Determined, he ran to the front door, his footsteps reminding him of the sounds from that fateful night. Whump, whump, whump.
“No!” Paul screamed. “What are you doing? Vince, get back here!”
Whump, whump, whump.
With his bag over his shoulder, Vince threw open the door and ran outside with his hands up. “Stop this!” he cried. “Leave the house! Leave this family alone! Please! Just take me, and then we can leave.”
Old Mother Byron smiled. She turned to Lonnie and waved her head in Vince’s direction. “Put him in the truck. Don’t hurt him too much. We could use a hostage.”
Lonnie approached and seized Vince by the arm, his hand nearly wrapping all the way around it. The moment he pulled Vince away, Old Mother Byron turned to Misty. “Now get the others. They saw my face.”
“Yummy.”
“No!” Vince cried, struggling in Lonnie’s grip. It was no use; the man was far too strong.
Vince was thrown into the truck as if he weighed next to nothing. “Now sit still,” Lonnie said, setting down the gasoline and leaning far over his hostage and opening the glove compartment. Inside was a pair of rusted handcuffs.
He leaned over farther still, and Vince noticed something fall from his pocket onto the seat: his Zippo lighter.
Vince reached for it, and Lonnie did too, knocking over the gas can in the process, the brown liquid leaking forth. Holding the lighter, Vince slid over to the far door and opened it.
Frozen, the handcuffs dropping from his hands, Lonnie looked from the trail of gasoline to Vince. His mouth dropped.
Preparing to jump out of the truck, Vince summoned the flame. Lonnie reached for him, but it was too late. Just before he jumped from the front seat, Vince dropped the Zippo.
There was a massive explosion. Fire blew out the windows, spreading glass everywhere, and Lonnie could be heard inside the truck, screaming like something deeply inhuman.
Vince landed face-first in the snow, his hair singed but quickly cooling. Behind him, Old Mother Byron clutched her heart and Misty shrieked in wild agony as Lonnie, burning bright like a candle, stumbled out of the truck and dropped to the snow, snubbing the flames.
There was another noise too, but with his ears ringing, Vince didn’t immediately notice. Yet, as it grew louder, it became undeniable. Sirens. A multitude of them.
Vince knew he had to get up quickly. If the cops found him, he would be back at the orphanage in no time; there would be no excuses. His journey couldn’t end like this, not when he was so close to finding his father.
Trailing a league of snowplows, cops arrived at the house by the dozen. Just as they began to exit their cars, screaming for the Byron Clan to keep their hands up, Vince jumped to his feet and, clutching his backpack, ran for the woods. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw MJ watching him from the window, her face running with tears. He wouldn’t have a chance to say good-bye. He hoped she and her parents would understand. They were a great family. He was sorry he brought this upon them. They deserved so much better.
CHAPTER 12
It was a brutal walk, both physically and emotionally. His legs throbbed with pain from moving them in and out of the deep snow, every inch of his body wet and frozen, his skin cracking, his hair matted with ice, but it was his heart that ached most of all. It was deeply upsetting to leave MJ and her family. He had been happy there with them. The pain of his past had dissolved beneath their roof.
And yet it didn’t matter, he decided. It didn’t matter because of the funeral. If his father was going to be there, then he had to be too.
Repeating this like a mantra, he continued walking through the woods, unsure of the exact direction he was heading. Eventually his backpack was beginning to hurt his shoulder, and he decided to stop and open it. He unzipped the main section and saw that it was filled with objects he’d never placed in there. There were gloves and a hat and some food and water and other provisions. He realized MJ must have stocked it for him without his knowing, and this made him want to cry even more. Ravenously, he devoured a sandwich and, with the dry hat and gloves and scarf warming him, pressed on through the woods with new determination.
Eventually he emerged on an isolated road. After passing a sign that said DYERVILLE, 6 MILES, he realized he was now actually closer to the town than he was to the train. But he wouldn’t make it by nightfall. The sun was nearly over the horizon already. The wind was picking up again, and the temperature was dropping fast. Even with MJ’s provisions, he had to find shelter soon.
There wasn’t a sound to be heard on this last leg of his journey, as if the snow had muffled the land’s mouth and pinned its creaking joints. The streetlamps on the side of the road were illuminated, giving off a magnificently haunted glow.
He staggered farther along, looking for anything that might help him survive the night. But there was nothing in sight. No homes, no stores, no cars, no people. Just white upon white. It could have been the Arctic. It could have been another planet.
Then, a little farther up the road, he spotted it: a bridge that went above a small river. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. He ducked down beneath it like a troll and, with a lighter packed by MJ, started a small fire to keep him warm, although it didn’t do much. He couldn’t sleep either, but he thought this might be a good thing. He might not wake up if he did. So, as he sat there by himself in the near dark, the moon a sickle in the sky, the hours went by like ice sheets across continents, while he shivered and tried to get what warmth he could from the fire.
What was he doing out here? he wondered. Should he have hidden in the woods until the police left? Should he have stayed with MJ for as long as he could?
The tears that fell from his eyes froze upon his coat. “No,” he said again. “I have to know if my dad is there.”
But even if his father was there at the funeral, that didn’t mean he would welcome Vince with open arms. After all, he could have come back for him at any time. What would make him change his mind now?
Beneath his thin sweater, it felt as if his heart were slowing. What was he doing? Why was he out here?
He wanted so badly to pick up his backpack and return to MJ and Michele and Paul and Romeo and that wonderful house his father helped build and never leave. But he didn’t. The funeral was near, Dyerville was near, and his father would be there and he would want his son back. He would have to.
And so, leaning close to the fire, he pulled out his grandfather’s book to pass the last few hours until sunrise.
The Door on the Cliff
Vincent scoured the pages of the gold book, feverishly searching line by line, image by image, for some answer to how to locate the sword and the bow.
Sleep deprived, he read until his eyes ached, until his hands shuddered with exhaustion. However, the language of the book was difficult to understand, and the illustrations didn’t offer much in the way of detail. All he could infer was that he had to find a very old man who might or might not live in the forest, an almost mythological being that the birds clearly trusted. And that was all. No information on how to find him, no information on how he could help. In the book there were no guarantees.
In the time he’d been working at Mr. Barlow’s estate, things had changed. No longer was he solely on a quest to find his mother and destroy the witch for what she had done to him. Now Vincent also set out to save a family, as well as protect others who might come across the witch’s path. To prevent these future sorrows, he knew he would have to push himself even harder. This was his purpose. He didn’t want anyone else to lose a mother, or a son, or a sibling. No one should have to hide within his or her own home out of fear of this woman. Her spells should hold no threat over the world and the people in it. He vowed to make this so.
But the key to defeating her remained a mystery to him.
He combed through the first one hundred pages and then the next hundred, hoping to find the answer to locating the weapons somewhere along the way, maybe in a c
hapter in which he could actually translate the words. But he couldn’t solve any of the puzzles, and days later, nearly eight hundred pages in, which was a little more than halfway through, he found himself imploring the book for help, communicating with it like an old friend.
With his palm flat against the illustration of the old man and the weapons, he said, “Please. There are so many counting on me. Help me find what it is I need. I beg you.”
He had been frustrated and desperate and didn’t expect a response, but then, as when he first opened the book, the pages flipped on their own, stopping toward the back, at one of the final entries in the book. Vincent read the first few paragraphs, and they seemed to concern some sort of doorway to a land of dreams. There was nothing to suggest he would find his answer here. “No,” he said, turning back to the illustration with great frustration. “The bow and the sword: that is what I need.” And again the pages flipped to this later tale. Vincent sighed. Perhaps the answer was in here after all. He decided to read further.
By the end it was, undeniably, the most beautiful part of the book, the most beautiful thing he had ever read in fact. The chapter spoke of a world in direct contrast with his own. A place where there was only peace, only happiness, only love. A place of no pain and no sadness, where people were never stricken ill and the only laws were of dreams and wishes and hopes and pure imagination. A place where one would want to live forever. And according to the book, it wasn’t a fantasy. It was all real, all attainable, and very much within Vincent’s reach.
The words consumed him, overtaking every thought. Could it all be true? he wondered, after feverishly reading the chapter a fourth time. Maybe, he thought, if it is a place of dreams, then that is where I can find what I need to rescue my mother. If so, he had to visit such a land. He at least had to try, to see if the entrance the story spoke of was real.
That night, while Orin was fast asleep, Vincent followed the book’s map to a cliff not very far away. Here, in the darkness, the wind picked up something brutal, and the temperature grew quite cold, but none of this bothered him because there, illuminated in the moonlight, was exactly what the book foretold.
At the edge of the steep cliff, resting like an unguarded portal, was a door or at least the frame of one. The ancient wood was held in place by some bricks, as if the door had once belonged to some type of house or other building that had long since collapsed and fallen into the abyss, leaving only the entrance behind.
Vincent peered through the doorway where it went off the cliff. He walked around the side of the door and saw the drop to the dark river below. The winds rocked his body back and forth. He returned to the doorframe once again.
If I walk through that door, he thought, and there’s nothing there, it’s a straight drop, hundreds of feet down to the icy waters.
But the book did say there was something on the other side. The book revealed a certain word or phrase that was supposed to be uttered the exact moment the threshold was crossed. That, and only that, would open the door to the other world. But what if the book was wrong? What if it was just a story, something not to be taken seriously or literally? Vincent wasn’t sure. Clearly, there was nothing on the other side of the door but cold air and a death plunge. Another world? It was a leap of faith.
He approached the door once more, the wind, active again, nearly pushing and bullying him through; the air was alive here. He braced himself against the frame, not ready to cross just yet.
Slowly he stuck his hand through the opening. What are you thinking? It’s impossible. Frightened, he yanked his hand back, inspecting it. Did it feel warmer? What if? Just what if?
Having memorized the key to entering this presumed utopia, Vincent closed the book and placed it back in the leather sack resting across his shoulder. Then he took a step back and exhaled deeply, shaking the nerves from his hands. “I believe. I believe.”
The wind picked up even faster now. Vincent could hardly hear himself speak over its incessant howling. “IbelieveIbelieveIbelieveIbelieve.”
The door waited for him. What lay beyond it waited for him.
Would it really be there? Was there such a place? It was time to find out.
Vincent closed his eyes, spoke the phrase from the book into the howling winds, and walked through the doorway.
He emerged in a field. All was quiet. There was no wind. He was alone. In the distance, up on a hill, was a dark house with a long dirt path leading up to it. In the silence he heard the front door open and close with a perfect click. A shadowy figure could be seen walking down the winding trail, making its way closer.
As he waited, Vincent took a look around. The doorframe was still behind him, but apart from that, there was nothing else in sight for miles; the cliff, and all below it, had vanished. It was neither hot nor cold, wet nor dry, and the air smelled sweet, as if perfumed. There were stars in the sky, but they seemed larger than they had ever appeared before, as if gravity had pulled them closer. The tall grass of the field swayed rhythmically. He had an urge to walk for hours. The book was right: he felt completely at peace.
Finally the shadow approached. To Vincent’s utter surprise, he was staring at a large jackrabbit walking awkwardly on its hind legs. The overgrown hare, gone white in the face with age, was severely hunched over and hobbling with a cane. It grunted and snorted with each strenuous step it took. Its only piece of clothing was an overcoat, but it fitted him well.
“Hello, Vincent,” the jackrabbit said in a soothing voice, its whiskers twitching with each syllable. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which he coughed into rather harshly.
“You know me.”
“I do. I am your guide here, and that,” he said, pointing to the house on the hill, “is your home.”
“Mine? I’ve never seen it before. My home was much smaller, it—”
“Everyone who visits here has a house specifically built for him. That one is yours.”
“But how did you know I’d come? How did it get built so quickly?”
“Time, as you will discover, works a bit differently here from what you are familiar with. Wonderful things can be done when you have a proper grasp of what you call seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years and decades and centuries and millennia and so on.”
“What is this place?” Vincent asked, gazing far into the distance. The sun shone down in some spots—glorious beams of light—while the moon did so in others. “Does it have a name?”
“It has many names, but you needn’t concern yourself with any of that just now. Enjoy it; that is all. Our homes are very special homes. We make sure to build them to your exact preferences, the exact specifications according to your dreams.”
“Is that it? Am I dreaming?”
“Vincent, come now, does this feel like a dream?”
Vincent closed his eyes and took in the air. He could feel every particle travel throughout his body, mixing with his complex system. He could feel the rush of his blood, the snapping of his neurons, the noble efforts of his lungs to continue breathing. He felt everything. He opened his eyes, and that was when he noticed he also wasn’t gold any longer “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “It feels better.”
“Yes, better than a dream, because here your dreams can be realized. Whatever it is your mind can imagine, whatever it is you want or need, whatever it is you crave or ache or wish for, you will find once you open the front door of your new home.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. Go ahead. Give it a try.”
Vincent was quiet for some time, his mind going where it needed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the jackrabbit said, his red eyes glowing. He turned and pointed to the house with his cane. Upstairs a light turned on. “She’s in there now. If you hurry, you’ll just catch her coming down the stairs.”
Vincent dropped his leather sack with the gold book tucked safely within it and ran faster than he ever had before. He raced up the l
ong, steep path, never once tiring or straining for breath. He reached the house in far less time than seemed possible, almost as if he had been carried along on a string. But this didn’t matter; nothing else mattered apart from what he would find inside the house.
He threw open the front door and crossed the threshold. And sure enough, there she was at the bottom of the stairs.
“Mom!”
She looked just like he had remembered. Not a day older from the moment he left home, not a touch of the witch’s sickness about her. He ran to her, straight into her arms, and they embraced long and hard. He couldn’t believe it: she was solid; she was real. “I thought I lost you,” he said, his voice choked with tears.
“I’m here,” she told him. “I’m here.”
And she really was.
She was there all day and the day after that and the day after that. She was there from the moment Vincent woke up until the moment he fell asleep. She was there to cook him his favorite meals and to join him in his favorite games. Together they talked for hours on end; they walked the mystical countryside so lightly they might have been floating. It was life as it ought to be.
They continued right where they’d left off, never once mentioning the witch or the curse. He didn’t talk of the giant or the horse or his quest. But it wasn’t as if he’d had to consciously make an effort to conceal such things. No, it was as if the thoughts never popped into his head to begin with, as if they couldn’t possibly exist. Not even the weapons he was seeking came to mind. Here there was only room for happiness. Here he was home.
A week into his stay Vincent was outside lying in the grass, and it felt as if he had his own personal sun shining down on him. Above, the clouds took whatever form he desired. The grass tickled his skin, and the air cleansed his lungs. He was happy.
“Enjoying yourself? It’s quite perfect, isn’t it?” the jackrabbit asked, standing over him.
Vincent sat up, taking in his guide, whom he had not seen since his arrival. The hare, in such a short time, looked thinner, sicker than he had before.
The Dyerville Tales Page 15
