Through the Trapdoor
A Feyland Story
By
Marilyn Peake
http://www.marilynpeake.com
Through the Trapdoor
© Copyright, 2018, Marilyn Peake
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
Through the Trapdoor is a novelette set within the world of Anthea Sharp’s best-selling Feyland series, and is published as a stand-alone story with her permission. It was originally available only in the Feyland Tales anthology organized and published by Anthea.
Anthea Sharp’s website:
https://antheasharp.com/
Book Cover Art by Cheri Lasota at Author’s Assembler:
https://www.authorsassembler.com
About the Author
USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Marilyn Peake writes Science Fiction and Fantasy. She’s one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as Editor for a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.
AWARDS: Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and Winner of “Best Horror” in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards.
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THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR
Marilyn Peake
A month after her sixteenth birthday, Zoe Nicholls started having debilitating nightmares. They seemed real. They didn’t always evaporate after she woke up. They remained floating in the air, visual hallucinations. At times, they had an auditory component.
One morning in early fall when the weather had just turned cold and the wind banged the shutters against the house, she awoke from an especially brutal nightmare, covered in sweat and shaking. She could still see the woman who had haunted her dreams. She had pale skin, violet eyes, and a dress that seemed to be made of the swirling trails of the aurora borealis. Standing across the room from Zoe’s bed, she leaned against her desk, cradling Zoe’s cat in her arms. Slowly, she dragged a dagger from her pocket and held it against Shadow’s throat.
Throwing off the covers, Zoe raced across the room, screaming. As she punched the woman’s face, it turned to mist. Shadow was nowhere to be found.
Zoe’s mother knocked on the bedroom door. “Are you okay, Zoe?”
Studying the mist swirling above her desk, Zoe said, “Sure.” She’d forgotten what she’d been asked.
Her mother rapped again on the door. “May I come in?” She sounded worried.
Zoe absentmindedly thought that perhaps her mother could help. Maybe she had the key, the missing clue. It was a random thought, something triggered by the vision of the woman wearing the dress of the Northern Lights.
Zoe opened the door. Shadow came running in, the soft fur of her tail brushing against Zoe’s bare ankles. The cat raced across the room and leapt onto the bed. Zoe sighed with relief that Shadow was okay.
“You don’t look good,” Zoe’s mother said, brushing loose strands of hair from her daughter’s face. “You’re very pale and you’re covered in sweat.” She placed a hand on Zoe’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. How do you feel?”
Zoe looked down. Her thin flannel nightgown covered with tiny lilacs was also covered in sweat and plastered to her stomach. She felt dizzy, like she might faint. A wave of nausea passed through her.
As she turned to see if the mist was still there, her mother watched her, waiting for an answer. The mist had thickened, turned to smoke slithering across the desk. Zoe pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “Do you see that?”
Her mother walked over to the desk. She picked up Zoe’s tablet. Before she had even looked at the desk, the smoke had turned to clear steam and evaporated, all in the blink of an eye.
Picking up the tablet and reading through a long list of homework assignments, Zoe’s mother looked concerned. “That’s an awful lot of homework! Way more than I ever had. You’re working too hard, Zoe. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you stay home, rest up a bit, maybe watch some screenies? I’ve got to head off to work. You gonna be okay?”
Zoe wanted to tell her mother about the dreams and hallucinations, but she decided against it. Her mother had dark circles around her eyes. They were often bloodshot, and it seemed to Zoe that her mother’s hair had been progressing from black to a shade of salt-and-pepper way too quickly. She’d noticed a few silvery strands a year ago. Now, she wasn’t even sure any of it was black anymore. It was entirely possible that the black streaks were nothing more than pepper.
For as long as she could remember, her mother had worked as a housecleaner for rich people on the other side of town. When Zoe entered middle school, her mother had taken on extra houses, sometimes working both day and evening shifts. She often told Zoe, You’re smart. You should go to college. You don’t want to end up like me. Your job is to study. My job is to put a roof over your head and make enough money for you to go to college.
Zoe forced a smile. “I’ll be fine. I need to finish writing an English Lit paper on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I have some algebra problems to solve.”
“That’s my girl.” Her mother gave her a hug. “But take some time off, too, Zoe. You need a break. You’ve been working too hard. Didn’t you mention a new screenie you were interested in checking out?”
Before going to sleep the previous night, Zoe had watched the first episode in the second season of Fey Girl, an anime series about a faerie girl lost in the human world.
Oh my God, that’s when the nightmares started. Zoe suddenly realized that she’d had the first of these horrifying nightmares after she’d binge-watched the first season. That was a month ago.
Smiling with genuine happiness, realizing once again that she was just too sensitive for her own good, Zoe told her mother, “You’re right. I’ll take some free time for myself. Maybe I’ll just read something for fun, something that isn’t homework.”
As her mother turned to leave, she called out over her shoulder, “That’s my girl. Have a good day.”
Beginning to recover from her nightmare, Zoe went over to the bed, petting Shadow and talking to her. Then she went downstairs to the kitchen. She grabbed two bowls off a rickety shelf, filled one with some weird cereal that had been on sale and past its expiration date and the other with Shadow’s dry cat food, and carried their breakfast up to her room.
While she and Shadow ate, Zoe worked through her algebra problems. She loved math. It was like solving puzzles, and Zoe had a knack for that.
As she solved a series of linear equations, the mist returned, slithering around
the base of her desk lamp like a snake. Her heart pounded. Her body broke out in a sweat. Zoe reached out to touch the coiling fog. She expected it to be cold and wet or to break apart when touched. It felt as though nothing was there. But the shape remained, then filled with swirling rainbow colors.
Severe pain erupted in Zoe’s head, like the worst migraine she’d ever experienced. Then, as quick as flashes of lightning, snippets of flashbacks marched across her vision. There was a girl. A girl around her present age. And a woman much like the one leaning against her desk with a knife to Shadow’s throat. Except…the knife was against Zoe’s own throat. A piece of her personality, a sliver of her self, was removed. It floated through the air into a glass jar and illuminated it with foggy blue light. A small, fat man laughed.
Zoe pulled open her desk drawer. She grabbed the bottle of migraine medicine and shook two, the maximum dosage, into her hand. She swallowed the round blue pills and wondered if she’d need psychiatric meds. Something was wrong. She was losing it. Whatever she was experiencing went way beyond her typical migraines.
***
After an entire week of nightmares that persisted as visions after she woke up, and missing more days of school in a row than she could afford, Zoe’s fears ratcheted up. She started to worry that she had a chip in her brain. The VirtuMax kids all had chips embedded in their wrists with ID information that allowed them access to places the poorer Exe kids could never get into.
There were rumors that the government was placing chips in the heads of certain people in slums like the Exe, to monitor where they went, both on the net and in real life. She’d had an emergency appendectomy a few years ago. Maybe the chip had been put in then while she was knocked out with anesthesia, and only recently activated. She’d also passed out once in a local grocery store and come to in a back room, surrounded by a bunch of people, some of them not exactly the friendly type. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. Her head had been bloodied. She’d just assumed at the time that she’d bashed her head when she fell. She’d had a concussion and felt woozy for days. Maybe the symptoms were the result of adjusting to the chip, rather than from the concussion.
If there was a chip, it needed to come out.
But who to talk to about this?
The next day at school, migraine medicine tucked into a corner of her purse, Zoe sought out Colton, the kid most likely to become a cyborg one day. He had large gauges in his ears, tattoos on his neck, and arms tattooed to look like robot parts. He competed in robotics competitions and seemed more comfortable with the machines than his teammates. Zoe knew him from her Algebra 2/Trigonometry class. He was a freshman on an accelerated track. There were rumors that his IQ surpassed that of Einstein.
At lunchtime, Zoe walked up to him in the cafeteria. He was sitting alone eating a sandwich he’d brought with him in a paper bag. How do you ask someone if they think you have a chip in your head? How do you ask if they know about any organized groups who might do this, maybe to hack into your brain or something?
Zoe reminded herself it wasn’t far-fetched. The rich kids over in the View had implanted wrist chips to keep them safe and give them access to the VirtuMax compound. Maybe the higher-ups at VirtuMax wanted to control people in the Exe with brain chips. To keep them under control. To keep them from trying to break into their compound. It would be more effective than guns, and a whole lot less bloody.
Zoe sat down across from Colton. “Okay if I sit here?”
Colton looked annoyed. “Sure.”
She placed her tray down on the table and took a seat. As she ate the pasty rectangle the cafeteria chefs had labeled Lasagna, she tried to make small talk. Then she switched to asking about Colton’s tattoos, jokingly asking if he wanted to be a robot rather than a person.
Rage simmering in his pale blue eyes, Colton said, “Look, if you’re making fun of me…”
Zoe looked around, making sure no one could overhear her. She said as quietly as possible, “No… That’s not it. Look, I have a question I need to ask for a friend. Suppose someone thinks they have a chip in their brain because they’re hallucinating… Suppose they’re completely rational other than that.”
Colton squinted. The way he looked at her, Zoe felt like a bug under a microscope. His gaze was intense. “It depends…”
Zoe put her fork down. The noise in the cafeteria—the chatter, the racket of dirty dishes being placed on a conveyer belt and trays being stacked into uneven piles, random shrieks and outbursts of laughter, chairs scraping against the floor—all receded into the background and quieted to a hush. Zoe’s entire concentration was focused on Colton.
Colton analyzed the situation like a surgeon diagnosing a mysterious illness or a rocket scientist figuring out a new way to defy gravity. “Either your friend is psychotic. Or there’s truly a chip in their brain. But how likely is that? Seriously, how could that have happened? Maybe they’re one of the lucky few who played the new FullD sim game.”
Zoe felt dizzy. Suddenly, Colton was surrounded by a golden glow. She blinked several times, hard. It didn’t go away.
Colton squinted at her again, a defensive expression that conveyed both anger and mistrust. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I see these funny colors and then get slammed with the most painful headaches.”
Colton smiled. “Asking for a friend, huh?” He leaned forward, suddenly intensely interested in Zoe’s predicament. “Did you by any chance play the FullD sim?”
Zoe felt confused. She had that sensation of flashbacks cascading through her brain again. “No… I mean, I don’t think so.” The woman leaning against her desk. But not there. In a clearing surrounded by trees. Her own head in a helmet. Gloves. A pink bedroom with gauzy netting around the bed.
Zoe blinked far too many times.
Colton stared at her. “I think you’ve played the game. Do you know anyone else who’s played?”
Colton was positively shimmering. The golden glow had intensified. Zoe looked around. No one else seemed to notice. “No. I mean, I don’t know anything about that game. How would I? It’s not like I could ever afford simming equipment.” Or had she? Something nagged at the edge of her brain. “Tell me about it.”
“Better yet,” Colton said, “I’ll show you.” He studied Zoe, as though sizing her up before sharing more information. Lowering his voice, he said, “There have been people wrecked by that game. You haven’t heard about that?”
At a loss for words, feeling her hands start to tremble, Zoe remained silent.
“A number of people ended up in comas after playing. One guy died. A bunch of kids had symptoms like yours: headaches, hallucinations, weird stuff like that.” After chugging down the rest of his punch, leaving a red stain on his upper lip, Colton continued. “Meet me after school. Out front. Tomorrow. I know someone who might let us play. I mean, let you play. You’ll probably have to do a trade: game time for homework.”
The golden glow disappeared from around Colton. It was like someone had snapped their fingers and made it disappear. Just like that.
Zoe made it through the rest of the day. Four periods: Algebra 2/Trig, AP English Lit, Art, and Spanish. Then she hopped on the bus and headed home.
The house was empty. Her mom had messaged her to say that dinner was in the fridge; she’d be working late. Did she feel okay? Zoe messaged back: I feel fine. She kinda did. At lunch, her headache had vanished along with the golden glow around Colton. At home, the mist had vanished from her desk. Maybe the game held the answer to her problems. She wasn’t sure how. It sounded so dangerous. She was just going on intuition.
Something led Zoe to her closet. It felt as though her mind was being pulled along by puppet strings, trying to solve a puzzle. Zoe stood there, staring into her closet. She had a feeling of déjà vu. She’d done this before. Stood in front of her closet, staring into its depths. She thought of The Lion, The Wi
tch and the Wardrobe, thought that stepping into the darkness would bring her to Narnia.
Zoe flipped on the light switch. A golden glow. Her skin prickled with fear, an intense sense of uneasiness. An anxiety attack. She was losing her mind.
A rumble came from the back of the small space. A lid flipped off a shoebox and knocked over a teetering pile of comic books. In a whirl of motion, something leapt out and landed on Zoe’s feet. She screamed before realizing that, of course, it was Shadow. Nothing more than Shadow. As her cat raced across the room and out the bedroom door, Zoe tried to calm herself. Nothing more than Shadow. Nothing more than Shadow. It’s your cat, not the lion. This isn’t Narnia. Get a grip.
Kneeling down to put the lid back on the shoebox, Zoe noticed something inside—a glove. A silver glove decorated with jewels: amethysts, rubies, emeralds. Those weren’t jewels, though. What were they? It was on the tip of her tongue.
As though in a trance, Zoe wandered over to her bed and sat down. She stared at the glove and rubbed it between her fingers. There was something she should know about this item. Something she needed to do.
***
That night, in the dream world, Zoe’s mind worked overtime to solve the puzzle of that glove.
When she woke, she knew she was in trouble. That glove had been part of a pair of gloves given to her a few weeks ago. By a girl who lived in a house her mother had cleaned. Not a house. More like a mansion. The girl was Ella Bradford. Ella was seventeen, one of the cool big kids. She had a simming game she didn’t know how to play. Feyland. It was Feyland. She had let Zoe play. More than that, actually. She’d asked Zoe to figure out how to play the game and teach her.
She’d given Zoe a stern warning. “You can’t tell anyone else about this game, okay? I have a cousin who’s a hacker. He got a hold of some bootleg copies of the game. He said it’s all hush-hush, top-secret stuff. The game’s being developed by VirtuMax. He and some friends figured out a way to hack into the system and take a peek at their brand-new FullD sim game. He told me he could get arrested if anyone found out he had a copy, and the same was true for me. Promise you won’t say anything?”
Through the Trapdoor: A Feyland Story Page 1