Into the Gray

by Geanna Culbertson

  Chance blinked. It reminded me of how woodland creatures might look if you tried to explain physics to them. “I don’t understand. Is he on our team now?”

  Alex opened his mouth, but it was my turn to cut off someone’s response. “You don’t get to speak,” I said harshly, then turned to Chance and Girtha. “He’s not on our team; he’s just traveling with it. We’ll part ways once we’re back in Book.”

  “You’re not going to turn him in to the higher-ups, or your parents?” Girtha asked.

  I paused. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “I . . .”

  Suddenly, all of our Dream Compasses started vibrating and flashing. What in the—

  A surge of robust lightning struck the desert terrain some hundred feet away, leaving a glowing red door in its place.

  “The Nightmare door,” Blue gasped.

  Daniel glanced at the moon. I put my hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” I said. “We talked about this.”

  He nodded and our expanded crew hurriedly headed for the door. We were nearly there when I stopped abruptly.

  “It can’t be . . .” I muttered. I took a few steps away from the group toward a stream of dead dreams junk floating closeby.

  “Crisa, what is it?” Girtha asked.

  My eyes zeroed in on the object and I was amazed. “Something lost,” I said.

  There, in the midst of that flow of dead dreams, bobbed a familiar journal. However, it was rapidly moving out of my range. I took off after it. “Girtha, I need you!”

  My massive friend dashed over. I pointed out the journal. “Can you reach it?”

  Girtha sprinted a few steps and leapt, but the journal had floated too high in the air.

  “Quick,” I said, “give me a boost.”

  Girtha knelt down and cupped her hands.

  Man, I loved her. No questions asked—she was always ready to be a team player and go into action mode. “Go!” she said.

  I ran, bounded off the ground, and Girtha lifted me into the air with the force of a cannon and the precision of a trained cheerleader. My eyes never left the target, and my hands closed around the text I’d been after a moment later.

  Regrettably, I did not land with the precision of a cheerleader. When my feet hit the dirt, my momentum tumbled me forward into the ground. Luckily I tucked and rolled enough to avoid injury past a few small scrapes. I was too ecstatic to care about those, and I hopped back to my feet beside Girtha like it was nothing.

  “What was all that about?” Blue asked, the rest of my friends joining us.

  “This,” I said, holding up my prize. “It’s my dream journal—I used to write in it to keep track of my visions so I could better utilize them to influence the future. I lost it on our Camelot quest. I had hoped to start a new one, but got so overwhelmed with everything going on at home that my dream of doing so, well it died. I guess that’s why the book is in the Wanderers’ Void.”

  “So is it the same as you remember?” Jason asked.

  I flipped through the text and saw countless pages of my own handwriting—months of dreams I’d written down. “It is,” I said, amazed. “I guess since Dreamland is a compilation of what’s in everyone’s minds, this chunk of mine exists here.”

  Girtha swung her backpack around and unzipped it. “Here. I’ll keep it safe.”

  I handed her the book. “Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for helping me get it. Not a bad omen to leave this realm with a solid win.”

  “I guess with Alex joining us we were due for one,” Blue commented, shooting my brother a look.

  “Hilarious, Blue,” Alex said dryly. “Glad to see you haven’t changed.”

  She shrugged. “Unlike you, man, I don’t need to.”

  s soon as I stepped into Nightmare, I felt rattled. My cohorts and I stood frozen just past the red door.

  The sky looked like it’d been soaked in cherry red soda, creating a surreal contrast with the blindingly white moon, nearing fullness overhead. Hundreds of black entities darted across the gory heavens. Unlike the ghostly gray creatures in the Wanderers’ Void, these seemed to move with purpose. Low, bone-shaking moaning emanated from their ghostly shapes. It mixed with the chilling sound of distant thunder.

  “They’re Shadows,” Alex explained.

  “We could have guessed,” Girtha replied. “It might be more helpful if you gave us some pointers on how to avoid them, seeing as how you’re the only one here who’s hosted one.”

  “I doubt I know more than you do about them, Gigantore,” Alex replied.

  “It’s Girtha,” my friend replied curtly, a little hurt in her eyes.

  “Just going by what Crisa used to call you,” Alex said.

  “That was a long time ago,” I cut in, glancing at Girtha apologetically. Then I stepped toward Alex. “And she’s right. I didn’t just bring you out of that void for kicks. What can you tell us about those things?”

  Alex frowned. “I’m not a textbook, Crisa, but you and your friends can calm down. You should be fine in Nightmare. Shadows can’t touch mortals. Aside from rare sleeping curse exceptions like the ones you say your friends are under, Shadows can only invade the bodies of people who invite them in. Even then, it doesn’t work most of the time.”

  “Why not?” Jason asked.

  A stronger swell of thunderous booming echoed over the barren terrain. Even the blackened dirt beneath my boots quaked in response.

  “Compatibility issues,” Alex said. “That’s why there are so few Shadow Guardians. It takes a very specific kind of person to host one. They have to be half light and half dark.”

  “How hard can it be for a person to fulfill that requirement?” Blue scoffed. “Most people have a mix of good and bad in them.”

  “I didn’t say a mix. I said half, Blue,” Alex responded. “Everyone has different ratios of good and bad, but most people lean in a certain direction. It is rare for a person to be exactly 50 percent light and 50 percent dark. That kind of person doesn’t get overly influenced by either side. Their path is completely determined by choice.”

  “Like you,” I said, absorbing the truth. “You were good at being good, but you were just as good at being bad. You could host a Shadow because you’re half dark and half light. Both paths come easily to you.”

  “Does that mean that Arian is half light and half dark?” Chance asked.

  Alex nodded. “All Shadow Guardians meet that qualification. It’s just as easy for any of us to be villains as it is to be heroes. We’re all just choices away from determining our destiny.”

  Another boom. Another shake of the dirt.

  Daniel glanced at his Dream Compass and signaled us onward. “Let’s move.”

  We proceeded wordlessly under the light of the moon and bloody sky, our Dream Compasses guiding the way in bright congruency. We had to watch our step as we proceeded; the ground was dotted with fissures that plunged into blackness. These cracks were not the most unsettling features of the landscape though.

  Like the other Dreamland realms we’d passed through, Nightmare had elements appearing and disappearing all the time. Black forests spontaneously rushed in, surrounding us with crooked trees that would just as quickly wither, die, and evaporate into ash. Colonies of bats flew up like geysers from the ground fissures, causing me to jump out of my skin on multiple occasions. We crossed a lake of fire on a thin surface of ice that somehow remained intact. Hooded black figures resembling Grim Reapers holding scythes materialized and dashed at us but vanished seconds after we started to run. The truest danger, however, was not revealed until we came across glowing green flowers stemming from cracks in the dirt.

  The flowers emitted luminescent spores. Girtha leaned down to have a closer look at one. When she did, the spores abruptly rushed toward her, conjoined, and transformed into a splotch of goo that latched onto her face.

  “Girtha!” We hurried to her aid but faltered when the ground shook and a wall of fire sprouted on every side of our g
roup, boxing us in. A ceiling of fire also formed above us and the dirt transformed into metal.

  FLASH.

  Next thing I knew, we were consumed up to our shoulders in individual, golden-brown puff pastries. All except Girtha, who was thrashing around on her back, wrapped up to her neck in pastry like a pig in a blanket. The words “Plus-Sized Order” were baked into her pastry with chocolate that dripped as the fire got more intense. The flower goo remained on her face and she was freaking out.

  Then we all freaked out when one of the fire walls lowered and a giant window to another world appeared. The enormous wrinkled face of a witch looked straight at us. My body was probably barely larger than her nose. She reached an oven mitt toward the tray we were evidently baking on. The witch held a dark metal rod with a pointed end in her mitt, intent on poking us to see if we were done. Blue suddenly burst from her pastry, hunting knife in hand and purplish filling pouring out.

  The witch turned her eyes on my friend and tried to stab her with the rod. Blue stumbled as she tried to get away and landed with her hand on the metal tray. She cried out in agony, snatching her hand off the hot tray.

  “It’s the goo!” Alex shouted. “The stuff on Girtha’s face!”

  Blue bounded up, evaded the witch’s rod, sprinted toward Girtha, and ripped the goo from her face in one swift movement as easily as if she was removing a facial cleansing mask.

  The fire, pastries, and witch vanished, and we were free. It was as if nothing had happened; even the purple jam Blue had been soaked in was gone.

  I dashed to Girtha’s side. “Are you okay? Was that—”

  Chance shouted. I spun around—another weed had shot magic goo at his face. Black walls shot up, caging our team in again. The sky turned gray overhead and snowflakes fell over us. Then Daphne’s flowing red hair hovered above our enclosure, her gigantic face looking down at us. She was as massive as the illusion of the witch had been.

  “Goodbye, little brother,” she said.

  We wobbled as the ground abruptly elevated. When we reached the point of being able to see over the edge of the black walls, we laid eyes on a cemetery where every gravestone sparkled gold. A funeral was underway, but although there were hundreds of chairs set up, barely anyone filled them. The only attendees were Chance’s brothers and sisters and parents, all dressed in black. Daphne, larger than life, stood in front of us. Queen Lydia sulked beside her, face partially covered with a birdcage veil.

  “None of them showed,” Daphne said sadly. “I thought they were his friends.”

  Queen Lydia put her hand on Daphne’s shoulder. “I guess they were not. Not really.” She stared down at where we stood but didn’t react to our presence. She couldn’t see us. Only then did I notice that the ground my friends and I stood on was soft. And it was made of—I bent down—fabric. Maybe wool?

  Hold on.

  I glanced around and adjusted my perspective. There was a protruding fleshy mound to my right. My eyes narrowed in on it, and I realized it was an upturned chin. I rushed toward it. This material was the fabric of a suit. We were standing on a body! And based on the cemetery, I garnered it was a dead body. Not just anyone’s either. I stopped when I reached the clavicle and could make out the face. We were walking on Chance’s corpse!

  The sound of real Chance’s shouting suddenly became audible, and I wheeled toward the noise. Our friend was much farther down, writhing as he tried to remove the goo consuming his head.

  “Get that stuff off him!” I shouted. Girtha reached Chance first and ripped the goo from his face. The second she did, the vision vanished and we were back on normal Nightmare soil.

  “What the frack was that?” Blue asked.

  “The things you’re most afraid of,” Alex said, dusting himself off. “I dealt with those Nightmare Weeds when I came with Arian to get my Shadow. They’re only one of the many things here designed to mess with your head and break you.”

  Before we could respond to Alex’s exposition the ground began to shake in a steady, building rumble.

  “Sheep!” Daniel shouted.

  I pivoted. Hundreds of counting sheep were inbound, charging in a pyramid formation “Holy—”

  My statement was cut short when bones started to shoot out of the earth. I’m talking a monstrous, skyscraper-sized ribcage jutting out around us. We didn’t have time to outrun its entrapment. The back of the ribcage emerged at an angle and we were caught on the vertebrate of its spine. My friends and I clung to the ribcage as it righted itself.

  Vines shot out of the floor and began to wrap the ribcage like reforming ligaments. Colossal arm bones protruded from the terrain farther away with complete sets of hand bones attached that hastily pulled themselves toward us.

  The army of counting sheep continued to run toward our group like a blue battering ram, however we were elevated out of their reach when our ribcage lifted off the ground, raised by hip, pelvic, and leg bones that rose beneath it.

  The area of bone beneath one of my hands started to crumble. I climbed higher to get a better grip, but when I heaved myself up I came face-to-face with a Nightmare Weed growing out of the bone. It ejected its magic spores into my face, and in a jerk reaction, I let go of my vertebrate. I screamed as the goo consumed my face, then felt myself land on something squishy. I’d landed on a cluster of vine ligaments forming by the bottom left rib. I saw the vines start to grow over me before the goo completely overtook my vision.

  Then. Suddenly. I was alone.

  I miraculously stood on water that stretched in all directions, a low fog drifting by. The Lady of the Lake appeared, three times her normal size. The foreboding female specter floated in front of me. Her icy blue body and robes, like her raven hair, flowed out from her. The ghost’s dark eyes were piercing.

  “You will pay the price,” she said in her creepy, multi-layered voice. She reached out and pushed me with one massive finger. Though she barely touched me, I flew back two dozen feet, landing on my back on the surface of the water. The Lady of the Lake’s face hovered over me instantly, only now it was even bigger—the size of a castle turret. Her ghostly locks dangled into the water around me and I couldn’t move.

  She opened her mouth as if to swallow me whole, but then a huge hand grabbed me from beneath the surface and yanked me below. Once beneath the lake, I found myself not surrounded by water, but a void, and I was trapped in the grip of something far scarier than the Lady of the Lake. Looking at her, I was emptied of all courage.

  It was a giant version of me. Her eyes radiated black energy that matched the dark aura glowing around her body. A fiery orange background encircled us. When I looked down my heart, which was being squeezed roughly by her tight grasp, stopped entirely. A sea of indistinguishable bodies lay in piles at giant me’s feet. The mounds expanded as far as the eye could see. Then things got even worse.

  All of a sudden the bodies’ heads twisted around and I could see their faces. It was the faces of various bad guys I’d killed—Stephanie from the chateau, the rebels in Tunderly, the magic hunters in Chance’s castle. Even more horrifying, mixed in were the faces of my friends—Daniel, Marie, Javier, SJ—along with countless other people I knew, from Debbie and Lenore to Susannah and my mother.

  I felt frozen and powerless. Then I shouted as giant Crisa squeezed harder. She started to bring me closer to her open mouth and before I could stop it, she ate me. However, when she swallowed me in one gulp, giant Crisa vanished altogether and as a result, I found myself plummeting toward the sea of bodies.

  “No! No! No!”

  I screamed, flailing my arms, then in a flash Alex stood over me. I was back on the ribcage. My brother’s hands were scratched and bleeding, and shredded vines lay all around me—he’d dug me out with his bare hands to rip the goo mask from my face.

  I gasped for breath as I crawled out. Alex grabbed my arm and helped me steady. We clung to the nearest rib together. I gazed around in amazement and horror. The massive skeleton’s structure had been
completed during my nightmare entrapment; it had all its body parts except the skull. Now it, and all my friends clinging to the skeleton, were on the move. We hung on for dear life with each quaking step the colossal thing took.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Alex in a panic.

  “See what?”

  “When Chance and Girtha got hit with the goo we saw their nightmares,” I said. “Did you see mine?”

  “No,” Alex said. “I guess we weren’t close enough when you got sucked in.”

  Relief swelled my chest.

  “What do we do?” Jason shouted from above.

  Oh, right. This is no time for relief.

  Jason held onto a vertebrate toward the middle of the spine. My other friends were in similarly precarious positions. I glanced ahead. The skeleton was approaching a body of water.

  “That’s the Lake of Misery,” Alex called. “It leads to the heart of Nightmare! Let go and drop into it!”

  “We’re supposed to trust you?” Daniel responded from his position two ribs up.

  “You have a better idea, hero?” Alex shouted.

  The skeleton took its first step into the lake. The bony foot pierced the surface, causing enormous amounts of water to gush up. I bit my lip and accepted the best option.

  “Let go when we reach the middle of the lake!” I called to my friends. “It’ll be less distance to fall!”

  The skeleton continued to wade into the water. When we were at what seemed like the center, and the skeleton was submerged up to its hipbone, I shouted. “Now!” I released my hold, as did Alex, and we fell through the air. I saw my friends do the same.

  SPLASH.

  The lake was black except for the silver bubbles that appeared around us as we sank. I spotted several bodies plunging into the water after me—my friends—but I could not swim toward them. Despite my kicking, I kept sinking. As I did, I found myself growing exhausted and depressed. It was like as my body sank, my mood sank. Silver bubbles continued to stream away from me. They were plate-sized and I discovered they held flashes of miserable scenes within them. Whenever a bubble popped, it released the sound that went with that scene.