* * *
“Matthew!” Nora screamed again, stopping in shock and staring at the black mass on the other, farther side of the bend. Peter stopped behind her and they both hopelessly watched the horde ebb and swell over Matthew, whose small frame had been completely swallowed by this living nightmare. The Jewish boy was totally winded by the exerting run, but he still had some strength left in him to console Nora when she turned away from the whole thing and tightly hugged him. “Oh, Peter! It’s all over!” she wailed. “No one can come out of that alive! We’re lost forever!”
“No, we’re not,” Peter admonished her. “Don’t talk like that, Nora.” This close encounter he’d never dreamt of ever happening in his lifetime with Nora, his one true crush, and although a hugging support had always been what he’d wanted to give her all this time, God knows he would’ve been happier were the events surrounding this crowning incident more pleasant ones. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For. . . For. . .” —she rummaged for the words— “. . . not leaving us like Leonard did.”
Searing rays of brightness hit their faces from the hideous mound some distance away and they lifted their arms in unconscious defense. The light had burst out through gaping holes the demons couldn’t barricade with their bodies and a tumultuous earthquake suddenly seized the stony path and its surrounding landscape.
“What’s happening?” Nora asked, quavering.
“Dunno.”
The light seemed to grow in intensity and strength, and one by one, it was like the black tormentors were being peeled off the mound, new rays pushing them into thin air and replacing their positions until a staggering displacement blasted them all away and Matthew stood alone holding up the flaming scroll.
He slumped.
“Matthew!” Nora screamed, tearing down the narrow road with Peter panting behind. The ground had stopped shaking and she was able to quickly get to him and fall beside him. “Please! Please!” she begged him, hugging his limp body close to her beating heart. “Don’t leave me, Matthew! Please, don’t!”
“Heard that,” Matthew muttered sleepily and this time his senior sister hugged him with joy.
Peter relaxed when he saw this picture and quietly stood some distance from the adopted siblings while his mind wondered back to what Nora had earlier told him. His question when it came, however, concerned a very different, but intriguing subject. “Who were those people?”
“They’re not humans,” Matthew pointed out with a stronger voice as Nora helped him up.
“They’re demons,” Nora put in, looking around her with a puzzled stare lest the black ghosts were lurking somewhere near.
“Demons?” Peter had thought they were joking when they first told him this. “What do they want?”
“For reasons I’m yet to find out, they want the book,” Matthew stressed again, Owen’s terrible experience coming to mind. He was holding his head with his left hand and his sister noticed this like a mother.
“Whatever happened back there?” she asked him with alarm. “Did they hurt you?”
“No,” he said, stopping to think. “Can’t remember what really took place in there, but it was like something—someone was fighting for me! I—I was blank most of the time and spinning in . . . a black hole?”
“A black hole? Why do you think so?” Peter asked.
“Because, it was all . . . black,” Matthew explained. “Something was trying to stop them from taking the book from me! The demons were seriously struggling with this . . . creature all the time.”
“So you were left alone,” Nora said. She didn’t seem to have believed him. “And how did you start the fire?”
“Don’t know,” Matthew confessed, abruptly turning his attention to the scroll in his hand. “The creature must’ve done that, too.” The document looked better than the previous papyrus the book had turned into back in Greece, and had very intricate flower designs on its back. Matthew gently unfolded it and beheld an ancient writing he clearly recognized around the flowers. “There are Chinese words here,” he remarked. “And I can read the sentence they form. It says: ‘Sacred ways back and . . . forth?’”
“Are we speaking Chinese now?” Nora wanted to know, anxiously hugging herself.
“I think it’s English, alright,” Peter assured her, arms akimbo. “Good, old English.”
“No need to be that hasty,” Matthew warned him, showing him the words on the scroll’s backside.
Peter wondered what the writings meant and squinted to see more clearly. They became more coherent. “I can read Chinese?” he discovered with a start. Nora peeped in, too. “But . . . how?”
“We’re in China,” Matthew revealed with a slight laugh. “Yung Ji is Chinese.”
“Is that who we’re looking for?” Peter asked him. “A Chinese?”
“A Chinese-American, actually.” Matthew was holding his throbbing head again. “His parents are from China.”
“Is that why you think we’re in China?” Nora asked. “‘Cause he’s part-Chinese?”
“We’re standing on the Great Wall, Nora.”
Amazed, Peter looked around. “Of course, we are.” He laughed, turning round in delight. “It is the Great Wall of China! How could I have missed that?”
“I missed it, too,” Nora confessed, now admiring the beautiful scenery around them. No amount of History class could measure up to this! “Guess it’s all the excitement we’ve been through,” she decided to blame.
They all agreed with this faultless reason and started walking towards the low tower standing in their way.
“So, how do we find this . . . Yung guy?” Peter asked. “Do we know where to start?”
“We usually bump into an ongoing war,” Matthew said, still holding his aching head with his free hand. “They must be waging one around here now.”
“I hope not,” Nora snapped, frowning and looking defiant.
Her striking pose ironically reminded Peter of what she’d revealed to him before her foster brother was strangely freed, and the Jewish boy hoped she’d been adequately tamed by that experience to start caring for others, herself. “Leonard was actually here?” he suddenly asked her and she briefly stared at him before realizing what he was asking her.
“Uh, yeah,” she stammered, looking away with embarrassment. “He—He met us in America and—and didn’t stay long.”
Nora’s words strongly conveyed the rejection she’d felt then to Peter and he suddenly realized that Leonard had failed her and she was like trying to make him understand this hurt she, herself, couldn’t comprehend.
“He was scared of the Native Americans and left,” Nora continued, turning back boldly to face Peter. “I still can’t understand why he did that after Patricia and Eden! He just . . . showed me he was too afraid to . . . care.”
“I don’t think so . . .” Peter began.
“Ow, come on,” Matthew said, turning to him in disgust. “You know Leonard thinks Nora isn’t good enough for him! Why don’t you just tell her that?”
“Don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll hurt your sister the more,” was the soothing reply. “Can’t do what he did, though,” Peter continued. He noticed the younger boy had calmed down.
“Thanks,” Matthew said for his adopted sister, who only nodded with gratitude and cleaned off the fresh tears on her cheeks. “You’ll never know how scared we’ve been since all this started.”
Peter smiled unconsciously to himself. He knew that Leonard must have also been very scared when he was around. Whatever was happening to them at present would drive any sane guy crazy!
On the other hand, Nora didn’t seem scared at the moment, Peter thought. She rather looked and sounded jilted, and he really hoped her gratitude was actually what it appeared to be. He really hoped she’d learned her lesson from all this.
A little girl dressed li
ke her had just appeared on the big entrance to the watchtower ahead of them and Nora stared at this new face with some trepidation. Her foster brother was also quizzically looking fixedly at this particular person and this really made Peter uncomfortable. “What is it?” he asked them both. “Is anything wrong?”
“Everything is wrong,” Matthew said. “We thought we’ve sent her home.”