Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within

by L. J. Hachmeister

  “Why kids, though?” I asked with a frown, rubbing at my chin. “What’s he do with ’em? Is it some kinda virgin sacrifice thing?”

  The picture on the TV flickered again, and Silenus’s goat-legged image was replaced by a photo of the nasty Pasty-faces. “You know what satyrs and seahorses have in common?” he asked.

  “What? No. How the hell would I know that? More importantly, why in the friggin’ hell would I know that?” I replied, staring at the drink in my hand. “They both start with s, I guess.”

  “Yes, they both start with s, clearly that’s the connection.” Cassius offered me a colossal eye roll. “Seahorse daddies give birth. Same thing for satyrs. Piper takes the kids in order to hatch a fresh brood of changelings. He gives birth to a horde of the shifty shits. His revolting offspring, in turn, kidnap a bunch of kids, steal their identities and memories, infiltrating the home, then eat the parents. Once the changelings are mature and the mental link becomes useless, Piper eats the kids, thus closing the whole disgusting cycle.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “That’s brutal. Like pushing someone into a wood chipper, brutal.”

  “Right?” Cassius said with a shake of his head. He hunched forward, swirling his drink, staring at the swishing vortex of Bourbon, then offering me a sidelong glance. “You gonna go after him?”

  I looked away, unwilling to meet his eye, and pinched the bridge of my nose with a grimace. Was I gonna go after him? Maybe coming to Valentine in the first place had been a mistake. Piper didn’t want me here, and he sure as shit wasn’t gonna stand in my way if I decided to hop back in the Camino and split. The folks of Valentine were the ones that entered into the contract. They were the ones that’d screwed the pooch, not me. The universe was giving me a chance to walk away—I could wash my hands of Valentine and leave guilt free.

  Well, mostly guilt free.

  My mind turned toward those kids. A bunch of kids that’d die unless I put my own neck onto the chopping block. I scowled. Sighed. Tossed back the remainder of my drink in a single gulp, the booze hitting my belly like a splash of napalm.

  “You’re such a bleeding-heart moron,” Cassius said. “Complete moron. If you kill us, Yancy, I’m nominating you for the Darwin Awards.”

  I waved his insults off. “Yeah, I know. I keep thinking the same thing.” I grimaced. “But those kids, Cassius.”

  “Fine, idiot. Whatever.” He crossed his arms and scowled at me. “Piper’s got this thing for abandoned cave systems, alright? And the closer to a body of water the better.” He grumbled for a moment “If you can find his lair, you’ll find the kids, and you’ll find Piper. But watch out for that stupid-ass flute of his. All his power is music based—he uses that thing as a focus to channel the Vis. Shut down that flute, you’ll shut him down, too.”

  I opened my eyes, Cassius gone—vanished back into my subconscious—the interrogation room unchanged. I pulled my feet from the water, weaved a small flow of air and heat to wick the moisture away, then shimmied back into my socks and boots. The sheriff stared at me from the corner, her lips turned down in irritation, hands planted on her hips. “So,” she finally snapped as I adjusted the cuff of my pants, “what did you find out with your ‘magic’?” She used air quotes around the word, as though she couldn’t really believe what she was saying.

  “We need an area map,” I replied, “preferably a topical one.” I paused, jaw clenching. “I’m also gonna need a local guide—one familiar with the cave systems in the area. And a mechanic. One who knows his way around a badass sound system.”

  The sheriff squinted at me in suspicion. At last, though, she dipped her head. “Harlan,” she snapped, digging out a pair of keys from her front pocket, “go find me Vick Larsen, then head up to my office.” She plopped the keys into his hand. “There should be several area maps in the top right drawer of my desk. I’ve got a cave survey in there, too. Grab ’em all and get back here ASAP.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff,” Harlan said, with a dip of his chin.

  “Okay, Yancy,” the sheriff said, fixing me with a hard-eyed death stare. “I feel like I’ve been pretty damn cooperative, considering the circumstances, but now I want you to tell me what you know.”

  So I told her, giving her the details Cassius had passed on to me. Harlan came back a few minutes later with an armful of maps and a burly bearded man in coveralls, who I assumed was Vick. “Alright,” I said as Harlan unfolded the maps on the round table, “this is how we’re gonna beat that assclown …”

  I squatted down, fingers trailing over the dusty ground as I surveyed the narrow opening of a cave mouth on the outskirts of town, near a spit of water the locals called Mill Pond. The cave entrance wasn’t much more than a tight fissure in the rocky face of a barely there hill peppered with trees. “You’re sure this is the place?” I asked Harlan, who stood to my right, a compact M4 with a broomstick slung across his body on a tactical sling.

  “It’s bigger than it looks,” he replied evenly, eyes picking over the map in his hands. “The entry’s tight, but it oughta open up into a pretty good size cavern not too far in. Place don’t go real deep, but there’s nothing else in the area. If you’re right and Piper’s holed up in a cave, then it’s here or nowhere.”

  “Is it big enough to hold forty or fifty kids?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “You ever been in there?” Harlan asked, turning toward the sheriff, who lingered just behind him.

  “Once,” she replied, grip tightening on the heavy-duty bolt cutters in her hands. “Long time ago, though, back when I was still in high school—local kids come out here sometimes to drink beer and fool around. At least that’s why I came out here in high school.”

  “Well,” Harlan said with a drawl, “I guess we just need to take a looksee, then we’ll know for sure.”

  “Yeah, alright.” I stood, brushing my hands against my jeans before turning back toward the coverall-clad Vick, our car audio-system expert. “You hooked up and ready to rock?” I asked, nervously eyeing the substantial set of speakers and subwoofers positioned around a Valentine patrol car. The Camino’s sound system—a truly heartbreaking sight. I ran a hand through my hair and took a great big ol’ breath, tearing my eyes away from the damage. If my hunch about Piper was wrong, I could be setting myself up for colossal, certain-death failure. And not just me. If I called this wrong, Harlan and Sheriff Copeman might end up equally dead.

  The greatest casualty of all, though, would still be my poor car.

  Vick nodded at me, then turned his face and spit into the dirt—a big ol’ brown blob of chew-laced saliva. “Everything’s good as you’re gonna get ’em,” he said solemnly, then rubbed a thick, scar-laden hand over one of the black boxes. A pet lover admiring someone else’s dog.

  “Well, I guess there’s no way to put this off any longer,” I said. “Let’s just get this shit over and done with.” I clapped Harlan on the shoulder, then set off. I slid my pistol—freshly reloaded—free from its holster and conjured a wavering orb of soft blue light, which floated an inch above my outstretched left palm. Harlan eyed the little working askew, still clearly uncomfortable with all the wonky supernatural bullshit. “Sheriff”—I glanced at the salty law-woman—“no matter how things go down in there, you work on getting those kids out, trackin’?”

  She nodded, face hardening in resolve.

  “Groovy. Sheriff, you’re behind me, Harlan, you’ve got our six.” Without waiting for a reply, I set off, wiggling through the slash in the rocky outcropping and pushing inward. The tunnel, if you could call it that, was a tight, claustrophobic thing, big enough to accommodate me, but just barely. After about ten feet of pressing rock, though, I squeezed into a rough passageway, maybe five feet wide and seven high, that cut deeper into the hillside before curving away. I trudged on, movements slow, careful, quiet, ears straining to hear anything while my blue orb battled against the gloom of the cave’s interior.

  “Trying for stealth at this point is futile, Mr. Laz
arus,” came Piper’s voice from somewhere up ahead, the words oddly distorted as they reverberated off the stone walls. “This particular cave carries sound exceptionally well, so your arrival hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

  I crept forward another few feet, goosebumps breaking out along my arms.

  The passage led to an irregular room—three or four thousand square feet—just as Harlan had predicted. Greasy firelight, burning from a handful of rusty miner lamps propped up on old crates, illuminated the rough-walled cavern, casting flickering shadows over everything. Along the right-hand side of the cave was a series of cages: beastly things of thick rebar, locked with even thicker chains, containing kids.

  Lots of kids.

  A good chunk of Valentine’s young folk had been sorted more or less by age, then rudely crammed together, with no room to fully sit and certainly not enough to sleep. Each cage had a plastic bucket in the corner, which must’ve served as a shitter. The children themselves were dirty and hollow eyed, their cheeks gaunt, hair disheveled, skin sickly and pale. And they were quiet; not a one of ’em made so much as a peep. No one cried out for help or shouted in protest. No one banged a fist against the prison bars.

  They had the look of coma patients, which meant they were in a trance of some sort—probably part of the binding ritual, attaching their minds to the changelings that’d stolen their identities.

  And speaking of the changelings, they were present and accounted for, too. Yay for me. Piper sat on a rickety wooden rocking chair like it was a grand throne, and spreading out around him in a loose semicircle were his kids. None of ’em had bothered to don their flesh-suits or hide their disgusting, unnatural appearance.

  “I was afraid you’d do something irrational,” Piper said, giving me a lopsided grin as he tented his fingers. “That’s what my kith and kin all say about you. That you have more misguided virtue than common sense. Still”—he paused, picking up his flute, running slender fingers over the carefully carved leaves and vines—“I wonder what you hope to accomplish here? Look around, Lazarus, and tell me how you think to seize victory. You’re badly outnumbered and the terrain favors me and mine. So, last chance, turn around and take your lackeys with you. Leave my brood be, or perish.”

  “A lot of supernatural shitbirds bigger and tougher than you have made that same threat,” I replied with an indifferent shrug, “but here I am, alive, kicking, and getting ready to turn your family into meat-paste. So, I’ll make you the same generous offer. Stop now, leave those kids alone”—I jerked my head toward the cages—“tuck your tail between your legs and run, and I won’t turn you into something I can sweep up in a dustpan, comprende?”

  “Ah.” Piper’s grin faded, vanished. “And so we’ve arrived at that unfortunate impasse I spoke of earlier.” He raised the flute to his chin, ready to play. “How do you propose we proceed, Laz—”

  Pop-pop. I didn’t let him finish the sentence, firing a pair of rounds his way while I broke left.

  In a blink, Piper had that stupid flute to his lips; shrill licks of music swirled and twirled, echoing through the room, battering at my ears and senses. A shimmering wall of twisting green light—shifting in hue from emerald to jade—exploded before him, the hasty construct intercepting my slugs with brilliant flashes before they could sink home and end Piper. Simultaneously, the changelings sprang to life, surging forward in howling rage in response to Piper’s music.

  Gunfire erupted from my right as Harlan opened up on the charging doom beasts, placing precise groupings into the mass of pale bodies.

  I hooked left, squeezing off a few more rounds, capping the Pasty-faces nearest to me. “Get the locks off,” I yelled at Sheriff Copeman.

  What I really needed to do was call up a whirlwind of flame and roast all these sons of bitches wholesale, but I couldn’t risk it, not until we got those kids away. Changelings fell, shrieking, to the floor, limbs missing, bodies leaking out fetid blood, only to be trampled underfoot by their kin.

  My pistol ran dry with a click, and I stowed it with practiced ease before drawing a Vis-imbued K-Bar at my hip—perfect for hooking and jabbing in a tight space like this. I dropped back a step, pressing my back against the jagged wall, then called up a spear of silver force, which blasted into the encroaching horde of creatures, smashing them into the ranks pressing in behind them. I glanced right: Harlan was standing near the entrance, laying down suppressive fire while the sheriff fought at the locks with her bolt cutters.

  This was taking too long. Harlan was doing a damn fine job of holding back the changelings, but eventually they’d overwhelm the sheriff and that’d be endgame.

  With a snarl, I drew Vis into my body, then shoved that terrible power into the ground, reaching into the deep places of the earth. The room trembled, quivered, and the dusty earth cracked as spear-shafts of granite sprouted from the floor. Sharpened javelins of rock skewered the changelings en masse, impaling emaciated torsos, ripping through arms, feet, and legs. The Pasty-faces mewled in pain as they struggled to fight free from the sudden forest of razor-sharp death.

  All the while, the Piper played on, his face darkening, but his fingers never ceasing their frantic dancing—

  One of the changelings broke free, a huge yawning wound in its belly, and threw itself at me. Before I could do jack-shit, jagged teeth sunk into my calf. A burst of pain lanced up from the wound, tap dancing its way through my body. Holy horsecrap, did that smart. With a howl, I lashed out with the K-Bar, stabbing down into the creature’s skull, sinking the blade to the hilt. I jerked the knife free and booted the suddenly limp corpse away from me.

  I took a quick peek out of the corner of my eye: Sheriff Copeman had gotten the locks and chains off the cages, but despite the cage doors hanging wide open, the kids didn’t move. Didn’t try to run. Piper—his damned music was filling up their heads, bewitching them into obedience. “Call Vick!” I shouted, limping right, positioning myself in front of flute-playing asshole in the Stetson. The sheriff tilted her head and spoke into the radio at her shoulder.

  Piper, still protected by his conjured force shield, regarded me with cool hate.

  A second later sound blared around us—an up-tempo track, à la Eric Clapton. Hard bopping piano runs and silky-smooth guitar riffs rattled the walls with thunderous volume. Piper continued to puff away at his stupid flute, but the noise was drowned out by Clapton belting out the lyrics to “Sweet Home Chicago.” A nasty smile, mean and feral, broke across my face as the caged kids came to themselves, Piper’s musical spell broken by the sheer awesomeness of the blues.

  It took only a handful of seconds for Sheriff Copeman and Harlan to evacuate the captives, ushering ’em out in a panicked rush. By then, the changelings were finally starting to pull themselves free from the spears of rock and regroup, but it was a damn-bit too late for that to matter. I slipped over to the tunnel entry, keeping my back pressed against the wall. Finally, Piper stopped playing, horror dawning on his pinched face as he realized how fundamentally screwed he was. I stowed the K-Bar, flipped him the bird as Clapton played on, then threw out both hands, unleashing a wall of flame that burned like the inside of a friggin’ volcano.

  Piper caught fire, his arms waving madly as he stood and rushed me. I conjured another hasty wall of bedrock spikes across the exit—the only exit—barring his path, consigning him to a long and, hopefully, unpleasant death. Asshole. I gave him a small wave, bye-bye, and turned away as he and his body-snatching brood burned, cloying smoke wafting up behind me, awful heat beating at my back.

  Good riddance.

  I puttered down Main Street, more Clapton washing over me, pouring from the open windows as I rolled along, puffing on a well-deserved cigarette. Vick had done a masterful job getting the speakers back in. I glanced up to my rearview mirror, caught a glimpse of Harlan and the sheriff waving at me. I stuck a hand out the window, returned the gesture, then put my foot to the pedal.

  BIO

  Hey all, my name is James Hunter and
I’m a writer, among other things. So just a little about me: I’m a former Marine Corps Sergeant, combat veteran, and pirate hunter (seriously). I’m also a member of The Royal Order of the Shellback—’cause that’s a real thing. I’ve also been a missionary and international aid worker in Bangkok, Thailand. And, a space-ship captain, can’t forget that.

  Okay … the last one is only in my imagination.

  Currently, I’m a stay at home Dad—taking care of my two kids—while also writing full time, making up absurd stories that I hope people will continue to buy. When I’m not working, writing, or spending time with family, I occasionally eat and sleep.

  LINKS

  Author Website: https://authorjamesahunter.com/about/

  Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/James-Hunter/e/B00R7T569C?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1562010499&sr=1-1

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/writerjahunter

  The Tragedy of John Metcalf

  Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

  It was a little after dawn, and John Metcalf was above Bali, scrunched up in an aircraft. Not as the pilot, no, that would have been far too glamorous; he was just one more passenger in a crew of hundreds, scrunched into his slight-too-small seat, legs cramping slightly.

  The asshole in front of him had just reclined his seat, and that made John’s little foldout tray jump out and smack the book from his hands. John wished he could lean out of his seat and call the man an idiot, but instead he sighed and twisted awkwardly in his seat, groping for the book. His eye came level with the porthole.