Paranormalcy: 9 Tales of Imagination

M. H. Tardiff

PARANORMALCY, VOL. 1

9 Tales of Imagination

M. H. Tardiff

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Michael H. Tardiff

ISBN: 9781301039616

Smashwords, Inc.

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To my wife, Dian

CONTENTS:

Foe

State Route

Irquart’s Arrows

The Strange Martyrdom Of Abdul Faheed Al Azarri

Late Night With Marty O’Dell

Planetary Voodoo

Clock Solitaire

And The Sky Cried, Havoc!

The Index of Chawn Doe

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet, Act I, scene 5

-William Shakespeare

FOE

A stiff breeze whipped across the snow, slithered snake-like between the roughly threaded seams of Irsa’s bristlefur coat.

It was her twelfth winter and she couldn’t remember ever being so cold…her very bones ached from it. The thick furs and the meager warmth her flint goaded from gathered boughs every night did little more than keep her alive, a painful reminder of the comfort of the ever-blazing fire of her house.

She turned to look at the footprints trailing back to the distant tree-line, feeling a little depressed. For three turns, the world had been a mixture of wet greens and browns, glittering streams and dappled light – a familiar sight for all her life. It was a stark contrast to the infinite plane of white ahead of her. Not quite infinite: the glaciers poured down from the Barrier Peaks, a range of saw-toothed mountains a half-day’s march away. The wide open plain imbued her with a relentless dread. There was no shelter against the winds. There were no berries to eat nor hava root to dig up when a hunt went bad. Like a drop of blood in a lake, that which was hot and living would be lost to the cold and inanimate, diluted by the uncaring nature of Nature.

She adjusted the strap of the hard plastic box hanging from her shoulder and tightened the grip on her spear, squeezed the fire-hardened shaft that was twice her height. The thing wasn’t much good as a weapon, a tool the village furmaker had cast aside and forgotten before he had left with the others. It made a good walking stick, though. And she was sure she could keep most animals at bay…a hefty whack from the blunt, but weighty stone head would be enough to convince anything she wasn’t going to be a meal tasty enough to justify the effort.

She started toward the mountains, the snow crunching beneath her fur-clad boots. For three turns of the sky she’d traveled away from the Great Star in the daytime and toward the brightest star of the Descending Eagle at night, exactly as Papa told her, toward the Green Men…

***

Papa took a big long drink of broth before collapsing back onto the bed. It was the most Irsa had seen him take in three days. She wondered for the hundredth time if he was getting better.

The old man coughed and gurgled.

Irsa…I don’t think we have much time left together.

I know, Papa.

You’re a brave girl. You don’t deny yourself the hard truths.

She desperately tried to think of something to say.

You’ll see Mama again. That makes me happy.

She thought the statement trite, especially in the special tongue, but Papa absorbed the words with as braod a smile as he could muster.

To be young and see the world encrusted with such glitter. It’s a better way to live, Irsa…don’t let anyone tell you different. Especially that pompous ass Hoeckner, if he’s still there.

He was being taken by fever again. She ran into the great-room to dunk her rag in the cold kettle of water, ran back in half the time. She could tell when he was getting worse whenever he started talking about the strange people who weren’t really there.

She pressed the wet cloth to his forehead, rivulets trickling through his white eyebrows. He sighed with relief.

Are you keeping up with me?

He meant with the special tongue, the language only spoken between them, a language very different from that common to the village. Papa was so quick and natural using it, Irsa sometimes had difficulty understanding him. It wasn’t the case today, though. His energy had been sapped by the sickness and his speechcraft was a shadow of its former glory. Or maybe she’d finally become fluent after many years of practice. The reason really didn’t matter. Being the only two people left in the entire village meant any language was only for them anyway.

I’m not having any trouble.

He responded with another soggy cough. She did her best to keep the cloth pressed to his skin as she worked up the courage for her question.

Papa…are you sure you’re not being punished?

His hand went up and grasped her wrist, pushing her away from his head as he sat up and stared into her suddenly frightened eyes. A spark of life filled him for a split second, something like rage, but not directed at her. It went away as quickly as it came and he collapsed with a heavy sigh.

Irsa, don’t do this. Don’t become one of those frightened sheep who left us here. I am not being punished by any force or god of the heavens. I’m sick, nothing more.

But, why aren’t I sick?

He closed his eyes and made a humming noise. Irsa thought he might be falling asleep, or worse. She pushed the thought from her mind.

I’ve wondered about that, he mumbled. I guess I can’t blame you for thinking…

If only we could ask the box, she wished. It had been dead since the early Spring.

He rolled his head toward her, cracked his eyelids.

I’ve done more than wonder. I’ve thought…long and hard about the matter. I’m not really surprised about the occurance, only in that it took so long. My best guess is I’ve contracted some sort of common virus that my body isn’t able to fight off and that which yours is immune.

Her brow furrowed. Perhaps she wasn’t as fluent as she had thought.

Papa read the confusion latched onto her face and beamed like he always did when teaching her a new bit of the special tongue.

You’re used to the things in the air that have made me sick, Irsa, so they don’t affect you. It’s called an immunity. You may have had it passed onto you in your blood, in this case from your mother.

She thought for a moment.

Don’t I have your blood too?

He closed his eyes, the smile remained.

Something else from your mother: a sharp mind, always ready with the next question.

He took a deep breath and slowly drained his lungs, working against an impending cough.

I see no reason to hide the truth from you any longer. Do you remember what the Elders would call me?

She slowly nodded. The many turns of isolation, being alone in a deserted village, hadn’t softened the memory. At gatherings, the Elders always called him ‘Outsider’. With every utterance, the word carried with it a hundred stone-weight of contempt on its back.

I came about a year before you were born. My intent was to stay for only a few turns, but I grew attached to your kind, beautiful mother, and decided to stay…thought I could raise a family while continuing my work. Live a simpler life. Everyone but your mother thought me someone of great power, very dangerous. I think the…the box freightened them a little.

What about the Fall? She already knew the answer, but hearing it from Papa would give her confidence. Papa was not bad medicine. He was not a demon.

I’ve hid nothing from anyone, he said, his words slurring. There are things I couldn’t explain…I didn’t know how. Too much other knowledge is needed. Too much foundation. It could cause problems if I didn’t do things right. Tears scurried down his face. I was such a fool.

She tightened her grip on his hand. She could feel him slipping further away, his mind lost to rambling.

"The Fall, Papa. Did you cause the Fall?"

I suspect some here were intelligent enough, but…Irsa, I’ve told you the truth. It wasn’t an omen. I can understand the pressure you must have felt, having an entire ocean of superstition poured over you day after day. My voice was but a whisper against a gale. His voice trailed off as he began to murmer to himself. "She saw me as a only a man…a man who could love and live just as any other, with a mind and soul to set him apart from the wild beasts. I meant to tell her everything about me…I never…Irsa!"

She flinched.

Yes, Papa?

I love you more than my own life. Don’t concern yourself with bloodlines or pedigrees. The Chief was no more a soul than you or I.

He reached up with a trembling hand to touch her on the cheek. His eyes stared at something as far away as the Heavens.

Take the box. Guard it with your life. Without it, the Green Men won’t help you. They can’t. With it. they’ll know you’re my daughter. They’ll have to take you. The damage will have been done.

She reached under the sagging bed, probed her fingers across the dirt floor until she felt the hard shape of the box. She pulled it out by the attached strap. The dull black surface, made from what Papa called plastic, was ice-cold in her hands, further evidence of its sorry state. When it was alive, the box would constantly radiate a slight heat. She could remember warming her feet on it on cold winter nights.

Irsa, where are you?

Here, Papa.

He panted, his lungs under a tremendous burden. When he spoke, the words were whispers. She leaned closer and held her ear besdie his mouth. Even then, some of the words didn’t make it outside his throat.

Take anything…dress warm to…peaks…go…North Star just as...talked…dangerous.

Yes, Papa. I understand.

Find…green men.

Who are the green men, Papa?

You…will have time enough…to understand.

She sensed a great inevitability and furiously wiped the sudden tears from her face.

Papa?

Time enough…time…

Irsa slumped into the corner of the room and stared at the bed, the image of Papa’s slackened lips and paling skin burning into her memory like the black soot baked into a hearth. A numbness coursed through her from head to toe like poison. Strangely, she was certain Papa would at any moment rise from the bed and tell her everything would be fine.

She sat quietly until the night began to leave, then silently scoured the village for anything useful. She took some thin rope and shards of flint from one of the Elder’s homes. She found the discarded spear and a cracked throwing chuck, packed the last cake of salt and all the food she could carry into a small pack made of flattail skin. She calmly dressed as Papa had told her to: the thickest furs, an extra one to drape over the shoulders, leggings tied with extra cord with her feet double wrapped against the cold. At one point during the task, she even asked Papa a question. Only when he didn’t answer did she realize her mistake.

Stone-faced, Irsa slung the pack over her shoulder and grabbed the box. She walked out into the village, took the spear she’d leaned against the outside of her home, found the pair of big trees Papa had told her to start toward to find her way through the forest to the Barrier Peaks-

And collapsed to her knees and wept.

***

A breeze washed across the frozen plane like misery’s afterthought, carrying miniscule crystals of ice across Irsa’s hands and forehead. She ignored the sudden chill and focused on the rhythm of her work: brushing snow away from the stone slab, carefully snapping a long, thin splint of wood from the spearchuck and liberally smearing one end of it with mashed berries.

Her stomach growled at the sweet, tart scent. There were too few berries left to satisfy her hunger, but there was more than enough to use for bait. Her mouth watered instead at the thought of roast rabbit.

The pile of boulders she was working behind seemed completely out of place on the great glacier. To busy her mind, she tried to reason out an explanation just as Papa would have. Maybe they had fallen from someplace higher up the mountain side, bounced and rolled into their present home many turns before. The mountain was pretty close behind her, barely an egg’s throw away, as Papa used to say, so a tumble from on high theory made sense. Then again, Papa used to tell her how the glaciers moved like a river of ice, slowly but steadily over the span of a thousand thousand turns. Maybe the boulders came from somewhere distant and were carried to their present home.

Fingers numb, she hefted the flat stone up on one side, precariously propping it onto the baited splint of