The Path Less Traveled

The Fallen Odyssey I Was A Weird Kid – Confessions From ...

The Path Less Traveled

It was no specific noise that brought Justin awake.

On the contrary, as he came back to the world what he noticed most was the lack of sound; no hum of ventilation, no whir of electric power, no hiss of plumbing. All the familiar background noise supposed to be there was missing. The silence penetrated and weighed him down. His confused ears rebelled against it, constructing barriers of whining, mosquito-buzzing white noise.

What he noticed next was the pain. A pronounced ache plagued his every muscle and joint. His head throbbed, and opening his eyes only made things worse.

He lay atop sweat-soaked bedding, alone, in a dark room. The only light came from some sort of old-fashioned oil lamp, mounted on the wall above the headboard and giving off a feeble glow. He raised an arm to shield his eyes from it, and even this tiny movement was a labor.

His stomach churned, and urgency shook all remaining sleep-haze. He rolled off the bed and fell to the floor, searching frantically for something in which to be sick. Tucked under the bed was a wide-brimmed, metal bucket, and he seized it. His empty stomach produced nothing but hollow echoes in the pail. Tears streamed down his face for the effort. When the nausea had passed, he put the bucket back and looked around.

This was not his bedroom. Nor was it any room in his house. The floor beneath him was made of crude, unfinished planks. Tapestries decorated the unpapered walls, and there was not a single window. The oil lamp was the only means of illumination. Justin spotted his tennis shoes at the foot of the bed, and he snatched them up.

It came back to him now: a strange kitchen. An old man with a long, wide, white beard, dressed in black robes like a monk. Antlers hanging on the wall. A clock whose symbols bore no resemblance to what Justin knew as numbers. And a second man– this one tall and silent.

The images in his mind’s eye were distorted behind fog and heat-shimmer; an avant-garde array of half-remembered pictures and feelings not unlike a dream. They were memories, but they were only fragmentary– messy, splattered and congealed on the inside of his skull. Where was he? And how had he gotten here?

A boat. For some reason, he was thinking about a boat.

Am I still in the same house? he wondered, tying his shoes. I remember the old man giving me a drink that tasted funny. I threw up and blacked out. It must have had something in it. Here I thought he was a monk, and instead he tries to poison me! But what was I doing in his kitchen in the first place? Can’t remember–

As he stood up, all the blood rushed to his head, and another wave of venomous pain hit him so intensely that his vision blurred. The room bubbled into darkness and then danced with flashes.

He held on to consciousness– for the moment– and as sight came back, he took inventory. Patting his jeans pockets, he found everything where it should be: wallet, keys and phone. He checked the phone. The display blasphemed a white, electronic glow that seemed alien and unwelcome in this archaic-looking place. It clashed with the oil lamp’s natural light, creating a strange, shadowy borderlands.

No signal, no time, no date… And almost zero battery life.

Justin turned it off to save what little charge was left and slipped it back in his pocket.

“Gotta get out of here,” he whispered.

He flinched at the groaning of the floorboards as he made his way toward the room’s only door. To his relief, the brass knob gave with little effort. The hinges were well greased, and ancient though it was, the door swung open with barely a sound.

He stepped into a kitchen– the same kitchen from his half-forgotten memory. Blue-gray moonlight spilled from a diamond-shaped pane in the door. It was the only window, and little more than a peephole.

So it was real, after all… he thought.

He remembered this place looking rustic and quaint. Now it felt more like a haunted house. The antlers hanging on the wall, above a washbasin, now seemed to belong to a lurking monster. The elaborate woodwork cast ghostly shadows of burrows and pits in the moonlight.

And there was the clock he’d remembered. The one that measured time by strange symbols that were not numbers. Nor were they numerals or letters belonging to any writing system that Justin recognized. Furthermore, the runic figures seemed to indicate the time to be a quarter past sixteen. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things, but a second glance confirmed it. The clock measured time in eighteen-hour increments.

He stood still, trying to moisten his dry lips, listening for any sign of the old man.

Zechariah, thought Justin. That’s what the old man said his name was. Right before he gave me that drink that knocked me out…

He tiptoed forward, feeling the vibrations of his every movement. The house spoke to him in elderly grunts. Creeping past the kitchen table, he wondered where the old man named Zechariah had gone–

Justin missed a step as another wave of sick agony crashed within his head. He felt it wrap around him and start to pull him down. He leaned against table for support, well aware of the creak of its legs under his weight.

Don’t black out again! his mind screamed at him. Pull it together!

For a few moments, he focused on nothing but staying conscious. Only after the blackness had subsided did he dare leave the safety of the table for the front door.

Groping blinding for a handle, his fingers found bolts and chains. They whispered like chimes in stale wind as, one by one, he undid the locks.

He froze. Had he heard something just now– behind him?

He looked over his shoulder. Shadows distorted the kitchen into a hundred crooked hiding places. His heart beat in his throat. His eyeballs pulsed with blood-flow. The last bolt slid free within his trembling hand. His breath was a freight train in his ears as he turned the knob and cracked the door. Cool summer breeze swept in like a lost midnight caller. He had to fight the urge to sprint off into the night as he slipped quietly out through the threshold. He inched the door closed behind him until the latch clicked home.

Turning away from the door, Justin’s breath caught in his throat at sight of his surroundings.

Rolling plains stretched out beyond vision. Thin snakes of gray clouds drifted across the night sky. A lop-sided, crescent moon peeked through the clouds and cast her influence over the steppes. There wasn’t a building, road or landmark within sight.

He looked back toward the old man’s hut. It sat at the base of a slope, and atop the hill beyond, he spotted the dull gray silhouettes of other houses in the moonlight. Their windows were dark. Along the edge of the settlement he saw movement: a repetitive catch of light. As his eyes adjusted, it became the blades of a windmill. There were dozens of them, rotating in ranks. But encouraging as it was to see signs of civilization, it didn’t change the startling fact that he recognized nothing in this wild, ghostly countryside.

His memory was fuzzy, but now that he was out here, the idea that the old man had poisoned him seemed pretty stupid. Justin didn’t know where he was or how he had gotten here, but running off aimlessly into the dark wasn’t going to solve anything.

He turned back toward the house. Moss hung from the brown brick, and creepers with flowers closed in slumber slithered between the cracks. The old man’s hut was several hundred yards from the hilltop village with its windmills. His door faced away from town, toward the open plains.

Justin sighed. He was lost, and he was clearly sicker than he’d realized. This old man had been kind enough to give him a bed to sleep in. Where there was a bed, he might as well get some rest and–

The bronze knob caught at half-turn. He jiggled it and twisted harder, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked.

Justin plowed his fingers through his hair, grumbling at his own foolishness. He raised his hand to knock on the door, but he bit his lip, hesitating. He hated to put the old man’s hospitality to the test by waking him up at this hour, all over a stupid mistake. But what other choice did he have?

A sudden noise distracted Justin from the door. It was faint and distant but definitely human, and as Justin squinted at the town atop the grassy incline several hundred yards away, he saw an orange flicker that he hadn’t noticed before.

Justin lowered his hand without knocking. It couldn’t hurt to take a quick look around first. Maybe he’d find something familiar and recognize where he was. He didn’t know why his cell phone had no service, but maybe if he could find a place that was open– the source of that light, perhaps– he could use their phone and figure out where he was. Giving the knob one last try– to no success– Justin stepped away from the door and started up a rutted trail, toward the gray silhouettes of town.

As he walked, he could see sprawling fields of grain beneath the lazy, turning arms of the windmills. The trail he followed led him along the edge of a field of waist-high wheat that shone pallid in the moonlight. He glanced occasionally over his shoulder, taking mental notes of his position relative to the old man’s hut. With the exception of some weirdly ancient-looking buildings made of crooked, cut stone, it was the only house so far removed from the bulk of the settlement. It wouldn’t be difficult to find his way back.

Still, Justin found that a growing sense of unease had taken root in his guts by the time he reached the village. The rutted path turned into a well-worn, dirt road. The buildings on either side seemed very old yet very tidy, and they sat abnormally close to one another. Even the size of the road itself was strange– hardly wide enough for two cars to pass at once. And come to think of it, he had yet to see any vehicles at all.

The orange flicker grew brighter with each step. The houses were silent. Not a single window was lit. Not a single streetlamp could be seen. Another voice echoed toward him, joined in immediately by a second. Laughter, he realized. Justin hurried toward it, and turning a corner, found the source of the light and sound.

Firelight shone from the wide-open doors of a large building, creating a swirling shadow-puppet show on the street. Patrons within swooped and danced across the light. Puffs of smoke rose from the chimney. From within came the sounds of laughter, singing, and the clinking of glasses. Somewhere behind it all, a stringed instrument strummed high and merrily.

As Justin approached the set of steps at the entrance, he was met by the conglomerate smells of smoked meat, warm beer and tobacco. A plaque hung above the door. Its symbols– like those of the strange clock– were foreign and unreadable to him.

At the base of the stairs, he took the phone from his pocket and turned it on. Still no signal; still no time, and battery failing.

Even if I could call someone, thought Justin, What would I tell them? I don’t even know where I am yet.

He took a deep breath that shuddered with nerves.

“Can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said to no one.

He climbed the stairs and entered the doorway.

Noise and light and smell hit him from every angle. He forced himself to keep walking so as not to stand and gawk, but it was easier said than done.

The room was hazy with smoke. Men with long pipes clenched between their teeth sat at tables, nursing drinks. To one side was a bar with barrels for stools. The far wall housed a blazing fireplace with straw-stuffed chairs clustered around it. Hanging at the center of the hall was a wooden chandelier, alight with glowing candles and piled with antlers.

Justin made his way to a corner and leaned against a wooden support beam in the shadows. He tried to stand tall, shoulders set and chest puffed out in a show of confidence that he did not feel.

His mouth was dry. His pulse quickened. With every new detail, his self-assurance withered all the more. This place seemed like something from another time. And so did the people. Their clothes were all earth tones, leather and furs, hanging with sashes and sheaths. There were cloaks draped from shoulders to boots. Faces were hidden by hoods. Worse still, Justin somehow knew, with an understanding that was deep and cold and relentless, that these people were profoundly different from him in ways far beyond physical appearance.

A voice very close made him jump. He turned to see that a portly man in an apron had sidled up beside him in the corner. Balanced on his arms were trays of empty glasses and plates. His sparse hair was messed and damp. His friendly red face cautiously studied Justin.

Justin gathered that he was being asked if he wanted anything. He waved his hand and said, “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

The barman looked confused. He asked another question.

“Sorry… I–” Justin fumbled. “I’m a little lost. Don’t speak the language. Sorry.”

He became increasingly aware of the heads turning his direction, the unfriendly eyes studying his clothes, which were so foreign in this place: blue jeans, tennis shoes and a tee shirt. Out of anxiety, he kept talking.

“I know I’m not old enough to be in here, but I’m not here to drink, I promise. I’m only seventeen– almost eighteen. I’m just lost and looking for a phone. English? You know English? A telephone?”

The barman looked more annoyed now than confused. He said something excusing himself to his work and shuffled off.

“Hey, boy.”

Justin turned toward the voice. A man stood from a nearby table and took a few unsure steps toward him. Even from here, Justin could smell stale alcohol clinging to his skin like a perfume. There was an ugly burn scar across his face, making it impossible to tell what sort of expression he wore. The eye on the injured half was glazed over and staring white. It was not the face that held Justin’s attention, though, but the dagger in his hand.

“…Lost?” the man said, the first half of the sentence indiscernible within slurred mumbles. He took a staggering step at Justin and raised the dagger. “I’ll send you home.”

The man was coming toward him with the dagger raised. Justin looked around for help, but all he found were bleary eyes, watching with either callous disregard or worse, amusement. He found himself in the numbing clutches of blind terror. For every step the drunkard took forward, Justin took one back. He dared move no faster, nor any slower. The drunkard was talking as he advanced, but it was garbled, and only half the words seemed to be English. All Justin could see was the blade inching toward him, held level with his frantic eyes.

Finally, Justin took one step too many and stumbled backwards upon finding no floor beneath his foot.

Toppling head-over-heels down the entrance stairs was a painful, confusing blur. He hit the ground outside in a cloud of dust and rolled into the street. He scrambled to his feet, ready to run, but nothing pursued him except peals of raucous laughter.

Justin swallowed hard against a dense lump in his throat. The cruel laughter died away within seconds, and the talking and singing resumed as if he’d never been there at all. In his hand almost automatically was his cell phone, and standing in the same spot he’d been just a minute before, he powered it on to check again. Nothing.

Justin rubbed the back of his neck where he’d hit the ground. In his mind, the encounter had left him even farther from home than before. If this was a dream, he was impressed by its authenticity. The rapid pace of his heart at sight of the drunkard’s blade, the smell of his own nervous sweat, the warm breeze of a humid, summer night; these were not things one felt in a dream.

He was awake, he was alive, and he was here, wherever here was.

Briefly, he considered going back in to give it another try.

“Better not,” he mumbled to himself. “They might decide killing me would be even funnier. What kind of people dress like that–?”

He didn’t finish the sentence. His eyes to the sky, Justin froze, torn from his thoughts by what looked down at him. The wind had pushed the cloud cover across the endless sky, and through a break, the moon shone in a crescent.

And even higher in the sky, half-obscured by the clouds, was a second moon, huge and bronze and also a crescent. So close to the world was it that even on this overcast night Justin could discern elements of its landscape; mountains and valleys pock-marked with craters, some round and some misshapen, the biggest nearly the size of the sister moon itself.

As Justin traced the line of a lunar canyon to where it ended at a large, slashing crater, scar of a primordial wound, he felt farther from home than any map could measure; lost, in the severest definition of the word.

And then, he heard someone call his name.

The odyssey continues!

Questions and mysteries abound as Justin is pulled deeper and deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole, far from anything and everything he has ever known. But lurking in the shadows of this fantasy realm is something darker and far more sinister than kidnappers; an ancient, demonic evil, that while threatening the peace of an entire world, may also hold the key to Justin’s gateway home, and the end of his Fallen Odyssey…

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