The greatest adventure in my life started when my eleven-year-old cousin Marisa yelled, “Hey, Billy, check this out!”
Marisa had run up the steps of the Glamorgan Castle to retrieve the Frisbee that I’d thrown. It was the fourth time I’d thrown the Frisbee to her, and the fourth time she had missed it.
“What now?” My patience was wearing thin. Marisa had been visiting my family since the first day of summer vacation, and she was a know-it-all bookworm. Mom and Dad had put me in charge of entertaining her and had promised me a new baseball glove if we could make it until the end of her visit without fighting or killing one another.
I jumped the steps two at a time. “What’d you find now, squirt? Another rare bug for your collection?”
“Very funny,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Look at this!” She was sitting on the top step. I could see where her foot had kicked away a loose stone. Beneath it was an old book, bound in leather and wrapped with a red silk thread.
Marisa lifted the book gingerly and placed it on her lap. The cover was so dusty and old that I couldn’t make out the title. “Should we open it, Billy?”
Without bothering to answer — little cousins, especially little girl cousins who were two years younger than you, could be so annoying! — I snatched the book from her lap and pulled the thread. It opened to the table of contents. Before I had a chance to read anything there, a strong gust of wind blew it from my hands.
The book tumbled down the steps and landed spine-down on the sidewalk. Marisa and I both stood amazed as fireworks shot from the pages, exploding in a cascade of stars and moon shapes above our heads.
“Billy?” Marisa whispered.
“I see it, I see it!” I didn’t know what it was, but I was seeing it.
I looked around. A woman was walking her German shepherd near the lakes, and a young couple was strolling hand in hand across the grass. None of them paid any attention to what was happening – it was as if only Marisa and I could see it!
The light show continued for a few more seconds, then sputtered out. The book lay open, thick smoke rising from its pages. Then ten glowing, yellow objects, like fireflies, lifted lazily to the sky and separated in all directions — north, south, east and west. Amazed, we watched as they drifted out of sight.
“What in the world was that?” I asked, mostly to myself.
“Look, Billy, the pages are blank!” Marisa was at the bottom of the steps, gingerly turning the pages of the book with a stick she’d found in the grass. She was right: there wasn’t a line of type anywhere in the book. It was as if the fireworks had burned the words away, leaving the pages untouched.
That’s when we heard laughter from behind us. Sitting on the castle steps was an old man. I was sure that he hadn’t been there a moment before. He laughed and laughed, and just when we thought he was winding down, he exploded into another fit of cackling.
“What’s so funny, mister?” Marisa asked, when the old man seemed to have gained control of himself.
“Oh, it’s just the beginning of the end, that’s all,” the old man replied, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. He had a red scar that ran down the middle of his face, extending from his forehead all the way into his thick gray beard. He looked like he’d been split in half and patched up poorly. Something about that scar made me remember sitting on my grandma’s lap, listening as she read aloud from a storybook. The memory made no sense, and I pushed it away when the old man said: “I’ve been waiting a considerably long time for someone to find and open that book, and now it looks like someone has!”
“What do you know about the book?” I asked.
“Only that you’ve unleashed the Story Plague on all of Alliance,” he said. “Left unchecked, it’ll destroy the city before the end of the day!”
“What?” I looked at him, then down at the book. “You’re crazy!”
“Maybe, but I’m the only other person besides you two who saw the Fourth of July celebration when that book opened, so I guess that makes you crazy, too!”
“What’s a...Story Plague, mister?” I wouldn’t have taken any of his babble seriously, except that I’d seen the lightshow when the book fell open.
“A day of destruction brought on by fictional characters who’ve come to life,” he replied, still chuckling. “It’s a headless horseman on Main Street, dinosaurs at the mall, and pirates at Silver Park, for starters!”
“That — that’s terrible!” I cried. “How can we stop it?”
“Can’t be done, son.”
“But ... this is our city, mister! We’ve got to do something!”
He scratched his head and looked at us. “I’m a sporting man, so I’ll give you a chance. It’s like this: only ten Story Plagues have been unleashed so far. You find each of ‘em, one at a time, and help each character get back into that old book. Every time you do, I’ll leave you a clue as to who I am. Once you’ve gathered all ten clues, I’ll meet you back here at nine o’clock tonight. If you can guess my identity, I’ll take my book and go away. But if you can’t ... I’ll unleash the other Story Plagues on your city.”
“Other plagues?” Marisa asked. “How many more can there be?”
He opened his cupped right fist to reveal a glowing yellow ball of energy, easily fifty times the size of the ten lights that had already spread over Alliance. “One for each page of that book,” he cackled. “Two-hundred-fifty-eight different plagues!”
“Come on, Billy, one of those lights headed this way, toward downtown!” Marisa snatched the book from the grass and headed off without so much as a look back at the old man. She threw the book into the basket of her bicycle and pedaled away.
“Wait a minute!” I shouted. “Mister, how do we get all these characters back into the book?”
“Simple.” He smiled. “Just solve each of their problems, or help them move further along in their story!”
“But...but...how?” I stammered, confused. Everything was happening so fast!
“Better hurry, son!” The old man pointed to the sun. “It’s already high noon! Only nine hours until your city goes...poof!” And with that, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
I shook my head, turned and ran to my bike. The old man was right about one thing: if we were going to solve the mystery of these ten Story Plagues by nine o’clock tonight, we had no time to waste.
To Be Continued
Story: Chris Schillig
Art: Steve Wiandt
No comments:
Post a Comment