I’m at my destination, and for a second nothing happens. Then the suction begins, and the wind from the barrier has my hair flying everywhere.
The last thing I see before being uprooted is Fannie hitting the barrier and bouncing back. Then August wraps his hands around my waist at the last second.
Chapter 18
The ride through the barrier is all a big blur. I’m tossed out and land in a field of grass with August’s hands still wrapped around me, until we hit the ground and break apart. My landing isn’t that bad, but the force makes me lose my breath for a second.
I leap up. As quietly as I can, I spin myself around in a circle to get a layout of my surroundings. “It looks like we still aren’t back home.”
August’s eyes browse the area. “No, it doesn’t. This must mean we are traveling through the displays. Hopefully, this isn’t as bad as the last two. But with the track record I have seen so far...”
The relief hits me that we are out of that horrible place, and I don’t even care that we are in a new display. I should have paid more attention and not trusted even the women. My mind was so set on Jack the Ripper being a man, that I didn’t even think it was possible. I wanted to think that there was a good person there. I assumed Fannie was like Katrina, but I was wrong about that. Then the whole Officer Rodriguez situation, but I can’t dwell on that right now.
Once again, we have on different clothing. There seems to be a pattern here. I look over my arm that doesn’t have the cut that Fannie marked me with anymore.
“August, look at my arm. It isn’t cut anymore.” I shove my arm in his face.
He looks it over. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Well, we also have a more relaxed set of clothing this time,” I say. I’m trying to be on the optimistic side.
I’m still in a dress, but the dress is much easier to manipulate and move in. It’s olive green and is made of cotton, possibly combined with another material. The arms flow slightly and are cuffed at my wrists. There’s a brown belt tied at my waist that has triangular designs and shapes all around it. Where the dress hits my ankles, I have on flat slip-on shoes that are brown with the same triangular design at the front where my toes are.
I grab at my hair that is braided down my back, and it hits right above my waist.
“This isn’t exactly jeans and a shirt, but it works better than thirty layers of material for a suit.” August looks down at himself and pulls at the end of his tunic.
I step forward and run my hand through his hair. It’s longer this time and falls right below his chin. “The hair looks nice on you.” It really does.
I pull my hand back from his hair and let it drift back to my side when he grabs it. “Does it?” He reaches around and tugs on my braid. “I like yours, too.” He smiles.
I smile back and observe the rest of him. He has on tight, brown pants, dark, brown boots that reach the top of his calf, and a green tunic that almost matches the color of my dress. Then I notice a weapon at his side.
“Hey, why do you have a weapon, and I don’t?”
He pulls out a long sword that is attached to his hip. August looks like he just won the lottery as he looks it over. The silver color of the sword shines as the sunlight hits it.
While still holding the sword, he walks over and pulls something from my back that is tucked into my belt. “You do.” He hands over a small dagger that has red rubies on the handle.
I frown at August. “This isn’t even close to being as good of a weapon as what you have. The person would have to be fairly close for me to strike them. It isn’t like I can throw it since, you know, I haven’t been trained in throwing daggers.”
“Better than nothing,” he shrugs.
“True. How come we didn’t have weapons before?” I turn the dagger over in my hand.
August places his sword back into the case. “I’m going to be real honest here. Things may be worse from the track record of how things have gone, so I’m going to continue to be ecstatic over this sword.” He pats at the sword case several times.
I shrug and tuck the dagger in front of me this time for easier access in case I need it. I’m glad I have something, so I don’t have to search through silverware again for a weapon.
We do the same routine as before, and the barrier will not open or give way. “This is like déjà vu all over again. Forward is our only option here,” August says.
This place seems similar to Sleepy Hollow, since our only pathway is through bushes. Once we get past the tall green shrubbery, it’s just trees. Lots and lots of tall trees.
I walk as quietly through the woods as I can, and August’s pace matches mine. The trees are spaced a decent width apart, so the journey through is an easy one. It’s strange that I hear no sounds from anywhere. When I look way up in the trees there are a few small birds scattered, but they are silent, as if they are scared to even make a single chirp. The sun is shining through the small openings of the tall and narrow trees and guides our way.
In our line of vision, out pops a large, gray rock or boulder. Then there appears to be a row of boulders lined up beside each other.
Suddenly, there is a quake of the ground, and we stop in our tracks. The shaking is a pounding so intense that my bones and muscles throughout my body are clacking against one another.
All around, the trees aren’t wide enough for us to hide behind. It’s an open invitation, us standing here waiting for whatever is causing this vibration.
“Go to those rocks.” August points in the direction up ahead. We run at a speed that isn’t as fast as I would like it, because the shaking causes us to stumble along the way.
I dive down first behind a large rock covered in green moss and dirt. I cradle my knees to my chest. Whatever is causing all of this is coming from behind the rocks. The shaking stops, and I hear loud rumblings, as if someone is talking in another language. Only it echoes so loudly, I have to raise my hands and press them to my ears.
There are about ten rocks in the row, but they aren’t solidly pushed up against one another. Because of their round shape, there is a hole where it rests against the next rock at the bottom.
August has already shimmied over to it and is gazing through the hole. It isn’t a small hole either; I know we would be able to crawl through it if we wanted to.
“What do you see?” I whisper. August doesn’t seem to hear me. He watches whatever it is with an intense look. I tug on his shirt to get his attention. “August.”
He scooches over to the next rock and pulls me over, so he can peer in from one side and me the other.
My vision has never been this overwhelmed. The green through here is a field of the most luscious green. I want to prowl right into the grass. From the looks of it, I know it would feel like velvet against my skin.
There is a huge bridge built with white rock and stone that is amazing. I look from left to right, and the bridge isn’t over water. It’s covering a sparse and patchy area that is mostly dirt. Then I see them.
There are three giants. No, not giants, but tall, extremely tall trolls that are underneath the bridge.
I can’t see them clearly from here, but they are grotesque from what I do see. Their skin is a sallow yellow with darkened brown areas that looks like rotten flesh that hangs loosely over the span of their skeletal frame.
Two appear to be female with long, stringy, dark hair that is covered in dried mud and dirt. From the looks of it, these creatures have never bathed a day in their entire lives. The other troll is male, and I can tell them apart because none of them are wearing any clothing.
I’m too busy looking in horror at the trolls to notice that something has made an appearance on the bridge. There is a clack-clack-clackity-clack-clack noise.
I look on top of the bridge, and I see a white goat. The fur is as white as a snowflake, and the goat looks happy. I watch in horror as I look back at the trolls, and all three of them are staring up at the roof of the bridge.
One of the females says something quietly that I can’t understand. She points at herself, and the male nods. The other female looks enraged, but she goes and sits down with a pouty expression.
The female troll that pointed at herself begins to lick her lips with a long, green tongue that is the color of pea-colored vomit. She creeps over to the edge of the bridge and sets her palms against the stone.
I look back up to the goat who has now reached the middle of the bridge. It is walking at a leisurely pace and admiring the scenery, as if it has all day to cross this old bridge. I want to yell at it to run, but I can’t scream out loud, or it will draw the attention of these monsters. I don’t want that.
Instead, I silently shout for it to run over and over in my head. Maybe it will somehow hear me, but it doesn’t.
The female troll moves as quick as a spider up the bridge. She snatches the goat in one swipe with her hand by its neck. There is a short cry from the little goat, until the sound is cut off by how hard she squeezes.
The troll doesn’t even climb back down the bridge. She just jumps off like she has done it a million times. I’m betting that she has. The troll hits the ground with a loud thump that has the ground vibrating below us. My hands fly up to the rocks in front of me, as if it’s my only lifeline.
She gets up swiftly with her prize and walks back under the bridge. The other female troll is still sulking and walks over to the female speaking in a language that I don’t understand.
The sulky female tries to grab the animal from the goat killer. The male stands up and hobbles over to her and pushes the female down, while the one holding the goat just lets out a loud cackle that is so loud it has my ears aching.
The sulky troll is visually upset. She starts hitting the ground with her fists, one hit right after the other that has the ground shaking again. Then she suddenly stops and goes back to sit against the wall. She’s furious.
The female with the goat takes it in her hand and pounds it over and over on the ground. I’m thinking to soften it up, but I have no idea. She then pulls it up and rips off one of the goat’s legs with a loud splitting and cracking sound. Thankfully, the goat is already dead when she brings the leg to her mouth. She bites it like she is testing it out as she slowly chews.
Satisfaction spreads across her face, and she stuffs the entire goat in her extremely large mouth. She doesn’t even take time to chew it and swallows the entire thing.
There is drool, blood, and maybe some slime bubbling on her chin that she doesn’t even bother to wipe away.
I move my eyes slowly away from the disgusting scene to look over at August, who is looking on at the trolls with his face twisted with a look of disgust. He manages to tear his eyes away from the scene that just unfolded and looks at me. “Well, Perrie. Sorry to burst your bubble and mine, but this situation went from bad to worse.”
“No crap,” I say with exasperation.
Chapter 19
I pull back from troll watching and think about how our situation got a whole lot worse. I prop my back up against the rock. “I think this is what we are in for, August. Each of these displays is going to get worse and worse. This is more than Three Billy Goat’s Gruff. It’s Bloody Freaking Troll’s Gruff.”
August pulls back and props his back against his own rock and slides his knees up. He rests his forearms on top of them. “What now?”
My stomach starts making strange noises. “It appears I’m hungry now.”
August shoots me “the look” and points his thumb back at the troll area. “After seeing that sick business?”
I spot a berry bush a few feet from us. I nod at them. “What about those? Do you think they are poisonous?”
He stares at the berries for a moment and then crawls over to the bush. “They look okay to me.”
I crawl over to him and pluck one blue berry from the bush and hold it up to examine. “What percentage are you sure about them looking okay?”
He picks one from the stem and inspects it as he rolls it around in his finger. Then he cuts it in half with his fingernail and looks at the juice dripping out. “I’m going to say fifty percent sure.”
It’s my turn to give him the “what the heck” glance. “I could have given you that same percentage myself. Fifty percent chance leads to death, or fifty percent chance leads to staying alive.”
He pops one in his mouth before I can grab it back. “You idiot!” I whisper yell.
I don’t know how long it would take for the poison to kick in, but at this moment I’m too hungry to care. We gather as many berries as we can in the folds of our clothes and crawl back to the rocks and eat.
We sit around for what must have been a few hours and still aren’t sure what to do. Oddly enough, we are still alive after eating the unknown berries. During that time, we peeped through the hole and saw what the trolls were doing. They were mostly sitting around, or one of them would throw a tantrum over something and start pounding the ground and getting it to vibrate again.
The barrier that we have to find must be under the bridge. I have no idea how we are going to manage to go under it with three trolls sitting right there.
August and I tried going back to the barrier where we came through, just to double check if maybe we could make an exit that way. We thought maybe after seeing the trolls the barrier would open there, but it didn’t. I beat against it nonstop for several long minutes. It only caused us to waste more time, so we came back through the woods and ended up back here behind the rocks.
During the time we’ve been sitting here, there have been two more goats attempting to pass over the bridge, and none of them have managed to succeed. The male took his turn first, and then the sulky female took the last goat. She was the most vicious out of them all, ripping the goat apart inch by inch. I couldn’t watch anymore.
I happen to be examining through the hole trying to come up with a plan. The only thing we came up with is to wait for all the trolls to fall asleep and tiptoe under the bridge. The question we both have is, do trolls even sleep?
The option I prefer is to attempt to go over the bridge and just hop off the side. That won’t work because the bridge is too high up. The bigger issue is the starting point seems to be outside of the barrier, but somehow these goats keep on appearing.
As I’m looking through the hole and August is picking at his fingernails with a stick he picked up off the ground, I see a young man start walking across the bridge. “Where did he come from?”
August drops the stick on the ground and rotates himself to look through the hole. “Who? Oh, wait I see.”
I want to run over and help him, but the trolls are already listening to him walk across the bridge intently. Once again, I’m too much of a coward to even attempt that fate right now.
The guy is tall with the lightest white hair I have ever seen. He’s wearing clothing like what August has on, except his tunic is blue.
My attention falls back to the trolls, and the eating round that has approached full circle. It appears to be first goat killer’s turn, and she is gearing up and ready to do her spider crawl.
I look back at the guy crossing the bridge and recognize him just barely. If his hair weren’t that shade of white, I would have taken him for any random person. He’s one of the missing people. I saw several pictures of him after Maisie told me he went missing. “That is Ben Johnston.”
August has a blank look on his face. “Who?”
“Ben Johnston. You know that college guy that has been missing.”
He looks at Ben a little harder, and then recognition begins to finally set in. “I wouldn’t have guessed except for that hair.”
“That is exactly what I thought!”
“I’m not sure how good his chances are of making it back home now,” August says sadly.
I’m waiting and hoping maybe this troll is going to do something differently this time, but she begins to do the same spider crawl and hops over the side of the bridge directly in front
of Ben.
My ears are waiting for him to cry or yell, and my vision is anticipating the moment he will try to fight back or run. But he just stands there, lingering like a moron and staring at the troll.
The troll stands idle and looks at him with hunger in her eyes, and quite possibly smiling, although it’s hard to know. Her smile is filled with deception, and she holds out her gigantic hand to Ben. He walks forward smiling, as if he is mesmerized by her and under some sort of spell.
“August, what is he doing? No one would willingly grab on to that creature’s hand, at least no one in their right mind.”
August scrunches up his nose. “Is he in his right mind? How long has he been missing?”
“He has to have been missing for a week or more now.”
Ben reaches up and grabs hold of the troll’s hand and clasps it while still staring at her like he is in a daze. The troll yanks him to her harshly, pulls him to her chest, and then leaps off the bridge, landing roughly on the ground causing it to ripple.
There are no screams that come from Ben’s mouth. He just looks happy to be in her arms, which I don’t understand.
She tosses Ben harshly to the ground, and he reaches up to her wanting to be held again. “You are so beautiful,” he says, and it echoes out from under the bridge. We can hear him as clear as day.
“There’s something wrong here. He has to be under some type of influence,” August mutters.
“I agree. Maybe they make you see what you want to see by locking eyes with them or something like that,” I guess.
The male troll stumbles to where Ben is and picks him up off the ground. My hand goes to cover my mouth to control the scream that wants to escape. He slaps him against the side of the bridge and then starts to beat him against the ground.
Ben doesn’t scream once throughout the process, and I can’t watch anymore. From all the blood that is covering his head and body, I know there is no life left in him.
Quinsey Wolfe's Glass Vault Page 12
