|
a new classic by Edward Summer |
ouglasCalder
had just settled into the monotony of night driving in the rain when his
wife awoke with a jolt.
"We've got to go back," she said.
"What are you talking about?" Douglas looked quickly at her tense face and then back to the highway.
"We've got to go back. There's something wrong."
"There's nothing wrong. They're all asleep. Everything's fine!"
"No, they're not. I don't know why, but I'm sure those kids were right about being in danger."
"Julia, you just had a bad dream! The kids are safe at Ginger's house."
"No, Douglas. They're not. There's something wrong at our house. We have to go back!" Julia stared at him.
"Why don't we call her house in the morning. You'll see."
"No!"
"But it's the middle of the night! It'll take hours to get home! We won't be there until sunrise!" From the tone of her voice, he knew there was no use arguing or discussing it further. "This is crazy," he muttered, "real crazy."
He slowed the car down and angled onto the shoulder of the highway. There were no other cars in sight. Douglas turned the wheel hard and made a U-turn. The tires squealed briefly as they turned, and the car headed for home.
A burbling chuckle escaped from Reon's mouth. He stared at Tony in disbelief. The child dares to fight back! Reon raised his arms and aimed the spinneret's at the boy. A puff of dust, a wisp of webbing floated through the air. Then the dust began to spew out like water from a high-pressure hose.
Tony gasped when the blast of webbing hit him. His eyes filled with tears, blinding him almost completely. Still he swung the baseball bat in Reon's direction. Streamers of webbing began to build up on the bat and hung down like sticky stalactites. Soon the webs adhered to Tony's arms and body in a thick mess that made it impossible for him to swing the bat. Tony began to feel drowsy. It was hard to breathe, and it seemed like too much effort to bother.
None of the dust or webbing went anywhere near Ginger, however. She watched in panic as Tony sank to his knees wrapped in so much webbing that it looked like a caterpillar's cocoon. Reon crept closer, relentlessly covering Tony's body.
Ginger stepped to Tony's side. She pulled at the webbing covering his face, but she barely cleared his nostrils when Reon covered them again. Ginger could hear Tony's labored breathing only faintly now.
"You stay away from him!" she screamed at Reon. She stepped right in front of the huge creature.
Then something happened. The stream of dust from Reon's arms literally bent in the air and flowed around her body without touching it. Startled, Reon lowered his arms. The dust cloud began to clear until Reon could see Ginger more clearly.
Hanging down from beneath the football shoulder pads was the amulet.
The fire inside Reon's chest seemed to implode. Each flame rushed toward his heart, paralyzing Reon with a jot that stabbed at every fiber of his being.
"Give it to me!" he screamed, with hot curls of glowing vapor drooling from his fangs!
Knowing immediately what he wanted, Ginger clutched the amulet to her chest as Reon lumbered toward her. She could feel the blood drain from her face. He moved closer and closer. The fire of body scorched the cool, dark air, heating Ginger's skin through her clothing.
Reon was close enough to touch her. Ginger cringed as his spiny hand reached toward her. She tried to edge up the stairs backwards, but she was frozen. Terror-stricken, she began to count the spines on Reon's arm as if giving them a number would make them less threatening.
Reon's claws reached for the amulet's golden chain, but Ginger swung away. The claws grazed the edge of her sweatshirt. It was enough contact to send a dazzling explosion of painful white sparks down Reon's arm. The entire room filled with eerie light! Reon howled in agony and collapsed backwards onto the floor. Immediately, the sparks stopped, and the room returned to darkness.
Reon lay still. He clutched at his arm, which still stung and vibrated. With deliberate effort, Reon rose to his feet once more. He raised his arms and allowed a trickle of dust to mist the air near Tony. Now, Tony was nearly covered and totally helpless. He toppled over and slid down the wall into a barely seated position. His breathing was shallow and difficult.
"Give it to me!" Reon ordered Ginger. "Give it to me, or he will die!"
Lying
groggily on the bedroom floor, the frog could feel its arm tingling.
It tried once more to roll over, but the pain of its cracking skin was
too great. It swung its feet desperately. As one forefoot flailed past
the frog's eyes, the frog knew at once that something was changing. The
webbing between each finger was getting shorter, and the fingers themselves
were growing longer. They were no longer flippers. They were turning into
human hands:
A searing, stretching pain seized the frog's legs below the knee. It felt as if its feet and hips were being pulled in opposite directions by mad horses. The frog screeched in pain and kicked desperately. Every muscle in the small green body felt as if it was being torn apart from within.
The tortured body spun around and a now webless foot struck the bed post, flipping the frog onto its stomach. Pushing down with its hands, the frog raised its head. Because the neck was suddenly longer, the head swollen and larger, it slammed against the underside of the bed.
Bulging hideously, the eyes would not focus properly, and did not turn as easily as they always had. Suddenly, they seemed to be pumped full of liquid, like water balloons gone berserk.
Painfully, the frog crawled across the bedroom floor toward the hallway. Hopping was impossible as its body had become too heavy, too unwieldy. Both arms and legs were growing longer and thinner. The frog sat back on its haunches and raised its hands toward its agonized eyes. But the eyes no longer protruded. They had become flush with the surface of the face.
Out in the hall, even amid the clouds of dust that hung everywhere, the frog could feel the coolness of the dark. Its legs and arms swung nearly out of control. Its eyes blinked and blinked again as they changed from the dark orbs of a frog to gentle, blue, human eyes.
The frog's spine twisted, making small popping sounds as one vertebra after another struggled to find a new position along nerves that screamed through their centers. The frog reached up and grabbed a post of the banister, pulling only to relieve the pain.
Finally, the frog's eyes began to focus. The scene in the living room below swam into shape, then slipped back into a blur. Clinging to the banister, the frog that was no longer a frog stared at the thousands of red dots on the living room floor. The dots moved crazily. Then a new wave of pain racked the frog. It closed its eyes and pulled itself even more upright.
The strange creature was nearly as tall as the three foot banister railing. Using the railing as support, it staggered along the hallway. The long familiar frog stripes on its arms and legs thickened into dense lines that solidified into straps of leather. The smooth green skin became plates of burnished metal. The webs of fingers and feet became boots and gloves. The flat tympanum frog ears became cheek plates of a shiny helmet that wrapped around a youthful male face. The stripes of the frog's back peeled away and became strands of long, straight hair.
Still shaking with spasms of pain, the half-human creature continued to glow. It staggered along the hallway. Bursts of sound penetrated the confusion of its brain. A crackling static, flickers of white light, drifting words…. "Stay away…give…give…give or die!" The voices were familiar. He glanced down at his hand, fully human now, clutching the banister tightly.
With a gigantic effort, Teefr stood erect, balanced on his booted feet and took two tentative steps toward the stairs.
"He will die!" Reon said again, stretching his hand toward Ginger. She trembled against the stairs.
"Reon!" The voice was not quite formed, and the word was lost in a guttural choke. "Reon!" This time the voice was clear.
Reon turned. I know this voice, he thought, I know it…. Who…? Who...?
"It is with me you must fight," Teefr intoned slowly, "not with my friends." Teefr began to walk down the cluttered stairs, picking his way among piles of tangled toys and dying demons. He walked past Tony and Ginger, stepped down the last two steps and stood facing his brother.
Reon could feel every scale on his body press inward. The spines seemed to be cutting into him instead of protecting him from the outside world. He struggled to breathe as the true meaning of the prophecy slowly penetrated his mind.
"So the frog did die before me…," Reon murmured, "…but not the man!" Then for the first time in thousands and thousands and thousands of years he stared into Teefr's blue eyes, and Teefr stared back into the pools of flame that were Reon's.
Without warning, Reon sprang at Teefr, grabbing his brother around the neck and dragging him to the floor. The two of them rolled over. Teefr shoved Reon away from him. Battalions of demon soldiers scurried out of the way as the fight moved toward them
Even through his heavily mailed gloves, Teefr had been cut by Reon's sharp spines. They had severed the leather and even the metal chain. The flames from Reon's face seared Teefr's cheeks. Teefr closed his eyes, but was unable to shut out the blinding red glow.
Teefr wedged his knee against Reon's chest and pushed with all his might. The bright green leather of Teef'r's boot shredded on Reon's spines, but at last Reon loosened his grip on his brothers throat. He fell backwards, toppling over a tall floor lamp.
The lamp fell onto the carpet, the bulbs already broken. As Teefr struggled to his feet, Reon's reached back, and his claws closed around the brassy shaft of the lamp pole with a metallic clitter. Alerted, Teefr moved out of the way as Reon swung the heavy pole at him. The lampshade flew off and rolled harmlessly against a far wall.
Reon jumped to his feet and swung the pole again. It whooshed through the air like a scythe, leaving a trail of dust curling behind it. Again and again, Teefr dodged the pole. He retreated slowly toward the far wall of the room.
Ginger pulled at the sticky webbing covering Tony's face until she cleared his nose. Tony sighed deeply as air finally filled his lungs. But his chest strained against the webbing wrapped tightly around him. Tony seemed hardly aware of the battle going on. His eyes were still webbed shut, his ears covered, his mouth packed with sticky webs.
Teefr ducked again as the pole missed his head by barely an inch. Reluctantly, he drew his sword. As he withdrew it from its scabbard, the shining blade blazed with the shimmering green of St. Elmo's fire. Teefr held the sword in front of him just as the lamp pole swung around again. The weapons met with a resounding clang. Demons cringed, toys shook.
The brothers stood in the center of the room exchanging blows. Neither would retreat. Neither could advance. Finally Teefr reached out and grabbed the pole and pulled it toward him. For a moment, Reon lost his balance and tumbled forward, but he deliberately fell heavily onto Teefr's chest, knocking his brother backward.
Spewing flames, Reon bit savagely into Teefr's shoulder, puncturing the metal armor with his teeth and piercing Teefr's flesh and bone. Yet the flames of Reon's body cauterized the wounds, so not a drop of blood fell. Continuing the attack, Reon dragged his spiny forearms along his brother's armor. One by one the links of chain mail caught and yielded to the sharp cutting edge of the spines.
Racked with pain, Teefr pushed upward with all his might, letting go of his sword to use both hands against Reon's immense weight. Reon thrashed with his barbed tail against his brother's calves until at last Teefr's knees buckled and collapsed.
Reon fell over propelled by his own bulk as the balance shifted. Teefr pulled away and rolled toward the staircase in the opposite direction.
Teefr grabbed the banister. As he pulled himself to a sitting position, he saw the amulet around Ginger's neck less than four feet above him. It hung serenely, nestled in a soft fold of sweatshirt just below the hard, plastic shoulder pads. Jeweled memories of the golden line of intertwined sun and moon flooded through him.
Ginger felt a surge of warmth inside when she realized that Teefr was staring at her. Slowly she became aware of his eyes moving toward hers. They are the bluest eyes I've ever seen, Ginger thought, bluer than blue. She longed to be closer to the eyes and to connect with their pleading sadness. She returned Teefr's gaze and in that moment merged with his mind and heart. How could all of this have been hidden inside a frog? She wondered. How did that feeling survive centuries of hiding and terror, hoping and waiting? But she knew. The waiting is almost over. The end is so close now, so close… He needs…he needs….
Ginger's finger's found the amulet and touched it gently. Protection, she thought. Safety…safety…. A loud noise jolted her back to reality. Reon was getting up. He grabbed the lamp pole again and something loose inside it clattered.
A quiet moan came from Tony's cocoon of webs.
Ginger looked at him, then at Reon, then at Teefr. She took in the scene of webbed and broken toys, of demons, of dusty, choking air. She felt the magical protective space around her, free of dust, free of threat, where she was totally safe.
Reon lifted the lamp pole off the floor, but to Ginger he seemed dazed and unsure of himself.
Immediately, Ginger made up her mind. She unbuckled the shoulder pads and slipped them off. She undid the chin strap of her football helm and took it off her head, dropping it on the floor. With ferocious determination, she stared across the room at Reon. She clasped the cool golden chain of the amulet with her warm, pulse-pounding fingers.
Slowly, Ginger lifted the chain over her head. Her long braids caught on it for a moment, then slipped clear and cropped to her shoulders again. As she lifted the chain over her head, she moved her arms and the amulet out in front of her face. Gazing at its glistening surface, Ginger felt her heart pound.
Reon stood and raised the pole high over his head.
Teefr turned to look at his brother, then back at Ginger.
Ginger held the amulet out toward Teefr.
Reon took one step forward, then another.
Raising himself up on one arm, Teefr reached out for the amulet which was just out of reach. Ginger took a deep, deep breath and tossed the amulet toward him.
In that fragile instant after the amulet left Ginger's fingertips, Reon swung the lamp with all his might. The heavy brass struck the amulet's chain, knocking it away from Teefr's grasp.
The amulet flew through the air, hit the floor and skidded to a stop on the carpet.
A scurry of demons pounced on it like carrion beetles. All but Snick were repelled by the white-hot energy field. The triumphant demon dragged the amulet to his master's feet and laid it beside him.
Reon looked down at his prize. Carefully, he placed the lamp pole beside him on the floor. Reon bent over and picked up the amulet.
He held it in front of his eyes. The flames from his face reflected in the jeweled sun and moon and stars.
Reon gazed past the amulet at his brother laying battered on the floor and the frightened children sitting on the stairs.
Reon looked down at his army, which had crept silently toward him. Their burning eyes looked up at him expectantly.
"We have won." Reon said at last. "We have won."
(c)1980,1981, 1996, 1997,2006
Edward Summer, All Rights Reserved, Teefr TM R, All Characters TM, R In
any form whatsoever
Mrs. Seel, Theadore Rosebear,
Dunkey Hotie, Tony Calder, Ginger Stephens, Fred Stephens, Teefr, Reon
are all (TM) (R)
created 6/14/97
revised 12/27/97, 5/24/98,
7/5/06
