Clandestine Tales
presents
The Extraordinary Adventures
of
Captain Tripp Vaguely
in
The Court
of the
Spider Queen
by
Ziggy D. Tausend
Book One of the Fascination Chronicles
The Court of the Spider Queen
All artwork and writing:
copyright Ziggy Tausend ©2012
Links to more stories plus extras at:
www.clandestinetales.com
CHAPTER ONE: DAMN NEWTON
The Captain pushed boldly through the jungle's underbrush as if any beast there hidden would prefer flight over fight in the face of his awe-inspiring figure. And had there been one, he couldn't have blamed any such jungle cat or great ape for doing just that. Retreat before an adversary the likes of the Captain couldn't be considered cowardice but rather a sign of intelligence or even keen strategic insight. He was Captain Tripp Vaguely after all; Owner, President and CEO of Vague Enterprises, veteran of the Russo-Turkish War (and several more secret ones), well-traveled scholar, and one handsome well-to-do man-about-town. In this particular instance, one might say man-about-jungle but his vaulted status as a man among men could not be diminished by it. Even still, with a well-worn western hat above and a well-waxed mustache below a pair of Transdimensional Aural-Sensitive Goggles ™ , any fool could tell they were looking at a bona fide adventurer and not some pith-helmeted, khaki-clad tourist to these darkest regions of Africa. But if there just so happened to be such an extraordinary fool beyond the dense foliage and they could not recognize the charismatic grandeur of Captain Tripp Vaguely's legendary smile and strapping physique, then they had better notice quickly the dangerous cluster of spinning barrels surrounded by spouts, hoses, prongs and knobs that combined to form the one and only Pan-Calamitous Portable Arsenal™, otherwise known as, Marybelle.
“An ill-prepared man,” Tripp often said, “is prepared to die.”
His weapon was a respectable answer to that credo. With the squeeze of a trigger, the turn of a crank, the pull of a lever or the press of a button, Marybelle could bruise, burn, freeze, electrocute, poison, smoke out or just plain perforate almost any mortal foe in her sights. Given her para-scientific origins complete with Vague Enterprises' own Quinta Essentia Power Source™, one could suggest she might fell a few immortal ones as well. So it stood to reason that the gun went into to the bush just ahead of the Captain and was already humming with expectant activity when the American-made duo stepped into the African unknown.
The native tribesman perhaps a dozen paces behind offered a warning but even if Tripp understood the fellow's language it would not have stopped him. The delegation of a guide was more of a courtesy to the tribe upon whose land the Captain now trekked. Just as much as the steel knives and tin crockery that he gave them were but an obligatory gesture of goodwill to that very same tribe who, had the Captain believed the pulp rags back home, could very well be cannibals. But man-eaters or not, he had long since learned that indigenous peoples worldwide were hard pressed for the “better mouse trap.” One just had to figure out what kind of mouse they were after. In this particular region it seemed weapons and dinnerware that didn't become waterlogged during the rainy season was all the rage. Nope, nothing too fancy for these folk; not like Paris or Moscow where only his most advanced and most favorite products would be required. The jungles of Africa could do with cutlery and that suited the Captain just fine. Any chance to keep his myriad machinations to himself was all the better. There was no need in equipping bone-clad tribesman with Heliacal Ray Projectors™ if one didn't have to. Over the years he was convinced that such fortune and logic averted any number of possibly brutal if not outright genocidal events from ever occurring.
It did not however prevent gravity from playing its ever-present role as detractor of human flight. As such, the Captain was carried swiftly downwards into what had only moments before been a hidden swallow hole. Ghost-Tongue, his nearest, dearest and circumstantially longest surviving companion, who had only a moment before been marching just behind Tripp, looked down into the now revealed swallow hole. The Captain's standard abusive comment to such an event as his sudden plummet down a dark shaft came reverberating up from the inky blackness. “Damn Newton to Hell!” he cried. This made Ghost-Tongue smile, as it usually did, just before he leaped down after the Captain, as he usually did.
The air was instantly cooler and rushed by for what seemed minutes, but in truth was more like a single minute, as Ghost-Tongue slid the length of the amazingly smooth earthen chute. The occasional sprig of root or bug frightened into scurry did bump, jab or otherwise become crushed against his form but, compared to his vast experience at such subterranean traverses, this was practically one of the Captain’s glass tubes back in the laboratory. Then, just as all of these thoughts and memories combined into a cohesive recognition of the facts, his feet met solid ground and forced from his belly a grunt. Always swift in reflex and resilient to shock, Ghost-Tongue stood from his involuntary crouch and found the Captain lighting a cigar.
“What luck,” said the Captain, the stogie clenched between his teeth, his face lit by the yellow flames of a fagot of bunched matches. The flames were reflected in his goggles and gave him an almost sinister appearance.
Ghost-Tongue knew the man too well to be taken in by such appearances. Sinister was not his niche. Bravado? Why sure. Jocularity? Certainly. Machismo? Of course. Bon vivant? You speak French do you? Well in that case, oui! The point being: the Captain could be pigeon holed, however briefly, into all such categorizations. But sinister, wicked or evil? Well anyone who suggested such deserved a good smack across their teeth. The Captain might be an occasionally obnoxious and permanently flamboyant thrill-seeker, but he knew what side he was on and treachery was a word he couldn't even spell. So the lanky Anasazi disregarded the devilish imagery and politely inquired, “Was that a lucky hole?”
The Captain pointed to a wall just beyond his shoulder, still alight in the glow of his matches. There engraved upon smoothly hewn stone, just below a curious vein of crystal running along the ceiling, were strangely angled columns of enigmatic hieroglyphs. Running top to bottom, bottom to top, side to side, and even at angles to converge at a central glyph, these pictograms depicted men, women, animals and at times figures of a combination of all three in the midst of a myriad of poses and tasks. Some of the peoples there etched were semi-Egyptian in appearance though the vast majority were obviously Sub-Saharan and thusly more tribal in feature and garb. This made perfect sense considering their location in the heart of the continent, though the use of hieroglyphs was certainly considered a very Egyptian practice. As much as they would have liked to, the pharaohs had never quite managed to conquer this dense land and peoples. People who, by the look of them, interacted, traded, and warred with one another amid the likes of gorilla-faced men and cat-women, or so the strands of glyphs seemed to say.
These “strands” of hieroglyphs were outlined by deep rivulets so that the eye might follow their course but were at times intersected by other columns where they would share a common glyph. But chief among them, several times larger and at the very center where they all converged was an intricately carved spider painted blue, black, and… could that be gold? Upon its abdomen, in white and black, was an amazingly hypnotic pattern of an obviously African origin and ingeniously designed so that the eye could endlessly roam its octagonal edges into and back up from a dazzlingly ambiguous spiral. It was a web within the larger web of symbols and proved to be the centerpiece of the artistic display. And as the eye traced these many columns and pa
tterns, an illiterate of this language could certainly fall into the dismay of a dizzying headache. So the Captain looked away, his thoughts turning to passages and the unknown but Ghost-Tongue was not what you might call an illiterate of any language. In fact, his name might very well say it all. So Ghost-Tongue closed his eyes.
The Indian’s voice began in his chest, deep and wooden, reverberating outwards. Carried along by his very bones to the hairy limits of his skin, he maintained the sound through continuous circular breathing until his entire being took part in this basest of bass droning. It became a current of sound, washing across the dim, dank chamber. It was a bath of somber voice; a beacon to the unseen. Thus, with such tonality achieved, Ghost-Tongue then began to inflect it with peeps and swirls of a twangy falsetto ranging from throaty to nasal. Each chirp and hum a vowel to the deep consonant of undertone, a song unbound by rhythm began to form. And so Ghost-Tongue, earthbound Anasazi, spoke to the spirits of this place.
The intent of the artisans leaped into his mind and became understanding. The very spirit of the language itself, a living thing as it were, spoke to Ghost-Tongue of its wont and purpose. Of course it had to be decrypted from among the spiritual cacophony of lichen, insects and all that lived in the immediacy, but by virtue of its purpose the manufactured word was often shouted and easily picked from amid the white noise of unintended existence. That quiet thrum of spirit uttered by the will of those cosmic forces beyond comprehension was a universal sound so embedded into the background of reality that, to those able to hear, it became as commonplace as the blue of the sky. It was taken for granted. Thus the phantasmal intent of the written word could be noticed and then discerned even amongst such a thriving chorus. Such was the Ghost-Tongue's world and that world was presently very loud. He looked to the Captain wryly and translated, “Praise to a spider god.”
“Hu-llo!” the Captain exclaimed, pointing to a pair of the hieroglyphic people standing below lotus sprigs at the foot of an ebony-skinned, eight-eyed, eight-limbed overlord. “To them he’s a spider god. Just another transdimensional entity to me.” He gave the hieroglyph further consideration and added, “Quite the looker though.” He smiled to Ghost-Tongue. “Get it? Eight-eyes? Likely legs? Looker?”
“Hilarious, Cap’n,” the darker man coolly answered. “So what's your plan? Supposing of course, you have one.”
Dropping the remnants of his matches to the ground and crushing them beneath his boot, the Captain spun a circular gear on Marybelle's side for a moment and soon a small light glowed to life. Aiming the gun towards the only passage from the chamber, he explained, “That away.” His light shown on a dense curtain of spider webbing. Nothing beyond could be seen.
“What about the tribesmen?” Ghost-Tongue inquired, looking back up at the empty black of the shaft through which they had fallen.
“I'm sure they've left us for dead. You saw how they looked at us when I drew that spider in the dirt. I think they came along just to watch us die.”
“They'll be disappointed.”
“Attaboy! There's the can-do attitude I'm looking for!”
“I mean they'll be disappointed they won't be able to watch.”
The Captain gave Ghost-Tongue the Bronx Cheer and replied, “There's nothing less certain than death at the hands of a spider god. There've been no studies.”
“Tell that to the tribesmen.”
“I would, but they're not here and if they were they wouldn't understand my English anyway.”
“Do you think they knew about this pitfall?”
“Doubtful. Seemed to me, they'd never been this deep into these particular woods. Lots of conversation between them. Most of it sounded like argument. They said boogata a lot. And loud.”
“They used it when looking at you,” Ghost-Tongue smiled.
“Likely means white devil or some such nonsense.”
“Or fool,” the Anasazi replied dryly. He did not know the actual translation of course. But Ghost-Tongue had understood their intent. And he did not need to hear their spirits to understand. Empathy was translator enough.
Of course the Captain, through empathy or (more likely) the aural sensitivity of his goggles, likely knew this as well but far be it for him to point out the natives' inability to recognize true greatness. Instead the haughty man shrugged his broad shoulders. “Could be,” he answered as he attempted to push through the dense webs shrouding the passage from the chamber. He was quickly entangled up to his shoulder. “They are just ignorant savages after all, Jobi.”
Ghost-Tongue canted his head to one side and watched the Captain rip away a large shroud of web as he withdrew his arm. Immediately hundreds of tiny, long-legged, pale, almost translucent spiders scurried in to repair the damage. The Captain eyed them through his paranormal spectacles and huffed. “Common telemidae cangoderces. Gnome cave spider. A local runt of a bug.”
Ghost-Tongue nodded at the Captain's observation but opted to continue the previous line of conversation. “Am I an ignorant savage, Tripp?”
The Captain looked away from the webbing cocooning his right arm and inspected Ghost-Tongue from head to foot and back up again. “You can ask me that when you stop carrying that spear.”
“We both know that's never going to happen.”
“You should at least let me put a scope on it. Give it a more... formidable look. The poor thing's just a long twig and a bit of bone.”
“I think it's formidable enough. It makes white men nervous.”
The Captain smiled. “It's nice you have goals, old boy.”
“So they've finished,” Ghost-Tongue noted, nodding to the now-repaired web. The tiny arachnids had vanished to the dark from whence they had come. “Plan on wearing all that as an overcoat?”
The never-ending smile of Captain Tripp Vaguely shifted to a smirk as he raked one of Marybelle's levers back and forth whilst depressing a button near one particularly ugly nozzle. The grating of the lever created a spark just below said nozzle and a pilot light burst to life, its hiss a furious, anticipatory tone. He took a few steps back as Ghost-Tongue moved fully to the other side of the chamber, his hair having just recently grown back from singed stubble. But then, with the squeeze of a trigger (one of several on his rifle), Marybelle's anxious hiss was replaced by a short roar as a fireball blossomed forth and set the webbing ablaze. When a properly sizable hole appeared, the Captain took the opportunity to hurl himself into the darkness beyond. There he rolled across the floor, gave a spirited “Hoo-ha!” and arose with Marybelle poised menacingly, still spewing a tiny, angry flame and shining forth a cone of light from her small electric torch.
Eight large black orbs reflected that light back at him.