Posted on February 17, 2009

Karaoke Quintessence: Chapter 9: Rabbit Hole

Dale never had a chance to ask his questions, though.  Not that Jimmy cared.  With what happened next, he didn’t care about much of anything beyond continuing to live—and not shitting himself.

They were just about to leave the cabin, Dale in front with is gun out, Danny limping along behind, and Jimmy bringing up the rear, when things got really weird.  Danny had reach down and taken the staff from the man who’d hit him.  “I’m going to keep it,” Danny said and Dale only nodded.  Jimmy shrugged.  What did it matter what the kid did with that thing?

But when Danny tried to carry the staff out of the cabin, he couldn’t.  It just wouldn’t go through the door.  Dale walked out just fine, but Danny slammed into something, an emptiness blocking the exit.  Jimmy slammed into him, swore, and, when she saw what was happening, said, “Just drop the damn thing, son.  If it ain’t coming out, just leave—”

He stopped, cut off before finishing, when the staff began to glow.  Danny screamed and tried to drop it, but couldn’t.  The thing was glued to his hands and the light, white and pulsing, spread from its top, down the length, and up Danny’s arms.  Jimmy grabbed him by the shoulders and jerked him backward, into the cabin.  

Dale shouted in surprise at the light and stepped back into the room with them.  He didn’t have any trouble going through the door.  Whatever it was that had blocked Danny, it seemed only to work in one direction.

Danny continued to scream.  Jimmy backed away from him, not wanting to get the stuff on his cloths should it decide to spread.  Dale was trying to grab the staff away from Danny, but it wouldn’t come loose.  Jimmy just stood still, not sure what he could do.  This looked like bad mojo, indeed.  And he’d seen enough bad mojo in his time to know that the best course of action was usually to avoid the shit.

Dale wasn’t going to let him do that, however.  “Help me,” Dale called to him.

Jimmy shrugged.  He took another step back.

“Get your fat fucking ass over here and help me,” Dale said.

Jimmy shrugged again, but this time stepped forward.  He put his hands on the staff, expecting it to be hot, but finding it instead freezing cold.  Danny was ridged, the staff held out in front of him, parallel to the floor.  The light had nearly covered his body, with hold his head and feet free.

Jimmy pulled.  Together, he and Dale managed only to drag Danny further into the room, until they were standing near the back windows.  But the staff wouldn’t come free.

Jimmy was working up the nerve to let go, to forget about Danny and this Alex Dale guy and just get the fuck out of here, when a bald man with a tattoo around his head stepped into the doorway.  The light from the staff meant Jimmy had no problem seeing the shock and then anger on his face.

Jimmy looked at Dale and Dale looked at the man.  Recognition flashed on Dale’s features.

“Oh, shit.” The man in the doorway said.  “Oh, goddamn shit.”

He took a single step into the cabin and took something from his pocket.  Jimmy and Dale just stood watching.  Danny didn’t move and didn’t give any indication of being aware of his situation.

And then the tattooed guy started chanting.

Dale was reaching for his gun, which he’d put away in the holster when he came back to help Danny, and Jimmy was deciding for the second time that evening that he was very surely going to die, when the tattooed guy hurled the thing in his hand onto the filthy wood floor of the cabin.  It bounced one and landed near the center of the room, six feet from where Jimmy stood.

Jimmy looked down at it.  Sticking up from the wood was a long, thin knife.  Its blade gleamed silver in the light from the torch, and the handle was five inch bar of dull grey.  A knife? Jimmy thought.  Did he try to throw a knife at us?  Did he really—

Danny stopped screaming.  Dale had the gun out and was aiming it at the tattooed guy.  And then Jimmy saw that the light from the staff had begun to leave Danny and was flowing through the air toward the knife.  As soon as they touched, the knife started to turn, slowly at first and then faster.  Dale lowered his gun, no longer paying any attention to his target.

The knife turned, and turned—and Jimmy realized that the floor was turning with it.  Like water in a whirlpool, the wood twisted and warped, the vortex growing, coming closer and closer to engulfing the entire cabin, the three of them included.

Jimmy glanced at the door.  It was closed and the tattooed guy was gone.  Behind him, he heard glass break and turned to see Dale knocking the panes out of one of the windows.  Even with all four gone, however, the opening wasn’t big enough for any of them.

And so Jimmy prepared himself for death.  He’d had a good life, been given the opportunity to do a lot of things most people wouldn’t even consider possible.  If he died now, he wouldn’t have much to complain about.

The vortex continued to grow.  The knife had long vanished and now there was just a huge hole in the middle of the floor, its edges less than three feet from the walls.  Jimmy pressed against the back of the cabin.  The light from the staff faded away completely and Danny dropped the staff.  It rolled down the incline and vanished into the opening.

Jimmy realized he was screaming and that Danny was doing the same.  Except now the screams from Danny weren’t because of the staff and the pain it caused—they were recognition of just how fucked the three of them were.

Dale stood quietly in the awful noise of the spinning floor.  He remained that way even when the vortex swallowed them.