World's End

by Jake Halpern

  Alfonso didn't pay too much attention to the police because he had other things to worry about. Presently, a red-faced Madame McKinnon was informing him that she had just made arrangements for him to return home to Minnesota—tout de suite! At dinner, Alfonso sat by himself. Charlie and his gang of friends huddled at a nearby table, giggling and talking about Alfonso. In a loud voice, Charlie claimed Alfonso was drunk from French wine when he jumped off the tourist boat.

  Alfonso didn't mind them; he was far too preoccupied with what had just happened in the harbor. Why, wondered Alfonso, had he fallen asleep and leapt into the chilly waters of the Mediterranean? Why was his sleeping-self acting up all of a sudden? The previous night, for example, he somehow had managed to gash his right hand in his sleep. The cut required six stitches from a local doctor, at the rate of thirty Euros a stitch.

  Alfonso knew intuitively that there must be a reason for his sleeping antics—there was always one. He suspected the reason involved Dormia. Alfonso's sleeping-self was mysteriously and inextricably connected to the Founding Tree in Somnos. Alfonso sensed that the tree was pulling him, beckoning him into slumber. Even now, as he sat in the hotel's dining room, sleep was descending on him.

  He finished his food quickly and walked to the fourth floor, where he and Charlie shared a small hotel room. It was a stroke of bad luck for Alfonso that Charlie had been assigned as his roommate for the entire trip. Their room was tiny, with barely enough space for two beds. To make matters worse, the walls were very thin, so thin that Alfonso could hear a young couple next door having a heated disagreement. It didn't matter. Alfonso was tired enough to sleep through nearly anything. He sank into his narrow bed, pressed his face into the sheets—which smelled faintly of cigarettes and cheap cologne—and immediately drifted off to sleep.

  By the time Charlie entered the room, Alfonso was out cold, snoring loudly in apparent harmony with the room's hissing radiators. Charlie loudly harrumphed and "accidentally" bumped into Alfonso's bed, but Alfonso did not stir. Charlie gave up and soon fell asleep as well. The rest of the night went by uneventfully, until dawn broke.

  It was at that moment that Alfonso got up from bed and began to dress. In less than a minute, he silently packed his backpack and made his bed. He yawned and walked to the door. His eyelids trembled in a half-closed position. Anyone who saw him would have thought that he was sleepwalking. The door creaked open and in the blink of an eye, Alfonso vanished.

  Some time later, Charlie woke up and realized Alfonso was gone. For some reason, Charlie was trembling, even though it was quite warm in the room. A whistle blew from a ship in the distance.

  "H-Hello?" whispered Charlie. "Alfonso? Are you there?"

  No answer. Charlie was spooked. He turned on the light and saw the neatly made bed.

  The whistle from the harbor blew again. It was the same Romanian freighter that Alfonso had swum toward the previous day, the Somnolenţă, and it was about to leave port. Charlie looked out toward the noise. He squinted hard. In the distance, he saw Alfonso running squirrel-like across the heavy rope line that lashed the freighter to the port. The rope shone with morning frost, but Alfonso never lost his footing. When he reached the freighter, he dove into an open porthole. Moments later, the rope fell into the water and the freighter pulled out of Marseilles' old harbor into the open seas of the Mediterranean.

  CHAPTER 3

  STOWAWAY

  ALFONSO YAWNED AWAKE in a dim swath of light, rolled over onto his side, and suddenly cried out in pain. Instead of the mattress in Le Vieux Port, he felt coils of coarse rope and various sharp objects underneath him. Confused, Alfonso struggled to his feet. He had been sleeping on a tangle of old fishing nets dotted with hooks. Several feet away, a half-open porthole pitted with rust and salt allowed in weak streams of sun.

  He walked over to the window and stared outside at a horizon filled with choppy water. The sun appeared low in the sky. At first he thought it might be dawn, but then he realized that the sun was actually sinking and it was dusk. He had been asleep for at least a full day, maybe more.

  Alfonso glanced about and noticed his backpack lying nearby on the floor. He rummaged through his belongings and quickly found his passport and three hundred U.S. dollars. Alfonso sighed in relief. He then emptied the rest of his backpack and found two books that he had brought with him from Minnesota, a bottle of water, a glass sphere that looked almost like a paperweight, and a few tabs of French chocolate.

  Although it appeared empty, his backpack still felt rather clunky. Alfonso examined it at every angle and discovered to his surprise that something was hidden between the coarse exterior fabric and the plastic brace. The outline was hard and rectangular. Alfonso examined the stitching inside the pack and noticed that a row of thread had been cut. The discovery of this mysterious package set his heart thumping. He laid the backpack on his lap and sat perfectly still. He heard only the rhythmic creak of wood planks straining against each other and the droning of the ship's engine. Alfonso took a deep breath and inserted his hand into the small opening in the pack. He pushed his hand downward until he reached the hard rectangular package and slowly withdrew it from its hiding place.

  The package was exactly five inches wide by seven inches long and wrapped tightly in gauze. Alfonso unwound the gauze, revealing a metal tin embossed with the following words:

  POLYVALENT CROTALID ANTIVENIN

  He examined the package carefully and hesitantly popped off the lid to the tin. Inside lay two medical syringes with razor-sharp needles attached, and two small glass bottles of a clear liquid nestled between them.

  "What is Polyvalent Crotalid Antivenin and where did this come from?" Alfonso asked himself aloud. He began to put the medicine away when he noticed the gash on his right hand. His mind instantly flashed back to the pharmacy across the street from his hotel in Marseilles. The pharmacy's front window had been smashed. Someone had robbed the place, and suddenly Alfonso knew without a doubt that he was the one who had done it.

  Over the next hour, Alfonso investigated the rest of the freighter's hold. It was at least half empty. Aside from the torn fishing nets and rusty hooks, there were a few empty cardboard boxes, some old tools, and in the corner, several dozen crates of dates. Upon seeing the dates, Alfonso realized that he was famished. In fact, he didn't remember ever being so hungry in his life. Alfonso took some dates back to his corner of the hold and sat down to eat. Then, suddenly, the door to the deck opened and a ladder slid down. Alfonso heard voices, and he shrank further into the darkness.

  Three sailors clumped heavily down the ladder, carrying boxes. They spoke in French and loudly discussed Marseilles—where they had found the best bouillabaisse, the best cheap hotel, and the best card games. For half an hour, they transferred boxes of dates from the deck to the hold while Alfonso sat in his corner, barely daring to breathe. At one point, Alfonso heard one of the sailors ask when they would arrive in "Alexandre."

  "Deux heures," replied another. "C'est bien, l'Alexandre. Tu verras!" Alfonso furrowed his brow. That couldn't be. The freighter would arrive in Alexandria, Egypt, in two hours? His head swam. He must have been asleep for a very long time—days. Alfonso didn't notice the sailors pulling up the ladder and shutting the door to the hold.

  "Alexandria," Alfonso whispered to himself. "Just like the book."

  He reached for his backpack and pulled out the two books that he had brought with him. The first was a book that he had originally obtained in Somnos. It was titled The Basics of Speaking Dormian, by Dr. Gregor Axel Oxenstjerna. Alfonso had been studying the book for the past several years and now, thanks to his studies, he was reasonably fluent in the Dormian language. Of course, he had no one to converse with, so it was quite possible that his pronunciation was atrocious. Nonetheless, Alfonso was Dormian and he felt that he should know his ancestral language. After all, he wasn't just any Dormian. He was a hero of Somnos—the boy who saved the city and earned the title of Great Sleeper.

&nbs
p; The second book, the smaller of the two, was Architecture of Ancient Alexandria: A Detailed Field Guide by Dr. Jarislav Lüt-zen. This was a very unlikely book for a fifteen-year-old boy to be reading in his spare time. But there was a reason. Alfonso's father, Leif Perplexon, had actually purchased this book from an online bookseller roughly six years ago. Alfonso still vividly remembered the day the book had arrived. A delivery man brought the book to their house around nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. Leif had read the book carefully for several hours. Finally, he set the book down and went for a swim in Lake Witekkon, near their house. Midway through the swim, storm clouds moved in and the lake was hit with rain and lightning.

  Leif Perplexon was never seen again.

  Alfonso, who was just nine at the time, waited by the edge of the lake for days, hoping that his father would miraculously reappear. Leif was eventually presumed dead, though his body was never found. In the months and even years after Leif's funeral, Alfonso clung to this strange academic text by Dr. Jarislav Lützen. It was the last thing that Leif Perplexon had ever read, and just by having it nearby Alfonso felt closer to his father.

  Alfonso held the architectural field guide in his hands, leaned back against the ship's hull, and thought about his father. Leif and Uncle Hill were both born in Somnos, the last city of Dormia. In the confusion of Great Wandering Day, Leif and Hill, who were both young boys at the time, were pushed through the gates with a group of Wanderers. Miraculously, the boys survived the harsh conditions of the Ural Mountains and were eventually discovered by a sea captain who took them back to North America. Leif ended up in World's End, Minnesota, where he married Alfonso's mom, Judy, and found long-sought domestic happiness.

  This was pretty much everything that Alfonso knew about his father's past. It was painfully little. His mother could have probably told him more, but she was the silent type. What's more, it seemed to grieve her to dredge up memories of her deceased husband. Alfonso didn't have the heart to press her on this.

  Still, Alfonso did have a few memories of his father. Above all, he remembered the walks that he and his dad used to take in the primeval Forest of the Obitteroos, which surrounded his house in World's End. Many of the trees were centuries old and most were extremely tall. Some of the oldest trees, which had been around since Roman times, stood more than three hundred feet in height. Alfonso and Leif would often walk through the forest at dusk, a magical time when the pine needles glowed like copper shavings and animals came out to drink from the streams. Often fog rolled off the surrounding lakes and settled so thickly that it was impossible to see more than several feet in any one direction.

  On one occasion, an especially thick fog rolled in and the two of them were separated. Alfonso had chased after a rabbit and when he finally looked up, his father was gone. Alfonso was reasonably certain that he knew the way home, even in the fog, but he decided instead to search for his father. He searched for hours. It wasn't until midnight drew near that, quite by accident, Alfonso stumbled into his dad. Leif looked terrified. It was the only time that Alfonso could recall seeing fear in his father's eyes.

  "If you ever find that I am missing, and you know the way home, you mustn't look for me," Leif had said sternly.

  "I'll always look for you," said Alfonso tearfully.

  "No," replied Leif with a shake of his head. "Sometimes it's best not to."

  Those words echoed in Alfonso's head as he sat in the hull of the Romanian freighter. He sighed and stared at the familiar blue-gray cover of Dr. Lützen's book. Finally, he flipped it open to chapter seventeen, which was titled The Three Sphinxes. The chapter began with a drawing of three sphinxes, each with the trademark head of a woman, body of a lion, and wings of a bird. Beneath the drawing Leif had written the following:

  The sphinxes from my dreams ... Which one of

  them has the watchful eye?

  Leif had written a few other sentences but they were impossible to read because the book had been rained on and the ink had run. Alfonso had found the book lying face-open on the Perplexons' front lawn while Leif was swimming in Lake Witekkon.

  Alfonso closed the book and sat silently on the freighter's wooden floor. He felt the churn of its heavy diesel motors. As he stared into the gathering darkness, he thought about his dad—his smile, the roughness of his beard, and how his dark green eyes twinkled as he watched a loon skim the surface of the cold Minnesota water.

  An hour or two later, Alfonso leapt to his feet when he heard a great clattering of feet overhead. Then the engines on the boat began to drone more softly and Alfonso could feel the ship slowing down. "Alexandria," he mumbled to himself. At that moment, his eyes drooped heavily with fatigue. Alfonso fought this drowsiness and, as quickly as he could, shoved his belongings into his backpack. He then lay down on the dank floor of the ship and prepared for sleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  GLIMPSE OF THE LABYRINTH

  ALFONSO STARED at the body of a man lying face-down in the snow. He was in the mountains somewhere, perhaps the Urals, but he couldn't be sure. The sky was a dull charcoal color and a heavy snow was falling. He stood in a long corridor of extremely tall hedgerows and shivered violently. He was freezing.

  As if obeying an unseen force, he knelt down next to the fallen man and turned him over. The man was dead. More alarming than this, however, was that the man was Leif Perplexon, his father. Alfonso shuddered but, instead of looking away, focused on two small puncture wounds, about an inch apart, located midway down his father's neck. The skin around the punctures was tinged a gray blue, in stark contrast to the grim off-white color of the rest of his neck. Alfonso stared at the image of his father until it disappeared.

  It had been a nightmare.

  Alfonso blinked furiously as if to ensure that what he was now seeing was real. He was standing in a darkened alleyway. The air was warm and balmy. Alfonso spun around and saw a large port, where several dozen freighters were anchored alongside stone jetties. One of these freighters was the Somnolenţă, the ship that brought him from Marseilles.

  Now what?

  The port was deserted and spooky, and Alfonso walked quickly and passed several low-slung warehouses, abandoned forklifts, and fluorescent streetlights that flickered a dull yellow. Every so often he'd hear a crack in the distance that sounded like gunfire. The only signs of life were mangy dogs that eyed him warily. The air was filled with a myriad of smells—a mix of spices, seaweed, cigarette smoke, and urine. In the distance, Alfonso could hear the minarets calling worshipers to their prayers.

  Eventually, Alfonso came upon a more populated area, a handful of open shops clustered along a crumbling four-lane road. Here he found a taxi driver who said, in very broken English, that he would accept dollars. The man's taxi was an ancient Mercedes, and the painted exterior had long since corroded and flaked off leaving only a coat of rust.

  The driver, a wizened old man with white hair coming out of his ears, looked at him through the rearview mirror. "Where to go?" asked the man eagerly.

  "The Three Sphinxes," replied Alfonso.

  "Three Sphinxes—yes, yes, yes," he said. "I take you there, finest good sir." Then he smiled, showing two teeth in his mouth, one hanging from the upper jaw and the other from the lower jaw.

  Ten minutes later, the taxi pulled up in front of a crumbling brick building; the narrow entranceway was occupied by a very heavyset man smoking a water pipe, called a nargeelah. It gave off a smoky, candy apricot smell.

  "What's this?" asked Alfonso.

  "This is Three Sphinxes," replied the taxi cab driver. He pointed to a sign above the building's entranceway, which read: THREE SPHINXES HOTEL-CHEAP ROOMS & ROOFTOPS AVAILABLE.

  Alfonso was about to say he didn't mean for the driver to take him to the Three Sphinxes Hotel, but then he realized it didn't matter. It was a hotel, and he needed a place to sleep. He paid the driver and left the taxi. The man smoking the nar-geelah motioned for him to come closer.

  "You want a room, fella?" asked
the man. He had a bald head and a neck that rippled with at least half a dozen chins. "I am innkeeper."

  Alfonso nodded.

  The innkeeper showed Alfonso to his room. It was tiny, with enough room for a single bed, a rickety chair, a sink, and a small window near the ceiling that had been painted shut. As the innkeeper was about to leave, Alfonso asked him if he could arrange a visit to the ancient ruins known as the Three Sphinxes.

  "Forget the Three Sphinxes," said the innkeeper dismissively. "It is top name for hotel, but not such a good place to visit. You must visit Pompey's Pillar."

  "No thanks," said Alfonso politely. "I really want to see the Three Sphinxes."

  "As you please," replied the innkeeper. "The sphinxes guard the tomb of the pharaoh Khafra. You know this, eh? One is said to be weeping in grief, another laughing because Khafra took so many riches with him to the afterlife, and a third sleeping because the pharaoh had at last found rest."

  "Sleeping?" inquired Alfonso.

  "Yes," replied the innkeeper. "The third of the sphinxes is the so-called Sleeping Sphinx."

  Alfonso nodded.

  "Good night," said the innkeeper.

  Once he was alone, Alfonso took a closer look at his surroundings. The dirty yellow walls felt like they were closing in on him. He felt stifled and anxious. Alfonso thought of his mother. By now, certainly, someone had informed her that he had gone missing. He would have to call her first thing in the morning.

  Alfonso sat on the bed. It squeaked as a plume of dust rose from the faded green bedspread. He opened his backpack, to distract himself from his fears as much as to make sure that everything was there. One by one, he lifted out his belongings. It was comforting to see these familiar objects in such a foreign place. He paused to examine his blue sphere. It was roughly the size of an orange, but it weighed almost nothing. Alfonso had found it in Straszydlo Forest, on the way to Somnos, three years before. The sphere was a curious thing. It could fly through the air with the force of a cannonball and then return to Alfonso's outstretched hand with the gentleness of a fluttering feather.