Shadow Chaser

by Jerel Law

  “Wonder what’s going on there?” Jonah said, pointing to a crowd gathered in front of a wide doorway.

  A man outside with a microphone fitted around his ear was working the crowd. He was bald, with golden hoops through each ear, and was holding a hammer and nail up to his face.

  Jonah looked up and spotted a sign that read RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

  “Step forward, step forward,” he said, calling out to them and motioning them over. “You don’t want to miss what’s about to happen. You’ll see much more inside, of course, but just so you get a taste of what’s to come if you join our show . . .”

  He inserted the point of the nail into his nose and, to their shock, began to hammer it in.

  “Ewww!” Eliza and Julia said together.

  “Awesome!” said Jonah and David.

  The five-inch-long nail went all the way in, with no screams from the man. Then, with great drama, he took the back of the hammer and pulled it out again.

  “Whew!” he said, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “That wasn’t so bad. I was able to miss my brain again.”

  The crowd went wild.

  “Come on,” said Eliza, pulling them along. “Let’s get out of here before I get sick to my stomach and don’t feel like eating anymore.”

  They walked one more block over, and the street grew much quieter. On the corner, a Mexican restaurant was serving people at tables outside. The smells of something on the grill were much stronger now, and they followed their noses in.

  Soon, they were sitting at a table outside, poring over the menu while munching on warm, salty chips and freshly made salsa.

  “The steak tacos or the chicken quesadilla,” said Eliza. “I just can’t decide . . .”

  Jonah studied the menu as the waitress came up and asked for their drink orders. “I think I’ll have one of these,” he said, pointing to a picture of a tall, neon-red-colored drink. “A Lemonade Exploder . . . are they good?”

  The waitress looked up from her writing pad. “Yeah. If you think a boatload of sugar and caffeine is a good idea.”

  “Sounds like a good drink to prepare for an all-night study fest,” he said. “I’ll take one.”

  Eliza narrowed her eyes. “You know half of it is lemonade and half is Energy Blitz, right? Which is like three times the caffeine of a normal soft drink?”

  But David raised his finger. “I’ll have one of those too.”

  An hour later, after demolishing platefuls of steak tacos, cheesy nachos, and chicken burritos, along with three Lemonade Exploders each for Jonah and David, they settled up their bill and hit the street again.

  Jonah was feeling giddy, no doubt from the caffeine and sugar surging through his veins. He and David had begun to play a roughhouse game of leapfrog on the sidewalk, to Julia’s amusement and Eliza’s frustration.

  “Hey, watch this, everybody!” Jonah said as he ran toward the side of a brick building. He pushed his foot up, then another, and for a brief second appeared to scale the wall, before flipping backward and landing on the street.

  “Nice move, kid,” an older man said as they passed by.

  A kid holding his mother’s hand pointed at him. “Did you see that, Mommy?”

  “Jonah!” Eliza shouted, moving over and grabbing his arm. “You need to calm down! That sugar has gone to your head.”

  But Jonah wasn’t in the mood to listen. As they continued down the street, he had another idea. He hit David in the arm.

  “Check this out,” he said, and stood in the shadows for a second. Suddenly, he disappeared.

  “Jonah!” Eliza called out.

  But Jonah wasn’t listening.

  BELIEVE IT OR NOT

  Jonah strolled through the hidden realm, heading toward the crowd. The barker for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum was still there, doing his routine. Jonah glanced around to make sure he didn’t see any fallen angels, and then behind him to make sure the others could see him.

  He moved behind the bald man with the huge nail in his hands, who was about to drive it into his nose again. Summoning his angelic strength, he leaned down and began to lift the box the man was on, just as he hammered the nail in.

  “He’s floating!” a teenager shouted, pointing at the man’s feet. The crowd stepped backward as one, and as the box lifted inches, then a foot, then two feet off the ground, they began to grow hysterical.

  Jonah was straining at the weight of the man and the box, but was grinning at Julia and David as he prepared to try to lift him all the way over his head.

  “Put him down right now, Jonah Stone!” Eliza said above the noise of the crowd. “Or I promise you, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell Mom and Dad!”

  Jonah snickered. “Oh no, Eliza, not that. Please, anything but that.”

  “Maybe she’s right, Jonah,” David said, glancing around at the crowd. “These people aren’t ready for this, and this guy is really freaking out.”

  The Ripley’s man was moaning softly and waving his arms frantically to keep his balance on the box.

  “Okay, okay,” Jonah said, finally lowering the box. “I was just trying to have a little fun. You guys don’t need to be such—”

  But just as he was about to join them, a black, crusty set of hands shot out of the door and yanked him inside the museum. He dropped the box, and the man, onto the hard concrete.

  Fingers tightened around Jonah’s neck, jerking him backward and throwing him down onto the floor. He slid across the cold tile. Before he could look up, he felt a blow to his stomach, which sent him hurtling into something against the wall. He looked up just as a giant man fell downward with outstretched arms, right on top of him.

  “Aaaahhh!”

  He grabbed the man’s head and was going to push it away when it snapped off from the rest of the body. He was suddenly holding a head in his hands.

  “What?” Out of instinct, he threw it across the room and backed himself up against the wall, breathing heavily. He didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to glance down at the body as the head rolled across the floor. Expecting blood, he was surprised to see a white, cakey substance inside the neck.

  “It’s fake, Jonah,” he told himself. “I’m in the museum. It’s a fake.”

  The body wasn’t the biggest of his concerns, though. He pushed himself up along the wall, hoping his eyes would adjust quickly to the darkened room. There were small groups of people milling around, looking at different displays. They were all gawking at the sight of the tall, headless figure that had fallen. A few had screamed.

  Jonah knew they couldn’t see him, though. He was searching the room for someone else—the fallen angel who had pulled him in.

  The problem was, there were wax figures everywhere, and they looked like real people. Jonah felt his heartbeat race as he looked carefully along the walls. Marilyn Monroe, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift were there, unmoving. But where was the fallen one?

  The door burst open again, and Eliza, David, and Julia barreled in.

  “Jonah!” Eliza called out into the room. She squinted. “Are you in here?”

  That was when Jonah happened to look upward. The fallen angel had been sitting motionless, perched on top of a Greek column. But now he screeched loudly and jumped.

  They didn’t even have time to react before the creature was on top of them. David, Eliza, and Julia crashed to the floor, sprawling under the weight of the dark angel.

  “Hey, get off them!” Jonah shouted, hurtling himself across the room. He slammed into the fallen angel, and they both fell into a couple of other statues, sending them into the wall. Bieber’s head bounced oddly across the floor, like a misshaped basketball.

  The museum visitors panicked. People were screaming and running everywhere, trying to get away from the falling exhibits. Security guards rushed into the room, but they couldn’t see the quarterlings and the Fallen, all now in the hidden realm.

  A light flashed right in front of Jonah’s eyes, and su
ddenly he was holding black dust. David stood over him, his bow in hand.

  “Thanks,” Jonah muttered, pulling himself off the ground.

  “You’re unbelievable,” said Eliza.

  Julia folded her arms, raising an eyebrow at him. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Guys,” Jonah said, holding up his hands. “I know that was—”

  The door burst open, cutting him off, and a group of yellow-eyed beasts stood there, searching the room until their eyes landed on them.

  The quarterlings began to back away, but more creatures were bounding down the red-carpeted staircase. Jonah didn’t bother to count—it was definitely clear that they were outnumbered. They’d been ambushed.

  “In here! Quick!” Jonah hissed to his friends, pointing to another set of double doors. It was their only choice, unless they wanted to fight all of the Fallen right there.

  They pressed the doors open and entered another museum viewing area. It was a longer, narrower hall than the first one. There was a tall giraffe, standing perfectly still along the wall. Beside it, a group of exotic animals were stuck in different poses, including a giant gorilla, mouth open and arms outstretched.

  “Creepy,” Eliza whispered.

  “Not creepier than Justin Bieber’s head,” responded Julia.

  At the back of the room, a red exit sign hung on the wall.

  “That’s our way out.” Jonah pointed. He glanced back at the double doors, expecting the fallen angels to burst through any second now.

  They jogged across the room toward the exit. Jonah hoped it led to a back alley somewhere, and they could make it home from there.

  At the back of the room, standing on two giant pedestals, were two creatures that drew Jonah’s eyes away from the exit door. They had the heads of lions, with their mouths open wide, showing off their razor-sharp teeth. Their bodies looked as if they belonged to horses, and they had scaly tails like an alligator or crocodile. But the worst part was that the end of each tail sported the head of a snake with long, sharp fangs.

  Julia noticed them too and shuddered. “I’m glad those aren’t real,” she said.

  “Yeah, can you imagine?” Jonah said, and headed toward the door again.

  But movement from the corner of his eye stopped him short. Jonah turned and watched in horror as the head of one of the creatures slowly pivoted toward them, its eyes turning from dull black to yellow. A roar split the air on his other side, and he knew that the second creature was alive as well.

  “Try . . . try to remain calm, everybody,” David said. But his voice trembled, anything but calm.

  “This is not good at all,” Jonah said, reaching for his sword.

  His hands grew instantly sweaty, but he pulled the blade and held it up. The strange animals leaped down from the pedestals, hitting the floor with heavy thuds. Their tails swung around, the snake heads hissing.

  “They’re going to strike!” Eliza cried. She threw her hands up to form a shield.

  The lion heads opened their mouths again too. Instead of a roar, though, ash and smoke billowed out, floating across the room. Jonah tried to cover his mouth and nose with his T-shirt. The others were trying to do the same thing. But the fumes seared the inside of his nose anyway, and it felt as though his whole face were on fire. His head spun as the room got darker and darker. Oh no! he thought dizzily. I’ve killed us all.

  Then everything went completely black.

  ABIGAIL’S SCARF

  Where in the world did those statues go?”

  Jonah heard the words faintly. Why was he lying on the ground? Cracking one eye open, then slowly the other, he tried to remember where he was. He felt completely disoriented. Two security guards stood in front of him, staring at two large empty pedestals, wondering out loud who possibly could have stolen the wax figures that had been there earlier.

  Jonah reached up and rubbed his hand on his face, feeling the pimples all over it. Then the memories from the day came crashing in, one after another. The constant sores, the endless study sessions. Dinner . . .

  Images of the barker with the nail in his nose, the fallen angels, and then the awful lion creatures flooded back, and he sat up quickly.

  Was any of that real, or was it just a dream? Maybe another one of the visions I’ve been having . . .

  Jonah’s question was answered when he saw Eliza lying facedown beside him.

  “Eliza! Hey, Eliza!” He crawled over to her, shaking her shoulder. “Come on, wake up!”

  “Jonah?” she said drowsily, as if she were talking in her sleep. “My head . . . hurts so much . . .”

  He gently rolled her over, facing him.

  “Oh, Eliza . . .”

  The area around her right eye looked charred, blackened as if it had been hit by the fiery blast. Her eyelid was crumpled and shut. Her left eye opened, looking up at Jonah.

  “I . . . I can’t open my . . .” She struggled to put words together, clearly still in a daze.

  “Shh, Eliza,” Jonah said. “It’s okay. It’s going to be . . . okay.”

  “What’s wrong with my eye?” she finally said.

  Jonah swallowed and studied it closely. It was blackened and raw. “It looks like you were hit by the blast from those creatures.” Her glasses were lying beside her on the ground, the right lens shattered, the frames twisted like a pretzel.

  Slowly, she pushed herself up on her elbows. “David and Julia?”

  When Jonah saw them, his heart dropped to the bottom of his sneakers.

  They were both sprawled against the wall, a few feet away from each other, unconscious.

  “Julia! David!” Jonah rushed over, trying to get a closer look at them. They made no sound or movement, even when he slapped David on the cheek and squeezed Julia’s hand hard.

  “Come on, guys, wake up!” He was getting frantic now, shaking them harder. “You have to wake up!”

  He looked back at Eliza, but she was still in a daze. She would be of no help right now.

  There was a burned, jagged hole in David’s jeans. Julia had the same kind of thing on her arm, burned through her shirt.

  He gently pulled back the cloth of David’s jean leg, just to see inside. It wasn’t bleeding, but it looked awful. And the smell almost made him lose his dinner.

  Jonah slapped them both on the cheeks gently. “Come on, guys,” he said, urgency in his voice. “Wake up . . . wake up!”

  He was growing more frantic by the second. They weren’t responding. He forced the unthinkable out of his mind. I need to find something to put on their wounds. Maybe they’re just in shock.

  He looked around the room, as if somehow he would find a medical kit along the wall. He saw nothing.

  Then he remembered. Shoving his hand in his back pocket, he pulled out the brightly colored scarf that had belonged to the prophet Abigail. Without hesitating, he ripped it into three pieces.

  He took one and began to tie it around Julia’s arm. He did the same with David’s leg. The third he tied around Eliza’s head, covering her wounded eye. It was all he could think of to do.

  They can’t be dead, Jonah thought to himself. They just can’t.

  “We have to get you out of here,” he said, frowning. “Back to Camilla and the angels. They’ll know what to do.”

  But as he said those words, the pieces of scarf wrapped around their wounds began to subtly change colors. Back and forth, from green to red, yellow, and blue, and back again. At the same time, David’s and Julia’s eyes began to flutter. Eliza reached up and felt her eye, aware that something was happening.

  He looked back and forth, from Abigail’s scarf to David’s and Julia’s faces again. He wasn’t sure whether to take the scarves off. What if they were making everything worse?

  “Come on.” He leaned over them, even more intently. “Come on, wake up, guys!”

  Julia opened her eyes suddenly and looked for a split second as if she could still see the lion creature in front of her. She breathed in sharply.
But then she sighed and relaxed.

  “That was so weird . . . I feel like I just had the worst dream ever . . . ,” she said, lifting her arm up to rub her eyes. She saw the scarf. “What is this?”

  She quickly pulled it off her arm. The hole in her shirt was still there, but the size of the wound had been drastically reduced. The horrible burn was scabbed over already.

  “Ow!” Julia said, lightly touching it. “That stings!”

  Jonah was about to tell her she should have seen it a few seconds ago, but David had now opened his eyes too and was examining his leg, pulling it toward him, flexing his knee, and wincing in pain each time.

  “That hurts!” he said. But as Jonah inspected the wound again, he saw a mark similar to Julia’s, a scab instead of the charred, bloody hole.

  He quickly turned to Eliza, who was holding the disintegrating pieces of Abigail’s scarf in her hand. Her right eye was still swollen, but not nearly as black as it had been. She could open it, but just barely.

  She blinked rapidly for several seconds, then rubbed her eye gently with the palm of her hand. “I still can’t see out of this eye,” she said. “But it seems better than it was.”

  That’s an understatement, Jonah thought.

  He picked up the remaining pieces of Abigail’s scarf off the ground. But soon he was holding nothing but a handful of dust.

  “Somehow, that scarf is helping us,” said Eliza as she stood up and moved toward David and Julia. “Look at their wounds. It’s like they’ve been healing for weeks already. Why would it do that?”

  David’s eyes looked clearer now, and he tried to stand on his leg. He cried out in pain but continued to pull himself up. It was tender, but he was able to take a few shaky steps.

  “I don’t know,” said David, shaking his head as he studied his leg. “It feels better than it did when it happened but still hurts very badly. All I remember was a flash of light, then the most awful pain I’ve ever felt. That was right before I blacked out.”

  “Well, we know the story of Elijah, and how he was taken up in the sky by a chariot of fire, a lot like Abigail,” suggested Eliza, still massaging her eye, trying to get it to open wider. “I just never connected the dots on the rest. He dropped his cloak, and remember who picked it up?”