The Lord of the Curtain

by Billy Phillips

  “I think you already know.”

  “But why?” she shouted at Tin Man.

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  She was being dragged against her will across the scorched field. Her eyes bulged in stark horror. She dug her feet into the dirt to try to slow them down, but to no avail. They marched, westward-bound, heading toward the one-eyed Wicked Witch, with Caitlin screaming, scuffling and thrashing wildly the whole way.

  Talk about a reaction to the red band.

  CHAPTER Sixteen

  A grimy, rancid, rag-gagged Natalie was bound tightly by leather constraints. She was strapped to a large wooden wheel, arms stretched above her head, legs pulled as tight as piano strings, her body locked upside down in the six o’clock position.

  Natalie knew precisely what this diabolical contraption was: a medieval torture wheel. And the wheel had been positioned so that blood was pouring into her brain and the backs of her eyeballs. The putrid rag stuffed in her mouth did its job well by preventing her from screaming for help. Not that there was anyone who could have heard a scream anyway, since her forsaken cell was subterranean.

  She surveyed her prison from her bottom-up view. The walls and floor were plank wood. No windows. A few jugs of water were piled up in the corner, maddeningly just out of her reach. That was the extent of the amenities in the underground dungeon.

  The cell was also chilly, but she felt warm, as if she had a low-grade fever. There was nothing to do but wait till she passed out or that kid-snatcher came back to spin the immoral spinning wheel right-side up.

  The memories of Wonderland and her bizarre experience with her sister last Halloween had come flooding back to her when that nefarious impostor, posing as Uncle Derek, forced her down the grave of L. Frank Baum. He had put a bag over her head when they touched the bottom of the portal, and then he took her God-knows-where. She had fallen asleep—or was put to sleep. When she woke up, she found herself mounted onto the Gothic torture device.

  Natalie was stunned that she had gone an entire year without remembering the otherworldly kingdom and the extraordinary events that had taken place there.

  Did Caitlin remember?

  Her sister had never talked to her about it. Perhaps that was because Natalie had never brought it up, having repressed all her own memories. Obviously, she would’ve never believed Caitlin even if her sister had tried to broach the subject.

  Natalie could only remember particular parts of the experience. She recalled diving into the glimmering portal that mysteriously opened up at Lewis Carroll’s grave on Halloween night last year. She had been enthralled by the opportunity to explore what she thought might have been a genuine wormhole leading to another dimension. But her zeal and motivation for diving into the glowing grave weren’t just about intellectual curiosity. If other dimensions existed, if other worlds were just as real her world, perhaps that meant the death of her mom was not really the end of her being. Energy never dissipates. Atoms never die. For Natalie, it was also about hope.

  She also recalled meeting the authentic princesses Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. The memory had surfaced clear and bright, but she still wasn’t sure whether she had been more fascinated by the tangible existence of fictional literary characters or by their shocking decay into the living dead.

  And who could forget those carnivorous Venus flytraps? And the awesome experience of teleporting through Zeno’s Forest—which to her mind offered irrefutable evidence of the space-time continuum being a persistent illusion, as Einstein had theorized.

  The very last thing she remembered was climbing a mountainous wall of stone on the perimeter of the Queen of Hearts’s castle.

  The last memory she had of Halloween was of waking up at Mount Cemetery in Guildford with a relentless craving for beef kabobs and hummus.

  A wooden door swung open with a resounding bang, breaking her train of thought. A pair of upside-down black boots clunked on the wood floor as they stepped toward her in the derelict dungeon.

  The boots approached the wheel. The contents of her stomach suddenly swirled as the rack spun, whirling her right side up.

  The impostor Derek Blackshaw stood before her. He untied the gag and pulled the stinking rag from her mouth. He stank of cheap rum, stale blood, and unwashed clothes.

  His black hair was as greasy as an oil spill and pulled into a ponytail. His unshaven face was bloodless, battle-scarred, and nail hard. The stubble on his face had been salted and peppered by the hands of time. Definitely not a face to mess with. Nevertheless, Natalie nodded knowingly as she peered at him with scorn.

  “You’re the Enchanter. The one Rapunzel said had cursed the Queen of Hearts and made such a despicable mess of this place.”

  His bony fingers rubbed his chin. He narrowed an eye and sneered, “I says you ain’t as clever as you think you are,” the man replied. He leaned in close to Natalie. The rum and blood on his breath were so robust, she could taste them on her own tongue.

  “I also says when I’m done with ya, it’ll be a name you’ll never forget.” His eyes were pools of crimson liquid, his grin as cold as a cadaver.

  “And what is this unforgettable name of yours?”

  He stroked the waxy stubble on his face. “Blackbeard.”

  “The pirate? Ha! I think your name should be Nosebeard! You have more whiskers coming out of your nostrils than on your chin.”

  His eyes flared.

  Natalie struggled to free her arms but the leather straps burned into her wrists. “Get me out of this contraption. I’m not afraid of you.”

  He cracked a knuckle and snickered. “Only the dead have no fear.”

  Don’t say it!

  She couldn’t help herself.

  “Well, I’m not dead, and I’m still not afraid.”

  He cackled with heartless glee. “Not yet. But ya can avoid yer fate by choosing ta become undead.”

  She rolled her eyes, feigning condescension. “Now why would I do a ludicrous thing like that?”

  Blackbeard raised a sharp eyebrow as he pointed a dirty fingernail at her. “How would ya like ta become a real princess, little lambkins? Rule over yer own kingdom?”

  Natalie’s nose scrunched. At this particular point in their interaction, she had been expecting more dastardly threats—not the offer of a royal coronation.

  Blackbeard tapped his head with a finger as he continued. “And ya get ta dream up all the laws of nature inside that presumptuous head o’ yours.”

  Silence hung like a cobweb in the air. And then Natalie’s eyes lit up with a compelling curiosity.

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  The grind, creak, and clatter of a winch, a pulley, and iron chains startled Caitlin. A footbridge had begun descending. It lowered down across a deep, waterless moat. The footbridge led to a medieval castle, gloomy and char-grilled gray. The castle’s spiked towers and walls of stone were chipped and scarred. The Gothic fortress loomed large, like a precipitous, haunted mountain before Caitlin and her captors.

  Scarecrow and Tin Man twisted Caitlin’s wrists as they hauled her across the wooden walkway into what was presumably the abode of the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Indeed it was. The hideous hag was already waiting for them in the vaulted entranceway of her stone castle.

  Caitlin squirmed.

  The wretched, withered old woman really just had one eye—dead center in the middle of her forehead, like a Cyclops—and it was immensely repulsive to look at. If the Oz books were to be taken literally, Caitlin knew that eye was also telescopic, giving her far-ranging vision.

  The eyeball itself was excessively bloodshot, with multiple broken blood vessels and red retinal veins from hemorrhaging. She was definitely a bona fide blood-eyed, just like the savage ghouls Caitlin had encountered last year in Wonderland.

  But why were these mortal enem
ies—Glinda, Tin Man, and Scarecrow, who in the stories worked against the Wicked Witch—suddenly forming an unholy alliance with her?

  “Come close, dearie,” the wicked old witch summoned with a wave of her decrepit hand.

  Not a chance.

  Tin Man and Scarecrow pulled Caitlin near her. The old woman stank of oregano. She ran two frigid fingers through Caitlin’s hair. Caitlin shivered from the cold touch of dead flesh on her forehead.

  “I’ve had my eye on you for some time, child,” the wicked one said.

  Could that explain the feeling I’ve had of being watched?

  The witch leaned in close to Caitlin—too close—examining her with that single eyeball as if the hag were peering through a microscope and examining some kind of exotic specimen.

  The witch’s breath was scentless and cold on Caitlin’s face.

  “I need your help, blessed dearie,” the witch said.

  Caitlin’s eyebrows jumped a tier.

  The witch smiled. Her teeth were crooked, sickly yellow, and stained brown from rot. “Your assistance is required if we’re to restore some semblance of free will in our kingdoms.”

  A wide-eyed Caitlin swiveled her head to Scarecrow. Then Tin Man. Then Glinda.

  “That’s why you all dragged me here? This old witch needs my help?”

  Glinda nodded. “You would’ve never come knowing you were to meet a blood-eyed, one-eyed crone—especially if you knew how you were going to help.”

  Caitlin bit her thumbnail. “I’m listening!”

  Scarecrow and Tin Man released Caitlin’s hands.

  “The Wicked Witch initially pleaded for my help,” Glinda said. “I was surprised, to say the least. We’ve been adversaries since birth. And she has enslaved so many creatures for so many generations.”

  “What changed?”

  Glinda nodded to her wicked counterpart.

  The hag sighed in self-pity. “Alas, I had always been the slave master in these parts. Then suddenly I was the one being held captive!” She shrugged. “Retribution and restorative justice, I reckon.”

  “Who’s holding you captive?”

  The witch’s brow narrowed in anger. “The Red Spectrum. Lord of the Curtain. Look here, dearie—I never vowed to walk the undefiled path of Lady Glinda and the Southern witches. But even the option to do so has been cast away,” she hissed. She pointed her pale, bony finger at Glinda, Scarecrow, and Tin Man. “The option has been blotted out for all of us. Our will has been predisposed. The privilege of choice revoked. We’re imprisoned by hunger, shackled to the cravings of a perverted appetite. And worst of all, dearie,

  we’re undead! Beyond recall. Even water won’t bring the end for me!”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t get it. I destroyed the scepter. Your will to resist should’ve been restored.”

  Scarecrow wagged a gloved finger. “The destruction of the scepter only restored part of the green frequency—enough to heal our eyes and return us to a less-extreme state of decay. We only got up to the same levels as the royal-blooded maintained during the original affliction.”

  Caitlin’s brows furrowed. “I know that. So what happened?”

  “The rebellion happened.”

  “What rebellion?”

  “After you left last year, the Lord of the Curtain was neutralized. But there were some who longed to return to the full-blooded eye. They were craving the instant rush of red. They surrendered their wills. Voluntarily. And so the Enchanter grew stronger again. About a month ago, a full blood-eyed rebellion broke out. All the wolf species. Others. It grew like an epidemic. The Enchanter grew even stronger.”

  “But you’re all blood-eyed again.”

  “We chose to be.”

  Caitlin shook her head in bewilderment. “Why in the world would you willingly choose to become a walking corpse if that’s what you had just fought against?”

  Glinda shot a look at the Wicked Witch and said, “Prepare the cauldron.”

  Cauldron? Cauldron of what?

  The Wicked Witch winked her one eye, then disappeared into the bowels of her fortress.

  Tin Man swiveled to Caitlin. “You cannot change what you don’t have. To weaken the overall red band spectrum, we needed to access it, make it part of us. Then, the idea was to weaken its influence within us. By doing so, we hope to lessen its dominance over the kingdoms and, in turn, diminish the influence of the Enchanter. And so we fight a terrible, dark war that rages inside us.”

  His eyes smoldered red. He leaned in close to Caitlin.

  Ugh!

  She could almost taste the saliva drooling from the corners of his mouth. “Every moment, an unholy hunger burns within us. Even now, it’s impelling me to attack you without mercy. But I fight it because I know each victory, large or small, over the hunger dims the red and weakens the enemy.” He paused for moment without taking his eyes off Caitlin. Then he said, “There are others.”

  “Others? Who?”

  “A select few that chose to wage this war alongside us,” Scarecrow said. “A few who willingly forsook their will to become one of the blood-eyed, living dead in order to defeat it.”

  “How many?”

  “Including myself, six. But we need a seventh. A human. You.”

  “Why seven?”

  Scarecrow turned to the man of tin.

  “Our world mirrors yours,” the Tin Man said. “Seven continents. Seven seas. Seven days of the week. Seven notes of music. Seven colors in a rainbow. The number seven is woven into the fabric of all worlds. Ergo, if we want to change reality, we will need seven people to effect change.”

  “What type of change?”

  The straw man nudged up the tip of his burlap hat a tad.

  “Mastery.”

  “Over what?”

  “The influence of the red band spectrum.”

  “How does one do that?”

  “Resistance.”

  “Armed resistance? Like a rebellion?”

  His finger tapped the top of her head. “No. We discussed this. Mind resistance. We must resist red band reactions.”

  Caitlin nodded. “Yes . . . of course. Which is why we need the Green Spectrum—the will to resist.”

  Scarecrow wagged a finger. “Forgetting what we already learned and repeating the same mistakes is also a byproduct of bowing to the Red Spectrum.”

  Caitlin shrugged sheepishly. “I get it.”

  Glinda patted her on the back. “Well done. This is the only way to restore balance.”

  Caitlin’s face suddenly soured. Her shoulders slumped. And she felt a sudden warming around her. She also felt feverish and flushed on the inside.

  Glinda lifted Caitlin’s chin with her fingers. “What is it?”

  “Restoring the color spectrum. Changing worlds. It all sounds so poetic, but it’s so not practical. I mean, how can

  just seven people impact a world if billions of others stay the same?”

  Scarecrow smiled sagaciously. “Intelligent question. But you just answered it.”

  “I did?”

  “Indeed. You said ‘billions of others stay the same.’ Which means zero change has occurred among the multitude. I’ll reveal a sweet and precious secret to you; please pay close attention. It is the degree of change that influences worlds. Therefore, if seven change a little and a billion changing nothing at all, which group do you think influences the kingdoms more?”

  Caitlin’s eyes brightened as if a great truth had been revealed. Wow! The positive actions of a few can far outweigh the negative behavior of billions!

  “The Lord of the Curtain is the one who blinds us to this truth. He hides it behind yet another curtain. Each one who attains even the smallest victory, each individual who manages even bare-minimum resistance to the reactions born of the red band impacts all
the kingdoms, whether they know it or not. They sustain kingdoms. And now you know this, Caitlin. But with that knowledge comes accountability.”

  “And that’s why we need to be blood-eyed,” Caitlin said. “To register change each time we resist those disgusting, undead impulses. But now that you’re blood-eyed,” she continued, “how do you even have the strength to resist? The Green Spectrum is still impaired, right? I mean, isn’t that the major problem here? What makes you different from the crowmen?”

  Scarecrow beamed his blade-thin, cherry-red eyes at her. Saliva continued to foam around his mouth. “The witch’s elixir,” the straw man replied. “She cooked up a special broth that gives us just enough will to resist. That’s why I’m half blood-eyed—I harness enough evil to ignite the red, and also just enough to give me a chance to resist it. Like I am doing right now.” His eyes flared. “Not easy sometimes.”

  Caitlin bit her bottom lip. “Is that what the witch is brewing in her cauldron? For me?”

  Glinda took her hand. “It’s the only way.”

  Though her fingers betrayed her nervousness by twisting the ends of her burnished auburn hair, Caitlin knew she had to do what she had to do. No matter what.

  Scarecrow took her other hand. “Ready?”

  The words got caught in her throat. So she nodded firmly, and then balled her fists.

  Scarecrow and Glinda escorted Caitlin deep into the damp darkness of the witch’s castle.

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  They quickly arrived at the cookery—a hot, steamy, stone kitchen replete with rancorous aromas that almost made Caitlin lose her dinner for a second time. She inhaled the pungent smell of oregano mixed with what seemed to be rotten fish, foul meats, moldy cheese, stale dog food, and . . . dirty laundry?

  Hanging from the gray stone shelves were large steel stockpots, oversized frying pans, and cast-iron skillets. In the heart of the cookery, a black cauldron bubbled over a pile of flaming coals. Some kind of repugnant, stinking mishmash was simmering inside it. The witch stirred it with a wooden ladle while tossing in fresh eyeballs, half a dozen or so wolf snouts—or were they dog snouts?—plus several strips of raw liver, and some soft, fatty globules of who-knows-what.