Spencer’s eyes scanned across the smooth expanse ahead. It had probably been too long since Marv had walked away, assuming he’d been deposited in this spot in the first place. Any tracks the big janitor might have left behind would surely have been filled by now.
“This is a waste of time,” Dez said from the other side of the debris field. “I don’t see anything but dust.”
The bully was right for once. It was shapeless dust as far as the eye could see. Spencer was just giving in to hopelessness when Daisy shouted behind him.
“There’s something up there!”
Chapter 35
“It’s bugging me.”
Spencer scrambled across the classroom debris to where Daisy was pointing into the hazy air.
“It’s an airplane,” she cried.
“Where?” Dez said, coming alongside them. “I don’t see anything.”
Spencer wouldn’t agree out loud with Dez, but he didn’t see anything either. He was wondering how he could possibly miss seeing an airplane in the formless sky when a flash of white caught his attention. Dez must have seen it at the same time. He shoved Daisy gently in the arm.
“That’s not an airplane, Gullible Gates,” Dez said. “That’s a paper airplane.”
“I know what it is,” Daisy replied. “I never said what kind of airplane.”
“But what’s it doing?” Spencer asked.
The paper airplane was indeed behaving strangely. It fluttered about ten feet above their heads, dipping its wings left and right in the windless sky. The sharp center crease was angled downward, the pointy tip of the plane seeming to stare at each of their faces.
“What are you looking at?” Dez shouted up at the paper airplane.
“It’s not looking at anything,” Spencer said. “It doesn’t even have eyes.”
“I don’t care,” Dez said. “It’s bugging me.” He bent his knees and sprang into the air, black wings propelling him upward. One hand reached out in an obvious attempt to crumple the fragile airplane. But the paper plane’s reaction was faster. It swerved out of reach just as the Sweeper kid’s talons closed on empty space.
Dez grunted and dipped down for a second attempt. This time the paper airplane was ready for him. As his clumsy hands grappled with nothing, the plane zoomed forward, pecking Dez directly between the eyes with its sharp tip.
Daisy couldn’t help but let out a little giggle. Spencer had to admit, it was pretty funny watching Dez get owned by a folded piece of paper. But Spencer’s curiosity about the small airplane prevented him from enjoying the show.
“Leave it alone, Dez!” Spencer shouted. “Maybe it’s here to help us.”
But Dez wasn’t going to give up now. He had a welt between his eyes and probably a bigger one to his pride. The paper airplane was buzzing circles around him while he flapped ungracefully, like a dog chasing his tail in midair.
“Get back here, you little . . .” Dez threatened.
But the paper airplane suddenly seemed to lose interest in Dez. It rose above the Sweeper’s head and hovered there, fluttering like a nervous bird. Its point darted anxiously back and forth. Then it dove below Dez’s feet and streaked between Spencer and Daisy before disappearing into the gritty horizon. It moved so quickly that Spencer knew it was hopeless to give chase.
Dez touched down on the soft, dusty ground.
“Way to go,” Spencer said sarcastically. “You scared off the one thing in the Dustbin that wasn’t dust.”
“I almost had that dumb thing,” Dez muttered.
“I think it was the other way around,” said Daisy, rubbing the spot on her own forehead to indicate where Dez’s welt was showing.
“Whatever,” Dez said. “It was scared of me. Didn’t you see how fast it took off?”
“I don’t think it was scared of you,” Spencer said.
“What else could it be afraid of?” Dez said. “We’re the only ones around.”
Right then, Daisy screamed as something streamed toward them through the dusty air. Spencer’s hand dropped to his janitorial belt, pulling the first handle he could grasp. But before he could turn to face the incoming threat, the attack had reached him.
It was a long, unwound ribbon of toilet paper. It wrapped tightly around his arm and pulled him onto his side in the dust. Dez backed up, talons flexing. But Daisy drew a razorblade from her belt pouch and leapt forward, slashing through the thin paper and cutting Spencer free.
The toilet paper around his arm instantly disintegrated, turning to dust and hanging weightlessly in the air around him. The other end of the severed toilet paper retracted across the dusty ground. Spencer watched it retreat, following the ribbon back to its owner.
The figure was standing only yards away. It was shaped like a man and stood at least six feet high. In place of hands, the attacker sported two toilet-paper rolls on metal rods. But the toilet paper didn’t stop there. It was wrapped around the figure’s arms and torso, down its legs, and around its head. It wasn’t a tight wrap, and the entwining strands dangled down, leaving gaps across its entire body. Through these gaps, Spencer saw no flesh or form, just emptiness, filled with the passing dust in the air.
“Mummy!” Dez shouted. And that was indeed how it appeared: a toilet-paper mummy, as if somebody’s cheap Halloween costume had suddenly come to life.
Spencer had only a moment to take it in before the TP mummy was moving in on them. Spencer leveled his pushbroom in defense and thrust as soon as the creature was within range. The bristles caught the mummy in the chest and sent it coiling weightlessly upward.
Its immediate reaction was to send two long streamers of toilet paper from its rolled-up hands. The paper came out like dual whips, snaring a desk from the debris field and using it as an anchor. The streamers rolled in, pulling the mummy back to the ground.
Even with its feet on the ground, the figure was still weightless and unable to successfully defend itself against Dez’s attack. The Sweeper kid launched himself at the enemy, bringing his sharp talons down across the figure’s chest.
The toilet paper ripped away easily, leaving an open rend in the mummy’s chest. As Spencer had envisioned, the wound opened to nothingness. Instead of a tangible body, the toilet paper seemed to be wrapped around air, giving only the illusion of a human figure.
Gravity returned, and the mummy tried to step forward. Dez swiped his talons once more, severing an arm that turned instantly to dust. Off balance and torn open, the mummy lurched awkwardly, fell toward the kids, and suddenly disintegrated.
Spencer stared speechlessly at the spot where the mummy had fallen. There was absolutely no sign of it. Not even the metal rods on which the toilet-paper hands had spun. Its remains were now dust, inseparable from the countless particles hanging in the air.
“Ha! Eat that!” Dez shouted. “That wasn’t even hard.”
“Um, guys,” Daisy said. She was pointing over the boys’ shoulders, her face pale and eyes unblinking. Spencer slowly turned to face whatever it was that Daisy had spotted.
Appearing out of the dust, like wraiths from shadow, were at least a dozen toilet-paper mummies.
Chapter 36
“He said it.”
It didn’t make sense to stand and fight. They would only be defending a useless pile of classroom debris anyway. Spencer shouted the only thing that seemed logical.
“RUN!”
Dez instantly took to the sky as Spencer and Daisy sprinted away from the swirled area where the Vortex had deposited them and into the shapeless void of the Dustbin.
Spencer remembered a family vacation to the beach a few years back. He had found it hard to run fast in the loose sand. But this was worse, with every stride sinking ankle deep into the powdery dust underfoot.
Where were they running? Away. It didn’t seem to matter what direction. There was nothing to be seen anywhere Spencer looked. He glanced over his shoulder to check the mummies’ progress.
“Wait!” Spencer grabbed Daisy’s arm
, and Dez dropped out of the sky to land beside him. “Where’d they go?”
Spencer cast his eyes in all directions, but there was no sign of the toilet-paper figures.
“Maybe they run slow,” Daisy said.
“Or maybe we run super fast,” said Dez.
But Spencer knew it was neither. “They were right behind us,” he muttered.
The stagnant particles of airborne dust began to swirl around them. The grit began knitting together and taking shape, forming into the same host of mummies that had only moments ago been behind them.
“What’s happening?” Daisy cried, staggering backward. But there was no retreat. The dust behind them was also swirling, with more mummies materializing out of the haze.
“We’re surrounded,” Spencer muttered, readying his pushbroom while Daisy readjusted her grip on the razorblade handle.
“Later, guys!” Dez shouted, leaping from the soft ground and spreading his wings. Spencer didn’t even have time to feel enraged that Dez would desert them like this. In a flash, one of the mummies unfurled a ribbon of toilet paper, which tethered securely around Dez’s ankle. His wings flapped uselessly once or twice; then he was flung back to the ground, where he landed in a heap.
The mummies formed a ring around the three kids. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their rolled hands coiling and uncoiling lengths of toilet paper, as though they were anxious for permission to lash out.
One of the mummies stepped forward. It was the same size as the others, but Spencer thought it looked a little different. Its toilet paper seemed whiter, thicker, with a quilted pattern across it.
The leader mummy tilted its head slightly to one side. The toilet paper wrapping its face parted, and a whispery voice issued an order to its comrades.
“Bring the one with white hair for questioning. Wipe out the others.”
“Nobody’s wiping my nose!” Dez yelled, hoisting himself to his feet. “I’m a big boy!”
“That’s gross,” Daisy muttered.
“Don’t blame me,” Dez replied. “He said it.”
“I don’t think that’s what he meant.” Something told Spencer that the order to wipe out Dez and Daisy would be far more sinister and deadly than what the bully was thinking.
“You’re not taking me anywhere!” Spencer yelled. “You’ll have to kill me, too!”
“Could you think of anything dumber to say?” Dez asked. Then he turned to the mummy commander. “Take me for questioning. Wipe them out!” He pointed at Spencer and Daisy.
“The Instigators do not want you,” said the toilet-paper figure.
Spencer felt a chill pass through his bones. The Instigators. Olin’s note had warned him about this. Spencer had at least hoped to find Marv before facing off with the mysterious Instigators. But the enemy had already found them—within minutes of entering the Dustbin.
The two hollow gaps in the mummy’s head that served as eyes focused on Spencer. Then the mummy spoke again. “You have the needed attributes,” it said. “The Instigators will use you for experiments, as they did the others.”
Experiments? Olin’s note hadn’t mentioned what the Instigators did to the Dark Aurans. Spencer didn’t want to know what kind of evil experiments had been performed on his friends before the Founding Witches had rescued Sach, Aryl, and Olin. He had to get away before the Instigators did the same to him!
Spencer stepped backward, but the mummy instantly uncoiled a length of toilet paper from its hand roll. The paper streamer shot forward like a striking snake, wrapping around Spencer’s middle.
It spun him around like a dizzying carnival ride, so fast that the pushbroom fell from his hands and both arms were pinned at his sides. The leaf blower was wrapped clumsily across his back, but there was no way he could reach it, tied up as he was.
The mummy turned its face to Daisy and Dez. In that whispery voice, it gave the final order to its comrades. “Turn their flesh to dust.”
No sooner had the words slipped through its wrapping than something small and white came diving through the hazy twilight sky. Even from his confinement, Spencer recognized it.
The paper airplane.
It shot straight down, faster than a diving falcon. The pointy tip drove directly through the top of the leader mummy’s head and exited through the chest, instantly reducing the toilet paper to useless dust.
The tethers that held Spencer fizzled away, and he found himself suddenly free. The deadly paper airplane came to rest at Spencer’s feet, the tip sticking in the soft dust. Spencer stared down at it. There was a message scrawled across one wing, inked out in black marker by someone with really bad handwriting.
Hi, Spencer.
In the second that followed, a huge flurry of folded paper airplanes materialized out of the dusty sky. They came like a squadron of mini air-force bombers, tearing through the ranks of toilet paper mummies.
Spencer backed up, bumping into Daisy and Dez, who stood speechlessly side by side. Spencer didn’t dare tell them what he’d read on the first paper plane. He didn’t dare vocalize what every fiber of his soul hoped would be true.
But in the next moment, words became unnecessary. As the toilet-paper mummies broke formation to fight the attacking folded planes, the kids’ rescuer came into view.
He stood not twenty yards away, a hulking, formidable silhouette in the haze. He lifted a beefy arm and flicked a paper airplane toward them. The action caused the cloud of dust to part, and Spencer saw that unmistakable, shaggy, bearded face.
Marv.
Chapter 37
“Built it.”
Spencer’s feeling of victory at seeing Marv did not last long. The nearest toilet-paper mummy lunged at Daisy, knocking her sideways. Spencer scooped his fallen pushbroom from the dust and slammed the bristles into the back of the mummy’s head. The figure lost gravity and went skipping out of control across the soft ground.
The rest of the mummies were making a stand, using their ribbons of toilet paper to swat the folded planes out of the sky. Spencer saw several of Marv’s airplanes pulverized to dust.
Another mummy sprang at the kids. Dez took to the sky as Daisy’s razorblade came down in an arc, severing the creature’s arm. A folded plane swooped in, its wing decapitating the mummy before the plane lost control and crashed into the dust.
“Gloves!” Spencer called to Daisy. He ducked as a toilet-paper streamer reached for his head. His hand dug into a pouch on his janitorial belt until he felt the latex glove. He didn’t know if the Glopified powers would prevent the mummies from holding them, but it was certainly worth a shot.
Spencer thrust his hand into the latex glove just as a ribbon of toilet paper wrapped around his leg. He stepped away, pleased to discover that his leg slipped effortlessly through the mummy’s grasp.
With this newfound advantage, Spencer and Daisy were side by side in no time, working their way through the battlefield to the spot where they had seen Marv only moments ago.
Out of his peripheral vision, Spencer saw Dez dive-bomb onto one of the mummies, the force of his impact turning the enemy to sudden dust.
Three mummies moved to bar their path, toilet-paper streamers reaching uselessly at Spencer and Daisy. The first enemy went spiraling away under Spencer’s pushbroom. The second was slashed to ribbons by Daisy’s razorblade. The third moved to intercept, but a big, hairy arm reached out, bare hand seizing the mummy by the neck and ripping its head clean off.
As the dust settled, Spencer and Daisy found themselves face to face with their old janitor.
Daisy flung herself at him, arms wrapping around his bearlike form in an exuberant hug. Marv patted her awkwardly on the back and did his best to show some affection. Spencer smiled. Marv wasn’t really the huggy type.
When Daisy backed away, Spencer lifted his hand into a timid wave. He had thought that seeing the janitor alive and well would cause his feelings of guilt to fade. Instead, the opposite seemed to be happening. What could Spencer say to the man he h
ad trapped in the Dustbin for over half a year?
“Hi, Marv.” It was a lame greeting, when there were so many other words he could have used. Then, in an attempt to make it more meaningful, Spencer added, “I wanted to tell you that I’m . . .”
But Marv cut him off as a mummy sprang from the side. The big janitor lifted his hand, causing the dust to swirl and take shape. Out of nothing, a brick wall was immediately erected. In surprise, the mummy slammed into the wall with such force that both brick and toilet paper were reduced to dust.
“How did you do that?” Daisy asked, passing her hand through the spot where the brick wall had been.
“That’s what it’s like down here,” Marv said. “This isn’t ordinary dust.” He squinted at the battlefield. Most of his folded airplanes had been destroyed, but they had succeeded in taking down nearly every toilet-paper mummy.
“How long have you kids been stuck down here?” Marv asked.
Spencer checked his watch. “About fifteen minutes.”
“Vortex get you too?” he asked. Spencer couldn’t tell if he was upset about it.
“We came on purpose,” Daisy said. “We thought you’d be bowling.”
“Bowling?” Marv said.
“Yeah,” said Daisy. “We heard a recording from inside the Vortex. You said ‘Gutter ball!’”
“Must have been back at the bowling alley,” he said.
“There’s a bowling alley down here?” Daisy asked.
“Gotta do something to stay entertained,” answered Marv. “I’ve been down here for . . . well, who knows how long.”
“About seven months,” Daisy blurted, not even softening the blow.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Figured it was longer. I’ve been down here so many years that Spencer’s hair turned white.”
As he always did when someone mentioned his hair, Spencer put a self-conscious hand on his head.
“He’s not old,” Daisy explained. “His hair turned white because Spencer’s an Auran.”