The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1)

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I’d just stepped onto the dock, reaching back for the rope, for her hand. But she wasn’t there. She’d felt like a flash. Like I was trapped on some deserted island and she was the only person in the world who knew I was here. The only person in the world who knew I existed at all.

  I stood there, just staring at the waves—crests identical until you actually waded out into the water and looked close up. It was more than strange. It was like magic. What if she was right? What if…?

  No. It…she…what if she was wrong? What if there were others? I’d seen the landscape change, daylight snuffed out like a match; the snow, the sand—it was different every time I blinked. Nothing was absolute. Not the landscape. Not time. Not me. What if the solitude wasn’t either?

  I headed for the forest again, trying to spot a break in the leaves and I could just make out something jutting up through the treetops. White. Massive. I headed straight for it, zigzagging over puddles and swollen roots, sunlight careening off the structure and cutting a path across the forest floor. I stumbled, foot caught on a fallen branch, and then I heard a faint hiss tangled in the leaves. I wiped the dirt from my jeans, rose to my feet, and the hiss grew louder.

  “Who’s there?” I stumbled backwards, scanning the trees. “Hello?”

  I looked up and dotting the branches were hundreds of eyes—wide on my face, flashing gold like the farmer’s moon that had been hanging in the sky the night before.

  The owls let out a soft unified purr, wobbling from side to side on pronged feet. But even higher there were others—darker, slimmer, hanging like rotting fruit. Bats. A few extended their wings, blue veins cutting through translucent skin and I fell against another tree, watching them. Then they all fell at once, the bats swooping down over my head, a black sheet flung out over everything and then...gone. Shred by the breeze like smoke.

  I tried not to breathe it in, a sinister weight floating down from the ashes. But then that was gone too, nothing but those strange shapes and sharp angles edging out from the leaves. I crept closer, still shivering as I waited for something else to disappear, and the white mass revealed itself in pieces. I spotted rails and tracks and boxcars. Concrete edged out of the grass beneath my feet and I craned my neck at a rusting Ferris wheel.

  Rain started sprinkling down in patches and I watched the sun carve through it as it fell from a cloudless sky. It disappeared through the trees and then the sky was red, a spontaneous sunset that just hung there.

  I stepped around the Ferris wheel, spotting a carousel sunken in the grass, poles cracked, horses strangled under thick vines. A few of the lights flickered, a short in the circuits. They shuddered, so bright, until they were all I could see.

  I was on my knees again, the same light I’d seen earlier stinging me from the inside.

  Pain.

  Heat.

  I groaned, kneading my eyes with the heels of my palms. It was stronger this time, too strong. But this time I smelled something harsh. Something chemical. Gasoline. It clung to the back of my throat, a different kind of burning. I scrambled, trying to get to my feet again and then I heard the soft tinkle of bells.

  The music started, low at first, warped like it was playing under water, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. The light finally disappeared and I blinked once, twice, letting my eyes adjust.

  I finally caught my balance, took a few steps back, watching the trees for movement, and then I saw the signs—corroded and rotting. FUNNEL CAKES. TICKET BOOTH. REAL MERMAIDS. THE SMALLEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD. The carnival signs were scattered among the trees, hanging from low branches by rusting nail heads and scattered in pieces across the grass.

  Suddenly it felt like fall, humid air replaced by a chill, and I shivered. I stared at the shadows between the lights, tracing the trees as they receded into darkness. But the longer I stared into it, the more the shadows seemed to swell. Something stood upright, peering at me from between the trees. It shifted, lithe like someone moving.

  “Is someone there?”

  It grew still and so did I.

  “Hello?” I didn’t mean to whisper.

  I narrowed my eyes, staring into the trees until I couldn’t see their outline anymore. And then I heard it, the sound like I was trapped in a vacuum, all of the air rushing towards me at once.

  I ran along the concrete of the playground as it narrowed into a sidewalk; the lights shuddering off behind me and the music growing faint as I followed it up a gravel driveway to a small yellow trailer house. A row of pinwheels had been buried in the rocks by the door and there was a pink bike wedged between the cinderblocks under the house.

  I knew it. We aren’t alone.

  The trees bowed behind me, the darkness moving closer. I raced up to the door but I didn’t bother knocking.

  “Hello?” I leaned inside. “Is anyone here?”

  No one answered and without looking back at what was chasing me I hurled myself inside. I pressed my back to the door, waiting for something to slam into it, to find me there. I crawled to the window, peering outside but the trees were still and everything was quiet.

  I faced the room and saw a couch, a TV, and a small card table in the corner of the kitchen. I opened the fridge. Empty. I followed the tile floor to where it disappeared under orange shag carpet. There was a bare mattress and an ironing board next to the window. A small nightstand sat next to the bed topped with a few picture frames and I picked one up, clearing off the dust with my shirt. It was of a little girl, wide-eyed and smiling. Dark curly hair was pulled into a ponytail on top of her head. And they were green—her eyes—sea foam.

  I walked to the other end of the house and found the little girl’s bedroom. There were a few stuffed animals tucked behind an empty clothes hamper but the bed was stripped just like the other one.

  I clicked the light on in a small closet and another bird shot past me, dizzying out on the floor before flying into the hallway. I was pressed against the back of the closet, trying to catch my breath when I spotted something along the baseboard. There was a crack in the floor, something gold flickering in the darkness. I pulled it out—a copy of Through The Looking-Glass—and the cover splayed open in my palm. My Dearest Bryn…

  Bryn. Is that her name? The book slipped from my fingers, pages still limp and opened to the inscription.

  “Bryn.”

  I let the name swell in the small space, the echo bouncing against the closet’s exposed ribs. But the moment it dissipated an ache climbed into my throat. Because even though I knew her name I still didn’t have one of my own.

  Who are you? Fucking remember.

  Who. Are. You.

  Chapter 10

  Bryn