“Is your name Shaun?”
He looked surprised, then confused, then I drove my forehead into his face. He stopped struggling.
I released his throat and took hold of the front of his filthy coat. The rope around my waist served as my guide back to the portal. All I had to do was make sure that Tockity Man didn’t regain consciousness and wiggle his hand with the activator free. If he did, he might close the gateway with me on this side and my friends on the other—my friends and all those old kids who needed help. I dragged him along as if he were a doll. I’ll admit, I was a little pumped up on adrenaline and fear. A few steps later we were back in the other universe.
I dragged the unconscious Tockity Man to the side of the juice bar, ordering some patrons who had been snatched from the liquor bar out of the way. It was natural that they would be confused, but the liquor wasn’t doing them any favors.
“Back. Go back.” Helsa was loud and forceful. Still they—six men and two women—weren’t sure it was a wise idea. Helsa stepped to the spot where I had crossed over and pointed. “Go! Run!”
They stood still, confused.
“NOW!” That was Brenda. She was more convincing. They followed the directions if for no other reason than to save their hearing from another Brenda outburst.
I pinned Tockity to the wall. He was still out of it, but he could come to anytime and I was afraid of letting go of his hand. I wanted the threshold open as long as possible.
Helsa was overseeing the rest of the plan. Officers and nurses poured through the door of the juice bar helping elderly patients into the light. Some were on gurneys, some hobbled, some were carried by police officers. None of the helpers questioned Helsa when she told them to carry their patients into the light, turn around, and come right back.
“Brenda, Daniel, go through. Take charge over there.” They exchanged glances and marched through. “You too, Andi.”
“I’m not leaving you, Tank.”
“Andi, please, just go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Go, those kids need help. Go.”
She went.
Moments later helpers were returning, shaken, pale, and a few vomiting, but they kept at it. Time and time again, they carried patients into the white void until every elderly child had crossed over. Helsa spit out orders like a drill sergeant. Based on the way I felt, I guessed those brave souls might need a few days off.
Tockity came to in a fury. His fingernails dug into my face. His knee caught me in the groin. I was already half out of sorts from traveling through the opening twice in short order. I didn’t need such treatment.
Some of the officers came to my aid. We took him to the floor, pinned his right arm, and slowly pried his fingers back until I held what looked like a small, glowing red apple. It had a switch on it. Tockity had it pressed when I grabbed his hand, so I kept it pressed.
“Easy with that, Tank. It’s your only way home.”
I released Tockity to the cops. Stood. Wobbled a little and did my best to keep the contents of my stomach right where they were.
“Go, Tank,” Helsa said.
“I need a minute with you.”
“No. The activator could stop working. It’s not in the same universe as the device it controls. Go. Go now.”
I had already watched Helsa—Littlefoot—fade in front of my eyes. I didn’t want to say good-bye again.
“Helsa—”
“Shut up. I can’t go with you and you can’t stay here. If either one of us tries, then we die. Go. Your friends need you.”
I walked to the light and looked back.
“Keep up the good work, Tank,” she said. “You’re a hero. You’re my hero.”
My vision blurred. My face was hot.
I walked through the light.
I was weeping when I emerged back in my own world. I don’t care who saw.
Epilogue
It took several tries, but we were able to take the door to the church down. The sledgehammers we carried made it easy. With me were several townsfolk from Newland. Each had a sledgehammer that he or she either brought from home or had been given by the owner of the hardware store, who was with us, too. After all, he had lost his wife but got his eight-year-old daughter back. It was a little difficult to explain all that happened to the others, but since we had brought many of their children back they would have believed us if we had said the moon was made of chocolate.
I felt a little bad about breaking into a church, even one that had been abandoned a long time ago. Still, a church is a group of believers, not a building, so I put my reservations aside and helped knock the door in.
We found the device that bridged the two universes. The sanctuary had no pews. It was a wide-open space with the device. It was an odd-looking thing. It reminded me a bit of some abstract sculpture. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe something sleek and shiny. It wasn’t sleek. It looked like an oversized golf ball, but instead of all those little indentations it was covered in little metal bumps. It wasn’t shiny, either. I could tell it was metal but it lacked the luster of aluminum. It looked a tad corroded. I doubt Tockity Man took care of his toys.
It rested on a set of wood blocks. High tech meets low tech. An electrical line ran from the bottom of the sphere and had been wired into a junction box in one of the walls. I wondered how it worked but only for a few moments. We had other plans for the thing.
We waited as Walter, the local electrician, disengaged the power to the unit. It was no secret that we had come to destroy it, but it needed to be done with some dignity, not like a crazed mob. Everyone needed to have a hand in ending the problem. This was the best idea I could come up with. Tiffany knew everyone who had lost loved ones and put us in contact with them. When I told them what I had in mind, not a person said no.
I wanted to make sure everyone got a good whack at the thing. So, I wrote their names on slips of paper, got a brown paper lunch bag, dumped them in, and created my own little lottery.
“Gerald Ames.”
Gerald grinned, but he did so with tears in his eyes. He got his son back but was shaken to the core to see what had happened to the boy. They were all shaken. It took awhile, but we convinced them that the impossible would happen and their children would grow young again. Those who didn’t get their kids back, well, we couldn’t do anything but weep with them. And we did a lot of that.
The group stepped away to give Gerald a little room, and Gerald gave it all he had. He was in his forties but looked to me like he was well acquainted with hard work. The business end of the sledge struck a devastating first blow.
A cheer went up.
Gerald folded over in tears and remorse. Several men went to his side while I pulled another name from the bag. “Jensen P. Monroe. You ready, brother?”
“More ready than I can say.” He recited the name of his two children who had been returned to him, then the names of his neighbor’s children who were forever gone, then he put every fiber of this body into his swing. The sound of it hurt my ears.
“Lucy Morris . . .”
The children were housed in the hotel at the end of the street. Two entire floors had been converted to a hospital wing. The local doctor, a young man not long out of med school, and a few nurses he called in to help, tended to the children. I can’t say enough good about them.
We stayed a week. Daniel began to look a couple of years younger and was having trouble finding the right size clothing. I guess it’s true—you can’t keep kids in clothes no matter if they’re growing up or down.
As for the adults, we were returning to our proper ages, more slowly than I liked, but I could be patient. At least I was in the right universe.
Each night I spent a little time looking at the stars and wondering about Littlefoot. I guess I will always do that.
Once the car was packed, we said our good-byes to Jewel and thanked her for making her place available for the kids to recuperate in. We also thanked her for trying to save our necks by sending us packing.
Before we entered the car, Brenda called us close. “We saved a lot of children,” she said. “That makes me feel pretty good. And Daniel was a big part of that. We might not have learned what we needed to know if he didn’t insist on some paper and start bossing us around.”
We all agreed to that. I waited, figured there was more Brenda wanted to say.
“Daniel and me had a chat. Okay, he did the chatting and I did the listening. You know him, he’s not much on conversation, but he did make it clear that he’s part of the team and even though he’s only ten, he’s very different from other boys.”
“That’s a fact,” I said.
Brenda looked at the ground. “Anyway, forget all that Batman stuff I was throwin’ around.” Except she didn’t use the word stuff.
“Oh, man, and here I was thinking we finally got rid of you.”
She punched me in the arm. It hurt in a wonderful way. “I will take you down, Cowboy. You know I will.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do know that.”
Then I hugged her. That led to a group hug.
And a prayer of thanksgiving from me.
Selected Books by Bill Myers
NOVELS
Child’s Play
The Judas Gospel
The God Hater
The Voice
Angel of Wrath
The Wager
Soul Tracker
The Presence
The Seeing
The Face of God
When the Last Leaf Falls
Eli
Blood of Heaven
Threshold
Fire of Heaven
NONFICTION
The Jesus Experience—Journey Deeper into the Heart of God
Supernatural Love
Supernatural War
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Baseball for Breakfast (picture book)
The Bug Parables (picture book series)
Bloodstone Chronicles (fantasy series)
McGee and Me (book/video series)
The Incredible Worlds of Wally McDoogle (comedy series)
Bloodhounds, Inc. (mystery series)
The Elijah Project (supernatural suspense series)
Secret Agent Dingledorf and His Trusty Dog Splat (comedy series)
TJ and the Time Stumblers (comedy series)
Truth Seekers (action adventure series)
TEEN BOOKS
Forbidden Doors (supernatural suspense)
Dark Power Collection
Invisible Terror Collection
Deadly Loyalty Collection
Ancient Forces Collection
For a complete list of Bill’s books, sample chapters, and newsletter sign-up, go to www.billmyers.com or check out his Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/billmyersauthor
Selected Books by Frank Peretti
Illusion: A Novel
This Present Darkness
Piercing the Darkness
The Oath
Prophet
Tilly
The Visitation
Monster
www.frankperetti.com
www.facebook.com/officialfrankperetti
Selected Books by Angela Hunt
Roanoke
Jamestown
Hartford
Rehoboth
Charles Towne
Magdalene
The Novelist
Uncharted
The Awakening
The Debt
The Elevator
The Face
Let Darkness Come
Unspoken
The Justice
The Note
The Immortal
The Truth Teller
The Silver Sword
The Golden Cross
The Velvet Shadow
The Emerald Isle
Dreamers
Brothers
Journey
Doesn’t She Look Natural?
She Always Wore Red
She’s In a Better Place
Five Miles South of Peculiar
The Fine Art of Insincerity
The Offering
Esther: Royal Beauty
Bathsheba: Reluctant Beauty
Delilah: Treacherous Beauty
www.angelahuntbooks.com
www.facebook.com/angela.e.hunt
Selected Books by Alton Gansky
By My Hands
Through My Eyes
Terminal Justice
Tarnished Image
Marked for Mercy
A Small Dose of Murder
A Ship Possessed
Vanished
Distant Memory
The Prodigy
Dark Moon
A Treasure Deep
Out of Time
Beneath the Ice
The Incumbent
Before Another Dies
Submerged
Director’s Cut
Crime Scene Jerusalem
Zero-G
Finder’s Fee
Angel
Enoch
Wounds
www.altongansky.com
Resources: bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook
Website: www.bethanyhouse.com
Facebook: Bethany House
Twitter: @Bethany House
The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village Page 29
