Chapter 31: Confrontation
“WHAT about the tickets?”
“We don’t need them anymore.”
“But you said . . .”
“They didn’t use the train, Steph. It’s just not possible.”
How did the president go missing? It was a News Flash! Worried-looking people hurried towards the train station from all around the children as they hurried out of it. It was as if war had been unexpectedly declared on the country.
“So what do we do now?” Stephanie wondered when they stopped beside a nearby retail store.
“Time to bring Marcos to Sleepy Lake,” Matthew declared, buying a pen from the shop.
“Matthew, look,” Stephanie pointed out, grabbing his arm. “It’s Yung Ji!”
The boy was leaning on the trunk of a parked car and immediately recognized Matthew when both Quentins approached him. He thought better of entering the car and ran away.
“Yung Ji!” Matthew called after him.
“Stay away from me!” he shouted in the distance, running.
“He knows,” Stephanie said.
“Guess so,” Matthew agreed half-heartedly. But then, Yung Ji might just still be afraid of him as a killer lurking his classmates, unlike brainwashed Anderson. That was more like it! “He can take care of himself, Steph,” Matthew declared, quickly unwrapping the piece of papyrus from the black book.
“It’s not burning anymore.”
“Better not in my pocket,” Matthew said. He wrote the former cardinal’s name on the ancient paper.
Nothing happened.
“We must’ve sent him back with Nora,” Stephanie suggested and Matthew nodded in agreement.
“That’s the plan,” he said, already touching the name. “Hold me,” he advised his sister and she did.
They appeared back in 19th century France near the same church, but outside the coal house.
“Marcos must have done this to get to Washington faster than a train,” Matthew said.
“How?”
“He puts down a guy’s name in the book—someone he knows lives in Washington—and meets this guy in the past with Nora, then forces him to come back to Washington with them tagging along.”
“It’s all muddled up.”
“I know—I’ve said that before.”
“Anglaise!” a poor-looking fellow shouted at spotting them. “Anglaise!”
The man was the fishy riot leader with a musket and Matthew suddenly recognized him. “Run!” he urged Stephanie and took to his heels. A large crowd wielding so many farming implements as weapons appeared behind the man and the noise they were generating was deafening.
The children ran into the churchyard, gaining some distance from the rioters. Matthew dragged Stephanie into a dark alley as the people poured into the place.
“What’s the plan?” she whispered.
“Marcos must have gone back with Nora, but we can follow them now that we have their names on our paper,” Matthew whispered back.
On hearing the children, the fish man slowly came up to this dark passage, but when he charged into the place with his musket drawn, they were gone.
The duo appeared in the countryside overlooking undulating hills. It was raining and they were wearing raincoats.
“There’s a barnyard over there,” Matthew pointed out. “We could shelter ourselves in it.”
“There’re two people near it,” Stephanie said.
“I see them,” Matthew concurred.
The middle-aged man wore a trench coat and a hat and held an umbrella. His companion had on a hooded yellow raincoat. Both individuals were moving towards the barnyard.
“Let’s hope they could tell us where we are and give us directions,” Matthew said, starting towards the wooden farmhouse. “C’mon.”
“Why are they in a hurry?” Stephanie wondered, following her foster brother.
“To leave the rain, why else should they be?”
“The second guy doesn’t want to,” she noticed.
“Which one?”
“The one in the yellow raincoat.”
Now, that was odd, and as the kids drew nearer to the barnyard, they discovered they had been wrong about the guy in the yellow raincoat.
He had long blonde hair.
In fact, he was a girl!
“He’s a girl!” Matthew realized, abruptly grinding to a halt only for Stephanie to bump into him. They were now so close to these two people that his astonished voice was audible enough despite the pouring rain, and the struggling girl turned in his direction. “Nora?” he said in disbelief.
“Matthew, get away!” Nora warned him. The man with her turned back and the children noticed he wore a priest’s collar.
“Marcos!” Matthew called out to the bald man, enraged.
“Run while you can!” Nora shouted at her siblings. “He’s made the president disappear twice before you removed us from the White House!”
“And we’re going back there now!” Marcos snapped as he tried to hold Nora and his umbrella while opening the book.
“No way!” Matthew shouted and attacked the former priest. “Give me back the book!” He started struggling with the tall man who dropped his umbrella while trying to keep the book above the boy’s head, but the fellow finally managed to kick him away and pull Nora back. Stephanie kept her distance and ran to where Matthew had fallen to help him up.
“Matthew, he can’t make the book disappear!” Nora shouted. “Seems the rain is hindering the magic!”
“Shut your trap, girl!” her captor snarled, pulling her along.
“Leave me alone!” Nora shouted as she fought to free herself from the former cardinal, to no avail. She noticed that Marcos couldn’t use the book or even keep it open while holding her and continued the scuffle for a while. Now she slammed a boot’s heel hard on his foot.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Marcos cried out in pain, letting go of the blonde girl rather than the book.
Nora bolted, but the bald man lunged for her and they both crashed to the ground to continue their struggle.
The rain kept up. Heavily.
Matthew got up and ran to help Nora.
Although a new danger had emerged! The desperate humans never noticed the sky darken, but they definitely heard the eerie shrieks suddenly coming from high above their heads as the Booklords swooped down on them in a spiral!
Matthew froze when he saw these unearthly demons, but Marcos pushed him away and looked up as the black mass hurtled down towards him.
“Elvereezer!” the Frenchman chanted, still holding the book in one hand and Nora’s arm in the other. “Elvereezer!”
Strangely, the spiral quickly dispersed above his head only to gather again somewhere higher up.
Matthew tried to grab the book from the bald man and Nora tried to bite this same individual, but the boy received a shove on the head, which sent him crashing to the ground, and his adversary swung an arm over his adopted sister’s head and pinned her to himself, immobilizing her two arms in the process.
“Elvereezer!” Marcos croaked again as the black forms flung themselves at him a second time. “Elvereezer!”
It was not working!
Stephanie went for the book, but missed it with inches as Marcos raised it up towards his new aggressors. Her foster brother had quickly gotten up, though, but the bald Frenchman punched him in the stomach and he crashed into her, both of them falling to the ground in a jumble.
Marcos swung an arch above his head with the book and it erupted into flames. The demons started escaping in different directions. “Behold the Flame of Masada!” he shouted at them, standing up in the rain with Nora wriggling beside him. “Draw nearer and be damned!”
Of course, the Booklords were drawing back. Their fear of the flaming book was greater than their will to retrieve it, and as long as it burned, they were no longer the predators but the prey!
Marcos continued swinging the book over his head. A tongue of fire suddenly leaped from it and cra
shed into one of the creatures as they retreated, sending bright flashes of light jumping from the demon in all directions. It erupted into flames to burn away.
The others then fled to a safer distance high up in the sky surrounding the flame holder and waited. They dared not draw an inch nearer.
“Now, I control you!” the greedy Frenchman snarled, laughing at the fallen angels while cajoling the fire into submission. “You can never hurt me!”
Matthew helped up Stephanie and they both backed away. His senior sister could not fight the former priest anymore and just hung there in the man’s arm. “Let her go!” he ordered the Frenchman.
“And why should I do that, huh?” he was asked. “The belle must come with me, no?”
The boy moved forward.
“Step back!” he was warned, the book pointed his way. “Step back or your sister dies!”
“Matthew, do as he says!” Nora begged and her adopted brother grudgingly obeyed.
Satisfied, Marcos opened the book’s leather cover with his free hand and touched his name on the first page with his left little finger.
Nothing happened, and he tried another left finger.
Still, nothing happened.
“Damn it!” he cursed in frustration and peered at the page using the dim light falling on them with the rain. “Damn it!” he cursed again, losing all his Frenchy mannerisms.
The ink he’d used for his name had blotted it out!
How could this have happened? He tried to rub away the stain with his thumb and realized the culprit was the rain!
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” he suddenly followed this action with, dropping the book and freeing Nora as he buckled to his knees in pain.
Stephanie dropped the log of wood behind the bald man and picked up the book before the fellow could pull himself together.
Matthew stared at Stephanie as she ran, amazed at her show of bravery. He’d been so busy keeping guard over Marcos that he didn’t see his junior sister slip away. “Where did you get the stick?” he called out to her from where he stood.
“The barnyard?” she replied, clutching the book and hurrying towards him.
Marcos came after the little girl and she froze in her tracks. “Give that back!” he snapped at her, grimacing with the pain he still felt around his knees.
“Stephanie, don’t obey him!” Matthew urged his sister and she started running towards him again.
“You’ll suffer if you don’t!” Marcos snarled, reaching out for her. “Give me back the book!” He came after her.
“No!”
Nora had followed behind the former catholic father, and now brought down the heavy wood on his back with all her might.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” Marcos shouted again, collapsing on the wet ground as the blonde girl scampered away from him. “You’ll all suffer for this!” he growled, fuming. “I’ll make sure of that!” He picked himself up, vaguely realizing that the book had changed hands, and turned to the boy, whose little sister hid behind. His steps were a bit wobbly, though. “Matthew, give me the book!” he coldly whispered.
“Matthew, don’t fear him!” Nora objected from where she rubbed her hands. “Just don’t fear him!”
Matthew slowly drew back with Stephanie and the former cardinal took painful steps towards them.
“Give it to me, Matthew!” Marcos urged the boy, grinning as he drew nearer and nearer, his right hand outstretched.
“Matthew, don’t!” Nora protested and Marcos glared at her.
“Don’t think you can escape from me again, mademoiselle!” he warned her, and she drew back almost involuntarily, staring at the cause of this fear with disdain.
“Matthew, don’t listen to him!” she defiantly kept up through the rain.
“You don’t need to be scared, boy!” Marcos growled. “JUST GIVE ME THE BOOK!”
“No way! That will never happen!” Matthew refused.
“Go away!” Stephanie screamed from behind her foster brother, but Marcos ignored her, taking another forward step a bit more carefully.
The Frenchman now had to be careful lest the boy was planning something. “You won’t get hurt, Matthew!” he allayed, advancing further.
But Matthew knew the bald man was lying. This situation could only go either of three ways—his, theirs or the Booklords’! No! Two ways, actually: his or theirs and the Booklords’! May the best player win!
The tall Frenchman suddenly thought the boy was doing something behind his back and quickened his steps. “What are you doing?” he demanded with alarm as he trudged up.
“Nothing? Why?” Matthew asked innocently.
“You rat!” Marcos shouted, lunging forward in a last minute effort to stop the Quentin from whatever he was doing, but before the contact could be made, he unceremoniously vanished into thin air and Matthew sidestepped his wet trench coat and priestly garments as they fell beside him.
“Matthew, the Booklords!” Stephanie warned, pointing upwards at the demons charging the children again. Her adopted brother just had time to reveal the book from behind him before the final stretch of their attackers’ downward journey, and it erupted into flames on its own free will.
“Not yet!” Matthew warned the dark angels, swinging the fiery book around him. “We need it a little longer!”
“Demons of the Deep and Hell’s Worst!” Stephanie yelled beside him. “Depart from us and hunt us no further!” Her adopted brother stared at her like a surprised mute. “Thought it might help,” she meekly explained and he sadly shook his head.
It was all over.
The rain became a drizzle.
Nora walked up to her younger siblings in this shower as the eerie black things above waited and watched. She was still trying to grasp what had just happened. “What—What did you do?” she gingerly asked her foster brother in awe, her hair plastered to her head. “He—He just disappeared.”
“I don’t know . . . ,” Matthew said, faltering. “Guess I sent him back in time without his precious book.”
“But we didn’t have any pen,” Stephanie said. “How did you do it?”
Matthew smiled. His adopted younger sister had stood behind him all this while and still failed to see what he’d been doing on the book’s last page. He was even surprised it worked. “I wrote his name in the book with . . . my finger.”
“Cool,” Stephanie declared.
“That works?” an amazed Nora asked.
“I guess so,” Matthew replied, looking down at the discarded clothes. He never told them he might have written the Frenchman’s name many times over, because he wasn’t sure that this would amount to anything.
But it did.
Somewhere back in time, a naked Marcos had woken up on a huge piece of rock and was trying to stand on it. This task appeared difficult since the sides of the stone were very steep and he only had a narrow footing, but he finally succeeded, and stood up straight to look at the harsh environment all around him.
He cursed himself for not making the book invisible when he could have easily done so. That way, he would have avoided the rain’s hindrance and manipulated the book without intrusion. Truth be told though, he knew he was yet to master this ritual, which was still physically demanding for him due to this naïveté he exhibited, hence his reluctance to use it when he thought the situation wasn’t that difficult at the time. A decision that had led him to his present state of affairs.
‘Just perfect!’ he thought, carefully looking around. Lush vegetation surrounded him and even filled his view when he looked up. The place was like a thick, dark jungle and he realized he was standing on a very high point, slowly stooping to straddle the rock again in order to lower his height. The whole thing tapered down to a bigger island surrounded by what appeared to be a deep river lying in thick undergrowth and the former cardinal still couldn’t establish where he was.
The boy must be a fool to think that he’d lost his cherished control of the book owing to this small mistake on his part, he s
cornfully thought. Of course, he’ll go back now using his power over the young man’s mind. The stupid boy will never know what brought him to that godforsaken place, after accidentally touching the former priest’s name again, of course.
Marcos closed his eyes and recited some incantations. Nothing happened and he tried again, feeling the blast of warm air on his face as the only response from the present environment he’d found himself in.
Nothing had come over him, not even a slight push.
Marcos became alarmed. Had the boy discovered the sacred Hebrew words so soon to quickly cut off the connection between their minds? If this was the case, then his mouth must be blamed for all his present troubles! How could he have underestimated the young man’s intelligence in such a delicate matter by talking for hours on end about the book?
His anxiety heightened when the ground beneath him started shaking. “Mary, Mother of God!” he exclaimed, looking around him. “Where the hell am I?”
The quaking increased.
“WHAT IS THIS PLACE?” he wondered aloud with fear, and the stone he stood on suddenly began to lift him up. “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!” he croaked again, falling flat on it and grappling with both hands for its sides.
He thought there was an impending earthquake!
But he was wrong.
The hill he lay on started swinging back and forth and he heard a deep, low grunt below him.
And then a loud sneeze.
Louder than any he’d ever heard in his life.
“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!”
Two giant eyes blinked at him.