Chapter 7
This is arguably the most important chapter in the entire book. We get to see what Neesha’s up to, and for the first time since chapter 4, we go back to the world of the Missing! And we finally meet the mysterious Mr. Ichabod…
Next chapter, we see what Jack’s up to.
EDIT (12:43 PM Nov 22 ‘09): I added a lot to the end of this chapter, and I also messed with Chapter 1, so all the word counts posted here are off. Oh well.
Total word count: 27,170
For the first time in her memory, she dreamed.
She was no longer in her world. She was back where she belonged, where there was a sun and a moon and stars and earth and houses and streets and houses, and oh, there was Wil. She was full of color again, lively, smiling, and hey, she had a nose. She touched it, then smiled absently at the rosy pink skin on her hand. She didn’t even care that she was wearing a dress. It was worth it to be here.
She stood on a hill overlooking the Wilkes estate—how she knew what the outside looked like was beyond her—dressed in something white and lacy and frilly. It itched in places she didn’t really want to think about. But that was fine, because she and Wil were going to go on a picnic on the back of some flying elephantine creature.
She flew down the hill on a stray kite, a kitten purring on her head all the way. She couldn’t fly without a kitten, of course. Wil waited at the end, basket in hand and smiling (lips closed). Oh, that smile. For the moment, Wil wasn’t angry with her, and hadn’t forgotten her, and hadn’t been to that wretched boy’s house, with his silly children and his awful charming ways. Best of all, she’d never been proposed to, and waited eagerly for Neesha. Yes, that was best of all.
They linked arms as they went, the grass turning slowly to butterflies, and sat by a rather large tree that was seemingly made of bananas. Wil smiled (lips closed) and started to make them some sandwiches.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Neesha said. That the making of sandwiches was not cooking was beyond her dream logic.
Wil only nodded and continued, plucking a banana from the tree and handing it to her.
“There are so many things to talk to you about,” Neesha said. Here, the roles felt reversed. It had been so long since she’d been out of her own dimension, really out, enjoying things, that she felt giddy and girlish.
Wil, however, said nothing.
“Are you all right?” Neesha asked, reaching out to her. Wil slapped her hand away. She was no longer smiling, but her lips were still closed.
“Here,” Neesha said, removing the kitten from her own head and placing it on Wil’s. “Is that any better?”
It was then that the kitten exploded.
Neesha jumped up, then watched in horror as the world lost its color. It drained away from the fields, the houses, the sun and the moon and stars and earth and houses and streets, and oh, Wil too. Wil finally smiled a real smile, but her mouth was only a gaping vortex surrounded by jagged teeth, the likes of which she’d seen before.
“No…” This was what would happen. “Oh, no.” This was the world he was trying to create.
“No!”
This was what he would do to Wil.
She sat up from her bed and clutched at her cloak. But then she touched her cheek, where a few tears lazily fell down. She wasn’t supposed to be able to cry. Or to dream, for that matter. Only humans got to do that.
Maybe there was hope for her yet.
Jack and I discussed our options for a while, wondering what exactly we could do. Silas had been kind enough to us that we didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Besides, we weren’t sure that he wasn’t hiding some axe and wouldn’t just hack us to pieces if we asked to leave.
“We could just leave,” he said. “Try our luck in the forest.”
“But those water girls—”
“Naiads.”
“They could follow us.”
Jack leaned his elbows on the table. “Can our situation really get any worse?”
A few short minutes later, he and I were running for our lives, as Heston had apparently been told not to let us out of the house.
Even in such a perilous position, I found the time to yell at Jack, “Did I not bloody tell you?”
It was dark again by the time we stopped running. I collapsed in a heap in a sort of clearing, and Jack fell to his knees next to me.
“I can’t move,” I whispered.
He nodded, his forehead pressed against the cool ground. “Think we lost ‘im, though.”
“Mhm.”
We sat in silence a while. This day had made me numb to the idea that I was covered in dirt. I didn’t care that I was filthy, that I was lying on the ground, that I was lost in the woods with seemingly no way home. For the moment, nothing was happening, and that was good.
While Jack and Wil lay in the clearing, Neesha had decided to get busy. There was no way she’d allow him to get away with…well, she’d never let him touch Wil, that much was certain.
She sneaked into the world as close to them as she could, quickly searching through the trees for the collapsed duo. She had the feeling that this night would determine everything. She looked up at the sky as she glided along, where the moon was bright and spotty and silver and smiling, and the stars sparkled and the trees bent noisily in the wind. She knew if she didn’t get to Wil in time, the lights would be extinguished. If she didn’t get to her in time, the night could last forever.
She saw something out of the corner of her eye as she sped along in the wood. It was a heap of mostly white clothing, and two things that looked suspiciously like bodies. She started her approach with caution. There was no guarantee that it was Wil—oh, who was she kidding? She knew it was her. There was no doubt in her mind.
But from this distance, she did have something else on her mind. They weren’t moving. She briefly considered that they might be dead.
But she wouldn’t let herself do that. Wil would not be dead, and if she was, she would move Heaven and Terra to bring her back. She took a breath and held it a second before slowly letting it out. Time to go take a look.
Before she could move, the clearing was teeming with familiar shadow figures that effectively blocked her path. They formed a sort of dome with their bodies that she couldn’t seem to break through.
“Move! Out of my way!” she shouted, knowing it was futile. One of the outermost turned its face to her.
“We have orders, Neesha. We can’t.”
“Locke!” she said. “Locke, you’re the only one I can trust! You of all people—”
The little boy faced shadow frowned. “This was a direct order, Neesha. I can’t.”
Neesha beat her hands against them, but no matter how it irked them, not a single one moved. She sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands, whispering.
“This is all my fault.”
It took a moment when I opened my eyes to realize that my eyes were, in fact, open. There was no light to be seen, only vague movements of the shadows around us.
“Jack. Jack, get up,” I said drowsily.
I couldn’t tell if he moved or not. He did, however, respond. “Wil? What’s goin’ on?”
“We’ve come to take you to our home now,” something said around us. It sounded like a hundred voices at once, all weary and windy, as though they couldn’t breathe.
“What if we don’t want to go?” Jack said. I could tell he’d had enough of being to other people’s homes in the past weeks to last a lifetime. He was—and always had been—something of a hermit.
We received no answer, only the horrible sucking feeling of being pulled through a very small hole in pieces and being reassembled later, but it feels like your liver’s in your head and your brain’s in your intestines. I’d been to their world before, but never had it been quite so unpleasant.
I recognized a few faces around me and frowned. “Hey, what’s going on? Neesha usually comes and gets me, you know.”
“Mr. Ichabod wanted to meet you,” one smaller one said. He came forward and held out a tiny hand. “I’m Locke. Doubt anyone’s ever spoken about me, but I’m the one that was covering the lights the day you first met any of us.”
“Oh! Ah, hello.” He didn’t sound nearly as screechy or horrible this time. In fact, he sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Um, who’s Mr. Ichabod?”
“The man that made all this,” Locke said, starting to walk. “I’ll explain as we go.” He made his way “See, Mr. Ichabod’s sort of our leader. I mean, we do mostly what we want, but he keeps us all together. He’s wanted to meet you for a while, you know.”
“Yes, Neesha said something about that the last time I was here,” she said. “We never got there, though. What’s he like?”
Locke was silent a moment. “Well, he’s—he’s Mr. Ichabod, is what he is.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t very helpful. But then I entered the square, which looked a bit different, but I paid it no mind. It was too exciting, meeting new people in the crowd, about to meet the man who brought them all together. I wanted to ask if Mr. Ichabod had a real name, like the rest, but no one seemed to be willing to impart such information. It didn’t matter. All that I cared about was right here, new friends, an adventure on my hands, the revel around me that was devoid of fancy lights and party dresses. The simple, basic contrast of this world was a refreshing change of pace.
We came upon a building hidden in a niche in the square, taller than all the rest. I looked around for Jack—I hadn’t seen him since we’d come through—but he was nowhere in sight. I’d have thought more on it, but I didn’t really have the time. The little shadows were pushing me through, and there was little I could do to stop them. I was flooded into one main room, where the massive crowd around me finally started to disperse.
It was then that I felt something spidery creep up my back. I turned and tried to swat it away, but froze when I saw Mr. Ichabod’s faceless smile.
“Hello, Annabeth,” he said. Suddenly, my excitement dropped away and fear set in. His voice was the rustle of crinolines, and as the gaping slit of a mouth opened and his disgustingly long tongue lolled out, a rattling hiss like the scratch of quill on paper came forth. It was all I could do to keep my lunch.
I tried to speak, but my throat persisted. His hand was still on my back, impossibly large and spindly. I was too distracted to quite notice as the fingers slipped into my skin.
A warm, gushing sensation filled my belly, made me feel ill. I could feel as it gurgled up, up, up, through my throat and mouth and spilled out. The same warm fluid started pouring out of my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. The wonderful world started to spin.
“You’re ssso sssssssssick,” the crinolines said in my ear as the fingers slid away. My final sight was his mouth of knives before I slipped back into a world of naught but darkness.
I did not assume I was in Heaven when I awoke. Heaven would’ve had more colors, more clouds, God. It wasn’t Hell, either. Hell wouldn’t have had Neesha.
She smiled at me and placed a cold cloth on my head. “You’ve taken ill. It happens every now and then. Most newcomers take sick with it, so it’s very common, nothing to worry about.” She must’ve seen the worry in my eyes anyway, because her smile fell a little and she said, “Oh, come now, no one’s died from it in years.”
I thrashed and tried to escape the bed sheets and the shadows, but her white hand on my forehead held me in place. She shook her head and pulled the blankets back over me.
“You’ll be perfectly fine. I know it’s uncomfortable, but it will pass soon. Mine barely lasted an hour, but of course, I was special.”
Special? Hers? What was she talking about?
She looked uncomfortable and sighed, shifting in her seat. “I know, you’re confused, but I can explain. You see, I was like you once, human. We all were.”
It was starting to come together.
“You know we call ourselves The Missing. I don’t think you know that when we find people like us still living in your world, we call out to them and bring them to live with us. We were all neglected like you once. We were all unloved, unnoticed, but here, we have a family that cares for us. The illness is part of the process to become one of us.”
I tried to scream, but the black sludge prevented any sound from escaping. She looked away, then back at me.
“I didn’t want this to happen. He’s trying to make you one of us, but not just one of us—he wants you to be the one that helps us take over your world. He wants to push all of our anguish onto them.”
I watched her look away. I saw her struggling with herself. She was looking around at everything, then to me, then back at the room. I hacked up a little more of the black sludge and she flinched, smoothing my hair back.
“Wil, I…I can’t let this happen to you.” She closed her eyes and sighed before one of possibly the most horrific moments of my life.
I saw her hand swoop down. It reached into my mouth, down, down, down. I felt her fingers flexing around in my esophagus, and—was her hand in my stomach?
Half of me said this was impossible. The other half could only focus on the arm that was stuck in my throat. Forget frogs. I’d ceased to be in a fairytale long ago.
But then, she withdrew her hand, and I snapped back to attention. Its removal wasn’t any more pleasant than the insertion. In fact, it may have been worse. The slithering feeling made me want to vomit, and the strange emptiness left only added to it. I coughed and coughed and coughed for what felt like years, but when I looked up, Neesha was holding a squirmy little thing in her white hand. I saw that the white stopped right at her elbow, and the thing dripped the black sludge that had formerly been dribbling down my chin. It was as a shadow too, of course, but had a deranged little face with beady white eyes and a disproportioned mouth full of jagged teeth. It yowled in her hand, even louder than the little fellow, Locke, had. I then recalled that this creature had been in my stomach.
This time, I did vomit.
Neesha seemed unperturbed and walked off to find her teapot, retrieving it and setting it on the table. “Here, drink something,” she said. “It’ll help. I’ll dispose of this and then, we’ll go get Jack.”
It took a minute to regain the ability to speak, during which time she glided out of the room. “Jack?” I asked anyway. “You know where he is?”
She came back in, nodding. I averted my gaze and tried not to blush. She no longer wore her cloak—or anything at all, for that matter. Being a shadow, there was no great detail, such as the curvature of her breasts or any hint of a nose, but to know she was naked (and my overactive imagination coupled with knowledge of the female body, of course) was enough to make me squirm.
“Mr. Ichabod has him,” she said nonchalantly, taking a cup and pouring herself some tea. “He doesn’t know I have you, or that I’m no longer loyal to him.”
I stood up and wobbled a little. I tried to steady myself before I said anything, but had to grab onto a chair. “Why are we sitting here drinking tea, then?” I said, my throat protesting every syllable. “We should hurry up and find Jack before anything happens to him!”
“Think,” she said as she sat down. “We need to go prepared. If we don’t, we risk everything.” I watched her close her eyes and take another sip, but when I didn’t appear to understand, she stood and looked out the window. “You’ve seen the way light works here. We are a colorless world. But, you’ve also seen my hair.” She flipped a few orange locks with a small smile. “You see, my tea contains nightshade.”
I clutched at my throat, coughing once more. “Nightshade? Are you mad? Why? How are we even still alive?” Now I was glad Jack hadn’t accepted any tea. I suddenly felt woozy and dropped back into the chair. Had she really poisoned me?
But she smiled. Smiled. “Wil, this place reacts to you. Haven’t you felt it? Only you keep this place here anymore. All of us used to be enough, but in recent years, things have only gotten worse. You were a godsend to us, someone who could think and move freely.”
“What are you saying?” I said. She still hadn’t answered me about the bloody nightshade.
She turned to me with a grim expression on her face. “I got so mad at you about forgetting me—us, forgetting us—because it meant that our world, and the people along with it, started to disappear.”
“How…how is that possible?” I leaned forward to look at her. How could a world vanish just because of me? And she still hadn’t addressed the nightshade issue.
She sat down and took my hands. “Wil, you are a dreamer. You can dream, you can imagine and create—and that’s something that no one here can do anymore. That was what we gave up in order to be here. But you, you! When you left and went with that horrid boy, and you stopped thinking about us—everything here started to fall apart.” She looked down at her hands. “And I will admit, I was…jealous. Of him. That duke.”
Now, I couldn’t help but blush. “Jealous? Ah, why?”
Neesha wouldn’t look at me. I chanced reaching out and touching her and almost withdrew—but a sudden burst of confidence made me place my hand on her cheek and turn her toward me.
“Neesha, what are you talking about?” I asked.
She leaned forward and kissed me quickly. I didn’t have time to react, but a small smile twitched at the corner of my mouth as she pulled away.
“That’s why.” She stood and turned away, clearing her throat. “Um, anyway. Jack—and the nightshade.” She ran a hand through her hair and cleared her throat again. “The nightshade would normally kill people, yes, but for some reason, here, it allows us to…resist.” She smiled absently and turned partway to me. “Neesha’s not my real name. He has my name, tucked away somewhere that I can’t get to it. He has everyone’s name. Without them, we’re powerless, but…for some reason, this keeps us safe.”
I nodded, but it was all coming at me rather fast. So much information all at once—I sighed and stood up, as well.
“Well, none of that matters right now. Let’s go get Jack, all right?” He’d almost been forgotten in the flood of information that washed over me.
Neesha nodded and took my hand. “Well, let’s go jump down the rabbit hole then, shall we?”
“…what?”
Neesha had not been making reference to anything by that—we literally went outside to jump in a hole. She led me around to the back of her house, where a large crater appeared. No, it had not been there already—as we approached, the thing had just opened up like some great mouth, waiting for us. Neesha moved on unperturbed, but me? I was less than eager to fling myself into a great black pit like that.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as I slowed down, pulling on her hand.
“I—that—I don’t think I can do it.”
She smiled and pulled me closer. I noticed now that she was taller than me and wondered why I’d never really noticed before.
She smiled and put both arms around me. “It’s fine. This leads into his domain. This is the only way we can get to where we need to be without anyone noticing,” she said. “He has Jack there. That entire house has everything we need to stop what he’s planning.”
I looked back at the way I’d gone before, the great looming house now ominous and dark. There seemed to be a small light on somewhere. I sighed and looked at her.
“Jack had better appreciate this, then.”
She smiled and gave me a light squeeze. “Just hang on tight and you’ll be fine.”
I nodded and buried my face in her neck. She smell was husky like burning wood, but still sweet, as though it were a flowery tree, like a jacaranda or maybe even a tangerine tree—
And down we went through the rabbit hole, deeper and deeper until I felt like the world pushed in on us and my body had gone. I felt alive, but could not breathe, could not blink, could not see or anything other than just be. There was nothing there to actually make me feel this way—it was rather the opposite, more like a vacuum, a void, where nothing truly existed outside the conscious mind. I thought Neesha was near me (or wasn’t, as the case may be) but then, she just didn’t. Not that she wasn’t near me, because she very well may have been, but that in that moment, she ceased to be.
And then I did.
It was just as dark as it had been a moment ago, but now, I could feel again, I had limbs and a torso and a mouth and tears to cry and this constant panging fear that something was wrong.
I stood up. So it was a room of some kind. Stay calm, I told myself. Everything will be all right.
After about ten minutes, I started to searched around. It defied all logic. I never found any corners, but when I turned around, there was a wall right there, to the right, to the left, like it would crush me. But, of course, there were no bloody corners.
There seemed to be a seat in the middle (wherever that was), and a blanket, and some water. The blanket was rough and unwelcoming, so I pushed it away with my feet (thunk as they hit the wall that wasn’t there) and sat on the floor, leaning my back against the seat. It was nothing more than a block, oddly smooth like everything here. I guess that’s what happens when everything is made from shadows. They don’t exist, but, you know, they do.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I cried, I laughed, I got old and died, I was born and I existed in there for some strange amount of time that changed every time I thought about it. I think I was naked, but the light was gone, it didn’t exist, we’d lost. Whether or not I had clothes on ceased to matter.
During one of my sobbing periods, when I wasn’t so old but also not so young, I heard voices. They were far off(right in my ear, loud loud loud) and came closer(inside my head, inside of me) and whispered(SCREAMED) to me:
“Annabeth.”
“Annabeth.”
“Ann…”
“Annie!”
“Annabeth…”
My turn. “Annabeth isn’t here anymore. Annabeth is dead.”
Their turn. “Annabeth.”
“Talk to us.”
“We just want to talk.”
“Let us talk.”
“We’ll talk to you.”
Me again. I sighed. “All right. I guess I can give Annabeth your message.” I laid my head back and put my hands over my ears to listen. “Go on.”
“Get up, Annabeth.”
“You can’t stay here, Annabeth.”
“You’ll die here, Annabeth.”
“Get up.”
“Get up.”
“Get up, silly girl!”
Me. “Jack?”
“Get up! I need your help.”
“Neesha left me, Jack. I don’t know where she is. She lied to me.”
I could almost see him, all flat, but there. “You don’t believe that. That’s what they want you to believe. Don’t you love her, Annabeth? She loves you. You need to get up.”
I shook my head. “No, no, no, Annabeth is dead, you hear me?” I reached out to touch him. My fingers found the wall.
“Annabeth, we need you to get up,” the voices rangrangrang in my head. I pulled my hands away from my ears, hoping they’d get out.
They didn’t.
“Up, girl, up, up, up!”
“You.”
“Get up!”
“You’re not Jack.”
He frowned. “Get up, Annabeth.” He no longer sounded so far away(right there) and not nearly as pleasant. It felt like he was threatening me, almost.
I looked at him. “No. You…you’re not Jack.”
His eyes went black, and the sludge started to dribble from his mouth. “Annabeth…”
For a moment, I thought the thing was back in my stomach, bubbling away, but that wasn’t it. I was angry. I stood and swiped my hand through him. The Not Jack dissipated.
“My Jack knows that Annabeth is dead.”
Neesha was in his chambers, trapped in a box. She beat against the sides using the all the room she could, but seeing as that wasn’t much, the sound was minimal. Not that it mattered. The box was clear, at least on her side. She could see everything around her, the room, the window to the outside where Mr. Ichabod was gathering the others for whatever it was he was planning. She saw the zaftig women on the bed, where there were shadows, both dark like her own skin and shallow like they would be in Wil’s world. Her life, her memories, all once locked away, kept floating to the surface of her mind like algae on a pond, only to be snapped up by some horrible memory fish only seconds later. She felt something in the box poking her in the side. What on earth—?
She moved around so she could get it and looked. It was…it was a name.
She frantically started searching for hers. It had to be in here. It was the only explanation. How else could she remember that she’d been a maid before? How else could she know that she didn’t really have orange hair? Her name had to be in there. Everyone’s was.
She found one in particular that struck her as odd. She looked at it this way and that, turned it around, looked at it backwards. She stuck it in her mouth and kept looking.
And then, there it was—stuck in the bottom, the corner, looking up at her like a lost pet finding its owner. She almost started to cry as she reached for it—
And then she wasn’t in the box anymore.
“Neeshaaaaaaaa,” she heard Mr. Ichabod hiss. She was off the floor, probably in his hand. She wanted to cry. She’d been so close to getting her name, her name. So close.
“Neesha, I don’t think you’re lissssstening,” he said. “Pay attention. I have her. The girl. You go get her and bring her to me. We will have that world. All those who sssshunned ussss will know the pain of the Missssssing.”
She felt that feeling, the one when he tried to give her orders. She felt the pull of doing what she was told, doing what much of her said she had no choice but to do, but then the nightshade pushed back, stood up, reminded her that she was herself, and no one else. She would’ve liked to know who herself was, but that would have to wait for now. She had to focus. Her head felt like it was going to explode, with the pull and the push and the push and the pull that did not cancel each other out, instead only clashing up against one another. She exhaled sharply and closed her eyes.
“All right.” She nodded as he put her down. “I’ll get her. Where is she?”
Mr. Ichabod, for the first time in anyone’s memory, did not smile.
“You had her. You—you bring her here now. I will not tolerate this!” He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her along.
She smiled away from him. “What happened?” she asked. “Not in control anymore? Mad that someone else can move freely in your world?”
“Silence!” He threw her down, and his world started to come undone.
The contrast lessened. She thought it would make things better—but now the deepening shadows on his face were horrific. They made him bigger than he was, deeper and more terrifying than he’d ever been. She was struck with the thought that maybe she’d never get her name back, that Wil was lost forever, or worse, he’d find her and succeed in his plans anyway.
But she still managed to stand up and look at him straight in (what she thought were) his eyes. “You will not win this, Mr. Ichabod. I may be destroyed in the process, but I will not let you take their world.”
Before he could reach out a spindly hand, she darted off, no longer hindered by the cloak. She had an idea.
Jack had not been conscious since he’d first been transported to the shadow world, but as he awoke, he wished he hadn’t. There were women everywhere around him, the curvy sort that Wil had seen during her first trip to their world. He didn’t know this, of course, but it didn’t matter. He was too distracted trying too close his eyes, as not a single woman wore any clothes.
Luckily, he still had his own, but it wasn’t enough to shield his eyes from those about the room. They all smiled the same, singular smile, each a copy of the other. He did notice that they now had some gray, and muted colors here and there—their long, bountiful waves of hair were blond, and their skin was purple.
Purple didn’t sound right. It was bad enough having so many female bodies thrown at him, but they weren’t even human.
He realized he was on a bed and—they were moving? Toward him?
He pulled the covers up over his face. “Ah, hello there—hello to you too, please don’t touch me! I, ah, you are all very lovely people, I’m sure, but I’m, uh, taken, you see—well, it’s not official, but I’m working on it, he’s fairly distracted by my friend—please don’t touch me!”
They’d crowded around him to the point that he couldn’t see for all the…faces. He jumped up and pressed his back against the wall. He looked for any way out that he could—the door was all the way across the room, across those women, and—oh, this was just getting silly. They were only girls, right? Just like Wil, only more…buxom. All he had to do was close his eyes and, well, jump.
He shut them tight and did just that, but the distance was a little farther than he thought. He looked and saw that he was sprawled across several of the women (oh, how positively repulsive) and that they were no longer smiling and lounging languidly on the bed.
So this is what I was feeling before, he thought. They were all so stunning and wondrous on the outside, but step out of line, don’t play along, and wham, there it was.
Their faces twisted to reveal a primal rage that contorted their features.
“Bleugh,” he muttered. “I’ll never understand why Wil likes you things.” That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say.
All at once, they leapt on him, hands, limbs, bodies everywhere. They pressed in around him so he thought he’d never breathe again, the purple flesh, no air—
A shriek sounded, and they all recoiled, flying back away from him. He sat up and looked around at them. They operated on all fours now, hissing and shifting around. One seemed to have a lame foot that it carefully kept off of. He saw a small sear on its hand in the shape of—
He looked down and touched his necklace. It was an ancient symbol, and the pendant itself had been passed down through the Finn family for as long as he could remember. He was struggling to recall what exactly it stood for when he noticed one of the women moving out of the corner of his eye. He quickly pulled the band on his necklace and held it up to shield him from them. They backed off, each sissing and swiping at the pendant.
He stood up and used it to carve a path through them all to the door. Once out, he ran down the hall. He didn’t think it would keep them at bay much longer.
And then he remembered. It was the symbol for harakha. God’s light.
He swore loudly as he ran. “Wil, I’ll kiss you and your goddamn Book if we ever get out of this mess alive!”
I have never been overly fond of talking to myself. I always thought it made me look a little too strange, a little too…I don’t know. I always had someone to talk to, after all, what with Jack and Eliza always being there. But, trapped alone in a dark, dark room, I had nothing better to do. I certainly wasn’t about to talk to those silly ghosts, anyway.
I’d hoped that with my vanquishing of the Not Jack, some mystical force would open a door and I could leave, but, of course, it never happened. I waited a good year for it to happen, I swear it. In the meantime, I believe I grew a beard, and out of sheer boredom, started to braid it.
I was just reaching the end when one of the ghosts started to sound familiar.
“Wil.”
My head snapped up. All the ghosts called me Annabeth, Ann, Beth, nothing I liked to be called. Hearing ‘Wil’ made me hopeful that someone real might be there. But still, underneath the rising hope, I was skeptical.
I looked around, trying to spot a familiar face, but was disappointed when I could not. “Wil’s not home now,” I said, making an attempt to mask my voice. “This is…Claudia.”
“Well, Claudia, when Wil does come home, tell her that Neesha came by to save her, and too bad she wasn’t home, because otherwise, she’d be stuck there for a very long time…”
“Neesha?” I shouted. “Neesha, is that really you? Why can’t I see you?”
There was a pause. I dubbed it dubious. “Because you’re stuck inside a room with no light?”
“Oh.” That did make sense.
“I’m going to try and get you out, okay?”
“Sounds good to me.” I guessed, anyway. It had been years since I’d seen anything, let alone Neesha. What if I was ugly now? What if she didn’t like me anymore? These thoughts and more filled my head with terror like I’d never felt. Never mind that I was about to be freed from my eons long entrapment. Neesha might not even recognize me.
The ghosts all looked at me, appearing rather angry. I smiled (I think) and stuck my tongue out at them, giggling inside my head. I pictured what my mother would think. Oh, how she’d frown.
I felt a prod in my arm and jumped—how many years had it been since someone touched me? I felt around—a hand, an arm, a shoulder! I found a neck, and then hair, and I couldn’t help but touch her face. I knew she was a shadow, and that she had abandoned me, but to be near someone again was too much to bear without some form of joy. I’d yell at her later.
I pulled her into a hug (so she wouldn’t get the wrong idea) which was eagerly returned. I felt her noseless face bury into my neck.
“Hey, you’re safe now. Close your eyes, all right?”
“Huh?”
Before I knew it, my eyes were bombarded by the light around me, and I fell to my knees in front of the one person I wanted very much to both smack in the face and kiss at the same time.
I settled for hugging her knees and suddenly sobbing.
Neesha reached down and patted my head. “Wil, as glad as I am to see you, we need to move. Mr. Ichabod is probably chasing us, or at least me. He thinks I know where you are, see.”
I looked up at her and hiccupped. “B-But you do know where I am.”
She chuckled. “Well, I didn’t. At least, not for a while.” She reached down and gently turned me to her by my chin. “But I figured it out easy enough.”
I sniffled and stood up, so we could start walking. Recalling my last encounter with Mr. Ichabod, I wasn’t keen on the idea of a repeat performance. “How exactly did you know where I was? I didn’t even know where I was myself.” Not that I really could’ve. I didn’t exactly know my way around.
She grabbed my hand—I realized that I did not actually have a beard, but had shredded my dress and braided that instead—and I then noticed that I was running around in my underwear.
She didn’t seem to care, though, and sighed as she started to explain. “I only knew where you were because…that’s where I used to go.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She was quiet a moment, as though she was debating whether or not to tell me. “I had some trouble adjusting to life here. I was…taken, not persuaded. Remember how I came to you? You used to like this place rather a lot, I’ll bet.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
“I was sent specifically because we watched you.” She turned a corner and pulled me, too, putting her arms around me and pressing me to her chest, her hand over my mouth. A few of the other Missing passed by without noticing us.
“We knew you’d respond to me,” she whispered in my ear. “We had to make you like us and our home. But that’s not what happened with us.” She glowered into the distance. “Not the originals.”
As soon as it was clear, she released me, but a second later, she had my arm and was pulling me along again. It was hard to follow her through the shaded alleys, as she seemingly disappeared every time a shadow passed overhead, but I didn’t have much choice. I hadn’t really thought about it thus far, but there was a very real chance I’d never make it home. Not that anyone there was really waiting for me (aside from Charlagne, who I realized I’d never given an answer concerning his proposal despite how obvious the answer was to me now), and there wasn’t much for me to go back to, but it was my home. It was where I wanted to be.
I finally spoke up, however quietly. “What happened to the originals? To you?”
She sighed as she ran, not looking at me. “We were just taken. We had no choice. Mr. Ichabod just up and decided that we would make nice additions to his world and he took us.”
I watched as we ran past her house and her giant pit, which was no longer there, and thought. Where could we go? Everyone else was under the control of Mr. Ichabod himself. Could we take him down by ourselves?
I got my answer as we rounded one final corner.
The tall, looming figure was impossible to mistake, though he looked different, somehow. Everything had started to, actually. It was looking more like reality is supposed to, or at least the one I’m used to.
I saw his face open up and the teeth come out as he smiled.
“Hello, Annabeth.”
