3:3
Ben creeped in the door first with Ivan close behind and Dan right on Ivan’s tail end. So close in fact that when Ivan stopped abruptly Dan bumped into said tail end.
“Whoa. Man! I know my ass is awesome but less touchy, kay?”
Dan just rolled his eyes then started scanning the space they’d entered.
“Ca’I touch?” Gwen sidled up to Ivan’s free side.
At his look she added, “What? it’s awesome. Everything an ass could want to be and then some more.”
Ivan just shook his head and smothered a laugh.
“It is fairly awesome,” came Prairie’s soft voice from somewhere distant, giving an indication that while she seemed to be Spirit-driven she was still enough with them to hear Gwen. A flush rose high on Ivan’s cheeks and he made a manly kind of sound that didn’t translate well to words.
Prairie wandered past where Ben had drawn to a halt, following something only she could see.
“This way,” she murmured almost too quietly to hear. Her voice sounded dreamy. Like I just saw a kpop star smile dreamy. Like I have just fallen into a room full of lavender teddy bears bigger than me dreamy. Like Jack Skellington was hugging her while she cuddled Zero dreamy.
What? She was Paradoxical. Capital P for Prairie.
Beyond the sewing machine set ups, about halfway down the large space, a clear tarp stretched across the width of the building obscuring what was beyond. It was to this that Prairie pointed as she navigated down the aisle along the left wall. Reaching the tarp she gently tapped it’s surface with her fingertips until she found a slice about 10 feet from the wall. She slid her hand beneath the slice and her body followed, becoming a blurred shadow on the other side.
The gasp she let out had the others scrambling to clear the tarp with far less grace than she had.
Prairie stood stock still, her trembling fingers pressed to her mouth. Then she shook her head as if she could negate what she was seeing.
Antique wrought iron hospital beds lined both walls. There had to be twenty of them, ten on each side. Clear tarp, tacked to the high ceiling, separated each bed. The makeshift curtains hung only about three-quarters on the way down the length of each bed so the footrails were visible.
After hearing Siobhan read the story about Nieve the sight shouldn’t have been unexpected but there was something so surreal, such a sense of a time outside of time like if she relaxed for a moment she’d see dust motes suspended on air still as the breath that didn’t want to leave her lungs.
Spiritus was… static. Not like the static that still came and went in her head since she connected with Arfa. Static as in completely unmoving, fly in amber, frog in ice forever trying to swim forward. The thing with Spirtus was it was never still. With all it’s layers it was always shifting like a kaleidoscope that could seize her mind and imagination for hours if she let it. Lost forever in the fractals that formed in the overlaps of real and Spirit and Spirit and Spirit and Spirit infinitely repeating, that’s how Prairie thought she might go someday, just lost and someone would find her comatose staring with wonder at a scape only she could see.
The lack of movement here was… beyond disturbing. It was unnatural. It was wrong. She longed to grab a mallet and start smashing it, releasing the frozen Spiritus to flow again.
Prairie stumbled slightly moving to the bed closest to her. She left it to the others to follow or not as was their preference. Of course, they followed. Was there a doubt?
Dan started striding across the room to the other wall when he stopped and dropped behind the cover of the pillar nearest him. The others, about to follow in a similar manner stopped and found cover behind the tarp of the nearest bed then looked where Dan pointed.
Deep back in the shadows a figure moved. Ivan poked his head carefully around the end of the tarp to try to see but it was too far and the shadows were too deep. Ben dropped to his belly and shimmied under the first bed. There was very faint scuffing sound and then his head was poking out from the tarp shielding the second bed.
Kim dropped and low crawled under the bed, coming up beside Ben.
“What do you see?” she subvocalized.
Ben responded in an equally quiet tone. “One figure. Too hard to make out. I’m going to move up another bed.”
Kim nodded and indicated with a sweep of her fingers towards the foot of the bed and then the floor that she’d stay at this spot.
Gwen poked her head under Ivan’s arm and started to look down the length of the room but her gaze shifted to the figure on the bed. She barely suppressed her gasp as a flow of muffled emotion, like that of a person in a deep sleep, washed over her.
She’d been feeling a low-level of lethargy since pushing through the tarp. Like the tarp had some kind of dampener on it that trapped energy within the space and once she was in it she could actually feel what was happening within.
There was the feel, there was no better word for it, of a single emotion, like that produced by one person, but it was coming from points through the room that corresponded vaguely to the placement of the beds. Like there was a single consciousness but dissipated across the beds. It was only when she ducked around the tarp and laid eyes on the occupant of the first bed that she felt a sense of individual emotion. Muffled, lying placid under a blanket of homogeneity, it reached spiderweb thin cords out to her, seeking connection.
There was something wrong with the threads. Separate from being thin and gray small nodules pulsed down them like globs of poison caught under the surface. It was utterly repulsive, but not, Gwen thought as she looked down at the woman lying supine on the bed her arm sporting an iv port that connected to a bag held on the hook of a pole, completely surprising.
Just as there was something foreign about the emotions reaching out to her so was there something foreign about the still body of the woman. It wasn’t that her skin was pale, Gwen had seen pale skin before. Nor was it the red lips, though Gwen did find herself wondering what brand of lipstick it was because it looked faboo. Wow, digress much?
Even the dark hair, fanning perfectly over what looked like a white silk pillowcase – which, how’d she do *that*? – wasn’t too out of place. It was a little too dark to be natural, because no black was *that* black. There was always subtle touches of red or even gold or that rare shade that appeared blue in black hair. This hair though was black. Flat black. Bad dye job, Gwen assessed and moved on. Like she hadn’t had one herself before?
No, what was wrong was the completely flatness of the features. The eyelashes on the closed lids did not flutter against the cheeks they fanned across. The red, red lips did not quirk. Even the nostrils did not flare, even subtly, on breath. It was looking like a wax figure. One in which a person was trapped if the emotional feelers reaching out for Gwen was any indication. Part of her wanted to grab ahold of a feeler, the other part of her shrunk in revulsion at the thought of connecting with that pulsating, pus-like mess. Like ‘no, nope, no, backing up, get me out of here,’ seized her skin and drew it back from her bones as if it could actually up and leave her.
For someone usually driven to connect to others this situation was totally whack-o. Add Yakkoo and Dot for kicks. An image of the Animaniacs chased across her mind, complete with blow-up hammers which they were vigorously applying to each others’ heads and butts.
Dang, when her mind wanted to distract her it sure had a rich catalog to pull from.
“We’re Animaniacs,” she mouthed, “Dot is cute and…”
Derp! Back on track! Track track track!
Argh!
This is serious. Focus. I appreciate it’s scary, she counselled herself with a stern finger wag, but you eat scary for breakfast!
Pep talk engaged she reached forward and snatched up the reaching tendril closest to her. And nearly puked up her breakfast. Along with an extra helping of scary.
Her vision pulsed. Gray gray gray gray GRAY. The part of her that connected with others, she liked to think of it as her soul, pulsed. It was like that video they had to watch in health class, the one where they scoped a woman’s uterus during contractions and set it to some psychedelic music which managed to enhance the pulsating pink, peach, red… Blargh. That thing had set her off sex for two years.
Helphelphelphelphelp echoed through Gwen’s soul, it’s own psychedelic music driven by the beat of slow, steady beat of the woman’s heart. Howhowhowhowhow? she projected back. Closing her eyes to focus fully she swayed on her feet. Firm hands grasped her near the elbow, providing her support. The emotional taste, she used that word though really it was a feeling/taste/smell/rhythm, of Siobhan flowed into her, bracing her soul with the same determined certainty her friend’s hands braced her swaying frame.
After an assessing look at Gwen and Siobhan and a quick decision that Siobhan had this, Prairie dropped as low as she could and duck-walked over to where Dan hid behind the pillar. When she reached him she slowly rose and whispered in the vicinity of his ear, “What is it?”
“There’s a figure up ahead. Doing something along the back wall. Can’t tell what. Need my binocs.”
“Where are they?”
“Cargo pants, side pocket. Left.”
Prairie slowly moved her hand to his pants pocket. She worked the button free and very gingerly fished the binoculars out. A small, compact set that folded they didn’t take up much room in her hand.
Carefully, so carefully, gratitude for her small stature and the tiny visual impact it afforded her, she moved the binoculars up to Dan’s shoulder.
“Flip them open and hold them to my eyes? I don’t want to move and give us away.”
While Prairie did exactly that Dan ran down the situation in a low tone. “One figure. Hoodie. Doesn’t seem aware of us.”
“We should get them.” Prairie’s whisper, low and sweet, held a note of anger tempered with the quiet gentleness that was her resting state. It was a weird combination. Vengeance and peace.
“You sensing something?”
“Major disturbance in The Force.”
Dan pulled back from the binoculars to give her a side glance. “Was that a joke?”
“I can joke.”
“Yes. You can.” Dan jerked his chin towards the other side of the room where the evenly-spaced beds and their tarp shrouds offered cover. “Think you can make it over there and up three beds without being seen.”
“Cake.” Prairie made a big show of dusting her knuckles on her chest then dropped low and slowly but steadily duck-walked to the point Dan had indicated. Dropping to the ground Dan low-crawled to join her then looked across the room and back to meet Ben’s eyes in the flickering light of the bare bulbs swinging on chains up high near the beams.
Dan flicked to fingers forward. Ben nodded then glided, a shadow among shadows, to the pillar halfway to the figure. Kim pushed up on her fingers, dropped to a low crawl, and scurried under three sets of beds so she was even with Ben’s position. Ben made a hold motion with his hand held low, then the universal two finger sweep to his eyes to indicate he was going to look. Dan nodded, then looked back to Prairie where she hunkered between a bed and a tarp. It seemed clear by her posture, ribs swayed forward with her shoulder back, forming an arch, that she was doing her best to not come in contact with the bed.
Whether that was so as not to disturb the sleeping – comatose, Dan assessed, a quick visual sweep noting the gentle rise of chest beneath the sheet. Someone had made an effort to groom her. The nails on the hands that were folded across her chest, making the impression of an effigy, were trimmed and neat and the white of her nightgown, rising from the sheet, was pristine. The woman, pale skin, black hair, oddly dark red lips, appeared to be in stasis, captured in a moment of pure repose and awaiting the kiss of a prince.
Well, that was damned fanciful. A look inward had him recognizing the subtle pull of story on his Magick. Damn.
Any hope this wasn’t connected to their earlier excursions drifted away like a feather on a spring breeze. Not that finding *that* story left much doubt, but there’d still been a chance. A chance that Jack/Mal had been a one-off, a malicious act by a Bibliomancer acting in bad faith to their Magick. But this, the sense of Story that hovered like a threat that raised the hair on the back of his neck and his pulse to a ready rhythm, effectively dropped that probability to nil.
He couldn’t sense the tapestry as he did when they were drawn into Story to find Mal, but it was there. Since that night he had felt it’s presence, like his understanding of it made him more aware of it, flipped a switch on his Magick as well as his imagination. Yeah, what was happening was messed up but the possibilities… It was kind of unknown territory and, damn, if nothing excited a Bibliomancer more than a mystery, a new avenue of research, a fresh page to be written on.
His admiration for whoever the villain was that was doing this grew at the same rate his anger at them did. This was some New Frontier stuff. It also had the feel of abuse. Which, when you considered it, was the dilemma that all researchers, regardless of field, had to face daily. Discovery balanced by humanity and which would win? In the case of whoever, or evers, was doing this he was figuring the arrow was ticking firmly to the first. It was a sociopath’s choice; a dick’s choice. It was also one quite a few people of his acquaintance, who were no longer his acquaintances rationalized making.
Dicks.
Shaking off his introversion, Dan indicated to Prairie they should move forward two more beds so they’d be slightly ahead of Ben’s position when the other man called the surge. They’d just reached their position, crouching between another bed and sheet with another doll that had once been a person (and might be again) lying above them unmoving when Ben did just that. As one the four of them – Kim, Ben, Dan, and Prairie rushed forward.
The figure seemed to register their movement with some preternatural sense. Without more than a sideways glance at them it dashed for a side door that had until then gone undetected.
Ivan cursed from where he was standing guard over Gwen and Siobhan, pivoted, and dashed out the door they’d entered to try to catch the figure. Flinging open the heavy door that had snapped shut at the figures passing, Dan leaped to clear the three small stairs revealed behind it. He was just in time to watch a figure in a black hoodie – indeterminate height, weight, and gender – make a slashing movement in the air.
For a second Dan saw the weft and weave of Story – what he was coming to suspect was *reality* – part beneath the device the figure wielded. Through the rent he thought he saw another scene, similar light suggesting the location was in same the zone as theirs but where around him he saw a wharf and an open, overgrown field abutting the factory there appeared a street with buildings with wood detail and mullioned windows looming over it, casting shadow on a sidewalk paved in flagstones.
The wielder surged through the opening and it sealed shut behind them even as Dan charged at the space they’d occupied. Ivan came barreling from the back of the building, his weight carrying him forward through the space when he tried to stop abruptly. Dan cried out a warning, expecting some consequence, but Ivan sailed through the air with no resistance to skid to a stop several feet further and turn with weapon brandished.
He turned to see if Ben, Kim, or Prairie had seen similar to what he had but they weren’t behind him like he’d suspected. From the doorway came Ben’s holler followed by Prairie’s “eep!”
Enter The Woods 