Joshua and the Lightning Road (2 page)

“One hundred. Ready or not here I come!” I said with more courage than I felt, pushing the attic door open.

Inky black swallowed me up. I darted my flashlight about, but its small, round light didn’t reveal much. The mustiness of old things hidden away filled my nose.
Bo Chez, hurry home
. The hair prickled on my forearms as the stairs screeched with each step and the landing loomed in front of me. Could a ghost with an axe be waiting to chop off my head? I took a deep breath, waiting for a blade to fall, but the only thing lying in wait was a dusty bookshelf.

“Finn-man, I know you’re up here.” I flicked the flashlight around the room, its cold metal warming in my sweaty palm. Thunder crashed over my head and my ears popped.

One more step forward.

“Got ya!” Finn jumped up, his shadow against the window. I tripped and landed hard on my butt. My
flash
light twirled across the floor.

Then a blue arc of light struck the window. Glass exploded. Finn’s mouth froze in a wide ‘O’. I yelled and reached out to pull him down, but another zap of light blinded me. Finn screamed. Rain splattered my face, stinging with each drop. White dots floated in the air. Something gray billowed past me carrying a familiar, rotten stench that made me gag. A knobby hand grabbed me. I bit it and shoved it away, gagging again, and the hand dropped me back on the floor with the taste of salty dirt on my tongue. An angry howl blasted the air.

Zap. Zap
.

Daggers of light shot everywhere as sharp glass cut into me.

“Finn!”

He floated in the shadows. Light erupted all around him, his eyes round with fear. The sky boomed overhead, and a deep laugh bellowed out as if the thunder itself were taunting me.

“Next time it’s you, boy,” a raspy voice said.

Wind shrieked around me in a ferocious wail, pulling me with it. I flattened myself on the floor and clung on tightly to the foot of a chair. The angry wind finally stopped. Rain pelted me through the broken window. All was quiet. I lifted my head.

Finn was gone.

The rain continued to blow in. I stumbled to the window, crunching on broken glass, my legs weak. What if he was lying on the ground with a broken leg? Or worse. But a soft flash of lightning revealed nothing below.

I fumbled around until I found my flashlight and shined it about, searching for the owner of the hand that had grabbed me. Again, nothing—or no one—was here. Who
was
that man? Where had he taken Finn?

I had to do something, but what? I rushed back down the stairs to the living room. It was still dark in the house and my flashlight was dying. The thunder and lightning had stopped, but the steady rain continued to pound the roof. It grew louder in its attack as if trying to get in. Wind raced around me from the open window, and I shivered despite the muggy air that blew across me with the scent of fresh cut grass.

Bo Chez—I needed my grandfather. My trembling fingers punched in the number for his cell phone, but the phone line was dead. If only he had let me have a cell phone. I ran to the front window. The driveway was empty.

I ran to the kitchen and looked out back. The creek was a wall of mud and water, the path now washed away. I could push through the thick brush to Finn’s house or take the long way around on the road to get his family’s help, but how could I explain the weird thing that had happened in the attic? And what could they do? It struck me then how lucky Finn was. He had a whole family who would miss him. Only Bo Chez would miss me, and if I had a brother I would protect him, no matter what.

A lingering toast smell filled me up, reminding me of my aloneness.
Think!

There was no time to wait for Bo Chez’s help. What if the road had been washed out, too, and Bo Chez wasn’t coming back soon? What if Finn was dead? Time ticked faster as my head reeled with so many questions.

My one terrifying choice: to try and get Finn back by myself. I took off to my room and, with no idea what could come in handy, snatched up mini chocolate bars and a pen flashlight, and crammed them in my pockets along with my favorite drawing pencil. Would the lightning come back and take me? It’s not supposed to strike in the same place twice. But that scary voice told me it would, and it hadn’t sounded like it was kidding.

Bo Chez’s crystal! He said it had the power to command the very heavens. I just thought it was part of the stories he made up. He told me that I would know what the crystal’s abilities were in time, but who knew when that would be? I needed power—needed to
believe
it had power—and I needed it now. I ran downstairs, pried open the case with scissors, and with shaking hands took the crystal. It pulsed through my fingers, then glowed blue and grew warm.

I gasped and almost dropped it when a shiny square of paper tucked inside the corner of the case in its seam caught my eye. I tugged it out to turn over a laminated photo and sucked in my breath. I had never seen a picture of my mother, but Bo Chez had described her so often it was like staring at the exact image I created in my head. I ran my fingers across the smooth surface of her face.

Bo Chez told me we lost all our photos in a fire when I was a baby. Why would he have kept this from me? My mom smiled at me with big, blue eyes and wavy hair, the same colored eyes and dirty blond hair as mine. Diana. Her name was Diana. She died just after I was born. I bugged Bo Chez for more stories about her, but he gave me only vague details, except one: my mother never told anyone who my father was, not even him.

I’d lived my life without a mother, but I needed her now. I shoved the photo and crystal into my pockets and ran back up to the attic.

Sweat ran down my back as the warm August air washed over me and the scent of earthworms filled my nose. Thunder rumbled far in the distance. I pushed aside the broken glass and knelt where Finn had stood. Water bled into my jeans from the rain pooled on the floor. It seemed like forever ago that I wished Finn would hurry up and get here.

Lightning flashed. I welcomed and feared it. My chest tightened, but there was no time for panic. The crystal warmed my fingers through the deep pocket of my jeans. Bo Chez had to be right—the crystal had powers. What would they be?

Thunder crackled.

“Yeah, just come and get me!” I yelled into the storm, and a bolt of light took the tree across the creek. The top exploded in a fiery ball, then sizzled black. Thunder broke loud over my head like a giant clapping his hands together, and blue light exploded through the broken window. Two rough hands yanked me up.

Light blazed everywhere and heavy, scratchy material bound me tight as I was pulled upward into a swirling wind tunnel.

Anger felt better than fear, so I kicked my kidnapper. “Where’s Finn?”

“You’ll find out soon, Reeker.”

Daring a peek, I saw a wide gray hat slung low over one green eye that blazed at me. Where the other eye should have been was a crater. One side of his face oozed red, melted mush! The man from my nightmares!

“Finn!”

The man held me tighter, choking off my words. His stink made me want to throw up. I strained to see over his cloak, wondering where his smell had struck me before. It hurt to breathe, and dizziness engulfed me, knowing the monster in my dreams was real.

Yellow and white ribbons of fire snaked before us in a black tunnel, and I froze in absolute terror. Lights ricocheted through the darkness on either side of me like shooting stars. We moved faster and faster. Wind roared everywhere.

“Stop looking around!” The man in gray knocked me hard upside the head.

I sank into darkness.

I came to just as I heard, “Enjoy your new home, Reeker.”

My kidnapper had some nerve to say I stunk. He smelled like a wet dog that had been swimming in sour milk and burnt grease. And then I was flying through cold air as the man threw me. Out of the corner of my eye, figures dodged left and right to part the way for my landing. Fog and faces spun around me. My body slammed into something hard, and sharp pain flashed along my side as rock cut into my hands. Dirt filled my mouth, and I spit out slimy pebbles and sticks.

The faces around me became clearer as dozens of boys and girls crowded into me. A few stuck out their hands and pulled me up from the trampled ground of the dirt corral we were packed inside. Frantic, I swung around to find a way out, then saw the fence. It was made of wooden stakes lashed together with frayed rope. Each stake rose taller than any kid by a few feet, and at the top of each a metal spear tip glinted fierce, ready to pierce any who dared escape. Lanterns, hanging from poles surrounding the fence, glowed far too dim to see much of the forest that spread beyond. Trails of mist blew around us and threatened to choke me as I gulped the bitter tasting air, focusing on the ground to get my bearings.

Find the calm
.
You can do it.
That’s what Bo Chez told me when lightning freaked me out, and freaking out would not help me find Finn. I stared in disbelief at the pale purple twilight sky and dim blue sun that sagged over me, the washed out colors sealing me into this strange painting. This was nowhere near home. My lungs finally unfroze and my legs stopped shaking as I stomped my feet on the rocky ground to get warm.

The kids checked me out. Some looked me up and down and some just stared at me with wide eyes and inched away. They didn’t seem to be a threat, and I had so many questions, but they silenced me with a collective shake of their heads. I rubbed the gravel off my hands, leaving behind stinging prick marks, and looked around my prison. The fence wound around us with no gate going in or out, and a giant platform as high as the stakes stood before us. The fence ended on either side of it, and on top of the platform sat a white-canopied tent with an open front, the flaps tied back like curtains. We had no such protection from the mist that breezed across my skin, covering me in a wet chill. The one way out of this prison was by two sets of stairs leading up to the platform on each side, and down the other side toward freedom. I considered making a run for it: up the steps, across the stage, down the steps, run fast into the woods. How far would I get, and to where?

“There’s no way out, boy.” My gray-cloaked kidnapper towered above me from the platform where he had thrown me. The angry-red side of his scarred face was partially hidden by his flopping hat, and under it, that one green eye burned into me just as it had in my nightmares when he’d tried to kill me with a lightning bolt. He tapped his thumbs on his fat stomach that spread under a dingy, white shirt, and his stubby legs were squeezed into black pants that clung to every bulge and rolled over the tops of his brown boots like a brim of blubber. He scratched his bumpy half-nose, snaking his eyebrow in concentration, then stuck a sausage finger up the good side of it and rooted around to pull out a green glob and flick it at me. It landed at my feet with a wet slap.

“That’s the only food you’ll get today, Reeker!” He laughed a deep, horrible laugh and then spit. A brown chunk plopped on my sneaker. “And there’s your dessert. Now they’ll put you to work with the rest of these Reekers.”

“Not before I find my friend you stole.” It burst out of me, sparked by a surge of courage.

The man jabbed the air at me with a crooked stick he pulled from under his cloak. My bite marks cut across his filthy hand.
Good
. His one eyebrow crinkled into a long, hairy snake as he scowled at me. The kids around me shrunk back, their sour sweat blowing over me as they moved, and beneath the smell of their fear lay the smell of rain and mud.

“Think you’re here for a play date, boy? I could have been a soldier if it weren’t for the likes of you Reekers. Now it’s payback time.” He tugged on the scraggly beard that flowed down his cloak, then spread out his hands. “Listen up, Reekers. You’re going off to work soon and good riddance. And you’ll work hard or you’ll lead a much more miserable life than need be.”

With that, he turned and swung his hefty, ugly self away from the platform, his gray cloak billowing behind him like a storm cloud. I heard a horse whinny and then the thundering of hooves. Probably the very horse on which he’d carted me from wherever we landed. There was no waking up from the nightmare this time. As soon as he left, the whispers began.

“I want to go home.” “How long do we have to stay here?” “Do you think they’ll let us go?” “What’s gonna happen to us?” “I don’t want to die.”

Their words churned around me when a boy leaned down in to my face. “
Allo
, where’d you come from?” He had dark skin and a strange accent and smelled like the mothballs Bo Chez packed in our winter clothes. I shook the spit off my shoe and straightened, reaching into my pockets. My mother’s photo and the crystal were still there. I gripped them tight, staring at the tall, skinny kid whose black hair sat plastered to his head. He tugged on the hem of his torn T-shirt to stretch it down, but it barely reached his waist, and his giant sneakers poked out from jeans that were way too short to be cool.

“New York.” My dry throat made it hurt to talk.

“I’m from France. We’re from all over.” The other kids nodded, many with dirt-smudged faces streaked with tears. Small groups huddled here and there, but a few stood alone and just stared at the sky as if it could magically whisk them away. There were about fifty of them and most were my age, but where was Finn—or a way out?

Two men on the platform held giant spears with tips that waved like flags blowing in the wind. A trick of light in the fog? No—hissing snakeheads with yawning mouths revealed shiny fangs. The heads darted back and forth as forked tongues flickered in and out, searching for something to strike. One head focused on me, its jaws stretched open wide as if it could swallow me whole. It leaned forward on the spear that held it in place, and venomous foam dripped from its mouth. Its glittery eyes told me just how eager it was to sink those fangs into my neck.

I shivered in my T-shirt and looked away at the outline of trees stretching beyond the fence into the unknown darkness. A burnt electric smell charged the air as static burst from the hanging lights like bugs being zapped. The eerie sound made the cold and damp even worse. Fear of not finding Finn—and of dying—crawled through me like a diseased worm.