by Otto Schafer
Moving cautiously in the dark, Garrett found his front porch and then the door. Quickly locating the handle, he gave the screen door a pull then pushed his way inside. “Mom!” he yelled into the darkness.
No answer.
Lenny hesitantly slipped in behind him. “This is freaky, bro.”
Garrett shouted again. “Dad!” There’s no way Apep could have beat us here – is there? But then Garrett wasn’t sure how the guy traveled either. Did he drive? Did the God Stones give him the power to fly? Or could he just magic himself from one place to another? As he stood there in the entryway, he found himself suddenly hesitating. With all these thoughts racing through his mind he felt less and less confident he should be yelling at all. What if he’s here now?
One thing was for sure – something was wrong. His parents should be in the kitchen. He should smell the fragrant aromas of his mom’s cooking, and his dad should be sitting with his back to the wall in his favorite chair – the king’s chair. His dickhead of a brother should…
Someone grabbed him.
He tried to cry out, but his feet went out from under him and he hit the floor hard on his back. Something pressed on his chest, and he couldn’t move. He heard Lenny grunt, then a second later he was lying on the floor next him.
Instinctively Garrett rolled his fingers into a tight fist and punched at the object pressing down on his chest. Lying on his back, he couldn’t chamber his fist properly, and the distance to the object was short. His strike had little effect.
“Knock it off and shut up! Both of you,” came a commanding whisper from the darkness.
“James! What the hell!” Garrett demanded in an angry hiss.
“I said shut up. We don’t have much time. Apep’s coming – isn’t he?” The comment was as much a proclamation as a question. James didn’t wait for an answer. “Now both of you get to your feet and follow me,” he said, removing his foot from Garrett’s chest.
“How do you know about Apep?” Garrett asked, quietly getting to his feet.
James pulled Lenny up by the wrist, and when both boys were on their feet Garrett heard the distinctive flip top of James’s Zippo lighter as he flicked it open and struck the flint wheel. The three boys were illuminated in the soft light from the flame. “Little brother, if you want to live, we need to move now.”
Quickly they moved through the house, guided by only the flame from James’s Zippo, and a strange flickering glow spilling through the kitchen window. The streetlights were blinking on and off as the city’s power fluctuated, unlike anything Garrett had seen. But not the lights in Garrett’s house – those stayed dark, which meant they must not be turned on. As they hurried past the kitchen window, he noticed that not only his parents were missing, but so was the king’s chair. Suddenly the streetlight outside grew impossibly bright and burst with a loud pop.
Garrett tensed, missing a step as Lenny ran into his back.
“What the hell is going on, James, and why are the lights off?”
“I said be quiet.”
They moved onto the back porch. Are we going outside? There was nothing in the backyard except rabbit cages. Unless, maybe they were going to the garage?
James crossed the back porch, walking past the washer and dryer before stopping in front of the basement door. “Come on,” he urged, giving the door a tug.
“We’re going down there?” Lenny asked skeptically. “I’ve never been in your basement. I didn’t even know you had a basement.”
“Well, it isn’t much to see,” Garrett said, having only been down there a few times himself. From the groans of the old wooden planks, he wasn’t even sure the stairs would hold all three of them at the same time. He hesitated, unsure, then he turned and motioned Lenny to wait. Once James stepped off the last step, Garrett motioned back to Lenny as he descended the stairs. He stepped down, looking back apprehensively in the low light. Lenny’s face scrunched as he hurried forward to catch up. The basement was damp, with a pungent mildew smell.
The set of rickety wood stairs landed on a poorly constructed patchwork of concrete. The piecemeal floor looked like an afterthought, or possibly a clever plan to conceal a body hidden long ago. Red brick walls, old and crumbling, stopped halfway up to reveal a dead space of sloping dirt. Pillars of crudely stacked stone placed precariously on top of the half walls were all that supported bowing floor joists darkened by time. Plumbing and wiring ran this way and that between and sometimes through the floor joists themselves.
James held his Zippo out in front of him like a torch as he led them across the small room and past a sump pump protruding from a dark hole in the floor, silent now but ready to evacuate water should the need arise. Further still, they went past a pair of hot water heaters, one a rusting antique long ago replaced but never removed. The other was rusty too, but it sat hissing, elevated atop a platform of cinderblocks, a pair of tarnished copper pipes extending from the top.
Lenny poked Garrett in the back. “What are we doing? Why is he taking us down here?”
“I don’t know,” was all he could manage. His mind spun with questions. Somehow his brother knew about Apep. As much as he didn’t want to think it, he knew the question burning in Lenny’s mind. Should they be trusting him?
Beyond the small first room there was a second. Garrett had only gone in this room once. Not because he was forbidden to go, although his father had made it clear there was no reason for him to be playing in the basement and he should keep his ass out of there, but because it was just a single boring room very similar to the first. It was dank, dark, and creepy. To the best of Garrett’s memory, it held nothing other than the furnace. The one time he had gone in there was when his father asked him to go down and tell him if the furnace’s pilot light had gone out. Though his father hadn’t said it, Garrett knew it was hard for him to make the trip up and down the stairs with his bum hip.
James rapped on the door.
“James, who’s in there?” Garrett asked, stepping backward into Lenny.
James ignored the question.
Lenny shot Garrett a look that he returned with a sideways nod toward the stairs. No words needed to be exchanged to know the plan: if this goes bad – make for the stairs. The sound of a bolt sliding open from the other side of the door broke the tense silence. Garrett didn’t even know it locked from the other side. Why would it lock from the other side? Slowly, the door swung inward to the room beyond, and light spilled out, washing over them. James snapped his Zippo shut and stepped inside.
The first thing Garrett noticed was the king’s chair. It sat empty by a folding card table. On top of the table sat three nearly empty glasses of sweet tea and a lantern. Leaning against the chair was his father’s ivory-handled cane. As he made his way through the open door and looked to his left, he saw his mother. He pushed past James and ran into her arms.
She pulled him close, hugging him tightly. “Oh, thank god you’re okay!” she said.
The embrace triggered a release of emotions, and Garrett sobbed freely in his mother’s arms. He pulled back enough to look her in the face. “Mr. B is dead.”
His mother’s face fell as she glanced back over her shoulder. Following her gaze Garrett noticed his father standing along the far back wall with his back to them, a brick in his hand. The walls in this room were complete, stretching all the way to the ceiling. His father held a brick slack at his side. Garrett craned his neck to see around his mother. A whole pile of bricks were stacked near a large void in the wall. At the sound of Garrett’s words, the brick tumbled from his father’s hand, his shoulders slumped, and he sagged forward, leaning heavily against the wall.
The room fell quiet.
Finally, James broke the silence. “Father, let me do that.”
James’s tone was concerned, caring – not a tone Garrett recognized from his brother. He’d also never heard James refer to Phillip as father. It was always dad.
His father turned, allowing his dark eyes to find Elaine’s
.
Garrett noticed it then, a look shared between his mother and stepfather. A look of deep sadness in their eyes as though they had just been told a dear friend had died. Yet as far as Garrett was aware, his parents had barely known Mr. B. He squeezed his mother tight, never wanting to let go. As long as he could stay right here in this moment, he knew whatever in the hell was going on would somehow be okay. But then Elaine did something completely unexpected. She pushed him back out of her embrace.
“Enough. Stop crying. If you want to be sad, be sad later. Right now you have to act.” Her voice was stern and commanding. Not her normal I’m giving you the what for to save you serious trouble from your father tone of voice. No, this was different – she was different. This woman meant business. The sudden shift left Garrett dumbstruck, but he found himself straightening up, nonetheless.
Lenny’s face contorted in confusion.
James ran to the wall and continued pulling bricks, exposing an opening to something beyond the wall. “Lenny, give me a hand!” James said, waving him over.
Lenny quickly shook himself out of his shock and ran to the wall. He paused only briefly, then nodding to James he began yanking bricks out of the wall as quickly as he could. The bricks were mortared in, so after pulling the loose bricks James motioned Lenny to stand back as he swung a small five-pound sledge, giving the next couple rows a good whack to fracture the mortar around several more bricks.
With both hands on Garrett’s shoulders, his mother looked him in the eyes. “I know you have a thousand questions about what’s going on, and I’m not even sure how much John told you but—”
“John?” Garrett managed, bringing his emotions under control.
“Sorry,” she said, her mouth a tight line. “John to us. Mr. B to you.”
“You knew him then?” Garrett asked.
“Of course we knew him – we are all Keepers of the Light,” she said, as if that were a given.
So, there it was, the confirmation he needed. We are all Keepers of the Light. “But I still don’t—”
She cut him off. “Didn’t he tell you all of this? He was supposed to tell you everything. That was the point of giving the signal. The point of announcing your closed test session. He was supposed to test your focus and then tell you everything.” She smiled weakly. “But I guess none of us could have guessed Apep would get the God Stones and come so quickly. Well, there’s no time for this now. Look, the wall is open,” she said, pointing at the hole. “We must go.”
Above them came a loud boom of splintering wood and shattering glass. Dust rained down from the ceiling as if a hundred people had jumped all at once.
“He’s here!” James said, drawing two sai from his waistband, one in each hand.
Garrett pulled back, his eyes going wide.
His father limped over to the king’s chair and threw himself down hard. “I have waited for this day for a very long time.”
Slow footsteps clunked overhead.
“As have I,” James said.
“No. We stick to the plan. You get them out.” Phillip said, pointing toward the opening in the brick.
“And what about you? You expect us to just leave you here?” he asked, lowering his voice to an urgent whisper. “We’ll be stronger together.”
Phillip shook his head. “No, James. You knew the plan. You must go and keep them safe.” He turned in his chair and faced Garrett. “Come here, son,” he said, motioning him over with two fingers.
Garrett approached his father.
“We are out of time now,” his father said. “But I need you to know a few things before you go.” He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Everything we have done has been for you and for this moment and the moments that will follow. All the training and all the rules. It’s all been for this day – to prepare you for right now. You will fulfill the prophecy. The world doesn’t know it now, but it’s depending on you.” He pressed his lips into a tight line. “I’m going to be honest with you, son. This situation isn’t fair and it isn’t right, but your whole world… no, the whole world is going to change.”
Elaine, Lenny, and James crowded around as his father continued to speak. In the low light of the lantern, Garrett felt as if he were receiving some ancient wisdom from a man he had never met.
“In the coming hours and days, or maybe even longer, things are going to be difficult, but know this, my son – every single day of your life has been to prepare you for this. The martial arts, sword training, survival training, even the running at school. I know I was strict, Garrett, because that’s what you needed – what you had to have. But you did it, Garrett. You did all the hard work – you are ready.” Phillip turned to Lenny. “You too, Len. I know it must have been strange for you. But you have both done so well.” He turned back to Garrett. “Now, did John tell you what you must do?”
Garrett hesitated, almost forgetting who John referred to. “Umm… yes. He said I must go to the temple and destroy what’s inside before Apep gets there with the God Stones but—”
“No buts, Garrett. Do it. You must! James can’t do it. Your mother can’t do it. I can’t do it. Only you. You take only the sages with you and you get it done,” he said, pointing a thick finger at Garrett.
Muffled laughter filtered through the floorboards overhead. The laugh was high-pitched, then low and angry. The psychotic laughter sounded as if it were coming from separate people. “Do you think you can hide? Maybe you hope I will assume you fled away, off to the temple?” The voice above them degraded into a seething, hateful slur. “I can feel you, smell the stench of your fear, each and every miserable one of you! Cowering down there like rats in a barrel won’t save you!”
“Go get it, James,” Phillip said motioning to the void.
James nodded then slid his sai back into his waistband. He quickly crossed the room and stepped inside the newly opened void, disappearing into the darkness only to reappear seconds later with a long parcel, wrapped in an old-looking piece of canvas.
Phillip pushed aside the glasses of tea and lifted the lantern. “Here,” he said, motioning to James.
James placed the bundle of canvas down on the card table.
The footsteps faded toward the back of the house.
Garrett watched silently as Phillip unrolled the canvas, revealing a sword sheathed in some sort of leather hide. The hilt gleamed white as bone or maybe ivory. There were carvings in the handle, but Garrett couldn’t make them out in the low light.
“This is yours,” Phillip said. “It was Turek’s, but now it belongs to you.” He picked it up and handed it to the boy. “This sword is exceptional, Garrett. Turek told me it was made especially for him long, long ago. The stories say he used it to slay a great beast.” He lifted it from the table and cradled it in his hands like a newborn baby. “He wanted you to have it. When you get to the temple, use this sword to destroy the—”
“Give me the boy, Phillip!” came a shout through the door.
“Time’s up, son. James, get them out of here,” Phillip said, then he placed his hand under the card table and flipped it.
With a quickness Garrett could never have fathomed possible, his father leapt to his feet, snatching up his cane before the table even struck the far wall.
Elaine and Lenny disappeared into the void, but James stood fast, grappling with the decision to leave his father.
Phillip turned toward Garrett and James. “Garrett, I love you. I always have – like you were my very own son. Always know that.”
Garrett paused, meeting his father’s eyes. “I… I love you too, Dad.”
For a brief moment, Phillip’s eyes softened, and he managed a small smile. With a final nod to his son, he flicked the wrist of the hand holding the cane. The ivory handle flipped up, locking into place to run parallel with the body of the cane. But this was no old, warped cane. Phillip drew a gleaming, curved sword from the bamboo body. His soft eyes turned hard once more, and the smile hardened into a grimace. “No
w go!” he shouted.
The eye contact between his father having been broken, Garrett’s eyes welled once more as he turned to go. But something compelled him to hesitate, to risk a final sidelong glance back at the man who had spent the last ten years as his father, and when he did, he froze in awe. Phillip faced the door with his back to them, assuming a strange sword-fighting stance. Familiar, yet different. Garrett’s experience was limited to the sword instruction from Mr. B. This was something else, something… other. He stood paralyzed now, transfixed by his father’s flawless technique. He had slid into the stance as if sliding into a pair of old slippers, as if he had spent years waking every morning before the sun to practice this very technique. After all, one does not simply learn the sword and hold that knowledge in one’s back pocket for a rainy day. Even Garrett knew a skilled swordsman lives the way of the sword, breathes it, day in and day out.
Garrett gaped, transfixed by the technique. Had he? Had Phillip woken every day and practiced the sword while we slept? Who was this man? Without breaking his gaze, he nudged James. “James, how does he know how to do that?” Garrett asked.
James lifted his chin. “This is the chudan stance in Japanese kenjutsu.”
Garrett blinked. “But how does—”
“You would be surprised what he knows, Garrett,” James interrupted. He drew his sai and ran to their father’s side. “No! You’re supposed to come with us. We get out together. Then we set the trap!” he said in a forceful whisper.
Phillip shook his head and forced a reassuring smile. “I must stay. It’s the only way.”
James clenched his jaw. “Then I will stay and fight with you. You’re not settling the score without me. Please, father. We had a plan!”
From the other side of the door, a slow mummering chant could be heard.
“Son, please,” Phillip said. “This was always the plan. I just didn’t tell you. Now, go… save our family.” He wore a thin, pleading smile, like a tin badge false in its comfort. Suddenly the smile transformed into a hard line. “Go, set the trap – settle the score. Avenge Turek!”