WARNING
Sometimes You Can’t Go Back!
16
BETWEEN SPLIT SECONDS
THE GOLDEN STREAKS in the boy’s hair glistened under the lights like they were dipped in fairy dust. He wilted like a week-old cut flower under Wizard Caldron’s burning eyes. Without moving a smidge, he tried to see past the glaring light dome over his chair that had him trapped like a bug under a glass. He wondered what the rest of the room held in store. The brightness was like a shield. He couldn’t see past it.
“We ‘ave ‘im ma’ lord.” The barrel-bellied low-ranking warlock addressed his superior with respect. He was trembling. He should have been afraid, very afraid… and he was. Fear was normal here. There was no mercy. Not ever. No one even thought of being kind, forgiving, or understanding. You never could tell what the next moment would bring.
The boy was panting hard. His breath was like a slow, labouring engine. Chief wizard Caldron paced circles around him, plucked the glasses off his face and studied him like a map.
“Where’d you find him?” Caldron’s eyebrows warped in a slow suspicious arch. His voice, usually low and gritty, rose too. He was asking a question that clearly, he already knew the answer to.
“…‘e was…” the young warlock stumbled, “…‘e was in the movie theatre… ma’ lord.” His words tip-toed a polite, careful answer.
“Oh, really….” Caldron answered, acting calm. “Is that so…?” he said in a silky voice. There was a long silence before he exploded, “It’s not him!”
Somehow in this madness, the boy was slightly relieved.
The warlock’s legs nearly dropped off. His eyes flipped like pages, showing their whites. He tried to think of something sensible to say. He couldn’t. “Well… um… I wasn’t sure,” he tried. “The other one… well, err… ‘e wouldn’t come.” It was all he could come up with.
“You mean, you weren’t wicked enough to convince him,” Caldron sneered.
“But, I didn’t have the permission I needed to take ‘im.”
“Same difference!” Caldron steamed.
“Well, this one was willing to come.” The junior warlock was whining now.
There was a sudden flash. The boy jumped! It was a powerful laser scan that stunned him. It left him dazed.
He was lying back on an elevated chair, the kind that can be raised up and down. He wasn’t strapped in. There was no need to be. There was nowhere to run. He was too scared to move anyway. He didn’t even know where he was or why he was here.
The place was a labyrinth of tangled hallways and tunnels. The room felt like a cave on a planet no one knew about. Except for the one above the chair, other lights placed randomly around were stingy with their light and beamed dim like glow-sticks.
Like giant eyes, black-faced darkotatron screens edged the area. Suddenly, there was an abrupt energy buzz and a purplish neon glow covered everything. It was a carnival, fun-house kind of glimmer that distorted things. It gave a haunting-effect to technical equipment and other scary apparatus hiding in the shadows. A startling image blinked into focus onto one of the massive screens. It throbbed and thumped with life. It was a magnified picture of the boy’s pumping heart.
Caldron studied the screen. “What’s your name boy,” he demanded.
With tears dripping, the boy bit his lip and sputtered, “I’m Frankie Luredin.”
“Yesss…,” Wizard Caldron was back to playing nice again. “And where were you a moment ago… where’d they pick you up?”
“I was at the movies, sir… at the Target movie theatre at the Target Town Center sir,” the boy answered. His teeth were chattering.
“Oh yeah? Hmmm… and what movie were they playing?” His voice peaked. He was still play-acting. The boy, Frankie, eked out the name of the movie.
“Of course it’s not him. You fool!” Caldron raged at the shrinking warlock. He was back to his beasty, dagger-shooting ways. “We had our own people in-on producing that film. You idiot! The film writers got their ideas straight from Darkotika. The boy we’re after would never go to a movie like that!”
“Well, next time,” Caldron fumed, leaning snidely towards the warlock, “you’ll try harder, won’t you! You incompetent fool!” he hissed.
“Guards! Take him to the dungeon! Lock him up. We’ll give him time to perfect up his persuasion techniques. Lots of it…. Set the timer for 366 years. That’ll give him plenty of time to rehearse his schemes.”
“No! Please! Let me go!” the cowering warlock cried. “I’ll try harder… let me try again!” he begged. Soon, his shrill, jabbing shrieks, faded to silence.
“Humff… We should have known better than to send a warlock to do a warrior’s job. We need more warriors! They’ve been dying off like flies!” Caldron howled. As he circled the room in a dither, twisting the tails of his mustache, the mish-mash of shadows swallowed him up.
Suddenly, something bumped Frankie’s arm. His nerves shot spears through his body. Popcorn sprinkled off his hand and heaped in a hill on his lap.
“Oops. Sorry Frankie.” Jenny Wilding leaned to whisper in his ear. “Here, wanna finish my drink?” she whispered again, pushing her soda cup at him. “Hey, are you OK?”
Frankie was ghost-white and ready to puke. Did that really just happen? He asked himself. He was in the movie theatre and panting like a dog. No, he wasn’t OK. Not at all.
At the Warbuck house on Covert Street, Lucas was back with Sloane again after leaving to go answer the phone. He’d been nervous something was wrong when his mother had called him in with such a worried look on her face. It turned out she was only upset about the disaster on the driveway.
Lucas hadn’t been gone long. Sloane was still standing by the car trunk, fascinated by the book.
“Maxx called, he’s coming over,” Lucas announced. “Charles will be dropping him off soon. He has something he wants to show us,” he said.
“Oh,” Sloane’s face lit up, “must be his surprise,” she mused.
They strolled to the back yard, each propped on the other, neither taking their eyes off the open book. The flipping pages had an odd effect. Their Middling world was fading. It was hard to care about here, when all they wanted was to find out more about there.
Only a blink later and they were hanging over the balcony of the fort watching the Bentley glide up to the curb. Maxx jumped out and reached back inside the car to fidget with something.
“Hey, what’s he got?” Sloane asked, with her voice full of mystery. The two of them scrambled to find out and swung down the rope ladder like trapeze artists.
Maxx met them wearing a clean, breezy, button front shirt and pressed jeans. Normal for him, not-so-much for any other guy his age. A spaghetti-strappy leash wound over his shoulder and dangled to his waist. Maxx’s eyes were bright. The three of them traded smiles.
“Hi guys… meet Slim,” Maxx said proudly.
“Whoa!” Sloane squealed, then popping a hand over her mouth, “Oh, I don’t want to scare him,” she whispered.
“Cool! “Lucas exclaimed with a smile that wouldn’t quit.
It was almost unbelievable… they had never seen one before. Hanging on the edge of Maxx’s shoulder, a small mossy green iguana blinked tiny glassy eyes at them. He was twitchy and shy.
“Oh, he’s so cute!” Sloane squealed, delicately this time.
Maxx was beaming. “Yeah, he’s really nervous right now,” he said. “He needs time to get used to us. I need to work with him to tame him or he could be big trouble later,” he laughed. “Iguana’s are wild, so you need to make sure you spend the time to train them carefully if you’re going to keep them as a pet,” Maxx explained. “My mom did a lot of research before we got him.”
Maxx’s surprise was incredible. It was Saturday. Maxx was going to be there for three hours, maybe four. The three of them slung themselves into the rope chairs and drifted around inside the mosquito net cloud. It was impossible for anyone to take their eyes off Slim.
Sloane was extra bubbly and chatty. It would be anyone’s guess if Slim was amused by Sloane’s bouncy conversation or frazzled. On a whim, she had thrown on some earrings today. Slim was carefully watching them bobble as she talked.
“He is so adorable!” Sloane said again out of the blue, infatuated with Slim.
Maxx loved it. “My mom’s got a whole wardrobe planned for him,” he smirked.
Today he was voguish in a teensy-weensy cobalt blue harness splashed with rhinestones. His leash matched.
Sloane’s mile-a-minute chatter was about every-thing under the sun. The boys jumped in now and then.
“Hey Lucas, didn’t Frankie ask you to go to the movies today?” Sloane asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Lucas answered dully, “Naw, I didn’t like the movie he was going to, I didn’t want to go,” he said.
They were all distracted by Slim. “Do you think he’ll let me hold him?” Sloane asked Maxx, then quickly changed her mind. “Ah, maybe I should wait a while,” she said. “He’s not used to everything yet. I don’t want to stress him out any more than he already is.” Maxx agreed.
“Yikes, I forgot to tell you,” Sloane was big-eyed. Lucas was sure she was starting into another babble-fest. But instead, what she had to say surprised him.
“Guess who I saw in Principal Lemon’s office yesterday?” her voice was full of mystery. She kept them waiting, twisting the tiniest of tidbits into the story before spilling out, “Clair Voyance!”
“Really?” Lucas said with a confused, thinking-hard, kind of look on his face. “I wonder what she was doing there? She could have been called in about Lenny,” he guessed.
“Yeah,” Maxx agreed. “He’s always down there for something.”
“Maybe,” Sloane said, doubtful. “But she’s never come in about anything before. I guess that could be it,” she added slowly. “It was weird,” she went on, “I have the feeling it was something else. I was down there to photo-copy something for Miss Goodwin. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about because the door was closed, but it seemed like a business meeting or something.” She swept her hair up into a five-second pony-tail, let it fall again, and gave her chair a swing. “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I just have a bad feeling about it, that’s all.”
“Miss Goodwin’s had a lot of days off lately hasn’t she.” Maxx commented.
“Yeah,” Sloane replied. “She’s been sick way more than she used to be.”
“Squawk!” Radger cheered. He was clamped to the railing, listening-in. “Spelling-bee. Spelling-bee!” he screeched.
They all looked at one another. Slim was spazzing-out and fidgety. Maxx gently cupped his hand around him to settle him. “Did he say spelling-bee?” Maxx asked with a laugh, nodding at the raven.
“Well, it’s kind of extreme to think he said anything, but it sure sounded like it,” Sloane answered with a smirk.
They were acting like Radger had just told them a joke. But it wasn’t a joke. Nothing from Darkotika was. Someday, maybe they’d understand. Everything Darkotika did was a trick.
Lucas was lost in thought watching his friends. Sloane was cracking up over something Maxx just said. He wasn’t worried about Sloane anymore. The more he got to know Maxx, the more he liked him. Now it was hard to imagine him not being there. It was weird. Sometimes you just never know. Sometimes you have to take a chance and get to know people; let them show you who they really are.
Obviously nothing had changed, yet, everything had. The normalness of the Middling-world was peeling off like an onion skin. You could put it this way: Mindless, Middling ways were quick to vacuum up hopes and dreams, and truths, like worthless dust bunnies. For Lucas, the drone from that vacuum was getting a little too noisy. He was starting to see. Really see.
A gallery of pictures reeled through his mind. The universe dangling like a crystal chandelier, the talking eagle with his yellow-jeweled beak, the dazzling Morning Star Kingdom, and the eerie death-glow of Darkotika. The last image made him shiver; the fantasia of imposters roaming the streets of Target.
After seeing all of this, after the note in the book… how could anyone ever be the same? He wondered about Sloane and Maxx. Could they just go on like nothing happened? Something did happen… at least it did for him. An invisible steely rod tightened through his core. He was stronger. He knew it.
Nunzio was right. There were decisions to be made. It would mean taking a risk. Believing the impossible, and expecting it to happen. It meant scrapping the Middling, “it’s-just-meant-to-be” attitude, or laying-low hoping like crazy everything would just, some-how work out. It would mean taking charge of every day like it’s a gift, waiting to be opened.
It was strange, but not scary. The shadows of darkness were closing in. Uncle Henry was right. Shadows are only shadows. They can’t hurt you. They can scare you… but only if you let them. Can the shadow of a shark, bite? Nope. Besides, beyond every shadow is a light… and Lucas was starting to see it. The best part was he was looking for it now. It was the lustrous, radiant light of Morning Star Kingdom.
Who could have ever known, that somewhere, between split-seconds, his life would change. As far as he was concerned, it was no big deal. He had only decided not to be soothed, hushed… scared… into staying a Middling. He had just said yes. That’s all… he answered the call.
“I’m going for it you guys,” Lucas announced, barging in on Sloane and Maxx’s quiet talk. They both turned with a quizzical look. Slim was like a statue on Maxx’s shoulder. Sloane’s rope chair stopped squeaking.
“Something’s going on. I just can’t pretend it’s not happening, especially after what Nunzio told us,” Lucas said. The pulse in his neck was throbbing. Sloane and Maxx nodded, wide-eyed. “While we were up there,” Lucas pointed to the ceiling, “I saw some weird stuff going on down here,” he said. “I can’t get it out of my head.”
“I know what Nunzio said about Darkotika,” Sloane said slowly, “But it seems so… well, quiet… you know, peaceful here in Target.”
“Yeah, but that’s just it,” Lucas said. “Things aren’t really like they seem. It’s part of the game. We’re being strung along.”
It suddenly dawned on Sloane that she had never seen Lucas like this before. She could write lists of things he was scared of. Now, even the curve of his nose was like a steel bow, and sparks of determination shone in his eyes.
His words were gritty and calm. “You can come with me… but even if you don’t, I’m still going,” he said.
No one knew what that meant, not even Lucas. And they couldn’t have guessed that the tiny flame of resolve, flaring in his heart, would one day be a bonfire.
The spark didn’t go unnoticed way down below the earth’s fringe either. The gates of Darkotika boomed and rattled on their hinges! Thunder rippled between curtains of blackness.
“We just lost him….” Wizard Caldron howled hideously, clawing his face then clutching his ears. “He said yesss. We lost him!” he shrieked. His knees crumpled under him and he stooped to the ground.
“Whoa!” Sloane shouted, jumping up. “That thunder sounds close. Maybe we should go inside,” she said.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Lucas answered, with a daring look, coolly molded to his face.
A split-millisecond away, a trumpet fanfare in Morning Star Kingdom burst into a joyful triumphant tune!
Maybe it was just the sun leaking in, maybe it was something else. A dusty haze riding into the room on gloomy, late-afternoon shadows was suddenly canceled. Prisms of shimmering light were dancing off the walls.
“Look!” Lucas spun his swing chair. “It’s like we’re in another world!” he shouted. And maybe they were.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ARIEL ROMA is a Canadian fantasy-adventure novelist who wrote, Lucas Warbuck: The Prophet’s Call, and continues to write Lucas Warbuck novels. Living on Canada’s west coast, as a full time author, Ariel enters daily into the worlds of Lucas Warbuck and his
friends. Book two of this series is due out in 2014.
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