This was written for National Novel Writing Month. I didn't finish the 50,000 words called for, but this stands up well as a novella and part one of a longer story.
Global Weirding - Part Four
The dreamcatcher didn't work. Or maybe it needs a few days to become fully charged. Or maybe it's been storing what pass for good dreams in the realm of wood spirits and elder gods, because what I did dream was scary. The sacrifice girl was there again, but less voluptuous this time. In fact I'd say she was looking a bit Tomb Raider, in a smaller bra.
We were hacking our way through jungles, searching for I don't know what. She wasn't being very communicative, just pointing at our next destination and waving a machete. Occasionally I'd let her take over so I could follow and enjoy the view. I'm a bad enough perv when I'm concious. When the REM kicks in it just goes off the scale.
After a while we came to a clearing. Ahead of us, rising out of the jungle floor, was a familiar shape. The ziggurat I had rescued the sacrifice from only a few nights, and several centuries judging by the vegetation, earlier. The roof of the pagoda lay at the foot of the grand staircase, the cracks from its tumble from the top long since weathered from prominence.
We didn't go up the stairs. My guide had another plan, she led the way around the side of the structure. At the rear, away from prying worshippers' eyes, there was an entrance. Presumably the priests went in and out of it. If it were completely hidden then they could appear magically at the top without anyone seeing how they got there. The door had been stout wood, but a couple of kicks saw it crumble to damp sawdust. She gave me a torch and drew a revolver from her belt. I didn't have a weapon, which seemed a bit unfair.
Inside the temple the furniture was in the same state as the door. One chair completely disintegrated when I touched it. I adjusted the beam so it was as wide as possible and cast around the room until I spotted a door in the far wall. My tomb raider led the way, working her way there along the edges of the room, always on the look out for traps. This door had fared better than the entrance, but it wasn't locked.
We moved along corridors, working our way down rather than up. After what seemed like an hour I couldn't guess how far down we were, but the air was cold and the walls damp. Finally we reached the bottom. Another door opened onto a cavern. Far above there was a tiny dot of sunlight, possibly an opening under the pagoda. In the centre of the cavern was a dark circle, a hole that disappeared even further into the earth.
There were torches on the wall, but they were all too damp to light. This became more worrying because the torch batteries were running down and the bulb grew dimmer. Behind us a door slammed, there was the sound of a bolt sliding into position. I looked at the girl. She shrugged. The torch went out.
I reached out, but she wasn't there any more. There wasn't enough light coming from above to make anything out. If I moved forward I would probably fall into the chasm. I tried stepping backwards slowly until my back found the wall. Guessing where the door had been I started moving sideways to my left. After a bit of shuffling I felt the door frame. Trying the handle just confirmed that I was locked in.
There were six shots. I heard them but couldn't see the muzzle flashes. Somewhere far beneath us something let out a sigh that could shake buildings and started to move. The sounds of something slimy moving over stone was disturbing enough, the snuffling from a huge snout only made things worse.
I did that thing they do in films, where a character sits bolt upright as they wake from a nightmare. I didn't think anyone did that in real life. The cold, clammy feeling of the wall and absolute fear still chilled me, no matter how much I told myself that this was real life and I was safe. I didn't get back to sleep.
I don't think the lack of sleep is affecting my work. Which has to say something about me or it. Hopefully it.
There was email waiting for me when I got home. Mum had sent a rather brief message. Granddad was run over in the street outside his house by a hit and run driver. No-one was ever arrested, or even suspected. About all the Police were able to ascertain was that he was hit by a black car. I have to ask him about it next time. Who knows, I might be able to track the car and driver down, even after all these years.
Charlie had emailed me as well. Apparently Jana had been asking after me.
Jana?
I guessed she could be the one whose name I never really picked up on that fateful night out. Why on earth would she be asking after me?
Unless she's been having strange dreams where I've been a supporting character. Charlie was online, so I IM'd him.
Charlie's been a hall warden for a few years now, so he's seen all the strange and confused emotions students go through in their first year away from home. So he should be able to recognise a problem when he sees it. He doesn't think Jana is upset about anything, and he's certain she's not crushing on me ("Tough shit mate. I think she's got a bloke."). But she keeps asking after me in a way that has him concerned, simply because he doesn't know if he should be concerned at all and if so, how much. As she seemed perfectly sane in every other way he had been willing to leave it for a while. But now he was curious, and he wanted to know what the obsession was about, so he had arranged another drinking sessions for Friday night.
I was in. How could I not be. Just this time I'd stay sober enough to avoid conversations with the shrubbery.
The octoboar idol had fallen off the window sill again. This time it had landed okay, and crawled some of the way across the living room floor before getting tangled up in a string trap that had been stretched between chair and table legs. I decided I didn't want it in the flat any more.
Platt Fields park, just a mile or two away from my flat, has a boating lake. Strictly speaking it's more of a boating pond, a roughly oval thing that's never more than three feet deep. Slightly off centre in the pond is an island where ducks and geese nest. I found the point of the island that was closest to the shore and pulled octoboar from my bag.
I weighed the statue in my hand, trying to get a feel for how hard I could throw it. I'd never been much of a sports man at school, but I reckoned I could heft it across the gap with a run up. Luckily there was a fence that would keep me from doing a Wile E. Coyote into the pond at the end of my charge.
The first try was a false start, because I saw someone walking round the lake toward me. When they'd left I had another go. Octoboar left my hand and described a fine parabola out across the water. I'm sure at the apex the tentacles were flailing a bit. It glanced off a tree and landed somewhere on the island.
The idol must have landed near to a nest or disturbed the geese in some other way, because there was a horrible commotion for a minute and birds started pouring out of the trees onto the lake. It settled down, but they didn't seem interested in returning to the island.
At least I was rid of the octoboar idol. That, and the dreamcatcher, would hopefully stop me having such bad dreams. I considered taking twig thing back to where I'd found it, but I've become strangely attached to it.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
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Technorati tag: Fiction, Fantasy, Weird
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