Rain poured for a while, then slowed to a steady beat.
Inside Wiley’s trailer, the “portal device,” with its components tied on a piece of cord, laid curled up on the small dining table. Wiley’s device dripped rainwater off the table’s edge and made a puddle on the floor. He sat on the torn, red vinyl seat and propped his head in his hand, staring at it, motionless. Out the back, rainwater dripped from the roof and ran down the plywood ramp.
Frustrated, Wiley slapped the tabletop, grabbed his tape measure, then checked the spacing of the clock, can, and ruby shard. It read the same as when Wiley measured it a little while before, one foot between the three things. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the dream of his Dad. Could it have been a memory, not a dream at all, but real happenings the day they disappeared?
His father, Albert, had sat him down in his dream, talked to him, and then went to the tripod. Albert shouted at Kathleen, banging on the locked door, and his father spoke about something. What did he say? He told Wiley, ‘the clock is the key.’ Or did he say the bell? Kathleen, or Mom, or that monster woman, burst in and shot fire from her hands. The flames formed in her palms around her curled fingers.
It had to be a dream. It couldn’t have been history. Moms don’t grow to over seven feet tall and try to kill their families by shooting fireballs.
Squeezing his eyes tight, Wiley concentrated on Dad’s words. The ruby held the key to it all, or did Dad say the clock had the answer? Dad. He remembered the conversation with Rhonda, asking him if he did this to find his parents. “What am I looking for?”
Rhonda had talked to him in the cafeteria about girls. “Am I looking for my parents? Or am I looking for someone else?” To find a life, a real future with someone to love. That hurt. That’s the part he beat back down. Tears welled in his eyes. Nobody knows lonely as I do. Wiley’s lip quivered, and then his heart thumped, then skipped, and pain snagged his chest. Hard. He gritted his teeth and grabbed his wet shirt over his heart. He put his forehead down on the tabletop and took deep breaths until the pain subsided.
Wiley frowned, uncomfortable in his hip. He removed his phone from his back pocket and placed it on the table beside the stringed portal device. He checked the battery status, and it showed one hundred percent. “That’s impossible. I haven’t charged it in two days.” He had to take it to the hospital to charge it.
The screen turned blue again, and then the cold blue fire jumped from the smooth glass, three inches high. Wiley jumped back as the flames rippled, flicked, and danced over the slick glass. Wide-eyed, Wiley cupped his right hand over the cold flames, and they tickled his palm. He leaned down and gazed into the fire. Deep inside the blue vapor, the planet with its three moons rotated on its axis.
“I see that planet again. What’s going on?”
It had a cloudy atmosphere, blue water, and polar ice caps. The moons followed one another like a kite’s tail around the planet. They spaced far enough apart so that the tiniest moon set as the white star rose. The largest moon’s diameter looked more extensive than that of our moon. The middle moon had a smaller diameter. The smallest moon’s size compared to a sizeable asteroid but had a perfect sphere shape.
“I’ll bet they have a name for each moon,” Wiley said.
“I asked, and the phone told me.”
Wiley wanted a closer look, so he reached through the icy blue fire. He touched the screen and did an un-pinch maneuver. The view got closer.
An ocean and two mountain ranges came into focus. He did the unpinch again and zoomed in closer. “The oceans,” Wiley said. Words appeared above the two vast water bodies. Above the most extensive read, The Great Crystal Sea, and above the lesser one, The Winding Sea.
Two of the tendrils went into his nostrils, and he breathed the vapor for the second time in two days. As Wiley held the phone in his palm, he closed his eyes and smiled, “Mmmmm.” The mist curled around his nose and eyes. Inside the blue on the glass, the planet rotated.
The clouds parted, and daylight from the trailer’s gaping end interfered with Wiley’s vision. So, he set the phone on the tabletop and cupped his hands around it. Blue vapor filled his hands.
The phone showed him a country with mountains and a vast plain or meadow on a land covered in forests. Rivers ran through the woods to the sea. It had towns and cities along the border of an immense plain, with seaports along the coasts. It had vast forests everywhere else.
Wiley leaned back on the vinyl booth’s back and said, “there’s abundant life,” and he breathed in more of the blue vapor. Blue fog drifted through the trailer, and Wiley continued to examine his discovery.
A broad swath of meadowland, the plains, stretched across half of that continent, the largest one, and it had an immense forest covering the west half. The forest ended at a range of mountains along the west coast. Vast forest covered the land to the south, and a Boreal forest covered the far north.
The thousand-mile-long meadowland ran from the sea in the east to the forest in the west. On the meadow’s western edge sat a great walled city with roads leading from the east and west gates.
The planet looked bigger than Earth. The three large moons reflected the white star’s light around the globe like nightlights. It appeared never to be pitch dark.
Wiley’s eyes became heavy from inhaling the blue fire. Sleepiness washed over him with the suddenness of a drug. He closed his eyes and fell asleep on his arm.
***
Wiley dreamed of the world on his phone. He did the unpinch maneuver again and zoomed in closer to the big city on the eastern edge of the vast meadow. Thousands of square miles of cultivated farmland laid to the north. The farmland sat on a vast river delta over the north of the enormous prairie over a range of tall hills.
He discovered he could move the world around on his phone like Google Earth. He rotated the globe to the eastern grand city and zoomed on a castle, a dwelling fit for royalty – a palace! He unpinched again, narrowing the view to a woman in a pastel yellow gown. She gripped the rail on the balcony of the bastion.
The tall woman with broad, muscular shoulders jerked her head to the sky. She stared straight at Wiley and bared her teeth. Kathleen!
***
Wiley pulled his head back, waking from the dream. “I remember! She said, ‘I am Amora, the Queen of Deamlon!’” He panted, trying to catch his breath. He put his hand over his heart and counted the steady beating, and relaxed. His eyes drooped, heavy with the effect of the blue vapor, and his head dropped forward.
Voices spoke to him from the phone. They chittered nonsense at first, but it became clear after a few seconds.
The voices vibrated his skull in shrill, screeching metallic sounds. “Aim at the pinwheel.” Flying things circled the smartphone screen – dragonflies? No. Little people. “Aim at the pinwheel,” they said.
The blue fog evaporated from the trailer, dwindled, and dissipated, leaving clear air. Wiley took a deep breath and shook his head as the phone’s lock screen returned to the familiar picture. It became an everyday smartphone again. He turned it over in his palm – ordinary, nothing special, and no blue fog.
Wiley lifted the clock, still strung to the can and the ruby, and held the apparatus high at arm’s length. “What does it mean?” He jumped up and put his phone in his pocket. He trotted down the ramp, still slick from the fresh rain.
At the tripod, he hung the things on the cord at the apex. “Dad said light must touch the ruby, so…” he turned the ruby, so the sun glinted off it. He walked back a few yards, spun, and ran under the portal to the other side.
Nothing happened. Wiley spat, put his fists on his hips, then walked back to the device. He turned the can and the ruby toward the sun and held it until it stopped swinging. No wind blew, and the device hung still. He walked away a few yards, pivoted, and ran under the portal again.
Nothing.
Wiley, frustrated, threw his arms up and trotted around the tripod. He lowered his head and ran through the tripod again, getting the same results. Sweat trickled from his temples.
“I’m doing something wrong. What am I forgetting?” He walked to the device and looked at each piece. A memory flashed. “In the dream, Dad adjusted the clock hands before Kathleen burst into the room!”
But how? Wiley adjusted the clock’s hands by turning the knob in back, both toward the sun. He steadied the swinging portal. Wiley moved away, satisfied with the adjustments. He got ready, then ran under the tripod.
Nothing happened.
Wiley walked around his hanging portal device. “I remember Dad saying, ‘At the top is the clock. The clock is the key.’ Dad spoke of vibration waves going down the portal and back up like ripples in a pond. As Mom pounded on the door, Dad fiddled with the clock.”
Wiley put a knee down into the soft wet oak leaves and crossed his arms on his knee. “Where did those vibration waves come from?”
His cellphone rang, and he answered and killed the call, a robocall to save him money on car insurance. Slipping the cell phone into his back pocket, the memory of his father’s face popped into his head. The cell phone had rung. Ringing! The clock is the key.
“The clock ringing. That’s what I heard after Mom burst into the room. Dad’s alarm clock rang!” Wiley stood and walked to the hanging gadget. “That’s it! It’s so simple! That’s what causes the vibration down through the string and back up again!”
Wiley’s hands shook with excitement as he turned the twin bell alarm clock around. “I’ll set it for one minute from now,” he said to himself. As he turned, he checked the time on his cellphone and set the hands and the alarm on the twin bell alarm clock to match.
The little clock rang, and the obnoxious sound shattered the forest stillness.
Wiley’s chest pounded. Thump-bump! Thump-bump!
He gripped his chest and grimaced. Wiley could not move at first, and numbness moved up into his chin. What’s happening with my heart? He took a few deep breaths, and the pain subsided. He got his feet, unsteady, moving toward the portal apparatus. He ducked his head and laughed as his head passed under the ruby shard, giddy from lack of oxygen. He trotted out the other side as the alarm continued to ring.
“Crap! Still here.” He laughed again. “I need to go sit down.”
Wiley went to the trailer, up the ramp, and slid into the red booth seat. He put his head down on the dining table and rested. After he had calmed, he got up and laid on his fold-out sofa bed. Wiley started playing a game on his phone to take his mind off what happened.
“Aim at the pinwheel.” The voice still rang in his ears.
“What do those scratchy voices mean by aiming at the pinwheel?”
He played on his phone. He reached a new level in his game, and it performed the level-up music, and some fireworks crackled. To his surprise, the screen went dark. The phone’s screen changed. Clouds parted, and stars came out. Dad used to show him the constellations out the window of his study and laboratory.
Cold blue vapor came floating from the screen. Under the blue on the screen, stars twinkled, and he tried to make out constellations. Wiley did the un-pinch zoom as blue tendrils danced around his fingers.
Wiley lay on his bed and fell asleep again, letting the phone fall on his chest. He dreamed.
***
Soon, he stood gazing at the panoramic view of the sky out of his father’s window. He stepped back, and Dad’s hand touched his shoulder, and it startled him. He looked up into Albert’s smiling face. He stood beside Dad in his study with its bookshelves and chemistry tables. They looked out the window, and Dad pointed to a bright star. “The pinwheel,” he said.
The dream shifted.
Boom, boom, boom! Someone pounded on the study door. “You can’t have it, Kathleen!” Dad said.
Wiley scrambled out of the big soft chair and hid behind it. Father said, “Wiley! It takes all that to open a portal…the light must interact with the pendant at the exact….”
***
Wiley awoke, sat up, and met total blackness, realizing he had slept for hours. He activated the phone and touched the phone’s flashlight feature. He shined it around the trailer, looking for the battery-operated camping lantern. Wiley found it on the counter beside the sink and clicked it to the lowest setting, stepped off the ramp and into the forest.
At the tripod, Wiley turned the lantern off and stood in darkness. After his eyes adjusted, he searched the sky. Dad had pointed out his window showing him the same star. Dad pointed at the one he always did to begin his lessons, Polaris, the North Star. All the constellations rotated around it.
“Aim at the pinwheel.”
“Of course! That’s what the voices in my head meant! Dad called Polaris, the pinwheel!”
“It’s at the end of the handle on the Little Dipper. If I can find the Big Dipper, I can find Polaris by drawing a line through the two stars that make up the dipper’s lip. Draw the line to the end of the handle on the Little Dipper, and you have Polaris. Dad lined up the clock’s hands and the pendant to Polaris through the window behind his desk. Polaris must be what he meant!”
Wiley searched the sky and stopped, then pointed, “There, between those limbs.” He found the Big Dipper, then traced the line to the North Star! He went to the tripod, inched the heavy legs together. Then he lifted it. He took baby steps. Wiley sat the tripod down every few steps. He moved the burdensome thing to the spot where the device could have a clear field of view of the Polaris, and then he worked the legs apart.
Wiley aligned the clock hands toward Polaris and set the twin bell clock to alarm in two minutes. The cell phone showed the date and time – May 4th, 2018, 10:15 P.M.
The alarm clock sounded a shrill ring sending vibrations down the string into the can. It sounded off with a ringing honk, amplifying the clock’s alarm, and the sound raced up and down the cord.
The ruby shard spun, stopped, and snapped toward the North Star!
Now! Wiley ran toward the tripod. Fiery sparks danced off his face, and he threw his arms up for protection. As he crossed his arms over his eyes, a sheet or pane spread before him, having all the colors of the rainbow. It began with red at the top and ended in indigo. Running became difficult as the multi-colored membrane held him back. He charged into the rainbow pane. Wiley ran harder, slipping and pushing with his feet. The fire and sparks became hotter, and the rainbow colors brighter.
He bowed his head and pushed through like a bull. Wiley drove with his legs and yelled with a terrifying cry, “AAAAARRRRG!” Movement caught his eye, and he looked to the heavens. All the stars in the sky whirled and spun. The sky swirled around the pinwheel in a colossal vortex.
In a hail of fire and sparks, the rainbow popped like a soap bubble. In that shady oak grove, under a tall tripod near his trailer, Wiley vanished.
