“Why?” he said. “You’re beautiful just as you are.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
They had fallen into a nightmare, eyes open and heartbeats stopped because this couldn’t be happening. Not in front of everyone. But their monsters had no rules anymore; they didn’t stay in the forest, they didn’t linger in the dark, they didn’t hunt only Thomas.
It didn’t make sense. Andrew had destroyed the rest of Thomas’s art—hadn’t he?
Now this monster clawed from the walls with a sultry grin as if it knew what the Antler King had tried and now promised,I can do better.
Screams rippled down the hall, teens rising from their seats and conversations splintering. No one understood what they saw. Reality smudged and logic crumbled.
Color drained from Thomas’s face, and he shoved Andrew behind him as he reached for the hatchet he didn’t have. But a strange, numb calm flooded Andrew’s chest. He should be freaking out, but he barely felt there at all.
“It’s a dream ravager.” He sounded far away.
“I didn’t draw that,” Thomas said, hoarse.
But it had to exist in some sketchbook they hadn’t destroyed yet. This was why they couldn’t win—because Thomas had drawn fierce and free for years, his drawingspacked with his pain and anger and cathartic vengeance. It was impossible to collect and destroy them all.
There would also be no end to the monsters until they met the forest’s demands. And Andrew hadn’t told Thomas about that yet.
—cut out a heart
“You must have,” Andrew said. “You draw all the time—”
“Not anymore,” Thomas snapped.
The monster began to move. It didn’t walk so much as flowed, its body a swirl of misting shadows that re-formed into triangular elbows and long, twiggy fingers and a sharp jaw that cracked to show an endless throat. Everything about it stretched as it moved, and its skin looked like bark under its shadows. Only its eyes glowed red.
Before the dining hall had a chance to dissolve into pandemonium, the monster howled and plunged its shadows across the room.
It was like throwing a blanket of black ink over the chaos. Where the darkness touched, everything went still. Frantic cries and attempts to run ended as everyone slumped into the tables. Bodies folded like their strings had been cut. Heads slammed into their plates, faces went slack.
A horrible, suffocating quiet seeped across the room.
Thomas sagged and Andrew barely had time to loop arms around his chest and hold him up before the darkness slid over them. The shadows felt alive, pressing against them, the slippery taste of earthy, rancid leaves and spilled ink suffocating them all.
The lights went out.
No sound touched the dining hall except for the click of the monster’s fingernails as it slithered onto the table. It hovered over an unconscious student whose hair was soaked in gravy, their breathing shallow and slow. Then the monster’s fingers began to grow. They stretched like sticks, knotted and nobbled, and grew over the student’s face before sliding into their mouth and ears and nose.
The ravager was after their dreams.
All around Andrew, ribbons of darkness slipped into the students’ slack jaws and curled down their noses.
Pain spiked through Andrew’s ear, and he clapped a hand over it. As if he needed reminding what happened when the monsters got inside of you.
None of this made sense. The monsters came for him because he was close to Thomas—but the rest of the school? No, this was wrong.
Either the monsters’ strength had doubled thanks to Halloween, or Andrew had never understood how they worked this whole time.
Maybe he didn’t understand anything.
It’s not real—
He had to think.
He dropped to his knees and dragged Thomas under the table, limbs tangling as Andrew shook Thomas to wake him up. Thomas was struggling to keep his eyes open, but his mouth had gone soft with sleep.
