The Dollhouse was empty when Alex came home. It was 8:15. Xander should have been watching Raw, with Renee hovering nearby pretending not to be interested, but the TV sat cold and silent in the stillness of the living room. Light from the streetlamp outside shone through the open door, throwing Alex's shadow on the far wall. The wooden base of the glass coffee table still sat in the middle of the room, supporting nothing.

Something on the floor glinted in the light. Alex investigated: a sliver of glass from the shattered table, embedded in the carpet, waiting to shred a bare foot. He plucked it from between the fibers, tossed it into the gravel parking lot, and shut the door. He stood in the darkness, recalibrating. The vial was in his pocket. Though he had endured many trials, he had returned with the prize.

He wanted to shovel all the fake gunpowder up his nose right then. He deserved it, after the day he'd had. He'd tried to talk with Tim and with Russell, tried to have pleasant conversations with both of them, and they'd both acted like he was some unflushed turd they'd found waiting in the bowl. With Russell, he'd kind of expected it, after he'd wigged out so bad over Stephen Brick. And even though he'd put up a fight, Alex wore him down enough to get the vial. But Tim, fucking Tim of all people, after everything I've done for him. The little nothing doesn't even realize that I'm his ticket into the Dead Men.

He hadn't even wanted to be there, outside Thorn Hall at godforsaken nine AM on a Monday morning. Alex's role models were people who were just going to sleep at nine in the morning; or, who, at the very least, had the good sense to stay indoors, with blackout curtains drawn, and a mind-altering substance close to hand. But Avery had called and reminded him of his assigned task, and Alex, in his state, hadn't been able to think of a single reason it could not be accomplished. It was a reasonable request, he assured Avery, though by that point he had been awake somewhere north of 45 hours. Everything seemed reasonable, but nothing was.

So he had waited outside Thorn for Tim to appear, and when he did, whatever he saw in Alex's face made him cringe away in fear. Add Tim to the list, with Renee, Audrey, Xander and Russell: People Who Want Nothing to Do with Alex.

But at least he had the gunpowder. Or the close approximation of gunpowder. He was pushing 60 hours on no sleep. But he had to stay awake. Every time he closed his eyes, the dream started again.

The Dollhouse, but not the Dollhouse. The stairs go up and up – ten stories, twenty, disappearing into darkness. But at the top, a circle of light. You hear the thing dragging its misshapen feet across the carpet. It emerges into the light. It is hunched and scrawny, pale papery skin under black rags. A pathetic thing. Its mouth and eyes are ragged black holes, waiting to be filled. Waiting for you.

Caffeine and fear could only sustain a person for so long. He was approaching a decision point. Go to sleep, and face the thing at the top of the stairs. Or take the gunpowder, and find out what awaited on the other side.

The choice seemed easy. Alex reached in his pocket and fingered the vial. It was warm to the touch. He knew it was just his body heat, keeping it toasty in the subtropical climate of his pocket, but he couldn't swear that it wasn't generating its own heat. It was a living thing.

You've only had gunpowder – real gunpowder – once before. It was Halloween, the first time you ever visited the Dollhouse, when it still belonged to Dave and Avery and Owen Bean. The borders are thin on Halloween to begin with, as you well know, but the gunpowder erased them. You could pass from this world into the next as easily as you pleased. That world was warm and safe and full of friendly faces, and you stayed until you had to be dragged out of it, spitting and clawing. You can't remember the face of the person who gave you the gunpowder. It was a mask.

Alex opened the bathroom door to his right and flipped on the lights. A hollow-eyed ghoul stared back at him from the mirror. It raised a shaking hand, extended a bony finger. "Xander?" it said. No, you idiot. You're Alex. I'm Alex.

There was a hand mirror in the middle drawer under the sink, part of the Wahl Home Haircutting System he'd bought to shave the 'Shakers' heads as a band bonding ritual. Only Audrey had gone through with it, and cursed the lot of them while Xander and Patrick laughed and laughed. He dug out the plastic pouch containing the System, found the mirror and placed it flat on the counter next to the sink. He fished the vial out of his pocket. The ghoul in the mirror watched hungrily.

"Stop it, Xander," Alex said. "It's not for you." But the ghoul didn't listen. Xander never did. It's not Xander, moron. It's your reflection.

In the mirror, Xander smiled. He twisted the cap off the vial and shook a little pile of the semi-translucent crystals onto the hand mirror. With a finger he shaped them into a line. Alex bent over the mirror. The line formed a scar on his reflection's cheek. On Xander's cheek. The door is locked just you and me. In the mirror, Xander pushed one nostril closed. Russell wouldn't even look at you when he finally handed it over. This is the last time, he said. Stephen Brick opened a door for him too, and he didn't like whatever he saw behind it.

Alex hovered over the mirror. From its depths, Xander smiled up at him. "What are you waiting for?" he said. Just a thousand reflections of my own sweet self self self self self self

Alex woke up on the floor. His body was cold but his head was hot. He lifted his face from the carpet of the entrance hall, and looked directly into a sunbeam shining through the broken blinds on the living room window. "Fuck," he said. He closed his eyes and bright red fractals exploded behind his eyelids. "Shit."

His hands felt the cool tile of the bathroom floor. He'd fallen half in and half out of the bathroom. He planted his hand to push himself up, and something sharp dug into the ball of his thumb. "Fuck!" he said. "Shit." He pulled a tiny piece of reflective glass out of his hand. The face of the hand mirror lay in shards on the floor, next to the useless ping pong paddle shape that once held it. The gunpowder was scattered and lost.

Alex reached up to the counter and pulled himself up. He found the box of Band-Aids in the middle drawer and applied one to the wound on his hand. The vial was still sitting on the counter, still open, still mostly full. He looked into the mirror over the sink. The person staring back looked only like him. If he dreamed of the stairs, he couldn't remember it.

His body had made his decision for him. In the light of day, the gunpowder didn't seem so vital to his continued existence.

If Russell's cutting you off, you should save it. It might come in handy later. But you should put it somewhere Xander won't find it. He's always been the one with the appetite, willing and eager to try anything once or twice or a dozen times. He's the one who binges, the one who goes cold turkey, the one who begged you – on his knees – for twenty dollars that he could not otherwise acquire, by means legal or otherwise, just to buy a vial of what turned out to be mostly baby laxative. He's the one whose shit and piss you've cleaned up on more than one occasion. It's easy to forget that you came to this vice first.

You got it from your friend Hayden. He called it a dimebag, said he stole it from his brother, home from college for Thanksgiving. While your mom mashed potatoes, you rode your bike through the crisp fall air to the house on the corner where the Deans used to live. The leaves in the empty pool in the backyard crunched under your feet as you walked your bike out to the deep end. You rolled a lumpy, lopsided joint with a Fruit Stripe wrapper and smoked it until you singed your fingertips. You floated back home and found your mom in the kitchen. The smell of the turkey was so strong and so good you started to cry. You hugged your mom so long she started to cry too.

Xander watched you all through dinner, pure hatred on his face. You came home after school on Monday to find your room ransacked. Your guitar lay on the floor, the strings ripped from the headstock, twisting and coiling on themselves. You reached into the body and felt only an empty space where you'd hidden the weed. Xander had taken it.

Alex took the vial to the foot of the stairs. He counted to three before looking up, expecting to see the thing with its gaping black maw. It wasn't there. He climbed up to the second floor. Even if it was, it can't hurt you here. Not in the day.

The door to Audrey's room was closed, but Xander's was open. It looked like no one had been in there in a week. As far as Alex knew, no one had. The room still had his smell, though, permeating every surface and object: sweat, cigarette smoke, pot, crotch funk, a sweet almond note from the lotion he used to jerk off. And something faint but malignant, rotting away underneath it all. An ancient slice of pizza under the bed or something. The smell was repugnant, but it was his brother's.

Xander's acoustic rested in its stand on the other side of the room, next to the window, across a sea of dirty clothes, unread textbooks, chip bags and candy wrappers, discarded bandages stiff with dried blood and pus, porn magazines and guitar magazines, and one splayed open to a centerfold of a naked girl straddling a guitar. The acoustic was the only thing in the room that had been shown any love or care or respect. It was the last place Xander would look.

Alex stepped through the chaos on the floor and knelt next to the guitar. He didn't have any tape. He pulled the Band-Aid off his hand, a perfect red circle in the middle of the white pad, and used it to affix the vial of fake gunpowder just inside the soundhole.

He put his hand on the windowsill to push himself back up. When he lifted it away, it left a spot of blood on a drawing of King Milo. Did Xander draw this? Or was it Owen Bean, or even that townie, Roger? Maybe that rotten scent belonged to one of them too. Maybe it had been part of the room before Xander ever moved in. Alex tried to recall if he had smelled it the first time he had been in this room, at the Halloween party a year ago. He hadn't been in much of a position to remember ambient room smells.

A phone rang. A red light flashed on the cordless phone base on the nightstand next to Xander's bed, but the handset was missing. Alex followed the piercing squeal to a pile of black t-shirts and dug the phone out from underneath.

"Hello?"

"Alex," said a thick, raspy voice. "You're needed."

******

King Milo stared down at them from the wall of Yarrow Hall, a bloody smear across one dead eye. They were four: Alex, Chet, Owen Bean, and Avery, taking deep drags off a cigarette and pacing so hard the thick heels of his boots were probably leaving dents in the floor. Alex flinched with each report of heel on hardwood. He wanted to find a closet and hide in it, as he'd done the one time he saw his dad mad enough to curse. Maybe I should've taken the gunpowder.

"Fuck!" Avery threw down the cigarette butt, stomped on it, and smacked the wall with a rolled-up newspaper.

Alex's pulse throbbed in his ears. He curled his fingers around the sides of his chair, to keep himself seated. Avery was supposed to be in charge. He was supposed to be in control.

"Fuck!" Avery thrust the newspaper at Alex. His hand was wrapped in gauze.

Alex relinquished his grip on the chair to take the paper. It was The Ambassador, folded over to the Op-Ed page. "IMMIGRANTS: DO WE REALLY NEED THEM?" ran the headline, above Dave's smug photo and his stupid real name. The edges of the paper quivered.

"Do you see that shit?" growled Avery.

Be more specific. It's all shit. Alex looked up from the paper. "Where is Dave? And Taylor?" Alex turned to Chet for some backup, some help, but there was none forthcoming.

"Idiot." Avery snatched the paper back and pulled a pen from inside his blazer. He made four long ovals on the page and handed it back to Alex.

He had circled the first letter of every line in Dave's column:

WEHAVEYOURSERGEANTHEISUNHARMEDAWAITINSTRUCTIONS

"We...we have your sergeant?"

"They took Dave."

"Who took Dave?"

Avery lit another cigarette. Half of it burned down to ash as he inhaled. "Motherfucking Charlie St. James," he said, in a cloud of smoke. "Charlie St. James and her goddamn Living Creatures."

For a moment the room fell so quiet Alex could hear the ash smoldering at the end of Avery's cigarette, and the whispery rattle of the newspaper shaking in his jumpy hand. The smoke rose and lingered in front of Milo's face, obscuring his features. It was impossible to tell what His Majesty was thinking. The King had left the building.

Yabba-dabba-doo, the King is gone, and so are you. That's how you knew it was safe to leave your hiding spot in the closet, when you heard George Jones playing on the stereo in the den. You found your dad passed out in the recliner, an empty tumbler on the verge of slipping out of his hand. You never heard your dad yell after that, but before too long you never heard from him at all.

Owen Bean rose to his feet. "Jesus Christ, Avery. The Creatures took Dave? That doesn't even make any sense."

Don't say that. You're only going to make him madder. Though it was true. Alex had never been entirely sure why he was chosen for the Nine Dead Men. He'd never even been entirely sure that this was the real Nine – if there had ever been a real Nine - that it wasn't just some doofy club that Avery and Dave started because they couldn't get in a frat.

It's fun. There are benefits, sure. You feel a certain something when you're all reciting the oath, or just walking around together, all sharing the same secret. Almost like being in a band, though not as good. You don't create together, you only consume. And though you all share this secret, you never think of the Nine as your friends. They're what you imagine coworkers would be like, in those bleak sleepless hours when you picture a life without the band, without success. Your mistakes have forced you together, so you have to get along.

But you've never done anything as one of the Nine Dead Men that you couldn't have done as a brother in Sigma Chi. All the secrets and the titles and the oaths and the symbols and the traditions are just window dressing on what is, at its core, a sad frat with a perennially weak pledge class. And if the Nine are a frat, then the Living Creatures – if they exist at all – are a sorority. They aren't kidnapping people.

"Don't call me for shit like this, Avery." Owen Bean took one step, and Avery fixed him with a look. My dad only gave me a look like that one time, and that was enough.

"You have not been dismissed, Corpus Major," Avery said.

Owen Bean sat back down.

"If you're all done questioning the facts," Avery said, "I have a reasonable request for you." Avery cleared his throat and called out in a louder voice, "Roger. We're ready."

Alex tensed as slow footsteps trudged down the stairs in the hall outside the room.

--Dude. That's the fucking townie from the Kangaroo. You definitely should have taken the gunpowder.

Xander's voice cut out as soon as it appeared, like a radio switching off. The door behind them swung open, and Roger stepped in, lank and filthy, ripe with his townie musk of cigarettes, Evan Williams and wet dog. Alex remembered something Xander said, during the two months in middle school they'd dabbled in Dungeons & Dragons: "The revenant enters the sanctum."

Roger glared at Alex as he walked to the front of the room, his eyes dark wells behind the curtain of limp hair and the dramatic ridgeline of his nose. Only when he reached the graffito of King Milo did he look away from Alex. He raised his eyes to Milo and gave a tiny nod.

"Some of you may know Roger," said Avery. "He's an old friend."

Roger nodded at Owen Bean. "Owen Bean." He turned back to Alex. "What's up, rock star?" He raised his muscle shirt, exposing a chest as pale and hairy as his arms were leathery. "Sign my tit?"

Avery sighed. "Put that away, Roger. You know why you're here."

Roger lowered his shirt. "Another time, rock star."

Avery pointed at Chet and Alex. "Quartermaster. Viscount. Go with Roger. We must retaliate, and we must do it soon. Owen Bean, you stay here. I have another job for you."

"Let's go, geniuses," said Roger. "Like the man said, this is time sensitive."

They had no choice but to rise and follow Roger out of the room and out of Yarrow to the West Campus quad. He's going to kill me. Townies never forget.

Roger lit a cigarette. "Either one of you winners have a car?"

Chet shook his head. Shit. "I do," said Alex. "It's in the deck."

They walked north across the quad, the freshly mowed grass springy and soft under Alex's Chuck Taylors. It was shady under the oaks and magnolias, but here and there light cut through the branches, dappling the quad green and gold. This is the kind of shit they put in the brochure. If only Roger and I weren't here to spoil the picture.

The northern edge of the quad was lined with a long, two-story brick building, eighteen purple doors spaced out evenly on each floor, half-hidden behind fat white columns. Purple Hall, they called it. Alex half-remembered something about it from the brochure. It was some kind of honor to live in one of the rooms, though it looked like a pretty shitty deal to Alex. Even worse than Wintertree. The brochure had said something about Thomas Jefferson too, though Alex couldn't remember exactly what.

Chet broke the silence as they passed Purple Hall. "Why wasn't Taylor there?"

Alex shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

"Did he ever talk with Renee?"

Roger's head turned at the mention of Renee.

"I don't even know."

"That your girlfriend, rock star?" said Roger.

"Shut up."

"If it's that Hollister kid talking to her, they ain't just talking."

"He's not wrong," said Chet.

"Shut up."

Behind Purple Hall they took the steps down the short hill and crossed Berry Street to the art school, an explosion of jagged concrete spires thrust at an angle from the earth. It looked like the scene in Bogus Journey where the Evil Robot Uses kill Bill and Ted, throwing them off this slanted rock formation like a sinking ocean liner. Another brochure fact: fhe art school was designed by some famous architect, a former student. They say she went crazy, but was it before or after she took the job?