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  It moved toward me. “Come, accept us, as others have, and you’ll be unstoppable.”

  My body felt weak and my breathing was labored. I looked down at my hands to find that my skin was pale and felt moist and clammy.

  “Yes,” it whispered, the voices rising from around the room. “Look how strong you have become. Join with us and be one.”

  Sweat broke out on my face and under my arms. Licking my lips, I could feel their rough, cracked edges.

  Suddenly I fell to my knees. I felt my bones hit the floor hard. My eyes started to roll back into my head, and everything began to go black. I felt out of control. Was it controlling me?

  Whatever it was doing, I was losing. This thing was weakening me. I felt so tired. My physical and mental capacities were drained from the lack of sleep. I couldn’t fight back.

  Accept us. An icy, oily grip clenched around my neck and I was powerless to resist. I could feel my airway slowly closing like a car window being rolling up.

  My thoughts flooded to Rick and Tracy, then to Kate, and then finally to Dean. They would all succumb to this same fate.

  The predatory voices rose like an orchestra crescendo gathering inside me. This was it; I was trapped. And now I could finally sleep.

  The room started to spin around me as the voices swelled louder. Then my mind snapped and a reflex kicked in. My airway opened more, but the hand around my neck squeezed tighter.

  Reaching up, I tried to grasp the oily substance, but my hands slid off. It was impossible. I didn’t want this to happen; I couldn’t let it.

  From the ground rose a force spreading between the collective’s arm and me, separating us. I breathed in fully again, my lungs filling and my heart pounding against my chest.

  Still on my knees, I looked up and saw that a wave of dark water had built a wall between us.

  Did I do that?

  Two dark hands came through the wall, shredding it into pieces instantly. The collective roared at me as I formed another thick wall between us. Again it tore the barrier to ribbons with ease and came at me, both arms outstretched. I created another wall to stop him, but this tactic wasn’t working. He was way too strong in here.

  Blinking out from Dad’s head and now returning to my own body, I was back in the Mitchells’ house. Dad still stood, Dean still hung, trying to signal me, but for some reason he couldn’t talk. I could see his eyes doing the shouting.

  Dad looked as though he had just broken out of a trance, his body flopping back to life. I backed away, retreating toward the stairs.

  Receive us, came his voice creepily in my head, the ax now held at half-staff.

  “No!” I yelled.

  The voice growled back, Accept us, or he will perish. Dad looked up at Dean, took a stride back, and countered the weight of the ax in both his hands. Dean squirmed, his heels punching holes in the drywall.

  “Wait, no!” I begged. “Please!” There was nothing I could do.

  Dean looked down at me, tears streaming down his face. There was no way I could defeat this thing inside Dad’s head.

  What I needed was to change things to my advantage. I needed a new battleground. Then it struck me.

  “You want me? Come and get me!” My eyes pierced Dean’s and I entered his mind.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  THERE IS A FIRST time for everything, and reading Dean’s mind was definitely full of firsts.

  Upon arriving, I was overcome by the total destruction of Dean’s room. Not only were areas of it on fire, but it was literally falling apart. It looked like a charcoal cave.

  Heat from some flames close by singed the hairs on my arms as I tried to move around the room. Not only that, but the ceiling crumbled down, smashing to pieces all over the floor. It looked as though I was in his bedroom or something. Although, it wasn’t Dean’s, and a lot of stuff looked like it had been either burned or blackened. It was too hard to tell.

  Then I saw him sitting on the end of a burned-out bed. It was Dean.

  “Dean!” I called out to him. But it wasn’t Dean at all. When he stood tall, I recognized those golden eyes set in my brother’s pale face.

  It spoke, revealing sharp, jagged teeth under his lips. “Is this what you wanted?”

  I cursed softly. What was I thinking? Like it said, I had opened the door to allow it inside. I’d figured that entering Dean’s mind would even the playing field with the collective, somehow give me a chance at defeating it, but now I didn’t have a chance at all. Dean walked toward me. I panicked and threw a punch, missing by miles. Thrusting out his arm, Dean tossed me across the room like a ragdoll. He didn’t even lay a finger on me. He must have been using his mind.

  “Now we have but another mind to gird ourselves with,” it said.

  A sting coursed inside me. Something sharp pricked my side. Looking down, I found I had landed on a piece of wood that now stabbed into my ribs.

  The pain was intense and white hot, blood oozing from the wound. I pulled it free and gritted my teeth together, holding my hand on the spot. It wasn’t deep but still hurt like hell.

  I rose back to my feet, the pain shocking in spasms. Then I saw Dean tossing fire from his fingertips. I didn’t believe my eyes; was this even real? I’d never encountered anything like it before. What if I died in here? The thought dropped as a fireball came roaring at me, and I jumped out of the way.

  If he could do this, so could I, right? But I didn’t have the first clue how to throw fire. A T-shirt next to me burned bright and I reached over to grab it. The heat just about melted my hand. I yelled in pain.

  “It’s mind over matter, Nolan,” Dean said. His eyes were as intense as the flames that had just burned me.

  “We’ve been dormant this entire time, waiting to regain our strength inside your father’s mind, inside this new world.”

  This thing had been directing everything from the start, but the final blame rested on me. I had allowed them to access others’ minds and feed, ultimately destroying my classmates. How many minds had I read? One of these things in each mind, devouring, breaking them down to feed back to this source, growing more powerful every time I did so.

  Kate flashed in my head. One of these things was in her head too. The thought made me sick.

  Winding up for another pitch, Dean leaned back and tossed a second fireball at me. I froze and instinctually stuck out my arm to cover my face. A thin layer of see-through dark water curved up from the floor and acted like a shield as the fireball struck it and fizzled out.

  Dean didn’t look happy. I had no idea what I had done. The shield melted away and I was on my feet again.

  “If you will not accept us, we will destroy you.”

  Dean came running at me. I put up a thick black wall, just I’d done before inside Dad’s mind, but this time the collective didn’t break through. The wall held strong.

  I had to focus to keep the layer up, and it wasn’t for long because the pain in my side raged with agony, making me drop the defense.

  Dean was waiting, pointed teeth together, breathing heavily.

  “We are done with this bargaining. This being and all the beings we possess will perish, and we will feed on their deaths.”

  I prepared myself for more fireballs or whatever else this thing was going to throw at me, but they never came. Instead, Dean lurched forward and dropped to one knee.

  “Nooo!” it howled.

  I watched his eyes blur from stark gold to steely blue.

  “Nolan!” It was Dean’s true voice.

  “Dean!” I rushed over to him and helped him on to the bed.

  “It won’t stop, Nolan. You have to destroy it.”

  Dean cried out in pain, almost going into convulsions.

  “Trap it, Nolan. It’s the only way.”

  I didn’t understand what he was saying.

  “In here. Trap it in here.”

  Dean wanted me to imprison the collective inside his head.

  “Dean, I have no idea what
will happen. I don’t even know if I can do that.”

  I thought about it further and said, “I won’t.” I could feel tears soaking my eyes.

  “No,” he shot back at me. “I deserve it.”

  His body tightened.

  “What are you talking about?”

  His hands took me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me close. His blue eyes glowed, spellbound with sincerity. “It was me. I did it. I burned down our house. I was the one who had been smoking the cigarette. Trent was trying to stop me!”

  Squeezing his eyes as pain coursed through his body, he began to whimper. Was Dean telling me the truth, or was he lying to protect me?

  “Do it!” he yelled, but then the blue faded as black oil totally engulfed his pupils.

  The collective had returned, and with a gesture of its head, it flung me across the room a second time.

  “He won’t bother us again,” it said.

  I barely made out the words, my ears ringing, and a new pain throbbed in the back of my skull.

  Again, Dean—the dimensional being having taken total control—grabbed my body from afar with its mental willpower. It felt like someone had reached in my chest and grabbed my heart. Blood spilled from my nose and out of my mouth.

  I yelled in pain as my insides burned.

  “Soon it will be over.”

  My entire body shook and I started to seize uncontrollably in midair. My body wouldn’t respond to anything, and I felt the last bit of my strength sucked from my very being.

  From above, pieces of ceiling fell around me like snow as my body dragged along the floor toward where Dean stood. Was I even still alive?

  I arrived at the feet of the collective helpless, broken. Using Dean’s face, it smiled down at me, but I didn’t see the evil. I chose to see the good, to remember Dean how I had known him.

  I whispered a final goodbye to my brother.

  Forming a thick, dark stake in my hand, I drove it upward, deep into Dean’s chest. The look of shock washed over his face, erasing the sharp-toothed smile.

  I righted myself, and holding my left arm to my broken ribs for support, I reached out with my right hand and created a clear, walled box around Dean, imprisoning him.

  The wordless chatter ceased.

  Keeping hard focus, I watched as Dean began to pound against the walls. He screamed at the top of his lungs, black oil pumping from his chest wound. All I could hear was the crackle and pop of the fire inside the room around me, which had also begun to die out to a low burn.

  Slowly—oh, so very slowly—I started to close my fingers together as if wadding up an invisible piece of paper in my hand.

  Tears dropped freely from my eyes. I had no idea what would happen, but I knew this was the way Dean had decided it. Caving in on him now, the walls had forced him to a sitting position, further still into a fetal position. He fought wildly, but I held firm.

  I knew it was humanly impossible to be in the position Dean was in now and not have your bones rubbing against one another and snapping. I didn’t want Dean’s face of detailed terror to be the last thing I remembered him by, so instead I watched my hands as they closed together into a tight, powerful fist.

  The fires around me sizzled out and cast everything into cold darkness. I exited Dean’s mind and returned to my own.

  It was over.

  Chapter Fifty

  THE POLICE WERE DIRECTED to 1403 Maple Street, where they found a shaken-up and handcuffed Rick and Tracy Mitchell after a neighbor had called about “something funny going on at the Jacob Day house.” I imagined that same neighbor was the one who had called social services on my behalf the night of the Event, too.

  My dad, Jacob Day, had taken the full brunt of the collective, devoured and used as a human host over the course of fourteen or so months while under psychiatric care, something only I knew. Scans revealed he had brain scars that were believed to be just that old, although it was said he’d suffered an aneurysm that night and was pronounced dead at the scene. I knew he had died a long time ago.

  Dean didn’t die that night, but something worse happened. His mind slipped into a severe coma, what doctors called a level one coma—the worst kind. I was determined to see him through it or wherever it may lead. I owed him that much. I’d put him there, a new burden I would now have to carry.

  As for me, with Dad gone, the Mitchells filed paperwork for my adoption, and I started calling them Mom and Dad. I slept well most nights, save for a nightmare once in a while of an oily, yellow-eyed substance that wanted to devour my thoughts. But other than that, the voices and nosebleeds—which I figured were a representation of me mentally holding open doors to people’s minds—ceased. I would never take sleep for granted again.

  ***

  IT HAD BEEN ALMOST two weeks since that night, and Mondays being Mondays, I began a new week. That meant going back to school.

  Classes at River West resumed, assignments were handed out, and life went on, although the halls lacked that certain charisma Dean had filled them with. He wasn’t forgotten, and just like Stephanie, he echoed a legacy amongst the students and staff. Something good we could all strive to be. Something I knew I wanted to be, starting with that first day back. It was a decision Dean had made with his life after realizing what he had truly done by placing the blame on Trent—the last memory Dean had passed to me before his room went dark.

  I flopped a thick stack of pages on the desk in front of Kate. “There you go.”

  She was nose deep into her laptop. A bluish glow tinted her face, and her hands scribbled notes in her black notebook. She didn’t inch from her focus, but offered one word. “Thanks.”

  I waited a few seconds, looking around the messy newspaper staff room as other members worked away, preparing articles and performing other duties.

  I turned back to Kate, who moved her pen with ease and loyalty across the page.

  “What, you’re not even going to look at it?”

  I watched Kate’s eyes scan the screen then jump to the notebook.

  “It’s all there,” I teased.

  Finally she set down her pen and picked up the stack of papers with frustration.

  “This is way too long.” Her fingers fanned the pages. “I said an article, not a manuscript.”

  She flashed a fake smile at me and then she was back at her computer.

  I sighed, knowing too well that she was pissed at me. Things between us were still uneasy after the events of that Saturday night. I’d come to the realization that I couldn’t get close to people without putting them in jeopardy. Something Kate quoted as, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

  I had backed out of our relationship and we decided to stay friends. Kate was the only person who knew my secret, and—using that to my advantage—I had gotten her to agree to allow me to write the story for the Weekly Beak, the one she had just rejected as too long.

  I went for the stack of papers, and as quick as a ninja, Kate slammed her hand down on them. “Listen, I need to tell you something.”

  I raised my eyebrows, ready.

  “I’ve known about Dean and Trent for a long time. I knew Dean was the one who started the fire. I’d dug around and even toyed with writing an article on it, but I abandoned the idea because I wanted to protect you.” Kate blinked hesitantly.

  I nodded in true Mitchell fashion.

  “Trent wanted me to expose Dean.” She curled a strand of hair around her ear.

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Well, even though I knew Dean’s secret, deep down he was trying to make up for it. At times it was hard, but I kept my mouth shut for the sake of the good he was doing.”

  Kate let a small smile escape that told me she was sorry for not telling me.

  “Sooner or later, we all have to face our demons,” she said.

  A moment passed between us, and I knew that even though we were just friends, I still felt something more for Kate.

  She went back t
o work on her computer but kept talking. “Instead of this, why don’t you write an article on Dean, but I still get to keep this for a possible future issue. I’ll have to edit it and change the title anyway.”

  “Change the title? Why?”

  “You titled it ‘Uncanny, Inc.’” That gives your business way too much exposure in the Weekly Beak.”

  I replied back with enthusiasm, “Oh, but I’ve changed direction. I’m no longer in the business of secrets.”

  This caught more of Kate’s attention, and she looked back up at me.

  “Now I’m in a new business. Call it a community service.”

  Kate rolled her eyes in her typical Muddy Huddy way. “That is so lame. It needs to be called something else. How about—” She thought a moment, and I stared deep into her eyes.

  At exactly the same time, we both said, “Detective service.”

  We laughed.

  “I told you not to read my mind,” she said, flipping her wrist to check the time on her watch. “Well, you’d better get going. You’ve only got so much high school left, and you’re late for class.”

  ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS

  I’VE NEVER WRITTEN AN acknowledgements page before. I’ve read some and been included in a few. Upon writing my own, never could I have imagined all the friends and family who encouraged, inspired, and loved me as I wrote this story. It’s strange, but just listing a simple thanks doesn’t seem like enough, so I’ll add a little extra.

  A kiss to my wife, Hollie. You’ve always been a cheerleader of anything I’ve set out to do, yet building a life and family together with you tops everything I have done or will ever do. A wink to my kids: Wesley, Noah, Keaton, and Ashlynn. You’ve kept me young in mind and heart and forced me to write when most quiet—the deep of night. A salute to my editors: Pam Johnson, Steve Rzasa, and Audra Marvin for finding my errors, holding me accountable for them, and helping me tell the best story possible. A handshake to my fellow authors/mentors: Travis Thrasher, Eric Wilson, Steven James, Bob Liparulo, and Kevin Kaiser in thanks for your honesty and showing me the true path of a writer in the real world. A high-five to my beta readers, reviewers, and endorsers who championed the story in the early, middle, and end stages.