Gatekeepers

by Sam Ferguson

  “Anyway, if it wasn’t for this,” Flint said as he held up the 1911. “A harbinger wolf would have ripped my throat out.”

  “You met a harbinger wolf in Afghanistan?” I asked.

  Flint nodded. “Evil piece of scum-sucking filth too. We had heard reports of insurgents killing local people who sympathized with us. I was sent to investigate and report back if I found evidence. Thing is, it wasn’t no dang jihadi. The harbinger wolf had killed an entire family of thirteen. Shredded them apart and ate bits of them. Killed their goats too. Came after me and broke my rifle in two.” Flint reached up and pulled the collar of his green t-shirt down to reveal a long set of jagged scars on his chest. “Sliced me up a bit, and that was through my body armor. Knocked me to the floor and I only barely managed to pull this up. I put it to the harbinger wolf’s chest as it lunged to finish me off. I pumped everything I had into it.”

  Flint went quiet for a bit. “I made it out, carrying the monster’s head with me as proof. I had thought I was going to get a prize or something, but instead I was rewarded with solitary confinement. My CO called in Section Four. Apparently Afghanistan was crawling with activity at the time, so there were standing orders to call the feds in for cases like that.”

  “They tried to recruit you?” I pressed.

  “They did,” Flint said.

  “So how did you end up here with Hank and the others?” I asked.

  Flint took a breath and shook his head. “Long story, and one I don’t like to tell.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Move to the first stall. Let’s see if you can keep up with something.” We moved and he set up a clean target fifteen feet out. “This time, I want you to run a drill I make up,” Flint said. “I’ll call out five shots, and then you do them as quick as you can.” Flint stood off to my side and then pointed at the target. “Your targets are left shoulder, then right shoulder, abdomen, head, and then two in center mass. Remember, do it quick.”

  I looked at the target. I hadn’t done anything like this before, but it sounded pretty fun. The 1911 felt good in my hands. Not just good, but almost as if my hands had been made to hold it. It was a perfect fit.

  “Go!” Flint shouted.

  The pistol came up. I fired and moved smoothly through the designated targets. It was a lot of fun. After the last shot I set the pistol down and looked at my work. Each shot was placed right where it was supposed to be. Both shoulders had holes in the center. The abdomen had a new belly button. The head had been hit dead center in the forehead area, and the two in center mass were touching each other and sitting just to the left of dead center.

  “Well then,” Flint said as he put a stopwatch in front of me. “You’re good, but I can beat you by about a quarter of a second.”

  I read the numbers. One point eight seconds. I had no idea if that was good or bad, but I would like to think that it would have made my grandfather proud to see I had not forgotten how to shoot, even if I wasn’t perfect. Either way the day was spent and my initial training session was over.

  CHAPTER 8

  You would think that with all the things that had happened in my life, I would have been racked with nightmares or strange dreams at night, but I wasn’t. I found it hard to fall asleep, as I would overthink and analyze everything, but once I finally was able to sleep, it was restful and deep. I spent three weeks training. Breakfast was at five a.m. After breakfast there were briefing classes. Most of the materials that predated 1960 were supplied by the three Vikings. They had information dating back to their time. They had hunted monsters and blocked invasions on every continent, if I was to believe their records. They fought ice giants in Norway. They fought werewolves in France and Germany. They fought wild yetis in the Himalayas. And that was only scratching the surface. I learned of something called the Rift Wars, a terrible event where seven portals opened simultaneously in Antarctica in the late fifteen hundreds.

  Katya had told me that the Rift Wars had been devastating for the elves, with only a small fraction of them surviving. In the end, a total of three thousand invaders had been slain, but a few larger ones had escaped. The three Vikings spent the next hundred and fifty years tracking down each of the invading demons before they were finally able to put an end to the last creature that had come through.

  “I didn’t even know we had ships capable of sailing down there at that time,” I said as I shook my head.

  Katya smiled and winked. “We didn’t,” she said. “The elves did. However, after the initial battle was won, most of the elves sailed off to the Taiga Forest in Russia. They vowed not to get involved anymore.”

  “But Indyrith is here,” I said.

  Katya nodded. “A small group of elves remained faithful to their covenants to protect our world.”

  “Our world?” I asked. Something about the way she said those words made it seem as if the elves were not a part of Earth.

  “They are native to our world, but they have always been reclusive. The Rift Wars was the final straw for many of them. You see, they have terribly long lives, just as you would expect from fantasy fiction, and without war, they could live very happily. The Rift Wars are aptly named not only because of the massive inpouring of invaders, but also because it created a schism within the elves. Most believed that humans had advanced enough to protect themselves. More than that, the elves demanded that humans start to work for their own protection rather than waste the precious blood of elves. So, they sailed away en masse. No one has ever found their home in the Taiga Forest.”

  “Well, it is the largest forest on Earth,” I said. “Not to mention hard to reach.”

  Katya nodded. “Indyrith and his order have been the loyal ones. They remained engaged, even when all of their kind rebelled against them and shunned them.”

  “Shunned them?”

  “We call Indyrith the king because by birth he is the rightful king of the elves. However, after the Rift War, the elves forced him to abdicate his throne. Indyrith was young then, only fifty years old at the time. Rather than allow his people to engage in a civil war, he agreed to let them choose a new ruler. Indyrith was allowed to leave, but warned never to try and follow them. A couple dozen faithful elves went with him, and now they live here. They help us and teach us, but their numbers dwindle as the years drone on.”

  “I suppose the other elves were right,” I said. “I mean, with groups like Section Four, the elves didn’t need to sacrifice themselves.”

  “Section Four!” Katya scoffed. “They are imbeciles. Incompetent, arrogant…” she broke into Russian and used words that were anything but nice. Something more was there than a simple rivalry of ideologies, but based on her current reaction just to mentioning Section Four, I was not about to press the issue. I let her finish vomiting out a long string of curse words that would have made a trucker blush, and waited for her to recompose herself.

  The door opened.

  Hank was holding an old Winchester lever action rifle and looking as serious he had when the gate had opened in the cemetery. “You are being called up,” Hank told me.

  “Called up to where?” I asked.

  “He isn’t ready,” Katya said. “He is, how you say, green.”

  “Flint says he can shoot, and we already know he can fight. Either way it isn’t my call. It’s Rolf’s.”

  I hesitated for a second. There was something about the hardness in Rolf that still unnerved me even during the times I could get the image of the fight with the drakkul out of my mind.

  “Good luck,” Katya said in Russian.

  I nodded and moved to follow Hank.

  “Has another portal opened?” I asked.

  Hank shook his head. “Nope.”

  I waited for a moment. It wasn’t like Hank to give short answers. At least, not unless he was busy whistling some Abba tune. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked, unsure what else could be going on.

  “You’re going hunting,” Hank said. “Listen,” he began as he
stopped and put a hand on my shoulder. “You haven’t finished your training yet, so I wouldn’t put you in this position, but Rolf has located something bad, and he seems to think that you can help him kill it.”

  “What is it?”

  Hank reached up and scratched his head. “All right, I guess since you are about to go into battle, you should know the full truth of it. You know all those posters for missing children and such?”

  “Sure,” I said with a nod. The local Walmart was plastered with nearly twenty of the things.

  “People are bad, really bad sometimes. We can be downright evil to each other on a level that makes the orneriest animal look like a saint by comparison, but not every missing child is the work of some kidnapper or serial killer. Some are taken by other things.”

  “Like harbinger wolves?” I asked.

  Hank shook his head. “No, those kind of monsters have an origin, and a place. As contemptible as they are, they have a kind of order, and a set of laws that governs them. Sure, once in a while we might see a rogue harbinger wolf like the one who came for you in Dallas, but there are other things that exist in this world that are much darker by nature. They exist only to create misery and pain for the living. Some of them come from other worlds, but most of them have always existed on our world, born in the shadows and thriving upon our agony.”

  A chill ran down my spine. I’m nearly three hundred pounds of good muscle, and I don’t scare at bedtime stories, but the way Hank spoke seemed to bring with it an air of pure evil. As if simply talking about these other things was enough to call their attention to us.

  “Most of them are physical, but not all,” Hank said.

  “What do you mean, like ghosts?” I asked.

  Hank shrugged. “I suppose you might think of it that way. That isn’t exactly correct, but that’s as good an understanding as one can be expected to have until they encounter one.”

  “A ghost took a child, and now Rolf wants to hunt it with me?” I asked. I had seen a lot in the last few days, but this was a bit much for me to believe.

  “Rolf isn’t going to fight it with you,” Hank said with a shake of his head. “You are going to fight it alone.”

  “What?”

  A door opened down the hallway and Rolf stepped out and pointed at me. “You, come. We have work to do.”

  “You’re up, dream walker,” Hank said with a shove on my back.

  I walked toward Rolf as the large Viking turned and disappeared into the side room. When I followed after him, I saw Indyrith sitting near a large stone table. Arne and Bjorn were in the room as well, sitting in the far corner and apparently praying in some language I didn’t understand.

  “My cousins and I will pray that Thor will grant you strength,” Rolf said as he motioned toward the stone table.

  “Thor?” I said softly without really thinking about it.

  “You have your god, and we have ours,” Rolf said with a bit more patience than I would have expected. “Go to the table and lie down.”

  I looked to Indyrith for clarification.

  The elf gestured to the table. “I had hoped to have more time with you, but there is a matter that requires your help.”

  “Now we’ll see if you are a true warrior, or if you turn tail and run,” Flint said as he slipped in behind me and closed the door.

  “What do I need to do?” I asked. I went to the table and got into position. I had expected the stone to be cold, but it was warm instead. It vibrated and hummed against my body.

  “There is not much time to explain,” Indyrith said. “A mile to the west, a pair of teenagers are camping. They have been attacked by an alp, a kind of creature that is somewhat like mixing an incubus and vampire together.”

  “Then why not charge out and help?” I asked. “Why are we here in this room?”

  “An alp attacks people in their sleep,” Indyrith said. “We could go out and slay it, but in so doing we would kill his victims. We are hoping that you can go into the nightmare he has spun for them, and fight the demon on his own terms.”

  “How do I kill it?” I asked.

  “No, don’t try to kill it. It will be more powerful than you,” Indyrith said. “Instead, try to steal its hat. The tarnkappe is its source of power. Take that, and the alp will no longer have a hold over the two teenagers.”

  “Hank and Dan have already gone out to flank the demon,” Flint said. “If you fail, they’ll kill it quick.”

  “This one is strong,” Rolf said. “He will not fail. Thor will guide him.”

  I looked to the elf and nodded. “I’m ready to try, but I don’t know how to start.”

  Indyrith placed a hand on either side of my head. “This is going to hurt a bit.”

  That was an understatement. I once had a large wart frozen off of my finger with liquid nitrogen. The sucker was big and stubborn, so it required three separate trips to the doctor. If you could somehow combine the experiences all together and focus the intense, stabbing cold of that process, it would come close to describing the initial two seconds after Indyrith put his hands near me.

  The cold shot through my temples, and ripped into my head. I found it hard to breath, despite the fact that my mouth opened and I gasped for air. Rolf held me down with his massive hands. He shouted something about courage in the face of battle, and then I blacked out.

  My consciousness was no longer inside my body, but that didn’t stop the pain. I was falling through darkness, and plunging through such bitter cold that every joint locked up. I pulled myself into the fetal position and focused solely on trying to breathe as I fell through nothingness.

  “Relax,” Indyrith’s voice called out around me. I looked around, but there was no light to see with.

  I continued to fall. There was nothing to slow me, and the cold was seeping into my body to such a degree that the burning and aching was starting to pass and I was losing interest in staying focused.

  That’s when I heard the drums. They were distant at first, then they grew closer. A single man sang in the darkness in some language that I had never heard before, and yet it seemed familiar. The drums woke my heart and the singing put strength into my body again. As I concentrated on that melody, I was able to stretch out. I stood up and suddenly found that I was not falling anymore.

  “This way, boy,” a voice said in the darkness. It wasn’t Indyrith, but rather it sounded like the man that had been singing. I still could not see, but he kept calling me to him as I walked. I followed his voice for a few seconds and then there was a hand on my shoulder. “I will open the way, the elf is not as good at this as I am. I will watch over you.”

  I could feel a sense of strength and warmth coming from the man. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Not important. You are here to save the two boys, yes?”

  I nodded in the darkness. “I am.”

  “Then take the creature’s hat. Try to sneak up on him from behind. Take it, and then they will be free.”

  A point of light opened in front of me. A tanned, wrinkled hand pulled the curtain of blackness away and the hand on my shoulder gently pushed me through. I turned back around to look at my helper, but the rift was gone and I saw only a snow-filled forest of pine trees. All around me was a blizzard. The snow was so thick that it blew in through the trees and obscured my vision. This kind of snow wasn’t likely for this area of the Olympic national forest. It was nearly up to my knees and there was no sign of letting up. I rubbed my shoulders and then thought better of it. I was inside a dream. Perhaps I had powers like Neo did in the Matrix. I could run faster, turn bullets away, and just maybe clear the snow. I tried to think of how I would even perform such an experiment, but nothing I thought of worked. I did try to jump up into the air, thinking that maybe I could at least fly, but nothing happened.

  A snarl came from my left and I turned to see a strange pair of glowing eyes staring at me from the darkness under a snow-laden bough. I looked down and realized I was without weapons. I ben
t down for a stick just as a large lynx leapt out toward me. With every bit of strength I had, I clocked that animal in the face as if I was going for a home-run record. The stick shattered across the lynx’s face and the animal fell to the ground.

  It then shook its head and turned to stalk around my left.

  I needed something, anything!

  There was no time to look for another weapon. The lynx charged in. I cocked one leg back and waited for the right moment before putting everything I had into a massive kick. I caught the animal in the throat and it flipped backward to flop into the snow. It yowled and then faded away to be reabsorbed by the nightmare.

  I heard a scream in the distance.

  I ran toward it through the snow and the trees.

  There was a large bonfire that rose twenty feet high in the air. A pair of young boys were tied to pillars near the fire. Their shirts had been torn free and they were being whipped by a haggard, two-legged beast that had a long, spined tail and wild fur covering its body. Was this the alp? I crouched low just to make sure I wouldn’t be seen while I studied the scene before me. The creature whipped one of the boys and he cried out in pain as the whip tore through his flesh and caused blood to spill out over his left shoulder blade.

  I couldn’t just sit and watch. I had to act, but I didn’t see a hat on the creature’s head. The monster did a little dance as it squawked and chirped loudly. It whipped the other boy and then danced again. It spun around and howled at the night, revealing to me a long snout and not two, but six orange eyes as bright as the fire behind them all.

  Then another creature came into the light from the trees on the left. Two curled and twisted horns extended out from its head. It walked upon two legs like a man. Its arms were lean and muscular. Its face though, was hideous. Two black eyes reflected the fire-light and sat on either side of a wide, flat nose with flared nostrils. The creature smiled wickedly, revealing a mess of teeth that would easily tear into anything. Atop its head, sitting between the two horns, was a small green cap.