Awoken (2 page)

The cat killer tossed the furry carcass toward the others. The four formed a loose circle around the cat, crouching on all fours like monkeys. Their arms seemed disproportionately long for their bodies, and the ease with which they flowed into squatting positions suggested they spent as much time on all fours as on two legs. Together, the sinister quartet sniffed at the cooling corpse.

Michael’s stomach clenched. They were like little killer dolls. Like pasty, homicidal… dollmen.

As if reaching a silent consensus, the dollmen regained their feet together. The three latecomers nodded to the first dollman, and they scattered. They moved with incredible speed, disappearing into the darkness. The first dollman stared after the others for several moments before reaching down for the cat. Without warning, he whirled and peered up at Michael’s window.

Michael dropped to his belly.

Had the dollman seen him? Was the beast staring up at his room right now, waiting for him to stick out his head?

His ragged breathing seemed intolerably loud. He slapped a hand over his mouth and closed his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. A weird black cat had not died in the yard, and there were definitely not four alien, albino elves living under the deck. If he went to bed now, this would all make sense in the morning. He was having a hallucination or something. His imagination had invented the creepy miniature men out of thin air and comic books. This was a dream.

He opened his eyes and glanced up at the window above him. Dollmen didn’t exist. They couldn’t…right?

“Crud.”

He had to be sure. One quick peek, and he’d duck right back down.

“The famous last words of Bambi’s mother,” he muttered.

He took a deep breath, and popped his head above the windowsill. The yard was empty—no sign of the little men, or the dead cat. Nothing. No fur. No blood. He’d imagined the whole thing after all. He managed a quivering laugh. Little white men. Ha! He must be going bonkers. This was almost as bad as when he’d had chicken pox, when he’d thought the tooth fairy was sneaking out of the toilet to steal his lunch money.

He stood and reached to close the window. Even if a band of goblins hadn’t invaded the yard, no way he was leaving the window open tonight. A gust of wind blew through the oak, drawing Michael’s gaze to the swaying branches. The air left his lungs with a soft hiss.

A dollman clung to a branch not ten feet away. His face was nearly human, but flatter, with a pointed chin and wide cheekbones. Where there should have been a nose, two vertical slits rested above unnaturally thin lips. The eyes were the most disturbing—of one color, without pupil or iris, they glimmered like twin pools of liquid mercury in the dark.

Michael pulled at the window, but his arms were like wet noodles. The window stuck.

The dollman looked from the deck to Michael, alien eyes calculating.

The thing was going to jump. The dollman was coming inside!

With a squealing whimper, Michael dragged down on the window with all the strength he could muster, but the frame refused to budge.

The pale lips peeled back, exposing a forest of needle-like fangs the color of grimy glass.

“The sleeping,” the dollman said in a voice like crumbling stone.

Michael jumped back, tripped over his feet, and fell on his butt. This was all a nightmare. He rolled to his hands and knees, scrambled to his bed, and pulled the covers over his head. This was all a nightmare, a nightmare…

Michael shivered beneath the sheets in a fetal ball, waiting for the monster outside to come and take him.

The sun finally disappeared behind Mrs. Finche’s roof.

Michael blinked, and noticed that bright red spots colored the insides of his eyelids. He had been staring at the sun too long. Someone had told him once that made you go blind. He hoped not. After last night, he had enough problems.

Two hours after dawn, he had finally summoned the courage to leave his bed and close the window. The wooden frame had slid down without so much as a squeak. He’d sworn he heard the window laughing at him. After getting dressed, he’d taken his backpack from the closet and filled it with jeans, a sweatshirt, two pairs of socks, fresh underwear, a dozen of his favorite comics, and a mostly full box of chewy chocolate-chip granola bars he kept in his bottom drawer in the event of late-night munchies. He’d tried to add another pair of jeans as well, but the pack had started to look like a swollen balloon. He’d hidden the backpack under his bed and gone downstairs for breakfast.

Since then, he’d loitered about the house and pretended the dollmen under the deck weren’t plotting his demise. The charade proved difficult. He wasn’t much of an actor, and Barbara kept giving him strange looks, as if she suspected something. Maybe she did. That wouldn’t stop him. He had to get out of there. The dollmen would be back. He’d bet his life on it.

Except he couldn’t just make a run for Mexico, or anywhere else far enough away the dollmen were unlikely to follow. The Wiffles would report him missing by supper. Flintville was a small town, with the kind of people who would remember a kid hiking down the road. If he left too soon, the cops would have him back in his room before you could say, “Dollmen think teenagers are yummy.”

To pull off his escape, he needed to get clear of the town before the Wiffles realized he was gone. He had to wait until dark, until after everyone was asleep.

He touched his nose to the window. The surface was cool, and his breath painted a grey film on the glass. Outside, the streetlights flickered on. Almost time.

The television clicked off and Barbara put down the remote.

“Up to bed, dear. You can finish daydreaming in your room.”

A cold shiver crawled up Michael’s spine. “Okay, Mrs. Wiffle,” he agreed halfheartedly, and started for the stairs.

“Is something the matter, Michael? You look pale.”

Karl glanced up from his book. “Probably gave him a case of the pregame jitters. All that talk about football being dangerous. Football is supposed to be dangerous. All the good games are dangerous.”

“I’m a little tired, Mrs. Wiffle,” Michael said. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

Barbara eyed him critically for a minute, finally giving a grudging nod. “All right, dear. Go get some sleep.”

“Will do, Mrs. Wiffle. Goodnight.”

“Call me Barbara, dear. Goodnight.”

“Sorry, Barbara,” Michael said. “Goodnight, Mr. Wiffle.”

Karl grunted. “Goodnight, Mike. Don’t stay up all night reading comic books. You got a game tomorrow.”

I’ve got a game tonight
, Michael thought darkly as he climbed the stairs.
I call the game, “Run for your life, the dollmen are coming!” I’d better win, too, or there won’t be a tomorrow
.

Michael lay under his covers awake and fully clothed, listening for the sound of footsteps making their way down the hall to the Wiffles’ bedroom.

The shadows thickened, transforming his room into a gloomy cave. The sky outside was overcast, the moon’s glow hidden completely behind grey-black clouds. The only light came from beneath the door, a thin bar of brightness shining in from the hall. The Wiffles would turn out that light when they went to bed. He pushed his backpack farther under the covers and waited.

Minutes passed, but no footsteps sounded and the light remained. He shifted his weight and yawned. After an hour, the light under the door began to blur. His eyelids grew heavy. He yawned again. He hadn’t slept a wink last night, and bone-deep exhaustion settled on him like a warm blanket.

Michael pushed himself up on one elbow. Where the heck were the Wiffles? He needed to get out of here soon, or he might as well stick an apple in his mouth and put out the silverware.

He was so tired. If only he could just close his eyes for a minute…

He bit down savagely on the tender inside of his cheek. The sting jolted him. He would not end up a midnight snack for a bunch of bald fairies. The Wiffles had to go to bed eventually. He would wait until they did, give them maybe twenty minutes to fall asleep, and make a break for it.

The light below the door stretched like taffy in a press.

“Gotta stay awake,” he whispered. “Gotta… Have to…”

His head touched the pillow, and he floated on a cloud of white sheets into oblivion.

Michael’s eyes snapped open, and he sat up so fast that his head spun and his stomach clenched in a nauseating knot. The room was pitch-black, the light under the door gone.

The blankets had cooked him in his clothes. He was soaked with sweat. Tossing aside his covers, he groped for his backpack. He had to leave now, before it was too late.

A soft wind blew against his face, chilling his wet cheeks and forehead. He froze. He’d closed the window in the morning. Where was the breeze coming from?

Scritch
.

The noise sounded like an ice pick scraping the floor, and came from the direction of the window.

Scooting up to his headboard, Michael stared blindly into the darkness. “Hello?”

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch
.

The scratching drew closer. Terror gripped Michael with an iron fist. Not ice-pick claws, dollman claws on his hardwood floor. They had come for him. He wanted to scream, to run. But he couldn’t. He was petrified, frozen in place by silver-eyed demons he couldn’t even see.

Scritch. Scritch
.

He blinked furiously, wondering why his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness. Had he gone blind? No. It was something else. There was an oily thickness to the air, like an odorless, tasteless smoke that suffocated the light. Stranger and stranger.

Scritch. Scritch
.

Abruptly, the sounds stopped.

“Greetings, Sleeper,” said a gravelly voice.

Michael jerked back, banging his skull on the headboard. “Who…who’s there?”

“We are the People. We are the seekers of the sleeping. We are the guardians of the earth and bone. This one found you last night.”

Oh, crud! The dollman from the oak tree.

“What…what do you want?”

“The People have heard you, Sleeper. We hear the calling in your blood. The People have come to awaken you.”

“Well, I’m wide awake now,” said Michael. “Good job. I guess you can get going then.”

“No. You are the sleeping, but you must awake. The Fallen draw near, Sleeper. They seek the earth and bone. You must awake!”

For just a moment, plain annoyance overcame Michael’s fear. “I said I’m already awake. Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you’re going to eat me, stop screwing around and get it over with. The suspense is killing me.”

“You must awake!”

A vice-like grip closed on his wrist, and something hard and cool pressed into his palm.

“What—?”

“Take the cup, Sleeper. Drink of the earth and bone, and you shall awake.”

Michael closed his fingers. The cup was stone. He’d known that much the instant the thing touched his skin. But the stone was unlike any he’d held before. The hum in his head buzzed like a nest of angry hornets, building inside him. The music was too strong. He couldn’t think.

“Take it away,” Michael gasped. “Too loud.”

He tried to drop the cup, but small fingers pressed his hand over the curved stone, lifting the singing cup toward his face.

“Drink.”

“Let go,” Michael pleaded. “Something is happening. Stop, please.”

“The stonesong awakes, Sleeper. All will be well. Drink.”

The cup touched his lips and a chainsaw roar filled his skull. “Stop.”

“This one cannot, Sleeper. The Fallen come. You must awake. Drink.”

Cool liquid poured into his mouth, and tingling swept across his tongue like an electric charge. The humming in his brain muted beneath the tingle, and his thoughts turned fuzzy and disconnected.

“Drink.” The command rolled over him like an ocean wave…heavy, demanding, irresistible.

He swallowed, and tingling numbness flowed down his throat and spread through his body. The hum in his brain began to change, growing outward, stretching, opening up like a flower in the rain.

“Drink, Sleeper. Awake to your destiny.”

Tilting back his head, he drained the cup dry. Numbness covered him, and the cup dropped from his fingers. He felt light, loose, and so very tired.

“It is done,” the dollman said. “Behold my people, the Awoken.”

“Behold, the Awoken,” echoed a host of gravelly voices.

Judging by the number of voices, Michael realized his room must be packed with dollmen. Oddly enough, what should have been a terror-inspiring revelation left him strangely unfazed.

Small electric surges, comforting and thrilling, flowed through him as his head touched the pillow.

“Quickly, Awoken, before the water takes you. You must be warned.” The dollman sounded distant, as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well. “Beware the hunters, Awoken. Already one has come. Do you hear?”

Michael blinked sleepily. “I hear you. I’m listening.”

“The Ven come, Awoken. They must not find you. The People must flee this place.”

“You…you’re leaving?”

“The Ven must not find the Awoken. The People will lead them away from here. We will return when the danger has passed.” Hands slipped over his head and draped a thin chain around his neck. “Keep the waystone close until we return, Awoken, and beware.”

“Beware? I don’t understand.”

“You will know them by their colors—green of moss and brown of soil. One of each, you must beware. Remember, Awoken. Remember the colors of the Ven.”

Michael’s tongue moved clumsily in his mouth. “What…are…Ven?’”

“They are the hunters of blood, and the earth and bone, spawn of the Betrayer. Remember, Awoken, one green, one brown.”

Michael wanted to ask the dollman more, but his lips wouldn’t open. Slowly, his eyes drifted closed.

“Rest now, Awoken,” whispered a faraway voice. “Rest, but do not forget the colors of the Fallen. The Ven bring death.”

The dire words followed Michael into the world of dreams, and he knew no more.