The Green Man; Aspect Book 2

[joegoda]

"Um." Yeah, okay. I was stunned. A lot. I have never quite liked the way I looked. Not good enough to make hardly anyone, male, female, straight or gay, turn for a second look. That includes me, by the way.

So why was it that looking at myself carved out of some dark stone made me think 'Damn. I look good!"

Bald head gleaming with the pale green light of my orb, eyes glittering like a singularity behind a pair of glasses, and my beard, which is salt and pepper with more salt in it, stood out and actually shone. Yeah. I looked good.

But it wasn't me. It was another creation of the 'Bads.

"You aren't me," I said. "You're just another creation of the 'Bads."

The Bad me smiled even broader, his straight, bright teeth seeming to erupt from his face. "You wish!" He stepped a bit closer. The wind tried to lift the little wisps of hair on his head and the mist in the air fought back valiantly. "You'd like to think that." He pointed one perfect finger at my left side. "How's the ouchie, bucko? Still hurt?"

In fact, until he reminded me about it, the wound I had gotten from the Dreamside needle didn't even tickle. The second he brought it to mind, though, it hurt like someone was reaching right below my ribs and started yanking out intestines. I gasped from the shock of the sudden pain.

The wound flared like that, but dimmed down to a sharp roar pretty quickly. My brothers and I learned to handle pain at an early age. I reached around with my right hand, and the fingers came back wet, shining black in the green light.

"Yeah," he said. "Hurts like a son of a gun, doesn't it?" He looked at my bloody wet fingers and he licked his lips. "And it looks like you're leaking a bit, old son."

"Nothing I can't handle," I grunted, my teeth clenched against the ache.

"Oh, I know." He found a handy tree trunk that had been blasted by our recent storms and sat down on it. "The old Beebe toughness. Nothing we can't handle; nothing we can't live though. Good thing mom gave such excellent survival lessons, isn't it?"

"Are you going to bore me all night with talk, or are you going to get to the point?" I wasn't really in the mood for chatter. When I'm hurting, I tend to get mean. "What's the deal? You gonna replace me or something? Is that the plan? The evil me takes the place of the good me?"

I was stalling. I knew if I focused just enough of my will down to the hurt, the hurt would go away.

Bad me stood up and dusted his black jeans. He was still smiling. "Do I look like I could take your place?" He looked back at the tree trunk. "Oh man... now, my butts wet. Hope I don't catch cold." He laughed like a loon at his own joke, the sound high pitched and scaring the bats out of the trees.

His laugh cut off in mid-ha, and he turned his cold eyes at me. "No, old son. I'm not going to replace you. I mean, look at me?" He drew his hands down to illustrate his body. "I'm black, moron? Think your friends wouldn't notice?" He tapped his knuckles against his head. "Think, stupid. What do you think you're here for? What do you think I'm here for?"

I thought... I didn't know what to think. That's what I was here for. "You tell me." I tried to sound stronger than I really was. "I came here because this is the nexus of the bad stuff that's been happening. I figured there were answers waiting for me here. So... you tell me. What am I here for?"

"Nexus?" He chuckled at the word, and his chuckle sounded like bolts rattled in a can. Did I sound like that? "Such a big word! You like big words, though. Or, to be precise, we like big words." Another laugh, that died quickly.

"Chum, you are here because we wanted to look at you." He leaned casually against nothing at all, a demonic Marcel Marceau. "We want to know what it is that is going on with you. Why you keep getting in our way." The Bad me winked, hunkered down until he was looking up with me, and started sketching on the ground, using one of the thousand of twigs that littered the path.

"See," he said, focusing on what he was doing. "That little side trip you took last year, to Oregon? That was sort of the last straw with my bosses."

I looked down at the ground where he was sketching. He had drawn a small circle and doodled a couple of runes in it.

"Last straw?" I felt myself starting to get tired, no matter how much I was trying to not. It had been a big day, I guess. The hole in my side wouldn't shut up, and it seemed I was leaking life out of the wound. Maybe I was.

I opened my Sight a bit. There's a reason I don't open my Sight and leave it open. For one thing, the entire world slips away and becomes this incredibly sparkly spider web of interplaying energies. That can be pretty darn distracting when you're trying to drive. Another reason is that the real world... or rather the world that is there when I don't use my Sight... is a bit different. There are rocks to trip over and cliffs to fall off of and there are walls to bump into. The bundles of energy that is every living thing looks entirely different and there are Shadows of things that don't exist any more. Every thing leaves a signature, and sometimes that signature can look as solid as anything. Until you try to touch it.

Plus, it's addictive. You can get lost in all the pretty colors and the dance of the Universe. It's like watching the biggest firework show in the world and all you can do is 'Ooooh' and 'Ahhh' after a while. I could die over there, and my body wouldn't even tell me. So I don't do it very long, and I don't do it very often.

What my Sight told me was that there were little tendrils of black flecked red dancing all around the Bad me. They reached out to me, trying to touch me, but I was covered in a grass green Chester shaped shield. Every time one of those tendrils touched it, there was a brilliant blue spark and the finger of red energy would withdraw, sharply.

The circle on the ground, and the runes inside of it glowed with a sickly yellow light. That was unusual in itself, because I shouldn't be able to see them at all. Letters and pictures are invisible when I use my Sight, because they don't carry living energy. They're just the scratchings of graphite or the leavings of ink, so they don't show up.

These did, though. The runes carried energy inside of them, and the circle kept that energy trapped as it flowed from the runes, like sick looking smoke in a bottle. I saw my own energy, a bluish goldish sparkle, flow out of my side where the dream wound was, flow out of my body to loop itself around the cylinder of energy created by the circle on the ground.

"What the hell are you doing?" I croaked, my Sight turning off by itself. My voice was old sounding, tired and cracking. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good.

"Patience," My double said. "These things take a bit of time to work." He stood again, dusting off his hands. "Now... where was I?" He looked up and off to the left. "Oh yes. The last straw."

He stuck his hands in his pockets and just lounged there, as if waiting for a bus. "Did you think that Thomas came up with the idea of Godhood all by himself? Did you think that his sons carried the genes through pure accident?" He paused, reached out into the air and snagged a cigarette out of the misty air. He inhaled and it lit itself with a dark red glow.

"We know better, don't we chum?" He smiled, the smoke pouring out of his mouth. "There are no accidents. Every. Even your own little bit of ability... that's no accident, either, but it wasn't caused by us."

He frowned, the first time I saw a crack in his attitude. "I hesitate to use the phrase Divine Intervention, but I think we ought to call something by what it is." The smile came back. "Or not." He shrugged. "It could have simply been that your dad was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I was getting too tired to say anything, but my mind was searching for an answer. An answer to how to get my wound from leaking all over the place. An answer to what I was going to do to get myself out of here. An answer to what the heck my double was up too. I felt a niggling idea, but it wasn't strong enough to give birth yet.

"Anyway... there have been a thousand times that you've bumped into us. You might not even have known it, but you have. And ever. Single. Time," he spat this at me, separating the words, "you left a stain on our work, ruining it."

"Here, let me give you an example." He sketched a window in the air with his twig, and I saw a scene on a bridge appear in the frame. The water under it was rushing, filled by recent rain, and there was a small boy underneath the bridge, hanging onto the steel under members of the bridge. The bridge wasn't very big and the boy didn't seem to be in much danger, but it looked like the boy was struggling to make it across the stream. I could hear a tinny cry for help, coming from the picture.

Memories rushed back into my head from when I was very young, at a park with my family, and my brother Sam found himself stuck crossing Sugar Creek. The water had risen too fast and was trying to pull him down stream. He called out for help, and I ran to pull him up onto the bridge, and out of what I thought was danger.

Sam laughed at me, and told me that I was an idiot, because he could have gotten out of trouble without my help. I remember feeling like an idiot, fuming in humiliation while Sam ran off to play.

"Do you really think Sam could have gotten out of the water alive?" My double chuckled his dark tin can chuckle. "There have been grown men die in three inches of water! How do you think your parents, already over burdened with your mother's... health issues, would have done with one of their children dead?"

I know what would have happened. Mom would have crumbled. Dad would have felt ultra responsible. I could see, in my mind, my remaining brothers and my father standing over a casket, trying to understand why mom would take her own life.

"Yep," my twin nodded. "Something like that. Or maybe Dad would have offed himself. Either way, score for us! It would have ruined your family, buddy. Instead, you were just a bit humiliated. Boo hoo." He rubbed his eyes with his fists in mock sadness, while the astral television screen winked out.

"And that was just the beginning!" he shouted at me, beating me with his words. "For every person that you've helped find their way, for every person that you offered your hand to, for ever single person that you just seemed to be in the exact right place to do the exact right thing, you got in our way."

I thought about what he had said, and it struck me as probably true. I could list, if I really wanted to, a hundred times when it just seemed odd to me that I would be right there when someone needed directions or a dollar or were struggling with their groceries and needed an extra hand. Or a lift to the hospital. Or just a kind word or a place to crash when they were really down on their luck. Of course, it could all have been a coincidence. Anything else would have been... just wrong.

"When you just happened to be traveling on just the right road at just the right time of night and picked up just the right person last year," my twin jabbed his finger at me, as if trying to stab me with it, "that was the last straw."

"You don't think that we didn't know the power that was in that bitch? You don't think we didn't know how she could screw up what we had planned? That dear old daddy was gonna do a lot of work for us?"

He took a threatening step towards me, and sparks flew from where our energies met and mingled. He held it for a few seconds, grimacing with frustration and pain, while the green shield provided by my friends gifts grew incredibly bright.

With a howl of fury, he sprang back, tripping over a branch and falling with a satisfying thud, just a little bit further beyond where he had been standing. He was breathing hard. It was the first true exertion I'd seen him do, and it winded him. "Damn your friends! Morons and slackers, all of them! Useless at tits on a boar!"

I switched quickly to the Sight. It was fuzzy and grainy, as if the reception was bad, but I saw what I wanted to. The cylinder of energy that grew from the rune circle winked out, briefly. I felt that draining of my spirit stop for that brief, all too brief time. And then the energy field winked back on and the tired started to gnaw at me again.

But it was enough. That pregnant thought gave birth. I just had to piss him off enough to get him closer.

"I would say," I whispered hoarsely, "That they're strong enough to keep you at bay."

"Only for a while, buddy." He looked over at his circle on the ground. "Only for a while. Once I've sucked enough of you out, you'll be too weak to sustain that pitiful little shield."

"Oh, I don't know..." I didn't know how long I could talk. I was so tired. "I've beaten you so far." I took a deep, painful breath. "Every time. So, who's the moron? Who's useless at tits on a boar?"

With a great effort, I pulled myself from the slouch I hadn't noticed I had been in and felt a painful tear in my back. I was going to hurt in the morning.

Leaning on my staff, I smiled back at him, trying to project a calm strength I didn't feel. "I think, regardless of your own power, that you will never win." I chuckled back at him, not quite as dark sounding as his, but not half as strong, either. "You think I'm the only one? You think I did it all by myself?"

From somewhere, and I wasn't even going to guess where, I felt a trickle of energy touch me at my throat. I reached my free hand, the one that wasn't holding me up, to where the tickle was. Charity's crystal felt like it was humming with vibration, and it was warming up. That little trickle of incoming energy wasn't enough to replace what was pouring out of me, but maybe it was going to be enough, for a while.

He smiled, grinning wickedly at me. "Of course we know you didn't do it all by yourself! What do you think? You're all powerful?" He got up from where he had fallen. "No way, chum. You're too guilt ridden." He took a step towards me.

"Too guilt ridden about your life!" He clapped his hands. "God, we've never met anyone so guilt ridden that hadn't killed themselves! You're guilty over everything. You blame yourself for your mom's alcoholism, because she got pregnant out of wedlock with you. You blame yourself for your dad not finishing college because he, stupidly, got her pregnant. You blame yourself for Sam's inability to have a decent relationship. You blame yourself for Jamie's death. For your dad's death. For Linda being stuck where she is, hurt, needing, and unable to do anything. Blame, blame, blame. Guilt, guilt, guilty."

He stabbed a finger at me. "You carry so much guilt on your back, it's no wonder you're so short. It's no wonder you don't have a decent relationship of your own. Hell, the only women you've had any..."

"Stop!" I roared, using more strength than I wanted. "I get your point." This wasn't going well.

"Do you?" he sneered. "Do you, really? Does the phrase unfocused mean anything to you? Does the fact that you seem to sabotage every gain you ever make strike a cord? You sniveling coward, you don't have any idea what my point is. You'd have to shovel your way out of years, and I mean decades of shit to even begin to figure out what my point is." He snorted. "Get my point. The only point you got is the point on your head."

The little trickle at my throat was getting stronger, which was weird. I couldn't see any reason for it. I pulled myself up a little taller.

"Yeah, okay." I sighed, sounding defeated. "Maybe my life hasn't all been roses, and maybe I do take more responsibility than I maybe should."

"Maybe?" Another snort. "Hasn't been all roses? Give up now, Chester. Let me kill you and let us win. That way you won't screw up your friends lives any more than you already have. Maybe when we open the Gateway, the Old Ones will let them live on, as pets."

And that was my last straw. I may have screwed up a few folk's lives, but my friends? That would be a NOT.

"Okay!" I shouted back at him, and it looked like I actually started him. I think he was expecting me to roll over and die. "That's enough of that crap. I know I'm a bit of an emotional screw up. If you were me as much as you look like me, you'd know that. I've done enough soul searching to recognize the truth of what you're saying. Okay? So shut the hell up about it."

Another idea came to me. Sometimes I'm a bit slow. I quit feeding of the crystal's energy and instead drew the power that was pulsing from it down to where my life was leaking away. Since it wasn't the same as my life force, it didn't pour out of my wound. The rune circle was only interested in me, my energy, not the energy from another source. I turned that energy into a mental needle and suture, and started stitching the hole shut. Like I said, sometimes I'm a bit slow. I could have done this minutes ago.

"What I want to know," I said to the dark me, "is this. If I'm such a screw up, why haven't you idiots taken care of me before now? Why haven't you just killed me? Hmmm?"

I felt a bit better, clicked the Sight on for just a second and saw that the flow from me had slacked quite a bit. I was feeling stronger by the second, drawing strength from the abundance of nature around me and drinking it up like a cool lime sherbet on a very hot day.

"I think," I pondered at him, "that if anyone is the screw up, it would be you." I raised my hand and ticked off on my fingers. "You couldn't stop me, one. You couldn't stop Angelina, two. You couldn't find a way onto this plane until you stole the idea from my own imagination. And frankly, that stuff on the other side, the side of the Transition? You couldn't even beat me when it was in your own home court!" I laughed at him, standing there with his big black eyes.

If he was built from me, I knew his weakness. "You shadows are pitiful!" I laughed harder, pushing his buttons. "For every person that you hurt, for every person that you push to despair, my friends, those 'slackers', and I pull two from their pain and misery and make them feel better. Just like I'm laughing at how sad and sorry you are." I thought a second. "You don't understand, do you? You've already lost. You cannot win. Even if you killed me, even if I died here and now, you have lost. I'm not the only one, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds stronger and better than me. You shadows can go back to the hole you came from. You are nothing to me."

I laughed hard and long, watching my double get angrier and more frustrated. I saw his fingers twitch, his eyes narrow and I knew what was going to happen next. True, I can get my feelings hurt, and true, I carry more guilt around than I probably should. But I've had years to get used to the sort of screw up I am. He's only been around for... what? A few hours?

"You bunch of pitiful losers." I sneered. "Look at me! Even your little rune circle isn't enough to beat me." I turned my back on him. "I've had enough. Go play with yourself."

I heard the leap before I felt it. I saw and smelled the burning of energies before it even began. When he hit me, my staff flew from my hands to fall somewhere. The green orb winked out, but it really didn't matter. While our auras fought against each other, the resulting clash of energies flared and shed brilliance into the night.

"I'll rip your eyes out!" he screamed. "I'll tear your arms off and make you watch while I eat them! I'll chew your head off and climb down and live in your entrails!"

He had wrapped his arms around me and the sparks were flying everywhere. I struggled to pull his arms off of me, but he was pretty darn strong. Frankly, I was impressed with myself. So, I flung my head backwards and was rewarded with a crunch.

He fell my back and landed flat. I jumped on him and just started wailing at him. I got a few good hits in when he lifted his leg and got it between us. He shoved and it was my turn to fly away. I bounced on the rocky path and skinned up my arms when I landed. My head bounced a couple of times and I felt warm sticky run down where my hair wasn't.

He launched himself at me and punched me square between the eyes before I could get up. I saw stars, literally, and struggled to not lose consciousness. If I did, I figured nothing really good would come of it. He straddled me where I lay, working his fists into my face and chest.

I reached up with one hand and buried it into his face, gouging eyes with my nails. Where I tore, I could see black oozing out, up and away, to flash into sparkles of gold. Just like the Leprechaun.

"You're losing," I gasped at him, right before I felt my finger break. "The most you'll do to me is make me bleed, break my bones." I ignored the finger and slammed my fist against his head, staggering him. I reached up with my other hand and ripped his ear off. It too, sparkled out into the night. "But I can tear you to shreds!"

I pushed hard against his chest with both of my fists and he staggered back long enough for me to get myself up and into a crouch. I shoved off, hard against the ground and bashed him with the hardest part of my body... my head.

He fell backward onto the trail and I didn't stop, I didn't hesitate. I jumped up into the air and landed, both feet, onto his chest, caving it in.

The black that was my double shuddered and looked up at me with baleful eyes. "You think you've beaten me?" he gasped. "You better keep looking over your shoulder. You'll never get rid..."

I didn't let him finish. I reached down with both hands, grabbed his ribcage and ripped it from him. I kept ripping until there was nothing left of him except scraps. Funny. He was hollow inside. Just like an over-inflated ego.

Now that the fight was over, I sat down with a thump. I was bleeding from a hundred different places he had cut or scratched or gouged. I was bruised in a hundred different places he had thumped or kicked. But I was alive. And maybe I hadn't beaten him... them. The Shadows. But I had kicked their butts!

And I knew what was going to happen. When one Gate closes another opens. That's kind of the old saw, isn't it? The Gateway for the dead to pass through had been closed by the 'Bads so that they could open a new one. A Gateway for the Old Ones to come through.

I staggered to my feet, and started to the entrance of the path, back to the parking lot. I tripped a couple of times and decided that crawling was the best method of transportation I could do. God, I hurt. I'd take care of that later, once I had slithered back to my van. For now, it just seemed to be the best thing to just lay here and bleed a while.

"Wizard." A small voice near my ear caused me to turn my head. That didn't feel good, and once the world had quit fading in and out of view, I saw a shadow that must have been the woodling.

"Yeah?" The word was more a sigh than a word.

"We brought your staff." I felt the familiar lines of my walking stick being placed in my left hand and the orb flickered dimly into view, casting shadows from where it lay.

"You fought well, and you fought bravely." Mutters of agreement chittered all around me. I couldn't see anyone. Not even the woodling. "It is not everyone that can fight the shadows and win."

"Yeah," I mumbled. "I feel all warm and fuzzy about it, too."

"You kept your word, wizard. That is all that matters to us." The tiny wooding came closer to me until he could have touched my nose. "We will never be friends. You know that. But we will not be enemies. I know that. Still, we give you a gift for our word." And then, just as before, he vanished like morning mist.

"What gift?" I whispered. I rolled over onto my belly, so that I could lever myself upright. "Oh."

While the woodling was speaking to me, they, his companions, had moved me, or maybe they moved the world, but regardless, I was laying at the foot of the parking lot. I could see my van sitting not more than ten feet away from me. The wood folk had gotten me as close as they could safely go to the gravel before they had to turn back. Civilization is parking lots.

I hauled my bruised self up with the aid of my staff, turned around and thanked them profoundly, before I limped over to where my parking lot was. I hauled open the passenger side door and dropped myself into the seat there.

Suddenly, there was light in my eyes and the driver's door flew open. I blinked rapidly while a shaky voice yelled, "You better get out of that van, you bastard, before I beat you to death!"

"Tim!" I said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Chester? What the hell are you doing here?" The look of surprise on his face almost moved me to tears of laughter. "And who beat the living shit out of you?"

"Yeah, it's good to see you to, chum." I hauled myself out of the van, painfully and leaned against the side. "What time is it?" I asked.

"It's almost five in the morning," he said. "Donna's gonna be pissed."

"When's the next new moon?"

Tim looked at me like I was nuts. "No... Really. When's the next new moon?"

"Uh." He pulled out his little book and thumbed through it. "Right now. Why?"

I sighed. I really didn't want to answer that right then.

"What are you doing out here?" I slumped down till I was sitting. "I told you to stay away."

"Yeah, well." Tim scratched his head, ruffling his mop even worse. "About one I got this text message from Sherry, saying she was coming to get you. I couldn't let her go, you know... alone."

Yeah. That sounded like something Sherry would do. "Where is she?"

"She's over at the circle."

"Circle?" I once again, hauled myself upright. "What circle?"

"On the other side of my van." Tim pointed to where the dark shape of Satori, the van he's driven longer than most cars would dare to stay alive, sat. "C'mon." He leaned into me, supporting me while we walked. "They'll be glad to see you, though they'll be pretty mad at who beat you up."

"They?" The world spun once, twice. I had to stop him so I could catch my breath. "There's a they?"

"Wait for it," he said.

"Okay." I replied.

He hobbled me around to the other side of Satori. There was a ring of people there, all holding hands with their eyes closed and not saying a thing.

I saw Sherry and Charity sitting next to each other. Amber, with her sweet, sweet face composed in a gentle smile and April, who was frowning in concentration. There was Susi and Bruce, who should have been home and in bed. They had a Renaissance Faire to prepare for. There was The Doc and his wife, Alicia and there was Kimberly, sitting quietly in her pretty blond way.

And they were glowing. I clicked on the Sight and I could see streamers, big fat rivers of golden lines of force flowing from them to me.

I swore to myself I would never make fun of circle casters again. Ever, never, ever. They saved my life. How could I argue against that?

"What the heck?" I whispered.

"It was Sherry's idea," Tim supplied.

"Hi kids." I mumbled, barely loud enough to hear.

Sherry opened her eyes first. She jumped up, breaking the circle and throwing everyone into disarray.

"Chester!" she cried, running over to me and throwing her arms around me. Which hurt. A lot. "You're hurt!" A wave of anger passed over her face. "Where's the bastard that did this?"

"Long story, hon." I said. And then they were all around me, touching my arms, my face, asking me how I was, and if I thought I needed a doctor.

"No," I told them. "No doctors. Don't trust them far as I can spit." I looked around. "Where's Charity?"

She came to me, since I couldn't go to her. I reached down and kissed her soundly, which of course brought a chorus of woooos from the gang. I didn't care. It was Charity that saved my life by coming up with the idea of all the trinkets in my pockets. It was Charity's crystal that gave me a fighting chance. At that moment, she was the one I owed my life to. And I told her so, in more than just words.

"Now," I asked, raising my voice and faking being angry, "why in the hell did you people come out here, especially after I asked you not to?" I shot a look at Bruce, Susi and Kim. "And what the heck are you guys doing here?"

Susi stepped up and told me in her most royal voice (she plays the queen, you see), "You don't think your friends would stand by and let you get your ass kicked, do you? Because, if you do, you have another think coming."

I was humbled. And, I was scared. They opened themselves up and showed themselves to the 'Bads. "Guys, I love you for this, but you have put yourselves in real danger."

"Aw," said The Doc while he yawned. "What's a little danger between friends?"

Amber came up to me and kissed me on my cheek, which didn't hurt a bit. "You've always been so sweet to me," she said. "How could I say no?" She looked around. "I wouldn't have missed this for the world!"

I sighed. Okay, now for the hard part. "Folk, if anything, you just proved to me that this is something I can't do alone."

"Told you so." I nudged Tim to shut him up.

"I'm going to ask you to do something else, and it may be the hardest thing you've ever done."

"Oh?" Kim said. "I have to be at work in two hours. What could be harder than that?"

There was general laughter, but not from me.

I waited for it to calm and then said, "If you need to leave, I don't blame you. In fact, I encourage it." I looked at each of them, to let them know I was really, deadly serious.

"Here's the deal." I pointed my staff back into the wood. "There's a really nasty thing that's going to happen in there. A Gateway is going to open soon, and maybe right now."

"A Gateway?" Bruce stepped forward. "As in... a Gateway?" He emphasized the word. I knew he knew what I meant.

"Exactly," I said. "And by the dark of the moon, the Gate shall swing wide and the Old Ones shall come forth."

"Old ones?" Alicia asked. She was, I think, the most innocent there. A very sweet woman, who had led a very relatively normal life. Until now.

"Yeah." I nodded. "Like in H.P. Lovecraft's Old Ones." I paused. "And the dark of the moon is right bloody now."