The Magician: An Epic Dark Fantasy Novel: Book One of the Rogue Portal Series (2 page)

TWO

⌛

"Connor, are you awake?"

              Julia peeked her head in the room, and Connor did his best to feign a just-waking-up-Mom yawn, though he'd been awake for two hours.

              "Yup," he replied.

              "Good. Would hate for you to sleep through moving day."

              "It wouldn't be ideal, I'll give you that."

              Julia smiled, but Connor knew better than to believe her. Her smiles always lied.

              "Took a trip to the attic this morning?"

              His stomach did a back flip, but he took pains to make sure his guilt didn't register on his face. Propping himself up on one arm he gave his mother a chiding look.

              "Yeah, I walked up there in my sleep."

              "I'm serious, Connor. I know how you are with your sick affection for the coward. You want to explain to me how the door got open if you didn't open it?"

              "You mean the door that opens on its own all the time? Last time I checked, that's why you put the doorstop there. Not that it does any good."

              He comforted himself with the thought that he hadn't actually lied. The door
had
been standing open upon his arrival.

              "Watch your tone! You're just like him, you know that? A lying coward! What did you do, Connor, search the filthy attic for some stupid trinket? Something to cling to like a damn child?"

              Carrying this conversation further couldn't possibly end well. New tactic.

              "I'm mostly packed. When do we need to leave?"

              She let out a sigh, crossing her arms and drawing her mouth into a straight line of pure disgust. The bitterness made its way to her voice.

              "In an hour. Be ready. I'll be downstairs."

              "Sure, Mom."

              The smile of lies, the turn of her face, the smirk of derision she thought he couldn't see but that he always did. And then she left, the click of the door offering him a reprieve from the verbal assault.

              He fell back on his bed, heaving a sigh of relief, and stared at the now decently lit ceiling, closing his eyes for a brief moment, trying to swallow the feeling of anticipation and nauseating anxiety that washed over him. He didn't fear leaving home. In fact, he looked forward to it. But his life, which had been a predictable, if not miserable, sort of consistent, had started to offer up drastic changes in a short period of time. And then, of course, he knew his mother would be alone in the house, and he feared that she would succumb to the same fate as his father. Too many times he'd been plagued with frightening images of coming home on a break from college to discover her in the same position as his father. Screaming at her that she was a hypocrite. It was like a flashback to an event that never happened.

              And then he would see the psychological masquerade for what it was - his fear getting the best of him. Life had been too disturbing, the atmosphere too negatively charged. For years he had felt that his house was not a home but a beast, welling with anger, ready at any moment to consume its occupants. His father had been taken, and now his mother was fading away into the clutches of the darkness that surrounded the house. He had no intentions of going with them.

              Heaving a sigh he allowed resigned steps to carry him across the room to his backpack. He unzipped the front pouch. Reached in. Picked up the pocket watch and felt the cold metal as he turned it over in his palm. It had once been gold, but time had eroded its previous splendor to a rustic bronze that held a charm of its own.

              He carried it back to his bed, allowing gravity to do its work. Felt the comfort of the pillow beneath his head. Stared once more at the wooden boards of the ceiling, knowing it was likely the last time he ever would. Flipped the pocket watch open, then shut. Open, then shut. Open...

              His stomach dropped without warning, and a sense of being an article of clothing in a washing machine overwhelmed him. The spinning sensation gave way to one of falling. Voices broke through the silence around him. Children, women, tribal songs. A faint humming of a song he'd never heard before, but that something within him recognized nonetheless.

              Scenes of lives he'd never lived covered the wooden ceiling. Flashes of memories that weren't his own. A swampy marsh against stark mountains. Flowers unlike any he'd ever seen. Darkness. Light. A universe of color stitched into the silken tapestry of human consciousness. A violently beautiful blue light that drowned all of it in a sea of mystic neon. And then nothing.

              As he looked at the pocket watch in his hand, he snapped it shut. The world returned, unassuming, to the way it had been moments earlier. Only not quite. The room expanded, shrunk, distorting everything around him, transforming them into images seen in a cosmic funhouse mirror. And then, with no more warning than he'd had when it shifted, the world snapped back into place.

              He needed sleep. That had to be it. He cast a hopeful glance to the clock on the far wall. Heaved a thankful sigh that the time of his departure had arrived. Giving the pocket watch a suspicious gaze, he rose from the bed and stowed it away in his backpack.

              After packing what few things he hadn't packed the night before - toiletries, mainly - Connor left his bedroom, pausing for a moment at the banister at the top of the stairs, running his hand across the cracked center.
Who in their right mind goes twenty-three years without fixing that?
he thought.

              The darkness grinned.

              Taking a final look, he allowed himself to absorb the place he'd called home, a melancholy snapshot stored in his mind. The banister, the wooden hallway, the door to the attic, all absorbed in a single image like a portrait, once colorful, now a time-worn remnant found in the attic of a man long since dead.

              Blinking back the tears that threatened his mask of composure, he ran down the remaining steps to find his mother waiting, as promised, at the door, his final suitcase in hand.

              "Connor."

              He looked up at her.

              "What?"

              "What do you mean what?"

              He frowned.

              "You just said my name."

              "No, I didn't. Did you sleep okay? Or did the attic get to you?"

              She snapped the word attic, making it more of an accusation than word. As though she had any right to ask him about such a thing. Being the resident expert on insanity, he should have been asking her that question. But this was not the time to start a battle. It was too late for that anyway.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

              "You know I did toss and turn. Must just be hearing things. I'll get more sleep tonight after I'm settled in at school."

              "Alright then."

              She exited the house, and he followed. Pausing at the doorway, he turned around and addressed the swelling emptiness of the place. The nothingness that breathed, as though the boards of the structure composed its ribcage, sucking the sanity out of its occupants as air. The darkness that watched, never abandoning its post.

              "Whatever you are, leave my mother alone," he murmured through gritted teeth.

              As he turned to leave, he extended his middle finger to the home, a farewell salute, knowing that something saw it, almost able to hear the disembodied laughter, a return farewell from the evil that would now have his mother all to itself. Stiffening his jaw, he showed his back to the door and put a foot on the front step.

              "So long for now, Dearie."

             
He spun back around to face the source of the voice, but an empty front stoop greeted him.  Shaking his head, he jogged down the front steps...and froze. A crimson top hat sat on the porch bench.

              "Hey, Mom, what's this thing doing here?"

              He looked toward his mother, her severe silhouette a stark contrast to the colorful garden beside her. He gestured with a jerk of his head toward the hat.

              "What thing?"

              "The..."

              He turned, and it was gone. Casting nervous eyes across the porch, he found no evidence to indicate that the wind had blown it away. Or that it had ever existed at all. He blinked, willing his sanity back in its place, refusing to get so close to freedom only to allow the beast to steal his mind. The darkness screeched with laughter.

              "Just um...there was a rat. It's gone. Thought it was something else."

              "Oh. Well, let's go, then."

              "Yeah," he said, not sure he heard her.

              Turning his back for a final time toward the house, he felt pressure on his back. A shove. Stumbled, thankful that his mother hadn't seen it. The house was as happy to get rid of him as he was to leave it. He didn't stop to turn around. Never looked back as he threw his last bags into the van and shut the door. Never saw the man in the crimson and gold suit wave at him with gloved hands, or the old woman who had taken the hat's place on the porch bench beside him.

THREE

⌛

Connor's dorm room boasted little space and even less color, but given the fact that he'd been assigned to a room without a roommate and decorating had never been his niche, it didn't lessen his relief.  Sitting on the edge of the bed he took in the new surroundings and smiled. So this was how it felt to have a place to himself. To be able to breathe. To break free of the home that had suffocated him for so long.

              But freedom remained elusive - he knew that. Running his hands through his hair, elbows on his knees, he imagined his mother, driving down the long tree-lined road, through the last fragments of peace she'd be able to claim before returning to the beast of a house they'd labeled a home. Would she be safe? Would the evil that he felt there, the embodied but invisible darkness, come to find her in her sleep - if it waited that long? Would it lock her in, take her mind, complete its work until it wrote its final chapter. Matching cracks in the upper banister its final words upon the tombstone of Connor's family?

              He didn't want to think about it, but could think of little else.

              A knock at the open door to his room interrupted his thinking, and he looked up with a start.

              "Sorry...Connor Galveston?"

              The man's head nearly reached the top of the door frame, his narrow limbs accompanied by thick-rimmed black glasses, a blue plaid shirt, and a mess of unkempt hair that seemed piled rather than placed on his head. He carried the appearance of a person who'd just pulled an all-nighter in a tech lab, and the laptop he toted completed the image like a period completes a sentence.

              "Yes, that's me."

              The man broke out into a wiry, unsure smile.

              "Oh, good, um. S...sorry to interrupt, it's just um. They said that I was supposed to room with you. I know your room wasn't scheduled to have anyone in it but you, but I'm a last-minute addition, and they..."

              He trailed off, offering Connor an apologetic look. He knew that look. In a single glance, years of bullying, loneliness, and friendless lunches spent in the corner of the cafeteria played across his face like a movie, and it moved him to compassion.

              "Hey, no worries. The more the merrier, it was getting a little lonely in here."

              Connor flashed him a smile, and the man's relief was palpable.

              "Hey, thanks. Um. I'm Stuart McElroy."

              He extended a nervous, thin hand, and Connor shook it, smiling again.

              "Nice to meet you." He glanced at the man's laptop. "That all you brought?"

              Stuart laughed and shook his head, placing the laptop on the free bed. Reaching behind the door into the hallway, he revealed a box. One he'd had all along but, Connor thought, he'd probably hidden, just in case he'd told him to get lost. Even though Connor couldn't have said no if he'd wanted to, it wasn't hard to believe that Stuart was more than used to people telling him no, even if convention wouldn't ordinarily allow it.

              "So Stuart, where you from?"

              Stuart looked at him with a hesitant gaze and smiled. "Oregon."

              "Oh, nice, what part?"

              "Grants Pass."

              "Oh, that's a beautiful area. At least it was - I've only been there once. When I was a kid."

              "Oh yeah? It is beautiful there. Yes. Boring when you live there, though, sometimes."

              They  both laughed.

              "You have family around here, or did you come down here by yourself?"

              Stuart's face darkened under the passing shadow of a thousand best-forgotten memories. He cast his gaze to the floor. The wall. Then met Connor's once more.

              "I don't have family anywhere anymore. My folks, um. They were killed. Car crash. About five years ago. Been living with my friend, and he got married, so it was a little...awkward to stay there. So. When I got accepted to college here, I decided to move into the dorms."

              Connor felt instantly connected to Stuart's past.

              "Wow, I'm sorry, I didn't..."

              "No, no, it's okay." Stuart was quick to paste the smile back on his face and move on.

              "My um...my dad killed himself right after I was born, and my mom's been...well the depression has kind of..."

              Tears threatened to expose the pain he'd been hiding. He hadn't imagined it would be so difficult to talk about his father. But then again he never had before. Not to anyone. He couldn't discuss his father with his mother, and he couldn't discuss her with anyone else. So his fractured pain had been kept half-alive, just below the surface.

              "So you understand, then."  Stuart's eyes were compassionate. Friendly. Connor immediately trusted him, which was a rare thing, and he decided that having a roommate might not be so bad. Loneliness, after all, is a poor companion for a wandering mind. And a dangerous one.

              Stuart reached into his box and started to unpack, and Connor followed suit. 

              "Well. I'm glad you're my roommate," Stuart continued. "You seem like a decent person."

              "Thanks. You, too."

              Connor reached into a box and his hand met a cold, metallic object. His heart skipped a beat. 

              "What's that?" Stuart asked.

              "Trinket from another life, I guess. It was with my dad's stuff in the attic. I wanted something of his, you know. Take with me."

              "I understand that," Stuart said, reaching into a box of his own and pulling out a pair of glasses.

              "Those your dad's?"

              "Yes. And I have my mom's necklace. I keep them with me all the time. Just to....well, you know." His voice trailed off.

              "Yeah. I know."

              Connor flipped the pocket watch open and noted the time had been set to twelve o'clock. His brow furrowed.

              "What's wrong?" Stuart asked.

              "Nothing. Just...the watch is set to twelve o'clock, straight up. Which I suppose doesn't mean anything. It just seems...weird."

              "It does. I mean the last time my watch stopped working it was at a random time."

              "Exactly." Connor shrugged. "Ah, I'm just overthinking it. I'll set it later." Stuart smiled, and Connor set the open pocket watch on the desk. The room contained just one desk, but it was large enough (or the room was small enough) that it gave each of them the opportunity to use one side of it as a nightstand, while still leaving room to work in the middle.

              "So tell me more about your mom's necklace." Connor looked at Stuart.

              "Oh, it's a locket. It has a picture of the family in it. My mom and dad on one side, my sister and I on the other."

              "Sister?"

              Stuart nodded with the rapidity of a cartoon character.

              "Yes, yes I had a sister. She was just two years younger than me, but, she..."

              "Passed away?" Connor offered, knowing how difficult it could be to admit such a thing out loud.

              "That's just it. We don't know."

              "What do you mean?"

              "She disappeared. Went missing from our home. She walked out the door to school and somehow never made it there. Never even made it to the bus stop from what we were able to gather from the students and others. But...they never found a body. The search went on for three weeks, but they finally had to call it off. We had a memorial service for her, but I never believed she was gone. She never...felt gone."

              Stuart looked at Connor with a crinkled brow that begged him to say that he wasn't crazy. That it made sense. And it did.

              "I can understand that." Stuart relaxed, the burden of forthcoming rejection or ridicule having been lifted. "How old was she when she went missing?"

              "About ten, I'd say. I was eleven, just turned, so she must have been ten or about to turn ten."

              "Wow."

              "Yeah. I'm twenty-three now and it just never goes away, you know?"

              "I don't think it ever does," Connor replied, then added "I'm twenty-three, too! So many people coming in as freshman seem to be eighteen and nineteen. I never thought I'd feel old at twenty-three."

              They laughed, both of them welcoming the change of pace in the conversation.

              "I know. I worked in a data lab for awhile after high school to get some experience. I wanted to know for sure if computer science was what I wanted to do."

              "And was it?"

              "Yes, I think so. That or mathematics. But you get beat up less if you can fix people's computers."

              Connor burst out laughing. It felt good. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed. Laughter was a rare commodity at his home, and life hadn't given him much to be happy about.

              Stuart looked pleased that Connor found him funny.

              "What about you, Connor? What's your major?"

              He sighed, running a hand over the back of his neck in thought.

              "I don't really know yet. I haven't declared one. I haven't had a lot of time to think about it, really. I've been dealing with some family stuff for awhile and had to work to get the funds for college since there wasn't a lot saved up after my dad died. My mom did what she could, but I had to kick in my share. Which I didn't mind doing. I wasn't ready for college three years ago. But now I feel like I haven't been more ready for anything in my life."

              "That I understand."

              They sat in mutual silence for the span of several breaths before Connor finally spoke again.

              "I'd considered psychology."

              Stuart lit up like a Christmas tree.

              "That's a great idea! You could help so many people. Given your experiences, you could even work with people suffering from depression. Or help people recover after losing loved ones. It could be a great opportunity for you to turn your tragedy into a really positive thing. You know?"

              Connor offered an amused smile. Stuart sounded like an advertisement for the psych department.

              "Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if I just don't want to handle it at all. If I even want to immerse myself into more of the same, you know?"

              "That's something to consider, as well." Stuart creased his brow and bit his bottom lip in contemplation.

              "I guess that's what general education is for, no?" Connor said.

              Stuart laughed. "Yes, I suppose it is."

              The daylight that had poured through the windows began to fade with unforgiving speed, though that was typical for western Washington. Connor rose to turn on the desk lamp.

              "You have a class tomorrow?" Connor asked.

              Stuart nodded in reply. "Yes, I have um...let's see..."

              He pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper from his back pocket and furrowed his brow, using a long pointer finger to assist him in scanning the information until he found what he needed.

              "Oh, yes. Chem 101 with Dr. Rumsfeld."

              Connor pulled out his list of classes from the desk and scanned them.

              "Hey, me, too!"

              "Really?"

              "Yeah, I had to take a beginning science class so I chose chemistry. Physics isn't really my strong suit, but I've always been pretty good at math and experiments, so I figured chemistry would be okay."

              "You'll do great, I'm sure. Plus we can study together for exams."

              The last part felt more like a question than a statement, and Connor smiled.

              "That would be great. I'm sure I could use your help."

              Stuart beamed. "Well, I can try."

              Connor gave a cavernous yawn, surprised at how exhausted he was thought it was only six o'clock. They worked at unpacking the rest of their belongings for the next several hours in relative silence. By eleven-thirty they'd each been unpacked for an hour or two and Connor examined the pocket watch while Stuart read. Finally, the weights on his eyelids proved too heavy.

              "I suppose we should hit the hay." Connor said.

              Stuart looked at him over the top of his book with a raised eyebrow. "Sorry?"

              Connor had stood to turn down his bed, and looked over his shoulder at Stuart. He burst out in laughter at the quizzical expression on his face.