Daisy flung herself at him, arms wrapping around his bearlike form in an exuberant hug. Marv patted her awkwardly on the back and did his best to show some affection. Spencer smiled. Marv wasn’t really the huggy type.
When Daisy backed away, Spencer lifted his hand into a timid wave. He had thought that seeing the janitor alive and well would cause his feelings of guilt to fade. Instead, the opposite seemed to be happening. What could Spencer say to the man he had trapped in the Dustbin for over half a year?
“Hi, Marv.” It was a lame greeting, when there were so many other words he could have used. Then, in an attempt to make it more meaningful, Spencer added, “I wanted to tell you that I’m . . .”
But Marv cut him off as a mummy sprang from the side. The big janitor lifted his hand, causing the dust to swirl and take shape. Out of nothing, a brick wall was immediately erected. In surprise, the mummy slammed into the wall with such force that both brick and toilet paper were reduced to dust.
“How did you do that?” Daisy asked, passing her hand through the spot where the brick wall had been.
“That’s what it’s like down here,” Marv said. “This isn’t ordinary dust.” He squinted at the battlefield. Most of his folded airplanes had been destroyed, but they had succeeded in taking down nearly every toilet-paper mummy.
“How long have you kids been stuck down here?” Marv asked.
Spencer checked his watch. “About fifteen minutes.”
“Vortex get you too?” he asked. Spencer couldn’t tell if he was upset about it.
“We came on purpose,” Daisy said. “We thought you’d be bowling.”
“Bowling?” Marv said.
“Yeah,” said Daisy. “We heard a recording from inside the Vortex. You said ‘Gutter ball!’”
“Must have been back at the bowling alley,” he said.
“There’s a bowling alley down here?” Daisy asked.
“Gotta do something to stay entertained,” answered Marv. “I’ve been down here for . . . well, who knows how long.”
“About seven months,” Daisy blurted, not even softening the blow.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Figured it was longer. I’ve been down here so many years that Spencer’s hair turned white.”
As he always did when someone mentioned his hair, Spencer put a self-conscious hand on his head.
“He’s not old,” Daisy explained. “His hair turned white because Spencer’s an Auran.”
Marv scratched a rough hand through his thick beard. “How’d that work out?”
“It’s a long story,” Spencer said. This didn’t seem like the right time to discuss it, even though the battle appeared to be finished.
“Looks like you’re not the only one who picked up some powers,” Marv said.
Dez landed beside Spencer, displacing a lot of dust as he put his feet down. “This is the guy we came looking for, right?” He pointed a hooked finger at Marv.
“I remember you,” Marv said. “From detention.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “But you didn’t have wings.”
“Yeah,” Dez said, unfolding and refolding his prize possessions. “These babies are new. I’m a Sweeper.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the janitor.
“It means I’m awesome.” Dez reached for the leaf blower on Spencer’s back again. “We found the dude. Let’s get out of here.”
Marv chuckled bitterly. “There’s no way out. I’ve been searching since the minute I got here.”
“We brought a way out,” Spencer said, gesturing to the big device on his back. “But we can’t use it yet. We have to give Bookworm at least another hour to get the Vortex into position.”
“We won’t last another hour,” Marv said. “Not out here, unprotected like this. The TPs will be back. And they’ll adapt to our attacks. Next time, those latex gloves won’t be much use.”
“Where can we go?” Daisy asked, looking around at the expanse of nothingness.
“We should get back to the fortress,” Marv said.
“You found a fortress out here?” Spencer said.
“Didn’t find it,” said Marv. “Built it.”
The burly janitor held out his hand with the palm up to the sky. He closed his eyes in concentration, and the dust above his hand began to swirl. The particles came together to form a new paper airplane, with folds crisp and even.
“How are you doing that?” Daisy asked again.
“It’s the dust,” Marv explained. “Down here, you can use your imagination to shape the dust into real stuff.”
Olin had mentioned something like that in his letter, though Spencer hadn’t known exactly what it meant until he saw Marv doing it.
“Anything?” Dez asked. Spencer didn’t want to imagine what the bully was thinking about concocting.
“Has limits,” said Marv. “I can only build stuff that I’ve seen in real life. The better I understand it, the stronger it holds up. That’s why I use these.” He held out the paper airplane. “Kids were always folding these at school. Tried to fly them across the hallway and land them in the trash can. ’Course, nine times out of ten, they’d miss. I spent half my work days picking up paper airplanes off the floor.”
Marv stepped forward and tossed the plane. It came out of his hand like a bird taking flight. As it cut through the dusty air, it displaced the particles, leaving a clean wake behind it.
“Let’s move,” said Marv. “If we stay close behind the plane, the TPs won’t be able to reform in front of us.”
The three kids followed Marv into the clear wake of the folded airplane. Spencer glanced over his shoulder, noticing that the particles remained displaced only for a moment before settling into a thick haze once more.
“Where did those mummy guys come from?” Daisy asked.
“From somebody’s imagination,” answered Marv. “They form out of the dust, just like my planes.”
“Who’s making them?” Daisy asked.
“They’re called the Instigators,” said Marv. “Don’t really have a clue who they are. When the Vortex dropped us back there, the TPs found us in minutes. Wiped out two of the BEM workers before we could blink. I got away, along with the other BEM folks.”
Spencer didn’t want to ask it, but he had to know. “Garth Hadley?”
“Oh, yeah,” Marv said. “That scumbag’s still out here somewhere.”
“Do you think we’ll run into him?” Spencer asked.
“Not if I can help it,” said Marv. “He can turn to dust for all I care.”
Chapter 38
“They’re quilted, like Charmin.”
Marv’s fortress wasn’t at all what Spencer was expecting to see through the haze. It wasn’t a castle with jagged battlements and rising turrets. There was no grand gate or formidable drawbridge. Instead, the fortress looked more like . . .
“Is that Welcher Elementary School?” Daisy asked.
“Yeah,” Marv muttered. “Well, parts of it, anyway.”
“You can build anything you want, and you chose to make Welcher?” Dez said. “I hate that place.”
“We can only build what we know,” Marv said. “Places we’ve actually been. Welcher was fresh on my mind when I got sucked into the Vortex, so I used the school as a basic pattern. There’s bits of other places I’ve worked, too.”
“So why are we just standing here?” Dez asked. “Why don’t we go inside?”
“This is the first time I’ve left the fortress in months,” Marv said. “Been gone at least fifteen minutes. Anything could’ve happened. I got to make sure it’s still safe before I take you kids in there. Last thing we want is to open the door and let in a bunch of One-Plys.”
“What’s a One-Ply?” Spencer asked.
“It’s the cheap toilet paper,” answered Marv. “Just got one thin sheet with no perforations. Most of the mummies are One-Plys. They’re dumb as dirt, but they put up a good fight.”
Spencer remembered the mummy leader. It seemed to have been made of different tissue. “Are there other kinds?”
“Two-Plys,” said Marv. “They’re quilted, like Charmin. Two-Plys can talk, but they’d just as soon rip your skin off as ask about the weather.”
“What is the weather like around here?” Daisy asked.
“You’re seeing it.” Marv gestured up to the sky. “Always the same. Never gets dark, never gets light. Dust. So much dust.”
Marv’s folded airplane suddenly returned. It looped around the janitor’s head and perched on his broad shoulder like an obedient bird.
“What’s going on over there?” he asked. “Any TPs?”
The tip of the paper airplane shook back and forth in a motion that could only be interpreted as a negative head shake.
“Good,” Marv said. “Looks clear, then?”
This time the airplane nodded its tip up and down. Marv reached his big hand up and plucked the folded paper from his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. Then, soundlessly, the little paper plane dissolved to dust between his fingers.
“What happened to it?” Daisy asked.
“I didn’t need it anymore,” Marv said.
“But you didn’t have to kill it!” she said. “Wasn’t it helping you?”
“I didn’t kill it,” Marv said. “It was never alive. I unimagined it.”
“Why?”
“Everything that I’ve imagined out of the dust takes effort to keep around,” Marv explained. “If I’m not using it, I might as well unimagine it.”
“I wish I could unimagine Spencer sometimes,” said Dez.
“Come on,” Marv said. He moved forward, his large feet trudging through the soft dust.
They reached the front door of the fortress in no time. It was a fairly accurate re-creation of Welcher Elementary’s entrance, but something was off.
“Wait a minute,” Marv said. “This isn’t the right paint.”
“Who cares about the paint on the door?” Dez said. “Just open it.” He reached out and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.
“Paint sealed over the door,” Marv said.
“Can’t you just unimagine it?” Spencer asked.
“You can only do that to things that you’ve imagined,” explained Marv. “This paint job isn’t mine.”
“Then who did it?” Daisy asked. “The Instigators?”
“This wasn’t the Instigators,” Marv muttered. “This was somebody we know.”
“Garth Hadley.” Spencer said the name under his breath like a curse.
Marv nodded slowly. “Locked me out of my own fortress.”
“What about the walls?” Spencer asked. “You made those, right? So you can unimagine them?”
Marv was already examining the school walls. “Looks like he used the same imaginative paint over the whole structure,” said the janitor. “I can’t get past it to unimagine the wall underneath.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Spencer said, drawing a bottle of blue Windex from his janitorial belt. “This will turn the wall to glass so we can break through.”
He leveled the spray nozzle at the wall, but Marv reached out, his thick hand holding Spencer back. “When the only thing between you and death is a little wall, you make sure nobody breaks in.”
“What do you mean?” Spencer lowered the spray bottle.
“I built defenses into the walls to stop the TPs from pounding them down. If you hit that wall, it’ll be the last thing you do.”
“Try it anyway,” Dez said. “See what happens.”
Spencer wasn’t about to be goaded into making a foolish mistake. He holstered the Windex as Marv explained the consequences.
“I designed the wall to backfire,” said the big janitor. “Hit it, and it hits you back. Knocks the dust right out of those TPs.” He scratched his beard. “These walls can’t be broken down.”
“So how do we get in?” Spencer asked.
“Think I’d build a fortress without a hidden door?” Marv flashed a cunning grin. “Follow me.”
The janitor set off through the dust, moving quickly along the outside of the mock Welcher Elementary. Spencer thought it was strange as they passed the window that would lead to Mrs. Natcher’s classroom. Garth had painted over the glass, so he couldn’t see inside, but he was curious to see what else Marv had imagined up.
They quickly arrived at a section of the school that Spencer had never seen before. It definitely wasn’t Welcher, and Spencer assumed that Marv had patterned this piece after another school where he used to work.
“Should be right here,” Marv muttered. He waved his hand, and the movement swept aside a layer of dust to expose something that had been buried.
It was a bowling lane.
The long lane stood alone in its dusty surroundings, angled at a gentle slope toward the school. Ten pins were set up against the school’s brick wall, forming their usual triangular pattern.
“Good,” Marv said. “It’s still here.” He held out his hand, and the dust began to swirl. In a flash, it had formed into a heavy red bowling ball, Marv’s thick fingers wedged into the holes.
“Ever bowled a turkey?” Marv asked, lifting the ball to eye level.
“No,” Daisy said. “But we always eat one for Thanksgiving.”
“You eat bowling balls for Thanksgiving?” Dez asked.
“I don’t think Marv’s talking about the bird,” Spencer said.
“We call it a turkey when you bowl three strikes in a row,” the janitor explained.
“I always thought it was three strikes and you’re out,” said Daisy.
“That’s baseball,” Spencer said. “You
want
to get strikes in bowling. It means you knock all the pins over.”
“I don’t see how bowling three strikes is going to get us inside your dumb fortress,” Dez said to Marv.
“Besides cleaning up messes,” Marv said, “I’m not too good at many things. Had to find something that I could do better than Garth.” He hefted the eighteen-pound ball. “Bowling.”
“So you have to bowl three strikes, and the secret door will open?” Spencer said.
Marv nodded his shaggy head. “Yep.” He stepped forward, dropped his back foot, swung his arm in a smooth arc, and released the heavy red ball. It rolled gracefully down the lane, curving just the right amount to avoid the gutters and line up with the center pin.
The ball struck the first pin, which tipped, colliding with another and starting a chain reaction. Each pin clattered to the ground, turning to dust as the bowling ball tore through them. It was a perfect strike, and all ten pins were down in a heartbeat.
Marv nodded in satisfaction and reached into thin air, where he was already conjuring another bowling ball from the creative dust. At the end of the lane, ten new pins were automatically forming.
“Strikes are easy,” Dez said. “Give me that ball.” He reached for Marv’s red ball, but the janitor swatted his hand back.