Gary
Chapter 2: The Soul Stealers. Ryan inadvertently bumps off a gargoyle and befriends another one.
“Listen, you have your wires crossed,” Ryan screamed, his voice a guttural slur.
He pounded his fists against the thick planks of the temple door. The planks, each as thick as railway sleeper, bound in iron to the doors hinges, shook violently but held. A shower of dust and debris fell from the arch above the door. “Pool maintenance! Hello!!”
To the left of the door grit and broken masonry lay around the gargoyle he’d knocked off its column. It seemed to look at him with sadness in its stone eyes. One of its wings hung curled over it. Like it’d been cowed by Ryan’s violent outburst. The gargoyle on the other column did that eerie rotating thing again. Last time, Ryan had been hit by a wall of brain fog and a killer headache right after that thing looked at him.
“Ok, dammit!” Ryan said, backing away from the door, palms held up. “Listen to me, I do pool service, pumps, cleaning, that sort of thing. Yeah?”
Ryan stepped back onto the top step and scanned the portico above the temples doors. Again a scrolling message appeared there, the graven stone letters reforming into a marching line of text. The tinny voice accompanied the display.
It’s your job, Ryan. Poor performance has consequences. I know you want to do your job well.
“My job?!” Ryan shouted at the temple.
It’s your first day. Let’s see how you do with a few simple killings to start off with, shall we?
Above the scrolling messages on the triangular area above the temple’s entrance, the carvings in relief caught Ryan’s eye. ‘Portico’ and ‘relief’ were words Mr Xanthopolous had used. That’s what he called the plaster mouldings above the front of his ornate pool-house. He liked things like that. He had some nice paintings too.
But these ones just moved. Ryan’s mouth fell open and he clapped his hand to his thighs.
Moving carvings. No way. He shaded his eyes with a big flat hand.
Two figures that had been triumphant soldiers now stood next to a laden cart in front of a simple house with a distinctive steep roof. Almost like a Swiss chalet. Despite being carved in stone they animated and began to run, only to be intercepted by a large solid figure, with no hair, who grabbed them, one in each hand. And squished. Their heads rolled onto the ground and then the grisly tableau morphed back into its original display.
Report back here when you’re done, and we’ll feed you again. Ok, Ryan?
Ryan’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. He slowly shook his head.
❖
Overhead more black “v” shaped darts flapped across the sky. So far above that the streaky pink and purple clouds were closer. Those must be really big birds. The two suns had moved across the sky and the smaller one neared the tops of the mountain range.
Ryan’s thoughts raced, but everything about this place, what he saw and heard, even his own body was wrong. Patterns he always followed - creature of habit that he was - now betrayed him.
His signature lop-sided grin that always seemed to get him out of trouble, now looked menacing, when he’d seen it in the reflection of the pool earlier. The clever hands he’d gotten from his teacher mom, capable of fixing most broken things he faced, now had broad flat fingers, blunt instruments of destruction. His limbs heavy and solid.
He’d always been light and fast on his feet. Not now. How had he been able to shake that whole door? Even the evidence of his own eyes did not make sense.
Time to go, Ryan.
The stilted voice, its source uncertain, accompanied a message that scrolled across the base of the two pillars closest to him. The text repeated as it scrolled, followed by a pictogram of a house and a pointing finger.
They do emojis? What fresh hell is this? Ryan scanned around the plaza, but no-one else was near. A weather vane moved slowly in the breeze on top of the small building at the edge of the precipice. It became an exclamation mark, rotated a few times and then transformed back into an old rusting weather vane.
Ryan clasped his hands in front of him, walking forward to address the gargoyle that still stood on its pillar.
“Hello! You can see me! I know you’re in there!” Ryan said to the doors, one palm on his chest. “Can we just talk please?”
The gargoyle, to Ryan’s right, slightly bigger than its bookend pair, sat on top of its column. It furrowed its brow a little.
Some fancy animatronics. That’s all it was.
It gazed down at the bereft figure of its partner lying on the ground and let out a reedy bark.
BRRAAARRK.
It sounded for all the world like an order. A warning tone. Like a backing alarm on a truck. More clever mechanisms. Had to be.
The other gargoyle, the one Ryan had set down, rolled its eyes and burbled plaintively. It gave out a faint metallic sound, an old-school wind-up alarm clock lost in your sock drawer.
Brrrr-aarr-rrk.
BRARK.
The big gargoyle gave out one last grating bark. The one on the ground almost looked scared the way it averted its eyes.
Then the big one turned and stared directly at Ryan. It’s beak parted, revealing a forked tongue. A subsonic shriek reverberated in Ryan’s skull, pain ripped through his body. He gritted his teeth, dropped his left shoulder and charged.
The fog began to close in. Ryan legs moved through mud. The inaudible skull-smashing cry shut down every thought.
Consciousness gone, he collided full speed with the pillar. Through the fog he saw the creature’s face drop and eyes widen as it fell. Its stone wings flapped once, uselessly. It slammed into the stone paving at Ryan’s feet.
It’s eyes closed. And the fog began to lift. The damn thing is alive. This just got more impossible by the minute.
The gargoyle lay with its wing bent underneath it and its scrawny neck twisted toward the door. The creature faced away from Ryan. Beneath it spread rubble from the now broken top of its column, which leaned crazily against the front of the temple.
He’d given the thing a headache but despite the fall the big gargoyle still moved, its free wing flapping slowly. The small gargoyle, the one Ryan had caught, had suffered almost no damage.
Actually it wasn’t flapping. It’s waving. It gestured to its mate.
These are cameras. Fancy cameras. Not alive. Not alive. Mr Xanthopolous had a gargoyle and it was stone, from a place that made headstones and the like. These things do not move.
The smaller gargoyle, raised itself painfully on one wing and rotated its head toward the doors and let out a low warbling tone. A call for help.
❖
The three of them remained rooted to the spot for a few beats. A stand-off. The last strands of the mind fog lifted and a parade of ill-formed plans trudged through Ryan’s mind.
He could run up the valley toward the hills over behind the temple. Ryan cast around and cupped his hands over his eyes squinting toward the jagged hills and mountains the hemmed the plain on all sides. That stone structure which gleamed in the late suns, sat at the top of sheer, towering cliffs. Falling from that or climbing in the snow? Either of those options would be just a fast or slow death.
That left finding a way down the precipice. That at least seemed to be what the occupants of the temple wanted of him.
The big gargoyle tried to extricate its injured wing. It’s beak opened. Its tongue flicked.
That beak, the source of the mind numbing fog and painful shrieking sound, opened. And it screwed its neck around toward Ryan.
“No you don’t,” Ryan said.
He bent, grabbed the thing in both hands, as it screeched its grating warning cry. Ryan braced and threw it with all his might at the door.
The doors shook and the timbers splintered. The iron bound hardwood held fast. The creature’s wings flattened against the unforgiving surface and its head smashed against an iron studded hinge. It toppled to the ground, its neck snapped.
❖
It wasn’t alive. Its a camera, animatronic. Thing. Whatever.
Ryan shook himself. He could never kick a dog, or hurt a living thing. But he had smashed a TV remote or two, and lost his temper with a bicycle pump one time.
He poked the inert broken gargoyle. He grabbed its shoulder and rolled it back and forth. Its eyes stayed shut and the head lolled on its broken neck.
The small gargoyle righted itself, and took a couple of steps toward its fallen brethren. It tipped its head on one side, then pecked it on the leg.
Brarrrkk!
The small gargoyle cried out, jumped up and ran around to Ryan. Before he could straighten up the creature put both its fore-feet on Ryans arm. It seemed to be looking over Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan took a few steps back out from under the portico and turned.
Brarrrkk!
In the sky above three large black v-shaped forms circled, and began to descend. Huge pointed wings, and wicked long beaks appeared in silhouette against the lilac sky. And they carried cargo on their backs.
The temple was quiet. But the message still scrolled around the foot of the two columns.
Time to go, Ryan.
No voice accompanied it. The text was followed by a pictogram of a house and a pointing finger.
Ryan ran.
❖
Running did not correctly describe what Ryan did. Lumbering maybe.
But he closed the ground between himself and the small structure at the top of the precipice as fast as he could. Above small stone and timber building the weather vane transformed once again into a rotating exclamation mark. At this distance it looked like a mine head, or old gear shed. Dust covered cart tracks led away from a small landing in front of it. The rear of the structure extended off its foundations and out over the precipice.
“Crap!” Ryan shouted. His voice echoed off the hills.
Cracks ran back from the edge of the precipice into the grassland delta he stood on, and Ryan skidded to a halt right in front of one. He’d have to zig-zag around. Yellow-brown tussock had almost obscured the fissure until it was too late. Good to remember that there’s no parks and recreation folks sign-posting this kind of hazard.
Brark!
Feet skidded to Ryan’s left. If he could’ve jumped he would have leapt out of his skin. A shower of dust kicked up and the gargoyle circled around him, scampering like a goddamned cocker spaniel, despite the clumsy weight of its stone wings.
Ryan almost smiled, then caught himself. The awful mind jammer shriek would be the worst possible thing right as he came close to toppling into a crevasse. He stepped warily away from the creature and headed for the shed again.
“Go away!” Ryan shouted.
The creature sat on its haunches, in front of the crevasse, watching him. It flicked its eyes up to the sky in the direction they’d come from.
The dark flyers now circled around the temple only a few hundred feet above the plaza. One dropped its feet and landed. It’s huge wingspan as it braked near covered the width of the plaza. The other two came in after it, shaking themselves as giant muscles rippled in the dark blue-grey flesh of their chests. It was for all the world like a queue of 747s landing at an airport. Figures that looked like ants compared to the size of the flying beasts moved off their backs, and down ladders.
Ryan picked up the pace and made for the building. With a noisy clumping, scampering gait the gargoyle followed.
❖
As Ryan reached the shed, the weather vane turned from an eerie exclamation mark into a rusty feature again. He stepped on to the loading dock, yanked open one of the two front doors and stepped inside. No-one inside. And no sign of anyone following. For now.
He slammed the doors and waited a beat for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. A large piece of equipment stood at one side, bolted to the stone foundations. Wind gusts rushing past the door outside punctuated the silence.
A wooden tray with some rusty wrenches, a wooden mallet and a pry bar sat on a footstool next to the equipment. On the wall a broom, and a ladder hung on hooks. All were covered in dust and grime. They looked a bit small, like toys. The bright outline of an other door opened beyond the machine. It had to lead out over the cliff face.
Could be a place to hole up for a while. Take stock, and make a plan.
Ryan cracked the door back open to check activity back at the temple. The winged monsters surrounded by a dozen moving dots of activity, indicated the huge beasts still being loaded or unloaded. Barrels carried up and down the ladders could be empty or full. Impossible to tell from from this distance.
Brark. Brark.
The door abruptly nudged open wide and the gargoyle shot in. It sniffed the equipment, ran around to the other set of doors and then turned to look at Ryan.
“What the hell are you doing here, hey?” Ryan said, surprising himself. It was how he talked to Mr Xanthopolous’ dachshund Phoebe.
Brark.
The creature lowered its head, and then nosed up against the doors, the ones over the cliffs. It looked back at Ryan.
“You want outside?” Ryan said. The creature put its front feet on the door. Ryan opened it.
The wind nearly snatched the door out of his hand. Then the view took his breath away. A set of undulating mountain ranges stretched as far as he could see in the distance ahead, and to his left as the ranges descended into hills, orange dust clouds rose up to obscure the view. Dimly through the dust a coastline snaked along, punctuated by two promontories. The ranges rose to snow capped peaks on the right.
And in front of them hung a platform suspended by ropes. No guardrails, nothing. Chain ran to a hook and eye above where the rope tied off and ran back inside to the winch - for that is what the equipment had to be.
“Wow. Some place,” Ryan said. He shook his head at the fact he was talking to a little winged demon as though it had a pedigree.
Brark! Brark.
The creature seemed to understand him. It was probably going off the tone of his voice. Just like Phoebe did. Makes sense.
Brarrkk!!
The gargoyle ran back to the entrance door pawed at it and looked back at Ryan. It made the low grating sound.
Ryan went back to the front doors.
“Damn it. OK, I’m going to call you Gary. Gary, the gargoyle,” Ryan said, grasping the bridge of his nose and sighing. He opened the door a crack. “What is it Gary? It thought you wanted the other doors?”
In the distance walked a figure. A silhouette, carrying a long . Something out of an old Clint Eastwood movie. This gun-slinger wore a pack and over one shoulder a long object. The giant discs of the suns behind the stranger.
Whoever it was came from the plaza, and strode directly toward them. The purposeful look to the figure’s stride and that rod, whatever it was — neither were things that Ryan wanted to wait to find out about.
Getting on that platform and winding it down the precipice meant that they could put a speed bump in front of whomever was coming.
“Come on Gary,” Ryan said. “Time to get out of here.”
