Wiley fell into a deep sleep and dreamed.
“Sit right there,” Dad said as he put six-year-old Wiley in a green overstuffed vinyl chair. The chair sat across the room and faced Dad’s desk in his study. A fluorescent lamp covered by a blue lampshade cast an eerie glow on Dad’s desk and his face.
Dad, in his long-sleeved white shirt that he always wore rolled up past his wrists, rose from his desk. He went to his long lab table to Wiley’s left. The table sat in front of bookshelves full of math and science volumes and astronomy within reach. A long fluorescent light shined bright over his lab table and lit the glass beakers, test tubes, and things holding blue liquids.
Dad checked some charts on the table. “I know what those are,” Wiley said. “Those are consolations.”
“Constellations,” Dad said, correcting the word with a chuckle. “But you are right. This map divides the celestial sphere into eighty-eight parts.” Dad stepped to an adjacent lab table, littered with books. It also held lab equipment and electronic boxes with lights. The metal boxes had knobs in front with power lines trailing out in the back and plugged into a row of surge protectors, and he also had a single gas burner.
Behind him stood two large whiteboards covered with numbers and mathematical symbols. Dad stared at the numbers. “I’m going to show you something special tonight, Wiley.”
“Is that why you built the big triangle thing?” Wiley asked. Dad made a funny face at him, and Wiley laughed as Dad walked to the tripod.
Near his desk and in the center of the spacious room, Albert had constructed a tall tripod. He made it out of rough, two-by-four lumber. The tripod stood eight feet high, where the three legs joined at the top. Wiley shook his head since Dad made things that never worked.
Dad would get an idea and take one of the televisions into the study and tinker with it. It would never work right again. He would tweak the microwave or toaster, and it would throw a breaker switch every time. Wiley figured whatever this thing was, it would fizzle and throw another fuse.
The tripod stood looming at the side and front of Dad’s desk, and he fiddled with things hanging underneath it on a string. Dad had tied a wind-up alarm clock, and it dangled from the fulcrum of the tripod. The aluminum can with the lid open also swung on the string below the clock.
Dad had tied a cord around the center of the empty aluminum can. Mom’s ruby red pendant, Mom’s favorite, hung below the can. Dad had taken it off its gold chain. The string held the alarm clock at the top, then the can, then Mom’s ruby pendant.
“That’s from Mom’s necklace,” Wiley said. Dad nodded as he checked the apparatus. “She wears it all the time. She’s going to be mad.”
“It’s costume jewelry,” Dad said with his back to Wiley. “It’s glass. Don’t worry about Mom, Wiley. It’s okay. What I have here is a portal. Can you tell me what a portal is, Wiley?”
“Yes, it’s a little window on a ship,” Wiley said.
Dad chuckled. “Close, but no, my smart boy, that’s a porthole. A portal is a door of sorts. Using your mother’s pendant, I’ve discovered how to open the portal into a wormhole through spacetime. I’ve found a bridge to another world!”
A commotion came from the double doors to Dad’s extensive study. The door levers jiggled, and someone shouted.
“Albert! Unlock these doors! Wiley’s in there, isn’t he? You’re using him as a shield, you coward! Give me my pendant!”
“That’s Mom!” Wiley said.
“Not yet, Kathleen!” Dad said. He went to Wiley. “To tell you the truth, I stole the pendant. She didn’t like that at all. But I NEED it! Come. I’ll show you.” Wiley slid off the chair and followed. He and Albert approached the tripod. “Listen to what I am about to tell you. It is important, Wiley! At the top is the clock, and the clock’s alarm is the key. Remember that!”
“Albert! Open this door at once! I’m getting angry,” Mom said.
Wiley started to the door, but Dad touched his shoulder. “Don’t. She’s dangerous.”
Wiley frowned. “How is Mom dangerous?”
Mom pounded the door. Dad’s voice rose over her racket. “I’ll explain later, but first, I must show you this. It is of vital importance. I don’t have time to go over physics, and you wouldn’t understand the theory or the eleven dimensions anyway. Listen! Opening the portal takes vibration and sound combined with light,” Dad said. He shook a finger at the pendant. “It also takes gravity. The speed or frequency rate of the vibration wave down from the clock through the can….” Dad said.
His nervous hand motioned from the top of the items down to the amulet. “And the open can serves as a soundwave transformer. Sound vibrates the string out of the resonator.” Dad went to the window and pointed to the stars. “Then the pendant refracts light from the pinwheel star, the North Star! And it goes back up again, over and over like ripples on the water! It takes all that to open the portal. Wiley! Pay attention! The pinwheel star must interact with the pendant at the exact….”
“I’m giving you your final warning!” Kathleen said, yelling from outside the door.
Dad took two steps toward the big double door. “Kathleen! I can’t let those Elves send you through that terrible machine again! It’s changed you, and now you don’t care about Wiley or me! If you try to hurt us, I’ll smash the pendant!”
“You wouldn’t dare defy me!” Kathleen said through the door. Dad went to his lab table and grabbed a small hammer.
Flames shot through the gaps and seams of the doorframe, and smoke churned through the top of the door. Curly-haired young Wiley screamed and ran around in a circle. He ducked behind the big green overstuffed chair.
BOOM!
The double doors burst inward in a ball of flame and smoke. A giant woman, seven feet tall and broad-shouldered, strode through the smoke. She marched into the study; eyes reddened as if she’d been crying. The woman stood there like a giant; she had the same hair as Mom, but she couldn’t be the Mom that Wiley knew.
She held her arms forward and curled her slender claw-like fingers. Long, black wavy hair fell over her shoulders onto the front and back of her blue dress. Her head snapped toward Dad’s items hanging from the tripod.
She smiled at Dad with red lips. “Planning on going somewhere?” the tall woman asked. She held her arms out straight and made two fists.
Dad ran to the tripod, gripped the ruby, and raised the hammer threatening to smash the pendant. “I will maroon you here, Kathleen! You need this ruby to return on your own!”
“Give me my ruby or die!” Flames formed in her fists. Kathleen tossed her hands out and sent a fireball at Dad. He ducked, and her ball of fire smashed into the curtains. They caught fire, and it raced to the ceiling. Wiley peeked from the back of the chair as smoke filled the room. The monster woman towered over Dad.
Wiley gripped the arm of the chair and shouted at Dad. “Who is she?!”
Another fireball flew from Kathleen’s hands, and Dad ducked as it bashed into his bookshelf. “You’ll never get back to Deamlon without my help!”
The fireball set the wall on fire. Standing under the tripod, Dad brought the small hammer down on the glass ruby. Dad struck his palm with a smack, cracking the ruby into pieces sending them scattering to the floor. She came to the tripod, and Dad stood back.
Kathleen snapped her fingers, and the pieces flew up from the polished wood floor and into her hand.
“How did you do that? I smashed it!” Dad said.
“Albert, you KNOW my ruby is a part of me!” She laughed from deep in her throat. “Now I have it.”
Kathleen lifted the amulet hanging from the string and passed the shattered ruby’s fragments over the pendant. The pieces reformed into the setting, all but one. She started to jerk it off the string but noticed the missing piece.
Kathleen doubled her fists and arched her back, screaming. “WHERE IS IT?” She searched the floor, then turned her attention to Wiley, scowling. “You have it!” Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. Fire blazed across the ceiling and the smoke thickened.
Wiley shook his head. Behind Kathleen, Dad adjusted the clock’s alarm while keeping an eye on her. Everything was still set, the clock, the can, and the ruby amulet, although cracked and a piece missing. He checked the alignment and the time, and the clock ticked the last seconds. Kathleen raised her hand to send fire at Wiley, but the clock’s alarm sounded. The ruby snapped toward the north star.
Dad jerked the collar of Kathleen’s gown, and they tumbled under the tripod.
Tiny, flint-like sparks shot from their clothes. The sparks grew into small fires in front of them, and Dad covered his face. Kathleen held firm to the ruby pendant as a rainbow appeared around them.
Kathleen tried to grab at the ruby pendant hanging on the string while she and Dad fought, and they fell into the rainbow. Sparks and fire grew around them, and Dad pulled her further into it. Edges of their clothing caught fire. And so did Dad’s laboratory.
Dad yelled back at Wiley as they faded out of sight. “Wiley! I’ll find a way to stop her. Use the exit plan I showed you! Run to the doors. GET OUT NOW!”
Dad and the monster woman vanished.
The study burned. Fire raced across the ceiling. Flames from the bookshelf lit containers on Dad’s laboratory table. Beakers popped, exploding flammable liquid in a mist. The long table whooshed into a flat field of roaring fire. Toxic smoke filled the room, choking Wiley. He crawled through the double doors and into the hall. He got to his feet as fire raced out of the study and across the hall’s ceiling. He ran down the hall toward the front door. He ran, and he didn’t stop.
Wiley reached the front lawn, coughing and rolling on the grass. Flames consumed the entire east wing of the mansion. He knelt, defeated, staring at the fire. An adult squatted and wrapped both arms around him from behind. He stared up into the face of their housekeeper.
“Where’s Albert and Kathleen?” asked the salt-and-pepper, middle-aged woman.
“They disappeared through the tripod,” Wiley said. Sirens screamed in the distance, and the sounds became birds chirping outside his trailer as he awakened from the dream.
