CHAPTER 9

Trekking back to the hotel was a lot less terrifying, with Duke at my side. We did not walk out in the open or anything—there was no use in taking pointless risks—but we didn’t have to hide behind constant cover, either.

Indeed, my new protector seemed to understand the severity of the situation far above what you would expect from a normal dog. Duke stayed near me, constantly alert to the slightest motion, more in line with a cat than the dog he used to be. His nose worked overtime, sniffing both the ground and air every few feet. I could feel the tension in his soul.

In life, my Barghest had been a cheerful dog, rarely showing true aggression toward people or other dogs. He’d lived almost to the age of 15 before passing, and in the intervening 7 years, I did not know what he might have gone through to make him as serious as he was now. The only thing I knew for sure was that he had been in another place. An intuition I could not describe, probably from my Sahu, told me that the netherworld Duke dwelled in was both distant and unreachable to me. Realizing that gave me a modicum of hope that I might return from this awful city to the land of the living. Well, that wasn’t exactly right; so far, everything except Duke and I had been alive. I suppose the world of light would be a more accurate term.

The rain poured down on us as we walked down the gloomy streets. How this strange city hadn’t flooded was a mystery. Sewers weren’t as ubiquitous in the empty urban land as in a real-world city. And, in the short time since I’d arrived, there had been only a little soft rain, and a lot of hard rain. It never stopped.

Large cracks in the street were the only explanation I’d been able to come up with. Most of the gaps were small splits in the pavement. Like you might expect in a city that did not get regular maintenance. Occasionally, there were some terribly large fissures, especially in areas where two differing styles of buildings were next to one another. From an overhead view, I imagined the city looked like pieces from three different jigsaw puzzles a child had forced together.

Thankfully, none of the holes in the street were large enough for something bigger than my foot to come crawling out of. Only the occasional glowing pink flower the size of a shopping basket sprouting out of the tears in the ground hinted at the possibility of more below the surface. If I were a bolder man, I would have used the single sewer entrance that I’d found to go check it out. An idea to think about for the future; after I had a reliable light source.

Before long, we’d returned to the scene of my arrival. The journey had been short and without incident. Still, I stayed as far away from the Tower of Pizza as I could. A vampiric instinct told me that whatever was trapped on that second floor of that building was too strong for me to engage.

Our arrival did not provide me with a feeling of relief, despite the hunger bearing down on my every thought. Upon entering, I noticed right away that the magic of this dimension had reassembled the broken mirror behind the front desk. Glowing light spilled out of the mirrored wall like a flat screen on mute. The same blonde headed receptionist that I saw before was there, working in what appeared to be the early morning hours. No one bothered her, and she played a word game on her cell phone under the desk.

I reached into my pocket to retrieve the shard I had taken for a light source and impromptu weapon, only to find it was missing. To understand this place better, I briefly considered breaking the mirror again to see what would happen. Ultimately, I decided against it, because the last thing I needed was seven more years of bad luck. Getting turned into an undead monster and tossed into a bleak hell made me a lot more superstitious than I had been a couple of days before.

The two Colo Colo that had sent me packing scant hours ago were sadly no longer in the lobby. A rotting mostly picked corpse of their companion that I had killed the night before was the only sign that they had been in the vicinity. Not that I expected them to still be waiting. I’m sure they had busy lives licking the air and scaring the living shit out of other newcomers.

Assuming there were other newcomers. Part of me hoped there would be other people, and another more altruistic (but less sizable) side wanted no one to have to endure this place the way I had.

Try as I might, I could not remember what sent me to this place. There were no holes on the side of my neck, like popular media would have you believe. I had no recollection of signing an agreement with a handsome red horned man at a crossroads. I simply went to sleep drunk and woke up in a filthy basement.

Then there was the scroll, asshole supreme, offering no hints what-so-ever to explain my situation. I wondered often if I had rejected the spark of Ma’at. Would it have sent me back home?

Snapping out of my introspection, I headed over to the cannibalized corpse. It was an assumption on my part that they ate one of their pack mates, but I did not think it was an unreasonable one. Until seeing otherwise for myself, I was going to assume that everything that I encountered here was a cannibal.

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“See this?” I said to Duke, kicking the corpse.

Duke sniffed the dead rat-bird, wagging his boney snake sized tail.

“We need to find more like this. I know they are around here…” I trailed off, looking at the top of the grand stairwell. That was where the creatures had come from before.

My companion’s heart was in the right place, but he misunderstood what I asked, ripping off a leg and handing it to me.

“Dude, I’m not going to play fetch right now!” I said, annoyed. If he still had ears, I’m sure they would have been lowered at the tone of my voice.

Kneeling, I hugged him around the neck. “I’m sorry buddy. This hunger has me in a foul mood. It’s not your fault. We can play rat-chicken leg catch later, promise.”

His nasty tongue flicked across my bushy eyebrow, plastering it upward. I wiped off the imaginary saliva, then reluctantly stuck the leg of the Colo Colo in my Oscar the Grouch backpack. Carrying that smelly leg bone around was not an activity I enjoyed, but I am a man of my word.

Together, we ascended the main stairs. When we reached the top, I realized that there was a serious flaw in my plan. The glowing moss that lit the lower floors was entirely absent, plunging the balcony in darkness.

My eyes could barely make out my own hands, and Duke was entirely invisible. There was some good news though, the smell of fried onions was strong. That meant the monsters were still near.

“Well, if we can’t go to them, I guess we will have to make them come to us,” I said to Duke.

Interlude - Chase

“You ready?” Chase asked his cousin Steven.

Steven, still in his Denver City Police Department uniform, gave Chase a quick nod.

If things went according to Chase’s plans, that loser Julian would go to jail this morning.

To Chase’s mind, it was an affront to the natural order of the world that a man so pathetic had married a girl like Heather. She was from an excellent family, with old roots in the community. On her own merits, she went to both college and law school, not taking a cent of her father’s vast wealth. Most importantly, she was ambitious, and knew how to get her way.

In short, she was the almost ideal woman for a man like Chase, who matched her point for point on the list of advantages. Her only flaw? Heather had married a worm. But even that wouldn’t be an issue soon.

Just breaking them up wasn't good enough. Julian had given up his promising career as a graphic designer to move to Denver for the wife he should have never had. A not insignificant sacrifice, either, from what Heather had said. Apparently, that job had been his dream, and he worked hard at it to provide for her while she finished law school.

Chase thought Julian deserved nothing for his sacrifice, but he knew the courts wouldn’t feel that way. The fool had given up a career for Heather, and spent the last year working as a lowly paid security guard.

Julian’s alimony would put a serious debt into the plans Chase had for Heather’s income. The sponge had to go off and wither away somewhere, outside of the power couple’s purview.

After convincing Heather to move in with him, Chase knew Julian would already be at the end of his rope. The weak sob had spent the last two weeks all alone, grieving for the death of a child that wasn’t even his. Any sane person would be close to snapping after a setback like that.

So, to ensure that schmuck would be at his absolute wit's end, he had Heather’s shrew of a mother call him repeatedly about a television. Chase hoped the sheer preposterousness of it had set Julian down a path of rage. It hadn’t been hard for Chase to convince the mean old harpy; it’s not like she ever approved of Julian. The mean socialite and he saw eye to eye on that.

The goal had been to make Julian destroy what they owned. In the divorce settlement, the dissipation of assets was not looked upon kindly, and would make Julian look deranged. Further, every cent Julian wasted through destruction would get removed from the division of assets. Between having Julian harassed at his job, getting his co-workers to sign affidavits about his unpleasant personality, and setting him off on Heather’s property, Chase could establish a pattern of abuse. The final nail in the coffin was to provoke Julian enough to attack him.

That was where Cousin Steven, Denver’s finest, came into play. Chase had already confirmed that Julian missed going to work that morning. He would be here, waiting.

“Julian? Hellllooo?” Chase said, using Heather’s key to unlock the door, then swinging it open without waiting for a response.

Much to Chase’s delight, the door clattered into a vast pile of beer cans. Alcoholism was not an angle that had occurred to him yet, but a few wonderful pictures of the living room and texts to Heather taken out of context might be enough to establish that too.

The apartment smelled terrible and looked like the scene of a tornado. A quick nod back to Cousin Steven, and the two entered the wrecked living space with smiles on their faces.

Stepping over the broken TV, Chase began snapping photos of the area with his phone. Julian had been thorough, destroying everything from the couch to the sink fixtures. By the time he made it into the bedroom, Chase knew his plan was going to work even better than he’d envisioned.

Cousin Steven knocked on the bedroom door. If Julian attacked a police officer, well, that would just be wonderful.

However, no one answered.

“Julian!” Chase yelled, barely containing his mirth. “You open the door right now, you piece of shit! You will pay me for everything you broke!”

Still no answer.

Steven kicked open the door to find an empty apartment.

“Well, shit,” Chase said, pulling out his phone to take in more of the destruction. “Looks like he went somewhere else to sleep it off.”

It wasn’t as good, but it would do.