His inner compass led him out of the park and down a few city blocks to an intersection. Jöanth stopped, his intuition screaming at him that something terrible had happened here. The cleaning crews had come and gone, but Jöanth could still find minute droplets of blood. The blood particles were old though, degraded. The time difference between jumps from Edínu to Terra was evident yet again. Jöanth was a day or two behind his quarry on this world. And in that time, it had killed again.
The feel of this particular place told Jöanth that someone had died here recently and the svartálvur was responsible. Jöanth offered a quick prayer for the departed's soul, wishing it a safe journey to the next realm. Often, when a life was taken by a supernatural entity or by unnatural means, then the spirit could get lost and wander aimlessly. Jöanth hoped for the departed's sake that he or she had found peace.
Duty done to the dead, Jöanth moved on, tracking the thing's progress across the road, through a park and to a subway station. From there it led to a platform and became fainter along the tracks, leading away from the city.
Jöanth muttered a quiet curse. The thing had gotten on a train. That made the distance to cover that much greater. It would now take longer to find the thing, especially since there were no trains running at this hour. Getting on a train at this platform would also not guarantee that Jöanth would be traveling to the same destination. The train could take him in a completely wrong direction.
There was only one thing to do. Follow the thing's trail along the tracks and hope that the thing hadn't decided to cross the continent.
CHAPTER 17
Eleanor had converted the downstairs spare bedroom into a combination study/library as soon as her parents moved out. Her desk was at the back of the room against the wall, her back to the door and the small library. She was facing the computer screen and a blank wall, which ironically mirrored her thoughts. Behind her, one wall was adorned with framed, blown up photographs of famous national parks she had been to and hiking trails she had done. Two of the four walls were completely covered from floor to ceiling with custom made racks, stacked with books. The fireplace in the corner near the door was dark.
She looked at her desk with a mixture of chagrin and anger. She checked the desk for any damage and was furious with herself for losing control. She usually had a place outside where she smashed the keyboards. Her writing desk had been bought at a yard sale and had belonged to a retired attorney. It was a 19th Century Belgium oak carved desk with a well-worn leather top and was the most extravagant piece of furniture in her house. She felt guilty for what she had just done. She had slammed the keyboard into the desk. Repeatedly.
Three days had passed since their escape from the train station. There had been no sign of the Thing, but that didn't mean that Eleanor could forget about it. It had replaced the bloody children in her nightmares. Even during her waking hours, she couldn't get it from her thoughts. She kept seeing it again and again in her mind's eye, those six amber eyes burnt into her every thought.
She hadn't slept much and her inability to make any progress had grown from mild irritation into a full blown hissy fit. She smashed the keyboard to pieces on her desk, and only stopped when an errant key, the f, hit the right lens of her glasses. That solved her anger issues immediately. If she hadn't worn her glasses for the computer, she would have been swearing even more now. There was no point really. Pent-up anger and frustration spent, she took a final calming breath and exhaled the last bit of her annoyance.
She unplugged the destroyed device, scraped together the bits and pieces of plastic and threw them in the bin. She pushed her chair back from her desk, took a deep breath, and walked to the cupboard to retrieve a new keyboard. She bought them every year by the dozen and allowed herself to smash one every month. It was her way to vent her irritation. Today, however, she was on her second keyboard.
Eleanor was frustrated for two reasons: she couldn't focus on Stephen Delaigne's work, and she was no nearer to finding an answer to the thing's identity than when she had first seen it.
She had done searches on just about everything she could think of.
She spent hours trying to find a description of a mythical creature that explained the Thing and she had nothing to show for it.
She looked at different religions. Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim. Looked through books of ancient cultures. Sumerian. Egyptian. Mesopotamian. Assyrian. Greek. Roman. Celtic. Baltic. Slavic. Chinese. Japanese. Native American.
She had a list of possible suspects, but none of their descriptions came even close to the thing she had seen. She was still no nearer to figuring it out.
At the moment, she referred to it as Thing with a capital letter, since she didn't have a better name for it yet. Its origins were still a mystery to her.
Eleanor looked at the list on her computer screen. She had three columns. Probables, Definitely Maybes, and Improbables. There were many Improbables, a few Definitely Maybes and only a handful of Probables. At the beginning of her quest for answers, she also had a list of creatures that did not fit the bill. This included creatures like unicorns, pegasus, sartyrs, mermaids, sirens, leprechauns, dwarves, dragons, elves, nisse, goblins, golems, leshy, wendigo, and a host of others. Eventually the list got too long and she deleted it and didn't spend time on even capturing the creatures she had eliminated.
At first, under the Improbables column, she had a long list of mythical creatures that were able to change shape. She didn’t know why she would have shifters on her list, but it somehow resonated with her. In theory, her Thing could be any of a million different monsters, and there was a sub-list of shapeshifters that Eleanor disregarded. These included werewolves, vampires, skin-walkers, Huli jing, púca, and other creatures that were known in Therianthropy. She was certain her Thing couldn't change into an animal. There was no indication that it could change shape at all, which was why she eventually disregarded creatures who had this ability.
First on her current Improbable list was Orc.
She looked at her scribbles.
Orcs. Brutish [tick], aggressive [tick], ugly [tick] and malevolent [tick].
Four ticks.
Orcs did not possess the ability to cloak themselves in invisibility. To Eleanor's surprise, orcs seemed to have been imagined by JRR Tolkien. He claimed to have gotten the word from Beowulf, which meant that orcs weren't mythical creatures after all, but were fictional. She put them on the list out of respect for the great works of Mr. Tolkien. Her Thing was also ugly and brutish enough to be classified as an orc, but orcs couldn't make themselves invisible.
Her eyes wandered to the rest of her Improbables column, which contained things like boogeyman, antmen, daevas, kobold.
Boogeyman: frightening. torments children (not adults). - Doesn't kill people in broad daylight...
Antman.
Eleanor smiled at this one. This wasn't the mini-superhero jumping about in the Quantum Realm, but a creature that went into a battle frenzy and was equally adept at biting off heads or decapitating an enemy with one of four possible wielded swords.
Antman: (from Homer's Iliad) 4 weapon bearing arms, red eyes, crushing jaw.
Eleanor's monster didn't have four arms, but it did have extra joints, burning orange eyes, rather than red, and what looked like a crushing jaw.
Daeva. (Iranian) A god-like creature - creates chaos and disorder. Word applies to ogres, monsters, and other evil creatures. (BUT - some believe they are benevolent deities). Confusing... + what does it look like? Powers?
She could probably scratch daeva from the list, she thought, but kept it nonetheless. She didn't have a large list of suspects.
Kobold. (German folklore) Can materialize in the form of an animal, fire, a human being, and a candle. Most common description = humanlike, size of small children. A CANDLE? REALLY? (Is this what I’ve been reduced to? Chasing fairytales??)
Based on this description, the Thing couldn't be a kobold, but she would have to make sure by doing m
ore research.
Eleanor's Definitely Maybe column consisted of fallen angels, ogres, jinn, and oni.
Fallen angels: (too ugly to ever have been an angel). Angels cast out of heaven - NO wings... BUT, is it fact that angels have wings? Would fallen angels still have wings? Wings premise: given Thing's size and body shape - could never fly, even with wings. BUT - who knew for sure?
Ogres. (Greek - Oiagros? French fiction - Charles Perrault) Giants, disproportionately large head, abundant hair, unusually colored skin, a voracious appetite, strong body, doesn't like people.
Obviously, her Thing wasn't hairy and she didn't know if it had a voracious appetite or what it ate. The rest though, seemed to fit. However, according to folklore, Ogres didn't seem to like congregations of people and generally stayed in woodlands, caves and mountain peaks. Eleanor also couldn't find any mention of ogres being invisible to humans.
And therein lay the problem. The invisibility. There weren't many creatures in folklore that were invisible to people. The rest of her small list contained the names of creatures that had the ability to turn invisible. It was a pitifully small list.
Jinn. (Arabic) Malevolent (tick) supernatural creature (tick) - can turn invisible (tick). No description. mentioned twenty-nine times in Quran. Can be good or bad. Questionable jinn traits: sometimes referred to as demons, fear iron, live in desolate places, stronger & faster than humans. Eat bones & prefer rotten flesh.
The problem with all folklore was that it changed over the course of centuries. Some thought jinn were benevolent and could help people, whereas others thought they were evil demons. This frustrated Eleanor greatly as there would sometimes be conflicting descriptions of particular creatures. She sighed and looked at the next suspect.
Oni. (Japanese) derived from on, meaning “to hide or conceal.” Hideous (tick), gigantic ogre-like creatures, single horn or multiple horns on their heads, sharp claws (tick), wild hair, black-skinned (tick), or yellow-skinned, third eye on their forehead (three eyes short), or with extra fingers (tick) and toes (my Thing has less).
They torment sinners as wardens of Jigoku (Hell), administering sentences passed down by Hell's magistrate.
What interested Eleanor was the ability not to appear, the black skin, extra fingers and sharp claws. She also liked the idea that they were tormentors. Perhaps Thing was on holiday from hell?
She sighed again. This was what she had been reduced to. Flights of fancy. It was frustrating for someone who didn't believe in the supernatural. Eleanor dealt with facts. They could be checked. Verified. Trusted. This was a whole new and alien world to her. She felt lost in the world of make-believe and myths and legends. The folklore was getting her down. It all seemed too fantastical. Too made up. As if it all came from a fictional book. They read like an amalgamation of scary stories that had been told around campfires for hundreds of years to stir our primitive fears and to scare naughty children.
Mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus, Eleanor thought.
And then there was the small list of Probables.
Demon. (Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek?) Supernatural entities with supernatural abilities. Not always seen by people (tick), malevolent (tick). (Why can I see it???)
Different types of demons with different powers.
Thing could be a mazikeen/shedeem/shehireem (Hebrew). Mazikeen love to play tricks on humans (tick). They can remain invisible as long as they wanted (tick - but why can I see it?) and could take on any shape.
This was the point where Eleanor had broken her first keyboard. A mazikeen could take on any shape. Could her Thing change shape? Was it a demon that chose to appear in the form it had to confuse her? Why would it toy with her? Why could she see it and no else could? Why her?
More than anything, that was what bothered her the most. The burning question: Why me?
Looking at her pitiful list of Probables, Eleanor scanned the list quickly.
Demon.
Grendel.
Rakshasa.
Grendel. (Beowulf) Grendel = creature of darkness, exiled from happiness, cursed by God, destroyer and devourer of human kind. Covered with scales (looked like it - tick), horny growths. Creature of darkness? = dark skin/evil?
Perhaps her thing was a grendel, not the Grendel that Beowulf had killed, but a descendant.
The translation of Beowulf by Nobel Literature laureate, Seamus Heany, describing Grendel's arm, made Eleanor think of her monster. Heaney's translation of lines 983–989, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, it is described as covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths:
“Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike
and welt on the hand of that heathen brute
was like barbed steel. Everybody said
there was no honed iron hard enough
to pierce him through, no time proofed blade
that could cut his brutal blood caked claw...”
To Eleanor, this was the closest description to what the thing's organic armor looked like to her, and that was why it was in the Probable column.
Another was the rakshasa.
Rakshasa (Hindu) shape-shifting, fierce-looking and enormous creatures (tick), two fangs protruding from top of mouth, sharp, claw-like fingernails (had claws. Half tick?) mean, growling like beasts, insatiable man-eaters (can smell scent of human flesh).
Some shown with flaming red eyes and hair (thing = orange eyes, no hair), drinking blood with their palms or from a human skull. Can fly, vanish (tick), and had maya (magical powers of illusion), change size at will, assume the form of any creature.
And then, there were Eleanor's Wild Theories. It was because she had been thinking along these lines that she had broken the last keyboard. Her wild theories included only two things.
1. Something created in a laboratory. Unlikely - Thing has the ability to turn invisible and only appear to certain people (me - why?).
2. An off-planet, extra-terrestrial, alien creature, like the Predator – here to hunt for trophies??
These ideas were so out of character for her that she had smashed the keyboard repeatedly, shouting “No!” with every stroke. It was only when the f key hit her glasses that she had stopped.
She realized she needed a break, and possibly sleep. She had been sitting in front of the computer for almost three days now. Exhaustion and few results were making her cranky and irritable. She powered down the PC, stored her glasses in their case and grabbed a sticky note. She wrote a single line and nodded.
Research specific demons - demon seems most likely
She stood up, done with the research for now. It was time for a quick meal and then it was off to bed. She didn't think the Thing was a demon per se, but if it was a species or thing that people had encountered before, then someone will have written about it somewhere. She just had to keep digging. Bring in some outside help perhaps. Make inquiries at university departments that dealt with Ancient Civilizations. Something would show up. She needed to know what the Thing was and if she ever saw it again, she had to know how to fight it.
Eleanor hoped that she would be able to recognize the piece of info she needed when she saw it. Her mind was a confused space of jumbling thoughts at the moment and everything seemed to blend into a single fuzzy whole. She needed sleep more than anything else.
Trundling up the stairs to her first-floor bedroom, her mind was a whirlwind of different images and lines of text. She felt numb and unable to think clearly. This was unlike her and she needed sleep. Reaching her bed, she didn't even bother taking off her sandals or getting into pajamas. She collapsed onto her bed and fell into an exhausted sleep that was mercifully free of nightmares. It was a dead sleep, reserved for coma patients and the truly exhausted where the body had only one job to do - reboot.
CHAPTER 18
Charlene woke, staring up at the ceiling in the guest bedroom that was always available for her. It was strange waking up while it was still dark. As a guest, she had always slept soundly here. This was the second night i
n a row now where she came awake at odd hours and for no reason.
It has to be that damned train, she thought. She still couldn't get it out of her head, especially when she was alone. That feeling of overwhelming dread flooded over her as soon as she thought of the train ride, the woman's hair and that dead spot that made her brain itch and set her nerves on edge.
During the day, in the sunshine, the train weirdness was far from her thoughts. She didn't even entertain thoughts of ghosts and goblins and dark entities that could cut a woman's hair in broad daylight on a train full of passengers.
Okay, okay, she admitted to herself. She was exaggerating a bit, the train wasn't filled to even half of its capacity, but still. She hadn't been alone and other people had seen it. too. And felt a presence.
And then there was Eleanor and her strange behavior. She had definitely seen something other than what Charlene had. Her reaction had been different than everyone else's.
It was more intense.
More focused.
As if she could see what was causing the problems.
Charlene decided that they would have to talk about it again. It wasn't something she could discuss with Rosewater. RW might think they were playing a joke on her. She would have to find a way to see Eleanor alone. Maybe RW had another cheerleading session planned?
As best friends since she could remember, they would usually share everything. This, however, was something different. If you hadn't been there, you wouldn't believe what happened. And no one, not even Eleanor as an experienced journo and writer, would be able to express in words and convey the sense of dread and fear she had experienced. And then there was that feeling of being watched by something utterly evil. She even began to relive that feeling here. Sometimes, when Charlene was alone, she would get that cold, creepy feeling of being watched. It sucked big balls of frozen lemons.
Stirring Embers: An urban fantasy action adventure (The Light and the Void Book 1) Page 12
