The Magic Tree House - An Hour for Oblivion

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

They just stood there staring at the woman. By some impossible enchantment, she had written a book about their first adventure in the tree house. Had she somehow been there with them all along?

Annie opened the cover of the curled up book and stared at the words. After reading through most of the first page, she reached out and squeezed her brother’s arm.

“Jack…” she said softly, not wanting to look back at… Mary. At the author.

“How do you know about us?” Jack asked, his voice shaking. “Who told you? Was it Morgan? Merlin?”

Mary laughed, her voice shrill and teetering on the edge of sanity. “Told me? No one told me anything.  I sat down one day and started writing about Frog Creek and Camelot. About Jack and Annie—”

“We’re Jack and Annie,” Jack said. “This is our life. This is real. You wrote about things that we did.”

Mary shook her head to the negative, her eyes growing distant. “He told me you would come…”

She looked slowly down at the floor.

Annie understood and jumped in:

“You put Teddy and Kathleen down there. We saw them before we came in. Did you think they were us? Vortigern—”

Mary jumped to her feet and shouted, “Vortigern saved me! He saved you and everyone else!”

“What?” Jack asked.

“What did Vortigern tell you?” Annie asked, undeterred by the author’s rage.

“He took me. Stole me from my home. Brought me here. He said that my books were bad things, destructive, unraveling the fabric of the universe. Every word I wrote about Jack and Annie brought everyone else closer to oblivion. I had to stop, he said. So of course, I stopped. I was in the middle of a new adventure when he came to me.”

“That’s why we failed in our last mission,” Annie said, turning to Jack. “She never finished the story. Our story.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “So… what’s real, then? She wrote about us. She didn’t write us into existence, though. That’s not possible. She’s not writing what we’re doing or saying in this house.”

Turning to the old woman, Jack said, “Vortigern lied to you. We wouldn’t be here now if you controlled what we did. We’re acting on our own.”

Mary closed her eyes. Shoulders slumped, she rose from her seat and moved ghost-like back into the living room. Jack and Annie stepped out of her way and followed.

The spectral form stopped in the center of the room, reaching down to remove the dusty blanket covering the table. Both Jack and Annie were mildly surprised to see the table was actually a large chest. A chill raced through Jack at the striking similarity it bore to the chest in his parents’ attic.

As Mary awkwardly fumbled with the clasps, she looked up at them and said, “I wasn’t the only one.”

Annie was about to question this, but stopped when chest creaked open. The author stepped away and gestured to the space within.

Together, they moved forward. Inside were more of the Magic Tree House books, but now there were variations. One was written not by Mary Pope Osborne, but Mary P. Osmond. Another boasted Dinosaurs for Dinner by Martha Pope Oliver. Yet another read Polly and the Pirates by Mary Oz.

Jack pulled out handfuls of the thin paperbacks, eyeing the alternate titles and author names. One thing, however, remained unchanged in the description on the back covers. Their names, Jack and Annie, did not vary.

“Do you see now?” Mary whispered, moving across the room toward a tall, narrow door. “I’m not the only one writing about you. There’s another version of me sitting in a room somewhere. She’s writing about everything we’re saying right now. Vortigern didn’t think about that. I hid those books from him.”

“But where did they come from?” Annie asked.

Mary looked down at the floor, then reached behind her and twisted the doorknob.

“I thought they were you,” she said, opening the door. “I thought they were just pretending to be Teddy and Kathleen. They brought the books. They tried to trick me. You can go to them now.”

Annie ran to the open doorway and took the steps downward quickly.

“Annie, wait!” Jack screamed, trailing just behind her, trying to grab her shoulder or the back of her shirt.

He was too late.

The moment he passed through the opening, Mary slammed the door behind him.

Annie screamed.

The darkness was total.

Momentum pulled Jack forward and his next footfall found only air.

He was falling.