“I’ll go down first. Throw my bag down, and then follow me.”
“I’m going to kill myself on that thing, you know,” Sandy said as she loaded the bag with the supplies from the closet. “In gym class I never made it five feet up one of those ropes.”
“Well, this ain’t gym, and this isn’t a rope. You’re going down, not up. The worst that can happen… Well, just be sure you hold on tight with both your hands and feet.”
“You always were the more adventurous one.”
In reply to that statement, Jina tossed down the other end of the net. Sandy heard it hit below.
“See you at the bottom!” Jina exclaimed as she grabbed the net and leaned back. She lowered herself hand over hand. Sandy did as she had been told and tossed down the gym bag. Jina caught it and then coaxed Sandy to pick up the net. When Jina’s coaxing neared coercion, Sandy wiped the sweat from her fingers and began to lower herself as Jina had. The fact that it was a net and not a slippery rope helped somewhat, but she had to be careful not to get her fingers tangled in the webbing. Near the bottom, she let go.
The scratching stopped again with the clatter of Sandy’s jump. By the time Jina helped Sandy to her feet, it had resumed, as though nothing had happened. They paused, and Sandy started dusting herself off in slow motion, staring into the corner.
From this angle, they could see him much better. He was a young man with a dark complexion — not bad looking considering the circumstances — dressed in a pale blue buttoned shirt that was open at the collar, and torn black pants. His curly black hair hung in front of his eyes. The hemp choker around his neck identified him as Jina’s type.
A curled-up pathetic mess, he had pressed himself into the corner near the room’s only door, and was indeed the source of the soft whimpering. A shallow indentation had been worn into the surface of the wall by his fingernails. His eyes unblinkingly stared past his fingers and into space. He breathed shallowly through his open mouth.
“Poor thing,” Jina whispered. She moved to his side and put her arms around him. She began to stroke his face. “It’s ok. I’m here. We’ll take care of you.” Sandy felt as comforted by Jina’s soothing words as the young man should have been.
But he continued to stare, unblinking, at the hole he was carving in the wall. As they watched, a splinter of wood broke away with one of the scrapes. The tone of the sound changed as his fingernails rubbed against the back side of wallpaper.
“He’s through!” Sandy shouted in whisper, feeling the excitement that he didn’t appear to have.
He continued, motionless except for his fingers. He reacted only when he broke through the tiny patch of wallpaper and a beam of light from the outside room shone down onto his hand. He leapt to his knees, throwing Jina off, and clawed at the torn wall with agitation. Sandy ran to him. His frantic fingers began leaving their marks as streaks of blood.
“Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!” she shouted as Jina helped her to pull him away from his attack on the wall.
He fought them, struggling, pushing against them, screaming, “No! I’m almost out! Let me go!”
Jina continued, “It’s ok now. We’ll help you get out.”
Immediately, he relaxed into Jina’s arms, quivering and sobbing. His whole body shook as he released emotions that were as pent-up as he was. He began mumbling, incoherently at first, but soon the two women could make out a few phrases.
“Gotta get me outta here. Maniac. Driving me crazy. Gotta leave. Crazed psycho loose. Gotta get police. Tell them I’m Lewis. Trapped. No more… “
Jina held him and put her hand to his head. She cradled him until he quieted.
“It’s him,” Jina whispered to Sandy. “That guy who went missing.”
Sandy nodded solemnly, fighting down a sense of dread. “He fell asleep,” she whispered.
Jina moved him slightly so she could see him better. It was then that Sandy noticed strange scars on his face, neck, and hands. Most were like normal scars, though there were more than she usually saw on people. It was like he had been in a bad accident, but on closer inspection, they were not from a single source.
Some were burn marks, some left over from clean cuts. There were whole areas of scar tissue on his upper arms, a mass of mottled skin. And in places the scars formed distinct patterns. Circular, symmetrical, dots. Teeth. Someone had bitten his hands and his face.
“So now what?” Sandy whispered. “Was this part of your plan?”
“I’m going to wake him up.”
“Do you think we should do that? Maybe he hasn’t slept for days.”
“And maybe he has.” Jina rocked him slightly. “It’s time to get up now.”
Lewis stiffened and looked up. He immediately jumped out of her arms and scrambled back against the wall. He gasped for breath and then shook his head as though he had just been under water for too long and had finally come up for air. His head fell into his hands and he remained in such a position until he breathed normally. Then he sighed and looked up. Bloody fingerprints dotted his forehead.
“Are you two real? As real as he is?” Lewis pointed at them.
He? They turned to look at each other, but instead saw the tattered shoulders of a dark suit. S.A. sat between them.
He smiled angrily. Pointing to a scar on Lewis’s neck, he said, “This is where I cut him.” He made a slashing motion with his hand. Lewis jumped and tried to push himself into the wall.
“This is where glass tasted him.” S.A.’s grin was now soothing. He gently touched Lewis’s forehead, and Lewis relaxed with the caress. S.A. traced his finger down Lewis’s arm to his hand.
“This is where the mantises tried to gnaw through his fingers!” S.A. beamed triumphantly. Lewis tensed again, his hands and feet pushing against the floor.
Sandy looked more closely at Lewis’s hands. Scars wrapped around some of his fingers leaving permanent rings. Sandy felt the ring on her own left hand with her thumb. She turned it slightly.
“This is where the maggots chewed at his living flesh.” S.A.’s voice held no emotion whatsoever. He lightly touched Lewis’s mottled upper arms.
“This!” Lewis’s shirt burst into flames and disappeared. He screamed and then grew very quiet. There were no new burns, yet his torso was marked with older wounds that resembled drip paths made by running syrup.
“This is where glass did not cut. It poured.” S.A. picked up a piece of broken glass from the floor. It melted, forming a ball of orange liquid in his hand. He dropped it and it cracked on the floor.
“This,” whispered S.A., pointing lovingly to a row of tooth marks on Lewis’s face, “is where I bit him.” His voice rose to a normal volume. “And this is where he bit himself.”
S.A. laughed at the tooth marks on Lewis’s hands and forearms. He then took on a reverent countenance.
“And this, this is my art.” He softly swept his hand over the patterned marks in the shapes of spirals, geometrical designs.
“And finally, this is where he bloodied his fingers while scratching his way out of this room. His name is Lewis Torentelli. He is pleased to meet you. Very pleased, I’m sure.”
Lewis nodded tensely.
“Well then, I shall leave you three to get aquatinted.” With a dip of his head, S.A. stood. He bowed slightly before climbing the stairs. The stairs weren’t actually there. His footsteps on air rang throughout the room. A door creaked and closed.
Only then did Lewis relax. He wearily leaned his head against the wall and sighed. Jina gently took his hand. “Sandy will take care of you while I find an escape.”
When Jina stood, Lewis came alive. “No way out!!” he shouted.
Sandy comforted him. “It’s ok. Jina has a plan.” Then Sandy looked back to Jina and hoped that she really did have a plan.
Jina rifled through her gym bag and pulled out two thin metal rods. She inserted them into the keyhole.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yep. Remember Nat
?”
“One of your jerks? Yes.”
“He taught me how to do this. I never told you because I knew you’d bug me about it.” Jina played with the lock and got a frustrated look on her face. “Of course, I wasn’t very good at it, but these kinds of locks are easy.”
Lewis scrambled to Jina’s side. “We can’t get out,” he whispered into her ear.
“Nonsense. I may be rusty at this, but it’ll work. Hey, Sand, can you get him a shirt out of my bag?”
Sandy did as directed, and wasn’t surprised to find a couple of shirts that would fit Lewis well. They were both shirts from former boyfriends that Jina had claimed as spoils of war. She chose one.
“You don’t get it,” Lewis interjected. “We can’t leave this house unless he lets us out. It’s his game, and he has control.”
“So maybe this is part of his game? We have to at least keep trying. We can’t just sit in here and wait for nothing.” Jina continued to twist the lock picks. Her look of frustration turned to an expression of relief when she heard a click.
“Got it. Put that shirt on, and let’s go.”
The hallway smelled of vanilla. As they walked, the scent intensified, until they came to an open door on the opposite side of the hall. The doorway framed a view of thousands of books. An inviting fire blazed in a brick fireplace. Jina entered the library.
Sandy reached out her arm to stop her.
“S.A. wants us to go in there. Let’s try doing what he doesn’t want us to do.”
But Lewis barged through. With animal haste, he knelt at the coffee table in front of the fire and started vigorously filling his mouth with the pastries that covered the table. Three cups of coffee silently steamed next to the array of food.
Jina paused with Sandy, until Lewis motioned for them to enter. The food and comfortable environment seemed to transform him into a new person, relaxed and even energetic. Jina shrugged and joined Lewis, sitting on one of the stuffed sofas and delicately nibbling at a cherry turnover.
Sandy sat next to her and whispered into her ear. “You know what happens every time we eat something of his…”
“We hallucinate? Since we’ve been here we haven’t had to eat to see shit,” Jina whispered back.
“Don’t worry,” Lewis said with a mouth full. “I eat here all the time. Sometimes it turns into beetles before I finish, but it’s good until then. Sometimes I get hungry enough I go ahead and eat the beetles. Or maggots. You’d best eat while you can.” He stuffed another half of éclair into his mouth.
“No thanks, I just ate.”
“It’s been days since he’s given me anything,” Lewis said when he had swallowed enough of his bite to speak. “This is a reward. We did something right. No telling what, though. Maybe it’s for you guys for rescuing me.” He made a hoarse sound that could have been a laugh. “Or for me, for rescuing you,” he added before stuffing his mouth again.
Sandy browsed over the titles on the shelves. Lewis finished quickly and then made himself comfortable on the couch.
“Anyways, as I was saying, we aren’t getting outta here unless he lets us. I’ve been looking for the door for weeks. Or has it only been a day? I can’t tell. I only found an outside door once. The back door. It was locked. More than locked. It was nailed shut. While I was pulling on it, an arrow flew out of nowhere. I felt air when it passed my head. I took the hint, and left the door alone. Which really sucks, because I’m sure I missed my final.” Lewis scratched his head and closed his eyes.
“We’ve heard of you, Lewis,” Jina said calmly, sitting beside him. “They’ve been searching for you for months. Your mom hasn’t given up. We’re going to get out of here, and we’ll take you with us.”
His eyes shifted, like he was trying to remember something. “I’m majoring in Law. Like my dad.” He spoke casually, as if they’d just met at in a dorm and were hanging out with friends. Jina squeezed his hand.
Meanwhile Sandy had spotted a rust colored book with a picture of a fairy on the binding. She pulled it down and began flipping through it. She read the title page aloud, “A compendium of fairy lore throughout Europe and the English Isles by WD Graves. 1894.”
“Cool, fairytales by firelight. You sure we have time to relax here, Sand?”
She flipped through a few more pages. “Not fairy tales. It’s an academic account of fairy lore in Europe. It’s full of stories, firsthand accounts or actual folktales. Like a mythography.”
“Mythography?”
“Yes. An account of what people believe, without any weight given to whether it’s true or not. Like a textbook on Greek mythology. But this is about the fairy faith. I think I’ve seen a copy of this at the University History Library. It was written in the late 19th century. It’s of historical value to help us understand what people used to think. Get this… It says the sidhe, otherwise known as fairies, can lure a human into… Oh my god.”
“Sandy? You’re looking pale.”
“It’s no accident I found this book. It—it says there are countless tales of… fairies luring humans into their world by offering them gifts, especially… food.”
“You’re saying S.A. is a fucking fairy?” Jina spat.
“Jina,” Lewis whispered, “you shouldn’t say his name too loudly.” His confidence seemed to wane and he shrunk in on himself a little.
Sandy ignored him and replied to Jina’s question. “Something like that. Fairy folk enjoy abducting humans to a place some call Tir Na Nog, the land of eternal youth. While there they see a lot of weird things that can’t be explained. They’re forced to do things they don’t want to, including… oh god.” Sandy’s hand wavered in front of her mouth. “Including taking them in marriage. Especially women.”
“You’ve convinced me,” Jina said. “Sandy, I’m so sorry. There’s got to be a way out. Someone had to tell the tale, right? Does it say how those humans escaped?”
“No. Once there, they are trapped for any length of time, overnight or even hundreds of years, until the fairies send them back for no apparent reason.”
“What? That can’t be right. In all the fairytales I’ve read, there’s some way out of every curse. Like kissing a princess or cutting through the brambles into the castle. Even Rumplestilskin let people go if they guessed his true name, remember?”
“Like I said, this is an account of fairy lore, not of modern fairy tales. Most of these stories don’t have happy endings. But let me keep reading.” Sandy sat on the corner of the couch and turned the pages.
“Thank god you read fast.”
“Shh… let me concentrate. Ok, here’s a story about a farmer whose wife was kidnapped by fairies. He followed her into Tir Na Nog. He found her, and held tightly to her. The fairies made all kinds of scary faces and forms trying to scare him into letting go. But he knew if he let go, they’d both be lost forever. So in spite of his fear, he held on. But it was too late. She had eaten fairy food at a banquet, so he lost her.”
“Fuck. We ate the fairy food.”
“Yeah… but… remember. This is lore, right? Maybe there’s something to this. Remember how I made the spiders disappear by convincing myself they weren’t real?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the same thing this farmer did, in a way. He had to hold on in spite of the illusions. He had to believe they couldn’t hurt him. That’s a common thread in many of these stories. The ones that end well do so because someone had a strong enough will, or believed the apparitions couldn’t hurt them. So maybe it doesn’t matter so much that we’ve eaten his food.”
Lewis seemed to perk up a little. “When I first got here, I tried arguing with him. I convinced him that none of this could be real, and… he went away for a while. I think Sandy may be right.”
Sandy nodded and continued reading.
“Fuck,” she said abruptly. “Some of these stories outright conflict with each other. Folklore makes me want to rip my hair out. It always has some kernel of truth, but it’s heavily
laden with red herrings and distracting details…”
Sandy kept reading a little longer. Then she looked at her hand. “My ring. It’s made of iron. Why would he…?”
“What? Tell us!”
“It says here,” she said, returning to the book, “that fairies are weak to ‘cold iron’, which could mean anything. Weapons, wrought iron, steel. Most accounts hint that it’s any kind of iron. This book was written before steel was widely available outside of industrial settings. So most likely wrought iron, or maybe cast iron. Why would S.A. give me an engagement ring that looked like gold but was actually something that could hurt him?”
“He did say this was a game. What kind of game would it be if we didn’t have a chance? Maybe he gave you the iron and the book out of a sense of fairness?”
“Or to make it more interesting. Like a fucking cat letting the wounded mouse run a few feet.”
Sandy flipped through more pages. Silence passed. The two on the couch listened to the sounds of distant music that they realized had been there all along. A phonograph someplace deeper in the house scratched out a snappy old jazz tune. It freaked Jina out a little, but Lewis seemed undaunted by it. He tapped out a beat with invisible drumsticks.
“You a drummer?” Jina asked.
“Yup. Damn good too.”
“In a band?”
“Not anymore. Lookin’. Was, anyway.”
Jina caught his eye and scooted in a little closer to him. “My band could use a drummer. If we get out of here, that is.”
Lewis smiled while Jina took a sip of coffee. Something fell from above and landed in her cup with a soft splash. Another something immediately followed, and left a deep red drip trace down the side of the ceramic. It froze. Wax.
Jina squeaked in pain and rubbed at her arm. Lewis jumped and curled himself into a trembling fetal position in the corner of the couch.
Sandy looked up. Liquid wax was beading along the cracks in the ceiling. The pastries on the table were already covered in wax, like display food. Strangely, no wax fell on her, though Jina and Lewis weren’t faring so well.
Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) Page 6
