The Alley

    The Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight floated down Highway 359 and took to the bumps in the road as if it were hovering.  The sky was dark, the radio was off, and the dome light was on, but dimmed.  The silence was occasionally broken by the Spanish call of cards, idle banter, and the chuckle of four old ladies.  Hector simply sat quietly in the center of the back seat and toyed with the cockpit to his X-Wing, very tempted to turn it on and hear the sweet, piercing noises.  He held it in front of him and faced it forward as he pretended the car had disappeared and only the ship traveled down the highway as he tilted it to turn as the road turned.  He was Luke Skywalker making the run through the Death Star trench.  In his backpack was his new toy: a mock-up of the ice cave, and a die cast wampa - complete with probe droid - he couldn’t wait to show his cousin, Eric.  This brought a brief moment of excitement until he looked out and saw they were barely crossing one of the towns that were midway to their destination.  It was an hour trip and he knew he was only about halfway there.  He decided to pass the time envisioning the things he would do there.  His cousin’s house had its own places of legend.  It was a town of roughly six-thousand people.  Oftentimes, at night, the abandoned buildings and dark spaces in between the yellow streetlights were playgrounds for fear and the imagination.  His cousin’s house was located on a particular corner on the outskirts of town where the ends of two streets met.

   On the inside corner sat Eric’s home and their grandmother’s home: Abuela (next door to each other with a dirt alley in between).  In Abuela’s yard was the Great Tree, as tall as the heavens and branches so low, seven year olds could climb.  Many days were spent in the grass and twigs under that pecan tree.  The alley was a great source of fear.  Several times a night they would transition to Abuela’s and back for snacks, forgotten toys, and asking the adults for permissions. Each time, they looked down into the darkness and hoped they saw nothing.  Eric’s home also had its own source of illusory fear.  It was built on stilts which left a cavernous opening under it and looked as though the underside of the home were rocky cave formations hiding devious denizens.  The stairs that ran up the side of the home to the front door left them frightful that something would reach from under the house and grab their ankles as they ran up the stairs.

    On the outside corner of the intersection rose a patch of mesquite and elm woods (called “monte”).  It held the promise of strangeness and mythical creatures hidden within when the sun went down.  When the cicadas went quiet and the coyotes called, they often thought it was because something was lurking in those woods.

   Another round of chuckling old ladies interrupted his escape.  Hector slumped in the seat and laid the ship on his chest.  It always seemed the real world of 1984 would never let him go and be somewhere else.  He opened the cockpit and wished he could climb in and take-off.  So close to his face, the toy seemed big enough that he almost could.  It would get him there so much faster.

    Hector woke to the sound of the car door and the bright dome light (which was turned-up) as the last of the ladies stepped out of the back seat and said her goodbyes.  As she shut the door, he scooted over and reveled in the available space to stretch his legs.  He looked through the window and saw the familiar, old, yellow, streetlights, encroachingly numerous mesquite trees, and dilapidated buildings.  This visit happened almost once a month, and still it could not occur often enough.  He saw the Circle-C, which was a convenience store identified by the cool-looking sign with the red Pegasus; he saw the Dairy Queen where his grandfather likely was, sipping on coffee and chatting with friends until two in the morning; and he saw the video rental place where they had both VHS and Betamax available.  As the car pulled into the carport, he looked to the right, to the Great Tree, and appreciated its majesty as it stood guard over Abuela’s home, a shadow in the dark.

    “Okay, `jito.  Ju be carful and go stray to jor primo’s.”  Abuela spoke with a heavy Spanish accent: genuine Spanish.  Hector's mother and grandmother were both born in Madrid, Spain.  Hector, though, knew limited Spanish as he grew up all-American: Cub Scouts, little league, youth soccer, and no accent.  He slung his backpack over his shoulder and held the X-Wing out as though it were flying as he made shushing sounds to emulate flight.  He ran as fast as he could – until he reached the alley.

    His shushing stopped and he hugged his ship as he inched towards the edge of his grandmother’s yard.  He leaned forward and looked down the dark path.  Nothing moved, but the alley seemed to breathe as a breeze blew from it. He swallowed and ran, but did not stop.  As he approached the house and saw the cavernous darkness underneath, he resolved not to stop then, either, and hit the stairs at full speed.  He lifted his feet as soon as they touched redwood in fear that a clawed hand of some sort may reach from under the house to grab his foot.  He looked up and there was a figure, standing and waiting, “Ah!” he shouted.  But it was just his aunt, with a finger to her lips, signaling to be quiet.

    “Eric and Fatima are asleep.”  She guided him into the house that smelled of urine – Fatima was only five-years old and had a bed-wetting problem.  It wasn’t a bothersome smell – the house always smelled that way.  It was almost familiar, and though it wasn’t sanitary, the smell always reminded him that he would soon be in good company.  “Eric’s in his room.  Just sleep in here so you don’t wake him.”  She led him to the bronze-colored, velvet-cushioned couch – imprinted with a cabin and waterwheel.  Its wooden frame never meant comfort and the velvet was itchy, but soon it wouldn’t matter.  He would have slept on the sandy linoleum floor if he had to.  She laid a blanket and he dropped his backpack and crawled onto the couch where he curled up.  Almost instantly, he fell into slumber.

***

    "Hector!"  Hector woke to his cousin shaking him.  The unfamiliar pillow and pungent scent reminded him he was not at home and woke slowly.  He threw the blanket off and rubbed his eyes as he sat up.  The scent of bacon also filled the air, accompanied by a smokey haze.  The house was filled with muted activity: his aunt was making breakfast, Fatima was playing with her Strawberry Shortcake toys, and he could faintly hear the clothes washer running.  His cousin was only a year older, but that meant influence and authority to a seven and eight-year old.  "Hector, wake up!"

    He was happy to be there, but that still didn't change his mood.  Crankiness was part of the package when waking a kid up. "Whaaaaaat," he whined.

    "We're going to John and Denise's."

    Hector yawned and blinked as Eric came into focus.  "Yeah, but bacon."

    "You kids are eating before you go," his aunt, Eric's mom, called from the kitchen.

    Eric sat next to Hector as he held his copy of the 1977 animated film The Hobbit. His whisper was almost hidden in the sound of sizzling bacon.  "They moved to the trailer park, and John is a dungeon master.  You gotta play."

    Hector must have still been asleep, because he felt like he should know who these people were and what a dungeon master was, but he was lost and didn't want to feel stupid for not knowing about these things, so he just stayed quiet and nodded his head.

    Eric, anxious to tell his story - and aware that Hector likely didn't know because this was such a secret game - spoke with muted enthusiasm, "There's wizards and dragons, and elves, and dwarves, and magic," Eric pointed at the cover of the VHS in his hand, "just like in The Hobbit!"  He felt like he had been initiated into a secret society with secret knowledge: a game only available to the privileged few that could be introduced by word of mouth.  This was not a game you could find in stores, and he was anxious to induct his cousin, Hector.


    The trailer park was only a few lots way and was only big enough to hold three or four campers.  It was less a trailer park and more a graveled lot.  As they walked down the alley, Eric attempted to explain the concept of the game to Hector.  "No, it's not like Atari, but there's no board either.  It goes on in your head, dude."  Hector looked around the alley, and for a brief moment wondered what was so scary about it at night.  It consisted of two dirt rows - caused by vehicles that traversed it - with patches of crab grass and annoying grass stickers running along the center.  He looked back at the alley's entrance - a crumbly, ragged margin of caliche and rocks.  Behind his cousin's house was the old lot where he lived for a short time - now it just had the two storage sheds which still contained some of his old toys.  Sometimes he would break into them and sift through the old memories.  Behind his grandmother's house was a small lot with two RV's.  The second was a silver, egg-shaped one with the door open.  A twelve-year old boy sat at the door as he looked at a book.  Behind him was a girl - Denise - who paced as she spoke on the phone.  A cord trailed behind her like a lost puppy.

    "John!" Eric called and ran forward.

    The boy looked up.  "What's up, man?"

    Eric looked back at Hector, out of breath, and said, "This is my cousin, Hector.  Can we play that game again?"

    John lit up and stood as he waved the book up to show it was what he was reading, "Yeah!  I was just looking it over."

    "Cool!  I got dibs on Silverleaf."


    The boys sat at the small table the RV provided.  John had set an intriguing red box on the table with really neat artwork that seemed almost sinful to behold - a great red dragon and an armored man with a raised sword.  John laid his book aside and opened the box from which he produced another book and a handful of plastic gems.  Eric instantly grabbed one of them and started tumbling it on the table and Hector noticed there were numbers.  They were dice!  He had never seen dice with more than six numbers on them before!  There was a pyramid shaped one numbered one through four; the familiar, cube-shaped six-sided one; one that looked like two pyramids, back to back, that went up to eight; another gem-like one numbered zero through nine - he later learned that "0" was ten; one with soccer ball shapes on it that went up to twelve; and one covered in a bunch of triangles that went all the way up to twenty!  John pulled a sheet of paper out of the box and handed it to Eric, "Here's Silverleaf," and another paper that he handed to Hector, "And here's Red Doogle."

    Hector looked over the hand-written, wide-ruled, loose-leaf paper.  It had all sorts of strange, occult looking notes with combinations of letters and numbers: "STR: 8," "INT: 14," "WIS: 12;" There were odd scripts and drawings, sketches and notations.  It looked as though someone had thrown together make-believe words and mixed them with the devil's language.  "What's this?"

    John smiled as though proud to explain, "That's your character sheet.  His name is Red Doogle and he's a wizard!"  He saw that Hector was a little lost.  "Here, put it down, I'll help you.  Those numbers are your abilities: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.  The numbers mean how good you are at those abilities.  When you roll the d20," he took the twenty-sided die and tumbled it, "you look at the numbers and see how you did."  He pointed at another part of the sheet, "here are your spells, and here is all your stuff, like your staff and your money."  He looked at Hector, who in turn was glaring at the sheet trying to reconcile what he heard with what he saw.  "It's okay, Eric and I will help you."  He tried to sit back down, but something in his pocket bothered him.  He pulled out an audio cassette tape.  "OH!  Eric!  Check his out!  I found this tape in Jersey!"  He ran to the back room and came back with a tape player, plugged it in and laid it on the table.

    Denise flopped onto the seat at the table and saw him flip the cassette door open.  "Oh!  you boys are gonna love this!"  John flipped the door shut and hit play.  A deep, slow, baseline played.  Denise bounced her head to the music as she reached for the box and grabbed a sheet of paper out of it, "And there's Laguna."

    John looked his book over and pointed at the tape player without glancing at it, "dude, this group is awesome!  The band is called Manowar, and this song is Gates of Valhalla!"  Behind the sharp, clean guitar, a man with a voice like a jet engine sang of entering the afterlife in glory.  Hector suddenly felt inspired to be that man.  He wanted to raise his sword in the face of evil and vanquish bad men - just like He-Man, and according to John he would be able to cast spells just like Orco.  Soon, the music changed to a speedy, screaming guitar.  He had never heard anything like it.

***

    The room was unlike one any would expect in a dungeon, with the exception of the stone masonry that formed the walls.  A canopied bed sat at one of the walls, while the remainder of the room contained a vanity, wardrobe, tapestries portraying a five-headed dragon, a velvet-red carpet, and a very large mirror.  A cursory inspection of the room revealed nothing special as far as items of interest or money, but the mirror held Silverleaf in thrall.  Its work seemed elvish - his race - but his interest was in the reflection.  It took a minute to notice, but he saw the reflection blink.  It took him even longer to realize that it should blink when he does.  He reached out and touched the reflection.

    Red Doogle turned to Silverleaf just in time to recognize the mirror was a trap, but did not react fast enough.  "No!  Wait!"  Silverleaf vanished.

    Laguna, a thief, and Silverleaf's companion, ran for the mirror, "Let's help him!"

    Red Doogle tried to stop her, too.  "You don't just--"  but it was too late.  He knew it was a trap, but he also knew they would need his help on the other side.  He shook his head, walked to the mirror, and touched it.


    Red Doogle examined his surroundings and felt a little chill.  It occurred to him that all his belongings, including his clothes, were stuck to the ceiling.  It also occurred to him that his friends were in the same predicament.  It then occurred to both men that Laguna... was a woman.  She covered herself and blushed as she shouted, "Eyes to yourselves, gentlemen!"  They smiled, then looked to the ceiling and pondered.  The circular room had approximately a twenty-foot diameter, and thirty feet in height.  Half way between the floor and ceiling loomed a mirror with an ornate frame - not hung, but built into the wall.  There were, otherwise, no doors nor way to climb.

    Red Doogle asked, "Anyone have a rope?"

    Laguna pointed, "Yeah.  Up there,"  She looked closer, "and getting it won't be easy." She pointed across from the mirror.  "There's a tiny hole there.  I suspect there's a trigger or trip wire that will shoot an arrow or rock from there and smash the mirror if we're not careful."

    "And then what?" Silverleaf asked.

    Red Doogle wasn't familiar with this particular room, but he knew the magic of the mirror.  "Then we're trapped forever."  He thought some more.  "I can shield the mirror and protect it, but how do we get up? -- I got it!" Red Doogle said.  "Silverleaf, you're the strongest.  Go stand under the the mirror and brace yourself.  You'll need to hold both of us."  He did so.  "Laguna, I'm going to stand on his shoulders, use us as a ladder and climb onto the mirror. -- But be careful not to break the glass."

    Laguna looked up at the mirror and pondered what she could do from there.  She looked at the items, the hole, back to the items and back to the mirror.  "That's right!  But the trap?"

    Red Doogle did not need his spell book.  He had this spell practiced, memorized, and mastered to where he didn't need the words, nor components.  He motioned his hand in a circle then pointed.  A blue shimmering sheet appeared over the mirror.  "I've shielded the mirror.  Try and spring the trap so we don't have to worry about it anymore."  He climbed onto Silverleaf's shoulders - with some difficulty.

    Laguna climbed both of them as they struggled to keep balance, and then reached up where she felt a hair-thin, fine thread.  When it pulled and broke, an arrow shot from the hole and shattered as it hit the shielded mirror.  Satisfied, she smiled and grabbed the frame of the mirror and climbed up onto it.  "Okay, you can get down, now."

    Red Doogle climbed down and they brushed themselves off as they looked at Laguna clinging to the mirror frame.  She climbed to the top of the frame, looked up at the items and sprung.  "Catch me!"  She intended to leap for her rope and grab it, but when she did, she did not return to the ground as expected.  About four feet more, and she found that she leaped into some sort of field where gravity was reversed, and was winded when she hit the ceiling.  She stood up and examined her surroundings.  What was up or down?  She looked up and saw that it seemed it was the boys that were standing on the ceiling as all the items laid on the floor by her feet.  She grabbed the wizards quarterstaff and looked at the hole from which the arrow flew.  She focused and leaped for the hole, but she felt gravity reverse, and it was almost like being accelerated.  With careful timing, she jammed the staff into the hole and spun, like an acrobat.  When she lost momentum, she climbed onto the staff and stood there.  The boys watched her perch like a bird on a branch.  A second leap and she was back on the ceiling with the items.  Quickly she began throwing the items out of the field and then dropped to the men below who began dressing themselves.  She did the same.

    With inventory back in order, they used the rope to get themselves back to the mirror where they exited the room.  However--


    They did not find themselves in the bedroom from which they entered.  Instead, they found themselves in another stony room with two doors.  These doors were in a rather inconvenient spot, as they were on the opposite wall and a creature imposed between them: a giant black widow!  Silverleaf and Laguna drew their swords and Red Doogle opened his hand - a golden arrow appeared, hovering in the air.


    "Eric!  I need you to come home and watch your sister!"

    John and Denise stared at Eric.  "Sorry, I gotta go," Eric said.  He and Hector leaped out of the RV and ran to his mother.

    "What were you kids doing?"

    Hector, excited for his first time, "We were playing Dungeons and--"

    Eric interrupted, "No! Shh!"

    "--Dragons."  Hector was confused at Eric's sudden fear.

    "What?!"  Eric's mom shot him a look.  Eric stopped and Hector stepped back to watch the story unfold.  "You go to the house right now and wait for me in the living room. - Hector, wait for me in Eric's room.  I need to call your mother."

***

    Hector sat on Eric's bed, fiddling with his die cast wampa - which he had yet to show his cousin.  It had a cream colored fur and a dark brown base.  The horns came out of the sides of its face.  He awkwardly listened to the shouting that came from the living room.

    "Watch the news with your dad, tonight, mijo, and I bet you her name will come up: Patricia Pulling!  Mijo, her boy turned to devil worship and killed himself!  Do you want that?  For you?  For me?"  Hector felt guilty for what Eric was going through at the moment as he was chastised.  The pungent smell of urine no longer smelled like he was about to have fun with his cousin.  Now, it just smelled like nasty, unsanitary urine.  He didn't want to be there.  "That game and the heavy metal you listen to is poison!  It's poisoning your mind!  And now you're bringing your cousin into it?  What am I supposed to tell his mother?"  Hector cringed at the thought.  He heard Eric's voice, but didn't understand what he said.  "Don't get smart with me, son!  If that stuff didn't influence you, then what made you think it was okay to go behind my back and play that game again, especially after I told you not to?!  Go to your room, and tell Hector to come here."  The hairs on the back of his neck stood and he shivered.  He put the figure back in his backpack and zipped it up.

    Eric walked in the room.  "My mom wants you."

    "I heard."  He picked up his back pack and slung it over his shoulder.  The weight made his body waver - weak and weary with worry.  He walked down the hallway and dreaded the inundation that waited for him in the living room.  When he got there, he didn't look up.  He simply heard his aunt's voice.

    "I'm taking you home."

***

    The day dragged on as Hector's trip home was delayed.  Eric was grounded to his room and Hector moped on the itchy, velvety couch.  He slid off the couch and meandered around the living room.  On top of the giant cabinet television sat a dusty old die from one of their board games.  It looked different now.  Once upon a time he saw the pips as number of spaces to move - now it was so much more.

   It was dusk when his aunt walked him out of the house and back to his grandmother's car.  Backpack in tow, he walked down the stairs, but simply maintained a distance from the bottom of the house.  If something reached, he could leap over the handrail - no need to be anxious.  Hector stopped at the alley.  He looked it over and wondered what was so scary about it after all.  The darkness didn't change anything.  He felt wiser and more capable of dealing with adversity.  He was still seven and didn't feel that he was invincible, nor did he lose his imagination - something may be down there watching him right now.  But now he looked around and planned: where would he run to?  How would he fortify his defense?  And most of all, how quickly can he get to companions that can complete him?  The woods went silent.  Something was probably lurking in the monte.  He adjusted his backpack which started to slide off his shoulder and walked to the car.  As he waited for his aunt to unlock the door, he watched the Great Tree - and for a moment - thought he saw it nod in acknowledgement or approval; maybe it was the wind.


    Hector was usually excited when the front seat was open, but he opted to sit in the back.  It pained him to think what his mother would say, so he attempted to distract himself.  He held his X-Wing out and pretended it was flying along the highway, but it did nothing to break the ghost of what happened, and it haunted him.  He put it back down and looked out the window.  He recalled the mirror, the gravity trick, the clothes and the trap.  He recalled the spider and his part in helping the team.  He may not have understood the rules, but he was full of ideas that helped everyone - and the spells that helped them pull through.  He took a notebook and pencil out of his backpack and ripped out a sheet of paper.  The moon was bright and it made the paper glow a magical blue halo.  He stared at the blank, white background with blue lines and the single, red, vertical one, and tried to recall what he saw on Red Doogle's character sheet.  He wrote "Magic Missile," "Shield," and "Dagger" on the right and "STR:," "WIS:," "INT:," and "DEX:," on the left, though he could not remember the rest.  He noted arbitrary numbers beside them and pulled the six-sided, classic white, cube die he stole from his aunt's house and rolled it on his notebook.  He couldn't understand, nor remember the rules, but he got excited when the die rolled high, and that was good enough for him.