by David Reed
A lot of hunters like to go it alone, figure things out for themselves. But that’s where we get in trouble, why I’m writing all this junk down. There’s too much out there that can take you by surprise. We need to get organized. There’s dragons? Really? That’s the sort of thing no hunter should turn around and find breathing down his neck.
Wouldn’t it be great if somebody had friggin’ jotted something down about half the creatures we come across? I can’t exactly picture Dean writing in his diary every night (though I can picture him stealing Sam’s and making fun of him for what he wrote). This isn’t about writing down your feelings. But at least keep track of the important stuff. And the point is, it’s all important. If you don’t have time to write down everything you know about dragons, at least write down where you got your information. That’s what I’m gonna do here. I don’t know jack squat about dragons, but I know they’re important. I know they’re gonna mean something, so I’ll point you in the right direction—Eleanor Visyak.
This is an excerpt from an unpublished manuscript she wrote called Dragon Lore, Fact and Fiction. It’s not the version of dragons you’ll read about in The Hobbit—it’s the real deal, straight from the only person who still believed in them before they made their sudden reappearance. After she submitted her manuscript for publication, SFU asked her if she wanted to be transferred from Medieval Studies to the Creative Writing department. We’ll see how they feel about it once they’ve been burned to a crisp by one touch from a dragon’s hand. I hate to admit it, but even I wrote this off as bull when I first heard about it. It wasn’t until recently that I went back and dusted off a copy of the text.
DRAGON LORE: FACT AND FICTION
Written by Professor Eleanor Visyak
Chapter 9: The Dragon Sword
No matter what Hollywood tells us, there is only one way to slay a dragon: with a sword forged from the blood of a dragon. Which raises the question, where did the first dragon sword come from?
In artistic representations throughout history and from around the world, dragons are shown as a conglomeration of human fears: the head of a snake, the body of a lion, the breath of the Devil. While lions and snakes are not relative to this anecdote, the story of the dragon sword does involve a conflict not unlike the infamous rebellion of Lucifer. Like the impetuous archangel, who found it disgraceful that God should so heavily favor humans over the other creatures of the earth, many dragons likewise believed it unfair that creatures as powerful and majestic as them be confined to the darkest and dankest parts of the planet. It was not a love of the dark that drove dragons into caves and dank places that humans rarely inhabited. In the beginning, things simply were. It wasn’t until later that angels, humans, demons, and dragons began their existential explorations into why things were that way. Dragons could set an entire village to flame with a touch of a hand. Why must they live in the darkness? So they grew in strength and numbers and planned to move into the light.
One dragon, Hypolyes, saw the inherent order in the status quo. To each species, a space was apportioned, and the dragons were no more entitled to the entirety of Creation than the humans, angels, or demons. Hypolyes went to purgatory, where the Dragon Mother resided, and told her of the pernicious plans of the other dragons. The Mother realized that she had instilled too much power into her beloved dragons; if no one could kill them, nothing could stop them from destroying her other children: for she had also created vampires and werewolves, rougarous, and wendigos, and she loved all of her children equally. She knew once the dragons left the darkness, it was only a matter of time before they obliterated all creatures, including themselves. So Hypolyes made the ultimate sacrifice for his Mother and fell upon his own blade. Legend says the Mother wept as she filled a pitcher with his blood, but she knew the sacrifice of one of her children would save the lives of many more. Five swords were forged from this blood and scattered across the earth. When the dragons began their uprising, they were so astounded to discover that there was a weapon powerful enough to slay them that they retreated to their caves and dark places once more. No one saw a dragon for centuries, and the swords became lost, the memories of dragon-fire became legend.
But the swords still exist, and the dragon-fire still burns. The time will come when they will come out of the darkness once more.
Names
DEAR DIARY,
I know, this is getting ridiculous, right? Bits and pieces of memory are floating in front of my eyes, but I’ve lost the context. Don’t know what they really mean. Just now, I had this vision of a piece of paper full’a names. I’ve got no idea where it came from or when I saw it. Could they be hunters? There’s no last names, no phone numbers, no nothing. Just names. It must be important, right? They wouldn’t be swimming around my subconscious if they weren’t, but . . . I don’t know. Here they are:
George
Daniel
Stephen
Edward (my dad’s name, I think. I can’t even remember.)
Matthew
These have got to mean something. It feels like it’s right on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t work it out. Maybe it was a list of victims from some monster hunt I went on. Maybe they’re the names of all the innocent people that got killed because I wasn’t good enough at my job. Maybe it’s all meaningless.
Timothy
Chester
Isaac (I think that was Karen’s dad’s name)
Some women’s names as well:
Maria
Sarah
Carolyn
Madeline
Rose
Josephine
. . . . .
Dammit. I realized what this was. Personal. Just . . . don’t worry about it.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Omaha
CAN’T AVOID IT ANY LONGER. I feel like my whole life is shattering, like things I did when I was a kid are getting confused with things I did last week. I was on a Boy Scout camping trip and hunted a skinwalker. No, that’s . . . that doesn’t make any sense. I have to write down the things that still do make sense.
Omaha. I was in Omaha with Rufus, and we were on the trail of something fierce. We had been together long enough to know what we were capable of, and what we’d need help with, and this was one where we needed backup.
We called the usual suspects: John Winchester, Martin Creaser, Daniel Elkins, but none of ’em could make it in time. The thing we were chasing had killed fourteen people in five days. Or was it four people in two days? I’m missing pieces here. I’m missing huge chunks, really. All I know is, if we didn’t go after the thing right there and then people were gonna die, and their blood would be on our hands.
I’m proud of what I do. Of helping people, of trying to make the world better and safer and less . . . evil. But I’m not proud of what I did next.
I called Rufus’s daughter. She’d grown into an independent young woman, and since she already knew about the work we did, I didn’t see the harm in asking if she could help us out for a day. I wasn’t asking her to hunt anything. I wasn’t asking her to hold or fire a gun, or put herself in the line of fire, all we needed was a lookout. Or . . . a driver? I know I wouldn’t have put her in danger. I couldn’t, because I knew she was all Rufus had. He and his mostly off-again girlfriend were never going to be soul mates, they were never going to grow old together. His daughter, though, she was with him through everything. He’d call her every day from the road, tell her what he’d seen. Confide in her in ways I was envious of . . . I guess that’s why I’m saying all this now.
When the time came for us to make our move, she was there. I didn’t have time to tell Rufus beforehand, and he was furious. Almost walked away from the whole thing, but . . .
Did he walk away?
Or am I just getting this all backwards?
At the end of the day, Rufus and I had killed our prey, but not before it had killed his daughter. An innocent bystander, caught in the middle of a situation she nev
er should have been in.
After that, Rufus went his own way. I went back to Sioux Falls, into a self-imposed exile for a while. Didn’t feel like I had any business trying to protect people if I couldn’t even protect my partner’s kid. That was the last time I was regularly on the road. Ever since, I’ve thought of myself as more of a command post for hunters, a resource to call on. I put myself into dishonorable retirement. I was thankful the hantaa couldn’t see what I’d become.
I got her killed. I made the world a lot worse that day.
The Departed
I’VE LOST SO MANY FRIENDS over the years. Probably the only reason it hasn’t driven me completely crazy (before now, I guess, since most people would define not remembering half your life as crazy) is because I don’t let myself think about it. There’s something really sad about being the last of a generation. Almost everyone I came up with is dead. I’m the oldest hunter I know. I’m the only one who remembers the old way of doing things, before the Internet and Facebook and sexting. Samuel Campbell, Sam and Dean’s grandfather who was brought back from the dead for too-complicated-to-explain reasons, he was like me. Couldn’t tell a USB port from a hole in the ground. Like we were cut from the same cloth, except I’m me and he was a total friggin’ bastard. And now he’s dead, for the second time. See how it goes?
Karen. Said about all I can say about her. Still miss her every day.
John Winchester. I had plenty of issues with the man, mostly how he treated his kids like just another set of duffel bags to drag with him from hunt to hunt, but know this: John was as good a hunter as there ever was, and one of those fundamentally decent guys who you knew would never stab you in the back. Didn’t stop me from firing off some rock-salt at him the last time I saw him, but what’s a spot of gun violence among friends? I’d give anything to get John back, if only for Sam and Dean. Those boys have lost so much in their lives, losing their dad was just the terrible icing on the horrible cake.
Ellen, Bill, and Jo Harvelle. I never got to know Bill all that well, but John was pretty close with him. They would go on hunts together every now and then, when one of ’em felt like they needed some more horsepower. That story ended in total tragedy—Bill was on a hunt with John when he got killed, and Ellen never forgave John for it. Bill had a kid, Jo, and that girl needed her father.
Maybe things woulda gone differently for Jo if her dad had lived. I’d like to think that he’d never let her take up hunting, no matter how bad she wanted to follow in his footsteps. It’s a job for people who have no other choice, and that girl was so bright, she had so many other places her life coulda gone. I know Ellen blamed Sam and Dean a little bit for Jo taking up the rock-salt shotgun, but it wasn’t really their fault. They just did what they did, and she wanted to be part of it. It was her daddy—he shouldn’t have exposed her to it. What was he thinking? Letting a little girl learn about all the terrible things that are out there prowling the dark, that’s what a dad’s supposed to protect his kids from. Boys and girls.
Jo wanted to be a hunter so bad it killed her. I . . . I know, after what I just told you about Rufus and his daughter, I’m not one to talk. That’s why I feel so bad about Jo. I thought I’d learned that damn lesson, but I didn’t. It took two kids dying for me to see it. If you have kids, retire. They need you more than the world does.
Ellen, she was a piece of work. I mean that in the best possible way. The woman was tough as nails, but still sweet as a cup of sugar. When she died (her and Jo, they sacrificed themselves to give Sam and Dean a shot at taking out Lucifer, only for the boys’ plan to fail), I wasn’t right for weeks. Some things just ain’t fair, and that was one of them. We’re the good guys. We’re supposed to come out on top. That’s how it is in movies, that’s how it should be in the real world, but I’ve seen enough heroes get torn apart to know that there are times when the bad guys win. The end of The Empire Strikes Back, you know, that’s the truth. That’s the world. It can’t be Return of the Jedi all the time. Am I even making sense anymore? Ellen and I were the last of a generation, and now she’s gone. Martin Creaser don’t count, he’s loony as a . . . a loon. God, I can’t even put together a sentence anymore.
Rufus Turner. Already told you about most of my time with Rufus, and about our falling out, but I didn’t tell you how he died. Last few months, we’ve been wrapped up in this purgatory business. See, purgatory is like heaven or hell, sort of an alternate plane of existence, parallel to our own, but where heaven is filled with the souls of the righteous and hell is filled with jerk-offs, murderers, and people who talk at the movies, purgatory is full’a monsters. I guess in purgatory they’re not considered monsters, but whatever. When a critter dies (vamp, rougarou, whatever) their souls don’t go up or down, they go sideways. Souls, since they’re incredibly powerful, are like celestial ammunition. Heaven and hell both want ’em so they can keep waging their pissing match for the fate of earth. If heaven or hell could get their mitts on the souls in purgatory, they could turn the tide of their war, maybe even end it for good. The powers that be in hell made an attempt at cracking open purgatory, which pissed off the shrew in charge there—the gal who created all the monsters in the first place, who they call “the Mother of All,” or Eve. Eve came through to earth and . . . she wasn’t pleased with us hunters for killing so many of her children over the years. She set a trap for us and turned us against each other. In the chaos, Rufus was stabbed. I tried to tell him that I was sorry for what happened in Omaha, but he wouldn’t let me. He went to his grave holding that against me . . . wanting to hate me for it. I guess he had the right. I hope he rests in peace.
Adam Milligan. Sam and Dean’s half-brother, he got the short end of the stick for sure. Before they even met him, Adam was already dead, killed by ghouls. When Dean wouldn’t say yes to Michael during the Apocalypse, Michael ordered Zachariah to raise Adam from the dead. He was brought back to life just to be a pawn in a game of celestial chicken—Michael had no intention of using Adam as a vessel, he just wanted to provoke a reaction from Dean. When Dean still said no to Michael, he reluctantly took Adam as a vessel instead, and Adam ended up trapped in hell with Michael and Satan. The torment that boy must be going through, I can’t even imagine.
Ash. A genius, though you’d never know by looking at him. He died when the Harvelle’s roadhouse was burned down. Gone way too young, like Jo.
Pamela Barnes. Why do the good-looking ones always have to die?
R. C. Adams, Jed Thurnby, Carl Moore, Olivia Lowry. All killed by the Rising of the Witnesses. As if hunters needed any more guilt about the people they didn’t save.
Isaac Foster. Killed by the demon Gluttony. His kid was killed by a demon, that’s how he and Tamara, his wife, got into hunting. Hopefully he’s with his daughter now. Hopefully he thinks it was all worth it.
Daniel Elkins. The man who was credited with hunting vampires to extinction, killed by vampires. Ironic way to go, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. He told me on more than one occasion that he knew he’d go down bloody, and he was right.
Caleb Johnson. Killed by Meg Masters. Never knew him as well as I should have, but he was a damn good hunter.
And then there’s the whole Campbell Clan—Samuel, Mark, Gwen, Christian, a few more. A year ago, I didn’t know any of them. They came into my life and exited it just as fast—every single one of them is dead. A whole hunter legacy, destroyed. As far as I know, Sam and Dean are the end of the line . . . and I don’t see them having kids anytime soon, if ever. Because if they did, I hope they’d know better than to keep hunting.
Something tells me both of the Winchester boys will still be hunting when their names get added to this list, and that that day will come too soon.
Fried Foods
GOD, I’M FALLING APART NOW. Everything’s disappearing. What else do I need to remember?
Okay. This might not seem important, but it is to me. My favorite fried foods:
• Chicken-fried bacon. It exists. Got it
at the Lincoln County Fair, four years back. The same day I met a lady named Reba, fell in love with her, head over steel-toed boots, woulda married her . . . then woke up the next morning and couldn’t stand the woman. That is how good chicken-fried bacon is. I’d highly recommend you do whatever you’ve gotta do to get your hands on some of this before you die, because otherwise your life just ain’t complete.
• Fried Twinkies. Do I need to explain this? Moving on.
• Deep-fried beer. This one’s rare, not just anybody can make it happen, but when they do . . . heaven. I mean that literally. When I’m up in heaven, you can bet your ass that this is what I’ll be eating. Plus, it’s an upper and a downer. Fried food raises your blood pressure, the beer relaxes you. Balances itself right out. Science.
• Deep-fried turkey. Wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it. When I was a kid, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without one of my uncles getting drunk and crashing his four-wheeler into our neighbor’s chicken coop. That way, you get both turkey and chicken for dinner, ’cause my old man would have to pay for the dead chickens, and we didn’t waste food just because it had tire tread marks on it.
• Fried pizza. Simpler than you’d think. Place in Sheboygan does it, could kill a man just breathing the oily air in that hole. That said, I’d never pass up a chance to eat something that’s greasy on the outside and the inside.
• Flautas. I chased a wendigo across the Mexican border back in ’94, ended up staying a month. There was this little cafe, nothing more than a neon sign in a woman’s living room window . . . best food I ever ate. Place didn’t even have a name, just the neon sign, which said “Flautas.” I’m telling you, you’d kill a man to get your hands on these little tubes of fried joy. The hostess wasn’t hard to look at, either. I’d tell you to look it up if you’re ever in those parts, but last I heard the whole town was wiped out in a mudslide—during the Apocalypse. Thanks a lot, Satan . . . ya jag.
