Chapter One: Something Goes Wrong
Imagine that! Doesn’t it seem something always goes wrong in these stories? Writers love conflicts to keep stories moving, but what happened at the end of Antiquity Calais & the Wrath of the Cryptids was just wrong on many levels.
I mean, you’ve got an epic battle going on in the Old Port of Portland, Maine. You’ve got creatures most people thought were just myths ransacking Portland. Jersey Devils helping the Greek god Hades set the Old Port on fire, a brigade of Mothman cryptid creatures soaring through the air, blasting everything in sight with the glowing red laser eyes capable of disintegrating a building to dust, and just when it seemed things could not get any worse, from out of the ocean rose a cloned plesiosaur, with none other than intergalactic menace Leviathan Avalon riding high on the neck, just beneath the creature’s skull.
Avalon, of course, could not die, because he had already been dead for more than 1,000 years, but he certainly would have died if he had still been mortal when a missile fired by an F15 struck the plesiosaur.
“Something is wrong here,” Antiquity Calais said, as he observed not just one F15 but several of them, flying in formation toward them. The lead F15 may have just sent plesiosaur guts all over Commercial Street in the Old Port, but it wasn’t stopping there. In fact, the entire fleet diverged just as he said that, and in some cases, heading away from the area where the death and destruction were already unfolding.
Antiquity, the Creator’s Liberator, who had been fighting Avalon since his untimely death years previous in Earth time, stood aghast when he saw the F15s start shooting missiles at random targets away from the Old Port, in downtown Portland. Antiquity guessed they were targeting Congress Street and points west on Forest Avenue, also known as Route 302.
As Antiquity rounded up his support team, affectionately known as Team Liberator, Leviathan Avalon emerged from the water, after falling into the ocean once his plesiosaur ride was reduced to goo, and said, “Someone is definitely going to pay for this.”
There was a storefront nearby that miraculously had not been obliterated yet that had a television in the window. On the television screen, an anchorwoman spoke over a visual of the carnage in the Old Port.
“We have just received word that a chaotic battle has broken out in the city of Portland, Maine. The images we are seeing are just incredible. It looks like scenes from a science fiction movie, to be honest, as there are flying winged creatures, creatures that look like demons setting buildings on fire, but the most amazing thing is that the United States Air Force has launched an attack, not on these creatures alone, but also on the citizens of Portland, launching missiles into the downtown district, which has both commercial and residential properties, well away from the carnage in the Old Port. It appears the United States military, presumably acting on orders from the President, has launched an assault on the American people. We will bring you more as it develops.”
The real problem, if you can believe it, is that nothing developed. The scene just ended. No more fires were started, the Jersey Devils stopped terrorizing the screaming Portlanders, and even the Portlanders stopped screaming.
“What happened here?” Antiquity Calais asked his wife Gillian.
“I’m not sure. Everything just stopped. Like we’re frozen in time.”
“Well, we’re not frozen, and apparently neither is Avalon,” said Antiquity, as he observed Avalon fly out of the water, and begin streaking down the coastline to the south. “Should we chase him?”
“I’m sure we will see Avalon soon enough, but we need to figure out why everything froze here, and if there is anything we can do to help these poor people,” Gillian said.
“I think you’re right. Let’s find a place to sit and talk,” he said to the rest of his team, which had gathered around him. They were standing right in front of a bar named 3 Dollar Deweys, located at 241 Commercial Street. Antiquity motioned to the bar and said, “Not exactly Mad Dog’s Coffee Shack, but I think this will due for now.”
“Berry Punny Mr. Liberator. This will due for now, 3 Dollar Deweys,” chided Sherman Yazoo, one of his team.
Antiquity just looked to the sky with the faintest hint of a smile, before opening the door to the bar and leading his entourage inside.
Team Liberator was an evolving group. In the beginning, once he learned that before his birth on Earth that he had volunteered to the Creator to be the Liberator who would search, battle and hopefully vanquish Satan’s Destroyer Avalon, Team Liberator was comprised of Antiquity and his friends Gillian, Sherman, and the Mighty Mundoo Asquith, an Algonquin god who had renounced the title god to serve the Creator helping guide souls through the levels of heaven, until they reached the Pearly Gates leading into Seventh Heaven.
In time, though, Antiquity and Gillian fell in love, and with the blessing of the Creator, they were married in Seventh Heaven, and later gave birth to two amazing and completely unique children, Gabriel Michael and Mary Theresa Calais, who would become known as the Children of Light, with powers and a mission from the Creator all their own. For now, they worked with their parents, but all of them knew that eventually Gabe and Mary would need to go in their own directions, fulfilling the Creator’s plan for them.
“So, what’s happened here? Why has everything stopped? Has the Creator just decided enough is enough?” Antiquity asked.
“I’m not feeling like this is the Creator’s work, at least, the Creator with a Big C,” said Sherman, whom the Creator had created especially for Antiquity as a source of information. He was the Answer Man on Team Liberator.
“OK Sherman, what else are you thinking? What’s this Big C thing?”
“Well, you see, there’s the Creator, our boss, who created, like, everything. But see, the thing is, a while ago I was surfing around this online bookstore, and I found this.” He pulled out a smartphone from his pocket, typed a few things, and then handed Antiquity the phone.
On the screen of the phone was a book cover, depicting a huge wave in the ocean, and the title of the book was Antiquity Calais: Standing at Armageddon. It was written by someone Antiquity had never heard of before named Jim Henry.
“What the heck?” Antiquity said.
“Lemme see! Lemme see!” Gabriel said, trying to grab the phone out of his father’s hands. Gillian slapped her son’s hand before she succeeded in removing the phone from her husband’s hands.
“Will you look at this?” Gillian said, moments later. “You can read the beginning of the book on the screen here. Antiquity, it’s about the tsunami!”
Just before Antiquity’s mortal existence on Earth ended, he had a vision of Avalon conjuring a tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean, while he was living in an apartment in Los Angeles, California.
“This is unbelievable, but there is something I don’t understand Antiquity. On the front, it says that this is a novel by Jim Henry. Isn’t a novel, like, fiction?” Gillian asked.
“Usually, yes. Actually, always, yes.”
“But that tsunami actually happened,” Gillian said.
“Maybe it only happened to us,” Antiquity said. “Sherman, you were calling the Creator the Big C. Is this Jim Henry the creator with a little c?”
“That’s what I’m getting at. I think the reason why everything froze is because Jim Henry hasn’t written what comes next,” Sherman answered.
“So, we’re stuck here until Jim Henry starts writing again,” Antiquity surmised.
“Pretty much,” Sherman said.
“It says here,” started Mundoo Asquith, who had taken the phone from Gillian when she was done reading it, “that Jim Henry lives with his family in Hernando, Florida. That’s on his author’s page.”
“Well that makes a whole lot of sense. The guy is from Florida. No wonder he keeps sending us on missions there,” Antiquity said.
“It’s where we fell in love,” Gillian said, recalling a sojourn in Key West.
“How true my love,” Antiquity said, before kissing her. “But Mundoo, you said he lives in Hernando? Not Orlando?”
“Yes, Hernando. It is in north-central Florida, in Citrus County, just south of Ocala. I looked it up online,” Mundoo said proudly.
“How very modern of you Mundoo,” Antiquity said.
“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?” Mundoo said.
“Would I use a sarcastic tone with a 20-foot tall Algonquin god?” Antiquity said innocently. Mundoo’s natural height was 20 feet, but he had the ability to shrink his size as the situation warranted it necessary. Sitting inside a bar in the Old Port required a more human 6′4”, which happened to be the same height as Antiquity. Mundoo did not like to shrink himself any shorter than Antiquity because he did not want the Creator’s Liberator to get it into his head that he could be bigger than Mundoo!
“Every freakin’ day!” Mundoo said with a huge grin, and everyone around the tables where they were sitting laughed heartily.
“I’d say that we ought to head down to Hernando, Florida and see if we can find this Jim Henry dude,” said Gabe.
“Are we going to be able to do that? I mean, if everything froze because Jim Henry stopped writing about us, can we just decide to go there ourselves?” Gillian asked.
“I think it must mean that Jim is writing again,” Mary Theresa said. “We’re having this conversation in this bar because Jim wanted us to have it.”
“Then I wonder how Jim envisions us getting there,” Antiquity said.
Precisely at that moment, a white convertible with the top already down appeared outside the bar.
“I think we’ve got our answer,” Mundoo said, gesturing at the Sebring convertible that appeared as if by magic.
“He wants us to drive from Maine to Florida in a convertible with the top down?” Antiquity said.
“I suspect you will find this is really Apollo’s chariot in the form of a Sebring,” Mundoo said.
Everyone went outside and got into the convertible, which magically expanded to hold them all. That was the first sign that Mundoo’s prediction was correct, because that is precisely the kind of thing Apollo’s chariot would do.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Antiquity said, “I don’t see any keys.”
“Why don’t you check your pocket, Mr. Liberator?” Mundoo suggested.
Precisely then, Antiquity could feel the keys arrive in his pocket. He reached in, grabbed them, and withdrew the keys with a grin, then inserted them into the ignition and fired up the car.
The dashboard looked very much like a typical dashboard for a 2005 Chrysler Sebring GTC, except there was a large red button that had no label and no apparent purpose, which meant, in Antiquity’s reasoning, that it was precisely the button he should hit next.
“Everyone have your seat belts on?” Antiquity said.
Once everyone signaled in the affirmative, Antiquity pressed the red button, and immediately a rocket was revealed from the trunk of the car, and the car took off into the sky, with everyone in the car screaming gleefully.
