The Night Sheriff, page 11
Bone Cat piped up. “That charring? It’s called Cajun Style.” I went to give the wretched creature a smack, which he easily avoided.
“I assure you we did no such thing.”
I don’t really know anything about Orsynn. Oh, I don’t mean his hopes and dreams, philosophical ponderings and firmly held beliefs; no, he makes sure that we are fully informed about every thought that blunders its way into the softly throbbing nodule that I am pretty sure serves as his brain. No, I meant what was he? I’d never seen or heard of anything like him before. How old was he? Where did he come from? Were there more like him? Was he going to get any bigger? (I had no way of telling just how much of him remained below the surface. However, after all these years, there was still more water in the lake than there was Orsynn, so I think that was one worry I could dismiss.)
I include him amongst the monsters I have allowed to stay, but that’s rather a disingenuous statement, as I really don’t know when he arrived. We first encountered him in 1968, and he had been much smaller. Bone Cat had been shocked the first time he bubbled to the surface, and I rely on him to know when anything odd is in the park. Even more disquieting, he claims to have trouble “seeing” Orsynn. Thus, he can’t tell me if he’s magical, or something completely natural. Even Orsynn doesn’t know anything about himself. His concrete memories stretch back about five years and then sort of dissipate. As far as he knew, he’d been in this lake for his entire life.
Frankly, I was not even sure that I could kill him if I had to. Luckily, he accepts my dictates regarding his behavior, at least so far, but he does have one worrying concern: He wants to try eating children. I don’t know why; maybe because it is the one thing that I have forbidden him from doing. I would have added “don’t show yourself to other people” but despite his outgoing personality, the idea of being seen by the general populace seems to terrify him. He has overcome this the few times I have personally introduced him to others, but him revealing himself to the world is not something I worry about.
It’s a shame I find him so annoying, really. While he is simpleminded, he is always cheerful, and should be a refreshing tonic after dealing with other members of the supernatural community, who are, more often than not, of a more gothic temperament, but his unrelenting determination to eat children so annoys me for some reason that at times I can barely keep a civil tongue in my head. I don’t even know that he needed to eat, per se, sometimes almost a year would go by without me feeding him some reprobate, and I never heard him complain about being hungry. Perhaps he gets the bulk of his nourishment by filter-feeding the detritus in the lake, in which case, he is certainly doing a poor job of it.
“Excuse me, my friend?” Orsynn had scrunched himself up. Apparently he thought that this made him look more winsome or something.
And now we come to the conversation about children. I took a deep breath. “Yes?”
“I have been thinking. You’re the one who kills these people, yes?”
I blinked. This was a new conversational tack. “Yes. They die while I’m eating the part of them that I require.”
“Have you ever tried eating a dead one?”
“Ew! That’s disgusting!” Belatedly I realized whom I was talking to. “I mean, it wouldn’t work. That which I consume is only there when they are alive.”
“Ah, so you feeding is what kills them?”
This was a level of intellectual thought that I was unaccustomed to vis à vis Orsynn. I found it most disquieting. “No, I can feed on their fear without killing them. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering what it would feel like to eat a person while it was still alive.”
Marvelous. The last thing I wanted was to give him a taste for living flesh. I occasionally push my luck transporting the dead ones as it is. However, it was possible, and while I drew a hard line at children alive or dead, I certainly had no moral objection to making a pedophiles’ final moments a bit more terrifying …
But this level of conversation from Orsynn was disquieting all by itself. “Are you … feeling all right?”
He actually considered this, which was strange in of itself. “Yes,” he said. “But I … I have been thinking.” He drew himself up proudly. “All by myself.”
I stare at him, and then swivel about and stare at the remains of the Happiness Machine sitting on the other side of the lake. “Just in the last few hours, I’ll wager.”
“It makes my head feel all fizzy.”
I don’t even know if this is something I should be worried about or not. “Well, try not to overdo it, especially if you’re not used to it. As to the live food thing … I will see what I can do,” I said grudgingly.
Several tentacles whip around me and squeeze hard enough that I feel my head bulge slightly. “You are the best friend Orsynn could ever have!”
I don’t need to breath, as such, and a good thing, as it was an agonizing several minutes, during which I had to endure the Friendship Song, which is a song that Orsynn composed about us being “the bestest friends in the whole world because I brought him dead people to eat and didn’t throw rocks at him.” I only know that it was supposed to be a song because he stretched the words out the same way every time. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.
Eventually, he released me, and Bone Cat joined him for the big finish, “We will be friends foreeevvvver!”
I suddenly realize that there was a very real possibility that this might be correct. The Vandys and the Mortimers that came into my life, the all too rare bright bits of color and joy that illuminated my existence down through the centuries, would continue to be snuffed out before their time, or else simply recede into the distance of memory, while Orsynn showed every sign of being as eternal as I was.
“No,” I snarled. “We will not be ‘friends forever,’ you superabundant clot of mucus!” I picked up a large rock and threw it into the lake. “You are naught but an overly familiar garbage disposal! I wish I had never met you, or Mr. Mortimer, or Vandy, or any of you!” I looked for another rock and saw that there weren’t any. With a crunch, Orsynn helpfully placed the one that I had just thrown back at my feet.
I brought my fists down, shattering it into fragments. I realized that I was screaming, my fists clenched and aching, my teeth long and my wings unfurled. I was screaming at Orsynn and Bone Cat and Mr. Mortimer and the park and even the stars, who had slipped away from me, one by one over the years. I screamed until I ran out of air and then realized that I had dropped to my knees and clawed deep furrows into the rocky shore. My throat felt raw and it took a bit of effort to get my teeth to retract.
When I looked up, I blinked. Orsynn and Bone Cat had vanished. Slowly I stood up and realized just how far from human I had allowed myself to shift. My neck straightened with a soft crack, and now I saw a single terrified eye poking up from the surface of the lake. I opened my mouth to speak, and with a glurp the eye vanished from sight. I stood there a moment, feeling a bit sick and rather ashamed of myself.
It seems the loss of Vandy had affected me more than I had thought. I slowly shrugged myself back into a semblance of human shape, feeling quite awkward as I did so. I had started out, all those years ago, with a fairly defined human shape. I believe it was because that was the only shape my body remembered, as it were. But over the years, I have had to come to grips with the fact that my memory of it is not what it once was. Oh, it is still easy to mimic the shape of the people around me, but when I am preoccupied, or in moments of stress, the real me appears, and I do not like it. Bone Cat’s disappearance was not without precedence, but it did not make me feel better. Occasionally, according to him, my thoughts and feelings are so … inhuman that he cannot stand to be near me. I now know how he feels.
I think of trying to call them back, but there are times when time and time alone will ease the embarrassment of the moment, so I launch myself into the night and hope that a brief flight will clear my head. As I slide through the sky, I find I cannot properly relax. That emotional explosion is very unlike me …
I come to a halt and hang in the air. Orsynn was not himself as well. Now, in his case, he was merely being thoughtful and less of a jelly-brained clown than usual, but after several decades, any change is significant.
I swoop in over the remains of the Happiness Machine and contemplate it for several minutes. It’s a fact that supernatural creatures are more sensitive to outside influences. But this is worrying. If it being offline for less than eight hours has affected Orsynn and myself to this extent, what is happening to the other permanent inhabitants of the park?
I think it high time I found out.
Which one to visit first? I am closer to the Lost Temple, and thus my choice is made for me.
The Lost Temple is at the heart of Kukuanaland, the jungle explorer section of the park. From the beginning, its popularity made it a keystone ride. Despite its ostensible African setting, the interior also unashamedly displays architectural elements and art from India, China, Mesoamerica, Cambodia, and, so we are told, Atlantis, all revolving around a central image, a great winged serpent. I alight near the door. Bone Cat does not appear. I do not know if it’s because of my earlier outburst, or because he and this particular tenant do not get along.
I find my way to the great central hall and approach the altar at one end. Out of politeness, I extend a claw, and stab the palm of my hand, and a drop of whatever it is that serves me as blood falls into the central bowl. For a moment there is nothing, then a faint mist pours forth from the bowl, and a skeletal snake rises from the center.
“Hola, Young One,” it whispers. “Bow Before Your God.”
Obligingly, I go to one knee. “Hail to thee, mighty Xochemilchic.” Normally, I don’t coddle the monsters that I allow to live here so outrageously, but Xochemilchic is a special case.
After Mr. Mortimer disappeared, Celeste and I tried many different things in an attempt to locate him, but none of them had produced results. By the third night, Celeste’s efforts were starting to range further afield than they ought. I awoke to find her and her mother hammering a copper pipe into the soil. They then spent almost two hours constructing an elaborate mandala around it, using colored chalk, sand, shells, and twelve small jars that, upon examination, I saw contained a variety of insects, lizards, snails, and small fish. “What exactly are you doing?” I asked.
“I am evoking the Spirit of the Land.” She carefully traced out a handprint in red chalk. “It should be able to tell us something.”
I glanced around at the industrial moonscape that would be Zenonland. I knew a little about how these things worked. “As far as the Spirit of the Land goes, I fear you may be a bit premature.”
Celeste snorted. “There is something here. I can feel it.” She paused. “Although I will admit that I am a bit uncertain. I cannot tell if it is very old, or very new.”
“That,” her mother said, “is because this is not your land. None of your power comes from here, my daughter. None. You are a stranger to this place and should walk the path of the supplicant, not the interrogator.”
“Merci, mère,” I heard Celeste mutter under her breath, “but I have done this before.”
The elder L’Enfant possessed either superior hearing, or a shrewd understanding of her daughter. “But you have not done it here. Have you even bothered to introduce yourself to the spirits here? You have not.”
Celeste was, by almost any metric, an old sorceress, wise in the ways of the unseen world and humanity, and should certainly have known better. However, doing something to spite ones know-it-all mother is an all too familiar epitaph. Thus, at midnight, she paced about the great circle, touching each of the jars in turn, and as the last one was touched, there was a rumble and a pop, and the creature we would know as Bone Cat appeared. Needless to say, this proved a great disappointment for any number of reasons, and Celeste had to admit—in front of her mother no less—that she had erred, and I gave it no more thought.
Until exactly one year later, when Bone Cat gasped and fell over. Before I could reach him, he rose into the air, and then was pulled away through the air like a kite on a string. I followed after him, and when we reached the spot where Celeste had performed her failed ritual, which was now the courtyard in front of Missy Mammoth’s Magic Tar Pit ride, I saw a gigantic skeletal snake rising from a crack in the earth. It snatched Bone Cat from the air and shook him vigorously. “Return It To Meee,” the creature hissed.
I tried to intervene and was swatted aside like an annoyance. Bone Cat was whining in a most pitiable manner, and so I did the only thing I could think to do—I rose into the air. Bone Cat faded away, and the serpent furiously swung about trying to find him. When it couldn’t, it astonished me by collapsing to the ground and starting to cry as it began to dwindle in size.
I approached carefully, and, eventually, it raised itself upright and began to talk. Its name was—well, its full name was almost fifteen minutes long, but it would gratefully answer to Xochemilchic, and it was a god. A genuine old-school deity that had been worshipped under one name or another for over fifteen thousand years by a long line of pre-Columbian civilizations. He gave me a list of the peoples that had worshipped him, but I had to confess that their names meant nothing to me.
I suspect, from things he’s said since, that he was there to greet the people who still—metaphorically speaking—had their feet wet from crossing the Bering Strait, and once, when I had brought him a cask of tequila, he hinted that they were merely the first humans who had worshipped him, but about this fascinating subject I could get nothing more out of him, as when it came to drinking, he is a bit of a lightweight. He is used to being offered something called pulque, which is to tequila what a firecracker is to nitroglycerine, and after that one experience, which resulted in him ultimately attacking (and losing to) the Skittering Teapots ride before passing out, he refused to touch it again.
For the last few centuries, since the Spanish conquests, he had survived by spreading himself out through the land, harvesting spare scraps of belief. In another century, at most, he would have faded into oblivion. But when Celeste had performed her ceremony, she had stolen a part of Xochemilchic’s hard-won essence, which had crystallized into Bone Cat, and the shock had galvanized Xochemilchic into coalescing here to try to get it back. Having formed here, it was trapped. It no longer had the energy it needed to leave.
It was Bone Cat who came up with the idea of installing it in the Lost Temple. Originally, the idea was just to give Xochemilchic a place that was familiar, so that it could die in peace. But then, something odd happened. At the climax of the ride, you see the explorer, “Digger” DuQuesne, returning the stolen idol to the altar, thwarting his evil rival, who throughout the course of the ride states that “It belongs in a museum!” Well, when the animatronic Digger finally replaces the idol, there is a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder, and in that flash, visitors began seeing an enormous, winged serpent.
No one could figure out how they did it, and, soon enough, thousands began flocking to the ride to see the mystery for themselves. The park went along with it, and designers began adding representations of the mysterious winged serpent to the walls, and Xochemilchic began to grow stronger. Once again, people are beginning to Believe in him.
It will be a long and slow road, but I have a great fondness for him. He is the first and only “god” I have encountered, which no doubt explains my fascination. I have heard it said that gods should be avoided, but even almost powerless I have found him to be a font of wisdom, and I enjoy talking to him, though I dare not do so often, as it tires him out quickly.
“Why Are You Here?” Xochemilchic whispers. Actually, the Happiness Machine might be difficult to explain. Xochemilchic still tends to rail against the out-of-control futuristic technology embodied in the wheel.
“You have heard the song that makes people happy.”
The snake raises itself up and swivels about. “The Song Is Gone.” There is the beginning of interest in his voice. “I Had Noticed That Something Was Different But Had Not Realized What It Was. Why Has It Stopped?”
“The instrument that made it was broken. Does this affect you?”
Xochemilchic regarded me. “Only In That When People Are Happy, They Have No Need Of Gods. Will It Be Repaired?”
I nodded. “It will.”
“It Uses Wheels, Doesn’t It?”
“A few.”
He sighs. “I Cannot Say That I Am Surprised. Must You?”
I nod. “I really think I must.”
Xochemilchic sighs again as he fades away. “We Are All But Tools In The Hands Of Greater Powers.” Not the most comforting of thoughts.
I exit the temple and find Bone Cat waiting for me. We say nothing about my outburst, and he leaps up onto my shoulder as if nothing had happened. We head towards the Mountain of Madness ride. I stop before the secret door, and reflexively look about, to make sure no one is about, then grasp the door handle. If that sounds odd, it’s because the doors are only “secret” in that they appear to be a perfectly normal set of steel doors, with large hinges bolted to the wall. And, if you open the doors outward, you will merely find a small chamber that holds large spools of the electrical cables that maintain the ride.
However, if you knock thrice, ignore the large friendly sign that tells you to PULL, and instead push, there will be a bit of resistance (as if the doors suddenly weighed several hundred pounds), but with a groan, open they will. You will then find yourself at the head of a small flight of stairs that leads into an immense space. One that appears to be larger than the footprint of the mountain itself. I am assured that this is simply a very well-executed trompe l’oeil. Within this space is a vast heap of books, and, stretched out upon it, a dragon.
I had heard of dragons, of course, and had talked to other creatures that had once seen and dealt with them, but everyone agreed that they had mostly given up on our world several centuries ago and travelled on to greener pastures.
