The Demon Queen and The Locksmith

  What others are saying about The Demon Queen and The Locksmith:

  "Ordinary teens become extraordinary in this thrilling tale of good versus evil...Skillfully written, this novel will captivate teens, including reluctant readers.”

  (Publishers Weekly)

  “... a wonderful sense of mystery and anticipation...has a fresh, creative feel. The DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH is well written, fast paced and full of suspense.”

  (Amazon Vine Program)

  “…I couldn't put it down...Spencer Baum writes with an eye to ideas, but he never loses his sense of fun and adventure. His teens are both believable and likeable. Most importantly, Baum lets the action carry the themes; he is never preachy. This is a great book for young adults and the young at heart!”

  (Elisheva Levin, Ragamuffin Studies)

  The Demon Queen and The Locksmith is a 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Semifinalist.

  * * * * *

  THE DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH

  by

  Spencer Baum

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Spencer Baum on Smashwords

  The Demon Queen and The Locksmith

  Copyright © 2009 by Spencer Baum

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. See the link below for more details:

  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/

  www.spencerbaum.net

  * * * * *

  THE DEMON QUEEN AND THE LOCKSMITH

  * * * * *

  Chapter 1

  Kevin Browne arrived at the park with a rust-colored stain on his shirt and a thick film of bloody saliva in his throat. He had been in his first ever fistfight that morning. He lost. Blackstone Park was the end point of his retreat. Hidden inside a forgettable neighborhood and shaded with the tallest, thickest elm trees in Turquoise, Blackstone Park was safe from the prying eyes of adults who might wonder why a fourteen-year-old was out and about on this, the first day of the school year. Blackstone Park was also far from campus, far from the stares and snickers of his classmates at Turquoise High School, far from those who stood witness to the pummeling he had received at the hands of Ruben Graves.

  At least, that’s what Kevin imagined as he ambled through the alleys behind Jefferson Avenue. Just off the school grounds, he had seen a sparrow bathing in the remains of a mud puddle. His head, fogged in panic and pain, twisted that sparrow into a ridiculous vision that had been with him ever since. He saw himself lying on his back under a tall elm tree, waving his arms up and down, soaking himself in the wet grass of Blackstone Park like a bird in the mud.

  He was disappointed to find other people in the park when he arrived. A guy and a girl, maybe his age or a little older. He might have seen them around town before, but he didn’t know their names. The guy was standing, his back against the tree, his nose in a book. The girl sat cross-legged a few feet from the tree trunk, holding a small pair of binoculars to her eyes as she looked into the branches above her. They had the same dark brown hair, the girl’s long and straight, the guy’s thick and unkempt. It was odd that they, like him, weren’t in school.

  He needed a different place to hide. He had to be alone right now. The thought of--

  Too late. He’d been spotted. It was the girl. She had turned his way and was looking at him through her binoculars.

  “Hello!” she shouted.

  “Hi,” Kevin responded. His voice came out airy and weak.

  The girl stood up. She approached, walking with a confidence that made Kevin nervous. What did she want?

  “I’m Jackie,” she said. She put her binoculars in her pocket and extended her right hand. Kevin shook it.

  “I’m Kevin.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kevin. What happened to your face?”

  Kevin’s intestines knotted. A gruesome image of how he might look came to mind. He envisioned his too-pale skin turning purple and black under his left eye, his already large nose swollen larger still, his nostrils pushed up and out by a fat upper lip.

  “I was in a fight,” he said.

  Jackie’s eyebrows sprung up her forehead. “A fight? With whom?”

  With whom? Kevin nearly laughed and let out a phony cough to cover himself. Who said with whom other than English teachers?

  “I’m fine. It was at school.”

  Her eyes drifted past Kevin to the backpack on his shoulders. He felt ridiculous and wished he wasn’t wearing it.

  “It was just some guy named Ruben.” Kevin waved his hand, like it was no big deal. It occurred to him that he looked terrible, but to someone who hadn’t seen the fight, he hadn’t necessarily lost. For all this girl knew, Ruben might look even worse.

  “You’re going to have a black eye tomorrow if you don’t put some ice on it,” Jackie said.

  “I…don’t I have a black eye already?” Kevin asked, mortified at how weak his voice sounded. He cleared his throat.

  “No, it’s just swollen.” She stepped closer. Kevin stepped away.

  “It’s alright,” she said in a voice one might use when approaching a stray dog. “I just want to look at it.”

  “Okay,” Kevin said. This girl, having known him for less than a minute, stepped right into his space. Every cell in his body went on alert. His already queasy stomach contracted. With a casual manner, as if nothing at all was unusual about this encounter, Jackie reached up and touched Kevin’s face, lightly pressing under his eye with two fingers.

  “Yes, I think you’ll have a black eye tomorrow,” she said, her voice tickling his cheek with its proximity. Her breath smelled like ginger cookies.

  She stepped back once. Kevin stepped back twice. He tried to shrug his shoulders, as if fist-fighting was something he did every day and black eyes were a normal part of his life. Under the weight of his backpack, his shoulder shrug was more of an awkward lurch. He tried to turn that lurch into one fluid movement where he would slide his backpack all the way off, but a corner of his thick biology textbook pressed through the canvas and caught his spine on the way down.

  “Ow,” he hissed. The backpack fell to the ground with a thud.

  Jackie cringed. “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah, fine,” Kevin said. “So what are you guys doing at the park?”

  “I’m bird-watching, and my brother Joseph, as you can see, is reading. Hey Joseph! Come over here!”

  Joseph was still against the tree, his eyes in his book. “Just a minute!” he shouted back.

  “He loves that book,” Jackie said. “We should just go over there, because he won’t move from that spot until he’s finished the last page.”

  Leaving his backpack on the ground, Kevin followed her to the middle of the park, toward Joseph and the large elm tree that shaded him.

  “Is school out for the day?” she asked.

  “No, I’m ditching. It’s fourth period now,” Kevin said.

  Jackie smirked. “Ditching?”

  “You know…I was just sick of being there today. How come you guys aren’t in school?”

  “We homeschool,” said Jackie.

  “Oh.”

  They walked a few paces.

  “So, how does that work?” Kevin asked. “Do your parents teach you?”

  “When we were little they did a lot of teaching, but now they mostly leave us to learn whatever we want,” said Jackie. “Sometimes we write reports about what we’re learning, for the government--”

  “They have to have their hands in everybody’s business, of course,” said Joseph as he snapped his book shut.<
br />
  “Uh-oh. Here we go,” said Jackie. “Don’t mind him. Joseph has some strange opinions.”

  “You don’t have to say it like I’m a wacko,” Joseph said.

  Kevin glanced at the cover of Joseph’s book. The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7.

  “It’s a good book,” Joseph said, “have you read it?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “Of course he hasn’t read it, hardly anyone’s read it,” Jackie said.

  “Well, more people should. If we all just opened our eyes a little, we’d be amazed at what we saw.”

  “Spoken just like your idol,” Jackie said.

  “His idol?” asked Kevin.

  “Lou Sweeney,” said Jackie. “He was a radio announcer. Joseph’s practically in love with him.”

  “He is a radio announcer, not he was, Jackie, and he is more than just a radio announcer. He’s an author, a detective, a voice of reason in troubled--”

  A cannon blast of sound ripped the air.

  “What the hell was that?” Joseph said.

  Kevin shook his head. Jackie stood on her tiptoes, looking toward Turquoise Mountain. The air was silent again. Kevin replayed the sound in his head, trying to recognize it.

  “Maybe it was a gas explosion,” said Jackie. “I don’t see anything, though. I hope no one was hurt.”

  Joseph let out a yelp and jumped away from the tree.

  “What’s with you?” Jackie asked.

  “The tree dripped on me,” Joseph said. He moved his hand through his hair. “It isn’t bird poop, is it?”

  “I’m sure it’s just water from the rain last night. Let me see.”

  Joseph crouched so his sister could look at the top of his head. Just before Joseph bent his knees, Kevin realized that these siblings were the same height.

  “Who’s older?” Kevin asked.

  “We’re twins,” said Jackie. She ran her hand through Joseph’s hair, rubbed her fingertips together, and declared, “Sap.”

  “Gross,” said Joseph. “Is it all sticky?”

  “Yes,” said Jackie, now looking up into the tree. “It’s strange, this elm shouldn’t be leaking sap.”

  “She makes fun of me for my interests,” said Joseph, “but now let’s see who’s weird. This girl can tell you about every kind of tree in New Mexico, and every bird, every bug, every coyote.”

  Jackie ignored her brother. She felt the bark of the tree with her palm, looking up into the branches.

  “It’s sick,” Jackie said.

  Joseph rolled his eyes. “You sound like a hippie,” he said.

  “Feel how dry it is,” said Jackie. “It rained all night. It shouldn’t be this dry.”

  Joseph touched the tree.

  “Feels fine to me,” he said.

  “Well it’s not fine,” said Jackie.

  “Maybe it just hasn’t had time to soak up the water,” said Joseph.

  “There’s been time,” said Jackie.

  Kevin approached the tree as well. He stroked the bark, feeling for dryness.

  “Its color isn’t right either,” said Jackie.

  “What’s that vibrating?” Kevin asked.

  “What vibrating?” said Jackie. She was now engrossed in her study of the tree. Kevin followed her eyes into the branches, and saw a lone butterfly perched near the top.

  “That vibration in the tree,” Kevin said. “Do you think it’s from the ground?” He removed his hands and the vibration stopped. He put his hands back on the tree and it started again.

  “I don’t feel anything,” said Jackie. She leaned in, touching her ear to the tree. Joseph too pressed his hands more intently against the trunk.

  “You’ve got to feel that,” said Kevin. “I can feel the whole tree buzzing.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” said Jackie. “Do you feel something Joseph?”

  “No,” Joseph said, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Joseph now had both hands, his chest, and his cheek pressed against the tree.

  “Maybe it’s the Turquoise Hum,” Joseph said with a smirk on his face. Kevin shot Joseph a dirty look, thinking about everything he’d like to say about ‘The Turquoise Hum,’ but a loud snap from inside the tree interrupted his thoughts.

  Joseph and Jackie stepped away from the tree trunk.

  Another snapping noise. It sounded like a thunderclap, or the cracking of the world’s largest wishbone. The exact sound was one Kevin had never heard, but was a noise to which his body was preprogrammed to respond. With no conscious effort on his part, his feet began taking him away from the tree.

  More cracks. One loud pop after another, separated by squeaking, ripping, snapping, grinding…faster, more urgent cracks became crackling…tearing, slipping…

  Kevin scanned the tree from bottom to top. The butterfly had left its perch on the branch above them and drifted in the breeze to the other side of the tree. Like a feather landing on a quiet lake, the butterfly touched down on the branch farthest from Kevin.

  And the tree broke.

  One loud burst of sound signaled the end, and the base of the trunk was a small explosion of bark and sawdust. There was a silence as it fell. Two seconds of anticipation, then a small earthquake of an impact. A shockwave rippled through the soil. Kevin had to widen his stance to keep from falling.

  The fallen tree divided the park in half. There was enough wood on the ground to fill an entire dump truck. A wave of relief came over Kevin. This tree could have fallen in any direction. It happened to fall away from the three teenagers who had been standing underneath it.

  A short, jagged stump, no more than two feet tall, remained planted in the earth. A flurry of bugs covered the top of it.

  Jackie was the first to approach.

  “Termites,” she said.

  Kevin and Joseph followed her and leaned in for a look. Kevin had never seen live termites before, but what else could these be? What other bugs lived inside a tree that eventually fell over.

  They seemed small and innocent, unaware that their own destructive teeth had caused this calamity. Their primary concern was to find a way out of the sun. In orderly lines they filed into small holes in the wood, disappearing into who knew where.

  “I wonder why none of them are going down this one,” Jackie said, pointing at a large hole in the center of the stump. As if in answer to her question, an ooze of thick, clear liquid bubbled up and filled the center hole. As the last termites burrowed their way into the smaller holes on the perimeter, sap continued gurgling from the hole in the center, spilling over the top of the stump, flowing through tiny channels in the wood.

  “It smells like cinnamon,” Kevin said. He felt a strange and surprising compulsion to taste it.

  Joseph crouched down to sniff.

  “It does,” he said. “Is it supposed to smell like cinnamon?”

  “It’s not supposed to smell like anything, because it’s not supposed to be here,” Jackie said. “I’ve never heard of an elm making so much sap. It must be related to the termites.”

  “What would the termites have to do with it?” Kevin asked.

  “It might be a defense,” Jackie said. “I don’t know – nature’s pretty resourceful. Sometimes trees ooze saps and liquids when they’re sick. Maybe it was trying to fill up the holes the termites were making.”

  Kevin dipped his finger in the sap and brought it to his mouth.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Jackie said.

  But it was too late to stop him. His finger was in his mouth, and the sap was on his tongue. Kevin didn’t know why he wanted to taste the sap so much, but he did, and as it rolled down the back of his throat, it seemed like the most sensible decision he had ever made. What do you do when a termite infested tree falls down? Eat the delicious sap inside, of course!

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” Joseph said with a laugh.

  “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted!” Kevin said. He scooped up a bigger glob of sap with his fing
er and stuffed it in his mouth. It tasted like cinnamon, sugar, milk, and mint, all at once, and in perfect proportion.

  Joseph laughed harder now. “You’re a nut! You’re just putting it in your mouth, you don’t even know what it is!”

  “Try it,” Kevin said, rolling the sap around with his tongue. The sap was better than just sweet cinnamon and sugar. It was like the coolest drink of water on the hottest summer day, the most sumptuous candy, the most nourishing food, the most healing medicine. He could swear that his whole body was thanking him for this deliciousness.

  “It does smell good,” Joseph said. He put a dollip on the tip of his finger and brought it to his lips.

  “You’re not kidding!” Joseph rushed to put his hand back in the sap and get a bigger scoop. “Jackie, you have to try this!”

  Kevin felt like his mind was growing sharp, like his body was awakening from a deep, restful nap.

  “It’s like a drug,” Kevin said as he dipped his finger in for more.

  “Like a drug?” said Jackie. “You guys are scaring me.”

  “Quit worrying and try it already,” said Joseph. He stuffed his copy of The Great Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 7 into his back pocket, freeing both hands to dig into the sap, which continued oozing out of the hole.

  “I think I’ll pass,” Jackie said.

  A picture came to Kevin’s mind that was so clear and so filled with joy that he acted it out. The picture was of him playfully putting a drop of sap on Jackie’s lips with the same self-assurance she possessed when she inspected his injured eye. Without thinking, he made it happen, dipping his finger back into the sweet liquid and smearing it on Jackie’s lips before she could turn away.

  “Hey!” she said with a start, but her face went deadly serious. “Oh…you weren’t…that’s amazing,” she said.