The Last Portal

THE LAST PORTAL

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This is a work of
fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events depicted in
this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Chapter
1
....Schoolyard bullies

Chapter
2
....Cathora

Chapter
3
....Mind Over Matter

Chapter
4
....Into the Storm

Chapter5
....An
Ancient Race

Chapter 6
...A
Road Less Travelled

Chapter
7
...Strange Happenings

Chapter 8
...The
Zentor

Chapter
9
...Down a Hole

Chapter
10
.Under the Mountain

Chapter 11
.The
portal

Chapter
12
.Demoss

Chapter 13
.A
Battle of Wills

Chapter 14
.The
Journey Home

Other books by
Rob Cole

No-one writes in
isolation. I would like to thank my children for their inspiration,
my mother for her proofreading and my colleagues for their many
thoughtful comments.

Chapter 1

Schoolyard Bullies

The two boys made a
strange sight as they wrestled their way through the lunchtime
crowd of students at Stanworth High school. The larger boy was well
muscled, with short, neatly spiked hair and broad shoulders. His
arms were firmly clamped around the head of a much smaller boy that
he was dragging around the playground in a head-lock. When the pair
reached the base of a tree, the larger boy flung the smaller one
into it and viciously kicked him in the side as he slid to the
ground.

All around a
crowd was gathering, their faces bearing the faint smiles of
anticipation - everyone knew what was coming. Jeff stood over his
victim, legs slightly apart, like a gladiator displaying his
defeated opponent. Chris climbed onto his knees, he represented a
stark contrast to Jeff, small, even for first-year high school,
with unkempt wiry brown hair and a narrow face which culminated in
a pointed, deeply cleft chin that gave him an almost cartoon-like
appearance.

‘You’re such a
pathetic creature,’ Jeff sneered, his newly broken voice booming
out amongst the gathering crowd.

Chris wiped a
few spots of blood from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.

Jeff leaned
closer and lowered his voice. ‘You know, E.T., the problem is that
huge nose of yours. It gets in the way. Maybe I should re-arrange
it for you, so you’re not so ugly.’

Chris risked a
glance up at Jeff. His spiked blonde hair was still neatly in place
and his pale features remained perfectly calm; only his grey eyes,
like liquid pools of ice, betrayed his cruelty.

‘Come on, get
up,’ Jeff taunted, ‘can’t grovel in the dirt forever.’ He crouched
down to Chris’s level. ‘What’s up?’ he whispered, ‘TOO SCARED!’ he
shouted directly in Chris’s face.

Chris pulled
himself up against the tree, but made no attempt to climb to his
feet. He knew Jeff’s routine all too well. He would bully kids to
stand up, only to push or knock them down again. Eventually his
victim would burst into tears. That was his measure of success, and
what the crowd, his devoted followers, were waiting for.

Jeff stood up
and placed both hands on his hips. ‘Come on, get up E.T...’ He
gestured with his hand. ‘Come on, up.’

Chris didn’t
move.

‘UP!’

Chris kept his
face turned away, giving Jeff nothing to work with.

‘A-li-en,
a-li-en, A-LI-EN!’ The chant quickly gained momentum as the crowd
thickened around them.

Jeff sighed
theatrically, then grabbed a fistful of Chris’s hair and began
pulling him to his feet. Chris swung a punch into his mid-rift,
then another, then another. With each punch the roar of laughter
from the crowd intensified.

Jeff joined in
the laugher. ‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got?’

With a hand
still holding Chris by the hair, Jeff turned to his audience, like
an actor bowing after a performance. Chris grabbed Jeff’s
outstretched arm and dug his nails in deep. Amid a stream of swear
words, Chris was spun around, and then thrown back against the
tree. His face met the tree with a sickening smack on its way to
the ground.

Some seconds
passed before Chris rose up on an elbow. His head felt dizzy and
something wet ran down his face. This time, when he touched his
nose, his hand came back covered in blood.

‘Leave him
alone!’ Joe Parkinson, a pear-shaped boy about Chris’s size, with
beady eyes and fat pink cheeks, pushed his way to the front of the
crowd. He knelt down and examined Chris. ‘You’ve done it now,’ he
said, glaring up at Jeff over his shoulder. ‘When the teacher sees
this, you’re history.’

Jeff eyed Joe.
‘Shut-up, Piglet. You say anything and you’ll be history.’

‘Yep, you’ll be
suspended alright,’ Joe added, pushing back a mop of greasy brown
hair that had fallen over his eyes.

Jeff looked
down at Chris, who was wiping away more blood with his sleeve. ‘E.
T. just ran into the tree.’

This comment
sent a wave of chuckles around the crowd.

‘You threw him
into a tree.’ A tall girl stepped forward with a mop of springy,
sandy-coloured hair that appeared to sit on her shoulders rather
than hang down from her head.

‘He dug his
nails into me, like a girl.’ Jeff displayed three red marks on his
right arm to the crowd.

The girl placed
her long, impossibly thin arms on her hips. ‘You had him by the
hair.’

Jeff pulled
himself up to his full height, only slightly taller than the girl.
‘That’s because he’s too gutless to stand up.’

‘What? So you
can hit him again? You should be ashamed of yourself, you’re twice
his size.’

Jeff opened his
mouth but no words came out. Clearly there was no arguing this
point.

‘You’re just a
coward,’ the girl added, pushing her flecked covered nose closer to
Jeff’s.

Jeff’s features
hardened at the word ‘coward’. No one called him that. The general
rumble of the crowd stalled as everyone listened for his response.
‘You watch who you’re calling a coward or I’ll…’

‘Hit me,’ she
mocked. ‘You big brave man.’

‘That’s
right... and you’re an ugly…’

WHACK!

Instinctively,
Jeff touched his face, his look of arrogance momentarily slapped
away. The seconds passed, but only Jeff’s deepening frown showed
any sign of movement. Chris could almost feel what Jeff was
thinking. No guy in his right mind would hit him, but a girl? Jeff
was like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

Some of the
girls were beginning to giggle and the guys were trying not to join
in.

‘Now what are
you going to do?’ the girl asked, pushing her face closer as though
daring him to hit her.

The girl’s
finger marks spread across Jeff’s pale features, leaving a perfect
imprint of her hand. This sight set another wave of giggles through
the crowd. Now completely red-faced, Jeff turned to Chris.

‘You’re such a
loser, E. T. You even need a girl to stand up for you.’ His eyes
surveyed the three of them. ‘You three are all just freaks anyway,’
he concluded, before turning and pushing his way through the
crowd.

Chris hauled
himself up to a sitting position. Susie was one of his best
friends, and had a formidable mouth on her, especially when it
extended to injustices, such as environmental issues, bad exam
results and bullies. But hitting Jeff? This was a step up. It was
like pulling the pin of a hand grenade and hoping it wouldn’t
explode.

With the
entertainment finished, the crowd dispersed, amid much laughter and
chatter. Chris wished Susie hadn’t slapped Jeff. This would only
make things worse. He could already imagine the taunts about a girl
coming to his rescue.

‘You alright?’
Susie asked.

Chris wiped the
blood from his nose with some tissues he found in his pocket.
‘Yeah.’

‘So what was it
about this time?’ she continued, wearing her most earnest
expression.

In typical
fashion, Susie was demanding an explanation from him for Jeff’s
actions. ‘How would I know?’

‘Well everyone
has…’

‘A reason for
doing things,’ Chris completed her sentence.

‘That’s right,
maybe you …’

‘No, I didn’t
annoy him. I spend most of my lunchtimes trying to get as far away
from Jeff as possible.’

‘Well it’s time
we went…’

‘No.’ Chris
shook his head. ‘You’re not telling the teachers.’

‘Well, how else
are you going…’

‘I’ll figure
something out.’

Susie flicked
back some of her hair off her shoulder in a gesture Chris knew
meant she was becoming irritated.

‘Well at least
you can show some …’

‘Gratitude?
Thanks for the help, but don’t do it again. I can fight my own
battles.’

‘Will you stop
finishing my sentences for me? You know how annoying that is. And
that’s the last…’

‘…time I’m
going to help you. Yeah, I know.’

‘Chris
Reynolds, you are so…’

‘…rude and
ungrateful.’

Susie’s eyes
widened and she grunted loudly, then spun round and strode off.

Joe, who had
been listening in the background, pulled out a large and rather
dirty looking handkerchief and handed it to Chris. Chris accepted
it, trying not to think where it had been. Joe was the only person
he knew who still had a handkerchief, which was fine in itself,
except he remembered seeing that same handkerchief for months,
slowly getting dirtier and dirtier. Much like his clothes, Chris
thought. Joe had a tendency to wear his clothes until they
physically fell apart on his body. Not a good look.

‘I was sure
Jeff was gonna do something,’ Joe said. ‘I wouldn’t have put it
past him to hit her back.’

‘Nah, he’d
never hit a girl.’

‘Uhh… How would
you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Oh yeah, that
psycho thing…’

‘Psychic,’
Chris corrected.

Joe rolled his
eyes. ‘Whatever.’

Chris finished
wiping away the remaining blood, then screwed up the handkerchief
and handed it back to Joe.

‘You know,
Susie is pretty mad at you,’ Joe said.

‘Well, it was a
stupid question, anyway,’ Chris replied. ‘Picking on other kids is
just what Jeff does. He doesn’t have any mysterious reason for
doing it, other than it’s fun.’

Joe nodded
slightly then lowered his head. Chris instinctively knew what he
was thinking. Joe was overweight, seriously overweight, and bad at
most things. Jeff, and an equally large bully called Matt, preyed
on him mercilessly most lunch times. To Joe’s credit, there was one
thing that he was really good at - hiding. If hide and seek was a
school subject, he would get an A. Some lunch times, even he
couldn’t find Joe.

The bell rang
for class.

Chris rushed to
the toilets and washed the blood off his face. He was glad to see
that his nose had stopped bleeding, although it was now so clogged
with blood that he couldn’t breathe through it any longer. His
shirt sleeves presented more of a problem and took some determined
scrubbing to remove all the blood. By the time he had finished he
looked as if he had taken a bath up to his elbows. Sighing to
himself, he rolled up his sleeves and headed off to class. This
afternoon was biology with ‘blowfly Kennel,’ the Science teacher
who earned his nickname from his unfortunate habit of rubbing his
hands together, like a fly.

When they
reached the classroom, Mr Kennel was standing by the door.

‘Today we’re
studying insect biology,’ he announced, as the students filed past
him. He was tall, with thinning hair, wide-set eyes and no chin,
rather like a praying mantis, Chris thought. On each classroom
bench was a large glass container filled with a clear liquid and
large, spiky objects.