by Nick Cole
I pass from the burning heat of afternoon into the cool rotten darkness of the main house. A wide hall spreads away into two wings of shadowy darkness. Shafts of sunlight shoot through what remains of the ancient roof, giving the gloom a chessboard look. Ahead, across a cracked and broken floor, stairs lead up.
I hear nothing. And then… a slight scrabbling.
Rats.
I see one. Moving along the far wall. Heedless of my presence. It’s abnormally large for a rat. But it doesn’t seem to mind me.
A thud sounds from up the old stairs. As though someone dropped something. I move forward, trying to mute the creak of my sandals as I cross the debris-laden floor. From the foot of the stairs I can hear low, muffled conversation coming from up there. Whispers.
I pad softly up the stairs, silent, Deathefeather leading the way.
At the landing, I see someone up there in the gloom of the second story. A large axe is raised over his head. There are others gathered behind him.
And he’s peering down into the darkness. Looking straight at me.
They come at me in a rush, the big man, a giant almost, raising the massive cleaver over his head, his eyes alight with the delight of expected murder.
I simply step forward and push the razor-sharp katana through his heart. He gives a small “oof” as though he only has indigestion, and he dies right there on the spot.
The others push forward with smaller weapons as I withdraw the katana and ready myself.
I decide not to give ground. I move the katana with such speed that it looks like a series of whirling blades. Arms and hands come off. And still they charge, mindless of the injury I’m dealing out in these tight quarters and dark shadows.
I strike one beardy fellow’s head from his shoulder. Blood goes everywhere. I step back, giving just the one step for the last two coming for me. There are five dying men along the stairs we’ve fought our short battle in. The last two try to rush together even though the space is too tight and I step back once again and put everything I have into a cut across their collective abdomen.
Entrails spill out at their feet.
I wait. Wait for their hot, close gasps to surrender to death as they fall back breathing raggedly and dying. I smell their unwashed stink competing with some greasy food smell. And vinegar. Or bad wine. Maybe they had been drinking while waiting for someone to stumble into their trap.
Moments later they’re all dead and I’m stepping between and over them to reach the top of the stairs.
I find a lone room, what must have been the master’s dwelling of this small and fortified freehold. A gray fireplace heaped with ashes gapes at me like some crouching gargoyle in the dark. In the room’s debris lie the personal belongings and bedrolls of my attackers. Black handprints have been pressed into every surface, and I know I would never have liked what went on here.
So I leave.
I’m sure there was something I could have taken away. But there was nothing I would’ve wanted.
As I pass by the dead in the shadowy dark, they leer at me with twisted evil faces. As though whatever they’ve found on the other side is just as debaucherously delightful as what they had here in this house of horrors.
At the bottom of the stairs I clean my blade on a cloth I keep for such. The mere act, standing there in the shadowy gloom, is a brief moment of not thinking. Not trying to understand. Not even being constantly amazed at what I’m experiencing, or passing through. A strangely complex world where the fantastic and the horrible are made real. And somehow it’s an adventure. The mundane act of wiping the blade is incredibly peaceful to me, and once the blade is free of their blood I feel as though I’ve packaged the whole of their slaughter so it will not trouble me the way their leering death masks did. The cleaning of the blade is just as much a ceremony as was the using of it to deal out death and slaughter.
I slide Deathefeather back into its sheath and investigate the closest wing of the crumbling manor.
I find a giant black-and-red sleeping snake, coiled in massive loops. Its belly is a massive bulge. Something it ate being slowly digested. The snake lies sleeping in the darkness, away from the hot afternoon beyond the crumbling stone walls.
I watch as the bulge, protruding from a coil, moves. As though something in there is reaching out, trying to find the limits of its cage. It reaches. Strains. Pushes against the unbreakable coil… and then surrenders. The bulge stills. Forever. That last act was its final death spasm.
I return to the main hall.
The dogmen and Alucard have to have gone somewhere within this building, so I search for clues. I scan the floor now that my eyes are accustomed to the checkered light. I can see where the debris has been walked over, the rotting wood crushed to dust and splinters time and time again with the passage along a particular trail. I follow the path. But just a few feet in, it’s almost too dark to continue.
I find a piece of wood, pull some rotten tapestry off the wall, and make a quick torch. When the flame is in full bloom I wave it back and forth across the dark floor. Beyond its circle of guttering light I see the dark recess of the building. It leads off into other rooms and deep darknesses.
But I find also what I’m looking for. Stairs leading down.
Far below I can see the flickering light of other torches.
I descend cautiously, yet the ogre that comes at me out of the flickering shadows when I reach the bottom of the stairs makes me recoil in sudden horror. He has the drop on me. He’s not stupid and cruel, but cunning and savage, and it shows as he rushes me with a wicked spear that’s as thick as a fence post. For a brief moment I’m rewarded with a nightmare of being pinned to the oozing walls deep beneath this swampy place.
Then what will become of me? Who will I be then? Will I wake up to play again…? Is this a game? Or will I be someone else? Some ordinary someone else with only dreams of such a life as this?
Yeah… I reflect on all that in the moment the slavering, bloody-lipped ogre comes charging at me. Working his fangs to roar in rage at me for daring to bother him. I see all that and think those thoughts.
Because for a moment time has slowed.
As though I wanted it to. As though I needed it to. As though autumn rains have begun and blossoms, pink and delicate, fall to a pond’s surface. Each of those raindrops is a nuclear strike seen from above. And all of it drips by in slow motion.
The words Serene Focus swim before my eyes.
I sidestep the charging bull ogre and his spear, and I draw my blade for a swift reply. I pivot and confront the ogre who has just rammed into the wall. Full speed. He’s dazed, and seems bewildered that I could move so fast. In that moment I leap forward and cut off his head with one slice. There is strength behind the cut, all of it that I can put behind it, because the creature’s bull neck is thick with fat and muscles. But the blade cares little for resistance and it feels as though I am merely pushing it through heavy cream. Possibly even freshly whipped butter. But nothing more than that.
The monster’s head rolls to the floor of the crypt with that same I-can’t-believe-it look on its ugly face.
Believe it, I want to say. Because this is the truth.
From far away, I hear the barking of dogmen. It echoes from a crumbling stairway that leads even further into the depths. They are coming. They are coming because the ogre’s rage was heard.
Time is returning to normal.
There are many, many of them.
They come surging up the stairs, their harsh barks and patchwork armor rattling the passage. I rush to the stairs and trade blows with the first I meet. Two blows that a snarling dogman parries, the first with ease, the second with effort. The third disembowels him.
The next dog-faced warrior, flecks of rage spraying from its muzzle, foaming canines biting, comes in chopping with a curved sword. I take his head off with one blow and he falls against the side of the passage.
Down the stairs I carve my way through a river of dogmen that will n
ever end. Torchlight makes their unreal faces even more ferocious. Their gleaming yellow canines snarl and bark as they press forward to meet death.
Of that I am sure.
For I am death.
I’m convinced, and I know that sounds poetic. But I see fields of wheat being scythed at harvest. And I am the scythe. And the dogmen are my harvest.
I advance forward, cutting and slashing like a whirlwind of blades. And when I do not cut, I chop. Hacking through the scaled armor and bone necklaces they wear about their furry chests. And when I don’t chop I stab. Planting one foot forward as I pull the blade back and then suddenly ram it through the beating heart of a yapping dogman. Then I pull the blade out and away, doing more damage. Dragging bloody spray across the walls.
I’ve stepped over about twenty corpses when I reach the bottom of the stairs and cut the last two defenders down with a single strike. Both clutch at hairless bellies jutting from their dented and bashed tribal armor. Both watch as their entrails spill out onto the flagstones of this subterranean warren. They flop to the ground and gurgle their last.
The cultists come next. Humans. Dark and swarthy. Those black robes I saw on some of the dead in the slaughtered village. They rush down a side passage and I’m only dimly aware that some temple bell has been ringing out, sounding an alarm.
Summoning all hands to stop the interloper.
I am the interloper.
And I refuse to be stopped because I remember the girl who was run down in the street by the mad priest with the whiplash smile.
Alucard.
Oppressor of the innocent.
So I lay into them, and here the blows are exchanged in rapid fire. A great drum soundtrack thunders inside my head. I hear its rhythms and individual beats rolling out faster and faster as I wade into the press of dark-robed fanatics who are screaming “Allahu Akbar!” A great burning eye hammered in bronze adorns their flared helmets. I hack and slash and crawl forward one fresh corpse at a time.
In the end I meet the last of them. The leader. “Lareth,” he tells me. “I am Lareth!” he shouts and slaps a sturdy mace against a shield emblazoned with that judgmental eye. “You shall not pass, interloper. You shall not change the world from what it is!”
Head down, I watch the flickering dark to the sides. Waiting for him to play some deadly card I’m not ready for. Waiting for a sneak attack from the last of Lareth’s faithful.
“The Priest of Chaos demands you be stopped. And so you shall be.”
“Where is he?” I mutter. My breathing is ragged. I try to control it. I know this is important. Control is important. But I feel like I’m burning up.
“Gone to the temple. And once I’ve taken your soul, you’ll serve me.”
He advances cautiously.
“You’ll serve me for all eternity, unclean foreign dog.”
If there were another, waiting, they would’ve attacked by now. But still… I wait as the fearsome cult leader approaches. Once I commit to my attack, I’ll be vulnerable to the unknown.
I shuffle forward as though I’m ready to slice through his more-than-formidable armor. I even jerk the tip of the katana upward as though I’m going to bring it down in some terrific chop. Testing him to see if he’ll commit to his own defense, or attack.
From out of the shadows, a small man comes running at me. Dark circles ring bloodshot eyes beneath a hooded cloak. He has no chin and his very presence reminds me of a snake. He leads with a dagger, and on its tip I can plainly see the sheen of some deadly poison.
I pivot and draw a slice from shoulder to abdomen on the fast-moving worm. The little assassin cries out in torment and falls to the floor, but the cult leader is already rushing me, screaming that I have killed his brother. He brings his savage mace down hard on my shoulder and I feel or hear some terrible crack. I go down on one knee, crumpling beneath the weight of the blow.
I close my eyes and block out the pain. The man above me sucks in a lungful of air and raises the mace over his head once more, rearing back for one last terrible blow to my skull. He means to cave it in.
I thrust Deathefeather upward like a flagpole.
Blood rains down on me.
The mace hits the floor of the now-silent hall. Lareth’s pierced skull slides down Deathefeather’s razor edge.
It’s later, when I’ve searched the hall of the cultists, that I find the map. Spread out on a table. It’s made of cloth and etched in charcoal. A crude version of the one on the castellan’s desk.
To the north lies a temple.
The Temple of Elemental Evil.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When I wake up alone in the morning I’m in a whorehouse.
It’s very quiet.
The smell of liquor competes with the overwhelming scent of heavy perfume.
She’s gone.
Chloe.
The girl who tried to kill me. And then didn’t.
I never undressed. So I merely stand and try to straighten myself. I feel like I was sleeping hard. Dreaming hard.
She kissed me.
Maybe drugged me.
I feel unsteady on my feet.
I go to the door, and it’s unlocked.
The guards in front of Rashid’s door are gone. I make my way down the stairs I followed Rashid and the blonde up last night. There was a party downstairs then. Now there’s nothing but empty glasses. The dusty remnants of cocaine. The stinky smell of old marijuana. The cloying scent of bad perfume. And the blaze of morning coming in through curtained windows.
“Leaving already?”
I turn. The blond hostess is standing there in the same attire she wore the night before. Her face looks old and tired now. Last night, I wanted to smash it in.
Now… I don’t know.
“Chloe was good?”
Yeah. I still do.
Why?
Because somehow Chloe, or whoever she is, isn’t her. And this whorehouse madame has…
… no right to be talking about her.
The girl I just met. I get that that sounds ridiculous. I get that.
“You’re getting too old for this,” I tell her. Because it’s the only thing I can think of to hurt her.
She smiles and seems to agree. Then she lights a cigarette and waits.
But I’m already gone. Already out the front door.
Rashid’s car is sitting on the front lawn. And other cars. But otherwise it’s a perfectly normal neighborhood of older houses. The kind of place someone would’ve called “Anytown, USA” a long time ago.
I smell the ocean. Then the rank smell of a swamp or bay. Off to the southwest I can see the rising apartment towers and hotels that watched over the mall we were at last night.
I feel like so much has happened since then. But really… nothing has.
I see Chloe again in my head.
And I want to see her again.
I start walking toward what I think is the direction of the ocean.
I walk for the rest of the morning. Weaving through neighborhoods and across carefully manicured parks. Sprinklers and golden sunshine compete with Muslim families out walking their children. Everybody watches me warily but they’re friendly for the most part.
These people aren’t like the people I saw outside the zone. These are all good-looking. Nice clothes. White teeth. Glowing smiles. The women wear colorful head scarves but not full hijabs or even the black oppressive burkas I saw beyond the zone.
Still, they smile at me like normal people who could never believe life beyond the Gold Coast exists. Or maybe they know and just don’t want to believe it.
In time I cross the coastal highway and follow a road that winds down toward the water. I cross over a picturesque bridge onto an island called Balboa. A small little main street, straight out of the last century, stretches out in front of me. Halfway down its length I find a chocolate-dipped frozen banana stand. Its signs are old and faded.
I think one of the frozen treats would be just the
thing for my hangover.
It isn’t. It’s terrible. The Mexican guy who pulls a pre-made one out of the freezer seems to have zero interest in me or his product.
I can see there are all the fixings at hand to make one. Warm chocolate. Fresh chopped nuts. I can smell that they’ve been roasted recently.
But it looks like I’m not getting one of those. I’m getting something pre-made for…
I don’t even have any Calistani money.
I pull out the card Rashid gave me and hold it up. The guy’s eyes go wild. Moments later he’s holding a freshly made frozen banana out to me.
I don’t take it. On principle. Or pride. Maybe I’m taking a stand against the chocolate-dipped frozen banana caste system. I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just cranky.
I sit down on a bench a few feet away and eat the first one he gave me.
It’s terrible and mushy. The chocolate is stale. The nuts hard and dry.
I hate this place.
I hate the whole gig.
I throw my banana in the trash and call Irv.
“I’m out.”
“Why?” he erupts, then starts coughing and wheezing for a full minute, pounding his chest.
“This place is a freak show,” I tell him.
He sighs. I hear the whiny creak of an office chair. I sense he’s leaning back and gathering his thoughts. Or preparing a speech that will convince me not to pass up his percentage of my five million in gold.
“Yeah… kid. Ain’t it all.”
He’s right. I’ve been so far gone I have no idea what normal is. I’ve been out there so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like to just… be.
For a moment, after Chloe tried to kill me, it felt like that. Lying next to her in a small room. Something almost felt normal. Maybe.
Her name probably isn’t even Chloe.
“Listen, kid. Rashid say anything about something big going down?”
That’s an odd question.
“No.”
Long pause.