“…no match for those jaws…”
“…don’t leave traces….”
“…gone completely…”
“No one will ever know…”
Eve tried to tell herself not to freak out, but it was too late. Those voices were plotting her death. They had some way to kill them all and make them disappear forever. Something was going to attack them, kill them or worse. They needed to get out of here and quickly. She had turned around and was on the verge of making a break for the trees back the way they had come when she remembered Logan. Again, she hesitated. Those voices had Logan. Who knew what they were going to do with him, what they had already done.
She saw the same look of indecision on everyone’s face. Adam had already half turned back, but he was shaking his head silently. Dominic was still as a statue, only a small crease between his eyes giving his anxiety away. Alex, eyes wide with terror, was mouthing something over and over.
“…any minute now…”
“…trapped like flies…”
It took Eve a second longer to recognize what Alex was saying. “Logan.”
Clenching her flashlight, Eve moved without thinking, spinning around and running straight toward the voices. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t tell if anyone was following her or not. Her mind was blank except for the one thought that those voices knew where Logan was. If she was going to die, it was going to be for a reason. She reached the spot she thought the voices were coming from, and stopped, spinning around, scanning the ground in every direction. No one.
The second she stopped spinning she heard the whispers again. They were off to her left. She must have misjudged them the last time. Without pausing, totally caught up in the panic, she darted in their direction, stopping only when she knew she should have run into them. Still nothing. Nothing but more whispers a bit further on and to the right. She ran.
Eve didn’t know how many times she ran and stopped to listen and ran again. She wasn’t sure at what point she realized that the others were running too, but in different directions. Her chasing of the whispers had turned into a kind of mindless frenzy, all her focus on finding the whisperers and forcing them to tell her what she needed to know.
She might have kept chasing around the meadow all night if her foot hadn’t caught on a rock in the grass and sent her sprawling to the ground. For a second, she just lay there, aching with defeat. The place where she had cut open her shins before felt like it was on fire. Then she slowly stood up. She could still hear the whispers a bit further ahead, but the pain in her hands and legs seemed to clear her head. For the first time she fully realized that she was alone. Where were the others? She should be able to see their lights somewhere, shouldn’t she?
The whispers came louder now.
“…off the track now…”
“…too late anyway…”
“…boy’s gone…”
“…find him dead…”
“…go home…”
Eve put her hands over her ears. She couldn’t take it any more. She couldn’t listen to one more word. “Alex!” she screamed. “Adam! Dominic! Where are you?! Alex!”
She heard a faint cry from the edge of the meadow behind her. It was hard to tell whose voice it was, but it wasn’t a whisper. Eve moved toward it, forcing herself to walk this time.
The whispers continued behind her.
“…all here…”
“…almost time…”
“…finish it…”
“…end is sweet…”
“Alex!” Eve yelled again, drowning out the voices. Her heart was pounding. “Dominic! Adam!”
This time she could hear the answering call. “Eve!” It was Alex. Eve walked faster, still not daring to run lest the panic swallow her up again.
She could see a soft glow now. Someone with a flashlight. Another voice came from off to the side. “Eve! Alex!” It was one of the boys. Eve saw the glow of his light. Then another from a ways behind it. Four flashlights. They were all here. All coming, the lights moving towards each other.
She opened her mouth to call out again when she heard a swishing in the grass behind her. Eve spun around. Now the grass was rustling. Someone was following her, getting closer. There was no light. It wasn’t a friend. The whispering was coming from that direction.
“…slow and painful…”
“…plenty of time now…”
Eve felt frozen in place. Her breath was coming in short gasps. The whispers were getting closer, and now there was a rustling in the grass to the side, too.
“…crunching…”
“…munching…”
Another voice hissing behind her.
“…screaming…”
“…bleeding…”
Eve spun in a circle. Her feet seemed rooted to the ground. Her throat had gone dry, so that even though she wanted to yell for help, no sound would come out. Someone called her name. Alex! She was getting closer. Eve knew Alex was about to walk into a trap. She needed to warn her, but her body wouldn’t work. The lights were bobbing nearer. The boys seemed to be running. Could they tell she was surrounded? What were they going to do?
Then a hand grabbed hers from behind. The scream that had been stuck in her throat tore its way loose and out into the night. The hand tightened.
“Eve.” It was Alex’s voice. “Eve. It’s me.”
Eve’s heart started again. She slumped toward Alex. “Did you see them? Did you get past them?” Her voice came out as a bare whisper now.
Alex kept her voice low. “See who? The voices? I couldn’t find them. Everywhere I went they seemed to move.”
Now the boys pounded into view, their dim lights reflecting off pale faces. Dominic was first, but Adam was sprinting behind him and didn’t stop until he actually crashed into them all. Eve reached out her free hand to him, and he clutched it like a lifeline.
The grass was still rustling, but now that Eve had her friends around her, she realized that whatever was moving out there was keeping its distance.
Adam was gasping for breath, but words were tumbling out at the same time. “I couldn’t…find them…I kept…following…couldn’t see…anyone…but heard…they said…they said…”
Dominic’s voice could barely be heard. “They said that Logan is dead.”
In the silence that followed this, Eve could hear the whispers again.
“…no escape…”
“No!” Eve said loudly.
“Shh…” Adam said.
“No!” Eve shouted. “I’m not whispering any more! They obviously know we’re here. I’m sick of listening to them. Let them listen to me. We keep hearing and hearing them, but let them show themselves. If Logan is dead, let them prove it. If they’re going to attack us, let them do it.” Gripping her friends hands tightly, she yelled into the darkness. “Do it already!”
The rustling stopped.
Everyone waited as the tense silence stretched out. No whispers. No moving grass. Eve felt her throat start to tighten up again as she strained to listen out into the darkness, trying to imagine what was waiting out there. Nothing came rushing forward to devour them.
Tightening her grip on Alex’s and Adam’s hands, Eve backed up until she bumped into Dominic’s back as he stood staring out into the black behind her. A warmth washed over Eve. Being connected to her friends made her feel anchored to the ground. Her head cleared. Her heart slowed. She felt like laughing with relief.
So she did. She laughed long and loud. It must have sounded a bit hysterical because, while Dominic didn’t move behind her, both Alex and Adam tightened their grip on her hands. Eve could see the concern on Adam’s face, as he turned his light in her direction.
Eve ignored his worry. Swinging her friends’ hands back and forth, she yelled recklessly, “Not going to attack, then? Not coming to eat us? You’ve gotten awfully quiet out there! I’m starting to think you’re all talk! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re all talk, aren’t you?”
Eve might have ke
pt taunting the invisible voices but with her last question, she had stepped forward challengingly. Without Dominic at her back, she suddenly felt more vulnerable again. She stepped back quickly, but the urge to shout was gone.
Dominic was repeating her words behind her, not shouting but not bothering to be quiet, either. “You’re all talk, aren’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? All talk.”
Something clicked in Eve’s mind. She and Dominic spun towards each other at the same moment. “That’s it!”
Eve’s eyes were wide. Dominic was grinning.
“Guys, what…?” Adam’s pale face stared at them.
“All talk,” said Dominic.
Eve saw comprehension dawn on Alex’s face.
“The flowers had little lines coming off them,” Alex said.
“Not a smell,” said Dominic. “Sounds.”
Adam’s jaw dropped. “You mean it’s the flowers whispering? All that stuff was just…”
Dominic’s grin was back. “It makes perfect sense. We heard them everywhere but never saw anything. They talked about attacking but…here we are.”
Adam shook his head. “It does make sense…” He looked back and forth at all their faces. “Believe me, I’m happy that this means we’re probably not going to be brutally killed by anything, but flowers that whisper horrible things are still kind of freaking me out.”
“I bet they’re here to scare us off. Whisper all our biggest fears…” said Alex.
“See my point?” said Adam. “Not awesome, actually. How do they know what our biggest fears are?”
But Eve was thinking about something else. “So it was all lies. We weren’t surrounded. We weren’t about to die. And Logan isn’t dead either.”
“Let’s get moving,” said Dominic.
It took a minute for Adam to figure out where they were. With the compass and map, though he got them turned in the right direction. Fortunately, they had ended up pretty close to the north side of the meadow. Turning their lights in that direction they finally spotted a trail leading off north and slightly west.
As they began to walk, a silence fell again. Eve could hear the wind rustling over the grass around her. A little shiver went down her spine. Even if she knew they were only whispering flowers, she didn’t want to hear any more. Those whispers made her feel like she was going crazy.
“You know the evil sorcerer guy in the first story in the Book of Sight?” she asked loudly. “Have I ever told you that whenever I read that story I picture Mr. Matthews, my eighth grade math teacher?”
No one answered.
“I thought of him the very first time I read it,” Eve went on. What am I talking about? It was the first thing that had popped into her head. Shrugging, she went with it. “I’ve always kind of wondered if that means he’s evil in real life or if I’ve just never gotten over my hatred of algebra.”
Eve was pleased that she couldn’t hear the wind anymore. Her friends thinking she was crazy was better than actually going crazy. “I’m sure he doesn’t deserve it, but I’m actually really freaked out about him now.” Eve was talking loudly. “My little sister wanted me to go over to the middle school with her the other day, and I wouldn’t do it. Actually, I feel really bad about that. I couldn’t tell her why I didn’t want to go, of course, so I was kind of mean to her.” Eve fell silent. Stupid thing to talk about, she thought.
“I always picture the brothers in that story looking just like my uncles,” said Dominic unexpectedly. “I’ve probably only seen my uncles twice in my whole life, but I always think of them in that part. My uncle Hector has this big mustache, and the older brother in the story has one just like it.”
Alex picked up the conversation now. “That’s so weird. I always picture the brother with a mustache, too.”
Eve laughed. “Is it like one of those big bushy ones or a long skinny one that curls at both ends?”
No one answered. They had reached the edge of the meadow. No one paused or looked back, but the relief that settled over them all was tangible.
“I won’t be sorry if it’s already daylight by the time we come back this way,” said Adam as they headed down the path. “Those voices were so real I still feel like someone is behind me. I can’t believe we were actually alone the whole time.”
“You’re never really alone,” said a voice, and a man stepped out onto the trail in front of them.
17
Into the Circle
Logan woke with a gasp and found himself in darkness.
Panic shot him to his feet, but then dizziness took over and he fell back to his knees. A quick wave of his hand in front of his face confirmed that he still couldn’t see anything. He remembered with horrible clarity emerging from that tunnel, realizing that he was blind. Then what?
It hurt to think. Footsteps. He had heard someone approaching. He thought he had called out. Then nothing. The throbbing on the back of his head told him that they must have hit him with something. Who were they? And where were they now? Where was he?
His head still felt like it was bobbing in the ocean, but he tried to hold steady for a minute to listen as his heart rate slowly returned to normal. Nothing but the sound of rustling wind reached his ears. Carefully, he bent onto all fours and felt the ground around him. It felt like he was sitting in the middle of some tall grass. There hadn’t been any tall grass around outside the tunnel where his last memories were. Whoever hit him must have moved him.
Logan wasn’t used to judging things by feel, so he couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought maybe those softer parts on top were flowers. He pulled on one and felt petals in his hand. Definitely flowers.
Great, he told himself, now you know flowers by feel. That helps you exactly not at all.
Curling up a bit, Logan rested his head on the ground and let the sick feeling wash over him. His stomach was rolling just as much as his head. What had he done? He had run off on his own and made a complete mess of everything. Now he was somewhere in the mountains, completely blind. He had no way of figuring out where he was much less how to get where he had been going. How would he get home? The thought of home made him physically sick. No, there was no way to go anywhere, and it was just as well. There was nowhere he wanted to go.
He decided to lay there in a ball until whoever had hit him returned to finish him off.
After a while, though, a new sound reached his ears. He lay and listened for a while before the importance of it sunk through his pain-hazed brain. Then he sat up quickly. Too quickly, according to his screaming head, but he ignored it and focused on listening. It was more than the wind. That sounded like voices. It was too low to make out what they were saying, but someone was definitely whispering not far away.
Even knowing that it was probably the same person who had hit him over the head, Logan felt a trickle of relief. He wasn’t alone. He was completely at the mercy of unknown enemies, but not alone. Somehow anything seemed better than being abandoned up here.
As quietly as possible, he began to crawl toward the voices. Maybe if he could get a little closer, he could hear what they were saying. There might be some clue as to where he was or who he was dealing with. He knew that he couldn’t do much in his current condition. There was no chance of fighting or running away or finding his way anywhere, even if they handed him a map and walked away. Still, he kept crawling. The urge to be close to another human being, even one who hated him, was too strong.
“What a waste…”
Logan stopped. He could hear clearly now. It was hard to tell with whispers, but that sounded like a woman’s voice. He waited a minute. A different voice answered.
“I always knew he would do something like this.”
That voice had sounded close. Logan held himself very still, wondering if whoever it was had seen him, but the voices carried on uninterrupted. They couldn’t be more than a yard or two away. It must still be night. The dark was hiding him. Logan prepared to creep a bit closer when a new voice made him freeze.
<
br /> “…always tries so pathetically hard…”
That was Eve. He would know her voice anywhere, even at a whisper. Before Logan could call her name, another voice, Adam this time, answered.
“…know you never really liked him…”
Now Alex’s voice, too. “…don’t want to, but we really had to rescue him…”
And Eve again. “…would have been better off without him.”
Logan felt the pain in the back of his head slowly spread out through his body as he sat silently taking in the whispered conversation. There was no question who they were talking about. Obviously they had come after him, sure he would get himself in trouble. Just as obviously, they weren’t happy about it. He had often wondered if the others thought he was just in the way, but he had never thought Eve would say anything like that.
Now Dominic’s voice joined the others. “Useless or not, we need the…”
“…already screwed this up…”
“…what you would expect…”
“…no more after this…”
How had they followed him all the way up here? How had they found him in the dark in the middle of nowhere? Even Logan didn’t know where he was. Then a cold hand squeezed his chest. Who had hit him over the head? Could it actually have been…? No. He couldn’t believe that they would… No.
Refusing to believe they would attack him didn’t change what he had just heard, though. He had thought they were his friends, but that apparently was an act. They had never wanted him in the group. They were furious that he was the one who was going to get answers. Adam’s angry whispers continued to wash over Logan. The map had been Adam’s first. He must be furious.
Of course. The map. It wasn’t in his bag. Logan had somehow left it behind, and they had found it. They had probably been behind him the whole time.
He was lucky they hadn’t noticed he was awake. The voices whispered on, clearly unaware that he was listening. He could only catch snatches as they all talked quickly, but the plan was pretty clear.
“…get the answers and get home…”
“…can’t just leave…”
The Broken Circle (The Book of Sight 2) Page 20