THE ALIEN LANDS

In a way, it was a very bad vacation. Raleigh and Cordelia never went outside except to walk to the corner store and back to the house. The Fosters lived in an upper-middle class section of Dallas Texas, very white, very middle-class and it felt so empty that every time Cordelia and Raleigh walked outside, the police were called because according to the citizens who lived in the area, they fit the profile of very dangerous criminals who had been breaking into some houses in recent months. But in other ways, the little vacation helped bring Cordelia and Raleigh closer together. It helped Cordelia understand why she was the way she was. They didn’t fight, not one time --- if anything the terrifying counterexample of Raleigh’s parents made them feel young and romantic by comparison. And after their first week, they finished all their homework and were free to lie around. Then by the time their two weeks were up, they were past ready to return to Arcadia Academy to start their last semester.

They heard almost nothing from the others since last summer. Cordelia really wasn’t expecting to hear from them. But, she was curious about what was going on in the world and wondering what cool new things they were working on. She knew that Billy was in development at Disney living the dream and making an insane amount of money. But she had no idea of what Sandy and Damien were doing. Were they doing anything cool, were they doing anything different? How were they going to show what the cool Arcadia kids were doing that would make them stand out in this brave new world now that they are graduates.

Damien and Sandy brought a sweet new condo down on fifth avenue. Sandy got a job as a producer at a hot new and up and coming production company where she got to scour the internet looking for new talent. Damien got a role on a brand-new television series called the Red List. Billy sent a note saying that he was developing three movies that kept him busy from the time he walked into the door until the time he went to ed.

Sandy did manage to send an e-mail one day.

Dear R and C:

Well this is our third week together and Damien and I are quite happy. Week two, we went out for real New York pizza that was oh so good. Cordelia, I kept thinking about you as I know you are a fan of pizza. Damien brought us this sweet condo right off eight avenues for a cool three point eight million dollars. Don’t worry girl, we can afford it and the Academy is giving us the connections too.

Oh and girl let me tell you, Damien is growing a neat little beard. I mean he got this Tom Felton look going cold. He’s looking all super fly with his fine self. We talked to Billy two days ago. He’s fine, he sends his love. Billy is writing a movie with Sean Pen, big name dropper and says they hope to go into production at the end of the month.

Girl, I’m telling you the Academy knows their stuff, you don’t have to worry about work when you get out in the real world. And you got to hurry up and graduate and soon.

Much Love

Sandy

Despite widespread popular resistance, or possibly because of it, Director Ashman announced that Arcadia was going to be in an international screenplay competition and for the first time, Cordelia was going to be traveling overseas to work on various scripts. Cordelia wasn’t nervous at all about traveling overseas and communicating with people and earning all kinds of awards along the way. Cordelia never thought in a million years she would get to meet other students and work with them on various projects and then see her name in the imdb for credit.

However, Cordelia’s world tour was cut short when, to Director Ashman’s acute embarrassment, the films did not go over well to the leadership and that was through no fault of Cordelia who did what she was asked to do. She couldn’t understand why the films were not well received when the critics could not understand the American pop culture references she kept putting into the short film. However, while they were away, some of the boys who saw Cordelia, developed crushes on her.

The international film festival ended on the last day of March and suddenly, Cordelia found herself staring at the end of her Arcadia Academy career watching a dangerous slender gap of only two more months to go. She felt like she was fighting to get through a maze of asteroids that was preventing her ship from leaving a hostile system that no one wanted to be in. She found herself missing the mean streets of Chicago and going to her favorite place to get a fresh slice. The whole time thinking she barely scratched the surface of what Chicago had to offer. She thought about buying a place in Chicago. She still had enough money left in her account to make that move there if she wanted to do that. However, Chicago was now behind her. She had a condo on Colonial island that she owned and at some point, she was going to take Raleigh down to it so he can get the lay of the land.

Now, the most insignificant things Cordelia did feel was the overflowing joy he was having at walking all over campus moving between classes. Sometimes certain people would catch her attention. She would see someone getting lost as they walk through the Maze or someone who was a First-Year standing around looking so clueless and lost and thinking once upon a time that was her.

Then there were the other moments that she was physically sick at being a student at the Academy. She would even be tired of the other students as well. It felt worse than playing a game of musical chairs while hoping you could find a seat before the music stopped. In the four years, she was at Arcadia Academy, she had not been off the Arcadia campus. By the lords of the Colonial, she was wearing a school uniform. If you really want to think about it, Cordelia just spent four extra years in high school. Students who were enrolled at Arcadia Academy had a way of speaking, it was a type of English that wasn’t broken, but no matter where you were from, you could understand each other, like they had just won the most important scholarship the United States Educational system could offer. It made Cordelia wanted to lay about her with a weapon and just end her life. And then there was this weird tradition of naming things. All the rooms at Arcadia Academy had the same furniture, same furnishings which suggested that things must had been ordered in bulk sometime in the late twentieth century. The desks were nothing special, just your standard desks that had enough storage space for your typical student and each student treated those cubbies and storage spaces like they were safe deposit boxes that were placed in the most secure bank in the world. Every time Cordelia heard someone drop a reference to “the Lock Door” and “Old Director’s Hole” she would roll her eyes at Raleigh. By the Lords of the Colonial, are they serious? She would ask him. We have got to leave and do it soon.

But where was she going to go, exactly? It was not considered the hip hop thing to looked panicked or worried about the approaching graduation, the Academy guaranteed every student a job in his or her desired field after it was all said and done, but it was an after-thought in Cordelia’s mind. She couldn’t get the lives of Raleigh’s parents out of her mind. It haunted her thoughts day and night.

It forced her to ask the question, what was she going to do? Was she going to be an independent actress and work around her schedule. Was she going to join the pilot of some upcoming hot new television series which is really what she wanted to do. Every ambition she ever wanted to do in life was starting to come true since the day she had been admitted to Arcadia Academy, but now she was struggling to formulate a plan of action. She had a few outside connections with directors she had worked with and Owen Townshed told her that anytime she wanted to do a movie with him, she was more than welcomed. But she did not want to be just known as a movie actress, she wanted steady work that brought in income. This wasn’t Mount Arm-Joy where they were under threat all the time or she could use her skills to get what she wanted, there was no great evil threatening the planet now and without that, life just didn’t seem like it would be the exciting thing that she hoped to come to this school would provide. No one would come out and say it, but the worldwide acting community needed an infusion of fresh new talent who could energize the human imagination.

It made the situation worse that she was the only one who seemed bothered by it. She did notice that a lot of her classmates were already networking with established studios lining up jobs. Casey was advocating for a hot new studio that was forming that had been created by this half blind, overweight guy who got lucky and won the Power Ball. He was making his dream of working in Hollywood come true and Casey was one of the first people he recruited to come to work for him. In fact, newly formed company had already hired some impressive people for Development, networking and talent acquit ion with the goal of becoming the next Walt Disney at least that’s the owners dream. Many students though wanted to go for research. Raleigh though was excited, he had been talking to a friend who just sold a show and was looking for a male lead. The show was a political theme show about a young, inexperienced young man who gets elected to the Senate who has to navigate the sharks and learn how Washington, D.C. works, it seems the show was going to be filmed in New York City and what turned out to be great news for Raleigh when after getting the role, he found out that Netflix, the show’s distributor ordered it straight to series.

Believe it or not even some governments were offering steady jobs. Imagine being given a call from the White house one day and asked to come in and work on doing a commercial or being tasked with doing a spot with the Democratic National Party or the Republican party and doing commercials and being paid seventy-five thousand a pop per commercial and if you end up doing ten in a row that is a cool seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a few days work. Cordelia gave serious thought to reaching out to the person who made the offer to her. She would be free to travel shop or do whatever she wanted to do during the day. That was half the excitement though, trying to figure out what you wanted to do for the rest of your life.

Cordelia knew they were bound for New York, Raleigh had a job waiting for him when he got out. The news was going to be hitting the entertainment sites soon enough. Cordelia did not know if she wanted to do television work or movie work. If she wanted to do movie work, Owen Townshed had several projects she could join and make a cool ten million doing that. The money looked good but when one of her fellow students came around with offers from other people looking for actresses where she fit the bill and would be perfect, she would run away in horror. She wanted to know why was she afraid to reach out and accept help from people?

Meanwhile, Cordelia, Raleigh, and Christina plugged away at their senior movie project with declining excitement. During your senior year, you either had to not only write a movie but direct it and submit it to the staff for review. The movie had to be able something important that affected you in the time that you had spent at the academy. For Christina, she wrote a movie called THE DECISION. The Decision told the story of a young lady name Martha who at school discovers a plot of students determined to take over the school by murdering the staff members. It was the hardest movie she ever wrote but she got it done and approved for production in less than a month.

For her movie, Cordelia couldn’t let go of the past. She continued to have nightmares about the long five-year journey to Earth. She thought to herself, a hell of a lot of shit happened to her people. She would remember how anguish her dad felt sitting in his office day in and day out. She recalled the agony that her mom was in fits of crying for the first month after they left. She knew that the people of Earth needed to know the whole story of what happened.

Owen Townshed would jump at the chance to turn this into a series of movies, but Cordelia felt that this would be better as a television series. That how she was going to make her mark on planet earth and honor what had come before her. She called her parents one day who were surprised to hear from her. She told them that she was working on her fifth-year project and what she wanted to do was tell the series of events which happened the day the colonial home world blew up, the hardships that people suffered during the five-year trip to Earth. While her father was on board with the idea, Cordelia really felt like that if their story got told, people would understand everything they left behind, on top of that, she really wanted to honor her friend Drozen who gave his life four years into the trip. Once she understood, Cordelia’s mother gave her blessing.

Six days into the project, Cordelia took the completed script to Director Ashman for his thoughts. Director Ashman read her two-hour pilot and nearly was in tears. He questioned if she really wanted to tell her people’s story and after sleeping on it for twenty-four hours, came back and said yes. But she wanted it to be a television series shot in New York. With Director Ashman’s help, the SyFy Channel read Cordelia’s script and not only ordered it to series but did something that no network in the history of broadcasting did, gave it at least a three season pick up. Cordelia’s plan for the show impressed the networks.

She had to go to New York to shoot the pilot and with the Academy’s blessing, she started the casting process at the end of February. Cordelia wasn’t going to star in it. She was going to be one of the behind the scene people. She thought about playing the role of her mother who had her own torment and nightmares to go through. But she thought, no I better not do that. From February 3rd to March 12th, the pilot was filmed, and edited for presentation to Ashman’s staff on March 19th.

The worst part for her turned out to be walking into the dining room for dinner the day of the screening of the pilot. She had the look on her face that said I am nervous as hell. I don’t know if the pilot is going to be received well. Her skin was flushed and wet as if she had been caught doing something she knew she shouldn’t have done. After dinner, she retreated to the sanctuary of the Prefect’s common room where she drank to forget her problems. She was thinking to herself why the hell did she choose her life story to turn into a television series. What if the series flops and only lasts one season, then she would have exposed the pain her people went through on the five-year journey for nothing and what about Drozen? How would his family react?

When she got done with her self-pity party, she knew she had to talk to someone who could give her a reality check. It was after eleven and Raleigh was already out for the evening. Christina had already finished her film project and was fielding several offers from various studios. She felt the intoxication and the sting of life pecking at her skin.

She walked over and knocked on Christina’s door. She was up listening to music when she opened the door.

“Cordelia, hey you up late, come on in.

Cordelia walked inside the room and sat down on a chair in her room.

“I don’t have anything to offer you I’m afraid.”

“It’s okay, I actually came to talk to you.”

“You know you can talk to me any time you want.”

“Tomorrow, the pilot of my television show The Colonials is going to be screened for the staff.”

“You must be very nervous about this.”

“I am nervous about this. I’m scared to death Christina. What if I made a mistake in doing this?”

“Cordelia,” by this time Christina walked over to her and grabbed her hands, “it’s time for you to face up to what happened to your people. For the last four years, I have seen you struggle and carry this weight on your shoulders. Everyone sees it. You pretend to want to try and be like the rest of us, but deep down you are hurting. You are hurting so bad its holding you back.”

For the first time in her life, Cordelia was being forced to take a good, long, and hard look at herself, Christina was right because that evening Cordelia went back to her room, prayed about the situation and went to bed. The next day, the staff gathered, watched the pilot episode and loved it. The network people at Syfy told her that yes, she had a future at the network if she wanted it. Cordelia. She made herself a promise that she was going to honor her people’s sacrifices and do their journey to Earth justice.

By then, there were only two weeks left until graduation. Classwork grounded to a stop. The Maze was full of students running through it free as a bird, the air was full of charged energy that seemed to radiate the students. A sense of wonder filled the air as students began to look at examining where they are going with their lives. All people talked about is how awesome it would be to party all day and night and figure out what they were going to be doing with the rest of their lives. People were high fiving each other, bond fires were being thrown and music parties were held late at night.

The staff dreaded that week because students were in a playful mood. They were playing jokes on each other. A last uncontrollable urge to act your age before you were beamed into adult hood and having the responsibility of paying bills, going into work, punching a clock. People were getting last many make-out sessions together, writing in each other’s year books, taking pictures that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It didn’t seem real but graduation was literary upon them and everyone knew it.

The graduation ceremony started at six in the afternoon, with the sky still heavy with the bright golden light being chased by the approaching darkness. The Academy went all out serving twelve courses which is what they would traditionally do every year at graduation. The twenty graduating Fifth-Years regarded each other with pride and joy, they felt strange sitting at the huge long dining table. Red wine was served from bottles; Director Ashman commented that the wine was home made with the Academy’s own special grown grapes. Cordelia silently laughed because she found the vineyard her first year at the Academy. It was an unwritten rule that all the bottles had to be drunk by the seniors at the graduation dinner, Ashman stressed this, because he added if not a single drop was left that something terrible would happen. Cordelia didn’t care for the so-called threat the Director issued, she was going to drink until she couldn’t drink any more. This was her night and she wanted to celebrate it. Toasts were made to Olivia Southerland. A moment of silence was observed and the glasses were thrown into the fireplace one by one.

Along with the fruit course, they were each issued a red pen identical to the ones that the prefects wore ---- Cordelia never thought in a million years that she would get to graduate and wear something that indicates that she achieved her dream. Director Ashman told them that if you encounter anyone in the business who wore this pin and they wear it proudly you know you are in the presences of an Arcadia graduate and there isn’t anything they would not do for you. Ashman told the graduates that they are joining an exclusive line of entertainers that had been trained the Arcadia way and that he expected wonderful things from their careers.

Joy leaned over to Cordelia and started explaining this tradition of giving a long speech at graduation, but as she was finishing up, Director Ashman stood up at the head of the table, looking glum, dismissed the rest of the staff and asked the Fifth Years to follow him downstairs.

No one was expecting this. It certainly wasn’t listed on the little program that was printed out. Downstairs meant the basement where Cordelia had never been in her entire time at Arcadia Academy --- maybe just once or twice to see what was down there and maybe to find a bottle of wine and bring it back to drink when she wanted something sweet. However, Director Ashman led them in a single, non-chatty line through the kitchen, though a door next to the huge walk-in pantry, down a flight of old stairs that transformed from wood to brick. They eventually arrived at the subbasement.

He’s going to so pull a surprise party on us Cordelia thought. But this wasn’t a party atmosphere at all. The air felt different down there and quiet. The basement was in badly need of being finished off, it was old, and it felt as though something creepy was going to jump out and slash your throats in any moment. Voice by Voice, the class started singing, “Marching to our doom. We’re all marching to our doom.”

Ashman stopped at what look like a golden disk located in the center of the floor. It looked so out of place. There were some markings on it that no one recognized. Oddly, it looked shiny and new like an oversized coin. Director Ashman asked for some assistance and two others joined him in lifting it up. Everyone in the room was curious about what was going on.

“Everyone please, enter,” the Director said. He pointed at the black hole in the middle of the floor.

Cordelia decided to go first. She felt around blindly with her wine unbalanced feet until she felt a wooden rung She felt like she was descending into the pit of hell. The ladder took her and the other graduates to a large round chamber which easily held all twenty graduates if you stood up in a circle. Ashman came down last as he was busy securing the cover behind him so that no one who wasn’t supposed to could follow him. Once he descended, he sent the ladder back up. The silence was starting to freak people out.

“Let there be some light,” Ashman said as he lit a candle and took a sip of whiskey he had tucked away in his pocket. Something about Ashman’s attitude was making Cordelia nervous. She never pegged Ashman for a heavy alcohol drinker. In fact, in the four years she was at Arcadia, she never saw anyone except McShane drink heavily.

This was graduation. They were not students anymore. They were full-fledged adults. They were men and women, fellowshipping together in a damp, dark dungeon under the school they just graduated from. Cordelia thought what the hell, you only live once. She took a swig and passed it around.

Director Ashman lit more candles that looked strange. They did not look like they were made from earth, but he arranged them in a large circle. The candles looked somewhat familiar to Cordelia but she couldn’t figure out where she had seen them before. This area that they were in, was old and it had the feeling of literary being in a grave yard.

“In case you’re wondering why we are down here,” Ashman said, “it’s because I wanted to get us outside of the protective shield that surrounds Arcadia Academy. That hatch we opened, allowed us to move beyond it.”

The darkness swallowed his words as a hungry student would eat a slice of Chicago Pizza.

“It’s a little unnerving, isn’t it?” he asked, but then smiled. He loved giving this lecture. “But, it’s appropriate because unlike me, you will be spending the rest of your lives out here. The point of this little trip is to scare you with ghost stories, with the true horrors that wait you outside of this world. In your case, I don’t think this will be necessary. You’ve only seen just a small taste of what is waiting for us.”

“It is unlikely you will see anything as bad as what happened on the day that the Black Queen attacked us. But remember that what happened on that day can happen again. Those of you who were in that class that day will carry that memory with you for the rest of your lives and believe me, the Black Queen, she won’t forget you either.”

“Forgive me if it sounds like I’m lecturing you, this is the last time this old war horse is going to get the chance to do so.”

Cordelia was sitting right next to Ashman in the circle --- they had all taken seats on the wooden floor – and his freshly shaven face with the strong aftershave was overwhelming her senses. Both bottles of whiskey reached Cordelia and she took a sip from each of them and passed them on to the next graduate.

“For hundreds of years, man looked up into the skies and wondered if we were alone in the universe. Then five years ago, we had that question answered when Cordelia’s people arrived in our solar system. No life lesson could have ever prepared us to learn that there were other humans in the universe who were more advanced then we were. But we now know we are not alone and are working on ways to meet and interact with them.”

“It is our job as entertainers to make sure we keep the hopes of people who don’t do what we do alive. It is our job to keep entertainment fresh and exciting and your lives, the experiences you had here at the academy will do that.”

“I sometimes wonder why we exist in the universe at all. The universe holds secrets and when ordinary people discover those secrets they feel the need to tell folks about it. They can do that in the form of a screenplay, in the form of being a director or in your cases acting, but they want to tell those stories and just about every story has a basis. It’s up to us as actors and actresses to recognize it and appreciate it when we spot it.” He paused and then asked, “Tell me this, as an actor and an actress do you feel that you will ever grow up and become an adult if your acting?”

He paused. He wasn’t expecting an answer anyway. What would they say to him? It was a little late to be yelling at them now that they created their dramatic education.

“I have a theory I like to share here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you actors and actresses?” More silence. Ashman was well into theory now anyway. He spoke more plainly. “Is it because you see things in these scripts that no one else sees? Is it because you are willing to take chances that other people are not willing? Or is it because you are special?”

“Maybe. Who the hell knows. But, I will say this: I think you are in this business because you want to make people happy. An actor and an actress is strong because they know they have what it takes to entertain millions of people. They feel the difference between what the world is, the pain that is hiding in the world and the emotion that is hidden deep within the human heart. Emotion is our biggest weapon as actors and actresses.”

“Most people never express the pain that is in their hearts. Some people may be punished through their pain by keeping it inside. Our craft though can be used to help us heal our pain, we can use the craft of acting to deal with grief, love, happiness and joy. By sharing your pain with millions of people they will better understand you.”

Cordelia’s attention wandered to the points of light from the candles and trying to make out her surroundings, she kept day dreaming about where this speech was going and how much longer they were going to have to sit there. Someone cleared his throat.

Ashman went on.

“Now, in case my speech was boring you and I suspect it was, each of you will leave this room tonight with a little insurance policy, did any of you feel a nice little tingling sensation on your backs as you came down here?”

A bunch of them answered yes.

“That’s a nice little incentive we put on your back. Six-pointed star, impressive, plus it acts as a holding cell for the most dangerous man in the entire universe. In fact, our school keeps these little dangerous creatures called Laborie locked up, this place acts as a holding cell for this interdimensional demon. They look like those Littles, that cartoon series that used to air in the 1980’s but trust me, one gets on your body, your ass is grass and they are the lawnmower.”

Ashman clapped his hands together and looked at them as if he had told them that he would be submitting a check of one hundred thousand dollars’ tax free to them after they leave the room. Joy was the first to raise her hand up.

“Let me get this straight. You just placed an interdimensional demon inside of us and we you know can’t object to this?”

“If that bothers you Joy,” Ashman said with no emotion, “you should have gone to MIT and be a normal student. Don’t worry though, he will be happy once you set him free. He will be loyal to you and totally on your side so only release him if you have no other choice.”

“That’s the other reason we’re down here, by the way. Above ground, you can’t summon this demon to aid you. Something about our air is toxic to them, they will die in ten minutes but down here they are safe and deadly. Now, this is going to hurt and you’re going to scream like a girl, whose first.”

The next morning at nine, the traditional graduation ceremony was held in the largest and luxuries of the lecture halls. Talk about a lack of excitement among the graduates, many of them were so drunk they could barely stand, when Arcadia Academy throws a party, they throw a party. It was one of those rare occasions that parents were allowed on campus and since many of the parents were entertainment industry veterans, royalty or world leaders, the media was not allowed. This was almost as bad as the pain from the unauthorized tattoo that Cordelia got. Cordelia’s back felt like it had hundreds of tiny worms crawling all over her back. She saw her father and mother and the palace staff.

Cordelia’s mind was racing as she was trying to recall what had happened the night before. Director Ashman had released some demons and then using the alien technology to quickly vanish them from our dimension. Just like the time they had to go to Arcadia South, they all had to get naked as Ashman worked to release the demons from their bodies.

In the half darkness, Cordelia couldn’t see what Ashman was doing but she did feel some slime and hundreds of feet crawling all over her skin. The symbols were unlike anything she had ever seen before. When the process was happening, it felt as though her skin was literary coming off her body. The pain was manageable though thanks to the alcohol that was in her body. Blood and smoke and something that smelled like thirty-year-old ass filled the room.

It all felt like a dream though, though he courses of the first thing Cordelia did that morning was check out her back. There it was just like Ashman had described. Her back was red and raw from the merging. The demon must be close to her heart which terrified her. Segments of the stars looked as though a tattoo artist had worked on it. She had never thought about getting a tattoo and she made herself a promise that she would never tell her parents about this.

When it was all over, they shuffled out of the auditorium into the hallway. This is the part of the ceremony where if they were wearing caps and gowns, they be throwing gowns into the air. People had conversations, a couple of hell yes were heard, but that was really it, it was over. Last night technically wasn’t a graduation ceremony. If last night was a nightmare, today was heaven. They can go anywhere, do anything. This was the big send-off.

Cordelia and Raleigh drifted out of a side door and wandered over to the tree that was there favorite spot to sit at. They had just spoken to her parents just moments earlier. Raleigh had told them that he already had his job waiting for him in New York while she told them that The Colonials, her television series was due to start production in a month. Raleigh had already found a place to live in New York City near where Sandy and Damien were living. Cordelia hated that her parents were near-by and that she would have to go and talk to them about what they wanted to do. There would be parties tonight. She didn’t feel like packing up her things, neither did Raleigh. She certai9nly didn’t feel like going back to Chicago or Colonial Island. She didn’t feel like staying and she didn’t feel like going. She looked at Raleigh. Raleigh looked and peaked. He performed a mental search for a word that could sum up his feelings at that very moment. But she wasn’t going to be alone, not on today of all days.

She couldn’t wonder why she was having bad thoughts. She was a freshly graduated, Arcadia certified actress. She can act and speak over a dozen languages. She had been transformed into a bird-of-pray, seen the Black Queen and lived and now had a demon on her back. Who would have ever thought that when she came here four years ago all of this would happen. If she wasn’t happy now how could she be happy two months from now.

I can now be famous for something on my own without having to rely on my parents for fame.

“Now, what.” Raleigh said.

“We have our whole lives ahead of us and now I just want to go lie on a beach for a month,” Cordelia said.

Then, a strange sound was heard behind them. A green bubble appeared behind them, a breath taste of light.

Cordelia and Raleigh turned around to see where the light was coming from and boom, they were all there. Billy whose head now was blonde now like he was going for that Justin Biber look and he had lost a little bit of weight. Sandy had her ears pierced with an ear ring which made her look weird. Damien was now sporting glasses that looked like they were in style back in the early nineteen hundred. There was someone else with them too. Cordelia was certain she had seen that man before but couldn’t place his face.

“Guys, time to go.” Billy said as he was grinning.

“Go where?” asked Cordelia.

“Come with us Ms. Alldice.” The older man with a little bit of a gut said and a thick unshaven beard. “My name is Celeron Belgrave and I’m here to take you to Mount Arm-Joy.”