The Crabapple Gang: The Gift of Dane
Volume 2
By David C. Baxter
Copyright © 2017, David C. Baxter
No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, digitally, or mechanically without explicit written permission from the author.
Edited by Ann-Marie Trammell
Illustration by Corbin Baxter
For my nieces: Mackenzie, Macy, and Cameron. Thank you for inspiring me to write this novel.
And for my wife. Thank you for your constant support in all my side projects.
II
19
The last child joined the others around the door upstairs. The huddled group was enamored with the flickering light behind the cracked door. Penny’s Intruder crept up the stairs without a sound. At the top of the stairs, the Intruder slunk into the master bedroom.
CG
Dane glanced over his shoulder. Shadows thrown from the surging light must’ve played a trick with his mind. He could’ve sworn the door by the staircase had closed. He turned back to the light. What did the room conceal?
Tommy smiled at him, a kind gesture, but the throbbing light twisted Tommy’s face in sinister shadows, like Two-Face’s deformed side.
Dane smelled Tommy’s stale sweat, like leaving his gym clothes in his bag over the weekend.
“I don’t think anyone’s in there,” Tommy whispered.
Dane wasn’t so sure. What’d Penny said outside? The house might really be haunted. It did feel occupied…no, more like alive. Maybe it was the way the light pulsed off the foyer tiles and walls. A darkness clawed at him. It took effort to look back. Yeah, his friends felt the same. Penny looked the worst, her strained face pulling her beauty away.
Dane forced a smile, rubbing the goose bumps on his arm. But, he couldn’t rub away the vision of those fangs and hellish eyes. The monster lurked behind that sadistic strobe. But if they didn’t go in after Mad Murry, who would?
Dane heard nothing but the whoosh of his exhale. “Paul, give me the camera.”
Paul passed it over without a word.
Dane turned on the camera’s light, moved past Tommy, and shouldered the door open. The relenting light refracted off two steel tables. He panned the camera: a flash of light on the wall and a figure behind it. A scream jammed his throat. The light and figure moved.
Dane shook the camera. The light near the wall mimicked the movement. It was the camera’s light reflecting off a closed window and the figure behind it was his.
But something was in here. Something was watching him.
Dane swung the camera to the left, using both hands to steady it. Fear glued his sneakers to the tile floor.
On the far side of the room, the mad-faced-mask of a Modifier glared down at him. He squinted at it on the camera’s monitor. The monster would lurk up on him in the darkness, between the strobes, and devour him. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Clicking behind him: the gnashing of fanged teeth? Dane gulped preparing himself for the feeling of two needles in his neck. Is that what a vampire’s bite would feel like? He’d watched so many movie victims encounter that fate, but he’d never stopped to think what a vampire’s bite would really feel like.
The room ignited in blessed light washing away the night terror.
Dane glanced back. The clicking had been Tommy flipping the light switch.
An arm wrapped around his shoulders with the smell of strawberries.
“We can go get your Yoda nightlight,” Alex said with devious eyes. “You know, if it makes you feel better.”
“Thanks.” Dane scanned the lab from left to right: shelves crammed with books to the left, clear-plastic marker boards covered in black, formulaic scribbles, and the two lengthy tables.
The rest entered and spread throughout the monster-less room.
On the far wall, the face of the Modifier was nothing more than a sun mask. It was what was below the mask that grabbed Dane’s attention.
“Mad Murry built a lab,” Paul said, crossing to the formula boards.
Tommy studied Paul.
“They affectionately call your uncle Mad Murry,” Penny said, blushing. “Actually, my generation did the same. Sorry.”
“It has to be for the portal,” Alex said.
Dane followed Alex between the tables and to the carved hole below the sun mask.
Everyone gravitated to it, except for Tommy who rummaged through papers on one of the tables.
“The hole,” Dane said, “is nothing but cut-away plaster and sheetrock.”
Simone peered in. “I can see the house’s brick wall.”
“They’re like our bracelets,” Paul said, all his fear gone.
Dane zoomed in on one of the round, white stones.
“It’s not possible.” Simone pushed up her glasses. “Do you mind?” she asked Collin.
Collin reached up.
Dane focused on Collin’s hand. It slipped between the hole’s curved frame and the stone.
“Careful not to touch it,” Penny said.
Like a magician showing the absence of wires, Collin’s hand moved between the stone and the hole’s edge.
“Sims,” Dane said, “any of your science magazines have anything about this?”
“Now that you mention it,” Simone’s eyes widened, “I read a blog post about the government trying to levitate a bowling ball.”
Dane handed the camera back to Paul and turned to Tommy. “How are they hovering?”
“My uncle didn’t say,” Tommy said. He didn’t look up from sifting through papers. “I think it has something to do with the drawings.”
“What drawings?” Penny asked.
Tommy’s eyes went to the top of the hole and the stones. He rushed over. “They’re gone!”
Beads of sweat dripped down Tommy’s forehead. The room was cool enough. Dane noticed a vent on the wall behind Tommy.
“They were the answer to opening it,” Tommy said.
Dane lifted his bracelet. “Like this?”
Tommy grabbed his wrist.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” Tommy said, letting go. “It’s just that my uncle’s bracelet had a drawing as well. It was different and so were the ones on the stones.”
“Could you draw them?” Penny asked.
Tommy shook his head. “We were attacked before I got a chance to study them.”
“Let’s just use Dane’s bracelet,” Alex said. “You know, to open a new portal.”
“No.” Tommy ruffled his hair and went back to the splay of papers.
“We know it works,” Dane said.
“It would only bring you back through this one,” Tommy said. “It’s the way back.”
“From where?” Paul asked.
Tommy crossed to the bookshelves. “Don’t know and it doesn’t matter.” He grabbed a hardcover book. “It’s broken.”
“Broken?” Simone asked.
“Before my uncle went through the symbols lit up automatically, in sync with his bracelet.” Tommy dropped the book and started yanking more from the shelves, spilling them to the floor. “He mumbled something and the portal ignited.”
“It’s voice activated,” Simone said.
Tommy kicked a fallen book. It slid across the tile, bouncing off the doorjamb. “The answer is in his journal. We must find it!”
20
In the spacious living room, Dane eyed Mad Murry’s DVD collection. The rows and rows of DVDs equaled the collection of Simone’s parents. Instead of action flicks and romantic comedies, Murry’s were more of the N
ational Geographic and Discovery Channel variety.
“I’m going to tell Penny,” Alex yelled from the adjacent room, “you’re not following the buddy system.”
Why did Alex want him in the other room? Dane’s insides fluttered. Maybe she wanted to be alone with him?
Before he could make a decision, Alex entered, and asked, “Find anything?”
Ceiling lights highlighted the freckles under her eyes. Dane could write endless poems about those freckles:
Painted drops of beauty
Like endless stars in skies
The opus of a deity
Oceans of time line her eyes—
“You okay?” Alex asked.
“Huh?”
“You totally zoned out. I thought you were having a brain aneurism or something.”
“Oh, um…” Dane ran his hand through his hair. “Nothing but nature DVDs in here. What did you find?”
“Ole Mad Murry may be crazy, but he’s got a pretty cozy reading room.”
“What’s in your hand?”
Alex studied the box. “The Chronicles of Narnia. The complete series. No journal though.”
“Lots of shelving and books?” he asked.
“Floor to ceiling. You really want to look behind each one?”
“It’d be a good place to hide a journal.” Dane crossed between the coffee table and television. “At the very least, we’ll know what Murry’s interests are.”
Alex lifted her bracelet hand. “May help us understand what these are all about.”
Dane took the box set, nearly dropping it, its weight surprising him. “Well, at least we know Mad Murry’s into teen fiction.”
“Little old for that.”
Her smile ignited every molecule within him.
“Alex, it’s a classic.” He put the box set on the coffee table. He needed an excuse to look away from that smile.
Keeping his eyes on his sneakers, Dane followed Alex into the library.
“Now this is where I’d hide a journal,” Dane said, looking up. He’d never seen such a variety of books, not in a home at least: colored paperbacks to ancient cracked leather bound. Alex was right; it was cozy. In the middle of the room, a small chandelier bathed dim light on a table. The round table’s petite size was a contrast to the two behemoth mahogany bookshelves which covered two walls floor to ceiling. There was even a ladder attached to a rail. Against the left wall sat a cigar chair and lamp.
“We should start at the bottom,” Alex said, dropping to her knees.
“So we can save pushing one another on the ladder for last?”
“No,” Alex said. “So we don’t block the bottom shelf with books we’ve already removed.”
“Oh, right.” He knelt next to Alex. Unlike Tommy, they took care to stack the books.
They’d emptied one of the bottom shelves when Dane asked, “Did you see how Tommy kept eyeing Penny’s bracelet?”
“He probably thought it was meant for him.” Alex flipped through a Stephen King hardcover. “But how’d he know it was the last one?”
Dane laid a book atop a stack. “You believe him about hiding the bracelets in the shed for safe keeping?”
“Maybe.” Alex grabbed another book. “He knew he was being chased. And that way it wouldn’t be on him if he was caught.”
“He wasn’t surprised when I said we tried my bracelet’s portal.”
“And what about the window in the lab?” Alex closed the book and set it down.
“What about it?”
“It was shut.”
“The Modifiers never broke in,” Dane said. “Tommy said it was two faceless guys, whatever that means.”
“No,” Alex said, pulling out a leather-covered book with both hands. “How did Tommy crawl out?”
“Maybe he came back and shut it.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said, her eyes studying him. “Did you see how timid he was entering the house? I mean, he followed you into the lab.”
Dane reached for a book. He wanted to conceal his wide, goofy smile. Alex had noticed his bravery. Was that why she’d joked with him in the lab? To cover up the fact that she was impressed? The Men in Black could turn him into a vampire, he could walk the earth for eternity, and he’d still never understand girls.
The book he’d randomly grabbed was unusually thin, like a school workbook his parents made him complete during summer vacations. The book had a familiar illustration—
“Guys! C-c-come feel th-this—”
Dane dropped the book. “Collin?”
Alex’s worried eyes startled him. She stood and headed for the door. Dane followed.
Outside the library, Alex pointed across the living room.
“You knew he’d be in the kitchen, right?” Dane said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn’t work.
They sprinted for the door by the staircase.
Dane pushed through the door harder than he’d meant to. It smacked the wall, rebounding, almost knocking Alex to the floor.
“Open doors much?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
The kitchen had a table and nook to the right, and a sliding glass door on the far wall. To the left Collin stood behind an island counter top and in front of the fridge.
“You okay?” Dane asked.
“The-the-the j-j-jar.” Collin stared at the incomplete sandwich.
It was nothing but a piece of bread with a slice of ham on it. A knife with a glop of mayonnaise stuck to the slice of meat, as if magically spreading itself.
“What’s wrong, C-man?” Dane frowned. The last time his best friend had stuttered this severely he’d found out Brock and Max had taken Simone’s lunch money. Collin had been so upset he literally couldn’t speak.
Alex shot him a concerned glance.
Dane went to his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know you like your muscles, but you really don’t need five-thousand calories a day.”
“It w-was already out.”
Dane was unnerved by the distance in his friend’s voice.
Collin’s eyes jittered from the sandwich to the jar. “Didn’t w-want t-to w-w-waste—”
“You said something about feeling.” Alex said, coming around the other side of the island.
Collin grabbed Dane’s hand and placed it on the jar.
“Yes,” Dane said, “this mayonnaise jar—”
And then it struck him. “It’s cold.”
Collin nodded. “Someone was j-j-just here.”
“Or still is.” Dane’s eyes darted to the sliding glass door and the ominous night beyond it.
Alex rushed to the back door. “Still locked.”
“Upstairs is done!”
Collin’s shoulder tensed under Dane’s hand.
“It’s Paul upstairs.” Alex led them out of the kitchen.
On the second floor, Paul leaned over the banister, his peace sign swinging. “Only a bathroom and two other rooms up here. Mad Murry’s bedroom, which is a pigsty, and a guestroom at the other end. It doesn’t look like its being used. No journal.”
Alex tried the front door. “Locked.” Her brown eyes said it all: Whatever was in the kitchen was still in the house.
Dane looked up at Paul. “We found a jar of mayonnaise.”
“Huh?” Paul said.
Before Dane could explain, Penny and Simone came out of the lab. Penny carried her satchel and Simone had her backpack.
“Good news,” Penny said, passing Paul, “we’re going back to the library.”
Tommy walked out of the lab, standing firmly in the hallway. “I need help finding the journal.”
Penny jogged down the steps. “We’ll be right back.”
21
The human book depository was lined with tall trees, this pleased Brim. He and Mirk waited in the puny car.
The fledglings’ transport sat dormant further down the street. There were no shops or disgusting mini-malls, nothing
but the backside of a multi-dwelling building. This was agreeable, less chance of modifying pesky witnesses. This would have appeased him, if not for the car, this putrid vehicle.
“This is deliberate,” Brim said through gritted fangs. “A human joke of some kind.” He stared out the passenger window, pulling out his gun.
“You said the same thirteen minutes earlier.” Mirk wiped his shades and put them on. He put the key in the Volkswagen’s ignition.
“It is named after an insect,” Brim said. “And the color. A weak, feminine blue. A prank I tell you!”
Mirk’s red lips curled. “I believe humans call it baby blue.”
“Exactly!” Brim snarled. He pointed the gun’s oval barrel out the window. “It is meant to make us fools.”
“The usual transportation is still inoperative. You drove it through a human-food establishment.” Mirk hovered his hand over the dashboard vase and its dried daisy. “We had to modify many patrons at the Dunkin Donuts.”
Brim studied his assigned partner. Was Mirk also making a joke? And what of this fascination with the plant? Nothing on this tilted orb deserved life.
Mirk’s aurora appeared from his fingertips, reflecting orange light in his sunglasses.
From brittle brown the daisy came to life. Its once dead pedals reached for Mirk’s life-force. The pedals returned to their pink color.
Mirk closed his hand, terminating the rays. He studied the vibrant flower, which turned up to him.
“Nonsense!” Brim slashed his hand over the plant: a black web of anti-light, as dark as Mirk’s shades, shot from his fingertips. It strangled the daisy, wilting it back to death.
“It is beyond me,” Brim said, “why you wish things of this planet’s time to live.” He turned to the night, aiming his gun out the window. “It is the one they call Jeffrey. He gave us this baby car.”
“Baby blue,” Mirk corrected.
“It is a trick,” Brim said, tracking with the gun. “A human will not betray me.”
Mirk smiled yellow fangs. “Krimson’s suspicions were correct. The younglings have help.”
Brim steadied the gun’s oval barrel. A cigarette-stained finger rested on the trigger.
22
Sitting on the curb outside the library, Dane scanned the parking lot. Even though it was well lit, it gave him an uneasy pull on his stomach like finding out his mom made Brussels sprouts for dinner.
Penny thought the parking lot was too conspicuous, so she’d parked on the side street. Across the lot and behind trees, the Blue Beast was hardly visible.
Why hadn’t he stayed in the van? And it wasn’t simply the night unnerving him. Alex, Collin, and Paul were inside the van surely theorizing what special powers they might develop and to what far off galaxies the portal might send them. But, it had felt right to walk Simone and Penny to the door.
Maybe he should’ve let Collin come with him. And leave Alex and Paul alone in the van?
Chin in hands, Dane noticed the plastic bag partially soaked in a puddle from last night’s rain.
He stretched out his bracelet hand, willing the bag to fly away. Nothing happened. He squinted at the gleeful pig graphic. Nothing. Not so much as a rustling crinkle.
“No luck,” Simone said, her glasses edging to the tip of her nose.
“Thought maybe my bracelet worked like Magneto’s from X-Men.”
Simone nudged her glasses up. “That intense emotion would make your power work?”
“No, instead of metal it only worked on plastic.” He stood, brushing his hands on his shorts. “Where’s Penny?”
“Checking out