Dreamtreaders

  Kara’s eyes widened. “So, yeah, I see. You think you’re awake, but you’re still there, so you miss your deadline. You stay in too long.”

  “Scary stuff. You usually don’t pick up tendrils unless you’re in a dream forest for a stretch of time. I don’t know why. It’s prob—”

  The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

  “Is that it?” Kara asked, standing up with her still-full tray. “Did we get through them?”

  “Not quite,” Rigby said. “One more. Rule number seven: don’t get killed in the Dream. It doesn’t kill you in real life. That’s a bunch of Hollywood nonsense.”

  “So what does it do?”

  “It keeps you from having a Lucid Dream ever again,” he said. “The human body is an amazing thing, right? The mind protects itself. If you get killed in a dream and actually experience the life leaving your body, your mind seals off the nerve passages that make Lucid Dreaming possible. It’s quite extraordinary, really.”

  “But I can get shot or stabbed or blown up?” she asked. “I mean, I know I’m in a dream and that it’s not really happening.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, so a guy pulls a gun on you in the Dream world. You see it. You know it’s a gun, but you know it’s a dream, so the bullets hit you. It takes a moment for your brain to catch up. You might bleed a little, but you can make it go away.”

  “Right, right,” she said. “But?”

  “But if something happens suddenly, without warning, say, like a beheading, your mind doesn’t catch up. You feel yourself fade out. You can’t come back. Uncle Scovy had a research partner that happened to, so that’s ’ow he figured it out.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Rigby said, heading for the door to the cafeteria. “C’mon, we have to get to class.”

  “No, tell me,” Kara said. “Please.”

  Rigby stopped, sighed, and put his hands in his pockets. His intense brown eyes seemed to withdraw within themselves. His usually too-cool, sideways smirk vanished. “It was like the guy was an addict,” Rigby said at last. “Going through withdrawals because he couldn’t experience Lucid Dreams any longer. It was horrible: panic attacks, the shakes, paranoia. Eventually, he went mad and jumped off a bridge.”

  In a sightless chamber, where the cold lingered and the air was as still as a grave, two figures sat crouched in the dark.

  “It was foolish,” he said.

  “Seeking to aid someone in dire need is never foolish,” she replied. “How long will you distress yourself? Isn’t the torture from our captors enough?”

  “No, Mesmeera,” he said. “It’s not. It was my folly that drove us both on that beady-eyed little maggot’s errand. It was my folly that took us into the forsaken moors of Archaia. And it was my folly that led us into the Lurker’s torture chamber.”

  “Look at me, Duncan!” Mesmeera hissed.

  “I cannot look . . . at . . . you.”

  “Right.” Mesmeera released a caustic sigh. “I know that. Imagine me, then. Imagine my face, stern and indignant. Imagine my green eyes flashing with anger . . . and compassion. Listen to me. It is not noble to rob me of my responsibility in this matter. I wear these chains now, not because you led me to them. I did. I chose to follow. I made a decision at every turn. It was my folly as well as yours!”

  Mesmeera let out fierce cry and shook her fists. The heavy chains rattled, their weight forcing her arms to drop.

  Duncan scratched quickly at his beard. “There is wisdom in what you say. But I led you, Mesmeera. I led—”

  “Lead, follow—what difference does it make? It’s all a choice. There’s no escape in blame, no comfort in shirking responsibility. We all make choices. We must all face the consequences of those choices.”

  “Even when it means we both knew better, that we both knowingly broke almost every rule of Dreamtreading? Even when it means that we will never see the waking world again? Even when it means we will forever be at the mercy of utter wickedness . . . even then?”

  “Yes, Duncan. Even then.” Mesmeera sighed. “The truth may hurt, but it is never so agonizing as the dagger of lies we tell ourselves.” She was quiet a moment, resting her head on her cuffed wrists upon her knees. Then she said, “Besides, we need to use our thoughts for something more productive, like getting out of here. I’m not ready to believe we don’t have a part to play in this yet.”

  “Shhh!” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Yes, I am coming to visit you,” came a rasping voice, seasoned with a peculiar buzzing, almost like hornets. “I have brought nourishment, meat and bread.” Footsteps grew nearer.

  “Well, now, that’s a relief,” Duncan quipped. “More dream food. You know it does us no good.”

  “Oh, it will now, Dreamtreaders.”

  The voice was just outside the cell bars, but Duncan and Mesmeera could see nothing in the inky black of the chamber. “What do you mean?” Mesmeera asked.

  “This food will nourish your minds. Take. Eat.”

  Duncan recoiled as a hunk of bread was pressed into his hand. He hadn’t heard the cell door open. But someone was in with them now.

  Mesmeera let out a yelp.

  “Mes!” Duncan called.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just startled me is all. Gave me the food.”

  “Same here,” Duncan said. He lifted the bread to his nose. It smelled fresh. It smelled spectacular. Cinnamon for sure. Maybe nutmeg. He took a bite and found it was something like raisin bread. There were little pieces of dried fruit within the flaky flesh of the bread.

  “Thank you for the food,” Mesmeera whispered, her eyes straining to pick up some form, some figure outlined against the thick darkness. She saw no contrast. Only pitch-black. “Hello? Are you still here?”

  “Yes. Still here.”

  “You said this food nourishes our mind. How so?” she asked.

  “Your minds are forever in the Dream,” the voice said. “They will need stimulation. My food can do that for you. But I wonder if someone will take such good care of your physical bodies in the Temporal.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Mesmeera said defiantly. “We have plans in place.”

  There was laughter from the darkness, but it was not pleasant.

  “You’ve kept us in darkness all this time,” Duncan said. “Why all the hiding?” There was no answer. “At least tell us where we are?”

  The laughter stopped abruptly. “Now that you’ve eaten, I suppose you’ll have the strength to bear it. So I will tell you about your new home. It is called Number 6.”

  FIFTEEN

  GALLOWS HALL

  ARCHER HAD A PROBLEM. LOTS OF PROBLEMS, ACTUALLY, as usual. This was a new one, however, and as he tried to soldier through a droning Chemistry lecture, this fresh issue vexed him. He’d brought Bezeal’s coveted puzzle box, the mysterious Karakurian Chamber, back from the Dream.

  He hadn’t meant to. He’d meant to take it straight to Bezeal and be done with it. But the Stroke of Reckoning had sounded, and there had been no way to get back to Kurdan in time. Still, when the Dreamtreader hit his anchor, he hadn’t expected the puzzle box to come back with him. That’s not how things worked.

  On one of his first Dreamtreading trips, Archer had found a six-inch, superfuzzy, talking caterpillar. He wanted to keep it as a pet, so he held on to it when he touched his anchor. The caterpillar did not enter the waking world. Archer had repeated the experiment with metals, stone, paper, leaves, jewels—even food. Nothing came back. Ever.

  Yet the Tokens of Doom had come back. Somehow the Nightmare Lord had attached them to Archer before he went to the anchor. That was the first time. Now the puzzle box.

  “. . . hope you are all preparing well for the Battle of the Brains,” Dr. Pallazzo was saying. “Monday will be A through H. Tuesday, I through P . . .”

  Archer bolted upright. Tuesday? Tuesday! I haven’t started studying. Rigby is going to slam me
. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Rigby is going to beat me fiercely about the head and shoulders, drop-kick me into the lower atmosphere, and then slam me.

  Archer shook his head. Okay, so I have two problems. I’m going to fail Chemistry. And I’ve brought back some kind of powerful relic from the Dream. A little voice in the back of Archer’s mind whispered that there was a third problem that maybe trumped them all: he’d defied Master Gabriel. Inexcusably. Directly. Absolutely. Archer rushed that voice back into a dark mental corner.

  The bell rang, emptying classes out into the halls. Kara pushed by Archer to catch up with Rigby. She didn’t say a word. All Archer could do was shake his head.

  Amy appeared at Archer’s elbow. “You getting ready for the big match versus Rigby?” she asked, bubbly as usual.

  “Kaylie’s on board,” he said dismally. “But there’s only so much she can do. After all, it is Chemistry, and I am, well . . . me.”

  Amy laughed. Archer laughed too, his snorts inspiring new rounds of snickers and giggles.

  “I love your laugh,” she said. “You sound just like Elmer Fudd, uh . . . with snorts.”

  “You love my laugh?” Archer asked. “Most people think it’s annoying.”

  “How can anything that makes you laugh be annoying?” she asked. “Laughter makes the world go round.”

  Just like that, Amy was gone, off on her way to Tech Ed. Archer had a random thought about Amy, but tossed that one quickly into the same mental corner as his imprisoned worries about Gabriel.

  Puzzle box! Think! Archer wondered what it was. Why did Bezeal want it so badly? Why had the other Dreamtreaders gone after it? Had they also been tempted by the offer of a sure-fire way to dethrone the Nightmare Lord? That was the only answer that made sense. Duncan and Mesmeera were not stupid. They didn’t take unnecessary risks. Still, they had gone after the puzzle box.

  Archer wasn’t thinking about his path to Gym class. He came to the T-junction in the hall. To go left was the long way, around the auxiliary gym. Going right was much shorter, past the custodial offices and supply rooms, and up the hallway known as Gallows Hall.

  Still puzzling over the puzzle box, Archer turned right.

  The best thing to do would be to contact Gabriel, confess his lack of obedience, and give him the puzzle box. If anyone knew what to do with it, Master Gabriel would. If anyone could see through Bezeal’s deceptions, Master Gabriel could. And if anyone could banish Archer into some nether-region hole in the ground, Master Gabriel could. Archer chucked that idea into the already crowded corner.

  That led to an even more frightening thought. What about the Superior? Would the Superior be upset about Archer’s lack of obedience?

  Suddenly, Archer stopped walking. The light in the hall dimmed ahead. It was not a gradual thing either. It went from full light to a little light . . . to no light.

  “Gallows Hall,” Archer muttered. “Why did I come this way?”

  He looked ahead. The Gym entrance was the very last door on the right at the very end of the hallway. Prior to that, there were two alcoves on the right: one to the girls’ locker room; one for the boys’ locker room. There was one gap on the left-hand side for restrooms and two drinking fountains notched between. Even on a blazingly sunny day like this one, all three of these areas were in almost complete shadow.

  There had been more fights and so-called “jumpings” in this hall than all the other halls in Dresden High put together. The principal and assistant principal did their best to patrol the area. They published a newsletter saying that the school had ordered new track lighting, but the Board of Ed had frozen school funds until a district shortfall could be taken care of. The result: Gallows Hall stayed Gallows Hall.

  And it was Friday. Archer had heard Guzzy and his cronies talking about something going down on Friday in Gallows Hall, but what, and exactly when? He couldn’t be certain, but he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be some form of payback to Rigby.

  “I should probably at least mention it to him,” Archer muttered as he stepped into the shadows of Gallows Hall. He passed the guys’ locker room, moving a little to the right as he passed the restrooms, and back to the left as he passed the girls’ locker room. He could handle himself. Dreamtreader training had been heavily dosed with hand-to-hand combat. Archer wasn’t really worried about a fight for himself, at least not one-on-one.

  And Rigby had pretty much disabled Guzzy with one strike, though it had been an unexpected blow. But taking out several very strong, very devious guys would be a lot more dangerous.

  Archer passed through Gallows Hall without incident and headed into Gym. Mr. Gant and Ms. Simmons divided up the classes into six soccer teams and turned them loose for the block. Archer loved soccer, but his mind was so busy with other issues that he all but phoned in his effort. Worse still, Rigby was on a different team, and they never played against Archer’s.

  But after class, Archer was determined to catch up to Rigby. The locker room was crowded, and Archer raced through the other boys trying to get to his locker. He passed Rigby’s row and was about to turn in and talk to him, but three senior football players plowed right past and blocked the row. Archer figured he’d change first and then catch Rigby. He ducked under a towel battle and finally found a clear path to his own locker. He changed faster than ever, feeling very much like Superman ducking in and out of a phone booth. But unlike the Man of Steel, who usually arrived on time to save the day, Archer zipped around two banks of lockers to find Rigby already gone.

  “Did you see which way Rigby went?” Archer asked Chris Hopper, whose locker was close by.

  “Nah, man,” Chris said. “But he has Physics last with Mrs. Shapiro.”

  “Thanks,” Archer said, racing out of the locker room.

  The bell had rung and so the hallway just outside the gym was flooded. Archer hopped up and down as he passed through the throng, looking for Rigby. He wasn’t headed the safe way, not unless he was ducking down for some reason while he was walking. That meant Gallows Hall. And that meant trouble.

  Archer reversed course, pushed his way through the crowd, and started to duck down Gallows Hall. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Whoa, where are you going in such a hurry?” Kara Windchil asked.

  Something in the back of Archer’s mind mentioned that this was the first thing Kara had said directly to him all week. He was tempted to ignore her.

  “Archer?” Kara said.

  But then again, Archer thought, maybe she could help. “There’s something going on,” he told her, freeing himself from her grip to keep up his momentum. “Get a teacher, would ya? It’s Guzzy in Gallows Hall.”

  Archer pressed on and passed into the shadows. He slowed just a step, wondering why he was wandering into Gallows Hall when he knew good and well that Guzzy and his buddies would be waiting. He heard the deep voices before he saw anyone. One, slightly annoyed, perfect diction, and an English accent: Rigby. The other, hoarse, gravelly, full of mischief: Guzzy.

  Not thinking of what he was doing, Archer drove ahead. He passed the door to the girls’ locker room, finding the group in the twilight near the restrooms. Archer skidded to a halt and instantly took in the situation. It was four against one: Rigby surrounded by Guzzy, Dev Gates, Gil Messchek, and Randy Pell.

  “. . . think you can just step off the boat and be the man?” Guzzy was saying, the rasp in his voice thicker than ever.

  “Look,” Rigby said, “I don’t know what you think you know, but I’m not about takin’ over your territory, right? Just startin’ a club, that’s all. I’d let you boys join, but I don’t think you have the brainpower to handle it.”

  “Is he sayin’ we’re stupid?” Dev mumbled.

  “Shut up!” Gil hissed.

  Guzzy fumed. “Whatever, man, but you cheap-shotted me, made me look bad. You made it personal.”

  “That hurt, did it?” Rigby taunted. “Well, there’s more where that came from. You and your boys better back
off, or I’ll do far worse than that.”

  Archer was initially frozen by Guzzy’s speed. In a blink, he’d lunged at Rigby and launched a right cross. Rigby spun with the blow, but when he looked up, his lower lip was split and bleeding.

  “That was a mistake,” Rigby said, his voice quiet and menacing.

  Dev surged forward, taking a wild swing, but Rigby slipped the punch and caught his attacker’s forearm. With blurring speed and agility, he seemed to swing on Dev’s arm, leaping up and hooking his lower legs on either side of the kid’s throat. The move threw a ton of weight on Dev, felling him in a split second. Rigby rolled off, leaving his attacker gasping for air.

  That was apparently enough of the one-on-one approach for Guzzy and the others. They came at Rigby from three different directions. That was also enough for Archer. He launched forward and performed a perfect base-stealing slide, taking Randy Pell off his feet.

  “Keaton?” Randy breathed. “What’re you doin’? Stay out of this!” Gil had awkwardly grabbed Rigby from behind in some kind of improvised wrestler’s hold. Guzzy smashed a heavy fist right into Rigby’s midsection. Rigby coughed, but must have been feigning because he used the blow and drove Gil backward into the hall’s brick wall. Stunned, Gil let go, but Dev jumped up and thundered his cinder-block fist into Rigby’s jaw.

  All Archer could do was watch out of the corner of his eye as Randy came back in, ready to fight. Unlike Gil’s wild punches, Randy’s quick jabs seemed to have some real skill behind them. It was all Archer could do to duck and dodge them.

  Back in the center, Rigby shrugged off Gil’s heavy punch, but there was a lot of blood around his mouth. Gil and Guzzy seemed to be converging on Rigby.

  A flash of movement, and Archer ducked two of Randy’s quick jabs to the head. The uppercut that came next might have knocked out Archer had he not twisted his trunk to catch the punch in his shoulder. It still hurt, but Archer was able to hold on to consciousness.