Chapter Four
A COLUMN OF air shimmered in front of Mr. Dunkelson's desk and bent in upon itself, as though from a nearby source of heat.
Kenneth had no other way to describe the phenomenon he observed.
It split vertically down the middle, like he'd seen on that Charlton Heston movie they put on television every Easter. In the movie, Heston had raised up his staff, and the sea had split apart so the Israelites could escape the pharaoh's chariots.
Now, the very air in front of Kenneth was doing the same thing.
A vertical blackness opened up, a blackness so complete that Kenneth thought no light could ever penetrate it.
A faint whirring sound echoed throughout the room.
Kenneth saw Savannah put her hands over her ears.
He wondered where the sound was coming from.
Then, he noticed a pencil suspended in mid-air next to his leg.
He'd knocked his pencil off his desk, yet it hadn't completed its fall. The pencil pointed upward, stuck in mid-air as though encased in glass.
Kenneth reached out a hand to grab it. The closer his hand got to the pencil, the more resistance he felt.
It reminded him of the time in science class when the teacher had him work with magnets. He had tried to nudge both north poles together, but no matter how hard he tried, they would slide away from each other of their own accord.
He thought of this as his hand slid off to the side, as though an invisible force prevented him from grabbing his pencil.
He tried standing up.
Before his knees could strike the underside of the desk, the resistance made itself felt again.
His whole body slid off abruptly to the left.
He struck the carpet, backside-first.
Kenneth blinked in surprise.
He hadn't expected that to happen.
He stood up, trying to get his bearings.
His feet felt unusually heavy.
The yawning chasm in front of Mr. Dunkelson's desk had grown wider.
Kenneth saw Savannah laying on the floor, curled into a ball.
All thoughts of the names she'd called him during gym class vanished from his head.
Trying not to touch anything, Kenneth staggered along slowly, awkwardly in front of the row of desks, struggling to maintain his balance, grunting mightily as he fought to walk across the room, something he had done countless times before, no more than ten, maybe twelve steps at most, but had never given much thought to until now.
What the hell's happening?
He passed the chasm.
He thought he heard a voice, though whatever sound registered in his ears had been so faint that he couldn't make out what had been said.
Had Mr. Dunkelson said something?
No, he remained sleeping at his desk, even as the whirring noise frantically increased in pitch.
Kenneth reached Savannah.
An angry purple bruise lay on her arm.
Kenneth looked down and saw that similar blotches had developed on his knees.
He hadn't noticed the pain until he looked down.
The throbbing suddenly made itself known.
Pain pulsated in his knees, nearly causing him to collapse.
He wondered if this was how magnets felt when they were forced towards together.
If so, he regretted all the time he'd spent in the classroom pushing metal objects with the same magnetic charge together.
Savannah, still curled in a fetal position, seemed not to notice him. Yet when Kenneth's fingers touched the bruise on her arm, he didn't feel the same force repelling him away.
Amidst the increasing chaos of the classroom, Kenneth had time to consider that he must not be repelled from Savannah because they must have opposite magnetic charges.
Why that should matter now when it never mattered before, he didn't know.
The black space widened until Kenneth saw it for what it was-a doorway.
He had seen such things on television before, though he hadn't ever expected a man to walk through.
Yet a man did walk through.
The man wore a spacesuit so cumbersome that he had to lift one foot up to the height of his shin before he planted it back down. The spacesuit, made completely out of metal, bore markings Kenneth didn't recognize.
By now, the whirring sound had increased so much that the desks were vibrating. Kenneth felt the sensations in his feet. Even so, each step Spacesuit took rang loud above the din. Every plodding footstep made produced a crash which left an indentation upon the tile floor. Debris sprang up in the air, slowed, then stopped before they could touch the ground. As a result, by the time the man reached Kenneth, he'd left a trail behind in midair to mark his passage.
Kenneth tried to speak.
He heard the words inside his head, yet all the noise around him drowned out all sound.
Spacesuit touched Kenneth on the shoulder with one hand.
Kenneth felt something puncture his skin.
Without warning, he felt his consciousness drifting away from him.
He struggled to stay awake even while his head drooped.
He had time enough to register Spacesuit touching Savannah on the back.
He wanted to shout a protest.
Instead, he crumpled to the ground.
Journey Through Time (A Time Travel Adventure Collection Part 1) Page 4