Love Dark

By Ripley King

Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Baby Sister has been kidnapped, and Pap must master the magic of his own universe, solving the riddle of another universe’s magic. Pap may be the next Keeper of the Dead, but whose soul must he ultimately Keep?

Bonus! Sneak peeks! Read samples from my other published works.

"Excellent book a mix of magic and mayhem wrapped into an exotic love story. A boy unknowingly comes into an adventure, a mysterious past and future that never exists, a book that could begin legends!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ripley King
• Release date: Jan 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301220533

Ripley King

I'm a storyteller, with many published credits. Now I do my own thing. Have fun.

Book preview

Chapter 1

New York, New York. September 13, 2120

Life endured, and the sun still rose in the east and set in the west. Toxic clouds composed of non-methane hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, makeyourownlistandputithere, have long since cloaked the planet, and were in no danger of dissipating anytime soon.

And waiting for the sun (he had never seen) to rise higher (but he had been told by Momma Cola it was a big yellow ball high in the sky) was a twig of a boy all of fourteen years old by the name of Pap. Pap’s stringy black hair was matted, lice infested, and shoulder length. He was wearing just enough to cover his narrow young fanny, and shoes.

Pap was busy hunting cat. The quasi-telepathic tabby or calico that could easily survive without human intervention. Cats ate rat, and rats were good roasted, but Pap didn’t want rat. Not that night, or any night too soon. He was tired of rat. Rats ate roaches. Roaches were good fried, with a dash of hard to find salt.

Though Baby Sister never said so—she never talked, her eyes would speak to him, and in his own way he understood more from her gaze than all the words constantly hurled at him from Momma Cola’s puffy red mouth—she was tired of rat, too.

Pap spotted his orange and white prey in the blanched morning light, and let his mind drain. He nocked an arrow, slowly pulled back on the string, watching the curious cat as it sniffed ever closer to his position, and heard a distant deep rumble from the sour sky. Thunder lords in combat was the thought, but it was a thought he shouldn’t have contemplated.

The cat’s head popped up gold eyes wide. Its fuzzy ears panned this way and that, probing for Pap’s mental oops, quivering pink nose and all. Pap jettisoned any remaining thoughts out of his head, changed the even flow of his breathing into a non-rhythm the cat’s finely tuned hearing couldn’t place as hungry human, and waited.

The cat wisely crouched and surveyed its bleak environment for quite some time. It didn’t smell anything unusual from any wind-borne direction, and because it didn’t hear or see anything it could equate with danger, warily went back to snuffling the acid-scorched ground for whatever reason it had locked in its quasi-telepathic cat brain. Perhaps kitty was hungrily stalking fat gray rat. Without thought Pap sighted in and let go.

The thin yellow arrow flew straight, and Pap watched it pierce the cat’s scrawny chest behind its shoulder blade. A good kill shot. The cat flipped side to side and end over end.

Pap, fearful kitty might fall into an asphalt crevice he couldn’t retrieve kitty from, nocked another arrow, but the cat was dying to dead. Its spindly body quivered and stretched as its nerves telegraphed their last.

Another clap of thunder roared across the murky heavens much closer than before, and a single drop of acid rain landed on his forearm, burning and smoking its way into his hide. Pap did two things almost at the same time. He spat on his arm to dilute the acid, and frantically clawed his way into the ruins of what was once Grand Central Station before the deadly squall began.

He still had a good view of his tasty meow meat, and watched with regret as kitty’s orange and white pelt smoked and melted with each toxic drop from the poisoned clouds. The blue plastic feathering on his yellow metal arrow would need to be replaced.

Norse mythology, boy, a coarse voice inquired, do you know anything of it?

Chapter 2

Pap pulled his knife and faced the potential threat this strange new voice held. In the stormy gloom he spied a withered old man in rags, doodling with a brown knobby finger in the dirt. A toothless grin under a bulbous red nose, bald speckled head, one good ear. Yellowed old eyes rested above the nose, and spoke of clarity of vision and mind.

In Norse mythology, the old man with one ear began, maggots from the dead body of the giant Yamir changed into the Faerie. Bright light elves and evil dark elves. Now, the Icelandic version has the first woman, Eve, washing her many children when God spoke to her, and in fear and with shame she hid them dirty children. God punished Eve by turning those children into the Faerie. Other races have their own creation versions, you know. Tricksters and pranksters all, magical monkeys and more. Now, boy, what do you think about that?

Pap’s agile mind asked itself many questions, none of which were about Norse mythology or the Faerie. In answering those questions Pap decided the old man was not a danger to him.

Your words mean nothing to me, old man, Pap replied truthfully, never one to mince words, and turned his attention back to his kill.

Fluffy’s exposed skin blistered and peeled itself off the tasty red muscle tissue. The delicious meat quickly dissolved off the white bone, which began to disintegrate into an ever-widening puddle of crimson goo.

It doesn’t cost you anything to listen to them words of mine, the old man muttered through chapped thin lips. You go on, watch that cat melt like ice cream on a hot plate. Don’t mind me. I’m old, I know it. The young never listens to the old. It’s like we don’t exist. Like you have better things to do right this minute than listen to a toothless old man.

The best of the cat was gone, it would stop pouring soon enough, and Pap still had to wait for it to dry before resuming his hunt. Baby Sister and Momma Cola were counting on him for their supper. Not to mention how hungry he was.

What about these Faerie you spoke of? Pap asked, turning back toward the toothless old man momentarily curious. Only the old man wasn’t there anymore, and there wasn’t any place the old man could go, not without getting wet.

Pap searched where he could within the ruins, over and under thick stone and broken brick, finding squat and not much else. No corpse was nearby outside, melting.

The old man talked nonsense and vanished like a ghost. Pap gave it some quick thought and decided the old man was dead. No other explanation fit for the old man vanishing like he did with no place to go, especially during a cloud burst. Pap concluded he had seen his first spook.

Momma Cola worried about spooks. She believed the ghosts of those she killed over the years for food and supplies (and there had been a few) might, or probably would come back some dark day to haunt her.

Pap never worried about ghosts before that day, and had never killed a one eared, toothless old man with a bald speckled head. Momma Cola, to the best of his knowledge, never killed a one eared, toothless old man with a bald speckled head, either. Considering the way she liked to tell stories, the same tired stories over and over, he would have heard if she had.

Momma Cola talked and talked and talked. Pap would spend hours tuning out her raspy rants. Baby Sister seemed to listen politely, nodding her head when appropriate, but Pap thought it all an act, something she did for Momma Cola’s benefit. If Momma Cola suspected, she didn’t object.

Fine. A dead old fart. He had met his first ghost. A spook who decided he was the one to haunt.

Pap could deal with a ghost, but his ghost had been doodling in the dirt, and the design was still there. The drawing the dead old man made looked like a number 8 turned on its side. Was that possible? Could ghosts leave marks in the dirt? Pap would ask Momma Cola when he returned home, but he couldn’t return home with an empty food pouch.

When the rain stopped Pap pulled out a small dirt-blackened rag and his yank. Haze from the quickly evaporating rain shower would make it hard to breathe for hours. He whizzed on the rag to block any toxic fumes from entering his lungs, and then conserved moisture by filling a dented tin cup he always kept with him, drinking the rest.

Pap returned his thoughts to the gathering of dinner. No cat today, but fat gray rat was plentiful.

Many long hours later, with four roach-fattened rats tucked into his rough canvas food pouch, Pap picked his way home in and around the Big Apple’s rotten core.

Momma Cola! he shouted, taking the wide steps down into his subway station home two at a time. Nobody answered.

Momma Cola?

Chapter 3

She’s dead, boy. Under the mattress.

Pap recognized the dead old man’s voice, but moved to examine Momma Cola first, making sure she was as dead as the dead old man said she was.

Momma Cola, big and black, now big, black and old, found Baby Sister and Pap a long time ago. Left to fend for themselves, Pap and Baby Sister managed to find each other, and stole what they could, when they could, from whoever they could in order to survive, hiding like rats in-between raids. For the third time in as many weeks they were copping a few half-rotted eats from Momma Cola’s meager stash when the big woman found them, and blocked their only exit.

My Lord in Heaven! Momma Cola had exclaimed. Two tiny little rats in my pantry! Perhaps I should eat ’em?

Pap might have been three, and Baby Sister four, or just turned five. That’s what Momma Cola said. Pap could barely remember back that far. Momma Cola said she talked them into staying by speaking softly without making any threatening moves.

Truthfully, Baby Sister made that decision for them both when she gave Momma Cola a wide-armed hug. She then forced Pap to do the same. That was the one thing about that day he remembered clearly. Having his face shoved between Momma Cola’s massive brown breasts, and choking over the funk.

Momma Cola had been field dressed. Skinned and boned, every available scrap of edible meat gone. All that remained was a greasy pile of innards, wide strips of brown skin, and a lot of fat with some bone mixed together.

Where is her head? Pap asked.

They took it with them, the dead old man replied.

His next thought was for Baby Sister. The most beautiful thing Pap had in a very ugly and sad world.

Is Baby Sister dead, dead old man?

I don’t know what makes you think I’m dead, boy, but I’m not. Neither is Baby Sister. In fact, I’m going to help you get her back. It means a lot to me to get her back alive.

Are you Baby Sister’s father? Or are you like the trader scum who wants nothing more than to take her to bed. Is that it, old man? You’re here because you wanted to do her instead of Momma Cola? Missed your chance?

The old man laughed loud and long, choked on phlegm, spat that out, and laughed some more. Pap thought his questions worthy.

Momma Cola, being a practical trader, did things for food and water. She’d kill another trader if she knew she could get away with it, and keep what he had for herself. They’d eat good for a couple of days on his goods, and eat better on the trader. Weeks of good food. Pap had to gather armloads of wood out of the ruined buildings, and it took a while for Momma Cola to jerk the meat, but the work and wait was worth the trouble.

You are a stupid boy, the old man said. Got any guns and ammo?

Momma Cola thought it safer to trade guns for food and water.

When she got her grubby chubby hands on them. Don’t want to become too big a threat.

Who did this? Pap demanded. Who killed Momma Cola and took Baby Sister?

"You’re in a big snit now, huh? I’ll fuel the fire. The who is the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel trader scum, and now you have a credible reason to despise them even more. The why, boy, is because they want to breed her. They want to do Baby Sister. Make her fat with babies. They killed some off-islanders over in Jersey, and they did it for five little girls. Took their goods and weapons, gathered meat, and took the women’s heads. They want it all, boy, and you dead. You have to kill them first."

Pap didn’t really love Momma Cola in any real sense of the word, but she hadn’t deserved to die. Not like that. She had traded with everyone for years, occasional disappearance notwithstanding, without incident. Everyone knew and respected Momma Cola. They didn’t trust her, the truth being the truth, but knew and respected her.

Baby Sister was another matter. He needed her, and she needed him. A link between them he couldn’t explain. He would get her back alive, and kill those who took her. A promise he made to himself without words then and there.

All Pap had was one small bottle of water, some roaches, and a meager supply of rat jerky. The fresh rats he caught would go to waste. He didn’t want to take the time to fool with them. What he had would be enough for the old man and himself a quick bite. Baby Sister, when he got her back, would eat well on trader scum.

He checked Momma Cola’s not-so-secret stash and found it empty. Oh well. He would care for the old man until he killed all those that took Baby Sister. He would then divide the spoils, and the old man would be on his own.

We have a long walk ahead of us, old man.

I don’t do a whole lotta walking well, boy. But you can follow me and we’ll kill us some trader slime.

Chapter 4

With that said, the old man strolled toward the platform’s back wall, and proceeded to pull Momma Cola’s trash heap apart, throwing everything willy-nilly. It was if the old man was looking for something. Since Pap had fabricated the trash heap in the first place, he stood, wondering if the old man was crazy. Not right in the noggin, as Momma Cola would say, tapping the side of her head and rolling her eyes.

What are you looking for, old man?

A tunnel, boy. We go through this here tunnel.

There is no tunnel in that wall, old man.

The train tunnel off the platform had caved in years ago, from what Momma Cola said, before she had been born, during or just after the Time of Pain, giving the three survivors a dry safe home.

Is that right? the old man said, removing a rusted blue car hood from against the grimy tiled wall. Watch my ass.

Pap watched the old man crawl his way into a roughed round tunnel that shouldn’t exist. All in all, it confused him. That, and the old man had a large hole in his baggy pants, showing flabby, white old-man rump.

Pap (a little afraid) followed the old man into the round hole in the wall. It was dark but dry, and smelled like butt crack thanks to the old man’s soiled trousers.

The walls of the tunnel seemed to glow, so Pap could see where they were going, and the tunnel appeared to change directions at a whim, growing larger with each twist and turn. Both got to their feet.

This tunnel, old man. How is it possible?

People once thought that giants walked the land, or Big Foot, a half-man half-ape thing, if you know what an ape is, but they didn’t. No Big Foot, no giants, no trolls.

Trolls?

Big ugly things. No trolls, no pixies, no brownies, selkies, fachan, phooka, spriggans or gobblins. The Faerie, though, they were real. They once lived all over the world, long before humans came about to bungle things up. They looked like us humans, too. A bit smaller, of course, but not by much. They taught men and women how to do magic, and taught—

All I asked about was this tunnel, old man. Why are you again, telling me about Faerie?

The old man stopped, turned around, and looked pissed.

Did you ever stop to think that the two might be interconnected? the old man leaned in and voiced, hands on hips. Please don’t interrupt me unless it’s a life or death situation. I’ll shut my mouth until you’re ready to listen. Damn kids never change. Generation upon generation of close-minded snot-nosed brats with loud opinions that spring from half-formed thoughts. Slap ’em upside the head twice a day for fun, is what I say.

The old man turned, and deeper into the tunnel he went.

Watch your head, boy. Don’t addle yourself more than what you are already.

Pap said nothing more, rather insulted the old man had called him a kid, a snot-nosed brat, and continued to call him boy. He wasn’t a kid, a brat, or a boy. He was a man that took care of his family, and a good hunter. Rare was the day he missed his target.

They might have walked a quarter mile more before the old man stopped again, felt around the thick concrete wall, and pushed open a squat wide door Pap knew for a fact wasn’t there a moment before. Brightness washed in and hurt his eyes. The old man stepped out, and Pap followed.

Boy, I don’t know which is worse on these old knees. Crawling hurts like hell, and walking isn’t much better. I know my knees wouldn’t have held out if we walked all this way street side. It pays the devil to grow old, boy. It pays the devil.

When the door shut, Pap saw it was a sign bolted to a tall building’s concrete wall. The faded image was that of a warrior covered head to toe in shiny steel. Pap didn’t want to ask the what or how with the door, sure he knew the answer. Instead, he asked about the sign.

Something about prophylactics, boy. Condoms. Things men used to slip over their peepees to stop from making babies. I was sure rubbers were a huge waste of time, and time proved me right. Used them as water balloons as a kid.

I don’t understand.

Fill ’em up with water, and drop ’em out a window onto people’s heads. Very funny.

The old man sighed. He said, It’s not important anymore, and Baby Sister is. We need to slide over a couple of blocks. Another tunnel I know about should take us up inside the trader’s stronghold without any of their sentries seeing us.

We haven’t traveled that far, Pap observed, yet we’re miles from Momma Cola’s. How can that be?

That’s what I’ve been getting to in my own roundabout way, the old man said. Anyway, where was I? The Faerie . . . they taught men and women magic—

The old man suddenly stopped his lesson. He first considered one direction, and then another. He turned a slow circle. He said, Something isn’t right. Then his eyebrows came together and drooped down in the center.

Do you feel it, boy? he whispered.

Pap could feel it. We’re being watched.

"We’re being watched alright, but it doesn’t feel like a who, it’s more of a what, probing the area. Open your mind, boy. Close your eyes and open your mind. I want you to experience this. Know it for what it is."

How?

You’re able to hunt cat, right? Same thing. Close your eyes and open your mind.

Pap closed his eyes and cleared his thoughts as if he was on a hunt, and began to construct a mental illustration of the immediate area. He distinguished obvious hiding places, and not so obvious hiding places, but no movement. He could perceive a darkness about him, icky sticky gooey, but the darkness was out of reach.

Pap whispered, What is it, old man?

Chapter 5

No answer.

He opened his eyes and looked around. No old man, and Pap never heard a sound.

Pap hunkered down and policed for movement. He stood and tugged at the metal sign, but it was firmly bolted to the old concrete wall. There was no hidden latch he could finger. The sign opened for the old man, but wasn’t going to open for him. If he was being observed, and Pap still felt as if he was, he needed to find a place to hide.

Across the street was a building that looked fairly intact. Pap picked his way around what was a parking lot of rusted hulks, crossing the street. A thin stairwell, choked with stone and brick, led to a basement.

A dented mailbox had made its last stand at the bottom of the stairwell, and died half buried, clinging to a corroded steel door he hoped to hide behind. Next to the door was a hole-of-a broken window big enough for him to scramble through, covered by a rusty mesh grate.

Pap pulled the thin grate off without much trouble, goaded any remaining shards of dirty glass out of the window’s metal frame, and clambered inside. He hurriedly nocked an arrow and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The room was altogether barren. Not even a piece of crumpled paper on the floor. A door leading into the building’s interior had long ago been removed, the empty frame bricked up, hiding something, possibly food or water. His stomach voiced its indignation at the thought of food.

He searched outside the window, left to right, top to bottom, but saw nothing, and heard nothing more than his stomach.

Pap ate one small piece of jerky, and then one roach at a time, savoring his meal, staring out the window, reasoning his strange new predicament.

The old man was gone, but wasn’t dead. He just acted like a ghost, vanishing at will. Tunnels that shouldn’t exist, and doors only the old man could open. Baby Sister needed to be rescued, and the traders needed to be killed, representing a continuous threat to both Baby Sister and himself. That meant going into dangerous and unfamiliar territory alone.

The idea of a more complete mental map inched its way to the top of his how to kill traders and save Baby Sister musing. He chewed another crisp salty roach, and chased it down with a slug of warm water.

The jerky and roaches calmed his gut, and the water renewed his energy. Still nothing moved outside.

Pap breathed deep, almost the rhythm of sleep, and backed away from the window. He let go his concerns, his fears, and let his mind sculpt the streets and buildings around him. This time the little things: trash, rats, a cat prowling for its dinner, entered his thoughts.

There was a presence. A darkness that was searching for something. Suddenly many such dark presences revealed themselves within Pap’s mind, only these presences didn’t feel dangerous. It was as if they were shadows of people, and he could reach out to them and know them as well as he knew himself.

Pap perceived they were the people who had died during the Time of Pain. Their spirits doomed to wander the dead streets of a dead city, as the world gasped its last uneasy breaths.

One, though, wasn’t of them.

One was feeding from the others, drawing from them their ghostly essence until all that remained was their fear. One that pounced into his living mind.

It first felt like an annoying itch he couldn’t possibly scratch, driving deeper into his brain. Then pain the likes of which he never felt before raced around inside his head. It bulldozed through his memories of hunting rat and cat, cleaning and cooking and eating with Momma Cola and Baby Sister. Memories of him gathering wood among the ruins, pulling it off of or out of walls, collecting potable water by draining old pipes in dangerous basements. The force inside his head was picking out locations. The best places to find survivors. A wail of pain could be heard; then a scream Pap knew came from his own lips.

Chapter 6

The pain stopped, and Pap felt his mind abruptly yanked into a measureless black that threatened to asphyxiate him. He mentally thrashed about until exhaustion forced him deeper into the all-consuming gloom.

Slowly, Pap became aware of himself in the syrupy pall. He realized several things at the same time. The first of which, he was heart-thundering-in-his-chest alive, sucking air. The second and third things he realized, he was standing upright . . . on absolutely nothing.

He let his mind unfurl to encompass the naught, trying to understand where he was. He expanded his awareness to such an extent he was afraid of forfeiting himself, what he was, to the darkness. He reined himself in and understood nothing, and nothing was what he understood.

He was in the nothing before there was something.

It was an unusual thought to think, but he recognized this unique concept as a bold but simple truth he could not deny.

Pap grinned, pushed his foot down, and immersed it in zilch. He then noticed another item that stilled his happy feet. A small pinprick of bright blue-white light off in the far distance.

Before he could think about it, Pap drew himself toward the small point of light. He circled the light with his mind, and stared into it. His curiosity got the better of him, and he touched it with his thoughts. The spark exploded, and a brilliance quickly enveloped him, passing through him, seething with colors he had no names for. Great bubbling globs of light.

Pap wanted his mouth to give all around him some visage of sound, and a great cry of anxiety erupted to become nothing more than silence.

After a short while it all slowed down. Whirlpools of light began to form little dots that radiated out at him untold shades of white, yellow, blue and red. Pap turned a small circle and marveled. It was like being on the inside of a great bubble.

Could he? Should he? It meant swallowing all uncertainty.

He took a small step and found his footing held, despite what his eyes were telling his brain. He took another step, and then another, and then another. He quickly decided admiring his feet was not the best thing to do during his unique jaunt.

With no real direction to go within his bubble of swirly light, Pap chose the nearest spiral. Each step took him closer than he ever thought possible. He’d never