The Three Thorns (10 page)

“Only a dream. Not real,” he whispered to himself, staring at his reflection.

Greta’s shrieks sent tension across his shoulders. Preparations for the early summer show remained unfinished, putting the Cain family under pressure. The props department and costume designers had been working night and day for the better part of two months now and the signs of exhaustion were beginning to show.

Viktor was grouchier than ever, intimidating his employees when given the opportunity. Sebastian knew the one thing that made his father even madder than a taunted bull was anyone who caused upset to his wife. And Sebastian was about to do just that.

“Sebastian Cain, you get here this instant!” Greta screeched.

Her relentless requests that afternoon irritated Sebastian as much as they exhausted him. Mop this mess! Clean those windows! Dust these rows! Wash these clothes! Paint these props!

The scrawny woman stood at the entrance to the theater’s backstage door, tapping her long fingernails on each side of the doorframe.

“One of the main lights blew out near the top balcony. The props department needs someone small enough to climb up there and fix it,” she said casually with a sarcastic smirk, knowing that Sebastian had a phobia of heights.

“B-but I’m supposed to help Father tighten up the loose seats in the auditorium,” he pleaded to her. Greta raised one finger to silence him and headed back toward her dressing room, leaving a trail of smoke behind her.

“You heard her, boy,” his father bellowed.

The familiar foreign voice always spoke after Greta’s chastising. It was like a chain re-action. Viktor had a bad habit of sneaking up behind folk without making the slightest sound. His stealth baffled Sebastian and many of the other workers in the theater as to how such a large and loud person could be as quiet and indiscernible as a house mouse.

“Yes, Sir,” Sebastian mumbled. Viktor handed him the new light bulb.

The heavy light proved very awkward for the puny boy to carry. Walking with the equipment was hard enough without having to climb scaffolding in the process. But Sebastian had no choice. It was either conquer his fear of heights on the spot or face a vicious thrashing from Viktor.

The props men and costume designers watched in anticipation. Even the orchestra stopped their rehearsal to look on when Sebastian started to climb. The conductor’s jaw dropped in shock after he gazed up from his rehearsed notes.

The unstable scaffolding swerved a few inches back and forth. At one point, it swerved so far to one side it looked ready to topple. Carrying the ceiling bulb over his shoulder, Sebastian clung on tightly to the last bar above him. One last pull helped him reach the top.

But the weight of the bulb wires proved too heavy, dragging him backward until his body tilted over the side of the scaffolding. He flapped out his arms in all directions, trying to grab a hold of anything. The floor staff gasped in horror at the sight of Sebastian’s near fall.

Viktor swiftly cried out for somebody to get his son away from the ceiling lights. Greta stood helplessly in shock.

No matter what Sebastian tried, he couldn’t balance himself, until something caught hold of his arm just when he was about to fall. Sebastian looked down and yelped when he saw how high he dangled from the theater floor.

“Take hold,” said the voice above his head. Sebastian instantly glanced above him to see the face he’d recognized before. It was the phantom of his parent’s opera house.

“
You!
” Sebastian exclaimed, tightening his own grasp onto his rescuer’s hand that lifted him up through a lighting hole in the ceiling.

Sebastian’s disappearance from the scaffolding had attracted the attention of the entire staff of the opera house that crowded around the stage set to get a closer look.

“He’s gone!” gasped a fellow worker, pointing to the ceiling above them.

“Where did he go?” asked another.

“Shut up, the lot of you!” Viktor shouted over the auditorium. He randomly led a lanky worker by the ear to the bottom of the scaffolding. “Get up there and see what’s going on.”

The worker was a bundle of nerves when he put one foot in front of the other at the base of the rusted metal joints. Viktor’s chastising didn’t seem to change the worker’s velocity either, until he shook the scaffolding with his boot.

“Come on you monkey, climb. Faster! Faster!”

The panicky worker tried to hang on but the added pressure of Viktor’s taunting caused him to lose his balance. At the same time the worker fell toward the ground, a man stepped next to the scaffolding from the theater’s side entrance doors. To Viktor’s horror, a stunned and furious Mr. Jennings broke the fall of the boy.

“Get this scrapper off of me,” Mr. Jennings yelled, too weak and helpless to help himself. “If I had a penny for every time—.”

“Just what is going on here then?” asked a familiar voice half hidden by the gloom of the stage corner.

Viktor kicked the lanky worker off Mr. Jennings, offering a helping hand to the old man. Lifting Mr. Jennings to his feet, Viktor almost jumped out of his skin when he noticed the Inspector emerge from the shadows.

“Well?” the Inspector continued.

Viktor couldn’t think of a word to say in response to the Inspector’s question, until another ceiling light blew out, followed by the entire row. Each light blew after the other from the far right of the ceiling to the left.

The Inspector smiled with a victorious sparkle in his beady eyes. “Care to
shine
some
light
on the situation, Mr. Cain?”

Viktor was unable to contain his temper. “Sebastian!” he screamed at the top of the auditorium. His booming voice travelled through the holes in the ceiling and strangled Sebastian’s eardrums.

Sebastian crawled behind his new rescuer and watched his parents from inside the dome shaped ceiling.

“Something fishy is going on here,” Mr. Jennings said with a scowl, pointing his bony finger in Viktor’s face.

Sebastian looked on as the Inspector kept his calm, walking over to the scaffolding while studying the ceiling above. He thought for certain the Inspector had spotted them hiding behind the dome ceiling somehow, even though it would have been impossible.

“What is that peculiar noise?” the Inspector asked.

The reflective stage-lights below pierced through the ceiling’s holes. Sebastian’s eyes adjusted inside the dimness when his rescuer signalled at him to halt and not a moment too soon.

“What is it now?” asked Viktor, stepping closer to the Inspector. “I have a show to put together in less than an hour.”

“Whom, may I ask, are you calling to, Mr. Cain?” asked the Inspector, in a suspicious tone.

“My son,” Viktor snapped impatiently.

The Inspector slowly took off his spectacles and revealed a wide-eyed stare that chilled Viktor and Greta to the bone.

“You have a son? You never mentioned having a child of your own, Mr. Cain. How old is he?”

The man’s questions came rapidly, unnerving the theater owner in front of his wife and staff, as well as the boys hiding above them.

“Our boy has nothing to do with your runaways, Inspector,” Greta interrupted, nervously fiddling a match between her fingers until she successfully struck it and lit her cigarette.

The Inspector sneered and tilted his head to look back up at the ceiling. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he smiled. “This boy of yours Mr. Cain…he is, in fact, yours?” he continued, staring back at both guardians. His eyes were scrutinising. The frightened couple swiftly looked to one another for a reasonable answer.

“My s-show—.” Viktor stammered, noticeably changing the subject.

“Are you hard of hearing, Inspector? We have a show to put on here, so if you don’t mind discussing this at a more convenient time,” Greta scolded, clearly startled by the Inspector’s probing manner.

“Well, it’s just as well I purchased my ticket,” the Inspector whispered, raising his hand to show the Cains a single ticket he held between two fingers. “I’m looking forward to the show. I reserved a balcony seat.”

Sebastian kept perfectly still as he watched Mr. Jennings and the Inspector leave with the policemen. “You must follow me, Sebastian,” the boy whispered back in a very faint tone.

“How do you know my—,” Sebastian began, but he didn’t have time to finish his question, for his rescuer was already at the other side of the inner dome ceiling. More calls echoed up to him from the stage floor as both boys slid a few feet down a steep horizontal drop, exiting the ceiling and entering the opera house’s overly-large constructed loft space.

“I’m not going any further until you tell me who you are,” Sebastian insisted, trying to balance himself on the bouncy insulation on the attic floor.

“You can call me Peter.”

“You were here before, weren’t you? I recognize your face. You hid at the top balcony when that Inspector visited here a few months ago,” Sebastian said.

“He is a very dangerous and evil man. We need to leave,” Peter said bluntly.

“Why?”

“If he finds out who you really are, he will spare no thought of killing you.”

Peter’s words sent an instant tingle up Sebastian’s spine.

“Why would a policeman want to do that?”

“Because he isn’t a policeman. We have to travel to meet an old friend of mine. We have to make it up to Warwickshire, so please, get a move on,” pleaded Peter.

“Warwickshire?” asked Sebastian, standing still in disbelief. “You’re one of those runaways they’ve been looking for, aren’t you? You’re one of the Gatesville boys.” Sebastian stepped away from Peter in shock and awe.

“Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to harm you,” Peter whispered. “I’ve come to help.”

“I don’t need any help. I don’t even know you,” Sebastian said.

“Just listen for a moment. There are others like you.”

“Like me?”

“They’re orphans too, only they’re more than that,” Peter insisted.

“I-I don’t understand,” Sebastian stuttered.

“Your parents are not your real parents, Sebastian,” Peter said honestly.

“I know…they already told me a few years ago, so what does it matter?”

“When you were born, you were left outside one of their opera houses so that you would be taken into their care and looked after,” Peter explained.

“You’re not telling me something I don’t already know,” Sebastian said…until he realized something important.

“Wait a minute here…but how…how do
you
know all this?” he asked, staring curiously at Peter’s honest eyes.

“Because I was there from the beginning,” Peter said, showing the boy a piece of maroon cloth adorned with the same two-headed snake symbol Sebastian had been wrapped in when he was born. Sebastian’s eyes lit up the moment he saw the golden pattern. “You’ve seen this before in your dreams, haven’t you?” Peter asked confidently.

“Not in my dreams,” Sebastian whispered in shock as he lifted out his own ragged cloth he’d always kept inside his pocket. “What is it?”

“It is the symbol of my King and his kingdom. I’m a soldier of that kingdom. That is why you have one just like it. You were covered in it when you were born…by your real Father.”

“This can’t be,” Sebastian gasped. “You’re just a boy yourself.”

“Only to you. You’re part of something much bigger than what this life has to offer.”

“Part of what?”

“A Brotherhood.”

“Wait…what?” Sebastian asked. He theatrically struck a pose of confusion that made Peter smile.

“The Brotherhood of Warlocks. Mighty sorcerers. There are two more like you, with gifts similar to yours. They were banished from their home when they were born, as were you,” Peter explained.

“The boys from my dreams,” Sebastian whispered to himself.

“Yes. They’re real. I’m the one responsible for planning their getaway from Gatesville,” Peter admitted before Sebastian pointed a warning finger at him.

“You stay away from me.”

“I was sent here to bring you back too, Sebastian,” Peter said. “You have to believe me.”

“Back where?”

“Back home…to Abasin. The world you’ve seen in your dreams. It’s real. I can show you I’m telling the truth. Please come with me,” Peter implored with conviction.

“What good are dreams? They mean nothing. What have dreams ever done for me? Viktor and Greta just use my ideas I write down, it’s all I’m good for,” Sebastian said modestly.

Peter sighed. “And they take all of the credit.”

Sebastian shot him a look of astonishment. “You
have
been spying on me, haven’t you?” he asked, shuffling away from the trespassing boy to put several dusty boxes between them.

“I’ve been protecting you, whether you knew it or not,” Peter admitted, chasing the boy around the attic’s stash of clutter.

“From who, exactly? Viktor and Greta?” Sebastian asked.

“The man in your dreams. You know who I mean, don’t you? The one dressed in white,” Peter said softly.

Sebastian stopped dead in his tracks at the mention of the white-cloaked man.

“How do you know about
him?
” Sebastian whispered faintly.

“Because he’s not just a nightmare, Sebastian,” Peter murmured up close. “He’s real too.”

“Get lost, or I will turn you in myself.”

“Listen to me. Dreams don’t haunt you like this unless they are real,” replied Peter, peering back into the passageway toward the ceiling.

“And I should just trust everything you’ve said, right?” Sebastian asked, leaning against several unpacked boxes near the far corner of the attic. “No, it’s my imagination, just my stupid imagination.”

“If that were true then how could I know these things?” Peter asked challengingly.

“Then tell me, this white-cloaked masked man, who is he?” Sebastian asked hesitantly, his voice shaking.

“He is known to many as
the False One
but to his people he is King Sa—,” Peter whispered when he was abruptly silenced.

“Stop! I already know his name. It’s mentioned every time I dream. I don’t want to hear it again…not if I don’t have to.”

Sebastian groaned, rubbing his neck to keep himself from shuddering. “So, how do I stop having these visions?”