“There’s nothing I have to do?” Archer asked.
“No, just rest.”
“You sure?”
She laughed quietly. “Yes, I’m sure. Sleep now.”
Archer felt a rolling tide of lethargy ready to envelop him. He felt slow . . . and warm. But there was something off, something he felt he should be able to get to. It was like an itch that he couldn’t scratch no matter how he twisted. A moment or two later, he felt the heaviness on his eyes winning out. He turned over on his side, toward the closet, and closed his eyes. “Good night, Mrs. Pitsitakas,” he mumbled.
There was a long pause, and Archer thought she might have already left. But then, she replied, “Good night, Archer. And don’t worry . . . things will all become clear tomorrow.”
SIX
GHOSTS
ARCHER’S BOWL OF FRUITY FLAKES TASTED NORMAL. THE January air at the bus stop was its usual frigid. Amy chattered away on the bus just as she always did. Everything seemed . . . normal.
Except it wasn’t.
The same impossible-to-reach mental itch he’d felt the previous night was still with him all morning. And now, as he sat through third period English class, the feeling was almost unbearable.
Snot buckets,Archer thought. Can’t focus. Especially not on this.He looked down at his worn copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Worldand shook his head.
The other students in the room seemed to be doing fine. Even Rigby, who had already read most of the classics a dozen times, seemed to be deeply engrossed in the book. Mrs. Mangum sat at her desk and pecked away at a keyboard. Feeling restless, Archer left his desk and signed out the bathroom pass.
He didn’t need to go. He just wanted out. Wanted to take a walk, get a drink of water, clear his mind . . . if he could. He walked along rows of lockers and absently tapped the padlocks that hung from each locker. It was a long hallway, mostly dim and shadowy where Archer was, but far up ahead near the main office, the windows of the front entrance were aglow with nearly unbearable bright light. Archer squinted as he bent to the fountain for a drink. A man and a woman, both dressed very professionally, stood outside the main office. From their silhouettes, Archer thought it was two of the school’s guidance counselors: Mr. Raymond and Mrs. Coonts.
As he slurped from the fountain, he wondered what the counselors might be talking about. Probably about the storm. Everyone was talking about the storm. Such a strange thing: high winds but little precipitation. It had gone out to sea, sucked up a bunch of moisture, and became a nor’easter, dumping a ton of snow in New England. Too bad,Archer thought. It could have . . . been . . . what?
Startled, Archer pressed the fountain latch too hard. Ice cold water went right into his nose. “Snot rockets!” Archer exclaimed, wiping his nose frantically. He stood up and stared. The two counselors were still there, talking, gesturing. But for a moment, one of them . . . flickered.
Archer blinked and kept staring. Maybe flickered wasn’t quite the right word. Mr. Raymond’s silhouette—just for a few seconds—seemed to become semitransparent and flake away . . . like a pile of ashes stirred by air currents. Then, he was there again: still a dark silhouette . . . but all the way there.
“Hey!” came a voice from behind. “Keaton, ya gonna drink or what?” “Guzzy?” Archer mumbled, spinning around. “But . . . I thought you . . .”
“You thought what?” The notorious school bully was pale as ever. A thin curtain of black hair partially concealed the smoldering just-give-me-a-reasonlook in his dark eyes. “Just get outta the way so I can get a drink, man. I’m parched.”
Archer hastened from the fountain, backing away from Guzzy.
“What’s wrong with you, Keaton?” Guzzy asked, looking at Archer sideways. That’s when it happened. Guzzy’s face went from lack-of-sunshine pale to ashen gray. For just a few seconds, his face disintegrated in a whirl of gossamer flakes. Then, Guzzy was all there again, sneering as always.
Heart racing, Archer backpedaled away from Guzzy, jogged back to the English classroom, and ducked inside. His back now to the door, Archer found the entire class staring at him.
“Everything okay, Archer?” Mrs. Mangum asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Fine,” Archer muttered, quickly sidling to his chair. Just not quickly enough.
“Hey, Keaton,” Rigby called. “Couldn’t get away from the scene of the crime fast enough, eh?”
Red-faced and mortified, Archer plopped into his chair and glared at Rigby. His nemesis in the classroom, however, didn’t meet his gaze. He’d gone back to reading. Archer stared at Rigby. Long sideburns, uber-cool flop of hair, and that ever-present sideways smirk. Archer mentally dared him to look up, but he never did. Instead, Rigby Thames became ashen gray, withered in a split second, and then was back to normal before Archer could blink.
There, in the midst of the quiet classroom, was a distressing thing to behold. It wasn’t gruesome, not like some time-lapsed footage of a dead thing rotting away. But seeing a tangible, flesh-and-blood person reduced to layers of ash right in front of you—it was a rattling experience. It’s the head injury,he thought. Gotta be. I’ve got a concussion, and it’s messing with my perceptions.
Archer scanned the room. If anyone else had seen Rigby’s disintegration, there should have been some reaction. But the class, even Mrs. Mangum, continued to work as if nothing had ever happened.
The rest of the school day left Archer questioning his sanity. There’d been no more dissolving people, but that irresistible, unreachable itch was still there. Only the bus ride home gave a welcome bit of monotony, a time to think.
C’mon, Archer,he told himself. You can figure this out. Just think it through.
But the answers eluded him. It just all felt wrong. It felt like he was supposed to be doing something, like he’d forgotten a very important task or mission. The answer was getting closer. It was there, hovering at the edge of his consciousness, just as the bus hit a bump.
Archer had been staring at the tall, dark green seat in front of him. The bus seemed to bounce and shake all at once, as if the driver had gone much too fast over a speed bump. But, in that moment, Archer looked up.
It happened again.
Two seats up on the left: Emy Crawford. The seat directly across the aisle to Archer’s right: Jay Stephago. Another three seats up on the right: Kara Windchil. Two more sitting side by side near the front of the bus: Bree Lassiter and Gil Messchek. The moment the bus jolted, they became disturbed blotches of whirling ash. A moment later, everything was normal.
When the bus came to Elvis Lane, the next stop on its normal route, Archer was the first to get off. It wasn’t his stop, but he didn’t care. He just wanted off that bus, away from . . . well . . . whatever was happening. Archer raced down Elvis Lane, cut the corner by leaping chain-link fences and racing across snowy backyards, and then finally crossed into his neighborhood.
All the while, his thoughts continued to clash. He was half-prepared to ask his dad to arrange a doctor’s appointment for him—maybe with a concussion specialist—but the other symptoms just weren’t there. No dizziness. No vomiting. No sensitivity to light.
No,he thought dismally, I’m just seeing people dissolve.
Archer tried to reach back into his memories. Maybe he could piece things together, find out what was causing all this, the visions and that interminable mental itch. He’d awakened in the middle of the night to find Amy’s mom sitting by his bedside. There’d been a terrible windstorm, and he’d been knocked unconscious. But what had come before? His previous memories were a blur, a mix of achingly beautiful and nightmarishly terrifying images: a massive tree with a castle nestled in its boughs, crimson tornados, beastly red-eyed hounds, and a small hooded figure with a sinister glowing grin. And then there was that big tower clock—what was up with that? It was like a ghost of Big Ben. It seemed to be everywhere—
Archer stopped right there in the middle of the road, just fifty yards from his hou
se. The answer was there, bobbing at the edge of his consciousness like a piece of treasure floating just offshore. Archer flailed at it mentally. He had some kind of job . . . a specialty, something he was very good at, something that helped people. But what?
Archer sat at his dining room table and munched absently on a big sourdough pretzel. His father stood at the sink and stared out of the window to the backyard.
“Good day at school?” Mr. Keaton asked, his face lit white from the sunlight reflected off the snow outside.
“Decent day,” Archer said. “Strange day.”
“Really? How so?”
Archer hesitated. “Well, I had trouble focusing,” he said, omitting the most troubling details. “It was like I just couldn’t think straight.”
“I suppose that’s to be expected,” Mr. Keaton replied, grabbing a tall coffeepot from the counter and beginning to fill it at the faucet.
Archer nodded. He heard a series of car doors shut somewhere outside. Guess Kaylie and Buster are home from school,he thought as he took another bite of pretzel.
“If it’s still bothering you after today,” Mr. Keaton said, “we should get you to the doc’s for a look-see.”
Archer heard the front door open and the giggle-ruckus of snow boots being taken off. Buster said, “Dude, you got snow on my socks.”
“Did not,” Kaylie argued.
Yep,Archer thought. Just like normal.
“Full pot?” Archer’s father asked without turning from the sink. “Or half pot?”
Archer blinked and took a bite of pretzel.
“Full pot,” came a voice from the foyer.
Archer chewed thoughtfully and said, “It was nice of Amy’s mom to stick around so late last night. Y’know? To make sure I was okay.”
His father shut off the kitchen faucet. “Amy and her mom went home at eight last night.”
Archer felt the terrible itch in the back of his mind again. “Then . . . who was sitting by my bedside?”
“Good to see you up and around, Archer,” a woman said, just a blur in his peripheral vision, entering the kitchen from the foyer. “I was afraid school would be too much for you today. How are you feeling?”
Archer knew the voice before he turned around. The chill vanished, overwhelmed by a complicated mixture of feelings. Almost involuntarily, he sprang up from the table. Tears already streaking his cheeks, he ran to the woman. He embraced her and wept on her shoulder, holding on as if she might at any moment be pulled from his grasp, pulled from his life once more.
SEVEN
ARRESTING DEVELOPMENTS
“MOM,” ARCHER SAID. “MOM, I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH.”
“Group hug!” Kaylie announced. She and Buster latched onto their mother, enthusiastically joining the embrace.
“Awww, Archer. Thank you,” she said, “but you missed me that much from a day at school?”
The sweetness of that embrace . . . soured a little. Archer pulled back a pace. “But, Mom, you have been gone . . . gone for so long.” It wasn’t so much a memory filling his mind as it was a sense of certainty, like a cold piece of iron hammered into the ground. Archer found himself saying, “You died, Mom. The cancer took you away.”
“Archer!” his father cut in. “Don’t say that!”
“Mommy?” Kaylie squealed. “You have cancer?”
Archer’s mother dropped down to look Kaylie in the eyes. “No, sweetie,” she told her daughter. “Not anymore.” She tweaked Kaylie’s chin, stood, and took a firm grasp of Archer’s shoulders. “Archer, I’ve been in remission for years. No sign of the cancer. I still think it was the well water.” She giggled lightly. “Maybe we should get you a sip of well water—if it’s not frozen solid that is.”
The well.
His mother’s favorite well.
Archer felt dizzy now. He swayed where he stood and might have fallen if his mother’s arms hadn’t held him steady. He stared hard at her.
“Archer,” she said, “what’s wrong, sweetie? You look pale. Maybe you should sit—”
“No!” Archer exclaimed, pulling away from her. “Something’s wrong.”
“It’s the injury,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder at her husband. “I told you it was too soon for Archer to go back to school.”
Mr. Keaton shrugged. “He seemed fine to me this morning.”
Archer resisted his mother’s attempts to hold him, but part of him didn’t want to resist. Something at his core, something raw and needy, urged him to just fall into her embrace and soak up the feel of her warmth, the scent of her perfume, the melodic sound of her voice. He almost did.
But he suddenly found himself careening out of the kitchen, past Kaylie’s and Buster’s wide-eyed attempts to slow him down, past his shell-shocked father’s haunted expression. Archer stumbled around the corner, banged into the basement door, and bounded into the laundry room. In a tear-streaked blur, he pounded out of the side door, charged for the backyard gate, and . . . without a jacket, without a hat, without even his shoes, he ran out into the snow.
He slip-slid down the hill through the slush, crusty snow, and ice until he collapsed hard at the base of the wishing well. Ignoring the shooting pain of the bitter cold on his bare feet, Archer crouched by the well and clung to its stone. He didn’t wish. He prayed. “Oh, God, please . . .” he cried. “I want her to be real. I want her back . . . please let this be . . . true.”
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes and streaked down his cheeks. Memories flashed: bare feet cushioned on the warming summer grass and well water sloshing as he carried a cool bucket up the hill; the delicious tang of his mother’s lemonade, made from fresh-squeezed lemons, cane sugar, and well water; and the grateful look in his mother’s eyes when he delivered a glass of water . . . a look that communicated the simple but powerful message: You matter to me.
With all five senses firing, Archer could see, smell, taste, hear, and feel all of it. And it was all connected to her.
“Archer?” Her voice was there now, right beside him. “Archer, please come back inside.”
“Dude, get some shoes on!” Buster advised. “It’s cold out here, man!”
He felt a tugging at his elbow. “C’mon, Archer,” Kaylie said. “Let’s go back inside.”
Archer reluctantly pulled away from the well and let himself be led back up the hill, back inside. His father was waiting for him in the den. “Son, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know your head injury has taken its toll on you. I know things don’t seem right to you . . . but you’ve got to take control of your emotions. You’re hurting. I get that. But you can’t lash out like that. Now, please, don’t mention your mother’s cancer ever again.”
Archer looked from face to face. Buster looked confused, Kaylie looked afraid, and his father seemed determined but somehow fragile too. Archer turned to his mother. He so dearly wanted just to get lost in her welcoming, understanding, loving eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong . . . what’s wrong with me. I—”
He’d seen it in her face, an ashen ripple. So small, just a tiny feathery distortion, but it was enough. “No, this isn’t real!” He backed away, backed into his father.
“Archer, settle down,” he said. “You’re getting all worked up. You need—”
“Get off of me!” Archer demanded. “All of you. This isn’t right. None of it.”
He turned from them, and as he rocketed from the den the whole scene whirled with ash, and he saw, just for a moment, the dreary darkness of a cold, winter night. He saw the emptiness of the home. And, through the hallway, he saw the damage to the kitchen cabinets the three-headed wolf creature had caused, back when . . .
It all came flooding back into his mind: Dreamtreading, the Rift, the world gone mad. That’s what had been lingering just outside of his consciousness. Archer tore up the stairs, flexing his mental will, constricting the tiny muscles around his eyes to see, to really see. It was spectris, a skill only
experienced Dreamtreaders could master, and it allowed Archer to see beyond the norm.
Like a curtain of undulating ashes, the daylight world parted, revealing night once more. He heard his father at the bottom of the stairs yelling, “Archer, wait! Come back!” But when Archer turned, he saw nothing but the night-darkened stairs.
“Archer, please!” his mother called, just a faint echo.
But Archer knew what he needed to do. He ran into his room, threw open the closet doors, and took out his copy of the Dreamtreader’s Creed. He needed Master Gabriel, and he needed him now.
He snatched the gossamer-white Summoning Feather and tossed it into the air. As the frame around his room door became sealed in luminous blue light, Archer felt a presence in the room behind him. He spun around.
There, dressed fully in his Incandescent Armor was the leader of all Dreamtreaders, Master Gabriel. He wasn’t alone. Two figures Archer had never seen before accompanied him on either side. They looked so similar that they might have been male and female fraternal twins. And they wore armor like Master Gabriel’s.
Archer didn’t waste another moment. He let it all out in a rush. “The Rift!” Archer cried out. “It’s worse than I thought! It’s hidden. There’s a spell over everyone, a spell of make-believe . . . like nothing bad ever happened.”
“I am sorry, Archer,” Master Gabriel said.
“Don’t you see?” Archer demanded. He whipped his forearm across his face and swiped the tears from his eyes. “The Rift has put people in a living dream—they don’t know what’s happening to them. They can’t see reality!”
“I truly am sorry,” Master Gabriel said. “Now, please hold out your hands.”
“What?” Archer tilted his head. He held out his hands but had no idea why. “Master Gabriel, we need to wake up the world!”