Chapter 14
“Aw’ right, this is what I’ve been waitin’ for all day!” yelled out a little brown‑haired boy. The young man leapt to his feet in the middle of my pack of story listeners with his arms raised over his head. The room stayed quiet after the outburst, with only the roar of the fire to be heard and the yellow and orange light from its energy smacking at his silhouette on the far wall. Unable to bottle his excitement, and with no help from his friends, he bellowed out, “Finally - goin’ to Bruinduer!”
“That’s right,” I answered. “But I hope you know and understand why I had to tell you so much before our three friends made it to the Mahogany Door.”
The children looked around and nodded. They too, it seemed, knew the importance of a good back story. I heard them faintly chirp about some of their favorite parts of my story so far. Some mentioned the dream JT had about his grandfather after he arrived in Warhead Dale on the couch. Others mentioned JT’s dream about Billy. Some liked the poem that Billy made up when calling him, and one little girl even called the creature a stuck-up, mean, old, spoiled brat. One small, strawberry blonde-haired girl felt sorry for the Essence that was bound to Bruinduer. She explained that it would have been just horrible to be taken from your home and made to stay somewhere else doing what someone else told you to do.
One little boy questioned why JT had even left the farm. It seemed to him that JT would have been happier if he had just stayed put in his bedroom and never found himself in trouble. A girl in the back with a bright smile said she liked Kali the most because she threw food at the boys.
Still, most of the crew in front of me questioned Michael. What was he going to do when he got back to Bruinduer? It seemed to them that the skinny, little boy with the black, slicked back hair, pointed nose, and thick, horn-rimmed glasses was all over the place when it came to his emotions. They wanted to know whether he was just going to lose his mind. The children were also interested in knowing if he even had enough strength to continue; would his will let him fulfill his destiny, or would he just be up to no good like JT thought. (I had to agree with this insightful premise; Michael was just up to no good and whatever the outcome, I’m sure it would be unfavorable.)
All of the children established and agreed, however, that they were completely in love with the big old house, Warhead Dale. I had absolutely nothing sour or negative to say about that because I too loved the big old mansion on the shore of Athens Eden.
“JT was as nervous as any child on their first day of school after he told the great Essence, Billy, that he was ready to go back through the Mahogany Door and return to Bruinduer. This was it. This was the moment that would define him, Kali, and especially Michael, whose look became both serious and staunch.
‘Place the cane into the lock,’ said Billy with his ever present groaning voice. ‘Turn it to the left. And be careful.’ Billy’s voice was almost consoling. ‘I think you might be right when you thought if you locked the door it would be quite catastrophic.’ The Essence displayed a crooked grin. Kali was right; he could really get into their heads regardless of any attempt to keep him out.
JT gingerly stepped back to the Mahogany Door and, like he had done before, slid the ivory handle into the lock with the bright ruby eyes going dim as they disappeared. A quarter of the way through, the cane stopped. JT wiggled the shaft a tad until the groove on the back of the skull caught the brass tumble with a slight ‘click.’ He then inserted the handle all the way into the lock. He couldn’t explain the feeling that rushed through his body as he started to twist the cane to the left. It could only be described as a mixture of joy, excitement and, above all, fear. As the shaft of the handle turned, it felt as though something on the other side of the door resisted JT’s advance.
He gripped the shaft of his cane with both hands, gritted his teeth, and turned with all of his might. This time, unlike when trying to unlock the iron gate at the entrance, he was not concerned about breaking the cane. Nothing was going to stop him from thrusting the cane in place and settling the door. Electricity poured over him. His muscles ached. His knuckles turned white as the cane’s stubbornness broke and gave way. The shaft began to move. After three quarters of a turn, JT’s legs cramped. Then with the final quarter, the cane moved quickly and halted with a loud, ‘CLANK!’ The resistance in the cane stopped, its shaft slid down into a slot in the door, and the skull and crossbones handle faced the inner room. The eyes exploded a bright red. The lock was fully engaged to the unlocked position. Hushed silence remained.
‘WOOHOO!’ screamed Billy shattering the void.
The outer wall of the room the three had entered suddenly shut with a powerful and intense jolt. JT, Kali, and Michael stood dumbfounded in the middle of the glowing red room facing the Mahogany Door. Without any warning, Billy began a strange dance around them. He bobbed his gruesome head up and down and chanted in a strange, incoherent language that only he could have possibly understood. He gyrated and skipped around them flaying and flapping his arms. The faded toga he wore flopped and swayed, kicking up dust that filled the room with a misty cloud. JT’s eyes began to burn. Kali coughed. Michael remained still. After a few more insane moments of the dance had passed, Billy stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his head, his matted dread locks thick with dust, to the three travelers and put his face right to theirs. In a small, uncharacteristic simple voice said, ‘boo.’
Suddenly, the inner room went black. A split second later, the cane’s eyes cut through the dusty room creating thick beams of light that danced and twinkled about the walls in strobe. Kali grabbed JT’s hand.
In the center of the ceiling, a small, blue and yellow spark flickered right above JT, Kali, and Michael. A brisk wind blew slightly and then began to pick up momentum. As the wind became faster and stronger, it circled around the room engulfing the dust from Billy’s dance and creating a vortex that surrounded them and imprisoned the now terrified trio. Like the ripples in a lake spreading as a rock breaks its surface, the blue and yellow spark began to expand across the ceiling down the four walls and then ran over the floor.
JT stared with concentrated amazement but his mind and thoughts wavered. He tried to eye Kali, but found it difficult. She swayed back and forth as though she might fall, but she wrenched his hand even tighter to steady her gait. Her free hand covered her eyes trying to keep her flailing hair out of them. Michael’s mood immediately turned from solemn and reflective to excited and energized. He jumped up and down and raised his arms as though he had scored the winning point in the big game. He was screaming with all of his might overcome by the spectacle, but no sound could be heard due to the cyclonic honing wind around them. The moment he had been waiting for since Billy came back to his dreams and he found JT had come. His fear of Billy’s endless taunting, nagging, ragging, condescending, and bullying turned into pure joy and release. The Essence could not hurt him anymore; on the contrary, it now led him, perhaps not by chance, straight to his destiny.
JT started to feel nauseated as the cracking, dancing light from the blue and yellow spark slithered its way across the floor toward him, Kali, and Michael. In the heat of this excitement, he somehow locked onto a memory of Gregory telling him once that if you felt some sort of motion sickness, closing your eyes was a good remedy. JT gripped Kali’s hand tightly and clamped his eyes shut.
The rippling blue and yellow light, which stopped right at the trio’s feet, pierced the air like a spike growing from the floor. It swayed back and forth very briefly like a charmed snake and then began to circle counterclockwise to the dust tornado that was still churning. The light swirled round and round, faster and faster until it overtook the dust cylinder. The light tornado expanded and compressed like it was breathing. Huge heaves of light crunched in on the trio and then dispersed, and in an instant the light collapsed into them with great intensity. The cyclone of light died instantly and the dust vanished.
JT stood nailed to the floor, his eyes still shut. His stomach felt as though it had
turned upside down, and he tried to keep his balance. ‘This feels strange,’ he thought as he ran his free hand through his hair.
‘This is so wicked!’ a strange, high-pitched, lisping voice pierced the air.
JT was scared to open his eyes. He didn’t recognize the voice he had just heard. Had someone come through the Mahogany Door from the other side?
‘NO!’ another higher more penetrating voice screamed out. Kali’s hand jerked from JT’s hand.
‘What’s going on?’ yelled JT in a shrieking, tumultuous tone. The curiosity of what might be happening in front of his closed eyes seemed to get the best of him. He then realized that he did not recognize the more elevated voice that came from his own mouth.
‘You have got to see this, JT! Look at this!’ the first of the three high voices barked out with its pronounced lisp. A giggle then rang the air.
JT cracked his eyes and then slowly and reluctantly opened them completely. The inner room had totally changed. Instead of every object seeming out of place, everything miraculously looked as though it belonged. The numerous books and papers that had been strewn haphazardly about the floor when JT entered the room were stacked neatly on bookshelves that lined the outer walls, and the ornaments dangling from the smooth ceiling took the shapes of planets in every color of the spectrum and yellow dazzling stars. The cracked paintings dressing the walls lined up neatly, displaying maps of small villages and dense jungles that JT recognized from his grandfather’s faded journal. A phrase emerged and danced across the top of the Mahogany Door in faded, twelve-inch, burned-out letters. At first, JT had only seen them as indecipherable symbols. It read plainly ‘The universe is but a step away.’
‘Howdy!’ an annoying little voice cracked the serene silence.
‘I know that voice,’ JT said. Then, the dirty little blonde-haired boy he remembered back at the Shorts’ farm slid into his sight. ‘I apologize for the little mess, but you know by now that my power is weak and Bruinduer is collapsing. What you have witnessed is about all of the strength I have left. I too have been waiting a long time for this moment to return to Bruinduer. I hope my effort in getting you three back here was enough and there is still time to save Bruinduer.’
Willy (who was now the transformed Billy) stood with his head buried in his chest. He no longer had the dirty overalls and bare feet that he had during his first visit to JT, but donned a tattered, dusty blue suit, complete with leather shoes, a tie, and a small brown derby hat. His eyes were huge, puffy, and surrounded with black rings. It was obvious he was exhausted, struggling to keep his wits. He appeared as though he were going to keel over at any second.
‘I know you remember me,’ said the little boy out loud with a weakening crumbling voice as he gazed straight ahead. He then grabbed JT’s arm and deliberately led him over to the large mirror with the golden frame that hung on the wall. The mirror had not changed much since JT had walked into the inner room or during the cyclone. It hung ever so gently and peacefully on the wall and its surface was covered with scattered black splotches. From the top right corner to the bottom left corner, it displayed a long, crusty crack. As JT angled his head up toward the mirror, he had a hard time making out the reflection he saw, but as he strained to focus his eyes upon the person staring back at him through the long cavernous fracture, he could do nothing more but open his mouth in dazed astonishment. He didn’t know whether to jump with glee or scream with fright. His face went flush. He stood paralyzed, his eyes bulging as though he had seen a ghost.
Willy placed his arm around JT, who was now practically eye level with him. He then said in a very soft, soothing voice, ‘But do you remember him?’”
“I really guess I need to say something here,” I said as I lifted myself from my comfortable leather chair and went to stoke the fire in the big hall. The rain still howled outside. “I know you remember that I told you that there are moments in our lives that can change everything.” The children all responded positively. “Well, there is no more important moment in life than when we find out that magic exists.” I paused, waiting for any questions, but I assumed the children knew all about magic with all of the books out about the subject. “But this was not your ordinary magic, no.” I thought about the subject for a moment. “This magic came from necessity - a necessity to survive.”
The children looked at me with young, puzzled faces. I had no idea what to tell them. I knew that if I tried to explain my premise in depth that the subject matter would probably take a turn that could lead to disaster. So I thought that I should quickly continue with the story in hopes that they would understand later, much like I hoped they now understood Billy since first hearing about him.
“Let’s just say that what happened next is a little hard to accept, but I want you to know that this tale really happened. I just want to prepare you for something that you might find unbelievable - well, hard to believe anyway. I think there is a difference.”
I took a deep, relaxing breath. “Sometimes though, yes sometimes, the most unbelievable things can happen to us, and one of those unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime events just happened to JT and his friends.” I lumbered back over to my leather chair and continued with the story.
“‘You have got to be kidding me,’ JT said, now realizing why he had not totally recognized the voice that had come from his mouth. He turned around quickly and stared at Kali and Michael, flabbergasted. Kali stood gazing at her shaking hands in horror. Michael, on the contrary was running, bouncing, and screaming around the room maniacally.
‘How in the world did this happen? This is impossible. What did you do?’ JT turned back toward Willy.
‘I told you. Bruinduer was created so the renegade tribe known as the Vryheid could control their destiny. They just went about it a little differently, unlike this world.’ Willy sat in the big, orange chair.
JT looked back up at the mirror, studying it curiously. He wanted to make sure what he saw wasn’t some trick. Kali glided to JT’s side and peered into the mirror without saying a word. A few moments later, the bouncing, rambunctious Michael calmed down as well as he could and stood beside Kali with a huge electric smile, trying to catch his breath.
The three stared into the old, dusty mirror and could not believe that reflecting back at them were three younger, smaller people, no more than fourteen years old.
The three pondered, searching their new young brains in an effort to comprehend what had just happened. The same clothes they wore before dressed their bodies, but now fit them in their smaller versions. JT wore his favorite gray T-shirt and jeans. Kali still donned her white shirt, green sweater, and tight jeans, and Michael had his red shirt, baggy pants, and thick rimmed glasses. The trio prodded their faces and poked at each other’s arms. Kali also repeatedly pinched herself for assurance that she was not dreaming.
JT bounced up and down and was taken aback. He then lifted and stretched his left knee a few times. His knee was completely healed. There was no soft, dulling, throbbing pain that had been present as long as he could remember. He hopped around in a little circle. No matter what direction he pivoted his knee, it did not hurt. He was ecstatic. Like Michael, he lost his calm, raised his arms, and bounded about the room screaming and thrashing about. Kali gazed upon him and only shook her head. She couldn’t believe he was happy about being young. She certainly was not.
Michael’s wits were lost as well and he followed JT, imitating his same wild moves and repeating every incoherent yell. Suddenly, halfway around their second lap of the room, JT felt a jolting slash through his head. He tumbled to his knees. The amber, yellowish mist appeared again and cloaked his surroundings; he was suddenly consumed by another memory.
The inner room looked different in this aura. The objects that were placed around the room and hanging from the ceiling were all brand new but somehow older - more like new antiques. Michael and Kali, still in their childhood forms, watched on without saying a word. A rough, strong hand grabbed JT on his shoulder
from behind. He turned, and standing face to face with him, was his grandfather. He was very regal, commanding, and confident in his decorated uniform on the deck of the Mary Maid when they had first met, but now he appeared very weak, sickly, and scared. The old sailor reached out and pointed to the Mahogany Door and to the cane, its eyes still burning bright red in the amber mist.
His grandfather coughed and wheezed. ‘You are the steward of the key, go.’
JT jerked awake. He straightened on his knees in the middle of the inner room. The amber aura disappeared, returning the view as it was before.
‘Are you OK?’ Michael and Kali asked in unison.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ JT labored to his feet, but was energized nonetheless; the trio was still in their fourteen-year-old bodies. JT turned toward Michael. ‘Looks like you’re gonna get that chance to fulfill that destiny of yours.’ JT glanced over to Kali whose expression had turned to shock. She wasn’t equipped to return to Bruinduer. She was overwhelmed. ‘Let’s go.’
Though obviously tired and worn-out from losing his power, Willy jumped up on top of the orange chair and laughed with a second wind. It was a joyous laugh, quite unlike the deep, degrading, droning of Billy’s laugh. It was more reassuring. But just as fast as the approving chuckle began, it stopped and Willy yelled out, ‘Rule number one: The first into Bruinduer chooses Bruinduer!’ The trio was taken by surprise, but JT and Michael prepared themselves and paid attention to the little boy.
‘I’m not sure I want to do this,’ Kali explained to JT with baited breath. ‘I wasn’t counting on being a kid again.’ She frantically tried to gather her wits, but the action was too fast. ‘I didn’t like it the first time.’ Her heart pounded in her chest. She thought that she was strong enough to face her fear of Bruinduer and Billy, but just like any fear, it is not until we are nose to nose with it that those feelings of helpless terror come to the surface.
‘Too late. We have to go back - as kids or as no kids,’ JT commanded. ‘My granddad depends on it,’ JT answered back. He thought that his own survival depended on it as well. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be right with you.’
‘Rule number two: Time has no meaning in Bruinduer.’ Willy’s voice became playful.
‘What?’ pondered JT. A weird thought entered his brain that he was unable to control. It was in his own voice, ‘You have to keep time while you’re in Bruinduer, otherwise you will be lost....’
JT thought heavily. He paid close attention to the rules being announced because according to Billy, during their previous adventuring they never did. Once he, Kali, and Michael passed through the Mahogany Door, there was no turning back. He then had a flashback to everything he was told or saw about time in relation to Bruinduer during the last two days. He remembered the hourglasses that were faintly scribbled on the back of the journal page where Kali had written Billy’s poem, and then the image of a gold, rusty, bloodstained watch burned into his brain. He then glanced over at Michael, his eyebrows raised, and mouthed, ‘Do you still have that old watch of Charlie’s?’
Michael smirked. He then opened his clutched fist. In his palm was Charlie’s watch as though he knew what JT was thinking. The hands on the face were still frozen in time.
JT shook his head and mouthed back to Michael, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to.’ JT knew Kali had told him the truth. When they were younger, it was Michael that the children at school had teased.
JT couldn’t figure out what importance the watch would play in returning to Bruinduer. He tried to piece something together in his head, but nothing logical followed. He had to trust that he would find out as events unfolded. He quickly lost his train of thought as Willy spoke up in a louder, more animated voice.
‘Rule number three: The people of Bruinduer are people!’
‘Whatever that means,’ thought JT.
‘Even if you conjure up an entire village in Bruinduer, the people are real and have their own free will,’ Kali explained to JT, as she prepared halfheartedly to enter through the Mahogany Door. ‘You can’t control them.’ The memories she had tried to forget were coming back. Thoughts streamed into her brain; her face was none too happy. Willy jumped up and down on the big, orange chair. His arms flailed about and his mop of blonde hair bounced along with every syllable he bellowed out.
‘Rule number four: Your destiny in Bruinduer must be finished!’
‘This time it will be!’ screamed Michael with a convincing, confident tone despite his lisp. He stepped closer to the large intimidating door. As he nudged ever closer to the wooden structure, a cyclone of wind began to gust like before. Kali and JT looked as though they were about to start a marathon and took a runner’s stance, their knees recoiling beneath them.
Willy delighted in his role of calling out the rules and he became more and more excited as each one rolled off his tongue. ‘Rule number five: If you bleed in Bruinduer, you bleed!’
Kali reached down and grabbed her calf. Time moved in slow motion. She rubbed the scar and peered over at Michael who was shuffling his feet and edging closer and closer to the door. She felt a slight sharp pain bolt up her leg as she pulled her hand away from the groove in her skin. Her fears and worries intensified as she thought about the pain Charlie must have felt as he lay on the sand.
The sixth and final rule was about to come from Willy’s mouth, and after that, they would step through the Mahogany Door for the first time in nine years. Everything felt as though those years had never passed; the years JT had on the Shorts’ farm; the years Michael spent failing at life; and the years Kali tried to forget, all vanished. The anticipation was tangible and hung in the air for the taking.
‘Rule number six:…,’ Willy started, but this time it was in the more recognizable, deep, hollow groan of Billy. The little boy stopped his bouncing, calmly stepped off of the big, orange chair and walked toward Michael who was now reaching out with a quaking hand ready to push open the Mahogany Door. The little boy stopped and then, in a violent instantaneous whirlwind, changed into the menacing Essence once again, his red, greasy, grimy dreadlocks flowing in the increased turbulent wind that now threw papers about the room. He lumbered over to Michael and clutched his shoulder - his yellow smile cracking.
‘Do it,’ Billy said. Icy, sharp chills rattled up JT’s back. He remembered the command from his dream on the barn floor.
Michael stretched farther and stepped just a few feet from the massive brown door. As he took another step, strong stunning electricity flooded the air. The hair on JT’s arm and neck spiked. Blue streaks of light began to flicker, and small lightning bolts burst across the room. With every inch that Michael’s hand progressed toward the door, the bolts became brighter and more powerful. Michael’s palm gently rested on the wooden slab. The door felt warm.
He closed his eyes and thought about the form Bruinduer would take. He knew it probably didn’t matter since Charlie was still there, but he remembered just the same. During all of the times that he had entered Bruinduer first, he wanted it to be a mysterious, distant, forgotten desert that he loved to explore. He loved to live stories of finding lost treasures in grand adventures. He would conjure up monuments, pyramids, temples, and kingdoms in hopes of discovering ancient cities just like ‘Ol Captain Luke had done. Best of all, he would be in control. He could do whatever he wanted – and he especially wanted to fulfill a destiny he knew he could not obtain in the earthly world.
The blue streaking lightning bounced around the room and the wind became as strong as a hurricane. The bolts of lightning encircled Michael’s hand. He did not move as the strikes pricked his skin and the smell of his singed hair penetrated his nostrils. The strange flittering electric light began to carve into the door. The faded outline that was on the solid panel in the face of the door took its original form. The lightning etched the dark outline of the faded pyramid and then carved out a sun that shone above it, the rays reaching to each corner of the panel. The lightning then carved objects that were not there befor
e. The bolts ground in the outline of a flag sprouting from one side of the pyramid and then scratched another outline of a flag on the other side of the pyramid, shading it black.
Michael’s eyes perked up, his senses heightened. He did not remember the new additions from the last time he stood in front of the Mahogany Door. It then dawned on him that this time his adventure would be very different.
The wind blasted and honed, causing the three to squint their eyes. The blue lightning danced and bounced around the room slicing into the door, its beams amplified by the dust storm. Billy laughed with delight. Suddenly, the wind and lightning halted and the dust and wood chips vanished. The light from the cane’s ruby eyes burst, turning everything in the inner room red. On the door remained a perfect sculpture of a pyramid, flags, and a sun. Michael pushed on the door. Nothing happened. His emotions erupted. He gritted his teeth and summoned what strength he had, then pushed the massive slab with all of his might. The door released with a deafening ‘BANG!’
Pure bright white light immersed the room. JT and Kali shielded their eyes. Michael leapt forward through the opening with a large pleased grin on his elated face. Delayed by the onslaught of the blinding light, a few moments later, Kali grabbed JT’s hand. JT then pulled her through the Mahogany Door with him. Through the intense light, JT heard the groaning dark voice of Billy echo out the final rule, and then his haunting laugh covered them like a blanket as the Essence entered through the Mahogany Door with them, ‘Everybody who enters Bruinduer, leaves Bruinduer!’”