[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  By early afternoon, my legs were shaking. Not only had I found nothing to eat, but I’d been climbing steadily uphill. I sat down to rest, trying to suppress the growing fear that I was lost forever in the S-Em.

  Cordus will come get me, I told myself. I’m valuable to him.

  But what if Graham got away? my pessimistic side responded. What if Cordus can’t find me?

  Then Graham will come get me, I told myself firmly. He wouldn’t abandon me here.

  Will he? He was trying to get Justine, not me, pessimistic Beth said.

  Pessimistic Beth was too smart for her own good. Huddled on the forest floor, I started to cry, and once I did, I couldn’t stop for the longest time.

  What finally got through the sobs was the feeling of being tapped on the leg. I looked up and discovered a tree-octopus perched on the large root beside me. It had reached out a tentacle and touched me. As I watched, it reached out again.

  I jumped up and backed away, hurriedly wiping my face. The tree-’pus retreated up its root a bit, eyeing me.

  “I’m sorry to be rude, but what do you want?”

  It didn’t say anything.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  Again, no response. What did it say about me that I’d thought I might get one?

  Slowly, it unfurled one tentacle toward me. Nestled among the suckers was a large snail.

  “Oh. Is that for me?”

  The tree-’pus put the snail down on the crushed ferns where I’d been sitting and withdrew its tentacle. Cautiously, I edged forward and reached a hand out. The tree-’pus backed away a bit, so I picked up the snail. Turning it over in my hands, I saw the shell was neatly cracked. I lifted half the shell away, revealing the snail inside. It was still alive, though it didn’t seem to be in good shape.

  “Is this to eat?” I brought it up to my mouth. “Eat?”

  The tree-’pus just looked at me.

  “Um … thanks. I think this is a gift. I’m sorry if I’m misunderstanding you.”

  I put the shell halves back together and stuck the snail in my pocket.

  “I do want to eat it, but I want to cook it first, okay?”

  I sat back down, hoping the thing didn’t squish. Once I was sitting, the tree-’pus started approaching me again. It came slowly, stopping and looking at me every few inches, so I held still. Eventually it touched my leg, then withdrew its tentacle and looked at me.

  It was pretty, actually. When I first saw it, it had been dark gray, like its root. Now it was an iridescent blue with cream-colored blotches.

  I thought about it. I really didn’t see how such a small creature could hurt me. I mean, I guess it could wrap around my neck or something, but it was soft-bodied. It looked like I could hurt it pretty easily with my bare hands.

  When I didn’t pull back, it undulated onto my calf.

  Maybe this was part of the possible animal-taming thing I’d discovered on Rib Mountain. I’d pretty much dismissed that “ability” as a figment of my imagination. Maybe I was wrong.

  I reached out a finger and touched the tree-’pus gingerly. It was quite cold and had a slimy coating. Oh well, we can’t all be koala bears, right?

  It kept moving up my leg, which was a weird feeling. Eventually, it settled in my lap. I looked into its eye. The pupil reflected light back like mother of pearl.

  “You’re a very attractive octopus,” I said to it. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  We sat there for another ten minutes or so, and then I told it I needed to get up and keep moving. When it didn’t move, I slowly stood. It stayed affixed to the front of me, as though I were a tree trunk. I felt its tentacles shift, wrapping around my waist and ass.

  Great. Groped by an invertebrate. Well, plenty of women had that experience, come to think of it.

  “All right, little fellow. I have to get going, okay? You’d better hop off.”

  From its station on my hip, the tree-’pus stared up at me with one funny pupil. I guess it wanted to stay where it was.

  “I’m going to keep walking, okay? You want to get down, just squeeze, okay?”

  I took a dozen steps, then looked down at the ’pus. It showed no sign of wanting down. Looked like I had a passenger.

  I continued up the forested slope for another couple hours. Eventually I realized it would be getting dark soon. I could worry about the big picture — where the hell I was and how I was going to get home — later. For the time being, I needed to get a fire going so I could stay warm overnight. And cook my snail.

  First I went looking for dry tinder. Unfortunately, nothing in that place was dry. Eventually, poking around a fallen tree, I found a bunch of dead moss that was only slightly damp. Then I tried to find dry pieces of wood to use as a board and spindle.

  I’d never actually made fire that way, mind you, but I’d seen people do it on TV.

  There simply was no dry wood. Not even a scrap.

  I sat down and had another cry.

  It occurred to me that I’d probably cried more in the last couple weeks than Madisyn had. It was pointless and self-indulgent. That thought helped me get a handle on myself.

  I got up and started gathering more of the hanging moss, looking for the driest bunches. After about half an hour, I had a huge heap of the stuff piled beside a large tree. When the time came for bed, I’d just crawl into the pile. It was the best I could do. Hopefully it would keep me warm.

  I reached into my pocket and pried out the snail. It had died, but it hadn’t gotten squished. I never in a million years would’ve thought I could eat a raw snail, but I suppose serious hunger has way of clarifying the mind. Holding my breath, I picked it out of its shell and swallowed it down in a couple bites. It was slimy and left a nasty aftertaste. I rinsed my mouth with water from a pool.

  “Thanks for the snack, little fellow,” I said to the tree-’pus, which was still clutching me.

  Then I sat down carefully and tried to think of something I could do that would make the next day a little better than this one had been. There was so much I needed — fire, dry clothes, food, a weapon, a way of signaling for help. I really couldn’t think of a way to get any of those things.

  Something touched my shoulder, and I just about jumped out of my skin. It was another tree-’pus. It was clinging to the trunk above me. Once it had my attention, it held out a dead slug.

  “Hey, thanks, that’s really nice,” I said, taking the slug.

  It was intensely gooey. I really didn’t think I could eat it.

  As I sat there, other tree-’puses approached me with offerings. By the time it started getting dark, I’d been given three large moths, a dragonfly, a lizard, two snails, and an earthworm. I thanked each ’pus profusely.

  When the gifts stopped arriving, I retreated to my moss pile with my collection of food items. My passenger ’pus climbed off me and settled on the trunk over my head, changing color to blend in. I began to eat my gifts. The slug was just too huge and slimy, but the worm, snails, and moths went down the hatch. The lizard I offered to the tree-’pus who’d been riding around on me.

  It just stared back at me in the dim light.

  “Hey, I’ve taken you pretty far from your home. I think you deserve to get some dinner, don’t you?”

  It stared at me a while longer, then accepted the lizard, which disappeared under the fleshy skirt that connected the tops of its tentacles. I heard a muffled crunch and wondered exactly how octopuses eat.

  “You can have the slug. I’m really full,” I said, and held it out. After a short hesitation, it too was accepted and consumed.

  I went and got a drink from one of the many rainwater collections around me. Then I climbed into my moss pile.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said to the tree-’puses, many of which were still parked on the trunks around me. “I really appreciate it. You’re wonderful hosts, and you have a lovely forest. Very, um, moist.”

  Of course, nobody responded. I was starting to get used to talki
ng to myself, though.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to get some sleep. Maybe I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

  18

  Sought, sought, the wind whispered.

  Ghosteater lifted his head.

  Run, the wind sighed.

  How long had it been since the wind said such a thing?

  He opened his mouth, smelling, tasting. He didn’t know the one seeking him, but it was a creature of power. Male. Young.

  How strange. No one sought him any longer.

  Interested, he rose to seek the seeker.

  The wind brushed through his fur, mumbling its warnings.

  The wolf crouched in the silence, watching a dark-haired man walk down a street in the place the humans called Dorf. He didn’t know the man but recognized him for what he was: a power, an émigré. An equal.

  Equals were dangerous. His hackles lifted.

  Ghosteater had not encountered many dangers of late. The great predators of this continent had vanished, and truth be told, such creatures had stopped posing a meaningful threat when he learned to walk in the silence. Even the cats. How easy it had been to step out in their midst and destroy a whole pride. It had quickly ceased to interest him.

  As for humans, despite their strange machines, they were absurdly easy to kill. Soft, blind — it was hard to believe they had multiplied so swiftly, driving so many other creatures from the face of the earth. One day they had appeared, roving in a few spare bands, curious and inventive, but often starving. The next they had overrun vast stretches of the continent. Now even the land they didn’t occupy bore their mark in one way or another.

  The same thing had happened in the other world, to a lesser degree. There were still places there where humans didn’t go.

  The other world. Unwelcome memories rose. Not many years earlier, enmeshed in the affairs of others, he had shed his blood there. He had met with true danger, in those days. But now those ties were gone.

  Sometimes he felt the lesser for it.

  He told himself it was good to be free.

  The wind agreed, murmuring the word back to him. Free.

  As though he too heard the wind, the émigré paused, looking slowly up and down the street. The man had been seeking Ghosteater for two days. He had driven slowly through the countryside, stopping and looking. He had walked all the streets of Dorf several times, wearing different human faces.

  For much of that time, Ghosteater had stalked the stalker, mystified by his actions, intrigued by his persistence.

  It had been hard to go unseen. The man’s sight was sharp.

  He crouched now at the moment of decision: should he turn back into the silence and forget the strange things the wind had shown him in this place, or should he bite the matter and wrestle it down until he understood it?

  The wind shifted, blowing from the north. Sharp and pungent, it tempted him with a taste of the boreal forest — the quiet of the deep woods, the sensation of late snow beneath his once-paws, the hot blood of a wolverine in his mouth.

  The wind had brought him here, and now it wanted him far away.

  He didn’t understand it. The wind didn’t lie. It didn’t jest. It had no mind for such things.

  Ghosteater shifted his weight, uncertain. He should probably heed its latest advice. In his experience, the wind didn’t speak of danger lightly.

  And yet, what he had seen in this place intrigued him: the woman Justine, who smelled like nothing he’d ever encountered; the pup, Beth, who seemed insignificant, and yet walked all the paths; the golden-haired man; and now, a human émigré, walking alone in the first world.

  Ghosteater’s curiosity ate at him.

  Coming to a decision at last, he slipped forward, showing himself. “Émigré.”

  “Elder beast,” the man replied, stopping and bowing. “You honor me with your presence.”

  Ghosteater cared nothing for honor. “You seek me.”

  “I do. I have come to ask your assistance.”

  Ghosteater cocked his head, waiting.

  “One of my people, the woman Elizabeth Joy Ryder, has disappeared from my home. I believe she has been taken by a traitor, but my trackers cannot follow him. I know you met Miss Ryder, spoke with her. I ask you to help me find her.”

  Ghosteater sat down, tucking his tail over his once-paws. He studied the man for some time.

  These human émigrés weren’t like him. They made rules, played games. They spoke words they didn’t mean. They fought with subterfuge and indirection, not tooth and claw.

  Until they did fight with tooth and claw. Then they destroyed everything. Repugnant.

  The she-pup, though — she had interested him. She who walked all the wind’s paths.

  The wolf inhaled, tasting the agitation beneath the émigré’s calm demeanor. He wanted the she-pup back very much. Why?

  The wind whispered past him, offering no answers.

  “A man was here,” Ghosteater said. “A marrow-worker. Slender, golden hair, your smell.”

  The émigré nodded. “The traitor.”

  “He went to an ancient place. He found a carven strait.”

  The man stared at Ghosteater. He smelled astonished. Finally he gathered his wits.

  “I had not thought any of those devices were still at large, in this world or the other.”

  Ghosteater chuffed with annoyance and said nothing. This species thought itself all-knowing. Many such workings were lost and forgotten eons before his own source species appeared, much less this man’s.

  “Elder beast, do you know where the companion strait is located?”

  “No.”

  The man stood silently, thinking.

  “Would you be willing to track the traitor for me?”

  Ghosteater tilted his head. Becoming entangled with the émigré was dangerous. The wind had said so. A thrill ran through him, a pale echo of his first hunts, of his last battles.

  The émigré seemed to sense his excitement. “The man is exceedingly dangerous. Any who track him will be struck down, unless their strength exceeds his. None of my trackers is strong enough.”

  A hunt. A true hunt.

  “If it is as you say, I will track him.”

  The man nodded. “The debt is mine.”

  Ghosteater was not, by nature, a keeper of accounts. He would help the émigré because the situation interested him, not out of benevolence or because he wanted a favor in return. Nevertheless, he said nothing. His long life had taught him some caution.

  “The trail begins near the eastern edge of this continent,” the man said. “We can get there most quickly in my airplane.”

  The great beast rose and came forward. The émigré stepped back, watchfulness and caution evident in his posture.

  That was as it should be.

  Ghosteater looked out the small window. The man, whose name was Cordus, had warned him of the airplane’s fragility, so he kept his once-paws carefully silent. He stared down at the tiny lights beneath, clusters connected by slender strings, sprinkled all over with single stars. Small pools of darkness marked bodies of water, and then a long darkness came as the airplane crossed one of the great freshwater seas the ice had left behind.

  He sat back on his haunches.

  How strange to pass over the land from far above. How deeply strange.

  The aircraft struck him as insubstantial, ephemeral. He could have destroyed it with ease. Yet for all its frailty, it did something he would have thought impossible.

  He felt unsettled. He had paid little mind to the humans who came to these lands mere millennia ago, thinking them a passing blight. Perhaps they deserved greater attention.

  Outside, the violated wind howled by, its voice muted by the plane’s walls.

  Danger, it said. Run.

  19

  I wasn’t nearly so cold as I’d been the night before. Despite the dampness of my clothes, the heap of moss provided good insulation. I woke feeling cramped and filthy, and with a headache and a
stomach ache, but at least I’d slept.

  When I pushed my way out of the moss, I was met with an audience — dozens of tree-’puses covered the trunks and larger branches all around me. Several had even come down onto the ground, turning green to blend with the ferns and mosses.

  As soon as I appeared, the closer ones began to hold out offerings. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I collected worms, snails, frogs, moths, and other creatures, thanking each ’pus for its gift. The cache included several more huge dragonflies. Their bodies were longer than my hand. I’d never seen ones so big.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. I had seen huge dragonflies before — in drawings of the prehistoric Earth.

  Maybe some essence-worker had made this place millions of years ago.

  How many millions?

  I looked at my collection of dead creatures. There were no mammals or birds.

  Well, whenever the place had been made, I still had to find help. I stood up and squared my shoulders.

  “Guys,” I said to the tree-’puses, “I’m going to keep heading uphill, today. I need to find a village or a road or something, someone who can help me get back to my world.”

  Dozens of oblong pupils stared back at me silently.

  “Thank you for taking care of me. I really appreciate it.”

  I gathered the food offerings up and was momentarily stymied on how to carry them. Eventually I took off the T-shirt I was wearing under my sweater and bundled the creatures up in it. Hardly ideal, but it should keep them contained. I would eat them as soon as my stomach settled.

  I looked for the tree-’pus who’d accompanied me the day before and found it on the same trunk. It reached several tentacles out to me.

  “Are you sure you want to come with me, little guy? I’m taking you farther and farther from your home.”

  It kept stretching toward me, detaching a few more tentacles to reach out.

  I was torn. It might be helpful to have the ’pus with me, but if I found help, I might have to leave it someplace where there was no good habitat for it.