Return To Lan Darr by Anderson Atlas Read Free Book Online

typical of dreams or even delusional trips. He is most certainly not crazy. As the credits of the second movie roll, Allan falls asleep.
    When the morning light peeks through the blinds, Allan awakes and sits up on the couch. The light is golden, illuminating the dust in the air. The dust. It is so thick in the shaft of sunlight.
    Allan’s stomach aches from binging on the junk food. He tries to remember if he dreamt during the night, but can’t. “I know when I’m dreaming.” The dust swirls as it passes through the light. “The dust is always there. It only needs to be illuminated in order to see it.”
    His eyes widen and his back straightens. “I’m not crazy.” He feels like yelling that declaration but thinks better of it. Rubic sleeps next to him with crumbs strewn about, a wadded-up napkin tucked into his half-open hand, and his mouth agape and snoring.
    As quietly as he can, Allan reaches for his chair and parks it in front of himself. He moves his knees to the side and hops into his chair. That pin-up-girl pin still confuses Allan. How did it get in the dam? It was in his pocket on Lan Darr. The therapist often pointed to that pin as evidence Allan was in the dam. In Allan’s memory, he hit the gravel after Lyllia of Meduna sent him home. He didn’t appear inside the dam. But the experience was confusing and traumatic. He could have slid down that pipe and not known it.
    Allan rolls to his bedroom. In his closet is a box of old clothes. He finds the pants he wore one year ago and reaches into the pocket. He pulls out the lining. There was a hole as large as a quarter.
    Every shadow of a doubt fades from Allan. He rolls to the bathroom to take care of business, packs his backpack with water, lunch meat, some chips, a few apples, a sweater, and a flashlight. He calls the Handi-Taxi, a taxi service for customers in wheelchairs and wrenches open the bottom lid on his piggy bank. Inside he finds a crammed wad of cash. He pulls out one hundred dollars and tucks it into his wallet. He pulls the plug out of the wall that charges his All-Terrain wheelchair and rolls the chair out of its parking space in his closet. He hops on and hangs his backpack on the back then pushes his normal wheelchair to the wall.
    Allan tosses his cell phone on his side table and heads out the front door to wait on the curb. “I’m going to find Lan Darr, and I’m not coming home until I do.”

 
    Chapter 5
    The Big ‘Duh’
    The yellow and black Handi-Taxi pulls up to the curb, and a platform lowers. Allan rolls onto it and lets it lift him into the spacious van. He knows the driver. “Hey, Charlie.” Charlie is a large-nosed Italian man with thick eyebrows and a brain full of bad jokes.
    “Allan, ciao, my main man. Where you goin’?”
    “Somewhere kinda far.”
    “No problem, anythin’ for you.”
    “I’m going to Blue Mountain.”
    “Whoa, by yourself?”
    “Yeah, I’m meeting friends for a hike.”
    “You hike?” Charlie eyes Allan in his rearview mirror.
    “Yeah, I’ve got an All-Terrain Apex Chair 690. It can take me anywhere.”
    “Rock and roll! Or should I say, roll over rock. Pun intended.” The driver chuckles and hits the gas.
    An hour later and a dozen bad jokes, the cab pulls off the freeway exit ramp and hangs a right on Pine Road. Only a few more miles, past some shops and a large visitor center, which houses a well-staffed ranger station, before Pine Road ends and the Blue Mountain Road heads up and into the dense forest.
    Allan needs to find the flower. He needs to prove to Laura he’s not crazy. He takes out a map of the canyon. All the safe trails are marked in green, and the sections of the canyon he’s explored are crossed out in red. The only section of the lower canyon left to explore is the lower field by the Boy Scout camp. If he fails and cannot find the Hubbu, he’ll start to make his way back up to the dam. It’s only five or six miles total. If he has to, he’ll make a bed out of