Prologue
Sometime beyond the toll of midnight, 10-year old Orson Bailey sat upright in his bed, stirred by the sound of something sniffing at his bedroom door.
Orson pulled his blankets up over the bridge of his nose, leaving enough room for him to see the fuzzy shape of the door. He hated needing his glasses and the thought of reaching a hand from the safety of his blanket to grab them was about as appealing as taking a syrup bath before lying on an anthill. Still, it was either take a chance or remain blind to whatever was prowling outside the door, so he quickly snatched his glasses and pushed them onto his nose, nearly poking out his eye in the process.
A long inhale of breath sounded just outside his door, followed by a slow purring hiss that ended with an odd clucking that reminded Orson of a tongue licking the roof of its mouth for that last unreachable trace of peanut butter. A sour smell slithered into his room and Orson scrunched his nose further beneath the blanket. It smelled like someone had left a package of meat out long enough to spoil. Orson fought to suppress a gag. The last thing he wanted to do was Urp—his mom’s charming word for throwing up—and alert the thing outside that he was inside.
The glow of the moon through his window left a long sliver of light in the shape of an arrow on his floor, pointing ominously at the door to his room. The thing outside scratched at the door with what sounded like long, sharp fingernails.
Orson shivered, ducking the rest of the way under his blanket. This was all very wrong, he knew, there were no such things as monsters. There were no shadows that bumped in the night, no bogeymen waiting in closets and definitely no strange creatures scratching on the outside of bedroom doors. Those were all stories made up by parents to scare children into behaving. Everybody knew that.
Everybody except the thing scratching on the other side of his bedroom door.
The scratching sound stopped, and Orson risked a quick peek over his blanket. The hairs on his arms all stood at attention when the doorknob rattled and turned. The door opened and something long and dark poked in, slightly silhouetted against the light from the window. A pair of dark lips peeled back, revealing rows of dangerous, spiked teeth. A thin stream of drool leaked out and spattered to the floor. The rotten meat smell was stronger now and Orson choked uncontrollably, slapping a hand over his mouth in horror.
With a loud bang, the door to Orson’s room hammered inward, knocked so hard that the hinges came loose, and it crashed to the floor. Orson barely had time to register his newly broken door as the prowling monster stepped into his room. Wide-eyed in disbelief, Orson found himself staring into the beady red eyes of what appeared to be a living, breathing dinosaur.
It stood upright on two powerful legs that rippled with muscle underneath the dark mottled scales that covered its entire body and glistened in the moonlight. Scratching irritably at each other, a pair of tiny arms poked out comically from its chest.
“I can sssmell your fear, boy,” the huge lizard hissed, drawing out each letter ‘s’ with a deep exhale of breath between its sharp teeth. Orson whimpered fearfully; if everyone knew that there weren’t supposed to be monsters scratching at bedroom doors, they certainly knew that those monsters wouldn’t be able to speak. This particular monster--Orson’s monster—seemed intent on breaking all of the rules.
He tried to duck back under his blanket, but it was torn away from him, leaving him exposed in his pajamas on the bed. The dinosaur spit out the blanket and looked at Orson coolly.
“Surely you wouldn’t cower ssso shamefully,” it hissed. “Not the Chosen One, he who would ssstand againssst usss!”
Orson crawled back on his bed until he hit the wall. “Leave me alone,” he tried to say, but the words came out as little more than a squeak. He hadn’t the slightest idea what it was talking about. The only thing he understood was that something horrible was happening and if he didn’t do something soon it was going to get much worse.
“No, I don’t think ssso.” The lizard dropped back into a low crouch. “But enough talk! Your time isss over, before it beginsss!”
With an ear-numbing screech the lizard launched into the air, flying towards Orson with its tiny claws outstretched and its mouth wide open. Orson raised his hands helplessly over his face and screamed.
“NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
He waited for the feel of those sharp, biting teeth. Waiting, because there was nothing else he could do. It would be on him in a second.
Except that second never came.
“What isss thisss trickery?” the hissing voice bellowed, and Orson opened his eyes. The monster’s snout was inches from his face, the yellow teeth coated in thick, oozing saliva. The rotten stench of air puffing from its snout was overwhelming and Orson’s stomach gurgled in sick protest. He was starting to dislike that feeling very much.
“What have you done to me, boy?” it squealed, and Orson realized that it hadn’t just stopped, but was frozen in place. The lizard’s entire body hung in midair with its tail sticking straight out behind it. Only its eyes and tongue moved, shifting back and forth anxiously as it struggled against the invisible bonds keeping it from its prey. The forked tongue flicked out, long enough to graze Orson’s cheek and leave behind a sticky wet streak.
For a moment all Orson could do was stare, terrified beyond anything he had ever felt before. His mouth worked without sound as he tried to make some sense of all of this. It took a long moment for him to realize that he was wasting his chance to escape. That thought quickly got him moving. Sliding along the wall, careful not to touch the lizard’s skin, he dropped from his bed and bolted out of the room.
The moment he stepped through his broken doorway, everything began to change. His breath caught in his throat as the very air around him swelled in a whirlpool of colour. Looking into it made his head start to spin and he closed his eyes against the dizziness, wishing it would all just stop. Now was definitely not the time for this to happen, not with a gigantic lizard hanging around his bedroom.
When he opened his eyes again, the whirlpool of colour was gone. Orson saw that he was no longer standing inside his house. The hallway outside his room was gone, replaced by a long corridor with red and black walls that were completely barren of any decoration or windows. Cobwebs hung loosely from the roof; webs so thick and large that Orson wondered what terrible creature had spun them and feared that whatever it was may still be nearby. One strand broke free and drifted across his forehead and he slapped it away in fearful disgust.
Orson turned to look at the doorway to his room, now floating impossibly in midair like a painting held aloft by invisible strings. Behind it, the same odd red and black hallway stretched on, but through the door he could still see his bedroom, complete with it the lizard still floating above his bed. Orson wondered how long it would be stuck there. Its tail twitched. That was all the incentive Orson needed to get running.
As he rounded the corner, something thumped heavily behind him and the lizard’s raspy voice called out angrily. “There isss no point in running, boy!”
Orson ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He looked around frantically as he ran, searching for a door or window, even a crack in the wall large enough for him to slip his skinny body into. There was nothing. He started to panic.
He rounded another corner. Behind him he could hear the lizard quickly closing the gap between them. He had maybe a few seconds left and there was nowhere to go. Sprinting clumsily down the hall, he nearly ran straight past the small metal door that materialized out of nowhere in the center of the wall straight ahead.
Skidding to a halt, Orson grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, staring into what appeared to be some sort of laundry chute. Risking a quick glance back to see how close the lizard was he yelped as it came whipping around the corner, lunging after him with hungry excitement.
Turning to the dark chute that led to who-knew-where, Orson swallowed hard and flung himself inside.
The chute angled steeply downward for several feet before pitching Orson out into the open air. He dropped several feet before landing on his back in something soft and wet. The slimy mound was probably the only thing that saved him from being hurt, but that didn’t stop him from grimacing in disgust as he pulled himself free of the ghastly sludge.
From his back he could see back up the chute, enough to see that the lizard wasn’t looking down at him. It was probably already moving on, trying to find its way down to the room with the muck pile. Orson guessed that it wouldn’t need much time. Dark, smelly and gross, this place seemed like the sort that a giant lizard would know well.
There was only one door leading out of the room. Orson stepped up to it and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. “Locked, great,” he groaned. “What am I supposed to do now?” He yanked on the door again and it didn’t crack an inch.
“This has to be a dream,” he said to himself. “I have to wake up! Wake up, Orson, wake up!” He continued to chant, his voice broken and frantic. Heavy footsteps pounded outside the room. Somewhere outside the room another door slammed open. Orson backed as far from the door as possible, barely noticing when his feet sunk once more into the slimy mound.
Something big hammered against the door.
“I know you’re in there, boy,” the lizard’s hissing voice growled. It slammed into the door a second time and the wood began to splinter. On the third blow the door burst inward with an explosion of wood shards. Leering in at him over the wreck of wood, the monster snarled at him.
“Now you’re mine!” it squealed, stepping into the room. Sliding back into a crouch, it pounced forward, arms outstretched, reaching out to grab Orson before he could escape again.
“NO!” Orson screamed. “WAKE-UP!”
* * *
Orson jerked awake in his bed, breathing hard and heavy as he swallowed the panic in the back of his throat. His mouth was dry and his heart pounded as he stared unknowingly at the walls around him. It took a moment before he realized that he was back at home, safe in his own room.
“It was only a dream,” he told himself, his breathing slowing and growing easier. “Just a dream. There’s no monster.”
He reached for his glasses and found only an empty space on the nightstand where they should have been. “I must have knocked them off when I was dreaming.”
Feeling hot, he wiped a hand across his brow, not surprised to find it beaded with sweat. His throat was parched and a terrible thirst nagged at him. He must have tossed and turned something awful.
Slipping his feet into the pair of fuzzy slippers beside his bed, he walked to the door and turned the knob. As the door swung open he stepped out and directly into a great wall of fur, solid enough to knock him onto his backside. Orson watched as the wall bent slightly to fit through the doorway. When it was inside, it stood over him and peered down with yellow eyes that glowed in the dark of the room.
When the thing spoke, its voice was like a clap of thunder to Orson’s ears. “Orson Bailey! I’ve finally found you!”
“NO!” Orson screamed again as a great furry hand moved towards him. “GO AWAY!”
* * *
Orson sat up in his bed again, fully awake this time, or at least he hoped he was. He reached hesitantly for his glasses and found them on the nightstand where they should be. Sitting tangled beneath his blanket in the unnerving silence of the room, he tried to make some sense of what had just happened.
He must not have awakened the first time, when the lizard was about to catch him. Somehow he had stayed in the dream and that other monster had been waiting outside his room, ready to catch him.
What if he still was not awake? What if there was something else out there, waiting in the hallways? For that matter, was it even his hallway outside the door, or that strange red and black place with the enormous cobwebs and the laundry chute that ended in a disgusting pile of slop? Everything seemed normal enough, but as his mother often said, looks could be deceiving.
Sinking deeper beneath his blankets, he buried himself up to his eyes and stared at the door. He spent the last waning hours of the night that way, waiting for his alarm to buzz and tell him that morning had come at last.
Orson pulled his blankets up over the bridge of his nose, leaving enough room for him to see the fuzzy shape of the door. He hated needing his glasses and the thought of reaching a hand from the safety of his blanket to grab them was about as appealing as taking a syrup bath before lying on an anthill. Still, it was either take a chance or remain blind to whatever was prowling outside the door, so he quickly snatched his glasses and pushed them onto his nose, nearly poking out his eye in the process.
A long inhale of breath sounded just outside his door, followed by a slow purring hiss that ended with an odd clucking that reminded Orson of a tongue licking the roof of its mouth for that last unreachable trace of peanut butter. A sour smell slithered into his room and Orson scrunched his nose further beneath the blanket. It smelled like someone had left a package of meat out long enough to spoil. Orson fought to suppress a gag. The last thing he wanted to do was Urp—his mom’s charming word for throwing up—and alert the thing outside that he was inside.
The glow of the moon through his window left a long sliver of light in the shape of an arrow on his floor, pointing ominously at the door to his room. The thing outside scratched at the door with what sounded like long, sharp fingernails.
Orson shivered, ducking the rest of the way under his blanket. This was all very wrong, he knew, there were no such things as monsters. There were no shadows that bumped in the night, no bogeymen waiting in closets and definitely no strange creatures scratching on the outside of bedroom doors. Those were all stories made up by parents to scare children into behaving. Everybody knew that.
Everybody except the thing scratching on the other side of his bedroom door.
The scratching sound stopped, and Orson risked a quick peek over his blanket. The hairs on his arms all stood at attention when the doorknob rattled and turned. The door opened and something long and dark poked in, slightly silhouetted against the light from the window. A pair of dark lips peeled back, revealing rows of dangerous, spiked teeth. A thin stream of drool leaked out and spattered to the floor. The rotten meat smell was stronger now and Orson choked uncontrollably, slapping a hand over his mouth in horror.
With a loud bang, the door to Orson’s room hammered inward, knocked so hard that the hinges came loose, and it crashed to the floor. Orson barely had time to register his newly broken door as the prowling monster stepped into his room. Wide-eyed in disbelief, Orson found himself staring into the beady red eyes of what appeared to be a living, breathing dinosaur.
It stood upright on two powerful legs that rippled with muscle underneath the dark mottled scales that covered its entire body and glistened in the moonlight. Scratching irritably at each other, a pair of tiny arms poked out comically from its chest.
“I can sssmell your fear, boy,” the huge lizard hissed, drawing out each letter ‘s’ with a deep exhale of breath between its sharp teeth. Orson whimpered fearfully; if everyone knew that there weren’t supposed to be monsters scratching at bedroom doors, they certainly knew that those monsters wouldn’t be able to speak. This particular monster--Orson’s monster—seemed intent on breaking all of the rules.
He tried to duck back under his blanket, but it was torn away from him, leaving him exposed in his pajamas on the bed. The dinosaur spit out the blanket and looked at Orson coolly.
“Surely you wouldn’t cower ssso shamefully,” it hissed. “Not the Chosen One, he who would ssstand againssst usss!”
Orson crawled back on his bed until he hit the wall. “Leave me alone,” he tried to say, but the words came out as little more than a squeak. He hadn’t the slightest idea what it was talking about. The only thing he understood was that something horrible was happening and if he didn’t do something soon it was going to get much worse.
“No, I don’t think ssso.” The lizard dropped back into a low crouch. “But enough talk! Your time isss over, before it beginsss!”
With an ear-numbing screech the lizard launched into the air, flying towards Orson with its tiny claws outstretched and its mouth wide open. Orson raised his hands helplessly over his face and screamed.
“NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
He waited for the feel of those sharp, biting teeth. Waiting, because there was nothing else he could do. It would be on him in a second.
Except that second never came.
“What isss thisss trickery?” the hissing voice bellowed, and Orson opened his eyes. The monster’s snout was inches from his face, the yellow teeth coated in thick, oozing saliva. The rotten stench of air puffing from its snout was overwhelming and Orson’s stomach gurgled in sick protest. He was starting to dislike that feeling very much.
“What have you done to me, boy?” it squealed, and Orson realized that it hadn’t just stopped, but was frozen in place. The lizard’s entire body hung in midair with its tail sticking straight out behind it. Only its eyes and tongue moved, shifting back and forth anxiously as it struggled against the invisible bonds keeping it from its prey. The forked tongue flicked out, long enough to graze Orson’s cheek and leave behind a sticky wet streak.
For a moment all Orson could do was stare, terrified beyond anything he had ever felt before. His mouth worked without sound as he tried to make some sense of all of this. It took a long moment for him to realize that he was wasting his chance to escape. That thought quickly got him moving. Sliding along the wall, careful not to touch the lizard’s skin, he dropped from his bed and bolted out of the room.
The moment he stepped through his broken doorway, everything began to change. His breath caught in his throat as the very air around him swelled in a whirlpool of colour. Looking into it made his head start to spin and he closed his eyes against the dizziness, wishing it would all just stop. Now was definitely not the time for this to happen, not with a gigantic lizard hanging around his bedroom.
When he opened his eyes again, the whirlpool of colour was gone. Orson saw that he was no longer standing inside his house. The hallway outside his room was gone, replaced by a long corridor with red and black walls that were completely barren of any decoration or windows. Cobwebs hung loosely from the roof; webs so thick and large that Orson wondered what terrible creature had spun them and feared that whatever it was may still be nearby. One strand broke free and drifted across his forehead and he slapped it away in fearful disgust.
Orson turned to look at the doorway to his room, now floating impossibly in midair like a painting held aloft by invisible strings. Behind it, the same odd red and black hallway stretched on, but through the door he could still see his bedroom, complete with it the lizard still floating above his bed. Orson wondered how long it would be stuck there. Its tail twitched. That was all the incentive Orson needed to get running.
As he rounded the corner, something thumped heavily behind him and the lizard’s raspy voice called out angrily. “There isss no point in running, boy!”
Orson ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He looked around frantically as he ran, searching for a door or window, even a crack in the wall large enough for him to slip his skinny body into. There was nothing. He started to panic.
He rounded another corner. Behind him he could hear the lizard quickly closing the gap between them. He had maybe a few seconds left and there was nowhere to go. Sprinting clumsily down the hall, he nearly ran straight past the small metal door that materialized out of nowhere in the center of the wall straight ahead.
Skidding to a halt, Orson grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, staring into what appeared to be some sort of laundry chute. Risking a quick glance back to see how close the lizard was he yelped as it came whipping around the corner, lunging after him with hungry excitement.
Turning to the dark chute that led to who-knew-where, Orson swallowed hard and flung himself inside.
The chute angled steeply downward for several feet before pitching Orson out into the open air. He dropped several feet before landing on his back in something soft and wet. The slimy mound was probably the only thing that saved him from being hurt, but that didn’t stop him from grimacing in disgust as he pulled himself free of the ghastly sludge.
From his back he could see back up the chute, enough to see that the lizard wasn’t looking down at him. It was probably already moving on, trying to find its way down to the room with the muck pile. Orson guessed that it wouldn’t need much time. Dark, smelly and gross, this place seemed like the sort that a giant lizard would know well.
There was only one door leading out of the room. Orson stepped up to it and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. “Locked, great,” he groaned. “What am I supposed to do now?” He yanked on the door again and it didn’t crack an inch.
“This has to be a dream,” he said to himself. “I have to wake up! Wake up, Orson, wake up!” He continued to chant, his voice broken and frantic. Heavy footsteps pounded outside the room. Somewhere outside the room another door slammed open. Orson backed as far from the door as possible, barely noticing when his feet sunk once more into the slimy mound.
Something big hammered against the door.
“I know you’re in there, boy,” the lizard’s hissing voice growled. It slammed into the door a second time and the wood began to splinter. On the third blow the door burst inward with an explosion of wood shards. Leering in at him over the wreck of wood, the monster snarled at him.
“Now you’re mine!” it squealed, stepping into the room. Sliding back into a crouch, it pounced forward, arms outstretched, reaching out to grab Orson before he could escape again.
“NO!” Orson screamed. “WAKE-UP!”
* * *
Orson jerked awake in his bed, breathing hard and heavy as he swallowed the panic in the back of his throat. His mouth was dry and his heart pounded as he stared unknowingly at the walls around him. It took a moment before he realized that he was back at home, safe in his own room.
“It was only a dream,” he told himself, his breathing slowing and growing easier. “Just a dream. There’s no monster.”
He reached for his glasses and found only an empty space on the nightstand where they should have been. “I must have knocked them off when I was dreaming.”
Feeling hot, he wiped a hand across his brow, not surprised to find it beaded with sweat. His throat was parched and a terrible thirst nagged at him. He must have tossed and turned something awful.
Slipping his feet into the pair of fuzzy slippers beside his bed, he walked to the door and turned the knob. As the door swung open he stepped out and directly into a great wall of fur, solid enough to knock him onto his backside. Orson watched as the wall bent slightly to fit through the doorway. When it was inside, it stood over him and peered down with yellow eyes that glowed in the dark of the room.
When the thing spoke, its voice was like a clap of thunder to Orson’s ears. “Orson Bailey! I’ve finally found you!”
“NO!” Orson screamed again as a great furry hand moved towards him. “GO AWAY!”
* * *
Orson sat up in his bed again, fully awake this time, or at least he hoped he was. He reached hesitantly for his glasses and found them on the nightstand where they should be. Sitting tangled beneath his blanket in the unnerving silence of the room, he tried to make some sense of what had just happened.
He must not have awakened the first time, when the lizard was about to catch him. Somehow he had stayed in the dream and that other monster had been waiting outside his room, ready to catch him.
What if he still was not awake? What if there was something else out there, waiting in the hallways? For that matter, was it even his hallway outside the door, or that strange red and black place with the enormous cobwebs and the laundry chute that ended in a disgusting pile of slop? Everything seemed normal enough, but as his mother often said, looks could be deceiving.
Sinking deeper beneath his blankets, he buried himself up to his eyes and stared at the door. He spent the last waning hours of the night that way, waiting for his alarm to buzz and tell him that morning had come at last.