by Brian Harmon
He didn’t try asking again.
They turned a corner and came upon a bridge, similar to the one on the second floor of the other playland, except this one wasn’t boxed in and impossible to fall from. This one was a real bridge. And it crossed a real chasm.
Eric peered over the rope and into a massive emptiness that made his stomach clench and his head feel light.
He glanced down at his phone. Are you getting all this? he thought.
IT’S AMAZING, she replied.
Dark energy?
NONE. IT’S TOTALLY CLEAN
So he was right. This wasn’t the same place the clown kept sending him. But there were a lot of similarities.
They made it across the bridge without plunging to their doom and continued on.
The playland gradually disappeared completely, giving way to a lush and mesmerizingly beautiful forest. Enormous, moss-covered trees towered over them, creating a latticework of leaves overhead that mottled the sunlight as it shined down through the canopy and onto the forest floor.
He dragged his hand through the leaves of a low-hanging limb as he walked. It felt real. It looked real. It even smelled real.
Only the silence gave it away.
No forest was this silent.
Not a single insect, frog or bird was singing. The only sound was the gentle whisper of the breeze in the leaves and the soft trickling of that nearby stream.
DO YOU THINK THIS WAS THE FOREST POPPY WAS TALKING ABOUT?
Eric had nearly forgotten. He looked up into the high branches. Poppy said she saw him walking through a huge forest, but she said she saw him walking through it at night. It was bright and sunny here.
MAYBE THE FOREST WAS LITERAL AND THE NIGHT WAS A METAPHOR
Maybe so. Maybe he was walking through this forest on a dark day. It was hard to be sure.
Ahead of them, the forest had crowded the path. Heavy limbs and thick ferns blocked his view of what awaited up ahead.
Eliot broke into a run and vanished into the foliage, passing through it like a breeze and leaving barely a rustle in his wake.
Eric shouted at him to stop and hurried after him, but the limbs and brush were far more restrictive for him than they were for the boy.
Perhaps Eliot was much more familiar with the forest than he was. Perhaps he knew how to slip through the leaves without disturbing the branches.
More likely, he was cheating again, melting like a ghostly fog and abandoning him in this beautiful, but eerily silent wilderness.
He had time as he struggled to push through the restricting limbs to consider that the little jerk had set him up. He was pretty mad about losing the game, after all. Maybe William and Todd were wrong and Eliot didn’t have to play by anyone’s rules but his own.
For all he knew, he could now be trapped in this beautiful forest for the rest of eternity.
But when he finally stumbled out of the brush, he found himself in a large and breathtaking clearing. A carpet of soft moss and countless tiny, purple flowers covered the ground. A small brook trickled gently from one end to the other, with a small, natural pond at the middle. Towering trees surrounded it, each of them reaching high up into the blinding sky, the high canopy twinkling in the breeze.
And at the center of it all, sitting on a mossy rock on the other side of the pond, was a girl.
She was older than all the boys, although not by much. She looked to be about twelve. She had long, blonde hair and was wearing a pretty, blue dress. Her bare feet were dangling over the water.
She was one of the loveliest girls he’d ever seen.
Eric walked up to the edge of the pond. “Are you Judith?”
“I am,” she replied. Her voice was sweet and girlish, as pretty as her angelic face.
“I’m sorry to disturb you. But I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“I know,” said Judith. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
She’d been waiting for him? Really? Because he’d been through hell just trying to find her. But he didn’t tell her this. He didn’t want to be rude. And something about this girl made him feel as if he should treat her with respect. He couldn’t quite explain it, but she seemed to have an aura of some sort. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” she assured him. Her gaze slid past him and she looked sternly at something behind him. “Is it?” she asked.
Eric turned to see Eliot standing at the end of her gaze, half-hidden in the shade of the trees. He pouted and stared down at his feet. “I told him you don’t like to talk to people.”
“That’s true a lot of the time. But Eric has important business, don’t you, Eric?”
“I do.” He didn’t ask her how she knew his name. He didn’t have much time. And she was a ghost. She probably knew lots of things. His name. His address. His favorite flavor of ice cream. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. “People are in danger. I need your help.”
“We don’t care,” groaned Eliot.
“Hush,” said Judith.
“We don’t,” he insisted. “I don’t. And neither do you. It has nothing to do with us.”
Her soft lips tightened. Her pretty eyes grew threatening. “Quiet,” she told him.
Eliot stared down at his feet again, his face flushing with anger.
“It doesn’t concern us,” she agreed. “Nothing that happens in that world can affect us. Time goes on and on. People come and go. They’re born and they die. And we stay the same. It’s always been that way. But I made a promise. You know that.”
Eliot didn’t speak. He just stared down at his feet, looking angrier and angrier.
Todd told him that none of them cared much about matters of life and death. Eric had wondered why any of them would bother helping him at all in that case. Here was his answer. If only he knew what the girl was talking about. What promise? And who did they make this promise to?
Judith turned her attention back to him and gave him a kind smile. “You want to know about the darkness hanging over this place.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. I need to know what I’m up against. How to find it.” His phone began to ring in his pocket. He laid his hand over it and ignored it. “I need to know how to stop it.”
“You should probably take that,” said Judith.
Eric blinked at her, confused. “Huh?”
“Go ahead. I don’t mind.”
“Um… Okay…” He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen. It was another Illinois call. “Hello?”
“Eric?” said a lovely voice he hadn’t heard in a long time. “It’s Delphinium. Are you okay?”
“Delphinium?” He glanced up at Judith. She smiled sweetly back at him. “Yeah. I’m… I’m fine.”
“Thank God!”
“Is…everything okay?”
“No. It’s not. I just got off the phone with Poppy. She told me what she saw in the water.”
“Yeah, she and Alicia were helping me out while Holly’s busy.”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
“It’s no big deal. They were really helpful.”
“No. They weren’t prepared. They didn’t know.”
Eric didn’t like the tone of her voice. He was growing nervous. “What is it? What didn’t they know?”
“The shadow,” she said. “The black cloud hanging over everything. The cause of the flood. The rat, Eric!”
The rats, indeed. Those things were disgusting. And it was really freaky that one just jumped right out of the bowl all the way in Illinois. But why was she so distressed about it? “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s a demon, Eric.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eric wasn’t sure how to respond. “A demon? As in from hell?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized that he didn’t know of any other kind…
“I can’t tell you much. All I know for certain is that they�
�re real, they’re immensely powerful and almost impossible to get rid of.”
He ran a hand through his hair again. He felt like he’d been doing that all day. He was going to end up bald at this rate. “What does that mean for me? Am I completely screwed or what?”
It didn’t sound good, that was for sure. Anything that rattled Delphinium Thorngood was nothing to take lightly.
“There has to be a way,” she assured him. “Every time I’ve peered into the water since the day I met you I can see your destiny shining like a beacon. I wouldn’t have seen that if you were destined to die so soon. That means there must be a way for you to win today.”
Eric replayed that in his mind for a moment. She just told him that there must be a way for him to win. She didn’t tell him he would win. Only that there was a way to win. He had a feeling that was an important distinction.
“The best advice I can give you would be to get as far away from that place as you can, as fast as you can, but I know you can’t do that. Even if you could, I know you wouldn’t. It’s the kind of man you are, the reason you’ve always been our hero.”
He hated when she called him a hero. He still didn’t feel like a hero.
“Since we both know you won’t leave, you need to understand that this isn’t going to be like anything else you’ve ever faced.”
It already wasn’t. Cold, black, endless worlds. Legions of rats. Evil clowns. Circus games and holiday decorations coming to life. The wardrobe 2.0. (That last one, in particular, was going to put his immunity to nightmares to the test.)
“You’re dealing with dark forces far more powerful than magic. It’ll be able to do things you never dreamed possible. You’re facing an enemy that’s immeasurably ancient, completely evil and utterly inhuman.”
“I understand.” And he did. He already knew all that to be true. And so far, this demon had only been playing with him. He could think of no other reason why, if this thing was so incredibly powerful, that he wasn’t already dead.
“I can’t help you,” said Delphinium. “Whatever you do next, you’ll have to do on your own.”
Eric looked up at Judith. She was still sitting there upon her rock, smiling patiently at him. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said.
“What?”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll have Isabelle contact you later and explain everything. She’ll let you know how everything turns out. Good or bad.”
“I appreciate that. And if there’s anything I can do to help, any time, just let me know.”
“Thanks. I will. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You be careful. Bye.”
“Bye.” Eric disconnected the call and then stared at the water for a moment as all that sank in. A demon? Really?
“Actually,” said Judith, “it’s a misconception that demons come from hell.”
Eric looked up at her, surprised.
“They’re much older than hell.”
“You knew who was on the phone, didn’t you? You knew what she was going to tell me.”
“I know a lot of things,” she told him.
Why was it that everybody he met in these weird travels had to be so damned cryptic? Would it kill them to just answer a question with a real answer now and then?
“Are you surprised to learn what it is you’re facing?”
“Shouldn’t I be surprised?”
She gave him an enigmatic shrug. “Haven’t you felt it? A dark, demonic energy, like a poison coursing through the walls?”
The dark energy… He looked down at his phone.
I CAN’T PROVE IT’S NOT, said Isabelle.
I CERTAINLY DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Demonic energy? Life energy? Eric seemed to be learning a lot about the weird today.
BUT I DON’T KNOW. DEMONS? HELL? I’VE ALWAYS BELIEVED THOSE THINGS WERE JUST SUPERSTITION AND STUPIDITY
And she’d seen her fair share of stupidity. Most of the so-called demon hunters she’d encountered in her travels had ended up trapped in those strange places because they believed that the odd activity they were investigating was a demon from hell instead of any of the countless other things it might have been, and almost always was.
He lowered the phone and met Judith’s gaze. “Doesn’t matter what it is,” declared Eric. “I’ve got to stop it. I won’t let some devil clown hurt those kids.”
“Clown?” she said, cocking her head to one side, letting her long hair spill over her shoulder. “The clown isn’t the demon.”
This caught Eric completely off guard. He stood there for a few seconds, letting that information process so that he could reply with a perfectly intelligent-sounding, “Huh?”
“The clown is only a remnant,” she explained.
“A what?”
“An ancient creature. A rare artifact from a world long dead. He draws his power from the other. He’s little more than a herald and a servant to the rat summoner.”
Eric had to suppress a shudder. Rat summoner? Who came up with this stuff?
Although it certainly explained why rats kept popping up every time things turned nightmare. He decided he should consider himself lucky it wasn’t the snake summoner.
“So it’s this rat demon I have to stop if I want to save the kids.”
Judith nodded.
So there was another monster lurking in this place? In addition to the clown? Was she talking about the other clown, or…?
The image of the old hag that kept turning up on the arcade screens popped into his mind. She’d even shown up on his phone once.
Was she the rat demon? Was she the one behind everything?
“Can you tell me how I’m supposed to stop this thing?”
She shook her pretty head. “Only you can know how to do that. And only when the time is right.”
Eric nodded. “Very helpful. Thanks. Can you at least tell me how to find it?”
“It’s in the basement,” she replied.
He was surprised. That was remarkably straightforward.
“It’s hidden behind a concealed door,” she went on. (Because of course it was.) “You’ll need a key to find it. Something that can undo the demon’s curse.”
“Oh is that all?”
“The answer will come to you.”
Eric rubbed at the back of his neck, frustrated. “Okay… But how do I even get down there? So far, every time I’ve tried, I’ve been thrown into one of those nightmare worlds.”
A shadow passed over Judith’s face. Her pretty features hardened a little. “Those are all our world. He’s stealing it from us somehow, creating his own perverse versions of it.”
So that was why this world had seemed so similar to those dark ones. They all contained nearby features of the real world that bled through. They all appeared to go on forever. And they were all silent. But only the real one—or as real as this world really was, he supposed—was warm and bright. The rest were cold and dark and sinister.
Judith’s features softened then. “No matter. It’ll be over soon. You’ll end this madness. The rat summoner’s worlds can be overcome easily. You merely need to stay focused on what is real.”
“How do I do that?”
She smiled. “You focus, of course. Concentrate. Listen for the children and the games. If you don’t let yourself get distracted, if you don’t let your thoughts stray from what’s warm and familiar, you can’t be taken from it. He can only send you to those places if you let him.”
“I think I understand.” And he did. Wasn’t that what he’d been doing all day? Letting himself get distracted by the clown’s trickery? Focusing on all the imagined dangers when he should’ve remained focused on the task before him?
“You’ll need to be careful. But you have everything you need to accomplish this task.”
But Eric didn’t feel all that confident.
“There’s something special inside you,” she explained. “A power like I haven’t felt in a very, very long time.”
A
lot of people had told him that he had something special inside him. Witches, mediums, psychotic women obsessed with sexual energy. Some called it a “profoundness.” Others called it a “destiny.” Still others, like Judith, simply called it “power.”
He called it a pain in the ass. Ever since his first experience with the weird more than two years ago, it seemed like people were always singling him out as some kind of chosen one. It was getting old.
“You’ve been touched by something divine. You have a connection to a higher power. Maybe even the highest power.”
The closest thing he had to a connection to a higher power, as far as he knew, was his cell phone. With that, he could connect to Isabelle, a whole coven of witches and his wife. Maybe that was what she was sensing.
Judith smiled at him. “Don’t underestimate yourself,” she told him.
Eric stared at her. Was she reading his mind? He couldn’t help but feel that she knew what he was thinking and feeling.
“You’re more special than you know,” she told him. “You’re unique. Lots of people have power. Lots of people have a connection to one aspect of the greater universe or another. You have more than one. You have another bond with the psychic realm.”
He glanced down at his phone. His link to Isabelle was psychic.
“You also have the gift to see things forbidden to others.”
Now she was talking about the unseen…
“And you’ve touched the world of magic.”
That, too, he couldn’t deny.
“And most impressively of all, you stand with one foot in the spiritual plane.”
He cocked his head. “I’m definitely not sure about that one,” he told her.
But she only smiled. “I’m sure. In another life, you’ve already been dead for years.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t.”
“Death has never laid its cold hand on you? Not even in your dreams?”
“No. I don’t know wh…” But he trailed off. In his dreams?
That first journey he took, three summers ago… The day he met Isabelle. The day he learned the profound secret and then forgot it again. There was a dream… He’d had it the previous three nights in a row, but he couldn’t remember it. Not until he set off on his adventure. Even then, it only revealed itself as he went along.
