The Paladin Prophecy

  “No lights on. Gonna leave it that way, case the Caps got it scoped out.”

  “Where are your parents?” whispered Ajay.

  “Not home,” whispered Will. “Still at work and … out of town. Out of town on work.”

  Nick and Ajay glanced at each other. Nando moved down the hall into the living room. Will’s heart sank when he saw it.

  It was completely trashed: Books scattered, chairs broken, wallpaper ripped from the walls. Floorboards had been pried up and left in jagged stumps. The sofa had been torn apart and the stuffing pulled out. Dad’s plaster bust of Voltaire had been shattered. They’d smashed his prized turntable, too, dumped out his record collection and stomped most of the priceless old disks into shards.

  “Dude,” whispered Nick. “You been robbed.”

  “Doesn’t look too good, holmes,” said Nando.

  “The bastards,” said Will, gritting his teeth.

  “Did you know about this, Will?” asked Ajay, more wide-eyed than usual.

  “I had a pretty good idea,” said Will. “Check upstairs.”

  Nando backed out of the room and climbed the stairs. The light grew dimmer; all the doors on the second floor were closed.

  “Hang a left at the top,” said Will.

  Nando rounded the corner. The whole house was deathly quiet. All they could hear was Nando’s breathing. “Hot up here, man,” he whispered. “A lot hotter. They must’ve left the heat on.”

  “My room’s straight ahead of you,” said Will. “Look in there.”

  The hallway flooded with light as Nando opened the door. It took a moment for the camera to adjust and then Will saw his room. Or what was left of it. It looked like wreckage caused by a hurricane. Everything had been chopped to pieces. The banner over the window—THE IMPORTANCE OF AN ORDERLY MIND—hung to the floor in tatters.

  “Oh, Will,” said Ajay in sympathy.

  They were looking for something. Something Dad must have hidden. But what?

  “Dude,” said Nick. “All kidding aside. This is serious.”

  Will felt sick, hoping and praying that the same kind of violence hadn’t been done to his parents. What do these people want from us? From me?

  “Check my parents’ room,” said Will. “Down the hall, last door on the left. There’s a shelf of files next to my dad’s desk.”

  Nando padded down the hall. When he reached the door, the camera tilted down. Nando’s hand came into view, turning the knob. He pushed the door open.

  As he walked through the doorway, a thin gossamer strand of filament that had been stretched across the threshold snapped. Nando never noticed. And in the furnace room under the basement stairs, a ring on a round steel mesh drum the size of a beer keg rotated slowly to the left. A plug rose out of the barrel with a hiss, and a thick yellowish vapor began to fill the room.…

  Upstairs in Will’s parents’ bedroom, Nando surveyed more of the same destruction. Will’s parents’ bed had been slashed and stripped to the coils. His father’s desk had been emptied, drawers pulled out and smashed.

  “The shelves are all empty, man,” said Nando. “Maybe the Caps took the files out in those boxes.” The camera focused in on a thermostat near the door. “No wonder it’s so hot in here. Thermostat’s turned up to eighty-five.”

  “Check the closet,” said Will.

  Nando moved to the open closet; it was a walk-in, deep and spacious and dark. He raised a pocket flashlight and switched it on. The camera followed the flashlight beam around the closet. Clothes and hangers had been pulled off the rails and tossed into a big pile on the floor.

  “There’s nothing in here, man,” said Nando. “And they’ve searched it.”

  “There’s a false panel in the ceiling,” said Will. “Near the back right corner. Try looking there. You’ll need a chair.”

  Nando dragged a chair from the bedroom to the rear of the closet. He stood on it and examined the ceiling, which was covered with a layer of sprayed white insulation.

  “Think I see it,” said Nando. “There’s a seam here.” He poked around until a panel, about a foot square, shifted out of its frame. Nando pushed it up and out of the way. “I can see the rafters. There’s like a crawl space. And there’s something up here.”

  “Can you reach it?” asked Will.

  “I’ll try,” said Nando. The screen went blurry as Nando tilted his head to the side. “I got it.” He brought a black bag down into view and pointed his light at it. “It’s like a doctor’s bag. Real old leather.”

  “That belonged to my dad,” said Will.

  “Something’s printed near the handle, kind of faded. It’s initials, I think.”

  Will didn’t remember seeing lettering on the bag before. “Is it J. W.?”

  “No, man. That’s not it. Looks like … H. G.”

  “That can’t be right,” said Will.

  “Take a look,” said Nando. He held the bag in front of the camera. They saw faded gold letters on the worn pebbled leather below the handle: H. G.

  “Open it,” said Will.

  “Hold on a sec,” said Nando. “Thought I heard something.”

  A moment later they heard a muffled boom, as if something heavy and metallic had hit the floor downstairs.

  “What was that?” asked Nick.

  “Maybe the furnace?” said Ajay.

  “No,” Nando whispered. “I think somebody’s in the house.”

  Will leaned in, alarmed. “You need to get out, Nando. Get out of the house.”

  Nando jumped off the chair and started toward the open door. “Oh, man,” he said. “What is that? Something really stinks in here.” Then he stopped at the door. “I hear something moving in the crawl space.”

  Will shouted at the screen, “Nando, get out of there now!”

  Nando spun around. His flashlight whirled and found the hatch in the ceiling. Something stood on the edge of the opening. Will’s first thought was that it looked like a huge version of an insect kids called a potato bug.

  But this thing was worse. Much worse. It had a tiny head on a pale stalk; pincers sprouted from its jaws. Big bright eyes protruded from an almost human face. It reared up on its hind legs, revealing a waxy segmented belly and the rest of its limbs, wriggling rows of what looked like black, stubby fingers.

  “Aw, sick!” said Nando.

  The thing emitted a high-pitched rattling screech and leaped off the ledge at the camera. Ajay, Nick, and Will jumped back from the screen. Nando swatted it away, turned, and jumped out of the closet, slamming the door behind him.

  “Did you see that?” Nando asked.

  “Yes!” yelled Will, Nick, and Ajay.

  They heard the bug hit the inside of the door, then watched as its pincers speared straight through the wood like twin drill bits, secreting an acidic red-orange fluid that quickly liquefied a pulpy wet hole.

  “What is that thing?” shouted Ajay.

  An automatic pistol appeared in Nando’s hands.

  “Dude’s got a gat,” said Nick.

  Nando fired three shots, point-blank, as the thing wriggled through the hole it had made. The creature exploded into loose fluids that splattered and burst into flames. Liquid fire flowed down the door.

  “That is not a bug native to Southern California,” said Ajay, shaking.

  “Ya think?!” yelled Nando.

  “Get out!” yelled Will.

  “I’m getting,” said Nando.

  Nando ran out the door as the fire quickly spread. They saw another bug just outside, perched on top of the banister. It leaped and attached itself to Nando’s leg. The camera spun frantically as Nando hopped down the hall, trying to slap the thing away as it crawled all over him, jaws snapping wildly.

  Ajay and Nick jumped as if it had landed on them, slapping at their legs.

  “Get to my room,” said Will. “Use the window—”

  “Damn, it’s on my back,” said Nando.

  Nando slammed backward into a wall. They heard
a hideous screech and a loud crunch. Nando quickly turned. The black smear and gooey debris that had splattered from the thing burst into flame.

  “Go, go!” yelled Will.

  Nando had reached Will’s door when they heard a sickening skittering sound. When Nando turned, they saw a stampede, hundreds of the monsters pouring upstairs, scrambling over each other. Nando fired a burst at the head of the swarm, setting off the combustible bugs like a string of firecrackers, flames erupting.

  Nando threw himself into Will’s room, slammed the door, ran to the window, and pushed up the sash. They heard a chorus of band saws behind him. Nando whipped his head around, tilting the phone sideways: A thousand bugs were chomping their way through every inch of the door, all at once, dissolving it before their eyes. Nando emptied the clip at them and what was left of the door exploded.

  Then he was on the roof, breathing heavily as he crunched across the shingles. “Somebody call the damn Orkin man!” shouted Nando.

  He reached the edge of the roof and jumped into the air. The camera jerked. They heard him grunt as he broke his fall on the branch of a tree, then groan as he dropped to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and limped for his taxi.

  He opened the door and turned just as the whole house went up, flames bursting from every window. Nando climbed in behind the wheel and slid his key into the ignition, then jammed the taxi into gear and pulled into the alley.

  “Are you okay?” asked Will.

  “I’m a long way from okay,” said Nando. “But I’m alive—”

  Another bug dove straight into the windshield, screaming. Nando shouted and swerved hard right.

  The screen went blank.

  A TINY PIANIST

  A message came up on-screen: CALL DISCONNECTED. When Will turned around, he saw Nick and Ajay with their arms wrapped around each other.

  “Monsters,” said Ajay faintly.

  “Dude,” said Nick. “I am believing anything else you ever tell us for the rest of my life.”

  They separated, a bit self-consciously. Nick staggered out of the closet, gulping in some deep breaths. Ajay and Will followed.

  “You think Nando’s all right?” asked Ajay.

  “I’ll try to call him,” said Will, taking out his phone.

  “So those bugs are from the same place as the other ones?” asked Nick.

  “Yes.” Will hit Nando’s number. The call went straight to voice mail.

  “Well, we didn’t need special glasses to see these,” said Ajay.

  “No,” said Will. “I think that means they came across a while ago.”

  “From this place you called the Never-Was,” said Ajay.

  “Right,” said Will.

  “And they get here through those Weasel Holes,” said Nick.

  “Yes.” Will punched REDIAL. “Damn, he’s not answering.”

  “Dude,” said Nick. “Your house is on fire. Call the local fire department.”

  “And tell them what?” asked Ajay. “That we saw it burning from Wisconsin?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nick, throwing his hands up. “If they hurry, maybe they can catch one of those crazy cock-a-roaches.”

  “They won’t find anything,” said Will. “It’ll all be wiped out by the fire. That was a trap set to go off if I came back. That’s how the Caps planned it.”

  “You mean … they want to kill you?” asked Ajay.

  The hell with rules or what my parents wanted. My friends are involved now, in harm’s way, and I put them there. Time to come clean.

  “Yes. Did you record any of what we just saw?” asked Will.

  “All of it,” said Ajay.

  “Get the girls,” said Will. “Let’s meet in the great room.”

  Five minutes later, Elise and Brooke had joined them, huddled together on the couches in the great room, listening as Will told them the whole story about how the Black Caps had chased him that morning in Ojai. He showed them the mechanical bird they’d used to spy on his family before his parents had been kidnapped, or worse. He told them about the monsters in the hills and on the plane, about Ride Alongs and Weasel Holes and how people at the school were now summoning monsters from the Never-Was. He didn’t mention Dave or the Hierarchy—he didn’t want them to think he was completely crazy—but he did say that Todd and some of the seniors on the cross-country team, along with Lyle and the rest of the Knights, appeared to be the ones who were bringing monsters over.

  “Monsters?” asked Elise skeptically. “That’s laying it on a bit thick.”

  “I want to believe you, Will,” said Brooke, wide-eyed and a little shaky. “Do you have any proof of all this?”

  “Show them,” said Will to Ajay.

  Ajay played back Nando’s phone call on his tablet for them. When it ended, Brooke and Elise looked stunned. No one in the group said anything for a moment. Wood crackled in the fire.

  “So basically,” said Elise slowly, as if intrigued by the idea, “everything we know … is wrong.”

  “One question, Will,” said Brooke. “Why are they coming after you?”

  Will shook his head. “I think that my parents must have known, considering how much we moved around.” He told them how they had ordered him to stay under the radar, how he’d always pulled back in school and in athletics. “Then I aced that test,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for that, my parents might still …”

  Brooke scooted over and took his hand. “Whatever’s going on,” she said softly, “I’m really glad you told us. And we’re all going to help you.”

  Will’s chest tightened; his eyes burned. Elise sat on the other side of him and patted his shoulder. There wasn’t much of his game face left now.

  “So it’s all connected,” said Ajay, on his feet, pacing. “The Knights, the locker room, the tunnels to the Crag, and what happened to you back home. Now if we can just find out the reason for all of it.”

  Will looked at Elise and when their eyes met, he could swear that he heard her thinking something. Almost as if she’d “pushed” a thought into his head.

  Ronnie knew about this.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Nick, pacing and agitated. “I think that the bastards who did all this to you are in for a prime-time ass-kicking—”

  “Take it easy, Tarzan,” said Brooke.

  Ajay knelt beside Will to look at the bird. “May I examine this later, Will?”

  Will nodded. Ajay folded the bird into the towel and picked it up.

  “I need to talk to Elise,” Will whispered to Ajay.

  “Brooke, come to my room, please,” said Ajay. “I want to show you something. You, too, Nick.”

  “What?” snapped Nick, still pacing.

  “I need your help,” said Ajay. “In here.”

  Will caught Ajay’s eye and nodded thanks. As soon as they left, Will sat in front of Elise.

  “Tell me,” said Will gently. “What did Ronnie know?”

  Elise’s eyes widened. “How did you …?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I’m right, aren’t I? Ronnie knew something about this and he told you.”

  Elise put her hands on her temples and rubbed hard, like she was fighting off a migraine. Her fine black hair hung down over her eyes.

  “They picked on him relentlessly,” she said. “Todd and Lyle and the rest of them. He was so shy, whining about how homesick he was all the time. We’d decided he was hopeless, V for ‘victim’ stamped on his forehead like a license plate. Then he started crushing on me. Way beyond awkward. He played the flute. He wrote poems, for crying out loud.”

  “He wrote them to you?”

  She put on a tough face. “ ‘How do you measure the distance traveled by a smile?’ Gag me with a deer rifle, do I seem like the kind of girl who likes poems?”

  He saw the answer behind the protest in her troubled eyes. “Yeah, you must have hated that.”

  “Please. We knew he was brilliant, in a dorkus malorkus sort of way. And funny and sel
f-deprecating, and that was … unexpected. He didn’t find his confidence until he started his project in the labs. They even stopped picking on him then. But he never told us what he was working on.”

  “Not even you?”

  “Why would he tell me? It wasn’t like we were seriously hooked up. I mean, we spent some time together, and I—” She saw he wasn’t buying it. “Okay, so we got tight. Then something changed a month before end of term. He just cut me off.”

  “Why?”

  Her jade eyes blazed with pain and anger. “I don’t know. I tried to find out. About him or me or what was wrong or any of it. And I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this or not, but I’m kind of skilled at finding out what people are feeling.”

  Will gulped. “I can see that.”

  “But I couldn’t read the faintest signal from Ronnie. Instead of this cute warm goof, an iron curtain came down. And I had told him things about myself … stuff I’d never told anybody. I trusted him, and I couldn’t get a hello.”

  Will had to tread carefully. One wrong word might shut her down again. “So what did Ronnie know, Elise?”

  Elise shot a fierce, penetrating stare at him. Will tried to open his mind, let her look inside him if she needed to, show her that he trusted her.

  “The last day of term,” she said, “we’re packing to leave for the summer. Ronnie stops me in the quad with this … sweet, openhearted look he used to have for me, so I know it’s him and his guard is down and … I caught a glimpse inside.”

  She looked away. Will tried to keep eye contact. “What did you see?”

  “Something that scared him. Something he’d seen in the labs. Something deep and dark and terrifying that he couldn’t handle.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  Elise shook her head. “He just hugged me and said that if anything ever happened to him, he’d find a way to tell me … so I’d understand. And then he whispered a question in my ear: ‘Are you awake?’ ”

  “Awake?” The word sent a shock through Will; he’d been hearing it a lot lately. “What did he mean?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. That was the last time I ever saw him.”

  She looked away, deeply wounded but too proud to cry. Will racked his brain, trying to think what to do. But this wasn’t a thinking problem. Then he remembered: #87: MEN WANT COMPANY. WOMEN WANT EMPATHY.