Destination: Elsewhere

          It was the steady drip of water onto his left cheek that brought Jack back into the waking world. Sliding away from the dripping water, he inspected the small cave in which he had ventured to spend the night. A storm had blown in during the night, and it was raining heavily outside the cave. Several small streams of water poured from the ceiling or ran down the walls, but not enough to endanger his small fire or stack of dry wood. Throwing a couple of sticks of the latter onto the former, he worked the small fire into a blaze of warm light.
         Outside, it was still dark; a quarter after five in the morning, according to Jack's watch. He sat basking in the warmth of the fire, having made himself a cup of hot chocolate. Lighting a cigarette, he debated eating a meal of trail rations now, or hiking the last five miles into the next town to get breakfast.

Dingy weather to hike in on an empty stomach, though, Jack thought.

         At that moment, as if in response to his remark, the rain ceased abruptly. A brisk wind blew in, scattering the clouds. After a few moments it was plainly visible that the sky was beginning to lighten with the coming of day.
         Taking from his pocket a small zip-lock baggie, Jack snuffed his cigarette and placed the butt inside the baggie with the others he had collected. Jack knew that every cigarette butt thrown down by a careless person contaminates two square feet of soil. He always carried his butts out of the forest with him, to dispose of properly.

"Alright," he said aloud, "I guess there's no time like the present."

         It took him less than five minutes to pack his belongings into his backpack. Kicking dirt over the fire to smother it, Jack picked up his walking stick and left the cave. The upper edge of the sun was just beginning to peek over the mountains to the east. The forest that surrounded the cave was alive with birdsong. Travelling west from the cave a few hundred feet, Jack pushed through a small thicket onto a well-trodden path. Heading south, he estimated he could make the five mile hike in under two hours.
          Enjoying an excellent steak omelett at the Clear Creek Inn, Jack was reading the New York Times and catching up on current world events, when a rumbling sound drew his attention to the front windows of the inn just in time to see a midnight black hot rod back into a parking spot out front. Jack knew old cars, especially the ones he liked. Here was one he loved; the car of his dreams. A 1968 Dodge Charger, with what sounded like a 440 Magnum under the hood.

***

         In the world of Grimh, a wizard's apprentice, confident that his master would be occupied at the royal ball for hours to come, began preparations for a spell he had been longing to try. His master had said he wasn't yet ready to wield such power, but this apprentice knew he could control it. He was sure his master was just being overly cautious.

***

         Jack watched the owner of the Charger emerge. "Lucky son of a bitch, cruising around in a ride like that," Jack murmered.

         The Charger's driver was of rather unimpressive height and build, with a gleamingly bald head. A mouth curved in a mishievous smile was framed by a mustache and goatee of indeterminate color, being a mixture of blonde, black, red and brown hairs.
         He wore a leather motorcycle jacket adorned with chains, coins, medalions, and numerous other trinkets. Under the jacket he wore a simple black t-shirt. Faded jeans and black work boots completed the outfit. Once inside the inn, the newcomer was shown to an empty booth in sight of Jack, where he placed an order for french toast and capuccino.

***

         In a little-used cellar of his master's estate, the apprentice known as Karlo, using chalk made from the crushed bones of an unborn child, traced a perfect, unbroken circle on the floor. Using a mortar made from the skull of a man hanged for crimes he didn't commit, Karlo ground together a precise mixture of fresh thyme, octopus eggs, and frog hairs. This mixture he then used to draw a complex design inside the circle, taking care to make no mistakes. The slightest mishap in the mixing of ingredients, drawing of the idiogram, or recitation of the incantation, could result in disasterous effects.

***

         Finishing his breakfast, Jack paid his bill and strolled over to the bald new-comer's table.

"Morning. Name's Jack. That's a sweet ride you got out there."

"Thanks, I rebuilt it myself. My friends call me Roach."" The stranger stuck out his hand. After shaking, Jack sat in the booth across from Roach.

"You from around here?"

"No," Roach replied, "just passing through."

"Yeah, same here."

"Hitchiking?"

"Sort of. Just hiking mostly. I haven't tried to hitch many rides. I spend most of my time on the hiking trails. It's a lot prettier out there than walking down the side of some road. Even these beautiful mountain roads."

"Well," Roach thought for a moment. "There's a big storm front moving in from the north, following that one last night. Be a bad one to get caught out in. Want to ride along with me for a while? I could sure use someone to talk to, anyway."

"Which way you headed?"

"West. I wanna go see the home of an old hero of mine in a little town called Woody Creek."

"Woody Creek", Jack said thoughtfully. "You mean Hunter Thompson?"

"Yeah, I've always wanted to try to meet him."

"Man, he's one of my heroes, too. I'd love to tag along with you for that."

"Cool, then it's settled." Roach drained the last of his capuccino. "Let me pay my tab, and we'll head out." As Roach signalled the waitress, Jack saw that the sky had become dark and foreboding outside.

         Stowing his gear in the Charger's voluminous trunk, which also contained a green army duffle bag, a set of golf clubs and a skateboard, Jack climbed into the passenger seat of the pristine '68 street rod, the inside of which was as well kept as the exterior. Tucked and rolled leather seats and door panels gleamed like new. The only thing slightly out of place in the classicaly-restored car was the modern sterio and cd player. IN the backseat was a green cooler and a battered, sticker-covered guitar case. Some of the stickers on the case seemed odd. For instance, what language was that one in, the one with what looked like a sun going supernova emblazoned on it? His attention was drawn forward again by the deep rumble of the Charger's engine roaring to life.
         With that characteristic michievous smile on his face and a glint in his eye, Roach threw her into first gear and let her rip. Tires spun, rubber squeeled, pavement whined, and smoke roiled as the Charger peeled out of the parking lot and onto the highway. Jack couldn't resist giving his best Rebel yell, in the spirit of the "Dukes of Hazard", echoed by Roach, behind the wheel with an ecstatic, almost maniacal look on his face.
         Two hours later found the duo cruising at a sedate sixty-five miles per hour as they listened to Beatles tunes on the car's sound system (another favorite the two had in common, both sharing a deep love for the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo, or "The Boys" as both Jack and Roach repeatedly reffered to their favorite band.) and spoke of old television series both had watched as children.

"Yeah, A-Team was great. I always liked Murdoch the most. That dude was a nut."

"No shit," replied Jack, "but Hanibal was the man. That dude always knew what to do. 'I love it when a plan comes together'. I love that line."

"Good point. I deffinately wouldn't have let Murdoch plan anything. No telling what that freak would have you doing."

"Yeah," Jack laughed, "probably have you dressed up in a cow costume or something, trying to distract the bad guys with a song and dance number."

         Both shared a good laugh, then fell silent for a moment as the cd player cycled to the next track. As soon as they both recognized the first four notes of "Drive My Car", their conversation resumed.

"Hey man," said Roach, "I've got some herb if you wanna smoke."

"Hell yeah, dude. I ran out about two weeks ago."

"Well there's a big bag of kind bud in the glove compartment. Why don't you roll us up a fatty?"

         Opening the compartment, Jack found a large freezer bag full of pungent, green buds. "Man, this stuff looks and smells good as hell."

"Yeah, I got it from some friends of mine that grow. Little guys really know what the hell they're doing."

"Little guys?" Jack sent Roach an odd look.

"Yeah, uh...their like, Guatemalan or something, real short, you know." Roach hoped he had covered himself well-enough on that one. It wouldn't do to let this guy know where that marvelous pot really came from. The guy would think he'd lost it.

***
         Karlo had completed the summoning circle and all his preparations. The next hour would be spent in deep meditation to clear his mind of extraneous thoughts before he began the incantation to activate the circle. His purpose was to open a portal to a place of unrivaled wealth, travel there, and return with enough of that wealth to make himself a rich man. Unable to locate an actual portal spell in his master's library, however, Karlo had decided to summon a being that had the poer to create it's own portals.

***

         After smoking the large joint that Jack had rolled, the two drifted into reminiscences about their younger days, and how easch had come to be a smoker. The weather had turned for the worse, dark clods rolling in and building menacingly above them. Laced with lightening, the clouds had so far threatened rain without delivering it. Just as the Beatles broke into "Hard Day's Night", the bottom fell out. Within a minute, Roach found himself without significant visibility. As he was about to start hitting the brakes to slow down, the damndest thing happened.

***

Korla opened his eyes and began the incantation.

"Ea ai an'aan. Klo'pek mal ush. Ea ainen ai Kos. Tol shek var munan. Kree-Ta! Kree'Ta! Kol vek Kree'Ta!"

         The smell of rotten flesh began to fill the chamber.

"By the power of three cubed, by the heart of Aravesh. By the spirit of Uluvek I invoke thee!"

         Thunder rolled in the very chamber, accompanied by subdued violet flashes like distant lightening.

"By the blood and soul of nine murderers, I summon thee!"

         Karlo upended a jar of blood collected at the execution yards of the city's prisons. Smoke, so dark that it seemed to absorb the light around it, began to spiral up from the center of the summoning circle where the blood touched it, thickening into a billious cloud of darkness, the center of which now began to pulsate with a deep, violet light.

"In my name, I, Karlo of Invey, command thee, come forth!"

         He splashed the circle with a small dish of his own blood drawn that very morning with the use of his shaving razor. The huge cloud of dark smoke took solid form horrible to behold. An amorphous mass of putrid, grey-green flesh sprouting countless long, rubbery tentacles and studded with untold numbers of violet eyes that glowed with a fierce, malignant light, and champing, frothing mouths filled with jagged black, yellow and green teeth. Karlo wasted no time in his commands, for now that he beheld the form of the being he had summoned, fear began to freeze his blood and thoughts.

"I command you to open a portal to a world of undreamed of wealth," the wizard's apprentice bellowed.

         The tentacled creature hesitated a moment, and with a deep, sinister chuckle, caused a glowing hole to appear in the air before the startled mage-in-training. Before Karlo could react, however, a massive tentacle swept down, knocking the unfortunate apprentice through the portal. The god-like entity the pitiful apprentice had summoned had detected a flaw in the materials used for the summoning circle, and therefore was not solidly under Karlo's control, as the poor apprentice had so fully believed. With a chuckle, the being caused the portal to remain open, and sent the side of it that existed in this world to a random location several hundred miles away. Then, gathering it's immense strength, it proceeded to tear the manor down around itself. The upheaval of the earth that this caused brought the entire structure down, sinking into the labyrinth of ancient caverns and tunnels that lay beneath the wizard's estate. Finding itself in a comfortable dark, dank cavern, the entity fell into a deep sleep, sending it's astral self out to explore this strange new world, while it's body recovered from the strain placed on it by the unexpected summoning of the puny mortal sorceror.

***

         As he rounded a curve, Roach and Jack were both shocked to see what appeared as a glowing hole in the air dead ahead in the center of the road. Just as Roach was about to react and brake, a man in strange robes came hurtling out of the glowing disc. It's hard to say who was the most surprised, Roach and Jack by the whole experience, or Karlo, just before the Charger into him at a sedate sixty-five miles per hour. Roach had maintained speed even in the storm because he relied on his superb driving skills (this was solely Roach's opinion of his driving skills) to see him through any problems. Unfortunately, since Roach's driving skills were all in his head, when the mage came flying toward his car, Roach did the instinctive; he slammed on the breaks, not the best thing to do on such a wet road.
         The car skidded sideways. One effect of this was that Karlo, flying toward the car at a high rate of speed, smacked, not into the windshield toward which he was headed, but into the much more solid and ungiving steel door of the classic car. Thus ended the brilliant (at least in Karlo's opinion) career of Karlo of Invey, Sorceror Supreme (another opinion of Karlo).
A second effect of the car's sideways skid is that, instead of hitting the portal head-on, which as anyone knows is the proper way to do it, they hit the portal sideways.

         Now, many scientists, wizards, warlocks, witches, philosophers, analysts, wizlocks, warzards, scientosophers, astrophysicists, mail-room clerks and bathroom attendants have all speculated that, to hit a portal from the improper angle, is to cause that portal to alter in either substance, mass, range, destination, duration, or alcohol content, the last referring to a popular drink among bathroom attendants called "the Portal"; short for portalette, and no one has been interested enough ( or has had stomach enough) to find out exactly why.

         What actually happened when the Charger hit the portal at such an off angle, was somewhat of a surprise (and cause for terror) to the occupants. The portal was only large enough to admit part of the vehicle at such an angle. Therefore, when it hit, the engine compartment and trunk were torn off and left behind on Highway 70, which would cause no small amount of confusion and consternation, as well as a spike in the chief's blood pressure, when the police and fire department arrived to investigate the scene of the "accident", once it was discovered and called in by a local teenager.
         The rest of the car, containing Jack and Roach, hurtled through the portal and out the other side, where it tumbled across a vast grassy savannah. When the mangled car finally came to a stop against a large outcropping of rock jutting from the plain, the two occupants lay unconcious in their seats.

         Jack was woken by the snuffling sounds of an animal nearby. Opening his bleary eyes, he saw what appeared to be a strange cross between a buffalo and several other creatures. The massive bovine-like body shuffled forward on six legs, each ending in the cloven hooves of a goat. It's head, something resembling both a horse and a bird, was crowned with an impressive rack of antlers. From the base of the beast's neck emerged a ridge of serrated bone than ran down the creature's spine, all the way to the tip of a long, scaly lizard-like tail that swished back and forth, brushing away flies.

         Closing his eyes, Jack took a deep breath and thought, We've gone off the mountain into a pasture and I've konked my head. I'm delirious. Or dead, he added as an after thought.
         Once more opening his eyes, he refused to look at the perversion of nature that persisted in existing despite his belief to the contrary. Jack looked to his left to check on Roach.

"Fuck." It came out as pure reflex. The driver's seat was empty.

Okay, Jack thought. He either got thrown from the car, jumped, or left while I was unconcious.

         It was just then that Jack noticed the black speck in the air, growing larger or closer. A plane, he thought at first. Then, No, there's no vapor trail, and the tail's too long.

         The object moved, but not in a way that Jack would have expected. Only it's wings had moved. They had flapped.

"Wait a minute," Jack said in a slightly tremulous voice.

         The thing was close enough now that Jack was able to make it out; his mind was just having a debate with his eyes on how honesty was the best policy, and how could the brain and eyes continue their close relationship if the eyes persisted in lying to the brain about things like this. Seeing a dragon flying through the air indeed!
         Jack's concious mind, which wasn't as intelligent as his sub-concious mind (though it had full control of the body, and how was that fair?)simply told Jack that he was either; a.) delerious, b.) insane, c.) both, d.) dead, or e.) all of the above.
As the figure of the dragon passed overhead, Jack held in a sigh of relief, unsure how keen a dragon's hearing might be, if he was acyuially seeing a dragon, and wasn't, in fact, delerious, insane, dead, or all three.

"Oh my god, I've lost my mind. I might as well start talking to myself, too." This Jack said much later, when he was sure that the dragon had passed by. He then began the struggle to extricate himself from the mangled car.

         As he finally pulled himself from the shattered windshield, he glanced back and saw that Roach's guitar was missing from the rear seat. "I can't believe he just left me here," Jack grumbled. When he turned around he froze.

         The dragon was lying on top of the rock outcropping that the car rested against, leaning on an elbow, head resting in the palm of the clawed hand tipping the dragon's muscular foreleg.

         For once, Jack's concious and sub-concious minds were in total agreement, and he promptly passed out.

Returning to conciousness was difficult, because Jack's concious mind, vital for full conciousness of the body, had withdrawn into the inner-most depths of itself, and steadfastly refused to emerge. When the sub-concious finally brow-beat it enough, the concious mind surrendered and came forth, but not without a threat to the effect that, should anymore untoward occurences happen, it would promptly go insane and take the sub-concious with it.
         Jack awoke filled with confusion. After he finally remembered the last events before he went under, he began to doubt his sanity. At least until he sat up and surveyed his surroundings. Then he doubted his sanity no longer; he was positive that he had gone off the deep end, never to return.

         Jack lay on a pile of silks amidst a vast cavern. Beneath his bed and stretching away to the limits of the cavern, lay a horde of treasure the likes of which he had never before imagined. Gold and silver coins covered the floor to a depth of several inches. Picking up a handful of these, Jack inspected them. They were like nothing he had ever seen. Scattered around the floor of the cavern were chests of many shapes, sizes and materials. Iron, gold, brass, silver, gold, wood, ivory, bone and even horn. These were filled to overflowing with gems and jewelry of fantastic desing. Scattered amongst these were all manner of strange and beautiful items. There were suits of armor, weapons and shields. Stacks of books leaned drunkenly against shelves crowded with items beyond count or description.
         Rising, he began to move among the treasures, exploring, investigating. A deep voice brought him spinning about.

"Welcome to the lair of Kalendessimornica."

         Before Jack stood a slender man with bright green eyes and shining, silver hair, dressed in robes of snow white silk. Jack watched him warily, unsure whether to trsut his senses after recent events.

"Are you Kali-whatever you said?"

"No", the white-robed man replied, "I am but a humble servant of the mighty dragon."

"Dragon?"

"I believe you saw him earlier today. He is the one that carried you here after you lost conciousness. My lord was concerned for your health, and brought you here so that I might tend to your hurts."