“What should we do?” Ariel said.
“I don’t know. Want to see what’s inside the windmill?”
“Okay, but we have to make a run for it.”
“All right. Ready, set … go!”
The girls raced to the front door as the rain poured down on them. They tried to get in, but it was locked. Ariel fixed that by using her sapphire pendant. Blue sparks issued forth from the sapphire, which burst the door wide open. The door was so rickety that it swung inward and outward.
They hurried inside where the rain dripped down from the cracks in the ceiling. They closed the door behind them and latched it closed. Ariel used the sapphire to illuminate the interior with a bright floating orb.
They sat down on a pile of firewood, waiting for the rain to stop. It didn’t. Beanie opened the door slightly and peeked outside. She didn’t see the well anywhere on the lawn despite the rain obscuring her view. The trees in the distance were dim like faint shadows. With the downpour getting worse, they decided to wait until the rain stopped to find the well.
Beanie sneezed. Her nose was getting stuffy. Through the small window, they could see the water level rising. It might be three or four inches deep.
The wind howled.
Beanie coughed with a dry rasp.
“Are you okay?” Ariel asked.
“Yeah. It’s just this weather is making me sick,” Beanie said.
“We can’t stay here much longer. We have to get out of here and find the well.”
“We can’t. Not with the water rising,” Beanie said.
“But we have to stop Malik. Remember what Mrs. Kantor said? He’s getting stronger. He probably cast a spell to make it rain. When he gets strong enough, he’ll flood Kitewell.”
A black sludge percolated through the seams of the wooden door. It gathered itself in clumps like a pyramid until it became a man in a cloak. His face was skeletal. His eye sockets were black holes. He sneered at them before he liquefied into sludge again.
“What is that?” Ariel asked.
Beanie recognized it from when she saw it in the bathroom earlier that day.
“Maybe it’s a ghost,” Beanie said.
“A ghost?” Ariel said, trembling. “But ghosts don’t turn to slime. Look, it’s moving again.”
The sludge sprang up from the ground. It transformed into a skeletal man with the cloak, almost instantly. He outstretched his arms, growling coarsely. The girls screamed.
“What should we do?” Ariel whimpered.
“Let me try something,” Beanie said.
She outstretched her arm and made a fist. The ruby on Beanie’s ring glowed red. A red beam zapped the man’s cloak, catching it on fire. He jumped back, then liquefied into sludge. The sludge slid out of the windmill through the seams of the door. The pouring rain put out the fire with a sizzle.
“That was close,” Ariel said. “So do you feel like you can control it now?”
“Yeah. It seems to work when I tell it to protect me.”
“Me too. We should get out of here before it comes back.”
Beanie lifted the latch of the door. When she pulled it open, the door was stuck. When she pushed it, the door jammed into something on the other side.
“Help me open it!” Beanie called.
Ariel went over to push the door open with Beanie, but it wouldn’t budge.
Sludge oozed through the cracks of the wooden door and a skeletal hand appeared in front of their faces. It reached out to grab them, but Beanie’s ruby zapped it with a hot beam of light. The skeletal hand burned with smoke, and the sludge slunk behind the door.
With their weight still pressed against the door, it finally burst open. The girls fell forward onto a puddle of rain that was at least six inches deep. Ariel screamed. Beanie helped her up as she did before.
“We have to move now and stop Malik,” Beanie said. “He’s flooding Kitewell.”
The girls ran through the rising water. Once they reached Mr. Drake’s house, they took shelter under the awning. They looked around for the skeletal man, but he was nowhere in sight.
“Who was that?” Ariel asked.
“Maybe it’s Malik,” Beanie said. “He’s trying to stop us from reaching the well.”
“I thought he was a snake?”
“He could shapeshift. Mrs. Kantor said he could turn into an anaconda if he wanted to.”
“Do you see the well anywhere?”
They surveyed the area when they suddenly caught sight of the black sludge in the field. It rose slowly, almost like an anthill that was growing. Slowly, it morphed into the shape of a man. It was Malik! He looked almost like the grim reaper minus the scythe. But he didn’t need one with his scissor-like skeletal hands. He glared at them from the marshy grass about forty feet away. Without hesitating, he started marching toward them.
Ariel shuddered.
“We have to run,” Beanie said.
Beanie and Ariel sprinted around the house into the backyard. A thousand slithering snakes emerged from the tree line that surrounded the property. They hissed as they slithered through the grass in rapid motion.
Beanie saw a shed near the fence, and took Ariel by the hand and ran for it. Their boots splashed up rainwater while the snakes closed in on them. Once they made it to the shed, Beanie tried to pry the door open, but it was padlocked.
Beanie looked over her shoulder and Malik was twenty feet away. His army of snakes formed a circle around them, making it impossible to escape.
“Stand aside,” Beanie said.
“Whatever you do, make it fast,” Ariel said.
She stepped aside.
Beanie held the ruby ring up to the padlock and made a fist. She closed her eyes and concentrated on making it open. The ruby glowed scarlet and a red beam struck the metal loop of the padlock. Ariel turned around and Malik was literally a few steps away.
“Hurry,” she said.
The padlock sizzled as it turned bright red like a torch. The hook snapped off and the padlock fell on the ground with a splash. Without wasting a second, the girls went inside the shed and slammed the door shut. Ariel lit the inside of the shed with her sapphire again.
The shed was a hundred square feet. Farm tools and equipment lined the walls. In the center of the shed was a stone well that was about three feet in diameter. A rope hung down from the pulley and disappeared into the darkness below.
“There it is,” Beanie gasped.
“Mr. Drake hid it from plain sight. He built the shed around it.”
The girls gazed down into the pitch-black well.
“Do you really want to go down it?” Ariel asked.
“Unless you want the snakes to get us,” Beanie said. “Besides, we’re trapped. Do we really have a choice?”
The door yawned behind them. A band of light fell upon the well.
“It’s Malik,” Beanie cried.
Ariel spun around and used her sapphire to shoot a beam of blue light through the door. It hit Malik in the chest, and he lurched back, splashing on the ground behind the door. Soon, the snakes started to wriggle through the hole Ariel had made with her sapphire. They fell in and quickly slithered toward them. Beanie held out her ruby ring and zapped them with scorching rays of light. More snakes wriggled inside the shed, too many for Beanie to fend off.
“We need to get in the well,” Beanie said. “There are too many of them.”
“I have an idea,” Ariel said.
“What?”
“I’ll make us small like fairies”
“What? Like fairies?”
“I didn’t tell you, but last night, I turned myself into a fairy.”
The door burst open with a bang. Malik let out a menacing growl.
“Do it now!” Beanie cried.
Ariel closed her ey
es and made a fist over the sapphire. Blue sparks flared in all directions. The power of the sparks sent Malik and the snakes flying back against the wall of the shed, cracking it. Beanie and Ariel began to shrink until they were the size of a bird. Blue wings appeared on their backs. Beanie and Ariel flew down into the dark well as the light above them faded.
Chapter 18
Beanie woke up.
She heard the sound of writing. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around the small room. Across from her, a boy was seated at a desk. His back was to her. He wrote feverishly as if he was anxious to get all of his thoughts out.
“Hello?” Beanie said.
The boy stopped writing. He turned around. His skin was pale.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Beanie.”
“Hi, Beanie.”
He turned back around and continued writing.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The boy stopped writing and turned around. “My name is Malik.”
Her face turned pale like she had seen a ghost.
“M-M-Malik?” she stuttered.
The boy smiled darkly. His body morphed into a man with a tattered cloak and a skeletal face with empty eye sockets.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Beanie.”
She made a fist with her hand to activate the ruby ring, but it was gone.
“Looking for this?” Malik said, holding up her ruby ring.
Beanie gawked in horror.
“Now it’s mine,” he said.
The door burst open. Ariel stepped into the room. Malik gazed at her with a broad, sinister smile on his skeletal face.
“If you don’t want anything to happen to your friend, then hand over the—”
Ariel zapped him through the chest with her sapphire. Black sludge painted the wall behind him. He felt the hole inside his chest, then cackled. The sludge began to drift back to his body from the wall, closing up the wound.
“It’s going to take more than that,” he said.
Ariel ran to Beanie and grabbed her by the hand. They raced out of the room and then down the stairwell. They exited the house and then stopped in the middle of the yard, panting. Fog permeated the landscape around them. Trees were scattered here and there with no forest in sight.
“Are we at the bottom of the well?” Beanie asked.
“Yes. I assume this is where he lives.”
“How do we stop him?”
Suddenly the house exploded like thunder behind them. Malik ripped through the roof as he grew up to sixty feet tall. He swung his arms left and right, breaking apart the shingles and the siding. Fractured pieces of board flew in the air and landed all around the girls. They dodged here and there until all the pieces had come to rest.
“This is my world,” his voice boomed. “You are both fools for coming here. Hand over the spirit-gem now!”
He took a step forward and the ground shook with a violent tremor. They lost their balance and fell sideways.
“Run,” Ariel said. “I’ll hold him off.”
Right after she said that, a shadow passed over them. Malik’s giant foot almost crushed them when Ariel blasted a hole through the bottom side of his foot with her sapphire. He screeched in pain and reeled back.
“Run!” Ariel cried.
Beanie stumbled to her feet and began sprinting through the field. The fog became denser the farther she ran. She looked back and saw Ariel zapping him with her sapphire, burning holes through his body like Swiss cheese. No matter how many holes she burned through him, however, he kept healing. Beanie wished she could help Ariel, but how could she without her ruby ring?
A caw echoed in the air.
As Beanie ran, a crow swooped down and almost clipped her. She crouched, then kept running. More crows swooped down and she zigzagged to avoid them. With her eyes on the sky, she tripped over a tree root and fell on her knees and elbows. Beanie hurriedly picked herself back up and sprinted through the field.
The fog thickened so much that visibility became nonexistent. She would’ve stopped for breath if she didn’t hear the cawing crows above her. One of them flew down and gashed her cheek with its claws.
After about a half-mile, Beanie couldn’t hear their cawing anymore. She scuttled up to an arched gate and rested against a rock, catching her breath. When she looked at the rock, she realized that it was a tombstone. She looked around and saw tombstones everywhere. Then she remembered what Mrs. Kantor told her. Malik flooded Kitewell soon after his father was buried at a cemetery.
The fog dissipated and the moon shone in its full glory, blanketing the land with pearl light. As she trekked through the cemetery, she saw a faint green glow in the distance. She knew that had to be Malik’s spirit-gem, since it glowed an emerald color.
To her right, a stone gargoyle trembled. Dust spewed forth from its head and shoulders. Its head wheeled around. It snarled with its wolf-like fangs and then crept toward her.
It pushed her to the ground hard. She crawled backward with her nails digging into the soil. The gargoyle leaped in the air and Beanie rolled away. It cracked a tombstone upon landing, then whipped around and gazed at her fiercely.
Beanie stumbled to her feet and raced across the graveyard, weaving around the tombstones. The gargoyle followed her effortlessly, hurdling over tombstones, kicking up grass and dirt in its wake.
Beanie skittered down a steep slope and saw stone gargoyles everywhere. As soon as she passed them, they came to life as if they had been woken from a deep slumber. They trailed behind her while she continued sprinting across the graveyard. She never lost her footing with thirty gargoyles behind her.
She made it to the tombstone where an emerald lay on the dirt. The emerald cast green light in her eyes like a neon light. The epitaph of the tombstone read: Crandall Schmidt, 1870–1920. With the gargoyles closing in, Beanie snatched the emerald off the ground and kept running.
Beanie stopped abruptly once she reached the edge of the cliff. She looked down and saw an ocean of darkness spread out like an abyss. The stampede of the gargoyles shook the earth. They descended the hill without stopping.
Beanie glanced at the emerald in her palm and knew there was one thing left to do. She chucked it down in the abyss and watched it disappear into the darkness.
The gargoyles stopped in their tracks. A great mushroom cloud of green energy shot up into the dark sky. It permeated the landscape, spreading its energy everywhere. The gargoyles crumbled down into loose piles of rocks. All thirty gargoyles disintegrated, leaving heaps of stones in their wake. The sky began to clear. The dark clouds parted, revealing a soft blue sky behind it.
Beanie looked at her hand and noticed how transparent it appeared. Soon, her skin faded, and she became invisible. Then she disappeared.
Chapter 19
Beanie blinked. White light gleamed into her eyes. She saw Mrs. Kantor standing before Ariel, who was hovering in the air, her eyes closed. A blue aura coiled around Ariel as the sapphire pendant pulsed like a beating heart. Mrs. Kantor walked in a circle around Ariel as she moved her wand up and down with glitter floating in the air like dust.
Beanie saw the glasses on the table, as well as the bowl of cookies. She realized that she was back at Mrs. Kantor’s house, the Friday afternoon she and Ariel had stopped by to hear her ghost story. Beanie observed the cuckoo clock. It was 5:30 p.m. She had been dreaming for less than an hour even though more than a day had passed in the dream.
Beanie rose from the floor.
“What’s going on?” Beanie said.
“Ssshh,” Mrs. Kantor whispered. “She’s almost finished.”
Beanie observed Ariel’s eyelids as they flickered. She walked up to Ariel, who was a foot off the ground. Her arms dangled weightlessly on her sides.
“What’s happening to her?” Beanie said.
“She’s fighting Malik.”
“Is she’s winning?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Kantor said. “After you destroyed his spirit-gem, you made him weaker.”
“You saw everything?” Beanie said in surprise.
“I created the world as a simulation.”
“So it was all just a dream?”
Mrs. Kantor nodded. “It was a testing ground for you and Ariel to bond with your spirit-gems … to see if you could defeat Malik together.”
Beanie observed her left hand and noticed the ruby ring on her third finger.
“I thought Malik took this from me?” Beanie said.
“In the dream world, he did. Malik wants the spirit-gems to become unstoppable. You must remember to keep the spirit gem out of his reach. He’ll use it to destroy Kitewell.”
Ariel whimpered. Her head swayed left and right.
“What’s happening to her?” Beanie asked.
“She’s fighting Malik. Let her be.”
Ariel began to croak as if Malik was choking her.
“Wake her up. She can’t breathe,” Beanie cried.
“We can’t interrupt the dream. We have to let her finish the battle.”
“But what if she doesn’t win?”
“She will.”
“But what if she doesn’t?”
Mrs. Kantor looked at Beanie directly. “Then she’ll be trapped in the dream.”
“No!” Beanie cried. “Wake her. Wake her up now!”
Ariel writhed and she flailed her arms as if she had fallen on the ground or hit a wall in the dream world.
“Hang in there. You’ve almost got him. Just hang in there,” Mrs. Kantor said.
“You have to stop this. He might kill her,” Beanie pleaded.
“She’s winning, Beanie. Hush.”
Beanie quickly snatched the wand from Mrs. Kantor’s hand.
“Give it back, Beanie.”
“No.”
“Give it back!”
Ariel began to lower to the ground. Her toes were inches from touching the carpet.
“She won’t possess the full power of the spirit-gem if you interrupt the dream. Everything she worked for would be for nothing.”
Kitewell Page 10
