The League of Anubis

By D.A. Madigan

"Huge plot twists? Check. Non-stop action? Check. Engaging voice? Yep. Two of them. If you like genre fiction that's fast paced and imaginative, this book delivers the goods. The way the plot careened in directions no one could ever guess combined with the mythic references that gave a sense of an underlying structure reminded me a lot of Roger Zelazny."

- L.T. VARGUS, best selling author of CASTING SHADOWS EVERYWHERE

* * * * * *

' "But... why us?" Michael gestured to himself, to me, with a hand that could very nearly have fit comfortably around my torso. "We're nothing special. I mean, I'm not, anyway. This is like something out of an old HEAVY METAL. If I didn't know I don't smoke dope, I'd swear I was smoking dope."

"How would we know whether we were special or not, below?" I replied. "Did you not always feel like, in fact, you WERE special, that you were not properly appreciated by those around you, that there was something about you that was so unique, so wonderful, that nobody else saw?"

He shrugged. "Everybody feels like that."

I shrugged in return. "Some of them are correct, apparently."

I could hear the smile in his voice. "Some of us."

I nodded. Strange, though, that it should be the ones generally despised and looked down upon, the unpopular ones, the ones who were not, never had been, and never could be, 'cool'. The geeks, with their roleplaying games. The nerds, with their science fiction and fantasy and comic books.

Perhaps not, though. What if the very attribute that allowed a mundane person to ascend into the higher plane of the mythos... that could, in effect, transform a mortal into a god... was imagination? In a world of television and movies and video games, imagination... the ability to fill a blank space with sound and imagery and feeling and scent and taste, simply with the power of one's own mind, was becoming a very rare commodity indeed.'

- D.A. Madigan, THE LEAGUE OF ANUBIS

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.A. Madigan
• Release date: Jul 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301765898

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THE LEAGUE OF ANUBIS

D.A. Madigan

All contents copyright 2013

published at Smashwords

This one is for my totally awesome daughters, TINA, KELLY, and AMY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Every writer is a reader first, and the things they read inevitably end up in the things they write... at least, the the things that they love do.

In this book, the giants whose shoulders I'm sitting on, and whose work I have loved and emulated within these pages, are, obviously, H.P. LOVECRAFT, ROBERT E. HOWARD, and STEPHEN KING. I do not do atmosphere as well as Mr. Lovecraft, I do not build worlds as well as Mr. Howard, and nobody writes weird high school shit as well as Mr. King.

But, for whatever it's worth, I've tried hard, and I hope you enjoy the results.

- D.A. Madigan, June/2013

May he give splendour, and power, and triumph, and a coming-forth as a living soul...

Chapter 1. The Children of Impotent Revolt

In my sophomore year of high school, the coolest hangout for any geek or nerd in all of Del Ray was the Anubis Society.

The first time I ever got in there, it started like this:

Hey, you guys want to go hang out at the Anubis? Davie Jenkins said to me and Vickie, all casual and shit, one September day while we were buying our weekly comics fix at Punch A Munchkin Comics & Collectibles. (That is absolutely what it's called; it's got a picture of one of those Lollypop Guild guys from WIZARD OF OZ getting totally whaled on by Wolverine right up on its sign; the guy who owns the shop, Bruce Kadinski, is a complete stoner and probably thinks midget abuse like that is hilarious.)

Now, we'd heard of the Anubis Society... supposedly, they had a bunch of tables you could play Magic or do a dungeon run at, they didn't mind if you brought in food, they sold a few things... Magic cards, paperbacks, some comics... but mostly, it was just a hang out.

The weird thing was, though, I didn't know where it was, and I didn't know anyone who did.

Vickie gave Davie a glare from behind her thick glasses... Vickie's always had spectacularly bad vision and lasix wouldn't work for her and neither would contacts. But her glasses made her eyes look like poached eggs and she had some SERIOUS glare on her. I mean, paint peeling serious. After four years of hanging with Vick I'm used to it but Davie couldn't help but flinch back a little. YOU know where the Anubis Society is? she demanded.

Yeah, Davie said, still trying to do that casual thing, I been hangin' out there a little the last week or so. It's a cool place.

'Cool' was what we'd heard for sure, but if it was so cool, why'd they let Davie in? Because that was also the word on the Anubis... even if you knew where it was, you couldn't just walk in off the street. The door was locked; you had to be buzzed in by someone inside. And if whoever was inside didn't think you were cool enough, you didn't get in.

So who let YOU in? I asked him, frankly incredulous. (That's one of my favorite phrases. I am frankly incredulous at your bullshit story is something I like to say a lot. It's, like, one of my trademarks.)

Jimmy Lemons, Davie said, sounding truculent. (Look, I read books, I know big words. Deal.)

James Lemmon let YOU into the Anubis Society, Vickie said, in a tone that was eloquent enough in and of itself that she did not need to say she was frankly incredulous of his bullshit story because clearly she was.

James Lemmon, AKA Jimmy Lemons, is a senior at Del Ray HS and his dad left him the greatest collection of Golden and Silver Age superhero comics in all of existence when he died. He's been written up in the paper and in fanzines and shit. He's got a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 and he's actually taken it out of the poly-bag and READ the fucker. With his HANDS. He is hard core.

Yeah you know I mow their lawn and sometimes his mom lets me in for Kool Aid when it's hot and I play Magic with him a little, Davie said. Which, if true, must have only happened over the last summer because if Davie had been hanging around AT ALL with Jimmy Lemons, Geek Royalty, during the previous school year it would have been all over the halls. Well, at least, all over the art room, which is where the geeks and nerds mostly hang out, because Mr. Wiseman is cool like that.

And you can get us in, I said.

Sure, if I vouch, Davie responded, still working that casual thing into the ground.

I looked at Vickie and she gave me that little one eyebrow thing she does which means, basically, sure, WTF, whatever. So that's how we all ended up walking out of Punch A Munchkin, turning right, heading up three blocks, turning left at the Speedway, going down two more blocks to just this side of the interstate, then left again, and walking down another block to a metal door in the far right corner of this great big old red brick warehouse building.

There was a security camera over the door. Davie leaned on the buzzer and after like thirty seconds, some chick's voice said What?

Uh, Davie said. Um. I wanna come in. I brought some friends.

Wait, we heard.

Then, like forty seconds later: Who did the Young Wolf marry? Not in that crappy HBO show, either.

Vickie said Jayne Westerling.

Good enough, we heard the chick say. The door buzzed and I yanked it open.

And there it was.

The thing is, the Anubis Society wasn't... isn't... a shop as such. It's more of a private club. Oh, you can buy stuff there. In fact, once you get inside, the front room looks a lot like a store catering to geeks and nerds... the walls are all covered with book shelves that are packed with sci fi and fantasy books, and there are four old fashioned spinner racks, like you used to see in drug stores back when my mom was a kid, over near the right rear corner, crammed with comics. There is a round clothes rack that is heavily hung with cool t-shirts emblazoned with graphics of superheroes and movie logos and anime icons. (I was to discover later that while most of the t-shirts contain graphics that reference well known pop culture characters and concepts, slipped in here and there were t-shirts sporting pictures of strange characters like Captain Phoenix and the Red Tiger... and quite a few more of them featured Egyptian motifs, like pyramids and sphinxes and Egyptian gods with logos spelled out in hieroglyphics. Only the inner circle at the Anubis Society ever wore any of those; everyone else just kind of passed them by with a puzzled glance.)

And to the left of the door as you go in is a glass case with a cash register on top and next to the cash register you can always find a box or two of Magic boosters.

And hanging from the ceiling everywhere are these totally awesome models of spaceships and space stations and stuff. There are three different versions of the Enterprise and the DS-9 and the Babylon 5 and a bunch of X wings circling around a totally out of proportion Death Star and a cratered planetoid with Moonbase Alpha on it and a Millenium Falcon and a Slave 1 and a Discovery and a Klingon Bird of Prey and a Valley Forge and even a Battlestar: Galactica. Plus something I didn't recognize until I stood right under it and realized it was a scale model of the Justice League satellite.

All of this, hanging from the ceiling in the first room you see as you walk into the Anubis. It's fucking mind blowing.

The models were so cool that they'd suck up your attention for a long time. Eventually, though, you'd notice the tables.

There were nine of them, each with maybe six to eight chairs grouped haphazardly around them. The tables were of all different types and styles, as were the chairs. There were small folding card tables and older, beat up dining room tables that someone had obviously at some point donated to Goodwill or dragged out to the curb for the junk man to take away, and there was one great big huge ancient looking walnut conference table that had doubtless come out of someone's office or maybe some meeting room up on campus.

Each table had something obviously wrong with it (many had one or more legs propped up on pieces of board or phone books to make them roughly level). The grand old walnut conference table had an enormous spiral gouge running right down the center of it, where it looked as if maybe some demented one legged skateboarder had tried to do an ollie at some point, with disastrous consequences.

The chairs attending these tables were a similarly motley crew; some were folding chairs, some were old kitchen chairs made of wood or metal (the metal chairs had padded seats which usually showed old, graying stuffing sticking out in tufts through tears in the plastic upholstery) there were a few pieces of patio furniture made out of molded plastic, there was even one barstool with a cracked Naugahyde seat that had been patched with duct tape.

And at the head of the big walnut conference table was the room's emperor chair... a gigantic old overstuffed armchair with cigarette burns all over one arm (the left). This chair was always reserved for whoever might be game mastering an RPG in the room at any given time, just as the walnut table itself was never to be used for any lesser purpose than roleplaying.

I never walked into that room once at any time of the day or night without seeing at least one person sitting at one of those tables. Usually there were half a dozen kids in there, playing games of some sort. Occasionally there might only be one guy sitting there, reading a stack of comics and eating some microwaved popcorn or maybe a slice of pizza from Zorba's, which was right up the street.

There were other rooms in the building, too... an adjoining room with a big flat screen TV on the wall and a bunch of different gaming devices hooked up to it and an old beat to hell couch in front of it with a microwave on a bench over in the corner. There was a steel door to the right of the bench with the microwave, and on the door was an ancient, cracked black plastic plaque saying EMPLOYEES ONLY and behind that door was a set of concrete stairs leading down to the basement. There was a tiny bathroom down at the foot of the basement stairs which always smelled strongly of bleach and faintly of piss. There were a couple of other game rooms, with a few old school 5 ball pinball machines, a pool table, and a foosball table. Rumor had it there were even a few bedrooms and a working kitchen... somewhere.

Of course, I didn't know any of that at the start of my sophomore year at Del Ray High School. Certainly not in those few seconds when I walked in to the Anubis for the first time. There was a lot I didn't know about the place, like, just how weird some of the comics on those spinner racks were. Or a lot of other things, for that matter.

I mean, I knew the place was strange, you know? I just had no real clear idea how strange it actually was.

Davie kind of eeled through the door first while I was holding it; he's like that, little and quick moving and even when he's not doing anything sneaky he still seems kind of furtive. Then I stood back and held the door for Vickie. I can't go through a normal sized doorway at the same time as anyone else is using it; I'm pretty big. My mom says I'm husky but that's just a B.S. word, same as big, really. I'm two inches over six feet tall but I weigh around 270 and it's pretty much all fat. I'm not embarrassed about it or anything. I mean, sure, I'd love to look like James Bond, and Vickie would like to look like Tasha Yar from NextGen. But you get what you get, you know?

So then Vickie went through in that kind of stolid Sherman tank walk she has. She's not built like a Sherman tank or anything but she just has a take no shit/get out of my way attitude. Vickie is short and kind of round. She's got reddish hair down to her shoulders and really pretty green eyes behind those big thick glasses I've already mentioned. I think she wore a dress once when she was like six to some wedding, but that may be a myth. Certainly there's no evidence of it. But I think she looks good in jeans and a t-shirt and she doesn't really care what anyone thinks of her any way, so, whatever.

I came in last, pulling the door closed behind me.

Did I say before that the first thing you'd notice would be the models hanging from the ceiling? Well, most days that would be true. But on that particular day, the first day Vickie and I ever got in to the Anubis, the first thing I noticed was who was behind the glass counter to the left of the door. Now usually there was someone behind that counter but not always; sometimes, whoever was supposed to be behind the counter might be out at one of the tables playing in a game or putting some comics back in the spinner racks or something. But usually there was someone there. One of the older high school kids from Del Ray or even a college student home on break. (At the time I just assumed that the older kids who seemed to work at the Anubis actually worked there... you know, someone had hired them and there was a schedule thumb tacked to a bulletin board in a staff break room somewhere and they all got paid minimum wage or something. Turned out to be a lot simpler than that, and a lot more complicated at the same time.)

Anyway, the day we went in for the first time, the person behind the counter was Serena Ruiz.

Now Serena, like Jimmy Lemons, was pretty much geek royalty at our school. She was older than Jimmy by a couple of years. But when she'd been in high school she and her boyfriend, Mark Whately, had actually come in on Hallowe'en their senior year dressed as Green Arrow and Black Canary and their costumes were awesome. Well, actually, Mark's Green Arrow costume might have been made out of shoe strings and painted cardboard but nobody would have noticed because nobody who had seen the two of them could remember anything but Serena in a blonde wig and a bustier and fishnet tights and high heels.

Today she was dressed in geek chic, by which I mean, low rider jeans with holes in one knee, black unlaced ankle high Keds with the rubber toe guards cut off showing bare feet with painted pink toenails, a white t-shirt with the Birds of Prey high kicking across her pretty impressive chest (you have to have a lot of self confidence to be a geek and wear a white t-shirt in public no matter how cool the graphics on it are). Her long dark hair was pulled back from her forehead with a pink headband and she wasn't wearing any make up I could see which probably just meant she was really good at putting it on. She had black framed glasses with narrow rectangular lenses in them that almost looked like old fashioned bifocals. And she was looking us over as we came in like we were specimens on a microscope slide.

She had to look up to scope me out fully but not much; she was probably 5'9 which is pretty tall for a girl.

Thanks, Serena, Davie said, still with the casual thing.

She gave him kind of an annoyed glare, then waved her hand like she was swatting a fly. Sure. Whatev. She picked up a paperback from the counter and sat back down on the stool behind the cash register... about the only thing the Anubis sells is t-shirts and Magic cards, the comics and paperbacks are all there for people to read on site but they're not for sale, although I did