Autumn in the City of Lights

by Kirby Howell

  I laughed. It was delightful to exercise those muscles again. Feeling the tightness in my belly, the stretch in my cheeks, and the shaking of my shoulders lightened the darkness of the small room around me.

  “Don’t worry, Ben. Grey will answer all of your questions as soon as this is over, I prom—” I cut myself off and turned off the flashlight. There was a noise just outside. Whether it was the clatter of an accidentally kicked pebble by a passing shoe, or an acorn falling from a nearby tree, I couldn’t tell. What I did know was that I wanted to be better hidden, and with some kind of vantage point. I would have to move farther into the Magician’s Mansion.

  “What’s wrong?” I heard Ben hiss from the walkie. I turned down the volume and didn’t answer as I moved farther into the room, trying to remember how far the desk was from where I’d stood at the entrance.

  The last time I’d been to the Magician’s Mansion was a few years ago with my dad and his colleagues. When guests arrived, they said a magic phrase, and a secret door in the bookcase opened, revealing the first room in a maze of lounges, bars, and theaters, all connected by narrow, dimly lit corridors and twisting staircases.

  I made my way to the desk and ran my hand under its rim, searching for a button that might open the bookcase. My fingers bumped into what felt like a doorbell, and I hesitated, worrying it might set off an alarm instead. Keeping one hand on the button, I searched the desk for something else but found nothing. I took a deep breath and pushed the button.

  A gust of muggy air puffed across the room, and I aimed the flashlight toward the opening in the bookshelf. The beam lit a cobwebbed chandelier lying in the middle of the floor, its crystals shattered and splayed like broken limbs. Small circles of brightness reflected around the room, revealing a long bar with a red padded edge, a pyramid of foggy alcohol bottles behind the bar, and overturned stools littering the carpet. The putrid smell of food gone bad hung in the air.

  I moved through the secret door and quietly shut it behind me.

  “Everything’s fine,” I whispered into the walkie. “Just hiding myself a bit better.”

  “Can you leave and come back here?” he asked.

  “Grey told me to stay here in case he needed me.”

  “Then I guess you’d better stay. How can I help?”

  “Well,” I whispered. “I’ve been out of commission a while. Grey tried to update me as much as he could, but I still have some pretty big holes. What happened after I left Paris?”

  “Everyone was pretty freaked out after Karl disappeared with you. And after Shad... ”

  After Shad. The familiar ache of loss pulsed in my chest again.

  “Daniel brought him home,” Ben said quietly.

  The ache lessened slightly at the thought of Shad being buried at home, near us, near his family.

  “We didn’t know anything had happened until hours later when a radio message finally reached the East Coast. They relayed it to us in the West. ‘The Summit was a failure. One dead. One kidnapped.’ That was the entire message we had to go on until Daniel reached the East Coast and Franklin got on the radio to us. It was awful. I didn’t even want to tell Connie until I knew more.”

  I stood in the dark with only the beam of my flashlight and Ben’s voice as company and imagined how it must have felt to know something bad had happened, but be unable to find out what or do anything to help.

  “Vincent and the fabulous Ms. Whitmore defended Karl even after everyone witnessed what he’d done to Shad. Then they both disappeared real quick after realizing they suddenly weren’t very popular, which pretty much told everyone they were in on it all with Karl. Margery disappeared pretty quick, too, so no one knew what to do and figured she’d been in with Karl since she’d passed her nomination to him. Cheri and Joe stayed to help Daniel with Shad, though. And Franklin.”

  A warmth I’d never really felt for Franklin spread through me, and I was suddenly extremely grateful he’d been present to help Daniel. And Cheri and Joe had turned out to be real friends, too. After all of this was over, I would have to use Ben’s radio to thank them all.

  I swept the flashlight around the room and found an empty doorway leading to a very narrow set of stairs.

  “I’m going upstairs,” I said into the walkie. “Maybe if I climb to the top floor, I can look out the windows and see what’s happening. I’ll talk to you again when I get there.”

  As I began to climb, I pointed my flashlight up and was met with a wall almost immediately. I turned on the landing and slowly continued up the uneven steps into the darkness. The air was thick and stale, and the rotting smell intensified the higher I climbed. At the top, I emerged into another bar with several doors opening into other rooms. I chose an open door and moved forward into a dining room.

  The large tables were laden with elegant place settings laid over linen. Flowers long past dead were disintegrating in tall glass vases at the center of each table. Champagne flutes stood proudly at the top of each setting, foggy and dull. Dust covered everything, giving the room a stifled, muffled appearance.

  Windows were just beyond the tables, and I rushed to one. I peered through the darkness down at the ground, the driveway leading up to the entrance and the parking lot. Everything was still.

  I looked around and saw another doorway. Beyond it, an additional room with dusty preset tables also waited for dinner patrons who would never arrive.

  Feeble moonlight lit the second room, and I clicked the flashlight off as I rounded its perimeter, glancing out all of the windows but seeing only stillness. At the far end of the room, a doorway led to what I assumed were the kitchens. The stench was strongest here.

  I moved away from it and paused at one of the windows to search outside more carefully. I saw the flickering of a small fire a block or two away but no movement directly below me. The walkie clipped to my jeans pocket crackled suddenly, and Ben’s voice came out of its speaker, muffled by the low volume. I fumbled with the volume knob.

  “—away from the window! They’ve seen you! Get out of there!”

  I lurched away from the window toward the staircase, but the doorway was blocked by a dark figure. I froze. The darkness shifted, and the figure moved from the shadow of the doorway into a patch of moonlight that lit his white blonde hair.

  Grey.

  Relief flooded through me. The familiar cream-colored water tower stood proudly with the Baker Brothers crest on it marking the entrance, lit up against the dark night sky. The only problem was that it was far away. I had run in the wrong direction.

  A hand closed on my arm, but it wasn’t Grey’s. I knew without looking that it was Karl and tried to wrench my arm away. Grey launched himself toward me, his hand still reached out, his face panicked.

  “Autumn, NO!” he yelled.

  The room began to dissolve around us. Karl was projecting with me again. Taking me away from Grey. We were going to have to start all over.

  I reached for Grey and felt his warm hand clamp down on my own. I heard him call my name again, and then everything disappeared around us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Time seemed to stretch and contract all around us. Or maybe it was our bodies stretching and contracting as we traveled through spacetime. I’d projected dozens of times with Grey, but this was different. It took longer, and we were buffeted from all sides, as if caught in the funnel cloud of a tornado.

  I tried to twist and pull away from Karl’s vice-like grip on my arm, desperate to get farther from him and closer to Grey, whose hand still held tight to mine. I didn’t dare open my eyes in this whirling, in-between place. I wondered what would happen if we stayed here too long, or where we would land when we came out of it. I realized I couldn’t draw breath, feeling like my face was sticking out of a car window on a speeding highway.

  Tiny stars burst behind my eyelids, and my hand began to slide from Grey’s. What would happen to me if I died here?

  Suddenly, we slammed into something large and unyielding.
Both Karl and Grey lost their grip on me, and we flew apart. The impact knocked out the last breath left in my chest, and I gasped for air. I could feel solid ground under me again. My body had mass again.

  I cracked my eyelids open. Grey was already on his feet, his gun drawn. I raised my head, and the rest of the world came into view. We were in the middle of a dark street. A street that looked a lot like New York, with large stone staircases leading up to pretty Brownstones. Curved metal fences surrounded young trees lining the sidewalks, and the old-fashioned streetlights were unlit.

  The street was too empty, though. Aside from drifts of dirt and debris against some of the buildings and weeds growing here and there, there were no traffic-jammed cars with fogged windows. No abandoned suitcases, boxes, or bags. No bodies. No one had tried to escape from this place when the Crimson Fever broke out. And Karl was nowhere to be seen.

  “It’s time to call it quits, Karl!” Grey’s voice broke through the silence of the empty street, and I scrambled to my feet.

  “You’ve lost, and you know it! If you surrender now, I give you my word you won’t be harmed!” Grey looked all around us, his gun clamped firmly in both hands, finger on the trigger, but lowered toward the street.

  “Is he gone?” I whispered. I couldn’t tear my eyes from a dark and empty basement doorway just below us.

  “I’m not sure,” Grey said, continuing to circle the area, watching and waiting. He held out his hand to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I took a step toward him and held my hand out just as a roar and a blur crashed into Grey. The gun clattered away across the road, and I dove for it. Before my fingers could close around it, something collided with my wrist, and my arm was flung backward, my bad shoulder exploding in pain. I crashed to the cement, and the gun disappeared. Clutching my shoulder, I rolled over to get to my feet.

  Grey was climbing to his feet as well, wiping a smear of blood from his lips.

  “Stop running away!” he shouted.

  Karl’s laugh echoed off the surrounding buildings. “You must have really loved the 1940s here in America,” he called. “Such a proud, manly time! I bet you fit into that decade like a glove.”

  “And I bet you never managed to fit in anywhere you went,” Grey fired back. “Always the odd man out, right?”

  His question hung, unanswered, in the air. Karl was gone again. Grey was suddenly at my side, helping me to my feet. I was reaching my arms around him so he could attempt to project us away, but something crashed into us with the force of a moving car, and we were thrown to the ground again. Grey tried to keep my hand clutched in his, but we were broken apart, Karl between us.

  Without pausing, Karl launched himself at Grey, who fought back, wrapping his arms around Karl’s waist, trying to lift him off his feet. They crashed into one of the stone staircases leading up to the nearest Brownstone and, to my surprise, the entire stone banister broke away as they fell.

  I ran after them and bent to pick up a large chunk of broken stone, intending to hit Karl with it, but the stone was surprisingly light. Too light to be stone. It was fake. I stared at it for a moment, then realized where we were.

  A movie studio backlot. Was it possible we were at one of the studios in New Burbank?

  I looked back to Grey and Karl, who were picking themselves up from the wreckage of the ruined plaster staircase. My eyes met Grey’s, and he mouthed one word to me right before barreling into Karl, catching him around the waist with his shoulder and driving him back into the wall.

  Run.

  I hated to leave him, but I knew he could project himself away if he didn’t have to protect me from Karl. I turned and ran down the street. I had to find out where we were. If we were at Universal Studios, Baker Brothers, or Disney, we were close to home, and I could get help. There were always guards posted around New Burbank at night, and they could alert the rest of the police force.

  After a sharp bend, the street came to an end at a large round fountain that looked strangely familiar. I climbed up on the edge and windmilled my arms wildly, teetering over the sludgy green water and tall reeds. I steadied myself and looked around from my new vantage point.

  Relief flooded through me. The familiar cream-colored water tower stood proudly with the Baker Brothers crest on it, lit up against the dark night sky. The only problem was that it was far away. I had run in the wrong direction.

  A noise drifted through the nighttime stillness. It sounded like truck motors. Lots of them. The Front was coming. It had to be them – they were the only ones who still used cars. Everyone else rode horses.

  As much as I wanted to run back down New York Street to warn Grey the rest of The Front was on its way, I couldn’t go back. Now that I knew where we were, I had to get help.

  Grabbing the walkie still clipped to my jeans, I jumped down from the edge of the ruined fountain and started running toward the entrance to the studio lot.

  “Ben!” I yelled into the walkie.

  “Autumn! Are you okay? Did you get out of there?”

  “Yes! Grey too, but Karl’s with us! We’re on the Baker Brothers backlot, and the rest of The Front is on their way! Get the New Burbank Guard over here! We need help!”

  I didn’t wait for Ben’s reply and crammed the walkie in my back pocket. If I could get to the entrance, I might find one of our guards outside. I flew down an avenue, this one lined with houses. Their once-cheerful paint colors peeled from the siding and shutters, and some of the doors hung open like broken teeth. It looked a lot like some of the neighborhoods New Burbank hadn’t cleaned up yet. Except these houses were just facades, like the Brownstones on New York Street. The doors didn’t lead to picturesque homes inside. They were shallow, with empty rooms inside.

  The street curved, and I flew past a small park with swings hanging frozen, caught in a netting of tall grass. I came to another street, lined with very tall, square buildings with large, garage-door-like openings and giant letters painted on their sides. Stages. I was getting closer to the main gates.

  “Au-tumn... ” A male voice sing-songed out of the darkness behind me, and I skidded to a stop. It was Karl, but I couldn’t see him. Fear stabbed through me. What had happened to Grey? Had he gotten away?

  I squeezed through the small gap of the stage door to my right and immediately wished I could turn on my flashlight. I felt along the inside of the wall as silently as I could. I needed a place to hide, and, I couldn’t depend on darkness to cloak me. Karl could probably see better in the dark, just like Grey. I bumped into another wall and cursed silently. I felt along its side until I found another corner and rounded it, my sneakers bumping into coils of wires.

  My eyes were beginning to adjust to the deep darkness, and I could see the cavernous space of the stage’s high ceiling above me. The floor of the stage was crowded with objects I couldn’t identify, some big enough for me to hide behind.

  I weaved my way into the maze of things. As I got closer, I identified a knee-high plastic turtle, its painted shell turned into a seat with handlebars. A shooting gallery was to my right, the bullseyes barely visible under the deep overhang of the roof above it. A strongman game was to my left, complete with mallet and a shiny silver bell at the top of a giant ruler. Prize booths, food stalls, hot dog vendors, popcorn machines, and other children’s rides surrounded me. Now I understood where I was. It was an idyllic fair, pristinely designed for a television show or a movie shoot that never happened.

  A pop echoed from the corner where I’d come in, and I barely had time to wonder what had caused it when everything suddenly lit up and began moving. I squinted in the sudden brightness and dove into a nearby ticket booth to hide. The games and rides all blinked with colored lights, and the children’s ride next to me hummed as the turtles whirred in circular patterns.

  I crouched against the floor, trying to silence my breathing, and reminded myself it was possible to hide from Karl. He could project faster and more accurately than Grey, but he still needed t
o see or hear me to know where I was.

  I was well hidden inside my ticket booth, but Karl would find me here eventually. I stayed near the ground and peeked out the door. The area within my sight was empty, but Karl could be hiding, too, waiting for me to make the first move. There was an opening across from me, which might lead to the backstage perimeter of the set, and hopefully, another exit.

  “Autumn!”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when a voice right beside me called my name. I realized it was Ben on the walkie and turned the volume knob all the way down right as I heard footsteps running toward me.

  “She’s somewhere over there! And she’s not alone!” a voice yelled. It sounded like Lush. The rest of The Front had arrived.

  I darted through the booth’s doorway and toward the opening between another game booth and a display of stuffed animal prizes.

  An exit sign, lit green in the darkness of a distant corner, showed me the way out. I jumped over a coil of cables but landed hard on the floor when the electricity suddenly went out, plunging me into utter darkness.

  Gasping as quietly as I could, I rolled over, ignoring the escalating pain in my shoulder, and lurched to my feet again, but I was completely turned around. I wasn’t sure which way the exit was now.

  Flashlights appeared behind me, and I scrambled in the opposite direction. I flung my arms out in front of me, hoping I’d either find another place to hide or, even better, the exit to this crazy carnival. My fingers met a wall, and I felt along it until I came to a doorway, which I ducked through.

  The walls went from rough to smooth and cold, and I recoiled, wondering what I could be touching. I hesitantly reached out and touched the wall again. It was like glass. I followed it, wondering if it was a window, and came to a corner. I hesitated, then kept going. It couldn’t be a window, I thought. There weren’t any windows on a stage, because filmmakers needed to control the light. I came to another abrupt corner and turned, my feet stubbing against a sudden incline. I steadied myself against the wall and continued forward at a faster pace, climbing until the floor suddenly disappeared under my feet. I crashed to the ground, which was now tilted down, and slid a short way on my butt, fingers sliding helplessly against the smooth walls on either side of me.