“This is a long walk. We should get Caleb to the surface as fast possible—”
“NO!” Madison shouted, making them all jump. She clenched and unclenched her fists and glared at both Liam and Ant in turn. “Enough! Let’s keep walking.”
Nothing more was said as they continued their journey. The uphill trek went on and on, and Caleb complained countless times about his sore feet. Out of respect for Madison, Liam sided with her and flatly told the boy to quit whining, and to his surprise, Caleb refrained. Just needs a firm hand, he thought.
Eventually, Caleb gave an excited cry and turned to dazzle them again with his miner’s lamp. “My house! I really did bring it down, didn’t I?”
Liam ground his teeth together. “You sure did,” he said.
It was hard to feel anything but relief at the sight of the weird protrusion sticking down from the ceiling, a massive chunk of rock that spanned the width of the tunnel and stretched fifty feet or so. It was here that the gas lamps petered out. Darkness lay beyond. But in the center of the ceiling, a small hole led up into the laundry room.
“We’re here,” Liam said with relief. “Wait,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Did I just see a light move up there?”
He hurried past Madison and clambered up the garment rope. It smelled faintly of Lurker. When he emerged in the laundry room, he found soft light emanating from the hallway and kitchen as expected—the glow sticks and candles he’d laid out around the house—but what really caught his interest was the hard white light bobbing around in the living room.
He sensed movement behind him and swung around to find Madison on her way up. “Someone’s here,” he whispered. “Probably rescue workers.”
“Good timing,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “Now that we don’t need rescuing . . .”
They both hurried back down the rope. Liam noticed some of the knots were tiny, probably impossible to untie now. He also heard a slight rip from somewhere. And again, that awful lingering onion smell.
He faced Ant and Caleb, once more squinting in the glare of the boy’s headlamp. “They’re here. Maddy and me will go up and meet them while you two carry on up the tunnel.”
Madison frowned. “And then what? Barton can’t hide him forever. Are you sure we can’t find some way for Caleb to just go home to his dad and live normally?”
Liam mimicked writing in a notebook. He frowned, deepened his voice, and took a stab at how the police interview would go: “What’s your name again, sir? Barton? Hmm, I can’t find you anywhere in the system. Can you prove this boy is yours? Wait, now you’re saying Barton isn’t your real name? Then what is? . . . Ah, now I can find your records. But wait a minute—there’s a long-standing warrant out for your arrest! You’re a fugitive, missing for the past twenty-three years! And you still can’t prove this is your son. Yes, the records do show you have a son, sir, but he’s in his early thirties now. Hmm, that’s strange. His name was Caleb, too. There’s something funny going on here. Are you right in the head, sir? Perhaps you need to see a psychiatrist . . .”
Madison batted his arm. “All right, enough.”
Liam tucked his imaginary notebook in an imaginary shirt pocket. “All right, Caleb, you go on out with Ant. Go find your dad. Maybe we’ll see you again soon. Don’t do anything crazy, okay?”
“I won’t,” Caleb said meekly.
Ant nudged him. “Let’s go. See you soon, guys and gals.”
He and Caleb headed off, trudging up the tunnel into darkness, no longer accompanied by an endless array of gas lamps. Only the beam of the helmet lit their way.
Liam sighed. “We’re done, Maddy. Come on.”
They climbed up into the laundry room and stepped carefully into the hallway. The candle on the floor burned silently, a puddle of wax in its center. The white light came from the living room, and Liam headed that way with Madison at his side.
“Hey, about time you showed,” he said loudly to the rescue worker that stood there.
Chapter 12
Ant burned with curiosity. Was everything Barton had said about his son true? Could he really conjure things from thin air?
He’d glimpsed Caleb’s strange world in its final moments, so there was no doubt of its existence. But had a mere boy really created it? A dragon had flashed by the tunnel opening and thrown Liam to safety just in time, but again, where was the proof Caleb had been instrumental in that? Back on the surface, Barton had told a lot of fantastic stories and revealed a weird illusory wall that he alone couldn’t penetrate. Ant had walked along a perfectly square tunnel supposedly created by an eight-year-old boy, and he’d witnessed the death of a hideous melting man. Despite all that, he still found it hard to believe a mere kid could conjure stuff out of thin air.
He looked back. The light of the gas lamps had faded into the distance. Soon, rescue workers would be lowering themselves into the tunnel and flashing their bright beams around. Hopefully they’d head downhill first, curious about the lamps.
“Hey, Caleb?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“You mentioned something about a flying saucer . . .”
Caleb stopped and shone his helmet light directly into Ant’s face. “Yeah! Can I make one?”
Ant nodded. “Just keep it between us, okay? And make it without lights, otherwise we might be seen. This isn’t Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Go subtle, all right? No lights.”
Grinning, Caleb closed his eyes. His lips began to move.
Ant took a few steps backward as a sinister whispering sound filled the tunnel. He turned to look behind him and saw nothing. When he turned to the front again, he almost fell over in surprise.
Floating two feet off the ground was a disk-shaped silver vehicle about eight feet in diameter, with a glass dome on top. A tiny flying saucer, he thought incredulously. No way!
The light from his lantern and Caleb’s helmet bounced off the saucer’s reflective surface and illuminated the tunnel further. It positively glowed.
“Martian spaceship,” Caleb said happily. “I made it with two seats, see?”
The glass dome slid back, and Ant moved closer. Sure enough, a pair of seats awaited them. The one on the right had a steering wheel in front of it. Caleb scrambled up onto the smooth, rounded surface and caused the craft to tilt alarmingly. He climbed into the driver seat and switched off his helmet. “Come on!” he yelled.
Fighting to control his shock, Ant gripped the side of the saucer. “Move over,” he ordered.
Caleb complained but slid sideways.
Ant felt like he was in dream. He was actually boarding a flying saucer. Okay, so not a true alien ship made by aliens from another world, but a super-advanced spacecraft all the same, hovering in a way that no Earth-constructed machine could. Whether it could survive the rigors of space was another matter—and one that he didn’t want to test.
When the glass canopy closed over their heads and Ant nudged the steering wheel forward, dozens of external lights came on, and the ship punched forward. Ant gripped the steering wheel and watched the tunnel speed by in a dazzling, colorful array of color. With only eighteen inches of clearance on either side, it was hard to keep it from hitting the walls, but it didn’t seem to matter much; it just scraped and caused a shower of sparks. Despite everything Barton had told him about this boy, only now did Ant appreciate the sheer power being wielded—by an eight-year-old.
It was terrifying.
Ant’s long, slow walk down the tunnel to the fallen house had taken an hour or more. The journey back to the surface took just a few minutes. He was glad to get past the sticky yellow mess that had once been a walking, talking mannequin.
When he reached the end of the tunnel, he slowed the craft and approached cautiously. And after nudging the rounded saucer outside into the moonlight, he looked back to find the mountainside as solid as ever. He stopped amid the trees, and the glass dome slid back as though smart enough to anticipate his intention to deboard.
Caleb looked unsure as he flipped a few switches and dimmed the saucer’s external lighting, and he took his time climbing down, the hovering craft wobbling like a boat in water.
It was at that moment Barton appeared from the trees. “My son,” he said, his voice breaking.
Caleb swung around, and his face lit up. “Daddy!”
He practically leapt into his father’s arms and hung there as Barton gripped him tight and swayed from side to side, mumbling something in his ear. With a lump in his throat, Ant watched as his normally stoic driver dissolved into a weeping mess. When he finally put Caleb down, he sank to his knees and seemed weak, drained of energy, wiping his eyes and tugging his son close again.
“I missed you, Daddy,” Caleb said loudly, his voice cutting sharply through the night. “I tried to make another you, but it fell apart just like the rest.”
Barton visibly winced at the boy’s statement, but he nodded and tried to smile. “Nothing like the real thing, huh? But we’re together again now. It’s time to move on.”
Caleb studied him. “You look old. You’re all wrinkly and grey.”
“I am old, son. You kept me waiting a long time. Twenty-three years, to be exact.”
The boy’s mouth fell open. “Sorry.”
“And you don’t look a day older than you were when I left you,” Barton added, his voice tinged with wonder. “You really did stay young.”
“I made time speed by outside.”
Barton raised an eyebrow. “Or you slowed time inside. I suppose it’s the same thing. How long do you think I’ve been gone?”
Caleb thought about this with a look of great concentration on his face. “I don’t know. Weeks and weeks and weeks.”
“How many people have deteriorated?”
“Most of them. I replaced a few. But it’s all gone now. All blown up. I turned off the gravity.” He let out a giggle and clapped a hand over his mouth.
Ant couldn’t help thinking the boy’s manner was overly immature for an eight-year-old. But then, he hadn’t had a lot of interaction with anyone but his dad throughout his life. Probably most of what he’d learned about real life had come from the TV.
Barton patted Caleb’s shoulder and climbed to his feet. “We’ll talk later. Let’s get Ant home, and then we’ll be off. But first . . .” He stood and pondered, looking toward the smooth cliff face. “You know, a vast tunnel is strange but not supernaturally bizarre. I’m not too worried about anyone finding it. Let them puzzle over it for years. However, the illusion needs to go. Caleb?”
“What?”
“Please remove the illusion. Open up the tunnel. Let people find it, as I’m sure they will now. They’ll assume it was an old, unfinished mine. When they wander up this way and come out here, I don’t want them to find a magical wall.”
“Oh, okay,” Caleb said. He closed his eyes and frowned. Abruptly, a ten-foot-square section of the cliff faded away, leaving a black opening.
“And turn the gas lamps off,” Ant advised. “Nobody will believe Liam and Maddy lit all those things themselves.”
“Lights out!” Caleb yelled, then grinned. “It’s dark now.”
Barton studied the flying saucer with great interest before leading the way through the trees toward the waiting limousine.
As the three of them walked, Ant said, “Where are you two planning to go?”
“Yeah, Dad, where are we going?”
“Well, that little spacecraft back there might be very useful,” Barton said. “Perhaps we’ll give it a spin and get far away from here. We’ll go someplace where nobody will ask questions about me. I’ll have to test out the ship’s capabilities, maybe head straight upward above the clouds, then zip around the Earth . . .”
“We could go to the moon!” Caleb shouted.
His dad shook his head. “No. There’s no TV on the moon, son. Everybody knows that.”
“Oh.” Caleb thought for a moment. “But I could make TV work on the moon—”
“No. We’re staying on Earth. And you’re going to be a good boy and listen to me this time,” he added sternly. “Right?”
Caleb hung his head. “Yes, Dad.”
“So another state?” Ant asked.
“A bit farther than that, Master Anthony,” Barton said. “England, perhaps. We’ll retire to a small village somewhere.”
Caleb looked disappointed. “Sounds boring.”
They emerged by the lane, and Barton unlocked the car. He winked at Ant as he opened the front passenger door. “One final ride, my friend. I’ll take you home, and then I’ll come back for the tiny spaceship in the woods.”
“Are you leaving me here?” Caleb said, his voice rising in panic.
“Not a chance. You’re riding in the back. But you must stay out of sight.”
As Barton climbed into the driver’s seat and Caleb flung himself into the spacious rear, Ant sighed and knew it had to be this way. Taking care of the all-powerful and incredibly dangerous boy was Barton’s job, and he couldn’t do it here in a town where people knew him, where the authorities knew him as a middle-aged man with no family. They needed to go away together. Far, far away.
“One final ride,” Barton said again as he buckled his seatbelt and looked sideways at Ant. “Where to, my friend?”
“Madison’s house.”
Barton allowed a faint smile. “Right away, Master Anthony.”
Ant shook his head as the reality truly sunk in. “This means you’re not going to be my driver anymore.”
“Correct. This little jaunt will be our last.”
“But . . . but who will—?”
“I’m sure your father will find someone better suited to the task than me.”
Ant said nothing. No Barton? It didn’t seem right.
Things would never be the same again.
Chapter 13
Liam and Madison stood on the roof of the house with a rescue worker who called himself PJ. Wearing a helmet similar to Caleb’s, with a bright light on top, he’d come down ahead of the others as an advance scout. Now others were arriving.
Together, they watched as four more figures silently descended the shaft on a single tether, winched down from equipment high above. They landed one by one, each stepping aside to clear the way.
Now the warped rooftop seemed very crowded. PJ, along with two other men and two women, stamped around talking about how perfectly the house fit into the circular shaft. “It’s in such good shape!” one man commented.
PJ said, “This is Liam Mackenzie. And the other is Madison Parker.”
“Safe and sound,” one of the women said. She spoke softly into a walkie-talkie that had a wire of its own, connecting it directly to the surface instead of relying on a weak or nonexistent underground signal. “We got them. Both kids are alive and well. Repeat, alive and well.”
A burst of static followed, then a tinny voice: “Roger that.”
PJ was probably in his fifties with heavy eyebrows and a goatee. He had the look of someone with decades of experience in this line of work. Although fierce-looking, he also had a kind twinkle in his eye and a grin of white, even teeth. He’d already been exploring the house when Liam and Madison had met him. Now, as he prepared to descend for a full inspection, he winked at Liam and said loudly, “Looks like these kids have been partying down there. They trashed the house.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Liam said.
“It was totally his fault,” Madison assured the man.
All the rescue workers laughed in unison, and Liam felt a great weight lifting. Everything was going to be all right.
“Well, let’s get you kids to the surface. Plenty of time for talking later. Come on.”
****
Liam felt like a deteriorating Lurker, barely able to stand. He just wanted to sleep. One of the rescuers
kept offering him and Madison bottles of water while another checked their faces and prodded them gently. They seemed almost overly protective, asking over and over what injuries they’d sustained. “Any broken bones? Sprains? Gashes?” Liam had a few minor bumps, but he played them down. He was too tired to care.
Not much was required of them for the journey to the surface. Two men attached a harness to Liam and fastened it, and then the walkie-talkie woman ordered someone on the surface to “bring him up.” As he lifted into the air, he looked down and watched as they fitted Madison with a similar harness. She left the rooftop moments later, attached to the same rope—one very, very long rope. A man rose with them, while PJ and the others stayed behind to explore.
The ascent was painfully slow. Liam couldn’t help dozing off, and he woke to a circle of daylight above. Not daylight, he reminded himself. It’s still the middle of the night. Whatever dazzling array of searchlights they’d set up, he saw the heads and shoulders of people silhouetted around the rim. The rope was attached to a winch fixed to a sturdy framework standing across the fifty-foot shaft.
“We’re here,” Liam said.
Madison jerked awake. “Huh?”
“Wake up, sleepyhead.”
As soon as fresh air hit him, a scream went up. He heard the words, “My baby! My BABY!”
Inwardly, Liam groaned and wished his mom would tone it down just a little bit. But he couldn’t help choking up when he saw her ashen face and tear-streaked cheeks. Workers pulled him to one side of the shaft and grabbed him tightly while they unfastened the harness. Then he swayed and staggered into her arms.
She was babbling in his ear, but he barely made out her words. Then his dad rushed over and almost knocked him and his mom down.
He gasped at the masses of people running about on the lawn at this late hour—mostly firefighters, medics, and police officers, but a good number of neighbors as well. He lost sight of Madison in the crowd, but he knew she was around somewhere, being jostled and hugged and cried all over.
One person was missing: his best friend Ant. He kept one eye on the lane while trying his best to answer a barrage of questions from his dad. “Are you hurt? What happened down there? How were you not crushed? Did you find flashlights okay? Did you feel that tremor a little while ago? First a sinkhole, then an earthquake . . .”
Power of Imagination Page 6
