Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(18)
It’s hot, like I’m being smothered by heavy air. I should move the towel away from the door for better ventilation. I kick off my blankets and inch my ankles toward the edge of the bed but freeze in place before sitting up.
The wind shakes the panes … louder than earlier. An eerie, vibrating hum that almost sounds like a song. Even the plants and flowers on the windowsill stay silent, as if listening to it. A sudden flash of light blinks across me. It takes a few moments for me to realize that it’s lightning. I don’t hear any rain. It must be an electrical storm.
The next flash illuminates my surroundings. Thick cobwebs stretch from my bed frame to the windowsill to the ceiling—a morbid canopy, as if a giant spider has laid a trap.
I sit up, and a sticky film suctions to my mouth. Next blink of light and it’s even thicker, suffocating me. I scrape webs from my face and scream for my mom, but I can’t see her; there are too many strands between us. I yank out my IV and leap off the bed.
Blood flows from my hand, different somehow. It floats upward, a solid strip, forming a glowing red sword. I take it instinctively, slashing at the filaments, cutting my way through the sticky fibers to reach Mom’s cot. A thick sheet of spider silk has engulfed her body.
The red glow from my sword reveals stuffed animals and dolls hanging in effigy on the glistening radials all around me, more toys than I remember seeing on my windowsill. They grab my hair and bite my skin as I hack my way and weave toward Mom’s cocooned form. An instant before I’m there, the clown drops down from a swinging thread. It plays the cello and laughs, taunting me. What I heard earlier wasn’t the wind at all … it was the instrument.
I lash out with my dagger of blood, and the toy drops to my feet, its song silenced, though its arm continues to move the bow across the muted cello strings.
Finally, I reach the cocoon. I slice open the white shell, afraid to look. As the sides fold back, it’s not Mom’s corpse staring dead-eyed at me.
It’s Jeb’s.
Jeb’s face, gray and lacerated. Jeb’s mouth that opens and screams. I scream in unison, our combined wails so shrill I have to cover my ears.
In the resulting silence, a voiceless whisper slides into my mind.
“It will end like this, unless you fight back. Rise to your place. Wake up and fight. Fight!”
I wake up, gasping for air. Hair tangles around my face. I comb back the strands so I can see. Moonlight filters through the blinds. There’s not a web in sight.
My heartbeat settles as I see Mom sleeping peacefully in her cot. The stuffed animals sit in their places on the windowsill, all but one. The clown hunkers on my nightstand, staring up at me, its hand slowly moving the bow along the cello strings in time with the wind howling outside.
I stifle a horrified moan and shove the heavy toy to the floor. It lands with a strange jangling noise and slumps there, unmoving, yet the message of its muted song still resonates: Morpheus is here in the human realm, and everyone I love is in danger unless I find him, reclaim my throne, and stand up for Wonderland against Queen Red’s wrath.
The clown didn’t haunt me again after the nightmare. I stuffed it in the trash under some paper towels and magazines while Mom slept. The toy was more solid than I thought it would be—almost like a toddler—and seemed to wriggle in my arms. It was even more unsettling because, although I can’t place where, I’ve seen that clown before. I told Mom I gave the toy to a nurse for the children’s ward, since it was from a complete stranger.
Stranger. The perfect descriptor for Morpheus. He’s stranger than any person or creature I’ve ever met. And, boy, do I have a long line of comparison subjects.
On Wednesday morning Dad drops me at school twenty minutes early.
I’m exhausted. After being discharged from the hospital on Tuesday, I refused to take any of the sedatives prescribed by the hospital’s attending physician. Between the pain of my injuries and thinking about Jeb’s heiress client and Morpheus’s crash-landing into my everyday life, I didn’t get much sleep.
“You look pale, even with the makeup.” Dad hands me my backpack across the seat as I slide out of the truck onto the asphalt parking lot. “I hope you’re not overdoing it.”
There’s no way to tell him the real reason for my blood-drained face. And his concern is nothing compared to what Mom’s been feeling since I’ve been home from the hospital. She wouldn’t let me have any visitors, insisting I needed to rest, so I didn’t get to see Jeb or Jenara. Since my new cell phone wasn’t charged and programmed, I settled for a short and unsatisfying landline call divided between both of them. Jeb was evasive about his visit with the heiress, insisting we talk about it in person. That did nothing to calm my nerves.
Mom’s final words as I left this morning were, “I’m not sure school’s a good idea so soon. Maybe take a day off from classes while your car is getting its tire fixed.”
Somehow I managed to talk Dad into driving me anyway, and I’m not leaving now. “Dad, please stop enabling Mom’s paranoia. Persephone’s given me the entire week off from work. I’ll get bored sitting at home. I have exams to make up, and there’s no way I’m going to summer school. I want to graduate with my class.”
I plant my feet in a determined stance. I have to win this argument. If I don’t find Morpheus today, he’ll come looking for me at home. That’s the last thing Mom needs.