I just hope all of the formatting on this does not come out all screwed up....
Oh well, here it goes!
Voices
Jang sat alone in the darkness of his apartment. It was dark for several reasons, the least of all because he could not suffer the sight of the aftermath, the sheer bedlam, which his grief-borne rage had spawned. Jang put his tear-streaked face in his palms for what must have been the one billionth time and clamped his eyes shut tightly; his jaws clenched voluntarily as he stifled the building, racking sobs.
“At least YOU can’t cry anymore…”
The mental voice that piped up this time was the weak one, the Strawboy, as Jang had come to call it; a high-pitched, piping voice that despite attempting to be positive, generally seemed to make the most disparaging comments at the most inopportune times. Comments that often left Jang feeling absolutely and undeniably worse than he had to begin with.
Then the other voice came. Its rough, gravelly bass tone would have vibrated Jang’s wisdom teeth right out of his head, had it been real. “Time fer cryin’s done. Time to do sumpfin ‘bout it.”
Jang knew that this voice, Gravelguy, as he termed it, was right this time. He had spent three whole days in this darkened apartment (a self-imposed exile) mourning for his loss; now it was high time to do…well, do something to right the wrong that had ensued. Jang fished his blue knit toboggan down from the curtain rod where it had been perching since he flung it in a fit of anger and socked it down over his short, jet black hair. Snatching his keys up from the tiny pile of fragmented glass that had once been a mirror, Jang caught a fleeting glimpse of his red, bloodshot right eye. The glimpse lasted only a nanosecond, but that one brief image summoned one similar to the fore of his sleep-deprived mind – that of another, but far more heinous, reddened, vein-streaked orb, followed by the pungent, nose-wrinkling stench of decaying flesh and the abysmally antiseptic scent of a morgue.
As he stepped out of his apartment, mindlessly closing the door behind him, Jang had that single image burning a hole in his head and a single goal burning a hole in his gut: he was going to get his son back. Like rocks in a tumbler came the resonating mental comment, “’Bout damn time.”
* * *
Jang could barely remember his great grandmother, Chi Jen, and the alluring tales she would tell of their family history and the lost past of their people. Some of his earliest and best memories were of sitting on her ample lap, the spicy smells of her herbal tea boiling on the twin-eyed stove, and looking up into the mask of brown, leathery wrinkles she used for a face. Her black eyes twinkled like the gleaming surface of her religiously polished shoes; from somewhere within the light colored, tightly tied kerchief on her head escaped a few rebellious strands of wispy, silver hair.
As a young man Jang never really knew what to think of Chi Jen’s stories of Taarva, the boy who conquered death and brought storytelling to the Mongol people, or of the brutal tests of manhood that the young men of the ancient tribes would undergo before being handed the reigns of his first mount. Even now, as an adult, the legends of the true treasures of Danzanravjaa, still lost to the world, and those of the creation of the first “howling” arrows perplexed and entranced him. It was always the stories of the demons, fearsome creatures of disease and palsy, which often took on animalistic or shamanistic forms, though, that seemed to sink most deeply into his subconscious. Jang always chided himself that it was just the simple fear that all experience in childhood when presented with such stories, but he could never fully convince himself. Whether or not he knew it, these simple children’s stories, told to him by a beloved and greatly missed ancestor, implanted in him something that he yearned for and desperately needed – something that would soon change him forever.
* * *
Like many of his family during the twentieth century, Jang felt the ever growing societal pressure to move away from the archaic stories and rituals of worship derived from his Mongol heritage. It was during this time of internal conflict, Jang was sure of it, that Strawboy saw his premier appearance on the internal stage of his mind. Having to choose between a strong and proud ancestral way of life and fitting in with his friends and classmates at the all-boy Catholic school he attended was the thing of nightmares. Strawboy was always there, his whining falsetto voice adding fuel to the conflagration searing young Jang’s soul.
“But there are NOT any horse lords anymore! Most people these days don’t even know what a saddle is, much less how to USE one! What good are the skills of hunting, tracking and riding in a world where meat is a short walk away at the grocer, HUH?” Strawboy was influential, to say the least, in the breaking of a young man’s spirit and paving the path for him to succumb to a litany of marketing, peer pressure and societal change. It was not long before Jang converted to Catholicism, throwing himself into the church full bore, trying to silence the irksome voice within his mind.
It was during this time of his extreme involvement in the church that he discovered a sanctuary, an exact replica of Giovanni Pisano’s The Pulpit of the Cathedral of Pistoia that was stored in a small, rarely visited room beneath the rectory. It was a massive hexagonal sculpture composed of six pillars, each resting upon either an unadorned pedestal, a wolf nursing a pair of infants, an elephant, or a bearded man. Topping the pillars were the slabs of the pedestal, borne upon the winged backs of seraphim, each of them depicting a scene from the Bible in beautiful and somehow garish scenes. The scenes were common ones often represented in religious architecture and art: the Natività, the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crocifissione, and the Universal Judgment. (((INSERT PIC 3)))
Somehow the unusual dichotomy of traditional Christian scenes, supported upon the backs of, in Jang’s mind, ancient pagan symbols: the wolf that nursed the swaddling founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus; the elephant (a widely used symbol in Indian mythology); and the burden-bearing bearded man, which seemed to obviously be the titan Atlas - as oddly comforting. Jang would often, in times of trouble, confusion, or sadness, find himself drawn to the Pulpit and sit beneath its bowers, gazing up at the greatest scenes of his faith given life in cold stone. He would always feel his eyes pulled, despite his most dogged efforts to the abutting depictions of the Adoration of the Magi and the Massacre of the Innocents – he sensed something more within those stony scenes, something that spoke to a part of him that was long and deeply buried.
* * *
It was to this place – the Pulpit - that Jang went now, to sort things out, just as he did in his youth. He knew that he had wasted precious time wallowing in his grief, but the Pulpit always seemed to clam him and set his mind at ease, even during the most tumultuous moments of his spiritual life. Now, it seemed, when everything in which he believed was threatened and when his entire world his entire reality - seemed turned on its ear by the events that had occurred less than ninety-six hours ago, he needed the soothing balm that the Pulpit had always provided him. If nothing else, he just needed a quiet, reflective place to think, and to plan out his next course of action. Quickly stuffing a mental gag into the mouth of Strawboy, which he had little doubt was about to open and ruin his resolve, Jang hustled across the still slick streets on his way to what would soon become the crossroads of his existence.
* * *
The small, dark room that housed the Pulpit was, as usual, empty and silent. Only the sounds of Jang’s now relaxed breathing pierced the veil of tranquility that surrounded and enveloped him. Letting his eyes meander over the carvings and stonework, as he always did, Jang felt the familiar waves of soothing peace flow over him; his eyes grew heavy and his breathing faint. In fact, Jang almost slipped off into a bout of much needed rest (he had slept none of the past three days) when a voice, or rather, several versions of the same voice issued out at him from the darkness.
“Jang, your time has come.”, stated the voices flatly. The manner in which the voices accumulated in his ear was terribly strange, they were all the same voice, but each seemed to come at him from a different direction, as if the speaker had many mouths, which were located all around him!
Slowly recovering his wits and his ability to move, Jang looked around him, stammering, “G-g-g-god?”
The voices around him seemed to make a chuckling, gurgling sound, similar to water be poured over rocks. “You could say that, yes.”, came the voices’ reply. They paused for a moment and then repeated, as if inpatient, “Your time has come.”
Still reeling in shock and amazement, Jang’s dazed brain finally processed that the voices were, in fact, coming from all around him – from the stone carvings in the Pulpit! When the voice spoke, the mouths around him moved, the stony visages of the Mother Mary, Atlas, Romulus and Remus, and Christ himself seemed to be speaking to him! Barely, through the fog of human disbelief that swelled within him like the rising surf, Jang managed, “My time for what, Lord?”
The voices seemed slightly irritated now, and replied, a bit flippantly, “Jang, spare the titles, the pomp and circumstance; you have much to do. Your son is held in bondage and lies in torment.”
The mention of his son sobered Jang instantly. “What would you have me do, Lor-uh-, well what?”, Jang fumbled. He kept wondering how Moses would have dealt with an issue like this, but then quickly rammed those thoughts deep within him, hoping that the Almighty would not notice them. They could be considered sacrilegious, after all…
If they noticed, the voices did not let on. “Your time has come to do one thing, Jang, and this thing you must do without fail and without question. Only faith and what lies within you can save your son.” There was an audible pause, as if the voices were thinking long and hard about something. At long last, it was Jang who spoke next, his voice full of incredulity.
“Lord…er…I mean…uh…whatever, you want me to go shopping?”
* * *
Jang had to fight hard to keep Straw boy’s mental gag in place as he rushed across the street and into the store, shaking the cold rain from his coat-less shoulders. Looking for a store employee and wondering if he had totally lost his mind, Jang pulled a thin piece of plastic from his wallet, cupping it in his hand as if it were manna from heaven. Catching the eye of a pretty young woman behind a counter with a warm, brown complexion, dark hair pulled back into a tight bun, and eyes that shone like a new black Jaguar XK8 Coupe, Jang stepped up, slapped the piece of plastic down on the glass counter, and spoke. His voice was a cool and strong as pig-iron, and somehow he knew that the resolution in his voice came from somewhere other than within his body.
“I’m here to shop. I’m on a mission from God.”
* * *
Jang had few answers for the young woman, but he somehow knew that she somehow knew that not only was he serious, but also that he was not a lunatic or some fevered religious fanatic. Almost instantly, he was swept up by the woman, who seemed to have a knack for browsing through the expansive store, all the while coddling folks who regularly spoke with the Almighty, and helping them pick out just the right divinely inspired gift. There was something about this woman that set him instantly at ease, and she seemed vaguely familiar, but his muddled, barraged mind could only strain vainly to place her. Her melodic voice broke Jang’s meditative state of thought and he gradually became aware that she was offering him a book on travel.
“Perhaps this is what you are looking for?”, she suggested, smiling and proffering the book to him, all the while doing her best Vanna White impersonation.
Feeling some spark of interest, at least on some level, Jang flipped through the book, while his lovely companion returned to her search for the sacrament. The first couple of entries did little to impress or move him, but upon the third haphazard flip, something caught his eye and rooted him to the spot. The entry detailed a methodically planned and plotted trip to Persia, noting all of the best times, climes, and places to visit. One of the highlights of the trips, according to the pithy article, was a self-guided tour through “the beautifully desolate lands once ruled by the might of the Mongol hordes”. The term “hordes” stuck in his craw, but Jang could not help but feel that there was some significance here; the sweeping sensation in his gut was telling him something, but he could not quite put a finger on it.
“Ya know wha’ ‘t means.”, came Gravelguy’s rumbling voice, seeming quite displeased with Jang.
“Of course he does –“, Strawboy sputtered, struggling out of his mental muzzle, “- he’s just not READY, that’s all. He just needs to go BACK HOME and lie down for a bit, and then he will feel better.”
Jang shook his head, trying to disperse the voices. Distantly, he was aware that his god-sent shopping guide was motioning to him; she was holding something else in her hands and her dark, smooth face had assumed a questioning expression.
“Do you play?”, she was asking, “You have the build of a jockey – I dated one once, which is how I know – and I know they often play.” Jang looked from her exuberant, smiling face to the object in her hands. At first, he could not place the item, which looked like a long tube, topped perpendicularly at one end with a smallish, cylindrical polished wooden head; a length of flexible mesh was attached at the opposite end, looped in such a way as to create a strap or handle. (((INSERT PIC 2))) “It’s a polo mallet, of course, you act like you’ve never seen one before, sir. Surely…well, on second thought, maybe I was wrong…”, she started to turn away, taking the object with her.
“No! Please – that’s it! It’s perfect!”, Jang heard himself bellowing, not truly knowing why. All he knew was that the moment he laid eyes on the object, he somehow, suddenly, had an idea of what lay before him. Handing the travel book and his credit card to the dark-haired lady, he gave her a quick, but polite command, “Please, Miss, ring these up. I’ll be taking them both.” He smiled apologetically, adding, “You have been most helpful, Miss, most helpful indeed…”
Paying for the items, Jang looked around the store, as if still searching for something. Noticing the potential for an even greater sale, the dark-eyed attendant spoke up, “Sir, is there anything else I can get for you?” She smiled, despite the fact that she secretly wished that this eccentric, shifty fellow would soon be finished and out of her care.
“Actually, yes, Miss.”, Jang replied. “Do you know where I can purchase a plane ticket? I need to be on the next flight to Persia…”
* * *
Jang stepped out of the small, dingy Persian excuse for a taxi and retrieved his polo mallet and his travel guide from the back seat. Paying the sweaty, bearded and gap-tooted driver in crisp American ten’s, he turned to survey the scene before him. Jang stuffed the travel guide, now soiled, dog eared, read and re-read, into his back pocket and absentmindedly turned the mallet over and over in his hands, caressing its smooth, straight and simple lines.
“CraZEE! CRA-ZEE is what you are!”, came Strawboy’s ear-piercing shriek.
Jang frowned, not wishing to hear this conversation again. He’d only endured it about a thousand times since he stepped onto the plane.
Right on queue, Gravelguy’s crackling voice chimed in, “Bah! ‘Dis is ‘da first smart t’ing we’ve done since –“.
Jang cut them both off this time, he was weary and this conversation never seemed to conclude, much less help. He pulled off his blue knit toboggan with one hand, scratched his head, and then plopped the hat back on again. He knew what he was here for, now it was time to get it started; whether he knew it or not, Jang was preparing to enter into battle.
* * *
Jang clutched the mallet in his hands until his knuckles turned white, or at least until he assumed that his knuckles were turning white. He could not tell, since his eyes were clamped shut. He could hear and feel his sharp exhalations of breath as he weathered blow after blow to his torso. He could not help but imagine he was being struck by a pillow-fisted giant; the sharp, methodical strikes hurt very little, but there was no denying the blunt force and massive energy behind each. Jang wished, and not for the first time that he could scratch his itching nose, but his arms were securely bound and from the way it felt, mostly buried at this point. He sneezed, but the action did little more than continue to stir the cloud of fine dust that swirled around his head. He heard the diggers laughing and talking to one another in their tuneful, almost sing-song tongue. Despite lacking the ability to translate the words, he knew that they were talking about him, “the-shaman-who-was-not”, as they called him; he had managed to get at least that much out of his hired guide before relieving him of his duty. Jang knew that he was nearing the end of his journey now, and would have little need of a guide on its next leg.
Jang sneezed again. The giant had gone away, replaced now by a gentle tip-tapping rain of small rocks and pebbles. Before long, it too, went away, and he was left, buried up to his neck, in the soil that his ancestors once ruled from the backs of their mighty steeds. All around him, he could hear the voices of those who the locals thought he sought to emulate – the shamans, all of them conducting an ancient ritual, the yinjkata, to gain passage into the spirit realm. (((INSERT PIC 1))) Jang knew he was here for a reason different from those white robed and hooded mystics, however. Most of them sought peaceful enlightenment or answers to plaguing questions about the hear and now; he was here to find and save his son and it was nearly time to enter into torment…
Jang stifled the twin voices within his skull and let his thoughts drift back to the Pulpit, to the time he spent there as a child, to the time he spent there recently, and slowly passed out of this realm, and into the next…
* * *
When Jang opened his eyes, he knew that he was in grave danger. All around him was inky blackness, accentuated by an ever present, glowing orange nimbus of fire. Screeching, moaning, howling, and piercing sounds of giddy, malicious laughter filled the air and threatened to overwhelm him. All that he could see was muted and blurred, as if he was looking through glasses smeared with oil at a world where little was evident and true. Out of the hazy gloom, he could make out indistinct shapes that seemed to be doing things that he would really rather not see to begin with, so he was thankful at least for that small blessing.
The moment that last though went through his mind, it seemed that all of the smoky air around him began boiling with trembling rage, jarring sound, and movements filled with such fury and hatred that his entire body quaked. Jang knew that something had just gone horribly wrong but had no idea how to cope with the current situation, much less the current situation at a worsened state. Unfortunately, the situation soon dealt with Jang on its own terms; without warning the shrouded darkness around him burst open, pouring out nightmares made flesh. All Jang could think about at that moment were the stories of the demons that his great-grandmother had told him as a boy. He had always known, deep down, that they were real…
* * *
Jang was tossed unceremoniously to the hard, hot, serrated stony ground; miraculously, he managed to hold on to the mallet. While he had no visible wounds and knew he had only spent moments in their clutches, he felt like he had just spent an eternity having his skin flayed and burnt from his bones. Even the gaze of the demons pierced his comparatively weaker flesh and seared the inner reaches of his soul. Instantly, he knew that one way or another, an end to his journey was about to arrive as the pungent, nose-wrinkling stench of decaying flesh and the abysmally antiseptic scent of a morgue struck him full in the face. He knew that the demon, the foul creature that had stolen his son, was nearby.
Jang rose shakily to his feet, brandishing the mallet like he had seen Arnold Schwarzenegger do with a sword in
Conan; he fervently hoped that a display would be enough. In the depths of his soul he knew that this was the part that he had been the most unsure about, finding his way here was one thing, but fighting a world of demons for his son and getting out alive was another thing altogether. His defensive stance was met with waves of demonic laughter, horrible, gnashing sounds that reminded Jang of a car crash combined with the screeching hoots of possessed owls. It was then that the demon Jang sought appeared, slowly emerging from the flame-spiked darkness around him.
It was a horrific, ghastly thing. A vile round mass of rotting, stinking flesh punctuated by hundreds of leaking, lidless, red, bloodshot eyes and a massive round, fanged maw in the center of its corpulent mass. Six gangly, leprous arms surrounded its bloated, bag-like body and in one of its lecherous claws, Jang saw his son. The demon was still laughing at him, its fetid breath rolling over him with every hoot-like chuckle that burbled up out of its foul gullet.
“Now the mortal worm comes and wants to PLAY a game!”, cried the otherworldly beast.
Jang nearly fainted. The Strawboy! The demon’s voice was the same high-pitched whining crone that he had so long railed against in the world above. Suddenly, things became very clear. Jang replied, grinning a sly grin, knowing that his theory was correct even before he spoke a syllable. “NO! ‘Da time fer playin’s done. Now’s ‘da time ‘dat me’s been waitin’ on!”, Jang’s voice rolled from his throat like a bounding boulder, deep and gravelly. Things now made complete sense to him.
The demon screamed like a frustrated girl and began to absentmindedly pluck at his son with the three claws closest to him, while motioning to Jang with the other three, beckoning him in for a fight.
Jang now knew that he was not here to fight, however – this was not his battle – it was a battle for those he brought within himself to his place. He knew now that the mallet was not a weapon, rather, it was a guide, as was the travel book; a modern day clue to provide insight for Jang to unlock the ancient secrets and tools within his soul. Jang cast the mallet, a symbol of a modern-day mounted warrior, to the ground and instantly the ephemeral form of a rearing stallion appeared beneath him. At first, the steed was more energy than matter, but soon it coalesced into something just as real and as solid as the encroaching fiends about him.
The demon and its minions in the darkness around Jang and his summoned steed screamed battle cries, and Jang urged his mount into a headlong charge towards the sickly sac of fiend-flesh that held his son. He had only ridden a horse once before, in the world above, but now all of the skills of those in his past, a great lineage of Mongol warriors, were at his command. His own, now-deep voice rose in a cry of battle in a tongue he only now understood as the one spoken by those that fought beneath the standard of the Khan. The foul demon that stood before his racing steed braced itself for the mighty impact...
The impact that never came. At the last possible moment, using all of the knowledge at his grasp, Jang veered away from the demon, snatched his son from its scabrous grasp and spurred his horse into a full gallop. As Jang held his son tightly to his breast, his steed flew like the very wind through the flickering flames and he knew that something within him had remained behind. Jang heard the pitched screams of battle behind him and wheeled his mount to chance one fleeting glimpse, the very sparks from the demon-spawned flames leaping around him to obscure his view. (((INSERT PIC 4))) Before his eyes was a mighty battle wherein Mongol warriors, singing songs of war in deep, baritone voices and mounted upon fleet-footed steeds slew scores of abominations and demons; banishing them from the worlds below and above forever.
Jang called to his horse and wheeled her once more into the smoky flames and then he knew no more.
* * *
Jang pulled the shade down to keep the light from the rising sun out of his boy’s eyes. Tired beyond belief, but resilient, the small lad had fallen asleep listening to his father’s tales of the ways of the old ones, the Mongols, from whom they both claimed their heritage. Sighing, Jang glanced at his watch, noting that there were still several hours of idle time to fill on their flight home. Jang wondered what it would be like having that mental quiet time all by his lonesome, now that the voices in his head were gone…
