Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
PART FOURTEEN
Toby's senses returned. He could hear voices and whistling wind. Though, oddly, no sound of water. He felt around for himself. Hands: check. Feet: check. Internal organs: check. Face: check.
He was fairly sure he was in shock. His limbs trembled with energy. There was no fear, but he could feel the pulsing, wriggling edges of its afterpresence. Like his brain had stomped it down into the cellar for a moment to give him time to collect himself.
He dared open his eyes.
"Hello, Nougatbomb," he addressed the candy bar that was filling his field of vision.
He looked around past the foil-covered caloric delight. The soil of this realm looked a lot like upholstery. And there were stalactites on the ceiling that resembled car seats.
The car was upside down. The car really had gone over the falls. And he had somehow survived. "I survived..." he marveled.
The outside voices became clear. Junella was explaining something to George. "...gone up on the bank, we would've been someplace else. The falls take us somewhere completely different. Here's where we want to be right now."
With a slight moan of soreness, Toby lifted himself up on all fours and crawled towards the nearest smashed-open window. Normally the glinting cubes of scattered safety glass would have worried him into staying put. But he was rather giddy at the moment, borderline delirious, and he scurried right on through. He stood up once he was outside and drew in a deep, victorious breath.
"I survived!!" he shouted joyfully. Junella and Zinc both jumped a little.
The mouse twirled around in a circle, taking in the wonders of this new place he found himself in. For starters, it had become nighttime in an instant. Unless their fall had lasted several hours, this was another trick of Phobiopolis' structureless structure. There was also no water at the bottom of the waterfall. Just a jet black cliff that extended so far up into the sky it melted into the stars and darkness. At the bottom was a great big cartoon bullseye: red and white rings as wide as a parking lot. The considerably-bent Fearsleigher had hit nearly dead center. Beyond this there was nothing but a lone dirt road leading away from the bullseye, flanked on either side by impenetrable lines of trees standing stiff and black and dead as a fence made of corpses.
But to Toby, it was the most beautiful place in the world! Because his brain was dumping happiness chemicals into itself to counteract the trauma of mortal fright! Wheeee!
"I survived!" he sang out again. He swiveled to meet his friends. "YOU survived! We all survived!!" he descended into giggles.
Then Junella started laughing too.
Which made Toby stop laughing, because he could tell in an instant she wasn't sharing his jubilation. Head still reeling a bit, he looked around to see her standing on a red ring, hands on her knees, scratching repeatedly at one spot so she could continue whooping derisively at him.
"You weren't kidding!" she finally said to Zinc, tears in her eyes. "He really is that clueless! I'd have never believed it!"
Toby did not like her tone. He tried to boldly stride over and tell her off, but his recovering brain was still a bit dizzy. Walking felt like trying to keep his balance on top of a bus that was going around a corner. "Stop that," he said, pointing a finger at her.
The skunk laughed harder. "I can't help it! You really have no idea!!"
"Stop laughing at me!!" Toby demanded, his whole face clenched in humiliation.
"Stop being hilarious then!" Junella shot back.
Concerned, George was about to step forward and act as peacemaker.
Zinc put a wrench in his path. "Let's not. This pot's been simmering for a while and it's gotta boil over sometime."
George was not fond of the idea, but snorted an assent. "If you think it is for the best, Sire Zinc."
The night wind swirled around Toby, fluttering his pajamas and sending shivers through his fur. He kept himself rigid as he stood up to Junella, but he could feel his nervous heart trying to sabotage him. He took another step towards the grinning skunk. "I don't like being laughed at," he said with a firmness that surprised himself.
"But you're so goddamn stupid you're funny!" Junella returned, braying a loud "HEE-HAW!" right in his face.
Toby snapped. "YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A BULLY!!" he yelled, his spittle splashing her nose.
She flinched and wiped it off. Then she got very quiet.
She tossed the end of her white scarf over her shoulder so she could focus entirely on this woeful scrap of rodent in front of her. She had to cobble it together syllable-by-syllable, but she spoke the word clearly enough: "MUN-CHAU-SEN'S!"
Toby flinched back.
"IT MEANS YOUR MOMMA WAS POISONING YOU, YOU DUMB SHIT!!"
Zinc shook his head. "Oh Christ, Juney..."
Toby's fingers curled. His tail whipped back and forth. He tilted his head like he was preparing a headbutt. "She was not!! Don't talk about my mother like that!!"
There wasn't an atom of mirth in her eyes now. "It's what the word means, stupe! It means she was making you sick on purpose to get sympathy, or because her head's a lighthouse with no bulb. I don't know, or care, which one. But lemme guess; she didn't tell you that word herself, right? You overheard someone else say it, and she told you it was some new bug you had?"
Toby stiffened. He sputtered. He could feel every little bit of dirt and gravel in the red-painted circle beneath his bare feet. "How do you know that!?" he hissed.
"Simple deduction. You're a world class fool. You've probably been her fool ever since you were born."
"IT'S NOT TRUE!!" he screeched, and the voice that came out of him was not one he recognized. "Why are you saying all this!? You're horrible! You're mean and horrible to people! Leave my mother alone!!" He stamped his feet on the white-painted ground.
"Tantrum time?" she asked, crossing her arms. "Why is this upsetting you so much if it's not true, huh?"
Toby grabbed the sides of his face like he was trying to keep his head from splitting apart. "It's NOT true! It's NOT! You're just saying that because you hate me because I'm not as crazy and fearless as you! I'm weak and you're disgusted by that, so you're just acting like a rotten bully!!"
Junella spat on the ground at his feet. "I'm telling you this for your own good. You can either listen or stay a fool forever."
His lips drew back across his teeth. "You don't care anything about me."
"You're goddamn right I don't! But out of the sheer goodness of my heart, I'm trying to help you wake the fuck up."
"I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP!!!" Toby exploded. He swiveled and stomped away towards the bleak road that led deep into night and darkness.
"Yeah, I thought so!" Junella called after him bitterly. "You welsher! Take your horse and go trotting off! We'll get all the way to the mountain someday, and it won't be with you! Get out of here!! Better now than after we spend even more money and time drivin' you around in a baby carriage!"
Toby stopped. He stood in the chill wind, breathing hard for a moment. Then he turned back to look at her.
She saw his teeth glint in the moonlight. His eyes were red but he wasn't crying yet.
"Take him," he said to Junella. "I made a promise. The deal's over. He's yours."
George was visibly uncomfortable. "Sire... are you planning to head off on your own, into the unknown? And at this time of night? Please, let me accompany you..."
Toby blinked hard, then looked up at his friend and servant. The horse's aura flickered in the wind. "No."
"Are you quite certa-"
"GO WITH THEM!" Toby roared. He drilled into Junella with his eyes and was glad to see her stunned. "I made a promise! I may be weak and stupid and useless, but at least I keep my promises! So let me just run off and get killed and you won't have me dragging you down anymore!"
Zinc looked back and forth between his partner and his client. "Look, let's just-"
"I don't want to hear it!" Toby yelled as he stamped off, away from all three of them.
"Let him," he heard Junella say.
After that, all he heard was the branches of the trees scraping against one another, the whistle of the wind, and his own footsteps crunching on cold dirt.
***
"You are exactly as dumb as she said you are," Toby told himself several minutes later as he pulled his pajamas closer to his freezing fur. It wasn't that the night was particularly frigid. It was his acute awareness of how fully alone he was. Alone and without any means of self-defense. The wind cut right through cloth and fur down to his bones.
Every step he took was a deafening boom. A signal, loud as a bullhorn, for all the night's creatures to come and feast on him. "A feast? Who am I kidding? I'm a mouthful." With every step, he felt the dirt road's rough soil and tiny pebbles dig like needles into his bare feet.
On either side of him, the soot-colored trees were so closely grown together he couldn't see past them into the forest beyond. But he could hear shufflings, growls, animal sounds. At least, he thought he could. It could have been his imagination magnifying every little creak of a twig.
He looked up. The moon was full as a bloated tick overhead. A bulbous wheel of white cheddar. The stars around it were... moving? No, they couldn't be. It had to be an optical illusion. The galaxies couldn't be drifting and swirling and bouncing off of each other in slow motion.
Then again, why couldn't they?
It was a good thing Toby was so mortified by his own childish outburst, and furious at Junella's ridiculous claims. It kept him moving. The ugly knot of churning frustration in his belly propelled him. Keeping a steady pace and keeping his mind occupied prevented fear from flooding in and obliterating his reason.
There were no words for the magnitude of how badly he'd just screwed himself over. "You had two guides. You had a devoted protector. You walked away from both. You're completely alone and completely unprotected."
He looked back and forth at the roadsides. He'd been seeing random garbage along the path occasionally. Maybe he'd spot something he could use as a weapon if it came to that. Something he could at least swing like a club.
He saw some old cans aged completely to rust. A bicycle wheel. A cotton shirt turned into a pancake of grey dirt. It did not entirely surprise him when he saw part of a dead man's leg.
He blinked hard for a moment. "Yes, that could be you. Just keep walking. Ignore it for now. Don't go into a panic."
More garbage. Old cereal boxes with the colors washed off from rainfall. A bulging black plastic bag with a bunch of dirty diapers surrounding it. Toby's lip curled at the sight, then he stumbled back a few steps in horror as the diapers sensed him and scuttled away on little rat feet. "Eeeuugh!!"
Toby walked on and kept his eyes on the ever-increasing piles of rubbish. This road was turning into a junkyard in stereo. Focusing on the bottles and torn-up shoes helped keep his mind away from picturing the svelte, powerful things with long claws that might be pacing back and forth outside his vision, watching him and deciding at their leisure when to strike.
Toby spotted a length of lumber. "Good enough," he said, and darted towards it. A few more rat-diapers squealed and ran from him. He picked the board up and wiped off the dirt and earthworms. It wasn't too wide to hold, and even had a few small nails poking through one end. "Allright!"
He fell back into his walking pace. Better not to stop for long. He swung his newfound weapon a few times. He liked the 'swoosh' it made through the air. He was fully aware it probably wouldn't stop a charging rhino or an alligator, but it was better than bare paws at least. "I'll swing for the eyes if I get a chance."
'No you won't. You'll freeze up and just stand there as whatever-it-is walks right up and starts taking bites out of your face.'
"Shut up! I'm not helpless! Or at least... I'm not like I was back in the cave. Look at me! It's midnight in a dark forest and I'm defenseless except for a piece of wood! But I'm not crying or calling out for my mommy-
'...who's been poisoning you slowly all these years.'
"SHUT UP!!!" he screamed, loud enough to scatter some birds into flight.
'Real smart. Tell every predator for miles around right where to come and get you. Dinner's served!'
Toby focused on his breath, trying to slow it down. He clutched the board tighter in his furless paws, not caring that he was probably riddling his flesh with splinters.
He kept walking. The endless trees and trash were starting to make him dizzy, like staring too long at an optical illusion. Then up ahead, just on the edge of his vision, he saw something square. Something hanging at eye-level. His breath and footsteps sounded loud as gunshots, but he risked running towards the thing. Hoping that it was a sign. Maybe it'd even say 'You Are Here' and have directions to not be here anymore.
But when he got closer, he slowed. The thing was a lot closer than he'd thought at first, because it was also a lot smaller. It was a framed oil painting of a plum in a dish. Hovering in midair. Yes, nailed there. Hanging like any picture on any wall anywhere, except nailed to nothing.
Sweating and quivering, Toby was tempted to smack it down with his two-by-four, just to stop its impossibility from driving him even crazier.
Instead, he detoured around it. He kept an eye on the plum picture, but when he looked at the other side, it seemed to have no back. It was invisible from the opposite angle. And as his head was trying to deal with that, he looked again at the front and it was gone. He waved his hand through where it had been. Nothing. It had vanished while he was looking straight at it. There was no evidence it had ever been anything but a hallucination.
Toby started walking faster.
He kept his head down, staring at the garbage. The garbage that behaved nicely and didn't spit in the face of physics. 'Just pretend that it didn't happen.'
Up ahead he saw a hammer. Half the rubber was worn off the grip, and it had rusted completely brown, but he ditched the board in a heartbeat for it.
"Ha!" He swung it around like a swordsman. He dented a nearby milk jug, then put a hole in a plastic beach bucket.
'Much better. You might last ten seconds instead of five with that.'
"Stop it. Maybe I can do this on my own. Or if not, maybe I'll find someone else to help me. My luck's been okay so far, right? I found George, then Zinc and... that jerk with the scarf. Maybe there's a town at the end of this road. I could go there for help. Maybe I could, I dunno, wash dishes in exchange for them helping get me closer to Anasarca."
He spotted some more diaperats and brandished his hammer at them menacingly. The disposable rodents retreated into the trash that was now piled several feet high against the tree trunks. Toby tried not to notice the increasing amounts of skeleton bits in amongst the other debris.
"Yeah, I'm not helpless," he continued to psych himself up. "I'm getting better. I don't need those two! Though..." He cringed. "I do wish George was here. I'd feel safer. And I could talk to him. Nightmare or not, he was-"
Tiny footsteps behind him.
Toby swung his hammer around in a circle, eyes wide and ears alert. His breath sped up. He didn't see anyone on the path behind him. The moon was so full and the path so flat he could see about a half-mile in either direction. No animals or attackers: just trash.
"Could have been leaves. Or more of those diaper things."
He kept walking, but now his whole back tingled, like someone was following mere steps behind him, breathing down his neck.
"I'm not afraid," he lied to himself, hoping he could make it true if he just repeated it enough. "I'm not afraid. I am not afraid."
pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat
Toby's tail shot straight out like a lightning bolt as he swiveled around, staring into the darkness for any-
There was a doll.
A tattered, run-over, plastic baby doll. Just sitting there in the exact center of the road. It was maybe a hundred feet back, but he was absolutely 100% sure it hadn't been there before.
Toby broke out into a run. There was no telling what kind of new nightmare this thing was, but he wasn't going to just stand there and find out.
pitter-patter-pitter-patter
It was following. Toby glanced over his shoulder. No, it was just sitting there again. But was it closer? He looked ahead again to avoid tripping on anything.
pitterpatterpitterpatterpitterpatter
It WAS following him! And it was getting faster! He grunted and swung the hammer around blindly behind his back. "Leave me alone!" he wailed. His voice sounded pitifully feeble.
The sound of those tiny footsteps. Little plastic feet keeping pace with him. He sped up, they did too. The tree branches scratched and scraped in the wind, sounding like they were gossiping about how soon Toby would be overtaken.
He struck out with his hammer, trying to topple the piles of garbage into the damned doll's path. But he missed most of the time. And its footsteps were coming closer.
He swung himself around, spittle flying from his mouth. "LEAVE ME ALONE!!" he howled.
The doll was just sitting there.
He stopped. He stared at it. He felt his heart slamming back and forth in his chest. He gripped the hammer harder in his paw.
It was dirty. Its dress was torn and smeared with filth. Its face had been smashed in. Nothing but a jagged squarish hole in its hollow plastic head.
It was motionless.
Toby's mind sparked. "You can't move if I'm looking at you, can you?" he realized.
A thin smile came to his lips. "That means, all I have to do is walk backwards and keep an eye on you." He did, sliding on his left foot, then his right. He kept staring. The doll remained frozen to the spot.
"Bye bye," he said as he shuffled away.
'See?' he told himself. He didn't want to get too cocky and say there was nothing to be afraid of, but he at least felt a bit proud he'd found a solution so quickly to this first-of-undoubtedly-many monster encounters tonight.
He continued walking away, until he stepped in a diaperat. It squished and squeaked at the same time. Toby looked down for a second to kick it away. When he looked back, the doll had moved again.
Toby paused.
The doll was holding its arms out, fingers intertwined.
A universally-recognizable sign of begging.
Toby felt his chest rise and fall with his breath. His gaze did not waver from the discarded toy in the road.
"What are you?" he called out in a neutral tone.
It did not answer. It was as silent as any other piece of trash around it.
"Can you speak?"
He waited. Only the sound of the wind replied.
Toby felt the sweat on his hand where he gripped the hammer. "Allright. I'm going to look away for a few seconds. If you chase after me again, I swear I will take this and beat you into the ground, and I'll probably be screaming like a wuss the entire time, but I'll keep on hitting you until I am beyond sure you'll never move again. Don't come any closer. Just... just make some kind of sign you can understand me."
The doll did not move.
"Allright!?"
The wind fluttered its soggy artificial curls a bit, but otherwise it did not move.
"I'm turning around now!" Toby warned. He thought for sure this was a terrible idea and the instant he opened his eyes again he'd see it behind him, grown to gigantic proportions, that hole in her face now full of gleaming teeth. But still he turned his head away and closed his eyes.
"One... Two... Three... Four... Fi-
"A-HA!" He opened his eyes and swung his hammer in a semicircle, as hard as he could. It hit nothing.
Instead, he saw the doll bent over in the road, its forefinger in the dirt. It had written: HELP
Toby was frozen solid for a moment. He blinked a bit. "I'm going to close my eyes again. Ten seconds this time."
He did. Counting off numbers in total blackness was not the easiest thing he'd ever done.
When he looked again, the doll had its back to him. He'd stopped it mid-letter. It seemed he could put it on pause with his gaze even when it wasn't looking back at him.
He deliberated with himself a while longer before taking a few cautious steps forward to read what it had written.
PleaSE IM cuRSEd I NEeD HEL
He closed his eyes for just a moment.
When he opened them, the doll was looking up at him with her faceless crater of a head, arms outstretched again, begging.
Toby stood there in the starlit road, listening to the whispering wind, seeing this dirt-caked mini-nightmare sitting in front of him. He wasn't in any position to take care of his own self. And here this hideous thing was asking for help.
He bit his bottom lip.
"I'm afraid of you," he said softly to the doll. "A lot. I'm tense and alone and I have a hammer. If you startle me, it won't even be a choice; I'll smack you away like hitting a home run. I'll panic and smash you to pieces."
It stared up at him, unmoving and unblinking.
"Understand?"
No response.
Toby could feel droplets of sweat running down his ears. He swung his hammer a little bit just to punctuate his point. Then he turned his back to the thing and started walking away from it.
His ears were perked up. He heard a shuffle on gravel as it stood up.
pit-pat-pit-pat
It was following him again. But its steps were measured, careful. To test it, he sped up a little. It did not. He nodded.
"Good. Thank you. I don't know if I can help, but I guess I can try."
He looked back over his shoulder and heard the tiny 'fwump' of it falling on its bottom onto the road. It's arms were outstretched again, but this time palms open towards him: 'Pick me up?'
Toby gulped, feeling incredibly queasy. What would this dirty thing feel like to touch? What would it smell like? His guts quivered at the very thought.
He got an idea. He walked back to the doll, and then crouched down beside it. "Can you take hold of my shirt?"
As soon as he looked away, he felt a weight on his hem. "That answers that." He stood up. The plastic hand held on. He was now dragging the thing like a wallet on a chain.
He continued walking. He sniffed the air and didn't smell anything worse than wet plastic. Then a finger touched his leg.
"Eeeeeeek!!" He looked down at it. "Don't DO that!"
It seemed chagrined.
He felt sorry he'd snapped at it. He didn't want to be like Junella. "Allright, allright. Just don't touch me suddenly. Remember my hammer."
He kept on walking. It touched him again, and he fought back a heave. That tiny, pudgy plastic finger was... Wait, was it writing? He tried not to look down at it as it drew lines against his leg. Toby looked up at the moon.
T-H-A-N-K-S
"Oh. Um, you're welcome." He actually smiled a little. This thing was terrifying and disgusting, but a show of gratitude meant that maybe it wasn't gonna bite his neck and drink all his blood when he least expected it. "Do you have a name?"
N-O
"I can't just call you 'Doll'."
T-H-A-T-S-F-I-N-E
"Okay. Doll. Um... This is gonna get weird with you writing on my leg. I'm gonna have to get you a little notebook or something. Maybe a chalkboard."
T-H-A-N-K-S
Toby continued walking. He tried to keep his mind from making him paranoid about the pound or so of possessed plastic dangling from his pajamas. It seemed he'd made a truce with her, but his adrenaline was trying to force him to regret it. He tried to push that lurking emotion away and concentrate instead on the fact that someone had asked for his help and he had looked past his instinctive disgust to give it. Even if he'd screwed up everything else tonight, he'd done this one good thing for someone else.
Up ahead there was a congregation of about a dozen diaperats. They were all gnawing noisily on what looked like a sack of dog kibble. When Toby tried to pass, the biggest one ran at him, snarling.
He squealed and reflexively threw the hammer at it. He missed by a foot.
When the diaperat kept advancing, Toby acted without thinking. He swung Doll by her feet like a cricket bat and knocked the screaming vermin bastard a few hundred feet. At the sight of this, all the other ones scattered.
Toby grinned victoriously for a moment.
Then he realized what he'd just done. "OH!" He held up Doll to his face and stroked her hair. "I'm so sorry! I'm SO sorry! I just- It was coming at me and- I didn't hurt you, did I?" He held her at his side again so she could clip on and answer.
T-H-A-T-W-A-S-F-U-N
"...Okay, not what I was expecting," Toby said with a smile. "Glad to hear it though. I certainly wouldn't want to be used to bludgeon something."
He picked up his hammer and continued walking. Oddly, his overall mood had lightened. The fear seemed easier to ignore. His instant of pure compassion for Doll had changed something in him.
He wasn't afraid of her anymore. He knew, rationally, that she could still be planning to gobble him up at a second's notice. But he didn't think so. Now, being with her made him feel better. On the most basic level, he felt less alone. But there was also something about traveling with a companion even smaller and more helpless. It meant he had to be the stronger one. It gave his brain a reason beyond himself to carry on.
The road stretched on. It was identical in both directions. Toby would have been lost if not for the full moon in front of him, like a beacon lighting his way. Its light also illuminated plenty more garbage. Now there were chunks of busted furniture and appliances. He saw a plastic wheeled horsie with its colors faded from years of sun bleaching.
"Are there more like you?" he asked Doll. "Like, whole bunches of people turned into toys and thrown away out here?"
O-N-L-Y-M-E
He nodded. That was good. He imagined dozens more dolls clipped to him on every part of his pajamas. He'd have to crawl every step from the weight. "What else can I do to help?"
Doll paused for a while, likely thinking of the most concise way to answer. F-O-R-N-O-W-J-U-S-T-T-A-K-E-M-E-F-R-O-M-H-E-R-E
"Allright, that's easy enough. And I'm not planning on hanging around this ugly place any longer than I have to."
Toby felt a squeeze. Doll had hugged him.
He smiled, rather touched by that. He reached down to pat her hair. It was sickeningly greasy. "We need to get you a bath."
I-D-L-I-K-E-O-N-E
"Glad we agree." He looked down at her and reflected that, with a bit of soap, a change of clothes and some repair work, Doll might actually pass for cute eventually. He guessed her species as feline, though all he had to go on was the shape of her ears. Like her paws, they were simple pinkish-beige plastic. Not much defining detail. There was a hole in her dress for a tail, but the tail itself was long gone. Her dress was currently an avocado green, though it was hard to tell with all the fading and dirt if it had started out that color. That, plus her once-blonde-now-copper hair, indicated she'd been out in the elements for quite some time.
He wondered what had happened to her face. The edges of the semirectangular hole in her head could have been melted or mangled. He imagined some destructive kid taking a blowtorch to her, or feeding her to his dog. Maybe he could plug a chunk of imaginite in there and fix it that way? Of course, he'd have to find some first.
Toby squinted and stared as far down the road as he could. It seemed endless. It could go on for hundreds of miles and he'd have no idea.
'Or it could be like that basement under the diner. I could walk forever and never get anywhere until I stopped thinking about where I was.'
Toby trudged on. "I actually wish a runbug would land on me now," he said. "I'd be scared insensible, but it'd give me a reason to run fast."
D-O-N-T-H-A-V-E-A-N-Y
"Thanks anyway. I didn't expect you to," he replied.
***
As before in the cave, fear gave way to boredom. The hungry sounds in the woods really were just his imagination. Aside from the garbage-vermin, which he'd proven he could deal with, this road was as empty as a dry bucket. Toby walked for what felt like hours. One good thing he had to concede about Phobiopolis was that he would have been a writhing mess of gasps and aches by now if this had been the real world. Just as this dream-body didn't seem to require pills or food, it also didn't tire. Yes he was sore and miserable and wished he could just fall over and go to sleep, but that was all mental. Physically, so long as he didn't think too much about his legs, they just kept on pulling him forward endlessly.
"Wait a minute."
He stopped dead in his tracks.
"I remember that wheelbarrow."
He backed up a few steps. Yes, definitely. A green wheelbarrow with a yellow front wheel, covered in weeds, with a bunch of broken bricks inside it. The likelihood of there being two of those on this road was likely quite small. And hadn't he remembered seeing it on the other side of the road?
Toby looked up. The moon was still in front of him. But did it look different?
He turned around, squinting into the darkness. "I didn't get turned around somehow. No. I..."
Doll tugged his shirt. He remembered to look away from her to pay attention to her.
P-U-T-M-E-D-O-W-N
"Okay then." He'd been giving her a piggyback ride for the last mile or so and now crouched down to set her on the road. "Don't tell me you're like a living compass?" he hoped. He turned around so she could do whatever it was she intended to do. He heard her finger pushing dirt. 'Ah. I guess she needed to say something too complex for skin-writing.' Toby waited patiently for her to finish. He watched the tips of the tree branches sway like giant hands all reaching for food over the dinner table.
When the drawing sound stopped, Toby turned around to see what Doll had written.
'PeopLE GET loSt oN THIS RoaD. It'S A PuZZle.'
Toby 'hmmm'ed. "That's just great. I'm assuming you mean the road itself is a puzzle, not that you don't know why people get lost?"
He closed his eyes long enough for Doll to write, 'YeS'
Toby nodded, feeling a bit like Sherlock. "May I further assume by the fact that you didn't give me any clues to solving the puzzle that you don't know how to solve it?"
'I caN'T'
Toby pondered that. "You don't know how to solve the puzzle? Or, like, you do know how, but in your current condition you're stopped somehow? Like magic?" Just before closing his eyes, he realized that the question couldn't be answered with a yes or no. "Um, just write a one for the first thing I said, a two for the second."
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, Doll had drawn a very big 2.
"This is like a party game," Toby mumbled. "Allright Doll, can you give me any clues to solve this?" He turned around and swung his hammer at nothing as he waited. He'd defended against several more diaperats with it so far, also a couple of ghastly owl-faced Pekingese-looking things. And he remembered not to throw it anymore.
When he looked back, Doll had written, 'TuRN Back 2 Go foRwaRd. The MoON's LyiNG."
Toby stared at that for quite a long while. But the wheelbarrow he'd seen twice was just what he needed to pull it all together. "I think I know what you're saying. Come on, Doll." He scooped her up onto his shoulders again. The texture of her decaying dress felt a little nauseating against his neckfur, but he figured it probably felt way worse for her to be so dirty. If he was in her position, he'd prefer sitting on a comfy shoulder seat to dangling off someone's shirt hem.
Toby trotted in the opposite direction he'd been walking before. His muzzle tick-tocked back and forth. He was paying careful attention to the trash by the side of the road, which was a little difficult because it had been thinning out again.
When he saw a red paint can, his hypothesis was confirmed. He didn't know how it was possible, but this whole road was one long mirrorbox.
Maybe that explained the too-fat full moon and the moving stars. Or why the trees were so unnaturally bunched together. Toby kept his eyes peeled for anything recognizable along the path. If there was a place where the road ended, but seemed to continue, he had to find it. He realized that he might have figured this out a lot sooner if he'd been paying closer attention earlier when he first stormed off. (Of course, he'd been a bit distracted by boiling emotions and having just fallen off a waterfall.)
That baseball! He'd seen it a moment ago. "And on the other side! I was right!"
He turned around again, this time taking very slow, careful steps. Maybe this road was like a pitcher plant. Maybe it trapped people inside and fed on them as they starved. Maybe it was just intended as a cruel prank. Maybe there were lots of places in Nightmare-Land like this. It certainly was the kind of frustrating, pseudo-making-sense kind of thing he'd encountered in his own dreams. Maybe he'd walked down this road's full length a dozen times already.
Toby stopped and allowed himself a moment to gloat when he finally saw it: a single reddish rock half-buried in the dirt on the left side of the road. ...and also on the right side of the road. He'd found the place where the mirroring joined. Each side of the path was a palindrome of the other. He grinned, deliciously proud of himself for figuring it out.
'You're still not done yet,' his brain reminded him.
"Right. I still have to figure out a way through it. If this is the place it stops, then when I look ahead at the road in front of me, I'm actually looking at the road behind me. And who knows how, but when I step past this point, I'm actually inverting and going backwards." He tried it out. Taking a few steps forward, he kept an eye on the red rocks until they lined up exactly as before. Taking a few steps back, it happened again.
He put his hand on his chin and stroked it as if combing a goatee. "Allright. So. You figured this part out, Doll?"
She simply drew a 'Y' behind his ear.
"Did you get to this place, right here, specifically?"
'Y'
"I haven't gone through the loop twice, right?"
'N'
Good. He didn't think so anyway. The garbage seemed to rise and fall like a bell curve. So here, where the road was mostly free of junk, he was back at one edge. But which edge? "I'm guessing that if I turned around now and ran all the way back, the bullseye would be gone and there'd just be another place like this?"
'Y!' She added an exclamation point to show she was proud he'd gotten that.
"So have I actually traveled any distance? Am I far away from the bullseye, or did I go all the way back to it?" He hoped it wasn't the latter. All that work for nothing!
'F-A-R'
He nodded, which nearly toppled her off, but he caught her in time. "Sorry!"
'O-K'
Toby stared into the distance that wasn't really a distance. This was a wall. A wall he was incapable of perceiving, but just on the other side was... Well, he didn't know. But it was more real than this place, so that's where he wanted to be.
The moon. He remembered Doll saying the moon was a liar. For it to have seemed to stay in the same place all this time, it would have had to be following him.
Toby got an idea. "I don't know if this is actually gonna work or if it'll just feel good doing it." He set Doll down, both as a visual reference point, and so she wouldn't fall off when he ran. He dashed back to where he'd seen the paint can. It was stuck pretty tight in the ground but he managed to dig it out. Beetles scurried everywhere when it came up. Toby "Bleagh!"ed and flicked them away from his fur.
He jiggled the can in his palm. A decent weight, though he crouched down in the road to pour more dirt into it to be sure. He momentarily wondered if there was another paint can somewhere down the road and if him dislodging this one would cause the same to happen to the other. He shook his head. Logic and dreams did not mix well.
Zinc had taught him that willpower was real power here. He hoped that would hold true now. He walked back to Doll and picked her up by her hand. "I'm gonna try something stupid," he said with a grin.
He backed up, then took a running start and whirled the paint can around in a hurricane circle.
Toby let it fly straight up at the moon.
BONK
His grin tripled in intensity as he saw the can strike the bulbous yellow orb and make a dent.
A moment later there was a groaning creak, and a house-sized section of reality became two-dimensional right before his eyes. The road he'd walked down just a second ago became a flat, painted wall that fell slowly backwards and finally collapsed onto the ground with an echoing slam and a cloud of dust.
Toby squeezed Doll's hand triumphantly as he stepped past the fake mirrored wall into reality.
It was still nighttime, but it felt like a much more natural nighttime. The moon was higher and had a warmer glow. The stars were still sluggishly moving around, so he guessed that was simply business as usual in Phobiopolis and he hadn't noticed before.
He was looking out onto another dirt road, but this one was much wider and had some curves to it. It led down into a rolling valley dotted with unusually-round trees and a few bushes that looked like cactus-flavored french fries. To his right, not far away, he could see a small cliff that jutted out above the valley. It was ringed with bushes and smoke was rising up from it. A campfire.
Toby squinted.
Was that the Fearsleigher!?
He literally jumped for joy on the spot. He tossed Doll up high, caught her and pulled her into a hug. He even kissed her awful-tasting hair. "We made it out! We did it! And I think that's my friends over there! Oh, WOW!! I cannot wait to go apologize. And even if Junella's wrong about my mom, I can certainly forgive her mistake. We'll just agree to forget all about it."
The eager mouse started running towards the column of grey smoke, then thought to look behind him. The wall he'd toppled had already repaired itself, and silently so. From the outside, that long moonlit road he'd traveled down was just an enormous canvas box. Miles in length. He could almost see the end of it from the way the hills sloped down, and there certainly was no enormous waterfall at the end.
He walked back and reached out a hand to touch the flimsy walls. Just canvas. Kept in place by a wooden frame and some diagonal bracing timbers every few feet. People had even graffitied on it.
It was nothing more than a huge stage prop. Toby could even see the bottom edges fluttering slightly in the breeze. He had no idea how it could have produced such a convincing illusion on the inside, but he knew he didn't care enough to investigate. He had more important things to do.
He gave Doll a squeeze. "Thank you." He set her back on his shoulders and giggled as he felt her stroke his hair.
"Come on, I have introductions to make."
*******