Evelyn’s breathing suddenly came very fast, and for a moment I thought that she was going to attack Avery like I had. Luckily for him, she had more restraint.
“Oops, I forgot. You two were a thing, weren’t you?”
“Do you have a death wish?” Lucas snapped. “Or are you oblivious to what you’re saying?”
“I think I know what I’m saying much more than you do, actually. You haven’t figured out that at certain times, stepping over the Boundary will pull you into the mirror world, like it did me? And until everybody has done that, no one can go free.”
“Well…we knew about half of that. What’s the mirror world?” Lucas asked, the desire to know overriding his anger.
“You’ll know when you lose.” Avery grinned, flashing a toothy smile. “Oh, don’t look so horrified. I wouldn’t dream of taking on Tressa if I thought that I’d have to spend the rest of my life living with her after one of you lot got out.”
“Over my dead body,” I challenged, my eyes boring into his. D promised me things, but what had it also promised to Avery?
“It won’t come to that,” Lucas put it with a worried look at the tension, which was almost palpable between us. “For now we need to figure out what’s going on, then—”
“Shut up a minute,” Evelyn whispered, and shockingly, we did. “I…I…”
I followed her line of sight, and nearly passed out again.
Tressa and Fred, standing off to the side, were slowly becoming visible through the mist.
Fred’s face was still covered in soot and he waved to Evelyn with a forlorn look of utter longing on his round, handsome face. He shook his head as tears began to spill down her cheeks, and mimed wiping them away which only made her cry harder.
“Why aren’t they coming over?” she sobbed, hiccupping like crazy and unable to stop staring at him. The duo seemed faded somehow, as if they weren’t quite with us, and they remained silent without moving to greet us in any way.
“They’re halfway between the mirror world and the Boundary,” Avery explained, waving sweetly at Fred, who suddenly stopped smiling and froze. Tressa was ignoring him completely, arms folded to hide the blood which still stained the bodice of her dress.
Fred made an uncharacteristically rude gesture, which summed up everything he couldn’t say, then beckoned for Evelyn to come over to him. She nodded weakly, swallowing and walking as if her legs were made of jelly.
It just about broke my heart as they half hugged, not quite able to touch and forced to stand about a foot apart. Evelyn was hysterically apologizing, but Fred simply smiled sadly and made a heart with his hands before rolling something across the grass towards her feet. There was a small rip as it passed from wherever they were trapped, to us, and she stooped down to pick it up.
“Fred…” she choked, but Tressa stepped forwards firmly and mimed shoving her away.
“Come, lovebird, show us what the losers gave you.” Avery sighed, bored. Fred, Lucas, Tressa and I flinched in anger, but no one gave him the satisfaction of reacting further than that.
“It’s…a…a…n-note,” she hiccupped, barely understandable.
Her fingers were shaking so much she dropped the slip of paper twice before Avery sighed, stomped over, and snatched it away in irritation.
He was about to read it when I grabbed it, saying, “What’s to stop you from reading it then rushing off and not telling us?”
“Then I think I should read it,” Lucas pointed out honestly. “You’re not exactly Miss Trustworthy either. Plenty of skeletons in your cupboard.”
I handed it over without argument, wanting to get it over with.
“It’s instructions,” he gasped. We waited impatiently whilst he scanned the tiny handwriting, which I recognized with a jolt as D’s. “We have to get to the attic, activate the machine…”
“So whoever gets there first and pulls that lever will rip way everyone else to the mirror world, and therefore be the winner,” Avery summed up, seeming quite confused underneath the facade of superiority. “However the heck that’s supposed to work.”
I looked over at Tressa for guidance, but she shrugged in evident befuddlement with look of longing. How terrible it must be to know that you had no chance.
“Then we can be together,” Evelyn realized with watery hope, flicking a longing glance at Fred.
To my surprise, he didn’t look pleased at all. Contrarily, he shook his head frantically and pointed behind us at the collapsing manor, mouth moving in desperation to form words we couldn’t hear.
“You want me to get out?” she whispered with sad realization. He nodded, relieved. “But then…I might never see you again.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he mouthed, and made the heart shape again.
Tressa patted Fred on the shoulder and he jumped. They were both fading away again.
“Don’t leave!” Evelyn cried, making to catch hold of his hand, but by the time she reached him they had vanished completely.
“Not what I expected,” Avery admitted sullenly, kicking a chunk of dust so it puffed in the night air.
“Shocking. He doesn’t know everything after all.” I rolled my eyes. “Though I thought the lever was gone now…”
Does it matter? D shrieked in my mind, making me start. It’s whoever gets there first, and you’re just standing there? Run!
I flicked an unsure glance at my friends, before sprinting away towards the manor. Lucas and Evelyn called my name, but I didn’t stop, feeling the night air whip my cheeks into, my heart pounding like a bass drum. This was it.
28
Avery cursed and dashed after me, but I only pushed faster. After a while, the footsteps stopped, and a quick peek revealed that he had ceased to pursue me. There was nothing but darkness behind.
No lights were on inside the house, so everything was in pitch darkness. I couldn’t see a thing, much less who was behind me, and for a moment I had to stop to get my bearings.
I heard a crunch of leaves behind me.
“Don’t hit me,” Lucas whispered as I whipped around, expecting to see Avery. “Evelyn’s disappeared to who-knows-where, you and Avery went sprinting off…”
“This is individual,” I reminded him, still miffed by his previous decision to split up.
“I know, but we might as well stick together for now. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be as simple as a race.”
“Or it might be.” I shrugged. “So stop bothering me or let’s go.”
Someone – or something – shrieked in the night, making us both jump. I skirted away from the woods, accidentally bumping into Lucas because I couldn’t see a thing. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad having someone to navigate with, just in case some horrendous monstrosity was sent to challenge us.
“Uh…but I’m sure it won’t hurt to call a truce for now,” I suggested airily, receiving an exasperated, albeit relieved, sigh from Lucas. “You’re right, something very strange seems to be going on.”
“Glad you’ve come around,” he muttered. “Any plans?”
“Yeah. Get to the lever before anyone else.”
“Perfect.”
With that understanding, we pushed on towards to manor. The trees loomed up as massive shadows against a darker sky, as still and silent as death itself.
I focused on breathing, knowing that it would only be a few minutes until we were back inside, running at steady pace.
Yet after what seemed like forever, I could still not see the house, and I was getting quite out of puff.
“Have we been going in circles or something? This doesn’t seem right,” I panted, surveying the area with confusion.
The cedar hadn’t been that deep in the forest, yet a quick glance seemed to assure that we were still in thick woodland. I didn’t really know the individual trees, and in the dark it was impossible to tell exactly where we were.
“I can hear the Boundary.” Lucas frowned, stopping beside me. “I thought we had been going out of the wood
s, not going farther in?”
“This is absurd,” I groaned, leaning against a tree to catch my breath. “Why do they have to make everything so blooming complicated? It could have been so simple, you know, ‘just get to the attic first’, but instead they have to go and twist everything! Urgh!”
Focus, D spoke mildly, though seemingly preoccupied.
The voice was very faint and tired, and cut off after those two syllables. No help, as promised, no hints whatsoever.
Lucas raised an eyebrow but said nothing, exhaling slowly.
“Climb up a tree,” he said eventually. “When we were in the fire, you said that you could see most of the grounds; perhaps it would work again, even in the dark.”
It was the only idea we had, and running around on a wild goose chase didn’t seem smart, so relying on touch alone I found a large oak with scooping branches perfect for climbing. They felt slightly rotten and soft under my hands, but I didn’t dwell on it, scrambling upwards as if I had been born to do so.
I perched precariously at the topmost branch and waited for my eyes to adjust. By the looks of things, we weren’t that deep in the forest but had done almost a full circle of the grounds since we left the cedar. The manor stood tall and black in the distance, which I took as a good sign, since surely, if anyone had made it already, they would have found a way to light a candle.
“Head that way,” I shouted down to Lucas, pointing towards the open lawns. “We’re only a few lines back!”
I slid downwards, wrapping my arms around a particularly sturdy branch and dangling my legs about seven feet from the ground. I could jump down, and save myself the time of descending.
“Penny!” Lucas yelled suddenly, and I saw his bright blue eyes widen in fear.
Before I could ask what the matter was, there was a terrible snapping sound and the rotting limb began to break away from the tree. I sucked in a breath, searching for a nearby branch to shift onto, but it was only a few seconds before the limb, which had been as wide as I, broke loose and crashed downwards with me clinging on for dear life. The air whooshed past me, and I screamed at least once before there was a heavy thud and pain exploded in my shoulder.
Almost as soon as the pain came, it was replaced by a surge of anger that boiled through my veins and caused my vision to flash like a strobe.
Lucas pushed the wood from my arm and offered a helping hand, but I just lay there and let the fury take over. My fists clenched tight, and my breathing became heavy, and…oh how my shoulder hurt!
I yet out a yelp of pain and unclenched my fists, feeling the muscles spasm and unleash myriad needles that seemed to dig in all over my shoulder blade, ripping and searing wherever they touched.
The anger hadn’t been mine, it had been D’s. Which meant the fall hadn’t been an accident, and there was only one other person I knew who could manipulate the Boundary in such a way. Oh, rapture, a power struggle! And guess which lucky winner got to be in the middle?
“Splinters,” Lucas winced, regarding the shards, which covered my upper arm. “And a lot of bruises, I’ll bet. But not broken, or you wouldn’t be able to go about swinging it like that.”
I didn’t ask where Lucas got his medical knowledge from, since it was the same answer as always. Perhaps I should have read more.
“Let’s just keep moving,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
My shoulder burned as if it were on fire, but every second I took now would allow Avery, and even Evelyn, an extra second to beat us.
What about Lucas? I asked myself. I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it.
We jogged forwards in the direction I had seen was the right way, occasionally bumping into things, but otherwise making remarkable time. Except the lawns still weren’t visible, and every time I thought we had nearly done it, another line of trees appeared. I was starting to feel quite hysterical, faint from pain and exhaustion. There was no way this could be possible!
Then footsteps echoed to my right.
Someone was coming.
Evelyn’s lavender dress rustled through the trees, gone as soon as I tried to place exactly where it was. Then again, I saw it, to the left. In front of me now…no, behind. I pivoted, a frown creasing my forehead.
“Evelyn?” I whispered, though some sense deep within me told that it wasn’t really her.
Lucas gingerly bent down and picked up a stick from the ground, tensed and ready.
She laughed, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“Give it up,” she ordered teasingly, appearing a few yards behind me and walking over, twirling a purple ribbon around skeletal fingers coyly. “It’s over. You’re done.”
Black eyes, pointed teeth stained in red, jerky movements, translucent skin covering an emaciated body, she was a mind monster.
I thought of the advancing Boundary, how Evelyn would have run haywire looking for Fred or a way out, not knowing that our world was shrinking as we spoke.
Lucas and I slowly backed away, but the monster echoed our every step. The stick suddenly looked flimsy, much too thin. So, with an unspoken understanding, we turned on our heels and sprinted with everything we had towards what should have been the lawns.
And just like that, we were out of the woods and tumbling down on the blessedly open grass of the gardens. There was no time to celebrate though, as the Evelyn-beast was right on our heels.
I scrambled upwards and surged towards the manor, not even checking to see if Lucas was behind me or not.
Then a sharp pain exploded in my shoulder again, but unlike before, it didn’t stop there. My mouth opened to scream, but there was too much agony, blocking out any noise I might have made. My knees buckled and I collapsed, gasping for air, ears ringing with the laughs of the impersonating monster.
“I don’t understand how something as pathetic as you could cause so much trouble,” a voice sneered in my ear. “It’s simply too easy. You’d think they’d have picked a greater challenge for the simple amusement of it, but perhaps I underestimated their capacity for compassion. Either way, it works in my favor.”
Madon. Through the wave of pain, I heard Lucas scream, and a thud as he fell to the ground.
I tried to shout for him, but remained mute.
Everything was turning a deep red, so I closed my eyes and curled into a ball, waiting for it to stop.
This had happened before.
I summoned up all the energy I had left, and ripped away the pain, which consumed me. I felt Him try to attack my attempts, but to no avail.
“You’ve gotten stronger,” He observed dryly, arms folded over a slender grey jacket as I struggled to my feet.
“So have you,” I retorted, focusing on not falling over again. “For a few days, I thought you were actually getting weaker.”
“I was.” He shrugged nonchalantly, and I realized just how ill He looked. Paler, tired, black shadows under His eyes, and even thinner than usual. Lucas was in a heap on the ground, the stick lying a few inches from his limp fingertips. His chest was rising and falling, but only slightly.
“What did you do?” I snarled, wrenching myself away from him to face the Master. “What have you done to him?”
“Nothing,” He replied, enjoying the blatant lie. “I don’t have time for this, there are other matters I must attend to. First, though, there is of course the problem that you represent.”
I realized then that I was absolutely terrified. I searched for D, but there was nothing. Running would do nothing either, I wouldn’t be fast enough to get away before the torture found me for a second time, plus I was too tired to rip myself for the moment.
“Are you going to kill me?” I asked softly, not really wanting to know the answer.
The Master cocked His head to the side, as if thinking. Then His smile turned into a bitter frown and He replied, “I cannot. All I can do is stop you from getting out.”
“You killed Beatrix,” I reminded Him with a soft anger. “Why not me? Why not stop
Avery?”
“You still do not understand what this world is, do you?” The Master smirked, though there was no amusement behind the gesture. “You do not know why you are here? Your little pen pals haven’t told you that much, have they?”
“They told me more than you have,” I retorted, hardly believing that such daring words could come from me. “And we found the fairy tale—”
“The legend,” He muttered, voice dripping with distain. “Don’t tell me you actually believe that? Who do you think planted it there? Certainly not me? Your confidants have told you nothing but what they wanted you to think, regardless of whether it is true or not. In short, they have manipulated you so that you, and you alone, would get out without any thought for the others. They have altered your dreams, your thoughts, even your sight…”
“They? But D is only one person,” I asked in confusion. I hadn’t ever really trusted D, not properly, but I had grown to rely on the advice which it had claimed would lead me to freedom. Yet what the Master was telling me made some sense.
“Wrong,” He corrected, removing His hat and casually walking over to where I was crouched by an unconscious Lucas. “They are two…people. Though I do not think that they warrant the title ‘people’. No matter. You are wasting my time, as I must see to a certain other issue. We will speak again, I am sure.”
There was nothing else for it. I ran with all I had left towards the manor. A static whine was coming from behind me, and I knew it wasn’t the Master. The Boundary was closing in, and fast. I chanced a quick glance behind me, and saw Him also staring at it in numb shock.
It was invisible, only the shuddering static giving away its position as it swallowed the last few trees. My forest was completely lost forever. The beast that resembled Evelyn had been standing just in front of the tree line, held at bay by the Master, let out a haunting yowl as the Boundary rippled over its body, but unlike what would have been expected it didn’t turn to ashes. It simply vanished.
I squinted, concentrating, and noticed with a sharp realization that the layers I had spotted before in the Boundary were much thinner, as if many had been removed, as if it were almost possible to move them.
Boundary Page 25
