by Nat Russo
Kaitlyn elbowed him and gave him a dirty look. The energy field surrounding him collapsed and his mind was present in the chapel once more.
“What the hell?” Kaitlyn whispered.
He started sweating as the panic grew worse.
I can’t be here.
He squeezed past the people sitting next to him. He might not make it out of the chapel, but he was determined to make it out of this pew.
“Nick,” Kaitlyn said in a louder voice.
He stumbled over the person at the end of the pew and escaped into the main aisle.
Another wave of nausea struck him. He had to get out of the building.
The parking lot made him feel better, but not much. The energy was there but subdued, just out of reach as if he had passed through an invisible barrier. He leaned onto the hood of Kaitlyn’s car and waited for the nausea to pass.
“Are you ok?” Kaitlyn said, running toward him.
He tried to speak, but dry heaves sent him into a fit of retching.
Kaitlyn rubbed his back until the heaving subsided.
When the nausea passed, He stood up and covered his mouth with the back of his fist.
“Better now?” Kaitlyn said.
He shrugged.
“Let’s get you back home then.”
“Gotta go back.”
“Like hell you do.” She grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. “You’re going home.”
“But my dad—”
“Isn’t here. And wherever he is, he understands. Now get your ass in the car.”
How could this happen today of all days? The man who had saved him from life in a children’s home and had given him a name and a future was lying dead in a wooden box, and he couldn’t attend the funeral because of an upset stomach?
No. He’d sit in that pew if he had to hold a bucket in his lap.
To hell with it!
He stepped forward.
Images of one atrocity after another assaulted him. Light strobed in his mind. He shot three people in the back of their heads as they knelt, then cut the tongue out of a witness to silence him. Strobe. He tied a woman down and injected her with heroin to make her more compliant. Strobe. He lit a cross on fire, and in its merry light, slaughtered the landowner and his family when they fought back. Strobe.
He collapsed and clawed at the ground, pulling himself back toward the car, and as he crossed that invisible line in the pavement, the images stopped.
He pushed himself up onto shaky legs and leaned against the car.
“Ok,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Give me the keys.”
“I can drive.”
Traffic was worse on the way back, and Nicolas cursed whoever designed the roads in Austin. Every time the car hit a bump, he thought it was the strange energy coming back.
“We can go to St. David’s,” Kaitlyn said.
“No hospital. I just need to go to bed.”
“Hospitals have beds.”
“Toby needs me.”
“Excuse me, but Toby wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t for me. Do you even know what brand he eats?”
“Puppy…dog nuggets.”
“Puppy dog nuggets. Wow, Nick. Just…wow.”
He pumped the brakes behind a moving van as he turned onto 24th from Guadalupe and swore.
His apartment building was only a block away, but a long line of cars stretched out in front of them.
“I can’t see anything,” Kaitlyn said. She craned her head out of the window.
“Accident,” Nicolas said. “Police and stuff.”
“Paramedics are working on someone on this side,” Kaitlyn said. “Whoa, they brought out the paddles.”
Nausea churned in his stomach. He put the car in idle, leaned out the window to heave, and a blast of energy entered his mind, replacing the nausea with vitality and power.
He could see it this time…a random stream of images accelerating toward him.
“Another ambulance,” Kaitlyn said.
He braced himself for the insanity the images would bring, but they carried a different set of emotions this time. He was an older man, swinging a little boy in a circle. The boy giggled with glee, and a sense of love and devotion filled Nicolas. As the boy spun, Nicolas saw his reflection in the window.
“It’s Mr. Landing,” Nicolas said. A frightening realization formed in his mind. “He’s dead.”
“No, they’re still working on him—”
“He’s dead. He was a good man. His grandkids….”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
A powerful force struck him and he was consumed by a dark stream of images.
He was Mr. Landing, only eighteen years old. The mugginess of the jungle outside of Nam Dong was oppressive, and the VC was out here somewhere. The crescendo of chirping insects made it hard to hear anyone approaching. He checked the twenty-round magazine on his M16 for no other reason than nerves. He knew how many rounds he had left. He’d loaded his usual eighteen and hadn’t fired a shot.
But a vicious and unseen enemy was stalking him through the dense foliage. His life was in danger, and his body trembled from an adrenaline rush. Where was the enemy? For that matter, who was the enemy? It was impossible to know.
Twigs snapped by a nearby tree, silencing the roar of the chirping insects.
Panic.
He lifted his rifle with unsteady hands and aimed it at the tree.
Movement!
He screamed and unloaded the M16 toward the tree.
The dull thud of a body hitting the ground was amplified by the silence of the insects. Dirty bastard tried to ambush him, but he’d been ready for it.
When he saw the body he grew cold and dropped to his knees.
It was a small child. His face was drawn, gaunt as if malnourished, and he was covered in scratches.
Landing, in a daze, saw the rest of his patrol running over to him, but the sound wouldn’t register. His hands trembled, and the shakes spread throughout his body until he collapsed next to the tree. He looked away from the boy, but the trembling grew stronger. By the time the patrol reached him, he was screaming the same word over and over.
“Why?”
The jungle faded and withdrew, taking the hysteria with it, until Nicolas was in the car once more.
“It was a kid,” Nicolas said. “He didn’t know. He was just scared.”
“Stop it,” Kaitlyn said. Her voice was raspy.
“It wasn’t his fault and he never knew it. He couldn’t have known. I can’t be here.”
“Nick, don’t.”
He opened the car door and ran toward his building, passing Landing’s covered body to his left. The lobby doors were open, and he entered at a full sprint, taking the stairs two at a time until his apartment door stood before him. Everything would be better inside.
The key wouldn’t go in. The metal tapped against the lock’s core and slid off, scratching the surface of the door. His hands trembled with frustration and he wanted to yell.
He swore.
The key slid into place and the door opened. He stumbled into the apartment, threw his jacket on the ground and pulled his tie off. He needed to sit down and look at something familiar…something peaceful.
A wet nose swept across his face. Toby nuzzled against him.
He grabbed for Kaitlyn’s picture and rocked back and forth on his creaky bed with one arm around Toby.
It wasn’t Landing’s fault. He thought he was going to die. God, what’s happening to me?
He hugged his knees to his chest and stared at the picture.
Forty years and he never forgave himself. My god, how do I know these things? I’m losing my mind. God help me. Please!
“You left me there!” Kaitlyn said. She closed the door behind her.
Kait’s here. Everything will be ok now.
“It wasn’t his fault.” Nicolas said.
“It was your fault. You took the damned keys. My car’s sitting
out there.”
When Kaitlyn spoke, a strange calm descended on him.
His vision darkened, but another stream of images came to him. An ornate door, etched with symbols reminiscent of Nordic runes, opened in his mind, and he imagined himself walking through it. Two open doorways stood in the room beyond. Darkness shrouded one door, but the other emitted a radiant white light. The white door pulsed, and with every pulse it enticed him closer.
But the white door also emitted a wrongness. Something bad would happen if he entered it. He forced himself to look away and, instead, walked toward the black door. The grotesque, decapitated head from his dreams hovered in the air beyond the threshold. Jagged, ripped flesh hung from the base of a torn spinal column. Patches of hair fell from the skull and the smell of burning, putrid flesh made him want to puke. He stumbled backwards in fright.
An unexpected sensation of calm returned. Something was soothing him. And whatever it was, it wasn’t from Texas.
Toby growled.
“The hair is burning,” he said.
“You’re going to the hospital,” Kaitlyn said. “I’ve seen enough.”
A pulse of energy threw Nicolas backward and pinned him against the wall.
Kaitlyn screamed.
Every time the energy touched him he learned more about it. It was a life force, vast and powerful, but he wasn’t afraid of it. It gave him a sense of security. It took away his fear. It made him feel…loved.
An invisible hand formed around his torso and tightened, threatening to crush him, but the strange calmness blanketed him again. He knew the hand was good in the same way he knew the man—Landing—was good.
Toby started baying.
A low-pitched metallic sound filled the room like someone striking a piece of sheet metal. A small point of swirling black light formed behind Kaitlyn, whipping her hair around her face, and grew larger, morphing into a multi-hued disk with a void of pitch-blackness at its center. As the point became a disk, the metallic sound grew louder.
“What is that?” Nicolas asked.
Kaitlyn looked in the direction he was staring. “What’s happening?”
The vortex of light filled him with a sense of belonging, as if his world would be complete if he stepped inside. But he refused. If it wanted him that much, it would have to take him.
The hand of energy lifted Nicolas several feet off the bed, as if in response to his thoughts.
Kaitlyn screamed and grabbed his boots, trying to pull him back down to the bed.
With a violent thrust, the hand pulled him into the vortex, ripping him out of Kaitlyn’s grasp. Pain radiated down his spine as his head snapped backward, and lights flashed like a strobe across his eyelids. He tried in vain to move his arms against the force, but it was too strong.
The world disappeared and he tumbled into the black void.
CHAPTER TWO
Nicolas blinked, and light stabbed at his brain like thousands of tiny daggers.
What the heck just happened?
The back of his head was throbbing, so he reached back to rub the sore spot.
Why am I on my stomach?
He spat out the taste of dirt and sat up. His head felt wobbly, like an egg on a spring.
A cool breeze tickled his face. He took a deep breath and a coughing fit seized him. The scent he inhaled wasn’t the familiar smells of his apartment, stale with week-old laundry and trash piling up in the corner. It wasn’t the scent of car exhaust leaking through cheap windows. It was lavender and juniper mixed with lilac and exotic smells he didn’t recognize.
He couldn’t decide whether he liked the smell or hated it, but it filled his lungs without suffocating him, and that’s all that mattered. His nausea was gone, the pain was bearable, and above all, he didn’t feel that strange energy pouring into his body.
Something shrieked above him.
He looked up and his chest tightened.
The sky was pale yellow, lighting the emerald-green meadow before him from all directions. The sun was missing. For a moment he thought the sun had taken on gargantuan proportions and filled the sky. But he could stare at it without pain, and the heat was bearable. In fact, it wasn’t hot at all. It was like that spring he spent in Flagstaff studying the Wupatki pueblo with Dad, and a biting breeze made them glad they brought their heavy-duty windbreakers.
He sat against a boulder in the foothills of a vast mountain range. The distant mountains were tall enough to put Mount Humphreys to shame. Snow was absent above the timberline, revealing grey rocky peaks. There was something odd about that timberline, though, as if the foliage below the line had been…removed.
Something shrieked again, and this time it flew over him. He had to look twice when he saw it.
It looked like a bright turquoise bat the size of a pickup truck, with wings the length of an eighteen-wheeler from tip to tip. Its neck was just as long, covered in cascading blue feathers, and ending in teeth surrounded by a feathery mane. Fangs longer than Toby’s body formed three concentric rings in a cavernous maw and dripped with saliva. Its six scaled, muscular legs flayed out beneath a lithe body with every beat of its wings, and a distinct saltwater smell followed it.
It shrieked once more, then dove down about a hundred yards away.
Nicolas inched his way around the boulder.
A herd of cows stampeded away from the mountainside. Bells dangled from their necks, filling the air with frantic dull clanks. They ran into a vast meadow, which was bordered by a dense row of tall shrubs. When they reached the shrubs, the entire herd turned left as one.
Those ain’t no cows.
He had no idea what else to call them, though. They had six legs, like that bat thing, but their agility was no match for the bat.
The bat swooped toward the herd, unleashing another shriek as it flew over. This time the sound was soothing, like a lullaby, and the animals started grazing as if the creature weren’t there.
Dumber than a box of hammers too. That thing’s gonna swallow ‘em whole.
Nicolas blinked from drowsiness. He wasn’t sure where that came from. He was energetic a moment ago.
Another shriek echoed off the rocky outcropping and three of the cow-like creatures staggered. They fell to the ground, but the rest of the herd ignored them.
Nicolas covered his ears and wobbled, but he gripped the boulder in time to stop falling.
The bat’s giant wings created a dust cloud as it landed among the cows. A few of them ran away, but the bat ignored them.
Two worm-like tongues snaked up from the recesses of the bat’s throat. They slid across the surface of the outermost ring of fangs as if in anticipation of a meal. It lumbered forward until it reached one of the fallen cows and raised its two hind legs in the air.
It faced its leathery hindquarters toward the cow and released a steady jet of liquid, spinning the cow as if on a lathe. The liquid congealed around the cow like a cocoon.
The bat encased two more cows and connected strands of the liquid among all three. With two beats of its massive wings, it lifted the three helpless cows as one, looking back as if to make sure they were secure, and flew up into the mountains.
Nicolas sat back down against the rock and leaned back.
“This ain’t Texas,” Nicolas said. “It’s a dang Spielberg film.”
Where the hell am I?
He was still wearing his suit pants and shirt, but he was squeezing his wallet in the palm of his hand.
Kaitlyn’s picture.
He was empty, as if a piece of him was missing.
A sting in his palm made him realize he had balled his hand into a fist. He stretched his fingers and tried to calm himself down. There had to be a rational explanation for this.
Portals didn’t open up in people’s apartments…in Texas of all places…and drag them into a world with six-legged cows and giant turquoise bats.
Please, God, just take me back home.
He rubbed his temples.
This ai
n’t helping. I have to do something.
He had to get back to Kaitlyn and Toby somehow, but he didn’t even know where he was. He needed information, and he wasn’t going to find it behind this rock.
Those things may not be cows, but there was something about them that made him think they were cows in the first place.
They had bells. That means they’re domesticated. So where’s the rancher?
He turned away from the herd and saw plumes of smoke rising from a cluster of small buildings in the distance, no more than a mile away.
There you go.
That village might have some answers. He wiped a small bit of moisture from his eyes, stood up, and started walking.
The terrain was rocky on this side of the emerald field, but he thought it wise to avoid the meadow. The jagged rocks rose to sharp points that stood several feet above him, and it was difficult to keep from stumbling. He tripped over a concealed granite nub.
That’s all I need right now. A broken leg.
His stomach growled. If the village didn’t have answers, maybe it had food.
The sharp crack of falling stone echoed in the crags, as if a scurrying animal had dislodged some rubble. He looked for the source and lost his balance again.
Careful, dumbass.
He steadied himself and continued around the face of an enormous boulder. He looked up at the yellow sky. Something wasn’t right about it.
As he climbed over some rocks, his hunger left him. Invigorated by the extra burst of stamina, he scrambled over the remaining boulders. All that stood between him and the village was a few hundred yards of meadow.
There was movement among the thatched-roof buildings. People.
He remembered the cows and decided it would be best to take a good look at the villagers first.
Two legs and two arms. Now we’re talking.
He took another step and his senses reeled. The faint sound of falling rocks reverberated through his mind as if he had some kind of sonar. The sound was too faint to know it was coming from the direction of the mountain…but he knew just the same.
An old stone building, surrounded by marble columns and covered by a rock awning, sat nestled in a collection of boulders beside the mountain. The sound was coming from behind that building.