Cult of Ded Moon

Cult of Ded Moon

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. However, romanticizing the good old days doesn't solve the infestation problem for the occupants of Ded Moon. Despite being nestled between two mountain regions, vast lush fields surrounded the city, rising from plateau to plateau amongst the mountainside, and the tip was all anyone could see. Tourists of Crazy Peak can look down at the canyon below to witness the unexplainable lights and seismic activity, referring to the vacant fog as ‘All Fears from the Nothingness. Recent fire breath accompanied by roars with visible sound waves deafening those in a three-mile radius happened quarterly, yet attempts to suss out the source forever fall short. Venturers rarely come back from a half a day’s hike down without several weeks missing upon their return; they described the city as peaceful with modern amenities and even a few cell towers at opposite ends of the canyon that the state of Montana approved if never sanction. According to the state’s representatives, Crazy Mountain, the most eastwards of the Rocky Mountain area, there’s nothing to acknowledge about the dark spot so void-like that satellites have never picked the lights witnesses to claims lie below. It’s a position the governor must share with which ever sitting president is dodging the questions or shifting the conversation away no matter the context. This has led to a hundred and twenty-three disappearances throughout the last eight presidents as the anomalies are effectively charted by brave private citizens while very poorly vetted.

My name is Neil Rav, and my team will be descending today on the only route ever recorded that wasn’t a D.B. Copper-style romp. Our motivation was to find the reason for flames within the clouds dropping light aircraft from the sky with only stories of roars and teeth to give the FAA. My team is heading down to hopefully speak to some of the locals, gather photos and evidence needed to calm those in the surrounding areas, and hopefully, if not overly ambitious, make a connection that could bring further communications. I have Ben Reese as my photographer, Lacey Cambell, who is essentially working as our resident gun operator, and Julie Grimm, a woman who truthfully merely needs a ride back home. She had been my source for the last year and decided I would pay her for her time by launching an expedition no one would aid her with since she turned seventy. Since nothing can be seen from the cliffs above, she would be our expert on the ground as long as we pay her, apparently. Her expertise will come in handy, softening our brash ignorance against their possibly new cultural differences. It has been difficult gaining any non-contradictory cultural inclinations since I began this investigation, but it has been nothing less than enchanting.

From Ms. Grimm’s jovial impatience to return, creatures that call the valley home may not do so out of necessity, their intentions glued to survive in peace. Lacey and I expected the worst, based on the countless disfigured people who managed to return and, a few times and her arsenal, things to have been reported appearing at the entrance of the only trail down in miles of possible access points the lead nowhere. But how happy could she be to return when she speaks of unicorn impalings sporadically or vetting processes involving drinking from a river only the chosen can survive ingesting? My personal goal was to discover what could turn dragon sighting into such a pathetic afterthought to Ms. Grimm. Lacey packed extra heat, and from her behavior, this was more than a trek into the norm, but I felt her rough demeanor would do more to keep me focused on the losses we hope to gain explanations for. As we began down the zig-zagging path thinning out to a straight march, Lacey explained her theorized imports and exports, but by the end of her seventeen-minute data regurgitation, I gleaned that they were importing humans involuntarily and exporting tales that draw them in. Some economy. The involuntary portion is what led Ben to take on this expedition so fiercely.

Each distracting sound, distorted and eerily unfamiliar, made the deep fog feel alive as we traversed. The growing steepness of the incline turned our gear into a liability that Ms. Grimm encouraged us to unburden from our backs, yet she couldn’t convince us why they were such dead weight without sounding like a suspiciously optimistic ayahuasca trip. Wind charged fog would cut us off and take us half an hour to regroup after losing sight of them a mere two minutes prior. A single slip up from Ben capturing another image of interesting fog set us back an hour on our watches and phones. Then again, most of his other photos, the clear ones, were of the writings on the cliffside in a dead or non-existent language. None of us could tell the time on feeling alone. Maybe this has been three hours of the most exciting low maintenance four-hour mile and a half, I said to a shocked crew trying to escape the haunting notion of being lost. Ms. Grimm happily added warm milk to our woes, saying that the human body responds differently on these grounds, and then she pressed on. She refused to wear a jacket for the temperature drop that only lasted minutes below zero before rising to a reasonable 50-ish degrees but varied vastly from the heat of the surface. I risked my Chevy Blazer’s engine overheating on the way here during record highs for the northern United States. Walking through each other’s breaths disoriented us when partnered with freaky-looking insects, Ben felt shouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist. A three-tailed three-eyed dog sniffed the yellow beetle-esk creature scurrying and left it alone unharmed. I barely pet it before it died five steps later from the odor. They can laugh at my mask all they want, but I only brought one extra gas mask, and bugs are choking an animal to death.

The city lights began to come into view, but we still had some ways to go without climbing equipment. But this place seemed to not like our progress. Ms. Grimm’s temperament, or lack thereof, was our powerful beckon dragging our cynical asses behind her skipping, which no human of her age should be doing. Our light amusement of her fanciful nature cracked by a rumble from above. A gigantic crash loosened rocks, firing them wildly onto the path that had been crumbling under us this entire time. Suddenly the four of us were playing an intense game, whose footing goes first from the vibrations of the land slide.

Only I witnessed this since Ms. Grimm stood next to me cheering before she dropped. It was her final words before falling into the mist. “You hear that Neil, your dream can’t end now.” She screamed gleefully, riding the slide ahead of us, cackling with all the twists and turns. “I’m home, my love,” was the last we all heard of her.

I woke on cobble stone, having hit it pretty hard based on the cut seeping from my forehead and the headache spreading to the rest of my body. Looking to see nothing but the fog and a loose rubble hill leading to the path too high to see clearly, I sat up, counting myself more lucky than frightened. Ms. Grimm lay a few feet in front of me, still smiling, slumped against the fountain of the courtyard’s center. Her eyes were open if only to the point of a daze, but her body seemed to be shaped oddly for the seated position in the yellow light of the eighteenth-century street lamps, looking like a hundred ten watts from a Home Depot special. I turned my attention to Ben yelling for help for the boulder pinning him to a mangled bench only deduced from the matching blue paint of the wood of other benches in the perfect circle. Lacey was on her way faster than I could but was paused at the sight of Ms. Grimm, which confused me at first. She puked before going to Ben. I couldn’t believe it was unfortunate, but I couldn’t—then I stood and caught a glimpse of her mangled corpse twisted like a weak bottle with a stuck lid in the light, head spun in a complete 180, thus why I subtly thought hips don’t function that way. Who sat her up if her spine wasn’t connected below the 10th or 12th vertebrae. I ran to help Ben before I puked as well.

Although it was a town square and our schedule stated we’d be down here long before nightfall, we stood alone in front of the locked main hall with no human or life signs in sight. We called out for help to no avail. After realizing our phones were far more than useless, whether they be dead or out of service, the wifi signals available just showed the image of a shrugging witch; for some reason, we noticed the odd shape of the north and south entries to the city proper. Each street sign, building structure, window placements, and movements of lights inside all mirrored the opposite. Ben pointed out that we should have seen these buildings far earlier into the journey from their height, but I was more focused on the close pin that dropped from a clothesline several floors up on the north and south side of the Welcome to DEd mOOn sign. The street lamps weren’t doing much, but we found Ms. Grimm’s bag, and Lacey began flipping through her notes as I searched for whatever supplies we could salvage, especially for Ben’s leg. The first line of Grimm’s first titleless book read, ‘You must accept that you have destroyed the only way out. You have arrived.’

“Fucking priceless,” Ben added.

It continued, ‘Your path is no longer your own. You must now open your mind to the absence of free will to embrace fate, destiny, and the inevitable place you are now responsible for holding. Accept or suffer.’ The last portion Lacey didn’t need to recite, putting the book back into the pack she decided to keep since hers was buried in the dark. Maybe Ms. Grimm mentioned it, or perhaps she couldn’t stop mentioning it. Lacey looked at their only two options and said mid a cynical chuckle, “The direction you chose is the last baby step of free will you’ll take. Make it count.”

“But they’re the fucking same, god damn it,” Ben shouted.

“That’s the rub, don’t you think?” I responded. “Nothing to guide you but you. No wonder no one wants to admit this place exists. We should stick together, right? Any ideas?”

“Julie had a map, right? Pull it out. I’ve got a compass—”

“She was the map,” Lacey said. “And there is a lot of magnetic inference or something interfering. My compass has been going nuts for the last three hours. I only know the that’s north and that’s south because we drove westward to get here and walked south down the trail, I think. I feel dazed; anyone else?”

“This place is already screwy,” Ben uttered as I helped wrap his leg with the remains of the scattered med kit I now realize was thoroughly understocked from the jump.

“We should go north,” she said, pointing to me for a vote I couldn’t truthfully abstain from.

Ben’s skepticism aided his limp in slowing him down, attempting to put reality back into a box he could understand. Following the crack shot protector type, more determined to survive this than I made the most sense given the curiosity tickling the back of my neck for whatever doom I’m allegedly fated to come across. I stuck to Lacey’s heels, heading northbound, taking what I could find in the dark, which, luckily, included a flashlight, a tattered notepad, a fancy pocket knife bought impulsively because of its shine over its quality, and a jacket I never thought I’d need. Ben limped behind, but that’s when I heard it. A faint scream whispered into my left ear. I turned to see nothing, and the others seemed unphased. A few more steps north and more screaming crept into my ear, driving the madness deeper the more they ignored their plight. Who was that, I kept thinking? Adrenaline soothed all my second guessing, blinding me to the chattering overthinking that has plagued me for years after my youthful chaotic trauma. All of it, every painful rage-filled nick in my psyche came rushing back, and the scream now sounded primal and hauntingly familiar. ‘HELP, PLEASE!’ No more thought. I sprinted into the south alley-sized entrance no one followed.

“Wait, I thought we were doing the group thing,” Ben shouted.

His call fell on deaf ears, or more accurately, disappearing people fading into their destinies. She shouldn’t have disappeared so quickly, sauntering the way she did; at least I ran. He didn’t want a side. He wanted to go home.

Six months, six days, six hours later….

…Although Ben couldn’t tell you how long it had been since they split despite feeling his limp should have healed by now. His mission remained the same no matter where he went, which was to escape the valley with whatever local tech he could barter or earn passage on. Sadly, they were all like-minded folk refusing to accept Ms. Grimm’s post-mortem message. Every attempt to hot-air balloon, single seater helicopter built of wood only found in the valley, or griffin ride out led to a dragon attack. If not that, he and his support group of involuntary citizens became so lost in the fog he’d survived landing harshly to be met with some cult-like settler nursing his broken ego and catastrophic losses. Once, he was struck by lightning thrown by a gargantuan hand made of cumulous clouds aimed at the thin fabric. Throaty roars became the air raid siren of his prison, putting him back down to the grown with matching contempt to his in regards to remaining here one more day. Since none of the content locals cared for his complaining nor the losses he caused, he turned his attention to a peculiar poster showing a startling lively yet inaccurate face of Neil Xaviers, Trapeze extraordinaire: Bounty: six hundred thousand dust.

He kept the poster, but as Lacey had a seat in parliament, she’d be easier to find and returned to the main hall full of the hustle and wizardry, causing a terrible inflation crisis, leading to a Snap-To replacement election. Coming across her several times before, she never gave him the time of day, yet it’s hard to tell if that was her intention. Embracing her fate has done wonders for her short career, as she completed two terms and was being shopped around by citizens for a higher leadership role, Prime Minister, direct liaison to the King. Joining her in one of her campaign meetings discussing strategy, a giant forced to sit if they would remain indoors to not bash through the floor above suggested she focus her messages of catching the Wild Trapeze and his dastardly cohorts. Something about time here makes everyone far more impatient, which is why Lacey had no intention of rising, or at least that’s why Ben assumes she was hesitant. No matter her clear expression of this, it seemed the people didn’t care or just hated hearing no, like spoiled children who don’t understand the nuance of too much of a good thing. They at least respected her need for privacy after she shot the ceiling to keep them yelling and shouting reasons they posed she didn’t need to hear a fourth time, and she left the room.

“Make it fast. I have an execution to oversee in an hour.”

“Lacey, do you hear yourself? I didn’t know you well before, but I knew about your brother. Did you find him?”

She smacked him in the face. He was fresh off a crash landing, so it wasn’t the best time to loosen his weakened jaw. “Can you for once shut the hell up and realize where you are? It doesn’t work the way you want it to. Do you think the hundred, that’s right, the hundred you’ve led to their deaths because you can’t get on board?”

“Get on board what? What has Neil done that has you considering killing him? This place it’s—you have pull, why aren’t you using that?”

She smacked him again. The city has a sanction that prohibits me from punishing your slaughter due to how you lure, so you’re only free because it’s not illegal to seek your path in whatever direction suits you. But know this, you sick monster, I don’t have to respect you, coward. I leave when I leave.”

She began to walk away back towards her meeting when Ben halted her with, “Should I even find you when I convince Neil too—”

“He’s a brave man, noble, just on the opposite side. He’s smart enough to ignore you.”

Returning to the council, he was left in the rain. It was a relatively sudden weather pattern but the lack of sky visible at all times made this a meteorologist’s nightmare. Traveling through the valley could be a jogging four miles in the morning or a dicey year-long escapade full of adventure, mayhem, love, and treachery. The more he asked town folk around how to find me, the more daunting the task became, getting swept up in crusades for all sorts of vendettas or causes. Weeks of getting swept up in the plight of others who knew of or traveled with me, he found what kept me busy he followed my trail of feats against the Gregors, giants of Ded Moon, with the intent of taking control from the humans or any sentient or none bipedal creatures.

I first saw him limping through a tavern asking around, but no one recognized him, and to be honest, I needed a second look. Those feeling the shift of the Gregors pull on the established institutions wrecking their simple day-to-day living tended to protect those fighting against tyranny lazily. Not that it’s all that simple when you live amongst them, grappling with illness, poverty in Dust and external supplies typically air dropped from trusted pilots in loose contact with those in the valley; these people needed hope. It started by accident when I was running towards that scream. I had a childhood friend I didn’t like to talk about, but on the night or day, it sounded like her. Nothing in that moment would have convinced me otherwise. Reaching the source, I was both saddened and relieved that I wasn’t losing it so soon. I found a group of people running from crashes, rumblings of destruction on a rampage. In a feat of agility I can’t place nor explain, I prevented the death of the Queen’s favorite daughter. For some reason, it was the first time since he lost his Queen that she took Bertha’s claims or attacks against his rule. Hell of a job interview, King Shifty Eye said after meeting me.

I’m usually meant only to report, but if you weren’t a grace butterfly before entering Ded Moon, it wouldn’t change overnight. Clumsiness aside, I’m a pretty effective sleuth. I could prove the nature of the Gregors treachery, but they’ve created a semblance of peace that voters couldn’t ignore and using Lacey’s diligence and charm, she hiked up their approval rating enough to make her a fine puppet. I’m not sure if Lacey knows this, but I surmise it’s why there have been so many election delays as of late. I intentionally led him away from me for a time, hoping that Ben’s findings would soften him to the woes of this place. He had been knocked over by a scooter barreling away from the bakery they had just robbed when I approached him in the mud puddle.

“Excuse me, weathered fellow,” I said, offering my hand as aid, “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

I graciously helped him to his feet, talking his over enthused hug with a smile until his stench offended me too much. “Please tell me you haven’t gone crazy,” Ben asked frantically, clutching at my jacket.

“Hard to tell when my bench mark is covered in pissy shit water, and you’re still waiting for people to believe in your fanciful rambling. We should speak quietly. Second floor of the Bob & Jude’s tavern, meet me there in an hour, old sport. And please, do both of us a solid and shower.” I threw him some dust in a small leather pouch and pointed directed him toward a hostel that would accept the amount of payment he could offer.

To his surprise, the lower level bar had looked like a Chili’s or TGI Fridays that had been disfranchised by the owners and decorated more to the liking their early 2000s ascetic comforted them. No one complained until Ben wandered to the back without saying anything upsetting the bouncer of sorts, who was a small fry with big feet. The arm bar that controlled him back down the steps alerted me that my guest had arrived, so I freed him, bringing him upstairs. Bertha was just as jumping seeing Ben walking around with my wanted poster.

“Careful, Bertha, he’s my photographer. But you should know, Ben, walking around the way you look with a rolled-up bounty in your hand rubs people every way but right.”

“I’m waiting for people to wake up, and here you go following along.”

“Yes, going against the wind rips the city entwine. When it’s time for you to leave, you make the walk. You should stop before you get anyone else killed.”

“Where are you two getting this lie?” Ben asked, infuriated.

“I met Lacey’s brother. Jason was sweet, kind, not as much a dreamer as us, but man, he was positive. He would have done great here, you know that. Funny enough, I’ve met over a hundred people like him—like you, full of zest yet blinded by something they don’t understand. What did you think when you met him and the other hundred twenty-two?”

Baffled, he responded, “There must be something in the air.”

Suddenly Bertha shot up with destructive intent. “How many have survived your escape attempts, asshole?”

“I mean, I haven’t met anymore,” Ben stated.

“In twenty-eight years, and the hundred and twenty-three people who are considered missing persons outside the canyon, you never saw any familiar faces, Ben.” He stayed lost, barely able to function while trying to make the connection. “When you don’t pick a direction, which everyone can tell you haven’t, all you think about is leaving. This place, it guides you where you’re best suited, but the first choice must be yours. You tried leaving, but you couldn’t do it on your own, so you enlisted help wherever you could find it, but everybody is crazy. They’re riding the rails and rebel you didn’t sign up for this. Each attempt out was a traumatic waste of resources raining down crispy body parts and random debris, yet you survive by the skin of your teeth all alone. Then you move to the next few. Am I right, Bertha?”

“Right again, Neil. I love the torment he’s fighting.”

“Over and over. Two people here, three to build that thing, six to help climb, or twenty keep the propellors spinning; none of them survive but you. Thirty years of this, you hit your last ditch effort, and you come looking for the dance partners that brought you here.”

“Every time you provided them with hope, removed them from their fate, destiny, whatever, it kills them. The Cult of Ded Moon finds them useless and lets them go. I bet you didn’t always look this feeble.” Bertha pointed him towards a mirror. Neil and Lacey hadn’t aged a year. Ben looked 77 on a good day.

“I bet the Cult used you to clean-house of all non-believers because you’ve got to be the last vanished person left. This place has gotten stranger, hasn’t it? You recognize the posters I saved?”

Ben didn’t scroll long. I stared at him just before he considered slamming the phone because despite feeling defeated, his phone was long gone, lost during one of his many crashes. The cane he’s needed finally made sense, along with arthritis and failing eyesight. “And Jason,” Ben asked, pulling his head out of his permanently pruned hands.

“No one is immortal, except maybe Julie, but she’s like warlock levels of powerful here; she doesn’t just talk—”

“She’s alive?!”

“Magic users, Lucky devils, Spell casters, they find loopholes with horrible consequences.”

“But she got out, right?”

“Yes, Ben. People leave all the time. You’re just too focused on it.”

“We should—

“I’m am not following you anywhere until you get settled. You’ll kill me too. Word of the wise, you’ve bought the ticket, the show sucks, and you didn’t ask, but take the ride.”

“This is impossible,” Ben said solemnly.

“Welcome to the impossible. Now, can you jump out of the second-story window because assassins are entering, and my bounty is the highest in the land?”

Meanwhile, in the north, because this place doesn’t label anything. So many average folks died painful, agonizing deaths because someone confidently shouted, “yeah, I’m sure I mean the blue beaker.” The campaign was under budget since Lacey stood her ground on her not participating in running in a race she’d not reap the benefits of without just compensation. She could only hold out so long before the popular vote swept her out the door onto their shoulders during a parade in her honor. While the dynamics of her lucrative tax plan provided a fair redistribution of wealth while maintaining the motivated masses to streamline the program’s five-year economic spike into three-year expansion with dust stimulus packages for education. No one can explain what the hell that means, but a little fungus of Hotep in the water supply keeps them happy enough to work their tits off in the WAX mines. It stands to reason Maxtro Gregor grew impatient with her staling to depose the ghostly King. I never learned the King’s last name despite knowing several of his court intimately. Maxtro strong-armed his way into the vice presidency but managed to keep it quiet until she leaked on his birthday. The following civil street battle is where they dragged the Wild Trapeze through the streets.

Bandana up, stripped of my jacket, and beaten in the face because their assassin couldn’t take losing and hit me with some sort of staff. They caught me mid-leap with a rope around my ankle mid-front flip through the window, but what hurt wasn’t the fall or the ego trip in the street by the Greta Gregor, cousin of Maxtro. I helped Bertha and Ben get away in a stolen carriage pulled by a hell cat on loan from Sage, Nine Tail. She’s pretty lovely when warts on her face don’t pop and reveal how you die with what comes out. My feet were tied together, and my hands were secured behind my back. I switched off and on my hands to compensate for the road burn growing by the meter. Although I didn’t feel the time locals claim I’ve lived in Ded Moon, the work, the pain, the sweat, the tears shared radiated from me as I shouted my criticisms to the crowd, informing them of the open secret I’ve been fighting against. I yelled out their crimes, their weaknesses, to the masses. What a delight it was to hear Lacey confessing to her crimes to out Gregor’s plot to overthrow King Sebastian as they put the rope around my bagged neck. It was nice to know the crowd’s maniacal laughter wasn’t at my expense.

I asked politely for final words, but two seconds after Maxtro’s denial, the King arrived late as ever a demanded I be heard. Removing the black sack, the light blinded me, but a specific glimmer caught my eye from a loft window on my right. “I always wanted a place on this strip. So lush. Wait, wait, wait. Those aren’t my last words. I was catching my breath. Look, I’ve been labeled a criminal before, and most of the time, it’s because of how I look, but today I’m being ridiculed for protecting the people. Sure, I wasn’t hired or given a knighthood, nor do I have the law on my side but heed my concern for the life and well being that you’ve had and wonder, could it be better with all your healthcare, rights, and freedoms taken away by a bully a little taller than you’ll. If you believe in equal representation from warlocks, to elf maidens, to gargoyles supporting the skies for all of us, tell our Lord King Sebastian, and I promise he WILL work to help you on your journey to cohabitation. I love you folk. Now get on with—”

They threw the bag back over my head, laughing with the crowd whose faces didn’t seem to match the glee. Lacey was my last face, over taken by the shrug of wishing there was more they could do against the Maxtro’s belittling of my words. I could feel the noose, but I could also hear encroaching disapproval of the cheap seats to my hanging ass. The undertaker, named Vince, the baker, tightened the loop. A rotating service and he will be responsible for creating a martyr. Shit, I’ve been here too long. I heard a voice in the seconds as the trapped door jiggled from the rough hands of my killer, taking hold of the lever.

“Guess we’re going to be here a minute, huh, My Wild Trapeze?”

“You know, I see us having a bright future Lacey Cambell.”

Yank, tug—To Be Continued….