Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series by John Stockmyer

himself
on the blade edge, Pfnaravin pried back on the handle of the
knife.
    A creak.
    A nail loosening.
    He pried again.
    Another creak.
    Again.
    Creak.
    A fourth pull, this time with a sudden
grating.
    Too loud!
    The noise caused the sweat of fear to ooze
down the furrows of his forehead.
    Ignoring all else, there in the house's dark,
Pfnaravin listened. .... Heard nothing up the stairs.
    Again, rest.
    Another pull-back on the knife blade handle
and the door gave enough so that he could wedge the talons of his
hands inside the crack.
    Outside, the storm was coming at the pace of
this world's violent wind.
    He must hurry.
    Again, he pulled back with all his
weight.
    A grate! Coming in a wind-lull!
    Surely, even a soundly sleeping man could
hear that noise.
    No matter!
    This must be the time, the storm clawing at
the house; panting wet screams like grotesque creatures howling in
the stripped-of-magic night!
    Yes! As he had hoped, it was upon him now!
The tingle-feel of crystal-power! ...... Not crystal-power, but
another form of transformation fluid! What he had come to know in
agonizingly small ways as static. In what the man had said was
lightning, one-half of the lightning settling on the house, calling
down ... the bolt.
    Gaining new strength as the transformation
fluid reached his body, kneeling in the hall before the slanted
door, the knife discarded, using both hands, inserting all his
fingers, Pfnaravin pulled back on the partially opened door.
    Creak -- bang! The door was loose at
last!
    Noise no longer mattered!
    Nothing mattered as the transformation fluid
was full upon him. Building!
    There was another sound!
    With shock, Pfnaravin heard ... footsteps. On
the stairs above.
    Pfnaravin's ash-gray hair rising, struggling
up on hands and knees, he backed into the transformation-tunnel
under the stairs.
    More steps! Above! Coming down!
    Turning up his head, Pfnaravin saw the ...
man. The man coming down the stairs!
    It was in that fearful instant that the man
... the stairs ... the house ... the whole of this hateful, foreign
world ... winked out!
     
     
-6-
     
    John wakened with a start. Why? Was it the
dream he'd been having?
    Vaguely, he remembered
dreaming that he was under the multi-colored sky of the other
world. On the boat. On the Roamer , John just another sailor
who, periodically, must row the boat from the rim of one huge, but
tranquil cyclone in the sea to the next, counter-rotating
spiral.
    Beside him in the dream, leaning on the deck
rail, was Captain Coluth. Large, big-boned, gentle -- the only
person in the other world John could trust to be both competent and
sensible, John asking Platinia to take John's crystal to the
captain.
    Had Platinia done as John asked? Taken the
crystal to Coluth, Coluth presumably still tending the boy-king at
the Stil-de-grain capital on Xanthin Island?
    Platinia had always done what John asked
before. But then, she seemed to be awestruck in John's
presence.
    Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she
was terrified of John's crystal and of the power that "gem"
contained. John remembered she had shied away from the disk even
before John became "drunk" with its power; long before John had
"manhandled" her with his crystal-strengthened mind on the night
before his return to this world.
    As sleepy as John was, a wave of regret
washed over him at the thought of bending little Platinia to his
will. Of forcing her to reveal her petty secrets.
    "Drunk" with crystal-power had been his
excuse for mistreating shy Platinia. Every inebriate's alibi for
reprehensible behavior!
    John searched his mind again for any sign
he'd revisited the night-terrors he'd been having recently.
    In one, sweat-soaked dream, for instance,
he'd barely escaped the gravity traps. Harmless looking spots
between the up-light border of Malachite and Stil-de-grain where
the gravity thickened dangerously -- here -- there. Places where
gravity became so heavy it would crush any object or animal
unfortunate enough