“Piddles.”
“Yip.”
The forest was wet and dark, with shafts of sunlight barely filtering through the thickness of tall trees and jumbled terrain. A plethora of tangled bushes and low branches blocked each path I took in the direction of her bark. Calling her name, I skirted around fat trees and scurried on hands and knees under drooping pine boughs. When only the silence of the woods or a bird whistling a warning to its brethren would answer, panic would rule my actions. I’d thrash through brambles in one direction, then slide down a ravine in another, splash through boggy mush after boggy mush, and end up staggering hopelessly in circles. Frustration and fears stabbed at my chest.
I couldn’t hear the flute anymore either, so I’d yell for Pan too.
“Piddles. Pan.”
My cries to find them turned to beggings for help.
I was mucking my way through a small marshy area riddled with a maze of yellow skunk cabbage when I saw the little mutt blasting full speed across a mossy log that bridged the gully I was in.
I yelled, “Piddles. Stay.”
She yipped excitedly that she had things to do and dashed onwards.
I slogged my way toward the fallen tree. The wetland channeled itself into a tiny, clear stream and my anxiousness was eased not only by having spotted Piddles but also by being able to see what my feet were stepping on.
I hoisted myself up onto the waist-high natural footbridge. A clear game trail approached it from either end. Piddles was sniffing enthusiastically nearby, crisscrossing the path as she tracked whatever had led her there. I took a moment to breath easy, sitting on the log, dangling my legs.
Piddles scampered down the bank to lap at the water, lifting her head mid-slurp once to bark.
In answer, I heard a familiar voice.
“These woods are getting awfully crowded.”
“Tuma?”
He appeared around a bend in the path. “Yep, it’s me, finally gone over to the other side, but I can see a whole lot better now.”
“Far out, man, like in the spirit world, you mean?”
“That’s where I hang these days. How’s your search going?”
“I think I’m zeroing in on whatever’s about to happen. Man, where’s Piddles? She’s disappeared again.”
Another new voice joined the conversation. “Let her go. She knows what she’s doing.” Gerald Pigeon appeared, fresh out of a tunnel-jump, near a jumble of rocks just off the trailway.
I cried out in joy to see him. “Santa.”
“It looks like a happening. The rumbling skies reunion.”
“So you hear it too.”
Santa answered, “I think it’s your injured Shadow God’s call for help as it comes into existence. We’ve searched these woods before but never heard it.”
Tuma nodded thoughtfully. “Deets has been in special tune with it though. Could be he’s amplifying it, and we’ve arrived at the right time.”
“The injured Shadow told me to go public with my abilities. You picking up on its doom could be a result of that.”
The three of us looked at each other questioningly, as if no one knew what happened next.
Pigeon broke the silence. “Beautiful spot. Deets, lead on. It’s your show.”
Despite our past history and their knowledge, I knew it was my expedition. I scratched the crown of my head, then lit a cigarette. I offered them each a Kool.
Tuma quipped, “I gave up a lot of bad habits when I died.”
I laughed. “Man, I’ve heard a lot of criticism about my brand of smokes, but never an excuse like that one.”
The little black dog came bursting through the trailside underbrush without a pause. She ran past us along the path. Her tail was up, flipping back and forth rapidly. A pink tongue lolled out the side of her mouth. Her eyes shone with excitement.
She made it easy for me to make a decision. “We’ll follow Piddles for now.”
So I found myself walking with a friendly ghost and an immortal, following a magical puppy on a footpath through the light-speckled forest. As we descended into steep valleys and climbed ridges near the volcanic mountain, we talked of the tunnel rumblings. Pigeon believed his brother Steel would show himself sooner or later and mentioned there was a major portal in the area.
“You’re looking for an unknown, not the obvious. I took a look at this nearby tunnel entrance a while back, and Steel and Monkey Man checked it out years ago. But it’s worth your investigation.”
As if in answer, I dropped down on one knee before a single plop of fresh cow manure. Atop it, flowered a delicate mushroom. “I heard a flute this morning. Pan’s been in the neighborhood. And walking around with a cow, I see.” I plucked and popped the sacred feast of the gods into my mouth. “I welcome the invitation.”
I strolled along, noticing how vibrant the colors of the vegetation were and how rich and full the music of the forest was becoming. Piddles trotted alongside me, her ears up and her nose twitching at the air. I stopped at a thick tree with a number of roots about three feet tall that lay across the pathway. Its leaves had a unique cloven hoof shape.
Piddles went into a sniffing frenzy. The towering, heavily branched wood gave me pause. Without the magic of the mushroom, I never would have seen it, but there was a figure hunched in among the shadows of the giant-rooted buttress of the tree. I was reminded of Amelia’s door decor at Monster Alley Mansion. Only this crouching being wasn’t the apeman painted on that door. It looked to be one of the refugees that came from a distant planet to inhabit earth’s wilderness areas—the wild-haired, long-armed chameleon creatures I had seen arrive by portal in the Andes. This one’s fur was brown and had taken on contours and textures resembling the bark of the tree. His feet matched the patterns and color of the dust and nuts and debris of the trail. There was also a green patch that covered a section of his shoulder.
He sat still, but his eyes, which he had camouflaged as knotholes, took me in. I nodded a good morning to him, then hesitantly, yet undeniably overcome by curiosity, studied him. He was a fascinating creature to behold, but I quickly felt ashamed of staring at him. I bobbed my head once more to convey my farewell and good wishes. Before continuing on my way, and hoping that I was not overstepping boundaries, I spoke to him. “I’ve seen others of your race arrive.”
The creature answered in unblemished telepathy, “We welcome your hospitable environment. Our home planet is a troublesome place.”
There was no indication of him being perturbed with me.
“Are there others of your kind nearby?”
“We scatter to survive, but I know where to find my friends.”
“Have you met my traveling companions before?”
I turned to gather Pigeon and Tuma into the conversation.
“I remember Mister Pigeon from long ago and have noticed the spectral one in these hills recently.”
They exchanged pleasantries before Pigeon said to me, “The portal area is just ahead. Take your time. We’ll meet you there.”
Tuma and Pigeon said their goodbyes to the chameleon and continued along the path.
The alien watched them as they topped a rise and descended out of sight. “You’re searching for the other wall, aren’t you?”
“The other wall?”
“The portal wall has a shadow now. One sits high on a mountain, beckoning travelers. The other hides as if its secrets would ruin someone’s dreams.”
I raised my eyebrows questioningly.
“This trail leads you to the one overlooking a valley, the one everyone uses. Your friends will be waiting for you there.”
“And the other? Who uses it?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“How do you know about it?”
“From my ability to blend into my surroundings.”
I shrugged
off my knapsack and sat on a large root, double-checking to see it wasn’t his leg. “Crazy, man. Tell me what happened.”
Piddles stopped sniffing around, plopped her butt down, and cocked an ear.
“My home world is in constant upheaval. Not only are my people always at war, but mountains spit fire at one another, ocean waves clash in calculated fury, the air itself will revolt and turn to putrefying gasses. This part of your planet is paradise. There are rumblings deep under the mountains near here, but overall these woods suit me well. To be able to harmonize with my surroundings, without violence being the major part of the blending, is most relaxing. Heavenly. You see, I pick up the patterns and colors of not only my physical surroundings, but I also sink emotionally into the auras around me. This tree is a comfortable old soul. You...” He pointed to his foot closest to me. Its flesh was turning to a replica of blue denim, his big toe having a little red Levi’s logo tag jutting up from it. “...remind me of someone lost between two worlds. It makes me think about a sensation I pick up on as I go about my travels. There’s a section of wood near the visible cabin, but outside the wall of magical keys, that also is distinctly out of place.”
“Uh, huh. I get it. What is it that you feel that’s odd?”
“Another barrier wall, but this one consists of a sense of something missing. And the same for whatever it’s surrounding. I mean it feels like zip. Whatever it is, or isn’t, doesn’t even seem to exist, yet I feel something when I approach the area, which I pick up as dense nothingness. Now that I’ve met you, I feel you carry not only the dilemma of that complete emptiness in your soul but also the key to see and travel into that nothing area.”
“It’s got to be the broken section.” I ran my fingers through my hair, scratching furiously. Piddles leaped up, barked, bounced up the path aways, barked, ran back, grabbed my knapsack in her jaws, yanked it from the jumble of roots and walking backwards, began tugging it along the trail.
The empath stretched his long arms out toward my right hand. All hues of the rainbow suffused his hairy fingers. “Well, I’ll be.” A smile appeared amidst bristly tufts of moss-speckled mustache fur. “I’ll gladly show you the spot.”
Although the chameleon trudged slowly, his strides covered a lot of ground as he was easily a foot and a half taller than I was. Piddles ran ahead enthusiastically, and as I hastened along, a flood of doubts and excited expectations clashed within me. What am I going to do if I find the collapsed tunnel? How do I maneuver in a nonexistent time tunnel? Will I have to reconstruct it? Am I skilled enough to? Will my actions be instinctual, or will I have to puzzle through a maze of confusion? Is Doctor Steel going to advise me? Why have I been involved in so much combat to arrive here? Why have I lost my mortal friends and lovers? How the hell hasn’t a god spotted this area of nothingness yet?
We caught up to Tuma and Pigeon at the edge of a rocky incline. They both smiled, delighted that my giant companion, now looking like an oversized fern with rocky, dirty feet, was joining the search.
Pigeon tapped the air in front of him, sounding a dull thud against a solid mass. “On the other side of the wall, follow the creek bed. This portal has a narrow approach, similar to the alley in New York. Let’s go. This should be enlightening.”
I could see a log cabin higher up the mountain, a waft of blue smoke coming from the chimney.
“Someone’s there.”
“Yes, this is a rather busy jump site, but I suspect that’ll be Steel and Sheoblask.” He turned his attention to the chameleon man next to me. “Jehingofratubalaz, you’re a welcome guest at our get-together. I’m sure any of your insights will be helpful.”
Pigeon wiggled his fingers, flapping his arms as he did so, Tuma did some kind of dance step while his hand motions traced a swift pattern, and Piddles barked while hopping sideways and then tilted her head in expectation. I flashed through my feathered-dog and star pattern and we all stepped through the ripples our magic had opened in the protective barrier. Meanwhile, Jehingofratubalaz just melted into the impenetrable air and out the other side.
About halfway up the slope, I turned, thinking I had heard my name faintly called, drifting up from a mist-enshrouded valley. The land was wild with cascading waters, dense spruce, and ravines clogged with gargantuan boulders, but my eyes honed right in on a small patch of yellow flowers clinging impossibly to a fragment of a ledge on a sharp-edged, sheer cliff.
A sadness overwhelmed me, dampening the adrenaline rush that had come from the chameleon’s revelation.
Hope. Those flowers must have such hope to be able to survive.
Chapter 46
Pushing open the cabin door, my somber mood switched into alert mode when I was greeted by Sheoblask’s curled lips and Doctor Steel’s ice-cold eyes. My hand flicked upwards, ready to counter any ambush. I was enraged to see those two assassins together. All their sadistic psychic probing of my abilities, all the pain and aggravation suffered by so many, seemed to have no place in the healing of the injured Shadow God.
But...
....my rage faltered, knocked aside by the suddenness of shock, as I changed my focus to a figure in front of the fireplace.
The unexpected being in the room, absently feeding slender branches to the flames, ignored my entry. With her back to me, recognition was instantaneous. She was naked, the feathers across her fine shoulder blades had grown longer. They had also widened, making the interplay of their iridescence more prominent. The brilliant plumage spread down the ridge of her spine and fanned out across her upper buttocks.
“Cassandra.” It was a whisper that began as a startled jolt, faded into a sibilant drop-off, dying on the final syllable. “Why are you...?” Then I was back in the church on the beach in Santa Paloma, a blast of fire spitting forth from the curandera’s mouth, a giant bird in the periphery of shadows surrounding the dancers... Bernardo relaying to me, as he munched on arepas and gulped beer, the story of the saint with burned wings who had appeared after the explosion of feathers over the beach. “I never thought... How?”
She’s innocent, crazy.
I felt absolute terror for her. I didn’t want her to turn and acknowledge me. Did she know her fate—a destiny that had already occurred? She still had yet to experience the blast, another victim of the convolutions of time travel revealing itself.
She had told me Pigeon had helped her access the tunnels.
I wheeled on Pigeon and Steel. “What haven’t you told me? What do you really know, goddamn it?”
Doctor Steel dragged on his brown cigarette, his entire body a sneer. He blew the smoke at me, and though I stood ten feet away, I felt it strike my face like a poisonous arrow. “What haven’t we told you?” He snorted contemptuously. “Everybody here has been drawn here by you. Cassandra belongs in this moment, like you. We think she’s another anomaly because no one remembers her being involved in the collapse.”
I could see Pigeon agreed. “Deets, it’s already happened. You’re here to heal the ruin. Nothing more can be done in how it came about. You’re not saving time itself or, for that matter, individuals.”
Cassandra threw another stick on the fire.
Steel rapped his knuckles on a highly burnished metal door in the cabin wall. “This is the location of a time tunnel. After the explosion, I enacted the command for all time entrances to seal themselves all over the universe. I checked this door personally ages ago with Monkey Man for clues as to the whereabouts of the damaged area, but like New York, like the one in Pan’s Valley, they do not hold the answer directly.” His cold eyes became viper-like slits as he continued, “The only remnant of the time tunnels seems to be the rip Sheoblask tells me you inflicted that is roaring through time, accompanying you like a shadow.” Steel’s tongue slashed out, angry and accusing. “Damn you and your god’s presence in this universe.”
He composed himself, settling into his familiar ridiculing
leer. “You hadn’t figured out what the steel doors were, had you?”
I shook my head in the negative. “Someone could have told me.”
Sheoblask reared upwards and thundered, “You imply we should have trusted you? Look at who you are. You ripped the fabric of the tunnels. Hid your secret of the wounded god. Killed my child. And now we discover that Cassandra’s fate is imbedded in your soul.”
Santa Pigeon dropped his chin to his chest, stared at the floor. “I think it can be said in all fairness that Deets was an unwitting catalyst, and the rest of us, excluding Tuma and Jehingofratubalaz, were part of the recipe. If Sheoblask hadn’t meant to destroy, if Steel hadn’t been prepping for a time-jump, if I hadn’t been fluffing my feathers for a hop over the Caribbean...”
Trying to fit more pieces into my puzzlement, I mumbled, “I met Cassandra near that California beach where Steel landed after the blast. And she’s part pigeon. She’s definitely an unknown ingredient.”
Cassandra spoke into the flames. “What happens to me? Am I going to be able to fly? I hear rumors as I wander the tunnels. There are whispers of time cages where people pass their existence living the same instance over and over. Travelers tell stories of gods confused by a spell cast in some fucked-up dream by a simpleton sorcerer.” She turned her head almost completely around on her neck to face me, her eyes rolling wild and faraway, still trapped by some passageway of the gods. She screeched, “I’m to be another of your sacrifices, aren’t I?”
The sky shrieked along with her.
Crashing and roaring, the torn tunnel’s moment was approaching.
A vengeful demon, two immortals, the ghost of a four-hundred-year old escaped slave, a giant chameleon, and a demented bird or angel or whatever she was, all seemed to disintegrate momentarily as my vision went haywire. Lightning flashed across my retinas. I could hear the roar of a powerful dimension-jumping car, heard the shouts of warning in Monster Alley. The smell of a salt breeze suddenly impregnated with the stench of burned flesh flared in my nostrils. Cars honked. My hand slapped a car hood and began to thrum.
Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 30
