Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“Okay, no worries,” I tell them, playing it cool. Of course, I only say no worries when I am absolutely full of worries.
I open the door, looking over my shoulder to see Everly’s sharp eyes on me, waiting for me to leave.
Where am I?
Where the fuck am I?
Is this another crazy dream?
I sit up.
It’s pitch black and I’m outside.
Not in my bed, not in my room, but outside.
Oh my god, oh my god.
I start feeling around with my hands, brushing over moss and ferns and twigs.
I can hardly breathe. Blood pounds in my head.
I know I’m not asleep. Everything is too real. Too cold. I can feel moisture seeping in through my pajama bottoms, the ground damp, the air thick and clammy. I breathe in sharply, my lungs weak and shallow, my nose catching the scent of the sea and pines and petrichor.
It’s so dark, too dark.
How did I end up here?
Did I sleepwalk?
Was I…taken?
There’s a helplessness embedded in my bones and I fear that most of all. Because this shouldn’t be possible and my mind is no longer my friend.
My mind is turning on me.
And I am terrified.
So I sit, frozen in fear, unable to move. My eyes are starting to adjust, picking out the outlines of the trees above me, their branches moving in the breeze. Far in the distance I see the glow of a light, which hopefully means I’m not far from the lodge.
I need to get up, I need to work my way through the woods, toward the light.
And yet I wonder if I can just stay where I am. Stay still. Stay hidden. If I lie back down and fall asleep, will I wake up in my bed again? The last thing I remember was after dinner packing for the camping trip in one of the backpacks they loaned us, then getting into bed when the sky wasn’t even dark yet, a bruised twilight.
You’re losing it, I tell myself. You’re truly losing your mind. You’ve been losing it all this time.
I have to find Kincaid. I have to talk to him.
I dig my fingers into the moss, cool, soft and damp, trying to feel what’s real, trying to hold on to reality.
But the more I dig my fingers in, the deeper they go, until my fist is buried and I have a terrible feeling that something is going to reach out from underneath, grab my hand and pull me down.
I suddenly yank my hand out, the thought enough to get me up on my feet. I stumble, off-balance on the uneven ground, and I’m about to fall sideways when my hands catch the rough bark of a Sitka spruce.
It’s a wide, rough trunk, an old tree, and I lean against it, trying to catch my breath, trying to push away all the scary images I have about what lurks beneath the moss, what hides between the trees. It feels like something is watching me, perhaps many somethings.
Stop that! I chide myself. Stop thinking like that. Find your way to the light!
But the tree feels comforting. The more I lean my head against it, the more I swear it whispers: rest, rest, rest.
It’s just the wind, though, moving the branches above me.
It’s just the wind that says, stay, stay, stay.
That whispers, Sydney.
Sydney, you’re home.
I straighten up, my heart pounding. The wind is playing tricks on me. Everything here plays tricks on me, even the people.
Especially the people.
I take in a deep shaking breath, my body trembling.
I start walking, grateful for my slippers, one uneven step in front of the other, my ankle nearly giving out on a few occasions. My eyes have adjusted enough to see that I’m in a small, open area in the middle of the forest and as long as I don’t look directly at the far-off light, I can see where I’m going.
That is until my toe catches on something, and with a cry, I go flying to the ground, landing in a pile of soft earth.
Soft, overturned earth.
I gasp, pushing myself upright but my hands sink in until the dirt is at my elbows. I’m about to panic when I realize that what I thought were stars behind my eyes are actually stars in front of my eyes.
The ground is covered in them.
Teal glowing stars with orange underneath.
Excandesco.
Excandesco, which means to flare and burn in Latin.
I’m staring at the Madrona mushrooms, glowing in their bioluminescence, and they’re all around me, lighting up the earth like fallen stars.
I marvel at them, feeling like I’m floating in the phosphorescent sea, but there’s a warning digging at the back of my skull. Something telling me to get up and keep moving. Something that says I need to get out of there, now.
I try to move, my knees sinking into the dirt now. For a second, I have a stupid worry about having to launder my damn pajama pants again, but that thought is quickly wiped away when I realize what this mound of soil I’m sinking into actually is.