The Last Portal (3 page)

‘This thing is
really weird,’ she commented and Chris could see a disturbed and
deepening frown creasing her forehead. ‘I’ve never seen anything
that behaves like this,’ she continued, turning to Chris. He knew
exactly what she meant. If it was a key, it was the strangest key
he had even seen. His mind went back to the creek where he had
found it, and the presence that appeared to be lingering there.
Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what.

That night, Chris was
again pursued by someone in his dreams. As always, the scenery
changed. This time he was walking along a creek bed. He recognised
it immediately as the same creek where he had found the key. The
presence was there again, but this time when he turned around he
saw a tall, grey-skinned man with pale green eyes and long, greasy
black hair, combed back against his skull. He was dressed in a blue
robe that reached past his knees and was tied by a thin strip of
leather. The man made no attempt to move, he just stood watching
Chris.

Summoning all
his courage, Chris called out. ‘What do you want?’

With still no
response, Chris ventured a few steps toward him. The man flickered,
like an image on a TV set, then vanished, seemingly into thin
air.

At breakfast, his
sister sat sullenly across from him at the table. Chris could tell
from the way she crunched through her cereal that she was still
angry. Apparently the fight between her and their mother had gotten
considerably worse after his quick exit. Fiona had accidently
knocked over a fruit bowl in the resulting argument. This drew the
penalty of no pocket money, or TV, for the next week. Chris smiled
pleasantly at the thought.

‘What are you
smiling at?’

Chris noted one
of Fiona’s hands was clenched tight on the table. He continued
smiling.

‘It’s your
fault anyway,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t stolen my toast...’

‘If you hadn’t
lost your temper,’ Chris pointed out.

‘You should be
banned from the TV too.’

‘I didn’t break
Mum’s best China bowl,’ Chris reminded her with a grin.

This had its
desired effect. Fiona’s face flushed red and she looked as though
she was about to launch herself across the table at him.

‘Both of you
stop it!’ Their mother appeared, frowning disapprovingly.

Fiona shrank
back into her chair and shot a disgusted look across at Chris.

Chris knew he
would have to play things carefully. Any slip-up would result in a
similar fate to Fiona’s.

‘Have you done
all your homework, Christopher?’

His mother only
used his full name when he was in serious trouble. ‘Yep, all done,’
he said brightly.

‘While I hold
your sister largely responsible for the trouble yesterday, your
behaviour left a lot to be desired.’

‘Sorry, Mum.’
He smiled across at his sister.

She replied
with a rude sign.

‘Fiona, that’s
enough.’

‘Well it was
his fault anyway.’

‘That’s no
excuse for smashing my fruit bowl. You have to control that temper
of yours.’

Fiona glared at
Chris and then climbed to her feet, ensuring everything in the
vicinity was knocked or banged in the process. ‘I’m not staying in
the same room with him for another second,’ she said, before
stalking out.

Later that day,
several storm fronts hit the city, accompanied by high winds and
nearly horizontal sheets of rain. While rain was not uncommon at
this time of the year, the frequency and ferocity of the weather
was unprecedented. At school, several trees lost large branches and
some classrooms developed leaks that quickly turned into floods
when the wind peeled off sections of roofing.

The rain had
cleared by the time school had finished, but the sky still looked
threatening. Chris, Susie and Joe decided to take the bus home, but
as it neared Chris’s home the sky darkened to the south and the
wind dropped. Although it was only a little after four in the
afternoon, the light dimmed to the point where passing cars had to
use their headlights, and the streetlights came on. Chris loved
storms, and this one showed real promise. He could see the whole
sky flick on and off like a faulty light switch. Always the
optimist, he never took a raincoat to school, figuring there were
always enough trees to hide from the rain between the bus stop and
his home. This time he was proved wrong. The sky opened up. Despite
sprinting from tree to tree, he got drenched, and then pounded with
hailstones.

He arrived home
with a collection of the biggest hailstones in his trouser pocket.
But when he proudly showed his mother, she just looked horrified
and got mad at him for collecting hailstones in the middle of a
hailstorm. Since he also looked like he had just crawled out of
someone’s swimming pool, she shooed him upstairs to the shower,
growling at him for not having a raincoat.

When he came
back down later, he found his parents sitting in the lounge
watching the family’s new widescreen TV. The images showed flooded
streets, houses with missing roofs and people moving down flooded
streets in motor boats. The commentator was standing on the roof of
a house surrounded on all sides by water and explaining that the
number of droughts, freak storms and floods was unprecedented. She
went on to describe similar events across the world, concluding
this weather pattern was a world-wide phenomenon.

Chris’s father,
a tall, balding man with the same cleft chin as Chris, was shaking
his head slowly. ‘We’ve caused all of this,’ he concluded slowly.
‘Too much greenhouse gases and not enough will to change.’

His mother
pushed back some strands of brown hair behind her ears and nodded
her agreement. ‘I worry for the next generation,’ she said, looking
up at Chris. ‘I wonder what you will inherit.’

The front door
opened and Fiona burst in wearing a raincoat, but still completely
soaked. ‘I accidently fell into a pool of water on the way home,’
she explained.

Fiona, like
him, loved playing in the rain. More than likely she was jumping in
water puddles on the way home, Chris thought. She was also ordered
upstairs to change.

When the hail
stopped Chris looked through the window, the garden and street were
buried under a layer of glistening white hailstones.

‘Come on, let’s
go outside.’ Fiona was back downstairs, pushing her hair under the
hood of her raincoat, her anger at Chris momentarily forgotten at
the thought of a hail fight.

Amid calls from
their mother to come straight back inside if it started to rain
again, they ran outside and started pelting each other with
hailstones. Chris was always a better aim than Fiona, and soon
scored several direct hits. But Fiona cheated by trying to turn the
hose on him when his back was turned. The game only ended when more
rain arrived and the wind picked up, accompanied by loud thunder.
When they ran back inside, the TV was filled with more reports of
fallen trees and broken roofs across the city.

Then the power
went off. In the growing dusk, the house was plunged into near
darkness. Their parents scratched around in the kitchen and came
back with a battery- powered lantern and an assortment of
torches.

Their father
placed the lantern on the lounge table and started examining the
torches. He picked up the largest torch and inserted four
batteries.

‘Can I have
that one?’ Chris asked.

‘But I’m really
scared,’ Fiona said. ‘Can I have it?’

‘You love
storms,’ Chris said.

Fiona shook her
head earnestly. ‘No, they really do scare me.’

Chris could
hear the clear note of attempted sincerity in her voice and looked
across at his father. He had that ‘you poor little thing’
expression on his face and Chris knew immediately he had already
lost.

‘Sure, Fi. It’s
all yours.’

Fiona accepted
the torch with a sweet smile and, when their father had turned
away, she stuck her tongue out at Chris.

Outside, the
storm, like some enraged, groaning monster, flung objects against
the side of the house. Chris settled on the couch with his sister,
who was flashing her torch everywhere. Each time there was a
lightning strike he could see his sister with a broad grin on her
face. The lightning and thunder were now almost simultaneous, and
the house shook with every thunderclap. By the next lightning
strike, he noticed that Fiona had slid up next to him and was
staring at something in the pocket of his jeans.

‘You know, your
jeans are glowing.’

He rummaged
through his pockets and pulled out the key. Its glow lit up half
the lounge room.

‘Wow,’ Fiona
grinned, ‘that’s cool, is it one of those glow-in-the-dark
toys?’

Chris didn’t
answer. He had an unreasonable urge to run to the closest toilet
and flush the key away.

Fiona lunged
forward and snatched the key from his hand. It changed immediately
back to grey, but the glow still remained. Chris knocked the key
out of her hand and it slid under the couch.

‘What did you
do that for?’ she asked indignantly.

The room lit up
a split second before the crack of a huge explosion rattled the
house. Chris rushed over to the window just in time to see the
neighbour’s tree burst into flames. ‘Awesome!’ he gasped, watching
the showers of sparks and shattered branches spraying across the
front garden as the tree turned into a giant torch. Seconds later,
there was a cracking sound and the tree split down the middle, with
half toppling over the fence, headed directly for their lounge.
Chris and Fiona dived away just as the front window exploded.
Glass, broken branches, and splintered wood sprayed everywhere.

Chris looked
around for his family and saw Fiona huddled in the corner of the
room, still clutching her torch. His mother rushed across and,
after checking Fiona hadn’t actually been hit by anything, hugged
her hard. Chris and his father ran into the kitchen, filled some
buckets with water and doused the few flickering flames that still
clung to the tree trunk. The strengthening wind blew out the
remaining glass panels of the window, spraying everyone with more
glass.

His father
pulled Chris back and signalled the others to retreat into the
adjoining dining room to wait out the storm.

In less than
half-an-hour the storm front had passed and the sky had cleared.
The family filed back into the lounge room to inspect the damage.
The tree trunk now rested squarely on the couch where Chris and
Fiona had been sitting. Glass was everywhere, and parts of the
curtains and the wooden window frames were burnt. Only the sheer
volume of water dumped into the lounge room during the storm had
saved the house from being guttered by fire. They had been very
lucky.

When Chris looked out
of his bedroom window the next morning, he could see his neighbours
busily cleaning up the debris from last night’s storm. Fallen trees
and branches were liberally strewn across driveways and along the
road. Several fences lay in tatters and a newly constructed garden
shed had lost its roof. His father was already up and inspecting
the fallen tree with the neighbour. But the sky was a brilliant
blue and the sun was out. All the fears of the previous night
seemed to evaporate. Chris dressed quickly for school and ran
downstairs, only to be informed by his mother that school had been
cancelled for the rest of the week, due to severe storm damage.

‘Yes!’ He ran
back upstairs and changed into an old tattered pair of jeans and a
T-shirt, then ran down stairs and retrieved the key from under the
couch. The glow was gone, but the red colour returned when he
touched it. He had come to a decision. Somehow, everything was
connected; the key, his dreams, and the creek under the old wooden
bridge. Once and for all he was going to solve this. Although he
had spent many long hours clambering along the local creek beds, he
had never walked up this particular one. He rang Susie and Joe and
asked them to meet him down by the wooden bridge.

When he
arrived, they were both waiting expectantly. He explained the
events of the previous night, and the strange glow that had come
from the key at the height of the storm. Susie and Joe took it in
turns to hold it. As previously, the key changed to a different
colour each time someone touched it.

‘Maybe it
responds to the heat from our hands,’ Susie suggested.

She climbed
down to the stream, which had swollen to a torrent, and being
careful not to get too close to the muddy water, dipped in one end
of the key. It remained bright yellow, despite the water being much
colder than her hand.

‘It’s still
warm,’ she announced.

‘We’re all
warm,’ Joe said.

‘No, that’s not
what I meant. Whatever this thing is... it’s generating heat. It’s
warmer than my hand, even the end I dipped in the water.’

Chris was only
partly listening. He started heading downstream to where the valley
narrowed between steep cliffs. Between these cliffs, the stream
seemed to disappear. He shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun,
but still couldn’t see anything beyond a certain point. It was as
though he was looking through a heat haze.

He hadn’t gone
far when Susie caught up to him. ‘It’s getting warmer.’

‘Uh…’

‘The
key...’

She pressed it
into the palm of his hand. The heat was unmistakable. Chris turned
back towards the stream. Now that they were closer to where the
stream seemed to disappear, he could see a circular area that
appeared blurred. They climbed over some boulders and arrived at
the point where the stream narrowed. A little further on,
everything, the rocks, the water and the bushes that hugged the
banks of the stream, all seemed to blur.

‘Can anyone see
where the stream leads?’ Chris asked. He could tell from the frowns
and squinting eyes that it wasn’t just his imagination. They
finally stopped directly in front of some type of distortion. Ahead
was a blurred area with the stream flowing through its centre.