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Tags: the kansas incident - nano 2009
Published : 3 weeks, 2 days ago (Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:06:24 PST)
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21291 / 50000 words. 43% done!
I woke up to the sound of two annoying voices arguing. One was stuck in my head, the other somewhere behind it.
"What the hell do you think you could do, pip?" Masculine, deep, smelling of onions and goat. "You can't reach him, and you can't jump back to get anyone that can. You think he's gonna just get up and walk outta the circle? He's friggin' unconscious, dimwit!"
"You know my name, bub. And what about you, goatboy?" Feminine, high pitched, snide. "Can't you just sort of... I don't know... Possess him or something? You know. Take over his body?"
"Ha! Don't I wish," Pan shot back. "I can't tell you the number of times I wish I could have just taken over his body. This guy's a Boyscout compared to the fun we could have. There was this one time, in Oklahoma City that..."
I cleared my throat, rather noisily before Pan could continue. "What the hell happened to me?"
Cat flew over to where I was, or as close as she could get without sparking. "You tell us! According to Faunus, you touched the windmill and folded up like a dead balloon."
Pan rumbled around, sounding more panicky than normal. "It was as if you just blinked out, buddy! I couldn't hear you, feel you or nothing. I was still in your body, and it was still alive, but I was like, trapped in a box I couldn't get out of. Pretty damned scary, let me tell you. Where'd you go?"
"Beats me," I said as I was sitting up. I rubbed my head where I must have bumped it as I fell. "There was a really bright flash and then a whole bunch of unresolved somethings. I know I was somewhere, but I wasn't able to focus on anything. Then I woke listening to you two arguing. I have no more idea where I was any more than you. Far as I can tell, physically, I didn't go anywhere at all."
"It was sort of like when I ride the Soular Winds, Pan. A lot of stuff, but no definition. No sights or sound except a lot of light."
I stood carefully. I felt a bit woozy, but not too bad. More curious than anything, and just a bit ticked off. I aimed a kick at the nearest of the legs of the windmill and made a good connection. The sound rang, deep and sonorous, and the vibration could almost be seen as it rolled up to the very top of the mill.
"Stupid thing!" I picked up a piece of white gravel and flung it up at the tail. With a clang, the rock struck the center of the letter M in Aeromotor and then bounced back down, to land at my feet. "I don't know why I expected anything at all," I said to nobody and everybody. "Plumb never taught me a damn thing, so why should he now?"
An image, kind of like the image a person gets from a fading dream, popped into my head. It was a picture of Robert Plumb, sitting on one of the chairs back in Christie's house. He was smiling at me and his hand was extended and he was holding... something. Something green. Or maybe it was something blue.
"Huh." Just another thing in a long line of things that make me go huh.
"What?" Cat hovered as close as she could get. "Did you see something? What?"
"I just saw an image of Bob Plumb." I stepped out of the circle and away from the protective circle of the windmill. "Cat, you didn't meet Bob Plumb, did you?"
The pixie flitted up to my face and looked in my eyes, carefully. "You don't look possesed." She shrugged her shoulders. "Nope. Never met him. Now, my pop did and my grandpop. They both met him."
"Ah." I turned back to look at the windmill. If I was to get a message from it, this was a hell of a way to do it. Plumb told me to find him here. Not meet him, but to find him. Which is kinda stupid, since he's buried in Tulsa. I think.
"Cat?" I was still looking at the windmill, searching for something I may have been missing. "Did your pop or grandpop mention anything specific about Plumb? That he carried something or that he gave something to them or that they gave something to him? Something green or blue? Like a rock or a flower? Anything?"
"Not that I remember," she said.
"What about Christie?" Cat, after all, hadn't even known Robert.
"You'd have to ask her, Chester," she said, "really. I don't remember much about what they said about Robert Plumb except he had a really good sense of humor and took good care of them."
"Look," Pan offered, "why don't you just cross over to Transition and ask him, if he's there?"
"He won't be," I said. "Robert Plumb died long ago, in a battle with Ammit. Eater of the Dead, remember? I think I'd be lucky to find anyone who even remembered his name." Ponder, ponder. I glanced back at the windmill. "How long was I out of commission?"
"I couldn't reach you for about five minutes," Pan said. Cat nodded in agreement.
"Hmm." I nodded. "Okay." I turned back to the gravel circle.
"Wait." Cat stopped me, placing a tiny hand on my arm. I will never get into an arm wrestling contest with a pixie. "Are you going to do what I think you're going to do?"
"Go back to the windmill?" I shrugged. "I think that's the fastest way to find out anything, Cat."
"Hey! I don't think that's such a good idea!" Pan sounded a bit nervous. "I mean, what if we can't bring you back or you get lost or something?"
"I'm thinking that last time I got zapped by it, I wasn't prepared, so that's why it knocked me out," I explained. "This time I kinda know what to expect."
Cat frowned. She even looked pretty when her face was all screwed up. "I dunno, Chester. I have to agree with your buddy there. What if something happens and we can't pull you out?"
"Lifeline!" I snapped my fingers and reached into my pants pocket. There, buried beneath keys and change were two pieces of red cord. I worked very hard to push some of my energy, my quantum essence into it, so that it would be connected to me, no matter where I go. I pulled them out and handed one short piece to the pixie.
"Here," I told her. "If you feel I've been gone to long, or there's danger about, or you feel a really strong tug on it, you pull like hell. It should, and should being the operative word here, pull me back from wherever I go. Okay?"
Cat took the red cord and looked at it dubiously. "This is connected to you? It looks like a piece of yarn."
"I promise you," I nodded, "that piece of yarn has saved my life more than once. Don't let go of it and if you feel anything hinky, you pull on it."
"Okay, if you say so." She held it in one of her hands and tugged on it, testing it. I felt my soul, or whatever it was that was connected to the cord, try to fly out of my body and go to her. Her eyes grew wide. "What the hell! I felt it tug back!"
"Please," I said, grimacing, "don't do that unless you really need to."
"Um," she nodded vigorously. "Okay."
I stepped up to the windmill, feeling the tingle at the base of my spine once again. I turned and looked at the little pixie hovering just outside of the gravel ring. "Remember, if you feel something is about to happen, pull for everything, okay? I trust you."
She nodded at me, grimly and I touched the leg of the windmill again.
Bright light, bright as the sun. Brighter, even, filled all my senses once more. I stopped screaming soundlessly and gathered control of myself. Just like the first time in the Otherwhere, the world was formless and nothing. The first thing I needed to do was gather my image of myself, just like Plumb taught me.
I focused on that, building an picture of what I believed I was in my head. Short, but not too short. Bald, but not entirely. Bearded, but not a full beard. I chuckled at myself. My description of myself sounded as if I was only partly formed. The chuckle came out of my point of reference and rumbled across the light and formed a landscape.
It wasn't much of a landscape. Sort of like what you might find in a paint by number watercolor... all lines, but very little color.
Let's see... blue eyes, brownish hair, arms and hands... The colors started to fill in across the lighted land. Greens for grass, brown and black for trees, blue for sky.
Blue jeans and brown shoes, red plaid shirt. A house appeared about a quarter of a mile away, and a path formed underneath my feet.
A hat, one of those baseball caps, with the words "The Wiz is In!" embroidered on it in red letters. My black jacket, all pockets, flowing behind me like a cape and fluttering in the light breeze. A figure sat on the front porch of the little wooden shack, wearing overalls and a plaid shirt, like mine. His feet were bare and he looked like a very tall Tom Sawyer. He stood and waved me over.
The gravel crunched under my feet and I quickly crossed the distance. The man was taller than me, with a shock of reddish hair and an impish green. His eyes twinkled a bright blue and his nose was sharp and freckled, as was the rest of his face. His complexion was pale, but that was more from genetics rather than anything else.
"Chet! What took you so long?" Robert Plumb stepped off the porch and came to meet me. He wrapped his incredibly long arms around me and bear hugged me hard. If I had been in a physical body and able to breathe, I think I would have passed out.
"Bob," I asked carefully, "I think the question is more like 'What are you doing here?' You're supposed to be dead, killed by Ammit."
Bob reached up and ran his hand through his hair and smiled like a six year old caught with his hand in the cookies. "Well, I would guess that if you're here, then I'm probably dead. And if Ammit was the culprit, rather than the Shadows, then you won't find me much of anywhere. Or much of me at least. I might be scattered about here and there, but it would take a whole lot to put me back together again."
"Humpty Dumpty," I mused. Bob had always called the Something Bads by his own word - The Shadows.
"Something like that, yes." Bob nodded. "Come back to the house; let me feed you a bit." He started walking back up to the little shack in that long gait he had. He stood six feet or a bit more and his legs were half of that.
"So," I said as I hurried to catch up, "can I assume that you're sort of a message left behind? A message in a bottle sort of thing?"
He laughed at that. "Not exactly a bottle, but I guess you could call me a message. I left part of me here right before I went to battle Ammit's gang. And I would also guess I lost."
"I would guess you did," I agreed somberly. I followed him up to the porch and past the open plank door. The inside was open, and one room. To the left was a bed, with mattress sitting on an old rope frame. There was a table to the far wall and between the table and bed was an old Franklin cook stove. There wasn't anything cooking on it at the moment, but Bob's shade pulled a bit of bacon and a few eggs from a coldbox and tossed them together in an old cast iron skillet on one of the burners.
He lit the tinder in the firebox from a long wooden match he pulled from the pocket of his overalls. "I don't get many guests here, as you can imagine," he chuckled.
"Why am I here, Bob." I asked as I sat on an old rickety chair next to the table. The bright yellow light from outside poured into the window above the table. A slight breeze moved the gingham curtains. "I got your message to come find this windmill, and that was pretty much all."
"Ah," he said, pouring a cup of tea from a pitcher in the cold box. The glass he held came from nowhere I could see. He offered it to me, and I declined. "You sure? It's good tea. Refreshes the soul." He chuckled and placed the glass before me. "I'll leave it there anyway, just in case you decide otherwise."
He pulled up another chair that was hanging on the wall and sat down with me. Hunkered down, I believe is the phrase. "Have you seen Miriam and Madame?" He slapped his forehead. "Of course you have," he said, answering his own question. "That's how you got the message to come here. Did you bring the books?"
"Yeah, Bob. They're all in the van," I told him.
"Did you read any of them?"
I nodded and said, "I read a bit of them, about your fight with someone you called 'The Evil One'."
"Ah, yes." He nodded and leaned back. "What do you think of him?"
"I don't really know, Bob." I leaned forward. "All I know is what you wrote, and that you were at battle with him. You were pretty sketchy."
"Yeah, I did that on purpose." His gaze never quite met mine, almost as if he couldn't see me very well. "I didn't want either of the two girls getting caught up in the mess." He frowned a bit. "Madame still stuck in the apartment? Still have the cancer?"
I nodded. "They're exactly as you left them, Bob. They miss you, of course. But they were safe when I left them. The 'Bads hadn't bothered them."
"Have you met Chris? Christie?" he asked without looking directly at me. I looked over my shoulder to see if I could see what he was looking at. It was just the empty side of the other half of the cabin.
"I have," I nodded. "She seems to be a fine woman. She's also safe, Bob, back in Sedan."
Bob sighed and a terribly pained look crossed his face. I got the feeling I was talking to Marley's ghost from The Christmas Carol by Dickens.
"She's stuck in the horrible place by her own choosing, Chet. She can't leave as long as Alexander Lawrence has his grip on the place." He sighed again. "I've been out of touch so long... Have you met him yet?"
"Who," I asked. "This Lawrence guy? No, I haven't. Who is he?"
"He's the vessel for Ammit, Chet. Moved to this area in... Oh, I guess it was the 1930's or so. Looking for me, I guess." Bob turned his head to not quite look at me from another angle.
"He found Sedan, then a sleepy little town just barely fifty years old, and settled into it. The town had been full of hope of growth before the influenza outbreak of '28. The town lost over half of its population to the sickness and the hope had been shattered. It was ripe for the Shadows to come in and break its spirit, and they did. Lawrence followed the Shadows and set up a base here, fostering just enough hope to keep the town going, and then breaking that hope whenever he could. The Shadows are his dogs, Chet. They go where he commands them to go."
"I was living in and around Tulsa at that point, doing my studies into where and what the Shadows came from. I didn't quite know of Sedan back then, but I had a feeling for the place. There is also a spot just outside of Tulsa - Redbud Valley, that is a nexus between this world and the Otherwhere."
"Yeah," I interrupted him. "I know Redbud Valley." I told him about the adventures of my and my chums that had just happened, about how the Guardians of the Gateways had vanished and how the 'Bads had started to break through Transition under the direction of this Ammit character and how we just barely beat them back. I told him as much as I could, thinking that it might help.
"You didn't see Ammit, though?" Bob leaned forward, earnest in his question, but his eyes still didn't meet mine.
"Mope," I said, shaking my head negatively. "At least I don't think I did. What would I look for?"
Bob smiled grimly. "Pretty much anything, but if you had seen him, you would have known it."
"Wait a minute." I remembered a bit of last week's episode I sort of left out. "Remember that thing that was trying to claw its way out of the Gateway? Cthulhu or whatever it was? A few days before that, I saved a woman and her baby from something like that. It had the same sort of nasty energy signature to it, and it didn't want much except the destruction of the soul. Like it was trying to eat their soul energy. Could that have been Ammit?"
"Maybe," he muttered. "It is possible that Cthulhu and Ammit are related in some way. Cthulhu was the herald for the Old Ones, and it wasn't above chewing on a few souls along the way. Ammit was the servant of Osiris, and it was his job to eat souls. And you told me that Cthulhu knew who you were?"
"It seemed that way." Another memory dropped in. I told him about how Miriam had died, with her face eaten away, and that it seemed like her soul had just vanished.
"That definitely sounds like Ammit," Bob said, nodding sadly. "He sounds like he has your name and address, Chester. Any idea how he could have gotten it?"
"No, not that I can..." Memories are funny things. "Wait! Maybe there is a way." I told Bob about the first trip I took into Transition, how stupid I had been and how the 'Bads had almost trapped me and destroyed me. I told him how my brother, Jamie, had been there in Transition, when he had no reason to be and had saved my sorry butt.
"Ah." Bob nodded and a bit of the sadness swept away. "Maybe he had a reason to be there after all, Chester. To save your sorry butt, exactly."
He leaned even more forward, wanting to drive a point home. "You see, when a major power makes a move, there are ripples of communication that flow through all of the worlds, and that includes the Otherwhere and Transition. That communication can send up flags to all sorts of folks, good and bad. It would be, it could be, that when the Shadows attacked you in Transition, the word went back to Ammit that you were there. You are a big threat to him, Chet."
"Me?" I pulled back from him. "How could I be a threat to him? I'm nothing. Barely a hedge wizard. You and the ladies told me so, yourselves, remember?"
Bob laughed and the light outside grew brighter. I hadn't noticed that it had dimmed to almost twilight, but it had. Now it was a noonday brightness again.
"You were, and quite probably are, the worst student a teacher could ask for." He laughed again, until tears were coming from his eyes. He wiped them away with an old checkered kerchief. "You may have been just a hedge wizard way back then, Chester, but you've grown. You can't even see how you've grown."
He reached across the table and grabbed my hands. Pure soul energy poured into me, lighting my brain like a thousand flashbulbs.
"Good Lord, Chet! You can't even see the guardians and the magic folk around you that support you and guide you, every step of the way. You called them, and you're still calling them. You're not just a hedge wizard, any more. How many times do people have to tell you this? Granted, you may not know what your full potential is. Granted you may not be able to tap into it all. I know I certainly didn't teach you how to make things like your little Lifeline you clutch in your hand. I know I certainly didn't teach you how to make a Whistletoo, that will come when you call it and transport what you tell it to."
"A hedge wizard can do none of these things, Chester." He released my hands. "A hedge wizard keeps to his little garden and makes small magic for plants. Sometimes healing magic for animals that get snared in traps. Things like that. Little things like that."
He turned his eyes on me for the first time since we sat down. They glowed with a bluish green glow, as fierce as the sunlight that was shining through the window. They touched my eyes and I felt my mind explode in wonder at the potential that might lay inside of me.
I grew, sitting there at his little table. I expanded and my consciousness reached out through the universes and saw them for what they were. Concentric rings that merged and flowed through one another, touching and separating and moving in and about each other. Magic was... everywhere. I stretched out my hand it and it was there. All of it. All the Universes. I gasped, once, at the full magnitude of it all. And that gasp brought me back to the little table, with Bob across from me, no longer looking directly at me.
"You see, Chester?" He nodded at me, wiping tears away again. "That's what I was. And that is only a bit of it, just a small fragment of all there is. And you?" He shook his head. "You've been there. You've touched it and held it. You know all this!"
"It wasn't Ammit or Lawrence that caused the big ripple through the Universes." He pointed his long finger at me. "It was you, Chester. You are the major power. Ammit must destroy you to gain an even stronger foothold in this world and bring it closer to its own destruction. As long as people fear and lose hope, as long as there is despair, the Shadows and through them, Ammit, will continue to grow!"
Through his heat, I said, bitterly, "There will always be fear and despair somewhere in the world, Bob. You know that."
"Then they must be stopped," he cried, pounding his fist on the table. "Since they cannot be destroyed or defeated, they must be stopped. Beat back until there isn't hardly enough of them to cause a child to be afraid of his shadow."
Bob was always one for the melodramatic.
He stood and turned away from me. "Why do you continue to doubt yourself? Are you afraid of losing the humanity inside of you? Are you afraid that if you truly recognize what you are, your friends and loved ones will walk away from you, reject you as a pariah? Why is it every time you do something incredible and magic beyond your capabilities, like at Redbud Valley, or fighting with James Thomas, you discount it and fall back to your old self?" He sighed again, a long whistle, and the light outside dimmed by half.
"You need, Chester, to fully believe in yourself," he said. "Alexander Lawrence knows who you are. Ammit knows who you are. If you don't come into your own - recognize your potential, he will destroy you if he can, and if he can't destroy you, he will destroy every one you love or care about. Just as he did me."
"Robert," I said, standing and coming to him. I placed my hand on his shoulder and it passed right through. I stepped back, shocked. It took a minute to realize I was talking to the ghost of Robert Plumb, now. Robert Plumb was dead. I swallowed hard and stepped forward again.
"Robert," I began, "tell me of the battle. How did Lawrence defeat you? Maybe it will give me some edge."
A much faded Robert Plumb turned around to face me. The light through the window was a reddish twilight and angry and sad.
"I thought I was fighting the Shadows," he began, "over at the Nexus in Redbud Valley. They had me trapped, just like they did you, and my shield was all but broken when they suddenly dropped away. I had been fighting them for over a week, trapped beneath the same type of force bubble you described. I was completely worn to a nub by the strain of it. I thought I had beaten them, for the moment, as I had beaten them before."
"For just that moment, I dropped my guard, my shield, thinking that I had been given a reprieve. Ammit was there, though, and jumped on me without hesitation. It was the killing stroke, and I was too exhausted to fight."
He looked directly at me, and the glow from his eyes was gone. There was nothing there but sadness. "It was my pride that killed me, Chester. I knew that Ammit was a coward. That he would send the Shadows out as his army, while he sat safely in the background. I knew that, as Lawrence, he was up here in Sedan, and expected him to stay out of the fray, out of Transition."
He shook his head, negatively, sadly. "Ammit is a coward, but he is no fool. He must have known that I would not expect him to be at the battle, so after I was weakened by his army of Shadows, there he was, on the ready."
"You must take the battle to him, Chester. He is here in Sedan, and this is where you need to be." His voice took on a solidity, a fierceness. "You must not believe you are a God or he will turn it against you, although you may feel that you have that sort of power and strength. You must not let your pride bring you to destruction. If you do, he will show you the true face of pride and its inevitable outcome. Pride does go before a fall, after all."
"You will have guides," he said slowly, nodding, "when the battle takes you to the Otherwhere and to Transition. If you are wise, you will have your own army; because you can rest assured he will have his."
The light outside had faded even more. Bob looked over at the table, where the glass of tea still waited for me. "You should drink the tea, Chester." His words were sad, but the sadness was not as bitter as it was. His face held concern, for me. "You should drink. Being here will waste you away, and you will need what the tea contains to get you back to your body without the exhaustion and rage you've felt before."
He was right. In the past, when I traveled outside my body, I tended to return pretty grumpy and dead tired. I picked up the glass from the table, raised it to him and gave a toast. "To your health, Bob."
This made him laugh. "You see," he said, through his chuckles. "This is what makes you different, Chet."
"What's that, Bob?" I sat the glass back on the table.
"You can always find something to laugh at." Those were the last words he said as the light faded from the room.
I was laying flat on my back, and as before, the two voices were arguing again. I could feel that there was something in my hand that hadn't been there before.
"Do you think he's dead? Oh, I hope he's not dead. It's been hours!" Pan, freaking out ever so slightly.
"No, moron, he's not dead or else you wouldn't be boring me and I could get back to the garden." Cat, the voice of reason.
I opened my eyes, and I was surprised by how good I felt. "I wonder what time it is," I asked nobody in particular.
If Pan could have jumped out of my head and kissed me, it wouldn't have surprised me. "Boss! Chester! You're back!" I could feel him running around, bouncing off the sides of my skull like a puppy on speed.
"Pan!" I shouted. "Stop, please! You're giving me a headache."
Pan got control of himself immediately. "Well, I'm just glad to see you back. It was Cat over there who was all concerned and upset. She thought you were dead."
"What?" A bit of pixie outrage flew at me. "It wasn't me that was going on and on about how you were alone now and what would you do, oh boo hoo hooing." She crossed her arms and turned a bit away. Looking at me over her shoulder, she said, "Bout made me wanna hurl. What a big baby."
"Okay, okay," I grumbled, standing up and brushing the dust off my jeans. "That's enough. I'm not dead, and I'm glad to be here and you two seem to be sounding like an old married couple. Knock it off."
Dead silence, pardon the pun.
"Good." I looked at Cat. "Can you take me back to Christie's garden now?"
"Sure," she said. "The entrance back is only a few hundred feet this way." She fluttered in the direction she meant.
"Okay." I caught up with her. "Then do you think Christie would put me up for the night?"
I got a pixie shrug for that, which caused Cat to bob in midair. "I don't see why not. You sticking around?"
"Just for the morning," I said. "Need to meet someone in town, and then I need to go back home and talk with some friends of mine."
"Oh. Okay." Cat flew a bit further and tossed back at me, "Who you gonna meet in town?"
"Alexander Lawrence."
Cat stopped her flight and turned. "No, Chester. That wouldn't be a good thing. He's the cause of all the trouble here."
"I know, dear," I said. "I just have one question to ask him, and then I'll go. But I'll be back."
I opened my hand and looked at what was there. I nodded as it made perfect sense. At least it made sense now. A few hours ago, I would have just been confused.
"What's the question?" Cat shrugged and turned back to the path.
"Where he wants to go next," I said, draping the copper Saint Christopher's medal around my neck. "Because he sure can't stick around here."
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