Tales from the Canyons of the Damned: Omnibus

by Daniel Arthur Smith

  Atticus was in awe at what he saw. No one had ever recorded such an event. He did not notice that Tesla had joined him until the man loudly spoke.

  “The ionization of the lower atmosphere needs to occur before the energy can be transmitted by way of the upper ionosphere thirty-thousand feet above.” Tesla twirled his finger upward. He cleared his throat. “That’s where it will travel.”

  “Travel?”

  “I can send millions of volts this way.” Tesla exuded confidence, certainty. “We’ll need a bigger tower of course.”

  Atticus was sure now that he was in the shadow of greatness, of history. Tesla was indeed like no one he had ever met, no mere mortal.

  It was then that something began to take shape in the void high above them, a billowing gaseous form, illuminated within by the same cyan blue lightning the tower spit forth. A deep purple arcus cloud rapidly unfurled, new pockets and pillows spread out in height and girth, and within seconds, the shelf cloud was mammoth in size. Atticus had never seen such a thing. The cloud, no differently than the tower, appeared alive. It had forced, pushed away the surrounding clouds, had overtaken Wardenclyffe.

  A wide, toothy grin filled Tesla’s face and he began to laugh.

  His predictions, his calculations, were correct. That immense power was being sent to the heart of Manhattan.

  And then, as if by some magical force, in a near instant, by measure faster than the massive arcus cloud had brought itself to life, it sucked into itself. The monstrous mass that had dominated the Long Island night sky—even if ever so briefly—shrunk inward to nothingness.

  And the power of the tower, the rhythmic flow of those huge cyan arcs, all of it ceased, went dead.

  “No, no, no,” Tesla wailed in disbelief. He ran across the room to his telegraph operator.

  Atticus was on his tail. “What just happened?” The reporter’s eyes darted around the room. “Was that it?” he asked, waiting for any of the white-coated men to answer.

  Tesla’s only focus was on the man at the wire. “Get Keller,” he said. “Ask him what happened.” In a series of rapid taps, the operator hammered out the series of Morse clicks Tesla instructed, and after a very brief pause, a reply. “He says,” the operator said, “Keller—stop—all ready—stop—waiting for you to begin—stop.”

  ~*~

  THE BLUE ORB

  Daniel Arthur Smith

  ~*~

  Manhattan, New York

  Population 4 million

  Zero Day – September 22nd

  One Hundred and Eleven Years After the Shoreham Experiment

  ~*~

  Aubrey Keller’s walk up Fifth Avenue had been swift, until he hit the flock of tourists at 33rd. He wove past them with contempt, dipping his tall shoulders deep to the sides on the off chance he may catch a case of Mississippi or Alabama. There was no doubt that he was not one of them. He stuck out on the sidewalk, a lanky six four and blond-mopped millennial, strutting in Levi’s and an oversized, once-white tee. A stark contrast to the sea of “I Heart NY” tees he was wading through. Tourists. The thought made him shudder, walking side by side—four, five in a line—a wall in the sidewalk, in the way of those with places to go. “Well, I get you’re happy to be away from that damn potato farm in Iowa or Idaho or I-doe-know, but I got a place to be!” That’s what he would’ve said. He chuckled at the words as he thought them and then snickered at a chubby-cheeked child. Tourists. Craning their necks up at the tall buildings. “Oh, Bill! Look at how tall that building is!” He made a funny face while he mouthed the words he imagined some heartland housewife named Deloris would say. Wasn’t hard to imagine—he reasoned they were all named Deloris or Lois or Emma, and they all said the same thing. People are dumb, and you can’t fix stupid. He had lived in New York all of his life, a few generations of Kellers had. And he had no time for tourists. He was on a schedule. He had to be Johnny on the spot at 12:23.

  He dodged the barrage of sandwich board-wearing pamphlet pushers and rounded into the art deco doors of 350 Fifth, the Empire State Building. The lobby wasn’t full, but it was full enough. More tourists, these with their cell phones held high, the screens lit bright by the gold leaf mural every one of them was trying to immortalize. The queue to the ticket windows filled most of the second floor visitor’s center. No matter, he had a pre-paid pass for the express elevator and it hadn’t closed yet. He scooted into the short security line behind a fat lady from—he squinted and pulled his lip taut to the left side of his face—from Kentucky.

  The little white letters on the security woman’s nametag read Rodriguez. The Bronx, he thought. No, purple eye shadow. He changed his mind, East Harlem. Rodriguez waved her security wand around Kentucky. When his turn came, he smiled a too-wide smile at Rodriguez and raised his hands high. She didn’t smile back, but nodded him past. He slid into the express elevator in front of Kentucky just before the doors began to move.

  As the elevator began to ascend, the fat lady behind his shoulder made a shrewd face. He saw her reflection in the dull brass of the art deco door. She was scrunching her nose. His shirt was old, a bit soiled. He wasn’t a Rockefeller. He lowered his head slightly to pull a whiff. Phew. Maybe he should’ve had a shower. He hadn’t had one today, or yesterday, even. Screw her. Tourist. He brushed his long blond bangs away from his forehead and glanced up to see how close they were to the 86th floor. In half an hour, everything was going to be different. He was going to be Johnny on the spot at 12:23.

  ~*~

  The 86th floor observation deck was full of people. Couples. Families. Tourists. The ones Keller hated. The ones that walked four bodies wide down the sidewalk, looking up at the buildings, while he tried his best to push past the bastards, and them always looking back at him like he was the one in their way. Like he didn’t belong. Like they didn’t know they were the intruders. People are dumb, and you can’t fix stupid. He sunk his hands into his front pants pockets and pulled his smartphone from one and a thick piece of chalk from the other. He looked around again and wiped the bottom of his nose with the back of his hand. He should’ve worn a jacket, the blue one he liked that he liberated from the Bar Mexicana. He tapped the smartphone, 12:22. His grandfather had said to be Johnny on the spot at 12:23, September 22nd, Johnny on the spot at 12:23. Actually, his dearly departed asshole of a father was groomed to be Johnny on the spot at 12:23, but dad and mom had an accident up at the Catskill property last week, a ventilation issue with the furnace, hadn’t even been found yet. Keller chuckled to himself. “Who’s the idiot now?”

  Aubrey Keller was supposed to be a last resort, regardless. He was a Keller. He was executing a family promise that had been put in the works since before his family sailed wooden ships over to the New World a few hundred years before. Way before. Way before, when the Europeans were still savages, and the Keller clan lived on a continent long lost.

  The Kellers were a long line, an ancient line.

  His great-great-grandfather Tobias was directly responsible for today. He had shared the ancients’ secrets of resonation with a string of fools that believed they were men of science. Tobias had worked beside Nikola Tesla, deceived the man into a line of invention to make this day happen, and then later up in Arkham, whispered into the ears of Crawford Tillinghast, seduced that scientist to go beyond as a messenger. Aubrey’s great-grandfather, to ensure the frequency was maintained, was at the controls of the resonator in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyards that made an entire destroyer vanish. And Aubrey’s grandfather, Elias, seduced sixty hippies into a trip out to the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, and then, one by one, sat them in front of a humming crystal contraption and dosed them full of DMT.

  In less than a minute, all of the planning, the investment, generations of investment, was about to pay off, and he, Aubrey Keller, was about to be the benefactor.

  Things were coming up Keller.

  A huge smile crept across Keller’s face. He may not’ve went to the fancy school his father wanted, bu
t he, of all the Kellers, he was the one that was going to have the power, immense power, all of the power. He was calling the Blue Prince when the line opened up. He was Johnny on the spot at 12:23. “Who’s the idiot now?”

  He glanced again at his phone. 12:23.

  And then he let his head fall straight back, straight back so that his neck was stretched taut and his eyes were locked on the target—the pinnacle of sky above the tower’s grand spire.

  He stared deeply into the gray abyss for the inevitable. For his future. There were tourists wandering all around him, but they took no notice. They were gawking at the views of downtown, they were looking away from him, away from the man facing the opposite way of the herd, the man staring up at the spire. He thought he could see it, he strained, compressed the muscles of his temples to push his orbs forward. He pained himself to will it into existence.

  And he thought he saw it.

  A dot.

  A flicker.

  A doubt against his eyes.

  And then, it came. And there was no doubt, no mistake. From high above the spire, midway toward the low gray sky it came, and it came quickly, and it came with force, and it came without warning to all those in the city but him, because only he, Johnny on the spot at 12:23, expected the thunderous jarring, and the explosion of a deep purple gaseous cloud from a point of singularity that rapidly expanded outward into a humongous billowing arcus cloud. From nothing to a fifty-foot-high and two-hundred-feet-across saucer of a dark angry cloud in seconds, and with it, countless arcs of electric blue lightning, fifty to seventy-five feet in length, all pounding the spire, competing to beat it down, searching, seeking the earth far below.

  Some of the tourists made a frantic run for the inside of the observation deck.

  Not Keller. Keller’s grandfather had told him what to do. Told him what his father had told him. Told him of the last resort, in case something happened to his father. Be at the tower on this day, September 22nd, Johnny on the spot at 12:23, not a minute later. And he had told him the lines to draw and taught him the words to say.

  Keller dropped to his knees and tapped the link on the smartphone. The picture from the book came up. It had to be like the picture. The lines had to be exact.

  He began to scrawl.

  First would be the wide circle, and then the letters, or runes, whatever you called them, those were what mattered. “The letters and the words,” the old man had said. “That’s what will call him.” His grandfather had some insight. Keller figured old Elias had dosed himself with DMT, taken a peek, broke on through the other side himself to make sure that the seeds elder Tobias had planted with Tesla would be ready to sow. Keller was about to sow. He rubbed the chalk hard against the rooftop and, stretching out as far as he could reach, began the circle. Three quarters of the way through, a young couple stepped into the path of his swing. Keller about choked. His head twitched up, a young Marine, a tiny Marine, and his gal.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  The couple, not noticing the man hunched over near their feet, shifted their view from the south of the island to him. Keller raised his other hand, and with flipping gestures waved them away. “Step aside, please,” he said. He gave them a googly-eye stare and the two sidestepped. He heard the Marine’s girl whisper, “He’s an artist.” Whatever. Tourists.

  His eyes darted up toward the cloud. The purple mass above was forming symmetrically now, spreading out in a huge, thick disk.

  Damn, he thought. They’ll see this from forever. The circle finished, he drew the lines to the square, and then the symbols, the symbols for the Blue Prince, the circle and the lightning bolts.

  When he was done, he shoved the chalk and the phone back into the pockets he’d pulled them from. Keller placed his hands together flatly, closed his eyes, and dropped his head forward. “Now or never, Keller.” This was the deal. This was what it was all about. All the planning. The sacrifice.

  The sacrifice.

  He almost forgot.

  He raised his head and shoved his long fingers deep into his right front pocket, down past the chalk, and dug around. Out came a peach golf tee. He stuck the long, thin tee into his mouth. The painted tee was soft to his teeth, but he was certain it would be hard enough to get the job done.

  There was no security near his side of the observation deck. They were too busy helping the I-doe-knows in through the door on the other side.

  Keller rubbed his chalked hands together as fast as he could, and when they became super-hot, he clutched the golf tee, reached over, and simultaneously pulled the Marine’s dark hair back with his left hand and sunk the knuckled tee deep into the thick artery of his neck with the right. Four rapid jabs. Keller might as well have been stabbing pulp. The wide-eyed idiot shit didn’t even see him coming. Tourist. Keller dropped his right arm but he held the sacrifice tight by the hair. It took less than a second, but as soon as the blood jettisoned in that spray hose fount, Keller jerked the stuck pig down into the center of the summoning circle. There was no blood on Keller. Perfect. He would have had to clean away the blood, and that took time. The girl, a petite little number in jeans and a tight black tee, took the brunt of the blood shower. She appeared to lose her breath, and when she tried to scream, the sound that came out was the bawk of a chicken.

  Keller didn’t waste any time.

  He straightened his shoulders, tilted his head up toward the spire, and raised his hands openly up above him to receive his sovereign. There was no need to access the phone again. The incantation was imprinted, etched into his mind. But the chicken girl was very distracting. She was hyperventilating squawks. Keller lowered his arms and glared at the blood-soaked girl. “Do you mind?”

  These people.

  These tourists.

  She didn’t stop. So WHAM. Sploosh. He planted a solid punch into the middle of her face. That shut her up. But she was still gawking at him. WHAM. Sploosh. Another punch, and she fell backward. Keller began to smile, and then realized that the group of I-doe-knows at the corner of the platform were watching him. One made eye contact and darted away. Going for help.

  No time to lose.

  He raised his hands again, and began the incantation.

  “Spirit of the Fire, Remember!

  GIBIL, Spirit of the Fire, Remember!

  GIRRA, Spirit of the Flames, Remember!

  O God of Fire, Mighty Son of ANU, Most terrifying among Thy Brothers, Rise!

  O God of the Furnace, God of Destruction, Remember!

  O God of Fire, GIBIL in Thy Majesty, and devour my enemies!

  Rise Up, Blue Prince

  Rise up, O God of Fire, GIRRA in Thy Power, and burn the sorcerers who persecute me!”

  A dark, high hollow began to form in the center of the cloud. Keller’s words were pushing the clouds. The power was inside of him. Already inside of him. The bottom of his belly tightened and pushed the words up from far within, from the genes of his family’s line, and he heard the bass of the words, heavy, resonant, invoking.

  “GIBIL GASHRU UMANA YANDURU TUSHTE YESH SHIR ILLANI U MA YALKI! GISHBAR IA ZI IA IA ZI DINGIR GIRRA KANPA!

  Rise up, Blue Prince!

  Rise up, Son of the Flaming Disk of ANU!

  Rise up, Offspring of the Golden Weapon of MARDUK!

  It is not I, but ENKI, Master of the Magicians, who summons Thee!

  It is not I, but MARDUK, Slayer of the Serpent, who calls Thee here now!”

  The entire mass above began to swirl around the void Keller’s commands had created, and a rain, a thick-dropped rain, began to slowly hammer the observation deck. A solid sphere missile of a droplet slammed into his forehead, and then another, sending a rivulet running around his eye. He had brought those, he had brought forth the rain. He had made the sky turn.

  “Burn the Evil and the Evildoer!

  Burn the Sorcerer and the Sorceress!

  Singe them! Burn them! Destroy them!

  Consume their powers!

  Carry them awa
y!”

  The blue lightning bolts emanating from the cloud above took on a brighter cyan hue and began to focalize their strikes on a point thirty feet above the spire, forming a cone of electric fire beneath the spiraling disc that had now spread to shadow all of midtown.

  “Rise up, GISHBAR BA GIBBIL BA GIRRA ZI AGA KANPA!

  Spirit of the God of Fire, Thou art Conjured!

  KAKKAMMANUNU!”

  Sparks and bolts of cyan and white fused at the tip of the cone, and from there rapidly grew outward around the shape of a dark blue ball of an orb.

  To watch the brilliant incarnation of the Blue Prince was to stare into the sun. The age-old intelligence that was his master was of an early form, the indigo orb. The sky behind the blue orb was black, forbidding, dulled and made gone from the lightning fusing the dimensional gate. The dull indigo surface was scarred with blackened, flaking, callused spots. Huge arcs of the cyan lightning dripped out and away and around the rim. The hideous disc was encircled with bands of electrical energy that at times swelled and joined into massive fiery sheets that caressed, kissed, and licked, while others absorbed into the Prince. These bolts, these bands of energy, these too were alive. The minions, thought Keller. The servants of the Blue Prince. The fire creatures that shared a hive mind and did the orb’s bidding.

  Keller tasted salt with the water washing past his lips. He realized the salt was from his eyes. His tears.

  The vision.

  His sovereign was so beautiful. Never had he seen anything so much greater than himself. His grandfather had not prepared him for this. Not really. He had not been groomed. He was a last resort.