Chapter 4

Once in early grade five, Brandon had fallen down on the pavement at school, trying to sprint after his friends. After a few seconds, it looked like there was a mini explosion of blood on his knees and arm. Some of the girls ran to get a teacher, and a couple little kids that were in the area started flopping around and yelling like a fish out of water.

The other guys were starting to ask the questions that people don’t really ask to make you feel better, it’s because they’re scared about what happened to you. Like “Can you feel it?” and “Are you okay?” Of course, he wasn’t! He was on the verge of crying - just, he could never to that in public.

That had been the scariest time in his life. Now, two years after, he almost broke the record.

On the other side of the tree, there was something that looked like a giant, black gash in the side of the tree. It was squeaking and dripping with black liquid full of gentoridges. It looked like a creepy mouth hanging, and drooling tar.

Brandon gasped at it in horror. He didn’t know why, but he stepped toward it and the world around him turned black. He tried to look back at Blair or Hal, but found that his muscles were frozen. He was slowly getting pulled into the horrible mouth.

He almost felt like he could feel cold teeth on his neck when he was suddenly pulled back by a strong arm and came into the light again. He could hear Blair and Hal’s blurry voices, but for a second he was completely in la la land.

“That was a portal to one of the other shelves,” Blair said seriously. “It was made when the lourdwarfs found out how to harness the power of gentoridges. That’s not natural. Lourdwarfs never had magic and could never use it. Now that they’ve found out this new power, they could be dangerous. It also seems like their use of it could be meddling with the separation of the shelves.”

Brandon was shocked, “What are you going to do about it?”

“What am I going to do? I think you are mistaken” Blair said slowly. “What are you going to do?”