The secret of commanders.., p.19
The Secret of Commander's Mansion, page 19
Dropping the van into park, Dom cut the engine and slumped against the wheel.
Blake opened his door and slipped out of his seat. He made a slow path to the front of the van and leaned against it, his hands in his pockets.
“Think it’s safe now? Can we get out?” Shane asked.
“I guess so,” Marti said. “But watch out for, I don’t know, firebombs from the house. Or angry skeletons or something.”
Shane smiled. “Yeah, right.”
They all joined Blake at the front of the van. Marti and Dom leaned against the grille, one on either side of him.
Shane, though, couldn’t stand up another second. His arms and legs were weak, and he yawned fiercely. He hadn’t been this drained since the time he and Ellie stayed up all night to finish their science-fair project on electricity. He melted onto a patch of grass a few feet from the van, sitting to prop his chin on his hands and his hands on his knees.
Elle settled down beside him.
For a time, no one spoke. After all they’d been through, Shane didn’t know what to say, anyway, or even where to begin.
Everyone watched in silence as flames licked the roof of the house from the window of the office in the tower. All of the Commander’s journals would be destroyed. In fact, everything, every last piece of the man’s history—and his wife’s, too—filling that old mansion would be lost for good.
Finally, Blake cracked the silence. “The management company is going to go all kinds of ballistic about this. I hope our insurance company is ready to write out a big, fat check.”
“It’ll be worse for our production company,” Dom said. “They’ll be apologizing over this forever. Did we start the fire?”
Marti beamed with pride. “You bet I did.”
Pulling off his now-dirty hat, Dom scratched his head. “How can you be so happy about it?”
“Because I started it with a case of very old rum to keep from getting eaten by a spider the size of Thorby’s ego.”
“Hey,” Blake said.
Ellie smiled at her. “I wondered how you managed that.”
“It was afraid of the fire in the lantern. So I turned the flame up as high as I could and smacked that creepy thing with it right between its eight eyes every time it got close to me. It tried to snag me with webbing a few times, too, but that stuff was easy to burn. It chased me all the way to that storage room, where I dumped a whole case of rum on the ground. The spider walked right over it and then shot a web line at me. I let the line catch me and then doused the webbing with a bottle I’d kept in my hand. Then I turned the lantern on it, and the fire ran back along the web line like the fuse to a roman candle. That spider went up like one too.”
“Thank you for coming back for me,” Ellie said. “I was in big trouble.” She tried not to look at Shane. It hadn’t been him—she knew it hadn’t been him—but it was still hard to look at him and not the face he’d made when the Commander was in control.
“Don’t mention it.” Marti grinned. “Like I said, we girls have to stick together.”
Shane cleared his throat. “Look, guys, I’m… I’m sorry.”
Blake shook his head. “Don’t be, Shay-man. You weren’t yourself. I know because I wasn’t either. I was, like, trapped inside some kind of bubble in my own mind, and no one could hear me.”
“Right.” Dom nodded. “It was freaky. But totally not your fault.”
“Well, I brought that dumb toy soldier into the house in the first place. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t.”
“Don’t let it eat you up, kid. We all do things we second-guess sometimes. It was stupid of me to leave you guys to try to get back to that laptop.”
“No, Blake,” Ellie mumbled, hanging her head. “That was my fault. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. But I thought I needed more time inside the house.”
“Why? We could have left.”
Ellie glanced at Marti, who nodded in support. “Well,” she said, “it’s a long story.”
Some minutes later, after she’d explained all about the toy and the Commander and, especially, hearing the Lady in her head, Blake whistled. “Whoa, that’s quite a story. You swear it’s all true?”
“Every word.” She made a crossing motion over her heart.
Blake frowned. “Man. Too bad we didn’t get all of that recorded. The ratings would be through the roof.”
“I think you got a lot of it recorded.” Ellie pointed at the camera gadget still attached to his head. “We all lost ours, but you had to have gotten most of the good parts.”
He pulled his headband off and looked at it. “Yeah, but without the laptop, whatever I did capture is gone.” As he spoke, the central tower of the mansion fell in on itself with ground-shaking crash. He blinked at the burning pile of rubble and groaned.
Ellie laughed. “The laptop is in my bag. I grabbed it on the way out.”
The Tracker’s eyes lit up. “You’re kidding. Don’t mess with me!”
“I wouldn’t joke about that.”
Marti clapped. “Ellie, I can’t believe it! That was super dumb, but I can’t believe it!”
Ellie smiled. “Us girls gotta stick together, right?”
Sirens wailed from somewhere in the distance, close to town. “Sounds like the fire department is on its way,” Shane said.
“Won’t be anything to save by the time they get here,” Dom said. “With as much old, dry wood was in that house, it’ll be ashes and rubble in another five or ten minutes.”
“Good.” Shane frowned. “Hopefully it’ll take the Commander with it.”
“Let’s hope, Shay-man. Still, Dom, you and me should go open the gate for the fire trucks. They won’t be too thrilled to be locked out.”
Dom nodded. “We’ll be right back. Sit tight.”
After the guys drove off in the van, Ellie squinted at Shane. “So, what now? You got your dream to be on a real ghost-hunting show. Time for a new dream? Something even more epic?”
He gave her a soft grin. “Nope, I think this has been enough epicness for a little while. I’m gonna go home and hug my mom and tell her that if it’s me and her against everybody, then that’s how we’ll take it. Together. We don’t need anybody else—and that goes double for my dad.”
“I think she’ll like that, Shane.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Then, with a sly wink, he added, “Hopefully it’ll be enough to keep me out of trouble.” He paused. “What about you? Is she—?”
“Yeah. The Lady’s gone. She came back once after we left the house and said we’d helped her take care of everything that was holding her here. She was tired and ready to move on. And then she kind of… faded. She didn’t even say she was sorry for bailing on me when she couldn’t stop the Commander.”
“Spirits, right? Can’t trust ’em for anything. So, you’re all alone now?”
Ellie shook her head. “No. Maybe alone in my brain at last, but I’ve got you. And Mom. And Father.” She looked over her shoulder at Marti. “And some new friends too. I don’t think I want to be left alone ever again. At least not if I can help it.”
“That’s awesome, El.”
As their chatter trailed off, both kids leaned against each other, too weary to do anything else, and watched Ballingschap House or Commander’s Mansion or whatever fall apart in glorious chunks of smoldering wood and glass.
Running his hand along the outside of his pocket, Shane traced the lines of the wooden cavalryman inside. He’d need to destroy that toy soldier as soon as he could. He’d cut it into a bunch of pieces and burn it up as soon as he got a chance.
Tomorrow, maybe. Or sometime soon.
No reason to rush. He had all the time in the world.
JR Andrews is the pen name for real life human Jason A. Rust. Born in Indianapolis, he has lived all but the first six months of life in Northern Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio. JR has a wonderful and very tolerant wife, four very individual kids, two very lazy dogs, and a very active imagination. An avid reader and lifelong lover of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, as JR Andrews he writes stories set in fantasy worlds where the proverbial *&#% has hit the fan or is just about to do so.
Other Novels by JR Andrews
Famine, A Survival Horror Thriller
Goldenshield, An Epic GameLit Fantasy
Get them now from Amazon or Kindle Unlimited, or ask about it at your favorite local bookshop.
J. R. Andrews, The Secret of Commander's Mansion
