Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  “Yes. It is,” I stammer out, rubbing my hands against my jeans. They are tingling slightly, almost as if they fell asleep for a moment and are trying to wake back up.

  We walk through the kitchen, towards the back door. Everything is fine now.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, my voice sounding dazed. Why haven’t I asked this before? Shouldn’t I know a man’s name before I go out with him? Yes… that makes sense…

  His hand touches the small of my back. “Matthew, don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, of course. Of course I remember.” I smile.

  Everything is fine now.

  We are in his car, moving swiftly down the road, the top down and my hair falling out of its messy style to tangle in the breeze. I smile. I’m happy. Everything is fine now.

  The car moves a mile or so more down the road towards town. I lift my arms and let my hands dance through the fast-moving-air. Or are we moving fast? We’re moving fast. Fast towards something wonderful.

  Something lovely.

  Something… A new word pushes into my brain. I don’t know where it comes from, but it resonates. It chills me to the bone.

  ‘Terrifying’.

  The feeling of unsafety sneaks back into my psyche. He is sitting right beside me. His hand reaches out to pat my knee and the feeling of comfort sloshes through my veins. Everything is fine.

  ‘Terrifying! Danger! Run!’ My brain screams at me.

  I stiffen in my seat. He is still touching my leg. I shrink away from his touch. I look at his face, which is momentarily turned towards me. His brow is furrowed, sweat beading on his forehead. Something is affecting him too.

  “Mine,” he whispers out hoarsely. “Mine.”

  At first, I think he is speaking about me, that I am his. I do think he means that, but I also think he speaks of something else. But who does he speak to?

  “Mine!” He yells, speeding up, pushing his foot harder against the gas pedal.

  I turn from him, focus on the road ahead, and scream when I see Tilda standing in the middle of the road.

  Tilda.

  Standing.

  And he’s going to hit her.

  I grab for the wheel, I yank it as hard as I’m able, and it’s enough to send us careening off the roadway and towards the field beyond. We move across the field. I can tell he’s trying to stop us, trying to push on the brake, but something keeps the car from slowing. We are barreling forward.

  Something begins to shimmer in the near distance. It undulates and curves and forms until it is a ten-foot-tall wall that spreads doubly as wide. I would call it a mirror, but it does not show the car and Matthew and me. No, it shows another meadow, one that I recognize, with purple flowers and a broken fence.

  Matthew screams as we launch towards the iridescent surface.

  “No!” He yanks the wheel this time, not me. We miss the portal-like surface by mere inches. “Mine!” He yells, ferocious and animalistic. “It is mine! She is mine!”

  We are slowed down enough that I think I can jump out of the car and not be too hurt. My right fingers grip the handle whilst my left unlatch my buckle. I pull the handle and push the weight of the door simultaneously. I can do this; I can escape.

  “No!” the man beside me yells again.

  He grabs the collar of my blouse and pulls me hard; my side slams into the gear shift that’s seated in the middle console between our seats. I grunt out, the pain sharp. “Let me go,” I mumble out, wheezing. I wonder if one of my ribs is cracked.

  “I’ll never let you go,” he says, his words calmer than they should be. His fingers stop simply gripping the material of the shirt, they clamp down onto my shoulder and it suddenly feels like…

  Everything will be fine.

  Everything is fine.

  I wake up back in my house. I’m lying in the studio on my sofa. It’s been a dream. It’s all been a dream. I feel so relieved that I might laugh. No, I do laugh. Loudly and manically, until the whole room is bursting at the seams with the sound of it.

  “Oh… my… God.” I hiccup out between giggles. “That had to have been the most insane dream I’ve ever had. Been sniffing too many paint fumes.” I stand up and stretch, looking around the room. My eyes rove to the floor. It looks wrong, something is different. It’s too clean. I move over to my canvas propped neatly against my standing easel. I pick up the canvas, turn it a few times, and sit it back upside down on the easel.

  That isn’t what’s bothering me.

  I look down at the floor again.

  It’s too clean. I’d spilled paint. I didn’t clean it up. Was that all part of the dream? I turn around in a daze, head for the studio doorway. I move into the kitchen. Everything seems fine there. The chairs where they should be. The honey where Tilda can reach it in her wheelchair. Dim sun filtering into the house, highlighting dust motes. How late is it now? I walk out of the kitchen, past the bathroom and the bedrooms and the small living room. Past every door, until I stand in front of the entrance Tilda and I never use.

  I’m not sure why I’m stood there, not sure why it’s important for me to walk through and prove that there is an outside to this inside. But I must. I will.

  I do.

  I unlock the door, I warp my fingers around the knob, I turn it and pull the large wooden obstruction out of the way. It reveals beautiful, late afternoon. The sky is blue and the sun is a brilliant orb overhead. Everything is fine. I breathe a sigh of relief. Fresh air will do me good. I step out of the house, expecting my foot to hit the wooden porch deck. But everything goes dark. Everything. Instantly, a finger snap of oblivion.

  When my eyes open again, my body is once more cushioned against the sofa in my studio. My studio. God. It was one of those dream within a dream deals. I hated that sort of thing. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes roughly. This time, I didn’t get up and search for odd out-of-place things. It was all a dream before. The room is fine now, the way it should be. I didn’t need to check.

  I laugh again, but this time it’s a pathetic weak thing. Uncomfortable, like I know I’m lying to myself.

  But I’m not.

  That was a dream. Everything is fine now.

  I get up, walk out of the studio, into the kitchen, towards the back door. I open the back door. I walk over the threshold.

  And I wake up on the sofa again. I wake up and I scream.

  Standing up, I run to the front door and I barrel through it.

  I wake up on the sofa again.

  Standing up, I run to the back door and barrel through it.

  I wake up on the sofa again.

  “What the hell is happening?” I scream out, standing in the middle of the studio. “What the hell is happening?” I yell once more.

  I spend the next… God, what feels like hours, racing through the front door, then the back door, then the front door again. I can’t leave. I can’t leave!

  “Let me go!” I scream, loud and clear. “Let me go!” I don’t even know who I’m talking to, who I’m yelling at. Or… do I? I do. Him, the guy that I was going to eat with, the one who bought my painting. How could I forget. I didn’t forget him. No. Coffee.

  I remember coffee. Sitting and having coffee with a man.

  Shaking my head, I try to lodge memories out of crevices like someone tipping over a tall bookcase, sending paperbacks and hardbacks flying haphazardly to the floor. They each clunk down, loud heavy tomes, sending sound pouncing about the room.

  “Remember!” I scream. “Remember!” I scream again.

  I ball my hands into fists at my sides. They feel hot, burning. I look down to see a deep yellow glow, like sunset light on a deep lake, squeezing between the cracks of my tight grips. “What the…” I murmur, flexing my fingers and watching sparks fly. I need to do something. I have to do something.

  My gaze darts around the room until they find a large, blank canvas. I scramble to it, the goldenness still radiating from my hands. Paints. I need paints. The nearest colors are flesh-toned,
red, and purple. The colors don’t matter. They don’t. I know that.

  I push the already-painted canvas off the easel and I put the blank canvas in its place. Becoming lost in a frenzy of color, I am fascinated as the glowing continues to flicker and flash from my fingers. It is almost a trance. I’ve experienced this before—losing myself in a painting, the work, the art. This is different. After a while, the color all blurs and I have trouble staying focused. I don’t know how much time has passed, but when I come to, the canvas is finished.

  Purple trees, set in and out of shadows. Two figures stood holding hands; they are nearly clothed head-to-feet in bright red robes. As I watch the canvas, it moves. It moves. The abstract figures take on life. They become more and more life-like. They become…

  Tilda and…

  I gasp, drop the brush still held in my grip to clamp my hands over my mouth.

  My sister. She’s holding up a hand; she’s pointing at me.

  I continue to watch, eyelids separated so far apart that tears are forming from the strain of holding my gaze so wide. A third figure is coming out of the shadows behind Tilda and Heather. I point, mime a warning. I don’t know why I don’t speak; perhaps instinctually I know that they will not hear me even if I scream. The third person eventually stands beside them, and I realize he means no harm. He‘s… not much more than a boy really.

  Tilda walks away from her mother and the boy. She comes forward, closer and closer to me, until it is only her upper body framed in the canvas. She lifts her arms until her hands, tightly fisted, come into view. I see it then—the sunflower gold sparks sneaking between her fingers. They cause bursts of glow against the colors I’ve slashed across the canvas. I look down at my own hands. The goldenness has disappeared, but they are still warm, tingling, with the memory of the cold fire. Like magic.

  Like magic.

  Tilda slams her fists against the other side of the painting. I’d always daydreamed that my paintings held a life of their own, buried deep beneath the paints, deep inside my subconscious that I’d transferred into colorful, riotous life. But here was the reality of it. My niece. My sister.

  Tilda is still hitting the painting. Each fist-fall is a burst of gold lightning.

  I don’t know what she’s trying to achieve.

  Not until I see the hairline crack in the painting. The painting and its surface which has become glossy now, like glass.

  The Dollhouse 2

  -M.H.-

  Forever. Mine. Mine. Mine.

  Thirteen days since I became free.

  A day since I locked my beloved in the house of my creation. She thinks it has only been a few hours. She hasn’t slept. She needs to sleep. Her mind is a frenzy.

  Watching her continually try to escape the house, it has made me hesitate in what I have done. I tried to think of every detail, but I have made it too perfect. I should have left the mess on the floor. I should have wafted the smell of burned toast throughout the house. Instead, I have taken her home and created an unbelievable trap. She figured it out too quickly, even with me concentrating my full efforts on keeping her happy.

  And then she started painting, using all the wonderful colors I’d lovingly laid out for her after cleaning up the mess on the floor of her studio. I see the magic flowing through her fingers. The magic. But she has no magic. She is no witch. She is Jen. She’s singular. She’s human.

  Something is preying on my vulnerabilities. Maybe I was wrong about her. Maybe my artist is blood connected to Elisabeth. Maybe this is all a spell. This isn’t my trap; someone has set it for me. I am the prisoner again. This is a new sort of torture. At any moment, I wonder if Jen will dissolve into witch and judge and warden.

  She is still painting, three hues flying across canvas to intermingle and merge and lighten and darken. Figures are sharpening, becoming defined.

  “It isn’t her magic,” I say, my voice and hands shaking as I go to touch the window in her studio, the one I am looking through although she cannot see me. “It’s that little, meddlesome witch.” Jen is not a witch.

  The painting is finished; I can tell by the way Jen is standing, holding a brush loosely in her hand. Then she is dropping it, gasping, clamping her hands over her mouth. I move, shifting so that I can get a better view of the canvas. It is moving. I see two people at first. Then a third.

  It’s them. In the forest.

  The miniature witch moves forward. She nearly fills the painting now.

  And then she is banging against the canvas until it begins to shine like glass. A portal. She’s creating a way in. A way out… She will destroy everything. Everything!

  She won’t take my artist away. She won’t.

  I begin to push my body through the window glass into my creation.

  The Truth 1

  -Tilda-

  I don’t know how we find our way back to the forest room, back to Mom.

  But we do.

  “Mom!” I scream as I rush into the forest room. Jon enters right behind me. She is sitting on the bed. I don’t immediately notice how pale she looks, how tired. “Mom,” I say in a normal voice, slowing my feet to a walking pace rather than a run. In reality, even before my legs were goners, I couldn’t have run for so long and for so far without cramping.

  Mom hasn’t answered me. “Mom?” I question, as I come closer. She raises a hand slowly, one finger extended. “Mom?” I question louder, fear seeping into my voice.

  I jump when Jon puts a hand on my shoulder. “Tilda, just wait.”

  “Don’t tell me to wait. Look at her. What’s wrong with her?”

  “I told you… I told you that doing what she’s doing, borrowing the magic, the strain. I told you she couldn’t last long like this.”

  Turning from mom, I face Jon. “What do you mean?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Tell me what you mean!” I scream.

  “Tilda, it’s alright.” Mom’s voice, weak and shaking, sounds behind me. Once again, I turn to look at her. The creeping, shadow wraith is pulsating across her face. Her skin goes from human-hued, to ash, back to human-hued.

  She’s fading.

  She warned me. Jon warned me. This would happen.

  “No, not yet. Not now.” I reach up and touch her face.

  “I’m too thin, My Little Witch. Too many directions. I’ve done all I can to protect Jen, to hide her power, to give her power back so that she may reach us here. You have to help her now. You have to be strong enough.” She takes my hand and begins to lead me out of the forest room. We move in the opposite direction of the way Jon and I had come from. Jon moves behind us, staying a ways behind.

  We keep moving until we come to a small clearing. As we enter the space, everything goes silent, like we have walked into the eye of the storm. “There, Tilda. There.” She raises a hand and points. I focus on what she’s seeing. There is a rippling hanging in midair, like someone is continually dropping a stone into a pond and watching the circles moving outward.

  “What do I need to do?” I take a step away from her, toward the abnormality hanging in midair.

  “Hit it. Hit it as hard as you can.”

  “That’s all?” I look back at her, uncertain.

  She nods, stumbles. Jon moves a few feet closer, out of the shadows behind us.

  I turn away from mom again and I walk without hesitating towards the rippling. I get there and I think ‘as hard as I can’, but I’m only human. I’m not that strong.

  But the magic is strong.

  I think about the magic. I pull it to me.

  Not the magic he has stolen, but the magic buried in this forest, infused in every tree and blade of grass. I’ve felt it, as I’ve walked between trees. I’ve felt it from the moment I first arrived, how unusual and strange and unbelievable this forest is.

  I feel the past rush into me. The power of everyone who’s lived before me and carried the history of this magic. It’s been here all this time. I didn’t have to fight the witchfi
nder for the meager magic I held only in my own veins. Here, in this forest that belonged to blood of my blood, I had what I needed already. How could I not know that? How could Mom not tell me?

  Or had she? As she urged me not to mess with the witchfinder, urged me not to risk projection. Maybe she could not tell me out right, maybe something prevented her. Maybe she hadn’t known…

  But I know the truth of it now, the truth of the power. I am a witch, a living witch, and this land is my land. I lift my hands, sparks pushing between my fingers, and I slam down on the ripple. I slam down over and over again until the moving air begins to harden and turn glassy.

  I hit and hit until that glass begins to crack.

  The Truth 2

  -Tilda’s Mother-

  She has figured it out. Thank god. Thank god.

  I wanted to tell her so badly, but I could not. When I first arrived in the woods, the magic embraced me. I felt more at home than I had in so long. Home, although dead. I had loved my husband and my children dearly, but there had always been a hole that could only be filled by the young girl who’d first discovered she had a gift, the young girl who was preyed upon by the witchfinder.

  Leaving it all behind, rarely coming back here, that was what it took to be free of his influence. That had been the only downfall of returning to the land of my ancestors. He had been here also. I have tried so hard, with borrowed magic, to protect Tilda and Jen. I have tried so hard to warn them and hold Matthew at bay. I’ve been so tired… so very tired. In the end, he had won though. He had done to Tilda exactly what he’d desired to do to me. He had won his freedom, through manipulation and blackness. And that wasn’t the worst of it. No.

  He’d come to me before he had taken her place in the living world, he’d come to me. He’d come to me after draining the youth from my daughter and he’d weaved a spell of silence so that I could not tell her that all the magic of the forest was hers to harness. She was not like me, not like Matthew. She could take it all and wield it without worry that it would reject or abandon. I could use borrowed bits of it, even in life borrowed bits were my gift. The witchfinder could force sparks to bend to his will so he could send that will, his shadow self, across the border.