Now, I’m not the smoothest talker in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad. Witty? I like to think so. Funny? Barely passable. Able to calm down the people who have just been fed on by a folklore creature whose feces are the equivalent of human nightmares? Definitely not. See, one of the things I failed to account for was the fact that everyone here would wake up all at once.
Everyone including the adults.
They began to groan all at once, stirring from their slumbers. I counted six adults who were starting to wake up. The rest of them didn’t move, and I didn’t dare dwell on why. Instead, I limped over to the corner with the Mother Tree’s branches and began to drag them in pairs over to one side. Hidebehind’s remedy flexed and hardened in place of my core muscles, making me imagine that there were cybernetic enhancements that one only saw in videogames attached to my stomach. I think Hidebehind moved a pair while I wasn’t looking. That was good. They were too big for me to move all thirteen by myself without straining something. Finally, I positioned myself near my friends so that when they woke up, I could help them reorient themselves.
The non-humans got their bearings first: Wol, Hwari, Seoul, and… Abigail.
“Jain?” Wol said, getting up. He stretched as cats do, elongating his spine and arching it.
Hwari immediately sank into the shadows, appearing near my feet. She spun around my ankles, and I got some feelings of warmth from her.
“Oh, thank god,” I said, kneeling next to the familiars. A sense of relief washed over me, erasing all the densely packed doubt and undoing the twisted knots in my stomach. “You two okay?”
“We’re fine, practitioner,” Wol said, yawning. He stiffened, his amber-green eyes widening at me. He sniffed delicately in m,y general direction. “Jain… you’re hurt.”
“We can discuss that later,” I said, watching Seoul nudge Mina to hurry awake. The korean girl groaned and turned over, before getting up.
“My head…” Mina muttered, sitting up. Seoul lapped at her cheek.
Abigail had been up as well, but she was quiet. She stared off into space, not really saying anything or reacting to what anyone else was saying.
“W-who,” said a new voice. A woman. Greg’s mom sat up quickly, looked all around us, then started shoving her husband. “Who are you kids? What are you doing here?”
There was no point in introducing myself. Not without giving something away, or getting into another conversation. Besides, judging from the look on her face, she wasn’t completely aware. Not yet. I still had time.
I jerked a thumb at the Mother Tree branches. “I’m the person who’s going to take these back.”
Her eyes widened and I saw the look of rememberance pass over her face. “The tree. The thing that followed us here. W-What is—, Chris, are you ok?”
Her husband—presumably Greg’s dad (one could never be too sure with these rich people if soap operas were any indication)— was up now. He shook himself. That was the signal, and all the other adults started getting up too.
A few number of them stayed down. Ashley’s mom was one of them.
Greg’s mom narrowed her eyes at me. “I know you from somewhere.”
Shit.
“W-wait,” Greg’s dad groaned, clutching at his head. His green eyes were glued onto me, and it made me wish I had a mirror to check how I looked. They became unfocused again. “Did the master send you?”
Master? Oh 100% cult vibes.
It took me a moment to figure out exactly who this master was. The Wickerman. Not wanting to give a verbal confirmation, I nodded.
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“He saved us,” Greg’s dad said. He got to his feet, leaning on his wife for support. He was still working on instinct, waking from the nightmare that Underthebed had induced on him. “I knew the Master wouldn’t just leave us.”
The other adults were taking their cue from Greg’s dad. If they took a second to think about it, our group would have looked pretty suspicious. First of all, why would the Wickerman—if it was the Wickerman (Dammit Jain, don’t start questioning everything now)—send teenagers to do his biddings when he a bunch of other pyromaniacs with driver’s licenses? Secondly, we definitely did not fill the bill for the general theme of the Wickermen membership uniform: ghostly familiars and a staff. I had a cat and a fish as my familiar. Mina’s staff was made of bluish carbon steel-aluminum or something. Abigail…
Abigail had a gun.
More than enough reason to hurry out of here.
“Gregory, the others…” Greg’s mom trailed off, her voice ending on horror. She’d noticed the bodies I’d been trying so hard to avoid.
Never mind the fact that she brought my attention to the fact that Greg was a junior. She made me look.
People were dead.
Dead. Like… really dead. Never coming back dead. The kind where you look at the casket and think ‘oh geez, this definitely can’t be the person I used to know. They look so different’. Not the type of dead you hear about on the news. Or when people tell you about the death of celebrities you never met and you feign condolences. Not the type of dead that hits skin-deep on a surface level, just so people can say ‘Oh, I listen to this music, I’m this type of person’.
It wasn’t a gory scene you see in late-night feature film slasher-horror flicks. Certainly not the type of dramatic death when people suddenly drop dead from an unknown illness.
They were just… still. The type of stillness that was natural, but knew it was forever. That something was wrong, but wrong only because you wanted to turn away from it. Because deep inside all of us, there is that knowledge that one day we will die. One day, we will lie on our deathbed, and know that the next time we close our eyes, it will be our last. And we live with the subconscious knowledge that this day is coming. That the day when we say good-bye to our wives, husbands, children, friends, and unmet strangers is inevitable. On that same day, we will be saying good-bye to everything we know.
And the monster bound to the teddy bear taped to my pink backpack was responsible for it.
Oh god, I wanted to hurl.
Before I could, Mina quickly grabbed my wrist. She locked eyes with me and shook her head. Not now, she mouthed.
Right. Mother Tree’s branches. Wickermen in front of us. Hudson Witch waiting for proof.
“The kids,” Greg’s mom said. “Oh no, Gregory, the kids.”
“They’re fine,” I said a little too quickly. “Why don’t you guys tell me what you remember? From the beginning?”
“We were coming back from the forest with the Master,” Gregory explained. He wrapped his arm protectively around his wife. “But after we parted ways… I think something followed us back. I…” he looked at the others. “We, tried to fend it off. We really did. But we haven’t been granted our familiars yet. Or our staffs.”
I frowned, feeling that something was off. I couldn’t put a finger on it at the moment. I dismissed it for later.
“These branches.” I gestured at the Mother Tree’s branches I gathered. “They’re from the forest? The one in Westchester with the big hill?”
“Yes,” he mumbled, still a bit glassy eyed.
“Jain, we got the branches, we need to go,” Mina whispered next to my ear.
I bit my lower lip. I knew what she was worried about: that these adults would start getting their full bearings and start wondering why a bunch of teenagers were asking them questions. I could see it happening too. The Lost Place was unraveling all around us. The vines around the arcane machine withered to brown bits, then just disappeared completely. Everytime I looked around, the scenery changed just a little in the places I hadn’t actively been looking in. Plant life disappearing, the animal calls fading. And with this same progression, I could see the adults gathering their wits about them.
“Last thing,” I said, then to Gregory, “What did your master look like?”
His wife glared at me. Her annoyance was a palpable thing, becoming more focused by the minute. “What kind of question is that?”
Gregory answered anyways. “Wore a cloak. Tall.”
The foreboding feeling in my gut intensified. Or maybe it was the mulch.
“Ok,” I said and turned around, ignoring them. My voice sounded hoarse. “Help me gather the branches. Let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t carry all this out of here,” Mina hissed. With a sideways look at the dumbfounded Abigail, she muttered, “These are huge.”
“Hidebehind,” I said into the empty space. “Can you take these?”
Mina jumped as Hidebehind’ growl came from somewhere around the room. There were just enough bits of shadow from the rapidly decaying plants for him to hide, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. Another reason to hurry.
“Not all of them, Shaman. Me will be seen and heard.”
“How many can you take?” I asked Mina.
“Two? But I won’t be able to hold my staff—”
“Then take two and have your staff out. I’ll take another two,” I glanced at Abigail.
Her expression wasn’t fully there yet. But she saw my look and gave me a subtle nod. The goth girl scrambled over and picked up two branches. Her skirt shifted, giving me a view of the gun strapped to a holster on her thigh. She didn’t seem to notice.
Jesus, just what kind of nightmare had she seen that she was worse off than the others?
I grabbed two myself. “Hidebehind, the rest?”
He gave an affirmative growl.
“Ok, let’s get out of here.”
“Wait,” Greg’s dad shook his head, taking a step in my direction. “Let me come with you. The master… she said that… she made me promises. We’re supposed to get books and familiars.”
…She?
Shit.