense.

  The train tracks emerged from the forest in the distance, miles behind them, and then came up to a rickety but serviceable train station smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The station sign read HavenPort, Alaska.

  Alaska? When the hell did we decide on Alaska? I must be dreaming. We live in the desert. Two thousand miles away.

  “Look Mommy, look!” Annabelle yelled wildly from her car seat. “A moose, Mommy, a moose!”

  Hank turned his head and groaned at the stabbing pain in his temples. He rubbed at them mightily: If his hand weren’t already there, he’d have thought he’d been stabbed on both sides of his head with an ice pick. Must’ve slept wrong while I was snoozing behind the wheel.

  “Oh Hank, she’s right.” Sarah cooed beside him. “There’s a moose in the lake over there.”

  Just beyond Sarah’s window he could make out the moose meandering across a shallow lake.

  Hank suppressed the huge urge to punch the windshield. Why will no one answer me? Where are we?

  Sarah turned towards him. “Do you see him?” Before he could answer, she dug frantically through her mommy purse the size of a saddlebag. “Now where’s my camera?” She turned back to the kids, “Annabelle, honey, do you know where mommy’s camera is?”

  This doesn’t make sense. We live in Wyoming. I don’t even remember deciding to come to Alaska, let alone driving here.

  “There it is.” Sarah took her camera from the center console compartment. Before she could snap a picture…

  WHUMP, WHUMP.

  Hank jumped at the sound of a large man pounding the palm of his meaty hand on the hood of the Explorer.

  “Hey pretty boy, you’re holding up the line,” he said in a gruff voice, “We ain’t got all day.” The big man was dressed in overalls and a baseball cap. His rough, heavily-pockmarked face, oversized bulbous nose, and squinty eyes loomed over Hank. He stepped to the side of the hood and motioned Hank to pull forward. An impatient driver in a rusted Ford-150 behind them laid on his horn.

  “C’mon buddy,” the driver shouted.

  On autopilot, Hank shifted into drive and pulled forward. The SUV drove forward up a dirt incline ramp and onto a flatbed train car. They were one of many; all lined up behind an antique locomotive the color of charcoal. Hank put the car in park and switched off the engine.

  “We’re on a train!” Annabelle shouted with glee.

  As other cars loaded up onto the freight cars, Hank saw something strange on the train depot platform. It was a comely woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Unlike the people wearing layers of war
m coats and hats around her, she was only wearing a long physician’s lab coat. Not so strange in itself, but the white in her coat was so sharp in color, and such a shocking contrast to the drab filtered daylight, it was as though someone wearing bright colors had stepped into an old black-and-white movie. It actually hurt Hank’s eyes to stare at it.

  The disembarking passengers bustling about didn’t seem to notice the strange doctor woman, and she seemed equally disinterested in them. She didn’t appear to have anyplace else she needed to be. Instead, she kept staring intently at Hank. She wasn’t just looking at the train or at their vehicle, only at him.

  What’s her problem, why is she staring at me?

  He felt his eyes squint and his brow furrow, but before he could ask Sarah if she saw the strange woman, the train jostled into motion. The woman in the lab coat still studied him. Hank looked away, pressed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and then attempted to clear his vision of her by rubbing away the sleep. At this, the doctor, as he thought of her, frowned and wrote notes on her clipboard.

  The back of his neck throbbed so bad he stared rigidly forward. The locomotive chugged away, leaving the depot, and the strange doctor lady, behind. The train then negotiated a bend and soon the tracks straightened again. Hank could now see their destination: a dark tunnel opening at the base of an enormous snow-capped mountain. Huge piles of shale flanked the entrance as though they were bones spewed up from those who had dared to enter the gaping mouth before. The impatient driver parked behind them turned up his radio and AC/DC’s, ‘I’m on the Highway to Hell’, blared over his speakers.

  “Mommy, where is the train taking us?” Annabelle must have also noticed the foreboding tunnel opening for she added, “It looks scary.”

  You got that right.

  Sarah barely heard her. She was toggling through her shots of the moose on her camera. She answered, absently, “Remember sweety? There are no roads into town. The only way in is to load your car on the train. The three mile long tunnel is the only way in or out.”