The Wonders Of Vast Emptiness

Chapter Five: The Man In The Store

The rest of the night was pretty quiet. Sam's worries quickly disappeared from his mind. He decided to take a nice, long soak in the bath. After his bath, he gazed out the window. He decided that he wouldn't mind Tlio after all. It was quite exciting here, really. Sam then went to bed without a care in the world. The next morning, Sam woke up with a start. He had been dreaming that the man he had seen in the store was chasing him. As he yawned and looked around, he immediately noticed something was up. The window was open, and the alarm system was blaring very quietly.

As Sam bent over to examine it, it made a fizzing noise and then powered down. It was obviously damaged. The window must have been why it was so frigid in the night. As he walked over to the window, he closed it to keep the cold air from coming inside. He then remembered the security tape. He put it on the TV, and what he saw horrified him. The man he had seen in the store was in his room! Climbing catlike through the window, he brandished a very evil-looking stick. "Thank heavens for that alarm system," Sam said to himself. On the tape, the alarm was blaring loud, and then the man had to climb back out, not bothering to close the window behind him.

The way Sam saw it, it was now getting quite out of hand. He knocked on Dr. Twolson's door, and a very tired looking Dr. Twolson appeared. He was wearing a plum colored bathrobe, and a toothbrush in his hand. "What is it, Sam?" he asked groggily. "That man that we saw at the store, he came into my window at night." These words seemed to wake Dr. Twolson up. "Blimey!" he cried. "So that's the noise I kept hearing as I was trying to sleep. No wonder it was so loud." Dr. Twolson then requested to see the tape. As Sam played it, Dr. Twolson looked more and more severe. At last, he spoke. "Blimey!" he said again. "You could have been killed! I shall have to deal with this myself."

Sam didn't want to lose his only friend in this place. "NO! What if he comes back, and kills you? I can't have that happen. I couldn't have that on my conscience if you led me here, only to die! That would be unheard of!" Dr. Twolson looked at the young boy. "I can't let you die either." And with that, he went back into his room. Sam felt upset and sad. Now he had pushed Dr. Twolson to try and hunt this guy down. He just shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place. After about 10 minutes, when Dr. Twolson did not re-emerge from his room, Sam knocked on the door again. No response. He realized soon that it was unlocked, and pushed it open. Nobody was there. Sam's heartbeat began to speed up.

Where could he have gone? The transportation device! Had he packed his? He rapidly searched his backpack, and there it was! He had to save Dr. Twolson. You see, Sam was a boy with very good memory, so he remembered exactly what store they had gone to. He arrived at the store, and suddenly the man who was working there looked confused. It wasn't the man, this guy was around 17, and had a very pale face, and Dr. Twolson wasn't there either. Had the man kidnapped him?

It was certainly a possibility. "What happened to the other guy, the one that was in here yesterday?" he asked. "Oh, Freddie? He left last night, didn't say a word. Was the most queer thing I had ever seen." That explained how the break-in was possible. Sam leaned to the man in a whisper. "Listen, this guy is completely mad. He left last night to break into my hotel room. He's dangerous." The other man looked scared. "Really? Oh my gosh, I am so sorry about that. Ever since he went to another dimension, he was never the same again."

Those last words swirled around in the head of Sam. "Another dimension?" he asked. "Yeah, around 5 months ago. Arrived in some dimension or other. He was fairly good-natured, but then when he came back, he was somebody completely different." This gave Sam a rather nasty thought. What if Dr. Twolson was slowly going mad, and that was why he looked rough this morning?" He walked out of the store distraught, and that was when he noticed him. The man was standing right outside, with the same stick. "Going somewhere?" he asked with a malicious grin.

Sam reluctantly pulled the transportation device out of his pocket, and tried to punch in the hotel. The man brandished his stick rather violently, knocked the device out of Sam's hands, and it smashed on the concrete. There went his transportation route. He had nowhere to go. He ran back into the shop, and the clerk working there looked at him. "Help, it's Freddie. He's going to kill me if I go back out there." He could tell by the clerk's expression that he wanted to help. The clerk picked up a tennis racket, and then went outside to face Freddie. As this was happening, Sam saw an exit that went out the back. He burst through it, and hurriedly looked around for the slightest glimpse of the hotel. He saw it in the distance, and it must have been at least 10 miles away.

Nevertheless, Sam ran. He ran like the wind, as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran all the way there, and collapsed in a heap at the entranceway.