The Graveyard Shift (5 page)

“Good day, Tyrus,” I reply, before glancing up at the table where the Jarl stands with his brow furrowed. “Good day, Jarl Strolf.”

Strolf
, who looks like a Hell’s Angel in a ruby red cloak, greets me with the kindest of smiles. I know everyone here, and I like everyone here, just as they know and like me. Falkhaven is my home, and I am its hero.

“Robb,”
Strolf says, pushing a hand through his stringy, piss-yellow beard. He moves a figurine on the table—of which a map of our world, Enderiel, has been painted—and sighs. “Their numbers are growing. There’s even rumors that their leader is a rider now. I’m worried our city won’t survive another attack.”

“It won’t have to,” I say.
“Because I’m going after them. I’m going to sneak into their camp and I’m going to butcher every last one of them.”

The Jarl seems pleased with this.
Enric, however, does not.

“Would you like me to come with you?”
Enric asks. He’s a Ward of Fairhaven—a poor man’s deputy, if you will—and his question is filled with apprehension. “You will be strongly outnumbered.”

“I’ll be fine. Just keep an eye on the city.”

Enric hands me a leather pouch. I can’t see what’s inside, but it smells strongly of healing herbs.

“Then take this, Robb, and please be careful. In case you come across their rider.”

“I don’t need a flying dinosaur to win a battle,” I tell him, as I turn my axe over in my hands. It’s felled more than a few dragons since I’ve started my adventures here.

The Jarl wishes me luck, and so I head off, but not to the
Rohkai. No, I head down the road, to the Dancing Goblin Tavern, where I plop onto my favorite barstool and raise my finger. Saria, the barmaid, slides me a nice, frosty ale and asks me, or rather begs me to regale my latest adventure. I’ll probably have two or three beers before I head off, because my last adventure was a big one.

I know, I know. In situations like this, after his town has been violently attacked, the hero is supposed to valiantly march off to battle and defeat the villain, right? Well, this is
my
story. And in my story, I drink a beer or three before I head off to battle. It’s one of my few pleasures other than killing. Plus, the beer they have here is amazing. It’s strong, and flavorful, and not like that horsepiss you’ll find floating around a Superbowl party.

Besides,
I’m the hero, and I will still prevail in my quest. I always do.

Fifteen minutes later, as I sip the last of my third ale and slip
Saria a tip, in gold coins, that’s worth more than she makes in a month, I push myself to my feet and head out the door. Nightfall is drawing near. I don’t understand exactly how time works here—hell, I don’t understand how much time has passed in the real world, either—but I always play it safe and keep my adventures relatively brief, because I fear the repercussions if the Howard family knows that
I
know about their secret room.

So with that, I mount my horse and make haste to the caves in the north.

The plains outside of Fairhaven are nothing short of breathtaking. Everything is brighter and so much more vibrant here in my imagination. The grasses are so vividly green it’s almost blinding, and the path I’m following is lined with the most fantastically purple lavender. Lavender was her favorite flower, and as I pass by row after row of tall violet stalks, I can see why. It’s beautiful.

This is all a stark contrast to the territory that belongs to the
Rohkai, and I know this because soon the lavender is gone. The grass here is brown, and thinned out, and the only trees are brittle branches limping off the edges of a lop-sided stump. I’m quickly approaching the mountains, which are bare and dry and devoid of color. My horse has now gotten nervous because his steps are slower, more reserved. I find that I’m a little nervous, as well. Nervous, a bit drunk, and clenching my axe like it’s going to fall out of my hands if I don’t.

This is what it feels like to be alive.

“That’s close enough,” a voice calls, from the mouth of a cave. What steps forth is a man covered in wolf pelts and bone. His helmet, made of shiny white bone. His necklace, his wrist bands, the shoulder pads of his armor, all bone. He is a Rohkai. He is one of the bone warriors of the northern plains, and he might look just like any other warrior in my imagination, but he’s killed my soldiers, he’s raped their wives, and he’s burned down their houses. He is a plague on this world.

“I think I might be lost,” I say, as I drop down from my horse and point to the west. “I was headed toward
Wintervale… which is… that way, right?” I scratch the top of my head with the backside of my axe, as if to demonstrate incompetency. He quickly buys it.

“You are either really stupid or really lost, peasant,” spits the
Rokhai warrior, from a bearded mouth that looks as if someone braided a long-haired rat. “You need to get the hell out of here
now
, before I split you in two. Go
that
way, and don’t look back.”

He heaves a finger to the east, turning his shoulder to me, which is exactly what I had hoped for. In that single moment my axe is now up over my head, like I’m about to fell a tree. Only this particular tree crumbles weakly to the ground as the axe severs three-quarters of the side of his neck. He’s trying to call for help, but all that can escape is a gurgling rush of air that’s silenced as the axe falls a second time. It frees his head from the gushing stump that is his neck, and sends it wobbling on its way like a spiked football tossed into the
endzone. It’s not the first time I’ve killed in this world and certainly will not be the last. I’ve never killed in the real world, and I have no desire to, but here, as I stand with my bloody weapon, I look a bit like an axe murderer.

It seems like the only difference between an axe murderer and an adventurer is an objective. A quest, if you will. It’s a thought that makes me laugh beneath my breath. It’s also a fleeting one, because I’m here to rescue my wife and seek vengeance for the town of
Falkhaven, a quest I begin as I grab a torch off the wall and step inside.

There are more
Rohkai. A lot more, and they live like animals, but they don’t
sleep
like animals because I easily sneak into their lair. They’re too confident in their recent victory. They sleep peacefully, with sore muscles and full bellies. And so it’s not until my axe has torn through the fifth Rohkai that alert has filled this dimly lit cavern painted in bear skins and animal blood and shiny white bones.

A sleepy
Rohkai pup, a teenager not yet with beard but with those same soulless eyes as his brothers, comes charging at me with a club made of sharp, jagged bone. I block it with my axe’s iron handle, and send his teeth into his stomach with the axe’s head. He falls, and another Rohkai takes his place. Then another. But my hands are too fast, and my axe is everywhere at once. Soon the last head has dropped to the rocky floor.

…Or at least I thought it was the last head. I hear a muffled yell, and then a figure pushes out into the torchlight.
A woman. Maybe a girl. Doe eyed, thin face, big breasted—aren’t they always, in tales like this? She’s quivering.

“Are you here to kill me?”

“No,” I say, which she doesn’t seem to be buying as she eyes the blood-spatter that covers my face like Rohkai warpaint. She shifts on her feet, and I catch glimpse of the shackles that clink loudly against her ankles. “You’re a prisoner?”

She gives a solemn nod.

“Was Mary here?”

“Mary.” The word seems foreign to her lips, until she says it again, “Mary,” and then she nods. “Yes, Mary was here. But they took her.”

“Where?”

“
Hammervale?” She squints. “I think? I don’t know.”

That’s right, Mario. The princess is in another castle. It seems she always is. It’s the story of my life—at least my life in this world.

And so, with a fresh victory over the Rohkai, I free the busty prisoner and listen to the clip-clap of bare feet as she scampers off. Then I lay down on one of the few bearskin rugs not covered in blood, I suck in a deep breath, and I close my eyes… and when I open them, I see white drywall. I feel old carpet beneath my elbows. I’m back in the real world, back in Will Howard’s garage apartment, and I expel my breath with a heavy sigh.

Coming back to this world is like going from a high-definition LED flat screen to an old black and white tube television with tinfoil covered rabbit ears.

I close the garage apartment door, step back into the backyard, and make my way to the backdoor of the house. I walk inside to check the time. According to the clock on the wall, it’s only been ten minutes. My adventure, meanwhile, had to have lasted at least four to five hours. Again—I don’t know how time works in my imagination, but I don’t want to push my luck. I have work to do, after all.

“Oh, hi, Robb,” I hear, from a very startled-sounding voice.

“Hello, Claire,” I reply.

Will’s wife is staring at me, or rather she’s staring at my hands, and only then do I realize I’m still holding my axe. I lower it, offer a not entirely reassuring smile, and tell her, “Just came to get a glass of water. I’m chopping down some more branches.”

“Yes,” she says, as she dashes off to the kitchen to do this task herself, “and the trees are looking wonderful, I should mention. Thank you for doing that. You’ve got such a green thumb… for, you know... such a… burly guy.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, both for the compliment and for the water upon her return. She’s a kind woman, and I think she might be afraid of me. She shouldn’t be.

With some reluctance I start my day of work. I mow the lawn. I trim some of the shrubs. I paint the back wall of the house, which had previously been faded and peeling. It’s lonely, it’s boring, and it’s unfulfilling, but time passes quickly because all I can think about is fighting the Rohkai. When the children get home from school they almost catch me swinging my paintbrush like an axe. Almost.

“Hi, Robb!”
Ruth exclaims. She’s trampling up the path toward the house, making enough noise with her footsteps for an army of children.

“Why do you always say hi to him?” Tom asks. “He doesn’t want to talk to you!”

“Who would?” Sam shouts. “Mom, we’re home!”

Inside they go, stomping and banging and yelling, and after I put away the last of the paint and the brushes I’m headed back to my own apartment. I won’t remember walking home, or unlocking the door, or warming up a TV dinner. I won’t remember what I’ve eaten. I’ll just sit at the kitchen table with my elbows firmly planted, smiling as I think about being
Falkhaven’s hero.

Mary would have been so proud of me. I used to read her Conan the Barbarian stories when she got too sick to get up out of bed. She told me that she always pictured me as Conan, and she pictured herself as Valeria, or
Zenobia, or any of the other female characters that Conan found himself romantically entangled with. No matter how pale and how withered away her body became, these books allowed us to go on daring adventures.

We slayed mythical beasts, we fought powerful wizards, and we saved kingdoms together, up until the very last day, when I went to go get a cup of coffee to stay awake and came back to a room full of beeping machines that I ripped out of the wall.

*

Morning has come, my pot of coffee has been drunk, and my breakfast has been shoveled down. I’m walking up Line Avenue toward the Howard household, and my smile is long gone. It’s a new day, a new adventure, and I feel irritated that I can’t yet be immersed in my world. I can’t yet see my Mary. Knowing that I have to trudge through this dull reality first, passing kids on their way to school and parents that throw me nasty glances, it almost seems unbearable.

I pass Ruth, who says hi, and her brothers, who roll their eyes. I pass Officer Brody, who’s in his car, watching.
Always watching. And then before I know it, I’m unlatching the gate and stepping into the backyard. Will’s already gone to work, but Claire is out here emptying some garbage from the house. She smiles and says a very quiet hello.

As much as it pains me, I’ve decided to wait until after the Howards leave ‘out-of-town’ to step into the garage apartment and resume my quest. Because of that, the day slugs by and the trickling of time is miserable. I find my mind drifting off to dark places.
Picking a hospital. Picking out a wig after chemotherapy. Picking out a casket.

It’s not until the Howard children come prancing in that I realize I’ve been painting over the same spot for almost an hour—a thick sludge o
f white paint slips down the wall and balls up against the windowsill.

“Those goblins aren’t
gonna stand a chance!” Ruth shouts, before her brother slaps her in the arm, hard.

“Shut up!” Tom notions toward me, and all three fall awkwardly silent. As usual, I pretend not to notice.

Less than an hour later, Will Howard is pushing a few twenty dollar bills into my hands and thanking me profusely for watching the house. He’s going out of his way to tell me that they’re going to walk to the bus station to save on gas money, but I know they’re just going to sneak back into the house and do whatever they end up doing when they disappear. In a way, I’m a little insulted that he thinks I’m so dumb, so naïve. On the other hand, I’m just eager for him to go wherever the hell he goes so I can go wherever the hell I go.