The Green Man; Aspect Book 2

[joegoda]

I'll give him this. He didn't laugh, didn't do so much as raise very much of an eyebrow. He sat in his big chair, with his big hands folded on his old wooden desk, and watched me, calm as a cucumber.

I told him about the Gateway, about the Bads, about the Center of the Universe. I told him a bit of my background, my raising, and my family, mostly deceased. I told him how I had gotten a postcard from someone named H.P. and how Miriam had come into my life. I spilled all sorts of things that I probably shouldn't have. I left out a few things though. I didn't mention the Golden Globe, my Aspect, or the Guardians of Reality. I also kept out the bit about the Paladin being related to me, since I wasn't sure any more. Heck, even if I had been sure, I probably wouldn't have told him.

I talked, pretty much nonstop, for over two hours. We were interrupted twice.

The first time was by the old matron at the desk outside; whose name I would later find out was Naomi, opening the door. Blackwolf looked over at the door as it opened, and raised his eyebrows. Naomi, her round face never breaking from its stone facade of not caring, raised hers in answer, nodded at me and waited. Blackwolf nodded back with a flicker of a smile. Naomi nodded again and shut the door as her head disappeared. Not a word was exchanged, but it was apparent that she was checking to make sure everything was all right, that I wasn't a "difficult personality".

The second time was when the matron brought in two cheeseburgers and two cokes. She opened the door and wordlessly placed them on the desk. Blackwolf thanked her, and offered me one.

"Its afternoon, you know." He said.

"Yeah, well..." I shrugged. "I normally don't eat lunch until six pm or so. Habit from working the late shift. Thanks, though."

He nodded. "I remember when I used to work that shift. I'm an early riser. Pay my respects to the rising sun." He looked at me and his eyes narrowed just a bit. "My grandfather used to be a shaman... a medicine man." He unwrapped his burger from its white and yellow paper and took a big bite. His eyes never left mine.

"Really?" I picked up the coke and sipped gently from its straw.

I don't normally drink soda. They tend to be too sweet and I don't like the cold of ice inside me. There's a long story why, and I won't go into it here. Just keep in mind that entropy is the slowing down of everything, to lose all the heat in a thing. It seems counterproductive to try to fight entropy and help it at the same time. Ice is evil.

"Thanks for the coke," I told him. He nodded at me while he chewed. He kept looking at me. Expectantly. I'm not really good with subtleties. Never have been. Probably why my love life has sucked so badly.

"What?" I asked, straight out. What can I say? His silence and his constantly watching me was bugging me. Sure, I can be a nice guy, when I've had enough sleep, and when I didn't just spend yesterday trying to not be killed by monsters. "I tell you a story that I wouldn't have believed if I heard it and you just look at me. What more do you want? I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but what do you want, detective?"

"Nothing, Chester." Blackwolf put his cheeseburger down. "I didn't ask you for that story. You told it to me all by yourself." He picked up his coke and slurped it noisily. "I think the real question is yours. What do you want? Why tell me what you didn't have to?"

Good question. Why did I tell him? I certainly didn't have to. I guess I just wanted someone on my side, and like I said, I flipped a coin. Something in me told me that I could trust this big honking Indian on the other side of the desk. I quietly pondered the thing while Blackwolf sat eating his lunch and I sat drinking mine.

When I came back from my mental musings, Blackwolf was smiling at me. Oh, his mouth didn't exactly show anything, but there was a twinkle in his dark brown eyes and the edges of them had crinkled. He was laughing on the inside for some reason. Some joke I didn't quite get.

Then I made a connection. Maybe. A small one. "Okay," I said. My head ached, and I rubbed my temples trying to push my brain back into shape. "Your grandfather was a shaman. There are some folks that call me a wizard. So... you believe my story?"

Blackwolf tipped his coke at me and this time the smile reached his mouth. "I had you figured for a smart man, Chester," he said.

This didn't tell me anything, of course. Or, it told me quite a bit. Patterns and puzzles. The world is full of 'em. If you figure out the edges, sometimes the middle will fill in.

"And you do the sunrise ceremony," I said.

He shrugged, still smiling. I could not figure out why he was smiling. Overly happy people bug the crap out of me. "Not so much a ceremony. I just say hello to the ancestors and Grandfathers and Grandmothers." He wadded the wrapping of the finished burger up and tossed it into the trashcan. "Besides, the Sunrise Ceremony is for young girls entering puberty."

"What tribe are you, detective?" I asked, adding, "Not that it would mean much to me. I'm pretty ignorant about Native Americans."

"Most whites are, Chester." He reached for the other cheeseburger. "Sure you don't want this?"

I shook my head. "No, go ahead. I'll eat later, at the pub." It was Wednesday. I was going to have a story for the gang that night, for sure and true.

"Which pub do you go to?" He asked.

"Place called Potbelly's in Broken Arrow." I shrugged. "It's something of a weekly thing. My friends and I have been going there since..." I let that trail off. We've been going there since they saved my life, right after my baby brother died.

He nodded. "I know the place. It's a bit loud, isn't it?" I've been going there for four years and I don't remember his face. Maybe he went when I wasn't there.

"Yeah, it can be." I sipped more of the coke. My throat was getting really dry and I was missing my travel mug. "Sundays are quiet, though."

Frank Blackwolf was playing some sort of game with me. Not a malicious game. Just a wait and watch game. I said something, he either did or didn't. He watched my reactions, and I tried to figure out what the heck he was doing.

Maybe it wasn't a game. Maybe he was trying to let me figure things out on my own. I mean, just because I can be a chatty Cathy doesn't mean everyone is. While he ate and I sipped, I turned my tiny brain to the task of asking myself the important question.

Why hadn't I left yet?

I wasn't under suspicion. I was too small to have killed Miriam. I could have walked out the door at any time, as long as I didn't leave town for a while.

Blackwolf had given me two pieces of information. His grandfather was a shaman. He did morning rituals. I knew I just needed one more thing to fit it all together, so I went looking for it. Answers come in threes for me.

I let my eyes roam around the room. His cabinets were clean. Old, but clean. Their tops didn't contain anything more interesting than some framed citations for bravery and some stacks of file folders.

The diplomas on the left wall were dated in the late seventies. That meant he was probably as old as I am, though he looked much younger. I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. He didn't even have gray in his hair yet, and my beard and what little hair I had on my head were gray and white.

There's a thing with my generation, the generation that is past their forties and heading into their fifties. Most of the midlife oh-my-god-I'm-not-young-anymore has passed. Well, okay... for some of us. There are some that never come to a state of calm about that. I think I've been there since I was twenty. But however it goes, my generation has seen things come and go that are strange and wondrous. We've seen the beginning of the space race, the beginning of the electronic age. We've seen wars that are just horrible and had criminals that made the monsters of nightmares real.

Yeah, yeah, there were older folks from the beginning of the 1900's who saw automobiles and the war to end all wars, whichever that was... but they saw things that were mundane, that benefited mankind in one way or another. Except the war, maybe. But you'd be surprised how many positive things come from war. Do some research, look it up. A lot of medical and engineering wonders came from the wages of war. There's some positive stuff there. It's just as shame that they were born from something so devastating.

My generation, though, saw the birth of the hold that the Bads have on mankind. We saw the shadows grow long in the hearts of men and women and children. We saw the loss of innocence and the widespread growth of cynicism. We saw the monsters of old come to life.

Monsters and wizards and witches, oh my. And shamans. I looked at the pictures on his right wall, where his eyes would be naturally drawn, if he were right handed. His family, dressed in ceremonial garb. Pow-wows. Frank Blackwolf was a Native American who followed his heritage, and remembered the old ways. The third piece clicked in my head, and my eyes confirmed it for me when they caught the leather thong around Franks neck.

He was wearing a medicine bag.

Interesting. Life never fails to amaze me in how it will always send me to the people that I need or to the people that need me.

"Frank," I asked casually, "What did your father do?"

He stopped chewing and leveled his laser eyes at me again. The smile had all but disappeared. He swallowed before he said, "My father worked on the oilfields until the oil dried up in the eighties."

"Roughneck?" I asked.

"No," he said, swallowing the bite in his mouth. "He was a surveyor of sorts. He could tell where the oil was."

"A dowser, then?" Puzzles were made to be solved. All it takes is the right pieces.

"Sort of," he said hesitantly. I felt that it was an area to stop pushing. Maybe there was bad blood between him and his father. Maybe, like with me and Jamie, I just don't talk about it much. I didn't see any pictures of his father or mother on the wall.

A dowser is a person that... finds things. If they go looking for water underground, they carry bent branches cut from some tree they like and they're called water witches. In truth, dowsers can find just about anything, if they're good and if they're real. Even cats that walk through walls.

Blackwolf's father was 'sort of' a dowser for an oil company. Or, maybe he was a 'sort of' dowser for hire. Maybe, if Blackwolf's father was the son of a shaman, and the son of a shaman became a shaman, or something like it, it would almost make sense for Blackwolf's father to hire himself out to make sure that oil companies would not only find oil, but also keep the earth spirits at arms reach. Blackwolf's father, if he was the son of a shaman and followed in the shaman's footsteps, would be able to make peace with the Great Spirits.

A 'sort of' dowser. I decided to not push the obvious question of what 'sort of' a dowser he was. Like I said, I'm not too good with subtleties.

"Are you a shaman?" I asked him.

The smile faded completely. "No," he said. "I'm a cop." He let that sit as it was and watched me. I knew that there was something else coming, I just didn't know what. All I had to do was wait. He would supply me just a bit more, I could feel it building inside of him. I was good at this game, too.

After a few moments, long and not exactly comfortable, he gave it up, "And you're a wizard."

"Some say so." I decided that I would just dive in. I could have played the 'give up just a little bit' game a bit longer, but I was getting tired, I had a headache and I wanted to do what I normally do on my day off. Sleep and nothing. Maybe eat some cake or something.

"Detective," I told him, "I'm going to take a shot in the dark here. I'm going to pretend that you're a pretty smart person and that you had me checked out even before you had your folks bring me in. You knew, before I got here, that I was physically incapable of killing Miriam."

I stopped and looked at him. As I was speaking, he leaned back in his chair and cradled his coke on his belly. You have to be old enough to be comfortable with a belly to be able to do that. I found I was liking him. The crinkles had come back to the corners of his eyes, and he nodded at me. "And?" he said.

"You already knew that the Gateway was a real thing," I guessed. "You had your suspicion that Miriam wasn't killed by a...," I searched for the word. "Human being." I tossed my trump. "I would imagine that you, grandson of a shaman, keeper of your heritage, would have sat near him, maybe on his knee, and heard stories about the spirits. And some of those stories weren't very pretty."

I watched him for a reaction. He gave me nothing, not a sign or a wink or a nod. Just those crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe, somewhere in your heart, you just wanted some sort of...," I gave up. I had nothing. "Really, Frank. I don't know." It was my turn to lean forward. "Why did you bring me in?"

Frank smiled again. It was small and quiet, but it was there. "Like I said, you're a smart man." He leaned forward and put his coke on the desk. "Yes," he said, "I heard stories from my grandfather that were pretty horrible. When I saw Miriam's body, it reminded me of the stories he told me of spirits that would steal the face of a man and walk the earth in disguise." His voice was soft and quiet, as if he was sharing a secret. "I didn't call you in here because you were as suspect. I called you in here because there was a witness that placed you with the victim, with Miriam last night. I was hoping you could shed some light on what happened."

He stood up and stretched. He was a big man. Nearly seven feet tall, I think. I heard joints creak and pop when he did it, and I was envious because I was still sitting. So I stood and stretched too. He saw this and nodded approval. "Sitting too long will make us old dogs weak."

He went to one of the file cabinets, unlocked it from a key on a ring he carried in his pocket, and pulled out a couple of folders. He carried them back to the desk and sat. I followed his example and sat too.

"I did check you out," he said. "Crime wise, you're pretty boring. You had a couple of brothers that were interesting, but don't we all? You, though, have absolutely nothing worse than some twenty year old traffic violations." He found the folder he was looking for and opened it. "I almost decided to just write you off, call you in, do the routine 'where were you last night' sort of thing, until I ran across this." He pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder and passed it to me.

It was a report from over a year ago. It detailed a cult murder near the town of Prospect, Oregon. I didn't have to read the report. I had lived part of it. Except it wasn't a cult murder. It was the defeat of a human monster named James Thomas. A man, who through the mixture of physics and LSD had unlocked a few secrets that it takes real wizards years to learn. He had raised his three sons to be incredibly powerful wizards, and had set himself up to be a God, with his sons as his bodyguards. He was determined to create a new pantheon of Gods and rule the world. The only thing that he felt threatened by was a coven of witches on the east coast.

He was beaten by his daughter, Angelina. He didn't know it, but his daughter, who he had ignored for most of her life, carried the spirit of a real goddess inside of her, just like I carried Pan, my Aspect. It was this Goddess, Demeter, who beat James Thomas, tied him up and left him for dead. What he had wanted to be, Angelina already was, or carried the Aspect of, anyway.

He was scum. He was scum, he had killed his wife, abused his daughter, and he deserved to die, horribly if possible. But Demeter couldn't kill him. No matter how strong an Aspect is, it can't do anything that the core personality of the person it inhabits wouldn't do. And no matter how abusive her father was, Angelina still loved him. Angelina is a good kid. Not like me.

I gave her father the choice to either die of starvation or, if he was smart enough, he could open a gateway to another dimension and get away. I gave him hints to the little thing I call a whistleto. You call it, and it opens a gate to somewhere else. It's fairly complex to build, but very effective, the whistleto. This one was programmed with the beginning phrase of a Billy Joel song, and if he whistled it, then a gateway would open up and he could escape from his bonds.

The kicker was that the gateway would open, one way, to a spot I call the Abyss. A place of depression and darkness, lacking light, lacking sound, and lacking... everything. I was trapped there for a short while and if it hadn't have been for my enormous ego, I would have been stuck there. If James Thomas were able to call the whistleto to him, it would have dropped him and trapped him in this place.

Good riddance. If he died or ended up in the Abyss, it didn't matter either way to me.

Angelina and I left him there. We knew that the police would eventually show up and write the whole thing off to a cult killing. That's what it looked like, anyway. Thomas had called a group of his ... godlings or whatever... and started some sort of a ritual. There were enough quote magical unquote drawings and blood all over the place that it would have surprised me if it had been anything else but a cult murder.

I got one call from the Oregon police. They asked me if I knew James Thomas. I told them I knew Angelina Thomas, but I didn't know her father. I told them that I had given Angelina a ride home, and then I went to see the Oregon Vortex. It wasn't exactly a lie. He was the sort of person that I had no desire to know. And I did give her a ride home, and I did go to the Vortex.

I passed it back to Blackwolf. "Yeah," I said. "I knew about it. I took Angelina home right before it happened. Poor kid, to lose her parents like that."

"Yeah." he answered. I knew I had seen your name before." He put the report back into the folder and slid the folder into a desk drawer. I suspected he would be looking at it again, later.

"I have a feeling that there is more to the story than meets the eye." He let that settle on me and he watched me for my reaction.

"It's been my experience, detective, that there is always more than meets the eye." I really tried to not sound like an ass. I shrugged. "It was a terrible thing that happened there. Other than that, I don't know what else to say."

"Chester," he said calmly, "I'm not trying to get you to say anything about it. I wanted to see what sort of man you are, not get some confession from you about something way outside of my jurisdiction." He smiled at me, trying to allay my worries. "No, I showed that to see if you would admit to knowing about it. You had two choices. You could have lied to me and denied any sort of involvement, or you could have told me as much of the truth as you felt was safe for you." He nodded. "You didn't lie."

I was wondering where the hell this was going. "And?"

"And," he continued, "if what I think is true, and I suspect it is, then I want to tell you my own story."

"Story?" I asked. Sometimes my world is just strange. I didn't know what it was he thought, but somehow I knew that it would involve magic, monsters and circle casters.

"For the last thirty years, this area has seen some of the strangest murders in the country. I have a whole cabinet full of unsolved murders and crimes that involve... some of the same elements that are in the report from Oregon."

"This area?" I knew that there were some oddities about Tulsa, anyone who reads the newspaper can see that, but I didn't know that we had reached such a level of notoriety.

"Here," he said. "Let me show you." He pulled a folded map from the same file cabinet he got the Oregon report from. "I call this cabinet the X-files." He was referring to an old television show, but I got the reference. That particular cabinet held his files of unusual and unsolved murders and crimes.

He cleared a space on his desk and unfolded the map. The map was of Tulsa and the surrounding area. It was covered in tiny red dots, each one pin pointing some crime or another.

"Look here," he said. His finger traced a large circle over the map, containing all the smaller circles. "A one hundred mile radius, give or take." His finger jabbed at a spot in the center of it all. There wasn't a single red dot, but it was obvious all the others spread out and away from that spot. I leaned down and peered at the words on the map.

Redbud Valley. One of my favorite walking spots. Very old and very sacred, Redbud Valley contained some of the original trees and rocks from the very birth of the country. The valley contained the bones of our planet and the memories of all that had passed through it.

And it sat right in the middle. Mysteries and puzzles.

"And why are you telling me about this?" I asked.

"Because, Chester, I have a feeling that it's all going to come to a head, very soon." Blackwolf folded the map and put it back into the cabinet. "Since you are the only wizard I know, and my Grandfather is no longer with us, you're the one that might be able to help me figure out what the hell to do about it."

I sighed. Yeah... it was going to be one heck of a story at pub night.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

"Overly happy people bug the crap out of me."

Oh oh. I think i'm in biiiiiiig trouble......

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Well.... we did say that our differences would make for an interesting visit... Besides, you might actually be a refreshing change.

[capi.livejournal.com]

My computer shut OFF while i was reading your installment!!!! *grouse*

And yes, i fully expect and intend to be a refreshing change. *hahahahaha*

*twinkle*

[capi.livejournal.com]

"Life never fails to amaze me in how it will always send me to the people that I need..."

Oh! *kof* Well! This is more reassurring.... *chuckle* I prefer to be in this category, thank you. *heh* Where do i sign up?

[capi.livejournal.com]

Ooooooooooooo..... *shivah* Dang, this is getting sooooo hot! I can't WAIT to get more of this!! *bounce*