“Weird, indeed,” Master George whispered.
“Whatcha two hanks goin’ on ’bout?” Sally bellowed. “I ain’t got nary a clue what that thing a’yorn’s tellin’ me.” He pointed at the screen.
Rutger answered. “They just winked to a large plain in Reality Prime—but in the middle of nowhere. The far northern reaches of Canada, it looks like. Nothing for dozens of miles around them.”
“Goodness gracious me,” Master George whispered. “Chu’s tests are getting way out of hand. The poor chaps and Sofia will freeze up there!”
“Mayhaps we need be rescuin’ them,” Mothball said.
Master George shook his head adamantly. “Absolutely not. The antidote is as complete as it’ll ever get, and we have to get it where it needs to be. Let’s just all pray it works. Sally.”
The large man jumped, as if he’d been caught daydreaming. “Yessir?”
“This may be our best chance—our last chance. I want you to wink there right away and give them the antidote.”
Sally’s eyes grew wide. “But . . . I’m a-feared of the cold somethin’ awful.”
“No matter,” Master George said over his shoulder as he walked briskly away, heading for the testing lab. “Come on, chop-chop!”
Rutger couldn’t help but feel sorry for the big lug of a man. He reached up and tapped Sally on the elbow. “You’ll be fine. Just wink in, wink out. No problem.”
Sally laughed, his booming chortle echoing off the walls of the room. “You ain’t got no thermal undies I could borry, do ya?”
“Hilarious,” Rutger said, hopping down from his chair to follow Master George.
“Ah, dude, it’s freezing here!” Paul said. He sat down on the hard ground and started struggling back into his shoes using only one arm. Sofia knelt down and helped him.
Although the bottoms of Tick’s feet felt like they stood on ice, he turned in a slow circle, gawking at the new place they’d been winked to. It was a barren, miserable land, flat and gray in every direction, all the way to the horizon. Not a plant or tree or animal in sight. The sun poked through a brief break in a cloud-heavy sky, but it added no color to the bleakness, no warmth. There was no snow, but everything about the area looked cold and dreary.
Then he saw something that stopped him. A small building—a tiny, leaning wooden hut just a few hundred feet away.
“Just be glad it’s not winter,” Sofia said, tying her shoelaces. “Or we’d have already been frozen.”
Tick snapped out of his daze and sat down, pulling on his first sock. “I wonder what that little shack is over there.” He pointed.
Paul and Sofia glanced in that direction.
“Looks abandoned,” Paul said. He grimaced as he lay back on his one good elbow, his injured arm resting on his ribs.
Tick finished tying his shoes. “I wonder where we are.” He stood up, the ground too cold and hard.
Sofia joined him. “Who knows? Let’s go check out that building.”
Paul groaned. “Couldn’t that jerk have sent us somewhere that has a hospital? I’d settle for a place that sells aspirin. But no—he had to send us to Pluto.”
“Come on,” Tick said, offering his hand to help him stand.
Paul shook his head. “It hurts too much. Got my own way of moving now.” He pushed off with his elbow, then rolled to his knees. After taking a couple of deep breaths, he stumbled to his feet, a little off balance. Tears rimmed the bottom edges of his eyes; one escaped and trickled down his cheek.
Tick quickly looked away, pretending he hadn’t noticed. Oh, man, he thought. He’s gonna die on us.
Sofia wasn’t as kind. “Are you crying? I thought you were a lot tougher than that.”
Tick felt a shudder of anger wash through him; he had a sudden urge to punch Sofia in the arm, but quelled it. “I’d cry too if my arm was broken and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Come on.” He started walking toward the small shack.
He didn’t look back to see their response, but he heard them following. Paul’s feet scraped the ground with every step, sounding like he dragged a dead body behind him.
As they approached the building, Tick noticed it was at least three times as big as he’d originally thought, and farther away. There’s something about a vast land of nothingness that messes up your senses, he thought.
The building had only one story, its entire structure made from warped, sun-faded wooden boards with thousands of splinters poking out. The two-sided roof peaked in the middle, slanting steeply downward until it overhung the walls in eaves that almost touched the ground. To handle all the snow in the winter, Tick thought. The place had no windows, and its door was a simple slab of wood, the only thing on the shack that had ever been painted. Only a few streaks of dull red had survived the weather. A rusted doorknob hung loosely from the warped door.
“Looks just like Grandma’s house,” Paul said. His voice was so tight Tick couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“I bet whoever lives here has never heard of Pacini spaghetti,” Sofia said.
Tick was about to respond but stumbled on his first word. They were close enough for him to notice something creepy about the door. The red paint he’d seen wasn’t the remnants of an age-old decorating scheme after all.
They were words, scrawled across the entire face of the wooden door from top to bottom.
“Look!” he shouted, already sprinting ahead to see what it said.
“What?” Sofia yelled from behind him. Tick ignored them, and soon they ran to catch up.
Tick stopped just a few feet in front of the door. At first, he couldn’t make out the words of the message, the writing hasty and messy, some of the paint having run down like blood into the other letters. But there was no mistaking Tick’s name, and soon everything else became clear.
He tried to speak, but his mouth had dried up and his tongue wouldn’t move. He felt like someone had rammed a glob of cotton down his throat with a wooden spoon.
Sofia read the words out loud.
Only two people may enter this door.
Atticus Higginbottom and Mistress Jane.
All others will die a horrible death.
Do not test me on this.
Chapter
34
The Antidote
Tick could only stare at the message, the world around him shrinking away. He felt like an entire hour had passed, but he knew it had only been a minute or two since Sofia had read the words aloud.