Ten teenagers discover a hidden world….and a horrifying secret.
Excerpt
In a matter of seconds, all ten of the teens had been bound by the wrists. One of the hooded figures had pulled out a long skinny object, muttered “Ropastope!”, and amazingly, a thick rough rope had shot out of it and wrapped itself around their wrists. Nick could do nothing as he was dragged towards the giant cart along with the others.
“What do you think, Razortooth? Non-magical beings?” one of the hooded figures roughly asked the wolf-man, spit flying from his mouth.
“Oh, yes indeed!” Razortooth grinned nastily. “These here kiddies must have somehow come across the Oakenwood Gateway. Lucky us, lucky us!”
“Zorkon’ll be pleased with this!” another hooded figure exclaimed. “This time we’ve got humans instead of elves, eh, Bogdorf?”
“Haha! Yes indeed, Marvin! Only thing better than a live human is more humans! We’ll be gettin’ a pay raise after this! That is, if we got paid to begin with!”
The man let out a hideous cackle as he laughed with his comrades.
“Look at this, Razortooth, they’ve even got a little doggie with them!”
“You’ll be wanting to keep him, eh, Razortooth?”
“No,” the wolf-man growled to his friends. “He’s not my type. Look at him! All cute and cuddly. I want a big black one that’ll rip a man to shreds on my orders!”
“Well, we’re takin’ the dog too, then, aren’t we?” the man called Bogdorf asked.
“Ah, feed him to Devilius’ new monster, that’s what I say,” snarled Razortooth.
Two of the hooded figures lifted Nick off the ground and were about to heave him through the cage door when they stopped.
“Hey, what was that?”
“What’re you on about now, Bogdorf?”
Then Nick realized something; Mrs. Sykes wasn’t there.
“I swear I just saw somebody in the woods over there, Marvin.”
The two figures craned their heads around.
“I don’t see nothin’.”
“Well, what if it’s more kids?”
“What if it’s a bloody squirrel, Bogdorf! Eh?”
“I just thought-”
“Contego!”
In a flash, everything changed. The two figures holding Nick dropped him suddenly. As he looked up, he thought he saw one of them blasted away as a strange blue light surrounded him.
It was Mrs. Sykes, and she was holding a long skinny stick just like the one the hooded figure had used. As Greg’s eyes became adjusted, he saw a jet of light streaming from the black stick, then spreading outward over their heads to form a half-sphere around him and his friends. He could still see through the shield of blue light, but it was as if they were inside a bubble.
“Get back, all of you!” Mrs. Sykes yelled at the dark figures. “These kids are mine. You will not take any of them!”
The hooded men glanced cautiously, and even fearfully, back at Mrs. Sykes as they retreated. They didn’t fight back or even bother talking to her.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” one of them grumbled, and a moment later they were scrambling away down the road with their horse and cart.
Mrs. Sykes waited until they were out of sight before releasing the shield. The blue light vanished as she shouted “Reverso!”, and Nick found himself lying on the dirt road with his friends in the moonlight.
She then shouted “Reverso!” once more, pointing it at Nick’s bound hands, then Greg’s, Katie’s, and so on. Amazingly, there was a crackling sound as blue lightning erupted from the stick each time, wrapped itself around the teens’ wrists, and freed their hands. Then she stowed the object away in the pocket of her dress and bent down to help them all. Everyone just stared, white-faced, at each other for a few moments before Mikey broke the silence.
“Mrs. Sykes?” he said cautiously, his voice shaking. “Are you a….a….?”
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry it had to happen like this!” she exclaimed, almost in tears. “What are the chances they’d be right there when we came out of the gateway?! It was lucky I was the last one out. They didn’t even see me coming!”
“Mrs. Sykes,” Greg said very seriously, “what just happened?”
Their teacher took a deep breath before saying, “It’s a lot to explain, so please forgive me if I skim over the small details. You see, Greg, I’m a witch.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Josh grumbled, still sitting on the road.
“So, wait a second, was that magic you just did?!” Mikey asked eagerly.
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Sykes answered. “It’s a contego spell, which is basically a shielding charm. I created a shield around us that automatically throws enemies outside and doesn’t let anything come back in. That’s why they didn’t bother fighting back; they knew it would do no good. The shield would have just repelled anything they fired at us.”
Greg’s mouth was open in disbelief. “This can’t be happening,” he finally muttered to himself.
“So- hold on again- was that a wand that you just had?” Mikey went on.
“Yes, of course,” replied Mrs. Sykes. “Every good witch has a wand these days. Unfortunately, however, most of the Zorkonians do too.”
“Zorkowawhat?!” Josh exclaimed in disbelief.
“Are those what just captured us?” Mikey asked.
“Hold it, hold it,” Greg yelled from the ground as he wiped his sweaty forehead with his hand. “Are you saying that there are bad….people around? Like those people?”
“They’re wizards, in fact,” Mrs. Sykes answered calmly. “And other….beings.”
“And other beings?!” Greg cried. “What does that mean?! What was that one dude who was all hairy?! Are you telling me- are you freaking telling me that that was a WEREWOLF?!”
“Greg, please calm down,” Mrs. Sykes urged. Nick could tell she had changed completely; she was no longer the upbeat, enthusiastic teacher they knew in school. Now she was faced with an immense task; the task of introducing ten students to her unbelievable world, and guiding them through it safely.
“I….I just….where the hell are we?!” Greg asked.
“It’s….it’s not very easy to explain, unfortunately.”
“That’s because we’re in a freaking fantasy world!” he shot back, his voice quivering with fear. “That’s because this place technically doesn’t exist, isn’t that it?! You don’t even have to tell me; I know how it goes!!”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s like that one book I was reading!” Mikey exclaimed. “Where there’s a fantasy world that’s hidden from the real world, and only certain people know about it!”
“But this isn’t a freaking book, Mikey! THIS IS REAL!!”
“Please, everyone!” Mrs. Sykes shouted. “Let me explain!”
“Yeah, I’d like to hear some explaining!” Greg cried. “I just got chased by evil green ghosts who kill people and blow things up, and now I’m sitting in a place that doesn’t exist! What kind of-”
“Greg,” Mrs. Sykes stated calmly, “everything will be fine. You’re very lucky to be here with me. We’re all lucky we didn’t get taken off to Zorkon’s castle-”
“Whoa, whoa,” Nick butt in, “so what would have happened if they’d taken us away?!”
But Mrs. Sykes shook her head. “You don’t want to know. Please trust me on that.”
“No,” Nick insisted, “I want to know what we’ve got ourselves into!”
“Bad things!” Mrs. Sykes replied irritably. “Things beyond your worst nightmares! Things you won’t live to tell anyone about!”
“Well?” Nick urged determinedly. “Things like what?”
“Like-”
“Tarantella!”
Another blue lightning-bolt crackled out of the forest and hit Mrs. Sykes squarely in the chest. Sticky spider webs exploded around her as she fell to the ground, encasing her like prey caught in a web.
The teens stared helplessly as the hooded figures reappeared from the trees surrounding them, and the huge black horse and cart emerged from the darkness.
“Heehee! Good one, Artemis! Hit her right in the chest!”
“Serves her right!” one of the figures cackled. “After that show she put on the first time! I can’t believe she really thought we were gone! One old witch stop four Zorkonians?! Zorkon’d kill us!”
The wolf-man reappeared over Nick, grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and thrust him into the caged cart while the others took care of his friends.
“Nice seeing you again, kid!” he growled as he slammed the door shut and locked it with a strangely-shaped key. “Ready for a ride?”
Nick rolled over on the wooden floor as the horse pulled them forward with a nasty jolt. He looked around to see Ben and Matt scared speechless, Cat whimpering in a corner, and Mrs. Sykes unable to move at all under the spider webs. Then he glanced outside the cage, but it was too dark to make out anything, except for the shadows of trees on either side of the road and the moon shining high above them.
“We’re takin’ ‘em to Zorkon straight away, ain’t we, Razortooth?” a hooded figure asked as they walked along beside the horse.
“Oh, we are indeed, Bogdorf. He’ll be pleased, of course, with all that’s about to happen tomorrow night.”
“You reckon he’ll try and use them as bait, or something like that?” a different figure questioned.
“I don’t know about that. But I wouldn’t mind keeping one of them for myself!” Razortooth paused and licked his lips hopefully. “Victor’ll probably want one, too. That rascal….”
Nick tried to block the conversation out of his mind; it wasn’t doing him any good. It was only making him panic even more.
“Katie!” he whispered, and crawled over to her amidst the hay scattered throughout the wooden base.
“Listen,” he went on as he leaned up against the cage walls beside her. “It’s gonna be OK.”
What a stupid thing to say. I must sound like a complete idiot!
“We have to….uh, work together and get through this, right?” he continued, trying to cover up the fear in his quivering voice. “So, uh….let’s think….we need a way to find that tunnel once we get outta here, I guess, so we can get back home….so let’s try and think of any….hey!”
Nick’s eyes lit up as an idea popped into his mind.
“Katie, the candy corn! Do you still have it?!”
Katie was too shaken to answer, but ruffled through her giant purse and pulled out the half-eaten bag from earlier that day.
“OK,” Nick went on, glancing ahead at the hooded figures. After making sure they were deep in conversation, he quietly opened the bag, pulled out a tiny piece of candy, and dropped it through a crack in the wooden base.
“W-w-what are you doing?” Katie whispered.
“Leaving a trail!” replied Nick as he dropped more candy through the crack, “So we can follow it back to where we got captured, and find the tunnel back to Parker’s Point!”
Katie looked back, but couldn’t make out any trail as she squinted into the darkness.
“I d-don’t know, Nick,” she whimpered.
“We’ll be able to see them in the daytime, don’t worry!” Nick whispered back.
After a few minutes the hooded figures steered them off the main road and onto a tiny pathway, leading them deeper into the forest. They traveled on and on, for what seemed like hours. Nick spaced the candy further and further apart as time went on, not sure if it would last the whole journey. Mrs. Sykes was stone-still inside the spider web-net, and Cat whimpered quietly in the corner, but the other teens just huddled fearfully against the cage wall, not knowing what was coming or where they were going. And outside the cart, the trees grew thicker and taller as they were pulled onto even skinnier pathways, until the underbrush scraped against either side of the cart.
Finally, the forest ended to their right, and they rolled past a vast field of grass. Ahead of them, at the end of the field, stood a giant black tower, illuminated under the moonlit sky. It was surrounded by several smaller structures and a disheveled stone wall, but the most ominous thing was the bright green light radiating from the upper windows of the fortress.
The horse pulled their cart off the tiny pathway and up a dirt road, stopping on the lawn in front of the entrance. Nick hastily stuffed the candy corn back into Katie’s purse and looked up to see a tall figure striding towards them from the tower doors. Behind him scuttled a tiny man in a lab coat and another tall figure wearing a black cape.
The man in front had a gray mustache and a long pointy beard. He wore billowing midnight-blue robes with stars and moons studded across the outer layer, and also had a pointy hat to match.
“Well, well, well,” he exclaimed as he strode forward, “if it isn’t my fine, ferocious werewolf and his companions, back from a hard night’s work!”
“My Lord,” Razortooth replied, bowing low before his master.
“Hahaha, look at that, Victor!” the tiny man behind him exclaimed to his friend, “They have captured more victims for my incessant studies!”
“They are young,” the man in the cape replied as he stopped to watch with the scientist, “Young and fresh.”
The star-studded man swept past Razortooth and his friends to gaze at the cart, and everyone inside it. There was silence for a few seconds as he surveyed the scene, and the hooded figures watched keenly.
“Razortooth?” the man finally said. “In all my years as an accomplished wizard, I have never seen any of my followers capture this many humans at one time.”
Razortooth grinned nastily, baring his sharp yellow teeth.
“How did you do it?” the man asked simply, folding his arms and pacing back and forth.
“Found them coming out of the Oakenwood Gateway, My Lord,” answered Razortooth. “All of them, including that witch and the dog.”
“Oooh, I’d beware of the witch, though!” one of the other hooded men blurted out. “She’s a feisty one, that one!”
“Shut your big fat mouth, Bogdorf!” Razortooth snapped from the corner of his lips.
The star-studded man thought for a second before saying, “Pick the juiciest one, Razortooth. They’ll be all yours.”
“Thank you, My Lord,” Razortooth replied, and bowed again. Then he walked to the back of the cage, unlocked it, and stared hungrily at the petrified teens. Before he had a chance to react, Nick found himself being dragged out of the cage and onto the cold wet grass outside.
“You’re nice and built, boy,” he heard Razortooth growl from somewhere overhead. “You’ll make a tasty snack.”
“My Lord,” one of the other hooded figures began, “you’ll understand if I feel Marvin and I deserve some of the share?”
“You will get your reward,” answered the man, “but it won’t be one of these humans or the dog. I have other ways in which I can repay my faithful followers.”
“So, what’s to be done with the rest of them?” the figure asked.
The man paused for a moment. “Feed them to the monsters,” he finally said, and swept away towards the door, his dark cape billowing behind him.
Mikey couldn’t believe what he thought he heard as he was pulled from the cart. Feed them to the monsters?!
“Search ‘em before we take ‘em in!” someone was saying. “Make sure they don’t got no weapons or nothing like that. We’re takin’ ‘em to the dungeons!”
Meanwhile the tiny man in the lab coat had hurried after the star-studded man, arguing angrily.
“Zorkon, I feel compelled to object to this decision! I am in short supply of humans for my next experiment, and I wish for at least two of these specimens! There are, at the least, ten of them! Would it not be a waste of precious victims to simply surrender them to the repugnant beasts which lurk in the depths of-”
“Don’t argue with me, Devilius,” the man snapped, cutting the scientist short.
One hooded figure snatched Mikey’s wallet and cell phone from his pocket, while another grabbed the rest of the teens from the cart and the third conjured ropes and bound them all together.
“Golly, look at this, Artemis! He’s got a little box that lights up!”
“Give me that, Marvin.”
“Looky here! This one’s got one of them, too!” a different man cried. “Ha! It makes numbers if you press the buttons, Artemis! Look at this! It makes numbers!”
Razortooth had grabbed a hold of Katie’s purse and was snatching random things out of it curiously.
“Take a look here! She’s got all kinds of tiny bottles in this bag!”
“You think they might be potions, Razortooth?”
“Don’t know, Artemis. This one says ‘Nail Polish’, though….never heard of no potion like that….”
Greg cowered in the back of the cage, and was about to be the last one pulled out. But the figure stopped short of him when he noticed what Razortooth had just pulled out of the purse, and crawled back outside.
“Put that down, Razortooth.”
The wolf-man was holding a gleaming gold necklace adorned with several shiny jewels.
“I’ll keep what I want!” he barked back. “I found it first, so that means it’s mine!”
“How about we all just divvy it up when we get inside? That’ll be fair,” the man urged.
“How about I divvy you up when we get inside and feed you to the monsters, Marvin!” the werewolf snarled viciously; Nick, who was lying in the grass below him, saw saliva drip from his fangs and almost hit him in the face.
“I won’t put up with this,” Marvin retorted, and seized his wand from his pocket. He gave Razortooth a meaningful I-have-a-wand-and-you-don’t look.
The werewolf’s lip curled, and the other hooded figures all stopped binding the teens to watch.
Greg’s heart skipped a beat as he lay inside the cage. Run. Run away right now while they’re not looking! You can do it. Just go!
“I’ve put up with your smuggling and cheating for too long, Razortooth. You’re not going to get away with it this time. Put the necklace down,” Marvin demanded.
“I found it!” the werewolf roared. “So stop you’re complaining, Marvin, or I just might consider having you for dinner instead of the boy!” Then he glanced from Nick to Marvin. “I’d get a full meal out of you, anyway,” he added as an afterthought.
“Fine! We’ll do it your way!” Marvin shouted back. “Let’s just see who ends up with all the precious goods at the end, then!”
“I don’t give a rat’s tail how much any of you wizards get!”
“Exactly,” Marvin replied more calmly. “Which is why I need to do this- PARALIPHITZ!!”
A green bolt of lightning shot from the tip of Marvin’s wand, hitting Razortooth and exploding into tiny bolts that wrapped around his body. The werewolf let out a tremendous roar, opening his mouth wide to reveal rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Then he stumbled towards Marvin; the spell seemed to be doing something to him, making him unable to run. The wizard dived out of the way and raised his wand again, but before he could shoot another spell, someone screamed “STOP IT!!”
Zorkon had turned around after hearing the fight, and now he strode between Razortooth, who was sprawled on the ground beside Nick, and Marvin. He glared at them both with a look that made even the werewolf shiver.
“Marvin, undo the spell,” he ordered coldly, and Marvin obeyed by shooting a blue reverso spell at Razortooth.
Nick watched anxiously from the ground, glancing from the werewolf, to Zorkon towering angrily over him, to the little scientist watching excitedly behind his billowing blue robes. Then he glanced over at the cart, deserted and forgotten in all the action. Greg was gone.
“Artemis, tell me who started it this time,” Zorkon commanded to one of the hooded men.
“It was Razortooth, My Lord,” Artemis answered with a wicked grin at the werewolf.
Zorkon sighed. “Why don’t I doubt you?”
“He was trying to snatch up all the precious goods, My Lord,” Artemis went on.
Zorkon twiddled his wand between his fingers. “Devilius?” he said finally.
The little man in the lab coat scuttled forward eagerly.
“Take Razortooth’s reward from him.”
“He is to be mine?” the man asked excitedly.
Zorkon nodded.
“Hahaha!” he cried evilly, and ran for Nick.
The werewolf grabbed hold of Nick’s arm as they both lay in the grass, watching the scientist scramble towards them. “I’ll be back for you,” he snarled, glaring right into Nick’s eyes as he was seized under the armpits and dragged away by the little man, “That’s a promise.”
Nick stared right back at the werewolf as he was carried away. His red eyes were hungry and vengeful, and they didn’t break eye contact until Nick was carried up the stone steps and into the castle.
“Let me go!” he shouted angrily as he tried to fight the scientist, but they had tied his hands behind his back and he couldn’t do much. He stared back out onto the lawn as he was dragged through the doorway, and saw the other wizards round up his friends and march them towards the castle. Bogdorf had hoisted Mrs. Sykes over his shoulder, and Biscuit’s four legs were tied together as Marvin carried him in his arms. But they weren’t going to the same place he was, he thought.
“You shall make a brilliant experiment!” the scientist cackled from overhead. Nick helplessly watched the stone door close behind him as he was dragged along the floor. The gap of blue light grew smaller and smaller, until there was a thundering boom and darkness surrounded him.
Read more about Zero Hour: The Revelation and Luke Fetkovich HERE.
Copyright 2008 Luke Fetkovich. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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