Chapter 38

“They’re quilted, like Charmin.”

Marv’s fortress wasn’t at all what Spencer was expecting to see through the haze. It wasn’t a castle with jagged battlements and rising turrets. There was no grand gate or formidable drawbridge. Instead, the fortress looked more like . . .

“Is that Welcher Elementary School?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah,” Marv muttered. “Well, parts of it, anyway.”

“You can build anything you want, and you chose to make Welcher?” Dez said. “I hate that place.”

“We can only build what we know,” Marv said. “Places we’ve actually been. Welcher was fresh on my mind when I got sucked into the Vortex, so I used the school as a basic pattern. There’s bits of other places I’ve worked, too.”

“So why are we just standing here?” Dez asked. “Why don’t we go inside?”

“This is the first time I’ve left the fortress in months,” Marv said. “Been gone at least fifteen minutes. Anything could’ve happened. I got to make sure it’s still safe before I take you kids in there. Last thing we want is to open the door and let in a bunch of One-Plys.”

“What’s a One-Ply?” Spencer asked.

“It’s the cheap toilet paper,” answered Marv. “Just got one thin sheet with no perforations. Most of the mummies are One-Plys. They’re dumb as dirt, but they put up a good fight.”

Spencer remembered the mummy leader. It seemed to have been made of different tissue. “Are there other kinds?”

“Two-Plys,” said Marv. “They’re quilted, like Charmin. Two-Plys can talk, but they’d just as soon rip your skin off as ask about the weather.”

“What is the weather like around here?” Daisy asked.

“You’re seeing it.” Marv gestured up to the sky. “Always the same. Never gets dark, never gets light. Dust. So much dust.”

Marv’s folded airplane suddenly returned. It looped around the janitor’s head and perched on his broad shoulder like an obedient bird.

“What’s going on over there?” he asked. “Any TPs?”

The tip of the paper airplane shook back and forth in a motion that could only be interpreted as a negative head shake.

“Good,” Marv said. “Looks clear, then?”

This time the airplane nodded its tip up and down. Marv reached his big hand up and plucked the folded paper from his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. Then, soundlessly, the little paper plane dissolved to dust between his fingers.

“What happened to it?” Daisy asked.

“I didn’t need it anymore,” Marv said.

“But you didn’t have to kill it!” she said. “Wasn’t it helping you?”

“I didn’t kill it,” Marv said. “It was never alive. I unimagined it.”

“Why?”

“Everything that I’ve imagined out of the dust takes effort to keep around,” Marv explained. “If I’m not using it, I might as well unimagine it.”

“I wish I could unimagine Spencer sometimes,” said Dez.

“Come on,” Marv said. He moved forward, his large feet trudging through the soft dust.

They reached the front door of the fortress in no time. It was a fairly accurate re-creation of Welcher Elementary’s entrance, but something was off.

“Wait a minute,” Marv said. “This isn’t the right paint.”

“Who cares about the paint on the door?” Dez said. “Just open it.” He reached out and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.

“Paint sealed over the door,” Marv said.

“Can’t you just unimagine it?” Spencer asked.

“You can only do that to things that you’ve imagined,” explained Marv. “This paint job isn’t mine.”

“Then who did it?” Daisy asked. “The Instigators?”

“This wasn’t the Instigators,” Marv muttered. “This was somebody we know.”

“Garth Hadley.” Spencer said the name under his breath like a curse.

Marv nodded slowly. “Locked me out of my own fortress.”

“What about the walls?” Spencer asked. “You made those, right? So you can unimagine them?”

Marv was already examining the school walls. “Looks like he used the same imaginative paint over the whole structure,” said the janitor. “I can’t get past it to unimagine the wall underneath.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Spencer said, drawing a bottle of blue Windex from his janitorial belt. “This will turn the wall to glass so we can break through.”

He leveled the spray nozzle at the wall, but Marv reached out, his thick hand holding Spencer back. “When the only thing between you and death is a little wall, you make sure nobody breaks in.”

“What do you mean?” Spencer lowered the spray bottle.

“I built defenses into the walls to stop the TPs from pounding them down. If you hit that wall, it’ll be the last thing you do.”

“Try it anyway,” Dez said. “See what happens.”

Spencer wasn’t about to be goaded into making a foolish mistake. He holstered the Windex as Marv explained the consequences.

“I designed the wall to backfire,” said the big janitor. “Hit it, and it hits you back. Knocks the dust right out of those TPs.” He scratched his beard. “These walls can’t be broken down.”

“So how do we get in?” Spencer asked.

“Think I’d build a fortress without a hidden door?” Marv flashed a cunning grin. “Follow me.”

The janitor set off through the dust, moving quickly along the outside of the mock Welcher Elementary. Spencer thought it was strange as they passed the window that would lead to Mrs. Natcher’s classroom. Garth had painted over the glass, so he couldn’t see inside, but he was curious to see what else Marv had imagined up.

They quickly arrived at a section of the school that Spencer had never seen before. It definitely wasn’t Welcher, and Spencer assumed that Marv had patterned this piece after another school where he used to work.

“Should be right here,” Marv muttered. He waved his hand, and the movement swept aside a layer of dust to expose something that had been buried.

It was a bowling lane.

The long lane stood alone in its dusty surroundings, angled at a gentle slope toward the school. Ten pins were set up against the school’s brick wall, forming their usual triangular pattern.

“Good,” Marv said. “It’s still here.” He held out his hand, and the dust began to swirl. In a flash, it had formed into a heavy red bowling ball, Marv’s thick fingers wedged into the holes.

“Ever bowled a turkey?” Marv asked, lifting the ball to eye level.

“No,” Daisy said. “But we always eat one for Thanksgiving.”

“You eat bowling balls for Thanksgiving?” Dez asked.

“I don’t think Marv’s talking about the bird,” Spencer said.

“We call it a turkey when you bowl three strikes in a row,” the janitor explained.

“I always thought it was three strikes and you’re out,” said Daisy.

“That’s baseball,” Spencer said. “You want to get strikes in bowling. It means you knock all the pins over.”

“I don’t see how bowling three strikes is going to get us inside your dumb fortress,” Dez said to Marv.

“Besides cleaning up messes,” Marv said, “I’m not too good at many things. Had to find something that I could do better than Garth.” He hefted the eighteen-pound ball. “Bowling.”

“So you have to bowl three strikes, and the secret door will open?” Spencer said.

Marv nodded his shaggy head. “Yep.” He stepped forward, dropped his back foot, swung his arm in a smooth arc, and released the heavy red ball. It rolled gracefully down the lane, curving just the right amount to avoid the gutters and line up with the center pin.

The ball struck the first pin, which tipped, colliding with another and starting a chain reaction. Each pin clattered to the ground, turning to dust as the bowling ball tore through them. It was a perfect strike, and all ten pins were down in a heartbeat.

Marv nodded in satisfaction and reached into thin air, where he was already conjuring another bowling ball from the creative dust. At the end of the lane, ten new pins were automatically forming.

“Strikes are easy,” Dez said. “Give me that ball.” He reached for Marv’s red ball, but the janitor swatted his hand back.

“This isn’t a game, kid,” Marv said. “Two more strikes and we’re inside. But it only takes one pin left standing to bring down the whole fortress.”

“What?” Daisy said. “If you mess up, then the whole place goes poof?”

Marv nodded. “Self-destructs. If I can’t get back inside, then Garth shouldn’t be able to use my walls for his own purposes.”

“You better not mess up,” Dez muttered.

“I won’t,” Marv said. He lifted the bowling ball to eye level again, sighting down the lane in preparation for his second strike.

But an enemy strike came first.