The Prestige
a friend, Keith, dared him to go into their creepy cellar with blacked-out windows, a dirt floor, and a bricked-off cistern with a constant drip. Keith then double dared him, and of course he couldn’t refuse. Once at the bottom, the friend slammed the door, the following click a clear signal it had just been locked. Keith then flicked off the lights on a switch that Boston didn’t have access to.
Keith’s father, a magazine salesman, had a problem with letting things go. To Boston’s horror, the basement had been turned into a labyrinth of magazines stacked over five feet high. Before the lights went out, Boston had only been able to take in part of the immensity of piles and piles of magazines. He had never experienced such darkness in his life before that. And the itching terror that crept around his mind at every sound, especially the drip from within the confines of the cistern, was torture. It was actually a saving grace that Keith started yucking it up, leaving Boston there for only a couple minutes. He somehow had remained silent, not panicking; though, at the time, his heart hammering, he wanted to scream. It took two months before he could sleep without a bedside lamp on and his bedroom door wide open.
And now, the darkness came back, though it somehow felt darker. He waved his hand a couple inches from his face but could not see it. Worst of all, there was no sound. He would take the dripping of the cistern over the nothingness that surrounded him, as if in the void of space, yet, thankfully, he could breathe. The soundlessness had weight to it, a pressure. It had probably only been seconds, but it felt an eternity.
He spoke, could feel himself speaking, but could not hear himself. “Amber? Ash? Anyone? Can anyone hear me?”
His best guess, since it had come upon him so quickly, was either he was dead, in some sort of hellish limbo, or he was within a shadow creature. It had to be the latter. And there was only one way to find out.
Boston reached into a pocket and grasped the narrow cylinder. “If anyone can hear me, crack the light. Ash, you need to be ready for us. I’ll be ready for you.”
Boston cracked the cylinder and dropped it, his hands going to the butt of his guns, eyes squeezed shut.
A blaze of light blasted his eyelids, no heat, but he knew if he opened his eyes it would probably blind him. He squeezed his eyes harder, waiting it out, knowing—if the light stick worked—that he would have almost no time to react as he wouldn’t know where he would be, where Eziel would be, or anyone else.
He gritted his teeth, a burning fire in his gut focusing his attention to what would amount to a quick draw in the dark, hoping Ash was ready.
The glow subsided. He opened his eyes.
He was exactly where he had been but turned the other way, facing the hallway. All of them, Ash, Amber, and Lorcthe stood side by side, facing the hallway.
Ash had Krull’s device in hand—a large, black cylinder. As Ash was in motion slamming the base of it with his hand, Boston whipped around. By some miracle, Eziel and Sartuish stood there, shaking their heads, feeling around with their hands. They had been blinded by the light sticks.
“EYES!” Ash said, followed by a violet glow washing around and over Boston.
“I will fucking rip every one of you to shreds!” Eziel yelled.
Boston smirked as he drew both revolvers, stepped to his right, and shot Eziel and Sartuish in the head. The bodies dropped.
Lorcthe stepped forward, grabbed the heavy oak dining table, and wrenched it sideways to unblock the flood of UV light that cascaded over the bodies that Eziel and Sartuish were now imprisoned in. The table smashed into a wall, Lorcthe tossing it like it weighed nothing.
Boston reholstered and pulled Lorcthe’s rectangular silver object from one pocket and the little silver pyramid from another. They had tested another UV cylinder, like the one Ash held, and it had lasted only five minutes. Boston was happy it had worked at all, after their other electronic devices crapped out.
Boston placed the pyramid in the other object’s circular opening, holding it facing him somewhat, but not within range of the beam that would hopefully soon capture Eziel and Sartuish. The pyramid hovered. Boston flicked the pyramid clockwise and faced it in the direction of Eziel and Sartuish.
Within seconds, a Whump! sound emanated from it, and then a beam of golden light shot forth.
“Get Eziel first,” Lorcthe said.
Boston pointed the beam at Eziel’s human prison, as the beam sizzled and crackled. The golden ray encased him, and like a glittering night sky of innumerable stars, the corpse disintegrated into countless pieces. The deconstructed body moved up the beam, like dust particles floating in sunlight, and into the pyramid. It took seconds. The beam cut off.
“Do it again,” Lorcthe said. “Hurry.”
She didn’t need to tell him. Violet light still washed over Sartuish, but for how long?
Boston spun the pyramid up again, and in no time both Eziel and Sartuish were stored within the pyramid.
“Are they dead?” Ash asked.
“They are not,” Lorcthe said. “Think of it as a prison. My kin—the Quisling, that is—had more of these. When we captured a good bit of Eziel’s lot, we had access to the Nexus back then and tossed the pyramid through a doorway. Do you still have the Nexus?”
“Can we not call it that?” Amber said. “Let’s call it the Shepherd’s Watch. It’s bad enough this building is called the Nexus. Let’s not add to the ongoing confusion and mystery with our current experiences.”
“We don’t have it,” Boston said. “A creature that calls itself the Observer took it from us.” Boston glanced at Amber, and all he got in return was a shrug with raised eyebrows. For a moment, Boston wondered if Lorcthe gained their trust to get to the Shepherd’s Watch. If she knew they didn’t have it, would she leave them on their own?
Boston told her about the Observer, the little they knew. “Sound familiar?”
“Not at all,” Lorcthe said. “Sounds like a powerful being to do what it did, and to know about the Shepherd’s Watch—about everything, it seems. This would not be the god you all cherish without proof of existence, would it?”
“He’s an asshole if it is,” Boston said, and handed the pyramid to Lorcthe, keeping the rest of the device in a pocket. “I’ll leave it to you and your kin to handle as you see fit.”
She took it, staring at it for a moment, and pursed her lips as she nodded. “Thank you for trusting me to do so.”
Even with Eziel and Sartuish imprisoned, staying in place was risky. Any of Eziel’s kin could be in the vicinity, including the horrible Zeisule. They needed to go.
“Let’s walk and talk,” Boston said.
“Agreed,” Amber said. “No one has mentioned it yet, but I’m assuming we obliterated a shadow creature. Did you all use a light stick?”
Everyone nodded. “At least we know they can be destroyed,” Ash said. “Trouble is, we don’t know how many sticks it will take. I wonder if one would do it.”
With Ash taking the back, Boston the lead, they made their way out. In the parking lot, two vans sat idling out front, but no one was in them. They kept walking, until they were outside the complex and on a sidewalk beside a busy street of traffic. It must have been bar traffic. He couldn’t believe it was only two in the morning, just an hour since they trekked from within the sewers. So much had happened.
Waiting for them on the sidewalk were Ralph, Jayson, Edward, and Krull, their van parked nearby.
“Folks,” Edward said, “what happened?”