A Walk in the Dark Chapter 1 by Maggie Finson

To think I started the day thinking it was going to be a good one. Well it should have been, but I’ll get to all that in a while here. I’ve been told it’s best to tell a story from the beginning so that’s what I’m going to do. I hope.

I’d taken a few days off work, I was a network administrator for a large and well known company, because one of my oldest friends was going to be in town for a few days and I’d promised to show him around and all the attendant stuff a thirty something ex geek would do with an old friend. Okay, not so ex geek after all, but at least now I had money, a good job, and a fiancée.

My phone beeped that I’d received a message and I checked to find that it was from aforementioned fiancée Carolyn Masters. “Dylan, just a reminder that our reservations are made for dinner and Fiona is really looking forward to meeting Sam. See you there, dear.”

With a grin, I texted her. Wouldn’t miss it, love. Then headed out to meet Sam.

Oh, yeah. Dylan, that’s me, or was, Dylan Thomas Ames. And yeah I know. Trust me I caught all kinds of crap over that name when I was growing up and still do off and on, and no, I’m not in the least of a poetic bent. I’m a techie, period. Oh I still enjoy SF and Fantasy books and movies, but trust me, I wasn’t one to try and write the stuff.

My friend, Sam, Samuel James Walken, and I had met in high school. We were a pair of geeks who spent a lot of time avoiding the bullies and other hazards of high school geekdom. Sam went on to get an engineering degree and was now owner and operator of a successful contracting business. I was looking forward to seeing him again and was abuzz with plans for the day and evening. He’d shown me the town when I visited him in St. Louis, and I fully intended to return the favor now that he was in Kansas City.

So I was waiting for him at the airport. He hadn’t driven because he had a series of meetings in New York once our three day fling was over with and would fly straight there from here. So I was playing chauffeur along with tour guide over the next few days.

“Hey, Sam!” I waved as he left the gate and joined him on the way to baggage claim. “I brought a cart, just in case.”

Sam was big, like in NFL linebacker big. He’d shot up to six feet plus and over two hundred pounds after high school leaving poor me in the dust there. Oh, I was fit — worked out in the gym every day I could, but my own slender five eight frame was pretty well dwarfed beside him.

“Still keeping that runner’s build, I see.” Sam grinned as we shook hands. “Still looks good on you, Dylan.”

“And you still look like you terrify quarterbacks for a living.” I chuckled. “How you been?”

“Good, good.” He answered. “Business hit a winter lull, so I decided to take a few days off, like I told you. So you’re getting married?”

“Yeah.” I nodded with a smile. “Carolyn’s a great gal, I think you’ll like her. She has a friend named Fiona who’s going to be with us tonight and let me tell you, if I wasn’t already with Carolyn and she wouldn’t gut me and smoke what was left for even thinking this, I’d go after her in a heartbeat.”

“But you haven’t have you?” Sam winked at me.

“Hell no.” I answer with a sigh. “That wouldn’t be right, or fair to Carolyn or Fiona. Plus I’d feel like a blue ribbon jerk if I even really did more than fantasize about it off and on.”

“Once a geek…” Sam chuckled.

“Always a geek.” I laughed. “We just can’t not look at pretty girls, you know, even if they are out of reach.”

“Too true, my friend, too true.” Sam joined my laughter as we loaded his luggage onto the cart.

Once in the car and on the highway headed south towards Kansas City proper (KCI is north of town by a few miles) we started talking again. “So, anything in particular you’d like to do while you’re here?”

“Well, there is the Rams/Chief’s game Sunday.” He answered.

“Got the tickets already.” I answered. “Fifty yard line just high enough to see everything.”

“Great.” Sam grinned evilly. “I should warn you that I intend to wear my Ram’s jacket to the game.”

“Like I expected less?” I chuckled.

There was some kind of distortion at the edge of my vision, not anything really annoying, just a bluish shimmer. I blinked and shook my head and it seemed to be gone. Sam gave me a look and I shrugged. “Just something in my eye, it’s okay.”

“There’s a con in town I’d like to visit if you don’t mind.” Sam told me after shaking his own head and giving me a curious look that faded back into his usual grin.

“Yeah, Com Con.” I nodded. It was fairly big, and well organized comics and gaming Con, and I’d expected Sam to bring it up. “I think we could spend the day there, but we have to meet Carolyn and Fiona in the plaza at eight.”

“Good enough, buddy.” Sam nodded and I took the exit that would get us to downtown and the convention center where the con was being held. Hey! What can I say? We’re both still geeks and enjoy things like that.

Once in the parking garage we headed towards the elevators when Sam stopped and looked off to the side. “You see that?”

That was the shimmering in the air I’d noticed on the drive from the airport, except it was bigger, a lot bigger. “Uhh, big blue shimmery thing off to the left there?”

“That’s it.” Sam nodded while getting a thoughtful look on his face. “What do you think it is? Some gimmick for the Con?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t think they were allowed to play in the parking lot.” I answered warily as the thing grew some more and started in our direction. “Just in case let’s get to the elevators now.”

“Good plan.” Sam answered.

Before our hindbrains had time to scream ‘RUN!’ the thing had expanded and swooped in on us.

The blue thing swallowed us. Just like that. One second we were in a normal parking garage then next…

“What was that thing?” Sam questioned as he slowly untangled his bulk from my own slender one and carefully stood up.

“Don’t ask me.” I groaned — he’d landed on top of me when we were unceremoniously dumped on the stone floor of wherever that weird blue disk had brought us. “More to the point, where are we?”

“Good question.” Sam answered while we both gave our surroundings a look. Stone walls, dressed and fitted, stone flags for flooring, and one really solid looking wooden door at one end made of what looked like planks big enough to be railroad ties. Oh, yeah there were torches on the walls. But those burned without smoke and flames they gave off were an unwavering yellow-white that didn’t seem to give off heat. Which would have been welcome if we hadn’t been dressed for being outdoors in December. The place was kind of chilly.

Sometimes, for some unlucky people, life veers suddenly to the left into something so weird you just know things are never going to be the same again. Obviously, this was one of those times.

Which got us back to where we were. Ten by ten room, made of stone, torches, no furniture or even a pot for emergency calls of nature, really heavy door — locked, we checked that first thing once the shock wore off a bit — and with not the slightest idea about what had happened to us or what this place was.

“I don’t think we’re at the convention.” I let out a sigh. “Or even in Kansas any more.”

“It was in Missouri.” Sam absently answered while still checking out the stonework.

“Whatever.” I said while trying to make sense of what had just happened to us.

“Alien abduction?” Sam questioned once we’d exhausted any ideas for getting out of the place.

“Nah.” I shook my head. “I can’t see aliens using stone in their spaceships, can you?”

“Probably not.” He admitted. “Then what?”

“Uhh, I think we’re about to find out.” I pointed at the door as the sound of a heavy bolt being thrown was followed by it smoothly and noiselessly opening outwards. Well, at least it didn’t creak ominously…

“Is that armor their wearing?” Sam questioned probably to avoid discussing what our captors looked like. They sure weren’t human, or little green guys.

They were green, sort of, but big. Bigger than Sam, with rough looking skin, little red eyes set deeply into sockets of skulls that would have looked right in place on a gorilla, except for the jagged fangs protruding from their lower jaws. And they were wearing armor, leather, iron, and some steel it looked like. Oh yeah, they were brandishing some very real very nasty looking swords and axes in gestures which I belatedly figured out meant they wanted us to go with them.

“Uhh, yeah, it’s armor.” I agreed then added as the biggest one began to look impatient with us. “I think we’re supposed to go with them.”

“Hope they aren’t hungry.” Sam whispered as we left the cell surrounded by the creatures. Oh yeah, they smelled really bad. Like a combination of carrion and lack of a bath for like — all their lives.

“What are we going to do if they are?” I questioned. “Give them indigestion? I can’t think of anything else right now.”

“Me neither.” Sam answered quietly.

We were hustled down more stone corridors, lit by the same kind of torches our — umm — cell had sported. There were arches along the way, but all we could really see were rapid glimpses of large chambers that were too dim to really make much out, or brightly lit ones that glittered with gold, and what looked like silk in an eye branding riot of colors.

Our escort harried us along until our group stopped in front of a huge set of doors made of some dull grey metal guarded by a pair of things even bigger than our aromatic companions. And no, they didn’t smell any better either.

One of those pushed open the enormous doors and again we were hustled along without being given time to even look at where we were going. The doors, by the way, closed with a very final sounding thud behind us.

Sam and I were moved to stand in circles surrounded with some kind of writing that began glowing softly once were inside them — separate circles, by the way then were left to catch our breaths and take in our surroundings.

Surreal comes to mind as a description. Hogwarts gone bad is another thing I thought of.

The place looked like a combination of old fashioned chemistry lab, library, and soup kitchen. There were tables filled with glassware, some of it containing things that fumed, burbled, and did other unpleasant things, shelves of huge books with what had to have been scrolls scattered into the mix, and some kind of big pot at a simmer at one end. “Is this where we become dinner?”

“No, human.” A deep, amused voice answered and I turned to see where that came from. I was kind of sorry I did.

He looked like something out a really bad fantasy movie, or an old D&D source book. Tall, cadaverously pale, thin enough to appear emaciated, wearing shimmering robes of some dark material that actually hurt to look at, and had the prerequisite long white beard, even if it was a bit on the wispy side. With a long mustache that went with the beard.

Oh, yeah, his eyes were solid black, no pupil, or iris, just black. And they were looking right at me.

“I am Kae’song.” He, it was a he gave me a long careful looking over then smiled with teeth sharp enough to scare a self respecting shark. “Welcome to my citadel.”

Great. We’d landed in some weird, and really bad Fu Manchu movie.