Fear (Gone #5)(57)

“Stupid,” she told herself. So much for the newly competent Astrid. She’d managed to lose herself in just a couple of hours.

As much as she hated to admit it, the only wise movement now was to stand still and wait for dawn. If dawn came. That thought sent a thrill of fear through her stomach. Even by starlight she was helpless. In total darkness she could wander forever. Or more accurately, wander until thirst and hunger killed her.

She wondered which would do it first. People assumed it was thirst. But she’d read in a book somewhere that hunger— “Not helpful,” she said aloud, just for the reassurance of hearing her own voice. “If … when … the sun comes up I’ll be able to locate the ridges and hills and maybe even see a bit of ocean.”

So she found a patch of ground with some tall grass and sat down carefully.

“Bad start,” she admitted. Lost in the wilderness. How long had Moses and the Hebrews managed to stay lost on the Sinai Peninsula before stumbling into the land they were to reconquer? Forty years?

“A pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. And they still couldn’t find their way out of the Sinai,” Astrid muttered. “I’ll settle for one last day of sunlight.”

At some point sleep carried her off to unsettling dreams. And when she woke at last she knew that her one wish was not to be granted.

Looking up, she could make out a circle of deepest, darkest blue just beginning to lighten on the eastern edge and push the stars away.

Beneath that midnight blue was black. Not the black of night with stars and the Milky Way and distant galaxies, but the absolute blank, flat black of the stain.

The sky no longer stretched from horizon to horizon. The sky was a hole in the top of an upended bowl. The sky was the circle at the top of a well. And before the day was done the sky would be altogether gone.

Caine woke. His head was pounding. A headache so painful he thought he might pass out from the sudden onslaught of pain.

Then he felt something else. It felt like cuts. Itchy and sharp at once, all around his head.

He reached to touch it. But his hands would not move.

Caine’s eyes opened.

He saw the gray cement block, shaped like a bowl. It rested on the coffee table. His hands were in the block to the wrists.

Fear struck. Panic.

He fought to control it but he couldn’t. He cried out.

“No, no, no, no!”

He tried to pull back, tried to free his hands, but they were absolutely held fast by the concrete, which itched and squeezed his skin. He had done this to people; he had ordered this done and he knew the results; he knew what it did; he knew the cement could not just be broken off; he knew he was trapped, powerless.

Powerless!

He jumped to his feet, but the cement block weighed him down so that he stumbled forward and banged his knee against the sharp edge of the concrete. Pain in his knee, but nothing next to the panic, nothing compared to the awful pain in his head.

He whimpered like a scared child.

With all his strength he lifted the cement block. It banged against his thighs, but yes, he could lift it; he could carry it.

But not far. He set it down but missed the table, so that it slammed onto the floor, bending him over into an upside-down U.

Had to get a grip. Had to not panic.

Had to figure out…

He was at Penny’s house.

Penny.

No.

Sick, terrible dread filled him.

He looked up as well as he could and there she was, walking toward him. She stopped just inches from his bowed head. He was staring at her feet.

“Do you like it?” Penny asked.

She held an oval mirror down so that he could look at it and see his face. His head. The streams of dried blood that had run from the crown she’d made of aluminum foil and then stapled to his head.

“Can’t be a king without a crown,” she said. “Your Highness.”

“I’ll kill you, you sick, twisted maggot.”

“Funny you should mention maggots,” she said.

He saw one then. A maggot. Just one. It was squirming up out of the concrete block. Only it wasn’t coming from the cement; it was coming from the skin of his wrist.

He stared at it. She’d put maggots in with his hands!

A second one was coming out now. No bigger than a grain of rice. Eating its way through his skin, coming out of…

No, no, it was one of her illusions. She was making him see this.

They would burrow into his flesh and—

No! No! Don’t believe it!

It wasn’t real. The cement was real, nothing else, but he could feel them now, not one or two, but hundreds, hundreds of them eating into his hands.

“Stop it! Stop it!” he cried. There were tears in his eyes.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

The maggots were gone. The feeling of them digging into him was gone. But the memory persisted. And even though he knew absolutely that they were not real, the sense memory was powerful. Impossible to dismiss.

“Now we’re going on a walk,” Penny said.

“What?”

“Don’t be shy. Let’s show off that washboard stomach of yours. Let’s let everyone see your crown.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Caine snapped.

But then something dropped onto his left eyelash. He couldn’t bring it into focus. But it was small and white. And it writhed.