by H. D. Gordon
He grinned, the sight making a shiver shoot up my spine. His voice floated in through the fragile glass barrier, touching me as if with fingers.
“I’ve been looking for you, precious,” he said, his scratchy voice awfully familiar. “I’ve waited so long.”
“Go away,” I heard myself mumble, my tone that of a seven-year-old little girl. A terrified seven-year-old little girl. My fingers were gripping my staff so tightly now that my knuckles were bone-white.
“Come away with me, cupcake,” the Scarecrow crooned. “I’ve come all this way for you.”
Then, as if by magic, he was standing in front of me, his tall, sinewy figure towering over me. I went so cold that I felt as though my blood had stopped moving in my veins. I tried to strike out with my staff but was unable, my muscles unwilling to take command from me. I was so paralyzed with terror that I could do little more than tremble, no matter how hard I fought against it.
His long, bony fingers came up and gripped my chin, the rancid smell of him filling my nose.
I could do nothing else, so I opened my mouth and screamed.
***
Someone was gripping my shoulders, shaking me. I swung out wildly with my fists, my eyes flying open and darting around the room in panic.
Both of my wrists were seized, and Thomas’s deep and gentle voice cut through the haze hanging over me. “Aria,” he said, “Aria, it’s okay. You were dreaming.” His hazel eyes were intense, his brow furrowed. “You were just dreaming. Everything’s okay.”
My chest heaved as my mind tried to make sense of things. As it finally did its job, a different kind of horror settled over me. I’d been having a nightmare, and I must’ve screamed loud enough to bring Thomas running. Now, he was sitting on my bed beside me, gripping my wrists and trying to calm me as I sat here sweating like a cold glass in summer. I leaned around him and saw that he’d broken the lock on my door to get in. I sighed, my cheeks flushed. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Was I screaming?” I asked, staring down at where his hands still held my wrists, hyper-aware of where his fingers touched my skin.
Thomas seemed to realize he no longer had to hold onto me and released his hold immediately. “Yes,” he said and gave a short, humorless laugh. “By the sound of it, I thought you were being murdered.”
I shoved my sweat-soaked bangs out of my face. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” Thomas replied.
All of a sudden, my chest felt tight and my throat thick. I felt unwanted tears begin to prick at my eyes, and wanted to tell Thomas to leave but didn’t trust my words for fear that they would release the floodgates. So I only sat there, gritting my teeth at the emotions raging to gain control over me.
Thomas stood from the bed, giving me space instinctually. I stared down at my hands while he went over to the broken door and fiddled with it, thankfully giving me his back. A couple tears fell as he was turned away, and I brushed them away swiftly.
I couldn’t so easily brush away the lingering images of my nightmare, nor the thoughts of the Scarecrow.
Just thinking the name made me shiver.
Thomas went over to my kitchen area, searched the cabinets, and found what was needed to make tea. A handful of silent minutes later, he returned to my bedside, handing me a steaming cup.
He took a seat in the chair beside the bed. “Drink,” he said.
The feminist in me wanted to tell him to leave me alone, that I didn’t need his help or his attention, but the truth of the matter was that I did. More than anything, I needed someone to lean on right then. I felt as scared as ever.
“Thank you,” I said, as soon as I could trust my voice again. I sipped at the tea. “I’m okay now.”
Thomas sat back in the chair, his handsome face smooth save for a small furrow on his brow. “That’s not true,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on, Aria.” He paused. “Tell me about the Scarecrow.”
I scooted back on my bed until my back met the wall, gathering the sheets around my legs and looking over at the moonlight streaming in through the window. I could still see him as he had been in my dream, crouched on my fire escape, grinning his terrible grin.
I was silent for a long time, and Thomas didn’t try to force anything out of me. He only sat in the chair beside my bed and waited. I felt as though I were standing at the edge of a lake I knew well—a lake of despair, and I was terrified that if I waded into the water, it would drag me under and drown me.
In the end, though, I was too burdened with all that was happening, and the shadows Thomas and I were sitting in seemed to lend me the courage to speak of things I’d never dared speak of. It was as if in the darkness of the early morning, in the quiet of the sleeping city, in the comfort of Thomas Reid, I could share my soul without fear of judgment or persecution.
“Tell me, Aria,” Thomas repeated, gently.
And though I had sworn to never speak of it again, I did. Whether it was because I trusted him that much, or because it was simply time, I told Thomas Reid what had really happened between the Scarecrow and I.
I shared with him the darkest secret of my soul.
CHAPTER 8
It had been the eve of my eighth birthday, five days after New Years. I’d just been moved from one host family to another the week before, and was now to begin the Green Stage of my training with the Peace Brokers.
Looking back as an almost adult, I could see plainly now that this had been a calculated move on their part, displacing me a day before the first test, as to throw my emotions off.
It worked, too. I arrived at my new ‘home’ with a chip on my shoulder and a crack in my heart. At this point, I’d only been with the Brokers for three years, and still remembered my life in the Fae Forest with my mother. I had yet to accept my duty as a Halfling Peace Broker. As a result, I became a bit of a problem child among the people in the organization.
The Peace Brokers were no fools, however, and I was hardly the first Halfling to rail against the plans they had for me. I hadn’t known it at the time, but they had ways of reprogramming Halflings like me. They had ways of shaping one’s mind.
During the time that I was to run the first test of the Green Stage, there was a rumor going around about a man called the Scarecrow. The gossip had touched every part of the Broker’s world, had circulated through all the groups and households. I overheard my host parents talking about him the night before I was to be tested. I’ll never forget it. It was the first time I’d heard the name Scarecrow.
“Children are being taken,” my host father had whispered to my host mother, unaware that I was standing just outside the small kitchen, listening intently to every word. “I’ve told Commander Kali that we should reconsider running Aria’s and the other’s tests on another day, after the madman has been apprehended.”
“And how did that go?” came the cold voice of my new host mother.
A sigh. “Kali wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Of course she wouldn’t.”
“How can you be so cold, Lee Ann?” he’d asked. “Aria is only eight years old.”
“And so were we when we ran the test,” she’d snapped. “What makes this any different? Halflings have been doing it for years. If she can’t pass the first Green Test, how the hell will she make it through Red, or Black, for that matter? This is what we do, Adam, so get over it. She’ll either pass or she’ll fail.”
I’d stood with my little back pressed to the wall outside the room, hardly breathing, my hand pressed over my mouth. I could feel Adam’s aura now. He was becoming angry with Lee Ann, as Halfling Demons were wont to do.
“The difference, Lee Ann, is that when we ran the test, there wasn’t a psychopath child abductor snatching Halflings and doing Gods know what with them.” A pause. “You’re a cold-hearted bitch, you know that? You’re jealous of the girl. I can see it in your aura.”
Lee Ann made a sound that was terribly snake-like. I remember that it made the hair on the back of
my neck stand on end. There was a shuffling noise, a small struggle, and I didn’t need to see her to know that my new host mother was speaking between clenched teeth.
“I’m not jealous of anyone, Demon,” she’d spat. “And if you want to keep your eyes in your head, keep them off my aura.”
There was a moment of tense silence, and then Adam said, “You’ve seen the bodies. You’ve seen what he’s done to them. We’ve lost three in the past six months… He seems to be partial to girls… to pretty girls.”
Lee Ann snorted. “And who in this Gods forsaken world isn’t?”
There was a scraping sound as my host father stood from his chair, the legs scratching over the linoleum in the kitchen. I’d retreated quickly back down the hall, but not before I heard him say, “I hate that they made me your partner. I hate you, Lee Ann.”
And she’d replied, “The feeling is mutual, Adam.”
I’d just eased the door of my room closed as I heard Adam slam the front door behind him while exiting our house. I’d moved over to my bed and could not find sleep that night as I thought about the upcoming test… and the man they called the Scarecrow.
Surely, I’d told myself, he could not be real. I could not be in any true danger during the next day’s exam. The goal was to measure a Halfling’s abilities, not to put them in any real harm.
I was only almost eight, after all, and who would do that to a child?
CHAPTER 9
Test day came, the sun rising over the earth uncaring of the events it would bring with it, unconcerned with the things that would face a naïve eight-year-old girl upon its arrival.
I didn’t awake in the place in which I’d gone to sleep. Instead, I awoke in a jungle. What kind of jungle, in what kind of world, I had not the slightest idea. All I knew was that I was no longer in my host house with my host parents, but somewhere else completely… and I was bound and gagged at the base of a large tree.
Panic bubbled up in me, and I will admit that a few tears burst free of my eyes as they darted all around, taking in the foreign territory with slow-dawning horror.
The trees and vegetation were thick, enormous trunks and vines making up the ground and surroundings. The chirps and clicks of insects and animals came from every direction. The air smelled and tasted untouched by humans and their destructive technologies. I figured I was no longer in the human world, and the question then was, what world was I in?
Somewhere in the distance there was a blood-curdling scream, from what I could only assume was another Halfling child. The sound ripped through the air, the terror slicing through to my gut. Then, there was silence. Just the whispering of the jungle around me, and the frantic pounding of my heart.
I forced myself to count to ten, to concentrate only on my breathing, as I’d been taught to do. Once I’d gained a reasonable amount of control over myself, I examined my bindings and began to make the small, necessary movements to free myself of the ropes. It took longer than it had in my training, as I could sense danger all around me, and was fighting the urge to give into my fear.
Eventually, I had my hands and feet free, and pulled a terrible-tasting cloth out of my mouth. With that done, I felt my confidence rise, reminding myself that this was a test, nothing more—nothing to be afraid of.
These self-assurances didn’t remove the knot in my stomach, but all the greenery around me lent me some strength. I was, after all, half Fae, and Faevian kind are never more at home than when surrounded by vegetation. Surely, I’d thought, this would work to my advantage on this particular exam.
Naturally, I took to the trees, scaling the tall one nearest me in record time. My little hands and feet—the brokers had not even bothered to put shoes or socks on me, and so I had nothing but the t-shirt and sweatpants that I’d gone to bed in—moved up the bark as though they’d been made to do so, and I reached the canopy soon enough, getting a view and feel for the land I’d been dropped in.
As soon as I’d poked my little head up out of the green, it nearly got taken off by a bird the size of an airplane. I only had time to take in an endless sea of green before I noticed the thing coming at me, deadly talons reaching, hawk-eyes sharp and predatory.
With a jerk, I slipped off the branch I’d perched on and fell for several feet, scratching my face, my arms, my stomach on sharp branches as I descended. Somehow, I managed to catch myself before I could suffer real damage, and for a moment, all I could do was clutch at the branch on which I was braced and suck in the green air harshly.
I still remember how scared I’d been. I was just a child, and lost in a beast-ridden jungle with nothing other than the clothes on my back. Despair descended on me as I sat there, staring down at the jungle floor. Then, I remembered the sound of that terrible scream, and told myself sharply to snap out of it.
The first thing I needed to find was shelter, then water and materials to start a fire. If I could manage that, I’d stand a chance at making it. These tasks were not as difficult for me as they would’ve been for a full human, because my senses are so strong that I can smell water on the air and hear danger well before it reaches me.
The hardest part of the eighty-six days I spent in the jungle that I came to know as the Green Room, was the mental side of things. I was only eight, but for the previous three years I’d been taught survival from the best survivalists the Peace Brokers had to offer. I’d been taught how to recognize all sorts of plants, to know what was safe to eat. I’d been shown how to tie knots, how to build shelters, how to fish and hunt, track and trap.
On top of that, I was half Faevian, and Fae people are most at home amongst nature, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that my mind was my greatest enemy in those endless three months, to say that I went partly mad, that I transformed into a feral child of sorts.
It’s also not an exaggeration to say that this early life experience helped shaped me into the person I am today, same as the other experiences I’d gained through the Brokers shaped me.
At first, my confidence that I could do well in the Green Room was pretty high, but as each day in the jungle faded into the next, and I was left alone with my thoughts, this confidence was chipped away at.
I lost weight, became little more than a waif of a child. I went for days on end without speaking, and then would suddenly burst into loud fits of noises, screams and utterances produced by my breaking mind. Cold became a permanent state, especially on the long, dark nights, when the animals of the jungle would come to life and call out their presence.
Even now, nearly ten years later, I remember clearly the stars on those nights. The endless vastness of the evening sky was the anchor I’d used to keep my wits about me. In the jungle of the Green Room, the cosmos stretched on as far as my eye could see, and farther even than my mind could imagine. I was forced to remind myself that this test would end, any day now. Any day at all, my superiors would come and end the exam, proclaiming me a victor.
As I told myself these things, another voice in the back of my head insisted that there would be no end, that I’d fallen into a nightmare from which there would be no waking. With every hour that passed in that place, this voice grew louder.
I saw things in the Green Room that still wake me in middle of the night. I encountered animals that could have killed me had they been of a mind, or if I had been a bit slower in escape. I thought most often of my mother, of my old life, of myself in the grand scheme of things.
I cried a lot. I was only eight, but I came to know depression like an old friend. The jungle of the Green Room was simply the one to make the introduction.
Then, one day—the eighty-sixth day I was in the jungle, to be precise—I was rescued from this prison. I’d thought this signaled an end to my pain, but I would learn it had only just begun.
CHAPTER 10
I bit my lip, not sure I could go on. Thomas sat looking at me, waiting. The sun would be rising over Grant City soon, and the world was quiet on this Saturday morning, or maybe the silence just s
eemed loud to me.
“I’ve never told anyone what happened after that,” I said, raising my gaze to his. “My superiors in the Brokers knew… of course they knew, but I was never made to speak about it. In fact, after it was all over, I was told explicitly to keep my mouth shut.”
Tears filled my eyes again and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I hated myself for this display and swiped the two that escaped me off my face almost angrily.
Sympathy and understanding filled Thomas’s aura, and it made my heart ache to see it. I expected him to say he was sorry, or that it wasn’t fair, and if he had said something along those lines, I probably would have shut down and not said another word on the matter. What he did say surprised me beyond words.
“I was special forces,” Thomas muttered, his head turned toward the window, his hazel eyes somewhere else completely. His voice was so deep and low that I wasn’t sure he really wanted me to hear him, or if he was mostly talking to himself. “The things I saw… the things I did, still haunt me, and you’re right, they don’t want us to talk about it.”
Thomas looked at me now, really looked at me, and the constant guard he wore seemed to dissipate completely, if only for a moment, a space in between heartbeats.
“You were a soldier,” he said, “and soldiers are never supposed to talk about it. But sometimes it helps… just to say it once, and be rid of the poison.” He paused. “You can trust me, Aria.”
“I do,” I said, surprised to learn that this was true only as the words escaped me. “I do trust you, Thomas.”
So I told him how I’d met the Scarecrow. I told him about the man—the monster—that had long stalked my dreams.
***
On day eighty-six in the Green Room, I exited the place the same way I’d entered it. I took a midday nap, and woke somewhere else altogether. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, the sensation of waking up and not knowing where you are, but I can tell you that it’s not pleasant.
