The Gate: 13 Dark & Odd Tales Read online

  I know this might not mean much to you, but in a way, you should feel honored. You’re my first, y'know. After this I won’t be a virgin anymore. It’s special, really. You’re gonna pop my cherry.

  Quit squirmin'! You’re only drivin' the blade deeper…

  David McAfee is the author of the vampire novels 33 A.D. and Saying Goodbye to the Sun as well as the horror novel, Nasty Little F!#*ers. David is currently working on the oft-asked for sequel to 33 A.D.

  David lives in Knoxville, TN with his wife, daughter, and infant son, who will no doubt grow to be just as deranged as the rest of the McAfee clan.

  God help us all.

  You can read more about David McAfee and his work by visiting http://mcafeeland.wordpress.com/.

  THE EMANCIPATION OF PO-PO

  (A BANDITS OF YADDO ADVENTURE)

  I – Shadrach

  SHADRACH KNEW THE MOMENT THEY CRESTED THE HILL that the town was possessed, for only demons could find such visceral pleasure in the sight of large buildings draped with mustard yellow bunting. He tugged at the brim of his slouch, its broken chinstrap tapping gently against his cheeks, kicked Lupe, his steed, and turned to his two brothers. Their gaze lay straight ahead, focused on the town of Po-Po and those ghastly decorations. His brothers wore expressions on their faces that said either let’s get this over with, or damn, I’ve got to pass gas. Shadrach, who preferred to be called Shade, understood that with these two either option was possible. He shrugged and ushered his warhorse onward.

  They happened upon a sign on the side of the road and stopped. Po-Po Welcomes You! it read in huge, elegantly crafted letters. The statement below these words had been scratched out with red paint, and in place of an original proclamation which was no longer legible, the sign stated, Population is Nil, so why you still here? Shade quivered in his saddle and shrugged the guitar strap off his shoulder. He secured the axe inside the saddlebag behind him and replaced it with his second-favorite tool – a sawed-off shotgun. He nodded to his brothers and they did the same, placing their weapons within reach, just-in-case-style. It seemed the Oracle, that rancid Old Crone, was right. Po-Po had been taken under. There might not be campfire songs tonight.

  “So, what do you think?” asked Mesh, the older of his two brothers. He sat high in his saddle, his long, wavy hair fluttering like a banner in the hot desert wind. His piercing blue eyes burned like twin fluorescents from above a thick beard. The fingers of his tanned right hand tapped the butt of his Colt revolver, which sat in its holster, draped over his lap. He didn’t look at Shade when he spoke. Those beam-like eyes focused.

  “Not sure,” Shade said. “What do you see?”

  “Looks like a party,” Mesh replied in his dreamlike, far-away voice. “Lotsa folks. How many, I’m not sure. Maybe more than in Tansaray, maybe less.” He turned and those wintry eyes peered straight into Shade’s. “Does it matter?”

  Shade groaned. “I guess not.”

  “Should we pull a Dinner Key?”

  “Perhaps. But I’m not sure if egging them on is the best thing to do. Could be that going in guns blazing would be paramount, like down in Winnebago. Cut ‘em all down before they know what’s hit ‘em.”

  “We can’t do that, bloke, and you know it,” said Abe, the youngest – and newest – of the brothers. He peered from beneath his comically large sombrero – a hazing ritual Shade and Mesh put him through when he first arrived that just seemed to stick – and hoisted the stock of the pulse rife (a weapon both Shade and Mesh despised for its killing ease) that hung to his leg. “There’s a time and place for everything. First, we gotta solve it. As usual.”

  “I know,” Shade replied.

  “So let’s hear it again,” said Mesh. “See if you can make any sense this time.”

  “Okay.” Shade cleared his throat, pulled a sheet of wrinkled paper from his pocket, and held it in front of his face. “I’ve measured it from side to side,” he read, “’tis three feet long and two feet wide, it is of compass small, and bare, to thirsty suns and parching air.” He glanced at his brothers. “You got anything?”

  Mesh shrugged. Abe shook his head.

  “Well, that was helpful,” Shade uttered.

  Abe guided his warhorse to the front of the line. “Let’s just get going,” he said. “We’ll think about it on the way.”

  They all agreed and up the desert road they glided, leaving dust and wind behind them. While they rode, Shade couldn’t help but curse the fact that the Crone didn’t seem capable of speaking in anything but riddles.

  * * *

  The tiny figures that had previously gathered between the two buildings marking Po-Po’s boundaries scattered when the triumvirate drew closer. By the time they passed the border, where the ancient ruins of a fountain guarded entry, there were none to be seen. Buildings rose up around them; long-decayed skyscrapers, leaning like wounded soldiers with their guts of steel girders emerging from blasted sides. The massive red sun shone down upon them, reflecting off what glass remained in the buildings’ windows, making the afternoon even hotter than the hundred-something it always reached at peak hours. Sweat beaded in Shade’s afro, ran down his cheeks, gathered in pools at the nape of his neck. He glanced down and wiped grime from his arm, taking a moment to notice how dark his skin had become. When he’d first arrived here, Lord knew how many years ago, it was the color of coffee filled with a healthy amount of cream. Now, it looked like the blackest of opal.

  “Hours in the sun can do that do you,” said Mesh.

  Shade passed him a sideways glance. “How do you do that?”

  “You’re transparent, my brother,” he replied, the irony showing through in his smile. “Transparent.”

  Abe suggested they go the rest of the way on foot, to allow for a quick retreat to cover should they encounter an ambush, and Shade agreed. They pulled the warhorses to a spot in front of an old pharmacy on the ground floor of another tall building covered with bunting – the RX could still be seen, etched into the doorframe – and dismounted.

  “Will that be all for today?” asked Lupe the Steed in its tinny voice.

  “For now,” Shade replied. “But I’ll only put you on standby. In case we need a quick getaway.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  He grasped the reins, lifted the small hatch just in front of the saddle, and turned the dial inside. The turbines that spun beneath Lupe’s oblong metal casing died down to a sputter and the steed lowered slowly to the ground. He turned to see that Mesh and Abe had done the same with theirs.

  “Which way now?” asked Mesh as he twisted the holster containing the Colt to his side. “Town hall?”

  “As good a place as any, I guess.”

  Off they went, marching up the middle of a collapsing Main Street with the blazing sun casting the dying shadows of dead buildings all around them.

  II – Meshach

  It took an hour to reach the center of the city on a road that was fractured, in some places forming holes so deep they seemed to carry on to the center of the Earth, and Mesh thought that Abe had been a tad early in his suggestion to ditch the warhorses. His feet ached as the straps of his leather sandals cut into them. There’d surely be sores in the morning. He could feel it.

  Not that it would be any different than any other morning, however, for his feet were constantly covered in sores; the price of spending year after year traipsing through the open, barren plains.

  “So, Shade,” he said, “you got anything on the riddle yet?”

  Shade chuckled without humor and shook his head.

  “How ‘bout you, Abe?”

  The younger man with the ludicrously outsized sombrero lifted a finger as if to say something, then dropped it and repeated Shade’s gesture.

  “That figures.”

  When his frustration lagged, he took a moment to take in the men who stood on either side of him. Though not related by blood, they were his brothers, all right. Abe, to his right, he felt a strong protective ins
tinct for. Quietly strong, he had as much talent with the acoustic as he did as a marksman; however, there was darkness to him, a deep valley of depression that every so often threatened to swallow him whole. Sometimes it seemed that if he and Shade weren’t there to protect him, to liven his mood, then he’d end up swallowed by the same deep chasm that cast him here in the first place, from his hidden family cove on the other side of the sea, in another place and time.

  Whereas he loved Abe in the way a guardian adores a child, to Shade he felt the kind of worship one would bestow upon a demigod. This was a man he’d known in his previous life, though observed and respected from afar, and now here he stood, striding alongside him. Shade taught him to shoot and play guitar, to ponder mysteries besides those that existed only within his own mind. It had been Shade who found him on the bank of the river Butte, Shade who eased his mind when he thought he might be going insane, Shade who laughed at his jokes, Shade who seemed able to follow his sporadic line of thinking, no matter how far off the beaten path he tread. Shade was more than a brother to him. He was a cog in his engine as vital as his heart, a component he adored in all and every way.

  A loud bang echoed through the alleys, shattering what glass remained in the windows around them and breaking Mesh of his preoccupied meanderings. He drew the Colt in a flash and grabbed Abe by the collar, shielding him with his body. Abe’s jumbo sombrero tipped off his head. He seemed to take extreme care putting it back on.

  In the distance, at the rear of a wide park consisting of burned, leafless trees and brown, dead grass, was a building of red brick and thick white spires. A lone figure stood in the middle of the many stairs leading to the building’s front door. His brothers were still too far away to see him, but Mesh, with eyesight that seemed to grow keener with each passing day, could. The figure stood with head bowed and feet shoulder-length apart, hands clasped before him atop a cane. With a swift motion he brought the cane up and then down on the staircase. Again a boom flashed in his eardrums.

  “What in bloody hell is that?” asked Abe.

  “A warning.”

  “From whom?”

  Mesh pointed towards the building, allowing Abe’s eyes to follow his extended finger. “He’s on the steps.”

  “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be close to him soon enough.”

  Shade spoke up. “You think this mystery man’ll allow us to come forward unhindered?”

  Mesh grinned. “Couldn’t tell you. But hey, nothing’s come out to get us so far, right?”

  “Touché,” Shade replied.

  The three brothers crossed the lifeless commons. The figure on the steps of town hall didn’t move until they were only fifteen feet away. The square ended, replaced by a sidewalk of chunked and broken concrete. It was there the three of them stopped. Shade drew to the front of the pack and bowed.

  “Mister, whoever you are, I beg you good day,” he said.

  The man lifted his gaze, and for the first time Mesh noticed that, though the massive sun bathed everything in its burning light, this man, standing in the open, seemed to cast a living shadow around him. His eyes were black and empty; his cheeks a pallid shade of white; his hands, lobster claws. The cane between them was made of glowing blue metal, an alloy and construction Mesh recognized quite well; a lightning stick.

  The stranger opened his mouth. Two roaches crawled over his lips and scurried down his neck. A purple, serrated tongue poked out. “Yes,” the man said. His voice sounded like smashing light bulbs. “Who comes to see us? Who comes to see Leviatres?”

  Mesh had never heard of a demon named such. Great, he thought, a new one. Then he noticed Shade straighten up and hand Abe the shotgun that had been draped over his shoulder. His brother looked disappointed, but he kept his respectful tone when he said, “It is us, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, from the province on the Western Sea. We, the Bandits of Yaddo, come on behest of the Oracle and the Reverend Gherkin, to see that those in Po-Po, who have been friends to our cause, are still…well, still here.”

  “I know nothing of this Reverend of which you speak,” the demon Leviatres spat back. “I know nothing of you three, either.”

  “That’s all well and good,” said Shade, “but you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Which was?”

  “Where…are…the…people?”

  “Gone. Kaput. Sweet.”

  Mesh nodded. “Kinda figured.”

  “How did you get here?” Abe asked. There was a gleam in his eyes Mesh liked. “Did the Director send you?”

  “Director? I know not of such things. No one sends me anywhere. Even the prince cowers in my presence. We have only known the waters of damnation. And from these waters, we arise. And then, we live. For the first time in since the beginning of history, we live.” Bitter, fanatical laughter escaped his lips, along with quite a few more nasty little bugs.

  Shade reached into his purse and withdrew the trumpet. Mesh sighed and rolled his eyes as his brother held it out to him.

  “C’mon, bro,” he complained in a whisper, “you know I don’t play that thing.”

  “You gotta learn sometime,” Shade replied.

  Reluctantly, Mesh took the trumpet and stepped forward. He narrowed his gaze at Leviatres. “Where are your brethren?” he asked, and then demanded, “Bring them out now.”

  “I will not,” replied the demon. “You will see them when they are ready for you.”

  Mesh put the blowhole to his lips. He wasn’t sure if tooting the horn would work this time, but if Shade wanted him to try, he’d try. “Alright then, you asked for it,” he muttered.

  He pulled air into his chest, but before he could do anything, the demon’s head exploded.

  III – Abednego

  Abe held the handle of Shade’s shotgun, staring first at the smoke coming from the weapon’s barrel, second at the stump ejecting a geyser of red liquid on top the demon’s shoulders. He turned to his brothers, handed the weapon back to Shade, and winked.

  “Why’d you do that?” pleaded Mesh.

  Abe glanced at Shade, whose mouth formed a sly grin on his dark face.

  “Well,” Abe said, “the git screwed up.”

  “How?”

  “He told me the answer…in a roundabout sort of way.”

  Shade, “What is it, then?”

  The screams of those beneath Leviatres’s dominion rose from the surrounding buildings. Abe snapped his head from side to side, watching as shadowy figures, hunched and deformed, crawled from dark alleys. He turned in time to see the arms of the demon Leviatres rise up as if searching for its splattered head, the lobster-claw-hands snapping, trying to itch a now departed scratch. The body fell over with a splat, and the choir of its underlings rose up an octave. Abe swung the pulse rifle from behind his back and tapped the smooth button-trigger with his finger. Mesh held his Colt with two hands at the ready. Shade hunkered down and shouldered the shotgun.

  “‘It is of compass small, and bare, to thirsty suns and parching air’. That’s what the Oracle wrote, correct?” said Abe before the screaming grew deafening.

  “Yes,” Shade screamed back.

  “Well, compass isn’t only a, you know, compass. It also means the scope of something. And bare doesn’t necessarily mean empty, because it can also imply something that’s open.”

  An army of demons emerged, falling upon them from all around.

  “Hurry up, amigo!” ordered Mesh. “We’re all impressed you went to University. Great. Just spill it!”

  “Fine! Leviantes! Leviathan! It’s from the water! The answer’s a well! The dirty bugger came from portal in a well!”

  “Where is there a well in Po-Po?” asked Shade.

  There was no time for reply, only action. With the demons – citizens of this once proud city whose bodies were on permanent loan to beings from a world beyond their own – closing in, the brothers formed a triangle and opened fire. One after another the monsters fell in
a shower of gory blood and bone. Bullets, both cased and not, pierced the air; chambers were emptied, reloaded, and emptied again. Only one got close enough to do damage, when a clawed hand managed to swipe Shade’s upper arm, searing it just above the elbow with hellfire. This one was cast down by a single shot between the eyes from Mesh. None got close after that. The air became thick with their residue, which fell to the cracked pavement with the sound of heavy rain.

  Five minutes after the deluge began, it was over. The brothers glanced about them, searching for any moving parts in need of dismemberment. There were none to be found. The park before the Town Hall steps grew bloody quiet.

  “Where was I?” asked Abe, his ears ringing from the relentless report of gunfire.

  Mesh glanced at him, annoyed. “Where is there a frigging well in Po-Po?”

  “Oh yeah, thanks.”

  “So,” said Shade, tapping his foot impatiently, “you got an answer?”

  When it came to him, Abe snapped his fingers with excitement. “The fountain!” he exclaimed. “It’s beneath the fountain!”

  “Then let’s –” Mesh began, before a return of the screeching cut him off.

  There were more of them. Lots more, funneling from the skyscraper windows like a thousand cockroaches. Shade frowned, unsnapped his belt, and handed his satchel over to Abe.

  “Take it,” he said.

  “You sure?” asked Mesh, seeming uncertain.

  “Of course I am. Abe can run like the devil. Can’t you, bro?”

  Abe nodded.

  “Then take it, my main man, and book. Drop it in and seal the bastard. We’ll hold ‘em off.”

  Abe tossed Shade the pulse rifle, snatched the pack from his hand, and took off diagonally across the dead lawn as fast as his feet could carry him. The majority of the oncoming demons ignored him as he sped by, instead focusing on his two brothers, who stood ready to dish out more death, but a few picked up his scent and gave chase. For these, it was nice effort, try again; for yes, Abe could run like the devil, as he had, in his old life, when running was all he could do to hold back his own demons, the inner ones that threatened to make him give up on the world once and for all.