The Broken

anticipation.

  As Link hoisted Ayden into his arms, there was a bright flash of lightning followed by a vicious explosion that rocked the ground. He yanked Ayden close and whirled round in search of the noise but found nothing. The air smelled of smoke and singed leaves, like the burning wood of a bonfire. Was the universe finally attacking directly? He looked back at the house.

  Clouded swirls of dirt and debris spewed forth from beneath the collapsed frame of an enormous elm tree. A solitary strike of lightning had cut the once mighty elm down to the stump. Even at nearly seventy feet away, Link could see the charred base of the tree, left black from the devastating lick of lightning.

  Link looked at Ayden, expecting a delayed outburst of panicked tears but found instead the steely-eyed resignation of a prophet.

  Ayden lifted his head. With a calm, unaffected tone, he said, "Told you."

  Certain what he would find, but unable to resist the temptation, Link raised the second picture in front of him like before. This time, the picture was identical to the scene of destruction that now lay before him, a perfect match down to the very last misplaced pink petunia.

  30

  You Will Bleed

  Legs cramping, Link arrived home still trying to catch his breath. The message had finally finished loading, though he quickly found himself wishing that it hadn't. It read:

  We're on to you. Give it to us, and we'll let you live. Hide it, and you'll die slowly like the rest.

  The subject line of the message read: Link MUST DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!!!!

  There wasn't much point in denying the message had been sent to him, but the all-caps seemed a bit overkill. A faint pounding in his temples grew stronger. Okay. This was no time to panic. Link took a few deep breaths. He held them in then released the air forcefully, hoping to push the fear out of his mind. It didn't work.

  For the first time, Link noticed that Ayden was no longer occupied with his books. Instead, he was now looking at Link, patiently awaiting a response to an unvoiced question, with an edge of concern on his face. Ayden was now floating about ten inches in the air.

  Voices began leeching from the walls. At first they were a series of low bellows and moans. But they soon turned into shrieks of fury and outrage before finally morphing into the quivering pleas of children begging for help. Link struggled to fight through the thick blanket of noise now covering him. He covered his ears. Were all these noises coming from inside his head?

  No longer a sanctuary, his bedroom suddenly felt much smaller than it had previously. In the time it took to read one e-mail, his room had transformed from a refuge to a prison.

  A tsunami of questions crashed into his ears. These were followed by a discordant mixture of profanities and laughter. An invisible mob screamed tirades of abuse as a horde of bullies mocked and tormented him. Link heard thousands of voices but still could not see anyone.

  It took all his strength to remember to breathe. His nerves tweaked his voice, sending it up a couple extra octaves. He screamed, "What do you want? Whatever it is, you can have it. Just leave us alone!"

  Ayden's face suddenly turned white and morose. His eyes shifted their focus about the room wildly as if chasing imaginary fireflies. Did he see something? Could he hear the voices too? If so, why did he just sit there?

  "Ayden, do you hear them?"

  At first Ayden ignored him, instead following the movements of the invisible shadows that flitted about the room. Then his head suddenly stopped bobbing. His eyes, now menacing and malevolent, burned as if on fire from the inside. They locked onto Link. A devilish grin split his face, and Ayden began to laugh.

  The shock of the transformation caused Link to take a step back from the thing that had once been his brother.

  Soft at first, the laughter soon became wild and unrestrained, finally collapsing into an avalanche of hysterics. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, Ayden's laughter stopped. In that instant, all the noise in the room was sucked into a vacuum of silence. In a deep, gravely tone, Ayden said, "You will bleed. Before I am done, you will pray to die! But I will refuse! I am coming!"

  Link stared aghast at the creature, too confused to react. The creature held only a vague resemblance of his brother now, but Link still couldn't attack him. What if his brother was in there somewhere? An unexpected tightness around Link's leg pulled his attention out of the nightmarish moment like an alarm clock. Disoriented, Link desperately tried to regain his bearings. It was as if time had slipped out of sequence again, and he had awoken to a world several minutes ahead of where he should have been. He looked down at his little brother, who now had both arms wrapped around his leg and tears streaming down his face.

  Link looked back to where the creature Ayden had been only seconds before and found a darkened whisper of his brother still there, a playful, pointy-toothed grin dancing upon his face. Reflexively, Link stepped forward to shield the real Ayden, who was still clinging to his leg. Somehow there were two Aydens, but he knew that only one was his baby brother. And it was obvious which one it was. As Link's mind reeled in search of answers, the creature Ayden waved mischievously, using only his pinkie finger. Then he slowly disintegrated into the bed, leaving behind nothing but a pile of ash.

  Link patted his baby brother on the back. "It's okay, Bug. I'm here." Given his current state, Link wasn't sure how comforting this assertion was. In a flash of inspiration, he said, "Ayden, do you know what they want?"

  Without the slightest hesitation, Ayden raised his hand and pointed to the camera. Then he resumed his death grip on Link's leg.

  "Of course," Link muttered, "they want the camera. How could I be so stupid?" Why hadn't he thought of that? On a whim, he pulled up his Facebook account. Sure enough, he had a message. He clicked on it. There was another message from Jim Jim, the same person who had told him to look behind the wall.

  The note was brief:

  Trust the old lady. Keep your brother safe. Time is short.

  31

  I Never Said It Was Magical

  With considerable effort, Link finally managed to calm Ayden enough to get him to bed. It had taken over an hour to bring Ayden to a point of sleep, but given what he had just seen, Link could hardly blame him.

  He picked up the receiver to call Celia and paused. If he told her any of this, she would think he had lost his mind. The sad thing was that she might be right.

  Thunder boomed overhead. Even from the basement, Link heard the harsh patter of rain outside. Obviously a camera could not take photos of the future, so he held up the two pictures and examined both for a more rational explanation.

  At first, the concept of a magical camera had seemed appealing. The prospect of adventure had been an exciting departure from the monotony of his everyday life. Of course that had been before he'd witnessed an evil clone of his brother, before people had threatened to kill him. And all around him, the fundamental laws of the universe seemed to be unraveling at an alarming rate. Things were becoming so bad that he almost wished he could go to school. Perhaps grammar class wasn't so terrible after all.

  Link watched his brother sleep on the beanbag beside his bed. Ayden's face was smooth and relaxed and showed no signs of concern. He slept with the total tranquility of someone who whole-heartedly believed in a rational, orderly universe and understood his place within it. He slept like someone who hadn't seen a picture of a fallen tree before witnessing it in real life. Link wondered if Ayden had seen his clone. Had he heard the voices? He must have. But then why did Ayden refuse to talk about it?

  Whether or not all of this was reasonable in the undeveloped mind of a four-year-old, fitting neatly between pirates and dragons, for Link, the whole day had deteriorated into utter madness.

  He'd considered walking to the old lady's house before putting Ayden down to sleep, but after hearing a floor-shaking thunderclap overhead, he quickly decided against it. With no other options, except waiting around to die, he picked up the phone and dialed Celia's number.

 
"Celia? It's Link. Are you busy?"

  "Panch is over, but we're not doing anything. Why? What's up?"

  "I wish I knew. You guys want to come over for a bit? I need to talk with you about something."

  "Can't we talk over the phone? It's a mess outside."

  "Voices, death, petunias, e-mails, strange messages, a camera."

  "What are you talking about, Link? Have you been assaulting trees again?"

  "Celia, this is serious. I don't have the faintest idea where to begin. At the very least, it should be good entertainment for you. Trust me, you're going to think I'm nuts."

  "I'm afraid that ship has already sailed."

  "I'm not kidding. I need to show you something. I need your help."

  Apparently detecting the seriousness in his tone and the strange absence of sarcasm in his words, she said, "I still don't understand why we can't just talk about this on the phone, but we'll be over in a few minutes. Will that be soon enough?"

  "Yes."

  "Hang tight. Panch and I will get there as soon as we can."

  As Link disconnected, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. He hated to bring his new friends into something like this, but he didn't know what else to do.

  Link sat down on the living room couch and shuffled through the remainder of the pictures while he waited for Celia and Panch to arrive. With only two photos left, he was interrupted by the doorbell. He placed the pictures in a stack on the coffee