THE MOUNTAIRY ROCK CITY CHRONICLES:
THE SERPENT CULT
“… yes…” Max answered, and then woke up confused. His house phone blared suddenly. The sleep had been a deep one, filled with dreams that were quickly fading from his memory. There was a bright sun, and dry sand…
The phone blared angrily again and he looked at it confused.
“Hello?” he said. The phone just rang at him again. Then he woke up a bit more and wondered why he couldn’t hear the person on the other end of the line.
… the phone worked a certain way…
It rang again before he remembered how to pick up the receiver. Too late he reached and his answering machine beat him to it.
"Max? This is Rosette!" He groaned and pushed his face into the pillow. He had not been looking forward to that particular confrontation. His date from the previous night was calling to kick him to the curb, to tell him not to bother her anymore.
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for being so crabby last night. I heard that you had some trouble last night. Is it all right if we make it up this weekend? Please call me." BEEP! Max shot up out of bed.
"DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK!!" he exclaimed as he hopped out of bed and walked the two steps to the bathroom. He scanned himself quickly in the mirror. Sleep had collected in the corner of his eye but he barely noticed it next to the huge white slobber stain going across half of his face. Other than that all six feet three inches of him looked good for a twenty-nine year old just getting around to finishing his studies and about to earn his first Doctorate. Maybe he should let his goatee bloom into a full beard, to look more scholarly. Nah! He didn’t run the faucet to clean his face because then he might not have enough hot water for a shower.
Max lived in a small apartment complex in the Ivy Hills section of Mountairy Rock just a few blocks from campus. Cheap rent and a bad view; he could not see the Great Lake because of the taller buildings surrounding his. He did not mind, however, as it was not in the plan to go on living there much longer. His Uncle was moving back to Virginia and leaving his loft. Max hoped to be able to sublet the huge warehouse apartment at a low rate, thanks to his father's older half-brother.
In the shower he thought of what he had to do that day. He knew that he had to check in with Dr. King to see if he was needed at the Museum because the break in last night. The thought of returning to the scene of the crime sickened Max. The image of the service corridor filled with the guards bodies came to mind. He did not know many of them but he did know one in particular, not very well but they had played basketball in the Bailey behind Wolf’s Keep once or twice. Larry was the man's name, and Max was certain he had been on duty that night. With all that been said last night the one thing Max had heard that had chilled him was that no one who had been working at the Museum last night had survived.
Who could have done something like that?
Worse was the fact that Max could have been there just as easily as not. Last year the Museum had inventory the week before Christmas and it lasted through New Year’s. Dr. King had ordered a few of his top assistants to stay on New Years to help finish counting. This year Dr. King postponed the inventory for early January, but that decision came late. Max might have been one of those few assistants left in the Museum that night, or any other night for that matter. With the exception of Dr. King, Dr. Bazillion, and Bazillion’s his first assistant Fatima Douglas, Max had logged in more after hours, than anyone else in the Museum.
He dressed quickly and called the museum. Dr. Saul Collins, the head of the Astronomy department answered. "Hello, Collins here."
"Dr. Collins? This is Max. What's going on over there now?" The Doctor told him that the police were still there but that they were almost finished. Then he asked him to come down and help clean the place up. Hoping that the bodies were no longer there but unwilling to ask, Max agreed and was on his way. He left the long black dress coat he had worn the night before on his couch and grabbed another shorter black jacket from his closet.
The Museum was not too far from Max's apartment, which was convenient in a city this big and old. So old in fact that only half of the city streets were laid out, “grid-like” from German influences. The other half were twisting winding European-like roads and alleys, interspersed throughout the old city. The older the section the worse the roads.
Mountairy Rock city, built along a sheer rock peninsula jutting out into the Great Lake, was just under three hundred years old officially. Founded by an odd mix of settlers, mostly poor immigrants who found themselves unable to compete for land along the profitable shoreline, the land seemed to offer little for anyone wishing to start their lives. No access to the lake, ground too hard for farming and it’s out of the way locale on the ridge placed it out of trade lanes. As a matter of fact the only attraction proved to be, at the time, another obstacle; Rockwood trees.
Rockwood trees, aptly named due to the incredibly dense wood, were the largest trees on the planet. It was their dense wood and great weight that allowed them to push through the topsoil and past the billion year old dense stone of the ridge to take root in the nutrient rich soil beneath the ground of Montairy Rock. There were two types of Rockwood trees, Kings and Queens.
The Queens were almost identical to oak trees save for their size. Most Queen Rockwoods were at least four times the height of any oak tree and the width of them was immense. The average diameter of a Queen in Montairy Rock city was over fifty yards! They were darker in color than oaks, ranging from soft terracotta to almost mahogany and their leaves were three pronged and wide as two sheets of loose-leaf paper end to end.
The Kings were very different. Initially the two types of Rockwoods were thought to be of related species because of size and coloring but 20th century analysis discovered they were not. The King Rockwoods looked more like California Redwoods but were taller; in some cases twice as tall and wider by the same ratio. In all of Rock city, in the entire world for that matter, there were only 42 Rockwood trees. It would have been 43 but as the trees gained fame in the late eighteen hundreds a King had been dynamited and felled, an act that is now illegal.
The largest Rockwood in the city by weight was a Queen and it sat in the immense Inner Bailey of Haley museum; once called Lupainvania castle almost three hundred years past, was renamed for and by an escaped slave whose family somehow gained ownership of it. The Queen was named The Wolf’s Den, and was itself one of the Museum’s biggest points of interest. Its long branches rose above the Museum and could be seen even from across the Great Lake. One could see many of the Rockwoods from almost any point in Mountairy Rock.
That is except for Max's apartment window.
And that gave the city an amazingly unique skyline. City planners had long ago decided that no building should be taller than the tallest King. So the Rockwoods dominated the landscape.
Haley Museum, itself an immense structure, was one of the structures that could be seen as well. Sitting at the high end of Ivy Hills, which was the northwestern section of the city, Haley looked down on almost everything in Mountairy Rock. As he got closer Max could see that not only were there still police cars outside the castle, but several news crews as well.
He loved working at the Museum but he never like the political side of it. There was always some city function, council member, Mayor, or Governor coming through and it was at those times that the science took a back seat to the considerations of politics. Dr. King seemed to handle those situations well but Max had never liked dealing with it. While his understanding of history had given him a good respect for the need to understand motivations and points of view, he never liked dealing with those who used people’s motivations as a means to garner influence. Many a gala at the Museum had seen him leaving early, or hiding in a stairwell.
So Max made sure to avoid the news crews. What happened the previous night was sure to be big news and he had no inclination to be asked anything. Better to let Dr. King handle that. The Barbican was covered but the Dock entrance on the east side would be open.
"Max?” Fatima Douglas, Dr. Bazillion's first assistant, met Max in the empty South Tower lobby. She was a fairly tall, thin woman. Her never styled hair was again pulled back in a tight ponytail exposing what Max thought was a huge forehead. Loose strands having escaped the severely tied knot stuck out and framed her face. She wore wide oversized glasses, as some sort of statement that Max had never bothered to figure out, on her upturned ‘pug’ nose. Fatima had been working here like Max had, first as an intern during her undergraduate days, then as a part time employee while doing her graduate studies. She was a few years younger than Max, like many of his peers here at the Museum and seemed to distrust him mainly for that reason. He had never liked her attitude and this past year she had been particularly irritating. They teased and mocked each other back and forth for most of the time they worked together. Fatimah would pick on his lack of seniority among the staff despite his age or his lack of much of a social life on campus. But Max knew how to get under her skin too. All he had to do was remind her that Dr. Bazillion, who did not like Max either, had left for Africa without her. Now she was working for Dr. King and Max loved to imply that King liked him better. She would get upset and flustered; partly because it was somewhat true. Or he would pronounced her name; Fah-TEEM-mah, even though she wanted it pronounced FAHT-im-mah.
The look in her eyes right at this moment, however, was fearful. He wondered if they had anymore information on what had gone on.
"You..uh..., did they say who the guards were who died? Larry?" he asked. Fatima wrapped her arms around herself and shivered slightly.
"Yes. He...I knew him and Jim… and Barb." Max looked at her for a moment, then decided that it would be all right to put his arm around her. After all he did not think she was a bad person, just irritating. Fatima did not flinch at his touch, but rather leaned against him. "Right here in the Museum."
“Did the police make an arrest yet?” he asked her. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head as if she did not know.
"Mr. Madigan! Miss Douglas! We've got a lot of work to do." Professor Collins walked quickly into the room from the South Tower stairwell. The fifty-year-old astronomer and professor at M.R.U did not have the presence that Dr. King had but still got the people who worked for or studied under him to work without having to tell them twice. Maybe it was his fairness or his wonderful insight when it came to research. Max thought it was his breath. Hot ASS personified!
"I've called every assistant and intern that works here and you two are the only ones to show up! Looks like we are going to have quite a few jobs slots opening up this semester." Max flinched at that remark and chanced a quick breath. The Montairy Rock Haley museum was one of the best museums in the country. Getting a position there was hell and if the Professor was serious then there would a stampede of college students running down Germantown Avenue from every college in commuter range. One had to sympathize with those who had not come. Though this was the last place he wanted to be during the holiday break, Max had his future to think of. He would need all kinds of grants if he wanted to continue his studies after getting his doctorate or get a good research position. Working at Haley museum for Dr. King would be a great way to get some of those things. Still he did not despair, figuring that there could not possibly be that much cleaning up to do because the police still had the damaged areas taped off.
Then Max noticed that Dr. King was still absent. "Hey where is Dr. King?"
"He called earlier to say that he won't be in today but that we should do our best to prepare the museum for the New Year. Hopefully the police won’t get in our way" Collins said right into Max's face. He tried not to blink too noticeably.
Max thought that was odd that the Doctor would not be here after such an emergency. Who was going to speak to the media? Whatever was keeping him away must have been pretty important.
"So what are we doing today?" he asked making sure to stand back a ways.
"We must inventory the damage and then write up applications and requests for the money to replace the exhibits. There were a large number of displays damaged and so a lot of paperwork. We’ll work in the South Hall since the offices are closed off."
Whew! Max's hands were hurting not even a fifth of the way through his stack of paperwork. Insurance forms, permits, notices, and dozens of more types of paperwork had to be filled out not to mention the ton of data entry needed and phone calls to be made. Eventually some more of the graduate students filed in and helped out but not nearly enough to finish the job. It was Eight o'clock by the time Dr. Collins had decided that they had done enough for the day. He announced that they would resume in the morning and for everyone to get a good night’s sleep.
Max waited while everyone slunk out, groaning about having to return in the morning. He wanted to talk with Dr. Collins alone but Fatima was not going to let that happen. So he saved his questions for later and escorted her outside. Sometimes he felt as though she was not really the kiss up that she played at. Maybe she did it to just to tick him off.
"I thought it was Eight o'clock." Max said when they got outside.
"It is Eight, almost half past." Fatima said as she headed off towards the lake, her house was in that direction.
"Then why is it so bright, Man?" He looked up and down the street. It was lit well enough to be midday.
“Stop calling me man!” Fatima stopped and burned a mean look at him as he stood on the steps of the museums side entrance. Max turned to the streetlight.
"AHHH!" Pain lanced through his eyes when he saw the streetlight the brilliance nearly blinding him.
"What's wrong with you?" Reaching back with his hands Max carefully sat down on the steps as Fatima walked back to him. He rubbed his eyes vigorously trying to ease the ache.
"Damn! That hurt!" When he could again open his eyes his vision adjusted slowly. Objects appeared to glow at first, blurring everything, then he could see just fine, very fine. What should have been a dimly lit street still seemed to be midday or late afternoon to him.
"Everything's so bright." he said. Fatima watched him for a few moments, and then left when she decided that he was just being weird. Max walked down the steps and to his car around the corner.
The city seemed strange now, even stranger than the fact that Max perceived it as midday. It was just brighter; the city seemed to just be… more there! There was high-pitched squeaking high above but he could not identify the source. As he looked around the very air seemed to vibrate with excitement. The hairs on his arms were standing on end. For a brief second he heard voices, people talking, someone yelling over the phone. He even thought that he heard Dr. King’s voice, then Crash!
Max jumped at the sudden shattering sound. There was a couple arguing across the street. The woman had thrown something very breakable to the ground. She then stalked off toward the bus stop, her male friend picked up whatever it was and walked off in the other direction.
He watched the girl and the more he watched her, the easier it was to hear her. Even as she walked away he could hear her mumbling to herself. Whew! She sure was mad at her boyfriend.
Max sat down in the car. It was warm despite having been outside in the winter weather all day. He reached inside his jacket pocket to pull out his keys. Then everything returned to normal. Like someone shut off a light the street was just dark; Eight o'clock winter dark again. The sounds, the air, everything had returned to normal.
"What the hell?" He rubbed his eyes again and it was still dark. Max mused that it was probably some unique phenomenon that had something to do with his working and straining his eyes all day. Maybe there was a Museum light on that he had not noticed and it just went off. It took a little shake of his head to clear things and Max drove on home. “Weird.” He muttered.
When he stepped out of the car he looked it over. He had to return it soon, to the rental place, so that meant riding the bus through two and a half more months of Montairy Rock winter. A winter that was famous for bringing the city to a halt many a year. Even so Max thought it would be a good idea to invest in a car as handing his dates bus tokens no longer played as sweet and romantic as it once had when he was in high school.
Speaking of dates, once inside Max hazarded a call to his New Year’s Eve date, Rosette.
"Hello. Is Rosette there? This is Max." Some woman with a familiar voice, probably Rosette's housemate, answered the phone. After a few minutes his former date picked up the phone. To his surprise Rosette was actually pleased to hear from him. Spurred on he dared to ask her out for the next day asking if she wanted to see a play. This seemed to impress her and Max decided against mentioning that his ex-frat brother was starring in it and had given him free tickets. She asked if they were going to go to dinner first and Max said, "Of course." She then suggested a restaurant and Max agreed without hesitation even though it was rather expensive. They hung up a little while later when Rosette' explained that she and her house-mate were doing their hair and Max said good bye.
“Oh! Yea-yea-YEA!” Earlier he had thought that he was tired but now he felt charged up.
"So what can I do tonight? Terps is probably rehearsing right now so I can't hang out with him. Don't really feel like going to a club with Steve and ‘em. Wait! The student center! All the undergrads are home for the holidays so it should just be filled with grad students." He showered quickly and dressed while listening to his radio for any news on what had happened the previous night. There was nothing about the break-in nor the murders; however, there was a report on a body found that had been mauled by an animal. He listened more closely then until he realized this was an old story. Someone, the news figured, was attacking male and female prostitutes with pit bulls or some such animal. But that had been going on since the Fall. Of the break in there was nothing so Max figured that they would come to it later, if it were not old news by now.
He walked into his front room and grabbed his good jacket off of the couch. As he pulled it on he was startled to see a big gray cat sitting outside his window.
"DAMN you scared me!" he yelled and caught his breath. "How did you get all the way up here?" The big cat was dirty gray with patchy fur and was obviously a street cat. It lay one blackened paw against the glass and just eyed him curiously.
"Fine.” Max said. “You got up here by yourself; you can get down by yourself." Although he could not figure out how the cat had managed to scale the side of his building. His apartment was a good seventeen floors up! For a moment he thought to open the window and look down the side of the building to see how, but the way the cat was looking at him made Max uneasy so he simply left.
In the hallway he found himself waiting for the elevator with one of his neighbors. Mr. Alt eyed him suspiciously as they both stood there but Max tried his best to ignore it. 'Old Man' Alt would forever distrust him after what had happened with Max’s fraternity of which the old man actually happened to be an alumnus. So he just tolerated the disapproving looks that Alt flashed all the way down the elevator ride.
Outside Max walked over to the car he had rented. It probably was not a good idea to take it to the student center. It had been one of Dr. King’s connections that allowed him to get the rental in the first place, and he would have to pay for any damage done to it himself. But with the campus empty there would not be too much ruckus going on. In two more days he would be back to riding his old mountain bike or public transportation. He had better make the best of his date with Rosette' the next night, because after that the longest parts of their dates would be spent on the bus.
Just as he put the key in the lock the big gray cat stepped out from behind the bumper.
"Jeez!" Max jumped back and stared at the cat. Then he cast his eyes skyward toward his window, some seventeen floors up the alley side of his building, wondering how the big cat had gotten down so quickly.
"You're NOT the same cat." He said as though his voicing it would make the statement true. The cat looked up at him expectantly.
"What? What do you want?" Just then Max noticed the very attractive woman getting into the car parked behind his, eyeing him strangely. He was, after all, talking to a cat.
"Ah… damn." He just walked around the other side of the car avoiding the cat all together and got into the car.
The Mountairy Rock University student center sat in the center of the campus. The usually loud and crowded center was calmer now with the majority of students having gone home for the holidays. The inside was keeping up with tradition, Max discovered, as the noise level was appropriately deafening. He smiled as he searched the room for former classmates and friends.
“There is he is man.” He heard someone say, but the voice sounded strange. He turned searching but he could find no one close enough to him that he should have been able to hear above the din of the crowd.
“… been trying…” Where? “… with my woman… punk-ass-mother-...” Max spun around and saw two men standing by a pinball machine leaning against the back wall of the room watching him. They looked away when he met their eyes.
“See? He know. But we got some somethin’ for his ass...” Max was confused. He could hear them above the rest of the noise but they were not yelling. As a matter-of-fact they were whispering.
"Wha'sup Max?" a short, portly, deviled eyed guy with an even more devilish grin came walking up. Steve Green. Max smiled nervously as he greeted his long time friend. He had known Steve since high school back in the Philadelphia. Behind him holding two drinks was a tall, lean and very attractive undergrad. As long as Max had known him Steve had always drawn the attention of the most attractive women.
"Nothin' man. Just chillin'. What's going on here? I thought you’d be at Finleys." Max continued to listen over his shoulder but he could no longer hear the voices.
"Man have I got something to show you. Come on." Steve started to lead him back outside.
"Wha? Outside man? I just got here." But Steve continued to pull him out.
“Steve!?! It’s cold outside!” the undergrad was pouting.
“Yea Steve, ‘it’s cold outside’. What’s the big deal?” Also as long as Max had known him, Steve managed to find little “Projects” to get himself into trouble. That trouble usually found its way to Max as well.
"I got a bike man, you gotta see it." Steve laughed as they walked outside.
Snow was piled up against the sides of the student center. Max had not noticed the dirty white motorcycle leaning against the snow bank.
"Whoa… that's yours?" Max said not believing it. "I thought you meant a bicycle."
"Nope. No bicycle here baby." Steve ran his hands over the bike with pride. "Guess how much it cost me?"
"How much?" Max asked.
"Guess." Steve smiled hard.
“Steve!?!” the undergrad was hugging herself in the winter air and still managing to hold onto the drinks. Steve blew her a kiss but otherwise persisted egging Max.
“Guess.”
"All right, all right. It's used right? That takes the price down a lot. Plus you were able to buy it so that means it couldn't have cost that much. Finally ignoring the fact that you owe me more than I owe on my student loan I'd have to say...What? About a grand? And just where did you get a thousand dollars?" Max was really curious now, and worried. Steve was always prone to making careless mistakes that required constant bailing out. He took a deep breath, as he knew that he was not going to like Steve's answer.
"How much Steve?"
"A hundred." Steve smiled even harder now and started to snicker, then chortle, and then laugh out loud. His short body shook hard with every guffaw.
"A hundred dollars? Steve who did you buy this off of? You know it's stolen."
"It's not stolen! I got it off this crackhead." Steve's smile was fading.
"Oh! I see! Of course it wasn't stolen, 'cause crackheads always own twenty thousand dollar motorcycles!"
"It was his, damn! He brought it to school with him when he came here. I've got the pink slips and everything." Steve wiped some of the grease marks off of the side of his new bike. The undergrad laughed as he hopped on and made revving noises. Max allowed the words to sink in.
"He was a student? And you took his bike and gave him some crack money?"
Steve sucked his teeth at that. He said that if he had not taken the bike someone else would have. Max just turned and walked to his car. He did not feel like hanging out tonight after all.
"Come on Max!" Steve called after. "Wanna go for a ride?"
Max just looked over his shoulder. "No Steve."
“There he is.”
Max stopped cold. Voices came from nowhere again. Except these were not the same voices. He looked around but he did not see anyone outside except for Steve.
"Did you hear that?" but Steve was paying so much attention to his new bike that he did not hear the question.
“Are you sure?” More voices again. Max scanned the area, unsure of where the voices were coming from. He wished for the great vision that he had experienced earlier that day. Then he saw, sitting on the hood of his rented car, the big, old, gray, cat.
"What the hell is going on!" The cat stared at him intently. Its eyes glowed brightly and when they met Max’s, he saw intelligence there.
*DANGER*SHADOWS*
"GOD!" That came from the cat, he thought. The message was not vocal. He felt it inside his mind. It was an intense feeling that evoked pangs fear and dark shadowy images; Danger in the Shadows. Max turned away from the cat despite what it had just done. Behind him, in the shadows of the student center, something moved.
“He sees us master!”
“Kill him now!”
From the darkness leapt death.
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