Chapter Four
A Warning
I don’t mean my hand rips a hole in Uncle Karl’s precious screen. I mean my hand leaves the pit and appears in the screen world, in the movie, lit all weirdly by the last of the green sparks left by the power force.
I freeze in shock, unable to pull it out. What’s going on? How can my hand be in the movie? I can’t think what to do, until I remember wanting to warn the kids in the film. I really wanted to tell Roger not to summon the power force, but it’s too late for that. Maybe there’s a way for me to tell them how to take out the power force before it kills Roger’s family, though. Unless, of course, I’m going crazy and just imagining my hand has left the pit and gone into the movie. But there’s one way to find out.
I take a deep breath and step forward, following my hand through the screen, into Roger’s basement.
The girls’ screams sound louder than ever. One of the boys jumps to his feet, cocking his fists like he wants to fight me.
“Who are you?” he demands. He probably wants to look brave in front of the girls. I can’t remember whether he was the second kid the force killed, or the third.
“I’m Andy,” I tell him. For some reason, I don’t want to tell anybody my real name. Then I turn to the hero. Time to be heroic, guy. “Roger, look, you’ve got to take that thing out. It’s going to turn on you if you don’t.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” one of the girls shrieks. I wish she and her friend would shut up. I don’t know whether it would make them scream less or more if they knew what the power force had in store for them.
“Andy?” Roger looks blank. “Do I know you? How did you get in here?”
I think fast. “I heard you talking in school,” I tell him, which is certainly true. I saw that scene twice on the DVD. “You just didn’t notice me.” Also true. No way he could have, after all. “But I had to warn you—I wanted to tell you to stop before you finished the incantation, but I had trouble getting in.”
The tough kid tries to say something, but I rush on. “This thing—this force you raised—it’s going to kill all of you after it finishes off the guys who were picking on you. And it’s going to come back here and start with your family, Roger. You’ve got to stop it by -”
Tough Kid interrupts. “What are you talking about? How could you know any of this?”
“I just know,” I tell him. I guess it stands to reason they wouldn’t want to believe me, but that hadn’t occurred to me before. “Look -” I start wildly inventing. “I read about these power forces in an old book my uncle had. You can give them one order that they have to obey, but after that they run wild, and their first victims are the people who raised them, and their families.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” the same girl shrieks. Why can’t she just shut up?
“But how can we stop it?” asks Roger. His face has gone pale.
“You’ve got to trap it inside a ring of saltwater,” I tell him.
“Oh, sure.” Tough Kid rolls his eyes. “This guy’s crazy, man.”
“Saltwater?” Roger looks dubious. Then his face clears. “Oh, I’ve got it now. You’re one of those jerks from school, aren’t you, Andy? You guys just won’t quit! But you’ve got such a surprise coming -”
“No!” I cut him off. “Not me, Roger, you! Unless you do what I say, in about 15 minutes that force thing is coming back here, and when it finishes, you won’t have any mom or dad or kid sister any more! Do you understand me?”
How could this idiot care so little about losing his family? For a second I want to just let the story run its course—let him see how he feels when his parents are dead. But I can’t do it. I can’t let him feel like me.
“The only way you can save them is to intercept the force in a spot where you’ve already poured saltwater in a partial circle, force it inside, and then close the circle. Do you get it? It’s that or nothing! Do you hear me?”
They’re all staring at me, mouths hanging open. I hope Roger gets it. There’s nothing more I can do. I turn away and head up the stairs, dimly remembering that the next scene of the movie takes place as the kids head up there to leave Roger’s house. Then it hits me. I can’t exactly get to Uncle Karl’s by opening Roger’s front door and stepping outside. How am I supposed to get back to the pit?
Beneath me, I hear the kids’ footsteps hammering up the stairs, and I look wildly around the foyer where the next scene happens. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t exactly expect to see a screen with the pit on the other side of it. But I do see something, something totally unexpected—some sort of string made of white light stretching away from me, through the back rooms we didn’t see in the movie until Roger got home and found his family dead. It hits me: that’s the angle the upcoming scene was filmed from—that’s the direction I was sitting in the pit when I watched the film for the first time.
I remember spending time at Andy’s ranch over Easter vacation one winter, when the snow had really piled up between the house and the barn. They tied a rope between the two buildings, and we were supposed to hang on to it when we plowed through the new snowfall to go to the barn, so we wouldn’t get lost in the blowing snow. Andy called it his lifeline.
I grab my digital lifeline and follow it, hand over hand, until I reach a shimmering, silvery curtain. Through it, I think I can see the slope with the chairs, and a bowl, a can of soda, and a glass on a table between two of them. It’s got to be the pit!
Roger and his friends sound like they’re about to burst out of the stairway. I let go of the lifeline and jump through the curtain. I find myself sprawling in the pit, at the bottom of the slope, right in front of the screen. Too late, I recall Uncle Karl telling us not to get too near the screen.
Did he know that it could do this?
– End Chapter Four –
