Hokum

A Goat Named Jed

3

‘I feel like you might be exaggerating,’ Jack called after Amber. ‘You make it sound like I just killed everyone.’

‘You very well may have,’ said Amber as she took the torch back up off the floor and marched towards the exit of the chamber. ‘And you might as well keep escion now, since you want it so bad, the Thing will be hunting down you and your stupid scent now anyway! And for Arikites sake, keep your voice down before you wake the dead as well!’

‘You’re the one yelling…’ he mumbled, then turned his vague expression to Nip, who had her eyes closed as if sleeping, but not looking as content as she usually did.

‘Are you actually pretending to sleep?’ he asked her.

One eye slivered open to peek at him, then quickly closed again. No other response.

‘Right….’ said Jack, deciding to pocket the gem in his jeans, and then walked after Amber who had already left the chamber.

A Goat Named Jed

2

‘You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?’ said Amber, giving Jack an incredulous glare, ‘Why would you steal from someone’s grave?’

Jack returned a look of an equal incredulous nature. He said, ‘I mean, I’m not stealing it, I’m just taking a closer look.’ He let the gem drop from his finger-and-thumb grip into his hand, where he turned his eyes back down to it as it rolled back and forth, settling in the warm pulp of his palm. ‘I’ve never seen a jewel like this one before. Like, I’ve seen some expensive shit in my time, but nothing like thing.’ He looked at amber again from the tops of his eyes. ‘So what the fuck is it, then?’

‘The fuck?’ Amber confused over the words Jack had used. ‘What is this fuck you speak of?’

Jack sighed, and said, ‘Never mind that, it’s just a word of slang, you know, a cuss. I just wanna know what this gem is.’

Amber considered this, remaining quiet for a time while she too stared at the gem. It looked like she was about to say nothing and maybe even walk away when she suddenly blurted out the answer –

‘It’s not a gem! I mean it is, but it is not in the typical sense of the word. It is called an Escion. It belongs to a….’ she paused, as if afraid to speak the word, ‘…it belongs to a… beast. A thing. An ancient… thing. And it is going to be wanting it back. This escion was placed here at this man’s grave for a reason.’ The more she spoke, the more she thought about the situation, and the angrier she seemed to be getting. Her face was red with rage before she finished her speech and then turned and walked away. ‘You don’t have any clue of what you have just unleashed upon the world!’

A Goat Named Jed

1

Amber was too late. She had barely run two steps before Jack had straightened, turning to her, jewel held up between his finger and thumb, a mischievous smile on his face.

‘Look,’ he said to her, as he glanced around at the otherwise quiet catacomb, ‘it’s fine. Nothing happen. Nobody woke from the dead. We’re safe.’

Nip sunk low on Jack’s shoulder, hanging her head as if embarrassed and let out a long, deep moan.

A Goat Named Jed

Part 10

A Gem

A Goat Named Jed

1

Many miles away, stood an old dead tree upon a ghastly ashen hill where the sun did not shine. Within the hill, beneath the tree, stirred a thing from a very long sleep.

A Goat Named Jed

Part 9

A Thing

A Goat Named Jed

7

'No, of course we don’t want to wake the dead,’ said Jack with a roll of his eyes. He sighed. ‘Can we just keep going? This place gives me the creeps.’

It didn’t smell too bad for a place of death, though, Jack thought while Amber continued walking ahead between the walls of sarcophagus and, despite his own words of wanting to move on, Jack delayed following her for the time being. Something had caught his eye. It was the twinkling like that of a bright star sparkling with various colours. The small spectrum of light was coming from atop a stone shelf protruding out from the wall next to one of the floor-level sarcophagus to his right. He turned towards it, tilting his head to try and make out what it was.

It was then that Jack noticed that the majority of the sarcophagus in the chamber had stone shelves next to them, displaying what were mostly small items - obviously Grave Goods or Votive Offerings – that were likely connection and holding personal or religious value to the deceased, and were placed there by relatives during or after the burial service. This particular item, however, was much more eye-catching than anything else he had noticed in the chamber. Jack figured it was a gemstone of some variety and, as he stepped up closer to it, he saw that he was right. It was a magnificent jewel, similar to a parti sapphire, maybe some variety of extremely rare diamond. It was roughly the size of a golf ball, glorified in a fusion of dazzling blue, purple, pink, yellow and traces of green.

As Jack stopped and stood next to the stone coffin, gazing down with hungry eyes at the beautiful sight before him, the Chilli on his shoulder turned her head to him. Her eye lids were no longer laden with boredom, rather widened with suspense, or possibly shock mixed with disbelief, perhaps even disgust at what she though Jack was about to do.

‘Don’t touch….’ said Nip, her voice cascading through Jack’s mind for the second time. But Jack didn’t appear to care this time, his attention was instead dedicated to the gem.

‘It’s okay…’ he replied in a low, automatic tone, ‘I just want a closer look.’

Amber, meanwhile, stopped when she heard Jack say something and she realised he wasn’t following her. Curious, she turned around to see him reaching for the gem. Her heart skipped a beat. Her breath lodged in her throat for a moment. She dropped the torch and started running towards him.

‘Jack, don’t touch that - No!’

A Goat Named Jed

6

Amber gave Jack a quizzical look, then looked at the Chilli, then back at Jack again. Meanwhile the Chilly remained still on Jack’s shoulder, eyes lids heavy as if it were bored.

‘Nip?’ She inquired, though rhetorically realising he had named the creature, but she added, ‘What did she do?’

‘She spoke to me.’

‘No.,’ Amber replied objectively, ‘that can’t be true.’

‘I’m telling ya, the thing spoke to me.’

The Chilli shifted uneasily. Amber gave her a suspicious glance, and said, ‘I didn’t hear it.’

‘That’s because it was in my head.’ Jack said, and turned his eyes to his little friend. ‘Isn’t that right, Nip?’

Amber had to think about this, her mind flipping through all the knowledge she had about Chilli’s. ‘There was an old fable,’ she said, ‘about some dragons having the ability to use the power of their mind to communicate. But it was only a story. No one believes it.’ She gazed at the creature, wondering, ‘Did you really talk to Jack?’ She then looked at Jack for a response.

‘I got nothing,’ he told her.

‘What did she say before?’ asked Amber. She was clearly mocking him with a sardonic expression.

‘“Be calm.”’ He told her in a tone that begrudged her derision.

Amber considered this. ‘Well, it is good advice.’ She then looked around at the burial chamber, and added, ‘It is always best to stay calm, especially while in a crypt.’

‘You say that like they actually care.’ said Jack, and pointed out in a firm tone, ‘They are dead.’

Amber puckered her lips to one side as she looked at him in a way that seemed like doubt to Jack.

‘What?’ He glared at her.

Again, she glanced around at the many tiers of sarcophagus, and replied softly, ‘Well, I mean sure they are dead. Physically. For now. But it’s best we don’t get too excited. We don’t want to wake them.’

A Goat Named Jed

5

Jack froze in position, while holding his breath and expecting the undead to start exploding from their places of rest, while the words be calm swept through his mind, and Amber stopped to turn around and smile at Jack. The dead didn’t burst from their coffins.

‘This is the crypt of Davious’s Armsmen’ said Amber, as if it was meant to men anything to Jack at all. And it didn’t, he of course had never heard the name before, and he was far too busy feeling weird about the recent voice he heard in his head to worry about who was buried in the Crypt, or even the previous sense of apprehension he was feeling for the place.

‘That’s fascinating,’ he replied sarcastically and looked down at his right foot, still keeping pressure on the tile that had turned on the lights, ‘But can you tell me if it’s safe to lift my foot off this without some booby trap killing us all?’

‘HAHA!’ Amber laughed, swinging her head with amusement at the thought. ‘You’re such a frightened child right now.’

‘I’m really not,’ said Jack, ‘I just don’t want to die.’

‘You can lift your foot,’ she told him with a playful slap to his arm.

Jack lifted his foot and took a wide step to the side to avoid the tile. The chandeliers remained lit. He then turned his eyes to the Chilli on his shoulder, giving the creature a narrow glare, and said, ‘I guess that was you then, Nip?’

A Goat Named Jed

4

Having the Chilly perched on Jack’s shoulder caused the first part of the journey to be made mostly in uncomfortable silence. Seemed like both Amber and Jack were too cautious to speak for fear of possibly upsetting the creature. On top of that, Jack didn’t appear to be very comfortable about walking through ancient tombs. In fact he was acting a little skittish, a type of behaviour that really didn’t suit him at all.

From the basement room of Amber’s shop, she led the way through a secret door into the catacombs and down several dark passages, a flaming torch in Amber hand being their only source of light. They had been traversing the ancient labyrinth of corridors for close to half an hour before entering a rather large chamber. The light from Amber’s torch didn’t reach far enough to disclose anything else in the chamber, but the cavernous darkness that surrounded them was chilling enough to provoke Jack into finally breaking the silence.

‘There wasn’t a less… spooky path to take?’ he said, voice broken with obvious anxiety.

Jack had barely finished speaking the words when a stone tile beneath his foot pressed down into the floor with a dull clunk, which apparently served as a type of On Switch for the lighting in the chamber. Just one second after hearing the startling clunk and feeling the tile give beneath his tread, the chamber suddenly lit up by way of flames on the ancient chandeliers that hung from the stone cathedral-like sealing, the blazing light from which exposed the hundreds of sarcophagus that lined the tiered platforms on either side of their path.