Forts: Liars and Thieves

by Steven Novak

  Reaching Staci’s room, Dale knocked softly three times on her door. “Stace?”

  While waiting for an answer, he ran his hand through his messy-stiff bed hair. Years ago he could have entered his daughter’s room whenever he liked. In fact, in those days her door was rarely, if ever, closed. She was getting older now. Age had brought with it many changes, one of which was the desire for privacy. As is the case with most in his situation, Dale was finding the realities of parenting a teenager difficult to come to terms with. Growing up meant going away, and going away is often a hard pill for a parent to swallow.

  Fifteen seconds passed without a response, and he knocked again. “Stace hunny, it’s daddy. Are you alright in there?” Still there was no answer.

  Then, out of the blue, he heard it: A bang, maybe a shuffle, something falling to the floor followed by a pair of barely audible whispers. Dale’s muscles went tight, and his body pulled straight and rigid. Despite being half asleep only a moment ago, his senses instantly sharpened.

  Grabbing the handle, he violently shoved the door open. “Staci? Are you alri—”

  Immediately focusing on Staci’s bed in the corner of the room, he noted the fact that it was empty. Through his peripheral vision he spotted the shape of someone with a head full of long, flowing brown hair climbing out the window onto the second story overhang. Before his brain even had time to consider a course of action, his body lunged in the direction of the bobbing ponytail. Shoving the dresser underneath the window out of the way with one hand and knocking it to the floor, he stuck his head angrily into the chilly night air. To his left, making her way carefully down the tree in the back yard, he caught a glimpse of his only daughter. Below her, already on the ground looking up at her, was the all-too-familiar Tommy Jarvis.

  With his entire upper body leaning out the window, Dale screamed at the top of his lungs “STACI, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!? GET BACK HERE! Staci, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Get back here!”

  His voice was booming so loud it could be heard a block away. Tommy Jarvis immediately looked up in the direction of the earsplitting sound. Despite the darkness, he could clearly make out Dale Alexander’s shape, the glare of the moonlight reflecting off the whites of his eyes.

  “Staci Lynne Alexander! You get back here right now!”

  Moments after Dale’s head disappeared back inside the house, Tommy could hear the stomping of the large man’s feet as he ran through the interior of the home and down the stairs leading to the backdoor. Looking up, Tommy noticed that Staci had stopped climbing halfway down the trunk of the tree, her body frozen in fear, no doubt wondering if she’d made the right choice in deciding to follow Tommy Jarvis and the little red man out her window and into the night. The sound of the Alexanders’ patio door slamming open cut through the mostly quiet night like the report of cannon fire. The porch light flickered on. The heavy thump of Dale Alexander’s feet on the aged, water damaged deck echoed off the surrounding houses in the neighborhood, waking neighbors three doors down. All down the block, windows that were black moments prior turned a warm yellow-white. Sleepy residents pulled their blinds open, hoping to catch a glimpse what was causing the commotion.

  His heart racing, Tommy looked up at the petrified girl above him and screamed, “Hurry!”

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 12

  RETURN TO FILLAGROU

  *

  With every stride, the frightening screams of Dale Alexander faded further away. Running at full speed, chests heaving, sweat pouring from their brows, the group of children quickly made their way through the space between the Parkers’ and the Thompsons’ houses and into the tree line adjoining their back yards. Once inside the forest, they were forced to slow just a bit. The surrounding trees were thick, clumped much too closely for anyone to move easily between them, especially in the middle of the night. The ground beneath their feet was uneven, cluttered with fallen debris not uncommon during the fall season. What little moonlight they had relied on until this point was now blocked by the partially leafy treetops. Visibility beyond even a few feet quickly became impossible. A significantly denser darkness folded around them, pulled them in, and turned them around, erasing all sense of direction. Hurriedly moving to the head of the group, Nicky reached into his backpack, where he retrieved a flashlight and clicked it on. He and his brother had traveled through these woods on their way to the tree fort more times than he could count. He knew every tree, every hole in the ground, every pile of leaves, and even every broken twig like the back of his hand. If anyone could get them through the forest quickly, it was he.

  Turning to face the rest of the group with a somewhat excited smile on his face, he stated confidently, “Follow me.”

  Bringing up the rear of the pack, a terrified and confused Staci Alexander was being pulled forward by Tommy. After Roustaf initially told her what was happening in Fillagrou, who had been captured, and what was at stake, she was anxious to help — maybe even a bit excited. As utterly horrifying as her initial trip to the strange Red Forest had been, a large part of her wanted very badly to see it again – to see her friends and hear their voices, not to mention hug Fellow Undergotten once more. She couldn’t explain why, but since her return from Fillagrou, the urge to go back had been gnawing at the inside of her brain like an unreachable itch she needed badly to scratch. Now faced with the reality of what it would take in order for her to step foot on the strange alien world again, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was making the right decision. Around her the air felt thick, wet, and heavy, cluttered with the sounds of crumpling leaves, snapping twigs and the breathy pants of her traveling companions. From somewhere behind, something bright and wobbly emerged: a beam of light created by a flashlight flickered across the scattered trees, lighting up their tattered aged trunks. The voice of her father, though weak and faraway, could still faintly be heard in the distance. What would her parents think? How mad would they be? Staci had always prided herself in the fact that she was never what some might call a “problem child.” Studious in her schoolwork, she always had high grades, wasn’t known for being overly emotional or prone to flights of fancy, or backtalk of any sort. For all intents and purposes, her parents couldn’t have asked for a better daughter. Running away in the middle of the night and ignoring her father’s enraged screams was unlike her. Would they ever forgive her? Would they be able to look at her the same way again? Why was she doing this? It didn’t make any sense. She shouldn’t be doing this and she knew it.

  Her mind awash with a million different thoughts, Staci’s attention was drawn away from the ground momentarily. Stepping awkwardly on a loose twig, her ankle twisted in a direction ankles aren’t meant to twist. The ground rushed up quickly to meet her face. A pair of arms wedged themselves underneath her armpits, stopping the forward movement of her body a mere moment before it collided with the dirt.

  “Whoa! I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Are you okay?” The voice was tender yet deep, frightened yet controlled. The voice belonged to Tommy Jarvis.

  As Tommy pulled her to a fully upright position, she turned toward him, their faces so close that they could feel the heat of each other’s breath on their chilled skin. The reflections from Nicky’s flashlight cascaded across Tommy’s eyes, bobbing back and forth hypnotically like partially translucent fish behind the glass of a bowl.

  “I’m fine …I-I’m fine,” Staci stammered, overcome with the sensation of momentary weightlessness in his arms.

  In this one instant she understood why she agreed to come along so willingly. If she were to be truthful with herself, she realized that it wasn’t for Tipoloo or Fillagrou or the war or Fellow Undergotten or Roustaf or Nicky — though they had played some small part. It was for him. It was for Tommy.

  The realization was both wonderful and horrifying.

  Like fingernails across a chalk board, the deep, grating voice of Donald Rondage quickly dragged her from her dreamy star
e and back to reality. “Hey losers, if we don’t keep moving, little Miss Staci’s old man is going to catch up to us! The dude might be half naked and wearing a pair of slippers, but he’s moving pretty fast. Come on!”

  Five or so minutes later the group exited the trees and made their way up and over a large grassy field and into yet another line of trees at the bottom of the hill. The glow of Dale Alexander’s flashlight had disappeared by the time they reached the Jarvis brothers’ tree fort. Standing next to the stream hiding the doorway to Fillagrou, the group as a whole stopped to catch their breath. High above them, the poorly constructed tree fort achingly creaked, wobbling ever so slightly as a result of a particularly stalwart gust of wind.

  Hovering four feet above the surface of the half-frozen black water, an anxious Roustaf turned to the children, his fluttering wings invisible against the night sky. “Well, is everyone ready?”

  He received no response.

  Moving his flashlight over the stream, Nicky breathed in deeply and held it, trying his best to slow his racing heart. The barely moving liquid looked darker than he remembered — darker, deeper, and a million times more ominous. It seemed so clear to him earlier, so simple. Returning to Fillagrou and helping his friends — there was never a moment’s hesitation. Now, though, staring down at the doorway, everything seemed far hazier. At last he exhaled, turned his head, and glanced in the direction of his older brother.

  Standing five feet away, Tommy could see the hesitation in his little brother’s eyes and hear the fear in his uneven breathing. A large part of him secretly hoped that Nicky would back out, prayed that he might take his flashlight and walk home to the Williamsons’ where he should have remained in the first place. At least there Tommy could be sure he was safe. On paper, the idea of returning to the strange world that very nearly killed them six months ago made no sense whatsoever to Tommy. Even with their incredible powers, even with the prophecy and the help of Nestor, Walcott, Pleebo and the citizens of New Tipoloo, it made no sense. They were just children after all, Donald, Nicky, Staci, and himself — every last one of them, just children. They were children doing things children had no business doing. They were children in situations in which children had no right being involved. A feeling, cold, icy, and impossibly thick inside Tommy’s stomach, told him this was a bad idea. This wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a storybook or a fantasy film; this was real life. In real life things didn’t always end well. In real life, the good guys didn’t always win. In fact, more often than not, in real life there was no such thing as the good guys. Real life is gray and unending. Real life is a question with no answer.

  His eyes glued to the silent group of children, Roustaf could only shake his head. Dragging four children onto the frontline of a war felt plain wrong on every level. Had he been asked to do the same thing a year ago, his answer would have been a resounding no. They didn’t belong there and they shouldn’t be a part of this. Things had changed since a year ago, though, and changed drastically. After seeing firsthand what the children were capable of, he discovered an odd, confusing, and slightly nonsensical faith in the prophecy of the Fillagrou elder. Maybe, somehow, despite the odds against them, these children could fix everything. Even if they couldn’t, even if the prophecy was little more than the pointless ramblings of a mad Fillagrou elder pushed to the absolute limits of his sanity, they were without a doubt capable of magic on a level he never believed possible. He had witnessed firsthand how Tommy wiped out an entire Ochan regiment with the subtle twist of his wrist. It was remarkable, something he could never forget, even if he wanted to. If the children couldn’t put an end to the war, maybe, just maybe, at the very least they could save Pleebo and Walcott. Despite his reservations, it is for this reason alone that Roustaf resigned himself to the reality that he had to at least try. Over the course of the war, many times he’d been asked to do things that he didn’t completely agree with, but such is the nature of combat. This was simply another of those instances.

  “Wait a minute,” Donald interrupted, moving slowly from the back of the group to the water’s edge. “How do we know this thing will even take us back? I’ve tried it more than a couple times since returning and ended up having to walk all the damn way home dripping wet.”

  “I don’t know kid,” Roustaf responded with honesty, looking up from the stream while lifting himself a few feet higher into the air. “All I can tell you is that Zanell guaranteed me it’ll work, and while she might suck at directions, she’s fairly spot on with her predictions these days.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot. It lets through who it needs to let through when they need to be let through …I remember her crazy spiel.” Donald sighed deeply, running his fingers through his greasy hair and rolling his eyes.

  Turning briefly, he looked behind him in the direction of his house. For Donald the choice had already been made — in fact, it was remarkably simple. He didn’t want to go back home. There was nothing to go back to really — nothing worthwhile anyway. Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, he dipped one foot into the water. The ice-cold liquid instantly seeped through the fabric of his worn and beaten gym shoe, soaking the dirty sock within. Turning toward the rest of the group, he scanned their faces, eventually stopping on Tommy Jarvis’s.

  A crooked smile slowly spread across his lips. “Screw it. Let’s go for it.”

  Not fully realizing he was doing it, Tommy smiled back.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 13

  THROUGH THE TUNNELS

  *

  The undeniably familiar yet wholly unique experience of traveling from one world to the next washed over Tommy’s body less than a second after dropping feet first into the greenish-black stream water. In an instant, everything that once was washed away. Concepts of form and shape no longer existed. The universe swallowed him completely, tugging him into the strange in-between where direction no longer had meaning and gravity became merely an abstract. Up folded into down and left transformed to right; back and forth came together at last, morphing into a bizarrely cohesive hybrid of the two. In the passageway between the place he knew as Earth and the strange world referred to by the locals as Fillagrou, sound and thought and idea were without meaning. In this strange nothing there existed only space — or, more appropriately, a vague reflection of the concept of space, an unproven hypothesis of an idea not fully fleshed out. These sensations terrified Tommy the first time he experienced them after falling into the stream with Donald Rondage six months ago. Something was different now. The silence, the emptiness, and the sensation of nonsensation felt oddly comforting and weirdly fulfilling. More than the Fillagrou forest, more than the Williamsons’ house, more than with his father or in the town he was born, the void felt like home. If only it could have lasted longer.

  From the darkness, the moist, slightly chilly feeling of water swept in from underneath him. Again his fingers could feel; again his body had shape. Fully submerged in an extremely familiar liquid, he began swimming toward a bit of blue light above him and broke the surface of the water a moment later. While he was gasping for air, two sets of hands pawed at various parts of his upper body, grabbing the fabric of his shirt and lifting him from the dark liquid. Just as before, what was a stream ten to fifteen feet wide and miles long in his world was now barely more than a puddle, barely large enough to hold the entirety of his body. After awkwardly dragging him onto solid ground, Nicky and Staci helped Tommy to his feet. Both were dripping wet, Staci’s petite body shivering uncontrollably in the nippy air of the Fillagrou night.

  “Exactly how you remembered it, huh?” she chirped with a half-smile as she rubbed her hands up and down along her arms in an ultimately ineffective attempt to raise her lowered body temperature.

  Tommy smiled back at her and laughed slightly. He was beginning to feel the cold himself, but tried his best to ignore it. Around him the Red Forest was pitch black, the only bit of light coming from a rather large, hauntingly blue moon peeking thr
ough the breaks in the dense foliage of the trees. As it had been night in his world, so it was here. Whizzing past Tommy’s head, Roustaf came to a hovering stop a few feet from the boy’s face in the center of the group.

  “We better get moving,” The tiny man injected, wringing water from the pants leg of his overalls. “I’m thinking we can make it to New Tipoloo before daybreak, as long as we don’t move like a pack of one-legged Lazigorns.”

  The children stared back at him with confused expressions; none of them had any idea what in the world a one-legged Lazigorn might be. Whatever it was though, it did indeed sound slow.

  The next three hours were spent hiking quietly through the darkened forest with Roustaf leading the way. Before beginning, the little mustached man had instructed the group to keep the chatter to a minimum, or more specifically to “shut your yaps.” In the six months since the children laid waste to the Ochan fortress, decimated its army, and murdered its prince, patrols of the Red Forest had tapered off somewhat. Tapered off, however, by no means meant they had ceased completely. The forest remained quite dangerous — the less of a ruckus created, the safer for all involved.

  Two of Fillagrou’s three suns were slowly making their way up and over the horizon when the group at last arrived at the hidden passageway leading to New Tipoloo. One by one they dropped through a trapdoor in the grayish-brown soil that was camouflaged by a pair of densely covered bushes. From here they made their way through a maze of stuffy, pitch-black underground tunnels with enough twists and turns to confuse anyone not wholly familiar with their layout. No less than ten minutes into the trek, Donald Rondage began to wonder how in the world Roustaf knew where he was going — if, in fact, he did at all. Though the entire trip had taken barely more than thirty minutes, the sweltering heat and dust, coupled with an awful wet clay smell, made it seem a good deal longer. Donald’s feet were sore, his calves on fire. A large, throbbing pain in his head had begun pressing against the interior of his temples. Moments away from reaching his physical breaking point, Donald glared upward just in time to see Roustaf come to a stop in front of an enormous stone blocking their path, thus putting an abrupt end to their forward movement.