Inside Evil

Chapter 12 - Part 1

*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks* 

Getting through the mirror itself wasn't the simple task that Roberta thought it would have been. Once encompassed by the shiny material, Roberta found that not only was it rather sticky, but that it also seemed to have an elastic quality about it. This made trying to fight against the substance and find a way out nearly impossible. As the mirror slowly contorted and twisted its sticky self around Roberta's legs, arms and head, she started to feel a desperate attack of claustrophobia, and Roberta couldn't help but kick and tear in panic. She threw her limbs out and screamed as the material engulfed her entire body. She had so easily trusted Mrs Peacock, but Roberta was suddenly worried that she'd given her trust too easily and that she'd been lured into the mirror under false pretences. Her mind raced as she felt the mirror start to suffocate her and constrict her body movements until she could not move at all. She could still see Mrs Peacock, only a few feet away and looking intently into the mirror. Though Roberta screamed and shouted, the old lady just continued to gaze in, as if trying to see what was happening and truly oblivious to the fact that Roberta had already encountered difficulties. After everything she'd been through, Roberta was going to die in a mirror, wrapped in elastic glass and suffocated so that every last breath was torn from her.

As quickly as it had started, the material constricting Roberta's body went slack as it released her from its clutches. In moments, the elasticity returned and took hold, pinging the entire mirror back into place, neatly into its frame as if nothing had ever happened. Roberta dropped to the floor and landed on her hands and knees, aware that she seemed to be far from the small flat where she'd been mere seconds before. Pine needles pinched between her fingers, and she looked up to see that she was surrounded by woodland.

Looking back at the mirror, Roberta saw that the transparency had vanished and she could no longer see Mrs Peacock. The shape of the frame was still lit up slightly, from the lights on the other side, but the tiny amount of penetrating light was immediately sucked up by the overpowering darkness that encompassed her. There was no moon in the sky as far as she could see, and Roberta was unsure as to whether the canopy of firs was so dense here that no light could pass it or whether the skies illuminations were obliterated by cloud. Not a star, not a moon beam, nothing.

Roberta's shrinking panic after being released from the mirror's sticky web started to increase dramatically as she wondered how on earth she was supposed to find, or do, anything in the blackness. She was supposed to find a riddle, but she didn't know where to look, and who or what was supposed to give it to her. And, as difficult as finding the riddle might be, how the hell she was supposed to find her way back to the mirror, especially if this so called bell started to toll, was beyond her.

Starting to despair, Roberta needn't have worried about the lack of light as a sudden fluttering overheard cast illumination all around her. Looking up, she saw dozens, no hundreds of moths, perhaps even thousands, all emanating a pale yellow glow. It was very similar to the light that had been given off by the worms hanging in the glass bowls from Mrs Peacock's ceiling. They flew around her, a few metres above her head, creating a ball of pale yellow light that gave the forest an eerie glow.

In this strange atmosphere, Roberta stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. The pale light allowed her to see that she was surrounded by hundreds of trunks disappearing skywards towards the black night. Above her, the unmistakable sound of the canopy howling back and forth filled her mind, clearing her head in the same way in which it had on the night when she'd wandered into the woods near her own home. There was not much underfoot other than bare earth, pine needles and a few scattered pine cones, but the terrain seemed steep. It sloped upwards from the base of the mirror, indicating to Roberta that she'd emerged on the side of a tree festooned hill.

Roberta wasn't given long to survey what little landscape she could see, as the moths started to move off up the hill, taking the light with them. Roberta, inquisitive and with her mission in the forefront of her mind, followed them at a steady pace, pushing away twigs and ducking under lower branches as she went. The ball of moths gradually unfurled into a yellow line so that she could now see about 10 metres ahead of her. They hovered and danced overhead like a little line of fairy lights.

After a few minutes of pacing uphill, Roberta realised that it was opening up ahead, she could clearly see an end to the trees that covered her, and she hastened forward hoping to spy the sky and some normality. Eagerly dashing forward into the open patch of wood, Roberta gasped as she saw someone standing only a few metres ahead. The opening wasn't in fact the end of the wood, but a small semi circle shaped expanse of earth bordered by the same wood as she had just come out of. It didn't look natural, and there was no way that the trees would have grown in this exact shape without some human interference. The sky above could clearly be seen now, and Roberta saw the moon hanging like a giant globe in the darkness. Though the moonlight brought some illumination to the clearing, a single beam seemed to intensely fall from the sky onto a girl who stood motionless in the middle of the space. Though her head was dropped to her chest, Roberta already knew exactly who it was, and she summoned all the courage she had before creeping slowly forwards, out of the shadows of the trees and towards the girl.

"Vanessa?" 

*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.

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