18th July, 2004
Locks
Sunday, 2:56 am in Corner
Very out-of-order with the previous things I’ve been posting for this series. Like, a lot. Oh well, life’s like that…
It’s been niggling me ever since we walking into this little shithole bookstore, something rough and out-of-place, and by the time my watered-down brain has figured it out I’ve realised I’ve lost Sig somewhere down the high, clustrophobic ailses of old books. And that scares the shit outta me. Like you wouldn’t believe.
The problem with it was I’d been looking for something; was he nearby, were we being watched, followed, scoped out by snipers. Anything that would’ve put me on edge like I’ve been. What didn’t occur to me was that I wasn’t looking for something at all; because there was nothing to find.
Absolutley nothing at all.
The creaky floorboard clued me in by breaking the silence. Dead and utter. No shuffling of partons, no low conversations or the sound of traffic from outside. Cities are noisy, but most of it is background, so you just wind up ignoring it. Cut it all out, and it takes you a while to realise.
There’s a window to my left, and I turn to it with almost madenning slowness. Dread… in so much as I can feel dread anymore. Outside is…
Reality is like any piece of household furniature; neglect it, and it decays. Humans are the cockroaches that live in reality and keep it worn smooth and flat. Keep the mould out and the sunshine in. Outside there were no people – one of the busiest streets in the city, and there were no people. Even most of the perpetual city traffic-jam had gone, leaving only the odd fast-rotting hulk on the street to add to the surreally empty vista. Not to be outdone, the fog was rolling in; when it touched the window, grime and decay followed it in snaking tendrils, first to yellow, then brown, then seeping in right at the corners…
The thump behind me caused me spin fast enough that I lost balance and had to catch a shelf for support. My hand came from it greasy – dust and grime and rot, that spread deeper, causing my nails to thicken and lengthen. Become seeped in old, dried blood. That this would effect me two was, however, the least of my worries.
Another wet thump, followed by a kind of heavy dragging sound, repeated again and again. About two ailes over, I thought, but it was hard to tell. When reality starts to break, so does perception.
Sigmund…
One spring and I’m on top of one of the book cases in a low crouch, not a lot of room between my head and the roof. My hair is starting to tangle and dread up again, and by this time both hands have turned to claws. The ward-tattoos on my back and arms and sides are itching like mad, but they are old and weak, sliced up by scars and worn down by time. Besides, they weren’t made to hold up under an attack like this from the outside.
“Lain, is that– holy shit!”
I hear him before I see him, have bound across the top of half the store before I can think, and dropped down in front of him just as he stumbles back a step. He shrikes a little when he sees me, which I choose not to take too personally since he stills that fear almost instantly, instead pointing behind me. I turn, hind claws scoring burning grooves in the wooden floors.
Thump.
And I am not the only monster in this place.
I don’t think about it much. Decayed, featureless fleshy lump; a man formed by an inexpert hand, tossed away and left to rot. It goes down fast, with a sickeningly wet kind of pop, and drops to the floor in a pool of gore like a burst leather bag. Which is what it was, really. It’s shit is burning my claw, and I absentmindedly set fire to them in order to get myself cleaned. It stinks when it burns.
“What the fuck was that?”
Sigmund is peering around my non-burning arm at the steaming mess, watching it time-lapse decompose with a terrified fascination. He swallows hard, pushes his glasses up his nose, and turns to look at me. The flames still burning on my hand send an eerie kind of flicker over his face, and I extinguish them.
“Trouble,” I growl. The stitches pull on my lips, and my teeth feel too sharp, my tongue too long, and my wards are burning up. I hate it, but it makes me feel more alive than I have in centuries, because something is happening. Something I can deal with – or at least deal through – and besides, Sigmund looks up at me with wide hazel eyes that see everything and he is not afraid.
And neither am I. Much.
“That’s a bit vague…” He looks slightly put-out. He doesn’t like it when I don’t tell him things, but often doesn’t like it when I do, either, so I weigh up my options.
“It was a draugr,” I explain, deciding I may as well try honesty and go from there.
His brow furrows, and I can tell he’s trying to dig up a translation for the word from that encyclopaedia of myths he keeps up in that DnD-addled brain of his. He almost gets it right. “A ghost?”
“Yes and no. More solid than that, as you can see. They’re barrow-wights, spirits of the restless dead that retake to flesh and shamble aimlessly about making trouble. Back in the day they were pests more than anything, but I haven’t seen one in… well, ever.” Which sounds funny, but is true; it may have been ‘back in the day’, but it’s from the myth-time, outside of the linealities of this real world. And I’ve never seen a draugr this side of reality before.
On the other hand, we aren’t exactly in ‘this side’ of reality at the moment.
Sigmund seems to be feeling a little braver with me standing here all devil-badass and knowing, and creeps around to get a closer look at what remains of our fleshy fiend; which isn’t much asides from a foul-smelling brown stain.
“This is all a bit Steven King, don’t you think? I can’t hear the traffic outside anymore either…”
“No.” I follow Sigmund’s eyes. The dead are walking again; never a good sign. Something somewhere’s been cut, and I have a suspicious feeling I know what it is. Suspicious… and very, very angry. I’m going to kill that golden-haired sonovabitch. Again. And this time I’m going to do it with my own damn claws and eat his fucking heart afterwards.
Sigmund seems to follow my line of thinking. “Um, if, like, this guy is dead. Or was, or whatever, shouldn’t we, like, tell someone he got out?” He pauses for a minute, and I think realises how stupid this would sound if he were talking to anyone other than me. “Like, um, Hel?”
“She’s dead,” I said with a deadpan flatness I don’t feel.
“Oh.” He bites his lip nervously. He never was very good when it came to my other children, though for no lack of effort.
“What do you know about the Three Seals,” I say rather than ask, going on before he can answer, “Hel, Fenrir and Jormungund?”
“Hel guarded the dead, Jormungund circled the world and, er, Fenrir was, um, bound up?” I wait, and he stammers on. “Um, Fenrir and Jormungund will be killed at Ragnarok. And they’re, er, all your bastard offspring.”
I raise an eyebrow at that, and he has the good graces to blush somewhat. “Potted history is all well-and-good, but what does it all mean?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Suddenly I don’t feel like looking at him, and shift my attention to the titles along the bookshelves; books on mythology. Of course. I pick up and great big colourful Encyclopaedia Nordica and flick open to a sutiably prosaic picture of the three – deliberatley not looking for an interpretation of myself, all of which I tend to find depressing. I hand the picture to Sigmund, who studies it as if I’d just given him the secrets to life itself. He’s so damn cute. Utterly clueless, but cute all the same.
“Time, Space and the Soul,” I start, putting on my best exposition voice. “All this”– I gesture to the row upon row of mythology books around us –“is pure allegory, right?”
He nods.
“So what can the story of my three ‘bastard offspring’ possibly mean, what is it an allegory for? A daughter who guards the dead and stops them from walking; who keeps the past in the past, a lock on Time and Decay. On Life and Death. One son who circles the physical world of Men, a lock on Space and Distance. Another who was bound in fear of his raw and barbarous power, a lock on Instinct and the Soul. Time, Space and the Soul; the three Seals that hold Reality in place. Do you understand?”
He nods, then frowns, and I can feel his next question before he asks it. “But Fenrir and Jormungand were to be both killed at Ragnarok, and you said it had already happened…?” Bright cookie.
I nod. “Around the time of World War II; two such huge conflicts within such a short time of each other. Us old gods are drawn to such things, and I suppose it was only natural of us to assume the End of All Things had come.” I wince inwardly at my use of ‘us’, but he doesn’t mention it, and neither do I. “And so my sons died, and so did the Seals and Space and the Soul.”
“Wait… the Seal on Space… You, you don’t mean that literally do you? Like, NASA and the moonwalk and all that?”
I nod. “It’s partly that, and partly many other things. The world is much larger than it used to be, back when all people knew was their own homelands and maybe a small part beyond, and yet it is smaller, more defined and structured. For a few month’s average salary I can catch a flight that will take me across the globe in a day and be as sure that I will land safely as I can feel walking from my house down to the shops. I can pick up a phone and call that same place almost instantly, or use the Internet to read about the lives of friends I’ve made all over the world. Space, distance, travel; these things aren’t the limiting factors they once were. The Seal is broken; we no longer fear that the Serpent shall devour us if we stray too far.
“Fenrir is more complex. You have to understand, the world has always been as it is now – the same round ball of rock spinning around the same sun – but only because it has been made to be so; and quite recently. The removal of the Seal on Space helped the fall of that on the Soul; the world is more mixed than ever before. Migration, people come from all over with all different beliefs and live together. Everyone brings with them a culture that has a different worldview – different religions, different worldviews – and for the first time people are beginning to see that they are all correct. That there is no monopoly on Truth, on the civilised Soul. There are other things too; Fenrir and I were chained for similar reasons. We represented the wild and primal things that held no place in the emerging Christian world order. Except that Order is breaking down, Reason is once more being, if not replaced, then supplimented with Instinct, with Chaos.”
Sigmund is looking at me kind of strangely, and I realise too late how adept he is in reading between my lines. I plough on regardless.
“Hel did not preish in Ragnarok, and so her Seal, that of Time and Death, still holds. Or at least did. I… I think he has killed her, and that this–” I gesture to the smear that once was the draugr, as well as the eerily deserted bookstore “–this is the result. The Seals are gone, and Reality is starting to crumble once more.”
“He wants to turn everything back like it was, doesn’t he? In… in the myth-time, before everything began.”
I nod. “That’s probably a reasonable assumption. As myths we have very little power over this world now, we are echoes of memories, not true gods at all. He wants to restore himself to the seat of his father’s throne. Be a God once more, presiding over the Paradise he believes is his by right.”
Sigmund chews his lip a little, then finally says. “You lied before, about there being three Seals.”
I nod.
“Yes. And you’re right; I’m the last one.”
“And you should have been destroyed in Ragnarok, but you weren’t, because– because your wife went in your place. Because she knew about all this somehow, or at least part of it. Knew someone had to survive to be the Last Seal.” He’s not guessing this anymore, he’s telling me, and there’s a light burning in his eyes I haven’t seen for oh-so long and I positivley ache for it.
“But that means he’s coming for you. That’s what that attack was in the alley that night, but he’s not going to give up. He’s going to destroy you…”
His next words send ice right down my spine and white-hot rage into my heart.
“… and he’s going to use me to do it.”
We leave the bookstore to the roar of the traffic and the blaring of horns. Suddenly I’m feeling a bit stupid to be walking on my toes in a way my legs are no longer designed for – not to mention my boots – and I manage to stand flat-footed again with only a minimal disruption in balance. I smack my mouth open and shut, re-adjusting to my human teeth and jawline, brushing the no-longer dreaded hair out of my eyes. I can see it’s going to be somewhat of a pain in the ass switching like this all the time. Oh well, nothing to be done about it really. At least my back doesn’t feel like a million little bugs are biting it anymore.
Sigmund is too busy staring out at the seemingly normal street again to notice my momentary discomfort.
“It’s all back to normal…?”
I shrug. “It’s likely it’ll shift in and out for a while. But when it all goes bad, it’ll go bad fast, so be on your toes.”
“What happens to everyone else… when it changes?”
“Fucked if I know. Everyone that’s got a little bit o’ godsoul in ‘em probably hangs around like you and I do. As for everyone else…” I just shrug.
Sig frowns again, looking adorable as he does so.
“Look, it’s best just not to think about it. It’ll happen when it happens, we’ll kick some ass and just wait for it to go away again.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” he snaps. “Some of us aren’t used to getting randomly sucked into alternate realities and harassed by the walking dead!”
“Ppft. C’mon, you play videogames. You just gotta find the flashlight and the board-with-a-nail and start smacking away. No worries.” He still looks annoyed, so I throw an arm over his shoulders and begin steering him out of the doorway of the bookstore. “Besides, you’ve got me; your very own personal god-mode. C’mon, let’s go get lunch.”
We go find some wanky cafe with an unpronouncable name and I order him some crepes with maple syrup and big globs of ice cream and cream, which I know he likes. For myself I get a hot chocolate and a slice of thick, rich mudcake. It’s probably too early in the day to sacrifice myself some whiskey, so I opt for the under-18s version. By the end we’re both feeling much better, Sig seeming to have put aside the bookshop incident as just one more trial in his suddenly very abnormal life. Adaptability; I always liked that about him.
It’s getting towards mid afternoon and the point that we’re going to have to start thinking about going back home. My only problem is I’m suddenly paranoid about leaving him alone in case everything suddenly goes pear-shaped again. Not that I’m worried about his ability to hold up against a couple of overzealous corpses per sei – he was a great fighter back in the day, trained by the Valkyries themselves, but that’s part of the problem. We’re no longer ‘back in the day’, and while his memory tends to pull through when it counts, it’s not something I’m about to go risk his life on. Besides, his weapon of choice used to be a double-bladed battle axe almost as big as her was; and as resourceful as he is, I doubt he could find one of those in a hurry. Fortunatley, as I’m trying to find a way around this problem, he manages to solve it for me.
“Um, what happened before has me kind of freaked out. Would… would it be alright if you maybe stayed over tonight. I’m sure dad won’t mind, I’ll just say we’re studying together or something.”
Or I could just do a head-job on daddy dearest, but really I’d rather not. Sig’s old man is a bit of an overzealous workaholic, but he’s not a bad guy. Besides, I think he rather likes me since he’s under the impression that I have a great deal of money and ‘friends in high places’ (which is, more or less, true). Plus I’m well-dressed and polite (at least to him, which reminds me I should really get out of this dress before we go there)… basically a dream friend for his errant son. I don’t really know what he’d think about the rest of it, but you never know; I suppose knowing your son’s being lusted-over by a god has got to be at least a bit of a boost to the old ego. I never knew Sig’s old man last time ‘round, and hell, this probably isn’t even the same guy, so I’m probably just running myself around in circles.
I realise Sig is looking at me kind of shyly expectant, so I grin and nod my approval. “Y’ just read my mind, luv.”
He looks almost heartbreakingly relieved, and I guess this afternoon really did shake him up pretty bad, though he hides it well. I pay the bill and we leave the cafe and jump into my car, parking it ‘round the block from Sig’s house because, as his classmate, I’m technically not supposed to be driving it around on my own. I don’t bother to put the top up. Sometimes I find old sneakers jammed into the car’s glovebox; the remains of the last person who tried to mess with it, I guess. No-one fucks with the god’s mighty steed; no matter what form it happens to take.
Sig’s dad is pleased to see me, giving me a hearty slap on the back and engaging me in what I’ve gradually learnt to be the ‘manly smalltalk’ people use to try and butter-up their superiors. I’d really like to know exactly who Sussman Senior thinks I’m related to. But, like I said, he’s not a bad guy. Just a bit overzealous, and I extract myself from him as soon as politely possible and retreat up to Sig’s room. By the time I get there Sig is already performing miscellaneous tasks on the ‘net, so I grab some comics and settle myself down on his bed.
It’s gonna be a long night. But as I study the delicate curve of Sig’s jaw, and the adorable way he constantly pushes the glasses up his nose, I realise that I wouldn’t want it any other way.
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