Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(63)

My entire body goes numb. I don’t even want to know what all those oozing appendages are connected to.

“Do you see that?” I whisper, mostly to myself. I hope Taelor doesn’t acknowledge me. This is one time I would prefer to be hallucinating.

Her attention doesn’t budge from the ants underneath us, our oasis shrinking as they swarm closer.

“See what?” she snarls. “The millions of creepers you let loose? Yeah. I see them. We need a king-size can of Raid!” She kicks a line of ants making their way onto the table’s top. The lantern strand catches on her heel, and she stumbles. As she tries to right herself, a globe rolls under her foot, and she teeters.

“Taelor!” I reach out but miss her by an inch. She falls backward onto the table, head hitting the edge with a sick thump. Her eyes go dull before rolling shut.

“No no no.” I drop to my knees, keeping the shadowy hands in my peripheral vision. I stroke her cheeks gently. “Taelor, can you hear me?”

As if satisfied she’s defeated, the ants retreat toward the gym door.

Save our realm, Alyssa.


Send the trespassers away.


They siphon into the breezeway, and I leap down. With their whispers gone, the gym falls silent.

I whip around to face the shadow hands and choke on a strangled breath. The clown stands just inside the locker room entrance. It has a hostage: Rabid White. The clown’s cello’s bow is wedged between his fleshy chin and cadaverous neck.

Far above them, dark liquid dribbles from the threshold. The fluid runs down the clown’s face, blackening its eyes and teeth.

“Majesty, sorry I be …” my royal advisor whimpers, his hideous face remorseful.

His key dangles from one hand, the empty cookie bag in the other. Some crumbs dot the floor around his feet. He must’ve opened the portal, tried to bribe the ants so he could get to Wonderland like I wanted him to. Instead, Wonderland came to us.

I’m starting to think Wonderland has been here all along, seeping in ever since my accident. That was when the possessed clown appeared. Red could’ve found it in the cemetery and sent it after me.

I can’t let that demented plaything take Rabid.

“Let go of him!” I yell.

With a laugh as eerie and haunting as an out-of-tune cello, the clown squeezes Rabid tighter around his neck.

The oily shadows claw at the threshold, gouging marks on the painted cement wall. Whatever they’re attached to on the other side won’t let them through. They release a garbled rush of shrieks and moans, more disturbing than what I’ve heard on the third floor of the asylum, where patients cry out in padded cells.

The noise rakes across every nerve ending in my body and echoes through my bones. I slump to the ground, covering my head until it fades to silence again.

Depleted, I barely have the energy to look up. A giant black form pushes through the doorway, shoving the clown and Rabid aside. It explodes into a flock of shrouds, constantly changing shape like wisps of living smoke. They screech as they fly up to the rafters and wriggle into the bulbs, filling them with inky fluid until each one ruptures. The lights snuff out in a domino effect.

I yelp and roll Taelor’s unconscious body from its perch to the ground, then drag her underneath the table to shield us from shattering glass. When the last bulb bursts, the room dims, leaving only the glow from the breezeway slanting through the gymnasium entrance.

More shrieks hammer my ears. One of the shadows slinks along the floor to the gym doors, trailing a greasy black streak behind. It disengages the doorstops to swing them shut, leaving us in complete darkness.

The clown hisses. Terror prickles through my backbone, and I pull Taelor closer, holding her like a security blanket. Her breath is warm against my neck and her pulse seems strong. It’s better she’s out cold. I could never explain what’s happening around us.

“Rabid, what are those things?” I shout, needing to hear his familiar voice in the darkness, needing to know he’s still there.

“The mome wraiths …” His soft answer is at odds with the loud shudder of his bones. “Outgrabe.”





All mimsy were the borogoves;

And the mome raths outgrabe.

It’s from the Jabberwocky poem. Mome wraiths. The pronunciation, “wraith” instead of “rath,” doesn’t even faze me. Morpheus has mentioned them before.

The word rath was misspelled and mispronounced in the Carroll poem. In reality, they’re wraiths—gloomy, phantasmal creatures. Mome means far from home, so they’re lost, seeking their way back. Outgrabe is the sound they make, a mind-curdling shriek.

That’s all I remember. I can’t let them escape into the rest of the school to terrorize the humans. I have to hold them here until I can figure out how to defeat them.

Their howls and wails scatter my thoughts. Gusts of cold air swoop by my face, rife with the scent of menace and clammy sweat. I hold Taelor against me, letting her expensive perfume flush the stench from my nose. I never expected to feel so protective of her. But she has no defense other than me. The responsibility is overwhelming.

The clown’s laugh erupts again, demanding my attention.

Rabid screams: “Majesty!” His plea echoes from the depths of the locker room, and I know that he’s gone—taken somewhere out of my reach.

“No!” I shout.