The Blade of Shattered Hope (The 13th Reality #3) (19 page)

Bad thoughts drifted through his mind, images of all the terrible things their vanishing from Jane’s captors might mean.

To get his mind off it, he knelt down on the floor and reached under his mattress. After feeling about, he found what he’d been looking for and pulled it out, then sat on the bed. Though he couldn’t see it very well in the pale light coming through the window, he knew every detail of the object anyway. His
Journal of Curious Letters.

Yes. Unless this was a Reality that had split from Prime very recently, he at least knew he was in the right place. But what in the world was he supposed to do now?

He set the book on the table by his bed and kicked up his legs onto the bed, not bothering to take off his shoes. He lay back onto his pillow, hands clasped behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Odd-shaped shadows from the moonlight slanted from corner to corner, dark and menacing. He closed his eyes.

Sleep. Could he really sleep despite all the terrible things going on that very instant? He didn’t know, but he needed it for sure. Surprising himself, he relaxed, feeling the first trickles of sleep edge his mind.

A minute passed. Two. The darkness was deep. No sound except a slight breeze pushing branches against the outside of the house. Something smelled good, like the fresh scent of laundry detergent and dryer sheets. All of it seemed to pull him down into the bed, as comfortable as he ever remembered being. Almost feeling guilty, he sank into the welcome pool of slumber.

Ooooooohhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn . . .

This time the sound came from the hallway right outside his room, a miserably haunted, ghostly moan. Tick shot up in bed, his feet swinging to the floor. A silver-blue light glowed through the space under the door.

So much for sleep.

~

He heard the sound again. Then again. And again. Each time it was only a few seconds apart. The moan had such a creepy, deathly feel to it that prickles of goose bumps shot up all over his body, and he felt like every hair on his head reached for the ceiling. This was a new kind of terror—something very different from the constant worry of being killed or hurt, something he’d almost become accustomed to.

No, this was like a real-life ghost story. He was in a horror movie.

He quietly stood up and walked over to the window, carefully stepping on the non-creaking spots of his bedroom floor. He looked through the glass, wondering if he’d have the courage to jump out. The moon cast its pale glow on the yard outside, making the trees look dark blue and creating shadows in which he could imagine every monster from his every nightmare hiding, waiting.

Ooooooohhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn . . .

Tick turned around to face the door. His mind felt hollowed out. How had it come to this? An hour ago he’d been in the middle of a desert in the Thirteenth Reality, watching Mistress Jane destroy an entire world. Now he was back in his house, in the dark, staring at a sheet of silver-blue light panning across his floor. He saw that it wavered with flashes and glimmers of shadow as though the source of the light was a gigantic TV out in the hallway, showing an old black-and-white film.

He didn’t want to face whatever was out there. He turned back to the window and unlatched the lock. After pulling up the window, he unhooked the screen. He stuck his head out to look at the ground twenty feet below. If he could land in that clump of bushes . . .

Behind him, the moan took on a different pitch, stuttered. Then something sounded almost like a cough, followed by an odd crackle. Tick couldn’t help but look back at this new noise.

Tendrils of bright white electricity danced around the doorknob, sparking and zigzagging like small bolts of lightning. It had a charged sound to it, like the monster-making machines in the old Frankenstein movies. There were dozens of small sparks casting flashes of light all over the room.

Tick was pretty sure he had stopped breathing and didn’t know if he would ever start again.

The lightning and electricity intensified, spreading out and growing larger until they covered the entire door and the walls around it. A glow of silvery light formed in the middle, growing brighter and brighter until Tick couldn’t see the features of the door or his wallpaper. Just a globe of metallic blue.

He realized he was in some sort of a trance. He was about to turn away and jump out the window—he’d take the broken leg or arm instead of whatever this was—when the entire display in front of him collapsed into an oblong and upright shape, standing maybe six feet tall. Crackles of electricity still danced along the surface, but they seemed more controlled, swirling around the oval body of light.

Then, to Tick’s shock, a large face appeared in the middle of the light. It was a young woman, her features shimmering but smooth, and her expression showing a small struggle, as if she was concentrating on a difficult task. But then she was gone, replaced by another face. This time it was a man, his features rigid and angled. Then another face formed—a young boy. Then another one—an old woman, her wrinkles lines of blue against silver. A second later, a younger woman appeared, this one with a round face and eyes.

More faces appeared, each one lasting only a few moments before another took its place. Boys and girls, men and women, all ages and all races. They all had that same look of intense effort, their eyes focused on Tick, sometimes with their tongue bit between their lips.

Tick realized he’d relaxed. He was breathing normally and no longer felt the urge to jump out the window. If this thing was a ghost, it didn’t seem very scary. After all the studying and intense reading of science and its inner workings he’d done over the past months, his rational mind had finally taken over. What he saw before him had to be some kind of explainable phenomenon, and his fear had been replaced by excitement to find out what it was.

The faces continued to change, one after the other, all types and ages. The light cast from the glowing oval shimmered and danced in the room, which had an even more relaxing effect on Tick. He stepped over to his desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down, never taking his eyes off the apparition.

The morphing faces seemed to relax a bit. When a young Asian man appeared, the lips of his mouth parted. He transformed into an African-American woman, and her lips began to form a word. When the sound finally came out, traveling across the room for a very shocked Tick to hear, it came from a teenage boy. Then a fat man. Then a beautiful woman. Then an old man. Face after face, image after image, their lips remained in sync as the odd phenomenon began to speak. The voice never changed, however; it was deep and charged with energy, laced with crackles of electricity.

“Atticus Higginbottom,” it said.
They
said. “We need to have a very serious talk.”

~

Sato had learned a lot about Tick’s sister. There wasn’t much else to do when you were stuck in a place that stretched to infinity in every direction with nothing to see but colored marble squares. They’d walked for awhile as they talked, but eventually had given up, deciding they were just as well off sitting and waiting for something to happen as they were wandering about aimlessly.

“I’m sure your sister is safe,” he said after a long lull in their conversation. “Somehow those bolts of lightning sent us somewhere else. Here. Maybe other places. Maybe totally random, I don’t know. But the more I think about it, the more I think it has to be something like that. If the lightning had been killing people, it would’ve left behind charred bodies.”

Lisa nodded absently, staring down at her finger as she traced the lines in the red marble square on which she sat cross-legged. “Charred bodies. Pleasant.”

“How much do you know about the Realitants?” Sato asked.

“Most of it,” she replied, looking up at him. She’d stopped crying, but her eyes were still puffy and red. “I tried to keep living my normal life and pretend it was just something for Tick, something I didn’t have to worry about. I have my friends, you know? I have my own life. My mom and dad tried hard not to put all their attention on Tick and his fancy Realitant stuff, but they couldn’t help it. I don’t really blame them. I was happy to kind of ignore it all. Guess I have no choice now.”

She pulled up her legs to wrap her arms around her knees. “This has something to do with Tick, right? It can’t be a coincidence that I’m his sister and was kidnapped and then sent here by a bolt of lightning.”

“I’m sure it has something to do with Tick and Mistress Jane,” Sato said. “Our boss had a meeting scheduled with her, and I’m sure it all went to pot right about then.”

“What’s really happening? I’ve never been in an earthquake before, but I’m pretty sure what I just went through wasn’t normal. Especially with all the lightning.”

Sato shook his head. “I don’t know. We’re not sure what happened to Jane after the crazy stuff in the Fourth Reality, but if she survived, I’m guessing she’s one ticked-off lady. And she has weird powers. She can do things with Chi’karda. For all we know, she’s messing things up pretty bad out there.”

“Yeah,” Lisa replied, her eyes staring at a spot in the distance. She looked slightly dazed. Sato had to remind himself that all of this was new to her, no matter how many times she’d heard about it. To really understand it, to really
know,
you had to experience stuff like this yourself.

They sat in silence for awhile. Then Lisa said, “I can’t imagine how scared Kayla is.” A tear trickled down her cheek. She sniffed and squeezed her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “I won’t be able to live if something bad happens to her.”

Sato couldn’t help but feel her sorrow. It made him think of the days and weeks and months he’d spent bawling his eyes out after Jane killed his parents. Why did there have to be so much evil in the world? Why couldn’t people like Jane realize the pain they inflicted or understand the end results on everyday lives? How was it possible to have such a complete absence of compassion? He couldn’t possibly hate Jane any more than he already did, but he felt his rage and thirst for revenge spring up anew.

“We’ll find your sister,” he said, hoping the promise didn’t sound too empty. “We’ll find your whole family, and we’ll make Jane pay for whatever she’s done. It’s the only thing I live for now.”

Lisa looked at him, her eyes red and wet and surrounded by dark, hollow circles on her face. “Thanks.”

Something hummed deeply behind Sato, and he noticed Lisa look sharply over his shoulder, surprise transforming her face. The floor vibrated slightly as well.

He spun around to see what had happened.

Mothball was standing there, looking as surprised as Sato felt.

~

It took a minute or so for Tick to gather himself, remembering that he’d seen many strange things since receiving his very first letter from Master George and that this was just the next in a long line of oddities. He pushed away the shock he felt, ignoring the impossibility of what he saw before him. So a big oval of silver-blue light was talking to him with hundreds of different faces mouthing the words. Big deal. He had to respond.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, proud that the words came out with no squeaks or stutters.

When the entity responded, its face started out as a teenage girl with long hair but had morphed into an old man by the time the short phrase was finished. “We have been observing you and your Realitant friends.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said a woman who changed into a man.

Tick was completely fascinated. “What are you? I mean . . .
who
are you?”

The glowing apparition was quiet for a moment, though the faces continued to change at the same rapid pace. Finally, a wise-looking, ancient woman appeared to speak the words, “They call us the Haunce.”

~

The entity paused after revealing its name, as if it wanted Tick to respond. But Tick had questions buzzing around his head like flies swarming a light bulb, and he couldn’t settle on just one. So he sat there, slack-jawed and silent.

“Do not be afraid,” the many-faced apparition said. “We are as close a thing to a ghost as you will ever see, but we are much kinder than the storybooks make us out to be. It takes considerable effort to gather ourselves into something strong enough to appear visually to those still alive. We would never do it simply to scare someone. It would be ridiculous.”

If Tick had flies buzzing a moment earlier, now they had become an army of bees.
A ghost?
Appear visually to those still alive?
What was this thing?

He decided to make a statement that encompassed all of his confusion in three short words. “I don’t understand.”

A smile appeared on a girl’s face, glowing silvery blue. When the face transformed into a middle-aged man, the smile was still there. “We would not expect you to. Sit and listen. We will explain.”

Tick had never heard a better idea in his life. He nodded his head emphatically.