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“Oh, we’ve almost done it, Jack! I just need to solder this last bit…” Maddie hummed, deeply focused as she brought the soldering iron to the machinery in front of her. Soon enough, she leaned back and let out a big sigh, melting into her chair briefly before bouncing up and waving to Jack, who was on the other side of the room.
“I’m finished!” Maddie exclaimed, electric excitement coursing through her veins. The anticipation had her nearly bouncing up and down like a child as she swiftly made her way behind the control panel beside her husband.
Jack threw down his tools almost immediately after her, wiping his brow as he stood up.
“Same here!”
“We’ve done it! Now, to activate it…” Maddie said, voice filled with wonder. “We’ve double-checked everything?”
“Yep.” Jack gave a firm nod as he followed Maddie to the control panel.
“Mom, Dad, Jazz says dinner is ready,” Danny called out. Maddie could hear him trudging down the stairs. The door creaked open and her son walked through, wearing oversized, worn out jeans and a faded, crinkled t-shirt.
“We are making history Dann-o, we don’t have time for dinner!” Jack declared, pressing the button with no small amount of dramatic flair.
Energy filled the air, tangible and heavy. The portal hummed at a pitch that was somehow both low and high and a faint glow began to emanate from the portal frame. The tension grew almost unbearable and abruptly snapped. The lights flickered briefly, then stabilized and the portal went dormant once more.
Maddie stared in shock, unable to comprehend what had happened. We were so close..! What went wrong? There has to be a way, the portal was forming!
Frustrated and brokenhearted, Maddie walked past her son, heading straight to her room.
Jack followed, only stopping briefly to inform Danny that they wouldn’t be eating dinner.
Too caught up in their loss, neither parent acknowledged their son standing alone, hurt yet unsurprised.
When Maddie woke up the next morning, it was with a renewed fire.
“Jack, we can fix the portal.”
“Are you sure, Mads?” Jack was slumped in his chair, not even in his hazmat suit.
“Yes, I’m sure of it! We saw the portal begin to form, it was right there! We’re just missing one last puzzle piece.” Maddie was filled with determination as hard as steel; they had spent decades on this project and they were not going to give up when she could have almost reached out and touched it.
“If you really think so, Mads,” Jack said, “then I’ll believe you.” Maddie’s husband gave her a warm smile and kissed her gently. “Now, let me go get my hazmat suit!”
Days turned into weeks as Jack and Maddie researched, combing through every book even remotely related to the supernatural.
Eventually, Jack found something in a book (a pdf copy, rather) called Fae and Foe: Into the Unknown.
“Look here, Mads, I’ve got something!”
“Show me, show me!” Maddie demanded, scrambling over.
Turning the laptop toward her, Maddie read the section aloud.
“‘To meet with the fair folk is dangerous, but to cross into their territory is infinitely more so. To willingly pursue such a pursuit, one must be mad. Nonetheless, this book is not one for the sane. To create a doorway to the spirit realm, a sacrifice is needed…’” Maddie trailed off, eyes scanning the next lines but unable to speak them aloud.
“So, a rabbit or pig, right?” Jack asked, chuckling. “I haven’t been hunting in a bit, but I’m sure I can get something.”
“No, Jack… the portal needs a person. Specifically, a person who means something to us.”
“But… Mads…”
“We have to, Jack,” Maddie stated, face hardening. “It’s our lives’ work.”
Jack looked her back in the eye, mirroring her stony gaze. “So be it.”
After more detailed research into the matter, Jack and Maddie were confident of what they needed to do. The sacrifice had to be where the portal would form so that the spirit realm could get a grasp of them, fueling it with enough energy to fully manifest.
Now, the question was… who?
As much as Danny and Jazz had teased their parents for not having any friends, it was based in fact. Jack and Maddie had each other. Once upon a time, they might have included Vlad in that count, but since the portal incident in college, he had been distant. (Maddie now suspected that their previous success had not been in spite of Vlad’s injury, but because of it. What would have happened, she wondered, if the portal had been a bit bigger? If Vlad had stayed in there?
Shaking her head, Maddie cleared her thoughts to focus on the matter at hand: The Choice. Visualizing this choice will surely help.
Pulling over a whiteboard, Maddie made a T-chart. One side was labelled “Jazz,” and the other, “Danny.”
“Jazz is whip-smart,” Jack offered. “She’s already in her senior year with almost all APs and her college applications are looking strong.”
“Alright.” Maddie nodded, writing the points down with plus-signs to mark their effect.
“Danny’s got straight B’s and B-pluses,” Maddie added. “And, he’s not in any AP’s or honors classes.”
Jack nodded in agreement, looking somewhat disappointed in his son.
Another set of points went down on the whiteboard, these marked with minuses for their negative status.
“Danny’s looking at NASA,” Jack offered.
“Will he get in with his grades though?”
“True…”
The discussion continued for hours, whiteboard filling with red ink that, in the right lighting, almost looked like blood.
“Danny, honey, do you think you can come help us down in the lab?” Mom called as she grabbed a granola bar from the pantry.
Danny, who was sitting at the dining table working on his homework, looked up before shaking his head.
“I’ve got a big assignment from math,” Danny replied, looking at the papers before him with disdain.
“C’mon Dann-o, it’ll be like a quick break! Then, you can get back to your math with a refreshed brain,” Dad cajoled.
Mom hummed in agreement and Danny realised that there was no way he would be able to squirrel out of this. While, sometimes, he loved helping out in the lab, as his classes got busier, Danny needed every second he had to keep up.
“Okay, I guess that would help.” Danny sat up, the chair making a screeching noise as the rubber pads rubbed harshly against the wooden floor.
“Don’t forget to put your hazmat suit on, Danny,” Mom reminded him. “Safety first!”
“Yeah, I got it.” Danny nodded along, walking over to the supply closet where the aforementioned suits were stored. As he grabbed his suit, he realized that the front had a sticker with his dad’s face on it, smack dab in the center.
“Ew, this sticker is not flattering,” Danny muttered, taking the extra minute to peel it off.
“Are ya sewing the suit from scratch, Danny?” Dad’s voice echoed up from the lab, teasing and impatient.
“Coming!” Danny yelled back, pulling the suit on as fast as he could. The zipper of the suit got stuck and after several seconds of fruitless tugging, Danny decided to leave it be. It’s not like he was going to die from a gap less than an inch long.
Rushing down the stairs, Danny found his parents once again working on the portal.
“Seriously? I thought the portal didn’t work,” Danny complained. The portal was one of the least fun projects in the lab.
“It didn’t, but, after this, it will,” Mom replied eagerly. Danny was sure that if her goggles were up, her eyes would be glowing with the same crazed determination you saw in characters like Dr. Frankenstein or Zachary Varmitech.
“Now, Dann-o, you are essential for this to work,” Dad began.
“We need you to go into the portal frame and wire the emergency stop button before we start it up. Both Jack and my fingers are too large to wire it efficiently,” Mom finished resolutely.
“It’s safe, right?” Danny asked. Something felt off, and he didn’t want to get hurt. Especially if, by some miracle, ectoplasm and ghosts were real and the door to their realm opened.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Mom assured him, followed by an affirmative nod from Dad.
“Okay…” Danny said uneasily. He grabbed the button and tools that had been set aside and walked up to the portal, taking in the tall, dark tunnel before him.
“Well, the button won’t wire itself,” Danny muttered under his breath, taking a step into the structure.
Just as he arrived at what he presumed was the button’s location, Danny turned back to confirm with his parents.
Only…
They seemed sad. They were looking at Danny in a way that felt like they were taking in everything they could, as though they might never see him again.
Tears welled up in Dad’s eyes as Mom pressed the big button that Danny knew was labelled ‘ON.’
“I’m sorry,” Mom whispered.
The portal came to life on top of Danny. He felt it attempting to rend his soul from his body but it was unable to, like it was trapped there by something. A glowing green substance that was neither solid nor liquid burned like acid everywhere it touched, quickly seeping into his exposed skin and then his suit from that small, innocuous hole. Completely immersed in ectoplasm, Danny’s soul was bound to his body, but his body was unbound from the earth itself.
Danny didn’t know if he had ever started screaming but he felt like he was. Everything was just pain, skin melting and reforming, bones shattering and rebuilding, organs bursting and repairing…
Eventually, Danny passed out, sweet darkness rescuing him from the pain of his body.
When Danny awoke, it was in a strange place, floating in a realm filled with green of varying shades.