by Dean Lorey
“It all happened so fast,” Tabitha said. “I’ve never seen anyone tap into their core fear so quickly. And did you see the Snark?”
The Headmaster nodded. “The boy is exceedingly powerful.”
“Which is why,” Pinch said, “as I advocated earlier, he should be—”
“He will not be Reduced,” Rex snapped, turning on him. “Least not while I’m around to stop it.”
“We’re quite beyond that now,” the Headmaster said mildly. “Forces have been put into motion that we must address. Let’s look at what we know. Barakkas wants the bracer back, which confirms what we suspected—that it is of enormous importance to him.”
“He said it took great power to control it,” Tabitha said. “He called it ‘an Artifact of the Nether.’”
“Yes, there are four artifacts,” the Headmaster replied. “Each of the Named possesses one. We are unsure of their exact purpose, but anything Barakkas wants this badly, we must prevent him from getting.”
“Why did he ask the kid to bring it to him?” Rex asked.
“Because Charlie is the only one who can,” Tabitha answered. “Barakkas said that the bracer would yield to Charlie, and, outside of the Headmaster, Charlie is the only one strong enough to open a portal into the Inner Circle to take it to him. He’s already gone there twice now. The more times you open a portal into an area, the easier it is to portal there in the future. It’s extremely likely he’ll do it again in a moment of stress.”
“True,” the Headmaster agreed. “And we must keep a close eye on Mr. Benjamin because of it.”
“That’s crazy,” Rex countered. “Why would Charlie ever intentionally take him the bracer?”
“Because,” Pinch said, “even though he is incredibly powerful, he is still just a boy, and an insecure one at that. He was attacked and mocked by older students, he was made a fool of in your class, and, through his recent disaster in Nethermancy, he has come to the realization that no matter how hard he tries, he will never fit in. A boy like that is susceptible to coercion.”
“Indeed,” the Headmaster said, “and yet…I don’t think he will turn on us. True, he feels insecure and alone—but it is our job to give him confidence, to become his family.”
“That’s if he wants one,” Tabitha cautioned. “Remember, he already has a family.”
The Headmaster’s blue eyes suddenly went wide. She leaped to her feet. “Yes, he does,” she said. “Come. We are in grave danger.”
“I’m a menace,” Charlie said, staring blankly at the far wall of Violet’s cabin. It was plastered with prints of famous fantasy paintings. “I can’t believe I opened another portal to the Inner Circle.”
“What are you talking about?” Theodore shot back as he worked furiously to transform a Snark. It rested on his shoulder, chirping quietly. “I would give anything to be able to open a portal like that. I can’t even transform this stupid Snark.”
“I can’t believe you actually stole one,” Violet said.
“I didn’t steal it,” Theodore replied. “I borrowed it.”
“Without asking,” Violet said. “Which is what we call stealing.”
“Well, how am I gonna get better if I can’t practice?” Theodore moaned. “It’s not as easy as it looks, believe me, in spite of what ‘portal master’ over there can do.” He jerked his thumb at Charlie, then closed his eyes, scrunched his face into a grimace, and yelled, “Get scared, Theodore! Be afraid! Be very afraid!”
The Snark cooed softly, not changing even the slightest bit.
“I’ll never get this,” Theodore groaned.
“Because you’re trying to force it,” Charlie said. “Do what you did in Nethermancy class. Try to find a fear that’s real and focus on that.”
“My biggest fear right now is not being able to find a fear.”
“Then use that,” Charlie said. “Heck, I wish I had your problem. Not only did I almost let Barakkas wipe us all out, but I actually had a chance to kill him and I froze.”
“First of all,” Theodore said, “you didn’t freeze. That stinkin’ thing just leaped back into the Nether before you got a chance to slice and dice him. And second, he never even came close to wiping us out. Soon as he tried to cross over, he lay there like a little puking baby…although I have no idea why.”
“It’s this place, I think,” Charlie said. “It’s poisonous to creatures from the Nether.”
“If it’s poisonous to them,” Violet said, “why didn’t it do anything to Xix or the Ectobogs?”
“They’re off in the Banishing caves, away from the Academy,” Charlie replied. “Whatever protects us, I don’t think it reaches all the way down there.”
“But it reaches here,” Violet countered, “And Theo’s Snark looks just fine.” She gestured to the Snark on Theodore’s shoulder. “It’s from the Nether.”
“First of all,” Theodore said, “never call me Theo. And second…” He paused, thought a moment, then turned to Charlie. “Yeah, she’s right. Why isn’t it doing anything to the Snark?”
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe the Snark isn’t strong enough. Maybe the more powerful a creature is, the more the Academy affects them.” He sighed in frustration. “There’s so much I don’t know, I don’t even know how much I don’t know.”
“Say that again ten times fast,” Theodore said with a grin.
Charlie laughed then. It felt good. He glanced up at one of the fantasy posters on the far wall. “I think that one’s my favorite,” he said, and pointed.
It showed a small squire sitting atop a rickety dray horse while holding a battered lance. The squire was staring up at a fearsome dragon that loomed high above, its toothy snout almost lost in a cloud of yellow smoke.
The impending battle was, clearly, hopeless.
“That’s my favorite, too,” Violet said, walking over. “It’s by Don Maitz and it’s called It Takes Courage. That’s pretty much how I felt on the day my mother died—totally outmatched by the dragons around me.”
She was silent a moment. Charlie glanced at Theodore, unsure what to say. Theodore looked away uncomfortably.
“Sorry, Violet,” Charlie said finally. “That must’ve been terrible.”
“It was a long time ago,” Violet said softly. “I guess that’s why I like to draw dragons so much. They’re evil beasts that can attack out of nowhere but, with this”—she held up a pen—“I can control them. I make them do what I want them to do, not the other way around.” She smiled. “I spent too much time being lonely and afraid.”
“I know what you mean,” Charlie said, and they shared a smile.
“Me, too,” Theodore added quietly.
Suddenly, Charlie realized that he had been wrong all along. He had thought that the Gift was the common bond he shared with the other kids at the Nightmare Academy, but it turned out that the Gift wasn’t the thread that tied them together after all.
It was loneliness.
“Let’s make a deal,” Violet said finally. “We’ll always help each other out, the three of us. No matter what. Then we’ll never be alone.”
She stuck out her hand. After a moment, Charlie clasped it.
“Deal,” he said.
“Deal,” Theodore added, putting his hand on top. “And, for the record, I think I could take that dragon.” He gestured to the poster.
“I bet you do,” Charlie said with a smile.
Suddenly, a portal opened in the room and the Headmaster rushed through. “You need to come with us immediately,” she said to Charlie. “I’m afraid something quite serious has happened. You must prepare yourself. This won’t be pleasant.”
From the outside, the model 3 looked untouched.
Inside, however, was a completely different story. Wallpaper hung from the walls in ripped sheets. Shattered glass covered the torn carpet, which was bunched up to expose the plywood beneath. The refrigerator lay on its side and its contents were strewn across the kitchen. Catsup and pickles mixed with broken eggs an
d anchovies in a noxious stew.
It wasn’t just a crime scene; it was a war zone.
“My parents,” Charlie gasped, looking around in dismay. “Where are they?”
“They have been taken,” the Headmaster said simply. “You had best follow me.” She led Charlie up the stairs. Rex, Tabitha, and Pinch followed a couple of steps behind, causing the splintered banister to sway drunkenly. Glass crunched underfoot.
Charlie saw the message the moment he stepped into his old bedroom. Written on the soft foam of the wall were a few simple words:
RETURN THE ARTIFACT
IF YOU WANT YOUR PARENTS ALIVE
The letters were large and scrawled in some dark red liquid. Charlie was afraid it was blood.
“They are being used for blackmail,” the Headmaster said, “to compel you to get the bracer from the Nightmare Division and take it to Barakkas.”
“So, what do we do?” Charlie asked. “We have to do something.”
“Course we’re gonna do something,” Rex said. “We’re gonna find ’em and rescue ’em.”
“How?” Charlie demanded. He could feel his panic rising. “What if they’re killed?”
“Control your fear,” the Headmaster said. “We do not need you opening another portal to the heart of the Inner Circle. We have no protection from Barakkas here.”
Charlie took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves, but it was like trying to put the brakes on an ocean liner. “Promise me,” he said. “Promise me that they’ll be all right.”
“I promise that we’ll do everything we can,” the Headmaster replied.
“But that’s not the same thing!” Charlie said. “If you can’t promise to save them, then we have to return the bracer, like Barakkas asked!”
“Absolutely not,” Pinch shot back. “It is far too dangerous. Under no circumstances will that artifact ever leave the confines of the Nightmare Division.”
“I hate to say it, but Pinch is right,” Rex said. “Anything Barakkas wants that badly is way too dangerous to actually let him have.”
“What does it do?” Charlie asked.
“At the very least,” Pinch answered, “it allows the Named to communicate with one another, which we absolutely cannot permit—no matter what the stakes.”
Charlie turned away from them then in something of a daze. Memories flooded back to him as he moved through the ruins of his house. Tacked to a wall was a Thanksgiving turkey made from his palm print when he was five years old. He could almost still feel the cold, slimy paint on his hand. His mother had gone to school that day to help out. In fact, she’d often gone there, just to “make sure things were okay.”
But now they were not okay.
Something alien had swept through his house and taken away the people he loved the most, taken them somewhere harsh and scary, and all because he had a Gift he couldn’t control.
It wasn’t a gift. It was a curse, and he hated it.
On the kitchen table, he spied a large brown envelope addressed to Charlie Benjamin, care of the Nightmare Division—it was one of the preaddressed envelopes Pinch had given his parents so that they could get in touch with him. When Charlie emptied it out, he discovered a sealed bag of home-baked chocolate chip cookies with a note that said, “We are very proud of you and love you always. Mom.”
And there was something else in there, as well. It was a photograph taken on a roller coaster called the Goliath. In the photo, Charlie and his dad had their hands raised high in the air, excited smiles on their faces as they waited in breathless anticipation for the coaster to make its biggest plunge.
“The Benjamin men face their fears!” his dad had written on the bottom of the photo in his quirky handwriting. After that, he had written one more thing: “I love you, son. Be safe.”
Charlie started crying then. He just couldn’t help it.
“Hey, kid,” Rex said, walking up behind him. Charlie wiped away the tears that were hotly welling up inside. “I know this is a tough blow, but we’ll see it through, I promise.”
“But you can’t make that promise,” he said. “We don’t know where they are. We don’t know what might happen to them. We don’t know anything. And it’s all my fault.”
“That’s true,” Rex agreed, to Charlie’s surprise. “If you didn’t have the Gift, none of this would’ve happened. Now, we can sit here and piss and moan about how unfair life is, or we can use the Gift to get your folks back.”
“I never want to use it again,” Charlie said. “I wish I had been Reduced, like everyone wanted.”
“That’s good thinking,” Rex replied. “Let’s make you stupid and take away any chance we have at bringing your parents home safely. In fact, let’s go to the Nightmare Division right now and shave off that frontal lobe. Your parents will be dead, but what’ll you care? You’ll be too dumb to know. That what you want?”
“You know I don’t,” Charlie admitted. They were silent a moment. “It’s funny,” he continued, staring at the shattered remains of the house where he grew up, “I was always desperate to get away from here, from my parents, because it felt like they were just smothering me to death. But now…I just want to be with them again.”
“I know how you feel,” Rex said. “My folks were the same way. They’re dead now, but when they were alive, shoot, I couldn’t get ’em to stop worrying about me. It ’bout drove me crazy.”
“Did you love them?” Charlie asked.
“More’n anything. Sometimes, when things get tough, I think back on when I was a little kid, burning up with fever, and how blessedly cool my momma’s hand felt on my forehead.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“My folks are gone,” Rex said simply. “And where they’re gone to, they can’t come back from. All I got are the memories. But your folks…we can get ’em, Charlie. And we’re gonna. You just gotta trust me.”
“I do,” Charlie said finally. “Is there a plan?”
“Course there’s a plan!” Rex roared back. “You think I do anything without a carefully thought out plan?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
Rex smiled. “Look, it ain’t gonna be easy. We may have to do some things that are…grim.”
“I don’t care.”
“You haven’t heard what they are yet,” Rex said. “You might care then.”
“I don’t,” Charlie replied.
Rex eyed him carefully. “I guess you don’t at that. Well, here’s what we’re gonna do. First we go back to the Nightmare Academy…and then we head into the Nether.”
“For what?”
“The Hags,” Rex said. “The Hags of the Void.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE HAGS OF THE VOID
“How long do I need to wait?” Professor Xix asked, cleaning an eye stalk with two of his front legs.
“I’m not sure,” the Headmaster replied. “Just stay here in the Banishing arena until we return, if you don’t mind.”
“I fail to see why the Netherstalker is involved in this operation,” Pinch sniffed, walking toward them. “What does it bring that we do not?”
“He is not human,” Rex said. “That may come in useful where we’re going.”
“Since when did we start depending on inhuman creatures?”
“Since we discovered human creatures like you are obnoxious and unreliable,” Rex shot back.
“Can we just get going?” Charlie asked, desperate to search for his parents.
“The child is right,” Professor Xix said. “I’m well aware of Mr. Pinch’s concerns about my contributions to the Nightmare Academy, and we can address them at a later date.”
“They’re more than concerns!” Pinch snapped. “I fail to see why we have allowed an enemy complete access to our most treasured training facility.”
“Because I trust him,” the Headmaster said simply, smoothing her dress. “Professor Xix has been a faithful and useful addition to our family for many years and I expec
t he will be for many to come.”
“Plus, I think he’s handsome,” Tabitha added with a smile. “I’ve always had a thing for dark and mysterious men.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Xix said.
“Disgusting,” Pinch groaned.
“And on that happy note,” the Headmaster said, “let’s get started, shall we?”
She waved her hand and created a portal in the vast cavern of the Banishing arena. “Step through, please,” she continued, “and be on guard. The Void is not a place to travel lightly.”
They found themselves standing in what looked like a field of tall purple reeds so high that Charlie could not see above them. The reeds were dusted with a crystalline substance that glowed in the red light of the pillar of fire surrounding the Inner Circle some distance away.
“Be very careful,” the Headmaster said, stepping nimbly through the stalks on her long, sure legs. “Though they appear to be plants, they are, in fact, hairs, and quite delicate ones at that. If one of them breaks, it will be…unpleasant.”
“What will happen?” Charlie asked, stepping forward. His foot landed at the base of one of the thick waving hairs, snapping it at the root.
“Good going, genius,” Pinch said with a sigh.
Suddenly, all the hairs in the field began vibrating wildly, clouding the air with the crystalline dust. It became so thick that Charlie couldn’t see to the end of his arm.
“Close your eyes,” Tabitha yelled. “And keep them closed, or you’ll be blinded.”
Charlie shut his eyes tightly, but already it felt like there was ground glass in them, and rubbing only made it worse. He tried to call out to the people around him to ask what to do, but the words died in his throat as the horrible dust coated his lungs, making it nearly impossible to speak or even breathe.
“Cover your nose and mouth with your shirt!” Rex shouted from somewhere off to his left. “Use it like a mask!”
Charlie did. It helped…but not much.