“And we all saw you kill her,” Aiden added.
“You fool,” Grubb told the boy. “I showed you your future and you botched everything.”
“Maybe he was never a fan of human meat?” Jeremy suggested, staring at the meal laid out on the long table in large dishes. He grimaced at the sight of human body parts in the stew spilling from the broken ceramic very close to his position. “Is that…”
“As the only surviving leader of the Inner Circle guiding the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada, I demand that you hand over the white book to me!” Grubb bellowed, shaking all over.
“Now you’ve gone crazy,” Kimberley muttered.
“Crazy, you say? Bah!” The agitated professor walked to and fro in the small lazerproof cubicle, clenching and unclenching his left fist. “Even if you refuse to give me the book right now, it will surely happen in the future after I get away from here.”
“You can only get away with paper from the book, Uncle Ben,” Rachel reminded him.
“But I will get the book. You forget you willingly gave it to me. I claim Bookbearership!”
“I didn’t willingly give it to you,” the little girl corrected. “I reluctantly gave it to you.”
Voices came from outside. Many voices.
“Perhaps, we do not need to deal with you, ourselves,” Kimberley said. “The spirit of your victims have come back to haunt you.”
“What the hell?” Grubb blurted out, trying to look out of the windows of the long hall.
The voices grew louder as their owners entered the administrative compound.
“And finally, we didn’t even need the Gray Ones to give you the final punch,” Kimberley said, signaling the others to sneak out of the banquet hall with her. She met Carl Bain outside the Chairman’s office.
“This doesn’t change our deal, Kim,” the American thug said.
“Don’t worry,” Kimberley allayed. “We still have a deal.”
“What about the piece of paper from the book, Kim?” Jeremy asked.
“Grubb will be torn to pieces before he can get to that paper,” Kimberley pointed out.
“Now, why would that happen?” Aiden wondered.
“Poor boy,” Kimberley said. “What did he brainwash you with?”
“How did you get him back, Rachel?” Jeremy asked the little girl, even though everything still seemed fantastically unreal to him.
“I couldn’t get to him until I touched him,” Rachel replied. “That makes me wonder if…”
“Uncle Ben made Aiden believe he was Avigdor,” Kimberley suggested. “That’s the reason Aiden could fully control the book like he did. I doubt if he could do that anymore in his new state.”
“But I could use the book before,” Aiden began. “Remember the big bang?”
Rachel shook her head from side to side. “You have never controlled the book like this, Aiden, and I don’t think you would be able to do so again. If only we...”
“Who’s Avigdor?” Aiden began.
“Someone we should look into later,” Kimberley replied as she came down the stairs with the others. She glanced at Rachel and thought it strange that even towards the end of all that had happened, the little girl still had some explaining to do.
The noisy crowd outside streamed into the lobby and migrated up the stairs in the opposite direction.
“He’s in there,” Jeremy told these angry citizens as they trudged up to the opulent banquet hall and office. The sound of lazerfire jerked his head around, but then how many could a single weapon take out before an angry mob exerted the ultimate revenge?
“This is the end for him,” Kimberley said.
“A revenge Mariah would approve,” Rachel added. “It’s all over now.”
* * *
Or was it? The time-travelers walked back to Jeremy’s residence in silence, each person with his or her own thoughts.
Carl Bain broke this silence. “Time for your part of the deal, Kim.”
“We don’t have a deal until you destroy that device,” Jeremy said. “You must…”
“Forget it, Jeremy, we do have a deal,” Rachel interrupted.
“But he…”
Kimberley stared at the black man. “We’ll cross that river when we get to it,” she told him.
“No side deals,” Carl Bain warned.
“Of course, not,” Kimberley said, feigning offence. She stopped and turned to Rachel. “It all depends on you now, Rachel. Remember your decision will be final.”
Rachel looked around her; at the underground city this weird journey had finally brought her to, and sighed. “Father would want me to be happy.”
“You know my masters could bring back your father right after you give them the book?” Carl Bain began.
“Not true,” Kimberley said. “Stop lying to us, Mr. Bain. Ben Haddad killed her father, so the Gray Ones cannot bring him back.”
“I wouldn’t even want him back into this chaotic world without the books,” Rachel said. “I think he will understand this decision.”
“You know we can keep fighting the Booklords right now, right?” Aiden said and Carl Bain’s face lost all color.
“For what?” Rachel demanded. “A future that can only cause more fighting? More wars? More deaths?”
“I support your decision,” Jeremy told Rachel, looking at his two sisters coming up the road beside an X9 transporter. “We must learn to make peace not war, and that involves destroying certain tools made for war.”
“Not gonna happen,” Carl Bain said. “I know I could be on my way back to Portwood after this…this escapade, so that tiny device is coming with me ‘cause it’s my retirement you see right there.”
“Hope you can defend that in court?” Kimberley asked the American hustler.
“And who’s gonna sue me?” he chuckled. “No one, I assure you, my dear. No one.”
Jeremy hugged his sisters when they arrived and entered the X9 to inspect it. Kimberley smiled as she watched the siblings make harmless banter in the big transporter. She noticed Rachel watching her.
“I want to live with you, Kim.”
“Done.” Kimberley brightened. “Aiden will also be moving in with me as well.”
Rachel smiled. “Okay by me,” she said.
“Okay, Rachel.” Carl Bain sighed. “My masters are waiting for you.”
The little girl sensed the gray forms emerging all around, their unearthly shapes shifting uncontrollably without reason. She’d finally lost her sense of fear, making two very good friends in the course of this wild adventure. She wasn’t going to let them down anymore.
She gave the white book to the Gray One its colleagues called Brezennigger, or the Angel of Death.
* * *
Kimberley woke up in a replica of her old office and blinked at the familiar fluorescent tubing basking the room from above with bright incandescent light. Marveling at the designer’s attention to detail, she saw her favorite pen on her desk, the writing pad Officer Lyndon usually provided every morning from the supplies department, as well as an invite from Jim for dinner at Mercy’s. The trash can beside the desk and the heavy rolls of elaborate city mapping by the window further convinced her that she sat in a similar office to her old one.
Or did she rearrange the room?
“We need to see her!” someone said in the main hall and Kimberley looked up to see the girl she’d tried to rescue that evening talking to Patrol Officer Lyndon amidst…
Kimberley couldn’t believe her eyes. Patrol Officer Lyndon in flesh and blood? She moved to her office door. Where did they find the girl? The familiar boy with her new friend was also trying to get a message across, but the girl was more persistent. “Please we need to see her! She’s the only person who can help us!”
Kimberley couldn’t believe her ears. Whatever happened to the little girl’s talk of the book?
Lyndon was trying to herd the kids back to the reception hall as Kimberley stepped out of her office. “This is no place fo
r kids,” he said. “Get in there and I’ll go get her for you.”
“Wait!” the female sergeant called out to him and Rachel instantly recognized her when their eyes met.
“Where have you been?” Kimberley asked the little girl, moving towards the trio in the middle of the boisterous hall. “Who did you say was coming after you in a car?”
“You won’t believe me if I told you,” the girl replied calmly.
“What are you two going on about?” a confused Lyndon wanted to know.
“Hi, Kim, is that the girl you were talking about on the radio?” Dispatch Officer Kate asked her while crossing her office door.
“Eh, yes, Kate.” Kimberley could only stare. Dispatch Officer Kate?
“What a lovely soul,” the woman continued. “Thought you said she was hurt?”
“Well…I – eh…”
“Hi, dear,” a lovingly familiar voice said beside her.
“Jim? But you…”
“Yeah, I wanted to prepare a special dinner for us,” her boyfriend said. “But I later figured Mercy’s will be an easier option, owing to our load of work here.”
Kimberley hugged him. “Oh, Jim, I really thought I’d never see you again.”
“I…missed you, too, dear,” Jim replied, holding his girlfriend while wondering what they were really talking about.
“Is he the boyfriend you couldn’t stop talking about, Kim?” a mischievous Rachel began.
“Excuse me, Jim.” Kimberley grabbed the little girl and started towards her office, Aiden and Patrol Officer Lyndon closely behind. “Where did you find her, Aiden?” she asked the boy.
“I didn’t find her,” Aiden replied with a frown. “She found me.”
“Okay, you didn’t bring her in?”
“Of course, not,” Aiden said. “Why are you all focusing on her alone?”
“Yes, Aiden,” Sergeant Kimberley said. “I haven’t forgotten you escaped from your foster home some days back, if that’s what you mean. We’ll discuss that later.” She found it odd that the boy smiled at her.
“Nice desk,” Rachel said on seeing Kimberley’s table from her office door. She rushed over to the desk and sat down on one of two chairs facing Kimberley’s chair opposite the desk.
“What’s going on, Kim?” Lyndon asked his superior as he closed the door behind him. His senior looked at him and shrugged, shaking her head. Now she turned back to the strange girl.
“Okay, what am I not getting?” she wanted to know.
“A bad man is after us, Kim,” Aiden said in the quiet room. “And he has a gun.”
“And why is he after you?” Kimberley found this news to be of the highest importance. “What have you done this time?”
“He…He wants this….” Aiden revealed what he had in his hand. A package wrapped in polythene.
“And why are you bringing this up now?” Kimberley asked him absent-mindedly.
“Well, I thought this was the right moment to bring it up if I was ever going to get your attention, since none of you guys have taken any interest in me ever since I came in here with my little friend here. Maybe parking the squad car a few blocks away has been a mistake, since its shattered rare windshield would have done a better job of getting your attention.”
Kimberley stared at the boy. “What?”
Rachel moved to get up and Kimberley stopped her by holding an arm.
“Lyndon?”
The patrol officer took the package from Aiden and untied it. He sniffed it and looked at his senior colleague. “Coke?”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Kimberley surprised herself with. “Give me the package and take some armed officers with you to scout the vicinity for an armed man looking for the kids. Arrest him whenever you find him.”
Officer Lyndon handed over the parcel and left.
“You know what happened,” Aiden said with a smile. “Finally.”
“Took me some time,” Kimberley said, bringing out Carl Bain’s tiny silver box from the white stuff. “We’ll find a way to destroy this,” she added.
“And what is that?” Rachel wondered.
Kimberley smiled. “You’ve forgotten already?”
“That,” Aiden said, “is a tiny silver box.”
Kimberley stared at him.
“What?” He shifted in his chair.
“This, right here,” Kimberley said, “is the prototype of a nuclear device destined to be used in a future world war called the red war.”
Aiden frowned. “I knew that.”
Kimberley laughed, tucking the tiny silver package into her right pants’ pocket. “Of course, you did.”
“He said he wants to share something with us, Kim,” Rachel began.
Aiden hesitated. “Well, I…eh…it’s about the book.”
“And what about it?” Kimberley asked.
“I saw something on the book’s pages when I was in that trance back…back at Resilience?”
Rachel waited for him to continue. “And?”
“And now I know what I saw,” Aiden continued. “The complete Hebrew sentence written in the white book, in English.”
“Can you remember the words?” Kimberley marveled at her calm demeanor.
“Sacred ways back and forth, greed and misery the third implies,” Aiden said.
“And do you know what that means?” Rachel asked him.
“What does it mean?” Kimberley wondered.
“The other book is again in the hands of a human being, just as David Hoyte predicted.”
“Okay, wait now,” Aiden interrupted the little girl. “Do we have to start all this again?”
“No,” Rachel said. “But we could if we want to.”
Kimberley laughed. “How?” she chuckled. “We don’t have the white book, do we? Thank goodness for that.”
Rachel looked away. “But…. But, we…do have…something…” She brought out a piece of familiarly strange paper. “I… I kinda took it from the dining table when…when no one was looking.”
Kimberley could only gape at the girl.
Aiden’s mouth remained open.
THE END
About the Author
Ukachukwu Chidube George (aka George Shadow) has been writing for almost three years now, although he’s a physiotherapist living in Nigeria. Creativity is his first love, and he has as his motivation for the BOOKLORD ADVENTURES, such titles as the HARRY POTTER Series by J. K. Rowling and THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J. R. R. Tolkien. Such wonderful works of literature are rarely repeated these days, and this was partly the reason for his embarking on the BOOKLORD ADVENTURES SERIES. He has completed a few other romance and fantasy novels and his stories usually take up magic and mystery as themes, with a large dose of history (both real and fantasized) thrown in. He also has some finished short war stories he intends publishing as a book of short battle stories in the future. . . . Titled THE WAR CHEST, this will be a collection of poignant battle tales from around the world.
THE WHITE BOOK is the second part of a fascinating series of six books he has tagged the Booklord Adventures, and is a beautifully written novel filled with action and imaginative adventure. It is suitable for children, teens and even their parents! Thoroughly researched and passionately expressed, this book is a must-have for book collectors and fantasy lovers.
Other Books by George Shadow
1.THE LAST CONSORT
2.THE BLACK BOOK
Part 1 of the BOOKLORD ADVENTURE SERIES
Excerpt
May 26, 1940…
Suddenly, the place became colder and darker.
“Matthew, Matthew,” nine-year-old Stephanie whispered, shaking her twelve-year-old adopted brother. “Matthew, wake up. Wake up, Matthew.”
He did, quickly sitting up to look around in confusion. He could only make out his younger sister’s shadowy silhouette from the blackish-gray all around him. “Why is it so dark?” he asked her, blinking. “What happened to the light?”
“I don’t k
now,” Stephanie said. She was sitting beside her brother, hugging herself. “Matthew, something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
Matthew frowned as he used his eyes a second time. Only a blanketing gray hue stared back at him from all sides. Where were the familiar outlines of his desk, chair, and shelves? “Is this my room, Steph?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Stephanie repeated, turning to her left, then to her right. “It’s so cold out here.”
“Out here?” Matthew shook his head. “We’re not in my room? What happened, Steph? Who brought us out?”
“Nobody,” Stephanie said. “Nothing happened before it–it happened.” She could feel her brother’s bewildered eyes on her. “I–I don’t know what happened, Matt, but–but something’s wrong. I know it.”
Matthew sensed the fear in her voice. Whatever happened must have surprised her. “I must have fallen asleep,” he said. He felt downwards with his hands for his bed sheet and mattress, which was hard. Very hard. No, he was actually on the floor. No doubt about that. Why was he on the floor? What happened to his bed?
“Matthew, I’m scared,” Stephanie said, and her adopted brother stared at her dark figure. She wore a funny-looking jacket atop pants and had a scarf around her neck.
Wait.
“What happened to your sweater, Steph?” Matthew asked. He could remember what his sister had on before he slept off…now she wore something else. When did she replace her lovely sweater with that odd jacket? “You’ve changed your clothes, Steph,” he said.
“So have you,” Stephanie retorted. “When did you change them? And what’s that on your head?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew confessed, reaching up to touch his head. He wore a cap. He also felt a scarf around his neck as he brought down his hand. “You’re right,” he said, rubbing both hands. “What happened to our clothes, Steph? When did we change them? And it’s really cold out here...” Something was lying beside his left leg. It was the book. He picked it up and turned to his sister, meaning to ask her about it, but stopped short. He could now see her face, as well as their environment. “This is not my room,” he said.
The White Book Page 50