I squeezed my eyes shut in utter despair.
At first I saw exploding white circles haloed with flares of white light—like flash bulbs of pain popping against the back of my eyelids with every beat of my heart.
And then everything went black.
No.
Black-tinged violet.
That’s when I knew the true Number 1—the eternal, disembodied essence of undiluted Evil—had my heart and soul locked firmly in its grip.
Chapter 61
I COULD FEEL the sinister thing probing my mind. It was shutting down good memories, stirring up horrible fears. Toying with my emotions and shoving me toward self-pity.
Then the wretched beast started gibbering at me in piercing blips, communicating with the screech of binary computer code. Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—whatever brain cells controlled my internal universal translator were still fully functional. I got to hear every ugly thought the unseen fiend shot my way.
“I want to show you something that might be beyond your infantile comprehension,” it said. In translation, the voice sounded as dark and malicious as the spirit behind it. Think Darth Vader, Voldemort, or a window-rattling bass line. “Watch carefully, Daniel. Behold your fate.”
My mind’s eye was overwhelmed with a digitally enhanced 3-D IMAX version of that horrible night in Kansas. Once again, I was a small boy hiding behind a water heater in the basement. Once again, The Prayer came stalking down the steps with its Opus 24/24, hunting me.
“But you never saw what was going on upstairs, did you, Daniel?” rumbled the malevolent voice invading my mind.
Suddenly, the scene shifted. Like a floating camera flying downfield to cover the action in a football game, my mind’s eye flew up the staircase and straight through the cellar door.
I saw something I had never seen before and never want to see again: Both my parents writhing on the ground in unbearable agony and pain.
“Neither one died right away,” gloated the voice. “Oh, no. Where’s the pleasure in that? While you were turning into a tick and fleeing the scene, they were upstairs suffering for a long, long, long time. If I remember correctly, and I always do, your mother actually prayed for death because the end of her miserable little life would have been such a blessing.”
I wished I could close my eyes, cut off this horrendous vision of both my parents twitching on the floor, their mouths open wide as they cried out silent screams. But I couldn’t. The scene was firmly planted in my head by the demon that had taken over my mind and memories. There was no way to pull the plug and shut this horror movie down.
“I was inside their minds, Daniel, just like I’m inside yours right now. This pain you feel? They felt worse. Soon you will, too. You will beg for mercy, and just like your mother you will pray for death.”
And somehow, impossibly, the pain intensified.
The dark presence felt like a giant tumor devouring my brain, pushing it sideways, squashing it up against the hard lining of my skull. It was growing exponentially.
There was no way to stop it. No way to keep my head from exploding.
I knew the dark and awful truth: In a few more seconds, I would be dead.
My soul would be crushed.
Daniel X would cease to exist.
Chapter 62
BUT EVIL WASN’T done with me.
It wanted me to die regretting every choice I had ever made in my life.
“You were foolish enough to think these humans were worthy of your protection, Alien Hunter? You wasted your life trying to save this planet when those who inhabit it have done everything in their power to destroy it?”
Now my pain-racked mind swirled with images of smokestacks chugging out swollen clouds of black soot. Oil spills suffocating pelicans and fish. Birds circling heaped mountains of rotting garbage. Fluorescent green chemicals oozing out of a drain pipe into a rippling stream. Rivers burning.
There… is… good.… I struggled to complete the thought despite the pain. I… have… seen… the good.
“You saw what you wanted to see, foolish boy. See the truth: humanity reigns as the most colossal mistake in all of creation. It is a race of greedy, avaricious, selfish animals determined to destroy all the lesser creatures doomed to share this puny planet with them.”
I knew it was trying to play mind games with me. It would be delighted to watch me die, totally lamenting my decision to join the Alpar Nokian Protectorship. I had forsaken any chance at a halfway normal teenage life to defend Terra Firma and its human inhabitants from an onslaught of alien outlaws.
What if they hadn’t been worth it?
What if my whole life had been a colossal waste of time?
The only thing worse than dying, I guess, is living a life with absolutely no meaning.
But I refused to wallow in the hideous thing’s dark and gloomy shadows. I clung to the truth as I knew it: There was good in this world. I had seen it. I had tasted it. I had heard it. Despite all their flaws, earthlings (and their planet) were definitely worth saving.
So, with every minuscule ounce of my remaining strength, I fought back. I punched through the pain and countered the evil thing’s thoughts with a few of my own:
If these humans are so evil, why don’t you embrace them instead of sending them off to oblivion in your black hole?
It hesitated.
The irrefutable logic of my argument caused a momentary glitch in its operating system.
Its grip of pain loosened.
Not much.
But enough.
I was out of there in a flash.
Chapter 63
MY WORLD WAS all in my head, now. And the forces of darkness were crowded in there with me, big-time.
I could feel the violet-tinged, tumorous thing regaining strength after its momentary power drop.
So I tried dipping back in time to see if I could shake it out of my head with a quantum leap.
I zipped back to Monday, March 4, 1861. Washington, D.C. Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address on the steps of the Capitol, which was still under construction. I would force Zeboul to listen to true humanity:
“We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln declared. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory… will yet swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
“He’ll be dead a month after his second inaugural,” rumbled up the voice of Evil. “John Wilkes Booth was a good and loyal servant of mine. So was Lee Harvey Oswald. So were all the killers and torturers throughout the ages.”
I went back through the ages and hit the highlights of human history. The signing of the Magna Carta. Gutenberg inventing the printing press. Mozart’s father buying his son a piano.
But for every good vision I conjured up, the evil force countered with something equally horrendous. The Spanish Inquisition. Adolph Hitler. The mushroom cloud of an atomic blast.
With each of these small historical downfalls where bad had bested good, the gnarled knot of darkness grew larger, blotting out more and more of life’s light.
And while it expanded, doubling then tripling its size, it laughed.
“You are such a child, Daniel. An infant clinging to the illusion of goodness and light. What a pity you’ll never grow older and wiser and see this wretched world for what it really is: a place of greed and sloth and cowardice.”
I flew into the future, hoping to glimpse some wondrous day when the world lived in peace and harmony.
But the darkness was overtaking me.
I couldn’t see that bright and shining day.
There was only encroaching night and the evil one laughing at me.
Laughing and laughing and laughing.
Chapter 64
AND THEN THERE was only blackness and a tiny dot of light, as if someone had pricked a pin through a thick sheet of black paper.
When I focused on that glowi
ng point, it started to widen. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed.
My pain decreased.
Now it was as if I were walking down a fun house tube of swirling blackness. I was drawn like a mindless moth toward the warm, golden light that lured me to the shaft’s far end.
As I drew closer to the light streaming at me like a train beacon in a mountain tunnel, I felt amazingly peaceful.
Every drop of pain was gone.
I remembered some of my dad’s funnier jokes.
I smelled pancakes. My mom’s pancakes. The best in the galaxy.
Silhouettes of familiar figures slowly emerged in the dusty beam and beckoned for me to move closer. As I did, I could vaguely make out the faces.
My father and mother. My grandparents. Joe, Willy, and Emma. Even Pork Chop.
“Where’s Dana?” I asked.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” asked earth-mother Emma.
Right. Dana’s soul had passed through death and returned to life in the person of Melody Judge.
Death.
That made me freeze.
In fact, I retreated half a step.
“Am I about to die?” I asked.
Behind me, I could hear the evil one’s laughter.
My mother extended her hand. “It’s over, Daniel. You fought the good fight. Step across the line. Join us on the other side.”
I looked down and saw a thin golden line faintly visible through the wispy fog shrouding the tunnel’s floor.
Behind me, the demon’s laughter boomed.
“No, Mom. I have to go back. They need me.”
My father stepped forward. “And you need to join us, son. Now.”
“Come on, Daniel,” cried my wingman, Willy. “It’s okay. Honest. We’ve already scoped it out for you.”
“And the food’s fantastic,” added Joe.
“But, Dad,” I said, “I still need to find my backup.”
He grinned. “You don’t need backup anymore, son.”
“Come along, Daniel,” said my mother as she and the others turned and started walking into the tunnel, leading the way into the welcoming warmth of the light. I heard music. The Symphony of the Departed. It was being played by an Alpar Nokian orchestra. “Everybody’s waiting for you.”
“It’s bigger than Gathering Day!” added Joe, as he began to disappear into the light.
“But…” I stammered.
“Death comes to all of us, Daniel,” said my father as he, too, whited out and faded away. “Now you must come to it.”
I took one tentative step forward. When I did, the evil thing suddenly stopped laughing. In fact, it started screaming.
Something had definitely changed.
So I took another step.
It shrieked even louder.
That settled it. If my death could make that horrible monster miserable, I was ready to die.
I stepped across the glimmering line and into the light.
Chapter 65
I WAS LETTING myself die.
Letting go of life. Looking forward to whatever waited for me up ahead in the light-filled tunnel.
My whole life flashed before my eyes. My time as a baby on Alpar Nok. Riding the roller coaster at the Kansas State Fair. My first ice cream cone.
I saw all the cute girls I’ve ever had a crush on. That was nice.
I saw Mel and me meeting for the first time. In Kentucky. I’d been riding on Xanthos but ended up on my butt in a very cold creek.
“Ride much?” she’d said with a laugh.
And I was instantly head-over-heels, wackaloon crazy about her.
I flashed back to my time in Portland. Los Angeles. London. Stonehenge. Tokyo.
I remembered my days time-traveling into Terra Firma’s past. Hanging out with Merlin, the medieval magician. Chatting with Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
Then I saw all sorts of wonderful memories of my home planet, Alpar Nok. The gunjun flowers blossoming in the high mountain plains. The Bryn Spi Symphony Orchestra. Me riding on the back of Chordata, this gigantic telepathic elephant. Spending time with my grandmother, Blaleen. Uncle Kraffleprog calling me “stinky boy.”
Next I saw some of my earliest memories. Joe, Willy, Dana, Emma, and me in preschool playing in a sandbox. That was the start of our “drang”—an intense friendship bond that kept us eternally linked, even when one or all of us died. Those scenes were probably my favorite ones in my whole life. My “drang” and I sure shared a lot of laughs—like that night we took over a whole amusement park and rode all the rides, even to places they were never meant to go.
Happily, the part of my life where I hunted aliens or they hunted me was condensed to a ten-second “greatest hits” clip collage of mayhem, explosions, martial arts lessons from my dad, and monsters dying. I was glad when that section of my life review was over because I was done with all that.
I was dead.
Up ahead I saw a white light that was more brilliantly intense than any I had ever seen.
I flew straight into the welcoming comfort of the light’s glorious embrace.
Soon, there was nothing but the light. Peaceful. Tranquil. It engulfed me.
I let my memories drift away.
Chapter 66
AS I PASSED through the light, I felt my mind overflowing with all the knowledge in the universe.
Everything I had ever wanted to know, I now knew. It was as if every library and database in galaxies far and near had instantly downloaded their entire treasure trove of information directly into my brain.
“Welcome, Daniel.” A new voice was inside my head. Mikaela. Soft and comforting. “You are truly one with the light, now.”
“And it feels amazing!” I said, giggling like a giddy kid who’s just tasted his very first cherry snow cone.
“Because you’re not alone anymore, Daniel. You have joined the spirits of the departed. You will never be lonely again.”
She was right. For most of my life, I had basically been an orphan. My friends and family were all dead. They only came to me through the power of my imagination. Now I had come to them. We were all dead.
Except, of course, the girl of my dreams: Dana who had become Mel.
I poked around in my brain’s new supersized knowledge center but I couldn’t find the one answer I was searching for.
“How was Dana’s soul able to return to life?” I asked.
“Those who live in the light never truly die, Daniel.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying I could go back?”
“If you have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to do so, yes. You can elect to return to life instead of moving on, as your father and mother chose to do.”
“Where are they now?”
“Once you cast their souls to the wind, Daniel, they became free of this circle and journeyed on to the next realm where they eagerly wait for you to join them.”
“They can’t return to the life they once knew?”
“Not without jeopardizing their eternal souls. They have moved on to the next dimension, Daniel. For them, turning back would be extremely risky.”
“But Dana went back to be with me,” I said.
“Such was her choice,” answered Mikaela. “She knew she was your soul mate. That you two were destined to be together, across all time and dimension.”
“Then I have to go back, too.”
“Do you have a compelling reason, Daniel?”
“I have two: Mel and Terra Firma.”
“If you wait a while longer, both will soon join you here.”
“You mean when Earth gets sucked into that black hole and every creature on the planet, including my soul mate, dies?”
“Precisely.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna fly. I know I could move on, that my parents are waiting for me, but I need to go back. Sorry.”
“Ah. So, once again, you choose fight over flight?”
“Guess some things never change. Even after
we die.”
“Well, if you’re going back,” said Willy, whose spirit was suddenly at my side, “we’re coming with you.”
Okay, this is weird. In all that bright, white light, I couldn’t actually see Willy. I could only feel him. And I don’t mean “feel” like I was holding out my hands playing blind man’s bluff and feeling his face because I didn’t really have hands anymore. I could just feel his presence. I could totally grok him.
“Dana is our friend, too,” added Emma, her ethereal spirit joining us in the light. “We want to go back into life with you, Daniel.”
“Besides,” said Joe, who was there, too, “it’d be cool to actually be alive again instead of just popping in and out of your imagination all the time. For one thing, we could eat on a much more regular basis.”
“We all want to go back, Mikaela,” I said. “We need to go back. Dana and a very nice planet, neither of which really deserve to die, are depending on us.”
“Very well,” said the angelic voice. “But before you depart, know that all who have passed through death into the light return to life with enhanced abilities.”
“Really?” said Joe. “Like superpowers? Cool.”
“Will we be able to do all the stuff that Daniel does?” asked Emma.
“Perhaps,” answered Mikaela mysteriously. “It will be for each of you to discover what your new talents and potential might be.”
And then it hit me: this is why Number 1 or Zeboul or whatever name Evil was giving itself these days didn’t want to kill me.
This is why it kept sending me off to that crazy, make-believe hospital or torturing me instead of slaying me.
This is why it screeched in terror and fled the instant I decided to step over that quivering line and die.
It knew I might choose to come back from the other side.
That, if I died, I might come back bigger and badder than ever.
What it didn’t know was this: I’d be bringing my three butt-kicking friends with me, too!
Chapter 67
I GASPED AND breathed as deeply as I could.