by Tom Turner
Charlie fell!
He dropped into the mini-star. Its energy pulsed around him, hugging him like a cocoon, and he heard a sound like the rising notes of a glorious pipe organ. It felt to Charlie like he slipped through a chute and shot out the other side. He tumbled from a large vanity mirror and landed on a hardwood floor. Thick black drapes hung from the rafters like billowy pillars. He was surrounded by various stage props, costume racks, and old set pieces that were stacked up against a wall in the corner. It was dark, except for the residual glow of some stage lighting fixtures hanging from a grid above him.
Charlie staggered to his feet, ready for anything. He scanned his surroundings and realized where he was. He was backstage in a large auditorium. And he wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ABRACADABRA
Charlie heard the rousing applause of a packed audience. At least that’s what he figured it was, given the fact he was standing backstage behind a big, red, velour curtain.
How could I be in a tree one minute and now here in an auditorium? he thought. And what was ‘here’? Was ‘here’ home? It did feel familiar, yet, somehow, not right. Something was off.
Charlie stared back at the mirror he had just passed through, trying to find some logical connection between it and the mini-star into which he fell. In the mirror, he could see the guardians battling the fierce creatures. It was clear as day. Like looking through a window, he thought. Or maybe— a doorway!
Charlie watched as the attack unfolded, and then his eyes suddenly tensed.
Oh, my God! “Plug!” he blurted out.
Charlie could see Plug hiding in the tree. I have to help him! But as Charlie charged the vanity, one creature spit a stream of venom that splattered the mirror’s surface, blacking it out. It startled Charlie, stopping him in his tracks. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He could no longer see Plug or the other side, but he needed to get back. He was about to try again, when someone grabbed his sweatshirt hood.
“Hey!” a voice shouted.
Charlie drew back and raised his fists — a gut reaction. But he lowered his defenses when he saw who was behind him. It was a boy, not much bigger than him. The boy was dressed as a magician; he wore a Halloween bunny mask with large rabbit ears and a black top hat. Normally, Charlie would have found the sight bizarre, but considering everything he had just been through, a boy in a bunny mask seemed refreshingly normal, and for a brief second Charlie thought maybe he had, in fact, crossed back home.
Then Charlie noticed something. Behind the bunny mask, the boy’s eyes were vibrant, almost glowing, and there was a soft blue halo of light surrounding him — the same color as the mini-star Charlie had just fallen though.
“Hey, Charlie. Did you go yet?” asked the boy in the mask.
“Go where?” replied Charlie. “Do I know you?”
The kid ignored his question.
“I’ve been practicing all week, but I still have problems with the rabbit trick,” the boy said. “And my dad’s in the audience. Gotta impress him, and that ain’t easy! Boy, am I nervous. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck?” Charlie was miffed. How did this kid know his name? Why was he wearing a bunny mask? Who the heck was he? Charlie pinched himself to make sure he was awake.
Ouch! He was.
The curtain went up and the boy took the stage. He laid out a small table and set his hat down. From his pocket he produced a magic wand and then waved it over the hat.
“Abracadabra!” The boy reached into the hat and pulled out a fuzzy white rabbit.
“How original,” Charlie muttered to himself.
He was so caught up in the absurdity of the moment that he almost forgot about the mirror, not to mention the black vapor that was now seeping from it and rolling across the floor towards the boy. The vapor spread like wildfire through dry leaves, consuming every bit of color in its path.
This can’t be good, thought Charlie.
One by one, stage lights exploded, raining sparks over him. He ducked for cover under the boy magician’s table, but the floor started to pitch and roll like a stormy sea. Charlie grasped a table leg and held tight. He watched the vapor spill over the edge of the stage and into the audience. The effect was immediate. The applause changed to laughter, and kids began to point and jeer, taunting the boy magician.
“Stop it! Quit laughing at me!” he screamed, and his blue halo vanished.
Laughter swelled as the dark vapor sunk into the floorboards and walls. The rabbit from the hat became gray and ghostlike. It was snatched from the boy’s hands and sucked into the mirror.
Like the things in the forest, thought Charlie. He was curious about the connection but had larger concerns at the moment.
The faces of the students in the audience warped like hot candle wax, and their limbs thrust out and twisted like the branches of a barren tree. It was as if their bodies decayed before Charlie’s eyes — still alive but more mutant than human. Their eyes burned red, and their laughter grew meaner. Then, with one loud and villainous laugh, an enormous clap of thunder shook the auditorium. Charlie pulled the boy magician under the table as chunks of cinderblock and splintered wood crashed down around them.
When the dust settled, Charlie gasped in horror. A giant mouth had chewed a hole through the stage wall. There was no face, just a monstrous jaw with an inner ring of razor-sharp teeth and slimy tentacles that wriggled out, searching for prey.
The demonic mouth emitted a belly roar and, like a black hole in deep space, began to suck everything toward it. Charlie and the boy magician flailed in desperation, grabbing for anything that might keep them from being devoured, but there was nothing to hold onto. They were drawn closer to the terrifying abyss. Charlie assumed he was a goner. But at the last second, he was able to grab a corner of the crumbled wall and cling for dear life. The boy magician was not so lucky. The decayed student bodies surrounded him. They clustered like insects defending their nest. Their jaws rattled, and their fiendish red eyes burned with fury. Charlie watched in horror, but what could he do?
“Help!” cried the boy. “Someone, help me!”
Suddenly, the bunny mask was ripped from his head and tossed into the mouth. Charlie couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Joe?” he said.
The boy was Joe Santiago.
Charlie let go of the wall and slid toward him, fighting his way through a blizzard of fists. The demented students clawed at him, but he shoved them aside. Something about his touch sent them scurrying into the shadows.
He grabbed Joe’s hand.
“Please! Don’t let go!” screamed Joe.
“I won’t!” reassured Charlie, trying to convince himself, as a prickly tentacle sprouted from the demonic mouth and lashed around Joe’s ankle. Millions of tiny hairs grasped like claws, dragging him toward the dark void.
“Charlie!” cried Joe, reaching out.
Determination washed over Charlie. He felt a flaming sensation in back of his eyes and was sure, for a split second, everything flashed gold. Like spying through a tinted lens. It wasn’t painful. In fact, it felt powerful.
“You can’t have him!” Charlie shouted at the mouth.
A surge of energy flowed through his body. Then, with a strength that surprised even him, he yanked Joe from the abyss. The tentacle shot like a scorpion’s tail toward Charlie, but he grabbed it, squeezing tight. Each prickly fang burst into white flames, as if struck by a jolt of electricity. The gaping mouth roared with rage and collapsed in on itself. In that instant, there was a blinding flash.
When Charlie’s eyes adjusted, he was back in New York, on a basketball court in the middle of Central Park.
What just happened? he thought. Color returned, rushing to every corner and washing the darkness away. It felt like a bright day after a summer storm. Charlie could almost smell the rain.
Joe was on the ground. His blue halo had returned. Charlie reached out and helped him to his feet.
“Thanks,” said Joe.
Charlie was uncertain how to respond. He found Joe’s manner strange, like nothing had happened. It was as if Charlie had just helped him up after an innocent foul in a pickup game of basketball. Truth be told, Charlie was confused himself about what had taken place. Everything he had come to know in his ten short years told him none of it could be real. But he was awake. He was aware. The puddle of water beneath his feet was wet, and the humid summer air filled his lungs.
Charlie watched Joe dribble and shoot a three-pointer. He didn’t have a care in the world. All was good, until the heavens shook.
“Joe, wake up!” a man’s voice boomed. “Come on! Time to get ready!”
“Who’s that?” shouted Charlie, alarmed.
Joe didn’t answer. All he said was, “Time to get off the court.”
“But I’m not really sure how I got here,” replied Charlie, spinning on his heels. “Where’s the exit? The real exit?”
Joe shrugged and took another shot, but it bricked off the backboard. The basketball bounced back and splashed a puddle of water, soaking Joe in his mid region.
“Dang!” said Joe. “Not again!”
Charlie chuckled, “Looks like you just peed your—”
“Oh, no,” the booming voice interrupted. “I don’t believe this! He wet his bed again.”
“Huh?” said Charlie. Wet what?
He examined his surroundings, trying to understand, when a funny idea popped into his head. Wait… Bed? Am I inside a— No! That can’t be possible! He shook off the thought. No sooner had he done so than the puddle by his feet rippled with light, taking on color around its edge. The color matched Joe’s glow, and the image of a craggy desert tree faded into view.
“Joe, I’m not telling you again! Get up!” the man’s voice bellowed once more.
The basketball court began to disintegrate around Charlie. It crumbled at the edges, and its pieces flowed into the puddle like liquid down a drain.
“You better go,” Joe said.
The colorful gleam around the puddle pulsed like a beating heart. Charlie knew what he had to do. He held his nose, made the sign of the cross, and did a pencil dive into the puddle. In an instant, everything turned to nothing and then flashed back into focus, including Plug.
CHAPTER TWELVE
REMI
Charlie tumbled back into the forest, and the mini-star disappeared behind him. It collapsed in on itself until there was nothing left but a tiny speck of light that vanished into thin air. Charlie rolled over and performed a quick inspection to confirm all his body parts were still intact. They were. Phew! He exhaled with relief. When he looked up, Plug was standing over him, hands above his head.
“You okay?” asked Plug.
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Just wanted to make sure,” said Plug. “Now, what were you thinking? Never leave me like that again!”
“Leave you? You dropped me!”
“You let go!”
“Why would I let go? You’re the one that—” Charlie stopped. “Wait. Why are your hands in the air?”
It was as if Plug had almost forgotten.
“I tried to follow you into the mini-star,” he said. “But I bounced off it like a brick wall. Knocked my head pretty good. When I came to, she was standing over me.”
“Who?” asked Charlie.
Plug motioned with his head, indicating for Charlie to turn around. When he did, he stumbled back, jarred by a tingle in his chest. But the tingle was more out of curiosity than fear. Standing behind him was a young guardian, not much older than him. She had a light arrow pointed in his direction, but Charlie didn’t care, because something about her made his heart flutter. The young guardian’s figure was willowy and slender. Her long, dark hair and olive complexion were exotic, prettier even, thought Charlie, than Maryanne DePalma. But it was not her beauty that most captured him. It was her golden eyes. They were penetrating, and there was something in them that Charlie understood — something sad, yet comforting.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Wish I knew,” said Plug. “She doesn’t speak. Not a word—”
“How did you do what you did?” interrupted the young guardian.
Plug furrowed his brow. “Until now.”
The guardian drew her bowstring tighter and took a threatening step toward Charlie. Her light arrow vibrated with sun-like intensity.
“What do you mean?” said Charlie, slowly backing away from her pulsing weapon. “What’d I do?”
“You entered a dream portal and banished the evil from it.”
“You mean the bright light things? The mini-stars?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Crazy talk,” said Plug. “That’s all you people do here.”
“So that was a dream,” said Charlie. “But I wasn’t asleep...”
“Of course it was a dream,” replied the young guardian. She eased up on her bowstring and approached him. “Every portal is the doorway to a human dream.”
“That would explain the talking cat,” mumbled Plug.
Pieces to the puzzle of this world were floating around in Charlie’s head, and he was desperately trying to fit them together.
“What are you?” asked the young guardian.
“Confused!” said Plug.
She ignored him and said to Charlie, “You restored the dream. Allowed the dream spawn to re-enter!”
“Dream spawn?” asked Charlie.
“Pieces of dreams cast out by Moloch’s evil.” She said it in a way that seemed obvious.
“She must mean the bunny,” said Plug. “It shot out one of those ghost things again. This time it was a rabbit.”
Unbelievable! thought Charlie. He had watched as the rabbit was ripped from Joe’s hands and sucked through the mirror.
“It landed over there,” pointed Plug. “And get this,” he moved closer to Charlie, as if to whisper a secret. “When it changed into human form — and this is gonna sound nuts — it looked a little like Joe Santiago.”
“It was his dream,” whispered Charlie.
“Then he — or the dream spawn, the rabbit — whatever it was — jumped back in,” Plug continued. “And then poof! The color came back. It got really bright. Then you popped out, and the mini-star disappeared.”
As crazy as it sounded, everything Rustam had told them in the castle was beginning to make sense to Charlie. The puzzle was coming together, but a lot of pieces were still missing: specifically, how and why he and Plug had ended up here.
The young guardian lowered her bow and took a step closer. Charlie could feel her studying him, as if he seemed as big a mystery to her as she did to him.
“You have no wings,” she said. “And your eyes…” her voice trailed off. “Where are you from?”
“New York City,” boasted Plug.
“Where?”
“The other side of dreams, I guess,” added Charlie.
“You’re human?” she asked.
“Yes,” replied Charlie. “Is that so weird?”
The young guardian’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“No human has ever been here.”
She examined them with odd curiosity. Charlie recognized the look. It was the same one Plug got the first time they went to the Bronx Zoo and saw a baboon — you knew they existed, but you never thought you’d actually see one up close.
“Amazing,” she said. “A human with the Sandman’s power.”
“What?” Charlie asked. “Whose power?”
“Did you just say the Sandman?” snickered Plug.
The young guardian nodded. Plug laughed louder.
“The Sa
ndman’s not real,” said Charlie.
“Of course he’s real,” she replied, as if offended. “Born ages ago from the dream of the great human warrior, Kala.”
It seemed she was reciting a story she had been told many times.
“Kala was the leader of an ancient desert tribe known as the Sandmen of the Upanishad. At mankind’s darkest hour, when evil forces had conquered most of your world, Kala rose up to fight them. But his friends and brothers turned against him. On the night they came to kill him, the sands of the desert consumed Kala, protecting him. Asleep under the protection of the desert, Kala had a powerful dream, one that vanquished the darkness around him. And from that dream a child was born into the Dreamscape, a child born of sand and man, endowed with a power held by no other: the power to banish evil from dreams.”
A moment of silence hung in the air. Until—
“Ha-ha! Great story,” said Plug.
“Sure is,” agreed Charlie. “And you tell it well.”
“How do you not know any of this?” Her voice raised an octave. “The Sandman rules the Dreamscape!”
“Sorry,” replied Charlie with an innocent shrug. “Where we come from, he’s just a song.”
Plug bopped his head and sang, “Mr. Sandman—”
The young guardian spread her wings, cutting him off. “The Sandman protects your dreams!” she shouted. “Without him, your world would be overcome by horrible nightmares! Peace would vanish! War would reign! Good dreams would die!”
“Did she say die?” asked Plug. “Ah, God! I knew it! I didn’t want to say it, but I knew it! Other side! Portals of light! That’s what they say you see!” He began pacing around and rambling to himself. “I saw it on TV— this guy died and came back, and he said he saw a light. That’s why we can’t go home! Because it’s too late! We’re gone! Worm bait, right? Ah man, I’m too young! I never even got to kiss a girl! Not once!”
“You’re not dead,” said the young guardian.
Plug looked at her. His eyes begged for confirmation. She shook her head, emphasizing again: not dead.
