It Is Said (Mathias Bootmaker and the Keepers of the Sandbox) (3 page)

“You can take everything away,” he screamed at the massive windstorm. “But I will not forget!”

The reins disappeared along with his hat, guns, holsters, belt and boots. He was left standing in only his black pants, black shirt and bare feet.

“I will not forget!” he screamed as the most devastating tornado ever seen in these parts arrived in Fears Corner.

Building after building was simply blown apart. Annihilated in the tornado’s wake. It was traveling down Main Street and heading right at the Man in Black. He could see the end of the street. If he could just make it to the edge of town. He was running, but not fast enough.

The twister was on the heels of the Man in Black when a door appeared at the end of the street. He threw his full weight against it, forcing the door open. The Man in Black stumbled inside and it slammed shut.

The door stood alone against the oncoming onslaught. Its frame cracked, but held together. Its hinges squealed, but did not give. The doorknob, in the shape of a silver cowboy hat, rattled but did not turn.
 

The door wisely vanished before it could be destroyed.

2.

Mathias Bootmaker

The Man in Black found himself standing in a circular hallway full of doors. The all white walls and the all white doors left no room for darkness. In this shadowless place it was clear to see that he was not the cold and callous Man in Black. He had the same eyes, the same face, but the features were calmer, gentler.

This was the face of a young man. A very confused young man.
 

“Mathias,” a woman’s voice whispered throughout the hall.

The young man in black was surprised by the disembodied voice.
 

“Mathias,” she repeated, “find the doors.”

He turned to the door closest to him. It was just like all the others, a simple white door in a simple white frame, but the doorknob was not like all the others. It was in the shape of a star. The knob on the door next to it was in the shape of a small tree. The one next to that was in the shape of a ribboned gift box. Every door was the same, but each knob was different.
 

Mathias reached for the star, grabbed it and turned the sparkling knob. The door was locked. Mathias reached for the small tree. Fruitless. He reached for the ribboned gift box. It would not open. He began trying door after door, knob after knob. The ship. The clown’s head. The question mark. None held the answer.

The young man was now running down the circular hall frantically searching for something familiar. A knob he might recognize. But there were so many. With each turn of the hall, an entirely new set of doors presented themselves. He passed hundreds of doors, and no matter which one he tried he could not gain entrance.

Mathias made one last turn and stopped. The circular hallway had come to its end.

Before him stood a set of double doors. The doors were like all the other simple doors in simple frames. Except these doors were red and the knobs were sparkling gold, held in place by a set of crystal talons. The talons turned. All on their own. The lock clicked. The doors opened and Mathias stepped inside.
 

He found himself in the large entry hall of a grand house. Exotic artifacts, trinkets and mementos lined the walls. This was the home of a traveler and adventurer. But none of this mattered to the young man.
 
The only thing that mattered was the other door, on the opposite side of the room. He ran to it.

Like the doors that granted him entrance to this palace, the door that led to the outside of the house was also red. But like the others in the circular hall, this door was locked.
 

Through the small windows that were set on either side of the door frame, Mathias could see three children playing in a sandbox that was set in the front yard of the house. He knew these children. They had led the battle against him in Fears Corner. He was about to knock on the door, hoping that the children would forgive him and set him free when he heard the giggle of a small child.

The giggling was coming from inside the house. It was coming from somewhere upstairs.

Mathias took the steps of the circular staircase two at a time. He raced his way up the stairs passing landing after landing. Room after room. They all passed his view in a blur until he reached the top and found himself staring at yet another door.

This door was made of an old heavy wood. Dark metal bands held the individual planks together. The frame was made of stone. At the center of the door, there was a square silver slab embellished with decoration. The head of a dragon, carved in crystal, seemed to be pushing its way out of the slab. Its eyes were staring at Mathias. It was waiting.
 

Mathias reached for the knob, but there wasn’t one. He thought for a moment. Then he knocked. Nothing. He knocked louder. Still nothing.

All the frustration from all that Mathias had endured rose up inside of him. He began pounding on the door with his fists. If this was another trick, another trap, then he wanted to be done with it. He pounded on the door until the house started pounding back.
 

The noise was deafening. Mathias tried his best to cover his ears, but the sound was even pounding in his mind. Everything in the house shook with each impact. Cracks began to appear in the walls.
 
Fissures opened up in the floors and ceilings, and dust began to rain down everywhere.
 

Mathias rushed down the flight of stairs. Landing after landing brought fresh disasters. Artifacts, trinkets and mementos fell from walls and shelves and crashed to the floors. Windows were exploding into cascading shards of glass. The house was being torn apart.
 

He reached the bottom of the stairs. He made it to the large entry hall as the circular staircase collapsed. Every landing, top to bottom, came down with it. The impact of the crash blasted Mathias out through the red double doors and back into the hall. They slammed shut behind him.
 

He could still hear the sounds of chaos behind those doors, and he could see clouds of debris beginning to seep out of the spaces in the frame. Mathias ran from those double doors as fast as he could. He ran back through the circular hall until he couldn’t hear a thing.
 
Convinced he was safe, he stopped to catch his breath. His sense of safety was short lived.

He could hear a sound coming towards him. Something was following after him.
 

From around the turn came a small white mouse. It stopped directly in front of the young man. Like Mathias, it was exhausted and trying to catch its breath. The little mouse looked up and smiled. He shook his tiny body violently. The creature wasn’t white at all, he was covered in dust from the destruction of the house. This newly revealed mouse sparkled.

This mouse was made entirely of golden sand.

Satisfied with his appearance, the mouse stood up tall, and with a flourish, bowed deeply before Mathias. As he rose, he winked at the young man. The mouse then raised his little arms until they were level with his chest. He then pushed up onto the toes of his tiny right foot and began to spin.

As Mathias watched, the little performer began to pick up speed until he was nothing but a shimmering blur. That blur burst into hundreds of teeny grains of sparkling golden sand.
 

Those little sparks of light flew everywhere. They bounced off of everything. They filled the hall of doors with a warm, amber light. Then they all froze in the air. For a second, not one of those tiny stars moved. Then like little rockets, they each found a target. Each one picked a door and rocketed itself into every keyhole under every doorknob.

For a moment there was nothing. Then the doorknobs began to rattle. Cascades of golden sand began pouring through the keyholes and onto the floor of the hall of doors. The sand swirled around the young man’s bare feet. Mathias tried stepping around it, but the sand seemed to be grabbing at him.
 

The hall, like the house before it and the town before that, began to rumble. He had encountered many frightening moments in this story, but nothing was as terrifying as the thing he saw before him. A giant wave of sand was rolling down the hall of doors right towards Mathias.

The sand at his feet formed into two gnarly hands that wrapped themselves around his ankles. The closed grainy fists held him in place. The tornado was unlucky. It missed its mark. The wave of sand would fare better. It slammed into the young man head on and consumed him.

Mathias woke up. In his bed. In his room. In his home.

It wasn’t the house that was pounding back at him. It was his heart. It wasn’t the wave of sand that had choked off his air. It was the twist of the red bed linens that were wrapped around his body. He had had another nightmare. Another nightmare, in a long line of nightmares that had stretched on for countless nights. Each one was the same, and each time Mathias felt a little more of himself slipping away.
 

Mathias slowly pulled himself up and sat at the edge of the large bed. The room was dark. Just a hint of moonlight sneaked in through a tall open window at the far end of the room. He could hear rain falling from the night sky and he could feel the dampness in the air.
 

His black bed clothes were not enough against the chill. He stood up, slid his feet into his black bed slippers and pulled his black robe from one of the four ornately carved mahogany bedposts and put it on. He cinched it tight around his waist, and the chill began to fade.
 

Mathias walked the few steps to his night table. Each footfall felt labored. His body was heavy from the effects of all the nightmares. He passed his hand over a thick white candle that was resting on a tall crystal candlestick. The wick lit with a spark and burned. As far as he knew, this little bit of magic was all he had left.
 

Mathias reached for the crystal pitcher on his night table. He grabbed it by the handle, which was in the form of a dapper chimpanzee at rest against the pitcher itself. His other hand reached for a crystal goblet in the form of a dragon in full flight. Its talons held the base. Its up stretched wings formed the cradle into which Mathias poured cool, clear water. He placed the pitcher down on the night table and took a long, deep drink.
 

He stopped when he caught his reflection in the mirror above his night table. He ran his fingers through his long dark hair. He was a young man, but there was age in his deep blue eyes. An age that comes upon a person when they’ve lost the better part of themselves.
 
Mathias didn’t know what part of himself he had lost. He didn’t know where he might have left it, or to whom he might have given it.
 

Maybe someone just took it from him.
 

He didn’t know because he couldn’t remember. He had forgotten a great many things. He hadn’t seen any of his friends. He had forgotten who they were. He hadn’t been to any of his favorite places.
 
He had forgotten where they were. Mathias was afraid that if he didn’t remember, and remember soon, he would simply disappear.
 

Mathias could see the reflection of the curtains blowing in the tall open window. For a moment, he thought he saw the shape of a woman forming in the flowing fabric. He took another drink as he walked to the window.

Since the nightmares began, Mathias had been spending all his daylight hours staring out that window. He looked out at the green hills that formed the lush valley in which his house stood. He looked up at the white clouds and blue skies that formed the canopy above the valley. But he was truly trying to look beyond this view.

He was searching for something he couldn’t find because he had forgotten what it was he was looking for.

He did, however, know two very important things. Deep down inside, he knew that he was a good man with a good heart. That gave him hope. At the center of his heart, he kept the only other thing he was sure of and the one thing no one could ever take from him. His name. His name was Mathias Bootmaker and for some reason, unbeknownst to him, that gave him strength.