“I guess,” Mark said.
“You guess what?” growled Frank.
“I got-um.”
Frank laughed. “We’ll see, shrimp.”
“So OK, let’s go do it,” said Troy.
They surrounded Mark and grabbed his arms and shoulders, and pushed him along with them, to the front of the house and then to the sidewalk, where they began to walk briskly up Main Street before abruptly turning North onto Bartlet Street.
“Where are we going?” Mark asked, puzzled. As far as he knew, there were only a few scattered homes on Bartlet, separated by long stretches of forest. He had liked it better being on Main Street. Even though there was almost no traffic and there were no other pedestrians in sight, at least Main Street had streetlights. Even with a half-moon poking its light through wispy clouds, Bartlet Street was almost totally dark. Troy and his buddies seemed to like the dark.
“We’re going to visit some squatters, Tuttle,” said Troy. “Stinking Norms and their little mixy brat. Going to welcome them to Hope real proper. OK, everyone cloak.”
Everyone except Mark disappeared, though Mark could still feel them holding his arms.
“Don’t you know how to even cloak, shrimp?” Frank asked.
“But it’s not legal!” Mark complained.
The others all laughed, except for Fred. Fred never laughed or smiled. Mark didn’t know who was scarier, Frank the loud, pushy bully, Troy the nut-case leader, pushy John, or silent dead-eyed Fred.
“But it’s not legal!” whined Frank. “What a wimp!”
“You gotta cloak, kid,” said Troy, as he squeezed Mark’s arm painfully.
Mark cloaked, though in the darkness it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference.
“Better,” Troy said. “Now listen up. There’s a trailer up ahead where a couple of stupid powerless Norms just moved, along with their little bratty mixy-breed kindergartener. I figure that the slutty mother screwed an Unaligned Wizard to get herself a ticket into Hope and a nice new trailer, but we're not going to let her get away with it. They're on an otherwise big empty lot, with no houses nearby, so we should have no trouble from nosey neighbors.”
“It’s the first trailer of what is to become a big trailer park for these kind of families,” said Frank. ”That’s why we’re going to make sure they go back to the Unaligned where they belong, or soon there’ll be many more Norms and their bastard mixies moving in.”
That was a racist remark, Mark knew. Many racist Wizards believed that any offspring with powers must surely have at least one Wizard parent. That had been disproven many times scientifically. Most Wizards actually were born of two Norm parents. That's why 'missionaries' from Hope were needed to seek out children with powers. “But no matter who the parents are, if the kid’s already showing powers, he should be living here in Hope,” he argued.
“The little half-breed bastard has no business living here with true Wizards,” said Troy. “All of us here are at least third-generation pure bloods, including you, Tuttle, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“But don’t they still have a legal right to be here?” Mark asked. He didn't dare mention anything about moral rights.
Troy and the others stopped in their tracks. Mark could feel them around him, and even through their cloaking could feel their hostility. They could probably feel his growing fear, also. Any second, and he expected to feel a big fist slam into his face or stomach.
“That better not be what you really think, Tuttle, or you won’t make the grade with us,” Troy said.
“What I mean is, that’s what the law says; that doesn’t mean that it’s right or wrong,” said Mark. “I mean, I can see your point, but what can we do about it?” He could feel their hostility decrease somewhat.
“We can scare the buggers off, that’s what,” said Frank. “A week ago we tore down their mail box.”
“Then we broke some of the windows of their lousy trailer,” added John, "and then since they are probably idiots we wrote some nasty notes to them so that they would know what we want."
“And we slashed some tires,” said Frank.
“And smashed some paint-balloons over their junker car and their junker trailer,” added John.
“And the dumb bastards are still here sticking it out!” Frank complained. “Can you believe it? Can't be courage, it must be a strong case of stupid!”
Mark couldn’t believe any of it; that this sort of thing actually happened here in Hope was totally insane!
“So it’s time to step things up a notch or two,” Troy said. “Take this bag.”
Mark could feel a plastic bag being shoved into his hands. It weighed several pounds and seemed to contain something soft and squishy inside of it.
“It’s kerosene filled balloons, four of them,” said Troy, “with a touch of gasoline just to help get things started. We have to move fast before the balloons disintegrate. You just throw them against the trailer so they break and we’ll light-um off. The trailer has some wood trim and framing that should burn like crazy and a propane tank that should go off like dynamite!”
Troy and his crew laughed, except for the always sullen Fred.
Crazy was the right word for it, Mark decided! The bag suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. Kerosene and gasoline? Really? But he could smell them faintly. Yes, that's what it was! What the hell! These guys were totally crazy!
“Quiet down now, we’re almost there,” Troy said. “The man will be expecting us; that’s what makes it such a great scam. The slob will be out with his baseball bat, looking for us, and again we’ll be invisible.”
“Throw them balloons against the trailer good and hard, or they won’t splash good,” Frank told Mark.
“And don’t get it on yourself, Squirt,” added Troy, “or you’ll go up with the trailer.”
“Go up?” Mark asked. His head was spinning too much. Nothing made any sense.
“In flames, dummy,” said Frank.
Flames? This was all crazy! They really meant to set a home on fire! With people in it!
“Quiet now, there’s the trailer,” whispered Troy, excitedly. “It’s up ahead on the right where that light is. Just smash the balloons over the trailer, kid, we’ll distract the guy and light the fire.”
“For sure,” laughed Frank.
"Get it done," said Fred. "Or else!" Fred's voice was deep like a croaking frog. Maybe that's why he didn't talk much.
Someone gave Mark a rough push towards the trailer, and he almost fell down with the delicate balloons. Then he was alone.
His first impulse was to drop the bag of balloons and run, make for home as fast as he could. But that would mean the end of any hopes of being accepted by Troy and his followers, which would mean that he and Ann would be at their mercy all year!
No, if he could just get through this one night, he and Ann would be immune from trouble. He simply had to go through with it! On the other hand, he couldn’t set a trailer on fire, especially a home with people in it! He simply couldn’t! He walked slowly towards the light, hoping for some brilliant idea to come to mind that would save both himself and the trailer.
“I hear you, you sneaking bastards,” came a man’s voice from the dark suddenly, in the direction of the light. The voice sounded both angry and frightened. A second light separated from the first and moved towards the boys. The man had a flashlight, and was walking straight towards Mark.
“Woooo,” came a voice several yards to his left, followed by laughter. Frank. Immediately the flashlight swung in that direction, but revealed only empty lawn.
“Get out of town, you mixed breed bastards,” shouted a voice, Troy’s, from his right. The flashlight swung towards Troy, but Troy was also invisible.
“Get out, Norms!” yelled John, again and again, and the chant was soon taken up by Troy, Frank, and even stoic Fred.
“Why can’t you leave us alone? What’s wrong with you boys?” the man asked, as they chanted. The man’s voice had a slight Spanish
accent.
The man moved to the right, towards Troy. Maybe he had figured out that Troy was the leader, from previous nights.
“Get away from here!” the man shouted, as he moved now towards Troy’s tainting voice. In the half-moonlight Mark could see him now dimly, a squat mid-sized man of average build, probably smaller than Troy, carrying a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
Suddenly the man fell violently down to the ground, probably from being tripped or pushed by his invisible tormentors. He fell hard; Mark could hear him grunt. Laughter from Troy and his goons followed. It sounded to Mark like all four of the gang were moving in to surround the man now. They cursed and shouted and laughed, taunting the man unmercifully, kicking him then dodging the man's futile return-blows.
Mark was frozen in place, his limbs weakened so much his legs nearly buckled, his heart pounding so loud it was a wonder he could hear what was happening. What should he do? What could he do?
The man started to stand up, but was immediately tripped and pushed down again and kicked by his invisible attackers. He was by now terrified, Mark could sense. The others must have sensed the man’s terror too, but instead of disgusting them it seemed to spur them on. Troy and his freaks were actually enjoying themselves! “Good one, dude,” Frank said, at one point as he laughed, after someone knocked the man down yet again.
“Move, Squirt,” Troy shouted in Mark’s direction. “Get the trailer!”
“Burn it down, dude,” Frank shouted, before laughing hysterically again. “Burn, burn, burn the scum out!"
"Do it or we'll beat you and your uppity sister to crap!" shouted Troy. "You hear me squirt? Do it now or you and her are both dead!”
Things were happening too fast and out of control, but they also seemed to be happening in slow motion. Mark suddenly could move, but his legs seemed to be made of lead. He ran towards the trailer stiffly. In the moonlight he could see its hulking shape of the trailer; a big one, lighted at one end by a small outside yellow bulb, the kind that wasn't supposed to draw bugs. The rest of the trailer was dark, but he could sense the young child and mother inside, and he could feel their fear!
At all costs he had to avoid getting any kerosene on the trailer. Somehow he had to get rid of the balloons before Troy and his buddies took them back from him and did the job themselves. He decided that he would slam the bag onto the ground a few feet short of the trailer. He would tell Troy that he had simply tripped in the tall grass and fallen down with them.
“No,” he heard the man shout, behind him, and further away, he heard Troy and Frank cursing. Looking back, in the dim light Mark could see the man up and running fast straight towards him. He had lost the flashlight, but still had the bat. “No!” he shouted again and again in desperation. Behind the approaching man, four small bobbing lights followed, floating in the air several feet off the ground. Troy and the others must have lit their cigarette lighters, Mark realized, to set off the kerosene! The lighters all burned far too bright: magic had to be involved! "Wooo!" one of them howled, his voice greatly magnified by magic.
Incredibly, the man was running straight for Mark, gaining on him rapidly, swinging the bat and now screaming incoherently. Mark dodged to the right, though he continued in the general direction of the trailer, which was only twenty meters further ahead. Impossibly, the man followed his dodge, bat raised to strike. How did the man know exactly where he was?
As he again glanced back to see the man almost on top of him, Mark tripped on a rough stretch of grass and fell heavily to the ground on his right side, on top of the bag of kerosene balloons. At least one of them must have burst, because Mark felt cool wetness on his arm and stomach, and could smell the unmistakable scent of kerosene and gasoline. Even in the dim light he could see the wetness as a darkness on his tan tea-shirt, and feel it cold on his skin.
See the wetness? Mark suddenly realized that he was visible! In the darkness he hadn’t noticed until now. At some point he had forgotten all about his cloaking; that’s how the man knew where he was!
The man was suddenly towering over him with the bat, holding it high and ready to swing. In pure panic Mark instinctively tossed up as a distraction whatever he held in his hands: the plastic bag, which still gushed with at least half of the kerosene and gasoline. The man swung the bat wildly and perhaps also as a defensive reflex and whacked the bag hard, which was ripped to bits, sending splashing droplets of kerosene all about in the darkness, including onto both Mark and the man!
In what seemed to Mark like super slow motion, a burning cigarette lighter spun through the air out of the darkness and landed next to him, from which flames spread in a flash to Mark, the man, and at least two of Troy’s troop.
Amid the terrified screaming that immediately followed, Mark somehow remembered one of the practice drills that Ann had put him through earlier that day, a flame-snuffing spell that at the time he had thought to be particularly boring and worthless.
There was sudden darkness as all of the flames were instantly snuffed out. Mark found himself sitting in singed, smoking grass. Part of his tea shirt was burned away, but aside from what seemed to be incredibly painful burns on one arm and his stomach, he had miraculously been spared, and the fire was out.
He and the man were alone in the dark; Mark could hear sounds of Troy, Frank, and the others retreating in the darkness, laughing.
The man hadn’t been so fortunate. In the dim light from the trailer and the moon, Mark could see him on his knees a few feet from him, holding his hands before himself as he moaned in pain. Mark could sense that both of the man's hands were very seriously burned, along with one side of his face and much of his chest!
More of Ann’s teachings came back to him. If someone wasn’t immediately treated for a serious injury, magic healing would be impossible! Mark was exceptionally good at healing; he had healed minor injuries to himself and to Ann dozens of times. He had never faced anything like this! But he had to now!
“I can help,” he told the man, as he knelt next to him. The moaning man didn’t seem to even notice that he was there.
“Get away from him,” demanded a woman’s angry voice.
The woman, evidently the man’s wife, had come out of the trailer. She shakily held a pistol in both hands, pointed directly at Mark. Behind her stood a small frightened boy in pajamas. Even in the near darkness Mark could see the woman’s angry, accusing eyes, and those of the boy, which were mostly curious, and very penetrating.
“Oh my God, Jose!” said the woman, as she realized how badly her husband was injured. She dropped the pistol to the ground and rushed to him, crying.
“I can help him,” Mark said again.
The sobbing woman looked at him uncertainly, before turning questioningly to the small boy beside her.
“He’s OK, Mom, he put out the fire. Let him try to help Dad,” the little boy with the deep eyes said. “I hope you’re better at healing than you are at running or cloaking,” he said to Mark.
“Please?” Mark asked the woman. “Let me try?”
“Go ahead,” the woman now told Mark in return.
Mark stood behind the still kneeling man, placed his hands on his shoulders, and focused. It took a moment longer to establish a connection to the man, perhaps because it wasn’t his twin sister this time, or perhaps because it wasn’t someone who also had Wizard powers. Still, in a short time he was synched with the man’s vitals, and was supplying calming, healing strength to him. That was stage one.
The man’s pain hit Mark like a sledge hammer, as he absorbed it to himself. “Help him, or he’ll fall down from the pain,” the small boy told his mother, and Mark was soon dimly aware of her steadying arm around his shoulders. He felt dizzy from the pain, but he could still function, he had to! So much for stage two!
Stage three was next. Healing. The man’s own body was the key. Programmed into the relatively undamaged cells that remained were the keys to healing. Mark simply used what was there,
and added his own body’s life-energy resources to those of Jose.
The pain should have immediately receded, but it remained; not for the man, but for Mark. He would have collapsed then, were it not for the woman on one side, the boy on the other, and his own tensed muscles. Fortunately, Mark soon wasn’t even aware of his own pain, gasping for breath, moaning in agony, and growing weakness. He was only aware of the healing that he was doing. Cell on cell, layer on layer of muscle and skin reformed on the man.
After minutes that seemed like an eternity the teenager at last reached his limit and lost consciousness.
****
CHAPTER 5
The Hortegas
“It’s about time,” Mark heard his father’s stern voice, a moment after he opened his eyes. He was in a hospital room, lying in a bed, and he felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. Morning sun was streaming in through a window.
“Go easy on him, Eric; he is a hero,” said another voice that it took a moment for him to palace. It was Moco. The massive Wolf stood head and shoulders over and next to the Wizard. Mark could have sworn he saw the Wolf grin and wink at him as he stepped from the room.
As his father sat next to the bed Mark saw that he also looked very tired. “Good morning, Son. You had us worried, boy. Gods, don’t ever do something like that again! Healing like that is a level three-plus skill; what were you thinking? You could have died!”
“I’m sorry, Dad. How is Jose?”
“They brought Mr. Hortega here to check him out, and then released him. He’s perfectly fine. From what he and his wife told me, they have you to thank for that. You completely healed extensive second and third degree burns, Mark! I managed to heal yours.”
“There’s much more to it than that, Dad. Terrible things.”
“Of course there is. You didn’t just happen to show up at their home half-way across town. You were part of the gang attacking that man’s home, weren’t you?” It was an accusation, not so much a question.
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