"I starved the glasses, Josh," came that godawful whisper. "I did it. They don't work at all now, but I can't get out . . ."
As Josh got closer he could see that the door itself was no longer made of wood. It was a dark, heavy gray slab, and when Josh touched it, his fingers stuck to the frozen surface, as they did when he touched the inside of his freezer at home.
The door had turned to lead. Kevin must have lined the entire room to keep all forms of energy out.
"Where's Teri, Kevin? Where are your parents?"
"Away . . ." said Kevin. "Just . . . away . . ."
Josh didn't like the sound of his answer. Bertram had been sent away, too. "Why is the sun setting, Kevin?"
"Never mind that," snapped the raspy voice. "I can't get out. . . . You have to find someone who can get me out . . . the police . . . firemen . . . anybody!" he said. "Because . . . I think . . . I think I'm dying, Josh."
Josh took a step away. The possibility had never been discussed, but Josh had feared it all along. That Kevin would abuse those glasses . . . until they killed him.
"You gotta help me, Josh . . ."
He should have taken the glasses away from Kevin as soon as he knew what they could do. He should have buried them at the base of the Divine Watch, so deep that no one would ever find them. But he hadn't, and now everything had come around full circle, back to him. Josh held the solution to the whole problem in his hands like a heavy, dark sword.
"Kevin, . . . if I let you out now, the glasses will start working again . . . things will keep changing . . ."
"We'll worry about it later," hissed Kevin. "Save me, Josh."
Josh tightened his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He banged his head against the wall, hoping to knock some sense into it, or at least to knock himself out so he could lose himself in his own dream world instead of Kevin's.
"Josh, are you there?"
There were two truths on the edges of Josh's sword. The first truth was that the only way to save the world was to remove Kevin Midas from it. The other truth was that he loved Kevin like a brother. Tears exploded from Josh's face, and he squeezed his eyes shut to hold them in.
"Josh, why won't you answer me?"
Josh could never win this one. If the solution was like a sword in his hand, then no matter which edge he used, the other edge would cut him down as well. Whether he saved Kevin or the world, he would have to suffer with his decision all of his life. With two choices each worse than the other, Josh knew which one he had to choose.
"Josh?"
"I'm here, Kevin."
"Are you getting help?"
"I . . . I just called the police," said Josh, pushing out the lie like a bad piece of meat. "They're on their way."
"Good." Kevin breathed a shivering sigh of relief. "Thank you, Josh. You're the best friend ever."
Josh pressed his palm against the frozen door once more, losing his battle to hold back the tears. He hadn't called the police. He hadn't called anyone. "Good-bye, Kevin," he whispered so softly that only he could hear it. Then he turned and left.
Halfway down the stairs he began to run and didn't stop running until he got home, where he buried his head deep in his pillow so no one could hear him scream.
In the chill of the October morning-turned- evening, the wind that had spent weeks shattering dry leaves on the pavement stopped dead, hushing like the surf before a tidal wave. The cloud cover that had been spreading out steadily from the Divine Watch for two weeks had, at last, reached the town of Ridgeline.
Single drops of rain began to fall, dampening the ground and preparing it for a sheet of rain, still ten miles away, that rolled south like a wall of water.
In his tiny dungeon of a bathroom, Kevin lost all track of time. He drifted half conscious through the loneliest, emptiest expanses of his mind; a dim universe growing dimmer by the minute. Then for a moment, perhaps the moment before dying, Kevin regained his senses and realized where he was.
It was much later now. Kevin could tell that it had been a long time since he heard from Josh.
"Josh!" he tried to yell, but all that came out was a wheeze of air. He pounded on the door, and it rang out with dull leaden thuds, but no one was out there.
If he closed his eyes now, he knew it would be for the last time.
But wasn't this what I wanted? thought Kevin. To kill the glasses at all costs?
Maybe not.
There was something he wanted more than that. He wanted to live. Kevin hadn't known that his will to survive could be so strong—so overpowering that it turned his fear into fury. All that mattered was getting out and getting warm—and both those things required giving the glasses whatever they needed.
There had to be a way out—but how? Wishing wouldn't make it so; the glasses were powerless now—and he had sealed himself in there so well it would take a battering ram to get him out. If he were going to live, then the answer had to come from him, and it had to come now.
Then all at once, the answer did come.
It was so simple, so amazingly simple, Kevin couldn't believe that it had taken him so long to think of it.
Kevin dragged himself across the icy floor to the bathtub, and with frozen fingers that could barely move, he turned on the hot-water faucet.
The frozen pipes clanged as the water tried to force its way through. Kevin thought it would never come, but finally cold water began to pour into the tub. Degree by degree the water slowly grew warmer until it was scalding hot. It flowed from the faucet, bubbling with heat; filled with energy.
In the dark, Kevin kept his distance as the bathtub filled, so the glasses wouldn't begin working too soon. Then, when the tub was full, Kevin stared at the dark door with a look of sheer determination. He focused all his thoughts on getting out of that awful room . . . and then he touched his fingertips to the surface of the water.
Josh heard the explosion five blocks away, and he instinctively knew it was Kevin. He flew out of the house, sprinting down the street at top speed toward the wall of rain clouds that loomed over the edge of town. He charged through backyards and crashed through hedges on the shortest route to Kevin's place.
He could see from halfway down the block that the front door of Kevin's house had been blown off its hinges by the force of the explosion. Shards of glass from the broken windows lay in the street. Josh raced inside and took the stairs three at a time.
"Kevin!" he screamed. "Kevin, where are you?"
All that was left of the upstairs bathroom was a gaping hole. That, and a bathtub full of solid ice.
"KEVIN!"
Through the huge hole in the wall, Josh could see the backyard, the brush-covered hill beyond, and the massive electrical tower that stood atop the hill like a giant Christmas tree.
That was where Josh spotted Kevin. He was climbing the hill toward the tower—the tower that brought in Ridgeline's entire energy supply.
As soon as Kevin's eyes had adjusted to the faint light after the explosion, he had begun his search for energy. The heat from the water had not been enough; he was still hungry, still cold. The glasses would fix him, but only if they had the energy.
When he saw the tower up on the hill, he licked his lips. Such a tremendous source of power was the perfect place to feed himself and the glasses.
As far as Kevin was concerned, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Halfway to the top of the hill, he heard Josh behind him.
"Kevin!" Josh screamed. "No!"
Kevin doubled his speed, scrambling through nettles that scraped his arms and legs. No one was going to stop him from reaching the top. He was going to get there. He had to.
"Kevin!" Josh screamed again, closer now. Kevin didn't turn around. He could already hear the electricity humming through the wires.
The nettles thinned to a bald spot atop the hill, out of which sprouted the four legs of the great steel beast. Kevin, unable to catch his breath, now dragged himself between two of the to
wer's legs, as if crossing through the gates of heaven.
But a demon had grabbed his leg, holding him back.
"I can't let you do it," Josh yelled over the electrical whine, locking himself around Kevin's legs like a ball and chain. "I won't let you!"
Kevin kicked and struggled. "Get your hands off me!" he screamed. Kevin then reached his hand out and pulled a pinecone out of thin air. "You're not my friend!" said Kevin. "A friend wouldn't have left me like that!" He brought his hand down, forcing the entire thing into Josh's mouth, as Bertram had done to him two weeks before.
Josh squealed a muffled cry of pain and loosened his grip just enough for Kevin to kick him away and scramble toward the nearest leg of the tower. The electricity was buzzing in Kevin's ears like a thousand sirens, promising him the world.
Josh plucked the pinecone from his mouth. "Kevin!"
"If you come any closer, I'll turn you into a snail—I swear I will!"
Kevin turned from Josh and reached for the tower.
"If you do it, it'll be the end of everything," yelled Josh, "and you won't be able to blame that on the glasses—because you '11 be the one who did it! . . . And then you'll be worse off than Bertram!"
"I don't care," Kevin growled. Then he added, "I already am." And with that Kevin firmly clasped the ridge of the girder.
Electricity instantly shot down the tower and surged into the glasses. The rush was more than Kevin could have imagined. He could feel his body and spirit inflate like a balloon. The glasses lapped up the energy, focused it, and sent it surging deep into Kevin's mind. He had never felt so completely energized—he never knew it was possible.
Then something went wrong. The joy became so intense that it began to burn, and the glasses, unable to bear the overload, started to crack again. Hairline fractures like the spiderweb of a smashed windshield spread across the whole surface of the sleek glass blade.
* * *
Josh, just ten feet away, lay on the ground, shielding his eyes. He looked up when he heard the crackling, popping sound of the glasses as they fractured—but still, the current of electricity fed them. Then at last the wires supplying the tower snapped, and with an earthshaking shudder, the arms of the tower melted down into twisted black stubs. The city below was plunged into darkness, and the power supplying the glasses finally died.
Josh could see Kevin now, standing on the scorched ground, looking more like a light bulb than a thirteen-year-old boy. Kevin's whole body seemed bloated, as if he had swallowed an entire ocean.
My God, thought Josh, all that power is still inside of him. But it couldn't stay in there for long. Josh knew what was about to happen, but all he could do was watch as Kevin Midas became the gateway to the Dream Time.
When Kevin could no longer hold in his ocean of energy, his mind exploded, blowing out through the fractured lens like a fiery supernova.
Josh saw shock waves of change radiate out from where Kevin stood, colorful surges like the northern lights that twisted space and time. Day changed to night changed to day, over and over; stars seemed to swarm in the sky like fireflies, changing their positions in the heavens.
It was like witnessing the creation itself, glorious and horrifying. The birth of Kevin's universe.
In the valley beneath them, space stretched and rippled until it tore open, and from the breach were born creatures of splendor and terror, angels and demons escaping haphazardly out of Kevin's imagination. It all seemed somehow familiar, all these miscreations from Kevin's mind—things Kevin must have seen in movies or comic books. Josh could even swear he saw Godzilla stomping by on the horizon. My God, thought Josh, are these the things that go on inside your mind, Kevin? How could you live with them? How could you stay sane? But even as the thought occurred to him, Josh knew that the insides of his own mind must have looked pretty much the same. If I had gotten to the mountaintop first, he thought, I could be the one trapped on the other side of those glasses now. He didn't know which was worse, being the dreamer or being the dream.
If there would ever be rules again—if the world was ever going to be pulled back out of Kevin's mind—then the glasses had to be destroyed now. So Josh leapt into the center of the chaos, right into the eyes of Kevin Midas.
Josh threw his hands before him, grabbed on to the glasses, and the moment he began to pull, he felt something happen to him. What he had feared—what he had sensed from the very beginning was happening! The glasses were pulling him in! Josh felt himself withering—collapsing in upon himself until the glasses seemed to loom like an immense wall of glass.
"Kevin, no!" But Kevin had no control.
With nothing to grab on to, Josh fell through the glasses as they were made of water rather than glass, and he screamed as he plunged down to the crushing core of Kevin's mind, where he would become nothing more than a figment of Kevin's imagination and be blotted out forever.
Josh screamed a single thought as he fell into Kevin's mind. "Break!" he cried to the glasses, praying that, for once, his wish would be stronger than Kevin's.
And then, a moment later, Josh Wilson ceased to exist.
Deep in his mind, Kevin felt Josh's wish ringing in his head. Then he felt the moment when Josh was gone, and the agony was too much to bear.
"Stop!" Kevin wailed, just as the glasses split in half and blew off his face. The force of the explosion threw him to the ground.
His head was spinning as if he had just leapt from the Vomit Wheel at the amusement park. Everything was peaceful and calm. No wind, no sound. Nothing.
"I'm dead," thought Kevin. "I have to be."
When he dared to open his eyes, he knew the glasses were truly gone from his face, for everything was fuzzy and out of focus.
What Kevin could see of the town below was not a pretty sight. It was still there, but it looked distorted, as if it had been squeezed through a fun- house mirror. It was not daytime, nor nighttime, but both at once. Through dense clouds of many colors, Kevin swore he made out not one but three different sources of light, as if the sun had multiplied itself.
And nothing was moving.
As once before, the silence that filled the air around him was unnatural.
"Josh?" he called, hoping beyond hope that he would be there. He wasn't.
Fragments of the shattered glasses were strewn everywhere, the powerful lenses useless at last. Kevin listened for a sound, any sound that would break the stillness, but there was nothing.
And then it occurred to him what his last command to the glasses had been.
Oh no! Of all the stupid, moronic, idiotic things I could wish for, this was the worst.
Just before the glasses had exploded from his face, Kevin had yelled, "Stop!" and they had obeyed their final order. The glasses had put the emergency brakes on, stopping time in its tracks, and freezing everything forever like a snapshot.
Everything, that is, except for Kevin Midas.
CHAPTER 16
9:42
Nothing moved.
Leaves and bits of paper that had been spinning in the wind now hung in the air, and gravity was too lazy to pull them down. They stirred slightly as Kevin brushed past, but otherwise they had no more reason to move than all those clocks frozen at forty-two minutes past the hour.
The air was scentless and flavorless as Kevin toured his neighborhood. The people he came across were fixed in their places like mannequins, with eyes open but unseeing, hearts frozen between beats.
All this belonged to Kevin now: a kingdom stretching out in all directions, with no one to threaten Kevin's dominion. Yet as he strolled through the wealthiest mansions in town, he knew there was nothing to be found here that he really wanted. It had been that way ever since his first experiments with the glasses. It seemed the morehe had, the more he felt was missing, and now that he had everything, he felt as if he had nothing. An overwhelming sense of emptiness cried out from inside him. I need . . . I need . . ., but he didn't know what he needed anymore.
The sickn
ess had already begun to come on— that sickness of need that always took over when the glasses were off his face.
By the time he reached his house, it was already turning him inside out. His head pounded like never before, his temperature was climbing, his teeth already ached from chattering, and if anything had been in his stomach, it wouldn't have stayed there very long. Kevin lay down upon his bed, and as he did, a vision came to him like a mirage in a parched desert.
The glasses were already healing.
They had exploded, but the pieces were already drawing themselves together on the top of that hill—for they could be disabled, but never, never destroyed. Even as he thought it, Kevin knew it to be true.
If you went back up the hill, Kevin told himself, and held the shattered fragments in your hand, they would come together right there before your eyes, and then you could put them on. Perhaps they couldn't set time back in motion again, undoing what Kevin had done, but they could do many more wonderful things that would ease Kevin's lonely existence. Most of all, they would takeaway the sickness. They would take away the need.
But Kevin clamped down his chattering teeth and uttered a single word to his empty room.
"No!" he said.
He would honor Josh's memory. He would resist the powerful pull.
No!
This time he would suffer through whatever awaited him here at the end of time, and he would face it without the glasses.
Kevin closed his eyes and lay like that, in the midst of the sickness, barely able to think or move, until, in the timeless silence, he heard someone knocking on a door.
Kevin thought it was some sort of hallucination. His droopy eyelids lifted part way, and he waited until he heard it again. Knock-knock-knock! It came from somewhere inside his house.
Kevin hauled himself out of his bed and into the hallway of many doors. Knock-knock-knock!
It came from the second door to the right—a heavy whitewashed oak door that rattled each time it was rapped upon.
Kevin had sparked out quite a few entrances to many places, and he had no idea where this particular door led.
Knock-knock-knock!