NOTE: This is only a first draft.

Chapter 3

The Silver Hammer Makes an Appearance

 

A couple of hours later, Maxwell sat in his Astronomy class bored out of his skull. There were only fifteen minutes left until school was out for the weekend and Ms. Marschak was not holding his attention.

He looked out the window and couldn’t wait until he could be out there, out of this prison, free as a bird, that is, at least until Monday morning when he had to come back to prison. No, wait, make that school.

Maxwell groaned with the thought of the weekend ending in a couple of days.

A dragonfly passed the window shooting fire out of its tiny mouth. The jet of flame caught a passing butterfly, which blossomed fire as it plummeted to the ground. This caused all of the other butterflies, which had been resting on a leafless bush nearby, to rise up and hover in front of the dragonfly. The butterflies began to rub their antennas together, which created an ear-shattering shriek. The dragonfly tried to get away, but the shrieking noise played havoc with his system.  He managed to turn away from the vengeful kaleidoscope of butterflies and began to fly away in a wobbly line. As the pitch of the butterfly piercing cry intensified, the dragonfly’s head began to bubble and then expanded until it exploded.

“Mr. Edison,” Ms. Marschak said again, this time with a tinge of irritation in her voice.

“Huh? What?” Maxwell said, whipping his head around in a daze.

A couple of the girls giggled softly as they looked at him.

“I asked you why you thought planets were round,” Ms. Marschak said, pointing to the image of Jupiter that was projected on the screen in the front of the class.

“Um,” Maxwell started. Not thinking clearly, he said, “Because the world is round, um, it turns me on?”

There was dead silence in the class as everyone’s mouth fell open in shock. It took a couple of seconds, but then the class lost it. Everyone started laughing and yelling, pointing at him. Papers flew into the air and some of the students fell off of their chairs and rolled around on the hard floor, tears streaming down their cheeks as they laughed hysterically.

Ms. Marschak grabbed her Teacher of the Year gavel, awarded to her when she was a young teacher thirty-five years ago, and hammered it repeatedly on the desk.

WHAM, WHAM, WHAM!

“That’s enough! That is enough!”

WHAM!!

“Everyone,” she shouted, “back in your seats!”

Kids pulled themselves up from the floor and sat back down, wiping tears away. Everyone looked at Maxwell as he shrank down in his seat, trying to disappear under his desk. He hadn’t meant to say what he said, but sometimes things just came out wrong, mixed up. This is a frequent problem he has when he is woken abruptly out of a daydream.

“You may think you are quite funny, Mr. Edison, but you are not!” Ms. Marschak said with a bit of venom in her voice.

Some of the students laughed quietly.

“I wasn’t . . . that is, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I don’t want to hear excuses, Mr. Edison. What I do want is to see you after class.”

Maxwell groaned.

“You’re going to write on the whiteboard fifty times, ‘I must not be a distraction for other students in Astronomy class.’”

Maxwell groaned again.

The bell rang and within seconds, the classroom was empty except for Ms. Marschak and Maxwell.

He looked forlornly out the second story window at the kids streaming out of the building, yelling and whooping it up. He saw Billy standing there waiting for him, sitting on his bicycle. Billy looked at his watch and then back to the front doors. Finally, he looked up and saw Maxwell in the window. Billy shrugged his shoulders and waived to his friend. Then he wheeled around, pedaled like crazy, jumped off the curb, and tore up the street trying to do a wheelie, but not succeeding.

“Are you waiting for an engraved invitation to get started, Mr. Maxwell?” Ms. Marschak pulled out her wheeled chair and took a seat behind her desk.

Maxwell jumped a bit and turned around to face his captor.

“The whiteboard marker is in the pen tray and it’s waiting for you to get started. I cannot wait to see how this all turns out,” she concluded with a malicious hiss. She leaned back in her chair, plopped her feet up on the edge of her desk, took out her cell phone, and checked the news.

Maxwell shuffled up the whiteboard and stood there looking at the pens in the tray. There were all sorts of colors there, as Ms. Marschak needed them to draw the many astronomical things that were discussed in her classroom. Maxwell eventually settled on the blue one, took the cap off and was about to begin writing when Ms. Marschak said, “You can choose any color except for blue. Blue is my favorite color and I don’t want you using it all up.”

Maxwell frowned, put the cap back on the blue pen, and placed it back on the tray. He then opted for red, removed the cap, and began to write.

I MUST NOT BE . . .

Ms. Marschak didn’t even look Maxwell’s way when she said, “In cursive, Mr. Edison, in cursive.”

Maxwell gave the teacher a dirty look, picked up the eraser, wiped the whiteboard clean, and began again. Luckily, his sixth grade teacher had been  extremely old school and had taught the class cursive.

I must not be a distraction for other students in Astronomy class.

Maxwell turned to Ms. Marschak and asked, “Like this?”

“Looks good,” Ms. Marschak replied, without looking up from her phone.

Maxwell sighed and began to write the same sentence over and over again.

And so it went for the next twenty-two times.

Maxwell grabbed the whiteboard marker with his left hand, then shook his right hand to get some feeling back into it. He stood back and looked at what he had written. He hadn’t written cursive in years, so what he’d written had taken longer than he had thought it would and looked pretty sloppy in the first ten or so sentences. But now he was getting faster and it was looking more like the way it was supposed to.

Unconsciously, he began scratching the palm of his right hand. After a couple of seconds, he noticed this action and looked down to see that his palm was red from what he was doing. He stared at his hand, moving it closer to his face. Now it really started itching.

What is going on? he thought as he began to scratch his palm with the end of the pen.

“I don’t hear you writing, Mr. Edison,” Ms. Marschak said from her desk, her back still toward Maxwell.

Maxwell looked over at his teacher and stared at the back of her head. Shrugging, he turned back to the whiteboard and continued to write the same sentence over and over.

As he took a break to scratch the palm of his right hand, out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed some movement.  Maxwell turned his head toward his teacher who was still busy scrolling through her phone. He leaned over, just a little, and squinted his eyes to get a better look. Ms. Marschak’ hair, which appeared as a mass of gray hair piled on top of her head, kind of like a beehive, seemed to be moving of its own accord. It wiggled around, bounced up and down a few times, swirled around tightening and untightening the beehive, and flip-flopped around. During all of this, Ms. Marschak seem oblivious to the wild dance her hairdo was doing as she concentrated on a puppy video.

That was when the strangest thing happened: a dark, shadowy face seemed to push its way out of the top of the beehive. It’s yellow, burning eyes searched and then landed on Maxwell, piercing straight through his soul. It slowly opened its mouth wider than any human could ever do. Hundreds of gray razor sharp two-inch long teeth filled its mouth in two rows. Black mist swirled around in the open maw as it let out a voracious, gurgling scream.

Ms. Marschak didn’t seem to notice and chucked lightly at the antics of the puppies on her screen.

Maxwell’s jaw dropped open. Was he daydreaming again? No, this didn’t feel the same.

Why is my hand itching so badly? he thought.

Suddenly, he felt something in his right hand. He looked down and saw his fist was clenched tightly around a silver two-headed war hammer, sort like the one Thor had in all those movies that he loved. Maxwell lifted it up in front of his face to get a better look at it, his mouth still hanging open. The handle was wrapped in brown leather and had a loop on the end. The head of the war hammer appeared to be made of solid silver and was covered with inscriptions he couldn’t understand. A slight red glow seemed to be emanating from it and the inscriptions appeared to be slowly pulsing in a bright red light. It felt light in his hand, but looked heavier that is actually was. He swung it back and forth a few times and smiled, then he almost dropped it. He fumbled with it for a moment, put his hand through the loop, and then tightened his grip on the handle.

“Awesome,” he whispered.

Maxwell looked back at Ms. Marschak and the shadow creature hissed at him. Two smoky arms seemed to slowly raised out of Ms. Marschak’ arms. They came down on the teacher’s shoulders and began to push downward with some effort. The shadow creature began to push itself out of the top of Ms. Marschak.

Looking at this terrifying creatures, somehow, Maxwell knew what he had to do. He let loose with a war cry, something he’d always wanted to do, and charged the shadow creature. He felt like his favorite dark elf character that’s always fighting other creatures with his two swords. He swung the silver hammer at the creature’s head. The hammer passed above Ms. Marschak and made contact with the shadow creature.

BANG!

The shadow creature’s head snapped to the side and then returned. Again, its mouth opened and it let out an ear-splitting shriek. Its smoky arms sprang forward and swiped at Maxwell. One of its fingers brushed Maxwell’s left forearm just below the elbow. Maxwell stepped back and hissed, looking down at where his arm was hurting. It was pale with frost and stung like the dickens, like it had been flash-frozen.

Maxwell reared back, his mouth now set with firm resolve, and leaped back into the fray. The shadow creature growled and swiped at him again, but Maxwell dropped to his knees and slid forward on the polished linoleum floor. He heaved the silver hammer upward and caught the creature just under its chin.

BANG!

Its head flew backward and sprang back into place. It growled menacingly as it pushed down once more on Ms. Marschak’s shoulders.

Maxwell looked at the hammer in his hand and knew he still needed to do more. Water slowly dripped off of his left arm as the frost from the touch of the creatures began melting. It still hurt, but he had no time for the pain. He grabbed a text book from the nearest desk to hold in his left hand like a shield. He tightened his grip on the silver hammer, furrowed his brow in concentration, and raised the weapon high over his head.

The shadow creature, who was now about halfway out of the teacher’s body, looked up at the hammer and then back down at Maxwell. It hissed as it struggled to free itself.

Maxwell brought the hammer down at an angle directly into the right eye the enemy.

CLANG!

The eyeball disintegrated. The creature cried out in pain as black mist seeped out of the wound. It struggled frantically now, desperate to be free from the teacher’s body.

Sounds of puppies barking filled the room from Ms. Marschak’s phone.

With the silver hammer by his left side, Maxwell swung in back up to his right, the head striking the creature into its left eye.

CLANG!

The silver hammer passed right through the shadow creature’s brain. It let out one final shriek and then dissipated. Tiny tendrils of the creature floated to the floor where they sizzled and rolled around for a couple of seconds until they shrunk and disappeared.

Ms. Marschak slumped in her chair, unconscious, breathing heavily, her phone falling to the floor.

Maxwell stood up and looked at the silver hammer in his hand. “Wow!”

Not knowing what else to do, Maxwell placed the silver hammer on his desk while he ran out of the classroom to his locker. He quickly grabbed his backpack, sprinted back to the Astronomy classroom, shoved the hammer inside, and zipped the backpack closed. He ran out of the school, hopped on his bicycle, and pedaled like a madman. He flew down the street, cutting the corners, switching between the sidewalk and street, swerving around people who yelled at him, until he skidded onto his front lawn, where he threw down his bike and ran up the front steps. He slammed the front door behind him, bounded up the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him, jumped onto his bed, and unzipped the backpack.

“No!” he screamed.

His backpack was empty.