by Dean Lorey
“I don’t want to. I—”
“Charlie.” Barrington’s voice was a stone door, slamming shut.
Charlie got up from the table and stormed out.
Mr. Benjamin sighed heavily and turned to his silent wife. “The older he gets, the harder it is to keep him here. I know we do it for his own protection, but, much as it pains me to say it, someday soon we’re going to have to let him face the world on his own.”
Olga turned away without saying a word.
“Are you all right, dear? You’re not coming down with something, are you?”
She shook her head. Mr. Benjamin took her hand gently in his.
“I know, I don’t want to let him go, either. It’s cruel outside of the model 3, and a boy like Charlie, a wonderful, unusual boy, well…” He shook his head sadly. “He’s going to take such a beating.”
The glow-in-the-dark stars glued onto the ceiling above Charlie’s bed had grown faint. The walls of his room were covered in soft foam. There was no glass in there, nothing sharp or heavy that could potentially hurt him if thrown or broken during a particularly destructive nightmare—only rounded corners, thick padding, and windows made of safety plastic. To Charlie, it sometimes felt like an insane asylum designed to protect him from himself, from the horrible things that often happened after he fell asleep.
And sleep, as usual, was slow in coming.
He tried to empty his mind of the crazy thoughts that were zinging around his brain by writing two new entries in the “Wicked Awesome Gadget Journal” he kept beside his bed. The first one (gadget number 47) was an idea for a “Wicked Awesome Laser Watch” that emitted a beam of light powerful enough to temporarily blind bad guys, giving you time to get away. The second one (gadget number 48) was a handheld device that used a complicated computer chip to identify smells for people who had lost their noses in horrible accidents. He called it the “Wicked Awesome Odorometer.”
He had no idea how he could actually build any of the objects he dreamed up, but that wasn’t really the point—the important thing for now was the idea.
A squirrel nibbled at a nut on his windowsill. In fact, he could hear more of them in the attic above, scratching away softly. It was oddly soothing.
Without even realizing it, Charlie finally fell asleep.
It started out as a good dream. He was playing Frisbee with a group of kids on the school playground—in fact, they were the same ones from the Sleepover Apocalypse, but they didn’t seem frightened of him now. F.T. threw the Frisbee to Charlie, but an unexpected gust of wind caught it and took it far down the field. Charlie sprinted across the freshly mowed grass with blinding speed. He leaped over a soccer goal and, spinning in midair, managed to snag the Frisbee in spectacular fashion.
“That’s the best catch I’ve ever seen!” F.T. said.
“It just comes natural to me, I guess,” Charlie replied, trying his best to appear casual.
“Would you like to have a Slurpee with us?” another kid asked, pointing to a Slurpee machine that stood gleaming at the edge of the field. “Nothing tastes better on a hot day than a cold Slurpee with your friends.”
“Sounds great,” Charlie said, and followed the kids over.
The Slurpee machine glowed with an inner brilliance. F.T. turned the handle and poured an icy red drink into a Styrofoam cup.
“This one’s for me,” he said. “Now your turn. Do you want red or blue?”
“Red,” Charlie said. “Same as you.” F.T. placed a fresh cup under the spigot and turned the handle. Nothing came out. “That’s strange,” he said. “Maybe something’s stuck in there.” He put his finger deep inside and searched for a blockage.
“Find anything?” Charlie asked.
“Not yet,” F.T. said. “Wait a minute…. My finger’s stuck.”
He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. As he struggled, a cold wind whipped down from the darkening sky. Thunderheads rolled in.
“Maybe someone should go and get help,” Charlie said, turning to the other kids. He was surprised to discover they were gone. In fact, everyone was gone now—everyone but Charlie and the trapped boy.
That’s weird, Charlie thought.
Suddenly, the spigot on the Slurpee machine turned on and the machine hummed back to life. The frozen red drink flowed from the machine, through F.T.’s finger, and into his body, filling him like a balloon.
“Do something!” he yelled. “It hurts!”
Charlie tried to turn the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. The kid’s face began to swell as his color changed—pink, then red…
“It’s so cold,” F.T. moaned, shivering. “Help me!”
“I’m trying!” Charlie shouted back, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do. The boy’s face bloated grotesquely, expanding like a balloon animal, as his skin turned from a deep red to a dark shade of purple, the color of a rotten plum. The wind that whipped down from the sky was freezing now and Charlie could see his breath on it.
Somehow it had become nighttime.
He looked upward and saw stars…but they looked too perfect. They had five distinct points and were glowing faintly. Suddenly, Charlie realized that they were the stars on the ceiling of his bedroom. When he looked down, he was shocked to discover that he now was back in his bedroom—along with the thing that F.T. had become.
It looked something like a scorpion—slick purple-black skin stretched tightly over a bloated body full to bursting with juices. Sharp claws clattered at the end of long, unnaturally thin arms. A skeletal tail with a foot-long stinger wavered dangerously above its head and the tongue that flickered, snakelike, in and out of its horned snout gleamed metallic silver.
Charlie tried to shout, to scream out for help, to do anything, but his mouth had gone as dry as chalk and the beating of his heart filled his ears like mortar fire. As the creature neared him, Charlie reached over, took the pencil off the nightstand next to his Gadget Journal, and, summoning all his courage, jabbed the pencil into his hand while yelling “Wake up!”
Charlie woke from his nightmare with a shout. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead and his heart pounded in his chest so hard, he felt it might break ribs.
“I’ll never go to sleep again,” he said as he slid out of bed and carefully felt his way across the dark room toward the thin, comforting line of light underneath the door that led to the hallway.
His hand touched something.
The creature from his nightmare stood there.
“No,” Charlie gasped.
Towering over him, it raised its long, curved stinger, preparing to strike. A thick poisonous-looking fluid oozed from the tip. Charlie’s knees went watery and he dropped to the ground.
“Don’t,” he said.
The monster’s tail whistled furiously down toward him with the force of a sledgehammer.
At exactly the same moment, the window beside Charlie exploded inward as a tall man crashed through. He made a movement with his arm so fast that it looked almost as if time skipped forward a beat. A blinding flash of blue light snapped in front of Charlie like a lightning bolt. It snaked around the creature’s stinger, causing it to arc off course just enough to spike harmlessly into the floorboard, spraying Charlie with splinters of wood.
The stranger landed with a thud, grabbed Charlie by the front of his shirt, and yanked him to his feet, away from the monster. To Charlie, he looked just like a cowboy—dusty blue jeans covered the tops of his oiled leather boots, a worn cowboy hat rested on his wide brow, and in his right hand he held a lasso that glowed with an electric blue fire. Charlie suddenly realized that it was actually the lasso that was wrapped around the creature’s stinger.
“Howdy, kid,” the cowboy said with a crooked grin. “Nice to meet you, finally. Looks like I showed up just in time.”
CHAPTER TWO
A CLASS-5 SILVERTONGUE IN FULL VOICE
“Who are you?” Charlie asked, staring in shock at the stranger in his bedroom.
> “Name’s Rex,” the cowboy answered. “I’m sure you got a ton of questions, and I’ll get to ’em in just a bit—assuming we live through this, of course. Things are about to get ugly.”
“Uglier than this?” Charlie replied, gesturing to the monster in his bedroom as it frantically tried to free its stinger from the floorboards.
Rex laughed. “Just you wait. You’re gonna get nostalgic for this moment once that old Silvertongue starts singing.”
“Singing?” Charlie repeated, confused.
Suddenly, that’s just what it did. The creature opened its mouth and stuck out its abnormally long silver tongue, which twisted and vibrated like a tuning fork. No words came out, only notes, but they were sweet as spun silver and amazing in their intricacy.
“Ah, no,” Rex moaned, then turned to the window and shouted, “Where’s my portal, Tabitha, darlin’?”
“Working on it!” a female voice answered, and Charlie spun around to see a pretty woman with short red hair scrambling through the shattered window. She wore long pants, as green as her emerald eyes, and her fingers and neck glittered with an extraordinary amount of jewelry.
“There’s my sparkly queen,” Rex said. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, sweetness.”
“Don’t call me ‘sweetness,’” she shot back as she strode toward him.
“Sure thing, sugar lips,” he replied with a grin.
Clearly aggravated, Tabitha gritted her teeth and extended her right hand. Brilliant purple flames began to dance over her body, charging the air with electricity. Charlie felt the hairs on his arms and legs stand on end. The creature continued singing—faster now, more intense—and Charlie was awestruck by the alien beauty of its voice.
“It’s incredible,” he murmured.
“Yeah, right up until it crescendos,” Rex said. “Then it’s gonna get bad, fast.”
“What happens then?”
“Oh, our heads’ll explode.”
“Our heads will explode?” Charlie gasped.
“It’s actually quite an interesting phenomenon,” another voice chimed in. Charlie spun back toward the window to see a short, sweaty man with a neatly trimmed beard trying to climb over the jagged plastic. He wore a dark three-piece woolen suit—far too hot on this warm night. “You see,” the man continued, wiping sweat from the tip of his long nose as he grunted with effort, “the precise frequency of the Silvertongue’s final note—stupid window—causes the air inside a human’s sinus cavity to vibrate at such a high speed that it literally shatters the skull. It’s a very effective attack strategy.”
“Gee, you think?” Rex said.
“Yes, I do think, unlike you,” the bearded man shot back, still struggling with the window. “And I remind you that you are not to take any action without prior approval from me. You know the rules.”
“You still talkin’, Pinch? I drifted off for a second.”
“I hate when you call me that,” the man named Pinch moaned.
“And I hate wasting my time arguing with a weasel like you, especially when I got a Class-5 Silvertongue in full voice to worry about.”
“It’s a Class 4,” Pinch said, falling into the room with a thud.
“It’s a 5!” Rex snapped. “Count the dang spikes on its tail—or can’t you count?”
Charlie looked at the spikes on the creature’s tail. “Yup, there’s five,” he confirmed.
“See, Pinch—even the kid knows.”
Suddenly, with a squeal like a rusty nail being pried from a plank, the still-singing Silvertongue wrenched its stinger free from the floorboards. The glistening tail slipped out of the lasso and attacked Rex, who leaped backward as it whistled past his face.
“How about that portal, princess?” Rex shouted.
“It’s coming,” Tabitha yelled back.
“That’s comforting,” Rex said, dodging another poisonous tail lash with the grace of a matador. He pulled a short sword (which also glowed with a blue fire) from his belt and used it to parry the swordlike stinger.
The creature’s singing had now become a shimmery blur of sound. Charlie could feel his entire head vibrating like a paint mixer. His eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his skull.
“Do something!” Pinch begged. “It’s crescendoing!”
“What’s going on in there?” someone suddenly shouted from the hallway. “Charlie, are you okay?”
“That’s my dad,” Charlie said, grimacing. “I’m not supposed to be out of bed.”
Just then, Tabitha’s entire body was engulfed in purple fire. There was a blast of hot air and a large portal, like a doorway, opened in the center of the room. It was circular and big enough to drive a car through. Its edges burned with purple flames, just like the ones that danced across Tabitha.
Rex smiled. “That’s my girl.”
The bedroom door flew open and Mr. Benjamin rushed in. “Charlie, are you having another one of your nightma—” He stopped cold and stared in shock. “Er, what’s this all about?”
The Silvertongue glanced toward him.
That was all the diversion Rex needed. He threw himself at the monster and the force of his weight sent it reeling backward, interrupting its final, deadly note. The creature stumbled into the portal and dropped out of sight. Charlie ran forward to see where it went.
What he saw shocked him.
The portal seemed to hover high in the air above a bizarre alien landscape. Far below, a tangled mass of mustard-colored crystals snaked through one another like barbed wire. The Silvertongue crashed down into them, snapping some crystals and getting sliced by the razor-sharp sides of others. Soon it was gone from view, lost in the deadly thicket.
“Wow!” Charlie exclaimed, staring in awe.
Rex jumped to his feet and slipped the short sword back into his belt. “And that’s how we do that,” he said with a cocky grin. “Sometimes I amaze even myse—”
Suddenly, with a hideous screech, a giant crimson-colored bat plummeted out of the red alien sky and flew through the still-open portal. It snatched Rex in its gnarled claws and, with a fury of flapping wings, yanked him backward through the gateway and into the strange world beyond.
“Rex!” Tabitha screamed.
Almost instantly, Rex’s lasso arrowed back out of the portal, missing Charlie’s cheek by inches. With a sharp crack, it snapped around the bedroom doorknob and pulled tight. Rex held on to the other end, jerking wildly in the air like a kite in a hurricane as the huge batlike creature struggled to fly off with him.
“Pull!” Rex yelled. “Pull and don’t let go!”
Tabitha and Charlie grabbed hold of the lasso and played a desperate game of tug-of-war with the bat as Pinch paced fretfully. “I told him he needed prior approval for any actions,” he moaned. “And now we are in a situation.”
“Dig in!” Rex shouted as the bat leaped and dove like a sailfish on a fishing line. “And Pinch—shut up!”
“Sticks and stones,” Pinch said, then turned to Charlie’s father. “Mr. Benjamin, do you, by chance, have any flour in the house?”
“Flowers?”
“No, sir. Not flowers, as in daisies and petunias, flour, as in the sentence ‘I need flour to bake my pumpkin pie.’”
“Oh,” Barrington said. “I think so.”
“Get it, please,” Pinch ordered. “With some urgency, if you don’t mind.”
“Right away,” Barrington replied, running out of the room.
The batlike creature flapped furiously, its wings thundering with a sound like a freight train as it slowly dragged Charlie and Tabitha toward the open portal.
“Help us!” Tabitha shouted to Pinch. “It’s pulling us into the Nether!”
Charlie looked down through the portal and saw the razor-sharp crystals far below, waiting to spear them if they fell through.
“Technically speaking,” Pinch replied, “I’m only here in a management and advisory capacity.”
“Just help us!” Charlie, Rex, and Tabi
tha screamed simultaneously.
“Oh, very well,” Pinch said, and grabbed the lasso. With his added strength, they began to pull Rex back toward the bedroom as Barrington ran in with a bag of flour.
“Got it,” he said, panting.
“Excellent,” Pinch replied. “Now throw it on the Netherbat.”
“The what?”
“The Netherbat!” Rex roared. “The only giant bat around here that’s trying to kill me!”
“Oh,” Barrington said. Just as Charlie, Pinch, and Tabitha pulled the creature through the open portal and into the bedroom, Mr. Benjamin ripped open the bag, unleashing a snowstorm of flour. The Netherbat’s wings whipped the powder into a frenzy, and soon everything in the room was coated in a thick cloud of fine white particles. Almost instantly, the Netherbat dropped to the ground and stumbled forward as if drunk.
“What’s happening?” Charlie asked.
“Netherbats, like regular bats, use a form of sonar called echolocation in order to see,” Pinch replied. “The fine grains of flour clog its transmitters, effectively rendering it blind.”
“Thanks, Mr. Science,” Rex said, elbowing the creature hard in the head. It released him, still coughing and gasping. With one quick, fluid motion, Rex loosed the lasso from the doorknob and cracked it like a lion tamer, herding the creature back toward the open portal. The Netherbat stumbled blindly through the gateway and tumbled down, spinning crazily, until it was finally speared on one of the needlelike crystal spires far below.
“Close the portal,” Rex said.
Tabitha waved her hand and the purple fiery-rimmed gateway slammed closed. There was silence all around them then as the flour settled, blanketing everything and everyone in a peaceful white shroud—in a crazy way, it reminded Charlie of Christmas.
“What in the world is going on here?” Mr. Benjamin finally managed. “Who are you people?”