Chapter 6: Near Miss by Ms. Piggy
I slammed the journal closed and tossed it on the bed as if it were covered in spiders. My heart was racing a million miles an hour. I stared at the book in horror as I thought to myself. Okay, let's see; I've read about monster chickens and killer spiders and almost gotten eaten by Jaws. If everything is saying get to some Camp in the middle of Long Island, then I should haul ass and get over there. But maybe, just maybe, my imagination is getting the better of me. If I lay low for a few days, maybe this nightmare will end and my life will go back to normal.
All of a sudden, a bolt of lightning flashed outside, and the power went dead. I jumped out of my seat with the crash of thunder; sounding as if it struck right in the backyard. I even felt the house shudder for a moment. It started raining, no pouring, like something out of forty days and forty nights. Then reality broke down. The beads of rain water on my window stopped sliding with gravity. Instead, they started creeping back up.
I watched in amazement, as the water pooled in the middle of my window and came together to form the moving picture of a man with a beard. I jumped out of my seat, away from the window and onto my bed and watched as the man wielded a three-pronged trident. His face looked deadly in the flashes of lightning.
Finally, the lights kicked back on and the man's face lit up, a smile made him look slightly less threatening. And then I remembered, "I know you".
The man groaned as he stared at me, looking me over as if memorizing every last detail. "Do you?" The man asked as his green eyes glimmered through the glass.
"Yeah, like a memory, a feeling or something. Who are you?"
The man opened his mouth to reply when an earth rumbling roar of thunder shook the sky. The man looked behind him and waved at the sky. "Oh come off it you old sod, give me some space oh King of the Heavens!" A flash of lightning burst at the man's dismissal. "I'll only be a minute, give me a MINUTE!" He shouted as the skies went quiet. The dark grey clouds were bubbling as if they were about to explode.
The man in the glass turned to look at me. He frowned and cradled his forehead. "There's not much time. I wish there was. But look, Alexander. You've got to get out of here".
"Why, what is it?!" I screamed over the rain.
"You're not dense Alex. You know why. The monsters are coming. You've already met one, and barely survived the encounter. Thank Lord Delphin for interceding on my behalf".
"Delphin? You mean the dolphins! Well thanks for that. I was almost shark bait until they showed".
"I know, and worse is coming Alex. Did you not learn from the stories of Beau and Catherine? You need to go, now!".
"Go? Go where!" The man looked like he wanted to break through the glass and strangle me with his bare hands. "Camp". The man stopped glaring at me. "Camp Half-Blood, you want me to go there".
The man nodded earnestly. "You must, if you are to survive, you must leave for Long Island. Out in the world, you won't last long. But there, you'll be safe".
"But how am I supposed to get there?"
The man helplessly shrugged. "You must make it to New York on your own. Once you get there, help will be waiting, I've sent a message ahead of you. They'll take you to camp". Thunder began to rumble again in the sky. The sky's patience seemed about to break. The man gazed at the sky with worry and then back down at me. "Don't tell your mother about me. Or the real reason you're going to Manhattan. Come up with an excuse, any at all. Visiting a friend, seeing the sights, anything! Just don't tell her".
"Why, who are you?" I asked again like a broken record player. And then, I knew. "Dad?"
He smiled wanly before a bolt of lightning flashed behind him, lighting him up in a white out, and then he was gone. All at once, the grey clouds parted and the sun shone cheerily as if it wasn't just storming.
I crept down the stairs tiredly as I found Mom looking over a window that blew in. Shards of glass littered the floor, but otherwise everything looked in one piece. "Mom? Are you okay?" I rushed down next to her. She shook her head from confusion as she looked up at the sky.
"I've seen some weird weather pull through here, but nothing like that. It's like someone was fighting up there or something". Actually, she probably wasn't that far off the mark… "But no, everything's fine. Shattered a window, but nothing a broom and dustpan can't fix. Only thing is Mr. Gnome got barbequed" She frowned at her lawn gnome still smoldering and charred black.
"Aww what a shame" I tried not to smile as I said it. With its wide-eyed gaze and wide-open mouth, it looked as if it had been frozen in a moment of terror. The thing gave me the creeps. "Mom, I got a really big favor to ask you. Like super, major, so going to owe you forever, big".
"Uhuh, I'm not telling you what your surfboard looks like young man. I told you, it's a surprise". She coyly replied.
"What? I? That's not it" I replied in exasperation. That surfboard was the farthest thing from my mind. "No, I want to go to New York, like ASAP".
She looked at me like a light bulb dinged over her head. "Oh this is about Grover isn't it?"
"Grover?" I asked in confusion.
"Yes, your pen-pal. He told me that you guys have been talking for a couple of months and made plans to meet up in New York during the summer. I wish you told me about this in advance so I could have gotten cheaper prices for travel. But boys will be boys" she sighed. "He told me about all the wonderful things you'd be up to at Camp Half-Blood".
"Wait, what? Oh right, yeah that's right!" I coolly agreed with my mother.
Mom looked at me suspiciously for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. "In any case, I guess I can hunt down a ticket for the next flight on Travelocity…"
"No!" I immediately shot her down. Between the way the sky was literally about to explode earlier and my personal feelings about airplanes, I wasn't having it. "Mom, you know how I feel about airplanes. They're flying metal death traps. I prefer my feet on terra firma thank you very much".
She rolled her eyes with a smile on her face. She knew she was yanking my chain. "I don't know what your problem is with planes, they have a much lower accident rate than cars do. But I guess I could always put you on a train" she jokingly replied.
I nodded my head energetically. "Good idea, let's roll with that".
"Alright, if you say so. It's a thirty-hour trip though. Wouldn't it be better to take the two and half hour plane ride?" I shot her my best death glare. "Alright, eighty-sixing the plane, got it. Just go pack your things sweetheart. I'll have everything arranged in an hour and we can hit the road okay?"
"Okay!" I rushed up the stairs in a hurry.
Emm Mmm, "Aren't you forgetting something?" She looked at me with a devilish smile.
I ran back down to her and gave her a hug, "thank you, you're the best mom in the world, Mom. Love you!" I quickly replied as I pecked her on the cheek and ran back upstairs.
Mom's eyes went wide as she smiled and looked up the stairs, "Wow, that's love right there".
It wasn't long before we were out on the road heading on the interstate for Orlando. I watched the pine trees, palms and magnolias as we whizzed by. My eyes growing a bit wide at the sight of the occasional monster stalking from the trees.
It took about an hour to pull into the train station in Orlando. It was a pretty busy place with the freight trains passing through, along with the tourist traffic heading down to Key West for the weekend. I grabbed my two carry-ons; carrying the bare essentials for light and speedy travel. A few changes of clothes, a map of the Eastern US, a couple of snacks and drinks to tide me over for the trip and the two journals and my knife-like shark tooth. Like I'm going to leave something like that lying around in my room for my mom to find while she cleans up the place, right.
"Alrighty well this looks like your train." We looked down Terminal 30 and saw the Amtrak train riding the Sunset Beltway. Supposedly this thing was supposed to ride from Orlando, through Savannah, Georgia, up through the Carolinas and then stop at the end of the line in Williamsburg, Virginia. I'd have a comfortable forty-five minutes to hop off the Sunset Beltway and board the Northeast Corridor train in the terminal next door. Then I'd ride through Washington D.C., Philadelphia and finally pop up in Penn Station in Manhattan, where a total stranger named Grover was going to pick me up and take me to Camp Half-Blood. Yeah, this was a great idea, nothing could possibly go wrong…
"Are you sure you don't want to take the plane" my mother asked for the millionth time with a smile on her face as she handed me my bags up onto the train. Though the sky was completely blue with not a cloud in sight, a crash of thunder exploded in the air above us after the suggestion.
I looked at her with an expression that radiated, 'Really? Are you really asking me that?'
"Alright sweetheart, in any case take care!" She yelled as the train started moving down the tracks.
I smiled and waved at her, "I promise to send you a postcard from New York!"
"Just call me. It's faster that way!"
My smile faded though when I looked at the end of the train. At first, I thought my eyes were playing with me so I rubbed them. But no, there was a silver pig running next to the tracks in the distance behind us.
No, it wasn't just a pig. This was Hogzilla! The silver thing was as tall as a train cabin and long as a pickup truck. Its hair was shaggy and dirty, but its fur had a silver shine like it was dusted in moonlight. It had a pair of monstrous tusks that it shoved from side to side as it ran. Its beady yellow eyes were focused right on me.
"Holy, what the, is that?!" I shouted and pointed at it.
Mom turned around. Her eyes bulged out as she jumped out of the way, before she got steamrolled by the hog. She got up and dusted herself off. Pissed off but unharmed at least. "Hey! Watch where you're going trucker!"
Truck? It's a giant… pig? I stared at it and it seemed to phase between being a silvery boar and speeding eighteen-wheeler rolling down next to the tracks. "Reet! Ree-nk Honk!" It seemed to switch between squealing like a pig and honking like a truck. I shook my head as I looked away from the pig. It was starting to give me a headache. "Come on" I quietly urged the train. "Go faster. Faster!"
As if it was listening, the train started picking up speed and charged down the tracks before dipping into a train tunnel. The pig stalled just before it crashed into the hole and gave a pissed off squeal before trotting off and fading away.
I pulled away from the back window, satisfied we left the giant pig back in the last county and sagged into my seat with a sigh. I looked in my lap and just noticed a book sitting there. I hesitantly picked it up and took a look at it. It was, what a surprise, another leather book, though this one was sea green. It had a bronze trident stamped on the front of it that shimmered in the light. Though when I opened it up, I realized that all the pages were blank.
I flipped open the cover and saw in tiny, cursive script, which gave me a headache just looking at it, a short message. It read, 'Have a Happy Fourteenth Alexander, and many more" signed Dad with a trident stamped next to it.
"Thanks" I tiredly replied. "Let's see if I make it to the next one at this rate."