Jeremy

  Jeremy valued having Karn on his team, even though he still hadn’t quite forgiven him for the belly kick. Karn fought using cleverness and resourcefulness, displaying aptitude as a warrior.

  When Jeremy reached Karn, they moved the statue trying not to tip it over. Jeremy felt like he was in an awkward dance with the marble female, not sure where to put his hands.

  “No. No. Stop! You’re doing it all wrong,” Karn ordered Jeremy. “Push here at the chest, and I’ll use this rope to pull. Ready…Heave!”

  After a few minutes, the statue moved enough to reveal an access hole doorway. Using his dagger Karn found the edges, and pried up the cover, revealing a gaping, bottomless pit.

  “Jeremy, you are the lightest,” Karn said, “so I’ll lower you down first.”

  “Actually,” Jeremy suggested, “If Mel’s up for it, let him go first. He’s light and stealthy. Thoughts, buddy?”

  [I am only a little terrified to death,] Mel said. [But I’ll go.]

  “He’ll go.”

  As they lowered him down, Mel reported to Jeremy, [It’s dark…It’s cold...It stinks…I hear water…I’m on the bottom…It’s gooey and slippery, but safe…I think. Be careful.]

  Karn used the rope to determine that the hole was about eight feet deep.

  “I will drop first, then you two follow,” Karn said.

  “Right behind you,” Jeremy said.

  He dropped in, creating a small splash, barely fitting with all his armor and weapons. Jeremy easily fit in the hole and fell into the darkness. His mind whirled, as his stomach literally prolapsed into his mouth. Like the entire stomach.

  Talk about a weird feeling, he thought as he forced it back down, thankful no one could see that. Who knew frogs could do this? Frogs are gross!

  Eli called down, “Are you prepared for me to drop?”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Come on down!”

  Eli dropped once Jeremy cleared the path. They stood still, eyes adjusting to the dark.

  The tunnel led one way, so Karn walked ahead, sword and hand raised. A faint breeze hinted at an opening. Jeremy hoped for light soon.

  After several minutes of creeping forward, a faint light appeared ahead. He silently prayed this wasn’t the bug-filled tunnel from that Indiana Jones movie.

  The team reached a mirrored circular chamber lit by four hunchbacked flame-creatures, each carrying a candle that didn’t melt despite being held by a fiery hand. They circled a pedestal topped with a four-cup candelabra. Four levers pointed outward from four bases.

  “I think it’s a puzzle,” Jeremy whispered. “Do either of you know what those walking flames are?”

  “I don’t,” Eli said.

  “I’ve never seen them,” Karn said. “How long have they been down here?”

  “Mel, can you go down and see if there are any other creatures?”

  [Sure!] Mel said as he teleported toward the center of the room. [There are only these four fire wisps.]

  “Well,” Jeremy said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Karn dashed to face off against one wraith prepared to fight, but he didn’t need to swing his sword. “They are not hostile,” he said. “They just float right past me whispering nonsense.”

  Jeremy and Eli hurried over. As Jeremy got close enough, he could view the information on the wisps.

  “Crap,” Jeremy said. “They are hostile, but they will only attack if we fail the test.” He paused as one passed him, and he heard a whisper. “What are they saying?”

  Eli said, “This one muttered, ‘Why? Why didn’t they stop him?’”

  Karn followed a different one. A moment later he said, “This one whispered, ‘If only I had helped.’ So strange. It says the same thing over and over.”

  “That has to be part of the puzzle,” Jeremy said. “Mine says, ‘This was not supposed to happen.’ Mel, what does that one say?”

  [‘It had to happen.’ It repeats the phrase over and over.]

  “Okay,” Jeremy said. “Let’s consider what they are saying. Also, they each are holding a candle…which makes no sense. How is it not melting? Anyway, sorry about that. There are four candles, a candelabra with four cups, four statements, four mirrors, and four levers. We can assume the candles go into the candelabra.” Jeremy snapped his fingers. “They must need to go in a particular order.”

  Jeremy started pacing. He walked over to the candelabra to see if there was anything written on it. He looked at the levers. They were plain and went only one direction.

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  Where are the clues?

  Jeremy had beaten plenty of escape rooms. The answer had to be here. A glimmer caught his eye as a wraith passed a mirror.

  He got closer to the mirrors. When the next wraith passed by, the mirror lit up revealing a reflection of Jeremy as a little boy holding a broken crystal owl figurine.

  “Sweet mercy!” Jeremy said as he fell back away from the mirror.

  The entire team was there in seconds. “What did you see?” Karn asked.

  “Me! As a kid! As a human kid. How did it…how did I?? I…I remember that day!”

  “I see nothing but myself,” Eli said.

  “The moment showed up as the wraith went by. I saw myself after I had broken one of my mom’s favorite glass owls. She collected them, and that particular one was from a country called Greece. I had never felt so guilty. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  [That’s the key,] Mel said. [This is the first mirror. You saw yourself and thought this was not supposed to happen. That’s the first candle. It has to be!]

  “Well, ain’t you a smart little guy!” Jeremy exclaimed.

  “What did he say?” Karn asked.

  “The first candle is ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen.’”

  “Do we just grab that candle from the wraith?” Eli asked.

  “Only one way to know for sure,” Jeremy said.

  Jeremy listened closely to the wraiths. When one passed by muttering, “This was not supposed to happen,” he took the candle. The wraith stopped its rotation, but didn’t attack. Jeremy took the candle to the first spot on the candleholder, gently placed the candle there, and flipped the lever. Nothing happened; possibly a good sign.

  When Jeremy looked into the second mirror, he saw only a reflection of himself. When a wraith passed, he saw Bart untying Steve from a large tree. He watched the situation with his own eyes as he approached. Steve chose his lineage, and Jeremy felt envious that another person received magic powers before him. Through his envious rage, he felt a porcupine quill enter his leg. When Starla came up and healed his wound, he felt the stitching up of his skin after every lick from the rough warm tongue. He watched in horror as the werewolf, he now knew was Bart’s father, came straight for him. He fell back, crying, hand raised in vain as the beast scooped him up and fled.

  Jeremy felt everything as if he were actually reliving the incident. He felt his cowardice to the core and thought he could’ve done more. Should’ve done more.

  “If only I had helped!” Jeremy shouted.

  [It’s this one here,] Mel said.

  Jeremy excitedly went over, took the candle, and stuck it in the second cup of the candleholder and flipped the corresponding lever.

  All four wraiths roared like a freight train in a long tunnel.

  [Wrong one, wrong one!] Mel jumped, then teleported away as the wraiths attacked.

  Karn tried to fight them off with his sword and dagger to no avail. The weapons went right through them. The candlewraith unleashed a barrage of attacks, including Memory Flame and Soulflare.

  “My attacks do nothing!” Karn said as he dashed as far away as he could. “We cannot win this fight!”

  Jeremy swore he heard Karn mumble curses and insults like ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’.

  “I have activated my shield,” Eli said. “But their magic attacks are too strong. I can’t defend against them.”

  Mel fired a water pulse at the candlewraith, but it fizzled harmlessly. He teleported to escape.

  Jeremy’s divinity spell barely scratched a wraith near him. Now low on mana, he dodged the flame attacks. After a minute-long assault, the candlewraiths reclaimed their candles and resumed circling the pedestal.

  “Dear God!” Jeremy exclaimed. “That sucked!”

  Eli healed Karn first as he had taken the worst of the fire attacks. Jeremy drank the health potion, its warmth settling into his chest. The pain eased, but the burn lingered, a subtle reminder not to make that mistake again.

  Mel stared at him, smoke wafting from his fins.

  “Are you judging me?”

  [Maybe.]

  Jeremy dusted himself and cleared his dry, ashy throat. “Okay…ahem…I believe the first one was correct.” He looked around sheepishly. “The second one couldn’t have been ‘Why didn’t they stop him,’ so it has to be ‘It had to happen.’”

  [Could we see the third before we decide?] Mel asked with a snarky tone.

  Okaaayy…I’m sorry. Jeremy projected to Mel. Then to the group he said, “Mel suggests we examine the rest of the mirrors to see what they reveal, then make our choices.”

  Karn and Eli both stared at him as if to say, ‘Ya think?’

  Jeremy approached the third mirror. As a wraith passed, the mirror shifted, revealing Jeremy in his bed at his home in Pierre Part. Jeremy couldn’t pinpoint the date, since his room hadn’t changed in years. The boy on the bed buried his head in the pillow, sobbing.

  Jeremy thought, I haven’t cried like that since…since Dad left.

  His mom came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Jeremy,” she said in a comforting voice. “Jeremy, honey. Can we talk?”

  “It’s your fault!” Jeremy screamed through the pillow.

  “Jeremy, baby, I tried to get him to stay—”

  “You were always fighting with him! Always badgering him!”

  “Honey, I just wanted him to be at home more. To be here for you and your brother. I never meant—”

  “How could you let him go? How could you?”

  Jeremy turned away from the memory, tears threatening to fall from his eyelids. He didn’t blame his mom anymore, but at that moment he remembered hating her. A few years later, he learned the truth. He found out about his dad’s affair.

  That prick had a whole other family in Baton Rouge.

  He shook himself and sniffed.

  [Are you okay, friend?] Mel asked, teleporting to his shoulder.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jeremy said. “That memory just sucked. The third candle is ‘Why didn’t they stop him.’ I’m sure of it.”

  “Okay,” Karn said like a dad impatiently dealing with drama. “Only one more mirror left.”

  Jeremy felt tired. Reliving the first two memories sucked, but the third one brought emotional baggage to the surface Jeremy wanted to forget. Jeremy felt the entire event with all his senses as if he were there. It felt too real.

  Jeremy stood in front of the fourth mirror filled with dread. When the wraith passed by, the mirror plunged him into another memory.

  Jeremy found himself staring at an old Nokia cellphone. Apparently, he had just finished a call, but he didn’t want to hit the ‘end call’ button. The phone automatically hung up, but Jeremy didn’t move. He just stood there staring at the display as a teardrop fell onto the screen followed by another.

  He looked up, scanning the empty living room. Closing the door to his room, he logged into his Facebook account on the old desktop computer.

  Pulling up the search bar, he typed, ‘Gabriel Foster’ and hit enter. Gabriel’s profile popped up. Gabriel befriended him in high school but drifted away after joining a rowdy crowd. When they started smoking pot, Jeremy smoked with them or ate a gummy now and then. Jeremy stopped contact with him entirely when the group started experimenting with meth.

  Posts expressing condolences to the family filled Gabriel’s Facebook page.

  Jeremy sat at his desk, fingers resting on the keyboard. He started typing, but couldn’t bring himself to finish. He deleted the comment and started typing something else, but again, he couldn’t finish.

  What would’ve happened if we would’ve stayed friends? he thought.

  Jeremy popped out of the memory, heart beating wildly. Blurry-eyed from tears, he fell back, shoving away from the mirror and its memory.

  Mel scurried over and curled up in his lap. Eli approached and rested a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. He didn’t know what Jeremy had seen, but he understood it had shaken him.

  “You don’t…” Karn started in a gruff tone. Then he switched gears and spoke softly, which was totally unlike him. “You don’t have to tell us what you saw. Take your time dealing with the memory. Let us know what you have figured out when you’re ready.”

  Jeremy wiped his eyes. “Thank you for that. It’s okay. Those memories just all hit different. It was like I was there. I re-lived those moments. Like it just happened. I felt every emotion I felt in those moments. The fourth candle is, ‘If only I had helped.’”

  Jeremy stood up, took a deep breath and prepared himself to solve the puzzle. “So number one is, ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen.’ Second is, ‘It had to happen.’ Third is, ‘Why didn’t they stop him,’ and the last one is, ‘If only I had helped.’”

  Jeremy stood still while the team placed the candles in their respective positions.

  “Okay. Ready? Let’s pull the levers and see what happens,” Jeremy said with a half-smile.

  When Jeremy pulled the first lever, the matching candlewraith vanished, leaving behind a wisp core and a candlestick. He received full credit for the kill. He repeated the process with each lever, uncovering four hidden passages and defeating every candlewraith.

  “This is very fortunate for you,” Karn said. “You can absorb four more cores if you so choose.”

  “We can share them,” Jeremy said.

  “That is unnecessary,” Eli said. “The cores do not match my abilities, and I could not use them. They would better serve you.”

  “Agreed,” Karn said. “If I were a mage, I would negotiate two cores from you. If we find cores to enhance my knight abilities, I will take those.”

  “Mel? Can you absorb cores?” Jeremy asked.

  [I don’t believe I could absorb these because they don’t match water abilities. I guess they are yours. Let’s see what you get!]

  “So, I guess when I have an affinity for a certain magic, I won’t be able to absorb certain cores either.”

  Jeremy picked up the first of the four cores. It felt warm to the touch, and unlike the grief core, this one swirled with smoke and burned with an orange-red flame.

  “The core will give me soulflare!” Jeremy exclaimed.

  Ecstatic at the new ability, he almost instantly forgot about the trauma he had just endured. With no further hesitation, he absorbed all four cores, increasing the soulflare ability to level four