Dead Jack and the Old Gods, page 3
No, that little runt wasn’t going to use his super powers. We had a rule and it wasn’t to be broken. Besides, I was fine. I just needed a plan.
The raven-haired woman was beside me. I opened my mouth to speak, but I got a mouth full of bile, and choked instead. There was only one way out of this. Through the stomach.
I held my nose and started eating. My first bite set the toad man into convulsions. I sped things up and went to town, tearing through this stomach lining and then working on his organs. Toad spleen is actually a delicacy. Then I started clawing through his fat. Finally, I saw the light.
I ripped and tore at the toad man’s flesh with my teeth and hands. When I pushed my head through his stomach, Oswald was standing there with his arms folded over his chest.
“I could have done it much cleaner,” he said, pompously.
The toad man crumpled, as his guts and blood spilled around us. I stepped out of the carcass and then reached in and pulled out the little raven-haired woman.
She gasped for breath as she broke free of the toad man.
“Next stop, Human Town!” the conductor announced over the PA.
Thank Lucifer. Civilization.
7
Oswald’s Journal
Jack said I should write about my dream. So here it is.
I was under water. Floating in the darkness. I swam, but I wasn’t sure if I was getting anywhere, because everything was black. I wondered if something was following me and then my thought became reality. Something was following me. I sensed it cutting through the water behind me, something large and alien and hungry. I swam faster. A sense of dread filled me. Though my arms stroked and my legs kicked, I didn’t move–and my stalker bore down on me. My body trembled with fear. Then, just as the unknown monster was about to catch me, I found myself walking in a dark city. I could barely make out the structures, but I did know I was no longer in the water. Still, I knew the city was under the ocean. I moved slowly, trying to figure out where I was and how I got there. My eyes must have become accustomed to the dark, because I began to see the forms that lined the endless street: hideous monoliths that rose out of the ground at impossible angles, stone blocks covered in filthy green slime, and grotesque statues of creatures so tall their heads were lost in the black sky. Strange, alien markings and etchings covered the structures. Whether it was writing or a mad beast’s scratches I couldn’t tell, but when I got closer, I saw that the markings had structure and repeated. The discovery made me uneasy, and I moved faster.
The road wasn’t straight. It shifted in width and direction as I traveled through the never-ending city.
Again, I had the sense that something hunted me; only now the thing crept cautiously and kept its distance. It had no need to hurry. This was its home and hunting ground. Sooner or later, it would catch me.
A pair of golden eyes shone in the blackness of the ocean.
At the center of the city, stood a great domed building so large I was barely a speck before it. I knew to fear whatever was inside. I turned to run back–and that’s when the stalker in the dark appeared. At least its mouth did. An enormous maw had opened. Row upon row of teeth like sharpened boulders. I stared inside the world-eating mouth and saw an infinity of dead stars. I screamed–I screamed so loudly that I woke myself from the hideous dream.
8
When You Gaze Into the Abyss
We stepped out of the station and onto a bustling street. Humans as far as the eye could see, going about their day. Accountants, bankers, grocery store clerks, schoolteachers, nurses. No horns or wings or cloven hooves in sight. Regular, normal people. Across the street was a butcher shop, a bakery, and a florist. A city bus rattled by, spewing exhaust.
I could have been back in the Other World, standing on the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues.
Human Town, at the western edge of Witch End, just over The Bleeding Throat, is even more human than the rest of the city. You won’t even find many witches here. Everyone in the Five Cities has a touch of the supernatural, or they wouldn’t be here. Humans needed only an ounce of extrasensory perception or telekinesis—maybe they could bend a spoon with their mind or tell you what number someone was thinking of. It didn’t take much to get you zapped into Pandemonium, which you can think of as a magnet for the supernatural. Since many of the humans in Pandemonium didn’t have much ability—in fact, many of them didn’t even know about their “gifts” until they found themselves trapped in this godforsaken dimension—they didn’t feel comfortable in the world of “mythical” and “legendary” creatures or, as they called them, monsters. For them, leprechauns and vampires and trolls and elves were still the stuff of fairy tales. So, most humans kept to themselves on Witch End, especially in Human Town. Witch End was the eastern most of the Five Cities, and if the humans could have pushed it even farther east, as far away from ShadowShade as possible, they would have done it.
As a result, Human Town was probably the least interesting and boring place in Pandemonium.
The homes and buildings stood upright and straight. There were lawns and white picket fences. Magic was even outlawed in certain areas. I missed the Other World, sure, but whenever I had to step foot on Witch End, my guts tightened. Humans’ greatest superpower is being judgmental. Nowhere is a zombie lower than in Witch End.
But Witch End was still in Pandemonium, and even here the taxi drivers were gremlins. The mischievous imps couldn’t stay away from machinery.
A big puke-green taxi screeched to a stop in front of us.
“Need a lift?” the cockeyed gremlin driver asked, one eye looked at us while the other looked straight ahead.
“Take us to the old Obsidian Tower,” I said when we got in the cab, which smelled like rotten eggs stewed over week-old fish.
“That’ll cost you extra, pal.”
“Just get us there in one piece.”
“I can’t guarantee that.” The gremlin laughed a crazy laugh and mashed his clawed foot down on the gas pedal. The cab sped down the street, cut a hard left, pushing the car onto two wheels. We dropped back down with a bounce and whizzed through Human Town in a blur.
We entered New Salem, which was filled with witches. I guess it was their revenge for Old Salem. To our right sat the Witch Mountains, which were nothing more than foothills. Beyond that was a curiosity. A place called Other World Town. But it wasn’t really a town. It was more of an amusement park, a re-creation of the Other World, as best as the supernaturals remembered it. It was mostly a rip-off but featured the Five Cities’ only roller-coaster.
“What’s your business at the Obsidian Tower?” the gremlin asked, his right eye, I saw in the rearview mirror, looking up at us.
“Private,” I said.
“Right, right. Of course. I heard there’s aliens coming through that hole in the ground, and they ain’t telling us. Little green men. Is that what you’re here for?”
“Is that what people say around here?”
“They say lots of things. They say the witches who guard it are working spells to summon some major demons. But I don’t believe that. The witches around here don’t care for no demons, and don’t we have plenty of them already?”
“What do you think is going on there?”
“I think—and this stays between us—I think they found a way back to the Other World. That’s all these humans talk about. Ain’t many that don’t want to go home. Don’t blame them. Who would want to live with all us monsters, right?” The gremlin cackled a thick, phlegmy cackle that would have given a five-pack-a-day Lucky Dragon fiend a run for his money.
We were heading north with the Dire Wood to our left. Darkness surrounded the little patch of trees and rocks. I looked over at Oswald to see if he had any reaction to his birthplace. The little runt stared out the window, watching the dead trees rush by. Alberic’s lab sat under the Dire Wood. For all I know, his bones are still there. Oswald said nothing, and I was relieved.
“Do you miss the Other World?” I asked the cabbie.
“I miss fiddling about in those engines and hearing the whine of the planes as they dropped out of the sky. That always gave me a kick. I was working on a Stuka over France—nearly had it broken—when I got zapped to the Five Cities.”
“Kind of ironic that a gremlin drives a taxi, isn’t it?”
“Just as ironic as a zombie detective, I guess.”
The Forbidden Bay came into view, no longer hindered by the Obsidian Tower. The last time I was here the tower went up in flames and then my pal Oswald created a swirling portal in its place.
There was something else new: an electric fence with a bunch of warning signs. KEEP OUT. DANGER - HIGH VOLTAGE. PRIVATE PROPERTY.
The cab came to a sudden stop and my face slammed into the back of the gremlin’s seat.
“This is as far as you can get,” he said. “They put this up a few months ago. I hope there’s someone to let you through, because they don’t allow visitors.”
We got out of the cab and I headed to the fence.
“Hey, that’s fifty gold coins!” the cabbie shouted.
“Oswald, give him the money.” I lifted the heavy padlock on the front gate.
“I don’t have any money,” Oswald said, annoyingly.
The gremlin opened his door, ready to jump out and give us a hard time.
I held out my hands to him. “Can we run a tab?”
The gremlin hopped out of the car. He was barely taller than Oswald. The cudgel he held was about half his size.
“You know I miss breaking engines, but I don’t miss breaking heads. Which one of ya wants it first?”
The gremlin took a weak swing at Oswald. He wasn’t really trying to hurt him. It was just a warning swing. The homunculus ducked in time and the cudgel swung over his head.
The gremlin took two steps toward me and suddenly stopped. His eyes grew big and he started backing up. I turned and saw what I could only describe as a black crab, but it was much bigger than a crab, at least twice the size, and its legs were sharp daggers and its shell was as shiny as metal. The thing scuttled over the fence and launched itself at the gremlin, who ineffectually swung his cudgel in the air.
The crab-thing’s needle-point legs danced like Gene Kelly over his face, slicing and dicing the little guy, before me or Oswald could get to him. He barely had time to scream.
I was just about to try to pry the creature off the gremlin’s neck, which was already showering blood, when I heard a voice behind me.
“Get the fook away from that thing!” Zara burst through the fence, her hammer in hand, and made a beeline for the fallen gremlin. Me and Oswald stepped out of the way.
Zara leapt at the gremlin’s body, swung her hammer like a croquet mallet, and whacked the crab creature off the gremlin. The crab shattered into dozens of pieces, green ooze spilling out of its soft underparts.
We all rushed over to the gremlin. He muttered, “Fifty coins, you fooker,” just before the blood stopped spurting from his neck.
Zara placed her hammer back on her right shoulder, where it returned to a tattoo. “Why the fook did you take a cab here?” she asked. “I would have picked you up.”
“Had I known he’d charge fifty coins, I would have made other arrangements,” I said. “You never said anything about inflation in Witch End.”
“There’s a lot I haven’t said. Come on. I’ll fill you in.” Zara turned toward the fence.
“You’re just going to leave him here?” I asked, a little concerned.
“Someone will come and take care of it. Let’s stop wasting time.”
We followed Zara through the gate. When we got to the other side, she did her best to secure it, but she had mangled the lock pretty good when she burst through the fence. Finally, she gave up and said someone would take care of that, too.
We headed across the Children of Thule’s former camp. The last time all three of us were here, we were embroiled in a crazy battle between the neo-Nazis and Lucifer’s demons. Burnt-out Jeeps and tanks dotted the landscape. Most of the buildings stood in ruins.
Just like in the newspaper, Zara’s hair was the color of the blood-red Pandemonium sky. The left side of her head was shaved clean, exposing a tattoo of the triple moon goddess symbol: a full moon and pentacle flanked by crescent moons. I didn’t know if she always had that magical ink under her hair or if it was new. Zara was always adding to her body art—which made sense, since the tattoos could all be conjured by a touch of her hand.
“I like the hair,” I said. “Very devil woman-ish. When did you dye it?”
“I didn’t. This is my natural color, and let’s keep the wisecracks to a minimum. After I show you what I have to show you, you won’t be laughing.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. I have a sick sense of humor.”
Zara gave me a look dirtier than my underwear.
We passed a bombed-out building where Beleth’s legions began their assault on the Children of Thule. It was a beautiful thing.
“Something or someone came through the vortex three weeks ago,” Zara said. “Something bad.”
“Three weeks ago?” I said. “Why did you wait that long before calling me?”
Zara grimaced, cocked her head, and took a deep breath, like she was about to say something she’d regret. But then she said it anyway. “Because, quite frankly, Jack, you mess up a lot and we tried handling it on our own.”
I smiled like the cat who ate the canary. “And now you can’t handle it and you called me as your last resort?”
“Yeah. To be honest.”
“I’m usually the last resort. I should put that on my business cards. Are you really dating Unicorn de Havilland?”
A bright smile bloomed on her face. “It’s none of your business who I date.”
“It’s in all the gossip rags. I’ve seen pictures. You’re famous now.”
“Unicorn told me about a picture she once hired you to find and how badly you screwed that up. You destroyed SleazeTown. Do you understand why I waited to call you?”
“Let’s not get into that. And if you want to know the truth, Oswald destroyed SleazeTown, and he didn’t even have his hoodoo then.”
“Don’t you know everything’s my fault, Zara?” Oswald said, with an edge to his voice. What had gotten into the little bugger? I let it go. We had bigger things to worry about than Oswald’s insecurities.
We came to the vortex. The great big hole sat where the Obsidian Tower once stood.
Five human witches stood as sentinels around the vortex, which was about twice the size of a baseball diamond. They stood about thirty yards away from a metal railing that ran around the hole.
The vortex still swirled, an eerie blue and white light that moved like water down a drain. When the tower first disappeared, the witches used a glamor to trick people into seeing the Obsidian Tower. But now the vortex was in full view.
“What happened to the glamor?” I asked.
“It was a waste of time. Those crab-like creatures were still getting through and the energy it took the witches to keep it up drained them. No point. And before you ask, no we can’t use our powers to block the vortex.”
“It would take too much energy?”
“Yeah. Magic drains you. It’s not something you’re supposed to keep up all day, every day. Something like that would end up draining us and eventually turning us into husks.”
“Did you try putting a wooden board over it?”
“Actually we did, but whatever energy is being emitted from the vortex ate away at it and turned it into sawdust. We probably shouldn’t even be this close to it.”
Me and Oswald both took two steps back.
“A number of the women have gotten sick standing guard. Their hair and nails fell out. Now we do shorter shifts and keep more of a distance.”
“Is that why you called me?”
“No. That’s not the worst of it. Even those little critters aren’t that much trouble as long as you get them quickly, before enough of them gather together. Something else came through. It wasn’t like the crabs. Whatever it was, it was intelligent.”
“A demon? Lucifer maybe?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Who was here when it happened?”
“They’ve been pulled off duty.”
“What did they say?”
“They haven’t spoken since the incident. They’re not—” Zara paused and took in a breath “—normal anymore.”
“Why didn’t you take me there right away?”
“I wanted you to see this first.”
“Incoming!” the sentinels shouted.
A small black creature the size of a dog came skittering out of the vortex. A black crab! One of its pincers darted out and sliced a guard’s face.
Then the thing headed right for me. I did the only thing I could think of. I took off my coat. Like a matador, I held it out and when the critter got close enough I snatched it in my coat. I nodded at Zara. She was already gripping her hammer as if she was Joe DiMaggio.
She nodded back, and I pitched the coat-swaddled critter at her. She reared her hammer back and walloped the bastard. It let out a loud Eeeee! and green slime poured out of my coat.
“You owe me a new jacket,” I said.
“New? That thing must be a hundred years old.”
I picked up my coat and did my best to shake out the critter juice bits, and then put it back on.
“Ugh,” Zara said, and gave me a dismissive wave.
We stood at the edge of the vortex.
When you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you. “What the hell are you staring at?” I yelled into the abyss. I got no reply. “Where do you think this thing goes?”
“I think it can go anywhere.”
“Okay. So, Pandemonium is the home to every weirdo creature from Earth. What are these things?”
“I don’t think they’re from Earth.”
“Are they connected to our mysterious stranger?”
“Hard to tell. For all we know this vortex is like a port and these are visitors from who knows where. Time to visit the Sisters.”
