Finders Keepers

by Peter Speakman

  “You need our help, huh?” said Parker.

  “If that makes you feel better, yes, I need your help. I’m trying to prevent a catastrophe of epic proportions.”

  “I understand that, I really do, and I would love for me and old Fon-Rahm here to jump right in and get our hands dirty, but here’s the thing. We need you to do something for us in exchange.”

  “And how, pray tell, could I possibly be of service to you?”

  “We want you to remove the tether that holds us together.”

  Fon-Rahm and Professor Ellison both looked surprised, and that’s a feat. It’s not easy to shock a genie or a three-thousand-year-old wizard.

  The professor pursed her lips. “Can’t be done.”

  “Of course it can. It’s your spell. You can undo it.”

  “That seems right,” said Theo.

  “Not now, Theo.” Professor Ellison turned to Parker. “All right. Even if I could do it I wouldn’t. I built the tether in for a reason. It’s a check on the genie’s power. Binding one of the Jinn to a human at least slows it down. You think Fon-Rahm is your chum but he’s not. He’s a being of pure power. He has more in common with a god than he has with you.”

  “I would still control him, though, right? I just want the tether gone. It’s getting harder and harder to always be within spitting distance of each other. People are going to get suspicious sooner or later. Besides, you know we’ll be more efficient if we have a little more freedom.”

  Ellison looked the genie up and down. “Is your leash chafing you, Fon-Rahm?”

  “As you say.”

  “Why should I allow you to roam the big bad world all by yourself?”

  “I am Parker’s to command, whether we are physically near or not. He has only to call me and I will come.”

  “So what do you say?” Parker asked. “Can you do it?”

  “There’s a way.” Professor Ellison glared at Parker. “But you won’t like it.”

  9

  PARKER CRESTED THE TOP OF THE water and took in a deep gulp of air.

  Fon-Rahm surfaced next to him. He floated gracefully out of the water and set himself down on the stone landing. “This must be the place,” he said.

  “It better be.” Parker pulled himself onto the cold stone. “I don’t think my lungs could handle another dip like that.”

  It felt to Parker as if they had been underwater for hours. But that couldn’t be right, could it? If they had been under for any longer than a few minutes he would have drowned. Had Fon-Rahm put an air bubble around him? Parker thought he had been swimming on his own.

  Parker hadn’t realized he was so cold. He shivered. His teeth began to chatter. “I w-w-wish I was dry.”

  Fon-Rahm waved a hand in his master’s direction and Parker was instantly dry. “Thanks. That’s a lot better.” That was when he finally took in his surroundings. He had to strain his neck to take it all in. “Whoa.”

  They were standing in a massive underground structure seemingly carved out of solid rock. If there was a ceiling at all, it was hundreds of feet above their heads. Pillars of stone extended from the floor of the room (could an open space this big be considered a room? Would you call Madison Square Garden a room?) up and up and up until they faded from view. He could see, but Parker couldn’t find any source of light. The pool that had been their way in was in the center of absolutely nothing. There was an overwhelming sense of gray emptiness.

  “Which way?”

  Fon-Rahm nodded at the pillars. “There are faint markings on the pillars. I believe we are to travel in this direction.” The genie set off, hovering a foot and a half off the ground. Parker followed.

  “This is crazy,” Parker said. “It’s like a whole city down here. I can’t believe this has been under our feet the whole time. This…whatever it is must be ancient, right? How do you think it got here?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps Cahill has a history that has been hidden from us.”

  “Maybe. Still, it’s weird. You’d think somebody would have stumbled across it eventually. How could they miss it? It’s huge.”

  “It is puzzling.”

  They walked a little more. The muffled footsteps from Parker’s sneakers were the only sound. “Are you sure we’ll be able to find our way back? I’m having a hard time getting my bearings down here.”

  The genie rotated in the air to look back the way they had come. “Odd. It seems the pool from which we emerged no longer exists.”

  Parker spun and looked. Where the pool once sat was now just an expanse of empty stone. “Well, maybe we walked farther than we thought. It didn’t just disappear.”

  “Perhaps you are right. Either way, our path is clear. We must continue on.”

  They started off again. Every two or three steps Parker shot a glimpse over his shoulder to verify that the pool was still gone.

  The room was endless and the scenery never changed. Gray stone walls hundreds of feet to either side. Gray stone underfoot. Gray gloom above. With nothing to look at, nothing to touch, nothing to smell, and nothing to hear, Parker felt his mind wander. What was Theo doing now? Or Reese? Or…Naomi? He liked the way Naomi wore her hair. He also liked how she looked at him, really looked at him, when they were talking. Sometimes when you talk to people you can tell that they’re just waiting until it’s their turn to talk. Naomi was different. Naomi was…

  Parker shook his head to wake himself up. This was no time to daydream. Professor Ellison had warned them not to let their minds wander. She had said there would be danger, and Parker had learned through hard experience that when it came to stuff like this she was almost always right.

  They were here to retrieve…What was it, exactly? Some kind of object, right? Something to do with a ritual? It was so strange, but he couldn’t quite remember what they were supposed to be doing. He knew that they had started at the old Conway quarry. He and Fon-Rahm dove off that cliff that everyone said not to dive off of and then they hit the water and…

  “We come to a crossroads,” said Fon-Rahm, his voice echoing in the vast chamber.

  While Parker had been lost in his own head, they had come to a corner in the immense room. Corridors led off to the left and the right.

  “I see no markings here. We must make a decision.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I will as always follow your command.”

  Parker frowned. Of course it was up to him. The two corridors looked exactly alike. He picked a direction at random. “Let’s go right.”

  The genie floated away, Parker alongside him.

  The corridor tapered as they went. Soon, the walls were only fifty yards apart. Then thirty. Then ten. Eventually, they were so close Parker could touch them both with his arms outstretched. When the hallway narrowed even further Parker and Fon-Rahm moved ahead single file. After what seemed like another four hours of hiking they emerged into a dark and musty room.

  This room was round and about as big as a baseball diamond. It was too dark to make out any details. After a few moments of walking, Fon-Rahm shot out his arm, stopping Parker from taking another step.

  “Be careful where you walk.”

  Parker looked down. Underneath his outstretched foot was the edge of a great pit. One more step and he would have fallen in. “Good advice.” His heart was racing. “It might help if we had a little light in here.”

  The first of the Jinn spread his arms to his sides. Pure electricity arced between his hands and created a flaring blue glow that illuminated the whole room. When he saw what was in front of them, Parker almost wished it was still dark.

  “Oh, man.”

  An immense web of shimmering silver strands stretched over the pit. The threads were as thick as ropes.

  Fon-Rahm cast balls of lightning around the room. They hit the floor in a fury of sparks and lit the room blue. The genie nodded to the center of the web, where a luminescent green orb as big as a kickball sat. “I believe that is the object Professor Elliso
n requested.”

  Parker nodded knowingly. “That seems about right.”

  “She did not say it would be easy.”

  “I know she didn’t. It would have been a nice change of pace if it was, though, right?” He sighed. “Okay. Not a problem. You can fly. I command you to fly out there and grab that thing.”

  “As you wish.”

  Fon-Rahm lifted into the air. As he floated over the web, Parker heard a clicking sound behind him. He turned his head to look.

  “Um, Fon-Rahm?”

  Fon-Rahm hovered over the web. “Yes?”

  “Could you maybe come back over here please?”

  Fon-Rahm rotated in the air to see what Parker saw. “Do. Not. Move,” he said.

  A monstrous spider had emerged from the gloom behind Parker. It was hideously white, as if it had never been exposed to the sun. Its body was about as big as Fon-Rahm’s desk at school. Its eight legs were angled spikes covered with fine hairs matted with grime. The spider stared with inky black eyes the size of Frisbees. Parker counted six of them, all staring directly at him. The clicking sound was coming from jaws that dripped green venom as they clattered.

  Fon-Rahm landed in between Parker and the spider. “Find cover.”

  Parker looked around. There were walls, a ceiling, and a pit. “Yeah, cover seems optimistic.”

  The spider took a few tentative steps forward. It was clear it didn’t appreciate the light.

  Fon-Rahm said, “It is unaccustomed to visitors, and there are two of us. Perhaps it is too wary to attack.”

  He spoke too soon. The spider stuck its ghostly white abdomen into the air, hissed, and spit a thick stream of vile green venom directly at Fon-Rahm and Parker. A bolt of blue lightning sprang from the genie’s outstretched arm, frying the poison in midair. As Parker shielded himself behind his genie, the spider reared up on its back four legs and charged.

  Fon-Rahm pushed Parker out of harm’s way and met the monster head-on in a flurry of crackling electricity. The lightning hit the beast square in the face. Parker thought it would put the spider down for good but the thing just lowered its head and glared.

  “I think you made it mad.”

  The spider swiped at the genie with one of its front legs. The movement was so fast that Fon-Rahm barely had time to duck out of the way. Fon-Rahm countered with a blast of blue volts that tore the leg clean off. The ugly smell of singed hair filled the dank air.

  “Yes!” cried Parker.

  The spider backed up a step. Then, with the sickening sound of rending flesh, a new leg poked its way out of the white body. The spider tested its new limb, dug into the stone floor, and jumped at Fon-Rahm. The genie grabbed the demon spider’s leading legs, one in each hand, and pushed with all his might. It was all he could do to keep the thing away from him. The spider snapped its dripping fangs inches from Fon-Rahm’s face.

  Parker hated standing uselessly by as his genie battled for both of their lives. He turned to the glowing orb in the center of the web. He had a job to do. He might as well do it.

  He got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the pit. He reached out and gave one of the web’s strands a good tug. It seemed solid. Parker had expected the fiber to be sticky, but it wasn’t. The web had been there so long it was covered with a thick layer of gray dust.

  “This might be a really bad idea,” he said under his breath. Then Parker pulled himself onto the web.

  Fon-Rahm had never faced anything like this creature. It kept coming no matter what the genie threw at it. As soon as he blasted off a leg, another grew to take its place. The thing was deceptively fast. More than once Fon-Rahm counted himself lucky to have evaded a river of venom coming right at him.

  As he ducked another attack he saw that Parker was crawling onto the web. He would have called out, if he had thought he could change his master’s mind. By now he knew that Parker was going to do whatever Parker was going to do.

  That meant that Fon-Rahm needed to kill this spider, and he needed to do it soon. The balls of lightning that were keeping the room from total blackness were beginning to sputter out.

  Parker’s legs were shaking, and that meant that the entire web was shaking with him. He tried willing his legs to be still. It only seemed to make things worse. Nothing to be done about it, he thought. The sooner he could grab that glowing ball, the sooner he could get off the web and back onto solid ground. Sure, there was a spider the size of the Titanic to worry about, but at least you could see the thing. When Parker looked down, all he saw was a foggy darkness that filled him with dread.

  There. He had made it to the web’s center. The orb was within his grasp. He now saw that it was a giant egg filled with baby spiders that skittered around and over each other. There must be tens of thousands of them. It was vile, but strangely fascinating. A hypnotic pull of curiosity conquered Parker’s revulsion and he reached out to touch it.

  Before his fingers brushed the egg, Parker felt the web move. He froze. Directly underneath him, hanging upside down from the web and into the pit, was another spider.

  A bigger spider.

  Fon-Rahm threw a burst of fresh electricity at the spider. He was finally getting the thing to move back, but it was taking all of his energy.

  He heard Parker scream and whipped his head around. Parker Quarry never screamed.

  The genie saw the second spider pull itself onto the top of the web. It moved clumsily. This beast made the thing he was fighting look like a friendly puppy.

  Fon-Rahm’s eyes glowed blue. He put everything he had into one giant blast of lightning that started in his chest, radiated down his arms, and came off his fingertips with all the power of the Nexus the genie could summon. It hit the monster square in the face. Fon-Rahm feared it would have no effect, but when the blue haze of ozone dissolved, the spider was gone. It had simply vanished.

  The first of the Jinn had no time to ponder the strangeness of what had happened. He threw himself through the air to save Parker just in time to watch the strands of the web snap one by one.

  Parker looked very scared. “Fon-Rahm?”

  The lights burned out. The room was cast into inky blackness. The last strand of the web broke and Parker, the mountainous white spider, and the glowing egg fell into the pit.

  10

  PARKER KNEW IT WASN’T THE FALL that killed you. It was the landing.

  He tumbled through the black air kicking spastically to fend off the slashing legs of the bloated spider that fell with him. The only light in the pit came from the glowing green egg that plummeted ahead of them.

  So this is how I die, Parker thought. Clawed to death by a giant spider while falling into a bottomless pit. It would be a crazy story, if only there were someone left alive to tell it.

  As it turned out, the shaft did have a bottom after all. The egg hit first. Instead of breaking, it bounced away into the gloom. Parker closed his eyes. His last thought was of his mother.

  Just before Parker and the spider splatted to their deaths, Fon-Rahm reached down from above and grabbed the seventh grader’s collar. Parker let out a choked “urk” as he was jerked to a standstill in midair.

  The kid and his genie floated above the stone floor and watched the fat white spider plunge to the ground. It waved its eight legs madly and managed to gain some purchase on the stone walls before it struck the floor with a loud thump. They hoped the fall had killed the thing, but it righted itself with a sickening display of flailing limbs and scampered off into the darkness to lick its wounds.

  “Can you put me down, please? You’re choking me to death.”

  Fon-Rahm drifted closer to the ground before gently dropping his master. Parker was glad to be alive but devastated to see that their situation was even worse than it had been before. A deep fog swept over the bottom of the pit. He couldn’t see anything five feet away in any direction.

  “Okay, I admit it. I’m a little freaked out here.”

  “It is an…” The geni
e searched for the right word. “Ominous place.”

  “Yeah, it’s terrifying is what it is.”

  “We could abandon this mission. We could attempt to find our way out of this abyss and simply go home.”

  Parker shook his head. “No. We’re not leaving without that egg.” He knew that they needed the egg. He just wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “So it will be.”

  Parker and the genie stared out into the fog. Somewhere out there was a green egg worth more to them than diamonds and gold. Somewhere out there was a mother spider that wanted to feed Parker to her thousands of unborn children.

  “We can cover more ground if we split up.”

  Fon-Rahm frowned. “That is not a wise course of action. Danger lurks here.”

  “That stupid egg can’t have rolled very far. We’ll stay within twenty feet of each other. If I need you, believe me, you’ll know it.”

  “As you wish.” The genie cast a light from his hands and began to search the ground.

  It didn’t take long for Parker to realize he had made a tactical error. It was too dim down in this hole to see much, and the fog cut his visibility down to about zero. Fon-Rahm could generate his own light. Parker was stuck with what he had.

  “Um, Fon-Rahm? Buddy?”

  From somewhere in the fog Parker could hear Fon-Rahm’s voice. “I am here.”

  “You are where, exactly? I can’t see you.”

  “As I cannot see you.”

  “Just follow my voice!”