The Chronicles of Trellah, Book One: The Perpetual Rain

by T. S. Graham

  “I don’t know where the children are,” she lied.

  “Okay, then.” Mr. Harris sounded disappointed but convinced. “I have to go out there and try to calm everyone down. Promise me you’ll be here when I get back. Your mother deserves to know you’re okay, and I can’t go find her until I’ve done everything in my power to convince those folks to stay.”

  “I promise.”

  “Thank you. . . . You can rest on the couch if you want to. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if you could take out those . . . contacts by the time I get back.”

  Sophina gave Mr. Harris a weak nod, and he opened the door to find Spike waiting on the other side.

  “What’s the holdup?” Spike asked in a huff. “I need to get this rolling; my camera battery is running on fumes!”

  Mr. Harris tried to step past him, but Spike held firm. “She said that she’d talk to me when you two were done. You heard her say it.”

  “She’ll talk,” Mr. Harris fibbed. “She’s just too tired to do it now. She needs some time to . . . rest.” His voice faltered as his eyes started to glaze over. He just stared at Spike’s chest with a confused look.

  “Rest?” repeated Spike. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Mr. Harris didn’t answer the question, which upset Spike even more.

  “I’ll find you if you try to leave,” Spike said to Sophina as he turned away from Mr. Harris in disgust. “My best guy is outside that window right now, ready to follow you wherever you go.”

  “She’s not leaving,” assured Mr. Harris, snapping out of his stupor. “She just needs some time to herself. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” With that, he stepped past Spike and closed the office door. Sophina could hear the irate newsman continuing to argue from the other side.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I do know that you’re not her father—and that means you can’t speak for her!”

  Sophina would’ve continued to listen, but a small knock drew her attention to a butler’s window that was built into the wall behind Mr. Harris’s desk. She walked to it, unlatched the access panel, and pulled it open to find Erickson’s rosy face peering at her from the other side.

  “Umm, are you okay?” he asked. “You don’t look—or smell—so good.”

  “Thanks,” Sophina returned drily.

  “I mean, you look fine,” Erickson backtracked. “What I meant was—”

  “It’s okay,” Sophina interrupted. “I know what you meant.”

  Erickson nibbled at his bottom lip. “Your eyes . . . Those aren’t really contacts, are they?”

  Before Sophina could answer, a loud bang shook the door of the bathroom where Erickson stood. His parents had converted what used to be an old breakfast room and adjoining kitchen into a lavatory and office, but their work wasn’t quite finished. After all, there wasn’t much use for a butler’s window that connected a bathroom with an office.

  “Erickson, are you okay?” Mrs. Harris called through the door.

  “I’m fine, Mom. I told you—I have stomach cramps.”

  “Okay, honey. I’m right here if you need me.”

  Erickson turned to Sophina with a pained look. He knew he was about to get teased.

  “Stomach cramps?” Sophina goaded playfully.

  “This is the only place she can’t follow me,” Erickson whispered. “She’s totally freaked, and to be honest, so am I. And your eyes aren’t helping any.”

  “Sorry . . . I’ll explain why my eyes look this way, but you have to help me do something first. And you can’t tell a soul about any of it. Promise me you won’t.”

  “I promise . . . as long as it doesn’t involve human sacrifice.”

  “Shut up,” Sophina said, grinning. She felt just like she did when they used to trade harmless barbs in Mrs. Tanner’s science lab.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help it,” Erickson said with a crooked grin. “It’s just that you look like a devil worshipper.”

  Sophina was amused, but she knew that Erickson probably wasn’t the only one to think that. “Are you going to help me or not?” she asked.

  “Of course I am.”

  “Good. My eyes are red because of a substance called drahtuah. It doesn’t exist here, but it’s everywhere in the place I just came from.”

  “And . . . where did you come from?”

  Sophina tried to think of a way to explain it other than by being blunt, but she couldn’t.

  “Another dimension,” she revealed.

  Erickson stepped back and said nothing.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Of course I believe you. After what I saw, I’d believe it if you told me you were an alien wearing Sophina’s skin to cover your slime. But what were you doing there?”

  “I can’t explain everything, but it has to do with Eliot and the other kids. They’re in trouble, and I have to go back to the other dimension so I can help them. I need your help getting there.”

  “How can I help you do that?”

  “I dropped something on the floor, and I think someone picked it up,” Sophina explained. “It’s a glass vial, filled with the same stuff that’s in my eyes. I need it so I can create a wormhole that will take me back to the other dimension.”

  “You came through a wormhole—from another freaking dimension,” Erickson said in awe. “That’s so much cooler than melting stuff with acid.”

  Sophina smiled again. Life had been such a whirlwind since she’d left Mrs. Tanner’s basement that she hadn’t stopped to consider how remarkable this all was.

  Wham! Wham! Wham!

  The door shook again as Mrs. Harris banged on it, yelling even louder than before: “Erickson, why is it taking you so long? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Give me a break, Mom!” Erickson hollered. “I’ve only been in here for two minutes!”

  “I was just checking. No need to be rude!”

  “Tell her you’re still having cramps,” Sophina joked, causing Erickson’s face to go almost as crimson as her eyes.

  “You tell her,” he challenged. “She’ll love that.”

  “Okay.” Sophina opened her mouth to yell out, forcing Erickson to reach through the opening and cover her mouth.

  He shook his head in defeat. “This vial you talked about . . . If someone picked it up, how will I find it? I can’t search everyone’s pockets.”

  “You don’t need to,” Sophina explained. “You just have to get close to it—and you’ll sense where it is. I can’t describe it, but you’ll know when it happens. It’s like you feel it calling to you.”

  “Maybe you should do it.”

  “I can’t. I’ve built up a tolerance to it and can’t sense it anymore. Please, Erickson; you’re the only one I can trust with this.”

  “Fine,” he conceded, “but you have to tell me one more thing first.”

  “I will if I can.”

  “What was the thing that chased you through the wormhole?”

  “It was a watcher.”

  “What’s a watcher?”

  “Someone from our world who has died, but they’re too angry to move on to where they’re supposed to go,” Sophina tried to explain. “The one you saw is angry with me, so he follows me everywhere I go. He’s even here right now.”

  Erickson’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “What do you mean, here? He’s gone. I watched him fall to pieces and disappear.”

  “Trust me, he’s still here,” Sophina said, trying not to sound too ominous. “He just can’t exist in solid form in our world. But where I came from, he can.”

  “So . . . he’s a ghost?”

  Sophina nodded.

  “What did you do to make him angry?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “So, you have some kind of an idea then?”

  “Mrs. Tanner thinks he could be someone who lived in my house a long time ago, who died someplace far away. When his spirit came back he found me there instead of his daughter—and he hates me because of
it.”

  “That’s freaky,” Erickson said, glancing over his shoulder as if he expected to find the old sailor floating right there behind him. “Do I have a watcher following me?” he asked, with another throat click.

  “I don’t know,” answered Sophina, wishing that she could put his mind at ease. “If you did, you’d never see it.” She knew that part wasn’t necessarily true, for she was now convinced that she had seen the old sailor many times before her arrival in Trellah, slinking in the shadows at the very edge of her vision. She just hadn’t known it was him.

  Sophina expected another question, but instead Erickson muttered, “That’s so awesome” under his breath.

  “You think it’s awesome that some dead guy wants to kill me?” she asked in disbelief.

  “No, not that,” responded Erickson with a gleam in his eye. “I was just thinking about what it did to Andy. I’m pretty sure he peed his pants.”

  Sophina grinned from ear to ear, which caused Erickson to do the same.

  “You’ll tell me everything when you get back, right?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Watch me through the door. I’ll signal you if I sense where that stuff is.” He turned to leave, but stopped when Sophina spoke.

  “Erickson . . . ? Thank you.”

  He gave her one last smile and then opened the door to the main hall, where his mother hovered impatiently.

  Sophina closed the butler’s window and walked back to the office door. She cracked it open to find that Spike Branson was standing halfway across the room. He was too busy berating his cameraman to notice her peering out.

  Erickson arrived at the refreshments table and walked among the people gathered there. He brushed by Mr. Albion, the bus driver whose hands shook when they weren’t on the wheel; he skirted past Mrs. Cushing, the town librarian who never collected late fees, even when a book was weeks late; and he slipped past Ed Warren, the plumber who was dressed in the same oil-stained jumpsuit he had worn to work for the past five years.

  He moved on to a gathering of parents and children as his mother followed with a perplexed look. He mingled for several seconds and then turned to Sophina. With a slight shake of his head, he told her that he had sensed nothing.

  Just then, Spike pushed by Erickson in a huff. Erickson’s eyes widened as Spike rifled through a stash of gear in the corner of the room. After a moment of wistful gaping, he turned to Sophina with a slack-jawed expression that was unmistakable: He had found what she was looking for.

  Of course Spike has it, Sophina thought. That’s why it took so long for him to harass me after I crossed over!

  “Mr. Harris?” she called. He turned to her with a defeated expression as yet another guest walked out the front door. He sighed and made his way over to her.

  “I’ll talk to Mr. Branson now,” she said when he arrived at the office door.

  “That’s not a good idea,” said Mr. Harris with a cool resolve. “He just wants to use you to make himself look good.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Sophina said.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I’m responsible for you until your mom gets back. She’s the only one who can make that decision.”

  “You don’t understand,” she pressed. “I have to talk to him now.”

  Mr. Harris was brimming with frustration, and for the first time ever she heard him speak with raw emotion. “What do you expect me to do, Sophina?” he said. “Given the circumstances, I think I’ve been more than understanding with you and your refusal to talk with me. Now you’re demanding that I let you do a television interview—without your mom’s permission—with a man I don’t trust. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

  “I wouldn’t let me do it either,” she admitted, “unless I already knew what I’m about to tell you.”

  “And what’s that?” Mr. Harris asked.

  “That if you don’t let me, I’ll leave here and find someplace else to do it. I don’t think Spike Branson will mind getting rained on for this story.”

  “You feel that strongly about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, then, if it keeps you here. But, for the record, I think you’re making a mistake.” Mr. Harris walked off across the main hall.

  Moments later, Spike bore down on Sophina with Jake the cameraman in tow, wearing a smile that was even less authentic than the one she had watched him flash on TV so many times before.

  “I’m glad you came around,” he said as Jake readied his camera. “I was about to interview that little old lady over there. That would’ve been fun, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact that this will.”

  “No camera,” demanded Sophina, looking at the floor.

  “No camera?” Spike sneered. “I’m a television reporter. I don’t write for the school paper.”

  “First we set the rules—alone. Then he can come in. If you don’t agree, you can go ahead and interview Mrs. Sanford. I’m sure she knows everything about what happened.”

  Sophina could feel Spike’s calculating stare. It was clear that he was used to getting what he wanted, and was infuriated that a thirteen-year-old girl was in control of the situation.

  “My, my, aren’t you a demanding one. You heard the lady, Jake, put down the camera.”

  Mr. Harris had returned and was leaning in close to Sophina as she stepped back to allow Spike into the office. “I’ll be right outside the door,” he said. “If he tries to bully you, just yell and I’ll put a stop to it.”

  Sophina nodded, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge his offer to help. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate it; she just knew that she wasn’t the one who was about to get bullied.

  Sophina closed the door behind Spike, and they were alone.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, hon,” he started before she could turn around. “I’m sitting on the biggest story of modern times here, whether you’re on board or not. This will be front-page news worldwide, TV and print. I’ll be a millionaire within a month.”

  Spike stiffened as Sophina lowered her hood and turned to face him. Her eyes still had the effect that she was hoping for.

  “Don’t call me hon.”

  A lurid smile crept over Spike’s perfect yet repulsive face. “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said with infuriating smugness. “And to set things right, I’m going to make you an offer of a lifetime. With your cooperation, those millions I talked about could turn into billions. Think about it: My face selling your story around the planet. Your family will be set for generations—all because you chose to shake my hand at this very moment.”

  Sophina looked at his outstretched hand with disgust. “You have something that belongs to me, and I want it back,” she said.

  Spike’s phony smile was replaced by a savage stare. He reached into his breast pocket and extracted the gleaming vial that Sophina had been waiting to see. He stood silent for several beats of her heart, gazing at the powder trapped behind the glass.

  “Now why would I give this up, when it’s the one thing that guarantees my story won’t become tabloid fodder?”

  “You’ll give it back because it doesn’t belong to you.”

  “How do I know it belongs to you?” Spike asked, his eyes growing glassier by the second. “I found it on the floor. For all I know, it belonged to that thing that chased you. And from what I saw, it won’t be coming back to claim it.”

  “You don’t understand. The only reason you can think right now is because you have a small amount of it,” Sophina tried to explain. “If you had more, it would take over your mind. I can tell how weak you are.” She stepped toward Spike, but he was too lost in the drahtuah’s allure to notice.

  “I knew the instant I saw it that it isn’t from this world,” he continued with a brooding stare. “And while everyone else clambered to get away, I had the foresight to realize its importance. That’s why I’m the best at what I do.”

  Sophina had had quite enough of Spike Bran
son. Her head was pounding, her stomach was churning, and time was of the essence.

  “Give me the vial, or I’ll take it,” she demanded calmly. “It’ll be like stealing candy from a snot-faced two-year-old.”

  Spike closed his hand around the vial.

  “Really . . . That’s something I’d like to s—”

  Whack!

  In an instant, Sophina had clamped her hand around Spike’s wrist. His eyes bulged as he dropped to his knees, unable to move on account of the pain. The only sound he made was a rasping whimper.

  “I don’t like the way you treat people,” she said with a quiet growl. “I’d like nothing more than to break your fingers one by one to get that vial, but I’m better than that. So, if you’ll kindly open your hand . . .”

  It took a moment, but Spike complied. Sophina scooped the vial from his palm.

  “I knew you’d come around,” she said. “Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, because without this, that’s all you’ll have.”

  Spike gasped as she released him. Sweat had popped out on his forehead like beads of clear button candy.

  “Who—what—are you?” he managed to ask.

  “I’m Sophina Murray, and that’s all you’ll ever know about me.”

  Sophina opened the door to find Mr. Harris camped outside.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “We’ve come to an understanding,” she said as she strode by him on her way to the front door.

  “Sophina—wait!”

  Sophina’s feet stopped against her will. She’d been prepared to ignore Mr. Harris if he’d called out to her, but Erickson was a different story.

  “Erickson, stay away from her!” Mrs. Harris grabbed her son by the arm as he stepped toward Sophina.

  “No, Mom!” Erickson shouted as he yanked his arm away. “Sophina’s my friend. She won’t hurt me!”

  Mrs. Harris stood in shock as her son hurried over to Sophina.

  “Whatever you’re doing, you don’t need to do it alone,” Erickson said. “Lots of people will help you if you ask them. People like me.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a genuine smile, “but I have to do this alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Someday I’ll explain. But now I have to go.”