Walking the Ley Lines

Prologue: The Whirlwind

Panting, I held the torn shirt of the man I'd shot against the bloody wound on the right side of my chest. I could see a Line. It flickered like the edge of broken glass, right through the blackened, lightning shattered stump of a pine tree. A memory of my mother flashed behind my eyes. She was a few years dead now, hung herself from the branch of a dead ash tree like one eyed Odin.

The world bent with hellish hues of red and purple as I walked and felt the solid world pass like a stinging wind. A tingling sensation ran up my left arm and the world solidified again. I was walking down a dirt road, not entirely sure where. I coughed. The dirt was red and it coated my worn black boots and kicked up in soft clouds. I saw a shimmering Line off to the right and turned, passing a rusted mile marker. The solid world bent in colors and motion again, it lasted a little longer this time. When the world solidified again I had to lean against the brick wall of a building and catch my breath.

It was night time here. I was pretty sure this was Omaha. A neon sign burned above me. I walked down the empty sidewalk and towards a traffic choked street. Street lights flashed here and there and cars honked and splashed through puddles of dirty water. Orienting myself, I turned and turned again. A restaurant I recognized lit up the left side of the road. This was Omaha. That was good. I was almost there. I felt a trickle of blood escape from my makeshift compress and dribble down my skin. The wound throbbed and made me shudder. I had to find the next Line.

Mother had called them Paths through the Mist, Dad had called them Ley Lines. Cosmic threads that stitch the worlds together. Energy lanes that stretched from one corner of the world to the other. With the right know how a man could ride them like an express train.

Glancing around, I saw the shimmer of a Line right on the corner of Eighty-Six street and Dodge. I headed towards it, took a breath, and plunged right in the path of a box truck speeding through a red light. The truck and city curved and opened in a swirl of color and in a couple more steps I was on another empty road. This one was old asphalt, weeds sprung from cracks here and there. Foxtails and milkweed pulled at my jeans. A single, pulsing, red stoplight hung from a long cable between two dark buildings with shattered windows on Main street.

Hangman, Nebraska.

I walked right down the middle of the broken road. No cars here, except for the rotting husk of a '55 ford in front of the old courthouse. Even in the dim light of a half moon I could see something moving the shadows of the rusted wreck of a machine. I could see another Line, flickering right through it, but I didn't take it. The ache near my shoulder just above the wound had become a throb.

Most Ley Lines passed through the old and the forgotten pieces of the world. The only exception is when they crossed each other. When enough lines pass through the same point, that's when the real world starts taking notice. Then you get stuff like Stonehenge and the Aztec Pyramids.

Spitting on the ground, I stepped up to the one building with light burning beneath its front door. A sign reading, Two-Headed Tavern, swung in the breeze. I tore off my coat and threw open the door. A couple tables and booths spread across a floor coated in layers of old sawdust, lightbulbs hung from the ceiling.

Seamstress Abby, the owner, was already rounding the bar. Skin as pale as a corpse, concern sparked in her dark eyes. Slim in a simple gray dress, she didn't look a day over twenty-four. Her eyes though, those dark eyes looked like they'd seen the fall of empires.

"Elias!" she said. "Lie down in this table here!" She waved her assistant, a tall, sunken cheeked, man, forward to help.

With surprising strength in his thin arms, he helped pull me on to the table, sending a glass mug tumbling to the floor. I lied back, panting, blood pumping in my ears. He took my coat, disappearing it somewhere.