Arcana 99: Stage One

“Hey, Johannes, get up. It’s about time for your shift.” Urho said as he prodded me to consciousness.

I opened my eyes and saw nothing. The night was still deep, and the only thing our jeep’s headlights illuminated was a few feet of the endless rocky plain before us. Our vehicle lurched to a stop and the three of us stepped out to stretch. I would have spent that time taking in the views of the Arizona desert, but the only magnificent view available was the stars overhead. Stars I could see just fine back in Finland.

“Have we passed the Grand Canyon yet?” I asked as I sat back into the driver’s seat.

Aksel crawled into the back and lied down, “Yeah, we did that a couple of hours ago.” The words left his mouth, and his eyes closed.

I looked to Urho, “I told you to wake me up when you crossed it. You know I’ve always wanted to see it.”

Urho leaned back in his seat, “You didn’t miss much. It was 2100 by the time we arrived; the sun was long gone.”

I started the jeep and groaned, both for missing out on the Canyon and for the eight hours of night driving ahead of me.

Of course I got the night shift. “Best not to let Johannes behind the wheel unless there’s nary a soul on the road.” I may not be the best driver, but I can keep the damn car in its lane.

We had barely traveled five miles before I had to speak or risk returning to rest, “So, uh, how was the weather when I was asleep?”

Urho looked at me, then back to the road ahead, “Hot, then cold.”

I nodded, “And, uh, how was the view?”

“Rocky, orange, then too dark.”

Why did Urho have to be my shiftmate? I’d be better off getting the void to speak back to me.

“Crazy that Nerio’s in this race, huh?”

The leather chair squeaked as Urho lowered himself further into it, “Yeah, this sort of thing really doesn’t suit him. The flashy opening? That’s Nerio. Believing this wish nonsense? The man I knew would never.”

“Maybe he’s in it for the money like us?” I swerved the car around nothing in particular, Aksel stayed sound asleep.

“Nerio? Needing this pocket change?”

“I mean, he didn’t have enough to make it to your wedding.”

Urho sighed and looked back into the endless expanse of darkness around us, “I don’t think money had a damn thing to do with him not being there.” Urho said nothing after that, and how was I supposed to respond? Minutes passed.

And we’re back to silence. Great. Awkwardness is the only path to salvation. A sacrifice had to be made, but hopefully a worthy one.

“If he’s not here for money, and I hope he’s not dumb enough to fall for that wish crap, you think it’s a job?”

Urho stayed silent another minute, “That would explain the woman he’s working with, but what kind of job could it be?”

“Taking out Maxwell and Grenfell? Though, I can’t think of a reason anyone would put a price on their head.”

“They’d already be dead if he was.”

“Well, we’ll just have to catch up to him and ask.”

“Yeah. . .” Urho’s voice trailed off, taking our conversation with it once more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Please, say something Urho. I’ve never asked before. I’ll give you thirty cents! Just say something!

Urho ignored my silent pleas, and three of my eight hours passed in silence and darkness. The Sun’s first rays peered over the horizon, and my boredom reached its limit. Something had to happen. And it had to happen soon. I prayed to the gods I had long since abandoned. If they but sent me a morsel of anything, anything at all, I would become a devout whatever.

Luckily, my prayers were answered. Unluckily, I forgot to consult a lawyer before sending them.

The rising sun began to illuminate the world beyond the road before us, revealing that through the night we had traveled to a patch of green in the desert. Countless short shrubs poked out of the sand beside us in a field that reached the horizon.

“Wow,” I said, using the opportunity to resurrect the conversation, “Since when have we been out of the stone land?”

Urho stared at me for a moment, “We’ve had these things on the side of the road for the past two hours. How. . How did you not notice?”

“How would I? It was too dark!”

“They’re on the edge of the road; you could see them in the headlights.”

“ And look away from the road? ” I looked Urho in the eyes to express my astonishment, remembered the road, then returned my gaze in time to dodge a shrub that had made its way into our path.

Urho looked back to our heading, “What’s our fuel level looking like?”

“Uhh. . .” I searched for the gauge, “the lines dancing on the ‘E’.” When I continued to drive, Urho looked at me with his trademark deadpan. Ten minutes later, I pulled the jeep over. Urho jumped out, grabbed our extra fuel, and began to pour it into the jeep’s tank. Meanwhile, I stepped out to reawaken my legs, and Aksel remained asleep.

The world surrounding us was dim, though still bright enough to make out colors in shades of gray. There wasn’t much to see either way. We were at the base of two small hills. The one we had just come from was sparsely coated in a layer of grass and short shrubs. The southern hill was much greener and housed the northern edge of a forest.

“Hey, Johannes,” Urho called as he packed the now empty gas container, “Do you know what a mountain lion looks like?” I shook my head and followed his pointing finger. About two kilometers away, a large gray mass was slowly pacing, “You would think that the creature would look like, well, a lion given the name. But you know Americans; they just love to hand out misleading names.”

“Yeah,” I looked closer at the creature, its body was noticeably shorter than it was tall, and its front legs appeared much thicker than the rear, “That’s definitely not any sort of cat. Whatever it is, it’s big.” The creature stopped pacing, and its rear legs vanished. It had turned towards us. Its silhouetted body began to shift up and down as it slowly grew larger.

It must have spotted a rabbit or something.

It was still several hundred meters away, but for some reason, my heart was beating ever faster, “Heh, I think this thing is gunning for us.” We both laughed and continued our stretches, and we both made certain to check for the weight of a gun on our belts.

The creature was less than a kilometer out now. A clamor like a dozen scores of horses galloping in time assaulted my ears.

We’re still fine. It shouldn’t be able to run the other kilometer without getting tired, and it should still take another five minutes, and a gun should stop it, and our jeep should outrun it. We’re fine; we’re safe. I’m certain Urho thinks the same. So, why. . . Why is my heart beating faster? Why are we stepping closer to the car?

“Johannes! Get in now!” Urho shouted as he vaulted the door. I followed suit and threw my legs over the door. While I was still in the air, Urho grabbed a rifle from the back seat and aimed it over my shoulder towards the charging beast. The jeep shook as the beast’s gray frame landed on the hood.

How? It’s barely been five seconds!

Urho reacted and turned his rifle towards the creature. I reacted and pushed my still-vaulting body away from the car and onto the ground. The gunshot reached my ears as my body reached the dirt. Another series of shots fired; from their sound, they weren’t from Urho’s rifle. The thud of bone hitting metal soon followed. I pulled my legs closer to my chest.

It got Urho and Aksel, and it’s getting me next. God, why couldn’t I have been the one asleep? At least then it would have-

“Johannes! Where are you!” Aksel's voice tore through my thoughts.

I struggled to my still shivering legs, “H-here.”

Before me lay the aftermath of the attack. Aksel was standing on the opposite side of the jeep from me. The seat Urho was in was empty save a small tear across the bottom and a large bloodstain on the door.

“Did you see whatever did this?” Aksel reloaded his pistol.

“No. I only saw it from a distance, then it just appeared on the hood. I pushed myself away before I could make it out.” I walked around the jeep and approached Aksel.

He knelt towards the ground, “I’m not talking about that mirage. I mean the thing that took Urho.”

“What? There was another creature?”

Before Aksel was a small red spot, and a few feet away lay one of Urho’s shoes. Between the two things, and stretching beyond them was a straight line of evenly spaced dips in the ground.

They were not footprints.

“Maybe,” Aksel stood back up, “But I’m starting to think there was only ever one.” He pointed to the hood of the jeep, “That thing jumped onto it, right?”

“Yeah, it shook the whole car when it did.”

“Strange,” Aksel slid his hand over the hood’s perfectly flat surface, “You’d think that would have woken me up, but I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Are you saying I hallucinated the shaking?”

“No, I’m saying we hallucinated the thing on the hood. Did you see what Urho did before it took him?” all I remembered seeing was the ground, “Urho turned his rifle towards the thing’s mouth, but it was too close. The barrel should have struck the beast’s cheek, yet I saw Urho’s gun slide right into its maw and his bullet fly right through its head. Mine did the same.”

“The entire damn thing only took a second, and you’d just woken up a second ago. If I’m hallucinating, why aren’t you?”

Aksel walked back to the stain on the ground, “One, because I actually saw it happening instead of cowering. Two, if the thing attacked from the hood, how did this get here?” He pointed to a spot of red on the underside of the front dashboard. Beside it was a deep groove.

It was not a cut.

“The only way for his blood to get under there, is if he was attacked from the rear-left, and I watched the thing on the hood, it hit him from the front-right. It didn’t dent the hood, bullets and a gun passed right through it, and it hit from the opposite direction of the bloodstain. Either we’re dealing with an extremely light-weight, intangible creature with a hidden fifth-arm, or we were too busy watching a fake to see the real thing strike.”

It was ridiculous. It was insane. An animal that could make people see things? Though, I guess it isn’t any less crazy than an animal that can travel a kilometer in less than a second, “Alright, we have an idea of what it was, but what do we do now? Where did it take Urho?”

“I’m not sure,” Aksel said as he picked up Urho’s shoe and surveyed the horizon in the direction of the even dips.

They were not footprints.

“This thing didn’t leave any evidence of where it went, but I doubt it was going very fast, otherwise more than Urho’s shoe would have fallen off, but the terrain is too barren in that direction. There’s nowhere to hide except for the other side of that hill, but it couldn’t have gotten there that fast.”

“The thing on the hood moved that fast.”

“The illusion?”

“Maybe they have the same speed. Maybe it was carrying Urho instead of dragging him.”

“I suppose, but. . .” Aksel’s voice stopped. He had made the same realization as me: those dips in the ground were footprints, “How did. . .” We both turned towards the vehicle. Inside, underneath the dashboard, right beside Urho’s bloodstain, was a deep cut. Aksel pulled a pair of binoculars from the rear of the vehicle, I remained still. “Those prints on the ground. . . They go over the hill!”

These prints had been here the entire time. Why are we noticing now?

“Get the gun.” Aksel's voice hid a familiar layer of fear. I regained myself and rushed back to the jeep. I pulled the heavy machine gun and lugged it over to where Aksel had set up the mount. I sat behind it while Aksel stood beside me, watching the hill. Minutes passed. I could make out colors now, but the morning sky kept its pink hues.

We didn't say a word the entire time. We were both far too busy watching the hilltop, “FIRE!” Aksel's voice resonated between us, the fear I detected in it earlier had vanished. Despite just hearing the order, I was pulling the trigger before the words left his lips. Even without the binoculars, I could tell.

They were not footprints.

I pulled the trigger for half a minute and coated the hillside in 400 rounds of lead. If there was anything alive anywhere near where those prints were, it was either mush or bulletproof. I released and let Aksel survey for a body. He spoke, but once again I did not need to listen. The footprints were back.

“I don’t see a thing.”

“Maybe its body makes us not see it too.”

“Or, it didn’t come back the same way, and it retreated.”

“That’s still good. A retreat means it won’t come back.”

“Or it will come back somewhere else. . . I should have expected it to come a different way in the first place. We need to get somewhere else and regroup, get a better idea of what this is before coming for Urho.” Aksel took a step toward the jeep. A second step didn’t follow; I turned and saw why. On the forested hill, at a distance of nearly five kilometers, was the creature I saw earlier.

I wheeled around and was met with the empty hillside. Halfway up the western side of the hill, a pair of shrubs flattened themselves.

It was not a footprint.

“What are we doing now?” I stepped towards the jeep. A minute passed and the phantom at the base of the hill began to charge, “Aksel!”

He sprang to action, reaching towards the canvas roof of the jeep, “Help me pull this off!” I didn’t bother asking him why. It’d just be a waste of time. We pulled it off and he led me to where our mounted gun was sitting. We set the roof down perpendicular to the ground, like a wall; the fake was only three kilometers away now. Aksel grabbed the metal bars on the sides of the canvas, “Tell me when that thing vanishes.”

Aksel began to slide the canvas in a circle around the two of us. Five degrees and the creature remained. Ten degrees and the creature continued its charge. Fifteen degrees and it reached a distance of two kilometers. Twenty degrees and we could hear it. Twenty-five degrees and it stopped. The creature vanished and its noises went with it.

“It’s gone!”

Aksel slid it another five degrees back, and the creature returned, much closer now, “What are you doing? We had it!”

“This wall is big. I want to make sure we hit it. We aren't getting a third chance. Now, keep watching.”

He moved it ten degrees forward, and the creature vanished once more. Another five degrees, and nothing. Another five, forty degrees from our starting position, it returned. The thing was less than a kilometer away now.

“It’s back!”

Aksel slid it back another three degrees, and the monster disappeared.

"We won't get this chance if you don't fire!"

Urho ignored me and continued sliding the canvas roof around us. Three more, and then three after that, and the creature remained missing. He moved it another degree back, and the monster returned. It was resting on the jeep’s hood now.

“AKSEL!”

He leaped to the gun, turned it twenty-six degrees left, and opened fire. Meanwhile, the thing on the hood lunged at me and turned into clear air. Aksel let off the trigger and eyed a corpse lying thirty feet from us.

The body itself was a rounded ellipse with two pairs of legs attached to its underside. On its back, was another pair of long tendrils, each tipped with a hard, bony point. Those were its normal features. Every inch of the body’s surface, save the legs and the tendrils, was covered with eyes, thousands of pairs of varying sizes staring vacantly out in all directions. And most of those eyes were trained directly on us.

“Well, looks like we got it.” Aksel said, “Help me put this thing back on.”

I grabbed the other side of the canvas roof, “Not even going to look at what we killed?”

“I can tell perfectly well enough from here. I don’t want to look closer at that thing.” We reattached the roof and moved on to packing up the gun.

“It looks like this thing came from the same hill, I’m sure Urho’s there too.” I pointed to the second pair of tracks.

Aksel stopped, “You want to go back there? Where there could be more of these things? We only got this one because we knew where it was coming from. Fighting these things when we don’t know that. . . Choosing to fight these things at all, is suicide. I want to save him too, but if there is just one of those things staying nearby we’re both dead.”

“And? If we don’t go, he’s dead.”

“If he isn’t already.” I glared at him, “Fine. You know, for someone who cowered at the sight of that thing earlier, you sure talk big when the danger is hypothetical. But,” He sat in the driver’s seat, “If we’re going somewhere dangerous, I want you as far from the wheel as possible.”

I mounted the gun to the hood and sat in the passenger seat. Aksel took the wheel and maneuvered us over the hill. On the other side, was a small cliff. Aksel decided that taking the fast way down was too dangerous, so we took the long way down the side. As we approached the bottom, I got a better view of the cliffside. Halfway up was a small cave that housed several large stone cubes. A closer look would have revealed those cubes to be ancient houses built into the cliffside, but we never got any closer. At the same moment I made out the cubes in the morning Sun, we heard a gunshot.

“Where was that?” I asked. I could tell the sound was close, but finding the specific direction was impossible.

“There,” Aksel turned the car towards the cliff. I almost asked him how he knew, but a second shot sounded off, releasing a momentary bright flash.

Urho was alive. I relaxed back into the seat. From my lounging position, I could see Urho’s bloodstain and the crevice behind it.

It was not a cut.

“Aksel, there’s another one here!”

He didn’t say a word. He simply groaned and increased the vehicle’s speed. He wasn’t going to stop, and I wasn’t going to get a second chance.

I leaned outside of the doorway and held my arm out, “Urho! Grab on!” Urho turned his head and caught my arm in his. He jumped, I pulled, and he landed next to me, “I’m glad you’re still around.”

Urho smiled and looked up at me, “I’m glad you had the strength to pull me up,” I barely comprehended his sentence. As his face turned to mine, I saw that he had not escaped unscathed.

“Your. . .your,” Urho’s smile shallowed, and the two empty sockets above his lips remained open, “What happened to you?”