“I’ll bet,” agreed Sherry and then her memory came back to her. “Isn’t Pound with you?”
“That is another problem. Pound must have been enchanted by the other witch somehow. Before daylight went out yesterday, I saw the witch fly along the street and then straight up the side of the building to the top. She didn’t come back down, and she wasn’t alone. She had Pound in her arms when she flew up the side of the building,” said Seth in a gloomy voice. “If we go up there, it may be our last stand.”
“Good morning to you, too,” said Dr. Tatum sarcastically. “We aren’t giving up just yet. I may have one last trick up my sleeve,” she said as she pulled a crystal ball out of her purse.
“Do you have a sling shot for that?” he asked sarcastically.
**********
Seth, Sherry, and Dr. Tatum climbed the snow covered steps that led upward, and when they finally reached the door at the top floor, they gazed through the window. Outside on the roof there was a scene as from an old movie. The floor of the roof was covered in snow, and amidst the wintry scene, there sat the church building that had chased them all across the city, cozy and almost comforting on the top surface of the skyscraper. There were no people in sight, but a cold chill filled the air.
“Are you ready?” asked Dr. Tatum as she rubbed her hands together for warmth.
“It’s now or never,” said Sherry. “I want my world back.” Seth nodded his head in agreement and opened the door latch. A bitter wind whipped through the doorway as the group took their first steps out into the snow. Seth lifted his finger to his lips in silence, and they followed him to the front porch where the broken stain glass window of the church could be found. The sound of music playing emanated from the inside, and the three adventurers from another era felt beckoned to enter. Seth turned the handle to the double door and pulled outward. Inside, the foyer was a beautiful entry way with a crystal chandelier centered above quarter sawn hardwood flooring. The craftsmanship was so breathtaking that they found themselves caught up in the glory of the moment.
“We should keep moving,” warned Sherry as she came to her senses. She closed the entry doors to keep the heat inside, and when the latch clicked, she heard a gasp of breath come from behind. Turning to look, a young lady stood at the next set of doors leading into the chapel. She was clothed in a black silk dress, and she held a candle in her hand.
“Welcome. We have been expecting you,” said the lady. “Please follow me,” she said as she entered the dimly lit chapel. The music of an organ continued to play hymns from the past as they followed single file down the center aisle to the front row where she seated the guests for the service. The young lady then took a seat on the opposite side of the front row where Phil and Pound were quietly settled in, and they waited for only a few moments before the preacher came forward from out of the darkness behind the pulpit. Sherry immediately recognized him for who he was, Minister Drakthos.
“Good morning,” he said to the congregation of six as he began his pre-planned sermon on hell. He preached for thirty minutes straight and when he concluded the message, Drakthos gave an altar call. Not surprisingly, Phil, Pound, and the young lady went forward to pledge their allegiance to the twisted minister. Wasting no time, Sherry jumped to her feet in anger and rebuked the minister for his actions.
“Are your deeds righteous?! You kidnap people! You twist the truth to your own self-interest!” exclaimed Sherry. Pound turned his head to look at her from the altar, and for a moment she thought she might have reached him. Drakthos threw up his hands in objection.
“You! You are the one who would destroy me!” he shouted before he once again gained his composure. “Never once did I doubt that my heir would come through for me,” he said as he pointed toward Phil.
“Yes, my lord. May you live forever,” Phil said as he bowed his head.
“Traitor,” snapped Seth.
“Ah, he is not a traitor. He has always been my servant,” Drakthos said with a sickly grin. “He is my descendant, you see. And he will help me live forever.”
“No one can live forever, Minister,” Dr. Tatum countered. “We all must face our judgment day.”
“Speak for yourself, Doctor. I have been between death and life for many years now, and the deal that was struck with the Senator and his daughter will bring everlasting life to me here on earth.”
“What deal?” asked Dr. Tatum. “Carol Fromage had a deal with you?”
“Never you mind,” Drakthos grinned. “Bow before me, and all may be forgiven, if it suits me.” At that moment, Dr. Tatum reached into her purse and brandished the crystal ball.
“Pound! Wake up!” she commanded as the orb glowed with power. Pound shook his head as if he had nodded off in the middle of a boring sermon.
“Hey, what kind of nightmare is this?” he asked as he looked around at the strange setting. In rapid response, Drakthos and the witch transformed into their true countenances, and Pound fell backward into the next pew.
“Pity your future, Doctor,” snarled Drakthos as he levitated many feet above the pulpit. Dr. Tatum then used the opportunity to shove the glowing ball into Phil’s face.
“Hand over the Quilt,” she demanded of him. Phil snickered at the request even as the witch backed away from the crystal ball in fright. The witch withdrew her ebony blade and held it defensively as she waited to see whether Dr. Tatum knew how to make use of the ball.
“That ball has no effect on me,” Phil said as he laughed at her demand.
“Really,” Dr. Tatum replied and then whacked him across the head with it in one quick downward stroke. Falling to the church floor, he released the Quilt from his tight grip. Sherry then sprang out across the aisle and snatched Pound by the collar while Dr. Tatum and Seth ran full sprint for the exit.
“Come back, you heathens! You have not repented!” shrieked Drakthos from above the pulpit. At that instant, the flesh of his body burned away, and the demon that was inside vaporized into a transparent fog of ash and soot, for he had no tangible body in this world. Yet.
Never slowing down, the four adventurers ran out into the foyer where the stained glass windows had been located, only to find the windows to the world outside were gone. In place of the windows there stood a solid brick wall which now lined the church.
“This way,” Dr. Tatum motioned as they headed right down the entryway only to find themselves trapped by yet another alleyway and brick wall. The outer walls of the church had become a maze.
“Where to now?” asked Seth while Pound was still recovering from the effects of the witch’s mind control.
“Left,” said Sherry, and they sprinted to another intersection with even more choices.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Seth.
“There’s nothing to do but choose a way,” said Sherry.
“Follow me, then,” advised Dr. Tatum, and she chose to move straight ahead, then left again. “What I wouldn’t give for a block of cheese at the end.”
When Dr. Tatum uttered those words, Sherry knew in her heart that no matter which path they chose, the D.A.M. were pawns of a much larger game. She let the other three pass by her at the next turn, and though it pained her to make the choice, Sherry backtracked alone to the foyer and waited outside the sanctuary. As the seconds ticked by, Sherry remembered the good times she had experienced with the team, the day-to-day camaraderie and sense of belonging that she had shared with them. No matter what challenged her behind those doors, Sherry knew that she had to confront the menace Drakthos one last time. The fate of the D.A.M. rested on her shoulders, and she would do what she could to bring about a better fate for her friends by standing firm against an undefeatable enemy.
Sherry Lance took a deep breath, swallowed her fear, and opened the doors to the sanctuary. That was when all hell broke loose.
Chapter 2
*
Looking Death in the Eye
> *
Crush sat crouched down behind a boulder in the dark dimension with the little imp Possum at his side. The two very different beings had been reluctantly thrown together in this adventure by Bantish and his master Drakthos. As they waited for the changing of the guard at the entrance to the castle prison, Crush wondered how he was going to free his friends and get them all back to earth without Sherry’s special ability to use the Staff of Helios to open portals between worlds. He had had some accidental success with dimensional transfer, but when push came to shove, he could not count on his own rapport with the Staff. And although he now had the Staff in his possession, he could not release it from his grip, making matters even stranger and more challenging. The thoughts of anguish were overwhelming, so Crush opted to engage in conversation with his fated companion.
“Possum. Tell me about your world,” he whispered.
“It is dark, and it is evil,” the imp began.
“No kidding,” Crush replied.
“But it was not always this way. Many years ago, there was light here, and there was happiness. Despite the gloom that hangs above and in the air, the old world I remember is still here.”
“You mean, if the lights were turned on, this world would be like mine?” asked Crush in disbelief.
“No, not exactly. The magic that you hold to be frightening, we hold to be beautiful. It was this way before Drakthos,” said Possum, and he seemed to drift away into memories of his own for a moment.
“Maybe something can be done to bring your world back. Or at least to remove Drakthos from this dimension,” he replied as he placed a reassuring hand on Possum’s shoulder.
“Look!” snapped Possum. “The guards are changing.” As they watched the front doors to the castle, two guards laden with broad swords and shields took the places of the existing guards seamlessly. “Now what, Crush? There was no downtime involved, no real chance to sneak inside.”
“Snap!” Crush exclaimed and slammed his free hand to the ground. “We’ll have to come up with a distraction, or we won’t get in at all without being captured.” Crush felt around on the ground for a stone, and he retrieved two smooth pebbles. He reared back and threw one at the corner of the moat surrounding the castle.
Plop!
The two guards lowered their weapons and turned their heads in the direction of the splash. Crush released the second stone without hesitation, and the two guards made a bee line for the corner of the moat with their swords raised and shields out. While they were investigating, Crush snatched Possum up in his free arm and ran full sprint across the lowered drawbridge.
“Reach out when I throw you,” whispered Crush as he flung the unsuspecting imp onto the battlement of the curtain walls. Holding his tongue for the moment, Possum landed on his feet on the walk of the battlement. When he peered back over the parapet walls, Crush motioned for him to throw a rope over the side, but Possum could not locate anything comparable to lower down to him. To remain undetected, Crush ducked down low along the wall, and as the guards made their way back to the door, he slipped over the edge of the drawbridge and into the murky waters of the moat. Lightly treading water, he held onto the brickwork foundation to maintain his head above water, and he waited for another opportunity to climb the wall.
As time quickly passed, he felt a warm tentacle slither around his thigh, and a strong tug from below pulled him beneath the surface. With his free hand he extended his claws from his fingertips, and he ripped the fibers that squeezed his leg, yet the pull downward continued. Taking one last deep breath, he was pulled beneath the surface, and down, down, down, he travelled. Pressure built as the mass of water above his head grew, and his eardrums popped with the increase. Crush held his breath as he was pulled through a crack in the castle wall, and the tentacle flexed once in to recoil its length. Then a faint red glow pierced through the murk, and Crush could see the outline of the appendage that wound its way downward to a hole surrounded by molten lava. Feeling the sharp increase in heat, Crush sensed a thermal current rising upward from the center to the surface above, and he struggled once again to break free. His tussle was to no avail, and it was clear that he would have to confront the force that had him in its grasp.
Down through the center of the lava, his body was tugged through the portal like a thread passing into the eye of a needle, and just when his lungs were on the verge of bursting, he was yanked through another crack in a cave wall to an open cavity in the sea floor. He felt air hit his face as the tentacle released his leg, and he gasped for air like a new born child. As he lay on his back, an orb that was the diameter of a car wheel floated in the air like a balloon above his face. Crush stared into the eye as it dilated.
“Who are you?” the eye asked though not with words but with thought.
“Shakespeare Crush,” he answered with disinclination. The eye rolled over the black gelatinous shadow that filled the cave, and it came to rest for a moment on the tip of a tentacle.
“I have heard your name spoken in my realm, and I wish to know why it is that you are here,” the eye spoke.
“How have you heard my name? You don’t have ears,” Crush nervously jested as the eye drew back to adjust.
“Do you not know of Captain Noggin?” the eye countered.
“Yes,” Crush answered in surprise. “He is a friend of yours then?”
“I have no friends, but he is an acquaintance,” the eye said with a squint. “This realm is no longer your home. You must leave.”
“Believe me, I would like to,” Crush replied with a wet cough, yet he wondered what the creature was referring to when it said that this was no longer his home. Seeing no need to press the issue, he held the Staff of Helios aloft for the eye to see. “I need to get this back to where it belongs.”
“Ach! Put that away!” the eye grumbled in anger. Crush seized the opportunity and rose to his feet with the Staff outstretched between himself and the eye. Black vapors rose up from the floor and surrounded Crush in a swirling fist as the eye retracted further into the cave. As the vapored fist tightened around his midsection, Crush was forced to lower the Staff in futility.
“Let me out of here! Now!” he demanded, but there was no real power to back up the demand.
“Not before you release that weapon,” said the eye as it squeezed the air from his lungs.
“Fine,” gasped Crush as he lowered the Staff. The eye released him from its grip, and he fell to the floor. “Thanks,” he said when he had regained his composure.
“Do not try that again,” said the eye as it wrapped a tentacle tightly around his leg. Then another tentacle slithered up his back, around his shoulder, and down the length of his arm to his palm. As it covered the Staff, the tentacle gently plucked it from Crush’s grasp where the antiquity had been lodged since he had retrieved it in Durham. The tentacle carried the Staff and slithered through the crack in the cave wall where it disappeared into the darkness of the water.
“What have you done?!” shouted Crush. “I needed that to get out of here!”
“Not likely. Besides, it bothered me,” replied the eye as it lifted him from the ground and examined him once again. After a lengthy inspection, the tentacle placed him back on the cave floor and casually asked, “Why should I let you go?”
Without hesitation, Crush dove through the crack in the cave wall and followed the tentacle and the Staff back through the crevices and into the depths of the moat. Before the eye could snatch him with even more tentacles, he swam upward through the molten rock and into the warm current that rose to the top surface of the water. But as he swam, he glimpsed two surfaces above, one being the moat from which he had travelled downward, and another surface that opened within the castle walls. The Staff was being carried to the latter, so Crush dug his claws into the rising tentacle and rode it upward into the castle.
As he breached the surface, he gasped for air for the first minute until he had gained his
composure. Treading water and studying the length of tentacle, he found that it stretched from the sea cave below, rose through the depths of the moat, penetrated into the castle chamber, and extended out through a set of jail bars.
“Where is the Staff being taken?” he asked himself, alone though he was in the castle pool. He swam to the edge of the round pool, and before he could climb out of the warm steamy water, the tentacle oozed back through the bars and wrapped itself around his midsection.
“Crap!” he blurted out before he plopped beneath the surface and into the murky depths he had just escaped. As he was dragged back down into the cave, Crush desperately kicked and struggled with the tentacle to no avail. His last thought before being pulled feet first through the crack was a simple prayer.
“Lord, though it’s too late for me, please help my friends escape.” Then all went dark as he lost consciousness.
**********
Crush found himself swirling in a whirlpool, being helplessly pulled to the eye in the center of the torrent. He fought and struggled to stay afloat, yet he could not escape the circular demise that he sensed was his destiny. His hands were now paws covered in white fur, and his instincts sensed the inevitability of his first death. When he reached the center, the draw downward sucked his body under and into the pupil of the eye where his body was pushed to the bottom of the sea. Gasping for air, his mouth opened to inhale a half gallon of sea water. All memories of Captain Noggin and their adventures passed through his mind, a life well-lived and a life given for a friend.
There were no regrets . . .
**********
The light broke outward from a point in the distance, and Crush gasped once again, this time for air. He rolled over onto his side and spit out the bitter taste of the stagnant cave water onto the shimmering rocks of the bottom. Coughing his lungs out, he gagged out the moldy residue of death and rolled onto his back once more to face the ever-shining eye.
“Not so fast, young one,” the thought rolled through his head like a freight train. “You are on my list, though your time is not yet upon you. There is another that must go first, and you may not interfere.” It was with these words that recognition clicked in Crush’s mind.