Deep Time

By Sky King

The usurper remembered the last battle as if it was yesterday, not eight hundred years ago. He felt the lance go through him, his life leaking out onto the ground. He had been glad it was over: the bad choices, the betrayals, the sad face of his uncle. He felt his sword cut deep into the side of the only one who had trusted him. At the last he recalled the fog clearing and the blue sky.
Then that face, that damnable wrinkled old face, blocking his view. He wore that stinking sheepskin jerkin and hat. Didn’t he know his beard always had food in it? That son of a cow Mydrrin. He was supposed to be dead, damn him. Now he was making some kind of circle in the dirt, chanting in Latin and the old tongue.
“You are being given another chance,” he said in the common tongue. “You must find the champion and help him slay the evil one.” Pastiche remembered Mydrrin smiling then. “But it’s a hasty spell. Your body parts will wear out, and you will be compelled to find now ones...”The smile widened...“from corpses. Let’s just say that part will be your penance, as the Christians would have it. Oh, and you can’t die until the champion wins.” The old man’s smile fell. “it’s all I can do,” he said and turned, shoulders slumping as he walked away.
“But how will I find him?” shouted Pastiche.
“Dreams,” came the old enchanter’s voice, seemingly on a breath of wind. “always from Dreams.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sky King
• Release date: Jun 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310484711

Sky King

Sky King lives in a winter swamp in New Hampshire.He makes his living taking care of a host of other swamp dwellers. He lives near the poverty line but seems to have all the money he needs forever. Mr. King truly believes there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Pastiche sat on the curb of Main and Hill Street in an older neighborhood of ranches and capes. His big, scarred head rested on his knee. He knew what was going to happen. When he needed a part he was drawn to these scenes. He had tried to intervene numerous times. But when he offered warnings to the police, or even tried to stop the accident, it was as if he didn't exist. The autos destined for the accident just went on. The police didn't hear him or see him. He could certainly report someone for littering, but not for one of the deadly accidents he had been destined to witness since the advent of the auto. He preferred almost any other way: freezing, hunting accidents, even premeditated murder was easier to take than this. But accidents were plentiful and Pastiche tended to use up body parts quickly.

For the ten millionth time he cursed that son of a cow Myddrin for putting this spell on him, this Gias. Now, down the centuries, he was doomed to finding the champion and helping him slay the evil ones. They had won many times and had also lost. Once one of the evil ones (Was it his mother? He could no longer tell.) burned his head after dismembering him, thinking that would end the strange spell and leave the Champion lost in reincarnation. It didn't happen. He found himself torso-less in a city dump. He dimly recalled some creature of the Sihda carrying him to the city morgue and a new body. The memory made him shudder.

Ambrosious, you old pig! he shouted out loud as he heard a car screaming up the hill toward the intersection. And here came the other one: an elderly lady wearing a pillbox hat and driving a Lincoln.

Pastiche held himself in a ball. He had only one leg today and the stump had started bleeding again. The car sped up Hill Street. It was a Camaro, a restored beauty, red, with a flat-topped teenager at the wheel. It hit the Lincoln broadside with a screech of metal and breaks that forced Pastiche to scream in self-defense. The Camaro slammed the Lincoln into a telephone pole. The pole, with power lines still attached, fell across the Lincoln and came down hard on the roof of the Camaro, bursting flattop's skull like a rotten melon dropped from the second story.

Pastiche hopped over to the Lincoln, checked the elderly lady's pulse and felt for broken bones. Her collarbone was fractured by the seat belt in a model too old for an air bag. Pastiche decided she had fainted.

Better get you out of here, old dear, before something worse happens, muttered Pastiche, eyeing the power lines.

The neighbors gathered. He didn't have much time. A thin woman with a dazed expression on her face saw him lay the old woman down on the grass, noticed his missing leg and screamed.

Sorry, he said under his breath as he hopped over to the Camaro and opened the door.

A bloody hunk of wood took the place of the driver's head. Blood had splattered the inside of the car. Pastiche retched into the passenger compartment before taking out his small, fine-toothed hacksaw. He sawed off flattop's left leg just below the knee. Pastiche checked twice to make sure it was the right appendage, even reorienting himself so he didn't do any kind of crossover. Once, in the confusion of a train wreck, he had managed to put a right foot on his left ankle and had too deal with it like that for sixteen years. Pastiche claimed a birth defect, but always buying two pairs of shoes and throwing away all the left ones got to be a little strange after awhile.

As usual the job wasn't too bloody since the victim had no blood pressure. A bigger group of people started to gather. Pastiche heard sirens, so he quickly placed the lower leg below his knee and bandaged it with duct tape. He rolled down the pant leg, dropped the saw, wiped his hand on the upholstery, and pulled his body out of the car.

Are you hurt? asked a large man with a full mustache.

Pastiche waved and limped off toward his car. He could already feel the leg taking hold and sensed the limb's confusion. It cramped, for one thing. Limbs had a memory of sorts: something that damned enchanter hadn't mentioned. The leg tried to turn around. Pastiche kept it going in the right direction with grim commands. He made it to the car.

Thank God, I don't have a clutch, he thought, forcing his new leg into the driver's well. The car lurched down the hill.

Chapter 2

Officer Raymond Mercer took the call from the dispatcher. He was in the alley behind the Rite Aid sleeping in the driver's seat of the cruiser with his head down on his chest. His belly lay on the bottom of the steering wheel. His multiple chins stacked like deflated bladders except when a light snore brought his head up a bit. Then his chins worked like the folds of a small bellows. When the radio crackled he opened one bleary eye, licked his thick lips and cleared his throat. It was part of his call strategy when he'd been cooping. It made his voice sound less sleepy.

Keep it brief, he told himself.

Car three here, he said.

The town had a code protocol but never used it. The Chief liked plain English.

Mercer, big accident up on the hill corner of Main and Hill. Get over there.

Got it, Robert, he said and rubbed his eyes. Fuckin' night shift, he mumbled. Need an eye opener.

Mercer knew he couldn't get one now. He started the car and headed for the hill. At the top he spotted the downed power lines.

Shit, he muttered. Shit on shit!

Mercer parked the patrol car across the partially open left lane and called for back up, including police auxiliaries and the power company. A young woman told him it was Ethel Carmichael's Lincoln and pointed. When Mercer came over the tough old lady was conscious, and in obvious pain. Three blankets kept her warm and still. No one dared move her, even on this chilly November night.

Raymond, she said. What happened?

You hit a telephone pole, Ma'am.

It was that red car, she said. Is he?

Mercer looked up at the young woman and two of her friends. They shook their heads.

Oh, said the old woman.

I hear the ambulance coming, Ma'am, said Mercer.

Ethel Carmichael had been his first grade teacher. She had been everyone's first grade teacher. It was just another thing to lay at the door of the local teenagers.

Mercer went back to the patrol car to call in. He tried to see if that really was Jerry Mulligan in the Camaro without crossing the power lines. With his powerful spotlight he could see the pole where Jerry's head should have been. Mercer had just busted him for hitting sixty in a twenty-five mile an hour residential zone filled with children. Mercer didn't arrest the boy because he had lost his temper and thrown the chunky kid across the hood of the patrol car.

The little bastards never listen, he thought. Fuckin' little shit got what he deserved. He won't run down any kids now.

Mercer briskly directed oncoming traffic down Hill Street. The ambulance came. Mercer watched Jim Buell, the only four hundred pound EMT he ever heard of, and Leonard Drinkwater, the chief's nephew, a skinny boy with the posture of a question mark, unload a stretcher from the back of the ambulance.

Fat and Skinny ran a race up and down the fuckin' pillow case, said Mercer under his breath as he beckoned a car down the side street. As the EMTs approached, Mercer hooked his thumb toward the Camaro.

It's Jerry Mulligan. No God damn head. The power guys will be here soon. Don't cross the power lines. Old Mrs. Carmichael is on the lawn in front of the split ranch.

The men nodded and moved off toward Mrs. Carmichael.

A kid in a SUV stopped in front of Mercer and stuck his head out the window despite Mercer's attempts to direct him either right or left. It was the kid they called XL with purple hair and a pale face: a biker at the local half pipe.

He blanched when he recognized Mercer. Mercer smiled.

Meat for the grinder, he said to himself until he remembered all the neighbors milling around.

Turn around and get out of here! yelled Mercer.

A girl in the back seat stuck her head out: blond hair, small nose, grave expression.

Jenny something, thought Mercer.

Did Jerry make it, Officer Mercer?

No! Now turn this car around!

The girl began crying as the SUV did a quick three-point turn. XL got out of there fast.

Fuck you, said Mercer to the retreating vehicle.

But his heart wasn't in it. Once he had a daughter. She moved to Canada. Her mother wanted to be as far away from him as possible. He couldn't even remember what his ex-wife looked like most of the time. And the kid had been only two.

Officer Mercer, said a deep voice. Mercer turned to meet the grim gaze of Noah Gerstein, a Jew. And worse than that for Mercer: As a transplanted flatlander and contractor he constructed suburbs all over town.

Yes, sir, said Mercer with a bland expression.

A man took Mrs. Carmichael out of the car and laid her on the lawn. He went into the other car and stayed in there for a while and then came out. He wore a hat. It was hard to see his face. He was in there a long time. I saw what he was doing. Gerstein's face crumpled up. He sawed off that boy's leg.

For once Mercer couldn't even find a curse.

The unmarked cruiser pulled up next to the patrol car. A moment later, lights flashing, the other patrol car pulled up and Mercer signaled Officer Smithson to take over traffic control. Mercer's attention went to the young man behind the wheel of the blue Ford.

Oh, this should be good. Pussy boy. He's never been at one of these before, he thought.

The truck from the power company pulled up next to the unmarked. Mercer hid his smirk as Detective Don Warner opened the door and got out. Mercer watched through narrowed eyes as the slim young man in the WPD windbreaker and cap moved toward him. Dimly Mercer recalled a similar young man gone into dissipation and pain these many years and shifted his bulk uneasily.

Fuckin' pussy boy son of a bitch, he muttered. Look at this kid pretending to be a cop. Chief Drinkwater's little buddy. Little buddy is going to soil his pants this evening.

Detective Warner, greeted Mercer in his most professional voice. The area is secure. We have one on the way to the hospital and a fatality. I won't know how bad it is until the power company declares it safe. You may want to examine the body.

Don Warner locked eyes with Mercer. The older cop gazed back calmly. Mercer worried Don. When he was a teenager the man liked to make life hard for kids. Don knew about the drinking, the nickname Mercer had for him and the enmity between Mercer and the Chief. Why the Chief never fired Mercer was beyond his understanding. It was one of the few things Chief Belden Drinkwater wouldn't talk about to his protégé.

Don chewed the inside of his cheek and tried to think while taking in the milling neighbors, the downed power lines and the men in yellow hard hats inspecting the lines.

Mercer's up to something, he decided with a mental shrug. But I sure don't know what it is.

We have witnesses? asked Don.

Yes, sir, said Mercer. I will take statements after we view the body, Detective.

One of the men from the power company came over.

It's safe now.

Mercer led Don toward the car. Out of the corner of his eye Don saw Noah Gerstein talking to one of the neighbors and he seemed to be crying. Don had only a moment to wonder about it before Mercer laid a hand on his arm.

Check it out, Detective, he said.

Don stared for one moment, gulped convulsively, fell to his knees and vomited.

"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, Detective, said Mercer. Mister Gerstein said someone saved Mrs. Carmichael, the driver of the other car, then went in and sawed off Mulligan's leg and took it with him. I think you might have to confirm that, Detective."

Don nodded, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his windbreaker and turned to look again. His stomach lurched at the sight of the raw stump.

Get the statements, said Don, swallowing bile.

Mercer smiled. "Yes, Detective."

Don barely acknowledged Mercer. He needed to get cleaned up, talk to Noah Gerstein, then to the Chief.

Chapter 3

One week later

Come here and look at this, Sarah! yelled Boyd. Ellen stood high on the ladder inspecting the gutter that had overflowed in the last rainstorm. She put one knee on a rung and turned to look. Boyd was nowhere in sight. She squinted against the shallow brightness of a November morning and saw Sarah's profile at the edge of the maples by the overgrown pond. At twelve, her daughter stood tall and willowy. Sarah kept her nut-brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail and had the deep brown eyes, straight nose, square chin, full lips and well-arched eyebrows of Daryl, her ex-husband. Damn that man, thought Ellen. Why do I have to think of him every time I look at her? She's a good girl.

Boyd was a different story and Ellen liked to dwell on the amazing differences between her two children. Boyd radiated vigor, sound and motion and never thought of consequences. Ellen recalled how he jumped off the garage with an umbrella and broke his leg. She appreciated how much mother and son looked alike from their thick black hair to their small, delicate features. But his face was thinner, skin fairer and his eyelashes were so long and thick Ellen envied them. Boyd inherited the unusual violet eyes from her mother's side of the family and the unruly behavior from his father's side, or so she liked to think. Ellen hung her head, scooped up some leaves from the gutter. Black muck soaked through her gardening glove. She hardly noticed. He still hardly speaks. The therapists said it would pass, but it's been two years, she thought. Ellen lifted her head and squinted further into the trees. She caught a glimpse of Boyd's arm. She stretched further back to spot the rest of him and the ladder slid along the gutter. Ellen grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled it back. I'm right here, she thought. Nothing bad can happen as long as I don't break my neck. Ellen scooped out more leaves and looked back at the old forest again. She tried to lift her spirits by recalling her delight at finding the old white farmhouse with the legend attached like another room. She had procured a list of historic houses for sale in the small town on the eastern end of the big lake. Ellen didn't go to see the land first. She went to the library to do research. The chief librarian, employed there for fifty years, delighted in telling her about the local houses and legends. Agnes, from an old New Hampshire family, became the youngest chief librarian in nineteen sixty-three. Agnes knew everyone and everyone knew her. Ellen remembered sitting with the tall, big-boned old woman, with her bifocals and plaited gray hair, at a table behind stacks of reference books. They drank her special herb tea.

Agnes's print dress seemed faded by too many washings. It didn't detract from her quick smile and calm, magnified blue eyes. Her voice creaked a bit. It didn't matter. The woman knew a lifetime of legends and Ellen felt like a little girl at the feet of her grandmother. It was the most comforted she'd felt since the divorce. About halfway through their conversation, Ellen asked Agnes why she was spending so much time helping her. The old woman's quick smile made Ellen laugh.

You caught me. I actually have one property in mind. You might be perfect for it. The house is old, but has had some modifications over the years. The land belongs to the state and is the most precious land in the state.

Agnes stood up, using a big knuckled fist on the flat of the table to steady herself. Ellen knew enough to stay silent at this sign of age. Agnes took a deep breath, turned and went to the only locked glass cabinet in the library, took a key from a small pocket in her dress, opened the glass and took out a small leather bound book. She handed the book to Ellen.

This book was put together by the Woman's Club in 1920, said Agnes. It's our local folklore up to the time. It is a great treasure, truly. Now, we never let it out of the library, so let me just tell you the key legend of this town. It is the story of the Nine and the Hundred Acre Wood.

Agnes smiled at Ellen and Ellen smiled back into her big blue eyes. Warmth spread over her.

Is it from the tea or Agnes, or both? wondered Ellen. She shared the joy of a storyteller finding an audience. Agnes took a sip of tea and began.

"Ezra Snow was one of the founders of this town. There is a portrait of Ezra painted by an itinerant artist in the Libby Museum. He was a dour looking man dressed in gray homespun. The kind of man one might think disapproved of all kinds of behavior and might have been a puritan. Nothing could have been further from the truth, although for appearance sake he went to church and was instrumental in the building of the old Christian Academy on West Main Street. A certain faction in the population broke off from the Church at that time because they said Ezra's contribution was tainted by sin.

You see, Ezra, although a father of six on one of the biggest farms in the county, never cultivated his land or cleared the forest. He only grew enough food to feed his own