Safe from the Matron, maybe. But in the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t so sure we hadn’t just leaped out of the frying pan and into someplace a lot worse.
As I tried to get my bearings, it became apparent that this “other side” wasn’t at all what I had expected. For one thing, it was cold. Not freezing cold, but a sort of damp, penetrating cold that hurt your lungs. For another, there wasn’t anything there.
“Um… Celia… where are we again?” I asked.
“This is the Shadowland.”
I looked around. It wasn’t quite right to call the Shadowland a “land” at all. There were no trees, grass, buildings, water, sun—or, for that matter, anything but fog and haze.
“This is your… home?” I whispered, hugging myself for warmth and turning completely around. The portal, which I thought had just been at my back, was gone now.
“I would never call the Shadowland home,” Celia said with a head shake. “And I hope neither of you do either.”
I couldn’t see… anything, really, beyond Whit, Celia, and Feffer. It was like we were standing in a room with a gray backdrop, and everything beyond about ten or fifteen feet in any direction seemed to fade into hazy nothingness. It was unnerving, not having anything to focus my eyes on. A wave of claustrophobic panic washed over me.
“Celia…” Whit looked around uneasily. “We have to get you out of this place. You got us out of the Hospital. We can—”
“Whit, let it go,” Celia interrupted gently. “You may be a wizard, but no one can bring dead people back to life. Not even The One Who Is The One. Remember that. It’s a fact of life and death. It’s how you get past grief.”
Feffer started trotting off to explore, or maybe to find a Half-light squirrel to chase. The dog seemed to be the only one of us that had a sense of direction here, so I followed her lead. “What’s out here, Feffer?”
“Wisty, no!” Celia shouted.
I almost got mad at being yelled at like a two-year-old wandering away from Mommy at the mall—but I knew Celia wasn’t exactly the nervous type. And she sounded seriously freaked.
“This can be a very dangerous place for humans. Your senses don’t work here like they do in your world… and if you get any farther away from me and Whit, we could be entirely lost to one another. Especially because it’s possible to take a path that will lead you into a subdimension completely different from ours.”
I didn’t understand the dimension part, but I whirled around in a panic nonetheless.
I couldn’t see Feffer anymore.
“Feffer! Here, girl!” I whistled. “Come back, girl!” Strangely, I already felt an attachment to the reformed hellhound.
Feffer came trotting right back to me, and I knelt down to hug her. The warm scent of her fur seemed very real and comforting in this hollow place.
“Well, Feffer apparently didn’t have a problem,” I said, puzzled, as the dog, sniffing the ground, wandered off again.
“I said, dangerous for humans,” Celia clarified. “Feffer’s an animal, and she has animal instincts. We don’t use sight to get around in here. Half-lights and others who are tuned in to extrasensory forces have a much easier time navigating the Shadowland. Humans who’ve found the portals have usually gotten lost here. Forever.”
As if to punctuate the horror of this thought, we heard a distant moaning sound. Whit involuntarily grabbed my hand.
“Lost Ones,” said Celia. “They’re not close yet, and that’s the way we want to keep it. Believe me.”
“What would they do to us?” I asked.
“They’d…” Calm-and-collected Celia looked as if she might lose it. “Forget it, Wisty. It’s way too grim to talk about right now. Let’s just get you somewhere safe.”
Chapter 55
Wisty
“CELIA! YOU’RE ALL RIGHT!” we heard someone call out, and a tall blond girl, maybe Whit’s age, came bounding into view. She was a Half-light, I assumed, even though I’d never pictured dead girls wearing tank tops and pleated skirts… and chewing bubble gum. And do dead girls really need glasses? Maybe it was a fashion statement.
“You got your friends out!” the girl said, then hugged Celia, the way Half-lights hug. Hard to describe.
“This is Susan,” said Celia. “Susan, this is Whit Allgood and his sister, Wisty. Remember me telling you about Whit?”
Susan rolled her eyes. “Yes. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. Sensitive. Mr. Washboard Tummy. I think you mentioned Whit once or twice. Total pukka kind of guy. You said he was a work of art.”
I blinked. “Pukka” sounded a little pukey to me. Celia wasn’t the least embarrassed, though Whit got a tad pink in the cheeks.
“Welcome,” said Susan, who seemed funny and nice. “Glad you got out of the Hospital. That place is a total mingus. It’s where I was executed. For chewing gum on the street. I think.”
“I have to get these two to Freeland before any Lost Ones spot them,” said Celia.
“I agree,” said Susan. “I saw a small pack of them only a few minutes from here. They’ve probably sensed there are living humans around.”
“Well, let’s reunite these guys with their erlenmeyer weasel and get them out of here.”
Susan and Celia had started to lose me with all of their weird lingo until Celia mentioned Byron Traitor Suck-up. I’d forgotten all about him.
“He’s not exactly our weasel,” repeated Whit.
Just then we heard another distant chorus of spine-chilling moans.
“We don’t need to wait for him, really,” I said, cold sweat breaking out all over me.
“It’s no bother,” said Susan. “And we have to meet somebody else here anyway. In fact, here he comes. Yo, Sasha!” she yelled as a boy came running into view. I was starting to get used to partially solid people, so his opaqueness seemed out of place in the Shadowland. Then I realized he was probably a regular kid like us.
“You’re safe, Celia,” Sasha said with relief as she introduced us. He seemed older than me but maybe younger than Whit, and he had longish black hair and dark-blue eyes. He wore a Navy SEALS ball cap on backward, and his T-shirt read FREEDOM SHOULD BE FREE. I also noticed he was carrying a spool that trailed string into the gray haze behind him.
“So you find your way around here using string?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I have some portal-sensing abilities, but it’s best to have backup. And bread crumbs are useless. But let’s talk about all that later. I heard a pack of Lost Ones on my way over here.” He was serious but wore an expression of easy confidence—which, in a split second, disappeared.
“Look out!” he yelled, and leaped in front of us to block the shape emerging from the fog. But it was just Feffer.
“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. “I’m guessing you brought a dog.”
“This is Feffer,” I said. “She came through the portal with us.”
“Cool, a Curve dog,” said Sasha, getting down on his knees to pet her. “You sure it’s gonna like your weasel?”
“He’s not our weasel,” Whit repeated. “Actually, that little rodent, that varmint, wanted to execute us.”
Just then another moan—sounding closer this time—cut through the gloaming. Celia’s beautiful eyes became a little sad. “Sasha, you need to lead them to the Freeland portal right now.”
Whit turned to her. “Can’t you come with us? You have to.”
Celia nodded. “Of course I will. But I can’t stay long, Whit. Or I’ll… cease to be. That’s another fact of life and death.”
“Let’s get out of here!” said a voice at my feet. I looked down and almost screamed.
“You’re taking the weasel,” Susan said firmly. “Incidentally, he needs a bath. And to be taught some manners. And some social skills.”
I glared down at him. “No. You can’t come. I hate your guts.”
He sat up on his haunches, beady black eyes boring into mine. “You did this to me.”
Sasha looked impressed. “You tau
ght a weasel to speak?!”
“I was human,” said Byron. “And she is a witch.”
Sasha looked even more impressed.
“And don’t you forget it,” I said proudly. “Feffer? Meet Byron Traitor Suck-up. You may eat him.”
Chapter 56
Wisty
BUT FEFFER DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE to find out what weasel tasted like. Because just then we all spotted the first thing other than ourselves that we’d ever seen in the Shadowland, and it was, in fact, a bunch of shadows.
They were distant and flickered out of sight as soon as we looked directly at them, but there was no question we didn’t want to get any closer.
Celia, Susan, and Sasha immediately put their fingers to their mouths, telling us to be quiet, and then—as Susan and Celia just kind of faded into the gray—Sasha did that little commando gesture indicating we should follow him.
With the weasel clinging to my pants leg and shaking like one of those toys that vibrate when you pull their tails, we fell into line behind him and jogged along his string toward what I prayed would be our escape.
“Sasha,” I panted after we’d been running for a minute or so, “did it just get really cold in here or what?”
“It’s the Lost Ones. Among other things, they absorb the heat of the living.”
“So,” I said, an uncomfortable realization dawning on me, “does that mean… they’re close?”
“No more talking” was all he said.
But then he stopped. He was holding the end of the string. And there was no portal there.
“Something broke the string,” he said, fear flickering in his brilliant eyes.
From behind us, a chorus of moans added an ugly exclamation point to his statement.
Then Sasha shook his head like a swimmer trying to get water out of his ears and took off into the fog.
Byron, scared past coherent speech, chattered nonsense as we followed. I felt the cold on my back getting more and more intense.
And then I did something incredibly stupid: I looked back over my shoulder.
Twenty or more shadows—crooked, tall, short, bent, hobbling, but all supernaturally fast—were chasing after us. Just yards behind us now.
They were indistinct, flickering, inconstant, but one of them loomed up and, with the most horrible, ravenous, yellow eyes, seemed to see me.
And then I did something even more stupid: I stopped and screamed.
Whit immediately scooped me up and raced after Sasha. I couldn’t stop myself from yelling, and the boys seemed to know it. They didn’t even try to shush me. I guess they knew the game was up—either Sasha would guide us to the portal in time or he wouldn’t.
And then we’d find out exactly what it was the Lost Ones did to people.
Chapter 57
Wisty
“OKAY,” SASHA SAID, stopping suddenly. “Brace yourselves.”
My heart leaped. Bracing, I could handle. Getting mauled by soul-eating shadow creatures, not so much.
But where was the portal? All I saw was more fog. Was the portal here? Where?
Just then Feffer—who was, sweet dog, running tail guard several yards behind us—whimpered piteously.
“Feffer!” I stopped my own whimpering and yelled as the dog, unable to control herself, raced past toward a patch of fog that, I suddenly noticed, seemed to be rotating like a sideways whirlpool. She was bleeding. Badly. It looked as if something had gashed her left side with a garden rake. And the fright in her eyes—she looked more like a terrified puppy than a former New Order hellhound.
But before I could even think to reach out to comfort her, she was past me and leaping into the swirling vapor. And she was gone.
“That’s our portal,” said Sasha. “You two next. And be careful,” he said. “Freeland can be pretty wild.”
Wild, I could also handle—I’d have happily signed up for a deep-jungle camping trip with a pack of hungry jaguars. Anything but this nightmare scene. But I couldn’t joke about it to Sasha. For one thing, my teeth were chattering too hard to talk.
We were suddenly confronted with a cold so intense it burned—and it was coming from in front of us.
One of the Lost Ones had somehow gotten in between us and the portal.
Maybe if pain, hatred, and suffering were mixed in equal parts, somehow given shape, and dipped in black paint, you’d come close to what we saw now. Although there was something disturbingly, hauntingly human about its shadow-filled face. There was no skin, just sort of a flickering, shadowy surface where you would expect to see a forehead, cheeks, nose… and then there were the eyes. No pupils. Just slits, yellow-orange, flickering like torches you’d see on the walls of hell.
I wanted nothing more than to scream, but I was now officially paralyzed by the frozen air and my terror.
I squinted my eyes against the cold and watched helplessly as other Lost Ones moved in around us. We were surrounded.
Then—and I don’t know where he got the strength or courage—Sasha stepped toward the one directly in front of the portal, ignoring its clicking finger-claws and looking into its deathly yellow eyes.
“You got us,” he said. “But you’ll want me to explain this to you.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “It’s a map. With it, I can show you where to find a portal—not like this one, which won’t work for your kind—that can take you out of the Shadowland. A way back home.”
Somehow the horrible creature seemed to understand and appreciate what Sasha was saying.
And then, with a masterful flourish, Sasha crumpled the paper and threw it to the ground, causing the creature to leap after it with an earsplitting shriek of anger.
And then Sasha fairly tackled Whit and me into the portal, and the three of us plunged through, Byron Hateful Suck-up Weasel clinging to my pants leg with all four paws, the insufferable little creep.
There was an electric, tingly feeling that got stronger and stronger until my body began to shake like I was being tossed around in the back of a horse-drawn cart barreling down a cobblestone road at fifty miles an hour.
And then, suddenly, we were through—and outside, it seemed. The initial sensation was of wind—and it felt amazing, as if it were the first fresh air that had touched my skin in years.
I got my balance, then stopped in shock and looked around. “Oh. My. God.”
Chapter 58
Wisty
WE STOOD ON A DRY, rubble-covered hillside. There wasn’t much to it, but the sun was up and the sky was blue. After those horrifying minutes in the Shadowland, I was quite simply shocked by how beautiful the real world was.
“Those Lost-One things are looking to get out of the Shadowland, huh?” Whit asked Sasha as we dusted ourselves off.
“Yeah, they say that’s why they glom on to humans so hard. They want us to help them find a way out. And when that doesn’t work—which it never does—they settle for stealing your warmth and eating your flesh.”
“But you gave them the map. Does that mean they can now find their own way into the real world?” asked Whit.
“Well, (A) I don’t think they can read, (B) I’m not sure they could survive in the real world—I sure hope not—and (C) it wasn’t a map, it was just a list of things I had to do once I got back to base.”
“So you just made all that up on the spot, and fooled those things so we could escape?”
He shrugged and was going to say something, but just then there was a high-pitched whine in the air.
“Incoming!” yelled Sasha, and slammed into me, knocking me down. I hit the ground hard, the air whooshing out of me.
I gasped like a fish on land as a piercing, whistling sound filled my ears, impossibly loud.
Then, boom! Make that BOOM! I squeezed my eyes shut as the ground shook like an earthquake. Sasha tightened his hold on me, covering my head with his hands. I kind of liked him already.
BOOM! More earthshaking explosions, more trembling, more dust and mud
and rubble raining down on our heads.
“Wisty!” Whit yelled.
I wheezed and gasped. “Whit! Feffer!” I choked out. I couldn’t see very much because of the smoke and dust everywhere.
It felt like ages, but the trembling finally calmed, and Sasha’s weight slowly moved off me. A minute later, it was over. Whatever it was.
“Whew!” Sasha said, grinning. His face was covered with thick dust, except for his mouth and eyes. He reminded me of a freaky circus clown. I guessed I probably looked the same. “Sorry,” he told me cheerfully. “Didn’t mean to squish you like that.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been squished by worse.”
I struggled to sit up, feeling Byron Hateful Suck-up coiled around my neck like a traitorous mink stole. Blinking grit out of my eyes, coughing, shaking off the dust, I looked around.
“What just happened?” I asked, finally seeing Whit. And then Feffer. And Celia.
“Bomb,” Sasha said, standing up and slapping off the dirt. “Everyone okay? I guess we must have stepped out into a war zone. Easy to do.” It sounded like this was about as ordinary as making a wrong turn en route to the nearest doughnut shop.
Looking around, I saw half-destroyed buildings on what once must have been a normal city block. Craters in the street were big enough to hold trucks. Rubble and dust were everywhere. Twisted metal, broken glass, electric wires, and chunks of cement made a dangerous carpet under our feet.
“Who’s bombing us?” I asked, trembling all over. So was Byron—the varmint was now riding on my shoulder, clinging to my hair. “Get off,” I told him.
“The New Order does bombings every day,” Sasha explained. “They know some of us kids are squatting here, so they run air strikes. Then they come looking for us.” He shook the hair out of his eyes. “Keeps you on your toes, right?”
“Yeah, nothing like a little shock and awe,” Whit said in disbelief.