The Lord of the Curtain

by Billy Phillips

  Dr. Kyle:Quite impressive. I’m pleased you seem to agree that your personal experience was merely the manifestation of deep-seated emotional issues, psychogenic in nature, as opposed to an actual, tangible experience that took place in some other hyperdimensional reality whose substance is made up of raw imagination.

  Caitlin:They are one and the same, Doctor Kyle. I think everything that I just said went right over your head. You’re failing to resist your own red side, and therefore you’ve been unable to grasp what I have shared with you.

  Dr. Kyle:Let me remind you: when you wake from this hypnotherapy session, you will remember nothing.

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  In Caitlin’s recurring dream about a gleaming black gate leading to a forest, there was always a mysterious, white-clad girl waving her over. The dream had now become reality, because standing by the black front gate to Forest Lawn Cemetery stood a strange girl adorned in splendid white apparel, waving her arm.

  “Over here!” the girl cried out when she spied Caitlin. Her words turned to steam in the cool air. Caitlin hightailed it across the road, praying that those awful dark shapes were still pursuing the car.

  When she arrived at the gate, the girl smiled sweetly. She was beautiful, lit by moonlight, and wearing a white, long-sleeved lace top with a sort-of-long peplum. An elegant lace drop-pearl choker graced her neck, and her white skinny jeans—to die for—featured fashionable ripped slits above ribbed knees. White, quilted lace-up sneakers adorned her feet. Her hair was in stark contrast to her white outfit, though—it was as red as precious rubies.

  The girl in white dispensed with formal introductions and simply said, “Come.”

  She took hold of a thick rope dangling from the high black gate and began to ascend the iron bars with graceful

  agility. She climbed up and over, then hopped down on the other side.

  Caitlin’s turn. She gripped the rope with both hands and wedged her feet between the bars. She began pulling with her hands, pushing with her legs, and scaling her way to the top. Once she climbed over the sharp top edge, she slid down the bars, landing inside the unlit cemetery.

  “Please follow me,” the girl instructed. She sprinted off into the dark. Caitlin went after her.

  They raced across the pitch-dark parkland that was Forest Lawn. A span of unreachable stars speckled the night sky. The whistling winds were behind them now, giving them added lift. They sprinted past tombstones . . . swaying trees . . . more tombstones. . . .

  “Who are you, and how’d you know I’d be here?” Caitlin called out, breathing fast and heavy.

  “I’m of the South. Lady Glinda.”

  The good witch from Oz?

  The air was dry and nippy as the girls galloped across the dark lawns. Leafy windblown tree branches hissed like waves upon the sea. They crossed a narrow roadway and cut across another tract of land. Then the girl called Glinda finally pulled up to a stop by a large tree. Caitlin skidded to a stop next to her, panting. She hunched over, hands on her knees.

  After catching some gulps of air, she glanced up.

  Next to the thick tree was an unusually broad headstone.

  Carved into the rock was the name L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels.

  A hole gaped open where Baum’s grave should have been. Glinda approached it. A rich yellow light suddenly began to swirl into a golden whirlpool in the hole. Twirling airborne particles glistened like magic dust as leaves,

  twigs, and other debris started to get sucked down the golden funnel.

  Another shrill echo in the distance, followed immediately by the awful earthworm smell.

  “They’ve found us,” Glinda said breathlessly. “Please hurry down that hole—now.”

  “But what about Natalie?”

  “She’s somewhere down there. Hurry.”

  Caitlin didn’t need to hear anything more. She jumped in, feet first, and was instantly swallowed up by the vortex of golden glimmer. Glinda followed right behind. As Caitlin descended the twisting portal, she glanced up. The top of the grave was sealing shut, locking her and Glinda inside.

  For the first time in her life, she was relieved to be in a claustrophobic environment.

  After about thirty long seconds of plummeting through a spiraling, hyperdimensional tunnel awash in a warm honey-amber color, Caitlin touched bottom in a surprisingly soft landing. She kneeled over to catch her breath. Beneath her feet was a road of gleaming gold bricks.

  Of course!

  The air was pleasantly warm, as if it were spring.

  Thud!

  Glinda touched down.

  Caitlin glanced up at her, still too winded to speak. She smiled appreciatively and huffed and puffed rapidly.

  Glinda returned the smile and said, “You’re safe. For now.”

  Caitlin exhaled a jumbo-size breath as her lungs recuperated.

  “You’re the Good Witch of the South?”

  “I prefer the title Sorcerer of the South. Witch is fraught with negative connotations.”

  “And you’re wearing makeup.” Caitlin said, realizing that Glinda looked young and healthy and tanned.

  Glinda winked. “Well done!” She pulled a tissue from a pocket and wiped it along her forehead. Beneath her golden, flesh-toned makeup was bone-white flesh. She wiped the rest of her face clean with the tissue, and a zombified Lady Glinda emerged. Silvery-milk complexion, concave shadowed cheeks, and recessed, dark-rimmed eyes. Her lips were like the hearts on Valentine’s Day cards. But instead of ruby red, they revealed themselves to be a pale shade of purple. She looked as if she were suffering hypothermia, though of course she wasn’t. She was suffering from a living death. Her eyes were like double sapphires. And yet, despite her ghoulish features, her countenance remained almost regal.

  “Someone abducted my sister,” Caitlin said. “I think it was the Enchanter. I absolutely need to find her. Can you help?”

  Glinda waved a finger. “It wasn’t the Enchanter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re being hunted. The episode at your house was a setup designed to separate you and Natalie.” Glinda suddenly flexed her back, as if involuntarily. Her keen eyes scanned the skies.

  “They’re on our trail. We need to get off this road.”

  Glinda cut a quick detour off the yellow brick trail and headed straight into a dense and tangled rose thicket. “They won’t follow us through here.”

  Of course not. Who would?

  Caitlin certainly wouldn’t venture willingly into the brush.

  This is a thicket from hell.

  Razor-sharp thorn bushes and prickly trees snarled together so tightly, it was like traipsing through a maze of barbed wire. There was not a single turn or opening that allowed them to dodge the thick cluster of claws, spines, and thorns. It felt like the devil’s fingernails scratching at them as they squirmed past.

  “Elbows and arms inward,” Glinda said.

  Ya think?

  Caitlin took a breath and went for it. A few strides in, her arms were already pinpricked and scratched bloody.

  Glinda picked up a long, sharp-edged piece of wood and started hacking her way through.

  “Who’s after me?” Caitlin asked as she wiped thin lines of blood from her forearms. “And who kidnapped my sister?”

  “Since you left this place last year, things have changed—and most certainly not for the better.”

  A hooked thorn snagged Caitlin’s collar. She twisted out of its grasp and said, “What do you mean?”

  “The Enchanter’s blood-eyed crows—they’re the ones hunting you.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “Impossible! That was no flock of birds chasing me. Those things were tall and upright—they walked on two legs, like humans.”

  “No, no. Those things chasing yo
u were not human. They’re crows. Some of the crows are . . . different now.”

  “Different?” Caitlin echoed. “How?”

  Glinda looked back at Caitlin as she slashed her way through the spiked bramble. A repugnant look crossed her face.

  “Good gracious. The Enchanter—he did terrible things to them. Mutations. Bad magic. The crows grew torsos. Arms. Legs. And their heads . . . oh my, their heads . . .” She cupped her mouth with her hand.

  “What about their heads?” Caitlin asked.

  Glinda shuddered. Then she shook her own head and waved her finger as if to say, “Let’s not go there.”

  Hooked thorns and needles continued to snag Caitlin’s top and jeans. She unfastened the barbs one by one, careful not to cut up her arms and knees more than they already were. She finally squiggled out of the prickly shrub.

  She crouched low, taking cover behind Glinda as she continued hacking through the bush.

  “Why are these crowmen after me?” Caitlin asked.

  “To stop you from preventing the encounter.”

  “What encounter?”

  “Between Natalie and the Lord of the Curtain.”

  “Nat? Why’s he after her?”

  “I’ll explain later. First, there are things you need to know to protect yourself.”

  Caitlin felt like she was drowning in brushwood. “I’m listening.”

  “These crowmen can fly—and without wings! Even though they walk upright like you and me. That gives them a great advantage.”

  Caitlin laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. “I witnessed that firsthand.”

  “Seven crowmen were sent to hunt you down,” Glinda continued. “They’re unafraid of practically everything. Fearless. Heartless. Especially their leader—Janus. There’s almost no one who can stop Janus.”

  “So I’m doomed?” Caitlin responded in despair. “Condemned?”

  “Oz and all the kingdoms, including the imminent worlds, are doomed if we don’t stop this,” Glinda said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect these places.”

  Thorns bit at Caitlin’s ankles, and bristles lacerated her arms.

  Does this thicket have a foreseeable end in sight?

  “There is someone who might be able to help you,” Glinda said. “He’s only one in all the kingdoms who stands a chance against the crowmen.”

  “Who?”

  “A dear friend of mine. He’s the only one that scares the crows.”

  Caitlin’s brow wrinkled as she whispered Glinda’s last three words to herself. Her eyes lit up. “You mean . . .

  Scarecrow?”

  “I do,” Glinda said, blinking her long lashes. “But he’s a living dead Scarecrow now. And his eyes are half blood-eyed.”

  The thorny thicket from hell finally gave way, and they stepped into a merciful clearing.

  Caitlin’s arms and legs loosened up as she and Glinda quickened their pace.

  “Half blood-eyed? Why?”

  “He’s full zombie. A dreadful ghoul, inside and out. But his brain—”

  Caitlin remembered that Scarecrow had received brains from the Wizard in the original Oz book.

  “His brains make him very smart,” Glinda said. “Which makes him smart enough to use his dark desires only for good. And so he willingly drinks her brew.”

  Her? Whose? What brew?

  “And he never sleeps,” Glinda continued. “So he will always be on watch for you. But I must warn you—Scarecrow scares everyone. He gives off odorless pheromones that make you tremble with terrible fright whenever he’s close.”

  If I could bottle his scent and sell it as deodorant in high school, I’d make a fortune.

  Caitlin raised her eyes to the sky. The moon was a bow-shaped, lit ember fixed in a dark purple firmament. The last time she had bathed in that same moonlight, she had been sailing aboard a ghostly pirate ship with Jack. Now Jack and Natalie seemed as remote and unreachable as the moon. Her chest muscles tightened as she recalled Natalie’s face just before she’d been taken. Finding Girl Wonder and getting home safely seemed about as likely as running full tilt back through that thorny thicket without getting a scratch.

  She shifted her glance to Glinda.

  “You said it wasn’t the Enchanter who took my sister.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then who?”

  “Pirates.”

  Caitlin’s hand clasped her mouth. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s written it in the Great Book of Records.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An ancient manuscript that continues to write itself. It tracks and documents all the events that occur in all the kingdoms, and all the worlds, as they happen. In real time.”

  Facebook on steroids.

  “Is that how you knew I’d be arriving at Forest Lawn when I did?”

  She winked.

  “According to the Great Book of Records, a pirate crossed over to your world from Treasure Island a short time before Natalie’s abduction,” Glinda said. “It was Blackbeard.”

  “Blackbeard? But he was a real pirate—not a storybook character.”

  The dirt trail curved right, leading them back to the winding road of yellow bricks.

  Glinda nodded to Caitlin as she picked spines and bristles from her white lace top. “Point well taken. But Blackbeard was written up in Treasure Island. And he was also recorded in the tale of Peter and Wendy.”

  “So?”

  “The moment his name was published in a book, he entered our Great Book of Records and was conceived in our world.”

  A fascinating notion.

  “Two more questions, if that’s okay?”

  Glinda smiled warmly. “And two more answers—go!”

  “I thought the Good Witch—er—the Sorcerer of the South was an older woman. I totally mean that as a compliment. You’re so young looking and beautiful.”

  “How kind of you. Goodness and youthfulness go hand in hand. That being said, I’ll be one hundred seventeen next June.”

  “Whoa! That’s like, insane. You look twenty!”

  “And your second question?”

  “I thought Glinda always wore a formal gown.”

  The Sorcerer of the South caressed her white lace top with the backs of her fingers, then ran her palms along her silky white skinny jeans.

  “Formalwear is not suitable for the apocalypse. I’m more agile in this attire. Now, we must go. The crowmen are coming, and Scarecrow’s waiting. Follow me down this road of yellow brick.”

  “Where’re we headed?” Caitlin asked.

  Glinda made a crooked face that said, Really?

  Caitlin winced. To the Emerald City, of course.

  * * *

  The thin, sharp blade of a knife punctured the earth a few hundred feet east of L. Frank Baum’s resting place. As the knife stabbed repeatedly, gouging out a plot of ground at Forest Lawn cemetery, the figure doing the knifing shoveled away the dirt with his other hand. Finally, he unearthed what he was looking for.

  He had a large duffel bag swung over his back. He slid it off his shoulder and loaded his find into the bag. Then he moved around, digging up more places in Forest Lawn until he had half-filled the bag. He decided to dig some more and fill the bag once he crossed over. He knew time was running out.

  He swung the hefty bag back over his shoulder and lugged his way over to the burial site of L. Frank Baum. He carefully set the duffel bag onto the grass.

  He took his knife and stabbed the ground above Baum’s grave. The blade punctured the surface without resistance. Clods of soil fell through an existing chink in the grave. He carved out a larger hole, and the portal reopened as a cone of pumpkin-orange light shot out of the grave like a concert floodlight.

  The knife diligently dug up the
dirt. He hacked out a sizable opening, one big enough for his frame to fit through. He climbed into the hole, bag over his shoulder, and proceeded to plummet through the honey-colored, hyperdimensional wormhole that had connected mythical dimensions, wondrous worlds, and ordinary families for centuries.

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  Caitlin strode restlessly along the yellow brick road, keeping pace with Glinda while being mindful not to trip over the uneven pavers. Her steps became more deliberate as she thought about her kid sister being abducted and duped by the despicable impostor Derek Blackshaw—who, as it turned out, was really the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

  Caitlin subconsciously balled her hands into fists. Her stride down the crooked yellow brick road morphed into a soldierly swagger. She held her head high and her back firm and straight.

  A profound sense of bravado tingled along her spine. A tenacious sense of mission began to fill her.

  “What else has happened since I left?” she asked Glinda.

  “Well, if you must know, Goldilocks is now eating bears, Riding Hood is lunching on wolves, and Hansel and Gretel are terrorizing the witches of the north, south, east, and west. The whole wretched world is upside down and inside out, and it worries me to no end.”

  How could this be happening again? I destroyed the scepter.