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.

I can’t just sit and do nothing. Going against my resolution to stay with Taelor, I prop her along the table’s legs and blindly crawl around, patting the floor and praying I don’t touch something that grabs back. My hand slides through an oily puddle, and I wipe the goop on my pants, then resume the search. Finally, a lantern rolls under my fingers.

I drag my prize under the table. After fumbling for the light’s switch, I flick it on. A soft amber glow seeps through the doily patterns, creating a luminary effect. It would be beautiful, if not for the gruesome scene it reveals.

Thick, oily sludge runs down the walls, then gathers in small puddles along the floor. Phantom shapes skim through the air, dipping and diving—like ghouls in a graveyard. Each time they touch the floor, they leave a black streak behind. It’s like I’m locked inside a Halloween movie. All that’s missing are the crumbling tombstones.

My gut twists with fear. “Morpheus. Come back, please.” I mumble the request, hoping he’ll hear me. Hoping he’s not too mad to listen.

Underneath the phantoms’ shrieks, Morpheus’s silence rings even louder.

“Morpheus! I need your help!” My scream echoes off the walls. The phantoms hiss in response, and one lunges under the table, splitting in half to form a pair of floating gloves filled with disembodied hands. They grab Taelor’s ankles to wrestle her away from me.

“Stop!” I drop the lantern and hug her from behind, fingers laced under her arms and around her chest. She becomes the object of a supernatural tug-of-war. Using my weight, I pull so hard, her boots slip off. My back thuds against the table legs. The gloved hands spin through the air in the opposite direction, then reunite to their original shapeless form.

I search for the lantern again, only to find that the other phantoms dragged it away. The one that attacked Taelor must’ve been a decoy so they could steal my light. They ooze into the holes in the lacy pattern, filling the globe until the light is extinguished.

The black void is as heavy as a wet quilt. I hold Taelor’s limp hand. Maybe Morpheus really has turned his back on me. I never thought he would leave me trapped with no way out. Even if he’s furious enough to want me to suffer, surely he’ll come around. He needs my help to save Wonderland.

As if in answer to my thoughts, a glowing light appears in the locker room’s doorway, small and sparkly like the lit fuse on a Roman candle, bobbing in midair. It dodges the plummeting wraiths on the way over, then perches atop Taelor’s knee.

The brightness fades, taking shape: two inches tall, feminine curves, lima-bean green, and naked all but for the strategic placement of glistening scales. Coppery bulbous eyes study me. It’s like being in a staring contest with a dragonfly.

“Gossamer,” I say, as surprised as I am relieved to see her. She was once Morpheus’s most beautiful and treasured sprite before she betrayed him. Either she’s here on her own or she’s made amends.

“Queen Alyssa.” She bows, and her furred wings tremble. She looks over her shoulder at the wraiths. “It is a dark time,” she says in her tinkling voice.

“It is,” I answer, trying to keep my voice steady so I’ll sound regal. I fail miserably. “Did Morpheus send you?”

“Indeed,” she answers. “He heard your call.”

I inhale deeply, reassured that he hasn’t completely abandoned me. “So what do I do? How do I defeat them?”

“You need not defeat them. Simply lead them home.”

“To Wonderland?”

“To its foundation. Children’s dreams are the infrastructure of Wonderland. You are versed in the Lewis Carroll tale and his poetry: A childish story take, and with a gentle hand, lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined in Memory’s mystic band … thus grew the world of Wonderland.”

We both duck as a wraith skims by.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumble. “That’s a little different than I remember.” Not that I’m surprised.

“In either version, the truth is there, if you but look for it. There are two halves to each child’s dream. The borogoves are the frivolous and mischievous half and are used by Sister Two within the cemetery to distract and entertain the angry spirits. But wraiths are the nightmarish and horrific half. They guard the rabbit hole, keep anything that belongs in Wonderland from escaping, or retrieve by force those things that already have. They’re tucked within the soil, and something violated their resting place.”

I remember my dream with Morpheus in Wonderland while I was drowning, how the mud seemed to breathe and bubble beneath my feet. Could that have been a collective of wraiths? Then I think of the ants, how they’re masters at moving more dirt than any other organism, including earthworms. They must’ve disrupted Wonderland’s foundation, awakened the defense mechanism to prevent the flower army from breaching the hole.