The grim adventure, p.10
The Grim Adventure, page 10
The others were glued to the floor with fear when Rosemary sprang into action.
“Go, go, go!” Rosemary shouted. She shoved Grey—her nearest classmate—and yanked Essie’s arm forward. Trym was the only person who knew precisely the horror that awaited them when the statue came to life. The banshee grabbed Willow and pulled so hard the girl was wrenched from her feet. She tumbled forward as a tidal wave of students sprinted for the exit. The statue was fast on their heels.
“What!” Thaeda screamed.
Owen was the first to the door. He yanked it as hard as he could and stood his ground, waving his arm like a windmill as student after student dashed into the night. Rosemary turned to urge him to run, only to see long, horrible fangs protruding from his mouth.
She skidded to a halt as Thaeda was the first to stop and turn around. She raised her arms and shouted, “Wind!”
The silent night became a hurricane in an instant. Tall, straight trees bent in half as booming air tore plants up from their roots and planks from the house. The wind slammed the door closed behind Owen the moment he dashed onto the front lawn. He ran after the students in a defensive position while Thaeda held her ground, but the statue could not be stopped by wind. The marble monster was too heavy to be deterred. It crashed through the door in a cloud of splinters.
“Essie,” Rosemary panted, “can you grant a wish?”
“Not without a coin,” he replied, broken and desperate.
“I got this.” Willow gritted her teeth. “Owen, get Thaeda!”
Thaeda was still holding her ground in front of the house, frozen in shock as the statue dashed toward her. Owen ran for Thaeda, scooping her from her petrified state on the walkway as Willow screamed for the plants. The vines that smothered the abandoned school sprang to attention. Long, green, powerful ropes shot into the air like fireworks.
“Stop the statue!” Willow cried.
The vines snared the stone woman from all directions, entangling her in their net. For a moment, Willow’s plan appeared to work. The green vines wrapped around the statue’s arms, its legs, even its neck. Then the statue began to snap through the living ropes, shredding the plants to smithereens.
Willow’s hand flew to her chest as if she were being physically wounded by every break the vines sustained.
“Keep running!” Rosemary shouted to the others while she searched for a solution. “Willow, go! You’ve got to run!” She’d gotten them into this mess. She had to help get them out.
Willow’s eyes shone with tears as she made her escape.
“I can use water?” Rush asked, panicked.
“It’s stone!” Rosemary answered. “It can’t drown!”
“Come on,” Rion urged his brother. The twins turned and ran.
All around Rosemary, the sounds of stumbling students and pounding feet filled the forest. She looked from side to side for her friends. “Where’s Trym?!”
“I’ve got her,” Iris said.
Rosemary wanted to demand that Iris let her go, but they were out of options. If they didn’t think of something, the statue would win. Unlike humans and fae, it would never get winded or grow tired. It wouldn’t give up. It would hunt them down, and it would find them.
“Here!” Grey shoved the torch into Iris’s hand. “Get somewhere safe!”
“What are you going to do?” Iris said.
He cracked his knuckles. “My powers are only good when someone needs saving, right?”
Iris looked between them. “No, you can’t.”
She understood the dilemma before Rosemary did.
Her reaction sent a renewed fear through Rosemary’s veins. With a grave nod, she told Iris to take Trym and go. Trym protested, but it was no use. For Grey’s guardianship powers to work, someone had to be in danger.
Rosemary nodded at Grey as if to tell him it was okay. He looked back with gritted teeth. He growled confirmation. “Let’s do this.”
Rosemary rallied her courage, though she didn’t feel very brave. Her heart thundered, her hands trembled, but she stood her ground. “You want me?” she called. “Come and get me.”
The statue ripped free from the final vine of its prison. Long gone was the polite demeanor from weeks ago. The statue spoke with a nasty snarl. “Did you think you’d escaped, Rosemary? Getting here wasn’t easy, but no one gets to waltz into the Seelie court and insult the Keeper without consequences.”
“The Keeper has no power over me, or over Fern’s,” Rosemary replied. “I make my own decisions. I will not help him.”
The statue took a booming step forward. The old cobblestone path cracked beneath its weight. “You think you have a choice?” it challenged.
“I know I have a choice,” Rosemary said defiantly. She held her chin high, though her voice trembled.
The statue laughed, a dark, cruel laugh. “You know nothing.”
Three things happened in that moment.
The first was that Rosemary lifted her hands to protect her face, though she did not flee, and she did not falter.
The second was that the earth began to quiver, crack, and ripple as if it were little more than water. The pathway opened in a horrible, mouth-like cave as the house crumpled into a bottomless pit. Rosemary’s eyes went wild as she realized that Grey had done the only thing he could think to do to save her. He’d created a chasm.
The statue realized it the moment gravity became its enemy. It scrambled to grip the roots and claw at the dirt as the gaping crack in the ground continued to widen, but everything it grabbed ripped away under its immense, stony weight.
Rosemary looked over her shoulder at Grey with joy and relief in her heart. His returning grin was short-lived. His eyes widened. “Rose!”
It happened too fast for her to scream.
The chasm was too wide. The ground cracked too far. The horrible, bottomless pit gobbled up the path, the grass, the world around her, including the bits she was standing on. A treacherous whooshing noise whipped past her as she began to fall.
Just as the earth opened to gobble her whole, a hand reached out from the horrible darkness and gripped her tightly.
One moment, Rosemary fell down, down, down.
The next, she tumbled into the blackest of shadows.
Red. Orange. Black. Yellow.
A campfire. How nice. Rosemary liked campfires. She liked s’mores and hiking and tents. She wanted to open her eyes, but perhaps she just needed to rest for a moment or two. She sniffed in her bleary nap and inhaled a lungful of smoke. A headache. How not nice. She pressed her fingertips into her temple at a sharp pain, and squeezed her eyes shut more tightly.
“Rose, are you okay?”
A boy’s voice. How strange. She couldn’t remember camping with a friend. She didn’t remember much, to be honest.
She cracked open an eye but didn’t see the pine forests of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. No, instead she saw jagged stone, dripping caves, distant flames, and . . . she knew that face.
“Henry?” She coughed. She struggled to sit up as she took in her surroundings. Her friend squatted before her in the dark, wet cave, face full of worry. He was hunched in an odd way, as if holding something behind his back. She looked past him to the flickering glow coming from the mouth of the cave. “Where are we?”
He lifted a finger to his lips to ensure that she kept her voice down. In a whisper, he said, “We’re in a cave just outside the gremlin camp. Trust me, we both wish it were bigger. Small caves are . . .” His voice drifted.
She scrambled to attention as soon as she connected the dots. She’d been transported from a plunge to her death to a dark cave the moment she’d tumbled into the shadows. His shadows. “Henry, why would you bring me here?”
With a sigh, Henry revealed a bundle he’d been hiding. She took the black folded hoodie from her friend. She lost her breath when her eyes landed on the scythe embroidered on its shoulder.
She looked from the sweatshirt to Henry. Her heart plummeted as painful, poisonous betrayal took her breath away. “You stole the sweatshirt?”
“It’s not what you think.”
Anger hit her like a lightning bolt. “And what do I think?”
“I’m trying to help, Rose. You have to believe me. I—”
Rosemary took in his frantic expression, his raised hands, and the pieces clicked into place. Her eyes went wide. “The distraction . . . The mushrooms . . . that was you?”
“Listen,” he begged.
Rosemary tightened her grip around the sweatshirt as she tried to back away. Her heel hit the wet, bumpy wall of the cave. She was hurt, she was scared, but more than anything, she was angry. Her gaze hardened as she stared at the boy she’d considered a friend. “I thought it was Iris! I thought this was the Keeper! You stole the sweatshirt. You tried to destroy Fern’s with those mushrooms. Did you bring the statue here, too? It’s been you all along. You’re the spy.”
He raked his hands through his hair in frustration. “I get it. You don’t want to hear my explanation. Fine. But whether you trust me or not, you can’t just walk into the gremlin camp out there. You need me to get out of here safely.”
“I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you!”
“That’s right!” He stamped his foot. “You wouldn’t be here. You’d be at the bottom of a pit with whatever marble nightmare that was chasing you. You’re here because I saw a chance to use my powers for good, and I took it. And I’m here because I’m still trying to help you.”
Rosemary heard her heartbeat in her ears. Then, finally, she unclenched her too-tight hold on the sweatshirt. Her thumb ran over the embroidered stick and curved metal.
“Fine,” she said. “How does this help either of us?”
Henry took a seat on the rough rock and told her a terrible tale. He spoke of the shadows, the gremlins, and the rumors that had rippled through their precious Nowhere Realm the moment Rosemary returned from the Seelie court.
She thought she’d gotten away without being spotted, but gremlins are everywhere, Henry said, and they share everything. The tiny beasts had spotted her in the Keeper’s throne room. They’d watched with dark, beady eyes as she’d stolen a black hoodie that hadn’t belonged to her. They’d watched her return to Fern’s and stash it under the floorboards. And then, Henry explained, they’d hatched a plot for how they might possess Grim’s valuable treasure.
“So you stole it for them?” Rosemary struggled to swallow the fearful knot in her throat.
“No,” he said, exasperated. “I can move through the same realm in my shadows. But gremlins can go anywhere. They’re like this terrible network of claws and secrets.”
Rosemary struggled to trust him, but she had to ask, “How do you know so much about gremlins?”
He made a tired sound as he produced a pen from his pocket.
She stared at it with a blank expression. “Because of a pen. Sure.”
“If I click it,” he said, thumb hovering above the device, “it will take me to the shadow lands within the Unseelie court. It’s where my dad lives. Gremlins have free rein over there. It’s the worst place imaginable.”
Rosemary recoiled as if the pen were a snake. “Why do you keep it on you?”
He tucked it back into his pocket. “In case things go from bad to worse. I needed to do something good, Rose, and my shadows aren’t always enough. I don’t want to be around the gremlins. I really don’t want to be around my dad and his Unseelie friends. But fae parents often give tokens like this for travel.”
Rosemary thought of the candle Trym kept for the banshee realm, and the compass that Iris used to jump to the Seelie court.
Henry said, “I’m here to use my shadows to slip through one of their portals to take us back to Grim’s house. I’m trying to return the sweatshirt before he knows you stole it.”
Rosemary’s eyes bulged. “Why?”
“Because,” he said, voice dropping sadly, “I know fae like him. Vampires, werewolves, the Boogeyman, the Grim Reaper—they’re cut from the same Unseelie cloth. You’re lucky you don’t know who your dad is, Rose. I do, and I wish I didn’t. If I can keep you from ever meeting someone like that—or worse, being in trouble with someone like that—it’s the most important thing I can do. We’re here in the middle of the gremlin camp, and these creepy monsters are far less terrifying than what could happen if the Grim Reaper finds out you robbed him.”
Rosemary swallowed. “He may already know.”
Henry sucked in a breath.
“There have been other odd things. I thought maybe the mushroom disaster was the Keeper, since there were so many mushrooms in the Seelie court. But do you remember when the garden flooded and the kissing kelp got out? Could that have been him?”
Henry exhaled. “No, Rose. These are not fae known for mischief. These are bad guys. He wouldn’t release a kissing kelp or drown some plants. What he does is much, much worse. Like all Unseelie.”
“But he’s not . . .” Rosemary stopped herself from saying that Grim was courtless. A little voice inside her told her that Henry was not truly talking about the Grim Reaper at all. She whispered, “You’re Unseelie, Henry. Are these things you believe about yourself?”
He looked sharply to the side, face hidden by shadows.
So instead, Rosemary pictured the beady eyes, the bony hands, the knobby spines, the pointy teeth of the horrible gremlins. She shivered as she stopped herself from picturing how much worse Grim must be. “You’re willing to face the gremlins just so I don’t have to confront the Reaper? Why?”
He shrugged. “I’ve spent my life with creatures like my dad. You don’t deserve the same. Someone who cares about you won’t want you to suffer like they have. That’s what friends are for.”
There’d been nothing left to discuss. Rosemary nodded solemnly as Henry led them away from the distant orange flame and into the darkest part of the cave. They slipped into the shadow one at a time. When they reemerged, Rosemary wished she’d stayed in the cave.
Dozens of gray-green creatures wriggled and writhed over one another, with talons and gnashing teeth. They were surrounded by the tallest trees in the forest. The only things that separated Rosemary and Henry from the gremlins were round, odd shelters. Each small mound had been hollowed out as a sort of house. One enormous fire burned at the center of the camp, casting long, haunting shadows across the forest.
It was as if Henry read her mind. He whispered, “They look like many, but they share a single brain, like a beehive. It’s why they don’t care about their individual selves. They’re one.”
Rosemary shuddered at the sight.
Henry kept his movements small as he made a gesture for her to continue following. She picked her steps carefully, hoping against hope that the pine needles carpeting the forest would muffle the sounds of her movements.
Then Henry lifted a hand for her to stop. She didn’t know why they’d come to a halt until the ground before them started moving. The dirt and pine needles shifted and grew as if a strange bubble beneath the earth were forcing its way to the surface.
“Quick,” he whispered, “put on the sweatshirt!”
She didn’t have time to respond before he dove to the side, disappearing into a shadow completely. She bit down on her tongue to keep from calling after him, but she knew she didn’t have time to demand an explanation. She pulled the sweatshirt over her head as quickly as she could, lifting the black hood to cover her hair.
She stayed perfectly still as a claw burst from the earth. A moment later a knobby nose, sharp fangs, and beady black eyes emerged.
“We live in the forest, we go to the trees, we hunt through the night, but do we find worms to eat? No, we don’t,” it hissed. She realized it was grumbling to itself. It continued, “Where are the pink and wrigglies when our stomachs are empty? Where are the crunchy beetles, the delicious, plump, juicy maggots . . .”
Rosemary covered her mouth.
The gremlin stopped amid its complaint as it looked directly at her. Only, it wasn’t looking at her face. Its ear twitched as it cocked its head to the side, listening. Rosemary held her breath as fear slithered through her.
Please, please, please don’t see me.
It crawled forward on all fours, then sat back on its sharp hind feet only a few inches away. The monster sniffed the air.
Please don’t smell me. Don’t hear me. Don’t find me.
She dared a glance at the pile of gremlins still squirming near the bonfire. If the one in front of her discovered her, dozens would be on top of her in a second. She was sure the arms of a twelve-year-old demifae would be far tastier than an insect. She suppressed a shudder and forced herself to be still.
A snapping twig in the distance drew the gremlin’s attention. It jerked its head to the side and peered into the black night far from camp. It pulled its lips back from its fangs in a threatening snarl.
A second snap sent the gremlin tearing across the forest floor. A cloud of pine needles flew up in its wake as Rosemary released her breath.
Henry jumped in front of her from a nearby shadow. “Rose, where are you?”
“Right here,” she replied. “Should I—”
“Leave it on,” he said. “There’s a shelter here that will take us where we need to go. Unless the gremlins are lying, it should take us directly to Grim’s house.”
Her heart skipped three terrible beats. “They can navigate the realms? If they can—”
“No, no,” Henry said hurriedly. “They have the intelligence of beetles. They absolutely cannot navigate the realms. They’re smart the way mice are smart, meaning they can find holes into worlds and discover the crumbs they need to infest houses. They’re dangerous. And if they gain the sort of favor they’re looking for, they could infest the world.”
Her jaw dropped. “And these mice-bug-monsters have tunneled from our realm to where the Grim Reaper lives? How? Why?”
“They aren’t really two different realms,” Henry said. “I don’t have time to explain it right now, but you know Fern’s is a Nowhere Realm. Grim is also a courtless fae, and he also lives in a Nowhere Realm, so that he can reap the lives of mortals and fairies alike.”
