by Joey Ruff
“Ever hear of Dead Man’s Hole?”
“It’s a cave.”
“It’s a morgue,” Huxley said. “Tower Bridge has a cave beneath it where the bodies that get dumped in the river end up.”
“And that’s where this thing went?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s a troll,” Huxley said. “And trolls live beneath bridges.”
“And that’s all I get?”
“It’s enough for now.”
He led on in silence, and the hall we wandered grew a little darker as we went. I pulled out my police-issued torch and turned it on.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any weapons on you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t use any. When the fight resumes, just stay behind me.”
“About that,” I said. “How do you...do those things?”
“Faith,” he said simply.
“Faith? Like in God?” It was an all too-familiar topic for me. One I wasn’t exactly comfortable talking about with a stranger.
“A man once said if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain.”
“That’s great that you can quote the Bible and all, but I don’t remember Jesus levitating royal mail post boxes.”
Huxley smiled, his teeth the color of ear wax. “You have been wounded, Swyftt. That takes time to heal. Just because you don’t want to believe does not mean others cannot believe enough for you.”
“So that’s the answer you’re going to go with? Jesus gives you mystic powers?”
“No,” he said. “But Jesus makes the world, makes the grass grow and the flowers bloom. The flowers have their purpose, and so, you see, does everything.” In his thick accent, it sounded like eveyting.
“So…you can do magic because of Jesus and grass?” I had to stifle a laugh. “And when you smoke the grass, mate, do you see Jesus?”
“You can mock if you like. I take no offense. I know what I believe, and I see it to be true.”
“Great.”
We’d come to a door, and Huxley turned the knob quietly and pushed it open.
The door opened onto a raised walk. A ladder descended to a concrete platform that was edged with green moss and algae and crowned with a blue metal guardrail. From there, a series of stairs led at least ten feet to the laid-brick tunnel floor. To our right, an open cave mouth spit out into the mighty Thames, and the sounds of overhead traffic sounded dimly in the room.
“Dead Man’s Hole,” Huxley said.
“And still no troll. You sure it came this way?”
Huxley didn’t answer right away. He descended the ladder to the concrete platform and crossed to the edge. He held his staff up horizontally over the tunnel floor, spoke a few quiet words, and dropped it.
From the raised walkway, I couldn’t see where the staff fell, but the clattering noise I waited for never came. As I descended the ladder and moved to stand next to Huxley, he said, “Now you will see what tests the faith of even the most devout.”
He closed his eyes and spoke in a strange tongue. I moved to the edge and looked over to see his staff suspended an inch or more from the brick floor. At first, it just sat there, but as he continued to chant, the staff began to spin, slowly at first, but building speed, like a fan.
In the next breath, the surface of the stone wall at the rear of the tunnel began to ripple and become transparent. As I watched, what was, ceased to be, and in its stead was another tunnel, one that looked like it could have been in some castle in a movie about King Arthur. The stones here were larger, and the walls bore a pair of bronze torch holders, the torches lit and the only source of light.
Before Huxley opened his eyes, I was descending the stairs. When I got to the floor, I was careful to avoid the spinning staff as I headed for the chamber.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
I heard footsteps behind me, and a moment later, Huxley was beside me, holding his staff once more.
“How did you know this was here?”
“I had a feeling.”
“You…the wall. How did you make it disappear like that? Who hid this here?”
“Lots of questions. I know how this looks for you.” He walked forward. “The easy answer is that the wall didn’t disappear, the door appeared once I opened it.”
“Door?” I said. “Where does it go?”
“To the troll. The Sidhe do not live in our world, Swyftt. They can’t, not for long. They come and go, but they can’t stay here. Theirs is a pocket of reality. The ancients called it the world of Fairie. I prefer to call it by the name J.R.R. Tolkien discovered: Eldamar.”
“The land of the Elves?”
He nodded and then entered the tunnel. He stopped at the nearest torch and slid it from its holder. I followed with my police-issued torch, and we ventured through a winding, serpentine hallway as wide as two cars and probably twenty feet tall.
So many questions moved through my head at the same time that it was impossible to pick any one of them out and ask it. Luckily, I didn’t have to. Huxley said, “There are many doors throughout the world, some hidden in plain sight, others hidden quite well. They are almost always found where people are not and where nature remains undisturbed. The key is always a circle. Fairy rings are common in forests. Other places, the keys are hidden. If you know how, you can make your own circle.”
“Like you did? With your staff?”
He nodded.
“I’ve seen some fucked up shit. Why have I never heard of this?”
“Because you didn’t need to know of it.”
“Okay. So, how do we take this troll down?”
“First, we lure it back to the bridge where it is weaker.”
“Why…”
“Is it weaker in our world?” He smiled. “That is a loaded question. The answer is not surprising, but is more than you wish to hear.”
“Because of Jesus?”
“Everything has a purpose,” he said with a wink.
“You’re really starting to piss me off.”
He just laughed, and while he tried to keep his voice low, it was no less hearty and full of mirth.
The tunnel continued for another fifteen yards, and every so often, we passed a room or another hallway, but Hux didn’t waiver from his path, and eventually we came upon a large chamber.
The chamber was nearly the size of a sports stadium, and other hallways snaked from it every five or so yards around the circle. Between the hallways, large, mounted torches cast enough light to see. Next to each torch, an enormous suit of armor stood as sentry. The middle of the room was open, and a great stone staircase climbed up to either the right or the left, connecting to a balcony that circled the entire room.
The place felt like the grand hall of some ancient palace.
“Who is this bloke?” I asked, trying to mask the awe I suddenly felt.
“The troll is not the master of this place. Yet another reason it is best we do not linger.”
As I looked around, I took careful consideration of each of the doors, each different hallway that lead away from the main chamber, and then I glanced back at the one we’d just come down. “They all look exactly the same.”
“So they do.”
I was wearing my patrol uniform, and my jacket was a reflective yellow. I shrugged out of it and walked to the suit of armor nearest our hallway. It was tall and wide, larger than a human but smaller, it seemed, than the troll we were chasing. In its hand was a halberd, which I took, and I tied my jacket on its wrist to mark our door.
The shaft of the halberd, which was basically a giant pike spear with a small axe head, was longer than I was, and it was a bit clumsy to carry. I’d been somewhat of a pole-vaulter in secondary school, and after a couple of turns and a few minutes bearing its weight, it all seemed to pull together.
“Where is it?” I asked Huxley.
“We will not track it further. It will fin
d us.”
“How’s that?”
Huxley moved to the center of the room, a good fifty yards, at least, from our entrance. I accompanied him maybe half that distance before I stopped, and when he reached the center, he knelt, holding his staff upright in the crook of his arm while he moved his hands in strange patterns before him. I couldn’t see everything he did.
When he finished, he turned and began to slowly walk back to me. As he neared, I asked, “Did it work?”
He shrugged. “We shall see.”
“What did you do?”
“I laid bait.”
Huxley didn’t stop once he reached where I was standing. As he passed, I felt a low rumble underfoot, and before he was halfway back to our entrance, I heard a loud, angry snort, as if from a bull, and turned to the left to see the troll shuffling from one of the many entrances on the balcony and moving towards the stairway.
“Shit,” I said and followed after Hux.
The troll lifted both arms at his sides as if flexing and roared. Strings of phlegm blew from its jagged teeth like streamers from a desk fan. It turned, saw me, and moved directly for me, forgetting the stairs. In one almost graceful move, it leapt from the balcony and landed with a tremor.
For a moment, the troll watched us, hate and anger blazing in its eyes, and then it sniffed. It must have caught the scent of something because it turned to the side, sniffing more aggressively. Suddenly, it spun, and like an animal, it bounded towards the center of the room on all fours. With the smooth domed end of the mailbox covering one hand, that limb kept threatening to get away from it, but it was strong and not as stupid as it looked. It stopped in place and hammered its mailbox fist into the ground, cracking the stone underfoot and denting the thick metal just enough to give it some sort of traction.
When it reached the center of the room, it bent low and held its nose maybe a foot from where Huxley had knelt. As I watched, I stopped moving and didn’t even hear Huxley calling to me quietly, as the troll moved its head side to side like a pendulum and sniffed and snorted at the spot. From where I stood, nothing appeared to be there, and after a few seconds, the troll started to grapple at the air in front of it with its one free hand, opening and closing it in a motion that looked almost like petting.
“What’s it doing?” I asked, turning to Huxley. It was only then I realized the man had continued to move as I watched, and he stood in the open mouth of our tunnel, waving to me frantically. I moved to him at a jog. “What did you do?”
“Created a phantom smell.”
“Of what?”
“Gryphon eggs.”
“And…it likes that?”
“It finds it intoxicating.”
“And you know what Gryphon eggs smell like, because…?”
He smiled. “I know more things than you can imagine.”
“I’m sure you do.” We watched it for a few seconds, and then I asked, “How do we get it to come this way?”
“Three,” Huxley said. “Two. One.”
The troll snapped to its full height and spun to us instantly. Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt its eyes locking tightly on me, and me alone. It dropped its jaw and bared its hungry fangs as it let loose another savage roar. Hatred oozed from its eyes that had narrowed to tiny slits. It beat its chest with both hands, nearly clubbing itself with its red, metal stub, and then it bounded on all fours directly to us.
“Now!” Huxley shouted. “Back down the hallway. Quick!”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. As I turned to run, Hux was already several yards ahead of me and gaining ground. “If you can hold it off in the tunnel for a minute,” he called, “I’ll ready the ritual to close the door behind once it crosses through.”
“Umm, what?” But he was gone.
I could feel the rumbling beneath me as I ran, which meant that the troll was getting closer, and I could tell when it had entered the tunnel behind me, as it began to beat its fists against the sides of the tunnel. Loose rocks fell from the ceiling, some as large as apples, some bigger. I dodged them and continued forward, pressing harder than I knew I could.
As I neared the entrance into Dead Man’s Hole, I saw Huxley climbing the concrete stairs with his staff in his hand. Stall, I thought. I spun clumsily, bracing myself with the halberd, and began to take deep, calming breaths.
My heart was beating in my throat so hard and so fast I thought I was going to be sick as the troll came galloping around the corner. It had apparently not expected me to be standing there opposing it, and it reared back and came to a halt before my extended spear point.
I yelled as if at a strange, aggressive dog and swung the halberd back and forth in front of me in a sweeping motion. At first, the troll appeared confused and took a few steps backwards. I took the opportunity and advanced, shouting at it louder, and then one of its shoulders brushed against the tunnel wall. It stopped abruptly and, without warning, lunged forward.
I carved the air almost instinctively, felt something firm and solid, and lost my bearings a little as I felt the troll’s hot breath against my arms. It let out a quiet, wounded cry.
With a glance towards the Hole, I saw Hux standing atop the concrete platform and his staff spinning wildly an inch or two above the ground below him.
Tearing the halberd from the troll, I raced for the opening and threw myself forward. As I hit the ground, I skidded against the uneven brick floor and slid into Huxley’s spinning staff and then into the ledge of the concrete platform.
I looked up at the creature to see it sprawled on the ground near me, apparently dazed. The wall behind it was solid once more.
“Swyftt!” Huxley called, and when I looked up at him, he was pointing to his staff.
I scrambled for it as the troll pushed itself up on its knees. My hand fumbled against the wood, but I managed to grab hold of it and turn to Hux. He was standing atop the platform, his hand outstretched, and I tossed it to him.
“If you lacked faith before,” he called to me, “maybe this will help you believe.”
He called out in a strange, melodic voice and thrust his staff towards the troll in the moment the creature gained its feet. The tip of the staff burned with a fiery, white light so intense I had to shield my eyes. I could just see the troll and the way it began to shine bright as well.
I closed my eyes and waited until Huxley fell silent before opening them again. The tunnel had returned to normal and the bright light had vanished.
So had the troll.
“Where the hell did it go?”
“It’s gone,” he said.
“Like, what? Vaporized?”
Huxley shrugged, and then his legs began to wobble and his eyes rolled up into his head. I barely had enough time to act by the time I realized what was happening. As his knees buckled and the man fell forward, I was in motion.
He was heavier than I expected, but I caught him. We collapsed together on the brick, and as he opened his eyes, he cast me a faint smile.
“You okay, mate?”
“That one took the wind from me,” he said in his thick accent. “I will be fine.” He tried to sit up, and I helped prop him against the concrete ledge. “Thank you,” he said. “You were very brave.”
“What choice did I have?”
He smiled. “First lesson in hunting,” he said. “Always appear confident. This is good.”
“Appear?”
“I was scared shitless,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t know if that last spell would work or not. It was a new one. Some ancient Babylonian spell I came across the other day.”
“So, you were basically gambling with my life?”
He chuckled.
“What did it do?”
He shrugged. “Erased from existence, if I did it right.”
“And if you didn’t?”
He spread his hands out before him. “It’s gone,” he said. “If I didn’t do it right…it must mean there’s another purpose.”
“For the tro
ll?” I said.
He nodded.
“You gonna be alright?”
He nodded again.
“What exactly are you?”
“I’m a night hunter. I work with a group called the Hand of Shanai.” He smiled at me. “Would you like a job?”
19
Nadia sat so still I thought she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes were almost entirely closed, and she had a look of reserved peace most people only attain while dreaming.
“Nadia?”
“Shhhh,” she said without moving.
For a few long moments, she didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Maybe she really had fallen asleep.
“He was wrong,” she said suddenly. Her eyes flitted open and closed with the rhythm of a butterfly’s wings, and then she said, “The spell didn’t work quite like he thought.”
“Oh?” At this point, I’d pretty much guessed that much. “What did it do?”
“Time is not linear,” she said. “But here on Earth, we are stuck in our place and forced along like a current.”
“Okay?”
“From an outside perspective, like the way God sees time, it’s all as one. It’s both happening and has happened.”
“Am I getting a physics lesson, or theology?”
“The troll,” she said. “It became unstuck in time.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that when it vanished from under the bridge, twenty years ago, it showed up, not somewhere else, but some when else.”
“Past, future?”
“It doesn’t seem to matter,” she said. Her eyes slowed their flicker, but only slightly.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, while you’ve Hux’s attention in there, ask him this: It’s been twenty years. Why here? Why now?”
“It seems random,” she said. “When he appeared to you on the road the other night, it was coincidental, nothing more.”
“Well, fuck me like a duck,” I said. “So then what are the odds that I would see this wanker twice in as many days?”
“He’s not sure. No, wait. Did the troll remember you?”
“Uh, sure. I guess.”
“While it’s been twenty years for you, it may have only been a week for the troll. But Huxley says the troll seems to have a particular hatred for you. You challenged it, and then you hunted it down, invaded its home in Eldamar. I don’t know what Eldamar is.”
