“Well, sure, I can take you right to some primo hiding places!” said the elevator enthusiastically.
“Great!” said Billy, brightening at the first good news in what felt like forever.
“Of course, you’ll have to travel with someone for part of the way,” continued the elevator.
“What? Who?” said Billy in a panic.
“Dunno. Some lady just pressed my button, if you know what I mean. Creepy gal, dressed all in black, big nasty bug on her shoulder.”
“Mrs. Black?” screamed Billy.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” said the elevator happily. Then in a conspiratorial tone, it said, “Not one of my favorite passengers, I can tell ya.”
“But, but,” said Billy, sounding like an airplane engine trying to turn over. “But, but, not her. Can’t you just ignore her?”
“Nah, rules are rules. I’m an elevator. Someone presses my button, I gotta go. But I can hide you after I pick her up,” it said reassuringly.
“But she’ll have killed me by then!” moaned Billy.
The elevator was silent for a moment. “That’ll definitely make it harder to hide you,” it finally said. “But not impossible,” it continued. “Like they always say, ‘You can always find a good places to shove a corpse.’”
“What? Who says that?” said Billy in a frenzied tone. He was fairly sure he could actually feel his brain melting in a combination of confusion and panic. “Never mind,” he said an instant later, before the elevator could go off again on one of its well-intentioned but supremely unhelpful tangents. “I’ll just get off here,” he managed, and stepped out of the still-open doors.
“All righty then,” said the elevator. “It’s been a pleasure, kid, as always. Now I’m off to get that Mrs. Black.” The elevator shuddered as its doors closed. “Ugh,” it said. “Creepy people wearing creepy bug pins, the place has just gone straight to…,” then its voice was lost to Billy’s hearing as it dropped through the ground of the tower, leaving no trace of its existence behind.
Once again, Billy was alone. He appeared to be in a somewhat better situation now, since there were no zombies around, but he still felt very exposed. In fact, he felt more than exposed. He felt like he was being watched.
He looked behind him, and saw immediately that the elevator had deposited him within a few yards of the Diamond Dais. The podium was still cracked, with the single thin shard of crystal still jutting up from its center.
Billy also saw something else. He saw that his feeling had been correct. He was being watched.
The figure was draped across the Black Throne, one leg thrown disdainfully over the arm of the dark pearl chair. The man smiled when he saw Billy, then hopped in an almost chipper way out of the seat. The happy jaunt to his gait, however, was belied by the serpentine look in his eyes, and a grin like a spider inviting a fly into its parlor.
“Hello, Billy,” said Wolfen.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH
In Which Billy is Cleansed, and taken Away…
Billy’s tongue felt like a giant rock in his mouth, thick and dry and useless for speech. A sudden feeling of fear had gripped him from his toes to the crown of his head.
Wolfen walked to the edge of the Diamond Dais and jumped lightly to the ground below, seeming almost to float down. His green eyes flashed with a disturbing inner light, as though Wolfen’s mind was ablaze with a dark fire.
“Why so quiet?” purred the Power. He approached Billy with a kind of deliberate casualness, appearing to walk in an almost meandering gait that nevertheless moved him closer to Billy with every step.
Run, Billy thought to himself. Run.
But he couldn’t move. His feet were planted as firmly on the tower as though he were part of the stone it was made of.
Wolfen was still wearing the black clothing covered by a white coat, the exact same outfit Billy had seen him wearing before, on the day that Wolfen had sworn allegiance to the Council. From what Billy understood, Wolfen’s words had to have been true, because the Diamond Dais had turned green when the Power spoke them. Nonetheless, the Council had been attacked, and Wolfen stood before him now, his smile broadening as he contemplated the fear-ridden Billy.
“I must confess,” said Wolfen, “you’re somewhat less than I expected. The way Lumilla spoke of you, I rather pictured someone a bit more imposing.” Wolfen paused, leaning in close to Billy. “At the very least, a bit braver.”
Billy felt his lip quiver. He was surprised at how terribly frightened he was. Not that Wolfen wasn’t scary. He was. But Billy could somehow feel, in a strangely disconnected way, that his fear was far out of proportion to what it should have been.
Wolfen waved a hand, and Billy’s fear doubled in intensity, almost causing him to fall over. Billy clutched at his stomach in raw terror, biting his lip to keep from shouting.
“What you are feeling,” said Wolfen in a calm, conversational tone, “is the Dread. It’s one of my specialties.” The way he said that left Billy with no doubt that Wolfen had other specialties, and that some of them were much, much worse.
Every bad thing that Billy had ever experienced, every frightening moment, every pain from the smallest sliver to the time he had broken his leg in grammar school and had to have surgery, crowded into Billy’s mind. It was as though he was made of fear, a writhing snake of horror that would suffocate him in its constrictive grasp.
Billy could feel his heart pounding. Far too hard, far too fast. He could hear his pulse in his eardrums, beating with machine-gun speed and intensity, and knew his heart couldn’t keep up like this for much longer: he would literally drop dead of fear.
Wolfen walked slowly around Billy, taking his time, a hawk circling an injured field mouse before dropping in for the final blow. He spoke as he walked, and the words confirmed Billy’s suspicions: “If I don’t let up soon, Billy, you will simply fall over and be consumed by your greatest fears.” He made a small movement, a crook of his finger, and Billy felt the terror ease somewhat. It didn’t go away entirely, but his heart slowed from its dangerous speed.
Billy’s mouth still felt dry, but he managed to croak out a single word. “Why?” he said.
“Always an interesting question,” responded Wolfen. He smiled. “But not to be answered today, I think.” He suddenly stopped circling, standing behind Billy. Billy still couldn’t move, but he felt the intensity of Wolfen’s hateful gaze boring into him. “Instead,” continued the evil Power, “I think I will ask the questions, and you will answer them.” He leaned toward Billy, and Billy could smell the man’s rank breath, rotten and fetid, as though he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a million years. “Who are you, Mr. Jones?” asked Wolfen.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Billy managed to answer through chattering teeth.
“Who are you?” repeated Wolfen. “What is it about you that made Lumilla think you were so special?”
“What have you done with her?” Billy asked.
Immediately, he knew that was the wrong response. His fear redoubled, and he fell to his knees. “I’ve done as I pleased with her,” was Wolfen’s cryptic response. “Just as I will do with any Power who crosses me.” He stood in front of Billy now, legs wide, fists clenched as though he was restraining himself from physically attacking Billy.
Instead, however, he reached out to Billy. He extended a finger, and Billy was reminded for a moment of the clutching hands of the zombies he had repeatedly escaped from. But this was no zombie reaching for him now, it was something much worse. And Billy couldn’t even move this time, much less actively flee from the reaching grasp.
Wolfen’s claw-like hand moved closer to Billy. The finger was only a centimeter away from Billy’s heart, from his chest. Billy braced himself for whatever might come, knowing at the same time that whatever it was, he couldn’t possibly prepare for it. It would be devastating, and Wolfen would have no mercy.
But at the last second, something intervened. There was a hiss, and a bright flash
of light. Billy had a quick glimpse of a red form. Whatever it was moved too fast to be made out, but it was lithe and angry, and had appeared from somewhere close, before disappearing once again to wherever it had come from.
He had no time to ponder this strange event, though, because at the same time it happened Wolfen cried out in rage and pain. The hand that had only a millisecond before been reaching out to Billy was now clutched against the Darksider’s chest. In that same instant, Billy felt himself suddenly free to move again, the icy grip of the Dread gone.
Billy wasted no time, but stood and ran as fast as he could. Behind him, he heard Wolfen whisper, “How?” Then, in a voice that was so full of hate Billy could hardly bear to hear it, the Black Power screamed, “You will be mine!”
But Billy didn’t turn around to see if Wolfen’s expression matched the sound of his voice. He just ran for all he was worth. Billy had never been athletic—just one more reason he had been picked on all his life—but fear of the terrible force behind him lent him strength and fleetness. He felt as though he could have outrun a cheetah.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know where he could go. He was just running aimlessly, without a plan of any kind. As far as he knew, there was only the Diamond Dais, the river, and the plant life on the tower. The Diamond Dais was where Wolfen was at, the very place Billy least wanted to go. The river was fast moving, and both sides of it ended in waterfalls that would send Billy plummeting over the side of the tower, thousands of feet to certain death. And the plant life that had once covered much of the tower was now either buried in rubble or dried and withered, offering no place to hide.
Billy heard Wolfen scream again; apparently whatever had just happened had really hurt him. Then Billy heard Wolfen’s feet as the Darksider began to run after him.
Billy looked around, still running as fast as he could, but hearing Wolfen right behind him. Rubble and rock were scattered everywhere, some of the pieces quite large, but Billy knew hiding behind a big stone would be futile, since Wolfen could undoubtedly just zap him right through it.
However, seeing the rubble gave Billy an idea. He glanced around and saw what he was looking for, running as quickly as he could to a particularly large stone nearby. He prayed silently as he ran that Wolfen wouldn’t guess what Billy was going to do; he remembered Mrs. Russet saying that the most powerful Black Powers could level entire cities, so he was sure that hitting Billy with a crippling Dread—or something even worse—would be no problem for Wolfen. Indeed, Billy suspected that the only reason he wasn’t already laid out flat was because Wolfen’s concentration had been broken by whatever pain he had just experienced. But that wouldn’t last for long, and Billy knew that if he was caught before he could put his idea in motion, if Wolfen so much as laid a finger on him, he would be trapped again, and this time for good.
But Wolfen didn’t seem to guess what Billy was planning, apparently blinded by rage that someone—anyone—had dared to escape from him or hurt him in any way.
Billy made it to the stone he had spotted. Now there was nowhere farther to run, he was literally between a rock and a very hard place.
“There’s nowhere to go, Billy!” Wolfen screamed triumphantly, now only a few yards behind Billy. His triumph turned to indignation and anger however as he finally realized what Billy was doing. “No!” he screamed.
But it was too late. Billy hurriedly traced the word “Transport” on the rock with his finger, and just as it had done before, a golden doorway—the doorway to the anteroom that was hidden in this stone—opened up.
Billy yanked the door open and stepped through it, slamming it shut behind him. Wolfen’s incoherent cry of wrath was instantly cut off. Billy backed away from the doorway as fast as he could, looking around for a chair or something to wedge under the door. But then he realized that the door opened outward, so putting a chair under the door handle would be useless. Besides, just as before the only thing to sit on in this cheery room was a collection of colored beanbags. He couldn’t even throw anything through the large window that looked out onto the beautiful snow-caked vista outside the room. The glass looked very thick, and he doubted he could muster the power to smash through it with a beanbag and flee out into the dazzling storm of snowflakes beyond.
Billy ran around the bar from which Vester had served him the hot chocolate that had tasted so wonderful at the time. It seemed like a million years had passed since then, a thousand lifetimes in which Billy had experienced so many new things that he bore little resemblance to the boy he had been.
Behind the bar, on a small shelf below it, was a mug that was already full of hot chocolate. Not a “Vester special” this time, but a simple cup of cocoa. That was all Billy had been hoping to find, and he realized that the magic hot chocolate bar would serve the hot chocolate wished by anyone in the room.
Billy hefted the mug. He dumped the chocolate unceremoniously on the floor, then held the empty cup over his head, waiting for the anteroom door to open. When Wolfen came in, Billy would chuck the mug at the evil wizard as hard as he could. Billy knew it was a useless gesture—he never got picked for baseball teams at school precisely because he could throw a ball about as accurately as a paralyzed earthworm—but he was determined to do something.
So he held the mug overhead, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And the door….
finally….
didn’t open.
Billy lowered the cup, frowning. What had just happened? Why wasn’t Wolfen barging in here? Then he realized: the doorway to the anteroom was activated by a special key word, a word that Billy had known because Mrs. Russet had told him. But Wolfen, apparently, did not know the word. So Billy was safe. For the moment at least.
Billy breathed a sigh of relief. Then new terror flooded him as he felt something scuttle across his foot! Billy screamed and threw himself backward. Unfortunately, there was a wall right behind him so instead of getting away from whatever monster was now attacking, he just managed to bounce gracelessly off the wall and then go down in a pile on the floor, where he saw what had run across his foot.
It was one of the rock Fizzles that cleaned this room. It had a rag in its many dexterous hands (or was that feet?), and was conscientiously and rapidly cleaning the mess Billy had made when he dumped out the cocoa on the floor. Within an instant, the spill was gone, as though it had never been. The Fizzle, though it had no eyes in its tiny rock head, seemed to look at Billy. It shook its top two arms/legs at Billy, clearly communicating the idea of “Be more careful next time!” And as soon as it did, it immediately ran over and scrubbed a bit of cocoa off Billy’s shoe, sighing in exasperation.
Then the Fizzle spotted the remains of the cocoa mug, which had fallen to the ground and shattered when Billy fell. The Fizzle seemed to droop a bit, not in depression, but almost as though its low expectations of Billy’s ability to keep things tidy had just been fulfilled.
Billy watched, his terror at the thought of Wolfen barging in after him momentarily alleviated, as the rock Fizzle expertly flicked the dirty, cocoa-saturated rag it held. The rag whipped around the rock creature, wrapping itself around the Fizzle like a toga. The move reminded Billy of an expert kung fu fighter throwing nunchuks over his shoulder: clearly this was a kind of Bruce Lee of cleaning.
The Fizzle scuttled over to the pieces of broken mug and began to gather them up in its tiny arms (Billy decided he was just going to call them arms, even though the Fizzle seemed to run on them or use them to grasp things at will). However, even with its many hands, it was too small to get all the pieces gathered up. A shrill whistle came from the Fizzle, and a moment later three more of them appeared from nowhere, emerging from the darkness under the bar.
The newcomers—each subtly different from one another, but cut from similar molds—scuttled over to the Fizzle who was holding some of Billy’s mug. They put their heads together, and Billy could hear wordless whisperings, with one of the Fizzles occas
ionally glancing over its shoulder at Billy. There were no expressions on those tiny stone faces, but each time that happened, Billy felt like the Fizzle in question was saying “How could you?” in exasperated tones.
Finally, all four Fizzles gathered up the last bits of Billy’s broken mug. Then they scampered off under the bar, and with four matching “pops,” they disappeared, leaving Billy, once more, alone.
This was fine with Billy. He got slowly back to his feet, glancing at the door to the anteroom once more. Still no Wolfen. He looked back at the shelf under the bar, and saw that a new mug of hot chocolate had appeared. Billy took it and sipped it gladly. The liquid, as it had before, tasted absolutely wonderful. It seemed almost like Billy was pouring courage and consolation down his throat, making him feel as though perhaps everything would turn out all right.
He looked around. As before, the pot-bellied stove glowed with cheery warmth, and the window offered a spectacular view of the windswept mountains and the beautifully shimmering snowflakes that were too large to be believed and constantly grouped themselves into shapes and images. Billy watched, in quick succession, a snowflake beaver, a snowflake book, and a snowflake baseball bat appear. Apparently the snowflakes were practicing their “B” words today.
Billy sank down on a bean bag, grateful for a moment alone to think without having to worry about sudden and painful doom falling on him. He had almost forgotten what a moment without threat of death felt like.
He thought about Wolfen. How had the man lied to the Diamond Dais? What was he doing just sitting there alone? Waiting for Billy? That seemed to make no sense, but Billy had to admit to himself that Wolfen hadn’t seemed at all surprised by Billy’s sudden appearance out of the elevator.
What seemed to make even less sense, however, was Wolfen’s failure to keep Billy under the control of the Dread. What had happened when the Black Power reached out? What had caused the bright flash of light? What had saved Billy?
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 28
