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whirling pin-wheel that had been a man, disappearing into a white cloud which got smaller and smaller as if speeding away and finally disappeared itself, becoming a closet wall.

Then the shrieking wind stopped and the room was empty and Jenny was sobbing alone in the silence.

Chapter 14

"Jenny?" Dee's voice said hesitantly. "Jenny, are you okay?"

I've had such a strange dream, Jenny thought, but when she lifted her face from her hands, it was real. She was sitting on the floor of her grandfather's basement, in a puddle of icy-cold water. Dee, Audrey, Zach, and Michael were standing in another puddle, looking at her.

"I found these three in the hallway," Zach said.

"We fell down a shaft," Michael said. "This hole just opened up in front of us. It took us all the way back to the first floor."

"It was a chute," said Dee. "I fell down it, too, and then we had to walk back up here."

"We followed your crayon trail, and it ended at a door," Zach finished. "We pressed the button and ..."

"It let us in," Audrey said crisply, when he stopped. "But it looks like something's already happened."

"My nightmare," Jenny said. She was having a very hard time bringing herself back to the present. The five-year-old in her mind seemed more real than the sixteen-year-old these people were talking to. Dee and Michael and Audrey looked like strangers.

Not Zach, because Zach had been there when she was five.

Zach, maybe, understood this. In any case he knelt on the floor beside her, ignoring the water soaking into his jeans.

"What happened?" he said, his gray eyes steady.

"I lost," Jenny said dully, feeling strangely removed from everything. "I screwed up. I couldn't save him. I lost."

"It's something about Grandpa Evenson, isn't it?"

"What do you know about it?"

Zach hesitated, then, looking her directly in the face, he said, "Only what my parents told me. They say he-went crazy that day. Tried to-well, hurt you."

Jenny was shocked out of her apathy. "What?"

"They found you here, in the basement, with your clothes all torn and your arms all scratched. Your legs and feet were bleeding...."

"From the ice," Jenny whispered. "I got dragged through the ice. And he scratched my hands to make me let him go. They were taking him. He let them take him instead of me."

Then, suddenly, she was sobbing again. She felt a movement, then a slender, hard arm around her. Dee. A rustle and a cool hand on her wrist. Audrey, heedless of her fancy clothes. An awkward, warm grip from behind on her shoulder. Michael, They were all around her, all trying to help.

"You went through our nightmares with all of us," Audrey said softly. "It's not fair you had to face yours alone."

Jenny shook her head. "You don't understand. All of you had nightmares about things you were scared might happen. Mine did happen-because of me. It was real. It was my fault."

"Tell us," Dee said, her face stern and beautiful.

"He was a sorcerer," Jenny said. She looked at Zach. "You mean, all this time everybody thought he tried to hurt me?"

"What were they supposed to think?" Zach said. "You were here, practically in a coma. You screamed if anyone tried to touch you, but you wouldn't talk. And he was gone. They figured he ran away when he realized what he tried to do. And when they looked around at this place"-Zach looked around the basement himself and snorted-"well, they knew he was crazy. Paranoid. Because all this junk turned out to be-"

"Charms for protection," Jenny said.

"Right. I mean, what kind of nut collects thousands of those from all over the world? And he had piles of books on the occult, all kinds of garbage____"

"He was a sorcerer," Jenny said again. "Not a black one. Maybe not a white one, either, but not black. He wasn't trying to do evil. He was just-a little bit naive. He didn't allow for accidents happening ... like a five-year-old coming down here on a day he didn't expect her, and opening a door she knew she shouldn't touch."

"That door?" Dee looked at the empty closet.

Jenny nodded.

"But what was in the closet? A monster?"

"Julian."

They all stared at her.

Jenny swallowed the bad taste in her mouth. "My grandfather wanted-well, the same thing those German boys in the forest wanted, I guess." She looked at Audrey. "Power. Or maybe he was just curious. He knew there were-things - out in the darkness, and he caught some. Maybe he used runes to summon