by Joey Ruff
Table of Contents
The Ballad Nocturne
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Epilogue
Other works by Joey Ruff
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Ballad Nocturne
Joey Ruff
Copyright © 2015 Joey Ruff
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1512145629
ISBN-13: 978-1512145625
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
In memory of Liz Brown,
one of the only angels ever to walk the Earth, and now she’s singing along side them in Heaven
This book is for you, the fans.
Special thanks to BJ May and Allison Ruff, whose amazing support, ability to listen, and willingness to push me helped shape much of what you’re about to read
Additional thanks to Josh Ruff, Cori May, and Marc Nutton
“Everyone carries around his own monsters.”
Richard Prior
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”
T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
1
Swyftt
Two days ago, Beth Norton disappeared.
I didn’t know Beth from Eve, but every indication pointed to her being a social-media whore and selfie-obsessed narcissist. At least, that’s what her friends were.
The friends, Tiffany and Katrina, were my clients, a word I used very loosely. They showed up to my office in yoga pants and furry hiking boots, seemingly more concerned with losing Daddy’s credit card than the well-being of their friend.
Somehow, the girls decided it smart to take a weekend camping trip, just the three of them, to get over a break-up. Beth, however, disappeared in the middle of the night. After the rangers mounted an exhaustive search, they found a bit of blood that proved to be Beth’s, but nothing else. Eventually, the hunt was called off. All my clients could give me was an 8x10 photo of a hoofprint in the mud and the map they’d used to mark their trek.
I was reluctant to take the case, until I asked around and learned what was in the area.
They’d been hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park, which was over two hundred thousand acres of wilderness and hills. Mt. Ranier, called The Mountain by the locals, was a fourteen-thousand foot peak, part of the Cascades (and technically a volcano). I knew all of this from the trivia that my new apprentice, Jamie DeNobb, recited as we drove south toward Tacoma. We took the longer way around on purpose, parking at the White River campground, and hiking the Wonderland trail north for nearly three miles, following the trail that Beth and her friends had used.
We’d been hiking for most of the morning when DeNobb collapsed onto the trail, groaning, “How much farther?”
I opened the map that the girls had given me, ignoring the pencil markings alongside the trail, the scrawled-in notes that said annoying bullshit like, “OMG, the world’s cutest squirrel” and “Rock shaped like a warty penis.”
“We’re close,” I told him. “Maybe a half mile.”
“Great.” He stared up at the sky for a minute. “From the look and position of those clouds, we don’t have long before the sky falls down around us.”
“What do you know? You guys are wrong half the time, anyway.”
DeNobb laughed and gave me the finger. Previously, he was the youngest weatherman in the history of the KING Channel 5 Morning News Team. Now, he slept in my basement. I didn’t want or need an apprentice, but with Ape on bed-rest and DeNobb hanging around – on account of my getting his apartment trashed by gargoyles – I figured he might as well serve a purpose.
I folded the map up and stuck it back in my pocket.
“You never told me what we’re up against.” DeNobb said.
I pulled out a photocopy of the hoofprint photo and handed it to him.
He sat up. “A horse?”
I ignored him and started up the trail again.
He groaned as he stood, and I was twenty yards away as he jogged toward me. “We’re going after a horse? Oh, or maybe, it’s the Headless Horseman?”
“Are you honestly that stupid?”
“So…what? Centaur? What are those half-goat people called? Satrons? Are those real?”
“They’re called satyrs, and yes, they’re real, but no. That’s not what this is.”
“So what?”
“Chin says it’s a Tikbalang.”
“Chin…the old Chinese man in the tea shop?” he asked, nearly incredulous.
“He’s neither Chinese, nor a man, mate. He’s Kitsune, and he’s somewhat of an expert on all Asian beasties.”
“Okay,” DeNobb said. “So, a Tikbalang. What does that even mean? What does this thing look like? Big sharp fangs by which to eat co-eds?”
“You talk too much.”
“Huxley’s first rule is ‘The best weapon is knowledge,’ right?” It was so quiet in the forest, I felt like he was nearly shouting.
“I’m glad you were paying attention. Lower your voice,” I said in a tone I hoped he’d mimic.
“You quoted that to me like a mantra as you made me read all those damn books for the past few weeks.”
“Those damn books will likely save your life one day,” I said. “What did you learn about Tikbalangs?”
“Nothing,” he said, getting excited again. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
“For future reference, I prefer the answers where you’re actually applying knowledge – scant as it may be – instead of just spraying random shit from your tongue.”
“Do you insult all your friends this much?”
I stopped, turned, and looked him in the eye. He was a couple inches shorter than me. His dark hair was short and styled up. He had the kind of clean-cut, pretty boy look that seemed better fit for his TV weatherman job than someone traipsing through the forest, which, incidentally, was not unlike my last apprentice – a bloke named Hunter.
“We aren’t friends,” I told him. “I don’t have friends.”
“I think we’re friends. After all, I am dating your daughter.”
“Well, we’re not. And don’t ever fucking say that to me again.”
“What’s wrong with friends?”
I shook my head and turned away. After taking several deep breaths, I started walking again. He fell into step just behind me.
“What’s wrong with friends?” he asked again. “We live together, we work together…”
“DeNobb…”
“Call me Jamie.”
“No.
” I didn’t look at him. “You will die. Maybe today, maybe next week, maybe in ten years, but you will die doing what I do, living this life. And if we aren’t friends, I won’t care when you’re gone.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Over twenty years.”
“Holy shit.” Then, as if a realization just dawned on him, he added, “But you’re not dead yet….”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“I bet you’ve seen a lot of friends die over the years, huh? Is that why you’re like this?”
“No,” I said. “Because I learned this lesson a long, bloody time ago. You don’t get fucking attached.” Then quietly, more for myself, I added, “But sometimes you forget that.”
“That sucks, man. I’m sorry.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Did you read about Minotaurs in your books? Study them in world history, something like that?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“A Tikbalang is kind of like that, except instead of a bull, it’s a horse.”
“So…it’s a horse-man from Asia. Cool.” I didn’t say anything. “So, we track it down, beat its ass and save the girl?”
“A Tikbalang is a Trickster figure. It’s not as simple as beating its arse. You have to tame it.”
He laughed a little bit. “Sounds kind of naughty. Like Fifty Shades of Midnight?”
I ignored him.
“Oh, come on. It’s okay to laugh some times.”
“I do laugh. When things are funny.”
He sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll bite. How do you tame a Tikbalang?”
I reached over and tugged the top loop of the backpack he wore, jerking him to a stop as I did so. Pulling the zipper, I reached in and retrieved a hefty coil of rope, handing it to him.
“Let me guess, Chin’s magic rope?” he asked.
“It’s a manila rope.”
“Is it at least special?”
“It’s soaked in the amniotic fluid of a stillborn baby.”
He shrieked and dropped it, as if it had just tried to bite him. I stepped over and took it from the ground, dusting it off. “Be more fucking careful. It’s not a tetherball line.”
Eyeing the rope in my hands, he wiped his palms against the legs of his jeans. “Is something written on it? CS…SML. What is that?”
“Latin. Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux,” I said. “It’s the first part of the exorcism of St Benedict: May the Holy Cross be for me a light. ”
“I didn’t think you put much faith in that stuff.”
“I have faith in the rope. And in gentlemanly kitsune with whom I’m well acquainted.”
I offered the rope back to him, but he stared at me. “I don’t want it,” he said. I shrugged, dropped it back into his backpack and zipped it up.
“I wouldn’t have agreed to carry the bag if I’d known your abortion rope was in it.”
“I wouldn’t have brought you along if I’d known you were going to be so goddamned annoying. You whine a lot more than Ape.”
“There’s a million other places I’d rather be right now, too, trust me.”
He kept talking, but I stopped listening and walked ahead a few paces until his words just became white noise with the chirping of the birds and the droning of the insects. As we walked, however, I began to hear less of nature and more of DeNobb.
Where the trail curved around, I noticed something at the edge of the path, just in the underbrush. I probably would have missed it altogether, but the way the light was filtering through the leaves overhead, there was a small reflection.
“What is it?” DeNobb asked.
I ignored him. There in the grass was a tube of lipstick, the fancy kind with the chrome lid. I held it up to show him.
“You think it was Beth’s?”
“I’m sure plenty of people come through here with cosmetics, but there’s one way to find out.” I slipped off one of my gloves. When my bare skin touched the tube, I felt the cold, electric energy begin to surge out of it at once. The familiar buzz stirred behind my eyes, and the lightheadedness overtook me as sudden and complete as jumping into a sodding ice bath.
The forest around me blinked away for a minute before coming back again, though this time, from a much different angle. It looked as if I were lying in the grass. DeNobb was gone, and in his stead were three college co-eds. I recognized the fuzzy boots immediately.
The vision didn’t linger, and as suddenly as it came on, it was gone again. I was standing exactly where I had been, and DeNobb regarded me with a stupid grin.
“Did you see anything?”
I nodded, saying nothing, and moved to the tree-line on the left. I never would have noticed the small, overgrown trail on my own, but I had just watched the girls use it in the vision. Or rather, the lipstick had.
See, I was born with the ability to see the history of an object. All it took was a little bit of skin contact to see and hear events that had happened as if I had been the object itself. I couldn’t actively participate, just observe, which was plenty, most of the time.
DeNobb followed me down the trail, winding around a clump of trees before emptying out into a large, grassy clearing. It was maybe twenty yards across, and just beyond the scant tree line on the far side, I could make out the greenish-blue surface of the lake. DeNobb broke clumsily into the clearing, still talking, and I realized that his was now the only sound.
“Shhh,” I said.
“So did you…?” He stopped. “Did you just shush me?”
“Shut up and listen.”
For about three seconds, he did. Then, “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly,” I said. “We’re in the middle of the woods and there’s not a single sound of nature. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“I… I guess. I hadn’t noticed.”
“Of course not. You were too busy flapping your gums to do your fucking job.”
“Sure, blame the noob.”
“I am. Now keep your mouth shut so I can think.”
Pulling out the trail map, I realized we were standing at the girls’ campsite. DeNobb was just staring at me. “Make yourself useful and look around,” I said.
He did, but asked, “Exactly what am I looking for?”
“Remember the hoofprint from the photo?”
“Sure.”
“Something like that.”
“Right.”
He disappeared from my peripheral vision, and I turned back to the map, studying the terrain, trying to figure the best place for a Tikbalang to hide.
“I thought you were supposed to trick a Trickster,” DeNobb said from somewhere nearby.
“Taming it is a form of tricking it.”
“So he has to honor you?”
“If you do it right, it grants you a wish.”
“I’m gonna wish for some water…”
“Shadow Lake’s right there,” I said, folding the map back up and looking around the edge of the perimeter closest to me. He didn’t say anything for a minute, then suddenly said, “That’s disgusting man, I can smell it from over here. At least you waited ‘til we were out of the car.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You. Farting…old Mexican food, from the smell of it. Gross. It lingers in your mouth a little.” He thrust his tongue out and gagged.
I smelled the air, picking up nothing but a mountain breeze and the fishy scent of lake water. On the other side of the clearing, maybe thirty yards or so, DeNobb was holding his nose and coughing. “Shit,” I said in a near whisper. Unslinging my pack from one shoulder, I pulled out one of my FN-57’s and a fresh twenty-round mag, snapping it in place. I threw the pack back on, took a deep breath, and ran toward where DeNobb had doubled over. I put a hand against his shoulder and pushed hard, shoving him to the ground and out of the way, then pulled the FN up and put three shots into the bark of the nearest tree. In the silent clearing, the noise was cacophonous. But it worked.
Three cr
eatures about the size of turkeys melted out of the forest and came running straight toward me. They were quick devils, closing the distance between us in about a half-second, angry eyes focused and narrowed. The faces looked like goats, but they hissed like snakes, and their ears were so large they clapped together as they ran on four legs.
I managed to drop to the side, putting a bullet into the first one. It went down fast. The other two plowed right over top of it, though, going straight for me, and it was all I could do to back-pedal away from them as their necks stretched out toward me and their teeth snapped hungrily mere inches from my legs.
“DeNobb!” I managed to scream. I fired off two more shots, but neither connected. The bastards were too quick.
DeNobb was rolling onto his hands and knees, casting a sideways glance my way with wide, unbelieving eyes. “What are those?!”
“Hit one and I’ll tell you!”
I fired again, again. Blood burst from the side of one of the creatures, slowing it only a little. I kicked out, striking the other in the side of the jaw, which spun it, turning its attention to DeNobb. The other kept coming at me, as the first sped off toward the weatherman, and I kicked out again and again, but the goat thing moved too quickly to connect. Its ears flapped together angrily as it hissed and spit.
Panting, I caught a whiff of DeNobb’s fart smell and nearly gagged, myself.
A gunshot rang out, loud and unexpected. One of DeNobb’s Glocks, I presumed. He screamed, firing again and again. He fired a fourth shot, and then I screamed as heat seared against the side of my calf. The goat head reached out for me, teeth snapping open, and I shoved the barrel of the FN forward. The back of its head exploded like a ripe melon as I pulled the trigger.
I fell back against a tree trunk for a minute and caught my breath. It took a few seconds. Things were a bit quieter now, and I said, “You okay?”
“I got it,” came a weak reply.
I looked down at my leg, blood soaking my pants just above the boot line. “You got me, too, you bastard.” I squeezed my leg, watched the fresh, bright blood trickle out with a strange fascination.
“Shut up!” he said. I saw him struggle to his feet and stagger toward me uneasily. When he got close enough to see the blood on my leg and the ground, he said, “Holy fuck. I….shot you. Shit, I’m so sorry. I…”
