The Magic Keys of Tanglewood: Summer Camp

By Malcolm Chester

With that, Calico turned around and growled at the soul eater. Barbara and Constance reluctantly resumed their flight. They knew their friend Calico had the only plan that would work.

The soul eater laughed and said, Silly cat, you are a little ball of fur with tiny teeth and small claws. I will take your soul to Hades. Ill enjoy smelling your fur burn in the eternal fires.

Not before I tear out your red eyes, Calico challenged.

The soul eater, now close to Calico, stopped and started taking enormous breaths. Calicos soul began to move toward the beast, but Calico strongly held on to his soul, his entire soul body straining against the powerful beast. Soon a light appeared above Calico.

Calico, laughing, said, Heaven has always been my destination. Im not going to your world, soul eater. Im going to heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781490775395

Malcolm Chester

Malcolm Chester earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in political science, a master’s degree in child study from Tufts University, and a Juris Doctorate degree from IIT Kent School of Law. A former public affairs executive, he continues to consult while also practicing law. He currently lives in Illinois; this is his second novel.

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THE MAGIC KEYS OF

TANGLEWOOD

SUMMER CAMP

MALCOLM CHESTER

©

Copyright 2016 Malcolm Chester.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN:

978-1-4907-7537-1 (sc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-7538-8 (hc)

ISBN:

978-1-4907-7539-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911645

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

Prologue

Summer Plans

Samantha and Skylar’s Home

Samantha

Camp- First Day

Dream

Second Day at Camp

Ghostly Trip

Another Conference

Canoe Race

Parade of Magicians

The Haitian

The Followers Meeting.

Frank

Ryan

Adonis

The Dangerous Encounter

The Dance

Pied Piper

A Plan

Journey to the Past

1756

Devil Worshippers

Carly

Peggy

Jade

The Confrontation

The World in Between Cave

The Fab Four

Samantha

Normalcy

Epilogue

The Magic Keys of

Tanglewood Summer Camp

Prologue

T he Master Satan Worshipper, bearing the horns of his office, nodded to the eight other worshippers surrounding him. After months of casting spells and incantations that didn’t work, the master finally believed he possessed the right spell to bring the spirit of the now very famous witch Elizabeth back from Hades. The master, a Roman Catholic priest by day, finally found the fifth-level druid spell, recorded in a sixth century manuscript but of a far more ancient origin, in the Vatican library. Using a cell phone he smuggled inside, the master took pictures of the spell book pages and e-mailed them to his home computer.

The master cut his finger with a knife, dripped the blood from the wound into a bowl at the center of the Pentagram, and passed the knife to his fellow worshippers. When his followers did likewise, the master began to repeat the ancient spell incantations in Latin. The master could already sense the power of this spell greatly exceeded those he already used. The Ancient Shrine began to glow red in the darkness of the large Massachusetts’s cave as the chants of his followers increased and the spell reached its climax.

Summer Plans

T he Fab Four and Samantha, who joined them as she often did in the afternoon, moved busily back and forth between their two dorm rooms. Their clothes littered the floor as they tried to organize and pack them in time to leave the school early the following week for summer break. Jade complained loudly as she put some of her makeup bottles and tins in her suitcase.

I can’t believe it! My parents are forcing me to go to summer camp. We’re old enough to be counselors, well almost, and they want us to be students there. I refused to be a Brownie Scout or a Girl Scout or a Campfire Girl or to go to one of these camps when I was younger. Why would I want to go now? I’m not the outdoors type. You can’t wear pumps, short tight skirts, or bikinis at camp. Even if I could wear these, they’re no boys to tempt. Worse still, you have to go to the bathroom in a crowded area where you can barely brush your teeth, let alone put on makeup. And the creepy live things, the cabins are full of spiders, mosquitoes, ants, ticks, flies, and God knows what else. Worst of all, they make you go on hikes in the woods to remote campsites where you have to go to the bathroom in an outhouse. What can be more disgusting than that? When I was a kid, my dad took us to one of those camps. I was constipated for four days. I almost blew up. How can anyone go with flies and hornets buzzing you? And the smell—oh, my god, the smell was so bad I wanted to vomit.

Jade, we’re all in the same boat. The principal and our parents didn’t know where to send the Key Girls this summer, so one of the school board members offered to put them up for free at his girls’ camp. Since we had so much to do with releasing the Key Girls from their prison, they decided to send us along for free. I didn’t make it past brownies, but I still think we can have some fun together. I get kind of bored going to the pool every day. I do like to go to New Hampshire, but I won’t go there until later in the summer. Oh, and I did attend this camp at age ten. I really liked it, Carly responded.

Horse riding camp is a little like this girl’s camp, but you ride horses every day. Sometimes, we would go on overnights, tie up the horses, and put down our sleeping bags in small tents. These places had no outhouses. We just went to the bathroom like bears or other animals do, wherever we could find a place in the woods. I worried all the time that an animal would attack me while I went. So for me, this place will be an improvement on horse riding camp, Skylar added.

I didn’t do any of this camp stuff, but I visited the places my grandparents lived. They went to the bathroom in outhouses and had no running water. I guess if they could use an outhouse all year long, even in the cold, I could use one for a couple of days. Samantha, what was it like in the 1700s? Peggy said.

We had chamber pots, which were bowls underneath a toilet seat. The servants emptied them in a cistern. If we journeyed into the country, we mostly went to the bathroom in the woods, although sometimes the servants would accompany us on a trip to the woods and would provide chamber pots when we needed to go. In terms of bathrooms, this camp sounds like a luxury but not as much of one as Tanglewood. If there is one thing I like about this century, it is its internal plumbing. Oh, and I have been studying the area where the camp is located. In my time, Indians regarded this place as very sacred. Colonists didn’t go there. The Indians would kill or badly injure them if they tried, and the colonial authorities wouldn’t do anything about it. They knew to leave this area to the Indians. Supposedly, a very ancient shrine with great power lay buried in a cave hidden in these woods, Samantha said.

Yeah, Samantha, we talked about the Ancient Shrine at camp even though nobody knew where it was. No one had seen it in a hundred years. But when it comes to us, things could be different. We can’t avoid places like that even if we want to, Carly said chuckling.

Oh, no, you don’t. The World in Between was all the excitement I need for a lifetime. Why would we need to go the shrine? As far as we know, nobody is caught there like they were in the World in Between, Skylar said.

You never know. We’re the Fab, and we may have to become involved, Jade added.

I’m with Skylar. I endured 250 years of magic. I’d like to live the rest of my life without it, Samantha said.

Hey, Carly: are our ghost friends, Constance, Barbara, and Calico coming with us? Peggy asked.

I tried to convince them to come, but they’re happy in Skylar’s and Samantha’s house. They know about the Ancient Shrine and don’t want to be anywhere near it. They say it is very evil.

Enough of this magic talk. We have to head down to a school assembly. They’re giving out the honors this morning. We know Carly and Skylar are going to receive all the academic awards for our class as usual, but I hear that the math department wants to give Samantha some kind of special award, Peggy said.

It’s so strange living in this century. In my other life, every time I came up with a new math theorem or formula, my father told me to stop wasting my time with men’s work. He wanted me to perfect my needlework, play music to entertain, and improve my social graces so I could marry an important young gentleman and have his grandchildren. I had no interest in doing this. All I ever wanted to do was to create new ways of expressing numbers. Now I can actually do it, Samantha said as she followed the girls downstairs.

Samantha and Skylar’s Home

H ome again before they had to go to camp. Skylar and Samantha walked through their mansion. As they passed by the hidden rooms now easily accessed, Skylar told the story of how Constance revealed their location to Carly. Samantha became excited.

Our ancestor, or should I say the distant member of the duke’s line descended from my brother, wasn’t the only member of the Worthington family interested in hidden rooms. My dad, the duke, had the same interest. When he designed our estate, he built a very secret windowless room where he spent many hours of quiet study. I followed him to the room once just before I disappeared into the World in Between and carefully noted how he entered. On the night before I disappeared, I looked through the study when my father took a trip. He possessed many fascinating books including many on the occult. I didn’t have much time to explore the room because I heard someone nearby. Not wanting to get caught, I exited the room vowing to return, but, of course, I never had the opportunity to do so. I wonder if the room is still there.

Wow that’s exciting! I thought I had explored every inch of this grand house, but the house is so big. I guess another room could still be hidden. Where is it? Skylar asked.

Near the hidden tunnels. My dad already started building the tunnels before I left.

Yeah, that area is the least explored part of the house, which is why the tunnels stayed hidden for so long. Dad keeps the area closed off most of the time. The area has heat and power, but most of the time, it’s turned off. Lead on Samantha and Constance and Barbara and Calico, if you’re there, please follow us, Skylar said.

I think they will. I can feel them. While I don’t have the same ability as Carly, I still spent over two hundred years in a magical place.

The girls slowly made their way to the most ancient part of the house. They each held an electric lantern and a small flashlight, which they placed in their jeans. The dust grew and the style of the rooms became more like those of early American times. Skylar realized that the room contained very valuable early American and English antiques covered by old musty clothes. Samantha climbed a small staircase just outside the entrance to the tunnels. The staircase led to a small, plain room, overlooking the back of the estate. The room looked like it had been occupied by one or more of the many servants on the estate. Samantha quickly commented.

While this looks like a servant’s quarters, my father housed no servants here during my time. He instead used it as a storage room. After my father’s death, I don’t know what future family members did with the space, but as I look on it now, the room looks very much like it did over 260 years ago. Come, the hidden entrance is right by this stone pillar. The door actually ends behind the pillar removing any sign that there is a doorway here. The other parts of the door are hidden with molding. You have to move the door to the left farther behind the pillar and push it inward to open the door.

As Samantha spoke, she did exactly the same thing she did so long ago and, miraculously, the door moved to the left and then opened upon being pushed. The door creaked loudly, but with a little help from Skylar and a mighty push, they managed to open it far enough for them to see a musty corridor and some steps leading down into the darkness. Many cobwebs lined the stairs.

Dad placed his room halfway between the second and first floor. The stairs are steep, but don’t go too far down. Let’s be careful. These wooden stairs, although well made out of oak, could be rotten.

The stairs creaked loudly but held as the girls descended flashlights on, into a large room with a big ornate fireplace. After removing the sticky cobwebs, the girls immediately turned on their lanterns bathing the large room in a soft light. The duke’s crest stood out prominently on the top of the fireplace. Many candles and candelabras filled the room. A large ornate desk occupied the space opposite the fireplace. The room also had some elaborate chairs and bookshelves filled with leather books lining all the walls except those next to the fireplace. The dust lay very thick upon everything. Cobwebs also appeared in many parts of the room. Still, most of the things in the room seemed to be in good condition.

This room looks very much the same as it did when I visited it so long ago. I don’t think anyone has been here in the 236 years since my dad died. I can’t believe someone hasn’t found it in all these years, Samantha said coughing a little as the dust settled around her and several spiders scurried for cover.

Samantha, come here. Your dad left a large diary on the side of his desk. It looks as if he worked on it until his death in 1781. That is the last day an entry is made. The diary begins the day you disappeared in 1752. I’ll read the opening lines, Skylar said.

I am very distraught, my darling wife, Susan, even more so. Our beautiful, genius daughter has disappeared. I know not whether she is alive or dead or kept in captivity somewhere. I almost pray someone is trying to blackmail me because then I would have a chance to find her, but so far, I have heard nothing. I think that witch Elizabeth is responsible, but I have no proof of her involvement. My daughter disappearing on Halloween is certainly suspicious. I have been re-reading my occult books, but there is no spell that I can find that would take my daughter this way. I have issued a large reward for my daughter’s return, but the information that is coming from this effort is not very valuable so far. I just don’t know what to do.

Samantha, the diary goes on for hundreds of pages. Your dad must have written in it every day for twenty-nine years. Much of it concerns his attempts to find you, but a lot more valuable information on the times is in it. This is an important historical document.

As Skylar talked, she, at first, didn’t notice the tears forming in Samantha’s eyes. Realizing her error, Skylar tried to make amends.

I’m sorry. This has to be hard for you, but knowing how much your parents cared is important. I sometimes forget how much I love my parents and how much they love me.

"All those years my parents looked for me while that evil witch kept me in the World in Between. For the first several years in the World in Between, I missed them so much. I blamed myself for what happened, but I really shouldn’t have. The fault lay with Elizabeth. Elizabeth, in the end, deserved what happened to her. I just wish I could have spent more time with my parents. In the