The Nightmare Vortex

by Deborah Abela

  ‘Are you the guy —’ Before Max could finish, he looked up from his book so fast he knocked his head against a large shelf above him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Max ignored Ella’s sympathy and got on with the list, eager to get out of this nowhereland.

  ‘We’re after some things for Irene.’

  ‘Oh right. You’re the kids I’m expecting.’

  Linden cringed as he saw Max’s face blossom into a furious rosy glow. In the time he’d known her he’d learnt a lot about what Max liked and being called a kid wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Look, whatever your name is —’

  ‘Roy.’ He smiled proudly and winked like he’d just been awarded the prize for the best name in the world. He could have been called Florence Nightingale for all Max cared.

  ‘Could we just have these things?’

  Roy took the list and put it so close to his face they thought he was going to eat it. Max stepped away from the desk as if standing too close risked a major brain drain. Ella moved in, keen to know more about Roy.

  ‘Agent 31 told us you were a student. What do you study?’

  ‘Aeronautical engineering. I want to build planes.’ And at that he leant on a tube of tomato sauce and sprayed the red oozing goop all over his shirt.

  ‘There’s my flying days over,’ Linden groaned softly.

  Roy searched for Irene’s ingredients, fumbling through shelves, drawers and cupboards like he was trying to find his way in a blackout. Linden and Ella stood close to him, catching things as he knocked them over and packing their bags as the ingredients were found.

  ‘There’s a short cut through those shelves there that’ll take you back to the kitchen.’ Roy pointed to a long corridor while talking to some crates of dried chilli. ‘It twists about a bit, you know how these old castles are, but you’ll get there.’

  Max closed her pack and strode away, eager to have a life that was Roy-free.

  ‘Thanks, Roy.’ Ella smiled.

  ‘And good luck with the engineering,’ Linden added, meaning every word of it.

  As Max, Linden and Ella made their way towards Roy’s alternative exit, a strange and unpleasant smile slid onto the storeman’s face.

  ‘Yeah, thanks kids,’ he snarled as he took off his glasses to watch them move away like he could see them perfectly. He took a miniature transceiver from his pocket and pressed his fingers precisely on the tiny buttons. He spoke in a clear, firm voice, no longer sounding clumsy or confused at all.

  ‘They’re on their way, sir. You’ll soon have Spyforce at your fingertips begging for mercy.’

  Roy looked down beside him, the sly grin on his face becoming even slimier.

  ‘Won’t be long now until we can let you go, but you may find there won’t be much left to go back to.’

  Roy laughed. At his feet, a bound and gagged secret agent let out a hollow, painful groan as Max, Linden and Ella walked down the corridor, oblivious of the terrible fate that lay ahead.

  After marching ahead of Ella and Linden, Max stopped as the stone corridor ahead split in two.

  ‘Great. Genius boy back there obviously forgot to let us know which one to take.’

  The corridors looked exactly the same with a small statue of a boy holding a candle between them. Max stood in front of both and with nothing to help her choose, decided on the one to the right. ‘I guess if it’s wrong I can always come back and waste even more of my life not being on a spy mission,’ she grumbled at the statue.

  Just then she thought she saw something dart away in front of her.

  ‘Okay,’ she said out loud. ‘Don’t spook yourself, Max.’ But as she walked along the twisting, curving corridor, a whoosh of stale wind extinguished a candle beside her.

  ‘Great.’ She took out her torch and switched it on, which threw shadows everywhere, like there was a whole group of people hiding all around her.

  ‘Where are Ella and Linden?’ she asked, realising walking on ahead might not have been her most clever idea.

  A vase sitting in a small alcove suddenly fell to the floor, smashing a few metres before her.

  Max stopped, her skin goosebumped with fear.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she asked. Not sure if she wanted an answer.

  Then she caught the bright-eyed glow of a rat scuttling in her torch beam.

  ‘You could have picked a better moment to go walking,’ Max said with relief. She stood taller and kept walking until a light up ahead showed the corridor she was in being joined by another.

  As she got closer she heard muffled voices.

  Then she had a terrible thought. What if she’d taken the wrong path? What if she wasn’t heading to the kitchen but straight into the malevolent arms of Blue? She wanted to call out to Linden but if the mumblings belonged to enemy agents she’d be handing herself over to certain doom.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ Max tried to convince herself. ‘Remember, you’re a superspy, you’re the best and you’re always in control.’

  Suddenly, a moth flapped in front of her face and Max only just held back a window-shattering scream. She tried to catch her breath as the flapping insect jittered innocently away.

  ‘Even if you have this annoying habit of attracting every creature in the animal kingdom.’

  It was only then Max realised that if it was Blue she could be seconds away from single-handedly foiling his plans. She wanted so badly to prove to Alex and all the other agents that she wasn’t just some custard-covered kid.

  She put her torch in her pack and took out her Slimer. She unhooked the safety catch and with her fingers on the handle, she hesitated long enough to gather as much courage as she could.

  ‘Okay, Blue. I’m ready for you.’

  She leapt into the mouth of the other corridor and sprang into the ready-for-action stance she’d seen so many times in movies. Legs splayed, arms outstretched and the Slimer gripped firmly in both hands, ready to slime Blue to the furthest side of oblivion.

  ‘You can’t scare me!’ she cried as she aimed her Slimer around looking for the enemy agent.

  ‘We weren’t trying to.’

  Max knew she’d been cursed with dumb luck when she saw Linden and Ella looking back at her and frowning.

  ‘Where have you been? We were worried you were lost,’ asked Ella.

  Max stared at the caring face of Ella and knew her action stance looked silly. They must have taken the other corridor which eventually merged with hers. She slowly changed her position to a normal one and discreetly tried to put the Slimer away.

  ‘I was … having a good look around … um … to make sure Blue wasn’t up to any of his old tricks.’

  ‘And the coast is clear?’

  Max wasn’t sure if Linden was being sarcastic or not. She eyed him warily. ‘All seems fine, but you know what Blue’s like. He could be up to anything.’

  She was having trouble fitting the Slimer back in her pack.

  ‘Do you want a hand?’ Linden asked.

  ‘I can do it myself,’ Max answered. Then, keen to take the attention off her, she added, ‘We better get back to the kitchen. Irene will be wondering where we are.’

  As they walked, Max continued to try to put the Slimer away. There was no noise other than the phhht, phhht sound of their rubber souls on the dark floor.

  Why don’t they keep talking? she thought. They always have something to say to each other. Or they’re laughing at the top of their voices. And Linden always thinks Ella’s so fascinating. So interesting. So —

  ‘Linden has been telling me all about your school,’ Ella interrupted Max’s thoughts.

  ‘He has?’ Max had no idea Linden and Ella talked about her when they were together.

  ‘Yeah. That Toby sounds like a real pain,’ Ella sympathised.

  Max was uneasy. Suddenly she wanted them to stop focusing on her.

  ‘Um, yeah. He can be.’

  A bit of slime squirted onto Max’s fingers as she gave the Slimer one last
shove into her pack.

  ‘Linden says he’s like one of those bad smells that just won’t go away.’

  Why was Ella still talking to her? Couldn’t she see Max wasn’t comfortable with all this? She took her hands out of her pack and wiped the slime on her already slime-covered trousers.

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ Max stopped.

  They’d reached a set of stairs leading down to a large candle-lit chamber and in the centre of the chamber was a metal plinth with three triangular shapes carved out of the top.

  ‘I’m not sure, but it looks like some kind of metal plinth with three triangular shapes carved out of the top,’ Linden said, like he’d just stepped out of a detective film.

  Ella’s girlish giggle buzzed around them and Linden remembered Max wasn’t happy about him making jokes while they were on a mission.

  ‘Sorry, Max. Sometimes they come out and I have no control over them.’

  Max led the way into the chamber, turning her back on Linden’s humour.

  Ella looked closer at the plinth. ‘The three pieces look like they’d make a perfect fit.’

  ‘Let’s push them together and see what it does,’ Linden suggested.

  ‘What if something dangerous happens?’ Ella thought the place was creepy enough without starting anything else.

  ‘We’ve flown in an invisible jet, travelled the skies of London in a Sleek Machine and zipped across the room in a Personal Flying Device.’ Linden was feeling pretty confident, and besides, he was keen to have another Vibratron or Wall of Goodness experience. ‘Plus we’ve got our packs. We’ll be ready if there’s any danger.’

  Max didn’t have a good feeling either, but agreeing with Ella was the last thing she was going to do.

  ‘I agree with Linden. Let’s try it.’

  They each put their hand on a third of the triangle.

  ‘After three,’ Linden breathed. ‘One, two, three.’

  They slowly brought the triangle pieces together.

  Nothing.

  ‘Oh well.’ Linden shrugged disappointedly. ‘I guess it really is a metal plinth with carvings on it.’ But just then, everything around them started to waver, like it was dissolving. He suddenly had a bad feeling about what they’d done.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ella cried. The floor beneath them started to ripple and a swirling wind whooshed around their heads, turning the top of the room into a kind of rotor.

  ‘Not sure,’ Linden replied. ‘But I don’t think I should have had that last pastry.’

  The chamber walls looked like they were melting, wavering and spinning like the inside of a giant life-sucking, upside-down tornado.

  ‘I think it’s some kind of vortex,’ Linden yelled above the whirring noise. ‘I read about them in a science mag. By pushing the carvings together we must have created some kind of electrical charge, allowing the vortex to come to life. These things can be really powerful. Grab each other’s hands.’

  Linden stumbled clumsily against the wind as he reached out to his friends. Ella took his hand. She then stretched out to Max but saw her being dragged away from them.

  ‘Max! Take my hand!’

  Max used all her strength to push against the force of the twirling suction, but the harder she tried, the further she was being pulled away.

  Then something happened that sent a bolt of fear through all of them. Max was being lifted from the floor towards the centre of the vortex.

  Linden watched as she was dragged higher and higher.

  ‘Max!’

  But there was nothing he could do. Linden watched as Max became smaller and smaller until she was only a faint dot.

  Then she was gone.

  The wind tore at Linden and Ella as it swirled in an increasing fury around them.

  ‘Linden!’ Ella gripped his hand even tighter as the wind became stronger and stronger, but it was no use. She too was being dragged into the gaping mouth of the wind channel.

  ‘Ella!’ Linden shouted as their hands were torn apart and they were sucked into the epicentre of the vortex.

  When Linden woke up, he found himself in a strange, blue-clouded world. His head hurt, like he’d been at a party the night before and eaten way too many lollies. He stumbled as he stood up and tried to stop his mind from spinning.

  ‘I’ve had smoother rides,’ he said as he coaxed his feet to walk in a straight line. It felt as though he was walking on air as a blanket of marbled blue steam circled his every step. Wherever he was, it was damp and humid with the sound of dripping, like he was in some kind of underground cavern but he couldn’t see any rocky walls or ceilings, just endless wafts of steam rising against a background of darkness.

  ‘Max? Ella?’

  He brushed at the steam around him and up ahead he noticed a small blue light. His feet made their cushioned way towards it. He didn’t know what to expect so he kept his Spyforce pack close.

  But what he saw next would need neither a Slimer nor a Freeze Ray.

  ‘Dad?’ Out of the blue light Linden’s dad walked towards him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  His dad didn’t answer.

  ‘How did you get here? And how did you know where to find me?’ Linden asked nervously.

  He was worried his dad’s silence was anger at how far Linden was from home without his knowledge. He knew it was going to sound strange but he tried to tell his dad what had happened.

  ‘I know you must be angry with me but Max and I were invited here to help out with a really important …’ Before he could finish, Linden’s dad turned away without saying a word. Now he was really worried. He never liked it when his dad went quiet. It usually meant he was unhappy with him or really sad about something, like when Linden’s mum died.

  ‘Dad?’

  His dad kept walking away. Linden followed him through the blue steam until they reached what looked like the door to his dad’s bedroom in Mindawarra.

  ‘Where are we?’

  Again Linden’s dad said nothing. Why was his dad here and why wouldn’t he talk to him? Linden’s stomach churned. He’d never seen him like this before.

  Linden’s father opened the door. Inside was his bedroom.

  ‘How could this happen?’

  His dad sat down on the bed and started to cough. Softly at first, then deeply like he couldn’t stop.

  ‘Dad?’

  He climbed into bed, still coughing. Linden walked towards the bedroom, but before he could enter, the door slammed shut.

  ‘Dad!’ He rushed towards the door, determined to help his dad, when a rising swell of steam exploded around him. He stretched out his hand to open the door but it landed on nothing. When the steam cleared, it was gone.

  ‘Dad?’ he said in a quiet whisper. His dad was gone. Linden collapsed into the pool of steam and sat with his knees pulled against his chest.

  ‘Linden?’

  It was Max. She sat down beside her friend, relieved at finding him after their weird experience in the vortex.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but this is the weirdest place I’ve ever been in. What do you think happened? And where are we? If that Blue has been messing with us, he’d better watch out, because I’ve had enough of being pushed around by his evil-smelling, slimy-headed ways.’

  Max stopped talking and realised Linden hadn’t even noticed she was there.

  ‘Linden?’

  He still didn’t move. She tapped him softly on the arm. When he looked up, Max knew something had happened. He seemed disoriented, like he couldn’t remember who she was. His face was pale and when she looked at him closely, she noticed he was shaking.

  ‘Linden, what’s happened?’

  He tried to tell her but couldn’t find the words. ‘I saw my … my dad. He’s sick.’

  Max tried to understand what he meant.

  ‘Your dad’s sick?’

  Linden nodded.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘He was here.’

  Max didn’t know wh
at to believe. The last few hours had been weird, but there was no way Linden’s dad could have been here. Something was going on. Like they’d been transported to another world. One that didn’t make any sense.

  They sat in silence while Max tried to work it out. Linden’s head was bowed and he was staring at his hands.

  ‘Max?’ His voice was so full of sadness she could hardly stand it.

  ‘Yeah?’ She was scared he was going say something terrible, like he was going away or he was sick too.

  ‘I kept having this bad dream around the time Mum died. I’d dream that I’d come home and couldn’t find Dad. Then I’d check in his bedroom and find him sick in bed. Really sick.’

  Max looked at Linden’s fingers. They were white from being clenched so tightly.

  ‘Max, I don’t want my dad to die.’

  He said it like he was suddenly facing the biggest fear of his life and no one had given him any warning or anything to help him face it. They were the saddest words Max had heard in her life. She remembered the time Linden told her about his mum dying of cancer. It was the most important thing anyone had ever told her. That time she didn’t know what to say, but this time was different.

  ‘Linden, your dad is going to be fine. He is fine.’ Max said it because she wanted it to be true. Linden’s dad couldn’t be sick. He just couldn’t be.

  She had to work out what was going on. It wasn’t possible that Linden had seen his dad. She tried to coax him back to normal by asking about Ella.

  ‘What about Ella? Have you seen her?’

  He spoke slowly and quietly. ‘Not since we got separated at the entrance of the vortex.’

  Max stood up and adjusted her backpack, ready for action.

  ‘We’ve got to find her and then we’re going to find out what’s going on and get out of here.’

  Linden sat still. Max wanted to take away every sad thought he was having.

  ‘Linden, nothing is going to happen to your dad,’ she said as convincingly as she could.