The Journal of Curious Letters (The 13th Reality #1) (41 page)

“Wait a minute,” Paul said. “I thought Sato was driving the bike.”

“Quick!” Mothball yelled, ignoring Paul. “Get in ’ere!”

She saw Tick obey immediately, shooting the Windbike through the narrow space between the half-open doors. Even as he did, Mothball grabbed the long ropes hanging on the inside of the huge slabs of wood that served as handles to pull them closed.

“Help me!” she yelled.

As the others moved to her side and pulled with her, Mothball looked outside. Just before the doors slammed shut with a loud boom, she saw the hideous sight of countless fangen charging directly for them.

~

Mothball pulled an enormous plank of wood down into the slot that locked the double doors. “Won’t hold ’em for long, bet yer best buttons.” She looked at Tick, who’d parked the Windbike and now hugged his friends like they’d just won the Cricket tourney. “Save the celebratin’ if you don’t mind. Here.” She held up the Barrier Wand, gesturing for him to take it.

“What?” Tick stammered. “Here? Now?”

“’Less you’d be wantin’ to invite the fangen in first.”

Tick frowned. “But I thought we had to get back to the battleground.”

Something heavy slammed into the doors from the other side, followed by a thunder of heavy thumps and nerve-grinding scratches. The fangen wanted
in.

“Only if we’d be wantin’ Master George to grab us in a few hours,” Mothball said. “No time for that now. It’s up to you.”

Without waiting for a response, she tossed the Wand in Tick’s direction.

~

Tick caught the long golden rod with both hands, scared to death he’d drop it and break it. He hefted it in his hands, surprised at how light it felt.

“So . . . I just have to adjust the controls and poof—we’re safe?” he asked Mothball.

“Be quick about it—and make no mistakes on the dials or we may end up in the wrong end of a beluga whale, we will. Once you’re set, we all need to be touchin’ it, then ya simply push the button.”

A crashing thunk made them all jump. Tick saw the head of a huge axe embedded in the wood of the right door. With an ear-piercing squeal, the huge sliver of metal was yanked back out. A second later it landed again, throwing a shower of splinters all over the stone walkway. It disappeared and a red eye peeked through the rough slit, followed by a gurgly scream.

“Uh, Tick,” Sofia said. “Maybe we should, I don’t know,
hurry
?” She threw every ounce of sarcasm she could muster into the last word.

“Yeah, man,” Paul agreed. “Giddyup.”

“They’re almost through . . .” Sato said, his voice taut.

“Okay,” Tick whispered as he knelt down on the stone, holding the Barrier Wand in front of him delicately, like he held in his hands the most priceless artifact of the ancient Egyptians. “Here goes nothing.”

More booms and cracks sounded from the doors. More cackles and deranged giggling. The left door started to buckle, like the fangen had just hit it with a huge battering ram.

“Take your time, Tick,” Sofia muttered.

Tick ignored her, closing his eyes and bringing up the image of what Master George had shown him back at the Bermuda Triangle complex. He raised his mind’s eye to look at the Doohickey, the uppermost control.

“Okay,” he said, opening his eyes to focus on the real thing. While holding the rod with his left hand, he reached forward and turned the Doohickey three clicks to the right. He paused again, knowing it was better to get it right the first time instead of rushing and having to start all over again. He envisioned the Whatchamacallit, then the Thingamajig, slowly making the appropriate adjustments. He moved his attention to the next control down.

An ear-splitting crack made him yelp, looking up to see a huge seam had split the right door into almost two complete sections. Several yellowy arms squirmed through the opening, grasping and clawing to pull the pieces apart.

Tick, spurred into a fear-induced sense of focus, went back to work on the Barrier Wand.

~

“The water ruined the ruddy Sound Slicers, no doubt,” Mothball said as she ran forward to the doors, picking up a huge splinter of wood that had fallen inward onto the stone floor. She immediately got to work, whacking and stabbing any sign of the diseased yellow skin that squeezed through the large crack. With every shriek and scream of anger, she doubled her efforts.

Paul joined her, finding a smaller but sharper stick. Without a word to each other, they worked in tandem—Paul fighting the lower portion, Mothball the upper.

They only had to buy Tick a little more time.

~

Sofia felt rooted to the ground, screaming inside with helplessness. Sato stood beside her, frantically looking around as if trying to find something to fight.

“What happened out there?” Sofia asked him.

Sato looked at her, his eyes drained of the hatred and mistrust he’d shown back at Master George’s place. “He saved my life.” Sato pointed at Tick.

“He did?”

Sato nodded.

“That’s—” Sofia shrieked as something grabbed her ankle. She looked down to see a slick yellowed hand gripped around her, attached to one of the fangen, crawling out of the river. Behind it she saw another’s head pop out of the water.

Before she could react, Sato kicked down with his foot, breaking the miserable thing’s hand with a hideous crunch. It squealed and splashed back into the water, just as Sato got down on his knees and shot the other one with a muted
thump
from his Sound Slicer. The creature disappeared into the black water.

Sofia reached down and helped Sato back to his feet, then dragged him away from the river, seeing no signs of other creatures—for the moment.

The breaches in the doors were cracking wider, almost big enough for one of the monsters to squeeze through. A sickly arm reached inside, a glimmering silvery globe clutched in its hand. Sofia was about to shout a warning when Mothball whacked the thing’s arm with her huge stick.

The tall woman turned around, her face on fire with rage, yelling at the others. “Run away from the door! All of you!”

~

Paul didn’t argue, turning immediately to run down the dark tunnel. He grabbed Tick’s arm as he passed, half dragging him along since Tick was still focused intently on the Barrier Wand.

“Come on!” Paul yelled. “We need to get out of their reach or they’re going to fry us for dinner. Just a little farther in!”

Tick finally snapped his concentration and broke into a full run behind Paul. “I’ve almost got it,” he said, panting. “Just one more dial.”

The last word had barely crossed his lips when a horrible explosion of cracking wood boomed and echoed down the dark stone tunnel. The silver ball had been some kind of bomb.

The breach was complete.

~

Tick tried to ignore the noise of screaming and howling fangen pouring through the shattered doors behind them. Knowing he had no time left, he quit running and knelt down again, bringing the Barrier Wand up to his eye level. “Everyone come here!” he shouted. “Grab the Wand!”

He focused on the bottom dial—the Whattzit. He turned it to the correct position, then glanced over the other six controls, verifying each of them one last time. The other Realitants had gathered around him, leaning over to grasp the Wand in different locations, being careful not to cover up or bump the dials and switches.

The nightmarish sounds of the onrushing fangen grew louder. Sato used his free hand to shoot with his Sound Slicer, keeping some of them at bay, but Tick knew it was only a matter of time.

“Everyone ready?” Tick shouted over the cackles and war cries of the fangen
and the teeth-jolting thumps of Sato’s lone weapon.

“Do it!” Mothball answered for everyone. “Be quick about it!”

Unable to prevent a smile from spreading across his face, Tick pushed the golden button on top of the Barrier Wand.

Nothing happened.

The haunting chorus of horrible sounds continued. Tick and the others were still trapped inside the Lemon Fortress.

Tick pushed the button again, then again, triggering his finger up and down several times.

Nothing.

“What’s
wrong,
Tick?” Sofia yelled.

“Dude, hurry up!” Paul added.

Tick ignored them, studying the controls to see if he’d made a mistake. One by one, he quickly scanned them, matching their positions with the image burned inside his mind. Everything was right.

He pushed the button again, with the same result.

No, no, no,
he thought.
Not after all we just went through. You will work. You will
work
!

“Tick!” Sofia yelled, swatting him on the shoulders in panic.

Tick could hear the creatures coming, could
feel
them.

Focusing, funneling the surroundings out of his mind and heart, Tick gripped the Barrier Wand, staring at it like he could melt it with his eyes.
They’d come so far . . .

He felt that strange reservoir of heat deep in his stomach bubbling to life. He’d tapped into it twice before and now he reached for it eagerly, letting the warmth flood through his entire body, filling him with certainty.

Tick shouted into the air, louder than he’d ever shouted anything in his whole life.

“YOU WILL
WORK
YOU STUPID PIECE OF HUNK-A-JUNK!”

He closed his eyes and pushed the button one last time.

Tick instantly felt a tingle shoot down his back and the world around him fell into dead silence.

~

What do you mean, it
worked
?”

Mistress Jane glared at Frazier Gunn, who knelt before her chair by the window, like a criminal begging for his life. Surprisingly, Jane felt more intrigued than angry about this new development. Maybe she would let Gunn live after all.

“I don’t know how it happened, Mistress,” Gunn grumbled, sweat covering his face. “The Realitants disappeared and took the Barrier Wand with them.”

Jane reached over and lifted the Chi’karda Drive from where she’d placed it on the stone ledge of the windowsill. “
How,
exactly, could they do that when I’m holding the heart of the Wand in my hands?”

“George must’ve winked them out somehow.” Gunn kept his eyes fixed on the floor.

“Impossible,” Jane said immediately. “I have firsthand reports that George’s Wand broke in half. Plus,
you’re
the one who said their plan was to go back to the ancient Plague battlefield and get winked hours from now.”

“Then how did—”

“SILENCE!” Jane had endured this stupid man for quite long enough. “Leave me. I don’t want to see you for a very long time.” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Jane watched him get to his feet and shuffle away, murmuring incessantly his thanks for her gracious decision to let him live. He was lucky—losing the Wand was a major loss; its parts and mechanisms were equally as important as the Chi’karda Drive itself—but she had much more important things flying through the recesses of her brilliant mind.

How
had they done it? How had they manipulated the Chi’karda powerfully enough without the Drive? And in the heart of her personal fortress at that? Did it have something to do with the twisted version of the mysterious force that existed in the Thirteenth Reality? Jane tapped a sharp fingernail against her lips, thinking.

Did one of those bratty kids have some kind of special power over the Chi’karda? Many questions indeed.

The implications were vast, the possibilities endless.

Despite the setback, Mistress Jane smiled.

~

To any outside observer, it would have seemed as though Tick and his friends had just won the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the NBA Championship in one fell swoop. Having been through so much, and after having hundreds of creepy yellow fangen
within inches of tearing them to pieces, winking away to complete safety seemed reason enough to jump up and down, screaming and hugging and cheering and then to start all over again.

“What took you so long!” Paul yelled, whacking Tick on the back with a huge smile on his face.

“I was trying to decide if I wanted to take you or leave you behind,” Tick replied, grinning.

They celebrated inside a room very similar to the one they’d left in the Bermuda Triangle, though a much smaller version—a couple of couches, a chair, a cold brick fireplace. A single window was placed directly across from the fireplace, and it looked out upon a dry palette of colors—oranges, reds, browns.