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small shiftings of earth in the tunnels and shafts below.
They were warning the heedless humans above of the
coming big collapses. Or were they, as in the poem "Kubia
Khan" by Coleridge, "ancestral voices warning of war"? Or
trolls working away in the abandoned coal mines so they
could hasten the ruin of Belmont City's houses?
Man, I'm a case, Jim thought. My brain is like a bullet
that missed its target. It ricochets all over the place,
envisions a hundred scenarios where only one could be real.
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PHILIP JOSE FARMER
I'm cut out to be a writer or a poet, not a garage mechanic.
He sat in a chair in the living room. He faced the fake
fireplace and the mantel, which held two glass balls with
Christmas scenes inside (turn the balls upside down and
then right side up and snow fell on the little houses and
people therein), statuettes of the Virgin Mary and St.
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Stephan, two incense candles, a can of furniture polish
spray, an ashtray with a pile of cigarette stubs, and a music
box on top of which was a circle of white-clad but
nicotine-stained ballet dancers.
On the wall above the mantel was a large photograph of
Ragnar Fjalar Grimsson, Jim's dearly beloved grandfather,
dead for eight years now. Though Ragnar was smiling, he
looked as fierce as his namesake, the legendary Viking
king, Ragnar Hairy Breeches, whom he claimed to be
descended from. His white and bushy beard fell to below
his chest. His white eyebrows were as thick and as splendid
as God's must be (if there was a God), and the blue eyes
were as penetrating as the edge of a Norse pirate's war ax.
When the old man had died, his son, Eric, had taken down
the big painting of Jesus, despite his wife's pale protests,
and had put up the picture of his father.
It was, Jim had thought, a satisfactory substitute.
The old Norwegian was a real man. A far voyager on sea
and on land, an adventurer, tough, no complainer, a
go-getter, largely self-educated, a wide reader, afraid of
nobody and of no thing, a quoter of Shakespeare and Milton
and of the old Scandinavian sagas, yet one who enjoyed the
cartoon strips and who had read them to Jim before Jim
could read, stubborn, convinced that his way was the only
way but with a sense of humor and wit, and also convinced
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that most of the present generation were degenerates.
It was a good thing old Ragnar had died. He'd be deeply
disgusted with his son and even more so with his grandson.
RED ORC'S RAGE
As for Ragnar's daughter-in-law, Eva, he'd never liked her,
though he had always treated her politely. She was scared of
him, and he scorned people he could scare.
His grandfather had at first been disturbed by Jim's
visions and dreams and stigmata. After a while, he had
decided that these were not necessarily signs that Jim was
mentally sick. Jim had been touched by the Fates, who gave
him second sight, a gift the Scotch called "fey." Jim could
see things invisible to others. Though the old man was an
atheist, he did believe, or professed to believe, in the
Noms, the three Fates of pagan Scandinavia. "Even today,
out in the rural and forest areas, you'll find Norwegians
who believe in destiny more than they do in their Lutheran
God."
His grandfather had taken Jim's small hands in his huge
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and work-gnarled hands. He held them up so that the faint
whitish marks on Jim's fingernails shone in the light. Jim
was keenly aware of them and somewhat shy about people
seeing them. But Ragnar said, "Those are the marks the
Vikings called Nomaspor. They've been given to you by
the Noms as a special sign of their favor. You're lucky. If
the marks'd been dark, you'd be cursed with bad luck all
your life. But they're white, and that means you're going to
have good fortune most of your life."
Destiny. Mister Lum had said more than once in English
class, " 'Character determines destiny.' That's a quote from
Heraclitus, ancient Greek philosopher. Remember that, and
live by that. 'Character determines destiny.'"
That had deeply impressed Jim. On the other hand his
grandfather thought that character was given you by des-
tiny. Whatever the truth, Jim knew that he had been doomed
to be a loser. Never mind what old Ragnar had said about
Nomaspor. Jim Grimson was a hopeless case, everything a
hero was not. As the school psychologist had told him, he
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PHILIP JOSE FARMER
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had low self-esteem, could get along only with a few of his
peers, all as messed up as he was, couldn't relate to his
superiors, hated authority in whatever form it took, had no
drive to succeed, and was, in short, without brakes and on
the steep road to hell. Having said that, the psychologist had
added that Jim did have great potential even if his character
was chaotic and self-defeating. He could pull himself up by
his bootstraps. And then the psychologist really piled on the
crap.
Jim sighed. For the first time, he became aware of
something wrong with his surroundings, something maybe
not so wrong as missing. It took him a minute to realize that
he was enveloped in silence. No wonder he had been feeling
uneasy.
He went to the kitchen and turned the radio on. WYEK
was into "The Hour of Golden Oldies" and was playing
"Freak Out," the 1966 album in which Frank Zappa made
his debut with the Mothers of Invention. Jim had been four
then, ages ago.
Before the album was finished, Eric Grimson came
home. And the gates of hell opened.
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60
CHAPTER 1 0
/\T 6:19, AN HOUR after sunset, Jim raised his bedroom
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