Chapter 4
1812 Words
4
Nothing, that is, until consciousness returned me to the waking world where I was greeted by a terrible pain on the side of my head. I groaned and tried to move away from my own body, but a pair of strong hands pinned me to the floor.
“Easy there, pumpkin,” my grandfather soothed. My eyes flitted open and I saw my grandfather kneeling over me. There was a terrible gash down his left temple, and dried blood coated the left side of his face. His lips were tightly pursed and his eyes studied me with worry. “They gave you a bad knock.”
My eyes widened. “Grandma! Is Grandma-”
“Gone, but lay still,” he insisted.
“We have to call the police!” I pleaded.
He shook his head. “That won’t work. Not in this case.”
My mouth dropped open. “But she’s been kidnapped! We have to-”
“We have to remain calm,” he advised me. “Now first off, let’s get you sitting up.” He assisted me into a seated position where the pain in my head throbbed. I winced and clutched my aching skull. He pulled my hand away. “Let me get a good look at it.” He performed a cursory examination and drew back to smile at me. “As tough as Bee, and with my stubbornness. A generally terrible mix, but in this case it proved useful.”
“We have to call the police,” I persisted as I glanced at the window. It was very dark now, but a glow on the horizon told me the sun would be rising soon.
“We’re the only ones who can save your grandmother but that won’t happen until we get you on your feet,” he told me as he took my hands and helped me to my feet.
I steadied myself before I tore my hands from him and glared at my grandfather. Tears slid down my cheeks and I balled my quivering hands into fists at my side. “What the hell are you talking about? Who were those guys?”
He studied me for a moment before he sighed. “They were porcine, a rather brutish breed of shifters.”
I blinked at him. “A breed of what?”
“Shifters. Creatures that take on human form, or vice versa,” he explained.
I shook my head. “That’s. . .that’s insane, Grandpa.”
“No, it’s the Shifting World, but one can be excused for confusing the two,” he mused as he walked over to the bookshelf that had hidden the phone.
I turned to follow him and shook my head. “You’re not making any-” He tilted the top of the book on sextons and the whole bookshelf spun ninety degrees to reveal a hidden area, and in the floor of that space a ladder that led into the ground. The lower half of my jaw now reached the basement. I pointed a shaking finger at the bookcase, but my wide eyes lay on my grandfather. “There. . .there’s really a secret passage behind that?”
He slipped into the space and proceeded to climb down the ladder. “Yes, and I know this is a lot to take in all at once, pumpkin, but we do have to hurry.”
I shook off my shock and hurried after him. The ladder led down to a narrow passage some two feet below the floor. My grandfather disappeared from sight, so I hurried down the ladder and set foot on the dirt ground. The walls were a mixture of wooden support beams that held back the dirt and a few heavy stones. My head barely brushed the ceiling and my shoulders nearly touched either wall. The air was dry and made me sneeze.
A string of white lights illuminated the passage and revealed the space to be a very long tunnel. My grandfather turned a corner and again disappeared from sight.
“Hey!” I yelped as I hurried after him. “Wait up!”
I reached the three-way intersection and looked down the side hall. Grandpa was climbing another ladder. I scurried down the new hall and reached the bottom rung. My head tilted back to see where he’d gone. There weren’t any lights upward, but I could see his butt still climbing up many rungs.
“Grandpa!” I called.
“Hurry along, pumpkin!” he replied.
I sighed and began the climb. The ladder stretched past the first and second floors, and soon I found myself at a hatch through which my grandfather had vanished. I opened the hatch and peeked over the edge.
I was in the attic. My grandfather scrounged through a pile of boxes not too far from the true entrance to the space.
“Where is that blasted thing?” he muttered to himself.
I climbed out of the hole and just ducked a flying shoe box. “What are you looking for?” I asked him.
“Ah-ha!” he exclaimed as he dove his hands into a trunk. He drew out a small, familiar wooden box. It was the same bee bolt box from long ago.
I walked over to him and pointed at his discovery. “We came up here for this?”
He smiled. “Yes. Now we can go save your grandmother.”
“Why’d we take this way? Why not the stairs?” I suggested.
“I doubt that Gargan fellow left anyone behind as sentries, but one can’t be too sure,” he pointed out as he scooted around me and back to the hidden trap door.
I spun around and threw up my arms. “This is all nuts!”
My grandfather paused as he knelt on the floor and turned to me. I’d never seen him so serious. “That may be, but we’re the only ones who can save your grandmother, so there’s little time to waste.”
“If we’re the only ones who can save Grandma then why didn’t they kill us?” I countered.
“Fortunately, the porcine people have a rather low opinion of humans. They think they can blow on us and we’ll be killed, though some of their breaths are pretty vile. Now-” he opened the door, “-follow me and be quick. We’ve lost a few days already.”
“A few-” He disappeared into the hole before I could interrogate him further. “But we’ve only been out for a few hours!”
There was no response. I groaned and hurried after him. We returned to the intersection of tunnels beneath the house and this time took the path that led away from the living room. The musty air was replaced by dank mold and tree roots now stuck out of the walls.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“To the tree,” he told me.
“Why a tree?”
“Not a tree, the tree,” he corrected me.
“What’s special about this tree?” I persisted.
“It’s the portal to the Shifting World,” he revealed.
I pinched my nose between my fingers, and at our furious pace I nearly poked out both eyes. “Grandpa, there’s no other worlds. There’s just this one and the afterlife, and I’m not so sure about the second.” I paused and furrowed my brow. “Actually, I’m not sure about the first one, either.”
“You’ll see,” he promised as he broke into a trot.
Even with him so much older than me, I had a hard time keeping up with my grandfather. We hurried past a growing number of intertwined roots and a few holes showed up courtesy of the local gopher population. The tunnel grew shorter and I could hear the faint gurgle of running water somewhere nearby.
We reached the end of the tunnel, and rather than a ladder there was only a trap door. My grandfather put his shoulder against the door and pushed. The planks rose an inch before it clapped back down on its frame.
He looked to me. “Looks like youth is needed here, pumpkin. Give me a hand with this.”
I stepped up and, because of the narrow tunnel, turned to face him. We put our shoulders against the door and pushed upward. The wood was incredibly heavy and clumps of fresh dirt fell over us. We heaved the door open and it clattered onto its top, revealing a canopy of trees and above that the brightening sunrise sky. The gurgle came from a creek not more than ten yards away. I knew that creek. It was two miles from our house. We’d made all that distance in the tunnel.
Grandpa climbed out first and I crawled after him. I got a look around the other side of the trap door and saw that a thick layer of grass and dirt lay on its top. My grandfather strode into the woods with a few words of encouragement. “Hurry along, pumpkin! We’re almost there!”
I climbed to my feet and followed him. He led us a quarter of a mile deeper into the woods until we reached a small clearing. The open space was lorded over by an ancient oak. Its thick branches blocked the sky and its children populated the forest as far as the eyes could see.
Grandpa walked up to its trunk where the bark had split. A small, dark hole led into the interior of the ancient plant. I marveled that the tree was alive with such a terrible hole.
My grandfather paused and knelt on the ground. His hand traced the footprints of many boots. “It looks like this Gargan fellow didn’t send any more than what we saw, and they all returned with him.”
I squinted at the myriad of mud and prints that overlapped one another. “How can you tell?”
“Practice,” he told me as he stood. His eyes followed the trail and stopped at the opening in the tree. He took a deep breath and tucked the box tighter under his arm. “One last time. . .” I heard him mutter.
“One last time for what?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Follow me and mind your step.”
Grandpa stooped and slipped into the hole in the tree. He vanished as though the darkness had swallowed him. I hurried up to the hole and leaned inside. The air wasn’t musty like I expected, but was rather fragrant, like an open field in bloom.
“Grandpa?” My echo came back to me as though it had traveled to the end of a very long tunnel and back. “Grandpa!” No reply.
I took a deep breath and climbed into the darkness. My foot tripped over a loose root, and I would have fallen had I not tumbled into an infinite darkness. I floated for a moment before it felt like a hundred hands grabbed the edges of my person and yanked me forward. A rush of wind whipped past my face and my scream was behind me almost before it came out of my mouth.
The surreal travel lasted only a moment before I was thrust forward and ejected into bright light. I rolled across some lush green grass and stopped after a few yards on my back. Above me a shimmering sun smiled at my prone form. I sat up and my eyes widened.
Stretched before me was an endless field of flowers dotted with patches of trees. A few small hills broke the monotony, and in the distance the white caps of tall mountains hinted at a very different environment.
I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
- Writer
