Grandpa's Portal by Steve Messman
“He taught us how to learn, didn’t he?” It was one of Sarrah’s most profound statements. It was true. And suddenly, it was clear. Grandpa taught us the most valuable lesson in the world. Exactly what we needed to get home. He didn’t teach us things. He taught us hows. How to ask questions. How to find answers. How to venture out on our own. How to learn. How to gain wisdom. How to get home.
“Now you’re getting somewhere, Little Girl.” I heard the voice as clearly as I could hear our conversation. “Grandpa?” I cried. “Grandpa?” But, he wasn’t there. The others must have thought I was crazy.
“Who are you talking to?” I really can’t remember who said that, either Thomas or Sarrah. I remember that I answered, though. “Didn’t you hear that? Didn’t you hear Grandpa? He said that now we’re getting someplace. He called me Little Girl.”
“Grandpa is gone, Hannah. Grandpa is dead.” I wished at the time that Thomas hadn’t said that. It only brought back the hurt.
I answered through barely controlled tears, “But I heard him, Thomas. I heard him as clearly as I can hear you.”
“He’s here,” Sarrah said. “Grandpa is here. He never left. He may be dead, but he’s with us in our heads and in our hearts. He always will be. We’ll always hear him. We’ll always remember him, his kindness, his laugh, his questions, his teachings. He’ll always be with us in our hearts and in our thoughts. To us, Grandpa will never be dead.”
“Giving life to the dead.” It was just a whisper. I don’t think that Thomas meant to say it to anyone. He might not have even meant to say it loud enough to hear. I remember looking at him as soon as I heard those words. It was as if time just stopped. His eyes were focused somewhere out there, not on anything or anyone in particular. I saw sadness, a deep sadness in Thomas’s eyes for the first time since Grandpa disappeared over a year ago. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but Thomas eventually refocused on the present. And when he did, I saw a flicker of growth.
“Grandpa taught us everything we needed to know and everything we needed to do. We just need to focus. He taught us how to ask questions. He taught us how to find answers. Now let’s point toward home, and let’s ask the right questions so we can get the heck out of here.”
“And while we’re at it, let’s not forget about my brother,” added Sarrah. An emotion vastly greater than sorrow blanketed her eyes.
*****
40. Finding the Right Questions
“What would Grandpa be doing right now?” Sarrah’s comment about her brother simply glanced off Thomas. Brian would not be easy to find, and even if we found him, it would be difficult to bring him back home. Brian had made his choice.
“Good question, Thomas,” I said, trying to bring myself and Sarrah back on the track of finding our way out. “That answer is much too easy. He would be asking us to point toward home.”
“Given where we are, how do we do that?” Thomas was doing the same thing that Grandpa had done for all those years, and he was skilled at it. This was the same plan we used to find all the answers to get here. Question. Answer. Question. Answer. It worked for Grandpa. It was going to work for us, too.
“Work it, Thomas,” I said. “Grandpa would be proud.”
“So, answer the question.” Thomas cracked the tiniest of smiles meant more for Grandpa than for us. “Given where we are, how do we point toward home?”
That’s when Sarrah spoke up. What a character she was back then. Often, she just sat and watched the rest of us. She was often quiet, but lately, when Sarrah did speak, she was on target. It was times like this that Sarrah made perfect sense.
“Maybe pointing isn’t what we need to do. Maybe knowing the direction of home isn’t as important as knowing how to get there.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked.
“Even if we knew where home was, we don’t know if we have what it takes to get there. The orb said there were two keys. We don’t have two keys.”
Thomas and I both did a double take. “What?” We both said at exactly the same time. I couldn’t understand for the life of me how Sarrah knew what the orb said. She was so out of it when the orb spoke last, but bless her heart, Sarrah knew, and she continued.
“The orb said that we had to find the secret. It said the secret and the key will allow us to go.”
“She’s right,” Thomas said. Then, he repeated the orb’s words exactly. “Find the orb’s secret. That you must know. That and the key will allow you to go.”
I knew from my private trip to the orb that we needed to listen to it and retain what it said. It’s rantings were important. I just didn’t know how important. Nonetheless, it seemed that the best thing we could do for now was to remember and think. Think. Think. Then, I remembered!
“I got it! At least, I have part of it. Remember when we found Grandpa? Remember what he said about our thorns? Do you remember how Grandpa made such a big deal of us still having those weapons?”
Thomas remembered. I could tell when he reached up to put his hand over the all-to-real memory of his stinging ear—the one Grandpa smacked. “Oh, my God! How could I forget? He told us to remember that those were the keys to going home.”
“They’re only one part,” I emphasized. “What was the rest? What is the orb’s secret?”
This time, Sarrah grabbed her chest, right where Grandpa poked Brian. It seemed that Grandpa was, in fact, still living in us so vividly we could actually feel his lessons. “He told us to remember our hearts. He especially told Brian to remember his heart.”
There was a moment of silence. The unearthly silence of sudden insight. Of growing understanding. Sarrah spoke, again. “He’s forgotten, hasn’t he? Brian has forgotten his heart.”
The battle will cease, but not for long.
Understanding will take its place.
“I think that he has, Sarrah. I don’t know what Grandpa meant, exactly, but I know that it has something to do with us as a family, how we support each other, how we help each other out, how we love each other. I’m sure there’s more that we still have to learn. It’ll come,” I said.
Sarrah smiled when she said, “I guess that falls into Grandpa’s category of ‘Someday you’ll understand.’”
At first, we all smiled these big, toothy grins. Then, slowly, the three of us broke into a tearful laugh.
It was a short-lived laugh.
*****
41. The Real Battle Begins
I know my eyes popped out of my head and must have looked as round as dinner plates. My hands covered my mouth. I’m not sure what that accomplished; you could have heard the air hiss through my fingers as I sucked in a gigantic volume of air. It was that damnable signal—again. The earth shook. Rocks fell. Cracks formed in the floor where we sat. I couldn’t believe it. This time was worse than it ever had been. I had no idea how that was even possible, but apparently it was.
The three of us did what we had grown so accustomed to doing. Two of us grabbed our remaining weapons, and three of us headed for the door. This prison was not a safe place to be while the ceiling was collapsing. Being inside that small cavern was like being inside a cathedral during an earthquake, except that there wasn’t a single hiding place to be had; not a chair, or a table, or a single acorn cap to hide under. If the shaking and rolling didn’t kill you, the falling ceiling certainly might. Up to now, we had managed to escape serious injury in similar situations because we could get out of our cell. This time, however, escape was not possible. We didn’t have the two guards watching our every move. Instead, we had a doorway plugged by what looked like dozens of ants stuffed into the entrance. I have no idea how they did it, but too many ants to count had jammed their behinds, their bodies, their legs and heads into the now impassable opening of our cell. The ants had formed a living cork. My guess was that our cell must be the center of activity, the target of yet another clash between the ants and who knows what. Every possible ant was making sure we were safe, and as certainly as cricket heads wer
None of us realized it at first, but later we understood that the ants plugging our doorway must surely have known they would die. Some could see it coming; some couldn’t. It didn’t matter. These ants were going to do what they had to do in spite of the obvious consequences. You wouldn’t believe how tightly these ants were squeezed into that hole. Their jaws and legs were nothing but a tangled mass. There was no way they could take an offensive stance; they couldn’t even defend themselves. They plugged that hole for one reason. Eventually, every one of them paid the ultimate price to protect us, and we still weren’t sure why. We were only certain that we weren’t ant food, yet. These ants were still protecting us. Our purpose in serving them was not yet finished.
The plugged exit had two edges. The good part was that we were protected for the time being from whatever was outside trying to get inside. The bad part was that we were trapped, and whatever was on the other side surely knew that.
The intensity of the battle outside our chamber must have been astonishing. The earth continued to quake harder than it ever had. The ants had not foreseen this outcome, but our prison promised to become our tomb. Huge boulders fell from the ceiling and thudded all around us like giant billiard balls. Before long, there was no room on the floor. The place began to look like a landslide in a rock quarry. Boulders tumbled on top of more boulders until our prison contained its own matrix of tunnels that all led to nowhere. At least those offered protection from the still-falling rocks that could easily have squashed us like the bugs we were.
As we cowered in our hopefully protective tunnels, the ground suddenly heaved straight upwards, then fell as quickly straight down. All of us hung in the air along with all the boulders we were hiding next to, but as gravity would demand, our bodies and the boulders soon tumbled to the floor with simultaneous thuds. This was far worse than being bombarded by the springtails. None of us had been seriously hurt, but this experience gave new meaning to the phrase “shook up.”
I thought that nothing but ants and gravity were strong enough to move these boulders, but apparently I was wrong. Something else was much stronger, and whatever it was hurled us and those boulders straight upwards—all at the same time. Suddenly, something new—again. The dirt floor of our cell rolled like the wake of a fast-moving freighter, and we were nothing more than dinghies caught in the surf.
“What the heck was that????????????”
I don’t know which one of us said it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me, but I wouldn’t swear to it. This unseen thing moved without effort just below the surface of our floor. It slashed through every inch of our room knocking boulders around as if they were air-filled beach balls, and we didn’t even know what it was. For sure, it was something living, and none of us liked the feel of it. Thomas started roaring like a mad man and running all over the room, stabbing his spear into the ground time after time trying to kill this thing as it slithered under the floor of our tomb. He stabbed it three times, four times, five, but the thing wouldn’t die. Every time Thomas stabbed the thing it shuddered and stopped, but only for an instant. The thing recovered almost immediately and tore through the floor of our cell like a tsunami crashing through an ocean resort.
The rolling wave undulated its way across our entire cell and back, all the time kicking up an absurd amount of dirt, rocks, and dust. It could move in any direction: backwards, forwards, sideways. Finally, some part of the thing broke the surface. Finally, we could see it! A worm! The greenish glow that filled our cell caused that giant earthworm to look like a grass-stained slug. All I could think was Great! A living tunneling machine!
As it turned out, that’s exactly what it was, and it wasn’t on our side. The worm obviously had our cell located. It could dive at will straight into the ground to escape the ants, to create new tunnels, or for any reason it chose. It could tunnel straight into our room from any point outside. The ants that plugged the normal entrance had done so in vain. This thing could create any number of entrances to allow a dozen spiders into our room through new tunnels that the ants would know nothing of. And, guess what! It did exactly that!
The floor suddenly stopped heaving. Within seconds, the opposite wall began to tremble and collapse. All we could do was watch from our boulder-created niches, which rapidly lost their appeal as safe places to be. Nothing was safe anymore. For crying out loud! How do you escape a rampaging worm that’s a hundred times bigger than you are?
The best answer is—you don’t. In a mere heartbeat after the wall began to shake, worm lips began to take shape in the shifting dirt. It had broken through. The lips turned into a head, and the head turned into a body that was squirming through every crack and gap between our fallen boulders. Big as it was, the thing squished itself into any and all of those tiny crevasses. Its backside may have still been in the hole it created, but its head was hunting for us!
“It’s blind!” Thomas yelled. It can’t see you. “It only feels vibrations!”
Long, dark, and slimy might not have been able to see, but it was great at locating motion. It didn’t make a lot of difference anyway, because the spiders that came in through the earthworm’s newly formed tunnel could see perfectly well. Worse! The one that entered first had a rider.
Brian!
*****
42. The Battle Continues
It was Brian! Riding on the back of that spider like a general on his horse. Brian was definitely in command. I could see him pointing, directing, leading the charge. I couldn’t explain it then. I can’t explain it now. How had he mastered this ability so quickly? Yet there was another, more important fact to consider. There was no one in the room except us, and you have to understand what that meant. Brian was after us!
Brian burst into the room and brought two additional spiders with him. Those seemed to respond to his every twitch. His commands were wordless, yet perfectly effective. He pointed to one side of the room and gave his pointing finger a series of twitches. The spider that he directed took a position by that far wall and reared on four legs. The creature’s free legs pointed up as far as he could reach; they waved like flags, like warnings to us not to move a muscle. His eyeballs spun like the blue stone in the orb. That spider waited. Waited for either of us to move just the tiniest fraction of an inch.
Brian directed the last spider into a similar position on an opposite wall. It also adopted that offensive stance, ready to strike at our smallest move. Brian, still riding his spider, was to our front. There was little we could do except cower and brandish our two, perfectly laughable swords.
“Brian! What are you doing?” I screamed. “What are you doing?”
Nothing. Silence.
“Brian! Stop. We found the way home, part of it at least. We can go home soon.”
Nothing.
“We just need one more part of the secret. Just one. We need you to help us find it.” I tried so hard to understand, to communicate, to stop Brian’s attack and get him to talk to us. Nothing worked. His face wore only a mask of anger and resentment.
Brian twitched one finger on his right hand and a different one on his left. The two spiders he commanded responded instantly. The one on our right dropped two legs and inched closer, stopping next to us and standing well within easy reach. The one to our left remained reared, remained poised to jump; its eyes rotated faster and faster, sizing us up, getting a fix on distance and alternatives. Using one finger on his right hand, Brian tapped his spidery steed on the head directly between its larger eyes. Then, using his left hand, he covered one of the beast’s lesser eyes. The spider stepped slowly in the opposite direction. Our circle of safety continued to shrink uncomfortably smaller.
“Brian! Please! Listen!” Thomas pleaded. “We found Grandpa. You’re right. He’s alive. Alive in our hearts. He’ll be with us as long as we’re alive. Everything that he said. Everything that he taught us. All of our time together will be in our hearts, in our memories. He’s pa
In all my life, I had never heard so much anger as I did in Brian’s rapid-fire response. He almost spit the words. “You lie! Grandpa is dead and buried in that God-forsaken bug crypt in the maple tree. You saw him, Hannah. I know you did. There’s only one way to get him back. I’m goin to do that. I’ll kill anyone and anything that gets in my way! And right now, you are in my way!”
This was not Brian. This was some shell crammed full of loathing and hatred that could only have been inspired by the double-edged promises of the orb, or by the devil himself. Brian’s next words were an echo: a punctuation mark added to make sure that we understood his intent. “You three are in my way!” he shrieked. He tapped his spider on the head one more time.
Brian’s spider inched forward. Slowly. Cautiously. Steadily moving forward.
“It’s true, Brian. Grandpa talked to me. He called me Little Girl. I heard him as clearly as I can hear you.” I pleaded with all my heart. I could not believe that Brian had turned on his family. I would not believe it. He had to hear the truth.
“Liar!” Brian yelled. “There’s only one way!” His spider continued to creep toward us. Brian pointed and twitched several fingers all at the same time. The other two spiders went on heightened alert dropping their stance much lower. Muscles tightened. Eyes focused. All were ready to attack. All waited on Brian’s directive.
Sarrah said the only words that caused Brian to hesitate. “I love you, Brian. You will always be my brother.”
Brian’s hands covered two of the lesser eyes of his spider, and it stopped. The earthworm, however, did not. That skinny freak from the depths of some slimy hell crawled through the smallest of crevasses and headed straight for us. I’ve never seen anything move so fast. That blind worm headed straight for me at full speed. I dodged. It missed, but it also smashed the wall behind me. The wall had been thinned by the work of a thousand ants on the other side, and the worm finished the job. An opening! Our way out!