Emily and the Spellstone

by Michael Rubens

Then they had suddenly gotten friendly and solicitous again, just like that, and Dougie was confused, and they apologized and said, “Come on, come with us, up this ladder, and we’ll play in the treehouse.” So he followed them up the hanging ladder to the treehouse, still afraid but thinking that maybe everything was better now. Then the door clanged shut and they were outside and he was inside, and he started sobbing again, and they laughed and went down the ladder and across the yard and disappeared into the mansion.

  From the raised vantage point of the jail, Dougie could see that the decorative pond was actually in the shape of a screaming skull. Why did this family like skulls so much? Why was there a small graveyard over in that corner of the yard? Why were teddy bears and dolls hanging in nooses from those branches? Why were those children being so awful to him? Then he realized that the bars of the jail were decorated here and there with grotesque faces of goblins and gargoyles, and when he looked closer, they came to life to snap and snarl at him, so Dougie had screamed and jerked away and ended up sitting in the center of the cell, chin in his hands, each inhalation a ragged gasp.

  This was where he was now, feeling scared, bewildered, and miserable, and desperately, desperately wanting to go home.

  Then Dougie noticed two tall stone doors that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He was seeing them from above and slightly to the side. There was nothing in front of or behind them—​they were just standing there. Then they spread apart—​like elevator doors, he thought—​and Dougie screamed in renewed fear. Somehow there were creatures emerging from between the doors, and other than the Venomüch children, they were the last creatures Dougie wanted to see again: Ugglins and Gugglins.

  But they paid him no heed. They came stampeding out of the doors, screaming their fierce war cries and waving their weapons, and made a beeline for the mansion, kicking their way through the back door, and then immediately there was a chaotic ruckus from inside, the sounds of things being smashed and overturned and generally Ugglinned and Gugglinned.

  Then Dougie screamed again, because something even scarier than the Ugglins and Gugglins had emerged from the doors: a massive demon creature who paused to toss back his head and roar, flames jetting from his mouth.

  And then, just before the doors vanished, someone else appeared, and Dougie screamed again, but this time he was screaming, “EMILY!”

  “Dougie!”

  Emily spotted Dougie in the cage as he leaped to his feet and came to the bars.

  “Emily! Help me! Get me out of here! OW!”

  One of the goblins on the bars of the cage had sunk its little teeth into Dougie’s left thumb. He snatched his hand back and gripped his left fist in his right, curling his body over them protectively.

  “Dougie! Hold on! I’m coming! Gorgo, watch my back!”

  Emily ran toward the tree, but the hanging rope ladder rolled itself up and out of her reach. She cursed, then put her hands on the trunk, trying to find purchase, but the surface of the bark felt like a cheese grater, as though it would shred her flesh if she tried to grip it.

  “Help me!” Dougie was crying. “Emily, get me out of here!”

  “I’m coming!” she yelled up to him again. “I’m coming!”

  “I want to go home!”

  “I’m taking you home, Dougie! I’m here to get you! Gorgo!” she yelled, still facing Dougie. “Help me! Gorgo? Gorgo!”

  “Emily . . .” he said.

  She turned. Gorgo was facing the house. Acrimina and the two Venomüch children were standing on the back porch casually observing the scene, Acrimina smiling with amusement.

  “Hello, Emily,” she said.

  “You!” said Emily.

  Acrimina made a show of looking around as if searching for someone. “Well, us, actually.”

  Maligno Sr. strolled out the door, several squirming Ugglins and Gugglins held by the scruff of their necks in each hand.

  “Shoo,” he said, and tossed them into the yard, where they scurried to cower behind Gorgo. Maligno leaned back in the doorway and said, “The rest of you! Out!” and clapped his hands once. The remaining Ugglins and Gugglins scampered out to join their brethren.

  Maligno turned back to Emily. He smiled.

  “Well. At last we meet . . . Stonemaster.” His voice was mocking. “So nice of you to come. And to bring the Stone.”

  “Could we offer you a beverage of some sort?” said Acrimina. “Milk, perhaps? Isn’t that what children drink? Or perhaps your own blood, in a chalice?”

  “All I want is my brother,” said Emily. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  They laughed at her—​the children with their hideous screeching yowl, Acrimina with her cold haughtiness, Maligno saying, “Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  “Mama,” said Maligna, tugging on Acrimina’s sleeve, “can I play with her . . . skull?”

  “No fair! You said I’d get her skull!” said Maligno Jr.

  “Now, now,” said Maligno Sr. “There’s plenty of skull to go around. We’ll split it in half!”

  “No one is getting anyone’s skull,” said Gorgo.

  “Ah, yes,” said Maligno Sr. “Our friend. And your name is . . . ?”

  “My name is none of your business,” said Gorgo. “Emily, may I?”

  “Just hold them off while I rescue Dougie!” She spun back to her brother, craning her neck to look up at him. “Dougie, listen to me. I’m going to get you out of there. Just hold on!”

  Gorgo grinned at the Venomüches. “She didn’t say how to hold you off,” he said in a low voice. “Since you did ask, my name is Baelmadeus Gorgostopheles Lacrimagnimum Turpisatos Metuotimo Dolorosum Tenebris Morsitarus. And that’s the last thing you’re ever going to hear.”

  Yellow fire danced along his skin. Raising his fists, he advanced on them.

  “Wait!” said Acrimina. “Please! Before you . . . hold us off, we have a gift for you.”

  “A gift?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling, and held up the enchanted dagger. “Your freedom.”

  She tossed the dagger underhand to him. Gorgo’s eyes tracked it in what seemed like a slow-motion journey as it cartwheeled toward him in a gentle arc, the jeweled handle and sheath sparkling, and he reached out his hand and caught the dagger neatly. He unsheathed the blade and held it up in front of his face, staring at it in wonder, the flames on his skin extinguished.

  Across the lawn, Emily took in a sudden sharp breath and looked up from the Stone. She turned and saw Gorgo goggling at the blade, the Venomüches smiling triumphantly. Right then, Emily understood the trap she had walked into. She was powerless to act, powerless to move, powerless to do anything but watch what was happening, knowing she had failed.

  “Free yourself!” intoned Acrimina.

  With a sudden fierce joy, Gorgo brought the blade down to the height of his navel, seized something invisible with his other hand, and with a quick sawing motion cut through whatever it was that only he could see.

  Emily felt the bond severed and cried out.

  “I’m free,” he whispered hoarsely. Then, louder: “Free! FREE!”

  Then he turned to face her, tossing the dagger aside.

  He seemed to grow, a shadow outlining his form, as if he were gathering the darkness around him. His teeth were extending too, growing sharper, his eyes blazing. He looked intoxicated with the joy of madness and power, a true demon finally free to reap destruction and terror.

  “I’m FREE!” he bellowed, and exhaled a jet of fire toward the sky.

  “Devour her!” commanded Maligno. The children leaned forward, excited. In three quick steps Gorgo was across the lawn and upon Emily, seizing her by her arms and lifting her up effortlessly while she stared into his swirling eyes in fear, unable even to scream.

  Dougie could scream, though. “No! NO! Emileeeeeee!” Then he turned away, covering his head so he didn’t have to witness what was about to happen.

  “HA HA HA!” roared Gorgo, and brought Emily up to his mouth,
and she knew it was over and she squeezed her eyes shut and—​

  It’s an odd sensation, receiving a gentle kiss on the forehead from a creature like Gorgo.

  Emily opened her eyes.

  Gorgo winked at her. Then he carefully set her down.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Maligno Sr., tromping across the lawn toward them, Acrimina in his wake. “Eat her!”

  “Nope,” said Gorgo. “I don’t eat my friends.”

  “Friends?” said Maligno. “Friends? A creature like you doesn’t have any friends!”

  Gorgo turned back to Emily. He smiled. “I have at least one,” he said, and reached out to put a hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s over. It’s all going to be—​AAARRGH!”

  Emily leaped back in alarm as Gorgo bellowed in pain, spine arching, clutching his back in agony as he fell to his knees.

  “Hee hee hee!” screeched Acrimina, the children joining in. Then Emily saw the dagger in Acrimina’s hand, the blade blackened and smoking with Gorgo’s blood.

  “Gorgo!” screamed Emily.

  “Now your friend can watch you die!” said Acrimina, raising the blade again. But with a roar, Gorgo swung an enormous arm at her, sending her sailing across the yard, the dagger flying from her hand. It was a blow that would have killed any full-grown man, but Acrimina was much, much stronger than a full-grown man, and she was instantly on her feet again.

  “Mama!” shouted the Venomüch children, running to her, but she batted them away impatiently.

  “Fools!” she spat.

  Gorgo struggled to a standing position and turned to face the Venomüches, and Emily could see the blood seeping from the ugly wound in his lower back. “Gorgo!” she cried again.

  “Get Dougie!” rumbled Gorgo over his shoulder to her. “I’ll take care of them!”

  Maligno Sr. was shaking his head sorrowfully.

  “This is such a disappointment,” he said to Gorgo. “All we want is the Stone. This could have been so clean and easy. We’d help you, you would help us. But you’ve gone and ruined it, creature, so now we have to make a great big mess.”

  “You think you can defeat me?” said Gorgo.

  “Oh, no,” said Maligno. “Even wounded I’m sure you’re more than a match for me. I think it would be dull for you. So I thought perhaps you might enjoy meeting our pet.”

  He raised a tiny silver whistle to his lips and blew.

  There was no sound.

  Then there was a lot of sound. The sound of a large section of the high garden wall shattering as a massive creature came bursting through it. Emily shielded her head and ducked to avoid the chunks of stone and plaster that came rocketing inward, some of them striking the cage in the tree jail and denting the bars.

  “DAW-GUH-GUH-GUH!” bellowed Gorgo.

  Not a dog, or even a dogg with two g’s. A doggg. Three g’s.

  Emily had the briefest moment for the strangest thought: that it was the cutest dog she had ever seen. Fluffy snow white fur, a perfect black nose, soft eyes behind long doggy eyelashes.

  Except it was bigger than two elephants, its head the size of a car, and as it came barreling like an unstoppable freight train across the yard toward Gorgo, those soft lovely eyes flared yellow with savage hatred and its jaws opened far wider than should be possible and its murderous teeth were as tall as Emily and there were two rows of them and Gorgo only had time to scream, “Emily, ru—” before wham, the doggg was upon him, driving Gorgo backwards to collide with Emily and send her sprawling, the Stone tumbling out of her hands as the wind was knocked out of her. The doggg and Gorgo kept going until Gorgo slammed into the gnarled tree, the impact jarring the cage partially loose from its perch so that it was balanced precariously, Dougie screaming as he tumbled down the now slanted floor and hit the bars.

  Gorgo, his back against the tree trunk, was desperately holding the doggg’s brutal jaws apart with his hands as the monster tried to eat him. Ugglins and Gugglins were running about in mindless terror. Dougie was still screaming.

  Emily, her head spinning, saw the Stone in the grass a few yards away. She reached her hand toward it, and it started to move to her but slowly, as if the Stone was as stunned as she was. Then a booted foot stomped down and trapped it.

  “Why, yes! How very kind of you!” said Maligno Sr. “I will take that.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Maligno Sr. was bending down to retrieve the Stone from under his hobnailed boot. Emily’s head was still buzzing, fuzzy, her breathing still paralyzed by the collision with Gorgo and the ground.

  Maligno’s hand was an inch from the Stone.

  With a wrenching gasp, Emily managed to draw a breath.

  “That,” she said, “belongs . . . to me.” Then, with a mighty effort that made everything go tunnel vision, she willed the Stone to come flying into her hand, Maligno nearly doing a back somersault, as if a carpet had been violently yanked from under his feet.

  Emily staggered upright, wobbling, then turned just as the doggg yanked its head free from Gorgo’s grasp and snapped Gorgo up by the midsection.

  “Gorgo! No!” Emily screamed, and the doggg shook him, ragdolling him, then hurled him aside to smash an indentation in the garden wall, the impact as loud as an explosion. Gorgo fell to the ground, inert and unmoving. The doggg darted toward him again—​how did something so huge move so fast?—​but Maligno shouted, “No! The girl! Kill the girl!”

  The doggg skidded to a stop, turned, and seemed to notice Emily for the first time. His lips curled back in an ugly snarl to reveal his fangs, his growl so low and powerful that Emily could feel the vibrations rattling her teeth and ribs. There was a scraping noise as the tree jail slid farther down from its perch, instants from plummeting to the ground. Dougie screamed again.

  Emily risked a quick glance at the Venomüches. In the brief moment while she had looked away, Maligno Sr. and Acrimina had somehow managed to assemble themselves side by side in lawn chairs, the children sitting obediently at their feet, as if the family were posing for a formal picture. The children were tossing money into a pile, taking bets.

  “Twenty says the doggg bites off her head first.”

  “Thirty says her leg.”

  Emily turned back to face the doggg. It crouched, gathering itself, eyes narrowing.

  “I bet,” said Acrimina, “that it swallows her in one gulp.”

  The doggg charged.

  Emily felt that time slowed. She was aware that she was gripping the Stone in one hand, her thumb tracing something over its surface, her lips reciting words she didn’t recognize.

  The doggg leaped, seeming to fill the whole sky, enormous, monstrous, bearing down on Emily’s tiny form the way a tiger might leap upon a defenseless mouse. The beast might have been snarling or roaring, but for Emily all sound was turned off.

  From the top of the Stone a blade of crackling white fire ignited, dazzling, terrible in its intensity, and Emily had only the briefest of moments to register that the flaming blade was actually a rolled-up newspaper unconsumed by the blinding fire that danced along its length. Then, as the doggg fell upon her, she swung the flaming newspaper blade in one committed, decisive blow, and then it seemed that she was in the very heart of a fireworks display, sparks starbursting from a thousand points and raining down like flaming diamonds, the doggg disintegrating to nothing.

  And before that brilliant curtain of light had settled, Emily turned back to the Venomüches, the newspaper blade extinguished and gone now, and in one smooth motion she brought up the Stone, the Venomüches’ image framed in its screen as if she were preparing to capture a photo of them. And click she did, except it wasn’t the family’s image that was frozen, it was actually the four of them, trapped, unable to move a muscle, paralyzed in various positions of shock and surprise: hands up or coming up, eyes wide, mouths open.

  “Who has the key to that cage,” said Emily. Her voice was very quiet and controlled. The only thing the Venomü
ches could move was their eyes, and she could see them darting nervously back and forth. Particularly Maligna’s.

  “You,” said Emily to her. “You have it. Give it to me.”

  Emily waved a hand and Maligna was freed from the power of the spell.

  “No,” she spat. “I won’t!”

  “Oh, yes, you will,” said Emily. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to . . .”

  What Emily said will not be recorded here. Let’s just say that it was wildly inappropriate and completely unacceptable, something that you would never say to anyone, ever, unless you were in exactly this sort of situation. Whatever it was, it made Maligna’s already pale face blanch even further, her mouth dropping open. Then she scrabbled at a cord around her neck, pulled it over her head, and handed it over to Emily, a complex key hanging from it.

  “Thank you. Cheese!” said Emily, and froze Maligna again.

  She stomped purposefully across the yard to the tree, the jail shifting even farther as she got close. The floor of the cage was now tilted at the angle of a steep ramp. Dougie was still cowering against the bars at the low end, opposite from the cage door, his weight further encouraging the cage to slide or tumble from the tree.

  “Emily!”

  “I’m coming, Dougie!”

  She could have used the Stone to open the cage, she knew that, but she was now acutely aware that the Stone had very little power in it, and part of her mind was calculating what she would need to get back home. They might just make it, she thought. Might.

  “You!” she said to the curled-up rope ladder. “Get down here!”

  It instantly obeyed. Emily began climbing the ladder, which was connected to the base of the cage at the door. With a jerk, the cage slid down a few inches on the other side, the floor tilting more, the ladder rising as it did. Emily paused.

  “It’s going to fall!” said Dougie.

  “Dougie,” Emily said, speaking as calmly as she could, “I want you to start slowly crawling up toward the door.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Try. Keep your body flat on the floor. Just wriggle up toward me.”

  She kept climbing as she talked. She thought of her science class, the teacher talking about leverage and balance, thought about how her weight on the ladder was helping to keep the cage from falling off the tree on the other side, but the higher she went, the less her weight would count.