KINGDOM OF DREAMS: Chapter 6
The Portal in the Haystack
(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)
Hey everyone. I hope this finds everyone well. Just a reminder all voiceovers are done by yours truly and available for every chapter like an audio book. The story is original with an illustration for each chapter to boot.
In case you need to catch up before reading or listening:
You can always find up to date drops of this story as it progresses in order under the new KINGDOM OF DREAMS tab on my home page.
Enjoy! -KC
The shrouded figure hurried into the walk-in closet and knelt down beside Jimmy. He wasn’t sure whom he thought the mystery intruder might be, but he was relieved to see it was only his sister.
“Get out! Get out!” Lem said under her breath as, in panicked motions, she drug Jimmy into the hallway by his sleeve.
But Jimmy resisted her.
“No,” he said. He clawed at the dust-caked floorboards. “I need you to put me back—I was receiving a special message in there!” No way he was leaving right now. The Dream world—heck, this one too—might need him.
“Um, wow. I wasn’t trying to make you insane, just teach you a lesson. Please be quiet?” Lem pleaded with a whisper.
What had her so amped up and worried? Jimmy wondered.
As if in answer, below them, the stairs squeaked, and Jimmy followed Lem's gaze down the hallway.
BLUMP. BLUMP. BLUMP. Someone had to be on the stairs. Each step groaned out in succession as if in pain, like a mammoth was clambering up them with surprising speed. From the next hallway, something grunted and then squealed in protest.
Muttered curses revealed it was at least human. “Lem! Charley's stuffed hedgehog is going to kill somebody if you don't put it away like I told you to do a million times. Lem?”
Lem lifted the chair outside and carefully pulled it and Jimmy back into the closet, gently shutting the door behind them. Jimmy guessed Lem still didn’t trust him as she smothered his mouth with her arm again. She gawked at the door with apprehension.
“Jim? Lem? Kids?” their father called out. “Jim, if you’re hiding, don’t worry about what happened last night. I hear sleepwalking is natural for some people. Just an, uh… interesting condition.” Doors squeaked open and thumped closed in rapid succession—then a BANG! Either the Titanic had attempted to parallel park in the hallway, or their father fell over something.
A not-so-nice curse word sliced the air despite it being a whisper. “Lem, how many times do I have to tell you not to leave your swim—what happened to OUR spaceship?” The question was sucked in at first, then hissed out at a boil.
Spaceship? The word knocked the breath out of Jimmy, too.
Lem spun away from Jimmy in shame.
“What did you do to it?” Jimmy mumbled through Lem’s palm.
The spaceship in question, Jimmy’s replica model 1947 Roswell UFO, was not only a source of pride; it was a unique symbol in his life. The physical evidence that he and his father had—if only for a fleeting second—bonded.
To say Jimmy and his father didn’t have much in common was like saying Godzilla and King Kong enjoyed sharing relaxing spa days together. It started long ago when his father used to walk by Jimmy’s room when he was sitting on his bed casually talking to Burks. The old man would do a quick about-face and interrogate Jimmy about whom he was talking to.
Unlike Lem, with whom his father related to on everything, Jimmy sensed his father’s ever-growing bafflement and frustration with him.
Jimmy’s father lived to walk around the house and fix anything broken or close to being broken, or ‘improve’ unsuspecting items that dared to show the slightest bit of wear. His father was always doing something manly, like chopping wood or changing the lawnmower oil, or fixing a car.
Jimmy’s tools of choice were game controllers, bookmarks, keyboards, charcoals, and hundred-sided die. When Jimmy was forced to “help,” he was only adept at ensuring broken things stayed broken, or finding new things to break. He just wasn’t into being “handy” and never would be, and his father knew it. So, when his father brought home the painted box of the cosmos with the unbelievably cool vintage UFO inside, complete with extraterrestrial pilots, Jimmy stared at his father like he was the alien.
They had spent months working on the amazing ship together, lovingly painting it layer by layer. It was, hands down, Jimmy’s favorite collector’s item.
And was somebody named Lem jealous about it all? You bet. And now?
“LEM!” their father snorted like a dragon searching for the thief that stole its treasure. Their father’s eyes would turn reptilian when he lost it, and you didn’t want to be anywhere in his line of sight. Anger was handed down in their family like old clothes.
Still, Jimmy was thrilled his father called it our spaceship.
All of Lem’s color drained from her face, and her lips trembled. She covered Jimmy’s mouth once again with her arm, practically smothering him in a brutal headlock. She wasn’t used to Jimmy and their father being on the same side. A condition Jimmy used to his advantage.
Jimmy motioned for her to uncover his mouth.
Lem shook her head, throwing darts at him with her eyes. There was no way she’d do it on her own, so Jimmy helped sway her by slapping his sneaker on the wood.
“No,” Lem mouthed.
Jimmy raised his shoe again. Lem rolled her eyes at him and removed her arm from covering his mouth.
“Help me find the Portal to the Kingdom of Dreams,” Jimmy whispered.
“The what? To… the WHAT?”
“There’s a Portal. We need to find it.”
Lem frowned. “We?” she hissed. She shook her head.
Jimmy propped his sneaker on the vacuum as a threat and made it lean dangerously. His touch proved a bit too heavy, and the vacuum tipped over!
Lem let go of Jimmy and dove, somehow catching the vacuum before it crashed against the wooden floor.
Footsteps arrived outside of the closet door, and an immense shadow stamped out most of the light blazing through the crack. “Where are you?” their father growled.
The doorknob turned.
Jimmy and Lem clambered behind the vacuum Lem had just righted again just as the closet door opened.
A mobile phone rang.
“Hey,” his father said. “I swung by the house to get some things. You’re kidding? The FBI is coming here? Today?” The floorboards creaked as if he might cave in the floor. “Well, the kids aren’t here. Jimmy’s room is wrecked—his ship is broken. Yes, that one. What do you mean Lem threatened to run away? You just drove off and left them? Hold on. I’ll drive around the neighborhood and see if I can round them up.”
The closet door slammed shut.
The floorboards rumbled and squeaked, the stairs cried out in distress once more as their father sprinted back downstairs. Bang! The front door slammed shut. Outside, seconds later, they heard a truck rev up and peel out of the driveway.
Lem let Jimmy go and sat there, stunned.
“They’ll be back soon with… others. If we find the Portal, we don’t have to stick around. Win-win,” Jimmy reassured her.
Lem stared at Jimmy as if she might not speak English. She took a moment to reply. “You talking to imaginary things in vacuum cleaners stresses me to no end, but… thanks for not ratting me out to Dad about the… you know.”
Jimmy was a bit taken aback at his sister’s pseudo-apology but played it cool. He still wasn’t letting her off the hook for destroying his UFO out of spite, either. “No problem. Let’s find the Portal.”
Jimmy was certain finding the portal to the Kingdom of Dreams would take a nano-second by simply asking Burks. But after repeated failed attempts to hail Burks until Jimmy was practically screaming his name, his imaginary friend seemed just that: imaginary. And worse, mysteriously absent. The magic of the talking vacuum cleaner seemed to have expired. Jimmy shook the devil out of the lifeless prehistoric cleaning device in frustration, but stopped when it occurred to him he might somehow injure Burks if he was still inside.
Lem cowered behind some boxes, this time maybe more about the state of Jimmy’s sanity than suffering their father’s wrath, so he dropped trying to communicate with his imaginary friend altogether.
For some unexplained reason, after being so desperate to get his attention, Burks wasn’t responding. Not inside of Jimmy’s head, nor out. Did something happen to him? Jimmy wasn’t sure.
In a rush, Jimmy rifled through pantries, slid under beds, darted around the garage, and ended up breathless and out of luck in the dark folds of the basement.
Lem trailed just behind him, at first smiling in apparent amusement, then thin-lipped, then all-out covering her eyes with her hands with each failed search to locate the elusive Portal, until they finally regrouped in his room.
Jimmy peered out of his bedroom window. The driveway below was still empty, but their parents (and most likely the authorities) would be back anytime.
“Haven’t a clue where the stinking Portal is,” Jimmy said, plopping down on his bed. “And I pretty much tore apart the house. Any ideas?”
Lem sat like a Principal in the chair at his desk, with her arms crossed, furrowed brow, evaluating a student of poor quality. “Big fat zero. But I’d pay good money to enjoy watching you get tangled up in Mom’s dresses again in the back of her closet in your desperate search to find this precious portal.”
The sore spot on Jimmy’s neck flared up and his hand went to the band-aide. “What happened last night?”
Lem bit her lip in possible consideration. “Tell me what happened to the bullies first. Did you sic mobsters on them or something?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of!” Lem looked concerned for him; there was fear in her eyes—it was strangely comforting to Jimmy.
Lem nervously stroked her thick, dark hair, then cast it aside, exposing the shaven side, returning to her egotistical self. “You sound as screwy as our mother. But at least you sound almost truthful. Last night you sounded… loco.”
“I did?”
“Ha. Do you think that little ‘sleepwalking’ charade you’ve been playing Mom and Dad with works on me, too?”
“Sleepwalking?” Jimmy strained his brain. “Dad said that, too. I was sleepwalking?” Why couldn’t he remember last night?
“Chit!” For some reason, Lem always made that charming sound when she was at wit’s end, which only took a wayward gnat to get her there.
Lem sighed, then fastened her trademark smirk to her face. “You told me you were all-powerful. You told me you would rule the Kingdom of Dreams or something ridiculous like that.”
“The Kingdom of Dreams? Are you sure you didn’t dream that?”
“That’s exactly what I told you.” Lem laughed, then her eyes sliced into him with a hot intensity. “Then you said you’d make me pay, too, if I ever got in your way,” she said in a low voice.
“I said it like that?”
“Just like that. You said I’d make a terrific bad dream, the ultimate slave.”
Jimmy felt like his brain had left the building.
“That cut on your neck came from me, by the way. You were about to fall down the stairs during your little zombie walk, and I pushed you back. The corner of my bedroom door got your neck when you fell. You don’t remember, do you?”
Jimmy shook his head.
Lem studied his face for a long time, then stood up. “Be right back.”
When Lem came back, she had her mongo backpack she used for her swimming gear in her hands.
It was a promising sight. “Good, does that mean you’re coming with me?” Jimmy asked, daring to feel pangs of hope.
Lem shrugged. “Not necessarily.”
Fair enough, Jimmy supposed.
Just then, a wild bell rang. Francis rounded the corner at full speed, followed closely by Charley, the plump dog chomping at the air.
Lem stepped back into the room to dodge the animals. A good thing, too, because Charley knocked Jimmy's bedroom door backward, propelling it off the flatulent sounding doorstop, and it slammed shut.
The full-length mirror fastened to the back of the door shook long after the door had closed, so long that even the animals paused and perked their ears up. A fake galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars bordered the glass, faded and dull in the light of day.
Jimmy stood up. He sensed something far away yet somehow not so far away that triggered an emotional response he couldn’t quite place.
The animals shrugged off the bizarre moment and raced in tight circles, weaving in and out between the desk and chairs. Jimmy couldn’t tell if Francis ran in complete terror or total delight until he found himself cornered between the figure stand and the bed. The pets liked to play this four-legged game of tag from time to time, but most likely Charley had attempted to hoover Francis’ food and the cat retaliated, hence the chase.
Charley gave a triumphant snarl.
Francis answered with a wailing meow and dashed toward the bed.
Jimmy dove out of the way as Francis jumped on the pillows and shot under the covers. The outline of the speedy feline’s tiny frame moved down the length of the bed.
Charley pursued, bounding onto the bed, tearing under the sheets. His bulky shape gained on the tiny cat.
But the chaos beneath the sheets didn’t continue; instead, the bedspread and sheets settled and then flattened back out.
Jimmy thought his bed might have swallowed them whole. “L-Lem,” Jimmy whispered. “Did you see that?”
“Uhhh, not sure what I just saw.”
From the depths of the mattress, a jingling bell grew more and more distant. Two far-off voices began… speaking!
“Charles, you calamitous canine, cease this futile pursuit! We must cooperate and investigate our curious whereabouts.”
“P-putile?” an unsure voice replied.
“Futile. It means pointless, like you trying to pronounce words that begin with the letter f.” The voice carefully enunciated each word, with an overdone, almost fake-sounding British accent.
“Stay dare. When I catch you!”
“No offense, my frivolous fellow, but I’d place a high wager against your chances of catching a parked car, let alone me. I advise you to desist at once, lest you die of exertion. Now—sit! Well done! Your brawn and fortitude are quite necessary for our survival.”
“Panks!”
“Don’t mention it. A capital question to start us off: what is this place?”
“Don’t know, looks punny to me.”
“Funny indeed. Confound my eyes—what the devil is that thing in the sky? Oh dear. Be quick, mate—off we go!” The voices faded.
“Francis?” Jimmy called out in disbelief and concern, leaning over the bed.
“Charley?” Lem joined in. She ripped the covers off his bed and shrieked, hopping backward.
Jimmy’s bed, a normal rectangular Earth bed a second ago, now was something else that contained an entire active galaxy! Unlike the false sticker stars around the frame of the door’s mirror, real stars twinkled and pulsed inside.
Jimmy was blown away by the impressive discovery. There were also planets of all shapes and sizes inside the mattress, like his bed was now a personal space aquarium. The puffy bright blob of a comet with its crazy long tail fired down the length of the mattress and disappeared from view, leaving a visible trail.
“Uh, Jimmy?” Lem whispered in a voice nothing like her normal obnoxious self. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say I think we just found your portal.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. His head swayed and he took a firm step back to steady himself again as he stared slack-jawed in a full-on cosmic trance at the once normal bed.
Car doors slamming shut outside jolted Jimmy back to reality—well, their reality anyway.
BUNK. BUNK. More car doors closed. Lem joined Jimmy at the window to check things out down below.
Two police cars and a black SUV had pulled up with four officers, and an important-looking man in a dark suit joined their parents on the lawn. The officers held walkie-talkies to their ears, heads on a swivel, and seemed on high alert. The man in the suit—which screamed federal agent—moved in a hushed and much calmer manner. The well-dressed man also stared down their house with an unnerving assurance.
Jimmy and Lem ducked out of sight.
“I got to hand it to you, little bro: you sure know how to dial up some major league drama,” Lem said. She flashed an annoyed glance in the direction of the voices outside, then back to the portal. “Okay, here's the plan.”
Lem slipped off her backpack and quickly unzipped it. Jimmy was surprised to find some of her clothes and essentials already stowed inside.
“Grab some clothes and your toothbrush; I'll throw them on top... Hurry, nimrod. And wipe that brainless smile off your face—they’ll be heading inside soon.”
After Jimmy made a mad dash around his room and bathroom, slam-dunking a few precious things inside the sack: toothbrush, extra clothes, flashlight, Lem plunked the humongous backpack roughly on him like he was her personal camel—probably her full intention all along. Jimmy just focused on celebrating the major miracle she was coming at all.
Lem leaned down to talk to Jimmy in the same manner he’d seen her coaches do for her just before the starting gun at swim meets. “We need to focus on getting our pets back first. And then just maybe... deal with your weirdo quest thingie.”
Keys jiggled in the front door downstairs as the deadbolt released with a SLOCK! The front door squeaked open.
“Kids? Are you here?” both of their parents said in unison.
Jimmy cautiously approached his bed like it was a wild animal. Was it really a galaxy-filled gateway to a strange realm? Jimmy thought.
Lem stayed right behind him in support. He shared an understanding look with his sister and appreciated this was no trick on her part. She was willing to try the ridiculous to get away from reality. For once, she had his back.
Hurried footsteps clopped up the groaning stairs. “Kids?”
Jimmy inhaled a deep breath, and climbed, stepping into his bed—still alive with an awesome galaxy of pulsing stars and dancing lights. And then?
Left the real world behind.