Ch. 27: Alva's song

Oliver Cunninghill, bound and gagged and lying prone across the trailer, looked at Wyland with a look of hatred that went deeper than bone. This look transcended hatred. Vile, malicious disgust emanated from that ugly Scottish face. If he weren't gagged, he would have ripped Wyland's flesh from his bones with his teeth. If he wasn't bound with thick rope, he would have strangled Wyland to death, but maybe slowly, over the next hour or so.

The anger and evil in that boy's eyes made Wyland think of Vlad the Impaler. The original Dracula. He didn't know why. It was probably the bloodlust in his eyes. The boy wished he had long fangs to slowly drain the life out of this pitiful, pale, fattening Yank. The Yank looked back at him unworried, calm, and tranquil. This further enraged Ollie. 

The slow tick tac of rain began on the aluminum roof of the trailer as a low rumble of thunder rolled through the lush green hills around them.

In the corner, the goat bleated.

The two men stared at each other, one in a dumb trance, the other blind with rage, both bound and gagged. A third, Crom, also bound and gagged, breathed shallowly in the corner.

Eventually, Ollie, his hate apparently expired, began worming his way over to his brother, who appeared to be out cold, perhaps drugged. His pale white skin shone even whiter in the deepening dusk, and Wyland could tell his blood pressure wasn't right. Crom looked a bit like a dead ghost, bound in jute rope. Ollie was nudging him with his head, trying to get him to wake up, but it wasn't working. Muffled noises came from Ollie's gagged mouth. "Mmmffff! Krmmmf! Rrgggghhhh! Krmmmmmf!" he said. Crom still just sat there, blissfully sleeping away what would be his last day on Earth. 

That having now failed, Ollie now looked with increasing worry at the small, strange device set near the door of the trailer. He began to worm and roll his way over to it, and Wyland looked on in a calm stupor. 

The device was moving. A cylinder in the center was rotating. The cylinder had small grooves in it. It looked like the old wax cylinders that predated vinyl records. There was a horn on it, that looked a bit like a morning glory flower. There were a couple wires, tied tight and wound through a conduit, connecting the motor near the cylinder to what must be it's battery, a small, black plastic cube. Ollie knew what it was long before Wyland figured it out. It was an old-timey record player. 

Oliver Cunninghill's mind raced. His eyes darted all over the strange object, as his mind revealed a deep truth to him. 

He had been right. Digital doesn't work, but analog does. 

This led to a deeper revelation, the last of Ollie's short life. The world was analog! Digital recordings were just poor, compressed representations of the world. On and off, one and zero, were stupid, clumsy binary settings compared to the rich swing of wholeness that the world presented to us! Whole realms of possibility opened up in his mind. Artificial intelligence required analog! Humans were analog! Life was analog, not digital! The quantum world was an analog world! Prickles of understanding ran up and down his spine as this deep truth reverberated through him. 

As this ran through his brain, the recording started. "Test, check, test", it said melodramatically. He could hear popping and hissing, although the sound quality was still pretty good. 

"Alvanic chant, analog test number 4. Fallah Alvic, no innotation, one ten beat. Multi-subject, un-directed, spit formed, quick mortality..." Ollie moaned dramatically as he heard this.

Ollie didn't recognize the voice, but there was a male British accent to it as the unseen student said today's date. Ollie knew it was a student; a new student who had obviously taken his own or his brother's place. The Professor never uttered curses unless absolutely necessary. The Professor said that to utter a curse tied one's Wyrd to another's, although he was at a loss to describe how that all worked. In fact, he had simply shrugged when asked. 

And then, the curse began. 

Parem Denan Alva. Prex Alva. Kentu Alva.

Ollie was suddenly squirming and trashing about, shaking his head, trying to scream through his gag as the terrible, crushing sound entered his mind and evaporated whatever deep beauty had just been held there. Crom lay unconscious in the back of the trailer, although Wyland now knew he was still being cursed right now; Wyland himself had been cursed in a drunken stupor. Crom was breathing faster and deeper now, air hissing out his nose. 

The goat looked about with his strange four cornered, rectangular eyes, apparently unconcerned by the recording, or the human thrashing about on the other side of the trailer. His dirty grey beard shook along with the whole trailer as Ollie thrashed about. 

The haze of hypnosis was now leaving Wyland, although confusion replaced it. Again he didn't hear what he expected. Again a squirming tightness bound his neck, wrists and ankles. No crunching noise, no pain, but time had slowed down and he was frozen in place. The voice of the student now had a deep, baritone character, and it was speaking words in a tongue Wyland had never heard.

To his left, he felt it coming. The creature. Death itself. A crow as black as jet, with a strange, long, scraggle-toothed skull for a head, and cloven hooves for feet set below the backwards facing legs of a goat. The air was suddenly as cold as the depths of space. 

But this time, it was in the trailer with them. Impossibly tall, as large as a small planet, with feathers that were as large as Manhattan Island, the ancient Lord Alva stood somehow well within the seven foot ceiling. It's crocodilian skull head looked about with empty eye sockets that somehow held knowledge, that somehow saw all before them. 

It... it was singing. That was the crunching noise that everyone heard! It was somehow singing softly through an empty skull. Wyland though the sound was somehow comforting, and not at all painful, although Crom and Ollie sure looked like it was hurting them.

It also looked as though it was dancing. Like the old Navajo fancy dancing, it spread its wings, leaned left and hopped about on one foot, then leaned right and switched to its right foot, and hopped about some more, going in strange little semi-circles with wings dipped towards the center of the circle. It was a celebratory dance. 

It danced up to Crom, and leaned over him, and its huge, ridiculously huge, massive, ginormous, gargantuan jaw opened up, baring an impossibly jagged row of teeth, each the size of a skyscraper. It looked triumphant. It looked hungry. It quickly bit down on Crom's head, and Wyland thought he watched Crom's head explode, violently and messily, but as the creature stood up, Crom's head was fully intact, without even any blood. Wyland didn't understand how that was possible, given the shape of those horrid teeth. The sensation of seeing this massive thing exist in an impossibly small space was making Wyland dizzy. 

It shook itself, as a bird might shake off water.

The creature then danced over to Ollie, appearing to relish in the act, taking it's time. Wyland felt as though the whole world must shake as it danced, and yet it's footfalls were silent and soft. As it approached him, the pain and anguish on Ollie's face increased. It bit Oliver the same as his brother, splattering brains and blood everywhere, but somehow leaving his head intact as it rose up. 

Wyland thought of a book he had read once; The Call Of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft described how looking upon the Old Gods, or even the terrible lands where the Old Gods slept, could break a man's mind. He now understood how something could break a man's mind. Here, before him in all it's glory, was an Old God, a terrible being that Wyland somehow knew was created the same day that the ancestors of men began to have nightmares. The day mankind realized the true weight of death, they birthed this monstrosity. 

He knew that a stronger man, a man confident in his worldview, confident in himself, would look upon this creature, this horrible thing, and he would break. It's very existence spoke "You are wrong about everything. You are nothing. You will die. Nothing matters. There is only darkness for you, forever. Not a cold, black unknowing darkness, but a warm, sallow, sucking, gnawing darkness." It was only the fact that Wyland already knew this feeling that kept him from breaking right then and there. Instead, a dreary calm had come over Wyland, an strange, cold anger that this thing dared show its face before him. 

It danced over to Wyland, but hesitantly. As it approached, it got colder and colder, until Wyland was sure he was already dead, and this is what it felt like. He looked up at the God Alva, and the old God of death looked down at him. Whether it was across fathoms of empty space, or simply across the small trailer, Wyland couldn't tell. Somehow, it was both.

But he could tell that the Great Old God Alva knew something was off. It cocked its head sideways, as a bird might, to get a better side-wise view. Wyland's skin was crawling, and he was shivering fiercely. He was surprised he hadn't yet shit himself. The giant thing bent down as before, but stood apart from Wyland and chattered its teeth and  ruffled its feathers, as though admonishing Wyland.

Wyland felt as though he were a snake, coiling to strike. His muscles were taught, shivering. His blood was cold and thick. His mouth tasted faintly of failure: of slow venom, of pneumonia, of nursing homes, of empty graveyards with no gravestones, of wilted funerary flowers. He felt the presence of Hebrix, whatever God that was, protecting him.

Then, suddenly, Wyland lunged at Lord Alva, face first as if to bite the cursed thing, and it was gone, leaving only a lingering cold.

Ch. 26: Tiffany Garcia

The first thought that ran through Wyland's head was that he was face to face with a real Jedi master. A practitioner of the old arts. A warlock. He saw now that the Cunninghill boys had been mere apprentices. And it was sounding like they had flunked out. 

The old man with the friendly face smiled at Wyland with gleaming eyes, but they held a deep sadness, too. Wyland thought it was just his own reflection at first, but no, he saw failure in this man's eyes. A familiar sight.

The old man who was still somehow young spoke like Santa Claus might. "I am known officially as 'The Professor.' You are Wyland Blake, of Sacramento county, California. Your parents are Trisha and William Blake. Your father has a fantastic name, named after a great poet. An Englishman, no less." A small, friendly chuckle. The radiance in his eyes now increased, reaching an almost godlike gleam.

"You have come here seeking an answer. I will give you that answer. You are here, at the end of your own little heroic journey. Bound and gagged, dragged through hell, yet here you are. A brave little soul, aren't you? And you have queried the Gods, but are you prepared for the answer? I assure you, it is not what you hope for." 

The Professor swept his hand around in grand fashion. Wyland now understood the official name. He looked as though he were at university, before a apt class of pupils, expounding on theory. He didn't look like he was in a livestock trailer with three condemned men in god-knows-where Scotland.

"Before you are the gates, and the question is on your tongue. But I must warn you. You may turn around now, never speak again of this incident, or these people before you, nor of this trek you have made here, and go on living your cursed little life. If you ask, you will receive the answer, and face the consequences. Is that clear?"

Wyland cleared his throat. His phlegm tasted a bit like blood. He considered the question for only a moment.

"I have no use for my cursed little life. I must fix this or die trying. I ask you: How does one remove a curse?" Wyland looked solemnly at the Professor as he said this. His eyes were wet with pain and tears. A hint of compassion rested in The Professor's bright eyes.

The Professor's smile faded. He answered through a sigh. "There is no way that we know. You are a prisoner of the entity to which you are bound. I have spent my life asking that very question, Wyland, and I assure you, we know of no way to remove a curse. We know of no blessings that will help. Indeed, there are no blessings in The True Tongue. Only curses. This forsaken world can only magnify hatred and anger, death and failure, it cannot magnify life, or love, or caring. These things we must build, slowly, gently, but us, the world, The Gods, (all are one, so to speak) will destroy them. And they will do so quickly, effortlessly, with a word." 

He spoke with his hands as he said all this, gesturing and shaking his head, and at the last statement, he clenched his fist, pantomiming the Gods crushing us all, quickly and effortlessly. 

The light left the Professor's eyes, and Wyland now saw only this failure in his eyes. A long program to help mankind had yielded only poison. Like he was looking at J. Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atomic bomb after the first test. The terrible power he created now held in the hands of greedy, hungry men. He birthed into the world a great evil. He was seeking only the truth of God, but in digging into the deep secrets of the world, he found only the Devil. And oh, what a Devil he had unleashed.

Wyland, his eyes still wet, spoke Oppenheimer's famous words: "Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."

The professor gave a sad little smile as he looked at the ground."Indeed, truer words in the common tongue, I've not heard." Then he sat motionless, wearing a deep frown. 

At length, he stood up and straightened his back, getting back to business. "But enough dithering. I'm sorry. But you do present an interesting research case, never-the-less. There is a name you carry. A name we do not yet know. A True Word that you've heard, and so I ask you to look at this."

He pulled out a small tablet. Racing across the screen were images stretched around a tube. Wyland's eyes were immediately transfixed. He felt like he was flying down a long hallway, like he was flying through a fractal drawing. He became immediately drowsy, and soon his mouth gaped open, with a dull cow look on his face. He was aware of this all happening, but it felt far away somehow.

The Professor spoke. "You will not remember the past two weeks upon your awakening from this trance. You will tell me the date and time that you heard the Fallah that binds your Wyrd."

Wyland answered, slowly and deliberately. "August 17th, 1990." The disconnect was strange, like he was watching himself talk, and he was amazed to hear these words come from his mouth.

"And who was it that uttered this curse, and what was their relationship to you?"

Wyland, again from far away, answered "Tiffany Garcia. She was my fiance."

"And the circumstance of your binding?"

"She had caught me in the bed of another woman at a large frat party. I was passed out drunk, and the girl had come in later, also drunk. I don't think we did anything besides sleep. She came in, and I could smell her perfume. I could hear angry muttering, and I think she was pacing around the room. Then she spoke at me, and left."

"And she had no training in the old arts?"

Wyland laughed through the trance. "No, she was a psychology major from the valley. As innocent as they come." The Professor smiled back. The Professor leaned in close now, and gave Wyland a small notebook and a pen. He said, almost whispering "Please write down the words you heard her speak to you. Do not speak them."

Wyland dutifully wrote:

Kentu Hebrix. Kentu Ba'al-alenda. Rerok Deka Morthenda. Rerok Despa. Deka Pelluda. Kentu Hebrix. Prex Hebrix.

Wyland's conscious mind tried desperately to weld those words to long term memory as the notebook was ripped from his hands. "Huh. Ba'al and Hebrix. Fascinating. Hebrix is a new entity. I'm sure he's no match for Lord Alva, although we now have a new avenue of inquiry." 

The Professor nodded to Blue. Blue dragged Oliver into the trailer to join his brother, both of them bound and gagged. Blue then gagged Wyland as well. Wyland didn't fight this at all. As they left, Wyland, still calm and entranced, watched as Ol' Blue dropped a small, strange looking device into the trailer before shutting the rusty old doors.