Jigsaw World (7 page)

“
The gates shall threaten to swing
wide soon. For the first time, you will determine the fate of this
world. If the gate opens, the final death will enter this
world.”

Tom awoke, and rubbed his eyes as he thought
about the dream. He took a glance at the clock, to discover that it
was now 4:00 AM, the early hours of the dark of the morning. Five
minutes later, he also discovered that George had awakened at that
same time, and that George had nearly the same dream during the
night that Tom had.

Tom brewed a pot of coffee, yet another perk
of driving an RV. George and he sat down, and discussed the
ramifications of recent events, interesting comparisons and sundry
theories. Tom theorized that George was a ‘Watcher’ like himself,
based on the similarities in their lives. Both of them had no
memories of their lives more than twenty years ago, and they were
basically Loners, not avoiding company, but always seeming to wind
up alone.

Another similarity that they had with each
other was that they gained important and useful information from
their dream lives. They also trusted their intuitions regarding
situations and danger to an almost ridiculous degree. They had also
developed identical conclusions regarding some sort of strange
immunity they had either developed or inherited to the spectral
phenomena that happened around them.

George and Tom had each been traveling around
for the last few years, instinctively seeking out answers to
questions that they had not ever consciously asked. The events had
begun to speed up (relative to a number of events to time plot) in
recent times. Tom and George mutually agreed that this was a real
acceleration, not any apparent change due to increased scrutiny or
enhanced detective powers.

They continued to discuss related matters for
about two hours, until finally Bailey padded into the room and
stared at them reproachfully. The pot of coffee was all but dead
about then anyway, and the two of them began to prep the RV for a
day’s travel.

The first rays of the morning sun began to
peek through the leaves of the Oak tree which bordered and shaded
the space where the RV was currently parked. There was something
brighter, more yellow, about the light Tom saw out of the side of
his eyes. He looked directly out of the windshield of the RV at the
curb wall in front of the RV, where a fat gray squirrel was
chittered and waddled along the top bricks of the wall.

Something strange was happening out there. The
light just touched the squirrel, and the squirrel began to emit a
loud squeaking screech of distress. One moment he waddled the
length of the wall, and the next moment, it looked as if the wall
melted a little, and the squirrel sank into the brick to about
shoulder depth. There, the brick must have hardened, because the
squirrel struggled desperately to no avail. The rodent was part of
the rock, and could not escape.

Tom brought the current situation to George’s
attention, and together they watched the activity around them.
Neither of them was sure if they would be less endangered by
leaving the rest area now, or more endangered. They decided to wait
a few moments to see if the phenomena subsided. If it did not, they
would make a break for it in a few moments.

As they watched, the couple in the RV next to
theirs eased out of their vehicle and was looking about curiously.
George speculated that they probably did not see the true action
around them, but were reacting to the distress of the various
victims of the event.

The man made the mistake of leaning against
their RV, and he fell backwards into the siding on the vehicle. He
sat back up so that his face had emerged from the metal, and there
he was stuck, screaming. The woman was screaming also, first in
response to the sound, and whatever she saw of her husband’s
plight, and then because the pavement below her opened up and
swallowed her in a quicksand like descent.

Tom looked sidewise toward George. “You really
can cook an ovary on the pavement in Texas.” George gave a
truncated snort in response.

“
All in all, I think we have
learned everything here that we are going to.” George stated. “This
is just another one of those weird events that have no logical
basis. Hopefully we are immune to this, but I don’t know. Let’s get
out of here, and not find out.”

Tom agreed with the sentiment of George’s
statement, and they prepared to move out. Just as Tom was about to
start the RV’s motor, someone or something began banging violently
on the door of the RV. Someone outside began yelling, “Let me in!”
The Shouter banged even harder on the door.

Tom checked the pocket where he had taken to
putting the nice 32 semiautomatic pistol he had obtained from the
werewolf dude. It was there. He reached over and turned the
ignition, starting the engine of the RV. A loud bang at the door
was the instant result, the noise a good five times as loud as the
previous ones.

Tom rolled down his driver’s side window, and
looked down the camper to where four juvenile boys where whacking
away at the door with tire irons and a two by four piece of lumber.
Tom leaned out of the window, and carefully sighted down the RV at
the four with the pistol. He squeezed the trigger twice and watched
in satisfaction as one of the boys dropped to the ground. The other
boys seemed to be only peripherally aware of the death of their
friend, or perhaps they were unconcerned. Tom emptied the rest of
the clip into their midst, bringing down two more of the boys, and
motivating the final boy to leave.

Tom put the RV into gear and gunned the
engine. As the boy ran past the front of the RV, Tom popped the
clutch, causing the big vehicle to surge forward and over the final
boy. Feeling the satisfying bump of the boy’s body under the
vehicle, Tom grinned and drove the vehicle to the exit road of the
rest stop and out.

George seemed a little disturbed by recent
actions, though not nearly as much so as Tom feared. Whatever
mental trouble George had with it, he shook it off rapidly, and the
RV made its way back onto the interstate and aimed itself at the
big unknown town of Elkskull.

******

Tom eased the RV into a parking space beside
the Walmart. George, Bailey and Tom tumbled out of the vehicle, and
stretched their legs in the short walk to the entrance. At the
door, Tom was dismayed to see a closed sign, and a couple of
employees talking to each other behind the locked door while
ignoring the trio.

“
Welcome to the beautiful Texas
city of Elkskull!” George proclaimed. “Where even 24 hour Walmart
Superstores close at sundown.” The three of them turned around and
started back to the RV.

They got back to the vehicle, and resumed
their seats. “Let’s go down the road a ways, and find someplace to
camp out for the night.” Tom said. With all in general agreement,
in five minutes they were bumping down a side road the promised to
lead them to a secluded spot. Bailey began to stare out of the
window with excited anticipation.

The RV turned a corner while topping a small
hill and the vista before the travelers was that of an ocean
tossing seaweeds and hapless shell fish upon the shore of its cold
body of water. Several sea gulls wheeled and screeched in the
background. The air was filled with the smell of cold salt water, a
scent like rotting fruit and the unmistakable smell of
fish.

“
Someone misplaced the Atlantic
ocean. It should be almost two thousand miles to the east of us,
and from the feel of things, maybe 1500 miles north of that.” Tom
said. “Any ideas?”

“
Just another mutation of the real
world by these ‘events’.” George said. “This sure looks like the
Northern Atlantic shore. So it is three thousand miles or so out of
pocket. It is just par for the course on a trip where the roads are
three times too long.”

Bailey had taken the opportunity to
investigate the terminal beaching of several aquatic life forms,
including one crab that was far too diffident about making its way
back into the surf after being beached by the tide. A chorus of
happy barks and wagging tail signaled that the dog was content with
the current location.

Looking about, the rocky beach and the moonlit
scene of the out of place ocean promised to be a comfortable
camping location. The RV would be the backdrop and resource center
for the campers, and a small manipulation of rock positions was
sufficient to create a fire circle, and with a moment’s work, they
had a campfire setting the ambiance.

Bailey started to bring Tom and George things;
He brought shells, and he brought sticks, he brought rocks, and one
time, he brought a finger. Tom was hard-put to solve the mystery of
that last item. He finally decided that people lost all kinds of
things on a beach. If you could lose your lighter, your phone or
your book at the beach, why not a finger?

While Bailey chewed on his finger beside the
fire, Tom brought out a package of franks and some buns, and using
a couple of green branches, he began the process of cooking hot
dogs over the fire. George had fished up a case of beer from
somewhere, and they settled down to a night on the beach eating hot
dogs and drinking beer. This seemed a decent recipe for a good
night to the two of them. Only the addition of females could have
improved the situation, and to do that, they would have had to take
the finger away from Bailey.

George had gone down to the beach a few
moments ago, and he now returned, carrying a plastic bag and a
cooking pot. He proudly poured the contents of the bag into the
pot, and the contents stood revealed as a dozen or so shellfish, a
mixture of mussels, oysters and clams, and with one oversized snail
that Tom wasn’t really sure what to do with.

George took all of the guesswork out of the
cuisine for Tom by producing butter and a gallon of water, which he
proceeded to pour into the pot until the shellfish was half
submerged in it. He then took the pot and placed it in the middle
of the campfire. A few minutes later, he produced a set of tongs,
with which he first removed the pot from the fire, and then removed
each of the shellfish from the water, placing them on a plate. He
then divvied up the shellfish into three different plates, and
offered Tom a plate and the butter.

Tom accepted the plate, and placed the two hot
dogs that he had just cooked on the plate. He buttered the seafood
on his plate lavishly, and put the extra plate down for Bailey to
eat. Bailey decided to temporarily abandon his finger in favor of a
more substantial meal. Tom tried the first tidbit, that being a
mussel.

“
This ocean may be in the wrong
place, and maybe delusional.” Tom said. “Even so, it provides some
very tasty illusions.”

Bailey finished off his plate of seafood,
waited for and received a cooked wiener from Tom, and walked back
over to where his gnaw finger was waiting patiently. He started to
toy with it, mouthing it and throwing it into the air, and catching
it in his mouth on its descent. Suddenly, he stopped and allowed it
to fall to the sand, and went down on his stomach in a way that
suggested that he was minimizing his profile. He began to whine
softly.

As Bailey did this, a series of shadows which
were not associated with any moving objects that could be seen
flitted across the face of the nearby trees, rocks and embankments.
This was accompanied with a noticeable drop in temperature of the
air. Then the earth shook, gently at first, and then with rising
intensity, cycling through a quaking interval on a roughly five
second cycle.

Tom and George retained their seats while the
earth was quaking. After something between one and two minutes, the
quaking stopped. The air retained its chilly character, and the
gulls, which had been disturbed at the same time as Bailey, had
taken advantage of their ability to fly to flit off over the
horizon, and were no longer to be seen.

The campfire was crackling from the
disturbance of the quake, with embers rising and floating on the
thermals off into the night. Just when the men were about to
conclude that the oddities were over for the night, they heard a
faint chanting in the distance. Somewhere up the beach, somebody,
several somebodies, was chanting strange words in an unknown
language.

Tom looked toward the chanting, and realized
that they could crest the next small outcropping, and probably
would be able to see the source of the chant. There was a small
trail along the beach upon which they could take the RV, if they
deemed it necessary. Tom and George discussed the plan for a
moment, and Tom felt the pockets of his trench coat for the knife
and the pistol. Finding both of them where they were supposed to
be, the two men and the dog trudged the thousand feet or so through
the sand to the outcropping.

Finally arriving at the outcropping, they
climbed its rocky face, and crouched down at its crest, to avoid
being spotted. The chanting has become louder, and the visage which
presented itself to the trio was that of a group of better than two
dozen robed and hooded figures, black robed figures in a circle
around three red robed figures, who in turn encircled the tableau
of a Crimson robed figure holding a ceremonial Athame and standing
before a totally naked and bound girl laid out upon a stone
alter.