by Grant Fausey
“Choose your path carefully warrior of the light,” snarled the beast. “Darkness abides in this place.”
Jake stood his ground, but remained quiet, silent, trying not to be intimidated by the beast, but the machine was frightening. The sheer ferocity of the beast was staggering … a born killer. The hauler jockey knees quivered, as he nearly pissed his pants. The book crushed under the predator’s hooves, shredding as the beast clawed at the pages. Crimson tugged at his arm, urging Jake to leave before he too found himself at the mercy of the hellhound. The pilot’s heart skipped a beat or two, pounding its way out of his chest. The beast was already on the move, ravaging the village as it drudged forth on the hunt. Jake felt the hair on back of his neck stand on end. His world alerted in the surge of energy that he felt rising within him, tightening and twisting his stomach with the anxiety of anticipation. He would see the beast again; of this he was certain. His future would end abruptly.
“Right place, wrong time,” said the old woman unimpeded by the situation; her body aglow, returning to its ethereal state of living light. “We can’t bridge the future from here,” she said, slipping back into the shadows. “It’s not our time together yet”
“I’m not so sure,” whispered Indigo. The bounty hunter brushed off his wide-brim hat and returned it to his head, standing next to her in an alternate reality. “He’s only seen a mere glimpse of his future.”
“Yes,” answered Crimson, “but if we push him, he may never become you!”
NINE: Silhouette
• • •
“Jake––” screamed Krydal covering her face. The hauler jockey hit the pavement, skidding like an animal in collision with the front grill of a black SUV in the middle of the street. The pilot rolled across the hood and landed on all fours. He looked back at the young beauty, seeing the old woman become a ghostly ball of light. Both worlds were still visible for a split second. He needed time to think, unsure of what just happened. Krydal ran after him, leaving the accident even though she was a witness. It was bad enough the pilot had come face-to-face with a Transit Hound, but leaving the scene of an accident was bad news. He had escaped injury, rolled off the hood of an oversize suburban utility vehicle, but everything else seemed surreal, as if life was happening all at once.
Jake ended up around the corner in an alley panting like a baby, scared shitless. The hound had done a number on him, practically squeezed the life out of him. The memory was churning around in the pit of his stomach and he knew without a doubt, he would inevitably have to face the beast again. The wrath of his girlfriend was a different story––that charming event would come a lot sooner. He knew he had left too many questions unanswered and needed to figure out what happened to him, and quickly. He needed to gather his wits about him, and deal with the driver, Nilana Keri, who was already on her cell phone, frantically dialing 911. “Hello,” she said in s panic, opening the driver-side door only to have it spring back, and then opened again. The long-legged woman dressed in loose-fitting clothes, sneakers, and a sweatshirt; exited the car in a rush, making her way around the front of the vehicle. At least, there was no visible damage to her car.
“Nine-one-one,” answered a voice on the other end of the line. “State the nature of your emergency.”
“Yes,” she said in a near panic. “I hit someone … A man.” There was a pause. “No,” she continued. “He ran right out in front of me. J-walking across the street.” The driver slipped the handset from one hand to the other, keeping the phone to her ear. “No!” She was angry. “What’s that got to do with it?” The housewife crossed the front of the vehicle, looking down one side of the automobile then the other. “There’s no damage as far as I can see,” she told the man on the phone. But Jake was nowhere in sight. “Where’d he go?”
Krydal shrugged her shoulders. Nilana looked at Krydal dumbfounded. The prospect of helping the young man if he was injured was coming up short.
“Nilana Keri, twenty-six,” continued the driver, stopping deadpanned in the middle of the street. Jake was gone. He had disappeared down the alley, rounding the corner of the building across the street. No doubt he was seeking the protection of a dark corner somewhere, huddling under the steps of a fire escape, while gathering his wits about him. Krydal hoped he wasn’t injured, but Jake was acting very strangely. The morning had been very unsettling.
“Jake––” yelled Krydal again. The pilot heard her, but didn’t answer. He wasn’t taking any chances. If he told her what had happened to him, she would think he was nuts, and why not? He even thought he was crazy. Most people would laugh at him. He wasn’t even sure why, but he had been given a glimpse into a possible future. The feeling was exhilarating but surreal, as if he was seeing through the eyes of some other entity. He was making different choices, feeling the experience of it. Obviously, he had crossed paths with the Hound before, but where? It was like the old woman said. “He was an observer, nothing more.”
At least, not yet; however, after the experience of living through it, his recollection of the event was fading. Although, there was the sound of Krydal running in the alleyway after him, her pace slowing; she yelled to him several more times. Jake didn’t respond. He was hiding, possibly injured. “Damn,” she said, pulling her housecoat tight. The cool morning air seeped in under the garment adding to the fluster of the experience. She was frightened. Jake was gone. She watched him vanish in the alleyway right before her eyes, as if he never existed. But that was impossible. She loved him, even if she didn’t understand his moods, or childish actions.
Krydal looked up to see an odd man standing at the other end of the alleyway, staring at her inconspicuously. Other than being mysterious, the well-dressed man, a middle-aged African-American male, in three-piece business attire, stood next to a couple of old maids a few steps from the commotion, on the other side of the street from where the corporate liaison moved through the brisk wind in the alley. Nilana took a step back, feeling the same harsh wind across her back. She immediately cringed pulling her jacket closed covering her head with her hand. Krydal jaunted past her, in a rush back to the apartment. She too had a hand over her face, protecting her beauty from the whirlwind of small stones, dust and flying debris pebbling the ground as it ruffled the leaves, sending a the shudder of cold morning air just as Jake looked down at the wave of distortion, seeing the ripple cross his skin diagonally along his forearm until it reached his wrist. The energy dissipated quickly from his fingertips and swept the landscape. The entire world changed before his eyes, leaving Nilana Keri disoriented. Her SUV was gone, swept away in a chain of events that circumvented the waves of distortion, only to replace the SUV with a black BMW.
“What was that?” asked the brown-eyed mother of two, turning around frantic. “Where did my car go?”
The man in the alleyway stepped away, cocked his head as he glared at her, curiously watching the event unfold from across the street. Panic had set in. “Excuse me,” he said in a blustery voice. Nilana turned around in a circle to face. “Are you all right?”
“Did you see what happened to my SUV? Its black …” She pointed to the ground behind her. “It was right here.”
“SUV?” The man glanced at her curiously. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about lady. What SUV?”
“How could some son-of-a-bitch steal my car? I’m standing right here!”
“Sorry?” The businessman raised an eyebrow, second-guessing her.
The woman ran her fingers through her hair. “I set the alarm,” she said confused. “I know I did!”
Nilana walked to the side of the car and stopped, her eyes on Krydal in the doorway as she dialed 911 again. The businessman, in a blue pinstriped suit, folded his newspaper and put it under his arm, crossing the street. The woman tucked the phone under her ear, against her shoulder., both hands were fumbling through her purse, as she looked for her keys.
“That’s right,” she said to the individual on the phone. “Its black. No–
–I don’t.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Samuel Nomad.
The young woman glared at the man.
“You okay, lady?”
“No,” answered Nilana. It was like déjà vu. The incident was happening all over again. “I’m not okay … some son-of-a-bitch just stole my car, remember? It was right here a couple of minutes ago.”
“You’re car is right there, lady,” said the businessman, while Nilana made a disconcerting face.
The businessman pointed to a BMW 735i parked in front of Krydal’s apartment on the side of the street. “I just saw you drive up in that beamer over there. Nobody stole it.”
“What are you talking about?” The woman frantically pulled her keys from her purse. “That’s not my car––does that look like an SUV?”
Nilana pushed the panic button. The headlights flashed in time to the burglar alarm, whaling within earshot of a siren.
“Told you,” exclaimed the industrialist, leaving the woman speechless. The entrepreneur shook his head and walked away. “Women,” he said on the march, looking back at her as if she was crazy.
“What’s your name?” she demanded, not taking kindly to his accusation.
“Samuel Nomad,” he answered with a sense of accomplishment. All that remained was to alter the future to suit his client.
TEN: Past Tense
• • •
From ground level, the interior of the great hall resembled a Cathedral; a monolithic sanctuary of towering crossbeams, flying buttresses and a gallery fit for a king. Yet no one listened to the daily ritual or morning blessing bestowed upon the masses. Only a single parishioner found its way across the floor, for there were no humans or aliens, no living biological entities of any kind save one: a tiny, whimsical inhabitant with fragile components and a delicate nature; his body covered in varying patterns of colored light alternating between shades of green and gray. The contraption found its way to the edge of an edifice and waited nervously amidst the tentacles of biomass, careful not to disturb the ooze before he reached the protection of the great audience chamber. His thoughts, ravaged with fear, displayed images of disassembly and being eaten in a ritualistic morning feeding frenzy.
“Rallumn,” prodded the harvester, offering no explanation for its appearance, only its fear. its cargo of precious minerals to the dark entity in a moment of solitude among the crustaceans. The carnivorous entity fluttered in the wake of its own ooze, slithering out from its resting place on a coarse pedestal of tattered stone. Its taste buds delighted with the thought of permeating the Dovekie, however, a second attendant, a rather tall looking apparatus, with more devilish eyes, an agile device with long legs and a flat head, bulging eyeballs, and the demeanor of a bug, scurried across the threshold, staying well-beyond the reach of the creature.
“Rallumn,” said the timid device again. The attendant braved his inadequacy and pressed on the nearest tentacle, quickly retreating across a river of sparks and electrical impulses to where he could stand on the platform eye to eye with the entity, but remain out of reach. “What is so important that you interrupt my slumber?” asked the mysterious being.
“We’ve a problem,” announced the informant. The biomass lumbered forward from its crawlspace, and emerged from out of the darkness into the light, as if its body materialized out of thin air like some oversized slug fallen from a building after a new rain. “A ripple in the continuum, M’lord.”
“Then it has begun,” said the beast, reassembling its appendages in order to form the essence of a face within the haggard wires strung together in a harness of intertwined biomass and electrical impulses.
“Yes, m’lord.” The timid attendant swallowed hard. The weasel-shaped harvester retreated quickly, but the Acreen wrapped its fingers around the informant and crushed it like an insect without a second thought. The crustacean’s greasy fluids dripped from every orifice, dropping from the beast’s mouth onto the biomass. The monster’s fiery red eyes scrutinized the crustacean, while a high voltage arc raced across its jaw, along the facade of its facial appendage.
“There is an uncertainty in your voice,” shuddered an echo from the depths of the darkness beyond the Acreen, as if death itself had risen from the grave to give him audience. The biomass turned to face the pool of dark liquid, shifting on his framework of tentacles and appendages in order to slither beyond the scavenger’s remains to where the giant mechanism burrowed deep into the planet’s mantel. The fires of hell itself rose and fell in the chamber, revealing the monstrous shape of a hideous menagerie of biomass and living tissue.
“A failure on my part,” said Rallumn. “A ripple has occurred within the continuum.” The beast rose from the ooze to face his benefactor, glaring out of the darkness with the lure of brilliant eyes, his mysterious shape awakened from the secluded shallow of the mist near the surface of the pedestal.
“Temporal distortion?” queried a second. The biomass entity slithered forward to take responsibility for the endeavor.
“At this juncture?” asked the first.
The ooze rose from the abyss, hidden beneath the waves of mist, as if death had no tolerance for the entity.
“How is this possible?”
“Appearances––” answered Rallumn. “The future is not yet written.”
“The Industrials have weaseled their way back from the depths of hell to create a new technology,” insisted a third.
“And what of this ingenuity they call human?” asked the first.
“Human?” The voice of the second was inquiring, his body remaining hidden beneath the fog.
“You are sure?” asked the third. “There is no mistaking him for another?”
“The Indigna is quite specific,” said Rallumn. “He who comes from the past also represents the future.”
The first rose from the depths of the molten liquid, emerging from the murky heat to stand in the fog of the dimly lit chamber, revealing itself to the world. Its body was that of a demon, its head a dark angel, the culmination of both flaming biomass and molten machinery visible in the muck. The dark entity lingered on the edge of the pedestal just long enough for its fluids to seep back into the pool of dark liquid. “Then we must witness this incursion to its end,” said the first, a turbulent wave churning within the depths of the fog as he ascended to the edges of the pedestal platform.
“If a new future is upon us,” said the second. “We will need more than your assurance to continue our place in the universe, Rallumn.”
“Then you wish to allow the event to continue?” asked the dark entity without resolve. “Is that not a dangerous game?”
“Is it not a chance we must take?” answered the first.
“Perhaps,” said Rallumn.
“Then we shall know soon enough,” said the third. “If this incursion is the result of prophecy, or human intervention, the truth will reveal itself. We need do nothing.” The entities agreed in unison, awakening the others, hidden in the fiery sea of molten darkness.
• • •
Jake’s sudden appearance startled the old woman. She hadn’t expected to encounter him in the marketplace, until he had made the trip to Sodin. Someone had assuredly orchestrated a new pattern of events. Crimson remembered the book incident with the literary merchant, even the shopkeeper’s flights of fancy, but the episode with Jake was a blur; a construct someone had used to fulfill a need. History was being rewritten like pages in the book. Perhaps that was the reason for the beast’s intervention. The Transit Hound was searching for some probability worth investigating, but Crimson had more pressing matters. The strange happenings in the center of the marketplace had made her uneasy and given way to thoughts of an infraction. She had to protect the time line at any cost. Transit Hounds were deadly beasts manufactured by the Industries, and kept online in order to pursue those individuals who the Transit Authority suspected of transporting contraband or other such paraphernalia against temporal accords. But there was no evidence of such activity,
nothing to support the Hound’s actions in the bazaar. No one had broken any laws; no agreement had been violated, no alteration had occurred within teleportation legislation that she could deduce. The only wrongdoing blatantly available to attribute to the Hound’s action was the misgivings of a wayward man escorting a pair of women off-world, and that was questionable.
The man with the book, on the other hand, was another matter. The bookseller was dead, torn from limb-to-limb with the force of a bulldozer. The book was destroyed leaving nothing to chance, not even the death of the bookseller. There was a crate full of unanswered questions, several of which motivated Crimson. The implication was obvious: There was something else the Hound was after, something not readily visible in the pages of the book. Perhaps the off-worlders were transporting something on their person, which would account for the beast’s proximity to the good doctor and her patient. The answer was hidden in plain sight. For now, however, the question would linger unresolved. Crimson was hot on the trail of a mysterious alchemist and his young apprentice, Christopher Denarak.
The youth seemed familiar, but his true identity remained cloaked in mystery, as if he didn’t belong. He moved with purpose, traveling a good length of forest before reaching a hidden staircase at the timber’s edge. He knew the nocturnal creatures would soon reclaim the lands and make venturing beyond the mountain passes dangerous, especially to those wondering the timberlands alone. The Taleron Mansion, hidden beyond the staircase located in the heart of the Mannukan territory, along the Kalamarian Mountains was the place the natives called: The Mansion. Not for its luxury, but because of the high cliffs and stronghold. It was where Christopher Denarak was leading her.
