STRANGER WORLD

by Jack Castle

  The good news was the hole wasn’t that deep. Maddie could stand on his shoulders and easily reach the edge. From there he could push her the rest of the way up by pressing on the soles of her feet. He could then jump up, grab the ledge, and pull himself out. As he was formulating this plan he was suddenly thankful for maintaining his daily physical routine, which included forty pull-ups every morning.

  “C’mere, kiddo, let me give you a boost.”

  Maddie put one foot in his cupped hands, staring upward. “Uh, Dad.”

  He heard the alarm in her voice about the same time noticed the light was diminishing. He glimpsed up just time to see a panel silently closing over the hole and sealing them inside.

  “Dad,” Maddie moaned in the inky blackness. “Where are you?”

  George reached forward and hugged her close. “It’s okay, Maddie. I’m right here.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, trying to keep the fear from her voice, and doing a pretty fair job considering the circumstances.

  “Hang on, just give me a second to think.” He reflexively double-checked his pockets to make sure he didn’t have his mini-mag light or pocket knife he normally carried but turned up nothing. Why would they save us from the train and hover drone just to bury us alive? Like most things they’d encountered, it didn’t make sense.

  “Okay, I’m going to pick you up and I want you to press as hard as you can on the ceiling,” he called down to her.

  Her tiny voice replied from the darkness. “Uh, okay.”

  He gripped her around her small waist and was about to hoist her up when one of the walls silently descended into the floor letting in precious light.

  Instinctively, he maneuvered Maddie back behind him.

  Not much wider than his shoulders, a narrow tunnel lit by incandescent lighting lay before them and seemed to stretch on forever.

  “What do you think?” he asked her; knowing that if he empowered her with some of the decision making process it might help make her feel less helpless.

  “Well we can’t stay here,” she said tenaciously, circling around his waist and squeezing past him. As she headed down the tunnel she called back to him, “C’mon, Dad, it’s like Mine-Dweller.”

  Mine-Dweller? It took him a moment but then he remembered the video game Maddie would play for hours on end about the little miner with a pick ax digging holes below the surface and building underground cities. He had never understood the appeal but at least now he knew to which she was referring and was glad she was focused on something familiar.

  Seeing how far she had gotten ahead of him, he called after her, “Maddie, wait.”

  The corridor ended in a short series of stairs leading upward, which in turn led them to another large room with several sets of doors that reminded George of elevators in a hotel lobby.

  Maddie ran over to one set of doors near the center and quickly depressed the oversized square button to one side.

  The doors parted (sans ding), and a bright white light beckoned them to enter.

  “C’mon, Dad, maybe we can take this to the surface,” Maddie said and vanished within.

  Fearful the doors would close before he got there, George jogged to catch up and stepped inside.

  “The indicator says -104. Does that mean we are 104 floors underground?”

  “That’d be my guess,” George said, and before either of them could find any buttons the elevator jerked upward with a steady hum.

  “Why are the numbers counting down when it feels like we are going up?” she asked.

  He smiled down at her. “Because we’re moving toward the surface.”

  “101, 94, 85, 64, 55,” Maddie continued to read off the numbers aloud.

  When they passed the number 3 the elevator came to a violent stop nearly tossing them to the floor.

  There weren’t any buttons to push but George noticed a maintenance hatch in the ceiling. “Don’t move.” He stood on the elevator’s railing and easily popped the overhead hatch.

  Peeking out of the roof he called down to her, “There’s a ladder up the side of the wall. I think we can climb the rest of the way out.”

  Lying on the roof of the elevator he reached down to her. She jumped up and he caught her hand easily and hoisted her up.

  “Wheee!”

  Standing on top of the elevator, he said, “Now don’t be scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” she replied immediately.

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I think this is neat.”

  George thought this odd since Maddie had always been a little scared of heights. It was never paralyzing, usually only took a little coaxing and she would get moving again, but now, she tackled the ladder like a rock climber. He had to scramble just to keep up.

  When they had climbed about twenty feet she called down to him. “I kinda like climbing ladders. This is fun.”

  As they climbed George had to force down thoughts of not finding his wife. How could they possibly hope to find Tessa in a labyrinth so impossibly large? Instead, he let his mind wander. He thought about the angry hover drone trying to kill them one moment, only to have the robotic horse save them the next. He thought about how the subway nearly ground them into track paste were it not for the extremely well-timed, well-placed trapdoor. And what about that strange costume machine, and the fact that they were over a hundred stories underground? He had never even heard of this kind of technology. Soon they were nearing the surface. What would they find up there? A foreign country, a military base, some sort of secret testing facility, maybe one like Groom Lake?

  These thoughts occupied his mind like swirling poltergeists, which was why he practically ran into Maddie before realizing she had stopped her ascent.

  “Why’d you stop?” he asked irritably.

  Her small face glanced back down at him. He thought it odd she wasn’t perspiring from the effort of the climb, until he remembered the ballet lessons she took five times a week. It was the advanced class, and they were grueling enough to make any grown football player barf up his lunch. A simple three story ladder climb was nothing by comparison.

  “Just keep going,” he said impatiently.

  She let go of the ladder with one hand and pointed above her. “I can’t. It’s blocked.”

  “If you don’t know where you are going

  any road can take you there.”

  -Lewis Carroll, Author of Alice in Wonderland

  Chapter 11

  “Fairy Maze”

  The statue of a winged-angel boy peed into a magnificent stone fountain.

  Nearby, a three-foot long creature--one resembling a caracal cat with oversized tufted ears, short tail, and yellow phosphorous eyes--sniffed the base of the ornate fountain. It was searching for a morsel of food, and was fairly certain it had seen a family of rodents here earlier just begging to be eaten.

  The feline’s ears flicked wildly at the sound of stone grinding upon stone. Body frozen, the creature heard the muffled cursing of a human voice coming from inside the fountain.

  This was new.

  The little angel boy of stone began turning on its pedestal, never stopping its urination as it did so, and eventually peed right on the cat.

  The cat wailed loudly in surprise and bounded nimbly away. The mice would have to wait to be eaten another day.

  Meanwhile the little angel-boy statue continued to corkscrew in place several more times before falling over and smashing into several pieces on the rich blue grass.

  ******

  George Stapleton popped his head out of the newly made shaft like a gopher, frowned slightly at the sight of the broken statue, and then climbed out. He then reached down into the fountain and pulled Maddie out with one hand.

  “Whee!” she yelled as he lifted her up and out of a hole for the second time in the last hour.

  After being underground for what felt like days, it took a moment for George’s eyes to adjust to the daylight.

  The ornate
fountain they had just climbed out of was surrounded by tall, square-shaped hedges.

  Checking her surroundings Maddie breathed, “Kewl. Now this is more like it.”

  Jumping down from the fountain’s base Maddie wasted little time poking around and quickly found an exit. “Over here, I think this is the way out.”

  Leaving the broken fountain behind, they ventured down another long passageway, only this time instead of concrete walls they were flanked by neatly trimmed hedges.

  “This is not what I expected,” George said.

  “Are you kidding, I love this!” Maddie practically skipped down the dirt trodden path.

  After navigating the maze for a few minutes longer they soon found themselves in an open field with four more exits.

  A small wooden sign near one of the exits read, GO THIS WAY, but when they followed the sign’s arrow they soon found a dead end with a second wooden sign that read, FOOLED YOU!

  They double backed to the open field and before selecting another path George said, “Hang on a sec.” He broke off several branches from the hedges, stripped them of their leaves and placed them on the ground in the form of an X. “This way we’ll know not to go this way again.”

  “Good idea,” Maddie said.

  He raised an eyebrow and said satirically, “Oh, I’m glad you approve.”

  After a second dead end they were soon making good time down a third path when George heard a rapid humming sound.

  Before he could ask Maddie if she heard the brisk flapping noise too, a winged creature flew over the hedges and flitted about his face. At first he thought it to be a colorful hummingbird. Then, to his surprise, he noticed the winged creature had a small human face, and he wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard it giggle.

  “Dad!” Maddie exclaimed. “Fairies.”

  “So you see them too?”

  Well at least I’m not totally crazy…or we both are.

  Maddie nodded enthusiastically. The fairy was the same size as Maddie’s Barbie dolls back home, only insanely thin, and with a crazy hairdo and blue fur.

  I am losing my mind.

  The giant underground complex, futuristic costume changer, robot horse, and angry hover drone--all of those he could believe, well, sort of, but fairies? This demanded a whole new examination on what was happening to him.

  I must be in some sort of coma. Yeah, that’s it. Bonked my head is all.

  A second fairy, this one draped in light green feathers and an acorn for a hat, dropped down on them and whispered to the first. The few sentences he managed to catch were bizarre and exotic.

  In an excited whisper Maddie asked him, “What are they saying?”

  George shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno.”

  “Dad, I thought you spoke seven languages?”

  “I do, but I’ve never heard anything close to what they are saying.”

  “Do you think they are,” she hesitated before finishing, “real?”

  “Can’t be. Gotta be some kind of hologram of something,” he muttered. He tried waving his hand through one of the Fairies but the winged nymph dodged nimbly out of the way and bit him on the thumb.

  “Son-of-a…” he began indignantly.

  His loud swearing startled the two fairies and they whizzed backward a few feet before zipping away.

  When he saw Maddie staring at him with her hands on her hips he held up his thumb and said, “She bit me!”

  Maddie pulled his thumb close so she could examine it. And in a way that reminded him of her mother she said, “It didn’t even break the skin.”

  George yanked his hand back and said grumpily, “C’mon, let’s follow them, maybe they’ll lead us out of this crazy maze.”

  They jogged after the two fairies and soon caught up with them. George was fairly certain the two flying nymphs could’ve easily outdistanced them, and it was almost as though they were leading them somewhere. Regardless, not far up ahead of them George saw a decayed stone wall blocking their path. The fairies hesitated a second to see if they were still following, and then darted through a large crack in one of the thick stones.

  “Wait,” Maddie yelled after them, but they were already gone. “Awwww,” she complained. “We’ll never catch them now.”

  She bent down, closed one eye, and peered through the hole in the wall.

  “Can you see anything,” he asked her.

  “Not really, it definitely opens up into a big field on the other side, but all I can see is a big tree and more hedges.”

  George examined the height of the wall. Even if Maddie stood on his shoulders she couldn’t reach the top. And when he attempted to part the hedges he discovered they were filled with vicious spikey thorns.

  “I guess we’ll have to go back to where we started,” he finally told Maddie.

  “But we’ve come so far,” Maddie whined.

  He was about to agree with her when they heard that familiar sound of stone grinding upon stone.

  It wasn’t coming from the rock wall though. No. Instead it was a pedestal rising up in the center of the footpath.

  “Maddie, get back.” George feared it might be some sort of trap.

  The short obelisk finished rising and stopped with a loud KER-CHUNK. They both stepped closer and could see four symbols on one side.

  Maddie extended one finger toward it. “I think we have to push these buttons,” and before George could stop her she began pressing buttons at random.

  Various synthesized tuba sounds that made George think of the UFOs in Close Encounters sounded out with each pressing. After Maddie stopped pushing buttons the drunk tuba sounds ceased, and were soon followed by a rapid clicking sound. After it stopped a small trap door sprang open in the wall and a tiny crossbow fired an arrow right at Maddie’s head.

  Fortunately George had seen the tiny trap door open and tackled her to the ground just as the crossbow fired. They heard a tiny whooshing sound as the crossbow’s bolt zipped by overhead.

  “How about we don’t push any more buttons?”

  Wide-eyed, Maddie agreed, “Okay, Dad.”

  They got to their feet and George examined the buttons once more. “These are symbols for the elements,” he pointed to one drawing that depicted wavy lines. “This one is water, the leaf represents earth, the tornado is air, and the triangle is fire.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “I think we have to push the buttons in a certain order.” Seeing Maddie was clearly becoming despondent he added, “Hey, I thought you were the video game expert.”

  This seemed to brighten her up a bit and she started to look around. “Okay, if that’s true, there should be a clue around here somewhere.”

  They began searching but after a full frustrating ten minutes they had found nothing.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said, becoming exasperated.

  “Wait a second, Dad. Do you remember the first Fairy we saw?”

  George thought about the blue fairy that he thought was a humming bird. “Yeah, she was blue, what about it?”

  “Blue like water,” she said mockingly, then when she saw he wasn’t following, “And the second Fairy, I think she had an acorn for a hat and her fur was green.”

  George snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Representing the Earth.”

  She moved back over to the obelisk. “Okay, so what do we have then, Water, Earth and…”

  Sensing her thoughts he joined her and said, “We’re going to have to guess the next one. We’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong. And that’s assuming we’re not supposed to repeat water and earth.”

  Maddie began reaching for the buttons.

  Stopping her, George said, “No, wait. I’ll push the buttons this time.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  He pointed to a distant corner. “Stand over there nice and low. And be ready to run.”

  George took a deep breath and exhaled sharply to calm his nerves. If something happened to him Mad
die would be in this madhouse all alone. He rubbed his hands together, checked one last time to see if she was a safe distance away, and then pushed the first button. So far, nothing happened. He stayed on his toes, ready to move out of the way, and pushed the second button. Still, nothing happened.

  “Okay, here goes number three,” he said, and was about to push the third button.

  “Wait,” Maddie cried, nearly causing him to choke.

  “What?” he asked angrily, but not facing her.

  “Which one are you going to push, Wind or Fire?”

  George shrugged. It was six of one or half-a-dozen of the other. “Well, I’d rather get blown by wind than get burned alive so, here goes.”

  He pushed wind. And nothing happened. He then pushed Fire. And still nothing happened.

  After waiting a few seconds more Maddie ventured, “Maybe you did it wrong, or maybe you need to push Wind last?”

  “I pushed it in the exact order of the clues,” George began, but then they both heard the grinding noises as the stone wall lowered into the ground.

  Maddie stepped up to join him, and without even realizing she was doing it, she grabbed him by the hand.

  What lay beyond was something right out of Lewis Carroll’s classic literary tale. Now Maddie’s Alice in Wonderland costume made perfect sense.

  And that’s when George knew, he really had gone mad.

  Chapter 12

  “Brunch”

  They stepped over the threshold and the hedge wall rose silently and efficiently up behind them.

  Maddie knew her dad was frightened for her, frightened she was going to get hurt. He needn’t have worried. Still, it was nice having someone care so fiercely about her well-being. Maddie had always felt safe around her father; she remembered that.

  “I must be cracking up,” she heard him say. Maddie knew George wasn’t talking to her, but more to himself. She noted he often did that when he was trying to figure something out. She decided to give him time to take it all in. He was one of the brighter ones. He’d be alright.