A wet and blustery Saturday morning in late April.

Richard was heading north toward Salem, where he would meet Jim Grange, owner and manager of Jim’s Antique Weaponry & Curios, according to Google the only establishment of its kind within manageable driving distance that specialized in the appraisal of swords and armor. Richard had spoken to Jim an hour ago. He hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone at seven thirty on a Saturday morning, but Jim picked up on the first ring. He sounded out of breath, his heavy voice alternating between wracked and wheezy. The conversation was terse, particularly on Jim’s end.

       J: [sounds of shuffling; a throat clears] H-Hello?

       R: Oh, um, hello. I’d like to speak to Jim, please.

       J: Your wish is granted.

       R: Um… Yes, Jim, I’m hoping you can help me. I have some objects in my possession, a sword and shield that I have reason to believe are quite old—

       J: Yeah, we deal in that. Where you calling from?

       R: Brookline.

       J: Okay. [Small belch.] Bring ’em in and we’ll have a look.

       R: Great.

       J: Appraisal, auction, lookin’ to sell, or what?

       R: Appraisal, I suppose.

       J: Yeah, we do that.

       R: Oh, okay. Great. Are you open today?

       J: Yeah. In an hour, I should be… [Long pause as Richard waits for Jim to finish his sentence, but instead his voice trails off.]

       R: That’s okay. Does ten o’clock work?

       J: Sure. Whenever.

       R: Right. I’ll try to be there around ten then.

       [Jim hangs up.]

Although he was put off by Jim’s curtness, Richard also felt strangely encouraged by it. The last thing he needed was a pushy salesman type with a glut of questions about the weapons’ age, condition, how and where he had come by them, whether he had documentation, questions for which he had no viable answers. Richard speculated that many vendors of precious rarities were accustomed to facilitating clients who did not want their treasures publicized or their identities disclosed, and because he transacted in war memorabilia and other specialty items, it wasn’t a stretch to presume that this was especially true for Jim, which would explain his reticence to press for details over the phone. This tacit respect for anonymity suited Richard just fine.

As he passed west of Saugus on Rt. 1, the mellow spring drizzle mushroomed into a monsoon. Traffic thinned, and then all but vanished. The drive was a bit rocky due to the pelting sheet that obscured the windshield and side-mirrors, but at least it was short. Richard had no trouble finding an empty parking space in front of Jim’s building, a nineteenth-century brownstone that buffeted a narrow, garbage-strewn alley. Wedged between a Chinese take-out restaurant and an appliance store at street level, Jim’s establishment looked no more spacious than a vestibule. He rubbed his eyes in damp palm creases as he retrieved the war gear from the backseat and approached the building. The brownstone’s brickwork showed signs of its original florid tint, refusing to accept defeat, like a senile king clutching a drab coronet to his chest as enraged peasants swarmed the royal grounds.

Richard pushed on Jim’s door until it opened just enough for him and his bundle to squeeze through. The squeal of never-oiled hinges drowned out the quaint silver bell that announced customers. The barely lit showroom was bordered by overvarnished walls of fake teak. Dirty orange shag carpeting covered the entire floor. The congested, oxygen-deprived air smelled like an unventilated depository, though it carried a metallic tang that alleviated some of the salty dankness. A high counter ran parallel to the far wall. On top of the counter sat what must have been the oldest cash register in all of retaildom. To the left of the entrance stood a complete suit of armor, over six feet tall. It was indeed menacing-looking, and caused Richard to skip a breath. Labeled “Medieval Replica,” the suit was priced at $9500. On its outstretched gauntlet dangled a laminated sign that warned in bold black lettering:

       All Transactions Final
       NO EXCEPTIONS

Jim Grange had devoted most of his adult life to his humble little antiques parlor, which was a shrine to instruments of violence and death. However, most of the weapons on display were so blunted and rusted that they gave the shop a beguiling and ironically innocuous charm. Swordblades and daggers, many without hilt or handle, ornamented the walls. The waist-high glass display cases that made a labyrinth of the space housed hundreds of odd relics that Richard didn’t know could still be found outside of the internet, let alone in a place like this. Each item was accompanied by a white index card with a handwritten description of the piece’s history and asking price. Jim had arrayed his merchandise in no discernible order: World War I helmets sat beside Revolutionary War musket balls ($20 each); nineteenth-century French fencing swords lay next to Culpepper rattlesnake banners; Union and Rebel propaganda from the 1860s commingled with U.S. Army propaganda from the 1960s. There were maps, flags, agitprop leaflets from numerous eras and countries, binoculars, uniforms, samurai swords, scabbards, revolvers, Kentucky rifles, muzzleloaders, bayonets, powder horns, and “diffused” grenades. Some of the claims of authenticity sounded dubious, such as the tray of metalworked blades advertised as “fire-forged.” One item, a bowie knife with a leather-stitched sheath, buck-horn handle, and twelve-inch blade dotted with flecks of dirt (or blood?) was honored with its own vitrine in the center of the floor. The descriptive card read:

"JAMES BLACK “SHEFFIELD” BOWIE KNIFE, c. 1845

On Dec. 7, 1846, this bowie was recovered from the field where the Battle of San Pascual was fought. This battle was one of the most important events during America’s War with Mexico.

In August of that year, General Stephen Watts Kerny captured Santa Fe with a force of over 1,700 U.S. soldiers. After securing the town and establishing a civilian government, Kerny set his sights on the Mexican-controlled region of California. With a detachment of 300 dragoons, Kerny headed west on an arduous 850-mile route that stretched across New Mexico and Arizona.

After he reached the California border, Kerny sent away many of his men after a messenger named Kit Carson informed him that California had already been taken by U.S. forces. Believing he was on friendly ground, Kerny entered California with less than 140 troops. He was immediately set upon by 150 mounted Californios at the town of San Pascual. Taking advantage of their superior horsemanship and their opponents’ exhaustion, the Californios fought the Americans to a stalemate. Eighteen of Kerny’s men were killed in the battle, and Kerny himself was seriously wounded. Although the battle at San Pascual only postponed the eventual acquisition of California by the Americans, and although Kerny later claimed it as a victory for the United States, the battle has since been acknowledged as a major success for the Mexicans, who were on the losing side for most of the war.

THIS KNIFE IS NOT FOR SALE!"

Richard nodded approval at Jim’s all-caps declaration. This artifact had been imbued with its own mythos simply by being registered as the thing that it was. Whatever else Jim might be—a fetishist, a whackjob—he was also a principled curator who refused to let history slip out of context or go unproclaimed. The bowie might fetch hundreds, perhaps thousands at auction, but in Jim’s universe, it was a holy relic, beyond price, beyond worth. Richard thought of the sword and shield and whether they could lay claim to a similar significance.

He rested his blanketed bundle on the countertop. Taped to the cash register were two business cards. The first, cream-colored and formal-looking with bold black Garamond font, advertised Jim’s Antique Weapons & Curios. In the bottom-right corner of the card was stenciled “Jim Grange, owner and dealer,” the number Richard had called that morning, and the establishment’s address. The card listed no email or Web site. This was odd (how can anyone who runs a business in this day and age not have an email address?), but the second card was even odder:

The Brotherhood of Lancers, Archers, Demonslayers, and Exceptional swordsmen
“Guns are for pussies”
Jim Grange, Founder and Vice President
617-242-1112

Before Richard had a chance to wrestle with whether this organization was legitimate or Jim’s idea of a joke, he heard someone belch, a ripe, ripping, rippling, prolonged eructation, like Booger’s contest-winner from Revenge of the Nerds. At that moment, a planetoid-shaped man shuffled from the shadows, his forehead, cheeks, and neck coated with profuse, ectoplasmic perspiration. Richard hadn’t noticed his approach; he was simply, suddenly there, as if he had traveled through some interdimensional portal. Perhaps we could compare notes.

The man, who appeared to be in his early forties, was wearing a black leather vest over a washed-out, Powerslave-era Iron Maiden T-shirt, black corduroys, a black leather belt, and black pointy-toed shitkickers that garnered respectable stomps even when they landed in the soft shag of the carpeting. The man’s T-shirt needed at least one more X on the label to accommodate his bulk. As he made his way behind the counter, he wiped his mouth with a greasy napkin. He reeked of whatever onion-heaped delicacy he had just ingested. Three thoughts entered Richard’s mind as the ends of the man’s upper lip levitated into a tepid smile.

First: the voice on the other end of the phone belonged to this person. Jim Grange. In the flesh.

Second: He was a dead ringer for Jeff Albertson from The Simpsons, better known as Comic Book Guy. Like his animated doppelgänger, Jim was a rotund hoarder of collectables with thinning brown hair, squiggly stubble, and a slick, too-tight pony-tail that wriggled like a headless eel when he moved his head. Just about the only thing that didn’t fit was the voice, which had sounded low and reticent on the phone, very much unlike Comic Book Guy’s trademark bluster.

Third: He was also a dead ringer for the behemoth from the longship. This thought was the most inauspicious of the three, so it was branded a witch and sentenced to hang.

“Jim, right?” said Richard.

“C’est moi,” said Jim. “Whatcha got there?”

C’est moi? A man in an Iron Maiden T-shirt fancies the phrase c’est moi? All right, then.

Before Richard could respond, Jim extracted a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser and pulled them over his meathooks. Squeeeeak…Smack! Squeeeeak…Smack! The gloves were stretched so thin his hands looked like they were wrapped in cellophane. He held them up to eye level. “My gauntlets,” he quipped.

Richard was keyed up. Finally, after months of feckless agonizing, answers were about to come his way. He undid the blanket’s knot and unveiled the weapons with a deft flourish. Jim gingerly dislodged the sword from the shield’s leather straps. “Don’t carry them like this,” he said sternly.

“Oh,” said Richard. “Sorry. I—I thought the blanket was the most efficient way to—”

“The blanket’s fine. I mean don’t wedge the sword in the shield-grips,” said Jim, holding the sword by the hilt with one hand while he cradled the blade in the other as if it were an infant’s head. “Could damage the blade, or fray the grips.”

“Right,” grumbled Richard.

Jim flicked on a halogen lamp and positioned the sword beneath the skim-milk-colored beam. He poured over every inch of it, bringing his eyes to within millimeters of the blade and slowly running his fingers along the gold hilt. Then he fished a magnifying glass from his back pocket and scanned the sword once more. There was no reaction from the appraiser, whose face was pallid and inert, betraying nothing. He placed the sword aside and turned his attention to the shield. With a deftness and tenderness that Richard would never have expected from such sausage-like digits, Jim sought out every dip and undulation, every nick and nook along the rim, every joint and pin that affixed the metal boss and leather grips to the wood. He set it next to the sword and returned his attention to Richard with the blankest of expressions.

“If I had to guess, the sword is Northern European, medieval,” he said.

“But how old is it?” blurted Richard.

“Well, I’m not sure. Definitely within the last fifteen years.”

“Excuse me?”

“The last fifteen years.”

A well of phlegm. Nasal passages tightening. “Hrrrmph. Sckkkllrm. Fifteen—?”

“How did you come by these pieces?” said Jim, a note of skepticism creeping into his voice.

“I, um…” Richard cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sorry. I, um, bought them at a Renaissance fair a while back.”

“Did you pay a lot?”

“Not much—um, twenty-five dollars maybe?”

“That’s good, because they’re not worth much more than that.”

“Really—”

“They’re bad reproductions.”

“Reproductions? But I…on a ship.”

Richard had to steady himself against the counter. Reproductions! But wait… Of course they’re reproductions! Why wouldn’t they be? How could they not be? A part of him had expected this, even welcomed it. If the sword wasn’t authentic, then perhaps the entire adventure had been a farce. He half hated Ivan at that moment for over-encouraging his imagination as a child. You read enough in books, you come to believe that anything can happen, and it’s a heavy blow when you realize that, at age thirty-seven, your entire life has been assembled from the wreckage of dashed hopes and dreams.

But how did I bring these things back, and from where? (Here we go again…) It’s not as if I hopped in a car, drove to a dock, and climbed aboard a ship.

“Are you all right?” Jim had a hand on Richard’s shoulder and was looking at him with a mixture of concern and amusement. “Wait, did you seriously think these were real? I’m sorry to burst your bubble, friend, but centuries-old swords don’t come into my shop wrapped in blankets. Shit, I’ve handled one actual honest-to-God medieval sword in twenty-five—no, twenty-seven—years in the business, and it was nothing more than a hunk of rust. As Indy said in Last Crusade, there are some treasures that belong in a museum. But seriously, you okay?”

“I’m fine." Richard slipped out from under Jim’s touch. “Tell me what you can, please.”

Jim motioned for Richard to look at the sword with him under the light.

“As these things go, it’s pretty shoddy. You see how I can scrape off gold flecks from the hilt with my fingernail? Cheap paint. Poorly applied. Also, the hilt was glued on, unskillfully, with some kind of epoxy; you can see some white residue clumped at the base of the forte. Also, these dents on the blade are too uniformly spaced to have come from random use, and you can make out a bunch of tiny dark streaks. This tells me that someone went to the extra trouble of caking on grease or mud to make it seem as if the sword had been through hell, when in fact almost all swords, medieval or otherwise, are ceremonial objects, seldom used in battle. The dirt is a clever ruse, but it’s a trick.”

Jim leaned in and looked Richard in the eyes. His voice suddenly turned sour and a little angry. Richard recoiled from the reek of him.

“I’ve seen this kind of thing many times, usually with Revolutionary War and Civil War knock-offs. There are people who hire metalsmiths to churn out swords and bowies by the hundreds, then sell them as ‘authentic’ to the unsuspecting masses on eBay. Though I have to say, I’ve never heard of medieval copies being deliberately aged to such an extent. Swordsmiths—legitimate swordsmiths—will sometimes make medieval and Tudor replicas to sell to armory shops, curators, film sets, whatever, but those are shiny, eye-catching pieces. Conversely, collectors and dealers want their swords and blades from recent history—Civil War and after—to be a little beat-up. If there’s evidence that the weapon participated in a battle, well, that’s just icing on the cake. Ups the nostalgia quotient, you know? Swords that saw verifiable combat are extremely difficult to come by. So, if people want a ‘medieval’ sword, which are very trendy right now, they need to be made specially, as reproductions, and preferably with some modicum of skill and precision. But this… To go through the trouble of maturing a replica, and to do it so piss-poorly, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

“Yes, I see,” said Richard.

“However,” continued Jim, “the blade itself is pretty decent. It could use about three days’ worth of whetting and polishing, but it’s a solid piece. You could easily gut an Orc or two, though I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Well, that’s something. And the shield?”

“Ah…” Jim positioned the shield under the light. “The wood is new. Not all that new—but new. Untreated wood will turn gray over time as oxidation sets in. But this wood has been coated with stains and varnishes to darken it with the patina of age. It’s plain to see that it hasn’t been oxidized. There are easy ways to artificially oxidize wood in minutes. All you need is some steel wool, vinegar, water, and a darkening agent. Lipton tea works well. Still, like the sword, it’s a solid piece. It won’t splinter on you right away if, say, someone comes at you with an axe.”

Richard stared at the ceiling and processed the data. Reproductions. Only a few years old. But solid. Therefore useable? What did it mean? He’d come here for answers, but he’d ended up with more questions.

“Well, Jim,” he said, “thank you for your time, and your candidness. What do I owe you?”

“Oh, there’s no charge. But if you’re in the market for a sword, I can show you around.”

“No, that’s all right,” said Richard. “I really need to be getting back.”

“Sure thing. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Richard rewrapped the sword and shield in the blanket.

“This next thing… I doubt you’ll be able to tell me anything, but I thought I’d show you anyway.” Richard took out an envelope from his jacket pocket. Inside was the piece of parchment. He handed it to Jim.

“Hmmm… Interesting,” said Jim. “Cool twisty writing. Doubt it’s worth much though.”

“I’m not as concerned about what it’s worth. Can you tell me how old it is?”

“Well, it looks to be parchment or vellum that’s undergone some slight decomposition, aside from the fire damage. But that could place it just about anywhere at any time. And whether it’s aged naturally or artificially would need to be determined. As for the ink, it’s blue, which tells me that it’s recent. Most of the ink used on old parchments was made from cuttlefish ink mixed with soot and wine dregs, a black ink that appears brown once it soaks into the parchment and ages. However, I could be wrong. The truth is that I’m out of my element on this one. I don’t do manuscripts. I could refer you to someone if you’d like.” He handed the parchment back to Richard.

“Yes, well, it’s—actually, no, that’s okay, I was just curious,” said Richard, unsure whether he should pursue the parchment and risk another letdown.

“Where did you get that, at ye olde Renaissance fair? Those places are playgrounds for scammers, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Yeah, at the fair,” said Richard. He placed the parchment in the envelope, stowed the envelope in his jacket pocket, and turned to leave.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Jim. “There’s one more thing. About the sword.”

“Yes?” said Richard.

“I noticed some runes etched into the hilt. Practically unreadable because of the shitty paint.”

“Runes?”

“Yeah, they look like they’re from some kind of Germanic alphabet. I’m no expert, so I can’t tell you for sure. Could be Dwarvish for all I know. My guess is they’re meant as a tribute to an RPG, Tolkien, Led Zeppelin—you know, ZOSO? No title or text on the packaging, just weird symbols? Anyway, inscribing runes into hilts and blades was a work of art when the ancients did it.”

“I see,” said Richard. “Well, thanks again. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Sure thing,” said Jim. “Happy hunting.”

Richard exited Jim’s Antique Weaponry & Curios and stepped into the sun. He almost didn’t recognize it. It looked like some alien star breaking through an inflamed membrane of sapped clouds, a pustule about to pop.

He tossed the pair of objets trouvée into the Pontiac’s trunk.

Hunched in the front seat, contemplations and conspiracy theories slashed at Richard’s mind yet again, but this time he didn’t try to reason with them or fend them off. Let them have their way. Richard was drained dry. He wanted to go home—for good. The blob of That Day, that day of the spheres, had left him sticky, bruised, bloodied. Perhaps it was time to move on. He knew that, he did, and yet he knew something else… That Day would continue to live on inside of him—gnawing, sucking, gorging. He was host to it.

“A hoax? A trick? A fabrication for the sole purpose of driving you nuts?” “Yes. Has to be. No other explanation possible.” “Really? You sure about that?” “Yes, absolutely.” “All right. Fine. Who am I to argue?” “That’s right.” “But aren’t you even the slightest bit curious about—?” “The runes. On the hilt.” “Yes. Might as well see what those are about.”

Next Chapter: Part Three: Diversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter VII