He looked at me dubiously. “Then how do we find a portal if their locations keep changing?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Let’s just go this way and try to get a better vantage point so we can see what’s around us. These trees can’t go on forever.” I pointed at the forest directly ahead of us and we went in that direction. In a world where there might not be any true directions, this one was as good as any.
“It’s cold,” Leon said after a few minutes of trudging through the undergrowth.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
We went a little farther in silence and then he asked, “What’s the plan now? We going to rescue the others?”
“Yeah, we are. But first, we’re going to get that torc. Before those vampires force Gloria to tell them its location, we’re going to steal it out from under their noses. Then we’re going to carry out a rescue mission and give it to Gloria so she can regain her powers and take back her part of Faerie.”
“You make it sound so simple, man. I’m in.”
I gave him a grim smile. “But first, we need to get out of this place.”
“Not so simple,” he said.
“No.”
He began to say something else but stopped, listened, and then said, “Do you hear that?”
I listened to the forest around us. All I could hear was the snow falling on the leaves above us. “No, what is it?”
“Not in the trees,” he said. “Closer. Like it’s under the ground at our feet.”
I felt it then, a digging sound beneath the earth, accompanied now by a vibration that shuddered through the ground.
“What the hell is that?” My question was answered as the ground beneath me burst open and a pair of clawed hands reached up and grabbed my legs.
I was pulled downward by strong arms and the last thing I saw before I was dragged into the ground was Leon being similarly taken. He looked at me with wide, terror-stricken eyes, his hands clawing at the earth in front of his face, before he disappeared into the ground.
Then my vision became dark and the smell of earth, tree roots, and something foul like putrid flesh filled my nostrils. I was dimly aware of the claws dragging me through a tunnel but I couldn’t fight back.
Maybe the claws had injected me with some sort of poison or maybe the stench down here was a gas that affected my nervous system, but whichever was the case, I was totally paralyzed. I could only allow myself to be dragged along the subterranean tunnel, hoping that whatever was keeping me immobile would wear off eventually.
The tunnel widened into a chamber where I was lifted to my feet and slammed against a wall. Thick tree roots were pulled around me, trapping me in place. Across the small chamber, I could see Leon likewise trapped. There was light here, provided by a dimly-glowing crystal set in the earth at the center of the chamber. In its dull glow, I could see our captors.
There were two of them. They were the size of humans but were covered in ragged black fur. Their heads were featureless ovals of gray, like huge membranous sacks. They had huge claws that were obviously perfect for digging.
One of them went over to Leon and placed its hand on the side of his head. Leon seemed to fall into a deep sleep. Veins within the creature’s head began to pulse.
The second creature came over to me and reached for my head. I felt the cold touch of its hand and then the chamber faded from my sight.
I became aware of the smell of gas and then my vision returned and I was sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car. It was nighttime. The windshield was shot through with a web of cracks, there was white smoke rising into the air beyond the side windows and we were at the side of the road, on the shoulder.
I knew this moment of my life; it was the moment my mom was killed. Only now, I wasn’t just remembering it, I was sitting next to my younger self in the back seat of the car, as if in a dream.
The younger version of me was panicked, his eyes wide.
My mom turned in her seat, her face full of concern, and said to him, “Alec, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. His voice sounded young, higher-pitched than mine was today.
“Listen closely,” she told him. “You need to get out of the car and run. You see those woods over there?”
I wanted to tell her no. I was here now, the older version of myself. I could protect her from whatever was coming to get her. I said, “No, Mom, I can help you now.”
She didn’t hear me, of course.
The younger me looked out of the windows at the trees barely visible through the smoke and said, “Yeah, I see them.”
“I want you to go ahead and open your door and run into the woods, okay?” She cast a nervous glance at the rearview mirror.
I could hear footsteps behind the car. They approached slowly, carefully.
I turned in the seat to look out of the rear window but there was nothing there but a gray fog. It was as if I could only see what I’d seen when I’d actually been here all those years ago. I couldn’t remember something I’d never seen.
“Alec, go,” my mom said. “And whatever happens, don’t look back, okay?”
“But, Mom…”
“Please, Alec. Run for the trees. And don’t stop running.”
My younger self unfastened his seatbelt and opened the car door.
I shouted at him, “No, stay here! If you stay here, I can stay here too and help Mom!”
The smell of gas and burning rubber drifted into the car, making my eyes water even though I knew I wasn’t really here. This was a vision into the past and no matter how much I wanted to change the events unfolding before my eyes, I couldn’t.
My mom’s eyes were watering too when she reached back to touch my younger self’s arm and said, “I love you, Alec. No matter what happens in your life, always remember that I loved you.”
He hesitated, unsure what to say.
“Tell her you love her too!” I shouted at him.
But he was just a confused kid and didn’t realize that he was about to lose his mother forever.
“Now, go,” Mom whispered to him. “Hurry.” He slid out of the car and ran for the trees and suddenly I was out of the car too, following after him despite my desire to stay and fight.
Younger Me glanced over his shoulder and I knew it was because he was expecting to see Mom following him to safety. But she wasn’t there.
I looked back too and saw four dark figures walking calmly up to the burning, crumpled car. Then a flash of intense blue light shot from the vehicle and one of the figures fell to the ground. The other three hesitated for a moment before rushing the car.
“Run, Alec!” Mom shouted.
Young Alec ran and I followed. Behind us, flashes of light of various colors illuminated the sky as if someone were igniting fireworks.
We ran into the woods, branches and pine needles whipping at us. I felt the pain of losing my mother all over again and even though I knew this was just a dream, that didn’t dull my emotions. I cursed my younger self for running. It would have been cathartic to save her, even if this was only a scene playing inside my head.
That thought brought me to my senses. I’d been so lost inside the dream that I hadn’t been concerned about the fact that I was trapped in an underground chamber in the Shadow Land while a creature had its hand on my head.
Was it making me relive this moment? Could it see what I was seeing or was it just feeding off my raw emotions?
Younger Alec had stopped running and was sitting beneath a tall pine, crying. This was the moment his life was about to change. After his mother’s death in a supposed car accident, his father would come from London and take him to study in the Academy of Shadows where he’d learn to be an investigator.
And just a couple of weeks from this moment, his father would take him to the Coven, the witches that ran the Society of Shadows, and have them cast an enchantment on the boy that would inscribe magical symbols on his bones.
As I stood over my younger,
crying self, that gave me pause for thought. I wasn’t really here. I was in that subterranean chamber being fed on by a creature. I had no weapons, but maybe I could use my magic to break out.
Into my mind, I summoned the magical circle that symbolized the energy blast and I concentrated on it. It burned bright blue in my mind’s eye and I felt a heat rising within me. I kept it in check until it had increased in intensity so much that I could hear it humming in my ears. Then I released its power in a blast that exploded out from me in all directions.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in the dream anymore. I was standing in the subterranean chamber surrounded by broken roots. I was free. The creature that had been feeding from me was lying on the ground. It wasn’t moving but I had no way of knowing if it was dead or not. The damned thing didn’t even have any eyes.
The creature that had been feeding on Leon turned in surprise, its hand leaving his head. I kicked it with the sole of my boot, slamming it into the wall of the chamber. It made a chittering sound and lunged at me, swiping the air with its claws. I dodged the attack and used its own momentum to send it sprawling onto the ground.
There was nothing handy that I could use as a weapon so I slid the backpack from my shoulders and swung it by its straps at the membranous head. The head exploded, covering my arms in a gray, viscous fluid. I stepped back, instinctively trying to wipe the stuff off me, expecting that it might be acidic or poisonous, but it seemed harmless.
“Eeew, that’s gross, man,” Leon said. He was still trapped by the roots but very much awake now.
I pulled at the roots, loosening them and helping him break free. “Let’s get the hell out of here before any more of these things show up.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. That dude gave me a god-awful nightmare.”
“Me too. I think they were feeding on our emotions.”
We followed the tunnel back to the holes we’d been dragged down, and climbed out.
Leon looked at the trees around us. “Now we wander aimlessly again until some other monster shows up to kill us.”
“Yeah, I’m getting pissed-off too,” I said. “There has to be a way of finding those portals. There should be plenty of them around because this realm touches our own in so many places. Gloria said the crossover points are where bad things have happened in our world.”
“But we’re not in our world, we’re in this one. It isn’t like we can go to the Lizzie Borden house and find the portal to the Shadow Land. We’re already in the Shadow Land, on this side of the portal. We don’t know where the Lizzie Borden house is on this side.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “you have a point. If there’s a portal in the bad places, then there must be a Shadow Land version of those places. So we just have to find one.”
“Yeah, well, I have a newsflash for you: this place isn’t laid out like our world. You said time and space are different here.”
I was thinking now, getting an idea. “They are. Gloria said that when we have nightmares, we travel across this land in our minds. Except we can’t do that because we’re actually, physically here. But if our thoughts can transport us across the Shadow Land…”
“We can think ourselves out of here!” Leon said.
“Not exactly. But we may be able to get to a place where there’s a portal.”
He nodded. “I get it. So, if we think of the Lizzie Borden house, we’ll arrive at the Shadow Land version of it. Then we find the portal to our own realm and go through it into the real Lizzie Borden house in our world.”
“Yeah, but maybe not the Lizzie Borden house. That’s a bed- and-breakfast now in our world so we wouldn’t want to suddenly appear there. It might take some explaining. We need somewhere that’s abandoned.”
He thought for a moment and then suggested, “The Amityville Horror house?”
“No, someone owns that now. It’s a family home. I’ve got it: Blackthorn House, the place where the Bloody Summer Night Massacre took place. A lot of bad things happened there so it has to have a Shadow Land version. Also, I can picture it in my mind. I’ve never been there but I’ve seen photos of the place.”
“Yeah, me too. That’s where Mallory was almost killed, right? By that Mister Scary dude.”
“Yeah, that’s the place. She’s told me about it so many times, I’ve had nightmares of that house myself.” I didn’t add that I’d also had a nightmare about a house I’d never even heard of, the mysterious house numbered 19 where I’d dreamed about Mallory in a mirror.
Leon nodded slowly, pity in his eyes. “She’s a great girl. It’s a shame she had to put up with all that shit.”
“Agreed. Now, picture the house in your mind. Imagine you’re standing right outside it.” Leon closed his eyes. I did the same and imagined I was standing before the house where the Bloody Summer Night Massacre had happened, where Mallory had emerged as the sole survivor, the Final Girl.
When I opened my eyes, I was still standing in the forest next to Leon.
“Shit,” he said. “So that isn’t how it works.”
I sighed, frustrated. “Obviously not.” Then the weakness came over me and I leaned against a tree, trying to stay upright. But the strength in my arms and legs faded and I slid down the trunk until I was sitting on the ground.
“You okay?’ Leon asked, putting a hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling to one side.
“I will be in a minute. I used an energy blast to get out of that induced dream.”
“Just take it easy,” he said.
The image of the bright red magical circle with the unicursal hexagram came into my head. I ignored it, choosing to wait out the weakness and recover my strength slowly. Leon was the only living being in the vicinity as far as I knew, and I didn’t want my magic to drain his life force. I concentrated instead on the trunk of the tree in front of me and eventually, the red magical symbol faded.
And so did my consciousness. The world around me faded as I blacked out. Images flashed through my mind, images of Blackthorn House and the horror that had occurred there. Malory had told me some of the gory details about the night Mister Scary decided to visit the high school party in the abandoned house and my mind played over those details before the images gradually faded away and I regained consciousness.
“Alec,” Leon said, his voice worried. “Are you awake, man?”
“Yeah,” I said groggily. “Sorry, I kind of shut down for a second there.” I looked up at him. He was looking at something behind me with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“We aren’t in the forest anymore.”
I looked past him, where a moment ago there had been trees. Instead, there was a street with houses on either side of the road. It was nighttime and there was still snow falling but the forest was gone. A gray fog hung in the air, giving the place an eerie atmosphere. The houses were mainly large mansion-type buildings but their details were difficult to discern because there was a shadowy quality about them, as if they were a dim reflection of actual places.
Most of them were set back away from the road behind iron fences and overgrown grounds. Leon and I were behind one of those fences ourselves and I realized I wasn’t leaning on a tree anymore; my back was pressed against a set of porch steps.
Struggling to my feet, I turned and saw the large clapboard house whose grounds we stood on. Blackthorn House. The site of the Bloody Summer Massacre. I’d only ever seen it on TV but it was unmistakable with its Victorian design that included an assortment of second-floor balconies and a turret in the western corner.
Leon said, “One second we were in the forest, the next, we were here.”
“Let’s hope there’s a portal to the Blackthorn House in our world inside,” I said.
“You feeling up to taking a look?” he asked me.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” My strength was returning slowly and I felt strong enough to move, even if I wasn’t exactly in fighting condition. “Let’s go,” I said, ascending the creaky wood
en steps to the porch.
The house had double front doors, carved with leaves and vines and gargoyle heads.
“This place is creepy as fuck,” Leon said. “Why the hell did those kids decide to have a party here?”
“The creepiness probably added to the excitement. Kids that age feel invincible, like nothing can hurt them. I guess they learned the hard way that there are real horrors in the world.”
I pushed the double doors and they opened, revealing a dark hallway and stair leading to the upper floors. I turned on my Maglite and shone the beam inside.
There were dead bodies in there, or at least the shadowy reflections of dead bodies. They lay on the floor in various death poses but there was something unsubstantial about them. Their features were blurry and I could see the floor beneath them, as if they were made of wispy black smoke.
“What the hell?” Leon said as the flashlight beam played over the smoky corpses.
“This Shadow Land version of the house seems to be locked in time at the moment of the massacre,” I said.
Leon looked at me, concerned. “Do you think Mister Scary is here?”
I listened to the quiet of Blackthorn House, wondering if Mister Scary was in there somewhere, hiding and waiting for us to enter. “I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s moved on since the massacre that took place in this house. I don’t see why he’d be here.”
“Unless he enjoys revisiting the scene of the crime,” Leon pointed out. He pointed at the street and the other houses. “Do you think these are all his crime scenes? Like, his own corner of Shadow Land?”
I followed his gaze to the houses on either side of the road. There were at least a dozen. Had Mister Scary been that prolific? Maybe there were murders that hadn’t been attributed to him, earlier crimes that he’d committed while evolving into the killer who would eventually carry out the Bloody Summer Night Massacre.
“They could be,” I said to Leon.
He turned his attention back to the darkness within Blackthorn House and swallowed. “Okay, so where are we going to look for this portal?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what it is we’re looking for. The portals between our world and Faerie are usually circles of stones or flowers but the portals to and from the Shadow Land could be something entirely different.” I remembered my dream of Mallory. “Maybe it’s mirrors. This realm is a reflection of our own, so maybe mirrors are the portals.” I stepped into the house.
Dead Ground (Harbinger P.I. Book 4) Page 13
