The Gatekeeper Trilogy

by Scott Ferrell

  Everett’s shaggy tail flapped once. We had no clue what mad scientist cooked up the ingredient list that made up the dog. Our best guess was he was a mix of a Dalmatian and Irish wolfhound with some super shaggy breed thrown in for good measure. He was big, long haired, and brown with black splotches.

  “Do you know how I can get back through the gateway?” I asked. I felt stupid asking, but she had tried to warn me once, maybe she could come out of her hazy mind to help. “I mean, I would have been happy never stepping foot on that planet again, but if there’s a chance Aoife’s still alive over there, I have to at least try to bring her back.”

  A light breeze blew in to cut into the heat of the summer day and rattle the leaves on the trees. I looked off in the distance, not really seeing the tops of the neighbors’ houses peeking over the fence surrounding the backyard. What I did see was Aoife stepping through the gateway and the stream of aliens following her. I felt her calm wash over me. It was a projection of her own acceptance of the decision she had made. She had somehow split her emotions in two. I don’t know how she managed that while projecting such a need to go through the gateway that the aliens couldn’t resist.

  I relived that moment a lot. Lately, I added a new twist to it. In my vision, I reached through the gateway and yanked her back to Earth at the last moment before I closed it. My daydreams—and sometimes nightmares—never went any further than that, though.

  “Gaige!”

  I jumped and spun to find Aunt Stacy standing at the back door.

  “Dinner is ready. Can you bring your mom?”

  I nodded.

  “And make sure that dog stays outside. I don’t want him slobbering all over our plates.”

  *

  The next morning, I got up early and hurried to martial arts—yet another suggestion from the experts who had handled my case before handing it over to Mr. Baumgartner. This one I didn’t mind. It was easier to clear my mind when I concentrated on forms, balance, and everything else that went into martial arts.

  I dove into that suggestion with the vigor I had reserved for football in the past. I took a couple jiu jitsu classes until I found a Kali instructor in town. Master Ruperto taught the Filipino art of fighting with two sticks, the escrima. It reminded me of my quick lessons with Minotaur and I thought I was pretty good at it. Master Ruperto seemed to agree.

  I struck the sparring dummy over and over. Right high, left high. Right low, left low. I started out slow but worked the speed up until the strikes came one after the other. The smacking sounds blended together.

  “You are here early, Gaige.”

  I stopped beating the dummy and turned to Master Ruperto. He stood in the doorway to his office. The building he taught out of was small, consisting of a gym that could only hold about five students at a time, his office, and a bathroom. I bowed and he returned the motion.

  “Are you surprised?” I asked.

  “I would be surprised if you didn’t,” he replied. He usually left the front door unlocked when he came in, knowing I’d show up before my scheduled lesson.

  I bowed again. “I just wish to get better.”

  “And you do.” He crossed the gym and picked up a pair of escrima from a box near the door. “You are opening your stance too much again.”

  I nodded and pulled my feet closer together.

  Master Ruperto walked to the other side of the dummy. He struck right high to the dummy’s head, my left. I followed suit, striking right high, his left. He followed with a left high strike, as did I. He struck right low to the dummy’s hip. I copied him, alternating hits to the dummy. He started slow but the pace quickened. I concentrated on keeping his pace so our sticks didn’t clash together if I broke the rhythm.

  “How are you, Gaige?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I grunted. I tried to keep track of his blurring sticks. He started varying the pace, forcing me to concentrate harder.

  “You do not seem fine.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer to give him. Of course, I wasn’t fine, but what good would it to do talk about it over beating up a dummy with sticks?

  “Why do you train in Kali?” he asked.

  “I was told to by the shrinks,” I said.

  “And this is the reason why?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You do not learn to fight in case your aliens come back?” he asked.

  I faltered. Our sticks clacked together, breaking our rhythm. Master Ruperto stepped back.

  “I’m not really in the mood to talk about that,” I puffed. The exercise had lasted only a few minutes, but it left me breathless.

  Master Ruperto’s breath was even and calm. He returned the escrima to the box. “I suppose not. Have you forgotten our first lesson?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Then you remember the Kali I teach you is not for aggression.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I grunted.

  “It is only for defense.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think this is something you are starting to forget.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He pointed to the dummy. There was a dent in the right side of its head that wasn’t there before.

  “I did that?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m just trying to get better.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You do not wish to spar with others, nor do you want to take part in competitions or exhibitions. If you are taking these lessons because you were told to, why do you try so hard to become better?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. I glanced away, hoping he would drop the subject. He did.

  “Begin your stretches,” he said.

  “I already stretched when I got here, Master Ruperto.”

  “Is class about to begin?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, confused.

  “We begin every class with stretching,” he said, turning his back to me.

  “Of course, Master Ruperto,” I said, lowering myself to the matt.

  3

  shadows of the Past

  I stepped out of Master Ruperto’s studio, unsure what to do with myself. It was only just after ten in the morning and I had no other plans for the day. Other than my appointments with Dr. Baumgartner and Master Ruperto, I lived life from moment to moment. Not that I was some kind of rebel fighting the teen system or anything. I just could never think of anything to do.

  “Hey Gaige, good workout today.”

  I nodded without looking at Lucas Henderson, the only other student in the 9 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday class. He was eighteen, tall and lanky. He reminded me a lot of Brian. I didn’t like him.

  He stood waiting for a response a little too long.

  “See you Thursday, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  He waited again for more of a response but wandered off to his car when he realized he wasn’t getting one.

  I stared at my scooter parked near the road. The police had found it at the park when Aoife and I disappeared. They held on to it when I came back, unsure if it was a key piece of evidence in Aoife’s disappearance or not. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that I couldn’t have used it to run off with her because they had it impounded that same night we went through the gateway. So, they released it to Aunt Stacy. She never said I could start riding it again, but she never said I couldn’t. I usually walked when it wasn’t too far, but Master Ruperto’s studio was on the other side of town. It’d take me an hour to walk there. I rode the scooter instead of making Aunt Stacy take me.

  I crossed the parking lot and climbed on the scooter. I kicked it to life and pulled onto the road. A little while later, I found myself turning on to the road leading down to Gate City Park. More accurately, what remained of the park. The cliff was nothing more than a pile of rubble with the rise of earth that lead up to where the gateway us
ed to be.

  The police had stung tape around various parts of the park to try to keep people out due to the danger of the loose rocks. Most visited the park to gape at it with curiosity; some ignored the tape and wandered around the park. The Gate City police no longer cared and stopped patrolling the area with any kind of frequency long ago.

  I stared at the space above the rise of earth. That’s where the gateway is. Was. I didn’t know if it was still there or not. I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything. No tug deep inside my chest. No desire to operate the gateway. Nothing.

  I glanced down at the small wooden post stuck in the ground at the edge of the park. A cheap plaque had been screwed to the side of it marking what used to be Gate City Park. It really was a pathetic little thing considering the proposed alternative. One of the city councilmen tried to get the city to pay for a large monument to the massive earthquake.

  When the Getharey tore the gateway open, it had caused an earthquake that was felt across Utah into Nevada and all the way down to southern New Mexico. Little Gate City, Colorado was headline news for a while, but the general population could take only so much geological blather. The interest quickly died away.

  The city council tried hard to keep pushing itself as the epicenter of the biggest quake this side of California. They saw it was an easy cash flow. It never materialized. They bickered over the best way to cash in and by the time they came up with a plan, nobody cared anymore.

  As the scientists and tourists bolted, they left behind a broken city. Dylan Connelly’s place of work, a local grocery store, wasn’t the only building to take damage. There were buildings, including some homes, all over town that suffered from collapsed roofs or cracked walls and foundations. One old building in the old part of town had fallen in on itself completely, leaving a mound of cinder blocks and debris. It was fortunate it was an abandoned so nobody was hurt. Without the money they had hoped for, the city had to dig deep into its own pockets to start rebuilding.

  Things would have been different if they knew what happened here. The park had been the spot of a failed alien invasion. Nobody knew that, though. At least, nobody was supposed to know it. I’d told the police what had happened. I figured out pretty quickly that if they didn’t believe me, it was highly unlikely anybody else would. I didn’t want to be that person. The one people made fun of and asked if I left my tin foil home.

  Still, it got out. I’m sure one of the detectives who grilled me went home to tell their family about the crazy kid. From there, it spread like wild fire and I became the crazy kid who was abducted by aliens or whatever.

  I snarled and kicked the wooden post. It leaned backwards. This stupid city hadn’t even bothered to properly anchor it in concrete or something.

  Movement out the corner of my eye caught my attention. I looked up the pile of rocks that had once been a cliff. There was nothing up there. Probably just having flashbacks or something.

  I shook my head and turned to leave. More movement. That time, I was sure I had seen something. I pulled the police tape up and went under.

  It was the first time I’d stepped foot in the park since that day nearly a year ago. The ground under foot felt wrong. It felt like the grass could climb up my shoes to grab my ankles to pull me underground. It made my skin crawl, but I kept a steady pace towards where I saw movement.

  I stopped as I came to the first of the boulders that had dug into the ground when the ridge collapsed. I wasn’t sure if I had just imagined I saw something, but if I had, whoever was out there had about a million hiding spots among the rocks.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  No reply.

  “You’re not supposed to be out here.” I felt stupid as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Was I a ninety-year-old grandpa? You dang kids ain’t supposed to be out here so why don’t you just go on and get!

  I stepped onto a black rock to try to get a better vantage point. The product of a fault line, the ridge that cut the park in two had formed thousands of years ago and had been made up of several different type of rock. Most of it was the black rock indicative of it past volcanic life. When the ridge shook apart, it exposed sharply angled rock mixed among the smooth. I stepped carefully so I didn’t fall and shred myself on one of those sharp edges.

  I was starting to feel stupid. I was going to break an ankle chasing shadows of nothing. There was nothing out there, only ghosts of a past that had faded into a “mentally disturbed” kid a year ago. It wasn’t like anybody called me that, but it was in the way they looked at me when I walked past. In the way Dr. Baumgartner would look up from his papers to see me, let his shoulders slump just a little, and not quite look me in the eye. Too much for him to handle.

  Movement slashed at the corner of my vision. I spun, nearly slipping off, but saw nothing.

  “This is stupid,” I muttered. I turned a circle. “Maybe I am crazy. Standing out here, seeing nothing but my imagination.”

  A large shape appeared from behind a boulder right in front of me. I didn’t have time to react in any way before it charged into me. I was lifted off my feet and thrown to the ground, hitting what felt like every rock in the field on the way down. I wheezed, staring up at the bright sky overhead.

  A shadow crossed my vision. I snatched a rock from the ground by my right hand. I threw it, popping the dark figure in the head. I hadn’t thrown a football in nearly a year, but I still had the arm for it. The figure’s head snapped back.

  I scrambled to my feet. The dark figure shook its head, but I didn’t give it time to shake off the rock before I pelted it with another larger one. It staggered back as the chunk ricocheted off its head. I was on it before it could recover. I buried my shoulder into it and we tumbled among the devastated ridge.

  Twisting to let the figure take the brunt of the fall into the rocks, I still hit a few on the way down. I ignored the jabbing pain in my thigh and climbed on top of the figure.

  “I know what you are,” I yelled and buried my fist into its dark hood. “Where’s Aoife? Where’s Aoife?”

  I hit the thing over and over. When it tried to fend off my right fist, I added my left into the fray. I swung wildly. There was nothing pretty or calculated in the punches. I just landed them wherever I could.

  It wasn’t enough. The creature gave up trying to block the blows and planted its hands on my chest. It pushed and I flew a couple feet to land on a rounded stone.

  The creature under the black cloak recovered quicker. It was on me before I could register a pain in my lower back from impacting the rock. It apparently took a page from my book and lifted a three-fingered fist. I grabbed a chunk of rock and swung wildly. The improvised weapon didn’t connect, but my arm did hit the creature’s, knocking it off course. His blow went wide left.

  With it momentarily off balance, I kicked a knee up, burying it into the small of the creature’s back. It fell forward overtop me, catching itself with hands on the ground to either side of my head. I wrapped an arm around its right arm and pulled it out from under the creature while lifting up with my hips. The creature flopped to the side. I rolled on it and resumed my punching.

  Most were woefully ineffective, but I did slip a sharp jab past his arms. My fist connected with the face hidden in the unnaturally shadowed hood. Its head snapped back, striking the ground beneath him, and its hood flew off. A lizard-like Getharey face leered up at me.

  I had known exactly what it was as soon as it attacked. There was no mistaking the dark, rune covered cloak the race wore. Seeing the face, however, made my heart tighten. I gritted my teeth and struck it three times in the face in rapid succession.

  “Where’s Aoife?” I yelled at it.

  I raised my fist to strike again, but it grabbed my arm. Its sharp nails dug into my forearm. Caught off guard, the thing threw me off again. I landed a couple feet away and rolled. It launched to its feet with a melon sized rock clutched in both hands.

  “Die now, human,” it hissed at me. It lifted th
e rock overhead.

  Before it could send its projectile down on me, a flash of purple exploded from its back. The Getharey and its rock flew over my head, crunched against a large boulder, and flopped to the ground.

  I rolled to my stomach, breathing hard. I prepared myself to attack, but the creature didn’t move.

  Maybe I knew what had happened. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe in those few seconds that passed as I lay there, I comprehended what sent the Getharey flying into the rocks. In the next instant, I denied it. It wasn’t something I could handle, so I just erased it from my mind.

  My denial couldn’t last for long, though. Not when the voice spoke behind me.

  “Gaige?”

  Every muscle, every fiber of my being tensed until I thought I might be sick.

  “Are you okay?”

  I rolled to my back to look up at Seanna standing over me.

  4

  Blasts from the Past

  My stomach clinched and the urge to throw up doubled. I gathered my bleeding arm under me and pushed myself to my feet. Seanna seemed even smaller than I remembered. Still, it was her. Same bright blue eyes. Same willow thin body.

  “I must have hit my head harder than I thought,” I said.

  “Hey, Gaige,” she said.

  “Where’s Aoife?” I asked.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Don’t say you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t know,” she started again, “where she is. There were rumors a human girl came through with the Getharey before the gateway collapsed, but that’s all they were—rumors. There was never any sign she come through or any indication of where she might have gone if she had.”

  “Then you have no reason to be here.” I turned my back on her and looked at the Getharey. Or, what was left of it. Its body was in the process of dissolving into a thin grey mist. “What the hell?”

  “That is a trait of their advance warriors,” Seanna said.

  “Their what?”

  “The Getharey trained to be on the frontlines of an invasion. If they die, their body dissolves, leaving no evidence.”