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“Yeah.”
“You’ve all been missing for nine days. It’s Tuesday after one whole week passed.”
He makes this ‘you’re crazy’ face at me that’s so cute I nearly laugh. “Really? That’s kinda weird.”
“Yeah. It is weird.” I take out my phone to show him the date. I almost ask him if he might’ve been in a vehicle accident, but the Jeep is right outside the cabin and not damaged. For the life of me, I can’t explain this situation.
How does a nine-year-old boy live by himself in a cabin out in the sticks of Idyllwild for nine days without seeming half-starved or the place being a complete mess? How is it the boy’s memory jumps from Friday a week ago to now?
The only thing Idoknow is I’m going to have to restart my investigation from scratch… beginning at this cabin. Something tells me nothing else is relevant. Not Norbert’s, not Carson’s dead wife, not the worries of her brother Scott nor her friend Heather. It seems the craziest situation—Gemma meeting this guy and falling for him instantly—might really be true. And now, something unexplainable has happened to both of them.
Guess I need to switch gears from wanting tocatchCarson, to needing tohelphim. Talk about a mental 180. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why investigators need to follow the clues and not make predetermined conclusions.
“Okay, Shane. I can’t leave you here by yourself. Need to go talk to the police out here. Gotta ask you to come with me, okay?”
He nods. “Okay. Yeah. Dad would be mad if I was left alone.”
I smile. Stranger or not, this boy is scared and willing to take a chance on trusting me. Part of him has to know there’s something bizarre going on.
“Are we leaving now or in the morning?”
“Let’s go now.”
He hops off the sofa, wanders over to the TV and turns it off, then squats to reach the power button on the video game system. “Okay. Gotta save ’lectricity.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Consuming Grove
Some things started to make sense to Tammy.
She now suspected she understood how Mom could face such crazy situations with a brave face. The eighteenth time the dark faerie realm tried to fool her into a trap with an illusion of someone she knew, or some poor child in danger, it set off more of an angry reaction than any sense of guilt or need to help. This place insulted her intelligence. Okay, so she kind of half fell for the fake Dad stuck in a slime trap, but that’s because she momentarily forgot he’d chosen to remain in an alternate reality to help another version of Anthony.
Friends, Mom, Kingsley, Paxton, or other random people couldn’t possibly be here—so she had little trouble ignoring all the various ways the dark ones tried to lure her into an ambush.
Her hike-slash-climb through the twisted woods came to a brief halt when it occurred to her they’d been traveling for almost an hour without any attempted trickery. She doubted the evil fey had simply given up, even though she’d barely even looked at the last seven attempts to trick her.
“What?” whispered Allison. “Why did you stop?”
“Something’s not right.” Tammy set her hands on her flower-and-leaf covered hips, glaring around at the warped, black shapes of unearthly trees everywhere. “Nothing’s happened for like an hour.”
As far as she could tell, Tammy remained normal sized. The huge vines running back and forth across the forest floor made her feel like a wild mouse climbing over tree roots. Even the trees seemed gargantuan. Wondering if the trees were gigantic or if she’d been miniaturized distracted her for a moment, until a distant crackling arose.
“What on Earth is that noise?” whispered Tammy.
“Pretty sure we’re not on Earth anymore.” Allison turned to peer behind them.
“Uh oh,” said Maple. “I think they are angry at you.”
“Me?” Tammy blinked. “For what?”
“For not being stupid and falling for their tricks!” yelled Maple. “We gotta move fast.”
The noise grew louder and closer, a din like a thousand people stomping on dry tumbleweeds. Still confused, Tammy stood there. Seconds later, something moving caught her attention not quite fifty yards away.
A whip-like black vine shot up from behind one of the giant roots, grabbed a tree, and pulled an amorphous shape of interwoven thorn tendrils into view. The creature, formed of a mass of bladed plant matter, sprouted another two grasping strands as it swung with the grace of a monkey and the eerie relentlessness of a car-sized spider.
No sooner did Tammy think to herself,no way is that thing making all this noise,the forest behind it came alive with an uncountable number of similar creatures. As though every root in the place finally had enough of her presence, the forest itself rose up to get her. Of course, despite what it looked like, she knew the truth. Each one of those moving root balls was a dark faerie who’d mutated into a wood-and-thorns monster. They’d given up on playing games and decided to just kill them directly.
