Map Theory

Maps are windows to the past, though many hold a map and pretend they see the future. “Here is where I will go,” they say pointing to a location on a map. That location represents their future to them, but it is actually the past. If I hold a map created in ancient Greece that depicted the streets and shops in Troy, I could point to a location and say, “I’m going there,” but it is impossible. I am pointing to a location that existed in the past, that does not exist today, nor will it exist tomorrow. Hold a street map of New York City, created in 1999, and locate the World Trade Center. Plan your route from any other location in New York to the World Trade Center. Your route is meaningless as you are attempting to travel into the past, into a time when the World Trade Center existed. Sure, you can occupy the exact same coordinates of the World Trade Center as the map indicates, but you will not be at the World Trade Center.

Even if you rely upon real time satellite imagery to take a picture of a city, the picture is of the past, at least is the past by the time you see it. It may only be a few seconds into the past, but it is only an indicator of how the place will be in the future.

Do not trust maps to plan your future. All we know for certain is we are here, right here, at this moment, and this place is as we see it. We can make predictions regarding how it will be in the very near future, but have no way of knowing how it will be in the far future.

“Don’t worry, I have a map.”

Maps, like plans, are crutches. At some point they are almost as valuable as folklore as a way to navigate your future. An explorer has gone to and returned from a remote location, created a detailed map of his journey. He hands you the map and say, “You too can make this journey.” No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to replicate the explorer’s journey. The terrain shifts over time. What has been marked on the map as a creek is now a raging dangerous river. A clearly indicated path on the map has become overgrown with underbrush. Safe drinking water has been become tainted, and a cave used for safe lodging has been taken over by a large bear.

We can’t help but use voices from the past to help guide our way into the future, but we must be fully aware, the past is the past and the future is unwritten, unexplored. Our journey to the future is a singular one. We cannot follow another person’s footsteps exact enough to duplicate his successes and failures. If someone tells you he has the map to success, you know that the map is faulty because it only represents how success was accomplished in the past, not how it can be accomplished now or in the future.

The Umbral Gate, Part VI - FINAL

“Jesus Christ,” I stammered. Guided by fear, I inserted the key into the lock and opened the little hatch that protected the innocuous button that would detonate the five separate C4 blocks of explosives positioned inside the building at key junctures. The building itself was not the Umbral Gate, the building was just a manifestation of the gate. Torrance had explained that to me when he was in the process of buying it. If it were destroyed, something else would replace it as a gate between the two worlds. The explosives would be a temporary measure, used to slow down the cabal, hopefully slow them down long enough for the Night Coven to stop them on their end.

Torrance had spent quite a lot of time, going back and forth between this world and theirs, learning the Artes from Dame Elsbeth, performing feats of magic that scared the hell out of me. I had grown accustomed to it, though I still found it unnerving. The tattoos that were marked upon his skin gave him abilities no person could naturally have: the ability to see in the dark, increased strength and speed, and amazing endurance. My time with Torrance taught me all sorts of things about the world on the other side of the gate, though I had never seen it. He had told me about dragons and the different kinds of people that existed over there, never did he mention anything that related to this thing stalking down the halls toward him.

Torrance now held off both stickspinners with his shadowstaff. Though he was able to keep them at bay, he seemed unable to make any progress in beating them back. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the monitor. I sensed Rex moving, but I figured it was restless anxiety at being stuck in the midst of a fight that wasn’t his.

“Torrance will be destroyed shortly,” Rex said. I was shocked at his callous prediction and spun around to face him. He had rolled up the sleeves of his work shirt and I could now see a band of black tattoos inked around his biceps. Strength markings, similar to Torrance’s.

“What in the hell…,” was all I could say before Rex lunged at me.

“I cannot let you detonate those explosives,” he said, grabbing me by the shoulders and lifting me away from the control panel. With little effort he tossed me out of the tailer and stomped after me.

I was caught be surprised and the rough landing knocked the wind out of me. I struggled to my feet and pulled out my club. “Who are you, Rex?”

He stared at me, contempt written all over his face. “Rex. You called me that because you thought I followed you around like a puppy. Rex. It means king, you know, and it is suitable for what I’ll become when a permanent path is created through the gate.”

I was flabbergasted but I was now trying to circle him, to get closer to the door of the trailer. He seemed to be aware of my goal and stepped to block my path.

“We’ve known about you and Torrance for awhile, Ross. It was quite the scandal in the Night Coven when Dame Elsbeth announced she had trained one of your world to act as a warden on this side of the Gate. It was after we found out about Torrance that we decided we needed our own person on this side of the Gate as well. I slipped through two years ago, waiting for this moment. It was I who put up the beacon, the markings on the wall.” Rex was moving slowly forward, pushing me further away from the trailer as I attempted to keep a safe distance.

He continued, enjoying his moment of betrayal, “Right now, Torrance is not only engaged in combat with two of our finest warriors, but the Baron of the Cabal himself is surely now upon him. If the Baron made it through, that only means Dame Elsbeth and her group have been destroyed or disabled. Hope for your world is lost this night.”

“Hope is never lost!” I shouted back irrationally. I had no idea what I was saying. I just had that sinking feeling that I was the last defense we had against the Cabal and I wasn’t going to be able to fulfill that function with Rex standing between the detonator button and me.

He laughed at me and stepped forward to swing his fist at me. I ducked low and swung the club out, catching him in the side, right below his ribcage. I heard the grimace and then felt his magically empowered arms come crashing down against my spine. The pain was intense and I fell to the ground. My attempt to roll away was thwarted by Rex’s boot being kicked into my abdomen.

Summoning my strength, I grabbed hold of Rex’s leg like an annoying kid brother. I held on for dear life as he attempted to kick me with his other foot. That was what I was hoping for. As he lifted his other leg, I pulled hard on the one I was holding. Rex was thrown off balance and fell to the ground with me. It was my chance to make a break for the trailer. Scrambling on all fours until I could get to my feet, I dropped my club and held my stomach, running stooped over.

Rex was right behind me. As I reached the trailer, he caught me. His fist pummeled my back, throwing me forward with my momentum. My head crashed into the steps to the security trailer. All I could see was red and blood filled my mouth. My body ignored the pain and I still tried to move forward. I had to see how Torrance was doing.

I was able to get into the trailer before Rex grabbed hold of my ankle and tried to drag me back out. I kicked hard at his hands, probably doing my damage to myself than him, but one of my kicks loosened his grip enough that I was able to slip away. I had seconds to look over the monitors.

Torrance was fighting the Baron. The spinners were on the screen knocked out or dead on the floor, I wasn’t sure which. Torrance looked hellish, blood streaked across his face, his clothing torn, and his shadowstaff no where to be seen. The Baron stood easily a foot taller than Torrance and the Baron’s hand with their unearthly long gray fingers were lashing out at Torrance like whips.

Rex had come back into the trailer and I had to make a split second decision. I hit the detonator button with my hand.

The entire site shook as the C4 charges exploded. All the camera feeds to the monitors went dead. Plumes of dust and debris shot out of windows and openings in the building. Rex grabbed me and beat my head against the console until I passed out.

The Varek construction site was abandoned as the developer disappeared. The building was taken over by squatters again and rumors of ghosts and ghouls living inside the building became popular street talk in the area.

I quit my job with Varek and now sell newspapers at a newsstand across the street from the Warren. I never saw Rex again, but I know he’s out there. I hope Torrance is okay, but I haven’t heard from him since that night. I do know that the Gate was not destroyed. The Gate can’t be destroyed. It is just a labyrinth and sometimes the walls of a labyrinth move and a new path needs to be found. If that day comes, I will be here, doing what I can to stop them, because that is what Torrance would have wanted.

Umbral Gate Part V

“I noticed, from my vantage point crouched on the floor, that the stickspinners kept the sticks guarding their heads and upper body, but not their feet and ankles. Elsbeth’s goons most likely couldn’t notice this due to their proximity. I stood and sidled alongside Skirt’s foe. The sticks shifted slightly to protect the side I was on. I feigned a lunge, dropped down to my knee while delivering a brutal kick to the spinner’s foot. I was pummeled several times by the sticks: a few blows to the head and a hard blow against my ribs, shattering two of them. The sticks clattered to the ground though as the spinner stumbled from my kick. Skirt seized the opportunity and jabbed the spinner twice in the chest, pounded him in the face once and finished him with a powerful roundhouse kick that knocked him into the wall, busting the drywall and causing the spinner to collapse unconscious.

“I tried to roll out of the way to catch my breath and deal with the pain, I saw the Dame still battling the dragon. The beast had pushed its head inside the skylight and was now using its mouth to attempt to swallow Elsbeth whole. She kept it at bay with her staff, bludgeoning it in the snout and head. With deftness I’ve never seen, Elsbeth rolled backwards to avoid a lunging bite, and came to her feet. She held the staff like a spear, cocked her arm back, and hurled it at the dragon’s head as its mouth smashed into the floor. The staff hit true and penetrated the beast’s skull with a blinding flash of light. It took several frantic seconds for my vision to return to normal to see the result of the blow. Elsbeth moved away from the lifeless dragon, a black ichor oozing forth from the mortal wound. Skirt had stepped alongside Pants and together they were destroying the spinning sticks. Shard of wood flew away with each pounding blow and timed kick. The spinner, seeing he was now outnumbered backed away through the door, his protective sticks fell to the floor and he fled. The goons gave chase.

“The Dame Elsbeth walked over to me and knelt next to me as I attempted to sit up. She told me to stay down as she pulled a cloth from the inside pocket of her coat. Folded in the cloth was some sort of dried herb or something that she made me eat while she held her hands over my torso and chanted what sounded like gibberish. The pain slowly faded.”

“I must have passed out, though. The next thing I can remember was being hauled out of the Warren by two uniformed officers. I spent the night in the hospital and after I filed my report, I was given the chance to resign or being terminated for psychotic disorders. The police did a full sweep of the building and didn’t find anything that backed up my story except for the section of the floor that had caved in.”

Rex stared blankly. “And what happened between when you were with Paragon Security and now?”

Torrance smiled. “I did my own investigation which led me to understand quite a bit about the Umbral Gate and the world on the other side. The gate is a labyrinth, walk it correctly and you are transported to the other side.”

I had to interrupt. There was movement on the monitor. “We’ve got spinners!”

Torrance glanced at the monitor as he stood and stepped to the door. “Arm yourselves but stay near the trailer.”

Torrance stepped out of the trailer and it rocked as it righted itself. We watched him from the trailer door disappear into the building. Rex flipped a few switched and he appeared on a set of monitors. We followed his progress and the progress of two men who seemed to be covered in a haze on the monitor.

“What should we do?” Rex asked in anticipation.

“We sit tight. If they get through, I’ll have to take them out.”

“What do you mean? If Torrance and that Dame can’t stop them, how are you going to do it?”

On the panel that controlled the monitors, there was a small door with a lock. I reached into my shirt and pulled out a key. “The button beneath that hatch is connected to explosive charges that are set throughout the building.”

“Dear god!”

“We cannot allow them to come through.” Rex looked about nervously. “Don’t worry; the charges won’t collapse the building, only seal the exits. We are safe, relatively.”

Torrance walked carefully through the hallways. The spinners approached down a side tunnel. Torrance made a broad sweeping gesture with his arms and his hands glowed blue. As the spinners turned the corner and faced Torrance, Torrance thrust his hands forward and a stream of blue light shot out from both hands, blasting one of the spinners squarely. The spinner flew backward into the wall, but didn’t seem phased by Torrance’s attack.

The second spinner rapidly threw several knives at Torrance. Torrance reacted with extraordinary speed, dodging to the side, and then rolling forward. As he came up to his feet, a long dark staff appeared in his hands.

“There is something else coming,” Rex exclaimed pointing to one of the monitors. I took my eyes off of Torrance’s fight to look at what Rex saw. On the small thirteen inch monitor was a tall skulking man creature. He was so thin his gray skin revealed his freakish skeleton. He wore a long tattered black coat with a red poppy in the lapel. On his head, covering his long yarn like grayish black hair was a battered velvet black top hat with a satin band. Another red poppy stuck out of the black satin band. Four small metal spikes protruded from his sternum, and a chain ran from a ring in his ear to a ring to the side of his bottom lip.

The Umbral Gate, Part IV

“What in fuck was that?” Rex asked, using foul language in front of me for the first time.

“Not our concern.”

“Shouldn’t we report it? Call the police?”

I turned away from the monitors and told him to sit back. “The call was made, there is very little we can do right now except stay in this trailer and keep our fingers crossed.”

“I can’t believe you are shirking your responsibility,” Rex accused me.

I shook my head; “Let me finish telling you about Torrance, it will hopefully explain everything. The Dame Elsbeth summed up the situation for Torrance. In her world, there was a cabal that uses magic and crazy ass stuff like that, which I guess isn’t too strange given the other oddities, but they are bent on creating a domain in our world to escape the rules of their society and live here like gods. Dame Elsbeth claimed that not only would it be disruptive to our world but would signal a reign of chaos and destruction in hers.”

“This is crazy!” Rex shouted. “If you aren’t going to do your job, then I will.” Rex grabbed a flashlight and an extra container of pepper spray as he moved about the trailer in a huff. The boy had a sense of purpose. Guys like him don’t stay in jobs like this very long, but this time instead of just moving on, he was putting his life on the line. I wasn’t going to let him go, but I figured I’d let him burn off some of his nervous tension first. He finally got his stuff together and reached for the handle to open the door to the trailer.

“Hold up, Rex,” I said. Rex opened the door and took a step before stopping. Rex stood in the doorway aghast. He took two steps back inside the trailer and the doorway was filled with the form of a tall man. His face was pale and he wore a full-length black leather duster. Underneath the coat you could see a purple brocade vest covering a bone white satin or silk shirt. The man’s nose was a bit pointy and the goatee on his chin was perfectly trimmed. Along his brow and on his hands were odd black tattoos. Without hesitation he stepped into the trailer. As he put his booted foot inside, the entire trailer tilted slightly. The man was not a lightweight, though he didn’t look it. His height concealed his mass.

“Rex,” I said, “this is Torrance. Torrance, this is my partner, Rex.”

Torrance looked Rex up and down before he broke his silence, “Where were you rushing off to, Rex?”

Finding his voice Rex replied, “F-fourth floor, East Wing, there was something on the monitor.”

“Weren’t you told to wait?” Torrance asked.

“I’m just doing my job,” Rex replied, emboldened.

I stepped in. “I was telling him about your first experience with the Gate. He’s young and eager, though.”

Torrance indicated the building that was in the long process of being gutted and rehabbed behind them. “Nearly six years ago, this building was a falling apart, a haven for the lost, a hunting ground for all sorts of human predators. The interior may be undergoing a significant change, but it is still the Umbral Gate linking this world to a world unlike anything you can imagine. Inside that building is not your world, you have no authority there. Looking at you, you would most likely find your way to your grave in there.”

Rex lost his voice again and stood with his mouth agape.

Torrance looked over at me and asked, “What did you see on the fourth floor?”

“We saw the girl, the Gatekeeper,” I replied.

“How much did you tell Rex?”

“I told him everything up to Dame Elsbeth telling you about the cabal.”

Torrance looked back at Rex and told him to take a seat. “I want you to know what you may be facing tonight. You aren’t expected to do anything except keep yourself safe, which means no reckless charging into an area you were told to stay out of. Got it?”

Rex nodded.

“Good. When Dame Elsbeth of the Night Coven had me in the Chamber she told me about the cabal. The cabal is akin to the anarchist movement in our world, rebelling against the authority of the Night Coven. The cabal doesn’t care about the effect their actions may have on the world around them so long as they are freed from the dictates of the Lords and Dames of the Night Coven. To them, the Umbral Gate represents a chance to work their craft and live their lives without any authority. In our world, they wouldn’t have to bow to anyone. Their powers would be greater than anything we could imagine.”

Torrance looked around the small trailer and grabbed a chair to sit in so he didn’t have to stoop. He continued, “As the Dame told me this, there was an almost deafening noise from above. She and I looked up. Straddling the skylight was a giant winged reptilian creature – a dragon.”

Rex looked over at me as if I was suddenly going to shout “April Fools” but that wasn’t the case. I just nodded my head, affirming the truth of Torrance’s story.

“The dragon’s wings flapped and the wind nearly bowled me out of my chair. The Dame reacted quickly, reaching behind her and pulling out a staff that couldn’t have been there before. It just seemed to emerge from thin air. I rolled off the chair towards the wall when I saw her two goons, one I called Skirt the other Pants facing off against the two men I had originally spotted in the alleyway. They were members of the cabal. Something was blurring around them, though. At first I thought they had nanchaku or some other oriental weapon, but then I noticed their hands weren’t moving. There were six-inch wooden sticks spinning in a complex pattern around them. As they walked, the sticks continued to move relative to them.

“I crawled to the wall and glanced at the Dame fighting the dragon. She was fending off its massive clawed foot with her staff. Each time she struck it, a flash of white light burst forth from the staff.

“Pants lunged at one of the stickspinners, laying out a blistering attack at an incredible speed. His fists kept striking the spinning sticks, each blow was blocked by the twirling weapons. Skirt guy faced off with his opponent with the same effect. Though both of the Dame’s goons were relentless in their attacks, they were held at a standstill.

“I felt lost in the in that twisted other-worldly battle. For crying out loud, there was a dragon – a large greenish reptile from a god damned fairy tale on the roof above me attacking a woman with just a staff. How she was keeping it at bay was beyond me. Honestly, in my opinion at that time, both sides represented an equal threat to my survival, but the exit was blocked by the stickspinners and seeing that I had no desire to remain and see who would win out, the dragon or the Dame, I decided I needed to clear a path to the door.”

Torrance checked his watch and turned to me, “Which one is the fourth floor, East Wing monitor?”

I tapped one of the screens, “This one.”

“Keep a close eye on it," he commanded.

The Umbral Gate, Part III

Author's Note: 2 points to anyone who spots the Goth joke.

“Torrance told me that if he had fully realized what she meant, he would have turned around and walked out. But to him, in full cop mode, it sounded like an idle threat made by rebellious teens who thought they had created a society apart from the rest of the world. He charged up the stairs and burst through the stairwell door into an upper hallway that smelled of an old fire. The walls were badly scorched and the linoleum tiles had melted away in a large circular section exposing the subflooring.

“Not knowing how stable the section of the floor was, he tried his best to circumvent it by cozying up to the wall and moving as if he were on a very narrow ledge. Three-quarters of the way across, the subflooring started to crumble under his feet next to the wall. A large section collapsed beneath him, giving him just a split second to jump for the non-burned area of the floor. Another section under his legs gave way and Torrance found himself dangling nearly 15 feet above the floor below, where several people stared up in bewilderment before going about their lives again. I guess that was just the way of life in the Warren, sometimes the ceiling fell in, you just dust yourself off and move on. Luckily for Torrance, his upper body was already firmly in place and he was able to kick his leg up and roll away from the hole.

“Unluckily for Torrance, he found himself staring at three pairs of black boots. The pair in the middle had a four-inch heel, were shiny enough he could almost see himself in them, and went all the way up the most beautiful pair of legs he could ever possibly imagine seeing in his life. She wore a matching vinyl outfit that looked like a pair of shorts and a tight blouse that exposed her cleavage. The coat she wore buttoned under her breasts, enhancing them even further and the tail of the coat nearly touched the floor. Her hair was long and black, with the sections framing her face colored an intense red. Which matched her equally red lips.

“Torrance started to stand muttering to the woman, ‘Nice boots.’ She smirked and Torrance became aware of the two frail looking creatures flanking her. Both were tall, easily six feet, but thin as rails. The one of the right wore a long black skirt that pooled around his feet and a mesh shirt. His hair was long and dark, and he wore sunglasses. There were odd tattoos similar to the eyeless girl downstairs tattooed on his arms. The one of the left wore shiny black pants, no shirt covered his hairless chest but he did wear a black velvet smoking jacket trimmed in blue. His hair was also long and pitch black, pulled into a ponytail. Torrance called them her goons. Both stooped and took him by the arms, and heaved him upward with little effort. He has assumed, due to their appearance, these two were the blow away in a stiff breeze types. He had assumed heroin or some other wasting drug. Their visage hid their strength well.

“The woman commanded them to bring him to the Chamber, which turned out to just be a large room on the top floor. Torrance was too stunned from his near fall that he wasn’t sure what was going on. He let the two goons lead him for a few seconds before planting his feet and attempting to break away. He caught them by surprise and was able to pull away. He drew his pistol and aimed it at them. ‘Hold it right there!’ he commanded to them, ‘No one is taking me anywere.’

“The woman stared at him impatiently and issued another command, ‘Get him.’

‘I’ll shoot!’

The two goons didn’t seem phased by his threat and closed in on him. Torrance pulled the trigger on the gun, once, twice, three times. Nothing happened. The pistol just clicked. Skirt grabbed the gun from his hand and tossed it to the side while Pants landed a punch into Torrance’s stomach, causing him to bend over in pain. Another blow to his back knocked him to his knees. Once again the goons picked up him by the arms and this time dragged him through the hallway, up two flights of stairs and into a large room. Torrance got dumped into a wooden chair and the woman took a seat in a chair facing him. The two goons flanked her once more.

“The room once had a skylight that ran the full length of the room. The glass had long since been smashed out. Torrance noticed the sky was unusual, the closest he had ever seen anything like it was the aurora borealis with intense wavering colors. It filled the sky and was so bright no stars could be seen. He knew nothing like that was going on when he entered the building. At that moment, he did feel like he was in another world.

“The woman asked him why he was there and he responded by asking who she was. He still had the residual confidence that his back up was on the way. She answered his question with a lot of stuff he didn’t understand. He understood the language, but none of the words made sense in the way she was using them. Her name was Dame Elsbeth of the Night Coven, guardian of the Umbral Gate. Everything she said boiled down to a few nuts and bolts. She was charged with the task to watch the Umbral Gate – the Warren, which for some reason was a link between her world and ours. Within the building the two worlds mingled casually, but it was her sworn duty to prevent our world from going into hers and her world from coming into ours. She was keenly interested in how Torrance had entered her world.

“Torrance described all the events that led up to that moment. After he mentioned the graffiti, Dame Elsbeth became visibly disturbed. She had Torrance describe exactly what he had seen. When he did all she said was, ‘they are attempting to circumvent the gate.’”

Rex interrupted me and pointed at the monitors. They had all gone to static. I reached over and toggled a few switched, turning the monitors off and on. They flickered back to their black and white images of various locations in the development site. Rex and I both cycled through the different views before stopping at one that had a lone dark figure standing in the hallway.

“That’s the fourth floor, East wing,” Rex said.

I didn’t say anything. There seemed to be a shadow enveloping the figure and I couldn’t even judge the size of the person. Whoever it was stepped forward and raised it’s face to the camera. As the face lifted, more light fell on it and both Rex and I gasped. It was a young girl with empty eye sockets. The screen flashed as it became inundated with light. As the light faded, the girl was gone.

The Umbral Gate Part II

“He said his regular calls were to oust loitering teens from coffee shops, take vandalism reports, and bust underage drinking, old guys who got off flashing Goth girls, and occasional possession of illegal substance kind of stuff. He said the only real gang activity was drugs, supplying the area’s insatiable demand for coke, x, and pot. This just meant that he kept a look out for possible drug activity to bust gangbangers, which earned him some attention down at the station. A cop needed a few big busts to get better assignments. So when he noticed some suspicious activity in an alley one night, he radioed in his location and set off investigating it.

“The alley was behind a building he said the police called the Warren. Abandoned for years, the ownership was constantly in question; it was filled with homeless kids and squatters. It was a different world inside. As Torrance headed down the alley, the two figures that caught his attention spotted him and bolted, climbing over the cyclone fence that blocked an entrance to the Warren and over a makeshift wooden barricade, disappearing inside. The wall where they had been standing had been tagged.”

Rex interrupted. “Like our wall?”

“I don’t know if it was like our wall, but Torrance said it was some pretty crazy graffiti, like nothing he had ever seen. He assumed it was a new gang moving in on the territory. He radioed in his location and told the dispatch that he was going inside the Warren after two suspicious male youths.”

I pulled out my brown paper lunch bag and pulled out a tomato. Being a bachelor meant not being picky about what you ate, and all I had in my fridge was three beers, this tomato, a container of potato salad, which scared me because I can’t recall the last time I bought potato salad, and a package of lunchmeat. I began eating the tomato and wiping juice off my chin.

“Inside the Warren was a different world. Torrance had said he had only heard stories about cops who went in, about how there are people everywhere, sleeping on top of conduits, in holes in the walls, and how the entire place seemed to be teeming with life that you can’t see. At night, by himself, Torrance was scared shitless, but his cop instincts told him to keep a cool and calm exterior. He moved through the halls quickly, his flashlight guiding him. He stepped over bags of clothes taken from salvation army drop boxes, kicked empty bottles of vodka and absinthe out of the way, and kept a close eye on the shadows.

“He could sense being watched, though he couldn’t see anyone. He realized that most likely the two men he was chasing had a much better knowledge of the layout of the Warren than he did. He knew he would have to proceed cautiously in case of an ambush.

“As he crept through the halls, he noticed a young girl slumped against the wall. Her head was pressed to her knees. He shined his light on her and asked if she had seen anyone come by in the past few minutes. She didn’t respond to him so he stepped closer and repeated himself. He was right up next to her, leaning over slightly, the flashlight held steady on her. Torrance began to repeat his question. The girl’s head snapped up. Torrance, already nervous due to being in the Warren by himself, startled and dropped the flashlight; which bounced and rolled into the trash. The bulb shattered from the impact, though it was supposed to be immune from such simple bumps and knocks.”

I paused. I could feel my heartbeat racing. I still remember Torrance describing all of this to me in such vivid detail. I wiped my mouth with a paper towel I was using as a napkin. Rex seemed enthralled, waiting for the next part.

“Her eyes,” I continued, “were just empty sockets. The skin of her face was as white as porcelain, as white as this piece of copy paper. Tattooed all around her eye sockets were intricate black markings – many looked like the graffiti Torrance had seen in the alley.

“She spoke to him in a raspy voice, a voice that sounded much older than the body it came from. ‘You don’t belong here,’ she said to him. ‘You should leave, you are in danger.’

“Torrance shuddered at the sound of her voice and the sight of her, though he couldn’t really see her now without his flashlight, but the brief moment he saw her face was burned into his mind. He was deeply affected by this girl, but he wasn’t going to let her know he was freaked out. In his most authoritative ‘move on, nothing to see here’ cop voice he asked if anyone had been by in the past few minutes. She answered in her raspy voice, ‘the ones you seek went up the stairs, but you won’t find them, they are not of your world and you have no authority in theirs.’”

The Umbral Gate, Part I

Author's Note: This text has been edited from when it was first posted to add necessary elements to make the ending more solid. I guess this is why I should only post finished works, but I really wanted to get parts of this story up for comment. And thank all of you who do leave comments. They do mean a lot to me.

Rex was a rookie and his name wasn’t really Rex, I just called him that. His actual name was Aden. Aden. What type of name is that? Anyway, he was my partner assigned to me as we worked construction security for Varek construction. His voice cackled over the radio, “Mr. Nolen? This is Aden, over.”

I grabbed the radio from my belt, “Call me Ross, Rex, what’s up? Over.”

“Well, sir, it looks like vandals broke in, spray painted all sorts of shit, uh, stuff all over one of the walls down here. I saw one of them head up some stairs. Please advise. Over.”

I ground me teeth a bit. “I’ll be right down. Stay put. Over and out.”

It didn’t take me long to leave the little trailer set up for security to get to Rex’s position. Sure enough, one wall had been tagged. “We’ll do a write up,” I said.

“A write up, shouldn’t we go after that guy?” Rex asked, antsy for his first real confrontation.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I walked back to the trailer following me like the dog I imagined him being when I decided his name should be Rex. We got back inside the trailer, I checked the closed circuit TV monitors for any activity and then told Rex to sit. I had to make a phone call and it wasn’t to the police or Varek, it was a special number given to me by the owner of the building. The voice mail picked up and all I had to say was, “The gate had been opened.”

I turned to Rex. “I’m going to tell you a story, told to me awhile ago by one of my partners.

“I’ve had a lot of partners in the six years I’ve worked for Paragon Security. You are like my thirteenth I think. Some of them were really unique. Like Jersey Joe. Did you ever hear about Jersey Joe?”

Aden indicated he hadn’t.

“Well, his name really wasn’t Jersey Joe, I just called him that because he had what I think was a New Jersey accent and drank a lot of coffee. I mean he drank it like it was brewed crack or something. He would go on long rants about his totally psychotic family. I swear to god most of the urban legends you hear originated with Jersey Joe’s family.

“His brother lost a leg while changing a tire because his brother used a crowbar lever to lift the car and a sandbag to hold it down. As he sat, one leg sprawled under the car he didn’t notice the sandbag slipping off the end of the crowbar. WHAM! The bag slipped off, the car came crashing down on his leg.” Rex grimaced as I slammed my hand down on the desk.

“See, the way Jersey Joe told it, his brother probably could have kept the leg if the ambulance had been called sooner, but the brother’s wife yelled at him for being a dumbass for a good thirty minutes. I guess each person handles stress differently.”

Rex nodded, still not understanding what I was talking about. That’s okay; I don’t like to get right to the point regarding things like this.

“Of all my partners, I enjoyed and feared working with Torrance the most. Torrance was kind of creepy because he always had a distant far away look about him like he was looking out over the horizon. I also doubt he bathed regularly and I am certain the security uniform was the only clothing he owned. Late into the shifts, he would tell the most spellbinding stories you can imagine. During all this time, even though his stories were way out there, I never doubted him for a moment. Torrance just wasn’t the kind of guy you openly doubted anyway. He had that odd intensity, what’s it called… gravitas about him that just made you believe what he was saying.

“The two of us starting working together at Crossgate Mall. Mall security was the best, just walk around and check doors to make sure they were locked. I loved it. It also provided ample opportunity to talk, though Torrance wasn’t talkative at first. I broke the silence by asking how he became a security guard. He looked at me like I asked if I could dig up his mother’s grave and use her ribcage as a sousaphone…”

“You mean xylophone,” Rex interrupted.

“Yeah, whatever, as a musical instrument. See, all types end up in this job. There are guys like you who get out of high school and are drifting until they fall into something better like marrying some girl who’d dad owns a business or something. Then there are guys like me who couldn’t afford college, took a job to help pay, end up getting some girl pregnant, get stuck in the job, get a divorce, have child support payments, and end up dead from alcohol poisoning at the age of 56. Then there are guys like Torrance who will never fit any sort of mold. His story was unique.” I had to stop a second and do a quick run through on all the monitors. If the kid saw someone go up the stairs, there was a chance I might be able to spot them on the monitors. Getting a visual would help me understand exactly what we were up against.

“Anyway, he told me I wouldn’t believe him if he told me. I shrugged. I didn’t believe Jersey Joe’s sister was stupid enough to mistake a rat for a Chihuahua but the picture he had proved me wrong. The point being there is a lot of stuff in this world that is hard to believe – hard to believe does not mean it isn’t true.

“Torrance had only said that as a warm up though because I didn’t have to press him to get him to start telling me. The way he picked through his words was like this was the first time he ever spoken about it.

“He told me he used to be a beat cop in the city. One of those policemen who walked instead of driving around in his patrol car. Paragon had a lot of cops, active cops, retired cops, and ‘other’ cops. The other cops were the biggest problems. They were usually bad cops given the option to leave with benefits or be fired. Cops protecting the brotherhood. These others always had something to prove. Always trying to be tougher, roughing up the people we have to chase away, that kind of thing.

“Torrance walked the area called Carfax Abbey.”

Rex stared blankly at me. Probably the same look I gave Torrance after hearing that.

“Yeah, I didn’t know what it was either. He said it was the section of the city where all the Goths hung out. There were clubs, coffee shops, new age bookstores, and that type of crap in a few blocks radius. In the novel Dracula, Carfax Abbey is the place in London Dracula buys.

Winter Lake

Winters in Montana were never mild when I was growing up there. The snow always threatened to bury the house, or at least cover the windows on one side of the house. One of my earliest memories of winter in Montana was that of a small Franklin stove. God bless Benjamin Franklin for his invention. Actually, to be technical, God bless David R. Rittenhouse who took Franklin’s flawed design of a freestanding cast-iron stove and made it work. Good ol’ Ben had originally designed his stove so the smoke would exit from the bottom, failing to realize that smoke rises and fire needs oxygen. His design did produce a stove that radiated a lot of heat, but wouldn’t stay lit for extended periods of time. Rittenhouse redesigned the stove with a pipe on top.

I loved that stove. I would awaken in the cold morning well before the sun broke over the mountains to the east and hover near the stove. It was on these mornings I would cherish the cinnamon toast and hot chocolate my mom would make for me. My dad would have already left for work. Often his would be the first tire tracks out on the long dirt road that lead to the main paved road.

As I grew up, winter was more than just cold and snow. The hill that led down to the lake became an ultimate sledding course. The lake itself would freeze over with ice sometimes two feet thick and would become the largest ice skating rink I have ever known. I loved ice-skating on that lake. At night, the frozen lake would speak and sing. The ice was always under some form of stress and that stress would result in cracks erupting. Each crack was a voice and sometimes the voices gathered into choirs. As spring approached, the ice would get more talkative. On a good day I would skate from my house, to Kim’s Marina, into Chinaman’s Campground, over to Yacht Basin, around Cemetery Island, back to home. That would take me about three hours. I would do this alone, which wasn’t without risk.

I never fully realized the risks involved until that one winter when I was skating along and hit thin ice and fell in. I sank with the weight of the skates on my feet and struggled to get my arms on the ice, but the ice kept breaking. Turning towards shore, I kept breaking the ice until my feet touched bottom and then continued moving towards land. I don’t have a recollection of being cold, I think fear and adrenaline kept me warm enough. As soon as I hit the beach, I ran the best I could with my skates on towards the house. I was luckily over an area that was called ‘the point’ which was a stretch of beach on the north side of Magpie Bay, which wasn’t too far from home. The run home was cold, that I do recall keenly. My fingers and toes were numb and I was shivering like mad. The frostbite was minor, but to this day, a good blast from the air conditioner will make my ears, fingers, and toes burn and ache.

I understood from that moment on, the true treachery of that area of the lake. It didn’t take much warmth in that are for that section of the ice to melt away when the rest of the lake was still several inches thick. Unfortunately, not enough people knew this. One winter’s night when I was in high school, I was getting a hair cut from my mom. I noticed a light flashing from the lake. On closer inspection, it was coming from a man stranded out there. I grabbed an orange water float that was meant to be pulled behind a boat and ran out to the point to help guide the man ashore. He had been following the tracks of his father’s homemade snowmobile when he got to this section. The ice was cracking around him and he was unsure of where to move to get back to safety. Luckily he had been on foot and was able to hear the sounds and sense the fragility of the ice. His father who had been out on the snowmobile much earlier in the day, didn’t have that notice and plunged through the thin ice. His father had fallen into the iced over lake a dozen yards away from where I fell in. I only had to move several feet to find footing, no one knows what conditions under which that man was struggled.

As the lake thawed with the approach of spring, the ice would melt away from the shore, leaving a giant tantalizing raft of ice floating out in the center. The air would be warm, the ground was wet instead of frozen and talk among my brothers and sisters would turn from winter things to who would be the first in the lake. If there were any Rites of Childhood for me, attempting to be first in the lake had to be one of the most cherished. How hard could it be, in March and sometimes April, when the lake was shedding it’s icy crust, to take a dip. The water was crystal clear and so tempting. The lake was cold, but feeling it with your hand, you couldn’t see how it was so cold as to prevent you from taking that quick dip and thus earning the title First In The Lake.

Dressed in bathing suits a few would line up and make their attempts. Some would get to their knees, few would get to their waists, and I dare say that I have no recollection of anyone going in all the way. As the ice disappeared completely and the sun was out longer, eventually someone would get in, but by that time the boaters were already on the lake and the title was a bit more meaningless because summer was around the corner.

Unfettering

He dangled, in midair, his right arm stretched skyward.

Pain burned through his hand, down his outstretched arm and into his bare torso. Nothing was actually visibly wrapped around his wrist, but he felt it. Whatever it was obviously suspended him, within a darkened void. No walls, no floor, no ceiling around him at all. Only a faint bit of light from far below him gave any indication that there was anything else around at all.

He struggled against the pain for conscious thought.

‘What is my name? Fucking pain! No. Nothing like that.’

Tears left him long ago. Tears don’t heal this kind of pain. He felt his heartbeat in his wrist, each beat causing a jolt of pain.

‘I must be a tortured hero. I must have delivered fire unto humanity in defiance of the gods.’

Once in a while a cold draft would blow pass him, sending a shiver through his naked, dependent body. A particularly strong wind would start him swaying, increasing the pain that his body could never quite adapt or adjust itself to. Each moment was like experiencing the excruciating pain for the first time. The muscles, ligaments, and tendons that held his arm and should together were slowly pulling apart. His shoulder would soon become dislocated.

‘Jacob. No. That’s my dad’s name. Thomas begets John. John begets Jacob. Jacob begets Mark. Mark. My name is Mark.’

Eternal pain. How long has it been?

Mark winced and breathed deeply which caused a slow spin. With his head hanging listlessly, he forced his eyes open, like he had done before, to see what he could see. A dark room, a void. Mark rolled his head to the side to look at his wrist. He squinted and though he could see the tether. A forged iron chain, each link covered in thorns, a hellish rose stem, twisted into binding links. The thorns pierced his flesh. In the dim light from below, Mark could make out dried blood all down his forearm.

‘How did I get here? What hell is this? What god have I offended? Forgive me my daily trespasses… my hourly trespasses… forgive my ignorance and my malice… if I had known this would be my punishment I would never have committed whatever sin it is I did that warranted this punishment.’

Mark thought of a scene he had read in the book Dune a thousand years ago, in the beginning of time, in the beginning of the pain. A young man was tested for his humanity by putting his hand in a box that caused pain. Dune. Paul. The test was to see if Paul would pull his hand from the box or if he would withstand the pain. Only a human would endure the pain. An animal would flee it.

Mark bowed his head trying to see through the darkness below him, trying to see what caused the dim light to shine. He could see nothing. With his remaining energy, he twisted his arm violently. The pain paralyzed his ability to scream, but he kept twisting his arm. Gashes appeared around his wrist, blood gently flowed. Mark struggled against his bond. He felt his flesh shred, but he didn’t stop his frantic thrashing. Mark looked like a fish caught on a hook, being lifted from the safety of the water.

He was an animal, not a human. The pain must have an end. A coyote would chew its own leg off to escape a trap. Isn’t that better? Escape the pain. Does it take courage to inflict a greater amount of pain upon yourself in hopes of ending all pain?

Mark didn’t care anymore. The chain ground against his bones now. He feared the fall, the descent into the darkness, the descent towards that dim light. The light of hope, or the light of a hell worse than this one.

‘Put a frog in boiling water and the frog jumps out. Put the same frog in a pot of water over low heat and it will remain there until it is cooked to death.’

Mark hoisted himself up, trying to grab hold of the chain with his left hand. His hand only touched air where the chain should have been. Tired from his efforts and overwhelmed by the pain, Mark slipped from consciousness.

All around Mark’s dependent body, drafts of air and winds whispered to him.

‘Don’t fight it, Mark,’ whooshed the winds.

‘The pain of hanging here isn’t so bad.’

‘Why trade a known for an unknown? The pain of hanging could be much better than the pain of falling, unsupported, into the void.’

‘Once you fall, you cannot return.’

‘Some actions cannot be undone.’

Mark didn’t know how long he had been unconscious. Time was meaningless in the void. When he finally woke, he noticed the skin of his arm had started to heal over the chain. He begged for death. Why wouldn’t he die from blood loss at least?

Without hesitation, he began in earnest to free himself. The sharp chain worked its way up his hand, peeling the skin along the way. Mark lifted himself up and let himself drop. Each drop peeled more skin. Each drop sent shockwaves of pain through his entire body. Each drop was closer to being free, closer to death, salvation, or damnation.

Another drop and the chain sliced through the bone of his thumb, which now tumbled into the darkness. Mark could feel the chain slipping up along his hand without his help. He was afraid now of the fall. He curled his fingers to catch the loop and to hold on tightly. Who was he to question the will of the gods?

There was no strength left in his hand and his fingers couldn’t hold onto the chain. Mark tumbled into the void. There was no scream.

He fell in the void.