The Reality Bug tpa-4

by D. J. MacHale

  “Any other ideas?” Officer Wilson asked. The cop respected Mark. If any other kid had given them this story, they probably wouldn’t have believed a word.

  “No,” Mark answered. “Sorry.”

  Courtney glanced to Mark with a “You sure you saw dogs?” look. Mark could only shrug.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Wilson said. “You did the right thing. Whatever was in here got away somehow, that’s all.”

  They walked out through the front gate and Officer Matt locked it up. Officer Wilson returned the tranquilizer gun and the srrare to the trunk of the police cruiser.

  “If you see anything else, be sure to call, okay?” Wilson said.

  “Okay,” Mark answered.

  The two cops got back into their cruiser and sped off, leaving Mark and Courtney alone in front of the house. “I’m not lying, Courtney,” Mark said. “I didn’t think you were.”

  “So then what happened to the quigs?” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his ring. The strange symbol was glowing brightly.

  “I don’t know,” answered Courtney. “But we saw pretty much every inch of that place and there was nothing strange that would make that ring glow.”

  “Then we missed it,” Mark announced.

  The two looked at each other. Each knew what the other was thinking.

  “We gotta go back in,” Mark said with finality.

  “Yeah, I know. Where’s the tree we gotta climb over?” Courtney asked.

  (CONTINUED)

  Mark led Courtney around to the side of the property and the tree that was their ladder. Courtney gave Mark a leg up, then Mark reached down and gave Courtney a helping hand. Seconds later the two of them jumped off the wall and landed back inside the property.

  “Wait,” Mark said. He looked back at the wall, scanning both left and right.

  “What are you looking for?” Courtney asked.

  “There!” Mark pointed to an old, wooden tool shed. “If we gotta get back over fast, head for that shed. We can climb up the side.”

  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time he wanted to be ready. Courtney nodded and headed for the house. Neither was nervous, since they had just done a thorough inspection and knew the quigs were gone.

  “I say we start inside the house,” Courtney said. “There are a lot of rooms we may have missed.”

  They climbed up onto the porch and stopped at the broken window.

  “That’s our door,” Mark announced. He made a move to go in, but Courtney stopped him.

  “Mark, I’m in,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I want to be an acolyte.”

  Mark couldn’t help but smile. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, it just took some time to get my head around it,” Courtney said sincerely. “I think it’s an important thing to do. And I don’t want to let you down. Or Bobby.”

  Mark smiled. “I never thought you would,” he said as he lifted one leg through the broken window.

  Mark’s confidence in her made Courtney feel better than she had in weeks. Maybe Mark was right. Maybe she had a more important role to play than sports superstar. She knew one thing for certain: She wanted the chance to find out. But there was no time to feel warm and fuzzy. They had work to do. So Courtney followed Mark inside.

  The two of them stood in the grand entryway, once again taking it all in.

  “Where to first?” Courtney asked.

  Mark lifted his ring and saw that the symbol was still glowing brightly.

  “Let’s start in the attic and work our way-” Mark stopped talking. He had heard something. Courtney heard it too.

  “What was that?” Courtney asked.

  “Sounded like something scratching across wood.”

  “There it is again!” Courtney exclaimed. “It’s outside, on the porch.”

  They both turned to the broken window they had just come through.

  “It could be squirrels,” Mark said hopefully.

  More scratching. Whatever it was, it was moving quickly back and forth on the porch.

  “Or birds,” Courtney offered.

  “Or… quigs.”

  Courtney laughed nervously. “Don’t even joke-” Smash! Smash! Smash!

  Three windows shattered as black quig dogs came crashing into the house.

  “C’mon!” Courtney grabbed Mark’s hand and they ran up the stairs. The quigs were slightly dazed by the hammering their heads just took, and it gave Mark and Courtney enough time to make it to the top. But a second later the quigs had their wits back, sniffed the air, and charged up the stairs after them.

  Mark and Courtney sprinted along the hallway, not sure where to go.

  “The window at the end!” Mark shouted.

  “We’ll never make it,” Courtney yelled, and pulled Mark into one of the empty bedrooms. They quickly closed the door. There were two other doors in the room. They were the doors that led to the adjoining bedrooms.

  “Close those doors!” Courtney ordered.

  They each ran to one of the doors and closed it.

  “We’re dead,” Mark said.

  Courtney ran for the window. She tried to lift it up, but it had been closed for years and wouldn’t budge.

  Mark then noticed something. “Look,” he said, holding his hand up. His ring had stopped glowing.

  “Not now, Mark. Wait here,” she said, and ran to the other door that led to an adjoining room.

  “Where are you going?”

  Slam!

  The quigs had found them. They were trying to batter down the door Mark had just closed. Mark leaned against it to keep them out. He could hear their angry growling.

  “Get ready to open that door” Courtney ordered, and ran out of the room.

  “What?” Mark screamed in shock. There was no way he was opening the door.

  Courtney moved quickly and quietly through the next bedroom and poked her head out into the hallway. It was empty. She could hear the sound of the quigs slamming themselves against the door that Mark was holding shut.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Devil dogs! Suppertime! Come and get it!”

  The banging stopped. Suddenly all three quigs came charging out of the far bedroom and into the hallway, headed for her.

  “Psyche” she shouted, and ducked back into the bedroom. She then sprinted through the room and back into the bedroom where Mark was. She didn’t close the door behind her either.

  Mark yelled, “Close the door!”

  “No!” Courtney shouted. “Open yours!”

  Mark hesitated. He didn’t know the quigs had left. But it was clear that Courtney wasn’t stopping. If he didn’t open the door, she’d run right into it. So he swallowed hard and pulled it open. It wasn’t a second too soon, because Courtney blasted through at full throttle.

  “Close it behind you!” she shouted.

  Mark didn’t know what she was doing, until he looked back and saw the three quigs flying toward him, through the bedroom. They had come through the door Courtney left open. Mark jumped out the door and pulled it closed as… slam slam slam! All three quigs hit the door. Now Mark and the quigs were on opposite sides from where they had been a few moments before. He still had no idea what Courtney was doing.

  Courtney never stopped running. She turned into the hallway and sprinted along the same route the quigs had just taken after her. She knew that either her plan was going to work, or she was about to serve herself up for lunch. She ran into the third bedroom and ran toward the connecting door that led back to the second bedroom. Her plan was to lock them inside.

  The quigs had figured it out. They stopped trying to beat down the door, and turned back for the door they had just entered through. But Courtney was too fast. She reached inside the room, grabbed the doorknob, said, “G’night kids!” and slammed the door closed, trapping the quigs in the bedroom. Again the quigs slammed at the door in a blood rage.

  Mark poked his head into the ro
om. “Can we go now?” he asked.

  The two of them ran back along the hallway and hurried down the stairs. They were just about to exit through the broken window when Mark stopped.

  “Look!” he exclaimed and held up his hand. His ring was glowing again. “Whatever it is, it’s down here. Or down there” he said as he pointed at the door to the basement.

  “Forget it! Those dogs are-“

  Mark wasn’t listening. He ran to the basement door and opened it. Sure enough, the symbol on his ring glowed even brighter.

  “It’s down there!”

  “If the quigs get out, we’ll be trapped,” Courtney warned. Too late. Mark was already headed down the stairs. Courtney ran right after him. She made sure to close the door behind her this time, just in case.

  The large basement didn’t look minutes before, except for one thing: Mark’s ring was blasting out light as if it were alive. “This is it!” Mark declared.

  “There’s nothing here,” Courtney exclaimed. “We looked behind every door!”

  A horrifying sound came from above. It was the sound of the quigs running down the stairs from the second floor. They had gotten out of the bedroom. Mark and Courtney looked up in fear. Mark was about to say something, but Courtney held her hand over his mouth. She put her fingers to her lips for him to “Shhhh.” They didn’t move. They didn’t make a sound. They thought that with any luck, the quigs wouldn’t find them.

  Slam!

  No such luck. The quigs found them and were trying to batter down the door.

  “We gotta find a way out,” Courtney said with a shaky voice.

  “No,” Mark yelled back. “We gotta find out what’s down here.” Mark looked around. He went to the door that led to the wine cellar and threw it open.

  Slam! Slam!

  The quigs threw themselves at the basement door with a horrifying fury. They seemed even more out of control than before.

  “They know we’re close,” Mark said. “They don’t want us to find it.”

  Courtney saw something they hadn’t noticed before. A raggy curtain was hanging on the wall, covering it from ceiling to floor. Courtney pushed it aside to find another door. She quickly pulled it open and shouted for joy. Daylight flooded into the basement.

  “Yes! It’s the way out! Mark, c’mon!”

  Mark ignored her. He threw open the door to the workshop, but nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “Mark, c’mon!” Courtney yelled.

  Crunch!

  The basement door was starting to splinter. A few more shots and it would come down… and so would the quigs. “Mark!” Courtney cried.

  Mark wasn’t going to run. Not now. Not when they were so close. He was about to open the next door, the one that led to the root cellar, when he felt something strange. He looked down at his hand, then grimaced in pain.

  “Ahhhhr

  Courtney ran to him. “What’s the matter?” CRASH!

  The wooden basement door gave way and clattered down the stairs. The quigs were on their way.

  “It’s burning hot!” Mark yelled, and pulled off his ring.

  Courtney turned to see the quigs had begun their final, fatal charge. “This is gonna hurt” was all she could say.

  Mark threw the burning ring onto the floor. Instantly a high-pitched sound came from it. It wasn’t a painful sound; it was more like a jumble of high musical notes that were all being played at the same time.

  Courtney grabbed Mark. Mark grabbed Courtney. The two turned to face the charging quigs to see…

  They had stopped. The three beastly dogs, their yellow eyes still intensely focused, had stopped. They twisted their heads as if the strange sound were irritating them. A second later the three dogs turned and ran back up the stairs, tails between their legs, whining in fear.

  Mark and Courtney looked back down to the ring to see that it was moving. It wasn’t growing though. It began to spin. It was slow at first, but picked up momentum until the ring was up on end, spinning so fast that it was nothing more than a blur. The high-pitched notes grew louder.

  “Look!” Mark said, pointing at the door to the root cellar. Courtney looked to see the door was starting to rattle on its hinges.

  “Something’s in there,” Courtney said in shock.

  “Maybe,” Mark said. “Or m-maybe something’s coming.”

  The rattling continued, then an intense light began to leak from around the edges of the door. Whatever was behind there, it was giving off a light so bright that Mark and Courtney had to squint, even though it was only coming from the crack around the edges. The strange sound from the ring grew even more intense. Now it was so loud it started to hurt. Mark and Courtney both had to cover their ears. The light from behind the door grew even brighter. The door shook furiously. Mark was ready for it to blow off its hinges.

  It was then that the most incredible event of all occurred. As the ring continued to spin, a laser light shot from it, aimed at the wooden door. Mark and Courtney watched in awe as the intense white light hit the door at head level. Smoke rose from where the light hit the wood. The door was burning.

  And then, like somebody pulled the plug on a lamp, everything stopped. Everything-the beam of light from the ring; the bright light from behind the door; the strange, piercing sound. And finally the ring itself stopped spinning. It rolled one last time, then came to a stop with a slight, metallic ping. It was over. All was back to normal.

  All but one small thing.

  “Oh, man,” Courtney said in awe.

  Mark saw that she was looking at the door to the root cellar. At first, Mark wasn’t sure why she was so stunned, and then he saw it. It was on the door, right where the beam from the ring had hit it. There was no mistake. They had seen this once before and read about it many times over.

  It was a star. The sign of a gate.

  Mark reached down and picked up the ring. It was no longer glowing and was now cool enough to touch. It had done its job. Courtney walked over to the door and touched the blackened symbol.

  “It’s still hot,” she said. She looked to Mark and asked, “Could it be?”

  “Open the d-door,” Mark said. “My hand’s shaking.”

  Courtney reached down and grabbed the door handle. “My hand’s shaking too,” she said.

  Mark put his hand over Courtney’s and the two of them pulled the door open.

  The room looked pretty much the same as it had when they searched it before. It was a large, empty space with a dirt floor and bits of dried weeds hanging from the beams of the ceiling. It was cool inside, just the way a subterranean root cellar should be. It was the exact same room that they had been in before, except for one small change. The rock that made up one whole wall of the cellar was gone.

  Mark and Courtney stood together, staring, not breathing. Instead of a rock wall, they now looked into a craggy opening. It was unmistakable.

  It was a flume.

  Neither could speak. They both stood there, staring into the infinite tunnel. It was Mark who first broke the silence.

  “D-Do you think m-maybe this means the time is right for us to be acolytes?”

  Courtney stared into the tunnel a moment more, then started to laugh. “Yeah,” she said through the laughter. “I’d say this is a pretty good sign.”

  Mark laughed too. The two laughed and hugged. Neither knew what the future held, but one thing was for certain: They were no longer just bystanders whose job it was to read Bobby’s mail. They were in the game now. For real.

  Mark’s ring twitched.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, and held his hand up.

  “Now what?” Courtney exclaimed. “I don’t know if I can take any more fireworks.”

  But this event was safe and familiar. The center stone of the ring started to glow. Mark took it off and placed it down on the dirt floor. This time the ring grew, opening up the portal to the territories. The familiar musical notes grew louder, bringing with them a special delivery. The sparkling light f
illed the underground room. For Mark and Courtney, it was like being held in a warm embrace. The lights flashed one final time, the notes fell silent, and the ring was once again back to its normal size.

  Lying next to it was the silver projector that held Bobby’s next journal.

  “Hobey-ho,” whispered Mark.

  VEELOX

  We were good to go.

  Loor and I stood facing the three silver disks in the wall of the alpha jump cubicle, wearing our dark green one-piece suits. Loor had been through the prep routine. Her blood had been scanned and she was fitted with a silver control bracelet. I got my own control bracelet too, but after what had happened during my last jump, I wasn’t going to put a whole lot of faith in that thing.

  Our safety was in the hands of Aja Killian. She had put the alpha grid that controlled Zetlin’s jump back online. She would now monitor our jump into Zetlin’s fantasy and yank us out if anything went wrong. At least, that was the plan. Once we were in Dr. Zetlin’s jump, the Reality Bug might have plans of its own.

  “Any questions?” Aja asked us. She stood at the door of the jump cubicle.

  “No,” Loor answered calmly.

  What could Loor ask? This was a girl from a territory of primitive, tribal warriors. The idea of jumping into somebody else’s fantasy was about as alien to her as, well, I seriously doubt if there’s anything that comes close to being that alien.

  Aja stepped back into the Alpha Core and sat in the big chair. She hit a few buttons on the silver control panel on the arm. Two of the three silver disks in the wall retracted, and the tables slowly slid out. These tubes were on either side of the center jump tube where Dr. Zetlin was lying. It was creepy to think ther was a guy in there, and we were about to leap into his mind.

  I hoped there was room for all of us.

  “Lie down on the table,” I instructed Loor. “Get comfortable.”

  She did. Loor trusted me. Man, I hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. I walked out of the jump cubicle and went to Aja.

  “Do you have any idea where we might find him?” I asked.

  Aja frowned. “I’m sorry, Pendragon,” she said. “It all depends on the fantasy he created.”