Or he would cease to exist.
CHAPTER TEN
OR
MY WORLD STARTS SHAKING
“Don’t fade away, fight it,” I called over my shoulder as I ran inside. “I’ll be back with the book.”
I hurried up the stairs…and came to an abrupt stop when I found my dad standing at the library door.
“Jack, what’s the hurry,” he said, smiling. “Book emergency?”
My dad had never been more spot on.
“Kinda,” I said, trying to maneuver around him, but he blocked my way. I couldn’t just shove him aside.
“Your mom and I have to drive back to the city again, shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “Want to come to? We could go catch a movie.”
I couldn’t afford to waste time chatting with my dad.
“That sounds great, but I’d rather check out our library instead.” I ducked under his arm. “You and mom have fun without me,” I said before the door shut behind me, undoubtedly leaving my dad bewildered that I turned down an invite to go to the movies in favor of books.
And with them gone, I’d gained another day of keeping a red boy with horns a secret.
If he was still here after today.
I pulled the key from my pocked, its long chain dangling from my hand.
With each step toward the place where I’d last seen the door, my heart beat faster.
Faint at first, the door materialized in front of me. With each step I came closer, the door solidified. When I finally stood close enough to touch it, holding the key up, it was as solid a door you could imagine.
I let my hand slide over the smooth wood, before I slid the key into the keyhole.
I pushed on the door handle.
The door opened smoothly, revealing the weird library behind. I had no time to marvel in the strangeness of it. Ignoring the moving shapes on the floor, I walked along the first bookshelf, searching for the right book.
Large shelves filled with books loomed over me. Hundreds and hundreds of leather-bound books. How to find the right one? And where to start? Under R like Remedies or under I like Illnesses? I searched first under R, but I found nothing.
Some book titles weren’t even in English. And some weren’t in any kind of language known to humans, I was sure. I tried to ignore all the strange sounding titles, but flinched at some of them.
“A hundred ways to skin a goblin?” I read under my breath. “Really?”
Ugh.
I walked back to the titles starting with R to begin my search all over again, when I saw titles starting with a D.
“Of course.” I slapped my forehead. D like Demon.
Quickly, I checked the titles. The ones I could read anyhow.
There!
On the shelf was a book with a silver ornament on the spine. The same ornament that was on Brink’s crate. With shaking hands, I took it from the shelf.
“Remedies for Demonic Illnesses.”
I flipped it open and scanned the index.
Demons and Sickness, page 239.
The three grave demonic goofs are: Plum Fever (page 240), Giddy Pox (page 243) and Rotten Disease (page 246)
Rotten Disease.
R.D!
I flipped to page 246:
Against Rotten Disease, mix your own rotten medicine: Put leaves with kitchen waste in a pot. Heat it up. Wait one hour. Add more leaves, water and dry bugs. Liberal amounts of chilies if available, the hotter the better. Fill into a jam jar. After two days, the concoction is ready.
“No!” I yelled at the book. “I don’t have that much time.”
Tears of frustration pricked my eyes; Brink would be gone forever if I couldn’t find a solution that cured him. I was about to close the book, when the last sentence caught my eye.
If you need a quick fix, a compost heap might do the trick.
It hit me like a train. Our compost heap was full of leaves, eggshells, banana peels and other rotting garbage.
Rotten things to fight a rotten smell.
I slammed the book shut. The garden compost was right behind the apple tree where Brink was waiting. I had lost so much time in the library. I hoped it wasn’t too late.
I ran out the library, shut the door and locked it with the key. Less I’d lose the key, I placed the chain around my neck.
The door disappeared.
I was back in the good old castle library.
I breathed a sigh of relief. The other library had set me on edge, as if someone had been watching me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but everything inside there had been decidedly creepy.
Suddenly, a low rumbling shook the floor. I stumbled a few steps forward, grabbing one of the reading chairs. For several seconds, the ground rocked and rolled. Books fell off their shelves.
Then the motion stopped.
Just what I needed.
An earthquake.
After waiting a few seconds to make sure the ground would stay put. I let out the breath that I’d been holding.
On any other day I would have been thrilled to have experienced my first earthquake, but not today.
Today I had a demon to save.
Fast as I could, I ran to the garden.
“Brink, you are saved,” I shouted when I reached the apple tree.
He was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OR
TOO LATE, TOO LATE
“Are you still here?”
I looked around the garden, my heart in my throat.
A bee buzzed past my face as I walked closer to the apple tree, searching. He wasn’t sitting beneath it and he hadn’t climbed between the branches—why would he, really?
A few dragonflies zipped over the pond. The knee-high grass that framed the pond moved gently in the breeze.
A couple of my t-shirts, towels and linens hung on the clothes line, waiting to be folded.
The vegetable patch needed attention. And the bright red tulips were a stark contrast against the dark brick wall surrounding the garden. A black bird landed on the lawn.
It was all very peaceful.
It was all very devoid of demon.
Would Brink just stay gone?
Standing in my completely ordinary, demon-free garden, I waited for a miracle.
None came.
Brink was gone, gone for good.
Sadness grabbed me as I stumbled forward, unable to grasp the fact that the demon was lost. I’d just saved him from the stupid crate. How dare he cease to exist!
It didn’t seem fair.
Then something amazing happened.
I walked into the foulest stench you could imagine. I gagged. My stomach turned and I nearly threw up.
It was awesome.
I slumped down on the grass and gulped down the fresh air near the ground.
“Is that you?” I was laughing, even though the air around me was positively poisonous. If his awful rottenness was still very much alive, he was still here somewhere.
“Brink, listen, the compost heap is your cure.”
How was he supposed to use the heap?
There was only one thing that would work. “Glide through the compost like a ghost.”
I could almost hear him say, “I’m not a ghost!”
I looked hard at the heap for a trace of Brink.
There!
A faint red glimmer above the heap.
I squinted. A pale shape of red was gliding slowly through the heap. But with each second, he grew more solid. He became more and more visible. After another minute, Brink was back, horns, scowl and all.
Finally, he was stuck in the heap, too solid to glide through it.
I’d saved him!
“That was disgusting.” Brink climbed out of the compost heap, a banana peel sticking to his leg.
“I did it!” The pressure to save Brink’s life lifting of my chest. I couldn’t stop grinning.
“Took you long enough.”
Guess you couldn’t expect gratitud
e from a demon.
“I told you to get the book from the other library,” I said. “But no, you had to try the foul smelling drink first.”
Brink grunted and removed pieces of broken egg shells from his shirt.
Then he held out his hand. “The key.”
With a twinge of regret, I took the chain with the skeleton key off my neck. “You could thank me, you know.”
He slipped the chain over his head and hid the key inside his shirt. “I could. Or I could burn all the hair off your head, you know.”
We looked at each other, grinning.
I held up my hand. “High-five!”
He looked at me and my hand as if I’d lost my mind. “High-five what?”
“Nevermind,” I said, laughing. “I saved you!”
Then the earth shook again in long rolling motions that sent us both sprawling to the ground.
CHAPTER TWELVE
OR
THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
When the earthquake stopped, we’d run inside the castle. I didn’t want the ground to swallow me whole or something.
We headed to the kitchen in search of snacks and hot cocoa. While Brink drank hot chocolate looking completely like his old self, I poured myself a glass of water.
“So, how does the key work?” I asked. “Can it open any door?”
Brink shook his head. “The key opens doors to rooms in the In-Between.”
“The In-Between?”
“To somewhere in-between your world and another,” he said, taking a sip of hot chocolate. “Libraries in your world often contain a door to an In-Between library, almost as if books like to huddle together.”
He shrugged. “But I didn’t know for sure until I found the door yesterday.”
“Well, it certainly helped us to beat the Rotting Disease!”
I raised the water glass to my lips in celebration, then, like a fist to the stomach, I remembered the worst was yet to come.
I sank onto a chair, biting my lip. Any moment now, the Collector would come knocking on my door to demand payment.
I didn’t have the gold.
And he would find out that Brink was still alive and well.
And then what would Hell do?
“Brink,” I said, “we have a problem.”
I had no idea how much of the phone call he’d overheard, but I quickly filled him in with the finer details.
“If the Collector finds you here, he’ll lock you inside the crate again.”
“I’m not going back inside that crate,” he said. “I like it here.”
“You have to leave,” I said. “Go somewhere where they can’t find you. Can’t you go back to your family?”
Brink shook his head. “My family isn’t exactly…nurturing.”
“Could you use the key to escape? Like, open a door to another world and be gone?”
“If I want to spend the rest of my life locked inside a space in the In-Between and never leave it again, sure,” he said. “The In-Between leads to nowhere.”
“Then go somewhere else where the Collector can’t find you.”
“You don’t understand. You ordered me. I’m stuck with you until I can pay you twice the gold you paid for me. Only then will I be truly free again.”
“How would you ever be able to pay me that much gold?” I asked, taken aback.
“I have gold.”
“You do? Where?”
“Not here, obviously,” he said, scowling harder than ever. “But I know where gold and other more interesting items are.”
“You do? How?”
Brink seemed to think hard for a few seconds, and then he shrugged as if making up his mind. “The book,” he said as if this would explain anything.
“What book?”
“The book I had with me in the crate.”
“The one with a kraken on the cover?”
Brink looked surprised. “So you noticed that? Not so slow after all.”
I grinned.
“That book,” Brink continued, “belonged to my brother.”
“But it turned to ashes.”
“He probably jinxed it when he noticed it missing. But I told you, I memorized all of it while I was stuck in the crate.”
“So,” I said, “what’s the book about?
“Let’s call it my brother’s…diary of sorts.”
“His diary?” My mind boggled at the thought of a demon sitting down to write in a diary. “And why did you have it?”
“Because I stole it from him just before he locked me into the crate.”
“He can’t be happy about that,” I said, wondering if Brink knew what he was doing. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll be mad at you?”
“He should be afraid,” Brink said defiantly. “In any case, I know where to go to find gold.”
“But I need gold now,” I said, feeling miserable and poor for my lack of fortune. “I can’t pay for you.”
“They’ll make you,” Brink said, causing my stomach to drop to my feet. “You have a debt with Hell. They don’t forget.”
We sat silently at the table, mulling over our options.
If the Collector showed up, Brink would be back inside a crate. If he somehow hid from him, I was still owing Hell gold. In any scenario, someone was wickedly in a pickle.
“And they know where I live too,” I said with a sigh.
“BOOM, BOOM, BOOOOM.”
I sat up straight as I heard the loud, thundering sound.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
“BOOOM.”
I raced to the window and looked outside.
My heart sank to my feet and I went cold all over—in front of the castle on the graveled parkway was a banana-yellow truck. Large black letters spelled:
Get-A-Demon—COLLECTION
I sought Brink’s gaze. “The Collector is here.”
What would the Collector do?
I remembered what Torque had said. That I’d never want to find out who the Collector was.
A shiver of fear ran down my spine.
“I’m not going back in that crate,” Brink said loudly as if he finally understood the seriousness of our situation.
He slammed his hand hard on the table. Sparks flew from his fingertips. “I will NOT!”
When he slammed his hand on the table again, the floor shifted beneath our feet.
Not another earthquake, I thought.
Through the window, I saw a flock of birds taking flight. Then the floor shook again, and the windowsill vibrated beneath my hands.
There was an overall high pitched sound like a dog whistle being blown hard.
Dust fell from the ceiling and the kitchen light was swinging back and forth, back and forth. A glass fell to the ground and shattered.
With a huge grinding and groaning, the castle wobbled. I felt my stomach lurch, like a rollercoaster swoop only backwards.
When I looked through the open window, only sky, sky and more blue sky greeted my gaze. And a few scattered clouds. Wind whipped my hair away from my face and made my eyes water.
Below, the street leading to our castle looked cartoonish small. And there was clearly a yellow shape on the ground, like a toppled over delivery truck, but it grew smaller and smaller. Then I couldn’t make out details anymore, just big shapes and colors. The enormous hole in the ground was the oddest sight of all.
My mind connected the dots, but I had trouble accepting what my eyes were seeing.
I stared at Brink, my mouth open.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Brink said dryly, “the castle is airborne.”
“Guess those weren’t earthquakes,” I said, staring at passing clouds as we climbed even higher. An uncontrollable grin spread over my face.
“They’ll never find us. We’re gone, address unknown!”
Brink smirked. “If we’re lucky, the castle takes travel suggestions. I have a few destination ideas.”
“Taken from your brother’s diary?”
“Precise
ly.”
Brink frowned at his hand, as if in thought. Then he held his hand up.
“High-five?” he asked.
“You learn fast.”
I high-fived him and watched as cloud dotted sky turned into a deep blue. I enjoyed the cold wind in my face as we headed toward an unknown destination.
This was Greencastle no more, I thought.
Welcome to Skycastle!
Coming Soon
Book 2 in the Skycastle Series
Skycastle and the
Demonic Incident in Chinatown
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Mulberry loves to write books filled with strange adventures, odd characters and mysterious circumstances. She lives in Southern California with her scowling teenager, a chubby blue cat-beast, an imaginary dog and one leaky roof.
www.andymulberry.com
If you enjoyed reading
Jack’s and Brink’s adventure, please consider writing a short review. Thank you!
Skycastle, the Demon, and Me: Book 1 in the Skycastle series Page 4