Chapter Three

Waking the Witch

In Chapter Three, the focus broadens to some of Maggie’s other classmates who are also about to get swept up in the happenings at Westbrook Elementary. Who will become pawns in a game beyond their imagining? And what is happening to Maggie herself, as she begins to exhibit more strange, supernatural abilities?

✪

Scott Saunders arrived home, as usual, to an empty house. He put on the television without checking what was on and went to the phone to call Jason.

The phone rang at the Lawson house a dozen times before he gave up. School had been such a dead waste that day he had really been looking forward to doing something with Jason. Why hadn’t Jason waited after school for him as usual? Oh well, he probably had something on and just forgot to mention it.

Something niggled at Scott, but he couldn’t put his finger on anything that might be bothering him. Just another day at school. Just another day in Mr. Sterling’s home room, just another day when spring and the outdoors called and learning didn’t.

And now, without Jason, there would be no after-school basketball, or road hockey. He might as well just turn on the TV or fire up the Playstation. He ran himself a glass of water from the tap and was trying to figure out what he should do to still his afternoon munchies when he heard the noise upstairs.

He froze. Then, quietly as possible, he edged toward the stairs. There, he noticed a shimmer of glass powdering the hall carpet.

He bent and stretched out a finger cautiously. A prickle in the back of his neck was all the warning he got; so much for a guy’s senses being sharpened by hunger. Something pressed into the tender skin of his throat, and all bets were off. Someone had broken into his house. A sweet, low voice murmured into his ear. “Hello, my little lad. Let’s keep this civil, shall we?”

Scott took a couple of difficult breaths, perched half on his heels with his arms stuck straight out at his sides, trying to square the voice with the situation. A girl had broken into his house?

“You got a knife?” he managed at last, barely a whisper. His imagination was working perversely, picturing his throat slit and words emerging only as a wheeze.

She laughed, the sound miraculously musical. “That was a stupid question. I hope you can be more entertaining than that. We have a long way to go.”

Scott felt slow and stupid. His limbs were all frozen in their awkward positions as if this Medusa had turned him to stone without so much a look at her face. Theft he could conceive of, but this was kidnapping?

She was right, though, the question he had asked was stupid. It was obviously some kind of knife pressing on his esophagus, and her hands felt steady and sure, one holding the blade and the other digging into his shoulder to pull him tighter against it.

He wasn’t thinking clearly; that much was pretty obvious. At this point in a movie, the hero would have already turned the tables and beat the snot out of the knife-wielder, girl or no. His mind ticked over what he hoped might be valid real-world scenarios, and came up with the only one that screamed out to him—run.

He tilted his head to the side, chin flattening against his chest to protect his windpipe, and tried to drop straight down. He had a distinct height advantage over her; only thirteen, but already within a few inches of six feet, he was a good half a head taller than she was. This tactic didn’t really use his height, but he was bargaining more on the element of surprise.

If he’d been braver, and she’d been a man, he thought it would have been a good idea to try a reverse head-butt—but maybe not. Doing damage in a video game was one thing. Actually hurting someone deliberately was somewhat scarier.

He heard her musical laugh as his knees hit the floor, not the sound he’d have expected from her when she lost her prisoner. Without a pause, he launched himself forward.

Too late, he remembered the noise upstairs. He ran, straight into a huge, bulky figure who had appeared from the stairwell. Scott swerved and tried to keep his feet, but crashed into the wall instead and found himself suddenly juggling one of his mother’s small prints of Degas dancers.

The girl was in front of him instantly, the knife he’d now had time to register as a long tapered stiletto again at his throat. This time, she let her companion pinion him while she tickled the point of the blade between the tendons of his neck.

“Don’t, Mr. Saunders,” she told him. There was no humour in her voice this time.

Scott, able for the first time to examine his attacker, took in her dark hair and eyes with confusion. She looked not much older than Jason’s sister Sarah, which would make her maybe seventeen or eighteen. Her black hair, obviously long and wavy, was piled in an elaborate series of pins and combs into a complex style on top of her head. She had a broad mouth, twisted now into a thoroughly unpleasant expression of curious contemplation.

Scott felt the air leave his lungs. This was not natural. For one thing, she was, he was sure, no thief. To begin with, she was not dressed like a criminal. Her clothing was as elaborate as her hair, soft brushed velvets in deep rich colours and black and gold braid. She looked like a gypsy: full sleeves, a vest, and a voluminous skirt slit up both sides to reveal red leggings that were the only practical part of her outfit.

She watched him taking stock with obvious amusement. When he at last met her eyes, her mouth turned down and her expression hardened. “Get him to the car,” she said, her eyes still on Scott’s. The hands pinning his arms tightened.

The doorbell sounded, and Scott’s muscles relaxed spasmodically, as loose now as they had previously been tight.

The girl’s head whipped around to follow the sound, a murderous look replacing her previous expression.

“Hide him,” she said, then paused, tense and considering. “On second thought,” she said, “get rid of whoever it is. And no tricks, because we can kill them as easily as you. Don’t get blood on your hands, my chicken.”

The realization came to Scott that these last comments were directed to him, and the point was made even more clear as the hands at last released him.

He staggered away from the intruders, down the hall toward the door, never turning away from them. His second assailant was as different from the girl as he could imagine. He could hardly believe she was female, although that at least was obvious. She was massive, broad like a bodybuilder, her face a mass of folds and wrinkles. Her hair was short cropped and grey, and her eyes were completely empty. She wore what he could only think of as a uniform, severely cut in green so dark it was nearly black.

“Go on,” hissed the girl, and smiled like a viper.

Scott stumbled to the door and composed himself. What could he do to warn whoever it was? He would never forgive himself if he endangered someone else to save himself.

Slowly, he opened the door.

A heavy police officer, a good half-head taller than he was, looked up from the notepad in his meaty hand. “I’m Constable Kerr. Mr. Saunders?” he asked.

Stupidly, Scott shook his head. “I’m his son, Scott.”

“I understand,” said the officer, smiling. “We had a report from one of your neighbours about half an hour ago that someone was lurking in your backyard.”

“Oh?” Scott sounded unconvincing to himself. The policeman would have to know something was wrong.

“Nothing strange going on?”

Scott shook his head, pleading silently. “Nothing at all. I just got home.”

The officer craned his neck to view the hallway behind Scott. “Do you mind if I take a look around?”

Warning bells went off in Scott’s head. Which would the girl consider the most threatening, to brush the cop off and risk tipping him to the situation, or to let him in and trust that she could stay out of his way?

“Sure,” Scott heard himself say, and the die was cast, for better or worse.

The policeman proceeded him down the hall as Scott trailed after, thinking how this would be the ideal moment to make a run for it, if it wouldn’t almost necessarily condemn the other man to the girl’s mercy.

Too late, he remembered the glass on the carpet.

The big woman came out of her hiding place with a suddenness that shocked even Scott, who knew she was there.

The reaction of the policeman was something even worse. He gave a gasp, disbelief and horror rolled into it. This was a man who was not used to being surprised, at least not inside a comfortable middle-class suburban home. Kerr was unable to even to grasp his holster before the woman had him in a vice grip with one thick arm pinning his hands to his sides and the other wrenching his head back.

Then the girl swung out, light on her feet, the blade of her knife flashing. She cut cleanly across the officer’s skin, dancing away again as the surprising gout of blood rose from the policeman’s throat.

Scott dropped to his knees, his empty stomach heaving and only clear bile coming up. He heard the policeman’s body hit the carpet, and then the large woman was turning her attentions to him. She hauled him to his feet, twisting one wrist behind him to immobilize him.

There was even less gentleness this time. Someone was babbling, the words all spitty and barely voiced, and he realized it was himself. “Sorry—didn’t mean—he wanted—would be too suspicious …”

Astoundingly, when the girl moved in close to him, her lips breathing warmly into his ear, she was purring.

“I know, baby,” she whispered. “It was just bad timing. Nothing you could have done. Now, let’s all be calm and nothing else will go wrong.”

They left through the back door, a more civilized method than the way the two women had entered, judging by the shattered family room window. The taste of bile lingered in Scott’s mouth. The pain in his arm was a steady thing, almost forgotten by the time they reached the edge of the garden and the upper end of the Saunders’ driveway.

The garage door was up, and through the gloom inside, Scott made out a sleek black car, maybe a Rolls.

“We’re travelling in style,” said the girl, smiling broadly at his growing confusion. “Poor baby. Hold out your hands.”

His captor released his arms, and Scott obediently did as he was told. If he’d had any doubts about the murderous potential of this girl, the events inside had certainly cured him. She took a piece of thick wire out of some fold of her clothing and bound his wrists together.

“I’ll have to blindfold you too,” she told him, and pushed him into the back seat of the car. Then, to her cohort, she said, “Pull out, then you can move the policeman’s vehicle into the garage. I love hide and seek.” She smiled broadly at Scott and, unbelievably, winked.

The bulky woman moved into the driver’s seat, and placed a chauffeur’s hat on her head at an inappropriately jaunty angle.

Then darkness descended on him as the girl lowered a strip of something cloyingly warm over his eyes. She bound it at the back of his head, and the car lurched backwards. They, to whatever unknown destination, were on their way.

And Scott Saunders, thirteen years old and mortally afraid for the first time in his short life, realized he had no memories between about two o’clock that afternoon, and arriving home. Another wave of fear washed over him. If this was what was happening to him, what about the rest of the kids at school? What about Jason?

Then, “Go to sleep,” said the girl. “We’ll pick the father up and head for the house.” And Scott heard and saw nothing more.

✪

Aaron Scribner was reading, pushing his glasses up his nose, unaware that he, like Scott Saunders, had no memory of the events of the afternoon.

Beside him on the table was a glass of lemonade. He reached for it and toppled it onto the carpet.

“Damnation,” he mouthed and set the glass up again before all was spilt. Quickly, hoping his mother hadn’t twigged to the accident, he ran to the bathroom for the roll of paper towels under the sink.

But when he returned to the living room, Mrs. Scribner was already standing over the spill. Neither of them said anything. Aaron bent to his hands and knees and wadded a bunch of towels to sponge up the lemonade.

He tossed the first wet handful onto the teak end table and tore more off the roll. Mrs. Scribner collected the damp paper before it could do any damage and smiled, shaking her head.

Aaron looked up at her. “You could help, you know.”

“I’m not so sure,” she replied, “since it gives me a perfect excuse to discipline you. Coincidentally, I need some things from the mall. I wouldn’t want to become an accessory.”

“Ha, ha, very funny.” The only thing worse than his mother’s almost sixth sense about everything that happened around her was her ability to make her superior awareness into a joke at everyone else’s expense.

“Get a little fresh air, sonny boy. Disappearing into a book for hours at a time is fine for a relic like your father, but why don’t you aim to end up healthy instead of an aging, myopic, failed radical like him?”

Aaron tried to think of a reply, but as usual, his mother beat him to the punch. She reached into the pocket of her omnipresent brown cardigan and pulled out a shopping list and a wad of bills. Miles ahead of him, of course.

She kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, my best boy.”

“Your only boy,” Aaron reminded her, and marked his place in Economic Upsets in Post-War Britain as she disappeared again into the bowels of the house calling, “Enjoy yourself” over her shoulder.

Going into the garage, Aaron unchained his bike. Something nagged at him, but he was slow to put his finger on it.

He tucked a pant-leg into one sock, and only then wondered why his dog wasn’t barking. She usually set up a howl the moment she heard someone enter the garage from the house.

He left the bike where it was and stepped out the side door to investigate. Still no sound from the back yard, when Heidigger should have been barking her head off. He was moving to check on her when a person stepped out of the shrubbery ahead of him.

“Geez,” Aaron said, startled. “You scared the heck out of me.”

The man was in his early twenties, Aaron guessed, dark-haired and immaculately dressed in a crisp black suit and a white shirt with its collar loosened.

He smiled apologetically. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Professor Scribner’s house.”

“Which one?” asked Aaron, laughing, at ease again. “If it’s my mom, then you’re in luck. My dad’s still at school.”

It had to be one of his dad’s crazy politics students; that was much more likely than imagining one of his mother’s economics students had showed up at the house.

“Then you’d be Aaron.” The young man sounded very sure. He took a step closer to the boy. “About your dog—we really couldn’t take any chances. I’m actually very sorry.”

Two other men came around the side of the garage then, one from the direction of the road and the other from the back yard.

“Is there something wrong?” Aaron was off balance. Sometimes one student would arrive at the house for extra help, or one of his dad’s famous verbal boxing matches, but the other two looked a bit old to be attending University.

They all looked a bit formal to be students in any case, dressed in matching dark outfits. And what about Heidigger?

“What is this?” He began to back away, but they were quicker than him. Why should he have been in any state of readiness, to flee ten feet from his own home? One caught him around the neck and put enough pressure on his throat that he started to black out. He couldn’t, in any case, get enough air into his lungs to call out for his mother.

On the third man’s hands he now saw blood.

“I’m sorry,” said the young man again. “It was necessary. We couldn’t have you alerted.” He paused long enough for Aaron to feel his head begin to spin before continuing much more softly: “You’re going to be our guest, Aaron. I’m Damon, by the way.”

They dragged Aaron, gasping, to the front of the house. The street was deserted. He begged silently for a car, a pedestrian, any kind of intervention, divine or human. No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t break the grip on him.

A car, black and expensive, sat in the drive, its motor purring quietly like a contented cat. The young man got in first, into the back seat, pulling Aaron abruptly after him.

Even though there was now a respite from the hold on his throat, he was too bruised and sore to draw a breath to shout for help. The second man got in beside him and roughly forced Aaron’s head down between his knees.

✪

It might have been the vibrations of the helicopter setting down that woke me. But as I swam uneasily to a drunken consciousness, I wondered if whatever I had been forced to breathe had been meant to wear off coincidental to our arrival. I felt Jason’s knees pressing heavily into my stomach; he began to stir just as I managed to pull my deadened eyelids open.

We were lying together on the floor of the helicopter on a carpet covered with a fine layer of grit and pebbles. My hands were bound in front of me, and when I was able to pull myself awkwardly up to look at Jason, I saw he was similarly constrained.

I felt awkward, embarrassed more than scared. This was the closest I’d ever been to a boy my age, and the fact I’d had no choice and had been unconscious somehow didn’t make me any less shy now. What a time to turn prude, I admonished myself severely.

“Jay—” I whispered, and was answered by a slap which seemed to come from nowhere.

Too slowly, I registered the figure bent forward in the seat next to us. Mr. Sterling, staring at me with eyes that seemed to look into the space between us as if he was somehow not resident in his own body.

I raised my bound hands reflexively to my cheek, feeling the sting, and sank back down on my side to wait, studying Jason’s eyelids.

Behind them, his eyes moved as if he lingered in REM sleep, but I suspected he was already awake. Probably just as embarrassed as me. I didn’t know if it would be worse if I found out he was liking it.

The helicopter’s rotors slowed and came to rest above us. Immediately, Sterling stood, mechanically, and jerked me to my feet by the wire around my wrists. I stifled a gasp of pain, and made a surprising discovery about my teacher’s apparel, something I hadn’t really noted before.

He was dressed, not in the casual clothes he wore at school, but formally in dark green. Neutral in its decoration but military in cut, it was obviously a uniform and not just a suit.

The other men in the helicopter, the one now pulling Jason upright as well and the two pilots, were dressed the same. The pilots were both wearing aviator glasses which obscured their eyes, but I was sure that they would share the same blank look as Sterling and his compatriot.

“What the heck—” was all a groggy Jason managed before receiving a slap like I had for his trouble. He recoiled before the blow with a groan—and I felt a strange surge go through me.

It took my breath away, that slap.

I looked at Jason, a new pulsing inside my skull which seemed to have far more form than a headache. I could almost trace where it had slipped through me—could have, if I’d had a finger free, pointed to the exact spot on my brain where the wave had entered, and then dissipated.

Shaking my head, trying to clear it, I tried to recapture the sensation. The only way I could make sense of it was to imagine that, for a moment, what I had been directly experiencing had come from outside my own body. It was Jason’s fear I had felt, the sting of Sterling’s hand on Jason’s cheek.

I knew my eyes must be wild, because the look Jason gave me back mirrored them. I knew it, and he knew it too. His fear, his reaction to the blow, and I felt them both. My head spun.

Searching for something to centre my reeling thoughts, and to break the lock between my gaze and Jason’s, I found Sterling’s face and held a tenuous focus on his chin.

But instead of my insides settling down, I met a wall of confused terror, strong as the panic I had experienced inside the washroom at school. The only difference was, and I had no idea why I was so sure of the distinction, that it was no longer my own emotions I was feeling. I was somehow sharing something happening inside Mr. Sterling.

My world spun, and only Sterling’s sudden hold on my arm stopped me from falling. If Jason was unaware of the nature of my turmoil, when he saw me lurch he was probably attributing it to the same sense of unsteadiness he felt himself. They had drugged him, chloroformed him or something. But I could feel his attention pulling away from me, more interested in what was going on outside the helicopter than in me.

And I found that through him, my focus shifted from what was happening inside myself to wondering where we’d had been taken. I couldn’t see through his eyes, or hear his thoughts. It was less specific than that. But I could sense his emotions, the curiosity that was overcoming his fear.

Thank God that guys have short attention spans. He was saving me from my own speculations.

Being special is not what I had hoped, I thought, and gave myself fully over to Jason’s feelings, coming to me in that pulsing surety inside my skull.

It was late afternoon, by the angle of the sun. A black shadow covered half of what I could see in the view the front window offered me, cast by something outside my range of vision, although perhaps not of Jason’s.

In the distance, probably a good half kilometre away, I could see a two-lane paved highway, with no traffic in sight, beyond a wide margin of grass. Nearer, there was a shallow gully, which seemed to be the only interesting feature in a stretch of otherwise unrelieved gravel, separated from the field by a well-worn chain-link fence. If we could get to the fence and scale it, it would be nothing to get over that grass to the road. And if we timed it so there was a car coming …

Somehow, I knew this analysis was more Jason’s than mine, and I was glad. Being able to plan an escape, even without a clue of how to execute it, made him feel more calm. Whatever we did, it would have to be soon, because we were on the move.

As Sterling lowered me by my now aching arms down to the gravel, the ground seeming to rise to meet me halfway. My balance was still off, and my vision was black-rimmed. Time was moving strangely; it seemed like an eternity since we’d landed and another while we stood there in that barren landscape, a light breeze on my face the only element of reality. If we were to get away, I would have to pull myself together, not just to be ready when Jason made his move, but to be capable of dashing after him.

It was a surreal, alien place they had brought us, and I put the clues together only slowly. Beyond the helicopter, I could make out what Jason had already seen: the fence and the distant, deserted road stretching to the horizon in each direction.

Off to my left was the decrepit building which cast the shadow I had noted from inside. It stood maybe three stories high, narrow and windowless, with enormous wheels and pulleys protruding from the top. Its use was not immediately obvious, but something clearly connected with industry, with …

And, glancing behind me over my shoulder, I put it together.

The flat gravel gave way to an enormous crater, wide and roughly circular, with a sloping road leading down into its depths. The shadows threw its bottom into darkness, leaving me with an impression of a possibly bottomless pit. A quarry, long deserted by the looks of it.

Then the building behind me must be connected to mining in some way, an elevator, I guessed, wondering if they could be mining with a shaft and an open pit at the same time.

Being able to identify the environment explained nothing. Why had they brought us here? Sterling pulled on my arm with a jerk, directing me toward the structure.

I managed to catch Jason’s eye for the first time since leaving the helicopter. It was no wonder I felt so out of reality. Just the day before, I had been mooning over this guy, hoping to spend a bit of time with him doing homework, while all the time frantically denying that I could feel anything for him at all.

Now, he was wild-eyed and tense, as confused and scared as I was.

That decided me on a course of action I had not even fully thought through. I reached out for him with that strange new part of my mind, hoping to touch his fright again as I had before, to maybe find a way to send my own feelings back to comfort him with the knowledge he wasn’t alone.

I sensed the raw emotions steaming off him like heat radiating from a wood stove. I didn’t know why I was so sure I could soothe him without even being near physically, but I wasn’t surprised to feel a sensing tendril leaving me, circling toward him.

This time it was different. Without warning, I was repulsed. A gulf yawned before me as significant as the quarry behind; Jason had become a bottomless pit. All sense of his emotions was gone, and my vision went black. I stumbled, like I was falling into him, Sterling’s grasp on my arm again the only thing keeping me upright.

I panted, frightened and blind. Slowly, my sight returned. As the dark blossoms began to fade and the sunlight crept back in, Sterling’s arms closed painfully around me.

I tried to jerk away, and, succeeding, fell forward onto the gravel, raking my useless hands. I looked around to see why my teacher had felt the need to grab harder hold of me, and then saw the reason.

Out toward the fence, Jason was running.

I watched stunned as he left me, trying to yank myself free of Sterling who had now bent to take my arm again.

None of the other three men were following Jason. Why?

In a day of unique and impossible experiences, the latest was by far the most frightening. Into my head came a voice, to the same place in my mind where I had first felt Jason’s and then Sterling’s emotions surge.

Bring Her Quickly. I Will Attend To The Boy.

I saw no one, but Sterling nodded as if he too had heard. Jason, receding, reached the fence and began to climb. Somehow, I was certain that he had not heard the voice.

Sterling jerked me to my feet and, with my small honour guard, I was escorted on toward the mine building. I lost sight of Jason immediately, and felt only my own emotions this time, a forlorn and almost paralyzing loneliness.

It hadn’t occurred to me to feel so hopeless when we were together, but now that he was gone, I had no strength. It was all I could do to stay upright on my feet as Sterling pulled me along.

We passed into the shadow the building. With tears suddenly threatening to spill out of the corners of my eyes, I forced myself to be angry, if only to keep my face straight. I was being stupid. It was happening, whatever it was, and it was no use panicking or losing my wits. If I was to get a break like Jason, I owed it to myself to be ready.

Rallying, I found my balance at last and tugged to reposition Sterling’s grip on my arm.

“I can walk myself,” I told him, mouth set and determined.

It made me feel better to say it, although of course it changed nothing.

They led me under a sagging lintel into the gloom of the decaying tower. My eyes adjusted quickly, aided by the sunlight trickling through cracks and knotholes in the boards.

Inside, the building was open to the ceiling three floors above, and packed with the machinery I’d seen protruding from the top. The building was not a straight-walled tower all the way around as I had naturally assumed. Straight ahead, the wall beyond which the quarry fell away sloped outward from just below the roof at perhaps a sixty degree angle. And this feature accommodated the base of the pulleys and the cables which ran below the slant and disappeared into a pit at the far end of the building.

An enclosed carriage hung above the platform directly below the roof, its single door open and waiting for me.

How thoughtful, I told myself, and despite the strangeness of it, found my mouth curling up in a grin. Helicopters, subterranean gondolas—someone was going to a lot of trouble for me. Despite my deep fear, I was strangely flattered. A prisoner, yes, but an important one.

I shook myself, ready to laugh. It must be giddiness. That was the only explanation of the surging good humour.

I tried to focus: Jason was still outside running for his life and freedom. There had been some kind of atrocity committed in the auditorium of my school. My French teacher had gone from being a bit of a sweetheart and a definitely easy marker to a hardened, bullying automaton—or worse, a finally-revealed sociopath.

And the more I itemized, the sillier it all seemed.

I had heard a voice in my head, a voice which had to have been in my head because I had seen four men act on its instructions and a fifth person remain oblivious. I had sensed emotions transmitted through the air as easily as vibrations made waves in water. I had, in some undefinable way, changed. It was so obvious, so utterly irrefutable. Maggie Stuart had, even in a matter of hours, become something completely new.

My back straightened. Whatever was coming, I was going to face it with dignity.

Sterling sat beside me with his hand resting on my shoulder through the whole harrowing journey through the darkness.

The gondola lurched down its spider-slender cable, groaning and squealing as it went. But the car, although not gentle, moved quickly enough through the utter blackness of its tunnel and before I had had time to arrange my thoughts further, we had arrived at a second terminal.

The room at this end was smaller, just large enough to accommodate an enormous winch and the three women in uniforms identical to Sterling’s who were there to meet us.

With an unjustifiable feeling of betrayal, I watched Sterling’s group disappear through the room’s main door as the others took charge.

Finally, my hands were unbound. I rubbed the deep red welts the wire bindings had left as I was led into a smaller room off the first. The walls of the chamber were rough, and I realized that both this room and what I could see of the corridor beyond the door were hewn out of solid rock.

We were deep underground, which was unnerving enough in itself. But it didn’t feel like we were in a mine. The gondola couldn’t transport ore to the surface, so what had its original purpose been? Was it an abandoned mine? Or had this place been excavated for some other reason?

I shivered, thinking, without any reason at all, that somehow, it had all been done for me.

✪

Jason scaled the fence easily and flung himself over, barely able to catch his fingers in the chain link to stop his fall. He hit the ground running, and finally allowed himself a glance back over his shoulder.

The moon landscape, with its black tower, was deserted. He slowed to a walk. Where were his pursuers? Did no one care if he escaped?

His initial elation was tempered by a suspicion he had had for a while now, since earlier that day, that Maggie Stuart somehow was the centre of all the strange events he had witnessed.

What contributed to the idea? It was probably enough that she had been the only one who had avoided the auditorium earlier.

When he had fled from that hellish room, unable to pretend any longer that he was enchanted like the rest of the students, it had hardly triggered any surprised reaction in him that Maggie would be the one he’d barrel into in the hallway.

And so, he blamed her, for his kidnapping, for what had happened in the auditorium, for Mr. Hunt’s experiments in the classroom of the night before. For his heart, beating like a bird’s.

Far off, on the highway, he saw a car. Although there was no hope of catching it before it disappeared, no chance, honestly, of even being noticed by its occupants, he began to run.

But in his mind, there came a cold voice, so final and commanding that he ground again to a dead halt.

STOP.

He was alone. Spinning, he scanned the horizon.

“Where are you?” he whispered, his voice not obeying him.

He braced himself to run again.

Don’t, Mr. Lawson. The voice came again, insistent and intensely persuasive. You’ve Found Our Mine Field. Believe Me, You Don’t Want This To Be A Proven Fact.

Jason found himself unsteady, his weight on one foot. He tried to right himself, but it wasn’t just his balance that was betraying him.

Something was touching him, although there was no one and nothing in sight. Pressing at him, soft and smothering as a blanket.

He used his arms to try to push it away, but his hands met no resistance in the air.

There was a long period of silence from the voice, and finally the probing ceased.

Well, Mr. Lawson, it came again at last. I Think It’s A Very Good Thing You Were Brought To Me.

Jason knew he’d hardly have to shout to make the owner of that silky, hateful voice hear him, but he couldn’t help himself. All his tension poured out: “Screw you, man!” and he was off again.

The explosion rocked him back off his feet to the soft grass before he’d even heard it.

Even when he understood what had happened, the sound echoing through his ears was more like a memory of a sonic boom than the thing himself. Dirt and sod rained down on him.

He reached forward in blind panic, mouth full of soil, touching his feet, his knees. Miraculously, everything was intact.

The voice came again. Mr. Lawson. I Must Insist You Come Back. The Next Mine May Be One You Explode, Not Me.

Jason was screaming. He knew that now, but he couldn’t stop until his throat was sore and he began hyperventilating instead, sobbing.

Through the haze surrounding his head, the massive weight on his skull, he heard the voice one more time:

Jason, Stay Very Still And Wait. We’ll Come And Get You. I Don’t Think The Highway Is Such An Urgent Goal Now, Is It?

Disregarding the warning not to move, Jason rolled over onto his side and drew his legs into his chest. His entire body shook. And in his ears, the sound of the explosion lingered.

✪

They had let me sleep for a while on a pile of fabric in the little room. I’d dropped almost immediately into a deep sleep, unusual for me, despite their eyes watching me.

I had been drugged, though, twice already that day, and my body was at about the limit of its resistance to stress. I didn’t dream.

The next thing I knew, a rough female hand was shaking me awake. They pulled me to my feet, then robed me in a voluminous dress of soft white wool which fell in curtain folds to my feet, and gave me soft slippers to replace the shoes they took away.

I was so transported trying to figure out what was going on that I hardly felt embarrassed when they took away everything but my underwear and the tiny bra Jan had finally felt I needed only a few months before. I was blindfolded and led out of the chamber down a steeply inclined path which took me further into a growing coldness, not of temperature but of even greater heightened senses.

I knew even before they removed the blindfold that someone had come to meet me, and that at least one question would finally be answered—that of who it was who had brought me out of Westbrook, out of my school, away from my home, and to this cold stone world.

When my eyes were uncovered, I found myself standing on a slab of smooth-polished black stone before a huge door opened to welcome me, to usher me in to the next stage of my descent. Beyond it, a tunnel curved downwards into semi-darkness, and out of sight. And appropriately, Lucifer himself was there to greet me, bearing a candle.

All that was missing was the standard warning: Abandon hope all who enter.

The man was handsome, in a dark way, his straight poise enough in itself to make me catch my breath. He stood before the doorway on its single step, which seemed unnecessary because he was so tall to begin with, unnaturally tall.

His clothing was immaculate: a loose black suit which seemed almost a part of him; crisp, darkly creamy shirt; rich satiny tie with a somber red design worked through it. The hair which curled around his temples and against the nape of his neck was dark, set off by a few strands of silver glowing in the soft candlelight. His short beard accentuated his fine cheekbones on its way to meet the shocks of black curls at his ears, trimmed to perfect symmetry.

But the more I looked at him, and he seemed perfectly happy to be scrutinized, the more he disturbed me. Even though I could see each of his features perfectly, something prevented me from putting the whole picture together and getting a sense of what his face actually looked like. I was full of impressions of him, but found nothing to hold on to.

Around his shoulders, he wore a black cape which swept the floor. With this addition to the ensemble, I was reminded of pictures I’d poured over in the library, of eighteenth century gentlemen in their noble, mysterious finery. He couldn’t have presented himself in a more appealing costume if he’d known about those, and maybe he did.

At first at least, his look made me feel comfortable, as if somehow this whole situation was an elaborate prank for my benefit. But I kept looking at him, trying to see his face, to see what he looked like, and still I was rebuffed in my attempt.

And, on second thought, that cape was more Dracula than Victorian gentleman, and made the whole impression slightly wrong, like a picture hung just a little crookedly.

He seemed only half aware of me, as if contemplating some problem beyond my knowledge.

It was the thing that really began to upset me, the cape; that, and his tallness and the shifting, impossible face. This could not possibly be real, but I knew with cold certainty that I was awake and that I was really here. I was not dreaming this, and had not dreamed it. Unlike the floating feeling of the day before, the feeling that I might still be asleep, I was under no illusions. This might be outside, or somehow above, reality, but I was really here. And so was he.

He seemed to come closer—but then I realized it was because I had walked forward toward him. He stood on the step smiling crookedly at me as I came close, so that I had to look straight up to see his face, and joined his eyes with mine at last.

I had never felt so tiny in my life.

Well Met, he said softly, capitalizing each word precisely in my mind, just as he had when his voice had reached me above ground beside the helicopter.

Here, at last, was my captor and my host.

I stood directly before him now, close enough that the shifting cape brushed the wool of my wool dress, its blackness overwhelming the white. My eyes had become locked with his and I could see nothing but his face, so beautiful but all wrong: too refined, too perfect, and completely impossible to piece together although all its elements were there in front of me.

His eyes, I saw, were holes, the irises so dark they merged with the pupils, both black.

The face shifted, distorted, righted itself, all around those impassive hollows. He seemed brittle, faded around the edges, as if he were an old photograph perhaps singed in a historic fire. There was an aura of age about him. I tried to put my finger on the impression he gave, and could only come up with the idea that he seemed to be all charcoal and smoke, burnt and refined by fire.

The Burnt Man, I thought, and laughed to myself. The Dark Man. The Man, the one who had been calling to me. He was the stamen of a delicate flower, the rock that drew sailors to their doom at the centre of Charybdis. I didn’t know him, and yet the moment was full of import, full of half-shadows of something grand and frightening.

You Are Mine Now—You Shall Stay With Me, he intoned, as quietly as before, and reached out to grasp my shoulder with a hand as cold as ice.

He pulled me closer, onto the step with him, and lowered his mouth to my ear, his lips nearly brushing my cheek, that cape wrapping us together, away from the others in the room.

I felt myself falling again, not fainting or buckling weak-kneed, but into him. Drawn in, as if I were metal and he a magnet.

It was very like the feeling I had when I thought of Jason, but stronger, and wilder, and much, much more dangerous.

“I am very pleased,” he said, speaking in a whisper, but into the air for the first time.

Then, his cloak repulsed me, and, in a flurry of dark fabric, he was gone.