Return To Lan Darr (4 page)

Laura notices Allan staring and tries to smile. A strand of hair falls over her face, and she tucks it behind her ear. Allan snaps back into his body and glances at the front. Mrs. Domley is staring at Allan, worry discoloring her expression.

The van pulls into the school parking lot and stops at the front entrance. The quiet weirdness between everyone is palpable, like magnets flipped the wrong way.

Laura helps Allan out of the van.

“Laura, I need to speak with you. Let Allan and Mac head on in.”

Laura whispers a good-bye to Allan and hops back into the van.

“Come on, bro,” Mac says.

“She’s mad at me. This is bad.”

“I’d say you messed up, big time.”

Allan rolls himself into the school and turns the corner, stopping by the metal lockers. “I’m gonna wait here for Laura.”

“Coo.” Mac walks off, striking a conversation with another friend.

Allan notices a girl laughing and pointing at him. It doesn’t take long for Allan to realize that the entire school seems to be watching him.

The first bell rings, and Allan still doesn’t budge. Where is Laura?

The assistant principal saunters over to Allan and folds his arms. The man is tall and muscular with a square jaw and thick brows that shadow his narrow eyes. He always wears a green polo with the school logo on the left chest tucked tightly into his tan khaki pants. A whistle he uses when he’s teaching gym class dangles on a string hung around his muscular neck. “There a problem, Mr. Westerfield?” He asks then cleans his teeth by sucking on them loudly. “I noticed a lot of folks giving you undue attention this morning.”

Allan shakes his head. “I don’t know why.” He shifts in his seat and feels his stomach flop around.

“Then get a move on. Class waits for no man.” The assistant principal walks off, shooing other straggling students.

Allan catches the stares and hears snickers while he wheels himself through the halls to his locker. Written in black marker is a message that reads, “Crazy in the”. A picture of a coconut is taped below the message. Allan panics and rips the image down and tries to rub off the marker, but the marker won’t come off.
What’s going on?
He feels clammy and tense. He can’t think or look anyone in the eye, but he feels their stares on the back of his head like a hot iron.

The halls clear out. Allan is alone, and he can breathe now.

Allan’s chest tightens again when Laura walks around the corner. Laura is cleaning her nails repetitively. Her eyes are red.

“Sorry, Allan.” Laura looks out to the grassy area then back to Allan. She sniffs and represses her tears. “I can’t go hiking with you in the mountain this weekend. I can’t go looking for the Hubbu flower, or whatever it is.”

Allan’s eyes widen. “What? Why?”

Laura nods. “I… I told my mother what you said two days ago. She thinks you have serious problems. I’m worried about you too. You tell me about going to another planet and that all this time we’ve been hiking together, we’re really looking for a weird flower that will get you there.” Laura folds her arms tightly. “I thought I believed you, but I don’t. What you’re saying is impossible.”

A schoolmate blows past them, hurrying to class. Laura straightens her posture.

“I’m not crazy.” Allan holds up the image of the coconut. “Who else did you tell?”

She takes the image then glances at the writing on the locker. “Oh no,” she mumbles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell anyone at school.”

“But the whole school knows! I trusted you.”

“After you told me, I got worried. You went to the bathroom, and I saw your diary by your nightstand. I picked it up and flipped through it. The stuff I saw made me worry more about you, so I took it.”

“What!!” The world closes in on Allan, making him feel like he’s in a dark tunnel.

“You really do believe you were on some other planet called Lan Darr. The creatures you met were so weird, and they spoke English. It’s not right. I wanted to give your diary to your therapist so she could help you see… to see that it was all a dream made up in your head. Lan Darr isn’t real! The flower isn’t real! Time to wake up, Allan.”

Allan grips the armrests on his wheelchair until his knuckles ache. “Oh my God, you stole and read my diary.” His head lowers and shakes slowly back and forth.

Embarrassment seizes every nerve. His therapist told him to write down all his thoughts and feelings and that doing so would help him make sense of himself and help him heal. He never expected anyone to read it, ever! He’d written about his attraction to Asantia, in detail. He’d written about how strong he’d felt with Mizzi’s mechanical legs and how often he’d thought about the Lorebs, the balloon creatures that carried him to Dantia. Everything is in there! Now Laura has read it and is freaked out by it.
She must think I’m a loser.
Allan has never felt betrayed before.

“I didn’t come over yesterday because… because I was looking for the diary. I lost it.”

Allan’s eyes close. It keeps getting worse. The reason for the graffiti on his locker and the strange looks is because his diary was found and has made headlines. “How did it get lost? Who has it?”

“I don’t know who has it. I was in the copy room making flyers. My bag tipped over on the chair. Your diary must have fallen out. I went back later and looked everywhere for it, but it was gone. Someone found it. I’m sorry.” She can no longer hold her composure and tears burst out of her eyes. She runs to the office, her hands cradling her face.

Anger competes with sadness in Allan’s mind like dueling samurai. Quivers echo through his muscles, leaving him weak and feeling small.

Someone found his diary and passed it around the whole school and probably posted it online. “No!” he screams. His voice echoes off the lockers. The past year of his life is on display, and it makes him look bonkers. It’s bad enough that the unfortunate events in his life—the car crash, his supposed abduction, and then rescue at the dam—make him famous in the sense that everyone has seen his story on the news and can pick him out of a crowd. Now those same people, the ones that felt pity for him or that wouldn’t look him in the eye, are all laughing at him. Allan feels ruined, a corpse on a battlefield, a plane in a nosedive. His hands are cold and stiff.

At lunch, Allan goes to the nurse. He feels like he’s going to vomit, and the feeling remains with him until Rubic comes and picks him up.

Rubic rolls Allan out of the nurse’s office as fast as he can. “We gotta hustle. I only have an hour for lunch, and it took me twenty minutes to get here.”

“I’m sorry you had to come get me.”

“Don’t worry, man. It’s all good. I just have ta burn rubber.”

Allan doesn’t say a word the entire ride home. He’s afraid he’ll start to cry.

Rubic drops him off and heads back to work.

Allan doesn’t play any video games or eat. He tries to watch television, but hardly pays attention. All he is successful at is getting into pajamas and flipping through TV channels. Rubic works late, so Allan doesn’t talk to another living soul the rest of the day and evening. He goes to bed early without brushing his teeth or reading.

In the morning, Rubic wakes him when his alarm fails to do so. “Hey. You’ll be late for school.”

“I’m sick.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. Let me get the thermometer.”

“Not that kind of sick.” 

“What do you mean? You were gonna blow chunks yesterday.”

Allan sits up. “Laura stole my diary and told her mom about Lan Darr. They think I’m nuts, and Laura doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore. And I don’t want to hang out with her.” The anger ruminates in Allan and is poised to burst out of him. “She lost the diary, Rube. Lost it. Someone at school found it. My life is over!” Allan falls back and pulls the covers over his head.

“Ah. I was wondering why our house looks like a winter wonderland. I thought it might have been a good thing. You know, a sign of affection. We used to prank people with toilet paper if we liked the guy, or girl.”

Allan peeks from under the covers. “What are you talking about?”

Rubic thumbs toward the window.

Allan lets Rubic help him into his chair. After flipping the brake off, he rolls to the window and then yanks the cord to the blinds. They clatter to the top of the window, sending dust into the air like smoke. A toilet paper horror scene lies just outside his window. The tall oak tree is completely crowned with dangling streamers of toilet paper, and the grass is littered with coconut shells.

Allan spins his chair and speeds out of the room. Rubic follows. “Still might not be a totally bad thing. In my day, if you really hated someone you’d egg ’em or put a bag of crap on their porch and light it on fire. Don’t do that, by the way.”

Allan rolls out the front door and stops. He’s never seen so much toilet paper, not even in the movies. Whoever did this took extra care to completely cover the yard. It really did look more like snow in some places than toilet paper. Then Allan sees the van. “This is not a sign of affection,” Allan steams, and rolls to the van. Pages of a book are taped to the windows with lots of thick, clear packing tape.

Rubic starts pulling off the tape and the pages.

“Hand them here,” Allan orders. He inspects them, expecting them to be his diary. They weren’t. They are pages from a children’s book by Adam Boldary titled
Morty’s Travels
. Someone had written a note on the cover page in a red marker. It reads:

Do these pages look familiar? You didn’t travel to another world, you’re remembering this book. Look through it. The dream spirits are in there and the salamander-people. The Lithic Furies are on page 10, and Dantia’s canal system is on page 8. Sorry, Allan, but you’re just crazy in the head. Get some help, dude.

With Love and pseudo-affection,

The Entire School Population of Minister Academy

Allan tears through the pages of the Adam Boldary book. Sure enough, there are the creatures he’d met and places he’d been: the six-inch creatures, the Lorebs, Dantia’s tall wall, the canals, the Lithic Furies, and even Lyllia of Meduna. They don’t quite look like how he’d seen them because they were illustrations in a children’s book. But there they are, in a book published in 1975.

Chapter
4

You’re Just Bat Crazy, Boy

Allan crumples up the pages of
Morty’s Travels
and throws the paper ball so hard he rocks his wheelchair. He’s confused to the point of madness. Why were these creatures in a children’s book? Had this book been read to him as a boy? Tears blur the world around him, trapping his sadness in their watery clutches. He grips the push-ring on his wheelchair until his muscles ache. Turning the left ring spins him back toward the house.

“Those Minister Academy preps think they’re so clever, don’t they? If I find out who did this to you, well, we’ll get ’em back. They’ll be sorry,” Rubic says. “I don’t care if that’s not the adult thing to say.” Rubic tries to reach out to Allan, to touch his shoulder, but Allan keeps rolling.

Allan takes one last look at the gently swaying streamers of toilet paper that decorate his entire front yard. It hurts him physically to look at it, so he rushes inside as fast as he can.

Rubic follows, closing and locking the front door. “Look. The prank on our house could be worse. They could’ve thrown rocks through the windows or keyed your van.” Rubic wasn’t getting through to Allan. “I know you thought you really went somewhere. I know you hold on to that with every ounce of strength. You dream about that place. Those friends you made, they feel real to you, as real as anything in this house.” Rubic knocks on the wall. “But that shows you how powerful our brains are. You were drugged with an intense cocktail of chemicals, bud. I experienced a slice of that poison that Alice had flushed into the river. I know.”

Allan drops his chin to his chest and looks at his hands. “I felt things. Mizzi built me mechanical legs that took me into the Lithic Fury desert. They were so much more than just tall rock creatures. They had souls, every one of them did. Jibbawk came after me. I ran from it. It was real.” Finally, the flood of tears and sobs burst out.

Rubic hugs Allan for a long time.

When Allan is able to speak, he pushes away from Rubic. “Laura stole my diary, but… but I don’t hate her. I’m mad at her, but I still want to see her.”

“You’re so young, man. You’re only fifteen. You’ll be sixteen in six months, I know, but you’ve got a long way to go in life. Friends will come and go.” Rubic tries to smile, but Allan can see anger on his face. “I thought she was better than this. I can’t believe she’d steal from you.” Rubic finds a seat on the edge of the couch.

“It wasn’t like that. She stole my diary and was going to take it to Dr. Brooks because she wasn’t sure my therapist knew what I was thinking about, dreaming about. The diary fell out of her bag at school. Someone found it, copied it, and posted it online. She was trying to do a good thing. Now everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

“Not everyone.”

Allan’s eyes narrow. “Yes! Everyone! I’m a massive joke!” His arms flail outward and then lower.

Rubic retrieves some tissue and hands it to Allan. “Aw, bud. I’m so sorry this is happening.”

The intensity of his feelings reminds Allan of how he felt after his parents’ deaths. Now, as the emotion builds behind his rib cage, feeling like angry, writhing snakes, he wishes to be in his mother’s arms.
I can’t wait to see my mom again. If I have to die to do so, then I wish death would hurry things up.
The thought is fleeting, but the feeling buries itself deep in his body. It’s a dark feeling, a secret feeling, and he knows that buried is where it must stay. It frightens Allan to acknowledge its existence, but it is evident when he’s low and feeling vulnerable to the tauntings of hopelessness.

Allan wonders if Laura had read the whole thing. If she did, then she knows how Allan feels about Asantia. How beautiful Asantia is to him, though she is tough and weathered by hardships. Embarrassment swells inside Allan, and he wants to turn back time and wishes it was as simple as pushing the hour hand back. She will have read that Allan dreams of Asantia at least two times a week. Allan’s cheeks redden like overripe apples. She’ll learn that after the first dream, where Asantia came crashing through his window during the raging storm, he didn’t let Rubic wash the comforter where she sat for over two months.

She’ll learn about the night Asantia rescued him from the top of a building in Dantia. He had escaped a mob by diving into the canal holding onto a glowing snail. Allan dove under the buildings and found a stairwell. With only one working mechanical leg, Allan managed to get to the top of the stairs. Then the working leg died and left him crippled on the rooftop. He felt hopeless then, lost and so tired, but there Asantia was. Her cable shot from her airship and buried itself in the wooden roof, and she came down from that ship like a guardian angel. Allan wrote in the diary how she almost glowed like a neon sign and how close her cheek came to his when she was helping him remove the mechanical legs.

I wonder where Asantia is now.
Allan wishes he could contact her so she can come rescue him from his horrible existence. He desperately wants to be somewhere else, to live a different life, to burn this one and all the trappings that keep him here and in misery.

Rubic returns from the kitchen with pudding cups and hands one to Allan, the lid already ripped off. Allan waves it away.

“Come on. Try and take it easy. When I get home from work we’ll eat some junk food and watch a movie. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Brooks for tomorrow, and you can talk it out. Let’s get past Lan Darr completely, then you can work on getting over the embarrassment.”

Allan cringes and fresh tears come to his eyes, and then he retreats to his room.

He sleeps the day away, and when he wakes, the house is dark and silent.

A loud car roars down the street, its sporty muffler ripping the silence to shreds. Allan gets into his wheelchair and rolls to the living room. The streetlamps outside illuminate the edges of the thick curtains. They are slightly parted and are the only source of light in the home. Allan rolls to the window and reaches for the gap in the curtains. 

A shadow passes over the light. Allan jumps. The shadow dashes away, followed by a crash. Allan freezes and listens. “I can’t believe I’m so jumpy.” He sweeps open the curtains and looks to the front yard. He expects Jibbawk to be there, waiting, armed with razor-sharp swords, but instead sees a black cat dashing away from an overturned flowerpot.

Allan rubs his eyes.
Jibbawk isn’t real, isn’t hunting me. Get that into your thick head and stop acting crazy.
Allan remembers the fishing trip with Rubic. That night, at the fire, Rubic had told him a story about Jibbawk. How did Rubic know that name? It would seem that everyone was right, Allan’s quest was nothing but a drug-induced hallucination.

Car lights turn from the street and hit Allan’s pale face. Rubic’s home.

Rubic steps from his truck holding two large pizzas.

That night the two devour the meat lover pizzas, an entire bag of cheese balls, and a package of cookies while they watch a couple of movies.

Allan hardly watches them. His mind is distracted by his internal doubt. He remembers all the sessions he spent with his therapist. One session in particular stands out.

Dr. Brooks was talking to Allan about Lan Darr. “So, your experience in the other world is what we call a schizophrenic delusion. It’s less like a hallucination and more like a dream.” The doctor switched her crossed legs. She always sat across from the therapy couch with her legs crossed. Her skirt left her smooth calves exposed, and she always wore shiny leather mid-heel shoes of varying colors. That day she’d worn a long black skirt with a white top. Allan thought she was pretty for an adult. Her makeup was delicate and her short hair cropped to her chin. She was so nice and always set Allan at ease, but she wasn’t always right.

Dr. Brooks continued, “There are things we can remember that will tell our brains we are dreaming. Once we prove to your psyche that you did indeed dream of Lan Darr and the city of Dantia, then you might be able to remember what really happened. Focus on what happened after the flash flood on the mountain and how you ended up in the old dam. Now, you’re not supposed to make up your answers. You’re supposed to remember them. If you can’t remember them, simply say that you cannot remember.” She set a ticking clock on her desk and lowered the light. “I’m going to hypnotize you so your answers will come from your subconscious.”

Allan nodded and obeyed all her promptings and listened to her soft, feminine voice. He felt like he’d fallen asleep.

For the next forty minutes Allan answered question after question regarding Lan Darr. He remembered every single answer as though it had happened yesterday.

“Hmm,” the doctor said after waking him from the trance. “Typically, subjects don’t remember their own bodies in these dreams.”

“I do. I remember peeing by the wall and the plant that shot me in the neck with some poison dart. It only stopped hurting after I washed away the dart in the river. And I remember my… body parts. Including my hands.”

“Could you fly?”

“I wish.”

“Did you instantaneously arrive anywhere?”

“Nope.”

“Were your mother or father in any aspect of your experience?”

“No.”

“Okay, normally, in a dream state you might seem disfigured, have different hair styling or missing teeth. Your physical body will be different somehow.”

Allan shook his head. “Nothing about me was different. I’m telling you, there was nothing about Lan Darr that seemed like a dream.”

“You had the strength to steal the key from the Lithic Furies,” the doctor reasoned.

“Yeah, but not without Mizzi’s metal legs. He created the leg contraption in his workshop and powered them with an energy crystal.”

“Ah,” she said smiling. “That is a sure sign you’re dreaming. Energy crystals are impossible, fantasy things.” She seemed proud of her answer, and that ended the discussion.

Allan left her office that day thinking,
What does she know? She can’t know everything
.

Now, as
Allan tries to watch a movie with a broken heart and scattered thoughts, he remembers how stumped the therapist had been. Allan had real, solid memories. He didn’t have super powers, distorted body images, or time sequence errors typical of dreams or even delusional trips. He is most certainly not crazy. As the credits of the second movie roll, Allan falls asleep.

When the morning light peeks through the blinds, Allan awakes and sits up on the couch. The light is golden, illuminating the dust in the air. The dust. It is so thick in the shaft of sunlight.

Allan’s stomach aches from binging on the junk food. He tries to remember if he dreamt during the night, but can’t. “I know when I’m dreaming.” The dust swirls as it passes through the light. “The dust is always there. It only needs to be illuminated in order to see it.”

His eyes widen and his back straightens. “I’m not crazy.” He feels like yelling that declaration but thinks better of it. Rubic sleeps next to him with crumbs strewn about, a wadded-up napkin tucked into his half-open hand, and his mouth agape and snoring.

As quietly as he can, Allan reaches for his chair and parks it in front of himself. He moves his knees to the side and hops into his chair. That pin-up-girl pin still confuses Allan. How did it get in the dam? It was in his pocket on Lan Darr. The therapist often pointed to that pin as evidence Allan was in the dam. In Allan’s memory, he hit the gravel after Lyllia of Meduna sent him home. He didn’t appear inside the dam. But the experience was confusing and traumatic. He could have slid down that pipe and not known it.

Allan rolls to his bedroom. In his closet is a box of old clothes. He finds the pants he wore one year ago and reaches into the pocket. He pulls out the lining. There was a hole as large as a quarter.

Every shadow of a doubt fades from Allan. He rolls to the bathroom to take care of business, packs his backpack with water, lunch meat, some chips, a few apples, a sweater, and a flashlight. He calls the Handi-Taxi, a taxi service for customers in wheelchairs and wrenches open the bottom lid on his piggy bank. Inside he finds a crammed wad of cash. He pulls out one hundred dollars and tucks it into his wallet. He pulls the plug out of the wall that charges his All-Terrain wheelchair and rolls the chair out of its parking space in his closet. He hops on and hangs his backpack on the back then pushes his normal wheelchair to the wall.

Allan tosses his cell phone on his side table and heads out the front door to wait on the curb. “I’m going to find Lan Darr, and I’m not coming home until I do.”