Chapter 3 (Griff)

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Next: Chapter 4

“If you make a sound imma flip you off the edge.” It wasn’t an unfriendly whisper, if anything it was kind of playful—or was it? It wasn’t  easy to tell with a whisper, especially one so close Griff could feel its warmth worm down into his inner ear. Griff nodded once and the hand withdrew. It then spun him around to face its owner.

They were just outside of one of the light spots, in a dimness hazed over with diffused glow, and in all that, Parker’s smooth, tan face was as difficult to read as his voice. Mostly he looked bored, like he had in the garden, but in the blankness Griff thought he picked up some distant tinge of amusement, which could mean that he thought Griff was kind of funny or kind of a joke. Griff felt a sudden need to prove that he was the former and not the latter. Also there was a girl with a gun downstairs.

“ W h o   Is. T h a t ? “  Griff mouthed. He briefly considered pantomiming her, but that wouldn’t be funny and also was now the time? What was Parker doing here again? How had he gotten up here without Griff noticing? Had he been here the whole time and if so, how much had he seen of Griff’s little outburst earlier? Griff felt himself turn red as he thought about all the potential embarrassing things this guy had seen, followed by a stronger, flusher wave of shame as he realized that yes, this was what he was thinking about in potentially the last minutes of his life.

Parker shrugged and shook his head, which Griff interpreted to mean: Who knows man, and then something like, she better not mess up my sneakers. He seemed like the kind of guy that had, you know, just a chill obsession with collecting nice kicks. Griff looked down to check out his shoes. They were dress shoes. Because, of course. They’d just been at a funeral, duh. Yo, eyes up here, said Parker, but with just a hand wave. And then a what are you doing look. He shifted seamlessly from that to a tilt of the head that meant: follow me.

“Hello?” The girls voice echoed up the stone walls, dampening as it hit wooden beams and thick volumes. It all blurred past Griff as he followed Parker quietly up another set of stairs. “Is someone there?” Could she hear them? She must be hearing something because they could hear her every move clearly, though she sounded small and far away. And when she exhaled he could tell she was shivering. It was weirdly cold in here, especially if you were wearing a sundress. “Mrs. Taui? Ms. Pharaoh? We don’t have to do it this way.”

Griff looked at Parker for clues as to what to do, but he didn’t seem to be acknowledging anything was happening. They were on the next floor now, and he was just strolling along. He turned his head back once to check if Griff was still there, but that was it. It was the sculpture-walls that couldn’t keep their eyes off him. Up here they were starting to be seriously detailed, in a way that had looked cool from far away but real disturbing this close. For all the lines in their faces and grains in their hair, none of them had pupils.

Up and across, up, back across and up again, not so many more floors, but Griff lost count anyway, as they vertically zig-zagged. He was listening to the girl climb the stairs behind them. No looking back or down, but he could hear her gaining on them. Parker didn’t seem to care. At one point he even stopped to wipe some some dust out of the corner of his eye. Then the strangest thing happened. The girl started counting.

“One,” she said, “two,” she said, “three, four....” trailing off. And then Parker must have realized what was happening because he grabbed Griff’s arm and practically flung him up the stairs.

“Go, go, go,” he said, and Griff did. He sprinted to the next landing and down the next stretch of balcony—ignoring the rumbling sound that became a clattering and then a rattling. The books on the shelves were moving, shuffling in their places, jostling now.

“Parker?” Said the girl, “is that you?” But her last syllables were drowned out by the roar of books flinging themselves off their shelves like synchronized divers. They gathered in a wave, a cloud that seemed to multiply as it spilled forward. Griff felt the sharp corner of a cover catch his ankle as he leapt up the next flight of wooden boards. He stumbled, found his footing, saw Parker shoot past him.

But the seeming security of the stairs didn’t last. Don’t look, Griff thought to himself when he heard a fluttering behind him, like a deck of cards being shuffled. Don’t look, you idiot. He totally looked, though.

“Move!” Parker shouted from above. Griff had frozen. It was kind of funny, actually, that a minute ago his biggest fear had been a potential small firearm. Now his main thing was reality exploding out of its apparently fragile cocoon. One by one, the steps below him were—peeling apart? Splitting? The wood was compressing and yellowing and then it wasn’t wood anymore; it was a stack of paper that then just fell away and scattered into the void below. And as the pages drifted downwards, blotches of ink surfaced onto their faces, coalescing into neat hand written lines of text. The staircase was turning into a book. “Are you stupid? Move!”

It had only been a second but that was enough for the disintegration to reach Griff’s toes. He bolted, jumped. It was fine. He was almost at the top anyway. Unfortunately all that sudden lack of staircase had messed with the structural integrity of the thing. As he landed on the fourth-to-last step, the whole thing cracked and began to tear away from, Griff saw, the firm embrace of the final balcony. This one was stone, and above it the beautifully painted library ceiling that, right now, was basically just a dizzying blur of color swirled in with his abject terror. Griff felt Parker’s hand grab onto his forearm and pull him up onto solid ground. Just as the rest of the staircase fell away behind him, dissolving into paper, rails and all.

They fell backwards onto the stone floor of the upper balcony, where Parker quickly untangled himself from Griffin’s limbs and stood up. He was holding something small and sharp, with a dull glint in the afternoon light. There was plenty of it up here, diffused though it was. The people in the walls stood side by side and the sun streamed in through the narrow slits between them. There was a golden, temple-like glow to the place.

“Is this who I think it is?” Demanded the girl. Griff felt his eyes strain as a flashlight beam hit him in the face. She was still on the balcony below, down where the stairs used to begin. Griff shielded himself with his forearm but he caught a glimpse of her as he stood up; she wasn’t a girl after all—maybe in her early twenties, standing in the mound of books she’d created. And she was not happy.

“Fuck off, Tara.” said Parker. Tara clicked off her flashlight. Now it was just her gun pointing at them. And it was a gun. A whole, silver and pearl revolver that just screamed rich people murder.

“Listen to me, Parker,” she shifter her aim, “let him go. Or I’ll take him by force.” A wind was blowing, like Griff had felt at the bottom of the tower. A breeze that revved up into gust and then died back down.

“Nah,” said Parker.

“You’re trapped.”

“We’re safe from you.”

“We?” She looked at Griff. “You’re with him?” Griff’s cheeks got very hot.

“What? No,” he said. “I mean. No! I mean, I’m standing with him right now but you’re the one with the gun, so—oh my god.” She’d swung the revolver back towards him.

“You’re Jack’s kid.”

“Yeah?” The gun went back to Parker.

“Wa uh uh,” said Parker, holding up what appeared to be a switchblade made out of some dark, glassy metal. Tara flinched, but didn’t move otherwise.

“What the hell have you been telling him?”

“Literally nothing!” Said Griff, “no one has told me anything!” Parker shushed him. Again, not angrily, not even slightly annoyed. Just. God Griff could really not figure this guy out.

“Nothing,” said Parker. “He’s family.” And there was that wind again, this time accompanied by the now traumatic sound of pages flipping. Griff risked a glance backwards, but there was no disappearing floor, just actual papers blowing off tables. Lots of tables. Big, ugly wooden work benches with everything they couldn’t fit down in the rest of library, apparently: more tomes and scrolls and loose sheets, oddly shaped wooden boxes, clocks with their guts spilling out, a skeptical narwhale statue that looked like maybe it just didn’t make the cut for the tower? Also Urns. Always urns. The wind crescendoed again, this time blowing a whole flurry of pages in Griff’s direction. One caught him right in the face.

“He’s a chess piece and you know it,” said Tara. Parker was unperturbed.

“I don’t.”

“Even you have to grow up one day, Parker. Let it be today.”

“Sure,” said Parker. Griff would have chimed in if he wasn’t sputtering out the taste of this grimy old piece of parchment clinging to his face like a baby monkey. After a protracted struggle, he finally got it in both hands and pried it off his eyelids.

“Griffin,” said the woman with the gun. Kind of creepy that she knew his name but what was surprising anymore? “What they’re asking you to do...”

He was looking at the piece of paper in his hand. It was old alright. Practically cracking into pieces. But it was still legible, and in plain English. It was an invitation.

[I will retroactively put the invitation text here. ]

Griffin was strangely entranced. The letters were thick and loopy and hugged each other closely. There was a little drawing of some kind of planetary system at the bottom. He barely heard the woman on the balcony below finish her sentence.

“...it’s not what he wants. It’s the last thing your father would ever want.”

“Oh you found it,” said Parker. He was speaking to Griffin.

“Huh?”

“Want to see what it does?”

“What do you mean?”

“This,” said Parker, and he pushed Griff with both hands, towards the ledge, in a soft, careless motion. Griff stumbled back. His ankle gave out as he did. He gripped the invitation harder, like it was attached to something, but it wasn’t. It tugged at nothing but air. He heard the soles of his shoes grind against fine grains of invisible rock dust as they tried to find a grip. His hands flailed out just short of the nearest rails. They found nothing behind him either. And with that.

He fell.

As it so happened, Griff was already thinking about death that day for obvious reasons. So in those first couple milliseconds on the way down, as time slowed and stretched, the experience of plummeting fifteen stories down was basically indistinguishable from a daydream.

Everyone imagines how they might die every once in awhile, but for Griff it was something of a nightly pageant. Before he went to sleep each night, his sock puppet pal  took him to a private movie screening of all his worst fears, rendered in great detail. The greatest hits, such as ‘being hunted in my own house by a serial killer’, or the more mundane, ‘I’m hit by an ambulance on its way to pick me up for a minor injury,’ were gleefully played back almost every night. So the fact was, falling to his death in actuality, when it should by rights be happening exclusively in his brain, was so surreal and ludicrous that he didn’t fully accept it was happening. Maybe if the fall was longer he would have had more time to have his life flash before his eyes; to think about how sad Gary would be, to wonder what life would have had in store for him if he had just listened to his mother and left the mansion and its magical, pushy-pushing people alone. But in the brief time Griff did have to contemplate his existence, he was mostly thinking about how real the graphics were on this definitely fake virtual death experience.

The only thing he managed to say, as far as last words went, was “No.” But not a drawn out, screaming no. Just a sweet, disbelieving little ‘no.” As in, “not happening.” “next.” “next scenario please.” And to Griff’s great surprise, wish granted.

The world filled with water. There was no smack into or breaching of a surface, it was just like he felt the wet seep into his clothes all at once and then he felt this cold pressure all around him, and then his fall slowed way down. His limbs dragged until, as quickly as he had fallen, he stopped, suspended as in a bowl of jell-o. Then his body did a stupid thing, which he could not blame it for. It tried to breathe, and it failed. Griff was choking under water. He flailed and kicked, up, up. He grabbed fistfuls of nothing and let out a gurgling scream. Kick, kick, kick. He was making progress towards the light above him—an irregular, semi-oval of light green-blue, dottted with clumps of dark green dots. It got bigger as Griff struggled towards it, until it was all he could see. He broke the surface, coughed up a lung’s worth of fluid and then gasped for air. His eyes stung, but he took in his surroundings.

Things un-blurred into focus: it was algae that floated in clumps all around him. And...he was in a cave of some sort, or he thought so because of the large, irregular, semi-oval opening in front of him, reaching up a couple stories high. There was also a considerable amount of wood floating around; little chips here and there, and then larger planks—none of it was driftwood, it all came from something. There were some big, almost raft like structures near the walls, covered in the same algae plus bird droppings. A large beam floated by, with a lion’s face carved into one end. Griff looked up and groaned. The rafts were balconies. There were more above him, pieces of them, attached to the walls, which, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Griff saw were made up of interlocking statues. He was in the library tower, but something had blasted a hole in its side, tore its insides apart, and filled it up with water. There wasn’t a book in sight.

The moment Griff realized where he was (approximately), was also the moment he realized how exhausted his body was. He was treading water to stay afloat. All those swimming lessons at the Y had finally paid off, he guessed, and he silently thanked Gary for making him take them. Now, if he could just get to one of those busted balconies at water level, or at least grab on to a floating wooden beam. He began to paddle towards the nearest one, but it kept drifting away, faster than he could swim. So he headed towards a balcony, panting. He could feel his energy waning, muscles giving out group by group, until something like sleepiness came over him. He went limp and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. As he went under, he glimpsed some thin white shape through the opening in the side of the tower, bobbing softly as it drew nearer.

Griff came to on the deck of a yacht. He was on some kind of fancy wooden lawn chair—or deck chair, he supposed it would be called—reclined so that the sun hit him in the eyes straight away. He squeezed them shut and sat up before he opened them again. The suit he was wearing—the blazer was long gone. Maybe it had come off in the water when he tried to swim. The rest of it was still on him, dry now, though stiff and briny. He must have been laying here for a bit. Oh God, his head really ached, all the way down to this nauseating feeling in his throat and stomach. He remembered now why he hated swimming. He always got so dehydrated after.

“Water,” said a familiar, unemotive voice. Jordan towered above him in her form-fitting black dress, holding out a dinged up copper mug. Griff took it and chugged it down, which only made him more nauseous. “Don’t drink too fast,” said Jordan, unhelpfully.

“Where am—“ but he didn’t finish his sentence because he’d just looked beyond the sleek white mast of the ship and almost had a fresh heart attack. There were giant, parallel, glowing trails of light, arching across the sky. “They’re here,” said Griff aloud, “the aliens are here.” Jordan tilted her head robotically.

“If by aliens you mean us, then yes, we’re here.”

“What? No—that, are you crazy? How is everyone so calm? I just like traveled in time to global warming doomsday and now there’s a mothership in the sky. Look!” He pointed. Jordan didn’t turn around.

“Those are the rings of earth,” she said.

“What?”

“In this world, the earth has rings. Now let me see what you’re holding.”

“What?” Griff looked down. Somehow he still had that crumbling invitation in a vice grip. Only now it wasn’t crumbling. It was just a normal, dry piece of paper scrunched together in his left hand. He let go and it sprung open. Jordan snatched it up and read it.

“That’s funny,” she said, without laughing, and then, abruptly: “Come inside when you’re ready.” She turned around, her dark purple hair whipping tastefully in the sea breeze. She opened a boxy door and disappeared inside the ship.

Griff stood up, cautiously. His head was still pounding, like it was being pinched and kneaded by a giant baby. Looking out at the water did not help. He only stared long enough to notice the absence of any statue tower and the presence of a land mass not too far away. It was misty out, and preternaturally bright. Must be all the light reflecting off those...what had she said? Rings.

In this world. Griffin frowned. That couldn’t be right. Someone would have told him. Someone would have warned him there were other worlds and he was going to travel to one. Someone would have explained beforehand what was going to happen to him and how. That’s what grown-ups were for, right? They were supposed to know things and tell you things and keep you safe even when every fiber of your being is set on self destruction. That’s what—what—what a nice yacht, Griff thought to himself. A really nice boat he was on. And he ground his palms into his forehead.

It wasn't so much a matter of when Griff was ready than it was about how long he could stall before finally following Jordan into the main cabin. He stared at the ocean and coughed into his elbow and stared at the ocean some more. It was warm out, but it was a thin warmth, easily chased away by the spray and the breeze. Griff was shivering before long and, tail between his legs, retreated inside.

The door stuck until Griff gave it a good shove and felt the rip of a magnetic bond loosing. As it snapped back together behind him, he felt the air pressure change in his ear. His skin warmed and his goosebumps disappeared.

The cabin had a 1940s vibe to it, bathed in warm yellow light and simple decor made with wood, metal, and other natural materials. It was  segmented into three areas: a bar and mini-dance floor where Griff stood, a plush den with fur-covered couches in the middle of the ship, and a dining area beyond it, at the bow. The seats were booths, low to the ground, with slanted windows all around them, rising up to the ceiling. Three people sat at the table. Two of whom Griff knew. 

“Hi Parker,” croaked Griff. He wanted to say something else, something quippy and barbed, but nothing came out. What point would he be trying to say anyway? Don’t push me off a tower? You’re so dumb for pushing me off a tower? You pushed me off a tower, but I’m alive, suckers!? You needed some inkling of superiority to throw a barb at someone and Griff couldn’t muster any.

“Oh hey, you made it,” said Parker. Baffling. Jordan looked Griff disconcertingly in the eye.

“Come take a seat, Griffin,” she said, and to the third person, as an explanation, “he took a fall.” Griff approached, beginning a laborious journey  through the sofa area. He nearly fell over three soft furnishings and an especially insidious footstool, hidden under a mythically large foxskin. Did they really have to put pillows and furs fucking everywhere? Jordan watched impassively, Parker might have been smirking or maybe his eyes were just—whatever—the new stranger, a man on the late side of middle age, was the only one with real facial expressions, and he seemed to make up for the others in magnitude. His resting face was a smiley gleam, with deep crows feet crinkling across his brown skin, but he perked up even more every time Griff lost his balance. His eyes got very wide and concerned, and then when Griff recovered, he smiled again and nodded with approval, like ‘I’m rooting for you, kid!’ Griff didn’t find it encouraging. But he did find the man’s outfit pretty sweet. It was an old-fashioned military officer shirt with cool shoulder stripes, and over it he wore an actual steel breastplate, like some kind of knight of the templars. You had to have impeccable posture and muscle mass to pull that off—which he did.

“Right here,” said Jordan, pointing to the seat beside the military man. Griff plopped down. “Adrian, this is Griffin Taui, a relation of Jack’s.” That was a weird way to put it. “Griffin, Adrian Jeruzha, commander of the Celthestan Legion.” Whatever that was. The man smized and held out his fist. Griffin faltered.

“Am I supposed to—to bump it?”

“Interesting word choice, but yes, that would be customary,” said the man. His voice was as smiley as his eyes.

“Forgive him,” said Jordan, “he’s from a ways off. And Parker? You owe him an apology.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry for pushing you. I thought it was funny.” The dude slumped back in his seat. Griffin nodded. Just nodded. Jordan didn’t wait a milisecond for anything further.

“Well, pleasantries over. Lord Adrian was filling us in on the situation in Dar Nal Emal.”

“A moment, I beg, but shouldn’t the boy be caught up? What does he know?”

“Nothing, actually,” said Griff, “I keep saying this.” Jordan shook her head.

“He’ll catch on.”

“Have you ever been to Dar Ness, Griffin?” Said Lord Adrian.

“No.” There was an uncomfortable pause, which Griff took the opportunity to fill. “So... my dad’s not dead, is he? I’m getting a vibe that he’s not dead.”

“No, of course not,” said Jordan, “why would you think that.”

“Funeral,” said Parker. He pointed at something behind him. In time. Jordan sighed.

“Yes. We held a funeral for him today.”

“Where?” Said Lord Adrian, “I would have liked to go.”

“It was a ways off.”

“He’s not dead.”

“In any case,” said Jordan.

“My dad’s not dead.”

“Jack’s boy,” continued Jordan, “is critical to the success of this run. I know it’s all very last minute, but I trust you can accommodate one more while we’re in the city, at least? I understand the situation there is precarious, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel it absolutely necessary.” Parker looked at the window and squinted at the gleaming white rainbow in the sky.

“I’m happy to provide anything you need, Ms. Faroh,” said Adrian, “but won’t it be dangerous—this kind of work—for a child?”

“Parker comes along on nearly all my runs,” said the woman.

“My meaning is,” said Adrian, “is the boy aware—Griffin, are you aware of the dangers that lie ahead?”

“I—“ Griffin very nearly repeated himself, that he didn’t know anything and he wasn’t aware of anything and would everyone please stop and just explain one thing to him. But then he realized, he did know something. He knew exactly what was going on. It was one of the many nightmare scenarios sock puppet had drilled him on incessantly in his long hours before sleep:

YOUR FATHER IS BEING HELD BY A DOOMSDAY CULT AND YOU MUST FACE CERTAIN DEATH TO SAVE HIM.

And suddenly Griffin was very calm. Scarily calm. This was what it was all leading up to. This was why he had these stupid powers and why he ended up at this stupid funeral and fell down a stupid tower shaft into another world. He’d known all along. This was why his father had never called—the real reason—it wasn’t because his mother had kept him away, it was because he had a destiny. He had a destiny and that was, the first time he met his father, it would be as his liberator, his hero, and all around someone worth meeting in the first place. The dangers? What did it matter. With the day he was having, dangers could mean anything, and Griff was afraid of everything. Of course he knew the dangers. He knew “the dangers” very well.

“Of course,” said Griffin, and to his surprise, Jordan smiled. He looked over to Parker, just in case he was smiling, too, but Parker was raising an eyebrow at him, or just looking skeptically at something else, Griff wasn’t sure.

“Perfect,” said Jordan, “the scuba gear is in the hold.”

Next: Chapter 4