Fairy Tale

I'm sure I can tell this story, but I'm also sure no one will believe it. My problem is deciding where to start. I suppose it begins with a chain, a strong one, leading from a goddamned bridge to a padlocked shed behind a ramshackle old Victorian. I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist. The bridge was steel grating, and when it got cold and wet, it froze before the road. That's what happened one Saturday in November. My mother was walking back from the Zip Mart with a box of fried chicken, and a plumbing truck lost control. Part of her went into the Little Rumple River. Most of her stayed on the bridge.

After that, my father, who had been a regular drinker, became a real one. He was a Gilbey's man, mostly. I was just a kid, but I learned to get my own breakfast, to hide his car keys after dinner, and to listen to him cry in the middle of the night. It went on for years, our sad rhythm of takeout dinners and old movies on TCM, until the day he lost his job. He sat in his chair, sipping straight gin, and told me, “I seem to have lost my job, Charlie.” That was the worst summer. I lay awake at night imagining us homeless, my father pushing a shopping cart full of all we had left. We were never a churchgoing family, but one night I got on my knees. “If you do that for me, whoever you are,” I prayed, “I'll do something for you. You just show me what you want and I'll do it.”

The miracle came a few weeks later. A man from Dad's old insurance company, a recovering alcoholic named Lindy Franklin, made what they call a Twelfth Step visit. He asked my father, “Aren't you sick and tired of being sick and tired?” And that was when my father started to cry. Lindy took him to an AA meeting that night, and Dad never stopped going. He got his job back, then went independent. We were okay. But I never forgot the promise I'd made. I did my best to pay it back - picking up roadside trash, collecting for UNICEF - but I always felt a whisper of disapproval: *Not good enough, Charlie*.

Which brings me to Mr. Bowditch. His place was on the corner of Pine and Sycamore, a slump-roofed Victorian the neighborhood kids called the Psycho House. He was a recluse with a foul temper and a German Shepherd named Radar who was rumored to be a monster. One April afternoon, I heard the dog let out a howl. It wasn't a vicious sound; it was sad and scared. Then, much lower, a man's voice called, “Help.” I found Mr. Bowditch sprawled on his back steps with a broken leg. I called 911, but before they took him, he looked at his aging, arthritic dog with love and dismay. “She's all I've got,” he said. The thought that came to me then didn't seem like my own: *This is where you hold up your end of it*. I told him I'd take care of her.

While Mr. Bowditch was in the hospital, I cared for Radar and started fixing up his rundown house. I quit the baseball team to have more time. I grew to love that old dog, who was no monster but a sweet, lonely old lady. But there was something strange about the place, a padlocked shed in the backyard. One evening, Radar crouched before it, growling. From behind the door came a scratching, then a weird, high-pitched chittering that stood the hair up on my neck. It wasn't any animal sound I'd ever heard. Mr. Bowditch had warned me away from it. “There's nothing in that shed,” he'd said, but I knew he was lying.

He had a heart attack not long after he came home from the hospital. In his last call to me, he whispered, “There's a wallet. Under the bed. Everything else you need is also under the bed.” Under the bed, I found a gun, a wallet with strange ID, and an old cassette recorder. On the tape was Mr. Bowditch's real story. “I was born Adrian Howard Bowditch, in 1894,” his voice said, raspy and faint. He told me he'd stumbled into a hidden well on the property, a well with a spiral staircase leading down. It was a portal to another world. He told me to go to the shed. “See what there is to see,” he said. “The remains of the one I shot will still be there.”

Inside, I found the source of the chittering: the decomposing body of an insect as big as a cat. And in the floor, beneath loose boards, was the well. Radar was old and getting sicker. I knew her time was short, but on the tape, Mr. Bowditch had spoken of a sundial in that other world, one that could turn back time. I decided to take her. We descended into the dark, past colonies of giant bats, and emerged on a hillside overlooking a field of red poppies. In the distance, I could see the spires of a great city. This was Empis, a fairy-tale land fallen under a terrible curse. The people were afflicted with a disease called “the gray,” which slowly erased their features and stole their voices.

I met Dora, a kind woman with a ruined face who mended shoes, and Leah, a beautiful, mouthless princess who fed geese and spoke through her horse. I learned that the city, Lilimar, was ruled by a monstrous being known as the Flight Killer, who had overthrown the rightful royal family. To save Radar, I had to journey to the city and find the sundial, which was guarded by a giantess named Hana. I had to follow the trail of initials Mr. Bowditch had left long ago, but a malevolent dwarf erased them, leaving me lost in a haunted, shape-shifting city where the dead whispered from every shadow.

I found the sundial. It was in a hidden alcove behind the palace, near a pool where a murdered mermaid lay rotting. I put Radar on the stone disc and spun it backward. I watched as her white muzzle darkened, her cloudy eyes cleared, and her thin body grew muscular and strong. She leaped into my arms, young again. But our escape from Lilimar was a nightmare of pursuit by undead night soldiers. I fought and killed Hana's giant daughter, Red Molly. We made it to the outer gate, but the Lord High of the night soldiers caught me just as Radar slipped through. I was thrown into a deep dungeon called Maleen.

I found other prisoners there, the last of the “whole people” who were immune to the gray, all destined to fight to the death in a contest for the Flight Killer's amusement. But with the help of a brave, disfigured servant and a magical red cricket I had once saved, we escaped. I learned that the Flight Killer was Leah's own brother, Elden, transformed into a monster. He planned to open the Dark Well beneath the palace and unleash a terrible god named Gogmagog. We confronted him as two moons collided in a sky that wasn't our own. As the creature began to emerge, I shouted its true name, forcing it back. I was badly wounded in the fight, but we had saved Empis. Leah, her voice and mouth restored, became queen. I was a hero, a prince, but I was also a boy from another world who just wanted to go home. And so, with my good dog beside me, I did.