Gatekeepers

by Sam Ferguson

  “Is this headed somewhere?” I asked. “I have a return flight in the morning. It’s been fun and all, but I should get going.”

  He grabbed my arm and came in close, pleading with his eyes. “You have to listen. I don’t know who else to trust. I stole engine plans while I was working there.”

  I pulled away. “I don’t want anything to do with this,” I said firmly. I was not about to get caught up in another one of his twisted schemes. I had already heard how he had tried to tack more than one hundred thousand dollars of back taxes onto my mother after the divorce. Now here he was, somehow trying to involve me with corporate espionage? I turned to walk away, but that’s when everything went south.

  Terrible Tuesday had begun.

  A flash of silver light ripped through the air in the alley a few yards in front of me. The light widened, crackling and sizzling with electrical energy as bolts of lightning shot across the widening opening. A man stepped through. He wore a white mask over his face that looked like something a Persian Immortal would wear. At his side was a pair of long, curved swords.

  “Oh, no, they found me! It’s too late. Run!” I heard my sad excuse of a sperm-donor shout.

  I turned just as another flash erupted on the other side. We were trapped in the alley. Through the second portal came something I wish I had never seen. It walked upright like a man, but its feet were covered in fur and tipped with claws. Its torso was wide and thick, with muscular arms held out to the side. The hands were almost human, but like the feet they too were covered in thick fur and long claws. Its head was the worst part. A long snout like a wolf’s, filled with wickedly curved fangs. Its silver eyes penetrated my own and filled my body with fear. In an instant, I was frozen, paralyzed where I stood.

  So was my father. He stood closest to the wolf-thing. His arms were up and his knees were bent, as if he had stopped half way through dropping down to beg for mercy. The wolf snarled with a voice that filled the alley and made the ground tremble. I’m not sure what caused my body to move, to break the spell the wolf had placed upon me. Maybe it was all the times I had been jumped growing up. Maybe it was simply the adrenaline pumping through my nearly three hundred pound body. Either way, I did the dumbest thing I could do. I ran toward the wolf.

  With a shout I lunged at it football style as it moved for my father. I caught him with my right shoulder, instantly grabbing the wolf’s sides with my hands and driving until I pushed through the portal. When I played ball in high school, my coach taught me to tackle hard, and to always keep driving with my legs to run the opposing player back. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. My feet pounded the pavement, and they were still pumping in the air when we toppled over. We both fell through some sort of tunnel. I felt the air turn to ice and close in around us. The wolf clawed at the back of my shoulders. I pushed off and the two of us tumbled through the painfully bright shaft for several seconds. I was spinning through the air, with a giant wolf snarling and growling just a few feet below me.

  It was simple luck that ended this particular threat. The portal opened up over a stone floor on the other side. I heard the wolf snarl again and then there was a sort of wet thump followed by a cracking sound. I flew out of the chute a moment later and landed on the wolf’s neck. All two hundred and seventy pounds of my bulk crashed down on the giant animal. There was another crunch, this time the wolf’s vertebrae snapping in its neck, and then everything was quiet. I shook my head and glanced around.

  I was in what I could only imagine was some sort of temple. Stone floor, large altar in the middle, stone pillars holding up the roof. It certainly looked like some sort of archaic temple. I wasn’t sure what to do. I slowly stood up and rubbed my arms. I was still left cold and a little stiff from the strange portal.

  That was when I heard the scream.

  I turned and leapt through the portal.

  I may not have started fights growing up, and I might have run from more than a few, but there was always one exception. If someone else was being picked on and hopelessly outmatched, then I would jump in. Even if it was to save the man that had once left me and my mother at the side of a road.

  I aimed my feet and legs so that I could, hopefully, hit the ground running once I reached the alley. The coldness was growing more frigid, and the space in the chute was closing even faster than it had the first time I went through. Fortunately, I managed to squeeze out just before the portal clapped shut behind me. Other than hair standing on end from the static electricity, I was unruffled physically. I charged toward the man, who was now holding my father by the hair and pointing one of his swords at his chest.

  “I don’t know where it is, I swear!” my father said.

  The man in the mask plunged the sword deep into my father’s chest. He then pulled the blade back out and lopped off my father’s head before his corpse had even started to fall.

  I don’t know why I felt the primal rage inside that I did. It boiled up and propelled my legs even faster. The man in the mask turned and regarded me. He laughed at me. Then he raised his sword and took three steps toward me.

  At that moment, a lesson came back to me. I once had a sensei who thought it would be fun to make me dodge sword strikes in class. It led to quite a few welts the first few times, but I learned quickly. At the time, I thought the lessons ridiculous, but at this particular moment, I was hoping my muscles would remember how to do those same tricks one more time just as easily as my legs had remembered my football coach’s teachings.

  The masked man stepped in and sliced down. I turned sideways, allowing the blade to sail harmlessly in front of me, and then I spun around so as to use my momentum. The attacker dodged away, and I tackled nothing but empty air. I grunted as I hit the ground, and instinctively rolled quickly away. The sword came down and threw out orange sparks as it struck the asphalt. The man growled and ran after me.

  This was the part that I remembered the most from my lesson. My only task was to continue rolling on the ground as the sword kept chopping down. Once on the left, then twice on the right. I rolled out of the way easily for a man of my size.

  The masked man then shifted his grip and was about to come in with a sweeping chop that would go sideways rather than straight down. This was decision time. In training, I had been taught that this was the correct time to get back onto your feet if downed in a sword fight. The first option was to somersault backward and hope that the attacker didn’t anticipate your move and adjust accordingly.

  The second was even riskier.

  I went for option two.

  I kicked my legs forward, simultaneously performing a sit-up. My right leg was aimed at the man’s groin, while my left was just for propulsion. I connected with my attacker and he stumbled backwards. His attack was interrupted, and the swinging sweep of his sword never reached me. Better than that, I had just managed to grab the handle of his spare sword. As the attacker stumbled backward, I had pulled the blade out with ease.

  I quickly jumped to my feet and held the blade out.

  The upside was I had a weapon, but the downside was we were far from evenly matched. My sword training had pretty much ended at this point. In training, my sensei had always bowed with a smile on his face once I had taken his spare rattan sword, but I had a feeling this fight was only just beginning.

  The masked man swished his sword from side to side. Lightning streaked across the blade.

  On the inside I was freaking out. I just saw lightning shooting around on his sword like something out of a fantasy novel. On the outside, I tried my best to ignore the display and scowl menacingly. It must not have worked, for the masked man came charging in. He swung and I moved to parry. Our swords connected and a terrible crack of thunder echoed through the alley. The man spun around, changing directions. I blocked that strike as well, but had failed to see the masked man’s foot sailing for my stomach.

  The kick tossed me up into the air and against the building on the other side of the alley as easily as if I had be
en a sack of straw. Whoever this man was, he was strong.

  He came at me again, but I managed to get my weapon into position to block that strike as well. Without even thinking about it, I launched a left fist and pummeled the man in the stomach. His body bent a little, but nothing like when he had kicked me. The sword came in again, I raised mine up and had to use two hands to block it this time. Even still, his blade cut into my left shoulder. The blade burned my skin and streaks of lightning fired off around the swords. My eyes then landed on the corpse of my father. I suppose stopping to think while in the middle of a fight is not the smartest thing to do, but that is probably what saved my life. In my mind’s eye I saw myself lying where my father was. I saw my head a few yards away, grotesquely connected to the rest of the body by a line of dark, crimson dots of blood stretching across the dark pavement. I then thought of my wife and son seeing that kind of image.

  In that moment a rush of adrenaline surged through my body like never before. I kicked again, this time pushing the masked man back several feet. I rose up quickly, angling the sword up and out. The man charged in and I put my feet to the wall behind me and pushed off. His sword went over my backside so quickly that I felt the wind behind it on my back. My sword, however, plunged deeply into the man’s lower abdomen.

  He howled in pain and we both crumpled to the ground. I let go of my weapon and climbed up his body until I grabbed hold of his sword arm. He was strong, but I had never met anyone with arms stronger than mine. Before he could angle for another strike, I pressed his wrist to the ground with my left hand and then I began wailing on the side of his head with my right. After two punches I heard a crunch! The sound raised my spirits, so I kept slamming my fist down. The man tried to fight back with his free hand, so I hit the sword handle sticking out from his gut with my leg. The man roared out in pain.

  I was winning. Whoever this psycho was, I had killed his wolf and now I was about to beat him too!

  It only took an instant, but at that moment my mind replayed that thought in my head. I had just killed something, and I was happy about killing something else. Except, this wasn’t a thing. The masked man was a person. I was happy about killing a man. The terrified realization only lasted for a half of a second. I was back in fighting mode right after that, but a lot can happen in half a second. The next thing I knew there was a flash of light and searing pain ripped through my chest. My heart beat maybe forty times in the space of a mere couple of seconds and my body was flying toward that building again, only this time I hardly noticed the slamming against the bricks because of how terrible the lightning was.

  I looked down and realized that the man had fired lightning with his hand. His freaking hand! It was like some sort of Star Wars movie. A giant wolf man and some sword wielding jack-tard who was now shooting me with lightning!

  My mind slipped. Maybe I had eaten bad food at the restaurant. Or, maybe my plane had crashed and I was in a coma, dreaming some terrible nightmare based upon all those monster books I read during breaks at work.

  The lightning stopped and I slid to the ground.

  Neither one of us moved.

  In the distance I heard a familiar sound. Sirens. Help was coming. Unfortunately, it wasn’t coming fast enough. My estranged father was dead in an alley, and I was not far off from that same fate. A part of me cursed myself for not listening to my grandfather. He had always said that a gun was like toilet paper. Carrying an extra roll around and not needing it is no big deal. However, not carrying it and suddenly getting the runs can leave you in an awful mess real quick.

  He was right. Right now I was elbows deep in “mess” and I had no clear way out. I could barely move my fingers and toes. The masked man, however, was turning over and starting to press up to all fours. It was impossible. The son of a gun had a sword sticking straight through him, but he was still moving. He stood and staggered forward two steps. He was still holding his other sword in his right hand. He turned and raised the sword.

  I still couldn’t move. My jaw went up and down, but I couldn’t even scream for help.

  Where were all the crazy Texans with guns when you needed them? Walker Texas Ranger would be a welcome sight right about now.

  The man took a step toward me and I knew what was coming. I was about to die, killed by something out of a B-movie, or a Power Rangers show with really good costumes. Then the mask fell from the man’s face. The eyes were almond shaped, slanted horizontally. The skin had some sort of strange pattern on it, almost like the rough lines a crocodile has along its skin. The man smiled to reveal short, but very sharp teeth.

  Something about realizing that my enemy was not human put the strength back into my muscles. I pushed up, using the wall for support as the monster staggered toward me. He came in with a forward thrust, but he was much slower now, and easy to dodge. I slipped left and then snatched out and yanked the handle sticking out of his abdomen straight up with my left hand while my right seized his sword arm once more. The creature hissed at me, so I answered by head-butting the ugly little prick. His nose was flattened and began oozing blood a few seconds later.

  The sirens were growing ever closer now. I just had to hang on for a few more seconds.

  So long as I wasn’t hallucinating, I’d be famous. I’d be a hero!

  The creature spat in my face. The liquid hit the skin just between my eyebrows and started to burn. I recoiled, but still tried to hold the creature fast. It easily yanked its sword arm free, so I ripped my sword out of it and prepared to fight. Instead, the creature turned and leapt for its portal. The hole in space closed and I was left alone with a sword in my hand and my dead father’s corpse behind me.

  I had barely managed to wipe away the acidic spit when a flood of lights hit me from both sides of the alley.

  “Drop the sword!”

  “Drop the weapon!”

  “Down on your knees you son of a—”

  All of the commands came at once. I couldn’t clearly hear any of them. The next few moments are still a blur. All I really remember clearly is the sensation of three small pinches in my back, followed by something hot and stabbing. According to the papers, I had been hit by six tasers at once, but I only felt three, I think. I guess I should count myself lucky that they hadn’t used their lethal sidearms.

  Everything that followed can best be described as hell. Hours in interrogation. Threats of the chair or firing squad. I knew no one would believe my story of aliens, or monsters, or whatever the heck they were. So I told them we were jumped by a guy with swords. I said that I had managed to get one of the swords and fight off the attacker, but that he got away. It was mostly accurate. I just left out the parts that would ensure a quick trip to a padded cell and very tight jackets.

  In the end, it was the sword and the strange wounds on my back that had the jury convinced I was innocent. My sword had blood on it, but it didn’t match my father’s nor my own. Not to mention the claw marks in my back couldn’t have been made by an old man in his early seventies.

  Still, somehow an acquittal didn’t seem like nearly the right compensation for what I had been through. Not to mention, I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t crazy. Terrible Tuesday had wrecked my life, and now I was sitting on a park bench near a jail house and trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces.

  CHAPTER 2

  Later that night, I decided to head to a motel for a bit of sleep rather than take a late night bus back to Utah. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to Utah anyway. I was no longer married, and what with being in jail during the divorce proceedings, there had never been hope for custody of my son in any part. At the moment I wasn’t even allowed visitation rights. I may have been acquitted, but that didn’t mean I was innocent in the people’s court.

  I tried to go as easy as possible on that thousand dollars Susan left me on my credit card. I bought some cereal and milk, a set of four Styrofoam bowls, and some plastic spoons. I got a rather judgmental look from the cashier, a hipster
by the looks of it, who was wearing an old “Save the Rainforest” shirt that he probably bought back in the 90’s.

  “You could use a cloth bag, y’know,” the bearded cashier said from behind his thick rimmed spectacles. I looked him up and down, snickered at his bright yellow jeans, and just shook my head. I wanted to say something, but since I had literally just gotten out of jail a few hours earlier, it was probably best not to be caught on camera harassing a wimpy little cashier who had to use both hands, and arched his back, to lift the jug of milk.

  I carried my dinner of champions to the nearest no-name motel. The letters N and C were out on the neon sign, so instead of displaying “Vacancy,” it simply read “Vacay.” I laughed to myself as I rang the bell situated outside the iron bar-infused window and waited for the manager. I had to imagine they got quite a few people coming out of the jail, either that, or the same interior designer had set up both this manager’s booth and the one at the jail where I had collected my personal effects.

  A short, fat man came waddling around the corner. He reached up and wiped a thick forearm over the sweat on his forehead.

  “How many nights?”

  “Just one, I think.”

  The fat man nodded and wiped his forehead again. Oddly enough, it needed it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot in Texas, and the AC was not working in the office, but even with that this poor man was huffing and puffing just from walking to the counter. He stopped typing on his computer just long enough to turn on a black metal fan clipped to the front of the counter and aimed it up at himself.

  “How many people?” he asked.

  “Just me.”

  The fat man looked up and eyed me with a suspicious glare. “Don’t let me catch you with anyone else in your room, y’hear? If I see one hooker in there, I swear I’ll beat your backside with a switch like my grandad used to do.”

  Somehow, I doubted the man could even walk to the room, let alone have enough power to pose any real harm, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t polite to judge, and he was only trying to look out for his wallet.