by Dean Lorey
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Theodore said, straightening up in his chair. “I really should be a Banisher, actually, because nothing scares me. My father’s a Banisher,” he added with some pride.
“All right, then,” Tabitha said. “Let’s begin with you.”
Theodore sat on a chair at the head of the class. “This isn’t going to work,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Just relax,” Tabitha told him soothingly. “I want you to meet something, a creature from the Nether.”
She stepped over to a small cage that rested on a desk that had been carved from the innards of the banyan tree. The cage was covered in a black velvet drape. Tabitha reached her hand under the velvet and pulled something out.
“This is a Snark,” she said.
Everyone leaned forward, straining to see the thing she held in her hand. It was a tiny, fragile-looking ball of fur with large round eyes and a small beaklike mouth.
It cooed gently.
“Aw, it’s cute!” one of the girls in the class exclaimed.
“The Snark feeds on fear the same way a mosquito feeds on blood,” Tabitha continued. “As a mosquito drinks blood, its body gets full and round. The Snark, when it feeds, changes as well.”
“Into what?” Theodore asked.
“You’ll find out,” Tabitha said, placing the Snark on his shoulder. It was as light as a feather and it clung to him on its spindly little bird legs. “Now,” Tabitha said, “close your eyes.”
Theodore did.
“So you’re not afraid of anything?” she asked.
“Nope. Always been that way. I’m a combat machine—no emotions, raw power.”
“Like your father?”
“Definitely. He’s one of the toughest Banishers around. He’s on a black op right now. You know what a black op is?”
“I do,” Tabitha said. The Snark chirped and cooed softly on Theodore’s shoulder. “He must have been very proud to find out that you were accepted into the Nightmare Academy.”
“Absolutely. Like father, like son.”
“But that’s not really true, is it?” Tabitha continued. “How do you think he’ll feel when he finds out you’re not a Banisher like he is?”
“But, see, I am a Banisher. There was just a problem with that stupid Trout, which I tried to explain to the Headmaster. I think it was sick or something.”
“Your father didn’t have any problems like that, did he?”
“I guess not,” Theodore said, shifting uncomfortably. “But, the thing is, our whole lives can’t be determined by some dumb, defective fi—”
“The truth is, you’re not really a Banisher,” Tabitha said, interrupting him as she moved in closer. “You wanted to be, your father expected you to be, but you couldn’t do it. You’re not strong enough, are you?”
“But I am,” Theodore said quickly.
Something happened to the Snark. It started to swell, puffing out at odd angles. The fuzzy yellow fur dropped off, leaving only bare, raw skin. A barbed tail poked out of its flesh and a jaw began to protrude—a jaw with small, sharp fangs.
Seeing this, Tabitha pressed on, more intensely now.
“You’re a disappointment to him.”
“No…”
“All he wanted was a son like him, a strong young man, a combat machine who could follow in his footsteps and make him proud. Instead, he got you—a weak little Nethermancer.”
Theodore was near tears now, but the Snark—
It was much bigger, the size of a vulture. Black bat wings exploded from its back and it hovered just behind Theodore with an eerie vibrating sound. Below its large, lidless eyes, a snakelike tongue flickered in and out of its toothy snout, as if it could almost taste the fear in the air.
“Maybe he won’t care…,” Theodore said softly, starting to rock back and forth. “Maybe he’ll be proud of me anyway.”
“But you don’t really believe that, do you? You think he’ll care very much. What if he doesn’t want you to be his son? What if he can’t stand to even look at you?”
“What if he’s ashamed of me!” Theodore suddenly shouted, his eyes snapping open in panic. “What if he doesn’t love me anymore?”
With that, the Snark grew to the size of a hyena, its forked tongue greedily tasting the air like a drowning man gulping his first breath of oxygen.
“Stop it!” Charlie shouted at Tabitha. He turned to Theodore. “Don’t believe her—you know it’s not true.”
But Theodore couldn’t hear him.
His panic grew quickly, like a snowball rolling downhill. Suddenly, there was a soft pop and a small portal opened up in front of him, no bigger than a bicycle wheel, its rim crackling with purple flame. Through it, Charlie could see the barren plains of the Nether and a gaggle of creatures he recognized as Gremlins. Startled, they scattered away from the open portal, disappearing into the dark crevices of the rocks.
“That’s good,” Tabitha said, taking Theodore by the face and forcing him to focus his attention on her. “You did it.”
“What?” Theodore said dazedly, as if waking from a deep sleep.
“You opened a portal into the Nether, to the 1st ring.”
Theodore stared in amazement at the portal that shimmered in front of him. “I did that?” he asked.
Tabitha nodded and smiled warmly. “Congratulations…Nethermancer.”
Theodore’s breathing slowed, and a small smile crept across his swollen face. The portal wavered a moment, like a mirage, then disappeared with an audible pop.
Above him, the Snark began to shrink. Its fanged jaw folded back into its face, the tail and bat wings receded into its flesh, and, as it dropped down, its fuzzy yellow hair regrew until it was, once again, an adorable little yellow ball of fluff perched delicately on Theodore’s shoulder.
It chirped and cooed. The class stared in amazement.
“Wow,” Alejandro muttered.
“It seems we have found your key, Theodore,” Tabitha said. “The personal fear that, with practice, you can use to create portals whenever you need to. Most people think that Banishers are the tough ones, but we know that the scariest things are not out there…but in here.” She tapped her head. “And we face those fears every day. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, Professor Greenstreet,” Theodore said quietly, and hopped off the chair.
“So…who’s next?” Tabitha asked.
Not a single student raised a hand.
She smiled ruefully. “Nervous? I don’t blame you. I told you our work here would seem difficult, even cruel, but it is necessary if you’re to gain mastery of your powers. Everyone will have to take a turn. Let’s start with you.” She gestured to a slight young girl with mousy brown hair. Hesitantly, the girl got up and walked to the front.
It continued that way for almost two hours.
All of the students sat down in the chair and had a fresh Snark placed on their shoulders. Tabitha questioned them, gently at first, using the Snark and her own experience as a guide. She probed for their fears the same way a dentist probes a tooth to find the raw nerve.
Some students had a breakthrough and managed to create a small portal that wavered hesitantly in the air for a few seconds before disappearing. Others never got that far—their fears had not yet been fully exposed or they were not advanced enough with the Gift to make use of them. Finally, everyone had taken a turn.
Everyone but Charlie.
“I guess that just leaves me,” he said.
“It does,” Tabitha agreed with some reluctance.
“You don’t want me to go, do you?” Charlie said with sudden understanding. “You’re afraid I’ll…do something bad again.”
This was true, Tabitha realized, and yet, how else could he learn?
“We’re just going to start very small,” she said reassuringly. “Step on up.”
Charlie walked to the chair next to Tabitha and sat down. She reached into the cage, withdrew a Snark, and placed it on h
is shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
Charlie did. Almost unconsciously, the rest of the class drew back, shying away from him, from what he might do.
“Now, this isn’t about the size of the portal we open or how far into the Nether it goes…. This is about control. Let’s just see if we can tap into a small fear and open a gateway no farther than the 1st ring.”
“Okay,” Charlie said with a nod. The Snark nuzzled up against his neck, tickling him.
“How many people in the world have the Gift, Charlie?”
“Two percent.”
“And of those, how many are a Double-Threat?”
Charlie didn’t answer right away. He could see where she was leading him, but he didn’t want to follow.
“Charlie?”
“One every twenty or thirty years,” he said finally. He could feel unease rising in him like a black tide. The Snark suddenly started to transform—hair dropped off quickly as its bare skin bulged and bubbled rapidly.
Tabitha was clearly shocked at how fast it was changing. “I think we should stop for today,” she said.
But Charlie couldn’t hear her. “I’m a freak,” he whispered, his mind racing down a track he couldn’t turn away from. “And I’ll always be one, even here.”
“No, Charlie,” Tabitha protested. “You’re just different, that’s all. Special.”
“Special ’s just another word for loser!” Charlie shouted. His stomach was beginning to feel sick—sick and sour—and he found it hard to catch his breath. “I thought I found a home, a place where I belonged, a place full of people just like me, but they’re not like me, not really. I’ll always be alone….”
“That’s not true, Charlie!” Tabitha said, glancing nervously at the Snark. It was changing at a frenzied pace now, eyes bulging, claws lengthening….
“I’ll never be normal,” Charlie continued, not listening to her. His panic rose like a flame fanned by hot wind.
“I’ll never fit in.”
Suddenly, with breathtaking speed, the Snark transformed into something monstrous.
Gigantic bat wings exploded from its back. It took flight and hovered above Charlie like a small dragon. Its barbed tail was nearly ten feet in length, which was about the same size as its wingspan. Hundreds of gleaming white teeth, each the size of a railroad spike, erupted from its snout at jagged angles.
Tabitha, amazed at the sheer speed and size of the transformation, drew back. “That’s enough, Charlie,” she said. “Let it go.”
But Charlie couldn’t hear her. His mind spun sickeningly as he realized that the depth and power of his Gift separated him from the rest of the kids as surely as prison bars.
Even among freaks, I’m still an outcast, he thought. I’ll always be alone.
Suddenly, with a deafening crack, a huge portal snapped open in front of Charlie, bigger even than the one he had created in the Nightmare Division.
The other students stumbled back, astonished.
“No,” Tabitha gasped.
There was a sound like cannon shots, one after the other, drawing closer. Charlie dimly recognized them as the sound of Barakkas’s hooves, slamming into the obsidian floor of his castle in the Nether. Finally, Barakkas himself loomed into view, sparks showering the air behind his every step.
He lifted his right arm, which was severed neatly just past the elbow, and grinned.
“Hello again, Charlie Benjamin,” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A TERRIBLE HOUSEPARTY
Charlie’s breath caught in his chest and he couldn’t take his eyes off that horrible stump. Barakkas waved it casually in front of him.
“It doesn’t hurt so much anymore,” he said. “In fact, I’m almost getting used to life without it. It’s funny how quickly that happens.” He was so close that Charlie nearly gagged from the gamy goatish stench of his filthy hide.
“Charlie, shut down the portal. Shut it now!” Tabitha shouted, but her voice was a whisper from a far away mountaintop.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Charlie said to Barakkas. “It was a mistake.”
“Oh, I know,” Barakkas said, quick to reassure him. “You would never want to do that intentionally. And yet…you did. You hurt me quite a lot, in fact. I’ll never fully recover.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said.
“Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be sorry after doing something so horrible, unintentional or not? And yet, it’s one thing to say you’re sorry and another thing entirely to show it.”
“How?”
“You not only took away my hand,” Barakkas continued, stepping closer to the open portal. He was now only several yards away. “You took something even more precious. My bracer. Do you remember it?”
Charlie cast his mind back. He did, in fact, remember the large metal bracer around Barakkas’s wrist, splashing dark red light around the High Council chamber.
“I do remember it,” he said.
“I want it back,” Barakkas replied simply. “That’s not so much to ask, is it?”
He was so soothing as he spoke…so reasonable.…
“But I don’t have it,” Charlie said. “It’s still at the Nightmare Division.”
“Then why don’t we go together,” Barakkas said, “and get it back.” With that, the giant beast stepped through the open gateway.
Or tried to.
As soon as Barakkas breached the portal, he groaned in agony and thudded to the ground with the force of a building collapsing, throwing up dust, leaning precariously on the rough knuckles of his one good hand.
“What happened?” Charlie cried out, startled.
Barakkas looked around wildly. “Where is this place?” he thundered.
“We’re at the Nightmare Academy,” Charlie said, backing away in terror. Even racked with pain, danger still radiated from Barakkas like heat off boiling asphalt. In fact, he seemed even more deadly now, like a cornered animal that must kill to survive.
“What’s wrong with you?” Charlie whispered, and suddenly his mind rushed back to something Mama Rose had said earlier—that the Academy was safe, a sanctuary from the creatures of the Nether.
Now he thought he understood why.
It was the Academy itself that had crippled Barakkas, some strange protection that was built into its branches. Is this what the Headmaster had meant when she said there were two reasons for training students here? Stimulating the imagination was the first one.
Was this the second?
“Shut it!” Tabitha yelled. She pointed to Barakkas, who was still only halfway through the portal. “If you close it now, you’ll kill him! Do it!”
“Me?” Charlie asked, dazed. “You want me to kill him?”
But before he got a chance, Barakkas summoned his remaining power and heaved himself backward through the open gateway and into the safety of his palace in the Nether. “Treacherous woman,” he growled, his strength seeming to return quickly now that he was shielded from the effects of the Academy.
He rose to his feet, towering over the humans on the other side of the portal like a temple god. “This isn’t over,” he said. “I may not be able to cross through here, but there will be another time and another place.” He smiled at Charlie with a ghastly grin. “Believe me, boy, when I say I have no anger toward you—as long as you return to me what was mine. Retrieve my bracer.”
“I can’t,” Charlie said.
“You can,” Barakkas replied. “It will yield to you. There are very few who have the power to control it. It’s an ancient thing, you know—an Artifact of the Nether. I will consider your debt to me paid in full if only you’ll return it to my palace. I will grant you safe passage.”
“How can I believe you?” Charlie asked.
“Because I just gave you my word,” Barakkas replied. “Don’t you agree that I should be the mistrustful one? After all, I’m the one who suffered grievous harm. I’m the one who will never again be whole.” He
rubbed his thumb over the stump. It was just beginning to heal, but as Barakkas raked his nail over the newly forming skin, black blood oozed out.
Charlie winced.
“I’m no assassin,” the giant creature continued, glaring at Tabitha. “Was I the one crying out for murder? No, I’m the reasonable one, Charlie Benjamin. I just want to make everything right. So…will you kindly return to me the item that you took?”
Charlie considered.
“No,” he said finally.
Barakkas stared at him and suddenly his orange eyes went red with rage. “NEVER TELL ME NO!” he thundered, and his voice was so loud that Charlie actually felt his teeth vibrate. Every muscle on Barakkas’s body tensed in fury and the talons on his good left hand bit deeply into his palm, drawing blood. The color drained from Charlie’s face as he remembered what Rex had warned him about—that, on the surface, Barakkas seemed calm but that his temper was legendary.
“I’m sorry…,” Charlie gasped.
And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the rage left Barakkas like a lightning storm so intense that it couldn’t last more than a few moments. He took a breath and all the tension seemed to drain from his body.
“No need to apologize,” Barakkas replied in his calmest voice. “Perhaps you fail to understand the importance of this Artifact of the Nether and the depth of your debt to me.”
“He understands,” a voice next to Charlie chimed in. “And he clearly said no.” Charlie turned to see Headmaster Brazenhope standing beside him.
“Headmaster?” Charlie said.
“Hello, Charlie. Good-bye, Barakkas.”
And, with that, the Headmaster waved her hand and the giant portal that Charlie had created slammed closed, cutting off Barakkas’s howl of rage.
“This is an ominous occurrence,” the Headmaster said later that night as she, Rex, Tabitha, and Pinch held council in her study. “I would not have expected the boy to return to the castle of Barakkas so quickly. If the Academy’s defenses had not held, it could have been a tragedy. At least we know the Guardian is still strong.”