OVER THE NIGHT, I study the 3-D map of Grisly Valley until I can see every turn and angle in my mind’s eye. According to Lavinia, cell phone coverage in the OEZ is spotty at best, so using a GPS map is out. It’s best to have my directions memorized, with the understanding that it may look different in person, aside from major landmarks. Once I think I know the map, Lavinia gives me a set of fancy goggles, tabs me up with a few sensors, and drops me into an expanded version of the map so I can practice exploring it in full-scale virtual reality. This involves bumping into the walls of the closet until I get the knack of stroking my steps along the floor to propel myself through the virtual set. The virtual streets and buildings, the concession stands and rides, even the garbage cans and streetlamps all shimmer with articulated, artificial brightness. It’s pretty cool, actually.
After I learn my way around the street level of Grisly Valley, Lavinia advises me to sleep for a while to cement what I’ve learned. That reminds me of Forge. She offers me the bed in the spare bedroom, and I crawl under the covers beneath the painting of the seashore. My dreams are full of Grisly Valley, and I wake late the next morning to the sound of Tiny purring in the crook of my bent knees.
“Hey, girl,” I say, and curl my fingers around her flinching ears. My mouth feels dry and my muscles stiff, but for once I didn’t wake from a nightmare, and I feel well rested for the first time in ages.
The first thing I do is check for news from Peggy on the wild chance she’s heard something, but there’s no change on her Facebook profile. On the floor beside me is a paper I drew the night before, when I was testing my memory of the map. I’m lifting the paper to puzzle over it when one of my phones buzzes. I have to sort through the bunch of them in my backpack until I find the right one, and it’s Burnham. With a pinch of remorse, I realize I should have called him sooner, when 240 Mallorca turned out to be a good lead. Also, Thea wanted me to talk to him about her, and I never did.
“Hey,” I say, picking up. “How are you doing?”
“Good,” he says. “Where are you now?”
“In California.” I let my gaze travel to the window and out to the sunny sky.
I fill him in about my messages from Dubbs and Berg, and coming to Lavinia’s, and my plan to look for my family at Grisly. I warn him about ten times that I don’t want the police involved. In return, Burnham tells me about Ian’s pill, the red Echo 8, which is a sleep aid. The yellow double theta is a stimulant. Fister produces a slightly different version that’s used for depression. He also discovered that Fister does sell pharmaceuticals in the Miehana area, but nothing stands out as unusual.
“Did you connect all right with your friend Thea?” Burnham asks.
“Yes. Thanks. And I have something I need to tell you.” Shifting on the bed, I cross my bare legs pretzel style and rake my hair back from my forehead. “The only thing is, you have to promise not to tell anybody,” I say. “Not Sammi or your brother or your parents. Especially not your parents.”
“I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”
“You’re going to have trouble believing it.”
“Just spit it out.”
I launch into the complicated story of how my consciousness split in two, and half of me ended up in another body, Thea’s body. I leave out how suspicious and mean I was to her at first, until she convinced me who she was. “She was pregnant, too,” I say. “We have all the same memories up to the point when we were put in the Onar Clinic, but I swear she came out nicer than I am. I ended up helping her have her baby that same night I went to the dean’s tower at Forge, and we’re friends now. She’s back in Texas with her family,” I add. “She’s having a lot of headaches, and that’s a bad sign.”
Burnham makes a skeptical humming noise. “And you’re positive about all this,” he says.
I nod. “Absolutely. I warned you. You can ask her if you don’t believe me. She can tell you anything about our time at Forge before you left. You can ask her about the note you gave me. The one with the P.S. about the lady knight.”
I can hear him clicking around on his computer in the background.
“She was at the Chimera Centre, you say? Look at this stuff!” he says. “If this is all true, do you realize what it could mean for medical science?”
“You’re making me nervous,” I say. “Don’t get excited.”
“This makes so much more sense now,” he says. “No wonder Berg was taking such chances. Rosie, this is huge. If what you’re saying is true, you and Thea are huge!”
“We are not huge,” I say. “You are not telling anybody about this.”
“Are you kidding?” he says. “You have to let me tell my parents!”
My heart goes still.
“Burnham Fister,” I say. “On the soul of your grandfather who you helped kill, you are not going to say a word to your parents! You promised me!”
The clicking stops. I can practically hear his shock in the stillness.
“We’re done,” he says.
I wait for the sound of him hanging up, but it doesn’t come. Is he expecting me to apologize? I pull my knees up to my chest and squeeze myself together.
“I’m sorry,” I say stiffly. “I take that back. But you have to understand. You can’t tell anybody. If you do, I’ll deny every word, and I’ll never speak to you again.”
From down below in the kitchen comes the growing whistle of the teakettle, and then it fades.
“I’m coming out there,” Burnham says. “What’s your address?”
“No.”
“Rosie, I’m coming. We have to talk in person.”
“Are you keeping your promise?”
“I will. But we need to talk,” he says. “I’m not sure you realize. My parents are the good guys. They use their research to help people, Rosie, and what’s happened to you could change the world.”
I shake my head. “You’re sounding like Berg,” I say. “I realize exactly what’s at stake, but I’m not going to sacrifice myself for any cure. I just want to save my parents.”
“I get it, believe me. You’ve suffered,” Burnham says. “So have I. Can I just ask you one thing, though? Are you glad Thea’s alive?”
His words catch at my heart. I tilt my head back to look at the ceiling. Of course I’m glad Thea’s alive, but that doesn’t mean I want a thousand more versions of me running around like her. Not that she’s actually me anymore. But still. He’s oversimplifying.
“Why do you always mix me up?” I ask.
“I don’t. Just don’t do anything until we talk, okay? I can be there in a few hours.”
I shake my head. I am not going to let him slow me down. “No. Thanks, but no.”
“Rosie!”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Wait!” he says.
But I hang up.
Burnham seriously disturbs me. I just knew he’d want to tell his parents, but if he does, and they start an investigation, then what Chimera did to Thea with my dreams will be all over the news. Every brain researcher on the planet will want a sample of my dreams to experiment with. I’ll never be safe again.
I pull on my jeans, take up my map, and head downstairs to the kitchen, where Lavinia’s reading a crisp newspaper. She’s wearing a silvery-gray outfit today with a fancy brooch, and I wonder if she’s dressed up for my sake or if she’s always like this. NPR plays low from an old radio. Sunlight reflects on the faucet and sink, and a basket of scones and a pot of apricot jam are laid out on the table.
“Did you bake these?” I ask. “I didn’t even hear you.”
“Help yourself.”
I slide my drawing onto the table and take a scone. Cutting it in half, I try it with a dab of butter, which melts into the warm, white tastiness. I can hardly believe how good it is.
“Oh, my gosh,” I say, in raptures.
With a rustle, she sets her newspaper aside. “Glad you like it. Have another.”
I will, for sure.
“My grandmother used to read the newspaper,” I say.
“Is that right?”
I haven’t thought about my grandma in a long time. She let me sit on her lap and showed me the funnies. She would read each bubble of words aloud as I pointed to it. Sometimes I would go backward, and she’d read the words in backward order. I loved that. It was like my finger magically controlled her voice.
“Would this be your mother’s mother or your father’s?” Lavinia asks.
“My father’s,” I say. “She died when I was little. I never knew my other grandparents. They all died before I was born.” I look thoughtfully across at her. “Do you have other family besides your daughter and your granddaughter?” I ask.
Her gaze goes toward the windowsill, where the paperweight rests on the pile of cards. “No blood relatives. I have a son-in-law. He’s remarried. We haven’t spoken in years,” she says. “When you’re old like me, you know more dead people than alive ones.” She nods at my map. “So. Have you settled on your route?”
I swallow another bite of buttery scone. “I’ll wait until tonight, when it’s dark, and leave my car outside the fence that surrounds the OEZ,” I say. “It’ll take me a little while to hike down to the park, but as long as I avoid any lights, I shouldn’t get picked up by any surveillance cameras.” I lean over the table and turn my map in her direction, so she can see where I’m pointing. “I’m thinking I’ll go in here, by the main entrance, if I can.”
“There are probably lights there,” she says. “Ideally, I’d like you to put one of my cameras here, overlooking the turnstiles and this little road for emergency vehicles. The second one should go here, facing the Keep of Ages.”
“I’ll try.”
“Then what?” she says.
“I need a way down to the Negative One level. I know the dreamers are in a big room, and it seems most likely that would be underground,” I say. “I was thinking of going down this first ramp.”
She shakes her head. “That’s too open. No place for cover.” She taps a finger on my map farther along, up the Main Drag. “There’s a VIP portal here, by a gift shop. That’ll take you directly down to the greenroom on Negative One.”
I don’t have it marked on my map. “Where?”
“I can show you in the closet.” She shifts her finger. “Or here, by the Bottomless Pit. There’s another VIP portal here. That might be even better. It leads down to the grand assembly area.” She sits back. “Supposing you do find the vault, what then?”
I don’t want to tell her how nervous I am about this whole thing. There are so many unknowns. I’ll have to trust to my wits once I’m there.
“I’ll look for my family until I find them,” I say. “I’ll break them out if I have to, and then we’ll get back to the car and drive away. That’s the best that I’ve got.”
“You’ll come back here afterward,” she says, frowning. “Do you have any weapons?”
Not really. The only thing I have is a couple vials of sleep meds left over from my time in the dean’s tower with Berg, and the pills from Ian.
“For Pete’s sake,” Lavinia says at my hesitation. She reaches behind her, opens a drawer, and slams a sheathed dagger on the table.
Startled, I slide it out to find a sharp, ragged blade, as long as my hand.
“I don’t know how to use this,” I say, turning it in the light.
“When you’re scared enough, you’ll figure it out,” Lavinia says.
I take a surreptitious look at her thin arms in her sleeves, wondering how strong she’d be in a fight. Hard to know.
“Thanks,” I say. “Does this knife have a name?”
“Please. This isn’t an elf kingdom.”
I laugh, and she smiles archly back at me. I slip the knife back in its sheath.
After breakfast, she sets me up in the closet again. I practice moving around the lower level of Grisly Valley, in and out of the dressing rooms, the cafeteria, the tech station, and the parking lot. Lavinia has me practice taking the VIP portals and routes, first by following the green lines, and then without them. I make special note of the portals by the Main Drag gift shop and the Bottomless Pit.
When I finally take off the goggles and step out of the closet, the world swims around me for a sec until I get my land legs again. The grandfather clock ticks loudly. Outside, evening has come again and the shadows are long. Lavinia’s hunched at the table in the kitchen, tinkering with a small solar panel and a camera.
“When do you want to go?” she asks.
“Soon,” I say. “Now.”
* * *
An hour later, I park near the outermost fence of the OEZ and get my first look at the evacuated area. As I step out of my car, a dragonfly whizzes past me with a sudden whir. The air smells of dust and a musky, not unpleasant rot of vegetation.
I half expected the OEZ to be blackened and twisted, like a bomb went off, but instead, the landscape is lush with ashy-green coastal trees and scrub. Under the last light of a streaky sunset, the lines of decaying roads and buildings are softened by the encroaching shadows of the forest. Where the roof of a distant church has collapsed, its pink walls stand hollow to the sky.
The Grisly Valley Theme Park lies in a shallow valley, half a mile inside the OEZ. A dusky wasteland of parking lots, dotted with bushes, expands for acres around the main gates. Inside another layer of fences, the theme park itself is a village of shops, restaurants, and rides. It has far more trees than I expected from Lavinia’s map. A scattering of security lights cast thin, half-hearted pools of illumination against the twilight, as if they’re only on by habit. The swelling roller coaster of Bubbles’ Clown World stands rickety but intact against the fading light of the sky, and the Keep of Ages looms with eerie majesty. It gives me a kick of nervous excitement.
I pocket my keys, sling my backpack over one shoulder, and check my knife, which honestly feels more awkward on my belt than reassuring. My phone has one bar. In my jeans and a brown shirt, I hope I’m blending in. I start hiking along the fence where a faint trail dips in the grass, until I find a place where trespassers have wedged an opening between two tilting poles. Sucking in my gut, I squeeze through and pull my backpack after me. Then I descend an uneven, washed-out path toward the parking lots. The evening sky darkens with surprising speed, and a salting of stars appears over my shoulder. I have to crawl through a gap in another fence, and then I start across the cracked tarmac of the parking lots, winding my way past the bushes, old beer cans, and fallen, rusted streetlamps.
My sneakers make a flat, unnatural sound that’s eerily absorbed into the distance, and I instinctively try to tread softly. Once, I look back the way I came so I’ll be able to find my way out, and that’s when I fully realize how dark it has become. Already, the nearest fence is barely visible. I note an upside-down exit sign for a landmark, and then I keep walking until I reach the main entrance, where “Grisly Valley” arches over the gated turnstiles. Four flagless poles stretch upward, standing sentinel, and a floodlight glares across the plaza to illuminate the dearth of visitors. The only movement is a plastic bag flapping in the fence.
I don’t like it. The place is too quiet. As if in defiance of the cameras that are posted on poles and corners, the old ticket booth is tagged with graffiti. To the right, the narrow road for emergency vehicles is blocked by a heavy gate. This is where Lavinia wants one of her cameras.
Stopping in a shadow beside a statue of the Grim Reaper, I take off my backpack and pull out her first camera. I climb up the pedestal of the statue, and I affix Lavinia’s camera and solar panel to a flat place near the hem of the reaper’s robe. I aim it toward the turnstiles and the road, as she requested, and turn it on.
Then I leave the floodlit area, heading around the tall iron fence, looking for a way into the park. In the darkness, I almost miss the place where a bar has been pried out, but then I manage to wriggle through the narrow gap, and I’m in the park proper. Another thrill runs up my nerves.
I’ve reached a narrow, curving lane with bathrooms to my right. As I tiptoe forward and peer around the first corner, I enter Camp High, the horror land based on summer camp and high school. The maze called The Showers is right in front of me. Based on the maps I studied, the giant Arts & Crafts slide should be ahead to my right, and the Main Drag should be to my left, only I can’t see either. Ruin and time have shifted things.
To avoid the lights, I have to take an indirect path, and I get badly lost once before I find the Main Drag. A few widely spaced, pragmatic security lights buzz faintly overhead and cast shadows from the quaint, original streetlamps that aren’t on. Across from me, a white statue of a unicorn has a plastic six-pack ring on its horn. The cobblestoned pavement is uneven underfoot, with missing and cockeyed stones. And yet, when I look up the length of the Main Drag toward the Keep of Ages, I can feel a certain aura of excitement, even now.
Grisly isn’t just a ruin. It’s has the feel of a legendary ghost town, an ironic tragedy. It’s a horror park that was closed by real catastrophe, almost as if it tempted fate, and I’m here all alone. I keep alert, walking slowly and staying to the shadows.
Since I promised to set up Lavinia’s second camera near the Keep of Ages before I go underground to search for the vault, I head west up the Main Drag, toward the center of the park. I pass a café, a souvenir shop, and a tattoo parlor, all empty. The faded storefronts seem too small for a real main street, skewing my sense of proportion. An armadillo squats in an empty flower tub, and a hubcap lies in the gutter. A kiosk has been burned to a blackened shell.
From somewhere to my right, a tinny snatch of carnival music drifts through the night. My pulse takes off. I step back into a doorway and slip my knife out of its sheath, but though I watch and wait, no one comes. A minute later, the music goes off, and all I can hear is my heart thudding.
Someone’s watching me. I can feel it.
I take a deep breath and start cautiously forward again. Three mannequins are draped in American flags and posed on a balcony as if waving to a passing parade. At the next corner, a dim alley is piled with baby strollers. I can tell some of the trespassers before me have been more interested in pranks than vandalism, but that only adds to the bizarreness of the place.
A light comes on in the store beside me, and I jump back. Gilt lettering on the window announces TOYS. I peek in. The toys are long gone. Only a rack remains, and an old price gun. I watch for movement, but no one’s there, and a minute later, the light goes off again.
“This is weird,” I whisper.
First the music and now the toy store lights make me think someone is following my progress through the park, but who? Why don’t they come out and talk to me? They can’t be ghosts.
I peer around and spot more camera lenses everywhere, large ones on poles and button cameras on doorframes and trim, exactly like at Forge. Just because Lavinia doesn’t have access to the feeds anymore doesn’t mean all the cameras are dead. Some of them could still be serving a security system.
But still no one comes. The Main Drag is as dim and motionless as before.
I don’t understand this place, but I’m not going to let a little spookiness stop me from looking for my parents. I still have to put up Lavinia’s other camera before I head underground. I note the VIP portal she mentioned, the one between a cookie shop and a gift shop, as I pass. Then, at the end of the Main Drag, I reach Scylla Square, the center hub of the park, where the Keep of Ages rises out of its base of thorny shadows.
The keep towers above me, twice as large as I expected, and blacker than the sky. Instinctively, I shiver. A dark, empty moat surrounds the massive foundation, and double bridges with rising stairs cross over the void to a big, arched door. One caged light bulb glows above the arched doorway like a modern afterthought, but otherwise, with a shimmer of moonlight on its pointed roof, the keep looks like it was born straight out of a nightmare.
Clinging to one of the topmost spires, a large black dragon peers over its shoulder with vivid red eyes. It’s no longer sleek and green as it was in Lavinia’s 3-D map. Instead, this dragon has weathered into a dark, motley beast with ragged scales and bony claws. I’m trying to understand how its eyes can glow so brightly, if they’re lit or coated with reflective red paint, when the dragon shifts its head.
My heart stops. I must be wrong. I peer upward, disbelieving. Slowly, with a creak, the dragon turns its heavy head as if to survey the park below, and then it blinks. Nothing more. It doesn’t hiss fire or open its wings, but it has the slight, hovering alertness of a beast that breathes, and it seems all the more lifelike and ominous because of its patience.
I’ve never seen special effects like this—if Lavinia hadn’t mentioned how remarkable the technology controlling the dragon originally was, I might have worried that I was hallucinating. As it is, I’m completely captivated.
Cautiously, keeping near to the buildings at my back, I circle Scylla Square and get closer to the moat and the bridge on the left. A small statue of a snaky, six-headed monster presides over a set of defunct water fountains, and I choose the monster’s platform for Lavinia’s second camera. I fit my knife back in its sheath, and then it takes me a second to secure the camera. I aim it across Scylla Square, toward the stairs of the keep, as she requested. When I try to call Lavinia to tell her it’s ready, I can’t get a signal, and now I know I’m on my own.
When I look back up at the dragon, its head has turned in my direction. It blinks again. I press back into a shadow, but its gaze never wavers. This is crazy, I think. It’s not real. But I can’t shake the feeling that the dragon’s eyes are staring right at me. On the double bridge of stairs that leads across the moat, dim blue lights turn on below the banisters. They shine out at knee height and catch in specks of white in the stone steps, giving them an eerie, black-light sort of glow. They almost seem like an invitation.
Above, a purple spotlight flicks on, beaming onto the keep’s roof, and the dragon lifts its shoulders in a great double-hunch, as if it’s stretching, or preparing for flight.
I could swear a bizarre show has started, just for me. I hear an amplified cricket noise. Then another. The chirping continues with a layer of static from a recording. Next, a gurgling, rusty sound comes from the bottom of the moat, and then fog drifts up, filling the moat below the bridges.
Then, from above, a loud, drawn-out creaking noise heralds the opening of a trapdoor that extends outward from the center roof of the keep. It lowers on two chains until it juts forward like a diving platform or the plank of a pirate ship.
Now the dragon fully awakens. It rolls its shoulders so its wings partially unfurl. It coils an arm more securely around the spire and leans its head forward toward the plank, moving more naturally than any mechanical puppet ever could.
Half a dozen purple and white spotlights are now trained on the plank, and a drumroll signals an event. As the figure of a small girl glides out on the plank, my heart catches in my throat. She’s pale and motionless, standing with her eyes closed and her arms at her sides. Her gray gown flutters slightly in the breeze, and her blond hair shifts lightly around her shoulders. Otherwise she doesn’t move. She shines with ethereality, and the staging would be beautiful except for one ghastly truth: she’s my sister.
She’s Dubbs. Up there.
Ready to fall.
And all of a sudden, I can’t think of effects anymore. My sister is far too real.
“No!” I whisper, staggering forward. I’m afraid to call out, afraid any noise will disturb her balance.
She’s forty or fifty feet up, and a fall into the foggy moat would kill her. The dragon uncoils slightly to inspect Dubbs. It cocks its head and slowly extends its neck forward. If she turns to look at it, she’ll be only a couple of yards away from its big head. But she doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t seem to move at all, as if she’s suspended in a trance.
Go back, Dubbs! I think. Get down on your hands and knees and crawl back inside.
Another breeze shifts her gown, and she sways with it. I can’t stand it.
“Dubbs!” I shout. I bolt toward the nearest bridge of blue stairs. “Dubbs! Hang on! I’m coming!”
The girl above turns her head slightly in my direction and her eyes fly open. They’re wide and frantic, and she lets out a scream. She crouches down to the plank and grips it with both hands. The dragon backs up slightly and flares its wings wide. Dubbs now turns toward the dragon and screams again with wild terror.
I’m frozen on the stairs, watching in agony. Much as I want to run inside the keep and up to the roof to save her, she could slip any second, and I can’t go farther up without losing sight of her. If only I could distract the dragon.
“Hold on! Just hold on!” I yell to Dubbs. Then I wave my arms. “Dragon! Over here!” I yell. “Dragon!”
But the dragon doesn’t see me or doesn’t care. It rises up on its back legs and flaps its heavy wings. Dubbs hugs the plank with all her might. Her gown ripples again, and she looks impossibly small and helpless. The dragon opens its mouth and lets out an earsplitting cry, and Dubbs catches her breath and screams once more.
“Dragon!” I yell furiously. “I’m over here!”
It leans its head back and lets out another roar toward the sky. A blast of fire comes out of its mouth, scorching the air above the keep. Wind swirls savagely around Dubbs, who struggles to keep her grip, and then, with a final scream, she’s blown off her perch. She topples into the dark night air and pinwheels down toward the moat.
In shock and horror, I run against the banister, and then, just as Dubbs is about to hit the ground, the dragon swoops down and catches her in its claws, soaring with her back up into the sky.
I can’t breathe. For another moment, Dubbs and the dragon are visible in the night sky above the keep. The dragon makes an awkward, dipping circle, as if adjusting to the weight in its claws. Then it flies out of the spotlights, disappearing into the night. The spotlights go off. The lights on the steps, too. The entire area around the keep is plunged into darkness. Even the sole, caged light bulb that hangs above the heavy wooden door is out.
They’re gone.
They were real. They couldn’t be real. My mind’s racing with confusion.
“Dubbs!” I cry.
Where is she? My helplessness tortures me. I search the night sky but I can’t see anything in the wan moonlight. Then, silently, a single, finely focused spotlight turns on and shines down into the moat, exactly at the spot where Dubbs would have landed when she fell. I lean over the railing, peering closely as the fog shifts. A hole has opened in the bottom of the moat. An opening. A drain, possibly.
Gripping the railing, I swing myself over and wade through the fog to the middle of the moat. A gurgling comes from a dark circle below the spotlit fog. I touch forward with my toe and feel the edge of a void.
What on earth is happening? A dragon that I believed was a special effect tormented my sister and flew away with her. Could Dubbs have been a special effect, too? She looked so real! And now a trapdoor has opened in an empty moat. My mind is still racing, surging with adrenaline and horror, and I can barely make sense out of anything.
But here’s what I do know: ever since I stepped into Grisly, I’ve had the feeling that someone’s been watching me. If this stunt with the dragon was a spectacle just for me, then whoever concocted it might just relish traumatizing me, but also they might be trying to tell me where to go. Whoever it is must know something about Dubbs.
Grimly, I realize what I have to do. I take a deep breath and step forward.