"Not Even Close To Nowhere"
May. 27th, 2022 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Not Even Close To Nowhere"
8/11-8/13/2016
I.
"We've hit rock bottom before but this time we're digging under the rock," Perry grumbled. Steam had stopped pouring out from under the hood of the fourteen-year-old Ford Taurus but there was not enough light to see what was wrong anyway. Under the stars of a Utah sky without a moon, strange twilight showed enough for him to see his cousin. She was rummaging about in the trunk.
"Here's the flashlight," Kari called out. "Batteries are as dead as a week-old fish stick. It figures, it figures. I wonder how close we made it to Salt Lake City, anyway."
"Look around you," her cousin yelled. "Highway for a hundred miles in front of us, highway for a hundred miles behind us. We're not nowhere, we're not even close to nowhere!"
Everyone thought Perry and Kari Costigan were twins, but actually they were cousins born to sisters who actually were twins. Kari and Perry had been born a week apart in the same hospital. Both cousins were about five feet ten, thin and a bit coltish at nineteen. Both had curly reddish-brown hair, dark green eyes and long narrow faces with upturned noses. They could wear each other's clothes and sometimes did.
"Anyway, we don't have any tools and neither of us would know how to use 'em if we did," she pointed out.
"You got a point," Perry admitted ruefully. "No cell service way out here, my phone's not even showing one bar."
"Damn damn damn. Nothing has gone right for us. We're broke until we reach that job offer in Salt Lake City. The woman said she would front you a week's salary once we turned up. My cards are maxed out. All I have is a single and some change in my pockets."
"I've still got that twenty in my shoe..."
"That stinky thing!" Kari laughed. "You've been walking on it for so long I bet it's imprinted on your foot."
"Not enough for a tow truck, even if we could call one." Perry leaned back against the battered Taurus with its strip of rust around the rear wheelwell and the driver's outside rearview mirror held on with black electrical tape. "You're the smart one, they say. What's your best idea?"
Kari Costigan put her fists on her hips and turned to gaze back in the direction from which they had been driving. She was wearing baggy jeans with one knee out and a blue checked flannel shirt with the tail hanging down behind her. "Um. Hmm. Well, we know there's nothing back that way. We drove since dawn and saw nada along the way. So our chances of finding something up ahead are unknown but probably better."
"Almost zero is better than actual zero? I suppose. Maybe some lonesome farmer will think you're hot and give you a ride while I have to sit in the back with the chickens."
Kari laughed. "At least you'd finally make some friends." She reached around in the back seat of the Ford and handed him his backpack, while getting her own gear. All she had brought was the bookbag she had used in high school and those six months at the community college, now stuffed with clothes. "I guess that's everything."
"Didn't I have a can of Red Bull?"
"Aw, I drank that while you were snoozing," she said. "Sorry, I was driving and needed the caffeine." She shouldered her bag and started hiking, and after a second's hesitation Perry followed her. It was chilly out on the desert at night, a real change from the suffocating heat of the day that had killed their car. They walked along in silence for a while before Kari began, "If we had stayed with my Dad after the divorce-"
"Don't get into that again. His new girlfriend was in your class at college, for God's sake. The last thing she wanted was the two of us around and Dad is so hopelessly whipped he went along with it. If we make it to the city, your Mom's pal at the bakery promised us jobs."
"Big thrill. Large charge," she said. "I don't really want a boring life baking bread and icing cakes! I want some excitement... Wait. Hold still."
Puzzled, he stopped in mid-stride and came over next to her. "What now?!"
"I heard something. Out there." She put her finger to her lips. "Listen."
The hissing was not loud, but it was unnervingly close. They could see nothing. Without a word, both cousins started walking quickly and broke into a full run as the hiss followed them. Heavy footsteps scraped in the dry earth nearby.
"Oh God oh God," Kari breathed, taking the longest strides she could.
"A.. big snake? No, it can't be, it's walking." Her cousin turned his head to glance back and screamed. "Don't look, Kari! Run!"
Suddenly there was a horse-drawn wagon in the road directly in front of them. They had no idea how it had appeared there. The ten-foot-long wagon was wood painted off-white, with a red gingerbread-style roof and symbols on both sides of the outline of a row of horseshoes in red as well. Sitting on the front platform with his feet on the buckboard, holding the reigns of the single white horse, was an old man with silver hair down to his shoulders.
"Hurry, climb in the back!" he ordered them sharply. "The door's open."
Frantic and confused but not inclined to hesitate at the moment, Perry and Kari ran around and scrambled in through the unlatched door at the rear of the wagon. The door slammed shut by itself behind them, they heard the stranger make a clucking noise and the horse swung around to pull the wagon back in the direction it had been coming from.
"Yes, I hear it, too, Senior. Never you mind. The crawling ones couldn't catch you on their best day." The silver-haired driver in the old-fashioned frock coat leaned back over his shoulder to talk through the open panel behind him. "Are you children all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, we're okay... but," Kira hesitated. "But look at the inside of this thing."
II.
The interior of the wagon somehow was much roomier than they had expected. Light came from a wrought iron gaslamp up near where the driver sat outside. One wall had a leather bench long enough to sleep on, as was confirmed by the folded blankets and pillow at its end. The other was a bench seat wide enough for two people to sit comfortably. The walls held many cabinets and shelves beautifully carved from dark wood, and both benches opened up to reveal storage space within. In one corner was bolted a cast iron coal-burning stove with a chimney that led up to the ceiling.
What confused them and what made it hard to concentrate was all the knick-knacks and curios stuffed into every opening. Bizarre little figurines in jade, bits of gemstones, bright bird feathers bundled together on sticks, charts of esoteric symbols, ancient coins hanging on cords, even a niche from which the ends of tattered scrolls protruded. The interior had a warm, pleasant scent of cedar. The more they stared, the more grotesque odds and ends became noticeable. That couldn't be a real shrunken head inside a glass jar? Or one of the toy dancers with a ukelele and grass skirt that tourists bought in Hawaii?!
"Whoa," Kari breathed.
"Yeah, I kinda like it. Hey, thank you, mister! We sure appreciate the ride."
"My pleasure," answered the old man. "Some company on an exceedingly long journey is most welcome."
"I'm Perry Costigan and this is my cousin Kari, Mr...?"
"Oh, everyone just calls me Traveler. My name seems challenging for Americans to pronounce. What brings you two young folks way out here where there is such danger?"
"Our car broke down," Kari answered. "Wait, what WAS that thing that was stalking us? A snake, a lizard, what?"
"I'm afraid you will find out all too soon," came the unhelpful answer. The driver swung around to gaze back in on his guests. He had a stern, deeply lined face but its severity was belied by the kindly voice. "I'm guessing you might want to open the cabinet right by the back door."
"Cookies!" chirped Kari. "Oatmeal cookies in a paper bag. And bottles of cold water."
"Baked them myself," Traveler chuckled. "Eat them all if you like, I've had my fill."
The cousins took him at his word and emptied a water bottle apiece. "Oh, that's better," said Kari. "I'm exhausted. Between us, Perry and I have been driving since late last night."
Traveler made a clucking noise at the horse Senior. "The road goes on forever, it seems. You might as well rest. I'll be up all night as I always am."
"Oh, thank God you came along," said Kari as she stretched out on the leather bunk and wadded the pillow under her head. She fell asleep almost instantly.
Unlacing his hiking boots, leaning back on the shorter bench, Perry also felt more exhausted than he had ever been before. "Traveler? What made you turn up like that? Where'd you come from? I'd swear the road ahead was empty for miles."
"You summoned me," Traveler answered. "You wouldn't know of course, but that's a phrase of great mystic power. 'Not even close to nowhere.' When I hear it spoken, I know I'm needed." He turned his head back to find he was speaking to two slumbering guests.
III.
Sunshine coming down through the skylight in the roof woke them. Kari stirred, sat up smacking her lips and scratching up behind her shoulder blades. Her red hair was a tangled mess and her eyes would only stay open one at a time. It took several minutes of gazing around sleepily before she fully remembered the night before. The wagon. The old man and the horse... and whatever it was that had been chasing them.
Coming back to life, Kari found that Perry had dozed off propped up on the bench oppposite her, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was going through the same process and suddenly seemed fully aware. "Whoa. What a night. Hey, Kari, the wagon's not moving. We've stopped. I need to get out and take a leak behind a cactus or something."
"You and me both," she answered. "See, I brought a roll of toilet paper in my bag. I know what's important." She stood up, stretched, and unlatched the back door. As it swung open, she saw cars rolling by on a suburban street. She glanced at the slim gold-banded watch on her wrist and saw it was eight-twenty in the morning.
"That does it," Perry said as he climbed out of the wagon and stood up on the sidewalk. "I am all messed up. How did we get to a town in a few hours in a horse-drawn wagon? I am so confused."
"You and me both," his cousin repeated. She hopped out next to him and started working on her hair with a brush from her bookbag. "Perry, do you think something's wrong with us? We're having like memory lapses or something?"
He had gone around the side of the wagon and she followed. The white horse was still hitched to the wagon, which was itself lashed to a parking meter. Senior was a handsome animal, all white with a yellowish-tinted mane. He watched the two teens with a friendly eye, not nervous at their approach or at the traffic going by. There was no sign of Traveler. They were parked right in front of a two-story white house with a slate roof and a Ford Mustang parked in a short driveway.
"Look, we need to find a bathroom fast," Kari said. "I don't wanna have an accident right out in public."
"Yeah, yeah, hop up and down for a minute," her cousin dismissed her concern. "Sign on the corner says Cornell Street. I'm still lost."
The front door on the house closed sharply and they swung around. "This is something new," came a cool, unwelcoming voice. "Can I help you two?"
Standing on the steps in front of his house was a man with black hair flecked by white strands. He was six feet tall, gaunt and fit-looking in black slacks and a black long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up a turn. He was watching the two of them warily, as if expecting them to be up to no good. The man had pale, unfriendly grey eyes in a narrow face.
"Oh. Hi, mister," Kari replied, turning on her smile as appealing as she could make it. "This isn't our wagon. We were given a ride last night out on the desert.... I'm sorry, I'm desperate, can we use your bathroom please?"
"I guess," the man said. "Come on in." The man in black ushered them through the front door into a neat living room with no clutter at all, as if he had just moved in. There was a bathroom just past the stairs leading up to the second floor and he gestured at its open door. Kari rushed in, come out a few minutes later and Perry followed. They both had scrubbed their hands and faces while in there, but left the bathroom as untouched as they could.
"Oh, that's better," said the redheaded girl as she fumbled in a pocket for an elastic band to tie her hair back. "Thank you so much, Mr..?"
"Bane. Jeremy Bane. What's with the horse pulling a wagon?" he asked.
"That's part of the whole crazy story!" she said. She launched into the events of the previous night and Bane listened carefully. When she stopped to take a breath, her cousin finished, "And we just woke up a minute ago."
Bane said nothing for a second. "You two think you're in Utah, is that it?"
"Well, sure, we were on I-15 a few hours ago."
"This is Forest Hills. Queens, in New York City." Bane was watching their reactions without giving anything away about himself. His face and voice were so subdued it was difficult to say what he thought.
"New York...?" Kari was close to tears in her agitation. "I don't.. Perry, are we having memory lapses? Are we both epileptic or something? How did we get across the entire country like that?"
"Calm down," Bane told them as he tried to make his voice less intimidating. "Let me tell you that it's a strange world and unexplained things happen." He crossed over to pull the curtain aside on a wide picture window. The white wagon was still out there, with the horse Senior seemingly content to stand there. "Where's the man who drove that wagon?"
"Traveler? No idea. He was gone when we woke up," Perry said.
"Traveler, Traveler... That sounds familiar but I can't place it. Give me a better description." As he listened to details of the old man's frock coat and silver hair and stern face, Bane kept watch on the wagon in front of his house. "Any minute now, a police car is bound to pull over and start asking about that thing," he said. "I don't remember ever hearing about anyone who fits that description or uses the name Traveler."
Suddenly, Jeremy Bane plunged for the door in a burst of motion so quick and unexpected that the cousins had no idea what had happened. Kari's mouth was open as she was about to say something, so she closed it and opened it again before managing to get out, "Where did he go?"
The front door had been left open. The two teens went over and peered uncertainly outside. The man in black was across the street, coming back from the far corner with an angry aspect to his stride. No one else was in sight. He came back to is house and gave the cousins a hard glare that made them both shrink back.
"Someone was watching this house from across the street," he said sharply. "Six foot five, four feet wide, wearing an oversized tan raincoat and a floppy hat. He had on some kind of weird mask with a red and black snout. What do you two know about this!"
Now Kari really did start to cry, as the uncertainty and confusion of the past hours caught up to her. Her face wrinkled up and tears poured down her cheeks to her chin. "Nothing, we have no idea what's going on. Why are you mad at us? We haven't done anything wrong!"
Bane seemed to reconsider. He took Kari by one arm and motioned toward Perry for them to go sit down on the long black leather couch that sat facing the picture window at an angle. The cousins obliged and waited until Kari cried herself out in a few minutes, her reaction as much to relieve stress as anything else.
"Let me explain a little," Bane told them, pulling over an easy chair to face them. "I'm a retired Private Investigator. Sometimes I'm called Dire Wolf, it's an old nickname. I mostly handled events that were paranormal or supernatural or just weird, however you want to label them. Midnight War, it was called. Believe me, this business with the horse-drawn wagon traveling three thousand miles overnight is not the strangest thing I've dealt with."
"So you don't think we're crazy?" sniffled Kari as she wiped her face.
"You don't seem crazy," Bane said. "But something Midnight War is going on. That watcher across the street just now couldn't have possibly gotten out of sight in the half-second it took me to reach him but he did. His proportions were all wrong, too."
Staring past Bane at the picture window, where the curtains had been left open a minute ago, Perry Costigan said, "Now the wagon's gone."
The Dire Wolf again reacted so swiftly that it was confusing to the cousins. He was up and over by the window before they could process the information. This was rough on their already unsteady nerves. The man in black turned around to gaze steadily at his guests. "It's gone, all right. This is getting interesting. So, you two are supposed to be in Utah right now?"
"Yes, sir. Heading for Salt Lake City to start a job."
"And instead you're in Queens with no money and no transportation and just your backpacks. Have I got that right?"
Kari had gotten hold of herself. "That's.. that's about it."
"All right." Bane's manner had softened slightly, he seemed less intimidating and more at ease. Going over to a cabinet, he took out a wide red leather ledger and brought it back to where the cousins were sitting. "Either of you have a dollar bill?"
Digging in the pocket of her jeans, Kari came out with a crumpled piece of green paper that was torn halfway across its width and offered it. Bane said, "That's fine," and inserted it into the sleeve inside the ledger. He asked to see their driver's licenses and wrote down information. Then he filled out a receipt for the dollar, got them to sign it and gave them one of the copies.
"There. Now you are my clients for this investigation. That dollar was a technicalty, but now I have certain privileges when asking questions of people and when dealing with the police." He closed the ledger and put it away. "The Dire Wolf Agency doesn't have its office any more but I've kept my license valid."
He stood up and watched them, apparently still suspicious. "Maybe you haven't thought of it yet, but is someone waiting for you two in Salt Lake City?"
"Oh God, Mom's friend Clara," Perry said. "What should I tell her?"
"Just say that you're both fine but you'll be delayed indefinitely. Have Kari talk to her as well. There's an outlet over there if you need to charge your phone." Bane went back to the window and stood there. "There's no telling where whackiness like this is going to lead."
IV.
The rest of that morning shot by in activity. Kari and Perry were amazed at how this man Bane took charge. He called his travel agent and managed to get three seats on a flight late that day that would bring them from Newark Airport to arrive at Salt Lake City International Airport at eleven that night. He arranged to lease a new Ford Explorer to be ready for him at that same time. As the cousins sat and watched, he also called three people who apparently worked for him as information gatherers and asked about someone called 'Traveler' who might be associated with a horse-drawn wagon but here he got no results.
"This is where I miss Bleak," Bane said. "Poor old Bleak. He never let me down. Anyway, you two sit there a few more minutes while I change. We'll get you lunch and pick up some travel items on our way to the airport." He handed Kari the remote for tne big screen TV that had been sitting dark against the far wall all this time and ran up the stairs.
Kari and Gary gaped at each other, then simultaneously pulled out their smartphones and began Googling 'Jeremy Bane.' They couldn't find much solid information. Bane was known mostly as a PI and consultant for the FBI and some Department of Justice group called the Mandate. He had captured or caused to be arrested over a dozen infamous serial killers and career criminals including the infamous Samhain and guys like Golgora, Seth Petrov and Wu Lung. Except for when he had to testify in court, Bane seldom made public appearances and never gave interviews. The nickname 'Dire Wolf' appeared constantly where he was mentioned.
"Damn," Perry said after a few minutes. He looked over at his cousin. "You know, Traveler sure dropped us off in front of a guy who can help us."
"Whoever 'Traveler' really is," she answered. "We still don't know how he could possibly get us to New York in a few hours with a horse pulling a wagon. It just does not seem possible."
At this point, Bane came quickly down the stairs again. He was wearing black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket, and his hair was still damp from a shower. "I forgot to rent a suite at some hotel near the airport to serve as our base out there. That's okay, we can do that when we get there."
Perry interrupted, "Mr Bane, we have to bring something up. Me and Kari are busted. Flat broke. We can't even pay for a meal at Burger King, much less all these plane tickets and car rentals-"
The Dire Wolf dismissed that with a short wave of one hand. "This is my affair. I'm paying for everything. Even if you two walked away from this case right now, I'd still go to Utah to investigate for my own reasons."
"That's a big relief-" Kari began but Bane cut her off.
"Let's get moving," he said, motioning them toward the door. As he closed the front door behind them, the cousins heard a series of buzzes and clicks. Seeing their expressions, he explained, "Just some security devices." He rushed them to the side of the house where a dark green Ford Mustang sat in a crushed shale driveway just long enough to hold one car. He paused to check that two small green and blue lights were blinking steadily on the driver's sunvisor before unlocking the doors.
Kari automatically assumed the front passenger seat was hers, one of the benefits of being the pretty one of the cousins. "Aren't you bringing anything?"
"I always have a travel bag ready in the trunk," Bane said. He got behind the wheel and started the engine. "It's almost noon. When was the last time you guys ate?"
"Hah!" snorted Perry from the back. "We had a dozen oatmeal cookies last night and that's it."
"There's a good diner on the way to Jersey," Bane said. "We've got time to fuel up. Also, you should pick up some personal items and new clothes before we embark."
Sitting next to the Dire Wolf, studying him with a mixture of admiration and uneasiness, Kari Costigan asked, "I have to wonder, why are you doing this, Mr Bane? What's in it for you?"
"You two might as well call me Jeremy. I'll tell you the truth. This is simply what I was born to do. Being retired this last year has been more boring than I ever expected."
V.
Although the flight arrived on time, there was delay getting their luggage and then it took longer than expected before Bane got the final papers signed and they drove off in the gleaming new Ford Explorer. By the time they got downtown and checked in at the Hilton Garden Inn, it was nearly one o'clock. Bane's insistence on getting a ground level suite added to the time needed before he was satisfied. Eventually, he arranged rooms on the first floor facing the rear parking lot. From their window, he could see where the Ford Explorer was parked and they could get out by a short run down a hall and through the side door.
Kari was getting tired and cranky by this time. "Why is all this necessary? The clerk had a perfectly good set of rooms on the eighth floor for us!"
"We may need a quick exit if we're attacked," Bane said simply. "I've learned the hard way to keep clear lines of movement no matter what."
The rooms he had chosen had twin double beds and the Dire Wolf said he would be fine on the narrow couch by the window near the parking lot. "I hope you don't mind the lack of privacy, Kari," he said in a tone that implied he didn't care if she minded or not. "We're safer keeping each other in view."
"I guess you know what you're doing," Perry admitted. "God, I'm tired. Are we going out into the desert tonight?"
Stowing his travel bag behind the couch, the Dire Wolf considered that for a second. "I don't think so. You two would be unreliable and prone to mistakes. It's better you get some sleep and we'll head out in the morning." Reaching up under his left sleeve, he slid out a slim silver-bladed dagger that had a cylindrical hilt and no crossguard. Bane examined the edge and seemed satisfied.
Watching him with the slightly uneasy fascination she would have watching a tiger enter the room, Kari asked, "How did you wear those on the plane anyway? Didn't they set off the metal detector?"
"There's a trick to it," he answered, going out to the window to scrutinize the parking lot again. "The sheaths are covered with high-density silicone that has been molded to feel just like human muscle to a search. The covering is enough to fool X-Rays. So far, at least."
"That is so cool," Perry said as he could not restrain a yawn. "I guess we can turn in now? And we can go out on I-15 in the morning to look for two-legged lizards."
Still standing by the window, holding the lace curtains to one side, Bane said quietly, "You kids might want to come see this."
Tired as they were, something in his tone galvanized them. The cousins jumped up and came over to stand beside him. Parked next to their rented Explorer was that white wooden wagon with red roof and horseshoe emblems on the side. Hitched up to the struts leading the wagon was a beautiful young horse with a shiny black coat, seemingly perfectly content to stand there all night if asked.
"Huh," Kari mumbled. "I wonder what happened to the white horse?"
The Dire Wolf headed for the door to the hall. "You two stay here and watch. You have keys to the Explorer if anything happens to me."
"Wait, WHAT?" asked Kari. "You're scaring me again."
Bane did not hesitate as he left the room. "It's good to be scared under these conditions." With that, he was out in subdued lighting of the hall, moving past a nook which held an ice machine and a soft drinks dispenser, using his electronic key card to pass through the door and out into the parking lot. It was a still, stuffy night without a breeze.
Walking up to the wagon, he found someone sitting on the step below the rear door. It was not the old man with long white hair and frock coat but a smaller man, wrapped in a thick winter coat with a fur-trimmed collar. He had a mop of black hair cut straight across an impish face that stared up at Bane good-naturedly.
"Hay-LO again, mate."
"I'm starting to remember some of it now," the Dire Wolf said.
"Good. Maybe it will stay with you for a while. Memories of me are like footprints in the snow, dear boy." The Traveler stood up, noticeably shorter than before. "Part of the curse, I dare say."
"You already know what is stalking those kids," Bane told him curtly. "What I glimpsed across the road from my house. Give me something to work with."
"Fair enough, Dire Wolf. We'll meet up again out in the desert away from electric lights and cell phones." The Traveler hopped nimbly up into the box at the front of the wagon, planted his feet in their well-worn spots and took up the reins. "I can give you a word. The Helodermim. Chew on it a bit, will yer?"
With that, the ebony horse backed the wagon up, swung it around in a wide loop and headed for the exit. Apparently, the Traveler intended to blithely bring the wagon out into busy big city traffic. Bane glanced away for a second as a car door slammed by the front of the hotel and when he snapped his gaze back, the wagon was entirely gone.
He was remembering more fragments, and it troubled him. How many other blank spots were in his memory was he not even aware of until the barriers were lifted? More grim than ever before, he walked stiff-legged back to the rear door and used his key card to get back in. When he entered their suite, he saw that the look on his face was frightening the cousins, so he took a breath and made an effort to seem less intense.
"That was the Traveler," he told the staring teens. "He expects to be meeting up with us tomorrow out near where you left your car."
"He wasn't the Traveler," Perry objected. "He was a little fellow with black hair."
"This is going to be difficult to explain to you two," Bane said. "You've heard of the Flying Dutchman? The Wandering Jew? The Undying Knight?"
"Sure, just as legends," Perry said. He caught the blank reaction from his cousin and told her, "Folklore. You know I used to read a lot of mythology and folklore."
"As far as I know, the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew are just tales. The Undying Knight, I'm not so sure. But the Traveler, with his wagon that goes everywhere and can't be caught... he's real." Bane went to his travel bag and took out some hard rubber wedges which he jammed under the hall door and into the jamb of the window. "This will make it a little more difficult for anyone to sneak in on us."
She had taken off her sneakers and socks, but otherwise remained full dressed. Kari Costigan pulled down the blankets and scrambled under them. "And to think I was saying I wanted some excitement in my life. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have nightmares, Mr Bane. What do you think?"
The Dire Wolf paused before answering. "Before going to sleep, remember everything you know about Gila Monsters."
VI.
The next morning, the cousins took turns scrubbing themselves in the shower until they were pink and fresh and almost shiny. They were wearing crisp new clothing that had just been purchased the day before and sat down to devour the breakfast brought up by room service. The horror and the apprehension of the previous twenty-four hours seemed to be completely forgotten.
As he watched them joking and teasing each other over the fried eggs and hot oatmeal and buttered wheat toast, Jeremy Bane felt an unfamiliar twinge. He didn't recognize the feeling, but he was feeling the bittersweet appreciation of how transient youth was. Kari and Perry wouldn't be nineteen forever and life would wear them down as it did almost everyone.
He himself ate as much as the two of them did together. Bane's superior speed and co-ordination carried the price of burning calories ruthlessly. He ate enough for a sumo and still looked like a gymnast. When the food was gone and he wheeled the breakfast cart aside, the Dire Wolf sat the cousins on the couch and explained he had rented the suite for two more days just in case. Kari and Perry had never been well off, they came from working class families, and staying in this hotel was a treat they hadn't even thought about experiencing.
"You know, you said something about Gila Monsters last night," Perry ventured to say as they were getting ready to leave. "The thing I saw chasing us the other night.. it sounds crazy, but that's what it reminded me of. A big old Gila Monster that somehow was getting up on its hind legs after us."
"Stranger things have happened out there in the desert," Bane told him. "We'll see if we can find out."
Driving out to the Interstate, they stopped at a supermarket. Bane insisted on loading the back of the rented Explorer with gallon jugs of water, packaged dried food that would be good for days, some hardboiled eggs and Slim Jims and assorted snacks that Kari requested, towels, a first aid kit and a red container he filled with gasoline when stopping to fill up the car's tank. He obviously believed in being prepared. Then they set out.
On the road, under a sun that suddenly seemed merciless, Bane told the cousins about what had happened in the late 1950s in the Southwest. Reports of animals and insects many times larger than normal had been in the newspapers repeatedly but had been dismissed by the rest of the country as wild exaggeration. The military had also used the excuse of national security to downplay the events and eventually that phenomenon was forgotten as the Cold War gave way to the years of Kennedy and the Beatles.
"I do remember reading something about that," Perry said thoughtfully. "Giant ants and scorpions that were killing and eating people. Most reference books concluded it was all hoaxes. One book blamed it on the radiation from all the atomic testing going on."
"I suppose the bombs didn't help," said Bane, "But there was another cause. You two have grown up with science-fiction movies and TV shows, so this may not seem as far-fetched as it would have back then, but there are what you might call pocket dimensions near to us. In the Midnight War, we call them adjacent realms. By 1957, one realm known as Fanedral was sending some of its creatures to harass us. Gralic energy leaking from the openings to Fanedral were what was changing the wildlife out here. That all stopped a few years later."
"This was before your time, of course," Kari said.
"Yes. I'm not THAT old, Kari. A man named Mark Drum was responsible for subduing most of the enlarged creatures and for closing off Fanedral for a generation." Bane was driving slower, scanning the sides of the road as they went. An hour and a half out of town, they found the abandoned Ford Taurus with its hood still up as if forlornly waving to them. The Dire Wolf pulled over, with the cousins trailing him, and examined the car.
"Looks like a hose blew and all your coolant ran out," he said after a minute. "Yeah. Being overheated contributed."
"Can you fix it?"
"No. The engine is fried, in my opinion." Bane stepped back and slammed the hood. "It would cost more than the car is worth."
"Wellll, we only paid eight hundred dollars for it from Jimmy," Kari admitted. "He said it had already gone three hundred thousand miles, what were a few hundred more."
Bane made no comment. He remained bareheaded but both teens were wearing baseball caps against the sun. The Dire Wolf brought them off the highway, where the dry dirt and scrub brush was sparse and mostly sand blew in what little breeze there was. The air shimmered over the highway where the Explorer and the Ford remained. Staying ahead of them, he led them parallel to the stretch of road they had hiked two nights earlier. Suddenly he stopped them and dropped to one knee.
"What does that look like?" he asked quietly.
"Footprints," Kari answered promptly. "Kinda like alligator tracks I saw in Florida once. Awful big though."
"If they were human, I'd say they were size fourteen. You see the long scuff left by a tail dragging between them right?" Bane stood up again. "Anything else strike you as funny?"
"Yeah..." Perry said after a second. "There's only one pair of prints. Not four. I wasn't imagining it then. There was some sort of lizard running after us on its hind legs! That's too freaky."
The Dire Wolf started following the tracks. "The prints are getting closer together. He was speeding up. To be honest, he could have caught you easily."
Kari shuddered visibly. "Stop it, you're giving me the creeps big time. Here we are isolated way out in the desert, not even nowhere, not even close to nowhere. Oops, I said it again."
As she spoke, they froze at the sound of a horse whinnying. All three spun around. Up by the side of the highway sat the white wooden wagon again, but now it had some flashy gilt trim added along the roof and around the edges. Hitched up at the front was a spectacular golden Palomino with a white mane and tail.
"Why am I not surprised?" muttered Perry Costigan. He took his cousin by her arm and got in front of her protectively. "Mr Bane, just what is going on here?"
The Dire Wolf started up toward the wagon. "Don't expect to see either of the Travelers you've met before," he said. "Just go with it."
Hopping down lightly from the driver's buckboard was a tall man with a crown of curly white hair over a smiling face. He had a prominent nose and inquisitive blue eyes. This Traveler was wearing a flamboyant plum-colored coat and white silk shirt with ruffles down the front, as well as tight purple trousers and shoes with rather pointed toes.
"My dear fellow!" he cried out. "You DID make it, and you brought the children as well."
"We're not children," mumbled Perry to himself.
"It's all coming back to me," said Bane. "We've worked together before. More than once. You look different every time."
"Yes, well, we all go through changes, what? Even good old Senior here. One can hardly expect to go for millenia without a makeover from time to time." The dandy stepped closer. "I expect you have been following foot tracks."
"What can you tell us about the situation, Traveler?" asked the Dire Wolf with just a bit of an edge in his voice.
"To be brutally frank, dear boy, the so-called Gila Monster is dreadfully overrated. They are so sluggish and so lacking in aggression that I almost think a man must deliberately try to get bitten by one. These beasties don't inject venom like a snake, either. They simply chew and work the venom into the wound that way." The Traveler scoffed. "As threats from the animal kingdom go, they are not impressive."
"The average Gila Monster does not stand more than six feet tall," Bane said.
"Yes, well, that is fair to say." The Travelers adjusted his fancy cuffs, with their French links, and tugged his jacket down a little. "Now, I realize you carry a firearm, my boy, and I do wish you would leave it here in the wagon."
"Yeah? And why would I do that?" Bane asked.
"I find diplomacy and negotiation are always worth trying first. Brute force should be the last resort, not the first." The Traveler smiled ingratiatingly. "I've been playing this game a good deal longer than you have, you realize."
"Thanks, but I'll use my own judgement," said the Dire Wolf. He handed two flashlights to Kari and Perry. These were as thick as a Magic Marker, with a lense that twisted to narrow or widen the beam. A spare battery was held on one side with velcro. When Perry tried his, the blinding white thread of light that shot out amazed him.
"Whoa. You have the coolest toys," he said.
"Put the loop on the end around your wrist. If we get separated, flick the beam on and off and I should be able to see it from quite a distance." He gave the Traveler a dubious stare before heading back up to the highway. "I'm going to move my car way off the road so the Highway Patrol doesn't tow it. I'll be back in a second." With that, he raced up to the Interstate, got in the Ford Explorer and pulled it away from the road. The ground was hard and dry enough that he had no fear of getting stuck.
Hurrying back, he found the wagon gone. The Traveler, the horse, the two teenagers he had placed under his implicit protection... all vanished. Bane was irritated but not really surprised. More and more, he was remembering why he had hated working with the Traveler. Circling, using one of the flashlights at a low angle, he picked up the ruts left by wooden wheels in the dirt. Of course, they led out into the desert. Bane began to follow the trail at a run.
VII.
"This cavern is suffocating me," Perry grumbled. "Why is it so hot down here?"
"The Heloderma like it that way, my lad," said Traveler. "Reptiles, you know."
"I can't believe I'm saying it, but if they weren't so ugly they'd be kind of pretty. The beaded skin, I mean," Kari put in. "But I don't like the way they look at us. I'm pretty sure they're imagining us on a plate with a side order."
The vault of the cavern reached up well over a hundred feet, with thick limestone stalactites reaching down to hang overhead ominously. Torches set in holes drilled into the walls gave off smudgy, uncertain light and water trickled loudly nearby. Despite the heat and stuffiness, there seemed to be enough fresh air circulating that they were not in any danger of suffocating. Traveler and the cousins stood in a huddle and stared back at the Heloderma who was regarding them with inscrutable glassy eyes.
Still basically a Gila Monster who happened to stand six feet tall, not counting the thick tail which dragged on the ground behind him, the creature had modified hips and spine so it could walk upright. The huge flat head seemed to have a permanent fanged grin that was not reassuring. Decorated with alternating wide horizontal bands of red and black, the pebbly hide looked thick enough to be extremely difficult to pierce. The Heloderma smirked at the three Humans and stayed where he was, blocking them from running out of the cavern.
A dozen more of the creatures moved slowly about the caverns on whatever inexplicable tasks they were performing. In a corner under a ledge was a stack of bones, and Kari noticed to her horror that she recognized a human ribcage. As they moved about, the Helodermim often dropped back down to all fours. When they did this, one of their mates hissed angrily and swatted at them with a taloned paw. Apparently their social pressure was to walk upright.
"Nice lizard," Kari said tentatively. She held up her open hands, not that she would dare try to pet the brute. One chomp of that wide mouth would take her arm off. "Here, lizard, lizard. Go for a walk?"
"Go for a WALK?" demanded Perry. "What's that all about?"
"It works with stray dogs sometimes," she admitted sheepishly.
"You waste your time with that one," hissed a sibilant voice from behind them. "He cannot speak."
The three of them swung their heads around at the newcomer. It was one of the Heloderma, but grotesquely wrapped in a long brown trenchcoat with a wide-brimmed hat. His long blunt snout stuck out way past the hat's concealment. "Only I have learned language so far of my brethren."
"Ah. There's always a gifted individual," said the Traveler. "And you would be?"
"Saramiento. Chief of my kin. I do not understand you, white-hair man."
"Please, call me Traveler. These are my new friends Perry and Kari."
"Something strange happened. I saw you in that wheeled hut pulled by the beast with four legs. I came up close to look at it and suddenly I was standing in a place of many buildings. I have spied on some of the towns where humans live under the sky but this was not like them. I stood there scared, a Human in black charged at me but before I could eat him, I was back standing out in the sands again." The monster took off the hat and struggled out of the trenchcoat with considerable difficulty. "Explain this to me!"
"Saramiento, old chap, I'm afraid you got caught up behind my wagon when I went to the big city back East," the Traveler smiled as he spoke. "Sucked up in the backdraft, althought that sounds crude. When you moved far enough away from the wagon, you snapped back home."
The Gila Monster stared with unblinking eyes, mulling this over. "I not understand, Traveler."
"Curses seldom make too much sense, my boy. They act in mysterious ways. Anyway, perhaps we can reach some understanding. What is it you fellows want?"
"Food. When we are small, we live on insects and little lizards and carrion. But we are this big, we are bored with that diet."
Perry mustered the nerve to speak up. "Excuse me. I thought your species only ate a few times a year and got by on a low metabolism?"
"This is true," Saramiento said. "But as we get smart, we want, what is word? More types of food."
Unexpectedly, Kari Costigan broke out in a mischievous grin. "Wait, wait. Here." She took something wrapped in a napkin from her jacket pocket and broke open a paper packet to sprinkle salt on it. "Try one of these."
The Gila Monster-monster took the small white object and gnashed on it. He made a weird gurgling noise and clapped his scaly hands together. "I like it! Give me another."
"I only brought one more," the redhead said as she salted a second hard-boiled egg and tossed it to the creature. Instead of trying to catch it with his clumsy blunt fingers, Saramiento snatched it from the air with his mouth and gnoshed away happily.
"So good, so good," he said, chewing with his mouth open. "Better than dead animal. Better than bugs."
The Traveler gave Kari a wink. "So then, I have a proposition for you, old fellow. Suppose we bring you perhaps twenty chickens. We will teach you how to take care of them, there are plenty of insects and worms aboveground for chickens to eat, and we can drop off a bag of feed now and then." He folded his arms across his chest, almost hugging himself in self-congratulation. "Learning to make fire and boil water will not be difficult for you, you speak better English than many Yanks to be honest."
The Heloderma tilted its huge head thoughtfully. "I think I understand. These chickens provide us with hard-boiled eggs?"
"You'll have to boil the eggs, but otherwise yes." The Traveler snapped the fingers of one hand. "It is easy. Tending chickens is not that difficult and you Gila Monsters have lots of free time."
"Just don't eat the chickens," laughed Kari. She seemed remarkably at ease in the bizarre situation. Perry gave her a startled glance.
VIII.
Bane found the wagon standing by a cluster of large boulders that had apparently been deliberately placed out on the open desert. There was no cliff they could have fallen down from. He was relieved for some reason to find that Senior was still a Palomino. "There, there," he whispered as the horse neighed and stamped the ground. "Easy. Let's see what's going on."
The wagon was unoccupied. Bane walked around the loose assortment of boulders and found half-concealed an opening to a tunnel leading down at a steep angle into the ground. Would Traveler have taken two teens into a dark unknown hole in the ground which was likely populated by giant carnivorous lizards? Of course he would. Bane remembered his previous encounters with Traveler by now and he would not put anything past the crazy old coot. Loosening the long-barreled Smith & Wesson 38 in its holster behind his left hip, the Dire Wolf crouched over the opening and listened.
Behind him, Senior made a concerned whinny and shifted from one leg to another.
"Don't worry, Senior. I'll bring them back." Then he realized he was talking to a horse as if the animal could understand. Traveler was rubbbing off on him. Bane started down the incline, which although steep had frequent level areas like landings on a staircase. Perhaps a half-mile below, a faint yellow glow could be made out.
Did Gila Monsters dig tunnels? He didn't know offhand. It seemed to him that this formation was natural. Ahead, the surface just above his head rose until he was walking down into a huge open cavern lit by torches. He made out the lumbering shapes of a dozen of the human-sized creatures and in one corner, the Traveler and the cousins had a Heloderma looming up over them.
The Dire Wolf ran down the slope into the cave. One of the Gila Monsters lurched toward him with thick fingers clutching. Bane made no attempt to throw a blow. The creature's left foot was raised off the ground as it took a ponderous step, and Bane squatted down to grab the underside of that flat foot with both hands. He straightened up sharply, getting the monster off-balance and the Heloderma fell over backwards to knock down three of his kindred like bowling pins.
Lunging over to where the three people were facing a particularly large Gila Monster, the Dire Wolf whipped out his revolver. "Freeze right there! I'm not going to break any knuckles on you, but I'll put a slug in each of your eyes and see how you feel about that!"
"Oh, Jeremy, do behave," said Traveler in a clearly exasperated tone. "You Americans and your Wild West mentality. Do put that thing away."
"It's alright," added Kari. "We've got a deal with these critters."
Bane slowly lowered his gun. For once, he was at a loss. "Huh?" was all he could manage. Perry Costigan came over and explained the situation, adding that he himself found the whole situation hard to accept in any way. There was an animated discussion that went back and forth for quite a while. At one point, the four humans looked up to see the red and black lizards standing in a semi-circle nearby, obviously trying to follow the conversation but being hopelessly lost. Kari started laughing at this, and Perry joined in after a second.
Traveler shrugged at Bane. "Young folks. They never change, bless their pointy little heads. Well, my boy, will you help us transport chickens and bags of feed here to the caverns? Perhaps you can show them how to make fire with the flint and steel trick? I do have some pots and pans in my wagon I will donate."
The Dire Wolf had seldom been more uncertain how he felt or what he should do. "Why not," he said at last. "I can take a few days for this. It beats having these Helodermim chasing people along the highways."
"And then," announced Traveler with a grand sweeping gesture, "I feel like I should visit Okali. I haven't been there in two hundred years. Tell me, Kari, Perry... how would you like to see real living Unicorns? Or Speaking Apes? They're quite gentle."
"Oh, I love the idea!" squeaked Kari. "This beats working in a bakery any way you look at it."
Perry snorted. "And I'm certainly not going to let my innocent cousin travel unchaperoned with some old man we don't know! Sure, I'll go along."
By now, Bane had become almost numb to more surprises. "Traveler, you can't seriously intend to take these two kids to Okali of all places? What about the Skullhunters there? What about the manticores?"
"You fret too much, dear boy," said Traveler. "I always travel with a companion or two and I have lost very few. I will fill you in on our adventures when we next see each other."
"We're going to meet again?" Bane asked.
"You will always be able to recognize me because I will always look different every time we meet," Traveler chuckled.
10/1/2016
8/11-8/13/2016
I.
"We've hit rock bottom before but this time we're digging under the rock," Perry grumbled. Steam had stopped pouring out from under the hood of the fourteen-year-old Ford Taurus but there was not enough light to see what was wrong anyway. Under the stars of a Utah sky without a moon, strange twilight showed enough for him to see his cousin. She was rummaging about in the trunk.
"Here's the flashlight," Kari called out. "Batteries are as dead as a week-old fish stick. It figures, it figures. I wonder how close we made it to Salt Lake City, anyway."
"Look around you," her cousin yelled. "Highway for a hundred miles in front of us, highway for a hundred miles behind us. We're not nowhere, we're not even close to nowhere!"
Everyone thought Perry and Kari Costigan were twins, but actually they were cousins born to sisters who actually were twins. Kari and Perry had been born a week apart in the same hospital. Both cousins were about five feet ten, thin and a bit coltish at nineteen. Both had curly reddish-brown hair, dark green eyes and long narrow faces with upturned noses. They could wear each other's clothes and sometimes did.
"Anyway, we don't have any tools and neither of us would know how to use 'em if we did," she pointed out.
"You got a point," Perry admitted ruefully. "No cell service way out here, my phone's not even showing one bar."
"Damn damn damn. Nothing has gone right for us. We're broke until we reach that job offer in Salt Lake City. The woman said she would front you a week's salary once we turned up. My cards are maxed out. All I have is a single and some change in my pockets."
"I've still got that twenty in my shoe..."
"That stinky thing!" Kari laughed. "You've been walking on it for so long I bet it's imprinted on your foot."
"Not enough for a tow truck, even if we could call one." Perry leaned back against the battered Taurus with its strip of rust around the rear wheelwell and the driver's outside rearview mirror held on with black electrical tape. "You're the smart one, they say. What's your best idea?"
Kari Costigan put her fists on her hips and turned to gaze back in the direction from which they had been driving. She was wearing baggy jeans with one knee out and a blue checked flannel shirt with the tail hanging down behind her. "Um. Hmm. Well, we know there's nothing back that way. We drove since dawn and saw nada along the way. So our chances of finding something up ahead are unknown but probably better."
"Almost zero is better than actual zero? I suppose. Maybe some lonesome farmer will think you're hot and give you a ride while I have to sit in the back with the chickens."
Kari laughed. "At least you'd finally make some friends." She reached around in the back seat of the Ford and handed him his backpack, while getting her own gear. All she had brought was the bookbag she had used in high school and those six months at the community college, now stuffed with clothes. "I guess that's everything."
"Didn't I have a can of Red Bull?"
"Aw, I drank that while you were snoozing," she said. "Sorry, I was driving and needed the caffeine." She shouldered her bag and started hiking, and after a second's hesitation Perry followed her. It was chilly out on the desert at night, a real change from the suffocating heat of the day that had killed their car. They walked along in silence for a while before Kari began, "If we had stayed with my Dad after the divorce-"
"Don't get into that again. His new girlfriend was in your class at college, for God's sake. The last thing she wanted was the two of us around and Dad is so hopelessly whipped he went along with it. If we make it to the city, your Mom's pal at the bakery promised us jobs."
"Big thrill. Large charge," she said. "I don't really want a boring life baking bread and icing cakes! I want some excitement... Wait. Hold still."
Puzzled, he stopped in mid-stride and came over next to her. "What now?!"
"I heard something. Out there." She put her finger to her lips. "Listen."
The hissing was not loud, but it was unnervingly close. They could see nothing. Without a word, both cousins started walking quickly and broke into a full run as the hiss followed them. Heavy footsteps scraped in the dry earth nearby.
"Oh God oh God," Kari breathed, taking the longest strides she could.
"A.. big snake? No, it can't be, it's walking." Her cousin turned his head to glance back and screamed. "Don't look, Kari! Run!"
Suddenly there was a horse-drawn wagon in the road directly in front of them. They had no idea how it had appeared there. The ten-foot-long wagon was wood painted off-white, with a red gingerbread-style roof and symbols on both sides of the outline of a row of horseshoes in red as well. Sitting on the front platform with his feet on the buckboard, holding the reigns of the single white horse, was an old man with silver hair down to his shoulders.
"Hurry, climb in the back!" he ordered them sharply. "The door's open."
Frantic and confused but not inclined to hesitate at the moment, Perry and Kari ran around and scrambled in through the unlatched door at the rear of the wagon. The door slammed shut by itself behind them, they heard the stranger make a clucking noise and the horse swung around to pull the wagon back in the direction it had been coming from.
"Yes, I hear it, too, Senior. Never you mind. The crawling ones couldn't catch you on their best day." The silver-haired driver in the old-fashioned frock coat leaned back over his shoulder to talk through the open panel behind him. "Are you children all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, we're okay... but," Kira hesitated. "But look at the inside of this thing."
II.
The interior of the wagon somehow was much roomier than they had expected. Light came from a wrought iron gaslamp up near where the driver sat outside. One wall had a leather bench long enough to sleep on, as was confirmed by the folded blankets and pillow at its end. The other was a bench seat wide enough for two people to sit comfortably. The walls held many cabinets and shelves beautifully carved from dark wood, and both benches opened up to reveal storage space within. In one corner was bolted a cast iron coal-burning stove with a chimney that led up to the ceiling.
What confused them and what made it hard to concentrate was all the knick-knacks and curios stuffed into every opening. Bizarre little figurines in jade, bits of gemstones, bright bird feathers bundled together on sticks, charts of esoteric symbols, ancient coins hanging on cords, even a niche from which the ends of tattered scrolls protruded. The interior had a warm, pleasant scent of cedar. The more they stared, the more grotesque odds and ends became noticeable. That couldn't be a real shrunken head inside a glass jar? Or one of the toy dancers with a ukelele and grass skirt that tourists bought in Hawaii?!
"Whoa," Kari breathed.
"Yeah, I kinda like it. Hey, thank you, mister! We sure appreciate the ride."
"My pleasure," answered the old man. "Some company on an exceedingly long journey is most welcome."
"I'm Perry Costigan and this is my cousin Kari, Mr...?"
"Oh, everyone just calls me Traveler. My name seems challenging for Americans to pronounce. What brings you two young folks way out here where there is such danger?"
"Our car broke down," Kari answered. "Wait, what WAS that thing that was stalking us? A snake, a lizard, what?"
"I'm afraid you will find out all too soon," came the unhelpful answer. The driver swung around to gaze back in on his guests. He had a stern, deeply lined face but its severity was belied by the kindly voice. "I'm guessing you might want to open the cabinet right by the back door."
"Cookies!" chirped Kari. "Oatmeal cookies in a paper bag. And bottles of cold water."
"Baked them myself," Traveler chuckled. "Eat them all if you like, I've had my fill."
The cousins took him at his word and emptied a water bottle apiece. "Oh, that's better," said Kari. "I'm exhausted. Between us, Perry and I have been driving since late last night."
Traveler made a clucking noise at the horse Senior. "The road goes on forever, it seems. You might as well rest. I'll be up all night as I always am."
"Oh, thank God you came along," said Kari as she stretched out on the leather bunk and wadded the pillow under her head. She fell asleep almost instantly.
Unlacing his hiking boots, leaning back on the shorter bench, Perry also felt more exhausted than he had ever been before. "Traveler? What made you turn up like that? Where'd you come from? I'd swear the road ahead was empty for miles."
"You summoned me," Traveler answered. "You wouldn't know of course, but that's a phrase of great mystic power. 'Not even close to nowhere.' When I hear it spoken, I know I'm needed." He turned his head back to find he was speaking to two slumbering guests.
III.
Sunshine coming down through the skylight in the roof woke them. Kari stirred, sat up smacking her lips and scratching up behind her shoulder blades. Her red hair was a tangled mess and her eyes would only stay open one at a time. It took several minutes of gazing around sleepily before she fully remembered the night before. The wagon. The old man and the horse... and whatever it was that had been chasing them.
Coming back to life, Kari found that Perry had dozed off propped up on the bench oppposite her, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was going through the same process and suddenly seemed fully aware. "Whoa. What a night. Hey, Kari, the wagon's not moving. We've stopped. I need to get out and take a leak behind a cactus or something."
"You and me both," she answered. "See, I brought a roll of toilet paper in my bag. I know what's important." She stood up, stretched, and unlatched the back door. As it swung open, she saw cars rolling by on a suburban street. She glanced at the slim gold-banded watch on her wrist and saw it was eight-twenty in the morning.
"That does it," Perry said as he climbed out of the wagon and stood up on the sidewalk. "I am all messed up. How did we get to a town in a few hours in a horse-drawn wagon? I am so confused."
"You and me both," his cousin repeated. She hopped out next to him and started working on her hair with a brush from her bookbag. "Perry, do you think something's wrong with us? We're having like memory lapses or something?"
He had gone around the side of the wagon and she followed. The white horse was still hitched to the wagon, which was itself lashed to a parking meter. Senior was a handsome animal, all white with a yellowish-tinted mane. He watched the two teens with a friendly eye, not nervous at their approach or at the traffic going by. There was no sign of Traveler. They were parked right in front of a two-story white house with a slate roof and a Ford Mustang parked in a short driveway.
"Look, we need to find a bathroom fast," Kari said. "I don't wanna have an accident right out in public."
"Yeah, yeah, hop up and down for a minute," her cousin dismissed her concern. "Sign on the corner says Cornell Street. I'm still lost."
The front door on the house closed sharply and they swung around. "This is something new," came a cool, unwelcoming voice. "Can I help you two?"
Standing on the steps in front of his house was a man with black hair flecked by white strands. He was six feet tall, gaunt and fit-looking in black slacks and a black long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up a turn. He was watching the two of them warily, as if expecting them to be up to no good. The man had pale, unfriendly grey eyes in a narrow face.
"Oh. Hi, mister," Kari replied, turning on her smile as appealing as she could make it. "This isn't our wagon. We were given a ride last night out on the desert.... I'm sorry, I'm desperate, can we use your bathroom please?"
"I guess," the man said. "Come on in." The man in black ushered them through the front door into a neat living room with no clutter at all, as if he had just moved in. There was a bathroom just past the stairs leading up to the second floor and he gestured at its open door. Kari rushed in, come out a few minutes later and Perry followed. They both had scrubbed their hands and faces while in there, but left the bathroom as untouched as they could.
"Oh, that's better," said the redheaded girl as she fumbled in a pocket for an elastic band to tie her hair back. "Thank you so much, Mr..?"
"Bane. Jeremy Bane. What's with the horse pulling a wagon?" he asked.
"That's part of the whole crazy story!" she said. She launched into the events of the previous night and Bane listened carefully. When she stopped to take a breath, her cousin finished, "And we just woke up a minute ago."
Bane said nothing for a second. "You two think you're in Utah, is that it?"
"Well, sure, we were on I-15 a few hours ago."
"This is Forest Hills. Queens, in New York City." Bane was watching their reactions without giving anything away about himself. His face and voice were so subdued it was difficult to say what he thought.
"New York...?" Kari was close to tears in her agitation. "I don't.. Perry, are we having memory lapses? Are we both epileptic or something? How did we get across the entire country like that?"
"Calm down," Bane told them as he tried to make his voice less intimidating. "Let me tell you that it's a strange world and unexplained things happen." He crossed over to pull the curtain aside on a wide picture window. The white wagon was still out there, with the horse Senior seemingly content to stand there. "Where's the man who drove that wagon?"
"Traveler? No idea. He was gone when we woke up," Perry said.
"Traveler, Traveler... That sounds familiar but I can't place it. Give me a better description." As he listened to details of the old man's frock coat and silver hair and stern face, Bane kept watch on the wagon in front of his house. "Any minute now, a police car is bound to pull over and start asking about that thing," he said. "I don't remember ever hearing about anyone who fits that description or uses the name Traveler."
Suddenly, Jeremy Bane plunged for the door in a burst of motion so quick and unexpected that the cousins had no idea what had happened. Kari's mouth was open as she was about to say something, so she closed it and opened it again before managing to get out, "Where did he go?"
The front door had been left open. The two teens went over and peered uncertainly outside. The man in black was across the street, coming back from the far corner with an angry aspect to his stride. No one else was in sight. He came back to is house and gave the cousins a hard glare that made them both shrink back.
"Someone was watching this house from across the street," he said sharply. "Six foot five, four feet wide, wearing an oversized tan raincoat and a floppy hat. He had on some kind of weird mask with a red and black snout. What do you two know about this!"
Now Kari really did start to cry, as the uncertainty and confusion of the past hours caught up to her. Her face wrinkled up and tears poured down her cheeks to her chin. "Nothing, we have no idea what's going on. Why are you mad at us? We haven't done anything wrong!"
Bane seemed to reconsider. He took Kari by one arm and motioned toward Perry for them to go sit down on the long black leather couch that sat facing the picture window at an angle. The cousins obliged and waited until Kari cried herself out in a few minutes, her reaction as much to relieve stress as anything else.
"Let me explain a little," Bane told them, pulling over an easy chair to face them. "I'm a retired Private Investigator. Sometimes I'm called Dire Wolf, it's an old nickname. I mostly handled events that were paranormal or supernatural or just weird, however you want to label them. Midnight War, it was called. Believe me, this business with the horse-drawn wagon traveling three thousand miles overnight is not the strangest thing I've dealt with."
"So you don't think we're crazy?" sniffled Kari as she wiped her face.
"You don't seem crazy," Bane said. "But something Midnight War is going on. That watcher across the street just now couldn't have possibly gotten out of sight in the half-second it took me to reach him but he did. His proportions were all wrong, too."
Staring past Bane at the picture window, where the curtains had been left open a minute ago, Perry Costigan said, "Now the wagon's gone."
The Dire Wolf again reacted so swiftly that it was confusing to the cousins. He was up and over by the window before they could process the information. This was rough on their already unsteady nerves. The man in black turned around to gaze steadily at his guests. "It's gone, all right. This is getting interesting. So, you two are supposed to be in Utah right now?"
"Yes, sir. Heading for Salt Lake City to start a job."
"And instead you're in Queens with no money and no transportation and just your backpacks. Have I got that right?"
Kari had gotten hold of herself. "That's.. that's about it."
"All right." Bane's manner had softened slightly, he seemed less intimidating and more at ease. Going over to a cabinet, he took out a wide red leather ledger and brought it back to where the cousins were sitting. "Either of you have a dollar bill?"
Digging in the pocket of her jeans, Kari came out with a crumpled piece of green paper that was torn halfway across its width and offered it. Bane said, "That's fine," and inserted it into the sleeve inside the ledger. He asked to see their driver's licenses and wrote down information. Then he filled out a receipt for the dollar, got them to sign it and gave them one of the copies.
"There. Now you are my clients for this investigation. That dollar was a technicalty, but now I have certain privileges when asking questions of people and when dealing with the police." He closed the ledger and put it away. "The Dire Wolf Agency doesn't have its office any more but I've kept my license valid."
He stood up and watched them, apparently still suspicious. "Maybe you haven't thought of it yet, but is someone waiting for you two in Salt Lake City?"
"Oh God, Mom's friend Clara," Perry said. "What should I tell her?"
"Just say that you're both fine but you'll be delayed indefinitely. Have Kari talk to her as well. There's an outlet over there if you need to charge your phone." Bane went back to the window and stood there. "There's no telling where whackiness like this is going to lead."
IV.
The rest of that morning shot by in activity. Kari and Perry were amazed at how this man Bane took charge. He called his travel agent and managed to get three seats on a flight late that day that would bring them from Newark Airport to arrive at Salt Lake City International Airport at eleven that night. He arranged to lease a new Ford Explorer to be ready for him at that same time. As the cousins sat and watched, he also called three people who apparently worked for him as information gatherers and asked about someone called 'Traveler' who might be associated with a horse-drawn wagon but here he got no results.
"This is where I miss Bleak," Bane said. "Poor old Bleak. He never let me down. Anyway, you two sit there a few more minutes while I change. We'll get you lunch and pick up some travel items on our way to the airport." He handed Kari the remote for tne big screen TV that had been sitting dark against the far wall all this time and ran up the stairs.
Kari and Gary gaped at each other, then simultaneously pulled out their smartphones and began Googling 'Jeremy Bane.' They couldn't find much solid information. Bane was known mostly as a PI and consultant for the FBI and some Department of Justice group called the Mandate. He had captured or caused to be arrested over a dozen infamous serial killers and career criminals including the infamous Samhain and guys like Golgora, Seth Petrov and Wu Lung. Except for when he had to testify in court, Bane seldom made public appearances and never gave interviews. The nickname 'Dire Wolf' appeared constantly where he was mentioned.
"Damn," Perry said after a few minutes. He looked over at his cousin. "You know, Traveler sure dropped us off in front of a guy who can help us."
"Whoever 'Traveler' really is," she answered. "We still don't know how he could possibly get us to New York in a few hours with a horse pulling a wagon. It just does not seem possible."
At this point, Bane came quickly down the stairs again. He was wearing black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket, and his hair was still damp from a shower. "I forgot to rent a suite at some hotel near the airport to serve as our base out there. That's okay, we can do that when we get there."
Perry interrupted, "Mr Bane, we have to bring something up. Me and Kari are busted. Flat broke. We can't even pay for a meal at Burger King, much less all these plane tickets and car rentals-"
The Dire Wolf dismissed that with a short wave of one hand. "This is my affair. I'm paying for everything. Even if you two walked away from this case right now, I'd still go to Utah to investigate for my own reasons."
"That's a big relief-" Kari began but Bane cut her off.
"Let's get moving," he said, motioning them toward the door. As he closed the front door behind them, the cousins heard a series of buzzes and clicks. Seeing their expressions, he explained, "Just some security devices." He rushed them to the side of the house where a dark green Ford Mustang sat in a crushed shale driveway just long enough to hold one car. He paused to check that two small green and blue lights were blinking steadily on the driver's sunvisor before unlocking the doors.
Kari automatically assumed the front passenger seat was hers, one of the benefits of being the pretty one of the cousins. "Aren't you bringing anything?"
"I always have a travel bag ready in the trunk," Bane said. He got behind the wheel and started the engine. "It's almost noon. When was the last time you guys ate?"
"Hah!" snorted Perry from the back. "We had a dozen oatmeal cookies last night and that's it."
"There's a good diner on the way to Jersey," Bane said. "We've got time to fuel up. Also, you should pick up some personal items and new clothes before we embark."
Sitting next to the Dire Wolf, studying him with a mixture of admiration and uneasiness, Kari Costigan asked, "I have to wonder, why are you doing this, Mr Bane? What's in it for you?"
"You two might as well call me Jeremy. I'll tell you the truth. This is simply what I was born to do. Being retired this last year has been more boring than I ever expected."
V.
Although the flight arrived on time, there was delay getting their luggage and then it took longer than expected before Bane got the final papers signed and they drove off in the gleaming new Ford Explorer. By the time they got downtown and checked in at the Hilton Garden Inn, it was nearly one o'clock. Bane's insistence on getting a ground level suite added to the time needed before he was satisfied. Eventually, he arranged rooms on the first floor facing the rear parking lot. From their window, he could see where the Ford Explorer was parked and they could get out by a short run down a hall and through the side door.
Kari was getting tired and cranky by this time. "Why is all this necessary? The clerk had a perfectly good set of rooms on the eighth floor for us!"
"We may need a quick exit if we're attacked," Bane said simply. "I've learned the hard way to keep clear lines of movement no matter what."
The rooms he had chosen had twin double beds and the Dire Wolf said he would be fine on the narrow couch by the window near the parking lot. "I hope you don't mind the lack of privacy, Kari," he said in a tone that implied he didn't care if she minded or not. "We're safer keeping each other in view."
"I guess you know what you're doing," Perry admitted. "God, I'm tired. Are we going out into the desert tonight?"
Stowing his travel bag behind the couch, the Dire Wolf considered that for a second. "I don't think so. You two would be unreliable and prone to mistakes. It's better you get some sleep and we'll head out in the morning." Reaching up under his left sleeve, he slid out a slim silver-bladed dagger that had a cylindrical hilt and no crossguard. Bane examined the edge and seemed satisfied.
Watching him with the slightly uneasy fascination she would have watching a tiger enter the room, Kari asked, "How did you wear those on the plane anyway? Didn't they set off the metal detector?"
"There's a trick to it," he answered, going out to the window to scrutinize the parking lot again. "The sheaths are covered with high-density silicone that has been molded to feel just like human muscle to a search. The covering is enough to fool X-Rays. So far, at least."
"That is so cool," Perry said as he could not restrain a yawn. "I guess we can turn in now? And we can go out on I-15 in the morning to look for two-legged lizards."
Still standing by the window, holding the lace curtains to one side, Bane said quietly, "You kids might want to come see this."
Tired as they were, something in his tone galvanized them. The cousins jumped up and came over to stand beside him. Parked next to their rented Explorer was that white wooden wagon with red roof and horseshoe emblems on the side. Hitched up to the struts leading the wagon was a beautiful young horse with a shiny black coat, seemingly perfectly content to stand there all night if asked.
"Huh," Kari mumbled. "I wonder what happened to the white horse?"
The Dire Wolf headed for the door to the hall. "You two stay here and watch. You have keys to the Explorer if anything happens to me."
"Wait, WHAT?" asked Kari. "You're scaring me again."
Bane did not hesitate as he left the room. "It's good to be scared under these conditions." With that, he was out in subdued lighting of the hall, moving past a nook which held an ice machine and a soft drinks dispenser, using his electronic key card to pass through the door and out into the parking lot. It was a still, stuffy night without a breeze.
Walking up to the wagon, he found someone sitting on the step below the rear door. It was not the old man with long white hair and frock coat but a smaller man, wrapped in a thick winter coat with a fur-trimmed collar. He had a mop of black hair cut straight across an impish face that stared up at Bane good-naturedly.
"Hay-LO again, mate."
"I'm starting to remember some of it now," the Dire Wolf said.
"Good. Maybe it will stay with you for a while. Memories of me are like footprints in the snow, dear boy." The Traveler stood up, noticeably shorter than before. "Part of the curse, I dare say."
"You already know what is stalking those kids," Bane told him curtly. "What I glimpsed across the road from my house. Give me something to work with."
"Fair enough, Dire Wolf. We'll meet up again out in the desert away from electric lights and cell phones." The Traveler hopped nimbly up into the box at the front of the wagon, planted his feet in their well-worn spots and took up the reins. "I can give you a word. The Helodermim. Chew on it a bit, will yer?"
With that, the ebony horse backed the wagon up, swung it around in a wide loop and headed for the exit. Apparently, the Traveler intended to blithely bring the wagon out into busy big city traffic. Bane glanced away for a second as a car door slammed by the front of the hotel and when he snapped his gaze back, the wagon was entirely gone.
He was remembering more fragments, and it troubled him. How many other blank spots were in his memory was he not even aware of until the barriers were lifted? More grim than ever before, he walked stiff-legged back to the rear door and used his key card to get back in. When he entered their suite, he saw that the look on his face was frightening the cousins, so he took a breath and made an effort to seem less intense.
"That was the Traveler," he told the staring teens. "He expects to be meeting up with us tomorrow out near where you left your car."
"He wasn't the Traveler," Perry objected. "He was a little fellow with black hair."
"This is going to be difficult to explain to you two," Bane said. "You've heard of the Flying Dutchman? The Wandering Jew? The Undying Knight?"
"Sure, just as legends," Perry said. He caught the blank reaction from his cousin and told her, "Folklore. You know I used to read a lot of mythology and folklore."
"As far as I know, the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew are just tales. The Undying Knight, I'm not so sure. But the Traveler, with his wagon that goes everywhere and can't be caught... he's real." Bane went to his travel bag and took out some hard rubber wedges which he jammed under the hall door and into the jamb of the window. "This will make it a little more difficult for anyone to sneak in on us."
She had taken off her sneakers and socks, but otherwise remained full dressed. Kari Costigan pulled down the blankets and scrambled under them. "And to think I was saying I wanted some excitement in my life. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have nightmares, Mr Bane. What do you think?"
The Dire Wolf paused before answering. "Before going to sleep, remember everything you know about Gila Monsters."
VI.
The next morning, the cousins took turns scrubbing themselves in the shower until they were pink and fresh and almost shiny. They were wearing crisp new clothing that had just been purchased the day before and sat down to devour the breakfast brought up by room service. The horror and the apprehension of the previous twenty-four hours seemed to be completely forgotten.
As he watched them joking and teasing each other over the fried eggs and hot oatmeal and buttered wheat toast, Jeremy Bane felt an unfamiliar twinge. He didn't recognize the feeling, but he was feeling the bittersweet appreciation of how transient youth was. Kari and Perry wouldn't be nineteen forever and life would wear them down as it did almost everyone.
He himself ate as much as the two of them did together. Bane's superior speed and co-ordination carried the price of burning calories ruthlessly. He ate enough for a sumo and still looked like a gymnast. When the food was gone and he wheeled the breakfast cart aside, the Dire Wolf sat the cousins on the couch and explained he had rented the suite for two more days just in case. Kari and Perry had never been well off, they came from working class families, and staying in this hotel was a treat they hadn't even thought about experiencing.
"You know, you said something about Gila Monsters last night," Perry ventured to say as they were getting ready to leave. "The thing I saw chasing us the other night.. it sounds crazy, but that's what it reminded me of. A big old Gila Monster that somehow was getting up on its hind legs after us."
"Stranger things have happened out there in the desert," Bane told him. "We'll see if we can find out."
Driving out to the Interstate, they stopped at a supermarket. Bane insisted on loading the back of the rented Explorer with gallon jugs of water, packaged dried food that would be good for days, some hardboiled eggs and Slim Jims and assorted snacks that Kari requested, towels, a first aid kit and a red container he filled with gasoline when stopping to fill up the car's tank. He obviously believed in being prepared. Then they set out.
On the road, under a sun that suddenly seemed merciless, Bane told the cousins about what had happened in the late 1950s in the Southwest. Reports of animals and insects many times larger than normal had been in the newspapers repeatedly but had been dismissed by the rest of the country as wild exaggeration. The military had also used the excuse of national security to downplay the events and eventually that phenomenon was forgotten as the Cold War gave way to the years of Kennedy and the Beatles.
"I do remember reading something about that," Perry said thoughtfully. "Giant ants and scorpions that were killing and eating people. Most reference books concluded it was all hoaxes. One book blamed it on the radiation from all the atomic testing going on."
"I suppose the bombs didn't help," said Bane, "But there was another cause. You two have grown up with science-fiction movies and TV shows, so this may not seem as far-fetched as it would have back then, but there are what you might call pocket dimensions near to us. In the Midnight War, we call them adjacent realms. By 1957, one realm known as Fanedral was sending some of its creatures to harass us. Gralic energy leaking from the openings to Fanedral were what was changing the wildlife out here. That all stopped a few years later."
"This was before your time, of course," Kari said.
"Yes. I'm not THAT old, Kari. A man named Mark Drum was responsible for subduing most of the enlarged creatures and for closing off Fanedral for a generation." Bane was driving slower, scanning the sides of the road as they went. An hour and a half out of town, they found the abandoned Ford Taurus with its hood still up as if forlornly waving to them. The Dire Wolf pulled over, with the cousins trailing him, and examined the car.
"Looks like a hose blew and all your coolant ran out," he said after a minute. "Yeah. Being overheated contributed."
"Can you fix it?"
"No. The engine is fried, in my opinion." Bane stepped back and slammed the hood. "It would cost more than the car is worth."
"Wellll, we only paid eight hundred dollars for it from Jimmy," Kari admitted. "He said it had already gone three hundred thousand miles, what were a few hundred more."
Bane made no comment. He remained bareheaded but both teens were wearing baseball caps against the sun. The Dire Wolf brought them off the highway, where the dry dirt and scrub brush was sparse and mostly sand blew in what little breeze there was. The air shimmered over the highway where the Explorer and the Ford remained. Staying ahead of them, he led them parallel to the stretch of road they had hiked two nights earlier. Suddenly he stopped them and dropped to one knee.
"What does that look like?" he asked quietly.
"Footprints," Kari answered promptly. "Kinda like alligator tracks I saw in Florida once. Awful big though."
"If they were human, I'd say they were size fourteen. You see the long scuff left by a tail dragging between them right?" Bane stood up again. "Anything else strike you as funny?"
"Yeah..." Perry said after a second. "There's only one pair of prints. Not four. I wasn't imagining it then. There was some sort of lizard running after us on its hind legs! That's too freaky."
The Dire Wolf started following the tracks. "The prints are getting closer together. He was speeding up. To be honest, he could have caught you easily."
Kari shuddered visibly. "Stop it, you're giving me the creeps big time. Here we are isolated way out in the desert, not even nowhere, not even close to nowhere. Oops, I said it again."
As she spoke, they froze at the sound of a horse whinnying. All three spun around. Up by the side of the highway sat the white wooden wagon again, but now it had some flashy gilt trim added along the roof and around the edges. Hitched up at the front was a spectacular golden Palomino with a white mane and tail.
"Why am I not surprised?" muttered Perry Costigan. He took his cousin by her arm and got in front of her protectively. "Mr Bane, just what is going on here?"
The Dire Wolf started up toward the wagon. "Don't expect to see either of the Travelers you've met before," he said. "Just go with it."
Hopping down lightly from the driver's buckboard was a tall man with a crown of curly white hair over a smiling face. He had a prominent nose and inquisitive blue eyes. This Traveler was wearing a flamboyant plum-colored coat and white silk shirt with ruffles down the front, as well as tight purple trousers and shoes with rather pointed toes.
"My dear fellow!" he cried out. "You DID make it, and you brought the children as well."
"We're not children," mumbled Perry to himself.
"It's all coming back to me," said Bane. "We've worked together before. More than once. You look different every time."
"Yes, well, we all go through changes, what? Even good old Senior here. One can hardly expect to go for millenia without a makeover from time to time." The dandy stepped closer. "I expect you have been following foot tracks."
"What can you tell us about the situation, Traveler?" asked the Dire Wolf with just a bit of an edge in his voice.
"To be brutally frank, dear boy, the so-called Gila Monster is dreadfully overrated. They are so sluggish and so lacking in aggression that I almost think a man must deliberately try to get bitten by one. These beasties don't inject venom like a snake, either. They simply chew and work the venom into the wound that way." The Traveler scoffed. "As threats from the animal kingdom go, they are not impressive."
"The average Gila Monster does not stand more than six feet tall," Bane said.
"Yes, well, that is fair to say." The Travelers adjusted his fancy cuffs, with their French links, and tugged his jacket down a little. "Now, I realize you carry a firearm, my boy, and I do wish you would leave it here in the wagon."
"Yeah? And why would I do that?" Bane asked.
"I find diplomacy and negotiation are always worth trying first. Brute force should be the last resort, not the first." The Traveler smiled ingratiatingly. "I've been playing this game a good deal longer than you have, you realize."
"Thanks, but I'll use my own judgement," said the Dire Wolf. He handed two flashlights to Kari and Perry. These were as thick as a Magic Marker, with a lense that twisted to narrow or widen the beam. A spare battery was held on one side with velcro. When Perry tried his, the blinding white thread of light that shot out amazed him.
"Whoa. You have the coolest toys," he said.
"Put the loop on the end around your wrist. If we get separated, flick the beam on and off and I should be able to see it from quite a distance." He gave the Traveler a dubious stare before heading back up to the highway. "I'm going to move my car way off the road so the Highway Patrol doesn't tow it. I'll be back in a second." With that, he raced up to the Interstate, got in the Ford Explorer and pulled it away from the road. The ground was hard and dry enough that he had no fear of getting stuck.
Hurrying back, he found the wagon gone. The Traveler, the horse, the two teenagers he had placed under his implicit protection... all vanished. Bane was irritated but not really surprised. More and more, he was remembering why he had hated working with the Traveler. Circling, using one of the flashlights at a low angle, he picked up the ruts left by wooden wheels in the dirt. Of course, they led out into the desert. Bane began to follow the trail at a run.
VII.
"This cavern is suffocating me," Perry grumbled. "Why is it so hot down here?"
"The Heloderma like it that way, my lad," said Traveler. "Reptiles, you know."
"I can't believe I'm saying it, but if they weren't so ugly they'd be kind of pretty. The beaded skin, I mean," Kari put in. "But I don't like the way they look at us. I'm pretty sure they're imagining us on a plate with a side order."
The vault of the cavern reached up well over a hundred feet, with thick limestone stalactites reaching down to hang overhead ominously. Torches set in holes drilled into the walls gave off smudgy, uncertain light and water trickled loudly nearby. Despite the heat and stuffiness, there seemed to be enough fresh air circulating that they were not in any danger of suffocating. Traveler and the cousins stood in a huddle and stared back at the Heloderma who was regarding them with inscrutable glassy eyes.
Still basically a Gila Monster who happened to stand six feet tall, not counting the thick tail which dragged on the ground behind him, the creature had modified hips and spine so it could walk upright. The huge flat head seemed to have a permanent fanged grin that was not reassuring. Decorated with alternating wide horizontal bands of red and black, the pebbly hide looked thick enough to be extremely difficult to pierce. The Heloderma smirked at the three Humans and stayed where he was, blocking them from running out of the cavern.
A dozen more of the creatures moved slowly about the caverns on whatever inexplicable tasks they were performing. In a corner under a ledge was a stack of bones, and Kari noticed to her horror that she recognized a human ribcage. As they moved about, the Helodermim often dropped back down to all fours. When they did this, one of their mates hissed angrily and swatted at them with a taloned paw. Apparently their social pressure was to walk upright.
"Nice lizard," Kari said tentatively. She held up her open hands, not that she would dare try to pet the brute. One chomp of that wide mouth would take her arm off. "Here, lizard, lizard. Go for a walk?"
"Go for a WALK?" demanded Perry. "What's that all about?"
"It works with stray dogs sometimes," she admitted sheepishly.
"You waste your time with that one," hissed a sibilant voice from behind them. "He cannot speak."
The three of them swung their heads around at the newcomer. It was one of the Heloderma, but grotesquely wrapped in a long brown trenchcoat with a wide-brimmed hat. His long blunt snout stuck out way past the hat's concealment. "Only I have learned language so far of my brethren."
"Ah. There's always a gifted individual," said the Traveler. "And you would be?"
"Saramiento. Chief of my kin. I do not understand you, white-hair man."
"Please, call me Traveler. These are my new friends Perry and Kari."
"Something strange happened. I saw you in that wheeled hut pulled by the beast with four legs. I came up close to look at it and suddenly I was standing in a place of many buildings. I have spied on some of the towns where humans live under the sky but this was not like them. I stood there scared, a Human in black charged at me but before I could eat him, I was back standing out in the sands again." The monster took off the hat and struggled out of the trenchcoat with considerable difficulty. "Explain this to me!"
"Saramiento, old chap, I'm afraid you got caught up behind my wagon when I went to the big city back East," the Traveler smiled as he spoke. "Sucked up in the backdraft, althought that sounds crude. When you moved far enough away from the wagon, you snapped back home."
The Gila Monster stared with unblinking eyes, mulling this over. "I not understand, Traveler."
"Curses seldom make too much sense, my boy. They act in mysterious ways. Anyway, perhaps we can reach some understanding. What is it you fellows want?"
"Food. When we are small, we live on insects and little lizards and carrion. But we are this big, we are bored with that diet."
Perry mustered the nerve to speak up. "Excuse me. I thought your species only ate a few times a year and got by on a low metabolism?"
"This is true," Saramiento said. "But as we get smart, we want, what is word? More types of food."
Unexpectedly, Kari Costigan broke out in a mischievous grin. "Wait, wait. Here." She took something wrapped in a napkin from her jacket pocket and broke open a paper packet to sprinkle salt on it. "Try one of these."
The Gila Monster-monster took the small white object and gnashed on it. He made a weird gurgling noise and clapped his scaly hands together. "I like it! Give me another."
"I only brought one more," the redhead said as she salted a second hard-boiled egg and tossed it to the creature. Instead of trying to catch it with his clumsy blunt fingers, Saramiento snatched it from the air with his mouth and gnoshed away happily.
"So good, so good," he said, chewing with his mouth open. "Better than dead animal. Better than bugs."
The Traveler gave Kari a wink. "So then, I have a proposition for you, old fellow. Suppose we bring you perhaps twenty chickens. We will teach you how to take care of them, there are plenty of insects and worms aboveground for chickens to eat, and we can drop off a bag of feed now and then." He folded his arms across his chest, almost hugging himself in self-congratulation. "Learning to make fire and boil water will not be difficult for you, you speak better English than many Yanks to be honest."
The Heloderma tilted its huge head thoughtfully. "I think I understand. These chickens provide us with hard-boiled eggs?"
"You'll have to boil the eggs, but otherwise yes." The Traveler snapped the fingers of one hand. "It is easy. Tending chickens is not that difficult and you Gila Monsters have lots of free time."
"Just don't eat the chickens," laughed Kari. She seemed remarkably at ease in the bizarre situation. Perry gave her a startled glance.
VIII.
Bane found the wagon standing by a cluster of large boulders that had apparently been deliberately placed out on the open desert. There was no cliff they could have fallen down from. He was relieved for some reason to find that Senior was still a Palomino. "There, there," he whispered as the horse neighed and stamped the ground. "Easy. Let's see what's going on."
The wagon was unoccupied. Bane walked around the loose assortment of boulders and found half-concealed an opening to a tunnel leading down at a steep angle into the ground. Would Traveler have taken two teens into a dark unknown hole in the ground which was likely populated by giant carnivorous lizards? Of course he would. Bane remembered his previous encounters with Traveler by now and he would not put anything past the crazy old coot. Loosening the long-barreled Smith & Wesson 38 in its holster behind his left hip, the Dire Wolf crouched over the opening and listened.
Behind him, Senior made a concerned whinny and shifted from one leg to another.
"Don't worry, Senior. I'll bring them back." Then he realized he was talking to a horse as if the animal could understand. Traveler was rubbbing off on him. Bane started down the incline, which although steep had frequent level areas like landings on a staircase. Perhaps a half-mile below, a faint yellow glow could be made out.
Did Gila Monsters dig tunnels? He didn't know offhand. It seemed to him that this formation was natural. Ahead, the surface just above his head rose until he was walking down into a huge open cavern lit by torches. He made out the lumbering shapes of a dozen of the human-sized creatures and in one corner, the Traveler and the cousins had a Heloderma looming up over them.
The Dire Wolf ran down the slope into the cave. One of the Gila Monsters lurched toward him with thick fingers clutching. Bane made no attempt to throw a blow. The creature's left foot was raised off the ground as it took a ponderous step, and Bane squatted down to grab the underside of that flat foot with both hands. He straightened up sharply, getting the monster off-balance and the Heloderma fell over backwards to knock down three of his kindred like bowling pins.
Lunging over to where the three people were facing a particularly large Gila Monster, the Dire Wolf whipped out his revolver. "Freeze right there! I'm not going to break any knuckles on you, but I'll put a slug in each of your eyes and see how you feel about that!"
"Oh, Jeremy, do behave," said Traveler in a clearly exasperated tone. "You Americans and your Wild West mentality. Do put that thing away."
"It's alright," added Kari. "We've got a deal with these critters."
Bane slowly lowered his gun. For once, he was at a loss. "Huh?" was all he could manage. Perry Costigan came over and explained the situation, adding that he himself found the whole situation hard to accept in any way. There was an animated discussion that went back and forth for quite a while. At one point, the four humans looked up to see the red and black lizards standing in a semi-circle nearby, obviously trying to follow the conversation but being hopelessly lost. Kari started laughing at this, and Perry joined in after a second.
Traveler shrugged at Bane. "Young folks. They never change, bless their pointy little heads. Well, my boy, will you help us transport chickens and bags of feed here to the caverns? Perhaps you can show them how to make fire with the flint and steel trick? I do have some pots and pans in my wagon I will donate."
The Dire Wolf had seldom been more uncertain how he felt or what he should do. "Why not," he said at last. "I can take a few days for this. It beats having these Helodermim chasing people along the highways."
"And then," announced Traveler with a grand sweeping gesture, "I feel like I should visit Okali. I haven't been there in two hundred years. Tell me, Kari, Perry... how would you like to see real living Unicorns? Or Speaking Apes? They're quite gentle."
"Oh, I love the idea!" squeaked Kari. "This beats working in a bakery any way you look at it."
Perry snorted. "And I'm certainly not going to let my innocent cousin travel unchaperoned with some old man we don't know! Sure, I'll go along."
By now, Bane had become almost numb to more surprises. "Traveler, you can't seriously intend to take these two kids to Okali of all places? What about the Skullhunters there? What about the manticores?"
"You fret too much, dear boy," said Traveler. "I always travel with a companion or two and I have lost very few. I will fill you in on our adventures when we next see each other."
"We're going to meet again?" Bane asked.
"You will always be able to recognize me because I will always look different every time we meet," Traveler chuckled.
10/1/2016
