Monk Punk and Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus

by Aaron French

  Except for Mownt, thought Lunakis. Poor boy.

  A flicker of images passed through his mind. Mownt’s twitching body. A worm flopping over the side of the body transmuter, slipping unseen into his robes; the taste of bone and brain in the night.

  He asked the prospectives if any boats were missing.

  “One’s gone. Storm probably took it.”

  Lunakis wished he could agree.

  About the author: Caleb Heath is an apprentice bookseller from Arkansas. He began writing after a chance meeting with the late author E. Lynn Harris. He is working on Scald, his first novel.

  Vortex

  Joshua Ramey-Renk

  If it is true, as it is said, that sometimes the veil between worlds is thin—perhaps at the edge of winter, at 3:00 A.M., or in a dying person’s bedroom—then how thin must it be when an entire world is set to pass from the warmth of the loving sun to the sheer, cold silence of the uncaring vacuum? There is no shroud large enough to wrap the whole globe, but the veil between worlds and planes can be very thin indeed.

  This is the state of the Witherworld. As certain doom approaches it, things have begun to emerge into the world that have not been seen for centuries, or perhaps have never been seen at all outside the feverish imaginings of some ancient herald looking for new beasts to decorate his King’s shield.

  In the way of things stretched to a breaking point, the first cracks appeared at the seams: ancient burial mounds, ley lines, dolmens and stone circles. And, of course, no place marks the daily boundary between what is and what could be sharper than a wishing well.

  At one such well, created in a forgotten past when the worlds were closer together, something hovered, virtually formless, a being made of air, vapor, and the faint echoes of the water sloshing against the stone walls. Formless, but present. Available.

  Usually things go right.

  Watch.

  A wisher approaches the edge of the well, closes her eyes, her lips moving in a fervent prayer. Then, with no hesitation, she tosses a glittering coin into the depths of the stone-lined passage. In the brief moment between the coin hitting the water and coming to rest against the ancient mossy stones at the bottom, it’s as if a bell tolls and the something takes a more solid shape and form, a being created entirely of WILL and DESIRE. From its tiny, fragile throat issues a whisper, a tinkle of water droplets delivering a single word, a word lost in the sudden breeze that springs up around the well.

  GRANTED!

  Of course, there are rules for such things. The death of the World is governed by Fact and Physics—Witherworld will pass out of its protected orbit and nothing can change that fact. The connection between the worlds is governed by... other... rules, laid down in the bones of the soil, deeper truths, and Fact becomes a mere curiosity to be studied, even cast aside, as it falters next to the Truth.

  The truth that governs the fey being at the wishing well is a fundamental law. Spirits who did not appreciate what they had in life, and who died with a bitter heart, are sentenced to expiate their sins by granting wishes to those who seek their desires in the sacred waters and who pay for them in good coin. The coin, when it leaves the wisher’s hand, begins a contract that ends only when the wish is granted and the coin strikes the bottom of the well, coming to rest flat. Heads or tails, the spirit is then free of the wisher and can mark one more notch on its phantom tally stick.

  But sometimes things go wrong.

  ***

  So it happened that a woman approached with a dark wish in her heart for revenge upon a lover who had scorned her for another. Unlike most, she did not close her eyes and whisper. She watched the arc of the coin as it spun and gleamed, and she spoke her desire: “I want him to suffer... and I hope his prick drops off!”

  The air gathered around her in a halo of anticipation, for this would be the thrice-thirteenth wish, and the spirit’s eagerness to be done with its penance resonated through the dappled leaves, like the whisper of things to come rippling through a crowd at a holy shrine.

  The wish was set in motion... a series of misfortunes to be visited on the hapless man who had scorned the wisher—the loss of his chosen love, a string of financial reversals, even an unfortunate rash—and the coin fell further to the bottom, tumbling upon itself over and over. The fey creature gathered itself into a near-corporeal form, anticipating liberation, as the coin fell and tumbled and spun and sank...

  ...and stuck...

  ...upright...

  ...wedged between the corroded remains of other coins, from other times...

  ...and did not finish falling at all.

  ***

  Thomas, called The Wayfinder by the monks who had raised him, awoke with an echo in his head, a voice from a dream.

  “There is a thing amiss... a thing gone awry.”

  He arose from the bole of the tree where he had been sleeping, and then tried to recapture the dream.

  A thing gone wrong, a thing to be put right.

  Without any direction in mind, he began walking, his bokken secured across his back and his staff gripped firmly. He didn’t know which way to take, but he knew he would find the right one. That’s what he did; he was the Wayfinder.

  His path took him further into the woods, where he had camped the night before, down a trail that was barely discernible to the human eye. Thomas’s feet and staff followed it easily, even in the half-light of the early morning sun that trickled into the thickening foliage.

  As he progressed, he began to hear a faraway sound, the faint gurgle of water mixed with something different, something sadder. He found himself becoming wary. He wasn’t frightened, but he was more alert than usual. His teachers at the monastery had called it ‘Samurai Spirit’—the extension of the senses beyond the body, into the rocks and path and trees that surrounded him, a reaching out and embracing of every aspect of his environment.

  He soon reached a small clearing, where the top of a stone well protruded above the wildflowers and grass that grew in a broad swath of sunlight coming through an opening in the trees. He approached the well cautiously, and as he did so, the sound he had been hearing coalesced around him: weeping!

  If a stream could weep, this was the sound it would make—watery and sibilant in the air. Thomas looked around. In the shadows just beyond the well a movement caught his eye, a rustling that betrayed the presence of... a thing.

  He felt a soft wind blow around him. The weeping paused, and then a quiet sigh seemed to float past his ears. He thought he heard a word... wish! He heard it again, more forcefully this time, WISH! And again, this time the wind roaring around him, whipping dirt and leaves up into a spiraling creature.

  “WISH!”

  The voice roared around and through him.

  “What are you?” cried Thomas, his words nearly lost in the frantic breeze.

  Abruptly, the wind and the moaning stopped; the clearing became silent and eerily still. Thomas had to strain his ears to hear the next sound from the being on the other side of the well. Thomas thought it could have been male or female, or neither. The sound that reached his ears held mourning, coupled with a deep longing; it was the weeping of a despairing spirit.

  He walked toward the well in the middle of the clearing, the weeping still echoing around him. He knelt beside the mossy stones, brushing away an accumulation of dust and grime from around the broad, flat pieces of the rim. In doing so, he revealed a timeworn inscription that spiraled around the lip of the well.

  From when the coin does firstly call

  To when the coin does flatly fall

  Wishing granted, one and all

  Thrice thirteen given, then received

  Released to Hell or Heaven, Spirit freed

  Thus the law, and thus the rule

  Of the ’prisoned spirit

  Of this wishing pool

  That night Thomas dreamed of birds wheeling against a cerulean sky, with sunlight glinting off their feathers.

  ***

  Away in
the city, a man whose life was near-perfect watched everything bleed away from him. It wasn’t enough that the world was going to end, but now that bitch he’d broke up with had given him some kind of disease. His privates were swollen and sore, and as he sat around the table waiting for the lawyers (who were supposed to protect him from crap like this), he had to resist the urge to scratch himself just to get some relief from the burning in his groin.

  It all had been going so well! The money he’d inherited and put into a string of for-profit psychiatric counseling centers had been multiplying at a very decent rate. As more people tried to grapple with the hopelessness of the extinction of the human race, Drop-In counseling was becoming big business—most insurance even covered the first few visits.

  He’d had both a beautiful fiancée and a sexy mistress. He’d even felt good about finally dumping the mistress. But he couldn’t understand why, after confessing it all to his future wife and being forgiven weeks before, earlier today she had frostily informed him that neither his ring nor his attentions were desired any longer.

  Then his groin began to itch and tingle. When he went to the bathroom and dropped his trousers, he had stared at himself aghast and quickly pulled his underwear back up to hide the swollen and inflamed skin. He needed to get to a doctor right away.

  He had walked out of the restroom intending to leave and go directly to his personal physician, but two men with suits that bulged under the armpits had flashed badges and escorted him into a conference room, alone. There were some “irregularities,” they said, “some questions they needed to ask.” As they tore through his offices, he could do nothing but sit and watch his business bleed away, as boxes of files were carted out under the watchful eye of uniformed police officers.

  Damn but it itched.

  ***

  As the sun rose over the trees of the clearing, Thomas approached the well carefully, pensive as he considered his dream the night before. While the water level was near the top, it was probable that the depth was considerable. He gingerly reached his staff down to probe the depths, but was only able to confirm his suspicion that the bottom lay deeper than he could reach.

  While he did this, he could feel the frustration of the spirit pulsing through the shadows around the well. The sense of desire, of longing, of long-held sadness was so strong that it nearly colored the air with its presence.

  A flock of birds.

  Wheeling.

  Glittering birds.

  The image filled his mind as he watched several leaves that had drifted onto the surface of the blue-green well water. They floated in mysterious patterns, following the waves and ripples that he created by probing with his staff.

  Absently, he stirred the water with his hand, making the golden leaves dance in a spiral current. At the monastery, the monks had told him that he was special, that he had some purpose in the dying world. Before he was found as an infant, the Abbot had dreamed of a wolf walking through a forest of brambles that opened before him and allowed him passage where the way seemed lost. When they found Thomas, the brown patterned blanket that wrapped his tiny body had been the exact pattern of the old monk’s dream. Thomas had been taught that he must still the noise in his head and heart in order to see his rightful path.

  A shiver crossed through the trees around the grove, and it suddenly came to Thomas that this, somehow, was the way. What he was doing was the answer.

  He moved his hand faster, like a child trying to create a whirlpool in a bath—faster now, even faster, using the staff to help.

  Thomas stirred the cauldron of ancient stones and murky water, his walking staff moving in strong circles. The leaves spun faster and faster, twisting and turning, becoming a blur of green and gold and brown in the water.

  He slipped into a state that he had learned to cultivate in the monastery. When doing repetitious exercises, he allowed his mind to float free of his body, focusing his breathing to match the exertion of the work.

  Around.

  Around.

  Thomas’s awareness seemed to float away from him now, down the conducting rod of his staff and into the swirling pool.

  Small pieces of dirt and moss circled in the wake he was making, spiraling around the rough edges of the well, collecting debris as the circulation began to build on itself.

  Around.

  Around.

  Around.

  A few loose coins joined the growing current. Thomas saw flashes of gold and silver, then more glinting from coins that had caught on outcroppings and jagged edges, coins that had sealed the bargains of wishers for untold years. More flashed by as the circling current reached further down, deeper into the mysteries of the well.

  Stretching and twisting the length of the whirlpool, Thomas’s awareness caught a bright sparkle that was out of place: a glimmer of light that reflected sideways, not upward. A Wrong Thing, something not part of the proper pattern.

  As a child, he had known which stone was out of place in a wall, or which potato carried rot inside it and was therefore not to be stored with the other vegetables. And now, at this hidden well, he had found The Wrong Thing!

  Thomas felt a slight shiver as he began to understand what was out of place. All the coins swept up into the whirlpool had been lying flat on the bottom, or on rough outcroppings. Some were coarse and crusted with age, while others still shone slightly, but each had lain at rest within the depths of the pool.

  But not this one.

  This payment was not yet complete. The coin stood firmly upright like a magician’s trick. It was obviously the newest addition to the riches of the well.

  As he caught sight of it, he felt the agony of the spirit increase. Like St. Elmo’s Fire, energy was running up and down the trunks of the surrounding trees, illuminating the shadows between the gnarled roots with an eerie luminescence that sparked and sputtered.

  Still more coins joined the wheeling flock in the murky water. Bright flecks of quarters and dimes, flashes of aged doubloons, corroded denarii, all fluttering and spinning, twisting and turning, like sparrows in a wind storm.

  Thomas was no longer sure who was in control. Was he making the current or was the current dragging his arms around with it?

  The coins continued to spin. It was now a watery cyclone, a funnel of ancient currency and timeless wishes, lengthening and stretching from where the Wayfinder crouched to nearly the bottom of the well, where The Wrong Thing still stood, against all odds, upright.

  ***

  In the distant city, the wish’s victim also crouched, hiding in an alley. His once fine suit was now torn and muddy. The pants were ripped at the knees where he had fallen when he bolted from his captors to get out of that room and away from the cops. His groin burned horribly, and he was afraid that infection might set in where he had scratched himself raw. He had become, in a short span of time, a wretch.

  It has been said that civilization is only two hot meals away from chaos. This man could have stepped out of an allegorical painting to illustrate the short distance from security to destruction. He barely remembered how he’d gotten out of the conference room, or the panicked rush out of the building. But he remembered ducking down this alley, trying simultaneously to figure out his next move, scratch himself, and stay hidden.

  At some point, night fell and he slept, curled in a ball under cardboard, his hands clamped tightly under his arms to stop himself from scratching.

  His credit cards had been frozen, his bank accounts blocked, his cell phone service discontinued. Such is the power of a wish run rampant; hence the ancient bargain of the wishing well: the bargain that is sealed and done once the coin falls. Like an electric charge that is potent but brief, the forces at play are cut off and only the effects of that initial surge remain: the money found by accident is spent, the cancer stops spreading, a man gets a rash which clears up over time.

  But the Witherworld is precarious and victim to the very letter of the ancient laws. Until that last coin fell, the wish made by
the scorned mistress continued to be fed by the old powers. Instead of fading, new force was given to the wish. The bargain was not complete. The spirit of the well was still charged with punishing the man, and delivering on the wish far longer than the normal span.

  ***

  That spirit now thrashed and moaned in the shadows around the clearing. The continuing drain had begun to unravel its very essence. It would end, not in release, but in simple dissolution, a vanishing into an eternal void. The breeze that floated through the trees began to make its own spirals, dust devils springing up and racing around Thomas and the well, splitting into smaller vortices, running around the glade in the same direction as the current within the well water.

  Thomas was now in the middle of a maelstrom, a funnel that stretched from the treetops around the clearing, through his arms, down the shimmering column of coins, and at last to the tiniest tendril at the thread-thin end of the whirlpool, touching and...

  ...spinning...

  ...the upright coin.

  It danced and sparkled for a moment. Then, too heavy for the current to keep it adrift, it spun out of the flock of coins and...

  ...dropped...

  ...heads over tails over heads over tails, to the flat bottom made up of other coins, and in final payment of the bargain, stopped flat.

  The wind stopped.

  The howling stopped.

  The leaves that had been swept up into the air stopped and slowly drifted to the ground.

  Thomas relaxed his arms. The water in the well slowly settled, coins fluttering down to rest on the ancient stones, on mossy outcroppings, on each other. Francs covering pennies, euros beneath dinars, everything stopped and was still.

  ***

  Thus were the ancient laws obeyed, and the bargain kept. Thrice thirteen wishes made and paid and granted. The final coin at rest with its fellows, and the spirit of the well released to meet its destiny.