INTERWORLD NEIL GAIMAN
MICHAEL REAVES
Neil would like to dedicate this book to his son Mike, who read the manuscript and liked it and encouraged us, and always asked
when he was going to be able to read it in a real book.
Michael would like to dedicate this book to Steve Saffel.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Once I got lost in my own house.
CHAPTER TWO
I rode the bus home in a daze. A few…
CHAPTER THREE
The stranger was wearing a full-face mask of some kind,…
CHAPTER FOUR
Greenville High School was built nearly fifty years ago. The…
INTERLOG
I’d got back to Base Town late at night. Most…
CHAPTER FIVE
I was walking after the witch, with Mr. Jellyfish and the…
INTERLOG 2
Looking back on it, I made a couple of seriously…
CHAPTER SIX
Well, to be 100 percent truthful about it, “we” didn’t…
CHAPTER SEVEN
I fell out of a shimmering patch of sky about…
CHAPTER EIGHT
I couldn’t leave him there.
PART II
CHAPTER NINE
I was holding onto the side of the cliff face…
CHAPTER TEN
And I’d thought Mr. Dimas’s tests were hard.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d been back in the In-Between several times since that…
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Get behind me!” shouted Jai, proving again that he could…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They came and asked me questions, and I answered them…
PART III
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I could Walk again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hue was nowhere to be seen when I got into…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
This is how to find dungeons, if you ever have…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The corridors got narrower and darker as we descended from…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was a rumble from above us, and a big…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The room was dark, the only source of light a…
CHAPTER TWENTY
She hung in midair, between us and the Malefic but…
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We were all there in the Old Man’s outer office:…
AFTERWORD
AUTHORS’ NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
OTHER BOOKS BY NEIL GAIMAN
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Once I got lost in my own house.
I guess it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds. We had just built a new annex—added a hallway and a bedroom for the squid, aka Kevin, my really little brother—but still, the carpenters had left and the dust had settled over a month ago. Mom had just sounded the dinner call and I was on my way downstairs. I took a wrong turn on the second floor and found myself in a room wallpapered with clouds and bunnies. I realized I’d turned right instead of left, so I promptly made the same mistake again and blundered into the closet.
By the time I got downstairs Jenny and Dad were already there and Mom was giving me the Look. I knew trying to explain would sound lame, so I just clammed up and dug in to my mac and cheese.
But you see the problem. I don’t have what my aunt Maude used to call a “bump of direction.” If anything, I’ve got a hollow where the bump should be. Forget knowing north from south or east from west—I have a hard enough time telling right from left. Which is all pretty ironic, considering how things turned out…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Okay. I’m going to write this like Mr. Dimas taught us. He said it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you start somewhere. So I’m going to start with him.
It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was pretty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. You try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.
But Mr. Dimas was always doing stuff like that. He made the front page of the local paper last year and nearly got fired when he turned two classes into warring fiefdoms that tried to negotiate peace for an entire semester. The peace talks eventually broke down and the two classes went to war on the quad during free period. Things got a little carried away and a few bloody noses resulted. Mr. Dimas was quoted on the local news as saying, “Sometimes war is necessary to teach us the value of peace. Sometimes you need to learn the real value of diplomacy in avoiding war. And I’d rather my students learned those lessons on the playground than on the battlefield.”
Rumor at school was that he was going to be canned for that one. Even Mayor Haenkle was pretty annoyed, seeing as how his son’s nose was one of the ones bloodied. Mom and Jenny—my younger sister—and I sat up late, drinking Ovaltine and waiting for Dad to come home from the city council meeting. The squid was fast asleep in Mom’s lap—she was still breast-feeding him back then. It was after midnight when Dad came in the back door, tossed his hat on the table and said, “The vote was seven to six, in favor. Dimas keeps his job. My throat’s sore.”
Mom got up to fix Dad some tea, and Jenny asked Dad why he’d gone to bat for Mr. Dimas. “My teacher says he’s a troublemaker.”