A seagull soared over the harbor where the Atlantic Ocean met the cradle of Station Bay, gliding on a crisp breeze that carried with it the scent of sea salt and something else - something alien and metallic, like the scent of a coming storm. That seagull met the rising flock of its kin as they crested over the sweeping cityscape where docks gave way to solid streets and skyscrapers, and at last their shadows passed over a district where the buildings grew shorter and opened up to expansive green clearings. A gift from on high fell from that specific seagull, and from its vantage point one would see a great meadow-like park rushing up to greet them. Drawing nearer and nearer the ground, they would see colorful little shapes enlarge into view - various sculpted works of abstract art, mostly exhibition pieces that had seen their last tours and been laid to rest here permanently, mixed with tall effigies and monuments that were seasonally portable to make special appearances at modern art galleries and parades. Toward the center, where the art park edged the recess area playground of the school, several of these monuments - in the shapes of dinosaurs and zoo animals - were hollow, and doubled as jungle gyms.
At last, the aerial tour of the avian falling star was brought to a close with an unceremonious splat.
Cuppy looked up from inside the hollow elephant sculpture he and two classmates, both young boys who shared his penchant for games, were crowded cozily within, a sprawling foldable tabletop game board unfurled to its full size in the center between them. His ears perked up, and he looked up toward the low ceiling of their regularly earmarked playpen, the interior painted a cool blue that helped vent the worst of the heat during the blistering peaks of summer. It was only September though, barely a chunk into the fall, and it was nice and cool inside.
“I think a bird just pooped on us.” Cuppy said.
His friends made a few wisecracks at his expense, and the taller of them both was near enough to Cuppy to give him a playful nudge and an earful that he had an overactive imagination, but curiosity overtook them anyway, and they cast their gazes out the rear windows built into the slope of the elephant’s ass just in time to catch the flock disappear over the bright horizon of the downtown area.
“No way, Cup’s got bat ears!” Simon, the shorter of the boys, his somewhat round face framed by a tidy bowl cut, was humble enough to give a low murmur of awe.
“Lucky guess, seagulls drop bombs over our heads all the time, it’s kind of their schtick.” Zeke, the tallest, somewhat gangly boy, spiky brown hair slicked back with copious gel, put his hands behind his head and leaned dismissively against the sloped wall of the elephant.
“I wonder what’s got them flying altogether in sync like that though?” Simon asked.
Cuppy shrugged. “Maybe they can feel a big earthquake or something, and they’re clearing out to get altitude above the tsunami that comes next? I think we’re due for one any day now.”
Simon’s face went pale and slack. “S-Seriously, you think so?”
Zeke rolled his eyes and put Simon in a loose chokehold, grinding his knuckles roughly into the top of the meeker boy’s head. “Get a grip, man, the Cupster says random spooky shit like that all the time, how many shadows are you going to jump at before you catch a clue?”
“But there’s supposed to be something like that happening to New York too, with the Canary Islands, they talk about that kind of thing all the time!” Simon protested.
Zeke looked across the way at Cuppy, a wry grin on his face. “You see the shit you start, Cup?”
Cuppy smiled back vacantly. “Well, technically the seagull started it.”
A beat passed between the three of them, then they all started cracking up.
“Come on, you knuckleheads, let’s get back to the game already. Where’d we leave off?” Zeke looked over the lovingly-detailed board, a vast fantasy landscape painted across its grooves and contours.
The map was a diverse range of rolling green fields, marshy wetlands and swamps, craggy volcanic peaks, sloping tundras and harsh, frigid mountain summits, all edging a great misty sea whose channels, each as wide as great lakes, ran like rivers through the continent, dividing it into so many islands and archipelagos. Great fortified castles, crumbling mesoamerican-styled ruins, abandoned ghost town mining settlements, and darkness-shrouded sinking necropolises stretched across the wide and wonderful world the game showed them. Hiding amongst the bushes and brambles, the fallen rocks, and the icy crevices were many strange races and creatures. A treehouse village linked by swaying rope bridges was the home of the slender elves in the great woods to the south, while scaly, gilled humanoid fish creatures lounged about amongst the mud and reeds of the shallow flood waters on the outskirts of a human hamlet of simple farmers and blacksmiths. Under a condemned and sealed-off bridge slept a great giant, the beams built over his own semi-petrified body. Beyond a gate of ethereal white clouds parted by a rainbow like an archway was a hanging garden of crawling ivy and marble columns, where an old wizard dwelt in self-imposed exile amidst the lesser angels. Deep within the canyons and craters of the ruined wastelands crawled vicious unspeakable horrors.
In each corner of the possible six allotted to players were color-coded piles of cards taken from a drawpile, and a set of tokens. Neon-colored plastic figurines were spread out over the far corners of the map, each believing he would be the adventurer chosen by the gods to bring glory to their kingdom.
“I was about to liberate my sacred treasure from the fey tower!” Simon cheered himself on, finishing the remaining paces of the polyhedral die roll he had never finished.
“I don’t think so, buckaroo. You’ve entered my territory.” Zeke sprung his trap, turning over a facedown hazard token he had elected to place in the area earlier. “You’re caught in a tiger snare unless you roll a 4 or a 6, unless you want to bite the bullet and just tear your leg free. Of course, then you’ll be hobbled for the next 3 turns.”
“You monster!” Simon grabbed his face. “You aren’t even getting any treasure tokens out of this!”
“Some players just want to watch the world burn, Simon.” Cuppy pattedpat his shoulder comfortingly.
“Ok, that’s another round completed, whose turn is it to draw a random monster card?” Zeke asked, thumbing to a thick, glossy stack of cards, each rendering a vicious enemy raring to break the brave adventurers - a hunched, warty ogre with a crude bone club, a sleek, iron-carapaced giant desert scorpion, a coiling basilisk with glowing red eyes, a cackling witch stooped over her kettle of sickly bubbling brew, a vampire lord in a billowing cape conducting a symphony of black bats - so on and so forth, 50 cards deep.
“I think it’s Cuppy’s.” Simon said.
“Shuffle ‘em good this time, you bad luck charm.” Zeke cautioned, exasperated at the string of incidents, Cuppy'sincidents Cuppy’s uncanny ability to pick the worst possible cards from each hand for them that had already begun to pile up.
Cuppy thumbed through the allotted selection of 7, picked the second from the left, and slid it free of the deck, turning it face up. The feral, screaming face of a tawny-furred wildcat whose paws and underbelly were caked in muck glared up at them with ghastly yellow eyes.
“Oh boy, Specter Swamp Cat. That’s an instant clearout for all your equipment tokens and spell cards unless you have the Shaman Pendant. Tough break.” Cuppy gestured to his item token bearing the illustration of the protective twine necklace.
“You mother - you’ve ruined me!” Zeke started tearing at his hair.
Simon broke out in fits of giggles next to the older boy, impotently stifling them with the back of his hand. “Instant karma.”
“Can it, twerp!” Zeke elbowed Simon’s arm jarringly.
This game is going so well. Cuppy thought, happy as a clam. “Luck of the Irish.” he quipped impulsively.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“What are you on about?” Zeke looked at him, befuddled by the latest in Cuppy’s long history of archaic non sequiturs.
He was interrupted by an obnoxious airhorn sound effect that made them all jump - his text message notification bell.
“Hey, I thought we all agreed! Keep phones on silent during game time!” Simon complained.
“Stuff it, it’s from my cousin.” Zeke flipped the phone open.
“More wild goose chase crackpot rumors?” Simon narrowed his eyes. “That troll nonsense was bunk. Same with the lights in the sky, and the ghostly hitchhiker, and-”
Zeke stuffed a leftover donut hole they’d smuggled out of the cafeteria pantries into Simon’s mouth, practically choking him. “Will you just back off a minute? It’s not like you’ve got any better stories. Now shut up and let me read this.” Zeke poured over the text.
“Anything new and exciting?” Cuppy asked hopefully.
“Nah, false alarm, guys, just letting me know he’s clearing out his old room and putting up a garage sale if we want discounts on any of his old junk.” Zeke shrugged.
“Where am I supposed to put a jumbo disco ball?” Simon wheezed out after finally choking down the donut hole, bits of powdered sugar stuck to his lips, tip of his nose, and chin.
Cuppy heard the snapping of twigs amidst their bickering, and looked out the open circular window at the back of his head to see what it was. He was looking out onto a circle of shrubs at the edge of a moderate grove of shaded trees, winds rustling through the leaves. Hidden in the shade was Freyja’s silky wolf form, beckoning Cuppy silently with her gold-ringed blue eyes, which looked in this lighting to be flecked with little teal sparkles. The born shapeshifter subtly nodded to the woods in the direction of the creak they had made their agreed upon meeting spot nearest the school, and used only once or twice before now.
What’s so important Frey couldn’t wait for me to get off of school? Cuppy wondered.
“What do you think, Cup?” Simon asked him.
“Huh?” Cuppy looked back to the conversation, mildly startled.
“Hey, wanna join us among the living?” Zeke snapped his fingers in front of Cuppy’s face.
“What’s up, guys?” Cuppy asked, realizing he had lagged behind wherever their conversation left off.
“The skatepark, are you coming or not?” Zeke asked impatiently.
“The skatepark? Why?” Cuppy asked.
“Simon insists there’s a bloodstain that crawls from ramp to ramp randomly there, mostly clinging around the big old half-pipe. Sheesh, keep up!” Zeke frowned.
“It’s no joke, there was a bigshot extreme sports name who bit the dust on that half-pipe, and his blood’s been tagging the place ever since!” Simon said emphatically.
Zeke plugged a finger into his ear and rubbed it within. “Ok, buddy, we believe you, just keep it down, fuck!” he turned back to Cuppy. “Anyway, we’re going to swing by after school with a few blacklights when the sun starts to go down and take a look around. Thought we’d grab a few slices of pizza while we’re out. I’ve got my skateboard if you guys want to bring wheels too.”
“No good, my old roller skates finally died on me.” Simon’s face took on a glum expression as he mourned his loss again.
“Tragic.” Zeke pat Simon’s shoulder. He turned back to Cuppy. “So, are you in or not?”
Cuppy took another slight peak out the window at his back again and saw Freyja nod at him, then retreat deeper into the shadows and out of sight. Cuppy looked back at the other two boys and shook his head. “Sorry guys, no can do, I have to tend to my succulents.”
“Your what?” Zeke asked, knocked for a loop.
“He means working on his garden.” Simon explained. “Right?” he turned to Cuppy for confirmation.
Cuppy nodded affirmatively, a little too quickly to play itself off as natural if he was the kind of person who passed for acting natural on the best of days in the first place.
“Whatever, have fun with your succulents.” Zeke shrugged. “Simon, you’re up to bat, take your turn or skip it, don’t just sit there with a stick up your ass our whole lunch break.”
“Fine.” Simon sighed, starting to get sick of Zeke’s shit. “I guess that crap about a sea serpent in the central park area fountain was too corny even for your cousin to try to gossip about with a straight face, but did he ever come clean and admit he made all that crap up?”
Cuppy took a sip from a bendy straw brutally stabbed into his juicebox; cranberry apple. He listened with rapt attention, eyes wide and excited as he soaked in the atmosphere of the dark interior of the elephant sculpture amidst a volley of cryptic rumors and legends. It almost felt like being privy to a circle of campfire ghost stories in the dead of night.
“Nah.” Zeke shrugged. “But I did hear from a couple of other guys that there’s a legit hellhound in the woods. Looks all black and shaggy, like a big dark wolf.”
Cuppy choked on his juice, geysers of it spurting from his nostrils. In his panic, he knocked his juicebox, and Simon’s as well, both over onto the game board and their cards.
“Really dude?!” Zeke shrieked. “I just fucking got this new deck! I blew my whole allowance on that!”
Cuppy put out one hand to calm Zeke, and with thehis other he curled into a tiny fist to pound on his own chest and try to dislodge the last remnants of moisture in his throat. “Don’t worry, guys, I can clean this up, good as new.” he pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket.
The warning bell struck and began to chime, recalling all kids at play to turn back inside for afternoon classes.
“And there goes our game.” Simon released a defeated sigh.
“No big deal, just take a picture of it on your phone, we’ll set the board back up just like we left it here.” Zeke said, already forgetting the puddles Cuppy was neatly buffing out of their cards.
The two boys dropped out of an escape chute through the bottom of the elephant’s belly and started jogging in place, faced toward the main gated schoolyard playground area where a few missing red bars left a convenient hole in the fence.
“Cuppy, get the lead out, I don’t want detention again!” Zeke urged him.
“You guys go on ahead without me, I’m going to stay here and pick up after ourselves a bit, put the game back in its box.” Cuppy waved them on.
“Just leave everything there, there isn’t any wind to blow our shit away!” Zeke argued.
“Just forget it, if he wants to clean up after us, let him. That dumb game has a thousand finicky little pieces.” Simon pat Zeke’s shoulder.
“Whatever.” Zeke shrugged. “It’s your hide, Cup. If you don’t get stuffed and mounted on the principal's trophy room wall, we’ll finish our game this weekend!”
“You got it!” Cuppy said, giving them both a thumbs up.
And like that, then they were gone, leaving PuppyCuppy alone in the hollow elephant to wonder what Freyja was trying to tell him.
“Guess I’ll go meet her.” Cuppy shrugged, extracting his marionette duplicate from his bag, already seamlessly patched up and repaired from his gruesome fate under the tread of O’Gravy.
The puppet was made over with a gentle wave of Cuppy’s hand that lent his wooden body a flesh-colored hue and texture, and animated his face and limbs convincingly enough, if to a creepily uncanny effect.
“Cover for me, brother.” Cuppy gave the command to his puppet, then left him behind to take his place as he dropped out the escape chute to go sneak into the woods while nobody was looking.
"You called?" he asked Freyja, now in her human form, as both stood under the shade of lush trees, the wind whistling through some of the wicker men around them like flute notes.
"Yeah, you said the leprechaun that attacked you guys came out of a fissure of fog, right? Same goes for the oni Richie dreamed about?" Freyja said, pocketing a pair of headphones she had been listening to while she'd waited for Cuppy.
"That's right." Cuppy nodded. "There was a big cloud of fog near those joined blank towers too, '' he said. "Gave him the creeps."
"Seems to be something each of the monsters have in common." Freyja said. "My animal instincts in wolf form keep screaming bad vibes at me when I pass over certain places, like I'm being watched by something predatory. Most of those auras of influence seem to be temporary, just passing through, but other areas seem stained by it. Several crosswalks, the wastewater outflow pipes, and the center strip of your reservoir out back too."
"Wait, quick question, have you let anyone see you in your wolf form?" Cuppy asked.
"It can't be helped. After leaving the Backyards, I can't remember how to get back in." Freyja's ears folded, carrying a residual hint of her lupine nature.
"Got it. Go on?" Cuppy gestured.
"Well, I overlaid each area that consistently weirded me out in animal form with the city planning map you got me from the library. What do each of those places have in common?" Freyja said.
Cuppy thought for a moment, looking pensive. Then it struck him.
"They're all connected to the sewer, or go over it." he said.
"Bingo. That's also where the leprechaun punched into this world from, where the maintenance tunnel you remember seeing before you woke up here runs through all the way under the reservoir, and-" Freyja said.
"Where he gobbled up that black gunk too." Cuppy snapped his fingers.
"That stuff has dangerous mutagenic properties, based on what you encountered. Why would it be running through the sewer pipes under the city? The storage area in the park, the maintenance tunnel, even the block near the towers where Richie first saw the fog are all really close to sewer junctures where that liquid could be moving through unchecked." Freyja said. "Those same places all feel dangerous too."
"Do you think you're sensing that black stuff?" Cuppy asked.
"I'm not sure, but that's my best guess." Freyja said, absentmindedly playing with her earrings.
"There's some connection between that stuff flowing in the sewers, and the monsters invading the city from those fog clouds, but I'm not sure what." Cuppy adopted a thinker pose.
"And we still don't know where the tunnels and Richie's cereal killer fit in. The air was clear each of those times, right?" she asked.
"Yeah. Not a wisp of fog in sight." Cuppy nodded.
"I don't remember any either, but then again, I can't remember what happened in the Backyards anyways. It feels like a fading dream where all the details are gone, and all I've got left is an idea of what it felt like." Freyja frowned.
Her ears laid back, and she looked up over the trees, off into the distance where a new fogbank was forming and beginning to coil toward the sky. “Well, speak of the devil.” she muttered.
“Fiddlesticks, that’s in the direction of the complex. I wonder if our otherworldly friends decided to come knocking?” Cuppy scratched his head.
“I can get us there in like twenty minutes if we ride.” Freyja said, batting at her ear and beginning to shift her nose into the black snout of a wolf.
“Make it happen, we’ve got places to be.” Cuppy nodded.