Dylan watched with horror. It was clear that Specter was on the verge of death. The Haunter was malicious and unstoppable. Sky screamed Specter's name, and leaped into action.
But instead of moving toward Specter, he dove for Lily.
"What are you doing?" demanded Dylan. Sky didn't answer. He went straight for Lily's neck.
And pulled the amulet off of her. He gave an inarticulate cry of rage as he charged the Haunter. It looked up, puzzled. Sky thrust the amulet in its face. The glittering purple crystal touched the ghost's skin or gas or whatever it was, and the Haunter recoiled in pain, giving an unearthly wail that Sky felt sure would haunt his nightmares for at least a week. It drew back, hovering in the air with a look on its face that was so full of pure hate that Sky had no trouble imagining why Ghost Pokémon had always unnerved people so much. Sky moved between Specter and the Haunter.
The Haunter's eyes flashed pure black, looking like twin pits in its head. Sky had seen that happen before, when the Haunter had used Night Shade attack on Specter. He saw the blackness in its eyes swell outwards, looking like it would keep pouring out of the Ghost until the whole world was drenched with night. For a moment, Sky was unable to move, looking at the massive black tide that was creeping towards him and trembling at the terrifying power the Ghost possessed. He knew he had to stop it before it touched him, but he couldn't seem to think about anything but the liquid darkness oozing through the air at him. His moment of indecisiveness lasted about a second.
Then Specter hissed. It was a small sound, an inconsequential sound, the sound of a weak creature near death. But it snapped Sky out of his paralysis. He lifted Lily's amulet.
The creeping darkness of the Night Shade was almost on him. Looking at the pure black that was filling his vision, he swung the amulet towards it with all of his strength.
The purple crystal touched the black cloud.
Lily blinked slowly, coming awake. She could feel softness beneath her, warmth on her right hand but not her left, the cool breeze of air conditioning on her face. Her eyes, open to slits, could see that there was a bright light somewhere. She could see colored blurs moving. One was white. There were a pair of reddish-brown ones, and one large one above her. She felt a vague sense of whispering. No one was actually whispering, but the quality of the silence all around her suggested that if someone did speak, it would be in a whisper.
The blur hanging above her head moved. A shadow fell across her face, dimming the harsh light. A voice spoke from above her.
"I think she's awake."
I was right, thought Lily nonsensically. They are whispering.
"Lily?" said a louder voice from her left. A female voice. Lily's eyes opened further. The blurs changed into vague, fuzzy shapes. There was a large square thing to her left, glowing green. She could see a round shape above her, the source of the light. There were two person-shaped blobs at the other end of the room. The round thing above her was a head.
She sat up, opening her eyes all the way. The people at the back of the room were Sky and his father. The nurse was bustling around, looking busy in the way that all nurses seemed to do. Lily's mother was sitting on the edge of her bed. Dylan was sitting on a stool to her right, looking anxiously at her. She saw that he was gently gripping her hand, although he didn't seem to notice.
Dylan saw where she was looking and let go of her hand, giving a little cough. "What happened?" asked Lily, brushing her hair out of her face. "I don't remember much after seeing Sky running towards me."
"He was going for your amulet," Dylan explained. "The Haunter was about to kill Specter, and Sky stepped in front of him. It almost hit him with a Night Shade attack, but he swung your amulet at it. The amulet went right through it, and hit the Haunter." He paused. "Actually, it really sort of went into the Haunter."
Lily waited. When no one continued, she said, "Then what?"
"I was trying to think of how to describe what happened when the amulet hit it," said Dylan. "It screamed, and then it sort of..." he gestured vaguely. "Came apart."
"So it's dead?" said Lily. Dylan shook his head.
"I don't think that your amulet was enough to kill it. It didn't look like dying, it was..." He looked at Sky, unable to articulate what he meant.
"It was like when Specter fades out, and turns invisible," Sky said. "Only when the Haunter did it, it didn't look like it was on purpose. It looked like it was coming unglued."
"So when Specter does that," Lily said, "he's not just turning invisible, he's going...away?" Sky nodded.
"I think he's going into wherever it is that Ghost Pokémon get their power from," said Dylan. "Professor Agnam told us that Ghosts draw on a type of Technic energy that's the same kind that's released when something dies. So maybe it's going to wherever all that energy goes to."
"The Land of the Dead," Lily whispered.
"If there is a Land of the Dead," said Sky's father, looking skeptical. Lily didn't bother correcting him. Many people didn't believe there was anything after death. Lily wasn't one of them.
The door opened, and Lily's father walked in.
"Lily," he said, relieved. "You're awake." He turned to Dylan. "I called your parents to tell them where you were," he said. "They'll be here soon."
"Thanks," said Dylan. He didn't look at Mr. Kent, and something in the tone of his voice suggested that Lily's dad could have said he was going to join a cult and eat live caterpillars for all the notice Dylan would have taken. Dylan was thinking about something. He was thinking pretty hard, too, from the looks of it. Lily thought about asking him, but if she knew Dylan (which she did), then the best time to ask him would be once he made a decision. Before that, he was likely to shrug and say, "Nothing, really." But it would be something, Lily was sure of that. With Dylan, it was always something. She lay back down and closed her eyes.
Sleep was coming, the black-robed lady in the night, stealing thoughts and giving dreams. Lily dimly heard the others leaving the room. Soon only her parents remained. They stood watchfully at her bedside, silent guardians.
The dark Lady in the night had her way, and Lily slept.
Dylan felt the sun on his face, but didn't rise. It was a school day, and he knew that soon he would be biking to school because he would lie there too long and miss the bus. But it felt good to lie here among the warmth and think. He was tired. He hadn't gotten back home from the hospital until about midnight.
He thought about Lily, of course. He had been so worried about her! He had known that there would be almost no chance of the Haunter's attack leaving permanent damage, let alone death. But he had worried just the same. The way she had looked as she lay there! Her teeth clenched together, her body as tense as a springboard, that awful shivering racing through her. She had looked like someone possessed. It had chilled him to the bone.
But Lily was all right now. No need to worry about, no harm done, just a little near-fatal attack from a blood-crazed Pokémon. Everyone else had written it off as just that: no harm done. Lily was all right, so now they could go about the business of forgetting that she had nearly died. That was what haunted him so much—that she had nearly died. If Geodude had been a little bit slower, she might have been worse off than paralyzed.
She might have been dead.
And that had brought it all home for him. Because what he was really thinking about as he lay there in bed was Sky. Sky—and what Dylan had told him. Lulled into complacence by the Specter's friendliness and the gift of Geodude, he had done a hasty thing. Maybe even a stupid thing, in retrospect. He had told Sky that they would be Pokémon trainers.
Now he thought maybe that had been a bad thing to say. He hadn't understood the dark side to Pokémon. Yesterday, he had discovered it. It was more than a dark side; it was a mad side. It was a lunatic side, a side full of blood and terror and sheer alien wildness. That side of Pokémon would cheerfully rend Dylan and Lily and Sky apart.
And it wouldn't have much trouble in doing so.
Dylan had no desire to join the long account books of those unfortunates who had died outside the electric fences. Those people had strayed outside the ordered and sane world that was the last rags and tatters of civilization. They had appeared to stray outside of the town and into the grass, but Dylan knew that that was not why they had died. They had died because when they stepped outside the town, they stepped outside of sanity. They had entered a world of madness where no man ruled and brutality was not the exception but the rule.
What made Sky so sure that they could live where so many had died?
It was an unanswerable question. So Dylan didn't try to answer it. He climbed out of bed, got dressed, and went downstairs. Fifteen minutes later, he was biking to school.
Dylan stopped. Something was blurring his right eye—an eyelash or something. He rubbed his eye, and whatever it was went away. As he got back on his bike he saw the Tower rising in the distance like a massive fang, and thought about the attack yesterday (trying not to think about the massive reprimand they had gotten for going near wild Pokémon).
The channelers had explained, saying that in rare circumstances, it was possible for a malevolent Ghost to possess a person. Channelers were more vulnerable to this possession, since they were so strongly connected to ghosts and the spirit world. Normally, they carried a charm to prevent it, but apparently one channeler had dropped hers and damaged it. Once she became possessed, the power of all the others lessened, allowing more to be taken over. With each channeler that became possessed, the rest became more vulnerable.
Apparently, a few channelers had realized what was happening and taken the charms from the possessed ones, giving the free channelers more protection. They exorcized the others and banished the Ghosts that had appeared. However, they arrived too late to help Dylan, Sky, and Lily. The channelers had said that they couldn't understand how the three children had survived for so long.
Of course, they didn't know about Specter and the Geodude.
Dylan put thoughts of death out of his mind as he headed into the school building. He found his locker and got out his math textbook and binder. He walked up the stairs to his class, trying not to think about the electric fence and what it meant for humankind.
Unfortunately, Algebra class wasn't nearly interesting enough to distract him.
While Mr. Tuttle prattled about consecutive integers, Dylan began to feel last night's lack of sleep catching up with him. He tried simultaneously to stay awake and to ignore Sky's eager whispered comments about preparing to leave town. One was relatively easy to do. The other... well, Sky was the kind of guy who shut up just about when he felt like it, and unless a teacher told him to, he wasn't likely to do it any sooner. Finally, Dylan decided he had to tell Sky about his misgivings.
"Listen, Sky—", he started to say. But Mr. Tuttle's voice cut in. "Mr. Imena, Mr. Talbot, please have your conversation somewhere more appropriate. Latin class, maybe. Not here."
There were a few giggles from around the room. Dylan went back to his struggle for consciousness. He wondered for a second what was blocking his vision, realized it was his eyelids, and opened them again. He even managed to keep them that way, for almost fifteen seconds. Mr. Tuttle paused in the middle of explaining what X squared plus twenty-two X minus forty equaled, and looked at Dylan.
"Did you not get enough sleep last night, Mr. Imena?" he asked.
"I was in the hospital—" Dylan yawned. "—visiting Lily Andros."
There was a titter from somewhere in the room. Sky rolled his eyes. "Well, if you aren't able to stay awake," Mr. Tuttle said, "then maybe you should go home and catch up on your sleep. I'll write you a note."
Sky pretended to stifle a yawn.
"Good try," said Mr. Tuttle. Sky grinned, and Dylan gathered his books and walked back down to his locker.
Half an hour later, he was asleep in his bed.
Time passed, as it had a way of doing. Dylan awoke, the light of late afternoon streaming in through his window and turning his room into a puddle of gold. Downstairs, he could hear his parents' voices, louder and harsher than normally. He wondered what they were arguing about. Pulling on some clothes, he started down the stairs a little bit.
"Principle?" his mother was yelling. "Principle? How could anything be that bad?"
"I don't want to say," his father said. "It was bad enough, believe me. But I don't want to talk about it."
"I don't care if they wanted you to sell cigarettes to toddlers, you should still have talked to me first! You don't just quit your job without talking over first! We have kids to feed, David!"
Dylan's eyes grew wider. Quit your job? His father had quit? What was going on? He crept downstairs and opened the door. "Mom!" he called.
The voices stopped. "What is it?" came his mom's voice after a pause.
"I'm going to Sky's!"
"Okay, but be back before seven. And stay away from that Tower!"
Don't you worry about that, Mom, Dylan thought. I don't plan on going there anytime soon. He headed to Sky's house, pulling into the driveway and dropping his bike on the scraggly lawn. Sky's dad never seemed to have the time to cut it, and Sky wouldn't know a work ethic if it slapped him in the face. Dylan ran up to the door, but Sky opened it even before he could knock. "Saw you biking up," he said. "C'mon in."
Dylan walked into Sky's house, taking off his shoes in the uncarpeted "mud room". He noticed a picture of Sky and his parents hanging on the wall. His mother was smiling broadly, her bright red hair drifting in the breeze. She looked so much like Sky, except that her face was softer and rounder. The squareness of Sky's face was from his father.
It must hurt, he thought suddenly. To look at her when she looks so much like him. Looking at something like that and knowing she's dead—it must hurt.
"Dylan?" Sky called from the kitchen. "You dead?" Dylan heard Lily laughing softly in the kitchen. She must have come over earlier.
"Coming," Dylan said, walking out of the mud room. Sky and Lily were sitting at the kitchen table, holding bottles of cream soda and looking at a magazine. "Check it out," said Sky, gesturing to the magazine. Dylan opened the fridge and got out a cream soda, then walked over to look at the picture Sky was pointing to. It was a green camping tent, with a fancy-looking rain cover and a zippered door.
"We got it two months ago," said Sky. "It's awesome, tons of space. It's a four-man, and it's completely waterproof. We've only used it on one trip so far, to Mt. Moon, where there aren't too many wild Pokémon. But it works like a dream. I was thinking..." he paused. "...it'd be good for when we leave town."
Dylan sighed. "Look, Sky..."
"Yeah?" said Sky. Dylan tried to think how he could phrase what he wanted to tell Sky. He settled on the direct approach.
"I don't think we should go."
Sky stared at him. "What?" he said.
"I know you think it would be fun, but since what happened the other night—"
Sky cut him off. "Fun? It's more than just fun! It's the most interesting thing anyone could do with their lives! Think about what kind of an experience it would be!"
"I have." Dylan said flatly. "But you haven't. Think about what it would be like outside the fence, with wild Pokémon all over the place and only one low-level Geodude to protect you. There's no guarantee of safety out there Sky. Just look at what almost happened to Lily the other night. She could have died!" He paused. "We could all have died. That's the kind of situation we'd be in if we left town."
Dylan expected Sky to be angry. He expected protests, arguments, yelling. Instead, Sky seemed to be listening to him.
"Tell you what," said Sky slowly. "I happen to disagree with you. I think that with your Geodude we'd be perfectly safe. I think we'd have the time of our lives. But I see your point. How about a compromise—we try it for a little while. We'll go to Cerulean City. It's three days on foot, if we go around Rock Tunnel. Three days, and we'll see what we think. If we like it, and we don't get hurt, we continue. Otherwise, we call home when we reach Cerulean and tell our parents that we want to come back, and they pick us up."
"What if we got hurt on the way there?" said Dylan.
"We'll bring a cell phone."
Dylan looked down at the magazine again. He rubbed a blurry spot on one eye. He must have been sleepier than he thought. Looking at the picture of the tent, he realized that Sky's idea was starting to make a lot of sense.
"Fine," he said. "We'll try it."
Sky and Dylan walked back through the night to Dylan's house. They wanted to ask Dylan's parents if Dylan could sleep over with Sky. If they said yes, they would spend the night working out the plan for their trip. Otherwise, they would have to do it the next day. Lily was waiting back at Sky's house—she already had permission.
As they drew near to Dylan's house, Dylan noticed something odd. All the lights were turned out. The house was only visible as a square shadow in the weak light of the streetlamps. Dylan stopped, confused.
"Why are the lights out?" he wondered aloud. Sky was about to answer, but he fell silent.
There was movement in the shadows. A large, blocky figure stepped into the glow of the lamp. Another, thinner one followed. Dylan also thought he saw a third skulking just outside the beam of the streetlamp.
The figure moved a little closer. The light revealed its face—a square, slack face with a scraggly goatee. Dylan and Sky recognized the face.
It was the dazed-looking Rocket that they had seen outside the Tower of Grays. The female Rocket's face was less visible. Her heavy eyeshadow turned her eyes into pits in the shadows. Lamplight glinted off an earring. Dylan and Sky couldn't see the third shape's face, but the whip-thin figure told them all they needed to know. It was the three punks who had tried to rough them up the day they found Specter.
"Hi," said the zoned-out Rocket in a whispery voice that made Dylan's skin crawl.
"Why are the lights off in my house?" he demanded. "And what are you doing here?"
The Rocket gave a girlish giggle. "You could say it's been...quarantined," he said in his revolting voice. "Until your family cooperates. It's funny—we didn't even know, when we were told to come here, that the little brat who slipped away from us lived here."
"Let my parents go. I'll call the police," Dylan snapped.
"Actually," said the Rocket. "You won't." he tittered again. "As a matter of fact, you'll be coming with us. Right now." He reached inside his coat, just the way Dylan had seen the girl reach into hers that day by the tower. But he didn't take out a gun.
He took out a Pokéball.