“I think you heard her friends. They somehow got out. Remember they told the cops they never left her room, but no one believed them? Sarah led the Dark Wizard off so they could get away. They escaped and wound up back in her room, so they snuck out and went home. You said the other kids were ‘found’ the next day.”
“That is true, but… it’s a coincidence.”
Keith raised a finger. “Her friends didn’t want the book. If they were into C&C and they were close friends, why wouldn’t they take it? Unless they knew it was dangerous, and they were scared of it.” He paused. “I mean, the game itself isn’t bad. It’s that particular book. I saw it glowing.”
She tilted her head, looking worried. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but I’ve got to stop lying to myself.” Shaking her head, she let off a sad sigh. “It’s true that my son didn’t take care of her. He was violent with them both… he used to hit that Renee woman all the time, and Sarah too if she got in the way.”
“I know,” muttered Keith. “The character she made has a background story, and it’s basically her life with the names changed and other stuff mixed up to fit a fantasy world. She made that sorceress based on you, and you protected her when she was little.”
Mrs. Norris dipped a Nilla Wafer in her milk. “Yes… Bryan wouldn’t raise his hands to me. No matter how angry he became at whatever. If I could put myself between him and Sarah, he’d leave her alone.” The cookie broke apart in her fingers and sank in the glass as her hand started shaking. “I… suppose he could have hurt her badly. Perhaps even buried her right here in our back—”
“She’s alive. I’m serious. Sometimes I hear noises in my closet, and it only started after that book was at my house.” He explained the night he’d gone into the closet and found Sarah on the other side of a locked gate. “I wanted to stay there and keep those monsters away from her, but she called me a turdling and told me to run.”
Mrs. Norris gasped. “Turdling?” Tears trickled down her wrinkled cheeks. “Sarah always used that word. How could you have possibly heard that?”
“From her.” He stared straight into her eyes. “I’m not making this up. What happened to Bryan?”
“He passed away in 2013. Drunk driving.”
Keith started reaching for a cookie, but stopped at hearing that. “Ugh. I’m sorry. Did they catch the drunk?”
She let out a sad chuckle before frowning. “Thank you, but don’t be too sorry… my son was the drunk. He hit a tree. Thank goodness he didn’t hurt anyone else.”
“Look, Mrs. Norris… I know it’s unbelievable, but if there’s even a tiny chance Sarah’s in trouble and stuck, would you want me to try and help her?”
“All right. I don’t suppose there’s any harm in letting you see her room. What do you think you’ll find in there?”
“You’ve kept it exactly like it was when she lived here, didn’t you?”
Guilt looked strange on an old woman. He’d never seen someone in their seventies put on a face like a kid caught doing something wrong. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“I think Sarah told me. There’s a door she can’t open, and she said the key is in a shrine that’s separated from time, like the way you keep her room in 1987. I gotta find that key.” He ate a cookie.
“Come on then.” Mrs. Norris set her glass down on the coffee table and stood.
Keith followed eagerly into the hall and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, shivering a bit at the dull pea-green walls and brown carpet. This house had a lot more room than his, but also felt like it closed in on him. In the dark, this house would be scary. If he lived here, he’d be afraid to leave his bedroom at night.
Mrs. Norris led him most of the way down the upstairs hall to a white-painted door. An eight-by-ten poster dangling from a pushpin bore the face of a young woman with wild hair, wilder glasses, and star-shaped earrings over the words ‘Who’s That Girl.’
“Good question,” muttered Keith.
“What?” Mrs. Norris looked down.
“Talking to the poster. Who is that?”
Mrs. Norris sighed. “Madonna. Sarah used to play her music all the time. Back then, I couldn’t stand it. Now, hearing it makes me cry.” She grasped the knob. “Ugly tears, too. Half-a-box-of-tissues tears.”
“Sorry.”
She pushed the door in, but pivoted so she didn’t look inside. “Go on.”
Keith stepped into a room a little larger than his with fluffy pink curtains and drab beige walls. Sarah had covered them mostly with posters: a few of Madonna, one showing Huey Lewis and the News, and a few posters of some dude named ‘Bon Jovi.’ Above the bed, she had a Pink Floyd The Wall poster. The closet door sported one of a guy with huge glasses, buggy eyes, and curly hair making a silly face next to random stuff like a toothbrush and a toaster.
“Weird Al Yankovic? Dare to be stupid?” Keith tilted his head. “What the heck is that?”
A desk to his right held piles of small plastic boxes with pictures inside them, each about the size of a deck of cards. Most surprising of all, she didn’t have a computer or a printer. Whoa. No wonder she had to buy character sheets. How did she do any homework? He picked one of the little boxes up and blinked at finding a Metallica album cover on a paper insert below the plastic. The box rattled when he shook it.
“Huh, wow. What the heck?” Curiosity got the better of him and he opened it, finding a plastic cartridge holding two spindles of brown ribbon with song titles printed on both sides. “Whoa. Some kinda old CD.”
A silver-grey box on the desk had a similar-looking object inside it. Round black areas full of tiny holes looked enough like speakers for him to recognize a portable radio, but had never seen one so massive. Keith put the strange album back where he found it, then rummaged the desk. He picked among Japanese comics, a number of cute toy ponies with rainbow manes as well as some half-car-half-robot toys. She also had a bunch of preprinted C&C modules on a shelf above the desk, at least forty of them, most about the thickness of magazines. The two all the way on the left still had shrink-wrap on them.
She never got to play those…
Farther left, he stopped in front of a battered white dresser. Uhh, no. I don’t wanna peek in her drawers. Please don’t be in there. He skipped that and looked over the dresser top among two wind-up music boxes, a ceramic model of a small, country house, a cluster of hair accessories, and a few pairs of sunglasses before moving past the window to another bookshelf by the bed.
It felt strange to be in a girl’s bedroom looking at her stuff, but he ignored the sense of doing something rude. She needs help, and she told me to go here. He held off on opening any of the dresser drawers—that would be a last resort. Keith went to the other side of the room and poked his nose in the closet by the bed. Boxes at the bottom held dolls and beat-to-hell Barbie stuff. Some clothes, shirts, skirts, and dresses hung in there as well. He lost a minute or three looking over T-shirts with cartoon characters he’d never heard of.
What the heck is a Thundercat… or a Voltron?
Still, no key.
He flopped on the floor and looked under the bed. Several board games like Life, Sorry, and Chutes & Ladders among others held nothing resembling a magical key either.
Gotta be with game stuff. It’s gotta be here!
He pulled all the C&C modules out of the desk shelf to check behind them, but found only cheap wood. After putting them back, he tried the desk drawers. Markers, crayons, colored pencils, graph paper, and a bunch of plastic rulers and artistic swirly guides. The bottom drawer had a box labeled Spirograph, with a picture of some kind of plastic gear thing and a pen stuck in it. Underneath it, a fat manila folder had the label ‘graveyard.’ It contained dozens of character sheets with all her friends’ names listed as the ‘player.’
Ouch. Guess they weren’t too good at the game.
Keith dropped the bundle of dead characters back in the drawer and turned in place, sick to his stomach with
worry that he wouldn’t find anything. The fifth time his gaze swept over the dresser, he stared at the miniature farmhouse. He’d assumed it to be a music box when he checked earlier, but now that he stared straight at it, it didn’t seem like one.
A thatch-roofed house with white walls, like something out of a fantasy movie, sat on a base resembling a tiny farm plot. The whole thing took up about the space of a dinner plate. In front of the house stood three little figurines, a jovial farmer watching a little boy and girl chase a piglet. All the figures, in fact the whole scene, had been painted with great detail. It looked like a collectible rather than a music box or toy.
He crept up to the dresser, gaze locked on the little farmers. Two farmer’s children found the key and took it home.
Keith reached up and grasped the roof of the hut, a lid, and lifted it off the base, revealing the house as a little jewelry box. Inside, along with a few rings and a necklace, sat a key. The handle had the shape of a hollow d8 made out of metal with a glowing emerald gem about the size of a green grape. The key shaft extended two inches from one end.
Keith took the key, surprised to find it warm, and held it up. “This is it!”
“You found something?” asked Mrs. Norris, without peeking in.
“Yes.” He put the lid back on the jewelry box and hurried out to the hallway to show her the key. “This is what I was trying to find. Look, it’s glowing!”
Mrs. Norris’ eyes went wide and her cheeks lost a little color. “I… see that. How is it lit up like that?”
“The only answer I can give you is… magic.” He held the key up so she could see it better. “Sarah needs me to have this key. She told me to come here and find it. If it glowing doesn’t prove to you that something weird’s going on, how else could I have known it would be here if Sarah didn’t tell me?”
The old woman’s lip quivered. She swallowed hard and put a hand over her mouth.
Keith stepped closer and hugged her. “Don’t cry. She’s not gone yet. I told her you miss her, and I’m going to make sure she comes home.”
Mrs. Norris clung to him and burst into tears.
21
Got it Bad
Keith returned home with the key safe in the pocket of his jeans a little after noon. His parents looked up from the kitchen table as he walked in. The scent of eggs and bacon in the air dragged him down the hallway.
“We’ve been looking for you,” said his father.
He sat in his usual place and helped himself to fried eggs, sausage, and toast. “I went to visit Mrs. Norris. The stuff I got at her yard sale used to belong to her granddaughter and seeing it made her sad. She’s really lonely.”
“That’s sweet of you, Keith.” His mother smiled.
He managed a weak return smile and shoveled food down his throat while his parents muttered back and forth about the year-ago death of his grandmother on his mother’s side. His father had been a late birth, and the grandfather on his side passed away before Keith started school. He didn’t remember the guy much, nor did he remember his father’s mother as she’d been in a nursing home for most of his life.
They’d visited her a few times, but he’d been too young and hated being in that stuffy, smelly place full of old people. He never imagined a care facility could be so frightening. Two things stuck with him about it: he never wanted to go to another one of them again, and he would never stick his parents in one when they became elderly.
“What are your plans for the day?” asked his father.
Keith shrugged. “Ash might come over later. I got some homework still, which I’m gonna do right after I eat.”
“Think you could work in running a rake around the yard?” His father chomped a piece of toast. “I need to go pick up some lawn bags and we can hit the rakes when I get back.”
“Okay.”
His mother finished off her orange juice and grumbled at the clock. “I need to run to the office. All but one patient canceled today. Shouldn’t be long.”
Keith looked away with a cringe as his parents kissed. His mother hurried off to change for work.
After cleaning the breakfast dishes with his father, he headed upstairs, the key jabbing him in the thigh with each step. Upon reaching his bedroom, he pulled it out and stared into the glowing green oval caged within the metal frame at the end. The Gamemaster’s Codex had no obvious keyholes or anywhere he could think of to place the key. Waving it at the book did nothing special, and neither did setting the key on or near it. Frustrated, he sat in the chair at his desk, turning the key over and over in his fingertips.
It looked like something a crafter might make for a renaissance festival. Two hollow pyramids joined end-to-end at the base encased a smooth stone. If it didn’t glow—which he still couldn’t explain—he’d think it some random piece of prop junk. Still, the more he held it, the more he knew it would help.
Keith leaned back in his chair and sighed at his computer desk and monitor. He’d inherited the PC a year ago after his father upgraded to a new machine. Despite being a hand-me-down, it handled everything he wanted to do okay enough. Elliot had a system that made his father’s new one seem like a toy, but Elliot’s mother was ‘indulgent’ as Keith’s mom would say. Whatever had happened to Elliot’s father at work wound up ending with a fat lawsuit and loads of money. Keith frowned. No way would he want money if he had to lose his father. Elliot didn’t seem to have much of an opinion, but he’d only been five when his father died, so he probably didn’t remember him.
As Keith sat there, staring over his knees at his desk, he couldn’t help but think about Sarah’s bedroom. Her posters, those strange albums, the toys and books… it felt as though he’d legit gone back in time. She didn’t even have a computer. He traced a finger back and forth over his keyboard, wondering if they even had computers in 1987. Even the poor kids at school had them now. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could do their homework without one. Especially essays. How on Earth did kids do research without the web?
Speaking of research.
He set the key on the desk and sacrificed a few minutes to Google until he found an explanation for those strange albums in Sarah’s room. Tape cassettes. The ribbon inside had a magnetic charge that held music, but only in a specific order. They had no ‘random’ play and you couldn’t hop between songs without fast-forwarding or rewinding and hoping to hit the spot you wanted.
“Whoa. That sucks…” He blinked, barely able to fathom that compared to MP3s. Even his father’s CDs felt old and cumbersome. He shook his head at the thought of dealing with tapes.
Homework proved annoying. He couldn’t stop glancing at the key sitting there beside him, casting its pale green glow over the desk. Is Sarah running around Aldrenor trying to stay away from Yzil right now? Or is she only ‘awake’ when we’re playing? He felt guilty for sitting there doing homework while she might be running for her life, but he couldn’t get the key or the Codex to do anything.
Keith sighed and leaned his head on his hand, elbow on the desk. He flicked at his hair, which had gotten long enough to touch his shoulders, making him look a bit like the guys on one of those posters in Sarah’s room. As a kid, his father had never been allowed to have long hair. His strict parents would drag him to the barber’s shop every two weeks. Dad didn’t force any particular hairstyle on Keith, and let him keep it long. Maybe he’d let it go even longer and see how they reacted. Sarah sure seemed to like having pictures of longhaired guys on her wall. Especially that one band… he strained to remember it. One thing he did know: he’d never wear makeup. Poison! Those guys had huge hair.
He flipped a page in his notebook and, instead of writing out the answers to his homework, wound up drawing Sarah from his memory of the picture in her grandmother’s house. Only… his drawing came out looking frightened rather than smiling for a school picture. Keith moved down the page a bit and drew her again, this time with her head slightly raised, projecting an air of confidence.
At the w
hump of the door connecting to the garage closing downstairs, he shoved the glowy key into one of his desk drawers so his father didn’t see it or worse, confiscate it for being ‘dangerous.’ Things like that shouldn’t emit light.
After closing his notebook to hide the doodles, he headed downstairs and helped with yard work for the better part of the next two hours. He didn’t mind so much. Spending time with his father was cool. Much cooler than having a ridiculous computer or a guarantee of a nice car the day he turned eighteen. Every time he started to feel jealous of Elliot’s fancy stuff, he thought about the cost: losing his dad.
Around three in the afternoon, he returned to his room to mop up the last of his homework. Again, he doodled Sarah’s face. In between moments of shading hair, he glanced at the closet, hoping to hear some sign of her. If the portal opened again, he’d have the key so he could let her out. He’d need to be fast and quiet in case the jackalweres returned. This time, he’d be ready—clothes instead of pajamas, plus shoes.
He stared into the eyes of the last Sarah he drew, wondering if the strange feelings swirling around inside him were love. His drive to protect Tira from bullies hadn’t felt anywhere near as strong as his need to get Sarah out of wherever she’d been trapped. He’d dated Madison Warner for about two weeks last year, but hadn’t felt much for her other than ‘yay, I guess I have a girlfriend.’ She evidently shared his blah as she ‘broke up’ with him sixteen days later. Perhaps ‘Oh, okay,’ had been the wrong thing to say in response to her ‘I don’t think we’re working out,’ but she didn’t make a big deal out of it.
No, the emotion stirring in him while staring at the drawing had to be real, and well beyond simply wanting to help someone who’d gotten into trouble. He put his headphones on, pulled up YouTube, and listened to some of the music from the bands in her room. Eighties tunes started off sounding incredibly weird, but he found himself not hating it. Especially the edgier stuff like Metallica. His father liked them, so he’d heard some of it before.
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