Just in time for Halloween (or maybe The Day of the Dead!) my story “Billy Gonzalez and the Day of the Dead” has been posted in RoM/Mantic Reads!
Here’s the link! Happy Reading!https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/2022/10/22/jeff-baker-billy-gonzalez-and-the-day-of-the-dead/
The Woodie
by Jeff Baker
The world went haywire just before the game was supposed to start.
I’d won the tickets and had driven all night from Albuquerque, sleeping in my old Woodie station wagon and was sitting in the upper deck at Candlestick there in San Francisco waiting for Game Three of the World Series to start. I’d just lost my job and didn’t have a lot to loose. Besides, my Mom’s Uncle had played for both teams a century ago when they’d been on the East Coast. The Philadelphia Athletics they’d been called back then. Now, the Giants were playing there in San Francisco and the Oakland A’s were just across the Bay.
Sleeping in the back of the Woodie wasn’t a bad deal. And I’d gotten a prime seat and could see the whole field.
I was shooting the breeze with a couple of guys in our section when I heard and felt the rumble like a bunch of people were stomping their feet on the floor of the upper deck. I looked around and was going to say something when I noticed the shaking and the swaying of some of the lights across the stadium. About that time, the message board displayed gibberish and then went blank.
Behind me, somebody yelled “Earthquake!”
Do tell, I thought.
It wasn’t even a minute when the shaking subsided and a big cheer went up from the crowd.
“This may not be anything to cheer about,” the guy sitting next to me said. He’d told me his name was Mitchell.
A few minutes later I got what he meant. They canceled the game and told everybody to leave “in a calm, orderly fashion.”
While we were waiting to get out of the stadium, the guy pointed up toward the top of the stadium.
“See?” He said. “I knew that felt pretty bad.”
There was smoke rising from beyond the stadium. Ar first I thought it was in the parking lot, but no.
We finally made it out to the parking lot and my Woodie. I remembered he’d said something about springing for a cab to the stadium, so I asked Mitchell if he needed a lift home.
“Sure,” he said. “Do you usually give rides to total strangers during earthquakes?”
“Only in October,” I said with a grin.
“I live a ways away from here,” he said. “Where are you staying in town?”
“Right here,” I said patting the Woodie. “I kind of bailed from everything to come here. No job anymore so I said what the hey?”
“I live over in Fremont,” Mitchell said. “You really want to drive that far?”
“I got no place else to go,” I said with a shrug.
It might not have been the smartest thing to do, driving someone I’d just met home but this was no ordinary night. While we waited to get out of the parking lot, we listened to the radio and heard more about the damage citywide and in Oakland. Bridges collapsed. People killed.
Needless to say, we stuck to the regular roads.
We saw a lot that night. Buildings in rubble, power out all over. People getting around using flashlights. A civilian, not a cop, directing traffic at an intersection where the lights were off and people following his instructions. People helping people like it was one big neighborhood.
We stopped to help a few places ourselves.
We did a lot of talking on the trip in the Woodie. A lot.
It was around One-thirty in the morning and dark when we arrived at Mitchell’s apartment. At least the lights were on in Fremont.
“Just let me stay out here in the parking lot,” I said.
“Parking lot, nothing!” Mitchell said. “I got a couch and some extra pillows. And a blanket.”
I nodded smiling.
He unlocked the apartment door, turned around and looked into my eyes. I came this close to kissing him.
I stayed on the couch that night. He slept in his bedroom.
But I did wind up staying in Fremont.
I guess that’s one way to meet a boyfriend!
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The October 17, 1989 earthquake hit the Bay Area during game three of the World Series. The casualty list would have been a lot longer if people hadn’t been home watching the game or at the stadium instead of on the streets. My thanks to my friends who have shared their memories of that day. This story is for you.
RoM/Mantic Reads, the new e-zine I am among the contributors to, is celebrating Halloween in a nifty way.
Through the next few weeks, several of us will be posting “stories, poems, bits and bobs” for the Halloween season.
Starting things off is a very cool poem by the fine writer Kaje Harper titled “Halloween.”
Upcoming bits will include a poem by me and other stories and the like to help us appreciate the orangeish dark of the season. https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/kaje-harper-halloween/
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published, or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974. For this week, a story by the great Clive Barker, back when he was a young master of darkness. In fact I first read this story in Dennis Etchison’s fine anthology “Masters of Darkness” where horror writers select a story of their own they regard as special. Barker selected his “In the Hills, the Cities” which he said his editors hadn’t liked but he did.
So do I.
It wasn’t until the first week of the Yugoslavian trip that Mick discovered what a political bigot he’d chosen as a lover. Certainly he’d been warned. One of the queens at the baths had told him that Judd was to the right of Attila the Hun, but the man had been one of Judd’s ex-affairs, and Mick had presumed there was more spite than perception in the character assassination.
If only he’d listened. Then he wouldn’t be driving along an interminable road in a Volkswagen that suddenly seemed the size of a coffin, listening to Judd’s views on Soviet expansionism. Jesus, he was so boring.
Sounds pretty contemporary, doesn’t it? Here’s a little more of the story (stretching that line limit a bit)
It was not until their trip—that endless, motiveless caravan through the graveyards of mid-European culture—that Judd realized what a political lightweight he had in Mick. The guy showed precious little interest in the economics or the politics of the countries they passed through. He registered indifference to the full facts behind the Italian situation and yawned, yes yawned, when Judd tried (and failed) to debate the Russian threat to world peace. He had to face the bitter truth: Mick was a queen, there was no other word for him. All right, perhaps he didn’t mince or wear jewelry to excess, but he was a queen nevertheless, happy to wallow in a dreamworld of early Renaissance frescoes and Yugoslavian icons. The complexities, the contradictions, even the agonies that made those cultures blossom and wither were just tiresome to him. His mind was no deeper than his looks; he was a well-groomed nobody.
Some honeymoon.
Again, sounds pretty contemporary for a story from 1984, doesn’t it? I’ll be back next week! See you then!——jeff
Here’s a link to Barker’s “Books of Blood,” where the story first appeared. https://www.amazon.com/Books-Blood-Vols-Clive-Barker/dp/0425165582?asin=0425165582&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
Here’s a link to volume 3 of “Masters of Darkness,” which I also highly recommend. https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Darkness-III-Clive-Barker/dp/0812517660/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2DE5S7SDWJSIC&keywords=masters+of+darkness&qid=1665889622&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjQ4IiwicXNhIjoiMC45MiIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=Masters+of+Darkness%2Cstripbooks%2C92&sr=1-4
Going Along With the Crowd
by Jeff Baker
“Okay, Okay. You. Can. Do. This”
Andrew Dominski puffed out the words in rhythm as he jogged along. He wasn’t at the front of the group but he wasn’t bringing up the rear, either.
He let his gaze wander down the road; he could just make out the top of a familiar building over the trees. Yeah, the old Alma Mater.
He had to have been crazy entering his College’s “Run-A-Thon,” but it was for scholarships. Besides, he’d turned down the High School coach when he wanted Andrew for the track team and never tried out for the one in college.
He kept jogging on, feeling the pavement pound under his feet. How old was he physically, anyway? Not chronologically, but physically? He could pass for being in his early thirties, he knew
He thought: The Taking had happened when he was about twenty-five. He’d aged about five years over nearly a hundred years being out in space and back in time. He’d been returned about two weeks after he’d left and his aging had been starting up as of a few years ago, albeit very slowly. Within a few years he would probably be aging like everybody else.
Yeah, like any other thirty-something who had been born over fifty years ago.
He thought again: He’d graduated College in 1984, he’d been working at the warehouse outside town early one morning when the spaceship had showed up and the aliens told him they needed someone with his metabolism for an incredibly important mission “with everything at stake.”
The job was going nowhere so Andrew had said “yeah.”
What followed was nearly a century of being in outer space and reliving parts of Earth’s history during the nineteenth century. Twice in some cases.
It was when he’d been in space he realized he had outlived his folks and probably most of his friends. He’d cried a lot for a few weeks.
He shook the memory out of his head. When it was all over, he’d been returned to Earth, just two weeks after he’d left. He wasn’t sure his folks believed him but he didn’t care. He’d never expected to see them again and he’d broken down in front of them and hugged them. They’d thought he’d been kidnapped. He had to find another job though, but he didn’t mind.
When you’ve been through what he had the world looked different, and the little things either didn’t matter or they were wonderful.
He looked at the runners ahead of him. He smiled. Just the kind of athletic guys he’d have checked out in college.
They were coming up towards the finish line in front of the college, by the old brick Administration building and the old Gymnasium. A bunch of spectators were standing in the early-afternoon sun on both sides of the finishing line. Somebody had already broken the tape and several of the first group of runners who’d crossed the finish line were lounging or collapsing on the grass.
Andrew heard something familiar. Over the other cheers and applause of the crowd was a familiar name: “An-Drew! An-Drew!”
His Mom and Dad, almost in their eighties were standing at the front of the crowd cheering him.
Andrew grinned broadly and put on a last burst of speed.
He glanced down at the number they’d handed him: 42.
He suddenly remembered—wasn’t that the number they used in that Hitchhiker In the Galaxy show?
Andrew was laughing as he crossed the finish line.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I hadn’t expected to write another story about Andrew Dominski, one time time-traveling space agent but this one just popped into being. His first appearance, at his school reunion, can be read here: https://authorjeffbaker.com/2021/02/26/long-time-no-see-friday-flash-fics-by-jeff-baker-february-26-2021/ I wrote the original story after stopping in at my old school and thinking “It feels like a hundred years since I went here.” —–jeff
Presenting the latest anthology from Queer Sci Fi: “Clarity.”
Stories from the 2022 QSF Flash Fiction contest, all stories 300 words or less, all dealing in some way with the theme of “Clarity.”
Stories by authors like Steve Rasnic Tem and Mere Rain among others.
As someone who knows his way around a good flash fiction story I can vouch that crafting one is not easy. The writers here rose to the challenge.
It’s excellent, as are the other anthologies in this series: Bite-sized tales of fantasy, science-fiction, horror, the paranormal and a dash or two of romance thrown in for good measure.
Here are some ordering links:
Queer Sci-Fi: https://www.queerscifi.com
QSF (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/groups/210192115794407
QSF Author Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/queerscifi/
QSF: Twitter:https://twitter.com/queerscifi/
Clarity (noun)
Four definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell:
1) Coherent and intelligible
2) Transparent or pure
3) Attaining certainty about something
4) Easy to see or hear
Clarity features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.
Series Blurb:
Every year, Queer Sci Fi runs a one-word theme contest for 300 word flash fiction stories, and then we choose 120 of the best for our annual anthology.
Non-Exclusive Excerpt:
From the Foreword
It’s hard to tell a story in just 300 words, so it’s only fair that I limit this foreword to exactly 300 words, too. This year, 312 writers took the challenge, with stories across the queer spectrum. The contest rules are simple. Submit a complete, well-written Ink-themed 300 word sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal or horror story with LGBTQ+ characters.
For our ninth year and eighth anthology, we chose the theme “Clarity.” The interpretations run from an “Aha!” moment to the bubbling laughter of water to a private, life-changing realization. There are little jokes, big surprises, and future prognostications that will make your head spin.
I’m proud that this collection includes many colors of the LGBTQ+ (or QUILTBAG, if you prefer) universe—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual characters populate these pages—our most diverse contest yet. There’s a bit of romance, too—and a number of stories solidly on the “mainstream” side. Flash fiction is short, fun, and easy to read. You may not fall in love with every story—in fact, you probably won’t. But if you don’t like one, just move on to the next, and you’re sure to find some bite-sized morsels of flash fiction goodness. There are so many good stories in here—choose your own favorites.
We chose three winning stories, fiver judges’ choice picks, and one director’s pick, all marked in the text. Thanks to our judges—Angel Martinez, B.A. Brock, Ava Kelly, Lexi Ander, and J.M. Dabney—for selflessly giving their time, love, and energy to this project. And to Ryane Chatman too, for editing.
At Queer Sci Fi, we’re building a community of writers and readers who want a little rainbow in their speculative fiction. Join us and submit a story of your own next time!
Buy Links:
Universal Buy Link: https://www.otherworldsink.com/book/clarity/
Authors:
A Acosta – Stuck in the Space Elevator
A. B. Encarnacion – Arene, 27F Invisible
A.H. Lykke – Fresh
A.J. Clarke – Shinigami
Abbie Bernstein – Kids Know
Alden Loveshade – Clouds
Alex Blanc – Death by Siren
Alex Liddell – Telegram From the Netherland
Alex Silver – Smile
Alison J. McKenzie – Happy to Help
Allan Dyen-Shapiro – Oysters and Other Slimy Creatures
Alma Nilsson – Meet Me at the South Gate
Amanda Meuwissen – Willows
Andrea Stanet – Bathtub Gin
Anne Smith – A Glimpse
Anton Kukal – Detonation
Antonia Aquilante – Through the Glass
Avery Vanderlyle – Taking the Plunge
Barbara Krasnoff – Age Cannot Wither Her
Beáta Fülöp – The Unicorn Handler
Belinda McBride – The Choice
Blaine D. Arden – No Crime Unseen
C.T. Phipps – The Chase Was Enough
Camryn Burke – Burden of the Blurred
Caro Soles – The Truth Sayer
Catherine Yeates – Outpouring
Chloe Schaefer – Matthias
Crysta Coburn – The Ghost Maid
D.M. Rasch – Crystal Clear
Daria Richter – Make Me Real
Darrell Z. Grizzle – The Vampire and the Werewolf Priest
David Viner – The Best Solution
Derwin Mak – Software Update
Devon Widmer – Post-Apocalyptic Goo
Drew Baker – The Only Question I Could Ask
E. W. Murks – Earth Day
Elizabeth Hawxhurst – Inflection Point
Emmy Eui – Sunset
Gina Storm Grant – Clearing the Heir
Ginger Streusel – Lovers’ Letters
Gordon Bonnet – Refraction
Isa Reneman – The Furthest Horizon
Isabel McKeough – The Art of Not Blowing Up
Isobel Granby – Sea-Glass
Izzy Tyack – Magically Induced Clarity
J Sigel – Hindsight
J.S. Gariety – Bloom
Jaime Munn – Impulse
James Dunham – Brain of Theseus
Jamie Lackey – The Cursed Princess
Jamie Sands – Remote Working Gothic
Jana Denardo – Unexpected
Jane Suen – Bowls of Steaming Noodles
Jason Sárközi-Forfinski – ACAB
Jaymie Wagner – Harmony
Jendayi Brooks-Flemister – Heartsbeats
Jennifer Haskin – Cold Conviction
Jess Nevins – Stagecoach Mary Versus the Ghost of Cascade
Joe DeRouen – The World Around Her
Jordan Ulibarri – Franklin
Josie Kirkwood – The Blue Capsule Experience
Julie Bozza – Verity
K.L. Noone – The Unicorn’s Knight
K.S. Murphy – Looped
Kaje Harper – Beneath the Surface
Kayleigh Skye – Blue
Kim Fielding – Shared Language
Kiya Nicoll – The Satyr and the Wishing Pond
Kora Knight – Sunrise
Kris Jacen – Visus
Krystle Matar – My Poppy Fields Are Burning
Lloyd A. Meeker – Ruti’s Prayer
Lori Alden Holuta – Magic Mirror
M. X. Kelly – Muddy the Waters
Marie Victoria Robertson – As Foretold
Mary Kuna – Late Bloomer
Megan Baffoe – Ribbon Thread
Megan Diedericks – The Closet is Made of Mahogany
Megan Hippler – The Gift
Mere Rain – With Clear Eyes
Minerva Cerridwen – Secundum Artem
Monique Cuillerier – Through This Window
Nathan Alling Long – The Shadow of Doubt
Nathaniel Taff – The Gauntlet
Nicole Dennis – Orange Dust
Oskar Leonard – Murcorpio
Patricia Loofbourrow – There’s Something Weird About Joe
Phoebe Ching – The Killer Cupid
R.L. Merrill – The Sitter
Rainie Zenith – Crystal Clear
Raven Oak – Wrinkled
Rdp – Alice!
RE Andeen – Male Female Nonbinary Other
RE Carr – A Woman’s Reward
Rie Sheridan Rose – The Night Witch
Rin Sparrow – Never Alone
RL Mosswood – A Trick of the Nerves
RoAnna Sylver – The Face in the Mirror
Rob Bliss – PSI Ecstasy
Rory Ni Coileain – One Night in Troy
Sacchi Green – The Star Beast
Sage HN – Impact
Scott Jenson – Cycles
Sheryl Hayes – A Smoking Hot Proposal
Shirley Meier – Upon Reflection
SI CLARKE – If the Shoe Fits
Siri Paulson – Blood and Water
Stacy Noe – Demons Need Love Too
Stephen B. Pearl – Sad Reality
Stephen Dedman – Through a Glass Clearly
Steve Fuson – Translucent
Steve Rasnic Tem – The Man in the Mirror
T.J. Reed – New Memories
Terry Poole – A Grey Man
Tori Thompson – A Visage of Home
V. Astor Solomon – Blood Will Show Us Who We Are
W. Dale Jordan – Ascension
Warren Rochelle – Ghosts
William R. Eakin – Overcoming Entropy
Yoyoli – If Deliberate Avoidance Fulfills No Dream
About QSF:
Queer Sci Fi is the brainchild of J. Scott Coatsworth, a blog and website that’s all about LGBT characters in science fiction, fantasy, paranormal and horror fiction. We’re dedicated to promoting the inclusion of LGBT characters in these genres.
We started the site in January of 2014, with the intent to create a community for writers and readers of LGBT-themed speculative fiction. We post regular discussion topics, news, book announcements and reviews. We have an AWESOME Facebook discussion group, and a great admin team – Angel Martinez, Ben Brock, Ryane Chatman, and J. Scott Coatsworth.
Once a year, we put out a call for flash fiction submissions based on a single word theme, and get anywhere between two hundred and four hundred entries. Clarity is our eight annual anthology.
QSF Website: https://www.queerscifi.com
QSF Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/groups/210192115794407
QSF Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/queerscifi/
QSF Twitter: https://twitter.com/queerscifi/
The draws for the October 2022 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Crime Drama, set in a Law Office, involving a Railroad Tie.
Here are the results!
E. H. Timms wrote “Waterlogged Notes.” https://thinkingthinking123.blogspot.com/2022/10/flash-fic-challenge-waterlogged-notes.html
And I wrote “All the Live Long Day.” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2022/10/10/all-the-live-long-day-flash-fiction-draw-challenge-story-by-jeff-baker-for-october-10th-2022/
How about you? It’s never too late for you to write your own story and post it in the comments and I’ll post it here!
Again, thanks so much to all the contributors! ——jeff
Here’s my story, based on the prompts of a Crime Drama, set in a Law Office involving a Railroad Tie. I set my lawyer-detectives Musselman and Pearce to work on the case! —–jeff
All the Live Long Day
by Jeff Baker
The Law Firm of Musselman and Pearce usually didn’t handle murder cases, but this one was different. For openers, all the people involved were dead. For another, the case had taken place 76 years ago in 1945. Musselman and Pearce were lawyers, not detectives but they would be be researching a case and would be paid well. Really well. They had the world’s smallest law office but still had to pay rent.
Abraham Bendix had been accused of killing his foreman in the old railroad yard in January of 1945. Someone had swung a heavy railroad tie and hit Smith on the side of the head. The trial had taken place months later. He was acquitted, but now his grandniece wanted to find out who really killed his foreman, Smith. Bendix had gone to his grave with people whispering behind his back.
It took a while but Musselman and Pearce found some letters and documents testifying to definite animosity between Smith and Bendix. None of it was reason to convict anybody. One of the notes, however, was about the railroad tie.
In their cramped law office, Pearce explained his findings.
“One of the women who worked in the office had mentioned that a discarded tie was sticking up out of the ground like a fence post and might be dangerous. Why she wasn’t called to testify I do not know. We were unable to find anybody living who had been at the trial, let alone who had known the suspect or the victim.”
Belford, Kansas had been a small town during the war, not even a post office, but the railroad yard was just outside of town. It served Millington more than Belford, but it was in Belford’s jurisdiction.
The facts were these: On the night of January 11th, 1945, Abraham Bendix had had dinner at his usual diner and supposedly gone home. The next morning, Smith was found dead. It was cold and there were no footprints in the hard ground around the body but somebody remembered Smith saying he had to inspect something in the yard. He was found laying by a large, wooden railroad tie which was laying there half buried in the ground, but was laying on its side like a railroad tie is supposed to.
Musselman and Pearce had checked the weather for that week. Bitter cold. But it hadn’t sleeted, rained or snowed.
Smith could have fallen, but had he?
The secretary’s note had been found in an old, abandoned desk in one of the yard’s old buildings, along with a receipt from January 17th of that year for ice.
Here’s how they pieced it together; Bendix had lured Smith out there in the dark, scattered ice from a freezer bag and had arranged for him to slip and bang his head on the tie that was standing there in the dark. It looked for all the world like someone had slammed him with the tie instead of the other way around. A tie that he could never have picked up. Bendix had simply kicked the tie over so it looked like it way laying there.
“So, why hadn’t the cops figured it out, Pearce?” Musselman asked me.
“The war was still on, remember?” I said. “Police officers were considered as serving their country, but most of the able-bodied young men in the area had joined up to fight. Remember, Belford was still very much a small town and the local police had been on the force for about thirty years and had probably never come up against anything like this before.”
I sighed. “Now comes the hard part…telling Abraham Bendix’s grandniece that he really DID commit murder. But in a very clever way.”
“But what happened to Carstairs, the secretary?” Musselman asked.
I smiled. “Don’t you know? She ran off with Bendix.”
—end—
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or a work of someone else’s that has at least one LGBT character, posted on the Rainbow Snippets page, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 This week’s snippets are from one of my weekly flash fiction stories. We eavesdrop on Jayse and Cassie, two best friends sharing a latte (or some such.)
Here’s snippet one:
“I don’t like funerals. I don’t like ‘em in the rain and I certainly don’t like ‘em at night,” Jayce said, sipping his coffee.
“Would you, could you with a bagel? Would you, could you reading Nagel?” Cassie said grinning and holding up her blueberry slathered bagel. The two of them laughed sitting there in the mid-afternoon sun of the coffee shop. Jayce sipped his coffee and went on.
Here’s a second snippet:
“I mean, honestly, I barely knew Uncle Karl. Remember, I told you when I was going through my David Bowie phase when I was fifteen? My hair was all, you know and I was in one of those suits that make you look skinnier? And that tie that looked like blue tinfoil?”
“Mmmmm-Hmmmmm,” Cassie said sipping her coffee.
“It helped with the look that I was pretty pale,” Jayce said.
Okay, one last snippet where Jayse recounts his one meeting with his Great Uncle:
“Anyway, Uncle Karl said he had to wear dark glasses too because his eyes were pretty sensitive to daylight, but he wasn’t wearing them then. Honestly, Girl, he looked pretty healthy and way too young to be a great uncle.” He took a big slurp of his coffee and Cassie grimaced. “Anyway, I asked Uncle Karl if the punch was spiked and he said ‘I never drink…punch.’ And then laughed like he’d made this big joke.”
That’s it for this week. Did you catch something Jayse didn’t? Here’s the story “In the Night, In the Rain” so you can read for yourself! https://authorjeffbaker.com/2018/10/11/stop-in-for-a-coffee-in-friday-flash-fics-by-jeff-baker/
————jeff
Gruff
by Jeff Baker
(A Bllly Gonzalez story.)
All Arnie Jorgenson told me was that he’d found a place with some good grass. Me, I wasn’t into that, but he told me to meet him behind the old Power Company Building that afternoon and he’d explain.
Arnie and I had known each other since grade school over in Maize and now we both lived in Wichita. I got over to the place just West of downtown and parked in the old Power Company lot which is where Arnie ran up to me. He was six-foot two, blonde and muscular. Yeah, I noticed. But that was all.
“It’s cool, Billy. It’s great. I’ll get it at a bargain price. ‘Cause the city doesn’t own it!”
He was babbling. Maybe he was on grass.
We went around the back of the big brick building with the old glass windows and Arnie pointed to a small rise covered in thick green grass.
“We’re going to set up the lab right there,” Arnie said. “This spot hasn’t been touched in centuries. We have the pictures and the deeds. And the four families that own it are going in on it with me.”
Arnie had been working with some ecology, environment group. I didn’t expect him to do it downtown or close to it.
“My family is one of the ones that owns this, or part of it,” Arnie said. “We just found out about it recently.”
I’d known Arnie’s family had some money. But I wondered why he’d gotten me out here unless it was to offer me a job. Or something else.
“Look over here, Billy,” he said pointing at a grate at the back of the building. “And watch your step.”
I stepped over the part of the grate and looked down. A chalky, lumpy face with squinty eyes looked up at me. There was one thin arm reaching up towards the grate. I jumped back and fell on the grass.
Arnie laughed, helping me to my feet. “Hey, ‘Bro! He’s harmless! Take a look.”
I stared again. It was a statue under the grate. Of a troll.
“Yeah, I read about this,” I said. “Like the story about the three billy goats. They would use that name.”
“You’re nothing like a goat, Billy,” Arnie said. “Now come over here and be careful. I’ve got a little problem.”
Oboy, I thought. My friends didn’t call me because they had an ordinary problem.
“My Great-Great-Grandparents bought this land around 1890 with some other people. They were going to build houses, but…”
“Who dares intrude?” The voice growled from nowhere, deep, guttural, menacing.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“Well, we think…”
The voice growled again.
“You have the scent of the ancestral lands and waters. But you do not belong here. Begone!”
There was a rush of wind and clumps of dirt and rock began hurling at us. From out of nowhere.
We ran to the other side of the building.
“What the hell was that?!” I asked again.
“I think it was a troll,” Arnie said with a sigh. “A real one.”
“A what?” I said. I shouldn’t have been surprised. William H. Gonzalez (as my driver’s license called me) had a knack for this sort of thing. I also shouldn’t have walked over to where the voice had come from. All that experience with weird stuff had made me a little careless.
“Look,” I said. “Maybe there’s some kind of un-weird explanation for this…”
There wasn’t. The next instant the ground erupted again. I was glad that my other experience included the High School and College track teams. In other words, a lot of running.
When Arnie and I were catching our breath across the street, I pulled out my cellphone and scrolled and searched for information about trolls.
“Only thing it says here is that trolls stick to the shadows. Sunlight is about the only thing that can fight them.”
“Swell.” Arnie said. “We start digging the ground to get the Troll some sunlight, how long before that thing throws us into the building?”
“We probably wouldn’t get to the building,” I said. It could toss whole slabs of ground at us and still stay in the shade.”
I held up a hand: “What kind of equipment do you folks have?” I asked. “Like for green houses and such?”
Arnie shrugged. “Lights. Thermometers. Some heavy-duty stuff.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
I was glad Arnie’s headquarters was not too far away. While we were going through the equipment, Arnie told me how his family had emigrated from Norway over a hundred years ago and he thought his ancestors may have accidentally brought the Troll with them and it had settled into their land. I joked that if this was an online troll Arnie could just unfriend him.
Yeah, that went over well. Fortunately, right about then we found what I was looking for. Then it was just a matter of waiting until dark.
Going after an angry nocturnal troll after the sun sets. I must be living well, I thought.
We pulled up as quietly as we could by the old Power Company building and carefully made our way in the dim light from the streetlights to the back and the mound of earth and grass. We were carrying a pair of big portable lamps that reminded me of a lantern we’d had when my folks and I went camping. I could hear the thing in the ground grumbling. It sensed us coming, or maybe it just sensed Arnie I wondered. It had mentioned his family earlier. The ground rumbled and the Troll emerged.
I was expecting a little man with thick arms and a beard wearing a red cap. Instead it was tall, bulky and looked like it was made of deep shadow. It had limbs and a vaguely human shape. It hurt my eyes to look at it closely.
The thing towered over us.
“Okay…NOW!” Arnie said shouted when the thing was out of the ground.
We turned the lights on and aimed them at the thing. The reddish beams hit the thing which let out a roar and dissolved.
I shone the light in my face and grinned. “Nothing like a little ultraviolet and infrared light to fake a little sunlight!”
We high fived each other but then there was a growl and the ground shook again. Then we heard a metallic clanking behind us. I had an awful feeling and went over and looked at the sculpted troll under the grate.
It was moving. Banging its fists against the grate and snarling. But the grating held; I guess the sculpture wasn’t made of anything sturdier than the grate.
It looked up and glared when Arnie looked in.
“You,” it growled. “You no stop me from finding way home. I can inhabit all things of the deep Earth.”
“Hey, wait,” I said. “You mean, you want to leave?”
“Need to be there. The mountains, the fjords, the rivers. My land,” the Troll said. “This not my land.”
Arnie and I looked at each other. If the Troll could really inhabit things like metal and rock…
It took some doing, and the toughest part was translating the note into Norwegian. But we shipped a carefully-wrapped stone in a large package with a letter explaining that this was a Norwegian mineral that we felt belonged in its own country. We figured the stone would be there long enough for the Troll to emerge and go where he wanted to be.
So we shipped the rock to a major Norwegian university. Arnie being part owner of a research and ecology company did help but it still cost us a bundle to ship.
And I guess Arnie did okay researching a chunk of Kansas grass in the middle of the city. I was just as glad I wasn’t working with him. I didn’t want to find out that there was some other unearthly thing there under the earth that didn’t belong.
—end—
authorjeffbaker 