At Witches' End

by Annette Oppenlander

  When I entered Stuler’s office, Jimmy’s cheeks flashed, his eyes glazed as if he were about to cry. Stuler’s was pale and drawn, outwardly calm except for his shaking fingers.

  Like last time monitors flashed around the room, showing different scenarios and landscapes: battlefields, soldiers ducking inside a muddy trench, what looked like huts in an African savannah, several castles, demonstrations and streets with horse buggies and women walking in old-fashioned dresses.

  The largest screen, spanning the entire right wall, displayed a patch of oak forest and brownish fields, the menu showing Upgrade to Expert now?

  I shuddered realizing the game was loaded and ready for the next unsuspecting person.

  It occurred to me that Stuler had never played. He was talking about his enterprise like an expert when in reality he knew nothing. He was good in finance and science, running a business. But he didn’t know what he’d created. He didn’t understand his own evil product.

  Stuler’s marble eyes, flashing irritation and surprise, zoomed in on me. “What are you doing here?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m too busy to deal with this nonsense,” Stuler said, his voice indifferent. Nobody uttered a word though I was reeling inside. How could I be persuasive when the guy never listened?

  He turned to Jimmy. “What are you two up to?”

  “We came to talk to you.”

  Stuler moved closer to Jimmy. “About what?”

  Jimmy threw me a glance. He shivered and his chin trembled. Stuler was feeding on Jimmy’s fear, because he moved even closer, his nose two inches from Jimmy’s.

  I stood paralyzed.

  The punch to Jimmy’s chin came out of nowhere. He didn’t cry or do anything, just made a weird noise in his throat, a mixture between a hiccup and a sigh.

  “Tell me.” Stuler swung again, striking Jimmy in the shoulder. “You little snit. Is that what you’ve grown up to be? A lying wimp. Spending time with low lives.” His voice was sharp, his breath in spurts. I guess the low life had to be me.

  Jimmy put up his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Max, he was going…”

  “Wait!” I shouted. “It was my idea.”

  “Liar.” Stuler ignored me and smacked Jimmy in the cheek.

  “We want you to stop the game,” I yelled.

  “You two are thick as twins.” Stuler punched so hard this time that Jimmy stumbled backwards and caught himself on the main console the size of a miniature cockpit.

  Stuler followed.

  I rushed between them. “It’s me you want. You must destroy the game. It’s crazy.” You’re crazy.

  I put up my hands to stop Stuler from hurting Jimmy. He was taller than us, but I trusted that office work had made him soft.

  Except he wasn’t.

  He turned on me, his grip around my chest reminding me of battling Wade in the Wild West. I wasn’t putting in as much effort because his attack had surprised me. Except for getting him to stop pounding Jimmy, I didn’t even know what I wanted to accomplish. Shoving me away he swatted at my head.

  “Max, Dad, stop it,” Jimmy yelled.

  “The game kills people,” I said, taking a practice swipe at Stuler’s chin. He blocked and ducked sideways. Son of a bitch knew how to box.

  “You’ve played three times.”

  “Sheer luck. Besides, you never told me…you planted the game with Jimmy, full and well knowing I’d try it out.”

  “You’re an excellent gamer, our target audience.”

  “And you didn’t think you had to explain what I was getting into?”

  Stuler glanced at his desk where a cellphone lay buzzing. “Jimmy, call security before somebody gets hurt.” And to me, “You’re getting yourself into a world of trouble, Max. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?”

  A new wave of fury rose in me. “The only one going to jail is you, Dr. Stuler. Because you kill people with your invention.”

  On the main wall forest and fields were spotted with yellow, red and black dots. Something weird was going on.

  “Jimmy, do it now.” Stuler maneuvered closer to his desk. Jimmy stood frozen.

  I don’t know if my refusal to back down further incensed Stuler or something snapped, but when he grabbed a hold of my throat, his eyes were filled with crazy.

  “You will not stop me, boy. I’ve worked too hard for this. I’m going to sue you and your mother, keep you in court for years until you don’t know your own name.”

  In that split second I wondered if I’d die after all. I’d survived three horrific games, just to return and get strangled by insane Stuler. For sure Stuler would ruin our family. Because I couldn’t control my temper.

  My ears rang as Stuler’s fingers squeezed tighter. My hands slid off his arms uselessly, my strength waning quickly while Stuler acted like a prizefighter.

  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I heard Jimmy shouting, but couldn’t make out the words. My lungs bucked from the pressure—there was no air now. Stars burst in my eyes. Were my lids open or shut? Nothing mattered but the air I needed. Just a little oxygen, such a normal thing we took for granted. Until it wasn’t available. Just one breath.

  There was nothing. Unrelenting pressure on my throat, Stuler’s labored breaths. Jimmy’s cries. My weak knees.

  “Leave him, Dad.” Jimmy’s face appeared next to mine, his cheeks wet, his fist making contact with his father’s hand on my neck, Stuler’s hands slipping off.

  Me…sagging, lurching…to the floor.

  My head whirled and things turned misty around the edges.

  “Dad, it’s dangerous,” Jimmy said, his voice soft… pleading.

  “What do you know about it?” Stuler snapped at his son.

  From my spot on the carpet, the world tilted. Sounds tuned in and out. I didn’t hear what Jimmy said next. Only his mouth moved. He and his father were embracing. Wait, not an embrace, but a fighting stance, each struggling to get a hold on the other. Stuler winning the upper hand, his hand closing around Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy gripping Stuler’s fingers, trying to bend them away.

  Get up, my mind said. Help Jimmy. Nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my legs, only this strange pounding in my head like sledgehammers on high speed.

  You’re a killer, Dr. Stuler, leave Jimmy alone, I wanted to say, imagining my voice calm and almost as icy as Wolf’s.

  On the screen forest and fields glistened in the sun, more pixels flashing orange, blue and yellow.

  Stuler half-sat, half-leaned on the keyboard, his green eyes full of bilious rage. He needed to be in an insane asylum, not run a business.

  “Please, Dad, stop it,” Jimmy rasped.

  In horror I watched Stuler continue choking Jimmy the way he’d choked me. Stuler’s pupils retracted. As if Jimmy’s pleading pushed him farther into a frenzy instead of calming him down.

  “Your friend doesn’t know who he’s dealing with,” Stuler hissed.

  With that he pushed Jimmy aside, a smack on his cheekbone that reverberated through the room. But worse it was a dismissal of everything that Jimmy stood for. A dismissal of his son.

  Stuler turned toward me. “Let’s finish this.”

  “No.” Jimmy slung an arm around his father’s chest to keep him from coming over. Stuler swiveled to face him. Jimmy’s arms flailed as they smacked into the console once more.

  Jimmy, the mouse, click the button, my mind urged…or did I say it out loud. Stuler’s breath came in spurts, probably from the effort of working so hard to strangle his own son.

  A slight shift happened in their stance, Jimmy’s father towering over Jimmy, his back to the screen… Upgrade to expert now?

  Click it.

  Jimmy had somehow gotten the message. His arms swung around his father, his shoulders heaving as Stuler’s fingers squeezed his windpipe.

  The screen zoomed in…closer, so close, I saw bugs flying above the wheat field among tiny specks of dust, birds chirped and something rustled n
earby.

  A wave of energy pushed against my chest as if somebody had shoved me. Something crackled. As Jimmy stumbled backwards, Stuler’s features faded, the edges growing transparent. He gripped his chest, wheezing, choking, his mouth gaping open. Our eyes met.

  Then he was gone.

  Jimmy collapsed and crawled toward me, blood dripping from a cut in his forehead, purplish fingerprints on his throat.

  “Father…what happened?”

  I sat up slowly, the room eerily quiet and shimmering as if the walls vibrated. My head swam. Jimmy’s face went in and out of focus. On the screen, the forest and fields fragmented into a million pixels, tiny squares of rainbow colors, prisms blindingly bright, growing…until the landscape was completely gone and the wall looked like colorful confetti.

  “Where is father?” Jimmy croaked.

  The door burst open.

  “I finally did it, you son of a bitch?” Karl hurtled into the room, followed by Elke. He stopped abruptly, turning 360 degrees around the room.

  “He didn’t listen, Dr. Stuler,” Elke yelled, cranking her neck to look past Karl’s shoulder.

  “Max? Jimmy? What are you doing here?” Karl said.

  I shook my head. Wasn’t that what I wanted to ask Karl? The room turned blurry all over again.

  “Where is Dr. Stuler?” Elke stepped around the desk, her eyes darting back and forth as if Stuler were hiding behind it.

  “He’s gone.” Jimmy rubbed the skin on his neck.

  Elke rushed up to Jimmy, her skirt hitching high around her thighs. “What do you mean, he’s gone?”

  Jimmy tried to get up, but his legs didn’t quite work. Neither did mine. Both of us just sat there on the fancy Persian carpet, staring at Karl and Elke.

  “What are you doing here, Karl?” I asked, the words painful in my throat.

  Karl seemed to wake from a trance, staring at the pixelated screen. He turned to me, his eyes shiny.

  “He finally played it himself.”

  I nodded, leaving out our struggle, Jimmy pushing the button.

  Jimmy tried to pick himself off the floor a second time, half succeeded and sagged back down. “I didn’t mean… I—”

  “What Jimmy means is that we came here to talk to Dr. Stuler. The game was loaded and…he was going to show us how easy it was.”

  “Where is he then?” Elke said. “He should’ve returned. The people in the lab always returned…”

  “Not always,” said Karl. “I’m afraid…” he scanned the wall again. “Dr. Stuler is lost in the past.”

  Elke rushed at Karl, gripping his forearm. “There must be something you can do?”

  Karl shook his head. “If he didn’t return immediately, he is gone.” He hesitated as if he wanted to say more.

  As Elke sagged onto an office chair and Karl began attacking the keyboard, I crawled closer to Jimmy.

  “I didn’t mean to…” he cried softly. “I couldn’t breathe and…” Fresh tears were in his eyes.

  I put an arm around his shoulder.

  “Can you get Stuler out?” I said to Karl.

  Karl swiveled around to face us, the lines around his mouth and chin deeper than I remembered. “Not that I know of.” He stared at the huge wall where the prisms still moved. He turned back to the computer and punched a few buttons.

  “Looks like he landed in the year 1631.” Karl whistled. “The Thirty-year War when the Swedes tore apart Germa—”

  “Father was right in the middle of that?” Jimmy’s voice was full of anguish. My heart hurt for him, my guilt over having convinced him to go with me like a poisonous cloud.

  “Wait a minute,” I cried. “You can see what he did?”

  “Sure,” Karl said. “Remember that squeezing sensation?”

  How could I not? It was like being pushed under a truck.

  Karl went on. “When you enter the game through the portal, markers are attached to your body. Imagine it as an invisible cloak. Every move and action is recorded. That’s how the game determines when you have completed enough missions to return home.

  “Then why did Stuler want my reports?”

  “To compare them with the game logs. To see if we missed anything.” Karl bent over the monitor. “Ah, here, he defended himself with a sword. There was a battle and he helped somebody, mission two was completed.” Karl typed some more. “Another entry in 1635. He moved into a manor, mission three complete…”

  “What?” Jimmy and I said at the same time.

  “Nothing. I can’t see anything else.”

  I scrambled to my knees, straightened slowly like a drunken sailor on a lopsided boat and wobbled to the desk. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I think we better call the police.” Ignoring me Karl moved toward the desk.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because an important businessman has disappeared.” Karl’s eyes though calm spoke of something else, something he was keeping secret. “There will be an inquiry. We may as well get it over with.”

  I slumped on a chair, my legs again ready to quit. Jimmy still sat on the floor, his eyes wet.

  “I’ll take full responsibility,” Karl said into the silence.

  “What?” I cried. “You nuts? You of all people who suffered through three years of hell in the Middle Ages.

  Karl shrugged. “At least I did come back.”

  “You better leave,” I said. There was something terribly wrong with the way he’d burst into the office. I needed Karl alone, ask him what he was doing here in the first place.

  “I’m calling the police and you’re staying right there.” Elke’s voice quivered as she rubbed a lone tear through her plastered makeup.

  “Call your mom first,” I said to Jimmy.

  A sob escaped him. “I can’t believe he’s actually gone. I mean he wasn’t really around anymore. Not with us, not at home. But that he time-traveled and got killed in a war.”

  Karl pulled himself from the chair. “Let’s call your mother.”

  Chapter 38

  “Where were you? Your father and I tried to speak to Dr. Stuler today,” my mom said as soon as I entered the house. It was after dinner. But one look at me made her rush to my side. “What happened?”

  Only then did I notice the blood stains on my T-shirt. All the way home—Jimmy had insisted I leave before the police got there—I’d mulled over the game and Stuler’s disappearance. Had I given Jimmy the idea? Had I sent him away?

  Guilt crawled up my throat like a slimy insect, ready to choke off my air once more. You gave him a taste of his own medicine, my mind whispered. Still, I couldn’t shake the belief that this was all my fault. That I’d killed Jimmy’s father.

  “Jimmy’s dad is gone. He played his own game…”

  “What are you talking—”

  My gaze made her stop because there were tears in my eyes and who knew what else.

  “What did you do?”

  I sagged onto the living room couch, too tired to walk another step. “Jimmy and I went to speak to him, beg him to discontinue the game.” I paused, the scene of Jimmy and me fighting Stuler replaying in my head. “We struggled…”

  “You did what?”

  “I was mad, we punched him and he tried to strangle… He was going to dismiss us like he’d always done. Didn’t want to hear about my suffering, or Luanda’s or Karl’s. He had Jimmy in a chokehold. The game started…they were leaning against the desk.”

  My mother sank across from me, her eyes on me as if I’d hypnotized her.

  “Stuler disappeared. Jimmy crashed to the ground and collapsed.”

  “Is Dr. Stuler…?”

  I looked at my mother and shook my head as tears spilled down my cheeks. I let them run, uncaring.

  Nothing mattered.

  Every minute of the next two hours stretched like a week. I sat frozen on the couch, my mother trying to entice me with chips, sandwiches and Cokes. I just stared, unable to swallow even one mouthful. In my head the
events replayed in an unending loop. Jimmy and I mouthing off to Stuler, our fight, the man disappearing. Karl bursting into the office.

  Stuler’s death was my fault. I’d known how dangerous the game was and yet I’d insisted on going to stop him. I’d wanted Jimmy there.

  A fatherless Jimmy.

  I was a killer after all. I’d acted all high and mighty with Bero, telling him I couldn’t do serious harm. But it was obvious that I could. A new thought entered my mind. What if they put me in jail?

  I flinched when the doorbell rang. The police were coming to arrest me. Still, I was so tired I couldn’t even lift my head. I heard whispers and then my dad rushed to my side, putting an arm around me.

  “Hey, Bud, you had quite a day.”

  I just leaned into my Dad’s side while the floodgates reopened. I’d never in my life appreciated my parents as much as in that moment. Who cared they were busy and divorced? Who cared my dad was going to marry again. In the end what mattered was that they were my parents who loved me when I needed them most.

  I blew my nose and attempted a smile.

  “Mrs. Stuler refused to speak to me,” Dad said. My head sank. “Mom says you’re feeling responsible for what happened to Stuler.”

  I nodded, the words stuck in my throat, my belly twisting into knots.

  “I think we’re lucky he tried out his game. He could’ve killed thousands of kids, young men like you who stumbled into wars and bandits.” He paused, giving my back a few pats. “Now I get your interest for horseback riding.” He chuckled quietly. I wanted to hug him.

  “But it was my idea to visit him.”

  “Better that than allowing him to be a mass murderer. In the military, we call it collateral damage.”

  I nodded.

  “Your mom and I are prepared to file a lawsuit.”

  “But nobody will believe me,” I said.

  “Sure they will. Especially when we invite your friends, Karl and Luanda, is it?”

  “Yeah, they sure had a hard time.”

  Late that night the phone rang, but I was too groggy to get up. My mom had given me valerian, the same herbs I’d planned for Ott.

  By morning all the stuff sloshed back into my mind like a tidal wave.

  Dad excused me from school so I ambled into the kitchen around nine. To my surprise, my mom was reading the paper.