Chapter 1: The Fiji Mermaid
   The pub stank of stale air, spilled beer and urinal cakes. It wasn’t far from the docks, and every time the door opened was like a breath of diesel fuel and dead fish. It wasn’t the kind of place people went to socialize or have a good time. It was a place for serious people to do serious drinking and try to figure out where their lives had gone wrong. 
Aldo sat at the bar and felt raw. Rye whiskey on an empty stomach never ended well with him, but it seemed to suit him at the moment. He felt numb and disconnected from his life, and at least the rye made him feel…something. Nauseous, maybe. He drained his glass, and started wondering how far he’d have to go to find a decent ham sandwich.
Then an old man heaved himself into the seat next to Aldo. The old man seemed to have a presence. The air around him seemed dense, thick with the smell of the sea and sweat. He was old, but solid. His ratty old jacket was faded and full of holes, and his cap was just a squashed up old rag with a brim. He had a scraggly gray beard, with bits of stuff lodged in it, and an enormous red nose. 
Normally, Aldo would have gotten out of there immediately, but he hesitated. The old man fascinated him. Maybe it was the whiskey swimming in his brain that made him feel tougher than usual. Maybe it was because it was so clear that the old man didn’t give a shit, and Aldo envied that. But probably it was because Aldo caught the glint of light from the hook that served the old man as a hand.
He watched as the old man dropped a couple greasy, crumpled bills on the bar and mumbled his order to the bartender. He kept watching as the bartender plunked a shot down, and the old man used his hook to scoot the glass closer to his good hand.
Aldo was mesmerized by that hook, and his face broke into a dopey grin.
“So how’d you lose your hand there, skipper?” Aldo asked. It seemed that his own voice came from some place other than his mouth.
The old man lowered the glass, and turned to look at Aldo with small, fierce eyes. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and cast a quick glance over his shoulder, as if to see who else was listening. He turned back to Aldo and regarded him intently for several moments.
Aldo’s jaw started to ache, and he realized he was still grinning like a boob. Aldo brought his hand to his mouth, and cleared his throat self-consciously.
“Aye now,” the old man began. His voice was phlegmy, and coarse. “That be a strange tale, and I’d be needin’ a bit of shorin’ up for the tellin’ of it.”
Aldo looked at him and blinked. The guy talked like a fucking pirate!
“Uh…shorin’ up?”
The old man winked and tapped his bulbous nose.
“Oh, okay,” said Aldo, “Sure, I’ll spring for a drink.”
The old man turned in the stool to fully face Aldo. “Well now…that’d be right fine, and we’d part company as friends. But if yer wantin’ to hear the story of me hand…you’d best buy me a bottle, for I’ll not go into those waters with anythin’ less.”
“Oh, okay, You sure? A whole bottle? A fifth of fucking whiskey?” Aldo tossed out his credit card to the bartender and mumbled, “This better be one helluva goddammed fine story.”
They left the bar and went to an empty table in a dark, empty corner, and settled themselves into a couple of chairs. The old man poured himself a drink, and settled back.
“Aye…well now…I was crewin’ on a fishin’ boat in the South China Sea some thirty odd years ago…”
Aldo swallowed a drink, and let his mind conjure the vision of a rust encrusted trawler, plowing across the blue water beneath a huge, orange sun as the old man told his tale.

He was a young man in those days, full of piss and fire. Even though he was young, he’d grown up crewing on boats like this from Gloucester to Kupang, and he was well-seasoned. He’d been an able-bodied seaman since he was 14, and he’d been around the world twice by the time he was 19. He could out-work, out-fight, out-cuss and out-fuck  anybody, and he was always ready to prove it. The other guys respected his skill and probably envied his wide-eyed, youthful enthusiasm, but they still made good-natured fun of him and his goofy, New England accent.
He didn’t mind. It was all part of the job. There’s a bond between men at sea that goes beyond both “buds and blood.” They might not be able to even tolerate breathing the same air on shore, but they were family on the water.

Except for one guy. 

He called himself Joe, but that wasn’t his name. Probably no one would be able to pronounce his name, even if he told them what it was. He was from India, and spoke with the mix of accent and precision that was generally the mark of education and high class-upbringing.
But Joe didn’t talk much. He was good-natured enough, yet there was a kind of distance between him and everyone else. There was a look in his eye, an expression on his face that you could only see when he didn’t see you looking. It was a kind of weird intensity…concern over something that he wouldn’t or couldn’t share. Like he was listening for something or to something. That’s probably the biggest reason the guys left him alone. The last thing anybody needed in the middle of the ocean was somebody to give them the creeps.
They were three weeks out from the boat’s home port in the Philippines, and had been fishing hard for tuna and mackerel in disputed waters. Their greatest concern was being discovered by some random Chinese patrol, and they’d been pushing the engines of the old tub pretty hard to keep moving and stay untrackable.

Then one night, she’d had enough.

Maybe the insulation had worn off the exhaust pipe. Maybe an impeller gave out, and the engines overheated. Maybe there was a short in the electrical system. Maybe somebody fell asleep smoking in their bunk. 
Whatever the cause,  fire broke out below decks in the middle of the night. Before anybody knew it, fuel oil that had been leaking into the bilge for days caught flame, and the fire spread almost instantaneously. 
He remembered he grabbed a fire extinguisher, but nothing happened when he hit the trigger. The boat’s owners never wanted to spend the money for such nonsense. Somebody grabbed him and started dragging him up the steps of the companionway. 
“The propane tanks, man! We gotta get outta here!” the guy screamed.
They stumbled up the steps into the pandemonium on the deck. There was a splash as the lifeboat hit the still water. His buddy turned to him with a grin on his face. “We’re gonna make it, kid,” the guy cried triumphantly. 

Just then his buddy’s smiling face lit up, and a crushing blast hit them.

The next thing he remembered was waking up in the cold black of the water. He was still holding on to that damned, useless fire extinguisher, and it had kept him from sinking too far. He gave a couple of kicks, and his head broke through the water into the stinking air. Burning fuel and chunks of the boat floated all over the water. He could see the boat listing towards him about ten feet away.  
“Shit,” he hissed, and started to swim away as fast and as hard as he could. He heard the groans of  distressed metal and the crashing splash in the darkness behind him as the boat rolled and began to go down. His arms and legs flailed at the water against the undertow that pulled at him, as the old crate tried to drag him down with it. 
It might have succeeded too, if the lifeboat hadn’t pulled up along beside him, and strong hands hauled him out of that black, stinking, burning water. 

	“Damn kid…you think you’re gonna…swim all the way to Sumatra?” heaved a rough voice through coughs and gasps.  
	“Aye…I’ll just catch me breath here, if you don’t mind, mate,” he answered as he lay in the bottom of the boat.
	“Fuckin’ kid.” 
It was the first mate, Felix, that had fished him out. Felix was a Liberian that had gone to sea to get away from his wife while still in his early twenties. He was a devoted husband and father, and sent nearly every dime he made back to them. 
All he would do by way of explanation of his life choices was grin and say “I love the sea…it lead me to da worl’ of pussy, man. Pussy be everywhere, man. She know I got to go,” and then he’d laugh, and everybody couldn’t help but laugh with him.
Right now, he was pulling slowly at the oars and peering intently into the night. It was a bright, full moon and the water was smooth as glass. Suddenly he stopped and squinted into the darkeness.
“Wha’s at?” Felix whispered. “Look dere, what ees dat?”
The kid rolled over and raised himself above the side of the life boat. “Shit, Felix, that looks like Joe! Hard a port, mate…maybe he’s still alive.”
“Yaahh,” said Felix quietly as he pulled the oars. The boat came alongside the figure. He was clinging to a wooden box that was floating in the still waters. Felix reached out to nudge his shoulder, and the figure lashed out with a cry.
“Get away pishaach!” he shrieked. 
“Joe!” Felix cried back. “Whasa matter wit you, man? You okay?”
Joe looked up at him and blinked a couple times. “Felix? Dear God! Felix?”
“Come on, kid, help me get ‘im in da boat,” Felix said quietly, and they both reached out for Joe.
“No, no. I cannot let this go,” Joe gasped while wildly shaking his head. His fingers gripped the box like talons.
“Ees, okay, man. We gotcha now. Come and get in da boat. Let go de damn box!”
“I must bring it! I must bring it! It is…very…important,” Joe hissed back as he wrapped himself tighter around the box.
“Felix… let’s bring the box…come on, mate.”
Felix looked at him a moment. “Fuckin’ kid,” he wheezed. “Okay Joe. Gimme de damned box.”
Joe did something that nobody had ever seen before. He actually smiled and then laughed as he released his grip and let them drag it up and into the boat. “Damned box, yes…damned box.”
They hauled Joe and his box into the boat, and spent the rest of the night rowing around in circles searching for more survivors. Of the seven  crew members only those three made it.

Those three and the damned box.

The fishing boat’s owners had never put much into what they considered to be non-essential items. One of those non-essential items had been fire extinguishers. Another item had been lifeboat provisions. There was a tangled gob of heavy fishing line and a bunch of rusted hooks that someone had thrown in there to get rid of them, and there was about 10 gallons of stale drinking water. 
Since they’d been fishing, more or less illegally, the trawler had been nowhere close to the shipping lanes, and had never made reports of its position.  Nobody would be looking for them for several more weeks. Even then, the chances of being found were remote. The only option that the survivors had for trying to save themselves was to row east, and hope for the best. Maybe they could make landfall on an island, or perhaps be sighted by a fishing boat or a patrol.
They paddled for days. The sun blazed down on them like a sledgehammer with no breath of breeze or rain for any kind relief. They rowed in shifts – two or three hours at a time, slow and steady. Sometimes, those were the only words that Felix would say in a day. “Slow…slow…slow and steady, man. Slow and steady get us home…you’ll see.”
There was no way to tell what kind of progress they were making. Felix believed that the currents were with them, but it was hard to tell for sure. With careful, rationing they figured they could go a month. If they were still out by then, maybe the monsoons would come and there might be a chance to collect rain water.
Joe had managed to untangle the fishing line. They attached one end of it to a bulkhead so that they could just let it drag. They were able to snag a fish every once in awhile that way. Felix managed to fashion a sunshade of sorts using the remains of an old tarp that had been in the bottom of the boat, so there was at least some relief from the blistering, relentless sun.
Though they were suffering, and you couldn’t really say they were cheerful, none doubted that they would make it.

One night, it must have been about a week after the trawler had sunk, heavy clouds covered the moon, and a light, wet breeze rippled the dead water. Joe pulled at the oars while the other two slept.
Suddenly,  Joe stopped rowing. Maybe that’s what woke the other two. They peered out at him from under the tatters of the sunshade. 
“Joe?” Felix asked.
Joe’s finger snapped to his lips and then he gently waved his hand back at them. “Listen,” he whispered. “There! Did you hear that?” They could see him in the moonlight sitting stiff and still. “There! Listen! There it is! My God!”
Sure enough, a faint, sweet sound snaked its way through the still air, and it seemed to slowly be getting louder and more distinct.
“Wha’ da fuck?” Felix whispered. “It sounds like…like singing. Yaahh, ees singing!”
“Aye…there’d be a boat out there, I’ll wager.”
Felix pursed his lips and shook his head, “Naw…not a boat…no lights…no engine…no wind for a sail…ees no boat, man.”
Joe’s voice cracked as he said, “It is getting really close.”
And then the clouds broke over the moon, and in that instant of silver, liquid light, they saw her leap not more than 15 feet from the stern of the boat. 
She shot straight up out of the water and seemed to hang in midair for an impossibly long time. Long enough for them to gaze upon the light shimmering off her scales and wet, white glistening hair. Her arms raised up over her head and she sliced back into the black water without even raising a ripple or a sound.
The men looked at each other, searching each other’s faces for some sign of confirmation - not wanting to admit what they’d just seen.
“Aye mates…That there be an honest-to-God mermaid. Nothin’ else fer it to be.”
Felix’s face fell into a frown and he waved his hand away and said “Ppsshhh. Crazy. It’s a big, fuckin’ fish, ‘as all”
Joe scrambled on the seat and looked over the side. “ She is right alongside of us. My God…She is beautiful!”
They all scrambled to the side and and saw her just a few inches below the surface of the water. She seemed to glow in the blackness of the water. Silky clouds of silvery hair billowed around a glittering, perfectly formed female body. She did a leisurely roll that showed two full and perfectly formed human breasts peaking out through the billows of glittering hair. She pulled some of the hair away from her eyes with a delicate hand and winked one of her large, black eyes. 
“Fish, my ass!”

Felix’s face broke into a huge grin, his perfect teeth gleaming and his black skin looked to have the quality of velvet in the moonlight. “Ah’ll be damned. Wha’ de fuck ees dis? We mus’ be close to de islands, man! We fuckin’ home free, man!”
“My friends…we need to be careful. This is really, very strange, and there are things–” Joe was acting unusually nervous.
“Whachu talkin’ abou’ Joe?”  Felix laughed, “Dere’s but one ting in dis worl’ dat I know, and da’s pussy. An my frien…Yaaahh. Dat is pussy!”
They watched as Felix laughed again, and dove into the water after her. And just like that, he was gone. No more mermaid and no more Felix.

They hollered for him until their throats were raw. They circled the lifeboat a thousand times, scanning the darkness for some sign of something. Neither one volunteered to venture into the water, though. By the time the sun began to lighten the sky, they were both exhausted and defeated.
“Aye…musta been a shark took ‘em both.”
“ I’m not so sure, kid,” sighed Joe as he shook his head.  “I’m not so sure. So very peculiar.”
They didn’t talk much that day as they rowed. Without Felix they felt lost and vulnerable. The sea and sky suddenly seemed vast and threatening without his constant and quiet confidence and reassurance. And though neither one spoke of it, there was an overwhelming sense of dread that hovered over them. A dread of the inevitable coming of night.
“We’ll be comin’ up ashore on the island, any time now. Can’t be far.”
Joe dropped his head to his chest and sighed. “There is no island, kid.”
“Aye…we’ll find ‘er family. Tell ‘em what happened. Damned shame.”
Joe looked up at him with fire in his eyes. “Stop it! I’m telling you, there is no island!” He literally spat the words.
“And how did you now become such an expert in navigation, Joe?”
“It is going to be dark soon, and you need to listen to me now, kid. A shark did not take Felix, and that…was not a girl. We’ve been rowing for hours and there is no boat, no island. There is nowhere that she could have come from,” Joe moved closer, leveling his eyes at the kid.
“Aye…Joe…come on. Don’t let yer mind take ye into waters that ye shouldn’t be in.”
“Listen to me. She will come tonight. She’s going to keep coming back until she gets what she wants.” Joe was nearly trembling with tension at this point.
“Okay, Joe…what is it that she’d be wanting from us?”
Joe nodded towards the bow of the boat where he had secured the box.
“The box?”
“Kid…Listen to me. What is inside that box can never be released. Were it to be set free, all we’ve ever known, all that humanity has ever built or fought for would vanish like dust.
“I was a fool. I stole the vile thing from those who had been guarding it for centuries. I thought the stories were legends, myths that would only serve to increase its value. But as soon as I touched it, the…thing, I knew that the stories were true. Dear God, have mercy upon us all. The stories are true.”
“Heave to, there, Joe. You’d not be makin’ a whole lot of sense.”
“There is a man in America who can guard the thing. He is the only one left, now. I must get it to him. He is –“
At that moment, the air became filled with a shrill squealing like that of a deranged porpoise. It was a sound to literally make the blood run cold. They looked up to see that night had fallen, and the mermaid had returned. She was leaping and diving madly all around the boat.
Joe leapt to his feet and wrenched an oar from the oarlock. “Help me, kid!” he cried. “We can fight her off!” He swung the oar and slapped viciously at the water.
There was a sound of tinkling laugher in the air as she dipped beneath the water with a flick of her serpentine tail. Joe scrambled to the other side of the boat, tipping it dangerously.
“Careful! You’re gonna dump us, ya damned fool!”
There was a flash of silver breaking the surface of the water and Joe swung again. “Pishaach!!” he screamed hysterically. “Shaitan!”
Joe looked back and yelled, “You must get to the other side, kid! Grab the other oar!”
And then there was that crazy, tinkling laughter again. Joe looked down and saw that the mermaid had a hold of the oar with her dainty, translucent fingers. 
In merely the pause of a heartbeat, Joe was airborne and plunging into the brine. Moments later, his voice came faint, and out of the distance, “Never touch the dagger, kid. Never…”

And just like that, Joe was gone, one of the oars was gone, and the kid was alone.

He tried paddling for five or six hours before he finally gave up. Exhausted and angry and scared, he threw the oar into the bottom of the boat, and kicked the fishing tackle into a heap in front of the “damned box” at the bow. 
“Fuck,” he murmured to himself as he grabbed the water jug and started to guzzle. 
He heard that sound of horrible, tinkling laughter behind him, and he whirled around to see her gripping the stern of the boat, looking at him. It was like an electric shock coursed through his flesh, and he shuddered at this first sight of her in the light of day. 
The fingers that had looked so dainty by moonlight were now clearly thin, sharp talons that now dug into the boards at the stern of the boat as if they were butter. The eyes that had seemed so large and dark and winsome by moonlight were actually the large, liquid, staring eyes of a dead fish. What had seemed to be such shining, billowing hair was actually a gelatinous mass that seemed to ooze of its own accord over and around a face that could only be described as hideously humanoid. What might have been a nose was pulled sharply upwards exposing several slits. What might have passed for the suggestion of cheeks and lips in the moonlight was actually just ropey tissue that framed a dangerous-looking mouth full of needle-like teeth. The mouth opened, and a yellow tongue flicked out at him. It winked one of its dead eyes, and disappeared.
The kid shuddered again, and shook his head. He looked back to the stern at the marks of her talons in the boards, just to convince himself that it had been real. 
“Aye now,” he told himself quietly. “That there be an honest-to-God sea monster!”
He started to laugh then, because he knew he was a dead man, and it struck him as funny.
She was just playing with him, he knew that. He was all alone and going nowhere fast. She could take her time and have some fun with his misery. She could take him any time, now. There was nothing he could do about it, and she wanted him to think about that for awhile.
She teased him for the next two days and nights. Sometimes she would let him see her, and sometimes she wouldn’t, but she always made sure he knew she was around. A little splash, a little song, a little laugh…sometimes she would rise from the water and undulate seductively, moving her talons over her perfect, human breasts. Sometimes when he was slipping off to sleep, she’d grab the boat and rock it violently as if she was going to knock him out of it.
Maybe it was the relentless sun, or the ceaseless horror, or the lack of sleep, or a combination of all three, but things started to get a little odd for the kid. He started to imagine that he could hear the box speaking to him.  And then he imagined that he wasn’t imagining it at all. He ultimately realized that the “damned box” was speaking to him.
It would start off nice enough, telling him what a brave man he was, a real hero, and how they’d tell stories and sing songs about him in bars all over the world. When he didn’t respond to that, it would start getting nasty, telling him that his soul would rot in the gullet of the mermaid for eternity. And in the midst of it all was always a tiny pathetic voice echoing a ceaseless refrain of “Let me go, please let me go.”
“No wonder old Joe looked so haunted all the time,” the kid whispered to himself, a grin cracking his blistered lips.
At one point, he thought he couldn’t take it any more. He grabbed the box and ripped it open, “Damn you to hell!! Shut UP!”
There was a bag made of some kind of thick hide inside the box. Curiosity sliced through his dementia, and he gently opened the bag. “It’s…bones. It’s just fucking bones!” 
Then the light glinted off of something else. Joe’s voice echoed in his memory “Never touch the dagger, kid. Never.” 
Even though the day was scorching hot, an icy chill went through the kid. He closed up the bag, and stuffed it back in the box. He closed the box and latched it securely, and shoved up under the bow as far as he could. 
“Aye, I’m guessing that it don’t matter much what it is, eh Joe? You figured ‘twas worth dyin’ for, and by God, that would be all I need to know.” 
He wouldn’t have done it if there had been a human soul within a mile of him, but as there wasn’t, he started to cry. And through those tears, he consecrated himself to Joe’s mission and that “damned box.”
She sang for him that night. She sang sweet and easy… a beautiful song of the sea. He listened and smiled. 

“Aye, ye bitch,” he whispered, “Yer lettin’ me know that my time has come, eh? Then let’s let this foolishness be done with.”
He picked up the oar, and braced himself solidly in the middle of the boat, as far from the water as he could get. 
He could hear her song getting louder and clearer as she came close. She was moving fast, faster than ever before. He gripped the oar and flexed his legs. He’d only have one chance…. just one, and he had to make it count. 

She lunged at him. 

She literally launched herself from the water at him, shrieking in rage with talons outstretched. 
He swung as hard as he could, and connected with her midsection. It was enough to deflect her off to the side and into the water, but he lost his balance and tumbled backwards into the boat. His hand plunged into the mass of fishing tackle, and one of the large hooks pierced his hand. 
With the instinct of a seasoned fisherman, he hissed “Sonofabitch!” and plunged his hand over the side into the water.  At that very second, the surface of the water broke and she took his hand with a snap of her jaws. 
He stared in wide-eyed horror at his bloody stump, and then the shards of pain blasted into his brain, and he started to scream a pitiful, primal scream of animal fear and rage. 
Then he heard a sound that he’d learned to live for – the fishing line pulled tight, and thunked against the bulkhead where Joe had secured it days ago so they could fish while they slept. 
He realized that she had taken his hand, hook and all, and now that hook was set in her gullet. And then he heard her screech. He looked up and saw her rise up out of the inky sea about ten yards away, howling in agony. And the kid smiled in awe. He forgot about the pain and he forgot about his missing hand. Truly, he had never seen such a beautiful sight, and wasn’t ever likely to again.
And by God, hand or no hand, the kid was a fisherman, and he had a fish on the line. He did what a fisherman does. Using his feet and his good hand, he started to haul her in. 

“Aye, good steal leader it was. She couldn’t bite it, couldn’t cut it. She couldn’t git free of the line, and the harder she tried, the deeper that hook dug into her. By the time I got her alongside, the sun was a risin’, an’ she were all but dead.”

Aldo blinked a couple times, and realized that the old man had stopped talking. 
“So…what happened?”
The old man looked at him and laughed. “What do you suppose happened, lad? I filleted the beast!”
“What?” Aldo gasped. “You mean you ate her? I mean, she might have been ugly, but you said that she was a lot like a human being. How could you eat her?”
The old man smiled, and took a pull off the bottle. “Well…truth be told, lad, I only actually ate the fishy parts. I saved the rest of her fer…y’know, other things.”
A wave of nausea and revulsion washed over Aldo, reminding him that he never did get that ham sandwich he was looking for. 
He thumped his palms on the table and started to stand up, “You, my friend, are a very strange individual, though I admit it’s been fun.”
“It’s all true, lad, “ the old man said quietly, almost sadly.
“Yeah,” said Aldo with a smile as he stood and stretched. “So whatever happened to the “damned box” of bones, anyway?”
The old man seemed to sink in his chair, and the years seemed to settle on him like a stone. 
“I held onto it all these many years. I held true to me old mate, Joe, and I never opened that box, not once, save that first time. I always hoped I’d figure out who he was trying to git it to, somehow. I spent 30 years wandering all over this country, waitin’ fer a sign of some kind. Never did git no sign, never found nobody that I felt I could give it to. In the meantime, that ‘damned box’ drained the life out of me. Aye…if it ain’t pure evil, it’s as close as any mortal should ever want to come.”
He took another drink, and sighed again. “Then somebody got it away from me, not three nights ago, not more than fifteen blocks from this very spot. Musta been somebody that knowed what it was an’ what it could do. I keep walkin’ around, waitin’ fer it to call out to me like it has done every fucking day since the South China Sea, but it don’t call to me no more. It’s finally where it wants to be. God help us all.”
Aldo stood there a minute or so, not really knowing what he should do or say. He rolled his eyes, and pulled out his wallet. All he had was $30. He laid a ten dollar bill gently in front of the old man, and said “You take care of yourself, okay? I hope you find your box.”
The old man’s hook snapped out and pinned Aldo’s hand to the table. The old man’s eyes burned ferociously into Aldo’s, and his nostrils flared as if he was preparing to breathe fire.
“Its mark is on you, lad. Heed me well…it is you, lad, that needs to take care. “
“Crazy old bastard!” Aldo hissed as he wrenched his hand free, “Geezus!” 
He turned and started to make for the door. “Beware, lad!” the old man bellowed behind him. 
Aldo pushed through the door, and out into the alley.
“Geez, what a weird night!” he murmured to himself. His stomach rumbled, and he thought to himself. “Ham sandwich. There has to be a restaurant around here somewhere.”
Chapter 2: In The Name of The Goddess
   Whoring was a career that Misty never committed herself to. She didn’t really see herself as a whore. She and her old man, Bosco, just did whatever was needed to get by, that’s all. They were enterprising and resourceful, and anything else was just incidental to that.

Yeah…

That spirit of enterprise had landed her here in this rat hole of a room with this crazy, creepy, smelly, old woman. Geez…did she ever shut up? Her voice sounded like a squeaky old gate that ceaselessly grated on the network of Misty’s nerves. She tried to think about anything other than the old woman. 
She thought about Bosco, and whether he was having any trouble getting his buddy’s beat-up, old, green van. They were probably drinking beers in his buddy’s garage. Probably cold beers. A cold beer would be good right now. 
Misty shuddered a little. She wouldn’t have taken a beer, even if the old woman offered. She wouldn’t think of eating anything that came out of those claws that she used for hands. Then she wondered about how the old woman could live like this.
“God, what a dump!” she thought to herself. 
The curtains on the grime-encrusted windows were more like greasy, rotten rags. She wondered what color they might have been when they were hung two hundred years ago. The walls weren’t painted as much as they were stained some greenish, yellow, brownish, puke color. Heaps of garbage were piled in the corners, but it was so old and desiccated that it was more like piles of dry dirt. It was about the only stuff in the room that didn’t smell. And what was that smell? It was like a combination of burnt hair and a rank fart.
Misty caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to see…nothing. Just the shadows on the walls. What was with those freaky shadows, anyway? Since she’d walked into this room, she’d been aware of movement in those shadows, though she had yet to actually see it. She shook off the feeling, and pushed back in her chair. She rocked the chair gently back and forth on its hind legs, and listened to the floor creak under the shifting weight. It kind of sounded like the old woman. 
What was she saying now? She wasn’t saying anything. Misty looked up and saw the old woman glaring at her. 
“Huh?” Misty grunted.
The old woman’s crystal blue eyes burned in a face that looked like a dried up apple. She wore a tattered, brown robe with a hood that she always kept up over her head, so that she was always peering out from dark shadows.
“This is important,” she spat in her gravelly, creaky voice. She sounded all the world like the wicked witch of the Wizard of Oz. “You must get him to say the words. A free expression of human will is necessary to open the Gate.”
Misty rolled her eyes as she lit a cigarette. She blew out a cloud of smoke, and sighed, “Yeah, yeah. Don’t sweat it.”
In half a heartbeat, the old woman was in front of Misty. She grabbed the arms of the chair in her claw-like hands, and slammed it down to the floor, bringing Misty’s face within half an inch of her own.
“Repeat them,” she demanded, her voice like the menacing growl of a wild animal.
Misty didn’t like being so close to that face. She straightened up in the chair, and looked away. “Oh Christ,” she murmured. She snapped her head back and stammered, “H – he’s gotta say, ‘I give myself to Ishtar.’ I got it, awright?”
The old woman smiled into Misty’s face, and she straightened up. “Good,” she said simply, and turned away.
But again, in half a heartbeat she was back in Misty’s face. “If you screw this up,” she growled, “I’ll know. Believe me…I’ll know.”
Misty looked down to the floor as she ground out the cigarette under the toe of her boot. “Whatever,” she mumbled. 
The old woman stood up again, and shuffled slowly away. 
Misty tried to dig out another cigarette, but the pack was empty. She wondered how the old bitch could move so fast when she wanted to. She crumpled the pack, and tossed it into a corner with a sigh. “So what kind of a freak show are you running here, anyway?” she asked offhandedly. “You making snuff films or something nasty like that?”
The old woman turned to her, and her face seemed to soften just a little. “We have some time…I could tell you my story, if you’re interested…if you think it won’t bore you. I couldn’t live with myself if I thought I bored you, honey.” 
Misty smiled back at her sarcasm, and said, “I don’t know, babe. I think I’ve heard it all by now.”
The old woman’s face eased into something approaching a smile. Her voice came soft – almost like a girl’s voice when she asked, “Have you ever heard of the goddess called…Ishtar?”

She began her story like this:

Ishtar was the last of a race of interdimensional beings who were called the Archons or Old Ones. They had the power of creation and destruction in the mere utterance of their words, and they ruled the world as gods for tens of thousands of years before the dawn of civilization.
But one of the Archons wanted to rule the others, and be the supreme power of the world. His name was Aya. He gained control of the Gate of the Eons which was the doorway through which the Archons moved through dimensions and was the key to their power in this world. 
Aya used this control to make a terrible war upon the other Archons. Some of them joined him rather than risk defeat at his hand, while others simply left. But those who remained to stand against him were ultimately defeated, and were bound up into a prison - a Pit within the nether region between life and death called the  Shadow Lands. It was a prison between dimensions from which there could be no escape, and it left them powerless in this world or any other.  
After this was done, Aya closed the Gate to this world, so that no Archon would be able to use it again – not even him. 
Ishtar escaped Aya, however. At the time of the war, she had taken human form, and was uninvolved in the conflict. In human form, she was able to hide from Aya and his forces, and he had to either abandon his search for her or risk losing the advantage he had gained over the others. So he left her, and closed the Gate without her. This effectively imprisoned her on Earth in her human disguise. So the people came to know her as a beautiful woman  with eyes of flame and the hands and feet of a great bird of prey.
But even though her full powers as an Archon were mostly wiped out, she was immortal and still retained considerable influence over many forces of nature. So within a generation, she became exalted among humans as the personification of those forces, and the embodiment of a living god. 
It was said that the mere sight or scent or touch of her could cure any ailment. She generally appeared as a lovely, bluish woman clothed in a nimbus of brilliant white energy. When she favored someone, she appeared to them as whatever they needed to see in order to know the meaning of true Beauty.  But when someone angered her, she would attack them in the night as a great winged beast with teeth and talons to rip them to shreds. 
It is also said that she lost the power of speech when the Gate was closed. She could speak through a person’s mind, and tell them wondrous things. But her actual voice was a piercing shriek that made the blood run cold. Many people came to associate the screech owl as being sacred because it sounded very much like Ishtar’s voice. 
The people came to love Ishtar. She kept them free from disease by teaching them how to make medicines. She kept them free from want by bringing the rains and warm breezes that made the crops grow. She kept them free from sadness by making pleasure a sacred obligation. 
The people built temples to her throughout the countryside, and towns and cities then grew around the temples. All the people under her influence lived happily and in harmony with each other and their world. The only thing she demanded in return was that there be unquestioning obedience to her will and her law. She had to make sure that no human would undertake any endeavor to upset the delicate balance of natural forces by which she was able to provide her gifts. Discipline had to be maintained for the good of all, so punishments were necessarily extreme. But that just made the people love her even more.

Ishtar’s presence on earth infuriated Aya. His plan for humanity was that it either grow of its own accord into his vision, or destroy itself. It was to that end that he had waged his war on the Archons. But as long as Ishtar walked the earth, humanity was not alone to sink or swim, as it were. As long as humanity had Ishtar’s help, his plan would never succeed. 
But he was a coward. He refused to return himself because that would mean opening the Gate, and restoring her powers. He feared he would be unable to defeat her fairly, and was unwilling to risk everything he had gained.
With the Gate closed, there was nothing he could do to her directly. He deluded humans to follow him by invading their dreams. He coerced them to channel his power and his will into themselves in order to exert his influence in the world. The tactic gave him advantage over Ishtar because her influence was limited to her immediate, physical domain and to the people who loved her for what she’d actually done. But since Aya existed  as spirit, he had the potential to exert global influence – even if it was only a tiny voice, telling lies in the night.  
Over the course of centuries, Aya did enlist followers in the wastelands on the fringes of Ishtar’s domain. These were mostly brutish men, thieves and murderers who were jealous and resentful of the bounty of Ishtar’s people, but who refused to yield to her authority and the authority of her priestesses. In these savages, Aya found one who was especially open to his will and word. He became a zealot for Aya’s cause, and Aya was able to bless him with visions, revelations and unnatural secrets and powers.
The zealot, under Aya’s tutelage, became a leader of his people, and was able to wage war on all the tribes of the wasteland surrounding Ishtar’s domain. Either they allied themselves with the zealot, or they fell beneath his swords. And thus the zealot became the leader of a flea-infested, disease-ridden empire of barbarians. This then gave Aya sufficient will under his control to be able to manifest limited displays of power in this world to trick and confound the savages even more.
Aya then gave his zealot one last task. He told him of a dagger that had been forged in the furnaces of hell thousands of years ago. It was actually a shard of metal that had been created when a bit of the Gate fused with a bit of matter of this world in the energy that was released when the Archons first moved through. Because this shard of metal was part of the Gate, it was attuned to the Gate and thus could render an Archon powerless in this world, and bind their interdimensional essence – their soul, as it were, to it. 
Aya directed the zealot to where the shard lay in a cave in distant mountains. The zealot found it and polished it into a razor sharp blade. He had his artisans make a handle for it of gold and jewels that they had plundered from one of Ishtar’s outlying temples, and he had his priests consecrate it to Aya. 
But Aya refused the offering, and sent a huge dust storm down upon them. And out of the howling of the maelstrom he announced his will that the dagger could only be consecrated in Ishtar’s unholy blood. 
At that, the zealot proclaimed holy war on Ishtar and all who followed her, and the storm subsided immediately. 

The zealot’s army swarmed out of the wasteland like locusts. Ishtar’s people had no army, no weapons to defend themselves. Her powers had always been more than sufficient to keep them safe. But Ishtar had no power against the Dagger. Wherever it went, destruction, mayhem and death went with it. The cities were sacked, the temples were demolished and the priestesses were unceremoniously slaughtered. 
Within a matter of days, they had hacked their way to Ishtar’s central city, and were bashing at the great doors of her temple with battering rams. The doors gave way with a sickening crash of splintered wood, and the zealot’s men stormed in, trampling a thousand years of culture, grace and civility under their dung encrusted boots.
They burst into the main hall, and Ishtar’s banshee screech shook the pillars and stopped them short – frozen in terror. With a single flap of her wings, she was on them like a cloud of fury. Six of them fell into heaps of their own entrails before a single breath could be drawn.
The zealot called for his men to fall back, leaving him alone to face Ishtar’s wrath. She turned to him, and was on him in a flash, but she didn’t see the Dagger, and was too enraged to sense it. With a flick of his hand, it was out, and her own momentum rammed it home – into her sweet heart.
Her body collapsed in a heap at his feet, and her Archon essence was imprisoned by the blade within the corpse. And thus her soul  remained bound to the corpse, and the Dagger kept the corpse bound in death.
The zealot then called for a huge pyre to be built right there in the hall. They made a great heap of anything that could be burned – furniture, rich tapestries, fine oils, and all the scrolls and codices of the temple library. All the knowledge, wisdom, humor and joy of Ishtar’s reign was tossed into the pile, and Ishtar herself was tossed on top of it all. 
When they lit it, the flames shot all the way to the top of the chamber. Within moments, the entire temple was ablaze. It was all that the zealot and his men could do to get out before they themselves were also consumed. 
By nightfall, there was nothing left but ashes and a heap of broken, toasted stones.
Ishtar was immortal, though, and the morning brought the implication of that into crystal clarity for the zealot. He found what remained of Ishtar’s corpse in the midst of the charred rubble. Rather than a pile of ashes, it had been rendered into a tough mass of tissue and bone with the glittering dagger lodged in the midst of it. 
He realized that Ishtar’s corpse could never be completely destroyed, and he also realized that should the Dagger ever be removed, her Archon essence could once again reanimate the corpse. To keep that from ever happening, he placed the remains into a bundle, and took it deep into the wasteland to hide it some place that no one would ever find it.

For his part, Aya was so revolted by the behavior and actions of the zealot and his men after Ishtar’s defeat, that he never spoke to any of them ever again.
The tale of Ishtar and Aya faded to legend and myth. The stories were told and retold and changed and modified to suit the times and circumstances of the telling, and the true significance of most of it was largely forgotten and lost in the moralism of the myths of a dozen cultures.
But in certain enlightened circles, the legend of the bundle endured. Though the nature of what it actually was changed many times, the legend of an ancient artifact of extreme power persisted in many dark, arcane mystical traditions. And there were always those willing to seek it out. 
	The bundled remains were found, hidden, lost and found again over and over for centuries. It became a prize for kings, charlatans and fools. They all discovered the hard way that none but hands consecrated in holy fire could remove the Dagger. To try meant a swift but agonizing death. Touching the dagger was like touching Ishtar’s tortured soul, and partaking of her torment to the last measure.

	I learned of the Archons as a young woman on an archeological dig in the Sinai. An artifact had been discovered there. It had been inscribed with what seemed to be characters of an unknown language, and as that had been the substance of my doctoral thesis at Princeton, one of my professors suggested to the government that I be sent to try to translate it.
It was a beautiful thing to behold. It was a spire nearly eight feet tall that had been carved from a single, pure crystal. Most of the interest was in the nature of how it was made, and who may have done it. It seemed to be a technology not of this earth, which made it some cause for concern – even back then in the early 30’s. 
Yes, dear, I am very, very old.
So they wanted me to tell them something about the inscriptions. 
I realized very early in my examination that the inscriptions were definitely consistent with known scripts, but in odd and inconsistent ways. It was much more ancient than anything that had ever been discovered before, and was actually an elegant and expressive precursor to the most ancient Sumerian cuneiform. 
But the most stunning thing about the artifact was what it did when the light hit it. Light from different angles would reveal different sets of characters – like flipping pages in a book. Each facet of the crystal contained hundreds of sets of characters and there were hundreds of facets. It appeared to have been constructed so that a half dozen people could stand around it and read different books through the course of the day – revealed by the sun moving through the sky.
It was breathtaking. I spent hours studying it, copying the characters, copying page after page of without having a clue as to what it might say. I spent entire nights studying what I had written, trying to make some sense of it, trying to reconcile what I knew of ancient Sumerian with what I believed this to be. 
Then I had a breakthrough. I realized that it wasn’t Sumerian at all, but that Sumerian was just a pale reflection of this. It was the Sumerian syntax that didn’t fit. It was much closer to a Chinese syntax, only using symbols of numerical relationship rather than pictographs. 
At any rate, I was then able to do a preliminary translation of some of the documents that I transcribed. 
I found detailed information about the nature of form and substance, and much about the dynamics of interdimensionality. I presented my initial findings, and within a day government officials removed the artifact, sent us all home and squashed all knowledge of the existence of the crystal.
Members of the original team then began to disappear in various ways, but since I was a woman, my work was merely discredited and my career was ruined. I had nothing but a dozen notebooks filled with my transcriptions from the crystal. So I set about to do a full translation of what I had. 
Apparently the crystal had been constructed as an aid to expanding Ishtar’s domain. It was meant to be the core of a temple library in a kingdom of the east. How it ended up preserved in a cave in the Sinai, however, is totally unknown. But it contained the story of the Archons, the Gate of the Eons, the War of the Archons and how Ishtar escaped Aya. It also detailed their science and technology as well as the craft of the temple – the rituals, the invocations. 
In translating the inscriptions from the spire, I learned enough to begin searching and understanding what others had not. I spent my youth tracking down the pieces of the tale of Ishtar’s murder. I learned to commune with the Demons of the Shadow Lands and  the Wraiths of the great Barrier – and I paid dearly for the information and insights they gave. I sold my body and I sold my soul time and again to learn what I know and get where I am. 
And now, I have managed to acquire Ishtar’s remains at great cost to myself and others. All so that Ishtar may be resurrected and all that I have spent and sacrificed and lost shall be returned to me.
There is but one thing left, and that is to find one who willingly joins with Ishtar in the ritual of resurrection. 
The old woman pointed at Misty. “That’s where you come in.”

“It’s about time, I think,” said Misty as she stood up. “It’ll be last call soon. The bars will be closing and the waterfront will be crawling with drunks.”
“Yes…good,” the old woman chortled. “It should be easy for someone like you.”
“Someone like me, huh?” Misty mumbled as she pulled on her long, leather coat. She smoothed her short skirt over her fishnet stockings, and regarded the shine of her high-heeled boots. “Hmmph,” she snorted as she pulled her glistening, black hair out from under the coat and let it flow down her back. 
She looked at the old woman a second and said, “You’re out there pretty far, lady. I think you’re a fucking kook! Whatever the hell it is that you’re going to do to some poor schmuck sure as fuck better not come back on me.”
The old woman walked slowly and leisurely up to Misty and grabbed her arm in a clamp-like grip. “Now you listen to me, you little whore…if you fail in this, I promise…I will make it my business to see that you suffer.”
Misty wrenched her arm loose from the old woman’s claw, and stomped towards the door. She opened it and looked back. “You paid your money, and you’ll get your action. But I swear, if you ever touch me again, I will break your fucking arm, you fucking freak.” 
With that, she stomped out, and slammed the door behind her.
The old woman smiled softly, and said, “See you in your dreams, sweetie.”

	Misty was still fuming when she hit the street. It wasn’t anything that the old woman had done or said, it was that the funky old bitch scared her in a deep, unidentifiable way that was really upsetting. That’s what made Misty mad. It made her mad at herself.
She shook it off, and started for Monk’s Pub. She and Bosco had figured that would be as good a place as any to start. As she walked,  she hoped that she found some old sonofabitch of a derelict to deliver to the old woman. She hoped it wouldn’t be a nice guy. She hoped that whoever she found would deserve it. Whatever it was. 
She wondered what it was. Nope, nope, she didn’t want to know. She knew that whatever that crazy old lady was cooking up just had to be horrible, and she didn’t want to know.
Of course, she didn’t have to go through with it. The old woman had paid half up front. She and Bosco could just take the money and disappear. Bosco would never go for it, though, the greedy bastard. Besides, that just wouldn’t be professional.
Misty turned the corner and stepped into the alley behind Monk’s. The green van was parked there. She whistled, and Bosco’s bald head popped out of the window. He grinned at her, and thumped the flat of his hand on the outside of the van’s door a couple times.
Misty rolled her eyes, and walked on. “Idiot,” she murmured to herself.
Just then, the back door of Monk’s Pub opened, and a young guy stepped out and stood in the hideous yellow glare of the light over the door.

“Geez, what a weird night,” she heard him say.

Misty thought to herself, “You got no idea, bub. Okay girlie girl, it’s show time.”
She walked up to him and entered the yellow pool of light.  “Got a light?” she asked.
He looked at her. He seemed startled, but she knew he liked what he saw.
“Sure,” he said, and he pulled a book of matches out of his pocket.
“How about a cigarette?” she asked with a dopey grin.
“Uh, sorry,” he said, “I don’t smoke.” 
She sighed, “Probably just as well, I’m trying to quit.”
He smiled and said, “Yeah, well, good luck with that,” and started to move off.
“Hey, where ya goin’?” she cried with a laugh. “I thought we were getting along so well!”
He smiled, and kind of hung his head, “Look lady…”
“Lady! How gallant!” she laughed mockingly as she pulled open her coat.
He cleared his throat uneasily, and said, “Look, I only have twenty bucks.”
Misty laughed, “Oh, Mistuh Money Bags!” Then she got serious and looked him straight in the eye. “I’ll do you for twenty bucks. I’ll even let you kiss me, motherfucker. What do you think about that?”
He cleared his throat again, and looked away, “Uhh, he started to say.
Misty laughed, “I’m just playin’ with you, honey. It’s all right. Come on, we’re friends, right?” She snorted playfully and patted him on the shoulder. “You should head on home. It looks like you’ve had a rough day. What’d you say your name was?”
“Oh, I’m Aldo,” he said.
“Hi Aldo, nice to meetcha,” she said, “I’m Misty. Ya see? We can be civil. Have a nice rest of the night, Aldo.” She started to step back and turn away into the shadows.
“Uhhh, Misty?” came his voice from behind her. She closed her eyes and bit her lip. “You said twenty bucks?”
She sighed, and turned back to him. “Twenty bucks, sport,” she said as she slipped her hand around his arm. “Twenty bucks, and I’m all yours. Walk this way,” she bumped his hip with hers, and they started moving toward the alley between the buildings.
“In there,” Misty whispered, and motioned for Aldo to enter the alley. She paused a second to check for witnesses. 
Behind her across the street, she could hear Bosco in the van shouting “Hoo Yaa, Misty! Got ya a live one! Hooo yaaaa!”
“Idiot,” she murmured, and stepped into the alley with Aldo.
He was standing there uncertainly, with a twenty dollar bill in his hand.
She moved in close to him, plucked the twenty from his fingers and shoved it into her pocket. She nuzzled his neck, and pressed up against him. “I need you to do something for me, Aldo,” she whispered almost pleadingly. “It’s a little weird…you don’t mind, do you? After that, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“What?” Aldo asked nervously. He noticed the faint trace of an odd smell mixed with her perfume. Something like burnt hair.
“I need you to say that you give yourself to Ishtar. Will you do that for me, huh?”
“I thought your name was Misty,” he stammered. Damn, she felt good.
“Just say it,” she cooed, “Say that you give yourself to Ishtar. Pleeeeze?”
“Okay…I give myself to Ishtar. All right? I give myself to Ishtar. Better?”
“Oh, yeah…that’s fine,” Misty whispered. She pulled her hand from her pocket. It held a small syringe. 
She slid her arm up his chest, still whispering, “Just fine, just fine.”
Aldo barely felt the needle slip into his neck. It all happened so fast, he didn’t even notice that everything went black, and that he’d lost all muscle control. Misty shifted her legs to absorb his weight and keep him from falling to the ground. “It’s all right, I gotcha,” she said almost sadly.
At that moment, the alley was flooded with red light as Bosco backed the van in. The lights dimmed and a few moments later, Bosco threw open the rear doors of the van. “Lookit miss sexy,” he laughed as hopped to the ground and took Aldo’s limp form and chucked it into the van like a rag doll.
Bosco hopped in after him, and turned to help Misty inside.
She looked up at him and said, “She’ll be waiting at the old church ruins. Get the money and get the hell outta there.”
“Ain’t you comin, Mis?” he asked.
Misty shook her head. “Naw, the old bitch gives me the creeps, and…”
“What?” he asked as he pulled at the doors.
“She makes me feel dirty.”
Bosco blew her a kiss, and said, “You are dirty.” Then he slammed the doors shut.
“Idiot,” Misty murmered.

Night Song by Ralph Hamblin available on Amazon at 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1500425737