Spencer couldn’t worry about the Witches. At the moment, he had a few hundred TPs to fight and a fortress to destroy.
Turning the scissors on an angle, Spencer snipped a huge chunk out of the wall, obliterating everything in his path. He raced into the fortress, finding the place to be a mazelike network of walkways and staircases.
A two-ply TP leapt from an overhead catwalk and landed deftly beside Spencer. The toilet paper binding the mummy’s face parted and the whispery voice issued a command to rally the others.
“The boy must die! He must not reach the brain nests!”
He might have said more, but Spencer’s left hand flashed from his belt, extending a razorblade and slicing off the head of the paper figure.
TPs crawled like spiders on the walls, covering every stair and pathway as Spencer pressed deeper into the fortress. He was nearly unstoppable, wielding a razorblade in his left hand and the highly destructive scissors in his right.
Spencer felt disoriented in the Witches’ fortress of interlocking catwalks. He forced himself to ignore the pathways, focusing instead on the ever-present beam of energy surging from the brain stem at the center of the fortress.
There was no beating this enemy. Despite Spencer’s path of wanton destruction, the TPs continued to re-form from the grit in the air. He shouted in frustration, walls and tunnels crumbling in his rage.
An unusually fast TP blindsided Spencer, knocking him to the ground and sending his razorblade clattering. The boy brought his scissors around, but the two-ply lassoed his wrist, causing the next snip to go amiss.
They wrestled, Spencer painfully aware that the hosts of toilet-paper mummies were closing in on him. He wasn’t strong enough to overpower the two-ply that grappled with him, and if he didn’t regain control of the scissors, all would be lost.
Spencer cried out in desperation. He needed help! He needed someone to show up and save him. Staring into the hazy air, he wished with all his heart that help would arrive.
A razorblade suddenly slashed through the two-ply’s back, causing the mummy to crumble to dust. Spencer whirled around, snipping the scissors to decimate the TPs crowding behind him. When he turned back, Spencer saw his timely rescuer.
It was Walter Jamison.
Chapter 45
“Go and finish this.”
Walter wasn’t real, of course. Spencer had created the familiar old warlock from the magical haze of the Dustbin.
Walter stepped forward, his bald head shiny with sweat. He smiled at Spencer and reached out a hand to help him up.
There was an emptiness to this fake Walter. He could never be the real thing, but Spencer latched onto this image of his past, using the warlock’s presence, however artificial, to give him strength.
“Come on,” Walter said. His voice was exactly how Spencer remembered it. After all, Walter’s voice only existed as an outward expression of the boy’s imagination.
They raced forward, Spencer slicing through TPs with the Glopified scissors while Walter Jamison cut them down with the razorblade sword. Spencer moved with renewed determination, strengthened by having a companion in this numbing land of oppressive dust. As long as he kept his mind on the old warlock, Spencer’s imagination would continue feeding the image and the magic dust would keep Walter by his side.
They were close now. Spencer could feel the pulsating heat of the brain stem. When he looked up, there was only one more high wall between him and the multicolored beam.
An archway stood in the wall just before them, sealed off with a heavy door. Spencer aimed backward, snipping the scissors to destroy any TPs behind him while Walter shoved open the heavy door.
Under Walter’s imagined strength, the door swung open with surprising ease. The warlock reached back, pulling Spencer through the archway.
Spencer found himself at the bottom of a dim, enclosed stairwell. But there was something different about the air.
There was no dust here.
“This is a safe zone,” Spencer explained to Walter. It wasn’t necessary, but it helped make the replica warlock feel even more real. “Garth Hadley’s building in the Dustbin was like this. It’s designed to vent all the dust away, forming a noncreative zone so the TPs can’t form inside and take over.”
The air was the same here. It made sense that the brain nests would be in a dustless area. That way, nothing could take shape around the nests without the Witches’ approval.
As they stood in the shadowy stairwell, Spencer saw TPs developing outside the archway. The mummies couldn’t re-form where he was standing, but Spencer knew that nothing would stop the TPs from racing through the arch to get him.
Walter stepped up to the door. “You’re close to the end, Spencer,” said the warlock. “Go and finish this.”
“Can’t you come with me?” Spencer asked. The false Walter could, of course. He would do nearly anything that Spencer could imagine. And that was what scared the boy. Spencer had known all along he would face the end alone. Not even a figment of his imagination would provide him the comfort of companionship.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Spencer whispered. “I don’t know if I can win.”
Walter reached back, and Spencer felt the comfort of the man’s hand on his shoulder.
“Winning doesn’t mean we all go home safe,” Walter said. It was an old conversation, Spencer’s imagination bringing it to his remembrance at this crucial time. “Victory will come to those who fight for what is right,” Walter continued. “It won’t come without its fair share of pain and suffering. No victory comes without sacrifice. But it will come. We just have to stay the course.”
Walter grinned, his hand slipping from the boy’s shoulder as the first TPs reached the archway. The warlock stepped out to face them alone, his razorblade shining in the steady, hazy light of the Dustbin.
Grabbing the heavy door, Spencer slammed it closed just as the first TP knocked into Walter Jamison. Spencer ripped a strip of duct tape from his belt and slapped it over the door’s edge. The replica of Walter wouldn’t last long, now that Spencer needed to focus his mind on other things. The warlock would disintegrate to dust once more, a painful reminder that Walter Jamison really was dead.
Taking a deep breath, Spencer began a slow ascent up the stairs. He expected the Witches to come barreling down on him at any moment. But the only sound was the steady thrum of the brain stem and the soft scuff of his shoes on the stone stairs.
The staircase deposited Spencer on a narrow walkway. The path curved, the wall forming a ring like the rim of a giant cup. The brain stem rose at the very center, surrounded by a column of dustless space as high as Spencer could see.
Afraid of what he might see, Spencer carefully stepped over to the edge of the wall. He peered down, readying himself to see the nests where the bright beam of energy originated.
Far below, in the pit formed by the ring of the circular wall, Spencer beheld the Toxite brain nests.
They were unlike anything he’d ever seen: three giant brains, nestled closely together. Each was roughly the size of a boulder, larger than a van, sitting cradled in a divot of hardened dust.
Spencer identified them immediately. The one on the left was a grayish-blue color. It looked dry, covered in a thick layer of dust, like a shelf that had never been wiped off. Rising through the spongy brain material was an assortment of sharp quills. The largest were as thick as Spencer’s forearm and taller than he was. A blue energy seeped from the brain, rising like a vapor to swirl into the single multicolored brain stem.
The middle brain seemed softer than the others. It trembled like an overset yellow gelatin, streaks of green and orange lacing through it. A sticky, pale goo oozed from the brain, pooling in the nest around it. From this one, strands of yellow energy twisted upward.
The final brain was almost entirely black. From his viewpoint looking down, Spencer thought it seemed to be made of toughened leather. At places, the leathery material appeared to be stretched too
thin, cracking slightly to let out a hiss of black smoke. The brain exuded ribbons of red light that rose to join the others.
Filth, Grime, and Rubbish.
The fueling brains of all Toxites pulsed just fifty feet below Spencer. The blue, yellow, and red energies tangled together into a single brain stem about twenty feet up. That was the spot. That was where Sach had said to use the scissors.
Spencer glanced at the pointed object in his right hand. He didn’t doubt the scissors’ power. He’d just used them to carve a path through brick and stone to get here. It seemed almost strange that something so small would be capable of destroying Toxites forever.
Spencer unclipped a broom from his janitorial belt and stepped up to the edge of the wall, his toes hanging over as he looked down. The low vibrations from the brain stem caused his ears to buzz, and Spencer’s face was damp with sweat from the heat of it.
He judged the distance. Angling his broom just right, Spencer gave it a light tap on the wall, just enough to send him drifting into range.
No sooner had his bristles touched the wall than the entire broom turned to dust in Spencer’s hand. He reeled, almost falling into the pit of brain nests. Pinwheeling his arms wildly, Spencer stumbled back to the walkway, heart racing.
The Witches were there. No, the Witches were everywhere.
There must have been nearly a hundred of them, suddenly appearing along the walkway all around the wall. They were replicas, of course, like the one Spencer had made of Walter Jamison. It was a distraction tactic, aimed to throw Spencer off course. And it was working.
Spencer lowered the scissors and snipped at the approaching Witches on his right. The blades sliced through them, reducing their forms to dusty vapor.
“Which ones are real?” said thirty Belzoras in perfect unison. “We enjoyed your game with the white wigs. But now it’s our turn to play.”
Spencer snipped through the Witches on his left, but the ones on the right were already re-forming.
“But how can you . . . ?” Spencer stammered. “There’s no dust in here!”
“We’re not limited like you,” answered twenty versions of Ninfa. “Our wands let us create wherever we like.”
Of course. If the Witches’ wands could summon dust in the real world, they certainly wouldn’t have trouble in a noncreative zone inside the Dustbin.
Spencer cut down a dozen more copies, hoping to trap one of the real Witches between the scissor blades. The attempt was useless, and the group of decoy Witches continued a steady pace toward him.
Spencer paused. This was a distraction, a tactic meant only to stall him from doing what he had come to do. Spencer turned back toward the brain stem. It was so close! He didn’t have another broom, but if he jumped, he would have one shot at lining up the scissors and snipping through the beam.
A line from Spencer’s recent conversation with Walter Jamison played back in his mind. “Winning doesn’t mean we all go home safe.” Spencer took a deep breath. “No victory comes without sacrifice.”
Ignoring the myriad of Witch replicas on the walkway, Spencer sprinted three steps, vaulted over the edge, and flung himself toward the glowing brain stem.
The moment his feet left the wall, Spencer realized his mistake. The Witches, the real Witches, were waiting for him, hovering on brooms right next to the spot he needed to cut.
His course was set, Spencer’s momentum from the leap carrying him straight toward the enemy. He opened the scissors, taking aim just as Belzora’s wand flashed.
The Glopified scissors exploded in Spencer’s hand. He felt the metal ripping apart as the shock of the destruction knocked him against the wall. The Witches cackled in victory as Spencer fell to the nests below.
The scissors were gone, blown to useless particles before Spencer ever had a chance to touch the brain stem.
Chapter 46
“Is he smart enough?”
Spencer groaned, his vision temporarily blurred from the jolt of his fall. He was lying on his back, nestled between the giant Grime brain and the leathery Rubbish brain. He couldn’t move, or didn’t want to. Spencer stared up at the gently twisting ribbons of energy, watching them swirl together at the spot he had failed to cut.
The Witches drifted upward, their replicas dissolving as the three of them stood at the edge of the wall, staring down at Spencer in unmasked victory.
Spencer looked up at them, his heart sinking. This was it, then. This was where he would die—here, nestled uncomfortably among the brains he had failed to destroy.
“What are we waiting for?” Holga shrieked. “Let’s finish the little whelp!” She lowered her stubby bronze wand, but Belzora grabbed her wrist.
“Has he come all this way for nothing?” Belzora’s voice echoed down the pit to where Spencer lay.
“What are you suggesting, Sister?” Ninfa asked.
“I see an opportunity before us,” Belzora continued. “An opportunity that the Instigators would never pass up.”
“Yes!” Holga shrieked, catching on. “Yes, yes, yes!”
Spencer knew he had to move. What the Witches were planning was horrible, unthinkable! He rose to his knees, sliding in the slimy spilled residue from the Grime brain.
Belzora was using her wand, rearranging the configuration of the brains in the pit below. The Filth brain slid past Spencer, sharp quills narrowly missing his arm. He scrambled out of the way as the Grime brain wobbled to a new place, dust re-forming into a hardened nest below it.
Spencer was standing in a newly formed vacant spot. He felt the dust firming below his feet, mounding up a curved edge to form another nest. There was no oversized brain to occupy this new indentation, just Spencer staring hopelessly up at the Witches looming over him.
Holga’s stubby wand angled downward, a streamer of magic dust taking shape into a fibrous rope. Spencer backed up as the rope landed coiled at his feet. But he knew Holga wasn’t offering him a way out. He’d seen a rope like this before.
Rearing up like a snake, the long rope had bound Spencer’s hands before he could reach his belt. The rope continued coiling around the boy, securing his arms and making its way down his legs.
As the rope cinched his knees together, Spencer lost balance and fell onto his side. He lay there, wrapped like a bug in a cocoon, with only his head exposed.
Spencer knew the Witches weren’t going to kill him. The boy’s agelessness was about to become very important to them. What the Witches were planning was worse than anything Spencer could imagine.
“Is he smart enough?” Holga asked.
“He has proven to be,” answered Belzora. “Almost, he outthought even us.”
“Will he survive the procedure?” asked Ninfa, though the tone of her voice implied that she didn’t care either way.
“The Refraction Dust will be tailored to his mind,” answered Belzora. “His strongest traits will be deflected into a new brain. And spawning from that opposite trait, a fourth Toxite will rise!”
Spencer wriggled helplessly in the divot that would soon become a brain nest for his own personal Toxite. He thought of Olin, Sach, and Aryl, feeling betrayed to discover after so many years that the Toxites had been born from their minds. It seemed worse for Spencer, knowing beforehand what the Refraction Dust would do.
He wondered at the damage he would cause the world. This fourth Toxite would spread like the others, infesting schools and rotting the minds of hardworking students. Spencer didn’t know what his greatest strength might be.
Was it responsibility? Loyalty? Trustworthiness? The opposite of any one of those traits would be detrimental to society.
Belzora leaned forward, her face a multicolored glow from the bright brain stem. She raised her bronze wand. At her right, Ninfa extended her wand so the tip was touching Belzora’s. Holga did the same from the left, the three wands now united as one.
Belzora’s voice echoed down into the pit, reciting some ancient verse in a low voice.
The boy that
here before us lies
Shall fuel these monsters till he dies.
From his mind, refracted traits
Turn scholars into reprobates.
Dust was swirling around the wands, entwining the Witches’ arms. It was brewing, building, with stabs of color lancing through the magic grit.
Spencer shouted something, but his heartbeat was pounding so loudly in his ears that he didn’t even hear his own voice.
The Witches extended their arms, the Refraction Dust mounting to a peak before it raced down the three wands, a terrible ribbon of haze on an unstoppable course toward the tethered boy.
“Spencer!” a familiar voice shouted from above. Spencer thought for sure he had imagined it, but as his eyes turned skyward, he saw the unmistakable outline of Dez Rylie’s Sweeper wings.
“No!” shouted the Sweeper boy as the bolt of Refraction Dust streamed forward. Dez folded back his wings and went into a vertical dive toward the brain nests.
Spencer knew Dez would never reach him in time. The Refraction Dust was traveling too fast.
Then, at the last possible second, Dez Rylie did something entirely unexpected. His wings snapped out, covering Spencer protectively. He clenched his jaw, his face upturned proudly, as the Refraction Dust struck him directly in the chest.
Chapter 47
“You think you have won?”
Dez’s body went limp as it absorbed the Refraction Dust in midair. His head rolled back lifelessly, and Spencer saw the boy’s leathery wings begin to disintegrate. The force of the blow sent him into an out-of-control spiral, and Dez’s body struck the brain stem at the exact point where the energies flowed together.
Dez dangled there for a moment, as if the brain stem held him aloft. His body was glowing deep hues of azure, amber, and crimson. Pulses of energy seemed to jolt through his body, sending blasts both up and down the brain stem.