CHAPTER 9

“YANCY?” ALEX WHISPERED TO ME.

“TheVampireDragon555,” I said through gritted teeth.

“The feared being who broke into the Overworld, turned it to night and almost destroyed it is named Yancy?” Alex said.

“He’s been interested in Herobrine for years,” Destiny said. “He knows a lot about him.”

“Maybe they’re working together,” I shot in.

Destiny shook her head. “Yancy hasn’t been back to the Overworld. He knows he’s forbidden from returning and he respects that.”

Respect? Don’t make me laugh. Whether you called him TheVampireDragon555, Yancy, or “the feared being,” it was all talking about the same guy, and he was trouble.

“Let me call him,” Destiny said, and Maison handed her the phone. Alex watched curiously, still trying to understand how phones worked. Destiny hung up and sighed, “No answer. We should go over there.”

“Just show me the way,” Alex said, adjusting her bow and arrows over her shoulder.

Maison and Destiny exchanged uncomfortable looks.

“What?” Alex demanded.

“We can’t just go walking out in daylight with you and Stevie,” Maison said. “People will … stare. And they’ll want explanations. It’s hard enough trying to cover for the fact I brought Stevie to school with me earlier this year.”

“We could cover them in blankets, like ghosts,” Destiny said. “It’s almost Halloween, so people might think we’re celebrating early. I don’t think that would be too weird.”

“I’ve had enough talk,” Alex said. “Let’s go.”

But Destiny stopped her.

“What now?” Alex demanded. “This is an emergency. We need to understand what this music disc is telling us.”

“Um, you can’t walk down the street with bows and arrows,” Destiny said.

She might as well have told Alex to stop being a redhead. “What?” Alex said. “How do you defend yourself against mobs if you do not carry weapons?”

“There aren’t any mobs in this world,” I said.

“No mobs!” Alex said. Her mind was blown.

Maison pulled some white sheets out from her closet. “Here,” she said to Destiny. “You make ghost outfits for them. I’ll go ask my mom if it’s okay for us to walk over to a friend’s. Then we’ll have to slip out so she doesn’t see Stevie and Alex with us.”

“You’re going to make us ghosts with a sheet?” Alex said skeptically. “Where is your crafting table to do such things?”

Destiny looked pained. “You’re not really going to be ghosts. They’re just costumes for Halloween. See, look out the window at all the houses on the block. They all have jack-o-lanterns on their porches.”

Alex and I peered out the window. Sure enough, most of the houses had little orange jack-o-lanterns out front, just like the kind Dad would make by putting a torch and pumpkin on the crafting table.

“Ah,” Alex said. “You have pumpkin farmers here.”

“What’s Halloween?” I asked.

“Just put on your costumes,” Destiny said.

It turned out TheVampireDragon555 only lived a few streets away from Maison. That didn’t mean getting there was easy. It was so hard to see through those sheets! Maison held my hand and Destiny held Alex’s. They had to guide us.

“Stop here,” Destiny said when we’d gotten to a street corner.

“Why?” Alex said. “Do you not understand we need to hurry?”

Right then, a bus flew by on the street, going so fast it made the bottoms of our sheets ruffle up.

“A mob!” Alex said. She reached for her bow and arrows, almost knocking off the rest of the sheet. “I knew it!”

“No!” Destiny said, pulling the sheet back down. “It’s a bus. That means it’s like a big car.”

“A big what?” Alex said.

“A big Minecart,” Maison said.

“Your Minecarts are noisy in this world,” Alex said. “And what is that awful smell it leaves behind?”

“Look, the light’s green,” Maison said. “Let’s go.”

“What light?” Alex asked. “Do you have lights that shoot up to the sky and show people where you are?”

“Shh!” Maison said. “People are already starting to stare.”

Maison and Destiny led us a couple more streets before stopping in front of a doorway. I pulled the sheet up enough so that I could see, making sure the sheet still covered my back so no one from the street would be able to make out who I was. Destiny rapped her knuckles on the door and we waited.

Alex pulled her sheet up over her head, too. “This is where the feared being lives?” she breathed. “I was expecting something a little more … sinister.”

She had a point. TheVampireDragon555’s house looked like any other house on the street. It even had a jack-o-lantern out front, and the jack-o-lantern’s face had been turned into a toothy smile.

When the door opened, I thought of TheVampireDragon555 the night he took over the Overworld. His skin had been a ghoulish zombie green and his eyes were a deep, dark red. He’d held a diamond sword in his hand as he led the whole zombie army. I cringed.

But standing here was just Yancy, your average seventeen-year-old for this world. His skin was its normal color, his eyes were dark brown instead of red, and he was wearing black jeans and a sweatshirt, no shoes or socks.

When he saw me, he smiled. “Well, well, well, Stevie,” he said. “I never thought I’d have the honor of seeing you again.”

I wanted to tell him to wipe that smirk off his face. That’s when Destiny said, “Be real, Yancy. Stevie and his cousin Alex traveled all the way from the Overworld because someone is threatening to destroy their world.”

“Hey, it’s not me,” he said. “I haven’t even played Minecraft since then. All I’m doing today is studying for the pre-calc test I’m taking tomorrow and I was getting ready to make myself a snack.”

I glared at him. “I don’t know why we should believe you, TheVampireDragon555.”

“Please, it’s just ‘Yancy’ now,” he said. “I gave up my old lifestyle.”

“You are the feared being?” Alex asked, blinking. “I expected someone more fierce-looking. But you do look like the pictures.”

“The pictures?” Yancy repeated, not understanding.

“Your image is in every village in the Overworld,” Alex said.

“Like a Wanted sign,” Maison said. “So if you ever step foot in the Overworld again, they’ll be looking for you.”

“Well, nice to know I live in infamy,” Yancy said. “But pre-calc won’t study itself …”

He started to close the door on us.

“Wait!” Destiny said, putting her foot in the doorway. “We need to ask you about Herobrine.”

Yancy groaned, but he opened the door to let us in. “My parents are going to be back soon, so you can’t stay too long,” he said. “I’m supposed to be studying. My mom’s been really down my throat about raising my grade in math.”

He lankily made his way into the kitchen and we all followed him. Alex and I took our sheets off and draped them over the backs of a chair at the dining table.

“So, Herobrine, huh?” Yancy said. We all waited with nervous butterflies to see what he had to say. But then something made a “beep” and Yancey pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped the screen with his finger.

“Hold on, I got to respond to this,” he said, tapping at the phone fast with his thumbs.

“Yancy, this is important,” Maison said, exasperated. “You can text later.”

Yancy kept playing with his phone as if he couldn’t hear her or he didn’t care. He wasn’t taking this seriously at all!

Annoyed, Destiny took the phone out of his hand.

“Hey!” Yancy protested.

“Finish texting when you’re done,” Destiny said. “We need to talk about Herobrine.”

Yancy groaned but didn’t try to take the phone back. Agitated, he walked farther into the kitchen.

“What’s this sudden obsession with Herobrine?” he said, pulling some jars out of the cabinet. He grabbed a loaf of bread—in Maison’s world, the bread came in packaging you bought from the store with green stuff called money. You didn’t make your own bread, like Dad and I did.

“Herobrine is this creepy icon from Minecraft, but he’s not actually in the game,” Yancy told us. “He looks kind of like Stevie, only he’s bigger like an adult, and his eyes are spooky-looking.”

“Who created him?” Destiny asked. She put his cell phone in her pocket. It looked as if she did it without thinking, because she was so interested in hearing what he had to say.

“Beats me,” Yancy said. “He doesn’t actually do anything. You make up what you want him to do. Some people probably wanted to scare someone else, so they made up this Minecraft character and told other people he’ll grief you and destroy your stuff.”

Just then, Yancy reached into a drawer and pulled out a long, silvery knife that flashed in the light.

I knew he couldn’t be trusted! “Alex, your arrows!” I yelled.

Fast as a flash, Alex had whipped out her bow, strung an arrow and held it back so that it trembled, aiming right at Yancy. Yancy put both his hands up, the knife still clutched in one.

“Whoa!” he said. “I’m just trying to make a PB and J with a butter knife. I’m not going to attack you with this.”

Alex slowly lowered her arrow. “You better be telling the truth,” she said. “I’m a perfect shot.”

Muttering under his breath, Yancy unscrewed the lids of the jars and stuck his knife in one, pulling out some gooey purple-red stuff. He spread it on one of the pieces of bread. “I swear,” he muttered. “Can’t make myself a sandwich without …”

“Look, enough about you,” Destiny said. “Can you hear this?”

She pulled out the music disc and it played. Yancy stopped making his sandwich to watch her with bored eyes. He must not have heard it, because he had no reaction, just like Dad and Aunt Alexandra.

When the music disc stopped, he turned back to his sandwich. “Nice trick,” he said. “Did you buy that at the dollar store?”

“No, it’s from the Overworld!” I said. Does that mean he can hear it? I thought, my heart pounding. Of all the people in all the worlds, how come only the five of us could hear this thing?

“Well, whoever made it has a dark sense of humor,” he said, screwing the lids on his jars and dropping his dirty knife into the sink. He took a big bite out of his sandwich.

“Look, I don’t think this is a joke,” Alex said. “I found it while exploring some ruins. No one else has been able to hear it except for the five of us. The people in my village have started acting really weird, like, really mean. And someone’s been breaking into people’s houses and going through their things, and the leaves are disappearing from trees. Someone left a sign at Stevie’s tree house saying they’re ‘getting closer,’ and Stevie, Maison, Destiny and I keep having nightmares about Herobrine—”

She broke off as Yancy began choking uncontrollably on his sandwich. He thumped himself in the chest a few times, leaning over, an expression of panic on his face. When he managed to swallow the food down, he looked at us all in horror.

“Oh, no,” he said, his face gone very pale.