Quinzy crawls into his school backpack one day looking for some missing homework and emerges in a labyrinthine wonderland: the inside of his mind. There’s a library (his knowledge), a furnace (his temper), a game of chess in progress alone in an empty ballroom, and a locked door leading deeper. He spends more and more time there, learning about himself through the artifacts of his subconscious, and who can blame him? After all, he has to deal with getting good grades, a girl who won’t stop harassing him, a brother in the hospital, and parents who don’t know what they did wrong. Indeed, his backpack is his sanctuary, but it’s also a trap. He’s being hunted by something in the shadows there, and it’s taking weeks of him away from his friends, his family, and his teachers who, whether they know it or not, actually need him around just as much as he needs them.
“Dark Heart” is the first hour of Phantasmagoria, a 6-episode urban fantasy for older children.
