The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Home: A Gay Teen Coming of Age Paranormal Adventure about Witches, Murder, and Gay Teen Love (The Broom Closet Stories Book 2)

by Jeff Jacobson

  “This,” she said, pointing to the kids in the chairs, “This is the way to do it. To strengthen ourselves.”

  A vague element from Charlie’s dream swam into his mind, where the orderly from the hospital bit random children until they popped like water balloons. He shuddered as he remembered how she kissed Diego, then sank her teeth into his shoulder until he exploded in a burst of water, his skin a wasted elastic shell falling to the schoolroom floor.

  Had it been one of those dreams that Beverly had described? What had she called it? A dream of … premonition? Had his dream been trying to tell him that this was what the witches were doing to the kidnapped teenagers?

  But what good were his dreams if they didn’t help him prevent bad things from happening? Just like the dream he had had with the German shepherds, when he hadn’t known what to do with the information or how to prevent Principal Wang from having a heart attack, the dream with the orderly was useless. Too little, too late. He shook his head in frustration.

  Forget the dreams, Charlie, he chided himself. He looked up at Grace, narrowing his eyes at her.

  “You would use kids as, as batteries, just to lord it over non-witches? And you’d call that good?” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “It’s not exactly helping those witches be free, is it?” He asked, pointing to the kids in their chairs.

  “Charlie,” Grace said, speaking to him the way a teacher does to a dull-witted student, “you’re missing the point. It’s about freedom! Freedom from hiding. You, of anyone, should understand that. Freedom from the stupid tedious little games people like your Aunt Beverly have to play every single day of their lives. Freedom to dominate the air, the streams and rivers, the oceans. Freedom to arrest the destruction that human beings cause on this planet, to return nature to her true balance, to use her gifts as is our birthright!”

  Charlie doubted that Grace was an environmentalist at heart. But he could tell that she believed what she said. Wasn’t that what made people crazy? And dangerous? When they had some insane idea that they really believed in?

  “You go along with all this, Malcolm?” Charlie asked, staring at the man.

  Malcolm opened his mouth, then shut it abruptly. He looked at Grace as if waiting for her to instruct him, a look of confusion on his face. Charlie couldn’t understand what was going on with him. First, he betrayed Beverly, making it so Charlie would get kidnapped, even hurting Amos. And now he showed none of the fire or strength that Charlie had come to associate with his mentor. He just stood there, waiting for Grace to tell him what to do.

  Thomas spoke. “Malcolm has recently been helping us find the perfect candidates, Charlie. He has more exposure to witching covens and their unpopped youth than anyone we know. With a little persuasion, he agreed to help us out.”

  Grace smiled and walked over to Malcolm, who winced as if he were about to be struck. She reached up and placed both of her hands on his head. His body began to shudder. When she stepped away from him, he stopped moving. His mouth dropped open, arms slack at his sides. He looked catatonic.

  “What did you do to him?”

  But Grace ignored his question.

  “Here’s where you come in,” she continued, walking over to where he stood.

  “You see, Thomas and I have learned a lot. We’ve figured out how to use that little burst of life force when someone dies. And we finally understand how to tap the potential of young witches. Combined, the power is incredible. Immense. But we haven’t been able to expand it. We’ve had to stay relatively near these kids to use their gifts. If we don’t, whenever we travel farther away from them, the power fades. We needed your help to learn how to …”

  “How to go mobile, Charlie,” said the man Thomas who might be his own father. “Right now it’s like a landline. We want it to be more like a cell phone.” He smiled as he finished, as if this explanation were the most obvious thing on the planet.

  “That’s right. With no roaming fees,” Tony added with a giggle from where he stood in the background. Scissors Lady Claudia gave him a warning look, but Grace just ignored him.

  Charlie crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you think I can help you? Why do you think I would? I won’t, you know,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on Grace.

  “Oh, you’ll help us all right,” the witch said as she walked over to him. “We just aren’t sure yet how it’s all going to work.”

  She put her hands on either side of Charlie’s shoulders and peered into his eyes. Charlie’s skin crawled at her touch. He tried to wriggle away from her but found his feet stuck to the floor.

  “You see,” said Thomas, walking over and standing next to Grace, “one night a few months ago, I felt you. Just like that. I woke up and I felt you stirring in my gut.” The man placed his hand over his stomach.

  “I didn’t even know you existed. But I could feel you far away, and I knew that somehow you could help. You’re my offspring. My blood is in you. My legacy is also in you. I knew you had to be part of what Grace and I have been building.

  “It took a while to track you down. I’m just happy to have you here, son, ready to help us with our plans.”

  “I told you, I won’t help you. I’m not your son. I …”

  Thomas spread his arms out to either side of him and turned his hands palms up. Then he raised his arms above his head. Charlie felt himself lift up off the ground. For a brief moment he floated in midair, horizontal, facing the floor, a foot or two above everyone else. Then he was thrown hard against the ceiling.

  The wind whooshed out of him as his head exploded in pain. He was struck blind for several moment as white heat seared his eyeballs. He cried out in spite of himself.

  “Remember that? I sure do. I thought I’d let you know what it felt like and remind you that you will definitely be helping us. Just so you know this isn’t a negotiation.”

  As his vision returned, Charlie looked down at the room from where he lay pressed flat with his back against the ceiling, at the kids sitting like zombie schoolchildren in their chairs, at Claudia and Tony who were smiling up at him, at Grace and Thomas directly below him, eyeing him the way people look at monkeys behind bars at the zoo, at Malcolm who stood stock still, staring off into space.

  Charlie wanted to summon Words, wishing he could wreak havoc on the witches below. But he didn’t know how to wreak havoc. He wasn’t powerful enough. Plus, if he could, he might inadvertently hurt one of the captured kids. And he had no illusions that he would be any match for even one of the witches standing beneath him, let alone all five.

  It was time that he faced reality: he was stuck, helpless, glued to the ceiling, held captive by the scariest witch on the planet, with no idea whatsoever how to get away, save his life, or keep from becoming a human battery pack himself.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Link

  “SHALL WE GET STARTED, THEN?” Grace said, grinning like the hostess of a summer tea party.

  No more than five minutes had passed since Thomas had thrown Charlie up against the ceiling. Now he sat on a chair facing one of the catatonic kids, a boy older than himself with big shoulders and an unshaven face. He stared at a spot just beyond Charlie’s right ear, his chest moving with that terrible rapid breathing.

  Tony and Claudia stood behind Charlie’s chair, their hands pressed down on his shoulders. They had been instructed to subdue him if he even so much as tried to summon a single Word.

  Grace and Thomas sat in front of him, on either side of the big-shouldered boy.

  Charlie looked over to Malcolm, hoping against hope that his teacher had snapped out of his stupor. But the man remained in a daze, eyes half closed and glassy, standing a few feet away.

  “We’ve been waiting a long time for you to be here with us,” Grace said.

  Charlie shivered.

  “Whatever this is, I’m not going to help you!” Charlie said, hoping his voice sounded braver than he felt.

  “Now’s not the time to talk, okay, son?�
�� Thomas said to him. Then, “Now only take a little, Grace,” he continued, jutting his chin at the boy opposite Charlie. “We just need to make contact and get the flow started.”

  Grace nodded. She placed her hand on the boy’s head. He squinted. It didn’t look like he was in pain as much as he was concentrating on something. Grace’s head didn’t fly back like it did the previous time, but her eyes widened and her breathing increased.

  “Good, good,” said Thomas. Then he placed his hand on the boy’s head. Thomas closed his eyes as a shudder ran through him.

  He opened them and looked at Grace. “Now,” he said.

  At the same time, the two witches reached out toward Charlie with their free hands.

  “No!” Charlie tried to squirm away.

  Tony and Claudia gripped his neck and the back of his head, holding him firmly in place.

  Charlie closed his eyes, wishing he could be anywhere other than here, wishing there was something he could do.

  He felt pressure on his scalp as the witches’ hands pressed down on the top of his hair.

  And then everything changed.

  There was a momentary dropping sensation in his gut like he had fallen from a short height.

  His skin flushed with a pleasant heat as if someone wrapped a warm towel around him after he had stepped out of a cold swimming pool.

  And just like that, Charlie felt himself thrust inside the boy’s head who sat across from him. He knew all sorts of things. He could see and feel what the boy saw and felt. The boy’s name was Todd Laramie. He hoped to go to college on a basketball scholarship. Charlie watched as a pretty young girl walked up to him. He grew aroused as he kissed the young girl on a bed somewhere. He felt himself sweating on a basketball court, dribbling the ball, jumping up and making a three-pointer. He heard a crowd cheering, felt teammates clapping his back.

  He saw cats. He felt himself running on all fours, and now he leaped, not like an athlete but an animal. No effort. Pure joy. He was fully feline, chasing rodents at night, stretching in a pool of sunshine during the day.

  He could feel the confusion and terror in Todd’s mind. The boy didn’t understand what was happening to him, even as he enjoyed the thrill and speed of being a cat.

  But above all else, above the sensations and the confusion, the memories and the cat dreams, the intrusion into Todd’s world, Charlie felt a stockpile of power, of amazing raw strength stretching far out in front of him like a vast reservoir of water.

  This seemingly endless supply of raw power made everything that he had learned before about witchcraft look like child’s play.

  He knew things: about air and trees, about the hair follicles of humans, about whistling up the winds and racing moonbeams across the sands of the great deserts of the world. He knew himself as both human and as something greater, something better.

  And … he wanted it. He wanted this thing that promised to carry his heart and his mind into a single point of utter clarity and confidence, confidence that had previously been unimaginable. He wanted this force that would give him dominance over everything. Over everyone.

  Before Charlie could fully grasp what was happening, the flow of power cut off as suddenly as it had washed over him, and he felt himself wrenched from Todd Laramie’s head and dumped back into his brain.

  He opened his eyes as his entire body shook.

  Grace and Thomas were staring at him expectantly, their hands now at their sides.

  “Oh yeah, that’s it. You felt it, didn’t you, my boy?” said Thomas.

  Charlie’s teeth chattered, and his skin itched as if a thousand sand fleas scampered and burrowed across its surface. For a moment he feared he would shoot up off his chair and through the ceiling, the aftermath of the invasion into Todd’s head was so strong.

  “Now, how can you say that’s a bad thing, huh, Charlie? How can you say that?” Grace asked, true sincerity in her words.

  The raw rush of power was diminishing, its fiery edges softening, turning dark, the way the edges of land do as the sun sets behind the horizon.

  Yet he could still feel Todd’s life force, still knew all the details, as well as sense the boy’s latent spark of witchcraft marking him as an echo, his connection to cats, even the inner secrets of his mind and heart. It was all still there, but as if it were in a room, and the door of the room was slowly closing, and Charlie was being pulled away from it, down a hallway, maybe to never go inside the room again.

  A moan slipped from his lips, and a small puff of white vapor floated from his mouth and hung in the air in front of his face. Charlie watched it for a moment, fascinated, while a part of him mourned the loss of the rich all-encompassing power.

  The vapor slid into his nostrils causing him to sneeze. His head jerked to the side, and he saw Malcolm standing still, not watching anything, just staring at the far wall. He forgot who Malcolm was for a moment. But as the surge a of power continued to wash away from him, and his mind sharpened in focus, he began to remember. He remembered that Grace was using Malcolm somehow to find more children, find them and turn them over to her so that she could drain them dry, leaving them sitting on chairs like corpses.

  The way the three of them had just drained a large quantity of energy from Todd Laramie, the basketball player.

  Oh my god! Charlie thought in a panic. I didn’t mean to. Did I just …?

  Yes. Yes, he had. The life force that they had just drunk was now gone from Todd, as if they had eaten months off of his life span, or maybe even years. Charlie knew in his gut that the boy could never get that vitality back.

  He looked over at the line of children against the wall, sitting zombie-like and captive, waiting to be used by Grace as nothing more than power boosters.

  Charlie felt his skin crawl. He had just been forced to drink a portion of Todd Laramie’s actual life. What was worse, a part of him had liked the power, had wanted more, had wanted it to go on forever. But now that it had stopped, Charlie knew it for what it was: stealing, siphoning away someone’s life, the worst kind of violation.

  Even though he still didn’t understand how he fit into their plans, he knew that Grace and Thomas wanted to make Charlie help them, to maybe drain all of the children, and mostly likely many more.

  He felt his head shake from side to side.

  “No,” his mouth formed the silent word. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t steal like that again, and he wouldn’t be a part of any plan that would let the witches steal from children.

  It’s time then, isn’t it? he said inside his mind. It’s time to fight.

  As if from far away, he heard Grace’s voice, pleasant and matter-of-fact.

  “Let’s continue, then. Let’s see if Thomas’s theory about you being a strong conduit is right.”

  Before Charlie could stop them, hands were one again placed on his head.

  “No!” he tried to scream. “I won’t let you. I can’t …”

  A violent lurch. He was no longer in the basement.

  He gasped as the dropping sensation came on again, only this time much stronger. This time it felt like he had been tossed from a cliff.

  Something shadowy encircled his face as he fell, hissing in his ears. A cold wind stippled his skin in gooseflesh, and dark shapes darted beyond his line of vision.

  Pleasure flooded his senses filling him with a longing so sharp that it almost hurt. He reached out to grab at something, anything, for balance, and then his feet landed on what seemed like solid ground. The euphoria increased, but this time a pall of anguish, like dark ink, sullied its surface. At first he couldn’t figure out why it was there.

  And then as clearly as if someone had flipped on a light switch, Todd Laramie now stood less than two feet from him on a vast expanse of arid land. The sky overhead glowed silver, and the air threatened to suffocate him with its heat. Todd’s eyes, alert, were staring at Charlie. He didn’t look like a wasted zombie anymore. He stood tall and hale. But something was wrong. Tears began to run
down the boy’s face. His mouth moved as if trying to speak, but Charlie couldn’t make out what he was saying. He looked so incredibly sad right then, so grief-stricken, that Charlie felt his own heart lurch in torment without knowing why. Drops of brown-red blood began to seep from Todd’s neck, and he shook his head slowly as if surrendering something. As if giving up.

  Charlie reached out and touched the boy’s neck, diverting one streamlet of blood onto his index finger. He heard his own sharp intake of breath. It was as if he had been parched with thirst for days at a time only to finally drink from a cool glass of water. He could feel his skin cells, his organs, his nerve endings, being slaked.

  Having drunk his fill, he pulled his hand away from Todd’s neck. The look of grief dissipated from the boy’s face, replaced by a blank stare. Then he shuddered once, closed his eyes, and collapsed in a heap to the dry ground.

  Charlie stared at the boy’s crumpled form at his feet. What? What happened? Why was he …?

  Charlie squatted down on the ground and gave Todd’s shoulder a slight shake, already knowing the boy wouldn’t, couldn’t respond.

  “Todd, wake up! Todd, it’s okay! Come on, wake up. Wake up!” he managed to squeak out before his throat squeezed closed. Tears stung his eyes as he shook the boy harder.

  Charlie groaned, patting at the boy’s shoulder, his arm. He looked around for help but only saw sand stretching for miles beneath the silvery sky. He tried to grab for Words, Words which could enter his mouth and reverse what he feared had just happened. But none came. Only the sounds of his own whimpering, his cowardly denial falling from his lips like an August rain too late to save the failed crops.

  Todd Laramie was dead. Charlie had sucked at his life force just as it was leaving the boy’s body. He had stolen from this young man again, had taken his very essence from him, and the proof of it lay in the lifeless body at Charlie’s feet. It didn’t matter that the witches forced him into it. The boy was dead and Charlie had participated in his death.