Elixir of Fear

As the day approached, Harrison found himself growing more nervous. A few days before Halloween, Harrison and Grampa Lewis went up to the big room upstairs where Harrison had found the trunk and the poster, and they brought the trunk downstairs.

Harrison's heart had been pounding the whole time. He half expected there to be a spell on the room that wouldn't let them in, or an apparition to scare them away. But when they opened the door–quite easily this time–the sun was streaming in, and it just looked like an ordinary, albeit very large and cluttered, room.

They lugged the trunk downstairs and set it atop the kitchen table. Harrison again expected something frightening to happen when they opened it, or for the poster to disappear in a puff of smoke. But when Grampa Lewis pulled open the trunk's lid, everything was there just as Harrison had seen it before.

"This is good," said Grampa, nodding his head. "These are all things that are closely connected to the Wizard Fusty-bus. When we build the bonfire, these will go in along with the poster and the elixir... and of course whatever else you are able to find."

Harrison nodded. He was transfixed by the sight of the poster again. There it was: the crinkly old piece of paper that had started all this trouble. It just looked so harmless and normal.

He noticed that Grampa seemed transfixed too. He just sat there staring at the contents of the trunk.

"Grampa," Harrison asked, "do you think... do you think that Dr. Faustis intends to... to kill me... in the ceremony on Halloween?" The words sounded very tiny when they came out.

Grampa Lewis turned to look at Harrison. He looked at him as if he had never seen him before, and for a moment Harrison thought he was about to cry. But then a look of rage such as he had never before seen came across his grandfather's face, and he said, very quietly now, not bellowing as he so often did:

"Harrison, I want you to understand me when I say that whatever that dark wizard has planned for you–and I don't doubt that it is something very dark indeed–your Gramma and I are not going to allow it to happen. We will use everything in our power to defeat him, and we will defeat him!"

Something occurred to Harrison. "But..." he said, "Gramma Rose doesn't have her umbrella."

"No," said Grampa, "no, she doesn't. And she's not going to get it. I don't know what we were thinking before, but your safety is far more important than getting that magical brolly back.

You're not to go anywhere near that slithering old snake-oil salesman ever again, you hear me? You'll stay right here with us! We'll just have to do the spell without the benefit of Gramma Rose's umbrella!"

Harrison didn't think he had ever seen his Grampa so upset before. Oh he'd seen him rail and roar against incompetent store clerks, or voice his opinion loudly on many an occasion. But this was different. Grampa seemed deeply upset, and afraid for Harrison's life.

Harrison knew that his Grampa was trying to reassure him. But he found that he was now more frightened than he had been before.

A little while later, Harrison's dad called to tell him that he would have to be home before dark, because the city had implemented a curfew for the next few nights.

"They're calling it a 'social togetherness' curfew," his dad said. Harrison repeated it back to him, while catching his Grampa's eye. As expected, Grampa Lewis exploded into a fit of expletives, and Harrison stifled a laugh as he imagined his dad's reaction on the other end of the line.

Once Harrison had hung up though, Grampa turned serious again.

"We'll have to figure out a way to get you over here on Halloween night then," he said. If there's a curfew, that's going to make it more difficult.

Harrison agreed.

"I know!" he said suddenly, "let's tell them we're having a Halloween party! Just for us!" Grampa Lewis nodded. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "And it's even kind of true."

***

Later that night, in the town of Milford, a few miles north of New Zebedee, someone was trying to destroy CubeSquared's bed.

Most of the usual players weren't on the server tonight, so CubeSquared had gone on a different server to play a game of Bed Wars. It wasn't the best game in the world, but it was alright and Cube was pretty good at it.

There was a new player on tonight. Someone CubeSquared had seen around a few times in the past few weeks: ImAGamer. Cube was on a team with ImAGamer tonight, and they had just delivered a devastating blow to the team they were playing against, demolishing one of their beds in a surprise attack. Now the other team was coming at them full force, and Cube was racing back from the site of the bed blow-up to go defend against this attack.

All of a sudden, the landscape of the game changed. What had been green hills, stretches of ocean, trees, a blue sky and clouds... in a flash became something else. Now it was a bare, desolate landscape. Dead trees stood against a pale grey sky, and there was not a blade of grass on the mottled grey ground. A pale yellow light barely peeked over the horizon.

CubeSquared frowned. "What the..."

Something appeared in the chat window. Cube looked. It was a message from ImAGamer:

"Hello CubeSquared," the message read. "How do you like the new world?"

CubeSquared was confused. ImAGamer typed some more:

"I have a message I'd like you to relay to your friend Harrison..."

Everyone on the platform knew that Harrison and CubeSquared were friends, so there was nothing unusual about this.

"...tell him that his Gramma and Grampa have a very special surprise waiting for them!"

A chill went up CubeSquared's spine. Harrison had spoken about his Gramma and Grampa to CubeSquared privately, but nobody else on this server or the other one could have known that.

In an instant, the screen changed back to the normal one–just in time for CubeSquared to see the team's bed get blown to smithereens. But CubeSquared just sat there for a long time staring at the screen.