Intro: Wyrd Tales

Intro: Wyrd Tales

The kidnappings happened every fifth week, a child taken right from their rooms. For the most part, it was the disaffected youths. Kids who wore the heavy black and whined about their lives because they thought they were hard. The parents still made the effort to look for them, police tried to find anyone with information. Feds were brought in with specialists and corpse sniffing dogs and underground sonar.

It all amounted to shit.

For us, we just started rattling our usual contacts. The drug pushers didn’t know anything, they were too busy dealing with a bunch of vampires outside of town. The Union didn’t know either, since they were too focused on the plant closings in the area to fight monsters at the moment.

We were left with one option then, and none of us really “liked” it. But if anyone had a chance of seeing those kids again, we had to use it.

So we went to the shop, “Holistics For You”. It wasn’t some dumb crystal gazer shop that was packed with tacky statues and little pieces of rocks for you to feel your “energy” in. It was a bookstore, really, catering to a very specific crowd. Inside were books in dead languages, from Sanskrit tablets to preservation jars full of brine and God knows what inside, the air inside musty and stale. We didn’t like to go to this place, Jerry especially, but we needed to find what was happening, and the owner of this place was our only source.

The owner wasn’t what you’d expect. She called herself “Dessie”, but I’m almost sure it wasn’t her real name. Course, we never used our real names with her, so it probably evened out. She was feeding her dog as we came in, petting his head as we came up to the counter, wearing a pencil skirt and white blouse. All I know is that despite my loving wife, it was a good thing there was a counter above my waist. “Dessie,” I said, as behind me, the cell kept watch in the store.

“Oh, hey,” she said, getting up, showing a little leg. “What’s up?”

“You’ve heard about the kidnappings?” I asked, not removing my sunglasses.

“I did, but I didn’t think much of them. Why, you think you know something?” She leaned over the counter towards me, smiling innocently. I didn’t buy it, seeing as that was the same smile she had on when she changed into a dog-thing and cut a vampire to pieces three months ago.

“A buddy in the police gave us this,” I said, taking the piece of thorn out of my pocket, sliding it across the counter. “It was found in one of the victim’s rooms, figured you might know something about it.”

Carefully, Dessie took the thorn, and looked it over, spinning it around in her fingers. Her smile disappeared. “I think I know what this is, and if I’m right, you’re never seeing those kids again.”

Jerry kicked at a bookcase, sending one or two tumbling to the floor. From behind the counter, the dog growled. “What, your Devil worshipping friends decided they’d make some good sacrifices, is that it?”

“I’ve told you all before, I don’t worship anything you consider evil,” Dessie said, shooting Jerry a look. “Now can you please pick those up before you make me angry?”

With a sneer, Jerry grabbed the books and put them back. He was an angry sonuvabitch, but he knew we weren’t the home team in this shop. “So, you said you saw this before?” I asked, trying to diffuse the situation.

“When I Awakened, I traveled to a land of fairies,” she said, Jerry letting out a snort. “These are not the fairies you know about, though. These weren’t cute little men making toys for a great bearded drunk, they were beings of magic, pure magic.”

“Are they human?” I asked, daring to step into her train of thought.

“Not all of them,” she said, taking out a box of matches. “The big ones, the real fairies, they’re totally inhuman, not a trace of emotion or empathy in them. They’re only interested in themselves, only concerned with what can keep them ‘entertained’ for as long as possible.” As she spoke, she lit the thorns on fire, and I watched as the flames went from red to green. My spine tingled.

“They’re kidnappers?” I asked.

“And worse,” she said. “On that shelf your friend just kicked, there’s a book on fairies that should tell you what you need to know.”

“Hell with that,” Jerry said. “We can find this monster without her help.”

“No, it could help us,” I said, ignoring Jerry’s cursing. “How much?”

Dessie’s smile returned in a flash. “For you? Seventy.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “Seventy bucks for a book that might not even be what I’m looking for? Thirty.”

“You want any information at all you’ll take what I’m offering. Forty-five.” Her smile got a little wider, making me feel uncomfortable.

“Thirty five,” I said. “Because if you don’t sell us the book cheap, more kids are gonna go missing. Can you live with yourself knowing you could have helped to stop this?”

Dessie chewed on her lip for a second, then nodded. “Thirty five,” she said, sticking out her hand. I shook it only for a second, and took the cash from my wallet. Nodding to Jerry, he took the book from the shelf, sneering at Dessie as he left.

So there we were, in the warehouse, putting the door into place. It looked weird, just a door standing up in the middle of a concrete floor, but according to the book, it was supposed to work with what we had planned. Jerry was almost finished pouring the salt around the door, cursing about the “pagan devil worship” we were committing. Lisa and Joe took the catwalks above the door, Joe loading his rifle, a leftover from his Marine days. Lisa was busy rigging the chains. If anything did go wrong, at least the freak probably wasn’t gonna leave the warehouse alive.

“We set?” Joe shouted, chambering a round. “I’m feeling real uneasy about this.”

“I told Louis to call the cops if we didn’t get back to him by one,” I said, going to the monster’s name, as Jerry got the trade objects from the wall to put inside the circle. An old inkwell, an MP3 player, a mannequin, and a plastic mask of the most famous Alaskan governor. If the book was right, this would be some kind of bargaining chip, if the monster was like it was described. “Okay, everyone got to your positions,” I said, checking that the ring of salt wasn’t broken. With the other three in place, I started calling out the thing’s name. “*Later*, Lord of All Words, High Powerful of the Contract of Language, come forth, for I have business with you.”

The door nearly flew off it’s hinges, a great roar opening it. Looking inside, I couldn’t believe for a second what I was seeing. A great barrier of thorns was suddenly behind the door, where before there was only the other side of the warehouse. It was bright too, and I almost went blind before shoving my sunglasses back onto my face. Grabbing for my pistol, I watched as the great monster emerged from the door, great sheets of parchment covering it’s body, it’s eyes milky white, a group of creatures scribbling on it’s parchments. I realized that some of the creatures had faces like the missing teens. “You who have summoned me,” he shouted, pointing a massive quill at my face. “Why have you summoned one as I to such a dismal place?”

“I’m here to deal,” I said. “You give us back the kids you took, we’ll give you that in their place.” Despite how I tried to make my voice sound, I couldn’t help but be terrified at the monster in front of me. It’s face alone was bigger than my chest, and I realized that it’s beard had managed to become the very parchment that the teens were scribbling on.

The monster looked the thing over, smiling as it did. Whether it liked what it saw or was working out a way to kill us, I didn’t know. Rearing up, it laughed, the teens cringing away in fear, but still writing. I got a look at the parchment, and couldn’t make sense of half of the stuff on it. One of the kids was scribbling on calligraphy from some Asian nation, while another was illuminating like how they wrote old bibles. “This is but a trinket, man,” it said, batting the mannequin away. My eyes shot to the salt circle, and I silently thanked God that the thing was still intact. “What have you to truly offer me?”

I desperately eyed the warehouse, but that was all we had thought to bring, until I remembered the book. Grabbing it, I held it up. Despite being what I could only call blind, his eyes latched on to the book, following it wherever I moved it. “You want it? Well we’ve got to make a deal.”

“And what deal would that be, man?” he said. I could see Joe lining up the monsters head in his sights, but I waved him off. No need to make it angry.

“If you can come over here and get it, you get the book.”

“And if I do not?” the thing shouted. As he bellowed, I saw one of the girls start to cry, unable to stop writing.

“We get all the kids you stole from the surrounding hundred miles back.” I stood as firm and tall as I could. It was like facing a wild animal, I guess. Either you show it you mean business, or it’ll kill your ass

“A poor challenge, man,” it said in what I guessed was a whisper. Laughing, it kicked the mannequin across the floor, breaking the circle. As it did, though, Joe opened up with his rifle, rounds slamming into the beast’s head. Roaring, it charged after Joe, as I felt a constriction on my throat. I tried to yell, but nothing came out. Shaking my head, I ran over to the kids, grabbing them and pushing them to the door. They shrieked and screamed, but I kept pointing to the door, and they started to get the picture when I fired my pistol at the ceiling. Quickly, they ran outside, Jerry waving at me, saying with his hands he was running with them. Nodding, I let him go, turning to face the monster. Lisa was tugging desperately at the chains, but they were stuck. Waving to Joe, I pointed at Lisa, before grappling with the monster. With a silent roar, I started tearing at the parchments on it’s body, ripping off parts of it with all I had. Before I realized what was happening, I felt the parchment wrapping around my legs and arms.

“You dare challenge me!” the monster bellowed, my ears nearly bursting. The parchment brought me up to it’s face, it’s long white hair flapping about around me. “You who dare to treat me like a fool!”

I couldn’t argue at all, so I did the only thing I could possibly think to do.

I smiled.

“You find this pleasing?” the freak said, pulling me close to his eyes. His breath stank like rotting paper, and I could see that his tongue was just more parchment. “Explain,” he said, as I felt the pressure on my throat ease.

“I just thought of a riddle,” I said, finally speaking. “You can’t figure it out, you have to leave Earth, and never come back.”

The thing laughed again, and I was sure I was close to going deaf. “A more interesting challenge! Should you lose, O Man, I take you and all in this building as mine.”

“Agreed,” I said, seeing Joe and Lisa still struggling with the cable. Taking a breath, I came up with the best riddle I could. “I can build a whole city, but I cannot speak. I can destroy whole armies, but cannot bleed. I can save lives, but cannot be thanked. I am two in one, but wholly neither. What am I?”

The monster pondered the riddle for a moment, simply freezing where he was. I could barely even breathe in it’s grip, and decided to just stay where I was, simply because I didn’t want to be crushed by making it angry. Finally, it laughed. “I cannot solve your riddle, man. I must concede.” Setting me down, I heard Lisa shout from above, and I ducked out of the way as a half ton of metal came crashing down on the monster. The floor shook, and the monster let out a great scream as the metal fell on him, ringing and screaming as it hit the floor.

Shakily standing up, I saw steam coming up from the pile of metal wreckage. Smiling, I gave him the answer. “I am steel.”

We burned the door before we went outside, making sure nothing else could come out. The kids we took stock of, and it really did hit us hard when we learned three of them were still in that monster’s world. Still, we’d saved who we could. We sent them back to their parents, with specific instructions to not tell them anything about what had happened.

I heard the kids are getting therapy now, so maybe there’s some hope. But Dessie called me up the other day. A member of her little coven had gotten word that a gang in the city was making waves about a “mistake” that had to be corrected, and that one of the kids we’d saved was being harassed. That thing shouldn’t be back according to Dessie’s book, so I’m gonna pay her another visit. If she’s playing both of us, this relationship is gonna be very strained.

--- Journal of T. Harris, found outside the burning wreckage of “Holistics for You”. The owner, Diana Mordred, has yet to be found.