I bite my lip. “Not now, please.”
“Is this something Carter did?”
“I don’t know what’s happening! We have to keep going. Now is not the time for this. If the door has closed, we’ll be locked in.”
The same pounding noise keeps coming from the direction of the door. It’s weirdly visible, a dimly lit outline where a sliver of moonlight falls into the cabin. It’s the next level stage of a video game, or the hints you get when you play in more accessible modes.
I beeline toward it—and immediately crash my knee into a chair that I could’ve sworn wasn’t there when we walked in. The pain is sharp and angry. “Frack.” I can feel myself start to lose control of my breathing, and it’s like I live on the edge of panic now—or the edge of anger.
There’s a black hole inside my chest, and everything gets slowly pulled into it.
Carter’s determination when he went back in to get my painkillers.
The first time Liva invited me here, and the blue room she decorated specially for me.
The laughter that somehow got lost between all of us.
Our joy. Our adventures. Feeling like we could save the world.
Everything tears at me, and I don’t know how to respond to any of it anymore.
“Maddy? Are you okay?” Ever reaches out a hand to me, and I allow it. For a second. But instead of making me feel better, I want to take the chair and hurl it through the room. I want to take Ever and scream at them, not because of anything they did, but because of everything I did.
“I know it hurts,” Ever says softly. “I wish I could fix it.”
That’s all I need to pull away again. They don’t need to fix me. No one needs to fix anything. I need to find a way to dull the pain, but we have to keep moving. A little more careful now, because though the cabin isn’t that big, it’s a veritable obstacle course. Finn takes his crutches and holds them out in front of him, to make sure nothing else blocks our path.
The door keeps trying to close, as if someone rigged the automated locks. The Styrofoam sword between door and frame has been crushed to half its breadth, and if this goes on for much longer, there’ll be nothing left of it.
The light from the outside becomes a little brighter, and the closer we come, the faster we move. I can all but hear the music change in the background. We’re nearly out of here, and I don’t know what’s waiting for us outside, but it can’t be worse than being stuck in a haunted cabin on a lonely mountain in the dead of the night.
If only it were that easy.
Finn is the first of us to reach the door. With his crutches, on even ground, he’s faster than any of us. Now, he has to make do with being careful, but he leads the way, and I fall back because with every step, my knee is more insistent about reminding me it can’t bear my weight. It’s like a voice in the back of my mind, constantly telling me I can’t stand straight, I’m not stable, I’m falling, I’m falling, I’m falling.
And somehow, Ever refuses to let me fall back alone, instead, matching me in stride.
But perhaps it’s because we all have that singular focus—get to the door, get out of the cabin—that Finn doesn’t see what’s right in front of the door.
When the moonlight filters out and catches on Finn’s crutches, they almost seem to gleam, especially on those spots where the color is scratched away and the metallic aluminum is visible.
But that’s not the only thing that picks up the light.
Once he’s reached the door, Finn stands in the middle of another arcane circle that definitely wasn’t there when we all came back in. It’s the same as the ones we used in game: a ward to protect buildings and doors from being entered.
It’s the same as the one that killed Lente.
“Finn!” Ever and my voices mingle together. This is a warning. Whoever made it isn’t done playing yet and knows our game inside out.
Finn turns his head toward us, but he’s already moving to the door. It happens in slow motion. He drops one of his crutches to rest against his chest, the way he always does when he needs a free hand to hold or pick up something.
He reaches for the door while he turns and asks, “What’s the matter?”
Ever manages to squeak out something that sounds like, “Stop!” and I’m silent altogether. It would’ve been too late anyway.
It occurs to me then that if someone went through all the effort to put furniture in our way and paint a magical ward around the door, they could’ve easily gotten rid of the fake sword that kept the door propped open. Unless they wanted us to reach for it.
Finn’s hand touches the doorknob, and there’s a flash. Something that sounds like the crackling of magic—or electricity.
He falls in slow motion too. Time slows as if, like Carter once described, the threads of time were prickly pear taffy pulled tight. Finn screams and flings away from the door, like some invisible force has picked him up and tossed him. He tilts backward. He loses his balance and stumbles and falls.
When he hits the floor with a crash, everything speeds up again.
Behind me, Ever yells or screams—and maybe I do the same because I hear an echo of voices. “Finn!”
Ever rushes toward him, and it’s all I can do to hold them back. “Wait!”
Finn lies turned away from us, so tense his back arches and his legs crumple. He’s pulled his arms close to his chest, and he moans.
“What?” Ever pulls themself away from me, but I cling to them.
“He was shocked, right? We have to make sure he’s not touching any kind of electricity anymore. It would only make things worse.”
