The Fandom(19)

‘They came down here,’ someone shouts.

I hear Alice gasp, but we don’t stop, panic driving us on.

Terry’s voice sails over the rising stamp of boots. ‘Come on, you useless bunch of cretins.’

We cram our bodies into the hole, pulling back the bricks with frantic, urgent movements.

I hold my breath and pull my knees towards my body with trembling, sticky hands. The ground vibrates as the Imps pass. The air stirs against my cheek, and I watch my hands turn pink to black to pink as their shadows block out the light. Only when my hands stay pink for a while do I start to breathe again.

‘They’ve gone,’ Alice whispers. ‘Just like in canon.’

‘What do you mean?’ Katie asks.

‘Rose, Saskia and Matthew hid in this very doorway to avoid the same lynch mob,’ I say.

‘That’s weird,’ Katie says.

I nod. ‘You’re right. It’s like the original plot seems to be . . .’ I pause, searching for the right words, ‘haunting us.’

Alice lets her head slump back against the wall. ‘How the hell did we end up in this place?’ In the shadow of the bricked-up doorway, I can just make out the tears glistening on her cheeks.

‘It’s insane.’ I shift my weight so our knees knock together.

‘I want to go home,’ Alice says.

‘Me too,’ Katie says.

I wish we could just stay in this doorway for ever, huddled and warm and safe.

Alice wipes her nose with the back of her hand, something I’ve never seen her do. ‘It’s funny, you know,’ she says. ‘I used to wish and wish I could be inside The Gallows Dance . . . but now we’re actually here and –’ her voice breaks from the weight of the emotion – ‘it really sucks.’ She makes this soft, rhythmic noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob.

‘At least you’ve read the book and seen the film,’ Katie says. ‘Why couldn’t we be in Narnia or Neverland or . . . or . . . or A Midsummer Night’s Dream? At least then I’d know what was going on.’

I don’t reply. I focus instead on the pain – my head, my ear, my back. It kind of distracts me. We listen to something drip nearby, a distant sound of chatter, the mew of a cat.

‘We need to find Nate,’ I finally say. I know we probably lured every angry Imp away from the tavern, but all the same, I won’t feel happy until I’ve seen him alive and well.

Alice nods. ‘Give it a second longer though, yeah? Make sure those bastards have definitely gone. I think Rose waited for an hour or so.’

I shake my head. ‘He’s only fourteen . . .’

Katie squeezes my leg. ‘But he’s super smart, he can think his way out of anything.’

We share a sad smile and begin to push the bricks away. We emerge from the doorway, stubbing our toes on the rubble, upsetting the brick dust. It catches in my throat and I stifle a cough.

Maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe it was the cough, but somebody spots us.

‘There they are,’ an Imp shouts. ‘I told you they came this way.’

My stomach flips. But we don’t pause, we don’t even turn to look, we just start running again. We skid around the corner to see more Imps; an angry, ugly wall. They close in on us, pinning us in, rounding us up, and I spin faster and faster as I realize walls surround us, of both flesh and brick. I grab Alice and Katie by the hands and balance my weight on my toes, ready to move at any opportunity.

The freckly controller smiles – long and slow – like he knows how scared we must be. ‘Well, look what we have here.’

I don’t respond, too scared to speak. Beneath my tunic, my skin bristles.

‘A Gem and her friends – two Imp traitors.’

I open my mouth, but only a whimper escapes.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Katie shouts, ‘she’s not a Gem.’

The controller ignores her. ‘You know what we do to Gems and traitors?’

Another Imp cries from the back of the group, ‘String ’em up.’

In the film and the book, the Imps are the goodies, the ones you root for, so it’s strange to be at the receiving end of their hatred. I wish I could explain this to them, sit them all down and show them the film, their film, make them see that this isn’t real. None of this is real.

And suddenly I don’t feel the heat in my ear or the pain in my back, I don’t think about my friends’ hands, slicked with sweat and cold in my own. I just feel my whole body melt on the spot. My legs cave, my lungs stop gasping, and my heart stops squeezing. I hit the ground like a dead weight.

‘She’s beaten us to it.’

‘Can you hang a traitor if they’re already dead?’

‘You can never kill a traitor too many times.’

I hear Alice’s voice, like she’s talking through cloth. ‘Violet, wake up, Violet.’

Colours dissipate, shapes fragment, sounds ebb to nothing.

I sail towards the clouds, toes pointed, legs stretched. I reach the peak of an invisible arc and glance down – the trampoline oscillates like a magenta sheet pulled between the trees. Mum laughs and Nate claps his hands. Jump, Violet, jump. We won’t let you fall. And then I hear a voice, muffled, like it’s moving through water. It belongs to Dad. That’s it, Violet, come on, baby girl. Wake up, wake up. My eyelids flicker, the effort of opening them feels like lifting a massive weight. And I can smell something clean, a lack of rotten bird, something crisp and medicinal. But the trees dissolve, the rotten bird returns, and Dad’s voice turns to a scream. Alice’s scream.