Showdown Read online

  “Hello?” the boy said again. “Who are you?”

  “Johnny.”

  “Have you seen Paul?”

  “No.”

  The boy looked back the way he’d come. “One of the worms died.”

  Johnny knew he was looking at one of the students who’d entered the lower tunnels. The worm salve had done this to him.

  “Have you seen Samuel?” Johnny asked.

  “No. I think he’s with Billy. Do you know where Paul is?”

  “I haven’t seen him.” The boy wasn’t lucid. “How do I find Billy?”

  “He’s in the first tunnel. The one on the right.”

  Then the boy walked by him, headed off to find Paul.

  The boy hadn’t tried to kill him. That was promising. Johnny ran for the door and stepped into the darkness beyond.

  Now what? He couldn’t go down without light. He was about to turn back to search for a light of some kind, when it struck him that the darkness seemed to thin farther down. Maybe just because his eyes were adjusting to the dark.

  He put a hand on the rough wall and descended several steps. Then several more. The stairway curved to his left. And, yes, a yellow light filtered up from below.

  Johnny went down on his tiptoes. The light came from a torch in a small room outside a large black door.

  The door to hell.

  He stared at the door and realized that he was making a terrible mistake. Running from Claude on familiar territory was one thing. Knocking down the gates of hell to take on Black was another. He glanced back at the stairs.

  If it was true—if Samuel was with Billy—then as far as Johnny knew, he might be the only thing standing between Billy and Paradise. He wasn’t at all confident that anything he wrote in a book would happen. He wasn’t even sure he could find a book. Or survive Billy. Or survive Samuel, if he’d been lured down.

  Johnny’s hands trembled, but he forced them to grip the torch, pull it free, and push on the black door. It swung open.

  He stepped into an inner room that smelled like a sewer. The walls glistened with a thin coating of the worm gel. The room branched into several tunnels. Johnny veered into the one on his far right.

  He stared down the long dark passage. Thick pipes ran along . . .

  One of the pipes began to move. He stood rooted in place for a long minute, breathing hard. Worms!

  But he couldn’t go back. Not now.

  “Samuel!”

  His voice echoed down the hall.

  “Samuel! It’s Johnny.”

  There was water dripping somewhere. His head felt odd—dizzy. A bit numbed.

  “Billy!”

  No one responded. He took a few steps and stopped again. The slugs throbbed in his torchlight. What was he thinking? He should find Samuel’s father first.

  “Come on back,” a faint voice called.

  Billy? It didn’t sound like Samuel.

  Johnny hesitated, then switched the torch to his left hand, gave the worm a wide berth, and walked down the hall.

  He saw light and headed for it, jogging now.

  On the right, a gate dawned. Past the gate, a room with a desk and some bookcases. In the room a boy with red hair sat at the desk. Next to the boy sat a girl. Both had pens in their hands. Both were covered with sores and bleeding skin.

  Both stared at him absently.

  “Well?” the boy asked. No threats. Not yet.

  Johnny stepped into the room, barely breathing even though his lungs strained.

  “You’re Billy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Just that. Just yeah. Now what?

  “Is . . . is Samuel here?”

  “No.”

  “You’re destroying Paradise,” Johnny said. “Do you know that?”

  The girl next to him answered. “Take a hike, Johnny.”

  They were just kids—Samuel had told him that—but somehow he’d half-expected monsters. They looked more lost than mean.

  “Who are you?” he asked the girl.

  “That’s Darcy,” Billy said. “And like she said, take a hike.”

  The books they were writing in looked old, fragile. He could see the outline of Billy’s writing. Hard to believe it had done so much damage. But he knew a few things about this writing. That it could be resisted, for example. He’d done it a hundred times in the last few days. And whatever smell was trying to make his head spin down here could probably be resisted as well. Johnny set his jaw.

  Billy laid his pen down. A grin tugged at his lips. “So tell me, Johnny? How does it feel to be the lone holdout? We’ll get you soon enough. You can’t hold out forever. Samuel can only do so much. He’s put all his eggs into one little fool, and if I’m not mistaken, the little fool has just wandered into the forbidden dungeons. Have you tried our slime yet? Tastes pretty good.”

  “It’s not too late to stop,” Johnny said. “You just killed someone. Do you know what they do to murderers?”

  “Steve killed him,” Billy said.“Not me.And obviously you’re a little short on the uptake. Thomas was no more a real person than Black is.”

  Black?

  “What do you mean, Black? He’s a teacher from the monastery.”

  “Sure he is. The one up here is anyway. The monk told me to write a character named Marsuvees Black who would have a little fun with Paradise, so I did. I wrote him just like the real Marsuvees Black. But the real Marsuvees Black is still here. I saw him yesterday. He never left the mountain.”

  “You’re saying that the man I saw walk into town is just like Thomas?”

  “Well, not just like Thomas. Personally I think he’s way more interesting.”

  “Thomas was a bore,” Darcy said.

  “You see?” Billy said. “I was the first one to write a character into Paradise, and unless I’m mistaken, he’s kicked some major Thomas butt.”

  “Forgive me, boys, but this is boring me to tears,” Darcy said. “Johnny, please, please, please take a hike. You can talk till you’re blue in the face. While you’re at it, give us a hug or something. Show a little love. Samuel tried that. It won’t work. We’re busy, and you rudely interrupted. Now, take a hike.”

  Their minds were scrambled. Duped. Doped. No different from the people in Paradise. Deceived to the core.

  He looked at the shelves packed with black leather-bound books. An idea dropped into his mind.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said, edging up to the desk. They looked up at him in a stupor. Several pens lay beside Darcy.

  “If I joined you now, would you let me share this office with you?”

  “Who said anything about joining us?” Darcy said.

  “I just did. What would I have to do?”

  “Eat the worm gel,” Billy said. “But nobody except me and Darcy write in here.”

  “When this story of Paradise is over, what will you do?” he said, putting his torch in the receptacle by the boar head.

  “Over?” They clearly hadn’t thought that far.

  “Will you go after another town? Where will it end?” Johnny moved closer to the desk. If he reached out his hand, he could touch it.

  “Who says it ever ends?”

  “Well, maybe I just have a point that you should listen to,” Johnny said. He pointed at the gate.“When you see that gate, what does it make you think of?”

  They both turned and looked.

  Johnny picked up one of the pens, reached over to Darcy’s book, and wrote as fast as he could, speaking to cover the scratch of the pen on paper.

  “If you look hard enough, you can see someone’s face, can’t you?”

  Johnny was given great powers to destroy Billy . . .

  He scratched out Billy.

  . . . anyone who stood in the way of truth.

  “What are you doing?” Darcy shrieked, jumping up. She slapped his hand. The pen drew a long scratch on the page and flew across the room.

  “He tricked us! He wrote in my book!”

  Billy w
as on his feet, eyes round. “What did he write?”

  She read aloud. “Johnny was given great powers to destroy anyone who stood in the way of truth. He wrote your name but scratched it out.”

  Johnny clenched his eyes and tried to think things that might bring out a great power. But his mind was blank.

  “Give me that!” Billy said. He grabbed a pen and scrawled words below what Johnny had written.

  “There. Billy was given great powers like Johnny, only to destroy whoever he wants.”

  Darcy pulled the book away and spoke as she wrote. “And so was Darcy. ”

  She slammed the pen down. “You thought we were so stupid? Go ahead, destroy us with your great power.”

  But Johnny had no great power.

  “The books don’t work like that, you idiot,” Billy said, face flushed. “I’ll give you exactly one minute to get out of here, or I’m going to make every last one of the students switch to write one character and one character only. Three guesses who that might be.”

  “You can’t turn me that—”

  “Not you. Sally.”

  “My . . . my mom?”

  Billy nodded, grinning now. “She’ll join the cop before nightfall, I can promise you that. The clock’s ticking, boy. Forty-five seconds.”

  “You can’t do that!” Johnny felt smothered. “She has nothing to do with this!”

  “She has everything to do with this. Forty.”

  “I’d start running,” Darcy said. “Save Mama.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  Johnny grabbed his torch and bolted. “Leave her out of this. Promise me—”

  “Thirty. It’s a long climb up those stairs, boy.”

  JOHNNY RAN. Down the tunnel, through the black door. He took the stairs two at a time, challenged by a spinning head. Into the hall. He made it, he was sure he’d made it.

  But knowing Billy . . . How would the boy know he’d made it?

  “Johnny?”

  Johnny spun. Samuel stood by the entrance to the atrium, staring at him.

  Johnny hurried away from the door, past Samuel, into the light. He was trembling, a jumbled ball of confusion.

  “You’ve . . . you’ve been down there!”Samuel said.“You have to wash that smell before—”

  “Marsuvees Black is Billy’s character,” Johnny said.

  Samuel blinked. “Black? He’s not the real one?”

  “As real or not real as Thomas.”

  “You’re sure? How—”

  “I was down there, Samuel.” Johnny wasn’t sure why, but he was yelling. Not that he didn’t like Samuel. On the contrary, he was desperate for Samuel to save them.

  “I saw Billy. He told me that the teacher you know is the one who convinced Billy to write Black into Paradise.”

  “Then Marsuvees is still in the dungeons! The real one. And it means that Billy knows he can bring characters to life. He must have known about Thomas!”

  “And what’s to keep Billy from writing a hundred Blacks into Paradise?”

  Samuel recovered from his shock and glanced around the atrium. For a moment Johnny thought the boy might burst into tears.

  Samuel ran to Johnny and threw his arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Johnny! I was with my father after we found out what happened to Thomas. Then I knew you were coming, but I couldn’t make sense of . . . The lower levels must have cut me off. And you’re right, Paradise is in terrible trouble. It’s hopeless!”

  Johnny felt awkward standing there with Samuel’s arms around him. Samuel’s surreal blend of innocence and intelligence unnerved him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Samuel pulled back. He was trying to be brave, but he couldn’t hide a frantic light in his eyes.

  “I don’t know. I think my father is terrified. It’s not only the dungeons, it’s the town. This was never supposed to happen!”

  “You don’t have any ideas?”

  “It’s falling apart. It’s all unraveling. I’m the only one left; the rest of the students are below. The overseers . . .” Samuel lowered his head into his hands.

  “Have you thought about using the books to give yourself power?”

  “I have the books. What more power do I need? It’s hopeless!”

  “No, I mean give yourself the power to deal with Black. You’re the person who believes. You could move mountains, couldn’t you?”

  Samuel looked at him.

  “Then you could go down yourself,” Johnny said. “With that power.”

  “Down where?”

  “To Paradise.”

  SAMUEL RAN all the way to the top floor. He’d washed Johnny off at the well and then sent him back to Paradise to scope things out in hiding. His father was meeting with desperate teachers. He would join them, but not until he was sure.

  Ever since Thomas’s death, which had awakened him at four in the morning, he’d racked his brain to understand his failure and the remaining alternatives. He’d pieced most of it together, but Johnny had given him the key.

  Samuel slipped into his father’s study and crossed to the desk. Behind it stood a bookshelf. On the top shelf, David had placed the original Book of History that Christopher and Samuel had written in.

  He stood on his father’s chair and pulled the black volume down. Set it on the desk. Opened the cover. His father kept a sheaf of loose-leaf paper in the front. It was a journal of sorts, documenting his experience with the book.

  He turned to the book’s first page. An entry about Thomas Hunter stared up at him. Next page.

  Christopher’s childish handwriting. Several entries. One about a desk and one about a cat and a dozen others that looked like experimental entries testing the book’s limitations.

  Next page. The entry about the books going into hiding.

  Another page. Here. Two entries in his own, though much younger, handwriting.

  The first entry limited the books to the residents of the monastery and clarified the way the books must lead to love. . . . which is written by any person not currently residing in the monastery at this time, and/or which does not lead to the discovery of love will be powerless. This rule is irrevocable.

  The second entry. He read it quickly.

  Samuel settled into his father’s chair. He reread the entry. Again. And he knew he’d found the key.

  Samuel returned the volume to its place on the upper shelf. He set the chair as he’d found it and left the office.

  He could hear Raul’s voice at the conference-room door when he laid his hand on the doorknob. He paused and listened, calming his nerves.

  “You have to call the authorities, David. The project has failed! Samuel could write ten Thomases into Paradise without a guarantee that Black wouldn’t string up every single one of them. It’s over!”

  “We’re beyond the authorities,” his father said.“How do you suppose they’ll deal with Marsuvees Black? He’s beyond the reach of ordinary mortals!”

  “Then what?”

  “We have to trust the books.”

  “There’s no one left to write in the books! The rest of the children have fallen.”

  “There is Samuel to write in the books!” his father’s voice boomed. They were desperate—all of them. Even his father. Especially his father.

  Samuel pushed the door open and stepped into the room. Seven of the overseers were gathered around his father. All turned to look at him when the door opened.

  He shut the door and faced them.“Marsuvees Black is in the dungeons,” he said.

  “He’s left Paradise?” Andrew asked.

  “He never left the monastery. At least not for long. The one in Paradise is Billy’s creation, inspired by the real Marsuvees Black.”

  Raul struck the table with his fist. “I knew it! Billy would never have gone below without being lured down by that monster!”

  “You’re sure about this, Samuel?” his father asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then we have to stop hi
m!” Raul said. “That could be the key!”

  “It’s the students who are writing, not Marsuvees,” David said. “I’m not sure stopping him a week ago would have helped. Billy made his own choice. He’s the one who holds the power.”

  Raul stood and paced behind his chair. “What was the man thinking? What does he stand to gain by doing this?”

  “That should be obvious,”Andrew answered.“He found David’s journal and learned about the history books’ power. God only knows how long he walked these halls with that knowledge before deciding to use the books. But to do so he needed the children. I argued six months ago that he should be replaced. As I recall, Raul, you stood with David in suggesting that the students were old enough to consider a few alternative ways of thinking.”

  “Marsuvees never suggested open rebellion!” Raul said. “The children had to start drawing lines for themselves—better here than out there!” He threw his hand toward the window.

  “Enough,” David said. “This gets us nowhere. We’ll deal with Marsuvees later. The students are our concern now. And Paradise.”

  “But knowing that Marsuvees has been complicit may help us to determine their objective,” Raul said. “Where does Billy hope to take this story of his?”

  Andrew shook his head slowly. “Can you imagine the power someone like Marsuvees Black would have if he could control the books?”

  “You can’t control the books,” Raul said. “It’s the children you have to control. Where’s Billy taking this story?”

  “I don’t think Billy knows,” Samuel said, moving to his father’s end of the table. “Marsuvees may, but Billy and the others are writing for the thrill of it. If you had any idea how it feels . . .”He looked at them, wondering if they could understand. “The power to do what you want is nearly irresistible,” he said. “Pure free will, with the power to back it up. It’s like a drug.”

  Several of them nodded.

  “Then you’re saying that Billy writes just because he can,” Andrew said. “Literally. He has no ambition except to write until the desire for it begins to burn him. If that’s the case, his passions will be insatiable. He’ll go from destroying things to killing things. People. And when he’s done with Paradise, he’ll move on. To what town? Or what country? We must stop him!”