Game Over (25 page)

Rick's mouth went dry. He licked his lips. He looked around the graveyard.

But when the cackle came again, he realized that no, it wasn't coming from the graveyard, it was coming from the headstone beneath him, from the book.

Sure enough, as he looked down, the pages of the book against the headstone blew again and came to a stop, and he saw the drawing of the witch on the page, and the name:

Baba Yaga.

The drawing showed a hideous crone—even more hideous than the witch had been in person. She was stirring some gooey mixture in a big pot. The mixture was bloodred, and there were weird bits and pieces of who knows what in it.

And as Rick gazed down at the picture, the witch in the drawing looked up at him!

He gasped aloud. The drawing had come to life! The picture of Baba Yaga grinned at him, toothless. She laughed that high, cackling laugh again.

“Don't forget, Rick,” she said, cackling. “You hold the truth inside you. The truth is your greatest weapon.”

The wind rose even higher, and the book came free of its place against the stone and tumbled away into the mist, gone.

Rick shook his head to clear away the image of the talking picture. Had it been real? Who could say? Was anything real in this place?

He started moving again, through the mist, among the graves.

He came nearer to the wall of cloud. It loomed above him, more fearsome with every step he took. Now Rick had to crane his neck to look up to the top of it. But there was no top. The cloud wall blotted out everything above him, as high as the sky and higher. It stood as far to the left and right as Rick could see. The cloud was dark and full and ominous like storm clouds just before they break. It was moving with a thick, bubbling motion like boiling tar, and the sound of it was a steady, hoarse roar. Now and then, the lightning flashed inside it. It seemed to turn the cloud translucent so that Rick caught glimpses of the thing on the other side: a silhouette of a hulking creature the size of a building. In the split second it was visible, the dark shadow moved behind the cloud, and its footsteps shook the earth.
Boom. Boom. Boom
. Then the lightning faded and the steps were drowned out by rolling thunder.

Rick reached the cloud. He stopped. He stood before the boiling wall, staring into the darkness of it. Without the lightning, that darkness was impenetrable. He breathed in deeply, trying to work up the courage to step into the storm, but for another long moment he hesitated. He could feel the miasmic dampness of the cloud on his skin. He could feel it right through his armor, a damp that was clammy and slick with filth. He hated the thought of entering.

His silver armor rippled on his skin.

As long as your faith stays strong, it will give you more power than you ever knew you had.

Rick prayed for courage. On the instant—almost as he
thought the words—the prayer was answered, and more. Courage was all he asked for, and it would have been enough, but not only did the courage come to him but also some living sense of love that he knew would sustain him even if things came to the worst. His father was in that love, his mother, his goofy brother, Raider, Molly too; the love contained them all and they were all with him and the love was with him and he was no longer afraid.

Rick stepped into the storm cloud.

“The code in the black box is the code we got from your mind,” the Traveler told Molly. “In theory, you should be able to join your thoughts to that code seamlessly.”

The techs had brought in another cot for her. She was lying down on it now, right beside Rick. Dial had put a headband on her with wires that would plug into the black box. She could feel her heart fluttering with fear, but she didn't care. Fear was only fear. It would not stop her.

“What that connection will be like or whether it will give you any power over Mariel, I don't know. But you might be able to give her some of your strength.”

Standing right behind him, and towering over him, Professor Jameson licked his lips with anxiety. “What if Mariel gives her some of her weakness?”

Molly tried to smile at him. “Don't worry, Daddy,” she said.

He smiled back. “Why not?”

“Because it doesn't help.”

The Traveler glanced over his shoulder at Chuck.

“We lost him,” said Chuck. “He's in that fogbank. I can't track him anymore.”

The Traveler looked down at Molly again. “If we're going to do this . . .”

Molly nodded. “Do it,” she said.

Lawrence Dial took a deep breath and plugged Molly into the black box.

Molly never lost her RL consciousness. She never fully entered the Realm. Instead, she went into a kind of fugue state where it seemed her dreams and the world blended together. On the one hand, she was aware of the makeshift portal room around her: the techs, the monitors, the glass coffins, Rick on his cot, her father and Professor Dial gazing down at her with a mixture of worry and scientific curiosity. On the other hand, an image had formed in her mind. Like a daydream, only much, much clearer. It was an image of a city in mist. A field in the distance . . . a field of stones . . . a graveyard, that's what it was! And there was a man there. Or not a man, but a fairy or sprite, made of blue light. Favian, yes. And as she looked out at those images, she had a sense of herself, her own body, changing form, becoming less solid, more liquid, a flow of energy
with fluid, changing outlines. More than that, there were new thoughts coming to her. There was new knowledge. They were not her thoughts. It was not her knowledge. But somehow she knew what she hadn't known before.

She focused her mind as hard as she could. She tried to think into the things she saw, the things she felt, the things she knew.

She thought,
We have to go with Rick. We have to help Rick. We have to.

“We have to go with Rick,” said Mariel.

Favian looked up, startled by the sound of her voice. Suddenly she sounded stronger, surer. Suddenly her figure had become younger, more powerful. Her voice filled the mist around him.

“We have to help him,” she said.

“Why should we?” Favian spat out bitterly. “He doesn't care about us. He was going to leave you here—leave you to die . . .” His voice trailed off. He was still angry at what Rick had said, but already the anger was beginning to curdle in him and turn to guilt. He had lost his temper, and in his rage, he had let his friend walk into danger alone. He knew it was wrong. Even as he was doing it, he knew. But the anger was like another person inside him, a person telling him to do what he knew he shouldn't. He'd obeyed the anger and now he wished he hadn't.

“Favian,” said Mariel. “Listen to me. I can't explain it all to you now. But Rick will not leave me. Rick loves me and I love him, and we are going to be together.”

“But he just said—” Favian began.

Mariel cut him off. “It doesn't matter what he said. He doesn't know what I know. Trust me, Favian. It's going to be all right. But we have to go to him. We have to help him. He'll die alone if we don't.”

Favian didn't need that much encouragement. He was sorry for what he'd done. He nodded.

“All right.”

Mariel turned and gazed off into the distance as if she were thinking. “There is . . . there is a stream . . . that goes around the graveyard . . .,” she said haltingly.

“Yes, you said,” said Favian. “But you said you were too weak . . .”

“I'm not too weak. Not anymore. You hurry after Rick through the graveyard. I will meet you on the other side if I can.”

Favian hesitated only one more second. “And he won't leave you here. You'll come out with us.”

“I promise Rick and I will be together,” she told him. “If we live through this.”

Rick stepped into the cloud and his first thought was
Yuh-uck!

It was disgusting here. It was beyond disgusting. It was hyperdisgusting. It was, like, electric disgusting amped to blast the back of your head off with disgust. That's how disgusting it was.

The inside of the cloud seemed to be made of some sort of sewage soup: a thick, greasy goulash with chunks of pure nasty floating past. The stench was indescribable—and if you could have described it, it would have been unbelievable. It curled up Rick's nose and down to the back of his throat and made him gag.

He forced his way through the roiling, boiling stew, his face screwed up like a baby's face just before it cries. Whatever monster was waiting for him on the other side of this, he thought, it couldn't be much worse than this.

And this just kept getting worse and worse.

As he walked through the mess, the lightning flashed again. Rick let out a strangled moan of pure, wretched nausea. In the momentary light of the flash, he could see the substance through which he was moving. It was horrible . . . horrible. Those chunks of filth that kept swimming over him—they were alive! Bug-eyed little lobstery monsters with chattering fangs and claws, they bit and snapped at him as they went past, and when his armor repulsed them, the beasts let off an angry little puff of stink and slithered away.

When the lightning flashed out, the creatures became invisible again in the darkness. Which was equally horrific! Knowing they were there, feeling them take their
little nips at him, smelling their awfulness. And just as Rick was praying to get to the other side of this thing . . .

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Even in the darkness, he began to make out the even darker darkness beyond the soupy wall: the hulking shape of the giant that was waiting for him, guarding the interface.

And now, the cloud began to thin. The soupy substance was becoming mist again. Rick could feel the walk grow easier. Fewer chunks and creatures touched him. The smell began to abate. His nausea receded. He started taking full breaths again. He was almost relieved.

Then the lightning struck and the thunder rolled at once, and in a single instant, the mist was gone and he got his first clear look at the King of the Dead.