CASE, WILL, AND the Hollow Boys trudged through the Gray Lands in silence. Brian kept bounding ahead, then waiting for them to catch up. They were following Case’s silver cord, which had remained visible to her even after it left the River of Souls.
The Hollow Boys formed a protective circle around her and Will as they walked. Will warned her against staring into their eyes, telling how he’d almost fallen into their depths in his first encounter. The Hollow Boys were strange, but she found the Gray Lands even stranger.
Its silver-gray landscape resembled a sheet of aluminum foil a giant had crumpled and then tried, unsuccessfully, to flatten again. The ground sloped up and down, right and left, at odd angles. Each slope was perfectly flat, meeting the next at a sharp crease like the face
