The Time Stone (54 page)

CHAPTER 80

Time Period: 1947 A.D.,
Flintown

The foursome, James, Tina,
Mercedes, and Drax landed together on their bottoms rolling onto
the grassy hill near a mighty oak tree overlooking the plains
below, the scorpion car soaring over them and crashing to the lawn
nearby as the portal vanished slowly into its subspace dominion.
They rolled down the hill until they came to a grassy precipice
overlooking a cliff to the valley below with a series of small
platforms in the rock face elevation overlooking the valley. A
small tree stripped of most of its leaves had branched out over the
cliff. As they rolled down, Tina grabbed a hold of the strongest
tree limbs rooted near the trunk of the tree and held on for dear
life; James subsequently grabbed her legs as he was headed downward
and felt himself pull upward. With his free hand, he reached out
and grabbed Mercedes’ arm and pulled her up. Drax felt himself head
face down over the cliff as Tina let go of the time stone in her
attempt to hold on to the tree causing it to tumble down the hill
and over the cliff passing Drax in the eye as he felt himself pull
upward as Mercedes had grabbed his leg with her free arm. Being the
end of the elongated human chain, Drax grabbed the time stone by
reaching out with both hands and gripped it tightly. The limb that
Tina held broke off and the four fell down a couple of feet to the
second grassy platform overlooking the valley below.

“Ouch,
I’ll never get used to that” shouted Tina.

“It’s
the damn wormhole, keeps on shifting the event horizon” Drax
added.

“Actually, it’s the frequency of spatial elevation and land
topography that is affected by changes in time sometimes over
thousands of years so since the wormhole is generally quasi-fixed
in space and time in relative to position its position will appear
to shift and deposit us at a different location when it’s the same
but in fact was the environment that has changed from one time
period to another.” Mercedes dissertated to her stunned
comrades.

“Well
said, professor”, joked James. “You sure know a lot.”

”Too bad
the creators of the stone couldn’t fix that little mishap,” said
Drax. “Suppose we land in a body of water one time or an
uninhabitable region like a snow covered peak or dead space” he
finished with his hands on his hips.

Mercedes
gulped.

“Oh my
God, were together again” said Tina.

“Awesome” screamed Mercedes.

“Yes”
said James.

“Oh
crap, great, I missed you guys” said Drax.

The four ran to one
another and embraced and as they did, the time stone in Drax’s and
Mercedes’ hands merged together as one and became solid
together.

“We’re
reunited and it feels so good” sang Tina.

“Where
are we now or when are we?” Asked Mercedes.

James looked down around
the hill and town in the valley below. “And about the time stone,
I’m sure that there are probably safety measures we haven’t learned
about yet, but now it’s dead. So, let’s get moving.” They sigh and
walk down the valley to the town below, Drax clicks a button from
the car alarm pocket beeper of the scorpion car and the vehicle
fades out and vanishes blending into the surrounding, “a stealth
mode” he winks and the others smile impressed. They head down happy
that for the moment at least they are together again. Drax smirked
with a sudden rhetorical comment, “did I ever tell you guys how
much I love each and every one of you? You’re awesome!”

In solitude in the well
lit room of Valandir Mansion in the far end of the small town
below, the isolated house that loomed over head like a monolith, a
lonely figure sits in a large chair covered in satin and the room
adorned by the candle light of multiple candelabra and a
mantelpiece with a bust of Shakespeare amongst a litter of old
world relics and artifacts. The elderly gentleman had a balding
hairline, grayish scraps of loosely drawn hair, a silver tongued
smile, and dark pupils as large as olives. He sat curled up like a
thin skeleton of a man shivering no matter how hot it seemed
indoors. He wore a red velvet robe and held a pipe puffing away.
“Soon the time will come.” He said to himself over and over every
night as he waited to fall asleep.

“Well,
it seems by the local newspaper, ‘the Flintown Gazette’ the time
period is March 18, 1947.” Said Drax reading the better headlines,
“local affiliate buys out town treasurer. There’s something you
don’t hear about every day.”

“Maybe
there is something there that can help us get home” said
James.

“And
clear our names” said Tina.

“That
will be two cents please” said a young woman approaching, she had
chestnut brown hair and smiled at the foursome.

“Oh
sorry,” said Drax putting the paper back.

“Yeah,
we’re still flat broke” said James as they all walked away
together. Then suddenly a swift movement stirred the wind before
them. “What the …?” Said James. And what stood before them, a young
woman with an adventurous and grungy outfit.

“Who are
you people?” Said the woman, her slender form and athletic build
made her seem vivacious and her determined grit and hardnosed
personality made her seem dangerous. She wore a tight leather
outfit from neck to toe and a white twill shirt and vest, her
sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and a brown fedora decorated her
head with blonde locks and curls flowing down her face. Like a
femme fatale she exhibited a primary virtue of never showing
fatigue and maintaining courage in her pursuits. She had clear
skin, smoother complexion, and ears that extended slightly upward
and to the side with her hair curling about them. “I am Eugenia
Smack, Female Bounty Hunter.”

“We are
travelers just passing through” said Drax.

“I am
the law in this town. Do not let me catch you up to no good” she
stirred around with a jerking motion and stiffness about her as her
words came out clumsily with a strong Latin American accent.

“I think
we can manage fine.” Said Drax.

“Make
sure that you do as I will always have my eye out for you” she
twirled away and was gone in an instant.

“Weird
chick” said Mercedes.

“Interesting personality for sure” said Drax.

“Did you
notice anything about the way she moved and her ears?” Questioned
Drax.

“Yeah”
said Tina. “What was up with that?”

“She is
a human-beast hybrid” said Drax.

“What?
Is that possible?” Asked Mercedes.

“Yes,
sometime after the initial encounter, the Machination began
experimenting with the idea to clone a beast and someone suggested
combining human DNA to accelerate the transfiguration process. I
didn’t think it was successful until now.”

“Look at
those people” said Tina. The four looked on as they walked deeper
into town and saw several different people in routine activity, a
postman making delivers, a pizza boy in a car, a paperboy on a
bike, a grocer carrying bags, and a milkman making his rounds. Each
of them and others had strange features on their faces and bodies.
One had extra hair on his face near his eyes, another with a
wrinkled extra limb on her body, another with small blue orbs on
his face and bear arms and legs, and yet another exhibited superior
agility and speed in his rounds as he had a long furry tail curved
around his right leg.

“They
are all human-beast hybrids” said Drax with a shock.

“This
whole town is” said Mercedes.

CHAPTER 81

“What
the hell do we do now?” James asked.

“It
seems we are stuck here until the time stone regenerates.” Mercedes
said.

“God
knows how long that will be” said Tina “so we might as well take
advantage of the situation and have some fun for once.”

“This
wasn’t fun to you what we been through?” Asked Drax.

“Almost
being killed? Ha, no.” Said Tina.

“I am
feeling strange like my powers are growing again” said James “and I
feel confused and lost.”

“You’re
not alone.” Said Mercedes. “We got your back.”

“I know
but I think they are getting stronger, so strong it’s scary.” James
waved his right arm and summoned a small car towards them. “I just
wish I knew more.”

“Whoa”
said Tina, “keep that trigger under lock for now.”

“Yeah”
said Mercedes.

“James”
said Drax “I know you are of the old maxim that knowledge is power…
but sometimes what you don’t know can make all the difference in
the world. Keeping yourself oblivious to some things may help you
discover something more promising and prevent bad things that may
occur, like not being to control powers that grow beyond measure,
you understand?”

“Oh wow,
that’s true.”

CHAPTER 82

A young policeman in uniform is
walking down the street monitoring his beat and feeling confident
but yet struggling as one of the first African Americans to make it
on the local Police Force. He knew there was a series of gruesome
murders plaguing the country side and he was on patrol to monitor
for suspicious activity in the old industrial part of town, now
mostly abandoned. No one could explain how the victims died,
puncture marks in their necks and completely devoid of blood as if
something out of a horror movie attacked them and drank their inner
fluids. He sees some movement in an abandoned warehouse and
stumbles over to investigate and what he sees is a secret meeting
in the abandoned warehouse. As he peers through the window he is
shocked at what he sees that he sees the meeting between three men
in black suits and hats who enter after leaving an unmarked black
sedan parked outside. He is terrified when he sees them approach a
weird looking creature with long horns on the top of his head, a
brown snout like a wildebeest, a pair of giant wings resembling
those of a bat, dark long brown hair around his waist and down his
backside and he was standing upright like a man on hooves with
arched legs like a horse, and a tail like a pterodactyl.

“
It’s a Satyr” he whispers
as he nearly collapses at the sight of it but hears a dialogue that
shocks him.

“
The killings have to stop
because they are drawing too much attention to the project” said
one of the men in black as another quickly talked after him, the
three seem to voice themselves in unison.

“
There will be a coming
soon so unnecessary attention is unwarranted.”

"We can obtain a substitute for your
cravings, Satyr!"

"I have already looked. There is none!
It ain’t worth it, guys. I must feed or I will not live to see the
coming." Said Satyr.

"Then we will have to employ an
alternative." The three men appearing to speak with one voice, a
dark and crumpled voice, a voice of evil emit a strange shadowy
odor of smoke. One removes a device from his jacket pocket and the
others stare endlessly into the creature with beady eyes like coal
as if harbingers of a soulless machine needing all their
concentration as one to make any movement possible and the movement
is mechanical and artificial. The man with the device holds it up,
a small silver cube with no markings and a smooth surface. The cube
suddenly lights up with no indication of a lighting mechanism as if
by the will of the three men staring into him and it's bluish aura
appears shocking to Satyr as he curiously eyes it but then realizes
their plan to subdue him so he tries to escape by flying away but
doesn't make it two feet off the ground when he realizes it’s too
late and he is caught by a beam of light emanating in the blink of
an eye from the device and enveloping itself around him. The
threesome acted as one and restored the device to the pocket of the
man on the far right and turned as one rotating on an axel of air
with one motion as if joined together at their waists. They faced
the direction of the cop peering in the window in awe and he
suddenly jumped back as their pale complexion, dry skin, and pitch
black small round eyes bore into him. He swore he saw a shadowy
aura surround their lidless eyes if only for a moment and the
motionless embodiment of their facial features, their mouths a
small slit with no apparent lips and their nose a small orb with no
point or curve. He knew they saw him and tried to run but there was
something about them of which he could not run and in an instant he
turned his head as he heard sirens approaching. When he turned his
attention back to the warehouse window, he was amazed to see that
they were all gone. He turned and felt as if he was dreaming and
felt as if he had been in another dimension. “Weird.”