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The Kansas Incident. - Aspect 3.
Okay, this is raw, raw, raw. No word processing spell checking or nuthin'. I'll do that when I get home tonight, cuz I'm running out of time before work.
6892 / 50000 words. 14% done!
I slept fitfully that night. I mean, besides the hurts caused by bruises and scrapes and scratches that came from wrestling with something the size of a Mack truck and having razor sharp claws and teeth all over it's body, I also had wild dreams involving a lot of nudity and sex. No, I won't go into details about the dreams. You have yours and I have mine, and I'm not going to ask you about yours. They were just... very physical, in a purely happy and fun way. In the dreams, I felt like the randiest faun in the forest, and was darned glad to be in the position I was. The women were full and lush and there wasn't a boney rib in sight, and I gotta tell you, if there had been a boney rib, I would have seen it.
I'd had dreams like that before, when I was younger. I figured it was just puberty, cuz that's what I figured puberty was. You get the idea, I'm pretty sure.
When I awoke, I felt good. I felt really good. I took a shower and it took me a second to notice that I didn't hurt. I didn't hurt anywhere. At all. Even the pain in my leg where I tore a ligament lifting a truck battery was gone, and that had been a constant limp for five or more years.
I checked myself to see if anything else was different, and all the scratches and brusies from the previous evening had faded to just faint lines and a bit of discoloration around the shoulders and upper arms.
"What the hell?" I muttered to myself.
"That was one heck of a nasty, wasn't it?"
"What the HELL??" I asked a lot louder.
"It's possible it came from hell," said the voice in my head, "or at least some form of hell. Who knows? Who cares? It's gone, that's what matters."
Bob's words came back to me in a rush. "Uh. Are you an Aspect?"
"Ha! Aspect!" The voice had a definite rough sound to it, and a snide one as well. "If I'm going to be stuck inside you, let's get one thing straight, bub. I ain't no Aspect. I'm the real deal." A quiet chuckle, deep and rumbling ran through my head and shook my sinuses. "If I was just an Aspect, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd be nothing but a pile of meat on the road, and I'd be..."
"What?" I asked a bit panicky. "You'd be what?"
"I dunno." I felt the voice scratching a non existant head. "This is kinda novel for me. Been a very long time since I was in the world of the flesh. Maybe if you were dead, I'd just float around again for another couple of millenia. Maybe I'd be dead. I really don't know."
"Who are you?" A pretty resonable question, I thought, considering I thought I was maybe going crazy.
"Oh, names, names, names. Such petty things, names." A breathy sigh, whispering between my ears. I've been around so long, just floating on the winds of time, that I was hoping that I wouldn't hear that question again. Did you know that at one time everyone thought I was dead? That was back in... Ummm... Thirty A.D. or there abouts. People are just fickle, I tell you. Fickle!"
"Um. Yeah." So, whoever this guy was, he was or claimed to be pretty old. Thirty A.D.? Wasn't that when....? No, no, that was just insane. Which would fit. "Sorry bout that fickle thing. Really, though. Who ARE you?"
The voice in my head sighed again and then, "Pan, Dammit! I'm Pan! Older than the Gods, here before you apes even walked upright. Born of No man, attendant of Cybele! The little Goat God. You know! Pan!" It was a roaring in my head that I couldn't stop, even though I still covered my ears with my hands.
And that was how I met my Aspect. Over the years, Pan has proven to be a bit less than he claimed and a bit more than I suspected. I still don't know if he's a true Aspect or not. It's possible that he really is the old God of Nature, and just happened to inhabit my body from the day I was born.
He can do some real magic, because I've seen it. He knows things from way, way back. Things that have saved my life. Things he refuses to teach me, claiming that my little monkey brain can't hold all of it, and that if he taught me even one of the things he knows, it would drive me crazier than I already am.
Whatever he is, I'm never lonely, exactly, and I'm never bored.
So, how did I end up on the road to Sedan Kansas? That's kind of a long story, but I'll sum it up like this:
I was living alone in a little apartment in Tulsa, pretty much secluding myself from the world because I had reached a place where I didn't like myself much. The whys I didn't like myself I've covered before, and they're kinda personal. You can read them if you wish, but I won't belabor them.
I got this wild hair to go see the Vortex in Oregon, so I started on a road trip. Along the way I picked up a hitchhiker. I know, I know... stupid thing to do, but here was this little slip of a girl standing outside a truckstop at 3am. It was the right thing to do, and I did it.
Turns out she's no ordinary slip of a girl. She's the daughter of a crazy person who has raised three sons to be Gods. Her dad, James Thomas, had discovered the existance of Aspects years ago through an overuse of LSD, and he was going to recreate his Olympus through his kids and some super dark magic spells.
Blah, blah, bad guys chase us, blah, blah, I hide really good, then get caught in a place I call the Abyss. This is a dark hole in the Otherwhere that doesn't have an exit, only an entrance. I get out with help from Angelina, the slip of a girl who, it turns out, is carrying the not quite activated Aspect of Demter, one hell of a Goddess.
Blah, blah, blah, we go visit daddy in the Godforsaken nowhere of the Oregon outback. Blah, blah, we get captured by daddy who is going to use Angelina in some evil ritual. After a lot of pain on my part, we escape, killing the Godling sons as we go. Daddy kills mommy, and Angelina, in the fully awakened Aspect of Demeter, slaughters all the bad guys in daddy's coven except daddy.
Daddy we imprison in the Abyss, giving him a key out, because I'm nice like that. He had to figure out the music clue I gave him to open the doorway. Yeah, I know. I said there wasn't any exit, and there wasn't. But there was a way out. And I gave it to him. Call it a weakness.
I got to see the Oregon Vortex and it was pretty neat, but still a tourist attraction. Look it up. It's a cool thing, but just an illusion.
I go back home to Tulsa, to my friends, and Angelina goes back to New York to marry the guy she's in love with, who just happens to be the son of one of the strongest witches covens IN THE WORLD. And that is a whole 'nuther story!
Fast forward about three years or so, which was like... last week or so.
Angelina had enrolled in a University in Chicago, I forget which one. She was studying writing, happily married, I think, and had a tiny son named Joseph. A normal life for someone carrying the Aspect of the Goddenss Demeter, and married to a Warlock of unknown abilities.
A man jumped or fell or was pushed from the Sears Tower. He might have been an angel or a crazy person, as he was wearing wings. Angelina meets an old man that tells her that he thinks the end times are coming and that someone is killing angels.
I had a crazy dream about my mom, who was a quadriplegic in a nursing home, but in the dream she was keeping watch over a gate. She was a witch in this dream, all old and gnarled and twisted. On the wall behind her was a picture of the Green Man, the scary boogey man of the old Celtic world.
In someplaces the Green man is revered as a God of nature, a good guy, and kind to small animals and children. In my world, he demanded human sacrifices bound up inside of ash trees until they starved to death. Inside of the trees, not bound to them. In my world, the Green Man was not a nice guy.
There were three other pictures on the wall, and each one was a sign of some sort. Sigils for keeping and warding. A Celtic Cross, a red flame, burning in a heart, a spiral, curling clockwise, and the Green Man.
Before the dream ended, mom whispered into my ear "If you want to save your friends..." and that was all I heard before I woke up. I hate having only half a message. I hate mysteries in general, but mysterious mysteries are the worst.
That morning, when I woke up, I scanned the 'net for news of the odd. I found mention of some guy jumping from the Sears Tower, dressed as an angel. There was the picture of the fallen angel and also a picture of a bum holding a sign proclaiming the End of Days. In each of the corners of the sign were images. They were the exact four images that were on the wall behind my mother, the old crone who told me how to save my friends.
I called Angelina. Blah, blah, blah, discussion about fallen angels and did she know anything about it. She tells me about meeting the old bum at a Starbucks, where he tells her about the end of the world. She's gotta run to class and we disconnect, after I warn her to be careful, and keep an eye open for signs. See, I call her Angel, and in my mind there's no such thing as coincidence. Dead angels are dead Angels.
Blah, blah, paranoia sets in. I start digging, like I do, looking for patterns. There's patterns for everything, you just have to look for them. For instance, there was a card I had recieved in the mail about a week before the dream from someone calling themselves H.P. and had written the words "Old Gods" on the card.
That was the beginning of my research.
Okay, enough rambling. Back to the background story. I used my Sight, in combination with the card to go casting for whoever it was that sent it. My Sight lets me slip past the normal bounds of the body and go traveling the Soul winds in Search of. I found a well kept apartment, but no name, no signature, nothing that gave me the identity of the person that sent me the card. More mystery.
Next day a knock comes to my door. A woman, Miriam, comes in claiming that she needs my help in closing a doorway. She knows about the Gatekeepers, those folk who ease the passing of the departed between here and the other side. She tells me that all the Gatekeepers are gone and she needs my help finding them.
See, this is bad because if the Gatekeeper are gone, then the Gateways are closed and the souls or whatever of the dead are sort of stuck between here and where they need to get to. Souls get very agitated when they can move on, and that creates despair. Despair calls and feeds the 'Bads and then the 'Bads come and feed on the souls. It's a never ending circle of bad stuff, and of course, it was up to me to fix it.
Blah, blah, more time passes. We go to the Center of the Universe, a minor tourist attraction in Tulsa and a central nexus point for dimensional crossovers. I open it and cross into Transition - the place between here and the OtherWhere. Transition is not a pretty thing if you're alive and I don't think it's all that cool if you're not.
The first time I was in Transition I went there looking for a lost cat. I was young, I was stupid and I almost got killed by the 'Bads. I barely made it out alive, with a little help from my baby brother. He had passed on half a decade before and was sort of existing in the Otherwhere. I would have called it a coincidence that he was in Transition the same time as I was, but I don't believe in coincidence. He was looking out for me.
Just before I cross into Transition, I gave Miriam my lifeline, a little piece of red cord. I told her to pull like hell if she felt me tug hard on it.
I made it to the Gateway, barely, and met an Old Guardian named Paladin. The Gateway was closed, which was a bad thing. With Paladin's help, I was able to reopen the Gateway, so the departed, could continue their journey. I pulled on my lifeline and Miriam yanked me back to our world. I warned her to not try to do what I did, ever, and especially do not try it alone.
Moving on. Miriam took me back to my apartment, and we slept. I woke up alone to a note from her thanking me for all she learned. That afternoon I got a phone call from a Tulsa Detective named Frank Blackwolf.
Miriam had been killed. Her face eaten off. She had tried to cross into Transition, just like I had told her NOT to do.
Two nice policefolk took me down town to meet and greet Blackwolf, who turned out to be this giant of a man, big in body, big in heart and big in soul. We talked a bit about Miriam's death, and he told me I wasn't a suspect. I took a big chance and told him about MY world, then he took a big chance and told me about HIS world.
Frank Blackwolf was almost a shaman, coming from a long line of shamans. He preferred to be a cop, though. He told me that he had been tracking a pattern of strange crimes, murders, that circled around a particular piece of property near Tulsa. RedBud Valley. He had tracked these murders for thirty years, and now he shared them with me. He told me that the murders had increased in intensity and he just had a feeling that things were going to get really bad and he needed my help on it.
I had slept after my meeting with Blackwolf and had a dream with my grandmother, who told me to go to pub night and look at my friends as they really are. I woke up just in time to get up and go to Potbelly's, the place where we used to hold our Pub Nights. These were nights when my best chums and I get together to celebrate another day of successful living.
That night, as I sat with my friend, one of the locals walked in the door. A big guy with red hair that I called the Leprechaun. He had opened the door by way of ripping it off it's hinges, and he didn't come to drink. He came to kill me. He was possessed by the 'Bads or something like them.
He couldn't though. Because of the combined strength of all my best chums there, all of them containing Aspects of one form or another, we beat the monster back, literally ripping the evil from the poor leprechaun and blowing it to smithereens.
I had explained the situation as I saw it to my friends, the impending evil and Redbud Valley and Blackwolf's suspicion and all. No need to keep them in the dark, I figured. After all, they had just kept my butt from being toasted. I told them that I had to confront the evil at the source and I had every intention of going to Redbud valley and have it out, then and there.
They refused to let me go alone, no matter how much I protested. Frankly, I'm glad they did, or this conversation wouldn't be happening. And then, into the midst walked Frank Blackwolf.
Moving on...
We went to Redbud Valley, fought the bad guy, who looked just like me and was sent by someone really, really ticked off at me. I didn't catch the bad guy's name right then, because I wasn't talking to myself. I was trying to kill myself and a bit preoccupied. Fortunately, I was smarter than me and finally defeated myself, but not without hurting myself pretty badly in the process. Got all that?
And then a bad thing happened. A Gateway was going to open. The Gateway that Miriam wanted me to help close. The gateway between our world and the world H.P. Lovecraft warned us about, and the Old Ones were wanting to come a-calling. And it was going to open the very next night, at the Dark of the Moon.
I slept for a bit, because I definitely needed it. I dreamed and in the dream, the 'Bads tried to kill me and keep me trapped in Dreamworld. Sherry, who had been standing guard over me while I slept, woke me from the dream, saving my bacon, again.
She told me that everything was ready. All the folks that needed to be there were ready and all the folks that were lending energy and love were ready to do that, too.
It was a good thing they were ready. The battle to close the gate took every ounce of what we had to give.
Long story hopefully made shorter and then we can get onto what is happening now:
The Transition was quick, and all my friends changed into their Aspects. Fighting warriors, Goddesses, little fairy folk. It's amazing to see what your friends look like when they take on the Aspects of what other people see them as.
We fought a good fight and we won. The Gateway closed and the Old Ones were kept at bay. A thousand thousand 'Bads were sent back to the hell they came from. We were victorious.
The Gatekeeper was freed and revived, and he gave me a key to the identity of who was trying to kill me.
Someone big, someone really bad. Someone who was bad enough that even the 'Bads were scared of him. Someone who either held the Aspect of Ammit, the Eater of the Dead, or someone who really was Ammit, the Eater of the Dead.
I called the only folks I knew to call. I called the witches, Madeline and Madame. At six in the morning, I went to visit them and learned that Bob, my mentor, had been killed by this Ammit guy. I also learned that I never needed to work again, because Bob had left all his worldly goods - Seven hundred years worth of worldly goods, to me.
He also left me another puzzle. In a letter written to me, he told me to come find him in Kansas. He left the clue that about a windmill in a wheat field in Kansas, and he told me to bring my ruby slippers.
And that is why I was on my way to Sedan, Kanas, home of the Yellow Brick Road.
I slept fitfully that night. I mean, besides the hurts caused by bruises and scrapes and scratches that came from wrestling with something the size of a Mack truck and having razor sharp claws and teeth all over it's body, I also had wild dreams involving a lot of nudity and sex. No, I won't go into details about the dreams. You have yours and I have mine, and I'm not going to ask you about yours. They were just... very physical, in a purely happy and fun way. In the dreams, I felt like the randiest faun in the forest, and was darned glad to be in the position I was. The women were full and lush and there wasn't a boney rib in sight, and I gotta tell you, if there had been a boney rib, I would have seen it.
I'd had dreams like that before, when I was younger. I figured it was just puberty, cuz that's what I figured puberty was. You get the idea, I'm pretty sure.
When I awoke, I felt good. I felt really good. I took a shower and it took me a second to notice that I didn't hurt. I didn't hurt anywhere. At all. Even the pain in my leg where I tore a ligament lifting a truck battery was gone, and that had been a constant limp for five or more years.
I checked myself to see if anything else was different, and all the scratches and brusies from the previous evening had faded to just faint lines and a bit of discoloration around the shoulders and upper arms.
"What the hell?" I muttered to myself.
"That was one heck of a nasty, wasn't it?"
"What the HELL??" I asked a lot louder.
"It's possible it came from hell," said the voice in my head, "or at least some form of hell. Who knows? Who cares? It's gone, that's what matters."
Bob's words came back to me in a rush. "Uh. Are you an Aspect?"
"Ha! Aspect!" The voice had a definite rough sound to it, and a snide one as well. "If I'm going to be stuck inside you, let's get one thing straight, bub. I ain't no Aspect. I'm the real deal." A quiet chuckle, deep and rumbling ran through my head and shook my sinuses. "If I was just an Aspect, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd be nothing but a pile of meat on the road, and I'd be..."
"What?" I asked a bit panicky. "You'd be what?"
"I dunno." I felt the voice scratching a non existant head. "This is kinda novel for me. Been a very long time since I was in the world of the flesh. Maybe if you were dead, I'd just float around again for another couple of millenia. Maybe I'd be dead. I really don't know."
"Who are you?" A pretty resonable question, I thought, considering I thought I was maybe going crazy.
"Oh, names, names, names. Such petty things, names." A breathy sigh, whispering between my ears. I've been around so long, just floating on the winds of time, that I was hoping that I wouldn't hear that question again. Did you know that at one time everyone thought I was dead? That was back in... Ummm... Thirty A.D. or there abouts. People are just fickle, I tell you. Fickle!"
"Um. Yeah." So, whoever this guy was, he was or claimed to be pretty old. Thirty A.D.? Wasn't that when....? No, no, that was just insane. Which would fit. "Sorry bout that fickle thing. Really, though. Who ARE you?"
The voice in my head sighed again and then, "Pan, Dammit! I'm Pan! Older than the Gods, here before you apes even walked upright. Born of No man, attendant of Cybele! The little Goat God. You know! Pan!" It was a roaring in my head that I couldn't stop, even though I still covered my ears with my hands.
And that was how I met my Aspect. Over the years, Pan has proven to be a bit less than he claimed and a bit more than I suspected. I still don't know if he's a true Aspect or not. It's possible that he really is the old God of Nature, and just happened to inhabit my body from the day I was born.
He can do some real magic, because I've seen it. He knows things from way, way back. Things that have saved my life. Things he refuses to teach me, claiming that my little monkey brain can't hold all of it, and that if he taught me even one of the things he knows, it would drive me crazier than I already am.
Whatever he is, I'm never lonely, exactly, and I'm never bored.
So, how did I end up on the road to Sedan Kansas? That's kind of a long story, but I'll sum it up like this:
I was living alone in a little apartment in Tulsa, pretty much secluding myself from the world because I had reached a place where I didn't like myself much. The whys I didn't like myself I've covered before, and they're kinda personal. You can read them if you wish, but I won't belabor them.
I got this wild hair to go see the Vortex in Oregon, so I started on a road trip. Along the way I picked up a hitchhiker. I know, I know... stupid thing to do, but here was this little slip of a girl standing outside a truckstop at 3am. It was the right thing to do, and I did it.
Turns out she's no ordinary slip of a girl. She's the daughter of a crazy person who has raised three sons to be Gods. Her dad, James Thomas, had discovered the existance of Aspects years ago through an overuse of LSD, and he was going to recreate his Olympus through his kids and some super dark magic spells.
Blah, blah, bad guys chase us, blah, blah, I hide really good, then get caught in a place I call the Abyss. This is a dark hole in the Otherwhere that doesn't have an exit, only an entrance. I get out with help from Angelina, the slip of a girl who, it turns out, is carrying the not quite activated Aspect of Demter, one hell of a Goddess.
Blah, blah, blah, we go visit daddy in the Godforsaken nowhere of the Oregon outback. Blah, blah, we get captured by daddy who is going to use Angelina in some evil ritual. After a lot of pain on my part, we escape, killing the Godling sons as we go. Daddy kills mommy, and Angelina, in the fully awakened Aspect of Demeter, slaughters all the bad guys in daddy's coven except daddy.
Daddy we imprison in the Abyss, giving him a key out, because I'm nice like that. He had to figure out the music clue I gave him to open the doorway. Yeah, I know. I said there wasn't any exit, and there wasn't. But there was a way out. And I gave it to him. Call it a weakness.
I got to see the Oregon Vortex and it was pretty neat, but still a tourist attraction. Look it up. It's a cool thing, but just an illusion.
I go back home to Tulsa, to my friends, and Angelina goes back to New York to marry the guy she's in love with, who just happens to be the son of one of the strongest witches covens IN THE WORLD. And that is a whole 'nuther story!
Fast forward about three years or so, which was like... last week or so.
Angelina had enrolled in a University in Chicago, I forget which one. She was studying writing, happily married, I think, and had a tiny son named Joseph. A normal life for someone carrying the Aspect of the Goddenss Demeter, and married to a Warlock of unknown abilities.
A man jumped or fell or was pushed from the Sears Tower. He might have been an angel or a crazy person, as he was wearing wings. Angelina meets an old man that tells her that he thinks the end times are coming and that someone is killing angels.
I had a crazy dream about my mom, who was a quadriplegic in a nursing home, but in the dream she was keeping watch over a gate. She was a witch in this dream, all old and gnarled and twisted. On the wall behind her was a picture of the Green Man, the scary boogey man of the old Celtic world.
In someplaces the Green man is revered as a God of nature, a good guy, and kind to small animals and children. In my world, he demanded human sacrifices bound up inside of ash trees until they starved to death. Inside of the trees, not bound to them. In my world, the Green Man was not a nice guy.
There were three other pictures on the wall, and each one was a sign of some sort. Sigils for keeping and warding. A Celtic Cross, a red flame, burning in a heart, a spiral, curling clockwise, and the Green Man.
Before the dream ended, mom whispered into my ear "If you want to save your friends..." and that was all I heard before I woke up. I hate having only half a message. I hate mysteries in general, but mysterious mysteries are the worst.
That morning, when I woke up, I scanned the 'net for news of the odd. I found mention of some guy jumping from the Sears Tower, dressed as an angel. There was the picture of the fallen angel and also a picture of a bum holding a sign proclaiming the End of Days. In each of the corners of the sign were images. They were the exact four images that were on the wall behind my mother, the old crone who told me how to save my friends.
I called Angelina. Blah, blah, blah, discussion about fallen angels and did she know anything about it. She tells me about meeting the old bum at a Starbucks, where he tells her about the end of the world. She's gotta run to class and we disconnect, after I warn her to be careful, and keep an eye open for signs. See, I call her Angel, and in my mind there's no such thing as coincidence. Dead angels are dead Angels.
Blah, blah, paranoia sets in. I start digging, like I do, looking for patterns. There's patterns for everything, you just have to look for them. For instance, there was a card I had recieved in the mail about a week before the dream from someone calling themselves H.P. and had written the words "Old Gods" on the card.
That was the beginning of my research.
Okay, enough rambling. Back to the background story. I used my Sight, in combination with the card to go casting for whoever it was that sent it. My Sight lets me slip past the normal bounds of the body and go traveling the Soul winds in Search of. I found a well kept apartment, but no name, no signature, nothing that gave me the identity of the person that sent me the card. More mystery.
Next day a knock comes to my door. A woman, Miriam, comes in claiming that she needs my help in closing a doorway. She knows about the Gatekeepers, those folk who ease the passing of the departed between here and the other side. She tells me that all the Gatekeepers are gone and she needs my help finding them.
See, this is bad because if the Gatekeeper are gone, then the Gateways are closed and the souls or whatever of the dead are sort of stuck between here and where they need to get to. Souls get very agitated when they can move on, and that creates despair. Despair calls and feeds the 'Bads and then the 'Bads come and feed on the souls. It's a never ending circle of bad stuff, and of course, it was up to me to fix it.
Blah, blah, more time passes. We go to the Center of the Universe, a minor tourist attraction in Tulsa and a central nexus point for dimensional crossovers. I open it and cross into Transition - the place between here and the OtherWhere. Transition is not a pretty thing if you're alive and I don't think it's all that cool if you're not.
The first time I was in Transition I went there looking for a lost cat. I was young, I was stupid and I almost got killed by the 'Bads. I barely made it out alive, with a little help from my baby brother. He had passed on half a decade before and was sort of existing in the Otherwhere. I would have called it a coincidence that he was in Transition the same time as I was, but I don't believe in coincidence. He was looking out for me.
Just before I cross into Transition, I gave Miriam my lifeline, a little piece of red cord. I told her to pull like hell if she felt me tug hard on it.
I made it to the Gateway, barely, and met an Old Guardian named Paladin. The Gateway was closed, which was a bad thing. With Paladin's help, I was able to reopen the Gateway, so the departed, could continue their journey. I pulled on my lifeline and Miriam yanked me back to our world. I warned her to not try to do what I did, ever, and especially do not try it alone.
Moving on. Miriam took me back to my apartment, and we slept. I woke up alone to a note from her thanking me for all she learned. That afternoon I got a phone call from a Tulsa Detective named Frank Blackwolf.
Miriam had been killed. Her face eaten off. She had tried to cross into Transition, just like I had told her NOT to do.
Two nice policefolk took me down town to meet and greet Blackwolf, who turned out to be this giant of a man, big in body, big in heart and big in soul. We talked a bit about Miriam's death, and he told me I wasn't a suspect. I took a big chance and told him about MY world, then he took a big chance and told me about HIS world.
Frank Blackwolf was almost a shaman, coming from a long line of shamans. He preferred to be a cop, though. He told me that he had been tracking a pattern of strange crimes, murders, that circled around a particular piece of property near Tulsa. RedBud Valley. He had tracked these murders for thirty years, and now he shared them with me. He told me that the murders had increased in intensity and he just had a feeling that things were going to get really bad and he needed my help on it.
I had slept after my meeting with Blackwolf and had a dream with my grandmother, who told me to go to pub night and look at my friends as they really are. I woke up just in time to get up and go to Potbelly's, the place where we used to hold our Pub Nights. These were nights when my best chums and I get together to celebrate another day of successful living.
That night, as I sat with my friend, one of the locals walked in the door. A big guy with red hair that I called the Leprechaun. He had opened the door by way of ripping it off it's hinges, and he didn't come to drink. He came to kill me. He was possessed by the 'Bads or something like them.
He couldn't though. Because of the combined strength of all my best chums there, all of them containing Aspects of one form or another, we beat the monster back, literally ripping the evil from the poor leprechaun and blowing it to smithereens.
I had explained the situation as I saw it to my friends, the impending evil and Redbud Valley and Blackwolf's suspicion and all. No need to keep them in the dark, I figured. After all, they had just kept my butt from being toasted. I told them that I had to confront the evil at the source and I had every intention of going to Redbud valley and have it out, then and there.
They refused to let me go alone, no matter how much I protested. Frankly, I'm glad they did, or this conversation wouldn't be happening. And then, into the midst walked Frank Blackwolf.
Moving on...
We went to Redbud Valley, fought the bad guy, who looked just like me and was sent by someone really, really ticked off at me. I didn't catch the bad guy's name right then, because I wasn't talking to myself. I was trying to kill myself and a bit preoccupied. Fortunately, I was smarter than me and finally defeated myself, but not without hurting myself pretty badly in the process. Got all that?
And then a bad thing happened. A Gateway was going to open. The Gateway that Miriam wanted me to help close. The gateway between our world and the world H.P. Lovecraft warned us about, and the Old Ones were wanting to come a-calling. And it was going to open the very next night, at the Dark of the Moon.
I slept for a bit, because I definitely needed it. I dreamed and in the dream, the 'Bads tried to kill me and keep me trapped in Dreamworld. Sherry, who had been standing guard over me while I slept, woke me from the dream, saving my bacon, again.
She told me that everything was ready. All the folks that needed to be there were ready and all the folks that were lending energy and love were ready to do that, too.
It was a good thing they were ready. The battle to close the gate took every ounce of what we had to give.
Long story hopefully made shorter and then we can get onto what is happening now:
The Transition was quick, and all my friends changed into their Aspects. Fighting warriors, Goddesses, little fairy folk. It's amazing to see what your friends look like when they take on the Aspects of what other people see them as.
We fought a good fight and we won. The Gateway closed and the Old Ones were kept at bay. A thousand thousand 'Bads were sent back to the hell they came from. We were victorious.
The Gatekeeper was freed and revived, and he gave me a key to the identity of who was trying to kill me.
Someone big, someone really bad. Someone who was bad enough that even the 'Bads were scared of him. Someone who either held the Aspect of Ammit, the Eater of the Dead, or someone who really was Ammit, the Eater of the Dead.
I called the only folks I knew to call. I called the witches, Madeline and Madame. At six in the morning, I went to visit them and learned that Bob, my mentor, had been killed by this Ammit guy. I also learned that I never needed to work again, because Bob had left all his worldly goods - Seven hundred years worth of worldly goods, to me.
He also left me another puzzle. In a letter written to me, he told me to come find him in Kansas. He left the clue that about a windmill in a wheat field in Kansas, and he told me to bring my ruby slippers.
And that is why I was on my way to Sedan, Kanas, home of the Yellow Brick Road.