Late to the Party

by Ramy Vance

  Stew was already on his feet, running toward the church steeple, calling over his shoulder, “Are you guys gonna fucking move, or sit around talking all day!”

  Suzuki knew Stew was right to keep moving. At most, the small bomb of positivity was only going to buy them a little time. It was, in fact, a small bomb. They were going to need something a whole lot stronger if they were going to take afternoon tea. It was better to keep moving and try to find the source of the fog.

  It didn’t take long for Sandy and Suzuki to catch up to Stew. The three of them sprinted as fast as they could, as if they were running from whatever dread had welled up within them earlier. Suzuki was curious to know what could have dragged Stew and Sandy into the depths of sadness. Now that he thought of it, he wasn’t sure what had caused his downward spiral.

  No one memory or emotion had stood out in his head. It was just an overwhelming feeling, one that had swept him up in its current before he had time to discern what was happening. There was no distinct image, no distinct point in time. Suzuki wondered if it was because he had had a relatively trauma-free childhood. So did Stew and Sandy though. So what could have caused them to sink so thoroughly into despair?

  The church steeple was coming up fast. Better to worry about it later, Suzuki thought.

  The church stood out oddly in the village, which on the whole had nothing particularly interesting about it. The houses and buildings look as if they had been pulled from a How to Design Fantasy Worlds RPG manual. The black church was another story.

  A long, thin, black steeple pierced the sky. It was covered in small spikes that stood out like fangs and was attached to a bell tower, where a cracked bell hung off-kilter. The rest of the church stretched out in a flat, monolithic fashion. It was also covered with the odd fang-like spikes, giving the impression that the church was the mouth of a dangerous creature that had been pulled inside out. Black flames flickered behind broken windows.

  Suzuki came to a full stop, staring up at the church, hardly able to comprehend the sheer amount of dread pouring from behind its walls. There was something in there, something dark and dangerous, but it wasn’t the source of the fog. Whatever was creating the fog was only a part of whatever had corrupted the church. “You guys feel that?” Suzuki asked.

  Sandy was keyed into the church as well. She had hardly blinked since she had stopped running. Her skin had gone paler than usual, so much so that her cheeks looked as if blush had been applied. Stew was staring slack-jawed as well. His eyes were locked in a gaze of determination, as if the church were full of something which needed to be understood, but couldn’t be grasped. “Yeah, I feel it too,” Stew said. “Whatever we’re looking for is in there.”

  “This isn’t magic,” Sandy added. “Maybe the fog, but whatever that feeling is, it’s something else. Psychic, maybe.”

  Suzuki gave a Sandy a bemused look. “Wait, you’re saying that there are psychics here as well?” Stew asked.

  “Shit, do you ever read anything that I tell you to?”

  “When it’s not extremely boring,” Suzuki admitted.

  “Well, if you had, you would know by now that psychic here isn’t the same as back home. We’re not talking about moving things with your mind. It’s deeper than that. Psychic is connected to something…other, something that permeates all of existence, something that sends out ripples that distort or alter reality. It’s really not much different from magic. The only difference is that we don’t really understand it, not how it works.”

  Stew started to pace back and forth, never taking his eyes off the steeple, rolling his shoulders as he fingered the hilt of his sword the way one imagines a gunslinger thumbing his six-shooter. “All right,” he finally said, “that’s a great history lesson, but when are we going to kill whoever is fucking with my feelings? This is worse than having a crazy girlfriend.”

  “And why the fuck does it have to be a crazy girlfriend? It could be a crazy anything, you sexist sack of—”

  Suzuki stepped between Sandy and Stew. He had felt it too. Something hot in him, trying to leap up out of his throat. “Guys, focus,” he said. “The effects of the fog must be stronger here. We gotta keep our shit together. So no fighting.”

  “I’d fucking win if we did,” Stew argued.

  “Earlier, when we all got depressed, what was it that you guys were thinking of?” Suzuki asked.

  Stew and Sandy both looked at each other. For a second, Suzuki thought it might be some shared sore subject that had resulted in them spiraling into the black. Neither Stew nor Sandy offered any inclination that it might have been though. They both looked perplexed. Stew shrugged and earnestly looked at Suzuki. “I don’t know,” he offered. “I can’t remember anything specific. Even just now, when I got pissed off, I can’t remember why I was pissed. I don’t even think I remember what Sandy said.

  Sandy nodded as she thought it over. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I can’t really think of anything.”

  Suzuki snapped his fingers together and nearly jumped to click his heels. He got it. “When we were talking about dying together, you remember how we started to feel better, how we actually started talking again?”

  “Yeah, it was like the fog was pulling back.”

  “It’s because we were focusing on a specific thing, a specific memory. Everything that we said was about a single instance. All the negative feelings that are overwhelming us are generic, but the memories that we used to dig us out are very specific. That’s how we can fight it off. Everyone concentrate on something that makes you happy or whatever. Just focus on the details.”

  “How do you know that’s it?”

  “It’s worth a try. Now let’s get to the top of that steeple and handle whoever decided to turn this into an afterschool special on feelings.”

  Suzuki approached the church gingerly. The doors of the church were massive, gothic things, a design that looked like it would be more suited for pre-revolution French cathedrals. Intricate designs were etched into the stone door. It looked as if they told a story. The etchings depicted a large fire, dozens of people standing around the fire. Then, by a trick of the light, one could see another group of people dressed in robes, lurking behind those near the fire.

  Sandy and Stew came up beside Suzuki. “That’s a fucking creepy-ass motif,” Stew said.

  “Since when do you know what a motif is?”

  “Since I’ve been taking art history lessons, you ass.”

  Suzuki glanced at Stew out the corner of his eye and could see Stew smiling. The memory was keeping Stew grounded. “My bad, my bad,” Suzuki said. “I keep forgetting that you’re a modern-day renaissance man. Hope you’re stronger than the average peasant revolutionary. Gimme a hand with the door.”

  “Not cool, dude. Revolutions for the equality of humankind should be praised, not get sidelined for a shitty punchline. The revolution is with the trampled masses.”

  Both Sandy and Suzuki stared at Stew with a mixture of incredulity and newfound respect.

  “Just joking, guys. I don’t give a shit about history,” he said, digging a booger from his nose and flicking it on the ground. “Fucking nerds.”

  Stew leaned hard into the church door, along with Suzuki and Sandy. The door crept open, sending a shrill creak through the resonant chamber. The Mundanes crossed the threshold and entered the church, which smelled of mold and must.

  The pews that had taken up the back part of the church were shattered, wood laying everywhere. There were pools of black liquid across the floor. The walls were covered in some kind of dark slime that oozed slowly down into the crevices in the wood. At the far end of the church, there was an altar.

  It was gated off.

  Suzuki went to the altar, making sure to avoid stepping in the puddles which smelled of rotten eggs and dried blood. He stood before the altar and stared at the large statue behind the gate.

  It was not of a deity Suzuki recognized. Whatever was standing in the middle of the gated altar resemb
led a parody of holiness. It had the torso of a man, but the head was flattened as if it had been beaten in with a hammer. Its nose was an empty hole, and large leathery wings appeared to be sprouting from its back. The creature’s legs were a mass of tentacles, goat hooves, and human legs. The posture of the stature was hunched, as if in some form of supplication, but to what?

  Sandy and Stew came up behind Suzuki, both wearing similar looks of confusion and disgust. “What the fuck is that?” Sandy asked.

  Suzuki opened the gate and walked behind the altar to get a better look at the statue. Now that he was closer, he could see that the details of the statue were obscene. He could see the individual hairs of the fur covering the sparse goat legs of the contorted mess of a lower body. “Whoever made it must have used magic,” Suzuki mused. “There’s no way that you could carve this.”

  As Suzuki walked around the statue, he noticed the candles on the altar had started to burn. He also had the distinct feeling that the statue was watching him from eyes that could not be seen. Suzuki did his best to ignore the eerie feeling crawling up his spine. He assumed that it was nothing more than the fog. If it could force him to feel anger and depression, how was fear any different? Besides, the statue wasn’t that scary. It was unnerving, but it was only a statue. Suzuki continued to circle the statue until he noticed a stairwell carved into the church behind the statue.

  Suzuki held up his hand and a small blue light floated out ahead of him, partially illuminating the pitch-black stairwell. “Hey, guys,” Suzuki called. “We got stairs going up back here.”

  Stew and Sandy trotted around the statue, both taking time to eye the statue with suspicion and a slight sense of dread until they were next to Suzuki. The three of them quietly ascended the steps.

  The stairwell was extremely cramped. The walls were barely wider than Suzuki’s shoulders. He felt bad for Stew, who he imagined was trying to scoot sideways along the old stone walls. Suzuki was less worried about Sandy. She would have figured out an ingenious way to stay comfortable by now. Now that he thought of it, Sandy was always finding ways to do things without effort. Magic seemed to come so naturally to her.

  Suzuki rested his hand on his sword as his mind wandered in a swirl of thoughts without any specific end. All that he could understand was that he felt miserable about being so shitty at magic when Sandy made it look so easy. He was an idiot. That’s how simple it was. He could never be as good as Sandy was. Why the hell were Sandy and Stew even listening to his suggestions? Suzuki knew he wasn’t fit to lead anyone.

  The pace of the Mundanes started to slow. The walls felt tighter around Suzuki, as if they had come alive and were trying to crush the three small bodies. At least that was something that Suzuki knew he could do as well as Sandy: die.

  Stew called from the back of the ascending queue, “Hey, guys, what’s the holdup?”

  Suzuki felt as if he had just been roused from a nap. “Huh,” he murmured. “What are you talking about?”

  Stew pointed at them. “You guys are moving real fucking slow.”

  “Are we?”

  The barbarian shook his head. “Fuck, the fog must be getting to you, dude. You gotta push it out. Remember what you were saying about focusing. Come on, focus on something happy. Get it together.”

  Suzuki tried to turn his thoughts inward. It felt like diverting the course of a river. Still, it was less effort than when they had been outside. So he dove deep into his memories. He tried to focus on one moment with all his mind.

  VR.

  Work had been shit.

  He signed on into the game…back when it was just a game. He went through his inventory.

  A text from Beth.

  There was going to be a raid.

  Instant transportation.

  Beth, Sandy, and Stew waiting for him outside of a cave.

  He couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but everyone was laughing.

  Suzuki knew he belonged there, with them, laughing.

  Suzuki could almost smell the dank moss of the cave.

  He felt that if he closed his eyes, he could see Beth standing there, waiting for him.

  Her and the rest of the Mundanes.

  They were always waiting for him.

  They never went ahead without him.

  Like that one time they had been stuck running fetch quests for some glitched-out NPC.

  The memories felt so strong that Suzuki didn’t think of anything else for a while. He just reminisced about the hours sunk into Middang3ard and lost track of time. It was good to take some time and remember. Life had been so insane over the last few weeks. It was easy to forget about these things.

  Suzuki finally came to the end of the stairs. A small, wooden door with a low arch stood in front of him. A thick fog slipped under the bottom of the door. “What’s the plan?” Suzuki asked.

  Stew tried to stretch, and Suzuki heard Stew’s skin scraping against the stone. He must have cast Stoneskin to keep from rubbing himself raw. “How about we get out of the fucking stairwell?” Stew muttered under his breath.

  “Seriously. What do we know?”

  Sandy forced her way up to the door, close enough so that she was pressed uncomfortably against Suzuki’s butt. “Uh, we know the source of the fog is here. The fog is magical and psychic in nature, so we can expect a mage at least. Also, Suzuki, you have got one hell of an ass.”

  Suzuki clenched his butt cheeks out of embarrassment and tried to move around, but realized that that would just result in pressing his crotch against Sandy’s. From the rear, Stew could be heard chuckling. “Dude,” Stew whispered, “what have I been telling you? Suzuki’s backing an extra brain in his glutes or something.”

  “Can we just focus on killing whatever is in there?”

  “All right. Whatever the fuck is in there is defs alone. And probably fucking tough as hell.” Stew flexed his muscles as if saying, “I’m tough, too.”

  “Why do you think it's alone?”

  “Homeboy has been pumping the town full of shit emotions. Can you imagine how terrible that would be to be stuck in a room with? I mean, imagine hotboxing all day, but you’re just smoking resentment and that weird shame you get from your mom walking in on you jerking off. You, not me. I ain’t ever been caught.”

  Suzuki scratched his chin as he nodded his head. “You know, that makes a lot of sense,” he agreed. “That makes a whole lot of sense. So we have some kind of magic something that’s probably by itself. We get in there, disable it, and the fog clears up. Then we can find whatever the fuck José sent us looking for.”

  “If it hasn’t already figured out that we’re here. We have been standing around and doing a shitty job of whispering for a while.”

  “Yeah. You’re—”

  The door exploded into a thousand cascading pieces. The force of the impact tossed Suzuki backward, widening the hallway he had been standing in. As the dust settled, Suzuki scanned the area to see if he could find the others or at least see what had attacked. He suddenly remembered that Sandy was already out of mana and was practically a sitting duck.

  Stew had managed to dive into the bell tower and was plastered against the wall. Sandy was beside him.

  Now that the dust was gone, Suzuki could see where the attack came from. The bell tower was a large room, with candle-covered floors and walls. A massive cracked bell hung in the middle of the room with an open expanse beneath it. A woman was hiding behind the bell. She had long black hair with white streaks. Her face was deeply wrinkled, her lips were blood red, and she was dressed in what looked like a black potato sack.

  The woman shuffled out from behind the bell. She hung her head as she walked so that her hair covered most of her face. Only her wrinkled mouth could be seen. “Who comes to disturb the Bell Tower Hag?” she growled, her voice thick and violent as a crouching lion.

  Stew drew his swords and stepped forward, pointing the blade at the hag. “Hey-yo,” he shouted. “Are you the one who’s makin
g the sad fog?”

  The hag bowed in a great show of false humility. “Most travelers would have killed themselves by now. Torn each other to pieces. But you three? How did you manage to move past my fog?”

  “Less talking, more killing!”

  Stew tossed his sword across the room with the accuracy of a throwing knife. The sword struck the hag in the chest, and she flew back. The blade pinned her to the wall, and she shrieked for a moment before her head rested against her chest and she was silent.

  Suzuki crossed the room to join up with Stew and Sandy.

  “Damn, dude,” Suzuki said, “since when did you get so efficient?”

  Stew tossed up one of his swords and caught it in midair. He had a smile as wide as a school kid’s, obviously proud of himself. “Always been efficient,” he said. “You two are just too busy with your heads up your asses to see my immaculate sick-ass skills.”

  Across the room, there was a sound like gas being forced from a balloon. Suzuki turned to look at the source of the noise. The hag was writhing against the wall. Her skin was covered in a thousand small gashes. She looked as if she were deflating.

  Suzuki flipped his HUD on to check their percentage of success. He looked in the direction of the hag. His HUD read 50%. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself.

  14

  The hag’s skin ripped open as if a seam had been split, then fell away, and a skinny white thing that looked like a maggot slithered out.

  “What are we fighting, a maggot or a hag?” Stew asked.

  “Does it matter?” Suzuki responded, staring as the maggot expanded rapidly turning into a creature nearly seven feet long, its head covered in thick, matted hair. It had four arms, each of which was nearly the length of its body. It hunched forward using its arms to drag its body, leaving a thick slimy trail as spurts of mucus and gas shot from its body through oversized pores.

  Suzuki drew his sword and cast Stoneskin. Stew did the same as he stepped up to stand beside Suzuki. “You can’t blame me for this,” Stew said. “I had no idea this hag was going to pull a Frieza on us.”