Shadow Forest- The Complete Series

by Eliza Grace

  He joins me now, leaning so it’s easier for me to reach him.

  Our lips come together in gentle meeting. I can tell he wants to keep it PG, but there’s heat building in my stomach and the butterflies are restless. I press into him harder and move my mouth just a fraction. He relents and we are kissing deeply, and without pause, until I have to come up for air or I will most certainly suffer brain damage… though being head-over-heels in love with a boy is its own kind of brain damage.

  “Dinner and a show.”

  Hoyt and I part quickly and we find Jon staring at us. His mouth is bloody and he’s holding a dismembered wolf leg. When he smiles, showing his fangs dripping red, I actually feel a little queasy. Watching him chow down on an animal is a little different than watching him drink hot blood from mugs.

  “Now,” Jon continues, “while you guys were getting lost in the rain and playing possum,” he looks at me when he says that, “I was hunting down the Marchosias demons. Anyone else care to be useful and point us in the right direction so we can get the hell out of this forest?”

  Part of me wants to move further away from Hoyt to spare Jon’s feelings, but I don’t want to hurt Hoyt in the process. So I stand still and awkward and I fight how happy I am that my lips are still tingling from the kiss.

  Mr. Witchfinder, you’re up to bat.

  Give me a moment, I’m busy vomiting in the corner of your brain. Next time you plan to make such unabashed love to your romantic partner, please warn me so I can cover my eyes.

  That was not making love. I protest. And you’re a pervert.

  I certainly am not.

  Just tell us where to go. I change the subject.

  Let me look around and orient myself. I’ve been recently ill you know.

  I roll my eyes, but don’t respond.

  After a great while, he speaks again.

  Turn around. Walk until I tell you to stop.

  Is that it?

  For now, little witch.

  “Fine,” I groan out loud. “He says to,” I turn around and point, “walk this way until he tells us to stop.”

  “He’s certainly keeping his secrets.”

  “Mmm hmm,” I mumble and begin walking. “He’s a big fat jerk face and if I ever get the chance to, I’m going to punch his lights out.”

  ***

  Stop. The witchfinder commands after about twenty minutes. Do you see that fairy circle? I look around, not immediately seeing it. There are two trees that have grown together to your left. Do you see that?

  Yes, I see that.

  Look down.

  I do and there it is. A wonky circle of beautiful white mushrooms. I’ve never seen fungus so perfectly-formed. They look like an artist has taken one and copied the others, creamy white with brown freckles. Yum. I think automatically.

  Be my guest. You’ll hallucinate for several hours and then experience total body paralysis. Fairy circles are meant to trap anyone too curious and too close to their homes. I wish I’d have exterminated them all eons ago.

  You really hate fairies, don’t you?

  Yes.

  Now what? I question after a moment.

  Step into the circle.

  Step into the fairy circle of hallucinogenic, poisonous mushrooms?

  Yes.

  Okay…

  “What’s he saying?” Hoyt asks, putting an arm around me whilst I stand still contemplating the intelligence of jumping into the center of a poison party.

  “That we need to step into that circle of mushrooms over there,” I point it out to Hoyt.

  “Okay. What’s the problem?” He quirks an eyebrow at me.

  “He also told me that the mushrooms are poison if we eat them.”

  “So we don’t eat them.” Hoyt pours out the logic.

  “Well, I know that. I just don’t—”

  “Trust him,” Hoyt finishes for me.

  “Exactly,” I say as I step forward.

  Jon is already stood by the circle. He looks at me and winks. “Someone’s got to go first.”

  “It doesn’t have to be you, Jon. Stop.”

  But he’s already stepping into the circle. And I’m holding my breath, feeling heavy with guilt that I am glad it’s Jon and not me or Hoyt. It tells you a lot when you come to the brink of a hard choice and realize who you’re willing to part with.

  With both feet in the circle, Jon does a funny little dance and I laugh. “See, Tilda. Nothing to worry abou—” With a whiff of crimson smoke, Jon is gone.

  “Jon!” I scream, running forward. What have you done? I yell at the witchfinder. Bring him back.

  Getting into my home is not easy, little witch. You each will have to find your ways in and out. I cannot change that now.

  You should have warned us!

  It would have changed nothing.

  We would have been prepared.

  I steeled myself and walked forward, getting ready to join Jon in whatever strange and scary unknown waited. Hoyt grabbed me by the shoulders before I could step into the circle. “Tilda, stop. You saw what just happened to Jon. You can’t risk that.”

  “I have to. The witchfinder says this is the way into his home. The only way.”

  “You just said you don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t, but Hoyt… we have to go. Jon is already in there.”

  “If that,” Hoyt pointed to the circle, “didn’t kill him.”

  “It didn’t kill him,” I say with certainty. “It didn’t. The witchfinder wants into the Neverwhere as badly as we want to get rid of the monsters. He’s not tricking us.”

  I pull away from Hoyt and I step into the circle.

  At first, just like with Jon, nothing happens.

  And then I am enveloped by thick red smoke which itches like ants are crawling over every inch of me. When the ruby hue around me dissipates, I am stood in a room with no doors or windows. Every surface is painted black as sin.

  I am very, very alone.

  -Tilda-

  Moving about the room, I touch every inch of every wall, hoping to find a way out. But there’s nothing to be found. Only the solitude forced by obsidian walls.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  You have to figure this out, little witch. Even I cannot help you.

  Why not? You’re the freaking architect of this place, aren’t you?

  Yes, that is true. Yet, I designed it to function outside of my influence.

  Well that’s just total crap. I breathe out, frustrated and scared. Why the heck would you create this ridiculous entrance? Who were you trying to keep out?

  Your mother, for one. The witchfinder says coolly. And there are all manner of beasts in these woods who would seek my power if given the chance.

  Okay, so, you’re zero help and somehow I’ve got to get out of a black box. Easy. I search around the room again.

  I can offer some advice. The witchfinder dangles information in front of me, an owner waving a bone at a dog.

  Oh, really? Want to be helpful now? How surprising.

  If you’d rather I stay silent, little witch, I can oblige.

  No, sorry. Stop. What’s your advice?

  I made these tests to prey on the personality of the recipient. For some reason, your mind has created this windowless, doorless design. Why do you think that is?

  I turn in a circle, staring around me. I’m trapped in a prison. The walls are as unforgiving as a night with no moon. I’m trapped. Just as I am trapped in actuality, when I am not fueling unbroken legs with magic. I feel trapped… all the time. I think and I can almost see him nod inside my head. So this is a representation of that feeling.

  But you’re not truly broken, are you? There is a part of you that no longer functions as it should, but you are not incapable. You find ways to operate in life.

  That’s true. I think of my wheelchair, of the collection bag I do not have to wear right now because I am not paraplegic at this moment.

  I walk forward and press my h
ands against one of the walls. I realize that it probably doesn’t matter which wall I choose, not if my subconscious is the creator of what I’m seeing. I push gently, because I believe I can.

  Just as I believe I can use a wheelchair to navigate a store. Just as I believe I can get into the shower on my own, if I keep trying. Just as I believe that having a collection bag is something I can deal with for the rest of my life if necessary.

  The wall gives, pushing outward. I walk forward, gentle nudges. As it moves, enlarging my prison, the black begins to lighten into a navy blue, then cobalt. Lighter and lighter until the shade is paler than a robin’s egg.

  And then the barrier dissolves completely, going buttery smooth in my hands and then snowing into tiny particles that float on the air, much like a puff from a baby powder container if you squeeze it quick and hard.

  Am I here? I mentally breathe out, relief flooding my body.

  Nearly. Follow the trail and you will see my home. It will be obvious.

  Deeply-red bricks line a path that snakes into the forest. I feel like Dorothy, though I’d rather be heading toward the emerald city with my dog than heading towards an evil wizard’s lair in the middle of a haunted forest… whilst the evil wizard plays house inside my gray matter.

  -Jon-

  It is jarring. I am enveloped in red and then dunked into ice cold water.

  I blink, fighting to the surface of a frozen lake.

  I remember this body of water.

  I remember this place.

  This is where I died. So very long ago.

  I can see my mother’s face in the near distance. She is sobbing and holding onto my father who is talking to a group of men. They are going to push a small fishing dingy out onto the ice. If it breaks, they will be safe. They are going to rescue me.

  But the water is so cold. I can feel it seeping into my body and slowing the rush of blood through my veins. I keep splashing and begging the freezing wetness to let me go, let me live. I try to keep my head above the water line. Yet, my clothes are so heavy now; they pull me downward. My ice skates are stone weights around my feet.

  I push to the surface one more time, and it takes every ounce of my nearly-depleted strength. I scream for my mother. I scream for her and wish to be her little boy again, sat in her lap whilst she reads in her lovely melodic voice. If I survive, I will not fight my father over boarding school. I will go to the school he attended and I will make him proud, even if the life he wants for me is not the life I want for myself. I am no longer a child. I am nearly a man.

  I must accept the fate that hovers across the horizon.

  I will even marry Ann Dewight if my parents keep pushing the matter. I will marry her and father will have the business connections of her father. And I will inherit his business and I will have a son and I will mold my son the way my father has molded me.

  If only I can live, I will do everything I can to be worthy.

  That last thought stops me in my tracks.

  Because it is not the last thought I had before dying.

  I remember it clearly, as clearly as I do the way my body faded as I fell into a frozen sleep.

  I am not my father. I am already worthy. I’m okay with dying.

  It was true, I had begged the universe to spare me. I had promised to do all of the things my parents wished of me.

  But I had not admitted that the life I’d led up until falling into the lake was wasteful. I had not thought I was unworthy.

  I realize that the lake is not real. Of course it isn’t. I have been dead for so very, very long.

  My body pushes upwards as the layer of ice on the surface of the lake melts away. I am on solid ground. My mother and father are gone, so too are the men who tried to save me that day. In their place is the man who prepared my body for burial. The man who felt the thread of a pulse as my body thawed out beside the fire in his preparation room. The man who was a vampire, who granted me this second life that has been so fraught with loneliness.

  He too fades away. His beady black eyes and shock of white hair. His herring bone waist coat and tailored trousers.

  He is gone and I am in the forest again. In front of me is a brick pathway. I follow it, because going backwards is not an option.

  I cannot drown again.

  After a time, I begin to see repeats in my surroundings. I have gone in a circle. Over and over again. There was a moment when I thought I smelled Tilda, the scent of her shampoo and body wash wafting too me in a comforting breeze.

  But she wasn’t there.

  -Hoyt-

  Jon and Tilda have both stepped into the circle. They are both gone. I have no choice but to follow. I cannot deny that there is fear inside of me, but the fear of staying is greater than the fear of going. I need Tilda like I need air.

  So I step into the circle and steel myself for the crimson smoke. It doesn’t come.

  Nothing happens.

  I step away from the mushrooms, and then enter the shape of them again.

  Nothing happens.

  “No,” I breathe out, realizing that I cannot get to Tilda. I do not know why the fairy circle will not accept me. I have no answers. I have no witchfinder in my head to provide insight. I can only stand here in the forest and hope that everything is okay, that Tilda is fine, and that I’ve not lost her again.

  Because that’s what it feels like—that she has disappeared into the woods and I cannot see her or hear her or reach her. I half expect the Neverwhere to claim me, to repeat the cycle of loss. But it doesn’t. The woods are eerily silent, no bird calls to calm me. Forests should be alive with sounds and life. When one isn’t, then you know there’s something to fear.

  “No, dammit. I don’t accept this.” Feeling determined, I step back into the circle. And I concentrate so hard I must look like Hildegarde the senior chicken my family kept well past her egg-yielding days. ‘Too old and tough to fry’, Gran would say. She’d act annoyed at the old bird, but I knew she loved every feather on that ornery chicken’s body. And the day that Hildegarde finally laid eggs again, straining so hard she squawked after each one, Gran didn’t have the heart to take them away.

  “Take me too!” I yell into the air after nothing happened for a third time. “Take me too or I swear to God I’m going to smash this circle!”

  That does the trick.

  I guess if you anger something magical, it rages right back at you.

  The crimson smoke is hot as hades and burns up my body like a bad sunburn. I choke and cough and don’t remember it looking so bad when Tilda and Jon went through the circle. And they were gone so quickly, whilst I am conversely still caught in the red assaulting haze. I fight, yelling for the magic to let me through so I can get to Tilda. But it keeps scorching me until I think I might pass out.

  Suddenly, I feel pressure against my chest. The temperature grows even hotter there, as if I’m being branded. I don’t want to die this way. I don’t want to die.

  Finally, it’s over. Everything clears around me to reveal a different part of the forest. There is a path leading away from where I stand, a red brick road.

  I don’t know what to do besides follow it.

  The Witchfinder’s Lair

  I do not feel the path will ever end. I have navigated numerous twist and turns and I swear I see the same fallen tree three times before I stop and turn in a circle, wondering if this is another one of the witchfinder’s safety measures.

  It is not. His voice assures me. Just keep walking. We are nearly there now.

  I think you’re lying. I grumble, but start walking again. It reminds me of a movie scene where the girl is caught in a maze that goes and goes and goes, no turns; just a straight path towards nothingness. Until she is stopped by a friendly creature that offers her tea.

  There is no fuzzy worm on a wall to guide me though, only the nuisance I carry in my head.

  Stop here. Turn around.

  Turn around?

  Yes. He signs, irritated. Do you thi
nk I do not know the way into my own home?

  You are telling me to literally turn around. What, did we miss it?

  No. Just turn around.

  I do as he says, seeing nothing save for the forest I have just made my way through. Now what, creeper?

  Reach out your hand. No. Your other hand.

  I drop my right hand and reach instead with my left. My fingers brush against something hard and cold. What is that?

  The door. Obviously.

  No, not obviously. I think about Jon and Hoyt and realize that there’s no way they could find this entrance without the witchfinder’s help. I turn the knob, it gives way easily. I try to push, but nothing happens.

  Pull, not push. Obviously.

  Again, nothing about this is obvious!

  I pull the door and it opens. A literal doorway into another world is revealed. Past the threshold is a garden exploding with gorgeous colors, some I cannot even give a name to. Past the garden, in the near distance, I can see a small home. Smoke puffs from a chimney. It is idyllic, like something from a Kinkade painting.

  Well, what are you waiting for? He urges. The answers are there. We are so close.

  I need to find Jon and Hoyt. I leave the door open, but walk a little to the side so that I can see past it down the path from whence I’ve come. “Hoyt!” I yell. “Hoyt, are you there!” I turn around and point the other way. “Jon! Jon, I’ve found the door!”

  I slide the backpack off and unzip it to grab a water bottle. After taking a long drink, I put it back in the pack and drop everything gently to the ground. It’s a relief to not be wearing the heavy burden for a while.

  There is no reason to wait for them. We can find the answers together. The witchfinder encourages me to walk through the door. I can feel his will trying to influence my own decision.

  Stop it. I’m not going in there without them.

  Yes. You are.

  My eyes go wide as my arm moves without my consent. It reaches past the threshold into the witchfinder’s lair. “Stop it!” I scream out loud, trying to steal back control of my body. My leg jolts forward; it too pushes into the doorway. “Stop!” I scream once more. My right arm is still my own. I reach out with shaking fingers and I grasp onto the doorframe. “You can’t make me go in there!”