by Steve Lang
The crystal ball
Farley McIntire goes to the carnival after a long day. Then, something strange happens.
The sun beat down on his head as Farley walked home along highway 85 in the hot summer heat. Sweat beaded on his brow running away in trickles, followed by rivers flowing down his face as he put one foot in front of the other. He wiped the sweaty locks from his forehead and stroked the growing beard that had recently graduated from a Van Dyke into a full-blown hippie beard. The smell of hot asphalt, mixed with the stench of exhaust fumes from cars wafted up into his nostrils, making breathing an unpleasant experience. He had just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte earlier in the day, and although his parents' house was in Concord, just a ten minute drive up the road, it seemed a lot further away when you had to walk the whole way. A friend from school happened to see him walking and pulled over about fifty feet down the road ahead of him. As Farley got closer he could see that it was Jim Strugg, one of his classmates Farley sauntered up to the car and Jim lowered the passenger side window as he unlocked the door.
"Hey buddy, looks like you're riding the shoe leather express. Was that your beater I passed down the road back there?" Jim asked. He was smiling. Farley was not amused, but feigned a friendly grin.
"Hot out here. Can I have a lift?" Farley asked.
"Hop in, man!" Jim said. "I was headed over to my girlfriend’s place in Salisbury. You want me to drop you somewhere?"
"Yeah, my folks’ house off highway 73 would be great." Farley replied.
The two drove along for a few minutes listening to a comedy station on the satellite radio in Jim's car as they reminisced about college and how glad they were to be done with it.
"Yep, all I have to do is pay back sixty thousand dollars in loans and I'm set. Should take what two, maybe three years?" Farley said. They both rolled their eyes.
"This job market sucks, man." Jim said. "I sent out thirty resumes last month and followed up with all of them and still got nothing. I'm looking at fast food soon if nobody offers me a gig."
"I hear ya; I'm not sure what to do now. I spent all my time studying for tests and trying to stick it out."
"You've always had a pretty good imagination, I could see you writing for a newspaper, or maybe publishing books. You were always coming up with little ideas for stories in school. Try and make that work for you, maybe." Jim said.
"Yeah, maybe." Farley said. He stared out the window, trying not to think about the bleak economy.
"Hey, I’m heading over to the fair in Concord tonight with a few of the guys. It's here early this year. You want to join us?" Jim asked.
"I don't know, man."
"Come on, what else are you doing? We'll drink some beer in the parking lot and go ride the electric bull." Jim said.
"Alright, I'm in. What time?"
"We'll swing by around seven and pick you up. That way we can grab something to eat before we head over."
Jim got off the highway and dropped Farley at his parents’ house.
"See ya tonight!" Jim said and drove off.
That afternoon, Farley found out that his water pump and radiator were completely shot, and he’d have to get it towed to a local garage. He would have to wait till the following day to get his car over to the garage, so he decided to just kill some time and wait around. That evening, Jim pulled up to his house and honked the horn once for Farley to come out. As Farley came outside, he saw Tim Sedon and Joe Miller sitting in the car with Jim.
"Hey guys, how's it going?" Farley said as he got in on the rear passenger side. Jim handed him a beer.
"Going great! Good to see you, Farley." Tim said from beside him.
"You ready to party and ride the bull? We're going to see who pukes first." Jim laughed.
"Let's do it. I can guarantee it won't be me." Farley laughed. He cracked his beer open and took a sip as Jim drove.
"That's not what we saw last time, Farley. You puked like a freshman chick at her first dorm party. I thought I was going to have to hold your hair back for Christ's sake." Joe said. All four of them were laughing.
"Yeah, well I was trying to forget that one. I bet the operator spent the better part of his night cleaning the bullpen. Good lord!" Farley said.
The quartet grabbed a bunch of burgers from the drive through at a fast food restaurant and drank a few more beers before going to the fair. None of them were drunk, but a buzz was definitely in effect. Nighttime had fallen and the rides were lit up, making the fair feel like a small independent town. As they arrived, Farley could hear people laughing and playing carnival games with their kids. Farley was upset about his car. He didn’t know how much it was going to cost to fix it, and he was more reserved than the other three because of everything on his mind. The aroma of fried foods and funnel cakes gave Farley a nostalgic feeling and it lightened his mood a bit more.
"I'm heading straight back to the mechanical bull." Jim said.
"I want to get a funnel cake!" Tim said.
"A funnel cake will kill your buzz man. What are you thinking?"
"Dude, we're looking at ten minutes at the most and if I get sick on that damned machine again I'm not going to want a funnel cake. You know?" Tim said. The logic was sound enough, and they all agreed to make it quick and made a beeline for the funnel cake stand.
"These things remind me of being a kid again when my parents would bring me here." Tim said. He was happily munching on the funnel cake as white powder dusted the rim of his mouth.
"Dude, are you eating that or wearing it?" Joe asked.
"It's a fashion statement. What, you don't think everyone will be wearing powdered sugar masks in the future? It’s a trend dude." Tim replied with a full mouth.
"Let's get to the electric bull before my buzz wears off." Jim said. He had finished half of his funnel cake and was beginning to look impatient.
"OK, man. Guys, finish up so the princess over there can get to her mechanical bull ride." Joe said.
"Hey, we're on a mission here and if we don't get on it soon we may get out of here without vomiting all over the bull." Jim said. A family of four with two small children across from them had heard every word and looked at Jim with disgust.
"Can you please sit down and be cool until we finish? That is, before we make someone else here throw up?" Farley asked. Jim sat at the picnic table and wolfed the rest of his funnel cake down. "Ready." He said with a mouthful of fried dough.
While they were sitting there, Farley noticed a small red and white striped tent between the bottle toss game and the ring toss booth. A small sign above it read Prophecy/Fortune Read. This was strange because Farley had looked in that direction ten minutes before, and the tent was not there at that time. He got up without another word and walked over to the tent. His friends watched him go as they finished up their cakes.
"Where are you going?" Jim yelled.
Farley was too mesmerized by the tent and did not hear Jim. The tent looked like a red and white striped candy cane, and it beckoned to him to come closer. His friends faded from his consciousness. The fair no longer existed and he was walking in a land of fog and smoke as the tent flap opened to him. Later, his friends would say that Farley walked around a corner at the ring toss and vanished; they never saw the tent he spoke of. Farley ducked inside and was overpowered by the odor of incense mixed with body odor and moth balls. A small capuchin monkey cackled at him as his head cleared the entrance. From the outside, the tent seemed to be only about four feet wide, but inside it was easily thirty feet between the walls. Jars containing yellowish liquid lined shelves from floor to ceiling, each one the vessel for odd looking bugs, animal body parts, human eyes, and partial faces that looked to have been cut apart with crude blunt instruments. Farley felt as if he were on another planet in an alien landscape far from home.
"What can I do for you this fine night, young man?" A man said from the darkness.
When Farley turned around, he was face to face with
a short, portly man dressed in a terrycloth robe and white knee-high socks. His slippers were brown corduroy and one of them had a hole in the left big toe.
"I'm. I'm sorry, I just wandered in here. I'm not sure why." Farley's voice was distant, dreamy.
The portly man before him had not shaved in some time, and he reeked like a hobo, but Farley denied every instinct to run and stood his ground before the man.
"You've come to see your future. I don't get many visitors here. Come in and sit down. Let's begin." The man said.
"What's your name, sir?" Farley asked.
"My name is unimportant, but some call me Jinks." The man said.
"Nice to meet you, Jinks." Farley said, but he was not about to shake the man's hand unless he was forced to.
"Sit down, please." Jinks motioned to a pillow in front of a low table.
On the table was a clear glass ball about the size of a grapefruit. The table had small wooden lathe turned legs supporting a sheet of solid granite. Farley sat down and crossed his legs Indian style.
"What would you like to know? What fortune do you seek?" Jinks asked him.
"I'm not sure. I don't know why I'm here." Farley stammered.
"You want to know if you can be free of your college debt. That is what I see in your thoughts. You are also scared that you will not be able to find a job after spending so long chasing the white rabbit down a hole." Jinks said.
"Well, yes." Farley admitted.
"Let me look into the crystal ball and see if I can find your future within." Jinks said.
"You can see that in your ball?" Farley asked.
"All that, and more."
Jinks sat quiet for a moment, staring into the orb on his table, and as he did Farley could feel the tent expand and contract around him as if he were inside the lungs of some great beast. Farley began to perspire and his heart raced as Jinks reached out to the ball, cupping his fingers around it. When they were an inch from the sides, Farley could see electric sparks flashing between Jinks' fingers and he saw that the ball was now filled with dark smoke. Farley could hear voices in his head and the screams of many people in pain. Sweat poured from his forehead, and the louder the noise became the more he felt his sanity slip away. Farley fell sideways, screaming and holding himself in the fetal position as the world swam away and he was locked in an embrace with his knees. Tears filled his eyes and he could see them now: the dead and dying all around him on a field of battle.
Humans, orcs, werewolves, minotaur's, and centaurs, engaged in mortal combat with spears, axes, and terrible great swords. Fires raged in his mind as Farley heard and saw shrieks of terror and rage. Two tall figures emerged from the battle like warriors out of a nightmare. Farley looked on as werewolves in leather armor slayed enemies before them, one after another in the fray of a horrible battle. Their claws shredded through centaur attackers, as the horse men leapt over the corpses of the fallen and stabbed down with their mighty spears. Farley felt as if the wolf men were inside his head and he could hear their thoughts. So much anger and sorrow. They fought back to back through the encroaching fire as bombs exploded and hell rained down. Farley saw that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of the dead piled in an ocean of bodies.
He was no longer in the tent, and Jinks could have been a figment of his imagination, as he writhed on the ground and screamed in a pit of flames. What he saw next caused an involuntary release of his bladder. Rising out of the fires, standing high above the battlefield was a black demon with the head of a bull and massive horns of onyx staring through red eyes toward the battlefield. His massive arms wielded a battle-axe the size of a skyscraper that had been forged with demonic skulls at the tip. With bulging biceps, the minotaur demon god swung his weapon and cleared a division of soldiers from the field, smashing their bodies with a single blow.
"I am Smoke!" It screamed.
Farley could see the two wolf men stop and stare at the hopeless horror before them. A moment later, the ground quaked and out shot a black winged woman and he knew her to be Lilith, but he didn’t know how he knew her name. She ringed the giant Smoke and stabbed at him with her dual bladed staff as he swatted at her like a bug. The two wolf men dropped another centaur, and began to run to her over the bodies of fallen comrades and foes like.
"Lilith! We are coming!" The larger one yelled.
"Dante and Ramos! It's about time you started doing some real fighting. Are you going to let a girl do it all for you?!"
Covered in blood and gore, the two wolven looked at one another with a get-serious expression.
"You sure she needs our help, Dante? She's got quite an attitude."
As he was speaking, Smoke caught her with the back of his hand, and although she managed to slice off his right pinky finger, the dark angel tumbled through the air slamming into a mountain of the dead.
"I'd say yes, brother!"
Before Farley began to see the world he entered fade away, he saw her rise once more and look his way. She was beautiful, terrible, ancient, and he fell in love. Her black wings spread wide as she glided to solid ground and began to walk toward him. He could see her perfect ashen skin was flawless in the light of battlefield fires. She wore a leather battle plate that accentuated her ample breasts and leather pants that hugged her thighs. Lilith's lips were the color of darkest night and her eyes blood red, as if the whole world were bleeding inside them. She strode forward as the battlefield turned to ashes. The wolven brothers disappeared, and Smoke faded like a dying light. She looked directly into Farley's eyes. He saw her mouth the word "Farley" and then it was over. He was laying on the fairground dirt in the fetal position and the tent was gone. His eyes were closed tightly as tears ran down his cheeks, and once he opened them he realized there was a crowd standing around him. Jim was shaking his shoulder and calling his name when he came to.
"I'm fine. I'm fine." Farley said.
"Where'd you go? You disappeared for over an hour! We thought you'd gone home or been kidnapped and then poof you're laying here in the ground." Jim said.
"You missed Joe tossing his cookies." Tim said. He was shaking his head with solemn reverence.
"I don't know what happened. Am I still on earth?" Farley asked.
"What was in your beer, man?" Joe asked.
"I'm not sure, but all of that seemed so real." Farley said.
"You must have had a seizure or something. Let's get you home, brother." Jim said.
They walked Farley up to his door and made sure he got inside before leaving him with his parents.
"I'll give you a call in the morning to see how you're doing, but you may want to seek some medical attention if you have one of those episodes again." Jim said. He clapped Farley on the shoulder and the other guys gave him bro hugs.
Farley had been wearing cargo shorts that night, and when he got upstairs to his room he noticed something hard in his right cargo pocket. When he reached in he found a glass ball like the one he had seen on Jinks' table.
"What the hell?" He said to himself.
He placed the ball on his dresser and laid down on his bed fully clothed, and fell into a deep sleep. At some point in the night he was awakened by a loud thump on the floor. Farley shot awake with a racing heartbeat, and looked around to see what it was. The streetlight outside shone though the blinds, illuminating the room with dim half-light. Farley could see the ball that had been in his pocket sitting on the floor, and noticed it was growing. Since the fall, it had doubled in size and now it was the size of a beach ball. As his eyes widened he could see a forest through the clear glass, and now it was the size of his bed. Farley wanted to jump out of his bedroom window and then he saw the black winged woman and stopped. She walked through the forest and as she stood in her beauty, the raven-haired woman beckoned to him. Lilith was summoning him to her world and he felt the strong desire to join her. But how, he asked himself, was this happening?
"There are many portals between worlds, Farley." She said through the bubble. "Join m
e in the forest."
She was just as magnificent as she had been when he saw her at the fair. He had to be with her, and so he stepped out of bed, and walked toward the man-sized clear ball. Farley found that he could put his hand through the translucent material, and then his foot, and finally he pushed himself all the way through the glass portal, looking back at his bedroom as the ball began to shrink once more. His world disappeared as he stood in a strange forest, light-years from his own planet. Lilith embraced Farley from behind, under her black wings. His love for her was supernatural, and as long as she wanted him he was there. Farley never went home again, but in his pocket, available for use at any time, was the key to his world in the form of a tiny crystal ball.
in light and darkness
When an angel decides to interfere with the world of men, she inadvertently unleashes a dark power so great it could tear the universe apart.
In ancient times, great wars erupted between the forces of light and darkness, each side immortal, and terrible with power. Their bitter struggles were ferocious. Angels and demons fought for cosmological domination in the ninth dimension. Planets were born and destroyed in neighboring dimensions in the wake of their chaotic battles, as The Creator passively observed. Lucifer dominated all darkness with his army of devils, and Gabriel, the archangel, commanded all else with beings composed of pure light. Their futile quarrel caused a vibration that reverberated through the cosmos from one dimension to another, giving life to unexpected forms of consciousness. For Mankind, and all of the natural creatures on Earth, Martians on Mars, Venutians on Venus, and elsewhere in the multidimensional field of energy, many changes began to occur in the space before time existed.
The Creator held a council with Gabriel and Lucifer and told them this fighting was futile, and not worth the destruction. They ceased their quarreling, and entered an armistice. Bored after several millennia of conflict, the forces of light and darkness began to redirect their energy. Pure curiosity drove them to watch over the life that their battles had unexpectedly ushered into existence.
