Strangewood (22 page)

Even as she lifted the portable phone from its cradle, Emily
began to hyperventilate. She felt as though the world had dropped out from
under her, and she was tumbling away into the void of oblivion.

First Nathan, and now Thomas.

Several minutes later, she found herself sitting on the cold
tile of the kitchen floor, the phone still clutched in her hand. She didn't
remember speaking to anyone but knew she must have, because she could hear the
siren wailing as the ambulance approached.

A sudden wave of anger swept over her, and she glared at
Thomas where he lay, possibly near death, on the living room floor.

"No," she said softly, furiously. Then she
screamed it. "No!"

She hurled the phone at him. It arced across the kitchen and
into the living room, bouncing on the carpet several feet away. Red lights
strobed through all the front windows and turned the interior of the house into
an infernal kaleidoscope.

Emily buried her face in her hands and whispered her
ex-husband's name, and then the name of her only child.

* * * * *

Nathan came awake slowly. His awareness, at first, extended
no further than the inside of his own body: his tongue against the back of his
teeth, the soft breath flowing through his nostrils, the sensation of sunlight
on his eyelids. A yawn took him unaware, and he stretched his entire body as
his mouth opened wide to accommodate it.

The bedclothes beneath his skin, where he now wiped the
drool that had slipped from his mouth during sleep, were soft but felt a bit
gritty. He rolled over. His mind was still warming up, and, distracted by the
comfort of his surroundings, so suggestive of home, had yet to recall the path
that had brought him here.

A breeze blew through the open window, billowing the
gossamer curtains, turning them into playful spirits. Nathan saw them through
the tiny slits he had allowed his eyes to become, lids lazily threatening to
close once more, not quite certain they were through with sleep.

The breeze was cold.

Not merely chilly, as some summer mornings could be, but
really, really cold.

That wasn't right.

Nathan opened his eyes, sat up quickly, and surveyed the
wood and stone construction of the room about him. It was clean, certainly. As
though someone had been through the day before and scrubbed until it sparkled. But
the bedclothes were filthy.

The door was thick wood with metal strapping and an iron
handle above the old-fashioned keyhole. Other than the window, it might have
been a dungeon.

The lair of the Jackal Lantern. Nathan knew right away that
was where he was. How could it be anything else? Part of him whispered that he
should not be frightened, that if the Jackal Lantern wanted him killed, any of
his goons could have done it. But the real Nathan, the boy-voice of his mind
told him that the Jackal Lantern might very well want to have him for dinner. Literally.
To suck the meat from his bones

The Peanut Butter General had said he wouldn't be hurt, but
Bob Longtooth had cut Nathan's back, badly. And besides, he wasn't with the
General anymore. Later, Grumbler had promised he wouldn't be hurt, but Grumbler
was supposed to be Daddy's friend, and here he was working with the Jackal
Lantern, so how could Nathan trust him?

It was all so very confusing.

The boy had been afraid ever since he had first awoken in
Strangewood. He was still afraid now. But as he climbed from his bed, Nathan
began to feel something else. Something that brought him back several years, to
petulant tantrums and striking out when he shouldn't. Nathan was five and a
half years old, and a very scared five and a half.

But he was also very, very angry.

He moved to the window and looked out, and his mouth dropped
open as he stood and stared. Out the window was a straight fall down the side
of the fortress, so straight it seemed almost like the wall leaned outward. Beyond
the fortress were the Bald Mountains, and beyond the mountains, the rest of
Strangewood. From up here, Nathan thought he could see it all. Everything in
Strangewood. That was impossible of course, and a part of him knew that. But
the illusion was a comfort, somehow. For out there in the vast forest, or
somewhere along the Up-River, there were people and creatures who did not want
him to be hurt. The Peanut Butter General wanted to protect Nathan.

"Please come," Nathan whispered, and then all the
anger slipped away and he was just a little frightened boy again.

He didn't really believe the Peanut Butter General would
come for him. But as Nathan's brain swirled like the roughest waters of the
Up-River, he came to realize that he wasn't really talking to the General. He
was thinking of his father. Grumbler had said the Jackal Lantern wanted
Nathan's daddy to come to Strangewood. He didn't know how that was possible,
but then, he also didn't know how he himself had come here.

"Please come," he whispered again.

A cold wind blew across the stripped mountaintop and through
the window of Nathan's cell. He shivered and moved quickly back to the bed. He
searched until he found the clothes Grumbler had given him — the things
the dwarf and the pony had stolen from his bedroom the night they killed
Crabapple — and dressed swiftly.

When he was dressed, he went to the door. He knew it would
be locked. How could they expect to keep him in here if it wasn't locked? But
he tried the handle just the same. The iron was cold to the touch, but when he
turned it, there was a heavy scrape as the thick bolt pulled back and the door
swung in.

Nathan blinked in surprise. He stepped out into the
corridor. It was dank and deeply shadowed, flickering with orange light from
torches that lined the stone walls. The fortress was built mostly of huge rocks
that looked like they'd been chipped out of the mountain itself. The only wood
seemed to be the buttresses used to shore up arches in the hall or the frames
of doorways. Nathan shivered. For no particular reason, he glanced down at his
blue-sneakered feet and saw that his laces weren't tied. His Dad always
corrected him about that, trying to get him to tie his shoes. It had never
seemed that important to Nathan.

He knelt and, with some difficulty, tied his laces. Then he
stood, took a last look — what he hoped was a last look — at the
bed in the room he'd slept in, and started down the hall.

Nathan was afraid, of course, but fear had slid over and
made a little room for excitement. Here he was, wandering around the next best
thing to a castle, and he seemed to be by himself. It was easy, for just a
moment, to forget the rest. His imagination sped along in that direction for a
while, ringing with clanging swords and swirling with knights . . . or even
pirates.

Then he arrived at a wide stone stairwell, with arched
windows cut into the curving wall where the stairs spun down into the depths of
the fortress. Nathan glanced around again and, seeing nothing and no one,
started down. At the first of the windows, he leaned far out, trying to see
more of the fortress, to gauge how far up he was. A fine needle of pain jabbed
his back, just below the shoulder blades. Nathan cried out, his face dissolving
into wide-eyed panic.

Then he remembered the slashes on his back where Bob
Longtooth had clawed him. When he'd leaned out the window, he'd pulled at them.
Despite the soothing, healing properties of the General's peanut butter, the
slashes were still there, and Nathan had strained them too much.

Biting his lip, the boy forced himself not to cry as he
slowly and gingerly worked his way down the stairs. There had already been, in
his five-and-a-half-year-old opinion, far too much crying. Once more, his
petulance returned, and he found himself overwrought more with anger than
terror.

That was his escape, he found. The angrier he got, the less
afraid he was. It didn't feel good, being angry. His father always tried to
tell him not to get mad about things, just to deal with them, but for now,
Nathan couldn't help it. Angry was much safer than afraid.

The light from the windows above disappeared as Nathan
reached the floor beneath where he'd been kept. There were more torches here,
and somewhere, he thought he heard voices. What he needed to find, he knew, was
another staircase. If he could keep going down, eventually, he might come to
the bottom of the fortress. They weren't afraid that he'd run, he thought, or
they would have locked his door.

He'd show them. He'd run as far and as fast as he could, and
they'd never find him out in Strangewood.

The thought gave Nathan pause. For if the Jackal Lantern and
his subjects couldn't find Nathan, the boy wondered how his father or the
Peanut Butter General would find him. On the other hand, if he stayed in the
fortress, they would know right where to look. At least, they would know where
to look if the General had figured out it was Grumbler who'd stolen Nathan in
the first place. It was all really confusing, and his head hurt a little.

As he tried to work this through his mind, Nathan stepped
into the corridor and started down it, searching for the darkened opening that
would lead down to the floor beneath him, and hopefully, even further. He
passed several doors on his way, heavy wood just like the door to the room he'd
been in. All of them were closed, letting not an ounce of sunlight into the
damp tunnel of stone. It wasn't until Nathan was halfway down the corridor that
he realized there were no torches at the end. No light at all, save for a tiny
glow of daylight that drifted up from the left.

The other stairs, he thought. But to get to them, he had to
go through the dark. Real dark. Dark enough to make it almost impossible to
remember that the sun was shining outside.

Nathan kept on, his sneakers almost silent on the cold
stone. He could hear his own breathing, and its loudness surprised him. He
passed the last torch, and the shadows swirled around him as though taking him
by the hand. The light receded behind him, and his breathing grew even louder. The
brave and angry boy started to slip away, stolen by the dark.

The meager light from the stairwell was not enough to keep
him brave. Nathan's heart began to pound in his chest. He could feel the
pulsing of his veins in his temples and his wrists and his breath came faster. Though
he could not see the stone floor very well, he began to run. His sneakered feet
slapped the rock beneath them, and he remembered, very clearly, his kitchen.

The kitchen at home. Before. Before Mommy and Daddy split,
and Nathan was caught in the middle. When the fights got really really bad, and
Nathan cried a lot. He was a little kid then, not even in real kindergarten
yet.

The wet crack of his rubber soles on the stone brought him
back to that moment. His mother screaming, his father stomping about. And his
mother's hand across his father's face. The one and only time Nathan had ever
seen her hit anyone, and she slapped him hard enough that it made daddy's face
all red.

They stared at each other for a few minutes as Nathan sat on
the kitchen floor wailing like he was still a baby, screaming at them both now
in words none of them could understand.

It was just a few days later that Nathan's parents told him
they weren't going to live together anymore. They told him they were still a
family.

He never believed them.

A single tear forced its way out and Nathan wiped it angrily
from his cheek. He'd promised himself he wasn't going to cry again, and now he
was mad at the dark, mad at his parents, and mad at himself for being so
scared.

He started to slow down as he neared the stairs. His
heartbeat slowed and suddenly his breathing didn't seem so loud.

Something smelled awful. Worse than a dozen skunks. Nathan
tried to cover his nose, but the smell was everywhere. And he recognized it.

Even as he turned to look down the stairs, he knew what he
smelled. Whom he smelled.

"Hello, runt," the awful creature said, and though
he didn't laugh, there was laughter in his voice. "I was hopin' we'd get
some time to ourselves."

The stinking steam that came from the split over the ugly
thing's eye blazed up into sudden life, green fire spouting from the space
where his brain ought to be.

Nathan froze, bit his lip, and refused to scream. Refused to
cry. Instead, he just whispered the monster man's name.

"Cragskull."

In the back of the ambulance, Emily sat very still, jostled
about by every bump and pothole on Broadway as they sped toward the hospital. The
siren was wailing, and though the EMT had offered her vague answers, Emily knew
they were hurrying for a reason. Thomas was in bad shape.

"Why?" she whispered.

The EMT, who was continually monitoring Thomas's condition,
didn't even look up. He hadn't looked up at anything she said, and this was a
question she'd asked her unconscious ex-husband a dozen times since he'd been
loaded into the ambulance.

Her mascara had left black streaks like war paint down her
cheeks. Emily knew they were there, but she ignored them. She had nothing to
wipe her face with at the moment, and there would be more tears, she knew.

"You bastard!" she snapped, her voice brittle, and
brought her open palm down on Thomas's chest.

Finally, she had the E.M.T.'s attention. The lanky man stood
as best he could in the cramped rear of the ambulance and reached both hands
out to restrain her gently.

"Ma'am, I know you're not yourself at the moment,"
he said, quietly but with much gravity. "But if you do that again, I'll
put you out in the street."

Emily wanted to scream at him. To explain to him exactly
what had happened here. How Thomas had failed her, and failed Nathan. They
needed him now. Now! More than ever, Nathan needed his father. More than she
ever had when they were married, Emily needed Thomas Randall to hold on to.