Midnight's Garden

Author's Note: Don't fret you people wandering up the garden path at midnight; Candy isn't softening to him yet. She still dislikes him with daggers!

Chapter Six

Candy was dreaming, or least she thought she was dreaming. Her skin felt hot, and her dark hair was stuck to the sides of her face with feverish sweat. Her eyelids fluttered every so often, and words were mumbled, but she could not escape from her purgatory of being between dreams and reality.

Three people stood around the side of her bed, all eyes looking down on her without sympathy. Their faces were hard and unfeeling, they saw suffering everyday of their lives, and this girl was no different.

The smallest of them, a sombre looking maid picked up Candy's hand, raised it and let it fall back onto the bed with a heavy thump.

"She is trapped in her dreams," she concluded. "She remembers where she is, but can do nothing about it. It's like being paralysed; we could do anything we wanted to her and she could not protest."

"How awful," the taller maid replied. "And she would know its happening?"

"Yes, that's what makes it so delightful," the small maid replied with a cruel smile. "We have to report this right away."

The three looked down on the girl for a last time, and then turned their backs on her, leaving her to suffer in her imaginary world.

It took two days for Candy's feverish dreams to break, and leave her in peace, and when she became aware of herself again she sat up empty of all thoughts. Rubbing her eyes, for under her eyebrows felt sore, Candy swung her legs out of the bed and tried to regain her balance as she stood.

She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but she could tell a great deal of time had past since her last encounter with Lord Carrion. Of course she had no idea that it had been as long as two days.

She felt numbed of all feelings as she pulled the switch in the bathroom, but as she looked in the mirror she began to remember.

Dark circles had appeared around her eyes, which she assumed must be bruises from where his eye contraption had dug in so hard. She touched a finger to them, and brought it away when it caused her discomfort. She felt embarrassed, how could she go out looking like this? Then she remembered she couldn't go out even if she wished to, and the feelings disappeared again.

Filling the sink with water, Candy didn't feel like washing properly, instead she simply washed her face, being careful of her eyes. She found her clothes draped over a chair and changed quickly in case someone should come in. But no one came. So Candy decided to linger.

Sitting down in the chair, Candy waited for someone to knock on the door, wherever it was, for she had yet to locate it. But still no one came.

Finally she got up to find the door herself, maybe they had forgotten all about her? Or worse, they had forgotten about her on purpose. Maybe they had locked her in, and were going to starve her to death? At this thought, she instantly felt hungry and she had to busy herself in order to forget it. She couldn't let fear well up in her again.

Looking around, Candy walked towards a wall and ran her hands over the books. They weren't fake; they were all real. She didn't know why this surprised her, but it did. She began to look at the titles, but they meant nothing to her. Some were in another language.

She was so engrossed in looking at the books, that when they opened before her into a doorway flanked by two guards, she jumped in surprise. She waited for something to happen, but they just looked at her expectantly. Eventually Candy realised they were waiting for her to walk through the door.

"Erm…" Candy stammered looking at the two motionless men in front of her, they were both double her size. "May I leave the room, please?"

It was if she were speaking to statues, for neither one of them even looked at her, let alone bothered to answer. Candy watched them both hopefully until she realised that she was not going to get a reply. So assuming she was free to leave the bedroom, since otherwise they wouldn't have opened the doors for her, Candy took a step out of the room, all the time expecting to feel a hand on her shoulder stopping her from going any further. But no one stopped her.

Candy knew where she wanted to go, she wanted to leave the tower, and guessing that she was probably above ground, she began looking for a staircase that led downwards. After walking through corridors, appearing just to go round and round in circles, Candy began to loose sprit. It was a foolish thing to think she could escape so easily.

She now knew she was in a greater prison that she had first thought. Letting her out of her bedroom had simply been a trick to make her think she had more freedom than she actually had, but there was no way of escaping this floor, except from jumping from a window to a plummet of many high feet.

Candy found that as her urgency subsided, and she understood that she was still a prisoner, she began to find her eyes ensnared by all the paintings and tapestries that lined the walls, and she found herself wandering rather than walking.

It would take her a lifetime to study all of them, not that she was usually interested in art and that sort of thing, but they were all made by people of the Abarat and were subsequently more special to her.

They showed so many beautiful and frightening things that Candy thought she would soon became disorientated and forget what she was trying to find. After stopping again to look at a particularly gruesome painting of a fallen animal in a battle, Candy heard the sound of footsteps growing louder, and feeling instantly that she didn't want to found in the hallway, Candy squeezed herself behind a suit of armour and waited.

The footsteps stopped, but Candy could see no one. Then without warning, the floor in which she had been standing on seemed to disappear, and reveal a staircase below it. Candy waited with baited breath, to see Christopher Carrion emerge from the black depths of the hidden staircase, and step up into the corridor.

Candy's heart hammered so hard that she thought for sure he must be able to hear it. He was standing so close to her that she could smell him. Her nose twitched, he smelt like a bonfire, but not unpleasant, just strange. She wondered what was on fire, and whatever it was, what had it done to offend him?

"Houlihan, my grandmother must not discover where I have been," he ordered to the man who had followed him up the stairs.

Candy watched Houlihan close the floor, it was so easy; why had she not noticed it before?

"She will not hear of it from me, Lord," Houlihan assured him.

"We must prepare, if day islands discover her before…"he broke off. "But she still sleeps, she will not even awake to my command."

"My Lord, they will not find her, and besides she is ignorant of it all," Houlihan assured him.

Candy didn't know why, but she had the distinct impression that they were talking about her. But she was distracted from what they were saying by Lord Carrion's presence.

All the time she had heard tell of him as a monster, and she'd certainly witnessed his cruelty herself, but here he was. No monster now, just a man stood moments away from her, all she need do was stretch out her hand to touch his shoulder. He did not seem so frightening at present. In fact his shoulders were slumped as she hadn't seem them before, and his head was slightly bowed. She could not see his face, but she could here his words, and what followed next was full of pain.

"I cannot loose her again Houlihan, I will not. They will not take her from me."

Houlihan said nothing to this, and in the silence that followed, Candy extended a finger from her paralysed hand, and let it scrape the back of Lord Carrion's jacket. She dreaded to think what she might have done next had he not moved away in hast, causing Houlihan to hurry after him.

She gasped air into her strained chest and squeezed back out from her hiding place. She was muddled in her mind from Carrion's words. What had he meant again? He couldn't be talking about her after all; they had never met before now. But at the same time she knew he was.

With mixed emotions, she pulled the lever she had seen Houlihan use and opened the floor. She felt sorry for leaving him, for his voice had spoken true to her of pain and suffering at her absence, but the instinct to get out and as far away as she could was too strong. She would not wait for him to subject to her to more horrid dreams; she would escape now whilst she had the chance.

He had been too close, and too real, and she had to leave.