by Dan Jolley
Jackson recalled when he had first learned that magick was real. He remembered the wonder he’d felt. The possibility. But times must have changed. Brett’s tanned skin had taken on a grayish tone, and beads of sweat began to run down his temples. Was he physically ill, or were these merely the boy’s anxieties exerting themselves? The small one, Kazuo, appeared to be on the verge of vomiting, and Gabe stared into space, frowning. Perhaps letting the truth of Jackson’s words sink in.
Only Lily seemed unfazed. She stared at him, hawk-like. He would need to keep a careful watch on that one.
Gabe glanced around at his friends before turning that unnerving green-eyed gaze on Jackson. “So, what do you want with us?”
Jackson tried to choose his words carefully. The boy, Gabe Conway, if that was what he insisted on calling himself, was by far the most important one in this group. The one whose trust he must win at all costs. Jackson tried to temper his voice so that it would sound soothing. “The four of you have been bound together through an ancient and unbreakable rite.” Jackson’s eyes slid over to Brett, who still appeared weak and shaky, and down to the Tablet he held. I wonder if Brett will ever comprehend how thoroughly his strings have been pulled? “You have also unlocked the sacred text of Tabula Smaragdina. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus himself. A keystone text to the magickal arts.”
Lily’s brow furrowed. “Tris . . . I’m sorry, who?”
Kaz spoke to her under his breath: “Sort of an Egyptian, uh . . . god of magick or writing . . . sort of guy.”
An unexpected flash of anger shot through Jackson at such a clumsy summation of so powerful an entity. He tamped it down. “As I was saying. The four of you can see things other people cannot see, and the things you can do . . . you cannot yet imagine. You have opened the Tablet, have you not?”
Gabe nodded guardedly.
“And you could see the writing on its pages, no? Allow me to guess: you each saw something different. Correct?” No one spoke, but Lily sucked in a quick breath, and Brett hugged the Tablet to his chest. “You each saw the hidden language of one specific element. You are bound to these elements, each of you. Bound to an immutable element of the terrestrial plane.”
Lily looked at Kaz, but he shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “He lost me after Hermes Trismegistus.”
“Speak English, would you?” Lily said, a quaver in her bold words. Jackson almost smiled. She was afraid of him, display of bravery or not. Good.
“Keep that courage about you,” Jackson said. He tried to grin, but this seemed to make Lily even more frightened, so he dropped it. “You will all need to be brave to face what is coming.”
Gabe turned to Brett. “Is this why you wanted to come down here? Did you know about this—this freak show?”
Brett blinked. Swallowed hard. “Did I know about this? I just wanted to see where the gold thread went!” He waved a hand vaguely at Jackson. “I didn’t know we were gonna run into Ghost Boy here!”
Jackson scowled. He could feel the encounter going wrong. “Listen to me! You have to listen. The four of you have a destiny. A destiny that you must embrace.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed as he turned from Brett to Jackson. “Look, Ghost Boy. We don’t understand what’s going on here, and until we’ve wrapped our heads around this a little better, why don’t you just back off with all the elements and destiny and crap, okay?”
And, like the cracking of a brittle twig, Jackson snapped. He saw the cold, hard light blaze from his body to flare against the ancient walls. “You fools!” His voice was like thunder. The four children stepped back in shock, even Brett. “You have glimpsed the power you possess, you have been told of the danger and the destiny that await you, and you waste precious seconds on nonsense?”
Gabe’s green eyes flashed with anger. It made Jackson pause. Part of him wanted to apologize, console them, explain everything in a clear, calm way that would make them all understand. Or at least understand what I want them to understand. But he saw the situation slipping away from him and knew he was powerless to stop it. He had spent far too long in the Umbra, far too long without any human contact, and it had damaged him.
But . . .
He didn’t want to admit the real root of his mounting despair. He should be in control here! He should be moving these children like pawns on a chessboard! And yet, as they took quaking steps backward, he wanted to cry out to them, make them understand the truth:
I’ve been so lonely!
“You cannot leave!” Jackson meant for it to come out as a request, but his voice quaked with anger. Lily turned pale, and Kaz looked like he was fighting back tears. “Stay here!” Jackson asked, but what he heard wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
A threat.
“Get away from us!” Gabe yelled. For a heartbeat, just for an instant, his voice sounded like the crackling of flames. Jackson’s skin abruptly tightened as a wave of heat rolled down the corridor.
“Let’s get out of here!” Lily shouted. Kaz fled immediately, but Lily had to grab Gabe by the arm before he seemed to hear her. As she pulled Gabe back she said, “Brett, come on, let’s go!” Then she sprinted after Kaz with Gabe close behind her.
But Brett lingered. Jackson fought for self-control, fought against the unreasoning tide of chaos and anger that threatened to overwhelm him. Brett was his friend. Brett would understand.
“Where is he?” Brett whispered, fear mingled with desperation. “You promised. You promised. Where’s Charlie?”
No! No, no, no, he wasn’t ready for that question! Not yet! And the anger must have shown on his face, because Brett quailed away from him, threw one hand up to protect his face as the light from Jackson’s body flashed and flared. Grotesque shadows danced along the length of the corridor, and Brett turned and ran.
Jackson’s eyes brimmed with tears. “No!” He hoped Brett would stop, stop and come back to him, but Brett ran every bit as fast as his friends had. With a wail that mortified Jackson even as he heard it escaping his lips, he cried, “Don’t leave me alone! Not again, please!”
But only Brett’s footfalls answered him.
A solid, freezing calm washed over Jackson. These children were his lifeline. Jackson knew he couldn’t let them get away. Not yet. Not before his plan had time to unfold.
He sprinted after Brett. If he could make one of them stay, surely the others would cooperate. They weren’t the kind of children to abandon one of their own, were they? No. The soles of his shoes rasped against the stone as he ran after them. Far ahead of him he could hear frightened, confused cries. Someone had taken a wrong turn. Good. Yes. Run in circles, so I can catch you!
As he ran, Jackson’s awareness of his surroundings grew. This prison, this Alcatraz, echoed and hissed and thrummed with anguish, whispered echoes reflected by the deepest scars of human suffering. Alcatraz was cursed, he realized. Might that have been why he could step through the veil here? Why he felt so—the knowledge pained him—why he felt so at home inside these walls? Jackson Wright belonged here.
Because who, in all the worlds, had ever been so cursed as he?
6
Escape!
The thought rang inside Gabe’s head with each pounding footfall.
Out the little hallway, take a right in the big hallway, straight up the stairs! Simple!
But then why did Kaz, twenty panicked paces in front of him, leave the narrow corridor and turn left? Lily, just ahead of Gabe, adjusted course and almost bounced off a wall—“Kaz!”—and went after him.
“Kaz went the wrong way!” Gabe called over his shoulder to Brett. “We’ve gotta grab him and—” The words snapped off cleanly. Brett wasn’t behind him, and Gabe skidded to a stop. Oh crap, that Ghost Boy got Brett! Wait, no—there was Brett, sprinting right at him.
“What are you doing?” Brett shouted. “MOVE!”
Gabe had no time and no need to ask what had happened, because Ghost Boy was right behind Brett, running full tilt, cold light strea
ming and pulsing off him as if in time with the beating of a phantom heart. “Stop!” he wailed. “You have to stop!”
Gabe took off again just as Brett caught up to him, and they exited the narrow hallway together. Gabe hung a left. “We’ve gotta get Kaz and Lily!”
Brett nodded, not questioning, and the two of them ran deeper into the old citadel’s halls, their shadows long and eerie in front of them, cast by Ghost Boy’s pale light.
Gabe got lost almost immediately, at least as far as keeping track of which way led out. He could hear Kaz’s frightened voice ahead and Lily’s more reasonable words trying to calm him, but they must have been running, too, because turn after turn, corner after corner, Kaz and Lily stayed just out of sight.
“How do we get out of here? We’ve got to get out of here,” Brett breathed next to him, huffing and puffing.
“I know, I know!” Gabe risked a glance over his shoulder. Ghost Boy wasn’t quite at their heels, but the icy freak show light he gave off was getting stronger by the second in the hallway they had just left. “Come on!”
With Gabe still in the lead, he and Brett rounded a corner and ran straight into Lily. She and Gabe hit the stone floor in a tangle of arms and legs, and he found his face shoved into the crook of her neck. An involuntary part of his brain offered up the opinion Wow she smells fantastic, but he didn’t even have time to feel what should have been a tidal wave of embarrassment. Immediately he sprang to his feet and hauled Lily back to hers, and spotted Kaz hiding, or at least trying to hide, inside one of the doorless cells.
“Come on let’s go let’s go LET’S GO!” Gabe shouted, and Brett grabbed Kaz by the arm and hauled him out of the cell while Gabe and Lily took off down the hallway ahead of them.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Lily demanded, and Gabe opened his mouth to say “I have no freaking clue!” when—he could scarcely believe it—he spotted a narrow, bright line beneath a metal door in the wall ahead. Sunlight?
Gabe banged into the door and, with every bit of strength he had, shoved it open. Bright, glorious sunlight and a delicious wave of salty ocean air washed over him, and he would have taken maybe half a second to enjoy it, but Brett and Kaz rushed past Lily and slammed into him from behind. All four of them stumbled out into the light, onto a narrow, stone-paved walkway that appeared to run around the back of the prison.
Gabe pointed. “The dock’s that way! Run!”
“Please. Please don’t!”
Ghost Boy’s voice stopped him in his tracks. Gone was the weird, otherworldly menace. Now all Gabe heard was a scared little boy. He didn’t want to turn his head and look, but he couldn’t help it. And in the process he realized Kaz, Lily, and Brett were all doing the same.
Ghost Boy—Jackson Wright, he’d said his name was—stood in the doorway of the prison. Maybe he can’t come out into the sunlight! Maybe we’re safe out here!
But Jackson Wright could come out. And as soon as he walked out onto the path, Gabe really, really wished he hadn’t, because when the sun’s rays hit him, Jackson’s body turned completely transparent.
No. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t as if the boy turned invisible. It was as if Jackson Wright had suddenly become a window. A portal that appeared in the real world but offered a view of a very different one. And to Gabe’s horror, it was a world he recognized.
As Jackson Wright moved, Gabe could see a gold-and-amber sky swirling around towering, warped, grotesque buildings. A gargoyle took flight and soared across the space where Jackson’s eyes should have been, and someone screamed, maybe Kaz. And even though his conscious mind was too pants-wettingly freaked out to make a rational decision, his feet at that moment found a mind of their own. Gabe turned and tore away from Ghost Boy, all three of his friends right behind him, and only then did he realize that the scream had come from his own throat.
The stone path emerged from a thicket of bushes onto the steep trail leading up to the cellhouse’s front entrance. Gabe was happy to let the incline work in his favor and practically flew down the hillside. A glance behind him confirmed that his friends were still with him and, better yet, that Jackson Wright was not.
They didn’t stop until they reached the wharf, where Gabe sagged against a low concrete wall, gasping for air. Brett and Lily were both winded, but they recovered a lot more quickly than he did—especially after Lily broke out her rescue inhaler and took a huge pull off it—while Kaz wheezed and coughed and wheezed some more.
Gabe went over to Kaz, who was bent over with his hands on his knees, and squatted down, putting their faces on the same level. “You okay, buddy?”
“I can think of a lot of words to describe myself right now.” Kaz got out the words between gasps. “Terrified. Horrified. Suddenly insecure on a freaking cosmic level.” He finally straightened back up. “But ‘okay’ is not on the list.”
Kaz wobbled over to a bench and sat, his head hanging down between his shoulders. Gabe sat next to him. Every time Gabe closed his eyes, the image of the twisted city he’d glimpsed through Jackson Wright was right there, front and center.
I’ve seen that place before. The sky, the towers, the . . . creatures. Right after we touched the book. The “Tablet.”
Gabe didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to think he could have seen into some other world, and especially not a world as horrible as that place. Just the thought of it made him feel . . . contaminated. As if the city itself were toxic.
Maybe he’d imagined it?
But any hope that the strange, distorted city might not have been real evaporated when Lily shook his shoulder and said, “Did you see that?”
Gabe raised his head and dimly noted that Brett was standing several steps away from the rest of them, staring back up at the prison. “See what?” Gabe asked, knowing the answer.
“That ghost kid.” Lily hugged herself, shuddering. “I could see through him. To some other place. It was terrible.”
Gabe stood and faced the wharf. The ferry they had come in on was slowly making its way back to the mainland, and appeared to be empty. Another ferry had just come to a stop at the dock, and as he watched, passengers began to file onto it.
I bet none of them ran into weird ghost kids.
Fatigue washed over Gabe. He found himself wishing he could go back to the way things were just yesterday. Before the world went completely nuts. Blissful ignorance. Can’t appreciate it till you’ve lost it, I guess.
“Come on,” Gabe said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Kaz groaned but stood. Lily beckoned to her brother, and Brett followed her. Sticking close together, and casting frequent glances back up at the prison, they left Alcatraz Island and boarded the ferry.
Finally drained of fear, since there had been no sign of Jackson Wright the ghost boy coming after them, Gabe felt his emotions swiftly spiraling downward. This whole day was a mistake. They never should have messed around with things in Uncle Steve’s office. And they definitely shouldn’t have ditched school and come out here. Gabe had wanted another adventure with his friends, absolutely, but this? Whatever this is, we’re in way over our heads.
They settled into some indoor seats on the ride back. Gabe had no great desire to get close to the water again, and no one else seemed to, either. It would have been easy to let his eyes glaze over, just stare into space like . . . well, like Brett was doing. Usually the first one to tease or crack a joke, Brett seemed to be dealing with all this weirdness by getting really quiet. Gabe hoped he wouldn’t shut down completely.
After a couple of minutes Kaz spoke up, sounding as if he’d lost most of his panic and regained all of his worry.
“So . . . are we gonna talk about this?”
Lily waved a hand vaguely in the air. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Well, how about that kid?” Kaz shuddered. “What was he?”
Gabe slowly shrugged. “Beats me. Could it have been— I mean, did we just see a ghost?”
Lily
thought about it. “But we saw something else through him. I’ve never heard of any ghost story like that.”
“Dead isn’t gone,” Brett said, barely louder than a whisper.
Brett’s eyes glistened, and Gabe realized his friend was a hairbreadth away from tears. “‘Dead isn’t gone’? Brett, what does that mean?”
Brett shook his head and looked down at his feet. “Sorry. Just—ghosts. Thinking about it. About . . . Charlie.” Lily sucked in a sharp breath, while Brett turned his face away and fell silent.
Gabe knew he’d just walked all over the sorest of sore points for the Hernandez twins, and he knew when to back off.
Kaz leaned over to Gabe and murmured, “Are they okay?”
He glanced at Brett, then at Lily, who suddenly seemed to have decided the bay outside the window was the most fascinating thing on Earth. Gabe shook his head quickly at Kaz: leave them alone. Kaz understood and sat back in his seat, only sneaking a few furtive glances at the twins.
Gabe stood and wandered over to the windows on the opposite side of the cabin. Beyond the city, a wall of fog had gathered along the tops of the mountains and rolled down into the city like a slow-motion avalanche. Buildings and roads and hills disappeared into it. As he stood there, taking in the sight, Ghost Boy’s words rattled and pinged in his head like pebbles in an empty tin can.
Each of us is connected to an element?
That reminded Gabe of the whole fire, water, wind, and earth setup from the hidden Friendship Chamber. Then there was Uncle Steve’s insistence that the stuff in his office was actually dangerous.
Gabe had never thought much of the books and artifacts in Uncle Steve’s office. He’d been sincere when he’d called them “hocus-pocus”: a bunch of made-up stories that kept Uncle Steve permanently distracted and that he seemed to find infinitely more interesting than he’d ever found Gabe. But was it possible that, all this time, those objects had held real power?