Jabberwock Jack

by Dennis Liggio

  He was a few feet from me, since I was on the outside of our table. He was clearly very drunk, something I could smell, which was impressive since we were in a bar. I didn't know the situation, but I assumed he had been refused a drink because he was too drunk. I wasn't drunk, but I had a little to drink, enough to make a bad judgment. So I didn't think Maybell could handle it, even though she had probably been handling drunks since before I was born. For some reason, I decided to get involved.

  "Maybe you should go back to Southend. Or wherever the fuck you are from." I had said it tersely, but not necessarily loudly.

  The frat boy spun. "Excuse me? What the fuck did you just say?" His fists were practically up already. It suddenly began to make some sense. He didn't come here for a drink, he came here for a fight. I turned my head and looked to see if he had any friends. I didn't see anyone who fit the bill. Lots of familiar faces and no one who looked like a student or rich kid. Strange. I could see him coming here for a fight, especially against people on the bad side of town he didn't respect. But did he really come to a bar on the other side of town alone just to get into a fight? Why wouldn't you bring friends? If not to help, just to show off. You're just asking to get beaten or stabbed by pissing off the one wrong person. People in South Egan are generally good, but it was still the east side of town, you could end up with the one Russian gangster visiting a relative.

  "We don't want any trouble," I said, feeling suddenly like someone out of an old Western. "This is our neighborhood bar, we just want to drink in peace."

  "You should have thought of that before you got up in my face," he said.

  I looked around in confusion. I hadn't even stood up yet. I was still in my chair with this idiot looming over me.

  "They should bulldoze this whole fucking neighborhood, like they're doing with North Egan," continued the frat boy. "Get you fucking rats out of here."

  Lem immediately stood up in anger. In general, we hated when people from better neighborhoods looked down on us. It was a sore spot, but at least we could deal with it. The whole destruction and gentrification of North Egan which might drive us out was yet another sore spot. It was a looming issue, but it still hadn't affected us yet. Except for Lem. He had just had to move his aunt because of it. This was a personal issue for him.

  I'd like to say I was the guy who kept his cool. I wanted to be the guy who didn't take this asshole's bait. I should have grabbed Lem's arm and kept him from standing, so we could avert this fight that the frat boy really wanted. But I didn't. I like to call myself a man of principles. The main principle that drives my monster hunting is I'm willing to risk my life for others. I put myself in danger so that others won't have to. Some call it admirable, while others I've known in the past have said that it's just an excuse to be suicidal. Whatever the case, that principle triggered here. I wouldn't say Lem couldn't handle himself in a fight, but he was no career brawler like my brother and I. And I don't think I could sit by and let Lem take this one.

  I stood up nearly as quickly as Lem, my chair falling to the side. The frat boy who had the looming height advantage while we all sat now had me actually up in his face, since he stood right behind my chair. We were about the same height, so I was eye to eye with him. The look in his eyes said he wanted to do this, that it wasn't false bluster. He hadn't been pulling some power trip where he got off by us backing down and being cowardly. No, this guy wanted to cause someone pain. And the alcohol on his breath told me he had loaded himself up with Irish Courage.

  "Shall we take this outside?" he said through gritted teeth.

  This surprised me. That was surprisingly civil considered the lengths he had gone through to pick a fight here. Maybe he didn't want to get hit by a chair or a bar stool. I saw Szandor grabbing my chair, but whether to pick it back up or hit this douchebag I didn't know.

  But I nodded in agreement, even with this concern. "Okay, let's do this." I stepped past the frat boy toward the door. He turned to walk with me. Sucker. I took about a step, then turned casually, as if I were going to say something to Maybell. And in this turn I suckerpunched the frat boy.

  Say what you want about how dishonorable or dickish that might be. I argue that this fight had no honor or class to begin with. He had wanted to pick a fight and my emotions got the better of me and I accepted. Even for all my principle, there was no reason for this fight. It was all testosterone and alcohol. It was a brawl and that had no rules.

  The frat boy fell immediately. I was actually surprised about this. I expected him to stumble or fall off his feet. Then I could either prove my point or end the fight. I didn't expect him to have a glass jaw. Maybe it was just the surprise punch?

  He began falling, his body completely unconscious. I grabbed at his shirt, trying to keep him standing. Unconscious people fall a lot more violently than stumbling people. It's like the weight just drops. The frat boy still headed toward the floor, despite my handful of shirt. Szandor appeared at my side, grabbing at the frat boy's shoulders to hold him up. Lem also came to my aid. With a communal nod, we all hefted the limp body of the frat boy. As we began to carry him toward the door, I nodded to Maybell.

  "Call the police and tell them we have some trash out front," I said.

  As we carried the limp frat boy to the door, we intended to just put the frat boy out in front, go back and have some drinks, and be very anonymous when the cops came to question the bartender. If they even came in. They might just get this guy on public intoxication and not worry about the bar. Even if they came in, nobody in the bar was going to turn us in.

  As I said, this is what we intended. The universe has ways of turning intentions into amusing failures. Szandor pushed the door open and we three carried the body out onto the sidewalk. We were just in the middle of propping the unconscious frat boy up against the wall in front of the bar when we heard a shout.

  "What the fuck are you doing with Chad?"

  I looked to my left to see a group of men lingering by the entrance to the alley. Baseball caps with Greek letters, Avalon U shirts, sunglasses tucked into their collars, and oh God, the cargo pants! Too similarly dressed to our unconscious frat boy, or as we now knew him, Chad, for this to be a coincidence. These were his friends.

  Shit.

  I now understood. Chad hadn't come into a bar alone to pick a fight like a reckless idiot. Chad had come in to pick a fight and lure his opponent outside so that his friends could gang up on their victim and kick the poor bastard's ass. Chad was an even bigger piece of shit that I had originally thought. A coward and a jackass. What the fuck was happening in our town? What had happened to New Avalon that there were people that thought this was reasonable behavior? At least monsters had a reason for what they did. They're monsters. Chad had no excuse besides being a terrible human being.

  As we straightened up, the group of Chad's friends understood the situation. Chad was plainly out. But rather than backing off, they were coming toward us, maybe a bit more warily than before. There were four of them. Chad had been hoping for a five-on-one fight. That made me angry. I wasn't going to run from this one. Someone needed to teach those guys a lesson. I cracked my knuckles and got ready. Next to me, Lem nodded. Not typically one for pointless fights, he understood well the situation and he was unhappy with it too. To my other side was Szandor. He might be drunk, but I could rely on him in a fight. His instincts were concentrated in every muscle memory and tendon after years of killing monsters. And he was always up for a skirmish, even if he knew he couldn't kill these particular foes. Three on four - not a fair fight, but I thought the odds were in our favor.

  I heard the bar door open, as Dickie came to check on us. His first reaction seeing the rapidly approaching frat boy gang was, "Well, shit." He shook his head. But then he moved next to us, his stance widening. He would stand with his friends.

  Four on four now.

  There was a moment of uncertainty among the frat boys. Two turned and looked at their friends, unsure if they were going th
rough with this. They hadn't signed up for a fair fight. They had wanted to prey on the weak. Suddenly the weak were fighting back and it didn't seem like fun anymore. But their friends didn't pause. They were already in the rage of battle. So the two nervous ones doubled down with peer pressure. For better or worse, they were doing this and so were we.

  I'd like to say it was some epic clash of battles like in the movies. Pike men and foot soldiers, barbarians and knights, a clash of arms and armor, a thousand ugly sounds arising from massive tides of men and metal thudding against each other in a murderous wave. But no, this was just eight men in a petty squabble using their fists to settle it. There were shouts and growls as we closed on each other, rushing for the first hit but knowing that it was the last hit that counted.

  I shouted as I threw a punch. Time to make this hurt.

  King Contrary Man

  When we got in Meat's SUV the next day, he looked at our bruises and shook his head. Szandor had a busted lip from where a punch hit his lip piercing hard. My cheek was cut and I had some clear medical tape over it; one of our opponents had worn a ring. What other rewards we had from the night before were covered by our clothes and only revealed by a slight stiffness in our walk. Monsters had given us far worse injuries. We could walk off cuts and bruises.

  "Tell me those wounds are from hunting," said Meat, but his voice was resigned to the probable truth. He knew that face bruises were unlikely caused by monsters that tend to bite and slash.

  "You should see the other guys," said Szandor with a smile from the back seat.

  "We just had a bad night," I said. "Let's just leave it there."

  Meat shook his head again and the SUV slid off the curb. It was another rainy day in New Avalon. Not quite a heavy downpour like we had been having recently; this was a much lighter rain. But it had been going all morning, leaving the streets soaked and wet. Pedestrians huddled under awnings and umbrellas as Meat's SUV made its way north to Asher. This neighborhood was on the northeast side of New Avalon. In some ways, it was only a little better than Egan. Rents were low, crime was high, the buildings in need of repair. With people needing to move out of North Egan, this is another place I expected them to move. Not a lot of options if they wanted to keep the same rents. Many would need to move out of town entirely. I'd about had it with gentrification.

  While South Egan was primarily residential, Asher was more mixed use. Besides the old apartment buildings, there were small warehouses, a few factories, and a large amount of ethnic businesses. In particular, Asher was a great place to eat non-American food without killing your wallet, like you might in Midtown. An ex had introduced me to this hole in the wall Ethiopian restaurant in Asher that I had so far been unable to convince Szandor to go to. He makes fun of me for eating Hot Pockets, but he lacks an adventurous stomach himself. Go figure.

  We parked in front of a warehouse that seemed even more broken down than the rest. The windows were intact, but the outside walls were covered with graffiti and stained with decades' worth of dirt and rain. Gutters and bars on the windows were crusted with a bright orange rust. Some might say this building had character, but the character I was seeing was that this warehouse was the building equivalent of homeless.

  Meat knocked on the metal of the rollup steel door that covered the garage entrance. There was a pause, and I can't tell if there was a window they looked out or we had a camera on us I couldn't see, but the automatic door started opening. Once it was up, we stepped into the warehouse, the door descending behind us. Despite the dirty and rundown exterior, the inside was in better shape. Oh, the floor was still just concrete that was cracked in a few places, the walls were peeling, and I could hear that somewhere in the warehouse they had a roof leak dripping into a bucket, but someone had done something with the place. I saw a few desks with computers, two boards covered with scribbled plans and posted maps, a large meeting table, a kitchen, and stairs leading somewhere upstairs. At the edges of the wide open area in the center of the small warehouse I saw hanging weapons, bins full of more weapons, and gear lockers. Mats were down in the central area, making me think it was a sparring circle. Nothing was high class, everything looked temporary and thrown together, but otherwise someone had turned this building into a hunter headquarters. I was impressed.

  We were alone in this large area for just a moment before someone came down the stairs. I heard him before I saw him because of his limp. Once he arrived down the stairs, I could see that across a level surface he hid his limp well. Had I not heard the off-cadence limp on the stairs I would not have examined his legs closer. But his left leg was stiffer than the other and it seemed to hit the floor with a lot more weight.

  He greeted Meat with as close to a smile as this serious man got and then he was introduced to us. His name was Jericho. Before anything else you could say about him, you need to understand he was intense. Dark eyes that bore into you. A face that was always serious, smiles traded in for scowls. There was just a feeling of intensity around him. It was in the air near him, as if sparks leapt off his body. His skin was dark, nearly ebony. His hair was short with patches of gray and he had a well-trimmed beard. A scar traveled a short distance along the left side of his jaw. He was very likely in his fifties but rather than being in poor shape, he seemed fitter than men half his age. His six foot two inch height rose above both my brother's five foot eight inch height and even my own six foot form. It goes without saying that my first impression was that he was one of the most badass people I had ever met and I would have no shame admitting he could probably kick my ass in a fair fight.

  He wore a long black coat, either leather or fake leather, which added to his badassness. His legs were covered in black leather pants that ended in boots. Without even being conscious of it, I found myself looking down his left leg and seeing just a tiny glint of Avalon Brass between the boot and his pants. When my vision rose from that, I saw that he had seen me look. His own expression was challenging, as if daring me to say something, an utterance I would make at my own risk. I said nothing.

  Jericho looked Szandor and I over. "This is it, then? Two boys?" he said to Meat, not us. There was a tone in his voice that was not an American accent. I wanted to say British, but I really wasn't sure. It was the squashed dialect of a man who had come to America decades ago and had a speaking habit or two that they had not yet given up despite the years.

  "Best of the new generation," said Meat. I had no idea if Meat knew any other hunters in the area around our age. If he did, he had never told us about them.

  "A bit scrawny, I think," said Jericho.

  "Well, fuck you too," said Szandor.

  Jericho was in front of Szandor in a second, his form towering over my brother. He didn't touch Szandor, but his presence seemed to almost throw a punch, as I saw my brother flinch. "Do we have a problem here, boy?"

  "Oh, hey, you can talk directly to us," said Szandor, maybe a little less confidently than he hoped. "I was wondering if we were invisible or something. Or maybe you were deaf. Or deaf and stupid. Wait, stupid's not the word for it. What was it? Oh yeah, it was dumb. So I was wondering if you were dumb. Really dumb. Oh wait, you've been talking, dumb can't be right. So I guess I was right the first time. Stupid!"

  Jericho's face tensed, one of his eyes almost squeezing closed in tension. Then his face relaxed. He let out a laugh. It was a throaty laugh, but it felt to me that it wasn't a happy laugh. It was too tense, too rough. It was a laugh that came from a deep place of desolation. It was a laugh trying to fit into a world that it didn't belong to.

  He turned to Meat, his stern face almost cracked with vague amusement. "They have balls."

  Meat grimaced and sighed. "Cowardice is not really a trait either of them have. Nor tact, for that matter."

  "True, but courage is a trait I need, you know this. Frozen men are dead men," said Jericho. He turned back to us. "I hear you two boys faced down a fearsome beast underneath the city. One with a great big red eye and a white snake bo
dy."

  "Yes," I said, nodding.

  "It wasn't so bad," lied Szandor.

  "It's impressive you survived, even more so unharmed," he said appraisingly. "Tell me about it. I've heard most of the details from Meat, but I want to hear it from you. Tell me everything about the beast."

  I looked to Szandor, who nodded that I could tell it. I recounted the story, focusing on the monster details and the location.

  Afterward Jericho nodded. "As I had suspected. My time here is not wasted. There is no doubt that it is the beast. It is Jabberwock Jack." He said the name with a combination of hatred, respect, and pain.

  "He hates when you call him that," said a voice from the bottom of the steps. I swung my head to see a woman standing there. I was surprised that she had come down them without any of us noticing. With how loudly Jericho had come down the stairs, I expected them to make a bunch of noise when anyone came down them. Yet she had made no noise that I noticed. Sure, we were all talking and that was distracting, but my hearing is usually on alert for movement in enclosed spaces. It's an occupational skill.

  "He and I share enough hate," said Jericho, "that misnaming him is just a drop of spite in an overflowing bucket."

  The woman slinked her way over to us. There was something very smooth in her movements, like a forest predator or a dancer. She was thin, her form lithe; she was maybe five foot nothing. She wore ripped jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt that was too long, so the sleeves stretched past her hands. She had the darkest eye makeup I had seen outside a dance club. That first made me think she was our age, but as I took in the rest of her face, I realized she was older than us, but at best in her very early thirties. There were feathers in her dark hair and a wreath of necklaces the dangled on her chest - crystals, more feathers, amulets, and at least one medicine pouch. Based on her skin, I couldn't guess her background - something in me wanted to say she was Native American, maybe a holdout from the Appaquagh tribe that was once local to New Avalon, but there was something different, almost Asian, mixed in with her features. Of course, I could be completely wrong. And maybe she was just trying to suggest Native American with her necklaces. It was very possible that she had no authentic claim, just the one-sixteenth Cherokee I had so often heard in bars.