AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mr. Swanson stopped talking. “Miss Lanley, is there something you’d like to add?” he asked.
She straightened in her chair to find twenty sets of eyes trained on her. Everyone stared at her, and suddenly a creepy feeling stole over her. There was something not right about them.
Any of them.
In unison, they all blinked.
“Uh—Poe,” she said, and then had to clear her throat. “He—he’s not in here,” she clarified. She held up the book in one hand. “I thought we were supposed to be studying Edgar Allan Poe.” She glanced up—and froze in Mr. Swanson’s gaze.
Mr. Swanson lowered his glasses, his eyes black. “Who?”
Isobel whipped her head back to stare at Varen. He watched her with a strange fierceness, frustration in the eyes that had since turned black as ink. His face, now wan and sunken, contorted with anger, scarcely resembled Varen’s at all.
That’s when she realized that it wasn’t Varen.
Isobel launched out of her seat. She made a break for the open door. Screams arose from her phantom classmates. Their faces twisted, their expressions demonic. Hands grabbed at her from all sides, but she yanked free and cleared the tangle of desks.
The room stretched and elongated before her like a tunnel. The door in front of her fell farther away. She ran faster, and the door slid back farther. It started to close. The faster she ran, the faster it moved. It boomed shut as she reached it. She groped for the handle but there wasn’t one.
“You’re always running away. You ruin everything” came a static voice from behind.
Isobel whirled to find herself alone in the classroom with Pinfeathers. His scarecrow figure sat occupying the desk the false Varen had. Slowly he rose, and Isobel pushed herself flat against the door, felt the coldness of it against her bare shoulders. She looked down, finding herself in her party dress again. Outside the door, she could hear music and people.
With quiet steps, he moved toward her, tucking a pencil behind one ear.
“You could have it all, you know. If you’d only let go,” he said, danger lacing his tone.
“I don’t want a lie.”
“Why not think of it as just another version? A better version. Really, no less truthful than the last. Perhaps even more truthful. Think of it as another chance to go back to that road not taken. To see what it would be like. To live what it would be like.”
“You’re not him.”
“Aren’t I?”
Isobel eyed him, skittish as she marked his approach, even though there was nowhere to run. His words seeped into her, burrowing deep into the recesses of her mind, raising flags of doubt. He stopped at a distance, letting her eyes scour him, his hands folded at his back and his chin turned down, as though posing for a snapshot. Isobel stared in disbelief, unable to deny an underlying shadow-resemblance to Varen that she had never noticed before. Where it could not be found in his face or his demeanor, it pervaded his stature, his height—his very form.
She shook her head, refusing to believe that his words held even the merest fraction of truth. She could not accept that this thing, this hollow zombie nightmare version, could hold any direct link to Varen. “It’s not just stalling this time, is it?” she said. “Tell me why you’re doing this.”
He sighed, eyes rolling. “Blondes, always needing things explained.”
Isobel glared, hands curling into fists.
He smiled wistfully. “See, this is why I like you. You never give up, even when you should. We need a little bit of your resolve, useless as it is. I think that’s why, cheerleader. Because the truth is that I don’t want to kill you. Not if I can avoid it.”
He took another step forward. She hitched in a breath, her back smashing flat against the door. Her hand groped for the knob she knew she would not find.
“And that’s up to you,” he said, his tone softening. “If you’ll only play the game, stay in the dance with me a little longer?” His head tilted to one side. He blinked those black eyes at her, the question in them, she was shocked to see, sincere—if that was a word that could be applied to Pinfeathers. That look frightened her more than his words could have. What was it, she wondered, that lurked beneath that monstrous porcelain shell? If it wasn’t a soul that animated him, then what? More important, what did it want with her?
He took one step closer, then another. “Only long enough to forget.” His face grew serious. “Quaff,” he said, his voice hushed, “oh, quaff this kind nepenthe.”
He closed the remaining distance between them in a series of movements too fast to see and pinned her to the door. He grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to his. His nails pressed into her cheek, threatening to break the skin.
She twisted her head away, but he looped an arm around her and yanked her to him. His body felt rigid and hollow next to hers. Empty. His grip on her tightened until she could no longer breathe. He pressed his lips to hers.
Isobel’s eyes flew wide. His mouth, smooth, cold, and hard, felt almost sharp against hers, like glass. He tasted of clay and ink, of blood and death.
Bile rose at the back of her throat, and along with it a scream.
