The Fairy Crown (Adventures in Otherworld Book 2)

by Michael Kerr

  They stopped in front of two massive burnished steel doors that were part way open. Above the doors was a sign that read: CROW MOUNTAIN FACILITY.

  As usual, Gorf stepped over the threshold first. The others followed, and Tommy drew the ray gun from his waistband and readied himself to open fire on anything that attacked them.

  The huge tunnel was about sixty feet across, and there were lights set high up into the concrete walls that glowed dimly, giving off a soft, golden radiance. They kept going, deeper and deeper, and the tunnel eventually levelled out and opened up into a huge natural rock chamber. There were large military-style trucks that were similar to humvees parked against a long loading bay on one side of it, and everywhere they looked were scattered the skeletons of personnel dressed in blue uniforms.

  At the far end of the chamber was a steel wall with several large doors set into it.

  “They look like lifts,” Ben said, approaching one of them. At the side of the smooth, shiny door was a panel with one button on it. He reached out and pressed it, not expecting anything to happen.

  With a whoosh, the door slid open, and they all jumped back, startled. There were three more dried up bodies inside the lift.

  Sam went to the next door and pushed the button on the wall. She heard a humming noise, and after a few seconds the door opened.

  “This one’s empty,” she said.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t like this,” Ben muttered. “How can the lights be on and the lifts be working, if everyone has been dead for ages?”

  “It’s probably nuclear-powered,” Tommy said, stepping into the lift. “Come on, we’ve come too far now to chicken out.”

  They all entered the lift. Even with all of them inside there was plenty of room to spare. It could have easily held thirty or more people.

  Tommy looked at the panel next to the door. There was no up, only down, and the engraved writing stated: LEVELS 1-33. Instead of individual buttons, there was a keypad. Tommy pressed 3 twice, and after the door closed the lift dropped at such a speed that they all felt as if their stomachs would come out of their mouths.

  Pook wrapped his arms around Tommy’s legs and made a funny mewling sound. He thought that they were going to hurtle down and crash, and for a second or two he wished he was nothing more than a real teddy bear again, with no feeling or knowledge of what was happening.

  The lift began to slow, then came to a smooth stop, and the door slid open. Behind it was a room with a desk cemented to the floor. An guard was slumped across the top of it, and another was stretched out on the floor with some kind of bulky rifle held in his hands. They were in no better state than all the other dead people they had seen.

  “They may have been experimenting with germ warfare here,” Ben said. “We could all be infected and end up like this.”

  “I don’t think germs can crush skulls,” Tommy said. “Whatever did this to everyone probably went away a long time ago.”

  The open steel door behind the dead guards was circular and reminded Sam of how some thick bank vault doors looked. It had dials on it, and shiny bars that she could see would slide into holes in the wall to lock it. It was obvious that whatever had happened had been fast, and that there had been no time for anyone to do anything.

  “What does Morpheus mean?” Fig asked, reading a sign that read: MORPHEUS PROJECT. COMMAND POST, inscribed in big letters above the door.

  As usual, Tommy came up with an answer. “Morpheus was a Roman god of dreams and sleep,” he said as he stepped up and over the rim of the door, into a vast chamber that could have been the bridge of some alien spaceship. It had a high, domed ceiling, and around the walls there were work stations with banks of computers and large screens, and high-tech kinds of equipment that were unrecognisable. The main lights gave off an eerie green glow, and the buttons on a lot of the machinery shone red and yellow and blue. Cables snaked across the steel grid floor to an elevated circular platform in the centre of the room, on which stood a large, black, leather chair, very similar to the one that people sat in to answer questions on the TV programme, Mastermind. Slumped on the floor in front of it was another skeleton.

  There was a throbbing sound coming from all around them. And at the rear of the room were large windows, behind which they could see another giant room that appeared to be completely empty. One of the windows was broken, and pieces of three-inch-thick glass lay scattered across the floor of the command post.

  Tommy walked across to the chair and sat down in it. It was fixed onto the platform by a single pillar, and cables were plugged into the back of a headrest and the sides of the padded arms.

  “I wonder what this was for.” Tommy said, resting his head back and immediately feeling very comfortable and extremely tired.

  “Who cares?” Gorf said. “I think we should go back up and get away from this place.”

  The coloured lights fascinated Zoot. He stood in front of one of the panels and began pressing them at random and tapping the keys of a computer keyboard with his claws. On the wall in front of him a screen glowed, and the image of Tommy appeared on it.

  Zoot grunted and backed away from the console. He could not understand how Tommy could be in two places at the same time. It was some kind of magic.

  “Hey, Tommy, you’re on TV,” Ben said. And as Ben spoke, two clamps appeared from the headrest and fastened round Tommy’s head, coming together at the centre of his forehead. More clamps on the chair’s arms snapped around his wrists.

  “Unghhh!” Tommy exclaimed, just before his eyes closed and he became still.

  Sam ran across to him and shook him, but he seemed to be fast asleep or unconscious. “What did you press, Zoot?” She shouted.

  “I...I don’t know,” he replied. “Just some of these buttons.”

  Gorf grasped hold of the clamps round Tommy’s head, but even with his great strength he could not pull them apart. Tommy was securely fastened to the chair.

  “Stand back,” Fig said. “I’ll shrink Tommy and he will be free.”

  The spell he cast didn’t work. He tried as hard as he could to magic Tommy free, but nothing happened. Speedy also attempted to use his powers, but to no avail. Neither of the fairies could know that the lead-shielded chamber deep in the mountain was blocking their ability to alter reality.

  Ben studied the buttons and the keyboard that Zoot had played with. On a shelf under the equipment was a thick manual. He pulled it out and read the heading on the glossy cover:

  MORPHEUS PROJECT

  OPERATING PROCEDURES FOR

  X250 DREAM GENERATOR.

  Ben flicked through the pages of technical jargon and found one with an illustration of the chair on it.

  “This manual might help,” Ben said to the others. “It’s full of instructions and diagrams.”

  “Maybe if we just unplug all the cables from the chair, Tommy will be released and wake up,” Sam suggested.

  “And maybe it would cause something terrible to happen,” Ben said. “Don’t let’s try anything until we’ve read this book and understand what has happened to Tommy.”

  “Is...Is he still breathing?” Pook asked, his bottom lip trembling as he thought that his best friend in the entire world might be dead.

  As if in answer, Tommy started to snore. Ben shook him by the shoulder and shouted, “Wake up, Tommy.”

  But he didn’t.

  ― CHAPTER NINETEEN ―

  THE DREAM MACHINE

  As Ben and Sam tried to make sense of the manual, lights began to flash in the room behind the broken window, and a buzzing sound filled the room. A few seconds later they heard another noise. It sounded very distant at first, but became louder and louder.

  “That sounds like an animal,” Gorf said.

  “It sounds like a dog barking,” Sam said.

  What happened next was incredible, especially to Sam and Ben. Looking through the movie screen-size window, the chamber beyond it vanis
hed, and in its place appeared a scene that they both thought looked exactly like the local park in Grassington. Not a two-dimensional image, but the real thing. And bounding towards them across the green was a scruffy looking black and white mongrel that they recognised as being Prince...Tommy’s dog, which had been run over by the post office van and killed.

  An even bigger shock was that the man following the dog was the spitting image of Mr. Scott, Tommy’s dad, who was also dead. Tommy had shown them photos of him.

  Prince turned, ran back past Mr. Scott to Tommy, who was running towards it waving something in his hand. It was a Frisbee. The Tommy behind the glass, in a scene that could not be there but was, threw the Frisbee. It spun and wobbled as it glided through the air, and Prince leaped up high off the ground and caught it in his jaws.

  Sam and Ben looked back and forth between the real Tommy asleep in the black chair, and the make-believe scene.

  “This is totally freaky,” Ben said.

  Before Sam could answer, Prince ran at the window, jumped through the large hole in the broken glass and dropped the Frisbee at her feet. She reached out to stroke him, and he licked her hand. Prince was real.

  Behind Prince, Tommy and Mr. Scott stepped through the shattered window.

  “Hi, you two,” Tommy said to Sam and Ben. “What are you doing here? I thought you were both in Weirdworld.”

  They couldn’t think of anything to say. Just stood and watched as Tommy grasped his dad’s hand and walked past them and out through the circular door. Prince barked, picked up the Frisbee and ran off after them.

  “What we just saw wasn’t real,” Ben said.

  “It looked real to me,” Fig said, and Speedy, Gorf and Pook all nodded.

  “And Prince’s tongue was warm and rough,” Sam said. “My hand’s still wet.”

  “But Tommy is still asleep in the chair,” Zoot said. “It must be magic.”

  Ben turned back to the console and heard a whirring sound. It was coming from a panel in the wall. He checked it out. There were buttons with symbols on them, very similar to those on a DVD or old VCR: ■, ●, «, » and ►, among others. He guessed that it was some kind of recorder. He pressed a silver-coloured button with a black square on it and the whirring sound stopped. He then tapped what he thought was the rewind button, and after a second or two hit stop again, and then the button which he was sure would start it playing. Above the panel, a screen came to life and a recording of what had just happened appeared. They all watched as Prince, Tommy and his dad came into view.

  “What does it mean, Ben?” Sam asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ben said. “But I’ve got a good idea. Hang on a minute.”

  Ben hit ■ again, then ▲, which he reckoned was the eject button. Sure enough, a cover slid back and a small, transparent cube hardly bigger than a dice popped up. Ben pulled open some drawers in the grey unit next to him, and in the third one he found trays with more cubes in. Each cube was labelled with a date, name and number. He picked one up at random and studied the label on it. 22/8/2258 - Fl Lt Ed Banning – MP#4.

  Selecting another recording unit, Ben pushed the cube against the cover on the panel below it, and the cube was accepted. He pressed play, and the scene of a man, woman and two children appeared on the screen. They were all smiling, and were dressed in swimwear. The scene behind them was of a white beach, turquoise sea and swaying palm trees. After a few seconds, Ben stopped the videocube.

  “Got it,” he said. “It’s a dream machine. Anyone that sits in the chair goes to sleep, and whatever they dream becomes real, and is recorded. Tommy was dreaming of being with his dad and Prince, so they appeared.”

  “So what broke the window and crushed everyone’s heads?” Zoot asked.

  “Something that someone dreamed up,” Ben said. “It obviously broke out and killed everyone on this base.”

  “Let’s find a way to free Tommy, and then get away from here,” Fig said. “Whatever came through that window might still be here.”

  Ben went back to reading the manual and found a section on: –EMERGENCY PROCEDURE FOR SUSPENSION OF X250 DURING OPERATIONAL MODE –. It was simpler than he could have hoped for. All he had to do was press a red button marked ☼. It was in the middle of the console under a clear cover, with a key to open it.

  “Turn that key,” Ben said to Sam. “Then lift the cover up and press the button down.”

  “Are you sure it’ll work?” Sam said.

  “I’m not sure of anything, Sam. But there’s no reason why the instructions in this manual should be wrong.”

  Sam did what Ben told her to, and the clamps withdrew from Tommy’s head and wrists, and he woke up.

  “Are you okay?” Ben asked Tommy.

  “Yeah. I must have nodded off. I had a great dream.”

  “We know,” Sam said. “We watched it.”

  “That’s impossible,” Tommy said.

  Ben replaced the cube that had recorded Tommy’s dream into the unit and pressed play.

  Tommy’s mouth dropped open and he blinked a lot, trying to stop the tears that welled up in his eyes, as he stood up and walked over to stand in front of the wall-mounted screen.

  “The chair makes dreams come alive,” Sam said. “You, your dad and Prince came through that broken window. Prince even licked my hand.”

  “Where did they go,” Tommy demanded.

  “They’ll have dissolved by now, like a real dream does,” Ben said. “It says in this manual that once the dreamer has woken up, the dreams lose cohesion and disappear.”

  “What is cohesion?” Zoot asked.

  “Staying together,” Tommy said. “If something falls apart, then it has lost its cohesion.”

  “Whatever killed everybody in this place didn’t fall apart after it broke through that window,” Speedy said.

  They looked at the remains of the man on the floor near the chair.

  “He must have had a nightmare,” Sam said.

  “The videocube should still be in one of these units, then,” Ben said, going from one to another and pressing the eject buttons. Only one had a cube in. Ben hit the close and then the play button.

  The man who appeared on the screen was running, and he had an expression of absolute terror on his white face. “Help me...Help me!” he screamed, drawing a gun identical to the one that Tommy had taken from the dead guard at the gatehouse.

  On screen, the man stopped in front of the window and fired at it, blasting it apart, before jumping through it into the dream machine chamber. Behind him, from what appeared to be the inside of a strange craft, a hideous looking creature appeared. It was very similar to the alien out of the movies that had starred Sigouney Weaver, and had dripping jaws and a long tail. It moved in a blur, and with one great bound it hopped through the broken window and bit open the heads of the people in the room, crushing their skulls, before leaping through the round door to chase after the dreamer. The screen then went blank.

  “If that thing is still in one piece, then we’re in big, big trouble,” Pook said.

  Ben shook his head. “The guy that dreamed it up is dead, and his dream has died with him,” he said. “We’ve got nothing to worry about. This place is deserted.”

  “You hope,” Speedy said. “You’re using commonsense, Ben. That doesn’t count for a lot in the strange places we end up in.”

  “Let me have a go in the chair,” Zoot said. “I have an idea.”

  “Not a chance,” Ben said. “You could dream up something as bad as the thing that wiped out everyone here.”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” Zoot said. “We horgs can dream of what we choose to. I would create something to attack the fortress. It would be invincible, and at least delay the Dark One’s search for us.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Tommy said. “I reckon that this project was created to do stuff like that; train people to dream up weapons that they could use in wars.”

  Without waiting for further argument, Zoot went over to
the chair and sat in it. “Are you ready to record this, Ben?” he said, before resting his head back.

  As the clamps slid out and positioned themselves snugly to Zoot’s head and wrists, Ben popped a cube into each of six recorders, not knowing which one would film whatever might happen.

  “Leave me asleep for awhile, to give me time to cause a great deal of chaos,” Zoot said, and then closed his eyes.

  Ben set each unit going, and within seconds the sound of a high wind came from behind the windows. The grey steel walls of the next room shimmered, and a craggy, snow-peaked mountain range appeared.

  As Ben and the others watched, a great flying beast swooped down from a lofty summit and headed straight at them. It had the head of a vulture, six powerful legs, each ending in a single barbed claw that looked like a giant fish hook, and two sets of broad, smooth wings. It hit the glass, and as the rest of the window shattered, Sam and the others turned away and covered their faces.

  The gigantic creature rose up, to pass through the solid steel ceiling as if it was no more substantial than smoke. And on the screen, it was seen to materialise through the roof of the complex and head off in the direction of the Black Tower.

  “Is what we are seeing really happening?” Speedy asked.

  “Yes,” Tommy said. “We’re watching Zoot’s dream, which this equipment has somehow brought to life.”

  In the video of the dream, they saw the flying monster soar up the face of the Dark Tower, to attack horg soldiers on the path that spiralled up to the top of the plateau. It slashed at them with its beak and hooked claws, smashing through their ranks and sending dozens, then hundreds of them off the side of the trail to fall to their deaths.

  Seconds later, Zoot’s imagined creature was at the fortress, looking down at the Dark One, who was standing in the courtyard next to the Pyramid of the Moons and staring up at the flying monster.

  The Dark One sprung up off the ground, arms straight out in front of him in Superman fashion, to drive his mighty clawed hands into the underbelly of Zoot’s dream beast.