A Shrouded World | Book 8 | Asgard

by Tufo, Mark

  “What is this place?” The sound of my voice was the only noise. There were shapes, but they would not become vivid no matter how long I stared. It was much like the background in an old photo; everything was blurred with soft edges. The only thing that had sharp lines was me, or what I could see of myself. I was suddenly worried that my face might appear the same way as everything else, maybe a Serrat, with washed-out, semi-solid features, like I’d taken an acid bath. Not that it was going to matter much; as far as I could tell, I was alone. Had I again become separated from my traveling companions? Had Church been forced down a different route? He could, quite literally, be anywhere or any time.

  I couldn’t get the feeling out of my head that I was in the in-between, a place before a place, if that makes any sense. It was and is a difficult concept to attempt to explain. I didn’t feel as if I were moving…wasn’t even sure if I could. Yet I felt movement, waves of change washing over me. Sometimes the world I was in became clearer, sometimes more distorted; sometimes I could make out great shapes in the background, and just as soon as I began to focus they would disappear, like being at the optometrist when they stick your head up against the lens machine.

  “This one clear?” and before you can answer, they switch to the next one that makes it feel like you’re looking through the bottom of a coke bottle. An old one, with the quarter-inch-thick glass. It’s difficult to gauge the length of nothingness. What do you measure it against? A minute could have been a year, ten. Each wave that crashed over me could have been an epoch. My world born, a bright magma erupting hot spot, then a cold, lonely stone floating through the cosmos, and everything in between. Everything I’d known and loved no longer even dust. Or it could have been the length of an extended allergy drug commercial; seriously, though, those can seem much like forever. No matter how long it had been, there was only so much I could take of this sort of environment, only as long as anyone could take this sort of environment. Trip might flourish, but the rest of us would be letting go of our marbles by the fistful. And those of us with barely more than a handful to begin with could be in some serious trouble.

  “Milk!”

  I either turned, lazily spun, or created a mirage. Off in the distance I could see the vague outline of Bob, sometimes as clear as if it were a bright summer morning, others through that optometrist’s torture device, only after they’d put that dye in your eyes and blew the air in so you couldn’t see anything. At least there, you get to rock those plastic sunglasses. Bob was sometimes a quarter of a mile away, and at other times, I could feel him touch me. My mind felt fractured, and that was when I began to understand what was happening—not that it helped, but it was a step in a direction—didn’t say the right direction because I didn’t know. There were so many variations of landscape and perspective and I was living through them all, perhaps simultaneously, and I don’t even need to find a limb to go out on here, but this is not something the human mind is capable of dealing with. Like trying to put a ten thousand-piece puzzle together from ten thousand different puzzles, the template to cut them may have been the same throughout, but each had a different image. It was going to take a lot of patience and perseverance to complete.

  “Close your eyes.” The first two words so close a lover could have whispered them; the last drifted from an unknowable distance. I did as he said, doing my best to calm my laboring heart and a panic that was smacking the ass of the runaway horses in preparation for a stampede.

  “Do not drift.” This, in and out like a fast-moving car on a small looped track. How does one do something they have no clue how not to do? Seems easy enough, right? You’d think that. I kept my eyes shut, forced shut, to the point it was uncomfortable, like I was five and I was convinced there was a monster clown in my closet, and as long as I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t hurt me, just like that. I told myself it worked then; why not now? Still hate clowns, but it as of yet hadn’t gutted me with its razor-sharp teeth—stupid clowns.

  “Follow my voice,” Bob told me. I don’t know where he was, but he must have seen my eyelids fluttering. “With your mind!” he yelled. It was like he was throwing my brain a life-synapse, as weird as that sounds. I latched onto that thing with a ratcheting grappling hook and those don’t even exist. He kept talking, each word reeling me in closer until, finally, he was able to sink a hook into me. Then it was as if I’d gone from traveling the speed of light to standing still. My body jerked violently as I felt ground under my feet. Bob kept me from pitching my face into it.

  “Whoa, thanks!” I shouted, not yet realizing the rushing noise had stopped. “Can I open my eyes?”

  “Perhaps not yet.”

  Didn’t like the sound of that one bit. What was out there that would necessitate me keeping them shut? Another sound picked up; it was like listening to a train with rusty axles crushing the heads of squealing bunnies. I placed a hand over my eyes in the unlikely event I decided I might need to see what was causing it. It was getting louder, to the point my fillings began to vibrate. I could only hope we weren’t standing on the tracks. I didn’t feel a breeze as it passed, but the sound started to trail off. I realized that whatever it had been, had thankfully kept on going. I peeled my hand back and opened my eyes. Far off in the distance was something monstrously huge, massive tentacles were whipping in the air, legs as large as water tower supports held up a body to match. It was highly likely this had been Orson Welles’ inspiration. Something better seen in a fever dream rather than real life. Though, there were decent odds that none of this was real.

  I turned my attention elsewhere when it finally passed from view. I noticed that the ground we were on was a flat surface of bluish glass. It was remarkable in that it was unremarkable. It was flat as far as I could see, not so much as a pimple or a divot on the terrain. I guess that wasn’t the appropriate word because “terrain” means to have features. Might as well have been standing on a windshield.

  “Kill?”

  I’d not known everyone’s favorite wart beast was here. And I don’t think I’d ever heard him hesitate in his one-word answer; he was looking off in the distance to where I had been.

  “Church!” I was happy to see him, even went so far as thinking about hugging him. “He all right?” I asked Bob when Church did not respond to me.

  “The journey is difficult,” Bob said with hesitation. “His mind will right itself.”

  That last part was not said with much conviction.

  “Screw it.” I hugged the beast. He tensed up to the point I thought he might push me away, followed by a hearty punch to the head. Then he looked down, his eyes were clouded over as he worked through the fog in his brain. The sides of his green scaly lips pulled back; I noticed Bob at the ready, to act before Church bit a chunk out of my head. Neither of us figured the display we were seeing to be Church’s version of a smile.

  “Kill!” he yelled exuberantly before giving me a solid clap on the back that dislodged my trachea.

  10

  Mike Journal Entry 6

  After we said our hellos and the initial joy wore off, I began to assess our situation. We were virtually nowhere and had virtually nothing: no water no food, and I had a weapon better suited for an office. Just once I’d like to be dropped off at a fully stocked Cabela’s. With all the world-hopping I’d been doing lately, odds were decent that had to happen at some point, right?

  “Bob, what do we do now?” I asked the question knowing that what we had just gone through was a first for us all; how could he know?

  “It will be up to others now.”

  That made as much sense as putting raisins in stuffing and yes, that happened once. Want to talk about a pissed off Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, I was pissed off; the host eventually got mad when I dumped my plate into the trash. Seriously, what did she expect? She made a ham, a green bean casserole, and the only thing I thought could save the day was the stuffing, and it had raisins in it. Who does that? The kicker? Cherry fucking pie. It was like she adam
antly disliked me and wanted to make the meal as uncomfortable and as inedible as possible. Tried to kill my holiday hunger with the cheese and cracker plate, but the crackers were off-brand low-fat wheat thins, I think the box said “Thin Squares of Wheat,” and the cheese was American slices, their edges hard and curled like it had already been out for a different occasion and then the leftovers repurposed. This is what happens when I go to Tracy’s relatives.

  “I don’t understand. What others? We’re here now.”

  “Where exactly are we, Milk?” It was the first time I’d ever heard Bob sound frustrated, at least, at me.

  “Umm, we’re here.” Couldn’t have had a lamer answer if I’d spent the time to think of one.

  “We have punched a hole through reality. An opening, so that others may follow and finish what we have started. To make the creators pay for their many transgressions.”

  I was still lost; we were here now. Why wouldn’t we finish what we’d started? And I asked him just that.

  “There is one more hurdle we are not prepared for.”

  I knew what he meant, the behemoth. “That giant thing?”

  “It is called a trundle. It is a guardian to the gods.”

  “That sounds formidable, but when has that stopped us? We’ve taken on whistlers, blown up a factory, killed custodians, and ripped a hole in time; we seriously going to pull up and stop short now? If we sit here and do nothing, aren’t we relegating ourselves to the same fate? Dead, I mean, if that wasn’t clear.”

  “There are better ways to die than others.”

  “Dehydration is a pretty shitty way to go.”

  “It is preferred to having your nerve endings pulled free from your body and laid bare to be manipulated. The pain is beyond the ability of a mind to comprehend.”

  I wanted to ask him if he even had nerve endings because to look at him, you couldn’t see anything besides the material he was made of, and then it dawned on me that he was worried about Church and myself, as we were built differently.

  “How much do you know about that thing?”

  “Some, though more legend is known than fact.”

  “Tell me exactly what you know.”

  “We are at the doorstep to the creators. What lies between them and us is the monster that guards the gates.”

  “So, this shitty world’s version of Saint Peter is a water tower mixed with a Cthulhu, a Welles and Lovecraft lovechild, perfect. And even if we somehow got by the gatekeeper, I’ve got to imagine salvation isn’t at the end of the journey, but rather the creators themselves. But…that has me thinking. If they had to create something so daunting to keep out trespassers, it makes sense that they’d be easy pickings once you get past. You don’t have a rabid guard dog unless you’re worried about getting hurt.”

  “You are supplying your own answers to matters you have no idea about. Have you perhaps thought that the guardian is here not because the creators can’t fight but rather, they do not wish to? These are the same beings responsible for the downfall of all life; do not underestimate them.”

  “And you’re giving up feet from the end zone. We either get into the history books as footnotes or legends.” It was a bravado I wasn’t feeling, and I was using the words as much for myself as my traveling companions.

  “It saw us, Milk.”

  “What?”

  “The guardian saw us; that is how little it thinks of us. We weren’t even worth its time to destroy.”

  I don’t know why I was indignant at the thought that a monster didn’t want to kill me. It seems like I should have been doing a celebratory dance at that fact. Instead, I was pissed. The jarhead in me ran deep. “Maybe we should give it something to think about.”

  “Kill.” Church seemed down with that idea.

  I started walking to where the creature had gone, and Church fell in step quickly. It was Bob that took a minute. I can’t blame him; it’s not usual for the gazelle to track the lion. We’d been traveling across the same strange, featureless ground for maybe an hour. The heat of my decision had been cooling the entire time, like a boiling pot of water removed from the flame. Then it about turned to ice when I could begin to see the outline of the thing far ahead. Easy enough to muster courage with no adversary. How you hold on to the elusive substance when confronted is the question I had no answer for.

  Church whistled, or made an approximation of a whistle. I wondered if it meant the same thing to him, like a “whoo…what have I gotten into?” type of whistle.

  “I do not know this to be true or not,” Bob said as he sidled up to me. We’d all stopped to look upon the creature; it wasn’t doing anything. Like, maybe it was resting before its next patrol or body flaying or shuffling for a rousing game of Uno, who knows.

  “But it is told that the larger tentacles are lined with poisonous barbs. One strike is enough to kill any living thing.”

  “And the smaller?” I gulped.

  “Razor-sharp suckers. But this is all hearsay, as it is likely anything that had any true knowledge perished long ago at the feet of the beast.”

  “You’re supposed to be the fun one of the group,” I told him. “Come on, might as well get this over with.” I did not like it at all, that I was having to drag Bob along into this. That the strongest of us three by a mile and a half wanted nothing to do with this spoke Encyclopedia Britannica-length volumes. As we got closer, I was walking slower. I’d initially been out in front, driving the pace; now I found myself at the rear, slogging along with Bob. Church hadn’t noticed because he’d yet to take his eyes from the trundle. We were still over half a mile away, and the thing dominated the skyline; even the mind tricks I tried to play with myself weren’t working. Especially the one where I blamed its immensity on the fact that there was nothing else around to compare it to. About as useless as saying one fire wasn’t as hot as the other; they would both still burn.

  I spent some time looking from my stapler to the trundle, back and forth until I couldn’t figure out why I was doing it. The thing still hadn’t moved, the longer of the tentacles were lying on the ground; it looked to be resting. Seriously, it had to be bored as fuck. How many visitors actually stopped by? This residence was the old, dilapidated, supposedly haunted house in the neighborhood. Bad analogy because there were always stupid teenagers daring each other to go in.

  “There’s no way around that thing?” I asked.

  Bob said nothing. His head, or the top part of him, sagged, his eyes looking down, for the most part. We were no more than a quarter-mile away when the top portion of the trundle swiveled in our direction like a drum sitting upon ball bearings. I didn’t think what I was looking at was a machine, but that was a very machine-like movement. Not that it mattered much either way. We froze like an advanced game of Red Light, Green Light. Though this game master never turned back around so we could approach. When it did nothing, not even slam its tentacles down like an ape may its arms in an intimidation display, I started walking toward it again. I took note of the arsenal I could see. It had four enormous legs, the foot of each bigger than an elephant.

  There were the two, supposedly spike-riddled, more massive tentacles, which I’d yet to confirm or disprove, and then two much smaller limbs that looked like they must be used to shovel food into the coal-black mouth. If what was in that maw could be considered teeth, they were the same color as the ground we walked on, or, I guess it was possible that was what it ate to sustain itself. There was nothing on its broad, leathery-looking face that would imply it had eyes, but obviously it was “looking” at us, I could feel its gaze, like maybe it was directing heat towards us and picking up the resultant signature. It was blind in only my definition of that word; there was zero doubt it saw us in its own way. We got into a line of three opposing it, which should have been somewhat scary or at least mildly intimidating in a posturing type of way for most adversaries. I got the feeling instead that the trundle was already growing bored with us and may have again begun its nap time
.

  I took another step. Before I could put my leading foot down, a noise boomed forth from it. A blacksmith dropping an anvil from atop the Empire State building onto a hundred sheets of glass a close approximation to the slicing sound that threatened to rip my damaged eardrums. Then my whistler-issued gear spoke what I’d heard into an equally loud translation.

  “What are you?”

  A curious monster…I think it just wanted to catalog our species before killing us. Something to tally. I mean, when you’re guarding something so utterly desolate, what’s the rush?

  “Weary travelers,” I told it, that was true.

  “This is not a road traveled very often, wanderer.”

  I’m going to forgo explaining that each time it spoke, there was the air-splitting noise and that it took long seconds after before I could even think on a reply. If this thing ended up being long-winded, my sliced-up brains would begin to sluice from my torn eardrums.

  “K….” I quickly spun on Church before he could finish his word. I didn’t think there was going to be any reasoning with the trundle, but that didn’t mean I wanted to move immediately to the bonus rounds where the rubber really met the road.

  “We’re lost; it is imperative that we meet with the Creators.”

  “Are you gods?”

  I’d seen Ghostbusters, I knew the answer to this. I turned to look at my companions to make sure neither of them decided to speak the Ray Stantz truth and tell Gozer we weren’t.

  “Of course.”

  “Lost gods?”

  “Happens more than you’d think,” I told it.

  “Milk.”

  “Yes, Bob, I realize this is a dangerous game. What would you have me do?” I said softly.

  “The key to entering resides within me. If you are indeed gods, I will present no problem for your access.”

  Pretty safe to say it wasn’t buying my gambit, otherwise it wouldn’t have been so cavalier with its life. Or maybe it would; maybe it was just plain sick of this strange place. Either way, I didn’t think it was just going to lay down and die for us, as nice a gesture as that would have been.