Dreamtreaders

“Taking us to see the animals. I loved it.” She ran over and gave Archer a huge fuzzy footie-pajama hug.

  He let her go, smiled, and patted her shoulder. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  “I can get you in,” she said.

  Archer sat up. “What?”

  “That door in Rigby’s basement,” she said. “I know how to get you in.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  BENEATH THE SURFACE

  THE SECOND MOON HAD RISEN JUST HIGH ENOUGH OVER the windswept moors of Archaia to paint the incline a frozen silver. The ever-churning mists wrapped around shrub and stone, shreds of it moving in odd directions as if more than one air current flowed there.

  Movement flashed beneath the ridge of dark stone, where the jagged rocks in silhouette made it appear that a host of demons and devils had perched. A sinewy figure worked carefully at an arched door of stone. He stepped inside and pulled the door shut, dust raining down upon his wild shock of white hair. The large man laughed, the sound high and manic. “Won’t be gittin’ in this way agin, no!” he said. “Not without ringin’ the bell.”

  There was a slight hitch in his gait, an uneven measure in his knobby legs that made him seem lopsided as he passed the torches, his many shadows even more misshapen. The hall opened into his favorite room: the laboratory. His fingers clicking as he worked, the man adjusted the height of one burner’s flame, lowered another. He switched out flasks at the end of one section of tubing and drained another. Finally, the man came to the end of a very busy machine and checked the level of a deep holding cistern built right into the floor.

  He cackled again and clapped. “He, heh, hee! Production’s well ahead of schedule. Grand, isn’t it?” He reached into the lowest pocket of his coat and pulled out a handful of shriveled black berries. He tossed them into his mouth, chewing vigorously enough that their juice drizzled down his lips. “Grand, indeed.”

  The man left the laboratory and came to a semi-hidden door. He grabbed the nearest torch from its sconce, checked over his shoulder, and then disappeared through the door. Stairs led down and down. Fifty feet from the bottom, he could already hear their clicking and gnashing. Of course he could. The man didn’t breed them for serenity.

  At last, near the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and gazed over the edges of the six massive breeding tanks. They were filled near to the brim with teeming, wriggling black shapes, hundreds of thousands of scurions. But these were special scurions. They were blind, sure, but they had other ways to sense where they were. And they were voracious.

  The man came to the bottom of the stairs and looked curiously down into a hay-strewn pen where several lambs lay sleeping. “Not this one,” he muttered. “Too skinny.” He walked around the waist-high fence, wobbled a moment, and then said, “You’ll do.” He curled his long knobby fingers around a rather plump lamb’s neck. With little effort, he yanked the lamb off the ground and carried it back to the stairs.

  The man snorted and cackled. Then he tossed the lamb into the vat of scurions. The teeming and snapping in the tank sprayed a mist of water into the air. The sound was something like a driving rainstorm combined with a brick of firecrackers.

  “My, can they eat,” the Lurker whispered.

  He scuttled the rest of the way down the steps and used his torch to light other torches all around the room. Then, he began the arduous task of opening all the pipeline valves. It took several tolls of Old Jack, but in the end, it would clear the way for his little beasties to travel great distances, deep beneath the surface of two districts.

  Three strains had gone in already. This was the last one. It wouldn’t be long now, the Lurker knew. He went to the breeding tanks and, one by one, turned their wheel valves to open. Scurions flooded out into the pipeline system.

  “No, it won’t be long at all.”

  A melodic tinkling bell drifted down the stairs. The Lurker looked up, grumbling. “Hmph, a bit early.” He took a large blackened-metal snuff cap and went round to put out the torches. Back through the percolating laboratory and up the winding hall, he trudged, breathing more heavily than he would have liked.

  The bell rang again, this time loud and shrill so close to the door. The Lurker rolled his eyes and adjusted his wire-rim glasses. Then, he swung wide the door and said, “Evening, Nephew.”

  Kara pushed herself away from her grand dining table. She couldn’t possibly have eaten even a single bite from each main course she’d created. It was enough food for a small army. But she didn’t care. It was so easy to create things she’d already created once. Like cheesecake, for instance. Coop had given her tips, and her cheesecake now was just as tasty. Maybe better. And all this was guilt-free too, she remembered. No calories in the Dream counted toward the waist in the real world. Even so, she was too stuffed for cheesecake.

  Kara stood and wandered once more to her favorite chair before the fire. She was about to plop down for a rest when she remembered something. Something she hadn’t realized before.

  Rather than sitting, she wandered over to the door she’d “installed” the other day. There was no handle or ring presently. She fixed that and yanked the door open, or rather, she nearly pulled her arm out of socket. “Why did I make this so thick?” she grumbled. But she knew why. She remembered. That was what she noticed the lack of this time. No screams. No complaints. No crying out.

  Kara reduced the thickness of the door and opened it rather easily. She stepped to the threshold of a long set of darkened stairs. She listened for a long moment and heard nothing. “Hello, down there!” she called. “You’re awful quiet lately. You are still alive, aren’t you?”

  She waited. Still no answer. No movement. Nothing stirring.

  The thought hit her like a bolt of lightning. But they couldn’t have escaped. They were too weak. Too delusional. The bonds too strong.

  No, she realized, not an escape. He’d come for them at last.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE BASEMENT DOOR

  “ARE YOU SURE WE’RE STILL ON ZOO DUTY?” AMY ASKED. “I didn’t see Rigby at school.”

  “I really don’t know for sure,” Archer said. He led them up Rigby’s front walk to the porch. “Rigby didn’t text me.”

  “He better be here,” Kaylie said. “I want to see the animals.”

  Archer shrugged and rapped lightly on the front door. The Rigby who opened the door that Friday afternoon looked tired. No, Archer thought. Tired would be an understatement. The young man who usually oozed cool and roguish charm had dark circles under bloodshot eyes, frizzy hair, and rumpled clothing.

  “Whoa,” Archer said. “Aren’t you a portrait of stunning good health.”

  “That’s why I stayed home from school today,” Rigby muttered. “Guess I’ve come down with something.”

  “I can see that,” Archer said.

  “Should we come back another day?” Amy asked.

  “Noooo,” Kaylie whined quietly.

  Rigby held the door open wide. “No, no,” he said. “It’s nothing that bad. Please, come in. You’re doing me even more of a favor by takin’ this off my hands.”

  “You sure?” Archer said.

  “Yeah, yeah, come on in,” Rigby said, stepping back. “But, ah, we’re fresh out of cookies, I’m afraid.”

  “No big deal,” Archer said. “Let’s hit the zoo, gang.”

  “Ha,” Rigby said. “You’re callin’ it a zoo now, are you?”

  “It’s better than a zoo,” Kaylie said. “Zoos are so mundane. Your animals are so diverse and magnificent.”

  “Quite the vocabulary you have, Miss Kaylie,” Rigby said, his charm turned up a notch.

  “I’m kind of smart,” she said, blushing.

  “So I’ve noticed,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, I’m surprised you’re not a GIFT kid.”

  “Yeah, well . . . we should probably get to work,” Archer said, avoiding an awkward conversation about money. He moved quickly toward the basement door. Amy and Kaylie followed. Then, Archer calle
d back, “Rigby, you . . . uh . . . you going out or just crashing?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I’m feeling a little better now. I might just go out. Yeah, can’t let the lads down, now can I?”

  “Lads?”

  “The club, Archer,” Rigby said. “I mentioned it to you before. We’ll have a talk about it sometime. I think it might be right up your alley.”

  Okay, Archer thought as he led the way to the basement, what was that? He was used to Rigby looking sly or smug, but this look was different. Rigby had a gleam in his eye, an eagerness that bordered on hunger.

  They’d been working diligently on the animal care for about thirty minutes when Archer heard footsteps overhead. He thought he tracked them pacing across the kitchen, up the hall, and to the front door. He wasn’t positive, but he thought he heard the front door open and close.

  So Rigby decided to go out after all, Archer thought. Doctor Who, in her usual spot on his shoulder, cocked her head sideways. Archer knelt to scoop some feed into the angora rabbit’s hutch. He heard Kaylie and Amy talking a row or two over.

  “Buster was stupid not to come,” Kaylie was saying. “Video games are stupid.”

  “He’s a boy,” Amy said. “He’s wired differently, yep.”

  “You mean he’s stupid?”

  “No,” Amy said, giggling. “Buster’s quite smart. Not as smart as you and not in the same ways, but still smart. He just, well . . . boys find the action in those games stimulating.”

  “I find these animals stimulating,” Kaylie said. They laughed.

  Archer was only half listening. His thoughts turned to the strange metal door on the other side of the basement. It wasn’t just simple curiosity. In some ways, Archer really didn’t want to know what was behind the door. There was a very strong sense of foreboding related to the door. Everything from the strange pulsing vibrations felt through the metal to the odd shooshing sound to the faint, thin regular beeping—it all felt wrong. Dangerous, even. But, for whatever reason, this felt like a danger he should know something about. Like knowing a rattlesnake waited a few feet away, it was better to know it was there, rather than stumbling onto it later.

  Archer finished feeding the rabbits and went on to the next task. He tried not to think about the door.

  “I guess that wraps things up, yep,” Amy said.

  Archer didn’t reply. He sat on a stool near the meerkat pen, deep in thought.

  “Archer, you ready to go?” Amy asked.

  “What, huh?”

  “Where’s your head?” Amy asked. “I said, I think we’re finished here. Ready to go.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” Archer said, knowing that he couldn’t have sounded any more reluctant if he’d tried. He stood, trudged slowly to Doctor Who’s cage and let the barn owl hop onto its perch.

  They left the basement, but Archer stopped in the kitchen. “Rigby?” he called. “You back yet?” There was no answer. “Rigby?” Still no answer.

  “Archer, what are you doing?” Amy asked.

  “Actually, Amy, there’s something else Kaylie and I need to do,” he said. “But you can go on home.”

  “You sure?” she asked. “I don’t mind staying to help.”

  “You’ve been a huge help, seriously,” he said. “But I’ll catch up with you in school on Monday.”

  Amy shrugged. “Okay, then. See ya.”

  With Amy gone, Archer turned back to the basement steps.

  “You want me to open that door,” Kaylie said. “Don’t you?”

  “Kaylie, I would never ask you to do something that might get you into trouble,” he said. “But this door . . . there’s something about it that worries me.”

  “Curiosity killed the meerkat,” Kaylie said, looking over her shoulder back at the zoo.

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. “But it’s really more than curiosity.” He led Kaylie back down the stairs. “There’s something suspicious about Rigby. He lives in this big house with his mom, he says. But I’ve never seen her. He leaves GIFT in May? No one changes schools in May. And honestly, I wonder about his uncle. The circumstances around his uncle’s death are peculiar.”

  “Think Rigby killed him?” Kaylie asked.

  Archer looked at his sister. “Have you been sneaking peeks when Dad’s watching murder mysteries?”

  “No,” Kaylie replied, half pouting. “I’ve been reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “Okay, Sherlock,” Archer said, “I don’t know what it all adds up to, but it feels wrong. My gut tells me there’s something important behind this door. I mean, who has a door like this in their basement? It looks like a hatch to a space station.”

  They turned left and came to the door. Archer put his ear to the metal. Same vibration. Same shoosh. Same faint beeps. “Think you can do it?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. She went to the keypad and stared at it for a long time, several minutes at least. Then she started pushing buttons. After each sequence, the keypad made a tone, and a little red light blinked once. “You might want to sit down for a bit, Archer,” she said. “It might take me a little while.”

  Archer sat on the bottom step and tried to listen for any sign that Rigby might be returning. He watched Kaylie working and let his mind roam.

  Then he heard a muted buzz.

  “Yes!” Kaylie said.

  Archer was up in an instant. The keypad light now shone bright green. “Kaylie, how on earth did you figure it out?”

  “This is where Sherlock would say, ‘Elementary, Watson,’ ” she giggled. “See, look at the keypad. The numbers that are most worn out are 1, 3, 7, and 5. At first, I thought for sure the code would be at least six numbers, so I tried all kinds of doubles. But nothing worked. Then I thought, well, he’s a boy. He wouldn’t want a long combination, so I went to five numbers. And then just the four. He’s tall, so I figured the higher numbers first. I was right. It was 3-1-5-7.”

  Archer nodded, impressed. “Stay behind me. No idea what’s in here.” When Kaylie stepped back, Archer turned the latch handle and pushed the door inward. There was a faint hiss of compressed air, and all the sounds from within grew much louder. The shoosh, the beep, and a light tip-tapping that he hadn’t heard before. The door was open now a few inches, but other than a few small lights, it was totally dark inside.

  Archer swallowed and pushed the door again. It swung slowly away from him. There was a faint plinking sound, and fluorescent lights snapped on overhead. In that moment, several things happened in quick succession:

  There came a terrible ruckus from above.

  Heavy footfalls pounded down the steps.

  Kaylie screamed.

  Someone yelled from behind, “What have you done?”

  Kaylie screamed again, and Archer nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around and put Kaylie protectively at his side. “Rigby? I . . . I thought—”

  “You thought I was gone, so you hack in, is it?” His face turned blistering red. “What, you got your little sister to crack the code, did you? Could’na been you. You’re not smart enough.”

  “It’s not her fault, Rigby,” he said.

  Rigby’s face churned between exhaustion, rage, and anguish. His voice sounded weak when he said, “You shouldn’t ’ave opened that door.”

  “You wanna explain what I’m seeing?” Archer demanded, pointing inside the room.

  It was a laboratory, but medical in nature. There were all kinds of machines and monitors, keeping track of various vital signs. And in the room’s center, lying on a mechanically adjustable examination bed, was a very tall man. He was much older. His straggly wisps of hair were white, and his skin was wrinkled and very stretched. He wore a plain hospital-style gown. His arms, legs, and head were all strapped down.

  “Well, Rigby?” Archer yelled. “What is this?”

  Rigby sighed. “This is my Uncle Scoville.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  NO TIME

  “IS HE . . . IS HE DEAD?” KAYLIE ASKED, ON
THE VERGE OF tears.

  “No, he’s in a coma,” Rigby said. He pushed past Archer and Kaylie into the room. He wandered over to a bank of monitors, clicked a mouse a few times, and said, “He’s doing about as well today as he has for the last five years, but some of ’is major organs are beginning to wear out.”

  Archer walked into the room. Seeing Rigby’s uncle up close was not a pleasant experience. In the sterile fluorescent light, his flesh had a greenish quality as if it might begin to peel away from the bone. “What . . . what happened to him?”

  Rigby sighed. “He stayed too long.”

  Archer frowned. Stayed . . . too long. The Laws Nine. When the reality finally hit him, it was like a thunderclap. “He was a Walker,” Archer whispered.

  “A what?” Rigby asked, squinting.

  “A Lucid Walker,” Archer explained. “Your uncle studied dream science, didn’t he? He figured it out, how to have Lucid Dreams?”

  “Listen, Archer,” Rigby said. “Are we going to beat around the bush here, or are we going to lay all the cards on the table?”

  “Huh?”

  “You are a Dreamtreader, aren’t you?”

  “I . . . How do you know that term—”

  “Don’t try to deny it,” Rigby said. “I know that you are. I was there, in the Kurdan Marketplace . . . at the Reliquary. You were looking for Bezeal, remember?” Rigby’s face seemed to change, his eyes darkening. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, “He’s fresh meat, ain’t he?”

  Archer felt the blood drain from his face. “That . . . that Scarecrow person was you?”

  “Well, in disguise, anyway,” he said. “Easy to do, in the Dream.”

  “Archer,” Kaylie said, her voice thin . . . worried, “what is Rigby talking about?”

  “I’ll explain it later,” Archer said.

  “But why did Rigby say his uncle was dead if he was just comatose? There’s a difference. Why?”

  “Something I mean to find out,” Archer said. “Now, go look in on the meerkats. Rigby and I need to talk.”

  “But why did Rigby call you a Dreamtreader?” she persisted. “A treader is one who treads or travels. Who walks on a dream?”