Into The Abyss

J. L. Langland Into the Abyss

Special Thanks and Dedication to:

Michael Begal, Jay Haesly, Sean Jones

For Maps, Details, History and more visit: www.Astlan.Net

Chapter 1

He wasn’t really positive, but Tom was pretty sure that this wasn’t what pot was supposed to feel like. He’d never smoked any before, but people had told him what it felt like and this wasn’t it. The room was swaying around him and funny colored lights were dancing about the room. Which he thought, rather muddily, is what acid was supposed to do, not grass. His stomach was beginning to dance in his middle. He sat down on the couch behind him, rapidly. The room seeming to telescope around him, sounds and faces appeared as if through a very long tunnel.

“Whoa,” was all he said as he sat down. This might not have been a good idea, thought Tom. He really shouldn’t have let Paul talk him into it. In fact, as the colored lights began to obscure the entire room at the other end of the tunnel, he began to wish he’d never let Jack and Paul talk him into coming to this party. At the time though, it had seemed the best way to meet people. He’d only moved to Harding two weeks ago and he had been awful lonely until he’d met Jack and Paul at school last week. They’d convinced him to come to the party, and then convinced him to try one of the new joints Reggie had just bought in New York yesterday.

“Hey Tom, what’s the matter? Can’t handle a little good feeling?” asked one of the guys on Tom’s left.

“I’m fine, just... thought I’d sit down and enjoy the... rush,” lied Tom, trying to save face. The world began to spin. Voices filled the air around him. The partiers laughing and joking, the music rushing in waves upon his head. His whole body seemed to be undulating in time to the rather retro — almost trance or psychedelic like — rhythm that was gushing out the fourteen inch speakers in the corners. As he turned his head towards the speakers it was like the tunnel was a reverse megaphone or something channeling the sound; it made him even dizzier.

As the rush grew, the room and its occupants seemed to sort of fade from view, the tunnel dimming, turning gray. Within a few minutes he was unable to see anyone in the room, or the room itself, for that matter. He could feel it and the music, but colored lights swirled and danced around him as his soul seemed to expand and shrink around his body with the music. Voices seemed to come to him from far away, his ‘friends’ making jokes because he’d apparently passed out. As the music and voices began to fade from his ears he slowly realized he could see again. It was weird though; through his eyes, or what he thought of as his eyes, colored lights still danced around him, but with what was almost like a second set of eyes he could see the party going on around him. The scary part, however, was that he wasn’t looking at the party from the couch. He was watching from the ceiling above, and he could see his own passed out body on the couch below him. His face pale, the joint slipping from his fingers, his chest rising and falling with the beat of the music.

Paul bent over him, laughing, and shook him, trying to wake him up. Tom didn’t feel a thing though. He could no longer hear any of the people at the party, but he could still feel the music, even though he couldn’t hear it. The room began slowly receding, as if he were backing away from it like one of those expanding long shots in a movie where they zoom from street level to outer space.

Is this one of those near death experiences? Thought Tom. No, he could still see his body breathing, and he certainly didn’t feel at peace. He felt sick and disoriented. This stuff was bad.

As he gazed at the ever more distant room, he realized that he could hear voices again. These, however, didn’t sound like the voices at the party. They were chanting something in time to the music in what sounded like a strange foreign language, something similar to, but definitely not, Latin. One voice older than the rest seemed to be leading the chanting, drawing him on. In his mind he tried rotating his point of reference in the direction of the chanting. It seemed almost as if they were saying come to us, come to us. Hey, he thought confusedly, maybe these are the voices of the doctors trying to bring me back, I better go to them, I really don’t want to die quite yet. He tried, sluggishly, at first, to move forward, towards them, through the soup of colored lights. The chanting grew louder and louder. Suddenly a face appeared right in front of him. It seemed twisted in a grim smile of triumph and determination.

It shouted in his mind, “NAME.”

Tom was so startled by its appearance and by being able to understand the voice, he answered, almost unwilling, “Thomas Edward Perkinje.”

The face twisted in, if possible, a more hideous grin of triumph. Tom suddenly decided, if that’s what I’m going back for, I think I’ll stay here. Tom recognized somewhere at the core of his being that the voice and face wanted nothing good for him. He rotated what he thought of as his body and began to flee from the face with all his strength. He ran on mental legs as fast as he could. Farther and farther away, he fled. As he fled, the voices became more and more insistent, demanding that he return to them.

He fled from them harder than he had ever run from the bullies in his old school, the ones that used to harass him because he wouldn’t give them money. Tom was stubborn, his mother always said he was too bull-headed for his own good. Well, Tom was absolutely positive that he wanted nothing to do with that leering face. He ran on and on, refusing to give into the voices that called on him to submit, to return.

He felt what seemed to be cold hands reach from behind to try and grab at the center of his being. The old voice screamed at him, “Thomasedwardperkinje, by thy true name I command thee, submit. Your will is mine. I am thy master. Submit demon, submit!” For reasons beyond his grasp hearing his name and that command he slowed his flight. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it. He was running as if through molasses, his legs slowing, the cold hands firming their grip upon his being. I can’t run, thought Tom, so I fight. Without warning, and with all his will Tom slammed to a halt, spun his ‘body’ around and threw something resembling a reverse spinning side kick, right into that hideous leering face. At the same time, he released a loud mental Kiya! at the face, he had no lungs to verbally yell, as his Tae Kwon Do instructor had taught him to do when kicking. His foot met resistance as it impacted with the face, but not solid contact. It was like kicking pudding... His foot went into the face as his leg reached full extension, but to Tom’s eyes it appeared as if his foot went through a hologram.

The face reared back in apparent surprise and possibly a bit of pain. Clearly, it had not expected the kick. Using the time to his best advantage, Tom did two rapid punches to the face, kiyaing twice. The face again backed off. The face was no longer grinning in triumph, now if anything it almost looked worse. It had grown solemn, serious and downright nasty. Tom decided that it was time to run again since the Tae Kwon Do only seemed to pause the man. He ran again; this time the molasses was not quite so thick.

“Urbido Dominae, triustrum” shouted the voices together behind Tom. “These are the rites of high binding let none hinder our task.” Smoke was burning somewhere, noxious and heavy. It stunk of sulfur and rubber. His vision of the lights was becoming clouded. “Et servitus nostrus Dominae. Ekfeltos tral kiev. By the sigils of binding, we conjure thee Thomasedwardperkinje. The sigil and thy name bind thee to us. As Varn in the first millennia, we control thee Demon. Thomasedwardperkinje thou canst not escape.” A glowing rune appeared in the smoking lights around Tom. Faces surrounded him.