Chapter 1: The First Wave
Sarah crouched under the tablecloth on the serving table with three other students in her school gymnasium, hiding from the monstrous creature creeping across the room. Screams from other students could be heard in the distance along with the growls and snarls from several other demonic predators. In all her time in the Labyrinth thirteen months ago, Sarah had never seen anything so evil, so frightening. She was terrified.
"What is it?" whispered Ryan, a scrawny red haired teenager. Ryan, Sarah, and the other two students were dressed in their Halloween costumes. They were at their Halloween dance, or what was left of it.
"Aliens," answered Jason. "They're aliens."
Lisa nodded in agreement. "From outer space," she choked out. Her bottom lip quivered.
"I... I don't think so," whispered Sarah. She adjusted her wire fairy wings. "I think it might have been a goblin." The others looked at her. Sarah saw their looks.
"Or... or something like that," she quickly amended. "An alien, I guess." Just not from outer space, she thought.
"I want to go home," cried the small blond next to her red haired date. "Please. I just want to go home."
"Lisa's right," whispered Ryan. "It doesn't matter what it is. We can't stay here." He put his arm around his date, and checked his cell phone again. "Still no signal," he informed the group before crawling further down the table.
"Sarah," Jason drew his classmate's attention. "We're leaving."
"Ok." She followed behind.
As the students crawled under the long table, the smell of smoke began to fill the area. The school was on fire.
Ryan peeked out from under the table cloth making sure the way was clear.
But as soon as they crawled out from under the table, they heard a deep growl. The four spun around to see the creature who'd just left. He was tall, dark grey, with coal black eyes, and he was staring right at them. As if in response to his growl, two other creatures ran into the room, and flanked him. He pointed to the blond.
"Mine." The word was drawn out. His voice was deeper than any sound a human voice could make. And the word itself seemed to be filled with power. The creatures flanking him growled a response.
"Move!" shouted Ryan, grabbing hold of his date's arm. "Lisa, c'mon!"
The four of them bolted toward the gymnasium doors. But just before they reached them, the doors slammed shut. The two boys grabbed hold of the doors, pulling frantically to get them open, while Sarah and Lisa slowly looked back at the monsters.
The lead monster stepped forward, and his form changed. Black energy dissipated around him, leaving behind a powerful looking man dressed in a silver embroidered floor length robe. He slowly moved away from the table and toward them. He held out his hand, offering it to Lisa. He smiled at her. And a chill of terror swept through Sarah, making her feel weak.
"Jareth," Sarah whispered the name. She remembered how Jareth appeared as a goblin in the tunnels with the false alarms. She remembered how in an instant he'd changed back into the Goblin King.
The new goblin-man looked at Sarah, surprise on his face. But he wasn't Jareth. He had the same tall build, the same blond hair. But it was longer. His poker straight hair fell to his waist. His face was different too. It was colder, darker. His eyes flicked back to the blond.
"Lisa," he spoke her name. "Come away with me." Lisa stared at the man.
Sarah noticed how this man called Lisa's name the same way the Goblin King had called hers. Was that magic, she wondered.
"Don't you wish to come away with me?"
"I..." Lisa stuttered.
Sarah stepped to the side. The monsters standing behind the goblin-man mirrored her movement. They were watching her.
"What do you wish of me?" the man asked again.
"Nothing," Sarah stepped in front of the younger girl. "You have no power over us."
The man cringed, instantly glaring at Sarah. It was getting harder to make him out through the smoke. She heard someone behind her cough.
Sarah turned back to her group, trying to hide how she was trembling. "Don't ever wish anything from them. Don't ever say "I wish,"" explained Sarah. "It gives them power over you. If no one wishes it, they can't take you."
"Sarah, we can't get it open!" coughed out Jason, referring to the door. The room continued to cloud over, and the lights flickered as the power went out.
The man's glare turned into an evil smile. "Sarah? Could it be? A human called Sarah who knows the Goblin King's name? It is. Oh! It is! What luck! Sarah Williams. Ohh! What a pleasure." He took a step toward them. "I'm afraid you are mistaken, however. Tonight, my dear lady, is a very special Samhain. So, if you will not come willingly..." With a wave of his hand the other goblins obeyed him. They bolted toward Sarah's group.
The students try to run to the side, but the monsters were too quick. In only a few seconds the teens were cornered, literally. They were backed into a corner. One of the creatures lunged forward, grabbing hold of Jason with his large powerful claw-like hands. The boy shrieked. Sarah called out his name. And Ryan grabbed hold of Jason, hanging on for dear life. He wasn't going to let the creature have him. But the monster was too strong. He pulled Jason from the redhead's hands.
"JASON!" Sarah called.
The monster dislocated his enormous tooth-filled lower jaw, and in one gulp ate him. He swallowed Jason whole, like a snake, choking him down.
Sarah froze. She didn't speak; she didn't move. The world felt like it was moving in slow motion. Her mind tried to catch up to what her eyes had just seen. When it did, the Labyrinth Champion let out an ear-piercing scream. Ryan pulled her back away. All the while Lisa stood mesmerized by the creature in front of her.
The beautiful man extended his white-gloved hand, raised his chin, and waited.
"Lisa, come away with me," he repeated his offer. When Lisa shook her head, trembling, the man extended his hand. A long silver thread began to float like a snake toward her. The three teenagers backed into the corner behind them, and pressed themselves together. Suddenly, the thread shot out, wrapping itself around Lisa's wrist.
"NO!" she shrieked. Sarah and Ryan tried frantically to pull the slender chain off of her. But they couldn't. It kept wrapping itself around her arm.
One of the goblin-like creatures chuckled, while the other one belched. The smell was horrendous.
"Mine." It pointed at Sara.
"No," countered the other goblin. "Mine."
The first goblin moved quickly ripping into the second goblin. The damaged goblin retaliated. Instantly, the monsters were in a fight to the death.
All the while, the man in the silver robe ignored them. He chuckled.
"Idiots," he said to his captive. "Never go after first prize." He glanced at Sarah. "No one ever wins that." His eyes returned to the girl he was capturing. "Take second place, and you'll win for sure." Besides, he thought, he could take Sarah after the others destroyed themselves fighting over her. The silver strand wrapping around Lisa's arm suddenly split into two. The second strand immediately found the blond's other wrist, binding her arms together.
"NO!" she called out. She looked at the man. "No. Please no." Lisa started shaking her head.
"Shhh," he said to her. "It's alright. It's..."
Before he could finish his sentence, Ryan barreled into him, knocking him over, and forcing him to drop the thread.
"Leave her alone!" he shouted.
Sarah was finally able to start pulling the thread-like chains off the girls wrists. She looked up when she saw Ryan flying across the room. The human-like creature had thrown him. Not waiting for another chance, Sarah pulled Lisa through the thick smoke in the direction Ryan had flown.
Before the girls reached Ryan, however, the blond was pulled back, disappearing into the cloud of smoke.
"Lisa!" cried Ryan. There was no answer. He scrambled to his feet, and caught site of Sarah, crawled off the floor, and ran to her. "Lisa?" He coughed.
Sarah looked back. She listened to the silence of the room. Sarah didn't dare breathe. She could no longer hear the goblins fighting, and was afraid if they heard her, the winner would come after her.
With a roar like thunder the area shook. And in that moment, the room was filled with the growls of hundreds of goblins scratching their way across the floor. Then they heard it. They heard Lisa's cry for help.
"Ryan!" she called out. "Ryan!"
"Over here!" he called back. He grabbed hold of Sarah's hand, and they made their way toward the shrieking girl.
"Lisa," Ryan whispered in relief, wrapping his arms around her. She melted into his shoulder, already sobbing.
"More of those... those things showed up," Lisa muffled her words into her date's shoulder. "They all started fighting, and he me let go."
Sarah didn't wait to find out about the creatures. They had to move. And they had to move now. If they had time to wait, she would have started thinking about Jason. But right now she had to focus. The three of them were still alive. And that's what she had to focus on. At least that's what she told herself. She ignored the thick smoke trying to choke her. She ignored the frightening sound of scratches all around them. And she ignored the tears starting down her face. She'd known Jason since kindergarten. Even though they weren't close friends, he was a friend still the same. And she'd just watched him die. She'd just watched that goblin eat him. He was gone.
Why were they here? Why would Jareth send his goblins to do something like this? Had someone wished away the world? The thought frightened Sarah beyond anything else.
In the thirteen months since she'd beaten Jareth at his own game, Sarah had tried to destroy "Labyrinth," the little red book that had started her story. If she'd never read the book, she never would have come up with the words to make that terrible wish. She never would have wished for the goblins to take Toby away. And if she'd never done that, the goblins never would have had access to her world. At least, that's how Hoggle had explained it.
A goblin could only take what was freely given. Oh, there were exceptions of course. But the basic rule was simple. If someone who had a legal right to something, and wished it to the goblins, bargains could be struck, contracts could be made, and terrible things could happen. But if no one knew the magic words to summon a goblin in the first place, the creatures were powerless on Earth.
So, Sarah had done everything she could think of to destroy the book. She tried tearing out its pages, and shredding them in her father's paper shredder. She tried burning the book one page at a time. She tried flushing pages down the toilet, and burying it in the backyard. She'd even tried blacking out every line with a permanent marker. But every time she was finished, the book would repair itself. The shredded pages would grow back. The black permanent ink would absorb into the black letters on the page. And the book would crawl out of the ground and back to her room. On more than one occasion, the little red thing found its way into Sarah's backpack, and startled her when she found it at school. It was obviously magic.
She figured the book wanted to be found. It wanted someone to read it, to give the goblins a way into her world. She'd wondered just how many copies of "Labyrinth" were available. And Sarah wondered now just what kind of wish someone had made to allow so many goblins into the world, if they'd made a wish at all.
The goblin trying to take Lisa said something about Samhain. What was that? And why would it allow the goblins to break the rules. Is that what was happening tonight? Sarah tapped Ryan's shoulder, and motioned for them to get moving. She'd figure the rest out later.
It was dark, and the smoke was thick. The trio couldn't see anything in the room. But they could hear. They could still hear people screaming in the distance. They could hear the fire burning in the halls. And they could hear the claws of monsters as they scurried across the gymnasium floor.
Sarah began leading to where she thought a door might be. If they stayed much longer, she was sure the creatures would find them. And if they didn't, surely they would die from smoke inhalation or the fire. At least the smoke provided good cover.
"Where's the girl?" asked one of the scurrying creatures.
"What girl?" asked another.
"The girl. The girl," it answered. "The girl who ate the peach and forgot everything."
"Oh!" It paused. "The girl who beat the Labyrinth."
"Shhhhh!" answered the other. "Do you want the King to hear." It groaned, scratching it's claws into the wooden floor. "You'll get us both bogged."
"Sorry."
Sarah trembled on the inside. She instinctively started leading the group away from the voices.
"Just hurry up and find her. If we don't capture her for the King before the end of Samhain..." The creature sighed. "It'll be worse than the bog."
Streaks of fear ran up Sarah's spine. Capture her? Why would Jareth want to capture her?
As the questions swirled through her mind, the trio stepped in something sticky. Sarah looked down to see bits and pieces of the goblin who'd claimed her. His insides were all over the floor. In the middle of the mess was Jason, bent over on his hands and knees covered in blood and mucous. But he was alive. Jason was alive! The goblin who had swallowed Jason was dead, killed by its competitor. But by some miracle, or maybe it was magic, Jason hadn't been harmed at all. Sarah didn't hesitate. She wrapped her arms around her filth-covered friend, and silently hugged him. Well, almost silent. All four of them were gagging on the smoke.
"This way," Ryan choked out, taking over as leader. He led the group out of the gymnasium, but the hallway didn't seem much better. The smoke was getting thicker, the roar of the fire was getting louder, and for the first time they could feel the fires heat. They needed to get out of the school. But almost every door they tried was locked. The only one open led to sounds of scratching, snarling, and screams.
Sarah swallowed at the sound.
"Not that way," begged Jason. His body shook as he leaned against Sarah for support. He was terrified.
"Back," whispered Ryan. "We've got to go back." The group backed away from the noise, retracing their steps.
"Can't breathe," complained Lisa, choking hard.
"Where are we?" asked Sarah, hoping no goblins could hear her.
"Mr. Riches room." Jason pointed down a new hallway. He was no longer leaning on Sarah for support. But he was having a hard time breathing. "Always leaves the top open." He used his shirt to cover his mouth, and pointed to the window above a nearby door. All the classroom doors were locked. But if they could crawl through an open window above a door, they could get into a classroom. And a classroom was better than a hallway.
"Hoist me up," ordered Ryan.
Jason linked his hands together, and Ryan used it for a foothold. But it wasn't enough. He couldn't quite reach. Using the wall as support, Ryan shifted to stand on Jason's shoulder's. Jason stood up taller, trying to give Ryan every inch he could. Finally, Ryan was able to pull himself through the window. With a crash the trio heard him land on the classroom floor. A moment later he had the door unlocked. Ryan let them in. But he was limping. He'd obviously hurt himself when he'd landed.
Just as Sarah stepped into the classroom behind the others, the ceiling in the hallway began to give way. Sarah spun around, slamming the door closed. Debris still shattered in through the open ventilation window, filling the classroom with more smoke and ash. But most of the ceiling shrapnel was stopped by the door.
"C'mon," called out Ryan. "We can get outside through the window."
"Wait!" Sarah countered, and everyone paused to look at her. "Check first," she instructed in a quieter tone. "They could be out there."
The four moved slowly toward the giant windows at the far end of the room. Even Lisa was watching carefully. She was still frazzled, and exhausted, and overwhelmed, and frightened, but she was dealing with the situation.
"It's all clear," whispered Jason.
"I don't see any..." started Ryan.
"Look!" Sarah pointed. "Things aren't always what they seem when dealing with goblins."
"Aliens," Jason corrected. Everyone looked at him. He frowned. There was a long silence. "Ok. They're goblins," he admitted.
Sarah pointed to several evenly spaced tree trunk stubs scattered throughout the school lawn.
"That's not right," she explained.
"It's just some old tree stumps," Lisa whispered.
"Really?" asked Sarah. "Are you sure?"
The group studied the vegetation.
"The school never had trees on this side of the grounds," commented Ryan in understanding.
"Then how could there be tree trunks?" asked Lisa.
"There can't," answered Sarah. "They're goblins."
As if in answer to her statement, the four watched in horror as a group of boys escaped the burning school only to run into the camouflaged creatures. They watched as several boys were swallowed whole. Jason paled. Lisa squelched a scream. And Ryan cussed. But Sarah... Sarah was silent.
"We have to find another way out," she whispered. The tree-trunk goblins had them cut off. The school was surrounded. Even the emergency vehicles behind the goblins didn't provide any hope. It was obvious they were abandoned. Either that, or the goblins had already swallowed the emergency personnel. The crackle of the fire in the hallway on the other side of the classroom door was beginning to roar. And the smoke filling the room was quickly leaving the four no choice. Die by smoke or die by goblin. The choices were bleak.
"We're dead." Jason said what everyone was thinking.
"No," Sarah countered. "There's always a way out. No matter how impossible a puzzle seems, you only lose if you give up." She began opening the largest window, and smashed out the screen.
"What are you doing!" Lisa whispered, almost panicked.
"Those goblins'll eat us," offered Jason.
"Not if we don't get too close," explained Sarah. "Did you notice? They didn't attack the other group until they were really close."
"Right," Ryan agreed. "If we stay close to the building..."
"What?" Jason cut him off. "We'll still be blocked off. They'll get us eventually."
"We'll stay alive longer than if we stay in here," he answered, following Sarah out the window. Ryan turned back to help Lisa, and Jason followed soon after.
The battered team crouched low next to the school as the smoke from the fire began to billow out the window, providing them cover. They quietly coughed out the smoke they'd been suffering, gulping the fresh air near the ground they needed so badly.
"Find The Sarah," called out a voice coming from the school. It was followed by more goblins than could be counted. They were scampering across the school field right before the eyes of the four students. Some of the monsters were huge. Some had horns. Some had multiple appendages. But most resembled the goblins Sarah had seen on her trip to the Labyrinth. "Find The Sara. Find The Sara." It was their battle cry.
They seemed almost friendly. But as soon as they realized the tree-stumps weren't tree-stumps, they turned vicious. Their teeth jutted out. Their claws grew long. And with feral animalistic growls, the little monsters descended on the tree trunks like a swarm of crazed army ants ripping apart a grasshopper. Nothing could stand in their way. They no longer resembled the goblins from the Labyrinth, but some kind of demonic plague instead. They quickly moved past the school grounds, spreading out into the neighborhoods beyond, leaving only a few of the larger goblins behind.
Jason looked over at Sarah in horror. "Are they talking about you?" he whispered to her.
She gave him a frightened look before turning her attention back to what was left of the battle field. The remaining goblins moved oddly, almost instantly becoming what looked like humans surrounded by wisps of black energy.
When the wisps of energy dissipated, they looked like regular men. And they began moving around, helping the emergency personnel to their feet. When the tree-trunk goblins were ripped apart, it freed all the people they'd swallowed. There were dozens of ambulance, fire, and police personnel, along with multitudes of students. All of them were climbing to their feet with dazed looks on their faces.
"Sarah," called out one of the human-looking goblins. He moved among the crowd, watching intently. "Sarah Williams." His voice was calm, caring. He sounded like an official looking for a lost girl. He even looked like a police officer. Several of the other human-looking goblins looked like EMTs. More looked like fire fighters.
"Holy..." Ryan let out a string of superlative words, expressing his distress.
"You said it," added Jason.
"Why... why do they want you, Sarah?" asked Lisa in a low voice.
Sarah swallowed. "I... I don't know." She shook her head. "I've met them before," she explained. "They tried to steal my brother. And I had to fight to get him back." She took in a deep breath. "But I won. I won." Did the Goblin King want to teach her a lesson for winning, for beating him at his own game? Is that what this was? Was he out for revenge? "Toby," she whispered. "I need to get home."
"I think..." Before Jason could finish his statement, an explosion ripped through the school, knocking the four hiding teenagers to the ground.
For a long minute all Jason could hear was the ringing of his own ears. Stunned, he looked around at his group. Ryan was shouting something at him. Lisa was screaming. But Sarah... Sarah was laying still on the grass in an awkward position. Her eyes were open unblinking, and there was blood seeping from a gash on her head.
"Sarah!" shouted Jason. "SARAH!"