by Rik Hunik
Chapter 5
Berdine joined them as Fester, at gunpoint, led them up the stairs to a small room on the third floor. Barely two meters across, it held four cribs, two of them empty. One of them held their daughter, Ellen, caught in a deep sleep, while the fourth contained another sleeping child, a pretty little girl of the same age, with dark hair and brown skin.
Berdine rushed to Ellen and picked her up. "Ellen honey, wake up." Berdine gently slapped her daughter's face but the child slumbered on. When she turned on King Fester Roland recognized the angry gleam in her blue eyes and he was glad they weren't directed at him. Her voice tense, she said, "What have you done to my daughter?"
Fester snorted loudly, emitting a wisp of smoke, then hawked and spat an ugly wad onto the floor. "She's under a simple sleeping spell. It makes children so much easier to manage. I can teach it to you."
Roland jammed the gun into Fester's back. "Rather than casting more spells I suggest you break this one, before I sever your spine with a bullet."
"Alright, alright, don't get so excited." Fester slowly brought his hands closer together, then clapped them twice. Ellen began to cry and so did the other baby. Berdine quickly soothed Ellen.
"Let's get out of here." Roland said.
"We can't leave that other baby."
"Of course not. Grab her too."
They marched down the stairs, Fester in the lead, Roland close behind, Berdine following. She was burdened with the two children but Roland had to keep Fester properly covered. In the room where they had fought, lit now only by a scattering of candles, Roland found some cord to tie Fester's hands behind his back.
"I won't try to get away," Fester whined as Roland tightened the bonds.
Roland snorted a short laugh. "Oh sure, I'll take your word on that. Just as long as I have this gun pointed at your head. Now let's go, out of the tower."
Fester led them out, doors opening as they approached and closing firmly behind them. Once outside, at Roland's behest, they headed up the road toward the shrine. Roland carried Ellen now, to relieve Berdine.
Before they had covered two hundred meters Roland heard a horse-drawn wagon approaching from behind. "We need that wagon," Roland told Fester. "Make it stop." He held the gun, hammer cocked, to Fester's head.
"Halt!" Fester commanded in a voice far more imperial than the one he had used to beg for his life. The driver, short, bent and gray-skinned, had the fiery eyes and the evil disposition of a goblin, but at his king's command he relinquished his wagon and the party boarded.
Ellen sat up front and took the reins while Roland covered Fester and kept an eye on the children in the back. The horse was disagreeable but Berdine used the whip and got the wagon moving. Roland couldn't help but notice that the too red sun was touching the horizon, and it seemed to be getting darker already.
"Why did you take our daughter? What did you want with her and this other little girl?"
Fester grinned, showing off his big, blackened teeth. "It's quite simple; we use them to strengthen our gene pool. We take the girls when they are too young to remember their lives back on Earth and raise them as our own so they accept us. Your daughter had good genes. We will regret losing her, but I still have lots of other little girls locked in my tower."
While Fester laughed, a wet, nasty sound, Roland and Berdine exchanged startled looks. Roland glanced to the west and saw that the sun was starting to sink below the horizon. "There's no time to go back, and he might be lying." It was also far too dangerous. He was down to one bullet and he was beginning to lose his nerve, but he didn't want to mention that. "So why did you take my wife?"
"We didn't take her. She should not have crossed over, but mothers occasionally do. We would have had some fun with her but she would not have been permitted to live long. You yourself were destined for my stew pot, and you would be there now if you had tasted that beer."
"Too bad for you that I took charge of my own destiny."
They arrived at the path and disembarked. Roland slapped the horse and sent it running down the road with Fester bouncing and cursing in the back of the wagon. It wouldn't keep him for long but it would give them some time to get through the gate.
Each carrying a child, they hurried down the path to the sickly birch tree and circled it at a run, traveling widdershins, spiraling inward. When nothing happened after three laps they stopped and looked at each other, breathing hard, neither wanting to voice their fears.
Roland slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "We're going backwards. To return we have to travel in the opposite direction to the one that took us here."
They tried again. This time, after his second lap, Roland saw Berdine shimmer and disappear in front of him. Two steps later he was through himself, into brilliant green vegetation and a blue sky. The setting sun, less than half above the horizon, was a healthy, golden orange, rather than the sickly red of the goblin's realm.
Mervin, asleep in a lawn chair under the birch tree, woke at the sound of their shouts of celebration and listened attentively to every detail of their story. When they told him of the other children still there he said, "I was afraid of that. I know he has been kidnapping children for a long time and I was hoping that you might bring more back, but you did very well. Even one more child freed is a victory of sorts."
They reported the other baby girl to the authorities but gave only a sketchy, fictional account of finding her at a campsite. After a few weeks they learned that the girl had disappeared from Saskatoon the same day they found her. Roland knew their story was flimsy, and it offered no explanation for the distance traveled, but they had done nothing wrong and the parents were so happy to get their child back that nobody pressed them. A fantastic version of the story, which actually contained a kernel of truth, though probably by accident, did appear on the front page of a supermarket tabloid.
Mervin moved away a few months later. "I must fight Fester on other fronts now, help other people who might become his victims."
"Good luck," Roland told him sincerely.
He and Berdine would miss the old man, even more so now that they knew who and what he really was. Roland had so many questions for him, questions he never got to ask, but when he complained about it to Berdine, she said, "Do you really think he would he have answered them anyway?"
Roland had a four-meter high boulder brought into his back yard and placed on the spot where the gate had appeared, so nothing could come or go through it, but even so they were always careful not to travel widdershins around it.
The End
If you liked this story please take the time to write a review. Thank you.
Down Among The Hoodoos (ghost story)
The Tale Of Orm's Revenge (Viking sword & sorcery)
The Emperor Germanicus (time traveling to change history)
For Sakina (fantasy mystery)
The Hole Story (science fiction)
Widdershins (modern fantasy retelling of old English folk tale)
The Gold Watch (western ghost story)
Defiance (horror poem)
Reality Check (science fiction horror)
Easy Money (alternate history, fantasy, paranormal detective novel)
Vacation Violation (dark science fiction)
Key Service (humorous contemporary fantasy)
On Full Moon Night (horror poem)
The Spirit Of The Game (horror) Things go wrong when a game designer makes a special game for his widowed mother so she can play cards with her deceased husband.
A Clone Of His Own (science fiction, fantasy)
The Hollow Idol's Eyes (fantasy)
Incident In A Tomb (fantasy, horror, humor)
The Ghost In The Kettle (ghost story)
The Eruption At Mount Sarna (fantasy)
The Sitting (horror)
Worse Than An Orphan's Curse (dark fantasy)
Joyride (fantasy, horror)
<
br /> Dead Man's Ashes (dark fantasy)
Green Eyes (horror)
Defiance 2 (poem)
The Treasure In The Monkey's Fist (fantasy)
Good-bye Grandpa (science fiction, time travel)
Witch's Skin (horror)
Goldbug (fantasy)
The Dark Gate (fantasy novel)
Find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rikhunik
