Bram assumed that this was their leader.
The creature studied them with cautious eyes, rubbing a stubby hand along the bottom of his square chin as he paced before them.
“Why have you crossed to our world?” the leader suddenly asked, pointing an accusatory finger causing Bram to stumble back.
Stitch stepped around him, hands at his side. He bowed at the waist before the tribe’s leader.
“Great Chieftain Herlethingus, we mean you no offense, and have only come to your beautiful world to escape an evil that pervades our own and would do us harm.”
Bram looked quickly to his friend. “Do you know him?”
Stitch did not answer, waiting for the chieftain’s response.
“How is it that you know of me?” Herlethingus spoke. “I have no memory of your like.”
The warriors grew more agitated, their circle closing tighter around them.
“I am made up from the parts of many warriors who have long since left the living,” Stitch started to explain, pointing out the thick lines of scar that covered his body. “And one such part retains the pleasant memories of Chieftain Herlethingus and his most gracious hospitality.”
Stitch held out the hand that had opened the tree passage, fingers splayed. “And as this hand remembers, so do I.”
The chieftain came closer to examine the scars upon Stitch’s body. The warriors murmured excitedly amongst themselves at this newest development.
Herlethingus took hold of Stitch’s large hand, examining it very closely.
“I remember this hand,” the chieftain stated. “A powerful hand filled with powerful magicks.” Herlethingus nodded. “It is good to see that it did not go to waste after death.”
The chieftain released Stitch’s hand and turned to his warriors.
“Herlethingus has determined that the large one is made from the parts of many … and one such part belonged to one who was a friend of the Mauthe Dhoog of Guttswallow.”
The chief paused for dramatic effect, puffing out his chest as he made his decree. “And one part that is friend to the Mauthe Dhoog is better than no parts. I say we bid them welcome.”
And with the chieftain’s words, the warriors grunted their approval in unison, immediately lowering their weapons in a show of acceptance.
“Now you will come with us,” Chieftain Herlethingus proclaimed. “And you and your companion will know the hospitality of my clan.”
The warriors came to stand upon either side, guiding them down a winding path that seemed to travel deeper into the strange environment.
“The Mauthe Dhoog?” Bram asked, following the chieftain and his soldiers, careful not to lose his footing on the spongy surface upon which they walked.
“That is what they call their kind,” Stitch explained. “We know them simply as boggarts … and Guttswallow is their home.”
“Lovely,” Bram muttered, careful not to let the sticky moisture dripping down from somewhere up above get on his clothes.
“Yes, lovely,” Chieftain Herlethingus agreed, turning around to dazzle Bram with a proud, toothy grin. “The great beast is very lovely indeed.”
Bram had no choice but to smile politely and agree.
The chief looked away, and Bram leaned in closer to Stitch. “The great beast?” he asked.
Stitch nodded. “Yes, the Mauthe Dhoog believe that their home is inside the belly of a great beast that swims through the vast oceans of magick in this dimension.”
Bram stopped short, looking around at his bizarre environment: the dripping, fleshy walls, the spongy pockmarked ground beneath his feet, the odd vegetation that grew from various cracks and crevices that looked more animal than vegetable, as well as the occasional rumble of thunder that could very well have been the grumble of a hungry stomach.
“Is it?”
Stitch just smiled and said nothing, continuing to follow the Mauthe Dhoog as they led them to their destination.
The village of the Mauthe Dhoog was suddenly sprawled before them, a cluster of tents of various sizes. The women, children, and elders left whatever it was they were doing to welcome home the warriors of their tribe.
At first the villagers appeared wary upon seeing that there were strangers in their midst, but after speaking with some of the warriors, and seeing that the chieftain seemed perfectly at ease, they became accepting as well.
The chieftain turned to Bram and Stitch, a trail of tiny and curious Mauthe Dhoog children behind him. “You will rest and then share a great meal with us,” he proclaimed. “A celebration of your return.”
He reached out for Stitch’s hand, holding it up for the villagers to see. They all began to clap and cheer, as if recognizing the appendage.
“That would be most wonderful,” Stitch said, accepting the chief’s invitation with a nod of his head.
Bram nudged his friend’s side. “Do we really have time for this?” he asked in a whisper. He took the folded files from his back pocket, waving them at his friend. “I have to find these people fast if I’m going to try to start the Network up again.”
“And you will,” Stitch reassured him. “But we’re exhausted and hungry right now, and we’re not going to be functioning on anything close to peak efficiency. I can’t imagine that evil will grow any stronger if we stop for a nap and a quick bite with our gracious hosts.”
Bram slowly turned around to see that others of the clan had joined the chieftain.
“I guess you’re right,” Bram begrudgingly accepted, as they were escorted to one of the larger tents.
“You rest in here,” the chief said, pulling back the tent flap to allow them access.
The Mauthe Dhoog left them alone. Stitch immediately went to a corner where a woven blanket had been placed upon the fleshy floor, and laid his weary body down upon it.
“Losing limbs and casting spells is exhausting work,” the patchwork man said, getting comfortable. “A nap will help to recharge the batteries, and I suggest you do the same.” He pointed to another blanket laid out on the floor on the other side of the hut.
“I’m not really tired,” Bram said, shaking his head. “I think I’m going to look at these.” He patted the files. “I’d like to know something about the people my father picked before I meet them.”
There was a crude three-legged table in the room’s corner and he lowered himself to the floor to sit in front of it. He set the files down on the table-top and opened the first.
“Wake me up when the feast starts,” Stitch said from across the hut, only seconds before going completely silent.
But Bram didn’t mind, already deep into the first of the files.
Reading about whom his father had chosen to be one of the special members of a new Brimstone Network.
11.
EMILY LARCH’S STOMACH GROWLED SO LOUDLY that it sounded as though she had some kind of wild animal locked up inside her.
The thought made her smirk, but it still didn’t change her gnawing hunger. She should have forced herself to eat something before going out, but she was so nervous that she was sure it would have made her sick.
Standing in the shadows of the parking lot of her school, Emily was glad that she was alone. There was nothing worse than having your stomach make gross noises in front of the wrong people.
And they were all here tonight, no doubt about that.
She watched as Annie Ritchfield and Brianna Knox were dropped off in front of the gym by Annie’s father in his new Mercedes. Emily had walked the five miles from home, even though she was sure that her dad wouldn’t have had any problems at all dropping her off in their ten-year-old minivan, if he had known she was going to the dance.
Her parents thought she was staying at her friend Cindy’s house, which was where she would eventually end up … after she got this stupid dance thing out of her system.
The scent of Brianna’s perfume lingering in the air hit her like a slap in the face and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. It may have cost a l
ot of money, but it still smelled like rotten orange peels to her.
Standing in the shadows, Emily again asked herself why she was there. She hadn’t gone to any other school functions this year, and hadn’t felt like she’d been missing out on anything.
But that was before Ben Turner started to be nice to her.
Just thinking of him she felt her stomach do a double backflip, and she couldn’t even imagine what would happen if she actually had a conversation with him.
I’d probably pass out, or worse … throw up.
More kids from her junior high class were showing up at the school, parents driving up to the gym entrance one after another. She couldn’t see who some of them were from where she was standing, but within seconds their smell identified them.
Emily wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to that, knowing her classmates through smell.
It is all so … freakish.
She hadn’t seen Ben arrive yet, but thought that maybe he was already inside. She was tempted to leave, a part of her trying to convince herself how much better she’d feel if she went home, had something to eat, maybe watched some TV. There were a whole bunch of shows she’d TiVo’d that she hadn’t had time to watch yet.
But she had sworn earlier tonight that she wasn’t going to give in to the urge to hide.
Since her thirteenth birthday, when things had really started to change for her, she’d found it easier to hide herself away than deal with the problem, and everything had pretty much been just fine. But since noticing Ben Turner—or was it Ben noticing me—Emily realized that she didn’t want to be like that anymore.
Her problem was her own, and it wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. She couldn’t talk to her family about it—just imagining how they would react was enough to make her skin break out—and she doubted that any school guidance counselor or psychologist would have anything really helpful to say either.
She’d talked about it a bit online—in some chat rooms—never giving out her real name, or where she lived. The people who connected with her all pretty much said the same thing: that she had to just accept who she was and stop hiding from it.
Easy for them to say.
She knew that they were right, but hadn’t done anything about it … that is, until Ben Turner.
Her skin tingled just thinking about him, and she remembered how he had come up to her locker just before first period at the beginning of last week.
“Gonna be at the spring dance?” he’d asked her, flicking his head, tossing his dark bangs to one side so that she could see one of his really cute brown eyes.
She couldn’t remember if she’d even answered him, but did know that she’d smiled like a big fat idiot. Yet another one of her finer moments.
Emily wanted to prove to Ben Turner—and to herself—that she wasn’t a big fat idiot. And hiding away in her room eating Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk while watching TV wasn’t going to help.
The flow of traffic to the school had slowed down quite a bit, and she wondered if what was going on in the world, with those Brimstone Network people getting killed and all, might have changed some people’s minds about coming tonight.
She recalled some disturbing images from a news broadcast that she’d seen earlier that night of some kind of sea monster attacking a cruise ship as the navy tried to kill it.
They said that the world was much less safe now that there were creepy things running around with nobody to stop them.
Maybe someplace else in the world, Emily thought, but she doubted that evil creatures would be so desperate as to come around here. Covington, West Virginia, was the most boring place on earth, and it would serve the evil things right if they came here and died a slow death from boredom.
She glanced at her watch. The dance was supposed to have started ten minutes ago, and she had to make her decision.
Her stomach growled again, and she wondered how much of that was actually hunger and how much was nerves.
Emily wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, growing angry with herself for being so indecisive. Glancing up into the night sky her eyes found the new moon as it slowly emerged, fat and glowing, from behind some puffy clouds that looked like a pair of cartoon sheep.
The moon hung large and swollen in the velvet sky, and there was suddenly no question of what she was going to do.
Emily stepped from the dark surrounding the parking lot, walking toward the entrance to the school gym, filled with a new confidence seemingly fueled by moonlight.
It’s only a school dance, she told herself as she pulled open the door. Besides, after all I’ve been through lately, what’s the worst that can possibly happen?
Bram held the shell firmly between two fingers while using the forklike wooden utensil in his other hand to try to pry the meat from inside it.
He was having some difficulty.
“Problems?” Stitch asked, leaning over to speak directly into his ear to be heard over the pounding of the boggarts’ music.
“It’s stuck in there pretty good,” Bram said, watching as his friend effortlessly pried the thick wad of meat from the shell and popped it into his mouth.
Determined to do the same, Bram plunged the tines of the fork down between the meat and the gray-colored shell. The sudden squeal made him flinch, and he dropped the shell, allowing the muscular, wormlike animal to crawl from its casing and burrow quickly beneath fleshy ground.
“That one wasn’t cooked enough,” Stitch said, holding back his laughter.
Bram decided to forego any more of the shelled food, and instead reached for a banana-like fruit from the basket that had been placed before them.
The music built to a near deafening crescendo, and then abruptly stopped. Stitch wiped his oily hands on the front of his pants and started to clap. Bram did the same, wanting their hosts to know how much they appreciated this banquet in their honor.
An old Mauthe Dhoog woman, her face resembling a dried piece of fruit, and noticing that he was no longer feasting upon the shell-covered animals, approached with a fresh plate still steaming from the hot oil they had been cooked in.
“No, thank you,” Bram said with a smile, holding up his hands.
“I’ll have more, my dear,” Stitch said, taking the offered plate.
Bram was finishing his fruit when Herlethingus came to stand in the center of their circle. His clothing was less battle-like now, much more relaxed, but he still wore his giant, insect headdress.
“It has been long since we have seen your like,” the boggart leader said, addressing Bram and Stitch. “The world of the man-kind has become too dark and turbulent a place.”
The other Mauthe Dhoog nodded as they continued to eat. Considering what had gone on lately, Bram had no choice but to agree with the gray-skinned chieftain.
“Our friend made from many parts has told us what has happened in the world,” Helethingus said, calling attention to Stitch.
The Mauthe Dhoog warriors rose, coming over to pat the large man upon the back and shoulders.
“A terrible evil has attacked from the shadows, striking down the men of Stone and he who led them, and who was also friend to the Mauthe Dhoog.”
The chieftain was talking about Bram’s father, and hearing it come from the boggart leader’s mouth, he was struck by how unreal it all seemed. Elijah Stone was dead, and the burden of his responsibility, and that of the organization for which he had sacrificed his life, had now been given over to him.
It was a huge job, and one that he was still not sure he was capable of handling, but he couldn’t let that stop him. His father believed he was ready, and right now, that had to be enough.
“But the son of Stone now sits before us,” Herlethingus said with a sly smile. “And it is he who will gather new warriors … new men of Stone to beat back the flow of darkness to their world and the worlds of others.”
The Mauthe Dhoog grunted, nodding their large heads again.
The chieftain’s words remi
nded Bram of the urgency of their mission. He didn’t want to be rude, but he suddenly couldn’t stand to sit around any longer. “We really should be going,” he whispered to Stitch.
The patchwork man agreed. “I think I’ve caught my second wind,” he said, stretching his long legs as he climbed to his feet. “Good Chieftain, we thank you for your hospitality and the hospitality of your world, but now it is time for us to continue on our great mission to find these men of Stone.”
Bram stood as well, eager to be on the move. “Thank you,” he said, and also bowed to the chief.
Herlethingus returned the gesture before raising his large, dark eyes to them.
“As the Stone leader gave his own son to the gathering of warriors, so shall I,” the chieftain of the Mauthe Dhoog suddenly declared.
Bram didn’t understand, but watched as the tribe leader turned and strode toward his dwelling. The chief’s tent was bigger than all the others, and painted with intricate symbols that none of the other tents displayed.
“Did he just say he was giving us his son?” Stitch asked, leaning to the side and speaking from the corner of his mouth.
“I’m really not sure,” Bram answered. He knew what he thought he’d heard, but that couldn’t be right.
The chieftain pulled back the curtain of his dwelling, allowing a younger Mauthe Dhoog, his ash-colored face painted in symbols similar to those on the tent, to emerge.
Herlethingus accompanied the youngling back to the gathering.
“To aide you in your future struggles, I give to you my son,” the chieftain of the Hauthe Dhoog proclaimed. “His spirit is young, but it will not take long before he is …”
Bram stepped forward. “We mean no disrespect, sir, but we can’t take your son.”
The chieftain’s eyes widened.
“As Abraham, son of Stone, was trying to explain,” Stitch began quickly, “there are very dangerous times ahead for us, and we would not risk the life of your only son and …”
“I have many more sons,” Herlethingus said, motioning to the crowd behind him. A Mauthe Dhoog woman stood, holding a baby in her arms, there were seven more of varying ages crying at her feet.