Zachary Pill, Of Monsters and Magic

around them. Surprisingly strong for a small man, his father dragged him by the good arm through the doorway.

  “Get into the bathroom!”

  Zachary ducked as a bat with blood red eyes hurtled past his head. It made a sickening splatter as it struck someplace in the bedroom behind him.

  “Enough!” Zachary’s father shouted in a voice so loud it made Zachary’s ears hurt. Another bat bounced off the hallway wall and hurtled toward them, but his father chanted something and a bolt of blue light burst out of the wand and struck it in mid-flight.

  Though he was temporarily blinded from the flash, Zachary heard the bat fall in a wet thump on the hallway floor not far from him. The air was filled with the sickly smell of charred flesh. He felt his father’s hands thrust him into the bathroom and he heard the door pulled shut.

  “Lock it!” his father ordered.

  Ashamed to be leaving his father alone with the bats but having no choice, Zachary groped along the door and forced his trembling fingers to turn the lock. Then, he backed away until his cast struck the towel rack on the back wall. Pain vibrated through his arm. He fought the need to scream, but couldn’t stop his breath, which came and went in great gasps. The windowless bathroom was pitch black. In an attempt to hear over the sound of his own sobs, Zachary clamped his good hand over his mouth.

  “Krage, I’m done with this!” his father bellowed.

  Simultaneously, a flash framed the bathroom door with blinding blue light. Then everything went black again. Something heavy thumped against the door. Zachary feared for the worst.

  “Dad?” he whispered. Then more loudly, “Dad?”

  There was another explosion of glass, maybe from his father’s bedroom. The crashing and banging sounds grew louder and reverberated from all over the apartment. Suddenly, another flash of blue light left spots swimming in Zachary’s eyes. Something about the following darkness was different this time, though. It was the silence. No crashing, no wind, nothing. Zachary could hear his own heart beating in his ears.

  “Dad?”

  The knob jiggled.

  “Get away from there!” his father hollered from somewhere in the kitchen.

  Blue light flashed again revealing dark curls of smoke coming from under the door then something heavy struck the bathroom door. Zachary coughed and grabbed for a towel to cover his nose and mouth from the smoke that was making it hard to breathe. He heard feet run past the bathroom door.

  “Tell Krage I’m coming for him!” his father yelled. “Tell him I’m coming!”

  The next blue flash was diffused by the thickening smoke. Then everything went silent again.

  “Dad?” Zachary coughed and blinked his smoke-stinging eyes. It was getting harder to draw even small breaths through his makeshift filter. Was their apartment on fire?

  He knew he had to find fresh air or risk suffocating.

  “Dad?”

  Still no answer.

  Staying low, the way he learned in school fire drills, Zachary tried to crab-walk on all fours to the door. His broken arm, however, made that impossible. Instead, he was forced to shuffle forward using a combination of his knees and his good right arm. It was almost impossible to breathe now. He fumbled with the lock and yanked the door open. Several small fires were burning on the hallway floor, and the apartment smelled like a barbeque pit. A gust of wind blew past and cleared enough smoke that he could suck in a breath. The small floor fires flickered and went out. His good hand touched something hot and slimy on the floor in the doorway. Yanking his hand away, he took another deep gulp of air.

  “Dad?”

  Using the doorframe to pull himself to his feet, he stepped over the slimy heap that must have been a dead bat and turned right toward the kitchen. He stumbled and tripped over several more lumps on the way to the kitchen where dim light coming in from the Boston skyline allowed him to see silhouettes of bat corpses on the counter. He groped along the wall and tried to flip on the hallway light. Nothing happened. The breakers were still off. Stepping gingerly over the disgusting lumps that littered the slippery floor, he made his way to the kitchen counter and pulled a flashlight out of the top drawer on the left. Switching on the light, he gagged at the sight of dead and burnt bat bodies everywhere, their blood spattered like red paint all over the furniture, walls and floors. Larger than he thought bats were supposed to be, the nearest corpse had leathery wings splayed across both sides of the kitchen sink. One glance at the creature’s long fangs was enough to make him fear for his father.

  “Dad!”

  Terrified, Zachary hurried to his father’s bedroom, then to the office, and finally to his own bedroom, which had somehow survived the onslaught without any damage. Though there were dozens of dead bats strewn across their apartment, his father was nowhere to be found.

  His stomach now tied in a tight knot of fear, Zachary checked the front door and found the bolt and chain lock were both still secured; no one could have gone out that way. His father also wasn’t on the fire escape outside the kitchen window, and it didn’t seem possible he could have climbed all the way up to the roof or down to the ground in such a short time. Zachary looked down and couldn’t see any flashing emergency lights, and the few late-night pedestrians seemed to be walking normally along the sidewalk. No one had fallen there. Looking out the broken living room and bedroom windows revealed more of the same. Thankfully, no one had fallen below them, either.

  Where are you, Dad?

  “Dad!”

  Terrified and confused, Zachary checked the entire apartment again. He even stuck his head out the windows to make sure his father wasn’t hanging from any pipes or ledges. But he found absolutely no sign of him. It was as if he had flown right out into the night—

  Zachary’s breath caught.

  Could one or more of the bats have carried him away?

  He dismissed the thought immediately. Though huge for their species, none of the bats he had seen would have been able to carry a small dog, forget a full grown man. No, there had to be another explanation. But what?

  Dad, where are you?

  11) All Alone

  Terrified, Zachary fished around in the office until he found his uncle’s phone number. Fortunately, it still worked. His uncle was famous for moving around and changing phone numbers every few months. After dialing, Zachary put the number in his pocket. The phone rang five times before a woman answered.

  “Yes?”

  “I need to talk to my Uncle Ned,” Zachary said. “Is he there?”

  “Big Ned is here all right,” the woman said, “but he’s sound asleep. Can he call you back in the morning?”

  “Could you wake him please?” Zachary begged. “It’s really important!”

  “Sure thing, Sweetie. Wait a minute.” Zachary heard rustling noises and several deep groans before his uncle came to the phone.

  “What?” his uncle said.

  “Uncle Ned, it’s Zachary. Something really bad happened.”

  All sleepiness gone from his voice, his uncle said, “Let me talk to your father.”

  “He’s gone, Uncle Ned! I don’t know where. Bats attacked our apartment. Dad used a magic wand―” Zachary paused. It seemed strange to talk about something so outrageous, but surely his uncle knew about such things. “My dad killed a lot of the bats. But when I came out of the bathroom, he was gone.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  Numb, Zachary shook his head.

  “I didn’t see much.” He was ashamed that he had hidden the whole time. “Dad made me lock myself in the bathroom.”

  “Did you hear anyone talking?”

  “No…but Dad was yelling. He said someone should give a message to Kage—no Krage.”

  Uncle Ned paused for a long moment. Zachary waited.

  “You said your father is gone?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know how. The door was locked and he wasn’t on the fire escape. I don’t know where he went.”

  “Zach, you’re in serious
danger! I’m leaving right now to get you, but I’m in California and it’s going to take at least an hour.”

  Zachary couldn’t imagine how anyone could travel from California to Boston in one hour, but he didn’t have time to think about it because his flashlight beam and eyes were riveted to several of the dead bats on the hallway floor outside the office. He could have sworn one just moved.

  “What I’m going to tell you won’t make much sense,” Uncle Ned said, “but you have to do exactly as I say, Sport.”

  Zachary nodded, forgetting that his uncle couldn’t see him.

  His uncle continued, “I need you to rub your hand under the alligator’s stomach.”

  Of all the things his uncle could have said, this was the last thing Zachary expected. He was no doubt referring to the stuffed alligator that his father had kept behind the couch in the living room ever since Zachary could remember.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “We don’t have time for explanations, Buddy. You’ll just have to trust me for now, okay?”

  Of course Zachary trusted his uncle. He put the phone down and made his way out to the blood-spattered living room. Each step got more frightening because at least half of the bloodied bats were beginning to flap and jerk weakly. Zachary tried not to think about their fangs. He pushed one of the creatures out of the way with the toe of his sneaker and grabbed the back of the couch to pull it away from the huge stuffed alligator behind it. Half-suspecting his uncle was nuts, he squeezed behind the couch and ran his hand along the alligator’s hard and coarse belly. He didn’t feel anything