“No . . .” he whispered, reaching out to touch his reflection. “I’m not a monster,” he yelled. “I’m not!” And he punched the mirror with his iron fist, trying to smash it, but it remained intact. He struck it again and again and again, then wheeled around and attacked the other wall. He kicked at his image in the mirrored steps, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. No matter what he did the glass would not break.
Bran was afraid to look at his own reflection, terrified that he’d turned into a monster too. When he finally got up the courage, he was relieved to see that he looked like himself, just scared and exhausted.
Rick, still in full freak-out mode, charged up the steps, surging past him.
“This place is messed up!” he yelled. “I’m done. Orias—Orias! I’m done with this crap!”
Bran followed with a groan, his legs aching at the thought of retracing their steps. He was both relieved and disturbed when, only thirty seconds later, the door that led back into the Anderson house came into sight. It was absolutely, completely impossible, Bran knew; there was no way they could have jogged downward for hours, only to make it back up in under a minute. But possible or not, the door was there, and Bran felt a wave of joy at the thought that he would soon be back in Maggie Anderson’s hallway.
But when Rick tried the door, it was locked.
“Come on . . .” he grumbled and yanked the door harder. “Come ON! Orias! ORIAS!”
He pounded on the door with his iron fist for what seemed like forever, then slammed into it with his shoulder, then tried to kick it down with his big, muscular leg. Even though the wood trembled against his assault, it did not crack, and the latch did not break. Wherever they were, Bran thought, they were trapped.
“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him,” the Rick thing snarled. “Damn you, Orias! Damn you to hell!” He finally turned away from the door.
The response seemed to echo from the ether around them. Now, now, Rick. That’s hardly fair—and there’s no going back on our bargain. Bran couldn’t be sure, but the voice sounded like Orias’s.
The Rick thing looked up at the ceiling and growled. “Let me out!” it screamed. “Open the damn door and let me out of here!”
Sorry. I can’t do that. I’m calling in the favor you promised me when I fixed your arm.
“No. No way!” Rick shouted. “You didn’t just fix my arm—you turned me into this! This wasn’t part of the deal!”
Orias’s laughter filled the stairwell. I didn’t turn you into anything, Rick. You made yourself what you are.
“Go to hell, you liar! Let me out of here!”
You want to get out? Orias continued. Then do what I asked. Take that scroll down the stairs and deliver it to Dr. Uphir.
“How? We’ve been going down that staircase for hours! It never ends.”
Of course it does. Look—the entrance to the Dark Territory is just ahead.
Bran turned his flashlight back down the steps. Sure enough, perhaps fifty yards away, he saw the landing. He knew it hadn’t been there only moments before but that didn’t matter. It was there now.
“I ought to shove this scroll down your lying throat,” Rick shouted. There was no response.
“Okay—great,” Bran said. “Whatever. Let’s just get this done so we can get out of here.” He hurried down and the Rick thing, still grumbling, followed him.
The landing was about forty feet long, and at the end of it, they found a massive wrought-iron gate. Although it was rusted and clearly ancient, it looked solid, too. Judging from its big rivets, thick bars, and heavy industrial construction, it looked like it had been made strong enough to stop a speeding semi-truck. It had decorative flourishes—fleur-de-lis and starbursts—also made of black wrought iron. In thick, Old English letters of burnished brass, two words were affixed to the gates:
Dark Territory
Bran and Rick stood together, staring at the entrance before them.
“What is this place?” Bran asked in childlike wonder.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Rick said.
The moment they stepped forward, the gates swung open by themselves, moving slowly with a biting screech of iron on iron.
Side by side, Bran and Rick entered the Dark Territory.
Chapter 14
Clarisse had been looking for Rick all afternoon. She was sure he would be at the basketball game, but he didn’t show and she’d overheard a couple of the cheerleaders talking about how he got suspended. Thinking that he would probably meet his Topper girlfriend after the game, she had followed Maggie to her house, turning away only when she saw Maggie stop and talk to the weird rich guy—Orias—who was opening Elixir, the cool new coffee shop where Clarisse intended to get a job as a barista.
It would be a lot better than the job she had now—bus girl at Rosa’s Trattoria. She had taken it out of desperation, just to get Nass’s mom off her back. Ever since she’d gone out with Rick after the big fight the night Raphael disappeared—and hadn’t made it home until the next morning—Amelia Torrez had been on her case. Rosa’s wasn’t so bad. Clarisse had found it easy to bully her coworkers into trading shifts with her whenever she wanted so that she could have more freedom and some kind of private life, but at Elixir she would make a ton of money in tips.
After Orias split and Maggie went inside, Clarisse waited for a while but Rick didn’t show. She felt a small surge of triumph. It’s about time he dumped the stuck-up homecoming bitch, she thought. She headed back down to the gate and made sure to smile and wave at Mike as she went through. Flirting with that goofball guard got her into Hilltop Haven every time.
She was halfway back to the Flats when her phone chimed. She figured it was probably Amelia Torrez or Nass, texting to ask where she was. But it was her Facebook app, alerting her to a new message. She opened up the program and the text that appeared there was so terrifying she had to stop and sit down on the curb. It was from Oscar Salazar, and it was just one sentence:
I know where U are & I’m coming 4 you
Well, that’s just fine, she said to herself, remembering her secret weapon. She thought of how Rick’s eyes glinted with red sparks and his shoulders broadened when they made out and she got that breathless, excited feeling again, like she always got when she knew she was going to see him. She texted Oscar back:
I can hardly wait. I’ll have something special waiting for you.
* * *
The Dark Territory was by far the strangest and worst place Bran Goheen had ever ventured into in his life. The landscape was barren, covered with powdery reddish soil, and its desolate expanse was dotted here and there with jutting rock formations, many of which looked like very old statues of humans or horses that had been effaced by the elements. Or perhaps—and Bran didn’t know where this disturbing thought came from—like people turned to stone. He’d looked back after he and Rick had passed through the gate and was horrified to see that the staircase had disappeared. A featureless haze hung above them, the same shade of purple as a winter sky just before it fades to the blackness of night. In the distance, Bran thought he saw the red glow of a setting sun, but as he and Rick walked toward it, he noticed that it wasn’t going down. It didn’t move at all, in fact, but sat resolutely on the horizon, sending its flickering rays across the wasteland.
After an hour or so of walking toward it, Bran realized that it wasn’t the sun at all, but some sort of a conflagration, like the most massive bonfire he’d ever seen. The quivering red light he’d mistaken for the sun was more rectangular than round, and as they got closer he saw that it was a wall of red fire stretching across the blasted earth. Since there was no other feature in sight on the dead landscape, they headed toward it and walked for what seemed like an eternity. Though he was exhausted and becoming increasingly concerned, Bran drew hope from the fact that, whatever it was, th
ey were, indeed, getting closer.
There were other things that worried him, too. For one, it was even hotter here than in the stairwell. The wind at their backs was like the airflow in a convection oven, and it seemed to be pushing them toward the distant wall of flame. He saw no living creatures but occasionally, when he glanced to his left or right, he glimpsed in his peripheral vision a flutter, like the undulating black wings of a massive bat. When he’d try to look directly at whatever it was, it invariably disappeared, sometimes with the eerie sound of fast-fading laughter.
The other thing Bran found disconcerting was the path they were following. At first he’d thought it was made of white stones that had been exposed by the erosion of many passing footsteps, but several times he saw features in the stones: knobs that looked like the ends of human leg bones, rows of teeth, and the parallel lines of ribs—once, even the little splayed bones of a human hand. After that, he stopped looking at the trail.
If the place they’d wandered into concerned the monster Rick had morphed into, he didn’t show it. After his outburst in the stairwell, he seemed to have settled into his new body and this bizarre environment quite nicely. Bran even caught him flexing his iron claw, testing it out, with a look of smug pride on his deformed face.
Bran had no way of marking the passage of time. He didn’t wear a watch and, not surprisingly, his cell phone had gone out the minute they passed through the gate. But after what seemed like about two hours, the macabre stone path led them between two hills, and then a crossroads came into view. There was a road sign of ancient black wood with arrows pointing down each of the four roads, like some kind of perverted gothic cartoon. Bran noticed that the squiggles and hieroglyphs on the sign were not remotely close to English. He glanced at Rick to see how he was taking all the weirdness, but he was oblivious. He was holding up his clawed arm and staring at it, fascinated. Ahead, beyond the crossroads, a black river cut a serpentine swath through the empty land, its flow so torpid that it hardly seemed to be moving at all.
Trying to get his head around the whole twisted scene, Bran looked around. The road that stretched off to the left promised nothing but more of what they’d seen so far: another path cutting across a vacant wasteland. To the right, however, the landscape changed. Perhaps twenty yards down the road, there was a big, dilapidated silver gate. Beyond that, Bran saw a vista of rolling hills covered with low plants that had lush leaves of such a dark shade of green they were almost black. Mixed in with them were a series of three-foot-tall flowers, with ghostly white, opalescent petals, their blossoms as wide as a dessert plate. There was a massive chain and a padlock on the gate and above it in wrought iron was one word: morrow.
“Ho, ho! What have we here?” asked a raspy voice.
Startled, Bran turned at the sound and saw a small-statured man trotting up the side of a ditch. When he topped the ridge, he headed straight for them. His eyes were small and squinty, like the eyes of a mole, and milky with cataracts, and his skin was the color of ash. His misshapen face seemed to be frozen in a distorted grimace of haughty disgust, like he smelled someone’s revolting fart. His clothes were filthy, tattered rags, but he wore several necklaces of gold and silver around his neck, and rings sparkled on each hand. He waggled his fingers at the boys as he approached, just as two other little men who looked like they could be his brothers joined him.
“Travelers, travelers! How long since we’ve seen travelers about these parts!” The man’s voice contained, simultaneously, the sounds of a cooing bird and a hissing snake. He moved closer and stared up at Bran and Rick, and his friends sidled up behind him and followed suit.
“Welcome to our crossroads,” he said. “I am Steel. These are my friends, Burrow and Begg. We are the guardians here and all who pass must pay us homage.”
Rick started laughing, but Bran spoke up before his friend’s ego could get them in trouble. “Hey there, buddy. What kind of homage you looking for?” he asked.
“Why, the kind that sparkles or shines or jingles in a coin purse, my friend. A toll.”
“Look, you little freak. We’re not giving you sh—” Rick began, but Bran interrupted, taking out his wallet.
“Here, twenty bucks,” he said, and the small man’s eyes widened, but Rick grabbed the money and held it out of his reach.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll give you the cash, but first you give us some information. We’re looking for someone. Dr. Uphir. You know him?”
The man frowned. “Certainly. He’s in the city. Everyone knows that.”
“Can you tell us how to get there?”
The man’s expression darkened. “That’s a long ways away. Across three rivers and the lake. And that money is just paper, with no sparkle or shine to it.”
Bran dug into his pockets, trying to think of what else they could offer. “How about this?” He raised his left hand and displayed his new Middleburg High football state championship runner-up ring.
The little man’s eyes widened. “And your demon friend’s, too?” he said.
“Hey!” Rick said. “Who you calling a demon, you freaking sideshow attraction?”
The man chuckled. “Well, if it looks like a demon and walks like a demon and quacks like a demon—I’d say it’s a demon! A very rude demon, at that!”
But it’s true, Bran thought. That’s exactly what Rick was. A demon. He didn’t know how he knew; he just did. And the strange part was, something told Bran that Rick had been a demon for a while. Maybe always.
“You take us to Uphir and show us how to get back home, you can have my ring and Bran’s,” Rick said.
“All right.” Steel’s eyes narrowed shrewdly as he took the rings and examined them. “You got yourself a deal. Right this way,” he said, gesturing toward the path that led straight ahead, toward the river.
Bran started after him but Rick held back.
“Wait,” he said, and Bran and their guide turned to look at him. “What’s that place?” he asked, pointing to the gate with Morrow written above it.
“Ah,” Steel said with dark glee. “That is the entrance to Asphodel Meadows—the Morrow Estate. Produces the most sublime tea in all of creation, yet they don’t sell much these days. Long has it been since the master of the house returned to open the gate.”
“Who is the master?” Rick asked.
“Oberon Morrow, of course. I’ve heard rumblings that he might return one day soon,” Steel confided with an evil little giggle. “But there are always rumblings.” More quietly, he added, “Some say it will be the master; others that it will be his heir. He’s just a half-breed, you know—but one of exceptional power, I’ve heard.”
“Orias,” Rick whispered.
It was strange, Bran thought, to hear a whisper coming from the mouth of a creature that looked like it was born to utter only war cries.
Steel looked at Rick, wide-eyed. “Few here know that name, and fewer still dare speak it aloud.” He gave another throaty giggle. “The master has forbidden anyone to say it.”
Rick shrugged. “Yeah, well I know Oberon and Orias, and I’m not scared of either one of them. Now are you going to take us to Uphir or what?”
Their guide glanced at his two companions, who remained by the roadside. Their eyes were so thick with cataracts that Bran guessed they had to be blind and couldn’t go even if they wanted to. Steel spoke to them in an unknown language, in a series of grunts and clipped consonants. They both nodded but remained rooted in place. Steel gave Rick a big fake-looking smile.
“All right, then. Follow me.”
As they walked with him down a short rise toward a warped, sagging, rusted steel bridge that spanned a black river, Steel gestured toward it.
“That is the River Lethe,” he said with the pleasant inflection of a professional tour guide. “If you’re thirsty, this is the last place to get a drink—
and it will be a long, hot journey to the Flaming City. Are you thirsty?”
Bran hurried toward the riverbank but Rick hung back, watching. Steel’s two companions were still at the top of the rise, gazing down on them, each holding an ancient-looking crossbow.
“You don’t have to drink,” Steel told Rick as Bran knelt beside the gently flowing river. “But don’t complain to me when your tongue swells and your brain is boiling inside your skull.”
Bran was already leaning toward the water. He’d never been so thirsty in his life—not at football or baseball practice, not at Spike Ferrington’s MMA gym—never. His mouth was painfully dry. His clothes were soaked with sweat and the sharp ache in his head was throbbing in time with his heartbeat. It had to be at least a hundred and twenty degrees, and he’d read articles about kids dying of heatstroke on football practice fields in weather cooler than that. It might be a long journey and he knew if he didn’t drink now, he might actually die.
He took a scoop of the black water in his cupped hands and lifted it to his lips. It barely moistened them before Rick rushed to his side, knocking his hands away from his mouth.
“You don’t want to drink that,” Rick said and his voice came out like a growl. From behind them, Bran could hear Steel and his friends laughing with hysterical glee.
Perhaps Rick was right to be cautious, Bran thought, but his thirst was too much. He licked his lips hungrily and slurped a few drops of water from his moist palms before he could stop himself.
Almost instantly he realized the mistake he’d made, and he experienced a moment of panic as he felt his awareness slipping away. He tried to spit the water out, but it was too late.
Soon, there was nothing but blackness.
Chapter 15
When his eyes opened, the first thing he saw was a pole above his head, bobbing along parallel to a dark purplish, opalescent sky. After a few moments of mental groping he understood that his hands and feet were bound above the pole and he was hanging down from it like a pig ready for roasting. His vision was blurry, but he blinked and looked around. At every glance, what he saw grew more improbable. To his left, another person was hogtied as he was, except that it wasn’t exactly a person. It looked like the love child of one of the beasts from Where the Wild Things Are and Conan the Barbarian. One of its arms seemed to be made out of some sort of metal. Two very short men held on their shoulders the pole from which this monster hung, and they labored forward under its oppressive weight, grunting and sweating and cursing with every herculean step.
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