Running Home – Chapter 14 (Penn and Sword series)

I stumble through Excalibur in the dark. Hit my knees on the couch. Slip in the kitchen. Miss steps as I check the entire house, third floor down to first. But can’t find Penn anywhere. Heart hammering, I hope he didn’t disappear into his red study world. Hope he didn’t leave me behind with this nightmare. But as the power surges through the house again, soaking the first floor in light for a single flickering second, I finally notice an open door. Simon hadn’t toured the back of the house, nor the wood stairs leading down into a dark basement.

“Of course,” I hiss through gritted teeth. “Of course, it’s the creepy basement.”

An ominous red glow provides just enough light to see the bottom of the stairs. The same red I’ve automatically started associating with Penn. Bold and brilliant and alive.

“Penn?” I white-knuckle the railing, ear directed downward.

“Acantha?” Penn calls up. “Do not come down here.”

I rush and hit the bottom, searching the large, open concrete basement quickly. The source of the red light comes from Penn’s key gripped in his right hand, just as I suspected. Where he lays in the middle of the concrete floor. Arms out wide, feet twitching.

“What happened?” I move to check him over.

Penn lifts his head just enough to shout, “Don’t!”

I skid, freeze in place.

“They’re…” Penn looks to both sides, then down his front. “Well, they’re converging.”

All I see is Penn. And the greenish lens, abandoned at his side. My stomach sinks, knowing what I can’t see. “Why?”

Penn’s laugh is empty. “I think,” he says, shuddering his chin away from something unseen. “My brand of homesickness… is a bit too… familiar. They’ve banded together quite, uh… quickly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Theirs isn’t the first world the portal thieves have attacked.” Penn’s sleeves undulate and shift under invisible movement. He stiffens, head craned back on the ground, avoiding something I can’t see.

I struggle to keep my mind blank of home and memories and tip-toe closer to snatch the green lens from the floor. At least a dozen furry bodies brush my hands and I yelp and twitch backward onto the stairs. Palms slick, I hold the lens up and check Penn over to find what I can do to help him.

But Francis’s creeping-crawling friends cover not only Penn, but the entire floor around him. Their antennae twitching, tiny bluish legs skitter into a mound on top of Penn’s torso. There must be thousands! And their blind search is leading them to Penn’s neck, verging on his mouth.

Penn’s jaw twitches as he tries to keep them from passing through his lips with clipped, clenched words. “Got them all in one place, at least.”

I shake my head. “That was your plan?”

“Hey!” he hisses. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“But now what?”

“I found the tear. Between the worlds. The furnace.”

I search the back of the basement and find the old metallic piece of equipment. Right next to the fuse box. Scorch marks travel across the brick wall. Thoughts filter fast, but I understand quick. “The source of the fire that burned down the previous building.”

“Precisely.” Penn swallows hard.

“So, okay, what do we do with that?” I fret, foot to foot.

“I could… send them back.” Penn’s brow goes high, clearly unconvinced.

“Back? But you said their world—”

“Is gone. Yes.”

I shake my head. “You want to send them back… to nothing?”

“They don’t belong here, Acantha. Crossing worlds…” Penn maneuvers his chin around the bugs again to gasp out, “It can’t happen.”

“Or what?”

“It just… can’t.”

“But you can’t just kill them!”

Penn’s eyes go wide, and he shakes more bugs off his arms, but says nothing. Keeps his jaw shut tight. With the lens, I see them all massing across his chest, his shoulders. No matter how many he pushes off, they dodge and squirm and wriggle toward his mouth.

“Penn! What do I do?”

Penn nods up the stairs. “Leave,” he grunts.

“Shut up.”

“Acantha,” Penn says, straining to make himself stern. He shakes his head with a frustrated groan. Finally, he releases his jaw to shout, “Do as you’re told! Please!”

“Close your mouth.” With the help of the lens, I try to shove them away, but with every swipe, at least a dozen bodies replace them, as if spurred on by our conversation of returning them home. “Get off him! He’s not your home!”

Penn twists his lips to keep his mouth shut. Eyes squeezed closed, he thrashes against the invisible creatures. If one breaks through his lips, they’ll suffocate him.

“How do I convince them to leave you alone? What do they need?” Around the basement, only old, stacked chairs and an abandoned office desk gather dust in the corner, while the washing machine and furnace stand on the far end, catching the red light from Penn’s key. Nothing that can replace their home, their emberite, their entire world! Nothing could ever fill that void inside their hearts.

I fixate on the red light from Penn’s key. The key to other worlds. The key to escape. Realization sizzles across my skull. The key to ending all of this.

Gripping my sister’s triangle necklace charm, I fall back on my knees and find Penn’s panicked gray eyes. “I can’t help them. But… you can.” I know nothing about finding lost homes. If anything, I’m just like the creepy-crawlies. Searching, crawling through life. Clinging to memories. Refusing to let go of a dissolved version of reality.

Penn shakes his head, words muffled by furry bodies. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you a chance.”

Deep in the back of my head, stomach shaking, I finally unlock the icebox.

Eudora’s smiling face bursts into my thoughts like a brilliant sun. A beacon in this dim world. She’s laughing, kneading dough, flour on her nose, alive. The day before the fight. The day before she left the note. No hint of sadness or distress. Just my sister. Loving and caring and the only home I’d ever want.

“Acantha,” Penn warns.

Tiny, creeping legs tickle up my feet. I kick and scoot away, body protesting this plan, but more legs prickle up my hands to my arms. Chest tight, I shrill, “Ugh, I hate this!”

“Stop thinking about home!”

“I-I can’t!”

“Empty your mind!”

“I can’t!”

Penn shoves more invisible creepies off his chest. With their attention transferring to me, he’s free to speak, to sit up. “Acantha, please. Stand. Get out of this house.”

“Send them somewhere,” I tell him.

“Where exactly? They’re world—”

“They can’t stay here!” I slap off more creepies from my arms from instinct, but hordes of tapping insect legs climb my shirt.

“They won’t go anywhere else.”

“They don’t have a choice,” I hiss, scratching tiny legs off my neck. “They have to get over it. They’re home is… it’s gone.” I’m shaking, chest rising and falling much too fast. Knot against my sternum winding tighter and tighter. “They have to move on.” Tears prickle the corners of my eyes, my own words stabbing into my heart. Too real, too true. I know why they search, why they cling. I’ve been doing it, too.

As the buggy legs crest over my jaw, I find Penn across the room. He pulls at his hair, turns in place, eyes searching the air for a solution. “Folding more worlds into this mix, it… it isn’t right!”

“Please,” I whisper, chin trembling against probing antennae.

Then I clamp my mouth shut, press hands to my face to keep the creepies from diving down my throat. But I can’t stay like this for long before the crawlies will slip through, fill my mouth, pile down my tongue, cut off my breath. Seek out my grief to the point of killing me.

Penn wields his key like a sword, determination set in his thick brows. But he hesitates.

I whine. My only form of questioning him.

Penn’s jaw tightens. “Why not ask me to gather the moons of Val’Duun? Hm? Or swallow the ocean.” His sad laugh punches my heart. “I can’t find them a new home. There are… rules. If I do this, I am breaking every law of the universe scorched into my skin since birth!”

Tiny legs tickle my eyelashes. I hum an urgent, apologetic plea.

Penn’s long fingers pluck the creatures from my face, allowing me one last look into his shining stare in the red-lit dark. “Why do you put this on me? I decide their fate? Why? Because I have the means? Therefore, I have the responsibility?”

Is he angry at me? Ugh, no. I can’t focus on that. Antennae and legs tickle the edges of my hands, wriggling bodies pressing toward the entrance to my mouth they know is there. To cradle closer to the desperate homesickness coiling in my chest, my mind. The beacon that brought them to Earth in the first place, to this house of homesick college kids.

And they’re going to get in. I’m going to suffocate. Knotted panic coils in my chest, muscle and bone protesting every part of this nightmare. Until it finally bursts, and I use my last second of free breath to shout, “You travel between worlds! Why not them? They just want to know they’re not alone. Please!”

Penn balks backward as if punched by my words.

And the legs stream in. Beyond my lips. Wriggling bodies fuzz across my tongue and dance inside my cheeks. They find their aim quickly, stuffing their wriggling forms down into my throat.

I grab at them, drag them out across my teeth. But not fast enough. Too many trigger my gag reflex, and I choke and sputter on bile and bugs.

Someone lifts me up. Effortless, hurried. By the time I register the flashing red of Penn’s wand through pained tears, he is already tugging the basement door open into a new world beyond.

Earth’s weighty gravity lifts, but I still can’t breathe.

Penn lays me back on warm ground. Something metallic tinges each desperate inhale through my nose. “Think of home,” Penn says, whispers apologetic, brushing bugs from my face as much as he can. “Think of… what you’ve lost. Draw them here. I’ll be back, I promise.” And then his stiff fingers are gone.

Only shadows surround me. And I can’t focus on them enough to tell where he brought me. Their voided tunnel world? Where is Penn going? The knot in my chest coils and burns. The bugs still outside my mouth gather on my breastbone, circling the panicky nodule. Are they trying to dig through my skin to get to my homesick pain?

A wet pulse erupts behind my eyes, nerves tingling down my neck to my fingertips. My fighting arms drop to the ashen ground, suddenly weak. The crawlies won’t stop. They’ll keep searching for home in all the wrong places. Draining my energy, my oxygen. Latching onto my emotional energy.

Pulse slowing, I grasp at fading images, memories, ideas. Where is Eudora?

Something clicks at the back of my skull. Bones rubbing or nerves shutting down or bugs invading. I can’t be sure.

I’m afraid. And fading…

Mental sparks tickle the sides of my blackening mind. Soft glowing questions. I am always asking questions, I guess… like Penn said.

What other worlds would Penn have shown me?

Will the otherworldly bugs find peace?

Will I see Eudora on the other side?

Why did Penn leave me alone to die like this?

Then the sparks rise high, fluttering and spinning. Not in my mind. Physically around us. Above us. Dancing in infinity loops and arcs.

The crawling fuzzy bug feet shiver against me, still afraid.

But I know where we are.

The fire-moths burst into stars across the thick air. Igniting life in this shadowed, ashen world.

Light in the darkness.

The knot in my chest snaps and unravels under that glow. Homesickness easing. Understanding buzzing through me. My life is not all darkness. My weak hand lifts and digs past dozens of furry bodies to the necklace charm around my neck. Eudora. Lost but… always glowing. In my memory. In my thoughts, my perceptions. All filtered through her.

The crawling feet covering my body, stuffed down my throat, pause.

Even on the edge of suffocation, peripheries fogging, darkening, throat convulsing and bulging, I’m lost in the beauty above and around. Remembering my sister. My light. My hope. I feel Eudora’s laugh tickling my ear.

The crawling feet across my chest and down my throat slowly uncoil and recede. Drawn to something other than homesickness. Stronger.

Are my thoughts affecting them?

Neon yellow vines burst from the stars, and the shivering bugs scatter. They dislodge from my mouth. I gag for breath, the air tasting metallic on my abused tongue.

“It’s… okay…” I choke out, searching through tears for the scared beings. “You’re safe… here.”

Penn steps out from the shadows with a confused brow, the piece of emberite clutched tight in one hand. The other he lowers to the ground, allowing Francis’ visible blue-gray body to scurry into the ash and puddles. “I see you didn’t need me at all.” He kneels at my side, smiling widely as honey drizzles over us. “You’re quite brilliant, aren’t you, Acantha Sword?”

I cough out a relieved laugh and lay back to admire the glowing vines. “Yeah, I know.”

“How’s your head?”

“Woozy.”

“How did you… What did you do?”

I smile up at the vines and honey rain with a soft sigh. “Everything feeds on light.” Gripping my necklace charm, I swallow back a bubbling sob.

Penn nods. “That we do.”

Slowly, one by one, the blue-gray fur of the invading creepies shimmer into visibility. I lose Francis in the mass of them crawling over each other, huddling toward the emberite, turning circles in honey puddles. A few even climb the vines.

“You brought them here?” I cough against my words, throat straining.

“It’s the least inhabited plane I know of. Light source. Plenty of ash to dig down into.”

“And… the rules?”

Penn sighs, glancing around. “We’ll have to see.” Then his brow falls, and he points at all the bugs. “Hey, you bugs! Don’t go messing this world up, you got it? I like this one. We have to share. No more chokey-chokey nonsense when you get upset.”

“Penn,” I rasp out. “They’re bugs.”

“Probably going to eat up every last ivy leaf.” He groans and lays back next to me. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

I shake my head as the neon yellow leaves start sprouting. We don’t have long before the vines ignite all around us, but neither of us move. “I wish…” I swallow hard against the truth I’ve kept locked down for weeks, but force the words out. “I wish my sister could see this place.”

“Yes, I… I don’t have the opportunity to share these things. Very often. I’m… I’m glad I could share it with you. And with… them, I suppose.”

I find his conflicted smile in the sticky rain and grin. “Don’t go all sappy on me, magic-man.”

Penn laughs. “You got it, sad girl.”

I roll my eyes and focus on the falling honey droplets and practice deeper breaths. My ears still tickle with Eudora’s laughter, memories spilling out of the mental icebox: pancake breakfasts, diner coffee at two in the morning, endless index cards and red pens scattered over the bedroom floor. I don’t have the energy to keep them locked up. And in this beautiful moment of impossibility, I pretend Eudora’s the one beside me. Pointing at the vines. Tasting the rain. Listing off recipes for our future restaurant.

Shining a light for me in the dark. Showing the path forward.

As the leaves go red, I ask, “What happens now?”

“You… go home. Dreams safe and sound. School in the morning.” Penn sits up and offers a hand to pull me upright. “And that will be that.”

“Oh.” Scanning the ashen ground, more of the furry bugs shimmer into view, circling the honey puddles and shifting the emberite to the edge of the vine jungle. They must sense the fire on the way as the air warms, the vines shiver. “But I still have so many questions.”

Penn pulls me to my feet and offers an arm for me to lean on as we make our way back toward the rectangle of light in the distance. “Of course. Acantha has all the questions.”

“First of which,” I say, turning to glance back at the horde of blue-gray bugs on the edge of the vines. They’ve gathered around the coral rock of their home, tiny antennae pointed straight at the buzzing stars above. “What should we call them?”

“Tunnel bugs?”

I laugh. “I was thinking something more like… Centipedes of Hope.”

“Ash Worms.”

“Fuzzy Wugs.”

Penn grips my shoulder. “Fuzzy Wugs! How very scientific.”

“It’s accurate enough.”

We make it to the door as fire twirls up the vines and glowing bits of ash snow to the ground. The Fuzzy Wugs flicker in and out of visibility, all coiling around the emberite in a mound until even the light source can’t be seen.

My heart squeezes. “They lost… everything. Will they be okay here?”

Penn nods. “They’ll survive.” He smiles down. “Like you have.”

With a heavy nod, I twirl Eudora’s triangular charm around my neck, follow Penn back to his red study, and close the door.