Tommy tried to stand up, but the chains were too short and wouldn't let him. The blood from his nose was running back into his throat and choking him, and Tommy kept sputtering and gagging. He could see his fellow students - some of them staring at him in horror, others pointedly looking away. At least no one was laughing at him, though. Tommy squirmed on the floor, scared and horrified, but he felt like he'd die if everyone started laughing at him. A soldier approached Tommy and slipped a dusty hood over his face, and as darkness surrounded him, Tommy woke from the dream.
He didn't wake at home in his bed, though. He was confused and bewildered - it wasn't him that the Army guys had trussed up and taken away - it was Stephen. Yet he was tied, arms, legs, and neck, just like in the dream. Instead of the gymnasium floor he was lashed to a large wooden table. His nose and throat were dry, and his tongue felt like it was made of sand paper, and he coughed and gagged, reminding him of how he had been choking on his own blood in the dream. He thrashed and pulled on the ropes that bound him - they weren't chains, like in the dream, but were instead a rough, stiff, and scratchy rope that hurt his skin. The rope reminded Tommy of his mother's clothes line - thick, grey, and stiffened by years out in the wind, rain, snow, and sun.
When Tommy thrashed, the greasy man stood up from where'd he'd been sitting near the end of the table. He had a thick finger marking the page of a comic book - one of the ones that had been in Tommy's backpack - but when he saw that Tommy was awake, he laid the comic book face down on his chair, open to the page. Tommy tried to yell, but could only gag - he always went to great lengths to keep his comic books in good condition, and he would never, ever even consider laying one open like that. It damaged the spine of the book and wrinkled the pages.
The man walked over to where Tommy lay bound. He cocked his head to the side, and smiled his greasy little smile. "Ah, awake at last," he said, "I realize it would have been nicer to finish while you were asleep, but it's so much more delicious awake".
Some saliva had returned to Tommy's mouth, and he managed to reply, "F-Finish what?"
"Oh, don't you worry about that," the greasy man smiled again. "It'll all be over soon."
The confusion of the dream was fading, and Tommy got even more afraid and started to cry. "I want my Mommy. I wanna go home," he wept.
That just made the greasy man smile all the wider. "I'm afraid that's not on the schedule for tonight." He pantomimed pulling out a clipboard, flipping through pages, and running his finger down a page. "Nope, no going home on the agenda tonight. At least, not for you. Me... well, I'm already home." He made an expansive gesture with his arm, and Tommy, still scared and crying, took note of his surroundings for the first time.
He was in what appeared to be a one-room building, judging by the grimy windows in three of the walls. There was a filthy, stained, and sagging couch against one wall, next to a refrigerator that appeared to have seen better days. A blanket and pillow on the couch testified that it also doubled as a bed. A washing machine and a clothes dryer were against the other wall, but all the relevant wires and hoses were disconnected and laying across the top of the machines. The third wall was hung with a variety of garden tools – shovels, rakes, trowels, hedge trimmers, and the like, all of which were covered with cobwebs and badly rusted. The chair in which the greasy man had been sitting sat against that wall, beneath and between the tools. The large table to which he was tied dominated the room and left little room on the sides to move around. A bare light bulb dangled from the ceiling on a wire and illuminated the whole place, although the dust and dirt that coated the bulb gave the light a sallow cast. The whole place looking like nothing so much as an old storage shed that had been converted half-heartedly to living quarters.
The greasy man approached the head of the table where Tommy lay lashed down. Tommy whimpered and tried to pull away, but the stiff ropes cut into his skin painfully and the rope around his neck threatened to choke him, so after a few seconds of struggle he subsided into weeping and soft pleading. The man came to the side of the table and held his hand out palm down, several feet above Tommy’s chest. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this won’t hurt me at all.” He then bowed his head and started to chant under his breath in a language that Tommy didn’t recognize. For several long moments nothing happened. Tommy was just starting to think that maybe the mage was just trying to scare him when suddenly a nest of thick, grey tendrils sprouted from the man’s hand. They started out short, but very quickly started to grow longer and descend toward Tommy, who started to shriek and plead with the man to please, please let him go.
Tommy tried to shrink away as the grey, ropey tendrils got close to his body, but he was unable to get away. When the first one touched the skin of his neck, it stiffened and bored into him, and Tommy felt an intense coldness, colder than he’d ever felt before. He screamed with the pain and terror of it, and his screams increased in volume as more of the things attached themselves to his chest, his forehead, even his lips. When two tendrils lashed out and attached themselves to Tommy’s eyes, he screamed again as his vision vanished. He could feel the coldness spreading from each of the tendrils, pulling at the warmth of his body, pulling at his life, tugging at his very soul.
Without warning, Tommy heard a huge crash and splintering of wood. It sounded like a car had just rammed the side of the shack, and Tommy felt small splinters of wood rain down on his body. There was another large thump, and the tendrils tore away from Tommy with a ripping that was almost, but not quite, audible. The pain was the most intense Tommy had ever felt in his short life. Once, on a dare, Tommy had stuck his tongue to a frozen metal fence post. His tongue has stuck to the post, and when Tommy pulled away the skin tore away painfully. This felt a thousand times worse than that day – it felt as if the skin on Tommy’s soul had been torn away, leaving his spirit raw and bleeding like his tongue had been on the day with the fence post. The pain was too much for Tommy to even scream, and he writhed on the table and made feeble attempts to breath.
With the second thump and accompanying pain, Tommy’s vision had begun to return, and he saw that the greasy man had been knocked across the room, where he had sprawled across the floor. The wall with the garden tools had completely disintegrated, and there was a huge, gaping hole that covered most of the part of the wall where a grimy window once was. A man strode out of the cool night air, through the hole in the wall, and into the shack. He was tall, so much so that he had to duck slightly to step through the hole. He seemed to be the exact opposite of the greasy man - he had long blonde hair held back in a ponytail, and he was clean-cut and as lean as the greasy man was portly. This man wore jeans and a nice button down shirt, and although his face was twisted in a snarl of rage, Tommy thought that the man radiated a calmness that he’d never experienced before, as if just by being nearby, the man made his pain and terror somewhat lessened.
“Jordan, you wretch,” the man bellowed. “I warned you I’d be coming for you if you continued this foul practice!”
The greasy man, meanwhile, had picked himself up off the floor. His cheek was bleeding where a flying shard of wood had scratched it open, and he no longer looked scary, only sad and pathetic. He stood before the blonde man and dry washed his hands. “Micah...” he began, “Such a pleasant... SURPRISE!” he finished with a shout, punctuating the word by throwing both of his hands toward the blonde man like he had to Tommy earlier that day.
Tommy wanted to shout a word of warning as another inky-black cloud flew toward the blonde man, but the man simply raised one hand and swatted the thing away like an insect. It vanished the minute his hand touched it, and Tommy wondered why that hadn’t worked for him.
The blonde man took another step forward, and the greasy man held his hand forward, palm out. More of the black snaky tendrils shot out from the greasy man’s palm, straight for the other man, but the blonde man simply swatted those aside, and they vanished as well.
The blonde man didn’t move a muscle, but suddenly
a large ball of fire streaked forward from thin air and struck Jordan in the chest. The impact knocked the greasy man back against the wall, and Tommy heard a sickening crack when his head hit the wooden wall. The greasy man’s body flopped down to the couch, and it looked almost like he was sleeping were his neck not bent at an impossible angle and his hair and clothes on fire.
Tommy could only lay and stare in shock as the blonde man stepped over and touched the ropes binding him. Each rope parted beneath the man’s touch as if it had been sliced by the sharpest of blades. Once Tommy was free, the blonde man gently helped him into a sitting position. By then, the fire had spread from the greasy man’s clothing to the couch and part of the wall, and it was spreading rapidly.
“Fire...” was all Tommy could manage to gasp. The man looked over at the spreading blaze.
“This is a foul place. Let it burn,” the man replied. Then he turned his gaze to regard Tommy. “My name is... well, it’s not my real name, of course, but you can call me Micah.”
“You’re a mage,” Tommy said. The realization had just struck him, and along with it, surprise. Mages were supposed to be dark, twisted, and evil, like the greasy man, yet this man was anything but.
Micah gave Tommy a sad smile and helped him off the table and to his feet. “Yes, I am,” the man said. Stars swam before Tommy’s eyes when his feet hit the floor, and a wave of extreme dizziness took him. He felt the man’s hands on his chest, lifting him as he blacked out, and the man’s words followed Tommy down into darkness. “...and so are you.”
Chapter Three
Tommy awoke on a small cot in a pool of sunlight. The light seemed extremely bright and felt like it was stabbing into his brain, so Tommy pinched his eyes shut for a moment. “A mage. That man said I was a mage,” he thought to himself, remembering the night before. The only things Tommy knew about mages were the things he had learned in school – that mages were all wicked and dangerous because they used their powers to disrupt the peace of society. The only good mages were the ones that had agreed to work for the government. Those mages all wore chains that limited and restrained their abilities, so that they could only use their powers for the benefit of all. Mostly, it seemed that what they did was help the government track down and capture other mages, although Tommy could remember hearing occasional news stories about large battles between government mages and rogue mages.
That’s how it had been, back in the beginning - mages using their powers to kill and steal, or even to try to take control of an area. Tommy remembered hearing about one insane mage who had actually taken control of the White House and declared himself President for life... until he fell asleep in his chair that same night and was killed by the Secret Service agents. He’d heard that there was a town in California that had been totally destroyed when two mages had both laid claim to the area and used their powers to fight over it. They kept fighting long after the thing they were fighting over had been totally ruined, and they were only stopped when a third mage had stepped in and put an end to both of them. It had always seemed that the only thing mages ever did was hurt people. Tommy had never understood why mages would choose to be like that – why couldn’t they just be like everyone else? Surely there was no reason that they had to use their power, so why couldn’t they ignore it and be normal?
From everything Tommy had heard, it seemed like most mages were like the greasy man last night – wicked people who got what they deserved. That the man Micah had helped him – saved him, actually – and was both kind and gentle had been a shock to Tommy.
Tommy opened his eyes again. His head still hurt and his body was sore, particularly the ankle that he had twisted last night (could it really have been just last night? It seemed to be ages ago), but he found that he could stand the brightness, and he looked around. He was in a small, dusty room with a rough wooden floor. A row of long, narrow windows were high off the ground on one of the walls, and they were thoroughly coated in dust and dirt. In fact, the entire room looked like it had not been cleaned in years. There was a small wooden box against one of the walls, and the only other furnishings were two flimsy-looking cots – the one that he was laying on, and another on which Micah the mage sat watching him.
“Good morning,” the man said. “I have to imagine that you feel a good deal like crap.”
Tommy forced himself into a sitting position, and his head swam for a moment. He tried to nod, but it made his head hurt more, so he replied, “Yeah.”
“Have you heard adults talk about hangovers? What you are feeling right now, that’s kind of what it feels like.”
Tommy boggled at that. His dad had gone out with his friends a few times and gotten a hangover the next day, and once his mom and dad had sat up late drinking wine. The next day both of them had hangover headaches. If this was what people felt when they went out drinking, Tommy was amazed that they were willing to do it. He was absolutely certain that, without a doubt, he never wanted to feel this way again. He shook his head in amazement, then groaned when the movement sent slivers of pain into his skull.
The man gave him a sympathetic look, and then said, “So, you may not remember, but I introduced myself last night. I’m Micah, and you are...?”
Tommy remembered the man’s name and thought it sounded somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t place where or why, so rather than be rude, he replied, “Thomas. Tommy, really. Everyone calls me Tommy. Like the gun.”
Micah seemed surprised. “Like the gun?” he asked. “Why would you put it like that? Why not... like the inventor of the light bulb?”
Tommy blushed furiously. “Well... uh... you see... when I was little, I got into a bunch of green apples and ate them all. I was up all night on the toilet, and my dad said my butt was going off like a machine gun, so he started calling me Tommy Gun.” Tommy suddenly wondered why he was telling this stranger about his butt, and he blushed again, but Micah only slapped his knee and laughed.
“Tommy Gun!” Micah chortled. “That’s a great story, Tommy. You shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. Everyone does silly things when they are young.”
Tommy couldn’t help but grin back at the man, but he was still feeling a little lost and out of sorts, so he asked, “Say, Mister...”
“Micah,” the man interrupted.
“Uh, ok. Say, uh... Micah, ummm... where am I?”
“We’re in a safe room. It’s a kind of place for mages to hide. If you must know, we’re in a warehouse in a town not far from your home.”
The mention of home had Tommy bolting to his feet. “Home!” he exclaimed. “My parents will be worried sick!” Tommy took a step, intending to head toward the door, only when he looked around, he realized that there was no door. He stopped, completely confused, and said, “How...?”
Micah grinned at him and said, “How did we get in here? The door to this room was walled up a long, long time ago. I doubt that even the owner of the building even knows that this room exists. There’s no way in or out, except by magic. That’s how we got in here, and that’s how we’ll get out.” Tommy stared at him, and he must have looked afraid, because Micah added, “Don’t worry; I’ll take you out, when it’s time. First, however, you and I need to talk for awhile. Don’t be afraid. We’re just going to talk, nothing else.”
“Magic,” Tommy said. “You said I was a mage. Last night, before I passed out. But I’m not, and I don’t want to be. I’ve been through the tests at school.”
Micah smiled his sad smile again. “Jordan was an evil man, Tommy, and bringing you into our struggle without your consent was not the least of his misdeeds. But he did it, it’s done, and neither you nor I can change that, now.”
Tommy furrowed his brow. “That greasy man made me a mage?”
Micah sighed. “No, not really. Not like you are thinking. He was actually trying to steal that part of you that makes you a mage, to take it and use it to make himself stronger. Since I interrupted him, all he succeeding in doing - besides giving you that terrible head
ache - is awakening a part of you that had lain dormant.” He let out another heavy sigh. “You see, Tommy, the real truth is that almost everybody is what you call a ‘mage’. Nearly every human being on this planet has the ability to learn to control magic of some sort. It’s just that some of us, people like me, have the ability awaken in them all on its own. Those are the people that the government tests find. Others have it forced on them through circumstances – sometimes things like an illness or a car accident can trigger it. The tests will find those people, too, but only after the power has awakened in them. That’s why you get tested at school every year. But usually, if someone makes it to adulthood without awakening the power, then it won’t happen on its own or by accident, and they have to be painstakingly taught to use it.” Micah looked genuinely sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Tommy, but you are in that second group. Now that it’s been awakened in you, you can’t go back. You are a mage.”
Tommy sat down heavily on the dusty floor of the room as the sun’s rays filtered in through the filthy window panes. “But what... I mean, how do you know? I don’t feel any different. Besides the hangover, I mean.”
Micah shifted on the cot for a moment and looked at him intently. “Tell me, Tommy… Do you know what a sunset sounds like?”
Tommy blinked several times and stared at Micah for a long moment. The question, of course, was completely ludicrous – how could a sunset have a sound? Except that, as Tommy thought about it, he realized he DID know what a sunset sounds like. “That’s stupid-” Tommy began, but the mage was staring intently at him, and Tommy realized that the man had known the answer before he’d asked the question. Somehow, this mage understood that Tommy would know the answer to a question he’d never even thought to ask.
The Channeler Page 2
