Elizabeth Webster and the Portal of Doom

by William Lashner

  “Just some pancakes,” he said.

  “I hope they were small.”

  With that Ivanov pressed something beneath his desk and the wall behind him swung open, revealing a passage leading to a brightly lit elevator with a folding brass gate for a door.

  “Come now,” said Ivanov, jumping off his chair. “The time is at hand.”

  I looked at Keir. Keir looked at me. My breath caught in my throat.

  “Nothing sappy, Elizabeth, remember?” said Keir.

  I was trying to figure out what to say without bursting into tears when I turned to see Ivanov standing on a stool in the elevator, smiling at us.

  “You can come, too, Elizabeth,” said Ivanov. “Barristers of the Court of Uncommon Pleas are allowed to accompany their clients to the mouth of the portal.”

  Keir and I looked at each other, a little embarrassed, and then headed to the elevator.

  Ivanov waited for us to step inside before leaning forward to pull the gate shut. As he flipped a large brass lever, he said, “Going down.”

  The elevator shook and dropped, dropped and shook.

  A wall of rough rock rose on the other side of the gate as we descended. My heart sank as fast as the elevator, and yes, I started crying. No one said anything, maybe they didn’t notice, or maybe they were just being polite, but there it was. I wiped my eyes. I wiped my nose. How do you say goodbye to a friend you’ll never see again as long as you live? The rock wall rose and my heart fell and we went down, down.

  Finally the elevator settled and stopped within a huge cavern with spears of rock pointing up from the ground and down from the domed ceiling. But the thing that caught the eye, the amazing thing, was in the far wall: a hole the size of a truck surrounded by a thick ring of steel. The steel had all kinds of strange symbols marked in gold, symbols that looked like an eye, a staff, a sword, a ram, a bolt of lightning. But it wasn’t the rim that most fascinated, it was the hole itself, quivering with light.

  “Welcome to Portal Nine of the Stygian Transit Authority,” said Ivanov as he leaned forward and opened the gate. There was a path carved into the stone floor, a path that meandered between the stalagmites on its way to the portal. “Go on,” said Ivanov. “The Portal Keeper is expecting you both.”

  Right after Keir and I stepped out of the elevator, Ivanov pulled the gate closed, waved once, and began to rise. When he disappeared out of the cavern, Keir and I looked at each other before starting down the curving path.

  As we approached the portal, the light grew brighter and the amazing patterns within it became clearer. Have you ever put your eye to a kaleidoscope and spun the tube so that the different colors started dancing? Yeah, that was what the portal looked like, a dancing kaleidoscope pointed at the sun.

  There were two people at the side of the portal. One wore a uniform and a cap, operating a console of some sort. When he turned and looked at me through his goggle glasses, the familiar face smiled.

  Yes, Mr. Topper was the new Portal Keeper. With the evidence we had found, he had made his case to the STA and been appointed Keeper of the Ninth Portal, the position his father had held and the job he had wanted his entire life.

  The demon Redwing, when he learned that his plan to send armies through Portal Keeper Brathwaite’s portal was foiled, had bellowed out my name in anger, or so we had been told. That was a nice little nugget to keep me up at night, and it made me wonder what Josiah Goodheart was up to when he slipped that file into my stepfather’s briefcase at the barristers’ bench. A mystery for another day.

  But now, when Mr. Topper smiled at me, it was like he was smiling with everything inside him. It would have been something to warm my sad little heart, but my attention was stolen by the second figure, standing beside him.

  A woman with dark hair and a familiar posture. I knew who it was even before she turned and tilted her head at me.

  “Mom?” I said.

  She was about to respond when a great sucking sound came from the portal and the shifting kaleidoscope of light and color began to shake and shimmer, as if its surface was being beaten on the other side like a drum. Mr. Topper and my mother both turned to the portal, whose middle grew bright and brighter until it was as if it had been set on fire. As the fire spread to the edges of the portal, the middle now became clear and we could see a strange shimmering scene on the other side.

  Inside a cave, much like the cave in which we stood, a half woman half horse in a Portal Keeper’s uniform was standing before a console of her own. And beside her a group of people surrounded someone, as if saying goodbye.

  When the group parted, Keir and I both gasped.

  Keir gasped because he could now see his mother holding hands with a young man in a green uniform, who I assumed was his father. Standing beside them were two older women—his aunties? And alongside was another man who looked very much like I imagined Grady to look as he drove the carriage through the dark and stormy night.

  “Glory be,” said Keir. “Isn’t that a thing.”

  And the reason I gasped was that the person they were saying goodbye to on the other side, the person in a suit and holding a briefcase, was my father.

  MASSACHUSETTS

  The next time I was called to the office out of social studies class, accompanied by the usual chorus of oohs and aahs and squeaks, it wasn’t my father waiting at the front desk.

  “Mom?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said when she saw me, “but you have another appointment with Dr. Fergenweiler that I completely forgot about. Get your coat and let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”

  I looked at Mrs. Haddad sitting in front of her computer and shrugged in apology.

  “Dr. Fergenweiler?” I said to my mom as we were heading to the car.

  “I wanted to be consistent with your father’s pathetic excuse,” said my mother.

  “Mrs. Haddad is going to think I have a disease.”

  “But you do, dear,” said my mother. “You’re a Webster. I packed us both a bag. Now get in and don’t ask where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Elizabeth,” she said.

  With the radio playing, we swept out of Willing Township and onto the highway north. You know what’s north of Willing Township? New York and Connecticut and then Massachusetts. And you know what they have in Massachusetts? Boarding schools. It’s a state of Pilgrims and boarding schools, and I wasn’t in the mood for either.

  But whenever I grew exasperated with my mother these days—and I still often did—I calmed myself by remembering how I’d felt when I saw her standing beside the Portal of Doom. I thought, weirdly, that with her there, everything would be all right. That my mother had the power to fix anything. And I sort of think she does, but that day it wasn’t Mom who had done the fixing.

  When my father recovered from his trip through the portal—which included using a special trash can kept by the Portal Keeper for just such moments, a box of tissues, and a small bottle of mouthwash—he pulled Keir aside for a talk.

  “Your father was on the other side talking to your banshee,” said my mother as Keir and my father huddled together over a document my father had taken from his briefcase. “He wanted to let Keir’s mother know how he was doing in school.”

  “Like a parent-teacher conference?” I said.

  “Exactly. And also to give her the opportunity to let Keir stay here for a while. Your father drafted a guardianship agreement that allows Keir to remain on this side in order to continue going to school. It also allows his mother and father to visit once a month. On the fifteenth of the month, as a matter of fact.”

  “Did she sign?”

  “She didn’t want to at first, she misses him so,” said my mother. “But your father can be very persuasive, and Keir’s father so wanted his boy to have an education. Eventually they both signed. Now it’s up to Keir to decide if he wants to stay. He has to agree to the terms, too.”

  “He won’t agr
ee,” I said. Keir had his arms crossed, his head down. “He’s afraid of what he might do if he stays.”

  “He’s right to be afraid,” said my mother. “But I think we can make it work.”

  I turned and looked at her. “You were the one sending reports to the countess, weren’t you?”

  “She was… concerned. And I needed to know all the details of his transformation.”

  “Then you know he can’t stay.”

  “The countess gave me the recipe for a special shake to keep Keir fed and healthy without the need for blood. The ingredients are boggling—something gross, something rare, kale, and something so weird I don’t want to talk about it—but as long as he drinks one each and every day, she says the hunger will be under control, like it was in the château.”

  “And who would be Keir’s guardian?”

  “I would be,” she said. “And Stephen.”

  “Does Stephen even know about Keir?”

  “Of course he does, Elizabeth. Your father suspected what Keir was right away, and I told Stephen. In fact, after I told him, he was the one who convinced me to let Keir stay at the house. He said every kid needs a chance.”

  “And Keir would stay with us?” I said.

  “I guess we’d lose our guest room for good. And I so liked having a guest room.”

  “But we never have guests.”

  “True. But I suppose we will now. On the fifteenth of every month.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I hugged my mother then and there. She let me for a moment, before she pushed me away and brushed the pink hair out of my eyes.

  “He still might want to join his mother and father and aunties, Elizabeth,” she said. “He still might want to pass through the portal. But at least he now he has a real choice.”

  I looked over at Keir. As he talked with my father, he was kicking at the rock floor of the cavern. Then he turned to stare at the portal, looking at his mom and dad, imagining his life over there. When he aimed his gaze at me, his eyes were rimmed with red and his jaw shook.

  It was time for Keir to choose.

  Choice. It seems like such a great thing, doesn’t it? Should I have this breakfast cereal or that Pop-Tart? Which book should I pick out of the hundreds in the library? Simple, right? I’ll have that muffin. I’ll take a mystery for now and leave the manga for later. Usually, it doesn’t really matter. But what happens when it does really matter? What happens when the whole curve of your life depends on a choice?

  I was thinking about Keir’s choice when I realized what this trip to Massachusetts was all about. My mother was taking me away so that I could make a choice of my own.

  My grandfather wanted me to dedicate myself to the family business even if it meant blowing off school. I needed to get my priorities straight, he told me again and again. But somehow looking at school through Keir’s eyes made me appreciate it so much more. Maybe it was time to actually make it more than just this thing in my life I suffered through. Maybe it was time to beat school like a kettledrum.

  And then there was my mother, who from the start had wanted me to turn away from what she called the Webster ghostly foolishness and pay attention to the things that really mattered, like family and friends and school. And truth was, in my time with Webster & Spawn my grades had taken a dive like those kites on the beach. But there was something that maybe she didn’t understand.

  I had a moment with my father at the portal while Keir was making his decision. “None of this would have mattered,” said my father, “if you hadn’t saved Keir from Van Helsing and then gotten that contract.”

  “We were lucky to get out alive,” I said.

  “This time,” he said. “I’m scared for you, Elizabeth.”

  “That’s funny, because I’m scared for me, too.”

  “It’s not funny,” he said. “I’m thinking that maybe you should hold off on the law stuff. There will always be the dead and the undead. You can back off and finish school before you decide about joining the firm. Your mother says your grades are slipping.”

  “Like a marching band on a hockey rink,” I said. “But something happened that I need to tell you about. Something weird. This was in the château, when I had just gotten the contract from the countess. Keir showed up, and we had to run to escape the fire and the fight, and in the middle of it all I started laughing. It was so strange. I just started laughing.”

  He looked at me, his face somber as a wet rock, because as soon as he heard it he knew. Of course he knew. When he had said the work filled him, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but when I looked at Keir, I realized it filled me, too.

  So I had a choice. And then and there, in that car, it was time to choose. As my mother and I drove north on the New Jersey Turnpike, I snapped off the radio and said, “I’m not going to boarding school.”

  “Good,” said my mother. “Because that’s not where we’re heading.”

  “And just so you know, despite what you and Dad want, I’m not going to quit the firm. Whatever I have to do to be a great barrister in the Court of Uncommon Pleas and help people like Keir, I’m going to do it. Which means I’ll be sweeping a lot of floors. But I’m going to be the best floor sweeper they’ve ever seen. Those floors are going to glow. And I’m sorry about my grades in school, but whatever I have to do to raise my grades, I’m going to do that, too.”

  I put my head down and stared at my hands and thought of the Countess Laveau and the way she made me feel.

  “I know you and Dad and Grandpop want me to choose one or the other,” I said, “but I choose not to choose. I’m not going to let anyone limit what I am, even those who love me the most. I can be more than any of you think. I’ll just have to show you.”

  “Oh my,” said my mother as she drove on, a slight smile breaking out.

  “So that’s that, then, right?” I said. “We can go back home?”

  “I have another idea,” said my mother. “Stephen mentioned something about a go-cart track? Petey was jumping up and down when he heard and Keir said he had never driven anything with a motor before.”

  “I love go-carts!” I said. “Let’s join them.”

  “I thought instead, while they’re driving around in circles, we could have a mother-daughter weekend. At a spa.”

  “A spa?”

  “We’ll do some yoga. We’ll get pedicures. And maybe we’ll do something about your hair.”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “Nothing. I like what you and Natalie did with it. But you’ve been fussing about it so much I thought maybe you’d be ready to try something new. They have books you can look through. Whatever you choose, they’ll create it for you.”

  “Can they make me look like Yuki?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “From Vampire Night. Her hair is this beautiful reddish-brown color, wild and spiky at the same time.”

  “We’ll find a picture online to show them.”

  “Yes!” I said, pumping a fist.

  “See, it will be fun. And sometime during our stay, maybe, if you want, I’ll tell you the story of how your father and I met.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I told you I’d tell it to you when you were ready.”

  “You’ll really tell me? All of it?”

  “Well, most of it,” she said.

  And she did. Alone in the hot tub, during our sprout-and-tofu dinners, as we lay with our heads touching on the one big bed in our room, she told me the whole terrifying and yet romantic tale of her journey to the other side and back, which was, in its own way, my origin story.

  And trust me when I tell you, it’s legendary.

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  ACKNO
WLEDGMENTS

  Every book needs a great editor and this book had two, the brilliant Tracey Keevan at Disney, who pointed out the horrifying gaps in my horror story, and the incredible Alexandra Hightower at Little, Brown, who polished this thing to a high sheen. Writing this was a group effort, and if the book sings it’s because of their voices.

  I also want to thank Mary O’Callaghan, the language program coordinator for the Department of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame, for helping me with the banshee’s Irish. I had no idea what the ghost was requesting of Elizabeth until Professor O’Callaghan graciously agreed to lend a hand. Before that I thought she maybe was asking for a pickle.

  My agents Wendy Sherman and Alex Glass have been with me every step of my Elizabethan journey and I will be forever grateful to them for making it happen.

  My family is my support and inspiration, especially my children, who seem to keep appearing in the books.

  I also want to thank all the school librarians who hosted me in the last year and all the middle school kids around the country who talked to me about Elizabeth, the law, and the writing process. I write these books to teach, entertain, and inspire, and these students have done exactly that for me. The main struggle in writing for younger readers is to keep up with such an amazing audience. Finally, this book is coming out in the midst of a pandemic that eerily echoes the influenza outbreak of 1918 that sickened Keir and killed tens of millions worldwide. Keir’s stories of the 1918 pandemic were enhanced by two excellent books, The Great Influenza by John M. Barry and Pandemic 1918 by Catharine Arnold. History continues to teach us that no matter what we face, we are stronger when we face it together. Elizabeth has taught me that nothing makes us stronger than a Legion of Friendship. Welcome to my Legion.

  WILLIAM LASHNER

  is the author of the Elizabeth Webster series for young readers. A former criminal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his novels have been published worldwide and have been nominated for two Edgar Awards, two Shamus Awards, and selected as an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review. He also was nominated for a Gumshoe Award in recognition of how often he steps in gum. When he was a kid his favorite books were The Count of Monte Cristo and any comic with the Batman on the cover.