The Prince Of Keldar

Chapter 2 - The Five Signs

It was an average Tuesday, Alex had finished another boring day of school, drawn a picture of a menacing, Greek-styled monster, and was now on his way home. He had fifteen minutes left in his curfew, so he was not in any hurry to make it the four blocks to the orphanage. He was watching the ground thinking about what else to draw when he walked right into someone. Alex fell backwards, but the hand of the figure shot out and caught his arm.

"Oh, thank you sir," said Alex, who was still frazzled from running into someone.

He did not get a response, and the person had not let go of his arm. Alex tried to remove himself from the grip of the stranger but could not pull free. He looked down at the hand that was securely holding his elbow and was shocked to see it was no ordinary hand. It was a dark maroon color and had only three fat fingers and an even fatter thumb. The hand was covered in short black hair, and each of the fingers was crowned with an unkept nail. Alex followed the hand up to the body and found a very peculiar man inside a grey trench coat. The man inside the trench coat had rough hairless skin. The man's face was the most bizarre that Alex had ever seen. The man had no nose, or any mark where the nose would be, and he had massive round ears that stuck out from his head at a ninety-degree angle. However, the strangest feature on the man's face were his eyes, or rather his one eye. His eye was massive and was in the centre of his face.

The man released a rough grunt, let go of Alex and walked swiftly away. Alex looked back only to see the man disappear into the seething crowd behind him. Alex was left dumbfounded in the middle of the sidewalk, wondering if anyone else had seen the strange man, when he heard a loud shriek of car breaks behind him. He spun around in time to see a truck drive right towards him. Alex felt his legs go numb, and fear grip his heart. He crouched down and covered his head as he waited for the truck to crush him. He kept waiting, even after he heard a large metallic crunch and a chorus of voices shouting. Alex opened his eyes and, to his amazement, stood up with no pain. He laughed, thinking the car had clean missed him. However, he stopped when he looked behind him. The truck had hit him. He looked down, but all he saw was the red hood of the truck. He looked all the way around, and he was standing in the hood. He walked onto the sidewalk and found that the car had hit where he was, but he was fine. He was shocked but noticed that nobody was watching with amazement as he turned around and walked through the car again.

Alex walked towards a frightened looking woman and waved a hand in front of her eyes. She did not respond. Alex passed his hand through the man who had crashed the car, but no one saw or felt him. Alex, who was suddenly frightened, let out a scream that no one else could hear. He ran down the street but ended up tripping on the curb. He put his hands up to protect his face, but it was of no help. He hit the pavement hard, and his ears were left ringing. The throbbing pain and sound of blood pumping overwhelmed his senses. He slowly got up but fell back down. Alex tried again to stand. He stumbled around for another minute, when he realized that he was not in the street anymore, but in a forest. The smells of the forest greeted his nose, and he felt stronger already. Even though he was not in the street anymore, he could still see all the people, walking about. The strangest were drivers and passengers of the cars: sitting on some invisible seat that carried them through the forest at great speeds.

Alex ran up and grabbed one of the people that was walking under the canopy of trees.

"Hey," shouted the woman, "why did you grab me?"

"Where am I?" Alex asked.

"You're in Chicago!"

"Why are there so many trees? Where did the buildings all go? What is happening to me!" Alex shouted.

The woman gave him a strange look, before shaking free of him and running away. There were other things in the forest. Alex saw a fat blue bird watching him in a tree not fifteen meters away. A deer became suddenly aware of his presence and ran off into a bush. The more Alex watched the trees, the less they seemed real to him. In fact, he could already start to see the cityscape bleeding through the forest around him. He gave his eyes a long close and opened them to find everything was back to normal. He shook his head, thinking that he must be going crazy