The War for the Waking World (5 page)

As if in protest, the raging storm began spitting lightning. A luminous bolt scorched the earth right at Archer's feet. He flinched but that was all. One lapse in concentration, and people would die. He poured his will into controlling the winds of his storm. He could feel the tension of their striving, the grating, clutching winds ripping at each other. Still he poured more will into the clockwise wind. He had to counterbalance the luminous green storm's power, had to tear the funnel apart.

Archer felt a jarring catch within himself. It was like his heart skipping a beat; only this halting sensation was in his mind. For a moment, he couldn't think at all. There was a dull blankness and a ringing in his ears. An ounce of awareness came back and he knew . . . he knew he had released all the mental energy he could afford to spend. The storms went oddly silent, and then there was a black shadow in the corner of his vision.

Something struck him, and a curtain of darkness fell.

Archer awoke with a start. Sweat trickled cold down his back, his heart jackhammered, and he gasped for breath.

“Easy, Archer,” came a soft voice. “Lay your head back.”

Archer obeyed. He felt a firm pillow placed beneath the back of his head, and turned toward the voice. It was too dark, just enough moonlight spilling in through his bedroom window to silhouette the
woman sitting next to his bed. Her outline . . . and her voice were somehow familiar.

She moved, and Archer felt a warm comforter tug gently to rest beneath his chin. “I had a terrible dream,” he said. His speech felt dry, like the first words spoken in years. “There was . . . a storm. Something hit me.”

“That wasn't a dream, Archer,” the woman said. “Worst storm since the derecho last year.”

Archer started to sit up but felt the gentle pressure of the woman's hands pressing him back to lying horizontally. “You need to rest,” she said.

“But I'm confused. There . . . was a storm?”

“You took quite a rap on the head,” she explained. “Piece of flying debris, most likely.”

“Wait,” he muttered, snippets of images stirring in his imagination. “I was helping . . . trying to stop the storm.”

“You were helping all right,” she said, her tone amused. “Kaylie had gotten caught out in the storm. It came up so quickly she just had time to duck down by the well. She was so scared, but you went out and brought her back inside. That's when the board hit you.”

“She okay?”

“Kaylie's fine, thanks to you,” she said. “She's in bed, sound asleep. You got the worst of it, you know. Well, you and the porch. Screens are all shredded. Guess your father will need somewhere else to smoke now.”

Archer closed his eyes. A dull ache throbbed at the base of his skull. “I was supposed to be doing something,” he said. “Supposed to be fighting.”

“You're fighting sleep, that's all,” she said. “Rest now. Just rest. We'll get it all figured out in the morning.”

Archer tried, but his mind kept spinning. Something bad had happened, right? They'd been at a hospital for some reason. Then, they
were home, but Amy and her mom were there. And then the storm. Archer turned his head to look at the woman's silhouette. That's why she seemed so familiar. Amy's mom. Archer's dad had a great many skills, but he was no good at being a nurse.

“There's nothing I have to do?” Archer asked.

“No, just rest.”

“You sure?”

She laughed quietly. “Yes, I'm sure. Sleep now.”

Archer felt a rolling tide of lethargy ready to envelop him. He felt slow . . . and warm. But there was something off, something he felt he should be able to get to. It was like an itch that he couldn't scratch no matter how he twisted. A moment or two later, he felt the heaviness on his eyes winning out. He turned over on his side, toward the closet, and closed his eyes. “Good night, Mrs. Pitsitakas,” he mumbled.

There was a long pause, and Archer thought she might have already left. But then, she replied, “Good night, Archer. And don't worry . . . things will all become clear tomorrow.”

SIX

G
HOSTS

A
RCHER
'
S
BOWL OF
F
RUITY
F
LAKES
TASTED NORMAL
. T
HE
January air at the bus stop was its usual frigid. Amy chattered away on the bus just as she always did. Everything seemed . . . normal.

Except it wasn't.

The same impossible-to-reach mental itch he'd felt the previous night was still with him all morning. And now, as he sat through third period English class, the feeling was almost unbearable.

Snot buckets,
Archer thought.
Can't focus. Especially not on this.
He looked down at his worn copy of Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World
and shook his head.

The other students in the room seemed to be doing fine. Even Rigby, who had already read most of the classics a dozen times, seemed to be deeply engrossed in the book. Mrs. Mangum sat at her desk and pecked away at a keyboard. Feeling restless, Archer left his desk and signed out the bathroom pass.

He didn't need to go. He just wanted out. Wanted to take a walk, get a drink of water, clear his mind . . . if he could. He walked along rows of lockers and absently tapped the padlocks that hung from each locker. It was a long hallway, mostly dim and shadowy where Archer was, but far up ahead near the main office, the windows of the front entrance were aglow with nearly unbearable bright light. Archer squinted as he bent to the fountain for a drink. A man and a woman, both dressed very professionally, stood outside the main office. From
their silhouettes, Archer thought it was two of the school's guidance counselors: Mr. Raymond and Mrs. Coonts.

As he slurped from the fountain, he wondered what the counselors might be talking about. Probably about the storm. Everyone was talking about the storm. Such a strange thing: high winds but little precipitation. It had gone out to sea, sucked up a bunch of moisture, and became a nor'easter, dumping a ton of snow in New England.
Too bad,
Archer thought.
It could have . . . been . . . what?

Startled, Archer pressed the fountain latch too hard. Ice cold water went right into his nose. “Snot rockets!” Archer exclaimed, wiping his nose frantically. He stood up and stared. The two counselors were still there, talking, gesturing. But for a moment, one of them . . . flickered.

Archer blinked and kept staring. Maybe
flickered
wasn't quite the right word. Mr. Raymond's silhouette—just for a few seconds—seemed to become semitransparent and flake away . . . like a pile of ashes stirred by air currents. Then, he was there again: still a dark silhouette . . . but all the way there.

“Hey!” came a voice from behind. “Keaton, ya gonna drink or what?” “Guzzy?” Archer mumbled, spinning around. “But . . . I thought you . . .”

“You thought what?” The notorious school bully was pale as ever. A thin curtain of black hair partially concealed the smoldering
just-give-me-a-reason
look in his dark eyes. “Just get outta the way so I can get a drink, man. I'm parched.”

Archer hastened from the fountain, backing away from Guzzy.

“What's wrong with you, Keaton?” Guzzy asked, looking at Archer sideways. That's when it happened. Guzzy's face went from lack-of-sunshine pale to ashen gray. For just a few seconds, his face disintegrated in a whirl of gossamer flakes. Then, Guzzy was all there again, sneering as always.

Heart racing, Archer backpedaled away from Guzzy, jogged back
to the English classroom, and ducked inside. His back now to the door, Archer found the entire class staring at him.

“Everything okay, Archer?” Mrs. Mangum asked. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“Fine,” Archer muttered, quickly sidling to his chair. Just not quickly enough.

“Hey, Keaton,” Rigby called. “Couldn't get away from the scene of the crime fast enough, eh?”

Red-faced and mortified, Archer plopped into his chair and glared at Rigby. His nemesis in the classroom, however, didn't meet his gaze. He'd gone back to reading. Archer stared at Rigby. Long sideburns, uber-cool flop of hair, and that ever-present sideways smirk. Archer mentally dared him to look up, but he never did. Instead, Rigby Thames became ashen gray, withered in a split second, and then was back to normal before Archer could blink.

There, in the midst of the quiet classroom, was a distressing thing to behold. It wasn't gruesome, not like some time-lapsed footage of a dead thing rotting away. But seeing a tangible, flesh-and-blood person reduced to layers of ash right in front of you—it was a rattling experience.
It's the head injury,
he thought.
Gotta be. I've got a concussion, and it's messing with my perceptions.

Archer scanned the room. If anyone else had seen Rigby's disintegration, there should have been some reaction. But the class, even Mrs. Mangum, continued to work as if nothing had ever happened.

The rest of the school day left Archer questioning his sanity. There'd been no more dissolving people, but that irresistible, unreachable itch was still there. Only the bus ride home gave a welcome bit of monotony, a time to think.

C'mon, Archer,
he told himself.
You can figure this out. Just think it through.

But the answers eluded him. It just all felt wrong. It felt like he was supposed to be doing something, like he'd forgotten a very important task or mission. The answer was getting closer. It was there, hovering at the edge of his consciousness, just as the bus hit a bump.

Archer had been staring at the tall, dark green seat in front of him. The bus seemed to bounce and shake all at once, as if the driver had gone much too fast over a speed bump. But, in that moment, Archer looked up.

It happened again.

Two seats up on the left: Emy Crawford. The seat directly across the aisle to Archer's right: Jay Stephago. Another three seats up on the right: Kara Windchil. Two more sitting side by side near the front of the bus: Bree Lassiter and Gil Messchek. The moment the bus jolted, they became disturbed blotches of whirling ash. A moment later, everything was normal.

When the bus came to Elvis Lane, the next stop on its normal route, Archer was the first to get off. It wasn't his stop, but he didn't care. He just wanted off that bus, away from . . . well . . . whatever was happening. Archer raced down Elvis Lane, cut the corner by leaping chain-link fences and racing across snowy backyards, and then finally crossed into his neighborhood.

All the while, his thoughts continued to clash. He was half-prepared to ask his dad to arrange a doctor's appointment for him—maybe with a concussion specialist—but the other symptoms just weren't there. No dizziness. No vomiting. No sensitivity to light.

No,
he thought dismally,
I'm just seeing people dissolve.

Archer tried to reach back into his memories. Maybe he could piece things together, find out what was causing all this, the visions and that interminable mental itch. He'd awakened in the middle of the night to find Amy's mom sitting by his bedside. There'd been a terrible windstorm, and he'd been knocked unconscious. But what had come before? His previous memories were a blur, a mix of achingly beautiful
and nightmarishly terrifying images: a massive tree with a castle nestled in its boughs, crimson tornados, beastly red-eyed hounds, and a small hooded figure with a sinister glowing grin. And then there was that big tower clock—what was up with that? It was like a ghost of Big Ben. It seemed to be everywhere—

Archer stopped right there in the middle of the road, just fifty yards from his house. The answer was there, bobbing at the edge of his consciousness like a piece of treasure floating just offshore. Archer flailed at it mentally. He had some kind of job . . . a specialty, something he was very good at, something that helped people. But what?