by Simon Holt
“Henry, thank God, you made it!” he exclaimed. “Are you okay? Did you see Reggie?”
“Not yet,” Machen said. He started the car and pulled away slowly, glancing periodically in the rearview mirror. Only when they were on the road back to his house and he was satisfied that no one was following them did he address Henry.
“Henry, are you all right? Hurt in any way?”
Henry shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”
“And you did go to visit Reggie today?”
“Yes, but they wouldn’t let us—”
“Wait,” Machen interrupted. “I need you to start at the beginning, so we don’t miss anything. Do you think you can do that?”
Henry nodded.
“Okay, first, where are they keeping Reggie?”
“It’s a hospital called the Home Institute of Psychiatry,” Henry answered quickly. “And I remember we drove on Route eighty-four for a long time, and it was close to a town called St. Mary’s.”
“That’s excellent, Henry. We’ll definitely be able to find it again, then.”
“The Home Institute?” Aaron scoffed. “Unger’s holed up in a place called Home?”
“Can you describe the place?” Machen went on, ignoring the irony.
Henry thought for a minute.
“It wasn’t like Thornwood. It was big and white, like a normal hospital. And very cold.”
“Cold like Vour cold?” asked Aaron.
“Yeah. I had the chills everywhere there.” Henry shivered, as if his body remembered the sensation. “There are Vours all over the place there, and they have Reggie.”
“But we know where she is now. We can get her out.” Aaron put his hand on Henry’s shoulder.
“What happened next?” Machen pressed. “When you went inside?”
“They tried to stop us at first. We were in the lobby, and a doctor—not Dr. Unger—came out and told us we shouldn’t be there. He said we couldn’t see Reggie, and we had to leave. Dad started yelling and pushing. I’ve never seen him like that. It was awful.”
Aaron had suspected it would go down something like that. There was no way the Vours would let them in to see Reggie. But he knew it must have been hard for Henry to witness.
“Dad got through the first security doors,” Henry went on. “There was a long, white hallway with doors all the way along it, and elevators at the end. But that was all I could see. A bunch of security guards grabbed Dad and they called the police. That’s why we were so late—they took us to the station. Dad was trying to tell the police that they had kidnapped Reggie, that they wouldn’t let us see her, but the cops didn’t care. They just threatened to keep him there if he didn’t calm down. Once we got home I thought Dad might make me stay in tonight, but he seemed relieved not to have to deal with me.”
“What’s your dad going to do?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he knows what to do. He said he was going to talk to a lawyer.”
“But of course he wouldn’t think to ask me about it, even though I warned him this would happen,” Aaron grumbled.
“I don’t get why,” said Henry. “After today, I really thought he’d believe us.”
“Your father is a man of extreme rationality, Henry,” said Machen. “He will always assume there is a sensible answer, even to the most inane questions. He won’t believe in Vours until he gets some kind of visual proof, and even then, maybe not.”
They had reached his house, and he parked the car and turned the engine off.
“You were very brave today, Henry. I know it can’t have been easy to go through that. But now we’re getting somewhere. The camera worked?”
“I think so,” said Henry. “I did like Aaron showed me.”
They went inside, and Machen set up the equipment for watching the video Henry had filmed. Throughout the week he and Aaron had met stealthily between the playground and the high school, and Henry had turned over one of his coats to Aaron. Machen had stitched a lipstick camera and mic—more goodies pilfered from the Tracers—into the lapel of the coat, creating a fake buttonhole for the lens. Aaron had explained how to use it, but they hadn’t had the opportunity for a live run. Now they hoped for the best.
Machen cut the camera out of Henry’s coat, careful not to damage the jacket too badly, and hooked it up to a monitor. The image flashed on the screen, and the three settled in to watch.
Henry had done a good job getting an exterior view of the Home Institute, as Aaron had instructed him to. Like he said, it was very unlike Thornwood. That hospital had been a rehabbed farm, the interior cozy and inviting. This place was a compound: large, generic, anonymous. Machen made notes about the perimeter and security as Henry and his father headed inside.
The interior was as sterile as the outside: white walls and floors, glass barriers keeping visitors out and patients in. They were staring at Mr. Halloway’s back as he strode ahead to the reception desk.
The following minutes were hard to watch. As Henry had said, his father had quickly grown belligerent with the nurse on duty, demanding to see his daughter and threatening to call the police. A doctor in a white lab coat appeared and tried to calm him down, but Mr. Halloway was not having it.
“I want to see my daughter!” he shouted over and over again. “Regina Halloway! She’s a patient here under Dr. Unger. I want to see her now!”
“Dr. Unger isn’t here right now,” the other doctor said. “I can’t allow any visitors without his authorization. I suggest you contact his office directly—”
“I don’t care about authorization! You can’t keep me from my daughter!”
Aaron bit his lip. It was a terrible sight: Mr. Halloway, so big and capable, and yet so powerless. The desperation and confusion rang through his voice, and his entire body trembled. It was unnerving. He balled his hands into fists, as Aaron had seen him do that day at the library.
And then, as an orderly was passing through the security door leading to the patients’ wing, he sprang, pushing the man aside and charging through the door. The view started to shake as Henry ran after, and shouting voices sounded around the camera. Mr. Halloway made it halfway down the hallway before security guards seemed to descend from all sides, barring his way. Aaron thought he could hear Henry’s voice crying out meekly for his father, but it was drowned out by the jangling of an alarm. Mr. Halloway tried to push through the guards; it took four of them to subdue him.
All the while, Machen had been scribbling in his notebook. He wasn’t paying attention to the theatrics on-screen; he was recording the locations of security cameras, the time it took the guards to respond, and all the other data that would be pertinent to staging a breakout. Aaron had to admire his focus, and he tried to follow Machen’s lead.
The guards had cuffed Mr. Halloway and were leading him back to the lobby, where a sheriff’s deputy waited. As they passed Henry, his father looked at him. “It’s going to be okay, Henry. Son, it’s going to be all right. Don’t be afraid.”
Machen jumped up and switched off the camera. The television went black.
“I think we got everything we need,” he said.
Henry sat quietly on the couch, looking at his lap. Aaron scooched next to him and put an arm around his shoulder.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that today. But we have what we need now. We know where Reggie is, and we’re going to figure out how to get her out. All because of you, Henry. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Aaron wondered if Henry was trying to hide tears, but when the boy turned to him, his eyes were dry and resolved.
“I know. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Aaron began researching the Home Institute of Psychiatry immediately. Over the next weeks, he and Machen gathered as much information as they could on the place. It was located in Connecticut, just off Route 84; it wasn’t a particularly renowned hospital, but on paper it appeared legit enough. They found schematics for the building in a local library’s
archives, and Machen made a few more trips out to St. Mary’s to scout the area and get a better feeling for the property.
The real break came two weeks later when Aaron was able to hack into Home’s network. Suddenly at his fingertips were the names of all the patients, their room numbers, the meds they were taking, the food they ate. And there she was: Regina Halloway, room 304. He pulled up the hospital blueprints and examined the floor plan. Third floor, west side, far from the elevators. It was the size of a prison cell.
Aaron looked at the information on the screen in front of him. It would be so easy to change her information, to delete her altogether—maybe to order a transfer? But it wasn’t the smart move. Unger would be keeping a close eye on Reggie, especially after the incident with her father, and any computer glitch would be another red flag. The rescue needed to be a complete surprise attack. And that was Machen’s purview.
“It’s doable,” he told Aaron over his cell one Tuesday morning in late November as Aaron was on his way into school. “I’ve figured out how to do it.”
Aaron’s heart soared. There was still a long way to go, but it felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Finally they had a plan.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all year,” he said. “We should do it Saturday—I don’t want her in there a day more than necessary.”
“I agree, but there’s a catch,” Machen said. “We’re going to need a third. We’ll have to have two go in, and another in the car. I asked Crystal but she won’t do it. None of my contacts want to risk exposing themselves like that, even for Reggie.”
“Okay, we’ll figure it out.” Aaron clicked the phone off and pocketed it. His eyes fell on a black Toyota SUV pulling into the student parking lot. He gritted his teeth and racked his brain for another option, but none came to mind. Saturday was five days away, and he was running short on allies. He walked toward the car.
As Quinn hopped out and grabbed his backpack, Aaron was relieved to see that he was alone—no Nina or other hangers-on were in the vicinity.
Quinn cocked his head as he saw Aaron striding toward him.
“I need to know if you’re still interested in helping Reggie,” Aaron said once he got close.
“Of course. What do you need me to do?”
Aaron glanced at the car.
“Drive.”
7
Reggie dove through the mirror and landed hard on cold stone. She whipped around to see the glass still intact—she had passed through it without it breaking—and the hag with the scissors slammed into it on the other side. She brandished her razor-sharp teeth and struck the mirror with her scissors again and again, their bloody tips leaving reddish black smears on the glass, but the boundary held.
She had passed into a deeper realm of yet another fearscape, and the witch could not follow her here. Eventually she backed away, scowling, and the room on the other side faded to black. Reggie was outside, looking at her own reflection in the window of a cottage. She winced. Her hair looked like it had been cut with a vacuum cleaner.
“Only a teen girl would be afraid of an evil hairstylist,” Reggie muttered to herself, thinking of Missy, the petite brunette she was strapped to out in the real world. She had looked about sixteen, Reggie’s age, and the relative solidity of the fearscape indicated she hadn’t been a Vour that long, perhaps a year or two.
Reggie turned her attention to her arms. In addition to mauling Reggie’s split ends, the psychotic beautician had gotten in several good stabs with her shears, and the wounds were oozing a black, viscous fluid. Had she not been so exhausted, so strung out from fight after fight in Unger’s endless parade of fearscape challenges, Reggie could have avoided this type of injury. Her skills for combating the wicked manifestations inside these forsaken places had grown immensely, but those skills would matter little if her mind was forced to battle without rest. Sooner or later, she would break for good. But until then, there was nowhere to go but onward.
Trees grew right up to the house, and their leafless branches scraped the cottage walls like spindly skeleton fingers. The front door stood open, but inside was only blackness. A few feet away, a dirt path led into the forest.
Reggie shivered, and her teeth began to chatter. Cold. Always so damn cold.
She had two choices—go inside or follow the path. Though she was loath to enter the uninviting cottage, she would freeze if she was out in this weather much longer without more clothing. But just then a gust of wind blew the front door shut, revealing a long, red cloak hanging from a peg on the wall. Reggie eyed it suspiciously.
Most objects that Reggie found signaled that she was on the right track, but they were often small tokens. She didn’t know how an old-fashioned cloak would correspond to a teenage girl like Missy. Reggie tried the knob, but the door was stuck. The fearscape seemed to be telling her that the right direction was through the woods, but to go that way, she needed some kind of covering.
She gingerly removed the cloak, holding it out wide so that it fluttered open. She checked both sides and inside the hood but found no insects, rats, or other surprises waiting to jump out at her. Reggie took a deep breath and swung the fabric around her shoulders, fastening it at her throat.
She waited, but no magic spell took hold of her. It appeared to be a garden-variety cloak, and a warm one at that. Reggie snuggled into the thick wool and pulled the hood up over her head, so she was wrapped in a cherry-colored cocoon. She was about to head off when she noticed a basket sitting on the ground, covered with a handkerchief. Pinned to this was a note that said only, For Grandma. Kneeling, she removed the napkin, again expecting some horrifying surprise the fearscape had concocted, but the basket was filled with muffins. Blueberry, from the looks of it.
She sat back on her heels, frowning. A red cloak, a basket full of muffins, a path through the woods, and a note sending her off to Grandma’s house.
Little Red Riding Hood.
“So be on the lookout for big bad wolves,” she said to herself as she rose, taking the basket with her. She wished she had something more threatening than muffins to bring along.
She set off along the windy dirt path into the woods. Though it was winter and most of the trees were clear of leaves, they grew so closely together that it was difficult to see more than a few feet beyond the edge of the trail. The path itself was narrow and overgrown; she had to dodge branches and step over roots, making her an easy target for anyone tracking her, especially with her bright cloak against the colorless winter forest. Still, there was nothing for it but to plunge on.
As she walked, she tried to put the fearscape pieces together. There had been the outer layers that had been the surface fears—rats, the dark, a bad haircut. But she felt that now she was getting to the deeper terrors. She couldn’t see how Red Riding Hood played into it, though.
The afternoon faded to evening, and she was quickly losing light. She tripped frequently, not seeing the vagaries of the trail in the deepening shadows. And then she heard it: a low snarl.
It was almost imperceptible at first, blending in with the wind blowing through the branches. But it came again from one side of her, and then the other. She heard twigs cracking, and the growl grew louder. It was behind her now.
Slowly she turned. The moon had risen, and in its spotlight she saw the flash of two yellow eyes. The beast was massive, its fur coarse and jagged, like wire. It trundled forward, black gums curled up around its snout, revealing spiked teeth dripping with saliva.
It growled again.
Reggie backed away. If she ran, it would be on her in a second. How did the fairy tale go? Red Riding Hood was on her way to Grandma’s house, and the wolf distracted her so that he could get there first, devour the old woman, and lie in wait for the girl.
This wolf seemed uninterested in forgoing Reggie as an appetizer, though. Its fangs glinted in the moonlight.
“My, what big teeth you have,” she murmured.
She glanced about for any kind of
weapon, but the branches were too high above her head, and she couldn’t spot any rock on the ground. All she had were the muffins.
She drew one out of the basket. It seemed like just a regular breakfast treat, soft and sweet-smelling. But as she lifted it, the wolf sniffed the air. When it snarled this time, it was higher pitched, more like a whine.
It took a step back.
Wary, Reggie held the muffin out, and the wolf retreated even farther. Then the creature threw up its head and howled, an ear-piercing screech that echoed through the forest. Its call was answered with other yowls, and soon the woods were a deafening cacophony of wailing wolves.
Reggie aimed for the wolf’s open maw and hurled the muffin at it. It landed in the beast’s throat; startled, it choked the muffin down and immediately let out a whimpering cry. It staggered back, and then, to Reggie’s utter surprise and horror, it started tearing at its own stomach with its teeth. Black blood spurted out of the wounds, and its intestines spilled from its abdomen.
Reggie didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She heard movement in the woods, and the howls around her grew louder: The rest of the pack was on its way. She dashed down the path, clutching the precious muffins to her chest. She couldn’t risk spilling any.
Ahead she could see light, and at last the dense trees opened up to reveal a glen, and another cottage, warmly lit from inside with smoke wafting out of the chimney.
Grandma’s house.
She staggered to the door and tried the knob, but it was locked. She banged on it.
“Let me in!”
The howls drew nearer. The wolves poured forth from the trees.
Someone moaned inside the house, and a meek voice called out, “Are you the Woodsman?”
“My name is Reggie! I’ve come to help you!”
“Only the Woodsman can help me.”
Reggie saw flashes of yellow shining in the dark. The wolves surrounded the cottage, slinking closer on noiseless paws.
“I have the muffins you made. The muffins for Grandma. Don’t you want them?”