The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

by Tim Pratt

  Humans were stupid filthy persistent insects. The world slapped them with an earthquake, and they came back for more! The earthquake was a message from the god itself, and they disregarded it. How much clearer did the god have to be? What part of “I don’t want you here” didn’t they understand? They had pride sufficient to offend the god.

  Next time, there would be no rebuilding. The destruction would be utter, the ground scoured of life, no stone left on a stone.

  For the first time in his life, Beej felt in total harmony with nature. So this was what all those pagans at school were talking about! He’d thought it was airy-fairy shit, all about trees and fields and the moon, but it was really about the raw brute force of nature. Titanic earth forces. The ground itself making its will known, throwing off the parasites that lived and thrived on its surface.

  For whatever reason, this empty lot hadn’t been rebuilt after the quake, despite its prime location adjacent to downtown. This patch of ground was unchanged since the day after the earthquake, except for the rubble that had been hauled away, and the fence, and the grass growing up inside. It still bore the mark of the god’s fury.

  Beej squeezed in through a hole in the fence and stood on the edge of his temple, the altar of the earthquake. Whatever building had once stood here had had a basement, and there was still a large hole with partially broken concrete walls shoring up the earth. Tumbled chunks of concrete filled the pit, with bits of rebar sticking out. Beej skidded down the steep slope into the hole, his bag over his shoulder. Several of the concrete blocks had tumbled together and formed something like a table, with a flat block across the top. The first time Beej saw that, he knew it wasn’t coincidental, not just a random pile of wreckage—it was a sign. It was an altar.

  Beej worked happily, the moon providing his light. He took out the contents of his bag and piled them on the altar, arranging them until the configuration pleased him, in much the same intuitive way he constructed collages. The last thing he took from the bag was a stack of comic books, tattered and well read, the whole run of Marzi’s comic, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. Beej wasn’t sure why the god wanted those, but he knew Marzi was tangled up in this somehow. He fanned out the comics on the altar stone, looking at their covers, remembering the stories—the rainmaker, the mud woman, the rattlesnake sphinx, Aaron Burr, and the box canyon. He’d never liked Westerns, but that wasn’t what Marzi’s comics were about. He hated to burn them, but consoled himself with the thought that these were only reading copies; he still had mint duplicates bagged at home.

  Once the objects were arranged to his liking, he smeared mud on the stone, imagining for a moment it was actually blood. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground, closed his eyes, and waited for a revelation. The god’s communications were usually subtle: whisperings in the night, partial words written in dust, voices hidden in the creak of bedsprings. Granted, the emissary that came to him yesterday in Genius Loci had been pretty dramatic, skin like cracked rock, black hair woven with feathers, a scalping knife in its hand. When it touched his head, Beej had felt a shifting of the plates in his skull, and had understood immediately what the god was doing. It had reconfigured the bones in his head so that they exactly matched the earth’s continental plates. His skull was a geological map now. That delighted him—there must be a vast sympathetic magic there! Marzi had tried to help him, he realized, by rushing in with a knife and driving the emissary away. That had been a mistake, but how could she know? It must have looked awful to her, like Beej was being attacked. He thought of Marzi, perishing under a pile of rubble, and felt a twinge. Maybe there was a way . . . but no. Marzi would die with everyone else, unless by some miracle the earthquake god chose her to be an acolyte, too. Perhaps Beej could initiate her into the church of the earthquake . . .

  Fire.

  The word hit Beej’s brain like lightning. More than just the word—the vision. Flames dancing on the altar. Very well, he would make it so. He squirted lighter fluid over the trash and the comics, then struck a match and tossed it onto the altar. The fluid ignited silently, and the trash—symbolic, Beej knew, of all the wreckage that the earthquake god would create on Earth—began to burn. The smell was unpleasant, but that was part of the deal. Destruction wasn’t pretty.

  The fire didn’t interest Beej much, and neither did the mud. They were side effects, he knew. The heaving of the earth would trigger mud slides, and fires would start when the gas lines broke. They would aid the destruction, but that was all they were: handmaidens. The earthquake itself was preeminent, the first cause. The earthquake was god.

  Something appeared in the flames. Beej leaned forward, staring at the shape in the fire. It was the emissary from the coffee shop, the sand-colored Indian! The figure was small at first, a gray form in the flames, but it gradually grew to human size. It stepped off the altar and stood before Beej, holding a large bowie knife casually in its left hand, feet hovering just off the ground. “Beej,” it said, voice smoky and distant. Indeed, everything about the figure was vague and attenuated, its body now made of smoke, not solid sandstone-colored flesh as before. Was the earthquake god weakening?

  “I’m too far from my epicenter,” the Indian said, and Beej realized with a thrill that this wasn’t an emissary at all, but the god itself. Indeed, why would a being so powerful have need of messengers? It could be anywhere, everywhere—wherever there were fault lines, the earthquake god held sway. “I’m trapped,” it said, “locked behind a door, and by pushing and pushing I’ve managed to open it a crack, enough to reach out to you this way. But I’m still trapped, Beej.” The god wavered, its face blurring. “You have to let me out. You will have assistance from other worshippers, acolytes of mud and fire. But you are my favorite. Remember. My chosen one.”

  “Yes,” Beej said. “Yes, oh yes. Where are you trapped? What can I do?”

  “I’ll show you,” the god said, and raised its knife.

  Beej sat calmly as the god sliced into his scalp. There was not much pain—the knife was very sharp. The god touched the bones of Beej’s head and tugged, and the plates parted. The sensation sent a shiver through Beej’s body. It was better than orgasm. It was an earthquake in his flesh.

  With the tip of the knife, the god began writing on the surface of Beej’s brain.

  Knowledge filled him. He knew where the god was imprisoned. He knew about the artist, Garamond Ray, and how the god had been changed and trapped—and he knew what Marzi had done, what she was still doing. Beej whimpered as the god’s mind brushed against his own. Even at this distance, with the god only reaching through the crack in the door of his prison, Beej sensed its enormity, its inhumanity, its unrelenting purpose.

  Its message conveyed, the god retreated, putting the bones in Beej’s head back together. A breeze blew in through the fence, swirling the god apart, wisping its transitory body into nothingness. Beej touched his head tenderly and found it unharmed. He smoothed down his hair, feeling grubby and human again.

  The things on the altar were smoking lumps, blackened by fire, and Marzi’s comics were now ashes. Beej touched the warm altar stone for a moment, then trudged up out of the hole.

  The sense of total understanding was fading, had begun to fade the moment the god stopped touching him, but Beej remembered enough. He knew what he had to do first.

  He had to break into Genius Loci, and open a door.

  Misty Beyond

  * * *

  Denis reached the site of Jane’s inhumation shortly after nightfall. He pulled his car off the road and drove into the trees, parking well away from the hillside. He searched halfheartedly for a flashlight in the glove compartment, but he hadn’t brought one. That was stupid, but he was under a lot of stress. Denis considered moving his car closer to the mound and letting his headlights illuminate the area, but that would bring him entirely too close to possible entombment. The way Jane had died . . . that wasn’t for him.

  Denis got out of his car, wrapping his overcoat around
him against the evening chill. It was noticeably cooler here in the hills than it was downtown. Denis squinted in the darkness as he approached the mound. The moon was silvery bright, but its light was pale and filtered through the redwoods overhead. Denis stumbled and cursed as he walked, but when he saw the tire tracks running through the mud, he stopped. He hadn’t thought about it before, but Jane had left a trail, driving here through the soft earth. Would someone notice the tracks, and follow them to the mound of mud? Jane had pulled off the road, but she hadn’t gone that far from the beaten path, just a few dozen yards.

  Someone would find her eventually, Denis supposed. There’d be no evidence of his involvement, though. Not once he picked up the knife, and the other remains of the picnic. There were his footprints in the mud, but his boots were not an unusual brand, and by the time the car was discovered, his prints would likely be washed away. Maybe he would scuff away the bootprints when he left. No one had seen him with Jane that night, Denis reminded himself. As far as anyone knew, they had broken up and were no longer speaking. He was safe. There was nothing to fear from Jane now but bad memories and bad dreams—but even dreams of Jane would be a relief from his usual nightmares about the machine that grinds.

  Denis followed the tire tracks . . . and then found another, much fresher, pair of tracks crossing the original set. Denis crouched and touched the new tracks, bewildered. The old tracks were dried on the edges, while the new ones were still damp. Someone had driven out of here recently, today, by the look of it.

  With a sinking feeling, a sort of disbelieving dread, Denis followed the new tracks toward their inevitable starting place.

  The mound of mud was still there, but it looked more like a broken volcano now, hollowed out and caved in. A hole gaped in the side of the mound, and the sides and top had fallen into the hollow center. Somehow, impossibly, Jane had driven out of the mudslide. But how could that be? Surely the weight of the mud would prevent any escape, the slickness beneath the wheels would make traction impossible—but he was faced with the refutation of those assumptions. This mound of mud, and no car, and tire tracks leading out and away.

  “Oh, fuck me.” Jane was alive. And she knew that he’d left her here to die. What would she do to him? Tell the police? Or come after him herself, attack him, talk to him, try to blackmail him? He tried to figure out which approach her personality would dictate. Could he . . . take care of her himself? Actually kill her, to keep her quiet, to keep his secret? He didn’t think so. The past two days had been hellish, edged with hysteria and denial, and then he’d been guilty only of negligent homicide, at worst. Denis was a creature of habit, and premeditated murder would catastrophically break his routine. To actually murder Jane would probably unhinge him. But there had to be some way to contain this situation.

  His mind refused to function properly. Every time he attempted to think in a rigorous line, he imagined Jane’s car driving out of the mudslide and bearing down on him, running him over, crushing his body into the mud.

  When headlights appeared behind him, throwing the mound of mud into sharp relief, Denis screamed.

  He sucked in a breath and squeezed his hands into fists. Screaming wouldn’t help. Perhaps this was just a random passerby, someone looking for a make-out spot, or even a police officer who’d seen Denis’s car parked off the road. There was no cause for panic yet.

  The car rolled toward him slowly, headlights blinding Denis to any details of the vehicle’s make, model, or provenance.

  The engine sputtered like an arrhythmic heart. Denis thought about walking up to the car, to see what they wanted, but why should he? He’d been here first. The fact that the driver could see him while Denis himself couldn’t see anything but the glare of headlights annoyed him, however, so he shaded his eyes and walked toward the driver’s side.

  The driver’s door opened, and someone stepped out, just a person-shaped blob in Denis’s still-dazzled vision. He blinked, waiting for his pupils to dilate so he could see in the dimness.

  “Denis?” the person said. Denis recognized the voice. It was Jane. Absolutely, no doubt about it, Jane. He took a step back, and she rushed at him.

  Denis threw up his hands defensively, and it took a moment for him to realize that he was being embraced, not attacked. Jane wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. She sobbed into his shoulder.

  What was this? Didn’t she understand what he’d done, what had happened?

  “Shh, baby, it’s okay,” Denis said, patting her shoulder. Cool mud smeared under his hands, and he realized she was wholly covered in filth. She’d gotten somewhat muddy during her wish-fulfillment fantasy with him, but her clothes shouldn’t have been so streaked, and the layer of mud on her body shouldn’t feel so thick. Why was she dirty, if she’d driven out? It wasn’t as if she’d crawled bodily through the mud. The car should be filthy, yes—and he saw now that it was, that her white hatchback had been turned brown by mud, the filth covering everything but a wiper-scraped semicircle on the windshield. Jane must have gotten down and rolled in the mud for some reason. That was the only explanation that made sense.

  Not that any of this really made sense.

  “I woke up in the dark, Denis,” she said into his shoulder. “I was so afraid. I don’t understand what happened. After I woke up I got into the car and drove out of this muddy mess, looking for you, but I couldn’t get to your apartment. Every time I started driving I wound up on Ash Street, by that coffee shop you like so much. I felt like there was something inside the place, pulling me. Do you remember when I told you about the goddess?”

  “Yes,” Denis said, trying to hug her as lightly as possible. She clung to him like a barnacle on a hull, smearing dirt into his clothes, his coat. He took deep breaths to calm himself, to overcome his total revulsion, but even breathing deeply didn’t help—Jane smelled of earth and wet and mold, and revolted him.

  “I think the goddess is trapped in the coffee shop,” Jane said. “I have to help her escape.”

  She’s gone insane, Denis thought. Being trapped in her car had driven her crazy—or else she’d run short of oxygen and sustained brain damage. Believing in some primal Earth Mother was one thing, but thinking the goddess dwelt in an espresso machine was something else altogether.

  “Let’s get you home,” Denis said. “Get you cleaned up.” Then he thought of Jane’s housemate. Denis didn’t want anyone to see Jane in this state—it could only reflect badly on him, lead to questions. “Better yet, come to my place.”

  “You’ll stay with me? You’ll help?” Her voice was husky and frightened. Denis had never heard her speak this way before, so vulnerably.

  “You can stay with me.”

  She looked into his eyes. Her face was ghost-pale in the moonlight. “Will you help me set the goddess free?”

  Denis hesitated, then said, “We’ll talk about it. Come on. Follow me down.” He needed to find out what, exactly, she remembered. If her memory loss was sufficiently complete, there might be no need for extreme resolutions.

  She gripped his jacket with both hands. “Please, Denis, ride with me. Don’t make me go by myself.”

  “Shh, it’s okay, all right.” He could pick up his car later. Right now, the important thing was to get Jane into the shower and scoured clean. He couldn’t think with her looking like this, like an avatar for some mud-goddess.

  He went to the passenger side of her car and opened the door, the mud from the handle smearing his fingers. He got inside and wiped the mud from his hands onto the upholstery. The smell struck him right away, though it wasn’t strong—just a whiff of ripeness, a hint of urine and feces. “There’s a nasty smell in here,” he said.

  Jane got into the car. The internal light came on when she opened the door, and Denis got his first clear look at her. No part of her body was uncovered; even her hair was caked, dreadlocked with mud. “I only smell the earth,” she said. “It smells good.”

  Denis grunted. He rolled the window partwa
y down to let fresh air in.

  Jane drove, her hands leaving muddy prints on the steering wheel and gearshift. She didn’t talk much, though she answered readily enough when Denis asked questions. “It’s all scrambled,” Jane said. “I wanted to pick you up, and make amends. We drove into the hills, made love . . .” She shook her head. “What happened then?”

  Denis improvised wildly. “You took me home, then realized you’d left some things there, your blanket, I’m not sure what else. You said you were going back to get them. I didn’t hear from you after that, and when I called your house Nancy said she hadn’t seen you, so I drove up here tonight to make sure nothing had happened to you.” He hadn’t picked up the knife or their trash, he realized, but he supposed it didn’t matter now, since Jane was alive and reasonably well—it wasn’t a crime scene anymore.

  “I must have been caught in a mudslide, and thrown from my car . . .” She shook her head, and a little rain of dirt pattered down onto the seat. “It doesn’t make any sense. There are all these gaps in my memory . . . I could have been killed, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “But the goddess saved me.” Jane’s voice, content and sure, chilled Denis. “She spared my life, and consecrated me into her service. Baptized me in mud.”

  “Baptize” was an inherently Christian term, unsuited to such a pagan sentiment, but Denis refrained from pointing that out, though it did indicate the extent to which Jane’s ordeal had affected her, replacing her typical precision with muddy inaccuracy.

  “I’m still so confused, but some things are clear,” she said.