THE NIGHTMARE

MAX SUMNER STUMBLED THROUGH A TUNNEL OF ice as the voices of the dead echoed all around him. They were telling him that he was going to die here, just like everyone else who had come to this haunted place.

Soon, the tunnel emptied into a circular chamber that was pulsating with blue light. People were trapped like statues inside the frozen walls. Most victims were probably around twelve years old—Max’s age—when they died. Some were older and at least one was younger, but they had all suffered the same fate—their eyes were lifeless and their faces were locked in terror.

The voices grew louder. Max raised his hands to his ears, but they couldn’t block out the ghastly sounds. He could feel his sanity slipping away. Then, just before he lost all sense of time and place, one voice cried out over the others.

“It’s not too late….”

Max willed himself to walk to the far end of the room, where the voice was coming from. There he saw a familiar face under the ice. It was Robert Hernandez, the boy who had been murdered by a former teacher at their school.

Max reached out to Robert, but the moment his hand scraped against the ice, the ground started to shake. Fissures shot through the surface of the ice. Max jammed his fingers into the cracks and pulled away chunks of ice and rock that crumbled as they hit the floor.

Before long, Max’s chest was heaving, and sweat was pouring down his forehead. As Max paused to catch his breath, he was distracted by a journal lying in the rubble. He picked it up, thumbing through the pages until he came to a sketch labeled THE PARAGON ENGINE.

The object in the sketch was covered with gears and steam-driven pistons, but the bulk of the machine was a ring. The phrase GATEWAY TO THE SHADOWLANDS AND BEYOND was written in looping script at the bottom of the page.

The room began to spin. Max nearly lost his footing. Then, in a flash, the icy crypt was gone, and Max was standing in the shadows of the Paragon Engine. It was real. Gears spun with rhythmic precision. Energy shimmered in the center of the ring like the surface of the sea, and the silhouette of a boy gradually emerged. Max pounded against the energy, but he couldn’t break through. Tendrils of frozen light leaped out and grabbed him by the arm.

Max was about to scream. Then he saw the face of the boy on the other side. His voice failed. Max was looking at himself!

Frost crept over his boots, then up his legs. Max tried to break free. He was too weak. It climbed into his mouth, down his throat, and into his lungs. Breathing became impossible.

Max sat up in his bed with wild eyes, gasping for air. His chest was heaving and his skin was covered in goose bumps. It was as if he’d burst out of freezing water to gasp for air. Another nightmare. Another premonition?

Max reached for his dream journal. He was still in a haze as he struggled to pick up the pen. Not that it mattered. By the time he was ready to record an entry, the dream had slipped from his memory.