Day 1 (Prelude, The Road Man)
THE BOOK OF ELDESS
by Roger Ostrander
((PRELUDE))
On the day of November 1st, 2005, a man named Michael Dorest drove home from his job. He was tired – it had been a long day, and it had been a long week, and it was not yet half over. Once home, he would face yet more work in the form of cleaning, feeding, and other routine tasks. They had become very routine to him at this point, as routine as the route he took home every day from work. Each turn was memorized, each change of lane he would have to make, when to turn and when he'd need to move the sunshade so that he wouldn't be blinded. Even the traffic backups were known to him, when he'd be delayed, how slow he'd have to be going to make taking an alternate route worthwhile. There were no surprises in him.
At home, he parked the car in his driveway and turned on its alarm. He unlocked the apartment he shared with a roomate and stepped inside, shedding his coat and feeling no more free of obligation than he had when at work. He quickly made himself food, quickly ate, quickly cleaned and quickly spoke to his roomate when the latter arrived. He acted in haste, but the end of the day came soon enough, and with it the knowledge that he'd do it once again tomorrow, go through every step and every motion.
Rest was the only thing left for him on this day. He bid his roomate goodnight, went to his room, undressed and lie on the bed until drowsiness overtook him.
He slept.
(( CHAPTER 1: THE ROAD MAN ))
The Road Man knocked on her door at exactly 7:00 in the morning. It wasn't as though she hadn't been expecting him; though he almost never announced the fact that he was coming over, and never even hinted at what their exact task was until the absolute last minute. She'd simply become good at knowing his patterns. Still, she had been caught unaware. It was early, for one; normally she'd sleep in later if allowed. For another, she'd slept on the couch. When she'd gone to bed the night before, she had thought he'd be paying her a visit, so it seemed a good idea at the time to keep watch from that vantage point. From the hindsight of morning, though, it had simply rendered her tired and made her neck ache.
She got up, stretching slightly as she did so, and looking out of the small window set into her door. Jacob was on the other side, eyebrows arched at her in an expresion she already knew at this point. He'd expected her to be fully ready when he came by – somehow – and was vaguely annoyed that she wasn't. Nevermind that he hadn't even bothered to say a word to her beforehand. The official policy of her employers was that she be ready at all times. Jacob was, after all.
She opened the door. He made no move to come in, instead simply nodding at her. “Morning, Alyssa.”
“Where are we headed today, Jacob?” she asked, still standing inside. They'd done this routine dozens of times by now. She had never invited him inside, and he had never indicated that he'd like to come in or even sit down. If her employers had sent a Road Man, it meant that they'd be travelling. Jacob wouldn't feel at comfortable inside a house anyway. The name somewhat gave it away – he was at home in the car. At first, she'd been to unsure of herself, unsure of her skills or her place in the new job, and she'd been too nervous to ask him in. Now it was somewhat of a joke. Knowing what she knew about Jacob, she knew he'd likely never even ask.
“Valleria.” he said simply, as though that explained anything.
“And... where exactly is that?” Her tone was vaguely sarcastic, but she was smiling all the same. Her job, while technically requiring her to be eternally vigilant, wasn't one that actually had her working full time. That Jacob was here meant that she'd actually be doing something. She'd been in the house too long. She wasn't a Road Man herself, naturally, but she certainly saw the appeal of forever being on the road.
Jacob shrugged. “It's a small town that'll take an hour or so to get to. Same as it always is, Alyssa. This kind of trouble always starts up in places like that. You coming?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
The car of a Road Man is special. Given the amount of time they spent going from place to place, it had to be. It didn't stand out on the road – motorists wouldn't give it a second glance. It barely registered in the conciousness of Police at all, which was fortunate, as there were many times where passengers and driver both were in a great hurry. Closer inspection would reveal no manufacturer's logo, no vehicle identification number, and license plates with no words but whose design always seemed reminicent of someplace a few states away.
Alyssa was used to this by now. The first time she'd seen the car, she'd spent a good ten minutes inspecting it. She noticed all the missing details, everything that an ordinary person would overlook. The car would have slipped past one without the sight that she posessed, just a brief flicker of movement and then gone from memory. Alyssa had, instead, been fascinated. Later, Jacob revealed to her that his reaction had been much the same.
As they left her driveway, she leaned back in the seat (comfortable, as always), and relaxed, allowing some of the rest she'd been robbed of to return. Jacob was, as always, silent. As she so often did in these trips, she thought back to earlier times.
She was gifted, they'd told her. She hadn't really known what they'd meant at the time. She didn't think of herself as overly smart – certainly, she wasn't an /idiot/ or anything, but she was definitely no rocket scientist. It had turned out they meant something entirely different.
She had the sight, for one. Jacob had been the one to pick her up, on that first day of her tenure, and it had turned out that even that had been a test of sorts. If she hadn't seen anything interesting about the car, she wouldn't have been a likely candidate.
This meant, as she found out quickly afterwards, that she could see things others could not. Things like the car, for one. Things which are usually concealed from ordinary people. The entrance to the chambers, for instance, seemed to everyone else to be a maintainance closet. She saw it as an ordinary door, which it was. Her eye wasn't just for detail, though. It saw things that the non-gifted were simply incapable of seeing. Like the harpies.
“It's harpies again, isn't it?” she said, relaxing in the seat, speaking quietly with her eyes shut.
“What was your first clue?” Jacob said, tonelessly.
“The fact that it's been harpies every time we go out?” She opened an eyelid and glanced over at him. He was sitting straight up, arms at 10 and 2, eyes methodically scanning the road, driving perfectly as always.
“Yes, it's harpies.”
“Third time this month.” She commented. When she first had been hired, she'd made many trips to the chambers. It was as close to a headquarters, she supposed, as their group had. At first she hadn't believed them. They'd claimed to be doing a 'scientific study' of the paranormal. Needed her help. Went through all the tests she'd seen on TV; showed her the back of cards and asked what the face said, asked her to predict the next symbol in a sequence. She got the feeling it was all window dressing, though, and she hadn't been wrong. After the initial tests were done, stranger ones began. They showed her patterns of dots and asked what she saw in them. It seemed a mix between a Rorschach test, one of the papers an eye-doctor would use to diagnose color-blindness, and the formerly popular Magic Eye paintings designed to form three-dimensional images. At first, she saw nothing, then numbers, then letters, then objects. After that, she saw movement. That, really, was her first clue that something stranger was happening than she knew.
Jacob nodded. “Yes. They're coming more frequently now.”
He didn't say anything more, and Alyssa shut her eyes again, sighing internally. Jacob could talk – after jobs, he tended to relax and be quite a bit more loquatious. Before them, though, he was all but silent. Nerves, Alyssa thought. At first the idea of him – essentially her mentor – being nervous was quite a shock. She was used to it now. After all, she had nerves too. That's why she was trying to relax.
It wasn't working. She knew, from long experience, that it never worked. Still, there was nothing to do and it was a long ride, so she simply relaxed. The car radio could play music of any sort she wanted – though this was due to an iPod rather than any otherworldly properties – but neither she nor Jacob ever listened to it. This soon before a job, it'd just annoy her. More than anything else, she'd need to have a clear mind before she faced the harpies.
She'd seen her first harpy her third day on the job. At the time, of course, she hadn't known she was part of the group yet. She had been under the impression – though even she doubted it at this point – that she was participating in research. It was to be a three-day overnight experiment, and she'd already spent two going through successively stranger tests. That morning alone she'd been asked to read a book full of blank pages, put out a candle in another room without touching it, and speak to an old woman who, she was pretty sure, was still asleep. She'd failed terrifically at all three tasks, but this didn't seem to upset the others there. Savant and Katherine, as she'd later learn them to be, had seemed more and more eager as the day had gone on. Finally, after they'd returned from a long conference she'd assumed had been with their peers, they took her to another part of their chambers. The testing area had looked very high-tech, but after a while of travelling down the hallway, that impression had faded quickly. They were underground, she finally realized, and the décor was becoming more and more unfinished. Finally, they reached a barren room filled with large glass cubes. Right at that moment, she hadn't realized them to be holding cells. That changed as soon as they turned on the light.
“What the hell is that thing?”
She could remember asking the question as though it had been yesterday. She'd been working, now, for years fighting against the very things she'd seen in that cell on that day, but they'd never lost their power to unnerve her.
It had been a harpy, of course. She'd taken a course in mythology and recognized it immediately. Only this one wasn't an illustration or artist's conception – it was crouching in a corner of its glass cell, hissing angrily at her. Its deformed face looked more reptillian than most drawings had, and its claws seemed to have larger reach. It didn't change anything. She didn't just recognize what it was, she /knew/ it on an instinctual level. Its hands and feet ended in cruel talons, almost jagged on the index fingers, which scratched against the glass soundlessly.
Next
by Roger Ostrander
((PRELUDE))
On the day of November 1st, 2005, a man named Michael Dorest drove home from his job. He was tired – it had been a long day, and it had been a long week, and it was not yet half over. Once home, he would face yet more work in the form of cleaning, feeding, and other routine tasks. They had become very routine to him at this point, as routine as the route he took home every day from work. Each turn was memorized, each change of lane he would have to make, when to turn and when he'd need to move the sunshade so that he wouldn't be blinded. Even the traffic backups were known to him, when he'd be delayed, how slow he'd have to be going to make taking an alternate route worthwhile. There were no surprises in him.
At home, he parked the car in his driveway and turned on its alarm. He unlocked the apartment he shared with a roomate and stepped inside, shedding his coat and feeling no more free of obligation than he had when at work. He quickly made himself food, quickly ate, quickly cleaned and quickly spoke to his roomate when the latter arrived. He acted in haste, but the end of the day came soon enough, and with it the knowledge that he'd do it once again tomorrow, go through every step and every motion.
Rest was the only thing left for him on this day. He bid his roomate goodnight, went to his room, undressed and lie on the bed until drowsiness overtook him.
He slept.
(( CHAPTER 1: THE ROAD MAN ))
The Road Man knocked on her door at exactly 7:00 in the morning. It wasn't as though she hadn't been expecting him; though he almost never announced the fact that he was coming over, and never even hinted at what their exact task was until the absolute last minute. She'd simply become good at knowing his patterns. Still, she had been caught unaware. It was early, for one; normally she'd sleep in later if allowed. For another, she'd slept on the couch. When she'd gone to bed the night before, she had thought he'd be paying her a visit, so it seemed a good idea at the time to keep watch from that vantage point. From the hindsight of morning, though, it had simply rendered her tired and made her neck ache.
She got up, stretching slightly as she did so, and looking out of the small window set into her door. Jacob was on the other side, eyebrows arched at her in an expresion she already knew at this point. He'd expected her to be fully ready when he came by – somehow – and was vaguely annoyed that she wasn't. Nevermind that he hadn't even bothered to say a word to her beforehand. The official policy of her employers was that she be ready at all times. Jacob was, after all.
She opened the door. He made no move to come in, instead simply nodding at her. “Morning, Alyssa.”
“Where are we headed today, Jacob?” she asked, still standing inside. They'd done this routine dozens of times by now. She had never invited him inside, and he had never indicated that he'd like to come in or even sit down. If her employers had sent a Road Man, it meant that they'd be travelling. Jacob wouldn't feel at comfortable inside a house anyway. The name somewhat gave it away – he was at home in the car. At first, she'd been to unsure of herself, unsure of her skills or her place in the new job, and she'd been too nervous to ask him in. Now it was somewhat of a joke. Knowing what she knew about Jacob, she knew he'd likely never even ask.
“Valleria.” he said simply, as though that explained anything.
“And... where exactly is that?” Her tone was vaguely sarcastic, but she was smiling all the same. Her job, while technically requiring her to be eternally vigilant, wasn't one that actually had her working full time. That Jacob was here meant that she'd actually be doing something. She'd been in the house too long. She wasn't a Road Man herself, naturally, but she certainly saw the appeal of forever being on the road.
Jacob shrugged. “It's a small town that'll take an hour or so to get to. Same as it always is, Alyssa. This kind of trouble always starts up in places like that. You coming?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
The car of a Road Man is special. Given the amount of time they spent going from place to place, it had to be. It didn't stand out on the road – motorists wouldn't give it a second glance. It barely registered in the conciousness of Police at all, which was fortunate, as there were many times where passengers and driver both were in a great hurry. Closer inspection would reveal no manufacturer's logo, no vehicle identification number, and license plates with no words but whose design always seemed reminicent of someplace a few states away.
Alyssa was used to this by now. The first time she'd seen the car, she'd spent a good ten minutes inspecting it. She noticed all the missing details, everything that an ordinary person would overlook. The car would have slipped past one without the sight that she posessed, just a brief flicker of movement and then gone from memory. Alyssa had, instead, been fascinated. Later, Jacob revealed to her that his reaction had been much the same.
As they left her driveway, she leaned back in the seat (comfortable, as always), and relaxed, allowing some of the rest she'd been robbed of to return. Jacob was, as always, silent. As she so often did in these trips, she thought back to earlier times.
She was gifted, they'd told her. She hadn't really known what they'd meant at the time. She didn't think of herself as overly smart – certainly, she wasn't an /idiot/ or anything, but she was definitely no rocket scientist. It had turned out they meant something entirely different.
She had the sight, for one. Jacob had been the one to pick her up, on that first day of her tenure, and it had turned out that even that had been a test of sorts. If she hadn't seen anything interesting about the car, she wouldn't have been a likely candidate.
This meant, as she found out quickly afterwards, that she could see things others could not. Things like the car, for one. Things which are usually concealed from ordinary people. The entrance to the chambers, for instance, seemed to everyone else to be a maintainance closet. She saw it as an ordinary door, which it was. Her eye wasn't just for detail, though. It saw things that the non-gifted were simply incapable of seeing. Like the harpies.
“It's harpies again, isn't it?” she said, relaxing in the seat, speaking quietly with her eyes shut.
“What was your first clue?” Jacob said, tonelessly.
“The fact that it's been harpies every time we go out?” She opened an eyelid and glanced over at him. He was sitting straight up, arms at 10 and 2, eyes methodically scanning the road, driving perfectly as always.
“Yes, it's harpies.”
“Third time this month.” She commented. When she first had been hired, she'd made many trips to the chambers. It was as close to a headquarters, she supposed, as their group had. At first she hadn't believed them. They'd claimed to be doing a 'scientific study' of the paranormal. Needed her help. Went through all the tests she'd seen on TV; showed her the back of cards and asked what the face said, asked her to predict the next symbol in a sequence. She got the feeling it was all window dressing, though, and she hadn't been wrong. After the initial tests were done, stranger ones began. They showed her patterns of dots and asked what she saw in them. It seemed a mix between a Rorschach test, one of the papers an eye-doctor would use to diagnose color-blindness, and the formerly popular Magic Eye paintings designed to form three-dimensional images. At first, she saw nothing, then numbers, then letters, then objects. After that, she saw movement. That, really, was her first clue that something stranger was happening than she knew.
Jacob nodded. “Yes. They're coming more frequently now.”
He didn't say anything more, and Alyssa shut her eyes again, sighing internally. Jacob could talk – after jobs, he tended to relax and be quite a bit more loquatious. Before them, though, he was all but silent. Nerves, Alyssa thought. At first the idea of him – essentially her mentor – being nervous was quite a shock. She was used to it now. After all, she had nerves too. That's why she was trying to relax.
It wasn't working. She knew, from long experience, that it never worked. Still, there was nothing to do and it was a long ride, so she simply relaxed. The car radio could play music of any sort she wanted – though this was due to an iPod rather than any otherworldly properties – but neither she nor Jacob ever listened to it. This soon before a job, it'd just annoy her. More than anything else, she'd need to have a clear mind before she faced the harpies.
She'd seen her first harpy her third day on the job. At the time, of course, she hadn't known she was part of the group yet. She had been under the impression – though even she doubted it at this point – that she was participating in research. It was to be a three-day overnight experiment, and she'd already spent two going through successively stranger tests. That morning alone she'd been asked to read a book full of blank pages, put out a candle in another room without touching it, and speak to an old woman who, she was pretty sure, was still asleep. She'd failed terrifically at all three tasks, but this didn't seem to upset the others there. Savant and Katherine, as she'd later learn them to be, had seemed more and more eager as the day had gone on. Finally, after they'd returned from a long conference she'd assumed had been with their peers, they took her to another part of their chambers. The testing area had looked very high-tech, but after a while of travelling down the hallway, that impression had faded quickly. They were underground, she finally realized, and the décor was becoming more and more unfinished. Finally, they reached a barren room filled with large glass cubes. Right at that moment, she hadn't realized them to be holding cells. That changed as soon as they turned on the light.
“What the hell is that thing?”
She could remember asking the question as though it had been yesterday. She'd been working, now, for years fighting against the very things she'd seen in that cell on that day, but they'd never lost their power to unnerve her.
It had been a harpy, of course. She'd taken a course in mythology and recognized it immediately. Only this one wasn't an illustration or artist's conception – it was crouching in a corner of its glass cell, hissing angrily at her. Its deformed face looked more reptillian than most drawings had, and its claws seemed to have larger reach. It didn't change anything. She didn't just recognize what it was, she /knew/ it on an instinctual level. Its hands and feet ended in cruel talons, almost jagged on the index fingers, which scratched against the glass soundlessly.
Next
posted by Roger Ostrander at 4:27 PM
1 Comments:
Dude. Cool. Hmm. Perhaps I'll take part in nanowrimo.
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