“Bree? Emmerich?” he said in shock. “What are you doing here?”
His friends were standing with an old woman no one recognized. Conner could instantly tell that Bree and Emmerich weren’t their normal selves. They both looked pale, exhausted, and frightened.
“Conner!” Bree said frantically. “I didn’t know you would be here, too!”
“Bree, what are you guys doing here?” Conner asked. “Is something wrong?”
Bree burst into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t want to bring him, but I had no choice.”
The doors slammed shut and locked behind them. Conner, Charlotte, Jack, Goldilocks, and Red turned around and saw the Masked Man behind them. He had a crazed look in his eye and he raised a revolver toward them.
Tonight’s surprises were just getting started.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ALEX ALONE
Alex found Tootles before he wandered into the Saint Andrew’s ICU and escorted him back to the multi-purpose room. Alex completed a quick round of the hospital, and the Lost Boy appeared to be the only character who had strayed from the group.
Right before Alex rejoined the others in the multi-purpose room, she saw something out of the corner of her eye: A woman with horns was entering the women’s restroom down the hall. Alex could have sworn Trollbella was with the others when she left, but she decided to inspect the bathroom just to be sure. Who else would have horns in a hospital?
Alex searched the women’s restroom, but didn’t find the troll queen anywhere.
“Trollbella?” Alex asked. “Was that you?”
Morina suddenly lunged out of a bathroom stall and blew a handful of magic dust directly into Alex’s face. Alex was so startled she gasped, breathing the dust deeply into her lungs. She coughed like she was choking on poisonous gas, and her eyes watered like she had been hit with pepper spray.
“What… what have you done to me?” she cried.
“I’ve enhanced you,” Morina said with a wicked smile.
Alex collapsed on the floor and tried to recuperate, but she couldn’t catch her breath or stop crying. The witch stared down at Alex, like a vulture waiting for its prey to die.
“That’s it,” Morina said. “Let it sink in, let it course through your veins, let it consume you.…”
The coughing and tears eventually subsided, but the irritation was replaced by even harsher symptoms. Alex was filled with more anger than she had ever felt in her entire life. She tried to fight the magic manipulating her emotions, but the struggle only infuriated her even more. Why was her life a constant battle? Why did she have to fight so hard? Why did she always have to save so many others?
To comfort herself, Alex thought of the people she loved, but the dust wouldn’t let Alex feel love. As visions of her friends and family flashed before her eyes, the spell convinced her that they all secretly hated her and wished she would disappear. She thought her brother resented her, that her mother was ashamed of her, that her grandmother had died disappointed in her, and that her father had died just as an excuse to abandon her.
Alex grabbed the sink and pulled herself to her feet. She looked into the mirror but didn’t see her own reflection. Alex only saw the face of a complete failure. The dust altered not only her perception of the world, but also how she viewed herself. She saw a girl who didn’t deserve affection, who was unworthy of success, and who was incapable of anything but making mistakes.
She wasn’t going to save her friends, she wasn’t going to defeat the Literary Army, and she wasn’t going to save the fairy-tale world. It would fall apart like everything else in her life, and Alex had only herself to blame.
“Do you feel the anger boiling inside of you?” Morina asked. “Let it grow, let it shape you, let it blind you.… Let it become you.”
The bathroom walls and floor started to shake and the lights flickered. Alex’s eyes began to glow, and her hair rose above her head like flames in slow motion. She disappeared from her body and the magic dust transformed her into someone else entirely.…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CEMETERY OF THE UNDEAD
Conner was so stunned to see the Masked Man in the hospital, he lost his train of thought. He didn’t stop to wonder what Bree and Emmerich were doing with the Masked Man, how they’d got there, or who the older woman with them was. All he could think about was getting his friends and his mom away from such a dangerous man.
“They said you were dead,” Conner said.
“I’ve lived to seize another day,” the Masked Man said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Charlotte looked at the Masked Man like she was seeing a ghost. Despite his injuries and tattered clothes, he was the spitting image of her late husband. Alex and Conner had tried so carefully to keep his existence a secret from their mother, but the disturbing reality was right in front of her face.
“Mom, this man isn’t Dad,” Conner said. “It’s his younger brother, Lloyd. He’s a criminal from the fairy-tale world, don’t believe a word he—”
“I know who he is, Conner,” Charlotte said. “Your father told me all about him before you were born. I’m sorry you know about him. Your father never wanted you to find out you were related to such a horrible person.”
“You’re not the only person he’s related to, Conner,” Bree said. “Emmerich is the Masked Man’s son—he’s the child the Masked Man had with Bo Peep!”
The information was so unexpected, Conner felt like he had been slapped. He remembered the story Hagetta had told him and his sister about hiding Bo Peep’s child from his father, but that was long before they discovered who the Masked Man really was. Conner had forgotten all about the child until this moment.
“I guess that makes us cousins,” Emmerich said.
“This has turned into quite the family affair,” the Masked Man said. “But I’m afraid it won’t be remembered as a pleasant reunion.”
“What do you want from us?” Conner said.
The Masked Man grunted. “Teenagers,” he sneered. “You always think both worlds revolve around you. To be frank, dear nephew, you’re quite useless to me.”
“Then what do you want with Alex?” Conner asked.
“He’s not here for your sister, either,” Bree said. “He’s come to the hospital to take your mom!”
“Me?” Charlotte said. “What could you possibly want with me?”
“I’m in need of an Otherworld nurse,” the Masked Man said. “You see, the medical knowledge of the fairy-tale world isn’t as advanced as it is here, and I’m in the market for a complicated procedure.”
Goldilocks moaned as another contraction began.
“This woman is about to have a baby,” Charlotte said. “Please, we need to get her to a doctor immediately.”
“What a coincidence—I’m going to need a lift out of the hospital,” the Masked Man said. “I thought I’d have to give the old woman here a bullet wound to do it, but the mother-to-be is even more convenient.”
“You won’t lay a finger on her!” Jack yelled.
Jack charged toward him, but the Masked Man fired his gun into the air and Jack froze.
“That was my only warning,” the Masked Man said. “I will not waste another bullet—that goes for all of you.”
Their captor was growing visibly impatient. His most recent scheme was so close to fruition, he could almost taste it. He paced around the room and gave his hostages more insight into what he had in store.
“This is what’s going to happen,” the Masked Man said. “Charlotte is going to collect from this room whatever she needs to perform a blood transfusion. Then she, Emmerich, and myself are going to escort Goldilocks downstairs to the emergency room. We’re going to tell the paramedics Goldilocks needs to be transferred to another medical facility, and as they load her into the ambulance, we’re going to steal it. Then we’re going to drive far away, where Charlotte will transfer my son’s blood into my own veins, until there isn’t a dro
p left in the boy.”
His plan was so barbaric, it took Conner a moment to understand the reasoning behind it.
“If Emmerich is your son, that means there’s magic in his blood,” Conner thought aloud. “You want his blood to regain your powers. You’re so obsessed with power, you’re willing to kill your own son!”
“I’m willing to kill more if I have to,” the Masked Man warned.
“I’m not draining your son’s blood!” Charlotte said.
The Masked Man pointed his gun at Conner. “I’ll find ways of convincing you,” he said.
The tense silence was broken by another painful cry as Goldilocks’s contractions increased.
“It’s okay, Charlotte,” Emmerich said. “I’m not scared—I’d rather he hurts me than anyone else. I’m sure it’ll just feel like I’m falling asleep.”
Charlotte would have sacrificed herself before harming a child, but Emmerich had given the nurse an idea. The Masked Man nudged her toward the supply cabinet and she collected syringes, gauze, bags, surgical tape, and other equipment. Charlotte put everything she needed for a blood transfusion into a large bag—and pocketed a little something extra.
“Now everyone else lie on the floor,” the Masked Man ordered. “Emmerich, take those ACE bandages out of the cupboard and tie their hands and feet together. Make sure the knots are tight—I’ll be checking before we leave.”
With no alternative options in sight, Conner, Jack, Cornelia, Red, and Bree did as the Masked Man demanded. Emmerich tied their hands tightly behind their backs and their feet together. The Masked Man inspected his son’s knots to make sure they’d last. Once he was satisfied, he tucked the revolver under his sling—making a point to show his hostages it was hidden but easily accessible if he needed it.
“Now let’s go,” he said.
Charlotte wheeled Goldilocks out of the room with the bag of supplies, and they headed for the emergency room. The Masked Man pushed Emmerich out the door, and they followed the women. The others left in the operating room struggled against the bandages with all their might, but they wouldn’t budge.
“We have to do something!” Jack said desperately. “Goldilocks is about to give birth! Who knows what that madman might do to her!”
“Help us!” Cornelia yelled. “Help us!”
“Let me try,” Red said. “No offense, but I’m an attractive young blonde—someone’s more likely to answer me! HELP US! HELP US!”
“Guys, we’re the only people in an empty hospital wing!” Conner said. “No one can hear us!”
“We have to stop him!” Bree said. “He’s going to kill Emmerich if we don’t!”
“You see, this is why I’m not close to my own relatives!” Red said. “Families are nuts! They give you life, then you’re lucky if you survive them!”
Red’s rant inadvertently reminded Conner of something in his bag—something they could use!
“Survival!” Conner said happily. “That’s it!”
Charlotte had packed Swiss Army knives in the twins’ backpacks before they left for “Starboardia.” Thankfully, the Masked Man hadn’t instructed Conner to take his backpack off before he was tied up. If he could just reach the knife inside it, he might be able to cut himself free.
Conner rolled onto his back and with his tied hands painfully reached up to the backpack’s front pouch. Just when it felt like he was about to break his arms, he pried the zipper open with his fingertips.
“Bree, see if you can find the Swiss Army knife in my bag,” Conner said.
They shuffled around the floor until they were back to back and Bree was able to remove the small knife from his backpack.
“I got it,” Bree said, and unfolded it. “Stay still—I’m going to cut the bandages around your wrists.”
She sawed the small blade against Conner’s bandages until she cut through them. Once Conner’s hands were free he removed the bandages around his feet and sliced them off the others. They helped one another to their feet and ran out of the operating room, but Cornelia stayed behind.
“Cornelia, are you coming?” Bree asked.
“I can’t keep up,” Cornelia said. “Go! Get to them before it’s too late! I’ll call Wanda and Frenda and let them know where we are!”
“Cornelia, go to the multi-purpose room,” Conner said. “Find my sister and tell her what’s happened—her name is Alex and she looks like me.”
“I will,” the old woman said. “Now hurry!”
Conner, Bree, Jack, and Red ran through the hospital as fast as they could. They followed the signs to the emergency room, pushed past the people waiting in the lobby, and ran out to the driveway where the ambulances were parked.
They arrived just in time to see two paramedics loading Goldilocks into the back of an ambulance. As soon as they shut the doors behind her, the ambulance screeched down the driveway, and the paramedics watched helplessly as the vehicle was stolen in plain sight. They ran inside the hospital to call the police. As the ambulance passed Conner and the others, they saw the Masked Man at the wheel and Charlotte and Emmerich sitting in the front beside him.
The driveway curved around the hospital like a horseshoe. If Conner ran straight ahead, he might be able to stop the ambulance—but with what? What did he have that could stop a speeding vehicle? As soon as he thought of the question, the answer hit him like a bolt of lightning hitting the Eiffel Tower.
“They’re getting away!” Bree yelled.
“Oh no they’re not!” Conner said. He ran across the driveway and retrieved the binder of short stories from his backpack. He flipped it open to the very last page and dived in front of the ambulance. Just before the vehicle ran him over, the beam of light hit the ambulance and it disappeared into his short story.
Jack and Red sighed with relief—they couldn’t believe Conner had pulled it off. Bree had no clue what had just happened, but she was amazed by what she saw.
“Come on!” Conner said. “Follow me!”
With no time to lose, Conner jumped into the beam of light and his friends followed him inside.
Since he had opened the binder to the very last page, Conner was certain he had sent the ambulance into “The Adventures of Blimp Boy.” He expected to see an Egyptian desert and the Pyramid of Anesthesia, but Conner didn’t recognize the world around him at all. In fact, he had never seen the strange environment they had landed in, not even in his imagination.
They were standing on a tall knoll surrounded by rolling hills of dark soil. A full moon peeked through dark clouds above them, and a misty fog hung in the air. In the distance they saw a tall wrought-iron fence along the perimeter of an enormous and eerie cemetery. The fence guarded a sea of gothic tombstones, and through the fog beyond the graves, they could make out a forest of stone mausoleums.
The tombstones were so old they were cracked and covered in mildew and their engravings were virtually illegible. They were decorated in crucifixes and macabre statues of angels and the grim reaper. Even though the fog distorted the view, the cemetery seemed as endless as the deserts of Egypt. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere; there were no trees, grass, or flowers, only tombs for miles and miles around.
“Conner, were you in a bad mood when you wrote this story?” Red said.
“This isn’t my story,” Conner said. “I never wrote about anything like this.”
Suddenly, they saw something moving across the graveyard. A red fox was prancing among the tombstones. The animal batted its eyes and twirled its tail flirtatiously, almost as if it were trying to lure them into the cemetery. Bree recognized the fox and rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.
“Conner, where was that beam of light supposed to take us?” Bree asked.
“It should have transported us into one of my short stories,” he explained. “We’ve been using a potion to travel into my writing, but I have no clue where it’s taken us.”
Bree gulped nervously. “I do,” she said. “This is my short stor
y—we’re in ‘Cemetery of the Undead’! I wrote it in the eighth grade!”
Conner tried to make sense of the situation. How could they be in one of Bree’s stories?
“I got my stories from Mrs. Peters,” Conner said. “She must have mixed your writing with mine when she gave them to me! It’s been in the back of my binder the whole time! I didn’t have a divider between them, so the Portal Potion must have seeped through my writing and into yours.”
Traveling into his own stories had been a jarring experience for Conner, but at least he knew where he was going. He couldn’t imagine how Bree felt after accidentally stumbling into a world from her imagination with no prior warning.
“Look over there!” Jack said, and pointed.
They saw tire tracks and followed them into the cemetery. The ambulance had crashed into the fence just beside a wide-open gate. They checked the vehicle, but it was empty. A moan came from somewhere in the graveyard and they ran toward it.
“Goldie!” Jack shouted. “We’re coming!”
They found Goldilocks on the ground a few hundred feet inside the graveyard. She was leaning against a tombstone, with beads of sweat covering her forehead, and she was breathing deeply. Jack knelt beside her and held her hand.
“The Masked Man…” She panted. “I couldn’t keep up, so they left me here.… He took Emmerich and Charlotte somewhere over there.… I didn’t see which one they went inside.…”
Goldilocks pointed to the mausoleums, but there were hundreds of them. Finding Emmerich and Charlotte among them would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
“Let’s get you back to the hospital,” Jack said. He tried to get Goldilocks to stand, but she wouldn’t move.
“My contractions are too close together,” Goldilocks said. “I can’t stand! This baby is being born right here!”
Jack and the others exchanged fearful looks—Goldilocks needed help.
“You guys stay with Goldie,” Conner told them. “I’m going to find Emmerich and my mom. As soon as I get them away from the Masked Man, I’ll send my mom here to help.”