Land of Nod, The Prophet (Land of Nod Trilogy Book 2)

by Gary Hoover

  Jeff sat silent and rapt.

  “There I saw,” Dave said as he slowly swept his hand to illustrate something wonderful and expansive, “literally hundreds of different types of meats and cheeses hanging from long strings stretched between the walls.”

  He grinned and waited for the image to sink in.

  Jeff was disappointed but didn’t let on.

  “I grabbed a couple big hunks of meat and figured I better get out of there before the owner showed up and started whining about me taking his food.” Dave rolled his eyes at the thought of someone being so petty to mind someone stealing their food. “I put a little distance between me and the shack and sat down to have a meal. I knew that once I connected back with my unit, I’d have to share, so I tried to get as much in me as I could before that happened. I was sitting there, just feeling great when... WHACK!” He said it with a sharpness and suddenness that startled Jeff.

  “Someone hit me over the back of the head. My brain was all scrambled, but I tried to fight. My arms and legs wouldn’t do what I wanted them to. There were more hands on me than I could count, but I didn’t go easy.” Dave smiled broadly.

  Jeff imagined several normal-sized people trying to subdue Dave, who was well over six feet tall with a broad frame and a lot of weight.

  “I kicked and punched,” Dave said, illustrating with animated arms and feet, “and I saw people going down and scrambling back up. I could feel them hitting me. I wasn’t sure if they were using fists or something else, but it was starting to hurt. They managed to get my hands behind me and shackled them. After that, I couldn’t do much other than make things as difficult as I could for them, but that didn’t stop them from kicking me, punching me and hitting me with my own gun.” He illustrated with sharp, violent swings of his hands, and Jeff cringed with each one.

  “They hauled me into a vehicle, and that’s when I started to get nervous. I figured my unit would find me as long as I was in the area, but if they hauled me off, I might have a hard time getting found. See, these was rogues. An unaffiliated group that lived in the wilderness, and guys like that, when the opportunity arose, would kidnap people like me to try to get a ransom. Most often they didn’t get much, but they kept trying.

  “They took me quite a ways and chained me up in a little cell. Turned out there was another guy in there, a Doclotnurian, but in that situation, he seemed more of a friend than an enemy. If we got out, I’d worry about killing him then, but at that point, he was pretty much my best buddy in the world. We got talking a little bit. He’d been there a week or more, and it turned out I actually knew who he was. A big-shot general named Blackbuck. You met him, remember?”

  Jeff nodded. He had met Blackbuck when the met with the Doclotnurians to help fight the pheerions.

  “They had killed his entire crew,” Dave continued, “but kept him alive. They figured they hit the lottery with him.” He paused. Jeff thought he almost caught a glimpse of emotion as Dave thought about the dead men.

  “So he and I were chained up in that little cell. No room to do much of anything. Toilet was just a spot at the far end of my chains; a little bit of food, not very often, just enough to keep us alive. It was too dark to see much, but we could feel the insects, rodents and reptiles crawling over us.

  “After about a week, they did this–” He held up his hand to show the missing pinky. “They needed something to prove they had me for anybody who might offer money. But I knew they wouldn’t get much for me.” He paused and looked at the view screen as if he were looking out a window. Jeff found himself looking also, almost expecting to see something, but it was completely blank.

  “The general was the one worth something. They knew that, and I knew that. I heard ‘em talking about how they’d probably just have to kill me. Keeping me alive was more trouble than I was worth.

  “The days kept passing, and we just sat in there. Each day felt like it might be my last. Sometimes they’d kick the plooch out of me just to vent their frustration.” He laughed lightly. “Heh, their frustration? What about my frustration? Not only was I stuck there, just sittin’ in filth, but each day that passed was just a reminder that I weren’t worth nuthin’.

  “At some point – I don’t know how long – I stopped counting. I guess it was about a month and a half. Anyway, we heard all hell break loose out in the camp. We could hear and smell of shots being fired. Heard screaming, yelling, things crashing, people in pain, dying.

  “After a while, things got somewhat quiet, and then I heard someone shouting, ‘Where is he?! Where is he?!’ Then things got quiet again. Next thing I knew, someone was blasting the door open. There was a haze of smoke and someone came in, blasted my chains, blasted Blackbuck’s chains and hustled us out of there.

  “I, naturally, assumed it was Blackbuck’s men, but when we got outside, I saw it was my old buddy, Artimus, alone. He got us into his vehicle and on our way to join up with our army.

  “Turns out, after I got captured, he put in a special request to work with the hostage-negotiating group. They had been communicating back and forth about me, but nobody wanted to offer any money for me. After one message that was basically a ‘stroing you’, Artimus took off on his own, completely against regulations. He had decided he’d find out where I was and get me out his damn self.

  “And that’s just what he did.”

  Jeff could see he was choking up, and he decided he should pick up the conversation to give him a moment. “Wow! That’s a great story. Artimus really is a hero.”

  Dave nodded.

  Jeff had always been a little intimidated by Dave. He never felt comfortable spending time with him, but now he felt he had seen another side of him. He suddenly seemed less frightening and a little more human.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  Jeff jumped in his seat and smacked his knee on the console. He dropped to the floor with his heart about to pound out of his chest as he tried to get his bearings and see if anything had breached the hull.

  Then he saw Dave grinning and holding his hand up to indicate that, again, he had been the one pounding on the hull. “Heh, heh, heh.”

  Chapter 9:

  Artimus knelt by the small tree and pulled some weeds. There was a small, curved plaque resting against the tree that read, “This tree is nourished with the remains of Nafeesa Winfred: Beloved Wife and Mother 501-544”. Thin elastic bands were wrapped around the plaque and tree. As the tree grew, the bands would hold the plaque against the trunk. The bands would stretch and eventually snap. By that time, the plaque would be pressed into the tree trunk and would be a part of the tree from then on.

  “I miss you so much, Nafeesa,” Artimus said with a wavering voice as he stood back up. “I feel like I’m nothing without you.” He stood for a few moments looking at the plaque then ran his eyes up to the top of the tree, which was only slightly above the top of his head. His eyes continued up, and as they did so, he almost felt like he was physically shrinking.

  He took in the expanse of stars. The sky was clear and the ambient light low in the remembrance field – their version of a cemetery. The stars were distinct and Artimus had a sense of awe... and isolation.

  He brought his eyes back down.

  “Nafeesa.”

  He closed his eyes and held back tears.

  He imagined her face, but as he did, he found he couldn’t hold the image. He saw her face, but then the image broke up and drifted away into a mist.

  He concentrated and brought her face into focus again, but the harder he tried the more difficult it was to maintain the image.

  “What am I going to do?”

  He stooped, pulled a few more weeds, and then stood again. His eyes followed the contours and textures of the plaque. His hand relaxed and the weeds fell.

  “I just don’t know if I’m up to it. There’s so much at stake, and I’m just a scared little man.

  “Who can I lean on?

  “Who can I trust?

  “What if I do the wrong t
hing?

  “What if I do the right thing but it’s still not enough?

  “I think there’s something very special about Jeff.

  “Is he the one?

  “Does he need my help... or does he need me to stay out of the way?

  “How can I protect him?

  “Is it as dangerous as I fear?”

  He put his hands over his face and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.

  “Andrew, Goldwin and Codi seem anxious to help. Am I keeping them at too far a distance? Am I not keeping them far enough away? I feel like I can trust them, but what if they just can’t handle what’s coming? Are they strong enough? Am I foolish to doubt them? Am I foolish to put it all on myself?”

  His mood suddenly lightened a bit. “You know, I think Codi may be interested in more than just political and military strategies. What do you think about that? You always thought you were the only one who could put up with me, didn’t you?”

  He looked at his feet. For a moment he distracted himself by watching how the soil compressed and shifted under them as he twisted his boot.

  “You know, I haven’t told anybody about the artifact. I told Andrew that Jeff dropped it in the ocean, and Andrew’s men spent a few days looking for it. I felt sort of bad about that, but I didn’t want anybody to know Jeff has it hanging around his neck.

  “It’s too powerful.”

  His face turned grim. “I’m nervous about what kind of danger it could bring to Jeff, but I think it belongs with him. I think it’s more his place than mine to decide what happens to it, but I don’t want anybody else to know about it. I don’t even want them knowing the key was a locket. Wylie has the other locket, or at least had it. I don’t think he knows about its potential power though, and I want to try to get it back from him without tipping him off – which could be difficult if we continue to butt heads regarding our best path forward.”

  Artimus sat heavily on the ground and felt the dew soaking through his pants.

  “I don’t know... ”

  He looked up at the sky again but then quickly looked down before the feeling of loneliness overcame him again.

  “Am I being foolishly short-sighted to not trust my friends?”

  He paused for a moment and collected his thoughts.

  “If I’m the only one who seems convinced we’re quickly approaching the ‘Great Human/Pheerion War’, is everyone else foolish and crazy, or am I?”

  Chapter 10:

  “Raja?! Who would be foolish enough to think you’re The Raja?” the shabbily dressed old woman asked. Her eyes darted randomly as if they were on constant, frenetic watch for demons coming to steal her treasured crazy.

  “If you were The Raja, you’d know how to solve The Enigma. If you knew how to solve The Enigma, you’d find out more about the child. But you don’t know how to solve The Enigma, do you?

  “Your father’s lost. How can you find him? You can’t even solve The Enigma.” She broke into a sparsely toothed grin and laughed a not quite evil, but still unsettling, laugh. “Here! See what you make of this – Raja.”

  Her hands closed on the fabric of a red velvet curtain beside her – which Jeff had somehow not even noticed – and pulled it open with a theatrical flourish.

  Jeff was looking at a flight of steps. Near the top of the steps, there was a woman, suspended in air and apparently frozen in time and mid fall.

  Jeff recognized her. He had seen photos of her, and more recently, he had seen her in a dream, dressed for her own wedding.

  It was Artimus’ wife – Baldwin and Nahima’s mother.

  Jeff felt very uneasy. He didn’t want to see what he sensed he was about to see. He tried to turn away, but no matter what direction he turned, the scene stayed centered in his line of sight. He tried to close his eyes, but couldn’t.

  Then, as he had feared, the scene came to life. The woman began falling down the steps in slow motion. She impacted violently and her body and limbs distorted nauseatingly with each successive impact.

  She didn’t scream.

  She didn’t try to catch herself or slow her fall. She just rolled and bounced, unconscious the whole way.

  She finally stopped when she reached the bottom and her lifeless eyes stared at Jeff.

  Jeff’s eyes snapped open, and he found himself in his cot.

  “You okay?” Baldwin asked from his cot on the other side of the vehicle.

  “Yeah... sure... sorry, did I wake you?”

  “Not really,” Baldwin answered. “I haven’t really slept well with all those sounds.”

  Just as he said that, there was a dull ‘thunk’ on the hull that helped illustrate his point.

  “Yeah, I know the feeling,” Jeff replied.

  “Hey Baldwin–” Jeff stopped himself. There was a question he wanted to ask, but he realized it would be an uncomfortable subject. Jeff got up from his cot and walked toward Baldwin.

  “Yeah?”

  “I ummm, this is sort of an odd question... and maybe none of my business... and you don’t have to answer at all if you don’t want to–”

  “What?” Baldwin’s voice had a slightly annoyed tone.

  “How... ummmm... do you mind telling... ummmm... do you mind telling me how your mother died.”

  Baldwin stared but didn’t speak.

  I guess I just shouldn’t have asked.

  “She– ” Baldwin began, but then paused. “She fell down the steps.”

  Jeff was finding such odd coincidences more and more expected, but he couldn’t help being a little startled and uneasy. “Was it an accident?”

  “Yeah, she was alone. Nahima was the first home and she found her, she must have just fallen.”

  Jeff could hear Baldwin’s voice breaking up a bit, and he empathized. It brought back memories of how he felt when he learned his father had disappeared.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m sorry. Just curious.” Jeff felt it was a bit of a lie, but he didn’t think the full truth was needed.

  He had a feeling there was a reason for the dream.

  And his feelings had been eerily accurate as of late.

  Chapter 11:

  “Da ssssky isss bluuu”

  “Good! Very good!” Jeff said, with a smile.

  Rasp was a surprisingly quick learner, and as he had explained to Jeff, he had been studying ‘human’ language for quite a while before they had met.

  Jeff’s perplexing ability to both understand foreign languages and be understood by those who didn’t speak his language – through a strange, almost telepathic link – was very useful in teaching language. He could communicate very clearly by simply speaking and listening, and while he could hear a mental translation of the words, he could also hear the actual foreign words. He assumed Rasp could similarly hear his words and mental translation.

  “Trees have green leaves.”

  “Treeez haf gween leeefzz.”

  “He sounds like a stroingin’ idiot,” Dave said from the other side of the vehicle.

  Jeff shot Dave a look.

  “What? He’s in our land, he can speak our language. Sssssss, sssssss, ssssssss,” Dave said, mocking the hissing sound Rasp couldn’t avoid when he spoke. “Sounds like a damn hexapod serpent. You know about those, don’t you?” He said grinning and shaking his finger at Jeff.

  Jeff tried to ignore him and get back to their lesson, but now Rasp was too distracted.

  ‘What does the fat one say?’ he asked Jeff in his own language while glaring at Dave.

  “It’s not important. Let’s get back to–”

  ‘I’d like to see how long you would last in Pheerion,’ he said to Dave still in his native tongue. The volume of his voice rose, and the menacing nature of his language became even more pronounced. ‘We would feast on your liver before the first sun-fall.’

  “Right now buddy. Let’s go.” Dave shouted back and gestured invitingly, clearly understanding Rasp’s intent if not his specific words.
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  Rasp began to rise. Jeff stood quickly and put his hands on Rasp’s shoulders to hold him back. But he knew that he could only hold him if Rasp let him.

  Oh hell, this is not good, Jeff thought to himself as his mind raced for ways to diffuse the situation.

  Baldwin and Benji were watching with great interest. Nahima, who had been driving, had stopped the vehicle and was climbing over the seat to see what was happening in the cabin behind her.

  Jeff felt Rasp’s muscles relax, and then he turned toward Jeff.

  ‘Tell him I challenge him to a ssstasssk.’

  Jeff didn’t understand the last word and assumed it was an untranslatable word that only had meaning in Rasp’s language. “I don’t understand–”

  ‘A sssstasssk is a simple contest of strength. Pheerion males use it when they are angry, and it helps them become friends.’

  Jeff liked the ‘become friends’ part of that, though he was very skeptical Dave would respond the way Rasp hoped.

  “He says he wants to challenge you to a simple contest of strength.” Jeff hesitated and wasn’t sure how to say the last part. He wondered if he should even try. “After the contest you can be better friends.”

  “Hah!” Dave guffawed. “I’ll be more than happy to kick lizard-boy’s back-end, but I sure ain’t gonna kiss him afterward.”

  Jeff turned toward Rasp. “He’s interested in giving it a try,” he simplified.

  Chapter 12:

  Rasp marked off a large square, approximately twenty feet per side, by dragging the heel of his boot through the dirt and short weeds.

  “He says it’s very simple,” Jeff translated. “You both start in the center and the first person to push the other over the line, using any method, wins.”