by Brian Harmon
Somewhere in the background, Alicia screamed, “Oh my god, Poppy!”
“I’m just saying what you couldn’t, dear.”
“Hi, Poppy,” said Eric. “How are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you. How’s it going on your end? Holly said you have to save the world again.”
“Not the whole world. Just a really big playground.”
“That shouldn’t be so hard.”
“Piece of cake.”
“You can totally handle it.”
“I think so.”
“But just in case, Holly asked us to take a little peek into your future and stuff.”
“Just in case,” agreed Eric.
“See if there are any unpleasant surprises.”
“I do hate surprises. What did you see?”
“Well, like Alicia said, it was weird.”
“It always is.” The divination spell that Holly and her sisters practiced was extremely simple. It involved little more than staring into a bowl of hot, steaming water. He was never quite able to determine whether one actually had to be a witch or wizard to perform the trick by oneself, but he knew from experience that anyone, even he, could see things in the water, just by being present.
If you knew what you were doing, you could find almost any answer you sought with the spell, even glimpses of the future. The only downside was that the answers didn’t always make much sense. They usually came in the form of riddles and metaphors.
“For instance,” said Poppy, “we kept seeing clowns for some reason.”
“You don’t say,” replied Eric.
“Creepy as hell if you ask me.”
“Yes,” sighed Eric. “That’s what I keep telling everyone.”
Poppy laughed.
“What else did you see?”
“We saw a skeleton in a black dress. I don’t know if that means anything to you.”
It didn’t, but it sure sounded creepy.
“And a little girl with wings.”
“What, like an angel?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. They didn’t really look like what I think of as angel wings… But then I’ve never actually seen an angel, so it could be. I mean, what do I know?”
Eric wouldn’t turn down the help of an angel. That had to be worth something, right? Surely an angel trumped an evil clown.
Didn’t it?
“And a flood.”
“A flood?”
“It was weird. There was a house. I couldn’t make it out, but it was big and blocky. It was sitting at the top of a small hill. Rain was pouring down and there was water rising all around it, creeping closer and closer. I couldn’t see inside the house, but I was sure there were people trapped in it.”
That was unsettling. “It’s not raining. And we’re not near any water,” he said. “Not that I know of, anyway.” And they weren’t on a hill, either. They were in a field. But her description of the house, big and blocky, sounded like this building.
“You were there. You weren’t inside the house, though. You were outside, standing by the water’s edge. There was a small boat there. A dark figure was sitting in it. You were talking to him. And I saw you handing him gold coins.”
Eric felt a cold prickle between his shoulder blades.
“Does that remind you of anything?”
“Greek mythology,” he replied. “The River Styx.”
“Paying the ferryman,” agreed Poppy. “That’s what I thought, too.”
That cold prickle became a chill that passed through his entire body. The ferryman was sort of like ancient Greece’s version of the grim reaper. After death, you had to pay the ferryman a coin to gain passage into the underworld. As such, people were often buried with a coin in their mouth so that they could pay their way into the afterlife. If the divination spell showed her that he was paying the ferryman, then essentially what it was showing her was his…
“Death…” said Poppy.
Chapter Eleven
Another problem with the divination spell was that it seemed to enjoy portending his imminent demise. The last time Holly used the spell, she saw him mortally wounded and dragged away by shadowy, monstrous things, presumably to be eaten. That didn’t actually happen, obviously. At least, not quite the way she saw it. But he’d be lying if he said it didn’t scare him a little at the time.
And it scared him a little now.
“But that’s not going to happen,” insisted Poppy. “Del said so, remember?”
He did remember. Delphinium Thorngood was the oldest and most powerful of all the sisters and head of the household. She was the boss witch, in other words. It was she who cast the spell that originally found him, sucking him into their magical world like a much older, much more overweight and much more pessimistic Harry Potter. She also used her magic to predict that he would have many more adventures and would always make it home, so long as he remained true to himself.
“Yeah. I remember.” He also remembered, just as he knew Poppy did, that there was no iron-clad guarantee of that. The future was always in motion. And you never knew when something might happen that could change everything.
But neither of them said it aloud.
“It could mean something else, too. You know how these things go.”
Riddles and metaphors. Usually they made sense at some point in the future. Some of them even made sense right away. The clowns, for instance, were pretty literal. The place was crawling with them.
And he was pretty sure he understood what the rising floodwaters represented, too. It was time, which was already running out for him.
“The only other thing we saw was a teardrop.”
“Teardrop?”
“That’s all there is. It was just a big, shiny, blue teardrop. I don’t understand it either.”
“Huh…”
“I hope we helped.”
“I’m sure you did. I just have to figure out what’s going on here, then it’ll probably make sense.”
“We’ll keep checking, too,” promised Poppy. “We’ll let you know if we see anything else.”
“Thanks. I’m going to owe you girls.”
“Hardly. You can never owe us anything.”
Eric wasn’t sure what to say to that. He didn’t see it that way. He didn’t do anything special. He wasn’t even able to save them all.
“Be careful out there. And say hi to Isabelle for us.”
“I will.” He already did, in fact. She was listening in.
“Bye.”
Eric disconnected the call and stared at the phone for a moment, distracted.
Everyone acted like he was a hero in Illinois…
SNAP OUT OF IT, scolded Isabelle.
HEAD IN THE GAME
She was right. He needed to get back to work.
He stepped into the arcade to find it swarming with children. It was past eleven o’clock now. The party had started. And during the time between his ordeal in the maze and his conversation with Alicia and Poppy, the vast majority of the party guests seemed to have arrived.
The noise had increased significantly in volume, too, from a headache-inducing string of shrieks and screams to a constant roar of pure, agonizing, auditory chaos.
There were children of all ages running around. Some of them were glued to the arcade games. Others were running from one machine to another, pushing buttons, tugging on joysticks, pulling triggers. Still others were simply running around as if the arcade were merely an extension of the playland and mirror maze.
Eric walked out into the midst of this chaos and looked around, feeling utterly overwhelmed.
A six- or seven-year-old boy ran past him, yelling in an annoying, screechy voice, “Tokens! I need tokens! Somebody give me tokens!”
He felt a sudden urge to take the ten dollars’ worth of tokens he was carrying in his pocket and get far away from that child.
A young boy in a Mario tee shirt walked by him and shouted, “Good mornin’!” at him in a goofy sort
of voice.
“Hi there,” replied Eric. Then he watched as the boy moved on. Polite kid. But not the one he was looking for.
He didn’t see Todd anywhere.
Maybe he was upstairs. That was the last place he saw him. And if he was lucky, maybe there’d be less people up there.
A little girl ran across his path, narrowly avoiding him, and stopped at a crane machine. She stood up on her tiptoes to survey the prizes inside, and then threw her head back and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Mom! Bring more money!”
He turned back the way he came and started toward the stairwell door, but stopped and looked the other way. It was bothering him that he still didn’t have his shoes. His socks were surely filthy by now. Maybe he should go back for them before going upstairs.
But he barely had time to consider it when he heard a voice behind him say, “Help us, Eric…”
He turned, startled, and found himself looking into the screen of an arcade machine.
The game was a motorcycle racer, but the screen had gone a grainy black and white. A faint image was flickering in and out of view. After a moment, he realized he was looking at the arcade again. He was seeing himself standing there, looking into this screen.
He looked up in the direction of the shot, but again, there was no camera. Only another creepy, plaster clown.
When he looked back at the screen in front of him, it stuttered and rolled. Then that awful face appeared again. Sunken eyes. Pallid flesh. The sharp angles of her jawline and cheekbones far too visible.
She was like a vision of Death.
Then she was gone again. The display flashed back to the motorcycle game demo.
He glanced around, but no one else seemed to have noticed the emaciated hag glaring at him from the arcade screen.
He ran a hand through his hair, distracted. Fine, he thought. Forget the shoes.
He headed straight for the stairs behind the prize counter. Aaron was right where he was last time Eric saw him, his nose in his phone, looking excruciatingly bored with his life.
Along the way, he passed the boy in the Mario tee shirt again, and again, the boy wished him a loud, “Good mornin’!”
Eric said hi again, then climbed the stairs to the second floor, barely avoiding several screaming, over-sugared eight- and nine-year-olds who were on their way down. When he reached the top, he was disappointed to find that it wasn’t much different than the scene downstairs. There were still children everywhere. And none of them had shaggy, blond hair.
He hoped he was right about Todd being the one to find him and not the other way around, because it was going to be virtually impossible to find one, specific child in all this insanity.
He looked around. There was an overweight woman with thick, curly hair and gaudy tattoos on her neck and arms standing behind the second floor prize counter. Like the other employees, she was wearing a clown nose. This was almost certainly Danielle. But unlike Aaron downstairs, she wasn’t staring into her phone.
She was staring at him.
Intensely.
He blinked and looked away. That was unexpected. And awkward.
He immediately felt uncomfortable, even guilty. There was no way this woman could know what he was doing, and yet he could think of no other reason for her to be staring at him like that. Did he somehow look like he was up to no good? Did he look like the kind of creep that would prowl an arcade in search of a seven-year-old boy? Because these were the only thoughts that came to mind.
When he glanced back again, she was still staring at him.
He moved on as if he hadn’t noticed her and tried to look like he wasn’t up to anything weird.
He passed the bimbo mermaid again, still giggling and oohing and ahhing over her collection of shells. She wasn’t making the situation any less awkward.
He stepped out of the way of a pair of boys who were running around, pushing each other, and then detoured around a bank of token machines to avoid a little girl who was sprawled on the floor, having an emotional meltdown while her mother stood over her, ignoring her and staring at her phone.
Scanning the floor around him, he found it astounding that there were so few employees for such a large area. But then again, this was probably a much larger party than they usually hosted.
Not that it mattered to him. It wasn’t his problem, he supposed. His problem was apparently the demented clown infestation this place had.
He walked over to the Batman game, where he met the boy before, and looked around. Was this a game he wanted to play? Was that why he appeared here before? Or did he choose to show himself there simply because this was where Eric had been standing at the time? Was he more likely to appear in front of his favorite games?
Or would he show up only when and where he damn well felt like it?
Deciding that any plan was better than just walking around aimlessly, Eric sat himself in one of the hard, plastic seats and withdrew a few of the tokens from his pocket.
He sat there, watching the demo play, waiting and wondering what he’d do if Todd didn’t show up.
The machines seemed to be behaving themselves for the time being. None of them were screaming his name. No creepy, skeletal woman was staring at him from any of the nearby screens.
It was odd, thinking about all that he’d experienced since he first walked into this place. Frightening clowns. Eerie images in the arcade screens. Ghostly children. And yet, this place was crawling with children who weren’t the least bit afraid. They were completely and blissfully unaware of the unnatural activity that was going on beneath their very noses.
It should’ve bolstered his courage to look around and see so many unafraid people, but instead, he felt only more unsettled by the minute.
Whatever was here, it wasn’t scaring the children. Maybe they were just too distracted to notice the eerie things that were going on around them, but he didn’t think so. It felt more like the supernatural activity was specifically targeting him.
But why?
He held up one of the tokens and looked at it as he mulled it all over. While he was looking at it, a small hand reached out and plucked it from his fingers.
“For me?” asked Todd.
He was sitting in the other seat, right next to him. He never saw him sit down. It was as if he’d been there the whole time.
“Yeah,” said Eric. “Knock yourself out.”
But the boy didn’t put the token into the machine. Instead, he just held it there in the palm of his hand and smiled patiently up at him. “It takes four to play,” he said.
“Seriously?” He looked down at the coin slot. “A whole buck for one game?”
Todd shrugged.
Eric dropped three more tokens into his hand and watched as he input them into the machine and started playing.
Todd selected a mission from the first menu and was then shown an impressive list of available Batmobiles. He chose the one from the Michael Keaton movies.
“Good choice,” said Eric. “That’s always been my favorite.”
“I like The Dark Knight one, too,” said Todd.
Eric gave an indecisive sort of nod. “It’s okay, too. But that one always looked like a transformer to me.”
Again, Todd shrugged.
Eric studied him as he played. His clothes and hair weren’t dated. He didn’t look any different from any other kid at the party. Was he really looking at a ghost right now?
He’d taken the tokens from his hand, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d met a number of ghosts in his travels who were indistinguishable from the living, and each of them, in some way, had interacted with the world around them.
He’d never touched one of them, though. Not one of the ones who looked human. There were other ways that ghosts could manifest themselves, and some of those ghosts had touched him. It was never a pleasant experience. The ones that pretended to be alive, however, always seemed to avoid touching him.
He’d often wondered if that would give th
em away for what they really were.
He didn’t touch Todd, either. Their fingers never actually touched when he plucked that first token from his hand. And he was careful to drop the other three into his open palm without touching him. Mostly, it just seemed inappropriate. Rude, even. But also, there was a part of him that didn’t want to know for sure. He didn’t want to know for certain that this child had died. He was still so young. He was somebody’s little boy…
Eric wasn’t sure he could handle it.
“So are you going to ask me something?” said Todd. “Or are you just going to sit there?”
He blinked, distracted. “Huh?”
“Isn’t that why you brought me tokens?”
“Right,” said Eric. “Yeah. I need to know what’s going on.”
“I can’t talk much,” said Todd. “It’s always lurking. And it’s strong. A lot stronger than me.”
Eric looked around the room, uneasy. “Am I putting you in danger?”
“No. Not really. It can’t hurt me. But it can envelop me with enough effort. It can’t hold me for long, but it’s…unpleasant. I’m going to leave before that happens.”
Eric nodded. “Right.” He had no idea what that meant, but if it was as awful as it sounded, he didn’t blame the kid. “Perfectly understandable.”
“And it knows I’ve been talking to you. It doesn’t like it. It’ll be listening. So if I were you, I’d choose my questions very carefully.”
No pressure then. Got it.
Eric leaned back in the hard seat and considered what he knew so far. After a moment, he said, “You told me it would be a mistake to send the children away. Why?”
Without taking his eyes off the game, he held out a hand, “Can I have another token?”
Eric frowned, but he dropped another token into the boy’s small palm.
Suddenly, an icy prickle crept down his spine as he realized what he’d just done.
He looked down at the remaining tokens in his hand. They weren’t legal tender outside this building, but they were, for all extensive purposes, coins. And they weren’t gold, but they were gold colored.
