Rise of the Shadow

by Brian Anderson

  Alex reached out and tapped Bartleby on the head, making the little dog nod.

  “But I’m already in trouble,” Alex pointed out. “So what’s a little more?”

  Alex hugged the wall as he headed down the main staircase. He’d gotten out of his room and to the second floor without encountering a soul. But once he reached the first floor, the riskiest part of his mission would begin.

  Luckily, Uncle Mordo’s study was only a few steps from the bottom of the staircase. Alex took those steps as stealthily as possible. His sneakers made no noise at all on the shiny, slippery marble floor.

  The doors to Uncle Mordo’s study were closed. Alex pulled a stethoscope from his sweatshirt pocket and placed the chest piece against the polished oak.

  At first all he heard was hushed, garbled conversation. It was like listening to a television through a seashell. Alex began to fear that his daring escapade was nothing but a waste of time. After all, what could he possibly hope to hear? A bunch of eccentrics complaining that people were finally tired of buying old, broken stuff?

  It wasn’t worth the risk after all. Alex was about to pocket his stethoscope and retreat upstairs when Agglar’s voice rose above the rest.

  “Yes, I am certain. The Shadow Conjurer is behind Angel Xavier’s disappearance. It is time to act. It is our duty to protect the Conjurian. I am calling for even stronger measures to—”

  “Do you think he will come after the children?” asked a woman’s voice. Mary McDurphy.

  Perhaps the group inside had moved closer to the door, because now Alex could hear them quite clearly.

  “The Maskelynes were clever magicians,” said Agglar. “Henry and Evelynne perfected the elephant-teleportation illusion in their stage act.”

  “And what does elephant teleportation have to do with the problem we are facing?” snapped Derren Fallow.

  “I mention elephant teleportation,” Agglar said icily, “merely to point out that it would have been a simple feat for the Maskelynes to hide the Eye before they perished. Unfortunately, they seem to have hidden it so well that no one has yet been able to find it. Therefore our foe will pursue every avenue that might yield a clue to its whereabouts. That includes the children.”

  “He can try,” Alex heard his uncle say. “He won’t succeed. The security systems here would baffle Houdini.”

  Deeply confused, Alex pressed the stethoscope deeper into his ears. Magicians? The Conjurian? Elephants? What were they talking about?

  The best thing to do, he decided, would be to gather as much information as he could, then process it once he was safely back in his room. That was the plan right up until a hand clamped onto his shoulder and he fell on his butt, dropping his stethoscope onto the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Emma whispered. She was wearing a long belted pink sweater with her favorite T-shirt and leggings underneath. Her rabbit was squirming in her arms.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Alex.

  “Pimawa got out of my room. I had to catch him. Hurry, we’d better get back before Uncle Mordo finds out.”

  On the other side of the study door, someone shouted angrily. Alex grabbed his stethoscope, scrambling to his feet. “We have to hide! Quick!”

  He dragged his sister across the foyer. Next to the staircase, a suit of samurai armor stood at attention. Alex pulled Emma down behind it as the study door burst open.

  Derren Fallow stormed into the hallway.

  “We are not finished,” Agglar called out, following right behind.

  “We are finished. Our world is dying, Christopher. Magic is dying. And what do we do?” Derren snatched his wool jacket off the coat rack beside the front door. “Hide in our tower? Our people need us. It’s time for action, not more talking!”

  “Your idealistic youth has blinded you to the real threat!” shouted Agglar. The wrinkles on his face tightened, like cracks in cement.

  “I think I know what the real threat is,” Derren said coldly. He slung his jacket on and yanked on his hat.

  Uncle Mordo walked out of the study as well, his kimono swirling. He stepped between his two friends. “Let us keep this civil,” he said, frowning. “And quiet.”

  “The children deserve to know the truth,” Derren snapped. “They have to, if they’re going to survive.”

  Emma, wide-eyed, met Alex’s gaze. He saw that his sister was frightened.

  He was too, but he put his finger to his lips. They had to find out what was going on. Staying unnoticed was their best bet.

  Agglar ignored Uncle Mordo, glowering at Derren. “If you leave now,” he said with a threat in his voice, “you are banished from the Circle.”

  Derren did not even answer. He gave Mordo a curt nod, turned up his jacket collar, and left.

  Agglar and Mordo stood staring after him. Then Uncle Mordo shook his head.

  “He will come around,” said Mordo. Putting a hand on Agglar’s arm, he guided the other man back toward the study. “We still have much to discuss.”

  Agglar pulled away. “No,” he said, grabbing his hat and cane from the rack. “Master Fallow was correct on one point. The time for talk is over. I must return to the Conjurian at once.”

  Emma’s brow furrowed. “The Conjurian?” she breathed.

  Alex scowled at her and shook his head very slightly. They couldn’t afford to make any noise.

  “Be safe, my friend,” said Agglar, and walked onto the porch. Dead leaves blew inside and rattled over the marble floor as the doors closed behind him.

  Pimawa twitched in Emma’s arms. Emma looked as if she wanted to squirm as well, but she held still at Alex’s side as Uncle Mordo headed back to the study.

  Alex let out a slow breath. Mordo didn’t know that he and Emma were hidden here, that they’d heard the entire bizarre conversation. He’d reenter the study, and Alex and Emma would head back upstairs to figure out what was going on.

  But at the study door, Mordo paused. He turned slowly, frowning. His eyes swept the hall. Then he walked, step by deliberate step, toward the stairway and the suit of armor standing at its foot.

  Emma’s face twisted with worry. She hugged Pimawa close.

  Mordo paused not three steps away from the spot where his niece and nephew huddled in their hiding place. He seemed almost to be listening to something. Alex knew what was going on. His uncle would wait until either he or Emma could not stand it anymore. He’d wait until they crawled out, ashamed, begging for forgiveness.

  Well, it wasn’t going to happen like that.

  Alex crawled out, all right, but he wasn’t begging for forgiveness. He wasn’t begging for anything. Once he got clear of the statue, he jumped to his feet, ready to burst out with all the questions crowding his mind.

  Why had Derren and Agglar been talking about his parents? What was the Conjurian? What was the Circle? Why had everybody been so angry?

  Alex met Uncle Mordo’s furious gaze with his own equally angry one. But to his surprise, Mordo wasn’t looking at Alex. The man was looking over the boy’s head at the staircase that rose into the gloom of the second floor.

  Emma squirmed out from behind the statue and got awkwardly to her feet, clinging to Pimawa. The rabbit struggled in her arms as if he wanted to leap out and run far away.

  “What’s going on?” Emma asked uncertainly. Pimawa lunged and she gripped him harder.

  “Run!” yelled Uncle Mordo.

  Alex turned and looked up to see what had caught his uncle’s attention. He wasn’t even frightened by what he saw on the staircase, because he was quite sure that it couldn’t possibly be real.

  Moon-white skulls missing their bottom jaws emerged from a swirling mass of tattered black cloth. There were five or six of the creatures clustered at the top of the stairs. Their eyeless sockets seemed to be looking directly at Alex an
d his sister.

  Uncle Mordo stepped in front of Alex and Emma, between them and the strange creatures, which had started to drift slowly down the staircase. “Mary! Rag-O-Rocs!” he shouted. “We need you!”

  A huge noise, as if a truck had slammed into the front of the house, assaulted Alex’s eardrums. When he spun around, he saw that the front doors had been blasted off their hinges. The doors hit the marble tiles of the hallway, revealing another black-robed figure standing on the doorstep.

  It wasn’t quite the same as the things on the stairs, though. This monster had a face, not just a fleshless skull. It was a sickly blue, marked by three red scars that ran from forehead to chin.

  But just like the staircase fiends—what had Uncle Mordo called them? Rag-O-Rocs?—this thing’s eyeless face seemed to be staring eagerly, hungrily, at Alex and Emma.

  Not two seconds had gone by since Alex had looked up the stairs to see something that couldn’t possibly be there. He grabbed Emma’s arm, trying to protect her and keep her close. What should they do? Should they run? Should they laugh? Surely this was just some kind of trick. A crazy joke. A Halloween prank come early.

  “Mordo?” Mary McDurphy poked her head outside the study door. “What on earth is—the Shadow Conjurer! He’s here!” She charged toward the doorway, purple umbrella leveled at the intruder. “Get the children out!”

  The creature in the doorway—Alex guessed that the thing was called the Shadow Conjurer—twitched his veiny hand. A blur of black cloth and bone shot out into the hallway and swept Mary McDurphy back into the study. Awful yells and clattering came from inside.

  Alex was beginning to realize that, whatever was happening, it was no game, or joke, or trick. It was serious.

  Deadly serious.

  The figure with the scarred face stepped into the foyer. Behind him, a wall of his skeletal minions in their floating black robes blocked the entrance.

  “I must say,” said the man Mary McDurphy had called the Shadow Conjurer, “this was quite gracious of you, Mordo. Gathering the Circle members and the Maskelyne children together for me.”

  Alex, still holding on to Emma’s arm, was finally ready to obey his uncle’s orders and run—but where? Those creepy Rag-O-Rocs were on the staircase, and the Shadow Conjurer was blocking the door. Into the study? But that was a dead end. There’d be no way out.

  From behind, Mordo’s arms came around Alex and Emma in a tight hug. He bent low so that they could hear his whispered words.

  “I’m so sorry. I have failed you and your parents,” he said. “Now you must do exactly as I tell you. Follow Pimawa. Do you understand? No matter what, follow Pimawa.”

  He kissed each of them firmly on top of the head. “I love you both. I am truly sorry.”

  Then Mordo whipped off his kimono and draped it over the children like a tent.

  A thin layer of black-and-gold silk could be no protection at all against floating skeletons or a scarred man with a dreadful eyeless face. Alex was ready to fling the cloth aside, to fight, or at least to run. Anything was better than huddling under a robe, unable to see, unable to escape—

  Then the floor gave way underneath Alex and his sister. They were falling.

  Emma

  Emma hit the library floor hard, with Alex right behind her. Pimawa landed lightly beside them, then used Alex’s head as a trampoline to bound over both brother and sister, heading for the far end of the long room with its rows of bookshelves.

  “Ow!” said Alex, rubbing his rear end. Emma just sat, watching the wall panel slide back over the secret passage that had swept them away from the front hall. They’d slid down a slick metal ramp and ended up here, in the narrow room lined with Uncle Mordo’s bookshelves and cabinets. Seventeen antique Victrolas had been arranged artfully against one wall.

  “What were those things?” Emma asked. Cold shivers had taken hold of her from deep inside, and she felt as if she’d never be warm again. “That man, he didn’t have—” She shuddered. “He didn’t have eyes.”

  Boom! It sounded as if a boulder had hit the library doors.

  She looked at Alex. Alex was the logical one. Alex always had a plan. Surely Alex would know what to do now.

  He didn’t disappoint her. “I think, for now,” her brother said, helping Emma to her feet, “we should get as far away from those doors as possible.”

  Bam! The doors began to splinter.

  They raced down the long library floor. At the far end, they found Pimawa clambering up a statue of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. It was Emma’s favorite. Alex would always complain that a story filled with illogical gibberish should have no place in a library, but Emma loved the dreamlike madness of the tale—Alice growing and shrinking, the tea party shifting seats every minute, the Queen of Hearts shrieking, “Off with their heads!”

  She thought she might love it less after tonight.

  Pimawa crouched and hammered the caterpillar’s hookah with his back legs. The statue creaked, deep inside. Then, to Emma’s shock, it split in two. The halves swung apart, like a set of doors on hinges, to reveal—another secret passage?

  Not quite. A secret staircase.

  A spiral staircase, made of wrought iron, descended into the floor from the space formerly occupied by the statue. Pimawa dove down the steps.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alex said, shaking his head.

  “Come on!” Emma pulled at his sleeve.

  “But where does that staircase go? We can’t just—”

  Bang! Crack!

  That, Emma thought, was probably the sound of the library doors splitting apart.

  “Uncle Mordo told us to follow Pimawa!” she shouted at Alex. “We have to trust him! Come on!”

  “Are you telling me to trust Uncle Mordo? Or a rabbit?” Alex demanded. But as Emma darted down the steps, he followed her.

  Behind them, the library doors imploded in a shower of timber and metal. The siblings were more than halfway down the winding steps when an unearthly cry echoed above them.

  Emma leaped off the last step, and her feet thumped on hard-packed earth. Alex landed behind her and grabbed at her hand. A narrow passageway stretched before them, with walls and a roof of stone and a floor of dirt. Emma could glimpse Pimawa’s small white form several yards ahead.

  The passageway twisted and turned, and Alex and Emma followed it, with Pimawa leading the way. They skidded around one final corner and saw that the tunnel stretched another twenty feet or so in front of them and then came to an abrupt end.

  At the end of the passageway, a small red box sat on a narrow black pedestal. Pimawa crouched on top of the box, gnawing the latch on the front.

  Alex groaned.

  “This is where the stupid rabbit led us?” he asked in disbelief. “A dead end? Come on. Let’s go back. We’ve got to find another way out.”

  “No. We’re supposed to follow Pimawa, remember,” Emma reminded him. Uncle Mordo had been trying to protect them; she knew it. He would not have told them to follow the rabbit without a good reason.

  “Not if Pimawa wants to get devoured by a demonic skeleton!” Alex yanked on Emma’s sweater.

  Emma shook him off impatiently. She was studying Pimawa, who was still gnawing at the box’s latch. “No, Alex, look. He wants us to open it.”

  “It’s probably filled with moldy carrots,” Alex growled. “Emma! Get real! This is serious! Come with me!”

  Still facing Emma, he took a step along the way they had come. The walls shook.

  Alex looked over his shoulder and yelped. Emma did the same and bit back a shriek. The ivory skull shrouded by tattered cloth hissed as it came around the corner.

  Alex spun to face the monster. “Stay close to me, Emma!” he yelled. “Get ready to run!”

 
Emma shook her head. She stepped away from Alex, nearer the box on its pedestal. She grabbed Pimawa and held him tightly.

  The Rag-O-Roc drifted closer. It seemed in no hurry, as if it knew they could not get away.

  Emma flipped open the lid of the box.

  Something inside unleashed a cloud of swirling blue light. Pimawa leaped out of Emma’s arms, straight into the light, and vanished.

  Deep down, Emma knew what to do.

  “Alex! Follow the rabbit!” Emma shouted. “We have to follow Pimawa!”

  She stuck her hand into the light.

  It warmed her arm from the inside out, slowly spreading through her body. The light tugged at her—gently, at first. Then she plunged down a waterfall of light, wondering when she would crash into solid ground, or if she would land at all.

  “Emma!” Alex shouted as loud as he could. But the thick fog all around him choked off his shouts.

  He didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten here. That terrifying skeleton monster had been stalking him down the tunnel, and he’d been backing away, expecting to bump into Emma at any second. Emma had yelled something crazy about her rabbit, and then—whoosh! It had been like he’d slipped onto a waterslide, except it was a waterslide made out of warm blue light.

  And when he was done sliding, he was here. Wherever here was.

  “Emma!” he yelled again.

  The fog was so thick that he could barely see his own hands. He couldn’t see his feet. There might be a cliff three feet ahead of him, and he wouldn’t know about it until he was falling.

  “Think,” Alex told himself. “Think! That’s your only chance.”

  He stood still and thought.

  “Okay. Yelling isn’t working,” he told himself, talking out loud because it felt a bit comforting to hear his own voice. “I could walk right past Emma and never know it. The logical thing to do is stay put. Wait for this fog to clear.”