The Reality Bug tpa-4

by D. J. MacHale

  I looked to Aja for her reaction. Aja looked to me and I saw the surprise on her face. She even let out a little smile.

  “Thank you, Loor,” Aja said. I think she meant it too.

  “For what?” Loor asked.

  “For trusting me… and for coming. We really need you.” We had reached an understanding. And we were under way.

  This is where I’m going to end the journal, guys. While Aja prepped Lifelight for our dual jump into Zetlin’s fantasy, I took the time to finish this. I’ll send it to you with a reminder that you might be contacted by somebody named Evangeline. If you’re serious about wanting to be acolytes, you’re going to get the chance.

  I have no idea what to expect when Loor and I make this trip back into Lifelight. Finding Dr. Zetlin will probably be the easy part. Finding his deepest fears is what I’m worried about. But having Loor with me gives me all sorts of confidence. It’s great that we’re together again.

  Be safe and think about me every once in a while. I’ll catch you on the other side.

  END OF THE JOURNAL # 4

  SECOND EARTH

  Bobby’s image vanished.

  Courtney and Mark kept staring at the empty space where the hologram used to be. Neither were sure of what to say or do next.

  Then Dorney started to laugh. It started out as a chuckle, grew into a belly laugh, and finally changed into a wheezing, uncontrolled, coughing fit. Courtney jumped up and got a glass of water. Dorney took it gratefully and gulped it down.

  “You all right?” Courtney asked as she sat back down next to Mark.

  Dorney cleared his throat, took a deep breath. He was fine. “What’s so funny?” Mark asked.

  “Just like his uncle, that one,” Dorney said with a smile. “Always jumping out of one frying pan into another one that’s even hotter.”

  Mark glanced at the metal boxes that held Press’s journals. “Can we read some?” he asked.

  The smile fell from Dorney’s face. He glanced over at the journals, then back to Mark and Courtney. “Depends.”

  “On what?” asked Courtney.

  “On whether or not I like what you have to tell me.”

  “We’re here for Bobby” Mark exclaimed. “You heard what Bobby said to Evangeline.”

  “Evangeline?” he scoffed. “If the devil himself told that lady he was misunderstood, she’d invite him in for tea.”

  “You know her?” Courtney asked in shock.

  “How do you think I knew to send you my address?”

  “But she’s from-“

  “Veelox, yeah. So what?”

  “But, you said you weren’t a Traveler,” Mark said.

  “I’m not! Are you thick or something?”

  Courtney and Mark were dumbfounded.

  “I’m s-sorry if we’re being dense,” Mark said. “But I thought only Travelers could fly through the flumes. If you’re not a Traveler, how could you know somebody from another territory?”

  Dorney stared at them for a moment, as if debating about whether or not to answer. Finally he held up his hand-the hand with his Traveler ring.

  “It’s the rings,” he said. “It’s all about the rings.”

  Mark and Courtney sat there patiently, waiting for Dorney to explain. But he didn’t. Instead he pushed himself out of the easy chair with a grunt and began moving the metal boxes with Press’s journals in them back into the cabinet.

  “I was a practical guy,” Dorney finally said, sounding serious. “I always thought that everything had its place. B always came after A. Two always followed one. But then Press Tilton came into my life. He opened my eyes, so to speak, and I began to realize there was something else going on. Something bigger than me and my safe little life. I don’t mind telling you, it scared me. All this business about fluming and territories that exist in different times-it’s enough to make a fella want to lock his door and never poke his nose out again.”

  Mark and Courtney nodded. They knew how he felt.

  “But what scares me even more,” Dorney continued, “is that somebody out there is causing problems. Knowing Saint Dane is trying to make it all fall down has kept me from getting a good night’s sleep in near ten years. Only thing that gives me a little piece of mind is knowing the Travelers are trying to stop him. That’s why I’m an acolyte. I do what I can to help the good guys.”

  Dorney put the last of the metal boxes into the cabinet, then closed and locked it.

  “Trouble is, I’m getting too old for this. Now that Press is gone, I’m not so sure I’ve got the energy. That brings me to you two. Pendragon seems to trust you. Question is, should I?”

  “We told you!” Courtney shouted defensively. “Bobby is our friend and-“

  Mark put a hand on her arm to quiet her down.

  “You’re right,” Mark said calmly. “You don’t know us. All we can say is that we’re just as freaked out about Saint Dane as you are. Besides that, you’ve gotta trust that Bobby knows what he’s talking about.”

  Dorney looked between the two of them. Finally he shrugged and said, “Don’t matter anyway. It ain’t my choice.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Courtney. “Whose choice is it?”

  Dorney shuffled toward the front door. “Go home,” he said.

  Both Mark and Courtney jumped up in surprise.

  “Mr. D-Dorney,” Mark stuttered, “we came here because we wanted to learn about being acolytes. You can’t throw us out.”

  Dorney opened the door and stood to the side. “I can do whatever I please,” he said. “Truth is, you two ain’t ready.”

  “But w-we are!” Mark protested.

  “Not from what I’m hearing,” Dorney countered. “When the time is right, come on back. I’ll help you then, not before.”

  Mark and Courtney looked at each other. They knew it was no use to argue. So Mark grabbed the silver hologram projector from the table and jammed it into his pack.

  “How are we going to know when the time is right?” Courtney asked.

  “Believe me.” Dorney chuckled. “You’ll know.” He opened the door further, expecting them to leave.

  “We’ll be back,” Mark said as they backed out the door. “Count on it.”

  “I hope so,” Dorney said seriously. “I truly do.”

  He shut the door, leaving Mark and Courtney in an empty corridor.

  “Well, that sucked,” Courtney said. “We came all the way here and all he can say is we’re not ready?”

  Mark walked toward the elevator. Courtney hurried after him.

  “We’re not giving up so easy,” she asked. “Are we?”

  “We’re not giving up at all,” Mark said. “I think Dorney believes we can be acolytes, but the time isn’t right.”

  “I think he’s a crazy old coot who likes pulling our chain,” Courtney said.

  “Yeah, that too,” Mark said. “But I’ll bet you anything we’ll be back here.”

  The two rode the elevator down and left the building. All the way back to Stony Brook, Mark and Courtney tried to analyze what Bobby had told them about Lifelight and the Reality Bug. Mark was fascinated with the idea of a computer that could read your thoughts and make them real. Courtney was too, but was more interested in talking about Loor. She thought Bobby made a bad choice. She thought he should have gotten Spader. Mark pointed out that Bobby wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could rely on Spader. Courtney didn’t care. She felt Spader would have been the better choice.

  Mark had a pretty good idea of what Courtney was really thinking. She was jealous. From what Bobby said in his last journal, it was obvious he had feelings for Loor. But Mark decided not to point that out. He didn’t want to risk a punch in the head.

  When the train brought them home, the two stood on the empty station platform at the bottom of Stony Brook Avenue.

  “Now what?” Courtney asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mark answered. Then added, “Does this mean you officially want to be an acolyte with me?�
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  Courtney had to think about that for a second. “It means I still want to find out what it means,” she said. “I can’t promise any more than that.”

  “Good enough,” Mark said. “Maybe Bobby’s next journal will tell us more.”

  Courtney nodded. “You’ll tell me when-“

  “Soon as it comes in,” Mark assured her.

  With a quick smile Courtney turned and headed for home. Mark stood there for a moment, twisting the ring on his finger. When Bobby was in the middle of an adventure the journals came pretty close together. Mark expected the next delivery to come through his ring at any moment.

  It didn’t.

  Mark had to get his mind off Bobby and back into his own life. He busied himself at school and went to his first meeting of Sci-Clops. It was better than he could have imagined. Mr. Pike, or David as he insisted on being called, introduced him to the other members, all of whom were older than Mark. They were all working on different projects, like mixing unique metals to create a new lightweight alloy, and making a computer processor that responded to eye movement. It was heady stuff for Mark and he feared he was out of his league. But he quickly discovered they all spoke the same language. He had found a home.

  Courtney focused on classes and soccer. She continued to practice with the JV team and did pretty well, but she always had one eye on the varsity squad that practiced on the other side of the field. More than anything she wanted to prove herself worthy of being back there.

  Several days passed with no word from Bobby. Mark started to fear that something horrible had happened when he and Loor jumped back into Lifelight. But he forced himself not to worry. He had to keep reminding himself that time between the territories wasn’t relative. Still, as days passed, Mark found himself thinking more and more about the trouble on Veelox.

  Then, toward the end of the week, something finally happened.

  There was no Sci-Clops meeting that afternoon, so Mark caught the early bus home after school. The bus stopped a few blocks from Mark’s house and he always walked the direct route home. But today he took another route. He wasn’t sure why; he just felt like walking. So he took the long way home.

  Mark was pretty familiar with every other house in the neighborhood. Though a few were modern, most dated back a long time, some over a hundred years. All the yards were big, with huge leafy trees that shaded the grass. Fall was coming on fast now and many of the trees had already traded their green leaves for brilliant colors of orange and yellow. It was Mark’s favorite time of year. Chilly but not yet wintry. The wind was brisk, the sky was blue, and he even loved the smell of burning leaves. It was the perfect afternoon to walk a roundabout route home and try not to think about territories and Travelers.

  His vacation didn’t last very long.

  As he walked along the cracked sidewalk, kicking leaves,

  Mark’s ring began to twitch. He stopped short. Naturally his first thought was: “Bobby’s next journal!” But when he looked at his ring, he saw that the large gray stone in the center wasn’t making the change. It was the odd symbol that glowed brightly-the same symbol that foreshadowed the arrival of the note from Dorney. Maybe it was a message from the old man to say the time was right to learn about being an acolyte!

  Mark ducked into the bushes near a tall cement wall. He didn’t want anybody to see what was about to happen. He dropped his pack on the ground, then took the ring off and put it down next to the pack, waiting for it to start growing.

  It didn’t. The light continued to glow from the symbol, but the ring didn’t change size. What was going on? Mark picked up the ring and put it back on his finger. The symbol glowed, but that was it. No change, no note, no nothing. Weird. With a shrug, Mark continued walking home. When he got to the next corner, he noticed that the glowing symbol had gone dark.

  False alarm, he thought, and continued walking.

  When he got halfway across the street, he realized he’d left his pack next to the cement wall. Duh! He did a quick about-face and jogged back to get it. But no sooner did he arrive at the pack than the ring twitched and the symbol began to glow again. Mark waited a few minutes to see if the ring would do anything more dramatic, but it didn’t. He grabbed his pack, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried toward home. But when he reached the street, the symbol stopped glowing. Mark felt sure something was going on, but had no idea what it could be.

  Then an idea struck him. He turned and slowly walked back toward the cement wall. Sure enough, as soon as he got close, the symbol grew bright again. Uh-oh. This was no false alarm. Something was happening, and it had to do with where he was.

  Mark looked up at the cement wall to see where he was, and his heart sank.

  “Oh great,” he muttered.

  He was standing in front of the Sherwood house. Everybody knew it. It was the biggest property in the neighborhood. The house was built in the early 1900s by some rich guy who’d made his fortune raising chickens and selling eggs, of all things. At one time there was a poultry farm on the property, but that was long gone. The house was still there, though. It was surrounded by the high cement wall that Mark was standing in front of now. It was actually more of a mansion than a house. The place was huge.

  The thing was, nobody had lived there for years. Mark’s mom told him that once old man Sherwood died, none of his kids wanted to run a chicken farm. But they couldn’t agree on what to do with the property. So there it sat, a giant piece of land with a big old mansion on it, going to waste, falling apart.

  Of course, all the kids in the neighborhood made up ghost stories about seeing shadows walking past windows and hearing strange sounds on Halloween. Bobby once made up a story about how the ghosts were actually chicken spirits looking for revenge. That was Mark’s favorite. But he didn’t believe in ghosts and didn’t think for a minute that the place was really haunted. Still, he never went near the place by himself.

  Until today.

  The glowing symbol on his ring was telling him something, and he had the sick feeling that whatever it was, it was inside the Sherwood house. Gulp. Mark had a quick thought of putting this off until he could come back with Courtney, but his curiosity was stronger than his fear.

  Halfway down the block was a big old set of black iron gates, but a heavy steel chain and padlock told him this wouldn’t be the way in. He only had one choice. He had to go over the wall. So he walked alongside the high wall until he found a tree that was close enough to climb up and get over the top. As he stood looking up, he wasn’t worried about ghosts or banshees or dead chickens running around with their heads chopped off. That was kid stuff. He was more worried about getting caught trespassing. The idea of calling his parents from jail was not a good one. Still, the insistent glowing of the symbol on his ring told him he had to keep going.

  He pushed his hair out of his eyes and dug his sneakers into the tree. Moments later he was up and over the wall, landing in tall grass. So far so good. He looked at his ring to see the small symbol was glowing brighter. He was definitely on the right track.

  He looked up at the house and could see why kids thought it was haunted. The place was ancient. The wind kicked up and the fall trees swayed back and forth, slashing against its walls. The yard was a mess too. A caretaker could be seen every month or so, cleaning up dead branches and making simple repairs, but that wasn’t enough to make the place look lived in. No, this was a big, empty, lonely old haunted-looking house.

  And Mark was on his way in.

  The ground floor was surrounded by a wide porch. He imagined people sitting there in rocking chairs on a hot summer night, drinking iced tea and swapping chicken stories. But they were long gone. The only thing on the porch now was dead leaves. Mark walked up the five stone steps that led to the porch.

  He thought he saw something move past a window inside the house. It was fast, and he wasn’t completely sure he really saw it, but the hair went up on his arms just the same. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looki
ng into the dark windows for any sign of movement. There was none.

  He started walking toward the front door… and saw something again. It was a quick shadow moving past the window. For a second he actually thought it was a ghost. But there were no such things as ghosts. Then again, he never thought there were such things as Travelers, either. He looked around and decided the ghost was nothing more than the reflection of a tree branch waving in the wind. At least, that’s what he told himself.

  Mark walked cautiously up to the front door and tried the knob. It was locked.

  “Great,” he said to himself. “Now what?”

  That’s when he heard something inside the house. It was fleeting, but it sounded like something had run past, just inside the door.

  “Heeeere, chickie, chickie, chickie!” Mark croaked nervously, though the idea of there still being chickens around was absurd. He looked at his ring. The symbol was glowing with a fierce intensity. He needed to know why.

  He moved over to the big window next to the door and put his nose right against the glass to try and block as much of the outside light as possible. That helped a little, and he got a better view of the inside of the Sherwood house.

  The place was empty. The only illumination inside came from windows farther back in the house, and they didn’t do much to light the place up. Very creepy. There was no furniture, or pictures, or any sign of life-“

  Grrrrrr!

  A hideous, black animal face leaped out of the shadows inside. It stared Mark square in the eyes. Drool dripped from its white fangs as it snarled viciously, trying to bite through the glass and get a chunk of Mark-meat.

  Mark yelped in surprise and fell backward, landing on his butt. He stared up at the window to see two more animals join the first. They were awful-looking black creatures that could have been dogs, but no dog Mark had ever seen looked as evil as these beasts. They were focused on him, with only a thin pane of glass holding them back.

  Mark pushed himself along the floor of the porch to get away. The beasts barked and snarled. Mark’s mind was reeling. What were dogs doing in there? Were they watchdogs? They definitely weren’t ordinary dogs. They were vicious, uncontrollable demons, and they were out for blood. They were…