Fulfilling Wishes...One Nightmare at a Time

By the time Dr. Geek was able to breathe semi-normally again, I had already opened a gateway into a world of darkness and shadow that was my haven of sorts from the world of the Living. This place was alien and forlorn, a world without inhabitants (for the most part). It was also a place that I could take someone to and know that I would be free to do with them as I pleased.

For poor Dr. Geek, this was his Guantanamo Bay, his Abu Ghraib, his own personal ‘renditioning’.

You see, I had discovered this place in my time with the Merlin. He had taught me how the various layers of the ‘onion-verse’ were interconnected by special tranisitional places that fit the traditional descriptions of the various ‘elemental planes’. The planes most commonly speculated to exist were Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The most commonly visited planes were those of Spirit, as I myself had already experienced with John Red Bear’s assistance. But I had remembered that Papa Locks had seemed to use some sort of Shadow Magick to be able to travel from place to place quickly, so under the Merlin’s tutelage, and using my now innate mastery of shadow, I had discovered how to open portals into this gloriously desolate world. Even the Voices deep inside enjoyed my forays into this place, it was one of the few places where I could find peace from their incessant whispering.

As the portal leading from the only world Dr. Geek had known closed, he began to struggle feebly in my arms. We arrived at my chosen destination with a slight lurch. I dumped his coughing ass onto the rocky surface that would be his home for the next few hours at least.

I could see him regain the sense to try and look around. I had some sympathy for him, knowing that his mere human eyes would have great difficulty in seeing anything in this environment, so reached into my coat pocket and pulled out an unwrapped glowstick. I gave the thing a good shake, causing it to start glowing in a fluorescent lime green light that barely illuminated our figures.

His eyes latched onto this meager source of light immediately. I held out the stick for him to take, which he did, gingerly.

Using this feeble light, he scrambled to his feet and traced out the limits of the plateau on which we now stood. He looked more than a little shocked as he realized that the whole platform on which we were standing was about 15’ in diameter.

His hair blew in the breeze as he stood near the southern edge, which caused him to back up immediately. He turned to face me, almost kneeling in his attempt to keep a low center of gravity. “Rusty, wh..wh..where are we?”

I chuckled. “Dr. Bernstein, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Suffice it to say you’re definitely not in Kansas.”

He looked at me with a new realization. “You’ve learned to travel as Papa Locks did! You’ve learned to ShadowPort!”

“So is that what he called it? Did you ever go with him on his trips?”

“Uh, no. I never trusted that man, he gave me the creeps.” He seeemed to shudder at that thought. “Why are we still here, aren’t you going to take me back to the US? You know, you didn’t have to hit me, I would’ve gone with you willingly!”

“Would you now? Perhaps you think a little too kindly of me, Doctor. I haven’t yet decided if I will be taking you back to safety.”

“What...why not?”

“Well, first of all, you had a major hand in a lot of evil shit, and I’m not sure I believe your little story about this supposed child of mine. So I brought you here. I’m going to leave you in a few moments, because I want you to take some time and gather your thoughts. When I return, I am going to ask you some questions, Doctor, and you are going to answer them, honestly and completely. If I feel that you are holding anything back, or are lying to me, I’ll leave your ass here for a little bit longer.

“But before I go, I want you to understand a few things. First, that light you are holding will last about an hour before it peters out. When it does, you will find yourself sitting here in the dark again. You’ve seen how small this plateau is, but it is also very high up. You won’t be able to climb down from here, but even if you did, the creatures lurking in the darkness below would make quick work of you. As long as you remain up here, you will be safe from them.
“Second, I would keep quiet if I were you. You see, there are other creatures in this place that fly. Those creatures hunt by sound. There aren’t very many of them in this place, but they always come to investigate loud noises. There isn’t much fresh meat in this world, so you are a rather tasty looking meat snack. Those creatures, though, are allergic to light of any kind. So I will give you two more of these glowsticks. Don’t use them up too soon though, because they only last an hour!

“Finally, don’t think that anyone will be able to find you here. I have chosen this place very carefully. You will be alone with your thoughts and the creatures of this place, until I return for you. So think long and hard, Doctor, about the information you give me about this child and any other damn projects you neglected to keep notes about. If I don’t get the complete story from you when I come back, I will leave you here to die.”

He was looking more and more shocked as my speech went on, he looked to be on the verge of tears as he blurted out, “Why are you doing this, Rusty? I...I...I’ll tell you the truth now! Don’t do this to me! I can’t die in this place!”

“Why? I’ll leave it to you to figure that out, Doctor. Here.” I held out the two still wrapped glowsticks for him to take.

He was still in shock and disbelief at this point, so he just looked from my hand to my face and back to my hand again, but didn’t reach for them.

“Fine” I said as I dropped the two glowsticks to the plateau surface and gathered the nearest Shadows around myself and transported myself to another nearby plateau, far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to see or hear me, but where I could keep an easy eye on him.

Time to sit back and enjoy the show...

More Than He Bargained For...

“OK...What kind of help are you looking for?”

He paused...”Well, I like Canada and all, but I really don’t like the cold enough to want to make a new life here. But worse than that is now that the Director has found me again, he’s going to demand I join with him again. If I don’t, I won’t be safe for long, even here. I will give you more information on him and his various pet projects, ones we didn’t keep records of, if you can find a way to get me out of here and make me disappear so that He can’t find me again.”

I smiled to myself and said, “All you had to do was ask, Dr. Bernstein. I think I can help you out sooner than you might think. Where are you right now?”

He hesitated for a moment, “Well, this is a pay phone near the Casino in Windsor, but obviously I don’t expect you be able to help me out this second. In fact, I was planning on meeting with the Director’s representative. I think I can stall him for a couple of days if I need to. So if you can arrange for someone to meet me at the Tunnel or the Bridge to Detroit and get me into some sort of protective custody in the next day or so...”

“Don’t worry Doctor, I shall be in contact with you very soon. By the way, are you on riverfront side of the Casino, or the land side?”

“Riverside actually, I can see the skyline of Detroit right from the phone here. So, should I come back to this phone at any time? I would really appreciate it if you can arrange something fairly soon!”

“Yes, I am sure you would. Let me contact you here at this number again in an hour.”

“Really? Wow, Rusty that would be great! I’ll be here then!”

“Good” I hung up on him. I thought to myself, ‘Ask and you shall receive, Dr. Geek.’

I put the phone down and hurried to take care of a few errands. It was going to be a busy night...

***

I sat deep within the shadows between the dumpster and the nearby building. I reached for my cell phone, flicked it open and selected the second to last number called, the one that Dr. Geek would be looking to answer in the next couple of minutes.

The area just beyond the shadow where I crouched was busy wtih people enjoying the warm August evening air. They paid no attention to the dumpster, if anything the smell wafting from it must have been fairly bad, because folks seemed to drift closer to the other side of the sidewalk as they passed by.

I activated the button that would call the number. The pay phone about twenty feet away began to ring. One figure from the bustling crowd edged toward the the ringing phone, looking around as he did so, as if to spot anyone who might be watching for him. After three rings, he moved to pick up the handset.

“Hello?” It was Dr. Geek.

I hung up when I knew it was him. Instead I sprung from the shadow in which I had been crouching and pushed my way through the startled couple who were passing my spot, oblivious to my presence previously. I could see that the good doctor was still trying to talk into the phone as I came up behind him.

“Damn,” he muttered as he hung the handset back up and started to turn around. “Wha....”

He never finished that thought before my carefully aimed punch to the solar plexis knocked all of the wind out of him. He doubled over in excruciating pain.

I heard voices behind me start to yell as they realized that a fellow patron was being assaulted right out in the open. This sort of thing didn’t happen all that much on this side of the Detroit River. “Hey, what are you doing?”... “Did you see that?”... “Is he hurting that man?”... were typical of the reactions.

Instead of enlightening those folks to the kind of man this ‘doctor’ really was, I quickly scooped the stunned man over my shoulder and bounded from the sidewalk towards the shadowy areas of the trees of the riverfront park that Windsor was famous for.

By the time any local Windsor cops could respond to the gasps and cries for help from the stunned crowd, I had found a nice patch of darkness and opened a rift between worlds to step through with my cargo.

He wanted to ‘disappear’, so I figured I would make that happen much sooner than he might have realized was possible. Perhaps he would regret his request, but I’ll let you good folks be the judge of that...

Paging Dr. Geek, You Have a Call...

It was 8:45 before I called the number. I didn’t want to risk not getting through, but I wanted to make his ass wait a little bit, too...a little gamesmanship.

The phone rang three times before it was answered.

He spoke first. “Hello, who’s calling please?” He was trying to sound nonchalant, but there was strain in his voice...he was a little too eager and it showed.

“You know who this is.”

His voice perked up a little bit. I could hear noises in the background, traffic noises. “Rusty, I’m so glad you’ve called. I was beginning to worry that you hadn’t gotten my message.”

“What do you want, Bernstein? I thought I was done with you when we left you in Canada to start a new life.”

“Yes, well, I am still in Canada, but there are some things I need to discuss with you. Such as your new baby daughter. And how you can save her life, of course there is a price to the information I have.”

“Before this goes any further Bernstein, you’ve got some convincing to do before I can believe that I have any newborn child out there. In case you haven’t noticed, asshole, I’m not exactly equipped for THAT job anymore.”

He hesitated for just a moment, like he was trying to gather his thoughts before he spoke again. He stuttered a bit as he began. “Well...um..Let me begin by saying that not all of our experiments with you and other test subjects...”

“You mean my fellow officers, don’t you Doctor?”

“Yes...of course. Like I was saying, not all of our experiments on you and the other officers were recorded in our notes. Director Kampmann had me conduct some off-record tests and to take samples of each officer’s...DNA...through blood and semen samples taken during the preparation of your bodies for your...uh...current assignments.”

“How did you get any semen from me, Dr. Geek, I had been fixed for over ten years before I died?”

“Well...you know that a vasectomy only prevents semen from escaping the body during intercourse, your body still produced plenty of fertile sperm, it just didn’t have an avenue of escape...until I....uh...”

“Until you cut me up like a prime hog in a butcher shop, asshole.”

“Yes. I could certainly see how you think of it in those terms.”

“OK, so say you did recover some fertile sperm from my carcass, how the Hell does that translate into my having a child now?”

He hesitated again. Cleared his throat, and spoke again, “Yes, well, those samples of semen and blood were used in some off-site experiments in cloning, gene therapy research, and in genetic modification. Eventually, some of those sperm samples were implanted via in vitro fertilization. One such sample of yours was implanted shortly before we located you in Las Vegas. That sample took and has been carried to full term, resulting in a baby girl who is your genetic offspring. You are her biological father.”

“You sick, sick bastard. Why should I give a fuck about this child, whoever the Hell she really is?”

“Well, first of all, because I know you are not the heartless monster you like to portray yourself as. Now that you know you have a child, I know that you will do the right thing. She is in grave danger right now, and you are probably the only one who can truly save her.”

“Alright asshole, I’ll play along for the moment, what danger is she in?”

“She is in danger in a number of ways. Physically, she is in a very precarious position that could very easily prove fatal if you don’t act quickly and decisively. If she survives the immediate danger though, she’s in peril from the Director. He will stop at nothing at locating her and using her against you.”

“How is it that you know where this baby is and Drake doesn’t?”

“Well, as I mentioned, the mother was impregnated shortly before I encountered you in Las Vegas, and after that, I was, shall we say, indisposed for a period of time. Before I had a chance to get in contact with the Director again, the organization was significantly degraded. I have been granted asylum and a new identity here in Canada, but just yesterday the Director made contact with me. He has set up a meeting for me with one of his representatives in three hours here. He expects me to provide him with the details of certain...projects...that may remain open, including your daughter.”

“Shit. So why did you contact me? Why not just give him the child and the goods on your other cursed projects?”

“Because I don’t particularly want to resume my former employment and I think you can help me avoid that. So, is saving an innocent young girls life, your daughters life, worth helping me, an old adversary?”

A Cryptic Message

So, where were we?

Ah yes, I was just about to arrange for a trip to go see Ravyn and visit my daughter there when I received a very cryptic e-mail, reproduced here in its strange entirety:

“RB-

Another experiment involving you has come to fruition, something not revealed by the data you captured previously.

Congratulations on your new baby girl.

If you wish to know the whereabouts of your daughter, contact me by phone at (519) 555-6859 between 8 and 9 PM tonight. If you don’t follow through, she will either be dead soon, or fall into HIS hands, and I don’t think you want that to happen.

If you help me, I will help you.

-DB”

Now, my very first reaction to reading this e-mail was to get ready to delete the damn thing. My new baby girl? How the fuck was that even possible? It had been nearly two years since I had died, and besides that, I had been snipped many years before my death....so the possibility of having fathered a child anytime in the last year was pretty much out of the damn question.

But before I deleted it, I sat down and thought about things for a moment. Something about the number seemed familiar to me? What was that?

Well, as someone who had grown up in Michigan near the border with Ontario, Canada, I recognized that the area code was an Ontario code.

But who would be leaving a message like that from Canada...and how would they know anything about what had happened to me? And who used the initials of ‘DB’?

Then it came to me...Dr. Geek, his true last name was Bernstein, and the last I had seen of him, we had left his ass outside of Vancouver, Canada in one of those transport rooms that Drake had placed all over the place.

But why would he help me, and what possible help could I give him?

Damn, only one way to find out...

The Mysteries of the...Onion-verse-Part 3

Some few days of constant contemplation later, Merlin actually sought me out.

This time, I was sitting on a rock near a small stream that emptied into a small, clear pool populated by curious, colorful koi-like fish. I looked up as he shuffled up to me.

“So, what has the onion taught you of the nature of the Universe?”

Marshalling all of the dignity I could, I sat up straighter and held the now worn looking root bulb in my left hand. “Well, the most obvious lesson is that the layers of the onion represent different layers of existence, worlds or places that are in many ways similar to each other, but with subtle differences.”

He nodded, “What else have you learned in these many days?”

“I have learned that each layer is unique, but that each layer is dependent on the other layers to provide support and substance to it, since each layer on it’s own is incomplete. there is an interdependence that is not immediately obvious, since each layer is whole in and of itself. I believe this represents that while each world is complete and whole on it’s surface, that the other worlds provide depth and substance to each other, supporting the worlds on either side of it, and in turn benefitting from the same kind of support.

“Looking at each layer of the onion as a world, I can see how the world above would seem lighter, higher, mysterious, a source of infinite knowledge and wisdom, while the worlds below might be seen as sources of darkness, fear, and of lesser importance.

“In terms of travelling between these worlds, I have seen personally how it can be done, and how these worlds are bridged at certain defined points, probably represented by the millions of tiny places where one layer of an onion comes into contact with the layers above and beneath.

“I have also learned the answer to my original question-why are there so many worlds? Because one world would collapse without the substance and support provided by the others. So how did I do?”

He pursed his lips in thought, kicked a small stone into the pool, startling the koi who had been watching us intently, and nodded. “Good enough for a beginner. Perhpas you have potential after all. We shall see.” He started to turn away.

“Master?”

He stopped, “Yes?”

“I do have one question, however, about this stuff with the onion.”

“Only one?” His left eyebrow shot up as he spoke.

“Well, one for now. How does all of this with the example of the onion and the ‘world’ tie in with our modern knowledge that the Earth is but one planet in one small solar system in one small galaxy...I mean if the Earth is represented by the layers of the onion and consists of so many different realities, I just don’t see how it all fits together...”

He threw his head back in peals of cackling laughter, slapping at his thighs with his hands until he nearly collapsed for lack of breath. After he regained his composure, he reached for the onion. I gave it to him.

“You think you have this all puzzled out my dear pupil, that this onion actually represents the planet Earth eh? How amusing. How typically...human...to think that our home planet is of such importance in this great vast Universe...No, son, the layers of the onion don’t merely represent our little planet, but instead one layer would encompass every planet, every star, every galaxy and all of that vast emptiness in between them.

“I have read of this Big bang that your modern scientists have talked about. If only they knew how close they were, and how just as the Universe they observe keeps expanding, the other layers that remain unseen with their instruments grow right along with it. If only your ‘scientists’ had the tools to look beyond their own layer-but then that ability is not so common anymore, and the desire is even less so.”

He handed the onion back to me. “You keep this boy, you have much left to contemplate with it. But you show promise. Tomorrow we shall see if you have what it takes to bridge the gap between worlds safely.”

With that conclusion, my true lessons with the Merlin began....but I have bored you enough already with my studies for now.

My next entry shall begin the tale of how I answered a call for help from an old enemy and how I became a father yet again....and we shall perhaps see if Ravyn ever gets that light orb she so desperately covets!

The Mysteries of the...Onion-verse-Part 2

The next ‘day’ (since there was no setting and rising Sun, I had to go by the old coot’s reckoning--which knowing him, was rather variable, depending on his cranky moods), I was sitting under a mango tree, staring at the onion in my hands when Zulu came up to me.

“Ah yes, the onion lecture eh?”

“I don’t know if I would call it a lecture, he threw this thing at me when I asked a question and told me to go and study it.”

Zulu laughed, “That’s about as close to a lecture as you will get from Merlin. He’s not a real believer in imparting knowledge directly to others. He, and other Druids as well, believe that no lesson is truly learned until you experience it personally. So you will find his methods a little...unorthodox.”

“You mean like chaining my ass to a rock for a few weeks?”

“Yeah, that’s a fairly typical Merlin lesson.”

“OK then, let’s play his game again for the moment. I know onions are made of many layers, and I suppose he wants me to see that this somehow relates to the different worlds I asked him about, each layer perhps representing a world of some sort.”

“Yes, that’s a beginning. But a child could point that much out.”

“Oh really? What the Hell else is there to see about a damn onion?”

“There are as many lessons to be found in that onion as there are layers to peel back. It really is one of his most effective lessons.”

“I take it you have had this lesson as well?”

“Oh yes, that’s why I am so familiar with the feelings you are having about it right now, as well as with his method of teaching.”

“How long ago did you study under Merlin?”

Zulu looked around briefly, and took off his suit coat jacket and used it like a blanket to sit down on the mango-strewn ground without getting his trousers dirty. As usual, he was dressed as if he just emerged from Senate sub-committee meeting, wearing a very expensive looking three piece suit with a red power tie and stiffly starched shirt and sharp, expensive looking shoes shined to a high polish. Once he was settled, he reached his hand out for the onion.

I gave it to him, glad to have it out of my hands for the first time in over a day.

“I came here for the first time maybe 20 years ago. I didn’t last very long that time though. I was very quickly put off by his bizarre teaching methods and his seeming lack of patience. I had thought I was ready for him, and I had been warned before I came to see him that he was rather eccentric. But my ego was far too big at that time, I left him after being tossed the onion and left to my own devices for three days and nights.”

“So this lesson was the one that drove you away?”

“Indeed. You see, I came here very full of myself. Once I discovered that the this incredible talent for magick was what was causing me so much trouble with my own faith and in my life, I secretly set about finding the best teachers of magick that were available. Within a few years of hard study, I had come into my own as a more than passable Mage. I had mastered more than a few skills with the Elements, but had found my true talents lay in manipulating other peoples’ emotions and even their unconscious thoughts...”

“No wonder you’re a damn politician.”

He laughed at that. “Yes, it does suit me all too well, which is of course why I was hoodwinked into coming to see Merlin, much as I had to manipulate you into coming here. You see, other Mages didn’t like the fact that I was such a well known politician already and had just discovered how well my magickal talents could tie in to my all too public career. There was more than a little concern on their part that I would fall to temptation and try to grab for more political power than is wise for one of our kind.”

“So you were actually forced to come see Merlin?”

“Well, yes and no. I was approached by someone I rather trusted who offered to take me to see a teacher of great renown who would offer me lessons I couldn’t get anywhere else. I was trapped by my own thirst for knowledge. I agreed to come along, but this was the first time I had travelled outside our world as well, and like you, I was taken by a way that I had no way of replicating, so once I got here I was trapped for a time myself.”

“But didn’t you say that you left on your own during your first lesson? How did you do that if you didn’t know how to travel between worlds yet?”

“I have always been a remarkably quick student. Once I had discovered that such travel was possible, and once I was forced by Merlin to study that darn onion for three days and nights, I figured out how to open my own pathway between worlds, and decided in my own ill-advised haste that I had learned all he was going to teach me at that point.”

“So you went back home?”

Zulu threw his head back laughing at that notion. “Oh no. Just because I had figured out how to open up a portal between worlds didn’t mean that I actually knew what I was doing or how to get back home. No, I travelled mostly at random from one world to the next until I got myself good and lost. I actually ended up in a place that fit the closest descriptions of Hell that the Good Book described and found myself unable to leave. It was only some time later when I had given up all hope that I could ever get back home that the old fella toddled up to me in my rather unpleasant captivity and handed me another onion and asked if I was ready to resume our lessons. Needless to say, I readily agreed and returned with him back here to resume my studies.”

“You mean you actually found Hell?”

“Well, let’s just say it was a very warm place inhabited by some very scary creatures who weren’t of a very kind disposition and were more than happy to make me feel like I was in Hell, but no it was not the Biblical Hell as such, although I certainly think it could have been an inspiration for it.”

As he finished up his narrative, he looked at the onion again closely, sighed almost fondly and said, “You know, I have never looked at an onion the same way since.” He then tossed it back to me.

“I would guess not. But I still don’t see how there can be that many damn lessons to be learned from this thing.”

“Then you haven’t studied it long enough...”

The Mysteries of the...Onion-verse-Part 1

(The following is an account of just one of the many lessons I learned as a student of Merlin. This lesson was particularly important, as well as particularly strange, so I feel it is a good place to start the next adventure...)

Merlin’s home was a series of vast caverns, each one unique in its own bizarre way, each home to more mysteries than I shall ever be able to explain here. Shortly after I had found my Key and released myself from the chains that had bound me to that damnable rock, I found myself strolling with the old coot in one the larger caverns. He seemed to favor this one more than most because of the bright, almost Sun-like light that allowed the place to be full of green grass, flowering bushes and trees, and a bewildering array of birds, rodents and even larger animals like small deer.

We were walking along a path that meandered through a particularly thick part of the ‘forest’. We had been walking in silence, something Merlin seemed to prefer over small talk, until I blurted out a question that had been gnawing at me for almost as long as I have been aware of the existence of ‘other worlds’...since John Red Bear had first talked about the Three Worlds of Spirit.

“Merlin, how can there be so many different damned worlds?”

He stopped, turned to face me, and replied with a question of his own, “How can there not be?”

“Huh?”

“How can there not be so many different worlds?”

“Well,...uh...I would think one would be enough...”

“Do you now? So you think there should just be the one world that all of us should be born into, and die in eh?”

“Yeah, why not? It would be so much simpler to understand everything.”

“And just why should everything be simple for you? Must everything be understood?”

“Dammit old man, things should be a Hell of a lot easier to understand! How the Hell can there be a world in which we live and breathe, and then have three different Spirit Worlds for Spirits to go back and forth from, and then for there to be places like this strange-assed place and that’s not to mention Zulu’s freaky-assed Fun House Mirror World? Then there was this weird Void like place I was at when Ma Grendel and I were killed by that blade...damn I can’t keep track of all of these damn places!!! How do you make sense of any of it?”

The old coot cracked a smile at my exasperated expression, and then used his walking stick to prod me to move aside. “Ah yes, now that, my boy, is a good question. But before I answer that, I’ll ask you to kindly step out of my little garden here.”

As I moved aside for him, I looked down to see a small patch of dark loamy earth which was now marked by some boot marks. There were several rows of neatly ordered garden vegetables lined up. I could’ve sworn there was only a path through the woods here before.

The old guy got down onto his knees and fussed with a couple of tomato plants that I had apparently damaged, and then after clucking his tongue, he reach over to a row of mounded earth with some green stalks growing up from each little mound in the row. He dug his hands deftly into the dark earth and came up a large, round onion. Using a small knife he quickly removed the green stalks at the top, and the little pointy root at the bottom, leaving a nice, full onion which he tossed over his shoulder to me without looking back.

Still puttering about with some of the other plants, he looked back briefly at me and said, “Study that onion. It is a fine specimen.”

“Study an onion? What the f...why?”

“In that root, you shall find many clues to the mysteries of the Universe.”

“How am I going to learn more about the Universe by studying an onion?”

He snorted as he looked back at his garden. “Another good question, so go study it and see if you can come up with an equally good answer.”

Leaping Forward

The astute reader will of course figure out that I could not possibly remain chained to a rock in a distant dimension and still continue to make entries into this blog. As I am well aware just how astute many of my readers are, I will not belabor certain points any further. But I guess I should provide a little insight as to what happened and how I came to be free again, so here we go....

In the beginning, my time with Zulu, Merlin, and most importantly myself, was spent with a heart that was filled with fear, hate, and anger. Those emotions were of course initially directed to my captors, but were also directed inwards as well.

I was left chained to that rock for what seemed like an eternity. The visits from my captors were few and far between, leaving me with a lot of time to reflect on what, and even more importantly, who, I was now. Every time I did receive a visit from Merlin or Zulu, it seemed as if they came merely to taunt me for not having found the supposed ‘key’ that lay within.

Looking back, of course, I can now see that they were not in fact torturing me (at least not intentionally), but were trying instead to prod my rather reluctant psyche in a direction that would help me to find that key and allow me to free myself from the chains that bound me.

However, at that time, I was so wrapped up in the conflicts between Light and Shadow, Self and Other, Life and Death, and Love and Hate, that I didn’t recognize their attempts to move me towards the Healing that I so desperately needed.

Time in that place flows differently than it does in this world. So, while I spent what must have been many weeks bound to that damnable rock and then several more weeks in study and meditation with Merlin, totalling several months in all in that world, the time that actually elapsed here was a matter of days and comprises one of my prior periods of silence on this blog.

My time with Merlin, and to a much lesser extent with Zulu, is almost beyond my ability to describe in mere words. I have never before been in a situation that was so conducive to learning lessons on Life, Love, the Universe in which we live, and of course, Magick.

I want to share as many of those lessons here as is practical, but in order to do so, I must find the right time and the right context to share them in such a way as to maximize their value. Thus, in the near future, you will see periodic flashbacks from those lessons posted. Sometimes these will come as separate blog entries, but other times they will be incorporated into other posts that address whatever events I am writing about. In that way, I continue to keep you apprised of events that are occuring (or have recently occured) in my (Un)Life, but I still get to share the incredible lessons I learned without boring the snot out of too many of you.

That being said, let me bring you up to speed with where I am right now.

After returning from that rather long and unplanned (by me, anyway) journey, I found myself at the familiar FBI headquarters that I first awoke to see Drake’s smiling face. Of course Drake was nowhere to be found, but rather a new crew of folks working on the Omega Project (that’s me, BTW) who were rather surprised to see me step out of a dark utility closet and into their (allegedly) secure facility.

You see, I was actually able to make the journey back from Merlin’s abode to this world by Shadowwalking, a form of travel that I had previously seen Papa Locks use. It turns out that my merger with part of Ma Grendel’s spirit gave me access to a world of magickal talent that I never could have possessed before, which is why Merlin and Zulu had been so desperate to make sure that it was my Spirit, not hers, that emerged in charge of the new Rusty Bones.

Once everyone recovered from shock and verified that I was indeed their beloved (and still very much feared) Omega Project returned, we set about setting me up for the next phase of operations.

I had to arrange for a new laptop computer, a new residence, and new transportation, since I had pretty much destroyed the Bonesmobile and my previous computer equipment with my experimental solution to being inhabited by Ma Grendel.

Once all of that mundane stuff was settled (and the piles of memos and forms were completed in triplicate--it is the Federal Government after all), it was time to sit down with upper management at the Bureau and hash out what exactly my role would be.

Let me just say that I now have significantly more say when I will or will not be deployed to address certain ‘issues’ and that my role as an investigator and as an agent has been clarified.

All of that took another several weeks to accomplish--you wouldn’t believe how picky those damn bureacrats can be on the spelling and punctuation of memos detailing my otherworldly travels, you would think they could give a guy a break after all of the shit I had been through...

That brings us up to the end of August, and the gathering storm called Katrina that was being predicted to hit New Orleans...I had been planning to take a break and go visit my kids and to spend some time with Ravyn and the Frau, but instead I ended up taking a call for help from a very unexpected source...but more on that later...

It is time to wrap up this entry, but I am sure there is a question gnawing at some of you...

What was the Key that I had to find within myself in order to be freed from those chains?

Love-- not that yucky, fake romantic stuff that is the source of so many sappy Hollywood movies, but the kind of Love for others that filled the hearts of such people as Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, and countless others who have throughout history sacrificed of themselves for the Greater Good. That is not an easy thing to find within yourself when you are an (Un)Dead FBI agent chained to a rock while literally battling an inner demon in another dimension...but by finding that wellspring of strength, I came to an acceptance of my being trapped there so that others would be protected from the Darkness within me. It was only then that the chains that held me melted away and I was free to go or to stay and learn from the man who designed my prison.

Luckily, I stayed and learned.

Prometheus Bound

Blinding, painful Light. I could see nothing because the Light was so bright, so unrelenting.

Closing my eyes was no longer an option, thanks to the latest change to my damn body, I no longer had eyelids, only sockets filled with mysterious red orbs that allowed me to see in multiple light spectrums. So there was no relief to be found from the simple, human act of closing my eyes. Instead, I had to concentrate on filtering the Light, to limit the brightness somehow.

As I began working on that problem, I heard Zulu speak again, the bastard.

“Master, he is coming back around.”

The other voice, now more discernibly that of a very old man, responded. “Yes, so I see. We shall have to see how he will react to this new situation.”

Zulu asked, “How long do you think it will take for him to be released?”

The old man sighed, replied in low voice. “The only one who can determine that is him.”

I had enough of these two talking about me, so I croaked out, “You better plan on releasing right damn now!”

I heard a shuffling footstep and the rustle of heavy clothing as a dark figure (all I could see at this point) seemed to loom over me. “If you wish to be free, then you must get up.”

I groaned, and tried to lash out with one hand, but found that I couldn’t move it more than a couple of inches before it fell back down over my head...I was bound by chains of some sort. I tried my other arm, then each of my legs in succession but found that I was laid out with my back stretched out over some large rock. My feet were shackled to the floor, my arms elevated up over my arched back, also chained.

Grunting, I put more effort into pulling at least one arm free, but no avail.

“Oh, old man, I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but you are not going to leave me chained here!”

The shadow retreated just a little bit, but his voice sounded amused as he replied. “Sir, you are free to leave at any moment. The only one holding you here is yourself.”

“What? You chained my ass to this fucking rock, asshole! I can’t get up, or I’d be wiping that smirk I hear in your voice all over the damn floor!”

He sighed. His shadow receded, his reply came in almost a whisper. “I am afraid my son, that you will be here for quite some time. But rest assured, when you are ready, you will discover that you have been the one keeping yourself imprisoned here. You are the only one with the key to these chains. Find the key within yourself, and you shall be free to go.”

I heard his slippered feet shuffle away out of earshot.

I was not in much of a mood to reflect on the old man’s words at that point, I was too busy trying to filter out enough of the damnable light to be able to see clearly and in trying to pry an arm or a leg free from the chains that kept me bound to that rock.

Taking a chance that he was still nearby, I calmed down and tried another tactic with Zulu, “Zulu, why have you done this to me? Why have you led me into this trap?”

Just like I thought, he was still standing nearby, his voice was low, apologetic in its tone, “I’m sorry Rusty, but you left us with no choice.”

“What do you mean? What the Hell did I do?”

He sighed, “You took on too much, too soon. You tried to absorb the remnants of that...creature...before you were ready for that task. I am afraid that you have come terribly close to being consumed by it. We can’t allow that to happen.”

“What damn choice did I have Zulu? I didn’t ask to have the soul of some ancient demoness added to my own!”

“Rusty, no one is saying you did this intentionally, but all actions have consequences. When you used that Witchbane Blade on yourself, you set in motion a series of events that have rocked the foundations of more than one world. No one could have foreseen the consequences of that action. But here we are nonetheless, trying to contain the damage.”

My mind was reeling with what he said, and with the whole situation that I was now finding myself in. I was...tired...for the first time in nearly two years, I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep...but of course, that was not to be.

“Zulu, can you tell me something?”

“Yes?”

“Who is that old guy?”

“That was, is, Merlin. I told you I was taking you to see him.”

“Can you tell me something else?”

“Perhaps.”

“How the fuck do I get out of these chains?”

“You have to use the Key.”

“What damn key? And how the Hell can I find it if I am chained up this way?”

“Not all keys are physical, Rusty.” His shadowy form approached, he reached out a blurry hand and tapped my chest. “Some keys can only be found by looking within.”

“Can you tell me what I am looking for then? Is it some sort of magick?”

“You will know it when you find it, Rusty.”

“Somehow, I knew that you would say that.”

He chuckled. His shadow receded. “Rusty, I must leave you now. I hope that you find your key soon. There is much for you to learn here.” I heard his footsteps as he left the area.

“Bastard.” I whispered, but with a lot less force than I had felt before.

I laid my head back against the rock, gave up trying to pry my arms and legs free, and fully concentrated on filtering this damnable Light so that I could try and make sense of my surroundings.

Even as fatigued as I felt though, I could feel a smoldering rage deep inside me. It was beginning to build again, the voices began to whisper again....

Drowning...

I came to slowly, dim shadowy light playing across my face in small fuzzy waves. I was laying on my back, trying to focus my eyes.

Why did everything seem so blurry?

Why did the light shift every couple of seconds?

Why did the dripping of water sound so thunderous?

I brought my hands up to my eyes to try to clear them out, but my arms seemed so heavy, they came slowly, the patterns of the light shifted visibly and the sounds around my ears became steadier, rushing sounds.

As the waves caused by my motions made oh so clear, I was underwater!

A moment of panic rose in my throat, a remembered instinct from my life before perhaps, before I realized that being (un)dead meant I didn’t need to worry about drowning for lack of air. Still, I did start trying to scramble up and see if I could get my head above water.

Standing up, I found myself in a vastly changed chamber from how I found it.

Besides the truly obvious difference of being nearly five feet deep in water, every single formation that I had marvelled at before showed serious damage. All of the hanging stalactite formations had been knocked down or broken up, as if a giant child had come and cleared away the dangling icicles from an eave. The massive stalacmite formations, besides being under water for the most part now, were broken down in nubs, or were massive stumps of cracked stone.

The two mirror smooth walls that may once have served as magickal doorways into this formerly wondrous place were now nothing more than ragged falls over broken and battered stone, any previous likeness to the mirrors they once were now long gone. The rushing water in those two places now formed the fawcetts that were quickly drowning the place, probably because whatever small holes once provided for the water to flow out of here were now blocked up with the debris of my...our?...rampage.

The sole remainder of the wonder of this place was the dimmed and sputtering orb of light that still hung above me, but was clearly damaged in some way by the assault of my alter-ego.

A voice spoke up, one I didn’t recognize. “Well that was quite the demonstration of useless rage.”

The voice surprised me, I turned around looking for anyone else in the chamber. No one else was here with me, that I could see.

A second voice, this one somewhat familiar, if a little distorted, spoke, “That is why I recommended this course, Master. He is unpredictable and quite dangerous. It took all of my skill to keep him Charmed for the trip here.”

“Who’s there!” I shouted, splashing around the chamber to see if I was missing them somehow. “Where the fuck are you, Zulu?”

The First Voice spoke up again, ignoring my cries. “Yes, I can see that you were right in your assessment. I only wish I didn’t have to sacrifice one of my favorite meditation chambers in the process.”

“That is indeed unfortunate, Master,” said Zulu’s distorted voice again, “but I am sure you have other places to visit when you have the need. This chamber was the most secure. I shall mourn the damage to this sanctuary myself.”

“You bastard (Zulu),” I used his real name, at least I thought it was his real name, “You’re gonna have a lot more to mourn when I get my ass out of here than this stupid fucking cave!”

The First Voice replied to Zulu, “Yes. Well we will have much work to do with this one. I don’t know if he is salvageable. He seems quite savage.”

I was feeling the Rage well up inside again. I tried to tamp the urge to explode again back down. I definitely felt the need to keep my wits about me, but the whispers began to surface again...

“Destroy the Light before it consumes us...”

“Hate is strength...”

“Summon the Shadows, they will gladly serve us...”

“Hungry....”

I began to move about, trying to look for a way to escape the voices, both inside my head and out of it, to find a way to return to normal, whatever the Hell that was anymore, to escape this place...

Zulu spoke up again, replying to the First Voice. “Yes, Master, he is savage, but we must try to redeem him, he is far too valuable to destroy just yet.”

The First voice replied, “A dangerous game we play, he could very well destroy us all.”

“A desperate gamble indeed, but a necessary one.”

I was floundering in the water, tripping over broken formations I could no longer see, growing more and more frustrated about being talked about...the whispers inside grew louder, more insistent. Finally, I turned an ankle on some slippery, hidden remnant of a formation, I heard one last sentence before the Rage overcame me yet again...

First Voice again, “Very well. Let him exhaust himself first, then we shall restrain him again....”

I slipped back into dark, watery Rage...drowning in more ways than one in forces I could no longer (if I ever could) control.

Rage

As the full realization of my current plight hit me, I felt an anger arise within me that was completely unexpected and new. It started with a slow, bubbling feeling that rather quickly rose to a furious boil. I couldn’t believe that I had been taken unaware by magick so easily by someone I had no real reason to trust in the first damn place.

Small voices, almost whispers in my mind, spoke to my conscious mind. They whispered in a dozen different languages and in nearly as many different voices, each telling me in their own way how foolish I had been to trust others, or how ‘they’ could help me...I couldn’t tell you what languages they spoke in, but I understood everything each one said...

“Trust is for fools...”

“We must not be weak...”

“Let us help you be stronger...”

“Don’t listen to the meddling humans...”

“We are one now...”

“We must feed...”

“Look to the Shadows, we know how to use them...”

“Destroy the Light...”

“Fear is Strength...”

“Hate is Strength...”

“Anger is Strength...”

The voices grew louder and even more discordant the angrier I got, which of course was making me even madder.

Before long my vision grew blurry as I began lashing out in rage at the beautiful formations in the cavern. Hitting things, breaking them in thousands of shards, gave me a sense of growing strength, but it fed the rage. It couldn’t have been more than a few moments before I blacked out. The last thing I remember from that moment is feeling a surge of Darkness well up from within and blast out from my fingers towards that damnable Light....

(Un)Charmed

It wasn’t until I splashed through the watery doorway into Merlin’s abode that I came to my damn senses...

I had been placed under a magickal compulsion called a Charm by Zulu that pretty much prevented me from overtly resisting any suggestion he made to me. Damn, but that man is powerful. I should have known not to trust a fucking politician, but really, I had no chance.

As mentioned in the last couple of posts, I was pretty much out it after I tried to take a stupid shortcut in the conflict with the splinter of Ma Grendel’s spirit that had stuck around for the ride. So I really didn’t have a chance to resist any Charm that Zulu wanted to implant in me, but boy did it chap my ass when I splashed through to the other side.

I was all wet in more than just the literal sense.

It all became crystal clear as soon as I landed on the floor of the cavern, catching my balance on one knee and two hands again. His words had all seemed so reasonable at the time, but then again, the Charm wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t used his words as skillfully as he did his magick!


Once I stopped my momemtum and realized that I just walked through a portal into an unknown location at the request of some asshole I’d only met once before and didn’t even half trust to begin with, I was more than a little pissed.

I got up quickly and looked back at the way I had come in. It was a shimmering, sheer wall that reflected the dim light in the cavern that I now found myself in rather well. I tried to put hand back through the ‘mirror’ the same way I had come in, and found it stopped by the solid, wet rock behind the cascading water. The portal had closed.

A few salty cuss words later, I tried to calm myself down and remember what it was that I felt as I had passed through the mirrors before, hoping that perhaps I could use the same method myself to get back to where I belonged.

Nothing. Shit.

But by focussing on the magick I had felt while travelling, I felt the now tattered bindings of the Charm that Zulu (or whoever the Hell he was) had used to keep me calm and to do his bidding. A flash of anger though, and those last tendrils of his influence were burned away.

“You bastard, you better hope I’m in a good mood the next time we meet!” I shouted at the gurgling wall before stepping back and surveying the rest of the place.

I found myself standing in a rather impressive cavern that reminded me more than a little of some of the more spectacular caverns in Mammoth Caves, in Kentucky. Dozens of sparkling stalactites hung from the roof of the cave while the floor was a veritable maze of smaller chambers created by tall stalacmites that stood in various patterns. The sounds of dripping and flowing water were abundant, from the drip drop of waterdrops falling from individual stalactites to the gurgling flow of sheets of water covering more than one wall. At my feet, at the base of the wall through which I had entered was a small pool of crystal clear water. A small outlet brook left that pool, flowing downhill along the base of the wall and disappearing through a small crevasse not ten feet away from where I stood.

From where I stood, I could see that the cavern was easily a hundred feet wide, another 50-60’ deep and at least 50’ high in the center of the room.

Cursing again, I began to make my way around some of the stalacmites to see about finding this ‘Merlin’, if he even existed.

The light that was in the cave seemed to be coming from somewhere on the far wall, so I started that way first.

After a few moments of picking my way around while trying not to damage any of the formations (don’t ask me why, it just seemed i should be careful), I came to the light source, it was a single glowing orb of light. I had seen Ravyn create similar orbs out of elemental fire while we were underground in New York, but this was more like an orb of pure light. It hung in the air near that far wall without any visible supports and without flickering or moving, about 9’ up. It looked to be about a foot in diameter.

Just below the orb, I could see that there was another water smooth surface that resembled the way I had entered this place. Hoping against hope, I reached out this ‘mirror’ but was again met with solid rock.

Looking around in the more illuminated part of the cavern, I noticed that there weren’t any exits from this place, except for the various small crevasses where the pools of water drained.

I was trapped.

I was alone.

I was pissed!

Fucking politician!

Dumb assed zombie.

Sigh...

Zombie 2.0--Revelations...Part 3

I fell for what seemed to be several minutes, but was probably only a few moments. The foot I led with was the first thing to touch ground, but I still stumbled and came to a rest on one knee, I had to catch my balance by throwing both hands out to stop my forward momentum.

Once I was sure that I was on stable ground, I quickly looked up and around to try and catch my bearings...I found that I was in a mist shrouded hallway that was lined with mirrors of nearly every shape and size imaginable. I saw my own confused, and pretty damn scary face looking back at me from literally hundreds of reflective mirrors. Just as I started to process that info, Zulu stepped into the hall from the mirror immediately behind me, so his reflections joined mine.

“Holy shit, what is this place?”

He grinned at me and offered a hand to help me. I took it and stood up. His grip was surprisingly strong, but not in any unnatural way like Drake’s, more like the firm grip of a former athlete. I couldn’t help but think of how this guy must have had it all as a youngster...good looks, strong body, I knew he came from Old Money if the news was to be believed, and he had charisma oozing from his pours, and too top it all off, he was clearly a powerful Caster. Some guys get all the luck.

“I don’t know the true name of this place, but I call it the Hall of Mirrors.”

“Wow, that’s...uh...imaginative.”

“Yes, well, I don’t spend that much time here, I don’t travel by this method very often. As with anything magickal, there are perils to relying on it very often. I guess the best way to describe this place is that it is another dimension, a dimension that is accessible through mirrors both ways. I use it as a shortcut when I must, but I must admit, I find it disconcerting.”

“Why not use another method to travel then?”

“My talents just happen to lie in accessing this place more easily than some others. But it has its uses, even if I do have to look at my own reflection much more than I ever care to.”

“Come on, you’re telling me this? I’m a damn walking corpse! If anyone should be afraid to see themselves in a mirror, it’s me!”

“I can’t argue with you on that front Rusty, but this place has a way of pinpointing and hilighting each and every flaw one has. In any event, we must not tarry here, let me slip past you here and I’ll lead you to where we need to go.”

With that, he slid past me. Remembering his previous instructions, I put a hand on his shoulder as he began slowly walking forward.

This place was extremely disorienting, quite similar to many of the funhouse Halls of Mirror rides I had been in at various carnivals and amusement parks during my youth. It was exceptionally hard to tell where the path went, since the mirrors cast so many reflections. Even Zulu had to go slowly, reaching out a hand to feel his way through the maze.

After we had been moving for a while, Zulu stopped at an intersection, apparently trying to puzzle out which to go. While he was busy mumbling to himself, I took a chance to look at my own reflection more carefully in the mirror to my right.

The face staring back at me seemed more like some Halloween mask meant to scare small children than that of my own face. Even from behind the dark sunglasses, I could catch the glimmer of red that were my eyes. The play of the flickering shadows created by my own glowing eye sockets only served to further define my face as the gruesome mask of a dead killer. But the barest hint of something else caught my eye...there were other images in the mirror behind my ugly mug.

I stared hard at it before the ghostly image of a room beyond the mirror crystallized. It was a bedroom of some sort. I could see two shadowy forms groping and clasping at each other on a large canopy-covered bed. They were making love, I think.

“Whoah, I can see stuff through this mirror here!”

Zulu took a moment from trying to decipher which way to go and responded, “Yes, each and every mirror in this place corresponds to a mirror elsewhere. If you look hard enough, you will be able to see something of the place where the mirror exists elsewhere in many of them.”

“You mean this mirror here is actually in someone’s bedroom?”

He glanced at the mirror I was looking at, “Yes, it appears to be so. This is precisely the reason I don’t keep mirrors in my own bedroom. It also the reason most Casters don’t keep mirrors around, especially in rooms they wish to keep private.”

“Shit, no wonder. I’ll never look at a mirror in quite the same way again.”

“Indeed. Before I learned to use my Talents, I often felt at unease around mirrors and more than once felt as if I was being watched. As I later learned, it was entirely possbile that I was being watched. Oh yes, we need to go this way.”

I looked away from the couple as he started to move forward again and concentrated on not looking past my own reflection in any of the other mirrors.

We travelled in silence for what seemed like an hour. We had made dozens of turns and even gone up one flight of stairs and down two more before we arrived in front of the strangest mirror we come across yet. Instead of being made of metal or glass, it was a shimmering, flat, rock wall that...gurgled. As we got closer, I saw that the reason the wall shimmered was a thin sheen of water that was flowing across its face. The water had no visible source at the top of the wall, and disappeared beneath the floor without pooling up in any way. Our reflections were still there, but they were constantly shifting in small, almost imperceptible ways.

“What’s this?” I asked my guide.

He turnedas he answered. “This, my friend, is our destination.”

“It’s different than the others. It looks like a cave wall of some sort.”

“Very good observation. It is indeed different. This is the only mirror I know of that was created specifically by the owner to be a portal to this place. He created it for me when he showed me how to utilize this Talent.”

“So who is this teacher of yours?”

“He has been known by many names over the years. You will probably know him as Merlin.”

“Merlin?!? As in Merlin of the King Arthur and the Knights of the fucking Round Table Merlin?”

He sighed. “Yes, he is that Merlin. However, as he told me hundreds of times throughout our time together, those stories have changed significantly over time, and many authors have used their own imaginations to embellish the tales a bit. He is both more normal and even more remarkbale than those tales imply.”

“Damn, this shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder. OK, why not meet Merlin too?”

“Very well. Just like the time we came here, you’ll need to step through this mirror in order to come to the other side. This time, however, I cannot come with you. I will activate the portal, you will have to move through on your own.”

“Why aren’t you coming too?”

“There are other matters that I must attend to at the moment, very urgent matters that I have ingnored in order to get you here, but which I can no longer delay.”

“Great, so does this Merlin even know I am coming?”

“He is expecting you, yes.”

Zombie 2.0--Revelations...Part 2

I looked up at this man called Zulu and asked the only question I could come up with, “So now what?”

He grunted, “Good question. I want you to take a few more moments to collect yourself, and to get dressed. I think it is time to take you to see someone.”

“Who is that?”

“One of my instructors.”

“Are we going to drive this thing?” I seemed to remember that I was in a rather large, rather deluxe RV at that moment.

“No, I’m afraid that won’t be possible for quite some time. Matter of fact, while you are getting dressed, I think I will call SAIC Murphy and let him know that he can have this thing towed off the premises and we can let the poor owner of the camp ground get back to his business, if you haven’t already ruined his reputation anyway.”

“What do you mean? Why can’t this thing be driven?”

“While you and that thing you had inside you were battling, you pretty much destroyed the electrical system on this vehicle, and just about all of the electronic circuitry within a a half mile radius.”

“What?!?”

“Seriously, your struggle was so powerful, you fried the circuits in every cell phone, computer, television and vehicle within a half mile radius. I’m afraid that the FBI is going to have a rather large, unplanned expense in their budget this year as they compensate the victims of your little battle with your own personal demons.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes. Luckily, the camp was relatively empty and fairly well spread out, or the damages would have been worse.” He reached into his breast pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a cell phone, he began to punch some buttons to make a call as he turned away from me.

“Hey, I thought you said I burned those things all out?”

He turned to smile at me before putting the phone to his ear, he smirked as he replied. “Shielding son, shielding.” There was a voice on the other side and his voice changed it’s pitch as he took on a decidedly more commanding tone. “Yes, SAIC Murphy? This is (Zulu). It is now safe to bring in the tow vehicle. The danger is over. No, you don’t need to bring any transport for me, I’ve got it covered, thanks. No, no need to worry about Agent Bones. He’s fine. Yes, I’ll be taking him with me. We’ll be gone before your folks get here, thanks anyway. Very well then.”

I was mostly dressed by now. In doing so though, I noticed that my skin no longer maintained the illusion of being alive. Instead of a healthy pale pink, it was now closer to lead grey. Luckily though, there were no darting little worms or black masses moving about inside me anymore.

My eyes though were what caught my attention when I took the moment to actually look at my face. I was used to my eyes resembling the small lenses of camera than actual eyeballs. Now though, the lenses had been burned out and my eyes had a red glare in the mirror that took me aback. My eyesockets were empty except for reddish-orange globes of energy!

“Son of a bitch!” I gasped out loud.

By then, Zulu was off the phone with Murphy, and was looking at my face from behind me, through the reflection in the mirror. “Ah yes, so you have noticed the changes. I told you, that you had burned out all of the electronics around, perhaps I should have warned you though.”

“I thought I was freak before! How am I ever going to be able to go out in public now? I’ll be branded a freak and a monster!”

“Well, I do believe that you will be spending less time with ‘normal’ folks now, yes, but trust me, there are some skills you will have to acquire, but you will be able to mingle when you need to. So are you ready for a journey?”

I pulled on my dark leather jacket, grabbed my shades, and pulled on the harness that carried the sheathed blades that housed the spirits of Diego and Herlinda. I looked at the image in the mirror one more time, definitely Terminator Chic.

Zulu came up right behind me. He was taller, so he could see over my shoulder. “I would not want to meet you in a dark alley, that’s for sure.”

I turned to face him, arms crossed over my chest. “OK Boss, where do we go now?”

“Turn back around. You’ll be looking at our doorway.”

I turned back to the mirror, and looked back over my shoulder, “Huh?”

“That’s our exit from this place. Now, I should warn you, most people who travel this way for the first time experience a feeling a of profound electrical shock, but I have only spoken with living people about it, so I don’t know how it will affect you. I just wanted to warn you so that you can brace yourself. Try not to lash out at me as we cross the threshold.”

“You’re serious? We’re gonna walk through this mirror?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is this something I will be able to learn to do?”

“That, I cannot say. Not very many have the talent to travel in this fashion. More likely, you will have other routes available to you.”

“OK, I’ve been through some strange shit the last couple of years, so I guess this isn’t any different than any other whacked thing I’ve done lately. Tell me what I have to do.”

“Very well. I will grab your shoulder and hold it firmly as we transition through the mirror. Like I said, you may experience an electrical shock and feel a little resistance. When I tell you to, you need to step right into the mirror like it was a doorway. Whatever you do, don’t stop in the middle. Once you start forward, keep going until you find yourself into a fun house like hall of mirrors. I will keep a hold of you until I also pass through. Once we are on the other side, I will move to the front, you will need to grab hold of my jacket and hold on, it can get very confusing on the other side.”

He grabbed my shoulder firmly with a strong hand. I could see his reassuring smile in the mirror in front of me. I braced myself as he seemed to grow calm and distant. I felt a small charge of unmistakable power flow from his hand to my body. I could feel him begin to push. Looking forward, the mirror began to cloud over, not quite like it does in a shower, but more like being taken over by roiling clouds, as if looking out of a window instead of a mirror.

“Now. We must cross. Don’t step too fast, but don’t stop either, no matter how strange it feels.”

With that admonition, I took an extraneous breath (of course, for me they are all extraneous) and stepped towards the mirror with one booted foot, half expecting to crack the thing when I kicked. But the jolt of a solid didn’t come as my foot, and then my leg, and then the rest of me plunged into the roiling white clouds that the mirror was showing. Zulu came with me as we seemed to fall for what seemed an eternity.....

(To be continued)

Zombie 2.0--Revelations...Part 1

An undetermined (at first anyway) time later, I came back to consciousness. I found that I was laying on my back, staring up at the ceiling in the same room where I had previously been standing, looking at my body in the mirror.

My thoughts were at first a jumbled mass of random words in dozens of different languages. Even worse, random images flooded my memories, but none lasted so long as to provide any kind of context. Looking back at those first few moments now, I know that I was trying to sift through and sort out my own human memories from the fractured, frenetic half-memories of a creature that had existed for centuries, if not milennia.

As things began to sort themselves out in my extremely cluttered and confused mind, I was able to think in English again, and finally began to formulate some semi-coherent thoughts.

“Who am I?”

That was my very first coherent thought. I didn’t however, realized that I had voiced that question out loud until I heard a chuckle and the answer to that question voiced by a male voice I didn’t immediately recognize. The voice came from a tall figure leaning up against the far corner of the room I was lying in.

“You are Special Agent Rusty Bones of the FBI.”

“Funny, I couldn’t recall my own name. Very well, who are you then?” I was so dazed from what had just happened that I wasn’t cognizant enough to actually be surprised. Curiosity was about all i could muster at the moment. I didn’t even lift my head to get a better look at the figure.

“I am a benefactor fo yours, you have met me before and will remember me as Zulu.”

“That’s a strange name for someone as pasty white as you. Why would I know you as Zulu?”

“Because that is what I have asked you to call me. You will likely remember my actual name soon enough, but Zulu is the code name I have chosen to be called by and to be referred to as in your various writings, most especially in your blog.”

I was trying to fathom what language the word ‘blog’ came from and what association I had with any such thing when he continued.

“The most important question you should be asking of yourself, and perhaps of me as well, is ‘What happened?’”

“OK, I’ll bite. What happened?” I was starting to regain the ability to move my limbs, so I figured it was a good time to prop myself up on my elbows and look at this mysterious, immaculately dressed white man called Zulu.

He smiled, a very charming and disarming smile if I have ever seen one, before he answered. “That, my friend, is a very good question. I have pieced together bits of puzzle from various sources, including from your associates who helped you to defeat the monsters below New York City and from your notes here in this vehicle. I have also gathered additional information from listening to your cries and ravings as you lay there unconscious.

“I must say that it is still quite confusing however. From all that I have gathered, it appears that you were infected by some sort of disease or some strange remnant of the creature you had slain under the ruins of 9/11. It appears that your struggle with whatever it was has been won for the moment.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I have been here for parts of the last three days.”

“Three days! Is that how long I have been down?”

“Oh, I believe you have been in this state for a couple of days before I came. I was not made aware of your situation until three days ago, but I came as soon as I did become aware that you were in danger.”

I sat up fully now. I pulled my reluctant legs into a cross legged sitting position and looked at my hands. They felt all numb and tingly. A sensation that I could not recall having for a very long time. “How did you learn that I was in trouble?”

He stood up from leaning against the corner and came a little closer. “The Bureau heard about it first when the reports of the unearthly screaming coming from this vehicle were reported by other patrons here at this park. When the park looked up your registration to the vehicle, they found that the Bureau owned the plate and contacted them. When SAIC Murphy came out to investigate, he apparetnly didn’t have the stomach to break into your vehicle and see what was happening, not that I blame him all that much. He ordered the park to be evacuated and secured the perimeter. He then contacted me through an intermediary and asked me to look into the matter.”

“I don’t remember screaming or causing any kind of commotion!”

“Ah, but you did sir. Your thrashings and your tortured screams and incoherent rantings easily outperformed any Hollywood production of an exorcism that I have seen anyway. I am quite glad to be taking these things out of my ears just now.” He reached up and pulled a set of cotton balls from his ears. “Yes. Much better.”

Things were coming back to me as we were talking. I was having flashbacks of being in front of the mirror and holding something dark and...wriggly?

(To be continued)

Death...and Rebirth

I stood there for a bit contemplating my current predicament before commenting again. “I need to find a way to co-opt this thing, to integrate it into myself, stop the outright fighting with it.”

“Wisdom sprouts forth from the barren soil at long last.”

I shook my head, looking up at the Tree, “You can’t even compliment me without a snipe, can you?”

I was greeted by silence, well actually by the random swaying and sighing of the leaves, with no discernible words coming forth to answer my last query. But I did sense a deep rumbling chuckle that came from deep inside the trunk.

I closed my eyes and took the quick route back to my body.

I opened my eyes to see myself standing in front of that mirror. I was naked, of course, and my skin still shone with beads of sweat. The black worm-like things continued to crawl along visibly within my skin. I had to resist the urge to scratch, since I knew it was solely in my head.

Instead, I spread my feet just slightly wider apart and bent at the knees just a little. I dropped my arms loosely to my side and drew a deep breath (again more for psychological reasons than any need to actually breathe) and rolled my shoulders. I was determined to ground and center and focus.

Whatever the thing inside me was, however, was having none of this attempt to calm my senses and center. I continued to feel flashes of pain and pleasure as well as flashes of burning heat in some spots and cold spots in others. I even felt the raising of imaginary hairs on the back of my neck.

But I continued to bring myself into focus, ignoring all of those wonderful feelings that had been lost to me for so long. I knew they were just an attempt by this thing to lure me into a false dependence on it. Instead, I focused on just one of the hundreds of little black threads burrowing through my skin trying to build a false web of neurons.

It took longer than I would have liked, but I finally grabbed one of those little buggers with my Will and forced it up into the palm of my left hand. It squirmed uncontrollably, but finally emerged through the skin and rolled into a little ball just like all those little pill bugs I had tortured in my (often) misguided youth.

As I focused on this single little speck, I could feel the hundreds of others literally explode into activity, trying every trick in their vast arsenal to distract me.

But I was having none of it. I remained focused on the tiny little critter in the palm of my hand. I could feel its desperation, its fear as it sensed its weakness.

Keeping enough attention on that one worm to keep it in place, I reached out with a smaller, but still considerable part of my Will and located another desperate worm, forced it up into my other palm, where it had a similar reaction once it emerged from my skin, rolling into a little ball.

Feeling my oats now, I reached deep down inside it myself with a sweeping sense of power, gathering up hundreds of the little buggers in a wave of euphoria, forcing the critters up from legs and down from my scalp and into my arms, until my palms became a seething mass of roiled, squirming worms that quickly began coalescing into larger and large worms by the sheer force of my Will.

Soon the two squirming masses of inky blackness that were my upturned palms were brought together to form one giant mass of darkness. I stared into the roiling dark ball of energy and could just make out images forming, including the face of that bitch, Ma Grendel, stare back at me briefly before disappearing again inside the mass.

Calmly, using every ounce of Will I had left, I sucked the entire ball of dark energy back inside myself and openned my entire Being to it, absorbing the mass of dark, chaotic energy like a thristy man drinking down a glass of cold water.

At that moment...

We both died again.

During that moment...

We were both reborn, not separately, but together.

In that moment...

Two became One.

Chasing Shadows

This has been a difficult time to be away from the blog. Since my last official post, a terrible storm has wrought untold damage on the lives of countless Americans on the Gulf Coast, and an iconic city has been drowned. The misery faced by the innumerable survivors of that tragedy dwarfs by comparison any other natural disaster experienced directly by this country in centuries.

I will continue with my meager narrative shortly, since I also realize how important it is to have pleasant distractions at times like these, but I do want to remark, briefly, on the city of New Orleans and its brave but distraught people.

New Orleans will rise again (although still not likely to be above sea level) as it is one of those kinds of places that no force of man or Nature can ever truly destroy. It is a city so full of life (and (un)dead) that it will not be kept down for long. It may take months to pump the city dry, and still more months to demolish the old, destroyed buildings, but new ones will rise as surely as the vampires arise after sunset.

Even as I write this entry now, I am doing so from deep within the devastation zone on yet another mission for the Bureau, but this story will be told soon enough, first I must conclude the story you have been following.

OK...so now back to our narrative....

I emerged from the cavern beneath the Tree expecting to find Diego and Herlinda waiting for me, only to be greeted by the near silence of leaves swaying in the breeze. No laughter, no crying, no clambering about in the branches to be heard at all.

I stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what was causing me to feel so ill at ease. Suddenly, it felt slightly colder, the sky seemed a little darker than I ever remembered it being here.

Out of the corner of my left eye, I thought I saw something dark and furtive move. I spun around to the left thinking perhaps Diego was playing a game of hide and seek with me, but saw nothing but a large clump of roots where whatever had moved had ducked behind.

I started moving towards where I had seen the movement go to, but something inside told me to approach the large gnarly knob of roots with caution. Almost unconsciously, I flicked my wrist, expecting my baton to fall into place. It was jarring when nothing happened. I felt naked, suddenly defenseless against an unknown danger.

I slowed as I approached my destination, fighting against a growing sense of unease.

I came around the right side of the obstacle barehanded, but ready for a fight, and came face to face with Drake.

Talk about stunned, I backed up a quick step and assumed a fighting stance, half expecting him to leap out and start a brawl. I did manage to stammer out a few words, “D-d-drake, what the Hell? I thought you couldn’t come here!”

The bastard’s face broke out into that damnable grin I had seen so many times before, “And just why would you think that, my boy?” He stood up from behind his hiding spot. He seemed just a bit shorter than I recalled...and something about him just didn’t sit right. It was almost like he wasn’t as...substantial as he should be.

“Well, I was under the impression you didn’t have enough of a damn soul left to actually walk the Spirit World, for one thing.”

He looked almost hurt at those words, but shook it off quickly, “Oh really, so you think so little of me that I would be incapable of following you to your little safe haven, do you? I am disappointed in you Rusty.”

Now that the shock had worn off though, I started seeing more and more discrepancies between my recollection of Drake and this...image...of him. I began to grow suspicious of this thing, whatever it was. I was growing convinced it wasn’t actually who it was trying to portray at the moment. “Well, since you are here now, perhaps you can deliver your fourth message to me in person, instead of on that device you left me.”

Now it was the one who was taken aback for the briefest of moments, like it was trying to sift through incomplete memories. “Why yes, I think I can do that for you. What is it you would like to know?”

That did it, I knew this wasn’t Drake, but someone or something trying to impersonate his ass. Let me tell you, one Drake is more than enough. I pretended to be thinking of a question to ask as I shifted my weight forward ever so slightly, then as I was about to speak, I leapt forward with both hands extended, going for the bastards throat.

I landed on him/it in a tangle of grasping hands and half thrown punches. We fell into a heap at the base of the knot of roots. I managed to get my hands around the throat of the creature just as Drake’s face melted away to reveal a slightly feminine version of Grendel’s face, and then about a dozen more images in quick succession.

It fought back against me as well, but its blows seemed almost soft, like it was formed not of skin and bone, but of something far softer and much more malleable. I kept pressing my hands together, tyring to choke the life out of it, but the substance just flowed slowly at first, but then much faster, through my fingers.

Before long my hands met in the middle and the form completely dissolved into a puddle of shadow that formed at my feet. I tried stamping on it as I got up, but to no avail. Wherever I stomped, the dark gooey form just flowed around my foot and slipped away. Soon the puddle slid far enough away from me to actually stand back up, this time in a smaller, less substantial form reminiscent of Grendel before it loped away from the Tree and into the dark woods beyond.

I stood there for a moment trying to collect my thoughts again. So this was my new foe.

“Tree, how can this thing even come here? I didn’t invite it here?”

The swaying leaves formed words again, “You and it are two parts of one whole. Where One can go, Both can go.”

“You mean that thing can come here just as easily as I can?”

“Yes.”

Rusty's Return (and other author notes)

The migration is nearly complete...so Rusty is scheduled to return to his regular posting schedule of 3-4 posts per week (and more when possible) starting tomorrow, September 7, 2005.

Because of a recent spate of spam commenters, I have turned on a feature that requires the commenter to verify a word inside of a box, that should shut out the spam comments since they are done by programs as opposed to people. So, please feel free to comment again, just be aware that there is a teeny, tiny extra step required now to verify that you are a real person and not a machine posting spam.

For any readers who would like to comment on the reader poll, I am reactivating that post for comments now that the verification process is turned on.

Thanks for your patience. I can't wait to see what Rusty has been up to in my absence.

Doug

Mass Migration and Reader Poll

(Author's Note)

The Great Migration takes place over the next week. I may have an opportunity to post perhaps once more before the back breaking work begins, hopefully tomorrow evening. After that, I don't expect a chance to post more on the story until the 6th, at the earliest.

In the mean time, I have a Reader's Poll that I would like you folks to respond to regarding the first Rusty Bones novel...

Please vote via comments or directly by e-mail to me.

Here goes:

Question 1: How interested would you be in seeing Rusty in print? Would you buy a novel(or novels) if it had substantially more info and insight into Rusty and his world?

Question 2: If you would like to see Rusty Bones novels, would you prefer that they be told in the first person as the blog is, or would you prefer to see a third person perspective showing the events and thoughts of multiple characters?

Question 3: How interested would you be in an experimental form of storytelling that used first person accounts from multiple characters?

Any input you provide will be read and appreciated.

(Added 08/31/2005)--Due to the number of commenrcial comments being posted at this time, I am closing off comments to this post. Anyone actually reading the blog e-mail me, or you can post comments about this post at any other post below, which are still open for comments.

(Added 09/06/2005)--Now that word verification is turned on, this post is now open for comments again.

Doug

The Tree Whisperer

(Continued from previous post...)

“So I have to stop this...Dark Seed...that is inside me from doing things that help me, like heal my body?”

“No. You don’t have to.”

“Wait a minute...first you say I have to control it, and now you’re saying I can let it heal me up? Can you make some sense here?”

“You do not have to stop the Seed. You need to learn to control and harness it’s abilities with your own Will. If you fail to learn how to control it, there will come a time in the not so distant future when it shall have gained enough strength and independence to take control of you, just as the mother of this Seed did to you.”

“OK, I get that, but HOW do I learn to control it?”

“That’s an answer I cannot provide for you. Only you have the answer to that question.”

“Great, the one damn question I needed an answer to, you won’t answer.”

“Perhaps that is because you don’t know what questions to ask yet.”

“Fuck off, Tree.”

“If you cannot learn to express your frustration with more creativity and less vulgarity, you will find it very difficult to learn the control in other areas of your existence that will become necessary for you to fulfill your true potential.”

“What is this, a lesson on etiquette?”

“A mere observation.”

“Well you can keep that damn lesson to yourself, ass....” I stopped in mid-insult. Maybe he had a point there, but I wasn’t about to admit it to a damn...uh, I meant to say,...darn tree.

I sat there for a bit in the dark, dank chamber, listening to the sounds of the steady dripping into the pool, trying to gather my own thoughts. The Tree was apparently content to let me stew in those thoughts.

Finally, I thought of a different tack to try. “Tree, can you tell me something?”

“Yes. Most likely.”

Ignoring his smartass reply, I plowed forward. “Before I came here tonight, I noticed that my body was beginning to feel hot and sweaty. It was like I was alive again. Can you tell me what exactly is happening to my body?”

“The Dark Seed is trying to lay a trap for you, to create the illusion that it can bring you back to life again.”

“Aha! So those things I was feeling and experiencing are not really real?”

“No, they are real enough.”

“Ugh, you lost me again.”

“The things you are experiencing are real, they are just not evidence that the Dark Seed can restore that which cannot be restored. It is building thousands of tiny connections between your skin and your artifical neurological system, so you can, at the moment anyway, feel real pain or pleasure, heat or cold. It is also tapping into some of your now shared reservoir of emotions and experiences to find ways of restoring things it thinks that you feel are most important.”

“This thing has access to my memories?”

“Not all of them, yet. But it is going to try and find more and more keys to unlock whatever barriers you have left so that it can find more ways of taking control.”

“Will I be able to do the same to it? I mean will I be able to access its memories and abilities like it is starting to do with me?”

“If you don’t find ways to do precisely that, then the battle between you and the Seed will be one-sided, with only one possible victor....”

“It would win.”

“Indeed. There is a balance that you must find and enforce where you are able to access some of the abilities of the Seed, but not to the point where you become dependent on it. You must take and remain in control, prevent it from growing in strength until you find the strength within you to either consume it entirely, or expell it from your Spirit.”

“Man, how am I going to learn to do that?”

“The strength to do so lies within you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that strength lies deep within all humans. It is the strength that allows a woman to give birth to her child. It is the strength of the hunter who chases his prey over the vast savannahs of your ancient habitat for days on end. It is the strength of the warrior who takes a mortal wound and yet continues to fight. It is the strength of the mother who lets her child touch the fire even though she knows it harm the child. It is the strength of an athlete who continues to perform well after exhaustion has set in. It is the strength of the martial artist to master their own body and perform feats that are beyond the reasoning of most observers. It is the strength of a mage who taps into and controls the wild elements that ever strive to be free and unfettered. It is the strength to love someone so much that you can spend the rest of your life with them. It is the stength to be able to care for a dear loved one who you know is dying, but there is nothing to prevent it. Finally, it is the strength that it takes to face the fear of the unknown and overcome it. That is the strength you must find deep within yourself. It is something that can be done, even by you. That is why the easy path has ended for you. There are no more easy answers, no more easy solutions to your problems. If you fail to rise to this challenge, you will fall before this determined and resourceful foe and your body and strength will become the weapons of a master so foul and so dark that it will imperil all you still hold dear.”

Whoah, there wasn’t much I could say to that, so for once, I didn’t say another thing. I sat there in silence and contemplation. After a bit I got up and made my way back up and out to where Diego and Herlinda would be waiting...or so I thought anyway...