by Chris Miller
Could have fooled me, I muttered to myself, remembering the pile-up we had just left on the freeway.
Still, her explanation gave me an idea. Pulling ahead I led the chase to Destiny Hills High School. We zipped across the parking lot, over a curb and headed straight for the gym doors. It was after hours on a Monday night; there wouldn’t be any events inside and we could use the school grounds as cover.
We ghosted into the gym, slowed to a stop and waited to see what Vogler’s next move might be. It also bought us valuable time to talk for a moment.
“He’s not going to give up that easily,” Desi warned. “He’ll loop around and watch for us to exit.”
“Yes, but he can’t be on both sides of the school at once,” I answered. “We can sneak out undetected when he’s on the opposite side.”
“That hasn’t stopped him from finding you before,” Trista noted.
“The girl’s right,” Desi added, ignoring the fact that Trista looked insulted by the title. “You can’t hide from Vogler, not in Destiny anyway. What we need is to find your father, and we need to go to Solandria. Do you know how to get there, Hunter?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Not really,” I answered. “It’s always just sort of found me.”
“Well, you better sort of find a way soon because Vogler isn’t going to wait for you to get an invitation,” Desi prodded.
Is that even possible? I wondered to myself. To find your own way into Solandria? So far, I had just happened upon it through the Author’s Writ and the falling Sky Car. The only problem was that my Author’s Writ was at home, and home wasn’t exactly the safest place right now. It was probably crawling with cops, investigating the disappearance of my family. Cutting another gondola off the Sky Car ride didn’t seem like the best way to get to Solandria either.
That’s when it hit me. “The bookshop!” I said.
Desi and Trista just stared blankly at me.
“One of Dad’s images was of a clock, one almost identical to the clock in a bookshop downtown,” I explained. “The last time I was there the back door led into Solandria.”
“It’s our best lead so far. So, where is this bookshop?” Desi asked.
“That’s the trick,” I answered. “Sometimes it’s there and other times it’s not.”
“How is that supposed to help us?” Trista asked.
I told them about how the bookshop had seemed to disappear from between two stores and that I hadn’t seen it since.
“It beats sitting around here,” Desi decided, firing up her engine.
When the coast was clear we ghosted through the doors again and headed downtown. Vogler was gone. By the time we reached 1421 Lathrop Avenue, the rain had stopped, but the bookshop was nowhere to be found.
“Where did you say the bookstore was again?” Desi asked.
“Right there, between the two stores…only it was wider,” I explained. The sewing store and hardware store appeared to have been pinched together over the place where the bookshop had once been. Between the two, a solid brick wall no wider than your average door remained.
“Now what?” Trista wondered.
A sickly moan drew our attention to a bus stop less than a dozen feet away, where a bedraggled old man sat up from the bench. He had been awakened by our arrival but seemed oblivious to our presence. In his hand he held an empty glass bottle, which he lifted to his lips and grumbled at. Though it had nothing left to offer, he still eyed it longingly and muttered to it, unaware that he was not alone. His entire universe centered on that single empty bottle.
Sensing the man was not a threat, Desi dismounted her Ghost and walked up to the wall. She felt it with her hand; then wandered to both sides of it, glancing through the shop windows. She scratched her head and looked my way.
“There’s unused space here,” she observed, pointing to the brick wall. Not much, but more than enough.” A mischievous smile swept across her face, and her brown eyes sparkled. “I’ve got an idea.”
Walking her bike to the center of the street, she turned it so it directly faced the brick wall between stores. Then, removing her Symbio device, she attached it to the front of the bike and stood beside it. After a few measured glances between the bike and the wall, Desi flipped the ghost button and the white bike disappeared.
Despite the thickness of the brick wall, there was a loud clatter from the other side, the sound of something large toppling in the missing space. The bike had made it through…almost. The final inch of the rear wheel jutted out from the brick wall, still visible.
“Oops!” Desi said with a frown.
The sound of shattered glass turned our attention to the man on the bench again. He was standing now, staring slack-jawed toward Desi. At his feet the remainder of his empty bottle lay in pieces. He rubbed his eyes and gawked back at the place the bike had once been, clearly disturbed by what he had seen. It must have been worse than seeing pink elephants!
Undeterred, Desi hurried back to where Trista and I sat on our bike. “Give me your arm,” she demanded, grabbing it before I could ask why. She brought up a digital keypad on the Symbio I was wearing.
“Let’s take a little peek inside, shall we?” she said as a video link streamed onto my device from the other side of the wall. The image was a little hazy, a room dimmed by a curtain of swirling dust. Like a remote submarine camera in a deep-sea exploration, the beaming headlamps of the Ghost were the only light piercing the darkened dust of the room. As the dust settled and the image cleared, I recognized the space immediately.
“That’s it!” I shouted. “Aviad’s book shop!”
The place was there, but a mere skeleton of what it once was. The few bookshelves I could see were empty, stripped naked of the books that once graced their shelves. From the looks of things it hadn’t been used for quite some time. Despite being abandoned, it was still larger than the wall outside allowed for. I didn’t know how, but I knew that the Author’s magic was at work.
“It’s empty,” I said sadly. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re going in,” Desi stated, dropping my arm. “It’s as safe a place as any and there might still be a way to Solandria in there. Scoot back.”
It wasn’t a request, she was in a hurry. Desi straddled the black Ghost in front of me, taking over command of the bike. Two bodies on the bike were tight, three were downright awkward. My backpack made the whole thing even more difficult to pull off. Struggling to keep the bike balanced, Desi drove us out to the center of the road and then moved forward a full bikes’ length to ensure we didn’t collide with the other Ghost. She aimed for the same spot in the wall where the previous bike had passed through.
“Wait! Are we sure there’s enough room in there?” I asked.
“You tell me, Hunter. I’ve never been there.”
I gauged the space mentally and decided that we were okay, but barely.
“Hold on, everyone,” Desi said.
Desi tightened her grip on the bike; I held tightly to Desi and Trista clung to my backpack like her life depended on it.
Our sole spectator, the man at the bus stop, watched intently at our odd attempt to share the bike. I gave a quick wave. He raised a hand in acknowledgement. Desi flipped the switch and we vanished from the street, leaving the man to ponder if he should finally give up the bottle.
On the other side of the wall, things were worse than they had looked on the video screen. Our arrival was rough, toppling another bookshelf and causing Trista to fall off the cycle, taking me with her. When the dust finally settled, we removed our helmets and stood up. The air was stale and chalky, with the smell of a room that had not been cleaned in ages.
The front desk was plastered with expired event papers, just like the first time I had visited. The ancient cash register and service bell were still there, but the rest of the room was a tomb—l
ifeless and cold.
“Aviad’s clock is missing,” I noticed, pointing to a darkened silhouette on the wall where it once had stood. Sunlight had faded the wallpaper around it, leaving the subtle shape of the grandfather clock on the wall, much like a chalk outline at a murder scene.
I was shocked to find the front door and window on the wall we had just passed through. The window looked out over Lathrop Street and the grubby old man who stood in the middle of the road, examining the place where we had disappeared. It was a surreal feeling to be able to see him through a window we knew didn’t exist from the other side.
“What a mess,” Trista said, shuffling across the dusty floor. “How long ago did you say you were last here?”
“Four months ago, at the start of summer,” I confessed.
“How could it possibly be this dirty already? It looks like it hasn’t been touched in over a hundred years.”
She was right.
“So, where’s this back door to Solandria?” Desi asked.
“In the office,” I answered, pointing to the room ahead of us.
“Why don’t you and the girl check it out. I’ll get the other Symbio,” Desi said.
“The girl has a name, you know,” Trista asserted. “It’s Trista.”
“Sorry, I’m Desi. But can’t we finish introductions later? We are in kind of a hurry.” Trista nodded, though I sensed the two were getting off on the wrong foot.
“Come on, Triss,” I said, using the nickname only her friends called her. I grabbed her by the hand and ushered her into the back room.
Aviad’s office wasn’t in much better shape than the front room. The burgundy chair where he once had sat was turned away from us on the opposite side of the desk so that all we could see was the high back. Despite the dust and cobwebs, I half expected the chair to spin around as it had before, to reveal Aviad smiling broadly. It didn’t.
We moved down the hallway to the door at the end, where the once illuminated emergency exit sign was no longer lit. I put my hand against the push-bar of the back door and shoved hard. The door wouldn’t budge. Trista and I both tried together, but still the door held shut.
“It’s no good,” I said. “It’s locked.”
“What now?” Trista asked.
I shrugged my shoulders, “Maybe there’s a key in Aviad’s desk.”
We made our way back up the hall to Aviad’s office to scour his desk for the key, but an object sitting in the dusty chair cut our hunt short. It was a book, an Author’s Writ, leaning upright between the seat and the chair back.
“The Author’s Writ!” I shouted excitedly, scooping it up. “It’s our way out!”
Like my own, this Writ was made of soft leather, but black where mine was brown. It shared all of the same markings as my own. I flipped the book over and examined the Living Tree in the center of the design. As always, a dozen symbols etched themselves into the book around the circle. They were familiar, but the symbols were not the same as the ones on my Writ.
“That’s odd,” Trista said.
“I know, the symbols are different,” I said. “I think I’ve seen them before though, in one of my father’s drawings.”
“That’s not what I meant…it’s the book itself. Why isn’t it dusty like the rest of the room?”
Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t noticed. Sure enough, there wasn’t a single speck of dust on the book, other than on the few edges that had been touching the dusty chair.
“Do you think somebody put it here?” Trista asked.
“I don’t know how…unless….”
“Hunter, look!” Trista gasped in fright. She was pointing at Aviad’s desktop where five words had been fingered into the dust:
Your Father’s End Is Near
The words burned in my soul like an angry fire. Somebody had been here, someone who was no friend of my father’s. But who? And how did he know I would be here to read this message? Furthermore, how did he get in here? I looked across the floor, but there were no footprints in the dust other than our own. Whoever had come had been careful to erase his footprints.
“Look on the bright side, Hunter,” Trista observed. “At least it means your father IS alive…at least for the moment.”
I marveled at Trista’s ability to remain upbeat in dreary situations. Leave it to Trista, the “glass-is-half-full” girl, to figure out there was hope hidden in the ominous message. She was absolutely right; if the message was true, my father wasn’t dead yet. If I had anything to say about it, whoever was after him would never have the chance to follow up on his threat.
“Any luck with the exit?” Desi called from the front room. Her voice sounded strained. We headed out to see if everything was okay. Desi was lying on a board, which she had placed over a black puddle of oil on the floor beneath the black Ghost. Her hands and fingers were coated in the black liquid and smears of it were wiped across her cheek and forehead as well.
“What happened?” I asked.
“One of the boards from the bookshelf punctured the oil pan. I think I’ve managed to plug it with a pencil eraser.” She held up a greasy pencil, minus the rubber end, with a proud grin. “Trouble is, the Ghost won’t get far without repairs.”
She stood up and cleaned her hands on her bandana.
“So, do we have an exit?” she repeated.
We explained how the door was locked, about the Author’s Writ and the message in the dust.
“Do you think Vogler could have done it?” I asked.
“Maybe, but why would he leave you the Author’s Writ? You said you’ve seen these symbols before?” Desi asked.
“Yes, in one of my father’s drawings, but I’d need to go back to the Underground to see them.”
“No, you don’t,” Desi said. “I’ve uploaded them into your Symbio so you can access them whenever you want. Come here.” She sat sideways on the bicycle and patted the seat beside her. I joined her on the bike and Desi leaned in closely so that we could share the screen on my wrist. Desi took her time showing me the basics of how to use the device before pulling up the pictures on the screen. I could see Trista tense as Desi held my arm in her own.
“I don’t feel safe here; we should get going,” Trista tried to interrupt as Desi continued to lean in closer.
“Nowhere is safe, Triss,” Desi replied. The nickname didn’t sit well with Trista this time, not coming from Desi. “Besides, we can’t go anywhere until we fix the bike. We need to find a way to Solandria.”
Trista rolled her eyes and pretended to look around the room. But her gaze kept returning to me and Desi, sitting far too close for her comfort. Once Desi found Dad’s most recent drawings, I quickly identified the one of Aviad’s clock. Sure enough, the symbols were identical to those on the book.
“But what does it mean?” I wondered.
“Well, your dad must have seen the symbols. Maybe he left that drawing as a clue to where he was. It might mean we’re on the right track.”
I pondered the idea. She could be right. What if my dad was leaving clues in his drawings? Maybe all of them were clues that would lead to his location.
“But why wouldn’t he just draw the symbols in the picture on the Writ instead of a clock?”
“I don’t know,” Desi answered. “Maybe because the book could have been anywhere. Maybe he knew that if we saw it on the clock we’d come here.”
“Uh, guys,” Trista interrupted, “there’s something going on outside I think you should see. I think we’re being watched.”
Desi and I looked out the front window. The dingy man who had been examining the spot where we had vanished was still there, scratching his head at the mystery of it all. He kept looking between the place on the ground and then back at the wall where the bike tire protruded from the wall.
“He’s harmless, Triss,” I said. “He can’t
see us either.”
“Not, him!” she said forcefully. “THEM!”
She pointed further across the street where there was movement in the shadows on the sidewalk. I squinted, attempting to make out the form of the movement. It wasn’t until another shape joined the others that I realized what it was. Ravens.
Hundreds of the black birds lined the sidewalk across the street and perched on the telephone wires. The birds were hopping around on the sidewalk, gathering in droves. But what happened next made even Desi’s usually unshakable confidence fade. The birds took to the air and began to circle like vultures in the center of the road around the old man. He swung at the sky, likely thinking it was another of his hallucinations and then he fell to the ground and crawled away from them. The swarm of birds didn’t follow the man. Instead, they continued to gather until there were so many circling in the road they looked like a black tornado of wings had touched down in Destiny.
The gathering of birds flocked together so closely they soon became indiscernible from each other. Then, the movement stopped. The birds had become a singular figure. The birds became…Vogler.
Chapter 14
A Bad Seed
Vogler could see us, of that I was certain. Even though the window was not visible from the outside, his mirrored glasses seemed to allowed him to see what others couldn’t. The cold chills returned and I trembled at the thought of facing him yet again.
Desi didn’t waste a moment. No sooner had Vogler formed than she jumped into action. Running to the white Ghost, still stuck in the wall, she opened a compartment on the side of it and retrieved two rods. With one rod in each hand, she moved to the door.
“You two, take the bike out the back,” Desi commanded.
“But what abou…?” I started to ask.
“It’s no good if you’re captured, now go!”
“But you’ll be killed.”
“I can handle myself. Just go!” Desi shouted.