1 - THE TAVERN

Damien looked down upon the tavern’s red shingled roof, although from his lofty vantage point, he could not know that it was a tavern.

An inn, perhaps. Or an especially well-appointed home.

No less than four chimneys bristled from the building, whose shape was reminiscent of a blocky horseshoe. The courtyard between its wings was of the same featureless grey as the expanse upon which it sat, dappled with the rain that drenched the entire street.

The rain’s puddles and rivulets reflected the lonesome orange light of an idling garbage truck’s hazard lights, as well as the sickly fluorescence of streetlights whose cold light perfectly matched the evening’s bitter chill.

The rain did not fall so much as it drifted about in ghostly waves borne on a wind so frigid that Damien shivered, pulling his hood up around his ears and eying the gloaming street with suspicion.

At his feet, the tavern squatted in the cold, scarcely more than a few inches high. Damien stood at a more respectable 6’1”, his comparatively titanic form casting a long and ominous shadow that danced with the light of the fire at his back.

Aside from the rumbling of the garbage truck and the dancing, rain-slicked branches of near leafless oaks and elms, the street was quiet. Nobody would be out in this weather, not that the streets of Loch Lomond were particularly lively after sunset.

The sleepy rural town was an early to bed, early to rise kind of place, where pubs closed before midnight, but bakeries opened in the gloomy half-light of dawn to fuel farmers and retail workers shuffling to their drudgery.

The tavern had not been here long, he was sure of that. He would have kicked it or crushed it under his black work boots as he’d come home earlier in the evening, each of his hands bearing the weight of a half-dozen bulging bags of groceries.

Somebody had put it here. The same someone, Damien presumed, who had knocked hastily on his door before disappearing into the night.

Damien had been in the shower when he’d heard the knock, and had cursed his unexpected visitor as he stepped, dripping and steaming, from the shower’s warm embrace.

He’d gone directly from work to the gym to the store, and his sweat soaked clothes nearly tripped him as he rushed across the slippery tiles on his way to the front door.

By the time he’d tugged on a pair of tracksuit pants and a hoodie bearing that emblem of his greatest shame, the caller had gone, leaving behind the miniature representation that Damien stooped to pick up.

It was heavier than its size might have indicated, although not so heavy that it necessarily surprised Damien.

The details on the model were exquisite.

The four pencil-thick chimneys were not merely painted wood, but individual slivers of stone, carefully hollowed out to simulate a functional chimney.

A tiny sign, barely readable in the flickering firelight, proclaimed the tavern as the Goose and Child. A reference, no doubt, to the Eagle & Child in which Tolkien’s Inklings met to discuss the worlds they were creating.

It was an odd bit of trivia for a man of Damien’s stature and former vocation to know. Rugby league players were not thought of as widely read, although he was not the only player who had a bachelor’s degree or had blossomed late in life.

Before the roaring crowds and lucrative sponsorship deals, he had been an awkward, pimply kid in this very town, huddling in a drafty demountable and pretending to be somewhere, anywhere else.

That virginal little kid was long gone now, replaced with a barrel-chested, broad-shouldered lock forward who had, until recently, at least, had the world at his feet.

Now, much to his dismay and humiliation, only a model tavern lay at his feet. He’d made sure of that with his recklessness, and this rainy, miserable pissant town was his purgatory.

If the replica tavern was somebody’s idea of a joke, Damien could not fathom its meaning.

It was not the first “gift” to be left on the doorstep of his childhood home; there had been flaming bags of dog shit, steaming piles of human shit, and black and gold jerseys reeking of piss.

“Traitor,” these little gifts called him. “Cheat.”

This model was refreshingly free of excrement, and it did not appear to be another reminder of the worst thing he’d ever done.

He turned it over in his hands, appreciating the effort that must have gone into its construction. The fingernail-sized front door, the tiny, shuttered windows, and the shingles on the roof were all the work of a masterful painter.

Sam.

Damien had been avoiding his old friend since his return to Loch Lomond. He told himself he’d simply outgrown his shaggy-haired boyhood pal, but deep down, he knew he also avoided Sam out of shame. If strangers thought so poorly of the man he’d become, what might one of his oldest and, if he was being honest with himself, most neglected friends think?

How many times had he walked by Sam’s store and contemplated going inside? He passed it on his way to and from his job at the hardware store.

What did he hope to find inside the incense-reeking, dimly lit interior of Sam’s boondoggle? Some naïve part of him hoped, perhaps, that his old friend would greet him with a lopsided smile and a hug that smelled of body odor, stale weed, and Lynx Africa.

But why would Sam do that? Why would he reward a decade of rejected phone calls and ignored friend requests?

No, their friendship was another victim of Damien’s arrogance, and he would wear the loneliness in the same way he wore the sneers, unpleasant gifts, and suddenly quiet phone.

What was the model tavern then? A peace-offering? A reference to something Damien had forgotten?

Not forgotten. he realized, examining the model again. Goose & Child isn’t just a Tolkien reference. It’s the name of the tavern from high school.

Like so much of his time in high school, Damien hadn’t thought about those days in a long time. When you were at the bottom of the social food chain, you either accepted your place or you clawed your way out of the muck. He, Carl, and Tanya had gone about it different ways, but they had all left this town and the assholes who’d made it hell for them behind.

Even Murray had managed to escape in his own way. He still lived here, but he seemed to have found a way to blend in.

Like Sam, Murray’s was a friendship that Damien had left behind him and, like Sam, he’d made a point of avoiding the foul-mouthed sparky every time he’d come into the store.

Yet holding the miniature representation of the bawdy watering hole from which Fred the Fighter, Illustria, Fudgerod, and Sir Eustice of Brie had launched countless adventures caused a flood of memories to boil up from where he’d thought them long buried.

Buxom bar wenches who shared names with the popular girls in their year (much to Tanya’s disgust), hideous troglodytes who looked suspiciously like their chemistry teacher, epic battles, long-winded boss monologues, loot, traps, and entirely too many poop, fart, and sex jokes had lit up their days for fifteen minutes at recess and forty minutes at lunch.

No matter how awful their days were going, retreating to the demountable classroom with its green carpet, chipped desks, and the faded mural of Lionel Ritchie quite literally dancing on the ceiling had been enough to recharge their batteries and keep them going.

Of course, he reminded himself, the fact you spent your days playing nerd games instead of talking to girls or playing sport was probably the reason why you were bullied…

The day Damien had realized his part in the position he’d found himself in had been the day he realized he could also make changes. It might have cost him the friendship of a few loveable losers in the short term, but his decision to retire his decks of overly expensive cards, hit the gym, and stop making himself a target had led him to first popularity, then fame, and then fortune.

And then here, back in the same shitty place in the same shitty house without fame, fortune, or popularity. Good move, dickhead.

For a moment, he contemplated tossing the model into the empty lot next door. He’d cast off every other shred of evidence from that time in his life, so why would he keep some stupid model left by a person he hadn’t spoken to in a decade?

But he didn’t throw the model away. Instead, with one last look out into the rain, he tucked the model into his pocket and shut the door.

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That night, Damien dreamt about the Goose and Child Tavern – not the model, but the tavern it represented.

One moment, he’d been dozing off in bed listening to the drum of the rain on the corrugated iron roof, dreading the prospect of another day of selling hammers, nails, and paint, and the next he was stirring from behind a two-person table upon which rested an empty mug.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. He could not recall having dreamt of smells before, yet here he was being assailed with the mingling scents of stale beer, tobacco, sweat, straw, and roasted meat. It was a strangely appealing combination of scents, although glancing about the empty taproom showed no source for these scents save the straw, which crunched and rattled beneath Damien’s feet.

Damien was no stranger to waking up in a bar when the sun had come up and the punters had gone home. He’d come to on the sticky floor of Fanny’s night club on more than one occasion, usually with a bleary-eyed staff member nudging him not-so-gently with a mop.

There was something disarming about a bar in the morning light, like seeing your mother cry for the first time. Without the dim lights, thumping music, and crowds, the space seemed overwhelmingly large.

Damien had felt the same the first time he’d jogged out onto the field for the first time at his home field. He’d watched countless games of rugby league played at this venue on TV, and even attended a few games live during his last year of school, but he’d never stood on the halfway line, gazing out at the thousands of empty seats, darkened concession stands, and the yawning tunnel that led to the dressing room.

Sitting at a table in this tavern he’d only ever pictured in his mind’s eye, he felt that same sense of loneliness. The tables and chairs were all where they should be, the shelves behind the bar were stocked with bottles of all colors, and the worn wood of the floor had been liberally dusted with fresh straw, but there was no life in the place.

Standing, Damien was unsurprised to hear the click of his knees and the soft creak of the floorboards underfoot, but it was otherwise silent. No irritating twitter of birds, no barking of dogs or honking of cars, not even the stirring of the wind outside.

“Hello?” he ventured, his voice entirely too loud for so quiet a place.

No reply came.

The common room was lit by a pair of chandeliers adorned with two dozen candles each. Damien knew the number without having to count – he’d heard Sam describe them often enough. They were the room’s only source of light, casting the tables, chairs, and the room’s sole occupant’s shadows in a lurching, violent dance.

The windows, of which there were an even dozen, were utterly dark. Not nighttime on a moonless night dark – utterly.

Damien moved to the windows that flanked the sturdy front door, grimacing at the sound his heavy boots made on the warped wood floor. Peering through the window, he could make out no sign of light at all. No pinprick starlight, no distant farmhouse, and no ghost light of the moon illuminated the world outside.

For all he knew, there was no world outside.

The thought made him shiver despite the heat coming from the fire in the hearth.

Had that been there before? No, he’d noted the chandeliers were the sole sources of light, and he’d have heard the crackle and pop of a fire. Yet there it was, cheerily filling the room with warmth and light both.

Looking back towards his table, Damien saw that his previously empty glass now had a finger of liquid in it. He didn’t need to smell or taste it to know it for the dregs of a beer left too long unattended.

Weird dream.

Damien’s attention was drawn back to the stygian darkness that pressed against the glass. A hesitant touch confirmed the bitter cold that existed outside, although it did not bleed into the room. No chill draft blew under the door, nor did the windows radiate cold like those in the room in which he now slept.

It was as if nothing lay beyond the tavern door. Nothing, with a capital ‘N’.

This wasn’t the way Sam had described the Goose & Child. Oh, it looked correct, but this was not the vibrant, chaotic watering hole in which adventurers met to discuss their plans, spend their gold, and sell their treasure; it was a hollow, eerie thing.

Was that what this dream was? A metaphor for the life Damien had possessed and since lost? Was the cold, dark nothingness pressing against the door, begging to be let in, the creeping depression that had been slowly consuming him since he’d passed that faded “Welcome to Loch Lomond: Celtic Country” sign on his way back into town?

Shuddering, he stepped back from the ominous darkness, instead focusing on the other details that seemed to be coming into focus as time passed. In addition to the fire in the hearth, there were now half-drunk tankards and goblets on a half dozen other tables, as well as plates slick with the grease of a finished meal.

It was almost like the tavern was loading in around him, gradually filling out as it finished buffering.

No sign of people yet, but I imagine they’ll come next. I wonder what happens if one phases in on top of me?

Silly as that thought was, he moved quickly back to “his” seat, sliding into it just as a plate heaped with food appeared alongside his now full mug of frothy beer. A healthy serving of meat drenched in gravy, a chunk of bread, and a pair of baked potatoes overflowing with sour cream, bacon bits, and caramelized onions sat before him, a meal far more appetizing than the store-bought pizza he’d had for dinner.

The one thing the two meals had in common was their accompaniment: he’d thrown back a six pack of Toohey’s Old with his pizza.

The meal was tempting, the beer moreso, but it was the words carved into the chipped and stained wood of his table that caught his eye.

SAM WAS HERE.

The words were followed by yesterday’s date, each letter and number carefully etched into the surface. Dream Sam had taken his time to ensure the words were legible.

On a whim, Damien took up his knife and was about to carve his own name into the table, when the floorboards overhead creaked, once, twice, three times. The unmistakable sound of a person moving overhead.

Damien had forgotten, but the Goose & Child had been a tavern and an inn. He remembered arguing with Sam over the cost of a bath for his character, Fred the Fighter, and letting whatever real world frustrations he’d been dealing with bleed over into it. Shamefully, he recalled snatching up his cards and stamping away, calling Sam and the others, “fucking nerds,” as he’d left.

The footsteps overhead continued, moving away from the staircase off to Damien’s right. Still, he palmed the knife and eyed the stairs warily.

He couldn’t recall ever having had a dream this vivid. He could feel the individual hairs on his arm standing up, and the way his heart began to race in his chest.

Not that he had cause to be frightened. He was, after all, still in the shape that had taken him to the verge of State of Origin selection in just the third year of his career, and a few months of poor eating and binge-drinking hadn’t completely robbed him of the physique expected of a professional athlete.

He moved quickly up the stairs, taking precautions to move quietly. As creaky as the floorboards were, the stairs were remarkably quiet, and he was soon on the landing overlooking the common room below. No new details had swum into view just yet.

The landing held another three tables, each of which was afforded a modicum of privacy by wooden dividers and potted plants. He and the others had met more than a few potential employers up here, about half of whom had inevitably double-crossed them in dramatic fashion.

Beyond the landing, dominating much of the tavern’s second floor, were six private rooms and, at he end of the hallway, a bunkhouse with room to accommodate the various NPCs and hirelings that Sam had invented to fill the place out.

The doors to all but one of the private rooms were closed, with the one nearest him hanging invitingly open. The movement of the mysterious stranger had stopped, leaving Damien with only the crackle and pop of the fire to keep him company.

Makeshift weapon in hand, Damien inched forward to the open door, feeling more than a little foolish when he peered inside and saw an empty bedroom. A single bed and a small chest of drawers with an unlet candle atop it was all that he found.

He was about to turn his attention to the other five doors in the hallway when he noticed something out of place on the bed. Atop its scratchy blanket, almost hidden beneath a straw-filled pillow, was a small object that Damien immediately recognized, even after all these years.

A starter pack of cards.

A glossy, unopened starter pack of Hand of Fate cards.

They were at once out of place and entirely fitting for the Goose and Child. An object from the present in a tavern described as being very much from a fictional past, yet the two were inextricably linked. The Goose & Child existed within their game of Hand of Fate, yet their in-game characters never acknowledged the nature of their pastime. That suspension of disbelief was key to the escapism they had all sought.

Picking up the booster pack, Damien was unsurprised to see it was labelled Warrior Starter. Of course it would be. Fred the Fighter had been a warrior, after all, and what else would his strange dream conjure but the cards he had spent so much of his allowance on?

Almost on instinct, he hurriedly ripped open the package. The smell of new cards stirred something in him that he had not felt in so, so long. A rush of nostalgia and… regret washed over him, even as he looked down at an all-too-familiar card:

image [https://imgur.com/ZLeAHDN]image [https://i.imgur.com/ZLeAHDN.png]

How many times had he laid his own dog-eared version of this card atop his character sheet over the years?

He could still remember how excited he’d been when he had first unwrapped the card. Christmas morning, and his parents had bought him no less than three booster packs and a starter pack like the one he now held. The Ancestral Blade – he’d named it Dukayne in-game – had been the first rare card he’d ever owned, and while there were better weapons in the game, Fred the Fighter had wielded his Ancestral Blade in countless battles.

I wonder what a mint copy like this would go for? He wondered. Do people still play Hand of Fate?

He absent-mindedly looked through the rest of the cards in the twenty-card starter pack: I Know the Bartender, Giant Rats, Powerful Strike, Parry, Threaten, Hard Tack, Battered Shield, two Potions of Healing, Cleaving Blow, Stone of Escape, Shield Bash, Tavern Brawl, Shrug it Off, Forced March, Just a Flesh Wound, Whirling Assault, Nemesis, and Ghostly Companion.

Some of them he recognized as staples from his old deck, others were cards he’d never possessed. The younger him might have been over the moon to have a mint condition Nemesis or Stone of Escape, but the wave of nostalgia had already washed over him and gone back out to sea, leaving behind a kind of ache that Damien refused to dwell on.

“Fuck this dream,” he growled, flinching a little at the way in which his voice broke the quiet, “and fuck this tavern.”

He tossed the cards at the room’s sole window like a petulant child. They scattered across the floor, nightstand, and bed.

The window was none the worse for wear for Damien’s tantrum, yet he felt the cold from the darkness outside increase, as if his action had drawn the darkness’ attention to the tavern. Foolish as it seemed, he couldn’t help but feel like he was being watched.

It was not so different to that feeling of irrational terror that grips a child in the second after they’ve turned off the bedroom light; that certainty that something is going to get them before they can cross the few steps to their bed and the safety only blankets could provide.

Try as he might, Damien couldn’t stop himself from backing out of the room, his eyes pinned on the window for fear something would burst in if he tore his gaze away for even a second.

He only felt safe once he had tugged the door closed behind him.

You’re a grown man, he chided himself, get a grip!

But his desire to seek out the source of the mysterious footsteps had deserted him, as too had the bravado with which he had crept upstairs to face down his fellow guest. Quickly – but not so quickly that he had to acknowledge the growing fear that leant speed to his steps – Damien went back downstairs.

The fire’s warmth and light acted as a barrier for whatever childish fears had driven him from the second floor. He could feel the fear and confusion pushed back by the flickering halo of firelight.

By the time he’d returned to what he’d come to think of as “his” seat, the entire thing seemed foolish.

He armed himself with a fork and knife, and was about to tuck into his phantom meal, when there was a forceful, frantic knock on the door.