Power of Imagination

by Keith Robinson

  She let out a sudden squeal that quickly cut off with a gasp.

  “Maddy!” Liam yelled, spinning to grab her arm—and missing. She was gone.

  Caleb’s triumphant yell came from above: “Bungee!”

  Just outside the tunnel where daylight flooded in, Madison hung upside down on a long, stretchy cord, bouncing gently. The cord was attached to a wooden tower that hadn’t been there half a minute earlier.

  Caleb’s head and shoulders appeared. “Lights off!” he shouted.

  Every single gas lamp fluttered and went out.

  “Have fun down there,” Caleb said, then disappeared.

  Something slammed shut, everything went black, and Liam heard the distinctive click of something metal.

  “Maddy!” he yelled again, rushing back down the tunnel and wondering what had happened. It had sounded like a large door with a lock and key, though there hadn’t been any such thing moments ago.

  Then he paused, hearing something in the darkness behind him. Something big snuffling around farther along the tunnel. Bigger than a Lurker.

  Something really big.

  It hadn’t been in the tunnel when he’d first arrived in this crazy world. He held his breath, wishing he could see. Perhaps the creature, whatever it was, didn’t know he was there. If he remained quiet and still, it might go away.

  So Liam waited.

  In his mind, the unseen creature grew more hideous and gigantic with every passing second. At first he imagined a lion because of its lazy, rumbling growl. But when it moved, Liam sensed something much bigger than a lion. And it snorted, too, sounding more like a rhinoceros.

  It was only when Liam saw a flicker of fire that his nerve broke—the gentle huff of flames from the nostrils of something instantly recognizable.

  A dragon.

  Liam stifled a moan and stumbled quietly back to the tunnel’s end, his arms outstretched, hands groping. He found it at last, something hard and wooden. Where there should have been an opening to daylight, instead a heavy door lay across the tunnel’s mouth. Two doors, a pair of them. He felt all around, his fingers discovering thick boards, nail heads, and iron straps. They abutted closely, barely a sliver of light between them.

  He wanted to yell for Madison but was afraid of attracting the dragon. At the moment, it seemed content to loiter in the darkness some distance away. Caleb must have sent it down to block the way. Liam guessed it wouldn’t attack him . . . but he certainly wouldn’t be getting around it anytime soon.

  A noise on the other side of the doors caused him to catch his breath. He heard footfalls on the wood, the sounds of fumbling and knocking, a rasping scrape, and something else Liam couldn’t identify.

  Then a muffled voice from outside. “Liam?”

  “Madison!” he whispered.

  “Can you hear me?” she called, louder this time.

  He winced. “Shh!” he said, rapping his knuckles twice on one of the doors.

  Behind him in the darkness, a rumbling growl sounded, and he cowered and prayed Madison would stop trying to talk to him.

  “I’m going to get you out!” she yelled. “Caleb walked off and left me here. I guess he thinks I can’t open this trapdoor without a key, but he’s wrong. Stand back.”

  Thankfully, silence fell after that. Liam waited.

  Then he heard the whine of engines. Madison had started the land speeder. Where was she going?

  Its engines roared, but the speeder remained close. Liam imagined Madison circling the tunnel entrance, but he couldn’t fathom why. There was another noise, too: a creaking, straining sound. Liam touched the pair of solid doors and felt them shaking.

  They flew open with a deafening crack. Or one did, anyway. Liam fell backward as the right-hand side swung outward while the left splintered into pieces and fell around him. Daylight flooded into the tunnel.

  The roar of the dragon behind him suggested it was annoyed.

  The engine faded and cut out. Madison shouted, “Liam!”

  He clambered out of the tunnel into blinding sunlight, aware of the thumping footfalls of the dragon as he tumbled forward and fell among the flattened ferns. Flattened by the dragon, he thought in a moment of clarity. He heard the roar of flames, and a split second later felt a searing heat coming out of the tunnel behind him.

  “Drive!” he yelled as Madison started to climb down from the land speeder. She froze as he stumbled in her direction.

  Glancing back, Liam saw a tall, thin, rickety timber structure with a platform at the top, from which the bungee cord dangled. A sturdy wooden frame now existed around the square tunnel opening, and the speeder remained tethered to one of its doors. The thin rope was taut, secured to a wrought-iron handle that clearly wasn’t about to come loose.

  It took Liam half a second to take all this in as he dashed toward Madison. He knew instantly there was no time to untie the thin rope from the back of the speeder.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  “Make up your mind,” she complained as she jumped down.

  With a terrible screech, the dragon exploded from the darkness behind them.

  Chapter 3

  Again, Liam felt searing heat as flames licked at his rear end. Madison screamed and almost fell, but Liam urged her on, noticing that the back of her t-shirt was smoldering.

  He looked over his shoulder as he ran—and then wished he hadn’t. He glimpsed the head and neck of a dark-green reptilian monster with a long snout and endless teeth, something he’d seen plenty of times in movies but never, ever in his wildest nightmares thought he’d see in real life. It looked like it had been around for some time, one of Caleb’s older creations that needed replacing. Some parts of its body were split open, slick with oozing yellow flesh.

  The monster was busy squeezing out of the hole, one clawed foot after another, inadvertently scraping more scaly skin from its hide and revealing the slick, yellow flesh beneath. A leathery wing caught on the door frame, and the dragon yanked at it with annoyance. It gave another bellowing screech, and at that point Liam let out a whimper and concentrated on running.

  They made it across the fields to the outskirts of the village before the throbbing beat of the dragon’s wings overhead made them dart for the cover of a shed, which stood against a stone wall beside a farmhouse. A massive shadow fell across them as Liam frantically rattled the latch and tugged the handle. The small door creaked opened just as another frightening screech filled the air. They threw themselves into the shed and slammed the door shut.

  Gasping, they clung to each other and trembled as the thump of the dragon’s wings faded.

  “What if it burns the shed down?” Madison whispered.

  The thought chilled Liam to the bone, and he cursed himself for being so stupid as to think they were safe. But what else could they have done? Continued running around in open fields?

  “Maybe it’ll leave us alone,” Liam whispered. “Maybe if it can’t see us . . .”

  Sunlight streamed through various cracks in the flimsy shed walls and bathed them in dusty rays. Liam found gardening tools and bags of seed that had never been opened. There were also several pairs of rubber boots, a few coats hanging on hooks, two rusted buckets, a lantern, cans of paint, spare gate latches and hinges, a shelf full of horseshoes, and a whole load of other objects that Caleb imagined would be stored in a farmer’s supply shed. But no axe or shotgun or anything remotely useful as a weapon.

  They peered out through the gap in the door. After a while, they spotted the dragon over the fields. It was coming around again. Madison moaned and went to huddle in the corner.

  The sunlight abruptly switched off.

  As before, Liam blurted an exclamation and instinctively reached for the walls, blinking rapidly and trying to find a pinpoint of light to reassure him he hadn’t suddenly gone blind.

  Madison gripped his arm, making him jump. “There’s no way Caleb’s taking a nap right now,” she whispered. “He’s messing with us.”

&nb
sp; Liam felt for his flashlight. “I don’t suppose you have any double-A batteries, do you?”

  “No, but I saw a lantern here somewhere,” Madison said.

  Liam spun around in the darkness. “That’s right. And I have matches.” His shaking fingers closed on the box deep within his pocket—flattened but intact. Relieved, he squeezed out a match and struck it. The flame flared, then glowed silently, illuminating Madison’s white face in an eerie manner.

  The lantern hung on a hook. Inside was a short, fat candle. Liam hurriedly lit the wick and jumped back in surprise when the entire shed lit up in a bright orange glow. “Wow. It really doesn’t matter to Caleb how things are supposed to work, does it? It’s how he imagines them to work that’s important here.”

  The candle glowed brighter than it should but otherwise appeared to function normally. Mesmerized, Liam stared at the flame. Its heat melted the wax under the wick, and the vapor rose and burned just as it should. Or did it? Was it real wax? Was its vapor really burning? Or did this imitation candle simply emulate what Caleb had seen in the real world? Where was the distinction between real and pretend if both looked and acted the same way?

  He peered over the flame at Madison. “I think the dragon’s leaving,” she said with her head tilted.

  They listened together and eventually heard a distant screech. They both sighed with relief. “And where did Caleb get off to?” Liam asked.

  Madison grimaced. “Right after he trapped you in the tunnel, he brushed his hands, said ‘Serves him right,’ and went off to the village for some chocolate.”

  “Chocolate? Why?”

  “Because he’s a kid.”

  Liam frowned. “So he just left? Without his speeder?”

  Madison shrugged. “He left it for me. He said I could catch up with him in the village for some chocolate, or I could sit and sulk.”

  Liam pushed the shed door open and peered out. The utter blackness had lightened now that the moon was out and stars circled it. “So Caleb’s here in the village somewhere?” he said.

  “And the dragon’s gone,” Madison said.

  Liam nodded. “All right, then. Time for us to get out of here.”

  He carried the lantern as they hurried across the field, heading back to the tunnel. The flame danced within the small glass panes, fiercely bright. They hardly needed the lantern with the moon at full strength, but they’d certainly need it in the tunnel now that Caleb had doused all the gas lamps.

  His heart pounding with excitement, Liam felt they were on their way at last. The land speeder was still there by the tunnel, loosely tethered to the sturdy handle on the busted trap door. The dragon had vanished. Maybe it had landed and resumed its snoozing, hopefully in a distant field somewhere. Liam didn’t care as long as it wasn’t here.

  He and Madison peered into the darkness of the tunnel and listened carefully. They waited a full half-minute, barely moving an inch. “Okay,” Liam said at last. “It’s quiet. I guess the dragon has—”

  At that moment, they both clearly heard a rumbling growl from deep within. The sound was all too familiar, and Liam almost yelled with frustration.

  Instead, he climbed to his feet and backed slowly away, pulling Madison with him. “It’s in there,” he mumbled. “I guess Caleb’s pet is back on guard duty.”

  Madison clicked her tongue. “So now what?”

  With a sigh, Liam turned to face the heavily shrouded village. Only a few lights were on here and there. He suspected it had once been a pretty sight at nighttime—or whatever ridiculous time of the day Caleb turned the sunlight off—but right now it was like a graveyard, silent and almost completely black. “Let’s go find Caleb,” he said with resignation. “Again.”

  “And do what?”

  “Talk sense into him.”

  Madison raised an eyebrow. “Good luck with that.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Liam demanded.

  She considered. “We could drive off in this floating contraption and find another way out. There have to be other ways, more tunnels leading to the surface. Where else does fresh air come from?”

  Liam gestured vaguely. “So we just drive around looking for tunnels buried under ferns and bushes?”

  They both gazed up and around. Even in broad daylight, it would be a massive task finding another escape route. Talk about a needle in a haystack . . .

  “Maybe we can figure out where the drafts are coming from,” Madison suggested

  Liam licked a finger and held it up.

  “All right, you win.” She sighed. “Shall we use the speeder?”

  “Sure.”

  It took a while to untie the knot from the tail end of the floating vehicle because it had tightened under the strain of tugging on the trap door. When it finally came loose, they tossed the rope down into the grass and climbed aboard.

  The speeder had extremely bright beams on the front, as Liam discovered when he flipped a switch marked LIGHTS on the dashboard. They set off across the fields at a steady pace, not because they couldn’t see but because it seemed prudent to announce their arrival in an open, non-threatening way, a form of white-flag truce. The last thing they needed was for Caleb to think he was under some kind of attack, otherwise he might conjure up a massive robot from the Transformers movies.

  Wait—those movies were too new for him. Liam pondered idly as he drove. Maybe something from the 1980s, like one of the Terminator cyborgs. He shuddered. He doubted Caleb, who was only eight, had seen the original R-rated movie . . . but still, the idea of being pursued by one of those things gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  They joined the paved road and cruised slowly between shop fronts, the beams flooding the street with bright light. The engines merely purred at this leisurely pace. When a small boy stepped out of one of the few brightly lit shops up ahead, Liam brought the land speeder to a halt and shut it off.

  “What are you doing back here?” the boy shouted. He sounded both annoyed and incredulous. “How did you escape?” Pointing a finger at Madison, he scowled and said, “I knew I should have put you in a cage.”

  He closed his eyes, and a familiar whispering filled the air. A steel cage materialized out of thin air, rectangular and about the size of a small shed. It stood to one side of the road, its door open.

  “Get in!” he yelled to Madison.

  She raised her voice to be heard the length of the street. “You trapped Liam in the tunnel with a vicious dragon! That was mean, Caleb. Not nice at all. I had to rescue him, otherwise you’d have gotten in big trouble with the police.”

  It was hard to see Caleb’s expression from this distance, but he stood still long enough to indicate he was considering her words.

  In the end, he sauntered along the road to meet them. One hand was filled with something; he used the other to pop pieces of whatever it was into his mouth. He said nothing until he was just ten feet away, at which point he noisily swallowed his mouthful. “Want a strawberry truffle?” he said, holding out his hand to Madison. His fingers were covered in partially melted chocolate. It smelled good, but Liam felt repulsed.

  Madison shook her head. “No. We just want to go home, Caleb. What will it take for you to move your pet dragon?”

  Caleb frowned. “Move him where?”

  “Out of the tunnel,” Liam said. “He’s blocking the way.”

  “Well, he’s guarding it,” the boy said. “He’s supposed to be blocking the way. And I won’t move him. Ever. Ever ever ever.”

  Chapter 4

  Ant gaped in amazement. He’d expected to come across a pile of rubble, the twisted remains of Liam’s house scattered throughout the tunnel. Instead, two very odd things greeted him.

  Neatly hung lanterns lit the way ahead, glowing softly as far as he could see. Barton had talked about these. Caleb’s elevator had descended half a mile to this exact point.

  But instead of an old elevator shaft above his head, he saw a massive slab of badly cracked concrete with bits of rebar
sticking out. In the center was a small, square hole. And from that hole hung a knotted rope of laundry.

  Ant stared for ages, feeling a chill. Faint light came from above, and he could make out the walls of a room as though he were looking up into an attic. Could that be a room in Liam’s house? Was he looking up through the underside of the house’s foundation?

  He must have spent several minutes just standing there gawking. If Barton’s story was true, Caleb had widened the elevator shaft and allowed the house to fall . . . and yet the tunnel Ant stood in had survived, its walls bracing the entire weight of the house.

  Where had all the debris gone? There were definitely signs of a landslide, but it was just a thin layer of rubble across the floor. The vast majority of the displaced rock and earth must have . . . what? Slid off down the tunnel like water running out of a pipe?

  Ant finally broke free of his wide-eyed wonder. The rescue crews on the surface had called it a sinkhole, but it was pretty clear to him that a mysterious, supernatural force had caused this so-called natural disaster.

  He had to find his friends.

  Clambering up the laundry-rope was easy enough. When he pulled himself through the square hole into the room, he let out a sigh of relief. Liam’s laundry room. I’m really here in his house. It survived the fall!

  “Liam!” he shouted, casting his gaze across the glow sticks and candles as he hurried from room to room. Though the floor was slanted in places, the walls buckled, and the ceilings low and cracked open, the place was in far better condition than he’d expected. “Where are you? Maddy?”

  He quickly concluded he was alone. Maybe the roof, he thought hopefully.

  His amazement grew when he stepped outside and nearly collided with a cliff face. He raised his lamp to study it, then followed it upward. The eaves were tight against the rock at the corners of the house, but there were big gaps along the sides where he could hoist himself over the gutter and onto the roof. He did so by climbing the drainpipe, the lantern gripped between his teeth. A few minutes later, he tiptoed to the apex and took in his surroundings.