The Curse of Greg

by Chris Rylander

  “But,” Froggy continued, “I can tell you it involves moss- covered logs, a traffic jam, and a gun-toting Old West outlaw with no name.”

  I shook my head in wonder, knowing he couldn’t possibly be making that up.

  He may be weak willed, the Bloodletter said. But I’ll give the kid this: he definitely knows how to build drama.

  CHAPTER 21

  Yoley Jumps Face-First into a Pile of Rocks

  Before we knew it, we were standing outside the Union Passenger Terminal near downtown New Orleans, hockey bags full of Dwarven weapons at our feet, looking at one another and wondering what exactly we’d gotten ourselves into.

  “Well, now what?” Glam asked.

  “Eagan said we should contact the local Dwarven sect after we arrived,” Ari said. “He gave me this.”

  She held out a small slip of parchment. Glam snatched it and glanced at the writing. Then she tossed it toward me dismissively.

  “Some help that is.”

  I fumbled with the parchment for a few seconds, but finally managed to corral it to my chest. There were only a few perplexing words scratched across the thick paper in Eagan’s handwriting:

  River Walk Under River

  “This is the lead he gave you?” I asked, hopelessness (aka Dwarviness) creeping in. “Oh man . . .”

  “Yeah,” Ari said. “He also told me to warn you guys.”

  “Wherefore ye leitmotif of ye gents’ heed to caution?” Lake asked.

  “He said this local sect, who call themselves the NOLA Swamp Dwarves, are rather . . .” Ari paused as if mulling over a secret. “Well, they’re a bit—notorious—is the word he used. For being somewhat strange.”

  “Strange how?” I asked.

  Ari shrugged. “That’s all he said. He had to run off to a Council meeting—he was acting pretty harried about all of this. I think he’s really nervous about being complicit in anything sneaky now that he’s the newest and youngest member of the Council.”

  “Well, though, aren’t we all a little strange?” Froggy asked from the background, as he reached out toward me amid our muffled laughs. “Let me see that parchment, Greg.”

  I handed it to him. He took one look at it and then nodded.

  “I know where we need to go,” he said.

  “How?” Glam demanded. “From that note? It’s utter nonsense!”

  “Because I’ve been here before,” Froggy said. “To New Orleans, I mean.”

  I sometimes forgot that he spent a lot of his childhood with his Elven mom and his super-rich Elven stepdad. Which I’m sure meant a lot of family vacations to cool places. Well, at least until he came to live with his real dad, our Dwarven combat instructor: Thufir Stonequarry Noblebeard, aka Buck. Not that Froggy seemed to mind. While Buck was generally gruff and rude to the rest of us, he and Froggy were like best pals. Over the past few months I’d noticed they’d developed a close father-and-son bond that’s hard to replicate. Plus, it didn’t hurt that both of them rarely spoke. The rest of us suspected that Froggy and his dad spent most evenings at home simply enjoying each other’s company in total silence. Which, if you really think about it, is a pretty special relationship.

  “We need to go toward the French Quarter,” Froggy said, pointing at a string of cabs lined up on the curb.

  * * *

  – –

  The guys on the radio talk show in the minivan taxi were discussing ghosts.

  And it wasn’t one of those kooky shows where all they talk about is conspiracy theories and alien abductions. It was actually supposed to be a local sports show. But instead of debating the start of the New Orleans Saints training camp, they spent the whole fifteen minutes talking about the sudden explosion of recent ghost sightings all around the city. The great majority of them had occurred in St. Louis Cemetery #2, near the French Quarter.

  “I mean,” one of the radio guys was saying, “this city has always been known to be haunted. But like most of the skeptics out there, I always thought it was mostly a joke. However, what’s been seen lately around town has—well, I’m just going to go ahead and say this, Speegs, but I’m scared to go out alone at night!”

  This was followed by strangely bellowing yet uneasy laughter from the two co-hosts.

  We all glanced nervously at one another inside the cab, knowing full well that the recent ghost sightings were almost certainly real. There were a number of fantastical Separate Earth beasts that either were, or could be mistaken for, ghosts: Specters, Wraiths, Shrieks, Foglets, Aureras, and Fart Clouds,* to name just a few.

  “Yeah,” Speegs finally said. “I guess people living nearby have been hearing horrible shrieking coming from the cemetery every night for the past few days. Cops are baffled.”

  “Oh, you mean they actually looked into something for once?” the other guy quipped.

  “Yeah, at least until they realized ghosts can’t offer bribes . . .”

  The taxi pulled up near a huge strip mall on the other side of the downtown area as the radio guys exploded with laughter.

  The combination mall was flanked to the left by a green-and-gray statue of some guy on horseback and an archway with massive blue letters that announced we were at the RIVERWALK. We piled out of the van and retrieved our hockey bags full of Dwarven armaments.**

  “Sounds like there may be a lot of fantastical creatures returning around here,” Ari said as the taxi pulled away.

  “Really?” Glam asked. “You think ghosts are one of the creatures magic is bringing back?”

  “Forsooth be’est ye apparition common,” Lake said. “Th’re art ye sundry stable of creatures yond howl ’neath ye moon and dwell amongst ye deceased.”

  “Yeah,” Ari agreed with her brother. “There are many creatures that shriek in the night and live among the dead.”

  Lake nodded solemnly.

  “Either way, never mind that for now,” I said, trying to keep them all on track. “We’ve got our own mission to deal with. Finding the local Dwarven sect so they can, hopefully, point us in the right direction of the Elves who once imprisoned Stoney.”

  The Riverwalk area was clearly pretty touristy. Like Navy Pier in Chicago, it was teeming with people: families with shopping bags, teens taking selfies in front of the river, and various vagrants asking anybody who would even glance their way for spare change.

  I handed one such dude, who was wearing what appeared to be old newspapers around his legs like pants, a handful of leftover cash from the sale of Stoney’s poop. He gaped at the ball of twenties I put into his open palms, too stunned to say anything as we passed.

  We followed Froggy up a small set of stairs toward a redbrick, concrete, and grass boardwalk that spanned a long length of the river. We stepped to the river’s edge and peered down at the brackish, green-brown water. It looked thick enough to walk on.

  “Well, now what?” I asked Froggy.

  He shrugged and then handed Eagan’s note back to Ari.

  “River walk,” Ari said, looking down at the parchment. “Well, we’re here. Next is Under River.”

  Our stares lolled gloomily back toward the seeping “river.”

  “No way am I getting into that stream of sewage,” Glam said defiantly.

  “I mean, I hate to be a Pyxeesprite* about it, but . . .” Ari started, gulping down a gag. “I don’t really like the idea either.”

  “Are we sure we’re even interpreting the note correctly?” I asked.

  “Aye, y’all most certainly find thee in ye location thee seek,” a voice behind us said.

  It was a teenager. Short and skinny with long black hair and a complexion like coffee. She grinned at our confused expressions.

  “Lest I be incorrect,” she added.

  Her deeply Southern accent sounded even more bizarre combined with the odd, almost Lake-like way she spoke
.

  “Be’est thee expressions of ye traditional linguistics,” Lake said, looking equally baffled and excited. “Yet, thy dialect, nay recognizeth.”

  “Hear tell, y’all’s tongue echoes mighty peculiar to me, eke,” she said in her half-Southern, half-Dwarven slang. “But at least I knoweth yond y’alls’ folk be my folk and I wasn’t indecorously assuming such.”

  “How did you know we were Dwarves?” Ari asked.

  “Y’all kidding me?” the strange girl said with a smile. “I knoweth a horde of Dwarves at which hour they past crost my vision. Coequal though we’re scarce as a hen’s teeth in yonder proximity. So I figure y’alls searching for ye NOLA Underground?”

  We all nodded dumbly.

  “Come on, then, proceed on thyne heels,” she said, not waiting around for agreement.

  She glanced back a few times as we followed her along the Riverwalk, away from downtown. We introduced ourselves to her as we walked. She weaved easily through the thinning crowd of tourists and evening joggers. We struggled to keep up, what with our huge hockey bags full of armaments and our backpacks of clothes.

  After we’d gone maybe a hundred yards, and the people around us had dwindled considerably, she looked back again.

  “Mine own nameth be Yolebena Ashbender, by the way,” she said with a toothy smile. “But folks ’round here calleth me Yoley.”

  Yoley led us past all the commercial tents, stores, and marketplaces. Past a huge, weedy parking lot flanking the Riverwalk mall. She led us farther down the river, where there were no tourists aside from a few joggers off in the distance, looping around back toward downtown. Finally, we stopped at a small inlet on the riverbank, where the slimy water lapped against a cluster of large stones piled against the pier.

  “Down yonder,” she said, and then hopped onto the narrow riverbank next to the rocks.

  The gooey water lapped at her feet.

  We all hesitated, looking at the polluted and muddy river with apprehension. This close you could make out actual objects floating in the muck: old candy wrappers, a fast food soda cup from some place called Krystal, a dead fish, a suspicious- looking latex glove (like the kind killers wore in movies), cigarette butts, and a general layer of indistinguishable goop.

  Don’t be a Pricklebink, Greggdroule, the Bloodletter taunted. Come on, dive in! I would.

  Whatever, I thought back. You complain when I use the wrong polish to clean your blade. If I threw you in this river, you’d be crying like a baby.

  You’d better not ever throw me in ANY body of water! the Bloodletter joked. I can’t swim. I’d sink like a hunk of heavy metal.

  “Cometh on, then.” Yoley beckoned while looking up at us. “Y’all ain’t truly afraid of a dram of muck and grime, art thee?”

  In addition to the ghastly sight of the water, it also smelled like a combination of Troll feet and rotting pepperoni. Sure, the water in the Chicago River wasn’t exactly potable, but in a lot of ways the bizarre, glowing aqua green of all the chemicals in it was more comforting than this, which looked to be composed of at least 20 percent Human feces. But at the same time, we were Dwarves, weren’t we? Not squeamish Elves who were too good for dirty work.

  So I hopped down next to Yoley.

  “Come on, guys,” I said.

  Froggy and Glam finally got over the smell and climbed down next to me. Lake and Ari followed. Once we had assembled in a line behind Yoley on the narrow bank next to the rock pile, she turned and smirked back at us.

  “Don’t think,” she said. “Just jump.”

  Without waiting for a response, she dove face-first right into the huge pile of stones. My heart leaped up into my throat as I turned quickly away so I didn’t have to see her face smash into the boulders. But instead of a sick THWACK and cries of pain, there was a brief, nearly inaudible creak and then just the sounds of the waves lapping at our feet and the distant chatter of the tourists at the other end of the Riverwalk.

  When I looked back, I didn’t find Yoley crumpled on the rocks with a bloody, broken face. There was nothing. It was as if she’d simply vanished. I was stunned for a moment, but then Glam snapped me out of it.

  “Come on, Greg!” she said. “What are you waiting for?”

  I looked back at the impatient faces of my friends. Of course, they’d spent their whole lives around such displays of Dwarven engineering ingenuity. So watching a teenager dive face-first into a pile of rocks only to disappear a second later was somewhat commonplace. Even after months of witnessing similarly impossible-looking feats, it still caught me off guard. That said, I knew I could trust Dwarven construction.

  So I took a deep breath—and after a few false starts, which garnered some impatient groans from my friends—finally dove into the rock pile on the shore of the Mississippi River.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jazz Legends and Fried Alligator Glands

  Part of me still expected my face to crash painfully into the rocks.

  But of course that’s not what happened. As I neared almost-certain bodily harm, a secret trapdoor that looked remarkably like rocks gave way on incredibly smooth hinges beneath me. And in less than a second I was plunged into a dark chute, sliding headfirst down a smooth tunnel. It turned sharply to the right and got steeper, bending this way and that. Somewhere along the twists and turns I’d spun around so I was going feetfirst. Eventually it leveled off gradually and deposited me onto a stone floor in a dimly lit cavern not altogether dissimilar from Chicago’s Dwarven Underground.

  Yoley grinned at me as I stood from the crouch I’d landed in and quickly stepped out of the way of the chute and joined her near an entrance to a narrow tunnel.

  “What taketh so long?” she asked.

  I shrugged as Glam, clutching a hockey bag of weapons to her chest, came flying from the end of the chute and landed easily on her feet.

  That was sort of fun, the Bloodletter said from the bag in Glam’s arms. But not nearly as fun as this one time I decapitated an Orc lord named Gnarg. Did I ever tell you about that one, Greggdroule? The time I beheaded Lord Gnarg?

  Only seven or eight times, I thought back.

  Well, you don’t have to be snide about it. A simple yes would have sufficed.

  Once the rest of the group was in the chamber, Yoley led us into the tunnel across from the chute. Their Underground was somewhat similar to ours in that it was skillfully carved from bedrock and reinforced in some areas with neat stone blocks, dimly lit, and smelled very distinctly of Dwarven body odor. But it was also different in a lot of ways that reminded us we were far from home and at the beginning of a potentially dangerous mission.

  For instance, the walls and ceilings of the passageways of this Underground were a lot narrower and damper. A bizarre and striking mixture of purple and green mosses covered nearly half of the exposed surfaces around us. The tunnels had a vaguely sour, bitter, but strangely pleasant odor (on top of the very distinct aforementioned smell of Dwarves).

  “So are we under the river right now?” Ari asked as we walked.

  “Aye, ma’am,” Yoley said. “Thirty-seven Lachters ’neath ye riverbed.”

  “Lachter?” I asked.

  “Tis ye traditional Dwarven standard for interval dimensions whence per Separate Earth,” Lake explained.

  Yoley nodded in agreement.

  As we walked, the tunnels eventually expanded and widened to something closer in size to the Chicago Underground and the weird multicolored moss coverage also diminished. We passed a few Dwarves on the way to wherever Yoley was leading us. They glanced at us, but said nothing, offering only jovially silent gestures of greeting.

  “So do all Dwarven sects exist Underground, then?” I asked.

  Yoley was suddenly laughing so hard she had to stop walking to catch her breath.

  “Thy adorable gent,” she said, patting me on the shoulder betwe
en desperate sobs of laughter. “Wilt just hath newly become privy to his sooth pedigree, huh?”

  “Yeah, just like three months ago,” Glam chimed in quickly, seeming anxious to defend my apparent ignorance.

  “Aye, aye,” Yoley finally said with a grin. “Y’all newbie folks can be very much comical oft sometimes. Come on, then.”

  She continued forward through the damp maze of tunnels.

  “Was the question really that funny?” I whispered to Ari as we walked.

  “No, not really,” Ari assured me, shaking her head. “I think this is part of what Eagan meant when he said this sect is a little odd. But, to be totally honest, you asking that question was a bit like if you’d asked whether fire was hot.”

  “Oh. Well . . .”

  “I know, Greg,” Ari whispered. “There’s no way you could have known.”

  “Why wasn’t it mentioned in any of our classes?”

  “Because I guess our instructors didn’t think there was a need,” Ari said. “I mean, would they teach teenagers that fire is hot in a Human Chemistry class?”

  I was about to tell her that it wasn’t really same thing, but I figured there was no point to dragging this on. Now I knew better and that was that.

  “Is there a reason we all live Underground?” I asked instead. “Besides just that we’re hiding out like rats hoping to avoid capture or something?”

  This time Ari chuckled and shook her head.

  “It’s not like that at all, Greg,” Ari said. “Quite the opposite. We live Underground because we want to. In fact, it’s considered an honor. Dwarves came from the earth, remember? Brought into existence before Separate Earth was Separate Earth. Back when it was just another rock in the cosmos. Supposedly, anyway . . . I mean, our whole origin story should probably be considered with a shank of lamb.* But the point is, since we’re of this earth, then it’s only natural for us to feel comforted the closer we get to its core. It’s like our collective heart, as cheesy as that sounds. I mean, why do Humans like sunshine so much? Or swimming in lakes? There aren’t really logical answers to those questions either. For Dwarves, the earth and its elements are like our sun and our swimming.”