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a new classic by Edward Summer |
he
driver parked the loading stairs between two large maintenance hangers
at the far end of the runway. He turned off the engine, dropped the key
into his pocket and walked away.
It was only when the man was halfway across the runway that Sniffler dared to move. Quiet now. Safe, thought Sniffler as he cowered against the metal side of the stairs. His lungs were no longer heaving with fear. He finally dared to release his claws from the stair. They had been dug into the metal since the instant the other demons were sucked into the plane's engine.
Failure. Must not go back. Master angry. His vision of tearing Teddy and Dunkey into scraps of cloth faded from his mind. It was replaced with an image of Reon's anger. Looking around carefully, he crept into the dark shadows between the two hangers. There was a long alley about twenty-five feet wide that led past the buildings and opened into an alternate runway that was normally used for small planes. Sniffler crept part way down the alley, then stopped.
Pterademon, Sniffler thought. Get pterademon. A twisted grin appeared on his lips. He sat back on his haunches, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth. Sniffler let out an eerie banshee wail that floated up into the wind. The wail shrieked higher and higher, beyond the range of human hearing. Then Sniffler stopped. He dropped down onto his stomach, panting, to wait.
At first, all he could hear was the wind rattling the sheet metal hangers. After a while, the rattling got louder. A deeper, echoing vibration began in the ground itself. The asphalt began to shake and ripple until all at once a crack began to open in the ground almost at Sniffler's feet. With a huge rumbling sound, the crack spread away from him. In seconds, a long crevice a dozen yards long and several yards wide had opened in the pavement.
A smile crept across Sniffler's face. His sharp tongue darted in and out expectantly. He tasted the air and the whiffs of sulfur smoke that trickled from the crack only to be blown away instantly by the wind.
The rumbling stopped. The wind whistled into the silence. The quiet was broken by a sound like the clicking of a hundred cicadas mixed with a symphony of rattlesnake tails. A waving colony of pink, fleshy tentacles thrust up out of the crack. The tentacles stirred in the breeze like sea anemones wobbling in an underwater current.
A long, snakelike snout followed the tentacles out of the crack. The tentacles ranged like a horse's mane down the center of the snout between two nearly straight stiletto-pointed horns. Gazing out from under the tentacles were large oval eyes that burned with a greenish-yellow fire. Beneath the eyes was a slit-like mouth that hinted of rows of teeth concealed behind gray-green lips. Poised upon a graceful neck, the head waved back and forth like a cobra dancing to a snake charmer's flute. It rose until it stood over six feet above the ground.
Slowly the neck lowered and crept along the asphalt until nearly thirty feet of serpent body lay upon the ground with more still hidden down in the crevice. The creature was covered with fish-like scales. They were green-black in color and dripped with a slime that rubbed off and lubricated the ground as the thing crawled along.
The head came to rest at the Sniffler's feet. Sniffler made puffing and snorting sounds, whining and spitting, working his mouth feverishly. As Sniffler spoke, the creature listened, its snake head motionless. At last, Sniffler stopped. The creature raised its neck slightly. Something like a smile split open its face revealing teeth like railroad spikes, green-black and slimy like the rest of its body.
Sniffler trotted over to the pterademon's neck, crawled up onto its head, and grasped the horns tightly with his front paws. The pterademon swung its body around and slithered out from between the hangers toward the small runway. Now its entire body was out of the crack. It was nearly forty feet long. As it crawled, the clicking sound began again as a row of spines running down the center of its back began to stir and shake. Their sharp edges popped up in a row, and two long, pole-like spines opened on either side of the body.
The pterademon spread its wings. Though the wings were huge, wider than the body was long, they were oddly transparent, diaphanous. In a perverse way, they resembled the wings of a butterfly, but instead of happy, sunny colors, the wings ran with clashing greens and the red-browns of clotted blood. With a concert of rattling clicks, the pterademon's wings began to flap, catching the stiff, wet wind.
Sniffler clutched tightly to the thing's head. The creature gave a push
of powerful wings, and they began to rise. Soon they were soaring up, higher
and higher into the storm-blackened sky.
"Take-offs make me nervous," Fred said, clutching the arms of his seat.
"I think they're neat!" Tony zoomed his hand back and forth in large swoops. "Just like spaceships!"
The plane began to accelerate, and the three children fell back against their seats.
"Feels weird." Fred made a funny face.
"G-force! Astronauts have it worse." Tony leaned back and imagined himself lifting off into space.
Like a giant silver leaf, the plane lifted off the runway and floated into the dark sky. The storm winds tossed it up and down, so the take off was not smooth. Teddy and Dunkey rolled against a bulkhead, out of sight of the flight attendants.
Slowly the plane leveled off. As the attendants began to move around the cabin checking on the comfort of the passengers, Teddy sat up and glanced about. The animals were in a safe place where no one could see them.
"We've got to find the kids," Teddy whispered.
"Okay," Dunkey whispered back.
"C'mon." Teddy stood up and glanced around the bulkhead. Most of the passengers were looking out of the windows, reading or sleeping.
"Hey!" Dunkey nudged Teddy's back. "You're not going to go down the aisle, are you?"
"Course not, dummy." Teddy waddled between the legs of a man in a gray suit who was sitting in the first row. The man was completely absorbed in his newspaper and didn't even notice. Safe underneath the seat, Teddy turned and gestured to Dunkey to follow him. Dunkey trotted quickly around the bulkhead, squeezed between the man's legs and ran up to Teddy. "Now stay right behind me," Teddy instructed.
"But where are they?" Dunkey glanced from side to side.
"Good question." Teddy lay down on his tummy and peered beneath the seats. All he saw was a forest of legs. All kinds of legs: legs in jeans, legs in leg warmers, stocking feet, crossed feet, uncrossed feet, feet in sneakers, feet in heels, even bare feet. Teddy said nothing for a long moment.
"Well?" Dunkey collapsed his front legs to look, too. After staring for a long moment more, Dunkey dropped his ears in dismay. "We'll never find them," he said sullenly.
Teddy straightened up and bumped his head against the back edge of the seat. He rubbed the stuffing back into place and thought about the situation. Finally he spoke. "All we can do is go out there and look!"
Abruptly, Teddy ran across the space under the next row of seats. Dunkey peeked up to see if the passengers had been watching, but they were so busy talking, they hadn't seen a thing. So Dunkey trotted across and joined Teddy.
In this manner, the animals proceeded through half of the cabin. Teddy was not sure just what he was looking for, but was certain he would know when he found it.
Teddy got down on his tummy again to scout around. He looked left. He looked right. He crawled over to the wall of the cabin, dodging a handbag and a briefcase. Teddy leaned against the wall peering past the carry-on luggage.
Then the bear's eyes popped wide open. His heart skipped a beat.
"There!" Teddy almost shouted. "Look!"
Dunkey made his way over, turned his head and looked where Teddy pointed.
Two rows ahead of them, Fred's shoelaces hung down below the edge of the seat.
"I'd know those shoelaces anywhere!" Teddy was jubilant. "Let's go!" Teddy raced off toward the next seat, just missing the legs of a woman dozing in the window seat.
Dunkey started after him, but, being a little wider than Teddy, he bumped the woman's legs. This hind quarter, then his fuzzy tail grazed her stockings. Jolted out of a doze, the woman glanced down to see Dunkey's rear legs and long gray tail disappearing under the seat.
"Eeeeeeeek!" the woman screamed. "A mouse!"
Startled, a flight attendant dropped her tray right in the middle of the aisle. Everyone in the cabin began to chatter at once. Some passengers crawled up onto their seats.
"Oh, no!" Teddy groaned. "What happened?!"
"Accident." Dunkey was embarrassed.
"Hurry up and be careful!" Teddy looked up quickly. The people in the row ahead of them were staring around the plane and watching the flight attendant consoling the frightened woman.
"It was huge!" the woman wailed hysterically as Teddy and Dunkey raced under the next row of seats. "HUGE! A GIGANTIC GRAY RAT!"
"I'm sure it was just a loose bag that rolled against your leg, madam." The flight attendant took the woman's hand and offered her some water and an aspirin.
Teddy walked over to Fred's shoelace, took a good hold of it with both paws and pulled.
Fred nearly jumped out of his sneakers. "It's here!" he tried to shout, but was so startled that only a dry whisper came out. "It's here!" he tried again, looking down in terror. "It's…." He gasped in disbelief. "It's…Teddy!" Fred was overjoyed. He bent over and picked Teddy up as Dunkey toddled shamefacedly out from under the seat.
Hugging Teddy with all his might, Fred turned to Ginger and Tony, who were staring at him incredulously. Despite herself, Ginger was ecstatic as she leaned down and lifted Dunkey up into her lap.
"How did you get here?," she asked Teddy, suddenly realizing that Dunkey was standing and walking as well.
"First they chased us up the coal chute and along the driveway…," Dunkey started to say.
"Shhhhhh!" Tony cautioned. "They're coming!"
A full contingent of flight attendants and co-pilot were combing the aisles, crawling along the floor, trying to find the rat.
"Just HUGE! A rat of GREAT PROPORTIONS!" the woman was still saying.
Judy walked by the three children, then stopped. "Are you kids okay?"
"We're just fine," Ginger said with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth smile. Judy smiled back and walked on.
"Oh, Teddy! I thought I would never see you again!" Fred hugged the bear again. Then he noticed the torn fur on Teddy's arm. "You got hurt!"
"It's nothing," Teddy said modestly. Fred poked the stuffing back into the hole. Teddy smiled with pride and embarrassment. "They almost caught us, but Dunkey saved me, and…. Wait a minute, we didn't run all this way to talk about that! They're coming! A whole army of them!"
"Who's coming?" Tony asked.
"Demons! Reon! Out of that crack in the basement! And that weird black sniffy thing that chased us all the way here! They were crawling all over the basement as soon as you guys left. Teefr distracted them so Dunkey and I could escape. He says that you've all got to get back with the amulet to help him!"
Tony stared at Teddy then turned to look out the window. He gazed along the wing into the thick dark clouds that surrounded and enveloped the plane. "Without a parachute," Tony said with a sigh, "that's gonna be tough."
Teddy, Dunkey, Ginger, and Fred all turned and looked out the window. They nodded. No one said a word.
Sniffler clung tightly to the pterademon's neck as the powerful wings carried them higher and higher inside the storm clouds. They were following the sound of the plane, which was getting ever louder.
The airplane was banking slowly toward a final cruising altitude when it glided out through a rift in the clouds.
Sniffler's eyes blazed with surprise and delight as the plane came into view below them. The chase would be easier than he had thought. Battered by the wind, Sniffler tightened his claws into the pterademon's neck, growling fiercely. The pterademon turned slightly to the left, adjusting its course to that of the plane.
With a click of spines, the pterademon folded its wings and streamlined its body like a spear. It gave a brief, harsh cry, then clamped its sharp teeth together with a clacking sound.
Like a vengeful bird of prey, the pterademon slid swiftly down through
the icy stillness of the sky directly toward the airplane.
