Chapter 91
Last backed against the sloshing marrow walls. The muted colors cast her face in a bone-white glow. She trembled, and a small moan escaped her as the monster under the bed swung around the corner.
The walls pulsed, lighting with red and white, as he dragged his fingers through their spongy surface. The dank, musty smell grew, and a hot, barely-there wind licked over us.
His voice sounded like the groan of a closing door or the scrape of a wool rug over rough wood. He smiled as he sang an eerie lullaby:
Go to sleep,
little girl,
go to sleep.
Dream of me,
little one,
in your sleep.
Sun is gone,
moon is gone,
everybody’s gone,
in your sleep.
The song formed a sawtooth rhythm, scraping back and forth, and with every line, Last flinched.
I stepped in front of her, shielding her from the monster’s seeking eyes.
Harry had called him a weak coward, and I could see why a slipshot would think that.
Slipshots were brash and wild and loved nothing more than stealing, lying, and murdering.
This monster didn’t care about any of those things. He only wanted to make children cry. He wanted to catch them in nightmares.
He looked, surprisingly, just like a man I’d once seen at a child’s birthday party in Central Park.
He’d made dozens of balloon animals for all the children at the party.
Pink balloon dogs. Yellow balloon elephants.
Orange balloon monkeys. Blue balloon swans.
There were even balloon flowers, hats, and swords thrown in.
The balloon artist had had milk-pale hands, flat, round nails, and fingers that were triple-jointed. I’d found his hands odd at the time but was more interested in the animals he was tying with quick precision.
Nothing else was unusual about him. He had a large forehead, a receding hairline, a short, tepid chin, and flat teeth that curved slightly inward.
That balloon artist looked exactly the same as the monster under the bed.
When he cut off his song and smiled at me, I realized he was the same man.
I let out a surprised huff of air. The monster under the bed daylighted as a children’s party entertainer.
“Why, it’s little Last Clark,” he said, peering around me, “and she’s brought a friend.”
“Go away,” Last whispered.
“Hmm?” he asked, cupping his hand to a meaty ear. “What’s that?”
“Go away!” she shouted. Then, shoving me aside, she twisted her hands.
I braced, expecting a swarm of wasps or a shower of morningstars. But as she twisted her hand, the monster under the bed flicked a spray of red lights at her.
The nightmares slammed into her. They hit her skin and stuck to her like burrs. There were dozens of them. She looked down at them with horror.
“No!”
But it was too late. The red lights sank into her skin, digging in like ticks tunneling into her flesh.
“No! No!” She twisted her hands, but instead of conjuring, her illusion fell apart and died at her feet.
“No. I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” She cried this, swatting at her arms. She sounded like a child begging.
Then I realized she was. The little red nightmare balls pulsed at her cries. I could hear the voices inside them.
“Last, I never loved you. You’re the spawn of your father—”
“We won’t be having children. I won’t be touching you. Ever—”
“He burned my mother’s picture. He burned my—”
Last crouched on the ground. She was seeing something other than what was in front of her. Her head turned violently one way and then the other. Her pupils widened until the black swallowed the brown. A low whimper escaped her lips.
“Let her go,” I said, stepping threateningly forward. “Release her. Now.”
The monster had been watching Last hungrily. He was drawing enjoyment from the nightmares staining her skin.
“She was always a delightful child. So many nightmares.”
Harry had been right. He was a coward. I lunged forward. At the last second, he dove to the side. He was surprised. Kids caught in nightmares didn’t fight back.
He threw red sparks at me. They caught my skin and sank in. Jagger’s blood devoured them, feasting on the pain.
The monster under the bed stumbled back, shocked. “You . . .”
I smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile.
The monster under the bed waved his arms. There was fear in his expression, and I could tell he didn’t like the feeling.
The floor—which, up until that point, had been mudflat-solid—became as viscous as tar.
It made a squelching noise, and then I was sucked into the floor to my waist. I tried to push toward Last. She’d been consumed in the marrow floor up to her shoulders.
I couldn’t tell if she knew what was happening or if she could only see her nightmares.
The monster laughed. “You may be immune to nightmares, but you aren’t immune to death. My tunnels are alive. And hungry.”
Oh. Oh no.
I’d heard of this. There were some creatures who were connected to their homes. Like a snail and its shell, the home grew out of the creature. These tunnels weren’t separate from the monster under the bed; they were the monster under the bed.
The walls were marrow-white, red, and pulsing like the gushing of blood through a living thing. In essence, they were a living thing.
The whole time I’d been traveling through the tunnels under the bed, I’d been traveling inside the monster under the bed.
I shoved against the tar-like substance. It was so heavy my legs barely moved. The pressure clamped down on me. I sank to my waist, and the marrow floor squeezed my abdomen and tightened over my diaphragm.
Could Last breathe? Her lips were turning blue. She held unnaturally still. The red nightmares still pulsed and whispered, but she didn’t make a sound.
At the rate the floors were swallowing us, we’d be consumed in thirty seconds or less.
The monster under the bed laughed. “You get it now. That’s right. I’m—”
Lightning-quick, I reached into my shirt, pulled out a dart of Smith’s Folly, and flung it at him. Now, the monster under the bed was not a Smith. The poison wouldn’t affect him at all.
But a sharp dart through his right eye would affect him a lot.
He screamed.
I grabbed the rice I’d saved for Last’s wedding and tossed a handful of it at him. The mini thunderers exploded. They singed the walls and fell like tiny bombs, flashing, sparking, booming.
The monster under the bed dropped to his knees.
He sank to his waist into the floor.
“I will—!”
I threw one of Jagger’s blood snakes at him. As soon as it hit the viscous floor, the wormlike creature exploded into a full-size snake. It darted at the monster and sank its teeth into his throat.
He screamed.
The snake’s venom was one of the most painful experiences on the planet. Even a small dose would leave a being in mindless agony for more than a day. The pain made some people go insane.
The monster convulsed and fell back into the floor. The viscous surface gulped. It swallowed the monster and the snake.
When they disappeared, the walls dimmed. Then they began to shake.
“Last?” I reached toward her, gripping her shoulder. “Last? Wake up.”
Sweat dripped down her pale face. Her breaths were quick and frightened. The nightmares swirled around her. Even through the floor, I could hear them sinking their teeth into her.
Nightmares about her mom. About Primus. About Luvic. Even about me.
I gripped her shoulder and shook her as hard as I could. “Last! Listen to me. It’s not real. It’s just a nightmare. It can’t hurt you. You are stronger than it. You are better than it. Wake up! Wake up and conjure! Last! You said we were friends. If we’re friends, then wake up and—”
Last’s eyes snapped open.
She looked around at the bleeding walls. They shuddered, and the wet slosh of them gushed free. The humming became a wheeze, and the walls began to fold, caving inward.
“Where’s the monster under the bed?” she asked, her eyes widening. She tried to move but couldn’t.
“Dead. The tunnel’s collapsing.”
“You killed him?”
I nodded.
She smiled. “I had a nightmare about you. Then I heard you calling. You said we were friends.”
The walls slid toward us, a marrow-red mudslide. “Conjure! Conjure us to the ceiling! We have to get out.”
I pointed up. The underframe of a king-size bed hung above us.
“Did you hurt him? Was it painful?”
“Very!” I shouted. “Get us out!”
“Did you do it for me?”
“Of course I did. Last! Come on!”
She stared at me, a funny gleam in her eyes. Then she laughed. It was a relieved, hysterical, spine-tingling laugh.
The walls exploded. Red, musty liquid gushed over us.
I couldn’t see Last’s hands, but she must’ve conjured, because while she laughed, we burst from the roiling floor. We were flung upward on a platform of dirt, and then, like a jack-in-the-box, we flew out from under the bed, back into the city.