by Holly Lisle
Minerva ran to the bed — through her eyes, he caught the sensation of flinging himself to the floor and staring under the bed. The space was full of naked Barbies and broken crayons and rumpled shirts and pants and socks rolled inside out. Minerva’s hand shot out and pawed through the mess. Then, inexplicably, she stopped and looked around.
Good, he thought. Minerva heard her. Carol must have been down the hall in the bathroom or something.
But Minerva was up and running again. She flew across the hall and burst into Jamie and Barney’s room.
The tattered blue ghost hovered at the foot of Jamie’s bed. It cast long, flickering shadows — shadows that made Darryl think, for a moment, that both boys might still be safe under the lumpy piles of their covers. But as the light moved away from Minerva, the shadow shapes changed, and he could see clearly that both boys were gone.
No, Darryl thought. This can’t be real. It isn’t real.
Minerva covered her face with her hands, and for an instant Darryl couldn’t see anything. But she pulled them away again and her head jerked toward the closet. The slatted closet doors flew open, and Barney, with Murp incongruously tucked under his arm like a football, exploded out of the dark space — running toward Minerva.
The blue light intercepted the little boy, and swallowed him and the cat. Then it shot toward the bedroom window and blasted through it, leaving shards of glass in its wake.
And then the mirror went dark. He stared at it, and the only thing that looked back was his own face, shadowed by candlelight and twisted with fear.
That cannot possibly have happened, he told himself. I’ll call home— But he couldn’t call home. The office phone lines had gone out shortly after the power.
This is my guilt talking, he thought. This is my conscience telling me that because I screwed around on my wife, the world will now come to an end.
He stared at the mirror, which stubbornly remained nothing but a mirror. I wish to hell it had shown me the home movies before I screwed around on Minerva instead of after. Then I wouldn’t have anything to feel guilty about — and I’d be home.
He had to get home. Once there, once he could convince himself that everyone was safe and that everything was all right, he would come to terms with his conscience. He would never, never, ever, stray again. That he was sure of.
The blizzard outside seemed to be getting worse instead of blowing itself out. Cindy had apparently gone, taking every trace of her existence with her. He supposed she’d gotten in her car and left. She might have gone to whatever part of the building she worked in. He didn’t care. He didn’t think she’d be back — but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
His ancient Chevy Nova waited in the parking lot. The storm had buried it under a thick, hard shell of ice. He chipped at the ice with his pocket comb, seeing his hot breath puff out in front of him; he swore and wished he’d thought to wear a heavier jacket or gloves or a hat. Stinging sleet blew down the back of his neck and sandblasted his face.
Time slipped into high gear around him; his body felt as if it had been dunked in icy molasses and strapped all over into weights. Faster, faster, he kept thinking, and every time he did, seemed to move slower and slower. The windshield was still caked in ice — but he had a clear circle. He would drive with the windows down, he decided, so he could see out. Not good, but it would have to do. He chipped the ice away from the door handle, fought the door open. The inside of the car was freezing — but at least he was out of the wind and the sleet. He turned the key in the ignition. The motor turned over once, sputtered — died. He tried again. Same response.
“Crank, damn you,” he muttered. Tried again. The motor whined, caught, rumbled to sullen life. The heater blasted frozen air into the interior.
He backed cautiously and felt bald tires slipping on the shield of ice-sheeted snow that coated the parking lot. He prayed to a distant and dubious god, to the storm itself, to the very idea of home and safety. He prayed that his world would still be intact when he got there, and shivered with the cold and the fear that a moment of childish lust and the desire to get even with Minerva might have destroyed everything.
He eased out of the parking lot, and nearly got himself creamed by a bright red Mazda Miata that came out of nowhere, headlights off until after it was right on top of him. The driver laid on his obnoxious toy horn, skidded around the Nova, throwing snow behind his ridiculous little tires, and vanished almost immediately down a pitch-dark side street.
The Miata’s bumper sticker stuck in Darryl’s unhappily circling thoughts long after the car itself was out of sight:
I ♥ VIRGINS.
“Not me, pal,” he muttered into the frozen air. “Not me.”
It was a dark and stormy night, he thought with some bitterness, and eased his way down the dark, silent, snow-shrouded street, crawling — wind-blasted and guilt-ridden — toward home.
* * *
The ghost tore through houses and forests, through the bitter, angry storm and then beyond it. It dumped Barney, his brother, his sister, and the irate Murp in the exact center of a dimly lit room, then dissolved into the floor. Murp slunk around the room, hackles raised, growling.
The three children looked at each other.
Barney frowned at Jamie, and said, “I told you so, butthead.”
“I didn’t know there were really monsters,” Jamie said.
Carol gave her older brother a disdainful look. “Of course there are monsters. That was a really scary one.”
None of the children had any clothes on.
“Gross,” Jamie said and looked around desperately for something to wear.
Barney looked, too. On a small rug next to the door, someone had laid out three outfits — pullover tunics and baggy pants and curly-toed boots... and even underwear and socks.
“Somebody knew we were comin’,” Jamie said. He grabbed the largest set of clothes and started tugging things on. “We gotta get out of here. Before they come back.”
Barney nodded, and began to dress, too. He fumbled with the unfamiliar clothes, not certain how they went on. He had no doubt that the house was full of other monsters, monsters who would be coming to the room shortly. He could feel them, somewhere down below, moving around thinking dark, scary monster-thoughts.
Carol was the first one dressed. She stood and looked solemnly at her brothers. Then she made the secret sign. “I am Carolissia, Queen of Butterfly World.”
Jamie snorted. “We don’t have time to play that stupid game.”
Barney glared at his brother. Jamie was getting to be no good at adventures. Didn’t he know they could do more things when they were the Kings and the Queen? Barney stood, and made his own secret sign. “I am Barnissius, King of Dinosauria.”
“Oh, grow up, will you?” Jamie turned his back on the two of them and crossed his arms over his chest. “Pretending to be a stupid king isn’t going to get you out of here.”
“King Jamisor does not believe in his magic powers,” Queen Carolissia intoned, her pug nose tipped at a haughty angle. “If he does not help us, we will have to leave him.”
“King Jamisor did not believe in monsters,” King Barnissius added. “He is a poopyhead.”
Jamie turned around and glared at Barney. “Real kings don’t call each other ‘poopyhead’.”
“Poopyhead,” Barney said.
“Skunkbreath.”
“Buttface.”
“Turdmouth.”
Queen Carolissia pointed one regal finger at each of the two prospective kings. “Stop it, or I won’t tell you the secret mission.”
Barney and Jamie stopped. Carol was the one who always made up the secret mission — they were kings in charge of trapping tigers and spying and capturing the enemy, but Queen Carolissia was the one who invented the secret plans.
“Okay.” King Barnissius stopped calling names and looked at Her Majesty. “What’s the plan?”
“King Jamisor hasn’t given the secret sig
n. Maybe he is a pretend king.”
King Jamisor sighed. “Do you really have a plan?”
The Queen rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she said.
King Jamisor stood, and made the sign. “I am King Jamisor of The Worlds Beyond the Sea.”
All three royals bowed to each other.
Carol beckoned them all closer. “Let’s climb out the window if we can,” she said. “We can tie the sheets together to get down.”
Barney was impressed. Queen Carolissia always had really good plans.
The three children tiptoed to the huge window and looked out into the night. Murp jumped onto the windowsill and looked out with them.
They were a long way up. People tiny as ants scurried around on the ground far below. Barney backed away from the window. He wasn’t scared of very much — but he didn’t like heights.
The Queen’s expression became thoughtful as she studied the ground far below. “Ooooh!” she whispered. After an instant, in her royal voice, she said, “I shall think of a new plan.” She stood, eyes squinched closed, fists knotted at her sides.
“King Jamisor,” she said at last, “will spy out the door and tell us what he sees.”
Jamisor nodded, and crept to the door. Murp seemed to think this was a new sort of game. He prowled beside the King. Jamie tried to open the door. “It’s locked,” he said.
The Queen stamped her foot. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Right then, King Barnissius thought, the Queen didn’t look very Queenish. Instead, she looked an awful lot like Carol when Mommy wouldn’t let her do what she wanted.
King Jamisor took charge. He looked at the younger two, and spread his legs and stuck his hands on his hips. “We’re going to have to build a trap,” he said. “Find stuff we can use. I want string, and heavy stuff.”
“Why?” Barney asked.
“Going to make an ambush.” King Jamisor, also known as Secret Agent Jeevus, was the master of ambushes. Both Barney and Carol, in their alternate guises as Secret Agents Equator and Renskie, had fallen into his traps.
King Jamisor pushed one of the heavy, oddly angled chairs toward the door.
Queen Carolissia found a small, heavy stone statue, and gave it to her brother. King Barnissius located the curtain cord.
“I found string,” he said, “but I can’t cut it.”
The Queen came over to look. “Yes,” she said, and nodded, “this is excellent string. I shall bite it into pieces.”
She pulled the curtain cord down as far as it would go, then climbed up onto the windowsill, so she could chew off a longer piece.
“Mom says you’re not supposed to chew string and stuff with your teeth,” Jamie said from the other side of the room.
“You got any scissors?”
“Nope.”
“Then just shut up.” She gave him the killer-sister look, and as an afterthought, added, “Buttface.”
King Barnissius watched the other royals squabbling among themselves, but he didn’t descend into the fray. He had something more important to do.
He pulled the sheets off the high bed and started twisting them. The Queen finished chewing through her string and took it to King Jamisor, who set up his booby trap. Then Carol came over to Barney.
“Watcha doin’?”
Barney didn’t say anything. He thought it ought to be obvious what he was doing.
Carol, after a moment’s thought, began to help him twist the cloth.
“It’s ready,” King Jamisor announced, and hopped off the chair. He pushed the seat back against the wall, then studied his handiwork critically, tipping his head at an angle and closing one eye.
“That statue is gonna hurt,” Carol remarked.
Jamie had balanced it precariously on the edge of the doorsill. He’d tied one end of the curtain cord around its middle and the other to the door latch.
“It’s supposed to hurt.”
Queen Carolissia looked doubtful. “If it hurts too much, whoever comes through that door is going to be really mad at us.”
“That’s what we need these for.” King Barnissius dragged over the first of his homemade ropes and presented them to King Jamisor with a bow. “To tie them up when we catch them,” he said.
“Good work, King Barnissius!”
“So when are they going to come up here?” the Queen wanted to know.
Both older children looked at Barney.
He knew what they expected. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His thoughts ranged through the lower reaches of their prison, and he sensed the life that inhabited the enormous castle. There was not one person awake in the place — excepting the three children. But the minds were quiet, full of sad dreams and worries. In all the floors beneath them, the monsters slept.
CHAPTER 3
Minerva opened her eyes and stared up into darkness. She was freezing. Snowflakes and sleet pelted her face and arms and legs and blew down the open neck of Darryl’s terry robe. Wind howled around the room, and papers snapped in little gusts and eddies — snow and sleet piled around her.
But I’m lying on carpet.
Everything was incredibly dark, and very blurry. Minerva sat up, took off her glasses, cleaned them on the inside hem of the robe, and put them back on. Everything was still dark, but now it was recognizable.
I’m in the boys’ room, she thought.
Minerva recalled bits and pieces of how she came to be there. She didn’t like what she recalled.
I fainted?! She stood up and brushed snowflakes and bits of broken glass off the bathrobe. She was disgusted with herself. I’ve never fainted before in my life.
Minerva wrapped her arms around herself and shivered and tried to remember. There was the blue light, and. Carol screamed, and I ran to her room but she was gone — ran to the boys’ room... Jamie was gone, but Barney came flying out of the closet screaming “Mommymommy!” —the ghost-thing got him.
Her stomach churned. No. That can’t be. Things like that don’t happen.
But the window was blown out. Not in. Out.
They’re okay. They have to be okay. They’re my kids.
“Jamie?” Minerva yelled. “Barney? Come out! Come here, guys! Where are you?”
She looked for the boys, under the beds, in the closet — she called their names but got no answer. Her sons were gone. She went into the hall and closed the door behind her. She stood and called their names again. Nothing. Checking, still not able to believe what she remembered had really happened, she went to Carol’s room.
Carol was gone, too.
She stood at the doorway and listened.
The house held within itself the deadness of absolute abandonment — always before in the middle of the night, she’d been able to hear the children breathing, though the sound was subtle and not one she thought about. She would note subconsciously the rustle of sheets as the kids rolled over, the soft thud of Murp’s paws hitting the carpeted floor or his quiet footsteps padding softly down the hall. The normal sounds of an occupied house were tiny when present. They roared in their absence with the hollowness of eternity.
This is all a nightmare, she told herself. It isn’t happening. It can’t be happening. She stepped into Carol’s room. She looked down at the rumpled blankets of Carol’s bed, at the indented pillow. She reached down and touched the hollow her daughter’s head had left, picked the pillow up and pressed her face into the hollowed spot and breathed in Carol’s scent — soap and sunlight and little-girl sweetness.
Minerva pulled her face from the pillow and felt a tight lump burning in the back of her throat — imminent tears. “Give them back, dammit!” Minerva screamed into the stillness. The house echoed her shout, then returned to waiting silence. The grandfather clock in the greatroom ticked — metronome-steady, surreally loud. Snow and sleet hissed against the glass. In the whole house, no one breathed save her.
Alone — a suddenly childless mother. It was too much for her.
She flung herself across Carol’s
bed and sobbed. Rocking back and forth, freezing, teeth chattering, she cried until her ribs ached. “I want my kids back! I want them back, dammit!”
Her sobs died down to sniffles. She curled into a tight ball, staring at the night-light, hiccupping, with her nose stuffy and her eyes swollen.
“It was the dragon,” she whispered. “The dragon in the supermarket. It wanted me to go after it. If I’d followed it, the kids would still be safe.”
Maybe she could still go after it. The dragon had wanted her. The light, too, had come after her first, and had only swallowed the kids when it couldn’t get her. She knew where the path was, that overgrown trail the dragon had vanished into like a rabbit down a hole. If the dragon wanted her, if the light wanted her — even if they were one and the same — they could have her. She would go down that path, and by so doing, trade herself for her children. She hugged the pillow tighter. The tears came again; their wet heat soaked her cheeks.
My life for their safety. Just let them come back home, you bastards, she thought. You can do whatever you want with me.
Nothing changed. The house remained empty and cold. The grandfather clock downstairs began to bong — slow, steady tolling of the time, a soft and mournful dirge. One, it said. Two. Three. Four. Five.
“Where are you, Darryl? Why weren’t you here when I needed you?” She glared into the darkness. Why aren’t you here when I need you now?
Damn Darryl. She would go out into the night. She would face the terrible storm and the dragon and the ghostly blue light and God only knew what else. But she was going to get her kids back.
She went downstairs. In the laundry room, she rummaged through the dryer and pulled out insulated underwear and a pair of heavy, quilt-lined corduroy jeans and unfolded her bulkiest hand-knit wool sweater from the top of the washing machine. She dressed in the dark. In the kitchen, she located the flashlight and the biggest kitchen knife they owned. She stared for a moment at the phone — the urge to call Darryl’s office or her parents’ house or the police was almost overwhelming. She wanted just to hear someone’s voice — to get some small reassurance that she was not alone in the world.
