The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(6)

Theodore, you may be our only hope. Keep this around your neck, because someday it will be the only thing preventing your death and the ruin of the multiverse - K. T.

—or something like that. The glowing message simply vanished before I could commit it to memory. I brought my hands closer to grasp the amulet, supposedly the premonition of my fate. Once in hand, it felt warm, like the side of my TV. When I thought it to be safe, I gingerly lay the strings around my neck. Reluctantly releasing my grip on the amulet for a few seconds, I clicked together the links at the ends of the necklace. As my eyes grew wide with wonder, the necklace itself miraculously retracted to snugly fit my pencil-shaped neck. Cool. Once the necklace was secured, I clasped the amulet itself as if I could never let it go. Didn’t want to risk it, you see. What kid wants to die, or ruin the multiverse?

“As I crawled onto the bed, I wondered what the multiverse might want with a dork like me—and who was K. T.? I figured it to be a dream. I gripped the prismatic jewel firmly, and continued to hum until another day of grounding diminished. I fell asleep.”

I stop recording. I look at the gloomy walls of my prison cell, feeling at one with my just-concluded parable of me falling asleep. I yawn. Enough talking. I will sleep for now in this place in hell, having had the satisfaction of venting my past.

I turn off the tablet and allow it to charge. Lying down on the mats causes my side to sting. I roll over to position myself in a way that is comfortable, with my back against the floor.

Staring down multiple barrels of a chain gun is a situation not too far from the normal reality outside of this fortress. Closing my eyes, I fantasize about my escape from prison for the hundred and fourteenth time.





3 THEODORE: THE TRAGEDY AT TAYLORS FALLS





True freedom is the product of defeated burdens and an admiration for one’s past. Those days, I must have deserved a brief liberation.


I sit in prison, with a tablet in hand, providing intelligence to the Multiversal Council—which itself deserves nothing from me. I know they proclaim their neutral position, but I still will alter information slightly to avoid implication. I slide my finger across the screen to record, and I start:

“Alright, finally, my grounding at home had ended. Exhilarated, I felt as if I were ready for ‘lift-off.’ It was the end of one of my longest stints in ‘Crane County Jail.’ That morning before school, as I lovingly rubbed my amulet which lay on my chest, I reminded myself that the vision of it flittering about in my room was not a dream—perhaps linked to my fate—but real on all accounts.”

The very next day was several uneventful hours at school. On the bus, heading into the direction of the Red Bricks, I once again admired my amulet. I had daydreamed about it so often in class, that two teachers had snapped at me to pay attention. At the back of the bus sat Jason and Travis, laughing out loud together every thirty seconds during their frenzied, non-stop jabbering. If it weren’t for the new strange object that was now mine, I would have felt a strong pang of jealousy. The bus halted at our regular stop, and we three stepped off.

Still in a trance, I headed to the park to play by myself. I didn’t have confidence that Jason could tear himself away from Travis to be with me.

‘Hey, Theodore! You want to come to our fort?’ someone asked. I turned, curious. It was Jason, with the widest grin on his face. Jason, with Travis eagerly looking on, invited me to his fort, which was nice, but today was different. The astonishing discovery last night still captivated me, and I wanted to be alone with my amulet. I had the fleeting thought that just this once, I should play hard to get. It would serve Jason right.

‘Nah, I have something I need to do. You guys go on without me,’ I said.

‘Come on Jason, let’s go! I have to go ask my dad if I can go,’ Travis said.

Leaving behind my stunned friends, I ran to the park. It was a sweltering day. The sky was vast and blue. Gazing at the Red Bricks, which bordered the park, I felt that the dilapidated complex could have devoured me whole or crushed me completely just because of its huge size. Its monolithic presence was slightly creepy, casting a huge shadow over the park.

Shuddering at how even my home could cause trepidation inside myself, I just had to climb a tree to achieve a better vantage point and fiddle with my amulet in private. I was now focused on a particular tree just down from the courtyard in the Red Bricks. Even though it was awfully close to my residence, it had those awesome thick limbs that stuck out sideways and enabled me to climb like a squirrel.

I arrived at the base of the desired tree, and there was no one in sight. There were cars in the lot, a few of which lacked working engines or were up on concrete blocks due to having their rims jacked.

As I ascended the formidable tree, I felt like I was entering a different realm. The theme music to a weird mystery show was blaring from someone’s living room window on the first floor. Safely ensconced on a thick branch, I squeezed my eyes shut, mentally blocking out the music.

As if awakened by the beat, the amulet glowed through my shirt. I was spellbound, staring at it. There were noisy laundry rooms in use on two floors. I briefly jived to the rhythm of the washer’s rotation and the percussion of a pair of shoes in the dryer. Excited, I discovered that the amulet was glowing in tandem with the intricate melody of background sounds! Eager to start climbing the more narrow branches toward the thinning canopy of the tree, I ditched my shoes, and they rolled away on the ground.