Nightmare Academy

by Dean Lorey

  “Look out!” Pinch shouted.

  Charlie turned and saw several Netherstalkers racing toward them on both sides. “They’re Class 5’s!” he yelled, quickly counting the number of eye stalks that waved obscenely on the tops of their heads.

  Rex spun and, with an almost inhumanly smooth motion, snapped his lasso at the nearest Netherstalker. It wrapped tightly around the creature’s two front legs, causing it to stumble forward and somersault onto its back, exposing its delicate eye stalks.

  “Cut ’em off!” Rex shouted to Charlie. “Use your rapier!”

  Almost without thinking, Charlie drew his rapier and brought it down toward the head of the hobbled creature. He sliced its five eye stalks off with a clean strike.

  The Netherstalker shrieked and regained its footing, only to stumble blindly into a pool of lava, where it began to smoke and burn.

  “Good job, kid,” Rex said. “Now let’s kill the other million.”

  The Headmaster, meanwhile, was making short work of the Netherstalkers that approached on her side. She was a blur of motion, whirling and spinning her metal staff like a blade in a blender, leaving a twisted pile of Netherstalkers in her ferocious wake. Black ichor fountained in all directions as the large bristly hairs that covered the creatures sprayed wildly into the air.

  “Wow,” Charlie muttered, awestruck.

  “I know,” Rex said. “Ridiculous, isn’t she?”

  “Look!” Pinch screamed, glancing around nervously at the incoming flood of Nethercreatures. “They’re pouring in from everywhere!”

  “Let ’em come,” Rex snarled.

  Even though Rex seemed confident, Charlie was beginning to get seriously worried. They could kill some of the creatures—maybe even many—but certainly not all of them. Hundreds of monsters boiled toward them from all directions like a black cloud. Some flew, some scuttled, and some slithered, but they all descended with astonishing speed.

  “Tabitha, open a portal!” the Headmaster commanded as she split open the head of an Acidspitter. “There are too many of them. We have to retreat.”

  “But my parents!” Charlie shouted.

  “She’s right, kid,” Rex shot back. “We can’t help ’em if we’re dead.”

  And that was when they heard the laugh.

  Low…deep…primal—it was the laugh of something so dark and ferocious that it found the impending massacre…amusing.

  Charlie turned and saw a monstrously large beast make its way into the cavern on six long, bony legs. Like most of the creatures from the Nether, this new thing was a sick perversion of a familiar animal—in this case, a crab. Its two gigantic claws opened and closed with startling clacks. They protruded from a bony, gray, saucer-shaped body streaked with hectic flashes of amber. It was so big, it could almost fill a baseball diamond. A head like a gargoyle’s snaked out of the deep recesses of its shell, its eyes red and unblinking.

  “Welcome, Headmaster,” the beast said with a grin and another shocking snap of its claws.

  “Hello, Verminion,” she replied.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  VERMINION THE DECEIVER

  “Begone,” Verminion commanded, turning to the creatures of the Nether. They quickly backed up, shying away from the lava light and folding into the darkness beyond.

  “So this is where you’ve been hiding these last twenty years,” the Headmaster said. “Cozy.”

  “It’s tolerable, although it’s not exactly the level of comfort to which I’d grown accustomed.”

  “Then why not return to your palace in the Nether?” the Headmaster replied with a smile. “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Verminion said. “Unfortunately, my work demands my presence on Earth. Did you bring Barakkas’s bracer?”

  The bracer.

  Charlie suddenly noticed that around his neck Verminion wore a black choker covered in red carvings that were identical to the ones on Barakkas’s bracer. Were they related somehow? Was this one of the other Artifacts of the Nether that Barakkas had mentioned?

  “Which bracer are you referring to?” the Headmaster asked mildly.

  “I see,” Verminion replied with a sigh. “We’re going to play that game. Too bad. It would have been nice to return the boy’s parents to him alive.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe you would let them live if he had brought what you asked?”

  “Of course.”

  The headmaster smiled. “I suppose that’s because you’re so trustworthy. Why do you want Barakkas’s bracer anyway? It can’t possibly benefit you.”

  “I wish to hold it for him in trust.”

  “You’re expecting him to find a way to Earth, then?”

  “In due time,” Verminion replied casually. “He will join us when he can.”

  “I’d love to know how. He’s isolated in the Nether and we have no intention of ever portaling him over.”

  “As I recall, you had no intention of ever portaling me over, either,” Verminion said. “And yet, here I am…thanks to Edward.” The creature swiveled its mighty head toward Pinch, who paled considerably. “Good to see you again, Edward. You’ve grown.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Pinch managed. He looked as though he was going to faint.

  “What?” Charlie said, stunned. “Pinch was the one who portaled you here?”

  “Oh, yes indeed,” Verminion replied, slowly scuttling toward the group on his six gigantic legs. “He was around your age, I suppose. Isn’t that right, Edward?”

  “Yes,” Pinch agreed, backing up a couple steps.

  “He was incredibly powerful with the Gift. ‘A Double-Threat,’ I believe he was called. Those of us in the Nether, the ones you call the ‘Named,’ watched his growth with great interest…as we do yours, young Nethermancer.”

  Charlie swallowed hard.

  “That’s far enough, Verminion,” Rex warned, uncoiling his lasso and drawing his short sword. “Don’t make me turn you into a seafood salad.”

  “Oooh, scary,” Verminion replied with a dismissive wave of his powerful claw—although Charlie noticed that the giant beast did, in fact, stop.

  “It is true,” the Headmaster conceded, “that Pinch made mistakes in his youth, and he paid a monstrous, unforgivable price.”

  “What happened?” Charlie asked.

  “I was Reduced,” Pinch said, his voice barely a whisper. “Director Dyer—he was the Director before Goodnight—called me ‘an abomination, a monster that had to be tamed.’”

  Suddenly, it all made sense. Pinch didn’t lose the Gift. It was taken from him. He had been one of the strongest—a Double-Threat, like Charlie and the Headmaster herself—but, unlike them, Pinch’s Gift had been brutally yanked away from him when he was just a child.

  No wonder he was angry.

  How alone he must feel, Charlie thought. How miserable he must be, surrounded by people with the Gift when he was once one of the strongest of all.

  “Oh dear,” Verminion said, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. “They made you just like the rest of the humans, didn’t they, Edward? Average and feeble. My, how the mighty have fallen.”

  “Because you lied to me!” Pinch suddenly shouted. “I believed you when you said you would help me seek revenge against everyone who tormented me.”

  “Ah, a boy and his crab,” Rex said. “I love that story.”

  “And speaking of those who tormented me,” Pinch said, turning to him, “you were the worst of them, Rexford—ever since we were Noobs.”

  “Because you deserved it,” Rex shot back.

  “How?” Pinch asked. “What did I ever do that made you hate me so much? That made all of you hate me so much?”

  “We never hated you,” Rex replied. “We just didn’t like you. There’s a difference.”

  “Don’t you dare speak for me,” Tabitha said. “I was never mean to you, Edward. I always treated you nicely.”

  “Only because it made you feel su
perior,” he snapped. “Give weird, freakish Pinch a few crumbs of kindness and he’ll come begging for more, like a dog.”

  “Knock it off,” Rex said. “You’re just trying to rewrite history. You were arrogant and conceited. You never wanted anything to do with the rest of us because you thought you were better than we were.”

  “No,” Pinch said quietly. “You just assumed I thought that because I was always alone—but that was only because there was no one else who understood what I was going through.”

  Tell me about it, Charlie thought.

  “I felt so isolated,” Pinch continued. “I never asked to be different or powerful. I only wanted to be like everyone else.”

  “And now you are,” Verminion said smoothly.

  His words were like a shot to the heart. There was a deep silence then, broken finally by Pinch.

  “Yes, now I am,” he said. “And I take responsibility for my part in it. I made grave mistakes. I felt so lost and alone back then that I ran away from the Nightmare Academy and portaled to the house where I grew up—and that’s when it happened.”

  “You opened a gateway to the Inner Circle, didn’t you?” Charlie said quietly.

  Pinch nodded. “To Verminion’s palace. It was purely by accident.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Charlie knows exactly how such a thing could happen,” Verminion said with another snap of his monstrous claws.

  “He talked to me,” Pinch continued. “And made promises…things he would do for me if only I would bring him to Earth.”

  “And you did, didn’t you?” Verminion said, his voice low and seductive. “My, how strong you were back then.”

  “What happened after he came through?” Charlie asked.

  “It was a slaughter,” Rex said, his voice cracking a little. “Verminion killed everyone in the house, everyone in the town, everyone…but Pinch.”

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” Pinch groaned. “You killed my parents right in front of me. You should have killed me, too.”

  “And spare you your delicious suffering?”

  “Shut up, Verminion,” Rex growled. “You’ve done enough.”

  “Me?” Verminion replied. “What about you? A bomb does not go off by itself—someone has to light the fuse. You lit it with your torment of Edward and it went off when he brought me through to your world. You bear as much responsibility for this as he does.”

  Rex seemed to deflate. He took a stumbling step backward. It was the first time Charlie had seen him less than sure. “You’re right,” he said finally, then turned to Pinch. “I’m sorry, Edward. I really didn’t know how you were suffering. I was just a kid then, like you. I thought you didn’t like me, and I guess I got defensive and attacked.” He looked Pinch straight in the eyes. “I was wrong and I apologize. I mean that.”

  “Me, too,” Tabitha added.

  Pinch nodded. “Thank you both.”

  “Oh, how touching…,” Verminion said. “I just may cry.”

  “You filthy—,” Rex began, walking toward him.

  “Enough!” the Headmaster shouted. “Fight a battle you can win, Rexford.”

  Rex’s slate eyes held her gaze steadily. After a moment, he backed away. The Headmaster turned to Verminion. “It is true that, many years ago, Pinch allowed you to enter our world. And yet, after the initial horror of your arrival, you have been strangely silent. Are you not as great a threat as we imagined?”

  “The time will come when you will see my fury unleashed.”

  “But that time is not now?”

  “Soon,” Verminion said, and crab-walked back toward Charlie’s parents, who hung suspended in their cocoons above pools of bubbling lava. “Wake up, little ones,” he said, tapping each of them with a giant claw.

  Slowly, Olga and Barrington opened their eyes.

  “Charlie?” Olga rasped, seeing him.

  “It’s okay, Mom. We’re here to rescue you.”

  “No…run,” his father croaked. “It’s…terrible here.”

  “Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “We’re going to take you home.”

  “Are you really?” Verminion asked, then reached up and wrapped a gigantic claw around each of Charlie’s parents.

  “What are you doing?” Charlie gasped. Without even realizing it, he started to run toward Verminion.

  “Stop!” the Headmaster said, blocking his path.

  “But he’ll kill them.”

  “No, he won’t,” she replied. “They’re the only leverage he has with you, and he needs you because—”

  Suddenly, she stopped. She was staring at Charlie’s feet.

  Something was wrong.

  She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It had to do with the rough volcanic rock where Charlie stood. There was something odd about it—something that had to do with why Verminion needed him….

  “We have been deceived,” she suddenly shouted.

  “Say good-bye to Mommy and Daddy,” Verminion chuckled, and with one quick snip of those terrible claws, he sliced Olga and Barrington cleanly in half.

  “NOOO!” Charlie screamed as his parent’s bodies tumbled into the lava below.

  The Headmaster was yelling at him then, trying urgently to tell him something, but Charlie couldn’t hear a single word. The sheer horror of the moment overwhelmed him. He reeled backward, his mind spinning crazily.

  Did that really just happen? he thought. Are my parents really dead?

  “No…,” he gasped again, and dropped to his knees.

  His parents had been horribly murdered right in front of him.

  He was all alone.

  There were other voices around him now. Tabitha and Rex—even Pinch—seemed to be talking, but the words were lost in the tide of panic that swept over him like an ocean wave, drowning him in its icy cold depths. He drifted farther and farther away from them in the grip of current too strong to swim against.

  All alone…all alone forever…

  And that was when he opened the portal.

  He didn’t mean to, certainly didn’t try to, but the raw horror of the moment made it all but impossible to stop. It was enormous, this portal, easily dwarfing the one he had opened in the High Council chamber, nearly touching the stalactites that hung from the top of the stadium-high cavern. The portal itself was ringed with a purple fire so bright and intense that the flames looked like solar flares raging across the surface of an alien sun.

  Everyone stopped yelling and stared at it, awestruck.

  Then…something monstrous stepped through.

  It was Barakkas.

  “Welcome to Earth,” Verminion said with a smile.

  “It’s about time,” Barrakas replied as he walked toward him, his giant hooves striking showers of flame off the volcanic rock. “And I owe it all to my very dear friend, Charlie Benjamin.”

  He turned to Charlie with a grin.

  “What have I done?” Charlie whispered.

  Then the world went white.

  Charlie felt something cool on his forehead.

  He opened his eyes, to find himself lying in a bed in the infirmary as Mama Rose dabbed his face with a chilled cloth. Oil lamps gave the room a welcoming glow. Through the round porthole windows, Charlie could see a full moon rising in the tropical night sky.

  He was back in the Nightmare Academy.

  “He’s awake,” Mama Rose said, then turned to Charlie. “Don’t you scare me like that again, boy. When they brought you in, you were white as a sheet. Drink this.”

  She handed him a cup of hot, steaming liquid. He took a sip and gagged immediately.

  “It’s terrible,” Charlie said, his voice raspy from the smoke and heat of Verminion’s lair.

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion of it,” Mama Rose snapped. “I’m not looking for a review. I just said drink it, and that’s what you’ll do. It’ll bring color back to your cheeks. I’ll be back to check in on ya later.”

  With that, she shuffled her large bulk out of the door, passing b
y Tabitha, who offered Charlie a gentle smile.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Okay,” Charlie answered, putting down the mug. “What happened?”

  “You mean after you fainted?” Rex said, grinning, as he stepped in from the shadows.

  “Is that what I did?”

  “Dropped like a rock. Normally, I’d consider that kinda a girlie move, but, given the circumstances, I’ll give you a pass. Truth is, we didn’t act any braver. Soon as Barakkas came through, the Headmaster whipped us up a portal and we grabbed you and ran like a buncha chickens. It was close, but we made it.”

  “Not all of us,” Charlie said quietly. “My parents—”

  “Are alive,” another voice chimed in.

  Charlie turned to see the Headmaster walking into the room through a portal. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before you were too far gone to hear me.”

  “They’re alive? How?” Charlie asked, sitting up in bed. “There was no way they could have survived what Verminion did to them.”

  “That would be true if the things he destroyed were your parents.”

  “But I saw—”

  “What he wanted you to see,” she said. “I believed the deception as well, until I noticed the Shadow at your feet. It was not pointing toward what you thought were your parents. Instead, it was pointing off to the right. It took me a moment to understand what that meant.”

  “The things Verminion murdered weren’t my parents,” Charlie said, with sudden realization. “They were Mimics.”

  “That’s right. Your real parents were being kept somewhere separate from the main chamber.”

  “Then they’re alive!” Charlie exclaimed.

  “Yes,” the Headmaster said. “Unfortunately, we were unable to rescue them.”

  “Heck,” Rex said, “we were barely able to rescue ourselves. It was that close.” He spread his thumb and forefinger about a hair’s width apart.

  “But if Verminion didn’t really want my parents dead, why did he pretend to kill them?”