In the City of the Nightmare King Read online

  I dashed into Alison’s room and shook her awake. “Alison, wake up. I had a really weird dream.”

  She got up and yawned. “Probably not as weird as the one where I’m married to Ross Lynch, and Harry Styles is our baby.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You were saying something?”

  “I had this book, it was a notebook—Gaspar’s notebook—and it had this spell inside that I used to pull Hunter out of the Void, and he was naked—”

  “Gross, J, I don’t want to hear about your weird sex dreams.”

  “Ali, do you remember? Hunter used that cintamani thing to stop the Sandman. Remember?”

  Quiet revelation crept across her face. “I’m not sure. Kind of?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She searched her thoughts for a proper response. “I don’t know how to put it—it’s like . . . when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember it.”

  “So, it feels familiar?”

  “Mmhmm, but nothing comes to mind.”

  Dad knocked on the door frame. “Hey, kiddos,” he said, kicking into a strange jig in the hallway. “You two ready for school?” We stared until he felt awkward about the weird dance. Embarrassed, he straightened up and cleared his throat. “You better get ready. Don’t want to be late.”

  We waited until he’d left to keep talking. “We’ve got to find Blake and Hunter. If they remember, too, then this place must be a trick,” I said.

  “Definitely. Now let’s hurry and get ready before your dad has a stroke.”

  Dad wrangled Alison and me into the car. Alison chewed on her thumbnail and stared out the window in the backseat. I didn’t plan on staying in school all day, not when there was an important investigation to undertake.

  “Now I know you two think I’m some musty old boomer, but I’m actually Gen X—” Dad rambled. His voice sent shivers up my spine. Alison still felt like Alison, but something about him was off. He didn’t give me a feeling at all. It’s like he was empty. If this place wasn’t real like the voice on the radio had said, who was the guy sitting next to me, and how was he able to mimic my dad so well?

  “You okay, kiddo?” he asked me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, hastily deflecting his question.

  Misthaven High School was just outside the Pines, not far from Dad’s new house. Parents dropped their kids off at a sidewalk around a traffic circle out in front. Dad pulled up behind a gray Scion and parked along the curb. He reached over and handed me a jingly pair of keys. “One’s for you and the other’s for Alison. Do you both have your phones?”

  “Sure do,” Alison said, already heading out the door.

  “I love you, kiddo,” Dad said to me.

  A brown boy with curly hair hopped out of the gray Scion and climbed some steps to a lightly packed concourse before the main building. He stopped near four other kids gathered around a bench under an oak tree. A girl with blond hair hugged him and he laughed and greeted the others—friends obviously. I didn’t know why the scene riveted me. Thunder groused in the cottony slate-colored sky.

  Dad’s words finally reached me. “Love you too, Dad.” He was still staring at me when I opened the door and chased after Alison.

  “That guy isn’t my dad,” I said as we walked onto the concourse. Alison didn’t respond. She kept extra guarded around new people. Her looks already attracted a lot of attention, but her height drew especially curious eyes. I decided against making her any more uneasy, given our situation. We didn’t get too many looks on our way into the main building, though.

  A chipped and faded black dragon mural with the words Misthaven Drakes encircling it hung over the main office’s entrance. A musty smell filled the cramped office, making me want to gag. Alison turtled her hand into her sleeve and used it to pinch her nose. A middle-aged secretary handed us our schedules and locker tickets. I stored the schedule in my back pocket. We hurried outside and up a staircase, leaving the main building via a skywalk that connected to the second one. Alison and I slowed down and studied our surroundings. The high school was a piffling three buildings, each two stories tall, but the scant number of students made it feel bigger. We found our locker in an alcove. Unlike our school in Chicago, each student only got a half locker. I didn’t hate that because Spencer Pruitt, the bully at our old school, used to stuff me into the full-sized ones so much they made me anxious. Alison got the top locker.

  “I’m on bottom,” I said.

  “All your life,” she said.

  I stored my backpack and checked the schedule. English at 7:20. Math at 8:15. The blandness made me miss the Institute. That felt a little messed up. I found myself craving a nasty Styrofoam-tasting bagel from the break room in Veles Hall. Alison analyzed her locker like she didn’t know what to do with it. Her old one in Chicago primarily housed My Chemical Romance posters.

  “What’re you thinking about?” I asked, not because I didn’t already know but because I wanted her to prove me right.

  “I’m trying to figure out what to do with this locker.” Called it.

  A familiar chuckle drew my attention. Shock washed over me in tingly waves when I saw Hunter standing near some lockers close to ours, laughing and joking with three other guys, all of them wearing Drake’s letterman jackets.

  “Alison, look,” I said, tugging her shirt.

  Alison narrowed her eyes at first then leaned forward. “Is that—”

  “It’s Hunter. Let’s go talk to him.” Alison didn’t look too sure about going over there and striking up a conversation with those guys, but we needed to find out if Hunter recognized us.

  We approached Hunter and his friends. They stopped talking as we neared, two of them ogling Alison. She gave me a funny look then fired them a dismissive smile.

  “Hey, man, I like your shirt,” Hunter said, staring at my Twenty-One Pilots T-shirt. “I love that band!”

  Our eyes met, but there was no connection. I waited for him to recognize us, but when he didn’t, I briefly balled up my hands, nails digging into my palms. Unlike my dad, some unexplainable instinct told me this was Hunter. Alison bumped me with her elbow. We didn’t have all day for me to build the courage to ask him if he remembered us.

  “Thanks,” I said, cracking a grin. “Do you . . . remember us?”

  The question took him by surprise. He uneasily stole a look at his friends, gauging their reactions, but they looked just as confused. “No?” he said sweetly. That one declaration crushed all my hopes. I refused to believe I’d dreamt him up, though. As great as Hunter was, he was no figment. There had to be some reason he didn’t remember us.

  I fought back a dour expression and smiled. “Sorry, I must have you confused with someone else.”

  “My name’s Hunter, what’s yours?”

  Oh, the angst. I wanted to punch myself until I had no teeth. “Johnny.”

  One of Hunter’s friends checked out Alison and said, “And your friend’s?”

  “This is Alison.”

  “Hey, Alison,” Hunter’s friend said to her. “Mine’s Scott.”

  Alison scanned him: He had a thick, meaty neck, sparkly blue eyes, and black hair. But she didn’t feel like flirting with cute jocks. “Hey, Scott.”

  “You’re like a sexy vampire.” Did he really think that sounded like a compliment?

  “Lucky for you I don’t bite virgins.”

  Hunter suddenly raised a hand to his head, briefly losing balance. Scott eased an arm around Hunter’s back and steadied him. “You all right, bro?”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said, regaining composure. “Just one of my headaches.” The first bell rang. “Hey, maybe I’ll see you around,” Hunter said, softly patting me on the arm before walking away with his friends. I watched him until Alison nudged me.

  “He doesn’t remember us,” I said. />
  “Maybe he’s like Sleeping Beauty and needs true love’s kiss to help snap him out of it.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know. Were those guys checking me out?”

  I was taken aback. “What’re you talking about, Ali?”

  “Those guys with Hunter. Were they checking me out?”

  “What—I don’t know!”

  “Fine, whatever. Maybe we’ll bump into Blake.”

  Alison and I parted ways because we didn’t have homeroom together. I walked to the third building and into Room 203. Science tables divided in two rows filled the stuffy lab. Students occupied almost every seat, except for one near the back. Hunter sat there talking to a brown-haired girl at the table in front of his. He noticed me browsing for an empty seat and waved me over. Our homeroom teacher, who stayed behind her desk checking her teeth for lipstick stains, didn’t even see me walk in. Good, I thought. I settled next to Hunter as the last bell rang. The teacher took roll and, finally spotting me, made me introduce myself. Then the announcements came on, and some soulless sounding girl rambled about PTA meetings and lunch programs.

  Hunter folded his arms on the desk and lay his head down, looking up at me while the announcements droned. “Why’d you move here at the end of the school year?”

  “My dad got a job and we had to move.”

  “Where’d he get a job at?”

  “The Misthaven Inquirer.”

  Hunter straightened up. “Your dad works at the newspaper? That’s cool. My parents are farmers.” That didn’t surprise me. This Hunter mirrored my real boyfriend in almost every way. “Where do you live?”

  “The Pines.”

  “I live out in the country.”

  The brown-haired girl spun around to us. “Hey, Hunter’s new friend.”

  “This is Tiffany,” Hunter said.

  With her long, wavy brown hair, bright-eyed expression, and sharp, angular features, Tiffany looked sixteen going on twenty-five. She probably smoked a pack a day and drank a bottle of Evan Williams before every football game.

  “Hey,” I said, and the two of them went on discussing some drama I was not privy to.

  I needed to meet up with Alison after class, to continue our investigation. I texted her to meet me outside after homeroom.

  “You should join the football team next year,” Hunter said while I was midtext.

  “Huh?”

  Hunter rose to his feet and every light in the room dimmed. A mirror ball descended from the ceiling, scattering white dots everywhere. Hunter reached for my hand, yanked me off the stool, and pressed our bodies together. “Johnny,” he sang, “You should join the football team with me. We could be magic together.”

  Back in Chicago, Alison had made me listen to Hamilton on repeat whenever we studied. That left me hating musicals. Instead of singing back, I just said, “I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

  “Why not?” he kept singing.

  “Because we’d end up making out while everyone else played.”

  The classroom split in two and both sides slid in opposite directions, leaving us standing in the middle of the football field, both in uniform. “But this is every gay boy’s high school fantasy,” he sang.

  “Not mine.”

  “Why not, Johnny?”

  The ground rumbled. Football players, dressed in blue, charged across the field toward us. This was why I couldn’t join the football team: the idea of getting squished under these guys terrified me. Hunter squeezed me against his chest and whisper-sang, “Will you follow me into the dark?”

  I stared up at his shining green eyes. The stampede neared. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

  Bam.

  They crushed us.

  Nothing but darkness.

  The bell rang, and I nearly jumped off the stool. Hunter and Tiffany laughed, but I didn’t stick around to feel embarrassed. I flew out the door and walked outside, to a bus stop near the traffic circle.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alison texted me and said she planned on staying behind to search for Blake. That sounded like a good idea. I left the bus stop to explore Misthaven alone.

  Chapter 4

  Misthaven’s public library was along Pine Street, south from the high school. The familiar building implored me to investigate, but I risked the librarian catching me and reporting me to the school. A few blocks down, Willow Avenue bisected Pine Street and crooked southwest, winding around Lake Misty all the way to the water bottling company.

  The sun tortured everything in Misthaven today. It boiled the lake and turned the valley into a steam bath. Even the birds refused to step outside. I kept to the shade and followed the shoulder for a while until I found a sign that read Dreadthistle and below that 2 miles. I knew little about the neighboring town. The Institute bus didn’t go there, and Hunter had never talked about it. All the mystery, and its short distance from Misthaven, made me curious to visit. I walked for ten minutes until I came upon a sign that read Thank you for visiting lovely Misthaven. I continued toward Dreadthistle until I came across another sign that read Now entering beautiful Misthaven. Confusion struck. The empty wooded road behind me betrayed no secrets. I turned and walked the other way, trying to leave Misthaven, and again found the same sign: Now entering beautiful Misthaven.

  My dulled wizard sense warned me of strange magic thickening the air. However, without proof, my feelings amounted to little more than paranoia. A crack that stretched from the roadside formed an S in the asphalt. If I walked toward Dreadthistle and found the same crack, in the same spot, that would confirm my suspicions—unknown magic had warped space around me. I started down the road again, desperately wanting to believe I wasn’t trapped here, but again, I passed the Now entering Misthaven sign, with the crack shaped like an S in the same spot as before.

  Panicking, I thought about using the forest to reach Dreadthistle, but I didn’t feel like going in there alone. Hell, I didn’t feel like going in there with other people. Too dangerous. Nothing around me inspired new ideas, so I kicked the sign and gave it the finger. My big toe hurt all the way back to Misthaven.

  The bizarre experience had confirmed my fears: Misthaven wasn’t real, and some strange magic was keeping us here.

  I went home and sunk into the living room couch. My phone buzzed—a text from Dad: How’s your first day going, Juanito?

  A sickening feeling hit me. I lurched forward and wrapped my arms around my waist. If this place wasn’t real, that wasn’t Dad texting me. It was something else.

  A cream-colored Lexus pulled up around three thirty. Tiffany applied some eyeliner in the driver’s seat, with Alison sitting next to her. I wanted to know why Tiffany decided to take Alison home—Alison never hung out with girls like her—but the day’s events dominated my thoughts. Alison got out of the passenger side, but Tiffany kept putting on makeup, too busy to leave just yet.

  Alison walked in and immediately noticed the look on my face. “J, what happened?”

  “I went walking earlier and I tried to leave town . . . but I couldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t leave town. I walked all the way to the Misthaven sign, and I went past it, then something looped me around and I ended up right back here.”

  We heard Tiffany drive off. “Are you . . . sure?” Alison asked.

  “Yes, Ali. I walked past the sign and marched right back into Misthaven. We can’t leave this place.”

  “But we . . . drove in. How could we have gotten here if we can’t leave?”

  “Do you think I’m messing with you?”

  “Don’t get defensive, J. I’m just trying to make sense of all this.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t find Blake?”

  Alison looked dismayed.

  Dad rushed in then and gave me a stern look. “W
here the hell have you been?” Alison stepped aside as he stormed into the living room. “Your school called me and told me you weren’t in any of your classes.” Creepy. He looked like my dad, even sounded like him, but I knew nothing about what, if anything, inhabited that body.

  “Juanito, answer me,” he said loudly. I didn’t respond; he continued: “I get a job somewhere new and this is the stunt you pull your first day of class? I had to leave work early. Do you know how that makes me look, Juanito?” My silence further frustrated him. “Is this because of your mom, or me? We can only do our best. You and me and Alison, okay? We came here for another chance, Juanito. If you’re going to ruin this for both of us, then I at least deserve an explanation.”

  Dad kneeled before the couch and put his arms around me. “We’ve got to make this work. Please, this is our second chance. You’ve got to promise me we’ll make this work.”

  Dad bought a rotisserie chicken for dinner and served it with instant mashed potatoes and canned peas. Then he dumped butter all over everything. For him, a culinary home run, but for Alison, our resident vegan, it was completely inedible. Dad drove back out to the store and got her something different. When we finally settled around the table, he asked about our day, but neither of us said much. My thoughts stayed on that stretch of road between Misthaven and Dreadthistle.

  We washed up and headed for bed after dinner, but I didn’t intend on falling asleep any time soon. I waited by my window for midnight. When warmed under the glowing sun, Misthaven pulsed with life, but at night, Misthaven stood still as a cemetery, her dormant streets sleeping comfortably beneath a starlit veil. Even travelers thought twice before venturing out, for every Misthavener knew not to wander out past twelve. When midnight came, so too did the eerie mist billow out into the empty streets. Its silent tendrils crept over everything like a fiendish ivy—crawled into every mailbox, slipped under every car, slithered between every gutter. Its dull gray rose, drowning all warm, earthly colors in undead whiteness. And when daytime’s memory vanished from the world and only ghoulish shadows remained, a gurgling sound pierced my ears, turned my skin to ice. It sounded like a ravenous stomach’s twisting pleas. But its growl resonated low and deep, like a wolf, greedy with hunger. And strange whispers rode on that unsettling sound, so indistinct as to be completely unintelligible.