Part One: The Shaman’s Path

“The adversary that refuses to die is not nearly as dangerous as the one who refuses to stay dead.” –William Henry Harrison

It began on a rainy Halloween night in Detroit. I was oblivious at the time, but the die was cast. The threads of fate were stitched in that cold, callous darkness. I was perched in the branches of a tree in the distant suburbs, celebrating the holiday in my usual way—dressed studiously as King Arthur, drinking Kraken Rum from a gas can, and shouting at passing children as they plundered the residents for candy. The weather should have kept me from partaking, but the fuel of my lifestyle urged me on, and the storm fell into the background. The utter joy of watching mask-clad heathens plummet face first into the ditch below as I frightened the last trace of religion from their fragile bones was greater than most tangible things in this world.

The haze of the night evolved into a foggy blur. As it wound on it condensed around me and made the air heavy. The more it constricted, the less I could focus. As I at last lost myself, it gave way, and when it parted I welcomed the waiting blackout and the absence of memory it brought as a gift. I can hardly imagine the horror it spared me, and I have no intimation of how I came to be sleeping in the basement of an abandoned house.

I did not let that keep me down. I rose with the sun and shook off the fetters of the night. I crept from the dwelling and made my way to my car, which I was relieved to find parked discreetly nearby. I set about seeking nourishment to quiet the demands of my physical form. It came in the form of fruit and bread from a nondescript market, and I gorged myself on it as I traveled through the dreary morning sunshine. Rote memory carried me home, and before I realized it I was in my driveway.

Something was awry.

My front gate was open. It is a burdensome and rusty contraption made of wrought iron that is difficult to move with intent. There was no way the prior night’s storm could have been the cause. I made my way through it and found muddy footprints leading up and back down the concrete steps. The prints were small and animal in nature, but a closer glance revealed them to be bipedal. A pit of despair grew in my gut. I rushed onto the porch and found my front door ajar with visible signs of forced entry.

I wanted to scream. I looked out to the street and to the abandoned or torched out houses beyond. There was no hope of a witness in this neighborhood, but there was also no safe place to hide. I knew immediately that the descending steps were those of final departure, that I would find no one inside. I listened at the opening and the sterile silence confirmed it. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the echo of sirens and the barking of dogs, but nothing emanated from within.

I crossed the threshold and cringed as the door creaked on its hinges. I left it open and made my way through the main floor of the house. The muddy prints soiled every room, but for the most part things remained undisturbed. The basement door was tampered with but still secure, the lock being too high or too complex to bother with. It was in the kitchen that I found the first evidence of larceny.

A quick survey revealed the absence of a large wooden spoon, two apples, and a pot holder. Scrambling further I discovered the picture of Elvis Presley that had been taped to the refrigerator was gone, as was a liter of single-malt scotch and a jar of honey. I choked back my disgust as I imagined the kind of savage that would steal these things. I pushed it from my mind, and headed upstairs.

The steps creaked beneath my determination, and I found pieces of my bedroom door strewn about the top few. It was forced open violently, and I stopped to shake my head in wonder at the vandalism applied to an unlocked door. I pushed it open and stepped into the room with my eyes closed, needing a moment before the ugly truth punched me in the chest.

There was a small pedestal on the mantle above the stone fireplace. Upon it was the missing wooden spoon and a half-eaten apple. Missing from it was a badly damaged copy of the Necronomicon that I had spent the prior month diligently restoring. My work was not complete, but most of the passages were once again intact and legible. Or they had been when I placed it there before I left the prior morning. The book was the most valuable thing in my home, as well as the most dangerous, and whomever the fiend was that took it came specifically to do so.

A half-hearted look around the room took away any hope the book had been cast aside. There was mud leading into the ritual chamber and the door was open. Fear surged through me, but I choked it down and made my way inside. Trying to prepare for a second wave of horror and violation, I flipped on the light and looked about in panic.

The other apple was at my feet, a few bites missing and haplessly discarded. The floor was also home to the empty whiskey bottle and the pot holder, the latter of which was lathered in some putrid yellowish residue. Against the wall, the large ebony cabinet that housed many secrets and supplies was marred with claw marks around the edges of the door, but it remained closed and secure. Taped to its face was the picture of Elvis, altered with a red crayon to look like some kind of devil with a stain or smudge on his forehead. I reached out and pulled it down, and upon the back I found a crudely scribbled message:

Shaman,

I took your fancy book. I need its secrets. Now that you fixed it I can read them. I will use them to win the Grand Prix in New Jersey. Don’t be mad. I promise not to show anyone or set it on fire or lose it or use it as a plate or draw pictures on it. You can have it back when I am done. Thank you for the food and the potion.

-Squee

Motherfucker.

Two days prior, when I should have been out setting fires, I completed the translation of the most powerful and dangerous passage contained in the Necronomicon. The very words I worked so hard to bring back to life would now cause only death. There was no way he could control the power he possessed, and his determination to use the book put everyone in danger. Not only would the other competitors risk glory in each battle, but they would risk their very existence just by being there.

But it was much worse than that. The danger would not be confined to the Grand Prix. I had translated rituals that could undo the fabric of time. He could unwittingly lay waste to everything that was, is, and shall come to be. With the wrong utterance Squee could unleash an Evil greater than anything that has walked the Earth during mortal times. He could bring the darkness of the past or the merciless light of the future to smother out the climate of the present. He had to be stopped at all costs.

This was too much for my sober mind. The pressure grew with the realization of what I had inevitably set into motion. I reached for the chain around my neck and tugged it until the small silver key attached fell loose and into my grasp. There was no visible lock on the cabinet, just the carved doors and the suggestiveness of where a lock should be. I inserted the key not into the doors but into the space between. The key vanished and I pulled back my hand. An unnatural silence constricted the air before giving way to a cosmic rumble as the cabinet slowly opened.

It occurred to me as I watched the ritual cabinet open that the Necronomicon would have been far safer inside than it was displayed on the mantle. I wondered for a moment if I had been foolish to leave it out but decided there must have been a reason for my haphazardness and cast the notion aside. When the doors completely unfolded I reached into the spinning darkness and wrapped my fingers around something cold. I lifted the device from the astral shelf upon which it rested and pulled it into the room. It was the most sacred and glorious of all ritual devices. I stepped back and held it up to the light, taking in the beauty of my most cherished possession:

The Goblin Charbelcher.

With an ample supply of green mana, I activated it and let it burn the world around me into nothing. When only my mind and my spirit remained, they drifted tranquilly in the Void. It was here that I could collect the shards of this shattered reality to make sense of them. I could fondle each piece individually, and when I understood them fully I could arrange them into my likeness. I would stare at them as a whole and they would stare back until we were one and the same: my mind and its reflection in the Abyss. When I did I found the understanding I sought.

I had taken a long hiatus from my work as a vigilante, retiring to a quiet and rather passive life as a Shaman, but I still knew how to blaze a trail in the name of justice. The rust of solitude would not keep me from rising to the challenge. I could not let this worldgorging dragon of a threat tear asunder all that was sacred and free. If I sat idly by and let it swallow the world I once fought so hard to protect, I would be just as much to blame as the villain who sought to unleash it.

I would go to New Jersey. I would find Squee. I would recover the Necronomicon. I would save the world.