Tonight was the night she had been waiting for.
The moon was in the right phase. The weather was rainy and brewing a lightning storm. She had thought about the risk and the risk was worth it. She had waited long enough.
Too long, in fact.
She came in through the garage. Rain was pouring outside, beating against the windows and streaming down the outsides of the leaf clogged gutters. Dad used to take care of the gutters, she thought bitterly. Irene had let a lot of things go around the house.
Toby and his chubby little friend Mark were playing Mortal Kombat, their thumbs nearly blistered from beating the virtual crap out of each other in the form of digital cartoons.
She could tell Irene was gone the moment she saw the coffee table strewn with the remnants of pizza and empty Mountain Dew cans, a yawning bag of Doritos spilling florescent orange triangles onto the floor.
"I hope you plan on cleaning up your mess, dorkface, because I'm not going to do it this time."
They ignored her.
Maybe this time I really won't clean up after you, you little pig. She thought. Toby's fat little face wrinkled in concentration, his mouth hanging open, drool threatening to spill. Some Goblin Prince you turned out to be.
She went to her room and fished out the spellbook from its hidden place behind the Collected Works of Shakespeare.
She put on a horrible collection of piano works by Schoenberg, the record player screeching. She drew the blinds and pulled the curtains over them. It felt good to shut out the prying eyes of the world.
She lit all the candles in her room, the tea lights, the candelabra she had bought from the resale shop, and even the bayberry candle she had found in a destined-for-Goodwill box of Christmas stuff.
From the candles she lit a couple of nag champa incense sticks. They quickly filled the room with their musky Indian temple smoke. She donned her white kimono and shut the lights.
The candles flickered eerily in anticipation. The darkness swallowed the room in a black veil.
She considered Toby and his friend. She wondered for a moment what they would think if they caught her, if they knew what she meant to do. She thought again--of course they wouldn't catch her. All they cared about were their stupid video games.
Lightning flashed outside, followed by the sudden crack of thunder.
It was a night just like the night she had entered the Labyrinth.
Inwardly she was glad that she had not chickened out and called Seth. She stood before her mirror, the candle shadows rendering her eyes as dark sockets in a glowing skull.
She said the words, reading directly from the book.
"I wish the Goblin King would take you away again, right now!" She screamed during a thunder crack followed by a dramatic squall of rain.
Schoenberg thundered along with the hail. Lightning flashed and for a split second she swore she saw Jareth's face in the mirror, a phantom face not much more than a skull with a pale halo of hair, long chin, and thin lips. He reached for her as if he were on the other side of the mirror with his skeletal hand, touching the film of glass.
Lightning flashed, the thunder tearing the sky apart. The room rattled and Lancelot the teddy bear and a tchotchke of a ballerina tumbled to the bed from an overhead shelf. Or was it the goblins?
She ran to the light switch and shut off the record. She tried to turn the light on--it didn't go.
The power was out, just like the fateful night she had first entered the Labyrinth. Her heart raced with excitement. She quickly ran to each candle, dousing each with a quick puff of air from her healthy lungs. Unlike Seth and his pals, she didn't ruin her airways by smoking.
Bumbling downstairs and nearly tripping head over heels, she realized that she had forgotten to take off the robe. The lights in the living room were off, the cold shadows of rain reflected in eerie pale illumination.
Her chest flooded with guilt as she came upon the empty living room, the TV screen heroes quivering in ready-to-pummel-each-other mode, the controllers left haphazardly on the couch.
Her heart was an exclamation point of shame and elation: she had successfully sent Toby to the Labyrinth again with his nasty little friend dragged along for the ride!
It was a horrible act on her part, but she had proved that she still had the power to enter the Labyrinth at will. She didn't mind rescuing them both, Toby and the other brat. She would rescue them, no problem.
The point was to see Jareth again, and this time, she would make a different decision.
A flashlight probed the dark. There was a groaning rattle and the lights flipped on. Electricity surged back into the veins of the house. Toby and Mark stood gaping at her.
She had never felt so disappointed.
"What the hell, freak. Why are you dressed like that?" They smelled that little boy mixture of Dorito, grime, and snot.
Sarah drew the kimono over herself protectively.
Mark began to make ching-chong sounds, imitating the noise of falling silverware, pulling his eyes into slits with his index fingers. He thrust his front teeth into an overbite and bowed. Toby laughed hysterically.
"Damn you!" She turned and ran, tripping over the kimono up the stairs en route to her room. Her hands smarted from falling upon them.
"But I saw his face!"
She wept into the pillow, the little spellbook lying open on the floor. "Jareth!" She doubled over, heaving with despair.
"I saw him! I'm not going crazy! I'm not!" The sudden truth of never being able to see Jareth again swept over her in waves, even though it had been hiding there all along.
"I hate my life!" The pillow swallowed her tears and she threw it aside, digging in her drawer for her pocket pack of tissues. "It's . . . not . . . fair!"
The silence in the room about her was uninterrupted.
There was no audience for her voice, save herself.