Part XI(A) - I Hate New York
When we left Oxford with the cross, we came back to Durham, NC, where some weird stuff had been happening. We materialized on the Duke golf course, it turned out that it was now September, when we'd left in March, and at this point, Brian young said that he wanted out. He wasn't up for all this saving the world bullshit, and wanted to see his wife again. So Chappell took him away, apparently back in time to shortly after he left, but he still remembered everything that happened, so he immediately showed up to pick us up from the golf course and take us home.
As for the weird stuff that had been happening, we'd all lost several months, when from our perspective, it had only been a few weeks (except for Joe, who'd spent the time in ancient Greece). I was severely annoyed, as Chappell had promised me when we left that we would return to the time we left, so it would be like we were never gone. He said he'd work it out.
We spent some time in town, to find out what had happened while we were gone. First of all, no one seemed to care that we'd been gone, and my neighbors were much too nice in my absence, paying my rent and all. Rasputin was OK too. Some strange stuff happened, the US economy collapsed, Gorbachov was elected president of Russia, the Cubs were in the playoffs, Yugoslavia won the basketball gold medal, and other things that made us wonder if reality hadn't shifted on us while we were gone, but there was nothing conclusive, as everything up to the time we left seemed to match with our recollections.
I had a letter in my mailbox from some unknown person, going on and on about how he asked the oracle when he'd die, and now he's upset about it, don't do what I did, blah, blah, blah. I mentioned this to Joe, and he told me a little about when he went to the oracle at Delphi, and saw us there, and got a message to take back with him, but a different one than the one I got. It wasn't supposed to be opened until some certain people were all present, namely, Bryan Young and wife.
After a little while, we were set to go again, and we all went to New York, where something bad was happening. The tickets were already arranged, and I took plenty of painkillers, since I knew that being in the polluted city would give me incredible migranes the entire time that I'd be there. Brian took us to the airport, and we met up with Dean, and in New York, some other people that the original David Chappell knew from Cornell. It seems that there was some kind of bat like vigilante going around the city killing criminals. It shouldn't be there, and we should stop it. We also picked up some girl sobbing uncontrollably because her friends weren't there to meet her like they said. Strangely enough, she was also from Duke.
We got into town, and into our hotel. I won't bore you with too many details, since the next few days were very lame. At first, I was thinking of the DC Comics stories about the multiverse, and to go along with the possible reality changes, I thought that maybe the barriers between alternate earths were breaking down. This might account for Batman to be in New York, and Fabio said that this bat-vigilante shouldn't be there, which made sense. I looked up Bruce Wayne in the New York phone book, and there was one listed, but when we called him, he didn't seem to fit, so we gave up on that line.
We roamed the city all night for several nights, looking for trouble, but never found any. One time, we found a guy who looked like a drug dealer/punk, and tried to get him to mug us, so that we might attract the vigilante, but he didn't take the bait. A couple times we seemed to get close to it, using our police scanners and watchouts to get to the scenes of strange murders STAT. It was at one of these that Jay tried making contact with a recently dead guy. He connected with what was left of the guy's mind, but either what was there, or the death shock, or something, really knocked him for a loop. He never really told us what happened.
The girl we met, Gegi, was hanging out at some weirdo dipshit "vampire" club which is where these "friends" that weren't at the airport hung out. At this club, there was some big shot vampire-wannabe freak who was in town and hanging out there. We thought he might be connected to the bat, so we went there and checked it out because we really didn't have anything else to go on.
The club was really stupid, but we saw the guy, and Gegi wanted to leave with him, so she did. We argued with her some, Jay seemed especially concerned, but she was adamant in her wishes that we leave her alone, and let her go with her friends. That was perfectly all right with me, since I'm a great believer in the free will of individuals to make their own choices to fuck up their own lives, which is not, and should not become, my problem. We followed them, however, because we suspected they were up to something, and this would possibly be the only entertaining thing that we got to see in New York, if an actual human sacrifice were to happen. After a fair bit of confusion, it turned out that they took Gegi off to be part of some demonic ritual. We tracked them to their lair, not knowing what was going on, and interrupted. The vampire cultists all took off, and the place caught on fire, but we found Gegi again. It seems that they had her laid out in penagrams and all that shit, and were using her as demon bait. I saw one of these dipshits in the crowd outside their burning hangout, but he got away in the mob (something about disasters just brings people out in massive numbers). Whee-fun.
We roamed the streets for a while longer, and Jon almost got killed. He was with Jay and Gegi, and the bat thing jumped them, and ripped Jon up real good, even though Jon valiantly unloaded a whole clip of exploding bullets into it. It was at this point that we realized that we were not dealing with Batman, since the description was of a comletely black, somewhat amorphous shape that was best described as round, with lots of natsy sharp claws. It seemed that we were dealing with some kind of demon, so it really shouldn't have been there (although, actually, in New York, I thought it was pretty appropriate, since that place is hell on earth.) Chappell said that the thing was attracted to dark evil thoughts, so naturally it was after Jay, with his new psychic power shit.
The baseball fields at Central Park were selected to be the final battleground, as it was a nice open space, with no buildings, alleys, or other stuff to hide in. We used Jay as bait (I was especially fond of this strategy, as it was a win-win situation). We got baseball bats, tasers, flares, and other essentials, then waited. Then it came. Joe, Charlie, and I were around Jay, I lit some flares for light to fight by, and maybe annoy it a little, since it seemed to like the dark, and we started fighting the thing. Charlie got scared so bad the first time he saw it, he started puking and was out of the fight (he hadn't seen the shit the rest of us had deal with, making us somewhat less susceptible). Joe and I fought badly, and passed out from the great pain of the wounds inflicted from numerous razor sharp demon claws. Chappell (and maybe Tom) were lobbing in fireballs from the outfield, but missing. It was slowly getting hit, but not enough.
The end of the story I got second hand, since I was out for the last of the battle, was that two more guys that we'd never seen before, with guns and swords showed up. They took it out, and it shrank down to a black ball, they stabbed it with the Holy Lance/Spear of Destiny like Fabio said, wrapped it up, and took it with them while we all staggered off to leave before the cops showed up (sirens were approaching). We made our little circle, and bugged out.