Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow

by Holly Hook

Chapter Eight

 

  Plans changed in an instant. A million thoughts ran through my head at the speed of light. A. Gist stood across the street, staring at me with that featureless face. He’d found me. Somehow, he’d found me. I had to do something, and now.

  An idea flashed through my head. It was worth a try. “Quick!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Run to my house!” Translation: this isn’t my house. No, it’s not. Go look somewhere else.

  Ryan stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. I took his sleeve and pulled him down the sidewalk. My keys fell from my hand to the pavement. Great. There went my lie.

  As if he’d detected it, A. Gist took a bold step forward. He raised his hand as if to say stop and started to cross the street.

  I stopped. Ryan crashed into me. Penny crashed into him. We’d have to run right at him to leave the yard, thanks to all the fences we had.

  “Now what?” Penny breathed. For once, she didn’t have the answers.

  My own breathing filled my head as my legs turned to rubber. Good question. “Come on!” I seized my keys off the ground and bolted for the front door. We had no other option.

  I’d never had a harder time unlocking the front door. The key kept missing the lock and my hand wouldn’t stop shaking. A. Gist’s footsteps drew closer.

  Ryan beat on the doorframe. “Hurry up!”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” I exploded. I imagined a hand landing on my shoulder any second. The key found the lock and I rammed into the door, forcing it open so fast it hit the wall.

  We stampeded into the house. I whirled around to close the door. A. Gist stalked up my sidewalk, cape flowing. He stopped there and waved me over with a silhouette hand. “Come here.”

  “Uh, no.” The words felt dry and weak in my throat. You can probably guess what I did next. I slammed the door, locked it, and turned to Penny. I was Rita Morse, but I sure wasn’t going to confront him. “Call the cops! Now!”

  Penny stood paralyzed for a second before running for the kitchen, shoes squeaking against the floor. I heard the click of her cell phone opening.

  I stood by Ryan, waiting. Waiting for the knock. Or for the door to break down.

  But the doorknob never rattled. The silence made it even scarier. What was A. Gist doing out there? I had a feeling he hadn’t given up or anything.

  “Wh…what’s he up to?” Ryan asked as if I knew the answer.

  “Don’t know,” I said. Then a thought hit me and I felt as if someone had punched me in the gut. “I…I left my window open this morning!”

  Our footsteps thundered through the house as we both ran for my room. My window was cracked open and my curtains billowed in the breeze. A. Gist hadn’t found it yet. I jumped over my art supplies, vaulted around my desk, and shut it in record time. Ryan pulled my curtains closed, then leaned against my wall and heaved out a huge sigh. “That was close.”

  Penny appeared in my doorway, brows high and chin quivering. “My phone’s dead. I think your power’s out, too.”

  I glanced at my alarm clock and felt like someone had punched me all over again. She was right. No red numbers glowed on the screen. It was like the time A. Gist made those streetlights go out.

  “Oh, crap,” Ryan breathed, pressing against the wall.

  It also meant we couldn’t call for help. It was time for me to take charge. Ryan was way too freaked out to think and even Penny’s brain had shut down. I had to get them out of here and to safety. I could never live with myself if my friends got hurt because of me.

  “We’ve gotta leave. He has us trapped in here,” I said. Any minute, he could have those Shadow Ones or whatever storming the place. I struggled to keep my voice from shaking. “I say we run down the street screaming. Someone’ll hear us. If we stay here, he’ll find a way in and nobody will ever know what happened to us.”

  Penny nodded, trembling. I felt like doing that myself.

  Ryan peeled himself from the wall. “Agreed.”

  Without a word, I led them through my room, careful not to make any noise. I didn’t want A. Gist to know where we were in the house. I nearly knocked over a ton of CD’s and tripped over a box of flowery shirts my mom always tried to make me wear. If I lived through this, I swore, I’d keep my room clean from now on.

  I stepped out into the hallway and stopped in mid-step, stomach lurching. “Wh—”

  A. Gist stood in the middle of the hall.

  He still used his shadow form like he wanted to hide who he was. Well, he didn’t know I’d seen him already, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Jerry’s life depended on it.

  An embarrassing squeak escaped my throat as Ryan gripped my shoulder from behind. The door hadn’t even opened. I never heard windows breaking or anything. How did he get in? But that didn’t matter now.

  We were screwed. Big time.

  A. Gist reached up and tipped his brimmed hat in a mock greeting. At least, I think that’s what he did. It was hard to tell on a walking ink blot. “Finally. The last of you,” he said in that cocky voice. “Now you’ll have to come with me.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even ask him what the heck he meant. Penny and Ryan looked like they were having the same problem, too. All I could do was stand there like an idiot. My heart pounded so hard, my teeth hurt.

  A. Gist reached out to the side to snap his fingers. To open a portal. To drag us away.

  “No,” I croaked, backing right into Ryan.

  The rumble of a car engine and the sound of crunching gravel floated in from outside. I almost cried out in joy. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

  My mom had come home from work early.

  A. Gist whirled around and cursed. He knew he was caught.

  I wanted to say something cool to him, something really crushing, but my brain wasn’t working at the moment. “You’d better leave,” was all I could manage.

  “I will.” He turned back to me, cape billowing. Uh, oh. “But first I’ll make sure you can’t hide.”

  Outside, the car turned off and went silent. I shot Penny a look. My mom had better hurry up.

  A. Gist raised one hand at me. His black palm started to glow bright blue as if heated by a live wire. Yeah, bright blue. The glow gathered together and formed itself into a ball of spinning light. I could only stand there and stare at it as it got brighter and brighter.

  Outside, my mom slammed the car door.

  And the blue light shot at me, fizzling and getting bigger by the second.

  Penny cried out. Ryan tried to pull me out of the way. Too late. The light hit and sent a jolt through my body, knocking me back into the folding closet door. Squealing filled the air as it gave behind me.

  Blinding blue blocked out everything. The hallway. My friends. I couldn’t even feel the closet door behind me anymore.

  It was like I was tossed somewhere outside of existence. An endless sea of blue light pulsed around me as I floated aimlessly in space. I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe seconds. Or months, or years.

  “Guys?” I called out, trying to whirl around. I prayed for Penny’s voice to come through, telling me I’d just passed out or something, or even Ryan freaking out.

  No response. Just the blue swirled around me in silence. That’s when I started to get really scared, as if I hadn’t been already. Was I dead? Maybe I’d float out here for eternity, lost. Maybe I’d disappeared like A. Gist said would happen to Jerry. My heart started racing even harder. What would my mom say when she got in the door and saw me gone?

  At last, the blue melted away like someone had pulled a drain at the bottom of it. I heaved out a big sigh of relief, until I saw what took its place.

  My feet hit the ground and I almost—yeah, almost—heaved out a big sigh of relief. It died in my throat. I wasn�
��t back in the hallway, standing next to Penny or Ryan. I don’t even think I was on Earth. I sucked in a sharp breath as I took in my surroundings. It’s not like I could help it or anything.

  Now I stood on an expanse of concrete underneath a dark purple sky. It seemed clear enough, but no sun, moon, or stars shined overhead. Definitely not normal. It was just the same, boring purple color all around.

  In the distance, an enormous blue mansion with four pointed towers crowned a hill and overlooked a small city of blue and gray. Past it, a brown wasteland (also boring) stretched out in every direction. Definitely not an inviting place.

  But that wasn’t the worst part.

  I was surrounded.

  Shadow people, thousands of them, stood around me in a huge ring. I’m not exaggerating. When A. Gist said the Shadow Regime was ten thousand strong, he meant it. Some of them had the sharp edges of armor on their shoulders, some didn’t. It was like standing inside a thick, inky circle. And every single one of them stared right at me as if I’d landed from Mars.

  Only the sound of my own breathing met my ears. Unless I grew wings, I had no escape.

  So I yelled the one thing that came to mind: “Go away!” Yeah, effective. My yells echoed off the pavement and up into the purple sky.

  Slowly the shadow people started to close in. An army of jackboots tapped nearer. I choked and spun around, forcing down a scream. I wouldn’t show fear. I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.

  Dozens of inky arms came towards me, grasping.

  Everything melted together in a smothering blackness. The ground vanished from under my feet again. My stomach lurched as I fell, fell into darkness just like the shadows themselves, and I remembered no more.