The moment he finished, Ajay jumped into Will’s arms and bear-hugged him. Nick rushed in after him and picked them both up off the ground. Will saw tears in Ajay’s eyes, while Nick just kept his closed tight.
“Yes, yes!” said Nick.
“Okay, okay,” said Will, the air squeezed out of him. “Don’t crush me.”
“I knew it, I knew it,” said Ajay to Nick. “I told you we could count on him.”
“Correction, I told you that,” said Nick, arguing at close range on either side of Will.
“Baloney, I trusted Will more than you. I never stopped believing in—”
“You’re completely cracked, Ajay.”
“Nick, I can’t breathe,” said Will, trying to disengage.
“Don’t fight over him, you goofballs,” said Elise, prying them apart. “Save it for the bad guys.”
“So what are we going to do, Will? How do we respond?” asked Ajay as he finally stepped back. “Are you contemplating a full frontal assault, or something more devious and far less suicidal?”
“Hey, why isn’t Brooke here?” asked Nick.
Will glanced at Elise. “I didn’t ask her to come.”
“So you told her already?” asked Ajay.
“No,” said Will, certain his unease was showing. “And it’s important that none of us says a word about this to her right now. She’s doesn’t know, and she doesn’t need to know, and it needs to stay that way.”
“That’s quite a lot to ask us to take on faith alone, Will,” said Ajay, puzzled. “Why?”
“Because she can’t be trusted.” Coach Jericho spoke behind them, startling them all.
“But why?” asked Nick.
“Because,” said Jericho bluntly, “Brooke’s been working for them since the moment you all got here. She sold the rest of you out from day one. Her father’s a Knight, inner circle, always has been. Like father, like daughter. She went rogue.”
Nick was shocked, Ajay looked stricken, and Elise banged a fist into a tree, her face coiled in anger. Will hated seeing them suffer like this.
Ira Jericho stepped closer, his sharp features taut and imperious, staring down at them. “Don’t give me that hurt face, West. They need to know. What they don’t know can kill them.”
“Maybe you’re right,” mumbled Will.
“Why does he know about it?” asked Elise, nodding at Jericho.
“I told him first,” said Will sheepishly.
“Before me?” Elise looked wounded.
“Get over it, sister,” said Jericho, giving her his death stare.
“Excuse me?” asked Nick, flaring up in her defense. “You can’t talk to her like that.”
“From this point forward, nobody here gets to think of themselves first anymore. In other words, you can’t be teenagers anymore. You don’t have that luxury, and you might never have it again. Will went this whole time without telling you any of this and that saved your lives.”
His three roommates glanced at Will, looking slightly ashamed.
“How do you think he managed to do that? Forget about your precious little feelings, and check your damn egos at the door. From now on, if any one of you breaks this trust between you, the rest of you are going to die. Can I make that any clearer for you?”
Elise shook her head, eyes downcast.
After a moment, Nick spoke first. “Wow, Coach, I…I didn’t even know you could talk that long.”
“I realize that you’re the track coach here and everything, but if you don’t mind my asking, sir,” said Ajay. “Who are you?”
“Good question. I mean, are you like, what, from the CIA or something?” asked Nick.
Jericho closed his eyes and shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “In words even you might understand, McLeish: I’m the best chance you have to make it to your next birthday.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Nick, nodding thoughtfully. “I can work with that.”
“I can explain,” said Will, taking something from his pocket. “I told you I had a friend who’d been helping me. The one who told me about the portals and the Knights, and he gave me these glasses.”
“I take it you’re referring to your allegedly dead helicopter pilot?” asked Ajay, looking up and to the left as he accessed his memory.
“That’s right,” said Will. “Except there’s nothing alleged about him. Elise met him, sort of.”
“Dave,” said Elise.
“And was this prior to or after the wendigo yanked Dave into the Never-Was?” asked Ajay.
“After.” Elise nodded. “Brooke saw him, too.”
“Correct,” said Will. “Just before that, Dave told me I was going to meet someone at school who could help me get through this. So…”
Will turned to Coach Jericho, holding out his arms as if presenting him to the others. Jericho, playing along, gave him a slight salute.
“Yes, I see,” said Ajay. “But if you don’t mind elaborating, sir, what exactly is your connection to Will’s ongoing…situation?”
Jericho sighed and shook his head.
“I do apologize for persisting with my line of inquiry, sir,” said Ajay, fidgeting with his hands. “But as our modest little group’s unofficial custodian of Keeping Things Straight, it would be tremendously helpful for all of us, really, to have some small notion of how you fit in.”
Jericho looked at Will again, who shrugged apologetically. “I guess you ought to tell them.”
“First, okay, I’ve heard all the stories students throw around about me,” said Jericho, annoyed. “For starters? I am not the great-great-grandson of Crazy Horse.”
“Aww.” Nick looked disappointed.
“I’m the great-great-great-grandson of Crazy Horse,” said Jericho, holding up three fingers. “I get pretty chapped you chuckleheads never get that right.”
“I knew it,” said Nick, turning to Ajay, asking for a high five. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“And what does this admittedly remarkable family tree of yours mean as far as we’re concerned, exactly?” asked Ajay.
Jericho moved to the edge of the deep woods. He spoke softly, barely above a whisper, never taking his eyes off the forest.
“This was our home, for a long time, more than ten thousand years. The stories say that early on my people learned something of what you’ve all seen down below here.”
“What did they do about it?” asked Elise.
“There wasn’t much they could do. There was dark power there, but it seemed to be latent, sleeping. So those in my lineage have always been charged with…keeping watch, in case any part of it woke up. But that tradition was lost, for a few generations, after my people were moved off the land.”
“During which time—making an educated guess—Old Man Ian Cornish and his family came to town,” said Ajay.
“That’s right,” said Jericho.
“And much hilarity ensued,” said Elise dryly.
“So, wait, you’re telling us you’re like the last in a whole line of these shaman dudes,” said Nick, scrunching up his forehead.
Jericho turned to look at them, but his voice sounded far away. “Living on the reservation, they had to hide it to survive. Times changed. Suppress your own talents long enough, gradually they fall away. We moved into cities.
“My grandfather was a car mechanic at a garage in St. Paul. My father ran track in college, then taught social studies at a public school. But they both knew our family’s history, and once I was old enough, they told me all about it. How they’d had to keep this tradition hidden for almost a century. Easier to stay alive that way.
“But times were changing again. My generation was looking back at what used to be, realizing how much we’d lost. I was almost your age when I decided to try and train in the old ways.”
“How?” asked Ajay.
“Had to track down this crazy old coot. Lived alone in a yurt way out in the Black Hills. Medicine man, about ninety-five years old. Not a healthy ninety-five; he was
half deaf, half blind, with skin like an alligator and mean as a snake. A few of my people told me he was the last one left who could teach me to walk the path. Didn’t have indoor plumbing or two cents to his name, but I knew instantly he carried himself with more dignity than any man I’d ever met.
“At first he wouldn’t even talk to me. Pretended he couldn’t hear, kept telling me to leave. So I just slept on the ground, right there in front of his yurt. Took six months to convince him I was serious before he’d say a word.”
“So he became your teacher,” said Elise quietly.
“And I assume he taught you…a number of mythical—that is to say, traditional—skills,” said Ajay, eyeing the small leather pouch around Jericho’s neck. “Shamanistically speaking.”
“That’s right.” Jericho looked up at them again.
“Skills such as…”
“After a few years he told me what was down deep below this ground,” said Jericho, ignoring Ajay’s invitation to elaborate. “And the need for having someone, one of our people, to man this post. He decided that since I’d arrived when I did, it meant I was the one to do it. I’ve been here ever since, over twenty years.”
“Coach,” said Nick sincerely, “what you just shared with us is like so totally super-powerful, and I don’t even know what most of it means, but personally? All this time I thought you were just like this regular coach dude, and I’m just really way super super super sorry if I was ever a dick to you.”
“What do you mean ‘if’?” said Jericho.
“Well said, Nick,” said Ajay. “Heartfelt and completely incomprehensible.”
“You think I enjoy this gig?” said Jericho, looking angry. “Giving up my chance for a normal life, stuck babysitting the spoiled brats of the ruling class so I can keep watch over an old pile of bones?”
“So you’re not like bitter or anything, are you, Coach?” asked Nick.
Jericho sighed heavily and leaned back against a tree. “I’m only telling you this because if I don’t live through what’s ahead of us, I’d like to know that somebody alive somewhere knows my story.”
“That’s presuming we live through it,” said Ajay.
“How can we stop them, Will?” asked Elise.
“Yeah, dude, what’s the plan?”
“Once I’m sure I’ve completely gained his trust, I’ll get my grandfather to lead me to the Carver,” said Will. “I’m going to steal it, and then we’re all going in to bring back Dave.”
“We’re going into the Never-Was?” asked Elise, staring at him.
“Yes.”
“Wait, what?” said Nick.
“All of us?” asked Ajay, wincing.
“Don’t even start with that,” said Nick, holding up a hand.
“Do you have the slightest idea what it’s like in that place, Will, or where Dave might be if we get there?” asked Elise.
“Yes to the first question, and as far as I know it’s more dangerous than I can even describe,” said Will. “No to the second. I have no idea where he is.”
“How do we know he’s even still alive?” asked Nick.
“He wasn’t alive when I met him,” said Will.
“Say what?”
“What he means is there’s no way they can kill him since he’s already dead,” said Jericho.
“What he said,” said Will.
“But why?” asked Elise, with a penetrating stare. “Why are we trying to find Dave?”
“Because I believe the Knights and the Other Team—those things we saw down below—are about to make their move. They’re going to use those monsters to launch a full-scale invasion at us any day now. And by that I don’t mean just us—I mean our world. According to the Hierarchy, these things plan to wipe human beings off the map and take over again, and if they’re right about that…our best and only chance to stop them starts and ends with Dave.”
“What can Mr. Dave do that’s so super-special?” asked Nick.
“He can bring the full weight of the Hierarchy down on their heads. He can call in the freakin’ cavalry.” Will immediately glanced over at Jericho. “Pardon the expression.”
“Wouldn’t have been my first choice of words,” said Jericho.
“Let’s call it Wak’an Tanka, then,” said Will.
“Now you’re talking.”
“Why can’t you warn the Hierarchy yourself?” asked Elise. “What do we need Dave for?”
“I don’t know how to begin doing that,” said Will. “I don’t even know where they are. Dave never told me.”
“Dude, just try going outside and yelling.”
“Just for the sake of argument, Will, what happens if we don’t save your old pal Dave?” asked Ajay.
“A seriously above average chance that we’ll face the end of all existence as we know it,” said Will.
What Will didn’t tell them, what worried him more than anything, was that he hadn’t heard a whisper from Dave for months now, and no matter how hard he tried he hadn’t been able to reach him through the mental connection they’d developed. The only reason he believed that Dave could still be rescued was blind faith in the man’s ability to survive, but that didn’t push the idea that he might be leading them on a one-way mission to disaster far from Will’s mind.
“Okay, so providing that we are somehow able to locate and extricate your dear dead friend Dave,” said Ajay, pacing with his hands behind his back, “from whatever sorts of dire circumstances may have befallen him in this dreadful other dimension, have you given any thought as to how we’re all going to get ourselves…back out?”
“Yes,” said Will. “The Carver. It works both ways, in and out. I think.”
“That’s a relief,” said Nick.
“So just the five of us,” said Elise, standing up. “In some lethal, extra-dimensional location, looking for a dead guy, up against a legion of pissed-off demonic beings and their army of monsters.”
“Sounds like a fair fight,” said Nick.
“Well, if you have anyone else you’d like to bring along,” said Will, “I’m open to suggestions.”
“We shouldn’t take anyone else going in,” said Jericho. “The smaller the squad the better. Element of surprise, fewer bodies to keep track off.”
“There’s a lot we’ve got to do to get ready for this,” said Will. “It’s going to take weeks to prepare, in secret. We’ll have to be ready to drop anything and go at a moment’s notice, and we ever give them the slightest hint of what we’re up to we’re probably all dead.”
That quieted everyone.
“So who’s in?” asked Will.
Nick and Elise raised their hands. Then Jericho raised his, which surprised Will. Jericho saw his look.
“Adult supervision is required for any extended field trips,” said Jericho dryly. “School rules.”
“You don’t have to do—”
“Hold on, Will,” said Ajay; then he turned to Jericho. “This will most likely require you to use your powers and, perhaps, turn into a bear, yes?”
Jericho looked annoyed. “If I had to guess.”
Ajay raised his hand. “If he’s in, I’m in.”
“One other thing. Even if we make it in, the Knights will probably be ready for us when we come back out,” said Will. “Dave told me there’s ‘no time’ in the Never-Was.”
“So you think that means we’d come out, back into our world, a split second after we go in,” said Ajay.
“Possibly.”
“Okay, that’s way weird,” said Nick, holding his head.
“Oh, really?” said Ajay. “But the rest of this you’re okay with?”
“I don’t know, time-travel stuff, man, it just puts the zap on my head.”
“Then you’re right, Will. Coming back out,” said Jericho. “That’s when we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Everyone thought about it for a moment, but no one could come up with anyone.
“At this point, who else can we tr
ust?” asked Elise.
“Well, I got a line on somebody,” said Nick. “Maybe more than one person. They’re not from the school, though, but their powers are totally awesome. And this one guy just might be able to help us recruit somebody even more important.”
“Who might that be?” asked Elise.
“Our old buddy Nepsted,” said Nick. “The blob in the tub, the beast from the basement. Who else besides me thinks it’s a smokin’ good notion to get Moby Squid playing for our side?”
“Who in the world’s going to help you do that?” asked Will.
Nick took a ragged and vaguely familiar-looking piece of paper from his pocket, one that looked as if he’d been carrying it around for many months. He unfolded it and showed it to them and Will recognized it immediately: an advertising flyer with garish blocks of print announcing an evening of professional wrestling at a local off-campus venue, featuring five theatrical portraits of the featured headliners.
“Not this again,” said Ajay.
“That’s right,” said Nick; then he pointed to one of the portraits. “And if this dude can’t help us get Nepsted to back our play, I’ll eat my hat.”
—
Nick led them to a large expanse of degrading asphalt outside of the nearest town, the vast parking lot of an old abandoned factory. Four mobile homes had been parked to form a square, creating an open area inside them where voices could be heard. The RVs looked weathered and road weary, colors faded, paneling stressed with age. They stepped to the closest trailer and knocked, loudly, on the side door. The voices in the back stopped.
Moments later they heard footsteps inside, and the entire caravan trembled with each approaching step. The door opened six inches and a huge square face, framed by a round halo of wild kinky black hair, appeared in the crack, staring down at them.
“What d’ya want, meat?” The man’s voice was half rasp, half snarl.
Ajay shrank back slightly behind Nick and Will. “Why would we want meat?” he whispered.
“He didn’t ask us if we wanted any,” whispered Will. “That’s what he called us.”