The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 30: Torches and Pitchforks

Emery's headache got a little better after they left her dream, but not much.

Finding Klaus's window was slightly more difficult than finding her own. They had no way of pulling it closer to themselves, though they knew it had to be close, since he was still on Fenhallow's campus. But so were the dream windows of everyone else on campus, which meant they went stumbling through several run-of-the-mill dreams—falling, being chased, losing teeth—before finally getting spit out onto cracked earth at the foot of a writhing and dark window flanked by trees.

Of the three of them, Jacqueline was the only one with any composure left; not a hair sat out of place on her head, and when Emery said, "Feels like it's been hours," Jacqueline replied with, "It's been forty minutes, tops."

Emery found herself leaning heavily on Wes—and him leaning back on her—as they trudged through Klaus's window.

Once again, they found themselves standing in the middle of a cobblestone road in the woods, and fog crept in tendrils around the lampposts that lined the road to the village nestled in the trees. It was nighttime yet again, the moon huge and sickly green against the black sky, and silhouetted against it were the turrets of the scientist's castle.

"Is this supposed to be a fairytale or something?" Jacqueline asked.

"Yes," Emery said. "The bloody stabby torture kind."

She and Wes set off toward the village with Jacqueline trailing slightly behind, examining their surroundings. Klaus's dream was as sharp and vivid as it had been before, but there was something more to it now, something off. Though sharp and vivid, it also had a wavering to it, a subtle flex to the trees and the road that made Emery feel off-balance if she concentrated on it too hard.

"It's unstable now," Wes said, his black eyes scanning the spaces between the trees. The insects that had chirped in the night the last time they had come here were quiet, as if they'd bedded down for the winter. They reached the first of the small cottages outside the village. Before, they'd been warm with firelight, their occupants settling down for the night. Now their doors stood open, the interiors cold and empty, footsteps pressed in the mud through the yards and footprints littering the path to the village.

"It's a different dream," Emery said. "It changed." She looked at Wes. "And it's stronger. Do you think...he can't be falling asleep?"

Wes started walking faster.

The lights in the village were consolidated in the center, near the large stone well, previously watched over only by Daniel, the scythe-wielding Texan. The lights were torches, held aloft by a literal mob of villagers. They gathered around the stone well, eerily silent until Emery, Wes, and Jacqueline rounded the corner. Like a paused movie set to play, their fists lifted into the air and they yelled in uproar.

"No more!" cried one man close to the edge, with two small boys hugging his legs.

"Death to the Plaguebringer!" yelled a woman holding an actual pitchfork.

The crowd roared with them.

Standing on the lip of the well, Daniel raised his scythe. Sick moonlight gleamed off its edge and off the smooth curve of his hair.  Like everything else here, there was something wrong about him, something off. As Emery drew closer to the edge of the crowd and closer to the well, she saw what it was.

Daniel's skin had turned ashen white and an oily green substance oozed from his eyes like tears, glowing. The veins in his neck were ink black. When he opened his cracked lips, his teeth were stained with the same green oil.

"Enough!" He thrust the head of the scythe into the air. "Enough! We are not slaves to the monster in his castle! We have had enough, and tonight we end him!"