Page 57 of The Spiral
Chapter 20
Madeline
I can’t feel the cold that surrounds us as I keep pushing through the mud beneath my feet. I know it’s here. It’s been with me all the time, making me run faster and faster to get to them before they kill him. I’m not even sure why I don’t want him to die. I should. I should want my revenge for him burning my home down like I did the morning after it happened. And I should want him dead for all those years of bruises, if nothing else to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else, certainly not me again, but it’s just not in me to kill. It’s not who Maddy is inside me. And I want her back again so much. I want to feel her happiness, enjoy it. I want those moments with Jack, like Selma has. I want to find them with someone.
Jack seems to have disappeared again. I check left and right, crashing through the next obstacle that this fog obscures but still not finding a trace of him anywhere. He must know this ground so well. I guess he might already be where they are because the noise they were making has petered out to near silence. I could focus on something when I heard Lewis’ sickening shouting, find a path through all this to get to him, but there’s nothing but calm and mist left.
My knee buckles as I slam into a boulder, left arm trying to push me over the damn thing as I carry on and peer into the gloom. There’s nothing there, no sound to cling on to or run towards. I can’t even feel Selma like I did earlier. She guided me, all the time trying to talk me out of this. I was arguing with myself as I ran, part of me wanting to let all this play out as she wanted and the other part desperate to reach Lewis before it ended. The gun I’m holding shot as I watched one of them baying into the night, animalistic as he kept charging after the others, and then it shot again. I’m not even sure who pulled the trigger, or who it was really aimed at, but those men were repulsive to watch, hideous, like they’d been turned into something they shouldn’t be somehow.
Tears come at that thought, unsure whether they’re mine or Selma’s as I keep wondering about right and wrong, but my feet don’t slow. They tear on through the brush, as if they don’t belong to me, as if they’re being forged forward by her energy inside. I, we, need to get there whatever the outcome. Some part of me is elated at the thought of death—any death—the other nauseated.
Freedom seems to come at a cost here.
Eventually I slow down, trying to listen closer in the hope of a sound to lead me in, but it’s futile, regardless of my pace. There’s nothing left for me to follow. Not even the sound of the men chasing him now. They were triumphant for a few moments with bays and cries of jubilation. I heard that, felt it in my guts as a gruesome image washed across me. There was so much blood, all of it slashed and gashed across Lewis’ body as he lay in the bog. I shook it off, not allowing it to invade my mind, and kept racing to this spot I’m now in, but I know it’s real. I can feel that now I’ve stopped trying to reach him.
It doesn’t matter that flowers should grow beneath my feet in this tranquil glade. Or that we’re not far from the treehouse Jack brought me to, the place filled with love and memories of Lenon. Those images I saw—the ones that came as the howling noise subsided around me, leaving me alone in this barren clearing of gloom—I’m going to find them soon. I’m going to find Lewis dead. Mauled.
The bog squelches as I edge around some rocky land, leaning on trees to hold me firm against the ground that wants to swallow me down. Anxiety comes racing though my skin, forcing the stability I seemed to hold while running to disappear and wrap me in fear. It’s so dark, so cold and dark and full of images that creep into parts of me I haven’t wanted to listen to. Jack is all I’ve seen lately. Jack and feelings of love and pleasure, irrespective of whether they’re my thoughts or not.
Maybe I thought they were mine. Maybe I thought I could make this my new home, live with him and blend into her somehow, make us all one, but then Lewis came and showed me my real life beyond these grounds. I’m not her, am I? And this feeling crawling through me, the one that warns of something I’m not in control of, it makes me snatch glances nervously, hoping for something to lift me away from what’s happened.
A shriek of sound comes from above me, making me duck and scramble through the undergrowth, looking upwards sharply. The crow’s there, the one who gave me her ring. He flaps and claws across the branches, opening his wings and batting them against the branches, feathers falling from them as he jumps and thrashes.
Maddy.
Tears flare up in my eyes as her voice permeates the dense void of emptiness, her fog slithering over the course of my skin. It forces trembles and quivers to come with her, a warmth beginning to creep around my bare feet as I watch it swirl and swell. I don’t know what she wants with me anymore, though. I don’t understand what this is all for.
“What do you want, Selma?” I mumble, sidestepping another black pool of muddy ground beneath me, still hoping to find Lewis. “I don’t understand.”
The crow squawks again and flies low across my head, his wing glancing my hair and turning me to look towards his path. He lands on a piece of stone in the middle of the fog, continuing to caw and hop around on it, as if trying to show me something. I stare at him, holding onto the tree and gauging his route as the fog clears slightly. That’s the bog. I know that much. I can tell by the way even the slightest deviation from these trees has me sinking, oily murk blackening my toes further.
Oh god, where’s Jack? I can’t go in there without him. He makes this normal somehow, gives me something to brace against when she comes.
“Jack?” Nothing comes back. “JACK?” I call out, louder and with a sense of urgency I hope he can hear.
I need his hand to hold onto, his skin to scrape at so I can feel something real in this. He’s a part of all this with me. I want his stoic gaze, his smile when he sees her in me. It’s the only way I can face it, be part of it. And I’m scared, I am. I’m alone out here with her and I can feel the nerves making me want to back track, find a route away from what she’s about to show me.
The crow screeches again, the kafuffle of his inky wings making me gaze at him as he flaps and fidgets around the mist below his talons. My own toes curl against the root of the tree, heels digging in to the soil as I try to do what my body’s screaming at me to do. I should run, back away and get to a car, or the road, anything so that I don’t have to see Lewis’ mutilated frame. I’ve seen it already, felt it in me as she pushed her visions through my mind.
Maddy.
My hands grab my shaking head, covering my ears as her voice comes again to haunt her way through whatever resolve I’m trying to achieve. No, I don’t need to see this. I’ll go, find my way back to the house. Maybe the old man will have my car fixed now and I can leave.
My feet scrunch deep into the sludge, pushing away from her suggestion as I turn and try to move back the way I came. I’m free now, aren’t I? Free to make my own choices. Lewis is dead. These men have made that happen. They took away my threat, gave me a chance to live my life again for whatever purpose I see fit. I still don’t know why, or why Jack had them in that cage other than what he told me, but it’s not a part of him I want to know. I’ll go and get on with that life I was after before all this happened.
Live free of worry.
A stun of freezing air comes at me suddenly, blasting a ray of light in my face and nearly knocking me off my feet. I stumble back, dazed and confused, as the ground flitters past my hands, wetness glancing off my fingertips before I reach for a large trunk to cling onto again.
“Madeline?” I spin to the sound of him, my body clawing onto all fours, desperate to see his face as I grip the tree.
“Jack? Where are you?”
“Over here.”
I scramble to my feet, not daring to let go of the only support I have against her until he gets to me, and peer into the dankness to the right of me. I can’t see anything other than the path clear of fog towards the crow. It’s still as murky and blurred as it’s always been.
“I can’t move, Jack. She won’t let me come to you.” He chuckles, a cheery tone coming from him as I stare towards is the sound of his voice.