The Cursed Codex

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Are you all right?” asked his mother. “You look pale. Do you feel sick?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Really. Didn’t sleep well since I have a test today, and those guys haven’t been bothering Ash and Tira for a while. I’m worried they’re gonna do something really bad.”

  His mother got up and walked around the table, checking him over and putting a hand on his forehead. “Well, you don’t feel feverish.”

  “Morning, bud.” His father, already in a suit, crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and poured a cup.

  “Hey, Dad.” Keith smiled.

  He refocused on his breakfast while his parents talked about their upcoming day. His mother playfully griped about Mr. Beem, a patient who tried to demand full anesthesia for everything including simple cleanings.

  “Trade places with you, hon.” His father chuckled. “I’m going to be in meetings all day. It takes them longer to discuss upgrading the server room than it’ll take us to actually do it.”

  “You can have that. I’d rather be vacuuming gunk out of old people’s teeth.”

  Keith grimaced. Okay, maybe horrors worse than Yzil the Dark Wizard did exist.

  He arrived at school within seconds of the first bell sounding, so he didn’t have a chance to see his friends before the day began. Lunch offered the first chance to release what he’d been bursting to share. Once they’d all headed to their usual spot in the corner, trays in hand, Keith looked back and forth among them without even opening his foil-wrapped hamburger.

  “What’s with you?” asked Carlos, before taking a huge bite of cheese steak.

  Elliot opted for the spaghetti and meatballs. As though he sat in an expensive restaurant, he made a show of formally stuffing a napkin in his shirt collar.

  “Guys, something really twisted happened last night. I have no idea what to do,” said Keith.

  “Your little warrior finally stand up?” asked Carlos.

  Keith rolled his eyes. “Not funny. No, I’m serious.” He leaned low over his lunch tray and told them about his run through the forest. “It’s the book, I think. The girl who used to own it is somehow trapped in my closet.”

  “You have a girl locked in your closet?” asked Carlos. “Whoa dude. That’s messed up.”

  “No, dumbass. She’s not in my closet. It’s like a portal or something… I uhh, this is going to sound crazy, but—”

  “Whenever someone starts anything with ‘this is gonna sound crazy, but,’”—Elliot raised his eyebrows with a dramatic pause—“it is crazy.”

  Keith pulled open the foil on his burger. “It’s weird, but I think I was really in Aldrenor.”

  “Dude.” Carlos patted him on the back. “That stuff’s made up. You’re dreaming.”

  Elliot tried to talk but he had too much spaghetti and half a meatball in his mouth.

  The boys stared at him, waiting.

  “I said, at least our GM is into it. Makes the game better.” Elliot twirled another forkful of noodles. “This spag is really crummy.”

  Ashur half shrugged. “I guess. When he’s doing Kyra’s dialogue it almost doesn’t feel like it’s even Keith anymore.”

  “So why do you always get it if it’s so crummy?” asked Carlos.

  “One, it fills me up. Two, it’s still spaghetti and meatballs. Even bad spag is godly.” Elliot shoved another forkful into his mouth.

  “You guys… you gotta believe me. It’s real. There’s still some mud on my floor.”

  “Oh wow. Mud on your floor. Call CNN. The dimensional doorway is open.” Carlos poked him in the side.

  Keith sighed and reluctantly attacked his burger. Carlos and Ashur fell into a conversation about soccer, leaving him to sink into a grumbly cloud of discontent. He hated it being Monday, since he had to wait until Saturday for game day. It felt like a year away. Either his obsession for the game was really a drive to help Sarah, or he’d lost his mind.

  No, his mother had griped about the mud on the rug in his room. That ruled out mental problems and hallucinations. He glanced at his one-third remaining cheeseburger and stopped short of biting it when a most disturbing thought hit him.

  The Codex somehow ate Sarah.

  And it wanted to eat him, too.

  17

  To Grandmother’s House

  Class after class dragged on that day, each minute that passed a tiny victory toward freedom. Any stray scrap of thought not consumed by Sarah—or by what Keith had seen the previous night—went toward being upset at the school day not yet being over. As soon as he escaped, he intended to enact the plan that had come to him while lying awake and staring at his ceiling: visit Mrs. Norris and try to get some answers.

  After the teacher caught him staring off into space instead of paying attention in science class, he managed to offer up about half his brain to school. If he got in serious trouble, he would surely be grounded. Assuming of course the shock of it didn’t leave his parents too surprised to react. Part of being one of the Invisibles included making it to eighth grade without having detention once, or even a naughty-gram sent home.

  Finally, the last period bell sounded. He caught Ashur in the hall on the way to the door and tried to convince him to go along to the old woman’s house, but his friend had soccer practice yet again. By the time Keith made it outside, Elliot had already hopped into his mother’s car, which meant she intended to drag him somewhere unpleasant, like clothes shopping or a doctor’s office.

  Keith sighed, turning in a circle while a river of other kids rushed around him. No sign of Carlos either, which could mean either football practice or detention. Carlos wasn’t an Invisible, though he didn’t wind up a complete jock either. Still, Keith Croft found himself as leader of a party of one.

  Whatever.

  He dragged his bike out of the rack, hopped on, and took off, standing on the pedals for extra power. At the end of the school lot, he pulled a right instead of going straight, heading for the ‘long way home’ he usually only bothered with when trying to put off an uncomfortable conversation with his parents as long as possible. Ever since his father had officially let him stop going to Little League, he hadn’t needed to use that tactic to ‘get home too late to go to the game.’ It did, however, come in handy when he had a bruise from the three idiots to hide.

  Mrs. Norris’ giant house and enormous yard looked much the same as it had the last time he’d been around it with a mower. For thirteen years, he’d lived two blocks left and three down from a house where a missing girl had once grown up, and never knew it. A whole other set of kids with their cliques and friends and hobbies and parents had once called these same streets home. As he skidded up over a driveway ramp onto the sidewalk, he wondered how many of the teachers still at his school had been teaching back then, too. One of the first grade teachers looked older than Mrs. Norris, so maybe she knew Sarah.

  Keith rode straight into the front porch step, using the bump of impact for help leaping off. He let the bike fall to the side and scrambled up the stairs to the door. An old-fashioned ding-dong type doorbell rang deep inside the house when he pushed the button. Other than Halloween, it likely never saw use, at least not since Sarah’s friends stopped coming over for game day.

  He fidgeted at his pockets, shifting his weight from leg to leg.

  Come on… come on… please be home.

  Maybe the doorbell rang so infrequently she didn’t remember what the sound meant?

  Don’t be mean. She’s not that old. Like seventy.

  He reached up to push the button again, but stopped at the thump of approaching footsteps.

  Mrs. Norris’ face appeared in a tall, narrow window to the right of the door. As soon as she got a good look at him, her expression changed from annoyed to warm. She darted back out of sight. A second later, the door opened.

  “Oh, Keith. What a lovely surprise.” She tucked a thick novel she must’ve been reading under her left arm. “Is it time to do the grass again already?”

  He sho
ok his head. “No, Mrs. Norris. I was hoping I could ask you some questions and stuff… about Sarah.”

  The woman opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without a word. The glint of happiness in her eyes at having a visitor faded to a distant, glassy-eyed sorrow. “Well, I suppose… They say it is good to talk about such things. Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry for making you sad.”

  She backed up with a smile so he could walk in to the front hall. A black metal can as tall as his waist stood on the left near the wall, holding a broadsword-sized umbrella. Next to it on the floor sat a pair of old white-and-pink sneakers. He couldn’t imagine Mrs. Norris wearing them, and given their well-worn appearance, he assumed they had been Sarah’s.

  The fragrance of flowers and something minty hung in the air, along with a whiff of furniture polish, which only grew stronger as he followed her down the hall and through an archway on the right to the living room. He blinked in disbelief at the size of the television, and not the screen. It couldn’t be more than forty inches, but it had a giant, plastic cabinet as thick front to back as it was wide.

  Whoa. She kept the 1980 TV, too.

  In fact, the entire living room made him feel like he’d gone back in time… except for the telephone on the small table beside the couch. The cordless unit appeared relatively new.

  “Have a seat, young man, and I’ll get us some cookies.” Mrs. Norris gestured at the couch before ambling out another archway into a dining room, and past it to the kitchen.

  Keith flopped down on the cushions, which gave off a smell like a bowling shoe. Nervous, he glanced around at furniture and decorations older than him. To the left of the television stand, an air conditioner stuck out of the wall half as big as his mother’s fridge. Below it, a small marble-topped table held five picture frames of varying size. All had Sarah’s portraits at different ages, starting at about five. The frame all the way right held the same face he’d seen hours ago. Only her outfit had changed. In the strange forest, she hadn’t been wearing a hideous blue-orange-and-green horizontal-striped shirt.

  “Here we are.” Mrs. Norris entered carrying a tray, which she set on the coffee table.

  Two glasses of milk flanked a plate with plain, brown cookies. He’d never seen cookies like them before, but out of politeness, took one. It didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t taste like much of anything more than sweet.

  “Thank you,” said Keith.

  Mrs. Norris helped herself to a cookie as well. “All right, then, young man. What’s on your mind?”

  Keith stared at his half-cookie. “I’ve never had these before. They’re kinda good.”

  “Nilla Wafers,” said Mrs. Norris. “Sarah loved them.”

  He knew she’d say that. “If you don’t want to tell me anything, it’s okay. I’ve been reading some of her old notebooks, and it feels like I know her. How did she disappear?”

  “Well.” Mrs. Norris’ hand shook as she nibbled at her cookie. “Back then, I hadn’t yet retired. I’d usually get home from work a little after six. It happened in early August that summer. Sarah and her friends had been spending a lot of their time up in her room, when they weren’t at Emily’s house.” She chuckled. “The girl had a pool, you know. Not a common thing back then.”

  Keith nodded, munching on his Nilla Wafer between sips of milk.

  “My son Bryan brought her here when he lost his job. Him, his wife, and Sarah had been staying with me for a couple of years. The house is so big, I didn’t mind. Of course, I loved my son, but he could be hard to live with. That Renee or whatever her name was, I could do without. Oil and water those two. That woman hadn’t been right for him, and the two of them would go after each other at all hours. Sometimes, Sarah would get caught up in it. When I was home, I’d do what I could to keep them away from her, but I had to work, so I couldn’t be here all the time.”

  “Sorry,” said Keith. “She wrote about that in her books. A lot of her stories that they played in C&C I think she based on stuff that really happened. There’s a powerful but kindly sorceress who I’m sure she meant as a reference to you. She always appears in a cloud of silver smoke and chased the character’s father away when he was mean.”

  Mrs. Norris wiped a tear from her cheek. “Sarah’s a bright girl. Willful. She always stood up to Bryan. Around the time she disappeared, he’d been particularly irritable since he had trouble keeping a job, you see. My boy was Grade A lazy. Always had been. Ever since he was your age. Renee gave up waiting for him to get job and took off, headed back home to Washington or wherever her parents had been from. That woman didn’t even tell Sarah she planned to leave.” Her tone darkened. “I doubt she much cared. She and Sarah didn’t see eye to eye.”

  “That’s really sad. I can’t imagine not loving my mom.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Norris nabbed another cookie. “I am sure your mother is a hundred times the mother that Renee was to Sarah. Treated her more like a pet when she was tiny, and a roommate when she grew old enough to cook for herself. But I’m dancing around your question, aren’t I?”

  Keith offered a polite shrug.

  “The first week of August. Well, technically, second week since the first of the month had been on Saturday. I’ll never forget that day as long as I’m still stealing young people’s air.” She chuckled. “The sixth, a Thursday. I made it home from work about 6:30 or so, and like most days, I expected her to be either at her friend’s house or up in her room. I checked on her, but the room was empty. All their game stuff was out on the floor, so I thought they’d decided to take a break and go swimming since it had been a warm one.”

  They were playing… Keith nodded. “Was that book there? The one I got from you?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Sarah loved that book. She tried to explain it to me once, but I didn’t understand. All I remember is that it was quite important to their game.”

  The book did eat her! His eyes widened.

  “I figured she’d remember dinner at seven, so I set about cooking, but seven came and went and she didn’t come back. Bryan walked in the door about ten after, and hadn’t seen her all day.” Mrs. Norris frowned. “I didn’t expect he would have seen her. Sarah didn’t go to bars.”

  Keith wanted to be grown up so he could pop Mr. Norris in the nose for being such a butthead to his daughter. “She never came back…”

  “No. I called the police. They went around and couldn’t find any of her friends, either. Emily, Shannon, Becky, Lindsey, and that boy David.” Mrs. Norris let off a wistful sigh. “He and Lindsey wound up together, you know. Married now. They’ve got two children. I think their youngest is about your age.”

  “Wait, they were all missing? But those two are okay?” Keith tilted his head.

  Mrs. Norris took a sip of milk after eating a cookie whole. “Oh, forgive me. I’m getting out of order here. As you can expect, I didn’t sleep well. Bryan decided that she’d run away from home, and didn’t bother himself to be concerned. As I live and breathe, that had been the moment I felt the most disgusted with my own son. He said something like ‘Well, she’ll learn soon enough and come home before she starves.’ The boy couldn’t trouble himself to get off the couch.”

  “Wow.” Keith shook his head. “I guess that’s why my dad says some people shouldn’t have kids.”

  “If he wasn’t my boy, I’d have a lot worse to say about him. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite.” She muttered something after that Keith missed. “Well. I’m losing my mind with worry. I had the police in and out of the house all the next day. The other kids’ parents are calling, coming to the door, everyone started wondering if they’d formed some kind of pact and run off together.”

  Keith blinked.

  “Well, the state police were about to start organizing search parties to go into the woods. Two nights later, I woke up because I heard someone moving around in the hallway. By the time I got out of bed and checked, no one was there, but I swear I heard the fron
t door close real quiet like.”

  They escaped somehow… did they all get eaten? “Was it Bryan?”

  Her eyebrows tilted upward. “It could’ve been I suppose. Anyway, the next morning, the police knock on my door. The other kids had come back home. At first, they said they’d gone for a walk in the woods, Sarah disappeared, and they couldn’t find her. Lindsey claimed she’d seen someone in a dark jacket or cloak grab her.”

  Yzil. Keith shivered.

  Mrs. Norris looked down. “The kids’ stories didn’t stand up to the police questioning them. Eventually, they admitted the walk in the woods was made up, but the story they seemed to believe also didn’t make sense. The police thought the kids were still lying, or too traumatized to remember the truth.”

  “What did they say?” Keith leaned closer to her.

  “They claimed they never left Sarah’s room. And one minute she was there. The next, she wasn’t… or something along those lines. Bryan thought she lied about going to the bathroom and slipped out a window.”

  Keith took the old woman’s hand. “I don’t think she ran away.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Mrs. Norris squeezed his hand. “It’s so nice not to be thought of as crazy. Bryan always believed she ran away.”

  Keith stared across the room at the portrait of Sarah, imagining her face on the other side of a barred gate. He couldn’t believe how a girl missing for thirty years could still be alive, much less still be fourteen.

  “They never found her,” said Mrs. Norris, her voice quivering. “Not even her body.”

  As the old woman gave in to tears, Keith put an arm around her and tried to be comforting. Three times, he started to tell her that he thought he’d found her, but chickened out. He still didn’t understand the situation himself, and truth be told, wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t dreamed it. There’d be no sense tormenting Mrs. Norris with false hope. Especially since he had yet to completely convince himself of what he’d seen.