by Peter Plasse
Tears streamed down his cheeks as he faced the fear that she might not make it.
Jacqueline sat quietly in Tanta Kendra’s living room on the couch. She was once again watching a morning episode of the Discovery Channel. Usually, she would be drawing furiously, maybe even writing facts down, and staring wide-eyed in amazement at the TV. But tonight she seemed to be staring ahead blankly. As always, she had a cat in her lap. Cinnamon was with her, having somehow made it over there, which Jacqueline interpreted as nothing short of miraculous. Libby, Tanta’s dog, and mother to her dog, Rosie, was close by, curled contentedly at her feet. Kendra noticed her odd look. “Jacqueline, dear, are you okay?” she asked. Jacq’ didn’t answer so Kendra repeated the question.
Jacqueline turned her way, and merely from the look on her face Kendra knew that something was drastically wrong. She put down the cooking spoon that she had been using to stir some cake batter and approached her. Kneeling in front of her, she asked, “What’s wrong, Jacq’?”
Jacqueline stopped patting Cinnamon and looked at her. She began to cry, but still said nothing, so Kendra picked her up, cat and all, and sat down on the couch with her, hugging her tight. Jacqueline buried her head in Kendra’s shoulder and silently cried for a few minutes.
“My goodness,” Kendra said, “It must be very bad for you to cry so. What is it Jacqueline? You can tell Tanta Kendra.”
She picked her head up, setting down the cat who was just as glad to be away from all of the squeezing. “That’s the thing, Tanta. I can’t tell you. It might cause trouble.”
“I see,” said Kendra. “Well, is there anything you can tell me?”
Jacqueline snuffed, clearing her nose, and said, “No.” Again she buried her head in her Tanta’s shoulder and cried some more.
“Oh no,” thought Kendra. She hoped there were no problems at home. She thought of the usual ones that a family goes through. Nothing came to mind. “Oh my goodness,” she thought, “Somebody in the family has gotten bad news from the doctor.” It was the only thing she could think of that Jacqueline might not want to talk about. She knew she would call Jessica as soon as she could, but for now her sole mission was to comfort her precious niece. “Poor child,” she thought. She rocked her gently and she drifted off to sleep.
“So you’re telling us that Hemlock is not a wizard, and you are,” said Orie. He was seated in the living room, eating a handful of Oreo cookies along with a tall glass of milk. Ryan and Minos Arterios were sitting with him. Mark was in the bathroom being sick.
“That is correct,” said Minos. “Hemlock, as you call him, is an imposter. His real name is Pinus Porphyrius. But he goes by lots of names as he goes about his … activities. He is one of the survivors of a great war on his home planet, all of whom were forced to live underground for literally hundreds of years. Hemlock is of that era. He, and a handful of others, learned to slow the aging process by using a form of, well, the closest thing to it here on your planet would be meditation, where the individual goes into a trance state and undoes the metabolic changes of aging that have occurred since the last time they were in the trance. It is what actually happens to you now when you sleep, but the process has been refined, and there are powerful drugs involved. Drugs discovered while they were living in caves. In theory, the stalling of the aging process could last forever but, like with all of us, there are things that need to be done that interfere with the thing that should be done, so long time intervals between the trances does result in some damage that cannot be undone. It also affects the mind. Eventually, those that practice this dark art become mad.
“But I digress. The next thing that they did was compile as much information as they could about the technology of their time for the sake of preserving it, most of which had been destroyed above ground in the war, and with the plan of resurrecting it the day they were able to resurface. So they studied. Pinus was one of the principal leaders in their academic pursuits, however, the bottom line is he was not the brightest of them, not by a long shot, and he has serious character issues. These deficiencies surfaced during his youth. Both of his parents died in the war while they were still above ground. His father was a high ranking politician, and a very good and fair man, and his mother was a politician’s wife. What she brought to the table was beauty, not brains, and I’m afraid Pinus inherited her lack of intellectual tools. Be that as it may, when they were forced underground, he was basically raised by some very unsavory characters, and he took on a lot of their ‘bad manners’, shall we say. All this being what it is, he is involved in some unconscionable activities on many different worlds by basically being in command of some of the gadgets that they had discovered long before the survivors went underground. He knows how to run them to a degree. So he flits about galaxies and pursues his illegal activities, always on the run. He is a criminal. He is a wanted man.”
He paused. His tone became dark. His body language suggested anger. He scowled. He began, and stopped, and began again. He did not quite know how to tell the boys what he was about to tell them.
It was late at night. Kendra had washed up the few remaining dinner dishes and put them away. She straightened up the kitchen, finished her cup of tea, and walked up the stairs. She was going to turn left into her bedroom, where Uncle Eddie was already softly snoring, when she noticed that the light in the guest bedroom was on, so she went to check on Jacqueline. She found her, Cinnamon in her lap, staring at the wall. Her little face was tense with something. Something big.
“Hey Jacq’,” she said softly. “What are you doing still up?”
“I can’t sleep, Tanta,” she returned.
“What’s going on, Jacq’?” she asked. “I tried to call your house several times and kept getting no answer. Where’s Jessica and your dad? For that matter, where’s Orie and Stephanie? Jacq’, if something serious is going on, you need to tell me. We can fix it. We can fix anything, but I need to know what’s going on.”
Jacq’ said nothing. She continued to stare as the cat purred contentedly.
“Are your Mom and Dad fighting?” she asked. She had already decided that this was it, and felt if Jacqueline could unburden herself of it, she could help her deal with it. It was the only thing that made sense. Orie and Stephanie were staying with friends while Blake and Jessica worked things out. All marriages had these bumps in the road. They had a good marriage, and she knew things would work out. If only she could get Jacqueline to talk about it, she sincerely believed she could help make it better.
Once again, Jacqueline wouldn’t answer, and the longer she kept silent, the more Kendra believed in her theory of temporary marital discord.
“Things will work out,” she said. “Now you need to go to sleep, Jacq’.”
“Tanta. I have a bad stomach ache.”
Tanta felt her tummy. It seemed all right.
“I think you’re upset about something,” she said. “We’ll see in the morning. If you don’t feel well, you can just stay right here with me. Don’t worry, baby. I’m going to bed now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She kissed her goodnight, giving her a hug. She noticed that she was stiff. Something big was up, no question. She would try Jessica again in the morning. She went to bed.
Jacqueline continued her vigil. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but she had the distinct feeling that she was waiting for something.
“So now we come to your involvement in this whole affair,” said Minos Arterios. “Yours and your family’s.”
Mark had rejoined them, politely declining a snack. His stomach was too upset to entertain the prospect of food quite yet.
“Before we get into that,” said Orie, “How do we know who to believe, you or Hemlock? I mean, how am I to decide who’s telling the truth here? Or if either of you is telling the truth?”
“And what’s up with the monster costume huh?” asked Mark. He reached for a cracker and a piece of cheese.
“That,” said Minos Arterios. His facial
expression came as close to a smile as it probably ever did, but his eyes remained hard. “Nothing more than a parlor trick to let Orie and Jacqueline know that there is danger afoot, and while they have nothing to fear from me, it would be very unwise to be anything but a little afraid right now. Besides, I was looking for something. And in the event that another intelligent being saw me, I could always duck down and, voila, I am a cow gone astray. This is farmland is it not?”
“You said Hemlock is wanted. Wanted by whom and who is chasing him?”
“He is wanted by law enforcement agencies on at least four other planets. And the one chasing him is me, me and five others.”
Nobody spoke for a while, as they sorted all this out in their minds. The only sound was the buzz of a few moths coming in through the screen door. The frogs started up and were making an exceptional ruckus when Orie asked, “How do we fit in to all of this? You were going to explain that.”
“Yes,” said Minos Arterios, “I was. Suffice it to say that Hemlock’s mission on Ravenwild is not a noble one. It is, in a word, evil. Humans from this planet are pawns in a giant game he is playing there, and here’s how it works. He manipulates the necessary mathematics on the transporter device, and he entices Humans to join him. They do. Without him, they cannot get back. They don’t. They perform their assigned tasks there, or they are punished severely until they do. You and your family are part of his day-to-day operations. That is the way he sees it. First of all, he surely needs your mother and your father, and most likely you and Stephanie as well. He may even want Jacqueline. In such cases, it is always hard to tell. The day you showed up would be the day you were assigned whatever duties he had in mind for you when he traveled here to trick you into going in the first place. You would have no choice. You would essentially be his slaves.”
“Holy S-word,” said Ryan. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Mark excused himself to the bathroom again.
“I’m going to have diarrhea,” he mumbled, dashing into the bathroom and slamming the door.
“Hey Mark,” Orie yelled, “Next time use the upstairs bathroom.”
The front door opened loudly and Ryan and Orie jumped, Orie standing up. It was Gracie Hubbard, Stephanie’s best friend. Minos Arterios didn’t move.
“Gracie, what are you doing here? It’s four-thirty in the morning.”
“I know,” she said, “I took a nap earlier and couldn’t sleep anymore, so I snuck out of the house and walked over. I’ll sleep here. When are you guys goin' to sleep? Is anybody sleeping downstairs?”
She looked at Minos Arterios, whose face had receded, largely hidden now, into the cowl of his robe.
“Hi,” she said, extending her hand, “My name is Grace.”
Minos Arterios extended his and accepted it. “My name is Minos Arterios.”
“Nice to meet you.” She turned back to Orie. “Are you guys skipping practice tomorrow? You never skip practice.”
Orie looked at Mark, who had returned from the bathroom, and Ryan. Nobody knew what to say, so there was a long pause while everybody looked at one another.
The principal look they shared was fear.
Gracie bounced over to the refrigerator and retrieved an apple.
Minos Arterios stood. “It is time I left,” he said. “We will talk again in the near future. Orie, if I could have a word with you outside in private.”
On the deck, in the shadows of the western aspect of the house, Minos Arterios stood facing the woods. He appeared to be listening intently to the sounds of the night.
“It will be important to keep everything you have learned a secret,” he said. He nodded towards the house. “Too many people already know. Those that know are already in peril.”
“Isn’t there any way you can, like, erase their memories somehow?” asked Orie.
“In theory, it is possible,” he returned. “But it is a lot more complicated than you think.”
He looked Orie in the eye. His gaze was constant. It was stern. He was not blinking. “You will have to journey to Ravenwild,” he said. “Moreover, you will have to journey there without me. You know what I was looking for in your neighbor’s pumpkin patch, do you not?”
“And what might that be?” asked Orie.
“Answer my question,” he hissed.
Orie didn’t budge. There was no way he was going to trust anybody until he knew more about what was going on. They stared at each other for a while in silence.
“Looks like we have a Mexican standoff,” said Orie at last.
“This is not a game, son,” said Minos Arterios. “There is much more here than meets the eye. More lives than those of solely your family depend on what we do in the next few days. More than you could know.”
“Look,” said Orie, “I want to believe you, but yesterday I wanted to believe this Hemlock guy. Or Pinus. Or whatever his name is. This whole thing is pretty crazy. Why can’t you understand that? Wizards showing up. Interplanetary travel. Is it so hard for you to understand that? One day we’re just a regular family, doing regular family things, and the next, it all changes. And suddenly, we’re involved in some nutzoid adventure the like of which is kind of difficult to get a handle on …” His voice failed as he tried to put words to all that was troubling him.
Minos Arterios relaxed his gaze. His voice softened almost imperceptibly. “I realize that,” he said. “Unfortunately time does not afford me the luxury of waiting too long. And you must know that it does not afford you any either. Every second we wait puts your family in more and more danger. You must decide tonight. Plain and simple, as your father likes to say. After tomorrow, I will not be available to you in any way, shape, or form. You must understand this. Not as a friend, not as an enemy. It will not be possible. I have compelling reasons to attend to matters of far greater consequence than those of which we have just spoken.”
“So what, exactly, do I need to decide?”
“First of all, you must decide to trust me, and show me the thing you took from inside of one of the pumpkins in your neighbor’s garden.” “First of all,” echoed Orie, “you don’t know that I have anything. That is a huge assumption on your part. Second, tell me what it is. Give me a reason to trust you.”
“Very well, my young negotiator,” said Minos Arterios. “I will tell you. It is a transporter device, the holder of which can travel to as many points in the universe as are programmed into it.”
“A transporter device,” said Orie. “Why would you need it, then? You can obviously travel to and from wherever it is you travel to and from, from. Is there anything else that this thing does?”
Minos Arterios shook his head and disappeared. One second, Orie was waiting for an answer to his question. It seemed a perfectly good question. The next, he was looking at the forest-darkness behind the spot where Minos Arterios had, a moment before, stood.
“Man, this is too weird,” he said.
He went back inside the house. Mark, Ryan, and Gracie sat talking quietly.
“How much have you told her?” Orie asked.
Ryan looked at Mark. Neither answered.
“Everything,” said Gracie. She wore a wolfish smile. “Is it true, Orie? Is it really true?”
Orie looked angry. “What did you guys tell her?”
Ryan and Mark looked at each other with that hand-in-the-cookie jar look that all kids get when they get caught. Ryan spoke first. “She made us Orie. She kept asking questions. Like, ‘Where’s Stephanie?’ And, ‘Where’s your Mom and Dad?’ We couldn’t lie to her.”
“So you told her everything. Man that was dumb. Minos Artery, or whatever his name is, just got through telling me how much danger everybody who knows is in, and now Gracie knows, so she’s in danger too.”
“Danger?” asked Gracie. “Danger from what? Why would I be in danger?”
“It’s complicated,” said Orie, “And we can’t get into it right now. Right now we have to go to Mark’s house. C’mon, we’ll take the truck
.” He bolted to his mother and father’s room where he knew his dad kept a spare key.
“C’mon,” he yelled. “We have to go now.”
Everybody moved at once and they all scrambled down the stairs to the truck. Orie opened the door and grunted.
“What is it, Orie?” asked Ryan.
“That’s strange. An hour ago there was no key in the ignition, and now it’s there. Right there where it always is.”
“Is this smart?” asked Gracie. “None of us has a license. What if we get caught?”
“We won’t,” snapped Orie. “We’ll take the back roads. Officer Corey is our only cop, and he’s asleep. Besides, even if he did catch us, I’d tell him it was an emergency. He’s my dad’s friend. Hurry up. Close the door.”
The truck roared to life. Ten minutes later they had retrieved the transporter device from Mark’s room. On the way back out the door, Orie whispered, “Hey Mark, don’t you have a watermelon in the fridge?”
“Yes we do,” Mark whispered back.
“Get it.”
“What for?” asked Mark.
“Just get it!” Orie whispered. Even whispering, you could hear the fury in his voice. “And bring a knife too. A big one.”
Mark passed the watermelon and the knife to Orie, who was waiting in the truck. As they were pulling away, a light came on in the kitchen.
“Go man. Go,” whispered Mark.
Orie nailed it, and in no time they were on the back roads, heading back towards his house.
“Now what do we do?” asked Gracie.
“You go home,” said Orie. “Mark and Ryan can decide what they want to do, but you’re going home.”
Gracie folded her arms and pouted her lips.
“But what are we going to do?” asked Mark.
