Nightlife James Lee and Willy Creech were the only ones on the road that lead through Saneer Pass. The two lane highway led away eastward from the city, then up into the now night mantled mountains. The overhead stars were much more distinct here, as were the shooting stars. But that was not what they were here for. Just before they took the curve that led out of the pass, the car slowed and turned onto a gravel road to the left. After proceeding a short ways from the main road, now hid by rockclad hills, they came to a chain entryway and stopped. From the links hung the rectangular, painted white with red lettering, sign reading ”Keep Out!” Willie got out on the passenger side and looked about, then walked back to the trunk. James popped it before he stepped out. Willie lifted the hatch and looked in upon the short barreled pump shotgun. And the scabbarded sword. Willy put the sword about his waist, then reached for the shotgun and the vest it rested upon. Twenty shells with ankh etched balls on the head of each one. Willy chambered a round into the all ready loaded shotgun. He shut the trunk and walked around the car to stand beside James. ” You set?” James asked. “Just another day in tha neighborhood. Let’s go see what’s so fukkin’ unusual out here. Made me put my ‘tennys’ on and we ain’t playin no ball!” The pair stepped over the chain hung between two hollow poles and walked the rest of the way. To the old quarry long disused. James took in a deep breath of the uncitified air. ” Over there”, he said. They left the gravel roadway and went through the brush which lined the road. Though neither could be considered ‘stealthy’, they walked warily, with heads swiveling in countersweeps that kept the ground they traveled constantly covered. They both halted at the sight before them. A bulky figure in dark clothing leaned against a boulder smoking, back turned towards them. James closed his eyes and’ looked’ at the figure ahead of them. He opened his eyes suddenly and wide! With a quick chopping gesture of his right hand, the being before them stiffened and jerked, then fell against the boulder to slide down it, then roll off it, to lie face up. Willy ran up, bent low, then stood back up to stand over it. “Gaww!” was Willy’s reaction. James came to stand beside him. James held between two fingers of his right hand a beam of light which he shone on the fallen one. The being lying unconscious under their stares, was human. But it’s dark skin had even darker splotches like mold upon it, it’s open mouth was filled with yellow spike teeth. His broad nostrils would not look out of place on a gorilla who constantly picked its nose. Big and stubby fingered were its hands, the nails ragged and black. ” Wat da fuk is this?” Willy asked when James came up. “That’s what people may look like if these nutcases get their way. What’s cold blooded ’bout it is, they come out of an alternate future to see it happen here.” Kirby Seaton stood back against the car with his arms folded, and a ‘it was distasteful’ look on his caramel colored face. Miss Monica when he first met her had been a most attractive woman when he first laid his bright brown eyes on her. But that was when she didn’t sprout feathery antennae like that of a moth, atop her head, or two large bulging red multifaceted eyes like that of some insect. She turned in her bright yellow robes and chittered something to what was once Kirby’s ‘podnuh’ McKinley. The once McKinley nodded its man-ape head and loped off in the direction of the four others. Miss Monica glided over towards Kirby. He straightened, then stiffened as she unfurled the almost tentacle like fingers of her left hand to stroke his cheek. There had been a long gone time when she looked human, when it seemed to Kirby they had made an impression on each other and the hotel bed. Now, Kirby felt she caressed his cheek as she did, because she regarded him as a pet. An attack dog or something. In a way, being her attack dog was what was first mentioned when they first met; she sitting alone in that booth, looking like a preacher’s dream of an off duty angel, in that lounge upscale coloreds went to down by the river. Kirby came swaggering in with his straw hat tilted at an angle that said he was Real Cool. His hard eyes and cold gold tooth smile said he was Real Dangerous, too. Or as he learned later, so he thought. The quarry had been out of business since the Fifties. Something about the workers coming down sick pretty much on the same day. James had been taught it was because the quarry workers had came too close to what rested in that man shaped pit. He and Willy approached from the east of the quarry. Not even the most avid off roaders or hikers seemed to have left their spoor here. “Hold it,” James said, psychically feeling the malignity barrier before them. Steadying himself and especially Willy, they crossed it. Miss Monica and her close associate, Amos Sattersfield, he too with bulging insectoid eyes, but with an otherwise human form, set out the instruments they had gotten from the trunk of the limo, they were to use in the coming rite. Kirby remembered how that one just nonchalantly walked into the hotel room where he and Miss Monica lay in bed together. She placed a hand to Kirby’s arm as he hurriedly reached for his Tyne .38 revolver under his pillow. The sarcastic words Amos uttered as he entered and went to the closet to get a robe for Miss Monica, still burned Kirby. ” How was playtime?” Now that one turned those roach eyes on him, and said ” You! Bring them forth!” Kirby gritted his teeth. ’ This bastard told Me! to fetch just as if I was some kind of mutt!’ Kirby angrily thought. Kirby knew Amos had some skills that made him dangerous, but unlike Miss Monica, there was only hatred Kirby felt for him. He went to the limo nonetheless and opened the door. Sitting in matching gauzy linen tunics, were two pubescent twins, male and female on the rear window facing seats. A half awake smiling face they both wore, as they stared at…whatever. Kirby gulped in nervous apprehension at their approaching fate. Yet he took the young girl gently by the arm and assisted her out the limo, her brother following on his own. James low crawled to the edge of the limestone quarry. At it’s bottom a scummy, dark green,pool had been formed from previous rains and melted snows. Then he made out the ‘Tourists’. James then looked skyward. The stars held to their ancient positions. But a trio of once space flotsam now fell earthward from west to east in an arc. ” We gotta move it now, Will! Unfunky bad times are almost on us!” “Hit ‘em from both sides or all at once on one side?” “We’d betta stick together. Let’s do this!” They low crawled away to their right and away from the edge of the quarry. They rose to their feet and half ran down the quarry side. Coming downslope, Willy saw another misshapened humanoid, it’s head thrown back as it urinated on some rock fragments. He signed to James he had this. Willy came up on the ‘ahhhing’ man thing, who grunted and shrugged it’s broad shoulders as it finished shaking off the last drops. With a ‘Huh!’ it whirled about only to kiss the butt of Willy’s shotgun! “Ya takin’ doo doo Georgie?” another grunted. It appeared carrying a Thanksgiving Pilgrim muzzled rifle, but before it could bring it to bear, James had it jerking in place, it’s eyes rolled into its head and tongue lolling from its mouth. It and the rifle soon fell to the ground, the man ape across it. Willy crouched low, his teeth clenched at the sound the unconcious one made in its collapse. James grimaced also, now wishing he had pillowed the being’s fall. But there was no apparent hostile response. The two proceeded on till they had the quarry wall on their left. And the ‘Tourists’ in sight. ”Gotdamn, Jim! We dealin’ wit fukkin’ bug thangs? Maybe I should of brought up a can of Black Flag?” ”I’m afraid all that would do is perfume these bastards!” “Bring them,” Miss Monica said, turning to Kirby, her antennae stiffly erect and her extra long fingered hand was held out as if to place the sacrificial pair within reach. Kirby pushed the youngsters behind him. “Fukk naw!” Miss Monica’s feathery mothlike antennae rippled. Amos drew himself up to his full 6’3″ height. ” Gettin’ salty mouthed in your old age, peasant?” Kirby stood with teeth visible and gritted, his mind now filled with the visions of how he had witnessed the grand weirdling change of that place he had called home. Of seeing McKinley’s baby boy racing down the street in tears as the physic light haze rolled across the city, the youngster’s convulsions when the haze rolled over him, and his transformation, and then,eventual death. Ella. Kirby drew his gun just when the shotgun blast echoed in the quarry. Willy fired point blank into one of the man apes who had crept up on he and James. The man ape’s companion was sent to oblivion by a bolt from James who felt the thickening of the presence within the looming quarry wall. The remaining being dropped behind a rusting frame of a tractor. It brought up its Pilgrim rifle and fired off three booming shots in the pair’s direction. Kirby pushed the awakening twins towards the limo. “Git yo asses inside and on tha flo! Move!” Amos had raced towards the firefight, both hands raised above his head as if carrying a burden. Miss Monica turned towards Kirby. ” Bring those damned ones to me and I’ll let you die swift and without pain, Fool!” “Pick up on this Beyatch!” Kirby was sent off his feet and slammed into the side of the limo before he could fire his revolver. With an uplifting of Miss Monica’s eerie hand Kirby, before even catching his breath, was picked up and thrown over the roof of the limousine! James saw the figure of Amos coming towards them. Just in time he got up a shield that was splashed with a now visible light, that stank of dark domains. Amos stopped, surprised but before he could recover James released a whirling ball of bright blue light that blasted Amos off his feet, shredding his clothing and leaving a shoe on the ground. Amos skidded across the floor of the quarry then rolled over head over heel into the dank pool. He staggered to his feet,wet, muck draped, and stunned. James quickly sent another ball his way and it atomized Amos who left behind his scream of shock and pain. James ran towards the distracted Miss Monica. She turned upon him and sent a wave of dark death his way. He raised his shield swiftly but the impact pushed him back. ” You cannot handle me, alleyway conjurer!” ” I don’t want to hold your ass, ho!” Their attacks met and flared a rainbow light in the crash. James felt the impact down to his feet. He drew up all his reserves for now he knew he dealt with a True Foul One! ” Hey! Monica!” The gunshots and their resultant bullets spun Miss Monica, her yellow robes twisted about her. ”You double crossing filth!” It was all Miss Monica said before James released his great beam of blue white light that struck Miss Monica in her back. She Screamed in the light,her form stiffened in a pose of electrified agony. ” Lemme help you out, baby!” Willy pumped off a round that disintegrated her head. The smouldering blackened robes dropped to the ground “Good seein’ ya Will,” James said after a steadying of himself from the effort he had unleashed. Will waved a finger at James but kept a frowning face on Kirby. He stared Kirby directly in his eyes, despite the night and the distance between them. Kirby felt the Stare. And he knew what he’d better do. He sent his pistol sliding across the limo’s roof and raised his hands high. He sidled around the limo, taken aback as the twins clambered from the limo and ran towards the unarmed stranger. James listened closely, the twins had a very accented American English speech with many a strange word in the vocabulary of it, and they were talking rapidly and in turns. ” Hey Will! These two aren’t from around here. They’re from a similar, yet different place!” Willy hadn’t taken his eyes off Kirby. ” I thought theys might been sorority and fraternity folk,” Willy replied, his weapon held now at port’ . James walked with the twins over to the statue like Kirby. The girl twin ran to him and clasped Kirby’s hand in grasp of thanks, that had Kirby steeling himself for the shotgun blast. ” Thunk ya meesta, thunk ya very,very mooch! Ya saved me and me brudda’s lives,” she said in an East Bank speech. ”Yeah, ya done saved us, but it seem yo azz be in tha wrong cowpen now!” the brother said looking between Kirby and the two other men. James came closer, but stood out of blast range and any desperate action by Kirby. ” You were a part of this,” James said slowly and distinctly. ” But not all the way it seems. How that got brought out?” Kirby looked from James and back to Willy again. ” Tell ‘em how come meesta!” the twins said together. ”Jist wasn’t right,” Kirby said more to the twins. ” I saw what dem two did to mah hometown and all tha people they changed inta gotdamn monkey-thangs. Whut fo they wuz about that?” ”Trying to unleash and combine a scattered entity, spread across the lands of space and time. All set to the tune of places like ours. It’s weave of magic that they had came across, promised the pair great influence in the worlds woven together by such deeds as this intended sacrifice,” James said, so the trio of strangers could both hear and comprehend. Both twins put a hand to mouth, stretched their eyes and nodded their heads. Kirby frowned. Willy walked beside James. ” Whut you got plan now, J-Wizard?” James looked skyward. The trace of the three shooting stars had faded from the nighttime sky awhile ago. James felt the malign essence in the quarry wall had also burned out. ” You got the keys to the brougham there?” James looked and asked Kirby. Kirby shook his head. ” That’s alright. I’ll hotwire the mutha. Get on in. I’ll send ya home.” Kirby bugged his eyes. “Dere’s sumthin ta go back too?” Willy scooped up Kirby’s pistol and handed it to him barrel first. ” Yeah, there is. What you three gotta do from now is try’n keep it that way. I’ll put it this way. With these,” James spat in distaste. ” Foul Ones disposed of, y’all find things pretty much like it was, back there. But, there are other Foul Ones and those in their stream, if not as weighty as this ho was, menacing nonetheless. You wanna take em on?” ”Hell yeah!” both Kirby and the male twin said as one. The girl thought a little longer. ” Yeah. Yeah. It be sumthin’ need to be dun,” she said nodding her head in assent. Willy watched as the limo drove through the dimensional rift, still amazed at such a sight. James steadied himself on a boulder, the effort still calling forth a lot from him, unlike Grandpa Henry and a couple of relatives who acted like it was being tickled by a feather. Willy, with concern in his voice asked,” You okay, man?” James waved to him. “Yeah. That takes some used to callin’ up a rift, that’s all. at least for me!” Willy nodded his head. “Good luck to em! Hey! It’s goin’ on quarta ta four. You wanna stop at that place ovah in Saneerville that serves up that breakfast wit hashbrowns?” ”Diamond’s will be open when we get back. You tryin’ ta say you don’t like theirs?” ”Depends on who back there. Wat’s today? “Thursday. Gil’s in the kitchen.” Willy smiled.”That’s alright then! Gil don’t be greasyin’ up his stuff like Bethunia and Perry be doin’ at breakfast.”
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 02:30:44 +0000
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