Ancil“Crazy!!” The Bookman shouted angrily as he abruptly stopped dancing. His eyes widened even more. “Don’t ever call me crazy you hear me. You see people around here. They not too fond of being called crazy.” He walked up to me in that creepy way that he always did causing me to back away. He then said, “they always run, like if I looking like a beast or something. I just want to have fun. I just want to…..” His eyes opened wider even more. “Buuuubbbble!”
I had the sudden urge to shoot his head off but I felt as though he was useful in getting us out of here safely with Megan’s mother.
“Child. If I wanted to kill allyuh I would have kill allyuh long time,” the Bookman said. “All I have to do is write allyuh name in this book and allyuh good as dead.”
“Yeah and sending a colony of bats to attack us doesn’t count as trying to kill us right?” Megan interjected sarcastically.
“Somebody have to feed the bats,” he laughed. “They does get hungry too.”
“Those bats looked real like if they weren’t wearing costumes,” I said to the Bookman
“Costume!” He shouted angrily. “You think that these is costumes?”
“Then what is it? Magic?” I asked.
“You only consider something magic when it can’t be explained. But when it have an explanation…..” The Bookman’s eyes widened. “It’s science.”
“So what is it then?” I asked.
“To you young people. It’s magic,” he said.
“Well…..”
Megan interrupted me before I said what I had to say. “How can I save my mother?” She asked the Bookman.
“The real question is,” his eyes widened. “Does she want to be saved?”
“Of course she wants to be saved. Why would she want to stay in a dump like this?”
“Why you don’t ask she yourself?” The Bookman asked.
“Because she’s not responding,” Megan said.
“Well make she respond,” the Bookman said.
I heard Megan mumble a few curse words under her breath then she shouted, “How?!”
“Well if you insist. You can visit the MR chamber,” the Bookman said. “All you have to do is walk through the wall, walk straight until you see a door, enter it then go up the stairs. The very next door on the right is the MR Chamber.”
“What does it have there?” Megan asked.
“The antidope.”
“You mean the antidote right?” I intervened.
“No no, antidope,” the Bookman said. “But be careful, things could get…. How to put it? Out of hand.” He then laughed hysterically.
I couldn’t tell if the Bookman was for us or against us. Even though he was helping us I just felt as though deep down inside that he was plotting to kill us and just having fun with it. He did say he just wanted to have fun.
“This wall right?” I asked while pointing to the wall at the side of us.
The Bookman nodded his head. Megan and I strolled towards the wall, looking back every so often to see the Bookman urging us forward.
We finally walked through the wall and ended up in another long white winding corridor similar to the one that we fell out from.
“Who needs doors right,” I joked.
We followed the directions given to us by the Bookman and we arrived at the last door but it wasn’t really a door. It was an elevator. The elevator carried us up to a room that had the look and feel of a hotel suite. A master bed in the middle, soft carpets and a smell of freshly washed sheets that could have made you feel right at home. It was definitely a huge transition from the previous room. But who lived in the room? That was the only question running through my head. Megan was digging up in drawers and looking under the bed for the antidope but she couldn’t find it. I helped her look for it but I failed at finding it just as much as she did.
“That bastard set us up!” Megan shouted after she was convinced that she checked the entire room.
“I’m sure it’s in here somewhere,” I said.
“I looked everywhere in the room and I’m not seeing it,” Megan stated.
“You look….”
“I looked everywhere!” Megan interrupted. “It’s not here!”
“I’m sure that we will find a way,” I said as I placed my hand over her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. “We reached this far already. It’s only fair that we get to go the distance.”
“This is not a story Jed. This is real life. There is no such thing as a happy ending. Right now we’re just alive by the skins of our teeth,” Megan cried. “I’m sure you could clearly see that it is only a matter of time before we face the same fate as the rest of the people who died by the hands of the Midnight Robber.”
I removed my hands from her shoulder and said, “maybe you’re right. Maybe we will die. But while I’m living I want to hold on to any chance that I have to be alive. To be in the land of the living as long as possible. To be here……with you.”
I saw Megan smile a bit. “I always loved your positivity Jed. I still do.”
I threw myself on the bed and said, “you can’t let your roof fall off in the rain.”
“That’s a really popular line by you huh? You should copyright it,” Megan joked.
