D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

Several days passed with no word from Bobby. Mark started to fear that something horrible had happened when he and Loor jumped back into Lifelight. But he forced himself not to worry. He had to keep reminding himself that time between the territories wasn’t relative. Still, as days passed, Mark found himself thinking more and more about the trouble on Veelox.

Then, toward the end of the week, something finally happened.

There was no Sci-Clops meeting that afternoon, so Mark caught the early bus home after school. The bus stopped a few blocks from Mark’s house and he always walked the direct route home. But today he took another route. He wasn’t sure why; he just felt like walking. So he took the long way home.

Mark was pretty familiar with every other house in the neighborhood. Though a few were modern, most dated back a long time, some over a hundred years. All the yards were big, with huge leafy trees that shaded the grass. Fall was coming on fast now and many of the trees had already traded their green leaves for brilliant colors of orange and yellow. It was Mark’s favorite time of year. Chilly but not yet wintry. The wind was brisk, the sky was blue, and he even loved the smell of burning leaves. It was the perfect afternoon to walk a roundabout route home and try not to think about territories and Travelers.

His vacation didn’t last very long.

As he walked along the cracked sidewalk, kicking leaves,

Mark’s ring began to twitch. He stopped short. Naturally his first thought was: “Bobby’s next journal!” But when he looked at his ring, he saw that the large gray stone in the center wasn’t making the change. It was the odd symbol that glowed brightly-the same symbol that foreshadowed the arrival of the note from Dorney. Maybe it was a message from the old man to say the time was right to learn about being an acolyte!

Mark ducked into the bushes near a tall cement wall. He didn’t want anybody to see what was about to happen. He dropped his pack on the ground, then took the ring off and put it down next to the pack, waiting for it to start growing.

It didn’t. The light continued to glow from the symbol, but the ring didn’t change size. What was going on? Mark picked up the ring and put it back on his finger. The symbol glowed, but that was it. No change, no note, no nothing. Weird. With a shrug, Mark continued walking home. When he got to the next corner, he noticed that the glowing symbol had gone dark.

False alarm, he thought, and continued walking.

When he got halfway across the street, he realized he’d left his pack next to the cement wall. Duh! He did a quick about-face and jogged back to get it. But no sooner did he arrive at the pack than the ring twitched and the symbol began to glow again. Mark waited a few minutes to see if the ring would do anything more dramatic, but it didn’t. He grabbed his pack, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried toward home. But when he reached the street, the symbol stopped glowing. Mark felt sure something was going on, but had no idea what it could be.

Then an idea struck him. He turned and slowly walked back toward the cement wall. Sure enough, as soon as he got close, the symbol grew bright again. Uh-oh. This was no false alarm. Something was happening, and it had to do with where he was.

Mark looked up at the cement wall to see where he was, and his heart sank.

“Oh great,” he muttered.

He was standing in front of the Sherwood house. Everybody knew it. It was the biggest property in the neighborhood. The house was built in the early 1900s by some rich guy who’d made his fortune raising chickens and selling eggs, of all things. At one time there was a poultry farm on the property, but that was long gone. The house was still there, though. It was surrounded by the high cement wall that Mark was standing in front of now. It was actually more of a mansion than a house. The place was huge.

The thing was, nobody had lived there for years. Mark’s mom told him that once old man Sherwood died, none of his kids wanted to run a chicken farm. But they couldn’t agree on what to do with the property. So there it sat, a giant piece of land with a big old mansion on it, going to waste, falling apart.

Of course, all the kids in the neighborhood made up ghost stories about seeing shadows walking past windows and hearing strange sounds on Halloween. Bobby once made up a story about how the ghosts were actually chicken spirits looking for revenge. That was Mark’s favorite. But he didn’t believe in ghosts and didn’t think for a minute that the place was really haunted. Still, he never went near the place by himself.

Until today.

The glowing symbol on his ring was telling him something, and he had the sick feeling that whatever it was, it was inside the Sherwood house. Gulp. Mark had a quick thought of putting this off until he could come back with Courtney, but his curiosity was stronger than his fear.

Halfway down the block was a big old set of black iron gates, but a heavy steel chain and padlock told him this wouldn’t be the way in. He only had one choice. He had to go over the wall. So he walked alongside the high wall until he found a tree that was close enough to climb up and get over the top. As he stood looking up, he wasn’t worried about ghosts or banshees or dead chickens running around with their heads chopped off. That was kid stuff. He was more worried about getting caught trespassing. The idea of calling his parents from jail was not a good one. Still, the insistent glowing of the symbol on his ring told him he had to keep going.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and dug his sneakers into the tree. Moments later he was up and over the wall, landing in tall grass. So far so good. He looked at his ring to see the small symbol was glowing brighter. He was definitely on the right track.

He looked up at the house and could see why kids thought it was haunted. The place was ancient. The wind kicked up and the fall trees swayed back and forth, slashing against its walls. The yard was a mess too. A caretaker could be seen every month or so, cleaning up dead branches and making simple repairs, but that wasn’t enough to make the place look lived in. No, this was a big, empty, lonely old haunted-looking house.

And Mark was on his way in.

The ground floor was surrounded by a wide porch. He imagined people sitting there in rocking chairs on a hot summer night, drinking iced tea and swapping chicken stories. But they were long gone. The only thing on the porch now was dead leaves. Mark walked up the five stone steps that led to the porch.

He thought he saw something move past a window inside the house. It was fast, and he wasn’t completely sure he really saw it, but the hair went up on his arms just the same. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looking into the dark windows for any sign of movement. There was none.

He started walking toward the front door… and saw something again. It was a quick shadow moving past the window. For a second he actually thought it was a ghost. But there were no such things as ghosts. Then again, he never thought there were such things as Travelers, either. He looked around and decided the ghost was nothing more than the reflection of a tree branch waving in the wind. At least, that’s what he told himself.

Mark walked cautiously up to the front door and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Great,” he said to himself. “Now what?”

That’s when he heard something inside the house. It was fleeting, but it sounded like something had run past, just inside the door.

“Heeeere, chickie, chickie, chickie!” Mark croaked nervously, though the idea of there still being chickens around was absurd. He looked at his ring. The symbol was glowing with a fierce intensity. He needed to know why.