by Kit Hallows
I sidled past the last row of mannequins and found a glowing trail of carved pumpkins stretching toward the front of a large deserted department store. The shutters had been prized open and the entrance was lit with strings of tiny black and orange lights.
A dozen or so disrobed mannequins had been positioned near the doorway and as I passed them, their bare wrists glowed with tell-tale silver spirals. I was almost at the threshold when a hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I spun round to find one of the mannequins had transformed into a young, naked witch. “Boo!” she said. Then her face and features vanished and she was nothing more than a hollow plastic model.
I forced nonchalance into my step and proceeded, like I didn’t have a care in the world. Most of the display stands were empty and the clothing racks were skeletal and bare. I glanced along the aisles and toward a few stationary figures waiting in the gloom. Mannequins or witches?
A whisper and rattle called to me, the din loud in the otherwise still, cavernous space. A pair of escalators, one going up, one going down. A cluster of pumpkins pointed the way, the candles behind their sinister faces bursting to life as I approached. Wyght’s not-so-subtle hint, telling me to go down.
I stepped onto the grilled platform, placed my hand on the squeaky rubber rail and descended into darkness. The basement below looked like it had once been the children’s department. Further pumpkins lit the way, illuminating a trail of impish mannequins with hand-drawn faces, downturned smiles and wide circular eyes that had been crossed out with a black marker, like they were dead. I followed them into the darkness, forcing a steady balanced evenness into each step as I went.
As I neared the next section, several tin robots sprang to life, their ray guns beeping, their feet marching. A handful of dolls hung from nooses, their tiny faces twisted into expressions of plastic agony. I wished I had my gun and sword. Wished I had enough magic to raze this place down upon the heads of Wyght and her sick followers. But all I had was my coat and the strange glasses rattling around in my pocket.
Then I spotted a semi circle of twelve figures. A still audience watching over Wyght and the boy. They sat together, propped before a child-sized desk, their eyes twinkling in the candlelight as they stared into the ornate mirror before them.
It was an eerie, sinister sight. The boy’s eyes wide, Wyght’s narrowed with hatred and malice.
As I reached them, more candles whooshed to life as if I was inside some cheap magician’s parlor. My heart began to race. The look in Wyght’s eyes told me she’d gone somewhere else entirely. She was vulnerable. Her dark hair pooled over her owl-grey dress and curled into the folded hands in her lap. Her posture was strangely civil. Expectant. A fat line of black spice glistened on the desk between Wyght and the boy.
“Suck it up!”
I flinched and turned to find the mannequins in the chairs behind me were witches. One stood, a chubby woman with wavy blonde hair and a pair of narrow purple glasses. She pointed her finger at me like a psychotic schoolteacher. “I said suck it up!” she snarled, nodding to the spice.
I glanced at the witches around her. It seemed they weren’t armed, aside from the spirals dimly glowing at their wrists.
The witch patted me down and took the phone and glasses from my coat. She gestured to the desk. “Take the spice and gaze into the mirror.” I could hear her hatred bubbling beneath the surface.
One of the others tittered and as I looked, I saw it was the witch that had escorted me through Temple Park. The others stared in icy silence but I could tell they wanted to tear me to shreds, no doubt after seeing what I’d done to their sisters.
“I’ll need those glasses back,” I said. “They’re the only way I can get in.”
The witch held them under a candle and scrutinized the magical code that ran in lines down their lenses. Finally, she held them out. “Okay.”
“So what’s next?” I asked, even though I already knew. I was expected to take their spice, render myself completely powerless, and travel into that poor child’s mind. Where Elsbeth Wyght waited. Like a spider.
“Get on with it, Rook. You’ve done this before.”
I glanced round for a sign of the door they were trying to create, but there was nothing to see. “You want to open a portal to Penrythe? In a shopping mall?” I asked.
“Why not? It seems a fitting place to usher in a horde of zombies, when you think about it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But why’d you need blinkereds to do it? I thought the Silver Spiral were almighty in the dark arts.”
“Blinkered minds are different to ours. They’re malleable. And expendable.”
“I’m not blinkered,” I said.
“You’re blinkered enough, and completely expendable. And if you want the boy to live, you’ll find a way to be malleable too.”
I glanced back through the store. The pumpkins had gone out, leaving a thick cloying darkness in their wake. Was that really the last thing I’d see in this world?
“Now for the last time, Rook, sit down and take the damned spice.” The witch produced a small ceremonial knife from her pocket and nodded to the child. “Or would you prefer I cut his throat? Because I’d be happy to oblige.”
I fought the impulse to snap her neck, and instead, sat on the chair. I placed the pinch-nose glasses on and took a dab of spice. It instantly numbed the end of my tongue.
“More!” the witch said.
“Fine.” I took another dab and gripped the arms of the chair as a rush tore through me. Had they doctored it with something else? Poisoned it? A tinny whine rang in my ears and a flash of light glimmered in the depths of the darkness. I glanced back to the witches, but in their place were twelve owls, their huge dark eyes upon me, their talons tapping on the polished floor.
I shuddered as I turned back to the mirror and an owl’s eyes peered over my shoulder. It reached down with human hands and bound my wrists to the arm rest with black snake-like cords. The owl stepped away and I was horribly aware of where I was, and who I was sitting next to.
Elsbeth Wyght.
I shivered as I caught her eyes in the glass. “Please,” I heard myself whimper. The sound of my distress sickened me. I focused instead on the boy’s bright blue gaze. “You’re doing it for him.” Had I said it out loud? And if so, to who? To me, or my other? Or the witches?
The spice hit me again and a slow heavy roar that I’d only just noticed faded. Then I was plunged into silent, pitch black darkness. Was I still in the real world, or a sealed stone-cold chamber a thousand miles below the surface of the earth?
Someone whispered. Or was it the slither of the serpents tied around my wrists… I shuddered until I found the boy’s eyes shimmering in the glass. I focused on them unwaveringly and fought the urge to leap over into her eyes. But oh how they called to me…
My vision blackened and I felt myself hurtling through an inner space. Eddies of time and consciousness spiraled around me as I fell, far from the place of endless night to somewhere else entirely.
53
A blinding white glare filled my eyes and a churning, roaring din broke around me. As I stumbled toward the glow, my sight began to adjust and I saw it was water.
No, not water. Milk. I reached out. It splashed over my hand, but my skin and sleeve remained dry.
Behind me, deep blue eddies of the boy’s consciousness swirled. Somewhere beyond them, my body still sat, helpless in the abandoned department store, surrounded by witches.
I walked carefully, my hands outstretched. The milk thundered down around me but I broke through and waded toward a gleaming green forest. I looked back at the milky waterfall, and the rock face around it that seemed to be made of fresh baked cookies.
Bright red birds flew through a deep turquoise sky and the clouds that sailed by were as fluffy and white as laundered pillows. Along the edge of the pool of milk were dozens of kittens, each one small and chalky blue. They leaned over, lapping at the milk, their tails twitchin
g and thrashing as I started down the hillside toward them.
The thick chocolate brown tree trunks that dotted the forest were whimsical, like the illustrations in a fairytale. A wooden arrow pointed toward a long, narrow path. I followed it, breathing in the sweet perfumes rising from the bright little flowers that peeked through the shiny green grass.
The place the boy had conjured was fantastical and childlike and not wholly unexpected. It could have been a scene from a story book with Wyght lurking as a maggot in the apple, an evil witch of yore.
I glanced up as a ragged cloud sailed over the sun, plunging the grass and trail into deep shadow. As I walked, the world changed, its whimsicality touched with more sinister details like the acid-green spiders descending from the boughs swaddled in webs.
A clearing opened ahead and I could see a giant wooden house with a steep slanted roof and a chimney lazily belching coils of smoke into the air.
I entered the house, slowly, cautiously. Inside, ten little beds lined the walls, and propped against their pillows, were ten little boys. Each of them was identical to Ben, but not one of them real.
Something slithered by my foot as I walked across the room. I glanced under the bed as a dark shadow vanished into the gloom, and a pair of glowing round eyes blinked back at me.
Nightmarish monsters from a child’s dream. Nothing for me to worry about. At least not for now.
I jumped as a riot of screams filled the room and the fake boys sat up in their beds, sweat glistening on their foreheads.
Amid their cries came a drum of thrashing limbs beating on the bare wooden floorboards.
I bypassed the spectacle and headed toward the end of the room where a line of wardrobes stood before me. They filled the house with the heady scent of old wood and polish as they rumbled and scraped across the floor, creating a maze with a narrow opening for me to pass through. I slowed as they shuffled and closed the gap behind me, then a low, spooky creak rang out. I glanced back to find one of the wardrobe doors opening. A man with wild black hair, blood-red eyes, and a terrible grin peered back at me. The bogeyman.
“Go fuck yourself,” I said and rolled my eyes. He looked disappointed as he sulkily descended back into the shadows. As I turned a corner, another wardrobe squealed open and a clown with bushy blue hair and a wriggly smile leaped out. He squeezed his nose, producing a trumpet-like sound, wagged a finger and curled his ruby-red lips into a lurid grin.
“Get back in your box.” I took a step his way, and he shot back into his cupboard and closed the door with his white gloved hand.
I headed around each twist and turn, ignoring the creaking hinges behind me. They were just distractions… but then again, this entire place felt like a distraction. But from what? Finally the maze of wardrobes ended, and I stepped out into a gingerbread village with cobblestone lanes and houses make of chocolate, icing and spun sugar. A glistening white tower stood in the center and I had to shield my eyes from the glare as I glanced up toward the window near its peak. It was huge and round like a great yellow eye. A tiny figure stood behind the glass, looking down at me.
Ben.
I rushed through the streets toward the tower. People emerged from the confectionery houses. They were small, childlike in their gaudy, silken clothes. Their faces were shiny and plastic, utterly unreal, their movements jittery like a puppet’s.
“Hi,” I said to one. It turned and scuttled back inside and slammed the door behind it. Weird. Miles and Grace’s inner worlds had been strange, but this one was the strangest yet.
Finally I stood before the tower. The tall wooden door and large golden handle were just as fairytale-like as everything else, yet my borrowed form bristled. Like the chill that occasionally passed through me when I turned to meet the eyes of a stranger staring at me in some public place.
Don’t go in. It was my own instinct, not my other’s.
Where was he? I searched deep within myself, and called out to him.
Nothing.
I backed away from the door as my spirit skin continued to prickle.
And then something roared behind me.
As I turned, a great brown bear thudded along the cobbled street and the tiny people screamed and fled for their homes. The chain attached to its ankle rattled and scraped on the ground behind it as it reared up on its hind legs before me.
The beast’s shadow eclipsed the village. All I could see was a towering mass of fur and the two hungry eyes set into its heavily scarred, piebald face. A line of saliva dripped from its fangs as it roared and a blast of hot, rancid breath filled the air around me.
My heart raced as the bear growled, low and deep, raised a paw and swiped its long black claws across my chest.
54
I ducked and rolled out of the way, the cobbles hard and rough. I barely had time to glance up when the bear’s shadow fell over me. It tottered forward and bellowed, its great jagged teeth snapping at my throat.
“Give me the sword!” I scrambled up and backed toward one of the gingerbread houses. The bear ran at me on all fours, its paws pounding. I dodged aside, and the beast sailed through the front of the house. It emerged dazed and angry, its roar starved and furious.
I closed my eyes and imagined the weight of the sword of intention in my hand.
Nothing.
I opened them as I heard the bear lumbering toward me, a dark mass of muscle, fur, teeth and claws.
“Help me, I need the fucking sword!” I cried to my other.
You mean you need me now.
I backed toward the tower as the bear stood on its hind legs, its eyes locked on mine. One of the little puppet people fled through the space between us, its tiny squeal cut short as the bear decimated it with a single swipe.
“Help me!” I cried. “If I die, you die.”
Leave this place at once.
“I can’t leave the boy here!”
You’re a fool. But if you die here, perhaps I can escape.
The entire ground shook as the bear dropped to all fours and charged me. I raced to the glistening tower, grabbed the golden handle, wrenched the door open and slammed it behind me with a resounding thud. A cascade of sugar-like dust fell from the lintel above as I grabbed a wooden beam and slotted it over the door, barring it shut.
Boom
The bear crashed into the door, and the wooden slats creaked and bowed.
Silence…
Boom
The door rattled and buckled, again and again. It was only a matter of time before it broke through.
Wake up!
“I can’t leave without the boy. Literally. We can’t get out without him!”
This place is dangerous. More dangerous than the others.
“Why?”
I don’t know. Something is hidden from my sight. We have to get out. Maybe together we can-
“I’m not going without the boy. If I do, Wyght will kill him. Now help me get the fucking sword!” I backed away from the door as the bear scratched at the boards, and turned to find a wide spiral stone staircase. It seemed there was no choice but to climb.
Up and up I went. The stairs seemed endless. The walls glimmered in the light of the arched windows that overlooked the storybook kingdom below, as I ascended. Then a terrible, piercing scream came from above.
Ben.
What the hell was she doing to him? I spurred myself to run harder, my lungs burning as an aching bolt of pain shot through my legs.
Again, I tried to summon the sword through the sheer force of my will, but my other was right. Something was interfering. It nagged like a psychic itch that couldn’t be scratched, a barrier that couldn’t be seen.
Release me. I don’t want to die here with you.
“You’re a part of me,” I spluttered, as I continued to climb.
I was whole once. It was your arrival that made me two. Let me go.
“If I knew how to do that, I would have done it years ago!”
There are ways. I can show you, n
ow release me-
“Shut up.” I slowed as the staircase ended and the top step extended out into a narrow landing that led to a tall wooden door. Two silvery suits of armor guarded either side but the swords and shields they held were carved from wood.
I reached for the handle.
Don’t.
I ignored him and shoved the door open. The heavy wood scraped across the flagstone floor of a large, sumptuous chamber. Then I saw Elsbeth Wyght. She was sitting on an ornate golden throne under the huge round window on the far side of the room.
“Here he is, Ben.” Wyght said as the boy whimpered at her feet like a dog. “The white knight of old.”
“Let him go.” I shouted as I stormed into the room.
The wooden door behind me slammed shut and the crystals in the chandelier, suspended high above, rattled and shook.
Wyght reached out with the tip of her shiny black boot and shoved the boy toward me. “You’re free to go, Benjamin.” She smiled and batted her eyes, but her gaze was still marred by her steely cold hatred. Ben ran to me and buried his face in my leg.
“Wake up,” I told him. “You can get us out of here.” I leaned down and gently pulled him from my leg. He looked up, his eyes streaming with tears. “This is your world, Ben, and you can do or imagine anything you like.” I glanced back to Wyght. “Anything. Including making that vile woman drop dead.”
Wyght stood, hands clasped behind her back as she peered out at the vast deep green forest beyond the window. “No, he really can’t,” she said with a sneer at the edge of her words.
And then I understood the truth of the place.
55
“Ah, now the lights are on and somebody’s home!” Wyght laughed as she watched the realization dawn on me. “That’s right, we’re not in little Benjamin’s world. We’re in mine.”
But I’d followed Ben’s gaze into the mirror… and… and yet somehow, somewhere along the journey I’d been diverted. I recalled how everything had grown black before I’d entered this consciousness. Her consciousness.