Outside Wiley’s trailer, birds chirped as he regained consciousness. Chirping birds seemed strange and out of place after the roar of the wind and the flying debris. His head throbbed from the smack, and a gentle breeze caressed his face – and birds sang. Odd.
He moaned. “Owww,” and rolled over in the narrow space between the table and sink cabinet. “Oh, my head.” He propped up and cupped the lump on the side of his head. “A hammer hit me! That rock hit me hard enough to crack my skull.” He smirked at the tiny, insignificant smear of blood on his palm. “At least I’m alive and apparently not hurt too bad,” he said. The small lump screamed when he touched it. “Whatever hit me gave me a concussion.” He decided to try to stand.
Bracing a hand on the bench seat at the dining table, he pushed himself to his feet. Relieved the trailer still stood, he stepped to the edge of the plywood ramp. The bright sun shined through the steamy mist rising from the forest floor. It glistened through water droplets off the trees and trailer roof. How could it be calm and sunny outside after all that? He stood straight and wobbled.
Still groggy, he opened the slender door to the tiny bathroom. In the mirror above the small oval basin, his dirty face and dusty brown curly hair reflected at him. He had a small trickle of blood at his temple. Wiley hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his chin, neck, and lamb chop stubble darkened his face. “Still can’t grow a full beard. It’s sort of sparse on the cheeks.” He pulled the neck of his shirt out and sniffed. “Oh my god. I need a shower, bad! Plus, I need to shave and get this matted stuff out of my hair.”
He had two choices for a hot shower. The hospital janitors had a shower, but they’d be tromping in and out with the storm cleanup. The two church missions would be full of street people huddling from the storm. But they would be clearing out soon since the storm had passed.
He checked his pocket for his smartphone.
Miracles do happen. It survived. Wiley pressed the side button, and the start screen lit. The phone’s familiar wallpaper showed the cinderblock foundation of the mansion’s ruins. Memories of his dream rushed back. Sit right there, Dad told him.
He remembered Dad’s green desk lamp and how it glowed on Dad’s face.
He swiped the screen. Another memory flash appeared, causing him to flinch. A fireball leaped from Mom’s hands. Mom? He remembered Dad angry and shouting her name in anger, Kathleen. The drapes caught fire, and it consumed them much faster than he thought it could. Whoosh!
Why not go out there and have a look at the place? “Why not? I haven’t been out there in a couple of years.”
The night the mansion burned, the housekeeper had led Wiley to the ambulance. She sat by him while the police officer and firefighters questioned him. The fire chief laughed when Wiley told him how Mom shot fireballs from her hands. The fire chief ruled arson, causing Wiley to ponder the aftermath and his fate. They thought his parents’ bodies were still in the ash and rubble.
Young Wiley told them that Kathleen started the fire with certainty. But the housekeeper overruled him, saying Kathleen might have started the fire. Wiley began to object, saying he saw it all, but he sounded hysterical, and his housekeeper quieted him.
But end the end, the investigators had found no trace of Albert or Kathleen in the rubble. All the family’s vehicles remained in the garage, destroying them beyond repair. So, how did his parents escape the blaze and the area? The answer had to be on foot, of course, and then through public transportation. But why leave the child behind?
Wiley moved into a group foster home that night. Time passed, and the sheriff concluded that the Myatts had left the county, and he turned the case over to State Police investigators. When Wiley heard from the estate’s executor, Wiley learned that the executor couldn’t settle matters until the State Police closed the investigation. Wiley had as much as he could handle surviving the foster life, and memories of that other life faded.
Wiley left the trailer with a small rucksack and skirted the hospital toward the highway. Storm recovery moved ahead at full speed, as he expected. Pine limbs and tree pieces littered the parking lots, roofs, and hoods of cars. Large tree limbs blocked the streets around the massive facility. Workers in hard hats went up in bucket trucks to cut tall trees off power lines.
***
Wiley showered at the Catholic mission, shouldered his rucksack, and walked out of town. He took the highway toward the country club where his parents’ former estate once stood. He turned off the main road onto Country Club Road. The last curve in the road neared, and with every step, the family property moved closer into view. He picked up his pace.
The old foundation had changed. Workers had removed the remaining parts of the cinderblock foundation. The foundation’s packed dirt remained, and groundskeepers had cut the weeds. The foundation sprawled over ten thousand square feet.
Of course, the executor would’ve hired a crew considering the property values. They had removed the long, semicircular driveway, and now grass took its place. The workers removed the fountain in the driveway’s center even though the fire had not harmed it.
He had no desire to sell the property even if he could. If he sold it, he would have no anchor to the life he once had, even if that life existed as a faded memory. This field of grass had become a memorial – a meadow of the faded memories of a happy childhood.
Being here on the foundation gave Wiley a warmth he couldn’t describe. He sat his small nylon rucksack on the ground, threw his arms wide, and smiled up at the sky. I’m home.
He stood at the foyer. The layout of the kitchen and food prep room still had the dirt outline in the far-left corner. Father’s study and the laboratory’s foundation remained ahead and to the right. He went there. He always went to the laboratory first.
The fire started there, where he last saw his Mom and Dad.
The workers had removed the cinder block corners outlining the study and laboratory. He looked to the sky where Mom and Dad’s bedroom used to be on the second floor; Mother’s chambers, Dad had called it.
He snapped a picture of the foundation for the new wallpaper. Then he kicked the dirt under the grass and dandelions. It neither felt like soft dirt nor gravel. As Wiley kicked the soil, it felt coarse, and it crumbled like cinders. The ground still had bits of debris from the fire. The cleanup crew had hand-raked the big chunks of debris but couldn’t get all the tiny fragments.
Something glinted in the mix of dirt and ashy soil, something red. Wiley took a knee and found a shiny red piece of glass sticking out of the rough. He began scraping at it with his fingernail. Wiley pinched the red glass between thumb and forefinger and pulled working it free. He held a two-inch, red glass shard in his palm. The memory came of his father standing under the tripod holding his hammer. Dad smashed Mom’s pendant into these shards.
Squatting like a baseball catcher, he pulled his smartphone from his back pocket again. Unexpectedly, his phone vibrated in his hand. Odd. Wiley hadn’t set it to vibrate. The cellphone’s screen changed. It turned blue. Blue?
At once, small flames of icy blue fire rose from the glass surface. A cold fire leaped and danced over the surface of the glass. Deep within the dancing blue blazes on the screen, a planet rotated on its axis, a different world, not Earth. The alien world had three moons.
His heart quickened as the glass changed, turning white. As his heart rate increased, pain and numbness rose toward his left shoulder, and he grimaced. The scene showed a tall woman in a blue gown fighting to push through a multicolored, opaque membrane. The rainbow bands wrapped her like a long bed sheet trailing behind her. The huge, tall woman dressed in the blue gown tried to reach through the stripes of color toward him. The smartphone rang and vibrated. Fear bubbled up in Wiley, along with the pain in his shoulder. Danger! Run!
He started toward the road clutching the red shard of ruby glass in one hand and his smartphone in the other. A movement behind him caught his eye, and a multicolored pane materialized. Wiley spun to face it.
A massive, seven-foot-tall woman pushed into the rainbow sheet, making it stretch like rubber. Sparks jumped from it like Fourth of July sparklers. The scene jogged his dream memory of Dad and Mom fighting through the same sparkles under the tripod.
The giant of a woman strained to push through with her hands, pushing it with her arms outstretched. She had broad, muscular shoulders and long black hair, like the big woman from his dream.
Kathleen?
The woman’s strong, thick, muscled arms pushed hard against the rainbow sheath. Wiley fell on his butt and crab-walked backward as the tall woman approached. The warped rainbow trailed behind her like a bedsheet. She tried to push through it, and as she reached for him, her fingers stretched the membrane.
I know her! He stopped, hurried to his knees, and leaned forward, squinting. Wiley stared at the woman’s face.
“Wait a minute!” he said and got to his feet. “You’re my mother! Well, not my mother, but the woman Dad called Kathleen….”
“Quiet, Earthman!” the woman said in a deep, bellowing voice from behind the rainbow. “Give me the ruby shard!”
The big woman pushed hard, and her hands stretched the membrane to the tearing point. Another push and the rainbow ripped. It popped, tore from her arms and face, and the woman stepped through. She stood before Wiley in person, no longer an apparition, her long black hair blowing wild. She pointed to Wiley’s right hand.
“Give it to me,” she said. Her baritone, smooth voice reverberated.
“You’re a bigger woman, and your chin is wider than Mom’s, and your mouth, too,” Wiley said, panting. “But you’ve got Mom’s eyes and straight nose.”
“You talk nonsense, Boy-Myn,” the woman said. Myn? Weird. It sounded like she said, “Mayan.” Another flash of his dream came. This same woman had clenched fists and marched into Dad’s laboratory. Seeing her up close, Wiley realized his nightmare had been real memories.
“Isn’t this where you say, ‘all the better to see me with?” Wiley asked with a shaky voice. He put his trembling hand, the one holding the ruby, behind his back.
The woman stopped her advance a foot from Wiley. Her perfume wafted to him, and the odor jolted his memory. Mom wore the same sweet, flowery fragrance. He stood still. “Give me my ruby piece, Boy-Myn.”
The woman stood close, towering over Wiley. “Why do you call me Boy-Myn? You know me,” Wiley said. “I see it in your eyes. You’re amazed to see me all grown up, aren’t you! You used to read me the story of the three little pigs, remember the big bad wolf?”
She put her fists on her hips and squinted. “Are you calling me a big bad wolf?”
“Of course not! We should get acquainted again! I’d offer you a drink, Mom,” Wiley said, spreading his arms and looking all about him, “but you burned the place down. You do remember that don’t you?”
She took a breath and remained calm. “I am Amora, the Queen of Deamlon. I demand you hand me my ruby piece,” she said, opening her fist and showing him her palm. Amora smiled and batted her eyelashes. “It is mine. Give it to me, and I will be on my way.”
“Mom! There are a million things I’ve wanted to tell you if I ever ran into you again. Did you know being in the foster system SUCKS?”
Amora lost her temper. “GIVE ME THE RUBY PIECE!”
“But Mom! You haven’t even acknowledged me yet. Also, I need to tell you. Not hugging me hurts a little. Look, your husband is Albert, remember? I’m your son, Wiley!” Wiley smiled a big toothy smile.
Amora’s hand shot out in a blink and gripped Wiley’s throat. Wiley tried to suck air but squeaked. He grabbed her sinewy, muscled arm. “I’m shy around girls,” Wiley said through clenched teeth, straining to speak through her grip. “You got any motherly advice for me?”
Her eyes narrowed as she clenched her teeth. She pulled Wiley’s face close and hissed at him. “You little ant! I can snap your head off like plucking a daisy! No more words. Give me what is mine!”
Wiley held the ruby piece in his left hand and his smartphone in his right. The phone went warm, and he glanced down at it. A blue glow emanated from the phone, and small blue flames licked between his fingers. A thought came to him like a whisper in his ear. Show her the phone instead!
Amora’s breath blew hot in his face, and her eyes had the look of a madwoman. Wiley nodded. “Okay. Have it your way. Here!” He put the smartphone in her face. The blue flames jumped from the glass onto her.
“What have you done with Dad?” Wiley asked. Blue flame raced up her nose in twin braided tendrils.
Amora giggled. “Hehe. Fairy fire. I haven’t seen this in ages.”
“Tell me, what have you done with Albert?” Wiley asked. “I had a vision. You and he fought. He grabbed you, and you guys went through that portal. Now, where is he?”
Her giggly mood turned to fear as the fire from the phone’s screen expanded. A ball of blue flame engulfed her head, whooshing from the glass, and she tried to fan it away. Her hands slipped through it as if it were mist.
Amora backpedaled as blue flames grew, surrounding and swirling around her body. The flames tightened into vines and weaved a cocoon over the seven-foot-tall woman. The tendrils arched from the phone and squeezed her, surrounding and spinning her.
Wiley stepped back, mouth open and eyes wide as he held his white smartphone at arm’s length. The blue flame roared out of it and took control of the huge woman. He froze, letting the phone control her.
A rainbow-colored pane appeared behind her, the same barrier she had torn through moments ago. The blue cocoon stopped spinning and moved into the rainbow. When it touched the pane, sparks flew around the edges of the blue wrapping.
Her body pushed hard against the flexible rainbow barrier. The sparks and flame jumped and popped, and Wiley cringed and covered his face. The blue cocoon around Amora tore through the rainbow.
Amora disappeared, and the rainbow sheet with her.
Wiley took a minute to wrap his mind around what he saw. “That was her. Mom, Kathleen, rather. The woman who attacked me. And my phone sent her back to where? Queen of Deamlon, she had said. Why did she come here? For this piece of glass?” Wiley held up the red shard of glass, turning it around, letting the afternoon sun twinkle through it.
He pressed the button on the side of the phone, and it came to life. The old wallpaper picture appeared as if nothing happened. He turned the phone over in his hand and noticed how cool the battery felt. After all the fire, it should be hot.
“How did it produce all that blue fire? How did it speak to me? I don’t know, but I owe it some gratitude.”
Wiley checked for minutes and texts on a wireless plan called Play’n’Rate. It cost nothing, but he had to play and rate the games it downloaded. Higher scores and levels meant more minutes or texts. He found his phone maxed out with minutes and data, and it should not have.
Later, back at the trailer, Wiley had an idea, and he put on a disguise. He changed clothes, putting on a plaid shirt and denim jacket. He wet his wavy hair and slicked it back, and put on a tall, white cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Sunglasses topped off the look.
He headed out on foot for a big box store down the highway toward the city.
After a two-mile walk, Wiley walked through the store’s double doors, and the greeter smiled and nodded. People shopping here wore all kinds of clothing, from pajama bottoms to miniskirts. A cowboy ensemble would not stand out in here.
In the housewares section’s aisles, he searched many styles of alarm clocks, and he soon found what he needed. The following department would not take long, either.
A plain-clothes security officer stopped him on his way out of the store as he passed the registers. The muscular officer dressed in a tight t-shirt and jeans showed him a badge in a foldout wallet. “We’ve been watching you,” the big man said. “You took that hat off in the housewares department, and we saw you put something in it. Remove the hat, please.”
“Okay, okay,” Wiley said. He turned the hat up for the officer to examine. The officer searched the cowboy hat and stared at Wiley, open-mouthed. It held nothing.
“Turn around and hold out your arms,” the security officer said.
“You want to pat me down,” Wiley said.
“That’s right. Cooperate, or I’m on the radio for help. That’s a face down, tile floor, a knee in the back, and handcuffs. You don’t want all that,” the officer said, shaking his head. Wiley rolled his eyes, turned, and with his big cowboy hat in his outstretched hand, he cooperated. No one had ever caught him shoplifting. Could this officer be the first?
The officer patted him from top to bottom and removed his cell phone from his back pocket. The officer continued to pat him down from his waist, around both legs. Wiley had put the clock and the twine in the loose tops of his boots.
While the security officer patted his legs down to his cowboy boots, a purple, foggy mist circled them. Wiley froze, eyes wide. What is that? Wiley’s heart began to pound, and his chest pain returned.
The officer didn’t see the mist, or if he did, he didn’t say anything. Is it me? Did I make that purple mist? The musclebound officer felt around the top of his cowboy boots through the purple cloud.
As the officer pinched Wiley’s boot top, the corona gave off wispy purple trails around the twin bell clock. He felt the clock! The officer had his hand all over the clock and ignored it! The security man stood, grinning, then finished his search by taking a few extra pats around the back of Wiley’s waist.
“Okay, you’re clean,” the security officer said. Huh? “I don’t know where you put it, but you took something. I want you to walk near the exit door RFID scanner.”
Wiley couldn’t believe the man didn’t have him on the floor!
Wiley walked to the exit door near the RFID scanner and stood. It scans for tags on products not deactivated at the checkout. The double doors opened, Wiley walked through, and no alarm sounded. Wiley went back to the officer.
The officer handed him his phone and pulled a small walkie-talkie from his hip pocket. He cleared Wiley to leave.
Back at the trailer, Wiley sat at the small dining booth and removed his boots. He emptied the little clock and the roll of string onto the tabletop. Still stiff around the top, new boots can conceal things if a guy like Wiley has skinny enough legs. He examined the top edge for any residue or remnant of the purple stuff and found nothing there.
As far as the RFID scanner goes, the big box stores can’t afford to put a three-dollar RFID bar code on a nine-dollar clock. He learned to rub his forefinger firmly over the barcode before he stole an item. He did it to feel for an underlying circuit, which he did as a habit whenever he picked up a product. Plus, the tall cowboy hat did its job as a distractor – a red herring.
Also, the floor detective felt the clock, but the purple mist did something to him. It made him look dazed, grinning, and he forgot that he squeezed the clock. Wiley whispered. “What happened? What is the purple fog, and what made it appear when I needed help?”
He laid the items on his table. He had a twin bell alarm clock, the same as the one Dad used but a little smaller. He also had an aluminum can with the top opened, which he took from the hospital trash. Wiley placed the ruby shard next to the other items.
Tonight, he would go “find” three eight-foot lengths of two-by-four lumber. He opened Google on his phone and typed “how to build a tripod.” He waited for the results.
“Where did that purple mist come from?” Wiley looked up from his phone. “And the blue fire.”
He found a YouTube video of a man building a big tripod.
