Chapter 4
Our hero detects that all may not be well
Spring came to Black Bear Lake County, Wyoming early and late, earlier than many other places in the state and later than most civilized places. But it did come. Elgin rode his ‘cycle most places, it was cheap to run and fun, even in the rain, though folks thought he was nuts. One sunny Saturday, he rode sedately over the rise and down into Beauty proper, with Humph riding pillion behind him.
Humph liked riding the motorcycle, sitting backwards, looking where they had come from with his tail wrapped pretty much all the way around himself he seemed both utterly stable and content. Several people got quite severe shocks when what they thought was a ‘seat pack’ shaped like a cat, turned out to be a real, live and very large cat, who didn’t take kindly to being stroked by strangers.
In the period of just seven months since thenElgin got himself killed, nowElgin had turned his life around. He was still poor and living in a 1968 Air-Stream twenty four foot Tradewind, had a 1994 Chevy pickup and lived on a parcel of land he didn’t own. But now he had a couple of weeks’ worth of savings, and a cell phone, the trailer was polished inside and out and he was working on the insulation heating and cooling. The pickup was just as rusty as ever but its engine was tuned, its frame and suspension solid and he had it both tagged and insured, if at the minimum.
He also had the Norton, which he enjoyed and lavished more time on than he should. TwoShoes Garage was a flourishing success and Griffith was talking about modernizing and expanding the building. And somehow Elgin had ended up working part time (Sunday morning, extended hours) at the library, which gave him access to it after hours all through the week, which was more than fine with him.
Of course there was the downside of not being sure if he was human or alive, any longer. There was also the chatting with ghosts, having to face down two legged human eating snake girls, turning into a good approximation of a dragon every once in a while and eating large game animals whole things that kept him awake lat into the night sometimes.
Cutter had said that magic was loose in the world again, the Basik girl had said pretty much the same thing. Elgin had been reading the papers to see if he could detect the changes they had promised. So far nothing, at least not in the regular press, the Inquirer, Star and that ilk did appear to be picking up some signs, as were some fringe bloggers and the like. The most telling sign might be that what one might have called the more conservative mainstream witch and demon worshipping organizations had suddenly gotten very quiet.
Beauty had a very cute arts and crafts district in the lake front, all of which Elgin usually avoided like the tourist plague spot it was, but today he had a target. Miss Katherine’s New Age Wiccan Arts store. The web page was mostly about new age and art stuff, but the stores page had links to the American Association of Professional Wiccans and that had piqued his interest.
Pulling up to one of the few stop lights in town he found himself next to Sherriff SweetBear, who grinned at him from the rolled down window of her cruiser. He tipped his hat “Afternoon Sheriff.”
“Good to see you Elgin, hear you’ve made Griffith TwoShoes a very happy man.”
Elgin grinned, “He’s happy when he’s making money, and we seem to have hit the mother lode.”
“Yes you did, but be careful, the Wiggins don’t like competition much and they have friends in low places.” She waved a little salute as the light turned green and she drove off. After a moment deep in thought Elgin let in the clutch and made the turn he’d been waiting for.
Parking was easy this time of year, a lot of the stores were seasonal, some changed hands each season in fact, and it was still too early for many tourists. Elgin parked in the lot behind the row of shops that contained Katherine’s and walked around the front, leaving Humph to scare off any would be bike-nappers.
The store was bright and airy, no Halloween witches or the like here, lots of crystal, ethereal wind chimes, pictures and plastic statues of wolves and beautiful Amerind maidens staring soulfully into the distance, etc, etc. The air was heavy with incense, enough to clog up Elgin’s nose almost instantly, and the constant faint tinkle of metal, ceramic and crystal chimes killed any aural sense as well.
But there was a feeling of power emanating from the store, more precisely from under his feet. The power didn’t feel dangerous, just powerful, and it stirred something that seemed to spend most of its time folded away in a distant recess of his mind.
“Well, what a surprise, Mr. Chalmers, you’re not someone I’d have expected to find in my little store.” The woman’s voice was familiar, and unfamiliar, Elgin turned, to find himself facing Mrs. Kitty Pauls, or rather Mrs. Katherine Pauls, the ultra sophisticated version he’d seen at the cat show. Now he knew what to look for he could see through the makeup, hairstyle and clothes, to the girl probably not long out of college, but she was still a testament to style.
“Kitty, you’re not the woman I would have placed as Miss Katherine.”
She blinked, the artificial smile stuttered then became more real, warming her eyes, “We’re all full of surprises, Elgin.”
He nodded, “I was walking, saw the store, just stepped in to look around. You have a lot of very nice work.”
She studied him thoughtfully, “I have some nice works but a lot of tourist dreck as well. Are you looking for something in particular, a gift for a relative, or a girlfriend?” This last was a little arch.
Elgin felt himself color, “No, I was just wandering.” Out of the corner of his eyes he saw one of the crystals hanging nearby apparently randomly begin to spin. Except it wasn’t random, he could feel the wisp of otherness tying it to him and the rest of the universe, it was a lie detector. And Kitty knew it was a lie detector, she glanced at it and back at him, her smile a little more artificial. Elgin ignored it and moved on.
“Fess pointed out your trailer the other day, you keep it very neat, were you looking for something to brighten it up now spring is finally here?” She was in saleswoman mode now, he’d lied to her, decreased his value as a human in doing so. Now he knew what to ‘look’ for he could see that there were little lie detector crystals hanging from the ceiling at several points. There were other things here as well, darker things than lie detecting ‘spells,’ things that slumbered now but would be more active when the store was empty and dark.
A few minutes later he exited the store with a set of wind chimes to hang somewhere in the trailer. He’d proved his hypothesis correct, some of the more dedicated magic believers had discovered the return and were moving quickly to make use of it.
Cutter pontificated as he walked back towards the ‘cycle, *One of the problems always was the attraction of power, especially for those with ability and patience. Today machines are generally going to provide more consistent and better results, and anyone can use a machine. The crystals give her an edge, the frighteners allow her to avoid paying for a burglar alarm but she would have to work very hard to make someone buy something expensive they did not want, harder than the ‘take’ would be worth.*
Coming around the end of the row of shops Elgin could see his bike, now blocked in by three other bikes, big choppers, and their six riders, three burly men and their matching ‘old ladies.’ Humph was up and striding back and forth possessively along the top of the bike. His tail seeming to float through the air after him.
The Bikers were laughing at Humph, one of the men made a shooing motion, and got yowled at, a baritone brother to a roar. The big man on the other side made the mistake of thinking that Humph not looking at him meant the cat didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He reached out to shove the cat off the bike, and got bitten, hard, for his trouble.
Cursing the big man leapt back, “Fucking monster bit me!” he yelled sucking at his wound.
“Hey, guys, the cat’s just protecting my property.” Elgin called out, not sure if he was going to be able to disarm this situation now.
Six pairs of eyes swiveled to look him up and down. Elgin was glad he wasn’t five eight and a hundred and fifty pounds, the stares alone would have knocked him over.
“Your fucking mountain lion bit me, I’ll have it put down.” Snarled the man with the bloody knuckles.
“He’s had all his shots, and he’s just a big Siamese, I’m sorry he bit you. Hey I work at the gas station on the south west edge of town, bring your bike down there and I’ll fill it up for free. Some juice for your juice as it were.” Elgin smiled, friendly and relaxed, but projecting concern as well.
The big man sucked his knuckle again, staring at Elgin over his dirty fist and dirtier mustache, “Okay, but it’s all three bikes, mine, Chunkers, and Gilly here.”
Elgin nodded at the other two men, Gilly a skeletal ferret faced man with no front teeth, and Chunkers, a broad rather short man hiding behind a frizzy beard and a mustache with the tips tied in knots. “Fair enough.”
One of the women, pointed at Elgins bike, “That a real Norton, not a knock off?”
“1975 Commando 850, got it at auction for a song and been working on it all winter.” Elgin replied easily.
“Told yeh,” she sniffed at Chunkers, who seemed to be ‘her man.’
“Kay,” he said equitably from behind the hair.
The bikers circled the bike, Elgin stepped in and lifted Humph off the seat and set him down on the ground a few yards away, where he sat down with a loud sniff and began to talk at him and the others in typical Siamese fashion, a low grumbling yowl. Two of the women went to try and make friends with him, and, after a show of indifference, he let them rub his ears, then stroke his fur.
Finally a cop car drifted by, a deputy looking them over, the bikers got quiet and hostile, and then got back on their bikes, giving Elgin friendly enough waves as they roared off.
Elgin sighed, “Humph, intimidate, yowl, dodge, don’t bite, that could have gotten ugly.”
The cat yowlped at him, ears at half mast, looking almost abashed. Elgin rubbed his friend’s head, “Okay, no bones broken, let’s go home.”
-o-
Elgin slowly braked his old Chevy and the Air-Stream to a stop outside the CircleSBarS ranch’s trailer park. It was time to start moving the cattle out of the paddocks, though it would be a month before they started drifting them up into the summer range. The Smith-Sampson’s of S bar S fame, had hired Elgin for the summer and let him set up on the ranch trailer park even though he was only going to work three days a week most of the time.
Mitch, the manager, had grumbled about that, to himself and Elgin, not the Smith-Sampsons. He’d wanted to hire another full timer, but times were hard all over and the couple liked Elgin and figured that his reduced pay and ready help would help keep costs down.
There were two other trailers already set up in the small neatly fenced grass covered glade with its shade trees in light green spring foliage. Elgin backed his trailer onto one of the pads between a couple of older trees, well shaded and out of the way and shut the Chevy off. An hour later the Air-Stream was off its tires, cabled down and hooked up to water, sewage and electricity, he didn’t bother with the cable or phone line.
Juan Garcia, his wife Juanita and their three black haired hooligans (male and female) were outside the largest of the trailers, the gray haired vaquero was cooking dinner on a barbecue and waved Elgin over.
“Hey man, grab a beer.” Juan pointed at a cooler set up in the shadow of the sagging, UV fadeded aluminum shell he called home during the northern hemisphere’s summer. Juan was from Argentina, in the Northern winter he was down there herding sheep, llamas, or cattle, in the northern summer he was up at the CircleSBarS herding cows. He claimed to hate snow and the cold, and Elgin had never seen any reason to disbelieve the older man.
Elgin grabbed a Corona and flipped the lid, toasting his host, “Welcome back to the US of A Juan,” He turned and smiled at the graying Juanita, “You as well ma’am, the offspring behaving themselves?” he waved at the three children, each a year apart, each more trouble prone than the last, especially the daughter, eldest, and a doe eyed devil child.
Juanita replied in a fast paced Spanish, which Elgin mostly understood but never attempted to speak. The gist of it was that Juan III had done well in school, learning his alphabet, but had forgotten all his English over the winter, Josef had apparently become a mathematical prodigy and little Duena had spent most of the summer either somewhere other than school or in truant detention, devil child that she was. The target of this pithy opinion stood and smiled up at Elgin with her hands behind her, she never looked like trouble, devils rarely did.
He ended up eating a hamburger and salad with the Garcia’s getting them up to speed on the various happenings. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, assaults, drunk and disorderlies. The Garcias were outgoing and warm, everyone’s friends, they seemed to know just about everyone in Beauty, certainly more than Elgin.
As the sun went down Elgin sipped his second Corona. Juan pointed at it, “Going easy I see my friend.”
Elgin held the bottle up, “Almost got myself killed last winter, decided I needed to change course. I won’t be herding full time this year, I have a job, a couple of them actually, in town.”
“Noticed your little metal bubble was all shined up and the truck sounds real smooth. A man who’s not burning his hours with the bottle can do a lot of things.” Which was something that Juan had said a couple of times a year to Elgin ever since they had met. This time it was said in approval, not as a warning.
“So I’ve noticed.” Elgin agreed, saluting his friend with the bottle.
-o-
Elgin didn’t have a lot of free Saturday evenings, spending most of them with the herd but this week Juan and one of the ‘cowgirls’ was watching the herd and he was sitting on a rock set up for the purpose to look down and across Beauty. His ‘other nature’ had been quiet for several weeks now, after the Iffrit had hunted down and eaten a couple of wild steers in the badlands. But he had a bad feeling about today that had nothing to do with Elgin Chalmers instincts.
The sky in the west was still ablaze, clouds catching the sun’s rays in a red orange glory. Above him the brighter stars twinkled. The street lights, store signs and lights, house lights and car headlamps washed out what might have been visible but it was still a beautiful scene. With the newly launched sailing and power yachts rocking at the marina, the scene spread out onto the lake.
There was a feeling of expectancy in the air, one of the tribal festivals was tonight and Cutter had warned him to be prepared. With real magic loose, customs thousands of years old, that had once had real meaning but lost them when the magic flickered out, might now trigger unintended occurrences.
He turned to look around, behind the thin shroud of here and now he saw the shadow realms, the happy hunting ground with its myriad campfires and beyond that into other places. In some there was jungle here, in others a sun shone down from a pitiless black sky. There were as many alternate universes as campfires and they overlapped in the shadow realms. It was the shadow realms that had been folded flat, hidden, during the unmagical time, now they were there again, if you could see them.
A big bonfire had been lit in the main square, and figures circled it, some in traditional garb, others in street clothes, some in costumes of one sort or another. Elgin could hear music, and particularly the heavy thump of the tom toms. In realms the dancers could not see Elgin could see loops of smoke and light, bursting flowers of energy and more, but it was chaos and self healing, come and gone in the same instant.
From behind him he felt something darker and more coherent forming, he stood to look. The tribal compound was in the direction of his foreboding, and he was nearly certain that something bad was already on its way. The shadow realm engulfed him as the Iffrit unfolded, and in a few moments the great wings were raising a storm as they lifted his mass into the sky.
The tribal compound was empty wh
en Elgin landed with a rush of wind that made the bonfire bloom and roar with renewed fury. There were cars parked on the grass on the other side of the big lodge but he had seen no sign of movement, no bodies, nothing indicating human presence as he glided in on owl silent wings.
An instant after touchdown Elgin found himself standing on two legs on the broad flat meeting circle that surrounded the bonfire. The only sound was that of the fire and the wind, no animal sounds, no people sounds, and no sign of the people. There had to be, or should be, at least a hundred, probably half again that many. But there was no one.
Off to one side he saw a tripod with a black box, he trotted over, a video camera, one of several set up to catch the proceedings. The built in screen showed that the device was working, he backed the film up a minute. There in the edge of the view he saw something massive touch down, a great clawed foreleg for an instant then pixilated smoke and an instant later Elgin Chalmers walked into view, looking around with a worried expression.
He ran the memory back till he saw people, then forward, he saw smiling laughing people, relatives and friends, people who had fought for many years to get what should have been theirs, and who had succeeded in getting at least enough for the tribe to finally start moving forward. Then he saw something, a small group, “Someone wasn’t happy?”
The man with his back to the camera turned, Elgin saw the grim face and swore, “Blast it, that’s Griffith.”
Cutter whispered in his mind, *He is protesting the use of a certain ritual, the dance and music, saying that they were evil things, and should not be just treated as white skin entertainment.”
As with most disasters everything appeared normal, right up to the moment that it wasn’t, there was a surge of people, some laughing, some frightened, first towards the fire, then away, then they were running, and fading, gone.
“They were pulled into the shadow realms?” Elgin whispered, staring into the little screen. For an instant he saw something, something large that looked like a pile of twigs shaped roughly like a man, striding with a broad sweeping gait across the gravel circle and out of the camera’s view. “And something came the other way.”
Cutter ‘sounded’ tense, *The Sasqual will not linger here long, or it will die, the humans in the shadow realm will fall back when they fall asleep, but they could stumble into realms further away and there they will almost surely die.*
Elgin almost put the camera down, then he looked at the controls, and carefully erased the memory. Setting it down he trotted to the next and did the same. Finished with that bit of sabotage he glanced around, not quite sure how to start till he knew more. Then, turning, twisting physically and in another way, he was standing in the orange twighlight and not far away from him he saw several dozen people huddled up against the dark shape of the lodge, but here the lodge’s roof was gone and the door was sagging off its hinges.
“Elgin!” A familiar voice barked.
He turned with a relieved smile, Griffith TwoShoes was trotting towards him.
“Hey Griff, I was worried for a moment.”
The businessman stopped, frowning, “Elgin, where did you come from?”
“Here, or rather the original here, where you all came from, this is just a shadow of our world, a shadow of might be’s.”
The Indian’s dark eyes opened wide, “You know what’s going on?”
“Somewhat, do you have a nose count Griff? This is not a healthy place to hang for long, we need to get people back into the real world as fast as we can.”
Another familiar figure was approaching, Caitlin SweetBear, she had her hand on her pistol, “Elgin, what are you doing here?”
“Helping Sheriff, if you’ll let me. I need to know how many folks may have left the area, the shadow realm isn’t stable, you can walk from here into a far more dangerous one without realizing.”
“This have something to do with the change you underwent last fall?” She stared at him, eyes hard and questioning.
“Yes, and no, they are related, but what happened here had nothing to do with me.” Elgin waved at Griffith, “TwoShoes tried to warn you, old music, old rituals are not things to be fooled around with anymore, the world is changing becoming less forgiving of certain types of mistakes.”
Someone, a woman came running out of the woods, screaming, sobbing, one of the men jumped up to catch her, and there was a fast paced exchange in the tribal dialect, Caitlin turned back grim faced, “She says she spoke to her grandfather, dead for twenty years, he told her we are all in the happy hunting ground, have all died.”
Elgin shook his head, “No, this is just a shadow world, it’s adjacent to the happy hunting ground but we’re not dead.” He grimaced, this was taking too long. He stepped across the ground separating him from Caitlin. The Sheriff jumped back with a yelp, he’d been far too far away to just step up to her.
He grasped her shoulder and turned, then let her go.
The bonfire burnt in the dark, a log snapped and shifted sending a shower of sparks into the sky, the breeze blew, a coyote howled and an owl hooted.
The Sheriff’s knees gave away and she sank down, to touch the gravel. She whispered some words in a language that seemed like it should be familiar. Her shoulders rose as she drew in a deep, deep breath then let it out. She half turned but did not look up, “Sorry Elgin, I guess you were telling the truth, get me back there and I’ll get ‘em organized, and start figuring out who’s lost.” She said it without looking back at him, he was fairly sure she was too frightened to look at him.
An hour later the Sheriff, Griffith and Chief BlackHawk were alone in the shadow realm. Alone except for between four and seven who were unaccounted for. The chief was ex army, he’d, perhaps not oddly, flown Blackhawk choppers for the Army before he’d commanded a regiment of them in Afghanistan. Few felt any reservation in calling him chief, colonel, or sir.
“How long do they have?”
“If someone’s unlucky they can get killed almost instantly, some of the other shadow realms are fatal to human life. But other than that, probably a couple of days, nothing here is edible, there is no water.”
“We need aerial reconnaissance or search parties,” The chief said flatly.
Elgin nodded his head, “Aerial reconnaissance we have, search parties just raise the odds of someone getting killed.”
“Don’t see an airport round about.” The chief looked at Elgin with hostile eyes, he had hidden his biases well as a US Army officer but he didn’t like whites. Didn’t trust this prototypical WASP for all that he was supposedly almost as much Amerind blood as the chief.
Elgin smiled, “You’re standing on it.” He said, and unfolded.
The three humans threw themselves away from the smoky distortion in the air that firmed into a winged nightmare, before they could scramble away, huge clawed fore limbs scooped them up. “Sorry about this but you need to go home for the night.” And he ‘placed’ them back in the real world.
Alone at last Elgin leapt into the air with a powerful downbeat of his wings and was spiraling up and out in seconds. He spotted two of the refugees within moments, one more in a few minutes and five in less than ten, but there were no more that he could see, and he could ‘taste’ the residue of at least one more, who was no longer in this shadow realm.
It took another two hours for Elgin to lead the strays back into the real world where their cell phones worked again and they could call for rescue.
A man again he stood in a thicket of trees a few hundred yards from where the tribal council circle existed in the anchor realm. Here the trail of a man and woman simply ended. They had been running in fear when they crossed the edge of the circle and into some other realm.
*We would need the queen of doors to find them, if they are still alive.* Elgin blinked, it wasn’t Cutter speaking in his head but the Iffrit this time.
“The queen of doors?”
*There is a human mistress of your world’s shadow
realms, to whom nothing is locked away and hidden if she knows to want to know it. She could find them but the queen is still in hiding and the likelihood of the pair being alive even now is vanishingly small.* Elgin could taste the sadness in the Iffrit’s mind, the Iffrit was as near immortal as any physical being could be but it had seen death, pointless, too early, death, far too often.
*I thought you were the Oldest, the most powerful being on earth?* Elgin protested, not wanting to believe that two people were simply gone.
*I am both of those things, but that does not mean I am omnipotent. I am a being, just a different, older, more powerful one designed to guide peoples, such as yours, to your potential point.*
*Designed?*
*Designed. Far away, long ago, in a universe that died to birth this one.*
Elgin didn’t know what to say after that.