Chapter 1

The stool tipped as Roger leaned forward and grasped the bathroom counter, pulling his entire body onto its slick Formica surface.  He’d scraped his leg down by the river, and his mom would freak out if she saw how bad it looked.

Shouldn’t have listened to that stupid Jimmy Bowen, huh?   His mother’s voice echoed in his head while he plugged the sink and watched the basin fill up with cool, clean water.  Turning his head, he inspected his face for cuts.   

His mirror self looked okay, just a little dirty.  But it wasn’t the dirt that caught Roger’s attention.  He’d heard stories about people whose eyes changed colors, and they even made fun of Susie Garris because she had two different colored eyes, but this wasn’t the same thing.  His eyes were still the same color, they just looked different, older somehow. 

The water splashed out of the sink and onto his pant leg, momentarily distracting him.  He shut off the valve and barely noticed how much his skinned leg stung as he plunged it into the water. 

They have to be the same.

He looked back at his reflection, tilting his head as he absentmindedly rubbed the dirt and skin off his knee.  He couldn’t explain why it bothered him so much, and perhaps that bothered him even more.  Even at seven, Roger liked knowledge; knowledge provided answers, and the people who had the answers were always better off.

Without realizing what he was doing, he put his hand against the cool, reflective surface and flinched.  He sat there for a moment, his dripping palm pressed firmly against the bathroom mirror while his breath came in shallow pants and his heart thudded loudly in his ears.  Nothing. 

Roger inwardly shrugged and tried to pull back his hand so he could finish cleaning off his knee, but he couldn’t.  No matter what his brain told his hand, it wasn’t moving.  He pulled back one last time and gasped as the mirror’s surface shimmered like a wave of heat rising off a summer sidewalk. 

Beneath the dirty reflection he saw a barrage of images. A shrill noise, like fingernails on a chalkboard, filled his head and caused him to grind his teeth until his jaw hurt, but then it was cut off as the image focused on a man.  There were several small, dark creatures scuttling around the poor man.  The mysterious forms darted in and out of the picture in a line of giant blurs, as if they had been sped up while the agony of this man was frozen solidly in time. 

Something flickered and Roger noticed that parts of the poor man’s body were hooked into large tubes that fed into a cylindrical machine.  The machine looked like the giant shimmering squid on the cover of his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea comic.  The tentacles snaked into the man’s arms and legs, leaving his skin red and puckered where each one sank into his flesh.  The steel beast began to hum, and the tentacles were immediately filled with a jittery, glowing, blue light which seared a haze across Roger’s eyes so powerful he was forced to squeeze them shut and peer through water hazy lenses. 

It was then that Roger noticed an oddly shaped jar jutting out of the steel like a crystal wart.  A glowing purple liquid that strongly resembled grape Kool-Aid sitting in the sunlight began to fill up the clear container.

The man shrieked and the entire world shimmered around Roger, and although he knew that he was still safely perched on the countertop in his bathroom, the world split open beneath him and he found himself balanced on the edge of a deep and yawning void.  Fear held him tight for nearly a minute before Roger clapped his free hand to his ear and pressed his head against his bony child-shoulder to block the pain-filled voice.  Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, creating clean rivers on his grime-covered face. 

The clammy palm couldn’t stop the scream from echoing through his head, bouncing around like a rubber ball.  Roger grimaced as he raised his head and looked into the mirror.  One of the scuttling creatures turned and stared at him, its violet eyes searing into him.  It bared its teeth at him, hissing in a manner that made it seem like a beetle. 

He hiccupped once and fainted, falling off the countertop and hitting his head on the edge of the toilet.  When he woke up six hours later in the hospital, all he could see was his mother’s worried face peering down at him, and he could no longer remember what he had seen.

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Itckrelle stood over the human as the servant gnomes drained him.  The man’s horrible peachy flesh was hooked into the machine that had always served him well.  When the gnomes turned it on, the harsh blue light sped across the darkened room.  He raised his face to bask in it as if it were sunlight. 

The human thing screamed, its agony rolling off the walls like a dark symphony.  This was his favorite part.  He leaned into the scream, allowing the torment to soak into his pores.  He allowed its melody to roll over him, moving and humming to a rhythm that he felt only in his mind, and laughed a little at how the council members would be truly appalled if they ever saw him enjoying such torture, regardless of what kind of creature it was being done to.  Most of them actually valued those texts they worshipped, keeping small versions of them tucked within their cloaks and consulting them whenever they felt any doubt.

He could see their scared green faces and pouting purple eyes now, all upturned to wait his decision.  They were afraid of him, afraid of change, but mostly they were afraid of uncertainty.  They wanted, no, needed, someone to tell them how tomorrow was going to be.  He’d meant for it to be like that when he designed it, and he intended to see it stayed that way.

One of the gnomes scurried past him, the dark brown cloak rustling at his feet and causing him to turn slightly to let the creature pass. 

As he turned, he noticed the vacant space in the ceiling behind him.  It wasn’t an absence of light, but rather a space in the roof where nothingness existed.  He narrowed his eyes and studied the anomaly.  He interpreted every unusual occurrence as an attempt to strip away his power. 

Itckrelle raised his hand toward the darkness but jerked it back when the face appeared.  It was as ugly as any human he’d ever encountered, maybe even more so because of its youth and innocence.  Every muscle in his body tensed, and he felt ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.  He licked his lips, savoring the taste of adrenaline. 

Looking around, Itckrelle noticed that none of the gnomes in the room with him seemed to notice anything.  He turned back toward the creature, lowering his cloak’s hood and widening his eyes to get a better view. 

Then, the image opened its mouth.  Itckrelle barred his teeth and hissed in a desperate attempt to keep the thing at bay.  When he did, the image disappeared and the dirt green ceiling returned.

He stared at it for a few more minutes, his teeth barred and his crimson hair on end, but nothing ever happened.  Itckrelle believed that he must have been the only one who’d seen the human child, but that changed as soon as he saw the captive’s putrid brown eyes staring at the ceiling.  His chapped and bleeding lips kept moving as if reciting some kind of ritual, but Itckrelle couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Itckrelle barely noticed the gnome’s yellow glares as he pushed them aside; he was too focused on the human.

He leaned over the man’s face and caught the last word to escape his dying body, Roger, and then he was gone, unable to offer an explain.  Itckrelle stormed out of the room and into the hall, his morning torture session ruined. 

By the time he finally allowed his body to sleep that night he’d convinced himself that Roger was nothing more than the unreliable memory of a dying man.