She punched her left hand forward and flourished her fancy compound bow in front of Del: “I’m not feeling that lucky, thank you very much.” The bow vanished. “Anyway, assault with a deadly weapon is not my cup of tea and I’m not feeling much love for a self-defense plea in mitigation, so let’s maybe wait another twelve minutes before we try to get ourselves killed?”
Game Boy spoke up again: “I’m not sure we can hang on that long.” He shivered. “You know that thing when you’re on a trap run through a kill zone and the ceiling’s coming down right behind you and it’s a trade-off between movement speed and hit points? I’m getting that feeling. That one. We’re on a timer and we don’t have fifteen minutes.”
“You’re saying we’re fucked,” said Doc.
“Yeah, and you—” Game Boy rounded on him—“this isn’t helping.” He deflated.
Imp focussed on Game Boy. “You’re absolutely sure we’ve got to move right now?”
Game Boy nodded.
“Okay, I’ve got this.” Wendy shoved her way to the front of the queue and marched straight up the stairs to the gate at the front of the crypt. “Torch.” Del passed her a flashlight and she summoned up the same skeleton key she’d used before. “Huh. Shit. It’s not going in properly, it’s—fuck! He jammed the lock!”
The key morphed frantically in her hand, expanding into a pry-bar and then a flat surface she could use for leverage. But the lock was well and truly jammed. “Fuck.” Wendy froze, then looked over her shoulder. “We’re going to need to break it, but if he’s waiting outside he’ll hear—”
Del laid a calming hand on her shoulder. “Peace! There will be no battering here. Listen, can you make a stepladder?”
“Yes, but—” Wendy gestured at the staircase—“it might slip—”
“Not if you hook it over the top of the gate.”
Game Boy was positively frantic, hopping up and down on his toes: “Do it! Do it! Do it! The bad things are coming!”
Wendy made Del’s ladder appear, while Imp gaped, his usual pose of detachment abandoned for the time being. She stood aside as Del scrambled up the ladder and dropped to the graveyard dirt on the other side of the gate. “Game Boy? You go next.” Wendy gripped one side of the ladder. “If I let go it’ll fade,” she said tensely. “Go on, go, I can’t hold it for long, it’s too heavy.”
The Lost Boys scrambled over the gate and dropped—or in Doc’s case slithered—down the bars on the other side. Finally Wendy scrambled up and over. Del caught her, cushioning her fall. “That was wicked!”
“Thank me when we’re home,” Wendy gasped.
“Come on.” Game Boy scurried towards the lich-gate, paused, then scuttled forward some more. “It’s safe,” he called quietly. “The big bad is behind us, not in front.”
“Big bad?” asked Doc.
“Tink—Tinkerbell,” Imp stuttered, on the edge of losing his shit completely. He’d heard the glassy chimes of malevolence ringing through the streets of a London that never was, the voice of the Lares in their true form, kept out of the real world by the psychopomp pets interred in the grounds of the mansion. Propitiated by the blood of Starkeys, generation after generation, maintaining custody over the family’s dream-buried treasures. He’d never truly believed, until now, whatever Eve said: and believing, he felt no desire to clap.
Together they traced their route back to the door to the real world. The mist swirled thickly now, forming bizarre illusory sculptures that climbed hip-high in places, dulling sounds and making it impossible to see more than a hundred meters in any direction. “Walls are coming down,” Imp repeated. He peered at the mist between his legs. “Does anyone else see this?”
“See what?” Doc took the bait.
“Mermaids and pirate ships,” he murmured, “the set dressing for the ultimate pantomime—”
“We can’t stay here.” Doc took his arm and tugged. “It’s not safe.”
Imp didn’t move. “Scared now. Don’t wanna leave. You can’t make me.”
“Yes I can.” Doc wrapped his arms around Imp. “You’re not staying. They’re illusions for kids, Jerm, it’s trying to trap you.”
Imp fell silent as Del and Wendy followed Game Boy through the side-door, even though it was alarmingly ajar. If Game Boy’s gamer sixth sense said it was safe to proceed, then the bad man with the gun wouldn’t be waiting on the other side.
“Dude,” said Doc. “We can’t wait.”
“But the book—”
“Forget the spell book, that asshole’s going to get what he deserves from the curse—”
“—No, I mean the other book, the one I need to be inside—” Ticking crocodiles and flying infants and a shadowless boy with the burned-out corpses of stars in his eyes—
“You can’t live here,” said Doc, then gently kissed him. After a couple of seconds, Imp relaxed in his embrace and kissed him back, hugging him tight. Finally they separated for air. “You’ve got to grow up sooner or later,” Doc told his lover.
Imp took a deep breath of Neverland. “I never wanted that.”
“Come on. Come with me, or your sister wins.”
Imp scowled. “It isn’t like that, we’re not rivals.” Neither for human sacrifice, nor the favor of their father.
“Prove it, then.”
The mist rose chest-high now, extruding tentacles filled with hypnagogic images that swirled almost to their heads. Some were fantastic, others were scarily plausible; but either way, they sucked the eye in and demanded the attention of the beholder. Elves and dragons danced a deadly waltz across high moorlands, around a castle on a mountain at the center of a perfectly circular lake that had once been a giant city beneath the shattered moon. Then all were swept aside to make room for a merry row of gibbeted felons, dangling like the Devil’s Christmas baubles along a Regent Street where carol singers chanted praise before the throne of the All-Highest, the Dread Lord of Downing
