The North Pole Challenge (Flea's Five Christmases, #1) (7 page)

             
Flea jumped out of bed and instantly took a defensive position, even though he had no idea of how to fight.

             
“Where did you take me? What is this place?” he demanded to know, trying – unsuccessfully – to sound tough.

             
The young man sighed, clearly annoyed. “This is your new bedroom here at the elf dormitory. Now please save the rest of your questions for later, I don’t really have time to answer them right now.”

             
Flea’s survival instincts kicked in and he looked for anything around the room that could possibly help him escape. Unfortunately, the snowfall filled the outside world with nothing but whiteness so he had no idea where he’d been taken. Flea’s eyes were drawn to the other side of the room, where he noticed that the room’s door had a simple knob, one without any kind of locks. Flea hoped that if he made a break for it, he could reach the outside world and use snowballs as weapons, much as he had against the bullies from gym class. Flea had to escape and either rescue Miss Mabel – who he hoped to find imprisoned somewhere nearby – or find a phone to call the police. But he didn’t want to be hasty. He needed to find out more about his captors to gauge the level of danger he was facing.

One thing the young man had said stuck out in Flea’s mind.

              “Did you say the elf dormitory? Is that some kind of joke?” Flea asked. “You
obviously
saw my episode of
The Great Build-Off
.”

             
This realization made Flea feel even worse. As Miss Mabel had suspected, his participation in the TV show
had
placed them in this dangerous situation. And if his abductor wasn’t the mysterious person that Miss Mabel feared, the only other possible culprit was the construction worker that Flea had angered on the show.

             
“
The Great Build-Off?
” the young man asked. “Are you speaking about
television
? Didn’t you listen to what I said earlier? I’m way
too
busy to waste my time watching TV.”

             
For some reason, Flea actually believed him. After all, the young man didn’t sound angry as much as he did annoyed and rushed.

             
“Then how do you know about the elf dorm?”

             
“Because I
live
here,” the young man said slowly, as if speaking to someone that didn’t quite understand his language. The confusion on Flea’s face must have been easy to read. “If you don’t believe me, come over here and take a look out the window. I don’t know how I can make this easier to understand.”

             
The young man walked back over to the large window and gestured for Flea to join him. Though Flea was curious to see a better view of the outside world, the fact that the young man had his back turned to him was too good an opportunity to pass up. There was probably a good chance that guards would be stationed outside the door, but that was a risk Flea had to take.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Slidewells and Hopwells

He bolted as quickly as his feet would move, nearly stumbling as he reached the door and turned the unlocked handle. Flea was relieved to find that no more captors waited outside for him. Instead, a long red-and-white striped hallway extended as far as Flea could see on both sides.

             
“Hey, where are you going?” the young man called out.

             
Expecting to be attacked from behind at any moment, Flea had no time to figure out which way to go. He turned right and began to run before the young man could grab him. The red and white stripes stretched the entire length of the hallway, the colors only interrupted by dozens of unmarked doors along the way. Everything looked so similar that it was hard for Flea to tell how far he’d run. Since all of the doors he ran past looked exactly the same, finding the one that held Miss Mabel seemed an impossible task.

             
“Stop!” the young man yelled behind him.

             
Flea quickly tired from sprinting for so long. He felt like he was getting nowhere as he continued passing the same stripes and blank doors. But just when he thought the hallway might never end, he spotted a large glass window up ahead. He passed a labeled door and some sort of open chute but continued toward the glass. He was shocked to look down into the massive lobby of what appeared to be a very fancy hotel. Confused, Flea had no time to take in the details of the lobby since the young man was quickly catching up to him. He looked into the chute and saw that it curved up instead of down so he moved on to the labeled door. Originally, Flea had assumed that this door led to some sort of stairwell. But instead of having a tiny picture of a staircase on the door, the picture was shaped more like a spiral and was labeled ‘
SLIDEWELL
’. Flea had no idea what that meant but with his captor dangerously close to reaching him, Flea threw open the door and ran inside.

             
The door opened to a view of the lobby. At that moment, Flea regretted his intense fear of heights. He barely took a step forward when he slipped and crashed down on his behind, quickly picking up speed on the slick surface of a large slide that spiraled down at a dangerously steep angle. Round and round he went, moving faster and faster. Flea might have enjoyed such a fast slide under different circumstances.

Trying to look out at the lobby, Flea barely avoided the first ice bar that jutted dangerously over the slide. He quickly lay flat, slamming his head hard against the slide in the process. He immediately felt dizzy and the spiraling slide didn’t help. From that point on, Flea kept his body flat and slid beneath numerous jutting bars, passing them with greater frequency as his speed increased.

              “Keep your head down!” the young man’s voice echoed from above.

             
Flea wanted to look up to see if his captor was getting closer but he knew better, barely missing yet another ice bar. The young man obviously knew how to deal with this ‘slidewell.’ With a feeling of sickness growing in Flea’s stomach, he knew he had to get out of the spiral slide as soon as possible. He raised his arms and grabbed the next ice bar, propelling himself off the slide and into the next hallway.

He slid down the bar and landed on his feet but was so dizzy that he tipped over while attempting to run. The world spun in front of his eyes as he stumbled along but he shook his head and regained focus. This hallway looked exactly like the last one; the same red-and-white striped walls, same unmarked doors, same total absence of other people. He needed to find help so he stopped at a random door and knocked.

              “Is anyone in there? Please, I’ve been kidnapped and I need help,” Flea yelled as he knocked over and over. When nobody answered, he pounded even harder. When he could wait no longer, he tried the handle. Like the last handle he’d turned, this one was also unlocked. Inside, the room was painted the same bright red and green as Flea’s room but was not nearly as empty. Instead, it was filled with toys, and not just simple ones: it looked like someone had robbed a toy store of its best stuff and set up the ideal room for a kid Flea’s age. This certainly didn’t look like a normal room at a hotel, no matter how large or fancy the place might be.

             
“Will you stop already?” the young man called out as he followed Flea down the hallway.

             
Flea ran on, trying several more doors, finding each room similarly filled with awesome toys. He had no idea what kind of strange hotel/toy warehouse he had been taken to. The young man was quickly gaining on Flea, who had never in his life exerted this much energy. His captor continued yelling for him to stop, though that only served as more motivation for Flea to keep running. He eventually saw another glass window ahead and looked through it long enough to see that he’d circled around the huge lobby again and ended up on the other side.

             
“You’re really annoying me,” the young man yelled. Unfortunately for Flea, his captor was not running out of breath. But he immediately realized that yelling threats was not the best way to make someone stop running. “No, wait, I’m sorry, I – ”

             
Flea opened the nearest door expecting another ‘slidewell’ but found himself standing on a small platform, still several stories above the ground floor. He looked back at the closing door to see a picture of a trampoline on this one, as well as the label ‘
HOPWELL
’. Again, Flea’s fear of heights made it difficult for him to look over the edge of the platform but the sound of approaching footsteps gave him the courage he needed. Ten feet below, Flea saw a large trampoline. It wasn’t exactly the most welcoming sight, but it was better than being caught. Flea took a deep breath before plunging off the platform. He landed on the center of the trampoline and immediately realized that it was tilted slightly forward. He struck the springy object and bounced up and forward, his body twisting in the air as he plunged toward the next trampoline another ten feet down. The trampolines were set up like a staircase – a bouncy staircase that flung his body uncontrollably toward the next ‘step.’

             
Flea wished that he’d stuck with the ‘slidewell.’ After striking the second trampoline and being shot forward again, he was so off balance that his body completely flipped on the way down to the third step. As Flea completed his forward rotation, he spotted a blurry movement traveling
up
toward him. Flea worried that his captor had somehow gotten to the ground floor already and was now working his way up the ‘hopwell’ to catch him. Considering that Flea was so out of control, being caught by the young man might not be such a bad thing. But when he caught a quick view of this person’s face, he knew right away that it wasn’t the young man. This person was far older, though this old man
did
appear just as angry as the young man, not to mention his similarly sharp facial features.

             
“Watch where you’re going,” the old man yelled at Flea. Somehow the two narrowly avoided colliding, though that was because the old man had enough control to get out of Flea’s way. “This hopwell is for going up
only
.”

             
“Please, you have to help me,” Flea called out to the old man though the two had already passed one another.

             
Flea continued bouncing end-over-end on his way down, yet he still heard the young man’s voice call out from above.

             
“Sorry, Vork, he’s very confused, he’s not listening to me.”

             
“You should do as he says, Flea,” the older man – Vork – called out.

             
Obviously, the young man had at least one accomplice with the kidnapping and Flea suspected even more. As the world spun in front of Flea’s eyes, he could tell that he was getting closer to the ground floor. He hit the last trampoline and was tossed five feet back into the air before finally crashing down on the hard ground, knocking the wind from his lungs. He rolled onto his back and tried to catch his breath. When he looked up at the ‘hopwell’ he saw that the young man was only two trampolines above him.
I don’t have time to worry about breathing,
he thought as he got up and began to stumble away.

             
Now that Flea stood inside the lobby, it appeared even more cavernous than he’d first thought. In fact, considering that there was a roller coaster nearby – and a full-size one at that, complete with a track made out of ice and several loop-dee-loops – Flea wondered if this place was more like an indoor amusement park than a hotel lobby. No one seemed to be riding the coaster at the moment, though the empty cars continued to circle around and around the track. A few other smaller rides along with countless games were scattered about and Flea felt his mind going into sensory overload. He struggled to figure out where he was and why there weren’t more people around this incredible room. In the distance, he spotted the snowy white light of the outside world and knew that he had to reach those glass exit doors.

             
As if the amusement-type atmosphere wasn’t strange enough, the piles of wood and building materials scattered about the room were just as baffling. Flea ran as fast as his tired legs and empty lungs would let him. Since the young man had landed perfectly on his feet behind him, Flea considered grabbing a hammer from a pile of nearby tools in order to defend himself. But he could never hurt someone like that, not even someone who’d kidnapped him. Besides, he formulated a better escape plan upon spotting one of the other amusement rides.

A small, yet fast-moving train circled the entire lobby on icy tracks and was about to pass Flea on its way back toward the lobby’s exit. The sight of the approaching train gave him the quick burst of energy he needed to leap over the railing that guarded the icy tracks. Unfortunately, he stumbled over a small stack of building supplies. Most of the train-cars passed by and the young man made up even more ground.