“S-sorry,” he said. “What was that?”
“I asked why you’re here. A big Protector like yourself.”
His eyes widened, then his spine stiffened to where he couldn’t slouch if he’d wanted to. “How do you know?”
“That you’re a Protector? Or your name? Or the fact I know pretty much everything else about you? Like Marcy, who’s broken your heart, or the love swelling inside of you for your dying partner?” She clucked her tongue. “A man with so many romantic interests shouldn’t be seen in public wooing a pretty lady like myself.”
Harold slammed his fist on the table, a thunk that was lost in the noise of the bar, and the clattering dishes from the restaurant. “Don’t mess with my head, woman. You may be attractive, but if you’re a Siren or something — makes sense that you’re right by the lake, doesn’t it? — I won’t hesitate in killing you if I have to.”
“Relax, Harold. I’m a friend. A Siren would’ve ripped your heart out by now.” A devious smile threatened to curl at the corners of her lips. “If you had a heart.”
“Enough. Get down to business — ”
“Oh my, you haven’t even bought me a drink yet.”
Harold shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. He pushed himself up. “If you aren’t going to help me, then I’m going to help myself. I’ve got a dying partner and a world full of people to save.”
She gripped his arm. Their skin touched each other, and Harold couldn’t describe the feelings that invaded his brain. It was as if he heard every sound ever made in the history of the world, felt every emotion in one big explosion of feeling, saw the faces of lovers lost and friends gained. He saw the world, saw the universe, looked down upon all of the Realms like a god. His insides swelled with love and lust.
And the way she looked at him let him know that she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Please, Storm, sit. I can help you. I’m a friend. Trust me.”
His voice lodged in his throat. The words weren’t coming.
“Please,” she repeated.
He listened, then said: “What was that?”
“That was everything — that was life.”
Somehow she had lost her sex appeal. And he looked at her the way he might’ve looked at a teacher who changed his life. But nothing had changed physically; she looked like a supermodel.
“Sahara is dying,” he said, finally, looking at her with eyes still lost in space and time.
“I know, I can feel it, but she will be okay. I can fix her.”
“How? We’re in the goddamn Seventies. She could be dead by now. Those things…those green mutants.”
She chuckled. “You’ve met my children? How sweet. I hope they treated you well.”
“What? Children?”
“Yes, they’re called Squeebs. I’ve raised them since they were nothing but tadpoles, so I call them my children.”
Harold stood up again, meaning to leave for real this time. He’d heard it all and all of it sounded like crazy bullshit. Didn’t matter if he lived through a Demon attack, or a sword had shot from his arm no less than two days ago because he drew the line at Squeebs. Mutants — abominations was more like it.
He took a few steps away from the booth before she gripped him. But he wasn’t blasted with that swell of emotion. Instead, his vision went dark. That exploding sound filled his head. Dynamite lit by a gunshot.
Time cracked.
Harold felt his body bend in every direction, the skin stretch, brains turn to a pink puddle. His heart might’ve exploded if he had endured the feeling any longer (If you had one) but it stopped. And he knelt on the floor of the bar — what used to be the bar. Old green glass dug into his bare knee. The heat enveloped him. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were quickly blinded by the luminescent white light that hovered in the same seat a beautiful woman had sat in over thirty years ago.
Harold could sense her presence now. That beautiful woman named Cindy.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked, advancing closer to the ball of white light, which vaguely held the shape of a human being.
The light made no reply, nor any motion. Just hovered.
He inched closer, reached out a hand. The burns were illuminated in the light, reminding Harold how grossly disfigured he actually was. Would always be. He plunged his hand into it. Energy zapped through him. Still no feeling from before, and he wanted it, craved it. Needed to see into the Realms again, like a junkie itching for a score.
But instead all he felt was coldness. And death.
He sniffled, felt the tears trying to squeeze from the ducts.
You don’t belong here come home you don’t belong here, that Shadowy voice chanted inside of his head.
Go home
Come home
We need you
Lead us
“No!”
The feeling inside of his palm had vanished, now he held something mushy, something wet. He opened his eyes, and the screams ripped through his middle, through his throat, then through the quiet of the abandoned bar.
The white light vanished. Before him, sat the corpse from his nightmares. That bloated, pulpy flesh. The lips peeled away from the teeth in an eternal grin. Eyes sunken, somehow all-knowing, and at the same time, dead.
It spoke in the sweet, sensual voice of Cindy from 1977, “Harold Storm, I can help you.”
But she couldn’t help him. He knew it. She was as dead as dead could be, yet she spoke; yet her eye gazed into his very soul.
He backed away.
The white light flashed again, blinding. He shielded his face away from the rays. And his vision adjusted, Cindy sat before him, the year 1977, a mirage behind her.
“Is this better?” she asked.
“What the Hell?”
“Thought you’ve seen it all, huh? Well, Harold Storm, you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. You can see it all, though, if you let yourself. Powerful beings such as us can do lots of things. Oh yes, lots. But you must look upon me in my true form, if you want to survive. The year 1977 has came and went — a time of peace — and the year 2016 is upon us and within it, a great darkness comes — ”
“You don’t say?” he said, meeting her eyes — her beautiful, bluer than the Pacific eyes. “That darkness has already came and went, darling. I think we’re a little bit late. Frankly, I don’t care ’cause my partner is dying and there’s still time to save her. The rest of the world — sorry, Realm — I couldn’t give two shits about.”
“Very well, Harold Storm. I will save your partner, but the darkness spilling from the Portal is not the darkness I talk of.”
Her devious smile vanished from her face, replaced by a blank slate of seriousness. Harold felt her glare dig into him like daggers. And he knew what she spoke of without confirmation, but she said it anyway: “I’m talking about the Shadows inside of you, Harold.”
CHAPTER 18
The next time she touched him, he blacked out. But the visions in his head danced. Harold Storm dreamed of his father. Not the one he’d known to be his father — Gregory Storm, the ever-absent binge-drinker, the one who’d been forced to visit him while Harold transitioned from childhood into the formative teenage years. The one who couldn’t muster up a smile when his son had asked him to play catch on a beautiful spring day after the two had shared an uncomfortable breakfast that the young Harold hadn’t known was uncomfortable until he thought of it many years later.
That was the last time he’d seen Gregory Storm. Though he heard from him every few years. A postcard from Texas one Christmas. Wishing you and your mom a Happy Holiday! Been working like crazy down here in Dallas. Hope to visit soon.
Then a letter three or four years later: Tell that crazy woman to quit hounding me about the goddamned child support, Harry. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. Best from your dad. Will write soon.
Soon to Gregory Storm happened to be five years later in the form of a single letter from a lawyer when Harold had
just graduated high school, the world at his feet, ready to start college the following fall. The letter was a request for a paternity test. A year before Mom had gotten the best of old Pops. The back child support he owed amounted to just less than fifty grand. And he’d be paying it for the foreseeable future, never able to outrun it. Man, he’d never seen his mother so happy, and of course Harold smiled with her. Hugged her. Handed her a tissue when she started crying. Hell, she needed the money bad. They had a stack of bills under the leg of the kitchen table so the damn thing wouldn’t tilt when they had their breakfast. And those bills were just the icing on the debt cake his mother had baked for herself.
Yes, that money would help, would be consistent. All was well and good, but Harold’s smiles were empty. He didn’t want money at all. Unless of course, it could buy him a time machine. Because all he wanted was a father.
Harold did not dream of Gregory Storm.
The man he’d dreamt of, he’d seen before. But the memory was hazy. He knew it was not a fond memory, but it was recent one. There was a lot of darkness. Smoke. A bobbing orange light. Then a sly smile and a flash. People screaming. Then clapping.
You’re a hero, Harry.
Guilt.
You’re a murderer, Harry.
Come home.
“I’ve been watching you, Harold, for a long time. Since long before you were born — hundred of years before.”
The feeling, the love the proudness, oozed from the man.
They stood in a dark room. A single lightbulb swung from high up in the ceiling, casting a faint yellow glow on the two men. As always in Harold’s dreams, his skin looked how it had used to. And the pain had vanished. Not even there as a dull thrum in the back of his mind.
“Even if you fail, Harold, you’ve done more than most will ever do in the entirety of their lives. You will not fail, this I know. I may have not raised you, but Denise Storm hadn’t raised a loser, either, no matter what you might think of yourself.”
Denise. It had been odd hearing that name. Of course, Harold had called her ‘Mom.’
“You will be tested, Harold. It will not be easy. I have lived through it.” The man took a step forward. Above, the glow shifted the darkness on his face. Harold could see his penetrating, smoky eyes, and a wispy beard that hung from his chin.
Harold tried to move towards him, but as it often went in dreams, he couldn’t move at all. That invisible hand of the Dream God held him back.
“And I have failed,” the man — his true father — continued. “But you’re a better man than I, Harold. I have no doubts about that. I cannot tell you how the test will go, I can only warn you.”
“Warn me? Have I not been tested enough?”
The man nodded. “You have, but if you are Electus of the Prophecy of Fates, as I suspect you are, then this test is just the first of many.”
Harold’s chest knotted. He was never very good at tests. The pressure got to him. They say pressure can make diamonds or burst pipes, and Harold had already been born with broken pipes.
“You will have to sacrifice one of them. You won’t want to, and it is not my place to influence your choice. That, you will have to make on your own.”
“Then why are you even telling me this?” Harold asked, but he never felt his lips move, or his vocal chords vibrate. Might as well have been communicating telepathically.
Now the light shined bright upon them like the rays from the sun. Harold tried to look up — no way could a single light bulb cast that much light — but his neck wouldn’t move.
He was forced to look upon the old man in front of him.
A smile set deep in the white beard showed proudly.
“Hello again, Harold. Seems like its been years since we first officially met on the beach.”
“Felix — ” Harold said in a whisper, one that echoed in the very emptiness of the room they stood in, now just white-washed.
“Yes, Harold. Your questions will be answered in due time. For now, I will only answer one. I am telling you all of this, about the test, about your future struggles, because I care about you…” There was a measured pause as the man looked at him with glossy eyes. “Son,” he finished.
Harold could’ve cried, and he no doubt would’ve had it not been a dream. “What will I have to do?” he asked.
“You will penetrate the city. But it will not look like the city you know. There will be terrible apparitions. Things they have conjured specifically to twist your mind. Things to make you weak and fragile and filled with emotions. They will throw everything they have at you. But you mustn’t let them phase you. You must get to the Gate. The path there will be easier once you pass through, once you accept your destiny. Your fate.”
“Pass through? What gate?”
“The Gate to Satan’s cell, of course. Only you can slay him, Harold.”
Harold said nothing. Couldn’t.
“’He who is born into the Pack shall drain the blood of the Dark One,’” Felix chanted from his memory. “The Prophecy speaks true and so far, Harold, you have lived up to it. And so shall you complete what is spoken within it.”
“Wait, what else am I supposed to do? How the heck am I supposed to find a gate? There’s a million gates in the city.”
“When you see it you will know. As for what else you are supposed to do, well, son, that is entirely up to you.”
And the light went off like the plug had been pulled from the sun itself. Then there was a clank.
Suddenly, fire swirled in front of Harold’s vision. A large gate shot up into the sky in front of him. From it, a long staircase made of rotten wood and crooked steps extended down into the blackness, like a terrifying way into a haunted cellar. Harold saw the branches of dark trees beyond the gate, how they curled and reached out to him miles away like arthritic fingers. He smelled the death. Heard the shrieking.
Daddy, daddy, daddy. I’m lonely. Come play. Mommy said you would.
That voice, a child’s voice, raked across his brain, and Harold screamed himself awake.
When his vision focused, a great green man looked down upon him with eyes that hung from its sockets like a broken toy.
Harold could hardly control his screaming.
CHAPTER 19
“They really did a number on her,” the woman who looked like a corpse said. Known as Cindy in the seventies. But Harold knew Cindy wasn’t the only name she had gone by for however long she’d been decade hopping.
Harold now knew her as the Grand Witch. Though, like his friend’s parents as a child, he didn’t know what to call her. He just avoided calling her anything at all. She frightened him, and asking questions that seemed so pointless in the grand scheme of things, like what he should call her, would only piss her off. And Harold had no intention of pissing off what looked like a really intelligent Zombie surrounded by a legion of mutants.
“The venom surges through her body attacking her cells. This is not good. Not good at all,” the Grand Witch said. “I’ve not seen such a case.”
The persona of Cindy had vanished with the mutton chops and a much younger version of Chet, the bartender. Harold had a hard time looking at her. That pale, swiss cheese-skin, those sunken, black rimmed eyes. Thankfully, she didn’t smell as bad as she looked. And outward appearance didn’t matter; the only thing that mattered was if her brain was as rotten as her flesh.
Harold reckoned it wasn’t. Sahara was a smart woman even in death, and she wouldn’t direct Harold here without good cause. But the oddity of the entire experience — the time travel, the mutants, the idea of seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting, everything in the entirety of Existence — did much to persuade him to just tuck tail and run.
But he had to remember he was not the old Harold anymore. And with each passing moment the world pressed heavier on his shoulders, he grew stronger and weaker at the same time.
The Grand Witch leaned in closer to the open black Audi. Sahara looked like a soaked piece of cardboard stuck to the le
ather backseat. Her red hair had seemed to lose its vibrant color; it had faded to an ashy, shell of its old self.
How it might look in a nightmare, Harold thought.
Sahara’s hand flopped into the Witch’s. She brought it closer to her face. Fingers traced the black snakes running along her forearm.
She sighed, turned her head to Harold.
Harold recoiled without knowing. Something…just unsettled him about the Witch.
“You can call me Roberta, Harold. Roberta Washington. That is my name. I know you are wondering.”
Harold narrowed his eyes. Had she been able to read minds, too? All along?
“It is the first name I remember. A name that burned in Salem with the rest of my coven. 1693, but I remember it vividly.”
“Roberta…that’s a nice name.”
“Thank you, Harold. You are too kind.” She turned her head back towards Sahara. “Come we must purge her of the venom.” She snapped her fingers, and two of the green mutants — Squeebs, she called them, he thought — reached into the car and pulled Sahara out as if she were a bag of groceries.
One of the green humanoid things had a dark mark near its upside down lips. Harold felt the jolt of guilt rock him. He wanted to apologize, but the thing didn’t seem to remember their little tango, didn’t remember the harsh uppercut Harold had thrown at him in the toxic water. Maybe he was grateful. That mark actually did well to draw the eyes away from the rest of its unnatural face.
And the one with the mark along with the one whose eyes hung from their coiled optic nerves like a pair of fuzzy dice from a rearview mirror, pulled Sahara free with ease. Then the one Harold had punched adjusted and held her like a baby.
Harold reached out towards her, touched the blackening skin of her left arm. It burnt with a warmth like a devilish fire; a fire Harold had felt lick against his skin in the coliseum surrounded by Demons and crazed Shadow Eaters.
The mutant pivoted, brought Sahara closer to his glistening green flesh. “Fren,” he said.
Harold’s fingers clenched into a fist.
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