Tumblefields [ONC 2021]

10

"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."
― William Faulkner

10

Her eyes flickered open. She didn't know how long she had lain there, only that it was still dark and that she could breathe. Not perfectly, but air now reached her lungs and her head, though still fuzzy, had started to clear. Her chest still rattled and felt tight and she still didn't know whether that was through Mara's attack or her asthma, but she could breathe again and that was all that mattered. For now.

Rolling to her side, away from the hole in the floor, her inhaler tapped upon the floorboards as she attempted to push herself up. She coughed a few times, the smell of gasoline burning her nostrils. She had to stand. She had to finish this before Jennifer came under the full ire of Mara.

Jennifer had left her. She knew Rachel was suffering, but she had left, consumed by her own grief and anger. Yet Rachel couldn't let her friend, if that was what she was, die. Character is not defined by how others treat you, but how you treat others. She didn't know where she had heard that, but it felt right. Jennifer abandoned her, but Rachel would not abandon Jennifer.

On all fours, she crept to the side of the hole, looking down into the darkness. Down there Mara awaited. The body of Mara, at least. Mara and two trophies that Rachel had to return to the corpse of the woman that had killed her friends and wrecked the life of another.

Looking around, she saw her cell phone, the flashlight muffled against the floor where it had fallen from her hand. Reaching for it, she trained the light down into the dark and found what she needed. The precarious pile of tables and chairs that she and her friends had constructed to escape the secret basement room.

Shuffling around the hole, she shifted to point her legs towards the darkness and began lowering herself down to the top-most chair, foot dangling and reaching until it found purchase on the chair's seat. Lowering herself further, she felt the makeshift construction wobble beneath her and she clutched at the edge of the hole until it all steadied.

-+-

Jennifer ran towards the doors, only to find them closed before her. Rachel watched from a short distance as Jennifer shook the doors, gripping the handles, the shaking increasing as her desperation and anger increased. She stepped back and kicked at the doors, but they remained closed. Sturdy, even after all these years.

Rachel didn't know whether Dawes had closed them, or whether Mara's hand reached out into the real world. She only knew that Jennifer could not leave. Hands balled into fists, Jennifer hammered against the doors, useless and ineffectual. Turning, she leaned her back against the doors as her eyes lifted up to the metal and glass roof above the entrance hall.

Raising her own eyes, Rachel saw cracks appearing in the panes of glass above. Her heart began to race as Jennifer began to shuffle around the walls, attempting to reach the relative safety of the overhang of the mezzanine floor above. A sharp crack sounded and one pane of glass exploded, sending shards and splinters of glass tumbling to the floor of the entrance hall.

Jennifer screamed, raising her hands to protect herself as the glass tinkled and shattered around her, but she remained unharmed. She began to run, checking and pulling at doors as she passed, turning her face away from glass breaking around her.

"No! Please! Stop this!" Calling out to the almost empty entrance hall, Rachel prayed that Mara would listen. "I'm putting them back. I'm putting them back right where they came from. Give me a chance."

But no answer came.

-+-

She shook her head, uncertain whether to climb back into the room above, or to continue down into the pit that was Mara's tomb. Jennifer needed help, but Rachel struggled as to where the best help lay. Above, helping Jennifer escape, or below, returning the trophies and putting an end to the madness?