by Aiden James
“Thanks, Pops.” His worried gaze followed mine.
I prayed Roderick’s decision to do this was a good one. He was the first to step out of the car, and without waiting for us, jogged over to the towering granite oblong blocks that formed a near-perfectly proportioned upside-down ‘V’. Once he stood beneath the granite archway, he threw his head back and opened his mouth as wide as he possibly could. A shrill tone, fairly painful to our ears, poured forth from his throat.
“What the fuck?!”
The rest of us echoed Cedric’s astonishment. It took a moment to realize Roderick was calling to something, or someone, repeating strange noises in alternating pulses. Like some sort of excruciating Morse code, the shorter pulses were a welcome relief to all of us holding our hands over our ears in a futile attempt to fend off the deafening noises reverberating off the hillsides.
The landscape beyond the archway began to change. Tropical palms soon replaced the bountiful evergreens, and these palms were a variety I had never seen before. Yet, that was not all. The sky beyond appeared to be on fire. It seemed as if another place had been superimposed upon the Andean world we stood within. A dichotomy of realms, if you will; the one we understood well enough, and another far different. A realm we would soon learn existed in an altogether separate dimension.
Chapter 7
“Come quickly!” urged Roderick, motioning for everyone to follow him through the archway. “The dimensional rift will only last for about a minute!”
While I doubt seriously it mattered if we stepped into this other ‘place’ beyond him via that route or not, it felt safest to follow his lead and run to the other side by moving beneath the ancient slabs. Only Cedric hesitated, while the rest of us sprinted toward the archway.
As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw him looking anxiously around himself while the tropical world eagerly gobbled up the foothills of the Cordillera Real. I admit to a little smugness for the many years he had underestimated the reality of the supernatural. But the bigger, more compassionate part of me readily forgave his arrogance, and I empathized with the incredible mind-fuck he struggled to comprehend.
“Come on, man!” I called to him.
“No…I don’t think so!”
He sounded terrified, like I had just asked him to take a running leap into the heart of an active volcano. I stopped and went back for him
“Pops! It’s starting to close up!” Alistair warned.
Indeed. I glanced back to where he, Amy, and Roderick had stepped into this other world. Tall grass obscured the Merrells my kid prefers for light hiking. What looked similar to a clump of tall date palms loomed directly behind him. I had worried he and Amy would regret their decisions to forego bringing jackets for this trip. But, from the immediate look of things, the temperature where they stood easily rivaled the balmy weather we had enjoyed earlier in La Paz.
Meanwhile, the Cordillera Real peaks were returning as the superimposed image rapidly shrank.
“You’re coming with me, Cedric!”
“The hell you say!” He backed away from me. “Regardless of what Roderick says, we don’t know what’s over there, man!”
True.
Maybe the rest of us would be better served if he either waited for us in the car, or drove himself back to La Paz. After all, we had planned to pursue our journey without him in the first place. Five warm bodies to account for with a ruthless Russian assassin on the loose was a much worse proposition than trying to protect four. Not to mention, in my extensive experience on earth, the ‘more the merrier’ tag holds true only for electoral fraud and sexual debauchery.
But something inside told me that Cedric wouldn’t be okay if I left him here. A terrible event was about to happen, and for him, it would be a bigger threat than what lay behind the rapidly shrinking hole in our reality’s fabric behind me.
“No! Damn it, Cedric, your ass is coming with me!”
“Oh yeah? Try to fucking make me, William!”
Surely there are times when I don’t seem like much of a physically imposing guy—especially when compared to the likes of Viktor Kaslow. But, given the warning from my gut, I was determined to not give in to Cedric’s protests.
I took two more steps and leapt. Before he could react, I overpowered him. With his arms restrained, I threw him over my shoulder and hurried back to the others. At any other time, perhaps the look of startled amazement on Cedric’s face would’ve made me all warm and fuzzy inside. To my recollection, this was his first close and personal view of my physical strength. No, I’m not some kind of Superman. That remains an exclusive trait for comic books and Kaslow’s domain. However, I have picked up a few useful tricks from several oriental masters I’ve known in centuries past. Focusing the life force that’s within us all, it’s nothing to lift twice my body’s weight.
Cedric shouted at me and tried to kick his legs into my sides as I ran toward the archway. But forcing my former CIA boss to remain with us proved to be the wisest choice—for all concerned. We made it to where the others waited with only seconds to spare. The hole closed up, and our connection to the world we were familiar with was lost. Yet, before the world we readily understood disappeared, our car suddenly exploded. Hard to say if it was a bomb or a grenade rocket launched from somewhere close by. The result was the same.
“Holy shit!”
Amy and Cedric’s mouths became slack-jawed, confirming Alistair’s shrill cry.
“Do you think that was him?” I asked Roderick.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Hopefully, yes.”
“What?! What in the hell is wrong with you immortals, anyway!” Alistair shook his head in disgust.
“Ali, we have a serious head start on whoever was back there,” I explained. “If it’s Kaslow, then this is even better!”
“You’re not making any sense, Pops!” he said, defiantly. “We’re stuck in this…in this….”
He couldn’t finish as he looked around. Actually, as he and I looked around, our mouths were soon left gaping open like Cedric’s and Amy’s.
“How far back into prehistory have you taken us?” asked Amy. I had forgotten about her paleontology roots. It was her father’s first love before he switched from dinosaurs to early man, and then to the folklore of ancient civilizations. But this eventually cost the lives of him and his wife at the hands of Petr Stanislavsky. “Look at the tongue-shaped leaves on these ferns over here. I could be wrong, but they look like glossopteris plants! If I’m correct, then we have definitely left the South America I’m familiar with by….”
“By what?” prodded Alistair.
We stood upon a hilltop that appeared to be the highest point for several miles. Lush forests covered smaller hillsides below us, and these trees…I had never seen trees as massive. They looked like giant broccoli stalks stretching several hundred feet into the air, and the forests stretched for as far as my eyes could see. There were a variety of unusual smaller trees, as well. But the giants seemed to dominate the landscape.
“Where in the hell are we?” I asked Roderick. “You said a different dimension, right? This isn’t the one the Aymara legends speak of…or is it?”
“You mean the crazy one we used to make fun of, where the Uros people believe their star-born ancestors live?”
“Yes…that one,” I said.
“Two hundred and fifty million years,” said Amy, finishing her earlier thought. “These leaves are most often found in fossils from the Triassic period.”
“Are you sure?”
Alistair’s question sounded hollow as he joined her by the plants. After a nervous scan of the area around us, he looked over at Roderick and me. His eyes begged for a second opinion that would make better sense to his mind. Sorry, kid, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
I suddenly had the distinct feeling we were being studied intensely. It wasn’t an impression of simple curiosity that sometimes alerts my senses when traveling through an Indonesian jungle, feeling the obse
rvation of a monkey or Jaguar as they watch me pass. No, this was predatory. Was it Kaslow? ...The notion behind the feeling wasn’t human. The only advantage we had was the sensation emanated from the thick woods below, roughly fifty yards away from where we stood. The granite archway behind us seemed to mark the very center of the hilltop.
“We should get going, don’t you think?” I said to Roderick.
He chuckled. “Why, are you getting a little nervous, Judas?”
The soft click from a gun safety brought our attention to Cedric. He had pulled out a standard issue Glock and peered warily toward the dense foliage closest to him. I’m sure he would’ve preferred his beloved Beretta, but was likely unable to bring it along with him to Bolivia. I’d say he was lucky to secure the Glock as it was. Regardless, his survival instincts had kicked in.
“Will we be able to defend ourselves if we stay here?” worried Alistair.
“We won’t be here long enough for it to matter,” said Roderick confidently. “Tampara should be here at any moment.”
He smiled, perhaps to offer extra assurance. But then a series of cricket-like clicks and heavy rustling through dense brush in front of the massive tree line drew his attention. His smile faded, taking with it his confidence from a moment ago…along with my own. My deepest worries are always tied to either Alistair or Beatrice, and in this case my boy and his girlfriend’s safety were at issue.
Suddenly, more clicks erupted from the other side of the hill. We were almost completely surrounded by something… something aggressive, but still hiding from view. The thick bushes beyond the ferns that had drawn Amy’s interest now rustled with aggression…less than forty feet away.
“Is this Tampara bringing along a bazooka or an elephant gun?” I tried to keep my tone from turning acidic. “If not, I suggest you strongly consider shrieking again to get us back where we came from!”
“I don’t understand…he should be here,” Roderick mumbled.
He suddenly raised his head and shouted a litany in Gaelic, or mostly in the older language of his youth, as another ancient tongue was mixed in. All I clearly recognized was this name, ‘Tampara’, that he spoke of. He shouted the name three times with more emphasis than the other words. But, still, there was no sign of anyone outside of the growing clicking-chatter in the brush.
That’s when they appeared.
It started with the tip of a striped reptilian tail in the densest brush in front of us…and then another. Granted, it can be difficult to assess size from where we stood, but the tails were easily six feet long, which likely meant the creatures they belonged to had bodies of similar proportion.
“We don’t have any more time to waste waiting for your friend, Roderick!” I chided him, looking around us for some place to provide protective shelter. There was nowhere to hide, unless we could climb to the top of the palms. But the tallest one was maybe thirty feet in height, and would provide no guarantees that our newfound friends couldn’t pursue us. “Get us out of here, now!!”
“You’re right, Judas…let’s move under the archway,” he said, much more calmly than I cared for, and he walked leisurely over to the granite boulders. The rest of us scurried behind him.
No sooner than we had done so, our visitors emerged en masse. Like most people, I believed dinosaurs—even small ones—were long extinct. Astonished, I watched nearly three-dozen of the creatures move out warily from the brush all around us. These were tripods, and each bore sharp claws and long snouts. When they opened their mouths to make the clicking sound that was now much more terrifying, it briefly exposed the inside of their mouths—mouths filled with long serrated teeth.
“Oh, shit! They’re all headed this way!”
Amy clung tightly to my boy as she cried out. I couldn’t picture him effectively protecting her when he clung to her just as tightly. Like Hansel and Gretel trembling before the fabled wicked witch, they cowered beneath the ancient boulders. The rest of us might’ve reacted the same if either our immortality or, in Cedric’s case, his insanity didn’t factor into our behavior. The three of us circled around Alistair and Amy while the small army of raptor cousins stealthily approached the archway.
“Where in the hell is this friend of yours?!” I hissed at Roderick again. “Either get us back to where we were or prepare to die!”
I sincerely meant my threat to him. Roderick glanced at me wearing a wounded look of betrayal. To my knowledge, I’m the only one who knows how to kill him. It’s a closely guarded secret he confided to me during an opium binge in Constantinople shortly after we had failed to infiltrate the Council of Nicea, to prevent the propagation of flagrant heresies the world has suffered from ever since. It’s not guaranteed foolproof, but is a formula that’s killed other druid immortals in ages past.
“You’ll do no such thing!” he retorted. “Tampara has never failed me before, and he will not fail us now!”
“Well, I don’t give a flying fuck as to which of you assholes is right or wrong,” said Cedric, pausing to point his weapon toward a pair of the menacing dragons that had left the pack and now drifted toward us with increasing speed, crisscrossing each other’s paths as they came. “In a few seconds we’re gonna know for certain if this was a terrible decision, or not!”
Without waiting to see if there was any invisible protection for us, like a force field sheltering the archway, Cedric opened fire on the two dinosaurs as they leapt at us. He connected on the first shot to drop the first creature in mid-air, but had to empty most of his clip to kill the second one. There wouldn’t be enough ammunition to take another down.
“Shit!” cried Alistair, when a dozen more came at us. “Please Roderick—do your screaming deal now!!”
“I-I can’t!” said Roderick “There isn’t enough time!”
He stepped out from under the archway, and the remaining herd of raptor-like monsters came after him. Despite my exclusive knowledge of how to end my buddy’s existence, he was still in grave danger on account of how many there were. Surely, one of the giant lizards could land a fatal blow. If that were to happen, it would mean an excruciating death for him with a level of agony very few mortals could comprehend or appreciate. He would literally live through the entire consumption of his physical body.
I prepared myself for the worst, but then the suckers suddenly pulled up. All of them turned their heads toward the woods on our right. Neither Cedric nor our two cubs could sense what had distracted the monsters. The creatures retreated, scurrying back into the woods.
Then, something new approached us.
It wasn’t a physical presence—at least not at first. It was something more felt than seen, until a slight wavering in the air before us alerted Amy, Alistair, and Cedric about the presence.
“Thank God you’re here!” Roderick shouted, while the rest of us waited anxiously to see what would come next. He stepped further from the archway.
The virile voice of an unseen man responded to Roderick in a strange tongue utterly unfamiliar to me. Roderick responded with a mixture of this language and the preferred ancient tongues I had often heard him use. Some of what he said I understood…. The name ‘Tampara’ again, and the Gaelic version of ‘How in the hell are you and the family?’.
“Pops, what in the hell’s going on here?” Alistair warily looked around him to see where the horde of lizards had disappeared. They poked their heads out cautiously from the brush. But, their whipping tails clearly announced we were still on the menu. “Is this the guy Roderick mentioned?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
Roderick turned to face us. He looked relieved and motioned for us all to join him where he stood, roughly thirty feet away. Relying entirely upon the trust he and I had forged over the years, I gave the okay for us all to join him. Cedric kept his handgun drawn as we made our way to where my druid pal waited.
Cedric was the first to gasp, since while he maintained his lizard vigil, he missed the sudden appearance of a hovercraft in the air before
us. Roughly forty feet long and half that size wide, it shimmered with energy. I had never seen metal such as what covered the entire outer shell of the vessel. It bore the appearance of burning red ochre that fanned out to intense copper and then brilliant gold. It could only be one thing. Especially since the substance pulsed as if it carried a living heartbeat!
“Orichalcum!” I whispered reverently.
It had been centuries since I had last heard rumors the legendary metal made famous by Plato so long ago actually existed, and had at that time been recently seen firsthand. A mutual friend, who no longer resides on earth as an immortal, told this to Roderick and me in what is now southern Pakistan. I recall scoffing at the news, since our friend wasn’t the one to actually see it. Since then, I never expected for the damned substance to be proven real. As some may recall, the Atlanteans of ancient lore were supposed to have created hovercrafts from this very metal, only to watch the combination of this material and their supposed ‘Great Crystal’ sink their island paradise to the bottom of the mid-Atlantic.
An unusually tall man stood atop this amazing ship, and for the moment, he was still engaged in conversation with Roderick. Incredibly handsome, his skin was almost bronze in its redness, and his long dark hair rested upon massive shoulders. This surely had to be Tampara, as his turquoise eyes glowed even brighter than Roderick’s.
The man’s skin tone jarred my memory, and I suddenly remembered Roderick talking long ago about this person. Tampara was the favored son of a powerful chieftain, who ruled a large metropolis in one of the earth’s older planes. I felt a twinge of guilt I had thought this was all an elaborate myth Roderick had amused himself with, when he first related the name and the city—a place called ‘Paititi’—to me sometime in the early 1700s, right before I moved back to London from my Virginian estate.
“Everyone, this is Tampara, Prince of Paititi and sovereign son of King Bashaan, ruler of the Yitari people!”
