Chapter Twenty-Seven
TWENTY-SEVEN
They had fallen into a nightmare, eyes open and heartbeats stopped because this couldn’t be happening. Not in front of everyone. But their monsters had no rules anymore; they didn’t stay in the forest, they didn’t linger in the dark, they didn’t hunt only Thomas.
It didn’t make sense. Andrew had destroyed the rest of Thomas’s art—hadn’t he?
Now this monster clawed from the walls with a sultry grin as if it knew what the Antler King had tried and now promised, I can do better.
Screams rippled down the hall, teens rising from their seats and conversations splintering. No one understood what they saw. Reality smudged and logic crumbled.
Color drained from Thomas’s face, and he shoved Andrew behind him as he reached for the hatchet he didn’t have. But a strange, numb calm flooded Andrew’s chest. He should be freaking out, but he barely felt there at all.
“It’s a dream ravager.” He sounded far away.
“I didn’t draw that,” Thomas said, hoarse.
But it had to exist in some sketchbook they hadn’t destroyed yet. This was why they couldn’t win—because Thomas had drawn fierce and free for years, his drawings packed with his pain and anger and cathartic vengeance. It was impossible to collect and destroy them all.
There would also be no end to the monsters until they met the forest’s demands. And Andrew hadn’t told Thomas about that yet.
—cut out a heart
“You must have,” Andrew said. “You draw all the time—”
“Not anymore,” Thomas snapped.
The monster began to move. It didn’t walk so much as flowed, its body a swirl of misting shadows that re-formed into triangular elbows and long, twiggy fingers and a sharp jaw that cracked to show an endless throat.
Everything about it stretched as it moved, and its skin looked like bark under its shadows. Only its eyes glowed red.
Before the dining hall had a chance to dissolve into pandemonium, the monster howled and plunged its shadows across the room.
It was like throwing a blanket of black ink over the chaos. Where the darkness touched, everything went still. Frantic cries and attempts to run ended as everyone slumped into the tables. Bodies folded like their strings had been cut. Heads slammed into their plates, faces went slack.
A horrible, suffocating quiet seeped across the room.
Thomas sagged and Andrew barely had time to loop arms around his chest and hold him up before the darkness slid over them. The shadows felt alive, pressing against them, the slippery taste of earthy, rancid leaves and spilled ink suffocating them all.
The lights went out.
No sound touched the dining hall except for the click of the monster’s fingernails as it slithered onto the table.
It hovered over an unconscious student whose hair was soaked in gravy, their breathing shallow and slow.
Then the monster’s fingers began to grow.
They stretched like sticks, knotted and nobbled, and grew over the student’s face before sliding into their mouth and ears and nose.
The ravager was after their dreams.
All around Andrew, ribbons of darkness slipped into the students’ slack jaws and curled down their noses.
Pain spiked through Andrew’s ear, and he clapped a hand over it. As if he needed reminding what happened when the monsters got inside of you.
None of this made sense. The monsters came for him because he was close to Thomas—but the rest of the school? No, this was wrong.
Either the monsters’ strength had doubled thanks to Halloween, or Andrew had never understood how they worked this whole time.
Maybe he didn’t understand anything.
It’s not real—
He had to think.
He dropped to his knees and dragged Thomas under the table, limbs tangling as Andrew shook Thomas to wake him up. Thomas was struggling to keep his eyes open, but his mouth had gone soft with sleep.
“Fight this. This is your monster.” Andrew cupped Thomas’s face. “Pen? We need a p-pen.”
Thomas fumbled in his pockets.
Andrew reached around him to pull Lana and Chloe under the table, too, trying not to bang their heads as they slumped lifelessly into the cramped space. It bought them all time, but not much.
He had to tell a story.
“I don’t remember drawing this…” Thomas trailed off, his cheek resting against Andrew’s shoulder. He had his arms wrapped around his stomach, over the hole the monsters had already left in him.
“Stay awake. It won’t touch you again.” Andrew snatched the pen from Thomas, but his fingers shook so hard he struggled to press it to the underside of the table. Without a birch to write on, this seemed like the best option.
Think of a story. Now.
Before the ravager drank everyone’s dreams and their lives along with it.
“Thomas, I c-can’t think. I—”
But Thomas’s eyes had closed. He looked so vulnerable, mouth open and body limp, all the fury of their fight drained until he was no more than a wisp. Andrew’s eyes felt thick and cottony, his eyelashes dipped in molasses, but he bit down on his bottom lip until blood slicked his teeth.
Stay awake.
Thomas had fought monsters alone for countless nights. Now it was Andrew’s turn to save them all.
He laid Thomas’s head in his lap and dug fingers into his soft curls. Hold on. Ground yourself.
He began to write.
Once upon a time a boy collected nightmares and put them in terra-cotta jars. He traveled across many kingdoms to add to his collection, and if anyone refused to give over their foul dreams, he’d wait till they slept before peeling out their darkness with his long, needle fingers.
Above Andrew, the table shook under the weight of the monster. Sweat beaded around his mouth and he licked it so it stung against his bitten lip.
Nightmares swirled like black galaxies within his terra-cotta jars, beautiful and wicked and mesmerizing, and it did not take long before he opened the lids and took a sip.
Then another, then another. Soon he could eat nothing but this.
All other food poisoned him and he forgot he had been a boy.
He ravaged a thousand dreams a night and still he starved.
Until one night he could no longer stand the hunger. He put mortal food to his lips. He ate, and for that he died.
Ink bled across Andrew’s fingers and he wrote until he felt dizzy. Tendrils of shadows coiled under the table, sliding over Lana’s face and between Chloe’s lips.
This was the part where Thomas would use Andrew’s stories to win the battle. Andrew would write how it would go—swing an ax, spill some blood, wrap a noose of vines about a monster’s neck, scream enchanted words—and Thomas would make the story come true.
But Thomas was a dead weight, sprawled in Andrew’s lap. Panic rose in his throat, and it took all his strength to hold it in, to believe he could do this by himself. He could be the prince, just this once.
Then a crooked hand shot under the table and grabbed him by the hair.
A cry ripped from his throat as the monster dragged him out. He thrashed like a caught fish, but the creature drew him into the air and then slammed him onto the tabletop. Plates shattered. Cutlery skidded away as glasses tipped over and drinks sloshed across the wood.
“WAIT—” It tumbled out like a gasp, but monsters didn’t wait.
And no one was coming to save him.
The monster hauled Andrew down the table by his hair. Broken crockery sliced at his back and food smeared across his pants. He held on to the monster’s wrists, trying to take some of the tension off his hair, but the pain splintered his vision.
The monster stopped in the center of the long table, surrounded by an audience of unconscious bodies with ribbons of darkness streaming from their heads.
They looked like dolls, stitched with black thread, sightless and horrible.
Andrew choked on a whimper. He tried to worm free, but the monster’s twig fingers went tight.
Then it slammed Andrew’s head down on the mahogany table.
Once—stars, dazzling and bitter—
Twice—ears ringing, piercing whine—
Three times—blood in his mouth, the world turned doughy and unsteady, the back of his head wet, wet, wet—
He closed his eyes while the world spun, and when he pried them open again, the monster leered over him. Its jaw opened and long, needle teeth extended.
Andrew fumbled a hand around the table, dizzy and gasping.
His fingers closed on silverware. Please be a knife, please be a—
He screamed and arched his body upward in a frenetic surge of energy, stabbing the monster in the face.
Butter and bread crumbs covered the knife as it punctured the monster’s cheek. Its skin tore like papery autumn leaves, and clumps of moss tumbled out. The monster screamed and twisted its head in agony.
Andrew wrenched free of its grip with a terrified cry. He didn’t let go of the knife. He stabbed the monster again, and then again, and the creature bent in half and its bony fingers clawed its face.
But its tongue had touched mortal food. Poison.
This was Andrew’s fairy tale, his tragedy, his beautiful suffering coming true. He’d won. He’d bested it alone.
As the monster disintegrated to rotten leaves, Andrew pushed to his feet and stood, bruised and fierce, atop the table.
His chest moved fast and ragged, and he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry or keep screaming.
He stayed silent as the shadows sank back into the walls and faded into the carpet.
Lights flickered back on over the trashed dining hall. There were tangled bodies and broken plates and splattered food everywhere as if a war had taken place while they all slept.
Someone groaned and raised their head.
They’d all be awake in a second, but Andrew still stood there with the bloody butter knife. He licked his lips, tasted blood and decay and the forest. He should … he needed to … He didn’t know. He felt alive, powerful, effervescent.
He started to shake.
He was still shaking when arms wrapped around his waist and half lifted him off the table while everyone woke and confused cries filled the hall. The knife slipped from Andrew’s fingers, but he didn’t care. He touched his mouth as he was dragged out of the dining hall.
He was smiling. He couldn’t stop.
Outside the hall, Thomas dumped Andrew against the wall and knelt beside him, cradling his face and brushing a thumb over his busted lip.
“Your head’s bleeding, shit, shit. Stop smiling. You’re freaking me out.” Thomas’s voice cracked. “Damn it, Andrew, stop smiling. What did you do?”
“I killed it myself.” Andrew dug fingers into Thomas’s shirt. “I’m s-s-strong enough now. I’m so-so-so much—so much more than I used to be.”
Thomas swallowed. He still looked too pale and his voice sounded more wrecked with each word. “I woke up and saw your story. You didn’t fall asleep, too?”
“I’m strong enough.” Andrew was laughing, or maybe crying. Their fight seemed so meaningless now. “I want you. Please, I-I-I want you more than anything. Don’t let me go.”
Thomas pressed his mouth to the top of Andrew’s head, and for a long, long moment he said nothing. He should have been fierce with pride or relief that Andrew could take care of himself. But Thomas’s eyes looked haunted.
Then he crushed Andrew to his chest. “I want you always.”
They stayed there, tangled in each other, heartbeats racing.
Nothing mattered but this.