Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5)

by D. W. Moneypenny

  “Oh, no you don’t. We are not quitting now, not until I figure this thing out. I’m not staying like this for the rest of my life.” She stepped up to the Chronicle of Cosms. “What do we do next?”

  Ping sighed and squinted at her. “You’re lucky I didn’t suggest we look at a sample of chocolate. That was what my Mara and I used as a sample the first time we worked in the lab together.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’d be a giant candy bar instead of a living pickle jar. I need more instruction and less commentary, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Very well, but please be careful. I don’t want you to make things worse for yourself.”

  She growled in frustration.

  He raised a hand to calm her, pointed to the turntable and said, “Rotate the glass sample in this direction and remove it. Then line up the sample container with the steam so it may be viewed through the Chronicle.”

  She complied and held out the tiny globe with the glass shards to him. He shook his head and said, “You must take that with you. Just keep it in your left hand for now.”

  Dropping it into her left palm, she asked, “Take it with me where?”

  He pointed to the container of steam on the turntable. “In there.”

  She gave it a sidelong glance, then looked back at Ping, frowning. “I’m not following you. What are you saying?”

  “It might be easier to show you than explain the process. Just follow my directions, and you should be just fine,” he said. He placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face the eyepiece. “Look through the Chronicle just like you did before. Remember to concentrate on the steam and think about the characteristics of glass as you saw them during your earlier examination.”

  Mara leaned forward and peered through the top end of the device. As before, she saw the steam roiling before her. “Okay. I see the steam. Now what?”

  “Grasp the end of the Chronicle as if you were adjusting the focus on a microscope,” Ping said.

  Since she still held the sample globe filled with broken glass in her left hand, she raised her right and put her thumb and forefinger on each side of the tube. A shock ran through her fingertips, up through her arm and throughout her body. She felt herself falling. Startled, she dropped the sample container and reached out for something to hold on to. She found Ping’s arm and dug her fingers into him. A spinning blue light filled the periphery of her vision and stretched out below her, forming a long brilliant tunnel through which she sensed herself falling.

  Behind her, she still had a grip on Ping’s arm, and she could hear him screaming, loudly echoing. He too was falling, but the pressure of air whipping by kept her from twisting around to see him or from catching her breath. It made her wonder how he could do all that screaming if he couldn’t breathe either. Lightheadedness pressed in on her as the bright blue light surrounding them faded to black.

  Her head snapped forward, and she found herself standing in clouds of steam, staring at Ping’s back several feet away. He spun around, panicked. What looked like a stick fell from the air above, landing between them with a series of metallic clangs as it bounced end to end, settling with a tinny drum roll.

  Mara approached it and saw it was the eyepiece, the Chronicle of Cosms, unmoored from its stand in the laboratory. Bending over, she picked it up, and a blue sheen glinted over its surface and disappeared.

  It’s the same blue light my Chronicle gives off.

  Ping ran up to her. “What have you done?”

  She pointed the engraved, gem-encrusted tube at him and said, “I did exactly what you said. You said nothing about this thing sucking me through a tunnel without warning.”

  He swatted at a thick bank of steam. Bug-eyed, he said in a hissed whisper, “I’m not supposed to be here.” He looked down at her hands and added, “You didn’t even bring the sample with you. How are you supposed to impart the characteristics of glass … Oh, forget the experiment. How did I get here?” He turned in a circle, scanning the steam that swirled around them.

  “Where is here?” Mara asked. “And why are you whispering?”

  Awestruck, he said, “The Chronicle has transported us into the microcosm, into the world of substance and constituents, where the basic elements of Reality are revealed to the progenitor. Here, we exist as part of the steam.”

  “Microcosm? What microcosm?” she asked.

  “Inside the sample container,” he said. He held up his arms. “This, this is our steam sample.”

  Mara gasped, inhaled a few tendrils of vapor. “You’re saying we’re inside that little plastic sample ball? That’s impossible.” She stared down at the copper eyepiece, at its familiar crystals and symbols. Well, maybe not impossible.

  Ping didn’t respond, just paced around, looking amazed.

  Mara narrowed her eyes as she watched him. “That’s why you were screaming all the way down. You’ve never done this, taken a trip through this Chronicle. Have you?”

  “No. I didn’t even know it was possible,” he said.

  Mara picked up on the reverence in his voice.

  “I only wish you had brought the sample. What an opportunity it would have been to see you impart the characteristics of the glass into this sample. Assuming you could have done it.”

  “Maybe I don’t need the sample,” she said. She held up her transparent hand and examined it. “Maybe I am the sample. What do you think?”

  “Mara always brought a physical sample with her. She thinks it was necessary, to infuse its qualities into the undifferentiated matter, into the steam.”

  “I suspect it was only necessary because she thought it was.”

  “She spent a lot of time experimenting, a great deal of trial and error, to develop this process. I wouldn’t recommend that you attempt anything outside the parameters she has set forth.”

  “You’ve never been here before. How do you know what she did after she traveled into a microcosm? What’s the procedure she followed once she was here?”

  “She infused the steam with the sample.”

  “How so?”

  He gave her a blank look.

  “That’s what I thought. You don’t know what she did or how she did it. Do you?”

  “Not precisely but I know she always brought a physical sample and always returned with an empty sample container. It must be necessary for the process to work.”

  “Having shared similar experiences in my life, I’m confident your Mara didn’t know everything about the Chronicle, not in the limited time she spent with it. I’d bet there’s more than one way to do these things. The key is believing in what’s possible.”

  “How can you say that? She’s the progenitor of this realm, not you.”

  “She didn’t know that you could travel through the Chronicle with her. Did she?”

  “No.”

  “So her way may not be the only of way of doing things here in the microcosm.”

  He gave up. “What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to sit down.” She bent over and waved her arms to clear away some of the steam. There was too much of it, so she gave up and plopped down to the ground, crossing her legs and placing the Chronicle of Cosms across from them. A moment later a wall of vapor blew past, and, when it cleared, she saw Ping sitting across from her, looking impatient.

  She tapped the floor with a knuckle. Maybe they were sitting on the bottom of the plastic egg sample container.

  “How will you do this without a sample? More metaphysics?” he asked.

  “Something like that. I’m guessing your Mara has similar abilities to mine, but she uses the laboratory and the samples as her talismans—physical objects on which she focuses to channel those abilities. Even this”—she held up the eyepiece—“is a talisman that channels her abilities.”

  “Talismans, as in lucky charms or magical objects?”

  “Think of them as tools, like paintbrushes. In the hands of someone with talent, art can be created. In the hands of someone w
ithout, well, not so much.”

  “Yes, but you’re suggesting that you can create art without a paintbrush.”

  “Let’s just say, unlike your Mara, I’m a finger-painter. We use different tools, but we both make art.” She crossed her still transparent fingers. “That’s what I’m betting on anyway. Understand?”

  “You are very clear.”

  “Funny. Now let me concentrate for a moment.”

  Closing her eyes, she visualized the gossamer strands that wove through the thin vapor of the glass sample she had observed through the eyepiece, recalling the shift and drift of the fine fibers as they had surrounded her, became a part of her. She concentrated on the shimmering strands and imagined them being lifted, as if by static, pulled away from her by an unseen force.

  She heard a muffled gasp, and she opened her eyes.

  Translucent threads, thinner than hair, floated and swirled around her, an expanding cocoon that fed on the roiling steam. The more it expanded, the more it dispersed into the clouds, the thinner the clouds grew until she and Ping were flanked by an ephemeral tapestry of vapor and thread that moved in waves, like a translucent sheet in a gentle breeze.

  Her gaze rested on Ping.

  Amazed, he said, “It worked.” He reached out and touched Mara’s arm. It was now opaque, the color of flesh. “You were the sample. Incredible.”

  “I only have one question,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “How do we get out of here? And don’t tell me that you don’t know.”

  He smiled at her. “Given your ability to ascertain how things work, I’m surprised you haven’t guessed.” He nodded to the Chronicle of Cosms. “You use the eyepiece. Instead of traveling to a microcosm, we should go to a macrocosm. Correct?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you suppose that would work?”

  She held up the copper tube and examined it. Then it occurred to her. “You look through the opposite end.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Standing atop a ladder outside the front of the hotel where he and Sam had stayed for the past few days, Ping attempted to insert a bulb into the streetlight. Reaching inside the open glass panel of the lamp’s rectangular compartment, he slid the softball-size bulb into the socket and gave it a quarter-turn. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed, and he retracted his arm, glancing at the burned, tight skin alongside his index finger—evidence that dropping one of these bulbs could have dangerous consequences. When he had a free moment, he intended to ask someone why they would use such a volatile gas to produce light. The hotel owner, Mr. Martin, had called it kerosteam and had reminded Ping to be careful when changing the bulbs.

  As he descended the ladder, he wondered what mechanism illuminated the bulb. He knew that electricity wasn’t used in this realm, but he had been reticent to ask Mr. Martin about it for fear of looking too out of place. It had taken much convincing to get the man to allow them to stay at the hotel in exchange for several hours of chores each day. And now that he had Abby to look after, it was even more important they have a roof over their heads until she recovered.

  He folded up the ladder and turned to carry it into the hotel when he heard a scream. Turning around, he took a few minutes to determine the source of the disruption. A block away, across the unpaved street, a man staggered down the boardwalk along the business fronts, flailing at the air. Ping squinted but couldn’t make out what bothered the man. He heard the hotel’s main entrance door open behind him.

  “What’s going on, Mr. Ping? I thought I heard someone yelling out here,” asked Bobby, the bellhop.

  Ping nodded toward the man who staggered in their direction. “I’m not sure. It appears something is pestering that man, or he’s suffering from some kind of delusion.”

  The man ran into the middle of the street, tripped over his own feet and rolled along the ground. Now that he was closer, Ping could make out something hovering in the air around the man’s head.

  “It’s the swarm!” Bobby yelled, pointing. “Two hotel patrons said they heard a rumor this morning about a swarm of bugs chasing people down in the southeast section. It must have made its way up here.”

  Ping frowned and cocked an ear. “I don’t hear any buzzing. And frankly that doesn’t look like a swarm of insects.” He stepped off the boardwalk toward the man, now slapping and kicking into the air.

  “Careful, Mr. Ping. I heard that they might carry a disease. If you get bit, Mr. Martin won’t let you stay at the hotel anymore.”

  As Ping got closer, he saw what assaulted the man on the ground. It was not a swarm of insects but a black mist that wove around the man’s head, extending inky tendrils into his mouth, nose and ears. Ping gasped as the memory of a bank security video he and Mara had watched played back in his mind.

  On the screen the security guard’s extended arm held out a gun that jerked upward several times, silently recoiling each time he fired. The insect-thing before him flapped and spasmed, falling off its legs to its side, all six appendages writhing, kicking toward the tellers’ counter while its wings battered the front door.

  Another shot exploded into one of the insect’s huge eyes, spattering gelatinous material all over the carpet.

  The last gunshot went wide, striking the forehead of the customer, the one at the counter in the lobby filling out a deposit slip, standing in the video’s foreground. He collapsed into a heap of ashes, leaving a misty black residue floating in the air where his body had stood.

  Ping leaned forward and pointed at the screen. “Did you see that? What is that?”

  The black mist spread before the camera, like a fog riding weak currents of air, growing thinner and thinner by the minute.

  From across the room, the guard ran toward the camera, dodging the remains of the giant dead bug, which had stopped kicking and twitching. The guard stopped behind the check-writing counter and looked down at his feet. Bending over, he scooped up a handful of ash and let it slip through his fingers. Once it had fallen back to the floor, the guard held in his palm a blackened bullet. He looked around, guilty and confused, but he seemed unaware that the black residue was curling around his head, seeping into his ears, nose and mouth. For a moment, the guard’s features were not discernible through the black haze that engulfed him. Then, as the fog slithered into his body and disappeared, his face became visible, and his irises turned as black and bright as hot tar.

  Ping slowed his pace, still staring at the writhing man on the ground. “Juaquin Prado,” he said aloud. It’s the soul of Juaquin Prado, the spirit that possessed Abby and turned them into the Aphotis.

  The blackness persisted in assaulting the man, streams pushing into every orifice of his head while his body fought the invasion, coughing, sputtering and sneezing. He spewed onto the ground wet gobs of oil which atomized into animated streams flowing back at his face, continuing to attack. The mist could enter his body but yet could not possess it.

  Growling like a cornered animal, the man grabbed his own face and shook his head, sending ropes of blackened goo to the street. He cleared his throat and spat a wad that landed next to Ping’s foot. He watched it evaporate into the familiar black mist and rise into the air, this time flowing high into the sky, joining the rest of the thin mass that seemed to have lost interest in the man.

  The dark cloud hung in the air and rolled away, as if riding a breeze.

  Wiping his face with his forearm, the red-faced man staggered to his feet. Ping took his elbow to help him gain his balance, but the man yanked away, glaring at Ping with a crazed look.

  Raising his hands, Ping said, “Just offering assistance, sir. Are you all right?”

  The man spat one more time, turned and left without comment.

  “Ping!” He spun around in time to see Sam and an unfamiliar man sitting in a wagon, pulling up to the front of the hotel.

  Sam smiled and waved enthusiastically.

  As Ping approached, the boy jumped down and pointed toward the man disembarking f
rom the opposite side of the wagon. “Guess who that is,” he said, whispering.

  “I’ve no idea. Who?”

  “It’s my dad.”

  Dr. Lantern walked around the back of the wagon and approached them with a look of astonishment. “It’s you. You are Mr. Ping. Unbelievable. I saw you back at the manor less than two hours ago, yet here you are.” He held out his hand.

  Ping shook it and said, “I’m sorry. You’ve got me at a disadvantage.”

  “I’m Christopher Lantern,” he said. He threw his arm over Sam’s shoulder and added, “Sam’s dad. And Mara’s too.”

  “Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable,” Ping said. Sam and his father waited for Ping to say something more, but the black mist and its implications distracted him.

  After an awkward silence, Sam leaned forward and said, “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost or something.”

  Ping shook his head and forced a smile. “It’s nothing. I take it you located the Progenitor’s Manor. Did you find your sister or her counterpart there?”

  “Our Mara is there. The other one is not. Something to do with her receptacle made her disappear from this realm.”

  “I gather my counterpart is there too,” Ping said, glancing at Dr. Lantern. “Why didn’t Mara come back with you? I would think she wanted to see Abby.”

  “That’s my fault,” Dr. Lantern said. “We thought Mara would draw too much attention if she came into town, and, since her friend was not feeling well, it seemed logical that I return with Sam instead.”

  “He’s a doctor,” Sam said. “We stopped and made a house call on the way.”

  His father smiled. “I also wanted to invite you and Abby to come stay at the manor. I think you will be more comfortable, and I can help you take care of her.”

  “Better than hanging out here and sweeping floors. Besides the manor is massive—and you will get to meet yourself out there,” Sam said.

  Ping picked up the ladder he had left on the ground and said, “It would be wonderful if you could take a look at Abby. I think she’s in shock, but I’d feel better with a professional opinion. As far as staying at the manor, it sounds like an excellent idea.”