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a new classic by Edward Summer |
nch
by inch, Tony and Ginger carefully let out the rope of bedsheets.
It stretched tightly over the window ledge, straining against Fred's weight.
As he hung supported by the sheet, the wind spun Fred fist clockwise, then counter clockwise and back again. Teddy and Dunkey clung tightly to him as the salt spray blew in their eyes.
"It sure is a long way down," Dunkey said as they twisted in the wind.
"I don't want to know," said Fred. "Just tell me when we get there." He kept his eyes shut with fierce determination.
Gradually, they dropped lower and lower. After what seemed like an hour of twisting and swinging, Teddy announced, "We're there!"
"Stop!" Fred called up toward the bedroom. And they stopped with a jerk.
Fred swung from side to side like the pendulum of a clock. His face was about even with the top window. His feet were just below the door handle. The windows were actually a double door that bulged out slightly from the side of the house. The windows opened outward above a narrow ledge with a low railing. Fred placed his foot carefully onto the door handle and pushed down. The handle wouldn't move. The door was locked.
"What are we going to do?" Fred moaned. He peered into the dark library. Lights were still on in the living room.
"Break the glass," Teddy shouted against the wind.
"But they'll hear!"
"Gotta risk it." Teddy turned uneasily toward the living room trying to spot demons.
"Guess you're right." Fred hesitated, then slammed the toe of his sneaker into the pane of glass just above the handle. The glass broke with a sharp sound, then fell quietly onto the cushions of the window seat.
Fred sighed with relief. He kicked away the jagged glass remaining in the frame. But kicking made him spin. On the way back around, Fred stuck his foot through the hole and steadied himself.
Slowly he lowered his sneaker, shoelaces dangling, onto the inside door handle. Fred pushed down. With a dim creak, the handle moved, and the door clicked open. Fred withdrew his foot. He caught the edge of the door with his ankle and pulled the door open. The space was just wide enough to squeeze through.
But his toes were still nearly three feet above the level of the window seat. Looking down past his shoelaces, Fred could see foamy waves as they slid back off the rocks into the sea below.
"Would you let me down, please?" Dunkey requested, breaking Fred's concentration. He was thinking about how high up they were.
"Oh… ah… sure." Fred swung his body around and dropped Dunkey onto the window seat. Dunkey landed not quite on his feet and bent his tail back out of line again.
"Thanks. I was getting seasick." Dunkey stretched and tried to get his tail to stand up properly.
"Me, too," Teddy said.
Fred dropped his bear down next to Dunkey.
"Hey!" Fred gestured up to Ginger and Tony. "Down more!"
They obliged, letting the sheet out with a sudden jerk. As they did, Fred realized that he wasn't above the window seat, but still swaying in thin air above the rocks.
His body dropped like a stone, then stopped with a snap. His teeth clacked together. He grabbed the sheet. This is it, he thought, I'm gonna break into little pieces and drown in the surf. His eyes were closed so tightly that they might have been sewn together. His belly button was about level with the bottom of the window.
Fred opened his eyes, let go of the sheet with one hand and pulled himself onto the window seat. For a long moment, he lay on his tummy, thankful to be on something solid.
Meanwhile, Teddy and Dunkey were tiptoeing soundlessly across the floor of the library toward the door.
Fred watched them for a few seconds while he caught his breath, then swung around and sat up. He untied the sheet from his waist. The wind caught the light sheet and drew it, flapping madly, out the window.
Dunkey crept behind the half-open door, butted up against it and began to push with his head. The wooden door was immensely heavy, but with Teddy's help it moved about a quarter of an inch, creaked, and stopped.
Dunkey, Teddy and Fred froze with terror.
But nothing happened. Apparently the demons were so involved with smashing light bulbs that none had heard the sound.
Fred eased his body around and slid onto the floor. He tiptoed slowly across the room and over next to Teddy. All three leaned their shoulders against the heavy door and began to push.
This time the door moved faster, but it creaked even louder. And this time, Snick, a demon with keen ears, heard the sound. The twisted black creature stopped in the shadows beneath the sofa and searched the room for the source of the sound.
It took a great effort to move the door, and when Fred stopped to take a breath, the creak stopped. Frustrated, Snick called to his companions and they began to gather under the sofa.
Fred and the animals pushed again. The door creaked.
"There!" Snick called out. He pointed toward the library. But light from the living room and several table lamps made a huge pool of brightness that separated the demons from the door. Snick found a path through the patches of darkness that twisted along the walls and beneath the furniture. A string of demons crept and crawled cautiously and relentlessly toward the library.
The door was more than halfway closed. Dunkey peeked around the edge to see what was happening in the living room. It seemed too quiet.
"Um, excuse me," Dunkey said softly, "But I think they're coming."
"Oh!" Fred exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. "Push! Push fast!" He and Teddy and Dunkey shoved with all their might, and with another loud creak the door edged forward again.
The demons streamed up from the basement and spilled into the shadowy places in the living room. They crept along the walls like ants toward a pile of sugar.
The library door was nearly closed when the demons reached it. Dozens of them piled together and began to push. Dozens more tried to get around the edges, and hundreds attempted to wedge themselves beneath the door to prevent it from moving.
Tiny clawed hands thrust under the door and waved out the other side. Their pin sharp claws caught at the cloth of Dunkey's legs, tore at Teddy's fur, tugged at Fred's shoelaces.
Fred was terrified. In desperation he gave on last titanic push. For a moment, the door seesawed back and forth as hundreds of demons piled against the wood resisting with all their strength. Finally, the demons yielded and the door slammed shut.
Furious, the demons chattered and pounded on the door.
Fred sighed and smiled. He stepped away from the struggle only to discover that the demons had dragged his shoelaces underneath the door and were holding on tightly. Fred tripped and fell down next to Teddy, who was also trying to get his foot away from a demon's claws.
Fred immediately slipped his feet out of his sneakers. Dunkey and Fred and Teddy could still hear the demon's frustrated gibbering. From time to time there were crystalline crunching sounds as the light bulbs exploded in the living room. It became darker and darker until finally the glow of light beneath the library door disappeared. Now, both the library and the living room were as dark as a closet. And barely a flicker came through the windows from the storm-darkened sky.
Distracted by the work of the flying demons, the demons clawing at Teddy's leg let go and their arms disappeared back under the door. Teddy and Dunkey and Fred sat exhausted in the darkness, catching their breath.
Tony had felt a certain relief when they no longer had to support Fred's weight on the end of the sheet-rope. He and Ginger had stood at the window stared down the cliff toward the rocks. The empty sheet hung and waved back and forth like a kite tail with no kite. Without a word, they pulled the sheet back up into the bedroom.
Now, they sat quietly in the center of the large bed surrounded by all the toys. Tony stared down at them, then up at Ginger.
"Do you think Fred's okay?" he asked at last.
"Sure. Sure. They're all fine." she answered without much conviction.
"You must prepare for the worst," the frog said after a long pause. Tony and Ginger barely lifted their eyes. As the frog breathed, it's throat ballooned in and out heavily.
Tony walked over to the closet and began rummaging through a huge pile of clothing. He re-emerged and tossed a football helmet and shoulder pads to Ginger.
"What're these for?" she asked.
"Armor," Tony answered as he strapped on a baseball catcher's chest protector and knee pads.
Ginger put on her outfit, then bent down and reached under the bed. She pulled out a squirt gun and a hockey stick. Tony picked up his baseball bat. Together, they looked like rag-doll Samurai warriors.
"I guess it's time, huh?" Tony mumbled.
Ginger nodded.
"Line up!" Tony commanded the toys. Dutifully, the dolls and trucks and tanks and planes rolled into formation. Farm tractors and marionettes, cows and toy trains, even boats sputtered across the floor. Soon, there was a rag-tag army that rivaled anything that Napoleon had dreamt of in his hours of desperation. Even Alexander the Great and Colonel Teddy Roosevelt would have been pleased.
Tony and Ginger surveyed their compatriots. Despite his doubts about the strength of this strange conglomeration of fighters, Tony felt a glow of confidence.
"All set?" Tony asked.
A clicking, clattering cheer went up from the toy army. They shook their rifles, they waved their spears, they swung their garden hoes, they wagged their tails, they wiggled their horns. The toys were ready.
"I think it's time to open the door now." Tony looked to Ginger for approval.
Ginger gulped and nodded. The frog gulped, too, in a wet and froggy way.
"You take that side, I'll take this." Tony pointed to the opposite corner of the chest of drawers that blocked the bedroom door.
Ginger walked to her side, Tony to his. She put down the hockey stick, he the bat, and they began to wrestle the chest away from the door.
Reon stood up slowly. Movement was as painful as speech. His joints acted as though they had been welded together. Each flex of an elbow or knee was a fight against stiffness. Only the full determination of fury could enable him to walk at all.
He strode toward the basement stairs like a great leader, never showing the agonies that shot through his body at every step.
"Come! Follow!" he commanded. "Slowly. Carefully." Reon smiled in anticipation, but it was a smile that would have curdled milk inside a cow. Reon's growing sense of victory helped to blot out the pain, and for a crucial moment, he quickened his pace toward the back hall.
His troops stood erect: their four, five and six inch bodies stretched tall. They did not form ranks or rows or lines, but moved as a seething mass across the floor, red eyes glowing with devotion and the fervor of revenge. Each man had rehearsed his revenge for thousands of years as he suffered his own particular punishment.
The king's curse had changed each soldier into the image of his own particular evil, had changed each into a form as ugly as that man's lust or perversion. But their tiny size reflected their subservience to Reon's massive sins.
The wood stairs creaked under Reon's weight. He climbed the stairs with flames streaming happily from his pores. The glow of his flaming body lit the way for his army down the hallway into the pitch black living room.
Reon surveyed the darkened house as his soldiers arrayed themselves around him. Reon looked over his men. Some must hate me for bringing them to this end, he thought. But now I will lead them in their revenge. When we have captured the amulet, when we are returned to the way we were, when we are free, they will love me again as they did so long ago.
He pictured his troops in their human forms. He had hand-picked them all. The biggest, the strongest, the cleverest, and the most ruthless. He had paid them more gold than they had ever dreamt of being paid. So they followed him with devotion. But when it went wrong, they blamed him, and nursed the hate through the endless centuries of darkness.
Yet they still followed him, for he was their only hope. The gold he had paid them could not longer buy them the light of day. Only the path they fought upon gave them hope. Reon knew now that they would fight for him to the last ink-black moment.
Reon turned to the stair case leading from the living room toward the upstairs bedrooms. He gestured with a spiny, flaming arm.
"Kill them," he said to his army in a silken hiss. "Kill them all."
