by C. D. Bryan
Thomas and Pip looked at each other timidly then nodded their heads.
“Is that what happened to Preston, Grandfather?” asked J.R. “I saw his name on the Black List, in Mr. L. LoDS’ book. I saw it along with something else when he was flipping his pages closed.”
“Well,” replied Mr. C reluctantly, “I’m not supposed to talk about those listed on the Black List, but for the sake of a lesson, this one time, we will.” He sighed. “Preston had the worst kind of symptoms that can put a person on the Black List, J.R. He wanted his dreams but didn’t want to do any work to make them happen, and he hurt and used people. That will put you on the Black List in a Whiffler’s minute. Of course, there are some in the Ambassador’s League that think he’s on the Black List because he stole the book missing from Mrs. WEK’s display case. Well, enough on that, I have to go.” Mr. C stepped in front of the mirror then paused and raised his finger into the air once again.
J.R. couldn’t help but smile thinking his grandfather was more like an absent-minded professor than an ambassador.
“Oh, one more thing, J.R.,” said his grandfather. “I know you feel lost and unsure but follow your willing-heart and keep believing. And if you’ve lost your way remember to follow the signs, Caput Mansus Trans de ut Angulus.” Mr. C touched the mirror and returned to a liquid form. “Retrieve the sacred text, J.R. You need it for the transition when the time comes. And beware . . . he knows who you are.” Mr. C stepped into the mirror. “Take care, kids. WAOO! Whiffler’s Ambassador Over and Out.”
Pip and Thomas stepped back as the gelatin-like surface of the mirror belched, bubbled, and burped, then returned to its solid state and began rotating again.
“Time for us to get out of here too,” said J.R. looking at the door curious as to what he’d find on the other side. But more over he was wondering about the translation of the Latin phrase, Caput Mansus Trans de ut Angulus that his grandfather uttered before melting into the mirror. What did it mean?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Wondering Souls Shouldn’t Go
J.R. touched the glass and looked back at Pip and Thomas. “So much for frequent-flyer miles, huh?” he joked, as he headed for the door back to Mrs. WEK’s room.
“So what do you think your grandfather meant?” asked Pip.
“I’m not sure,” answered J.R.
“Hey, where are you going,” asked Thomas.
“To ask Mrs. WEK how we get out of here,” said J.R. as he tried—to no avail—turning the doorknob. But when he let go he heard rattling as if someone was turning a key and unlocking the door.
The door opened inward this time, and a short stocky guard who said nothing, removed his hat and gestured toward an exit through the doorway and ultimately out of the house.
J.R., Pip and Thomas looked at one another as if they didn’t trust it to be that easy, but all three ran out the door and into the front yard of the house on that corner. Each of them taking long deep breaths of fresh air and looking back as the guard slammed the front door and returned to his position near the entrance.
J.R. sighed with deep relief and turned and headed for the street.
“Wow, we’re finally out of there,” said Thomas. “I was sure we’d never get out.”
“J.R.,” called Pip. “Where’re you going?”
J.R. didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the marble and rolling it between his fingers.
“J.R.,” said Pip, “are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“It’s that phrase,” said J.R. “I’ve heard it somewhere before. And it’s definitely Latin.” He looked back at the house then across the street. “I’ve got it. Do either of you have your card from that collector guy?”
“Oh,” said Thomas, reaching into his back pocket. “You mean Mr. Scary of scare himself?”
“Yeah,” said J.R., taking the business card. “Here, right here, I knew it.” He positioned his thumb under the Collector-at-Large title. “See what it says? That’s exactly what my grandfather said–Caput Mansus Trans de ut Angulus.”
Pip and Thomas moved closer.
“I wonder what it is and why is it on Mr. Scary’s business card?” Thomas asked, worriedly.
“I don’t know,” answered J.R., “but we’re gonna find out.” He pulled out his Junior Archeologist Latin dictionary and leafed through its pages several times. “Ok, Caput Mansus means . . . ‘the manor house’; and Trans means ‘across’—that one I know. And, let’s see . . . de means . . . ‘from’; and ut means ‘that’; and the last one, Angulus, means . . .” He paused and flipped his dictionary closed but didn’t reveal the last translation.
“Yeah, and what does Angulus mean?” asked Pip.
J.R. didn’t say a word; he grabbed a pen and paper and wrote it all out then handed it to Pip.
“The manor house across from that corner,” said Pip, reading from the paper. “What does it mean? I don’t get it.”
“Here . . . look,” said J.R. “On the business card that phrase is filled in like a street address.” J.R. took the paper back and wrote something more and gave it back to her.
“The house on that corner?” she read.
“That corner,” said the three of them in unison as they turned around on the curb in front of the house on that corner and looked directly across the street into the woods.
“Ok,” said Pip. “But there’s just a bunch of trees.” She looked at J.R. “You ran through them with us last night, remember? There’s no house back there.”
J.R. was speechless because he knew she was right. He didn’t see any houses in the woods last night. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well,” said Thomas, “What makes sense to me is that we’re not supposed to find Mr. Scary, collector-at-large. We’re supposed to let him do his thing and we do ours, which at this time means . . .” He turned and began walking away. “We should all go home.”
“Thomas Dean,” said Pip with a scold. “Is that what an honorary ambassador would do?”
“Oh geez,” replied Thomas, “why’d you have to go and say that?” With a steady but reluctant swagger he walked back.
“You know what?” said J.R. with conviction. “Everyone keeps telling me to follow my willing-heart and to keep believing. So that’s what I’m going to do.” J.R. pulled a compass out of his backpack. “Pip, which way is the club house?” He gauged the direction she was pointing. “Ok, that’s east. So, we’re going to head southeast, deeper into the woods.”
“You’ll just run into that ridge,” said Thomas. “The one we saw from deep in the valley, remember that one where I saw that—”
“That fortress,” responded J.R.
“Oh boy,” said Thomas, his shoulders sinking, as J.R. crossed the street and walked onto a path leading into the woods. “Does our ambassador status come with any special super powers, J.R.?”
The three of them formed a line on a path across street and followed it deeper and deeper into the woods until it became impossible to walk between the full-grown trees, the saplings, and the thorn bushes with spiky daggers sticking out in every direction.
Pip stopped. “I can’t go any further,” she said, “there’s no room to walk and these thorns are tearing me to shreds.”
J.R. and Thomas stopped.
“Well, we’re at a dead end anyway,” said Thomas. “The path goes under those thorn bushes.”
J.R. looked closer. “Yeah, but we can crawl under that, look . . .” J.R. pointed. “There, it’s like a little tunnel.”
Thomas looked at J.R. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” said J.R.
“Ok,” agreed Thomas, “I’ll go through first but if we get through and there’s nothing there we come right back, all right?”
“Sounds fair to me,” said J.R. “Pip, are you ok with that?”
Pip was quiet for a second. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Thomas got down on his hands and knees then dropped to his belly and snaked under the thorn bus
hes and their spiky daggers.
“You get through,” asked J.R.
“Almost there,” answered Thomas. “One sec . . . Holy-geezum-harp-toads.”
“What?” yelled J.R. and Pip in unison as they dropped to the ground, grunted and squirmed along on their bellies.
“It’s really here,” said Thomas. “But it’s more like a deserted castle.”
The three of them crawled a little further, being sure it was safe first, then stood and walked into a small clearing.
“Okay,” said Pip. “That’s where your sacred text is? I have to admit, that looks a little creepy to me.”
The blackish-gray skeleton of a fortress sat slightly recessed in the ground with its far side opening to a plateau overlooking the valley.
“I guess,” said J.R. not feeling too confident at the moment, as the three of them decided to take off running down a hill leading to the castle. “This isn’t so bad, right? We go in and look around. If the text isn’t here then we leave. Sound good?
“What was that?” yelled Pip and Thomas in unison as they slowed to a walk, nearing the entrance.
“I said we go in and check—“
“No not you, J.R.,” said Pip raising her hand to her ear. “That.”
“There, it’s coming from over there,” said Thomas, pointing toward the far end of the fortress. “Oh no . . . It’s a dog.”
“Come on we have to get inside,” yelled J.R. as they dashed for the door
The dog stopped at the end of the walkway and growled, as if calculating which one of them was the weakest and easiest target. Then it made small aggressive advances toward them and began barking again. They pushed on the door but it wouldn’t budge.
“There, Thomas,” yelled J.R., “Behind you, pull on that.”
Thomas turned and pulled on a large ring fastened to a rope that disappeared into a hole in the wall and the door creaked open. “Ding Dong, we’re in,” said Thomas, bringing a smile to both Pip and J.R.
The three of them looked back at the dog. Its face wrinkled into a snarl before shaking its head in a twist, throwing and whipping saliva clear from its muzzle, then charging like a raging bull.
“That looks like the dog from the woods last night,” said J.R.
They jumped inside, turned and drove the door shut at the last second. The dog growled and barked several more times then stopped. The three of them put their ears to the door and listened. It was gone.
“Well, J.R.,” said Thomas. “We’re in. I sure hope that sacred text is here.”
“It has to be,” said J.R. insistently.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Darkness Moans and Shivers Bones
J.R. strained to see as his eyes adjusted to the darker inside light. And he quickly covered his nose to shield it from the musty air lurking with the smell of wet newspapers and dog kennels. Right away he noticed the inside didn’t have that hollow kind of echoing sound he expected. That puzzled him, not that he’d ever been in a castle or fortress before, but he’d seen enough movies to expect that. As the inside became more visible, he walked from the entrance into the middle of a large, towering, circular room. “Something about this place smells and feels sick,” he whispered.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” agreed Pip.
J.R. could see the far end of the room was filled with seemingly countless layers of bookshelves all the way up the wall. Most were packed with antique books and others crowded with objects of every imaginable kind. At the base of the bookcase was an entrance to an iron stairwell that spiraled up and around the wall encircling the room. And evenly spaced along its ascent were large, barred cells each in the shape of a square, each resembling some sort of prison or kennel.
“J.R.,” said Thomas, “how are you going to know which book is the right book? There must be thousands in here.”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” answered J.R. feeling overwhelmed for moment.
“Well we really need to figure it out,” said Pip and get out of here. I have a bad feeling.”
“I second that,” said Thomas. “That’s if we think we can get past that monster outside.”
Just then, without warning a tin cup dinged Thomas in the head, and fell to the floor with a clang. “What the heck.”
“Shh . . .” said Pip and J.R. in unison.
“But it wasn’t me,” replied Thomas, looking around for an answer as to where it came from.
“And please no more talk about monsters?” insisted Pip in a quick and snappy fashion.
And just as quickly the towering room suddenly filled with the sound of a thousand tin cups clinking and clanking across bars. J.R., Pip and Thomas cringed and crouched in a huddle on the floor. And just as quickly gleams raced out of their HAM manuals forming a barrier in front of them that sprayed light up into the far reaches of the towering room.
“Look,” cried Thomas. “There must be hundreds of them.”
The three of them stared in shock at all the pairs of glowing green eyes behind the barred cells above. They were swaying back and forth with the cadence of clinking and clanking tin cups. Charcoal-gray arms reached out empty handed and others threw more cups.
“What are they?” said Pip.
“They look like that monstrous thing that was following Preston,” said Thomas.
And on the word “monstrous,” every one of them started moaning and groaning, and again clanked their cups.
“Shh . . .” said Pip, motioning with her finger at Thomas. “Don’t say that word.”
“What word?” asked Thomas.
“Monstrous,” Pip answered, and the creatures moaned and groaned again.
“Pip’s right,” said J.R. “we shouldn’t say that. It seems to upset them.”
“Hey, look,” said Pip, pointing over J.R.s shoulder. “There’s a thin blue light coming from over by that bookcase in the wall.”
“She’s right,” agreed Thomas.
But the three of them quickly shifted their focus to what sounded like someone talking in a low raspy whisper. They turned around and saw a scaly-armored hand and arm reaching out from between the bars of one of the cells only ten feet away.
“Help . . . me . . . not bad,” the voice attached to the arm said. “I have . . . dreams, I’m . . . good.”
As they moved closer they could see the figure wasn’t like the rest. It had a more humanistic resemblance. And when they reached the opening, it had moved away from the bars back into the dark recess of its captive space.
“The light . . . please . . . put it out,” it requested.
The gleams extinguished their lights as if understanding the need, and as they did, the thing moved closer, dragging itself on its belly by its forearms and elbows. It brought its face to the bar, along with a foul, offensive smell akin to decomposing worms in rotten egg yolk.
Thomas, Pip, and J.R. nearly gagged; they each pulled their shirts up over their mouth and nose.
“I know . . . what you seek . . . I can help you,” the thing whispered.
“Where is it?” said Thomas, his voice muffled through his shirt.
It didn’t answer. It dropped its head to the floor and began to quietly weep. As it did, J.R. noticed a tag around its wrist with the inscription; I.S. - P.P.P.III
“Excuse me?” said J.R.
It raised its head and tears ran down its prune-like face. “Are you the inner self of Phillip P. Preston the third?”
It lowered its head again. “Yes, that I am.”
J.R. felt the Blue Blink-Eye marble radiate a warm charge of heat from inside his pocket, as if signaling something.
“We can help you,” said J.R. “And we can help Preston. We can change you both back—to being believers again.”
The creature raised its head. “Shh . . . don’t say that in here.” The other captives moaned. “I will help you find your book . . . but you have to promise . . . to come back to get me . . . even if I turn completely into a pangolin. Maybe . . . I can be saved.
”
The creature grabbed its chest as if he were having a heart attack. His skin turned a darker shade of gray with scaly outlines. “I will only be able to talk to you now. When the metamorphosis completes, I will have my thoughts—or those of Preston—but I will not be able to speak them.” His head dropped limp to the floor.
“J.R., ask where it is before it’s too late?” said Thomas.
“Go to the passage,” the creature said, “on the next level. . . It’s the only . . . way out. What you seek . . . is in the last door. Gooo-d-d-d,” stuttered the tortured inner self of Preston before pushing itself back into the blackness of its cell.
J.R. guessed it was trying to say good luck, but the change that was filling its body wouldn’t let the words out. J.R. felt sorry for it. He turned around and looked at the countless numbers of similar cells and occupants. He wondered how many other places like this there were in the world. He finally understood why it was necessary to protect the dreams and stop the pandemic. He felt himself truly wanting to be the Whiffler for the first time. He looked at Preston’s inner self. “I have to stop this from happening to other kids. I have to get that book.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Illusions Cause Confusion
In a strange new way, J.R. felt less inner debate about what to do, like things were falling into place, with a solid direction that was of his own choosing. He enjoyed that.
Pip bent down and stared into the darkness of the cell. “You have to keep fighting it,” she whispered. “Keep believing in yourself, in Preston. That’s the only way you can get back to your original self, and get out of here. Trust us.” She stood up. “I say we go check out the light by the bookcase and see what it is,” insisted Pip abruptly as she looked at J.R. “You’re right, you have to get you that book.”
