The Well of Many Worlds

by Luke Metcalf

  There was a packed crowd of dancing bodies, all waving their hands in the air as they bounced to the rock music that was shaking the walls of the house. Even in the excitement of the party Emily could not seem to calm her fury. Every nasty remark Chanel had ever made raced through her mind. She was buzzing with adrenaline and didn’t know what to do with herself.

  Bethany arrived, looking amazing in a skimpy little dark angel costume, and Emily felt a surge of insecurity well up. How could she possibly compete with Bethany? She was gorgeous, rich and a total sweetheart. She fought to bury her feelings of jealousy and insecurity.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “Wow, Beth you look hot,” Cindy exclaimed with genuine awe.

  “You too!”

  Emily spotted Tom in the living room. He was talking with some of his hockey buddies. Just seeing him made her feel better, and yet there it was again, a strange twinge of guilt mixed in with the other feelings she was experiencing. He smiled across the room and she waved back. Far away, she spotted Chanel cutting a swathe through the party, followed by her posse. A mid-tempo rock anthem came on. Everyone cheered and began singing along as they danced. Someone bumped into Emily, their drink sloshing over her hand.

  “How’s it going?” Tom asked.

  “Great. Thanks so much for inviting me.”

  “Aw, yeah, I’m glad you came. You want to dance?”

  Emily’s eyes widened and for a moment, she was a little taken aback. “Dance? Uh, yeah, sure.”

  Tom smiled his easy smile and wrapped his arms around her. As much as she tried to avoid glancing in Chanel’s direction, she couldn’t help it and found her looking back at them, thunderstruck. In fact, all of her posse was staring. Emily looked up at Tom and a part of her felt a dark thrill of triumph. Tom held her around the waist with his strong hands and her fingers glided over his broad shoulders as he pulled her closer. She practically swooned, then tilted her face up to allow Tom to kiss her.

  Emily could feel the eyes of a hundred jealous girls watching them, thought maybe she even heard a few jeers from the guys as well, the sound of trouble approaching.

  A surge of excitement and desire burst through her and she felt incredibly alive. The moment was shattered as someone grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her roughly around. An enraged Chanel faced her, seething. Emily was pretty sure Chanel was not the type of girl who would risk getting into an actual physical fight. That would be utterly beneath her. But she was certainly willing to wage war in her own way.

  “Do you have some kind of death wish?”

  “What?” Emily said. “I didn’t know you wrote your name on his forehead in Sharpie.”

  “Hey, girls, calm down!” Tom stepped between them.

  “You calm down!” Chanel shouted, shoving Tom’s hands away from her.

  A crowd of onlookers was forming in a circle around them.

  “Maybe I should leave,” Emily said quietly, touching Tom’s sleeve.

  “Yes, leave,” Chanel said.

  “What? No. Why? I mean…” Tom stammered, ignoring Chanel.

  “What do you mean ‘no?’” demanded Chanel. “Of course she should leave!” Chanel crossed her arms and glowered at Emily. “Go. Now.”

  Tom turned to face Chanel. “Listen,” he said, loud enough for the whole room to hear, “Enough! Like I told you; it’s over, just move on.”

  Chanel looked as though she was about to have a stroke. “You seriously mean to say,” she whispered, “you’re choosing her… over me?”

  “Chanel, I broke up with you, it wasn’t working out. Why can’t you accept that?”

  “Fine,” she said, holding the palm of her hand up to Tom’s face. She turned her attention to Emily as if she’d reached some sort of decision. “That’s the way it is. But so you know… your life is over.”

  “Ooohh, melodramatic,” some guy said above the silence and a couple of people laughed. Chanel spun on her heel and strode out of the room.

  “Wow, Tom,” Emily said. “I’m really sorry…”

  “No. That wasn’t your fault.” He took her hands in his.

  “Well, regardless, I’m gonna go find Cindy…”

  “You don’t have to go, Emily.”

  “No, I think I do. It’s okay.” As she walked away, Emily had a strange feeling, thinking about the pleasure she had taken in hurting Chanel. How well do I know myself? she wondered. She had only walked a few feet when Cindy ran up to her, eyes wide with excitement.

  “Okay, what just happened?”

  Emily sighed. “Tom and I were dancing and…”

  “Uh, yeah, I think everyone in the whole party noticed that.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Chanel basically threatened to kill me. That was pretty much it.”

  “You are so my hero!”

  Emily laughed. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Cindy shook her head in awe. “Seriously. All the girls in school will be worshipping you.”

  Something about that statement made Emily uncomfortable. It reminded her of what Mercurios had said about her being able to conquer and enslave the world when she became a powerful wizard. At just that moment, Chanel strode back in, turned off the music and addressed the suddenly silent room.

  “Everyone, listen up. I wasn’t sure if I was going to hand out these party favors, but our good friend, Emily, has actually informed me that this is the perfect time.” She pulled a pile of something out of her shoulder bag. Squinting for a better look, Emily realized they were photos. “Here are some photos a photographer that works for my father’s newspaper took. Everyone knows that Emily’s father was murdered, but nobody knows why. Well, the reason is because he was a criminal. He was mixed up with the mafia, and I guess he must have ripped the wrong people off, because this is what they did to him.”

  She began handing out the pictures. Emily’s heart stopped for a moment and her stomach churned. Cindy looked at her, confused.

  “No. That’s not true,” Emily said.

  Chanel walked up to her and handed her a photo. “Here – just one more dead criminal.”

  Emily yanked the picture from her hand. It was a reporter’s photograph of her father’s badly beaten, bloody corpse. Her eyes filled with tears and the photo vibrated in her shaking hands. The sight of the bloody and lifeless body of her father, the man whom she loved so dearly and who had loved her and been so tender and caring with her since she was a child, horrified her. Her eyes stayed glued to the photo. There he was, brutalized and murdered. She felt all the blood drain from her face. Her head spun. She stumbled forward and Tom caught her. She looked at him, not understanding what was going on, unable to grasp how someone could be so cruel, wondering where she was…

  “It’s okay, I have you.” Tom looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Chanel,” he said, as Emily’s world spun around her. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  “But why? The fun was just getting started.”

  “Leave now!” he shouted, struggling to keep control of the rage welling up inside him.

  Cindy strode up to Chanel, bristling with fury. “You sick, twisted, evil… You think you’re going to get away with this? You’re going to pay. You’re going to pay for this, Chanel. I’m gonna do something to you that you’ll never forget!”

  “I have to go home,” Emily murmured.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” Tom asked.

  “No, I just – I just need to go. I need to be alone.”

  “Listen to me, Emily,” Tom was saying, “I want you to know I am never going to let anyone hurt you like this again. I promise.”

  Emily nodded and walked to the front door, numb from shock, the photo falling from her fingers to the floor.

  As she stumbled down the steps, Cindy caught up with her. “Emily, wait, I’ll take you home.”

  “No. Please, I need to be alone right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Really, Cindy, it’s okay.”

 
“I’m going to get her for this, I swear.”

  “Don’t. She’s a sad case who just needs help.”

  “No, she’s a horrible person who needs her ass kicked.”

  Emily walked outside in a daze and the door shut behind her, muffling the noise of the party. She was just about to get into her car when she spotted Chanel’s new sports car parked under an ancient oak tree. She opened the door of her car, reached into her glove compartment and took out the wand Mercurios had given her. The little imp appeared on her shoulder.

  “The Wand of Lightning, Emily, yes, yes indeed!” he whispered excitedly. “She is merely a foolish girl and poses no threat, and there are some dark clouds in the sky, tee-hee. Yes indeed, your first kill will be regarded as an unfortunate accident. You will wait until she comes outside, then blast her into oblivion!” Mercurios clapped his hands with demonic glee. “Hurray!”

  “Will you please stop saying that!” yelled Emily then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not going to electrocute anyone!”

  The imp went silent, as Emily glanced up and down the street. When she was sure the coast was clear, she raised the wand and pointed it at an enormous branch about twenty feet above Chanel’s car.

  “Vaza bel thlemin,” she commanded.

  A great bolt of lightning leaped from the wand and blasted the base of the branch, immediately followed by a second bolt that exploded into a distribution transformer on a lamppost. The huge branch fell with an ear-splitting crack and crushed Chanel’s car. Seconds later the power went out along the whole street as the transformer exploded like a firework. The mansion went totally dark and silent for a few seconds before the cheering and laughing replaced the music.

  “Uh oh,” muttered Emily as the imp cackled with glee.

  “Good shot, Emily! But you lost control. Use only one lightning bolt at a time.”

  Emily jumped in her car and started the engine. As she drove away her heart pounded. “I could have killed someone, that second lightning bolt could have gone in any direction.”

  She was filled with self-doubt. Who was she to be playing with these powers? She wasn’t a wizard or witch or whatever, she was just some nobody high school girl.

  “Do not worry, Emily, with practice you will gain complete control over your spells and magic items. Patience and hard work. Everyone knows that’s the key to success in anything in life. Magic is no different.”

  When she got home, Emily told Mercurios she wanted privacy and ran straight to her bedroom, her mind racing. The voices of different people kept spinning around her brain – Chanel’s, the detective’s, Tom’s, Mercurios’s, the bizarre encounter with her dead father. But mostly, she kept thinking about Cady Sunner. Seeing those awful photographs had made her even more determined to help the police catch her father’s killers. She turned on her computer and checked the recordings coming in from the shotgun mic. She spent several hours going through long periods of nothing, occasionally broken up with phone calls that were about mundane, every day things and the sound of Cady’s television. But then she came across a conversation that had just occurred.

  “Yeah, what?” She heard Cady’s voice. “Oh, it’s you.” Emily thought she detected a trace of fear in his voice. “Yes, everything is being arranged at the warehouse in two nights… No, I asked him, he hasn’t found out anything more about it.”

  Was this the warehouse that Sammy runs? she wondered. It? Was “it” the desk?

  Emily heard Cady get up and his footsteps scuffled as he walked across the kitchen floor. A moment later a door slammed. He must have left his house, she thought.

  Her mind was whirling.

  “Mercurios,” she said and the imp appeared a moment later.

  “At your service.”

  She played him what she had just heard. “My father mentioned Sammy when he was a ghoul and now I hear them mention a warehouse. It must be the warehouse my father’s friend Sammy runs.”

  “Indeed,” said Mercurios. “I am certain that you are correct.”

  “And what did he mean when he said that they hadn’t found out anything more? Since he specifically said the word ‘more,’ that must mean they found out some information… I think I’m going to have to have a talk with Sammy.”

  Fourteen

  Emily awoke the next day with a scream. Her tangled sheets were wet with sweat. Once again she had dreamed of the mysterious boy and then the demon, experiencing exactly the same heady mixture of desire and terror. She wanted to ask Mercurios about him again but she had slept late and had to rush if she was going to make it to school on time. It would have to wait until later. She quickly showered and brushed her teeth. Looking at herself in the mirror, she sighed.

  “Well, you’re eighteen, Emily, Happy Birthday,” she said quietly, then walked into her bedroom and got dressed.

  Arriving at school she spotted Tom standing near the doors talking to a couple of his hockey buddies.

  “Hey, Tom.”

  “Oh, hey. Listen, I’m really sorry about Chanel…”

  “You don’t have to apologize for her. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, I’d like to make it up to you.”

  Emily smiled. “That’s not necessary.”

  They walked into the school together as Tom’s friends took the hint and went their separate ways.

  “So, are you going to let me take you out on a date?”

  “Sure.” Emily grinned.

  During the day various friends wished her happy birthday. Cindy and Chester gave her a couple gift certificates to some of her favorite stores. Everyone was talking about how the tree outside Tom’s house got struck by lightning, crushing Chanel’s car, and about what they were going to do for Halloween. The day seemed to last forever. Emily’s mind swirled with thoughts of Tom, her father, the mysterious boy in her dreams, the Sanctuary, and what she was going to find there.

  After school, Emily and Cindy stopped at the salon to get their hair done together. When they were leaving Cindy nudged her friend.

  “You know, Em, after you left Tom’s party Bethany kinda moved in on him.”

  “What?” Emily frowned, not liking the feeling of jealousy she could feel surging within her. “What happened?”

  “Well, nothing major, but she was being super flirty and Tom spent most of the rest of the night talking to her, that’s all.”

  “Well, I can’t control who he talks to,” she snapped.

  “Okay, chill, just thought I should let you know.”

  After the hair salon Cindy’s cousin, a film makeup artist, came over with her makeup bag. She made Emily look like a real vampire, complete with very pale skin, blue veins along her neck and hairline and blood-red lips. Emily pulled on the blue ball gown. With her hair pinned up and falling in ringlets over the side of her face, lace gloves and faux pearl necklace she peered at herself in the mirror and wished that every day could be Halloween.

  The night air was crisp and clear and the autumn leaves glowed in the twilight. The sunset painted the scattered clouds on the western horizon in lurid colors, as the full moon rose, yellow in the east. The dry leaves crunched under their feet and all around them fairies, goblins, ghosts, ghouls, werewolves, princesses, aliens, superheroes and super-villains raced with bags of candy from house to house while jack-o’-lanterns glowed and grinned from every window and porch.

  The Sanctuary was already packed when they arrived. The atmosphere was electric. The venue was much larger than she had imagined. There looked to be about four hundred people there and whoever had put the club together had done an incredible job. It had a great sound and light set-up.

  “I will definitely be coming back here,” Emily said, her eyes wide in excitement.

  Everyone was in full costume. The whole tea party from Alice in Wonderland were there; Alice, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and the Dormouse. There was also Tweety Bird, Cinderella and the Tin Man. Every type of costume imaginable was on display. A thick, eerie
, dry ice mist covered the dance floor while strobes and beams of blue and red lit the witch trees and tombstones and other Halloween decorations scattered about the club. The music was primal rock; hard, driving, relentless beats pounding deep inside her, filling her with excitement. The dance floor was rocking.

  She felt as if the beat possessed her, as though it were one with her heart, pumping hot blood through her veins. The bass, drums and guitars drove their steady pulses into her, while the singer alternated between deep, melodic crooning and snarling intensity. The lyrics were dark and passionate, rising at points to an unearthly howl.

  Emily scanned the crowd for Cady Sunner and the pale-faced man but saw them nowhere. She and Cindy ordered a couple of sodas, found a table near the dance floor and sat down. Emily was never much of a dancer, but Cindy could never resist the lure of the beat. She bounced in her seat, unable to resist the rhythm any longer and Emily watched her friend join the mass of gyrating bodies on the misty shrouded floor, happy just to watch the party unfold. She felt as if she were on another planet, a club at the far edge of the universe where alien beings congregated to party.

  Her heart gave a sudden jolt as she spotted the pale-faced man from Sunner’s house. Everything about him unnerved her. Now that she could see him clearly, if intermittently, in the flashing lights, she noticed he was actually handsome, but his features were marred by the condescending sneer on his lips and the deadly coldness in his eyes, as though everything he saw around him filled him with contempt.

  The three young men behind him all looked to be in their early twenties. They too were good-looking but had the same pallor to their faces. Two were tall and narrowly built and the third was short and noticeably muscular with shiny black hair that fell over his face in sharp spikes. He was also immaculately groomed, wearing a tailored suit, dressed as a gangster. Emily kept her face toward the dance floor, following them with her peripheral vision as they pushed through the crowd and took over a table in the back corner, the muscular man shooing other people away to make room.

  After a few moments, once they had settled, she got up and casually walked over to the other side of the dance floor, leaning against a wall near to their table. In such a big crowd she was pretty sure she wasn’t being too conspicuous as she eavesdropped on their conversation. The man who had terrified Cady Sunner was doing all the talking, the others leaning in to listen with rapt attention, but the music was too loud for Emily to properly make out what he was saying. She wondered if she should get Mercurios to go invisible and sit by them and listen.