The Specter Key

by Kaleb Nation

  “Are you trying something funny?” the officer growled, rattling the handcuffs as he pulled them out. “Now by the order of the Great and Glorious City of Dunce, I hereby arrest you, Mr. Sewey Wilomas, for—”

  “What’s this?!” Colonel Brumtoppa roared.

  Sewey spun, the officers looked up, and everyone else began to stumble backward. Right above the Colonel’s head, the ceiling had begun to glow. It seemed to be a trick of the light, but in a second all doubt had been erased, because the glow expanded at a rapid speed, seizing the wall and growing to the floor. It was like a ring of fire that did not burn, and it cast a strange greenness upon their petrified faces.

  “Great Moby…” was all Sewey could say.

  The glow caught the wallpaper, spreading down the halls, up to the ceiling, growing in brightness, as if everything were catching flame.

  The officers, breaking from their fear, suddenly shouted from outside, and Sewey saw that the green had lit up the yard and street. He shouted, and the guests screamed and began to run for the door. Sewey was pushed aside in the frenzy, the green growing brighter and stronger.

  A slow, rising, high-pitched sound squealed in Sewey’s ears. The bright, fiery glow blinded him. He finally reached the door, surrounded by the piercing green light, the noise, and the screams from the people around him as they dashed out of the house in a mass panic.

  When he staggered outside, his strength returned and he found himself running with Mabel beside him. He discovered that in his arms he was carrying Baldretta, though he had no memory of picking her up. They spilled into the street, and Sewey spun, looking back at the house amid the shouting and sirens. He squinted in the light.

  The entire house, from the bottom of the open door to the highest point of the roof, was a piercing green. He looked up and saw that there seemed to be a source: a deeper, darker glow, from which the illumination seemed to originate. It was the attic window.

  “Great rot…” his voice finally returned, though he couldn’t even hear himself over the shouts and screams of those around him.

  ***

  Bran and Astara arrived back at the bookstore, though Bran stayed in the back room, still feeling out of place. Astara fetched Adi, who was happy to drive them both back to Bolton Road for the remainder of the Wilomases’ party.

  As they approached Bolton Road, he spotted something strange ahead.

  “Look at that,” he said, pointing upward. Right above the rooftops of the houses, they could see a strange, green glow on the dark horizon.

  “Wow,” was all Adi could say. “Are those fireworks?”

  “But it’s green,” Astara pointed out. “All the fireworks for today would be yellow.”

  Their confusion only grew as the brightness of the glow became more pronounced. Bran spotted blue and red lights ahead.

  “Oh no…” he said.

  Adi turned onto Bolton Road. And he saw the madness. People were running about screaming in party clothes. There were police with guns shouting into radios, jumping into their cars; guests were falling onto the grass, dashing across the street, doing anything they could to get away from the light.

  Adi gasped, spinning into the street and gunning the engine. Bran could only stare at the house. The brakes on Adi’s car screeched to a halt, but Bran had his door open a moment before, leaping out and stumbling forward, shielding his eyes as he did.

  An enormous, high-pitched tone pulsated from the house, cutting into his ears. Bran fell forward, dodging behind a police car when he could go no farther. His skin was bathed in the light, and his heart pounded harder as the fear rose within him. The box! his mind screamed. The noise and the light were so strong that he felt he would be pulverized by it. But then the sound began to take forms in his mind.

  It became a mixture of high, garbled screams, like a crowd of people being murdered, screaming in agony at the same time.

  “Hammmbriiiic,” he caught: a whisper floating among the agony. He heard it again, and a third time. There were so many voices that he could not decipher any other words, just a mass of torture.

  There was a great, deafening shatter, as the windows of the Wilomases’ house exploded outward. The people screamed and covered their faces, the yard littered with bits of broken glass that sparkled like gems in the green light.

  “Hambricccc!” the voice called again, sick and hurting. It twisted around Bran like a whirlwind.

  Out of the corner of Bran’s eye, he saw someone move. Astara stumbled to her feet, wavering for a moment.

  “Get down!” Bran shouted, but his voice could not be heard above the screams and echoes coming from the house. Astara didn’t even notice him, her face stony and pale, as if she was seeing something everyone else could not. Her eyes locked on the open doorway, and Bran shouted for her again, but she stumbled forward a step toward the house.

  “What are you doing?” Bran yelled, but Astara pushed forward, the power rushing against her with the strength of a thousand winds, blowing her hair and shoving her back—but her gaze remained focused ahead, as she took another heavy step closer. Bran pulled himself up; she was nearly to the door, the lights from inside the house silhouetting her in their glare.

  “Stop, Bran!” Adi tried to grab his arm, but he pushed her away, fighting his way toward Astara, covering his face with his arm.

  Astara didn’t notice him. Her clothes were being buffeted by the powers that fought against her steps. Bran tried casting magic outward, anything to pull her back, but the magic did not come. She stopped at the door, the green glow now so bright that Bran couldn’t see anything but the black outline of her form.

  “Astara!” he yelled, one final time.

  But before her name had left his lips, Astara stepped across the threshold.

  In an instant, she was enveloped by the green, like a wave of water crashing over her. She was lifted from her feet a few inches, her body bending as if a cord had wrapped around her waist and pulled. Bran continued to fight, but the power from the house leapt forth even more fiercely than before, throwing him off his feet. The scream of the crowd became intermingled with the screams of the voices, the scream of Adi, the scream of Bran…as Astara was consumed by the light.

  The moment Astara disappeared, a glow burst from the house like a bomb. The roof right above Bran’s bedroom exploded outward, and everyone leapt for cover as bits and pieces of shrapnel rained down. Bran had no cover and threw his arms over his head, trying to shield himself. From the hole erupted a deep beam of green light, piercing the sky. Black clouds swirled around the light in a fiery storm.

  The beam crackled and fought like a beast waging war in the sky. There came one final, great blast of light and a roar—and then it was gone. The noise shriveled up. The voices ceased. The glow shrank back through the hole in the roof, like the fading of hot embers in a fire, and the streetlamps, which had been blown out, flickered back to life until the road was once again filled with their friendly yellow glow.

  And there, lying still on the doorstep, was Astara: her face solid white, her lungs drawing no breath, and a blank, glassy stare.

  Chapter 14

  Her Death

  Every muscle within Bran cried out as he pushed himself to his feet, screaming Astara’s name. He rushed for the house, but Adi caught him. He fought, but she held him back, so he struggled against her with magic, caring nothing for anyone who saw them. Before he knew what he was doing, his powers shoved Adi through the air, where she hit the side of the car many feet away and fell—unnoticed in the frenzy. He ran toward the house, but her magic seized his legs, bringing him to the ground. She was upon him in an instant, holding him, shouting his name, though he didn’t hear her.

  “Astara!” Bran called again, as if it would somehow erase what he had seen.

  “Stop, Bran!” Adi hissed in his ear. “Stop this now before we’re both arrested and we
can’t help her at all!”

  Bran hadn’t even realized there were tears in his eyes before he felt them, though no cries escaped from his lips. There were just tears: hot tears that fell down the side of his face and were dried by the grass as Adi kept him pinned. He saw white shoes running past: paramedics who would have no way of helping Astara anymore.

  “She’s gone,” Bran said, his voice cracking.

  “I saw it,” Adi whispered, her voice filled with terror. Bran heard the medics hollering, trying to revive Astara and yelling into radios for backup.

  He heard another siren, lights flashing from an ambulance. He fought Adi once more, trying to see Astara, but as the medics lifted her body, her arm fell limply at her side. They rushed past Bran, and he pressed his face against the grass, unable to hear himself weep.

  Adi loosened her hold on him, and so he shoved her away, leaping to his feet and dashing toward the ambulance. The medics had already loaded her, and they slammed the door just as he caught a glimpse of her face: a breathing mask over her mouth and nose. He kept running, but the ambulance took off, roaring around the corner in the direction of the hospital.

  “She’s not dead,” Bran said to himself. “If she were dead, they wouldn’t even take her to the hospital.” He sank to his knees on the pavement. It was the only thing he could believe. The only reason they would have taken her away was if they thought they might revive her. He told himself this over and over, rubbing his palms against his jeans as his hands shook.

  Adi came up behind Bran and put her arms around him. The scene was still pandemonium; some of the crowd was still screaming, some were on cell phones, others leaned against one another for support. The officers were wielding their guns as if something might erupt from the darkness at any moment.

  “Bran, get up,” Adi said.

  “No, leave me alone,” Bran shouted, striking her arms away.

  “Shut up, Bran!” Adi yelled—he had never heard her shout in that way before, and it caused him to shrink back. “Listen to me! Either you can sit here in the road or you can get up and get in my car and we can get down to Holdsben Hospital so Astara isn’t all alone.”

  Bran couldn’t say anything, but he let Adi pull him up and into her car. Through the front window, he saw the Wilomases gathered across the street, Balder and Baldretta crying into their parents’ sides, while Sewey and Mabel just stared blankly. A pair of officers looked in the direction of Adi’s car as she slammed the door, and turned to come after them, but Adi gunned the engine, roaring in a sharp circle. Bran looked out the back window and saw the wreckage of what had been their home: the windows reduced to jagged pieces of glass, the bushes and the grass bent out, a large hole in the roof through which Bran could see the attic and what was left of his bedroom. But his mind seemed to have no fear at all for his things or the place in which he had lived for so long—all that consumed his mind was Astara and her face of terror as she had been pulled toward the strange green glow.

  He hadn’t even realized that the tears had stopped, and he wiped his face with the back of his shirtsleeve. His head pounded, and his muscles were sore. His ears burned; every nerve in his body was calling out in pain.

  “She’s not dead, is she?” Bran asked. Adi didn’t say anything, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. Bran’s senses were slowly coming back to him, and he realized that Adi had her foot flat against the floor of the car, weaving in and out between traffic and swerving around corners.

  “Please, Adi, just tell me she’s not dead,” Bran said, his voice more of a whispered sob than a question.

  “Just don’t ask me that, Bran,” Adi said, and Bran noticed that tears streamed down Adi’s cheek as well. Whatever strength that had remained within him vanished immediately as he saw the answer written across Adi’s face, and he slumped against the car door.

  Adi slammed her car to a stop in front of the hospital. She threw her door open, and Bran stumbled out on his side. Someone yelled at Adi that she couldn’t park her car in that spot, but she swore at him so angrily he left her alone, and she threw the automatic sliding doors apart because they didn’t move fast enough for her to get inside.

  “Excuse me!” the woman at the front desk protested as Adi stormed in. Adi simply rushed past her to the emergency center, but the thick doors slammed shut and locked. She spun on the woman at the desk, whose finger was still poised over a large red button.

  “You can’t go in there, miss,” the woman said sharply.

  “We have to see someone, she just got here a few minutes ago,” Bran said desperately.

  “Are you family?” the woman asked.

  “No,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “But we’re—”

  “Only family is allowed back there now,” the woman said.

  “But she doesn’t have any family!” Bran said.

  Adi looked as if she was about to fly into a rage, and for a moment Bran thought she might even use magic—but Adi curled her fingers into fists, then loosened them once more. She let her breath out slowly.

  “All right,” Adi said dejectedly, and Bran knew the fighting was over.

  He fell into a chair, and sat in the lobby among all the others who wept for their loved ones. But Bran remembered nothing from the rest of that day, except for two words whispered to Adi from one of the doctors:

  “She’s dead.”

  Chapter 15

  The Shadow of Her Memory

  The feeling of numbness did not leave Bran in the hours that followed. It was as if his mind had built a wall to protect him from being hurt anymore. He heard voices, but he did not know who spoke; he saw faces, but he did not recognize who they were. Many doctors came and left, speaking to Adi and to him and to others, but the only word he seemed to catch was “Astara”—the name that had once been hers.

  Things became a blur as the pain sank deeper into his soul. Adi forced him to eat, though every bite of food made him sick inside. When the Wilomases showed up at the hospital, he covered his face with the blanket and let Adi tell them he would be spending the night in the lobby with her. She had tried to convince him to go back with them, but he did not want to leave that chair.

  His mind didn’t believe that she was really gone, even when Adi finally got him out of the hospital and loaded him into the car. He stared out the window, saying nothing as Adi drove away. He didn’t even know how much time had passed. As he watched the building disappear, he knew that somewhere inside was Astara’s lifeless body.

  “I hope they don’t put her in a freezer,” Bran said. “She doesn’t like the cold.”

  His words made no sense—they just fell out. Adi didn’t reply; she stared tearfully at the dark, rainy streets of Dunce.

  Bran stayed at Adi’s house and slept in the spare bedroom. He saw Polland once when he came inside, but Polland didn’t say anything—or if he did, Bran didn’t notice. He crawled into the bed and held tightly to a pillow at his side. He fell asleep and remembered nothing more.

  His senses slowly began to come back as the numbness wore off, and he found himself days later standing outside with other people in suits and formal clothes. He realized that he was also in a suit, though he had no memory of putting it on, or the black tie either, or even riding in the car there. His eyes were trained on a deep hole in the ground. Beside it rested a dark, wooden casket with the lid already closed.

  He slowly began to recognize the faces of those around him: Sewey and Mabel and the children standing across from him; Mr. Cringan, his rough face haggard and unshaven and his eyes red with tears; two other women Bran didn’t recognize. They were all holding umbrellas to block out the light rain that drizzled down from the branches of the trees. He looked to his right and saw Adi standing beside him, holding an umbrella for the two of them.

  His mind registered who was in the wooden casket, though it didn’t q
uite wrap itself around the fact that it was Astara who was being buried. It felt wrong that he wasn’t crying as he stared ahead in stony silence like the Wilomases, who were there simply because she had died in their home and it was the respectable thing to do.

  Some men came forward to place the casket into the ground. Bran started.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “I didn’t get to tell her good-bye.”

  “You did, Bran,” Adi said, swallowing hard. “You don’t remember.”

  “No, you need to stop them,” Bran said desperately.

  “Please, Bran,” Adi said, her voice filled with pain. “You don’t want to see her like this. I promise you.”

  Bran stood silently for the rest of the burial. When the men filled the hole in with dirt, everyone stood around for a few minutes before slowly drifting off. As the others walked away, Bran started to tell Astara how chilly and wet it was that morning, and how he hoped it didn’t put Sewey in a bad mood, and how it sometimes made the brakes on his bike slippery, which was actually fun because it would make the tires skid—but he just shut his mouth again, because she just wasn’t there.

  Sewey came their way, and Bran ducked down so Sewey wouldn’t notice him.

  “Erm…” Sewey stammered, not sure what to say. “I’m…sorry, Bran. About your friend.”

  Bran didn’t say anything.

  “He’s doing all right,” Adi said to Sewey for him.

  “And he’s all right at your place?” Sewey said, his voice taking on a strange, foreign tone of sympathy. “Ours is in a bit of a…situation. We’re sending the children off to relatives while things get fixed, and we can send Bran off as well.”

  “He’s no trouble with me,” Adi said. “I think he’s better staying with me anyway.”