Ensnared

by Sian B. Claven

  Jono nodded. “Yes, yes …” He wrote the subject choices in the blank space on the side of his paper. “You need a fourth! Please, please, Amari, please will you give a psychology a chance?”

  He looked up at her with such sad eyes that she agreed. “Okay, dad. Um, can I be excused then?”

  Her father nodded and Amari went up to her room and sat on her bed, hugging her knees. She knew her father was trying to assist her, but she just didn’t feel like being asked to make a decision that would affect the rest of her life. It shouldn’t be made at such a young age and shouldn’t be made quickly. She didn’t have a choice now though; she would have to take the bridging course.

  True to what Jono said, the course books and assignments arrived two weeks after he registered her for the bridging course. It was on a Friday morning while Jono and Amari were out in the field inspecting the shoots of plants poking out the soil.

  The driver pulled up to the farmhouse and gave the large box to Sashqua before tearing down the farm road again.

  Amari only knew what it was once they finished up their chores. When she entered the kitchen she saw her name scrawled across the label on the box and looked at her mother. “My course stuff?”

  “I imagine so, unless you were expecting something else?”

  “Nope, nothing else expected.” Amari got a knife out of the drawer and sliced open the tape holding the box closed. Once it was open she pulled out the text books and folders of papers packed inside. She glanced at all the titles and nodded to herself.

  Sashqua was watching her and asked, “Does it at least look interesting?”

  Amari looked up at her and smiled. “Some of it does, but I’ll only really know once I start studying it.”

  Her mother smiled too. “Take it up to your room, it’s time for dinner.”

  Nodding, Amari shoved everything back in the box before lifting it up, carrying it upstairs to her room and sitting it on her bed. She glanced at the box once more as she made her way out before descending the stairs.

  Supper was awkward as Jono discussed nothing else but how much he expected her to study daily and what sort of grades he expected her to have. Amari sat through the dinner, nodding and agreeing with her father, because she didn’t want to put a damper on his excitement.

  Once the dishes were cleared and washed, she escaped up to her room. She sighed as she shut the trap door and rolled her eyes, imitating his voice, ‘Nothing less than a B, Amari. It’s up to you to invest in your future, Amari.’

  She crossed to her bed and fell into it, staring at her ceiling and dreading the next few months of studying this bridging course. Examining the wood on her ceiling, she realised she should probably start and the moment that thought crossed her mind, she realised she had fallen into her bed and had not hit the box.

  Sitting up quickly, she searched the top of her bed and the box was definitely not there. Amari leaned over and searched the floor, but the box wasn’t there either. She got off of her bed and glanced around her room, but couldn’t find the box anywhere. She crossed to her dresser unit and then moved towards her desk, where she saw the contents of the box packed neatly on her table.

  The box was nowhere in sight.

  Amari touched the books lightly; they were stacked neatly in order of size. Next to them were all the assignment folders, also stacked neatly together.

  The room temperature suddenly dropped and she shivered, taking a step away from her desk. Who unpacked the box? She knew she hadn’t. Her parents couldn’t have because they had been with her the entire time. It was like when she lost track of time the other day while reading that book. It was as if she was losing her mind and forgetting things she had done.

  There hadn’t been anyone else in her room. Amari looked around to confirm that, noting that every other item was in the place she had left it. Nothing was disturbed. The only other logical explanation was that she was actually losing her mind. Maybe she had hit her head, and damaged whatever part of her brain controlled her memories. Maybe she had sunstroke or something from working on the farm, maybe it was starting to affect her.

  Amari sat on her bed and sat back against the wall, hugging her knees tightly. She thought hard, trying to remember if she unpacked the box when she had brought it upstairs earlier. She remembered bringing it up and setting it on her bed before going down for dinner. She had still looked at it as she left her room and, no matter how hard she tried, she didn’t remember unpacking the box.

  Another creepy thought that crept into her mind was the way everything was stacked so neatly. It was not how she would have unpacked them. Amari was a creative person by nature and that meant her life was generally organised chaos. She would never have arranged the books so orderly on her table.

  Amari looked around her room again before standing up quickly and walking over to her window to make sure it was still locked. It was.

  She shivered again and as swiftly as the temperature dropped, it normalised again. A brief thought of the house being haunted crossed her mind and she glanced over her shoulder. She was creeping herself out and, although it was just her wild imagination, it was working.

  Her mind drifted back to Maggie, the little girl on the wall, and how she had said they nearly got her. Who were they? Did Maggie know something about the house? The more Amari thought about it, the more paranoid she became.

  She sat back on her bed, in the corner with her knees pulled up against her chest, and kept glancing around her room. It felt fuller somehow. It felt as though there was something there. It was probably all psychosomatic, but she couldn’t help herself. She would never admit it openly, but she always believed in something more than just the physical world and this bout of memory loss on her part was not helping her disprove that belief.

  Shifting her gaze to her mirror, she froze. Amari had always believed that mirrors held some sort of power and she was terrified that one day she would look into her mirror and see something that didn’t belong there. It was a silly thought, but one that had caused her to suffer night terrors for weeks when younger. She would stare into her mirror for what felt like hours, testing that her reflection did everything she did, looking behind or around her, and under her bed through the mirror to see that there was nothing hiding in her room she couldn’t see unless she looked through the mirror.

  It was a silly fear and her parents had constantly moaned at her, telling her that she lived too much inside her head and that she manufactured her own fear. Of course she did, she was creative and her imagination ran wild. She, however, felt that people like her, creative people, were just more open to the possibility of the supernatural and therefore only creative people were possible victims to supernatural events, not that she had experienced one yet, but still.

  No! Amari screamed the thought in her head. Stop it right there. She took a deep breath and slowly relaxed her body, stretching her legs out and taking her eyes off of the mirror.

  Absolutely silly, this whole thing. She must have unpacked the box when she brought it up; it was as simple as that. Clearly she took them out of the box as they were and that was why they were packed so neatly on her table. She just hadn’t had time to create her creative chaos yet and that’s why they seemed out of place.

  Amari got off of her bed and crossed to her window, shutting the curtains before going to get her pyjamas out of her dresser. She changed quietly, trying to distract herself from her irrational thoughts by thinking of how she was going to arrange her study routine. Once she was dressed in her pyjamas she sat at her desk and shifted the books and assignment folders aside.

  Grabbing an unused notebook, she opened it to the first page, and then opened her desk drawer, which was stacked full of all sorts of fun colour pens. She selected a few and put them on her table before she searched for her ruler. Once she had everything she needed, she started to divide the first page into colourful blocks.

  Amari worked diligently on making a routine timetable for her household chores, s
tudying and free time. She knew in her heart that she would never stick to it, it just wasn’t the way she operated, but she did it anyway because it kept her busy. Once she was done she made some fun looking page tabs with coloured paper from her art supplies drawer, carefully counting out even amounts of pages and marking them with the coloured tabs, labelled with the subjects she had chosen.

  Her father hoped she would go with psychology at the end of the year, but she didn’t think she would. It would have to be damn interesting during this bridging course for her make a career out of it.

  Glancing at the time, she set her notebook aside. Not bothering to return her art supplies to their assigned drawer, she took out her sketchbook and charcoal pencils. Art had always helped her relax, as did reading, and she felt she needed to relax more now than ever.

  Turning on her bedside light, she set her sketch book and pencils on her bed, switched her main light off and climbed into bed. Settling in, she angled her smaller light so it was shining on her lap and reached for her sketchbook. Once she was comfortable she opened up to a fresh page and considered what she should start drawing. Normally she could conjure up ideas quickly, but her mind was tugging her back to the supernatural, fear-fuelled thoughts she had earlier and drawing that would not relax her.

  Amari cast her eyes around the room to find something to inspire her. Drawing her room itself would be boring; she didn’t want this to be a chore. She looked at her window; the moonlight was filtering in through a small gap on the side of the curtains. It was pretty but hardly inspiring.

  She followed the smooth line of moonlight to its end and saw it shone directly on the leather bound book she had found. She thought back to the story she read and her mind rested on the girl it had been about.

  Kiara. That was her name.

  Shifting slightly, she started to lightly draw the outline of a circle. Once completed she added feint lines, in the shape of a somewhat uneven cross, over the circle. Amari closed her eyes and conjured up an image of what she thought this girl, this Kiara, would look like in real life. She opened her eyes and it was as though Kiara was a real person, standing in her room, and she was doing a portrait of her for an art class.

  The strokes Amari made across the page were bold and sure. She saw every feature of the thirteen year old girl, for Amari imagined that was how old she was, wandering in that never-ending forest. She gave her long curly hair. She sketched in charcoal, so black was the only option, but she knew the hair was black and thick, as though Kiara was Mediterranean by birth. The eyes she drew were round and pretty but dark, as though Kiara hid so many secrets, so much pain from the world. Her face was contradictory to the pain; it was oval shaped and she had a petite mouth.

  When Amari was done with her sketch she sat back and examined it in the light. It had been a long time since she had done a full sketch in one sitting, and her back clicked and groaned in protest at being hunched over the sketchpad for an extended period. She didn’t care; she was staring into Kiara’s face. She loved everything about the sweet girl she had conjured up from nothing but a few short paragraphs in a story, a story she didn’t even know the ending to

  Amari smiled to herself, scribbled her signature at the bottom and then, just before closing the book, she decided to write Kiara’s name at the top.

  Setting her book down on the floor beside her bed, she dropped her charcoal pencils on top of it and curled up under her blankets. All thoughts of spooks and invisible beings were driven from her mind as she closed her eyes, sighing deeply as her body relaxed. The cold blanket warmed against her body and she was soon fast asleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chores. Dinner. Study. Sleep. Chores. Dinner. Study. Sleep. Chores. Dinner. Study. Sleep.

  Over and over again, the routine that became Amari’s life repeated itself. She almost did everything automatically, as though there was no sense or thought to what she did, only that a thing had to be done by her and so she did it. There was nothing beyond her current task.

  It wasn’t just the routine humdrum of having a normal, boring life that drove Amari crazy, it was also the little things that happened around her. Things that would confuse her, or make her feel as if she was losing her mind. She put it down to being over tired, or over bored, but the fact of the matter was that she wasn’t so sure.

  First it was stuff in her room that moved around. One day she would leave her shoes in the middle of the room, only to find them in the corner by her desk the next day. Sometimes she would leave a glass of milk on her bedside table only to find it on the floor by the door the next day, empty.

  She had taken to covering her full length mirror at night, afraid she would wake up and see something she didn’t want to see in the reflection. She had also taken to putting small stickers and pieces of paper around her to see if they moved - they didn’t. Other objects did.

  One Sunday, Amari had had enough with studying about Pascal and his theory of evolution and she didn’t feel like going over Freud again. She shut her Philosophy textbook and tossed it on the floor. She needed out of this house. She needed fresh air and a chance to relax, just a little.

  Finding her trainers, she pulled them on before heading downstairs. Jono was nowhere to be seen; Sashqua on the other hand sat in the living room knitting.

  Amari paused at the door and said, “Mom, I’m going to go for a walk, I need some fresh air.”

  Sashqua nodded, acknowledging that she heard, and her daughter skipped out the front door. The weather was still miserable and, although it wasn’t raining right now, the clouds hung ominously low. The ground was damp and mud clung to Amari’s shoes as she squished her way towards the woods.

  She didn’t know why she was attracted to the woods so much, but despite her initial fear of them, she felt drawn to them. She didn’t dare venture into them too deeply again, but she liked to walk alongside the outskirts, following the road they bordered. The road was the safest place to be. It just felt that way.

  Amari sighed deeply as she walked; the pressure of getting good grades was getting to her. She knew she could if she applied herself, but didn’t regard it her choice to do this course and therefore wasn’t really applying herself.

  These thoughts were driven out of mind as soon as she reached the end of the road, where the wall marked their section of land. Maggie sat there, just staring at up the road, at the house.

  Amari approached her slowly. “Hi again, it’s nice to see you.”

  Maggie glanced at Amari briefly, returning her gaze to the house.

  Amari moved to lean against the wall, also looking down the road. “Your name is Maggie, right?”

  Maggie nodded and kicked her legs quietly against the wall. Thud. Thud. Thud. The hardness of the sound seemed to echo through the woods. Maggie said softly, “Yeah, and you’re Amari.”

  It was a simple, stated fact.

  Amari crossed her arms. “How often do you sit here, Maggie?”

  Maggie shrugged her small shoulders. “Often as I can.”

  Amari felt awkward talking to Maggie, like she was doing something wrong. Maggie continued to kick her boots against the wall and just as Amari was deciding whether or not to leave, she spoke again.

  “Mommy says I’m not allowed past the boundary wall.”

  Amari nodded. “Yeah, I remember you said so. You said it was because this was a bad place.”

  Maggie looked at her with those piercing blue eyes, as though searching her thoughts. Amari couldn’t help the shiver that rippled through her body.

  Trying not to creep herself out, she asked, “Can you tell me why it’s a bad place?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know, it’s just what Mommy says.”

  Amari looked away briefly, trying to work out a different approach so she could get an answer. The soft thuds of Maggie’s boots hitting the wall were rather lulling; it soothed more than it irritated her.

  “So why do you sit here as often as you can?”

  Mag
gie whispered, “Because I like seeing her.”

  Amari frowned. “You like seeing her?” It was a question from her, a statement from the little girl.

  Maggie smiled. “It’s a game we play. She shows up at different windows and I try to spot her.”

  Amari squinted, barely making out the windows of the house. “Who? My mom? The lady that looks like me, just older?”

  “No, silly, not your mom. I’m sure you’ve seen her too. I know you have. Sometimes I see her with you in your room.”

  All of Amari’s intentions to not creep herself out flew out the proverbial window. She moved closer to Maggie, her eyes wide with fear. “What do you mean you see her with me in my room? Who was in my room, Maggie?” Was that her voice that was so high and squeaky? She didn’t care. This kid was freaking her out and she did not like it.

  Maggie stood up on the wall. “She follows you around the house. Haven’t you seen her?”

  “Who, Maggie? Tell me right now!” Amari didn’t mean to get angry, but she wasn’t sure if Maggie was messing with her or being genuine, and it scared her.

  “Kiara, of course,” Maggie said before playfully jumping off the other side of the wall and disappearing from sight.

  Amari tried to see where she went, but the wind picked up, whipping her hair into her eyes and stinging them. Tears formed against her will and she rubbed her eyes, gazing down the road once more at the house.

  She walked back, watching the windows warily. The name rang in her ears. Kiara. She knew that name from somewhere but couldn’t quite place where she remembered it from. She didn’t have any friends called Kiara and … Amari paused, a few meters from the house, as the thought struck her.

  The girl. The girl in the book.

  She ran towards her house, her heart beating so hard she swore it could be heard from miles away. She didn’t even hear her mother call her name as she took the stairs two at a time. She wasn’t able to reach her room fast enough.