by Charlie Wood
“What?”
Tobin grinned. “Host of Family Feud.”
Turning the corner of Middle Street, the two friends walked together toward a soccer field behind the high school, where the Bridgton Panthers were getting ready for their afternoon match against the Hillside Warriors. Chad Fernandes, the third member of their trio of best friends, was waiting for them there, so Tobin hopped up onto a set of bleachers while Jennifer stood nearby.
“I don’t know why you’re so worked up about all this,” Tobin said. “It’s freaking October, Jen. I still have plenty of time to think about all this stuff.”
“No, you don’t,” she replied, “not really. Even Chad has started thinking about colleges already. That’s how far behind you are.”
Tobin snickered. “No, he hasn’t.” He turned to Chad. “Have you?”
“Yeah.” Chad was tall, lanky, and one of Bridgton High’s best athletes. He and Tobin had been friends ever since the second grade, when they were both teammates on the Bridgton Little League Blue Jays. “Some dude from UMass is coming to watch my first game next month.”
Tobin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not fair. You’re only going to college because you can put an orange ball into a hole with a net on it. Congratulations.”
Chad laughed. “Hey, it’s not my fault I have a skill at something, Tobin. Maybe if you had any kind of skill, you’d be going to college, too.”
“Tobin has skills,” Jennifer said defensively. “He just…doesn’t know what they are yet.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tobin agreed. “I’m good at plenty of stuff. Like…” He scanned the soccer field. “I’m really good at watching other people do things,” he said proudly, holding up a finger. “I could sit here and watch other people do things all day.”
Tobin watched the field, then sighed as if exhausted.
“Whew. I am really good at this. Really, really good.”
Jennifer groaned and rubbed her temples. “God help me.”
Nearby, a car honked its horn in the school parking lot.
“Oh, that’s my mom,” Jennifer said, turning toward the car. “I better go. But you guys are going to Stacey Redmond’s party tonight, right?”
“Yeah,” Chad said, “I am, but Detention-Boy over here is working.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, only till 9:30, though,” Tobin explained, “so I’ll probably stop by after.”
“Good, you definitely should,” Jennifer told him. “Everyone’s gonna be there, and who knows how many more times we’ll all have to hang out like this, you know? Plus, I wanted to talk to you guys about something, too. You promise you’ll be there?”
“Yeah,” Tobin said. “I’m going.”
“You promise?” Jennifer asked again, holding out her pinkie. “I really want you to be there, Tobin.”
Tobin looked down at her with a confused smile, then completed the sacred pinky swear.
“Okay,” he laughed. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
“Okay.”
Jennifer turned and walked toward the parking lot.
“Bye, guys. I’ll see you later tonight.”
“Later, Jen.”
“Bye.”
Tobin watched as Jennifer got into the car and it drove off.
“What was that all about?” Chad asked.
Tobin turned back to the soccer field. “I don’t know. She’s probably just having a nervous breakdown. Again.”
The two friends shared a laugh. Then, as the referee blew his whistle, they turned their attention to the game and cheered on their school’s team.
What the two of them didn’t know, however, was that they were being watched.
Jonathan Ashmore—a thin, pale man in his late twenties dressed in a perfectly tailored purple suit—was standing several feet behind the bleachers, leaning against the high school and studying the boys with a smirk. As the soccer match got underway, the pale man popped a piece of gum into his mouth, kicked himself off the building, and strolled down Middle Street, walking among the people of Bridgton.
CHAPTER THREE
A dozen miles from Bridgton High, on the outskirts of town in a dirt-and-gravel-covered, dusty area nearly devoid of people, Jonathan Ashmore hopped over a rusted metal fence and walked across the crumbling parking lot of the old Bridgton Amusement Park. The deserted park had been abandoned for over two decades, yet still its structures stood: the merry-go-round, with its wooden horses, elephants, and swans swollen into deformed monsters; the popcorn booths, with their rotted doors boarded up and their windows coated in thick grime; the rollercoaster, with its barely-there track covered in peeling white paint and its loops now ending abruptly in mid-air. The place was like a forgotten memory, a mangled piece of nostalgia, left to rot in the sun and sit alone in the night.
Ignoring the macabre remnants, Jonathan made his way through the park and eventually reached the creepiest structure of them all: the Haunted Forest Fun House, with its scary-looking trees and their scary-looking faces looking down on him. Inside, walking along the track, he weaved around its motionless, dented carriages and broken-down ghosts, goblins, and reapers, and eventually reached an elevator door. The door was surrounded by plastic trees and cobwebbed shrubs and a sign above it read:
ELEVATOR OUT OF ORDER! DO NOT USE!
Paying no mind to the warning, Jonathan reached out and pressed a small button near a metal speaker on the wall.
“Harold,” Jonathan said into the speaker. “It’s me. I’m here to see Vincent. He’s expecting me.”
With a ding, the elevator door opened and revealed Harold—a scrawny, wispy-haired, short, elderly man dressed in a long black coat with green trim on the sleeves. As the elderly man stepped aside, he greeted Jonathan with a smile that made him appear younger than his eighty-eight years.
“Hey, Jon, how are ya? Good to see you. Come in, come in.”
Jonathan stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind him.
At the bottom of the elevator shaft, the doors opened again and Jonathan stepped out. He was now in an elegant, serene entryway, with walls that were lined with gleaming emerald stones and a ceiling that was over forty feet high. The focal point of the entryway, facing the elevator, was a giant pair of golden doors, resting in an arch. Not only were the doors so tall that they almost reached the ceiling, but they also had eight doorknobs at their very top, where no one could reach them.
Moving aside, Jonathan watched as Harold stepped out of the elevator and removed his black coat. The elderly man actually had a second pair of arms, located directly underneath his normal pair, and also a second set of legs, which folded down from behind his back. Skittering like a spider, he quickly climbed up the golden doors and grabbed each of the eight doorknobs with each of his hands and feet.
“You know,” Jonathan asked from the floor. “I’ve been wondering: what would happen if you didn’t turn all eight at the same time?”
Harold leaned back with a smile. “Well…you don’t want to know, let’s put it that way.”
Jonathan raised his eyebrows, leaving the conversation at that. Above him, with a grunt, the eight-limbed man turned all the doorknobs and leapt back to the floor. Slowly, as Harold stood next to Jonathan, the doors opened with a smooth, elongated WHOOOOOOOSH!, revealing a swirling, humming portal of black energy behind them. The massive portal—which filled the entire arch—had a reflective surface like a mirror, and snapped and cracked with occasional bursts of purple electricity.
“There you go,” Harold said with a grin, walking back to the elevator. “It’s all yours, Jon.”
“Thanks,” the pale man replied. Then, just as he had so many times during the last few months, he stepped into the portal and disappeared into its mirrored surface.
&
nbsp; A half-second later, as easily as if he was walking through a door, Jonathan emerged from the other side of the black portal and stepped into a strange city. It was a bustling place, with large, gleaming apartment buildings, wide streets filled with sleek, retro-cool cars that appeared to be from the 1940’s and 50’s, and perfectly paved sidewalks that were lined with smiling vendors selling fruits and vegetables. The people of the city, many of whom had skin that was a light shade of green, were wearing suits and hats and sundresses, and up-tempo jazz music from a street corner band filled the air. The city, known as New Rytonia, was safe, clean, and wonderful.
Walking through the city, Jonathan made his way toward its tallest building: a glass-walled skyscraper topped with three large points, which was known as the Trident and sat directly in the middle of the city’s busy main avenue. The building’s front doors were being watched over by two heavy-set, green-skinned guards, but these uniformed men were not concerned when Jonathan approached. Instead, they simply nodded, reached across their bodies, and opened the doors for him, no questions asked.
110 stories above Jonathan, on the very top floor of the skyscraper, the building’s owner, Vincent Harris, was sitting at his desk in his office and looking out a massive window at the city below. Vincent was a handsome, blue-eyed, older man in his early sixties, with thick grey hair that he wore somewhat long, a few inches above his shoulders, and a neatly trimmed grey goatee. He was also very fit for his age, with a well-built body standing over six feet tall, and he was almost always wearing the same thing: a black-and-green uniform with a green insignia of a tiger-like beast above his heart. This insignia could be seen on posters and banners all over New Rytonia, along with portraits of Vincent.
At the moment, the grey-haired man in black-and-green was absent-mindedly listening to a report from his assistant, Chris. Chris was a young man in his early thirties with closely cropped dark hair and—unlike Vincent—light green skin.
“Tom Paulson let me know that his district received an over-shipment of their medical supplies,” Chris explained, “so I had him send the extra cases to the hospital, like you advised. Also, here are the most recent reports from General Thrace about the D. N. project, and also the photographs from your home.”
Chris handed Vincent a file and a leather-covered photo album.
“Thank you, Chris,” Vincent said. “I’ll have Rigel look over the report before I take a look at it myself.”
Turning to his right, Vincent handed the file to the third man in the room, his bodyguard and closest confidante, Rigel. Rigel was a towering, barely human beast, with dimpled, red skin that was rough like a rhinoceros, yellow, piercing eyes, and a body as thick and as strong as an oak tree. He wore a uniform similar to Vincent, and was nearly seven-and-a-half feet tall.
“I think that’ll be all for now, Chris,” Vincent said. “Thank you.”
“No problem, sir. Just let me know if you need anything else.”
After watching Chris leave the room, Vincent placed the photo album on his desk and opened it. One of the photographs caught his eye.
It was a photograph of three teenage boys: there was a blonde boy with a movie star smile; a dark-haired boy in the middle of a loud, booming laugh; and a black boy with glasses, shy and smaller than the others. The dark-haired boy was standing in the center with his arms around the others’ shoulders, and they were about fifteen years old.
Vincent turned the page. He stopped on another photo.
This photo showed a tall, handsome young man dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans. He was smiling a crooked smile and sitting next to a pretty young woman who was dressed in black and red. They were holding hands and very happy. They were about twenty-five years old.
Vincent turned the page, but he did not look at the next series of photos. Instead, he stared down at the desk in front of him.
“Vincent,” Rigel said, breaking the silence with his guttural, graveled voice. “Jonathan is here to see you.”
Vincent looked up and saw Jonathan standing in the doorway.
“Oh, thank you, Rigel. Hi, Jon. Come in. Take a seat.” Vincent and Jonathan shared a handshake. “How is everything, Jon? How’d everything go today?”
Jonathan sat down in front of the desk. “Fine, sir. I did just as you said. Didn’t have any problems.”
“Good,” Vincent said. He leaned back, resting his hands on his stomach. “I’m glad to hear it. We’ll get started on what we agreed upon right away. How’s that sound?”
“Very good, sir. Thank you.”
A silence passed. Vincent tapped a pencil on his desk, studying Jonathan’s face. When he spoke again, each word was given time to breathe.
“Jon, what we are doing tonight is significant. To both our history and our future. It’s not often one can say something like that and truly mean it, but tonight, we can, and I think we should always be aware of that.”
The grey-haired man walked to a liquor cabinet in his office and poured himself a drink. As he swirled the dark liquid in the glass, he watched it spin around with the ice cubes.
“We are responsible for this, Jon,” Vincent continued. “It begins tonight and sets in motion everything we have planned so far. Without it, we’ll be starting over, and we can’t have that; it would be devastating to us, and—most importantly—to everyone outside. But you already know all that. At least I hope you do.”
Vincent looked to Jonathan and smiled. The pale man nodded and smiled back, but he clearly didn’t like to be talked to this way.
“I want you to know,” Vincent said, walking back to his desk. “I want you to understand that, even though I picked you myself for this team, that does not excuse you from discipline. There’s a set of rules for us here, Jon. A set of rules set up by them outside—for us—to make sure we do our job. It’s them we’re doing this for. If someone were to let them down, well…I don’t know what I’d do.”
Vincent looked up and stared across the desk. Jonathan looked back at him, uneasy.
“This is the future, Jon,” Vincent said. “Do not fail it.”
Jonathan stood up. “You have nothing to worry about, sir. Everything is ready. The storm will come tonight.”
Vincent pulled his chair out. “Yes, it will.” He motioned toward the door. “Thank you, Jon.”
When he was once again alone, Vincent sat down behind his desk with his drink and looked through his photo album.
Meanwhile, outside of Vincent’s office, one of the skyscraper’s many green-skinned guards was standing in the hallway, listening to all that had transpired. As he watched Jonathan walk away from the office and down a flight of stairs, the eavesdropping guard quickly walked away in the opposite direction, before entering one of the skyscraper’s empty dining rooms. Spotting a balcony high up near the ceiling, he ran to it, leapt, flipped, and landed on its floor with a soft clack of his boots. In front of him, there was a door on the balcony, so he quietly entered it, shutting it behind him.
After moving down a long corridor and away from the balcony, the guard soon found himself in the skyscraper’s main kitchen. A chef was walking toward him, so he ducked behind a corner and retrieved a metal, ballpoint pen-like device from his pocket with a button on its top. After he clicked the button, his appearance changed from that of a green-skinned guard to that of a green-skinned chef, complete with white chef jacket and white chef hat.
With his new disguise in place, the mysterious guard-turned-chef nodded “hello” to the other chef, walked through the kitchen, and eventually found himself in front of a large storage room, which was filled with shelves of cooking utensils, cardboard boxes, and crates of food. After watching the other chef leave the kitchen, the guard-turned-chef stepped into the storage room, closed its door, and clicked the button on his device one more time.
This time, the
man’s true identity was revealed: he was Orion Hobbes, a tall, thin black man, with grey hair and glasses. As nearly always, he was wearing black boots, a long red coat that reached his knees, and a quiver of arrows and bow on his back. Leaning against the storage room door, the old man closed his eyes and sighed, tired and worn.
But then there was a knocking at the door. “Hey!” somebody shouted from the other side. “Who’s in there? Open this door immediately!”
Orion jumped up. After using a long wooden table to barricade the door, he quickly stepped behind one of the metal shelving units. Hiding there, and peering out between the shelves, he reached behind him, grabbed an arrow from his quiver, pulled it back in his bow, and aimed it at the door. The arrowhead began to glow bright red.
After three loud BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!’s rattled the door, it was smashed open, and three green-skinned guards entered the room. However, the first was immediately blasted back by an arrow that exploded in a bright red flash against his chest and sent him flying into the kitchen.
Stunned, the second guard stepped forward and fired his gleaming, silver laser rifle. But, Orion dodged the green laser beams, jumped up onto a stack of crates, pulled his bow back, and shot another exploding arrow, all in one fluid motion.
The third guard, amazed at how an old man could move so fast, focused on his target and was able to shoot the bow out of Orion’s hand. However, the old man was unfazed; as he avoided the next series of lasers, he ran down a long metal shelf, leapt toward a hanging pipe on the ceiling, swung around it, and threw another arrow with his bare hand.
In a red streak, the whistling arrow pierced the air, struck the guard in his chest, and slammed him against the wall with a BANG! After sliding down the wall in a heap, he joined his other two mates on the floor, unconscious.