by Bryan Chick
“He can’t . . . he can’t get us, can he?” Ella softly spoke.
DeGraff moved his head for a better look at them and subsequently revealed his face—or what was left of it. For the first time, Ella saw the dark skull cavities where DeGraff’s eyes and nose should have been; the flesh missing above his top teeth; the gash exposing his jaw. The skin on his neck bubbled out as an insect crawled beneath it. He turned and walked slowly to the middle of the corridor, its only torch at his back. His shadow was stretched out across the floor in front of him, onto the tank, and across the water beside the scouts. Beneath it, several crabs were thrashing about, their claws striking out at nothing.
But DeGraff’s interest, Noah knew, wasn’t in the crabs—it was in him and Ella. And just as he had this thought, DeGraff began to walk down the corridor, easing his shadow toward them. Noah noticed the silhouette of his fedora moving across the stony back wall of Crabaquarium.
“His shadow!” Noah called out. “Move, move!”
Ella understood at once, and together they splashed toward the other end of the aquarium. They passed cleanly through DeGraff’s shadow, Noah feeling a twinge of its magic in the short time. DeGraff began to follow them, bringing his shadow along.
“Keep going!” Noah said.
Ella dove forward, swimming with wild, careless strokes. Noah stopped and faced the corridor, his palms against the glass.
“Right here, you freak!” Noah screamed, trying to lure the Shadowist away from his friend.
DeGraff’s shadow slithered across the water like a living thing. Then it cloaked Noah, who gazed down at his arms, his chest. Nothing was happening. But just as he had this thought, the right side of his body jerked. A second later, his left side spasmed, and then his right again. Pain shot through him, and noises dimmed beneath a high-pitched squeal.
“Noah—no!” someone called out. Noah wondered who it had been. Richie? No, it had sounded like a girl. He tried to think of his sister’s name and couldn’t. His head—something was wrong.
His arms thrashed and Noah twisted to face the back of the aquarium. He saw DeGraff’s shadow on the wall—it had become one with his, the fedora seeming to sit on Noah’s head.
Then Noah lost sight of the world as his eyes rolled back. His knees gave out and he slumped to one side, sinking into the water. Powerless to raise his head, Noah became certain this was the place he was going to die.
CHAPTER 41
ELLA TAKES A SWING
Ella splashed over to Noah, calling his name.
“Up, Noah! Get up!”
As she struggled through the water, one strap of Tameron’s pack slipped off her shoulder and caught in the crook of her arm. She returned it to its former spot, cursing the pack, which had been good for nothing. Only Tameron could—
A thought grabbed her. Was Tameron the only person who could use the backpack? Or could anyone? Could she?
She remembered back to the times she’d seen Tameron decked out in his Descender gear. Had she ever noticed what he did to join the tail to his body? No, but Sam opened zippers on his jacket to release his wings, and Hannah tugged pull-loops to alter her boots.
She looked at the backpack straps and noticed that, near her shoulders, two cords disappeared into holes circled by velvet patches. She grabbed one in each hand, and then hesitated. But somewhere beneath the choppy water, Noah was thrashing about, drowning in DeGraff’s power.
She pulled the cords. Two clicks sounded inside the pack, and then a great weight dropped from her shoulders. Something had fallen out, and she was certain what it was.
Tameron’s tail.
One end seemed to grab on to the base of her spine, and brief pain shot through her body. Her mind sparked, and she suddenly became aware of her tailbone—the muscles there. She peered over her shoulder to see the long appendage half floating in the water. The canvas pack was somehow fused into the back of Ella’s shirt, which now looked like the armored plate of an animal.
Ella put all her attention on the tail and tried to make it move. It immediately rose like a serpent, water pouring off its sides. Then it hovered several feet in the air. Fifteen feet long, its armor was studded with spikes, most of them at the tip.
Without wasting another second, Ella turned in a circle and commanded the tail to swing with all its might. The monstrous appendage flew through the air, and when it struck the front of the aquarium, the wall shattered, sending a spray of glass at DeGraff, who ducked and covered his head. Hundreds of gallons of water spilled out, and the small tidal wave knocked DeGraff down and pushed him against the wall. The scouts washed out into the corridor.
It took only seconds for the flood to subside. Ella ran across the wet floor to Noah, her tail sweeping up pieces of broken glass, and fell to her knees beside her friend. As she heaved him up by his shoulders, his eyes rolled back into his head.
“Noah!” she said, and then shook him.
She noticed that DeGraff was slowly rising to his feet, and she slapped Noah across his face, hard. His eyes turned, and his oversized pupils shrank in the flickering torch light. He coughed and water dribbled down his chin.
Ella looked back and saw the Shadowist standing. He straightened his fedora and then advanced on the scouts, his boots splashing on the wet stone. She rose and turned to face him, her tail curling behind her.
“What are you doing?” Noah managed to say.
But Ella didn’t respond. She simply stepped toward DeGraff, whipping around Tameron’s tail and bringing his mighty power as a Descender with her.
CHAPTER 42
ELLA VERSUS DEGRAFF
As Ella moved in on the Shadowist, she saw glass fragments embedded in his cheeks and neck, black blood oozing from the wounds. Tameron’s tail pulled on her spine as it dragged across the floor. She swung her body just as she had in the Crabaquarium, and the tail came off the ground and flew through the air, its pointed tip dragging along the far wall, shattering aquariums and batting chunks of stone all around. As it reached DeGraff, he disappeared into the shadows just long enough for it to pass, and then reappeared in the same spot, a mirthless smile spreading on his face. Ella reversed the swing of her hips and the tail whipped in the opposite direction. DeGraff vanished into the shadows a second time and the tail crashed into the wall, the spikes on its tip becoming ensnarled in the framework of a broken aquarium. Ella yanked once, twice, and then the wall burst open, raining pieces of stone and glass into the corridor. Her tail bounced off the ground.
DeGraff gave a grunt that might have been a laugh, and said, “Child—do you honestly believe you can defeat me?” He plucked a shard of glass from his face and flicked it into the air. “Try again?”
Ella flung the tail high over her head. The powerful appendage dragged along the ceiling and came down toward DeGraff, who disappeared into the shadows again. The tail smashed into the floor, pieces of stone exploding in a cloud of dust.
A voice came from behind her: “Over here, girl.”
Ella spun as hard as she could. The tail whipped around, its tip passing through the open wall of the Crabaquarium, and whooshed through the air, missing DeGraff as he dissolved into the shadows again.
Laughter came from behind her, and Ella turned, this time without attacking. DeGraff stood several feet away from her, his body cloaked in shadow.
“Now . . . my turn,” he said.
Before she could think to respond, DeGraff disappeared, and then Ella felt two tugs on the cords of her shoulder straps—he was behind her. Pain surged through her spine and then Tameron’s tail was coiled inside its pack again. She was jolted around as DeGraff stripped the pack off her shoulders. It flew out over her head, struck the ground, and slid to a stop twenty feet away. Then Ella’s head rocked as DeGraff threw her to the cold floor. She turned onto her back and stared up at the Shadowist, who now loomed above her.
DeGraff said, “It’s time to—”
Something struck his face. He reached up, pulling away a wet, j
ellylike substance, and then let loose a deep, visceral scream, partly in anger, partly in pain.
Ella looked behind her and understood what had happened. Noah. On his knees, he was flicking his wrist, trying to get something off his hand. The substance: jellyfish.
DeGraff rubbed at his face and staggered to one side of the corridor.
Ella jumped to her feet and ran over to Noah. “Up!” she commanded as she reached under his arms and lifted. “Get up!” She grabbed Tameron’s gear and hoisted it onto her back. Then she ran with Noah, her arm under his for support.
They rounded a bend and saw that the corridor came to a sudden end at an open doorway. The scouts rushed through it, having no idea where it might lead.
CHAPTER 43
THE SECRET CHAMBER OF LIGHTS
Noah concentrated on matching Ella’s pace as they rushed down a winding glass tunnel surrounded by water filled with hundreds of blinking white lights. Flashlight fish, Noah realized—tiny animals that could emit spots of light. There were so many that it felt like the scouts had discovered a passage into a magical night sky. Noah had no doubt that they were in the Secret Zoo’s version of the Clarksville Zoo’s Chamber of Lights.
“Faster!” Ella said to Noah. “You’re slowing down!” As they neared a bend in the tunnel, Ella looked back and gasped, “He’s coming!”
Noah glanced over his shoulder to see DeGraff stepping into the tunnel. He was staggering a bit, still wiping the jellyfish from his face. The light from the flashlight fish made different parts of him pulse in and out of view. The folds of his jacket. The buckles in his boots. The sharp edge of his collar.
Noah lost his balance and dropped to one knee. As Ella helped him up, hundreds of flashlight fish streaked across his vision like sparklers being waved on a summer night. Then he ran forward again, still groggy.
The scouts charged around another bend, and then another. Noah heard the thuds of DeGraff’s black boots, and he knew it would only take seconds for him to overtake the scouts.
The end of the corridor came into view, an open doorway into a dark space. Noah lost his balance, staggered in front of Ella, and the two collided and tumbled to the floor. Noah forced himself up to his hands and knees, and looked to see DeGraff less than twenty feet away.
A blinding pulse of light forced his eyes closed. It was so powerful that Noah couldn’t hide from it—his eyelids lit the same way a window shade does in the morning sun.
“What’s happening?” Ella screamed.
A wail of pain canceled all other sound. DeGraff was standing above Noah, and something was wrong with him.
Noah waited a few seconds and then peeled back one eyelid. When light blinded him, he closed it again.
DeGraff continued to howl, and the floor shook as he staggered.
Noah waited some more and then forced his eyes to open and stay that way. All he could see was a flat, dimensionless white. He realized DeGraff’s painful wail was no longer coming from above him; it was coming from beside him.
The world slowly came into focus. Three feet over to Noah’s left, DeGraff was on his knees, his back hunched, his head down. His trench coat was draped over him, and the leathery mound of his body reminded Noah of a turtle tucked into its shell. The area around him was such a stark white that Noah couldn’t see a suggestion of anything else. The winding tunnel walls, the fish—all of it was gone.
DeGraff’s scream subsided, then stopped altogether. As he huddled beneath his trench coat, Noah understood why. This shadowless world was hurting him.
Noah rose to his knees and looked around. Ella was on her feet beside him, her eyes shut tight.
“It’s safe!” Noah said. “It’s okay to look!”
Ella slowly peered out. “Wha—? Where are we? Did we portal?” She paused for a few seconds, then added, “Oh, no . . . we’ve gone amiss!”
Noah shook his head. “How? We didn’t go through a gateway.”
He reached up and touched something smooth and cold. Glass.
“The wall,” he said as he slid his hand along. “The tunnel . . . it’s still here.”
“But . . . but how?” Ella asked. “Where did—”
“The flashlight fish,” Noah interrupted. “They’re causing this.”
Noah recalled when the flashlight fish had shined their magical light during a power outage at the Clarksville Zoo. He looked at DeGraff, on the ground, his trench coat draped across his body, and realized the fish were still on the scouts’ side.
“Let’s go,” Ella said. She pointed to the end of the corridor, where an open doorway stood, and then moved in beside Noah to support him again. “You okay?”
Noah felt nauseated, but no longer dizzy. He gave a quick nod.
Together, they headed up the bright corridor. “Just keep holding me,” Ella said. “Don’t let go.”
Noah glanced back. DeGraff had begun to crawl after them, his face tucked beneath a flap of his trench coat. The coat and hat—they protected him by keeping him in constant shadow, Noah realized. DeGraff’s wardrobe kept him alive when he was in the light.
“Hurry!” Noah said. “He’s coming!”
The two of them located the open doorway and escaped from the blinding light.
CHAPTER 44
THE CORRIDOR OF PORTALS
The corridor outside the Chamber of Lights was like most of the others: a stone floor, aquariums set in the walls, and green slime dripping from the ceiling. Insects covered everything. The passage ran to the left and right of where the scouts were standing.
“Which way?” Ella asked.
Noah shrugged. “I don’t know, but we should ghost.”
Ella quickly unzipped her portal pocket. When no chameleons came out, Noah opened his and got the same result.
“They’re not there,” Ella said. “The water—it must have washed them out of the Portal Place.”
From the dark distance, something flew toward them, and the light from a torch revealed a tiny blue bird with a big beak. Marlo. The kingfisher touched down on Noah’s shoulder, chirped once, and then flew back the way he’d come.
“Let’s go,” Ella said.
As they followed Marlo, Noah no longer needed Ella’s support. The two of them ran down the corridor, turned left, then hurried down another. Every time Marlo got too far ahead, he found a perch and waited. They headed down a third corridor, a fourth, a fifth. Big black ants covered the floor of one passage, and the scouts ran on their tiptoes, trying not to hear their bodies crunch.
In a particularly dark corridor, Marlo flew back and landed on Noah, chirping wildly.
“What is it?” Ella asked.
From up ahead came a deep, rumbling growl. Noah thought he could hear the click of hooves and the thump of padded paws.
“Ours or DeGraff’s?” Ella asked.
Noah knew they couldn’t just stand there waiting to find out. A few steps ahead, an open doorway led to a dark space clouded with fog. A sign by the door read, “The Corridor of Portals.” Noah pointed to it.
“The Corridor of Portals?” Ella said.
Noah understood her confusion. There was no Corridor of Portals in the Clarksville Zoo.
The rumble of the animals grew louder. New sounds took shape: the grunt of a rhinoceros, a rumbling growl.
“C’mon!” Noah said.
They ran forward and ducked through the doorway. A few steps away, the new corridor became a steep, sloping tunnel with dirt walls and a muddy floor.
Ella stepped onto the slope and immediately lost her footing. She dropped to her rear end and sailed down, as if on a slide. Noah followed. They landed in a heap where the cave floor went flat and quickly untangled themselves. On their stomachs, they stared up the incline, which had a partial view into the hall above. Marlo had landed again on Noah’s shoulder and was keeping perfectly still, his bright orange bill tipped toward the doorway above.
The noise grew louder, and distinct sounds continued to take shape. The cave walls began to
tremble, and clumps of dirt rained down from the ceiling. Bugs scattered to new spots. Marlo gave a weak, frightened chirp and stepped closer to Noah’s neck.
As rhinos and tigers charged past the entrance to the Corridor of Portals, Noah saw their red eyes and long, filthy hair. Within seconds, the walls stopped shuddering and the noises died.
“They’re gone,” Noah said. “C’mon, let’s—” His voice stopped as he happened to glance over his shoulder.
When Ella saw what Noah was looking at, she gasped. Across the muddy floor of the foggy cave, puddles sat in the craterlike footprints of sasquatches. Along the walls, dozens of dark openings gave way to new places. Caves. To Noah, it looked like they’d been dug out by the same sasquatches that had left the footprints.
Noah crouched down and touched the mud, which oozed over his fingertips, releasing a foul, earthy odor. Marlo chirped nervously and hopped to a new spot on his shoulder.
“Noah?” Ella said. “Yeah . . . I’m thinking right now would be a good time to get out of here.”
Noah flicked the wet earth off his hand and gazed down the cave. “What’s DeGraff doing down here?” He rose and took a step forward, Marlo jumping on his shoulder and chirping in protest. Noah noticed how words were engraved in the packed dirt above the mouths of the caves.
“Ella . . .” he said, and he pointed to the place above the first entrance.
“‘Forest of Flight,’” she read.
Noah read the words above the next cave: “‘A-Lotta-Hippopotami.’”
“He’s creating new portals,” Ella said. “So he doesn’t have to use the ones that we do.”
Noah shuddered as he saw the words marking the third tunnel: “Nowicki House.” Marlo gave another worried chirp and stepped back and forth, restlessly.
“This was the one . . .” Noah said. “To my closet.”
Ella nodded. “How many others go beyond the Clarksville Zoo?”
